Radiance

Vince found me. Vince brought me in out of the dark and the wet. Vincenza Mako, who never slept with my father but outpaced all the women who did by miles: She wrote his movies, every one. What’s the point of screwing somebody once you’ve gotten that close? It’s…redundant. Vince brought me in, kissed my forehead, read the note, and made the decision before Percy got downstairs. She opened her dress to hold me against her hot, greasepainted skin, out of the cold. I couldn’t stop shivering, but I didn’t cry.

[The footage of SEVERIN’S discovery in Virago plays under her narration.]

And Percival Unck, unable to stop being Percival Unck for even a single moment, made her do it all over again. Get the shot. It didn’t happen if it didn’t happen on film. No matter what else happens—hell and the resurrection and dinosaurs and comets—get the shot. He made poor Vince take me back out into the screeching storm and the rolling clouds and never you mind the rain and the lightning, just leave her there until I can get Clara and at least one good overhead light going. Yes, fine. Shut the door. We’ll add in the doorbell cue later.

It all happened again. This time, Percy opened the door to find the abandoned orphan daughter he had never known existed. [PERCIVAL raises his hand to his mouth. His eyes fill with tears.] Percy looked into Clara’s big black eye with an exquisite expression of shock, wonder, fear, and cautious, not-quite-believing joy. Percy gathered the shivering black-and-white bundle into his arms with a father’s instinctual protective gesture. [PERCIVAL brushes a stray tuft of dark hair from his daughter’s brow.] Then Percy, his own Byronic, Stygian hair plastered across his forehead by the deluge, gave one last gaze out into the street and the wind as if to say, By golly, the world is so terribly full of unlikely magic, before closing the door to the great house and opening the door to a new life. [A slow, tender, terribly vulnerable smile blossoms on the face of Percival Unck. He shakes his head. The rain pours down. He shuts a heavy door on the storm, bringing an innocent within.]

This is the version I’ve seen. I have watched it over and over. It is beautiful. It is right. It is full of hope for the future. It is perfect. It is a whopper of a lie.

Percy had to find me a mother right quick. It was the casting decision of a lifetime, as all the papers speculated wildly. He couldn’t raise that wee poppet all by himself, the poor man! A child needs a woman’s tender hands! And he could have his choice. Who wouldn’t leap at the chance to slot herself into that family portrait, to cradle the beautiful baby, to rest her hand possessively upon the elbow of the great man? A role had been written, the costumes made, the sets impeccable…he only needed a leading lady. Oh, but isn’t that always the trouble, though? An actress who can be nymph enough to interest the patriarch; mother enough to comfort the child; genius enough to build a kid from scratch to be that most elusive of creatures, the useful and interesting adult; fairy godmother enough to make the thousand magical woods and towers and castles of childhood appear at a snap of her fingers? File your headshots with the secretary, please. Form a line to your left.

But Clotilde? Clotilde wasn’t an actress. His first choice, and she couldn’t have delivered a line with conviction if God in Heaven cried action. Clotilde was no topless tart of Ilium. But she made a fine Airy Spirit, to say aye and thank him for his commands.

Clotilde Charbonneau is a box of photographs in my mind. She was gone before I started school and I recall her in bursts, flashes, frames, stills. Moments exploding in the recesses of my brain like lightning effects. I remember Clotilde’s furs. I remember Clotilde’s fingers. I remember Clotilde’s soft, throaty French consonants. I remember Clotilde’s hair, falling around me like the trees of a dark and secret forest. Hair like mine. Excepting Mary Pellam, Percy was always careful to make certain my mothers looked like me, could plausibly be mistaken for sharing my blood. They all had black hair, big dark eyes, and cheekbones like statues. He made sure I was never an alien; always a native in a nation where all the women looked like sisters.