Black Heart, Ivory Bones

Goldilocks Tells All SCOTT BRADFIELD

Scott Bradfield was born in California but now lives in the United Kingdom. He has published both mainstream and genre fiction, including the novels The History of Luminous Motion, What’s Wrong with America, and Animal Planet. His stories have been collected in Dream of the Wolf and Greetings From Earth. He is currently writing screenplays in Hollywood and reviews in London.

“I definitely didn’t know what I was getting into,” Goldy told the crowd of demographically diverse audience-participants. “I certainly never thought it would go so far. Imagine yourself in my place, just a kid really, lost in the Enchanted Forest for weeks now, and no familiar paths in sight. All of a sudden — winds howl, owls hoot, the woody noose tightens. Which is when you smell porridge bubbling in a big iron pot, and after heeding your nose for a mile or so, find it. What looks like salvation. But what turns out to be something completely different.”

Goldy paused long enough to hear the high-ceilinged studio hum: cameras, audio-processing equipment, boom mikes, even the agitated curls of Goldy’s Dolly Parton — style wig.

“Bavarian modern, baby,” Goldy continued. “With cotton-candy smoke burbling from a candy-cane striped chimney, and all the doors wide open. So what would you do, ladies? Maybe what I did — climb in through one of those convenient, Hobbit-style windows, pull yourself up to the porridge bowl, and after a good hard dose of victuals, eventually fall asleep dreaming of feathery opulence in a just-right lacy bed. I felt like a million bucks. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. A warm home, warm food, cool sheets, all the things I’d ever dreamed about and more. Little did I realize that fast fate was already hastening toward me through the hoary woods. Little did I know, ladies, what Papa Bear had in store for me when he got home.”

Goldy let the sentence hang, establishing eye-contact with every working-age woman in the studio audience. I am your sister, Goldy’s glance affirmed. And I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it.

“We’ve all got a Papa Bear in our lives, ladies, even though we may call him by different names. I’m talking about that guy who comes home late every night stinking of pretzels and beer, slamming all the kitchen cabinets, enacting his plans for world domination on our soft, life-affirming bodies. Which brings me, ladies, not-quite-so-coincidentally, to the subject of my new book—”

Goldy held up a bright laminated glare to the camera. The assembled studio audience blinked.

“It’s my latest,” Goldy concluded, “my best, and the one which the New York Times recently described as ‘thrilling, sad, heartbreaking’ and ‘packs a huge wallop.’ Entitled The Goldilocks Syndrome, it’s currently available in the lobby at a today-only discount of $21.95. And if you act now, I’ll sign and date this sucker at no extra charge.”

Goldilocks hated book tours. She hated the silent-time in chauffeur-driven stretch limos when the cellular phone didn’t beep. She hated the articulated virtual-landscape of acoustically muffled hotel corridors and velour-scented penthouse restaurants. She hated predawn wake-up calls, the hard crack of ice machines in the night, and hasty publicity girls going ballistic over memos. In fact, the only things Goldy did appreciate about book tours were hotel room-service and movie people. Because both entered and departed her life on perfectly fitted steel casters. And both always made just enough of a fuss to let her know that they really cared.

“We love you, Goldy,” Sid Croft said. “We love everything about you. We love the way you look, the way you write, even the way you comb your hair. When Barbara and I first read your book, we couldn’t help it, we both said, ‘Wow.’ Isn’t that right, Barbara? When we first read Goldy’s book, what’s the first thing we said to each other, huh?”

Barbara looked up from her blue loose-leaf notebook and finished biting the eraser off her Number 2 Ticonderoga.

“I’m not sure, Sid. But didn’t we both say something like, I don’t know, like ‘Wow’?”

Barbara looked like she had spent most of her life on an IV drip. About the only weight and buoyancy in her entire body was confined to her pointy breast-implants.

“That’s it! That’s it!” Sid was bouncing up and down on the flexible toes of his beige penny-loafers as if he were preparing to return a particularly wicked volley. “We said, ‘Wow.’ We said ‘double-Wow.’ And what’s more, Goldy — we meant every word of it.”

Goldy was perched in front of her vanity mirror, gauging the depth of her own reflection. Goldy loved moments like this. Moments when everybody else waited for her.

“So what is it, Sid?” she asked finally, applying a modicum of blush to each cheek. “I’ve got a conference call at five, and a TV gig at five-thirty.”

Sid was as short, round, and immovable as a mailbox. With an almost audible pop, a bright bead of sweat broke from his receding forehead and slalomed down the right side of his face.

“We love the anti-male thing,” Sid said, exchanging a rapid semaphore of glances with Barbara. “We love the woman-striking-out-on-her-own thing. We really, well, we’re really intrigued by the three bears in the gingerbread house thing, but maybe we can talk about that, okay? I mean, couldn’t they be reindeer, or lions, or even East Germans? Think about it, Goldy. I’ve got Sandra Bullock’s agent on the line, and he just doesn’t go for this bear thing at all.”

Goldy’s unmascaraed eyes pinned Sid’s reflection to the mirror like a butterfly to a killing tray.

“So what are we talking about, Sid? Because if we’re not talking contract, I’ve got better places I need to be.”

Sid, with a long expiring exhalation, wiped his forehead with a monogrammed silk handkerchief and smiled.

Ahh, Sid thought. Take a deep breath. Now another. This is the moment when Goldy waits for you.

Sid reached into the left breast pocket of his white linen sport jacket, withdrew the folded legal documents, and slapped them perfunctorily onto Goldy’s vanity table like a summons.

“Of course we’re talking contracts, babe. Guild deal, pay-or-play, mega-points, your script until you lose it. But not until you’ve gotten us signed releases from all three bears, especially Papa. We’re asking primary rights, subsidiary rights, foreign rights, you name it. Those bears don’t go to the bathroom we don’t own the rights to it, get me? You deliver what we need, Goldy, and we’re ready to make heap-um big medicine on this one. We’re gonna make you the deal you’ve been waiting for all your life.”

Even Papa Bear couldn’t remember what really happened anymore. He had rationalized events in his mind, then re-rationalized them, then re-re-rationalized them again. He told Mama Bear one version of events, Baby Bear another, and himself alone in his bed at night still another. He woke from cold sweats dreaming about what might have happened. What probably didn’t happen. What never happened but seemed like it had. The most frightening thing of all, though, was that he couldn’t escape one firm unalterable version of his own history. And that, of course, was Goldy’s version — available in trade-paper, CD-ROM, and audio-cassette.

“You ruined the best years of my life!” Goldy screamed, appearing from her long sleek limousine in a thigh-length sable coat, pearl-drop earrings and a sequined raw-silk blouse from agnès b. “And maybe if you hadn’t made me lose so much confidence in myself, I could’ve developed into a more stable, nurturing-type personality, and gotten married and raised my own family, instead of ending up like this. You know what I mean, Papa Bear. Totally fucked up!”

“Why don’t you calm down, Goldy,” Papa Bear said without inflection. “Then maybe for once we could talk things over without getting so, you know, emotional all the time.”

Mama Bear stood in the kitchen doorway, wiping her sudsy paws on the hem of her white cotton apron. Oh Papa Bear, she thought simply. When will you learn to keep your big mouth shut?

It began as less than a whisper. And ended as more than a roar.

“Me?” Goldilocks replied. “You want me to stop being emotional?”

As Goldy’s heat gathered, Papa Bear gazed out the frosty window at her limo in the driveway. Its density belongs to a different world than this one, Papa Bear thought. Somewhere cleaner, perhaps. With firmer lines and harder surfaces.

“You ruin my life and I’m not supposed to get hysterical? You chase me out of my adopted home at the most defenseless and impressionable age for a young woman, and I’m not supposed to be hostile! What kind of animal are you, Papa Bear? Don’t you ever think about anybody but yourself?”

Giving under the weight of an exclamatory little stamp, Goldy’s left stiletto heel broke with a resounding crack. Goldy staggered — but, as usual, she didn’t fall.

“You bastard!” she shouted at Papa Bear. “You hairy ball-less honey-sucking bastard!”

The words didn’t make an impact so much as clear space in the room. Then, from the upstairs landing, Papa Bear heard it, a soft assembling presence like rain gathering behind dark clouds. Footsteps, a slamming door, an aimless cry in the dark.

“I can’t stand it! I can’t stand it anymore!” Baby Bear screamed from the summit of stairs. He was wearing his sloppiest Varsity sweat suit and a pair of buzzing stereo headphones. As he pounded the floorboards with his hairy adolescent feet, lamps toppled from tables and windows rattled in frames.

“All I ever hear about is you you you!” Baby Bear cried. “But what about my feelings? Why doesn’t anybody stop for a minute to think about me?”

When things finally settled down again, Mama Bear fixed everybody porridge. Hot and lumpy for Papa Bear. Tepid and slightly mushy for herself. And in-between for Baby Bear and Goldy, who, like all good children, preferred to drive straight down the middle of roads so they didn’t veer too dangerously toward either side.

“You can sleep in your old room,” Mama Bear bossed abstractly as she pottered at the sink. “And Baby can sleep on the convertible sofa in the den. It’ll be just like old times again, won’t it? Goldy and her three bears. Arguing about every little thing, but living their lives just the way they’re supposed to. Together — and happily ever after.”

Goldy dipped steadily into her porridge with the just-right-sized silver teaspoon. Meanwhile, Baby Bear sniffled into his checkered linen napkin, and kept close tabs on how much of his porridge was being eaten by her.

“I’m telling you, Sid,” the chauffeur said discreetly into the hall phone. “Take a left on Enchanted Forest Boulevard and drive straight past 7-Eleven. Get your butt over here and see for yourself.”

It’s all so futile, Papa Bear thought. All four of them sitting around the table just like old times, nursing their private hurts and grudges, learning a lot of complicated ways not to tell each other anything. Papa Bear felt it blossom in the pit of his stomach like gastritis. So much for so long. He couldn’t stand to hold it back another minute.

So Papa Bear roared.

Causing everybody to jump at least three feet higher than the backs of their chairs. Except, of course, Goldy. Who simply stared into Papa Bear’s eyes and smiled.

“I knew it,” Goldy said. “I knew he’d raise his voice eventually. When Papa Bear can’t persuade people by means of superior reason, he threatens to use force instead. It’s such a goddamn dick-thing it makes me want to puke.”

Papa Bear took a slow moment to catch up with his own impact. It didn’t seem right somehow.

But I’m the one who’s scared, he thought finally. And I don’t know any way to tell you but this.

“We gave you a bed to sleep in,” Papa Bear pleaded. “We gave you food to eat and clothes to wear. And believe me, I tried to be patient and put up with your endless constant complaining. ‘This cereal is too cold,’ or ‘This bed is too hard,’ or ‘You can’t have red wine with fish — whatever happened to that nice little Chablis Papa Bear was saving in the cellar?’ I tried to be a good foster-father, Goldy, but okay, maybe I didn’t do a very good job. Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore and I chased you the hell out of my house. I chased you into the dark woods and you never came back. Jesus, Goldy, I’m sorry, I really am. I’m sick about it nearly every night, I can’t sleep, I can’t enjoy a decent bowel movement. Please, Goldy. I’m begging you. Help me make amends.”

As Papa Bear talked, Goldilocks grew increasingly out of breath, as if she were performing a weird act of ventriloquism. She stood with her tiny fists planted on her overgrown hips, her large round face flushed and damp. She had been waiting for this moment all of her life.

“You want to make it up to me, Papa Bear? You want to make everything all right again?”

Papa Bear breathed silently for a moment.

“Yes, Goldy,” he said softly. “Anything. I’ll do anything I can.”

Goldilocks permitted her frozen expression to lapse into an equally frozen smile. Then she removed the tidy white rectangle of legal documents from her purse and showed them to Papa Bear the same way she might show a fly swatter to a fly.

“Well,” Goldilocks concluded, “let’s see what we can come up with. Okay?”

“There may not be third acts in American lives!” Sid Croft shouted through an old-fashioned plastic megaphone. “But there sure-the-hell are third acts in a Sid Croft Motion Picture Production! Let’s work together, everybody! And roll on three!”

Papa Bear was so exhausted it felt like catharsis. Seated in his familiar recliner with a bottle of Weiss Bier braced between his thighs, he let Mama Bear mop his feverish brow with an ice-cool dishcloth.

“One!” Sid Croft shouted. Technicians and administrative assistants went scurrying. The high hot lights activated with a flash.

Jumping her cue, Goldilocks charged out of her dressing room, trailing a haze of anxiety and talcum.

“Where’s that bitch from Continuity!” Goldilocks shouted, frantic with black eyeliner. Her artificial beauty spots were popping off her face like buttons from an overextended blouse. “I asked for forty-one minor changes to this scene and all I’ve counted so far are seven! Don’t you guys understand comedic development around here? I can’t go chasing after Papa Bear! Papa Bear’s got to come chasing after me!”

On shooting days, Papa Bear didn’t know why he bothered. Four months ago he had happily signed away every legal right he ever had just to get Goldy off his back. Now, as a result of those very same concessions, it was beginning to look like she would leave.

“I’m starting over again from two, folks!” Climbing atop the exhausted luncheon trolley, Sid stood among the pink shell-shards of King Crab and Jumbo Shrimp like a height-challenged swashbuckler. “And you, young lady! I’m talking to you, right?”

Sid Croft pointed directly at Goldy. All around her, studio technicians (especially the male ones) started to snicker.

“You take another look at your contract. And do it with a good lawyer, okay?”

Papa Bear retreated into a slow shrug. He felt totally alone, and, as per usual, he was totally wrong.

“First we live our lives,” Mama Bear whispered, “then we get on to the equally hard job of making those lives make sense. We eat jam, drink coffee, belch, defecate, bump our heads in the night, make love, eat more jam, suffer toothaches and bad faith. Then we wake up the next morning and tell stories about what we think really happened. We call our friends on the phone. We write letters and compose poorly punctuated e-mail. We publish books, outline screenplays, adopt the latest word-processing equipment, and dream our way through a thousand endless hibernal lapses. All I’m saying, Papa, is that maybe you and Goldy aren’t so different after all. She needs her anger and you need your guilt. Where would you be without each other, huh?”

Mama Bear was showing Papa Bear to his chalk mark on the polished wooden floor. Then she brushed lint from his hairy chest with a soft gray brush.

“Two!” Sid Croft shouted.

“I’m ready!” Goldy volleyed back, pulling her ringletted blond wig into place and readjusting her bosom. “Just hold your horses, Sid, I’m ready!”

Out of the corner of his eye Papa Bear spotted Baby Bear at the cappuccino bar, stroking the script girl’s pale cheek with a tender ursine restraint. Look, I may be a bear, the stroke implied. And you may be a woman. But that doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends.

“Three! And that’s action, ladies! Roll ’em! Let’s go! I got an early date tonight! Look alive and I mean now!”

Papa Bear felt the room dilate down to the width and glossy thickness of a six-inch lens. At which point Goldilocks, with a stamp of her high-heels on the parquet linoleum, entered stage right.

“Now let me tell you something, Papa Bear! Nothing you say or do can ever hurt me, because I love myself too much to let you beat me down. Before I’ll let your negative-sounding criticisms damage my self-image factor, I’m leaving the Enchanted Forest and never coming back! You can’t throw me out of your miserable hovel, Papa Bear — because I quit!”

Papa Bear took a deep breath, awaiting his cue.

And from the wings, Mama Bear made a perfect round O of her lips.

“O Goldilocks,” Papa Bear woodenly pronounced in Camera Two’s general direction. “I stand naked before you in all my testosterone-drenched male rage. My futile penile egocentrism withers in the all-embracing light of your heterogeneous female-multiplicity. Forgive me, O Goldilocks, for the terrible indignities your brave female self has suffered in my cruel clutches! What I’m trying to tell you, Goldy, is that you win, all-powerful woman! You win, you win, you win, you win!”

Papa Bear dropped his chin to his chest. It was the closest he could bring himself to self-abasement.

“Cut!” Sid Croft shouted. “That’s a wrap, kids! Let’s work together again real soon!”

Papa Bear remained on his mark, waiting. It seemed like forever — the time that elapsed between who he was supposed to be and who he really was. When he looked across the room at Goldy, Goldy steadfastly refused to look at him.

“Let’s go, girls,” Goldy told Hair and Makeup. “I’m opening a factory outlet in Reseda at six.”

Papa Bear watched the overhead arc lights flicker and diminish with a series of foggy pops, while stagehands coiled thick black cables and clumps of electrical wiring around their burly forearms. Papa Bear could smell her scent and perspiration. This was the lie he had been waiting for all day.

“You were wonderful,” Mama Bear whispered as the studio lights dimmed. “Maybe Goldy had all the good lines. But you definitely stole the show.”

Goldilocks was never completely an innocent, even in the original story — she was not only a trespasser but a force of chaos as she destroyed the property of those three sympathetic bears. In Bradfield’s satire she becomes the bitch goddess of the media as she uses her exaggerated experience as a victim to attain her fifteen minutes of fame.