You Look Different in Real Life

playing producer.
    “Justine,” she says evenly. “Everyone has a story. It’s simply a question of finding it.”
    I want to help them. I want to help myself. I’m not sure if those are the same things in this situation, but I’m feeling a little desperate.
    “The community theater is doing a musical in June,” I say softly. “I could . . . you know . . . audition. That would be something.”
    Lance and Leslie share a sad, knowing kind of look.
    “We don’t feel comfortable with that,” says Leslie. “We’ve never created a situation to shoot. We’ve always tried to focus on naturally occurring scenes.”
    “It changes the kind of filmmaker you are,” adds Lance, “if you set things up.”
    If you set things up . Should I say it? Yeah, what the hell. I’m not feeling desperate anymore. Just mad.
    “So what was that with Keira, last time?”
    Leslie looks down at her notebook, and Lance winces like he’s been poked in the ribs.
    “That,” Lance says slowly, “was a conversation that Marcus Jones would have had with his daughter regardless of whether or not we were there.”
    I remember reading that same line as a quote from Lance in a magazine story.
    But you didn’t have to put it in the film , people said. You could have cut away at any one of several moments. And they were right. I think.
    Suddenly, Blue, who’s been curled in my lap this whole time, for some mysterious important cat reason launches off my legs and onto floor. In his mad dash out of the room, he ricochets off my floor lamp, knocking it off-balance, and down it goes with a big clang.
    And that’s a wrap for the day.
    Mr. Jones sits by himself on the stone bench in the garden, his back to the camera. His eleven-year-old daughter, Keira, walks into frame. She looks confused and surprised to find him here, and for a moment, glances back over her shoulder as if to ask an unseen someone, Is this where you want me to go?
    “Hi, Daddy,” she says tentatively. Her hair is gathered in a tight bun off her face and she’s wearing a ballet leotard underneath her hoodie and jeans.
    “Hello, Sprite,” says Mr. Jones, because a well-regarded English professor at the college would only have a literary, classical-sounding pet name for his little girl.
    “What did you want to talk to me about?” asks Keira.
    “Have a seat.” And Keira does, but you can tell she’d rather not, because when someone tells you to have a seat before they talk to you, something is about to suck.
    Mr. Jones takes a deep breath and you can hear it rattle into the microphone he’s wearing.
    “You know how Mommy had to go to Massachusetts for a few nights?”
    “To visit her friend,” says Keira.
    “Right. Well.” Another rattle, amplified. “You need to know that she’s not coming back.”
    Keira is facing away from us, but we see her head cock sideways, the body language equivalent of a question mark.
    “What do you mean?”
    “She’s going to live somewhere else.”
    “I don’t understand. How can she live somewhere else when we’re here?”
    Mr. Jones looks at his daughter for the first time, and she looks back. Now they’re both in profile.
    “That’s a good question, Sprite. I wish I knew the answer. She told me she needs to be away for a while.”
    When you hear this, you think of the earlier scenes in the film. The scene where Keira’s mother starts crying at dinner and locks herself in the bathroom. The interview where she seems only half there, lighting up a clove cigarette in the middle of the conversation, to the shock and horror of her husband.
    “But she’ll come back, right?” asks Keira.
    Even you know there’s no way to answer that. You think for sure Mr. Jones will say something like, “I hope so,” like most people would. But he does not. Because Mr. Jones has said that he’s a proponent of constant honesty with his child, he says, “No, Keira. I don’t believe she will.”
    Keira is silent for a moment as this truth, this reality that suddenly seems inevitable even to us, sinks in.
    Then she turns to the camera. She swivels her entire body to the other side of the bench and slides away from her father. In her effort to hide her expression from him, she is showing it to us.
    Her face.
    Take eleven years times a million, and that’s how much pain is on her face. That’s how much confusion, despair, and betrayal is on her face.
    The camera does not cut away.
    Instead, it zooms in close.
    Keira starts to