“They do. On the upside, that means the market will settle out once a new CEO has been named.”
Once you name the new CEO, he meant.
Cosima’s mother had built PFS into an empire on the shoulders of her first project,Ship of the Cosmos, a low-budget film that she wrote, directed, and starred in as Captain Astra Saturnine.Ship of the Cosmoswent on to become one of the biggest film franchises of all time. It spawned sequels and prequels, limited-series spin-offs and animated versions, comic books and novelizations, action figures, fast-food toy tie-ins, and conventions. For three decades, PFS had been synonymous withShip of the Cosmos, even as the studio’s scope grew to constitute a significant portion of Hollywood’s continued output.
And yet Phoebe Frank, in what was possibly her first misstep, had not named a successor. Instead, she had charged Cosima with the knighting. Phoebe had called this a “compromise.” Cosima considered it a punishment, since it had come after she made it clear that she could not—or, in her mother’s view,wouldnot—succeed Phoebe.
That last, horrible, monthslong argument with her mother was the first time Cosima had refused to do what Phoebe wanted.
It surprised them both.
Cosima often thought of her life as Phoebe’s daughter in terms ofbeforeandafter. From her birth and appearance on the cover ofPeople—swaddled in lace, cradled in her loving mother’s arms—until her graduation with a niche degree in the arts, her life had been a public performance of what it was to be the daughter of a famous creative. After the whirlwind of finals and graduation, Cosima had traveled, experimented, and dreamed of making something of her own. Then she’d come home to rest and regroup, only to be told that Phoebe needed her. Cosima’s advice was required. Heruniqueknowledge of Phoebe Frank Studios. How well she could anticipate what her mother would want done. How good she was at doing things Phoebe’s way.
It worked out well for Phoebe. For the stockholders, too—until Phoebe was gone.
Now, the global entertainment industry, the markets, the PFS licensing and franchise partners, the media, and even the internet cinephiles looked to Cosima for a decision that she’d already taken too long to make. They had expected her to deliver it like a puff of white smoke from the Vatican, perhaps. Or they’d looked for the name of the annointed to float from the Castle on the exhale of her mother’s last breath.
Duncan watched her for a long, quiet moment.
Her stomach pressed against her heart, her throat, and locked her voice up tight.
He sighed at the screen of his phone. “Do you want to talk about the garden project instead?”
She did not. She took a sip of seltzer, hoping it would remind her stomach to be a stomach rather than a bag of knives. “Of course. That sounds perfect.”
When he looked up from his phone, it was to smile at her with sympathy.
Duncan was wonderful. He’d always been wonderful, ever since Cosima’s mother met him on a jet boat in the French Riviera, where he had at least six heiresses and models fighting over him—but naturally he chose Phoebe, with her long legs and curly hair and big eyes. At that time, Phoebe’s fame was wildfire, but, telling the story, she’d liked to portray herself as though she were an awkward girl reading on the beach, noticed by a handsome rake.
Cosima had her own memories of that trip. She’d been four years old, just beginning to understand that there was a difference between her mother when she was being her mother and her mother when she was being “Phoebe Frank.” Cosima had liked it when her mother took her into the cold sea, holding her hand. She’d liked this tall man with his fascinating Scottish accent. He found a gold coin behind her ear and gave it to her,and he said it was real gold. She could still remember the way he crouched down, putting his kind eyes right at her level. He buckled her into a bright pink life jacket he’d bought for her in a beachside shop. It pressed underneath her chin when she sat down on his boat.
Duncan set his phone on the arm of the chair and removed his glasses. “Maybe we can reconvene in the morning. You’ve already had a long day putting out fires.”
Cosima looked out the window of her mother’s study at the sprawling landscape of native plants and quiet, flower-filled paths to the pool. The gardens had been Duncan’s intervention. A casual gardener in the way many Europeans were, Duncan had decided to cultivate plants and flowers as a way to cultivate his relationship with Cosima. The first time Cosima and Duncan’s gardens had been photographed for a magazine, she was sixteen. There had been several more features over the years, the product of writers and editors charmed by the duo and the oasis of California native plants they’d created.
At the height of Cosima and Phoebe’s arguments about the future of PFS, Duncan had used the garden to broker a ceasefire. He’d suggested to Phoebe that Cosima’s desire to build something of her own was equal to Phoebe’s but not identical. Perhaps a few calls could be made to support Cosima’s passions. Audiences might be interested in a new kind of gardening show, a stylish one filmed at the Castle. Many an empire began with a single audience, as Phoebe well knew. Cosima simply needed herownaudience. If this grew into a younger, leaner sister studio to PFS? Well. It wouldn’t be surprising.
And so, the blow to Phoebe thus softened, Cosima came to be in charge of two projects. First, she was to handle the peaceful transition of power and the initiation of a new era for PFS so that everything might be done just the way Phoebe wouldwant. Then, a few weeks from now, she would begin filming the pilot ofAn American Castle’s Garden.
PFS had already inked multiple streaming contracts and a global distribution deal for the new gardening show, somewhat losing sight of the “leaner” sister studio that had initially been imagined.Cosima’sstudio now employed dozens of people who depended on her new passion and vision.
She missed gardening. It would have been nice to be out there, her knees and hands in the dirt, alone with her feelings.
“I’m fine, Duncan. Truly,” she said. “I do need to find a paper, since we’re here in Mother’s office.” She rose to her feet. Her arches hurt. “One of our producers wants it, something she said Mother put aside for her in her desk. A note from Scorsese he wrote after he sawShip of the Cosmos.”
Her mother’s desk was a disaster, though Phoebe had always claimed to have a “system.” No one had been permitted to touch the teetering piles on top of it—not even Cosima. She didn’t know where to find a note from Scorsese, even if she’d had the urge to search for it. She trailed her fingers across the stacks of paper and wished it were the end of the day so she could take off her shoes and curl up in her bed like a small, soft animal.
Instead, she started taking apart the piles, flipping each item over, one by one. There were papers falling off the desk, sliding under it, drifting onto her mother’s desk chair. Duncan rose to his feet. “I’ll just give you a hand.”
“I’ve got it.” She reached out to steady a stack before it collapsed but miscalculated, sending it tumbling to the floor. “Shit.”
A sheet of her mother’s canary-yellow stationery fluttered to the carpet between her feet. Cosima crouched down to retrieve it, her arches throbbing.
Her hand stilled over the paper.
“What is it?” Duncan asked.
It was a list. One she’d written down for her mother, who dictated the items to her when the doctors made it clear Phoebe was intractably ill despite her efforts to hide it.
