Mistakes, Omissions, and Creative Writing

Don't let anything stop you

It came to my attention that last week’s post had a spelling error. I apologize. But that won’t stop me or you from correcting and writing more. I’m often asked about memoirs. Don’t you have to have a photographic memory to write one? Well, no. As someone (I can’t remember who) said, “It’s not a deposition. It’s a memoir.” Below is my fictional obituary for Pilard Rogers, who died December 21, 2001. The person who sparked my story is alive and well, but she did inspire me.   

So here’s my next installment of Repurposed Darlings. Up next: DON’T BUILD YOUR HOUSE ON RENTED LAND.

Pilard Rogers had beautiful hair.  Everyone thought so.  She was blond –- not too white or yellow.  Her hairdresser had used two parts lowlight to one part highlight.  He said it gave her a very natural look.

Great hair was important to Pilard.  She understood how to get it and how to use it.  She spared no expense because her hair was her insurance.  Men love great hair and she knew that, if she had to, Pilard could use her hair to get a man to love her, adore her, and support her.  

Pilard was from a prominent New York family.  Her father, the world-renowned architect Oscar Rogers, has a full head of hair.  Her mother, Isabel, a famous portrait photographer whose photos are in sixty-three museums worldwide, including the permanent collection at the Guggenheim, also has great hair, though not as great as Pilard’s was.  Her parents had been known to supper in small groups that included Joan Didion, Vaclav Havel, and Steve Martin.  Oscar Rogers has been on the Charlie Rose show twice.  They never thought anything like this could happen to them.  

Pilard had just graduated from N.Y.U. film school and moved to Los Angeles.  Her father helped her rent a fantastic beach house in Malibu.  Pilard’s hair looked great in the Southern California light.  She was about to start an internship at Julia Roberts’s production company.  Pilard was sure she and Julia would get along famously.  

For a while, before she knew she had the gig with Julia, it looked like Pilard might get an internship at Robert Altman’s company.  Pilard loved talking to her film school friends about Altman, and she knew they thought that working for the director would be a huge help to her, but she was really pulling for the Julia internship to come through.  Julia would surely have a good hairdresser, and that alone would be worth it.  Besides, wasn’t Altman like seventy?  How could he appreciate a girl like Pilard?

LA was the right place for Pilard.  She felt it in her roots.  It wasn’t really that she wanted to direct movies, although that’s what she told everyone who would listen.  It was that LA could give her a chance to feel special, and like she belonged.  All her life she felt like a fraud.  She was beautiful and smart, but deep down she never felt that anyone loved her enough to make her real, like the Velveteen Rabbit or Pinocchio.  She lived in the shadow of her parents, not in the light of their love.

Pilard needed the right person to love her.  She felt that she only needed to convince one person, the right person, that she was gorgeous, witty, and charming.  If she could convince, say, George Clooney, he would convince the rest of the world.  Pilard’s anxiety would disappear.  She wouldn’t have to prove herself anymore.  George would love her and that would be enough.  And Julia knew George.  All Pilard needed was an introduction.  

Pilard was crossing the Pacific Coast Highway on her last afternoon.  She was thinking about her life with George.  He would just love her hair.  She noticed a split end midway across the road.  She didn’t see the car and the driver didn’t see her.  She was killed on impact.