by Eve Corso
Table of Contents
The Fallen Starlet
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright © 2020 by Crazy Ink
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Book Layout © Crazy Ink
Chapter One
A cab pulled up to the address Jack had given the driver. Jack got out of the cab and could feel the oppressive Alabama humidity even though it was September. Jack took his suitcase out and whistled a long low whistle when he saw the house. The front yard he was facing was vast and depressing. The lawn had been dead a long time; the fountain in the center of the front yard was tarnished and dirty. Even the old mansion didn’t look like it was going to stand for much longer.
Jack took a deep breath and headed up to the front door where he was hoping he’d come face-to-face with his birth mom for the very first time in all of his forty-five years.
He got to her front door and knocked, listening for any sounds coming from the other side. When he didn’t hear anything, he put his ear against the door, careful not to stand too close. The paint on the door was chipping off and falling to the ground at the slightest touch. He felt a little foolish with his ear on the door, listening.
When he still didn’t hear any movement coming from the other side, he knocked again, harder this time.
Still, he heard nothing.
Jack tried calling her name. “Vivianne? Vivianne Lindley? My name is Jack Moore and I am here from Los Angeles.”
Immediately he heard a loud crash inside, followed by footsteps rushing to the door. An older woman’s voice spoke to him from the inside of the house. “Did you say Los Angeles?” she shouted. He couldn’t tell if she was excited, deaf, or if she was in a panic. Why was she shouting so loud?
“Yes, ma’am, I was hoping to have a word with you.”
When he didn’t hear anything, he put his ear to the door again, wondering if she was still there.
“Ma’am?” he asked.
“Which studio are you with?” she asked loudly. Her Southern accent was thick.
“Studio?” he asked, confused.
“MGM, RKO, you know, which studio are you from?”
Jack shook his head. What medication was this lady on? “No, ma’am, I’m not with any studio. I was hoping you could open the door and we could chat face-to-face.”
There was a horrified gasp on the other side. “Oh no! Absolutely not. I haven’t penciled my eyebrows yet. Return tomorrow, and after ten a.m., please and thank you. A lady needs time to prepare for guests.”
Jack looked at his at watch. It was 9:59 a.m. He shook his head in disbelief, but did what he was told. “Okay, I can come by 10:30 a.m. tomorrow. How’s that?”
“Perfectly fine, my darling. Until tomorrow,” she said, and she blew a kiss at the gentleman leaving from the inside of the mansion even though she couldn’t see him. She heard his footsteps walk away from her, taking with him the good news he would surely give her tomorrow. She needed a full day to prepare for Hollywood. Find her best wig, sharpen her best eyeliner, paint her nails cherry red, and put together the most perfect outfit.
She thanked her lucky stars. She had told them all it would happen. And now, Hollywood had returned, crawling back to her doorstep to beg her to come back. She laughed. “Oh, if they could see me now,” she said and walked away to finish penciling in her eyebrows. The audacity of being interrupted during that crucial moment in one’s day. Nowadays, her day was determined by how steady her hand was. If her eyebrows were imperfect, her entire day would be off. She’d cover all the mirrors, hating to see the mistakes she had made. And she couldn’t afford any mistakes tomorrow. She’d redo them over and over again if she had to. There would be no dusty sheets hiding her reflection when the gentleman returned.
When she got back to her bedroom on the second floor, where her make-up was lying out in abundance, she gave herself a mean, hard look in the mirror. The face of an old woman stared back at her. Tears filled her eyes, but damn them. She would not let them fall. Instead, she squared her shoulders. “No, you’re going to show them, Vivi,” she said to herself and got to work on her right eyebrow. She smiled at her reflection when she was finished.
“Absolutely perfect.”
Chapter Two
Jack left the mansion, clueless as what to do for the rest of the day. He wondered about the state of his mother. He decided to take a walk, talk to some of the locals, see what information he could gather about the big mansion and the woman inside of it.
The mansion was the only property on her street, if you could call it a street. The road to the house was barren and run down. It almost looked as if there were supposed to be more lots, more cul-de-sac mansions like hers, but it was the only house for at least a mile.
When he finally got back into the heart of the small town, he started seeing it come to life with the residents who lived here.
He noticed a woman wearing bright purple leggings and a pink T-shirt on the corner. Her hair was as red as her lipstick. The woman stopped to catch her breath while jogging and had her hands on her knees. Jack waited until she stood upright again to approach her.
“Uh, hi, my name is Jack and I was wondering if you could tell me about the mansion back that way?” he said and pointed. “I have an appointment with the owner, but any information you could give me in advance would be helpful.”
The stranger cocked her head and looked at him with one eye closed. “Well, what kind of information are you looking for?”
Jack gave her an embarrassed laugh. He didn’t want to tell anyone why he was in town yet and hadn’t quite come up with a lie. “I was just wondering about the owner. Does she live alone in that big old house of hers?”
“You’re talking about Ole Lady Viv?”
“Ole Lady Viv?” Jack asked. Man, he thought, this really was a small town. No one had any nicknames for one another in his quiet neighborhood back in Encino, California. In fact, he hardly knew anyone in his own town, except for his next-door-neighbors, Walter and Lilly. He wondered if he should get to know more of his other neighbors. It wasn’t something he had given much thought to before.
The woman brought him back into the conversation, as she scratched her head and squinted in the sunlight behind him. “Yeah, that’s what we locals refer to her as. What do you want to know?”
Jack cleared his throat. What did he want to know that he couldn’t find out tomorrow? “Is she of sound mind?” he asked, trying to put it as gently as possibly. If he knew, then maybe he could prepare himself for it.
The woman started to laugh, but then she wasn’t sure if he was serious so she grew serious, but then she couldn’t help but start laughing again.
“Aw hell, there ain’t nothing wrong with Ole Lady Viv. She’s just stuck in another era, is all.”
“Another era?”
The woman laughed and patted him on the
back. “I imagine you’ll find out during your appointment. Since you’re new in town, why don’t you stop by the Get It N Go for some fine home cooking? I baked up some fresh apple pie this morning and we make one hell of a cup of coffee. Plus, a cutie pie like you would just be like free advertising for my place. What do you say?”
Jack nodded, trying to hide his blushing. He and his new friend were close to the same age, but it wasn’t often that women boldly flirted with him. He still had his good looks, he knew. It didn’t mean he was used to compliments. “Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good idea, actually.” She gave him directions and he nodded, repeating them to himself so he wouldn’t forget.
“Thanks so much. I’m sorry. I didn’t catch your name,” he said.
“Willadeen. Willadeen Harper,” she said and stuck out her hand.
“Pleasure to meet you. Jack Moore.”
She winked. “I’ll see you back at the Get It N Go. I’m going to go home and change back into my day clothes.”
Jack thanked her again. As he made his way to the Get It N Go, he wondered what she meant about Vivianne. Stuck in another era? He pondered the question the whole way to his next destination, but as soon as he got to Willadeen’s restaurant, the delicious smell of home-cooked food filled his nostrils and his stomach growled in anticipation. He’d have to wait until tomorrow to find out more about Vivianne Lindley.
Chapter Three
Jack woke up in his motel the next morning, forgetting for a moment where he was. A chicken was heard somewhere close by. A chicken? Now, that wasn’t a sound he was used to hearing in the morning. It was still dark outside, he noticed. The sun was just starting to come up.
He checked his phone for messages, hoping to find one from his teenage daughter, but there were none. It was Amber’s first semester in college, and school had just started. Letting her study in Northern California was one of the hardest things he ever had to do. It was Amber who convinced him to come to Alabama and meet his birthmother for a distraction from everything.
“Dad, why don’t you book a ticket and finally go? You’ve talked about it enough,” she had said to him a week ago on the phone. And when he got off the phone with her, he did just that. Now that he was here, he wasn’t so sure he should have come.
Frustrated and sleep-deprived, he turned over in his lumpy mattress and put a pillow over his head, trying to drown out the sound of the chicken. Back in Los Angeles, he was able to drown out the sound of the gardeners’ leaf blowers and garbage trucks at six a.m., with their loud beeping when they backed up. City noises didn’t disturb him. But chickens? That was going to take some getting used to.
After a few minutes of tossing and turning, Jack begrudgingly got up and stumbled to the shower in the darkness.
After a quick shave, which gave him a more youthful appearance despite his forty-five years, he threw on some clean boxers and walked back to bed to turn on the TV. Jack flipped channels until he found ESPN. Anything to remind him of home, he thought, which had never felt further away.
WHEN IT WAS FINALLY time to leave, Jack took another look at himself in the mirror; his blue eyes stared back at him. He was getting ready to meet his biological mother for the first time and he was a little nervous. He adjusted his tweed coat, wondering if he was trying too hard to impress a woman who he shouldn’t need to impress. She had left him, after all. And he was ready to find out why.
He left a few moments later, giving himself enough time to walk through the town and back to her old house.
When he arrived, the sticky Alabama heat had made him perspire after only a few minutes of being outside. His dress shirt was starting to cling to his body. He wiped his brow once he arrived at her doorstep and knocked on his mother’s door. His watch told him he was right on time.
As if his mother had been waiting on the other side of the door, it opened magically. He had no words for what he saw before him. He closed him mouth, realizing he must have looked like a fish as his mother extended her hand, palm down. He guessed she expected him to kiss it. Instead, he cleared his throat and firmly shook her hand.
His mother only laughed it off. He took a moment to take her in, trying to determine if they shared any similarities. It was impossible to tell. The old woman had more make-up on her face than his local CVS store had in their entire inventory. Her eyebrows were penciled in thick and her eyelashes, heavy. Her eyeliner, which she wore thick as coal, gave her a mysterious look. At least her straight short light-brown wig wasn’t crooked.
He remembered his manners. “Hi, my name is Jack Moore. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”
“Vivianne Lindley. Tell me, son, what brings you to my doorstep two mornings in a row?” she asked, her emerald-green cape flowing as she walked down the wide hallway, leading him further into the old mansion.
“Well, if you have a cup of coffee, or a cold glass of water, maybe we could talk about why I’m here.”
“Coffee I have, but you’ll have to figure out how to make it yourself. I don’t touch the stuff, but I had some fresh grounds delivered from the grocer this morning.”
“Oh, you have a delivery service. I thought that was only in the big cities.”
Vivianne turned to him, a shocked expression on her face. “Why of course I have a delivery service. You don’t expect me to lug all these groceries in by myself, do you?”
He looked around in her kitchen. The groceries she had ordered were still in brown shopping bags, sitting on her counter. The kitchen was spacious but old and needed updating. She kept it clean for the most part.
“You need a hand with some of this?” he asked about her groceries as he took off his tweed coat and rolled up his sleeves.
Vivianne waved him away. “My girl comes at noon. Once a week. All this will be taken care of. The coffee pot is over there.” She pointed to a corner in the kitchen. The coffee pot was a little dusty. Jack didn’t have to approach it to know he’d rather stick to water rather than deal with cleaning and making coffee.
“Just a water would be great.”
Vivianne pointed to the sink. “Glasses are in the cabinet to the left. Be a doll and grab two, will you?” she asked in her thick Southern accent.
Jack did as he was told. He took two water glasses out of her cabinet and inspected them before setting them down. They looked clean enough. He poured two glasses of water from the tap.
The water that came out was slightly discolored.
“Uh,” he laughed. “I’m not sure about this water here.”
Vivianne waved her hand. “Oh, just let it run for a minute or two. It’ll run clear soon enough.”
Jack dumped the water and tried again. He handed a full glass to Vivianne and watched as she brought the glass to her lips. She took a sip and spit it out just as Jack had raised his own glass to his lips.
“Only Vodka for me, please and thank you,” Vivianne said and handed the glass back to him.
He raised an eyebrow at her. Vivianne pointed to one of the many grocery bags still on the counter.
“The bottle is a trifle heavy,” she admitted.
Jack obliged and dumped her water in the sink then looked for the vodka, finding it in the same bag as a jar of peanut butter.
“How do you take it?” he asked.
“Straight. Fill the glass one fourth of the way, thank you,” she answered, her head held high.
When she finally took a sip, she leaned back in her chair, looked at him, and smiled. “Now, are you going to tell me why you’re here?” she asked him.
Jack cleared his throat as he sat across from her. It was the moment of truth. “You used to live out in Los Angeles?”
“Yes, that’s correct. I was there for roughly sixteen years.”
“And why’d you leave?” he asked, wondering if she’d fill in the blanks so he wouldn’t have to.
Vivianne averted her eyes. “It was my time, that’s all. Hollywood turned its back on me and I’ve been here ever since.”
“You said Hollywood turned its back on you? How so?”
He watched his mother take another small sip of the vodka. “Why don’t you cut to the chase and tell me why you’re here, son?” she asked him, giving him a friendly smile.
“Funny you should use the word ‘son,’” he said. He looked at the glass of water in his hands and then eyed the very full bottle of vodka he had left on the counter. “May I?” he asked, nodded towards the alcohol.
She smiled and nodded, motioning towards the bottle. “Help yourself.”
He dumped his own water into the sink and poured himself vodka. The first sip stung his throat. He made a face, but decided to just come out with it. “About forty-five years ago, you had a son.” He stopped there and watched for her reaction.
She looked at him quizzically. “I beg your pardon?”
“You gave a baby boy up for adoption.”
She shook her head, a confused look on her face, her eyes downcast.
“I don’t understand,” she said quietly.
Jack set his glass down and watched the woman, giving her a moment.
“You mean to tell me you’re not from the studios?” she asked as she looked back up at him.
Jack shook his head. “Well, no. I mean, I am a producer, but that’s not why I’m here I’m afraid to say.”
He watched her face light up.
“A producer? Who sent you? Was it my agent, Doris?”
“You still have an agent?” he asked.
“No, no. She was my agent all those years ago. I finally stopped paying her, but she owes me a favor or two.”
Jack let out a breath and remembered to be patient. He tried to speak slowly. “I’m not here representing Hollywood, or the film industry. I’m here because I wanted to meet my biological mother. Vivianne, I wanted to meet you.”
She let out a throaty laugh and took a slow sip of her vodka. “And what makes you think I’m this woman? This mother you search of?”
“Well, your name is Vivianne Lindley, is it not? And you had me forty-five years ago. I was adopted by a really great couple. They named me Jackson, a popular Southern name because of my mother’s ‘lovely Southern accent,’” he said, using air quotations for the last part.