Night for Day

by Patrick Flanery

  This music of memory plays in spurts and squalls of noise, like a film pieced together from unrelated clips or scenes edited without regard for continuity. The challenge is always to keep the story of Noah – or you, if I am thinking of you, Myles, as I have been throughout these pages – contiguous in my head, writing it over and over to keep from losing it now at my death. Agon is all that remains, the contest of remembering, replaying, and containing without loss the little I yet grasp. How was Noah different from you? It was never only a question of appearance or physical attraction, since you were objectively the more beautiful, but of a flawless synchrony and understanding, the sense of never needing to translate ourselves to each other. If I spoke what I felt, Noah would respond in a way that made clear his complete understanding of that feeling. I cannot remember us arguing, although perhaps time and grief conspire to erase what was imperfect, and the first love is always the one we wish to magnify beyond all others, the love for which one feels oneself capable of total sacrifice, of being willing, literally, to give up one’s life for another. I had never felt this for you, Myles. I must confess that. Noah read me as I read Noah, two minds reading each other as the self reads itself. I do not think I can say that of you.

  Lanterns swayed across the lawns, their light turning faces into waxworks wet with insobriety. I tried to stand but my legs buckled and I sat down again hard on the grass. I did not want to leave without you, whose body and tenderness, whose capacity to reflect my desires and dreams, might let me pretend Noah was still alive, one last time. Perhaps that was all you ever were to me, a vessel for memories of someone else.

  A full moon of two hands, one clear and pearlescent, the other mottled gray, joined together in front of me, reaching down out of darkness. It was the man and his daughter who had given me a lift that morning, standing above me.

  What are you doing here? I asked them, staggering to my feet. I didn’t imagine I’d see you at a bloodbath like this.

  They are friends of friends, the daughter explained. We do not really know anyone in fact. Schoenberg was supposed to come I thought but he must have heard what was afoot. We cannot find him anywhere.

  No, my dear, the man corrected, they are friends of friends of friends. The Feuchtwangers, around whom all else revolves I think, they know the husband. Who can keep track with so many spheres of connection. Always there are too many.

  Or sometimes not enough, I said, conscious of the laughing faces around us, cheeks ripe, like background figures from Beckmann or Dix, ready to transform from louche to goose-stepping in the space of one night.

  Chaplin told us to come. He said it would be grisly.

  And of course now he does not come. This is so like him. Unreliable. Unpredictable.

  But so very charming.

  I think these American fascists are preparing their own bookburning squads, do you not find? Exhibitions and dismissals of Entartete Kunst, how do you say in English? Obscene art?

  Degenerate.

  Degenerate art, yes. They do not see how degenerate they are themselves. What trouble they make. And this time also it will be motion pictures. Mountains of celluloid smoking in this desert. It is a nice image, perhaps, but a horrible one. As I told you this morning, I go to Scandinavia soon. Maybe I do not come back. At least there they do not think I am aiding in plots to overthrow western civilization. Imagine, the old man sighed. These people are philistines.

  Don’t, Papa, the woman said, touching his arm.

  I told them I was sorry to leave them, but I had an early start the next day.

  Once again you are in no state to drive, Mr. Frank, the daughter said. Perhaps we could give you a lift? We have always our car.

  I came with friends. I have to find them. I hope I’ll see you again in a more sympathetic setting.

  As the man and his daughter made their way towards the house, there was a sudden clattering, shrieks of laughter and alarm, and then a disturbance of bodies making way for a man, bumbling and slow, one arm outstretched and swinging. It was not Frankenstein’s monster, as it first appeared, but John Marsh, pursuing Nick Charles, who sprinted pale and erect through a bed of tulips.

  You know there’s a rumor Nick Charles killed his own mother, a woman near me said.

  A man next to her laughed. Not killed: sold. That boy’s got ambition. Slick as mercury.

  Waiters and waitresses passed through the garden planting blue and white lanterns, softening the party into a vision of wonderland. I wandered around hedges and pergolas until I came to the tennis court where you had been hiding. At first I did not see you amid the clusters of people sitting on that close-clipped lawn, but then your face caught the light, angled towards a lithe young man who might have been Montgomery Clift or Farley Granger, the two of you reclining and chatting, nothing more than that, but in such an intimate way that it looked as if you were already lovers. My heart throbbed with jealousy. I picked a path through the other people until I was standing above you.

  Where have you been? you asked, all innocence.

  Looking for you, Myles. It’s time we left.

  I turned around earlier and you were gone. That pageant, whatever it was, wasn’t it the limit?

  The limit, laughed the lithe young man.

  You can say that again, I said.

  I just did, laughed the lithe young man.

  Ha-ha, I said, deadpan.

  You’re as funny as Myles said, laughed the lithe young man. I wanted to hit him but as my fist rose I lost my balance and had to lean against the court’s chain-link fence. The waiters and waitresses were installing torches around the perimeter and I began to see that the tennis court contained everyone Mary would have wanted to eliminate from her vision of America, all the Jews and queers and blacks and yellows and browns, all the people who had come for John’s sake rather than hers, writers and philosophers, directors and designers, most of them exiles from places they had thought darker than the one they chose as refuge, a novelist whose whole family had been killed in Dachau, a philosopher who had fled Berlin days after the Reichstag fire, a playwright who had done the same and arrived in Los Angeles with a contract from Paramount, a satirist who had smuggled himself out of Paris in a steamer trunk, a cinematographer who was traveling in America at the time of the Anschluss and had never been able to return to Vienna, a screenwriter fired from UFA along with all the other Jewish artists, a composer and impresario, a couturier, a Talmudic scholar, a poet, a romantic versifier, a cultural critic. One of them, a philosopher, turned sharply in my direction. How can you laugh? he demanded. There’s no humor now. How can you laugh about anything? Who are you to laugh?

  I’m laughing at what people like our hostess would choose to do to people like us, given the chance.

  Gallows humor, the philosopher said, almost spitting. He sat up straighter in the flickering torchlight. I do not think enough time has passed for gallows humor. I do not know that enough time ever will have passed for gallows humor. I try to laugh at innocent jokes and the air inside me turns to poison. This whole place is toxic. I came here believing every myth this country makes up about itself, more fool I. I thought I had escaped into a land without darkness. You see the pictures of American faces, so innocent, so clean and hopeful and earnest, and you think: This is a place for hope to flourish. And then you get here and see that while it might not be like the place you escaped, there is just as much darkness, only the darkness here is only now returning. Cycles of night. I cannot live in the dark.

  But where’s safe? I asked.

  Nowhere, the man said. The mistake is believing anywhere is safe from darkness.

  It’s time to go, you said, taking my hand without hesitation and pulling yourself up from where you were sitting. You said goodbye to your lithe young friend and I tried to tame my jealousy as we picked our way through the crowd on the tennis court and back across the garden, finding Helen inside, already in her coat, looking as if her world had ended.

  She was almost tearful when
she spoke. I’ve been waiting ages for you two. I thought maybe you’d left without me. Let’s get out of here. Who’s too drunk to drive?

  I am, I heard myself say.

  You drive him, Myles, I’ll take our car.

  I felt your hand reach inside my pocket to retrieve the key.

  Outside, idling on Summit Drive, a dozen limousines were lined up waiting for passengers who refused to come.

  SHE TURNED AWAY

  Part Five

  EXT. FAYE’S HOUSE - NIGHT

  Faye’s secret house is a squat bungalow that sits in a long narrow lot on Cynthia Street where jacarandas wave in the moonlight.

  Faye parks in the driveway at the back of the property and she and Orph slip in through the kitchen door, checking over their shoulders to be sure they haven’t been followed. The bell of a church tolls once, sad and hollow.

  INT. FAYE’S HOUSE - NIGHT

  Faye brushes past Orph to lock the door from the inside, her movements slowing and smoldering as her hand rests against the knob.

  ORPH

  Don’t you have to get home?

  FAYE

  Jack won’t miss me. The guest bedroom is down the hall. I’m upstairs.

  ORPH

  Not afraid of me?

  FAYE

  Plenty afraid, Corporal, but I’m not a fool.

  She opens her purse and shows him the butt of her gun.

  FAYE (CONT’D)

  No fast moves. You have your room. I have mine.

  ORPH

  Hot and cold, sister. Last night I was ready to run away with you. I thought you felt the same.

  FAYE

  If the world turns cold, so do I.

  She pulls down the blinds, switches on a light over the sink, pours herself a glass of water, and stands looking out the window. Outside, lamplight filters through the fans of plumose leaves.

  FAYE (CONT’D)

  There’s a shower off the kitchen, but if you want a bath you’ll have to wait until morning.

  ORPH

  I want to thank you, Faye.

  FAYE

  You’re not safe yet. You won’t be until you get out of Los Angeles. I hope you understand we’re finished. Jack would never let me get away.

  ORPH

  Supposing I could take care of Jack?

  FAYE

  Don’t be a fool. Eddie may be dead but there’s a whole pack of other thugs, not to mention Woody Montez. If Jack wants you gone you’ll wake up on the other side before you even know you’re in trouble.

  ORPH

  Did Jack kill Ursula?

  Faye swings around, back against the sink. The light hits her eyes and there’s something half-crazed in her face.

  FAYE

  Jack? No... Jack didn’t kill Ursula. Why don’t you give up on her already?

  ORPH

  Maybe I loved her.

  FAYE

  I thought you loved me.

  ORPH

  The truth is I could never tell you apart.

  FAYE

  That’s a rotten thing to say.

  ORPH

  Maybe I wanted you both.

  FAYE

  You’re just a spoiled kid, aren’t you?

  (a beat as Orph smirks)

  You can stay until tomorrow and then you’re gone. Find a taxi to the station and get a train as far as you can go. Keep traveling until you’re at the end of a road that goes nowhere, then step off that road and walk through the fields as long as your legs will carry you. Only then can you sit down and stop. Build a house, find a wife who doesn’t already have a husband, play your music, have some kids, raise a white picket fence. This one’s not for sale.

  Orph starts to speak but Faye puts a hand over his mouth. He takes her fingers from his lips and kisses them. Faye pauses, feeling his breath on her skin, and then, slow and cold, she pulls her hand free.

  Watching until Faye disappears up the stairs, Orph finds his way through the darkened hallway to a little bedroom at the back of the house. Still halfdrunk, he collapses against the mattress.

  ORPH (V.O.)

  Only way I could see clear of this mess was confronting Jack, face-to-face, brother-to-brother. If I could look him in the eye and ask him to tell me the truth, then I’d know for sure. I didn’t care what Faye said, I was already certain they both knew the truth about Ursula, and I’d put all my money on Jack being responsible. I couldn’t sleep and then I heard Faye moving around above me.

  Orph leaves the guest bedroom and goes upstairs where he finds Faye coming out of the bathroom, wet hair knotted in a towel. She edges past him, turning her back and walking towards her bedroom. On the back of her neck, Orph notices a distinctive birthmark in the shape of an oak leaf. He looks once and looks again.

  In a flash, everything makes sense. He grabs Faye by the shoulders, twisting her round to face him.

  ORPH

  I said I could never tell the two of you apart, but there was one thing I always knew to look for to be sure it was you.

  FAYE

  I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  ORPH

  That birthmark on the back of your neck. A little oak leaf. Faye didn’t have one, did she, Ursula? It’s been you all this time, hasn’t it? It’s not you who’s been missing, it’s Faye!

  Her eyes flare as she whips off the towel, hair falling across her shoulders.

  FAYE

  You’re crazy, Orph, and you’re drunk. You don’t know what you’re talking about. I am Faye.

  ORPH

  Like hell you are. Faye was too good to do half the things you’ve done since I came back. Faye was a saint and an innocent. And Faye had a neck like a sheet of silk. She didn’t have this –

  He grabs her again by the shoulders, pulls the hair away and looks hard at the birthmark, pinching it between his thumb and index finger.

  Ursula, for now it is undoubtedly Ursula, swings back from Orph, slaps him hard in the face, and rushes into the bedroom, locking the door behind her.

  ORPH (CONT’D)

  (banging on the door)

  Does Jack know who you are? Is that Faye lying dead in the morgue? Did you throw her in the river or was it Jack? Tell me, Ursula! I’d like to hear the truth!

  The bedroom door squeaks open and the barrel of a gun pokes through the crack. Ursula pulls the door wide, stepping into the hall as Orph backs towards the stairs.

  URSULA

  You’ve been trouble ever since you came back. I don’t know why someone couldn’t have dropped a bomb on you over there. It would have made everything simpler. Eddie could have taken the fall for Faye and it would have been neat and painless.

  ORPH

  What kind of monster kills her own sister?

  URSULA

  I’m the victim more than she was. I’m the one who’s suffered! When she found out about me and Jack she threatened to tell you!

  ORPH

  What do you mean, you and Jack?

  URSULA

  We’re in love, Orph. Always have been. It should have been me and Jack from the beginning, but somehow... If only things had been different we wouldn’t be in this mess. I couldn’t let Faye ruin what I have. It should have been simple, but Faye loved Jack more than you can imagine. She fought for him, and she lost.

  ORPH

  But how? How did you do it?

  URSULA

  We were at Woody’s place in Palm Springs...

  FLASHBACK TO:

  EXT. WOODY’S HOUSE - DAY

  A bright afternoon at the modern desert house. In matching swimsuits, one black, one white, the twin sisters lounge by the pool as Jack and Woody and Eddie and some other HEAVIES play poker in the shade.

  There are other people in the background, Modest Jones and the woman who called herself Rose Zapatero, even little Nancy Jean and Lillian Wesley and the waitress from the diner where Orph met with Noah Roy.

  URSULA (V.O.)

  Only it’s not Woody’s place. It’s Jack’s
. Everywhere you’ve been, everything you’ve seen since you came home, it all belongs to your brother. The apartment where I lived, the car I drive, the clothes I wear, the club, the house in Pasadena, the flophouse downtown, even this house, Jack owns it all. Everyone you’ve met and spoken to, everyone who’s chased you and helped you and led you along, they’re all paid by Jack. Faye, too, she got paid just like the rest of us, only she didn’t want to keep quiet.

  From beneath her sunglasses Faye looks across at her sister, and then, past the pool, to the gazebo where the men play cards and smoke and drink.

  Jack makes no attempt to hide his interest in Ursula when she turns over on her stomach.

  FAYE

  (whispering to Ursula)

  What do you suppose you’re doing?

  URSULA

  Don’t be such a prude.

  FAYE

  You forget I have a husband. And so do you.

  URSULA

  He’s on tour, didn’t you hear?

  FAYE

  But mine isn’t.

  URSULA

  If you did more to keep him interested you wouldn’t have to worry so much. Besides, there’s plenty of Jack to go around.

  Faye sits up, looking as though she might be ready to hurl a brick at her sister. Jack notices, smirks, and turns his back on his wife and sister-in-law. Faye’s fingers twitch as she stands.

  FAYE

  I’m going to get a drink.

  Ursula blinks into Faye’s backlit face: a gray oval of skin surrounded by a mane of fire. The two gape at each other as if calculating their next moves.

  URSULA

  Didn’t Mother ever tell you not to drink alone? I’ll join you.

  INT. WOODY MONTEZ HOUSE - DAY