In the afternoons, Katie sat from her window alcove seat and watched children come one after another for piano lessons. Young girls in velveteen skirts, churlish boys with books, and a few graceful girls of seventeen. She liked to listen to their chatter and footsteps, liked to count them as they filed in. She liked the dissonant sound of amateur playing, followed by Mrs. Gallagher’s more fluid hand. It was a peaceful way to put the world to bed as the sunlight softened and she picked garden dirt from under her nails.
She thought sometimes of what Mrs. Gallagher would have looked like when she was her age, traveling to see the haggard fortune-teller, her dramatic eyes watching blocks of wood as they fell from a threadbare sack. Maybe she’d have pulled her knees to her chest, just as she herself did when she was curious or afraid. She thought of her hair falling like a screen over her arms while the woman inspected the short-sighted blocks nestled in the dirt.
Four daughters, maybe five.
Chapter Six
Pacific Palisades, California
1949
Danny came and went as he pleased, so long as he was home in time for dinner. When they ate together, Katie watched him over the table as the soft light glanced off his cheeks and full bottom lip. The impression of how little she knew about him was most apparent then. His boyish features were hardening. Had been, it seemed, from the moment she’d come to stay with them. There was little left of the boy who’d pulled her away from a monster with a slick, appraising look.
She was little more than a ghost to him, forever waiting at the top of the stairs as he complained about her from below. She dumbly realized this and squirmed at the remembrance of having once thought more of him. Just a teasing boy who’d once tricked her into revealing her real name. A boy with whom she’d been paired like a sock for interviews, parades, and drug store appearances for as far back as she could remember. But she hadn’t really known that boy either. She’d rarely spoken to him when there hadn’t been a script to pigeonhole their words. No interaction without direction. That was, until their novel cuteness failed to sell tickets. Katie knew that time was coming like the ticking down of a clock. She thought he knew it too. And judging by how quickly he’d shrugged off the hem of boyhood, she supposed he welcomed the end of their phony sweetheart team. She wished that he didn’t hate her so much. Then again, she wished her father hadn’t died to leave her with a boy she barely knew, in spite of their make-believe history onscreen.
He’d stood close to her while her father’s oblong coffin had been lowered into the ground. That day, she’d wanted him to say something, anything to her. But his only words after were for his mother: a barking complaint in that other language while he tossed off his jacket and flung it to the back seat. He flung himself in after the coat and perched his feet against the back of her seat, revealing the stems of white dress socks. As their sedan rolled away, she took a last look at her father’s grave then glanced at a sunburst of palm fronds against the sky. Daniel’s body rustled in the backseat.
Tonight Daniel had stayed in the den after dinner, reading a magazine and idly listening to the radio. Mrs. Gallagher came down the stairs dressed in a silk dress with shiny Lucite buttons. Her hair was pinned beneath a blue cloche hat, and the sloping shadow it cast over her face gave her an unused, supple look. Katie looked up from her seat on the floor, her eyes drawn to the large stone hanging from a chain on her neck. It was fat on her décolletage—like pooled oil, an underworld of green filaments shining through with her every move. Without thinking, Katie rose to her feet and walked to the foot of the staircase. She touched the stone and it was warm on her fingertip.
“I’ve never seen a black one before, wherever did you get it?” Katie murmured in awe. Mrs. Gallagher gave her a skeptical smile, looking a lot like her son in that moment. Katie snatched her hand away before stiffening at the scoffing click of Danny’s tongue.
“Mom, I wish you’d stop wearing that. It stuns people dumb, makes them ask stupid questions. You really togged on the bricks, what’s the occasion?”
Mrs. Gallagher waved her son’s question away and looked at Katie.
“Oh, doodah, it’s not so very rare,” she smiled. “Daniel, come into the kitchen with me.”
He sighed and tossed away the magazine in his hands. Clomping, as was his custom, he followed his mother’s sharp steps. Katie took her embroidery from the floor and sat on the sofa where Daniel had been. The room was quiet until the advertisements played out from the radio on hold from the Screen Director’s Playhouse.
Halo, Everybody, Halo
Halo is the shampoo that glorifies your hair…
So Halo, Everybody, Halo!
A man’s warbling voice sang from the radio against the muffled sounds of male shouting from the next room. She concentrated on her pattern, piercing and pulling her needle through the thick fabric. The voices ceased after several minutes, and Katie heard the familiar pull and bellow of the back door. After, there nothing but the radio touting the merits of Lifebuoy soap.
She was surprised when Daniel came back into the room, thinking him long gone. His thick eyebrows moved together when he saw her sitting on the couch.
“Where is—”
“She’s gone to play mousel with that awful womens club,” he said, “or so she claims.” He pulled his jacket from a rack behind the couch. Standing over her, he looked very tall, a grumbling giant in place of the boy he’d been. He pulled a roll of cash from his jean’s pocket and un-spooled the rubber band keeping the bills in place. He counted the money quickly, mouthing tiny numbers.
“Well, are you going to change or not?” he asked as he returned the money to his pocket.
“Change? Whatever for?”
“Max and Al’s folks are throwing a party at the Riv. It’ll probably be boring as hell but there’s nothing else to do tonight.”
“What makes you think I’d go anywhere with you?”
“Nothing makes me think it—other than I’ve got orders to lock the house behind me with no one inside. Ma said I’d get a regular chew-out if I went without you. So in my book, you can either come along, or sit in the garden with your needlework until she comes home.”
Sorry mister, I’ve my orders to fetch her, can’t go back empty handed now.
He smiled, looking like the delinquent gnome he’d been just under eleven weeks before. She felt the snap behind her eyes, though softer this time. Her mind went walking, but only the very smallest part. Behind her eyes, she saw a horribly tinctured cartoon image. It was her, sitting amongst a garden of coneflowers. The dusky sky stretched out until forever, the colors so brilliant it could be nothing but painted celluloid. Beneath her figure, she saw her father’s oblong coffin secured by a filigree of fine flower roots. Her hair glowed inhumanly gold. She wore her bobbin-lace jumper and white stocking costume. The costume that had come to feel like a nasty second skin. Her cartoon face fell agape as a man wearing a flat-cap danced into the frame, his nimble legs looping in weightless dance steps. The shadows from their bodies cut from their physical truth and, to her horror, began to dance independently. Their shadows met and swirled in risqué billows. She called her mind back before it grew worse. Her eyes blinked and looked down to her dungaree pants and plaid cotton shirt tied at the waist. Her saddle shoes were dull and scuffed, and she felt grateful for their honest homeliness. She touched a strand of her hair, natural and straight. In a groundswell of anger, she threw the embroidery hoop to the floor. It broke into two pieces. She took a step forward and pointed her chin at him.
“How you dare bully me? I may have to pretend to like you on set—but I’ve no mind for you away from it. I don’t want to be here anymore than you want me to, and I’ll go to hell before I’ll be seen anywhere with you off the camera.” She felt blood flush to her ears.
He sighed and rolled his eyes as though she was an unruly child. Crouching down, he gathered the clump of thread and fabric in his hands.
“Christ, blow a fuse, Katie. I was on
ly joking,” he stood to his feet with the hoop in his hands, “look, you ruined it.”
He glanced at the immerging shape on the fabric. “What the hell were you trying to make anyway—a flower?”
She pulled the fabric from his hands. She looked at the crumpled red and black threading. “A ladybug.”
The radio program cut out with a swelling of brass instruments. Katie tossed her ruined embroidery to the couch.
“Look, Katie, you have to come with me. She’ll nag me for a week if I leave you here.”
“If you try to lock me outside I’ll scream.”
“Jesus, Katie. You really thought I was going to lock you out to sit on the lawn all night?”
She plopped down to the sofa.
“I don’t want to go anywhere with you,” she mumbled.
He lowered to her and clasped his hands together. It was a casual, very grown-up gesture—as if they were two adults quarreling in the cozy bubble of his home.
But they were just teenagers, although she felt much older than that. That maturity had come with a price—a price that Danny could never understand. She looked at him, afraid to see the strange expression he shared with his mother, but there was only apology on the fringe of impatience.
“Gee, Katie, I said I was sorry. It was a joke. How was I supposed to know you’d take it serious?” His face stiffened when his apology was met by icy silence.
“Look,” he sighed, “you have to go with me or I’ll be in dutch with Mom for a week.”
She looked at him doubtfully.
I’ve my orders to fetch her mister.
The radio continued to play in the background—now to the clomping baritone rhythm of Ghost Riders in the Sky.
Danny rose to his feet and flicked off the radio.
“C’mon, Katie—please?”
She sighed but stood up.
“I’ll go with you. But once we get there, we part ways and you don’t say a word to me for the rest of the night. I’m not at your beck and call, Daniel Gallagher.”
His eyebrows pitched up—then relaxed to smug indifference.
“No you’re not, Katie Webb.” The words were calm but deep in their distaste. She realized then that maybe he knew all about the price of maturity. Maybe his tumble into manhood hadn’t been as easy as she thought. It had been the same painful pull to a place for which they were both unprepared.
“Hurry up and change if you’re going to. I’ll meet you out front,” he said. She watched him leave. Her body jumped, as always, at the squall of the kitchen door’s hinges.
Katie sighed over the few sad pieces of clothing in her closet. A sloppy-Joe sweater—two sizes too large, a pair of muslin pants of indeterminable color, a few jumpers in atomic prints, and the tattered shirts Mrs. Gallagher had given her to work outdoors. She gave a half-smile when she spotted the white, pleated dress Mrs. Gallagher had bought her at Desmonds— only a week and three days before. She shuffled-off her shoes and garden clothes, leaving them in a pile on the floor. She pulled the dress from the hanger and stepped into it with bare feet. Before leaving, she paused and looked down at her scuffed, knobby knees and thin calves. She stepped toward the dresser and looked into the small mirror sitting atop. She frowned at her murky blue eyes and reached for a white case of lip pomade, another gift from Mrs. Gallagher. She smoothed a bit of the coral, waxy sheen over her lips and smoothed them together. She shrugged when it did little to improve the vitality of her face. She met Daniel at the foot of the staircase. They said nothing as he gestured her out the front door, then locked it from behind.
“Why, what’ve you got there, Danny boy?” A man, cheerful in his inquiry, asked standing against the parked car in the driveway. The light was fading from dusk to dark but she could still make out the two boys in the back seat. A woman sat in the front, looking into a hand-held mirror and applying lipstick in a frenzied circular motion.
“Why, it’s Katie Webb, of course.” Danny gestured as if to showcase her body standing next to his own. The man squinted over the rim of his glasses.
“Why it is Katie Webb isn’t it? Irene!” He snapped his head to the side as he called for his wife.
“What?”
“Irene, get yourself out here—it’s Katie Webb.”
“What?” she asked again, but was already pulling herself from the passenger seat. She didn’t bother to close the car door behind her. Her blonde hair was piled on her head in the immovable curls of a doll. She clapped her hands and let out a cry of delight.
“Oh it is Katie Webb, well my my.” The charming twang of her voice put Katie at ease for a moment. The woman’s hands framed her face. Katie tried, unsuccessfully, not to flinch against the touch. Irene gasped then exhaled into a long sigh.
“Look at this child’s face, Felix.”
“Oh, I see it,” he crowed and lifted his hands to the air.
“She’s even lovelier in person, isn’t she?”
“Indeed she is.”
“The face of angel. Oh, and look at her precious nose. Just like a little acorn. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to have a little acorn for a nose. Who does she look like? Don’t tell me—I know it. The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips.”
“Mae Murray, oh no,” he disagreed, but took a compulsory glance at Katie to check for the resemblance in question. “Oh well could be, but with none of that Teutonic chin. No, she’s much more the face of Esther Ralston.”
“Oh but Felix, she wasn’t a Teuton. Mae was a Hungarian, couldn’t speak a stitch of English until they made her for the talking pictures.”
“No, no she wasn’t,” he grumbled, “she’s a Block Island Dutch, real name was Akerman? Abrahmsen, maybe.”
“Oh that doesn’t sound right. I’m almost sure she’s a—was a Hungarian.”
“Hell, Irene, she’s not dead.”
“No? I could have sworn she passed years ago—sepsis or blood poisoning…wasn’t it?”
“Of course not. She plays at Billy Rose’s every other weekend in New York. You know, the nostalgia club—two blocks down from the one pop owned in ’21.”
“Oh yes, that is right isn’t it. Well who, I wonder, was I thinking of?”
“Garbo?”
“Oh no.”
“Pola Negri?”
“Oh no, Felix, that isn’t it either.”
But Katie knew exactly who they were talking about. She was one of the two women who’d used the second-story bathroom. The one with the vanity and full-length mirror—the blue tiles and—
“Vilma Banky,” Katie’s words were soft, but clear.
They turned strange eyes on her when she interrupted their clever debate. Katie cleared her throat and spoke again.
“It was Vilma Banky.”
Irene pursed her lips again and nodded.
“Yes, yes that’s it,” she said with no touch of doubt. She looked at Katie’s face again, this time with more warmth and less inspection. “You’re right. She does look very much like Esther Ralston. I don’t know how I missed it.” Irene crossed her arms and looked quizzically at her husband. “Now there’s a girl you’d never see dancing past her heyday at the Horseshoe. What is Esther doing these days?”
“Left the business for theology,” Mr. Kittredge said and yawned. “Yes, she looks very much like Esther Ralston, and has a nose just as tiny as an acorn—but she looks a little pale all the sudden.”
“Oh, why yes, she does,” she held Katie’s face in her hand once again. “Are you feeling alright, dear?”
Katie nodded, suddenly thankful that she looked more like Esther Ralston than Mary Pickford or Vilma Banky.
“She’s fine, would rather stay home with her needlework is all,” Danny said. His mouth came close against her ear, his body slanting into her for one brief, taunting moment before he snapped upright.
“Is that so?” Irene asked.
“No. I’m fine,” Katie said, shooing Danny away.
“Well let’s be along then.” Felix shrugged and climbe
d into the driver’s seat. Danny sprinted past, collapsing into the back seat alongside the two chattering boys. Katie sighed and felt the woman’s hand touch the small of her back and glide her along to the car. Suddenly, Irene’s arms came around her in a tight, breathless hug. Katie stood rigid in the embrace as the Kittredge’s mother clung and palmed the back of head. To Katie, it lasted forever in the blind spot toward the rear of the car. Katie smelled her acid aroma and hairspray. It seemed it would never end: the sensation of having something done to her. Best to let it run its course. The words in her mind were sing-songy like the radio’s jingle from before. Best to let it run its course, of course…never do to break away! So Halo, everybody, Halo. She clamped her eyes shut as the refrain sang out over and over in her mind.
“I’m sorry for your father, child. Don’t think I didn’t remember.”
She didn’t really hear the words at first. She thought she’d only imagined them, intermixed with the sing-songy voice in her mind. She looked at Mrs. Kittredge’s face. Behind her feigned concern was a kind of giddiness—the kind that came when something pretty was purchased at a cheap cost. Something attractive to lay upon the mantle or tack against the wall.
She felt that old needling, prompting her to say something agreeable. Something to say she was grateful for her cooked-up sympathy. Maybe it was the urging of her father’s voice—the memory, at least, of what it had been. Give a smile to the nice man, girl, he’s speaking to you—ship -shape or Bristol fashion, followed by a pat of his hand to the small of her back. A pat that urged her forward into the intimate space of strangers. Best to let it run its course, of course, girl. Maybe it had always been his voice, making a tidemark for her every move, her every word. But today she would say no agreeable words to subdue the awkward air. Katie narrowed her eyes on Irene and left her to join the boys in the back seat of the car.
Bells of Avalon Page 4