Except she didn’t wear underwear, but this seemed like a bad moment to remind Miriam of that, strategically speaking. Miriam was paying. Ceinwen told her to wait and she’d carry the groceries back to the apartment. She paid for her two cans, and they started back.
A seamstress. I’m an idiot, thought Ceinwen. All I could imagine was actresses and stars. MGM was a huge studio, full of people doing all kinds of jobs. Carpenters. Set decorators. Prop managers. And the seamstresses. And they probably all had stories. “Was it a fun job?”
“If you like sewing.”
God forbid Miriam should throw her a bone here. “Do you? like sewing?”
“I suppose. I’m good at it. I make my own clothes still.” Ceinwen’s eyes darted down to the skirt hem that hit exactly where it should. Of course. You couldn’t be old, with every part of your body in a different place from where it was, and have clothes that fit well, unless the clothes were made for you.
“Did you stay there a long time?”
“Until I got married. Right after the war ended.”
“And then you moved to New York?”
“Oh no, not then. My husband was a stage manager. We traveled around to regional theaters for a long time. I sometimes did costumes. He got a job here in 1962.” They paused for the light.
“What made you pick Avenue C?”
Miriam gave a little half-smile. “It was cheap. You didn’t grow up here, did you?”
“No,” said Ceinwen. Do I sound like I’m from Avenue C? “I’m from Mississippi. You ever been there?” People who had usually didn’t ask why she moved.
“Yes, just once. We did a season outside of Jackson.”
“Did you like it?” Miriam, for once, seemed to be searching for words. “It’s okay, I never liked it much myself.”
“In the fifties … the hiring practices were troublesome. So was the seating. Of course it was like that almost everywhere. But in Mississippi they were more … enthusiastic about it, I suppose you could say.”
That was good news, at least. Miriam was a liberal. Seems like we all wind up in New York sooner or later, she thought. They’d reached the building. The street lock was still broken. Ceinwen stood to one side to let Miriam go up the stairs ahead of her. When they got to Miriam’s door, Ceinwen was more worn out than usual because she hadn’t gone at her own pace. Miriam unlocked the door and held it open. Ceinwen got a few feet into the hall and stopped.
The layout seemed the mirror image of their apartment, but it was as though she were in a different building, a different neighborhood. The walls were completely smooth, the wood trim was stripped and polished, and she realized that underneath all that paint their molding was probably oak. There was an Oriental runner down the parquet floor of the hall. The transoms were clear glass, and there was a glass-paned door at the end of the hall.
Miriam moved past. “I’ll just put this in the kitchen. You can step in for a moment.” Ceinwen recovered, continued to the living room and stopped again.
She’d gotten glimpses of other apartments in the building: worn linoleum and bumpy walls painted beige or white. No difference. Miriam had gold wallpaper with a Chinese print, and carpet—old people did like their carpet—that was spotless and still plush. She spied full-length drapes and sheers at the windows, and in front of them was a tufted sofa, with all its legs. Next to that a high-backed chair like in men’s club scenes in English movies, and in front of the sofa a low coffee table with an inlaid top. On a sideboard sat a hurricane lamp with a landscape painted on both glass globes. Set by a wall was a china cabinet Granana would have killed for.
“This is beautiful.” Look at that, there used to be French doors between the two living rooms in these apartments. We were robbed.
“Thank you,” said Miriam. “Wait here, I’ll put it away.”
“I never knew any apartments on Avenue C looked like this.” Since Miriam hadn’t told her to leave, maybe she would offer her a drink—sherry? Cognac? Ceinwen walked over to a round table, covered with a thick damask cloth that had a tassel weighing down one corner. On the table were a bunch of photos. Mostly vacation shots, it seemed.
“I’ve had plenty of time to decorate,” Miriam called from the kitchen. Ceinwen didn’t reply. She was peering at a large photo in the back, sepia, in a silver frame with leaves and flowers twined around the edges. She leaned in to get a better look, and suddenly the picture was in her hand, so fast she wasn’t conscious of picking it up.
It was Miriam, she knew it was. Same features, but young, full makeup, dark hair half up and half down, a glittery ribbon wound through it. She was wearing a high-waisted dress and a pearl necklace, and her hand was posed delicately under her chin.
Ceinwen might not know all that much about silents, but she knew a publicity shot when she saw one. This was Miriam in period costume, sometime in the late 1920s, from the looks of the hair and makeup.
Seamstress, my ass.
Down at the bottom she could see writing, in a high-styled, hard-to-read hand. She held the picture closer. “To my darling Emil—All my love, always—” The “all” and “always” were underlined. And under that, a row of xoxoxos, and the name, Miriam.
“I wanted to thank you for helping me with my groceries.” She almost dropped the frame. She put it back and turned around in dread. Miriam was standing there with a face that made Ceinwen feel like a burglar.
“Oh, you’re welcome.” Should she apologize for looking at the picture, or would that make it worse?
“I don’t want to keep you.” The same kiss-off she’d gotten in the lobby. Man, Miriam was furious. Why have pictures out if you didn’t want people to see them?
She tried to think of a way to say she had nothing to leave for, and said, “Have a good evening.”
“Thank you. You too.”
She was out in the hall and listening to the snick of the deadbolt almost as soon as the sentence was finished. She’d never been so thoroughly eighty-sixed in her life.
Jim was in the living room, dusting. Talmadge was in the kitchen getting his ice cream. She started to tell him about Miriam, but he didn’t seem to care. Marlene was the only old star Talmadge really wanted to hear about, and she’d been at Paramount. Forget it, then. She was going to figure the whole story out by herself and spring it on them. They’d both realize she’d been right: finding out more about Miriam was worth the time.
The news about the French doors, however, was huge.
“How do you like that,” huffed Jim. “I bet those junkies sold them.”
“The ones before us? How do you know they were junkies?”
“Wax in the sink,” said Talmadge. Ceinwen nodded, wondering what a junkie needed wax for. She’d find out some other time.
Jim was running his hands over the molding and muttering about laziness and philistines. “This must have been a nice building once. It’s still got the jets.”
“The what?”
He led her to the hall and pointed to something poking out of the wall, like a small faucet. “Gaslight,” he said. She reached up and felt the bottom—a key that would have turned, before it was crusted with paint. She pictured herself as Ingrid Bergman, twisting the flame up and down while she listened to Charles Boyer’s footsteps above.
She went into her room early and started consulting Harry’s books. Her first job was to find out who this Emil was. Maybe the man Miriam married? The name Emil Gibson sounded kind of ridiculous (assuming Miriam had changed her last name), but then again she’d heard a lot worse in Yazoo City.
She went through the indexes. Precious few Gibsons, none of them named Emil. Could be a middle name. Or a nickname. No, it probably wasn’t Gibson at all. You didn’t go all ice-cold over someone seeing a photo you gave your husband, did you? You got upset if it was something you didn’t want to discuss. And not like a creepy relative, either. Like a lost romance. Ceinwen decided to go with that assumption, mostly because it improved the plot.
The onl
y famous Emil who fit the time period was Emil Jannings; she knew him from watching The Blue Angel three times with Talmadge. She wasn’t crazy about him. He had good moments, like after Lola’s final betrayal, but other times he was too much, as though he were on stage and playing to the balcony. According to the books, he’d made Blue Angel when he returned to Germany after sound came in, and eventually the Nazis chose him to head up the main German film studio during the war.
Miriam in love with a fat, hammy Nazi. In love with him enough, furthermore, to scrawl a bunch of hugs and kisses across the bottom of a photo she gave him, then get the picture back from him—somehow—and keep it in a fancy silver frame for the next fifty-some-odd years.
Even Ceinwen’s fantasies couldn’t accommodate that much … fantasy. It probably wasn’t an actor at all.
It was well past 1:00 a.m. when she reluctantly switched off the light.
OCTOBER / NOVEMBER
1.
EACH NIGHT BEFORE BED, CEINWEN SEARCHED THE PARADE’S GONE BY and tried to find another Emil—a director, a cinematographer, a producer, an art director, a stunt man. Nothing. Nothing in The Movies, nothing anywhere else. She decided to attack the problem from another angle, and went through every actress, looking for a Miriam. There weren’t any.
Lily had taken a rare Saturday off, Talmadge was in charge, and the atmosphere was festive, or would have been, had Ceinwen not been stuck with a middle-aged lady who couldn’t decide between a choker and a pendant. She gently tried to steer the woman toward the pendant, decided gentle wasn’t working, and started saying things like pendants were more youthful (although that wasn’t strictly true), at which point, due to boredom, she happened to glance toward the front of the store, where she saw Matthew speaking to Roxanne. She had managed not to think of him all day, or at least only twice, which was very close to zero and thus barely counted, and there he was, strolling down the aisle toward the jewelry cases as if no time had elapsed since their last meeting.
He didn’t pretend to look in the case. He leaned against the far counter, gave a wave and waited. Ceinwen’s sales patter took on desperation. The necklace was twenty dollars, and this woman was carrying a Chanel purse. If she didn’t make up her mind soon, Ceinwen was ready to take down some hats and see if she could keep her occupied that way. She finally decided on the choker, and Ceinwen handed her over to Roxanne.
Matthew was still leaning. He didn’t look so hot. In Mississippi, if you finally laid eyes on someone who’d disappeared for a couple of weeks, you’d say, “Where the hell you been?” What would you say in England? She walked over and clasped her hands behind her back.
“To what do I owe the honor?”
At least he looked startled. “Harry gave me homework.”
She looked around the counter. “What do you have to buy?”
“A movie ticket,” he said. “To The Crowd.”
He was going to ask her, she realized with a little flare of happiness. But that didn’t mean it had to come easy. “Great. Let me know how you like it.”
He put his elbows on the counter, which probably foretold an explanation. “I would have stopped in sooner”—yep—“but we were trying to work out this proof together. And it wasn’t going well, so I was staying late at the office. And yesterday Harry walked in and told me the whole thing was a nonstarter. He’d been giving a talk up at Columbia, and he got on the subway and started thinking about another idea, and he realized our angle couldn’t be done. Four months of work. Poof.”
She wasn’t sure it worked as an excuse, but she did feel a little sorry for him. “Just sitting on the subway? What was he looking at?”
“No idea. A derelict, possibly. In any event, that’s that. We have to start over. So today he came in”—Mathew took a folded sheet out of his pocket—“and said this sod—erm, silent movie is playing somewhere called Theatre 80 St. Marks. He said it’s tonight only and ordered me to see it.” He paused for a second or two, then continued when she didn’t speak. “Threw me out of the office. Threats were made against my job.”
“Aw, Harry wouldn’t do that.”
“Probably not. But he did bring up the word ‘recommendations’ in an ominous sort of way.” Another pause. “So here I am.”
“Here you are,” she agreed. He needed to suffer some more.
“It’s at 9:30.” She waited it out. “Would you like to go?”
She put her elbows on the counter. “Did Harry order you to take me?”
“He mentioned it.”
Harry’s idea. Damn. “He’s probably right. It’s probably a great movie. There’s a whole chapter about it in one of the books he lent me. There’s one shot of hundreds of desks—I saw a still—and Billy Wilder stole it when he made—”
“Does that mean yes?”
“—The Apartment. I don’t know, I’m tired.”
“This should buck you up. Almost two hours of poetry. Hard poetry.”
“That’s harsh poetry.”
“Right, my mistake. Harsh, dark, truthful poetry. Got that again tonight. I hate to say you owe me, but you do.”
She decided it was time to straighten necklaces and opened the case. She smoothed out one, she smoothed out another.
“Of course, if you already have plans …”
“I get off work at nine,” she said. “I’ll meet you there at a quarter after.”
It didn’t take fifteen minutes to walk to Theatre 80, so she had some time to kill. She watched Talmadge bring the gates down in front of the store. From his post on the men’s side he’d been checking out the conversation with Matthew, and he had opinions to deliver.
“You had me thinking he was forty at least. He’s not that old at all. And he’s cute. Sort of.” Talmadge was trying to get the padlock fastened. “For an English guy, he’s incredibly cute.”
“I didn’t say he was forty, I said he’s older than me.”
“He likes you.” Talmadge finally had the lock through the gates.
“I guess. I didn’t think he was going to show up again.”
“But he did. He likes you a lot.” Talmadge gave her the once-over, taking in the hair that was drooping after eight hours behind the counter, the flats, and the dress hem peeking out from under the iridescent men’s raincoat. “Has he seen that dress before?”
She hadn’t thought about that. It was the blue dress she’d had on the night she first met him. He was going to think she had no clothes. “No, that’s sweet,” said Talmadge. “It’ll remind him of when he first saw you.”
“What he saw was my bare waist when this thing ripped.”
“Perfect. I’ll walk you to Second.” When they got to Astor Place Talmadge stopped in front of a street vendor selling vintage clothing and asked, “What are you going to do about the girlfriend?”
“I’m not trying to do anything about the girlfriend.”
“Don’t bother, sweetie. I’m not Jim. What’s her name again?” The dresses were 1970s. Clothing’s worst era, as far as she was concerned.
“Ah-nuh.” They stopped at the next one.
“What?” She spelled it for him. “Anna you mean?”
“He says Ah-nuh.” The vendor seemed to know his stuff was hopeless, and he kept smoking and drinking out of whatever was in his paper bag. “I guess that’s how she says it.”
“Screw that. We’re gonna say it like normal people. AN-na. Is she pretty?”
“I guess. She looks a little like that girl from Family Ties. Bigger nose.”
Talmadge thought about that. “All right, that’s pretty. But not gorgeous. You’re prettier.”
“I don’t know, we don’t look one thing like each other. And she’s from Italy, so that’s exotic.” None of the vendors had anything good tonight. They moved on.
“So’s Yazoo City.”
“Are you kidding? You’ve heard me talk about it.”
“He’s from England, what does he know? Let him think you grew up at Tara.”
“Tha
t was Georgia.”
“Don’t tell him that. And AN-na’s out of the picture. If you play things right, which means you do not bring her up again, ever, she may wind up in Italy for good. These long-distance things never work.” They’d reached Second Avenue. “What did he say she did?”
“She’s an economist.”
“Oh my god. If you can’t get rid of an economist, it’s hopeless. Good night, sweetie.” He kissed her on the cheek and turned for downtown.
Matthew was waiting for her outside the theater, examining the small group of celebrity footprints set in the concrete sidewalk outside. “Who is Hildegard Knef?”
“German I think? Not all that famous. She was in The Lost Continent.”
“Future assignment?”
“I think Harry would let you skip it.”
“I was asking about you, not Harry.”
She concentrated on covering Gloria Swanson’s tiny footprints with her own. “You wouldn’t get science fiction homework from me.”
He’d bought the tickets already, which made her happy, although she told him he didn’t have to do it. It was only Saturday—he needed to know she still had money. He bought popcorn, which he handed to her without a word. The theater was a little more than half full, and she directed him to her favorite spot, a few rows back near the middle—the Theatre 80 sightlines were terrible if you were too close or on the sides. She put the popcorn bag in her teeth so she could unbutton her coat. Matthew unfolded his seat and sat down. The bottom of it tilted forward, and he grabbed both armrests to keep his ass from hitting the floor. She had to take the popcorn bag out of her mouth so she could laugh without dropping it.
“I get it. You’re testing me.”
“You’re laughing too.” She moved down one more seat.
“Because I can’t believe I fell for that. You knew that seat was there, you told me this was your favorite spot.”
“I know it’s there, but I can never remember exactly where.”
“So you say. First time, foreigner, doesn’t watch silent movies, give him the dodgy seat.” They threw their coats over the broken seat and sat back down. Matthew put his elbow on the armrest between them, then put his hand on it. The armrest, too narrow for more than one small arm, wobbled slightly.
Missing Reels Page 6