It all changed the day Linda showed up.
I recognized her standing beside Mr. Griffith, listening intently as he pointed up to the camera and then around at the scenery.
My heart began to race. It was Linda—after so long—here, in the studio.
“Linda?” I said, approaching. “Linda Arvidson?”
She didn’t seem surprised to see me. She glanced briefly up at Mr. Griffith, then over at me. “Hello, Flo,” she said and clasped my hand.
“Miss Lawrence, I see you’re acquainted with Miss Arvidson.” Mr. Griffith raised his sharp chin. “She’s to join our company.”
I looked at her with wide eyes. “How long have you been in New York?” I asked. “Why did you never contact me?”
“I’m sorry, Flo. It’s … rather a long story.”
Her words stung. That was all she said. As if nothing else was needed. She returned her attention to Mr. Griffith. He escorted her around the studio, his arm draped about her shoulder. I felt my back stiffen, my neck lengthen.
Harry came up behind me. “Flo,” he whispered. “She’s his wife.”
“His—?”
Harry put his finger to his lips. “It’s a secret, Flo. Mr. Griffith doesn’t want anyone to know because he doesn’t want to be charged with favoritism. He trusted me with the truth, and I’m trusting you.”
I looked back over at them. Linda was laughing, gazing up at Mr. Griffith with undisguised adoration in her eyes.
So Mr. Griffith was the husband of whom she had written. The talented, ambitious playwright determined to conquer Broadway. So she’d been here all along, holed up in their apartment probably, listening to her husband’s stories of the studio, hearing all about his work, all about—me—
The sun was coming in through the tall dusty windows of the studio. It fell upon her, reflecting off her golden skin and near-white hair—just as it had on that hillside in San Francisco. How infused with light she had been on that day, too, a day of sun and daisies and buttercups and Linda’s laughter.
She spied me watching her. Eventually she broke free from Mr. Griffith—from her husband—and approached me, taking me by the arm and leading me down the steps to the dank basement.
“I’m sorry this had to come as such a surprise,” she said.
“You said his name was Larry.”
“It was the name David was using then on the stage. Lawrence Griffith. David Wark Griffith is much more noble sounding, don’t you think?”
I didn’t answer. I just looked at her, trying to find something in her face that I recognized. “You’ve been in New York for months,” I finally said. “Every day I’ve been waiting to hear from you.”
She took my hand. I looked into her blue eyes. They were still pale and translucent, but they weren’t the same. “Oh, Flo, forgive me,” she was saying. “I couldn’t contact you. To do so might have given away David’s and my secret. Once he told me the name of his new leading lady, I knew I would have to wait before I saw you. Oh, Flo, you’re so wonderful on the screen—just as you were that night in San Francisco in your mother’s company.”
I smiled weakly.
“I’m sure you have a great future ahead of you,” Linda said. “Oh, my dear, we all do! David truly believes in motion pictures. He believes he can make art as well as any producer on the stage. You believe it, too, don’t you, Flo?”
“Yes,” I told her.
“He’s a brilliant man, don’t you think?” Linda gazed off toward the stairs with an insipid glint. “David Wark Griffith. It will be a name to contend with. As big as Belasco.”
“I wanted to show you around New York,” I said simply.
“Oh, Flo.” She put her arm around me. She didn’t smell the way she had in San Francisco, the way I remembered. Then she’d smelled of oranges and daffodils. Now she smelled of perfume—heavy, sweet, expensive perfume, no doubt bought by her adoring husband with the profits I’d made for him.
“Oh, Flo,” she repeated as if I were a child, “I’ve seen New York. I think David and I scoured every last block of this town, first looking for a place to live, then trying to find work. Now, of course,” she said, her voice rising merrily, “we’re taken out to all the finest restaurants by Mr. Kennedy and the other Biograph bigwigs.”
She leaned in close to me. “You mustn’t ever give away our secret now, will you? Only a very few people know. You do promise, don’t you?”
I gave my word.
“David is planning some big things, Flo.” Linda still held my hand but she was gazing over at the stairs again. “Already the trade papers are calling him the movies’ first true artist.”
“You’re going to act with us now?”
She smiled. “Yes, Flo. He wants me to play in Enoch Arden. He says I’d be perfect, that no one else—” She stopped, looking at me. “Well, I’m sure you’d be wonderful, Flo, but David has so many other pictures planned for you.”
I didn’t say anything. She went on and on, gushing about “David’s” big future, about “David’s” grand vision, about what “David” said she’d bring to Enoch Arden, about all the other roles he wanted her to play.…
Then suddenly she embraced and kissed me. “Oh, it’s so good to see you again, Flo.”
I pulled back from the thickness of her perfume. “I’ve got to go home now, Linda,” I said.
“All right. Good night, Flo,” she said, kissing me again.
We climbed the stairs. Linda moved off in another direction. I passed by Mr. Griffith. He was standing there stiffly, watching me.
“Your secret is safe with me,” I told him. I paused, then added deliberately, “David.”
It was the first time I’d ever called him that. He swallowed, his big Adam’s apple bobbing up and down quickly in his long neck.
Harry escorted me home. I was steely in the cab, as if an iron bar had been inserted up my spine. “I thought I was Biograph’s leading lady,” I said.
“Well, sure, you are, Flo,” he said.
We got out of the cab. I looked up at Harry with a hard expression. The sun was setting. The sky between the buildings was a spill of reds and golds and deep purples. There was a sting to the air, an early winter bite. “And for how long?” I asked him. “Now that the director’s wife has joined the company?”
Harry was silent as we resumed walking. The only sound was our shoes against the brick sidewalk. At last he said, “You’re the only one the public would accept as Mrs. Jones.”
“That’s right,” I said, and I shiver now remembering the hardness in my voice. “I am The Biograph Girl. And Mr. and Mrs. Griffith both had best not forget that.”
Harry and I made love for the first time that night. Mother had already fallen asleep, and we found ourselves drinking too much.
“Florrie,” Harry protested. “That’s enough for you.”
I began to cry. He stood up and came over to where I sat, stooping beside me to take my hands.
“Don’t worry, Florrie,” he said. “You’ll always be The Biograph Girl. Linda can’t change that.”
I didn’t fully understand my tears. But I wasn’t crying for The Biograph Girl.
“Once, years ago,” I told Harry, “Linda asked me what I wanted more than anything.”
“And what did you tell her?”
“To be a great actress.”
“And you are. The greatest. And as the movies get bigger, so will you.”
I let him slide into the chair next to me. There wasn’t much room for the both of us, but he wedged himself in beside me. I felt ridiculous and weak, unable to move, crushed by his massive frame. But it was easier to let him embrace me than to push free.
Maybe this was all right then. Here, in Harry’s arms, I didn’t have to think about questions like the one Linda had asked me. Seeing her again had just brought all that back. Maybe it was all right just to be a girl.
Harry began to kiss me. I didn’t stop him. We had to be very quiet for fear of awaking Mother.
It was quick. I felt no real passion, but no pain either. The nicest part was afterward when I could fall asleep with his raspy breath next to me. I could block out all else and think only of that. Harry will take care of me. The way Mr. Griffith takes care of Linda.
The next morning, of course, he insisted he marry me. I agreed. I knew how angry it would make Mother, but I didn’t care. “It’s time I was married,” I reasoned aloud to myself. How old was I then? Eighteen? Nineteen? Around there, I suppose. We ran off that very evening and found a justice of the peace who hitched us up with very few questions. His wife stood in as our witness.
Mother, as expected, was apoplectic. “How could you?” she screamed. “What ever possessed you? He’s going nowhere, Florence. Nowhere! What a pointless match! What have you shackled yourself to?”
I was packing my clothes, preparing to move into Harry’s much smaller apartment in the Village. “Mother,” I said calmly, folding a blouse into my suitcase, “just because you didn’t marry for love is no reason I shouldn’t.”
Her face grew stony. “Who’s to say I didn’t marry for love? And who’s to say you have?”
“Come now, Mother. You never loved old Bridgewood. You just married him because you felt like a whore on the stage.”
I’ve never forgotten the look of hatred on my mother’s face at that moment. It was as if I were a stranger. She should have slapped me, and I half expected she might—but she didn’t. Not even to slap me did my mother touch me.
“I loved him,” she said softly. “Why do you think he did what he did?”
So it was true. It had been no accident with the stove. He killed himself. I saw Mother’s eyes suddenly well with tears. She didn’t cry, though—of course not. She bit back the tears as usual and hardened her stare. Finally I dropped my eyes, realizing there were parts of my mother’s pain that I’d never know.
“Go,” she said. “Go to your husband.”
She spit the final word.
I’d never really been separated from my mother before. Walking out that door that night was the most agonizing step I’d ever taken, like ripping away a piece of my own flesh. But I wouldn’t let her see my struggle, just as she had hidden hers from me. We barely even said good-bye.
That night, lying in Harry’s arms in Harry’s bed, all I could do was cry. “Come on, Florrie,” he tried to reassure me. He tried to make love to me. “Come on, Florrie. I’ll take care of you now.”
“No,” I ordered, but he persisted, his fingers moving inside me, forcing their way into me—until I sat up and shrieked, “No, Harry. Please, no!” He rolled over without saying a word. But I couldn’t sleep with him there, his hot man smell choking the room, his bestial snoring. I ordered him away. For the first night of our marriage, I made my husband sleep on the couch.
But it didn’t matter. He loved me anyway. He brought me little gifts of pinecones and ribbon, of poinsettias and holly. He’d sit across from me at the table with his big adoring eyes, watching me open the letters addressed to The Biograph Girl, thrilled over each and every one, so proud of my fame.
“Here’s another offer of marriage,” I said. “He says he’s a millionaire from Detroit.”
Harry made a wan smile. “S’pose you could’ve done better than me, huh, Flo?”
I just laughed. I picked up another letter from the pile. It looked to be addressed by a child. The postmark was Mount Pleasant, Michigan.
I opened it. The short note was written in pencil, in a child’s very best penmanship:
When my teacher asked who I loved most in this world, I said Jesus. But who I really meant to say was The Biograph Girl.
Lester H. Slocum
“How darling,” I said as I pressed the letter to my lips for a kiss.
The Present
They’re all silent. Stunned.
It’s Ben who speaks first. “So it’s true,” he says. “You really are … her.”
Flo smiles wearily. “I was her,” she corrects him.
Sister Jean has tears in her eyes. She’s sitting on the edge of Flo’s bed, just staring at the old woman. Richard’s writing furiously in his reporter’s notepad, as he has been all through Flo’s stories. He’s changed the cassette in the tape recorder twice.
“It’s unbelievable,” Anita says.
Rex whispers, “You actually worked with D. W. Griffith.”
“If I’d have stayed with him,” Flo says, “maybe I’d have become as big as Mary Pickford.”
“You were bigger than Pickford,” Rex says.
“Then. Not later.” Flo sighs. “But we want different things as we go through life, as we change.”
“There was supposedly a fire, Flo,” Richard says, finally adding his own observations. “A fire that ended Florence Lawrence’s career. The article mentioned scars.”
She pulls back a little—a trifle defensive, Richard thinks. “There was a fire,” she says, as if he’d doubted it. “I saved Matt Moore. Carried him down the stairs, and he was no small man.”
“But I don’t see any scars,” Richard tells her, studying her face.
She smiles. “You don’t have to see the scars for them to be there.”
Their eyes hold. He hadn’t expected her to admit to all this. He’d expected weeks of research, investigative reporting. Even now, he’s not sure he can simply take her at face value. She could be some crank, some publicity hound who thinks why not? Why not be Florence Lawrence if they think I am? But at a hundred and six? And knowing all those details? The ring of truth is there—scars or no scars, autopsy or no autopsy. Richard’s learned how to recognize it.
“So I can print this?” he asks. “I can reveal who you are?”
She looks over at Sister Jean. “What do you think, Jeannie?”
“It’s up to you, Flo.”
She looks back over at Richard. “It was all such a long time ago,” she says. “Who would care now?”
“Oh, but people will care, Flo,” Rex interjects breathlessly. “That’s why it’s so important to tell your story. You’re a link to history. Film is an art now. You might not have realized it at the time, but what you were doing with Griffith—my God, Flo, this is like finding buried treasure—like—like—finding a collaborator of Mozart or Beethoven still alive, like finding one of Manet’s students who could describe the origins of modern art. You owe it to history to tell your story, Flo!”
“No, you don’t, Flo,” Sister Jean says, stepping forward, standing between Flo and the rest. “You don’t owe anything to anyone except yourself.” She looks back over at the group. “We don’t have to go any farther than right here.”
Flo says quietly, “He’s right, Jeannie. I never realized how important it was until it was gone.”
Anita gets up from her chair, kneels before Flo and takes her hand. “This will make you famous all over again,” she says in awe.
Flo looks down at her. She says nothing.
“But how, Flo?” Richard says at last. “How did you do it?”
“What do you mean?”
“How—and why—did people think you had—you had died?”
She sighs. “There was just a mix-up at the hospital,” she tells him.
“That’s all?” he asks. “A mix-up?”
“That’s all.”
“But someone died,” he persists. “Someone was autopsied. Someone was buried and listed as you.”
Sister Jean walks up behind Flo, places her hands on the old woman’s shoulders. “You know, Flo, maybe you shouldn’t say anything else,” she says. “Maybe we should talk privately before you go any farther.”
Flo reaches behind her and pats Jean’s hands. “It’s all right, Jeannie. There’s nothing much to tell. They made a mistake. Simple as that. And I decided to jump at the chance, to get the hell out of there, start over. Don’t you see? It gave me the chance to go back to being just Florence Bridgewood. I walked away, left everything behind—took nothing that would link me to who I once was.”
“But still, I don’t get how you could just—”
She smiles. “It’s been such a long time, my friends. So very long. And really, the most interesting part came later, after all that, when I was able to get away from her.”
“From who?” Ben asks.
She grins cagily. “Florence Lawrence.”
“But, Flo,” Richard says, pushing. “Why would they think this other woman was you? Were you at the hospital for something else? Were you sick?”
“No, no, I wasn’t sick,” she says.
“Then how did the mix-up happen?”
She drops her eyes. “I’m not sure I know. Really, Richard, what’s far more interesting is what came afterward. Don’t you want to know about my life in San Francisco? That’s where I was headed.”
“Did she look like you, this other woman?” Richard interrupts. “Did she have a similar name?”
“She was just a girl.” Flo’s voice trails off. She closes her eyes, seeming to fade out right in front of them. Her energy drops like the mercury on a cold day.
“You knew her?” Richard asks.
“Flo,” Sister Jean says, clearly anxious now. “I think we should take a break.”
“Did you know her, Flo?” Richard persists. “Were you at the hospital?”
“Mr. Sheehan,” Sister Jean demands, raising her voice. “I think you can appreciate that Flo is tired. I’m going to have to ask all of you to leave. At once.”
They stand—Richard last, and reluctantly. As he passes by Flo, she takes his hand. “She was just a girl,” she tells him quietly, her big, round blue eyes looking up at him.
The Biograph Girl Page 19