The Biograph Girl

by William J. Mann

  “Could she be making it all up?” Anita asks. “Pretending to be Florence Lawrence so she can get some attention?”

  “Oh, come off it. She’s it,” Ben says. “She’s the real McCoy.”

  “You’ve had quite the sudden turnaround,” Richard says.

  They’re in a room off Sister Jean’s office, seated around a large oak conference table. A portrait of the Pope hangs opposite a theater poster of the Great McGinty.

  Ben shrugs. “It’s those stories—about Biograph—about the early days. How could she make those up? And what would be the point? She’s a hundred and six.”

  “I must say, for once I agree with you, brother,” Richard says.

  Rex is still mesmerized. “She worked with Mary Pickford,” he’s gushing. “She worked with … Lionel Barrymore!” He looks around at the group. “She could tell me if I’m on the mark in my show!”

  Richard ignores him. “But the girl—the girl they buried as Florence Lawrence. There was a death certificate. There was an autopsy. There had to be collusion in this.”

  “Richard!” Anita gasps. “Are you thinking she could have done something … criminal?”

  “Well, I have to consider the possibility,” he says. “She knew her. That much is obvious. She knew this girl. But why the hospital would think she was Florence Lawrence is beyond me.”

  “Oh, let it go, Richard,” Ben says. “In those days nothing was computerized, nothing was as ironclad as it is today. Hospitals make mistakes. And she admits she took advantage of their mistake. That’s the only ‘criminal’ thing she did.”

  “But come on, Ben. Why would they think it was Florence Lawrence in the first place?” Richard is pretty heated. He looks around the table. “Come on, you guys. We’ve read the obituary notices. It’s all pretty clear what happened. She took the poison, then freaked out, banging on her neighbors’ doors. The ambulance came and took her to the hospital. The doctor tried to save her, but failed. Everyone knew it was Florence Lawrence. She left a goddamn note, for crying out loud. She said, ‘Sorry, guys, but this is the only way. Good-bye.’ Or something like that. So how could a mix-up happen? Something doesn’t fit here.”

  Ben shrugs. “Okay. Maybe she took the poison, but they pumped her clean. Then she walked out, and somebody accidentally switched the charts.”

  “But who did they autopsy then?” Richard asks. “Who did they bury? Wouldn’t somebody have missed this girl? Why didn’t her family ever say, ‘Hey, that’s our daughter?’ Or sister? Or whoever?”

  “Because she was just a girl,” Anita says quietly.

  “Yeah. Just a girl.” Richard sighs. He looks around at them. “Flo’s not telling us something. And until I find out all of it, I can’t go any farther with this story.”

  Though it kills him.

  He can feel the warm blood in his face, the tingling in his fingers. At Columbia, he’d had a journalism professor named Reynaud Beylarian. Old Professor Beylarian had been a reporter back in the 30s and 40s for the Hearst syndicate. He told Richard that when a reporter just happens on a story—not a story he’s been assigned to or has been researching for months, but just a story he stumbles on—nothing in the world was more fulfilling. “Not sex, not brandy, not a good Cuban cigar,” Professor Beylarian had said. “There is nothing quite as sublime—as intoxicating—as that.”

  In his mind, Richard’s bursting in on Mady Crenshaw, his editor, telling her that she has to stop whatever she’s doing, that she has to listen to what he’s found. He indulges in a moment of giddy fantasy: being interviewed on Entertainment Tonight, writing a bestselling book, winning the Pulitzer Prize. Careful, Richard, he tries to caution himself. There’s so much you don’t know. You can’t run off half-assed with guesswork and unanswered questions.

  But for the moment, he finds caution impossible. In his head, he’s already writing his lead:

  Like the raising of the Titanic, like some archaeological excavation of ancient Rome, Florence Lawrence—the world’s first movie star—has come back from the dead.

  Well, Ben is thinking, maybe Richard isn’t going to move ahead on this story, but there’s no reason for me to delay.

  He grins, hoping the others won’t notice. You need something personal, Xerxes had said. Something timely. Something for Hard Copy and People magazine.

  He should’ve brought his camera. He needs to get Flo on video, talking about the past. About the movies. About D.W. Griffith and all the rest. It’s brilliant. It’s got everything: art, mystery, romance. The cult of celebrity and the pursuit of the press. It’s perfect, perfect, perfect.

  And if something criminal turns up—well, he can’t imagine anything will. That sweet old lady didn’t do anything criminal.

  But if she did …

  “Give me something personal,” Xerxes had said.

  I’ll deal with whatever comes. I don’t want to hurt Flo. But Richard’s right about one thing: We got to tell the truth.

  Whatever secrets that old lady held could just make his movie all the more interesting.

  Sister Jean looks over at Flo.

  “Is there anything I should know?” she asks. “About that girl, about your … former life?”

  Flo is visibly tired. “Will you help me onto the bed, Jeannie?”

  Jean takes Flo’s hands and assists her as she stands. She steadies her on her feet and they look each other directly in the eyes. Jean can read nothing there. She guides her as she takes the few steps across the floor. She cranks the lowering mechanism on the bed and helps Flo lean back and lie down.

  The old woman sighs, staring up at the ceiling. “No, Jeannie,” she says finally. “There’s nothing you need to know.”

  “They’re going to have more questions, Flo. Do you want to answer them?”

  “Richard’s a good man,” she says. “I trust him. Don’t you?”

  “He’s a reporter,” Jean says. “They’re a breed apart.”

  She knows of what she speaks. In Hartford, at St. Vincent’s, Jean had trusted a reporter. A white bank executive had been murdered as she walked to her car one night; the police were on the hunt for a homeless black man. Racial tensions were high in the city. Jean was aware of the crime, but had not given much thought to the sad-eyed, quiet man who’d shown up at the shelter that same evening. A week went by; the man spoke little, yet was unfailingly polite. When a local journalist spotted him and prepared to tip off the police, Jean had pleaded for restraint in the coverage. “Go easy,” she begged. “For the sake of the rest of the people here.”

  “Sure, sure,” the reporter had promised. But his eyes seemed to pulsate with excitement in their sockets. The next day there was a front-page story with a photo of the shelter and its glassy-eyed—but innocent—residents. St. Vincent’s was accused of harboring criminals.

  The bad publicity was just six months prior to Jean’s eventual dismissal. While not directly connected, it couldn’t have endeared her to the diocese.

  She looks down now at the frail old woman in the bed. “I think we should wait before you say anything else,” Jean tells her. “In fact, I think we should talk with a lawyer.”

  Flo’s tired blue eyes find hers. “A lawyer?”

  Jean caresses Flo’s forehead with the back of her hand. “Flo, who was the girl they thought was you?”

  Flo’s quiet. She closes her eyes. “Her name was Molly.”

  “You knew her?”

  “I knew her.”

  “How?”

  Jean sees tears. Quiet, almost invisible tears leaking from under Flo’s eyelids. Tears nearly a century old.

  “That’s all right, Flo,” Jean whispers, taking her hands in her own. “No more for today. Don’t worry about a thing. I’m here. I’ll take care of you.”

  What have I done? Why did I allow these people in to question Flo?

  It had seemed so innocent at first. Even Flo had thought it a game. Up until just an hour ago, it was all just an interesting, quirky little story.r />
  How quickly things change. How easily we can find ourselves trapped by other people’s agendas.

  She opens the door to the conference room. All four of them turn their eager faces to look at her.

  “I’m sorry,” Jean says, shutting the door behind her. “Flo’s too tired to go on. If she wants to talk further, I’ll let you know.”

  “Sister,” Richard says. “I want to do right by Flo. I’ve come to care about her very much. I want to treat her honorably and fairly.”

  “If you want to be honorable, Mr. Sheehan,” Jean tells him, “I suggest you erase those tapes and shred your notes.”

  He blinks at her.

  Jean stands over him, defiant. “I understand your arguments that Flo represents an important piece of history, that she was part of a significant movement in the development of an art form. But she’s also a very old woman who enjoys her life here tremendously and I don’t want anything to affect that. She’s frail, vulnerable.”

  “I’d hardly call her frail,” Richard says.

  Jean seethes. Could they really be that oblivious? “That’s because she’s here,” she snaps. “Oh, she’s loved putting on a grand old show for you. The tough-old-broad routine, I call it. But she’s one hundred and six. She has to be helped in and out of bed. She can’t walk up stairs. She can’t bear a shower anymore because the water hurts her skin. She can’t step into a bathtub, so we have to sponge bathe her. Sometimes she gets so tired she falls asleep in the middle of a sentence. Why do you think she had to come here to live at St. Mary’s? Because she couldn’t take care of herself all alone anymore.” Jean sighs, her voice cracking ever so slightly. “Tough as she is.”

  She sits down at the table with them. They’re all quiet. She looks around at each of them. “Flo’s lived a long, long life and deserves to have her last years peaceful and free of intrusion.”

  Richard smiles kindly. “I agree, Sister. But with all respect, I’m not going to destroy my tapes.”

  She sighs. “I didn’t think you would,” she says.

  He places his hands on the papers in front of him. “The first thing, Sister,” he says, “is to confirm what she says is true. I mean, the evidence that exists seems incontrovertible that Florence Lawrence is dead. I need proof that what Flo says is true. I’m a reporter, after all.”

  Sister Jean looks at him. At his eyes, so ferocious now, at the steeliness of his jaw. “I’m well aware you’re a reporter, Richard,” she says.

  “May I see her records?”

  “No,” she says plainly.

  “Then how can I prove—”

  Jean smiles. “That’s not my concern.”

  Richard smiles back at her. “You’re stonewalling, aren’t you, Sister?”

  She shrugs.

  “You’re afraid of what might turn up. About the girl. The one they autopsied and buried as Florence Lawrence.”

  “If Flo’s being truthful,” she says, going eyeball to eyeball with him. “You said it yourself, Richard. How can we prove she is who she says she is? You’re right. The evidence seems irrefutable. I’ve read the articles. Florence Lawrence is dead. Dead and buried. Why should we believe Flo Bridgewood? Sure, she might say that Florence Lawrence didn’t die—but who’s she? Just some very, very old lady in a rest home in Buffalo. You, on the other hand, have a signed document from the Los Angeles county coroner.”

  “But it’s her,” Ben says quietly.

  They turn to look at him.

  “I believed her, Sister,” he says. “Didn’t you?”

  Jean sees his eyes. The same color, the same shape as Richard’s. But the fierceness isn’t there. The determination. They’re gentle eyes, the way Flo had described Harry’s. She thinks of how moved she was by Ben’s film, by his vision of peace.

  “I’m not sure, Ben,” she says, more gently, more honestly now. “I’m just not sure.”

  “What about these posters?” Rex asks suddenly. “Of Baby Flo and Lotta Lawrence? If she isn’t Florence Lawrence, why would she have them?”

  “Actually, Nooker, they might prove just the opposite,” Richard says, sitting back down now, giving up for the moment on persuading Sister Jean. “She says she just walked off, left everything behind. She wouldn’t have carted these around with her if she didn’t want to be known. How could she end up with all this stuff?”

  “Well, then, there you have it,” Jean says, turning her glare back at him. “This all must be a mix-up somehow.”

  “Of course, someone could have saved them for her,” Richard says.

  “Maybe she’s just an obsessed fan of Florence Lawrence’s,” Anita offers.

  “Come off it, sweetheart,” Ben says, annoyed. “This isn’t a soap opera.” He turns back to Sister Jean. “Flo’s telling the truth, Sister. That’s The Biograph Girl up there.”

  He has such beautiful eyes, Jean thinks. Eyes like Victor’s.

  Ben’s the only one of the group she trusts. The others have their own agendas. Especially his brother Richard.

  I won’t let them take Flo away from me, Jean’s thinking. I don’t care who she is. Or what she’s done. She’s my family. I have no one else.

  Ben’s eyes are still focused on her. They seem to read her mind, understand her fear. Jean remembers the first time she saw his film One Chance, One World. It was during a peace rally in Hartford, and she and Anne Drew had both been deeply moved. “If only more people could see this film,” Jean had said.

  What a difference a decade makes. Then, her anger had been easier to direct. Nuclear proliferation. Welfare cuts. Reagan. James Waat. Ed Meese. Al Haig. A consortium of evil old white men—although, as the other nuns pointed out, at least they were pro-life. Jean just scoffed at that idea. “I would hardly call men who slash programs for the poor and build weapons of mass destruction pro-life,” she argued.

  The bad guys wore suits and ties. The good guys wore dungarees and tiny gold crosses around their necks. It was so much easier then.

  She could pinpoint with some accuracy the day it all became more difficult. One year and five months ago, to be exact, when Jean was still director of St. Vincent de Paul’s. It was a bright, golden spring morning, and Anne Drew—sick and near death—had walked into Jean’s room and discovered Victor in her bed.

  Oh, the screaming that had ensued—the wailing.

  Dishes smashed. Chairs overturned.

  Who would have thought a dying woman had so much strength?

  “How could you just break your vows so cavalierly?” Anne had cried.

  The cancer had progressed to the point where she was thin and wasted; the chemo treatments had left her nearly bald. A horrible wig sat on her head. It slipped, hanging off to the side, as Anne threw her tirade.

  “Anne,” Jean had pleaded over and over again after Victor had hurriedly dressed and slunk out the back stairs. “I didn’t break them cavalierly.”

  “Didn’t that promise mean anything to you? A promise made before God?”

  Jean stood directly in front of her, eyes locked. “Anne, Anne,” she said, “of course my vows meant everything to me. That’s why I’m asking you to give me at least that much. That what I did might have been wrong, but it wasn’t cavalier. It wasn’t easy.”

  Oh, no, it was hardly easy. It was the most difficult thing Jean had ever done. She sits here now and looks over at the eyes of the man sitting next to her. So clear. So filled with truth.

  Or, at least, she hoped so. She’s looked for that clarity, that honesty in the eyes of many men in her life, but found it only rarely. Not even her own father had had it. Only a few missionary priests, the ones who worked with the poor in Central America—and Victor. Victor’s eyes had been the most true she had ever seen. Eyes more like a woman’s than a man’s.

  In his gaze, all of her seemingly ironclad dogma lost its relevance. It was a child’s gaze. The gaze of the Christ child, she told herself. Anne Drew would call that a rationalization for what she had done. Maybe it was. Maybe wh
at she did was a sin.

  But it wasn’t easy. Oh, no, not easy at all. It wasn’t impulsive. It was carefully considered and carefully acted upon. Of course, that only made it worse to Anne. Jean had hoped it would help her understand. But it only made it worse.

  “I love you,” Victor had said in his sweet Latino cadence to Jean after they had made love, his big brown eyes full of her.

  “And I you, Victor,” she’d replied.

  At first, when his cracked lips touched hers, she had felt nothing—no stir, no flush. His rough hands had caressed her own, and she watched as if removed somehow, as if seated up near the ceiling, observing, not participating. It was only when he began to cry—small, quirky sobs that made him shake as if he had the hiccups—that she began to feel some passion. She took his face between her hands and kissed him tenderly. She eased him back gently onto the bed, and he had entered her—the first and only time a man had ever done so.

  “Then you planned it?” Anne Drew asked—broken now, exhausted, sitting opposite her on the couch, her face like a skull.

  “Yes,” Jean admitted. “I planned it. Would you have me surrender my vows without even a consideration?”

  That afternoon, she had bought a package of condoms. How strange an experience that was. How terrifying. She hadn’t been able to look at the cashier in the pharmacy, a pimply girl with wire-framed glasses. When Victor had slipped off his denim shorts and Jean felt his hardness against her thigh, she reached over to the night table and handed him a foil-wrapped condom. He seemed surprised. But he accepted it.

  “Give me at least the fact that I didn’t break my vows lightly, that I thought about it, about all of the implications, all of the consequences over and over and over again,” Jean said.

  “And still went ahead with it.”

  Jean stiffened. “Yes. And still went ahead with it.”

  Victor had been homeless off and on since he was fifteen. He was twenty-five when Jean met him. Yet the cruelties of life hadn’t soured him. He wasn’t like the others at St. Vincent’s: hard eyed and blunt, worn raw from their years on the street. He was a man, big and strong, muscular like Richard Sheehan—but a boy, too, soft, gentle, finding pleasure in the stacks of comic books left behind at the shelter. He would laugh uproariously during a game of Twister. He delighted in watching the girls play double Dutch jump rope out on the sidewalk, clapping and whistling when they were done.