“Miss Lawrence,” a messenger said, appearing behind me at the table. “I have a message for you that’s come through on the wireless.”
He handed me a slip of paper folded in half. I looked down at it, then up at Harry, who sat across from me, looking awkwardly pompous in his white tie and tails.
“Well,” the First Officer said politely, “I should hope it’s nothing upsetting.”
“Do you want to step outside to read it, Flo?” Harry asked.
I smiled around at the table. The ladies in their glittering emeralds and pomaded hair smiled sympathetically at me. “No, that’s all right,” I said. “I’m sure it’s just a well-wisher.”
I opened the message. At the top of the paper was the insignia of the Olympic and the White Star Line. Below, in the scrawled handwriting of the wireless operator, was the message:
Ducks died this morning. Asked for you. Funeral tomorrow.
I folded the message back in half. “Just as I thought,” I said, smiling. “Mother just wanted to wish us Godspeed.”
Everyone smiled. The first officer went back to telling us how powerful the Olympic was, how great were the possibilities for the future of oceangoing travel.
I stared down at my dessert of Waldorf pudding. I scooped a bit on my silver spoon, kissing it for taste. Then I set it back down on the table and covered my face with my hands.
“Are you all right, Miss Lawrence?” the first officer asked.
“Florrie?”
I stood up abruptly, knocking over my glass, spilling water onto an industrialist’s lap. He jumped up, startled, upsetting a tray of eclairs. I didn’t apologize for the commotion. I just ran off through the dining room.
Harry found me on the deck, staring into the roiling black sea. “What is it, Florence?” he demanded. “What did the message really say?”
I had thrown it into the ocean. It floated there awhile, caught by the moonlight, before vanishing under the waves.
I turned to look up at Harry. I tried to speak, but found my throat tight and filled with tears. “He was the only father I ever knew,” I cried at last. “My earliest memories are all of him. The smoke from his cigars. His … harmonica.” I felt as if my gut would tear open. “He’d hoist me up on his shoulders, carry me up into the flats where we lived between shows. When the children came around, he was there to protect me from them. Ducks always there to protect me.”
Harry just stood there. He didn’t attempt to comfort me. His face clouded; his lips grew white.
“Damn the bitch,” he finally seethed. “Why did she have to send the message now? Go to all the trouble of wiring a message to the ship?”
“Because she knew I’d want to know,” I said weakly.
“Because she knew it would interfere with us!” Harry shouted. “You need rest, Florence, and she’s upset you again!”
He tried to grip me by my shoulders, but I yanked myself away.
There was some commotion then, a flurry of crew rushing past. The ship lurched a bit in the water. Harry and I steadied ourselves on the railing. He took off his coat and wrapped me in it, leading me downstairs, past the Turkish bath and the smoking room, where the men had gathered, puffing on their cigars with looks of consternation on their faces. The ship had changed directions, they told us, and was heading north. I could not have cared less at that point where we were headed, but Harry found great camaraderie with the men and their cigars, huffing over their umbrage in not being kept informed.
Finally the First Officer came down to explain. “One of our sister ships is in trouble,” he said. “We need to alter our course and go to her assistance.”
I sat on the deck all that night alone, watching the moon dance along the waves. It was a cold night, and my teeth chattered, but I couldn’t bear being down with Harry and Pop Lubin, keeping vigil with the men, smoking hundreds of cigars, reveling in their own sense of inclusion in the rich boys’ club. I watched the sun edge the far horizon, the water gradually reflecting shards of pink.
In the distance, I finally spotted a vessel, but there seemed to be nothing wrong with it. As we got closer, I could see smaller boats being hauled on board.
Mrs. Lubin was behind me, wrapped in a shawl. “That’s the Carpathia, rescuing the ones who survived,” she told me. “They say hundreds went down with the ship.”
I watched passively. My mind could not embrace the tragedy of others. The morning sun now revealed debris littering the waves, wooden planks and deck chairs. To our left came the excited cries of a group of women looking over the side of the ship. Mrs. Lubin took my hand and urged me to follow. We found a spot for ourselves along the railing.
“There!” cried one of the women. “There it is again!”
A body came bobbing in the water near our ship. Its face was as black as the man I’d once found hanging from the tree. There were screams from the women. Mrs. Lubin fainted.
I sat back down on a bench. I began to cry. I think I must have sat there for hours, just crying, for I remember eventually becoming very warm. The sun was high, full on my face. Finally Harry found me. He said nothing, just helped me to stand. Then he escorted me back to our room.
The ship’s doctors pronounced me a complete nervous breakdown. Oh, who knows what that means? All I know is, I couldn’t stop crying, and I hated Harry for taking me to Europe. I was convinced I was going to die. “It’s God punishing me—don’t you see?” I cried, pounding Harry’s chest again and again with my fists. “For lying to the world that I was killed in St. Louis! Now I’m really going to die!”
I passed through the stately dining rooms of the ship like a ghost. Harry would find me wandering down the majestic central staircase, eyes lost, in bare feet and only a flimsy white nightdress, my hand lightly gliding along the banister. Or else I’d be up on the deck, the moonlight in my hair, the wind catching my dress, exposing my calves. He’d wrap his coat around me, gently chastising me for walking off, guiding me back to our suite of rooms and easing me into bed.
“Oh, my poor beautiful little daughter,” Pop Lubin clucked over me, then straightened up to glare at Harry. “But she’ll be all right to film when we get there, won’t she?”
“She’ll be all right,” I heard Harry reply.
He tried to engage me with stories of the places we’d visit. We’d disembark from the Olympic at Cherbourg and board another ship to Gibraltar. From there, we’d take a series of cruises that would take us through the Mediterranean and bring us to Corsica, Rome, Egypt, Cyprus, Turkey, and finally, the Greek islands.
Of all of them, only Santorini produced a glimmer of interest. I read the guidebook from cover to cover, sitting on a chaise on our private promenade deck, wrapped in a blanket. “It says here that someday the volcano off Fira will explode again,” I said to Harry. “That in ancient times it took Atlantis down into the sea.”
He just smiled indulgently. I closed my eyes and imagined the great shudder of the earth, the rumbling sound as the lava pushed its way to the surface. I saw the first spit of fire from the volcano’s mouth, then the great mass of molten rock spilling down the sides, turning the black waters red, claiming everyone on the island for the sovereignity of the sea.
Miss Lawrence is a globe-trotter, some reporter would write a year or two later. I kept the clipping in my scrapbook for many years. It yellowed and faded and finally crumbled into dust. But I can remember its breathless prose to this day. It read:
She can tell you how the moon looks rising on the Sphinx in the Egyptian desert, or how the dawn comes up like thunder, out of China, across the bay.
Breathless indeed. They were my exact words. I remember telling the woman about the trip, as I reclined on my velvet remarpé, dressed only in my pink negligee. Wide-eyed and far too young to be out on her own, she was eagerly taking everything down in her notebook.
“Why did you go to Europe?” she asked. “You were there so long.”
I sighed as only a star can sigh. “My work had been ve
ry arduous and trying,” I told her. “I was extremely nervous, so much so that I couldn’t work to my own satisfaction. I wanted to get away from motion pictures and motion picture studios for a while. But it was a great mistake going to Europe. I found no rest there.”
All those wonderful places—I barely noticed them. Harry propped me up against the rail of the barge steaming up the Nile. I was dressed in some absurd tunic. The other tourists looked quizzically at me and at the cameramen frantically cranking their cameras, perched precariously on tripods that slid around the deck each time the boat lurched. Yes, I can tell you how the moon looks rising on the Sphinx, but I felt no passion, no romance. Only weariness and an aching, unnameable sorrow.
Mother arrived while we were in Turkey. I’d written her, begged her to join us. Harry was vehemently opposed to the idea, and he sulked about it for weeks. He slept out on the little balcony of our hotel like a pouty child.
Once Mother had joined us, they had terrible quarrels. “Why don’t you get her a fitting picture, like the kind she was making with Mr. Griffith before you spirited her away?”
He folded his big arms across his chest. “Flo’s more popular than ever!”
“And how long might that last with her here idling away precious weeks?” She hurried over to me where I lay stretched out lethargically on my bed. She cupped my chin in her palm. “Oh, Queenie, you are capable of so much more than what you’ve been doing with Lubin. You just don’t have the vehicle. Come back with me and we’ll find a director who knows what makes you so special.”
“I know very well,” Harry shouted.
Mother ignored him, her eyes fixated on me. “We’ll get something with an elaborate setting,” she said. “Shakespeare or Bulwer-Lytton—what d’you think? I played in The Lady of Lyons on the stage to great acclaim! It was one of the biggest hits of our company. Do you remember, Florence? Or maybe a good riding picture. You were always so good in them. I want something thrilling to bring the audience to its feet—not that ordinary trash he keeps putting you in.”
Harry stalked off, slamming the door behind him.
I looked up at Mother. “You just don’t want to go back to being poor,” I managed to say to her.
“I’ve never been poor, only broke,” she sniffed. “Being poor is a way of life. Being broke is just a temporary situation.”
I closed my eyes and turned my face to the wall.
“The industry is changing so fast, Florence,” Mother warned, her voice lower now. She sat down beside me on the bed. “There are all sorts of new things on the screen now. Pictures are getting longer. New stars are appearing all the time.” She gave me a small smile. “Did you know Pickford was just voted Number One in the Photoplay poll?”
My eyes flickered up to her.
“It was only a matter of time, Flo, especially with you gone so long.”
“What about me? What number?”
“Number Two,” Mother said with a great clucking of her tongue.
I went back to silence for the rest of the day.
Yet I couldn’t think about going home. I had to get to Santorini. I was convinced there lay my destiny. The volcano would explode and take all of us with it.
MOVING PICTURE STAR PERISHES
IN VOLCANIC ERUPTION
Yes, yes—that would be the way. A wonderful, magnificent, fitting way to go.
“There it is!” I cried. “There it is!”
Santorini loomed ahead of us. The ferry carrying us from Paros would dock within the hour. Mother stood with me on the deck, a kerchief wrapped around her head. The sun was full and bright above us, the sky a vivid, sharp blue.
“The volcano,” I asked, turning to our Greek guide. “Is that it? There?”
The guide was on the deck of the ferry slicing open a squid. His knife caught hold of the jellylike flesh and slid down its length. A white ooze flowed forth. He lifted his eyes to look in the direction I pointed. His face was a deep bronze, lined and cracked. He was missing several teeth but his eyes were clear and large. “Yes,” he grunted and spoke the name of the volcano in Greek.
Great rocks stood black against the dark, smooth waters. The bay is the volcano’s collapsed crater, the largest caldera on earth, you know. We sailed past sheer cliffs of volcanic layers that rose a thousand feet in the air. Far above our heads sat the gleaming white structures of the capital city of Fira, edged along the rim of the cliff.
“You’ll need to take a mule up to the town from the dock,” our guide explained. “There’s no way you can walk.”
“A mule?” Mother grimaced. “Florence, are you sure you can?”
“I’ll be fine, Mother,” I told her. And I was quite sure I would be. All at once the idea of a mule ride up the side of the sheerest cliffs I’d ever seen seemed exhilarating. It made the whole trip suddenly worthwhile.
How I laughed watching Mother and Harry grapple with their mules. Mine was pliant and obedient, dutifully plodding up the nearly six hundred stone-ramped steps that zigzagged up the side of the island. I kept turning around, the sight of the black volcanic water filling my sight. The wind whipped under my bonnet, roguishly untying its drawstrings. Halfway up the cliff, my hat lifted free of my head and sailed out madcap over the sea.
My laughter echoed against the volcanic cliffs as my mule trudged onward.
“Three thousand years ago,” our guide told us as we sat on a deck built into the side of the cliff, “Santorini was called Stronghyle, or the Round One. Even then it was the most beautiful of all the Cyclades. But then the volcano erupted, the most colossal explosion the world has ever known. It created these high cliffs, and many say the lost civilization of Stronghyle is really the Kingdom of Atlantis. They say Plato simply mistook the symbol for 100 for 1,000 in his calculations. That would put the sinking of Atlantis squarely at the time the round Stronghyle became the crescent-shaped Santorini.”
I sipped my wine and breathed in the cool night air. A small fire had been lit to keep us warm on the terrace of our pension, and I spotted other blazes on the many similar terraces along the cliff. Across from us the “burned isles” of Palia and Nea Kameni stood as testimonials to the volcano’s wrath. “There are still some sparks over there,” our guide told us. “Just to keep us guessing.”
I didn’t need to guess. The caldera was quiet and smooth, but it didn’t fool me. I knew at any moment we might feel the rumbling beneath our feet. The first wisps of smoke would rise up from the sea.
“Do you remember the papier-mâché volcano Ducks made?” Mother asked suddenly. “For The Winds of Pompeii? How we had to cart that thing around with us? It took more space in our wagon than our costumes.”
Mentioning Ducks made me sad again. I turned to our guide. “Is it too cold to swim? Have the waters warmed up enough yet?” I asked.
He grinned, exposing his gapped teeth. “Here they don’t need warming. There are hot springs from the volcano. I’ll take you tomorrow.”
“No,” I insisted. “Tonight.”
“Oh, Florence!” Mother scolded.
“I forbid it!” Harry said, all bluff and swagger.
I disregarded him, which had become easy to do. “Please,” I said again to the guide.
“It means going back down by the donkey,” he told me.
“I’ll do it!”
So we did. Harry insisted he accompany us, but I barely noticed him. All I could think of was swimming in those black waters, the waters that would claim me, take me home. Our guide took us out in a little boat toward the burned isles and had us disrobe. I stripped completely to Harry’s horror. Oh, how warm the waters were. How glorious. At one point, I completely submerged myself, holding my breath and opening my eyes, staring only into the murky blackness that enveloped me. I burst to the surface in a spray of water and laughter.
“No more, Florrie,” Harry pleaded. “It’s too dark out here.”
But I kicked and splashed like a girl—like the girl I’d been—for over an hour, as nak
ed as the day I was born. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier, before or since.
At the end of our first week on the island, Harry departed with Pop Lubin and the camera crew. I stayed behind with Mother. Harry, sour and belligerent, told Pop I needed time to “come to my senses.”
Of course, that was exactly what I was doing.
I was glad to see them go. Harry and Mother had taken to quarreling incessantly, which only added to my stress.
“She’s a nasty, antagonistic witch!” Harry shouted at me, his face moist with sweat and his big ears bright red. “She’s an old sow and you’re her stubborn calf! She’ll destroy your career if you let her!”
“How dare you speak of my mother that way!” I threw a tomato at him. It hit the wall, leaving a smudge of red flesh.
Harry packed his suitcases and stormed off. I watched from the deck as he flopped around on his mule, heading back down the cliff, desperately trying to hold on to what little dignity he still had left.
That’s really the last image I have of him. Oh, certainly there was much more to come. Harry’s story doesn’t end there, but in many ways, the image of the man being jostled about on the back of his mule was the last of the husband I loved. I can’t bear to go into what eventually became of Harry, what became of our marriage. That’s for another time, when I feel stronger. For now, suffice to say that I’ve chosen to remember the shy, awkward bear with the bouquet of slightly wilted chrysanthemums, the one in whose embrace I found solace, albeit fleetingly. This is the man who loved me, whom I continue to love in return. Not the desperate, unstrung man who saw me only as Florence Lawrence, the movie star, and not his wife.
Mother and I spent a month on Santorini. I felt the yawning distance, the great protective stretch of sea between the island and New York. Every morning I’d rise with the sun, breathe in the warm, salty air, and stare down into the roiling caldera. I set out on daily excursions around the island, finding the simple joys of life returning as I waited for the end to come. Wandering through the narrow, twisting streets of Fira, I bought fresh fish at Plateia Theotokopoulou, the central square. I picked baskets and baskets of the wild tomatoes that grew from the rich, dark soil in the cracks of the pumice. I’d sit on a black rock under the brilliant blue sky and watch pelicans dive into the sea at perfect right angles. At any turn between the white stone buildings, I would come to the edge of the caldera and gaze down at the multicolored cliffs and black water below.
The Biograph Girl Page 30