Flo seems unsure how to respond. Her eyes seem a little bloodshot. Gone is the witty banter she’d displayed on Rosie.
“Well, I think it’s just about perseverance,” she finally says, and Richard suspects she’s trying to remember what Ben—or the “Dare to be 100” people—have been coaching her to say. “I can’t say I always ate the best foods, but I always preferred the outdoors and I got a lot of exercise.”
“What’s Ben doing to her?” Richard asks, more to himself than to Rex.
“You’re amazing,” Oprah’s gushing. “Really. At 107, you’re traveling the country, making a documentary on your life, being interviewed everywhere, and I understand preparing a return to acting in John Waters’s new film.”
Flo shrugs. “Well, if someone was crazy enough to offer me a quarter of a million dollars to make a picture, I certainly wasn’t crazy enough to turn ’em down.”
The audience hoots, claps.
“There she is,” Rex says. “There’s a flash of the Flo we love.”
“You realize you’re an inspiration,” Oprah tells her. “I mean, the image the world always had of older actresses was Norma Desmond or Baby Jane Hudson. You’ve changed that stereotype, Flo. Hopefully forever.”
Flo just smiles. Richard waits for a sassy retort but it doesn’t come.
Oprah cuts to a commercial. The camera fades out on Flo’s face; Richard thinks she looks a little slumped over in her chair.
“Flo’s got a hump on her back, too,” Rex says, winking at Richard as he picks up their plates, careful not to spill bagel crumbs on the floor.
“Yeah, but you never knew it on Rosie,” Richard muses. “They’re wearing her out. They’ve got her doing too much. The Today Show. Yesterday Regis and Kathie Lee. Today Oprah.”
“And tomorrow Good Morning, America,” Rex tells him.
“They’re taking some pretty big risks,” Richard says as the show returns after the commercial break. “One of these days, someone’s gonna ask Flo a question she doesn’t want to answer.”
Now Oprah’s introducing six other guests who’ve passed the 100 mark. Two men, four women. Both men are black, and among the women two are white, one is black, and one is Asian. All are dressed in their Sunday best, the men’s ties loosely knotted at their flabby throats, the women wearing corsages.
One of the two men still plays the church organ. He gives a demonstration, but plays only a few chords before he seems to get confused. The black woman still quilts, and a stagehand displays her handiwork to the oohs and ahhs of the crowd. One of the white ladies claims to have been a Ziegfeld dancer and performs a little soft shoe.
But they speak in halting phrases and seem unable to hear or fully understand Oprah’s questions.
“They’re nothing like Flo,” Richard tells the TV, “and she’s the oldest of the bunch.”
“Okay. Easy, sweetheart,” Rex cautions.
When the camera pans the group, Flo has joined the ranks of her fellow centenarians. She sits there seemingly as lifeless as the rest of them, not looking at the camera, hands in her lap. It’s hard to distinguish her at first glance.
Richard shivers. He stands up, snaps off the TV.
Rex stays sitting on the floor. “Excuse me,” he says, “but I was watching that.”
“So go ahead and watch it. I’m going out to the gym anyway.”
“Richard,” Rex begins, then stops. “No, forget it. I’m not going to get into it with you. Been there before, and it does no good.”
“Fine. Good idea.” Richard ties on his sneakers.
Rex sighs. “I thought you were going to call Ben,” he says anyway. “You wanted to try to talk with Flo.”
Richard glares at him. “I tried. But he hasn’t returned my calls. I called Anita back in New York and she hasn’t heard from him since he got out here either.”
Rex sighs again.
“It’s Sister Jean who I don’t understand,” Richard says. “How Ben’s managed to hoodwink her. I thought she was sharper than that. He’s exploiting Flo in the very ways she was against.”
“And you aren’t?”
Richard’s eyes bug out at his partner. “Me?”
“Richard, I just worry that you’re getting into this without thinking through all the implications, for you, for Flo.”
“I have nothing to do with it anymore,” Richard insists. “Ben’s calling the shots.”
“You’re still investigating. You have offers.”
“And so I should stop? Just give up? Let Ben have it?”
Rex runs his hand down in front of his face. “That’s what this is about,” he says quietly.
Richard’s steaming. “Can we just drop it?”
“Fine.”
“Thank you.” Richard stands and looks at himself in the mirror. At the gym yesterday, he ran into Scott again. They said hello, exchanged a few pleasantries, then cruised each other from across the pec deck for the rest of the hour.
It’s crazy, Richard tells himself. I don’t know why this guy is in my head. I love Rex. I want to spend the rest of my life with him.
Maybe that was it. Maybe it’s that rest-of-life thing riling Richard up, because how much of life was really left? Ever since he’d spied that lump on Rex’s back, ever since the efficacy of the drugs was called into question, Richard has found himself short with Rex. Resentful. Like now, finding himself instantly annoyed by Rex’s mother-hen scolding. Richard wonders if he’s somehow angry way deep down—or maybe not so deep—with Rex, angry that there’s still the chance he might get sick again when Richard had thought that fear was gone for good.
Or maybe it’s simply that Scott looks so good in his gym shorts, he says to himself.
Rex stands and stretches, and immediately Richard feels guilty. “Nooker,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Rex smiles. “By the way, I forgot to show you something I bought.”
“What?”
Rex walks around the bed and unfolds a plastic bag sitting there. From inside he withdraws a small paperback book. “Did you see this?” he asks, handing the book to Richard, who takes one look and groans.
The title on the cheap, glossy cardboard cover reads:
RISEN FROM THE DEAD:
THE STRANGE LIFE OF FLORENCE LAWRENCE,
THE FIRST MOVIE STAR
Two photos of Flo stare up at him, divided by a zigzag line. One photo dates from the Biograph days, with an angelic glow hovering around Flo’s head; the other is the startled look caught by the trespassing photographer from the National Exposé.
“Some fleabag publishing house,” Rex tells him. “This leach of an author concludes Flo could have killed the girl they found in the grave to cover up her own botched suicide attempt.”
Richard just stares down at the cover. In his head, his own book is still taking shape. What title would he use? What questions would he pose? What conclusions would he draw?
And how different would he be from the leach who wrote this bullshit?
“I’m going to the gym,” he tells Rex. “I’ll be back in a while.”
“Sweetheart,” Rex says.
Richard looks back at him.
“My point before was I think you need to try Ben again. I think we need to check in with Flo.”
The flight attendant wheeling Flo onto the plane had seen her on Oprah. He’s quite awestruck.
“My grandma is ninety-seven,” he tells Flo in a heavy Southern accent. “And because of you, she’s been inspired to take a ceramics class at her church.”
Flo manages a small smile. “How nice for her.”
Ben picks up on Flo’s sarcasm, but says nothing, just lets the young man bask in his good feeling.
But once they’re all settled into their first-class seats, Flo sniffs, “Ceramics? I hated ceramics when they’d try to lure me into it at St. Mary’s. All they do is paint funny little figures. If I’m going to make a vase, for God’s sake, I want my hands in the damn clay. I want to f
ire up the kiln.”
“Now, now, Flo,” Jean gently reprimands her, a small smile playing with her lips. “Not everyone is as vital as you are.”
“None of them were. They gave me the chills, those old codgers on Oprah. Did you see that woman try to soft shoe? They’d have pelted her with tomatoes if she’d done that on stage. They’d have brought out the hook! Ziegfeld Girl, hah!”
“Flo, give her a break—she’s 103,” Ben reminds her. He’s seated across the aisle from her.
“A chick,” Flo snaps.
“Look, Flo. You’re the exception here,” Xerxes tells her, turning around in his seat in front of her. “Those other old folks on Oprah are what most folks your age are like.” He gestures to the flight attendant. “A gin and tonic,” he whispers, then turns back to Flo. “That’s why we’ve got doctors calling you a medical phenomenon. That’s why the ‘Dare to be 100’ campaign is paying us big bucks for you to endorse it.”
“It’s a good campaign,” Jean says, seemingly trying to convince herself—yet again—about the wisdom of doing it. “Isn’t it, Carla?”
The attorney is seated in front with Xerxes. “It is, so long as we’re all comfortable pretending Flo doesn’t smoke.”
Carla smiles over her shoulder. Her eyes catch Ben’s. He thinks maybe they sparkle, and he tries to lock on to them, but she’s quickly back to looking down at her lap and reading the contracts Xerxes has drawn up. Damn her, Ben thinks. Frigid, that’s what she is. Never anything in her eyes when I look at her. He notices she’s kicked off her black pumps. God, he’d love to massage her silk stockinged feet.…
“What’s good,” she says, not looking up, “is that St. Mary’s will benefit.”
That was their deal. The bulk of the money from the “Dare to be 100” campaign goes to a new physical therapy wing at St. Mary’s—minus a commission for Xerxes, of course, since he did manage to land the deal.
“Flo’s involvement is a good thing,” Ben says, transferring his gaze from Carla’s feet to Sister Jean. She gives him a look of gratitude for the affirmation, her eyes clear and honest and lively. He relaxes looking into them and smiles at her reflexively. How different were Jean’s eyes from Carla’s icy mirrors.
“Yes, it’s a good thing for Flo to do,” Jean is saying, convincing herself. “I just need to make sure she doesn’t get tired out. She wasn’t really herself on Oprah.”
“Oh, she was marvelous,” Ben assures her. He’s still scared Jean will try to put the brakes on the whole enterprise. The campaign means more appearances for Flo, more work—but also terrific publicity. She’ll be a household name by the time he’s ready with the film.
“Well, if you want my opinion,” Flo interjects, “I’m not too crazy about the no smoking in public part.” She looks up at the flight attendant handing Xerxes his drink. “I can smoke during the flight though?”
“I’m sorry, Miss Lawrence,” the flight attendant tells her. “All domestic air travel is now smoke free.”
Flo sighs. “Just like me, I guess. This campaign wants me to say that I owe my long years to good nutrition, exercise, and an avoidance of alcohol. Hoo boy.”
Jean shakes her head. “I don’t like lying any more than you do, Flo, but it’s a good message. You’ve lived as long as you have despite your bad habits, not because of them.”
“You sure of that, Jeannie?” Flo asks, just as the flight attendants commence their safety instructions.
Jean smirks. “With you, Flo, I’m never sure of anything.”
The last time Flo had been on an airplane—or aeroplane, as she persists in calling it—had been in 1954. She’s quite struck by the changes in air travel in the ensuing four decades. “It’s so enormous,” Flo says to Jean as they take off down the runway. “How can it possibly stay in the air?”
Jean makes a little Sign of the Cross.
“I remember reading about Kitty Hawk,” Flo tells her. “Ducks was fascinated that they could actually get that contraption to fly. I remember my brother Norman had little model airplanes at my grandmother’s house in Buffalo.” She peers out the window into the bright blue sky above the clouds as the plane reaches its cruising altitude. “Who’d have thought I’d ever see this?”
Jean watches her. Am I doing the right thing, agreeing to this trip to California? Oh, there was no question that Flo was excited about it, but all the questions people are asking disturbs Jean. That, and how weary Flo seems. Yesterday she complained of a mild headache. Flo never had headaches.
And the look Xerxes had found for her. Those horrible modern wigs and all that powder. The overblown Versace dresses and Todd Oldham suits. The jewels that made her look like some dowdy grand duchess of a Benelux country.
“Did you mail in those passport forms, Sister?” Xerxes asks, turning around again as he snaps his fingers at the attendant for a refill of his drink. “The Altman film will be shooting in London.”
“Yes,” Jean tells him. “I mailed them yesterday.”
Flo had seemed excited about the prospect of going back to Europe. “They used to call me a globe-trotter in the press,” she’d said.
Carla reaches over the seat to hand Jean the contracts. “These look all right,” she says. “You and Flo look them over and see if you have any questions.”
Jean nods. But Flo’s asleep already. She sleeps almost the entire flight, and Jean gazes over at her, worried that it’s already too much.
As the plane begins its descent into LAX, Flo wakes, and Jean points out the byzantine highways of the city below. “My God,” Flo says. “Where are all the orange groves? How can there possibly be so many cars?”
They’re staying at Xerxes’s house in Malibu, on Carbon Beach. Xerxes bragged that it was called “Deal Beach” because so many deals are made by show biz execs at their weekend homes here. “Katzenberg’s just down the street from me,” Xerxes bragged, furthering Jean’s dislike of him. “Geffen’s been over for barbeques. Aaron Spelling and I walk our dogs together.”
A limo meets them at the airport and whisks them off to the beach house. Jean feels a little overwhelmed and very out of place.
Ben smiles over at her. “Not bad for a coupla kids from Putnam and Chicopee, huh?” he asks.
So he feels it, too. The displacement. She laughs, takes his arm.
She was very grateful for Ben. He remained as steady, as unspoiled, as grounded as he was that day at St. Mary’s when he’d first asked her to trust him. Without him, Jean doesn’t think she could get through all this—this—Hollywood glitz.
Xerxes’s “weekend house” is three levels, made of brick and spun glass. Huge windows look out over the beach. There are rooms for each of them and private terraces. There’s a housekeeper, a middle-aged Mexican woman named Graciela. Below, the coast highway threads along the rocky cliffs. From anywhere in the house, one can hear the waves crashing up on shore.
Flo stands on the deck, looking down.
“I passed this way,” she says softly.
“What’s that?” Jean asks her, not sure she heard her correctly.
“I passed this way. When I left.”
Jean places her hand on Flo’s shoulder. “You mean, when you walked away from the hospital?”
Flo nods. “I walked along the coast road. None of this was here then—except the surf and the sand.”
Jean smiles warmly, then leaves Flo to her reveries. If what she told them is any indication, the last time Flo passed this way she was forgotten, destitute, and hungry, eating out of trash cans and drinking from garden hoses. Now here she was, ensconced in the lap of Hollywood luxury, very much alive again, as big a star as she ever was.
How life sometimes twists so ironically back on itself.
The next day begins a flurry of activity. Ben’s got his videocam on his shoulder as the limo takes Flo to various Hollywood landmarks—or what’s left of them. “Just talk to me,” he instructs as Jean helps Flo out of the car and escorts her across the old MGM lot. “Jus
t say what you feel, what you remember when you see the old soundstages.”
There’s not much of them left to see. Ted Turner, who’d bought MGM/UA, had sold what remained of the old Culver City lot to Lorimar, which in turn was bought by Warner Brothers, which eventually was swallowed up by Time, Inc. Now Columbia—owned by Sony—was in control of what remained of the old soundstages.
Flo can’t even find her way around and seems a little dazed. She makes no pithy remarks, reacts with none of the pathos Ben was hoping for.
Next he takes her down Hollywood Boulevard and shoots some tape of her talking about the stars’ footprints outside the Chinese theater. He’s asked Xerxes to explore the possibility of getting Flo’s feet so immortalized. It would make for great publicity. At the very least, she should get a star on the Walk of Fame.
Finally, she stops. She looks up at the Hollywood sign, then back into Ben’s camera.
“It used to say Hollywoodland,” she tells him. “Peg Entwistle jumped off the thirteenth letter.”
Ben keeps his camera rolling.
“You know, I can’t help but think about Egypt and the pyramids,” she says.
“Yes?” Ben asks. “Go on.”
“Hollywood is like that. Our pyramids are crumbling, and they’ll just keep crumbling until the wind blows the last prop across the freeway.”
“Brilliant, Flo!” Ben exclaims. At last, some good footage. “Brilliant!”
He’s noticed how tired she’s been getting, how easily she seems to fade. But there are still moments where she shines through.
He instructs the limo driver to drive past Flo’s old home on Westbourne Drive. Flo looks up at the little cottage through the tinted window, then looks away.
“That’s all right,” she tells Ben. “I don’t need to get outside.”
They travel back to Malibu in silence. Finally Flo says very quietly, “They’re still there.”
“What is, Flo?” Ben asks.
“My roses.”
Despite his urge to turn on his camera, Ben respects the silence.
The next day Flo attends the dedication of a statue to herself at the Universal Studios theme park at Universal City. “We are pleased to welcome Universal’s very first star back to the lot,” says Charlton Heston, who was tapped to do the honors. A cord is pulled, and a bronze statue of Flo is revealed. She looks sweet and demure in her 1910-era clothing, her long curls cascading around her shoulders. At the base is the legend:
The Biograph Girl Page 40