The Biograph Girl

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The Biograph Girl Page 42

by William J. Mann


  “Goddamn,” he says out loud into the silence of the library. A few heads lift to glare over at him, but he doesn’t notice.

  He just keeps staring down at Margaret Butz at 532 Westbourne Drive.

  “How the hell did the cops miss that?” Rex is asking.

  Richard’s pacing on the deck of their guest house. “Remember, these are the same folks who couldn’t get enough evidence to convict O.J.”

  Rex grins. “So now we know that a woman living with Flo was reported missing shortly after Flo’s supposed death.” He crosses his arms in front of his chest. “She was ‘just a girl.’”

  Richard picked up the phone. He dials nine for an outside line, waits for the dial tone, then punches in the number of the house where Anita said Ben and Flo and Sister Jean are staying. “I’m calling again,” he says. “But this time …”

  “Hello?” It’s a woman’s voice. Mexican, Richard thinks—the same voice that’s answered each time he’s called.

  “I’m calling for Sister Jean Levesque,” Richard tells her.

  “Just a moment, sir.”

  “Think she’ll talk to you?” Rex asks.

  “I can only try. I’ve left ten messages. I’ll leave anoth—”

  “Hello?”

  Richard’s caught by surprise that she’s actually taken the phone. “Sister Jean? Richard Sheehan.”

  “Hello, Richard.”

  “I take it you’ve gotten my messages?”

  He hears her sigh. “I have. We’ve been rather busy, as you can imagine.”

  “Yeah. Keeping Flo’s life peaceful and free of intrusion, I’m sure.”

  He can’t help the sarcasm. Throwing Jean’s words back at her was just too irresistible. She’d been so adamant, so sanctimonious that day at St. Mary’s, dismissing him as if she were his grade school teacher. Flo’s a very old woman who enjoys her life here tremendously and I don’t want anything to affect that. Yeah, except for movie deals and appearances on Oprah.

  Sister Jean doesn’t respond right away. Finally she asks, “Did you call for a reason, Richard, or just to scold me?”

  “I need to see Flo, Sister.”

  She laughs. “Oh, I see. Censure me for letting Flo make this tour—but then press your own agenda to pump more information out of her. Tell me, Richard. Have you sold your book proposal yet?”

  “Not yet, but I’m close.” He stands his ground. “But that’s not why I want to see Flo, Sister.”

  “Then why?”

  “Because I want to help her. Because I don’t trust my brother.” He hears Jean start to object, but he talks over her. “And I’ve found some information that I think Flo should know, because it’s not information that will remain a secret long.”

  “Are you making a threat?”

  “No. Not at all. Look, Sister. I’m trying to help Flo. Believe me.”

  She’s quiet. Richard begins to think she may have disconnected the phone. He’s about to say something when she finally responds. “All right, Richard. Come by today. Ben and Flo are out, taping a segment for the ‘Dare to be 100’ television campaign. Come by and we can talk on our own.”

  “Thank you, Sister. I’ll come right now.”

  She’s already hung up.

  “She’s gonna talk with you?” Rex asks.

  “Yeah.” Richard starts to pull on his sneakers. “Hey, Nooker.”

  “What?”

  “How long does your run at Highways last?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “Good.”

  “Why good?”

  “Because I don’t want to head back to New York for at least that long. Things are going to start happening here. You know Lee is going to stumble upon the connection between this Margaret Butz and Flo. People are already saying her story doesn’t jibe. And Ben’s going to exploit the headlines for all they’re worth.”

  “You think you can make a difference?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m gonna try.” He gives Rex a quick peck on the lips. “When do our free digs courtesy of Highways kick in?”

  “In just a couple days.”

  “You know, subletting our place back home was a great idea, especially with us going rent free here. Maybe we can even save enough moola to finish paying for all your redecoration.”

  Rex just smiles. “Say hello to Flo for me.”

  “If I see her.” He winks at him; then he’s out the door.

  I don’t trust my brother.

  Richard’s words still hang in the air after Jean has replaced the phone. They seem suspended in front of her, written as if in smoke, or lipstick on a mirror.

  Ben has said the exact same thing: He doesn’t trust Richard. What was it with these brothers—these twins? Jean had always heard of twins having a special bond, a special kinship of love and trust—or at least, a distinctive understanding of each other, a perspicacity unique to themselves.

  And maybe they did. Maybe that’s why they didn’t trust each other.

  “Ben,” she’d asked a few days ago. “What has Flo said about the fire? The one that ended her career?”

  He laughed. “You told me that was off limits.”

  “But you have a video labeled ‘Fire Discussion.’ I saw it in the pile.”

  He’d flushed a little. That had made Jean uncomfortable. Was he hiding something from her? She had relied on her instincts—her heart—about him. There was no reason to doubt him, was there?

  I don’t trust my brother.

  “Don’t worry,” Ben assured her. “As soon as I saw Flo getting anxious, I changed the topic. All she did was repeat her standard line: that the fire got out of control, that she got badly burned saving her costar, and the recuperation took so long she was off the screen for five years.”

  “Do you think there’s more to it than that? She gets so anxious.”

  He shrugged. “Hey, there are a lot of things she gets anxious talking about. That girl, for instance.”

  “All right.” Jean sighed. She didn’t want to get into that again. “I do appreciate your respecting the limits, Ben.”

  He was respecting them. She had to believe that. Richard was wrong not to trust his brother.

  Jean walks over to the French doors leading out to the deck overlooking the ocean. It’s an overcast day. Gray and gloomy. The sea is dark brown with pesky little whitecaps. Poor Flo’s bones had been aching this morning. They always did in damp weather. But Ben had insisted the “Dare to be 100” taping was too important to cancel.

  She didn’t like the way things were going. The way Flo was on every TV talk show. The way Xerxes found—every week—yet another new offer that they just couldn’t refuse. Carla had gone back east for a week—there was other business in her life—and Jean felt just a little outdrawn by Xerxes’s big guns.

  Oh, she could see the weariness in Flo’s eyes, hear it in her voice. She’d try to insist that Flo rest, but the old woman persisted every night, walking out onto whatever stage they’d found for her, moving as if she were some brittle mannequin operated by strings. The cameras were always flashing, and Flo always waving to the adoring crowd. But increasingly she was confused and inarticulate when confronted with any questions. Where was her old sense of humor? Where were her wits?

  So why was Jean acquiescing to all this? Why did she let it go on?

  “Hi,” the man had said to her.

  Jean had been startled. She was in the supermarket, buying some fruit to keep in their room, when the man had casually moved beside her, squeezing the tangerines, and said hello.

  “Hi,” she managed to respond.

  “They’ve got a wonderful selection here,” he said. “Don’t you think?”

  It was his eyes. His damn eyes. The eyes were her weakness. She nodded quickly, then hurried away.

  That was all. Just that. An innocent, fleeting encounter in the grocery store. But that was why she stayed. That was why she let it go on. He was flirting with me, Jean realized. Or trying to anyway. She had r
ushed off so promptly that she couldn’t even recall his face now—whether he was handsome or homely, tall or short, black or white. She just remembered the greeting—how wonderful it had sounded, how fearfully passionate it had been.

  That’s why you let it go on, she scolds herself. Because you don’t want to go back.

  Outside the air takes on the deep gray green of a thunder sky. Inside it feels thick and heavy. Jean stands as if transfixed, her eyes cast over the ocean, waiting for the rain.

  “Couldn’t you put in for a transfer?” Ben had asked her just last night. “Couldn’t you say you’d rather be working with the poor?”

  She smiled over at him. “It doesn’t work that way, Ben.” They were eating takeout Chinese from little white cardboard boxes, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Both were tired of dining out, of endless meetings with endless producers and reporters. Flo was exhausted, too, and fell sound asleep in her bed at six-thirty. Ben and Jean decided to eat in, to make a picnic on the elegantly carpeted floor: sweet-and-sour chicken and egg rolls and a bottle of cheap red wine. Xerxes had flown back to New York that morning; with both him and Carla gone for a while, they could afford to just be normal human beings again.

  “But if you’re not happy,” Ben persisted.

  “It’s not that I’m not happy,” Jean said, bewildered by her double negative. She frowned, trying to make sense of what she’d just said. The wine made her mind floaty and giddy. She just laughed.

  “From what you’ve told me,” Ben continued, “it sounds as if you did some real good work at St. Vincent’s. You’d think they’d want you to do what you do best.”

  She looked at him. Part of her wanted to tell him what had happened. But she’d never spoken of it to anyone, except to the Board, when she’d assured them nothing like that would ever happen again. They were trusting her now, she told herself, allowing her to take this trip with Flo. They were putting a great deal of faith in her. Jean wore that faith—that trust—like a bulletproof vest. They were trusting her, but also testing her.

  “What I do best,” she said, raising her glass of wine to him, “is not necessarily what they want.”

  “That’s the church for you, I guess.”

  “You’re a lapsed Catholic, aren’t you, Ben?”

  He shrugged. “I prayed and prayed to God to save my father, but He wasn’t listening.”

  “Oh, He was listening, Ben. I’m sure of that.”

  “Well, He ignored me then. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t bear any grudge against God if He’s up there. I just figured that life was pretty hopeless and let it go at that.”

  Jean set her glass down on the floor and looked over at Ben. “Do you still feel that way?”

  “I don’t know.” He met Jean’s eyes.

  Oh, there’s no question about it, she thought. He did have the same clear vision she’d recognized in Victor, the same window directly onto the soul.

  “This is the first time in a long while that I’ve begun to have any hope again,” he told her. “First time since One Chance really. But I learned from that experience not to believe anything’s going to last.”

  “But that was such a hopeful film, Ben. It was filled with hope.”

  He shrugged. “And look what happened. The Cold War ended.”

  She blinked. “Which was a good thing, Ben.”

  He hesitated, then laughed. “Of course. Of course, of course.”

  She reached over, placed her hand on top of his. “I remember the scene in One Chance where you had a little African-American girl meet a little white boy, and they sat together holding hands in a bombed-out doorframe. Ben, that single image spoke volumes about your soul. About the things you believe in—the fundamental goodness of humankind, the intrinsic connection between all of us and our world. Try to remember that scene, the hope behind it. You are a brilliant artist, Ben Sheehan, and the best kind—an artist who uses his talents for the good of others.”

  He looked at her strangely then—queerly, even sadly. His look unsettled her. She withdrew her hand. Maybe it was her touch—unexpected, perhaps inappropriate. That must have been why he had looked at her with such unease in his eyes.

  But they were beautiful eyes. Jean couldn’t deny that—how lovely she found Ben’s eyes. How in the mornings, when she’d first awake, she was filled with a strange, intoxicating abundance inspired by vaguely remembered dreams. She’d lie there for close to an hour, basking in the afterglow of her forgotten reveries. Try as she might, she could never salvage them with any precision—except to remember that they were filled with rapture.

  And the spirit and form of Ben Sheehan.

  She opens the door and Richard finds himself a little taken aback.

  “Sister,” he says. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”

  She smiles a little bashfully. Richard can detect the blush spreading up from her neck to her cheeks.

  “Come in, Richard,” she says, standing aside to let him in.

  Richard is overwhelmed by the affluence. The house is perched at the edge of the ocean, and the floor-through plan affords majestic views of the sea from any angle. He looks up into a cathedral ceiling and chandelier. On the table near the door is a pile of newspapers and magazines with Flo on the covers. Off to the side is a pile of videotapes and one of Ben’s camcorders.

  “You’re looking good,” Richard tells Sister Jean as they move into the living room.

  He’s being sincere. Dressed in khakis and a cotton blouse, she looks like some preppy college girl out of the J Crew catalog, all tanned and strawberry blond.

  “Thank you, Richard,” she manages to say.

  “How’s Flo doing?” Richard asks. “I saw her on Oprah. And Regis. And The View.”

  Jean manages a small smile. “She seems to have rediscovered her love affair with applause,” Jean tells him.

  “But you know what, Sister?” Richard looks at her intently. “She doesn’t seem like herself on TV. Do you know what I mean?”

  She takes in a long breath and looks away. “How does she seem to you?” she asks.

  “Well, it was different on Rosie. She seemed like herself then. But it’s all been downhill from there.” He pauses. “She seems like some shy, fragile, genteel old lady. The way they’ve got her decked out, in those pearls and wigs. I miss her caftans and bloodred fingernails. And her cigarettes.”

  Jean smiles. “The ‘Dare to be 100’ campaign doesn’t want Flo seen smoking. It goes against the message.”

  There’s a crack of thunder in the distance. Richard hears the sudden tappity-tap of raindrops on the skylights above.

  “So what is it you’ve found out, Richard?” asks Sister Jean, suddenly all business. “What is it I need to know?”

  She hasn’t even asked me to sit down, Richard thinks. “Well,” he says. “A couple of things. First of all, a Detective Lee will be contacting Flo. He wants to ask her questions about the body that was buried under her name.”

  Jean walks over to the couch and sits. Richard follows, sitting opposite her in a chair. She looks over at him.

  “I knew someone would, at some point,” she says.

  “He’s not a bad guy. A little eccentric. I’ve told him I’m sure Flo did nothing wrong.”

  “You did?” Jean seems brightened by this, as if she had expected differently. “Do you really believe that, Richard?”

  “You might not like reporters, Sister, but we’ve got something pretty special. And that’s instinct. Good reporters always trust their instincts. And mine tells me Flo did nothing more than take advantage of a situation.”

  “I have a healthy respect for instinct,” Jean says. “My own has served me well.” She smiles. “All right. What else?”

  “Well, I’ve found out the girl’s name.”

  “The girl who died,” Jean says simply.

  Richard nods.

  Another rumble of thunder, followed by a crackle of lightning that slices through the gray sky outside the window. From t
he glass doors overlooking the water, they can see the ocean roiling, crashing against the rocks. The rain comes fast and frantic now, the drops exploding in a torrent on the deck.

  “At least, I think it’s her,” Richard says. “In February 1939—just a little over a month after Florence Lawrence apparently ‘died’—Margaret Butz was reported missing to the police.”

  “I’m sure any number of girls were reported missing at any given time.”

  “Margaret Butz lived with Florence Lawrence on Westbourne Drive for three years.”

  Jean sighs. “Her name was Molly,” she says, very quietly.

  “What?” Richard asks.

  “Her name was Molly. The girl. Flo’s told me that, at least.”

  “Molly.” Richard considers it. “Which could be a nickname for Margaret, no?”

  Jean nods.

  “Look, Sister. We’ve got to get Flo to start telling the truth. At least to us.” He pauses. “Or to you anyway. We’ve got to know the full story of her past if we’re to help her. Like I said, I don’t believe she did anything wrong—but people are asking all kinds of questions, and I just don’t want any negative publicity to hurt her.”

  “You’re right, Richard. It’s time she told me everything.”

  Jean stands, pressing her hands against the glass door leading out to the deck. The rain is dying down. There are snatches of blue along the far western horizon.

  “Such a quick storm,” she muses. “So much bluster, and then it’s gone. Guess that’s the way out here.”

  Richard stands up and walks over behind her. “And, Sister,” he says. “Just be careful of how much you share with my brother.”

  She doesn’t say anything. Richard watches her for a while, and then she finally turns. “Thank you,” she says. “I’m sorry if I’ve misjudged you.”

  He’s surprised how good that makes him feel. He doesn’t quite know what to say in response. He just smiles and shifts his feet like a kid in front of his teacher.

  She promises to talk with Flo. She doesn’t make any promises about Ben.

  “Are you very tired tonight, Flo?” Jean asks.

  “Not so,” Flo tells her, enjoying a puff on her cigarette in the privacy of her room. Jean helps her steady it and rest it in the ashtray.

 

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