“When the baby is born, Mother, I’m not leaving her side,” I insisted.
“Florence! You will have to go back to making pictures. How do you think you’ll pay our bills?”
“Harry will pay them,” I told her. It all seemed so simple.
“Well,” Mother said, arching her shoulders, “he’ll make demands of you if you have expectations of him. I say divorce him now, Florence, and ask Mr. Laemmle to give you a new contract with a new director. Better yet, we could approach Mr. Griffith again, with our sincerest apologies. Why, if you’d stayed with him, you could’ve been in The Birth of a Nation.”
I stopped listening to her. She would prattle on for hours if she had the chance. I just smiled to myself, staring at my swelling stomach in the full-length mirror.
Annie Laurie.
That would be her name. Just that. No last name necessary.
Just Annie Laurie.
It was all the name we’d need.
Looking back, I suspect Mother must have colluded with Harry. There was a doctor she brought in who asked me a number of peculiar questions and declared, “Any woman who keeps a loving husband from her side while expecting his child cannot be fully sane.”
I responded that any doctor dispensing such lunacy would not be fully paid.
He left in a huff.
I imagine some papers were signed before he left. I imagine now that Mother and Harry had called an uneasy truce to combat a common threat to their ambitions: me. They called that doctor in to declare me unfit, unstable. Insane, perhaps.
And maybe I was, at that. Maybe my plans were preposterous. But they were my plans. The first I’d ever made completely on my own.
Harry was there the day the baby came. I have never known such pain. I remember once, as a very young girl, licking the block of ice under the icebox. My tongue had frozen hard; I screamed as best I could, flailing my arms until Ducks had come running in to see what was wrong. “There, there,” he tried to comfort me as he warmed up a poker in the fire. “Don’t move, Florrie. Don’t move.”
But the idea of the poker terrified me even more than the pain on my tongue. I know now he meant just to melt the ice a little, but I panicked as he approached. I pulled away, ripping my tongue off the ice, leaving chunks of flesh and blood there. The pain was excruciating. I was lucky I didn’t lose my sense of taste completely.
That’s all I can compare childbirth to, except that childbirth was far, far worse. I felt my body twist and contort, split in half. The midwife was gruff and unsympathetic, telling me to push harder and to stop my crying. My labor went on for sixteen hours—sixteen hours of sheer, wrenching, burning pain. Mother would say later that my shrieks echoed throughout the house. The maid put on earmuffs to go about her work.
Finally I felt something rip, like the flesh from my tongue, and then a final rive of pain. It was over. I was left with a shuddering sense of nothingness, of the pain being spent.
Then I heard the slap, and the baby’s shrill, tiny cry.
I know I heard her cry. I had fallen back, my head deep into my drenched pillows. I couldn’t see anything but the wooden beams of the ceiling. “Let me see her,” I cried. The midwife said nothing.
I was breathing heavily, trying to catch my breath. “Let me see her!” I cried again, raising my arms, but too weak to sit up.
Suddenly Mother’s face, and Harry’s, hovered over me, looking down with big round eyes.
“Let me see her!” I shouted, my voice so hoarse I barely recognized it as my own.
“The baby’s dead, Florence,” Mother told me.
“No! I heard her cry!”
“The baby’s dead,” Harry said solemnly. He turned away, disappearing from my view.
“She is not dead!” I cried. “Give her to me!”
Mother didn’t try to console me. She just kept looking down at me, hard, not saying a word.
I managed to get up on my elbow. My hair fell into my face. I saw the midwife bundling something in a blanket. She was covered in blood. She handed the bundle to Harry.
“Let me see her!” I cried.
Mother tried to force me to lie back down.
“Let me see her! Annie Laurie! Annie Laurie!”
But Harry just turned with the bundle and left the room.
The months that followed are the only ones in my life that I can’t remember. There are snatches, but only snatches: walking through the rose garden, being caught by a sudden rainstorm; waking up at night with my sheets and pillows drenched in sweat, as if I were in childbirth all over again; rocking in a chair in front of the fire, Mother staring at me from across the room.
I never believed them. When I began to find my way out of the haze, I told Mother plainly and simply that I knew my baby was alive. She told me I spoke nonsense, that often mothers of stillborn children refused to accept the truth. When Harry tried to visit, I locked myself in my room, covering my ears with my hands when he would bang upon the door.
Harry died about a year later. I don’t know from what. Heart attack, maybe. That’s what Mother thought. Or else he killed himself. That’s what I always secretly believed. No one would hire him without me. I remember the trades didn’t even carry an obituary when he died.
Without me, he had often said, life was just not worth living.
One afternoon, a few years before we were forced to sell the farm, I was walking along a row of white pines, the ones Harry would cut down for Christmas and drag into the house. There, on a branch higher than my head, was tied a pink ribbon, flapping in the wind. The same pink satin ribbon that once had hung from my baby’s bonnet.
I reached up and, with some difficulty, managed to untie it. I slipped it through my fingers. It was indeed the same ribbon.
I knew somehow that Harry had tied it there the night she was born.
His own private little ceremony? His solitary expression of grief?
She was his daughter, too.
Somehow I just couldn’t bring myself to hate him for what he had done. There was just a tremendous, overarching sadness.
A few weeks before she died, Mother—delirious and feverish, an old, old woman by then confined to her bed—admitted the truth. She spoke of the child, the baby, the adoption agency, the cash that had changed hands. “You were so nervous, Florence,” she kept repeating, over and over. “So nervous.” There were no specifics, no names—just the terrible, trembling relief of a deathbed confession.
She was eaten up with cancer, a shrunken apple of a woman, her big eyes protruding from her skull, making her look like some oversize insect. Just as with Harry, I couldn’t bring myself to be angry with her. I bore her no hate, no rage, no blame as she lay dying. For I suppose there was some truth to her diagnosis: Florence Lawrence had indeed been too nervous to raise a child.
And besides, it’s not as if Mother told me anything I didn’t already know.
I had heard her cry.
My baby.
Annie Laurie.
The Present
“So that’s the story of how I retired from pictures,” Flo is telling them. “The fire, as you can see, was just one small part of it.”
She takes a breath and gives them a weak smile. They’re mesmerized by her tale. “When I tried to come back,” she continues, “the pictures had moved on. Off to the West Coast, off to bigger and better things. Not too many folks remembered me anymore.”
“Oh, Flo.” Jean moves over to embrace her. “I’m sorry you had to go through that all over again, but I thought Ben should hear it.”
Flo’s old blue eyes are clear. No sign of tears. They look over Jean’s shoulder and seek out Ben. He sits across from her, shifting awkwardly in his chair.
“She might still be alive, you know,” he says softly. “Have you ever thought of that? She’d be, what? Early eighties. She might have even had children. You might have grandchildren out there, great-grandchildren. Did you ever think about trying to find her?”
“I thought
I had, once,” Flo tells him. She sighs. “But that’s another story for another time.” Her hands fold around Jean’s arms. “I’m pretty tired now, Jeannie.”
“Of course, Flo,” Jean says.
“Flo.” Ben stands, approaches her. “Just one more thing. How in the world did the story ever evolve into you saving Matt Moore’s life? Lifting his two-hundred-pound frame?”
She shrugs. “You know how people love to say things, especially movie people. Each story just built on the last. I was trying for a comeback, so I was happy for whatever they said about me.”
“I’m going to help Flo into bed, Ben,” Jean tells him. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
He nods. “Thanks, Flo,” he says. “For … for sharing all that.”
She smiles up at him.
Beautiful. Just beautiful.
In his head, he’s already rewriting a part of his script. The way Flo had described it was just perfect. Her baby torn from her body and whisked away, Flo barely able to sit up, pleading for them to come back. Fantastic. Unbelievable. So … so … cinematic.
Glick will eat it up.
Now, if he can only get her to talk about the murder … or whatever it was that happened to that girl.
He picks up the remote control and clicks on the television.
Frasier Crane is making some wry remark to his brother, Niles, who flips back with an even wryer retort of his own.
Ben sits down on the couch. Laugh track crescendo—Niles wins the sparring match for this round—and then the show fades to a commercial.
“Hello, I’m Florence Lawrence.”
Ben sits up. It’s the first of the spots she taped for the “Dare to be 100” campaign.
“Oprah Winfrey and I want to make you a dare. Don’t settle for the old average life expectancy.” She smiles sweetly into the camera. Her eyes seem a little glassy. “Instead, we dare you to live to 100. I’m 107. I still read the newspaper every day, take walks around the block, and coordinate talent shows.”
“And smoke,” Ben says to the television.
“And oh, yes,” Flo adds with a wink. “My new picture comes out in the fall.”
Close-up. She smiles. Hair’s perfect. Kevyn Aucoin did her makeup. Very tasteful.
“Learn the facts,” she’s saying. “Live right. Dare to be 100.”
An 800 number appears on the screen.
“Hey, Jean, you missed her!” Ben calls as Jean comes out of Flo’s room.
“Was that one of the commercials?”
“She was ta-rif-ic,” Ben gloats. “She’s lost none of the sparkle that made her a star.”
Jean folds her arms across her chest. “Richard said she didn’t seem like herself on TV,” she says. “I have to agree.”
“You spoke with my brother?”
“He was here today.” Jean sits down next to Ben on the couch. “He’s spoken with a police detective who wants to interview Flo.”
“Flo doesn’t have to talk to anyone,” Ben says defensively.
Jean nods. “I know she doesn’t. But it’s better if she does, Ben. It’s better if she tells the truth. Especially to us. That’s what tonight was about. I talked to her. I told her she had to start telling us the whole story because too many people were asking too many questions.”
“So nothing’s off limits anymore?”
“So long as the camera isn’t rolling.” Jean rests her head against the back of the couch. “If we know the truth, we can make the best decisions about who she talks to, and when—as well as what she says.”
“You mean, we’d keep some stuff to ourselves?”
Jean closes her eyes. “Possibly. You were right, Ben. She might indeed have grandchildren out there. What if Annie Laurie is still alive? What might that do to Flo if a truckload of descendants suddenly turns up in her life? Suddenly Flo’s worth something again. The money from the Waters film, the ‘Dare to be 100’ campaign, possibly the Altman film if that comes through. And who knows what else, Ben—your film, for example. Who knows where that will go?”
He shifts uncomfortably on the couch.
“Money brings out the worst in people. I don’t trust anyone, Ben.”
But she trusts me, Ben thinks. She trusts that I won’t tell what I know.
But the film, he tells himself. I owe it to the film.
The film needs the story of the baby, he rationalizes. It’s too fabulous for words. Not only does it answer the question of why she bowed out of the movies, but it’s great drama. And if we could sponsor a nationwide hunt to find Annie Laurie, he suddenly thinks, what publicity it would make.
“There’s more, Ben,” Jean says.
He blinks back to her. “What?”
“Richard also discovered the name of the girl. At least we think it’s her. She lived with Flo for three years before the supposed suicide. Then she was reported missing. Her name was Margaret Butz. Flo called her Molly to me.”
“Well, my brother is sure the ace reporter, huh? There’s no fact he can’t dig up.”
Jean looks over at him and the exasperation shows on her face. “What is it between the two of you? You’re brothers, for God’s sake. Twins even. The same flesh and blood, the same genetic material. Why is there such competition?”
“Ahh,” Ben says, trying to dismiss it.
“No,” Jean says, sitting up, leaning in close to Ben. “What is it? Something from your childhood?”
“Jean, leave it alone. Really. It’s dumb. I shouldn’t have made the remark. It’s really Richard who’s always had the problem with me, not the other way around.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. He’s always felt he had to prove himself, I guess. Prove himself better than me.” Now it’s Ben’s turn to lean back into the cushions of the couch. “Nothing’s ever been enough for him. He’s always pushing himself farther and harder for more, more, more. He writes for the New York fucking Times. He makes a good living. He drives a nice car. He’s got an amazing body that he worked really, really hard for, and he wears only the very best clothes. He’s gone to Europe a couple times. And he just bought the most fabulous town house in Chelsea that he and Sexy Rexy are turning into the Taj Mahal.”
“So?” Jean frowns. “How does any of that make him better than you?”
“Money and a great body can’t guarantee happiness—is that what you’re trying to say?” Ben laughs bitterly. “Try telling that to Richard. He seems happy enough. And I can’t say I wouldn’t mind having his dough and his pecs to see if the old adage is true or not.”
“Ben, pursuing one’s art means a struggle.”
“Tell me about it,” he agrees. “I know from struggle. Until two months ago, I nickel and dimed my days away at Penn’s Advertising. Look at where I live, for Christ’s sake. A Hell’s Kitchen hellhole. My body’s flabby around my waist and skinny through my shoulders, and until Xerxes bought me these new threads, I got all my clothes at the Salvation Army.” He shrugs. “And, oh yeah, I’ve never been to Europe.”
He turns and looks Jean square in the eye. “On top of all that, my girlfriend’s dumped me. So tell me again that Richard’s life isn’t better than mine.”
Jean can’t seem to help a small smile as she leans back with him into the couch. “Anita hasn’t dumped you,” she says. “The two of you are just … adapting.” She winks. “And just to keep things in perspective, I’ve never been to Europe either.”
“You went to Central America,” he reminds her.
She ignores him. “And I happen to like the clothes you can get at the Salvation Army.”
He turns to face her. They’re practically nose to nose. “Flo can change all that for me,” he tells her.
“She doesn’t need to, Ben.” He feels Jean’s hands take his in her lap. “You’ve already accomplished more than many people. You made a film—an award-winning film. Richard can’t claim that. You made a film that touched people’s lives.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he says, suddenly sit
ting up, pulling away from her. She doesn’t get it. “We’ve been over this before.”
“You don’t allow yourself to celebrate your own accomplishments,” she tells him.
“What accomplishments, Jean? Sure, you liked One Chance, One World. But you know what? I never made a goddamn dime from it. It’s never helped me do anything else in my career. People have very short memories, Jean. I was a star for about nine months after taking second place in that contest. Then it was over. And I came back to New York with nothing. Oh, sure, sure, One Chance, One World was a very high and noble thing—but it never helped me pay the bills. Or open any doors.”
He looks back at her. “Maybe you can’t understand that, with the church as your own private sugar daddy.”
He stands up. He faces the TV. He’s suddenly afraid to turn around and look at her.
And with good reason.
Jean rises from the couch. She can feel the anger constricting her throat. “Just one minute, Ben Sheehan,” she says slowly. “I have always worked for my pay. If you add up all the hours I work and then divide that into what the diocese provides for me, I think you’ll find I come out on the definite short end of the stick.”
He turns and faces her. She stiffens.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t know where that came from.”
He gives her a schoolboy smile. Dear God, does he ever look like Victor.
“Forgive me?” he asks.
Jean senses the warmth in her cheeks. “Ben, I do know where it came from,” she tells him. “If only I could convince you of how talented you are.”
“There won’t be any need of convincing anybody of that fact once my film of Flo’s life comes out,” he tells her, suddenly animated again. “I know it’s going to be something special. I just know it.”
“I know it’s going to be special, too, Ben,” she says. “With Flo telling all her stories combined with your talent, you’re in like gold.”
“It’s not just the documentary, Jean,” he says, approaching her, taking her hands.
The Biograph Girl Page 44