Tiptoeing quietly past Norman, I discovered a small box in the old rolltop desk. I opened the lid and found a gold band. Under the lid was inscribed, in handwriting I still recognized as my mother’s:
Charles and Lotta, August 6, 1881
I slipped on what was clearly my mother’s wedding band, which I never remember her wearing, which she must have kept here in this box. Out of sight, a reminder of a painful episode in her life? As a treasured memento, one that brought heartbreak and regret?
“Who’s to say I didn’t marry for love?” she once said to me.
There was so much I didn’t know.
From his chair, Norman was snoring like a buzz saw. I tiptoed past him and stopped at the door to the basement. I pulled it open with some difficulty, yanking the string that dangled from the ceiling to illuminate the bulb overhead. I carefully made my way down the broken steps to the earthen floor. The cellar smelled dank and musty, but sugary sweet, too—like rotting apples or the decaying carcasses of squirrels and mice.
I don’t know what I was looking for, if anything. But it didn’t take me long to find them. There, behind Grandmother’s old trunks, at the base of her ancient dressmaker’s dummy, leaning in three stacks against the old stone wall, were our posters. Mother’s and mine.
THE LAWRENCE DRAMATIC COMPANY PRESENTS
“MEDEA”
WITH CHARLOTTE LAWRENCE
THE MAJESTIC THEATER PRESENTS
THE GREAT McGINTY
GABY DUBOIS, THE FRENCH SENSATION
And finally, there, at the very back:
BABY FLO, THE CHILD WONDER WHISTLER
Norman had lived in that house nearly all his life. The farthest he’d ever traveled from Buffalo were two brief trips into New York City in the 1930s. Eighty-three years he lived, and that was as far as he went. Me, I’d crisscrossed the country with Mother and our troupe, lived in New York and Hollywood and San Francisco, floated up the Nile on a barge, and found tranquility on a Greek island. But Norman—Norman didn’t need to go so far. Down to his electrician shop in the center of town and to the corner market for food. That was all.
I never counted family by blood. Blood has no particular claim, no rank. Maybe that’s why I could come back to my grandmother’s house and have it be all right. I’d never expected anything of Norman, and he never expected anything of me. The money Mother and I sent in our heyday must have been welcome, but when it dried up there were no squawks for more. I never knew my brother. I never thought about him all those years. I didn’t even come back to find him. I just knew I had to come back.
Norman lived another two-and-a-half years. I like to think I made his life better. The few acquaintances he had were surprised to learn he had a sister. The visiting nurse eyed me at first with some suspicion, but in the end, I think she was relieved when I let her go. I was all the nurse Norman needed. I kept a clean house, cooked him some good meals, even took him for drives in my Bel-Air through the town. We came to enjoy our routine and even each other’s company, though we spoke very little. Occasionally something on the radio would catch our spirits, and we’d laugh. And that—I think, that, more than the meals and the clean house—was what Norman appreciated most.
I found him one morning out on the porch, sitting in the old rocking chair, the radio on at his side, as always. “Hard Day’s Night” by the Beatles was playing. His head was down on his chest. I placed the palm of my hand on his forehead. He was cold.
There are worse things than to die on one’s own front porch in the spring, just as the forsythia is bursting into life. I turned off the radio, folded his hands in his lap, and sat opposite him for nearly three quarters of an hour, just looking at him.
When Norman died, the house became my own. People in town knew me as Miss Bridgewood, the old lady with the fancy car. I’d show up at the market or the library, cigarette in hand, my nails painted scarlet, a flowing scarf around my neck. I’d drive through town, beeping at the children, waving from my open-top car. “Hello, Miss Bridgewood!” they’d call. “Sure is one fine car, Miss Bridgewood!”
Miss Bridgewood. That’s who I was. There was no connection, none at all, to anyone else I’d ever been, any other life I’d ever lived. And that was just fine with me.
I lived there in my grandmother’s house until climbing the stairs proved too difficult, until I could no longer get in and out of the tub with ease, until driving my beloved aquamarine Bel-Air became impossible. That’s when I sold the house, deposited the cash, and moved to St. Mary’s.
I hear they’ve torn the house down now. Put up high rises all along Eagle Street.
Guess I made it back there just in time.
The Present
“We just want some answers,” the woman with the bleached-blond hair and broad Midwestern accent is saying. “We just want to know what happened to our aunt.”
She pronounces “aunt” as “ant.” She’s one of three women on 20/20 tonight, sitting opposite Barbara Walters. All three have similar hair teased very high up on their heads. They look to be in their mid- to late forties, all wearing tight black jeans and red satin Western shirts. Earlier there was a clip of them singing together in a nightclub. They’re known throughout the Midwest as the Cherry Sisters.
Now the scene shifts to show them clustered around an older woman with bright orange hair, her face a mass of creases, a beauty mark in the shape of a star to the left of her mouth. She’s crying. Her tears cut shiny trails down her powdered face, taking her mascara along with them.
“Our mother has been heartbroken for sixty years,” another of the Cherry Sisters tells Barbara Walters. “All she wants to know is what happened to her sister.”
“Do you think,” Barbara asks slowly, “that Flowence Lawwence … knows more … than she is saying?”
The redheaded woman looks up. The camera moves in to frame her mascara-streaked face. She speaks for the first time. “That woman may have killed my sister,” she croaks. “I don’t care how old she is. My darling sister. Lovely Maggie.”
Flo just watches from bed. She’s propped up with several pillows. Her face is drawn; she wears no lipstick. To look at her, one wouldn’t think she even understood what the Cherry Sisters and their mother were saying. But finally she turns her face on her pillows—seemingly with great effort—and says softly, “Her name was Molly.”
Jean sits on the edge of her bed. “Do you want more aspirin, Flo? How’s the headache?”
Flo just closes her eyes.
“Flo,” Jean says, taking her hand, “I know all this is upsetting to you. But it’s time. You need to tell me about Molly.”
“I’m … too ill,” the old woman says.
Flo. Ill. It seems so incongruous. Flo has never complained about pain before in the entire time Jean has known her. Even when her joints must surely have been aching, she never uttered a word. Now for the last several days, she’s seemed as weak and lifeless as … as the other old folks who’d appeared with her on Oprah.
Jean turns her eyes back to the program. Now there’s a clip of the exhumation. Barbara Walters is saying how DNA tests seem to link the remains of the corpse with the redheaded woman, Myrtle Butz Pickles, suggesting the girl buried as Florence Lawrence may indeed have been her “lovely Maggie.”
Ben appears in the doorway. He’s been watching in the other room.
“That’s it,” Jean tells him sharply. “No more interviews.”
“Jean,” he says, obviously weary of this argument. “We’ve just arrived here in San Francisco. We have a lot of media set up.”
“No more interviews,” she states unequivocally. “Not until we can find out what exactly happened to old lady Pickles’s sister.”
She turns back to Flo. She’s just staring at the set. Jean can see nothing in her eyes.
Richard thanks the flight attendants and heads down the walkway into the terminal. He hasn’t been in San Francisco for a number of years. He’s looking forward to being in the city again. It
’s a town that knows how to have a good time, but without all the mess and craze of New York. San Francisco always does things with a touch of class. He saw a bit on the news last night, a clip of a banner draped across Castro Street:
SAN FRANCISCO WELCOMES THE BIOGRAPH GIRL
The Castro Theater was all set with its special program of one-reel films, all starring Flo. She’s scheduled to make an appearance later this week.
Leave it to the queens, Richard thinks, smiling.
Then, of course, had come the 20/20 interview with the Cherry Sisters and their mother, the dollar signs nearly popping up in their tear-filled eyes the way they do in cartoons. But whatever trailer trash they might be, Richard knows they’re legit. The day before, he’d gone over to the library and checked the index to the 1920 Census for Iowa. Lee had said the missing person report had identified Iowa as Margaret Butz’s home state. Sure enough, he found them, on a farm in Red Oak: Glenn Butz, age 37; his wife Vera Butz, age 35; and their four daughters, Madeline, age 10; Miranda, age 7; Margaret, age 5; and Myrtle, age 1.
“She doesn’t look too bad for her age,” Rex had said, watching Myrtle call Flo a murderess on national TV.
“Oh, I’m sure that’s her real hair color,” Richard had said.
Rex just shivered next to him on the couch. “I guess now is when the vultures begin to circle.”
Richard put his arm around him and drew him in close.
Opening night of The Royal Family of Broadway had gone remarkably well. A packed house, an enthusiastic crowd, and great reviews in the next day’s papers. “Brilliantly hysterical!” said Kevin Thomas of the Times.
Richard’s favorite part of the show had been when Rex did a dialogue back and forth between Ethel and Drew. This was new stuff; he hadn’t seen it in New York. Ethel’s just come out of a theater, a little dazed after watching Drew’s grisly performance in Scream. “Simply regal, my dear, simply regal,” Ethel intones, trying to find something to say. “Only a Barrymore could drip blue blood as elegantly as that.”
His heart had nearly sprung a rib watching Rex take his bows. How handsome he looked up there. How vibrant. How alive. The sweats had disappeared. Rex was fit, trim, and ready for anything up on that stage.
And I’m ready for anything, too, Richard thinks. I hope.
Some of Rex’s fans from his porno days mobbed him after the show, slobbering over him for his autograph—and possibly, they hoped, more. Why did people think once a porn star, always a porn star—and that their idol must surely be willing and ready to hop into bed with them? Richard stood proprietarily beside his partner, who was still dressed as Lionel, caterpillar eyebrows and all. The fans were telling him how hot he was, how his videos were still the hottest on the market. Rex handled them all with such aplomb, winking occasionally over at Richard. They made their way to Richard’s waiting rental car and then laughed like kids all the way back to their room.
“Okay now. Get a move on,” Rex urged Richard this morning. “Hop on your white horse and charge up the coast to save milady.”
“You’ll call me after you’ve seen the doctor?”
“Yes, yes.”
“He’s good?”
“My doc back home recommended him. He’ll be fine.”
Richard takes him in his arms. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“You won’t have to find out.” He kisses him quickly on the lips. “Now, go. The fair damsel is in need of rescuing.”
Richard laughs.
The fair damsel.
He’s stopped now by the face staring out at him from the airport kiosk. Flo, of course, on the cover of People magazine. The headline reads:
ONCE MORE, A STAR
He decides not to buy it. He’s here to stop it, not subsidize it. He hurries outside and hails a cab.
The real Flo’s waiting for him at the Warwick Regis.
“Oh, yes,” Jean says into the telephone. “Send him up.”
“Who’s that?” Ben asks.
“Richard,” she tells him.
Ben just makes a face.
“Ben, it’s only right. Richard’s been helpful. He says he has more information that might encourage Flo to tell us about Molly.”
Ben smirks. “He’s really working hard on that book of his, isn’t he?”
Jean just frowns.
Sure, Ben’s thinking. Just as I get close … just as I begin to get to the heart of my interviews with Flo, Richard turns up with “more information.” Why can’t he just leave it alone? Why can’t he accept the fact that this has turned into my show now?
He watches as Jean opens the door and Richard walks in, dressed in his L.L. Bean sweater and khakis. He’s brought Flo a single white rose—how classy. Richard’s always so goddamn classy.
But wait—he has another one. Behind his back. This one is for Jean. She’s touched. Hand over heart. And now she’s hugging him. They say nice things to each other. She hugs him again.
“Ben,” Jean says. “Richard’s here.”
Richard approaches him, extending his hand. “Hello, brother,” he says. “Well, you got a new look.”
Ben shakes his hand, running his free hand over his close-cropped head. “Xerxes’s idea,” he tells him.
Richard nods. That’s it, Ben thinks. He won’t say, Looks good or anything like that. That’s all he’ll do. Just nod.
“Looks good,” Richard says.
Ben blinks a couple of times in surprise. “Uh … well, thanks.” He shifts awkwardly. “Where’s Sexy Rexy?” he asks finally.
“Still in L.A.,” Richard says. “Sorry you couldn’t make it to his opening night.”
Ben’s sorry, too. He feels a little pang of guilt. “Well, we had to get up here,” he explains.
Richard nods. He looks around the room. It’s another suite, with connecting rooms for the three of them. A big canopied bed in this one, with a bar, a sitting area, and a terrace overlooking Geary Street.
“Where’s Flo?” Richard asks.
“She’s sleeping,” Jean tells him. “Here. Let me take her rose and I’ll put them both in water.” She smiles at them, accepts the second flower, then disappears into her own room.
“So,” Richard says.
“So,” Ben repeats.
“How are the interviews with Flo coming?”
“Good. Good.” He pauses, clumsily. “Very good.”
“That’s good.”
Richard walks around the room. He presses down on the bed. “Good mattress,” he says.
“Oh, yeah,” Ben agrees. “Very good.”
Another pause.
“Did you see 20/20?” Richard asks.
“Oh, yeah. Yeah, we saw it.”
“What did Flo think?”
“Um, well, she didn’t say much. She just kept shaking her head.”
“But it’s clear she knows who this girl was,” Richard says, folding his arms now across his chest.
“Uh, well, yeah, I think so.” Ben scratches his head, desperate to change the subject. “So have you talked with Mom lately?”
“Yesterday.” He keeps looking at Ben. Damn him. Is he trying to make me uncomfortable? “How’s Anita?”
Yep. He’s trying, all right.
“She’s—” Ben pauses. “Well, you know, she’s still on that soap—”
“Yes, I do know,” Richard says. “I talked with her yesterday, too.”
“Oh.” Ben turns, walks over to the window, looks down at the traffic on the street. Enough games, he thinks.
“Okay, Richard,” he says, still looking down at the street. “So why are you here?”
“To protect Flo from you,” Richard says plainly.
Ben spins back around to look at him. “What? Are you out of your mind?”
“I don’t think so. Are you?”
“Look. This wasn’t my idea to have you come by. It was Jean’s.”
“Oh, it’s just Jean now, huh?”
“I don’t have to take this, R
ichard. All my life you’ve been trying to lord it over me. Trying to tell me what to do. Not anymore.”
“Lord it over you? Is that what you think I’ve tried to do?”
“Yes. Absolutely. You and Mom both. Taking sides against me. You just can’t believe I can accomplish anything on my own.”
“Ben, you can’t deny you’ve sidestepped taking responsibility—”
“Don’t talk responsibility, Richard. It was me who took care of Dad.”
“You’re always throwing that at me, Ben! It doesn’t change the fact that you have no ambition, that you’ve always—”
“This is what I’m talking about! Back off, Richard! You have nothing to say to me anymore!”
Richard narrows his gaze at his brother. “Oh, but I do. Just one thing.” He takes a step closer to Ben, who takes a step backward. “You’ve put Flo in a very awkward position. Something’s going to come out about what happened back in 1938 and it’s likely not going to be good news for her.”
“Hey, it’s not my fault.”
Richard moves closer to him. “It’s just what you want, isn’t it?” His voice is soft, and the look in his eyes changes from anger to revulsion. “You want something to come out. It’ll make a better movie.” He stops not six inches from Ben. “Jean told me that you were writing a script. For a dramatic film. Not just a documentary anymore.”
“So?”
Richard keeps staring at him. “I’m just curious, Ben. About what you’re going to do.”
Ben smiles hard. “Of course you’re curious. I’m sure you’ll be trying to get a film option on your book.” His grin tightens further. “And we wouldn’t want to find ourselves in competition now, would we?”
Richard just stares at him for several seconds. Finally, very low, he says, “I’m not going to let you hurt that old lady.”
Ben feels his smile fade off his lips.
“Richard.”
They turn around.
It’s Jean, standing in the doorway across the room.
“Flo’s up,” she’s telling him. “She can see you now.”
The Biograph Girl Page 47