The Biograph Girl

by William J. Mann

  Their eyes hold for several seconds.

  He assists her as she stands. The applause rises. Whooping, whistling, calling her name. Sister Jean stands back, saying nothing. Ben is behind her, his lips tight.

  Jameson Collins shouts over the din, “Ladies and gentlemen, The Biograph Girl!” as Richard walks Flo slowly off the stage.

  December 28, 1938

  Just like before.

  Florence Lawrence was always so weak. So easily rattled. Sometimes her mind would wander, and she couldn’t find the answer to the simplest question, so cloaked was she in fog and pain. She was a poor pathetic little creature, a brittle bundle of nerves.

  Florence Lawrence.

  What more can I tell you? Oh, yes, yes. The girl. It always comes back to her, doesn’t it? Seeing her again, up there on the screen, sitting next to me in Camille… No, I can’t talk about it. I promised I never would. She’d be too horrified, too shamed. I can’t do that to her.

  And yet …

  I suppose I can’t avoid it. I suppose it was inevitable. But how—how can I go back there? How can I even begin to tell you—tell you what you need to know?

  It’s Lester I keep seeing. Dear God, it’s Lester, and he’s blue, all blue, and it’s my fault—my fault he’s hanging there.

  Why was his license suspended? Can you tell me that? No, you can’t, can you? What was his life like after I left him? What did I bring upon him? Who found him? I wonder. Who cut him down? He had no friends, no family, none except Molly and me. Who cried over his body? Was there anyone?

  I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him. And then, tonight, I saw Molly. I saw her again, so large that she filled the theater—Molly, there, in all of her wide-eyed hopes and preposterous dreams.

  For Molly. For Lester.

  All right.

  I’ll tell you what you need to know.

  It began at midnight, the night before. Lester had brought over a bottle of champagne, as he had every year for the past three, marking the anniversary of my first day in pictures.

  “To the return of The Biograph Girl,” he intoned, raising a toast, and Bob and Marian chimed in with a chorus of “Hear, hear.”

  It was a dim and dreary celebration, despite their best efforts. I was depressed, reclusive—had been for weeks. The pain kept me to my bed, and the last time Metro called with a walk-on assignment, I’d turned surly and mean. “I’m far too ill to come all the way down there just to walk across a soundstage,” I’d snapped. Who knew if I’d ever be called back now?

  Molly raised her glass of champagne and smiled over at me. It had been some time since she’d frowned on alcohol, turned down offers of beer or wine. Or Scotch. The bubbles were sparkling out of her glass. We all clinked.

  I remember how sweet it tasted on my tongue.

  Cheap stuff.

  But then, we were a cheap group, weren’t we? Marian with too much rouge, her vanity too overbearing to allow eyeglasses to sit against her beady little eyes. Bob with his dirty T-shirts and tattoos on his hairy forearms: Singapore Sue and a fire-spitting dragon. Molly with streaks of platinum still in her hair, the remnants of one night’s giddy attempt to emulate Harlow. She’d dyed my hair, too, but now Harlow was dead and the platinum irrelevant. Neither of us had fully dyed all of it out.

  I was so weak I could barely lift my glass to acknowledge Lester’s toast. I was a sick, tired old woman. How old then? Forty-eight? Forty-nine? Around there. Years older really.

  And my birthday just days away. I was dreading it. Dreading it so much that I refused to let any of them speak of it. “I can’t face another year,” I told Molly. “I can’t go through another one.”

  She no longer tried to persuade me otherwise. She was no longer the innocent. The lines around her eyes were deep and dark, the corners of her mouth folded into a permanent frown. She was just a girl, but how old she looked. Too much booze, too much heartache, too many broken dreams. She looked old and tired, nearly as old as I was. We weren’t that different, Molly and I.

  My depression had spread like a cancer. My darkness had shadowed all of us. I looked over at Molly and saw she hadn’t slept in weeks. She’d get up at midnight and pace our little cottage, smoking cigarette after cigarette. A new flock of doves had descended upon the studios, and the bloom was off the rose. Molly had begun to wilt, and no amount of platinum could disguise that.

  She wasn’t much different from me, not then—except that she didn’t have the pain, of course, or the memories. She had never known fan letters or crowds or the thrill of seeing her name on a marquee. She had only known the dream, the crushing promise, the pluck and ambition that brought too many girls west and left them stranded in the sun.

  “I can’t go on another year,” I repeated to her, and I saw in her eyes not only compassion but a horrible empathy, a terrible recognition of self. She said nothing then, didn’t try to dissuade me. She just sat back in her chair, her eyes cast down to her lap.

  She wasn’t much different from me.

  I can’t. I can’t go back there. Oh, dear God, was this what I came back to find? Was this what I came three thousand miles to relive? Why I became her again?

  I just walked away. That’s all. The hospital just made a mistake and I—

  No. No, that’s not it. Oh, please. Just let me sit here a bit. Just let me collect my thoughts.

  She wasn’t much different from me. That was the rub. She even looked like me. Don’t think I didn’t fantasize about it—especially when Molly said she’d always felt she’d been adopted, left on the doorstep of her hard, cruel family in Iowa—a changeling child, as they called her. Don’t think that I didn’t look over at her and imagine she was my own.

  Annie Laurie—grown to the full flower of womanhood. They were the same age. She had my build, my coloring.

  She wasn’t much different from me.

  Oh, but she was. She was young. She wasn’t sick. Yes, she had been awakened to the realities in that land of dreams, but she could have escaped. She could have found a life somewhere else, found love.

  Of course she could have. The girl who had survived her father’s fists, her mother’s indifference—the girl who had run off and learned to dance, learned to hustle, learned to make love far earlier than I ever had. She could have gotten out. She and Flo Bridgewood, together. Oh, why couldn’t it have happened that way? We came so close.…

  But the morning after the toast—thirty-two years to the day after Mother and I first ventured out to Bronx Park to play in Daniel Boone and I found a body hanging in a tree—that morning I told Molly it was hopeless.

  “Look at me, Molly,” I said to her.

  She did as she was told.

  “This is what the truth is.” I had pulled myself from my bed, tired and in pain. My joints ached. My skin was sallow and dry. “Nothing lasts. Nothing but the pain.”

  She began to cry. “Oh, Flo.”

  I had little patience for her tears. “You and Bob should just get married,” I told her. “Run off to Arizona and get hitched, raise a few kids.”

  “That’s not the answer, Flo,” she told me. “You tried that. It didn’t work.”

  You see? She was no longer the innocent.

  “Besides,” she said, “Bob has a new girl. She’s younger, prettier than I am.”

  She took my hands in hers. Gently, because she knew how much they hurt. “Flo,” she told me. “I’ve been thinking. There’s got to be a way. There’s got to be.”

  Oh, why didn’t I encourage her? Why didn’t I see?

  Her eyes pleaded with me to understand. “You’re right that the only future here is pain and misery. That’s why I’m going home. Back to Iowa.”

  I laughed at her. “Iowa? You’re crazy.”

  “My father’s dead,” she told me. “I called last week—out of the blue, in a fit of curiosity. And the operator said, ‘I’m sorry, ma’am. That party is deceased.’”

  She looked at me as if expecting me to respond.
But I sat still.

  She tried to feign brightness in her eyes. “Don’t you see, Flo? Maybe if we went back there. You and me. You could raise roses again, Flo. And we have horses on the farm.”

  “I can’t go to Iowa, Molly,” I told her. “Are you mad? I can barely walk down the street. Horses! I can’t ride a horse anymore.”

  It would have been so easy for her just to acquiesce, to slump back down in her seat, to give up this last crazy, impossible dream. But something kept her going, even if barely.

  “There’s nothing else, Flo,” she said. “I can’t go through another year either. I came out here with such plans, Flo. Such plans. And none of them—none of them came true.”

  I said nothing.

  She stood up, summoning strength from some hidden reserve I didn’t know she had. “All this place holds is bad, spoiled dreams,” she pronounced in a loud voice. “Out there we can be free of them. Out there, Flo—out there you’ll be well.”

  “You talk nonsense,” I said to her.

  “You can teach me how to ride. I was petrified of horses when I was a girl. But you could teach me. I wouldn’t be afraid with you there, Flo.”

  I tried walking away from her. From her absurd plan. She moved in front of me, refusing to let me pass. “If we go, Flo,” she said, very softly, “we’ll be all right.”

  “Don’t you think it’d just follow us wherever we went?” I asked her. “I can’t get away from what I’ve become as easily as that, Molly.”

  Still she defied me. “I’m going down to the corner to call my sister,” she said. “I’ll tell her we’re coming.”

  Our phone had been disconnected for lack of payment. When we needed to make a call, we had to walk down the block to the drugstore on the corner of Melrose. I leaned on the back of a chair for balance and watched Molly pull on her sweater. “Don’t go looking for pain,” I told her. “We got plenty right here.”

  She couldn’t be dissuaded. For a brief, flickering moment, I saw light around her again—the same light I’d seen three years before when I’d first met her in the wardrobe closet, imagining herself to be Garbo. All the hopes and aspirations she had carried with her across the country had still been alive then. She was a creature filled with light, until finally the wick went dry and the flame was snuffed out. Yet for a moment—one tiny, quivering moment on the last day of her life—I saw again that same light, glowing around her, from within her.

  She left to make the call. I watched her walk down the path and out onto the street. I stood at the side of the kitchen table, looking out the window through the frayed, dusty curtains. The day was a clear one. Filled with sunshine. There was a chill to the air, but nothing like the Decembers I remembered from back east. I watched until she was out of sight, and then I watched some more. Just watched whatever I could see: a squirrel in the grass, a child on a tricycle, a flock of birds drop down onto the utility wires.

  That’s when it happened.

  There are moments in our lives we can’t explain. Moments of crystal clarity, unheralded and unexpected. They happen despite ourselves, despite any defenses we’ve constructed. Such moments awaken the spirit, animate the body. And their catalyst is usually surprisingly simple: a glance, a smile, a break in the clouds.

  For me, it was the palm trees outside my window. Standing there, it was as if I were watching one of those very earliest motion pictures, the kind the Vitascope had thrown upon the makeshift screen. Just movement, simple repetitive movement. The window was tightly shut, so there was no sound, just the movement of the swaying palms. Hypnotic. Green. Restorative. I must have watched those palms for several minutes. Maybe longer. It could’ve been weeks for all I knew then.

  “You think they only know Florence Lawrence.”

  A voice. A man’s voice. I knew it, but couldn’t place it. I didn’t react, didn’t turn around. I kept staring at the swaying trees.

  “But she saw through her. How many people could do that? How many, Florrie?”

  Slowly I turned my head. Ducks stood by the door, just as I would always remember him: in his slouch hat and bow tie, his shotgun at his waist, his eyes twinkling above his round nose and walrus moustache.

  “Ducks,” I breathed.

  “She believes in you, Florrie. Like I do. Florence Bridgewood is still there. Down deep, she’s there, just waiting to be let out. Molly can see that. She’s always been able to see that.”

  I was too overcome to speak.

  “Go ahead, Florrie,” he said. “Close your eyes. Close your eyes, and when you open them, everything will be different.”

  Oh, I know what you must be thinking. That I was delusional. Hallucinating. Maybe I was, and if I was, it doesn’t matter. Because I did as Ducks said, and Ducks was always right. He always knew how to take care of me.

  I took in a long breath and closed my eyes, placing my hands down on the table. I steadied myself there, breathing in and out. I felt lightheaded and faint. I opened my eyes again and watched the soundless breeze move the palms outside my window again.

  Then I straightened up.

  The pain was gone.

  If we go, Flo, we’ll be all right.

  “If we go,” I said aloud.

  I turned around. The pain was still gone. I approached the mirror. And the woman I saw there wasn’t the one I’d seen when I awoke this morning. Something had happened. She was gone.

  It was Flo Bridgewood staring back at me.

  “Did you know I used to whistle for the audience when I was very young?”

  “Whistle!” Linda exclaims.

  I hear the laughter of young girls.

  “How alive do you feel now?” I’m asking. Our automobile skids to a stop in a cloud of dust at the foot of the hill.

  She kisses me.

  I look back at the palms.

  “We aren’t only this,” Linda is saying, pulling at the pink skin on the back of her hand. “We can be so much more.”

  I was filled all at once with a rush of energy, a spate of passion. My blood seemed to pump faster through my limbs. My skin felt warm and flushed. My breath came in short, quick gasps.

  Get out, Flo. Get out now.

  Florence Bridgewood is still there. Down deep, she’s there, just waiting to be let out. Molly can see that. She’s always been able to see that.

  Ducks was right, and so was Molly. We had to leave. Get out as quickly as we could. I’d go with her. I’d ride her horses. I’d teach her to ride. We’d go to Iowa—we’d go to so many places. Yes, yes—it was the way.

  We could be so much more than this.

  I found a pad of paper on the table. Yes, yes—I would leave Bob a note. We couldn’t wait for him to get home. By then, I was sure, it would be too late. The pain would have returned. I’d be her again. We needed to go now—as soon as Molly got back.

  “Good-bye, my darlings,” I wrote, reading aloud as I committed the words to paper. It was for Bob, but for Marian, too, and Lester. “This is the only way. You’ve all been swell guys. Everything is yours.”

  I looked down at the note.

  “Lovingly, Florence,” I signed it.

  Then I folded it in half and wrote Bob’s name across the front.

  I hurried into my room, threw open my drawers. I began pulling out slips and brassieres and stockings. I flung open my closet door, pushing aside hills of old shoes trying to find my suitcase.

  “I can ride better than any boy,” I’m bragging to my brother.

  “Look at Florrie go,” Ducks crows. “Go, Florrie, go!”

  I laughed out loud. I felt as giddy as a ten-year-old.

  That’s when I heard the kitchen door open and Molly come back inside.

  “Molly?” I called out.

  I walked out into the kitchen. She was crying.

  “Molly? What’s wrong?”

  Her face was red and blotchy from tears. “She didn’t want to hear from me,” she managed to say.

  “Your sister, Molly?”

&n
bsp; “A man answered the phone, Flo. Her husband.” Her eyes couldn’t seem to focus on me. They wandered the room. “I told him who I was, and he went off to tell my sister. But then he came back to the phone and said Myrtle told him she didn’t have a sister named Molly.” She pauses for a second. “Then he hung up the phone.”

  “Oh, Molly.”

  Her eyes still wouldn’t focus. “I was so sure, Flo, so sure that if we went back there …”

  I took her hands. “We can still go, Molly. We can still pack our bags and go. It’s still the way. You were right, Molly.”

  But she didn’t answer me. She just moved away from me, walking languidly to her room.

  “Molly,” I called after her. “We don’t need her. We don’t need anyone.”

  She turned and looked at me. Her eyes were steadier now. “Don’t you see, Flo? I wanted to go home. But home doesn’t exist anymore. I went away, and so I lost it.”

  “Molly, Molly,” I chided. “We wouldn’t have been happy there. You go in and pack your bags. You’ll see. We can go anywhere we want to.”

  I was still so passionate that Molly’s torpor failed to reverberate for me. It failed to penetrate very deeply, and if I sinned, that’s it. That’s where I’m guilty. I didn’t recognize the truth her eyes were telling me.

  I returned to my own room to finish packing. There were stockings and sweaters scattered all across the floor. What to take? What to leave behind? Few items actually made it into my suitcase. Most were simply strewn around the room in my haste. Later they’d say my messy room attested to my disturbed state of mind. I suppose in many ways it did.

  That’s when I heard a sound. A small sound, like a bird. Like the bird that had once flown inside our cottage through an open window and become panicked. It flew madly, crazily, hitting the walls. We tried so hard to catch it but it was just too frantic, too terrified—until, stunned, it fell behind the armoire and fluttered helplessly. We found it by the little sound it made: a hiccup of defeated terror.

  I listened again for the sound from Molly’s room. It was quiet. I stood, walking out into the corridor. “Molly,” I called. “Are you packing?”