Violet couldn’t stomach much more of the scene on the couch. The sooner she served dinner, the sooner Audrey would go to her hotel for the night. It was only a bit after three now, though. Too soon to get the food on the table.
“Did you put the oven on too high?”
Violet turned to her mother-in-law. “I don’t have the oven on too high. I just got sidetracked for a moment. I’m making some more.”
She had just started to turn toward the kitchen when she heard Bert tell Audrey that she didn’t have to go to a hotel that night if she didn’t want to. The sofa was hers if she wanted it.
“The sofa’s not comfortable enough to sleep on, Bert.” The words flew out of Violet’s mouth. “And there’s absolutely no privacy.”
Audrey gazed at Violet for a second before turning to face Bert. “And you only just got home, Bert. I don’t mind sleeping elsewhere tonight.”
“It’s Christmas Eve,” he said insistently. “Do you really want to wake up Christmas morning in a hotel room?”
Audrey was at a loss for what to do; Violet could see that. Her friend looked down at the baby in her arms as a weak smile broke across her face. “I probably outstayed my welcome the last time I was here, Bert. I was here for a long time.”
“You didn’t outstay your welcome,” Delores chimed in. “I can sleep on the couch and you can have my bed.”
“Oh, I couldn’t let you do that, Delores,” Audrey said quickly.
“It’s just one night, Audrey,” Bert said. “We want you here. Don’t we, Violet?”
Three sets of eyes were on her. Violet cleared her throat. “Yes. Please do stay here tonight, Audrey,” Violet heard herself saying. “Bert’s right. You don’t want to wake up in a hotel on Christmas. You’re coming back to the house in the morning, anyway. If you don’t mind the couch, you should just stay here.”
Audrey held Violet’s gaze for a moment. “If you’re sure I won’t be in the way.”
“You’re not in the way,” Bert said reassuringly.
“All right.”
“Then it’s all settled.” Bert started to stand. “I’ll just go get your suitcase from your car.”
Audrey reached out with one hand to stop him. “Actually, Bert, it’s just a travel bag, and I don’t need it right this minute. Here. Sit back down with your little girl. You’ll be having to report back to the Army post before you know it. You don’t want to miss out on any cuddle time. And I want to help Violet make the cookies.”
She transferred the baby back into Bert’s arms and kissed Lainey’s forehead just before she stood up.
Audrey crossed the room and linked her arm with Violet’s. They turned toward the kitchen.
“I love making cookies at Christmastime,” Audrey said, and leaned her head toward Violet’s. “My mom and I used to do this together. It was always such a special time. Just her and me.”
“I’m not very good at gingerbread men,” Violet said.
“I’m not very good at baking any kind of cookie.” Audrey laughed. “But it’s not about the cookies, really. It’s about the time you spend with the person you make them with.”
Violet handed Audrey the apron that Delores used to wear and that Audrey had worn when she was pregnant and living there. Bantam roosters strutted across the front of it.
Even though it had been only been a matter of weeks since Audrey left, it was different having her at the house now. Bert was home, for one thing, and Lainey was no longer hidden from view within Audrey’s body. It was almost as if Violet and Audrey had nothing in common anymore. For one fleeting moment, Violet missed the way it was when she first arrived in Hollywood and she and Audrey were just secretaries at a studio. The filming of Gone With the Wind had only just begun and everything seemed new and exciting. There was no war, and curly-haired Bert, who hadn’t yet held a rifle or been shown how to point it at someone and pull the trigger, had been utterly convinced there was a nightingale on Sunset Boulevard, calling for its lover against a star-studded sky. Back then Violet had longed for what she now had—a husband and a child—yet an ache seized her as she remembered the way things used to be. She handed the apron to Audrey.
Audrey took the apron. The look on her face was one of understanding, as if she was thinking the same thing.
“Thank you, Violet.”
She tied the apron around her slim waist.
• • •
Hours later, Violet awoke in the middle of the night, surprised that she hadn’t heard from Lainey. Then she realized Bert wasn’t in bed with her, and she smiled as she pictured him in the nursery in the rocking chair, whispering sweet nonsense to Lainey while she had her bottle. But then she heard voices in the living room.
She got out of bed and tiptoed down the hall. Bert and Audrey were talking in low tones. She couldn’t see them from where she stood hidden from view, but she could hear them. And she could hear Lainey. One of them was holding her while she sucked on a bottle. Violet could hear the sweet little sounds the baby made when she drank.
Audrey was telling Bert that she thought the man she was seeing now, Glen Wainwright, was going to ask her to marry him. Audrey had told Violet plenty of things about her new beau, including that he was quite a bit older than her, as they’d rolled out the gingerbread dough, but not that she was expecting a proposal from him. Bert had coaxed it out of her somehow and it stung that he had.
“Do you love him? Are you going to say yes?” Bert asked.
Violet couldn’t see what Audrey was doing as she contemplated her response, but several seconds passed before she answered. “What does it matter if I love him or not? He loves me. He’s good to me. He wants me to go far in my career, and he has the money and the connections to make it happen. There’s a lot of comfort in that. Maybe for me, that’s what love is. It’s being with someone who makes me feel safe and cherished and wanted.”
“Maybe that’s what love is for all of us,” Bert said after a few moments of silence.
It got very quiet then. Violet knew if she so much as moved a toe they’d hear her, so she stood glued to the wall while she pondered if love really was what Bert and Audrey said it was.
She was not ready to hear what Bert said next.
“Are you sure about letting us keep and raise your daughter?”
Violet didn’t hear what Audrey said in response because there was suddenly a terrible roaring in her ears as she imagined her responding with, Yes, I’m having second thoughts, now that you mention it. But Audrey must have said something like, But I have nothing to offer Lainey, because Bert said she had what every mother has to offer her child: herself.
The earth seemed to have tilted off its axis. Violet felt for the wall behind her to steady herself. Then after a few seconds of no words at all between them, Audrey spoke.
“I can tell how much you and Violet love Lainey. I know it would break your hearts not to have her.”
“That’s exactly why I am asking you if you are, because surely your heart is breaking, too.”
Violet had to stop this conversation from continuing. She came forward as if she’d just emerged from the bedroom, and rubbed her eyes as if she hadn’t heard a word they’d said.
Audrey was sitting on the sofa with her legs tucked up underneath her and her blankets all askew. Bert, who had pulled Delores’s armchair close to the couch, was sitting in it, and he had Lainey over his shoulder as he gently rubbed her back to burp her.
Violet’s heart was pounding in her chest but she forced herself to sound relaxed and sweetly cordial. “Bert, you are so thoughtful to get up with Lainey, but you didn’t need to feed her here in the living room, where Audrey is trying to sleep.”
“I actually hadn’t been asleep yet, Vi,” Audrey said. “Bert was being as quiet as a mouse in the kitchen, getting her a bottle, and I told him he could bring the baby into the living roo
m while he fed her. I didn’t mind.”
The room became quiet again. Bert finally got out of the chair with a sleeping baby over his shoulder. “We should all get to sleep so Santa will come, I guess. Good night, Audrey.”
“Good night.”
Violet blew Audrey a kiss as Bert took Lainey back to the nursery. Audrey clicked off the light.
TWENTY-SEVEN
March 1943
A breeze toyed with the edges of Lainey’s blanket as Violet sat with her daughter on the grass and waited for the mailman to arrive. Bert’s letters usually came on Saturdays, and she was eager for news of where he might be posted. His division was gearing up for some kind of movement. He didn’t know where or when, but it was imminent.
Lainey, on her back with a rattle in her tight little fist, was making happy gurgling noises, pleased with herself that she could produce such sounds. Violet tickled her child on her cheek and Lainey smiled and uttered a monosyllabic response of delight.
It was not quite warm enough to be sitting outside and Violet had to keep replacing the little crocheted shawl over Lainey’s legs, as her daughter kept kicking it off. But she had to get away from Delores and her constant commentary on how terrible the war was and how much she wished Bert would come home and how tired she was all the time and how Violet wasn’t seeing to her needs like she used to and how much she missed her new grandson.
Their relationship had been tense since her mother-in-law’s return from her visit to San Francisco to see Bert’s sister’s new baby. Delores’s health had continued to decline, and she required more help from Violet than she had when Bert had first left for the Army. What with helping Delores in and out of bed and in the bathroom, making all her meals, and doing her laundry, Violet felt as if she had two children to care for. While it was a joy to care for Lainey, jumping through hoops for Delores was wearing Violet out. Plus, Delores’s constant reminders that her new grandson was three hundred terrible miles away were just plain annoying.
“But you’ve got Lainey right here!” Violet had said earlier that day, when Delores had again remarked how frustrating it was that baby Owen was so far from her.
“Well, yes. Yes, that’s true,” Delores had said, looking down at Lainey lying on a flannel blanket on the living room floor while Violet folded laundry on the sofa.
Violet had stopped smoothing out the clean diaper on her lap. She could tell by the look on her mother-in-law’s face that Delores considered Owen to be different from Lainey. Owen was biologically a part of her, an extension of her own life. The new baby also had her beloved dead husband’s blood coursing through his infant veins. Lainey did not.
Sweet Lainey was easy to feel affection for, but she wasn’t like Owen.
The sheepish look on Delores’s face had made it appear as if she’d read Violet’s thoughts.
“I just don’t like it that I don’t get to see him as often as I get to see Lainey,” Delores had said.
Then go live with Charlene, Violet had wanted to say.
Again it seemed as though Delores had heard Violet’s unspoken words.
“Maybe I should go back up for an extended stay.” Delores’s brow had crinkled in consternation, revealing that she had already been thinking about a return trip to San Francisco.
“I am sure Charlene and Howard would like that.”
“They’ve prepared a room for me so that I don’t have to rush back if I don’t want to.”
Violet had folded the clean diaper and pressed it across her lap, hoping that Delores was saying what Violet thought she was saying. That maybe she was thinking of returning to San Francisco to stay. “How very nice of them.”
“Charlene’s a nurse, you know,” Delores continued, more to herself than Violet, as though lecturing herself on good reasons to leave her beloved home and move up north.
“Yes,” Violet said.
Delores had inhaled heavily as she looked about the parts of the house visible to her from her armchair. Violet could tell Delores was picturing herself saying good-bye to the home she had shared with Bert’s father, and not just for a week or two, but for good.
“I never thought I’d leave this house.” Delores’s eyes had glistened with ready tears.
“Every memory you made here you can take with you,” Violet had replied, willing herself to sound compassionate and not relieved at the thought that Delores might cease to be her responsibility.
“That’s true,” Delores had said softly as a tear had slipped down her cheek. Violet pretended not to notice.
Now, as Violet sat outside on the blanket with Lainey, she found herself thinking how she might redecorate the kitchen when it was finally hers. When the mailman arrived, Violet jumped to her feet to receive the little collection of envelopes he had for her.
But there was no letter from Bert that day.
Instead there was a note from Audrey. Violet opened the envelope, thinking perhaps Audrey was at last announcing her engagement to Glen Wainwright. She would have to not let on that she’d overheard in that terrible conversation between Bert and Audrey that Wainwright might propose. But that wasn’t what the note was about. It was about coming to visit. Audrey wouldn’t be starting rehearsals for her next play until the third week of April. She wanted to know if she could come up to Santa Barbara and spend the weekend after next with them, if it wasn’t too much trouble.
Maybe we could get a sitter for Lainey and the three of us could go see No Time for Love with Claudette Colbert, Audrey wrote. And, oh! I found the cutest little striped pinafore for Lainey. With a matching hat.
Was that all right? Could she come?
Violet crumpled the piece of paper and Lainey cooed happily at the sound. From the living room, Delores called out that she needed to use the toilet.
Violet scooped up her daughter and the blanket and headed inside, the note a wad of paper in her fist.
She set Lainey down in her crib before attending to Delores’s needs.
As she helped her mother-in-law get situated on the toilet, she knew she could not continue to live this way. She didn’t want to wipe Delores’s rear end anymore and endure her many complaints. She didn’t want to pretend to be happy about Audrey’s frequent intrusions. She didn’t want to sleep alone any longer in the bed she’d shared with Bert. She wanted to go home. If she could get Delores safely settled with Charlene and Howard in San Francisco, she could take the train—at last—to Montgomery. There she and Lainey could bask in the love and care of her parents while Bert was away fighting.
She left Delores to give her a few minutes of privacy on the commode. As Violet stood just outside the bathroom, she looked at the crumpled letter in her hand. She hadn’t seen her parents for two years and they had never met their granddaughter. When the war was over and Bert returned to them, it would be much easier to get to New York from Montgomery to meet the people Bert wanted to meet at the Audubon Society. Daddy had banking friends in Manhattan. Surely one of them knew someone who knew someone who could help Bert get his foot in the Audubon door. Whatever schooling Bert needed to finish, he could finish back home in Alabama, over in Auburn, maybe. If they stayed with Mama and Daddy after the war, Bert wouldn’t have to worry about making a living and providing a home; he could just concentrate on finishing his biology degree. And then the three of them could travel to wherever he wanted to go to photograph his birds. South America or Canada or some island in the Pacific. It would be a great adventure. Their great adventure.
But for now, she needed to get out of this house. She wanted to go home. She wanted her mother.
Violet shoved Audrey’s letter into her pants pocket as Delores called out that she was finished. A minute or so later, Violet was helping Delores make her way back to the living room.
“Want me to make the call to Charlene, Delores? I’m happy to do it for you.” Violet said as the two of them walked slowly
down the hall.
“Yes,” Delores said, leaning heavily on Violet. “I do. I’m just not happy here anymore.”
Violet patted her mother-in-law’s arm.
“Leave it to me, Delores. I’ll take care of everything.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
April 1943
The top was down on Glen’s Cadillac Series 62 as Audrey zipped up the coastal highway with one hand on the wheel and the other holding a cigarette. The ends of the gauzy white scarf around her head frolicked behind her as if dancing on the wind. The midmorning sun was warm on her face, even though the sea air was still chilly from the last remnants of morning fog.
On the seat next to her were presents for the baby: darling dresses she hadn’t been able to resist, a stuffed giraffe, and a silver cup with Lainey’s initials engraved across it. For the first time in her life Audrey had more money than she knew what to do with. The play she had been cast in would pay a modest salary, but it was Glen’s insistent generosity that allowed her to buy whatever she wanted. He didn’t seem to care that Audrey doted on Lainey from afar; he actually encouraged her wild spending on the baby.
It made her happy. And Glen loved seeing Audrey happy.
In the past few months he had bought her jewels and furs, dined and danced with her at expensive restaurants and clubs, and taken her sailing on his yacht because that level of attention also made her happy. And he had seen to it that she had at last signed on with a respected agent, and he was already planning a lavish opening night party for when the curtain on the new play was raised. She had a fairly decent role in the new show, and Glen was convinced she was on the cusp of a stellar acting career. He had already told her he was going to see to it that it did happen, just as soon as the war was over and people could go back to having fun and enjoying life instead of killing one another.
Not only that, but Glen wanted to marry her because he wanted to spend the rest of his life finding ways to make her happy.
Stars Over Sunset Boulevard Page 22