Beauty and the Brain

by Duncan, Alice

  He’d like to say yes but couldn’t. “Of course it doesn’t,” he growled angrily. “But at least you pursued a career and made something of yourself.”

  She threw her hands up in the air. “What’s to say George won’t make something of himself?”

  He leaned forward and almost spat the words into her face. “For God’s sake, Brenda, he wants to be an artist! An artist, for the love of God!” He threw his hands up, too, as if he couldn’t even conceive of something more nonsensical than a Peters wanting to be an artist.

  “An artist?” She gazed at him blankly. “What’s wrong with being an artist?”

  He rolled his eyes in a gesture very similar to the one she’d given him a few moments earlier. “It’s idiotic, that’s what’s wrong with it! How many people do you know who make their living via the arts?”

  She shrugged, making the lilac silk of her gown ripple in the morning sunshine sifting through the lodge’s curtains and making him think of the fleshly treasures the fabric hid from his eyes. Lord, she was gorgeous. He wished he’d stop noticing. A person would think that, after a while, familiarity would breed nonchalance. It hadn’t with him regarding Brenda, dash it.

  “Hundreds,” she said quietly. “I know hundreds of people who make their livings in the arts, Colin Peters. I’m one of them, in fact. And the opportunities are endless here, in Southern California, in the motion-picture industry.”

  “Motion pictures,” he said as if they tasted bad. “I can’t believe you said that.”

  “And why not? You’re earning a good salary working for Peerless, aren’t you?”

  “This job as research assistant is only a summer stopgap job until school starts in the fall and I can begin teaching at the new university in Los Angeles.” He glared at her and felt like adding a so there, just like a little boy.

  “But you are working in the pictures.” Her gaze narrowed again, and she looked as if she were pondering something for a second or two. “Is that why he came here, do you think? Because he hoped you might be able to help him get a job in the pictures?”

  “I don’t have any idea!”

  “Why not? Didn’t you ask?”

  Her question tripped him up for a second. He opted not to answer it, because he thought she’d use his no against him. He said instead, “He oughtn’t have done it. That’s all I know.”

  She pressed her lips together. “I’m sure it is. And I’m sure poor George wishes now that he’d braved the ire of your parents. It couldn’t be any worse than your callousness.”

  “Callousness? Is it callousness to believe he ought to have faced up to his responsibilities like a man and not run from them like a little boy? For God’s sake, you were only twelve years old when you started making your way in the world! You didn’t travel halfway across the country to snivel to your big brother that you wanted to be an artist. For heaven’s sake!” He was so wrapped up in indignation that it finally suffocated his words, and he couldn’t go on.

  She eyed him levelly for a moment. “Yes, but my circumstances and those of your brother were different. My parents were Irish immigrants and poor as church mice. When my father died, it was either work or die. I didn’t have much choice in the matter.”

  “Nonsense. You could have sat in a corner and cried.”

  “I did plenty of that,” she said, and a bleak expression entered her eyes.

  He didn’t want to acknowledge that look, which he knew resulted from deep pain in her past. “But you didn’t stay there and whine! You got out and worked!”

  “But isn’t that what George is trying to do? He came here, to you, looking for work, didn’t he?”

  “It’s entirely different.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, you’re wrong.” Colin decided he’d taken enough abuse for one morning and rose abruptly. “I have to get out there and make sure Martin doesn’t have the Indians singing ragtime songs or something equally heinous.”

  She lifted her cup so roughly that some of the tea slopped into her saucer. She didn’t seem to notice, as she was glaring arrows and spears at Colin. “It won’t matter if they sing anything at all, since nobody watching the picture will be able to hear them.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Oh.”

  A frenzy of resentment overtook him. He put his hands on the table and leaned over until he was nearly face-to-face with Brenda. “And I don’t know why you’re blaming me for this fiasco. It isn’t my fault George ran away from school. And it isn’t my fault that I think he was wrong to do so without consulting our parents first. I’m not the villain in this piece.” Deciding with some satisfaction that this was as good an exit line as he’d be likely to come up with under the circumstances, he turned on his heel and marched out of the restaurant.

  His heart was pumping like a piston, his nerves were skipping like children playing hopscotch, his blood felt as close to boiling as it ever had, and he wanted to break something. Preferably George’s neck. Or Brenda’s.

  He absolutely hated to acknowledge that he’d much rather be making mad, passionate love to Brenda than doing either of the above.

  Brenda watched Colin stalk away from her and wondered what had possessed her to attack him like that. It wasn’t her business if George and Colin were having problems with each other. And really, if she looked at the situation calmly, she agreed with Colin. George’s action had been cowardly.

  Of course, he was very young.

  Then again, she herself had been even younger when she’d begun supporting her family. Colin was right about that, too.

  But the circumstances had been so different. George had been brought up with, if not wealth, then at least comfort. Brenda’s family had never been comfortable. They’d always existed on the slim, perilous edge separating survival from starvation. In an odd and hideously ironic blow of fate, her family had been better off without her father than with him.

  That sounded unfair and cruel, although Brenda didn’t mean it as such. She’d had to be intensely practical almost from infancy, and old habits died hard. Financial circumstances weren’t the only important aspects of life. She sighed heavily.

  She, better than most people, understood that when people intoned in their superior, preacherly voices that money didn’t matter, it was because they had plenty of it. And they were right. If one had money, it didn’t matter a rap. If one didn’t have money, it mattered almost more than anything else in life.

  Darn it, why was she being so gloomy this morning? Because she’d quarreled with Colin was why, and she knew it. Blast her ready tongue.

  She ate her orange in a moody silence, wishing she could replay her last scene with him She’d hold back her sarcastic opinions if she had it to do over again. It would have been far more reasonable of her to have asked Colin civilly what had brought George to California. If she’d done so, he might even have allowed her to help him deal with his brother.

  Fat chance of that now. She’d attacked, he’d parried, and they’d been at each other’s throats in an instant. Whatever was it that made Colin and her rub against each other so irritatingly and so constantly? They caught fire like a match to dry kindling every time they spoke to each other. She didn’t understand it. She’d never, ever had trouble getting along with people before she met him. She could get along with people she hated, for heaven’s sake, and she didn’t hate Colin. Far from it.

  Unfortunately, real life, unlike life as portrayed in the pictures, didn’t allow for second takes. She smiled grimly, recollecting Martin’s always-present ambition to capture every scene in one take.

  With another hearty sigh, she sipped the last of her tea and recalled her first meeting with. Colin. She’d had such high hopes for a relationship between them. There seemed perishingly little chance of that now. She wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t even want to tell her about Indians any longer.

  On that depressing thought, she left the restaurant and ambled outdoors to watch the fi
lming, which was again taking place outside the lodge in the huge clearing that formed the lodge’s yard. As she stopped in front of the lodge doors and peered around, Brenda wondered how much forest had been cut down to accommodate the human beings who chose to take holidays on this spot. Had birds and animals been displaced? Lost their homes? Died from having their sources of food eliminated?

  Good God, she was getting positively morbid. Instead of thinking about dead deer and birds, she ought to be marveling at the beauty spread out before her. It took a little effort, but she dragged her mood out of the swamp of misery in which it seemed inclined to wallow and concentrated on the magnificence of her surroundings.

  There was a whole bunch of beauty around here, and no mistake. She’d always loved the mountains. She used to perform in the Catskills sometimes, and in the Adirondacks, at various hotels and lodges. She’d loved the life available to her there: long walks in the woods, swims in the lakes, boating, fishing, even doing nothing but staring at the blue, blue sky and making animals out of the clouds. She smiled slightly, remembering. She’d been allowed very little of that sort of relaxation in her life, as she’d been working constantly for years.

  Not that she regretted a single instant of the life she’d been forced to live. It had saved her family, it had saved her, and it was, therefore, a blessing. Brenda knew that far too many people perished when their lives were visited with the type of tragedy that had hit her family. She was fortunate. She was blessed.

  Why the deuce wasn’t she happy, today of all days, when the sun shone, the birds chirped, the squirrels chattered, she was making tons of money, and her family’s welfare had been secured for as long as any of them lived? Bother. Human nature was so illogical and perverse sometimes. With a parting slap on the paneling of the lodge doors, she quickened her pace, descended the steps, and walked out to see what was going on with the filming of Indian Love Song.

  The first person she saw when she walked onto the area marked off for the Peerless set was Colin. Funny how her eyes seemed drawn to him, not unlike steel shavings to a magnet, no matter how mad at each other they were.

  Actually, it wasn’t funny at all.

  Colin and Martin were deep in a discussion. Brenda was pleased to note that neither man appeared angry or frustrated. That must signify that Colin approved of whatever was going on in the Indian village. A miracle in itself. She decided not to join them; she didn’t want Martin to be hit by shrapnel from any ammunition she and Colin might shoot at each other.

  Instead, she glanced around the clearing until she spotted George. He was looking small and alone, perched on a stump close to the forest. She sensed he was trying to disappear while, at the same time, absorb everything he saw. She walked over to him and smiled.

  He’d been engrossed in watching the cameramen set up their machines and the set designers tweaking tipis and fire logs into proper position, and so forth. When he saw her, he jumped a little. Brenda stifled a sigh. Sometimes she wished she could be simply be another person on earth, instead of a “star.” On the other hand, if she were that, her family would be in much worse shape than it was. She guessed she’d take things the way they were.

  “Oh! Good morning, Miss Fitzpatrick.” He flushed. “I mean, Brenda.”

  She imagined her smile growing more tender, because that’s how she felt. With a quick fluff of her skirts, she sat on the stump next to George’s. “Good morning, George. It’s interesting to watch the moviemaking process, isn’t it?”

  “It sure is.” He sounded faintly wistful.

  She decided to take a chance and plunge in. What the heck? She’d never minded her own business before. Why start now? “Is that why you came to California? To see if you could get a job in pictures?”

  He glanced at her, and his flush deepened. George’s complexion echoed Colin’s, but George wasn’t as swarthy as his brother, evidently because he hadn’t spent so much time outdoors. Colin must have lived under Arizona’s blazing territorial sun for months and months. Small wonder he looked rather like a pirate—until one got to know him. Then one realized he was nothing like a pirate. There was nothing of the swashbuckler in him. Instead of swashing and buckling, Colin read and learned. And fussed. Brenda sighed aloud this time.

  “Um, I’d sort of thought about getting work in pictures,” George admitted, sounding as uneasy as he looked. “Colin thinks I’m being silly.”

  Brenda didn’t turn to watch him because she didn’t want to cause him any more embarrassment than she could tell he already felt. “Were you considering acting?”

  She hoped he wasn’t; most of the actors she knew were either star-blinded fools or merely mad for attention. Her case was so different, she felt guilty sometimes for having achieved her level of success.

  He cleared his throat. She could tell he was terribly nervous. “Er, no. Actually, I had hoped to get in on the production side of the industry.”

  The production side? He sounded very mature about his ambition. This surprised her, because she’d gathered from what Colin had told her that George’s trip to California had been impetuous and thoughtless. She slid a glance his way. “What do you mean?”

  He flipped a hand in the air as if his meaning was irrelevant as his ambition. Brenda’s heart squeezed for him, because she knew his own ambition wasn’t irrelevant at all, but only different from his family’s ambition for him

  “Oh,” he said in a muffled voice, “I’d got the notion that I might work as a set designer or something.” He glanced at her, as if expecting to see contempt on her face. “I suppose that’s probably pretty stupid, isn’t it?”

  “No,” she said simply. He jumped again, as if the one word had been so unexpected as to have shocked him. Poor George. She went on, “Set designers are in great demand nowadays.” She gestured at the Peerless set. “This set is much simpler than most, because of the nature of the picture. But you know, George, Peerless is planning to shoot Cleopatra pretty soon, and they’re going to need magnificent sets for that. And there are lots of other pictures that require complicated sets. Good set designers are hard to find. You could do a lot worse. And it wouldn’t hurt to see if you could get hired by one of the studios.”

  “Really?” His eyes were huge. They were almost as pretty as Colin’s, but they didn’t move Brenda as Colin’s did. She considered this a very bad sign.

  “Really.” She decided it would be best not to think about Colin’s eyes. They watched the set preparations in silence for a few moments. Then, curious, Brenda asked, “Have you read anything about the pictures, George?”

  He sat up straighter. “Oh, yes. I’ve read everything I could get my hands on. Not about the acting part,” he hastened to assure her, as if he considered acting on a par with street sweeping. “I’ve read about the cameras they use and the methods of set design and construction. I—” He stopped speaking suddenly.

  Brenda decided to overlook the slur against actors because she knew he hadn’t meant it to be disparaging. He was probably speaking to her as he might have spoken to Colin, had Colin not slammed the door on conversation. “You what?” She smiled again, making sure it was a sweet, encouraging smile this time. She saw him gulp.

  He lowered his gaze and lifted his shoulders until his head was almost lost in a hunch of unhappiness. “I, ah, am an artist. Of sorts. That is to say, I like working in art better than anything else. I like to draw and paint.” He sounded as if the admission shamed him.

  “That’s wonderful, George. I’ve always envied people who could create things on paper and out of clay and marble and stuff like that. I’ve got ten thumbs. Can’t draw a straight line with a ruler.” She spoke lightly.

  His head jerked up and he stared at her. “Wonderful? Ha.” Now he sounded bitter. “When I told Colin about it, you’d have thought I’d confessed to having taken to theft and murder.”

  She laughed. “I can imagine. Colin isn’t vastly interested in anything outside his very narrow field of study, is he?”


  “He—”

  George stopped speaking and swallowed again. Brenda sensed there was a tremendous war being waged inside him and didn’t speak, hoping he’d blurt out what he’d been going to say.

  “Actually,” he said after a moment of struggle, “he knows just about everything about everything. His interests are vast.”

  “They are?”

  George nodded. “Oh, yes.” A faint smile touched his lips.

  Brenda was intrigued. “I must say I’m surprised. I thought he’d become mired in Indians and never looked at anything else.” Prior conversations with Colin started knocking at her brain’s door, and she perceived it was she who’d become mired. Colin had imparted fascinating tidbits of information about any number of things, now that she allowed herself to recall them.

  “Oh, no.” George sat up straighter. “I remember when I was growing up—Colin’s thirteen years older than I am, you see, and he used to take care of me quite often—why, he used to take me everywhere. It was a lot of fun.”

  “Really?” Her amazement must have been clear, because George blushed again.

  “He’s really not as bad as he acts most of the time. Honest. He’s only . . .passionate, I guess is the right word.” George heaved a large sigh. “He was great to me when I was growing up, although he tried to steer me away from art. I didn’t mind. I was so glad he took an interest in me, and he’s so darned smart, and he was so good to me.” He seemed to run out of words with which to express his mixed feelings about his older brother.

  A little of the fog began to dissipate from Brenda’s mind. “Is that why you chose to come to California when you left school, George? Because you thought Colin would be more understanding than the rest of your family?” She saw his eyes widen in horror, guessed the reason, and hastened to say, “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I’m a terribly snoopy goose. I asked Colin why he was so upset about your appearance—and he told me. I’m sure he wouldn’t have if he hadn’t been so surprised.”

  “I see.” George’s words came stiffly, and he sounded so much like his older brother that Brenda couldn’t hold in her laugh.