Starstruck

by Rachel Shukert

  Dane bounded out of the car, hand outstretched. “Dr. Allenby.”

  “Mr. Forrest,” said the man, shaking Dane’s hand warmly. “Always a pleasure.”

  “Thank you so much for allowing us to come on such short notice.”

  The doctor nodded cordially. “Of course. Anytime.”

  “And … how are things?” Dane asked. His voice had an anxious edge.

  “Oh, I’d say pretty steady,” Dr. Allenby replied carefully. “Nothing I’d call a major setback. Still, the progress has been quite a bit slower than I’d like.”

  “Is there nothing you can do to speed things up?”

  The doctor sighed. “Mr. Forrest, it’s as I’ve always said. In a case like this, the healing process is vastly influenced by the patient’s mental state. The physical recovery is almost beside the point. She has to want to get better.”

  She. An involuntary shudder jolted through Margo’s body. There was only one person in the whole world that “she” could be.

  “And does she? How would you characterize her mental state?”

  The doctor sighed again. “Let’s just say she has her good days and her bad days.” He smiled. “Just like anyone, I suppose. But why don’t you see for yourself?” He tilted his head at the nurse by his side. “Nurse Morisco will take you.”

  “Thank you, that’s very kind.”

  “Of course.” Dr. Allenby headed back toward the entrance of the house. “I’ll be in my office if you have any questions.”

  “This way, please,” said the nurse with a brisk nod. Obediently, Dane and Margo followed her down the steps and around the side of the building. “She’s out on the lawn today, getting some fresh air. I’m afraid it was a rather difficult night.”

  Dane stiffened. “How so?”

  The nurse’s eyes flickered toward Margo. “She got hold of one of those picture magazines—”

  “What?” The color drained from Dane’s face. “We specifically said … I mean … how could you let this happen?”

  “It seems one of the younger nurses left it lying around by accident. She’s been reprimanded, of course,” Nurse Morisco added quickly. “It won’t happen again. She’s been given a sedative, so she’s calm now, although she may seem a little more disoriented than usual. Still, I wouldn’t say or do anything that might upset her.” The nurse cast a long, meaningful glance in Margo’s direction. “You must be Miss Sterling,” she said.

  “Margo, please.”

  “Mr. Forrest didn’t mention you were coming.”

  “No.” Margo forced out a nervous little chuckle. “Nor to me.”

  “It’s very important that Margo be here,” Dane said firmly. “Very important indeed.”

  Nurse Morisco pressed her lips together in obvious disapproval. “In that case, Mr. Forrest, I suppose you know best.”

  They were behind the mansion now, walking across an expansive green lawn. They passed a small vegetable garden being carefully tilled by a handful of patients in green gardening aprons. A pair of nurses hovered nearby. A few other patients sat at a small grouping of easels, frowning over their boxes of watercolors with quiet concentration, the deliberative slowness of their movements adding to the feeling of eerie calm. It’s almost like being underwater, Margo thought.

  Nurse Morisco pointed across the lawn to a wicker wheelchair, positioned to face the sea. “That’s her. She’s been a bit agitated lately, so please try to keep your voices and your movements very calm. I’ll be right over here if you need me.”

  Dane gave Margo’s hand a squeeze. “Ready?”

  She squeezed his in return. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  And calmly—very calmly—they walked across the lawn to meet Diana Chesterfield.

  Dane knelt on the grass in front of the motionless figure in the wheelchair, leaning forward to press a gentle kiss against her forehead. “My darling. How are you?”

  Peering into the face of her idol for the first time, Margo felt a strange chill. It wasn’t just because of the wheelchair, or the unsettling silence of their surrounding—although in all the years she had imagined meeting Diana, it had never been in circumstances quite like this. There’s something missing, Margo thought.

  She was suddenly reminded of a Shirley Temple doll Doris used to have. With its deep dimples, bouncy yellow ringlets, and adorably chubby cheeks, it was a perfect replica of the beloved child star, and yet there was something about the doll’s blank, unmoving stare that Margo had always found deeply creepy.

  That’s how Diana looks, Margo thought. All the right features were there—the slanted blue eyes, the famous Chesterfield cheekbones—but something essential seemed to have been drained out of them. Sitting stiffly in the chair, staring glassily ahead, she looked like a doll. A Diana Chesterfield doll.

  She was wearing a dressing gown of apricot silk over a set of blue Mandarin pajamas, the frog clasp left open at the throat. A pair of sunglasses was lying neglected in her lap, one of the earpieces splayed open crookedly, like a broken wing. Her voice was as strangely hollow as her expression as she slowly lifted a hand to point at Margo. “Is this the new stand-in?”

  “No, darling, this is Margo. Go on.” He gave Margo a nudge. “Say hello.”

  Margo took a step toward Diana, reflexively dropping into a little half curtsey. She felt like a fool, but it seemed as if some kind of subservient gesture was expected. “I’m so happy to meet you,” she said. “Dane has told me so much about you.”

  “She’s much too tall, Ernie,” Diana said. “They’ll never get the angles right.”

  Ernie? Margo thought, glancing back at Dane. Does she even know who he is?

  Dane, however, seemed unconcerned at being called the wrong name. “No, darling, I told you. Margo isn’t the stand-in. She’s my friend.”

  She was still staring at Margo with that same glassy gaze. “And you’re going to bed with her.”

  “Diana, please,” Dane said firmly. “Be a good girl.”

  “I don’t mind, you know.” Her eyes were awash with tears. It was the first hint of emotion she had shown since she’d laid eyes on them, and its transformative effect was startling. There she is, Margo thought. A melancholy goddess, gazing luminously up at Dane, exactly as she had done in picture after picture. “I never mind. I just want my darling to be happy.”

  “Then get well,” Dane said quietly. “And come home. That would make me happy.”

  Diana let out a staccato cackle, her eyes glazing over as the color left her face. She was once again an empty shell. “They haven’t sent me my script yet, you know.”

  Dane sighed. “I know.”

  “Well, can’t you see that they do? How on earth am I supposed to prepare if I can’t see my lines? They’ll be terribly cross with me, and that won’t do. Not at this stage.” Diana twisted the silk sash of her robe worriedly around her fingers. “It must have been stolen.” She pointed at Margo again. “She stole it, didn’t she?”

  Gently, Dane folded his hand over her accusatory finger. “No, darling, you’re mistaken. Margo didn’t steal anything.”

  “Stop lying!” Diana shrieked. “Don’t lie!”

  Nurse Morisco swooped to her side, grabbing Diana’s flailing hands in her own. “Now, now, honey,” said the nurse, holding Diana’s arms firmly down against the chair. “This lady doesn’t have anything of yours. Do you understand? This lady is Mr. Forrest’s friend, and you must be kind to her, or he won’t be able to come and see you anymore. Do you understand?” Diana shook her head. The nurse grabbed her chin and stared directly into her eyes with calm but undeniable force. “Do you understand?”

  Diana inclined her head in the tiniest of nods. “Good.” Nurse Morisco turned to Dane and Margo. “I’m afraid she’s tired. I’d better take her back to her room.”

  “Of course,” Dane said. “Whatever you think is best.” He knelt before the wheelchair once again, gazing up into Diana’s face. With his hair mussed, he looked like a small boy at
his mother’s feet. “I’ll come back and see you as soon as I can, I promise.”

  “It’s so bright, Ernie,” Diana replied. “Can’t you tell them to turn down the lights?”

  Dane picked up her sunglasses, which had fallen from her lap onto the grass. He turned them over in his hands, examining them as though they were some strange artifact from a distant land, before he carefully placed them over her eyes.

  “Thank you, Ernie.” Diana smiled. “You always know how to fix everything.”

  With a brisk nod of farewell, Nurse Morisco wheeled her patient toward the house. Dane watched them until they had turned the corner, then rose to his feet and stood with his back to Margo, facing the sea.

  Margo watched the gentle rise and fall of his shuddering shoulders with a kind of anguished awe. She had never seen a grown man cry before. She longed to comfort him, but it seemed somehow like a terrible intrusion. Like making love in another woman’s bed.

  Awkwardly, she reached into the pocket of the faded calico dress, eager for something to do with her hands, and felt something soft. It was a square of white cloth, clean and folded and smelling of lavender.

  A handkerchief. Margo smiled. Just like he’s always given me.

  Silently, she held it out to him. They stood for a long time, and when at last his shoulders stopped trembling, she brushed his arm, just so he’d know she was there.

  Absently, he reached for her hand. “She was pregnant, you know.”

  “Oh.” What else could she possibly say? “I see.”

  “She couldn’t have it. The studio wouldn’t let her. She was at the height of her career, in the middle of her busiest year yet. And what’s more, she was unmarried. Every contract player at Olympus, no matter how big or small, has a strict morality clause in their contract. Standard policy. Ever since the Hays Code went into effect.”

  Margo nodded. The office of Will Hays, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America, acted as Hollywood’s all-powerful, if self-appointed, censor, policing every picture a studio released for any hint of what it deemed “immoral” content, a monitoring that all too often carried over into the public—and sometimes private—lives of its stars. “I know. It’s something Mr. Karp is very keen on pointing out.”

  Dane gave a rueful laugh. “They’re almost never enforced, of course. I mean, no adultery, premarital sex, excessive drinking, homosexuality …” He shook his head. “There wouldn’t be an actor still working in Hollywood. Mostly, the studios just use them to intimidate people into doing as they’re told. But for a star to have a child out of wedlock … well, that’s different. Much harder to hide. And if it ever got out, there wouldn’t be a theater in America willing to show her pictures. Her career would be over for good.”

  “That’s horrible,” Margo said.

  “It’s just how it is.” Dane gave his eyes a final, matter-of-fact wipe. “And look, she’s hardly the first actress to find herself in that kind of trouble. There are ways to handle it. Nobody’s going to buy the old this-here-baby-I-just-happened-to-adopt story anymore, not after that stunt Loretta Young pulled with Gable. But there’s a clinic just south of Santa Barbara, not too far from here. Safe, discreet, expensive. The sensible girls go up there on a Friday and make a weekend of it.” He smiled sadly. “But Diana never was a particularly sensible girl.”

  “You mean she wanted to have it?” Margo asked, wide-eyed.

  Dane shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know what she wanted. I’d been away on location for a few days. We were supposed to have dinner the night I came back. I went over to the house to pick her up and found her lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs.” A choke of a sob crept back into Dane’s throat. “I still don’t know what happened. I don’t know if she fell, or if she did it on purpose … if she was trying to get rid of it herself, or even …” He shook his head again, as if to defend against the horrible thought.

  “So what did you do?” Margo asked.

  “What do you think I did? I called Larry Julius. He was on the scene in five minutes flat. Private ambulance and everything. After all, we couldn’t run the risk of information this juicy falling into the hands of the wrong paramedic.” He barked out a bitter laugh.

  “Oh, Dane.” She didn’t know what else to say.

  “I didn’t know she was pregnant until they told me at the hospital. She lost the baby, obviously. Fractured her ankle and one of her wrists.” Dane sighed. “But the real problem was with her head.”

  “You don’t mean … brain damage?”

  “Nothing that wasn’t damaged already. The first few days in the hospital, she wouldn’t speak. And then when she started talking, she couldn’t stop. Raving for hours about people who were out to get her, seeing things that weren’t there. She was convinced the studio had put some kind of radio in her head so they could listen in on her conversations, maybe even read her mind. Don’t think I didn’t see a little lightbulb go on over Larry Julius’s head when she came out with that one.”

  “The doctor called it a full psychotic break,” Dane continued, “so we brought her up here. And since then, it’s been pretty much the same. Sometimes she seems fine, other times … well …” He shook his head. “I’m glad today wasn’t one of those times.”

  “You mean today was a good day?”

  “Today was a happy medium.”

  Margo shut her eyes, struggling to take in everything Dane had just said. “But I still don’t understand,” she said. “Why all the secrecy? Why not just tell the press the truth from the beginning?”

  “The press? Are you serious?”

  “Well, not the whole truth, obviously,” Margo amended. “But why not say Diana’s recuperating from an accident, that she’s not well—”

  “Because The Nine Days’ Queen was already in production!” Dane shouted. “Because the studio had two million dollars riding on her snapping out of it. And in the beginning, we all thought she might. Later, when it became clear that wasn’t going to happen …” He looked over his shoulder, at the empty spot on the grass where Diana had sat. “That’s when Larry Julius had the idea to gin up the mystery angle.”

  “But why?”

  Dane gave her a sorrowful smile. “Because he found you, Margo.”

  “Me?”

  “Diana’s replacement. If he could keep up the public’s interest in Diana, he could keep interest going in you. Either you became a moneymaking property in your own right, or the stage is set for Diana’s magnificent comeback, the likes of which has not been seen since the resurrection of Christ. He could save the movie. He could protect the studio.”

  Diana’s replacement. So it was true. She heard Leo Karp’s voice in her head: “If Diana were here, what would we do with you?” Diana Chesterfield had been her idol, her inspiration, the woman she had dreamed of becoming one day. Well, that day was here. And the woman she’d adored was the one who could take it all away. Should Diana recover, they would never be the glamorous best friends of Margo’s girlish daydreams, shopping and going on double dates and having glitzy adventures all around town. They’d make us destroy each other, Margo thought, or be destroyed.

  Dane was staring bleakly out at the ocean. “If only she’d told me,” he said. “If only I’d known. I could have helped her. I would have done anything for her. I would have talked to the studio, given her money, anything.…”

  “Why didn’t you marry her?” It was crazy to be furious at the man she’d been pining over for months for failing to make an honest woman of her greatest rival, but her rage on Diana’s behalf, at the terrible turn of fortune that had bound their fates together, knew no bounds.

  “Marry her?” Dane looked as though she had just placed a loaded gun against his temple. “Marry her?”

  “It would have been the decent thing to do,” Margo insisted. “The right thing. It would have fixed everything. She could have had the baby; you could have gone on with your lives—”

  “It wasn�
��t my baby.”

  “She could have—” Margo stopped midsentence, looking at Dane with her mouth agape. “What? What did you say?”

  “It wasn’t my baby. And I couldn’t marry Diana, even if, God help me, I wanted to.” Dane began to laugh, a horrible, anguished laugh that racked his body. “You see, Margo, Diana Chesterfield was never my lover. Diana Chesterfield is my sister.”

  Margo felt her legs give way. The ground came up to meet her, and she gripped the grass tightly with both hands, as though it were the last thing tethering her to the earth. “Your sister,” she repeated dully. “Diana Chesterfield is your sister.”

  Dane nodded grimly. His face was deathly pale. “Yes.”

  “But you were in love.” Margo felt a balloon expanding rapidly inside her chest. “You were her … her …” The balloon popped. “Who are you?”

  “Margo, let me explain.”

  “What kind of sick, twisted—”

  “Margo, please! You can’t scream here!”

  A flock of nurses were already barreling toward them, white-aproned and ready for action. Dane caught her hand tightly before she had a chance to protest, and together they walked quickly to the farthest end of the lawn, where a grove of trees surrounded a small artificial brook. Beside the brook was a limestone bench with a well-worn seat.

  “Sit down,” Dane said.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Please.” Dane’s eyes were clear and sad. “The story you’re about to hear is extremely difficult for me to tell. When I have finished, you will be one of only three people in the world who knows it, and one of them is currently babbling in the loony bin. And so I would appreciate it if you would stop looking at me like I’m some kind of monster.”

  His hands were shaking. He’s terrified, Margo thought. No matter who Dane was, or what he had done, her heart went out to him.