I Don't Know How the Story Ends

by J. B. Cheaney

  “What if we find a tall man and dress him in a surgeon’s coat and shoot him from the back?” I was stretching the fabric of possibility now but couldn’t seem to help myself. “And when the Youth comes to after his surgery, he looks up at the man’s face and it…it fades or somehow changes to an image of the picture?”

  “Dissolves. You’re thinking like a cameraman now,” he said, not without admiration. “But this calls for a big recognition scene with tears and all. And the only way we can end this thing is with Dad coming back and punching his brother in the nose and weeping over his mama in the hospital. You’ve let too many snakes out of the bag—we can’t chase ’em all down.”

  “But suppose Father still has work to do overseas—”

  “I can’t figure you out! You want him out as a villain, but now you hafta stick him back in as a hero, and we don’t have the time or the film for all this—and what is it with Father anyway?”

  I couldn’t tell him, because I wasn’t sure myself. Only that the film-cutting with Sam had shown me something about stories, and I couldn’t shake the sense that if we just told it right, it would prove true. “He can write a scathing letter to his brother or send some kind of legal document that takes the girls out of his control.”

  “I don’t know,” Ranger said. “A letter is weak—”

  “Not if it’s brought by Dauntless Youth, who comes home with a medal and his arm in a sling. Here’s where your train scene comes in, Ranger. The girls meet him at the station and hear his story, and the Youth goes to confront Uncle at the beer garden… Maybe we don’t even have to show you two together, but the Youth does his denouncing, and one of the uncle’s pals is outraged and punches him—punches the Uncle, not the Youth—and we could cut that floozie in too—so full of righteous indignation she dumps a mug of beer on Uncle’s head! The End, on a comic note.”

  Ranger chewed on the ending while I chewed my pencil. “All right,” he said finally. “It’s not as good as a man-to-man knockdown, and there’s a problem with shooting Father” (I couldn’t help wincing at his choice of words), “but I like the field hospital. And if we can find an old lady in a sanitarium, that could work too. Tell you what: if you keep Sylvie out of my hair for the rest of the afternoon, I’ll be so good Pa will have to let me out of bed, and tomorrow we can meet Sam at Echo Park.”

  Chapter 15

  Miss Blanche

  The price Ranger paid for getting out of bed the next day was a licking from his father for the Sundance incident. Oddly, this seemed to clear the air between them so they were on speaking terms again, even if the speech was not especially warm.

  We couldn’t meet Sam at Echo Park until the following morning. Ranger was so glad to be out that he turned a cartwheel on our way to the streetcar stop—though he had to limit himself to one because his head still hurt.

  But Sam quashed some of those high spirits after hearing the revised scenario. “Way too complicated. Where do we get a field hospital, not to mention a field surgeon? Not to also mention an invalid grandmother—which we don’t even need.”

  “We have to show that the girls have a good father,” Ranger insisted. “A good father wouldn’t leave them behind unless he knew they were in safe hands. And it wouldn’t be his fault if the grandmother got sick after he left and ended up in the hospital so the no-good brother has to take over. Of course, we can explain all that in a title card, but pictures are for showing.”

  “A hospital is a public place,” Sam pointed out. “What did I tell you about public places?”

  “Only semipublic,” I put in—obliged to support Ranger, since he’d accepted my scenario. “A place where most of the people are in bed couldn’t exactly be public, could it? If we found a hospital or sanitarium where there’s a porch or courtyard, and if we got there at the right time of day and explained to the nurses what we were doing…”

  “Explain what we’re doing,” Sam repeated flatly. “What are we doing?”

  “We’ll tell ’em we’re making a photographic record of the healing profession,” Ranger said confidently. “It’s true enough, and who wouldn’t want to be in a photographic record?”

  “I can think of a few,” Sam muttered. “Besides, you’ve stuck in twice as many war scenes—before, we just had you marching in a parade and scouting on horseback. Now, we’ve got that, plus you getting wounded and toted to the field hospital—with Sylvie as the ambulance driver maybe?”

  “All that might need a little more thought,” Ranger admitted. “But Grandma in the hospital—that’s easy, and it’ll add pathos to the picture.”

  Sam made a very brief remark about pathos, and Ranger tried to change his mind with no evident success, and it ended up a most unsatisfactory meeting.

  And I felt it more than Ranger did! On our way home, with Sylvie darting from one empty seat to another while the streetcar driver kept an edgy eye on her, I couldn’t help fretting out loud.

  “What if Sam backs out of the project?” I asked. “Is there any way we could get another camera?”

  “Not that I know of,” Ranger told me, disgustingly cheerful. “Sam gets foot-draggy every now and then. I’m used to it. He won’t back out, believe me. But how come you care so much all of a sudden?”

  “Who says I care that much?” The words came out snappish, and Ranger grinned at me. Because I did care, of course—a string of images on film had come to mean the world to me.

  “I’ll talk to him tomorrow,” Ranger said. “He’ll see the light.”

  Surpassing strange for Ranger to be the calm one, since he rarely was, but that state of affairs didn’t last long. For when his father joined us for dinner that night, he brought news of particular interest.

  After some random chitchat about Mack Sennett’s latest run-in with the Santa Monica police (when Mr. Sennett ran a Keystone Cop car off the pier and caused a panic among church picnickers who thought it was for real), and some good-natured teasing about Mother’s motion-picture career (“Don’t make a federal case of this, Titus,” she said warningly while I felt my ears getting hot)—after all that, and while the table was being cleared for dessert, Mr. Bell turned to his son and said, “By the way, I had lunch with D. W. this afternoon.”

  Ranger nearly choked on an éclair.

  “Congratulated him on Hearts of the World. Glad to see he’s back into solid, clean entertainment—though I didn’t tell him that, of course.”

  “I should hope not,” Aunt Buzzy said, laughing. “Let’s not get started on the merits of Intolerance.”

  “Water under the bridge,” Titus Bell agreed. “He has some interesting projects in mind. We agreed to talk further. Suppose we invite him over to dinner sometime in the next couple of weeks.”

  While he and Aunt Buzzy discussed dates, Ranger was struggling to force down his éclair, his eyes behind the glasses as round as nickels. “Say, Pa…”

  “Yes, my son?”

  “Would you… Could I…”

  “Join us for dinner? I don’t see why not.”

  • • •

  Unable to sleep, Ranger slipped into our room after eleven. “I’ve changed my mind about fathers. Mine’s not all bad.”

  “I thought he was a tight-fisted stuffed shirt,” Sylvie murmured sleepily from her bed.

  “Who said that?”

  “You did.”

  “Perish the thought.” Ranger waved away all previous opinions. “Know what I’m thinking? If we can have the picture finished by then, I’m going to ask him to see it. Mr. Griffith, I mean.”

  “Well, of course,” I said. “That was the plan all along, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but I wasn’t sure how it would really happen. Now that I know when and where, well… We have to finish it, Iz. Soon as possible, so we have plenty of time for cutting. Better forget the war scenes: no time.”

  I grabbed my fath
er’s picture from the nightstand and held it up. “Can we still use this?”

  “Sure. We’ll make the Youth a member of the Home Guard who stands ready to defend his country, but in the meantime he vows to defend Matchless and Little Sister. I’ll talk to Sam tomorrow and come to a meeting of minds. While I’m gone, see what you can do with the scenario.”

  Ranger left on his bicycle as soon as he could get away the next morning, after promising Aunt Buzzy he would pick up two pairs of high-top boots and a button hook at the shoe repair on Hollywood and Vine. Shortly after, I was trying to work up a scenario minus war scenes when Esperanza came to the drawing-room door to tell me I had a telephone call.

  “For me?” This was unheard-of. “Who is it?”

  “The young man who calls for Mr. Ranger sometime. I tell him he’s not home, he say he’ll speak to you.”

  Full of wonder, I followed her to the front hall where the telephone was. “Hello?”

  I heard the operator’s voice crackle, “Go ahead, Edendale.”

  “Isobel.” Sam’s voice sounded flatter than usual, or maybe that was just the wire. “Got a message for Ranger.” I didn’t tell him Ranger was on the way, but waited until he got some delicate throat-clearing taken care of. “For you too,” he continued. “Forest Grove Sanitarium on Thursday. Meet me by nine.”

  “What?”

  “Be sure to bring Sylvie.”

  “Of course we’ll bring Sylvie. But, Sam, what made you—”

  “See ya. ’Bye.”

  What made you change your mind? The question echoed long after he hung up so abruptly, and Ranger had no answers when he returned much later than Aunt Buzzy thought he should. At least he’d remembered the shoes.

  “It’s a mystery,” he said, once we’d retreated to the rose arbor. “Sam just told me it’s all set up, so we hashed out the shots. One of her and you and Sylvie, and a close-up of her and Sylvie, and one of you introducing me to her and she gives me her blessing.”

  “But what her? Who is she?”

  “Search me. He knows somebody at the sanitarium, I’ll bet. If she looks grandmotherly and takes direction, that’s enough for me.”

  • • •

  Forest Grove Sanitarium had a genteel but rundown air, like a French aristocrat reduced to washing dishes after the Revolution. An aristocrat, I might add, who did not bathe enough. It was a three-story brick building facing an ill-kept lawn with forlorn patches of grass spearing up unevenly. As we walked up the path, I noticed two wounded soldiers sitting under an alder tree, dressed in odd ensembles of uniform parts and pajamas. They made me feel a bit guilty, as though I should be visiting hospitals instead of making pictures.

  Sam met us in the front hallway. “The camera’s all set up. Light’s only good for thirty more minutes, so we’d better hoof it. You can call the lady ‘Miss Blanche.’”

  He led us to the second-floor gallery, where “Miss Blanche” reposed in the very last chair. She looked elderly enough to be a grandmother, but the eager gray eyes she turned our way had none of that faded, rheumy look you see in the aged.

  Sam introduced the three of us, and Ranger snapped to it, assuming his most winsome manner to explain to Miss Blanche what we were up to. Meanwhile, the lady’s eyes fastened on Sylvie. They never left Sylvie for long during the shooting, even when I took her hand or Ranger knelt down before the chair as though asking for her blessing. At one point, she got in her head that I was the maid and kept asking me for a needle and thread so she could sew up a tear in Sylvie’s dress. She nearly drove Ranger to distraction, but he persevered with various angles and sequences until Sam told him the film was almost gone. Sylvie had climbed up in the old lady’s lap by then, and the two of them were getting along famously.

  A fluttering sound in the camera like a frantic moth in a box signaled the end of the film. Sam straightened up, turned his cap around, removed the crank, and loosened the mounting bolts on the tripod in his usual efficient way. I noticed his eyes seemed brighter.

  “Come on, Sylvie,” I told her. “Say good-bye to Miss Blanche.”

  My sister kissed the lady on the cheek and began to ease off her lap, and that’s when the trouble started. Miss Blanche tightened her grip, and our efforts to break it only made her frantic. “No, you can’t have her. You can’t take my pet away. Hold tight, Trudy. No!”

  Sam let some pretty strong language slip just before he joined us. As he worked Sylvie loose, he told us to clear out. “Now! I’ll wrap it up here—just go!”

  With a last firm tug, he removed the lady’s hands from my sister, who was crying by now (Sylvie I mean). Miss Blanche was crying too, and as we made our escape, her sorrowful wail followed us: “Truuuudy!”

  “What was that all about?” Ranger exclaimed in the hallway. He paused to swing the sobbing Sylvie up in his arms.

  Two nurses, alerted by the hubbub, marched past us with starchy disapproval.

  “Fudge!” I stopped abruptly. “I left my pocketbook.”

  “Let it go. Sam’ll bring it.”

  “But it has our streetcar passes! Of all the… I remember exactly where I put it, on the coatrack near the door. Go on. I’ll meet you outside.”

  On the porch, Miss Blanche had caused quite a scene and the patients were buzzing with curiosity. I slipped behind them to get to the rack. I thought Sam had slipped away until one of the nurses around Miss Blanche turned aside with a hypodermic needle. There he was in a wicker chair, holding Miss Blanche’s hand.

  “I’d have thought you’d know better,” another nurse was scolding him. “Any more pranks like this—”

  I reached out and secured my pocketbook as the nurse with the needle bustled away. Miss Blanche, already much quieter, was moaning for Trudy as Sam hiked his chair closer and put an arm around her. Stroking her hair, he said, “It’s all right now, Mama. It’s all right.”

  I didn’t think he had noticed me, but before I could slip away he raised his voice a little. “It don’t work, Isobel. Some film can’t be cut.”

  I stammered out something—I don’t know what—but he never looked my way.

  • • •

  Ranger was pleased with the shots we got. Much to my relief, he entertained Sylvie in the streetcar so I could piece together what just happened. Rumor was that Mrs. Service had deserted the family after their tragedy. Maybe Jimmy Service himself had put out that story, once it was clear that a change in climate and scenery had done the missus no good. Not very noble, perhaps, but no worse than Mr. Rochester, who had shut his own wife in an attic and pretended she didn’t exist.

  The one I couldn’t understand was Sam. Knowing the state of his mother’s mind, what had possessed him to expose her to another little girl, only to tear her away again? The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. I was almost simmering when Sylvie bounced across the aisle and asked, “Who’s Trudy?”

  “She was Sam’s… She was Miss Blanche’s little girl, I think.”

  “Did she die?”

  “Probably.”

  “Then,” Sylvie declared, “I’m glad I could be her little girl for a while. She was glad too, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” I said. “For a while.” The lady’s face came to me unbidden, gazing at her little girl. If I were Sam, wouldn’t I want to see her like that just one more time? On film forever?

  But some film can’t be cut. In life, some of it had to stay, no matter how desperately you wished it away.

  By the time we reached our stop, the sun was at high noon and we were hot and starving. Halfway up the drive, Ranger caught sight of his father’s long, blue touring car in front of the house. It was supposed to be on its way to San Francisco with Titus Bell inside.

  “Maybe he’s been delayed for an urgent meeting with D. W.!” Ranger cried and galloped toward the house. Sylvie was right behind him, but I took my time.
If Ranger’s life revolved around Mr. Griffith, I was pretty sure his father’s life did not.

  And I was right. What delayed him had more to do with us.

  Chapter 16

  News

  The screen door banged behind me as I crossed the hall and entered the great room. There I found this tableau: Mother, pale-faced in the wing chair with a paper in her lap and Titus Bell by her side; Ranger near the door, biting his lip while Sylvie clung to his hand. Aunt Buzzy stood by the sideboard, a whiskey tumbler in one hand and a bottle of spirits in the other. Every eye, whether teary, shocked, or anxious, was on me.

  It was my worst dream come true. I could almost feel the shuddery ground of that nightmare battlefield under my feet. “Has something happened to Father?”

  “Dear Belladonna.” Aunt Buzzy set down the bottle and glass and hurried over, putting her arm around me. “It’s not so bad, and if we all pull together like troopers and put our chins up—”

  “What is it?” I demanded, pulling away from her. Whereupon Sylvie let loose a wail and bolted across the room to dive into Mother’s lap. I half noticed that Titus Bell rescued the paper just in time.

  Aunt Buzzy reached out a hand, then dropped it. “We got a letter from your father today. He wrote it himself, so we know it can’t be too bad—”

  “What can’t be bad?” I burst out again. “Someone tell me what happened!”

  “He’s been hurt.” Mother spoke up suddenly. “On the front. It seems he’s been going on ambulance runs instead of staying at the field hospital, but of course he would never tell us that, so we wouldn’t be worried.” She tossed her head in exasperation, as I recalled her doing when Father would come home late from a call without the pins or the half-dozen eggs she’d asked him to pick up for her.

  “How bad is it?” My voice sounded echoey in my ears.

  “Apparently his ambulance hit a mine.” Mr. Titus Bell took charge, and I was never so glad for his resoluteness as I was then. “The problem is, this letter is dated a month ago, and he writes as if there was one earlier that explained everything. He hurt his right arm. That’s all we can tell for sure. He says something about the bandages being taken off tomorrow, and… Well, here, Isobel. You’re old enough to read it for yourself.”