by Camille Eide
The sound of Millie clearing her throat from the other end of the room made Eliza jump. “You take lunch in here today, ma’am?”
Tempting as it was, Eliza had no intention of eating away her earnings.
Besides, Joan, one of the girls from her building, had invited her to a card party later that evening and there was sure to be snacks. And payday was coming soon. Life had been either feast or famine for so long she’d grown used to going without.
“No, thank you, Millie.” Eliza continued to work, pencil in her teeth and ignoring the rumble in her belly that began the moment Millie mentioned food. By some act of cosmic providence, Eliza had actually eaten supper the night before. On the bus ride home, she’d found a sack lunch containing an apple and half of a cheese sandwich. Normally, she wouldn’t eat food someone had left lying on a bus, but the half sandwich had been neatly wrapped in wax paper, the same way Betty would do for Sue Ellen or Eddie Jr.’s school lunch. Both the apple and the sandwich seemed perfectly fine, and since she couldn’t afford to faint on the job, she had taken her chances.
At a sound behind her, Eliza turned.
Millie hadn’t left the library but was standing at the back of the room with arms folded, watching her.
“Yes, Millie?”
The old woman lifted her chin, sending a flash of light from her glasses, like cowboys in a western signaling each other from their hiding places in the rocks. “Beg your pardon, ma’am,” Millie said evenly, voice firm. “But skippin’ meals ain’t smart. And you seem like a smart woman. That’s all.”
“Thank you, Millie, but I’m fine.” To Eliza’s dismay, the growl that came from her middle nearly drowned out her refusal.
Millie’s eyes narrowed. She tromped back to the kitchen muttering something in the same tone she’d used on Lucy Ricardo.
It wasn’t long before Eliza came across a page that not only wasn’t clear, it was slightly unsettling. John was making strange references to a menacing movie camera as if it had a mind of its own—like something from a Hitchcock film. The thoughts were so vague that she wasn’t sure if he meant it as a metaphor or if he meant to convince the reader that the camera was really alive.
Which made him sound crazy.
Which might then explain the red-faced woman’s early demise.
She stared at the page again. The penmanship was neat and firmly written. She had once interviewed a graphology specialist at a military base who analyzed handwriting to determine things about a person—hidden things.
Crazy things.
On the other hand, maybe a person had to be a little batty to work in Hollywood. Hopeful, she read it again, but her heart sank as she reached the end of the page. It was complete nonsense.
Eliza took the page and headed toward the dining room. Halfway there, she stopped.
John was clearly growing weary of her interruptions. What if he thought she couldn’t do the job?
What should I do?
Betty would tell her to simply do what she was being paid to do: correct grammatical issues and turn in an edited, typed manuscript before the deadline. But since the passage of text was so unclear, she had no choice but to go in there and ask him to clarify his work.
Again.
Wincing at the click of her footsteps, Eliza headed to the dining room.
The rising tone of Millie’s voice startled her. “—and that’s twice now. The woman ain’t nothin’ but skin and bones already, Mr. John. We gonna find her stone-cold dead on the floor any day now, just you—”
Eliza took an extra loud step and entered the dining room, page in hand.
Millie, bent near John’s side, straightened when she saw Eliza.
“So sorry to interrupt, but I—”
“Mrs. Saunderson,” John said. A plate of steak and onions and a dish of cobbler topped with ice cream sat in front of him. He examined Eliza’s frame with a glance so brief she may have imagined it. “I hope you’re not working through lunch?”
Millie stood silent, watching Eliza.
“Thank you, but I don’t—”
“Oh no,” Millie said, shaking her head at Eliza. “No, I’m sorry, ma’am, but you just bein’ unkind now.”
“Unkind?” Had Eliza offended the woman?
“All that food I made just gonna be thrown out,” Millie said. “Be a terrible, sinful waste. If you don’t take some, I could lose my job.”
Eliza studied John to make sure she’d heard right, but he was leaning back in his seat with arms folded, watching Millie.
“So if you don’t want to see a poor old woman beggin’ on the streets, you best take some. You can eat here or take it on home, but you gots to take somethin’.”
John turned back to his meal, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“I see.” What living soul would dare refuse such a performance? Apparently Johnny Devine wasn’t the only actor in the house. Much as she hated to do it, Eliza would just have to accept lunch and have the meal deducted from her wages. “Yes, thank you,” she said quietly. “But only if it’s not too much trouble.”
“No trouble at all,” John said, opening a folded napkin. “Millie?”
“Yes, Mr. John.” The woman grinned, forcing deep ripples from a lifetime of smiles into her cheeks. She tottered off toward the kitchen.
John indicated an empty chair beside him. “Please, have a seat.”
“Oh. I … didn’t know you meant … in here.”
John stiffened. He glanced out the window, his face a blank—almost. The discomfort in his expression was so faint that someone passing by probably wouldn’t notice it. “Millie can join us,” he said quietly. “Is that acceptable?”
As Millie returned, Eliza’s gaze followed the steaming steak until Millie set it down on the table. “I … suppose that would be fine,” Eliza said, her voice barely audible.
As she took her seat, John said, “Millie—”
“Right here, Mr. John.” The old woman stood at the end of the buffet, gnarled hands clasped, lips turned up slightly at the ends.
Inhaling the savory aromas of caramelized onions and juicy beef seared to perfection made Eliza dizzy. Her mouth watered as ribbons of steam curled up from the plate. Her stomach rumbled. She swallowed hard and took up her utensils.
“Gracious God,” John said, voice solemn.
Eliza halted and studied him.
John’s eyes were closed, his head bowed.
She put her utensils down and stared at her lunch, salivating.
“We thank You for this meal and for Your amazing grace and mercy. Forgive us, guide us, and empower us to follow Your way. May we be ever grateful. In Christ’s name, amen.”
Eliza had never heard such a prayer, and steak, onions, and buttered green beans had never tasted so good. Several times, Eliza had to remind herself to eat slowly, especially when she found John watching her. Why on earth had she agreed to eat in here? Couldn’t she have insisted on taking her lunch in the library?
Millie brought in a small dish and set it beside Eliza’s plate.
Eliza breathed in the fragrant scent of apple and spices, warm and sweet. The cobbler had been topped by a dollop of vanilla ice cream that drizzled tiny rivers of cream over golden streusel and pooled around the edges of the dish. Smiling, she took a bite. Amazing, heavenly, far more delicious than she could have imagined. Millie was some kind of saint—she had to be.
Millie came near with a silver coffee pot. “Coffee?”
“Oh! Yes, please,” Eliza mumbled, barely getting intelligible words out around a mouthful of cobbler. She covered her mouth and glanced at John.
With a deep frown, he took a bite of his dessert.
Her face burned. Could she be any more uncouth? John was probably accustomed to dining in upper class circles with celebrities and wealthy types. Eliza could almost feel the kick from Betty’s shoe beneath the table.
As Eliza sipped her coffee and willed herself to stop blushing, John took his napkin,
wiped his mouth, and reached for the page Eliza had brought to him.
She stilled. The tranquilizing effect of a full stomach had lulled her into a stupor, making her temporarily forget her dreaded mission. She swallowed her coffee wrong and lapsed into a coughing fit.
“Are you all right?” John asked, face tense. “Millie, some water for Mrs. Saunderson please.”
Eliza put up a hand. “No, I’m okay. Just went down the wrong way.” She coughed one more time, poked her glasses back into place, and cleared her throat. “So sorry. I’m fine.”
“Good.” He glanced at the page, then looked up and caught Eliza in a probing stare.
She braced herself. Time for another gentle, diplomatic explanation about the writing. Time to try to help him understand—
“What does Mr. Saunderson do for work, if you don’t mind my asking?”
At the unexpected question, Eliza dropped her gaze to her lap, where she folded her napkin into a crisp square. “He was killed in the war,” she said quietly. “In the Philippines.” She reached for her coffee and sipped, carefully this time.
“Oh. I’m so sorry to hear …” John stared out the window with a distant look, as if remembering something. Then he rose. For a moment, all he did was stand there beside his chair, eyes closed, with a grip on his cane that turned his knuckles white.
Eliza set her coffee cup down. Had he changed his mind? Maybe his mind had gone entirely elsewhere.
John limped to the window and stood with his back to her.
An old man crossed the lawn, bent nearly double and straining to push a rotary mower.
“So your husband is one of the fallen,” John said quietly. “A hero.”
Hero. Eliza would never deny that Ralph was a hero for giving his life to his country. It was just that his heroism began and ended with his military service. Somehow that heroism never managed to materialize in his personal life.
John unlatched the window and swung it open, drawing in the scent of cut grass. “Of course you’re widowed. I should have known.” He muttered something she couldn’t quite hear, something about how war robbed families of good men.
No, he wasn’t muttering. He was praying.
As he stood at the window, Eliza pressed a palm to her full belly. Remember what you came to do before you caved in and ate the better part of a steak. The deed still needed doing, and the more time she wasted, the more difficult her job would be. “When you’re ready to look at this page, there is a passage we need to revise.”
“Of course.” He eased out a sigh. “What mountain of mangled metaphors are we tackling now, Mrs. Saunderson?”
She cleared her throat. Bringing these issues to his attention wasn’t easy, but it would be even harder on John in the end if his publisher sent the manuscript back, dissatisfied. “This page … I’m afraid it’s just not quite clear.” She rose and took the sheet to him, then poked at her glasses, which were already as high as they could go.
He took the page and read the marked passage, the furrow of his brow deepening. He read it again and handed the paper back. Slowly, he paced across the room. “I don’t know. I suppose what I meant to say was how ironic it is that at the height of my career, with top billing and my name in lights all across the country, I was terrified.”
“Terrified? Why?”
“My greatest fear was that one day, when it no longer had use for me, the camera would turn on me without warning. At any moment, the shot would fade to black, then come back into focus from backstage and zoom in with unforgiving clarity—behind the bright lights and makeup and brilliant lines.”
Eliza stared at him, the meaning of his muddled passage about the camera suddenly clearing. She hurried to the table, turned the page over, and jotted in shorthand.
John returned to the window. “Then the camera would pan in on the skilled professionals buzzing around me,” he said. “The clever set designers, the expert makeup artists, the talented cameramen, the swooning co-stars, the brilliant directors—and the camera would reveal the disappointing truth. It would finally expose the masterfully built mirage, the empty illusion that was Johnny Devine.”
She took down every word, working her pencil as fast as she could, and then looked up, waiting for more.
He shook his head. “That was the fear I lived with every minute of every day. At any moment, I would be exposed as the fraud that I knew I was.”
When she finished jotting, she stood with paper in hand and read over what she had written. “Yes, that’s much clearer.” She turned to him. “It’s quite good, actually.”
Millie cleared her throat.
John turned to the woman. “Did you … have something to add, Millie?”
“Oh no. You the storyteller, Mr. John, not me.” She cocked her gray head. “But I was thinking …”
Brows raised, John waited. “Yes?”
“Maybe instead of you writin’ it and then Miz Eliza runnin’ all over creation tryin’ to straighten it out, maybe you could just tell her your story and let her write it. Proper like. Then she can type it up clean as a whistle.”
“You mean have him dictate the story to me.” A dozen thoughts vied for Eliza’s attention at once.
Millie nodded. “Yes, ma’am.” She turned to John. “You dictate your story to Miz Eliza, and she help it come out right the first time. Just makes sense to me, that’s all.”
John shook his head, his gaze aimed toward the entryway and the library beyond. “It wasn’t my intention to … work that way.”
“Actually, it is a good idea,” Eliza said, energized by the hope of making better progress. Millie was correct; dictation made far more sense than the way they were doing it now. It would solve much of the needless difficulty of the task and also get the book back on schedule. “I could take shorthand while you tell me what you want to say, and if I need any clarification, I can ask as we go. Then I can type what we’ve composed at the end of each day. It would certainly speed things up.”
John’s gaze alternated from Eliza to Millie. “The book has fallen behind schedule,” he said. “Perhaps dictating would make up for lost time.”
Millie and Eliza nodded in unison.
He stared at Eliza. “You realize this means working together.”
“Yes,” she said, her cheeks instantly on fire. They both knew what he referred to, but she saw no need to address the issue again. She’d made herself quite clear at the interview. “But I’m afraid there’s one thing I need to warn you of.”
He tightened his grip on his cane, as if bracing himself. “Yes?”
“This kind of editorial work would be considered collaboration, and for that, the employment agency may charge extra.”
“Ah.” John relaxed. He peered at her with a long look. “I see. And exactly how much extra are we talking about?”
Eliza’s chest tightened. “I have to check with the agency to be sure, but I believe it would be twenty-five cents more per hour.”
John scratched his clean-shaven chin, deep in thought.
Now what had she done? What if he thought she was just using his pressing situation for her personal gain? He could decide to get someone else. Itchy sweat popped out along her brow.
“All right, I’ll agree to that. I’ll have Duncan move a desk into the library for me. Millie, if you wouldn’t mind …”
“Yes, Mr. John.” Millie glanced at Eliza with a knowing nod. “I know just what to do.”
“Swell,” he said. “It looks like we’ve just solved our problem.”
“Yes. Very good,” Eliza said. She wasn’t about to tell either of them that they may have only exchanged one problem for a whole set of new ones.
If there was a God, I didn’t want to know Him. There were already enough people trying to control my life.
~The Devine Truth: A Memoir
5
After lunch, John surprised Eliza by coming into the library carrying a stack of handwritten pages. Pencil poised above the paragraph she was revisi
ng, she turned and watched him amble around the room, cane in one hand, pages in the other. He seemed a bit lost.
Did he mean to begin dictating now, even though she wasn’t finished retyping his first chapters? “Did you have something you need me to type?” Mr. …?
How could she call him John? The man was a famous film star with an Oscar and two Golden Globes, for pity’s sake.
“No, I’m working in here now so you can tell me if—I mean when—you need me.”
Apparently, he was making himself available to assist with the pages she still needed to retype. “That should be very helpful, thank you.”
He turned and continued his stroll, pacing the length of the room while reading back over his newest pages.
Eliza also returned to her task, forcing herself to concentrate on the passage she was revising. The man was clearly unaware of how distracting his presence was, and even more, his aimless movement. If only he would sit down.
But he didn’t, so she did her best to ignore him.
While Eliza worked and John strolled, Millie came in, followed by the leathery old man Eliza had seen earlier. She presumed he was Duncan, the handyman. He was no bigger than Millie, but since he stood with a fixed stoop, it was hard to know how tall he really was.
Eliza turned her attention back to her work, but couldn’t help wondering why John kept two such elderly workers.
“Mr. John need this table in front of that chair over there,” Millie said in a loud whisper.
Eliza glanced over her shoulder.
Millie was pointing at the upholstered chair near the fireplace where John had sat during her interview.
“So it’s just the one table then, Millie?” the man said.
“Yes, just the one,” Millie said over her shoulder as she shuffled toward the kitchen.
Duncan lifted the bill of his stained cap and scratched his forehead. “Sure, and the minute I’m up to my elbows in compost again, you won’t be calling me back to rearrange the rest of the room?”
Millie turned back and gave him a tight-lipped look. She pointed at a small round table in the corner. “Like I said, this table in front of that chair.”