“What do you mean, she’d gone?”
“Maria,” he said, and Maria came over. She had towels in her arms and a leaf print scarf tied over her mouth. Maria set her towels by the medical book. When she talked, her breath floated the leafy scarf. A mouth sail.
“You girls need to leave right now,” she said. “You’ve got your answers. Dr. Ostrander, permission granted.”
“You cleaned her?” I asked Maria.
“Your sister? No. She stood and left. She didn’t say anything. I tried to clean her, and she left.”
That wasn’t Rose. She’d always been full of words. “Why would she leave?”
Dr. Ostrander to Maria: “Husband on his way?” And to me: “It’s all I know. I wasn’t her doctor. I never treated her. So,” he said to Madge, “no emergency bill.”
“She left when, around two thirty? Did you see who she was with?”
Maria said, “The man who brought her had gone, I think. I don’t know who gave her a ride.”
Madge, beside me, grabbed my arm. “A man?”
“The man,” I said. “Who was he?” It didn’t matter, because anyone could have picked her up along Sunset. That’s what I’d told Rose to do—flag a car. So she did, and a nameless guy took her to the hospital, helped her inside. Then he left. The guy didn’t matter, he was the ride.
“Smooth-looking,” Maria said. “Dirty face.”
The only smooth-looking dirty face I’d seen on Halloween was Marty Martin, but he’d run off. He’d have been far away when Rose reached Sunset.
“Black pants, black shirt,” Maria said. “I think it was a costume. He wore blackface.”
But he’d run off, hadn’t he? Marty with a sooty face and black clothes, scared off, wouldn’t wait to see if Rose was okay. If he’d waited, he did so for another reason, and I couldn’t think of many: to see what Rosemary would do, or to see what Rosemary would say. Either reason, they were to keep Marty safe, not Rose.
Dr. Ostrander wheeled Bed Four from the room. More voices, a phone ringing. Maria lifted her hands at us: Will you leave? Patients groaned in their line of beds, the air smelled like shrimp dip. Rose had been here. Marty Martin had brought her. She didn’t wait to be cleaned, she got up and left, and all I could think, all I could feel, from my crawling skin to my fists, was that my lawyer had killed her.
* * *
Madge bought me dinner at Tick Tock. We sat in a booth and ate chicken pot pies and drank big Coke floats with foam so high we had to lick the tops. We had to wipe foam from the table. Madge used her fingers to wipe foam and then stuck her fingers in her mouth and sucked. She didn’t know about Marty Martin, and I couldn’t tell her that he was more than a lawyer.
“I was right,” I said. “The ambulance entrance. Dr. Frith must have wandered like he does. Agnes said he stayed at the hospital all night sometimes. Why not Halloween? Say he stayed the night. He’s eaten dinner, Agnes brought it before she left, but he forgets. He’s hungry again. He doesn’t realize it’s the middle of the night. Empty hallways, and the lights buzz and flicker. Zzzt. Zzzt.”
“A horror show,” Madge said.
“Exactly. Shadowy corners. The stairwells are gaping black holes. I can see the poor doctor in the hallways. Wandering, calling for Agnes.”
“Poor doctor, my ass. We’d have to view him from behind so we don’t see him ogling patients. The camera follows him so we don’t see his face. That way we notice his feet shuffling and how his jacket’s too big. The jacket hangs. Then a close-up on his feet. I think Wally Beery should play Dr. Frith.”
“John Gilbert.”
“He’s dead.” Madge twirled her Coke float with a straw. Her ice cream bobbed. “Though he shuffled pretty good toward the end. Lionel Barrymore would work.”
“Yes. Lionel Barrymore. Shuffling the hallways. He calls for Agnes.”
“Agnes! Agnes?”
“He calls and calls,” I said. “No Agnes. He’s wandered across the whole hospital to the emergency room. He hears a noise and thinks—”
“Tickle your tunnel, little girl?”
“You’re ruining it.”
“Sorry. Agnes? Where is my Agnes?”
“He’s closer,” I said. “He sees light through a doorway. He looks beyond into a room with a bunch of hospital beds, all full, but his eyes turn to one bed.”
“She’s sitting, holding her cut hand. His Agnes.” Madge raised one hand like it hurt her.
“Yes, his Agnes with gold hair. He hasn’t seen her in so long. He misses her so much.”
“We’re still viewing the scene from behind. The camera trails Barrymore through the room, and we can see Rose’s face as she waits for a doctor to help her. She’s not Agnes.”
“No,” I said. “Not Agnes, but Barrymore thinks she is.”
“Are you eating that foam?”
“Don’t touch my foam,” I said.
“All I have left is Coke.”
“Get your hands off my foam.”
“Agnes, here you are, at last.” Madge sucked a plop of my foam into her mouth from her fingers. “Mmm. I’ve been looking so long, my darling. I’ve wandered the world.”
“Rose is in shock. She’s shocky, but she knows she’s not Agnes.”
“She’s not Agnes. She’s Glinda the Good Witch. Lionel Barrymore scares her. He shuffles near. Close-up on Glinda, eyes wide, mouth wide. Blood smears her cheek. She forgets her cut hand and knows only that she must run, get away from the shuffling monster.”
“The shuffle’s important, isn’t it?”
“Essential,” Madge said. “Monsters shuffle. Think of Lon Chaney.”
“Glinda flees.”
“Come back, says Barrymore. My beloved. What about our ten children?”
“Ten?”
“Anyway,” Madge said. “That’s how it happened.”
“Then later Barrymore sees the flyer posted on the hospital board, and he remembers he’d found his Agnes.”
“Heartbreaking,” Madge said.
“It is, isn’t it? That poor man.”
“At least now we know.”
Yes, now we could picture the truth, except when Glinda left the hospital: Who did she meet, what happened to her? That part was a different movie.
Madge drank the last of her Coke. She looked in her glass, empty but thick with ice cream smears. “I didn’t want you to be a friend.”
“I know.” I looked in my own empty glass.
“I hate friends.”
“Me, too. Especially when they steal my foam.”
Madge looked from her glass to me. She laughed. “I’m thirsty for something real,” she said. She paid for our food, and we left.
I loved that Coke float at Tick Tock. The restaurant was stuffed with people, but they didn’t count. We didn’t see them. We had our horror show.
If you asked me to point to a time in Hollywood when I felt I belonged there, when moment and place came together and I’d remember them perfect and right, I’d tell you, The dinner at Tick Tock. Madge stealing my foam and us laughing. How we built our movie and believed in it, and a radio by the cashier played “Sing My Heart.”
CHAPTER 22
Says Linda Darnell: “The person who lacks poise often manages to preserve a certain calmness of expression.”
—Photoplay, November 1940
It was past twilight by the time we got back to the Gardens. Bath night for me. Madge parked on the boulevard behind an old pickup. I didn’t know it was my brother’s pickup until he yelled.
“He’s calling you. That guy.” Madge pointed at Will.
“Penny. Pen!”
“You ignoring him?”
I wasn’t sure. I might be ignoring him, I hadn’t decided yet. Will got out of his truck.
Madge watched him. “You have a date?”
“Go take your bath,” I said. “Leave me hot water.”
“Joe’s following you. Now you’ve got two guys.”
“Where?”
> “Across the street. Past the traffic light,” Madge said. “How do you get two guys and still dress like that?”
“Take your bath,” I said. In front of Will’s truck, across the street, and beyond the traffic light, I saw Joe in his squad car. I saw his cop hat, shiny above a face I could barely separate from shadow. I would have missed him except for Madge, who could spot any guy near her. I hardly saw him now, even though I knew he was there.
“Penny,” Will said. I looked at Madge.
“I know,” she said. “Hot water.” She ran the alley between buildings. She’d gulp a drink first, a big whiskey drink, then take her bath, where she’d use all the hot water and the Career Girls would yell. With Rose it had been the same, minus the whiskey.
“Who was that?”
“A friend,” I said.
“You have friends here?”
“No.”
“Can you talk?”
“Will. Why are you here? I’m tired. I’m not coming home to help pick.”
“Talk for a minute. Just one minute. Here, sit down.” He sat on the curb, and I sat next to him. I only sat down because Joe couldn’t spy on me when I sat between cars. I was too low, and he couldn’t see. Cars drove past and couldn’t see us, either. We were part of the street.
“Mom’s okay?” My feet crunched on trash.
“She’s fine. She wants to know if you’re coming for Thanksgiving.”
“That’s why you’re here, to ask about Thanksgiving?”
“Are you?”
“No,” I said.
“I’m sorry you got arrested,” he said. The streetlamps near the curb sputtered and lit. Even with streetlamps Joe still couldn’t see me, not from inside his car. I saw Will, though. I could see him without turning my face, through the streetlamp and sifting, floating dust that swarmed the light like no-see-ums. He looked speckled. “Your best friend murdered and you’re arrested for it,” he said.
“I didn’t kill her.”
“I know.”
“I couldn’t have.”
“I know.”
“You came here to tell me about Halloween,” I said. “Not Thanksgiving, that’s not why you’re here.”
“I guess,” he said. He rolled a pebble in his fingers. He reached for a bigger chunk of rock. “Navels are up, over twenty-five cents a pound.”
“You robbed Stany’s house on Halloween,” I said. “I thought you killed Rose.”
“I didn’t kill her.”
“I know. I didn’t know then, but now I do. You’re still a bastard. You ran out of that backyard. I saw you, and you saw me. Except you left, you left her in that house, and she was bleeding. I helped her, and I’m arrested. What do you think about that?”
“I love her,” he said. He threw his rock at a passing car. The rock hit a fender and bounced. “I’m a bastard.”
“Are you here because you feel guilty? Don’t talk to me then. I don’t care how guilty you feel.”
“You want me to leave?”
“Why would you break into houses? God, Will. Bel-Air. Holmby Hills. Those people breathe and a cop comes running. God. Did Rose talk you into it? Where’s the stuff? What happens to Mom if you’re caught?”
“Pen.”
“What happens to Daisy, or me? What happens to Mom?”
“All right, all right.” He looked toward me—looked into the streetlamp glare—and I saw him crying. “We lose it. The house, everything. But how’s that different from me hiring goddamn pickers for a useless crop? We’re losing everything anyway. You see what Knott’s doing? He’s plowed under half an acre to build that goddamn ghost town. Maybe you’d see if you came home. People don’t want fruit, they want something to do. They line up to watch each other, not for some chicken dinner. Nobody makes chicken that good. Christ, they’re all in a line over there staring at each other. And where are we? They’re not standing in line for oranges, Pen. We have another year, maybe.”
“Did Rose talk you into it?”
He shook his head. “You don’t listen.”
“I listen,” I said. “Here’s what I heard: You have to rob houses because Mr. Knott wants to buy our property. Poor Will, trying to hold the family together. So Rosemary meets the wrong guy and they decide, Hey, let’s rob movie stars, and Rosemary talks you into it because you’re a sucker for her, and you become this night bandit who runs when Rose gets in trouble.”
“I didn’t know you were there. I panicked,” he said. “We ran right by you, and I saw you, but I didn’t know it was you. I couldn’t figure it. I mean, I was scared. Later I kept thinking, did I see Pen or not? I didn’t know what was real.”
“What’s real?” I was angry, but I understood, because I’d felt the same a year ago after my date with Teddy. Even with thighs that hurt when I walked, I still thought: Did it happen? Did Teddy shove me against that wall until the paint chipped and nails wedged in my back? The bad things we never imagine happening to us still seem like they couldn’t happen, even after they do. I wasn’t pushed in a room and forced until I bled. Will didn’t see his sister when he turned coward and ran out of Stany’s yard.
“You’re wrong,” Will said. “Rosie didn’t talk me into it. She wouldn’t have done that.”
Right, because afterward it seemed like she couldn’t have, even if she did.
“I went to her. I had the idea, but I didn’t know where, you know? Rose knew where people lived and she had guts, but she still didn’t want to. I told her that Mom and Daisy depended on it. I said Daisy was near homeless.”
“That’s a lie.”
“How do you know?”
“You didn’t go to her. You wouldn’t do that.”
“I did. My idea, Pen. Besides, it’s not so far from stealing cantaloupes or tomatoes. How often did we sneak into somebody’s field? Houses are just a stretch more. Not much of a stretch.”
“We had rules.”
“There’s always rules! Any field without cars. Tomatoes and squash and watermelon—”
“I don’t remember those rules. We only stopped at company-owned fields.”
Will threw another rock at a car and I heard ting when it hit. From the car came a voice: “Hey! You throwing rocks!” But the car was moving past us, down the street.
“You’re something, really something,” Will said. “You know? You want to think Rosie’s so bad she talked me into robbing houses. You’ve changed her already, in your mind. You don’t remember who she was. And you want to think I’m bad because I left her there and ran off, and you’re the good girl because now you’re charged with her murder. Yes, I ran off. I heard the glass break, and God help me, I didn’t think of Rosie. I should have. I kill myself in my head every day because I love her and I ran. I love her. You know what happened to me when the glass broke?”
“No.”
“You don’t. You were sneaking around the bushes. The whole house I didn’t like, the way the pool sat in the backyard. Any stuff we got we’d have to run around the pool with it. That took too much time. Some of the houses up there, the pool is set off from the house, to the side or by the master bedroom. There’s always a back door so we can haul out stuff in a straight line and pass it guy to guy. We had that scheme down. But at that house, we had to go all the way around the pool with every trip. I already felt nervous.”
“Guy to guy? Teddy, right? You and Teddy steal stuff, pass it guy to guy.”
“Shut up. You want to hear this or not? Did you see the streetlamps that night? Christ, I’d never pick Holmby Hills.”
“Rose picked it?”
“Some guy. The slime. Rosie knew him. How do you think we picked houses? The slime told us which ones. But Holmby Hills with all that light, Christ. So yeah, I was nervous. I held the ladder and Rosie climbed up. That window was painted shut, I swear it. I said stop, because I saw the window was stuck. I couldn’t yell it, but I called out loud as I could. She must have heard me. I swear she heard me. She kept shoving the frame with both palms
, and I thought of how Mom’s always doing that, always pushing something that won’t give, you know?
“And I’m at the ladder seeing Rose bang at that goddamn window, and I’m getting scared, and all I can think is me in jail and Daisy with Mom, all alone. Then the glass cracked. It happened slow. Rosie hit the glazing, and I could see the crack start in the corner and crawl up. Rosie lifted her hands to hit again, and I called ‘Stop!’ I know she heard me.
“Then it all shattered, and I hid my face and chunks of glass hit me, and I heard glass crack on the ladder, and when I looked up again Rose was gone. The window was just a frame with shards stuck in the glazing, and goddamn it, I didn’t think of Rose or where she’d gone. I saw Daisy’s face. I ran.”
“Did anyone see you?”
Will had thrown all the little rocks. He felt on the curb and brought up a three-inch chunk of concrete. He bounced it in his hand. “Besides you? No. Maybe. Probably not. I didn’t see anyone. I’d come in my own pickup just in case. I didn’t see anyone drive off. I didn’t go home. I drove to Santa Monica and parked. I felt awful and so glad to get free, and I couldn’t stop shaking. The only thing in my mind then was Rosie.”
I didn’t believe him. I thought the only thing in his mind was Rosie, but Daisy, too, and himself already changing how he remembered it: Did I really run because of Daisy, or am I thinking of Daisy now? I can’t remember thinking of Daisy, but I must have. I wouldn’t run otherwise. Would I? I wouldn’t leave Rose. What Will told me, his thinking of Mom, I didn’t believe him. I still don’t know if it’s true. I believed him about Rosemary hammering a crack and the glass breaking, but in my mind I’ve changed it a bit. Now I have a new memory, even though that night I only heard the glass shatter and I didn’t watch it happen.
In my new memory I can tell what Rose is thinking. She hits the window frame with her palms, really hard, because she’s mad at me. I’ve just told her she can’t rob this house, not this one, not ever. She hates me and I hate her. We hate and love each other. She hits the window. The frame doesn’t move. She hits it again, and gets madder at me because the frame doesn’t move. She hears Will call to her from the ground, but she ignores him. She thinks of me and hits the glass, not the frame. She sees herself in the glass, cracked now, and the crack slides right through her reflection. She pulls her hands into fists and doesn’t hit the glass. She hits herself within the glass. She hits the reflection of herself.
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