“Hmm.”
“Your boss at the Gardens said some months back, you fell down a staircase. You don’t look bad, except for that big scar.”
“Ah.”
“You could have been really hurt. Say, I heard about Will’s arrest.”
“What arrest? Now he’s army.”
“I am, too. Not army. I enlisted in the navy two weeks ago.” He flicked a page of the Reporter. “You always liked to read.”
“No, I didn’t. I hated reading. You enlisted two weeks ago? Did you tell Will?”
“He knew I was leaving.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said.
“I guess not.” He kept flicking the Reporter.
“Stop it,” I said.
“Pen, I want to tell you something before I leave.”
“What? That you raped me? I already know.”
“I’m sorry you feel like that,” he said. “But now I’m leaving, and I can’t carry this secret, it’s not fair.”
“It’s not a secret. You raped me.”
“Pen, some things aren’t about you. Can we go somewhere quieter?”
“Teddy. What’s quieter than an orange grove?” Down Grand, people lined up for Mrs. Knott’s fried chicken. Families yelled to each other: Hey, how about that chicken?
“Okay,” Teddy said. “It’s quiet enough. Where’s Daisy and your mom? They okay?”
“Hmm,” I said.
“Must be tough, living at home again.”
“It’s better than living in Hollywood. Teddy, why are you here? What are you telling me?”
“I’m telling you the rest of what happened. At least, I’m telling you what I know.”
“So tell me.”
“Okay. Don’t cry, okay? Here goes. Just don’t cry. Last fall Rosie came to see us, to see Will and me. She said you wouldn’t miss her in Hollywood. She said she’d leave the Gardens for whole days and you never asked questions.”
“Then I must not have cared, huh?”
“She came to see me and Will. She’d met some guy who’d give us a side job.”
“To break into houses,” I said.
“No. Absolutely not. We’d climb in and take some things. We never broke one thing, not until Rosie broke that window. But we, me and Will, we never robbed. These were rich people, Pen. Robbery doesn’t happen to people like that, they don’t even notice things gone! It’s not like we stole from people in Buena Park.”
“People in Beverly Hills aren’t really real,” I said.
“Yeah, like that. And you know how bad Will needed money, with you not here.”
“If I’d stayed home, if I’d stayed right here on this porch, he wouldn’t have had to do it,” I said.
“Probably not, yeah. But it’s not all your fault. Will also wanted Rosie back. He’d do anything for Rosie.”
“Yes, it was her fault, too. What about you, Teddy? Will wanted Rose. What did you want?”
“I was trying to help, you know? Pen, do you have any iced tea?”
I jumped. I’d been picturing Stany’s backyard, the base of a ladder, and now I was on my mom’s front steps. I went into the kitchen and ran Teddy a glass of tap water. Back at the porch, I handed Teddy the glass. “You were all helping each other,” I said.
“Exactly. And I never went in one house, not one.”
“You helped pass out the stuff, guy to guy?”
“Me and Will drove his truck, too. Load and unload, that sort of thing. And the night Rosie died, I wasn’t even there. Pen, you couldn’t get me a simple glass of iced tea? What is this?” He raised the glass full of tap water.
“You didn’t rob houses,” I said. “You didn’t break anything, you didn’t go in. Why are you telling me? This isn’t a secret. Where’s your terrible secret?”
He leaned forward and set the glass on the step next to his hat. Then he shifted his hat and picked up the long envelope underneath. He held the envelope out to me.
“What?”
“This is it,” he said. “This is the secret.”
A long white envelope, probably taken from the sheriff’s office downtown. Not stolen, though. Something thick and heavy and flexible inside. I opened the envelope and looked.
“Eight thousand dollars,” Teddy said. “Will’s share. His share of the—of our work. I didn’t know what to do. Should I keep it? What if Will finds out? Should I hide it? But I’m enlisting, too, and what if something . . . something . . . well, what if the worst happens and Will comes home but I don’t, what would he think of me? For God’s sake, Pen, don’t count it.”
A big pause, Teddy breathing, and then: “Penny? Aw, goddamn it.”
His shirt against my face felt crisp and warm, like Will’s or my dad’s might have, like a shirt freshly line-dried. He wasn’t Teddy the bad date, he was a shirt that felt crisp on my face, and I’d needed a shirt. I didn’t know until I pressed my face against it that I’d needed a crisp shirt. I cried for Rosemary and her lost daughter, and for Madge and her lost parents, and for my mother, whose son would be lost soon.
“I’m glad I told you,” Teddy said. “I feel much better now.” We sat together and I cried, and we listened to the line of people shuffling toward fried chicken. A while later, Mom and Daisy came home. The second mom and the silent girl. My family. We watched Mom’s old car putt down Grand and onto our gravel drive.
“Your mom doesn’t like me,” Teddy said. “See? She’s glaring. I’ll leave. Pen, when I’m wearing a sailor’s cap and I’m on some ship getting bombed in the English Channel, can I write to you? Will you be my girl at home?”
“No,” I said. “I will burn every letter you send.”
He nodded. That was it. He stood up, put on his hat, and brushed at his spitty shirt.
Behind him, Mom swung open her car door and stepped out. “I only have two arms,” she said to me, holding grocery bags. I stood and kicked the Hollywood Reporter out of the way and went to help her. When she handed off a bag, I squeezed her arm and kissed her on the cheek.
“I thought you were helping,” she said, but she smiled when she said it.
* * *
Eight thousand dollars will hold us for a year, while we negotiate our land sale with Mr. Knott. We’ll have time to decide what comes next. I like Riverside, Madge’s hometown. The heat! In Riverside, sun burns the grass to brown threads. It’s beautiful, though. Louis—Conejos—says he grew up in sun like that. I think Rose would have liked Riverside.
Rose, who got pregnant nearly three years ago and left home to hide it from Will and me. Rose, who gave her baby to a nurse. It’s all I know. I don’t think Will was the baby’s father. She wouldn’t have needed to leave home if the baby was Will’s. They were planning to marry. Maybe she, too, had a bad date with Teddy, but I just don’t know. Like Stany warned me, I still have questions. When I’d asked Dr. Ostrander which star had come out the hospital side door, he had a question, too: “Does it make a difference?”
Not to Rose. She would have screamed no matter who limped out that door. The difference is Joe and Marty and Abbott and Dr. Ostrander. Abbott didn’t hurt Rosemary, but he needed her quiet. And Dr. Ostrander, I like to think that when he found out about Rose, he felt bad. But behind him is the studio, and studios don’t feel.
And Marty. A killer and thief and a pretty good lawyer. He was important in Hollywood. At the studio, when Stany and Marty listened to my story about Halloween, Marty had rubbed Stany’s shoulders and knew what to say. He knew why she was upset. Hollywood needs those kinds of people. The greatest movie stars, the real ones, Bette Davis and Stany, aren’t real at all. They need guys like Marty. Their stories have changed so many times that comfort is what moves them forward.
I forgave Rose for being a thief. She also lied, but I forgave her. I’d learned how grief makes us change, first mother to second mother, each of us changing in our own way, but none of it good. We need movies to remember what it was like before the grief. When Paramount released The Lad
y Eve, I went to a theater. I’ve seen the movie three times now, and I’ve got a secret: Preston didn’t reshoot the wedding scene.
He meant to. I’m sure he cut what he could. Stany in Edith Head’s gown and veil, pearls and pink gladiola, descending a staircase toward Hank. Behind Hank, all the guests at the wedding, and there—the foot and skirt nearly hidden, but there, and a hand—Rosemary on film.
Maybe it’s me—I want to see Rose so badly I’ve made my own film. It runs alongside the real one. Here’s a Wallflower, Career Girls, part of a Femme Fatale. But not me. Not Madge, either. And Rose steps to her mark, and Preston yells, and the film rolls, and we’re not there. We’ve left Paramount, Madge and me. We’re in her creaky Dodge on Route 18, driving to Riverside. Drive fast, Madge says. We’re nearly there, goddamn you, keep driving. That’s the film I want. That’s the only film I’m willing to make.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The following people and organizations assisted with research for my story. Thank you, with my gratitude, to the Buena Park Historical Society; Esotouric; Glynn Martin at the Los Angeles Police Historical Society; Knott’s Berry Farm; Los Angeles Public Library; Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; Media History Digital Library; Newport Beach Public Library; Tom Sturges; UCLA Library Department of Special Collections, and curators of the Preston Sturges papers; and Melinda (Mindy) Brown at Paramount Pictures.
My deepest thanks to everyone who generously read and commented on the story or the writing: Shirley Barker, Kelly Berman, Cramer R. Cauthen, Kate Collins, Anthony Diaz, Amy Dominetta, Wendy Gates, Kelly Graves, Barbara Jaffe, Donald Maass, Jeanette McCann, Lorin Oberweger, Jennifer Peters, Lissa Price, John Roche, Joanne Steinmetz, and Brenda Windberg.
A sparkling thank you to my agent, Jennifer Udden, editor, Peter Senftleben, and the extraordinary team at Kensington, including my editor, Wendy McCurdy, copy chief, Tracy Marx, production editor, Paula Reedy, and copy editor, Linda Seed.
Photo credit: Nicholas Mazzotti
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Suzanne Gates began writing historical crime fiction after listening to family stories about her great-uncle, a gangster in 1930s Los Angeles. She received her master of fine arts in creative writing from the University of California, Irvine, and she lives in Southern California. The Glamorous Dead is her first novel. Visit Suzanne at www.suzannegates.com.
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