“Stop,” he says again, and leans forward to put the stack of manuscripts on the coffee table. But with the pill, the whiskey, the towering pile of screenplays, he leans too far forward and loses his balance. With paper raining down around him, he falls from the wheelchair and onto the floor.
She jumps forward, though it’s too late to catch him. He’s on the carpet, stretched out, looking helpless.
“Arn.”
She reaches down to him, but he smacks her hand away. “Leave me alone.” That phrase, the one she’s heard so many times since he’s been back, comes out as a snarl.
She creeps back against the wall. She swallows.
He pushes himself up on his hands, slowly, painfully. By the time he gets himself into a sitting position, leaning against the coffee table, he’s panting.
“Arn,” she says, and steps forward again, uncertain.
“It’s no good.” He swipes a hand down his face. “Don’t you see I can’t?”
She stumbles to the bathroom. She trips over his toilet bench, bumps against the low shelf with his unused shaving supplies, catches herself on the metal bar above the bathtub. All the little reminders that he can’t. Hand to her chest, she counts to ten as she turns on the faucet. It’s ice cold. The tears wait until she’s in the shower. She turns her face up to the water streaming down, and she cries.
—
Louise wakes on the aqua-blue sofa. She doesn’t remember turning off the lamp or falling asleep here.
Resting open across her chest is the script. She remembers coming out of the shower and making another sloppy Manhattan. After the shower, she’d been wide awake. She didn’t want to stumble into the dark bedroom and the too-quiet bed. She wanted to get lost in the mountains of Pennsylvania, the flat prairies of the Middle West. She wanted to change a tire and play cards in a tent and take pictures of the sun rising over the desert. And so she propped up her feet and let herself fall asleep reading When She Was King.
She’s wrapped in only a bathrobe. Outside, it’s still dark. The glow from the streetlamps pushes from between the curtains. She checks the clock on the wall, the one that always makes her think of outer space, of planets orbiting around the hour. It’s morning. Just barely.
Her tongue feels thick and her head stuffed with yarn. She flexes her calves before getting up. She’d rather be still asleep, but nights are never as long as they ought to be. The kitchen floor is cold. She automatically measures coffee from the blue tin, fills the percolator with water, and plugs it in.
As the percolator bubbles, she washes her face in the bathroom, wiping away the last streaks of mascara. She runs her wet hands through her hair. It’s dried in waves from last night’s washing. She rubs in curl cream and combs, twists, and pins her hair until it’s all up in loose, pinned curls. It isn’t perfect, but it’s better than looking like she’s slept on the sofa.
While her hair sets, she remakes her face. Not all the way, but enough that she can go out of the house without feeling half-naked. She smooths on some powder, fills in her eyebrows, rubs on some pale pink gloss. She begins the transformation back into “actress.”
She steps on Arnie’s shaving brush. She vaguely remembers knocking over his little shelf the night before and bends to collect everything that’s rolled under the sink. His toothbrush and tube of Pepsodent. His comb. His Old Spice shaving mug, soap, razor, unopened package of Gillette blades, shaving mirror, now cracked in half. She arranges everything back on the shelf, everything except the mirror, which she pushes to the bottom of the Lucite trash can.
She automatically straightens his toilet bench, pats down the bubbles in the rubber bath mat, refolds the towel on his low rack. It’s bone-dry.
Once the coffee’s made she drinks a whole cup leaning against the kitchen sink. She can’t stomach any breakfast. She can barely stomach being awake. The bathroom mirror agrees. Her face is icy white with circles dark-smudged like bruises beneath each eye. She dabs on more powder before unpinning and brushing her curls.
Arnie used to drive her in every morning. One hand on the wheel, he’d drink his second cup of coffee in the car. He always drove as slow as honey; he never spilled. She could drive herself, if she wanted to. She has a car in the garage, a bullet-nose Studebaker Champion convertible. Deep red and as shiny as a new apple. Arnie bought it for her the day before he left. But she’s never driven the Champ by herself, not in all those months he was gone. It makes her nervous, being behind the wheel. Besides, it just isn’t the same.
So the studio sends a car. She checks the clock again, this time the one on the kitchen wall, as round and sunny as an over-easy egg. Five minutes. She’s still naked under a satin bathrobe.
The bedroom is dark, but she knows her way around it by the glow of the hall light. Underthings in the top drawer, stockings beneath that. A stiff, folded girdle. She opens the narrow closet and feels for the silky touch of rayon, the crispness of linen, the soft caress of jersey. She picks a fir-green dress, with long narrow sleeves and white turned-back cuffs. She’d bought it for a funeral once where she couldn’t bear to wear black. She ties the white ribbons at the collar. She slips into alligator pumps and, last, as always, fastens on her gold watch.
It’s only when Arnie rolls over and murmurs, “Where are you going?” that she remembers.
There’s no car coming. No makeup artist waiting. No one expecting her at MGM.
“Are you going to Las Vegas?” Even half-asleep, he’s remembered the night before. She’d drunk enough to forget.
Last night she’d been angry. Her talk about risking suspension, about thumbing her nose at the studio’s threat—it was Manhattan-fueled. She can’t really. If she doesn’t show up, if she’s suspended, if she’s let go, who buys the cans of coffee? The chipped beef and toast? The Googie ashtrays? It’s been too long since Arnie’s drawn a paycheck. She has to go to Vegas.
A good actress. It’s all she’s tried to be for the past year.
“I don’t have a choice,” she says, and steps backward toward the hallway.
In Arnie’s office, she switches on the desk lamp. It’s been ages since she’s been in here. Arnie too, apparently. The desk is gray with dust. She blows on the typewriter cover and sends up a cloud. It’s exactly as he left it when he flew out to Korea. The green blotter. The covered Remington in the center. Three sharpened Ticonderoga pencils and a single red pen in a souvenir mug from the Golden Gate Exposition. His pipe stand and the black telephone. Along the edge of the blotter, she traces “Lou was here” in the dust with a finger, then wipes it out with the side of her hand.
She should have made travel arrangements yesterday, before leaving the studio. But after the meeting and the phone call from that lawyer, she hadn’t even thought of it. Now it’s Saturday. She’s on her own.
The phone book is in the upper-right-hand desk drawer. She doesn’t know which airline flies to Las Vegas, but starts with Trans World. It’s what she flew on that single transcontinental trip all those years ago, when she stopped to see Dad before heading to Europe with the USO. Eight years is a long time for nothing but phone calls. Maybe after this picture wraps. New Jersey isn’t going anywhere, but she misses Dad.
The Trans World agent is far too chirpy for this hour of the morning. They do fly to Vegas, yes. Would madame like to make a reservation?
She takes a pencil from the cup and opens the drawer where Arnie keeps notepaper. The paper’s there, but also a folded pink sheet. She sees “House of Representatives” and “Committee on Un-American Activities” and hangs up the phone without replying.
She stalks into the bedroom holding the subpoena between her fingertips. Arnie’s still in bed, but she knows he’s not sleeping.
“When did this arrive?” she asks. She’s simmering. She’s steaming.
He doesn’t answer.
“I know you’re awake. When did this arrive?”
She doesn’t specify what “this” is, but he knows. The covers shift. A shrug. “I don’t know. A week
ago.”
“And you were just going to ignore it? Shut it up in a drawer and pretend it never came?”
“Maybe.” Another infinitesimal shrug. “Maybe they’ll forget about me.”
“They haven’t in nine months. These aren’t the kind of people who forget. Arnie, this is a congressional subpoena.”
The light from the hall throws a splash of yellow across the bedspread. Arnie doesn’t stir, and he doesn’t reply again.
She goes to the kitchen and pours another cup of coffee, but doesn’t drink it. She paces from the table to the pantry, from the sink to the refrigerator. When she sets the still-full mug on the counter, it’s with decisiveness.
“We’ll set up an appointment with Dr. Keller,” she says, coming back into the bedroom. “You’re scheduled to be in D.C. next month.” She unbuttons her cuffs. “I know you haven’t been doing your exercises. You aren’t in any shape yet to stand in front of the committee.”
He rolls over. “Stand?”
She flushes, and is glad it’s dark. “You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I do.” He pushes himself up on one elbow. “You mean that I need to polish myself up so that I can go in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee and make nice. Just what you didn’t want me to do back in March.”
Back in March a subpoena would’ve been an interruption to a writing career going at full tilt. These days there’s nothing to interrupt. She throws the subpoena on top of the dresser. “Make nice. Tell them to get lost. Something. Anything.”
He lies back down. “Maybe anything is exactly what I don’t want to do.”
She’s tired of the dusty, unused typewriter and the laundry basket full of nothing but pajamas. She’s tired of cracker crumbs in the bed. She’s tired of him not making an effort, at a single thing. Not at eating, at doing his exercises, at starting to work again. Not even at fighting for the things he believes in. She wonders if he believes in anything anymore.
She’s tired too. Exhausted. Deliberately long hours at the studio. Solitary dinners. Quiet nights. But she does them. She does the laundry too.
She wants him to do something. Give in or fight, it doesn’t make a difference. Giving in would keep them safe, but fighting, well, that would be a flash of the old Arnie. The one who—yes, don’t tell a soul—might have been to a rally or two in his day.
“You always tell me not to back down,” she says. “You used to say you’d be right behind me to push me back up.”
He’s facing away from her. “In case you haven’t noticed,” he says to the wall, “these days I can’t even push myself back up.”
She gets down on her knees and reaches under the bed for a suitcase. She has a matching set—white, monogrammed, with gold clasps—that she bought in a splurge before her USO trip, but that’s not what she reaches for. The suitcase she pulls out is ancient. She hasn’t used it in ages. It’s a battered old thing that she brought with her on that bus ride from Jersey fourteen years ago. Faded wicker, lined with purple-pink fabric, something excessively flowered and ugly. It was Mom’s. It’s hers now, and it’s perfect.
She goes to the living room and drops the suitcase on the coffee table, right on top of the scattered manuscripts, then returns to the bedroom. Gray dawn starts to seep in at the edges of the curtains. She throws open the closet, slides open the dresser drawers. “I’m leaving.”
Arnie’s awake. He pulls himself up to a sit. “What do you mean, leaving?”
“For Vegas.” She’s yanking clothes out haphazardly. Skirts, blouses, sweaters, shawls. Dresses and pajamas. One pair of twill shorts. Stockings, underpants, girdles, brassieres. A silky slip of a scarf. “It’ll take me a day or two to get there.” A black stocking slithers from her arms. “I don’t want to be late.”
She carries the clothes out to the living room and drops them on the sofa. She folds them with suddenly sure hands and packs them into the wicker suitcase, one by one, stacked and wedged. The suitcase is enormous. There’s room enough for weeks’ worth of clothes. Maybe if she’d planned ahead, laying outfits on the bed, checking items against a list, folding them between sheets of tissue paper, she’d have been able to fit that much. As it is, she hasn’t packed half that.
She ducks back into the bedroom and into the shoe closet. Gray heels, shiny black slingbacks, a neat pair of red flats. Her favorite sandals, with straps that twine around her ankles. One pair of pristine white Keds, in case she chances upon anything athletic. They never told her how long they’d be shooting. A girl must always be prepared for tennis.
“How are you getting there?” Arnie is at the edge of the bed.
She thinks of the journals, of the envelope of photos. Of the two women alone with their Model T. “Maybe I’ll just drive myself,” she says suddenly.
It’s not that ridiculous. Though she’s never driven the Champ by herself, she knows how. Before he left for Korea, Arnie took her and the car out, introduced them to one another. She drove even slower than he did, but she didn’t hit a single thing.
He doesn’t reply, doesn’t offer to drive her the way he would’ve once upon a time. He shifts, moves first one leg, then the other, over the side of the bed. Of course he doesn’t offer.
“I can do it,” she says. Insists.
“But you don’t have to. There’s probably a train—”
“I said I can do it. Leave me alone,” she snaps, unthinkingly throwing his own phrase back at him. “I don’t need a train. I don’t need your help.”
“The studio should—”
“If we’re listing the things the studio ‘should’ do, we can start with ‘listen’ and ‘respect’ and ‘treat me like an adult.’ For the rest of the list, we’d be here all morning.”
“Why are you so defensive?” He runs a hand through his hair. He needs a trim and a shave.
“Why don’t you think I can take care of myself?” In the studio she holds her head up, despite everything at home. A good actress. “What do you think I’ve been doing all these months?”
“I didn’t say that. I only asked about your drive to Vegas. I’ll…”
He doesn’t finish the sentence. She waits. Worry. Wait. Miss you. So many things he could end it with. Even manage without you she’d accept, because that would mean getting out of bed and eating more than saltines.
But “I’ll leave you alone” is what he says, before adding, “Fine.”
It’s a pin to her heart. She pulls her shoulders back so she doesn’t deflate. “It’s what we do best.” She spins and leaves the room.
Though driving to Vegas in the red Champion started as a whim, it’s solidified. It’s independence, it’s escape, it’s proof. Of what, she doesn’t know. But she needs to do it. She can picture it now, a shot on the screen in Technicolor. The red car, the brown desert, the dark-haired actress running away from it all with her wicker suitcase.
She digs for spare corners in the suitcase where she can tuck the shoes. She adds a satin bag with earrings, a pearl necklace, a silver bracelet studded with turquoise. In the bathroom she gathers her curlers and pins, her Aqua Net, her cold creams, her makeup. She finds her old blue vanity case on the closet shelf, the one she used to carry back and forth to the studio when she was still unimportant enough to do her own makeup, and she packs her toiletries. She adds a bottle of Four Roses. In the bedroom, she fills a cardboard hatbox.
Arnie finds her out in the living room, kneeling in front of the suitcase and vanity case, snapping them shut. He rests his hands on the wheels of his chair.
“You’re really leaving now?”
“I don’t get to spend all day in bed. I don’t get to live on pills and coffee and complaints. I don’t get to hide from the HUAC, pretending that everything is okay. Someone has to make decisions. Someone has to go out and work. Someone has to hold the house together.”
“But you said the script was crap. That they patted you on the head and didn’t listen to a word you said.”
“What
do you want me to say, Arn?” The clasp on the vanity case is jammed. She smacks it with the heel of her hand. “That I’ll put on my lucky scarf and try again?”
“Anything’s better than giving up.”
It’s what she’d wanted him to say last night. It’s what she’d wanted him to say when she confronted him with the pink subpoena. Words that sounded like the old Arnie, when it was them against the world. Words that made her feel like it was worth it.
She stands, tall in her alligator pumps, and looks down at him. “It may not be the career I want, but it’s something. One of us has to have something.”
The two glasses from last night’s Manhattans are still there, his empty on the floor, hers up on the liquor cabinet, sticky and half-full with melted ice. She takes them to the kitchen. He won’t clean them up while she’s gone. Before setting them in the sink, she drains her glass. She tastes the ghost of whiskey in the water.
Arnie’s still in the hallway, hunched in his chair.
She pins on a curve of a white hat with a pouf of netting. She takes her coat from the closet. Mink, lined in scarlet. Like she’s leaving for a premiere, she holds it out to Arnie.
“Lou,” he says, and hesitates. “When will you come back?”
Tomorrow, she wants to say. Never. She doesn’t know what the answer is. “I don’t know.”
He takes the coat and a deep breath. He unbuttons it and shakes it out. Sitting in his chair, he holds it as high as he can.
She bends backward and slips into the coat.
Turning, she holds it tight against her neck, as though to leave it open would leave her heart open. Arnie stares at her tightly clasped hands. “Last night you said you didn’t want to go,” he says. “That you wanted the suspension. You wanted the fight.”
“Arn,” she says, picking up her luggage. “I don’t know what’s worth fighting for anymore.”
Scene: The front seat of an overstuffed Model T. Two women are inside, both wearing raincoats and wet hats. BERYL is turned around, kneeling on her seat and looking out through the back window at the city disappearing behind them. FRANCIE is driving, facing straight ahead.
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