Beryl removes a handkerchief from her eyes and waves it at the city.
FRANCIE
(smiling)
It’s not going to wave back, you know.
BERYL
Don’t make fun of me.
(looks at Francie and sticks out tongue)
I’m saying adieu to the city.
FRANCIE
You will be back.
BERYL
(turning back around and sitting down)
You’re the one who’s never coming home. Don’t you want to say goodbye?
FRANCIE
Goodbye? No.
(her eyes on the road)
Not with all the hellos ahead of me.
—Excerpt from the unproduced screenplay When She Was King
Chapter Three
1926
MRS. CARL WILD: HOUSEHOLD ACCOUNTS,
WEEK OF APRIL 4–10, 1926
Sunday
Supper: Pot roast and carrots. Popovers filled with prune whip for dessert. Carl ate two helpings.
Beef, round
gratis
Salt pork
gratis
Tomatoes, can
12½¢
Carrots, bunch
5¢
Prunes, box
25¢
Monday
Two library books returned, two more checked out for the week. Tik-Tok of Oz for Anna Louisa, The Young Diana for me. She said she’d rather the newest Hopalong Cassidy. Carl must be reading that to her.
Supper: Meat croquettes with white sauce.
Parsley
2¢
Tuesday
Rain today.
Supper: Pork chops and buttered peas.
Pork chops, three
gratis
Peas, two No. 2 cans
20¢
Wednesday
Rain.
Supper: Ham and boiled onions.
Ham steaks
gratis
Pound of pearl onions
9¢
Thursday
Florrie Daniels appeared on my doorstep. Seven years, three weeks, and two days since I saw her last. Offered her coffee (the good stuff), but she said she was just saying goodbye. She’s going to California. Never thought she’d really leave.
Supper: Chicken à la king with mashed potatoes toast.
Fryer chicken
gratis
Mushrooms
6¢
Pimentos, jar
10¢
Friday
So much rain it’s flooded the backyard. A.L. built a raft of matchsticks.
Supper: Pork chops (again) and fried potatoes.
Pork chops, three
gratis
Saturday
Supper: Pork chops. Also, Carl left me.
Pork chop, one
11½¢
THE JOURNAL OF FLORRIE DANIELS
April 10, 1926
I bought this notebook thinking a travel journal would keep me company (of course, only a writer would make friends with A NOTEBOOK). How many lonely nights are strung between New Jersey and California? A tent, a cot, a lamp, and enough ink to last me three thousand miles. I’d observe all through the window of the Model T—every curve of mountain, every ripple of golden field, every last stretch of desert—and then scribble it all down once I made camp for the night. I have a Folding Autographic Brownie to help me capture the trip, once I read the owner’s manual, that is. There has to be inspiration in a journey like this. The ad in Variety had said MGM would provide each aspiring scenario writer the contract (three months!) and salary (near to $75 a WEEK), but the ideas, I have to bring with me.
But then, as I was pulling away from the apartment, everything I hadn’t sold stuffed in the back of the flivver, I heard my name and suddenly I didn’t need the notebook because I had a friend, a real friend. Ethel was running down the sidewalk in the rain with a suitcase. It was like the final frame of a movie, only she splashed her way right into the beginning of this one. Take me with you? she asked. She tried to explain, with tears all over her face, about Carl and her daughter and wanting a ride as far as Nevada, but all I could think was She’s here and Yes.
I’d gone to see her earlier in the week. When she saw me on the doorstep, she dropped the bowl of potatoes she’d been holding. Potato and butter and crockery all over my shoes and the daffodils, but I was too nervous to say a word. It had been too long since I’d seen her last and she looked so different but exactly the same. I just stood as butter soaked into my stockings and listened to her babble about her day, her week, the last seven years. She invited me in for coffee, but I’d come to say goodbye, for now, forever, and I knew if I came in I’d never want to leave her again. I still ached over ending our friendship all those years ago.
But I didn’t have to. Because, when I was about to drive away from Newark and everything, there was Ethel and her soggy suitcase crawling through the door of the flivver and I didn’t have to say goodbye. She’d been crying all night, she said. Carl had left her, she said, and took Anna Louisa too. A few months at his aunt’s Nevada ranch to establish residency for a quick “Reno divorce.” I said the right things like That’s terrible and Of course I’ll help but really my heart was pounding.
So I’m not doing it alone after all. Not driving across the country or camping or looking for inspiration across the prairies and deserts. Though I can scarcely believe it, I have Ethel and, at least for a while, I don’t have to say goodbye.
Later
Ethel cried herself to sleep. We were still seven miles outside of Wilmington when she dozed off, sliding farther and farther down in the seat until her head rested on my shoulder. When we got to the campground, I sat for half a minute. Her hair smelled like Watkins Cocoanut Oil and, besides, I didn’t want to wake her.
I paid our twenty-five cents for the campsite, but I didn’t set up the tent, even though yesterday I couldn’t wait to try it out. I did shake out the blanket, that red tartan one that the man at Montgomery Ward swore would be warm enough for an arctic night. It was big—I’d planned to wrap it twice around myself—but I tucked it around Eth still lying there across the front seat. I dug out my extra sweaters from the duffel strapped to the running board and made myself a little nest in the backseat.
I’m writing this by the light of my new battery flashlamp. Tomorrow I’ll ask her more about Carl. About what reason he could possibly have to walk away from her. I’ll ask her what she means to do when she gets to Nevada. I’ll ask if it’s all worth saving.
Tomorrow I’ll ask her all that. Tonight, for now, I’m content to just listen to her breathe.
After all I said about not needing a journal as a friend, look how much I’ve just confided.
FRANCIE
Do you think I need a pseudonym? A lot of scenario writers have one. Frances Marion does.
BERYL
Well, that’s a good one. Use that.
FRANCIE
Do you think I look like a Velma? A Blanche? A Myrtle?
BERYL
Does anyone truly look like a Myrtle?
FRANCIE
I don’t have the cheekbones to pull it off.
BERYL
Was it Shakespeare who asked, “What’s in a name?”
FRANCIE
I think it was Will Rogers.
BERYL
No! Really?
FRANCIE
Well, anyway, I’d like to hear what he says about the subject.
BERYL
He’d probably say, “Names are like socks. Change them only if they stink.”
FRANCIE
He wouldn’t say that. That’s awful.
BERYL
Fine. I’m saying it. A Francie by any other name wouldn’t smell as sweet.
—Excerpt from the unproduced screenplay When She Was King
Chapter Four
1952
No one has called her “Anna” in decades, not since she legally transformed fro
m Anna Louisa Wild, daughter of a New Jersey butcher, to Louise Wilde, MGM star, Hollywood beauty, and East Coast heiress. The latter is not, technically, incorrect. She does stand to inherit a used upright piano and an excessive collection of Gurley Christmas candles. Her publicists just never specify.
But when she stops at a motor lodge outside Ludlow, it’s not “Louise Wilde” that she signs in the ledger. She pulls the curve of her hat lower and signs the book with the name she wore for eighteen years. Without thinking about it, she loops the As and the Ls like a schoolgirl. The desk clerk, a teenage girl with a ponytail and peppermint-pink lipstick, just smiles brightly.
“Did you have a nice drive?” the clerk asks.
After driving the first sixty miles white-knuckle nervous, the next sixty miles lost, and the third bored to bits, she wouldn’t say “nice.” But the desk clerk looks so hopeful that Louise politely says, “It was fine.” There’d been no flat tires, no collisions, no inadvertent roadkills. She supposes that counts for a successful day of travel. “There wasn’t much traffic.”
“You drove in from…” She consults the ledger. “Oh, from Los Angeles! That’s a pretty stretch, isn’t it?”
The clerk starts waxing on about Cajon Canyon and Mount Pisgah, dry lakes and volcanic craters. Between concentrating on the signs and the dwindling gas gauge, Louise hadn’t noticed much. Desert on all sides, with distant peaks shimmering like mirages.
Louise muffles a yawn. “I’m afraid I didn’t stop.”
“Though you have some of the best of Route 66 ahead.” The clerk procures a handful of brightly printed brochures from under the Christmas light–bedecked counter. “Tomorrow morning you’ll pass the Bristol Dry Lake. It’s not far off the highway, at Amboy.” She passes over one showing what looked like a dried-up lake bed. “There are smaller dry lakes and lava hills. The Marble Mountains. The Colorado River. Oatman is worth a stop. Loads of mining history there.” She holds up a glossy brochure whose cover shows a delighted-looking child brandishing a gold nugget. “Have you vacationed in this area before?”
As though movie stars flocked to Ludlow, California, to get away from it all. She’s just driven through the town center. It’s no Palm Springs. “I’m traveling for business,” she says.
The girl just blinks. “Business.” Her pink smile widens. “But of course you’ll want to see the sights on your way there.” She unearths more brochures, all featuring shiny cars and smiling families.
Louise is too tired to argue, so she lets the perky desk clerk push one after another across the desk. On each is a car (always a sensible sedan) driven by a man and woman (both stylishly thin and overdressed) and two children (always one boy and one girl, just to be fair) scrubbed, pink-cheeked, and eager for whatever America has to offer. A happy family in search of adventure, as long as that adventure is middle-class and moderately priced.
She cuts off the clerk’s cheerful babble. “Do you have anything on Las Vegas?”
“Taking a detour?”
“No, that’s where I’m headed.” She rubs her eyes. “My business.”
“Oh.” The girl glances down at Louise’s hand, at the thin line of her wedding band. “Oh!”
Louise wants to cross out the name in the book, tell the girl who she really is and why she’s going to Vegas. Not for a rendezvous or a divorce or an otherwise scandalous weekend. But she’s exhausted and not in the mood to get into it. The girl doesn’t mean any harm. “Las Vegas?” Louise prompts.
The girl keeps her eyes on Louise’s ring. “You’re taking the scenic route to Nevada, ma’am.”
“I am?” Louise asks in dismay. She’d watched the signs. She thought she was on the right road. Miles and miles on straight, desert-lined road. She’s less than a day into her trip and already tired of sand. “Where am I again?”
“Ludlow, California,” the clerk says, a touch too proudly. “You’ll get there all right, but your best bet would’ve been to take Route 91 from Barstow.”
“I guess if I’m heading to Vegas, I should make my best bets better.”
The girl draws in her bright pink lips. She doesn’t have much of a head for jokes, it seems.
Louise sighs. “How far off course am I?”
Arnie never gets lost. Even the few times they’ve been out of the city for a party or out-of-town preview, he needs only one glance at the map to know exactly how to get there. It’s one of the reasons she doesn’t mind that he always drives. He gets her wherever she needs to go.
Got. Past tense. He’ll never drive again. Despite her nerves and her awful sense of direction, it’s all up to her now.
She draws in a breath. “Can you show me a map?”
She half-watches as the desk clerk unfolds a map, marks with a pencil where Louise is supposed to turn onto 95 to go north. “Not much once you get into Nevada. You can fill up in Needles.”
“And then how far to Las Vegas?”
“Four hours? Five? More if you stop to see the sights.” She taps the map with a pink fingernail. “You’ll be very near to the Colorado River. You’ll see wildlife all along the Dead Mountains.”
As if rivers and canyons and interesting stretches of desert are enough to beat the loneliness that has been squeezing Louise in her very middle.
All she wants is to fall straight into bed, but she asks, “Where’s a good place for dinner?”
Though there can’t be more than a handful of places, the desk clerk sticks out her lower lip and thinks for a measure. “That would be the Ludlow Cafe.” She nods. “But you should hurry if you want to miss the rush.”
She can’t imagine there are enough people hiding in Ludlow to warrant a rush, but nods knowingly along with the clerk. “I will. Thank you.”
“Your room will be to the left.” The clerk passes over a key on an oversized plastic key ring. “You really did pick the best hotel in Ludlow.”
The motor lodge had probably been the height of modernity in 1932, but in 1952, it looks worn around the edges. Behind the counter, a small TV set is showing This Is Your Life.
“Don’t forget your brochures, now. They’ll keep you company at dinner.”
Louise gathers them up. “Thank you,” she says again, and hefts up the wicker suitcase. “At least I won’t have to eat alone.”
The stack of brochures goes into the bin underneath the ashtray by the elevator.
The worst part about those two hundred miles today was the loneliness. Standing under the fluorescent lights by the elevator, she admits that now. She’s used to being surrounded by people, all day. From the moment her driver picks her up in the morning, she’s never alone. Makeup artists, hairstylists, men with scripts, women with armfuls of dresses, assistants with coffee and sandwiches and too much cheerfulness.
Even Arnie, withdrawn, ignoring, is at least there. He snores, he aches, he sometimes complains. But she can still feel him. She falls asleep and the space next to her in the bed is warm.
She’s used to people. She’s not used to the absence.
The Ludlow hotel room is unimpressive, but clean. Green carpeting, bleached-white bedspreads, curtains an orgy of desert flowers. The desk is scratched from decades of suitcases. She nudges aside a square ashtray and drops in a tumble her handbag, her keys, her vanity case. The suitcase she lifts up to the bed. She takes out a dress for tomorrow and shakes it over the desk chair.
She hauls the vanity case to the tiny bathroom and begins unpacking. She needs to organize her temporary space. She needs to arrange her cold cream and toothpaste, so that she can find everything at bedtime. She tells herself that she’s unpacking and arranging because she has to, and not because she’s trying to avoid a lonely dinner. It’s just dinner.
But she had too many of those in the months Arnie was gone. Too many nights eating dinner off a TV tray. Easy, unremarkable things, like tomato soup or buttered rice or pineapple rings straight from the can. She filled the space with the radio, playing anything. Guy Lombardo, Patti Page, Johnnie Ray. Jac
k Armstrong, the All-American Boy. The World Series. Each night, she drank enough to fall into a dreamless sleep. It worked. While Arnie was gone and after he came home, it worked.
From the bottom of the case, past the Aqua Net, the curl cream, the talcum powder, she takes out the bottle of whiskey. There’s a pair of tumblers on the desk, upside down beside a plastic ice bucket, and she fills one with an inch of booze. But she doesn’t drink it. She wanders over to the window and leans against the glass, whiskey warming in the tumbler.
From her window she can see a far-off stretch of mountains, a break of color against the blue of the sky. Other than that low ripple of mountain, just sagebrush, greasewood, the occasional spit of a cactus or palm. The sun is stretched out across the horizon, a streak of orange against the blue and brown, but it hasn’t yet started getting dark. She should go to find dinner, but she doesn’t. She leans against that window, by the riotous curtain smelling of cigarettes and old perfume, and watches the sun slip farther and farther away.
Only when the orange has faded and the first fingers of dark edge the window does she toss back the whiskey in one big swallow and feel for her keys on the desk. She leaves the curtains thrown back as she shuts the door.
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