Woman Enters Left
Page 14
“I’m an idiot,” she says softly. “I’m sorry.”
“I can reach the crackers,” he says.
Even if she’d stocked the lower shelves for him, he can’t reach up to the toaster oven. He can’t fill a pot up from the sink. He can’t cook on the stove without catching his sleeve on the flame.
There, in the lobby of the El Tovar hotel, her eyes fill with tears. She turns toward the wall and wipes at them with the cuff of her shirt. It comes away streaked with buff powder.
“I was in such a hurry to get out the door, I didn’t leave anything for you to eat. I didn’t even think about that.” Tears are soaking through her sleeve and running down her face to her chin. She’d borne the past few days of travel—the empty gas tank, Mr. Steve, the suspension, the nights of loneliness—but this right here, and she’s crying right onto the lobby phone. “I’ll turn around. I’ll start driving back tonight. I’ll probably get there late tomorrow, but I’ll make you meatloaf or hash or spaghetti and meatballs. Piles of them. I’ll make whatever you want.”
He doesn’t say anything and, for a moment, she’s worried he’s hung up.
But then, quietly, he finally asks, “So why aren’t you in Vegas?”
She holds the phone away and sniffs. “Not in Vegas?” Her tears slow. “It’s not important now.”
“But you were going to go. You were all set to do it. And now you’re in Arizona, riding mules?”
Spending the day riding mules and eating a picnic lunch with ten strangers and Duane. While her husband sits at home eating crackers and, probably, drinking days-old coffee.
“It’s not important now.” Her drive across the country, to eat Christmas dinner, to ask Dad if he’d divorced Mom—it all sounds so selfish now. “I was going to go visit my dad—for Christmas, you know—but he won’t miss me. I’ll go to pack up and head back….”
“You should go.”
His voice is so low, she wonders if she heard him correctly.
“You should go,” he says again. “To New Jersey.”
“But I…”
“You haven’t been home in years.”
“Home.” There’s that word again. But this time, she doesn’t think of snow and pine trees and carols at Dad’s piano. She hears “home” and thinks of last Christmas, when she strung lights around the fan palm in the backyard and Arnie cooked two beautifully rare steaks on the barbecue. Just the two of them, lying barefoot on the hammock, singing Christmas carols up to the stars.
Maybe he’s thinking the same thing. Maybe. Because he asks, “You will come back, won’t you?”
She smiles through her tears and wipes her eyes again. “I can’t stay in New Jersey forever.”
Through the crackle of the line, she hears, “Don’t.”
And suddenly, that’s all she needs. “I’ll call Pauline. She’ll bring hot food over. I don’t want you to fade away to nothing.”
“All right.”
“Remember to do your exercises. You know you’re supposed to.”
“Lou…”
“And if the studio calls, tell them to get bent.”
She imagines he’s smiling. “I will.”
“Is that all? Oh, water the African violet in the kitchen.”
“Lou.” He hesitates. “Just come home?”
Arnie, you’re home, she wants to say. “I promise.”
Francie and Beryl lie on a blanket beneath a sky overflowing with stars.
FRANCIE
(wondering)
There isn’t room up there for heaven.
BERYL
You can’t say things like that, Fran. Heaven’s always there. It has to be.
FRANCIE
Maybe it’s beyond the stars. Up to where the universe is black like velvet.
BERYL
Not dark. It’s clouds and light and ice cream.
FRANCIE
Whatever it is, it’s quiet, I’ll bet.
BERYL
(moving an inch closer)
Just like here?
FRANCIE
(moving an inch closer)
Just like here.
—Excerpt from the unproduced screenplay When She Was King
Chapter Eleven
1926
Saturday
F. was a perfect grump this morning. Rushed me through breakfast. I burned my hand on the coffeepot.
I’m the one separated from her daughter. I’m the one on the edge of divorce. I’m the one who aches every morning, from ankle to hip, who swills Vigor Tonic like a drunk with her bottle. What does she have to be grumpy about?
Supper: Salmon patties with celery sauce, toast.
Camp
25¢
Gasoline
$1.30
Postage stamp
2¢
APRIL 24, 1926
Woke up to a throbbing tooth. That same old molar that’s been giving me trouble. I thought it had gotten better, but now it’s shooting pain again. It’s awful. I hate the thing.
I gargled with some salt water and took some aspirin, but they only halfway worked. I still had that bottle of hooch I bought in St. Louis and used it to wash down another aspirin. All I wanted to do was get to the next campground and go back to sleep.
Of course, today, of all days, Ethel wanted to putter about the campsite, boiling up eggs and making cheese sandwiches for lunch. It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it? she chirped. It was disgusting. I didn’t want to sit a second longer. And I definitely didn’t want a sandwich.
Later
E made me some sort of fancy dinner. Salmon patties topped with celery and white sauce. I’ve never had celery before. She said she wanted to cheer me up. Of course I felt like a heel. Later, while digging through my duffel for pajamas, I spotted Carl’s letters. Now I feel like an even bigger heel. I put myself to bed with aspirin and hooch.
Sunday
It was raining when we woke up, the kind that A.L. always calls “frog rain,” where it’s drizzly and puddly, the sort of weather frogs and worms feel quite at home in.
Aches nudged me awake early today. Ankle. Hip. Everything in between. Took a little extra Vigor Tonic. It gave me enough of a push to get out of bed and limp to the bathhouse.
F. an absolute bear again this morning.
Supper: Molasses baked beans + cornbread.
Camp
25¢
Gasoline
$1.30
Eggs
28¢
Postage stamp
2¢
April 25, 1926
Tooth worse today. I’d been hoping that it was just a little inflammation, but I can feel it all through my cheek. I think the dreadful thing has to come out. I want to cry. I’ve already lost two others. It’s like I’m eight again, losing teeth left and right. At twenty-eight, it’s no longer as cute.
Later
Raining an obnoxiously steady drizzle today, which didn’t at all help my mood. We ended up not driving as far. E didn’t mind one bit. Used the early stop to cook up some beans and cornbread. She pushed a bowl in my direction and said, Your favorite, just as I bit down on a dried bean not quite softened. Pain down through my shoulder. I know I shouldn’t have (believe me, I know I shouldn’t have), but I snapped, You don’t see me in years and you think you know my favorite? As if it was her fault I disappeared from her life for seven years. As if it was her fault I had a toothache.
I tried to apologize, I swear, but the words stuck to the roof of my mouth, and she went off to bed without eating a bite.
I opened my duffel just to look at Carl’s letters. I’m the worst sort of friend.
Monday
F. saw a dentist today. Came back one tooth lighter. Made her warm custard for dinner. What else could I do?
Supper: Custard, a whole potful.
Camp
25¢
Gasoline
$1.00
Dentist
$2.50
Cream, pint
12¢
Cinnamon
27¢
Postage stamp
2¢
April 26, 1926
Oh sweet relief! Of course I’m sorer than a dairy cow, but THAT TOOTH is gone. The dentist said it was bad in there, but fixable. He checked over my jaw, but no decay. Thank God. A few days (and a few nips from the flask the dentist slipped me) and I’ll be right as rain.
Custard for dinner, so I know E has forgiven me my bad humor. Bless her.
Tuesday
F. says cross her heart her toothache is better, but her right cheek is swollen like a chipmunk’s and I saw her slip some aspirin. Maybe she’s angling for more pudding?
Supper:—
Gasoline
44¢
April 27, 1926
My dratted throat hurts. The dentist I saw yesterday swore up and down that it was just a toothache that was the problem and nothing more, but of course I worry. How can I not? Before I left New Jersey, Dr. Hunt told me what to watch out for. Tooth decay that reached my jaw. Joint pain. Anemia. Aching bones. Broken bones. He said I was lucky so far, said the other girls who’d been in to see him, the ones who’d ended up in the hospital (or worse), had never had “just a toothache.” He wrote it all down, all those terrifying words like “necrosis” and “cancer” and “probable outcome” for me to give to my new doctor in California. If I made it that long.
While E made breakfast, I sat by the fire flicking my Djer-Kiss compact open and shut, until E took it away and pushed a mug of coffee into my hand instead. Not that I’d know what I was looking for. What does necrosis of the jaw really look like? Would I feel it clear down to my throat?
Later
Stopped for lunch and it’s not even eleven. My throat feels like razors and I’m hot all over. Rode the last ten miles with the window flaps tied open.
Wonder if E would make me more custard. It’s ambrosia.
Later
Can’t drive anymore. Can’t hardly
Wednesday—
Thursday—
Friday
Have spent the past few days in a hospital chair. The nuns give me the boot at night and I have to leave her side. I’ve been sleeping in the car, wrapped in her sweater.
She’s peaceful now. Am content to just watch her sleep.
Saturday
The doctor called it Ludwig’s angina, as if I’m supposed to know what that means. An infection in her mouth and throat that made it hard for her to breathe. She was fine one minute, scribbling in her little notebook, and then collapsed the next, flushed and gasping. Someone helped me bring her to the hospital. Angina, the doctor said. Because of that damned tooth.
I’ve never been so scared in all my life, not even when A.L. fell into the swimming pool at Olympic Park.
Sunday
When they first brought her into the hospital, it was queer. All blue around the lips, she dug in her pocket and thrust a piece of paper at the doctor. I didn’t know what it was, but the doctor shook his head. “No, none of those,” he said, and Florrie let herself fall asleep after that. It was like it was a relief to her.
Later, I looked in her pocket for the paper. It was from a New York City dentist, a Dr. Hunt. I didn’t understand it. It was some sort of medical record. Symptoms, treatments, possible outcomes. It had her name on top, but it said “diagnosis of radium poisoning,” so it couldn’t have been hers. It was just a toothache. Wasn’t it?
Monday
So much better today. She asked for clean pajamas. I realized I hadn’t changed in days. When I told her, and about sleeping in the car, she said, “Oh, Eth!” and sent me to find a campground.
Don’t know if I can do it without her.
Supper: Can of soup, half-warmed.
Camp
25¢
Soup
12¢
Ride to campground
$1.00
May 3, 1926
Finally have this little book back in my hands. E brought my duffel by. I sent her away after then. She’s been here every day since it happened. She needed to rest. Maybe I did too.
I’ve spent the past few days feverish and cold, angry and scared, and also embarrassed. Eth had ridden with me in an ambulance. She’d watched me lying in a hospital bed, bleeding and weeping pus. She’s seen me use a bedpan. I smell like boric acid and carbolic solution.
But it’s not just that. She was the one I was worried about. Watching her limping and swallowing aspirin. I was thinking of her, and so I let a bad tooth go for too long, I ignored signs of an infection; I collapsed. I did everything Dr. Hunt told me not to. And all because I was more worried about E than myself.
Maybe it would’ve been better if she’d never come along.
Tuesday
Slept in late. Bought a bouquet on the way to the hospital.
Supper: Can of soup (tomato), eaten straight from the pot.
Camp
25¢
Soup
12¢
Dozen roses
96¢
May 4, 1926
Why did I write that? That I wished she’d never come along? Must be lingering morphine. I missed her all night.
The ward sister, Sister Benedict, helped me freshen up. A sponge bath, my Chinese pajamas, a pat of Djer-Kiss powder. She combed my hair and braided it, with a coral-colored ribbon on the end. I chewed Sen-Sen to cover up the bitter smell of strychnine on my breath. I hoped E wouldn’t notice my sticky bandage, my flushed face, my hospital bed.
When she came in, it was with a little bunch of pink dollar-a-dozen roses. No one had ever brought me flowers before. She came in almost shyly, with the flowers clutched to her chest, and a blue-checked dress on that I hadn’t seen her wear before.
She sat and, for a few minutes, we didn’t have much to say. The sisters bustled between the beds, straightening sheets, changing dressings, talking in low voices. E and I just sat without a sound, she fidgeting with the flowers that she’d still forgotten to give me, me fidgeting with my blanket.
I finally asked her how the campground was. Fine, she said. Splendid. I have a site under an elm. She didn’t say any more for a moment, and I started picturing it and wondering how she ever set it up. How she ever got to the campground in the first place when she didn’t know how to drive the T.
She must’ve seen the question in my face because she said, Drat it, someone drove me there. Okay? A kid, who ran up the curb twice. I paid him a dollar for driving me, which is probably far too much, but I didn’t know what else to do. I saw then that her eyes were smudged gray underneath and her hair was only halfway combed. She might not be in a hospital bed, but she wasn’t aces. It’s too dark and quiet without you, she said. Those tents are too big for one.
Wednesday
Asked F. today about that piece of paper from her pocket from that city doctor. I wish I hadn’t.
Supper: Soup (pea). A little bit.
Camp
25¢
Soup
12¢
May 5, 1926
Ethel didn’t know. She knew she was sick, she knew it was worse than her doctor said, but she didn’t know it was radium poisoning. She didn’t know she might be dying.
I told her what Dr. Hunt had told me, about all of the other girls who came in with infected teeth and rotting jaws, all girls who’d once worked right alongside us for the U.S. Radium Corporation. Mary, Dotty, Helen, Ruth. Others whose names I’d forgotten. Two dead already. More on their way there.
She told me everything she’d been feeling. The dizziness. The sore hip. The broken ankle that never quite healed right. Here I’m the one in the hospital, but I know, I know that she’s the one with bones full of radium. And then she shows me the tonic her idiot doctor prescribed and I recognized the name as one Dr. Hunt warned me against. Parson’s Vigor Tonic is what she’s been drinking, every time she’s had a bad night. But I know, oh God, it’s really just radium water.
She cried. I’m sure I didn’t prese
nt it the best way. And the hospital setting, all of the nuns and white sheets and bottles of medicine, probably didn’t help. I’d known for weeks that I was dying. That all those days I dipped the brush in radium paint and pointed my lips with it were just letters on my tombstone. I’d known for weeks, but Ethel, she’d only learned. And she had more to lose than I did.
Thursday
Wrote to C. today. Just C. Told him everything F. said about the radium. That it was still there, in my bones, all these years later. That it was the thing making me sick.
If he knows, will he leave Nevada and come home? If he knows, will he bring A.L. back to me? Everything’s changed. Even he can see that.
Supper: Another red-and-white can. Vegetable-beef.
Camp
25¢
Soup
12¢