Instead she listens to the rhythm of tires on pavement, like drums, like maracas, until the sound blurs. The window, cracked open a hair, lets in a high whistle of air. It’s almost like her own little band. For a while, she sings along with it. All of the Betsey Barnes songs, all of the ones she hears over her kitchen radio in the evening, all of the ones she’s seen in movies lately. Singin’ in the Rain (of course), Skirts Ahoy!, April in Paris, Bloodhounds of Broadway. She’s better than Mitzi Gaynor.
She tries singing “Silver Bells,” but the song is too new. She doesn’t know all of the words yet. It wasn’t one that she used to sing around Dad’s piano. Not like “We Three Kings” (Dad’s favorite) or “The Twelve Days of Christmas” (hers). With the latter, she had a dance and everything. She wonders if she still remembers it.
So many miles with nothing but her own thoughts for company. She thinks about Christmas. She thinks about the ocean. She thinks about Arnie in the Columbia Green living room. She thinks she sees another buffalo. With her fingers, she eats the chocolate cake.
She thinks about Las Vegas, about the script she walked out on. A cabbie’s daughter steps in for a showgirl friend, only to become the hit of Las Vegas. She Trades Her Saddle Shoes for Dance Shoes! shouts the tagline. In the end, she hangs up her saddle shoes for good and heads out of town, strumming her ukulele in the back of Daddy’s cab. Louise is too old for parts like this.
She’d read the script. It was awful, really it was, but somebody wrote that. Someone spent time working on it. And she knew how to play that kind of part. Girl thrust into the spotlight, only to retreat when the going got tough. Not because it got tough, mind you. But because there was no place like home. Thank you, Dorothy Gale.
So she thinks about the script. The Princess of Las Vegas Boulevard is the working title. Maybe she should go back. Maybe she should tell the studio that she’ll do it. But then she thinks about the other scripts, the ones written on an old Underwood Champion and crammed onto the shelves in Florence Daniels’ apartment. Stories about women strong enough to stay put when the going got tough. Women who didn’t hang up their shoes, saddle or otherwise. Yes, she thinks about those.
That puts a fresh burst of speed on. Bush-buffaloes whip past her window. When she finally gets tired of driving, she’s in Rolla, Missouri, and starving.
Instead of a motel, she stops at a tourist court. It looks like something straight out of an earlier century, with neat rows of tiny red-roofed white cottages. The red and the white and she’s suddenly thinking of candy canes. Cracked.
She steps from the car and is instantly freezing cold. It’s not cold enough for snow, not here in middle-of-nowhere Missouri, but it’s not Oklahoma. Or New Mexico. Or Arizona. Or any of the other scraps of Western states she’s driven through. She digs for her coat, her scarlet-lined mink. It’s all she has.
The tourist court has a newer hotel building, promising modern rooms and a TV in the lobby, but she takes one of the little cottages. Inside it’s just big enough for a bed, a chair, and an ashtray stand. The girl at the front desk said that the original owner had converted old chicken coops into the first few cottages way back in the 1920s. Louise isn’t sure if she believes the story, but, then again, she’s never actually been inside a chicken coop. Maybe they’re roomier than she thinks.
She sets the wicker suitcase on the chair and closes the curtains. Pink and green flowers. The curtains are faded and old-fashioned. Maybe they’ve been hanging since it was a chicken coop.
Not for the first time, she wonders if her mother stopped here. If she was driving the same roads, sitting in the same diners, walking the same three-house main streets that Mom and Florrie Daniels had all of those years ago. Did they stay in Rolla, Missouri? Did they eat in El Reno, Oklahoma? Did they stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon and want to touch the sky in the middle?
She slips from her mink and drapes it around the back of the chair. There’s a telephone in the room, and she puts a call through to New Jersey. She hadn’t known she needed to talk to her dad until this very moment, but suddenly she’s monstrously lonely. All that precious solitude she’d craved, and now all she wants is someone to share the trip with. Like Mom had.
When her dad answers, she asks, “Why don’t you ever talk about Mom’s last trip?”
“Al?” She can almost hear the blink in his voice.
“Did she drive on Route 66?” Louise peels off her gloves, one by one. “Did she hate Missouri as much as I do?”
“No ‘Hi’ or ‘Ho’ or ‘Hanging in there, old man’?”
“Sorry.” She blows a noisy kiss through the phone.
“What’s going on? You sound tired, Al.”
“You can hear that through my kiss?”
“When I pick up the phone and you start peppering me with questions, something’s going on.”
The phone cord stretches as far as the little bathroom. “Driving alone on the road all day, a person has time to think.” She drops the gloves in the sink and turns the faucet on.
“You?” He chuckles. “You can’t sit still long enough to think.”
She delicately ignores that. “Anyway, it made me realize I’ve never been in a car for this long. I’ve never seen this country from side to side.” She attacks her gloves with the bar of hand soap. “But Mom did, and I know nothing about that trip. I’ve been driving along Route 66 this past week and I realized, well, she might have driven the same road.”
“Oh, honey, I don’t know much about it either. You expect me to remember maps and itineraries from a trip I didn’t even go on?”
“You’d remember more than me.” The water from the faucet starts running from warm to scalding hot. She shuts it off. “I was only six.”
“Al.” She can imagine him taking off his reading glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“All I know is that she drove across the country and never came home. You never told me what road she took, what states she passed through, what sights she saw. Until I saw the pictures, I didn’t know that she traveled with Florence Daniels. I didn’t know—”
“Pictures?”
She hears the catch in his voice, and balls up the dripping gloves in her palms. “I found them in her apartment.”
He coughs. “Florrie’s apartment? You know her?”
“Knew. And no, I didn’t, not really. Dad, she died a week or so ago.”
He’s quiet for a good long time. She squeezes down the length of each glove finger. Water spatters back down into the sink.
“We were good friends,” he finally says. “The three of us—Flor, Eth, and me. We were inseparable as kids. Then we grew up, graduated, and war hit. I went overseas and, well, it all changed.”
“War does that,” Louise says quietly.
“Yes, it does.”
She drapes the damp gloves over the edge of the sink.
“Eth wrote to me a few times while I was Over There. Flor didn’t. I knew they were still as inseparable. Work, dances, Saturday matinees. I wondered if there would be room for me when I came back.”
“Oh, Dad. You’re worth making room for.”
“Eth thought so, but Flor…Well, I don’t know. I’m not sure if your mom started keeping company with me because Flor drifted away or if it was the other way around.” She hears water on his end of the line. He’s maybe washing his hands or filling the kettle for his evening tea. “But you knew Florrie? You never said that.”
“I didn’t, Dad. Well, not more than in passing. We were at the same studio. She had quite a reputation.” She amends, “A good reputation.”
“I’ve seen all of her pictures,” he says, and she’s not surprised.
“But out of the blue, she dies, and I inherit everything. I didn’t think she even knew me from set dressing.”
“She knew you.” A cabinet slams. Evening tea it was. “We kept in touch.”
“Really? For all this time? But—”
“Al, this is costing a sultan’s fortune,” h
e interrupts. “I’ll tell you all about it when you get here.” She imagines him unfolding a Red Rose tea bag. “Scout’s honor.”
“Okay, Dad.” She shakes water off her fingers. “I’ll be there soon.” She hears the murmur of a voice in the background. “Uncle Hank’s over? It’s not Sunday.”
Now her dad is the one to sound tired. “We’re doing a jigsaw.”
“Circus animals, like we used to do? Bears? Boy and his dog?”
“Trains.”
“I love you, Dad…”
“…as big as the prairies.”
The line goes dead with a click, and she wipes her hands on the bathroom towel.
In just a moment, she thinks, she’ll go find dinner. A sandwich. Chicken soup. Maybe some of that barbecue the desk clerk told her about. She sits on the bed, eases out of her pumps, leans back to test out the pillows. In just a moment.
In just a moment, she’s asleep.
FRANCIE
Do you remember the time we saw that tightrope walker at the circus?
BERYL
Remember? I can’t forget.
FRANCIE
I didn’t watch her, you know. I watched the people below holding the net.
BERYL
You wanted to see if she would fall?
FRANCIE
I wanted to see who would catch her.
—Excerpt from the unproduced screenplay When She Was King
Chapter Fifteen
1926
Saturday
Bought A.L. a turquoise bracelet, set in silver stamped with lizards. Traded my tortoiseshell comb to a Hopi woman for it. A.L. loves lizards more than she loves dolls.
Supper: Rice.
Camp
25¢
Bracelet
tortoiseshell comb given to me by C., our wedding day
May 22, 1926
We stayed at the Grand Canyon one day. One whole day where we could wake up and watch the sun rise and fill up the bowl of the canyon and then set, leaving impossible stretches of stars. One single day where we forgot to write, forgot to photograph, forgot to even talk. One wasted day in our rush to Nevada that wasn’t wasted at all.
Eth was quiet. We both were. I didn’t know if she was thinking about Nevada or Carl or the divorce. I didn’t know if she was thinking about the radium in her bones. I knew she was thinking about AL, when I saw her bartering with a Hopi woman. She came back without her hair comb, but with a present in her pocket for AL. Parents can’t go away and not bring back a souvenir, she said. Share the adventure.
I didn’t remind her that C was the one who went away. That she never would’ve left New Jersey in all her life if it hadn’t been for that empty house and note on the table. That C pushed her into adventure. Do you regret it? I asked. The adventure?
She touched the spot in her hair where she’d always worn the comb. Not now.
Sunday
Set out early today. Two hundred miles to think of what to say.
Supper: Rice.
Camp
25¢
Gasoline
$2.71
May 23, 1926
I woke up and the sun was shining. Right outside the tent door, birds and jackrabbits and one persistent bumblebee. It was almost beautiful. But then E came out of her tent, stretching and yawning and scratching the small of her back. Morning, she said. Out of coffee, I guess. Should we pack up? Tomorrow might be my last morning with her and here she was wasting time with itches and the coffee tin when all I wanted to do was to grab her hand and stay right here in Wherever, Arizona, until forever. She yawned and the sun shone and my heart shattered into a million pieces.
Later
While I was strapping in the tents, she went and begged a jar of coffee off the neighbors. She poured it into our two tin mugs. We might not have too many of these left, she said, almost shyly. But we do today.
Thank goodness Arizona is so god-awful long. Because I’m dreading Nevada.
Monday
My chest is full of butterflies.
Supper:—
Camp
25¢
Gasoline
$1.80
May 24, 1926
All day, it was as if E couldn’t make up her mind. Fast, slow. Stop, go. One minute she’d be speeding along, pushing the Lizzie until it shuddered. The next, she’d be pulling off with one excuse or another. Pretty flowers. Cramped knees. Too much coffee. I didn’t believe any of them. She’d wander and fill her hat full of flowers, sit on the running board and plait dozens of daisy chains, but she was a thousand miles away. Maybe back in Colorado or endless Missouri. Maybe all the way back in New Jersey. Maybe farther than that. Not on the verge of Nevada. Not hours away from seeing her daughter and husband.
Finally, right about suppertime, she stopped. Stopped clear on the side of the road and refused to go another mile farther. We could see the state border from where we were. She looked calm as can be, but the daisy chain in her hand trembled. I can’t show up on AL in the dark, like a ghoul, she said. It was still handfuls of moments until sunset. One night more?
Of course.
Tuesday
I saw her from the end of the driveway. She came bursting out of the front door like a rainbow. Two crooked braids, too-big overalls, a sunburned nose. She didn’t even notice me. Rushed straight over to a paddock, blowing kisses at an enormous horse.
I swear she was bigger. Had it only been weeks? Surely she was twice the size.
I called out her name, but she didn’t even glance up. “Anna Louisa!” and “A.L.!” And then, like C. always called her, “Al!” She looked up, grinned sudden like sunshine, and ran my way.
F. was right, I shouldn’t have worried that she’d have forgotten me. But she was missing a tooth—her very first—and I hadn’t been there to catch it.
But Carl, he didn’t come running across the driveway. As A.L. wriggled and squeezed me and planted kisses straight on my belly button, he stood on the porch of the bunkhouse. He was brown and thin and wore a plaid shirt unbuttoned at the top. He was growing a mustache. He squinted across at me and he waved.
Words I didn’t know I had came up like bile in my mouth. Six weeks of sentences unspoken, six weeks of tears hidden in the dark of my tent. But just when I walked forward, when I opened my mouth, when I was ready to tell him every thought that pressed on my heart, when I was ready to tell him that, yes, fine, let’s get divorced after all, he straightened. He said, “Good to see you, Eth,” and A.L. wormed her way under my arm and suddenly, suddenly, all those words went away.
Supper: “Cowboy stew,” A.L. told me.
May 25, 1926
She walked off, the way I expected, the way she was supposed to.
The car was warm. I went around it, leaned my head against the hood, and cried.
Wednesday
I can’t believe I have my little girl back in my arms. But, oh, she doesn’t stay there. She’s impatient these days. Happy to see me, but then happy to move on to whatever’s next. She tags along after the dude wranglers. The first time I saw her on that huge horse, my heart was in my throat. But she just waved away my worry with a little gesture. “Daddy lets me,” she said. “They all let me.” And I knew, whatever happened, I wouldn’t have to worry about A.L. So commanding. So fearless. So absolutely sure of herself.
But she ran off and I was left alone with Carl.
That’s why I left home. That’s why I drove three thousand miles. That’s why I slept in tents and cooked over a fire and pushed a stubborn Model T through mud. To find him. To beg him to come home.
I’d only thought about the destination. I hadn’t counted on the journey.
All day, shaking and sore and sick to my stomach, I didn’t know if it was my bones aching or my heart.
Supper: Omelets, fried tomatoes, raisin dumplings.
May 26, 1926
I’ve been watching AL riding her horse. Her hair never quite stays in her braids, but her chin is lifted and her e
yes shine. She looks so like Ethel, it devastates me.
Thursday
It’s a good thing I’m here. Carl’s aunt Marjorie isn’t much of a cook and the kitchen is as tossed as A.L.’s toy box. I spent all morning on the spice cupboard alone. She had THREE jars of celery seed and didn’t even know it. Who needs that much?
A.L. has been keeping me company in the kitchen. She has so much energy she’s wearing me out. I don’t remember getting tired so easily before. She pushes over a chair for my feet and brings me cold water. I know F. said to not take the Vigor Tonic anymore, but I almost think it did help.
Supper: Bean soup, cornbread, shoofly pie.
May 27, 1926
E has been in the kitchen all day. I heard AL’s voice inside for a little bit, singing in a toothless lisp, but when I looked in the window, I didn’t see Carl. Just AL, dancing around the kitchen with a broom, and E slumped in a chair with a drink and a sleepy smile. The table was covered with jars of spices and tins of flour and lard. It must be heaven after our little camp kitchen.
It isn’t a bad idea E has. I spent the morning cleaning out the Lizzie. Everything came out and I spread both tents out to air. I wiped flour from the food box and sand from pretty much everything. I scrubbed six weeks of mud from the floor and sewed up a tear in one of the side curtains. It all needs to be done. I can’t stay here forever.
Woman Enters Left Page 19