He reached out and hooked my hair behind my ear and then leaned close until our faces were almost touching. In the shadowy darkness I could see the glitter of his eyes. “There’s no secrets in this business. Only I don’t talk about it because the studio is getting strict about scandal. I mean, I don’t talk about my wife.”
I moved away from him, closing my blouse where he’d undone a couple of buttons. “It’s not a scandal to be married. Oh, you mean me.”
“No, I mean her. She’s, uh, you know what an addict is?”
Sort of, not really, though I’d heard the other girls whispering in the dressing room about some of the parties. I didn’t go to that kind of party and so I tried not to listen. Sometimes they talked about things I didn’t really want to know.
He said, “Golly, you’re sweet. Like you hatched yesterday. Guess I was, too, because I didn’t know until after we were married. Anyway, that’s how it is and there’s not much I can do for her.”
I didn’t know what to say. Then he said it for me.
“Nice girls don’t date married men. I should have realized that you didn’t know. I guess I better take you home now.”
He did, he took me home, walked me to the front door, kissed my cheek, gave me a smile and said good night. And I couldn’t think of anything at all to say until I made it upstairs into my room. After closing the door, I spent the night on my bed with a pillow over my head to muffle the sound of me sobbing his name.
We avoided each other on location after that. As our parts never put us both in front of the camera at the same time, that was how it went. Horrible. The days were horrible. I stood wherever I was told to stand and wait to be called, and it’s a miracle I ever heard directions because all I could think about was Laurence. My eyes ate him up, from his looks to his clothes to the way he moved and then occasionally, I heard his voice.
He was talking to a director and the words weren’t clear, but that tone carried, low and beautiful, and that voice belonged on stage where people could hear him. He looked good on the big moving picture screens, maybe better than he would on a stage, but it seemed a waste not to hear him.
If he watched me, I didn’t see it. Only I guess he did. Because a week later he was waiting on the sidewalk when I returned to the rooming house. He smiled and stood there and waited until I reached him. My heart wanted to burst it was so happy and for a minute I forgot why we couldn’t be together.
“Silver,” he said, “I miss you.”
All I could do was nod.
“Trouble is, I’ve fallen hard for you.”
Nice girls don’t date married men, he’d told me, and he was right. I never would. I’d practically grown up in Sunday school. Okay, I ran away but that’s not to say I forgot everything my parents taught me.
He said, “I’m going to leave her.”
I managed to ask when and how.
“As soon as I can. But divorce isn’t easy, it takes time. And we have to keep it quiet and keep us a secret. The thing is, those gossip reporters don’t care about a quiet divorce. The story they always want is the triangle. And that’s what the studio doesn’t want.”
And then he said, “When this is all straightened out, I want to marry you, Silver.”
CHAPTER 16
Dates who spill wine on the restaurant table cloth and lose track of the conversation are only intriguing the first time around when they are unexplored territory. I could write a Guide on How to Lose a Man, damn, I wasn’t surprised when Graham cut the evening short. Little April strikes out again. Hmm. That could be a chapter heading in a Dummies Guide to Recognizing the Signs.
I thought he’d get over it, hey, I got over it. The evening was a bummer, with Graham echoing Laurence’s words, not something I could explain to him, and besides. When he dropped me off, I’d apologized. Blamed the spilled wine and wandering attention on a headache.
“Thanks for a wonderful dinner,” I’d said. “Now I need to hit the aspirin bottle because my head is splitting.”
Everybody gets a headache occasionally and I certainly wouldn’t expect him to stumble through a migraine making nice. Or is it only women who are forgiving? A few days of silence, maybe. Although Mac or Tom would have been phoning every half hour to see how I felt. Still, we had planned to spend the weekend at his cottage.
Instead, he phoned to say, “Darling April, the in-laws won’t leave and I am stuck playing reluctant host.”
So maybe there really were in-laws in town? I am not stupid but I am forgiving, especially if I think I’m the one in the wrong.
“I’ll miss you.” Something in the region of my heart felt tight and worried.
“Darling, I’ll call you next week.”
And he did and I was ashamed that I had been suspicious. We went out to the cottage, walked the beach, stretched out on the rug in front of the fireplace, and he quoted poetry, whispering odd bits while he kissed me and touched me and covered us both with the afghan because even with the fire, the room was drafty. The only place colder was the bedroom, which made it fairly useless.
Beneath the crocheted squares of color, he slowly removed my clothing. When I worked away at his buckle and zipper, he laughed at me.
“You’re always in such a hurry,” he said.
“I’m freezing.”
“Need another glass of wine?”
“No, I need you.”
He reached down, managed to work his jeans off, then bent his leg over me and ran his bare foot up and down my legs and I had an odd memory. No. Wouldn’t think about it. That’s what had killed our dinner out.
“What?” he said and I knew I’d grown silent, almost stopped breathing.
“Thinking how much I love you,” I said, because that was the truth, I wanted him so much.
The reflection of the fire flamed his hair red, made his eyes shine, and when we were warm enough to push away the afghan, I ran my hands across his chest and down his body. His skin glowed golden.
It wasn’t until the next day, when I was home and thinking about him that I realized.
I had told him that I loved him. And he had kissed me and said a lot of things about how much he loved the way I looked and the way I felt and the way I made him feel. He had said he needed me. But last night he never once said he loved me.
He usually said it repeatedly.
No surprise, then, when he didn’t phone me until three days later to tell me some long story about faculty meetings and an upcoming event he was supposed to organize and a lot of other stuff that I should have recognized immediately as a kiss-off.
I concentrated on keeping my voice steady. “You work too hard. Take care of yourself.”
And then I turned off my cell phone and turned on the TV. Didn’t see it or hear it, but it blocked out the world. In all that sound and flashing light, I leaned back into the couch cushions and let the tears stream down my face.
Maybe that’s what triggered the scenes, way too much emotion on my part. My world disappeared and I was back in California in Silver’s depressing life, and once again, the memories were out of order.
***
“She died yesterday, I told you she would,” Esther said.
We were sitting on stools in front of the dressing table and trying to fix ourselves up. Ruth was standing behind me, waiting for me.
“How do you know that?” My hand shook and I splattered powder all over the dressing table.
In the mirror my face was whiter than the powder.
“It’s in all the morning papers.”
“Oh Millie.” Ruth bent over me and her arms went around me. Her face pressed down on the top of my head. I couldn’t see her face in the reflection, just her short dark bob, the barrette on one side.
“He’ll be devastated,” I whispered.
Esther said, “I wouldn’t bet on that,” and Ruth hissed at her to shut up.
My eyes went hot and blurry with tears. “He will. He’ll blame himself.”
“For sure,”
Esther said.
I didn’t hear Ruth’s comment, something grated out.
Esther reached over and trailed her fingers through the powder I had spilled. “Gee, have you seen those new vanities for loose powder? They have a screen or something built right inside so that the powder won’t spill and they’ve even got a mirror and a puff and the whole thing is so small, you can tuck it right in your pocketbook. Kind of expensive, though. Like a dollar and a half, I think. Next time a man wants to buy me a gift, that’s what I’ll tell him I want.”
Had Laurence ever talked to me about his wife? No, but honestly, he didn’t need to, did he, it was none of my business. I knew he was a married man. He loved his career more than he would ever love me, I knew that, too. Whatever it cost me, it was my cost, not his.
I’d walked in knowing. Maybe not exactly, not at first. By the time I knew, it was too late. I was head over heels and now I couldn’t stand to be without him.
Or maybe now everything between us would turn out all right. He’d told me he loved me and wanted to marry me. Only, I felt awful about his wife. I never ever would have wished her dead.
“Overdose,” Esther said.
“Oh, do shut your trap,” Ruth said.
Esther leaned toward me. We both kept working, Esther trying to make her marcel stay in place with some sticky hair cream and me trying to powder over tear streaks. The collar on my dress was threadbare from one too many washings. I couldn’t afford another dress. Maybe I could black over the scuffs on my shoes, but what could I do about my collar?
“That man, he supplied her, you know.”
I stopped, the puff in front of my face. “What are you talking about?”
“That Laurence, everybody knows it, he kept her supplied.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Ever meet her? Golly, guess not, you haven’t been around long so you don’t know the guy. That’s lucky for you. But she used to be an extra, pretty thing, too. I saw her a couple weeks ago and she looked like an old lady. And now she’s dead. With her out of the way, he’ll start moving up.”
She was horrid to talk about him like that, practically accusing him of murdering his wife. I didn’t know what to say so I said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means some people talk too much,” Ruth muttered.
With her palms, Esther smoothed her waves in close around her face and held them in place, waiting for the cream to set. “Mabel Clara. Wait and see.”
Mabel Clara had wonderful eyes and lashes like you wouldn’t believe, she honestly did, but the skinny had it that she was past thirty. Hard to tell under all that makeup. She sure knew how to act, sometimes played little girls who were only supposed to be fourteen or so.
“She gets to pick her leading men,” Esther said. “She’s been giving that Laurence the eye.”
Such a terrible thing to say, and him now in mourning and me not able to go to him to comfort him. I would have done that if he asked, sent a message of any sort. He couldn’t, could he, not really, because with such a tragedy he would be nagged by reporters.
“Come on,” Ruth said, and helped me pick up all my things and then she caught my elbow and practically pulled me out of the dressing room and down the hall and outside. “That woman is poison. Don’t listen to her.”
“I could write him a note telling him how sorry I am. Ruth, would that be proper?”
“You could sign both our names, kind of like it came from fellow actors. I don’t think we should go to the funeral. We didn’t know her and it might look odd.”
Ruth was smart about stuff like that.
We didn’t go. But on the note I wanted him to know that I was thinking of him and felt really sad, so I only signed my name, not Ruth’s. I signed it Millie because then if all the notes got put out for display at the funeral, nobody would know who Millie was.
The next time I saw him was a week later. I hadn’t heard a word from him. I hadn’t expected to, of course. I remembered what he’d said about gossip and triangles. He wouldn’t want to be seen talking to another woman, not yet.
It was an outdoor shot again, burning sky and the pavement fire hot under the thin soles of my slippers. Across the street I could see Laurence in a scene with the leading man, waving their arms at each other, shaking fists, glaring, then stepping apart to look at the director.
The director called for another take, more anger, and then another, until the anger looked real, not an act, and maybe by that time it was. At least the actors stood in partial shade and at every pause, a makeup girl ran forward with a wet washcloth and glasses of water for the leads. Nobody offered the extras water.
Laurence was wonderful to watch, his hands so expressive, his eyes bright. When the director was finally satisfied, Laurence and the leading man grinned at each other, slapped shoulders, then turned away. Not a glance in my direction. Which was why I was so surprised a few minutes later to feel his hand touch my shoulder.
“Don’t turn around,” he said in that low voice. “Thank you for so much, Millie.”
And then he was gone again, walking so quickly that I don’t suppose anyone else saw him walk past me.
CHAPTER 17
Depression, yes, my head exploding, yes, plead guilty. That’s how I kept waking up from those damn flashes of scenes.
Macbeth found me sniffling into a tissue and feeling sorry for myself and guess what he said. “Babe, your whole trouble is that you’re dreaming sunny California and waking up to Washington rain.”
He flipped on the overhead light.
“That’s my whole trouble, huh?” I covered my eyes to block out the glare, then peeked at him from between my fingers.
Would it be possible to ask him for the apartment key? I’d give it back to him the next time I needed him, so why bother? Anyway, it was Cyd’s key he had.
“Three in the afternoon, the sun scheduled to set in another hour and a half, babe, you need to get outside.”
Macbeth has always been a “don’t take no for an answer” guy and I didn’t have the energy to argue. I muttered about him being a bully and then gave up, pulled on the wrap he held out for me, and followed him to his car.
I didn’t bother telling Mac that it wasn’t my jacket he’d handed me. It was one of Cyd’s, large, down filled, very warm and when the winter wind met me at the door all I could think was, thank you, Cyd.
First we paused at a drive-through where Mac ordered bags of burgers and fries.
“Coffee,” I insisted, and that was the last wish I was granted.
After that it was all about what Macbeth wanted and I told him so and he laughed at me. His face made me angry until he laughed. The gap in his front teeth made him look so human, I couldn’t stay angry.
We drove to a large empty parking lot, which meant we drove quite a way out of the city to one of those dead strip malls that hadn’t yet met a wrecker’s ball. Blackened leaves blew across the cracked concrete of the lot, along with scraps of paper. The surface was blotched with old oil stains and dirty water and stuff I didn’t want to try to recognize.
“What are we doing here?”
“Eat something,” he said.
No use arguing with the man. I dug into the bag and finished the fries and handed back the burger. Gave him my stubborn stare because the line had to be drawn somewhere and the burger was where. Hate the things, too much fat and my stomach wasn’t going to take that. Despite the wishful thinking of alpha types, depression does not improve appetite.
“Okay,” he said, all toothy smile, “then let’s get on with it.”
“Get on with what?”
He opened his door, got out, came around to my side, opened my door, and stood there wearing his happy face. He had discovered the solution to world problems, apparently.
“You are going to learn to drive.”
I clutched my paper coffee container so hard the lid popped off and the whole thing went flying out on the parking lot.
�
��Are you insane?” I screamed.
He was. Insane. He stood there with light mist settling in diamond drops on his neat brown hair, and glittering wetly on his face, leaving dark streaks on his jacket and his Nikes. Only the creases in his jeans seemed immune to the damp.
In a slow, grade school teacher voice he said, “April, your problems all started with a nightmare about a car crash. I’m not asking you to drive a car out in traffic. Just learn how to drive. Here. Around in the parking lot. There’s no one else around, nothing to hit, and I will be right next to you.”
“No, no, no!”
“If necessary, I can pull on the emergency brake. So you won’t run into anything, I promise.”
“No, no!”
“My car is in very good condition. The hand brake works well. And if I have to, I can reach the steering wheel. You’ll be fine.”
“No.”
He had me down to one no. He also had hours more of lecture ready and so finally, with a whole lot of protesting, I told him my rules. He wouldn’t follow them, we both knew that, but at least it gave me a small hope of limits. At least he wouldn’t suddenly suggest I drive out into the street.
“Ten minutes,” I said. “I’ll do this for ten minutes.”
“Takes longer than that to explain. All right. You will actually drive for ten minutes? Fine, come on.”
He led me around the car hanging onto my elbow as though he thought I might escape. To where? The strip mall was closed, out of business signs slapped on dark windows. The street was a blur of traffic, no crosswalk in sight. Not a lot of choice. I slid behind the wheel and expected to go into convulsions right there.
Mac closed the door and returned to the passenger side. After he was settled, the first thing he did was put one firm hand on my shoulder.
“Try to focus,” he said, which no doubt meant that he, too, expected me to go into convulsions. “Look down at your feet.”
“Huh?” Wasn’t expecting that. He surprised me into forgetting to be terrified. And then he explained the pedals, the steering, gears, way too much stuff, and I tried to follow what he was saying and at the same time pretend I was someplace else.
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