The Bette Davis Club

by Jane Lotter

  When the fourth and last sidescreen is attached, Tully picks up the garment box and stuffs it back in behind the seats.

  I get in the passenger seat and try to tighten the wing bolt, in the corner above the windshield, that holds the top to my side of the car. But the bolt is stuck, it won’t budge. Tully, once again in the driver’s seat, watches me struggle.

  “Here,” he says, and reaches over to help.

  In the close quarters of the MG, Tully stretches across me and I’m pressed back into my seat. I can’t help but be aware of his physical presence, how good he smells. I’m staring at the upper right corner of the windshield, watching Tully turn the wing bolt. He finishes, but his hand remains where it is, not turning the bolt anymore, just holding it, his body more or less suspended over mine. I shift my gaze from the corner of the windshield to him. His face is only inches from mine.

  “I gotta tell you,” he says. “You have great eyes.”

  “Yes?” I say, my throat gone dry.

  “Yeah,” he says sincerely. “They’re so blue.”

  For a moment, we stare at each other. Then Tully lets loose of the bolt and plops back into his seat. “We’re done,” he says.

  Are we? Oh right, he means the car. Our shiny red roadster now has windows and a tan-colored top.

  “That wasn’t so bad,” Tully says. He reaches up and taps the fabric over our heads.

  “Done and done,” I say, equally pleased with our success.

  Tully slides the key into the ignition. “Now all I need is for you to show me how to turn on the heater,” he says. This reminds me of the moment—just days ago, but it feels longer—back in Malibu, when Tully and I first got in the car and I had to explain to him that there weren’t any seat belts.

  “There isn’t one,” I say.

  Tully frowns. I rush to explain that in the 1950s, when the factory at Abingdon, England, was producing MG TFs, heaters were not standard. “But the cockpit is quite compact,” I say. “Now that the top and sidescreens are on, our body heat alone will . . . warm things up.”

  He looks at me skeptically. I prattle on. “However, then the problem will be interior moisture. Because I’m afraid we don’t have—”

  “A defroster,” Tully says, defeated.

  A few hours later, we’re on the outskirts of Chicago. The sun has gone down; the air has grown even colder. Luckily, I found a wool blanket nestled in with the sidescreens, and I wrap myself up in it. The blanket, like everything else about the car, is another relic from my shattered childhood.

  When my mother drowned herself, I was eight years old. Some weeks later, having nowhere else to take me, my dad brought me to live with his other family—his legal, sanctioned-by-the-state-of-California family—in the big Spanish-style house at Malibu, on the bluff overlooking the Pacific. He parked the MG in the circular drive. He relieved me of the car blanket I was clutching, folded it up, and put it in the sidescreen compartment. Then he took me inside. We climbed some stairs and went down a long hall.

  “This is your place, here, kiddo,” he said, showing me into a room. It was clean and sunny and smelled of the sea. Most of my things were already moved in, a photo of my mother stood on the dresser. We went out on the balcony. My father lifted me up to take in the view. “Look,” he said. “You can see the ocean.”

  “I don’t like the ocean,” I said.

  We lingered, gazing at the water, my father’s cheek snugged up against mine. I felt something wet by my ear. “Daddy, are you crying?” I said.

  “Nah.” He rubbed his face. “Well, you know.”

  “You’re remembering about Mummy,” I said.

  My father introduced me that day to the female housekeeper, but not to his wife, Irene. Then he told me he had business in town, kissed me good-bye, and left. With nothing to do, I wandered down by the swimming pool. A skinny, flat-chested girl in a two-piece swimsuit was floating on her back in the water. She was about thirteen years old. I knew I had an older half sister because on the ride over my father had told me about her for the first time. Suspecting this might be her, I sat down on a lounge chair to watch.

  The girl rolled over, thrashing like a crocodile. “Hey, you little creep!” she said. “Get off my towel!”

  This was how I met my big half sister. This was Charlotte.

  Route 66 goes more or less to the heart of Chicago. By the time Tully and I enter the city, it’s late evening. We’re cruising through the downtown area when a beeping sound emanates from my bag. The cell phone. Charlotte again.

  “Breaking news!” Charlotte says. “It cost me a Kate Spade clutch and a gift certificate for full-mouth dental veneers to find out Georgia’s staying with her best friend, Kelsey. Kelsey moved to Chicago last month—but Tully knows her. They met when Kelsey came back to LA for the wedding.”

  Charlotte sounds even more manic than usual, and I wonder if she’s had her head inside that globe in the library.

  “After your odyssey in Daddy’s little car,” she says, “that is, when you finally reach Chicago, I want you to go to Kelsey’s.”

  I gaze up at the lights of the Willis Tower, formerly the Sears Tower, the signature skyscraper of the Windy City.

  “I have the address,” Charlotte says. “Wait—” She drops the phone on the desk, and it clanks in my ear. I hear her talking to herself and rustling through papers.

  I worry Charlotte may wander off, forgetting about me altogether. But moments later, there’s more rustling, the clink of ice cubes in a glass, and she’s back.

  “Sorry,” she says. “I’m a little woo-woo right now. I’ve been doing deep medication. Ha-ha. I mean, meditation.” She rattles off an address, and I write it on a notepad I pull from my bag.

  “Charlotte,” I say, “if you have this address, you probably have the phone number there as well. Why don’t you ring them? Or text Georgia. Tell her the game’s up. Tell her to come home, nothing is forgiven.”

  “Georgia’s not answering her cell,” Charlotte says. “She’s still not talking to me. Find her, make her understand the mother-daughter healing can’t possibly begin until she gives back what she took from me.”

  It’s been four days since I broke into Georgia’s hotel room in Palm Springs. I have not yet mentioned this escapade to either Charlotte or Tully, but I decide it’s time to take a chance. “You mean that old screenplay, don’t you?” I say.

  I glance over at Tully, who’s preoccupied with the heavy Chicago traffic. After days of Charlotte’s incessant phone calling, Tully’s become adept at tuning out entirely my endless discussions with my half sister.

  “I saw it, you know,” I say to Charlotte in a low voice.

  “You found Georgia?” Charlotte says.

  “No, but I got into her room in Palm Springs. That script she has would make quite a movie.”

  “If you only knew!” Charlotte says. “It’s a very hot property.”

  “And I imagine it’s the item you want returned to you.”

  “It is,” she says after a moment. “Along with one or two other things.”

  “Charlotte,” I say, “I’m weary of this scavenger hunt.”

  Tully stops at a red light just as three young men come out of a bar. Hanging on each other, they gape over from the sidewalk—pointing and giving thumbs-up to our little car. I wave at them.

  “If you want me to continue,” I say to Charlotte, as the car starts up again, “you have to let me know exactly what it is you want from Georgia. One item? Two? A baker’s dozen?”

  “All right,” she says. She gives an exasperated sigh. “I’ll tell you the truth.”

  There’s a pause as Charlotte and I both apprehend that she’s set herself a personal best. Charlotte tell the truth? We’re half siblings, after all. We share the same DNA—and in our family, DNA stands for Denial Now and Always. The truth never came easily to our father, and it doesn’t come easily to his daughters.

  I again look at Tully, who continues giving his full attenti
on to the traffic. I press the phone tightly to my ear.

  “First,” Charlotte says, “how much am I paying you?”

  What? This is not what I expected. What’s she talking about?

  “How much,” she repeats, “am I paying you to locate Georgia and retrieve my possessions?”

  She’s paying me fifty thousand dollars, but I haven’t lived in New York City all these years without picking up a few tricks. “Fifty-five thousand dollars,” I lie.

  “All right,” she says.

  Bother. I should have said sixty.

  “I’ll make it sixty, if you’re successful in getting my things returned to me. Georgia has abused my maternal love. But I do care about the goose. So tell her . . . tell her I’m willing to pay for shamanic counseling or mother-daughter hypnotherapy if it will help us heal the hurt. Do please try.”

  “I will,” I say, amazed to hear Charlotte use the word “please.” “I’ll do my best.” And strangely enough, I mean it.

  “There are three things I want back,” she says.

  “Three things,” I echo.

  “Yes, three. Although one of them is my lost youth.” At this last statement, she breaks into peals of laughter. She’s laughing so hard at her own joke, she can hardly speak. “That’s funny, isn’t it?” she stammers. “My lost youth.” She goes off into more laughter, snorting and giggling into the phone.

  I take the phone from my ear and hold it in my hand, staring at it. I’ve always had trouble understanding people, communicating with them. My relationship with my half sister is simply another case in point. Here I am in the middle of North America, searching for Charlotte’s daughter and some trio of purloined objects, and here’s Charlotte, collapsing into what I can only assume are drug-induced hysterics.

  I put the phone back to my ear. Charlotte’s still laughing, but her tone has changed. The pitch of her voice has gone lower, there’s a hollowness that doesn’t seem right. She no longer sounds like she’s laughing. Not anymore. She sounds like she’s sobbing.

  “Charlotte?” I say. “Everything all right?”

  She breathes in. “Of course! I’m tired, that’s all. Muscle Man premieres in a few days. I’ve been working”—the phone cuts out—“that picture! Dog, I’m telling you. D-O-G!”

  “There’s trouble with Muscle Man?” I say.

  “What? No. I’m in complete control!”

  Maybe. But her voice is husky, she’s sniffling. Is Muscle Man shaping up to be a flop? Don’t read too much into this, I tell myself. Maybe she’s not sad. Maybe she’s been snorting cocaine.

  “Anyway,” Charlotte says, all business again except for the occasional sniffle, “as I was saying, the script. That’s the number one item I want returned to me. And then there’s the other.”

  “I know there’s another item,” I say. “You keep telling me that. But what is it?”

  “Hmm?” she says. “Oh, that’s not as important. But I’d like it anyway. Sentimental reasons. And if you must know, there’s something else Georgia stole from me. Margo, you’re my . . . half sister. So I might as well tell you as anybody. But you won’t be able to help. I’ll have to handle that myself.”

  “But what is it?” I say.

  “It’s upsetting, is what it is. I have feelings, too, you know. After so many years together, a woman shouldn’t feel betrayed by her man, her own daughter—”

  And then I lose her. The line goes dead.

  “Charlotte!” I say. “Are you there? Dammit!” I beat the cell phone against the dashboard.

  “Hey!” Tully says. “Don’t do that!”

  I cease flogging the phone, though perhaps too late. Its lights have gone as dim as Tinker Bell after she drinks the poison intended for Peter Pan.

  “Let me see,” Tully says. He holds his hand out, and I pass him the phone. In the darkened cockpit, it glows weakly. I do believe in fairies; I do believe in fairies. Glancing away from the traffic for a moment, Tully looks down at the device.

  “Battery’s dead,” he says. “Put it in the charger tonight, and if you didn’t kill it banging it around like that, it should be okay tomorrow.” He hands it back.

  I’m not really listening to Tully, however, because I can’t stop thinking about Charlotte. Her man, did she say? Meaning her husband, Donald, the screenwriters’ agent? Her own daughter, meaning Georgia?

  Is Charlotte saying what I think she’s saying? That Donald is romantically involved with his stepdaughter, Georgia? Wait a minute! Is that why Georgia ran off? To be with Donald? And why wasn’t Donald at the wedding, anyway?

  It’s late. After Tully and I check into a downtown hotel, I call Charlotte from the landline in my room. All I get is her voice mail. I undress and climb into bed, but I can’t sleep.

  Three things. There are three things that Charlotte wants returned to her. At least now I know what they are. The first item, the most valuable, is An Innocent Lamb, written by our father, Arthur Just, and Orson Welles. I’m guessing she needs that to offset whatever losses she incurs on Muscle Man.

  The second item isn’t terribly important, yet Charlotte wants it for sentimental reasons. Well, it’s not the Spy Team script, is it? She didn’t even mention that. So it’s Georgia’s wedding dress, it must be. That dress is exquisite. And I remember Charlotte saying at the Malibu house that she hoped to get the dress back. After all, it’s meant for Daughter’s First Wedding—like Baby’s First Christmas.

  But the third thing? The item Charlotte said she’d have to handle herself? It’s not a thing at all. It’s her own husband. It’s Donald. No wonder Charlotte feels betrayed. No wonder she’s ambivalent about her relationship with Georgia. No wonder she was crying for her lost youth!

  I wonder what Charlotte ever saw in Donald. Something hidden, I suppose. Something the rest of us will never see. Well, she’s right: I can’t help her retrieve her husband. And I already have the wedding dress.

  So my path is clear. Find Georgia, talk to her, get that screenplay. The one thing I absolutely must lay my hands on is An Innocent Lamb.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  EMOTIONAL BAGGAGE

  In the morning, the sun is out, there’s a chill in the air, and the wind is blowing in off Lake Michigan. Tully and I leave the hotel and drive to the address Charlotte gave me. It turns out to be one of those glass and steel luxury high-rises across from Millennium Park. After we park the car and walk to the building, we take a very fast, very smooth elevator to the thirty-sixth floor and press the buzzer of apartment 36C.

  The door opens and a young woman stands there. Blonde, attractive, yet somehow a tad world-weary for her years, she wears tights and a sleek, stretchy leotard that make her look like she’s on her way to dance class. For a moment, she considers Tully and me both, thinking perhaps that we’re salespeople or religious zealots. Then recognition comes into her eyes. She leans against the doorjamb.

  “Hey, Tull,” she says.

  Without a word, Tully brushes past her, and I’m pulled along in his wake. The woman closes the door and follows after us. We pass through a marble foyer and into a living room that’s all white walls and floor-to-ceiling windows with multimillion-dollar views of the park, the lake, and the city. There’s a lipstick-red sofa, a white Berber rug, and a lot of expensive, modern furniture, but I get the feeling we won’t be invited to sit down. The three of us stand there, ignoring the view and focusing on one another.

  “This is Georgia’s aunt,” Tully says to the woman. “Margo Just.”

  The young woman gives me a childish wave.

  “Kelsey Burke,” he says to me. “Kelsey and Georgia are best friends.”

  “Duh,” Kelsey declares, hand on hip. “Since we were dweebie little boppers, surfing the breaks together.”

  Kelsey turns to me and her attitude changes. Now it’s as though she’s addressing the aging headmistress—that would be me—of a private girls’ school and has put on her best manners in an effort to escape punishment for some outrageous t
ransgression. “I lived in LA my whole entire life,” she says politely. “Until last month, when I moved out here.”

  “Right,” Tully says. “Listen, Margo and I are here to see Georgia. We’re worried about her.”

  “Don’t be,” Kelsey says. She leans against a sofa table and pulls a leg up behind her, stretching. “Georgia isn’t stressed about you.”

  “She told you that?” Tully says.

  Kelsey laughs. “She told me lots of things. The day before the wedding, she texted me she was going to ditch you. Sorry to say that, but you asked. By the way, that was some wedding reception. Too bad you missed it.” She laughs again. “After you left, everybody partied. Danced the whole freaking night! Somebody had disco biscuits.”

  Disco biscuits?

  “Party drugs,” Tully explains for my benefit. “Ecstasy.”

  “Anyway,” Kelsey says, stretching her other leg, “too bad you and Georgia weren’t there.”

  “Kelsey was going to be Georgia’s maid of honor,” Tully says.

  “That always sounds so Robin Hood,” Kelsey says. She does a half curtsy toward Tully, then makes a fawning gesture like a courtier. “Thy maid of honor, my lord. Forsooth!”

  Is she mad? Surely no one in her right mind could be so willfully insipid.

  “Kelsey is also studying acting,” Tully says. He’s beginning to sound like a frazzled father, humoring his two-year-old.

  “Umm,” Kelsey agrees. “And Kelsey is about to get her big break. Kelsey will soon be back in Hollywood. Kelsey is stoked!”

  “You got a part?” Tully says.

  “Yup. Not supposed to tweet about it yet, but it’s big.”

  “I’m impressed,” Tully says, though whether he’s commenting on Kelsey’s career or her anatomy is a mystery. She continues stretching, and we both watch as she lifts her right foot up to the sofa table and bends forward, effortlessly touching her forehead to her knee. Her spine and flawless back muscles are outlined by her leotard. She turns her head so that her cheek rests on her knee.

  “You know,” Kelsey says, gazing up at Tully, “Georgia totally guessed you might show up here.”