by Anne Nesbet
“I certainly don’t,” said Victorine.
“That was the person who put the holes in the sides of the celluloid filmstrip so that the film could be run through a projector. See?”
There was a strip of film stretched out to air-dry, and she showed Victorine the sprocket holes, running along either side of the celluloid.
“Perforator! Can you imagine a job duller than that? But now they don’t need a special person for that. I guess the strips of film come with the little holes already made.”
She led Victorine to the far wall, where a few strips of celluloid were hanging on a kind of clothesline.
“And, yes! Here it is!” said Darleen, holding the edges gingerly. “Just what we were looking for. See?”
“So that’s what a film looks like up close,” said Victorine. “How interesting! All those little tiny pictures of you, Darleen. And of that awful man, too, the one who wasn’t driving the car.”
Indeed, there he was: the side-winding man, looking around over his shoulder toward the cameraman, every inch of his face beautifully caught in miniature.
“Perfect!” said Darleen. “We can hide this safely away, and it will be, you know, a guarantee. Insurance, in case the thieves come sneaking back.”
They were glad to leave the fumes of the laboratory behind. But instead of going right back upstairs, Darleen nabbed a handbill from a desk outside Aunt Shirley’s office and then led Victorine through an entirely different door.
“Look at this!” said Darleen, gesturing into the great space where the photoplays were filmed.
Victorine followed her, her mouth falling open in amazement. Darleen felt a surge of pride. The Matchless studios were really something!
“But it’s like . . . it’s like . . . the largest hothouse in the world!” said Victorine.
They were in a huge building made of a thousand glass panels, so yes, it was quite like a hothouse.
“In fact, it’s boiling in hot weather, that’s for certain,” said Darleen. “But the glass lets the sunlight through, and that’s good, because it takes a lot of light to photograph a moving picture.”
“Look, a piece of a parlor,” said Victorine, looking around in awe. “And over there — a Wild West saloon. Is that a photoplay set?”
“Surely is,” said Dar. “We can be filming three or four different photoplays at once in here, it’s so big. Tomorrow you’ll see it in action, I guess.”
Victorine spun around slowly, taking it all in.
“Do you like it?” said Darleen.
“I love it,” said Victorine. “Oh, Darleen. It’s so unlike my world — my world in recent months, I mean. Anything must be possible here. Anything!”
When they got back to their hideaway upstairs, they collapsed into their comfortable nest.
“Suddenly I don’t know whether I’m mostly ravenous or mostly exhausted,” said Victorine.
“Well, we were up pretty much all night, weren’t we?” said Darleen. “I say, let’s have a bite of something, and then I’ll tell you my next idea.”
“You are so wonderfully full of ideas, Darleen!” said Victorine. “But a little bite of something sounds lovely. My Grandmama used to say that an escape from danger is better than medicine for increasing the appetite.”
So they ate two of the apples and the piece of chicken and then settled comfortably into the nest Victorine had made, with their backs leaning against the wall, and with overcoats from the costume closet pulled up over their shoulders like blankets.
“Now take a look at this!” said Darleen, giving Victorine the handbill she had grabbed downstairs. “This is part of my new secret plan for you!”
Victorine took a glance and then looked up with such a puzzled expression that Darleen couldn’t keep from laughing right out loud.
“It’s a kind of list?” said Victorine.
“It is!” said Darleen. “That’s the ‘I CAN’ list, the studio questionnaire for the actors applying, you know. To see what talents they may have. Oh, but Victorine, don’t you see? You’re going to become an actress! It will be the perfect disguise around here. We’d better have you go through the list properly, and then you’ll just hand it in at the office tomorrow morning, as if you were the most ordinariest extra actress there ever was.”
They studied the list together:
WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING ABILITIES DO YOU POSSESS? PLEASE CHECK:
I CAN RIDE A HORSE
I CAN SWIM
I CAN BOX
I CAN DANCE
I CAN DRIVE A MOTORCAR
I CAN CLIMB ROPES
I CAN STAND ON MY HANDS
I CAN WRESTLE
I CAN WALK ON A TIGHTROPE
I CAN PLAY A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT:
_____________________________________
I CAN DIVE FROM CLIFFS INTO A WILD, CHURNING RIVER
“Oh, dear,” said Victorine. “I’ve never wrestled anyone. Nor sprung from a cliff into a river.”
“That last one is Uncle Charlie’s little joke,” said Darleen. “Never you mind about it. And anyway, all the actors just check them all if they really want the job.”
“They lie?” said Victorine. “But Darleen, what then happens when a photoplay director tells them to stand on their hands?”
“I guess they learn fast,” said Dar, and when Victorine looked up in horror, Darleen had to try very hard not to giggle.
“Now, really,” she said to Victorine after a moment. “How often do photoplay actors actually have to stand on their hands? That would be just about never.”
Victorine sighed.
“It’s a daunting list of abilities,” she said. “I’m afraid I fall quite short. I’ve had such a mixed-up education that sometimes I think the only path in life I’ve trained for, after all, is that of a World-Wandering Librarian. And I’m afraid they aren’t very much in demand.”
“But I’m sure you can dance,” said Darleen. “Can’t you? Of course you can. And I myself have seen you slither down a rope to a fire escape. And cling to the side of a moving motorcar. And capture snakes. And climb trees! Very recently!”
“Not on the list,” said Victorine, but a smile flickered across her face, and she brought out a pencil end she had found somewhere. With that pencil, she put the most elegant imaginable checks next to riding a horse, swimming, dancing, and playing a musical instrument: PIANOFORTE.
Then she looked up at Darleen with a troubled expression.
“But Darleen, when they read my name on this form, I’ll be sent back to the Brownstones quick as quick, won’t I? Or at least certainly I will as soon as anyone reads the newspaper, which I guess they already have done, to judge from your conversation with your Aunt Shirley.”
Darleen took a deep breath.
“I’ve been thinking about it, Victorine, and I think you’d better do what everybody does around here: use a stage name. I bet we can come up with a really good one.”
Victorine gave her a long and skeptical look.
“You mean simply make something up?” she said. “But what about the truth? You’ve forgotten entirely about telling the truth.”
“Well, the truth is important,” Darleen hurried to say. (The expression on Victorine’s face had her worried.) “But so is keeping you safe. And anyway, stage names are completely normal and ordinary and not at all the same as lying,” said Darleen. She was proud to discover that she could be as stubborn as the Berryman heiress when circumstances required. “Your stage name is who you truly are when you’re at work. On the stage. Right? Many, many very good people have them. Now you give me that paper right now!”
Darleen took the pencil, too, and paused a moment for a thoughtful squint: What would be a name as different from Miss Victorine Berryman as possible?
“We’ll call you Miss Henrietta Hankins,” she proposed. “There! How do you like that?”
“Absolutely not,” said Victorine sternly. “Henrietta Hankins must be about the worst name I’ve ever heard in
my entire life. Here, I’m taking back that pencil right this minute.”
There was a brief tussle, which Victorine won. And then, somewhat to Darleen’s surprise, instead of flinging the pencil to the far corner of the dressing room, Victorine wrote Bella Mae Goodwin on the form, in a lovely, flowing hand.
“And that,” she said, “happens to be actually, truthfully, my name. Parts of my name, anyway. The parts nobody remembers but that were given to me long ago. Yes, Darleen, you are actually at this moment sharing a room with someone named Victorine Charlotte Bella Mae Goodwin Berryman. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”
So many names for only one not-very-large person! Darleen was impressed.
“Finally they come in handy, all those middle names of mine,” said Victorine. “I’ll put them to work as my stage name, and I will still be telling the truth. Ha!”
She paused for a moment, stricken with another distressing thought: “But acting! If I’m an actress, I’ll be acting! Oh, dear, I —”
“Victorine Berryman, don’t start fretting again!” said Darleen. “Acting is definitely not the same as lying.”
Victorine tipped her head to the side. “Is that true?” she asked. “Maybe it’s true. I don’t know. I thought I had everything so clearly sorted out, but now I wonder. Grandmama used to laugh at me, now and again. She said I was an onion sort of person, and she loved me for it, but she wondered whether it might be hard for me sometimes, you know, being an onion.”
Darleen stared. An onion? “Why would she say such a thing? Did you make her cry a lot?”
Victorine laughed right out loud.
“No, no!” she said. “Oh, dear, that’s not what she meant by it at all! She meant I’m just layer after layer of the same thing — consistently Victorine all the way down. Like an onion. I thought it was a compliment, but now I see it might be seen as rather dull, being an onion. Though what’s wrong with being an onion, really, when you think about it? But anyway, Darleen, what would you be, do you think, if you were a vegetable or a fruit?”
“I don’t know,” said Darleen. She had never been asked such a question before. What fruit is the one that just wants to keep its Papa happy and his heart unbroken?
“Well, I don’t think you’re an onion,” said Victorine. “If you don’t mind my saying so, I think you may be quite different on the inside from what you seem on the outside, like one of those fruits my Grandmama showed me in South America: purple skin and crinkly on the outside, but inside, full of surprising pulpy seeds that are the sweetest, wildest things you ever tasted. Oh, and they grow on vines. They like to climb freely, you know — like you! They are quite wonderful, I think. Why, if they could simply grow wings and fly away, I’m sure they would!”
It took Darleen by such surprise that she felt as though flames had suddenly kindled right under her skin. How did Victorine know? It was like she had looked right into Darleen’s soul and seen the wildness hiding there.
“But I can’t,” said Darleen, her heart now ablaze with longing and pain. “I can’t.”
“Can’t what?” said Victorine in alarm. “Oh, Darleen, I’ve gone and upset you somehow! How foolish I am! What is it you can’t do?”
“I can’t fly away! I mustn’t fly away! I promised Papa I wouldn’t. Because my poor Mama —”
“Your mother? But I didn’t mention your mother, did I?” said Victorine. “Oh, dear. Oh, dear. We were talking about fruits, weren’t we? Fruits on a South American vine.”
Darleen just shook her head. The feelings had come first, but now the image followed: bright wings on a roof, reaching for the moon.
Oh!
It was that dream of hers that came back to her now, that took her by surprise at this moment when she was awake. (Dreams are like that — they fade to whispers and shadows, but every now and then, a sliver’s worth will cut right through the haze of the everyday and startle us into seeing something new.)
And when the old dream came flooding back to Darleen now, she saw something the sleeping-and-dreaming Darleen had never been able to see before.
It had never been just a dream all those years. It was — it had always been — a memory dressed up like a dream. How had she never seen that before? How had she not known?
“Mama used to dance on the roof!” Darleen said. And then she surprised herself by bursting into tears. “It was Mama all the time! She danced on the roof — and then she died!”
Darleen knew how to make tears appear when the camera thought tears were necessary, but she had almost no practice at all with sobs that simply welled up in her of their own accord, that shook her all the way through and made her unable to speak sensibly or even move. She was aware of Victorine patting her on the shoulder and keeping a steady stream of words flowing over her, because calm words are reassuring when the world inside you has split right open.
And eventually she realized that Victorine had something in her hand that she was offering to her, a small lump wrapped in waxed paper.
“Have a butterscotch, do,” she was saying. “They are so restorative in times of trouble. Here, I’ll have one too.”
It was true; the sweet richness of the butterscotch seemed to quiet something down inside Darleen. Soon enough, she could think again — and then, of course, she was horrified to realize she had given way and fallen apart when Victorine must be counting on her to stay steady and keep them safe.
“Oh, no, I’m so sorry . . .” she began, but Victorine would have none of it.
“Dearest Darleen, think about it! We’ve had no sleep in I don’t know how many hours,” she said, using her fingers to tick off the reasons a person might need some butterscotch. “And you’ve saved my life several times over, and then you had the terrible shock of seeing your father hurt! My goodness, Darleen, I’d be surprised if you didn’t feel a bit wobbly in the knees now that we’re not actually running from danger. I just blame myself for not remembering about the candies earlier. Grandmama was always a believer in having a Reed’s Roll tucked away somewhere safe for emergencies. But then I forgot all about that particular pocket, so you see, you mustn’t feel the slightest bit apologetic.”
Victorine’s kind voice was as butterscotchy as the butterscotch, and Darleen found she was beginning to feel the way one does once the fever (or strong feeling) has passed: weak, but relieved. Comfortable. Convalescent.
“You know,” said Victorine, “I think you are very lucky to remember your mama at all. I have seen pictures of my poor mother, but that’s not exactly the same, is it?”
“But I didn’t know that I was remembering,” said Darleen, hiccuping a little despite the butterscotch. “I thought it was just this old dream I have sometimes, coming again and again and making me sad.”
Victorine listened to Darleen’s description of the dream that wasn’t a dream — the child looking out the window at some magical creature dancing on the roof, and reaching out to her with arms that would never be long enough to keep a fairy, a butterfly, or a mother from flying away.
“I couldn’t keep her,” said Darleen. She ordinarily wouldn’t have been speaking these secrets aloud, but she was so tired and comfortable, and the butterscotch was so sweet. “I was supposed to be the one to keep her feet on the ground, but I couldn’t. Something in her wanted always to climb and dance and fly. She would tuck me in and sing to me, and then —”
Why hadn’t she seen it before? That the dream was just the plain truth, wrapped up in dream clothing?
“It’s all come back to me this minute, clear as clear: sometimes she would slip out my window and dance in the moonlight, right there on the spine of the roof. I was so little, but I knew she wasn’t supposed to do that. She had promised Papa to keep her feet on the ground. I knew that. But she was so lovely out on the roof! Sometimes she would even wear her beautiful billowy wings.”
“She had wings?”
“Wonderful silk wings,” said Darleen. “From when she was Loveliest Luna Lightfoot and did her butterfly d
ances, you know.”
“Moth dances, I suppose you mean,” said Victorine.
Darleen looked at her, not understanding, and Victorine blushed.
“Sorry, sorry,” she said. “Ignore me, do. The luna moth is just so beautiful, you know. More beautiful than almost any butterfly. What color were your mother’s silken wings? The color of a glacial tarn, I’m guessing? Palest green, so lovely?”
“Yes!” said Darleen. “How’d you know that? And what’s a tarn?”
“A steep-banked mountain puddle, more or less. They’re the most beautiful color because of all the minerals in the water. But never mind that. It sounds wonderful, your mother’s dancing. Like a lullaby, but without the singing.”
Darleen thought about that, settling even more deeply into the blankets and coats. Dancing as a lullaby! Victorine didn’t seem to understand what was frightening and sad about it all.
“But she had promised not to. You can’t have a baby and still be dancing on tightropes and roofs, can you? I was supposed to — supposed to — keep her feet on the ground. But I couldn’t do it, and she kept dancing me to sleep, you know, until one night it got her.”
“Oh, Darleen. . . . Are you saying . . . she fell?” whispered Victorine, and that whisper shook a little, from horror and sympathy.
“Oh, no, not like that,” said Darleen. “She didn’t fall down, she fell ill, and all because her feet kept taking her out to those dangerous places. I didn’t stop her. I couldn’t stop her. And a chill from the night air caught her, and she died of the pneumonia, and our hearts were broken, and Papa’s never really been the same ever since.”
“This may sound like a strange question,” said Victorine, and she doled out another butterscotch for each of them. Butterscotch slows down a conversation so well, like a sweet and melting pause opening up right there in the middle of too many emotions. “But you know I’m an onion sort of person, the same thing layer after layer after layer, and so sometimes I can’t help but be very literal-minded. Anyway, I’m wondering: How were you supposed to keep her from dancing out on the roof when you were so very small? Were you supposed to hold on to her skirts somehow? I guess she would have been much stronger than you, being so much older.”