by Anne Nesbet
Darleen shook her head.
“I don’t mean that. I mean that if I had been — I don’t know — the right sort of daughter — easier to love — she wouldn’t have wanted to fly away. She would have been able to keep her promise, and keep her feet on the ground. But I wasn’t enough, somehow. I couldn’t keep her.”
They each sucked on their butterscotch candies for a thoughtful moment.
“Goodness,” said Victorine. “Mothers must be very complicated things. When I was little, I was sad not to have one, but mostly because my father and grandmother missed her so much. I didn’t know her long enough (only three days, after all) to develop a personal impression, or to feel I ought to have behaved differently somehow.”
Then Victorine shifted a bit in their nest so that she could turn her clear gray eyes right on Darleen.
“What I mean, dear Darleen, is, I don’t have experience with mothers, exactly, but I’ve never ever heard of a child being able to cure a parent from pneumonia. Have you? So I don’t think even you could have done it. Or kept her from dancing out on the roof. And now —”
She smiled and then covered her mouth with a hand, because the smile had turned into a yawn.
“Oh, you’re tired!” said Darleen. “Poor Victorine! Everything you’ve been through, and here I am, talking your ear off when you’re tired as can be!”
But yawns spread fast, so Darleen was already yawning, too, and that meant they found themselves wobbling back on the edge of laughter — and then tipping right over that edge.
“Oh, Darleen,” said Victorine, wiping her eyes. “Imagine. Soon the world will have spun itself around one whole turn since we first met in the back of the motorcar.”
“Gosh,” said Darleen. She thought back to that surprising moment when the large bundle had turned out to be an actual girl. “I guess you’re right about that! Almost twenty-four hours.”
“I do believe,” said Victorine after a silent moment, “that my life, since meeting you, Darleen, is now irreversibly changed. How lucky for me that we met! I think some of your daring may be rubbing off on me, you know.”
“I’m not really —” said Darleen, and then she stopped.
Maybe it was true that what they had done, over that long day and night, could be called daring for real. Did that daring come from being the kind of fruit that is not one thing all the way through? A fruit that has a rind that makes it seem like one thing and yet holds something completely different inside?
She wasn’t sure. That feeling that sometimes fluttered inside Darleen, that was always threatening to break out into the world, might or might not be like the sweet insides of a purple fruit. It felt sometimes like a living thing, stretching its wings and wanting to be born. A monstrous something, maybe even.
What if it broke out and then kept on breaking things?
Her father’s poor heart;
Her own dreams;
The world.
Darleen started the next morning by running over to Aunt Shirley’s house to see how her Papa was doing and to pilfer some breakfast supplies for herself and Victorine.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right here if I leave you alone?” she had asked Victorine several times over. “All the studio people will be arriving in an hour or so, and then it will begin to get properly lively around here. Just pretend to be one of them. There are always new people, you know, so you should be able to blend in.”
It seemed such a terribly huge thing to Darleen, to be facing a studio full of people you didn’t even know! Why, she knew practically everybody at Matchless, and she still sometimes felt tongue-tied around them (when the camera wasn’t cranking away).
“I’ll be entirely fine,” said Victorine, looking the picture of composure and confidence. “Now, go along quickly, or I guess you’ll be late for your own picture!”
Darleen ran.
In fact, she ran so fast that Aunt Shirley laughed out loud when she saw her.
“Darleen! Why, you’re panting like a poodle! You’ll be in rotten shape for your scene this morning if you run yourself ragged.”
“How’s Papa?” said Darleen, trying to breathe a little more quietly.
“Perfectly all right,” said Papa himself, and Darleen whirled around to see him sitting up in Aunt Shirley’s most comfortable armchair and smiling at her.
Darleen ran and flung her arms around him (gently) while Aunt Shirley smiled and tut-tutted:
“Now, Bill, you must not stir an inch from that chair — except to go back to bed. I’ve told everybody the rules. Absolute rest today and tomorrow for you. An actual nap lying down in the afternoon. Darleen, be gentle with him, child!”
Darleen was actually being very gentle, of course. But it was so wonderful to see her father on the mend that she grinned and grinned and grinned at him.
But after she had kissed her Papa and said goodbye, Aunt Shirley drew Darleen into the hall and pointed at something in the newspaper.
“He mustn’t see this, Darleen, dear,” she said. “No more sad shocks for him while he’s mending.”
Looking past Aunt Shirley’s tapping index finger, Darleen saw a set of headlines that made her feel very strange inside:
“BERRYMAN GIRL FEARED DEAD”
“Shoes and Hat Wash Up”
“Guardians Grieve”
“No Trace of Kidnappers”
“Poor little rich girl, indeed!” said Aunt Shirley, shaking her head. “Looks like she’s been drowned after all, poor chick. We can’t let Bill hear about this — I doubt his heart could withstand the thought of it.” She sighed. “Well, that’s that, then, probably. No one will be getting that twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward now. Too bad.”
When Darleen left Aunt Shirley’s, she felt quite proud of her achievements. She had not gotten into a single argument with her aunt. She had learned that her Papa seemed to be well on the mend. And she had left Aunt Shirley’s with several warm and savory biscuits, wrapped up in the offending newspaper.
She went skittering back to the Matchless buildings, where the atmosphere was nothing like it had been the evening before. If in the middle of the night the studio had felt like an abandoned city or a graveyard, now it was a factory, an anthill, a military camp, a chaotic town on carnival day. All of those things and more all at once!
“Hurry, hurry, hurry!” said one of the director’s all-purpose assistants as Darleen came speeding by. “Your Uncle Charlie wants to have things going in thirty minutes! Prisoner in the attic, remember!”
“I know, I know,” said Darleen, and she sped on up to her dressing room, where there was, to her surprise, no sign of Victorine. Even the blankets and coats in the corner had been folded up so neatly that they had practically become invisible.
But there was no time to worry about where Victorine must have gotten to. Darleen admired the rather battered look, of course, of her dress from yesterday. Appropriate for a prisoner in an attic! She checked in the mirror, and her hair was also a little battered-looking. All right.
She put the biscuits and newspaper on a shelf and marched herself downstairs.
Stepping out into the huge expanse of the glass-roofed and -walled studio meant walking out into din and chaos. There were at least three different pictures in production at the same time, and the set for each one had its own crew, who were shouting instructions, questions, and suggestions. It was extraordinary how much noise went into making silent films! Darleen was mostly used to the din, of course, since she had been working on film sets as long as she could remember, but today she was scanning the hall for any trace of the missing Victorine, and that made her imagine what this place must seem like to someone seeing it for the first time. It must seem as raucous as Palisades Amusement Park at the end of the trolley line.
She saw technicians down at the far end putting the final touches on what was recognizably a saloon, with a bar counter on the right and swinging doors on the left, as every movie saloon in every Wild West picture always had
.
At the other end was a backdrop with arches and a garden painted to fool the eye (well, to fool the not-very-clever eye; the painting wasn’t very good — even Darleen could tell that). They were most likely going to film a historical picture there, Darleen thought, something with enormous costumes and lots of the wooden “marble” pillars that the props and scenery men kept stacked in one of the back storage rooms.
In the middle of all this bustle, Uncle Charlie was noisily consulting with some of the carpenters. He was standing next to a cutaway of an attic, with the ceiling angled up so that an improbably large skylight could be seen. The whole room had been lifted up on short stilts so that a few steps’ worth of a staircase could be squeezed into the foreground. A few feet away, the camera was set up on a little loft structure of its own to film the attic from straight on.
“Darleen!” shouted Uncle Charlie as soon as he saw her. “How good of you to join us!”
Uncle Dan added, “How’s Bill?”
“Papa’s much better this morning, thank you,” said Darleen, and even Uncle Charlie softened for a moment.
“It’s a terrible thing,” he said, shaking his head. “Can’t believe anyone would have a go at Bill. Now, Shirley on a bad day — I could see someone wanting to clonk her over the ears. But Bill?”
They all thought good thoughts about Darleen’s Papa for a moment, and then Uncle Charlie went back to his usual mode, which was impatience.
“Where’s that Jasper Lukes? We’re missing our villain.”
A shudder went right through Darleen then. Villain, indeed! Little did they know! She had been fretting about this privately all morning: What would she do if Jasper Lukes turned up on the set today? What could she say? What would he say? He can’t hurt me, not with all these people around, she told herself, but her self only half believed her.
She wanted to warn them all, but she couldn’t quite figure out how to talk about the details of yesterday without bringing up Victorine. She couldn’t say a word to her family about an undrowned Victorine now that she knew they couldn’t be trusted when it came to large rewards.
“Maybe he won’t show up at all,” she said, and really she hoped he wouldn’t. “Didn’t he say he wanted to quit?”
“He’s said that a thousand times,” said Uncle Charlie. “Doesn’t mean a thing.”
“Start without him,” said Uncle Dan, checking his camera.
“I guess we can film the bits where Lukes isn’t needed,” said Uncle Charlie. “All right, Darleen, do you recall what we’re doing today?”
“Um . . .” said Darleen. It had been a distracting thirty-six hours.
“I’ll refresh your memory: the Salamanders nabbed you at the theater. Remember that?”
“Oh, yes,” said Dar. She certainly did remember that.
“So, even though your actual kidnapping stunt over at the theater went sideways — with no helpful publicity for us — we’re pretty much keeping to that story we had planned in the episode this week. Means that for today, here you are in the attic of the Salamanders’ den. Prisoner. Lukes — if he ever bothers to get here — will be threatening you because . . . because . . . Dan, what’s the because here again?”
Uncle Dan wasn’t just clever with cameras; he had the kind of head that could hold on to the plot of a story and never let it go.
“King’s head got clobbered,” he said. “Amnesia.”
“That’s right,” said Uncle Charlie. “It’s all coming back to me now: Your poor Royal Father, who is imprisoned by those Salamanders at the moment, got hit over the head and doesn’t remember a blessed thing, including where that Black Sapphire may be. So our villain Lukes wants you to give up the Sapphire, but you are a brave girl, of course, and refuse. And then they leave you to starve to death or change your mind in the attic, and a mysterious balloon comes and rescues you.”
“What?” said Darleen. That was new! She hadn’t heard anything about any balloon.
“An idea we had yesterday. Good, right? We can film exteriors out at the Palisades. There’s a balloon at the amusement park that they’ll let us borrow. It’ll be nifty. Pulling out the stops for Episode Nine! Now get up there. Why don’t we do the closer-in shots, hey, Dan?”
Darleen scampered up the narrow half stairs at the front of the set, and Uncle Dan pushed the little platform holding the camera a few feet closer to the set. Uncle Charlie had a list of the pictures they needed, and they checked them off as they went.
Darleen had learned as a little, tiny tot that photoplays aren’t always filmed in regular real-life order; sometimes the end is filmed before the beginning. That is one helpful way to check whether what is happening to you is real life or the filming of a movie: Did lunch come before breakfast today? Did you shout and smile after the new puppy appeared at the door, or before?
Darleen was supposed to be a prisoner at this point, so an assistant tied some rope around her wrists and another length of rope around her and the chair.
“Here we go. First up is some agonized worrying if you don’t mind, Darleen! The Salamanders have just left you to rot in this attic room and have threatened to hurt your Royal Father. Ready . . . steady . . . off you go, Dan. Crank away.”
Darleen wrung her hands, widened her eyes, and made a show of pulling against the ropes.
A messenger boy came by, mid-hand-wring, and asked rather loudly whether any fiddlers were around, because the players over in the Western picture were complaining that they couldn’t get into a properly jolly mood for their saloon scene without any music.
Uncle Charlie, annoyed, said, “Stop for now, Dan! Could you people give us a little consideration? Our Darleen’s trying to agonize up there, don’t you see?”
“Oh, sorry,” said the boy. He didn’t seem very sorry.
“For the sake of Pete,” said Uncle Charlie to the boy. “Go tell them to look at the ‘I CAN’ forms. There’s got to be a musician in the pool somewhere. Now, scoot!”
They filmed close-in shots of Darleen loosening the bonds around her hands with her teeth, and then they moved the camera’s little perch back again and filmed those actions over again, from a distance. The balance between distance and close-in shots was a delicate thing, Uncle Charlie always said: like knowing when you’re hungry for a banquet and knowing when a single dumpling is just what you need and want.
Jasper Lukes still hadn’t shown up.
Uncle Charlie said some choice words about that. Then he said, “Well, let’s do the balloon bit now, then, shall we? All right, Darleen, here’s how this is going to work: the rope from the balloon is going to come into the attic through the skylight, and you’ll naturally just climb right up it. Got that?”
“I guess so,” said Darleen, who might possibly have the strongest arms of any twelve-year-old girl in all of New Jersey. (Serial heroines climb a lot of ropes. Up ropes and down ropes, all day long.) “Who is supposed to be flying the balloon?”
“Don’t quite know yet,” said Uncle Charlie. “A mysterious friend come to help you out. Something like that. We’ll figure it out before tomorrow, don’t worry. Hey, you there with the rope! Let’s get this scene moving!”
There was a scaffolding platform built right above the attic, and some technicians in overalls were fastening one end of a good, thick rope to the sturdiest part of the platform.
Darleen scooted back down the narrow half stairs so she could see the arrangements for the rope. The balloon was not in evidence at all, not for this shot. The rope would represent the balloon all on its lonesome, and then the ones who cut the film into shape (including her dear Papa, once his head had stopped aching) would simply insert some images of an actual hot-air balloon with some sky behind it. The astonishing thing was how willing a photoplay audience was to be deceived! It didn’t take much to make them think, There goes Darleen in a lighter-than-air balloon!
But climbing up the rope, even if it was just through the skylight and up to the scaffolding platform, was real enoug
h. Darleen flexed her hands and thought strong rope-climbing thoughts.
“Let’s keep your feet tied together,” said Uncle Charlie, cruelly enough. “That will look extra nice, don’t you think? Daring Darleen climbing up the rope, using only her hands!”
“Thanks so much, Uncle Charlie,” said Darleen.
“We’ll cheer you on,” said Uncle Charlie. “All right, are we ready? Let’s go, Dan! Crank away!”
The fellows on the scaffolding above let the big rope down through the skylight and then twitched it back and forth to suggest it was tied to something large and round and buoyant.
“Go on, now, Darleen!” said Uncle Charlie. “Up you go!”
Darleen grabbed the rope. One hand up . . . the other hand up . . .
“That’s good!” said Uncle Charlie. “Go ahead and look up at the balloon — it’s up above your head. Keep climbing!”
The men on the scaffolding grinned down at Darleen.
“Come on, come on!” they said. “There will be a ginger beer for you when you get up here!”
It took every single last ounce of Darleen’s strength to make this trick work, because it wasn’t really a trick at all, was it? It was one hundred percent genuine rope climbing. The only thing in this shot that got off lightly, thanks to tricks, was the foolish balloon itself! It didn’t even have to show up at all. All things considered, Darleen was quite jealous of the balloon.
Hand over hand over hand.
“Keep it up, Darleen!” “Come on, Darleen!” “Go, go, go!” It seemed like everyone anywhere near the set (and a bunch who had wandered over from the other two photo-play scenes, too, just to see what was going on) was staring up at her and shouting encouragement. All that cheering and hullabaloo did give Dar’s arms another boost of strength.