So, after much rumination, he’d decided to step aside and allow his son to do what he liked—a young man should choose his own life, he thought. Besides, he could continue to run the movie house without the boy and still make a fair living.
His son wanted to be an actor. “An actor?” Surely, he thought, such fancies would pass. Having exhibited thousands of films in the movie house in the past twenty-nine years, he knew something about the fortunes of the trade, that many an actor came one day and left the next. He’d liked Ramon Novarro in Ben-Hur, the biggest star of all time for a moment, and then gone. Then there had been Rudolph Valentino, taken from this world in 1926, his absence causing such grief, with pictures of long lines of mourners in all the newspapers. Who even mentioned the fellow now, except to recollect that day? Thinking about movie stars, he could name dozens who had appeared in one or two films and then vanished off the face of the earth. His personal taste had always leaned toward the “sweet ladies” of the screen—Lillian and Dorothy Gish, for example; they were reminiscent of the way he’d thought of his own daughters—wholesome and earnest. He’d seen them come and go, and though he had never been particularly interested in the appeal of movie stars, whose photographs he would sometimes distribute, he could see how a young man like his son might be attracted to such a profession, as even he had noticed how the young girls in town admired Emilio’s good looks.
(And there was something else. Blunt in his fashion, open in his expressions, he would deal with the world as happily and open-mindedly and as hopefully as possible, afterward withdrawing into the privacy of his photography studio—a shed he had converted during the 1930s, which stood near the barn, where he kept his cartons of old photographs and a table where he could fiddle with the hand-coloring of photographs and with memory. On a day when he once again talked to his son about the possibility of his going into the business, he began to feel a little discouraged, and, as was his usual recourse, went into his shed, drank a few sips of whiskey, and imbibed a few mouthfuls of Dr. Arnold’s Relaxation Heightener. Mainly it calmed him down, and he would forget about his misgivings—the many times he’d been unkind to his wife, Mariela; his lapses in mood, when he would move through the tremendous femininity of his household feeling disempowered, times when he would look at his son, Emilio, his flesh and blood, as he lounged in the yard and, with a great rage, would want to remind the boy that the legacy he was rejecting—the photography shop and theater—was the product of many hard years of work. And yet that day he walked out into the field with an eccentric, or drunk, look on his placid face, in one of those moods when, regarding the flowers, he would swear that they were growing because of him; and things which seemed to be in place, like the old buckboard in which he had photographed many of his daughters, came loose and moved. Then he looked toward the house and saw Kate O’Brien standing there, arms held out and imploring, as if it were 1897 again and the winter storm that would bring on her pneumonia was coming. And he thought, blinking, that death was lurking; why trouble the inhabitants of this world with one’s own sorrows or needs? Another blink and he perceived a shadowy figure hiding behind a chestnut tree, and then a breeze rose and everything seemed normal again. He went back to the house and sat in the kitchen eating some stew—Carmen had set it out for him—and he thought about his son and asked himself, “Who am I to make trouble for him?”)
Well, good luck and an honest demeanor were not enough to succeed, but to show his son, Emilio, that he would help him, Nelson had written a few letters to his friend Harrington’s son in California. Harrington had gone out there to make pictures back in the 1920s—this tall cowboy of a man whom Nelson had met in Cuba in 1898. He had died, but his son had taken over his modest studio, Starr Pictures. To please Emilio, he sent off a few letters of inquiry, and he was delighted when Harrington’s son responded with a most laudatory letter, saying, in part: “My father used to speak of you with the greatest respect. If there is anything that we can do at Starr in the future, by all means, let me know.”
He tucked the letter into a jacket pocket and found his son in the ice-cream parlor with Gloria. Sitting down beside Emilio, he said that he wanted to “reveal a confidence,” and they went outside. Standing across from the hotel, Nelson, his hand shaking, told Emilio about the letter.
“Now, isn’t that good news?”
“It is, Father”—Emilio answering him in his “best” way, in imitation of his father’s Irish intonations (he was lost when it came to speaking to his Cuban mother).
“But there’s something I have to tell you.”
“Yes, son?”
“I’ve signed up.”
“Signed up?”
“For the army. I went over to Quarryville one day. I think they’ll take me.”
“You couldn’t wait for the draft?”
“No, Poppy”—his mother’s term for her father. “I wanted something different.”
***
The sisters were not happy with his decision—death notices of young men were everywhere in the newspaper, memorials announced on the radio. But Emilio Montez O’Brien wanted to have his way, so many days spent in daydreaming about the challenges of life and the rituals of being a man. He was barrel-chested and tall, sometimes taking work as a carpenter’s assistant for the money, or working on a construction crew in town, hoisting beams and carrying sledgehammers and bricks in wheelbarrows, and feeling hearty with the rest of the fellows, and sitting around with them, hearing about how the war was ending the Depression, bawdy jokes being told, and corny ones, too (“Say, I got one for you, son. Whaddayou call a camel without a hump? Hump-free”), and smoking cigarettes with them and giving the up-and-down when a pretty woman came walking down the street, some fellow always saying, “Boys, that’s what we’re fighting for,” the fellows with whom he worked lost in speculation as to whether they would make the grade with the draft board, for they wanted to get the Japs and the Nazis; just about any branch of the service was fine as long as they didn’t turn up like one of those poor sailors in Tiger Bay, eaten up by sharks or tortured by the cruel Japanese (“Heard this story about this fellow, an Aussie—that’s what they call the Australians. They plugged his bottom up with tar and sewed shut his peter; they sewed up his nose and his mouth and left just a small opening so they could pour rice and water down his throat. They did that until he burst open, I wouldn’t want that”). Or end up on a B-24, them Luftwaffe boys shooting them down left and right like fish in a barrel. And there was always one older fellow who’d remember the First World War and say, “At least they’re not using mustard gas anymore. You know, that stuff gets into your lungs and makes the veins inside expand and burst”—and many more descriptions of terrible ways to die. Yet the prospect of glory seemed beautiful and ennobling, even if you did die, carried home like the Spartan on his shield in the history books.
He’d listen, feeling, despite his occasional doubts, that it would be appropriate to do his bit for the war; and wanting very much to be a man and get the hell away from the female influence, for as much as he loved his sisters, loved the tenderness of their hands and how it was nice always to have someone pretty to look at and someone to take care of the trivial chores of the day, he had felt, over the years, softened and pampered by all this. It would make him a little annoyed to see the picture his father had taken of him a few months after his birth, when the sisters had dressed him up in the most lacy and sweet-looking clothes, his baby face so bright-featured that he resembled a little girl instead of a male. He’d sometimes swear that his bones and limbs and organs were somehow softer—and thanked God for the healthy recourse of the bordello, where he could prove himself, the ladies always impressed. But there were many days when he’d have the strangest dreams: that he possessed insides made up of soft flower petals and like a young prince found himself roaming through the rooms of a house filled only with female things, dresses and ribbon-brimmed hats, slips and step-ins, brassieres and stockings rising up and wrapping them
selves around him, the female influence in which he had flourished as a child a source now of terrible self-doubts.
Not that he thought that he would go fairy like a certain Mr. Belvedere, who, unmarried and delicate, ran the music shop in town, the very shop where in earlier years his musical sisters had bought their instruments, returning them for repair or adjustment from time to time, the boy sometimes accompanying Olga or Jacqueline, when she would buy a new set of violin strings. Mr. Belvedere, with his snuff box and high forehead and wax-tipped mustache, and his tendency somehow to have the air of a butterfly, was ever so enchanted by the presence of his sisters when they looked particularly pretty on a given day, but was always a bit more overwhelmed when Emilio would enter the shop with them, the man clapping and clasping his hands at the sight of him, declaring, “My, what a beautiful child you’re turning out to be.” This gentleman was well liked by the sisters, and, in fact, aside from failing to exhibit a thorough masculinity in his every movement, there was very little about him that was different from other men, for he lived a quiet life alone in an apartment above the shop. Yet this did nothing to stop rumors that whenever he left town it was to have a lover’s rendezvous with a young college boy of similar inclination. Emilio would wonder if Mr. Belvedere, too, had been raised with a powerful female influence—not the kind that makes a man grow dizzy at the prospect of love or makes a man feel crude and hopelessly ungenteel by comparison, but the kind of influence that would produce an inclination for untoward behavior.
He did not think about this often, except on days when he’d had those dreams and he found his sisters too doting or when his mother would tell him to wear a muffler even though it was not particularly cold. Wanting to prove himself then, he would charge across a field and on certain days, to test his physical strength, he would attempt to lift the front end of the Model T (he could never do it), regularly impressing his father with the ease with which he could carry his black trunk of photography equipment and his willingness to work for local farmers, mending fences and helping with the harvest.
Yet, while doing such things, he never felt particularly close to the brotherhood of man, the vague feeling coming over him that he was almost ambassadorial in their midst—a feeling that, quite frankly, he did not have when he was around women. In fact, he preferred their company, though he felt he would do best to keep his distance. Sadly, for on many a day when he had his doubts about life and something of his father’s melancholy came over him, he would feel like resting his head on a tender female lap. Of course, he avoided doing so, being a man. Better to get out of himself, to become someone else—that’s what, years later, he would say attracted him to the idea of becoming an actor (Movie Life magazine, August 1954).
For all his lack of experience, his few dalliances on the stage in long-forgotten high-school productions had put that idea firmly in his mind, and yet, for the time being, he, with his own self-doubts, had wanted to be toughened up by experience. He did not much look forward to the drudgery of barracks life and training, not to mention the very real possibility of getting killed, but he thought joining the army was necessary—even if he would have been called up in any case.
— A Love Affair, 1943 —
Something else, a love affair with a young woman, had helped him along. A traveling theater troupe had come to Cobbleton in 1943, mounting a production of William Saroyan’s Time of Your Life for a two-weekend run in the Jewel Box Movie House, and Emilio, working backstage, had made the acquaintance of a young brunette actress named Spring Mayweather, a dark Irish beauty not much older than himself, a stand-in, who worked alongside him as a stagehand, in a shirt with rolled-up sleeves and ordinary blue jeans.
She was five eight or so and, like many actresses, a bit of a chatterbox. She loved to talk while they worked and had such a sweet way about her that her voice fell on his ear like a kind of music. She talked about the business, having danced in USO shows—he knew about that kind of work, for his sisters Olga, Jacqueline, and Maria were always performing for the boys in New York—and how she had gotten into show business. “Stagestruck, I guess,” she said, her history amounting to a little summer stock and a few bit parts in a WPA theater in Albany. She was about twenty and had come from a small town in Upstate New York. Stricken with actorly ambitions, she hoped one day to make something of herself. Emilio, loving women, listened to her with great attentiveness and compassion. Her hopefulness was beautiful and he found himself nodding “Yes, you will do it,” yet sensing that she would never get what she wanted in this life, fading instead into the oblivious periphery of the theater world.
One night he invited her to dinner in the Main Street Hotel, spent $7.32 on that meal, and amused her with a few card tricks (he always carried a deck of Bees in his shirt pocket), saying little about himself (“Yes, I have a large family. I’ve got fourteen sisters, three cats, and three dogs, though right now there’re only a few of them at home”). Feeling most complimentary and happy after a few bottles of beer, she told him that he “looked like a movie star,” and he answered, with some humility, “Well, maybe so, thank you. The girls look at me all the time and I don’t mind it, but when it comes to doing something like what you’re doing, I don’t know if I’d have what it takes.” And although he knew about the general demeanor of women from his sisters, and something about intimacy from the countryside brothel with its coal heater and smoldering wallpaper smells, he felt ill at ease, being one of those men who feel nervous until they find their release in the act of love.
After dinner, they’d gone for a walk, Emilio taking her by the hand to a tranquil spot in the countryside, explaining a little bit about his family—that he had an Irish father and a Cuban mother (“Cuba, I think I once heard of that place,” she said) and that, although he could pretty much stay in that town for the rest of his days if he so liked, carrying on the family businesses, he didn’t much like having things so easily set out for himself. He became a little sad, thinking about his father, who’d never as much as laid a finger on him all his life, and who would sometimes look at him as if he, and not his sisters, were the future of the family. That night, he stood in one spot, near a chestnut tree by a hill where in the winters he and his sisters sometimes went sledding, and she kissed him out of pity and loneliness, surprising him with the heat and strength of her tongue, that first kiss returned many times over, and Emilio, ever polite and respectful, sighing as her hand groped in his trousers and she said, “Oh, darling, this is perfect, isn’t it?”
And because it was late May in 1943 and few lights were to be seen at that time of night because of blackout shades (most people were in bed for the night anyway), the sky was very clear and all across the horizon came streaks of light, falling stars.
They sat down on soft, dewy grass that left their clothing wet, holding hands and peaceful as if they were resting on the cots of a slightly rocking ship—the sensation of the world’s movement beneath them—and soon enough they’d started to kiss again and Emilio began to feel glorious, and she, liking him very much, opened her plaid skirt and the blouse she’d bought at Macy’s in New York, worn especially for the occasion (“I wanted to look pretty for you”), and lifted off her brassiere and suckled him on her breast (how he liked that, the soft flesh against his cheek, her nipple growing rigid and dense in his mouth), and told him in a voice that seemed to betray her many fears about the uncertainties of the future, “Take care of me now.”
Her youthfulness, his strength, her softness, his ardor, her naughtiness, her compliance, his reckless thousand kisses, his large “bone,” the scent of her hair, her quivering and sweet femininity, saliva, kisses, the churning of hips and cries.
They were inseparable for the next three days, his father vaguely aware of the young lady’s presence, Emilio reluctant to hang around to help, walking about in a delirium of love, his every thought on Spring: not his sisters, his actorly ambitions, or Errol Flynn, or Cuba or Ireland or anything else. She was good to him; whenever
they could get away, they’d meet and go off to their tranquil spot and she was tender and affectionate. But at the theater she begged Emilio to show discretion, not to stare at her with such obvious intent and to pretend that they weren’t up to anything. Her fellow actors seemed to know what was going on—he had seen the players’ sideways, winking glances and slowly began to deduce that the ardor of Spring was a pattern. He didn’t care, but on their last afternoon, with Emilio swearing that he had fallen in love with her and on the verge of declaring his intentions, she said: “Well, I guess this is our last time together.”
“Last?”
“Well, we’re off to a few more towns this month, and then we go to Ohio, and from there we just keep on gonig.”
“Will you come back?”
“I don’t know. I’ll write you. Maybe we can figure something out.”
His handsome features drooping in consternation, his expression sad: “But I thought we had something going.”
“My goodness, don’t you know I can’t get tied down. In any case, you’re too young to get all tangled.”
The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien Page 26