Elm Creek Quilts [10] The Quilter's Homecoming (7 page)

Henry, looking ever more pleased they had arrived too late to compete, offered to get them some drinks while Elizabeth found a place to sit and watch the marathon.

“I bet you could dance circles around them all,” a man spoke close to her ear. Startled, she drew back as he pulled out the chair beside her and sat down. “You look like a girl with energy to spare.”

“Not that much,” she admitted. “I like dancing, but in smaller doses.”

“I’d ask you to dance, but the floor is reserved for the marathon.”

“I’d have to refuse,” she told him. “I’m married.”

He made an exaggerated show of looking around. “I don’t see any husband. If you were my wife, I wouldn’t let you out of my sight.”

Elizabeth laughed politely and watched as a dancing woman frantically waved smelling salts beneath her partner’s nostrils. She shrieked and burst into tears as he staggered into a table at the edge of the dance floor, sending glasses of lemonade and ginger ale flying.

“That’ll disqualify him,” the man remarked. His hair was parted down the middle and combed down neatly. When Elizabeth nodded, he suddenly peered at her curiously. “Say, aren’t you that actress, the one from that movie—what was it? No, don’t tell me.
The Thief of Baghdad
?”

Elizabeth smiled. “No, that wasn’t me. I’m not an actress.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think I would know.”

“You’re pretty enough to be an actress. Have you ever thought about being in the movies?”

“No, I can’t say that I have,” said Elizabeth. “But I’ve been in California only a day.”

“Well, let me tell you, sister, girls not half as pretty as you are making movies every day.” He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a business card. “I’m a producer myself, always on the lookout for new talent. Where are you from? Ohio? Indiana?”

“Pennsylvania.”

“Same difference. You’ve got that wholesome, midwestern look the camera just loves. I have half a dozen scripts on my desk with roles you’d be perfect for.”

“But I’ve never acted before,” Elizabeth said, fingering the business card. “I wouldn’t know the first thing to do.”

He shrugged. “We have an acting coach on staff. It’s easy. You’re a smart girl. You’ll pick it up. My number’s on the card. Just call me at my office—”

“My wife won’t have time to be in your picture,” said Henry, directly behind them. “We’re ranchers, not movie stars.”

The producer jumped up in surprise, nearly knocking over his chair. He eyed Henry’s strong farmer’s build before taking a step back and saying, “She looks like a girl who can answer for herself.”

“I can,” said Elizabeth quickly, as Henry glowered. “And my husband’s right. I’m going to be much too busy to be an actress. I’m sorry, but thank you anyway.”

“Suit yourself.” Grumbling, the man walked off and disappeared into the crowd of observers lining the dance floor.

“You didn’t have to be so rude,” said Elizabeth as Henry took the vacant chair and set two glasses of lemonade before them. “He might have put me in a movie. It would have been fun.”

“I doubt he was a real producer.”

“He had a business card.” Elizabeth held it up. “See? Grover Higgins, Golden Reel Productions, Hollywood, California.”

Henry jerked his thumb toward the entrance. “Back out on the midway, I can buy a copy of
Life
magazine with my picture on the cover. I don’t think a fake movie mogul would have any trouble making fake business cards.”

Insulted, Elizabeth turned away from him and studied the exhausted dancers. When Henry reached over to touch her arm, she scooted her chair out of reach.

“Sweetheart, don’t be like that,” he said. “Even if he was the real thing, that’s not the life for us. You never even thought about being an actress until he came along.”

“Maybe it never occurred to me that it was possible,” she retorted. “You know I love the movies. Why couldn’t I be an actress?”

“Because the day after tomorrow, you and I are going to be in the Arboles Valley running the Rancho Triunfo.”

Elizabeth had nothing to say. Why was it so impossible to believe that a genuine movie producer thought she had talent?

They sipped their drinks in silence until Henry abruptly drained his and stood. “Come on.” He held out his hand, and by force of habit she took it and rose. “You want to go to Hollywood? I’ll take you to Hollywood.”

On the way to the door, Elizabeth tightened her grip on Henry’s hand—and slipped the business card into her pocket.

On the way back to the trolley station, Elizabeth persuaded Henry to stop and allow her to shop for souvenirs. He owed her that much, she figured, for his unwillingness to consider the possibility that she could be the next Clara Bow or Mary Pickford. As she browsed through racks of purses and jewelry at a shop on Windward Avenue, Henry’s willingness to please her despite their dwindling funds made her feel demanding and unreasonable, and ashamed of herself. She was a married woman now, not some Sheba with a string of boyfriends who only accepted apologies in gift boxes. If she told Henry she had changed her mind about choosing a souvenir, he would never believe it, so she settled for a postcard of the midway at Venice Beach with a view of the Giant Dipper roller coaster and the Bamboo Dragon slide to send to little cousin Sylvia and a silk scarf with the words
Venice Beach, California
printed upon it in curved letters that reminded her of the crash of ocean waves upon the sand.

From Venice Beach they took the Red Car trolley north to Hollywood, where they strolled along the sidewalks lined by shops and businesses built in an eclectic assemblage of Beaux Arts, Spanish Colonial Revival, and Art Deco architectural styles. They stopped at Sardi’s on Hollywood and Vine for a soda, then continued down Hollywood Boulevard to Grauman’s Egyptian Theater. The name alone prepared Elizabeth for the hieroglyphics and decorative carvings, but the front courtyard also boasted columns larger around than her favorite stately trees along Elm Creek back home. She and Henry marveled over the tiled murals and a fountain, enormous planters filled with exotic flowers, and a twelve-foot statue of an Egyptian idol with the head of a dog. “All this before we pass through the front doors,” Elizabeth exclaimed. Henry laughed and squeezed her hand.

Halfway through the first feature,
Trouble at Rocky Ranch,
Elizabeth leaned over to Henry and whispered, “Do you think our ranch will be anything like this one?”

“Considering that we’ve already seen three men shot, a bank robbed, and two women kidnapped by Indians, I sure hope not.”

Elizabeth smothered a laugh and settled back to enjoy the movie, savoring every bit of pleasure from the lavish theater and the company of her dear, wonderful husband. She knew this would be one last day of fun before the real work began. In the morning they would take the train northwest into the Arboles Valley, or at least as close as they could come to it. Henry had shown her on the map how the railroad actually ran through a valley to the east, where they would disembark and hire a cab to take them the rest of the way. They would spend one night in a hotel, but the next morning they would go to the land office and take possession of Triumph Ranch.

After so much waiting and planning, only the last stage of their journey still lay ahead of them. They were almost home.

1886

After her mother’s death in late summer, Isabel left school to care for her younger brother and sister and keep house for her father. Her closest friends did not forget her. Every day after school, they gathered on her small back stoop to gossip and help Isabel with her chores. Isabel’s heart lifted when her friends were near, but all too soon summer came, and her friends’ visits ceased. She soon discovered the reasons for their absence. Most had to work their family farms; others had taken summer jobs in the sugar factories in Oxnard. If they had forgotten her, it was only because they had become as busy with responsibilities as she.

Even her father had taken a second job delivering milk. Every morning he rose well before dawn to walk to the dairy farm two miles away. Before the sun rose, he was crisscrossing the Arboles Valley in a wagon loaded with milk and butter and cheese. Isabel would have his breakfast waiting for him when he returned. He would bolt down whatever she put in front of him, thank her, and give her sleeping brother and sister quick, gentle kisses before leaving for his regular job as a handyman at the Grand Union Hotel. He returned home in time for supper, exhausted, with little to say. The children crept quietly around the house when their father was home, heeding Isabel’s warnings to let him sleep. Although her father had never raised his voice to them, Isabel slowly came to understand that they were fearful of the stoic, silent man who worked so hard to provide for the family. She wished they had known the father she remembered, the man he had been before her mother died.

On her birthday, Isabel’s father gave her a dollar to spend as she pleased, so she decided to take her brother and sister to the Arboles Grocery for ice cream. She bought them each an Eskimo Pie, pocketed the change, and took them outside to enjoy their treats in the shade of the live oaks.

As her brother and sister chattered happily, Isabel heard through the open store window a conversation in Spanish. “Who’s the beautiful widow?” a young man not much older than herself asked.

“Who?” another man replied.

“The pretty widow who just left. You saw her. She bought ice cream for her boy and girl.”

The second man laughed. “Widow? Are you crazy? That’s Isabel Rodriguez. She went to school with us. She was in the same class as your sister.”

“That’s not Isabel Rodriguez. She’s much prettier than Isabel.”

“I’m telling you, that’s her. She’s a friend of my cousin. That was her little brother and sister with her, not her kids.”

The men argued good-naturedly as they left the store and approached the three siblings. Isabel pretended not to see them, but they strolled over, all too casually. “
Buenos días,
Isabel,” her friend’s cousin greeted her. “Do you know my friend, Miguel Diaz?”

Miguel, whom she recognized as a boy a few years ahead of her in school, smiled in a friendly, hopeful way, but Isabel returned an icy glare. “Only by what one overhears.”

Miguel winced, but his friend grinned.

“It’s Isabel’s birthday,” her younger sister piped up. “You should tell her happy birthday.”

“
Feliz cumpleaños,
Isabel Rodriguez,” said Miguel, with a regretful look that begged for an apology. She was only sixteen, but the past year had not been kind to her. Someone she barely knew thought she looked old enough to have children ages ten and thirteen. Isabel hardened her heart, gave her friend’s cousin a curt nod, and took the children home.

She sent her brother and sister out to play while she put beans on to soak and made tortillas. She ached for her mother. She longed for her to walk through the front door, smile in her fond and gentle way, and tie on her apron. She wished her mother could be beside her, teaching her all the treasured family recipes she had learned from her own mother. On Christmas, Isabel had tried to make tamales the way her mother had always done, but her brother complained that they tasted nothing like Mami’s and her sister left hers untouched on her plate. Nothing was right without their mother. Nothing had been right since they had left the little cabin on the ranch so many years before. She wished she were still that five-year-old girl, safe and happy within the lie that all would be well in her world, that she would always be loved and protected and happy.