Laura Lamont's Life In Pictures (17 page)

“That’s Laura Lamont, that’s Laura Lamont!” The girl, a tall blonde with thick glasses—the fifth wheel, Laura guessed—
announced to her friends, who, seeing that she was right, and that the woman standing in the parking lot was indeed Laura Lamont, rushed to Laura’s side, brandishing pens and scraps of paper torn from nowhere. The girls kept trying to touch Laura’s clothing, as if one gentle hand against her sleeve would be something they could hold on to forever. The boys hung back at first, not wanting to seem like they cared, but in a minute’s time they were crushing their bodies against their friends, trying to get as close as they could, to share a meaningful word.

Over the teenagers’ bobbing heads, Laura saw her parents move farther and farther away, until they were halfway to the breaking waves, with her father pointed toward her and her mother pointed toward the water. Clara did clumsy pirouettes at Laura’s side, her round face turned upward, toward the flurry of attention, just as Laura had done as a child. After a few minutes, Irving came around, Florence held aloft in his arms, and steered Laura to the front seat of his car. The teenagers hurried away, waving as they ran, their wool blankets flapping behind them. Laura and Irving watched John and Mary slowly make their way back across the sand, Mary’s heels sinking further in with every step.

T
he Emersons left the following evening, after spending all day long with the girls and pronouncing them both wonderful. Josephine looked her sister in the face for a long time before saying, “You do look like a Laura now,” and walking to the car. Laura ran after the car as it went down the driveway, blowing kisses like a lunatic, though she knew that neither her mother nor her sister would have wanted her to make such a spectacle. Laura imagined her father was twisting his body around in the backseat, trying to catch every kiss she
threw. She didn’t know any of the neighbors in Beverly Hills—if Ginger still lived down the street, she would have run straight there. But Ginger lived too far away to go on foot, and Harriet wanted to talk about what to feed the girls for dinner, and Irving wanted time alone with his wife, and so Laura turned around and walked back into her house, taking the smallest, slowest steps she could. She pulled her hair into two pigtails, the kind of thing Susie was always doing in her movies so that she could still play a teenage girl, as if no one had noticed the lines forming around her eyes. When they arrived back in Wisconsin, Laura’s mother sent her a letter congratulating her on all her success, and saying that she was sure Laura wouldn’t mind if she wasn’t in touch very often anymore, seeing as Laura was so busy and they had so little in common. The letter went on to say that Mary was sorry she’d been so stupid as to name her Elsa, as it had proven an inferior choice, and that she hoped very much that Laura’s own daughters would never hurt her so deeply. It was the longest letter Laura had ever received from her mother, and she read it over and over again, crying more each time, until Irving took the letter away and threw it in the fireplace.

I
t was Laura’s twenty-eighth birthday, and they still hadn’t gone to Paris. Laura knew that Irving needed to be close to the studio—the phone rang at every restaurant in town, and his secretaries always seemed to know when he was at the breakfast table, awake and alert. There were stars who traveled with their children, taking over entire floors of expensive hotels, with rooms set aside for their dogs and parakeets, but Laura wasn’t one of those. She liked to be at home with the girls, and to feel like they were as normal a family as possible.

Her birthday had never been Laura’s favorite holiday, what with
the focus trained onto her and off the girls, and it was her first birthday when she knew her own mother wouldn’t call. Laura stayed home with Harriet, having nothing to do on the lot except wander around and have people wish her a happy birthday.

“I don’t feel twenty-eight,” Laura said. They were making an omelette for lunch, with fresh tomatoes cooked inside. “I feel a hundred and seven.”

“Well, you look about sixteen, so you should thank your lucky stars,” Harriet said.

“You don’t look any older!” Laura swatted at Harriet’s arm.

“I too need to thank my lucky stars, it’s true,” Harriet said, rocking her hips from side to side. She held out the pan and slid the omelette onto a plate.

T
he front door opened and closed with a decisive thud, and Irving’s voice called out, “Hello? My love?”

“What is he doing at home? It’s the middle of the day!” Laura quickly dried her hands on her skirt. “In here!”

Irving bounded through the kitchen doorway and kissed Laura on the cheek. “She all ready, Harriet?”

“Bag is by the door.” Harriet did a little ironic curtsy at Laura and took her lunch toward the table.

Irving held up one of his ties. “Turn around,” he said, and Laura closed her eyes as he secured her temporary blindness. “I promise not to let you walk into any walls.”

Laura let Irving guide her through their house and into his car, and resisted the urge to peek during their drive. She didn’t ask where she was going, but she imagined that Harriet had packed whatever gown Irving deemed necessary, along with the shoes to match, and
some nice jewelry that she wouldn’t otherwise get to wear. Irving kept one hand on her knee as he drove, and Laura thought she wouldn’t have minded spending her whole birthday just like that, in a state of suspended anticipation. But soon enough they stopped—it didn’t feel like they’d gone farther than Beverly Hills, or Brentwood, maybe.

“Ready?” Irving said.

Laura reached up and felt the contours of her eyes through the silk of the tie. “Ready.” She pulled it down, so that the fabric was resting around her chin. Straight ahead of them, clearly visible through the windshield, was Beverly Bowl, the bowling alley. “Are you serious?” Laura said. The parking lot was almost entirely empty, with only two other cars parked close to the entrance. Laura swiveled in her seat, trying to look around. “Are we the only ones here?”

“All for you, my bride.”

“You do know that I’m going to beat you. Girls in Wisconsin know how to bowl, Irving. I am not afraid to beat you.” Laura leaned forward and kissed him, the tie still between their faces.

“Harriet picked out an outfit. I ordered you a pair of shoes. They’re inside.”

Laura clapped her hands and quickly climbed out of the car. Irving walked slowly around to her side, and they walked into the alley hand in hand, as elegantly as a couple of teenagers on their first date, wanting both to show off and to rub against each other as often as possible until they exploded. When they left, several hours later, Laura and Irving would smell like French fries, and hand sweat, and cigarette smoke, and Coca-Cola, and neither of them could remember a better evening out.

I
rving didn’t want another girl, but he’d never have said so—after all, they already had Clara and Florence, who now climbed all over him and hid under his desk and pulled on his earlobes and called him Pop without a moment’s hesitation. When Laura got the news that she was pregnant again, Irving bought cigars for the entire studio. Everywhere Laura went, guys on their breaks from sawing wood or rigging lights or acting a scene were puffing away, their mouths opening and closing around the cigars like so many guppies. The air above Gardner Brothers must have smelled like Cuba.

There weren’t any roles for pregnant women—not few, none. Gardner Brothers had a policy that female stars should vanish from public view as soon as they were showing, and reappear only once their figures had been regained. Laura was happy for the break, and spent all day at home with Harriet and the girls. All four of them would be in the kitchen to watch Irving gulp down two cups of coffee and inhale a piece of cheese Danish before heading to the studio. Florence would wrap her body around one of his legs, and Clara
would serenade him with a song. Clara was always singing, ready to be the next Shirley Temple, even though she already outweighed Shirley by two to one and was about as dainty as a Holstein. Harriet, always discreet, would turn her back when Laura leaned down to kiss her husband good-bye, as though some things were too intimate to stare in the face. Of course, Harriet had lived with them for long enough—almost five years—that there was nothing she hadn’t seen. Her room was on the other side of the kitchen, facing the back of the house. She went to visit family a few times a year, and had weekends off, and Laura never asked where she went. It seemed rude to impose a friendship on a relationship that already took up so much of Harriet’s time. The girls treated Harriet as their second mother, which she was, and Laura knew that their nightly whispered secrets and pledges of eternal love were the reason she’d stayed so long.

With the new baby on the way, Laura wanted the house to be perfect. The palm trees lining the long, wide streets in Beverly Hills seemed like such fun: She wanted some of those in their yard. In one of Susie and Johnny’s latest films,
The Sunshine Kid
, a beachy romp with a subplot about a baby abandoned in a wicker basket full of snorkeling gear, Susie had sung a song from a white woven hammock—Laura wanted one of those too. The swimming pool was cleaned and treated on a weekly basis, the flowers trimmed and tended just as often. The new baby would have his or her own room, even if it meant the girls would have to share. They were sisters; they would understand. A baby needed to have his own space; that was what Irving said, and Laura agreed. She was nervous about the possibility of having a son; the idea seemed so foreign, like having a baby that spoke only Chinese. She was a girl from a family of girls, raising another brood of girls—surely there were things that had to be done differently. Laura sat by the pool and watched Clara and Florence splash each other, their long wet hair plastered to their small
backs. She didn’t know how to speak to a boy, how to raise one to be a good man. There were some books at the library, but Laura was too embarrassed to check them out, and made Ginger do it.