Laura Lamont's Life In Pictures (20 page)

“Yeah, but who are we supposed to laugh at, me or it?” Ginger leaned her head back and howled. “Uh, what’s the difference, though, between Johnny and some monkey, if you think about it. All grabby little paws, always climbing all over you. I’d rather act with the chimp.”

Even when no one else was around, Laura still felt guilty about speaking against Gardner Brothers. After all, the studio had given her everything she’d always wanted, and Irving had always taken care of
her, since even before they were married. She took a long sip of coffee and set her cup back down. “I’m sure they know what they’re doing.” The truth was that Gardner Brothers needed Ginger more than she needed them, and they both knew it. Nowadays when Irving came home and Ginger was still there, a thin coating of frost hung in the air between them, a professional barrier. Laura tried to pretend it wasn’t there, but seeing Ginger often put Irving into a foul mood for the rest of the night, as if he were already bracing himself for when she packed up and left, taking her television show and all her fans with her. He wouldn’t have been nearly as upset were Laura to leave, whether or not she was his wife.

Ginger balled her hands into fists and beat them in front of her chest. She stuck out her tongue. “Oh, well,” she said. “I have to go to work.”

“Oh, well,” Laura said back, sticking out her tongue. One day she would have to choose between Irving and Ginger, and she would have to choose Irving, and until then, she wanted to be around Ginger as much as possible.

“Let’s have a party,” Laura said, stopping Ginger before she left.

“Okay,” Ginger said. “But I’m not cooking.”

I
t was Irving’s idea to call the magazine.
Hollywood Life
would come over and cover the party—not what people were saying, but what Laura Lamont served, on what linens, to which guests. It was to be Laura and Irving, Ginger and Bill, Robert Hunter and Dolores Dee, recently engaged, a new Gardner Brothers writer named Harry Ryman, Peggy Bates, and the children, who were to appear briefly halfway though, looking adorable, and then be whisked back into their bedrooms. Laura wore a cream-colored gown that skimmed the
floor and a diamond brooch over her left breast. The theme was “Nights of Spain,” which meant that there were bulls embroidered on the napkins and chorizo sausages on toothpicks.

Laura paced nervously with Harriet before the guests arrived. She didn’t have to do anything but welcome them—they’d hired caterers, a bartender, and a waitstaff, but still, they were both fretting, and Laura kept letting her cigarettes extinguish between her fingers because she’d forgotten they were there.

Peggy Bates arrived first, and golly-geed everything in the living room—“I love your curtains!” and, “Gosh, look at that lamp! What is that, gold?”—until she’d run out of things to compliment. Then she ate two sausages and sat down in the middle of the couch, chewing and nodding, nodding and chewing. Irving brought her a martini with a Spanish onion at the bottom of the glass, and she poured it quickly down her throat. Laura forgot that Irving made people nervous.

Everyone else came late, all in a clump, as always happened at parties, like they’d been hiding in the bushes outside, awaiting some smoke signal. Robert Hunter and Dolores Dee hadn’t been engaged long, only a week or so, and everyone in the room (including the reporter, who wouldn’t have said a word) knew it was in name only. Still, they played it up, especially in front of Irving, patting each other gently on the rear. Ginger and Bill brought a cloud of noise in with them, always laughing and singing louder than anyone else in the room. The screenwriter slunk in unnoticed, and Laura nearly asked him to fetch her a drink before she realized that she was speaking to one of her own guests.

“You must be Harry,” she said, and stuck out her hand.

“Miss Lamont, it’s an honor,” he said, bowing slightly at the waist.

“Where you from?” Harry Ryman was taller than she was used to, and she had to look up to make eye contact. Men around the Gardner
Brothers lot hovered at the five-foot-seven mark, unless they were doing construction.

“Who, me? Chicago.” He smiled at her. There were freckles on his cheekbones—Harry was young, probably only twenty-five.

“We’re practically neighbors,” Laura said. “Come, let’s get you a drink.”

The seating cards had been written by a calligrapher at the studio, and had Irving at one end of the table and Laura at the other, with the rest of the guests separated from their dates and placed boy, girl, boy, girl. Harry was on Laura’s left side, with Robert on her right, and the latter seemed as interested in the former as Laura was.

“What are you working on?” Robert asked, cradling his chin in his long fingers. Laura watched Harry watch Robert, calculating and recalculating everything in his head.

“Who, me?”

Robert nodded. He really was the handsomest man on the lot. Laura had heard rumors for years, but it was only a few months ago that Robert’s proclivities for male companionship had gotten so obvious that the studio had had to step in and do something. Dolores didn’t seem to mind—Laura watched as she put her paws on Irving’s forearm as he talked, and leaned over so that her cleavage nearly spilled out of her dress and onto the table.

“I’m writing a picture for Irving. It’s about a horse and a boy.…”

“Hey, Ginger! This one’s got a horse movie for ya!” Laura called across the table, having fun.

“I like it already.” Robert winked at him. “Giddyap.”

“No part for me, then?” Laura said. Two could play this game. Acting was her job—she could certainly do it at home if she wanted. Laura raised an eyebrow, as if Harry were a camera pointed her direction.

“Well, yes, Miss Lamont, actually, Irving and I spoke about a part for you. It’s the mother of the boy.” The young writer didn’t even realize that he’d said something wrong. Robert let out an oversize laugh, loud and mean. Irving turned away from Dolores’s cleavage and toward his wife.

“Olé!” Laura said, smiling her brightest smile of the night. Though she herself was the mother of three children, it was entirely different to play a mother on the screen. Mothers were old, with unflattering aprons tied around their stout waists. There was always someone more beautiful than the mother. That meant that Laura had been demoted, and her picture with Pierce wasn’t even out yet. It was as if Irving assumed it was going to fail, and had adjusted his own schedule to reflect it. The gaffe made its way down the table in an indiscreet game of telephone.

The screenwriter flushed, his cheeks turning from peach to scarlet. “I’m sorry, Miss Lamont, did I say something wrong?”

“No, dear,” Laura said, her eyes trained on her husband. “Not at all.”

Bill chimed in, sweet and daft, wanting specifics on the horses in question, and Laura was happy to have the attention shift.

The photographer from
Hollywood Life
trained his lens on the place settings, the actors, the bowl of punch. He photographed Dolores smiling at Irving, and Robert charming the hostess. Peggy Bates sat quietly in the middle of the table, talking to no one, and the children came and went as they were bidden. Laura made sure that no one at the party gave another thought to the slight, and carried on as though she were having a wonderful, wonderful time. She kissed everyone good-bye at the door, and then, once they were all alone, and the reporter had taken all his notes and vanished down the drive, Laura slapped Irving on the cheek and instructed him to sleep on the sofa.

L
aura was right: Her movie was a flop, and Ginger’s monkey picture was a smash, drawing crowds for weeks.
Flowers for the Dead
was her first real failure, which Irving swore meant only good things—it meant that it hadn’t been her fault. Laura wanted to tell him that of course it hadn’t been her fault; it had been his, for loaning her out like a moving truck, but she couldn’t say that to her husband, and anyway, it had been her idea in the first place. She nixed the horse picture—if Laura could have, she would have sent the cute little writer all the way back to Chicago—and Gardner Brothers quickly pulled together a couple of projects to make the audience forget they’d ever seen Laura Lamont try to speak with a Mexican accent.

By the summertime, Laura was a trapeze artist in love with an elephant trainer, and in the fall, she was an impressionable young woman who fell in love with a dashing widower, the film set on a private island off the coast of Maine, filmed entirely on the lot in Culver City. Gardner Brothers printed massive posters—twice as large as life—and put Laura’s face on the side of the building. It didn’t help her mood. The movies were quick jobs, shot on borrowed sets, with story lines that hung together with costumes and lighting. Laura memorized her lines and the words tumbled out, rote and wooden. There wasn’t enough time to sort out why the widower was a good match, or what made the elephant tick. The ground underneath her feet was soft, and she could feel it sinking. Despite what Irving told her, Laura knew that the public was fickle, and that one bad movie meant that people might not go to another. Since the dinner party, Laura could think only about all the meetings her husband had where her name was mentioned, or wasn’t mentioned. She didn’t know which was worse.

Her headaches had gotten worse, and the house couldn’t be quiet
enough: Laura thought about going to visit her family for a few weeks, but Irving couldn’t be away that long, and she couldn’t take Junior on her own. In any case, she hadn’t been invited, and Laura felt sure that her mother would not have wanted her there. Harriet was a godsend and spanked the girls’ bottoms if they made too much noise—Laura wouldn’t have done it herself. When she was finished putting the girls to bed, Harriet would bring a tray of soup into the master bedroom and set it next to Laura on the bed. It was a Sunday, one of Harriet’s days off.

“Why aren’t you at home, Harriet?” Laura asked. She’d thrown a scarf over the single lit lamp, and the room glowed with faint red light. It was still too bright, and Laura squinted.

Harriet sat down on the edge of the bed. Her hair was twisted into two fat French braids, each one thicker than all of Laura’s hair combined. Some of the people Laura knew had their maids and nurses wear uniforms, but Laura thought that was silly. She and Harriet were the same age, born only months apart. They could have been sisters. Laura missed her sisters. Her headaches brought everything back, both Hildy and the darkness in her wake.

“I wanted to make sure you were okay.” Harriet’s voice was low. She didn’t want to make the headache worse. The only black people Laura knew were Harriet and her sister, whom Harriet had brought over when Florence was a baby. She’d never even seen a black person in person until her father took her to Chicago when she was a teenager. Door County was as white as stone. When Harriet spoke to the children, as gentle and friendly with them as always, Laura’s mother’s face had hardened. It wasn’t her fault, Laura thought, that she’d never been anywhere else, though it did make Laura sad. Aside from Ginger, Harriet was Laura’s only real friend. She wouldn’t have said so aloud, for fear that Harriet would laugh, but Laura felt that it was the truth.

“I’m fine, really,” Laura said. She pushed some pillows behind her back to sit up straight.

“Better than that, Laura, better than that.” Harriet stayed until Laura ate all the soup and crackers on the tray. It was hard to say no to Harriet, and Laura liked being told what to do. Irving always said that if he couldn’t get Laura to agree to something (how ludicrous an idea! Did he not understand his wife, after so many years?), that Harriet would be his emissary. The two women sat in silence in the near-dark, the only sound the soft slurping of chicken soup.