Laura Lamont's Life In Pictures (34 page)

“Hello, Harriet, kiddos,” Ginger said, pushing Laura in toward her children, and pulling Harriet into the kitchen. Laura knew that Ginger and Harriet must have spoken, arranged this moment. They had decided together that it would be good for Junior to see his mother walk through the door, without any makeup on, without her nice clothes. Laura couldn’t imagine why. She hadn’t been thinking about Junior when she got into the swimming pool. She had been thinking only about herself, about the person she used to be. Laura was so angry at Irving for leaving her alone that she’d forgotten she wasn’t the star of a romance, but a family drama, and a farce, and a tragedy. It seemed impossible to fit all the people she’d ever been into a single body, let alone a single moment: Maybe Elsa had wanted to die, but Laura hadn’t, or Gordon’s wife, or Irving’s wife, or Junior’s mother. She looked at her son. In a few years, he would be a teenager. A few years after that, he would move out, and live on his own, maybe not even in Los Angeles. Children did that all the time, just picked up and left, just as she did, without looking back. How could she not have thought about him? Laura watched as Florence gripped her brother’s shoulders. She had made them worry. It was all upside down.

“How are you feeling, Mom?” Junior’s voice was smaller than she’d ever heard it. He sounded as if he were speaking across a
thousand miles of telephone wires, crackling in the distance. Laura couldn’t see his eyes behind his glasses, just the shining, reflective panes.

“I’m feeling much better, love. Just swallowed some water, is all. They were just keeping me there to make sure it was all out of my lungs.” Laura spoke as though the lines had been written for her—she didn’t know what was true, or what was appropriate, but she spoke with as much conviction as she could muster. All she wanted was for her son to never look at her again the way he was looking at her now, like she might vanish into thin air without leaving so much as a mark on the rug. Florence leaned down and whispered something into Junior’s ear. He nodded and, without looking back up to his sister, crossed the living room floor slowly and steadily until he reached Laura’s body. The top of Junior’s head almost reached Laura’s chin, and she tucked him into her chest as if she would never let him go. Florence watched silently from across the room, nodding every now and again in approval.
Something with a tail.
Whatever had gone wrong with her sweet son, it was Laura’s fault. Even though it seemed impossible that he had done what Florence had said, her daughter wasn’t a fabulist. Elsa Emerson had been a better mother than Laura Lamont, and Elsa was the only one who could fix it.

The phone rang and rang in Laura’s office. Jimmy was off for the day, and Clara was likely still at work, though Laura imagined that if Ginger wasn’t in, there wasn’t much reason for anyone else to be, either. But Clara was a sensible girl, or at least heading in that direction, Laura hoped. Her eldest child seemed too corporeal to worry about, too rooted to the earth. Laura let the telephone ring, afraid that if she let Junior go, he would wriggle out of her arms and never find his way back.

I
t was only after the accountant’s sixth message that Laura called back to make an appointment. Dobsky & Dobsky, CPAs, were on Beverly Boulevard near the Silent Movie Theatre, a father-and-son team of the old-world variety who had managed Irving’s money for his entire professional life. They had called every so often, and Harriet reported higher and higher frequencies in their voices.
We need to speak with Miss Lamont,
the messages read.
This is urgent
. Harriet handed over the slips of paper without comment, her eyes wide, and then, unable to help herself, she added, “Laura,” which alone said all it needed to.

The office itself was comfortably shabby, with worn Persian rugs and stacks of files on the desk, all of it illuminated by the low light of two green glass banker’s lamps. Arthur Dobsky gestured for Laura to sit in one of the cracked leather chairs, and then sat down beside her. Arthur’s father, Leonard Dobsky, was a man of nearly eighty, and half stood on the other side of the desk, supporting himself on the
arms of his chair. He looked happy to collapse back down once Laura was seated.

“Thank you for coming in, Miss Lamont,” Leonard began.

“Thank you for getting back to us,” Arthur continued.

“As you know, we worked with your husband for many years,” Leonard said.

“He was a wonderful man,” Arthur said. “A very prudent spender.”

“Is there a problem?” Laura asked.

Arthur turned his face toward the rug and kneaded a bald spot with his toe.

“In fact, there is,” Leonard said. “This is why we’ve been trying to get in touch with you. The problem is one of supply and demand—you know what that means? Supply is the money coming in, and demand is the money going out. Right now, you’ve got all demand and no supply. You see what I’m saying to you? There’s no money coming in, and all the money’s going out.” He opened a manila folder on his desk, pulled out a sheet of paper, and handed it to Laura.

“What is this?” Laura asked, though she recognized the name of the bank from her checkbook.

“That is your bank statement. An overview. You see the number in the upper right corner? That’s the amount of money you had in the bank when your husband died. Now see the number in the lower right corner? That’s the amount you have now.”

Laura tracked her finger down the column on the right side of the page, watching the number decrease. There was the five thousand dollars she’d given to Gordon, Harriet’s salary, the school tuition, the groceries, the pharmacies, the hospital bills, the gasoline, the restaurants, Jimmy’s salary, Clara’s shopping trips, all of it. “Oh, God,” she said, as she reached the number at the bottom. “Oh, God!”

Arthur and Leonard nodded appreciatively, glad that Laura had finally seen the approaching train, now speeding violently down the track.

“What about Irving’s money? That’s all gone?” Laura gripped the sheet of paper with both hands, as if that would make the number increase.

“I’m afraid your husband’s portfolio was smaller than he may have led you to believe, Miss Lamont. Mr. Green’s salary from Gardner Brothers was handsome, but he didn’t enjoy the stock market, and he didn’t like to save.” Leonard looked at his son. “We tried to speak with him about that.”

Arthur chimed in. “The other issue is with the insurance.” He looked almost giddy with anticipation. This was what accountants lived for, Laura thought: proving their worth after the fact. “As I’m sure you know, Mr. Green’s heart condition prevented him from ever purchasing life insurance, and the health insurance he did have was through the Gardner Brothers studio. At the time of death, Mr. Green was not insured, and so there are still some rather large bills to pay.”

Laura tried to remain composed. She laid the sheet of paper back down on the desk, and held on to the armrests on her chair. “And what do you suggest I do? I have three children, you may remember.”

Arthur finally looked up from the floor, and mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. “Respectfully, Miss Lamont, we suggest that you get a job.”

Laura rose slowly, shook their warm hands, and walked to the parking garage with as much dignity as possible. If Irving had been there, he would have rubbed his hands together and had a plan before the key was in the ignition, but instead, Laura was alone, and stared at the keys in her lap for a few minutes, wondering what to do, what to do, what to do.

T
he wedding was small but extravagant—Clara wanted to gild everything in sight, including the hotel silverware. She and Jimmy had chosen to hold the ceremony at the Bethel Lutheran Church on Olympic Boulevard, and the reception in the small ballroom at the Roosevelt Hotel. Laura tried to explain that proper Lutherans were understated, modest people, but Clara was having none of it. She whooped with laughter in the church, and made everyone throw buckets of rice afterward. Laura was picking the grains out of her shoes and hair for the rest of the day. At the reception, there were gold chargers at every setting, and wine goblets that could easily hold an entire bottle each. Laura sat at the long table at the front of the room, with Clara and Jimmy in the middle, Florence and Junior beside her, and the pale, bewildered Petersons on the other side. It was either this or tell the girls that they were broke, and Laura would rather go out with a bang—a gilded bang—than ask her children to wear burlap and eat beans on toast until the next paycheck arrived.

The dress that Clara chose for the wedding was high necked and short sleeved, with a beaded sash around her waist and a train that dragged several feet behind her. On her head she wore a satin bow that spanned eight inches from one side to the other, like a deranged Minnie Mouse. All the guests approached Laura with the same two lines: “Congratulations!” and “That is quite a bow.” She thanked each of them in turn.

Florence was the maid of honor, which meant that it was her job to ensure her sister’s happiness on her wedding day, a task that required she smile more than usual. She and Laura wore dresses in the same shade of pink, the soft blush of a magnolia blossom. Or, as Florence pointed out to her mother, the exact same color as Pepto-Bismol.
All the popular wedding designs for the year were equally offensive to Florence, and she wouldn’t have been truly happy unless she had been permitted to wear black. Her kohl-rimmed eyes were the bane of Clara’s day, and Laura tried her best to keep the girls apart, or at the very least to keep Florence behind Clara, holding her train, where her eyeliner would be out of sight.

Mr. and Mrs. Peterson clutched each other’s elbows as they made their way around the room, offering limp handshakes to anyone who asked. Mrs. Peterson wore a fur wrap around her shoulders, having forgotten that March in California was no different from June in Illinois. She was shy around Laura, and whenever they were face-to-face, Mrs. Peterson opened her handbag to forage around for mints. It was unclear whether she was shy because Laura had once been a movie star or because Jimmy had told her about the pool incident. Laura found that it was often hard to tell the difference between bashfulness and shame.

The hired band—Stevie Dean and the Starlight Orchestra—played their standards on a small stage along the left-hand side of the room, leaving ample room for the dance floor. Clara and Jimmy bopped around, bending their knees and wiggling their bottoms, two giant chickens. Laura’s weddings had both been small, with hardly any fanfare, and she enjoyed watching Clara dance in her floor-length white dress, her bow flapping in time with her movements. Clara looked happy to be married to Jimmy, and to be the center of attention. Laura felt a twinge of envy for her daughter’s happiness, and for the Petersons’ slow and steady togetherness. Weddings were for the parents, she now understood; no matter what the bride and groom thought, they were one stop on the continuum, birth to death, a milestone that meant you were closer to the end than to the beginning. Jimmy’s parents looked thrilled, in their quiet Midwestern way, as
if they were dipping their toe in the coffin and deciding that it felt quite nice after all. Laura just wished that Irving were next to her, dancing. She might not have minded it at all had she not been alone.

“Mom,” Junior said, his voice high and sweet. He was having one of his good days, one of his sunny days, and was bouncing off the walls. Teenage boys were different from girls, all volume and bravado. “Dance with me!”

Laura followed him onto the dance floor. Junior loved rock ’n’ roll, Elvis Presley most of all. He’d taken to slicking his hair back with pomade the way his father had, the grease giving his soft, downy hair a reflective sheen. Laura’s hair was darker—the girls at the salon made sure of it—still the color that had made her famous, but Junior’s look was all his own creation. Sometimes Laura wondered what her life would have been like if she’d stayed a blonde, if she would have had better luck. Clara was as fair as they came, and blissfully ignorant of any of her faults. Maybe that would have been better.