Laura Lamont's Life In Pictures (35 page)

Junior swung his hips from side to side, his eyes shut tight behind his thick-framed glasses. Clara spotted her baby brother through the crowd and came dancing over, spinning him around and around. Laura clapped in time to the music and watched them go.

“Isn’t this the best, Mom?” Clara shouted over the band.

Laura watched her son and daughter giggle together, so amused by the shapes of their bodies, the bumps and angles, the hilarious biology of it all. Laura sometimes worried that she’d ruined everything for the children, especially Junior, that life had been as unfair to them as it had been to her. They were happy, though, at least for this moment, with one another and the universe outside their cellular walls, and Laura felt nothing more acutely than a sense of relief. Even if she was never happy again, not for the rest of her life, Clara had danced with her brother at her wedding, her white bow stuck in place with a thousand
bobby pins and an entire can of hair spray, its little satin wings threatening to fly away. “It’s the best,” Laura said back. “The best.”

G
inger was sorry to miss the festivities, but she was eight months pregnant and unable to go anywhere without causing a traffic accident.

“I’m a whale,” she said.

“You’re gorgeous,” Laura said.

Ginger ran her hands back and forth over her belly. “I’m a gorgeous whale.”

They hadn’t even been trying—Ginger’s uterus was, as she liked to say, famously inhospitable—but then she was pregnant, just like that. She was already four months along when she went to the doctor for the first time, sure that her lack of a regular period was the first sign of menopause. She’d cried for three days straight when she found out, and then she’d called Laura. It was a secret until Ginger was too big to fib about a sudden interest in boxy clothing.

The columnists were ready to strike—Ginger was the first female studio head, having taken the reins at Triumph from the men who’d stolen her away from Irving, and reporters were placing bets on when she would quit after having the baby. The greatest odds were in the one-to-three-week range, postdelivery, with one to three weeks predelivery a close second. If Laura had placed a bet, she would have bet that Ginger would work in the delivery room, the recovery room, and every day following, no matter what. Since the pregnancy, Bill had found more of a reason to be on the rodeo circuit, getting back to his “rodeo roots” was what Ginger said. Laura thought the whole thing sounded suspicious, but it wasn’t her marriage to worry about.

“Listen, Ginge,” Laura said. They were sitting on the patio of
Ginger’s new house, the only Italian villa in Bel Air. She’d imported marble columns, marble floors, and a bathtub big enough for a Roman orgy. Bill and the horses seemed to stay mostly back in the canyon. Laura didn’t think the spurs would sound very good against all that stone.

“Hang on, I need more ice.” Ginger swiveled her neck sharply. “Hello?”

One of her butlers scurried out from an unseen corner. He bowed almost imperceptibly. “Yes, Mrs. Balsam?”

“More ice, please. It’s a thousand degrees out here.”

Laura wasn’t warm at all, but she remembered what it was like to have another human being living inside your body, with all the extra blood pumping and whooshing through your veins. She lit a cigarette and felt the smoke travel down into her lungs.

“So, listen,” Laura started again. “I was thinking you might be able to find something for me. At Triumph.”

“You know we don’t really do movies, Lore, they just don’t make money like they used to,” Ginger said, waving the idea off like a bad smell.

“I don’t care if it’s a movie. Anything.” Laura hadn’t worked in years, not since
Pantheress
, which she’d never actually seen. The reviews had been bad enough for her to stay away. Some afternoons Laura sat on the front step and waited for Junior to come home from school, pretending that she was sitting in her dressing room on the lot, just waiting to be called, wondering how she would pay to send Junior to college. Laura wanted to work, and needed to. The Dobskys called once a week, and Laura had stopped answering the telephone.

“Well,” Ginger said. “We are putting together a new show. One of the game shows, you know, only a new one.
Will You or Won’t You
it’s called. The host is this kid who used to be at MGM, looks like a
politician and talks like Jerry Lewis. Hilarious. The idea is that every show, a contestant gets paired up with a celebrity, and they both have to decide whether or not they’re going to do something—you know, pogo for a minute, bob for apples, say all the states in order. The team either does it or they make the other team do it. If the team can complete the task, they win money. Simple.”

Laura pictured herself with wet hair, lipstick smeared against the skin of an apple, her dignity waving good-bye, along with all the mystery she’d ever had, and the romance, and the adoration. She thought about the Academy Award sitting on her desk, which only made her think of Irving. He would have been appalled.

“I’ll do it,” she said.

Ginger grabbed Laura’s hands and pressed them against her belly, hard. “Feel,” Ginger said. “She’s kicking. I think I’m going to have a feisty little bugger.”

T
he set of
Will You or Won’t You
was on built on stage four of the Triumph lot, which meant that Laura had to drive straight past the gate to Gardner Brothers on Marathon, a street she’d been avoiding since Irving got sick. The driver pulled up to Triumph’s lone entrance and announced Laura’s name and destination. In the old days, when she drove herself to Gardner Brothers, or when Irving or Louis sent a car, Laura sailed through, waving at everyone she knew, Miss America on her float. This guard dutifully took her name and then turned his back to check it against his list of drive-ons for the day. Laura faced forward, unwilling to be humiliated. There would be plenty of that to come.

The soundstage itself had already been transformed from a cavernous
box into the home of the game show. Three walls with an orange Art Deco pattern were in place, as well as three wooden consoles—one for each team, and one for the host. Laura hadn’t been on a soundstage in years, and she’d missed the way the high ceilings felt dark and endless before the lights turned on. Big, burly men in overalls clomped around, and the air was thick with sawdust—nothing was ever finished on time. Laura had missed those men too, and the hours she’d spent in her dressing room learning lines or gabbing with whoever else was around. But it was different now.

Instead of a proper dressing room elsewhere on the property, they’d built a narrow hall of tiny, coffin-size rooms right on the soundstage—one for Laura, one for the host, Phil Mayweather, one for the visiting celebrity guest, and a shared room for the two contestants, who wouldn’t need to change their clothes unless they were soiled during an episode or they were filming two in a row. Laura wandered around the set until she found a door with her name on it, and then went in and sat down. She was the regular, the fixture, the ones that fans would tune in to see. At least that was the idea.

The walls were made of single sheets of plywood, which were about as soundproof as sheets of paper. Laura stared at herself in the mirror and listened to the conversation next door.

“But what am I supposed to do with her? See if she can
act
like a person with a sense of humor? Or if she can
act
like a person who can hula hoop? Come on, Pete, this just isn’t gonna work and you know it.”

The other voice, Pete, offered a grunting laugh in response. “She’s going to be fine, Phil.”

Laura sat perfectly still and watched her reflection as she moved her head from side to side. She had not been their first choice, as they had not been hers. Laura loudly cleared her throat once, and then
again, before pushing herself back up and walking to the next room over to introduce herself.

T
he show moved quickly: With only a week of rehearsals, which were mostly for the host and the cameramen, they were ready to film. Pete Hollowell, the director, ran Laura through the paces. Though it would seem to the audience that the contestants had a choice about whether or not to participate in a certain stunt, it was all worked out beforehand, and written in a script that would be held beside the camera in the form of cue cards. Laura was not to wear any of her own jewelry on set, for fear that it might be damaged. The costumer put Laura in demure skirt suits, as if she were auditioning for the role of a bank teller.

The scripts were easy to remember: Laura never had more than a few phrases per episode, and most of them were along the lines of “Gee whiz!” and “I think we’re gonna pass on that one, Phil.” Physical gestures were important. Laura was supposed to wink, to elbow, to wring her hands, but in a
funny
way. Game shows were comedy, life with a laugh track. Sometimes people had to be told when they were allowed to laugh, especially when they were watching Laura Lamont try to hula hoop while holding a pineapple in each hand. It was a strange part to play, oneself. Laura tried different approaches: a warm mother of three, a widow, a younger sister, a kook, Ginger. In between takes, she sat very still and concentrated on whatever she was going to try next. Eventually she settled on the kook, a wild-eyed cross between Hildy and Junior and Peggy Bates, who had long ago made the shift to television. In thirty minutes, gestures could be big and broad—they would still be forgotten.

The first episode featured Laura and an insurance salesman from New Jersey on one team, and a very tan young actor named George Wells and a housewife from Delaware on the other. It was all sorted out in advance: Laura was going to win the first episode for her partner, and George would win the next. Before the filming began, Laura and her insurance salesman stood behind the set’s walls.

“It really is a pleasure to meet you, Miss Lamont,” he said. The man was no more than twenty-five, a baby. His suit was cream colored, with gray checks. Laura wondered whether he bought it especially for the occasion, whether he and his pretty young wife—weren’t they always pretty?—had gone shopping together, with her sitting outside the dressing room, her pocketbook on her lap.

“You are very sweet to say so,” Laura said. They were waiting to have their names called by Phil, when they would trot out with big smiles and take their places behind their console.

“You’re my mother’s favorite actress. When I told her that I was coming on this show with you, she nearly had a heart attack.” The insurance salesman was beaming, so sure he’d made Laura’s day.

“Please tell your mother I say hello,” Laura said, and turned her face back toward the short, dark passageway they would walk through to reach the set. The theme music—a nonsensical, bubbly tune—began to play, and Phil welcomed the whirring cameras and imaginary audience to the show. His voice had more energy than Laura had felt in years, and the sound of it, so zippy it seemed full of helium, made her want to take a sleeping pill, or better yet, slip one into his drink when he wasn’t looking. But no: Laura had to remember Phil was in the right. She would have to match his energy and enthusiasm. She was the stranger here.