Seidel, Kathleen Gilles (27 page)

But the camera was not loaded. Jill set it aside.

Except for a few family pictures, most of the other objects were inexplicable, things with meaning only to people long dead—a silky rabbit's foot, a battered fountain pen, three matchbooks, all with phone numbers inside, a gift enclosure card reading, "Now maybe you'll keep away from ours. With greatest respect, All of us." If Doug found any of it interesting just because it had belonged to Bix, he didn't say.

They went through the papers carefully, looking at each sheet in each folder. All were orderly, none exciting—Bix's discharge papers, his contract with the studio, carbons of his assignment sheets, his 1947 income tax return. Except for the word "writer" on his contract and again on his income tax return, there was nothing to indicate that Bix was one—no manuscripts, no outlines, no notes.

Jill shrugged. "Smithson would have weeded out anything that belonged to the studio... and anything that had to do with the conspiracy. He can't have been proud of the fact that he was duped. It must have been quite a scene when he saw the rough cut."

Among the folders had been a manila envelope, labeled in what they guessed was Smithson's hand: "Bix's doodles, October 20, 1948." Doug and Jill rifled through the contents quickly, establishing that they were all doodles, then going back to look at each one carefully.

The doodles were weird and wonderful explosions, some on the backs of envelopes, others on narrow strips that must have once run along the margin of a larger piece of paper, still others taking up full sheets of paper. Doug and Jill sat cross-legged on the bedroom floor, careful not to lean their dusty shirts against the wall or the bedspread, passing the doodles between them. But the artwork was too interesting, too full of detail and energy, not to be talked about, not to be shared. Soon Jill found herself closer to Doug and they were looking at them together, their arms brushing as they laid aside one or pointed out a detail in another.

Miles Smithson had put them in the envelope by size, and the 8 1/2-by-11 sheets were at the bottom. One was strikingly different from the others. It was dense, covering the entire sheet, and rigidly geometric, full of straight lines and darkened boxes marching out from a tight center of three typed words:
Original Screenplay: Untitled.
Centered underneath them were two more words:
Bix Ringling.

It was, obviously, a title page.

"This is it. I bet it is." Doug pointed to the words. "This is the title page for his script."

"We don't know that," Jill argued calmly. "He could have written dozens—"

No, he couldn't have. He might have done dozens of treatments, but this was the title page for a full screenplay. He had only been at the studio for three years, and he had spent the first year on horror movies, then becoming a men's dialogue specialist. The carbons of his later assignment sheets had shown him assigned to adaptions, rather than new concepts. How many original screenplays could he have done on his own time? There was a very good chance that this sheet had once been attached to some version of
Weary Hearts.

Doug cursed. "What a bitch. What an absolute bitch— just to have the title page."

"But it's nothing to get angry about," Jill spoke quickly. She didn't think there was any reason for anyone to get angry; she never did. She took the paper from him. "We never expected—"

"Jill, look!"

He took the sheet back, turned it over. The other side, masked by the density of the doodle, was covered with a dramatic, feminine hand—Alicia's.

Dear Bix,

A million, million things to say. I hardly know where to start. It's magnificent, overwhelming—

"Look at this. I was right." Doug gripped the paper. "It's... Charles said that Alicia read it and wrote Bix about it. This is it. This is what she said."

Even cautious Jill agreed. Alicia had read the screenplay, turned over the title page—as anyone would have done— and written her thoughts to her brother-in-law. Bix, after reading her note, must have put the page back on top of the manuscript and drawn a box around the title, and then another box and a line, again and again until the page was covered with this dense, dispirited design. Jill did not have to read Alicia's comment to know that Bix hadn't liked what she had to say.

It made the two of them feel so real, so close.

Dear Bix,

A million, million things to say. I hardly know where to start. It's magnificent, overwhelming, powerful, every superlative, so much so that the whole question of "Like-dislike" feels trivial.

First, as a person who knows you... as your friend... I was miserable reading it because it reminded me of what you went through in the war. I know there's nothing about capture and escape in here... yet I could see it, and I ached for you and for all the things that you've never told any of us about.

But that's me knowing you. It's not relevant to anyone else... I say that, but then I wonder. Aren't there other girls out there who care about men who went through all kinds of things that they're trying to forget? Maybe these are things you want... need to say to us, but I don't know that we want to hear. And the ending... we—all of those girls who stayed home—can't live with the thought of that happening, that he's really that changed because of the war.

I try to imagine myself as an ordinary girl out in my best sweater on a Friday night... is this the movie I'd want to see? The answer to that is no. And I'm afraid that's what the studio would say too.

But... Bix... I'm not telling you to change it. I can't bear the thought of that. It has to be made this way. I don't know. Do show it to Miles. Maybe he'll have some ideas.

Alicia

"This is exactly what Granddad said." Doug's voice was charged with energy. "That it was too good, too powerful to be commercial."

"That's what Alicia thought." Jill spoke cautiously. The most gifted producers in Hollywood had trouble predicting how good a movie would result from a particular screenplay. Alicia, though far shrewder than her lovely face suggested, was still a young actress, and one whose judgment, Jill thought, might have been seriously biased.

However, this did confirm that the idea of Bix having written a masterpiece was not a story made up out of sentimental nostalgia after his death. The family had thought it at the time. They weren't necessarily right, but certainly that's what they had believed.

Slowly pieces of that story were being confirmed. Dan's birthdate proved that there had been a secret script filmed. With everyone at the studio busy with
Circean Nights,
the conspiracy might have had a chance. Alicia's note was hinting at some of the differences in the two scripts—her talk about the ending suggested that it was different. She lamented how much "he" had changed. Was that Booth or Phillip? This was now another question to answer.

But Jill had to wonder if their search for the secret script wasn't going to uncover another story, one more private, one that Bix would have never wanted anyone to know.

Bix wasn't the reckless gallant Phillip any more than Doug was. But he might have had one thing in common with the role he played. He might have been falling in love with has sister-in-law.

She decided it was time to raise the issue. If this was what they were going to find, she should warn Doug so he could decide how hard he wanted to go on looking. "Doug, you don't have any sisters-in-law, do you?"

He looked puzzled at her change of subject. "No, I specialize in the real thing, actual sisters. But some of my brothers-in-law have sisters, and I know them pretty well. Does that count?"

"I don't know. Read this letter again, trying to imagine it being from a sister-in-law. You know more about families than I do. Is the tone right?"

"What do you mean, tone?"

"Just read it."

He picked up the paper and read it carefully, then again. He bit his lip, then spoke slowly. "No, this isn't right. Last spring, when I was busy shooting myself in the foot, Anne's sister-in-law, who was in my class at school, wrote me a note, which was very nice of her, but the letter was full of 'C.J. and I'—C.J., that's her husband—she was speaking for both of them. It wasn't just her to me. This is so direct. You'd think she'd start off 'Charles and I got this yesterday' or something. But she never mentions him. I think you're right. This is so... I don't know."

"So intimate." Jill finished for him.

He drew back. "You don't mean 'intimate' as in having an affair, do you?"

"Not necessarily anything physical. But they were both so bright and articulate, they must have had a lot in common. Then the tone of this letter-—"

Doug interrupted. "It wouldn't have been an affair. Bix never would have slept with Charles's wife, not ever."

Jill didn't ask how he knew that.
He
wouldn't have had an affair with his brother's wife. But who was to say what Bix would have done? "Did he have a girlfriend?"

"No, but that's beside the point. Bix wouldn't betray his brother."

"Philip did."

"But that was during a war. They were facing an invading army. That has to excuse something. And you were the one who said Philip wasn't anything like Bix."

He almost sounded angry. "That's true," she said mildly. "I'm sorry. I was out of line. I'm being a woman here, turning everything into a love story."

They packed the box back up, keeping out only the envelope of doodles. Doug got fresh tape to reseal the flaps. Then, wearily, they climbed back into the attic, now lit only by the electric bulb, and like two very good scouts, they put all the boxes, trunks, suitcases, dress forms, and rocking horses back under the eaves.

When they were back downstairs Mrs. Ringling offered to make sandwiches for them. There was a bone-in ham sitting on the kitchen counter, and the bread was from her own sourdough starter, but Jill felt too dirty to eat. She sat on one of the spindle-backed kitchen chairs, waiting for Doug. He ate two sandwiches, then looked expectantly at his grandmother, who laughed at him and took a pie tin down from the top of the refrigerator. She cut him a slice.

"You're sure you won't have any of this?" Doug pushed the pie in Jill's direction. "It's dried apple. You won't find pie like this in California, not like me old granny makes."

Mrs. Ringling rapped him sharply on the head with her knuckles. Doug grabbed her hand and kissed it.

"What was that for, young man?" she demanded.

"I was counting your liver spots," he said and threw his hands up to ward off the next onslaught from his grandmother's knuckles. "Come on, Gran, stop hitting me. What's Jill going to think?"

Mrs. Ringling dusted off her hands and returned to her corner of the kitchen. "That we're family."

Jill turned in her chair, looking across the room at Mrs. Ringling. "Did you get other letters from Bix or Alicia? Besides those ones you have in your jewelry box?"

"Oh, I imagine." Mrs. Ringling shrugged. "They were both ones for writing, but I don't suppose I saved them. Those ones upstairs, they were special. He was wrong, you know. No one had told us that he had escaped. He was still listed as missing, so we were waking up every night thinking that he was dead. Then, out of the blue, sitting in the mailbox was that letter. I'll never forget it. You know, first you almost don't notice, 'Oh, another letter from Bix,' and then an instant later it hits you, what it means—that he's alive. I didn't really need to save the letter. I'll remember every word until I die."

The overhead fixture cast a steady glare on the Formica of the kitchen tabletop; the salt and pepper shakers made squat little shadows. For Jill the news had come over the phone, Ken Sommerston, her father's attorney, calling. But for her the news had been bad—a heart attack, alone in a New York hotel room, no one heard anything...

Whatever had been attached to that title page they had just seen couldn't have been a masterpiece. Cass would have never, not ever—

Jill pushed away the thought. "Do you remember any of the other letters?" she asked Mrs. Ringling.

She shook her head. "No... it was so long ago."

"Was there anything about working on the movie?"

"Well, now that you mention it, there was that blame horse. That's right. He wanted us to find a starving horse. What were we supposed to do? Go around and ask the neighbors? I can remember Sam trying to figure out what we were going to say, 'It's a right pretty day, isn't it, and aren't those magnificent lilacs you've got there, and excuse me, but do you happen to starve your horses?' We laughed and laughed."

Doug had finished his piece of pie and was now eating straight out of the tin. "So what did you do?" he mumbled, his mouth full.

"Asked the vet. That Was Sam's idea. And it turned out that there was this miserable animal who was about to be put down, so they used it. It wasn't the most humane thing to do, keeping the poor creature alive those extra weeks, but they did put him down as soon as the movie people were finished."

"And that would have been Blossom?" Jill asked. "The chestnut Booth and Pompey bring back from Appomattox?"

"I suppose. Though I can't say I've ever seen the movie myself."

"You haven't?" Doug dropped his fork, and Jill stared at her.

"Not many people know that. I suppose I'm the only one around here that hasn't. Sam saw it when it first came out, and he said it was too much like having Bix back alive, and I just didn't think I'd care for that."

Jill shivered. Whenever she thought about motherhood— which wasn't often as she was a little short on good role models—she thought about babies and toddlers. But Bix Ringling was twenty-eight when he died, and his mother's heart mourned him to this day. It was frightening to think about caring that much, that long.

Doug was speaking. "Do you remember whether the scenes with the horse were filmed in April or August? You mentioned the lilacs, so it would have been spring, wouldn't it?"

"I don't know." Mrs. Ringling frowned. "Oh, wait, yes I do. It must have been during April, because when they came back in August, some little fellow was all upset because the poor horse was gone. He wanted to find another one who looked exactly like her. I don't know what they thought, that we regularly keep around a supply of dying horses for the movies."