The Carpetbaggers (75 page)

Ilene nodded. She watched as Jennie slipped out of the costume — the sheer, flowing silk harem pantaloons, the diaphanous gauze blouse and gold-beaded blue velvet jacket that had been her costume in the last scene. She scanned the girl's figure appreciatively, her designer's eyes pleased with what she saw.

She was glad now that Jonas had sent for her. She had not felt that way at first. She hadn't wanted to come back to Hollywood, back to the gossip, the jockeying for importance, the petty jealousies. But most of all, she hadn't wanted to come back to the memories.

But as she'd studied the photograph, something about the girl had drawn her back. She could understand what Jonas had seen in her. There was something of Rina about her but she also had a quality that was peculiarly her own.

It wasn't until she'd studied the photograph a long while that she realized what it was. It was the strangely ascetic translucence that shone from the photograph despite its purely sensuous appeal. The eyes in the picture looked out at you with the clear innocence of a child, behind their worldly knowledge. It was the face of a girl who had kept her soul untouched, no matter what she had experienced.

Jennie fastened her brassière and pulled the thick black sweater down until it met the top of her baggy slacks. She sat down and took the cup of steaming chocolate from Ilene. "Suddenly, I'm empty," she said, sipping at it. "I'm all used up."

Ilene smiled and tasted her own cup of chocolate. "Everyone feels like that when a picture is finished."

"I feel that I could never make another movie," Jennie continued thoughtfully. "That another part wouldn't make any sense to me at all. Somehow, it's like all of me went into this picture and I've nothing left at all."

Ilene smiled again. "That will disappear the moment they put the next script into your hands."

"Do you think so?" Jennie asked. "Is that what happens?"

Ilene nodded. "Every time."

A blast of noise came through the thin walls. Jennie smiled. "They're having themselves a ball out there."

"Cord ordered a table of food sent down from the commissary. He's got two men tending bar." Ilene finished her chocolate and put the cup down. She got to her feet and looked down at the girl. "I really came in to say good-by."

Jennie looked up at her questioningly. "You're leaving?"

Ilene nodded. "I'm going back East on the train tonight."

"Oh," Jennie said. She put down her cup and stood up. She held her hand out to Ilene. "Thank you for everything you've done. I've learned a great deal from you."

Ilene took her hand. "I didn't want to come back but I'm glad now that I did."

They shook hands formally. "I hope we'll work together again," Jennie said.

Ilene started for the door. She looked back at Jennie. "I'm sure that we will," she said. "If you want me, write. I'd be glad to come."

In a moment, the door opened again and Al Petrocelli, the publicity manager, stuck his head in. A blast of music came from behind him. "Come on," he said. "The party's going great guns. Cord sent over an orchestra."

She put down her cigarette. "Just a minute," she said, turning to the mirror and straightening her hair.

He stared at her. "You're not coming like that?" he asked incredulously.

"Why not? The picture's finished."

He came into the room and closed the door behind him. "But, Jennie baby, try to understand.
Life
magazine is covering the party. How would it look to their readers if the star of the biggest picture we've made in ten years was wearing a loose black sweater and pants? We've got to give 'em more to look at than that."

"I’m not getting into that costume again," Jennie said stubbornly.

"Please, baby. I promised them some cheesecake."

"If that's what they want, give them the photo file."

"Now is no time to make with the temperament," Al said. "Look, you've been a good girl up to now. Just this once, please."

"It's O.K., Al." Bonner's voice came from behind him. "If Jennie doesn't want to change, she doesn't have to." He smiled his pleasantly ugly smile as he came into the tiny dressing room. "As a matter of fact," he said, "I think it might be a welcome change for
Life
's readers."

Al looked at him. "O.K. if you say so, Mr. Bonner," he said.

Bonner turned to her, smiling. "Well, you did it."

She didn't answer, just looked at him.

"I’ve been thinking about you," he said, his eyes on her face. "You're going to be a big star."

She didn't say anything.

"
The Sinner
is going to be a tough picture to follow."

"I hadn't thought about it," she said.

"Of course. You haven't and neither has Jonas." Bonner laughed. "But why should you? That's not your job. It's mine. All Jonas does is what he feels like doing. If he wants to make a picture, he makes a picture. But it might be another eight years before he feels like it again."

"So?" she said, meeting his eyes levelly.

He shrugged his shoulders. "It's up to me to keep you working. If you go that long between pictures, they’ll forget all about you." He reached into his jacket for a package of cigarettes. "Is that Mexican woman still working for you?"

"Yes."

"Still living in the same place?"

"Of course."

"I thought I might drop by one evening next week," he said. "I’ve got some scripts we might go over."

She was silent.

"Jonas is going away," he said. "To Canada, on a business trip." He smiled. "You know, I think it's fortunate he hasn't heard any of the stories about you, don't you?"

She let her breath out slowly. "Yes."

"I thought maybe Wednesday night."

"You'd better call first," she said through stiff lips.

"Of course, I forgot. Nothing has changed, has it?"

She looked up at him. "No," she said dully. Then she walked past him to the door. A great weariness came into her. Nothing had changed. Things turned out the way they always did for her. Nothing ever changed but the currency.

She awoke to the sight of white linen floating in the wind on the clothesline outside the window. The rich aroma of corned beef and cabbage, wafting into her room on the heavy summer breeze from the kitchen next door, told her it was Sunday. It was always like that on Sundays, only when you were a little girl it had been more fun.

On Sundays, when she'd returned from church with her mother, her father would be awake and smiling, his mustache neatly trimmed and waxed, his face smooth and smelling of bay rum. He tossed her into the air and caught her as she came down, hugging her close to him and growling, "How is my little Jennie Bear this morning? Is she sweet and filled with God's holiness fresh from the fount in the back of the church?"

He laughed and she laughed and sometimes even her mother laughed, saying, "Now, Thomas Denton, is that the proper way for a father to talk to his own daughter, sowing in her the seeds of his own disobedience to God's will?"

Her father and mother were both young and filled with laughter and happiness and God's own good sunshine that shone down on San Francisco Bay. And after the big dinner, he dressed himself carefully in his good blue suit and took her by the hand and they went out of the house to seek adventure.

They first met adventure on the cable car that ran past their door. Holding her in his arms, her father leaped aboard the moving car, and waving his blue-and-white conductor's pass, which entitled him to ride free on any of the company's cars, pushed forward to the front of the car, next to the motorman. There he held her face up to the rushing wind until the breath caught in her throat and she thought she'd burst with the joy of the fresh, sweet wind in her lungs.

"This is my daughter, my Jennie Bear," he shouted to all who would listen, holding her proudly so that all who cared to look could see.

And the passengers, who up to now had been engrossed in their own private thoughts, smiled at her, sharing somehow in the joy that glowed like a beacon in her round and shining face.

Then they went to the park, or sometimes to the wharf, where they ate hot shrimp or crabs, swimming in garlic, and her father drank beer, great foaming glasses of it, bought from the bootlegger who operated quite openly near the stands. But only to wash away the smell of the garlic, of course. Or sometimes, they went out to the zoo and he bought her a bag of peanuts to feed the elephant or the monkeys in their cages. And they returned in the evening, and she was tired and sometimes asleep in her father's arms. And the next day was Monday and she couldn't wait until it would be Sunday again.

No, nothing passed as quickly as the Sundays of your childhood. And then she went to school, frightened at first of the sisters, who were stern and forbidding in their black habits. Her small round face was serious above her white middy blouse and navy-blue guimpe. But they taught you the catechism and you made your confirmation and lost your fear as bit by bit you accepted them as your teachers, leading you into a richer Christian life, and the happy Sundays of your childhood fled deeper and deeper into the dim recesses of your mind, until you hardly remembered them any more.

Jennie lay quietly on her sixteen-year-old bed, her ears sharpening to the sounds of the Sunday morning. For a moment, there was only silence, then she heard her mother's shrill voice. "Mr. Denton, for the last time, it's time to get up and go to Mass."

Her father's voice was husky, the words indistinguishable. She could see him in her mind's eyes, lying unshaven and bloated with Saturday-night beer in his long woolen underwear, on the soft, wide bed, burying his face in the big pillow. She heard her mother again. "But I promised Father Hadley ye'd come this Sunday for sure. If ye have no concern for your own soul, at least have some for your wife's and daughter's."

She heard no reply, then the door slammed as her mother retreated to the kitchen. Jennie swung her bare feet onto the floor, searching for her slippers. She found them and stood up, the long white cotton nightgown trailing down to her ankles as she crossed the room.

She came out into the kitchen on her way to the bathroom and her mother turned from the stove. "Ye can wear the new blue bonnet I made for ye to Mass, Jennie darlin'."

"Yes, Mother," she said.

She brushed her teeth carefully, remembering what Sister Philomena had told the class in Hygiene. Circular strokes with the brush, reaching up onto the gums, then down, would remove all the food particles that might cause decay. She examined her teeth carefully in the mirror. She had nice teeth. Clean and white and even.

She liked being clean. Not like many of the girls at Mercy High School, who came from the same poor neighborhood and bathed only once a week, on Saturdays. She took a bath every night — even if she had to heat the water in the kitchen of the old tenement in which they lived.

She looked at her face out of her clear gray eyes and tried to imagine herself in the white cap and uniform of a nurse. She'd have to make up her mind soon. Graduation was next month and it wasn't every student who could get a scholarship to St. Mary's College of Nursing.

The sisters liked her and she'd always received high marks throughout her attendance at Mercy. Besides, Father Hadley had written Mother M. Ernest, commending her for her devout attendance and service to the church, not like so many of the young ladies today, who spent more time in front of a mirror over their make-up than on their knees in church in front of their God. Father Hadley had expressed the hope that the Good Mother would find a way to reward this poor deserving child for her devotion.

The scholarship to St. Mary's was given each year to the one student whose record for religious and scholastic achievements was deemed the most worthy by a committee headed by the Archbishop. This year, it was to be hers, if she decided to become a nurse. This morning, after church, she'd have to present herself to Mother M. Ernest, at the Sister House, to give her answer.

"It is God's mercy you'll be dispensing," Sister Cyril had said, after informing her of the committee's choice. "But you will have to make the decision. It may be that attending the sick and helpless is not your true vocation."

Sister Cyril had looked up at the girl standing quietly in front of her desk. Already, Jennie was tall and slim, with the full body of a woman, and yet there was a quiet innocence in the calm gray eyes that looked back at her. Jennie did not speak. Sister Cyril smiled at her. "You have a week to make up your mind," she said gently. "Go to the Sister House next Sunday after Mass. Mother Mary Ernest will be there to receive your answer."

Her father had cursed angrily when he heard of the scholarship. "What kind of life is that for a child? Cleaning out the bedpans of dirty old men? The next thing you know, they'll talk her into becoming a nun."

He turned violently to her mother. "It's all your doing," he shouted. "You and those priests you listen to. What's so holy about taking a child with the juices of life just beginning to bubble inside of her and locking her away behind the walls of a convent?"

Her mother's face was white. "It's blasphemy you're speaking, Thomas Denton," she said coldly. "If only once you'd come and speak to the good Father Hadley, ye'd learn how wrong ye are. And if our daughter should become a religious, it's the proudest mother in Christendom I'd be. What is wrong in giving your only child as a bride to Christ?"

"Aye," her father said heavily. "But who'll be to blame when the child grows up and finds you've stolen from her the pleasures of being a woman?"

He turned to Jennie and looked down at her. "Jennie Bear," he said softly, "it's not that I object to your becoming a nurse if you want to. It's that I want you to do and be whatever you want to be. Your mother and I, we don't matter. Even what the church wants doesn't matter. It's what you want that does." He sighed. "Do you understand, child?"

Jennie nodded. "I understand, Papa."

"Ye'll not be satisfied till ye see your daughter a whore," her mother suddenly screamed at him.