Tribute (13 page)

“You think he was local? What was his name?”

“He didn’t sign them by name. She—” Cilla glanced over, noticed how close they stood to the open window. Taking her father’s arm, she drew him away. “She told the man she was pregnant.”

“Pregnant? Cilla, there was an autopsy.”

“It might have been covered up. It might not have been true, but if it was, if it wasn’t a lie to get him back, it could’ve been covered up. He threatened her. In the last letter, he told her she’d pay if she tried to expose their relationship.”

“You don’t want to believe she killed herself,” Gavin began.

“Suicide or not, she’s still dead. I want the truth. She deserves that, and so do I. People have talked murder and conspiracies for decades. Maybe they’re right.”

“She was an addict, sweetheart. An addict who couldn’t stop grieving for her child. An unhappy woman who shone in front of the cameras, on the stage, but who never really found her happiness away from them. And when Johnnie died, she lost herself in grief, and smothered the grief with pills and alcohol.”

“She took a lover. And she came back here. Johnnie kissed your girl, and as a result, you lived. Small moments change lives. And take them. I want to find out what moment, what actual event, took hers. Even if it was by her own hand.”

SEVEN

Janet held the sleeveless, full-skirted dress up, and did a twirl in front of the wall of mirrors. “What do you think?” she asked Cilla. “The pink’s more elegant, but I really want to wear white. Every girl should be able to wear white on her wedding day.”

“You’ll look beautiful. You’ll look beautiful and young, and so incredibly happy.”

“I am. I’m all of those things. I’m nineteen. I’m a major movie star. My record is number one in the country. I’m in love.” She spiraled again, and again, spun-gold hair flying in gleaming waves.

Even in dreams, her sheer joy danced in the air, fluttered over Cilla’s skin.

“I’m madly in love with the most wonderful, the most handsome man in the world. I’m rich, I’m beautiful, and the world—right this moment—the world is mine.”

“It stays yours for a long time,” Cilla told her. But not long enough. It’s never long enough.

“I should wear my hair up.”

Janet tossed the dress onto the bed where the pink brocade suit already lay discarded. “I look more mature with my hair up. The studio never wants me to wear it up. They don’t want me to be a woman yet, a real woman. Always the girl next door, always the virgin.”

Laughing, she began to fashion her sleek fall of hair into a French twist. “I haven’t been a virgin since I was fifteen.” Janet met Cilla’s eyes in the mirror. And with the joy layered amusement, and a thin coat of disdain. “Do you think the public cares if I have sex?”

“Some do. Some will. But it’s your life.”

“Goddamn right. And my career. I want adult roles, and I’m going to get them. Frankie’s going to help me. Once we’re married, he’ll manage my career. He’ll handle things.”

“Yes,” Cilla murmured, “he will.”

“Oh, I know what you’re thinking.” Standing in her white silk slip, Janet continued to place pins in her hair. “Within the year I’ll be filing for divorce. Then a brief reconciliation gets me knocked up with my second child. I’m pregnant now, but I don’t know it. Johnnie’s already started inside me. Only a week or so, but he’s begun. Everything changes today.”

“You eloped to Vegas, married Frankie Bennett, who was nearly ten years older than you.”

“Vegas was my idea.” Janet picked up a can of hair spray from the dressing table, began to spray suffocating clouds of it. “I wanted to stuff it down their throats, I guess. Janet Hardy, and all the parts she plays, wouldn’t even know Vegas exists. But here I am, in the penthouse of the Flamingo, dressing for my wedding. And no one knows but me and Frankie.”

Cilla walked to the window, looked out.

A pool sparkled below, lush gardens flowing back from its skirting. Beyond, the buildings were small and on the tacky side. Colors faded, shapes blurred, like the old photographs Cilla supposed she’d pieced together to form the landscape for the dream.

“It’s nothing like it will be, really. Vegas, I mean.”

“What is?”

“You’ll marry Bennett, and the studio will spin and spin to counteract the damage. But there won’t be any, not really. You look so spectacular together, and that’s almost enough. The illusion of two gorgeous people in love. And you’ll take on your first true adult role with Sarah Constantine in
Heartsong
. You’ll be nominated for an Oscar.”

“After Johnnie. I have Johnnie before
Heartsong
. Even Mrs. Eisenhower will send a baby gift. I cut back on the pills.” She tapped the bottle on her dressing table before turning to lift the dress. “I’m still able to do that, to cut down on the pills, the booze. It’s easier when I’m happy, the way I am now.”

“If you knew what would happen? If you knew Frankie Bennett will cheat on you with women, will gamble away so much of your money, squander more. If you knew he’d break your heart and that you’d attempt suicide for the first time in just over a year, would you go through with it?”

Janet stepped into the dress. “If I didn’t, where would you be?” She turned her back. “Zip me up, will you?”

“You said, later, you’ll say that your mother offered you like a virgin to the studio, and the studio tore the innocence out of you, piece by piece. And that Frankie Bennett took those pieces and shredded them like confetti.”

“The studio made me a star.” She fastened pearls at her ears. “I didn’t walk away. I craved what they gave me, and gave them my innocence. I wanted Frankie, and gave what was left to him.”

She held up a double strand of pearls, and understanding, Cilla took them to hook around Janet’s neck.

“I’ll do amazing work in the next ten years. My very best work. And I’ll do some damn good work in the ten after that. Well, nearly ten,” she said with a laugh. “But who’s counting? Maybe I needed to be in turmoil to reach my potential. Who knows? Who cares?”

“I do.”

With a soft smile, Janet turned to kiss Cilla’s cheek. “I looked for love all of my life, and gave it too often, and too intensely. Maybe if I hadn’t looked so hard, someone would have given it back to me. The red belt!” She danced away to snatch a thick scarlet belt from the clothes tossed on the bed. “It’s just the right touch, and red’s Frankie’s favorite color. He loves me in red.”

She buckled it on, like a belt of blood, and stepped into matching shoes. “How do I look?”

“Perfect.”

“I wish you could come, but it’s only going to be me and Frankie, and the funny old justice of the peace and the woman who plays the spinet. Frankie will leak it to the press without telling me, and that’s how the photo of the two of us coming out of the tacky little chapel gets into
Photoplay
. Then the shit hits the fan.” She laughed. “What a ride.”

And laughed, and laughed, so that Cilla heard the echoes of the laughter as she woke.

 

 

BECAUSE SHE WANTED to let her thoughts simmer away from the noise and distractions, Cilla spent the majority of her time the next two days sorting out the dozens of boxes and trunks she’d hauled into the barn.

Cilla had determined on her first pass that her mother had already culled and scavenged whatever she deemed worthwhile. But Dilly had missed a few treasures. She often did, to Cilla’s mind, being in such a rush to grab the shiniest object, she missed the little diamonds in the rough.

Like the old photo tucked in a book. A very pregnant Janet plopped on a chaise by the pond, mugging for the camera with a glossily handsome Rock Hudson. Or the script for
With Violets
—Janet’s second Oscar nomination—buried in a trunk full of old blankets. She found a little music box fashioned like a grand piano that played “Für Elise.” Inside, a little handwritten note read:
From Johnnie, Mother’s Day, 1961,
in Janet’s looping scrawl.

By the end of a rainy afternoon, she had a pile designated for the Dumpster, and a small stack of boxes to keep.

When she hauled out a load in a wheelbarrow, she found the rain had turned to fragile sunlight and her front yard full of people. Ford and her landscaper stood on the wet grass laughing at each other, along with a man with steel-gray hair who wore a light windbreaker. Crossing to them from a little red pickup was the owner of the roofing company she’d hired. A boy of about ten and a big white dog trailed after him.

After some posturing, and looking out from between Ford’s legs, Spock tiptoed—if dogs could tiptoe—up to the white dog, sniffed, then plopped down and exposed his belly in submission.

“Afternoon.” Cleaver of Cleaver Roofing and Gutters gave her a nod of greeting. “Had a job to check on down the road, and thought I’d stop on the way home to let you know we’ll be starting tomorrow if the weather’s clear.”

“That’s great.”

“These are my grandsons, Jake and Lester.” He winked at Cilla. “They don’t bite.”

“Good to know.”

“Grandpa.” The boy rolled his eyes. “Lester’s my dog.”

As Cilla crouched to greet the dog, Spock bumped through them to claim Cilla’s hand. It was a clear: Uh-uh, you owe me first.

Cleaver hailed the trio of men walking toward them. “Tommy, you son of a . . .” Cleaver slid his gaze toward his grandson, smirked. “Gun. Don’t think you can fast-talk this lady into selling. I’ve got the roof.”

“How you doing, Hank? I’m not buying. Just checking up on my boy here.”

“Cilla, this is my dad.” Brian, the landscaper, gripped his father’s shoulder. “Tom Morrow.”

“He’s a slick one, Miz McGowan,” Hank warned her with another wink. “You watch out for him. Before you know it, he’ll talk you into selling this place, then put up a dozen houses.”

“This acreage? No more than six.” Tom offered a smile and his hand. “Welcome to Virginia.”

“Thanks. You’re a builder?”

“I develop land, residential and commercial. You’ve taken on quite a project here. I’ve heard you hired some good people to work on it. Present company excepted,” he said with a grin to Hank.

“Before these two get going,” Brian interrupted, “I’ve got some sketches on the landscaping I wanted to drop off for you to look at. Do you want a hand with that haul?”

Cilla shook her head. “I’ve got it. I’m just going through the stuff I brought down from the attic, stowed in the barn. Rainy-day work, I guess.”

Brian lifted a dented toaster out of the wheelbarrow. “People keep the damnedest things.”

“I can attest.”

“We cleaned out the attic when my mother passed,” Hank put in. “Found a whole box of nothing but broken dishes, and another dozen or more full of papers. Receipts from groceries back thirty years, and God knows. But you want to be careful sorting through, Miz McGowan. Mixed all in there we found letters my daddy wrote her when he was in Korea. She had every one of our report cards—there’s six of us kids—right through high school. She never threw a blessed thing out, but there’re important things up there.”

“I’m going to take my time with it. I’m finding it an interesting mix of both sides of my family so far.”

“That’s right, this used to be the McGowan farm.” Tom scanned the area. “I remember when your grandmother bought it from old man McGowan, back around 1960. My father had his eye on this land, hoping to develop it. He brooded for a month after Janet Hardy bought it—then he decided she wouldn’t keep it above six months, and he’d snap it up cheap from her. She proved him wrong.

“It’s a pretty spot,” Tom added, then gave his son a poke. “See that you make it prettier. I’d better get going. Good luck, Miss McGowan. If you need any recommendations on subs, just give me a call.”

“I appreciate that.”

“I’d better get on, too.” Hank pulled at the brim of his cap. “Get my grandsons home for supper.”

“Grandpa.”

“They’ll talk another twenty minutes,” Brian commented when his father and Hank strolled toward the red pickup. “But I really do have to get going.” He handed Cilla a large manila envelope. “Let me know what you think, what kind of changes you might want.”

“I will, thanks.”

After Brian tossed the toaster into the Dumpster, he shot a finger at Ford. “Later, Rembrandt.”

On a short laugh, Ford waved. “Around and about, Picasso.”

“Rembrandt?”

“Short story. Wait. Jesus.” After she’d handed him the envelope and started to push the wheelbarrow up the Dumpster’s ramp, Ford nudged her aside. “Flex your muscles all you want, but not while I’m standing here holding paper and guys are around.”

He shoved the envelope back at her, then rolled the wheelbarrow up to dump. “Brian and I could both draw, and somehow or other got into a sex-parts-and-positions drawing contest. We got busted passing sketches back and forth in study hall. Earned us both a three-day pass.”

“Pass to what?”

He looked down as he dumped. “Suspension. I guess you didn’t go to regular school.”

“Tutors. How old were you?”

“About fourteen. I got my ears burned all the way home when my mother picked me up, and got grounded for two weeks. Two weeks, and it was my first and last black mark in school. Talk about harsh. Hmm.”

“I bet they still have them,” she said when he rolled the barrow down again. “And future generations will find them in the attic.”

“You think? Well, they did show considerable promise and a very healthy imagination. Want to go for a ride?”

“A ride?”

“We can go get some dinner somewhere, catch a movie.”

“What’s playing?”

“Couldn’t say. I’m thinking of the movie as a vehicle for popcorn and necking.”

“Sounds good,” she decided. “You can put the wheelbarrow back in the barn while I wash up.”

 

 

WITH HER NEW WIRING APPROVED, Cilla watched Dobby and his grandson replaster the living room walls. Art came in many forms, she decided, and she’d found herself a pair of artists. It wouldn’t be quick, but boy, it would be right.