Laura Lamont's Life In Pictures (12 page)

Three days into the film, the actor playing Laura’s love interest fell ill with appendicitis and had to be taken to the hospital. (“Isn’t that
the point?” Ginger had joked. “That he’s supposed to be sick, and you’re supposed to take care of him?”) It was Irving’s idea to replace him with Gordon.

“Gordon Pitts?” Laura asked. “My Gordon?”

“He’s not your Gordon anymore,” Irving said, already holding the telephone in hand. His voice was hard, definite. There was no argument Laura could make that would sway him, she knew, but she tried anyway. She knew as well as Irving did that Gordon played broken better than anyone else on the lot.

“What about Johnny?” She knew it was a long shot. Johnny’d been out of Gardner Brothers’ favor as of late, thanks to a gambling problem he’d acquired while filming
Las Vegas Is for Lovers
, a romance about mistaken identity and shotgun weddings that culminated in a scene with Susie and Johnny racing from one chapel to the next, a herd of angry mobsters trailing behind them.

Irving held up a finger. Someone was on the other line. “Get me Gordon Pitts,” he said. “I don’t care what kind of hole you have to go down to find him.” And that was that. Laura stood in the doorway as Irving called the director and wardrobe. Everything would need to be taken in.

“There,” he said when he was through. “That should make it more interesting.”

G
ordon was late to the set every single morning. More than half the scenes were just the two of them, which meant that more often than not, Laura would arrive, get dressed, have her makeup done, and then sit in a canvas folding chair for an hour, watching grips carry things back and forth across the set. A flock of extras gathered nearby, all smoking in their knickers and bonnets. Peggy Bates had a real part,
another nurse in the unit, and Laura was surprised at how calm she seemed after they called “Action,” how her nervous energy could be boxed up and put away. Nurses made Laura think about her sister Josephine, who had always hung around with nurses, and could have sewn together a wound without flinching.

The first day of shooting, when Gordon finally arrived a half hour late, he ambled over to the director, J. J. Rush, and began to apologize. J.J. wasn’t known for his patience, and Laura couldn’t help but watch as Gordon’s already stooped shoulders seemed to lower several more inches to the ground as J.J. laid into him. All the extras stomped on their cigarettes and scurried off to their proper places. When Gordon turned, his eyes swept over Laura and onto the rest of the set, only to backtrack—was it really her? When he realized he had already seen his former wife, Gordon stopped moving. Laura tried to stifle a smile when Gordon clomped up to her.

“What did you do to yourself?” Gordon pointed at Laura’s head, in case she couldn’t tell what he was blabbering on about.

“Don’t you like it?” Laura put a hand under her hair, which the girls had curled into (she was fairly certain) historically inaccurate ringlets.

“You sure look different,” Gordon said. He narrowed his eyes, taking her in as if for the first time.

The whites of Gordon’s eyes looked yellow. Laura had to resist the urge to back away. “Thank you,” Laura said, though she was sure he hadn’t meant it as a compliment.

T
he first scene took place in Nellie’s farmhouse, somewhere in Virginia. Laura sat on the bed until there was a knock on the door. Gordon’s wounded soldier was on the other side, and she helped him
in. They both still needed lines every so often, Gordon more often than Laura. The script girl moved so that she was closer to him. If necessary, J.J. said, they’d write all his dialogue out on cards. It had been done before. Laura wished that Gordon would pull it together: He was a good actor; she believed that. She never would have married a bad actor. When they had acted together in Door County, Gordon had had something better than average, a darker bloodline that ran much closer to the bone than most of the summertime boys. It wasn’t so different than it was for her, Laura imagined, watching Gordon murmur his lines to himself in between takes—there was a part of Gordon, buried deep inside his body, that he was trying to reach. The only real question Laura had was whether Gordon could stay close to the good part of himself, the actorly part, when this other, larger beast was trying to take over. Gordon coughed, and kept putting all his weight on the leg that was supposed to be shot and broken and infected. Everyone turned away and waited for him to finish.

“Sorry, J.J., I’m sorry,” he said, still hacking away. “There must be something caught in my throat.” When the script girl started rolling her eyes, Laura knew he was in trouble. Gordon coughed something up and spit it into his handkerchief.

The bonnet itched. The shoes were flat and square, like something her mother would have worn. Laura was nervous that everything she thought showed on her face. The camera got so much closer than it ever had before. When it was her and Ginger in their matching dresses, the camera was never less than ten feet away, skimming over the surface of their youthful exuberance. Now the camera’s lens hovered over her like a lover, its open, round eye coming ever closer.

“Is Irving here?” They were in between shots, and Laura couldn’t breathe. There were too many layers of clothing, and Edna, the assistant costume designer, had wound too many ribbons around her neck, which began to feel as if it were being strangled. She started
tugging at them, and wandered off the set, out of the three walls of the farmhouse, and onto the concrete floor of the soundstage. Several voices shouted at once, and the quick feet of grips and assistant cameramen ran off to find him. Laura stared at the ground, unable to move. A strand of her hair had fallen out and clung to her sleeve. She picked it up by its end like a worm in the garden and tried to fling it off, but it wouldn’t go. “Can someone call Irving Green, please?” Edna hurried over, her legs moving as quickly as her narrow skirt suit would allow. There were pins sticking out of the hem of her skirt, and a little cushion strapped to the back of her hand. She knelt down next to Laura and loosened several items at once, her tiny, birdlike hands moving furiously. Laura moved onto her hands and knees, as though she were playing with Clara and Florence on her own rug at home and not surrounded by grown-up people who might think ill of her if she began to vomit. Her neck, it was her neck. She should have remembered to tell them she couldn’t have anything on it; she should have told them that her neck was off-limits, nonnegotiable, no matter what the costume designer said.

“Laura, what’s going on?” Irving arrived quickly, relieving Edna. He’d been in his office bungalow, where he almost always slept and ate all of his meals. If nothing else, Irving Green was an easy man to find. Despite his presence, which did calm Laura a bit, the room was too warm still, and her entire body felt damp and feverish. Laura held out her hand, and Irving helped her stand up. The extras all pretended to look away, but Laura knew how strong the impulse was to get Irving’s attention.

“I don’t think I can do it,” she said softly, so that only he could hear. “I couldn’t breathe.” Laura pulled at her collar, trying to free up her heart, which was booming against her jaw, and felt as if it were about to burst.

“Why, because of Gordon?” He sounded so disappointed, as if she
had let him down personally. He had expected more. Irving adjusted his glasses, and then leaned down to pick up the bonnet that had been tied tightly under Laura’s chin, and the ribbons that had been so tight around her throat. “That’s too much, don’t you think?” Irving craned his neck, looking for Edna, who was still nearby. He wasn’t talking to Laura anymore. Edna came over with a pair of scissors and snipped a few more things off, opening up Laura’s costume so that her neck was free. Edna’s small eyes focused on parts of Laura that only the camera would see. Hair and makeup rushed over to fluff Laura’s ringlets.

“No,” Laura said, although she wasn’t sure whether she was telling the truth. She looked at Gordon, who kept readjusting his hat. He did look sickly. The casting had been good; as usual, Irving was right. “I’ve never had to be serious before. In front of the camera, I mean.” In the theater, there were always people sitting right in front of you. Even with the few meager lights that her father had rigged in the barn, Laura could make out one person’s nose, or another person’s laugh. The audience had been right there with her, and she could react. What choice did she have now, to react to Gordon? Just looking at him made her sad. No, Laura thought, no. She could do it. When the nurse looked down at the soldier’s gangrenous leg, its oozing and bleeding mess, she would see her husband and her own broken heart. Gordon hadn’t broken it—no, Laura doubted that he would even know how. She had broken it herself when she’d climbed aboard that bus in Chicago, when she knew that she was hitching her wagon to Gordon’s only temporarily. When she watched her father hold his own elbows and not turn away until the bus was gone, maybe not even then. Her father probably waited in that depot for hours, wanting to be there if she changed her mind and decided to come back. That was what she would see when she looked at Gordon; she would be Elsa, saying good-bye to her former life, her happy childhood and her sad
one, all at once. Laura thought of Hildy’s body and put her hands back to the collar of her dress, pulling it down and away from her face. She could heal Gordon’s leg with her bare hands if she had to.

A
t night, someone would drive Laura home. Gardner Brothers had a fleet of cars, and Irving insisted. It was pleasant not to have to drive: Laura enjoyed waving good-bye to whoever was around and then folding herself into the backseat of a waiting car. Once inside, she could shut her eyes and lean her face against the leather headrest. She hadn’t been in such nice cars before, and after the first few trips, Laura stopped telling the drivers where to go, because they had obviously already been informed. It was an odd feeling, that strangers knew who she was and where she lived, and that they cared, but Laura could get used to odd.

Harriet put the girls to bed and waited for Laura to have dinner, though Laura would never eat much. They sat together at the small kitchen table and whispered about the days, as if speaking in their regular voices would wake the girls up.

“Florence walked like a mermaid all afternoon,” Harriet said. “Every time she took a step, she said, ‘Squish, squish, squish.’”

“Oh, no,” Laura said, her eyes widening with pride. “She’s an actress.”

“Some spice cake?” Harriet got up to clear their plates.

“I shouldn’t.”

Harriet brought over two plates with tiny slivers of cake. “Just a smidge. Hardly counts.”

Laura nudged a bit of cake onto her fork and put the bite on her tongue, closing her lips around the fork. In every house Laura had
ever lived in, the kitchen was always her favorite room, the place where conversations actually happened, rather than where they pretended to. It didn’t matter how tired she was, and how long her day would be tomorrow. It was nice to be at home. Across the table, Harriet ate her piece in two swallows. “Let me get you another,” Laura said. “They were awfully small pieces.”