Laura Lamont's Life In Pictures (13 page)

Harriet leaned back and hooked her hands behind her head. “I won’t say no to that,” she said, and laughed.

T
he filming went on longer than expected, nearly three months. Gardner Brothers rented an abandoned lot in Echo Park for the battle sequences. Laura appeared in only the final one, when she waded through the dead and dying men strewn about the field in search of Gordon’s soldier. She found him dead, his healed leg having swiftly delivered him to the front lines of the war. When Laura collapsed over Gordon’s body, she smelled his sweat and his foul breath, and the tears that she shed were real. When the film was released, the studio leaked photos of the final scene, and Laura’s mascara-streaked face, to the “Facts of Hollywood Life” column in
Photoplay
magazine, which screamed that the two actors were in love. Only the people on the Gardner Brothers lot knew the truth, and they weren’t talking. It all seemed so silly, so backward: When Laura and Gordon really were married, no one had cared, but now that she wanted nothing to do with him, everyone wanted to take their photo and whisper behind their backs. When Irving asked Laura and Gordon to sit next to each other at the premiere, they did so. Gordon sucked gin out of his flask throughout the entire film, clinking glasses with all the well-wishers. Laura couldn’t stand to be next to him, but when the spotlight found
them, she let him kiss her on the cheek. His lips were dry and cracked, no matter what the makeup girls put on him. Whatever he was putting inside his body was stronger. The girls were at home with Harriet; Irving was in the balcony with Louis Gardner and his stout family.
The Ballad of Bayonets
showed on screens all over the country, in movie houses large and small, and Laura Lamont was a star, through and through. The newspaper photographers snapped her photo when she left the theater alone, her white stole dragging behind her like a child’s security blanket.

T
he announcement went out on the wires the morning after the opening: Gordon Pitts was so moved by his role that he had chosen to enlist in the United States Armed Forces, and he would be shipping off to basic training that afternoon. Louis Gardner was quoted as saying that he was proud of Gordon, as he was proud of all his employees who had chosen to serve their country. Such bravery! Such selflessness! Hearts were stirred from Santa Monica to Pasadena. Laura went to Irving’s bungalow when she heard the news, thirdhand, from Ginger, who had shrugged.

“Did you know?” Laura asked, once one of Irving’s fleet of secretaries had noiselessly shut the door. “Did you know he was going to do that?”

Irving took off his glasses and held them up toward the light. “In fact, I did.”

“Gosh,” Laura said, as she sank into the chair opposite his. She dropped her purse onto the floor. “I never took him for a soldier type. Or anything even close. I guess I didn’t know him very well at all. I’m sort of impressed.”

Irving stifled a laugh. “Oh, Laura.” He got up and walked around the desk, toward the window that overlooked the lot. “I told Gordon Pitts that if he didn’t get out of town, he would never work again. Not at Gardner Brothers, and not anywhere else.” He fingered the blinds, peeking out into the world that he controlled. The Gardner Brothers water tower stood spitting distance from his window, the studio emblem painted ten feet high. You could see the water tower from anywhere in the lot, even from the cemetery on the other side of the lot’s walls—you could see it from the studio next door. To see it out Irving’s window reminded Laura that she was not the one in charge, no matter what she did.

Laura cocked her head to the side. “You made him go? To war?”

“Oh, they’ll kick him around different training camps for months,” Irving said, turning to face her. “He’ll learn to shoot, to run. It’ll be good for him. Who knows if he’ll even see any real action. I’m not putting him to death, Laura, I’m not sending him to Hitler on a silver platter.”

She was still working it out in her head. Gordon was gone—he wouldn’t bother the girls, wouldn’t ring her doorbell, wouldn’t breathe his hot breath on her cheek. “You did that for me?” It was wrong of Irving, potentially lethal, and yet she was moved.

“You bet I did,” Irving said. “I’d do it again too. That guy was a prick.”

Laura laughed, but stopped herself quickly. “And Louis approved it? It’s okay?” She tried to imagine Gordon in uniform, a real uniform instead of a costume, but realized she didn’t know the difference. “Oh, God,” Laura said, shaking her head.

“It’s done, it’s done,” Irving said. “People will like Gordon more now. That’s what I told him, and it’s true.”

Laura moved across the room to Irving. She held out her hands,
and he took them, rubbing his thumbs over her knuckles. “Would you ever do it? Sign up, I mean?”

“Oh, they wouldn’t take me. Too many childhood illnesses. Fluid in the wrong places. Hole in the heart. I’m like something out of a Victorian orphanage.” And just like that, Irving confirmed everything she’d ever heard about him, as nonchalantly as if he were placing an order for dinner. Laura was glad he’d been a sick child: It meant that she could have him now, and keep him forever. He looked at her and smiled, as if amused at the expression on her face.

“And what about me?” Laura asked.

“What about you?” Irving sat on his desk and crossed his arms over his chest, amused.

“Shouldn’t I do something too? Sell some bonds? Visit some troops?”

Irving shook his head. “Leave that to the Dolores Dees of the world. All you need to do is spend a couple shifts at the Hollywood Canteen. We need you
here
, my dear.”

“Well, then,” Laura said, and folded herself against him, her lips against his neck, then his cheek, then his mouth. “If you say so.”

I
rving wanted to meet the girls, and to give them a proper tour of the studio, despite the fact that they’d been regular visitors on the lot the entirety of their young lives.

“Trust me,” Irving said, and Laura did.

The plan was to meet in front of the schoolhouse at three p.m., when the girls were finished for the day. Florence was three and an excellent mimic, repeating back nearly everything she heard. Clara was five and quick on her feet, choreographing elaborate dance sequences that she then performed for her dolls. Laura stood in front
of the schoolhouse building, her hands patting her thighs. It was a clear, bright afternoon, the only shadows cast by the buildings themselves, and by the trees. Laura wasn’t used to going on dates with her children, or going on dates at all, really. Before they’d kissed, Laura had told herself that Irving was interested in her only professionally, as he was in all of his actresses. Surely he wasn’t kissing them all the way he’d kissed her—Laura had kissed enough actors to know the difference between a real kiss and a manufactured one, kisses just for play. Irving rounded the corner from his bungalow, his small frame dipping from side to side as he walked quickly toward them.

“Girls!” Laura said. “Girls!” She scooted them in front of her and held their shoulders in place. Florence was too young to stand still for more than a split second, and was already rubbing her bottom against Laura’s leg in a way that was embarrassing. “I’m sorry,” she said, as Irving came closer. “She’s still a baby, really.”

“I’m not a baby!” Florence said. “Baby!”

Irving nodded hello to Laura and than sank directly to his knees in front of the girls, so that he was on their eye level.

“Hello, ladies,” he said, and stuck out his hand for them to shake. They both giggled, and Clara curtsied, her elbow knocking into Florence’s chest, which made Florence’s face cloud over, with chances of showers ahead.

“Oh, no, no,” Irving said. “There’s no crying! We have too much to do! Come along, now.” And with that he stood up and again held out his hand, this time for Florence to hold. Laura waited—Florence was a shy child, but good enough with strangers, from all her time on the lot. She wished that she could will her daughter into taking Irving’s hand, and Clara toward his other side. Laura closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them, it was right there in front of her, the three of them pawed up like a merry little band of friends, starting their march down the sunny pathway.

S
ix months later, Irving moved out of his modest house. The truth was, more often than not he slept in his office, which had a place to sleep and a private dining room, and so the house meant little to him. Louis and Maxine Gardner sent over a magnum of champagne, glad that Irving was finally taking a wife. He hired movers to come to Laura’s house and pack anything she wanted to keep. She and the girls climbed into Irving’s waiting car and drove to see the new house, where they would all live together. It wasn’t in the neighborhood—Laura watched Ginger’s house recede in the side-view mirror. Irving liked Beverly Hills, and so that was where they were going. The girls would have their own bedrooms, and a swimming pool. Laura supposed she’d always known that this was going to happen, and that it was the reason she’d never fully set up her household before. A girl needed a husband, a proper husband, to say whether or not he liked this lamp or that one, the sofa against this wall or that. And to manage the money, which Laura didn’t like having to keep track of herself. So it was old-fashioned!
She
was old-fashioned. Laura couldn’t do it all alone, and with the girls both running full speed across the wide grassy lawn, the new house seemed like a gorgeous, whitewashed opportunity.

The marriage took place in a judge’s chamber at City Hall; it was the tallest building Laura had ever been inside. The service itself took less than five minutes. Ginger and Harriet acted as witnesses. Laura wanted to invite the girls, but Irving didn’t think that was a good idea, too confusing. Irving’s parents had died when he was very young, and Laura thought that it was therefore only fair that hers didn’t come, either. It was family-free, efficient. The judge was brief and moved quickly through the state-issued phrases. Laura cried. She wore a cream-colored skirt suit that the chief costume
designer, Cosmo, had created for the occasion, with draped lapels like sleeping lilies, and Ginger pinned some Queen Anne’s lace into her chignon, where the delicate white fans stood out against her dark hair. When she looked at the photos later, Laura decided it was reasonable to think of it as her first wedding, because the previous one had been someone else. Elsa Emerson would never have been married in a courthouse, wearing a suit. Elsa Emerson wouldn’t have known what to do with a man like Irving Green. Elsa and Laura, before and after. There were an endless number of things that Laura was going to do that Elsa never would, and she couldn’t wait to find out what they were.