Laura Lamont's Life In Pictures (26 page)

T
here had been rumors, but Laura didn’t believe the news until it was in
Variety
. Louis Gardner, a man who had sent all of her children presents on their birthdays for their entire lives, had fired Irving Green; it said so right there in black and white.
Ouster at Gardner Brothers Studio Leaves Green Out in the Cold.
Bernadette LaFarge
had been the last straw, though as far as Laura could tell, she was also the first. Everyone in town knew that Irving had done all the work, that Gardner himself was little more than a bankroller and a figurehead. The ideas, those belonged to Irving. The stars were loyal to him, not to Gardner Brothers; it was absurd to think otherwise. Now the doctors came to their door, and Laura could think of no loyalty except her own.

The day was bright, still morning. Irving lay quietly in their bed, the skin on his closed eyelids so thin and purple it looked like he had two black eyes.

“I’ve decided,” Laura said, the folded-up newspaper still in her hands. She read him the trades on days when he wanted to hear the news. “I’m going to leave too. They can’t expect me to stay after what they’ve done to you.”

Irving wet his lips but didn’t say anything.

“Did you hear me, sweetie? I’m going to quit. My contract’s up next month, and I’m going to leave. Screw them if they think they can do it without you. Louis Gardner? I’d like to see him produce one-tenth of what you’ve made.”

Irving nodded and pulled his mouth into a shallow smile. Above them, the ceiling fan spun in circles, its blades circulating the stale air in the room. All around them, the noises of the world persisted: squawking birds, the radio in the kitchen, airplanes flying overhead. But Laura couldn’t hear any of it; she could hear only the light swinging on its chain, the electric buzz of the fan, and her husband’s labored breathing. She would quit as soon as possible. There was no other solution. There was enough money in the bank, Laura was sure—Irving had worked his entire life, and never spent a penny before he married her. She didn’t worry for a moment about her decision, though she did take a pill, just in case. And then it was done.

Florence was still at school, but Harriet and Junior were on their way home. Laura heard the horn honk when Harriet pulled into the driveway, announcing their arrival. It wasn’t unlike a movie set, when certain noises set other actions in motion—before the director called “Action,” the extras were already moving, the world already brought to life. It had been decided—Laura had decided—that Junior shouldn’t see his father when he was ill, despite the fact that Irving was now at home. Junior had always been a dreamy little boy, often content to entertain himself. Laura had imagined that things might change when he started school, and hanging around with other boys. As it was, Junior had only his older sisters, and other girls who lived in the neighborhood, always gussying one another up with their mothers’ makeup. More than once Laura had come home to find him sitting alone on the front stoop with lipstick and blush on, a forgotten practice dummy. He never complained, even when Irving spanked him. Of course, that hadn’t happened for months, or even a year. Irving was too weak to say more than a few words, let alone lay a hand on him. Harriet would wash the makeup off Junior’s face, but the lipstick was clingy and a ghost of it remained on his face for days. The girls were big, so big they hardly needed anyone, but Junior, he was still a child, only eight years old.

Harriet knocked once and then opened the door. “In his room. It’ll be fine,” Harriet said, and then pulled the door shut again. Laura believed her, because the alternative was worse.

“Come on, honey, let’s take a bath,” Laura said, her steady voice coming from some hidden recess, some part of her throat that believed what Harriet said was true, and that everything would be all right. Before her sister died, which was to say for the first nine years of Laura’s life, she might have really thought it was the case, that all things worked out in the end, and that the world was a benevolent place, but she knew better now, and had to fake it.

N
ot even the lawyers tried to stop Laura from leaving Gardner Brothers. She wasn’t the only one who was jumping ship: Actors and directors were going all the time; Johnny had ripped up his contract and was being his own one-man band in Las Vegas. For the first few days, Laura had Harriet answer the home telephone to make her appointments, and after that she brought in Jimmy Peterson, a second cousin of Ginger’s, who was twenty years old and wanted to get his foot in the door in Hollywood. Laura cleared out one side of Irving’s home office and set up two small desks, one for her and one for Jimmy, who was a very sweet boy and who had nearly fainted when she offered him the job. After all, she still had to work. Laura knew that some women in her position would stop entirely, but she found that she couldn’t. Irving’s illness and firing from the studio were two sides of the same coin: Had he had the job to go back to, Laura felt sure that his health would have improved. She worried that the same was true of her: that if she went too long without working, all of Hollywood might pick up in the middle of the night and move to Boise, Idaho, without telling her, and she would be left alone, without a sister or father or husband
or
job. She wasn’t ready to give everything up at once. Yes, there were the rising medical bills, but Laura was confident that there was more than enough to cover the expenses and then some. Surely there was enough until she went back to work.

The tasks were simple: Jimmy was to answer the telephone, find out what the callers wanted from Laura. Make appointments: breakfast meetings, lunch dates, dinner dates, drinks. Call the directors and producers who had slobbered all over Laura’s hands when she was with Gardner Brothers, tell them she was free, as if
free
meant something other than “unable to leave the house.” Jimmy had blond hair
that crested in a short wave over his forehead, and always looked Laura in the eye when she talked. It was like having a Labrador who could use his thumbs. Florence liked to say he looked like Wally from
Leave It to Beaver
, which was not a compliment. She was a senior in high school and was reluctant to offer praise to anyone excluding her brother, on whom she doted, but only when she thought no one else was paying attention.

Jimmy wasn’t the only one with a new job. After graduation Clara, a quick typist, was hired by Triumph Studios. She worked as a secretary for Ginger and Bill’s show, fixing up the scripts for the writers. She had a desk with a small brass plate that had her name on it, which she would polish with her own spit and a corner of a handkerchief. Clara loved being in an office, and would come home at night and clatter back and forth across the kitchen floor, still in her heels, pretending she had important work to do that couldn’t wait until morning.

“You do know that you’re only a secretary, don’t you?” Florence asked from her spot on the sofa, where she had tucked herself into a little ball. She was having crackers for dinner. Laura was too fraught with worry to notice. The girls pretended not to notice how sick Irving was, at least when they were in the same room. They were old enough to visit with him, and would kiss him on the forehead at least once a day, sit in the chair beside his bed and talk about their day. Laura couldn’t help but envy the easy way that they took for granted that their father would recover, though she knew it to be false. One morning, before school, Laura heard a loud noise in the bedroom and ran in, her pulse already dangerously quick, her finger ready to dial for an ambulance, and found that it was just Florence’s laughter. When Laura walked in, they both turned to look at her, the warden who’d come to ruin their fun. She’d shut the door, walked down the hallway to the bathroom, locked herself in, and cried.

C
lara smacked her sister on the back of the head. It was a Friday afternoon.

“Hey!” Laura said. She and Jimmy were finishing up for the day, and had exited their office just in time to see the smack. Clara was still in her work clothes and shoes, which she would usually kick off the moment she walked through the door.

“Flo has her feet on the sofa,” Clara said, by way of an explanation.

Florence unfolded herself and put her socked feet on the rug.

“Have you two met yet, sweetie?” Jimmy was new, and Clara was often at work until after dinner. Florence hoisted her elbows onto the back of the couch and tucked her hair behind her ears, anxious to watch the introduction.

“Why, no.” Jimmy stuck his hand out. “I’m James. Your mother, er, Laura’s assistant. Jimmy. Please call me Jimmy.”

“What else would she call you, Frederico?” Florence rolled her eyes. She’d seen enough and slumped back down, leaving a trail of her long, dark hair thrown over the back of her seat. Irving’s illness was showing up in funny places—Florence’s attitude, Clara’s appetite, Junior’s eyesight. They were all taking it on wherever they could, little pack animals preparing for winter. Perhaps they thought that fathers came in waves, for indeterminate periods of time, and had never admitted to themselves that they might get to keep one for good. Laura wanted to talk to her daughters about what was happening, but couldn’t find the words. She would often leave the room, only to find she’d left every room in the house and was sitting on the front steps.

“So nice to meet you,” Clara said, taking Jimmy’s hand in her glove. “I’m Clara.”

Watching them bat their eyelashes at each other was like watching
a car accident that was about to happen. Laura stood still and hoped she was misunderstanding the signals. Of course she was—clearly she had never
correctly
understood a single signal in her entire life. That made her feel oddly better about the whole situation—knowing that she was probably wrong, because she had terrible instincts, and if she felt like something was happening, well, then it was most likely the opposite.

T
he master bedroom no longer had enough room for Laura, despite the fact that Irving’s body was taking up less and less room in their bed. Beside the bed, the nightstand now held half a dozen small white pill bottles, a half-empty glass of water, Irving’s glasses, and a book he was never going to finish. Laura sat with him most days, from six in the morning until it was dark outside and she could no longer keep her eyes open. She often fell asleep sitting upright, her head resting against the arm of the chair. The doctors and the girls and Harriet came and went, dispensing food and drugs on trays. Laura kept a small bottle of the blues in her pocket and chewed them like candy, the bitter taste no longer a deterrent. It seemed only fair that she share some of the physical discomfort, as if fairness were something that existed anymore. Junior stayed in his room, or in the living room. He wasn’t allowed to see his father every day, only when Irving was feeling good—Laura felt powerless about so much in her life, but she could control the last time Junior saw his father’s handsome face. Laura herself could barely stand to look at her husband, with the fact of his vanishing now so clear. It seemed impossible that Irving could be gone, as swiftly as a season, when he was still her only, best love. Laura wrote letters to her mother and didn’t send them, but stacked them up on her desk, tying them together with ribbon before the
stacks fell over onto the floor, the letters slipping out and spreading like tarot cards on the rug, each one saying only Death, Death, Death. This was being a wife and mother, being a witness to the fullest spectrum of human horrors and unable to stop them. If she were to cry out, Junior would come running, and if Junior came running, he would see his father’s chest barely moving up and down, and he would know—too young, too soon—the truth about the human body, how quickly everything could fall apart.