Stars Over Sunset Boulevard (17 page)

But Violet didn't answer. And Audrey opened her eyes to see if Violet was still in the room with her.

“Don't give up on your dream, Audrey,” Violet finally said, her voice hoarse with emotion. “Don't give up now, after you've come so far. Of course your mother is still
watching over you. Show the world you are the star it has been waiting for. She would want you to. She would want you to live the full life she didn't get to live.”

“I am so tired of it,” Audrey said as she stared at the remnants of Bert's drink in her hand.

Violet said nothing, and Audrey raised her head to look at her roommate. “Did you hear me, Violet? I'm tired.”

Violet cleared her throat. “Tired people don't give up, Audrey. Tired people just take a rest. Rest a bit and try again. You don't want to live with regret.”

She laughed. “Take a rest. Take a rest from what? I'm not doing anything.”

“Take a rest from chasing it. You just need to rest a bit if you're tired. Don't give up now. I know you can make it as a movie star.”

“How? How do you know it?”

“Because you have everything all those other famous movie stars have and then some. You're smarter and prettier. And you've wanted it more than they ever did, so you will work harder and shine that much brighter.”

“You really think so?

“I know so.”

A slow smile stretched across Audrey's tired face that felt like it began somewhere deep. “You'd make a wonderful mother, Violet. You really would.”

Violet's eyes instantly shimmered, and Audrey saw that as much as she wanted stardom, Violet wanted motherhood. Violet was caring for her the way a mother would, the way her mother would have. Should have. Audrey suddenly remembered a snippet of a long-ago conversation at the sanitorium between her and Aunt Jo, long forgotten, never pondered. Aunt Jo had said Audrey's mother had wasted away because she'd chosen to feed only her sadness.
Audrey hadn't understood until that moment what Aunt Jo had meant: Unhappiness has an insatiable appetite. It does not care what it might have to kill to feed its cravings.

Audrey reached into the pocket of her robe and pulled out the brown bottle she had placed there earlier that evening. It made a rattling noise as she extended the bottle toward Violet. “Do something with these.”

“What are they?”

They had been a ticket. A ticket to her disappearing act. “Sleeping pills,” she said. “I was going to take them tonight. All of them.”

“What are you saying?” Violet whispered.

Audrey shook the bottle so that Violet would take it from her. “I am saying I want you to take these and get rid of them. Please, Violet. I want them gone. Please? Take them.”

Violet uncurled her fingers from the glass she held and set it down on the table.

“Thank you,” Audrey whispered, as the bottle was transferred from one woman's hand to the other.

“You're probably the best friend I've ever had, Vi.” Audrey locked her gaze on Violet's for a moment, then closed her eyes and laid her head back against the sofa pillow. When sleep overcame her, Violet was still sitting in the chair with the bottle in her hand.

September 1939

V
iolet's waking thought on the morning of the tenth of September was the kiss Bert had given her the night before. A smile broke across her lips and she giggled. She felt a little like Scarlett on the morning after an inebriated Rhett carries her up the stairs in a rage fueled more by hurt than alcohol. And in the morning, Scarlett had been giddy with the thought of Rhett having needed her so.

Hours earlier, Bert had taken her in his arms as they said good night on the porch. “Want to go with me to Santa Barbara tomorrow?” he'd whispered into her hair. “I'd like you to meet my mother and sisters. I want them to meet you.”

Her heart had felt primed to burst. “Of course!” she'd murmured.
Yes, yes, yes!

The kiss had been the perfect ending to a perfect evening, which had begun with them going incognito to a theater in Riverside an hour away for a secret screening
of
Gone With the Wind
. Stealing away for it had been deliciously deceptive and pleasurable.

Violet had learned via a collection of memos she had typed that the movie was going to be shown at a theater full of unsuspecting patrons who thought they were going to be seeing
Beau Geste
. Selznick wanted a test audience for the film, even though the premiere was many weeks away yet. Violet had whispered the news to Bert at lunch and suggested they take his truck and sneak over to Riverside to be a part of the test audience, fairly certain he would think she was joking, but Bert had surprised her by agreeing they should do it. It was almost as if, like Audrey, he was shaking off an old life. They hadn't told anyone what they were doing, and they'd timed their arrival at the Fox Theater to just mere minutes remained before the newsreel was to start, so that they could slip in without any studio people, including Selznick himself, recognizing them. They sat in the back row in the farthest corner so they could stick to the shadows and be the first to leave when the screening was over.

The moment the announcement was made that instead of
Beau Geste
the seated audience was going to see a three-and-a-half-hour, soon-to-be-released film, the air inside the room became electric. The audience was told there would be only one intermission. No one would be allowed to use the telephone. No one would be allowed to leave the theater once it started. And if someone did leave, they would not be allowed to come back inside. Policemen had been stationed at the doors. When the lights dimmed and the
Gone With the Wind
title began moving across the screen, the crowd roared with delight, and when they saw Clark Gable in his first scene, they cheered for five whole minutes. Nobody left early, even though the movie wasn't over until just before midnight.

Afterward, Violet and Bert were given reaction questionnaires that they were supposed to take home and send back to the studio. They had ducked out before anyone could recognize them and gone out for drinks when they got back to Hollywood, and walked Sunset, listening for the nightingale and talking about the movie.

It had been an exciting evening, and the kiss as Bert said good night had been magical. Bert was fully hers now. Perhaps this should be the morning to tell Audrey that she and Bert were seeing each other.

Bert hadn't asked about Audrey in recent days other than in polite terms. Violet liked to imagine he had been wondering what he had seen in Audrey as a love interest all those years. Violet wanted to believe he had finally realized Audrey wasn't someone to fall in love with, but rather someone to appreciate from a distance.

She had not told him about the pills Audrey had given to her to dispose of. What would have been the point of that? Doing so would only have served to arouse Bert's compassion, which Audrey didn't need. What Audrey needed was confirmation that it was a good thing she had been let go from the studio. Being a secretary had been keeping her from pursuing her true goals rather than helping her meet them. Audrey hadn't been making inroads with influential people because they never thought of her as anything but a lovely girl with a steno pad.

Audrey hadn't brought up the matter of the pills, either. The morning after that disastrous night, Audrey had simply given Violet a cozy, one-armed hug in the kitchen and then headed for the coffee and aspirin bottle. That had been two weeks ago. There had been no more allusions to Peg Entwistle or the handing over of the little brown bottle, or tearful reminders of crushed hopes.

Violet didn't know what Audrey was doing for money or how she was spending her ample supply of free time since her firing. Just as Violet had expected, everything was different now that Audrey no longer worked at the studio. Audrey was usually still asleep when Violet left in the morning and was gone when Violet got home from work. And yet Audrey still had food on her side of the Frigidaire, and Violet had seen a new pair of shoes on the bathroom floor a couple of days ago. When she did see Audrey, she seemed happy or at least determined, and with Audrey that was kind of the same thing. It was apparent to Violet that Audrey was no longer waiting around anymore for her angel mother to set everything in motion.

As she lay in her bed, contemplating last night's kiss, Violet heard movement in the bedroom next door. It was a Sunday morning and still relatively early. Audrey had been out later than Violet the night before, and Violet was surprised Audrey was even awake. Perhaps she would make biscuits and gravy, and she could tell Audrey about last night's screening—and that she and Bert were in love.

Violet rose from the bed, grabbed her robe, and opened her bedroom door. She found Audrey in the kitchen with a cup of coffee in one hand and the questionnaire from last night's screening in the other. The morning newspaper lay unread on the kitchen table.

“What's this?” Audrey asked without looking up from it.

“Oh. Selznick did a surprise screening in Riverside last night. Bert and I drove out for it and snuck in.”

Audrey turned to her. “Did you?”

Violet took a coffee cup from the dish drainer and filled it from the coffeepot on the stove. “It was amazing, Audrey. You should've heard the audience cheer when the title came up on the screen. And to finally see all those
scenes that I had stood by and watched being filmed? It was marvelous.”

She turned back to the table. Audrey was staring at her, waiting for more.

“I think Selznick is going to be very happy with the responses he gets. Of course, Bert and I won't be sending in our questionnaires, since we probably shouldn't have been there in the first place.”

Audrey looked down at the response sheet and then back up again. “It's a thrill to do something you aren't supposed to be doing, isn't it? Though I don't suppose you've had much experience with that.”

An image of the curtain hat filled Violet's head and she mentally flicked it away. “It's going to be the best film ever,” Violet prattled on, pulling out a kitchen chair and sitting down. “Though Mr. Selznick is still not happy with how the movie ends. The Hays Office won't let him use the word ‘damn' in Rhett Butler's last line. Right now it's ‘Frankly my dear, I just don't care,' and he hates it.”

“Not quite the same thing, is it?” Audrey took a sip of coffee.

Violet couldn't read her tone. Something about it unnerved her. “That's not the only trouble Mr. Selznick is having with the end,” she continued, keeping her own tone light. “After Rhett Butler leaves, there's poor Scarlett, without the man she truly loves. There's nothing at the end of the book to suggest Scarlett will get Rhett back, and everyone at the studio says audiences won't like that for an ending. So there have been a bunch of different endings that the script people have written, and not one of them has seemed right. Mr. Selznick finally came up with one that I really like, though no one really cares what I think. He thinks Scarlett should say something about how she will
just
have
to win Rhett back, and of course the audience will believe her, because, you know, when has Scarlett not gotten what she wanted? But she doesn't yet know how and she doesn't know what to do with herself while she tries to figure it out. And so she's crying on the stairs of her fancy house after Rhett leaves, and then she hears in her mind the voices of the three men who've mattered most to her—Pa, Ashley, and Rhett—and they are telling her that Tara is where she has always gone when life handed her sorrow, and it was at Tara that she was always able to find the strength to overcome whatever opposed her. Home is where she will go to begin again. It's not how Miss Mitchell ends the book, but I like it.”

Violet paused for breath.

“Sounds like the perfect ending,” Audrey said.

Violet knew Audrey was not talking about the movie anymore.

“Bert and I are seeing each other,” Violet said, and she held Audrey's gaze.

“So I've gathered.”

“It just happened over time, Audrey. We both realized we love and want the same things. You've been so busy with your career and Vince and meeting new people. I hardly ever see you anymore. I was going to tell you before now.”

Audrey seemed to need a second to take this in. “You'll be good to Bert, won't you?” Her resonant voice was thick with neither anger nor resentment, but something closer to longing. “Promise me you will, Violet. He's the kindest man I've ever known. And my first true friend. Promise me you'll be good to him.”

“I . . . Of course I promise. I love him.”

Audrey closed her eyes just for a moment. When she
opened them, a glistening sheen sparkled in both. “I'm so very happy for you both. Really.”

They regarded each other for a moment silently.

“You two won't forget about me now, will you?” Audrey finally said, a sad laugh coating her words.

“Never in a million years!” Violet answered quickly. Audrey would forever be within the folds of Violet's soul. She could already feel her weighty presence there. Things were coming together just as Violet had dared to hope they could, but it was as though everything she held was made of gauze and could drift away at the slightest breath of wind. If she wasn't careful she could lose it all. Hadn't she learned that already? Hadn't Audrey's sad life borne witness to this? What you owned one day could be snatched away from you the next if you didn't find a way to hold on tight to it.

Audrey smiled a tired grin, as if Violet's unspoken thoughts had been audible. “I think I might go back to bed for a while.”

She lowered the
Gone With the Wind
response sheet to the table, letting it fall onto the newspaper and cover up the headline that a world away, Adolf Hitler had just laid siege on Warsaw.