Stars Over Sunset Boulevard (24 page)

“That his car?”

Audrey looked back at Glen's gleaming Cadillac and then turned back around. “Yes.”

Leon Kluge stared at the car for a moment and then at her. “Is he a good man?”

She nodded and a knot of emotion swelled in her throat at all that lay beneath that question. “He is.”

Her father hesitated for only a moment. “Guess we can look at the calendar, then.”

They turned for the house. The dogs, who had been off in the groves when she had arrived, bounded toward her now, tails wagging, tongues lolling, welcoming her home.

November 1943

V
iolet tied a pink balloon to the grosgrain ribbon she held in her hand and ascended a stepladder to attach it to a chandelier. She heard a voice behind her as she pulled the bow tight.

“Bessie can do that for you, Violet.”

Violet turned to see her mother, dressed in a peach-toned linen dress accented by a strand of pearls, standing at the entrance to the formal dining room. At fifty-eight, Mama was still trim, elegant, and very active in Montgomery's social and charitable circles. For Violet, the sweetest aspect of coming home had been finding she was at last seeing shimmers of her own reflection when she looked at Mama, who was a paragon of social graces.

“I don't mind doing it.” Violet leaned back a bit to gauge the need to add another balloon to the cluster already dangling from the light fixture. “I've got to keep busy, or I'll go crazy watching the clock.”

“Well, don't go falling off that ladder, now. It's a big day and you don't want to spend it with an ice pack on your ankle.”

Violet laughed. “I promise I'm being careful.” The cluster of pink and yellow balloons looked festive and cheerful. Violet climbed down the ladder. “Do the balloons look all right?”

Her mother nodded. “Very nice. It's going to be a lovely birthday party.”

“I guess I can finally start getting ready to go to the train station, then.”

Bessie, her parents' housekeeper for the past twenty-five years, appeared at the doorway to the kitchen.

“Let me take that ladder back out to the utility room, Violet.” The housekeeper reached for the stepladder and folded it closed. “I'm so glad your Mr. Redmond gets to be here for Miss Lainey's first birthday party.”

“Thanks, Bessie. I probably don't have to tell you that I am, too.”

Bessie laughed. Her voice was low and resonant, like Audrey's. An ache from a deep place swelled inside. Violet missed Audrey more than she'd ever thought she would. There had been letters and cards over the past seven months, and Audrey had sent a photograph of her May wedding to Glen Wainwright, but those letters and the picture had seemed only to intensify Violet's feelings of sadness at their parting. And yet she did not for a minute want to go back to California right now. Violet shook her head slightly to coax that sad sensation away.

“I so wish he could stay through Thanksgiving and Christmas, though,” her mother said. “Seems a shame he's coming right before the holidays and then must head back to New Jersey just as everything else is about to begin.”

Violet shrugged. “I guess I'd rather he were here for Lainey's first birthday, which will only happen once, while Christmas will be back around again before we know it.”

“I suppose that's true.”

The housekeeper started to walk away with the ladder under her arm. Violet heard the faint sounds of Lainey chattering in her crib upstairs. She had awakened early from her nap. All three women looked toward the stairs beyond the dining room.

“Don't you gals worry none about Little Miss,” Bessie said. “I'll get her cleaned up and fed while you ready yourself for the train station, Violet. And I knows you've got to go get the cake and flowers, Mrs. Mayfield.”

“Thanks, Bessie. I'll get back as soon as I can,” Violet's mother said. “I'm sure you've got all the food yet to prepare for the party.”

“No worries, no worries. There's a lot I can take care of in the kitchen while Lainey has her lunch in the high chair. No worries at all.”

Violet turned from the decorated room to head upstairs to change and fix her hair. A happy knot was already forming in her stomach at the thought of seeing Bert again after six months.

She ascended the staircase to what had been her oldest brother's bedroom, which she and Mama had redecorated when she'd arrived home. She bypassed the closed door to her old room, which was now Lainey's. Behind the door, her daughter was happily babbling nonsense, but that cheerful chatter wouldn't last. In a moment or two, if no one came for her, Lainey would start to howl for attention.

Sweet girl.

Violet stepped into the bedroom that was hers now and closed the door. She stripped off her party-decorating
clothes and picked up a powder puff laden with scented talcum to chase away any unpleasant scents.

The party for Lainey later that day wouldn't be a huge affair; everyone seemed to be doing less entertaining with a war on and rationing to go with it. But her grandparents would be there. Her brothers and their wives and their children. A few of the cousins who still lived in town. Some high school friends and their young ones.

Violet frowned as she pulled on a clean slip. Her friends from her younger years just weren't the same as when they had all been childhood chums. Or maybe since Violet was the one who had lived in California for the past four years, she was the one who had changed while everyone in Montgomery had stayed exactly the same. She could tell just how much they had drifted apart when she'd moved back home seven months ago. Their easy camaraderie had thinned; their affection for one another now was one of Southern politeness. Her high school friends had forged new friendships with other young mothers at her church and at the different charitable organizations for whom they now volunteered. Violet still had some work to do to get back into that little universe, even with her mother's help reintroducing her into local society.

Violet now started for her closet and nearly tripped over a box on the floor that had arrived in the mail the day before. It was for Lainey from Audrey, and she had meant to open it earlier and had forgotten. She picked up the box, wondering what she should do with it. It felt heavy. There were probably several presents inside. It would be a little odd to add Audrey's presents to the growing pile of gifts downstairs that would be opened during the party. Audrey had surely signed her card
Love, Auntie Audrey.
And since her brothers' wives—Lainey's actual aunts—would be at
the party, that might be thorny. Perhaps she could open it tomorrow, after all the hullabaloo. But in the meantime, it was in the way. If she left the box in their bedroom, Bert would see it and ask what it was. He might not understand the awkwardness of trying to explain to a roomful of people who Auntie Audrey was.

Still wearing only her slip, Violet opened the bedroom door and peeked out to make sure her father hadn't come inside the house. Across the hall, Lainey's door was open and there was no sound coming from it. Bessie had her downstairs.

Violet dashed across the hall into Lainey's room and opened its closet doors. The left side was full of Lainey's clothes and toys. The other side contained boxes and books and trinkets that had been Violet's when this room had been hers. She rearranged a few of the items to make room for Audrey's package until she could decide when to open it.

Her hands touched a box she had missed seeing when she had put Lainey's things inside the closet. It had a California postmark and the mailing label was in her handwriting. The return address was that of the bungalow that Violet had shared with Audrey.

Violet hadn't thought about the contents of that box in a long time. A very long time.

She put Audrey's gifts down and knelt by the unopened box that she had sent home four years earlier.

Clothes not needed in California was what she had told her mother were inside.

Violet stared at the box for a minute before running her fingernail under packing tape that had lost much of its sticking power. It came away easily. She opened the flaps, pulled out three wool sweaters, and placed them on the floor. She reached in again and her fingers touched the tips of feathers
and then braided cord and velvet. She put her hands around the hat—Scarlett #13—and lifted it out of the box. Her mind took her back to the night she and Audrey and Bert got drunk in the wardrobe building, the night Audrey put this hat on her head, and the night Bert told her she was pretty.

The spell had broken that night. Audrey's merciless hold on Bert's affections had been wrested from her when that hat turned up missing. He had finally begun to see that loving Audrey Duvall would bring him only unhappiness.

Audrey had been careless with what mattered to him.

That was what Violet had let him think; it was what she'd needed him to think.

He had almost lost his job and he'd believed it was all Audrey's fault. What would Bert think of Violet now if he knew why she had this hat? Would he forgive her as he'd forgiven her for not telling him before they married that she couldn't have children?

He had understood that she had lied because she loved him and didn't want to lose him.

But this. This was different. She'd lied this time not to keep him loving her but to get him to stop loving someone else.

An irritating pang of remorse started to shoot through her and she tamped it down.

Everything was as it should be. Everything.

Bert was meant to be with her, not Audrey. Audrey was meant to be with Glen.

What she had done was all for everyone's ultimate benefit. Sometimes a person had to do something drastic, like rip apart beautiful curtains to make a dress and hat, to bring about the better good.

It had taken courage to do what she had done, just as
it had taken courage for Scarlett to do what she had done. Even Melanie had understood that.

Melanie had understood every harsh thing Scarlett did.

The hat both condemned and commended Violet, just as it had for its fictional owner. Violet couldn't risk Bert seeing it and she couldn't just toss the hat away. The movie was still being talked about four years later. Anyone who saw the hat would recognize it, especially with the label on its underside. And the thought of taking it downstairs to the fireplace and burning it seemed wrong somehow.

Violet reached up to the top shelf of her old childhood closet and pulled an old sewing basket toward her. Inside were hats from her high school days that she no longer wore but were special to her. She dropped Scarlett #13 inside, replaced the flannel sheeting over all the hats, and lowered the lid. She hoisted the sewing basket onto her arm by its black leather handle, lifted Audrey's package into her hands, and then went back to her bedroom. She set the two containers on her bed while she put on a bathrobe over her slip for the quick trip up the attic stairs.

She grabbed the sewing basket.

A blast of chilly air met her as she opened the little attic door and ducked inside. The long, narrow, and low-ceilinged room was filled with crates of Christmas decorations that would soon be coming downstairs, plus old dress forms and extra dining-room chairs and an old phonograph and picture frames. She walked to the little window that provided the only light and opened the steamer trunk beneath it. The trunk had a broken lock but it was a good place to store things, as it kept the bugs and moths out. Violet had long kept in it her dolls and diaries and special memorabilia from years past. She lowered the sewing basket inside and let the lid fall shut.

Violet headed back to her room. She took off the bathrobe and slipped into the new dress she had bought to meet Bert at the train station. It was salmon colored with ivory trim, and her mother had said she looked like a movie star in it. Violet pinned on the dress's lapel the little rhinestone hummingbird that Bert had given her on her last birthday. She fluffed her hair and reapplied her lipstick. In the mirror she saw Audrey's package still on the bed. She turned and pondered it for a moment.

She could take Audrey's gifts downstairs and put them with the other presents on her way out the door. Of course she could. She was making more of the situation than she needed to. How hard would it be to explain to the other guests that Auntie Audrey was Violet's very good friend in Hollywood who didn't have any children of her own?

That wouldn't be hard at all.

Because it was the truth.

Hollywood

March 10, 2012

E
lle, her granddaughters, and the dog are out on the balcony when Daniel and Nicola finally make it back to the bungalow a few minutes before eight. In their arms are In-N-Out burger bags. The girls squeal with delight, and Jacques yips as they all make their way inside.

Daniel rolls his eyes when Elle good-naturedly says she didn't know cheeseburgers were now considered Thai cuisine. “After an hour stuck in traffic, we just went with something fast and easy that didn't involve a bottlenecked freeway,” he says.

Nicola sets one of the bags down on the kitchen counter. “And I thought traffic in Paris was bad.” Having been raised in Italy, Nicola has an accent that adds an
a
sound to the end of nearly every word. “That was insane.”

Elle starts to get out plates.

“Tell your mother about the woman at the shop!” Nicola says to her husband as she withdraws paper-wrapped burgers from a white bag.

Elle turns to her son, a rivulet of disquiet zippering through her. “Something up with the hat?”

“Not really. The shop owner says she lived next door to Grandma when she was little. She recognized the hat.”

“You're kidding.”

“It's true!” Nicola says. “Show her the texts.”

Daniel pulls his phone out of his pocket. “So I texted her—her name is Christine McAllister—and told her I would be stopping by her shop sometime tomorrow, and this is what she said.” He hands the phone to Elle. “She knew Grandma's last name and the street the bungalow is on. At first I thought maybe one of the boxes I took over there had an old mailing label on it, but that wasn't it.”

Elle takes the phone and reads the exchange of messages:

Christine:
May I ask if the house where all these things came from is on Beechwood? Is the last name Redmond a family name, by chance?

Daniel:
Yes! That house was my grandmother's. Violet Redmond. How did you know?

Christine:
I used to live next door. Your grandmother babysat me when I was six. I'm happy to bring the hat by that house tomorrow, if that's where you will be. I know right where it is.

Daniel:
That's too kind. You don't have to do that.

Christine:
I'd be happy to. Around 4 p.m. okay?

Daniel:
If you're sure it's not too much trouble. My mother, Elle Garceau, will be there if I am not. We're
still in the process of emptying it. I'm sure she'd love to meet you.

Christine:
And I would love to meet her. Your grandmother was a wonderful babysitter. She let me try on this hat once.

Daniel:
Small world, right?

Christine:
Small and lovely. I will have the estimate of your other items ready by then.

Daniel:
No rush. Thanks for bringing the hat by.

Christine:
My pleasure.

The string of messages ends and Elle looks up from the phone.

“Isn't that amazing?” Nicola says.

“Very,” Elle murmurs as she hands the phone back to her son. She wonders if this Christine McAllister is aware that the headpiece she will return tomorrow isn't some ordinary accessory that just happens to smell of cedar and lost years. Surely she knows what it really is. Daniel said it himself.

She recognized the hat.