Winter in June (4 page)

That was what Jack had learned. He and his CO were the only survivors of a capsized boat that had claimed ten lives. The CO said it was an accident, but Jack apparently knew otherwise. Word was his own CO had shot him to try to keep him quiet. Faced with the possibility that he was the guy's next victim, Jack had done the only reasonable thing: he'd run.

I traded the newsletter for Jayne's slicks.

A pretty blonde smiled at me from inside
Screen Idol
. Above her face were the words: T
HE
N
EXT
B
IG
T
HING
. Her details were included beside her picture.

Name: Joan Wright

Age: 22

Where you can see her: this fall in MGM's film
Mr. Hogan's Daughter

Who she might remind you of: a young Gilda DeVane

I cringed on her behalf. Sure the girl looked like Gilda, but who had decided that Gilda was old?

I traded one magazine for another. There was a time when Gilda DeVane was on every other page of the fan magazines, handing out advice, showing off the finished product for a knitting pattern, hawking Max Factor, and being snapped at some fabulous event in a four-page spread. Either Jayne's slicks were the exception, or Gilda was no longer as popular as she used to be. Perhaps that wasn't it.
Once a star reached a certain level, maybe they no longer needed puff press. It had to be a relief not to have to constantly engage in self-promotion.

The only photo I could find of Gilda was the one accompanying the article about MGM dropping her. I stared at her carefully lit face, her body sprawled across a divan we were supposed to believe was in her bedroom. Her expression was solemn. This was a woman wronged, and unlike the characters she played on film, she wasn't seeking revenge for what had been done to her. She was grieving the two terrible losses she had experienced—the man who'd left her and the studio that abandoned her—and she wanted the public to know how much both of them wounded her.

“How are you feeling?”

I jumped at the sound of the voice, and my hand automatically went to my mouth lest my surprise should manifest itself in any way other than sound. Gilda was at the door, holding a small tray in her hand.

“As long as I don't close my eyes or focus on any part of the ship that's moving, I'm great.”

“I thought this might help.” She entered the room and set the tray on my bed. On it was a glass of what appeared to be ginger ale and some soda crackers.

“Thanks. That's swell of you.”

“I got terribly sick the first time I ever stepped on one of these things. Of course, I wasn't smart enough to take to bed like you. Instead, I insisted I was fine and ended up humiliating myself in front of a hundred strangers, two of whom were European royalty.”

“Ouch.”

Her eyes fell on the photo of Jack lying at my side. “He's handsome. Boyfriend?”

“Ex.”

She picked it up and smiled down at Jack's static face. “But apparently, if you're toting his photo across the Pacific, you don't want him to stay that way.”

“He's missing in action.”

Her breath caught in her throat. She returned the photo to my side. “I'm so sorry, Rosie.”

“He's in the Solomon Islands, or at least he was.”

“This trip must be awfully hard for you then.”

“Actually, he's the reason I agreed to it.” I didn't want to explain the rest. How our well connected friend Harriet had arranged for us to travel with the USO to the South Pacific. How I was hoping not to say good-bye to Jack but to find him despite the military's repeated—unsuccessful—attempts to do the same. After all, I didn't want to make myself feel sicker.

Gilda sat on the edge of the bed, pushing the slicks to the side so that they wouldn't crinkle and tear beneath her weight. I wished I'd had the smarts to cheese them under my pillow when she'd first arrived. “I hate those things,” she said.

“Me too. I mean, I was short of reading material. A gal back home gave them to us so we'd have something for the trip.”

She picked one up and idly flipped through it. What was it like when the photos in a magazine weren't just pictures of famous people but famous people you
knew
? “I wish someone had warned me about what it would be like. I probably never would've gone to Hollywood if I'd known.”

“It can't be all bad.”

She smiled at her lap. “Of course not. But there are some days when it just doesn't seem worth it anymore.”

“Is that why you decided to tour?”

“After MGM dropped me, I had a meeting with Jack Warner.” He was the head of Warner Brothers. It must've been nice to have those kinds of connections. “While I was there, he was telling me about the talent he was losing to the war—who had enlisted and who had been unlucky enough to have their numbers come up in the draft. He was living in terror that the Japanese might try to bomb the studio.”

“Sounds like someone's a little paranoid.”

She shook her head. I could see the barely visible line where her
makeup ended and her skin began. Violet could learn a lot from her. “It wasn't entirely paranoia. Warner Brothers has a big building not far from the Lockheed plant. Jack was so worried about it that he decided to have a big arrow painted on his roof that said
LOCKHEED THATAWAY
.”

I tipped a swallow of ginger ale. “You're kidding me.”

“Nope. I think he expected me to find the story reassuring, but the whole thing really chafed. Didn't he realize that he was helping out the enemy by doing that? Was his studio really so important that he'd put the entire country in danger? The more I thought about it, the more I realized that maybe I should be going ‘thataway,' too, out of Hollywood where I might be able to use my fame for good, if you can do such a thing.”

I put the cold glass against my cheek. Oh, that was better. “I'm sure Mr. Warner didn't take that very well.”

“I didn't phrase it quite that way. And truth be told, it wasn't all about helping out my fellowman. I wanted to escape for a while. I thought if I did, everyone might forget about me.”

“I think it will take more than six months for that to happen. You saw those photographers today. You're pretty unforgettable.”

“Tell that to MGM.” She traded the magazine for the issue that discussed her firing and flipped through the pages. When she landed on the picture of Van Lauer, she paused.

“What was he like?” I asked.

“I can't say that I ever really knew. “

“I heard a rumor that he was the reason you were fired.”

She raised a penciled eyebrow and ran her hand over his photo. Her fingers brushed his cheek as gently as they would if he were standing right before her. “I've made a lot of mistakes, Rosie. I've rushed into relationships thinking that if I just found the right man all of my problems would be solved. Only by doing that I created a new problem. Suddenly every fellow I smiled at was rumored to be husband number three. My love life became a punch line.”

“So you and Van weren't involved?”

She was silent for a breath too long. “He's married.”

“And?”

Tears filled her large green eyes and threatened to engulf her fake eyelashes. “And I'm not the kind of woman to steal another woman's man.”

“But what about him? Was he the kind of guy who would step out on his wife?”

She didn't respond for a long time. Her chest shuddered as she attempted to keep her emotions under wraps. “He was under development, and MGM thought it would help raise his profile if he was seen in the company of a star. I didn't expect to…we tried to keep it quiet.”

“So what happened?”

“The studio got wind that he was planning to divorce his wife. That wasn't the image they wanted for their new leading man.”

“Wow. So how come you got fired but he didn't?”

She pushed her hair back, and for a moment she wasn't the glamour girl who fueled a thousand fantasies but just another woman who'd had her heart broken and dreaded having to face the world alone. “I was unredeemable. I was more expensive. I was the one always getting bad press for my behavior off set. I didn't have nearly the money-making potential that Van had anymore. Or so they assumed.”

“Did you fight to stay?”

“I didn't think I should have to. I thought my career spoke for itself. I didn't realize they already had a woman in development to fill my shoes.”

“And what about Van?”

“When he chose to stay with MGM, he made it clear that he wasn't choosing to stay with me.”

“You must've been so angry.”

She closed the magazine, hiding Van's picture from her view. “If I'm really honest with myself, I suppose he's the reason I left. I needed to forget him and I knew that wasn't going to happen if I stayed in Hollywood. That's the thing about being a star. There are
copies of you everywhere—magazines, billboards, posters. Wherever I looked, there was a reminder of him. I needed to be someplace that had never heard of Van Lauer.”

I hated to tell her, but as the slick just proved, distance wasn't an effective way of forgetting someone. When you've fallen in love, there wasn't a place you could run to that could help you escape those memories.

“It all seems so unfair,” I said.

She fluttered the edge of the slick, turning the pages so rapidly that the images seemed animated. “Hollywood's not about fair. Believe me.” She put her index fingers to the corners of her eyes to stop the tears from flowing. “We're a pair, aren't we? Here.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a white capsule. “It'll put you to sleep. You'll lose a night, but the nausea won't bother you.”

“Thanks.”

She patted my leg. “Feel better.”

In fact, after I took the pill, I felt nothing at all, which was almost the same thing.

By morning I was on the mend. Not well enough to eat but at least capable of remaining vertical for more than ten minutes. The other girls left me to sleep while they grabbed chow, so I took my time waking up and went for a walk on the deck, trying to get my sea legs. We were in the middle of nowhere without a sign of land to be found. We weren't alone though. There was another ship in front of us and one behind, both of which were U.S. Navy vessels.

The briny salt air was strange and refreshing, counteracting the bounce of the ship and setting my stomach at ease. I leaned over the rail and watched dolphins bob out of the water. They seemed to be attempting to keep pace with the boat, as though they were our guides on this long passage. Every once in a while a bird flew overhead, and I marveled at how seagulls could be in the middle of nowhere without any place to land. Weren't they tired? Didn't they need to rest? Or were they like warplanes, loaded with enough fuel to take them from one destination to another? From my vantage
point, I could see guns that had been retrofitted on the sides of the ship. While we may not have been prepared for battle, our mode of transportation was.

Despite the roar of the ship's engines and the tinkle of music playing through the loudspeakers, the ocean seemed quiet and peaceful. I was moved by the sheer size of it, by how no matter how far I looked in any direction, we appeared to be alone. As amazed as I was to discover that there were still places in this world where people didn't knock elbow to elbow, it was intimidating too. We were completely vulnerable out here. If catastrophe struck, there was no one to fish us out of the bay with a hook.

With no land to shield us and no clouds to protect us, the sun beat down on the deck until I could feel my skin prickling from the heat. If I stayed out there too long, I was going to look like a tomato. I left the deck and went below, where the offices we'd seen the day before were stowed. A few men who weren't at breakfast greeted me with wide grins that made it clear they weren't used to seeing women. I returned their smiles and tried to keep out of their way as they gave in to the rhythm of their tasks. To pass the time, I grabbed that day's edition of the ship's newsletter and positioned myself on a lounge chair outside the mess hall. A group of soldiers marched past, their eyes set forward, as they practiced some drill that could be essential to their survival on land but seemed pretty useless on a ship in the middle of the Pacific.

The newsletter was abuzz about the body from the day before. More information had come down the wireless, and the writer had done a fine job putting together as many pieces of the story as he had access to.

“There you are.” Jayne appeared at my side as I closed the newsletter. “I've been looking for you everywhere.”

“Sorry. I had to get out of that cabin. How was breakfast?”

“Delish. Real eggs, bacon, toast. Real coffee, too, strong enough to take the rust off the ship. I'm sure we can grab you something if you want it.”

My stomach churned a warning. “Thanks but no thanks. My goal is to keep my insides inside. Tomorrow I'll worry about food.”

I tucked the paper beneath my arm and followed Jayne back to the vacated mess hall, where we were scheduled to have our first rehearsal. Violet was on her feet, trying to demonstrate a series of dance steps. As we arrived, she paused, and Gilda greeted me with a warm smile. “Good morning. Feel any better?”

“I'm on my way. That pill of yours sure did the trick.” I set the newsletter on one of the tables. “Where's Kay?”

“She went in search of a pianist. Rumor has it there's a fellow in the dental corps who did two semesters at Julliard,” said Gilda.

“A musical dentist?” I asked.

“Yeah, he plays everything in the key of pain.” Violet snagged the newsletter and started tearing through it as if she was searching for a review of a play she was in the day after opening night. “The corpse has a name,” she said. “Irene Zinn. She was a Wac.”

“A former Wac,” I said. “She left the military a few months ago.”

“What's a Wac?” asked Gilda.

“The Women's Auxiliary Army Corps,” I said. “It's the women's division of the U.S. Army.” The WAAC, the WAVES, and SPAR were the female divisions of the different armed forces (army, navy, and army air force, respectively). Recruitment posters were all over the home front, urging us to join the WAVES and “free up a man to fight” or “speed them back, be a Wac.” Only the Wacs got to travel abroad—the other divisions were strictly stateside for the time being—though rumor had it the WAVES might get to see the other side of the ocean before the war was over.

That was an unsettling thought: the war had gone on long enough that the rules made at its beginning were now being changed out of necessity. What would happen next? Would we run out of men and send our women to fight?

Gilda smiled at me with such appreciation you would've thought I had just pushed her out of the way of a runaway streetcar. “Thank goodness they were able to identify her,” she said. “I wonder if she came to see someone off.”

I'd been wondering the same thing. Why else would Irene have been in San Francisco that day? It's not like Los Angeles was a hop, skip, and a jump away. “I'll bet we were the only ship headed for the Solomons yesterday. If that's where she was stationed before, it was probably someone on this boat she came to say good-bye to.”

“Of course, if that's the case, why didn't she have any personal belongings with her?” asked Violet.

It was a good point. If it weren't for the dog tags, it was very likely Irene would still be an unidentified body.

“Who are you talking about?” asked Kay. Behind her was a short, sturdy man loaded down with sheet music. Even from a distance I could see that he had perfectly straight chompers.

“The dead girl in the water,” said Violet. “They identified her. Her name's Irene Zinn.”

Kay faltered. In slow motion she began to lean backward, forcing the pianist to drop what he was carrying so that he could catch her.

“Are you all right?” asked Jayne.

The dentist slid Kay the remaining distance to the floor, keeping her torso propped up on his. Her upper body teetered from right to left, before settling in the middle.

“I'm just feeling a little faint,” said Kay. “I think I'm…. I'm…” She clasped her hand over her mouth and scrambled to her feet. With the grace of a stilt walker cursed with uneven legs, she stumbled out of the ballroom.

My stomach lurched and the soda crackers I'd had the night before threatened to evacuate. I took a deep breath, hoping it would pass, but the ship chose that moment to switch from a zig to a zag.

I ran after Kay with my own hand plastered across my mouth.

I heard her before I saw her. She was kneeling in front of one of the toilets in the ladies' room. I entered the stall next to her and completed my own foul business. Stomach emptied, I did my best to clean myself up before turning my attention to her.

“You all right?” I asked.

“Oh, you know.” She lurched again. When she came up for air, her face was a mess of smeared makeup, tear stains, and blotchy skin.

“I would've thought that after twenty-four hours at sea you were safe.”

“Guess I'm just lucky,” she said. If there was more to this story, she wasn't sharing it.

“The good news is it will pass eventually.” I handed her a wad of toilet paper and helped her mop up her face. “I'll bet by tomorrow you'll be good as new.”

She rested her forehead in her hand, and a shiver passed through her body. “I hope you're right, but I doubt it.”

 

I helped Kay back to the cabin and arranged for her to get some ginger ale and crackers. By the time I returned to the mess hall,
the pianist—Dr. McDaniels—was playing some fast paced instrumental piece that the others were whirling around to, their faces red from effort and laughter. Even though Jayne and Violet both performed the steps with much more skill, it was Gilda that my eyes were drawn to. She was radiant as she twirled, acknowledging her mistakes with a grin and a roll of her eyes. Eventually she conceded that she couldn't keep up with the two of them, and she left them to their energetic jig while she joined me to catch her breath.

“How's Kay?” she asked me.

“I'm not sure. I get the feeling that it wasn't just motion sickness that hit her. She's an odd one.”

“And a talented one,” said Gilda. “You should've heard her sing earlier. It gave me shivers.”

Rehearsal lasted for two hours. Practicing dance moves on a ship at sea was a terrible idea, even when the routines that Gilda choreographed were so simple that…well…under normal circumstances, even I could do them. Gilda was a patient teacher, though, who never demanded perfection out of any of us but rather praised us for simply putting in the effort to be there.

In other words, she was the exact opposite of every director I'd worked with in the past.

I should have found it cloying, but it was clear Gilda wasn't paring things back because she didn't think we were capable of doing any better. She understood that spending our days putting polish on footwork and all those other little niceties that turned a show into a Show was silly. The people we would be performing for wanted to be entertained. They didn't care if we had perfect extension, timing, or pitch.

Violet was wrong in her prediction that Gilda would make herself the focus of the show. Gilda insisted that, in addition to the group numbers, we would each share the spotlight based on whatever particular skill we excelled at. I wasn't sure the audience would be so thrilled if our star periodically receded into the background; nor did I think it possible that they wouldn't be staring at her no matter
where she was onstage, but it was nice of her to at least try to give us each our moment in the sun.

The question was: what was I good at? My most prominent skill was acting, but I had a feeling the men weren't going to want to suffer through a Shakespearean monologue done by yours truly. They'd been through enough unpleasantness.

After lunch I mused with Jayne about what my skill should be.

“We could dance together,” she suggested.

“I think I've already exhausted my limitations in that arena.” In our last show I'd been grossly miscast in a corps de ballet, where my limited hoofing skills made the other incompetent dancers look like Pavlova by comparison.

“Not ballet, you dumdora. We could tap.”

While I wasn't a good dancer when set side by side with Jayne and just about anyone else with legitimate training, I was a reasonably good tapper. Not Eleanor Powell or Fred Astaire good, but I'd had some classes, and with a little rehearsal I'd be passable. And if we combined the not-so-fancy footwork with some verbal hijinks, the soldiers would never be the wiser. “We could do a Burns and Allen thing,” I told Jayne. “You know—jokes between the steps just in case the dancing loses their attention. You mind playing dumb to my straight man?”

“What do you think I've been doing for the last five years?”

Fortunately, we were in the land of improvisation, where adding taps to shoes involved nothing more than stopping by the inventive onboard cobbler. Within a half hour our shoes were done. By late afternoon we had the skeleton of a routine and a few nasty bruises on our shins.

Rather than spending our free time before dinner up on the sundeck, the four of us decided to go back to the cabin and check on Kay. She was lying on her bunk when we arrived, a wad of tissues clutched in her hand. The ginger ale I'd brought her was gone, although she hadn't touched the crackers.

“How are you?” Gilda asked.

Kay looked at her as though she didn't understand the question.

“Kay?” I said.

“What?”

“Gilda asked how you were.”

“Better. I'm better.”

Violet, Gilda, Jayne, and I shared a look of concern. Jayne climbed the ladder to Kay's bunk and started to gab at her as if there was nothing unusual going on. She described our efforts to choreograph our dance and the difficulty we had coming up with jokes for an audience we didn't know. As Jayne spoke, Kay stayed in her daze. Her reactions were delayed, as though she were listening to us from a great distance away and had to account for the time that lapsed between when we spoke and when she heard us.

“The pianist is great,” I said. “You're going to love working with him.”

“I'm not so sure about that,” said Violet. “He had the nerve to say I had summer teeth.”

“What are summer teeth?” asked Jayne.

“You know: some are there and some ain't.” She grinned and pointed out a missing molar.

Kay smiled for the first time. We took that as a sign that she was coming back to herself and started suggesting songs she could sing. She got excited about the repertoire, and the color came back into her skin. With Jayne's help, she left the upper bunk, and the five of us ended up sprawled on Violet's bed, talking through the show.