The Girls in the Picture Page 9

  “Yes, I suppose it is. No one told Edison he ought to stay home with his wife more often.” Mary laughed ruefully. “But the other thing is—I sometimes do feel as if something’s wrong with me. Or missing. I worry about that. It doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that I’m a woman. It has something to do with the heart—my heart. My ability to love.”

  “Owen’s not your great love,” I reminded her. “He’s not. I was brought up to believe we all get one great love in our lives.”

  “But am I capable of that great love? Would I recognize it, even? Don’t you worry about that?”

  “You’re asking the wrong person.” I sighed, allowing myself to think of the past—something I didn’t usually do. “Twice divorced, remember?”

  “Because you fall in love too easily? Because you have a heart?”

  “Because I fall in love too stupidly. Oh, Mary, I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I got married, like some silly little doll with no mind of her own. But now, things are different. Now, I have something to do, finally, something I love to do. Like you said—I don’t know that I want to be in love again. Love, for a woman, it’s—”

  “Stifling?”

  “Complicated. Isn’t it? Men can be in love and it doesn’t affect anything else they do; it gives them even more cachet. It adds something to them. But for women, love doesn’t add, it subtracts. Why do I feel as if falling in love means I have to give something up?”

  “That’s how I feel, too, Fran! Exactly how!” Mary leaned forward, grasping her knees. “And I don’t want to give anything up! I don’t want to give up my career so Owen can feel more like a man—and he asks me to, daily. Every moment we’re together he nags me, tries to make me feel like less of a woman just because I’m ambitious.”

  “Owen’s an ass.” There, I said it, and I didn’t care.

  Fortunately, Mary giggled.

  “Yes, he is. Still, I don’t want to see him fail, but I’m not willing to sacrifice my success for his. But if it were a man whose wife was struggling in her career—there’d be no question of him stepping back in any way.”

  “No.” I was now sitting up straight, my hands balled into fists, all fired up with anger; anger at all the unrealistic expectations, assigned roles imposed upon us; roles and expectations we had no part in choosing.

  But in that moment of righteous anger, I also thought—Why, I’m happy. Right now. Happy to be here, talking to Mary, who feels exactly the way I do. We’re alike, the two of us—who else would understand me right now?

  “But is it just us? Do other women feel this way?” Mary fiddled with the lace hem of her dress, fingered the button of her satin boot.

  I thought of Mother, my sister, all their friends back in San Francisco; women seemingly content to be merely decorous and allow their husbands to tell them what to think. Even Lois Weber; she’d never worked for a studio that also didn’t provide for her—less talented—husband, even if that meant turning down opportunities for herself. “Some women are quite happy being married. Was your mother happy when your father was alive?”

  “I honestly don’t know.” Mary sank back in her chair, and I couldn’t see her face in the shadows. “I don’t really remember much before he died. I was so young—five. Why didn’t Mama marry someone, so I didn’t have to be the breadwinner of the family when I was only a child? Mama certainly could have had her pick of suitors then—and there was someone, once, when we were touring. But the three of us—Lottie, Jack, and me—we put up such resistance! That poor man never stood a chance. We needed Mama so much, then. Of course we’re older—but maybe she’s too old now. And maybe she’s regretful. I don’t ask. I guess I don’t want to know.”

  “I don’t want that—to be full of regret when I’m older. I think that’s the thing I’m most afraid of, actually—to look back with regret, to think of all the things I didn’t do.”

  “I didn’t think you were afraid of anything, Fran,” Mary said, and the admiration in her voice pleased me more than it should have.

  “What are you afraid of? I told you my greatest fear; turnabout is fair play.”

  “Oh, maybe I’ve already faced it.” Her voice was very soft; I had to strain to hear her.

  “Not fair! You have to tell.”

  “All right.” In the darkness, I heard her sigh. “Losing everything. Going back to how it was before, when we were touring and living like dogs hungry for scraps. Not being able to take care of Mama and Jack and Lottie—yes, that’s it. That’s the thing I’m most afraid of.”

  “More than being able to love?”

  “Oh, yes. Infinitely more than that.”

  “I don’t want to rule out the possibility of love again, though, and neither should you. But right now— Oh, Mary!” I couldn’t remain still; I had to jump up. I began to pace the length of the porch. I looked up at the stars again and now they seemed hung there for me and me alone. They were mine to corral. And if I could, I would keep the brightest one for myself and give all the rest to Mary.

  “There’s so much ahead of me!” I spun around and leaned back against the porch railing, and it seemed as if the very ends of my hair were sparkling like fireflies, so electric was the air and my mood. “There’s so much I can do on my own terms. I’ve only found it out, really—allowed myself to believe. And now, tonight, watching that film—it is like love, it is. I get dizzy, my heart has palpitations, I can’t sleep at night. I feel the way the romance novelists describe love. But I only feel it when I think of my career! I’ve never felt this way about a man. Never. And right now, I don’t give a damn.”

  “I know, I know!” Mary jumped up, too; she hooked her arm through mine. Everywhere was quiet, everywhere was ordinary calm—everywhere, but on this porch full of ambitious, restless women. “Tonight, all I want to do is dream of that movie. Is that bad? That I’d rather dream of a movie than of a man? Even my own husband?”

  “But I don’t think I’d want to be ‘normal’—if that’s what you want to call it. Do you? Would you really want to give any of this up for mere love? A man? Children?”

  Mary didn’t answer, and although we remained standing side by side, I sensed that she had withdrawn from me. She did this at times, retreating from the world and protecting her energy, saving it—saving the best part of herself—for the camera. Each time it happened, I felt as if she was withholding something from me, like I couldn’t be trusted, and that stung. I shared everything with her.

  With a soft little sigh, Mary unhooked her arm from mine. She stepped away, retreating again into the shadows. She didn’t even say good night; she just slipped away.

  I looked back at the stars. There was still so much to learn about Mary, and no matter how close, how alike I might think we were, I might never know everything about her. Even despite the eager, almost needy, way she had instantly, dizzyingly, welcomed me into her life, insisting I call her nicknames—“Squeebee, I’m your little Squeebee from Skunkville, remember? How you said my cabbage soup smelled like a skunk? You see, I never had a nickname growing up. So now I do!” Still, she didn’t quite trust me.

  Did she—could she ever—trust anybody?

  As I heard Mary’s front door shut, I began to feel the effects of the long day; a yawn turned into a stretch and I held my arms out straight from my sides and began to spin slowly around on the porch, making my own little breeze, feeling the warm night air gently pulsing against my open palms. I began to hum a little tune, nothing I’d ever heard before but plucked from the very air itself, full of promise and possibility. Despite my weariness, I could have remained there all night gazing at the stars, seeing my future written in every one—but suddenly I stopped and hugged myself.

  I was alone. Entirely alone for the first time in a long while and I craved even more solitude. I needed to go somewhere where I could refocus my mind and fully process what I’d witnessed earlier tonight, in that movie theater. For Griffith’s Birth of a Nation wasn’t merely an evolution—so
mething that seemed to take place daily in this crazy business—but a revolution.

  Mary was right; people would have to take movies seriously, after this.

  I skipped across the pavers into my own little house—an entire house, just for me; in both my marriages, I’d only lived in apartments. I loved this little bungalow, decorated to my taste; I had to account for no one else’s.

  I didn’t share Charlotte’s Victorian tendency toward doilies and tablecloths and tinted prints in heavy gold frames. What Mary’s taste was, I honestly couldn’t say—and I only just now realized it. But I’d never gone shopping with Mary as I had done with other female friends; we’d never paged through catalogs or magazines together, except for Photoplay. I’d never heard Mary express an opinion about anything domestic, not even food; she seemed content to let her mother make all those decisions.

  Or was it that she simply didn’t have an opinion outside the studio?

  My own house was neat—except for all those notebooks and sketchpads scattered about—and spare, the walls hung with a few chosen pictures, most I’d painted or drawn myself, all in simple wooden frames. There were flowers in vases—why not, when every inch of Los Angeles was a garden just waiting to be picked?—and I’d asked Mickey to make me a writing desk out of a piece of plywood, which I’d nailed beneath a window. On weekends when Mary wasn’t shooting, I sat there, breathing in the perfume of the lavender and nodding along to the comforting hum of the bees dancing through the geraniums in the flower box, and I scribbled furiously, story after story. Some I mailed off to magazines for publication, others I kept to stretch and pad into workable movie scenarios.

  Now that I’d finally given myself permission to write—funny, how we think it’s up to others to say yes or no when really, we’re our own gatekeepers—it seemed as if I would never run out of stories to tell. They flowed from my brain to my fingers like water from a fountain, an endless supply. Some were good, some were bad—some were very bad—but the important fact was that they were always, always there. Instincts—that was all I had, instincts and discipline and the desire to work. And my instincts told me that if I never feared running out of words and stories to tell, I would be a success.

  I switched off the light and went to my bedroom, where my dresses, cloaks, and shoes filled the entire closet. Stepping out of my new purple velvet dress, I brushed it with the clothes brush, sneezing as the dust flew up, then I hung it back on its hanger and surveyed my wardrobe with a happy sigh. I did love to shop, my one real extravagance. What did I need with a fancy car or expensive champagne? But clothes, ah—that was another story! I had a good figure for the latest fashions—I was slender, slightly taller than average, practically model size. But it wasn’t only the way I looked in them; it was the way I felt.

  My wardrobe gave me a certain air, a mood; a legitimacy I knew in my heart I hadn’t yet earned. Taking a page from Lois Weber’s book, I decided that if I dressed better than everyone else I worked with—including Mary—they’d have to take me, the new kid on the block, seriously. Or at the very least, notice me.

  As tiny as the bungalow was—a far cry from Mother’s vast house in San Francisco—it was mine. I paid for it, I decorated it. And while I cherished having Mary and Charlotte only steps away, I enjoyed even more being single, finally, after so many years of stifling marriage. Unlike Mary, I had actually lived with both of my husbands.

  Still, my bed could sometimes be a cold and lonely reminder of the one thing I’d enjoyed about marriage. There were nights when I lay awake wondering if I should marry again, just for the regular assurance of the touch of a man’s hard, warm body, his coiled muscles, thick hair to grab onto, rough, unshaven cheeks like a brand on my flesh. Since moving next to Mary, I’d been hesitant to bring men home. Mary wouldn’t approve, I knew.

  But then again, Mary was still married; she didn’t have to sleep in an empty bed if she didn’t want to.

  What if Mary was correct? What if I didn’t even have it in me to love fully? Would I, knowing that, someday marry again, in order to have a man’s body every night? Knowing that I’d not loved either of my husbands? At the time, truly, neither of my failed marriages had seemed a great tragedy, merely a fixable mistake because I’d married men who had been as emotionally uninvolved as I was. But the next time, I might not be so lucky. After all, look at Owen and Mary.

  How odd. Despite my past mistakes, I had always assumed that someday, I would love a man like in—well, like in the movie scenarios I wrote. But what if I never did—would it be a tragedy?

  And did I want children someday?

  Oh, bunk! I pulled my pillow over my head, the better to block out these conventional, disgustingly female contemplations. I wanted to go back to that theater; I wanted only to concentrate on The Birth of a Nation. I wanted to relive how it had felt to be both part of the audience gasping at something never before seen and part of the industry that had created it; the pride, the astonishment. And the fever to create something like that myself.

  As I lay there, the beat of my heart in my ears became the stamping of feet again—that was what I kept coming back to, that frenzied drumming. It was as if the excitement was too big to be contained in a stilled body. Never before had I heard anything like it, not at the opera, nor in an art museum, or a concert or a symphony.

  Removing the pillow from my face, I saw, again, the stars outside my window. And I picked one. Just one star out of all the stars suddenly available to me; just one thing that I wanted to accomplish now. Before—instead of?—husbands and children and everything else.

  Perhaps I’d dreamed too big when I was younger and longed to become a singer, a pianist, a painter; scattering my hopes like buckshot ensured I’d never hit a single target square on.

  So tonight, I focused on one. I wanted to sit in a dark movie theater surrounded by people like me, people who needed the movies, needed the glamour and laughter and tears and thrills. I wanted to sit among my fellow travelers and see my name on the screen. Not as an actress, but as a creator; the person with the vision.

  The person who could move an audience to a frenzy, and start a revolution of her own.

  —

  “Did you see it, Mickey? Did you?” Mary darted into her dressing room as I raced after her, spilling the cup of coffee in my hand. Mickey Neilan was already there waiting, his feet insouciantly on the dressing table—a transgression Mary would allow only him.

  “Lower your voice, Tad.” Mickey winced. “I had an epic night this morning.”

  Mary shook her head scoldingly, but couldn’t restrain a loving smile, and I understood her indulgence. What was it about Mickey? I’d been trying to puzzle it out ever since I met him, the day I also first met Mary.

  Mickey had moved up from an errand boy in the studio; his face was too darkly handsome to ignore, and now he was playing the leading man in some of Mary’s movies, including the one they’d just completed, A Girl of Yesterday, which featured yet another epic performance by yours truly. Why I allowed Mary to persuade me to play her rival in it, I had no idea—yet of course, I did have an idea. I was incapable of saying no to Mary.

  When we watched the rushes, again I couldn’t understand why people kept forcing me in front of the camera. “I’m awful! So stiff! Nothing like you, Mary.” I meant it sincerely, and I wasn’t envious. Mary had a gift I didn’t, a gift I’d never be able to learn because I suspected it was something unteachable.

  But then, I had a gift that Mary hadn’t. For in spite of Mary’s ability to become different people in her movies, she had no imagination in real life.

  “It takes time,” Mary soothed halfheartedly, but she didn’t seem upset when I told her—and everyone within earshot—once and for all, that I was through with acting.

  Mickey played Mary’s leading man, and when I watched them together on set I detected something more, at least on his part. Even when the camera wasn’t turning, he let slip a few adoring looks at her. And whenever Owen showed u
p to take Mary to dinner—although never did I see him spend the night in the bungalow, and I’d given up trying to define this odd marriage—Mickey started drinking even earlier than usual.

  “Mickey, are you hungover?” Mary asked fondly as she nudged his feet gently away from her makeup.

  “Tad, the worst. The absolute worst. What? Did I see what?”

  “Griffith’s Birth of a Nation. Did you see it? What did you think? Frances and I went last night.”

  “Did you, now?” Mickey opened one eye up to squint at me; without a word, I handed him the cup of coffee.

  “Mickey, it was remarkable.” Mary sat down and began to apply her makeup, expertly; no one did Mary Pickford’s makeup but herself. “I never liked Griffith much personally, but professionally, I respected him. I respect him even more now. He’s changed the industry—you’ll see. People will take us seriously from now on.”

  “That’s the worst news I’ve ever heard,” Mickey groaned, finally removing his feet from the table and sitting up straight.

  “Now, why on earth would you say that?” I perched on a stool. “Don’t you want to be taken seriously? As an artist?”

  “Good Christ, no.”

  “But, Mickey, you’re good—really good! Not only as an actor but as a director, too.” I hated it that Mickey didn’t respect himself and his talent. He seemed to have a chip on his shoulder about movies even as he couldn’t seem to stay away from them. And he had such talent—but he seemed to resent that, too. As if his talent got in the way of his drinking.

  “Fran, my dear, once we’re taken seriously as an industry—as art”—he pursed his lips and held out his pinkie, as if daintily grasping an imaginary teacup—“the money men will move in. They’ll fuck it all up—excuse me, ladies.” He glanced at Mary, who was frowning.