Laura Lamont's Life In Pictures (19 page)

There was a hooting off in the distance, and the clanging of a bell, and then Ginger came closer, waving a hat over her head, beckoning the stragglers—Laura, Irving, and the baby—forward.

“Yee-haw,” Irving said, and put his arm around Laura’s back.

C
lara was a natural on the horse—she held the reins loosely, and gamely let herself be bounced around by the horse’s even gait. Florence preferred the ground, but quite liked feeding carrots and apples to the horses roaming the paddock. Laura watched as Florence’s whole body tensed up when the animals’ big, soft lips would search her palm for another morsel.

Outside with the girls—really outside, not just on a soundstage with a backdrop painted to look like the mountains—Laura sat on
the porch swing with Junior on her lap. Irving had ducked inside to make a phone call, which he promised would be short, and Bill was with the girls. Ginger came out onto the porch with two tall glasses of lemonade, and sat down next to Laura on the swing. After a moment, they settled into an easy rhythm, forward and back, forward and back, their heels and toes working in tandem as if on a shared bicycle.

“Irving’s still on the phone with Louis,” Ginger said.

“The story of my life,” Laura said, and rolled her eyes. Junior gurgled out a noise, a spitty laugh, and both Laura and Ginger turned their attention to his sweet round cheeks and thighs.

“Sometimes I forget that the girls aren’t his,” Laura said, tracing her finger around Junior’s belly.

“They’re his, all right.” Ginger nodded her chin out toward the horses. Florence stood with her back to the house, her hands on her hips, shaking her head at her sister. Her tiny bones had no idea how small they were, how delicate. “That’s him, don’t you think?”

The screen door clattered open. Irving stepped out onto the porch, reflexively smoothing his hair. Bill and Clara had started to go faster, a gentle, rocking canter, and Irving walked forward to get a better look. He put his hands on his hips, his pointy elbows jutting out like wings. “Look at our girl go!” he said, turning to Laura, shaking his head with pride and amazement.

I
t was another six months before Laura was back to her pre-pregnancy weight, and even then she was cheating the numbers a bit. Even Clara got tired of telling her mother that she looked thin. She was eleven, and strong enough to help Laura get into her girdles, to pull strings tight.

Laura wanted to be loaned out. The studios were doing it more and more—swapping around their stars for an added boost at the box office. People were crazy to see Susie dance with someone who wasn’t Johnny, and it wasn’t only because Johnny was looking the worse for wear. There was a movie shooting across town at Pierce Pictures, and Laura wanted in it, whatever it was. After her maternity leave, she wanted to be something
new
. After all, every single one of her pictures had been made by Gardner Brothers. She begged Irving until he relented.

“It’s about
what
?” Laura asked Irving for the third time that morning. She couldn’t keep it straight in her mind—since Junior was born, she’d been getting headaches, brain crushers like the Emerson women had always gotten, and she sometimes lost entire afternoons to the darkness of her bedroom. She thought it had to do with Junior, but couldn’t say so without upsetting Irving, and so she kept it to herself. Sometimes she had the strangest urge to cover his tiny body with a pillow and leave the room. Not suffocate him, exactly, but arrange things so that it might happen. But then she would be so horrified at herself for even thinking it—not thinking about
doing
it, but even allowing the image to exist in her mind—that she would do penance by baking four batches of cookies and making the girls pass them out in the neighborhood.

“Conquistadors, my bride, conquistadors.” Louis Gardner had spoken to Mr. Pierce himself, who assured him of the film’s credentials, and then Louis had passed the information on to Irving. According to Mr. Pierce, conquistadors were the most exciting, adventure-seeking warriors never before seen on film. According to Louis, conquistadors were Spanish explorers who wore big helmets and had mustaches. According to Irving, they were the next knight, the next gladiator, the next war hero. Laura would play a Mexican woman, the daughter of a Mayan shaman, and wear a lot of lace. The
studio had already requested that her brown hair be darkened to black. Laura protested—the actor playing her conquistador love interest was also bringing smallpox to the Americas; how was that supposed to be romantic? She’d already done two movies in which men died in her arms. But Irving liked the director, the movie was to be shot locally, and Laura wanted so desperately to prove herself once again that she insisted the project move along as rapidly as possible. The deal worked out best for Gardner Brothers—they would continue to pay Laura her salary, and Pierce Pictures would pay them another, greater sum, with her home studio pocketing the difference. Laura didn’t feel taken advantage of; after all, it had been her idea. She and Irving had discussed it: After a baby, it was important to build back up. One couldn’t go straight back to the top; it simply wasn’t possible.

A car came to the house every morning and drove Laura to Burbank, where an entire Mexican town lived inside the walls of Pierce Pictures. Mr. Pierce himself met Laura at the gate the first day, and introduced her around. All the young people turned to look at her as she walked past—if she’d been home at Gardner Brothers, Laura would have waved, but to wave at strangers seemed inappropriate, so she just felt their stares and looked straight ahead. It was hotter on the east side of town, and Laura had to dab her temples in order to keep sweat from dripping down her cheeks. No one wanted to see Laura Lamont perspire.

Mr. Pierce was older than Irving, older than Louis, even. He walked with a cane, and kept his sunglasses on even when they went back into his office. It was roughly the same size and shape as Irving’s office, a large rectangle with a wooden desk and windows on two sides, and Laura felt as if she were inside a mirror image of her normal life, as if Mr. Pierce could have been her husband, if things had been different earlier on.

“Miss Lamont,” Mr. Pierce said. She felt awkward not knowing his first name, but didn’t know how to ask without seeming rude. He gestured for her to sit, and Laura sank into the leather chair opposite his desk. She crossed her legs.

“Mr. Pierce, my husband speaks so highly of your operation.” That sounded too clinical, too businesslike. She was supposed to be a movie star, all volatile emotion. Susie was the only movie star who was ever as golly-gee sweet as her on-screen image, and even she’d been slipping in public lately. There were rumors about Susie and her new boyfriend: too much drinking in the afternoon, her eyes always bloodshot and red. Ginger liked to tease Laura by saying that Susie was Susie only on the outside, but that Laura was Susie on the inside, all sunshine and rainbows and cups of sugar. At the moment, Laura didn’t want to be made of sunshine, she wanted to be made of steel. “I’m happy to be here.” She crossed her legs the other direction, striking a pose. That was better.

Mr. Pierce started to explain the contract to her, but Laura waved him off. “It’s all right,” she said. “I’ve already discussed it with Irving. If he’s agreed, then I’ve agreed. Now, let’s talk about conquistadors!” She snapped her fingers over her head, the way she’d seen Spanish dancers do. Sometimes Guy had them Spanish-dance back and forth across the floor, stepping and snapping in unison. Part of her had wanted her first postbaby movie to be something fun, like in the old days, but that wasn’t right. She put her hands back in her lap. If Irving had thought a comedy would be better, he would have said so. Without him, Laura would still be Elsa Pitts, overweight and miserable in a tiny house with a drunk. The people who said fairy tales didn’t come true weren’t looking at her, that was for sure.

Flowers for the Dead
had problems from the first day of shooting. The director’s assistant had to be replaced. The producers wanted more fight sequences, with horses. Laura wanted to get out of her lace
corset at least twice a day, to eat something and to use the ladies’ room, but her dressers always seemed to take their breaks exactly when she needed their help undoing the hundreds of buttons that ran the length of her dress. The actor playing her Spanish lover, Howard Powers (né Rosenblum), was so pale that he had to be covered in makeup all day, even more than Laura. If Howard had had a sense of humor, they could have compared to see which one of them was wearing more eye makeup, but Howard didn’t seem to find anything amusing. Laura kept her mouth shut and tried not to move. It was hotter when she moved, and she found that if she moved, she usually discovered that she had to go to the bathroom.

T
hree weeks later than scheduled, the director finally called “Action” on Laura’s first scene. By that time, she’d forgotten the story she’d concocted for herself about why this beautiful Mexican woman would find this plundering heathen so attractive. A heathen in mascara, no less! All Laura wanted to do was go home and put her ear on Junior’s belly. She wanted to hear her daughters giggle in the next room. She wanted the children to be asleep and for Irving to dive under the covers with his glasses on the nightstand, his narrow body as slippery and quick as a fish. That was the key—the conquistador was Irving, an unlikely match. He was powerful and sexy, even though he wasn’t whom her parents would have chosen. That was a start. But when she stepped onto the set, her long black lace dress dragging behind her across the sandy concrete, Laura knew that the movie was going to be terrible, and there was nothing she could do to help.

Ginger liked to come over in the early evening. Her husband had the sleeping schedule of a farmer—up before dawn, asleep by dark—
and so her nights were free.
Ginger & Bill’s Hoedown Happy Hour
filmed from nine until three, and because Irving was usually at the office, the women often had the house to themselves, with baby Junior as the only man around.

“They’re making me act with a
monkey
,” Ginger said. “It’s this tiny little thing, yap, yap, yap.” She yapped with her fingers, and then sighed. “At least it wears diapers. Better than that stupid dog. I can’t tell you how many times that mutt peed on my shoes.”

“I’m sure it’ll be funny,” Laura said sympathetically. They sat at the kitchen counter, a space no bigger than an ironing board, by far the closest quarters in the house. Their elbows bumped against each other every so often when they reached for their coffee cups. Sitting so near to another body that wasn’t her husband made Laura think about her sisters. Laura missed her sister Josephine’s solid physical presence, her steady breathing. There weren’t many people in the world who could just sit together quietly without worrying that something was wrong. In her weaker, darker moments, Laura knew that Ginger was envious of her life, that she had both the jobs and the children, but she never would have spoken it aloud. It was getting harder to remember when they were just the same, both bad dancers with oversize dreams and no responsibilities. Laura imagined that Ginger felt the same way, that she’d trade all her fame for a child, though Laura never would have asked, not in a thousand years.