Laura Lamont's Life In Pictures (44 page)

“I think Irving would be absolutely overjoyed,” she said finally. “I only wish he were here to see it. Luckily, I have three gorgeous, healthy children, and they will be here in his stead.”

“What would you say you’ve learned about acting in the years since your days at Gardner Brothers?” The young man held a small tape recorder between them, level with Laura’s chin. Underneath her, the chair squeaked, and she wondered whether he’d include that, the
sights and sounds and smells of the room itself. She hoped he would. The intimate truth of bodies—spit, breath, reddened cheeks—it arrived in the theater whether or not it was invited. That was what Laura loved the most. Irving was there too, in the distance between the proscenium and the front row.

“It’s better to work than not to work,” she said. “But it’s even better to know why you’re working. When I was young, I made movies because people told me to, and hit my marks, and spoke my lines. I made
Farewell, My Sister
without knowing what was going on most of the time. I did what I was told.” She paused. “I chose this,” Laura said, “but I chose everything else too.” Laura nodded, agreeing with herself, and then leaned over and gave the boy reporter a kiss on the cheek. She probably reminded him of his mother, or his grandmother, even.

“Um, thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome, my dear,” Laura said, and walked slowly back to her dressing room. She wanted to talk to Florence on the telephone, and there seemed no reason to wait. She wanted to tell Florence everything she’d just said, and more, and for her brilliant, smart psychotherapist of a daughter to tell her what it all meant. Of course, Florence always claimed it didn’t work that way, but Laura thought she’d break down sooner or later and give her poor mother all the answers she was looking for.

T
he night before the show opened, Florence and Clara and Junior and Jimmy all flew in. Roy and Leslie were with the Petersons, and would come on their own later in the season. The apartment was completely silent before they arrived, and Laura switched from the chair to the sofa to a perch by the window like a one-woman relay
race. The apartment wasn’t much—the walls were painted a creamy white, with only a few framed reproductions, all innocuous flowerpots and such. Laura wished she’d thought to redecorate a bit, so that when the kids came in they would look around and see how happy she was, how well the space suited her. The doorman called to announce their arrival, and Laura squeaked out, “Yes, send them up, send them up!” and then waited in the open doorway. Her hair was gray now, which she’d warned them about, but she was nervous for them to see it in person and not in the play, to know that their mother really was old enough to have gray hair, that it wasn’t part of the act. She adjusted her simple black headband over and over again, the way Clara had when she was in grade school.

Junior was out of the elevator first, and before he’d taken three steps, Laura rushed down the hall, leaving the door open wide, inviting the world in. He was wearing suspenders, which made him look young and serious, like an old-fashioned bank teller. He smelled like an airplane, but Laura didn’t care.

“Mom! Your hair looks amazing! You look so beautiful,” Junior said, his mouth so close to her ear. She hugged him tighter, filled with relief.

Clara was next, humping the bags clumsily out of the elevator, with the door trying to close on her over and over again, which turned out to be Florence hitting the button on purpose. They were with their mother, and so they were acting like children. Laura let go of Junior and shooed him toward the apartment, and then waved both Florence and Clara into her arms at once. The girls were tall, like her, taller than their father had been, her sweet, small Irving—and just then she realized she hadn’t told the girls about Gordon. Laura’s breath caught in her throat.

“You okay, Mom?” Florence said, pulling back. She righted her suitcase, which had fallen over onto its side. Clara too let go, and they
stood there in a lopsided triangle. Jimmy was behind Clara, waiting his turn, all of them quiet except for Junior, whom they could hear all the way down the hall, exclaiming about the view.

“Your father died,” Laura said. It came out so clumsily, but she didn’t know what else to say.

Clara gave a little laugh. “Yes, Mom, we know, it was twenty-five years ago.”

Then it was Laura’s turn to laugh—at the number, as if time mattered, when she had thought of Irving every day since, when he was still her one and only. “Gordon Pitts,” Laura said. “Gordon died. Just before I came to New York.” She grabbed their hands and held them in a big pile in the middle of the triangle between them, like at a basketball game. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“Um, it’s okay, Mom,” Florence said. “But are you okay?” As she was talking, Florence ran her fingers through Laura’s hair. “It’s so shiny,” she said. “I love it. Come on, we’ll talk about it more inside.” With that, Florence darted through the open doorway.

Jimmy took two steps forward, so he was now the third corner of the triangle. “He really was so good in
The Ballad of Bayonets
.”

“You actually have seen them all, haven’t you, my sweetie,” Laura said, and kissed him on the cheek. Jimmy nodded.

“Here, Clara, give me your bag and I’ll take it in,” Jimmy said, and did, so that then it was just Laura and Clara standing alone in the hall.

“It’s so nice to have you here,” Laura said. She put her palms on Clara’s cheeks. Now that Laura’s hair was light again, they looked alike—perhaps it had always been so. “I missed you guys.”

“We missed you too, Mom,” Clara said, her eyes starting to crinkle at the edges.

“Well, come on in. We can order some Chinese food, just like real New Yorkers. How does that sound?” Laura put her hand on Clara’s back and led her toward the door, letting her cross the threshold first,
the way Irving would have done. When she got to the doorway, Laura stopped and rested her hand on the frame. The living room looked smaller when it was full of people, but so much warmer too. Laura looked from Clara to Jimmy to Florence to Junior and remembered something Ginger had told her ages ago, when the children were babies: that acting was what people turned to when their own lives weren’t good enough, and she knew it wasn’t true. Her family was healthy and gorgeous and alive, and she wanted to show them what their father had seen so many years before: that there was something special that she could do.

“Laura Lamont,” Jimmy said, beckoning her in. “What are you waiting for?”

O
n opening night, Laura stood offstage, watching the heavy curtain from behind in the dark. All around her, people were wishing one another broken legs. There were legs breaking all over the place, and hers the oldest legs in the building. The children were there, all four of them, in the second row. She peeked out from behind and saw them, Florence on one side, Jimmy and Clara on the other, Junior in the middle.

Her son fidgeted with the program. He curled it up and smacked it against the back of the seat in front of him, which was still empty. At Laura’s insistence, they were early, with no possibility of missing a single word. They were passing a box of candy back and forth, like they were sitting in a movie theater. Laura watched as Florence tipped the box into her cupped hand. The girls—they were women now, but Laura could think of them only as girls, as her girls—looked happy and expectant. Jimmy craned his neck around to see the other people coming into the theater, and waved hello to someone whom Laura
couldn’t see. She had a brief, fleeting thought that it was her father, though of course Jimmy had never met her father, and he’d been gone since the girls were children. But there was always the balcony. Laura took a step back from the curtain until she could see the underside of the balcony, a sturdy Art Deco shelf floating in the middle of the room. Surely her father was there somewhere, along with Hildy and Irving and even poor Gordon, all of them watching from far enough back that she wouldn’t be able to make out their faces, no matter how hard she squinted into the lights onstage. Even if she held her hand in a ready salute, Laura wouldn’t be able to see them, but she knew they would be there, laughing and delighted. Was it possible that she’d finally gotten old, when she had always been the youngest? Laura supposed that anything was possible. All her lines for the evening went zipping through her brain, the words so ready to be spoken that they tumbled over one another with excitement. In the house, the lights dimmed, and she heard everyone in the lobby hustle into their seats. Laura Lamont took a deep breath and exhaled through her mouth, slow and steady. She stepped out onto the stage in the dark, feeling the wooden floor under her shoes. Once she hit her mark, Laura stood still and waited for the curtain to rise, and for the applause to begin.

My boundless, ceaseless gratitude to Megan Lynch, Geoffrey Kloske, Ali Cardia, Jynne Dilling Martin, Melissa Broder, Tiffany Yates Martin, Hal Fessenden, and everyone at Riverhead Books, for making my wildest dreams come true.

Profound thanks also to Jenni Ferrari-Adler; Christine Onorati, Stephanie Anderson, and Jenn Northington of WORD; Mary Gannett, Henry Zook, Zack Zook, and Chad Bunning of BookCourt; Lauren Cerand; Sophie Rosenblum; Kate Harvey and everyone at Picador UK; Anvar Cukowski and Birgit Schmitz at Berlin Verlag; Stuart Nadler; Julie Klam; Dan Chaon; Lorrie Moore, the University of Wisconsin–Madison MFA program, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing; Courtney Sullivan; Claudia and Eve Rose Gonson; the Sackett Street Writers Workshop; Megan Branch; Bethanne Patrick; Alexander Chee; Jennifer Gilmore; Elliott Holt; Jessica Francis Kane; Edan Lepucki and Patrick Brown; Rae Meadows; Michelle Wildgin and Rob Spillman of
Tin House
; Cathrin Wirtz; Adam Wilson; Alex Shepard; Michele Filgate; Andrea Walker; Cal Morgan and Carrie Kania; Caitlin Roper; Corinna Barsan; Jason Diamond and Tobias Carroll of Vol. 1 Brooklyn; Karyn Bosnak; Lauren Groff;
Maris Kreizman; Erin Kottke and Marisa Atkinson; Rachel Fershleiser; too many delightful, warm, and wonderful friends to name. Rest assured, I’m talking about you.

And thank you most of all to my very patient and encouraging family, cats included.

I would also like to acknowledge the fabulous Margaret Herrick Library in Los Angeles, where I did much of my research. If you need to learn anything about Hollywood, they will take excellent care of you.