Laura Lamont's Life In Pictures (7 page)

The house was small—one bedroom in the back, a larger room up front that was both kitchen and living room. The single bathroom was big enough for only one person at a time, but they didn’t need anything bigger. Elsa had made curtains to block the sun from the windows in their bedroom, but the hems were all uneven, and bits of thread hung at either end. Gordon didn’t seem to notice, but it was all Elsa saw when she was in bed. Her mother and Josephine would have been horrified. The living room was better—a sofa, a coffee table. Gordon liked to check books out of the library and stack them beside the sofa, though Elsa rarely saw him read them. On good days, Gordon came home early and read out loud so Clara could listen, and she rolled around on her stomach while her father pronounced words she didn’t know, happy as a bumblebee in springtime. Elsa sat back and watched them, thinking about her own father and his musky gentleness. She was pleased that Clara looked so much like her side of the family. On bad days, Gordon hardly came home at all, and the
baby cried so hard and loud that Elsa was sure the neighbors would call the police. Sometimes it got so loud and lonely that she would cry too, and she and Clara just sat in the middle of the floor together, howling, their faces wet and purple.

She hadn’t made friends, not any real ones. They’d been in town for only a couple of months when she realized she was pregnant, and Gordon had ideas about what she should do, what was best for the baby. Elsa stayed in and dusted shelves with her fingers. What had her mother done all day? She had done everything that had to be done, so that her father could concentrate on the theater. That was what Elsa would do. The truth was, though, that their house was too small to sustain an imagination, and Elsa spent most of every day staring out the window and taking walks around their neighborhood when Gordon was on the lot, which was five days a week. Gordon had friends coming out of his ears: Every day he’d tell Elsa about someone new, an actor from Kansas with a lisp he’d met in the Gardner Brothers barbershop, a girl from New York who danced in the background behind Susie and Johnny but never got to speak because her accent was so thick. Sometimes Elsa would find Gordon’s wedding ring in his pants pocket when she was doing the washing. She asked him about it only once, and his response was so immediate—“Baby, it was for an audition!”—that she let it drop. Elsa couldn’t fault Gordon for trying.

In three months the second baby would be born. Clara loved to stroke Elsa’s growing belly. Sometimes Elsa lay on the floor with Clara and turned herself into a landscape with mountains and valleys and streams for Clara to cross. When she was hungry, Clara looked just like Josephine, impassive and serious. When she was full of joy, having seen a dog or a butterfly, or when she took her first crazy-legged steps across the wooden floor, all Elsa saw was Hildy.

C
ountry Boy, City Girl
was wrapped. Louis Gardner and Irving Green, his second-in-command, were throwing a party for the cast and crew, and Elsa was invited. It was her first trip to the studio in Hollywood, despite the fact that Gordon had spent the last two months sitting around his dressing room, his part already finished, or just gabbing away with the other actors in the commissary.

Elsa had only two dresses that would still wrap all the way around her body.

“Blue or white,” she said to Gordon. “Blue or white?”

“Blue,” he said. “The white one will make you look like a beached whale.” He made an elephant noise. Beside him, Clara giggled. In the end, it wouldn’t matter anyway. Elsa knew that either dress was going to look shabby next to the dresses the actresses would be wearing. Being so massive actually gave her an excuse to look less than perfectly done-up, Elsa thought, as if to say,
If I weren’t pregnant, I would have worn nothing but diamonds and sequins.

Elsa put her hands where her waist had once been. Her belly was hard, like a shield. It wouldn’t be long before she had her body back, she knew. With Clara, it had taken only a few months before all the parts zipped back to the way they’d been before. She was impressed with the elasticity of the female body, the wisdom her cells possessed. They grew this way, not that. She expanded out, not up. Elsa knew she was having another girl, even though the doctor hadn’t said. Elsa could feel it deep in her center of gravity. It was her fate to be surrounded by women for the rest of her life, by sisters. Late at night, Elsa sometimes thought that if she had done more to stop Cliff, and been better to Hildy, she would have had boys.

“The blue it is.”

Elsa squeezed herself into the blue dress, coaxing the zipper up along the side. They dropped Clara off at a neighbor’s, promising to bring back details of the Gardner Brothers party, and set out at eight.

Gordon nodded hello to the man at the gate, and they drove into a large parking lot. As they walked from the car to the party, Gordon pointed out spots around the studio that had been used in movies.

“You see that wall over there, with the columns in front of it? That’s where
Claudine Claudine
was shot, the whole thing, supposed to be Rome.” Elsa squinted. It was dark; the wall looked nothing like Italy, not that she’d ever been. It was almost better that way, that things didn’t look the way they were supposed to—that was why they were
actors
. A real actor could perform
King Lear
with an empty stage, could perform
anything
on an empty stage; that was what her father would have said. Gordon guided them around a corner, and then down a narrow alley between two enormous buildings, three stories high with no windows—the soundstages.

“The party’s on stage twelve,” Gordon said. “It’s this way.”

They rounded another corner, and it was easy enough to see where the party was. The two-story-high sliding door was open, and light spilled out onto the narrow space between stages twelve and fourteen, across the way. A crowd of people stood outside smoking cigarettes, and Gordon greeted them all warmly, kissing all the women on the cheek. Elsa knew their names from their screen credits: Betty Lafayette was a curvy brunette from New Orleans; Dolores Dee was a blowsy blonde who’d been playing ingenues for the last five years; Peggy Bates had a squirrelly face but a real, honest laugh, and was so nice that it seemed rude to take note of the squirellyness.

“Hey, gals, this is my wife, Elsa Pitts,” Gordon said, introducing her around.

Dolores took one look at Elsa, stubbed out her cigarette, and headed back inside.

“Don’t worry about her,” Peggy said, pumping Elsa’s hand up and down. “You’re a blonde. Dolores hates all other blondes—it’s just what she does. Obviously Susie gets all the nice-blonde parts, and then all of you have to duke it out for the rest. But hiya! It’s so nice to meet you.”

“Okay,” Elsa said. The baby stuck an elbow in between her ribs, and Elsa smoothed the spot with her free hand.

“Are you pregnant?” Peggy asked, though the answer was clear. Elsa cocked her head to one side. “I’m sorry. Of course you’re pregnant. My mother told me it was rude to just assume, though, and that one should always ask.”

There was music coming out the open door, and Gordon was craning his neck to see who else was inside.

“Come on, Else, let’s go in,” he said, not waiting for her before walking through the door.

“Nice to meet you,” Elsa said to Peggy, who was doing the Charleston in the middle of the street with another short-haired girl, an unlit cigarette dangling from her lips. Peggy waved her off with both hands.

The party was on a soundstage that had last been used as a ballroom, with walls that ended abruptly despite the lack of a ceiling, and several tons of lighting strung on wires overhead. Elsa had never been inside a proper soundstage before, and tried not to gape. The walls were padded and covered with chicken wire to keep the noise locked inside. Bales of hay lined the fake ballroom walls, and the cigarette girls were dressed to look straight off the farm, with gingham blouses tucked into their short skirts. Everyone they passed clapped Gordon on the back. Elsa kept her hands clasped beneath her belly, making sure that the actors all knew that Mrs. Gordon Pitts was pregnant, not obese. The room was warm, despite the presence of large electric fans, and Elsa’s throat felt dry.

“I’m going to find something to drink,” she said, touching Gordon on the arm. He nodded, already scanning the room.

“I’ll meet you over there,” Gordon said, and set off in the opposite direction.

Elsa smoothed out her dress, which was not all that bad, considering her girth. It still clung to her bosom in a way that was flattering, and flared out around her knees. Pregnancy was good for her hair too, and Elsa ran her fingers along the side of her head. She’d pinned it up all day, and there were perfect waves still in place, shiny with a swipe of Gordon’s pomade.

The bar was on two levels of hay, with cowpoke bartenders at the ready. Someone was going to put down her cigarette and set the whole place on fire. Everyone had on bolo ties and blue jeans. Elsa felt overdressed. She rested her hands down on the hay. Surely they had cows in California, and dairy farms, and people who looked like her family, but Elsa had never seen them. She was sure that anyone who looked at her face would know straightaway that she was a country girl, no question about it. Gordon had slipped into Los Angeles like a hand into a glove, his Floridian past vanishing well before the Gardner Brothers wiped his slate clean with a squeaky new biography. They thought he looked like a New York City boy, maybe half-Italian, with his dark skin and his soft voice. He was going to be the next Valentino. Next to her husband, Elsa felt about as cosmopolitan as a bovine.

The intimidation factor at a Gardner Brothers party was high: Everyone on the guest list looked like a movie star, and half of them were. Elsa saw Susie herself holding court in the middle of the dance floor, the whole party spinning and dancing around her as if she were the tiniest human maypole. The other half of the party guests were waiting in the wings, like Gordon, and wanted nothing more than to shake hands and light cigarettes and maybe even dance
with the actors who had already made it big. Elsa recognized all of them, her memory snapping photos of everyone who walked by, even the ones who thought they were nobodies and clung to the sides of the room like barnacles. The unfriendly (and maybe already sauced) Dolores Dee was swiveling her hips on the dance floor, paying attention to only her internal rhythms. Moving around the actors and actresses were the poised hairstylists and the well-painted makeup artists, the strapping dolly grips and the men who built things with giant saws and pieces of wood. Elsa wanted to go home and take off her heels. Her already large feet had swelled up another whole size, and her toes were hanging out the peep-toe of her shoes, looking more monstrous than peep-worthy. She scuffed the bottom of her shoes on the concrete floor.

“We have horses who do that on command,” a small, thin man with glasses said. He stood to Elsa’s right and held out a glass. “Cheers,” he said, “to the baby.”

Elsa accepted the drink, which had a lime bobbing gamely near the top. It tasted like bubbles, with a healthy dash of gin.

“Thank you,” Elsa said, and extended her free hand. “I’m Elsa Pitts.”

“Ah, the young, fertile wife of Mr.
Gordon
Pitts, I presume.” The man shook her hand and looked her up and down.

Elsa took a sip of her drink and the sourness opened up the back of her jaw. It felt as good as pressing a bruise. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Do I know you?”

“Irving Green,” he said. “I work here.”

It was only then that Elsa noticed the small audience surrounding them; a growing ring of actors and other hangers-on had positioned their bodies so that Mr. Green, should he wish, would be able to see them. If he could see them, he could talk to them. If he
talked to them, they might get a bigger part, a devoted publicist, their face on the cover of a magazine. Irving Green was second only to Louis Gardner himself, and from what Elsa heard, maybe even more powerful. He was younger than the other producers, no older than thirty-five, and had the look of a boy who had always hated the sunlight. His skin was so pale it was nearly green, as if all the blood vessels underneath were desperately close to the surface. The word on the lot (according to Elsa’s husband) was that Gardner was a softie compared to Green, despite his physical frailty. The studio lore was that Irving Green never put his name of any of his movies, because doing so would make everyone else look bad by comparison. Elsa stood up straight and tried not to move. But she hadn’t sought this out, she reminded herself. He had come to her. She felt embarrassed at her own ignorance, embarrassed that she had looked so out of place that he’d felt the need to speak to her.

Elsa had seen photographs in magazines and should have recognized him. Irving Green was slighter than Gordon, but with an intense gaze, dark brown eyes that focused on Elsa without looking away. He had dressed for the evening without a nod to the country theme, which made Elsa feel more secure in her own choice of dress. His round glasses sat high on his nose, which was disproportionately large and leaned slightly to the left, as though a strong wind were blowing through the room. Irving’s pitch-black hair swooped backward, slick as oil. Elsa thought he looked like a Greek statue, and when Irving smiled, he displayed two rows of crowded, imperfect teeth. Here was a man with all of Hollywood’s glamour at his fingertips, and all he had done was put on an expensive suit. Elsa admired his lack of vanity.