The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard (40 page)

The afternoon had seemed like a watershed, but life brings so many of those. An announcement is made, a goal revealed or blurted, and we think:
At last. Let the waters come crashing in.
Even when the moment ushers us into a world of mistrust and grief, we long for it to happen and strain to hear the words that will devastate our lives. We are ready to begin again, whatever the cost. This time, we say, this time we will make selves that are shining.

And then nothing changes. No matter what burst of terror or recognition flared through us like a lightning strike, life shines for only an instant before settling down to its ordinary, grubby state of wanting: wanting dishes washed, wanting letters written and mailed. No wonder people liked to go to movies. On the screen, tediously familiar characters become wondrous. No one in that brilliant new life has to brush the hats or spend an extra ten minutes at the sink, scrubbing stubborn sauce from a pot. Who would watch that movie?

We got up in the morning, and if extra light glittered in George's eye, still nothing had happened. The warm glide of his lips across my cheek when he left was nothing more or less than a husband's absent-minded affection. He wasn't sure when he would be home. He would be driving all day. I shouldn't hold dinner.

We were a California couple, but not the kind Lisette and Aimée dreamed about. Rusty, dusty Mrs. Grundy and her mister, we were precisely the people any self-respecting "It" girl would flee. The best we could hope for were comic roles that called on us to gasp, horrified, when our daughter came home with a cigarette burn above her knee. Better that than the drama that ends when the heartbroken mother, her face ignorant of makeup, looks up slowly at the terrible news of a runaway girl. In her dull meekness, that mother would be the very picture of disappointment and of age. Did George think I didn't notice the new care he was taking with his collars and shoes? I noticed.

Lisette and Aimée did not seem to care when I gave myself a pat with their powder puff, so I started to pat twice, then more. A man on the streetcar smiled at me the morning that I wore a swipe of Lisette's geranium-red lipstick. Because the moment pleased me disproportionately, I stopped at the Rexall and spent a dime for a tube called "Rasp-Berries," a less hysterical hue.

I raised the hem of my favorite yellow skirt and was rewarded by a wolf whistle when I stepped out of the laundry. The whistle sent me to a nearby shoe store for a pair of T-straps. I did not bother to hide the purchase from George, whose contemplations of girls' legs did not include the legs of his Helpmeet.

"It" crept into my costume designs, too. Crept? It leapt, landing with a sizzle in the piles of cheap satin delivered every day. I lowered the collars on the blousy pirate shirts and tightened the rise on the pantaloons for
Bounding Main.
I dropped the hip line and smoothed the derrière on every single dress for
Lawless,
a feature only two days into shooting and already late, according to gossip Aimée brought home from the seamstress shop. The actress kept showing up drunk, and now girls were wondering how long the director would wait to find a replacement. "Keep your eyes skinned. You never know when a door might open," I told Aimée.

"Is Little Mother trying to get rid of us?" said Lisette.

"Little Mother is looking out for your interests," I said. The cold sweat that would have soaked me a month ago was nothing more now than a shudder. Lisette should be proud of herself; coming to live with Madame Annelle, she had reawakened angry Kansas Nell. Now tart words were always on my tongue; I felt them the way bodybuilders at arenas liked to show their muscles in their tight costumes.

Because Mrs. Hoyt and I scarcely talked, my time with her was less fraught than my time at home. I worked briskly; in a single morning, I unearthed a sample gown that I'd spent days pinning and re-pinning, cut the line of the bodice, and vigorously set to basting it. "Somebody put the nickel in you," Mrs. Hoyt said, reaching over to straighten a fold I had missed.

"Every day, in every way, I am growing better and better." The saying was the newest thing. Its inventor promised that if people repeated it five times a day, their lives would become radiant.

"I don't know about that. But at least this dress is getting better. What is it for?"

"Next time a director comes over and says he wants something for his leading lady, we'll be ready."

"Very progressive thinking," she said.

"Didn't Franklin Coston say he would be wanting something new?"

"Franklin always wants something new." Her voice was vinegar. I had already noted the deep rings under her eyes and the careless tuft of hair springing from her turban. I would not bring his name into conversation again.

"I have an idea." Pushing aside the muslin I'd been attacking, I picked up a pencil and started to draw a gown that had occurred to me the night before, when George had buried his mouth in my neck. Hanging from the shoulders by two narrow bands, relying on heavy beading rather than seams to give it shape, it would seem revealing without actually revealing anything and would lead a fellow to have ideas. Looking at my sketch, I added a slit up the thigh. The dress still looked fussy, which bothered me.

"Goodness, madame. What has happened to your famed restraint?"

"Madame is tired of her famed restraint. Madame is ready to enter the twentieth century."

"I did not hire you to be a flapper." The edges of her carmine mouth quivered with a smile. She was one to counsel restraint, with her lipstick matching the dragon red of her Chinese-embroidered tunic.

"I am not being a flapper. I'm designing for one. Should the wearer be seized by the urge to do the Charleston, this dress will accommodate her." I did not see the need to mention how the garment's loose movement away from the body would provide glimpses that would be, by any definition, tantalizing. It was the most improper dress I had ever conceived. Still, there was something wrong with it.

"I did not expect you to have close acquaintance with the Charleston."

"These days every policeman and greengrocer has a close acquaintance with the Charleston."

Mrs. Hoyt pointed at the slit. "This will aid in kicks?"

"Bankers' wives will be kicking the night away."

"I don't know as that is a good thing."

"Considering what most people do go to the pictures to learn about, I am keeping us in business."

The smile lurked at her mouth again. "Were we in danger?"

"Security is important. In pictures, as in love and finance. We must take care not to be passed by."

"And you a married woman," she said.

"And you also, Mrs. Hoyt." The words were out before I could recall them, issued in the teasing voice of a confidante, as inappropriate with Mrs. Hoyt as feathers on a topcoat. Blushing until I could feel the heat across my chest, I erased a little of my drawing so fabric would not slither as high on the wearer's leg. The elastic moment stretched. "Or so I have always assumed," I said.

"Sometimes, Madame Annelle, you astonish me."

"Forgive me." The drawing that wavered before my eyes was crude in its concept, worse in its execution. I added two new lines, the suggestion of a gather at the hip that would draw the eye down. It needed to be simpler. How could such a plain dress be simplified?

Mrs. Hoyt tapped the drawing with her amber cigarette holder, and I saw what she was indicating. If I added the new seams, the fabric would want to flare over the knees, a ridiculous effect. The dress needed to be started again. I crumpled the sketch. "I'm tired today. I'm sorry. I am—not myself."

"You seem recognizable."

"A shame. I always mean to be better than this," I said. We had never spoken so frankly, and Mrs. Hoyt did not look pleased with the new coziness. Still, her voice was more curious than affronted when she said, "Who would you be?"

"Clara Bow."

"You can't be serious."

"
Photoplay
promises that she is the model for today's new woman."

Mrs. Hoyt exhaled a strand of smoke. "People say she's never had a day of school. Her Brooklyn accent is so thick that no one on the set can understand a word she says."

"If a person wants talk, he can go to Clarence Darrow."

"She did not invent 'It.'"

"No," I said. "But she gave 'It' a face. And now everyone is excited."

"As are you, evidently." Mrs. Hoyt uncrumpled my sketch and shook her head. "This is an old story."

"But it has not lost its appeal." I pulled up another piece of paper and in a few lines created a different dress—bunchy lines, high collar, hemline just north of dowdy. I shaded it to indicate tweed. If a demented seamstress made such a thing, it would weigh twenty pounds.

"Who in the world is that for?" Mrs. Hoyt said.

"Mrs. Percival Longley."

"I have not made the lady's acquaintance."

"The mother of two, she resides in a Spanish-style home in Bel-Air. Her husband is the banker and civic leader who contributes so handsomely to the opera. Mrs. Longley stays busy every day with her children and her tennis, to which she is devoted."

"Forgive me, madame, but Mrs. Longley sounds very dull."

"Think of her as an intermission. Mrs. Longley will give us relief from 'It.'"

"Mrs. Longley will make us yearn for 'It,'" said Mrs. Hoyt.

"And there exactly is her virtue." I jabbed a thumb toward the window. "All that 'It' walking down the street. We need a break in the tension from time to time. Mrs. Percival Longley doesn't have a tense bone in her body."

"You want a story with no story?" she said.

"For the betterment of society."

She moved toward the window, her steps muffled by Chinese slippers. "Three children sit in a nursery, eating their supper. The table is highlighted with gilding, and their plates are edged with gold."

I nodded. A good scene to light, with manageable reflective surfaces.

"The oldest girl has glossy curls spilling over her shoulder, and she wears a pinafore. The smaller children aren't so neat, but their dishevelment is adorable.

"The oldest pretends to be cross with the little ones, correcting them on their table manners. She wants to see them using their forks properly. The little girl is genuinely befuddled, and the oldest reaches across the table to show her how to grasp a fork."

I could see the sweet, soft hand. Anyone would want to kiss that dumpling.

"The little girl is a princess, but the little boy is a rascal. He pretends to fall off his chair and lunges for the teapot as if he might upset it. His hair lies in tangles no matter how often it is brushed, and when his older sister chides him, he grins at her with a rowdy boy's grin—dimples and a space between his teeth."

I didn't want to say
Who leaves?
The story was coming for me like a train down the track. "Is there an adult anywhere?" I said.

"This is a nursery scene. The oldest girl is a real Little Mother, fussing about the china, blotting the tea that the little one spills onto the table linen."

"She is old for her age," I said.

"Yes."

"She herself brought the sandwiches and cakes to the table and spread the little cloth."

"Yes."

"No one else is in the house. Just these three."

"People are busy," Mrs. Hoyt said. "They have lives to attend to."

"So when the boy stands up suddenly and upsets the table, spilling tea all over his little sister's bear and making her cry, it is up to the eldest to make things right. She uses her own pinafore to scrub at the bear."

"Only setting the stain in," Mrs. Hoyt said.

"But she doesn't know that. She's a good child, doing what she can to make things right."

"Or else she's a tedious little bully, forcing her brother and sister into her stupid games of pretend," Mrs. Hoyt said, her voice truly bitter now. She had never shown me so much of herself before, and I didn't know whether this was a gift or punishment. "She loves to tell people what to do. When she leaves, everyone will be happy."

Those children in the golden sunlight, the cakes and dainty china. I pressed my fingertips against my hot eyes. "They will miss her," I said. "For the rest of their lives, they will yearn for her."

"Children recover from things," she said. "Adults, too."

"Not from this," I said. My voice was getting very loud. "First, the children have no mother, and now you take away their older sister, who loves them. It's monstrous."

"Who said they have no mother?" she said. "These children have more mothering than they know what to do with. They are smothered in mothers. They dream of running away. The boy in particular. He will make a break as soon as he can."

"To the circus?" I said. "That would be very filmable." Costumes in jersey, with spangles.

"Though expensive, with the animals. No, he will join the Navy. The clues are there already. He is fond of the stream behind his house, and his father has given him toy ships."

"He has a father, too?"

"You sound angry, madame." The slash of red lipstick in her dully white face only made her look older, but surely she knew that.

"Not a bit. May they have parents galore and all the protection that the world might provide."

"However much that is," she said.

"
Exactement.
" I picked up the muslin dress pattern again; we had deadlines. It was a signal that Mrs. Hoyt usually understood. She usually was the one to use it. But now, she lingered a moment.

"You wanted a story with no story," she said. "Nothing has happened."

"Then why is it so sad?"

"It hasn't finished yet. It hasn't started yet. The older sister has a life before her. A life of bossing people."

I did not look up from the seam I was tacking in inch-long stitches. "When her story is finished, will it be happy?"

"We are not in the business of making any other kind," she said.

She was putting aside
Scarlet Woman, Daughters of Desire,
and
Chinese Slave Trade,
just in the last month. Who could forget the last frame of
Chinese Slave Trade,
the actress's despairing face pressed against the bars at her window? Perhaps Mrs. Hoyt thought that was a happy ending.