The Woman Who Fell From Grace (12 page)

July 12

Quite a scare today. Little Mavis didn’t turn up for lunch and no one seemed to know where she was. Toward late afternoon she was found across the road in the Appleby pasture
,
which they’ve rented for the battle scenes. The little fool had taken off on a horse and had a nasty spill. Dr. Toriello rushed her to the hospital
,
where it was discovered she had broken her collarbone. She’s in a great deal of pain
,
but she’ll live. I must remember to thank Mr. Sloan. The crew said it was he who found her
.

July 16

The rains came again today
,
washing away all of Willy’s best-laid plans. He is under increasing pressure from Mr. Goldwyn to finish on time. The strain is beginning to show on him
.

The bad weather did give me an opportunity to lunch with Miss Barrymore. She is a lovely person
,
hardworking and professional and very proud of the fine theatrical tradition of the Drews and the Barrymores. She is deeply concerned about her dear brother John
,
whom she calls Jake
,
a darling boy but so troubled by drink and demons. She believes he will soon die. She has noticed the same sickness in a member of this cast. I assumed she meant Mr. Flynn
,
but she meant Mr. Sloan
,
who
,
like John Barrymore
,
achieved greatness in his portrayal of Hamlet. Ethel believes certain men are born to play the Sweet Prince
,
and that these men are also born to be destroyed young by the poisoned cup just as he was. … If Mr. Sloan drinks he hides it well. I have never noticed him intoxicated
.

July 27

Newsreel cameramen came today to fan the flames of publicity. Went away with the impression that everything was going well. Nothing could be further from the truth
.

The love affair between Mr. Flynn and Miss Barrett is quite evident now. So is the effect her brazen infidelity is having on Mr. Sloan. He is pale and drawn and complains of constant migraines. Frequently
,
he is unable to leave his trailer. The doctor has been attending him. Miss Barrett dismisses his condition as a display of martyrdom and refuses to yield to it. This has resulted in a frightfully juvenile battle of wills. If he will not come out of his trailer to do a scene
,
then she will not come out of hers. This afternoon they kept the crew waiting for hours before they would appear. Everyone
,
I must say
,
seemed quite unconcerned about it. Stars will be stars
,
or some such thing.
…
Willy’s reaction was the most surprising. While he is upset at the delays
,
he actually seems pleased that Miss Barrett is involved with both men
,
for it mirrors my story and consequently makes the scenes among them all the more genuine. I told Miss Barrymore I thought this was rather inhuman of him. She said it was always a mistake to think of a director as a human being
.

Mr. Niven told me it is best not to take sides in such matters. Most of the crew have taken Miss Barrett’s
,
partly because they adore Mr. Flynn
,
partly because Himself
,
when he does emerge from his trailer
,
is so snappish and unpleasant. There is something about that man I don’t like. My Edward believes he is a genius and terribly misunderstood. Edward thinks Miss Barrett is a witch. Actually
,
he used a stronger word than that. College man
.

August 10

Mercifully
,
they finish today. A party is planned in town tonight. I suppose I shall have to go
.

Something rather strange happened this morning. They had been shooting the last bedroom scene upstairs in my old room
,
the scene in which John Raymond bursts in on Vangie while she is dressing to demand once and for all whether she loves him or De Cheverier
.
Her sister
,
Lavinia
,
little Fern O’Baugh
,
happens to be in the room at the time
,
as is Bessie
,
Vangie’s wise old personal maid. Pearl Blue plays Bessie and is a dear. It being rather cramped and narrow up there
,
I stayed out of the way during filming. When they were done
,
I went up to see Fern. I was at the top of the stairs when I heard a scream
,
and then Fern came flying out of the sitting room
,
her face white
,
her wig cockeyed. The poor child practically knocked me over in her haste to get down the stairs. I wondered
,
naturally
,
what had happened. When I went in there
,
I found only Pearl and the makeup girl
,
Cookie Jahr
,
finishing up. I asked them what on earth had frightened Fern so. They had no idea. They said she had been chatting gaily away when suddenly
,
without warning
,
she had screamed and run out of the room. Mystified
,
I went next door into the bedroom. The crew had cleared out. However
,
I did find Mr. Sloan in there with one other —

That was it. Alma’s notebook ended here. The rest had been torn out.

W
HY HAD FERN O’BAUGH
screamed?

What had she seen? Whatever it was, someone had made damned sure there’d never be anything on paper about it.

Alma Glaze hadn’t changed her mind about how to end
Sweet Land of Liberty
, as Frederick had advised me. I knew better. She, or someone else, had torn out those last pages of her diary because of what they had to say about Sterling Sloan, and how he died. But what? Who had been there in Vangie’s room with him? What had been going on? How was I going to find out? Fern had told me time was running out. She’d mentioned the golden-anniversary celebration. Did a survivor from the cast or crew know something? Cookie Jahr, the makeup girl? No telling. I only knew that something had been covered up just like Fern said. And that somebody wanted it to stay that way. Real bad.

I put the notebook down and yawned and knuckled my eyes. It was past one. The rain had let up. The fire was just a glow of coals. Lulu was asleep in her chair, Sadie in the kindling box. Across the courtyard, the east wing was dark. The Glazes were asleep, too.

I carried Sadie next door. Gordie’s light was on. So was his TV. He was fast asleep before it on the love seat in his Washington Redskins knit pj’s. I turned off the TV and picked him up off the sofa. He didn’t weigh much. I carried him up the spiral staircase to his room and got him into the bed without waking him. Or so I thought.

I was reaching for his bedroom light when he opened his eyes. “Had me a looth tooth, Hoagy. Bottom tooth.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Fell out. Kept it though.” He sure did. He had it clutched right there in his clammy little hand.

“That’s swell, Gordie. Real nice.”

“There a tooth fairy here?” he asked gravely.

“I seriously doubt it.”

Out came the lower lip. He rolled over and faced the wall, crestfallen.

Don’t look at me that way. I never claimed I was good with kids. Just that I don’t like them. “Uh … actually, I’m pretty sure there
is
one, Gordie. Has to be one. I mean, this is the planet earth, isn’t it?”

He turned back to me, brightening considerably. “Hoagy?”

“Yeah, Gordie?”

“G’night, Hoagy.”

I turned out his light. “Good night, Gordie.”

I slipped across the courtyard and into the east wing, which was left unlocked at night for Gordie’s sake. I closed the kitchen door softly behind me. It was dark in there, except for a light over the stove, and quiet aside from the hum of the refrigerator and the growl of my stomach. Charlotte’s meat loaf at supper tasted as if it had been made from remnants of the Berlin Wall. As sandwich makings, however, it might do. I found its remains in the fridge, cut a slab, and slathered two pieces of bread with mayo and ketchup and Fern’s homemade pickle relish. I took a bite. Not terrible. I opened a beer and drank from it. I went into Fern’s bedroom off the kitchen and turned on the light.

It was a small, narrow room. Single bed with rock-maple headboard and woven white cotton spread. Matching maple dresser and nightstand.
Oh
,
Shenandoah
memorabilia crowded the walls. Autographed photos of a fifteen-year-old Fern, costumed and bewigged, standing on the set with Sloan, with Barrett, with Flynn. Framed pages from her shooting script. A review from the local paper that singled out her fresh beauty and fine performance. It had been the high point of her life. I wondered, as I ate my sandwich, if it had been on her mind as she tumbled headlong down that stairway.

There was a paperback copy of a Jackie Collins novel on the nightstand next to an old-fashioned windup alarm clock. One drawer, shallow, containing two pairs of eyeglasses, a prescription bottle of high blood pressure pills with her doctor’s name on it, two rolls of pennies, a small tin of Bag Balm antiseptic ointment, and a snub-nosed, .38-caliber Smith & Wesson Chief Special, loaded. There were no personal papers of any kind. None in any of the dresser drawers either.

I found them on the top shelf of her closet in a shoebox, a big fat wad of them wrapped in tissue paper and bound up in rubber bands. Love letters, all of them written by the same strong hand on plain white stationery and dated during June and July of the year the movie had been made:
Fern
,
my darling
,
I cannot eat or sleep for the pain and longing of thee. I cry out in the night for your touch
… And so on. Each letter was signed
Thine Sweet Prince
. No other name. He wrote her poetry, too, with no apologies to either Emily Dickinson or Hallmark:

O beauty, whose name be Fern

She who comes to me whilst I sleep

It is for her lips
,
pouting blossom
,
I yearn

And for her pure
,
pure heart I weep
.

There were dozens more of them. I wrapped them back up and pocketed them and put the shoebox back up on the top shelf of the closet. I turned around to discover Mercy standing there in the bedroom doorway, blond hair tousled, blinking from the light. She wore a sleeveless white cotton nightshirt and nothing over it. The material wasn’t quite sheer but it wasn’t exactly flannel either. I could see the curve of her hips beneath it, the ripe fullness of her breasts and thighs. On her feet she wore a pair of fuzzy slippers fashioned to look like giant bear paws.

“What are you doing in here?” she wondered, yawning.

“Got hungry,” I replied. “Wandered in and started looking at all of Fern’s pictures. Sorry if I woke you.”

She ventured into the room a few steps. “Fern was so proud of that,” she said softly, gazing at the wall. She turned to me and swallowed. She didn’t seem quite as confident as she usually did. She glanced at the bed, hesitated. She sat down on it, hands folded in her lap. “You didn’t. Wake me, I mean. I’ve been tossing and turning.”

“Thinking about her?”

“More about Polk, to tell you the truth.”

“What about him?”

She shrugged her shoulders. Her bare arms were smooth and strong. I offered her my beer. She reached for it and took a small sip.

“Kind of hard on him, aren’t you?” I suggested.

“Maybe I am,” she conceded. “There’s just something so solemn and perfect about him that sometimes I can’t help myself, y’know? I mean, there’s no trace of the man after he leaves the room — he’s odorless, colorless, tasteless … ”

“He’s a politician,” I pointed out. “To the bone.”

She helped herself to more of my beer. “I really do like him. He’s kind and fair. It’s just that mother
loves
him, and I feel like she’s pushing me into it. I’m used to that. Mother has never given me much freedom. Most of the time that’s okay. I know she wants what’s best for me. But this … ” She trailed off, stabbed at the braided rug with her giant slipper. “Sometimes I think I’d like to buy a ticket to somewhere, anywhere, and just go and not tell a soul. And never come back.” She looked up at me. “I know what you’re going to say — never is an awfully long time.”

“No, that’s a little Manilowish for me.”

“All I’ve ever done is go to school. There are so many places I still want to go, so many things I want to experience. I can’t even begin to think about settling down and marrying Polk. I mean, how can I know if I even want to stay here until I’ve been somewhere else first?”

“You can’t,” I replied. “I took a year off when I got out of school. Bummed my way through Europe. Scribbled in a notebook. It was something I needed to do before I settled down.”

“And were you glad you did it?”

“I don’t know yet. I still haven’t settled down.”

She looked at me seriously. “How come you seem to understand me and no one else here does?”

I left that one alone, very aware of her there on the bed. Her soft young mouth, the smell of her. She smelled like baby powder. Merilee smelled like Crabtree & Evelyn avocado-oil soap, though I can’t imagine what made me think of that just now. “My parents didn’t understand me either,” I said. “Still don’t.”

“Does that bother you?”

“Only if I think about it.”

“Fern sort of did,” Mercy said. “But she never did have the nerve to leave here. Do things on her own.”

“How about your uncles?”

“My uncle Edward has traveled a lot. But he’s a guarded sort of person. He and I have never found it easy to talk to one another. It’s easier to talk to Uncle Frederick, only he still treats me like I’m a little girl.”

“He mentioned that someone at your school might be willing to track down period detail for me.”

“How about me?”

“You?”

“I’d love to help you. It would be an honor, really. I’m really good at library work. Just let me know what you need and I’ll find it for you. Okay?”

She stuck out her hand. We were in the process of shaking on it when Mavis appeared in the doorway wearing a blue silk robe, her tight copper ponytail brushed loose. She didn’t like any of it — her daughter sitting there on the bed in her see-through nightshirt. The empty bottle of beer. The two of us holding hands. She didn’t like it one bit. She turned her icy blue eyes on me, jaw clenched under her permanent smile. “You’re fired!” she snapped. “Get out!”