The Biograph Girl Read online

  “Oh, yes,” the old nun says. “Sister Jean told me he was having visitors.”

  She pulls open the door with noticeable difficulty. Richard observes, with his reporter’s eye, that she has a limp: one leg is longer than the other, fitted with a higher black shoe. She closes the door behind them. “I’m Sister Augustine,” she says cheerfully.

  “I’m Anita Murawski,” Anita says. “And this is Richard Sheehan. He’s … my brother-in-law.”

  Sister Augustine keeps her eyes on Anita, as if she were studying her. Richard’s busy looking around, taking in the vastness of the room. It’s a large foyer, with a parquetry floor and a cathedral ceiling open through to the second-floor landing. A great curving staircase, with marble steps and polished oak banister, ascends from the middle of the room. In the center hangs an ornate chandelier of gold gilt, dripping with crystals. On this floor, several plush chairs are arranged around an antique Heppelwhite desk, on which rests a Bible. A simple wooden crucifix hangs on the wall, facing a somber portrait of the Pope.

  “Nice place you got here.” Richard smiles.

  “Oh, thank you,” Sister Augustine says. “I’ve been here for fifty years. I remember the day the Bishop first blessed the place.”

  “Fifty years,” Richard repeats. For a moment he considers interviewing her.

  “Please,” she says, gesturing with her bony hand toward the chairs. “Have a seat. I’ll tell Sister Jean you’re here.”

  “Thank you,” Anita says. They watch as Sister Augustine hobbles down the hallway and disappears around the bend.

  “Brother-in-law,” Richard whispers. “That’s expanding the definition of family. Not sure the Catholic hierarchy would approve.”

  Anita smirks. “You’re my live-in boyfriend’s brother. Makes sense to me.”

  “Perfect sense. Except the ‘in-law’ part is kind of a contradiction in terms.”

  They hear the clack of shoes coming down the hall. From the gait it’s obvious this newcomer is no relic like Sister Augustine. Richard and Anita look up to see a tall, pretty woman with short reddish-blond hair and a scattering of light freckles across her cheeks. She’s young—early to mid-thirties, probably—and dressed in a conservative plaid skirt and white blouse. A simple silver crucifix hangs from around her neck.

  “Ms. Murawski?” she says. “I’m Sister Jean.”

  The women shake hands. “This is Richard Sheehan,” Anita says, pointing over at Richard.

  Sister Jean takes his hand and smiles warmly. “The brother-in-law, Sister Augustine said,” she remarks. “So are you related to Stanley as well?”

  “No,” Richard says with a grin. “I’m—from the other side of the family.”

  Sister Jean nods. “Well, shall we go upstairs? Stanley has been so excited about your visit. He says you’re going to interview him.”

  “Yes,” Anita says. “Well, Richard is.”

  They begin to climb the marble staircase. “You’re a writer, Mr. Sheehan?” Sister Jean asks as they go.

  “Yep,” Richard responds, tapping his tape recorder in his jacket pocket. “At least, that’s what I call myself.”

  “Who do you write for?”

  “Anyone who’ll pay me.” He laughs. “This particular piece is for the Times Sunday magazine.”

  “And the subject …?”

  “I’m writing about the very old. How it feels to live so long. What living does to a person, decade after decade after decade.”

  They reach the top of the stairs. Sister Jean pauses at the landing. “Did you see the article in National Geographic a few months ago about those old Russian women? They were like a hundred and forty or something astounding like that, and they said they attributed it all to cold air.”

  Richard smiles. Sister Jean seems warm, quite real, and natural—nothing like the harpies he remembers from St. Thomas à Becket Academy back in Chicopee. “That’s not what my piece is going to be about,” he tells her. “I want to write about the experience of living, of being one person one year and another twenty years later—how we change, how we grow, and, I suppose, how we stay the same. How we adapt to a world that often changes faster than we do.”

  “Mighty big topics,” Sister Jean says.

  “Well, these people have lived through so much,” Richard says. “I’m thirty-four, and sometimes I can’t remember what life was like pre-ATM machines and computers. I’ve never written on a typewriter. But these people were around before automobiles—before Social Security!”

  Jean laughs. “I often wonder myself how people got by without voice mail and answering machines. I imagine we’ll be saying the same thing about E-mail soon enough.”

  “In my line of work, I say it already.”

  Jean cocks her head at him. “So your wife must be Stanley’s niece as well?”

  “Oh, I’m not married,” Richard says, moving his eyes over to look at Anita. She bites her lip.

  Sister Jean is looking at him. “Then you must—”

  “Be gay,” Richard finishes with a little smile. He loves doing that, just to see people’s reactions.

  The nun seems only momentarily taken aback. “That wasn’t what I was going to suggest,” she says. “I was going to say then you must be the brother of Ms. Murawski’s husband.”

  “My twin brother is Anita’s boyfriend,” Richard explains. “Hence the brother-in-law.”

  Richard senses something cool about Sister Jean. He usually trusts his instincts. They’ve served him well tracking down stories and saved his ass a couple times. He figures she can accept their rather unorthodox set of relationships.

  “Well,” Sister Jean says, grinning, “if your boyfriend is Mr. Sheehan’s twin, Ms. Murawski, he must be very good-looking and charming.”

  “Oh, don’t say that in front of Richard,” Anita laughs. “He already knows he’s cute. Too well.”

  “Actually, Sister,” Richard says in a conspiratorial whisper, “you’d never know Ben and I were twins. See, I comb my hair and clean my nails.”

  “Don’t start,” Anita warns. “Ben’s just a little—well, less precise about his appearance.”

  They resume walking, heading down a wide corridor. Richard looks into the rooms as they pass. He makes out withered bare feet with hardened toenails protruding off the ends of beds. In the doorway of one room an old woman sits in a wheelchair with a purple velvet ribbon in her hair. Her face comes alive for a second when she sees them approach, but then it fades again, and she resumes the circular motion of her hands on the tray in front of her.

  Richard notices Anita shiver. He slips his arm around her waist as they walk.

  “I understand you’re an actress,” Sister Jean says to Anita.

  “Yes.”

  “Might I have seen you somewhere?”

  “Commercials mostly. I’ve done some off Broadway. Well, off-off-Broadway.”

  “And don’t forget Miami Vice,” Richard says.

  “Oh, you, hush,” Anita tells him.

  “Actually, Sister,” Richard says, “Anita and my partner, Rex, who’s also an actor, have both appeared in my brother’s movies. Ben’s a filmmaker.”

  “How fascinating,” Sister Jean says. She stops walking abruptly. “Well, here we are,” she announces.

  They peer into Uncle Stan’s room. Sister Jean steps aside so that Anita can go first. She enters a bit timidly, knocking gently on the opened door and whispering, “Uncle Stan?” They all step quietly inside.

  The first thing Richard notices is not the old man asleep in the bed, but the picture hanging on the opposite wall. It’s a faded old theater poster, featuring a raven-haired woman in a pink-plumed hat. A large water stain has dried across the bottom. Richard can make out the words:

  THE MAJESTIC THEATER, INDIANAPOLIS

  And below that is a list of all the theater’s acts, headed up by somebody named Gaby Dubois. Maybe she’s the woman with the pink plumes. Richard walks up to the poster, which is framed and safeguarded beh
ind a pane of glass. Rex would love this, he thinks. Rex is a big old movie and theater freak. He does a one-man show playing all the Barrymores, from Maurice down to Drew.

  Anita has approached Uncle Stan’s bed. “I hate to wake him,” she says. “He seems so peaceful.”

  The thin white sheet has been drawn up to his waist. He wears a red-and-white-checked flannel nightshirt. His head is tipped back, and his mouth is open, a toothless black hole, but he doesn’t snore. For an old man, he still has a considerable amount of hair, shockingly white against his pillow. His face is lined deeply; his Adam’s apple is prominent in his scrawny neck.

  “Uncle Stan?” Anita whispers.

  He doesn’t move, not so much as the flutter of an eyelid. “You know,” Anita says, looking up at Sister Jean, “I can’t imagine he’ll recognize me after all these years.”

  “Oh, he was quite aware of you when we spoke this morning,” the nun says. “He told me that you were his favorite sister’s granddaughter and that you were a famous actress.”

  Anita smiles, turning back to the man in the bed. “Uncle Stan?”

  Richard glances at the theater poster again. The eyes of the lady with the plumes are the kind that appear to follow you around the room. He feels a chill. He looks back at the old man in the bed.

  “Uncle Stan?” Anita says, a little louder now.

  “Stanley, your niece is here,” Sister Jean announces in an official voice.

  Richard peers in closely. “Uh,” he says. “I don’t think he’s breathing.”

  Anita has placed her hand on Uncle Stan’s shoulder. She pulls it back quickly. “Oh, my God,” she gasps.

  Sister Jean moves quickly to grip the old man’s pulse. She appears to count in her head. She drops his wrist and then leans in fiercely in front of his face. “Stanley!”

  “Oh, my God,” Anita repeats, stepping backward, bumping into Richard.

  Sister Jean presses a buzzer beside the bed.

  “Is he …?” Anita asks.

  “Katie!” Sister Jean barks suddenly, stepping back to call out the door. “Sister Kate!”

  “It’s okay, Neet,” Richard says, putting his arm around Anita.

  A gray-haired nun in a black veil and a floral-print dress appears in the doorway. “Give me the stethoscope,” Sister Jean orders. Sister Kate unhooks it from around her waist and hands it over. Sister Jean plugs the stethoscope into her ears and slips it up under the old man’s shirt. She listens.

  Anita’s eyes are wide. “Is he …?”

  Sister Jean’s face relaxes into resignation. She makes the Sign of the Cross. She unplugs the stethoscope and lets it dangle in front of her. “Miss Murawski, I am very sorry.”

  “He’s dead,” Anita says in stunned disbelief.

  “I am truly, truly sorry,” Sister Jean repeats, and her eyes mist over. “He was alert and talking this morning, so excited about your visit.”

  “He’s dead,” Anita says, turning to Richard, as if he hadn’t heard.

  He can’t help but smile. “Sorry, babe,” he says and laughs a little. Then a little more.

  Anita does, too. “Oh, my God,” she says, laughing. “We drove for six hours—”

  Richard starts laughing so hard he drops into the chair behind him. “Four hundred miles!”

  Anita covers her mouth and looks over at Sister Jean, who appears bewildered by their laughter. “You must think we’re terrible,” she says. “It’s just that—well, I hardly knew him—and, well, Richard kept thinking this was going to be a waste of time and I kept telling him, no, Uncle Stan was sharp as a—” She bubbles over into laughter again.

  “Go on, Katie,” Sister Jean tells the other nun. “I’ll take it from here.”

  Richard’s laughing silently in the chair. Anita giggles a little as she looks down at Uncle Stan. “Well, rest in peace, you sweet old man.”

  “He really was, you know,” Sister Jean says. “I’ve only been here a little more than a year, but he was one of the dearest men at St. Mary’s.”

  Anita gently strokes his spotted gray hand. “He’s still warm,” she says tenderly. She looks up at Sister Jean. “I suppose you’ll need to call a doctor or something to pronounce him dead.”

  “Actually, I can do that. I’m a nurse-practitioner—part of the reason they wanted me as administrator here.” She winks over at them. “Kind of a jill-of-all-trades, you know. But I will need to call his next of kin—his daughter, Mrs. Gawlak. She must be … your mother’s aunt, yes?”

  “That’s right,” Anita says. “My aunt Trinka.” She makes a sour face.

  “I’m sure she’ll want to come up,” Sister Jean says. “She’s not far away—just up in Niagara Falls. Maybe you’d want to wait for her.”

  “No, Sister. Frankly I wouldn’t. Aunt Trinka has never approved of my—lifestyle, shall we say. Looks down on actresses.”

  Sister Jean smiles. “I think we’ve all got an aunt Trinka somewhere.”

  They’ve moved away from the bed and are now standing near the door. “But you know what?” Anita says. “I imagine you must have a chapel here. Maybe I should go say a prayer or something—and you can tell Aunt Trinka I did at least that, okay?”

  Sister Jean nods. “I’ll be sure to tell her what a devoted niece you were.”

  “Thanks, Sister.”

  Sister Jean calls again to Sister Kate and asks her to take Anita to the chapel. Anita starts to follow, then turns back to Richard. “Sorry for the wasted trip,” she says with a crooked little smile.

  “Hey,” he says, “people die.”

  Anita suddenly looks as if she’s going to cry. She disappears around the corner after Sister Kate.

  There’s a moment of awkward silence. Then Richard says with a sigh, “Ninety-four. Guess that’s not too bad, huh?”

  Sister Jean smiles. “Oh, we’ve got older folks than him.”

  Richard looks at her, an idea suddenly striking him. “Sister, I wonder, since we’ve come all the way here—” He pauses, clumsy in his request. “I wonder—are there any others at St. Mary’s who are very old—ninety or over—whose memories are still sharp? Who might be willing to talk with me?”

  He watches as the nun’s eyes move past him, over his shoulder. Her gaze seems to come to rest on the old theater poster on the wall. Her face betrays nothing for a moment, and Richard fears he may have offended her, may have encroached upon the safe environment she’s devoted herself to ensuring the old folks. But then she smiles and returns her gaze to Richard’s face.

  “I tell you what, Mr. Sheehan. I need to call Mr. Soboleski’s daughter, and I’ve got to get someone to attend to him, dress him up nice and all that. And then there’s a ton of paperwork and—well, I may not have a chance to take you around to meet everyone. But I can—” She pauses, seeming to consider something. “I can leave you with someone who’ll probably have everything you’re looking for and then some.”

  Richard grins.

  “Mr. Sheehan,” Sister Jean tells him, “let me introduce you to Flo.”

  One Hundred Years Earlier

  So. Where to begin?

  The stage, I think. That’s where it all started for me. Everything. The stage was my kindergarten. My earliest memories are all lit with footlights shining up into my eyes. Not much of a childhood, some have judged. But I tell those blue-nosed busybodies I regret nothing in my life—so long as I enjoyed doing it at the time.

  And I loved performing on the stage—or, more accurately, I loved the applause. That’s the rub of it, you know, the heart of all my troubles in my life. My love of the applause. But I’ve come to learn—and you should remember this if you want to understand everything else—that if you want a place in the sun you’ve got to expect a few blisters on your face.

  So it’s not surprising that walking along the coast highway I thought less of Molly and the events of the past day than about that old theater—oh, where was it? Indianapolis, I think—the night I saw my first moving pictures, bac
k before the century had turned.

  Between the steady crash of waves, I could hear the incessant clatter of dancers’ shoes as they scurried up the wooden steps to the stage. Strange, isn’t it, that with a life as colorful as mine it would be sound that first comes to my mind. You’d think it would be images, hues, textures I’d remember first: the faded red of the velvet curtain or the pink plumes of Gaby’s hat. But instead what always comes first is the barking of trained seals, the tinkling of old pianos, the applause of the audience. Above all, that’s what I remembered that night standing on the beach: the thunder of the crowd, the hoots of appreciation, the whistles, the whoops. The applause.

  I was hidden in a fold of musty-smelling curtain, its edges frayed, its gold fringe loose and straggly. Like my hair.

  “Florence,” Mother scolded. “Come here immediately.”

  The dancers on stage had started their act. The piano player’s shaky tenor struggled to rise above the tap-tap-tap of the girls’ shoes. “Wait—till—the sun shines—Nellie—”

  “Honestly,” my mother said, pulling me roughly from the curtain by my arm towards her, “why can’t you take better care of yourself?” She thrust a comb into my hair.

  “She looks fine, Lotta,” Ducks told her. “The crowd will love her, as they always do.”

  My mother scoffed at him. Ducks was forever getting in the way, telling her how to raise me. My earliest memories are of him, not of my mother, who was off touring with a company only a few months after I was born. The very first thing I ever remember is Ducks’s harmonica, the sound of it, tinny and repetitious, filtering into my bedroom late at night. That and the smell of his cigar. Whenever I’d call out, he’d come in, puffing away, reassuring me that someone was indeed outside that door.

  Ducks. Henry Ambrose Duxworthy, from the little town of Romney Marsh, in County Kent, England. He used to tell me stories of hillsides covered with sheep, of the great white cliffs of Dover, of the music halls of London, where he’d gotten his start. There had been some nasty business with a boy—he never quite explained what—but he stowed away in the steerage of a great ocean liner and arrived in New York penniless and without a friend. Oh, Ducks loved a good story, but I had no reason to doubt him about this. On the London stage, he’d been a master juggler, and he found work in the burlesque theaters of New York. Later, he hooked up with a traveling troupe of acrobats and played all over North America. He was young, agile, and carefree, and at fifty-five—the age he was now—he still possessed a youth’s merry twinkle and love of mischief.