The Biograph Girl Read online

  “Dead?” Rex repeats. “You mean you got all the way up there and—”

  “And the old guy was history,” Richard finishes, standing back up. “What do you want, Neet? I’ll go up to the counter.”

  “A mochacinno,” she says. Richard nods, heading off to place their order.

  “So what a waste of time, huh?” Rex asks.

  “Not exactly,” she says.

  Ben senses something in her tone. “What do you mean, not exactly?” he asks.

  She grins over at him. “We have an idea for you, sweetheart.”

  Ben pulls back just a little. “What do you mean, an idea for me?”

  “Now don’t go getting all defensive,” she says.

  “Ben’s got his own idea,” Rex tells her. “We went to see Xerxes today.”

  She looks at Ben. He can see a little hurt in her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It’s just that—well, it’s still taking shape.”

  Richard’s returned with Anita’s mochacinno and his own cup of coffee, dark black. Anita thanks him, takes a sip. Ben watches her intently.

  “Did you tell him?” Richard asks.

  “No,” Anita says.

  Ben ignores whatever’s on their minds. “So you didn’t see Uncle Stan at all?”

  “Just his body,” Anita says quietly. “And I even said a prayer. I told the nun in charge to tell Aunt Trinka, who was on her way up.”

  “Oh, God. Did you see her?”

  “No,” Anita says. “We made it out just in time.” The week after One Chance, One World got written up in the Times, Aunt Trinka’s only comment was: “Too many pinko films already.”

  “Excuse me,” a man says, bending down at their table. They all look up at him. “Are you two … brothers?”

  It’s a good-looking muscle boy in a white-rib tank. He hovers over their table with a quizzical expression on his face. Ben notices Richard spark right up. What was it about gay men that made them always on the ready?

  “Twins,” Richard says, and Ben detects his brother’s chest swelling out.

  “No,” says the muscle boy in disbelief, looking back and forth between them—but mostly at Richard. He balances an enormous cup of coffee in his palm. “Both gay?”

  “Ben hasn’t come out yet,” Rex interjects, and they all laugh—Richard and the muscle boy especially, eyes still locked—in that annoying way gay guys laugh together.

  “Oh, no, not my Benny,” Anita chimes in, grabbing his arm and pulling him in for a kiss. “He’s one of the last of the original straight men.”

  “Yeah, like Abbott for Costello,” Richard jokes.

  Ben just grins.

  “Nature versus nurture,” the muscle boy says, shrugging as he moves on.

  As if he even knows what that means, Ben thinks. Ditz head.

  “What is it with gay guys these days?” Ben asks. “Do you all have to have seventeen-inch biceps to be admitted into the club?”

  “No,” Richard says, deadpan. “I think they’ll let you in with sixteen.” He winks. “Let’s see,” he says, raising Ben’s arm.

  “Cut it out,” Ben snaps, pulling his arm back. “Why don’t you go follow muscle head over there and deconstruct Judy Garland films?”

  Rex laughs. “Hey, Ben,” he says, “speaking of Judy, I’ve got a great idea. Seriously. What about doing something on a star who died mysteriously? People like that kind of thing. Hollywood scandal and intrigue. Like Marilyn.”

  “She’s been done to death,” Richard says. “Excuse the pun.”

  “Then Jean Harlow,” Rex says. “Or, I know—Thelma Todd.”

  “Who’s she?” Anita asks.

  Rex’s eyes glow. He leans across the table toward Ben. “Thelma Todd would be perfect. She was killed by gangsters back in the thirties. Gorgeous blonde. Funny, too. You could get clips from her films—”

  “Rex,” Ben says, exhausted, “how timely is that? Who’d care about some old forgotten film star?”

  He shrugs. “I would.” He gets campy, swishing an invisible cigarette between his fingers as if he were Bette Davis. “Lots of us remember Thelma Todd. Lots of us!”

  “Well, that’s the gist of the idea we had,” Anita says. “Will you at least hear us out, Ben?”

  He sighs. “Go ahead.”

  “It’d be a documentary on life.” Anita sounds like Richard. “On living. On what living does to a person. About all the different lives we lead in the course of one long life.”

  “I’m not sure I follow,” Ben says.

  “I like it,” Rex offers. Ben shoots him a look.

  “Just listen, Ben. We found the perfect subject. We met her today at St. Mary’s. She’s one hundred and six. Sharp as anything. Sharper. She’s wild. She’s hot. She’s—”

  “A former actress,” Richard tells Rex, looking over at his lover.

  “Really? From what?”

  “Vaudeville, I guess,” Anita says. “We didn’t get all the details. But she started telling us some stories about her days on the stage, about one-legged acrobats and singers—she’s so sharp, so spunky. She whistled for us!”

  “Whistled?” Rex asks.

  “Yeah, that’s what she did as a little girl on the stage.” Richard laughs. “It was amazing. What did they call her again?”

  “The Baby Whistler or something,” Anita says. “Anyway, her name is Florence Bridgewood, and she’s perfect, Ben. Just perfect.”

  She looks at him. He doesn’t respond. He just looks back at her. “Thanks, hon,” he says at last. “But I’m sticking with Marge Schott.”

  “Marge Schott?” Anita asks.

  “Marge Schott?” Richard repeats.

  Ben sighs, picks up his coffee cup, sees that it’s empty, then puts it down. “Look, I’m sure your old actress is a fascinating old lady, but I want to make a splash here. This isn’t my first film. I need a major follow-up to One Chance—I have to go high profile. Something that’s going to get noticed.”

  Anita sighs, sounding like the air rushing from a deflated tire.

  “I appreciate the suggestion, though,” Ben says. “I really do. It’s a good idea for an article. But not a documentary. Marge Schott—now there’s a topic. Her name’s been in all the papers. I mean, who the hell is Florence Bridgewood?”

  “That’s what I’m wondering,” Rex says quietly. Ben looks over at him. He seems lost in thought. “What did you say they called her on the stage?”

  “The Baby Whistler,” Anita says.

  “No, no,” Richard says. “That’s not it. Baby Flo—that’s what they called her.”

  “Baby Flo,” Rex repeats as if trying it out in his mind. “The Child Wonder Whistler.”

  “Yeah,” Richard says, looking over at him. “That’s it. How’d you know?”

  “Have you heard of her?” Anita asks.

  “I’ve seen the name,” Rex says, thinking. Then he seems to remember where and laughs. “But, no, it can’t be her. Can’t be the one I’m thinking of.”

  “Why not?” Anita asks.

  “Because Baby Flo, the Child Wonder Whistler, has been dead for more than fifty years.” He grins. “She grew up to be the world’s first movie star, and she killed herself after her career faded. She took poison, I think. Ant paste or something like that.”

  “That’s horrible,” Anita says, recoiling. “Well, this woman was very much alive.”

  “What was her last name again?” Rex asks.

  “Bridgewood.”

  “Florence Bridgewood,” Rex says more to himself than anyone else. “I’ll look her up when I get home later. I’ll report back what I find out.”

  “Well, tell her,” Ben says, pointing to Anita. “Because I want to be clear with you all. This isn’t my story.”

  Richard smirks. “We heard you, Ben. Loud and clear.”

  New Year’s Day, 1939

  She was my first friend in my new life. Her name was Doris, and I thought she was beautiful.

  �
��Jeepers” was her first word to me. I looked up into great saucers for eyes, deep brown like the coffee she poured for me. “You sure look like you’ve been through the wringer.”

  I imagined I did indeed look that way. For the briefest of seconds, I averted my eyes. Might she recognize me? Don’t be silly, Flo, I told myself. She’s not going to recognize you. She’s far too young.

  “You all right, honey?” she asked, leaning in toward me.

  I was sitting on a stool in the roadside diner where she worked. I can still smell the strong coffee brewing on the stove, the wafting cinnamon of fresh-baked doughnuts.

  I glanced up at the mirror behind the counter. The left side of my face was sunburned. My nose was crusty with blood. My hair was windswept. My dress was torn—I’d pinned it together with a safety pin I’d miraculously found in my purse—and dirty with sand. My calves and shins were scraped.

  “Yes,” I told her. “I’m all right.”

  And I was. Really, I was. Sitting there, drinking coffee, still alive—that proved I was all right. I’d followed the road along the coast, always heading north. I accepted no more rides, just kept walking. I stopped to rest only when my legs felt as if they’d burn off, and I ate only at night, from trash cans that stood behind people’s houses. Once a man spotted me and shooed me away from his back porch as if I were some stray cat. I slept on the beach, shivering, covering myself with an old tarp that had once wrapped somebody’s boat. I urinated under piers; I drank water from an old rusty faucet. None of it caused me to ponder; I felt no irony in who I had been and what I had become. I had stopped thinking. I processed none of it, not once feeling even slightly afraid or sorry for myself. How many days passed I wasn’t sure. Not until the morning I stumbled into Doris’s diner did I finally lift my eyes up from the ground and take a good look at where I was.

  The clock on the wall read ten o’clock. There was no one else in the diner but me.

  “I’ve given you some extra toast,” Doris said, setting a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon in front of me. “Looks like you could use it.”

  I smiled up at her in gratitude.

  “Too much partyin’ last night, huh?” she asked, clearly curious about this strange old creature that sat before her. She leaned on the counter with her elbows, staring at me.

  I wasn’t sure what she meant, so I just smiled at her again.

  “I knew I’d get a few stragglers from the party over at the Rotarians’ club,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “When I opened at five, there was already a line. Folks so hungover they could drink six cups of black coffee and still stagger out of here. Nobody since then, though. Everybody’s sleeping it off. Me, I just went to bed at nine-thirty. Why bother waiting up till twelve? What’s the big deal with midnight anyway? It’s just another day.”

  “So,” I said, realizing it for the first time, “it’s … New Year’s Day.”

  She looked at me in puzzlement. “Gosh, I guess you did have a real swell time last night.”

  I laughed, just a little. “It’s my birthday,” I said. Just a week ago I had dreaded this day—but now that it was here, it made me feel giddy. Alive.

  She raised her coffee cup in salute. “A New Year’s baby, huh?”

  “Mother always said I waited until one minute after midnight.” I smiled.

  “Well, I won’t even ask you how old you are, so don’t worry about that.”

  I observed her. Thirty, maybe. But with years added around her eyes. She might have been as old as I was if you just looked at her eyes.

  “All that matters is I’ve crossed the line of forty,” I told her. “That’s the line in the sand for women. Before that, you can rely on Max Factor. After forty, you’re responsible for your own face.”

  “Well, you’ve got a good face,” she told me. She startled me with her assessment. I managed a small smile.

  “So you had double reason to celebrate last night,” she went on. “Well, good for you. Me, I just went to bed.” Yes, her eyes revealed how tired she was. “Besides, I had to get up early and come in here. Where’d you blow in from?”

  Her eyes. So dark. She might have been Mexican.

  “Hollywood,” I told her.

  She smiled queerly at me. “That’s a long drive from here.”

  “No,” I said, weakly lifting a forkful of eggs to my mouth. “I walked.”

  “Walked?” She backed away from me. “Honey, Hollywood’s almost a hundred miles away.”

  “Yes, I know,” I said quietly. “I’m going to San Francisco.”

  “San Francisco?” She ran her hands over her black hair, whch was wrapped in a white hair net. “Lady, you can’t walk to San Francisco.”

  “No,” I agreed. I snapped open my purse, which sat beside me on the counter. I took out the gold pocket watch. “I aim to pawn this to buy a bus ticket.”

  She squinted at it. “Is it real gold?”

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted, “but I imagine it is.”

  “How long have you been walking?”

  “A few days.”

  “A few days.” She sighed, shaking her head. “And your birthday, too. Why don’t you go to the little girls’ room and wash up? There are some clean towels on the shelf over the sink. I’ll keep your breakfast hot.”

  I did as she suggested. The water felt good against my face. I combed my hair roughly with my fingers, peering hard into the mirror. I tried to sear my memory with my appearance, to remember always what I looked like in that moment.

  It worked. I have never forgotten that face.

  “My name’s Doris,” she told me when I came out and took my seat again at the counter. She had refilled my coffee cup. She poured herself some more too, and came around to sit on the stool beside me. I finished my breakfast. Nothing has ever tasted better, before or since. Not the sumptuous feasts Mr. Laemmle wooed me with. Not the elaborate dinners prepared by Charles’s cook or the elegant banquets on the S.S. Olympic. This was by far my greatest feast: slightly runny, very yellow scrambled eggs and four crispy strips of salty bacon.

  “I’m Flo,” I told her.

  When I first sat down, when my mind first began to think again, I had decided I needed a new name. I had even started rolling over a few of them in my mind—but when Doris told me her name, I responded without thinking, telling her the truth. I had many last names to choose from, but I’d always been Flo.

  “Well, Flo,” Doris said, peering close again, “I think you’re going to need a little more than what you’ll get from hocking that pocket watch.”

  “It’s a start,” I told her.

  She grinned. Dark eyes, olive skin. Her nails were painted scarlet and chipped; she wore no lipstick. Her ears were pierced with small gold studs. She chewed gum.

  “You runnin’ from somebody? Don’t have to tell me if you are. I’ve seen a lot of desperate folks come through here. Husbands that can’t find jobs who’ve taken off and left the little lady and kiddies behind. Times are tough.” Doris stood, cleared away my plate. I wiped my mouth with a napkin. “And gals like you,” she said, looking back at me from the sink, “always running from somebody who did ’em wrong.”

  “No one did me wrong,” I said, again without thinking.

  Doris folded her arms across her chest. Her forearms were covered with soft dark hair. “Well, no matter. But like I said, you’re gonna need more than what you can get for that watch.”

  I nodded. “Do you know where I could sell it?”

  “Yeah. There’s a fella coming around in a bit. Hang around until then.”

  She moved off to take the order of two newcomers: a man and a woman, presumably married, well dressed, who had stepped inside the diner to the cheery ring of the bell over the door. They were laughing, sparkling even—celebrating the first day of the new year. I watched them for a bit, the easy way they touched each other, the comfortable silence that settled over them after Doris had moved away. There was no need for extraneous conversation. He helped her
off with her coat. She wore her hair the way Ginger Rogers did, curled up on top and long in the back. They sat in a booth, both on one side.

  I sipped my coffee. I stared back at my reflection in the mirror. I’d gotten some of the blood off, and my hair looked a trifle better. But my dress was still dirty and soiled. The stains of blood and vomit were now covered by a gritty film of sand.

  At the end of the counter were some old newspapers, folded and slipped between the big black cash register and the glass doughnut case. I reached over and pulled one out, opening it in front of me. The Los Angeles Examiner. It was dated December 29.

  I was just trying to wile away the time, waiting for the man Doris said might buy the pocket watch. I don’t think I expected to see what I did there in the newspaper.

  FIRST GREAT FEMININE FILM STAR A SUICIDE

  Front page.

  I’d made the front page.

  The headline continued:

  FLORENCE LAWRENCE ENDS LIFE WITH POISON

  IN HOLLYWOOD HOME AFTER LONG CAREER

  And there was my face, staring up at me from the counter, perfectly framed in an iris. I pulled the paper closer. It wouldn’t do for Doris to recognize me. But I didn’t look like that—not anymore. The caption read:

  THE BIOGRAPH GIRL—IN HER DAYS OF GLORY

  I’d made the front page.

  “Oh, dear God,” I said, and the words seemed to blur together as I tried to read.

  Impoverished and dogged by ill health, Florence Lawrence, first great feminine star of the films, drank ant poison and ended her life in her West Hollywood home yesterday. Miss Lawrence had collapsed when an ambulance arrived before her home at 532 Westbourne Drive and took her to Beverly Hills Receiving Hospital.

  There Dr. Lester Slocum applied a stomach pump and antidotes to no avail. Miss Lawrence died an hour later, at 3:10 P.M.

  “Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh—” I couldn’t go on reading.

  Doris’s voice: “Honey, are you all right?”

  But it was as if she were miles away. I covered my face with my hands.

  “Oh, dear God,” I cried. “Molly!”

  I passed out, falling hard from the stool to the floor.