Crystal

  “Did anything happen?” Crystal heard herself stammering. “What…?”

  “I don’t know what happened,” the nurse said. “I’m so sorry.”

  Rowena dead?

  “But I just spoke to her yesterday!” Crystal’s voice broke as she spoke. “It was just about…” She looked at the clock over the file cabinet. The face of the clock broke up through her tears. The hands moved in uneven orbits.

  “Here’s the coffee.” The volunteer put two cups on the table.

  Crystal looked at the girl, who was probably a year or two older than she was. The girl tried to force a smile and then turned away.

  Crystal cried. Her shoulders shook with the sobs and her eyes burned with the tears. The nurse held her tightly, squeezing her shoulders as if she were going to squeeze every bit of sorrow from her.

  The wind lifted bits of paper from the sidewalk and flung them against her legs outside of the hospital. Where would Rowena be? Crystal remembered ER, the television show. Rowena would be in some cold room. There would be conversations going on about her that she could not hear. There would be lights glaring down at her. She would be still. Her face not made up. Rosa, at the last.

  Tears. Crystal leaning against the dark-brick corner of the hospital. A policeman stood on the sidewalk not far from her. He looked at his watch and turned away.

  She went into the subway. For a moment, she was confused. The nurse had asked her to stay until her mother could come. But what would her mother have said? That it was a shame? That she couldn’t dwell on what had happened to Rowena?

  Where was she? That was the important thing. Where was she?

  Crystal looked into her pocketbook. She had forty dollars in her wallet and fifteen dollars in her pockets. Where would she go?

  She wanted to run home and tell her father. She wanted to say “Daddy, Rowena is dead.”

  “Dead?” he would say. He would look at her and his forehead would move. He would search her face. Maybe he would lift her chin. “Who’s Rowena?” he would ask.

  “A model,” she would say. “A model like me.”

  “How she die?”

  “She tried to kill herself,” Crystal would say. “And then she just gave up trying to live.”

  “Why?” he would ask.

  He would ask why, and she knew he wouldn’t be thinking about Rowena. He would be thinking about her.

  “I don’t know, Daddy,” she would say. “I just don’t know.”

  Then he would grab a beer and storm around the house, dark and brooding. It was his way. He would pound the walls with his fists and with his eyes flashing the anger he felt.

  She would feel sorry for her father. Sorry for his anger and his frustration. But it would be her mother, sitting in the kitchen, her face tightened in the shadows, who would say the things that would push Crystal on to the next day.

  “If you have a chance, honey,” she would say, “you have to take it. We’re like people drowning in our own history. We can’t turn down our chances when they come.”

  Her lips would find words of sorrow for Rowena, and then they would say that Rowena was Rowena and Crystal was Crystal. It wasn’t where she had come from, it wasn’t her history that had failed Rowena, it was the “look” that she had lost. She should have had her eyes fixed. Maybe, even, gone to Europe.

  Crystal thought of going to Rowena’s mother’s house. She would go there and knock on the door. But then there would be nothing to say. Just pain to be rolled around the mouth and offered through lips lined with a shade slightly lighter than her lipstick to make her lips appear less full.

  Crystal stopped at a phone booth and called home. The phone rang several times before she heard her mother’s voice announcing that it was the Browns’ residence.

  “Rowena’s dead, Mommy.”

  “I know, honey,” her mother answered softly. “Loretta called earlier and told me. She suggested that we might all get together for dinner tonight. Of course, your father won’t be able to make it.”

  “I saw Joe Sidney—”

  “Yes, Loretta said he called her.” Her mother’s voice raised in tone the way it did sometimes when she was excited. “He said you read for the part very well. Loretta thinks he must have got the money. Are you on your way home now?”

  “Not yet,” Crystal said. “I have something to do first. Then I’ll be home.”

  “Loretta was thinking about dinner between seven-thirty and eight….” Her mother’s voice trailed off.

  “I’ll try to make it by then,” Crystal said.

  She hung up the phone, hung on to the receiver for support for a long moment, then dropped in another quarter. She made another phone call, then hailed a cab.

  The driver had asked her three times if she had the money for the cab ride from Queens into Manhattan. Crystal knew it was the crying. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop the flow of tears or her shoulders from shaking. The driver was angry. When they reached the address on Bedford Street that Crystal had given him, he jerked the cab to a halt.

  “That’ll be twenty-seven fifty!” he said.

  Crystal took thirty-two dollars from her wallet and gave them to the driver. He looked at the money and at her as she left the cab. He called out his thanks. Crystal wasn’t interested.

  The stairs to the brownstone were spotless, no graffiti marred them. The brass fixtures at the door were polished and the black grillwork freshly painted. Crystal looked at the address on the script. The top of the two addresses was Joe Sidney’s office. The bottom was his home.

  “Come in.” He stepped away from the door.

  Crystal entered.

  “I thought you would change your mind,” he said. “You gotta be smart in this business and you impress me as nobody’s dummy.”

  “I’ve made up my mind,” Crystal said.

  “Sure, that’s why you’re here,” Sidney said. “Look, why don’t you go into the bathroom and fix yourself up. You look a mess. I’ll make us a couple of drinks. We can relax.”

  “I don’t drink,” Crystal replied.

  “Whatever.” Sidney took a cut-glass bottle of Scotch from the bookshelf. “The bathroom’s over there. Make yourself look nice, honey. You know how to do it.”

  “I don’t want the part,” Crystal said. She didn’t want to cry again, either, but the tears came. “I want to give you back your script and then it’s over.”

  “What are you talking about?” Sidney downed his drink and poured another one.

  “I’ve made up my mind.”

  “You’re upset,” Sidney said. “Get Loretta on the phone. Come on, hurry up! Get that agent of yours on the phone!”

  Crystal had planned to say that she didn’t like what she had to do or who she had become. She wanted to say something about Rowena, that the girl she had come to know, whom she had walked down the street with, whose mother she had visited, wasn’t just a “look” that had passed. She was more than a pretty face, or a sexy look, or something that made clothes look good or men feel good. And so was she, Crystal.

  But none of the words came, and she stood in front of Joe Sidney, the tears streaming down her face, leaving streak marks where they ran over her foundation.

  “Look, we’ve got a commitment.” Joe Sidney put down the drink. “We’re going to Italy, we’re going to make a film; and you’re going to be a star in spite of yourself! Now—”

  Crystal turned away and started toward the door. Sidney got to it first and slammed the palm of his hand across the carved panel.

  “You can throw your career away if you want to,” he said, his face reddening with anger, “but you’re not throwing my living away in the process! You don’t have to come across if you don’t want to, but you are making the movie. I’ve got the money in place and you are making the movie.”

  Crystal ran the back of her hand under her nose and tried to pull Joe Sidney’s hand away. She couldn’t budge it. She looked into his face. He was smiling.

&n
bsp; “Please let me out.”

  “Look, no one is going to hurt you,” he said softly. “Why don’t we just sit down and talk about this whole thing? Now doesn’t that sound more reasonable than you standing in the middle of the floor crying your friggin’ eyes out?”

  The doorbell rang.

  “That’s my friend,” Crystal said.

  “You told somebody to come here?” Sidney looked at her.

  “I told her if I wasn’t out of here in five minutes after she got here to call the police!”

  Sidney looked at her. His face calmed; he shrugged.

  “So leave,” he said. “But this is going to be one of those moments you’re going to remember, girly.”

  Crystal opened the door that led into the vestibule. She could feel Joe Sidney behind her.

  “This is one of those moments that you’re going to look back on when you’re working in some fast-food joint!”

  The words followed her out of the front door and down the steps as she went past Sister Gibbs.

  “Crystal!” Sister Gibbs caught up with her on the street. “Are you okay, baby?”

  “I’m fine, Sister Gibbs.”

  “That fool didn’t touch you, did he?”

  “No. I just made up my mind about something, and he didn’t like the way I made it up.”

  Sister Gibbs turned back toward the well-kept brownstone in time to see Joe Sidney close the door.

  “Who that man, anyway?”

  “He’s the one that wants me to make a film in Italy.”

  “You don’t think we should call the police or nothing?” she asked.

  “No,” Crystal said, taking Sister Gibbs’ hand. “And thanks for coming.”

  “Girl, when you call me and tell me to meet you over in this neighborhood because you need somebody to be with, I was worried sick,” Sister Gibbs said as they started toward the avenue. “Just look how I run out the house looking!”

  “You look just fine, Sister Gibbs,” Crystal said as she took the older woman’s arm. “Just fine.”

  They were sitting at the kitchen table. Carol Brown was in a housecoat, balancing a cup of coffee on her upturned palm. Crystal sat opposite her father.

  “I need you to tell me about this,” her father said, “and I need you to tell me what you want to do. I’ve been telling myself that I didn’t understand your opportunities and I didn’t want to mess anything up. Now, I still don’t know everything that’s involved in this business, but I don’t have to. I see you’re not happy in it. Any time you got to call Sister Gibbs instead of one of your folks, things ain’t right.”

  “I just thank God that you’re all right,” Carol Brown began. “I should have realized that she needed more help with the pressures. I should have realized it.”

  “We didn’t know it because we didn’t want to know it,” her father said. “All this stuff about me not standing in the way. I can’t believe I let myself go for that crap.”

  “Daddy, please don’t fight,” Crystal begged.

  “I’m not fighting, honey,” he said. “But I’m going to be right here in the middle of everything from now on. I’m gonna sleep with both my eyes open.”

  “I think Crystal can use some sleep,” Carol said. “And you and I can talk.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you” was the quick answer. “I need to talk to my daughter.”

  “Daddy, are you going to get mad?” Crystal asked.

  “I might,” he said. “But I can handle it.”

  Crystal began to tell her father about the modeling. About how she had liked it at first and then how it had become something different.

  “How did it change?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe it didn’t even change. I was supposed to be pretty, and I was supposed to be a little sexy, I guess. It was like there were two of me. A real me underneath and an outside me that was pretty and sexy. Then after a while, the outside part just seemed to get more and more important until it was the only thing that mattered.”

  “You don’t have to be pretty, or sexy, or anything else in the world that you don’t want to be,” her father said.

  Carol Brown put the coffee cup down and left the room.

  “Is Mama going to be all right?” Crystal asked.

  “Sure, she’s strong,” Daniel said.

  “You’re not going to fight with her, are you?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Daniel said. “I can see where she’s coming from. Sometimes, if you miss a few things along the way, you lose your perspective. She don’t mean nothing but the best for you, honey. Just that sometimes the best is hard to get to. We’ll get over this thing the same way we’ve got over a lot of other things. I ain’t saying it’ll be easy, because what got us here didn’t happen overnight. But we’ll get there.”

  Crystal put her arm around her father and kissed him.

  15

  It was something that Crystal had to do. She wasn’t sure what Jerry would say or do. She had just called him and said that she would be over later to talk about the pictures he had of Rowena. She started to ask her father to come with her but decided against it. She was going to ask Jerry for Rowena’s pictures, the ones she had seen in the studio. She didn’t want her father to know about them.

  She had been so close to him the last few days. He had spent so much time showing his love for her, and for her mother, that Crystal couldn’t bear to hurt him. It might come someday, she knew, but not now.

  “Hi, come in.” Jerry backed away from the door. He smelled vaguely like the chemicals he used in the darkroom.

  “How’ve you been?” she asked.

  “Crystal, let me show you something,” Jerry said, ignoring her asking about his health.

  Jerry went to the fireplace and took an envelope off the mantelpiece. He handed it to Crystal.

  Crystal opened it and took out the papers inside. They were release forms that Rowena had signed.

  “I figured she had signed these,” Crystal said. “I’m just here to beg for them. I’m not trying anything legal. I’m just trying to get my friend’s pictures back.”

  “You really want them?” Jerry asked.

  “I really want them.”

  Jerry went to his desk, picked up some forms, and handed them to her. “I don’t have release forms for your pictures,” he said.

  “Loretta said La Femme didn’t want them, since I’m not going to be in the movie,” Crystal said.

  “Yeah, she told me,” Jerry said. “She said you’ve decided to get out of the business. You’ve turned down the movie, your accounts, the whole ball game. I’m sorry to hear that. But I’m still in the business.”

  Crystal looked at the forms. “You’re saying that if I sign these you’ll give me Rowena’s pictures?”

  “You either want them or you don’t.”

  Crystal sat down. She looked at the release forms and up at Jerry. She hadn’t even realized that she hadn’t signed the forms before, but now, now that she knew, life was hard again.

  She thought about Rowena lying in the hospital bed. She had asked Crystal to take her makeup off. She had wanted to be Rosa again. Her hands had been bandaged, the intravenous tube in one arm. She had been unable to help herself.

  “My father doesn’t read girly magazines,” she said as she signed the release forms. “I just hope that his friends don’t.”

  Jerry took the forms from her. “Wait here.”

  He went upstairs to his studio. Crystal looked again at the forms he had shown her. There it was, in black and white, Rowena’s signing away of her life. It was a matter of minutes before she heard Jerry’s footsteps on the stairs. He brought the pictures down. There were even more than she had seen before. Jerry handed Crystal a large envelope to carry the pictures in.

  “You don’t have to believe this,” Jerry said, “but I wasn’t going to sell them.”

  “Fine,” Crystal said, standing. She pushed the pictures into the envelope and started towar
d the door.

  “Here, take these with you, too,” Jerry said. “I cared for Rowena, too, Crystal. I really did.”

  Crystal looked at the release forms she had just signed and pushed them into the envelope.

  It was cold outside, snow flurries came down in frantic circles and melted instantly against the hard concrete. Down the street from Jerry’s studio, there was an empty lot. In one corner of it, there were some men standing around a fire in a barrel. Crystal headed toward it. She smiled at the men as she dropped the pictures into the flames.

  Crystal and Pat stood in front of the Regency State and looked at the pictures advertising To Touch the Sunset.

  “We can see the movie, then we can go on over to Bloomingdale’s and window-shop,” Pat was saying.

  “Don’t you ever get tired of window-shopping at Bloomingdale’s?” Crystal asked. “I mean, why don’t we give some of the other stores a break? Let’s go up to Tiffany’s.”

  “I tell you what,” Pat said. “I’ll go to Tiffany’s if we go for Chinese food afterwards.”

  “It’s a deal, but I don’t want to go see the movie,” Crystal said. “The reviews were terrible.”

  “But they said Alyce Winslow was a knockout, and she’s the only model besides you I know anything about,” Pat said. “And you know the producer, right?”

  “Actress now,” Crystal said. “She’s just doing acting now.” She was looking at the stills of Alyce in a bathing suit, next to the male lead.

  “You don’t even want to see if she really takes off all of her clothes like they said?” Pat asked.

  “She told me that she did,” Crystal said. “I told you she calls me once in a while.”

  “You ever figure out why?” Pat asked as they started away from the marquee. “I mean, you said you were more friendly with that other girl, weren’t you?”

  “I was,” Crystal said, “but Alyce is okay, too. It’s just taking her a while.”

  “Okay, girlfriend, if you say so,” Pat said. “So it’s off to Tiffany’s.”