“Mary!” But the ethereal figure walked right past me and as she did, I saw that it wasn’t Mary after all but merely a nurse with a veil, a veil that had caught the light just right so that it looked like gold. My hands still outstretched as I blinked after the vanishing nurse, I heard my name.
“Mrs. Thomson! Mrs. Thomson!”
Whirling around, I saw another nurse, the one who’d been by Fred’s bed, beckoning to me. “Mrs. Thomson—you must hurry!”
Still reeling from the mirage that I had thought, had known, was Mary, I stumbled back to my husband’s bedside; I fell upon him, grasped those big shoulders in my arms, cradled that beloved head, the hair plastered against the forehead with sweat, and the eyes—
The eyes closed, by someone else’s hand. A hand bigger, more authoritative, than mine.
“I’m so sorry,” the nurse whispered, and something tore its way up from my stomach through my throat, my mouth, and it was my grief, my sorrow, the realization of all the years left ahead of me alone, without him, and it was my sobbing that was the only sound audible in that room, bouncing off the sterile white walls. My tears that were the only living things left, they stained the collar of Fred’s pajamas, the ones he’d asked me to bring, the last thing he’d ever asked me to do.
“Bless you, my child,” someone said, and I looked up and saw a priest, and almost laughed, then remembered that Fred was supposed to have been a minister, and I’d put an end to that, and if I hadn’t, would he still be here now?
“Mrs. Thomson,” someone said, removing me—gently, as if I might shatter into pieces—from his bedside. A doctor approached with a vial and a needle, he took my arm—again so carefully—and there was a sting, a warm sensation spreading out from the puncture, invading me, filling the void that would need filling for the rest of my life.
“Is Mary here?” I asked, my eyes suddenly heavy, my voice surprisingly thick.
No one answered.
No one ever answered.
And then I was asleep.
—
The funeral was even bigger than Valentino’s had been, people were anxious to assure me. As if that mattered.
But—the thing was—it did. It did matter that Fred be remembered as a star, one of the biggest. Because I had forced him into that role—or suggested, depending on how I chose to remember it—and I needed to know that he had succeeded. That he had been happy. That he had never had a cause to regret that I’d been the reason he’d left the ministry. Seeing the throngs of fans lined up, openly weeping; the stiff unfamiliarity of cowboys in suits, looking touchingly awkward among the luminaries that included Irving and Mayer and Cecil B. DeMille, Marion Davies, Harold and Mildred Lloyd, Sam and Frances Goldwyn and of course Hedda and Marie and Adela and Bessie and Anita and Lillian, all my women friends—
“We’ve gone Hollywood, Fred,” I whispered, settling into my pew, and I smiled a little, to the consternation of Marie and Hedda who were flanking me, two fierce bulldogs protecting me from the press. I’d left my boys at home with their nanny; they were too young to understand what was going on. I envied them their innocence.
Douglas Fairbanks was one of the pallbearers and he was weeping as he and Tom Mix and Buster Keaton and some of Fred’s nephews shouldered the big casket up the aisle. And I liked him, for perhaps the first time ever, for that. He was a snob, he was a conceited fool, but he had come down from the mountain often enough for him and Fred to become friends; they’d loved to ride the range together with all the cowboys Fred used on his pictures. They weren’t close friends, but they admired each other.
He had come down the mountain today, and I’d not even asked him to. He’d simply done it, because he knew it was the right thing to do.
I never turned around during the entire ceremony; I couldn’t take my eyes off that enormous casket, long enough for tall Fred who was inside it. I had to stare at it for as long as I could stand it, because once it was in the ground I was afraid all my memories of Fred would be laid to rest, too; they’d vanish, smothered in dirt.
But even though I didn’t turn, I knew one person was missing. Mary had sent an enormous array of flowers, the largest of all the arrangements at the altar. She’d telegraphed her deepest sympathies. She’d said she would be there.
But she wasn’t. I knew it; I didn’t have to see it with my own red, swollen eyes.
And I knew there would come a day when I would remember this, go over it time and again, worrying it like one does a sore bruise, pressing down on it over and over to feel the pain anew. But not now; I didn’t have room for Mary today. So I tucked the grievance—no, Fran, that was a prissy word. It was a laceration, no less; what Mary had done was tear apart something that had once been pristine, perfect.
I stitched over the laceration with some of the many dangling, tangled threads of my grief and regret. Someday, I would unstitch it and wallow in it, and march back up that hill to Pickfair and show it to Mary, and demand an explanation.
But not this day. This day was only about Fred. The one pristine, perfect thing in my life, after all. And when it was over, all I wanted to do was sleep, and sleep, and never wake up. For I knew that waking up would mean losing him all over again. But I would, because I had to. Because this wasn’t the movies, and I couldn’t dissolve into a frame with the title “Years passed.”
The years would have to pass agonizingly slowly, 365 days at a time, before I’d ever experience anything like happiness again.
Mary felt the back of her neck, grainy from the talcum powder the barber had brushed it with. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt a cool breeze ripple against her bare neck. Always, her hair had hung there, a heavy curtain falling down to her waist.
“I hope—I hope you like it,” the poor barber—a stone-faced older man who was suddenly holding back tears, his lips quivering—stammered. He swiveled Mary around to face the mirror.
A photographer’s flash pan popped, there was a blinding light and the smell of burning sulfur, and when Mary could see again, a woman was staring back at her. A petite woman, with softly waved hair hugging her cheekbones, making them more pronounced; a woman with enormous hazel eyes, wide, shimmering with tears. Her eyes had never looked this big before.
“Mary, Mary, what do you think?” One of the reporters—there were about a dozen of them, all crammed into this small barbershop in Manhattan—wanted to know.
She touched the back of her neck again, touched her newly shorn hair, and smiled for the cameras even as she quivered inside. What on earth have I done? How long will it take to grow back? What will Mama say—
Then she realized that Mama couldn’t say anything, anymore.
“I think it looks so modern, don’t you?” She posed for the cameras, tilting her head, pursing her lips just like any other flapper.
“But your curls! What will you do without them? What will your fans think?”
“I don’t think my entire career has been dependent on my hair,” she retorted. Looking in the mirror again, she sought reassurance that a movie star would be reflected back, smiling and glowing, the familiar image from the cover of Photoplay, the movie posters, the programs. But she couldn’t quite see it, at that.
Her entire career had been dependent upon her hair. From the moment Miss Josephine came backstage to see her, bashfully touching her curls and saying, “You’re so pretty,” Mary’s hair had been something more than a coiffure—just as Charlie’s hat and cane were something more than merely accessories. Her curls had been sacred. As her fame grew, odes had been composed in their honor. Psychologists had written scholarly analyses about their symbolic value.
There were eighteen of them when she was filming. Twelve of her own, six specially made fake ones, each twelve inches long. Curls once wildly copied, not only by her fans but her rivals like Mary Miles Minter, Madge Bellamy, Olive Thomas, even dear Lillian at one point. Then, wildly derided by the press: When Will Mary Cut Her Curls? Bobbed Hair Is All the Rage.
/> Now that she had, she felt slightly nauseous; her reflection in the mirror wavered for a moment, like the way a road looks on a hot day, little shimmering waves obscuring her face. But the press was here—she had invited them, of course—so, still smiling, she removed the huge drape from her clothing and rose. Then they all looked down. Her curls were lying on the floor, fallen soldiers, twelve in all. The barber approached with a broom but she waved him off; kneeling, she carefully picked up the curls and put them in her purse before she could even say why. She simply couldn’t bear to see them swept up like—like anybody else’s hair! And she couldn’t say goodbye to them yet. She’d said too many goodbyes lately.
Blowing kisses to the reporters, she ran out to her car and was driven back to the hotel, and the entire way there, she shook her head, marveling at how light it felt, how her hair didn’t whip across her face and get in her eyes. She kept brushing her hands over the nape of her neck, trying to get used to how exposed it felt.
When she opened the door to the hotel room, Douglas was waiting for her, pacing up and down like a husband outside a maternity ward. He stopped, looked, and made a sound that Mary had never heard before; a wail of despair, of disbelief, seemingly originating from the very depths of his soul. He fell down on his knees, and sobbed like a baby.
“Douglas! What? What’s wrong?”
“Your—your hair, Tupper! Your hair, oh, your hair!”
“But you knew I was going to have it cut!”
“I knew, but I didn’t quite believe. Until now—oh, Tupper, what have you done? What have you done with my Mary?”
“I don’t know!” She ran to the mirror again for assurance; she still looked the same as she had at the barbershop—like a woman, like a sophisticated, very pretty woman. But she didn’t look like a girl; she didn’t look like Little Mary, beloved the world over. She didn’t look like the daughter Mama had known, and then she, too, was crying. Not for her hair—no, she was relieved, happy to be rid of it, from a purely practical standpoint.
No, now her tears were for the memories of Mama tending to those curls, so diligently, when Mary was little; of Mama coaxing her dark blond, rather flat, childish hair to grow and grow with special egg-white shampoos and beer rinses, wrapping up the hair at night, twining it about her loving finger when it was finally long enough. And encouraging Mary to rinse it with champagne to lighten it up so that it was really golden in real life and not only when strategically lit for the camera.
She wept for all the loving, cozy nights, like a warm cocoon, or being back in the womb, when she and Mama had chatted while Mama tended to Mary’s hair, brushing it, twirling it, pinning it up so that Mary could sleep. Her hair was almost as much their mutual creation as her career, or perhaps they were the same. Little Mary would never have been Little Mary without the curls—that was the truth, the terrifying truth. So what would Little Mary become now? If only Mama could tell her—
But Mama was gone now. Two months ago, she’d passed away. Mary was still picking up the telephone every day to call her; still planning treats and surprises for her before remembering, then having to cancel them.
Mama had died, peacefully—truly, she had. The cancer had taken her away; no amount of prayers could heal her but Mary believed, finally, that this was the right way to go. No doctors, no surgeries, no interventions. Simply a wasted body at the end of its life.
“Mary, don’t cry,” Mama had whispered at the end, a strange, beatific smile on her face. A smile of peace, which was so odd, for Mary had never really seen her driven mother at peace in her life. Happy, yes. Proud, always. But never entirely at peace.
“Who will love me when you’re gone?” Mary tried not to cry; she tried to be strong, as she’d always been. But oh, it was so hard!
“Your public, darling. Your public will always love you. We made sure of that, didn’t we?” And Mama smiled again, closed her eyes—and soon after, drew her last breath.
Someone’s hands were on Mary’s shoulders, pulling her away from Mama so that the doctors and nurses could do whatever they had to do. But Mary didn’t want to leave; she never wanted to leave and so, urged on by a roaring sound, like a freight train, in her ears, and a sudden, white hot light in front of her eyes, she fought whoever it was, twisting, lunging, slapping the person—and then the clouds parted and she saw that she had hit Douglas.
And that was it; after she saw his stricken face, she calmed down, took charge, did everything the way Mama had wanted her to. Everyone said that Mama’d had a good life, Mary was such a devoted daughter, and with such a loving relationship as theirs had been, Mary would be comforted and soon, back to normal. Mary nodded and agreed and knew they were all as wrong as wrong could be. She would never be normal again; she was all alone in the world. There was no one left who truly knew her. Mary would always feel gravity weigh down on her more, now that Mama was gone; she would always be utterly alone in the world. And while she knew that wasn’t a very loyal thing to think, considering she was married, it was true. No one would ever love her, ever understand her, like Mama did.
Not even Douglas. Not even Fran.
Dear Fran! She came to Mama’s funeral and was so broken up; she stared and stared at the coffin while tears ran down her face and Mary came up to put her arm about her. “I loved her,” Fran said, simply, and while they didn’t take the time to reminisce about the old days, Mary knew she was thinking about them, the days when they were next-door neighbors, and Mama was the den mother who took care of them both. But she couldn’t talk, not even to Fran; she was too overwhelmed with grief. And Douglas had an iron grip on her arm in that way he had; he wanted to be her only comfort. She thought she even detected some relief in his eyes that Mama was gone, and he finally had Mary all to himself. But he didn’t; he wouldn’t. As much as she loved him, knew their love to be the biggest love of all time, he would never have her all to himself. A part of her was buried along with Mama.
But now—watching Douglas still sobbing, unable to look at her, she had the strangest notion. She had killed his Mary. Murdered her, intentionally. And it seemed right, for it was 1928, a year of death.
Deaths of careers, as well as people.
Only a couple months after Mary cut her hair—Famous Golden Curls Go! Mary Pickford Cuts Her Hair! The Little Girl with the Curls No More!—Fred Thomson died, so tragically. Poor Fran! With her own grief still so raw, Mary knew how Fran would be feeling, and she did want to go to her; truly, she did. She even put on her best black dress and hat and descended the stairs to the door, before turning back around and running up to her room.
Fran had her children, after all, for comfort. Children were a comfort, in times like these; sweet little babies to cuddle and watch over, taking refuge in their innocence. And the more she thought of it, the more she realized—rationalized?—that if Mary went to the funeral there would be so much publicity, it would absolutely take away from poor Fred, and so that day, she stayed home. Even when Douglas surprisingly told her, with a disgusted look—a look that he gave her more and more, and she had to wonder just what else she had destroyed that day at the barber—that she owed it to Fran to be there. But she waved him away, ordered the most expensive floral arrangement possible, and retired to her room for a little “nap.”
That was what she called it, and he knew what it really was, but he went along with the fiction, because he understood. He was terrified, too, and he had other ways to cope, ways that didn’t involve the bottle but were no less destructive.
Everyone in Hollywood was terrified, that deadly year of 1928.
“Wait a minute! Wait a minute! You ain’t heard nothin’ yet!”
Al Jolson spoke those words on-screen; the words leaped from his mouth into the air and everybody gasped, cheered, rose to their feet. And everything changed. Eleven words, heard ’round the world. Now all of a sudden movies were supposed to talk. There was even a new word for them—“Talkies.”
Ever since The Jazz Singer premiered in
October of 1927, Hollywood had been trembling like one of its frequent earthquakes—only this one was man-made. Warner Bros. made. “It’s a fad, it’ll pass.” “People still want the artistry of silent films.” “Silent films are a universal language. When people have to talk, they can only speak one. It will never happen.”
“Speaking movies are impossible,” Griffith pronounced.
“It’s like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo.” Mary herself issued a press release. “Silent film is a perfect art. It doesn’t need embellishment.”
But it wasn’t a fad. When Warner Bros. released another “talkie” starring Al Jolson, called The Singing Fool, it did even better than The Jazz Singer. Now every movie theater was frantically wiring itself for sound; every studio was hiring callow young undergraduates from Stanford or UCLA who had completed even one class in sound engineering, making them the heads of newly formed sound departments. Production had ground to a halt; silent movies that could have some kind of sound added—even just noise effects—were being held in order to do so.
And actors, all of a sudden, were expected to speak.
Of course, Mary was a trained stage actress; so was Douglas. Of course they had nothing to fear, or so they told themselves, told the press, told the money men at United Artists.
But privately, they hired a vocal coach from New York who came to Pickfair every evening to train them to speak properly for the screen. “Enunciate, enunciate,” she intoned, making them walk around with books on their heads and their hands on their stomachs to feel their diaphragms as they recited poems and snippets of Shakespeare.
Mary and Douglas had spoken into microphones before—many times. At banquets, at premieres; they’d given interviews on something called “radio” that was beginning to make inroads into America. They even had their own radio receiver at Pickfair, an enormous black cabinet monster that looked as frightening as any piece of medical equipment with all its dials and tubes. But there wasn’t much to receive; some sporting events, news programs, and quite a lot of symphony music.