The Girls in the Picture

  There was a crash; Fran had dropped the knife on her plate, her cheeks red, her nostrils flaring. “You’re drunk, Mary.” Her voice was high, tight with fury. “Drunk as a skunk! No wonder Douglas—”

  But Fran stopped, and wouldn’t say anything more about Douglas, even though Douglas was right here, his face red now, too.

  “You’ve always been jealous of Douglas and me. The way you pouted on our honeymoon! Remember, Douglas? Oh, what a triumph it was!” Mary turned to her husband, but her husband—so strange, for Douglas!—wouldn’t say a word.

  “That’s it—I’m leaving, don’t you worry, Mary.” Fran began to gather up her purse and gloves. “I’m leaving and I’m not coming back. All my life I’ve come running back. Never again. I’m sorry, Buddy—” Strange, that Fran was talking to Douglas but calling him Buddy! “I’m sorry for you, but this is the last straw.”

  “Fine! Take your two Academy Awards and go home! I won mine first, you know.” She addressed the rest of the table fondly, waving her arm expansively, and was about to tell the story of how she won hers, what was it for—that movie, some movie…she could go get it and show it to everyone…but suddenly, everyone else got up and walked out after Fran.

  How odd! But Mary didn’t mind; she wasn’t hungry, anyway, and her tiara was so heavy, she could barely hold her head up. She allowed Douglas to help her up the stairs and back to her room.

  “Thank you, Hipper, dear,” she murmured, and his handsome face crumpled. “Thank you, Douglas.”

  Then she shut her bedroom door. And never opened it again.

  —

  That had been two years ago, or so her husband said, although Mary didn’t keep count. What was the point? She had everything she needed right here; a big, luxurious bed and a television, newly installed, and a maid to dress her and bathe her and make sure she ate something, although no one could ever make Mama’s stew, which she craved. Sometimes, just for kicks, she made soup out of catsup and hot water, and remembered the old days with fierce love, almost protectiveness. Was that when she’d been her best? When she was plain little Gladys Smith, taking such good care of her entire family?

  And of course, here in her room she had access to her liquor; no longer did she hide it because no one cared. Lottie and Jack and Mama were all gone now, all her fans had forgotten her, so she didn’t have to set a good example for anyone.

  She stayed in bed and watched television. Sometimes, she caught one of her old movies. Late at night, after the news was off the air, and everybody else was fast asleep. Everybody who could sleep; everybody who could close their eyes and let go of the memories, and fall asleep looking forward to tomorrow.

  Mary wasn’t one of those people. She didn’t have anywhere to go, anyone she wanted to see. Well, there was one person she wanted to see. But Fran didn’t come around anymore, and most days, Mary couldn’t remember why. But surely Fran wouldn’t stay away forever! Fran always came back.

  Except this time, she didn’t, which was awful, simply awful! How could Fran do that to her—leave and never come back? Didn’t she remember all they’d been through together?

  Nobody understood her anymore. Not even Douglas, who kept asking her to get dressed and come downstairs, who often knocked on her door, so politely, telling her she had visitors. Poor Douglas didn’t understand—no, no, not Douglas—poor Buddy. Buddy was her husband now.

  Wasn’t he? How on earth had that happened?

  It was all so confusing! Husband meant Douglas. But Douglas had left her, and Buddy had stepped in seamlessly to take his place and Mary didn’t seem to recall having much say in any of it, but perhaps she had. It was so long ago now. Thirty years or more.

  Sometimes Mary tittered behind her closed door when Douglas—no, Buddy!—knocked on it. She could hear the impatient shifting of feet as whoever was out there—friends or foes, she had no idea—waited for Mary to throw open her doors and emerge, eyes wide, arms waving, like Norma Desmond in that movie Sunset Boulevard, whom that director, Mr. Wilder, had wanted her to play but she said no. It made her sick to her stomach, that script with all its tawdry innuendo, the character of Norma entirely pathetic, and so the role had gone instead to Gloria Swanson, dear Gloria, who had been very good in it. Mary was big enough to admit that, and she’d sent dear Gloria a note saying so.

  But perhaps dear Gloria had been too good, because now every silent screen star was supposed to be living in the past and crazy as a loon, and that’s what Mary knew those people outside her door—who were they, anyway? Who had invited them? Whoever they were, and whoever had invited them, Mary knew what they wanted to see. They wanted to see the Girl with the Curls staggering out the door, crying out for her close-up, grotesque and old.

  Well, she wasn’t about to give them the satisfaction. So she stayed right where she was, safely tucked into bed, and giggled as Buddy—always pleasant and pleasing Buddy—pretended that Mary was talking to him through the closed door.

  “What’s that you say, Mary? You say you’re sorry that you can’t greet your guests today? You say that you’re touched they wanted to see you, but you’re a little under the weather? You say you hope they had a pleasant day at Pickfair?”

  Meanwhile Mary tittered and fell back among her pillows and waited until they finally walked away. Then she might get up and open the door and peer out, rejoicing in the empty hallway, tickled that she’d managed such a trick.

  And her husband would come back in the evening and scold her, very gently, and Mary would listen and nod and say, “But Douglas—” and his face would fall and she wouldn’t understand why, and then he’d leave her alone, which was what she wanted, after all.

  She preferred it this way, living in shadows and dreams, not entirely sure what year it was or whom she was talking to. Because those moments when she did remember were far worse.

  Those moments when she remembered that Douglas had left her, had betrayed her, had told her he didn’t want her anymore. Those moments when she remembered how, after she did file for divorce and he remarried, he moved back to Los Angeles with his new British wife, sneaking away to spend long, silent evenings with her at Pickfair out by the pool, the two of them lying in separate deck chairs, remembering. Different things, she knew; she thought of the crowds cheering and the clock stopping in the car and the possessiveness that once had rankled but now seemed like the very notion of love and attention. She had no idea what he was picturing, only that it must be something sweet, something perfect. Something lost.

  It was so sad, that’s what it was. Tragic. Their love had been too big for a little life. And that was the kind of life she was living now; it was the kind of life she told herself that she wanted to live. As much as she loved Douglas, and always would, DougandMary had become too exhausting to keep up forever; it was best to lay it to rest, along with the last remnants of the silent era, like the shorn curls she still kept in a shoe box, high atop a closet shelf.

  Buddy Rogers proposed several times, and finally in 1937, once the divorce was final, she married him. Did she love him? No. And she never pretended otherwise.

  But he was young, handsome, with black hair, big brown eyes and boyish good looks, and perfectly nice. Rather like a loyal Irish setter. And to have such a handsome young man in love with her, at her age—she didn’t mind that. Especially after Douglas had so publicly betrayed her with a younger woman.

  Douglas died, didn’t he? She remembered where she was, in Chicago, in 1939, when the phone rang; Buddy’s band was playing and in those days, at least, she still put in public appearances in support of him, or United Artists, or the industry as a whole. But she was the grande dame, trotted out as a remembrance of the old days, then pushed back into her cupboard until the next occasion.

  She was only forty-seven at the time.

  That night the phone rang in the hotel room, and she answered it before Buddy did. It was her niece Gwynne, dear Gwynne all grown up now, who was sobbing. And she knew.

  “He??
?s gone, Mary.” And Gwynne didn’t have to say who; there was only one “he” in Mary’s life, and it wasn’t her current husband. The words were like a whip across her face; she flinched from the impact of all the emotions that rushed in behind them: grief, loss, anger, sadness. Then came the memories, cruel and taunting, and she had to get up and go into another room, so that Buddy wouldn’t hear her cry.

  Once, when she and Douglas were still courting—he always used that old-fashioned word, for he was an old-fashioned man—he’d taken her to an amusement park far down the coast, as far away from Los Angeles and its prying eyes as they could get, almost to Mexico. He convinced her to ride a rickety Ferris wheel, the wind off the ocean pummeling her hair and assaulting her ears; she shut her eyes and gripped the bar in front, terrified that the whole thing would break apart because it looked as flimsy as a set piece.

  “Open your eyes, Mary,” Douglas shouted above the wind. “Open your eyes, and see!” She did open them; they were high above the rest of the people, little tiny figures below, looking up at them. And that was how she always viewed their union—two people high above the rest of the world, sharing a view only the two of them could see; a privileged, lucky, hard-earned view. The very best view there was.

  She had lost the one person who knew how it felt to be on top of the world; she had lost the one person who had shared that view, for so long.

  When she put a call through to Charlie the next day, the two of them burst into tears at the sound of each other’s voices and this time, she didn’t try to stop them.

  “Oh, Charlie, what will we do without him?”

  “I have no idea,” Charlie replied, his voice thick with loss.

  In that moment of shared grief, Mary forgot all the annoying things about Charlie—how he was so possessive of Douglas, always trying to sneak off with him behind her back. How he could never be counted on to come to stockholder meetings for UA, how he never read a ledger, how he seemed to think his films were above hers in every way, precious jewels that had to be polished for years before being unveiled in front of an undeserving audience.

  No, in that moment all Mary remembered was that Charlie was a bridge to those glorious, heady days of the bond tour and Pickfair and DougandMary; they both had loved Douglas very much, and so now, during this phone call anyway, Mary loved Charlie.

  “I always showed him my movies first, Mary, remember? He was the best judge, my best audience. No one laughed like Doug.”

  “He loved you,” Mary was generous enough to say, and Charlie said the same thing. Even though Charlie was still making movies, the Little Tramp was almost as much of a symbol of a bygone era as the Girl with the Curls. And in that moment, Mary couldn’t help but envy Douglas; he didn’t have to live the rest of his life a relic of the past, like she and Charlie did.

  A past that faded more and more into memory, into history, even legend, as the years rushed by. Now Mary Pickford movies were no longer shown in theaters unless they were part of a “silent film retrospective.” People came to Pickfair, but only to genuflect at the mausoleum of early Hollywood. Hollywood was no good at preserving its past; all the old studios had been plowed under, there was no museum full of costumes, even the films themselves hadn’t been properly saved. Pickfair was the most tangible remaining symbol of the silent era, and to Pickfair the worshipful came. Young actors, hoping to get some kind of blessing from the woman who had invented the term “movie star.” Journalists hoping for a good story along the lines of Sunset Boulevard. Documentary makers who wanted to air, generally on public television, tributes to a bygone era.

  Mary met with some of them; she went to a few of the retrospectives, until she couldn’t bear looking at her face any longer; couldn’t stand to gaze into the youthful beauty of Little Mary, shaking her fist at the camera in the very embodiment of “spunk,” saving her tears for the camera, too; all the tears she didn’t allow herself to cry in real life. And when she couldn’t bear it any longer; when she couldn’t stand to be introduced as “the very first star of the silver screen, the queen of the silent movies, that beloved little girl, the legendary Mary Pickford” one more time—

  She shut her bedroom door so she didn’t have to see the disappointment, the disbelief, in the public’s eyes when they realized she was no longer that beloved little girl.

  They deserved each other, finally, Pickfair and she. When night fell and Douglas—Buddy?—and all the servants were asleep, she and the house told each other their secrets. Only then would she open her door. And as she shuffled down the halls, touching the chair rail to keep her balance, the house whispered names of long-ago guests: Albert Einstein, the Duke of York, George Bernard Shaw, Mrs. Calvin Coolidge. They’d all come to see her, the biggest star of them all. The star she’d set out to be when she was such a little girl, responsible for Mama and also Lottie and Jack, who got to have a real childhood, not like her.

  They were all gone now. Long gone. And she had all the time in the world.

  So while the house kept lookout for prying eyes and gossiping tongues, Mary would play with her doll collection as she’d done in The Poor Little Rich Girl, slide down the polished halls like she’d done in Rags, raid the kitchen as she’d done in Pollyanna. And the house never once betrayed her; the walls and the windows and the curtains and the rugs all seemed to smile in understanding as she took refuge in childhood memories. Memories that were created by Fran for her to play in front of the camera as an adult.

  Which were the only childhood memories that she had.

  The house was enough, it was hers, and she knew that nobody really understood why. The only one who might have understood was Fran.

  Sometimes she’d catch an old movie of theirs on television—like she did last night. Secrets. Mary thought it really wasn’t a bad film, although it had done so poorly at the box office. Leslie Howard played her love interest—poor Leslie, shot down in the war. Which war? She couldn’t remember. He was younger than her, of course, something that Fran had worried about in casting, but Mary had overruled her.

  Secrets was a flop. It was her last film, too. She was afraid of the camera after that—impossible, but true. The camera who had always been her friend, her lover. She simply had nothing left to give. And the camera had only loved her as a little girl. Just like everyone else, including Douglas.

  Douglas had died. Hadn’t he? And so had Mama. Everyone was dying; there was no one left who cared, not even her public. They were gone, now. Everything was gone. Never again would she know the desperate throngs who’d greeted her on her honeymoon with Douglas; never again would she receive thousands of fan letters a day.

  Never again would she recognize herself in a mirror. In order to remember who she was, she had to creep downstairs at night to gaze at her portrait and weep at its loveliness, and all that little girl had achieved, and lost. Then she would creep back upstairs and shut her door.

  Until one day, the door opened. And Fran came barging in.

  I stepped back in horror after I opened the door; it was no little girl with golden curls who emerged from the gloom, after all.

  A tiny, puckered figure sprawled on an enormous bed, wispy gray hair standing up all over her head, little downy puffs, like a baby chick. Pink patches of scalp peeking through. On a table next to the figure stood a detached head and I almost screamed—until I realized it was a wig. A wig, styled in blond curls, perched on a wig stand. The figure was propped up on pillows, so many pillows she was almost swallowed by them. She was emaciated; a pink-and-white flowered nightgown enveloped her so that only the tiniest bits of scrawny neck and her clawlike hands were visible.

  Except for the face—the face was too visible. The face that had no eyebrows, only watery hazel eyes, still almond-shaped. The chin was still recognizable; that stubborn Irish chin, the outline softer now, a bit jowly but still evident.

  And the lips; the rosebud lips. Which were moving, trying to form words.

  “Mary.” My heart lurched, and I
was sorry. Sorry I’d barged in; sorry I’d invaded my friend’s privacy.

  Sorry that I had to see Mary like this—that Mary was reduced to this, a ghostly creature drowning in gin and memories. For I was assaulted by them, too, all the time; but my dreams were fragments of movies I’d written, vacations I’d taken, arguments I’d had with my sons, people I’d lost. And Fred. Always Fred. Sobriety was the only defense against the avalanche of regret and loss that comes with old age. An alcoholic had no defense; an alcoholic was the most vulnerable, raw, walking wound of a person in the whole wide world. Especially an alcoholic who had once been the most beautiful, the most admired. The most.

  “Mary, Squeebee, darling.”

  “Oh, Fwan, I told you not to come up!” Mary brushed one skeletal forefinger with the other in a scolding gesture, one she’d used on film many times. “Didn’t you get my message?”

  “I did. And I came up anyway.”

  “Well, go away. It’s too late!” Mary flouncingly turned her back to me, crossing her arms, and I had to wonder if this was really happening; if I was truly witnessing this tottering creature acting like a ten-year-old child, the child she’d been in the movies, so long ago.

  “I’m not going away, Mary, not this time. I did once, and I’m sorry.”

  Mary was quiet, she fell back against the pillows and closed her eyes, her blue-veined lids fluttering. Amazingly, her eyelashes were still as long—almost grazing her cheekbones—as they always had been. Then she pushed herself back up on her elbows and suddenly her eyes were blazing, she was raising that skeletal hand toward me, pointing. Accusing.

  “You! You wrote Anne of Green Gables for Mary Miles Minter!”

  “Oh, Mary, stop it!” I hated myself for snapping at her—she was so old and fragile and obviously not herself. Or perhaps, too much herself? “This is ridiculous, darling. That was fifty years ago and we’re both too old to care. In case you haven’t noticed, we don’t have a lifetime ahead of us anymore.”