Chapter 3
Chapter 3
“We don’t have the money for both Chouinard and the Actors’ Lab anyway,” Elsie told Harvey and Charlie when she explained that Chouinard would have to wait. “I’m going to have to work more to pay for even one of them. And you said they’d take GIs before they took a woman anyway, so I probably won’t get in.”
“You’re more talented than any of those GIs,” Charlie grumbled.
“Those GIs fought the Nazis,” Harvey pointed out. “You can’t begrudge them.”
Charlie sank onto the sofa. “I know. I know.”
It was obvious from the way they talked that neither of them had fought, which was strange, given that they were both the right age to be veterans. “Neither of you went to war?”
Again they exchanged a glance, one full of meaning that Elsie couldn’t read.
“No, sadly,” Harvey said. “We tried but we were ... unwelcome.”
He did not elaborate. Elsie remembered what Anita had said about the rumors of Communist Party activities and thought maybe that had something to do with it.
“We’re all in the same boat now anyway,” Charlie said glumly. “All hoping we aren’t vaporized by the bomb.”
“At least not until our girl here has a career,” Harvey joked.
“When Walter makes it, then I’ll have my turn,” Elsie said.
She did not miss their obvious doubt.
“You really think he will?” Harvey asked. “Not that I question your faith, but Hollywood is full of actors who don’t make it.”
“I’ve seen him convince a hundred players that he’s bad at pool, and he’s good enough to be a professional.”
Charlie frowned. “You know that’s just a hustler, right, Elsie?” He passed around a bowl of potato chips.
Elsie took a handful. A rapid knock on the door startled her into spilling some on the floor.
Charlie lurched to his feet and went to the door. Whoever was there kept his voice low—he and Charlie exchanged a few terse words, and then Charlie came back.
Harvey gave him a questioning look.
“They were at it again,” Charlie said quietly.
Harvey’s mouth thinned.
Elsie stared at them, bewildered. “Who’s at what again?”
Neither of them said anything for a moment, and Elsie felt them measuring how much to say.
“Is this about your meetings?” she asked.
Charlie looked surprised.
“Anita told me,” she explained. “It’s hardly a secret that the two of you are leftists, you know.”
“There’re all kinds of secrets in Edendale,” Harvey said soberly. “You want to be careful what questions you ask. It’s not that we don’t trust you. It’s that we don’t want to drag you into trouble.”
“The FBI has been amusing themselves by going around Edendale asking questions the last month or so, checking license plates, things like that,” Charlie explained.
“Asking questions about what?”
“They want to know what people think their neighbors are up to.”
“Are you in trouble?” Elsie asked. “Can I do anything to help?”
“We’re not in any more trouble than anyone else in this neighborhood,” Harvey told her. “They find all artists suspicious. They don’t like anyone who thinks differently, and that’s half of Edendale. They can’t shut us all up. It’s nothing to worry about.”
So Elsie tried not to worry, but it didn’t escape her notice that they’d told her they didn’t want to drag her into trouble. It was as if they expected it.
Still, she didn’t stay away. Harvey and Charlie were her closest friends, and she was alone more often than ever now, as Walter’s rehearsals became more intense. The play opened in a week, and he was in a fever of excitement, jittery and unable to keep still. He hardly slept. He’d brought home the flyers he’d had printed up for the movie producers. She’d spent all the next day addressing envelopes and stamping them.
“When they see my performance, I’ll be in like Flynn,” he said.
Elsie wanted to go to the dress rehearsal, but Walter said no, he wanted her there on opening night instead.
“That’s when I’ll be in all my glory, baby. I want you to see me then.”
The day before the play opened, Harvey and Charlie stopped in at the café. They were both smiling broadly, both obviously bursting with some kind of news.
“What is it?” she asked as she poured their coffee. “You two look like cats who caught the canary.”
“You want to tell her?” Charlie asked Harvey.
Harvey shook his head, still grinning. “It’s your doing.”
“What?” Elsie asked.
Charlie reached into his jacket pocket and took out an envelope, which he handed to her.
Elsie set down the coffeepot and turned the envelope over to look at it—strangely, it was addressed to her, at Charlie and Harvey’s address. The return address was Chouinard. It had been opened already.
“What is this?” she asked, but her heart began to pound, her heart already knew. Elsie took out the letter, her fingers trembling as she unfolded it and read the words. “Oh my God, what did you do?”
“You’ve been accepted,” Charlie said. “I know you said you were waiting for Walter’s class, and maybe you didn’t want this, but we went ahead and applied for you. I sent it in myself. I told them you were the most talented fashion designer I’ve seen. Elsie, you’re accepted to Chouinard! Even over the GIs!”
Harvey and Charlie looked jubilant. Elsie was jubilant. She had tried not to think of it, she had tried to put it aside, and yet the dream remained, and she could not deny she wanted it.
“Oh.” She pressed her hand to her chest, unable to say what she felt, and then she realized Anita was watching from behind the counter and she was smiling and no one asked Elsie for more coffee or water, and everyone seemed to know that something special was happening, and Elsie wanted to cry with sheer happiness.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she managed. “Walter won’t—”
“Well, after tonight, Walter’s going to be a star, isn’t he?” Harvey asked. “And we’re going to help you, honey. You’re going to be the best investment we’ve ever made.”
She decided to wait until after the play on opening night to tell Walt about Chouinard, when they would be celebrating his success too. Everyone would be jubilant. The movie producers would be there, one would offer Walt a contract, and his star would rise with hers. They would be on their way.
She decided to wear the orange-red dress with pink organza overlay—it was her good luck charm, and his, too, since she’d been wearing it when he first realized how much she could help him. When she came downstairs in the dress, with her hair up, she expected him to appreciate the symbolism, but he was obviously too distracted. He barely noted her.
She kissed him. “Tonight’s going to be perfect.”
He straightened and nodded shortly. “We’d better go.”
Walter had reserved her a seat in the front row. The theater was mostly full. She wondered which of the men she saw were movie producers. Maybe that one in the gray suit, or the one over there with the glasses who looked very well groomed. She opened her program and scanned it until she found Walter’s name: Man in Bar ... Walt Maynard . So he’d decided to go with Walt as a stage name. She had pushed for Walter. It sounded more dignified. Like Humphrey Bogart or Orson Welles. Two-syllable first names had more heft. But Walter said he liked the livelier, more assured sound of Walt. “It makes me sound like an ace, don’t you think?”
The lights went down. Elsie closed her program and settled back to watch the play, excited for Walter to appear. The first act went on and on with no sign of him. The second act opened in a bar and there he was, looking handsome where he sat, wearing the linen suit she’d first seen him in at the grange in Zanesville. The director had asked the actors to costume themselves, and the suit was the best he had, and she’d agreed that it would be perfect. How different it had made him in Zanesville, how it had made him stand out.
But the suit looked old fashioned on the LA stage, compared with what the other actors wore. It even looked seedy, and in it, Walter, with his six lines, certainly made an impression—just not a good one, which would have been fine, had that been the character.
It wasn’t.
His words so broadly articulated, that flamboyant gesture he’d thought so perfect looked like it had come straight out of a silent movie. Dark-haired, handsome Walter. “ Like Rudolph Valentino ... ,” the other actor had said, and now she understood what he’d meant. Not just Walter’s looks, but also his melodramatic delivery belonged to another time.
It was all wrong for this play. The crowd laughed, but his lines weren’t funny.
Elsie sank into her chair, cringing for her husband. The gesture was ridiculous—why had no one told him? Why hadn’t the director said something? And the suit ... the character was a man-about-town. He needed a dark suit; she would have said charcoal. Double breasted. A richly colored tie to signal confidence and discernment. Superbly tailored.
She was relieved when the scene ended and Walter left the stage. Unfortunately, now Elsie knew a truth she did not want to face. If there were movie producers there, none would be offering Walter a contract based on that performance. She did not want to think about what the critics would say. There was no way Walter would be a star. Not after tonight. Not after any night. She knew that with searing, swift certainty.
The truth was that Walter wasn’t good. The truth was that her confidence in him was not just shaken but broken. Again, she heard what the pool hall owner had said. “You hitched your wagon to a loser, girlie.”
Had she?
The answer came to her with blinding clarity. Yes, you have.
But she couldn’t admit it out loud.
Afterward, she went backstage and smiled and hugged him and kissed him and said, “That was wonderful! I enjoyed it so much!”
“Did you? You really did?”
“I’m sure the play’s going to be a hit,” she assured him, though she knew it wouldn’t be.
On the way home, Walter said, “I think the crowd really responded to me, didn’t you? Did you hear them?”
“Yes, I did.”
“You see what I mean about the gesture? How it really brings the character into focus?”
How to say it without hurting his feelings? Elsie searched for the words. “Well ... honestly I think ... you know, it might be a little old fashioned.”
“Old fashioned? How do you mean?”
“Your character is supposed to be sophisticated, right? He’s supposed to know what he’s talking about. So I don’t think they’d trust someone who’s so ... flamboyant and old-style.”
Walter went very quiet. The car felt uncomfortable. Elsie looked out at the passing buildings, the other cars.
She tried, “Your lines aren’t supposed to be funny, are they?”
Walter threw her a quick look.
“I mean ... you know, maybe the gesture doesn’t work the way you mean it to. But I might be wrong. Those movie producers tonight—”
“There were no movie producers there tonight,” he snapped. “None of them came.”
“Oh.”
“This is not going the way I thought it would!” He slammed his hand on the steering wheel. “There weren’t even critics there tonight!”
“It’s only the first night. I’m sure once they know about it ...”
“Yeah.” Walter spoke as if he were trying to convince himself. He stared ahead. “Yeah. But you know what else? I have to audition to get into that Actors’ Lab thing! Me! Can you believe it?”
“Oh, well, about that—I’ve been thinking—”
“I agree. I’ve been thinking too. Who needs it, right? I don’t need any of that fancy acting crap. I’m good without it, right, baby? I can be a star just the way I am. It’s all about the right look, you know. The play’s going to build, and soon I’ll get another part—the right part—and now that you’ve got that job, I’ve got time, I’ve got all the time I need. I’ll keep auditioning, and it’ll happen. You watch.”
Elsie said nothing.
“So maybe it doesn’t go as quick as I expected. So what? Someone’s looking for the new Rudolph Valentino. Someone wants Walt Maynard. I’ll be in Photoplay . One day it’ll be my name on the marquee—it’s all going to happen.”
How embarrassed she’d been for him in that theater.
“You hitched your wagon to a loser.”
He nervously thumbed the steering wheel rat-a-tat-tat , that intent stare, those Valentino eyes, and suddenly she saw herself at the end of the pool table, making it all happen for him, and she knew another truth she hadn’t wanted to admit—he needed her. She had made the hustle work. Without her, they wouldn’t be here. Walter couldn’t have made it to LA on his own. He was good at pool, but he wasn’t that good. Her ability to distract the other players had allowed him to win as often as not. She was the key.
She had wanted out of Zanesville, and he had taken her out. She had lied to herself about what he was. But Charlie was right. Walter was just a hustler. He was a loser. And if she stayed with him, she’d be a loser too. She would keep working to support Walter, live in a duplex forever, and Walter would keep auditioning and maybe he’d get small parts but he would never be a star. He would only ever be dreaming, and she would never get to Chouinard. She would never be anything but a diner waitress and wife. The vision leaped into her head with an insistence she couldn’t ignore. Exhausted from days at the diner, laundry hanging on the line and a baby in her arms and toddlers crying. Waiting for Walter to come home from another audition, another small part. Every night a few hours later. Every night more drunk.
The horror of it, and the clarity, startled her. This was not what she wanted. This was never what she’d wanted. There would never be enough money. Her life would be worse than it had ever been in Zanesville, more a trap, because once she had children, she’d never leave them.
“You believe in me, don’t you, baby? You believe I can make it?”
They were at the top of the street. The stairs loomed before them.
She could keep her wagon hitched. Or she could unhitch it.
“No,” she said steadily. “You know what? I don’t think you can.”
It took her a moment to realize she’d said the words aloud, and they surprised her as much as they obviously did Walter, who stomped on the brakes in the middle of the street, jerking them both forward. “What?”
“I don’t think you can,” she repeated slowly, letting the truth sink in.
Elsie opened the car door and got out. She slammed it behind her and started up the steep steps.
“Elsie!” Walter yelled out the window. “Where are you going? Goddamn it, Elsie!”
She kept going. Past the quiet chicken coop, the hens inside for the night.
“Elsie!”
He couldn’t leave the car there; he’d have to park it before he could come after her. She dodged down the street, passed their duplex, and turned onto an alley.
“Elsiiee!” Walter’s voice came plaintively behind her. Then, explosively, “Don’t you run to those Reds! I know who they are, you know! I’ll call the FBI! Elsie! You unnatural bitch! Come back here!”
She ran. Down more stairs, down another steep, twisty street. She was so busy listening for Walter to come after her that she was at Harvey and Charlie’s block before she knew it, and then she saw the lights blazing—too bright, shadows crossing, noise. She stopped. All the commotion came from her friends’ bungalow, and people parading from the house into the darkness, herded by men in suits and police officers. It was obviously a raid on a meeting of some kind. Harvey and Charlie and their fellow travelers were being arrested.
She fought the urge to race forward to defend them. That would be stupid and she knew it. They would just haul her away too. She could not go there. But she did not want to go back to Walter. She had nowhere to go.
She heard a man shout. Someone pointed to where she stood at the end of the block.
Elsie turned and ran down the hill, past one set of darkened houses, farther, a roundabout way, avoiding the road, until she reached the café. It was the only place she knew to go, though she also knew Walter would check there before long. It was closed. But the lights were on in the bungalow behind, where Anita lived. Elsie pounded on the door until Anita opened it.
“What the . . . ? Elsie?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve left Walter, and I ... could I just come in for a minute or two? Please.”
Anita stepped back quickly, her gaze moving beyond Elsie, searching the night as she ushered Elsie in. “My dear, you can stay much longer than that. Get yourself in here.”
Anita put her in a spare bedroom and told her to stay away from the café for a few days, which was good advice, because Walt came by the next afternoon.
“He said to tell you he’s done with you,” Anita said. “You want my advice, Elsie? Maybe that’s true and maybe it isn’t, but if I were you, I’d clear out for a while, hmmm?”
Elsie had the money she’d saved for Walter’s Actors’ Lab classes, but she was now going to have to find a place to live, and not only that, but working at the café wasn’t an option. It wasn’t that Elsie thought Walter was a danger, but ... he could be persuasive, and she didn’t want to be persuaded to be with him again. It was just better to put it all behind her. She wanted to move on. She wanted a future that didn’t include Walter. She was in LA with the chance to start new, and she meant to do that. She’d look into getting a divorce soon, but for now a new job, a place to live, and then ... What about Chouinard? She’d been accepted, but Harvey and Charlie were arrested. She had no idea where they were or what to do about that. She was on her own. She would have to get the money for tuition herself.
“Who knows when they’ll be out or what they’ll do then,” Anita said over a cup of coffee one Sunday morning. “That they’re Reds is bad enough, if the feds discover they’re fairies too—what? Don’t give me that look. Don’t you know a fairy when you see one?”
Anita’s words were a little shock, though now that she’d said it, Elsie wondered why she hadn’t noted it before. She’d never seen Harvey and Charlie touch, really, had she? But now ... well, of course. It was obvious that Harvey and Charlie were a couple. The way Harvey handed Charlie the sugar before he asked for it, the small comments, “ Better get Harvey his coffee quick. He’s sullen this morning .” Things like that. The way they looked at one another, the way they seemed to know what the other was thinking.
Elsie tried to figure out how she felt about it. It was one thing to know that homosexuals existed. But to see a couple, to imagine them as a couple ...
Yet she truly liked them, and they were ... they were just normal people, and it was those little things, wasn’t it? No different from how she’d been with Walter, she supposed. She could not look at Harvey and Charlie and think degenerate , or morally enfeebled . Quite the opposite. They were two of the most principled men she’d ever known. They were friends. They had helped her. This new revelation didn’t matter.
Anita laughed. “I surprised you, I see. You don’t know what to say. Tongue tied! You know what you need, Elsie? Confidence. You let Walter walk right over you and he was nothing. But you ... you’ve got something. I’m not sure what it is exactly, but you could do something with yourself. You should get a good job and go to Chouinard, the way Harvey and Charlie said. See what it makes of you.”
The next evening, Elsie went down to Charlie and Harvey’s. The house was dark and locked up. No one was there. She walked over to the duplex she’d shared with Walter. He wasn’t there, fortunately, and she hastily gathered her things. All of her in one suitcase. She did not leave a note.
It was a relief.
The idea of starting new, alone, frightened her, but Anita’s words about her needing confidence stayed with her, and Elsie knew her friend was right, and that maybe Walter had seen that, too, and it had let him think that Elsie would do whatever he wanted. She had, too, but she had learned some things since then.
Walter had taught her how to make people notice her when she wanted them to, and Anita had told her she had “something.” Harvey and Charlie had said she had talent.
Now all Elsie needed to do was turn those things into a future.