Chapter 8 1964 #2
Maisie heaves herself onto the bed, kicks off her scuffed shoes, and takes my hand, my fingernails ragged compared to her bright red polish. “Bob’s sister Toni and your aunt were like your two pals, the ones with the crazy names. Miss Devine was like the famous one and Toni was like the other one.”
“Like Flitter?”
She nods. “Miss Devine had all the roles. Miss Toni tried so hard, but had no luck. For a time it was quite the foursome—Mr. Mason and Toni; Bob and Miss Devine. Then only Mr. Mason and your aunt were left, and he tried to do what he could for her, but there are some things you can’t fix.
All I know is that I spoke to your aunt that night when she was on her way out with Toni.
She’d always stop and chat, ask how my grandkids were. ”
“Miss Devine Rey asked about your grandkids? Wow.” I can’t imagine my aunt caring about anything besides herself.
“People become what the world makes them, Miss Aria,” Maisie says and I’m reminded of my mother’s words: There are no mean people.
Just hurt people. How hurt do you have to be to transform from a woman who asks the housekeeper about her grandkids to the woman in my aunt’s suite right now?
But what hurt her? Bob breaking off their engagement?
“I remember that night because it was the first time I saw Miss Devine not smiling,” Maisie goes on. “I asked how she was doing and she told me she was going to break off her engagement. The power was going to Bob’s head and she wanted someone who loved her more than power.”
“Miss Devine broke it off? I thought Bob did? Holy cow.”
The shocks keep coming. My aunt broke off her engagement to the man who was about to become the biggest of the studio bosses, which is about the bravest thing a woman in 1940s Hollywood could do.
How did the woman upstairs, addicted to stardom, left prone by its implosion, have the guts to even contemplate it?
And it’s not enough of a reason for her to have gone from goddess to goose egg overnight.
Maisie’s on her feet. “Two bright young women went out that night. When they got back, they never left again. Well, I guess one of them did—in a coffin. Seems to me like your aunt could do with someone to save her before she ends up in a coffin too. Someone who’s already so busy trying to save everyone else around here.
Know anyone like that?” She puts her hands on her hips and stares pointedly at me.
“Seems like family should be who you save first. Talk to your aunt, Miss Aria.”
Then Maisie lumbers out my door and I’m left sitting on my bed, gobsmacked. Chastened too.
Talk to your aunt. She won’t tell me anything.
Besides, I have a brand-new quilt and a room of my own. Why not just enjoy those tiny victories?
I brush my teeth and slip into a pair of silk pajamas that Flitter gave me for Christmas. Calliope’s gift had been a box of silk underwear, presented with a kiss and the words, You absolutely cannot wear Schwab’s cotton panties for the rest of your life.
So in my silk underwear and silk pajamas and with a blue cotton quilt lapping over the bed, a regular job and a future beckoning, I write in my journal—a proper notebook now, rather than the notepaper Doctor Foster purloined from Marian Monti—then fall asleep.
I wake with a start not long after midnight.
I can hear music; someone is playing the piano in the lobby, the keys jangling and sliding into the melody for “Great Balls of Fire.” It isn’t a ghost—people play the Marmont’s piano at all times of day and night.
But why is it playing that song? Who is playing that song?
It’s the same one that spun on the turntable in the library that day. Only two other people in the world know that.
I slip out of bed, don’t realize that my hand is shaking until it fumbles with the key to my door. I glide along the corridor to the lobby, silent, stealthy.
There are the arched windows, the wooden ceiling, the red velvet armchairs, the fringed lampshades, and crystal tumblers. There is the piano.
Nobody is sitting on the stool.
I stretch out my fingers. Make my hand relax. I must have dreamed it. It’s a popular song. Anyone might play it for any reason. It means nothing at all.
It’s October now. The Santa Ana winds have been pouring down from the Sierra Nevada all week, bringing dust and hot tempers and the smell of wildfires. It’s the month of overdoses and tainted dreams, of ambition getting into bed with hope.
It was October when I sat in the library and a camera recorded something I didn’t understand.
In the turret I push memory and The Bell Jar to one side. What was I thinking, asking Adele to read that? That she’d learn something about a woman’s struggle for freedom? Don’t we suck in the knowledge of that struggle along with our very first breath?
Plath will stay confined today. But we won’t.
“Let’s swim,” I say. “It’s too early for anyone else; we’ll have the pool to ourselves.”
“Meaning I’ll be safe from corruption?” Adele says archly.
“Meaning you’ll be safe from corrupters,” I tell her in a faux teacher’s voice. “It’s up to you whether or not you’re corrupted.”
She groans and I laugh. “Put on your swimsuit. I’ll meet you outside the penthouse.”
“Because I’m absolutely not allowed to wander around the hotel alone in my bikini,” she says in a terrible mimicry of me.
I wish she could parade around in her bikini. But that freedom isn’t for her, not here.
It takes me hardly any time to retrieve my bikini from my sparse wardrobe, a black-and-white polka-dot number that Flitter liberated from the costume department of ACE Studios.
I pair it with cat-eye tortoiseshell sunglasses that had lounged unclaimed by the pool for a week last summer until I, knowing what it’s like to be orphaned, adopted them.
I’m at the penthouse five minutes later. I turn when the door opens, expecting Adele.
It’s Win.
He jumps, not expecting anyone to be lurking outside. Predictably, he curses.
“Do you want Adele to grow up with the filthiest mouth in Hollywood?” I ask.
“Do you want to give me a heart attack so Adele can inherit the Marmont and gift you a penthouse instead of a closet?” he counters, tone gruff, eyebrows relaxed.
I laugh. “I think Adele would choose any of about a thousand actors to put in the penthouse ahead of me.”
He leans against the doorframe, which decreases the height difference between us a little.
“In a month, you’ve made her talk about actors a hell of a lot less than she did for the first few weeks I had her,” he says.
“She even said something about wanting to be a writer. I don’t know if I should ask what you’ve got her reading to make her think of that. ”
I wince. “Sylvia Plath.”
“Jesus.” I’m not sure if the subdued imprecation is disdain for my literary choices or if he’s trying not to laugh.
“Why are you here anyway?” I ask.
“I live here.”
“But you’re never here during the day.” Nor at nighttime when creeping into bungalows seems to be your fetish. I keep that thought to myself lest it sound like I’ve been spying on him.
“I’m having a party tonight. I’m sick of everyone asking when I’m having one, so I decided to get it over with.” He says it like it’s tuberculosis. “I need you to chaperone Adele. Ideally,” he says as Adele exits the penthouse, “you won’t be in bikinis.”
I turn to Adele. “Let’s go get some exercise before the poolside resembles the French Riviera, otherwise I might forget myself under the influence of all those nipples and come to the party dressed like an extra in a brothel scene.”
Adele just about falls over laughing. Win does not.
We make our escape, Adele whispering, “Nobody talks to him like you do. They’re all ‘yes, Win; no, Win.’ You make me remember he’s not just famous Win; he’s a human being.”
“There’s a way to break through everyone’s reserve,” I tell her. “Keep trying and you’ll find a way that works with him.”
“But shouldn’t he be trying too?” she asks.
Gone are the folded arms and the eye rolls.
She looks fourteen and vulnerable and as if she isn’t sure whether there’s a person alive who loves her.
God, I remember that feeling. I’d hoped Win was doing more to show her that she has arms rather than a void around her.
I still don’t know what he does all day—he never takes his guitars anywhere, so he can’t be making a new album.
What else do mysterious rock stars do during the day?
Sleep like vampires? Maybe I’ve made it too easy for him to get out of being a father; he knows someone is taking care of Adele’s basic needs and to hell with the rest.
Well, party or no party, I’m going to have words with him tonight.
Outside, one cabana is occupied by the sleeping form of a man I don’t know—a leftover from last night’s bungalow parties, the wildest in the hotel.
There’s a woman curled up beside him and, while she’s missing her bikini top, at least the lady garden is under shade and the little birdie beside her is asleep.
There’s someone at the far end of the pool too. Matt, a screenwriter in his mid-forties who started calling himself Matty a few years ago, as if adding a y to the end of his name was the elixir of youth.
“Aria, hey,” he calls.
“Any progress?” I ask, indicating the typewriter. He’s signed on as writer-director for a much-publicized and highly anticipated project green-lit by Bob’s studio to adapt Jane Eyre—the novel about the orphan girl.
He shakes his head. “It’s not like it doesn’t happen around here. Young girl falls for older, richer man. But why does he fall for her when she’s so plain and dull?”
“Because she’s his second chance,” I say without thinking. “We always think we’ll eventually live our lives right if only we get enough practice.”
“Fuck, that’s good.” Matty starts a percussive clacking on the typewriter. “I’ll give you a screenwriting credit.”
I laugh. “I’m content to remain anonymous.”