Chapter 30 1964
The Marmont urges me on, its exhalations pushing me up the stairs to the turret. I walk with my aunt’s key in my hand to the one door I never lock because nobody goes up here. The door to the balcony where Toni Ashenhurst decided she didn’t want to live any longer.
I go out onto the balcony and I search. There’s no furniture, nothing besides the balustrade and the walls.
One of the bricks right in the corner is loose. I try to prize it out, but the years have made it stick fast. I hurry back into the turret, find a pair of scissors, use the blade as leverage to wriggle the brick out.
Finally it comes away.
Behind it are folded sheets of paper, a little worse for wear, but not so much that I can’t see they’re covered in handwriting.
I sit right there on the floor of the balcony and read Toni Ashenhurst’s last words.
Dreams and nightmares are the same thing—the difference just depends on your perspective, it begins. It’s addressed to my aunt.
I should never have persuaded you to give Bob another chance.
If I’d developed perspective about him earlier, you’d have broken it off with him months ago and none of this would have happened.
And “I’m sorry” are the two most pathetic words in the English language.
How can they convey all the repentance I feel?
They can’t. So I’m leaving you this account.
My testament. I hope one day you can do something with it so the whole of Hollywood develops perspective too.
There follows a signed statement:
On the night of July 4, 1950, Miss Devine Rey intended to break off her engagement to Bob Ashenhurst, my brother.
But she’d promised to do him one favor and she didn’t like to go back on her word.
She also hoped that if she did him this favor, he’d let her go to another studio without a fight.
So her plan was—do the favor, make Bob happy, tell him it was over, and walk away to a studio where there were men in charge, sure, but not quite like Bob.
The favor he’d asked of her was that she go to a party put on by the three men selling Golden Mare to him.
Miss Devine Rey, as everyone knows, was a star like no other—to have her at the party where the deal was done would be like having King Midas there.
But those men, they were worse than even my brother.
Nobody should forget that as the biggest star of her generation, Miss Devine had to keep herself squeaky clean.
She had rules. She never went to Golden Mare studio parties.
They were the kind of parties starlets were paid to attend—if they were given a fistful of dollars, they’d be quiet about whatever happened to them there.
But this party would be fine, Miss Devine thought—and so did I—because Bob was there.
She’d arrive, give Bob back his ring while he was riding high from signing the contract to buy the studio, and smile for the men who were desperate to meet her.
I went with her for moral support; we thought my brother wouldn’t get too mad at her if I was there.
I waited in the car while Miss Devine told Bob she no longer wanted to marry him.
They were over by the pool house, but I could see them from the car.
Bob looked furious. I heard him shout at her to keep her ring on her finger while she signed autographs for the men.
He didn’t want to look like he couldn’t keep the eyes of Hollywood’s biggest star fixed on him.
Because what if that meant the deal didn’t get done?
Then he marched her inside the pool house.
I want it on the record that Miss Devine would never have gone inside a pool house at a party alone. But Bob was there. The man who said he loved her.
My brother.
When Miss Devine walked in, Bob walked out, saying he’d be back in a moment.
But he didn’t come back. He chose to pretend that arranging a “meeting” meant those men wanted a kiss on the cheek, maybe an eyeful of cleavage.
So I got out of the car and went into the pool house.
And those men turned their attention on me too. Yes, we screamed. But nobody came.
I don’t know how we got back here to the hotel. Maybe one of us drove. All I remember is Maisie finding us the next day and calling Dr. Foster and that neither of us could get out of bed for a week.
Words from the past batter me. Calliope saying, You forget why you have to learn that it hurts less that way. I hadn’t ever let myself think about how she’d had to learn that lesson.
I put the paper down, cover the sound of my weeping with my hands. I don’t want to read any more of this. But the time is long past for ignoring my aunt and Toni.
I understand now why Miss Devine eats Quaaludes like they’re survival.
Miss Devine called Bob a couple of days later.
She told him she was going to Photoplay with the story of what happened.
He told her to buy a copy of Whisper first. The lead story was about Bob breaking it off with Miss Devine Rey because of her wild behavior.
You’ve all read it. It intimated that she was a drunk seductress with no moral character.
He had quotes from the former owners of Golden Mare—the animals in that pool house—to back him up.
And the pièce de résistance: a photo of her leaving the pool house, dress awry, staggering.
She telephoned the magazine, hysterical. I could hear what she sounded like, and I knew straightaway they wouldn’t believe her. The next article they ran was about her mental state.
The press have history on their side—the stories are always about the women going nuts.
I gave up then. But Miss Devine didn’t. She called Photoplay anyway. But now Bob owns a major studio and he can give the press access to his stars or he can deny it. He has a whole team of publicists who don’t just bury all his dirty secrets, they cremate them so they can never be dug up later.
Just now, I went to his bungalow. “It was your own fault,” he said to me. “You should have stayed in the car.”
The letter drops to the ground.
I will never forgive you.
When Bob said those words to me, what I knew of Bob’s evil was that he carried women he’d given too many pills to through the Marmont, that he put conditions on movie parts that desperate young starlets paid for with the tarnish staining their dreams. But now I know what he did to my aunt.
And that his sister killed herself because of him.
A few nights ago, Bob told me, well played. Which means I’ve been horribly, terribly wrong about him. He doesn’t do this for power. He does it for fun.
It’s a game.
Which is so much worse.
Power would mean he had something to lose. But some people just like to play; for them it’s only important that the game goes on and on. And it has. It isn’t just one girl, or two or three. It’s a pattern.
It’s the way Hollywood works.
His words have kept me small for a very long time.
But right now I have a fury as dark as a murder of crows beating its feathers against my skull.
I push myself back onto my feet.
I stalk over to the bungalows and thump on Matty’s door. It’s only nine in the morning, so it takes a good five minutes to rouse him.
“Aria, hey,” he says, voice still raw, most likely with the misdemeanors from Calliope’s party. “Looking for Calliope? She’s not here.”
I shake my head. “It’s my turn to come knocking for favors.”
He laughs. “You want a part in the movie?”
“Not on your life. But I want you to audition Miss Devine Rey in about three months’ time for the part of the housekeeper.”
He stares at me. It’s probably too early in the day for sobriety to have emerged out of his nightcap of reds and vodka, so I repeat, “Miss Devine Rey. Hollywood legend.”
“But…”
The process of deciding which objection to start with is too much for him, so I deal with them all.
“She’s in rehab. She’ll be out in three months.
Just think what her name and that kind of publicity will do to your movie.
Miss Devine Rey, who hasn’t been lured onto the silver screen for nearly fifteen years, has been coaxed out by you.
The column inches of press you’ll get will fill theaters. You know it will.”
He laughs. “Man, that’s outta sight! Aria, you’re everyone’s guardian angel. You know that, right?”
I leave him effusing over how much he digs my idea, then I retrace my steps to the lobby, pass Phillip, still waiting for Calliope to smile at him, walk through the colonnades, out onto the driveway and across Sunset Boulevard.
Through the doors of Schwab’s. There, nursing a coffee and waiting for whatever news is happening that day, is Lois, chief gossip columnist for Photoplay.
Calliope introduced me to her years ago when I first went to Schwab’s and I always say hello, refuse to share any gossip.
Today I slide into the booth.
“Aria,” she says, like she’s always known that one day I’d break and spill Hollywood’s guts. “I’ll order you a coffee.”
“No time,” I tell her, even though a coffee would be just the ticket to dislodge the ache in my temples. “Miss Devine Rey is making a comeback. In Matty’s movie.”
“In Jane Eyre?” Her eyes can’t stretch wide enough at the scoop. “Nooooo-ooooo-.”
“Yes,” I tell her. “You’ll report it?”
Her mind is busy calculating how many copies this will sell, how many advertisers it will bring in, how much money she’ll make in bonuses. “I’ll do one better—I’ll run a Miss Devine Rey feature, remind everyone how good she was.” Her face softens. “She was good, wasn’t she?”
I’m going to be late for work again. But I still have one battle to face.
Calliope.
I need to stand in front of her and scan her hair for a cotton thread from a red headscarf, find the indentation left by a black eye patch. I need to know if it was her pretending to be a fortune-teller, and why.
I need to tell her that sisters don’t behave like that.
I thought sisters were forevermore.
I guess seven years in Hollywood is forevermore.
Up to the sixth floor. Walk over snakes toward the small penthouse. Tap on the door.
No answer.
I turn the handle.
The room is dark, the drapes drawn, the bed hasn’t been slept in. On the nightstand is a spilled bottle of pills, like pearls scattered from a broken necklace.
I’m about to call out, Calliope? when I hear it. The sound of someone’s empty insides. Not even vomiting, not now. But retching, a body trying to get rid of poison and demons and the hangover of dreams.
I close my eyes but the tears leak out.
Seven years ago, Flitter held Calliope’s hair off her face while she heaved into a toilet. I brought her a glass of water and made her cry.
Now I’m the one crying.
I want to believe that Brian is in there, holding her hair and telling her to let it all out. I want to not remember Calliope saying to me a couple of weeks ago, I wish you wouldn’t see me every time I’m being my worst self.
That’s the thing that keeps me out here, weeping instead of helping. She won’t want me to be the one who helps her.
I run down to my own room, pick up the phone, call Schwab’s. “I need paracetamol, Coca Cola, chicken soup, and a packet of hair ties taken to Calliope Burns’s room as fast as you can. Leave it outside the bathroom.”
I don’t know if it’s more or less than what a sister would do. But nor did I know that sisters set themselves on fire in front of you, or watched you pull Death and The Fool from a pack of cards. We are no Meg, Jo, and Amy. We chose to be sisters; we made our own blood.
There’s no cure for that.
That’s how I know this isn’t the final battle of the morning.
Along to the lobby now. There’s Phillip, the man who writes poetry, which makes everyone think he’s a sensitive soul because that’s the cliche the movies have made us believe. But this man can’t even rhyme No and Go.
“Phillip.”
He blinks, surprised.
“Get out,” I tell him. “I can get the hotel owner to come down here and tell you to leave. Or you can slink away now. The Marmont will arrange to have your things sent on.”
He tries to be superior; of course he does. “May I ask why?”
“Because you’re a creep. I bet that even if I gave you all week, you couldn’t come up with a rejoinder better than the one I’ve been composing in my head just now.”
I put on my most bard-like voice and proclaim:
“There once was a girl named Calliope
More famous than you or I’ll ever be
She was stalked by a man
About whom she gave not a damn
And who’d better go fuck off quietly.”
God, it feels good when Judith Crown, who’s sitting at the piano, plays the “Triumphal March” from Aida.
Phillip slinks out the door.
If only Bob Ashenhurst could be slayed with a limerick.