Chapter 9
Nine
Loretta rapped on my door at eleven thirty Sunday morning, and by noon I and my new guardians were having breakfast at the round table in the dining nook off the living room.
Warm cheese omelets were accompanied by aromatic bacon, crisp toast with whipped butter, and individual compotiers filled with chilled mandarin-orange segments topped with shredded coconut.
Rich, dark coffee steamed from the silver-plated pot when Franklin poured it into our cups.
How magical it seemed that this lovely repast could be summoned from the hotel kitchen, each dish hot or cold as required, served on pretty china, and accessorized by a slender glass vase holding a single red rose.
All of it might have been conjured by a wizard.
An egg-salad sandwich from an Automat couldn’t compare.
I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had cost two dollars or even twice that for the three of us.
The rest of the day was likewise enchanting, although I felt some trepidation when Franklin departed for the afternoon, leaving us alone, to prepare the way for us at Bramley Hall, where we would arrive the day after tomorrow.
Their estate was but a fifteen-minute drive from the hotel.
I thought I concealed my anxiety, but Loretta quickly read my mood and asked the reason for my concern.
“Well,” I said as I perched on the sofa, “I’m sure this sounds silly, and no doubt it is silly, but I dreamed of Captain Farnam last night.
” In case she was of a mind to attribute the slightest credibility to the predictive power of dreams, I did not reveal that in the nightmare Captain had intruded into Bramley Hall and that the children had been missing.
I didn’t want to worry her, for surely it was foolish to believe that the nightmare had also been a prophecy.
I revealed only this: “I dreamed he found us, as he said he could do if he wanted.”
Loretta sat beside me and gently pulled me against her.
“He is a monster, and there’s nothing unusual about dreaming of monsters.
Everyone does. His threat to find us in three days is just as phony as he is, sweetheart.
That galumphing swine is giddy to have fallen into a payday beyond his greediest dreams, and he’ll do nothing to risk his freedom now.
He’ll build a house on that plot of coastal land you said he owned, and he’ll sit on his patio, staring at the sea and eating cake and drinking bootleg bourbon until his heart is clogged with fat as dense as the contents of a Swift’s Silverleaf lard can.
He’s a cowardly user, not an audacious doer.
He’s no more likely to barge into our lives than Valentino, rest his soul, is likely to rise from the grave to remake The Son of the Sheik as a talkie. ”
Leaning against her, I said, “You sure know how to make me feel better about most everything.”
“I’m not shoveling a lot of hooey at you, dear.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s not just what you say. It’s how you say it, ma’am. You’re so confident and sharp and funny.”
“I’m funny, am I?”
“In a good way.”
“Well, when you’re in the movie business, you better have a sense of humor or you’ll throw yourself out a high window.”
“Is it as crazy stressful as all that?”
“The stress is invigorating. But you’re swimming with sharks all the time, and sharks have no sense of humor. They especially don’t like to be laughed at, even though their insatiable appetite and self-importance are pretty damn funny. Frank and I laugh a lot behind closed doors.”
“I think I understand.”
“I’m sure you do. You’re a very bright girl. But we agreed you won’t call me ‘ma’am.’ Do it again, and severe discipline will ensue.”
“Yeah? Will you make me work in a blacking factory?”
“You never know. At the very least, I’ll make you scrub floors until your knees are blistered and your fingers bleed.”
I laughed, leaned away from her, and met her eyes. “That, too, is very Dickens. If you really could reduce me to such a terrible condition, you must have many floors.”
“Acres,” she said.
I felt something then that was new to me, that was not respect or admiration or gratitude, though it encompassed all those things.
I was reluctant to put a name to it, for fear that events to come would not justify this feeling.
I might prove to be engaging in assumptions that were wishful thinking.
What I felt was a condition that could bring great pain if not reciprocated, so the best course was to wait and hope.
Of course the word was love. For the first time in my seventeen years, I had someone to love, and I dared to think that she and Franklin loved me if just a little, or could in time come to do so.
Such was the fullness of my heart that I might have made a blubbering spectacle of myself if just then someone hadn’t knocked rapidly on the front door of the bungalow.
Even as Loretta and I rose from the sofa, Marjorie Hollingsworth Merrimen threw open the door and entered without waiting for an invitation.
“Bon après-midi, ma amie! The valet sped off to park my new Pierce-Arrow with such enthusiasm that it is no doubt worthless wreckage with him dead behind the wheel.” She stripped off her pale-gray gloves as she stepped out of the foyer and crossed the room.
“Nothing excites young men of his benighted generation more than eight cylinders. Women come in a distant second on their must-have list, I’m afraid.
The human race will, I swear, wither away altogether because of the automobile. ”
I knew who our visitor was, because Loretta had told me she would be coming and had described her to me.
A tall, slender woman of about fifty, she had a somewhat long but attractive face.
She was at the same time brisk and graceful, attired in a shamrock-green suit, a white blouse, a silk scarf fashioned as a necktie, and a tilt hat.
She looked very chic and worldly wise. She came straight to me and framed my face with her hands as if looking at me through a movie camera.
“You divine child, you are the very image of Lillian Gish, who always has been and will always remain the most beautiful actress in the history of film. You also have eyes like hers, eyes that more than see. And that glorious hair! You must never cut it short. The bobbed hair of the past decade was an abomination, and yet we still see it everywhere on those flappers in their shapeless shirt dresses. The only garment I can condone from that period is the cloche hat. I adore cloche hats. Lillian Gish as I live and breathe. You look lovely as well, Loretta.”
On a few occasions, I’d been told I had a pretty face by those who would have called me a monster if they had seen me from the neck down.
However, no one had ever before praised my appearance at such length as this or with such enthusiasm.
Miss Merrimen put her purse on a small table and sat in the armchair beside it.
The two women seemed calm, prepared to discuss the task at hand, but I lost my equilibrium.
Although I was sitting on the sofa again, I felt as if I were in motion, adrift on a length of flotsam with ocean swells rising and receding under me.
I couldn’t know if Miss Merrimen’s compliments were sincere or whether she knew everything about my deformities and, out of pity, chose to flatter me while she could, before the time came for me to reveal myself.
I blush now to admit how much I delighted in her praise.
Yet every time the thought of Miss Merrimen’s praise lifted me, I was reminded of the truth of my physical nature, whereupon the delight receded.
Would the time ever come when, like a lowly caterpillar, I would turn into a butterfly?
Marjorie Hollingsworth Merrimen was a clothing designer and dressmaker of some renown.
She worked for various studios, creating costumes suitable for the characters in the stories, for which she received screen credit.
For those who could afford her services, she also made clothes for women who would never be on the silver screen but wished to look their best and make an impression.
More than half of the clothes in Loretta’s wardrobe bore the Merrimen label.
I was to be the designer’s special project.
Although it was clear that these two women were not merely business acquaintances but also good friends, I found it surprising that a person of the designer’s status would come on a Sunday to wherever Loretta might be, to consider the task at hand and take measurements.
As I was to learn in time, it was not always or even primarily the Fairchilds’ fortune or their success in the motion-picture industry that earned them special treatment.
They had made many friends who admired them and regarded them with affection that money and position could not buy.
I would also eventually learn that such virtue was not common in the film world, where the sharks were numerous, voracious, and humorless.
For fifteen minutes we sat in the living room, making small talk.
I understood that this was to allow me to get to know Miss Merrimen and be comfortable when she took my measurements.
Early in the conversation, she opened her purse and withdrew a pack of Pall Malls, which she placed on the padded arm of the chair.
I expected her to light a cigarette, but she did not.
Loretta hung a Do Not Disturb sign on the bungalow door, but she thought it best that we retreat to my bedroom before I removed my robe. Miss Merrimen brought a small notebook with a pen clipped to it, a yellow tape measure, and the pack of Pall Malls. She put the cigarettes on a nightstand.