The Girls in the Picture

by Melanie Benjamin

  Mary was alone now; Fran had gone, but her news remained and it would linger, this dream baby would become real, like little Gwynnie had. And she would lose Fran forever. And she would be even more alone.

  But she did still have her bottle; the gin wasn’t gone yet, and there was more where that came from. The gin made her forget how quickly time passed, how fleeting was youth and beauty and innocence and fame and fortune; it made her dream wild dreams—fantastic visions of dragons and men on the moon and silly dancing people; dreams that had nothing to do with real life, and so she preferred them, terrifying as they sometimes were, to her dreams that were not gin-soaked.

  The gin let her forget that Douglas might come bounding in for dinner with a coterie of people to amuse him, because he seemed to need that more and more; he was no longer content only in her company the way he used to be. And if he didn’t come home surrounded by others, he would probably come home late. There had been some nights, recently, when he stayed at the studio until almost midnight. Mary didn’t ask him why. Just as he didn’t ask her what was in the medicine cabinet.

  She set the bottle down and snuggled further into the pillows, pulling the covers over her. She might as well sleep now; she would look all the better in the morning. The room spun behind her closed eyes and her mouth was already dry as cotton, but still it was preferable to remaining awake, thinking about all the things she didn’t want to think about; seeing images of people she would only disappoint, or whom she had already disappointed. Seeing images of gurgling babies; babies she could never have. Babies she didn’t deserve.

  And she wouldn’t have to know what time Douglas came home, if she was asleep.

  The hospital was so cold.

  That was what I kept thinking as I waited outside his room, seated rigidly on a small metal chair. The very same kind of chair I’d sat on when I met him—and I almost laughed at that, wanting to rush inside and share this with him as I shared everything.

  But the doctors wouldn’t let me, and the hospital was so cold, and I was shivering so violently my teeth hurt, my joints, too. The last time I’d been this freezing was on that road from Verdun, in the war. The war that brought Fred and me together. The nurses and the doctors went in and out of his room but they always shut the door firmly, as if it could drown out his moans. But it didn’t.

  I thought that if I could only hold him, I’d stop shivering and he’d get better. I thought that if I couldn’t hold him, I wanted to hold our sons, little Fred and Dickie, and I looked around, their names on my lips until I remembered. It was Christmas Eve, and they were home asleep. Oh, God, Christmas Eve, and they’d be expecting a visit from Santa, presents to open, and how could I do it? Who would do it for me?

  “Mary,” I whispered, and I knew this was not the first time I’d said her name, but I couldn’t remember how many times I had, or when. I couldn’t remember what time it was or how long I’d been sitting here.

  I could only remember that Fred was sick, desperately sick, and I was shivering outside his hospital door, and that it had all started with a limp. A stupid little limp, as we strolled the grounds of The Enchanted Hill one evening the way we always did; surveying our land, taking stock of our blessings, planning tomorrow before heading inside to say good night to our sons, already tucked into bed by their nanny.

  “What’s that?” I’d ask, as he winced and favored his right leg. “One of your old injuries?” For my husband had many; that was the occupational hazard of being a cowboy star. Fred had been run over by a wagon, injured himself in a jump from a building onto Silver King, and collected countless scrapes and wounds from rolling around in the sagebrush as he wrestled bad guys.

  “Oh, nothing.” Fred took another step and couldn’t hide a spasm of pain. “I think I pulled a groin muscle yesterday.”

  “Fred Thomson, is there a muscle on that body you haven’t pulled or strained?”

  “I’m working on it.” Fred grinned, pulled me to his good side, and held me close as we turned around and took one last look—I would always remember it that way. One last look at the purple twilight, the way the sun’s last beams threaded pink through a smear of gray clouds, a few stars beginning to twinkle on. A horse neighed down in the stables as I inhaled the jasmine. I took one last look to remind myself how lucky I was—how lucky we were.

  Then we went inside. Only a few hours later, the nightmare began.

  —

  Before the nightmare, there was paradise.

  A new contract with MGM, when I was expecting Fred Jr. I finally allowed Mayer and Thalberg to persuade me to settle down and work for one studio—a welcome measure of stability right when I was feeling the urge to nest. The better to rock the cradle, which would never fall. And I made good films, too—The Scarlet Letter, with Lillian Gish; Love with the strange new Swedish star, Greta Garbo. And my favorite of all my films, The Wind, again with Lillian.

  Irving and I had poured our hearts into that movie, going over the script together time and again. It was a grim story and it had to be filmed on location—something that Mayer balked at, but he was in awe of Irving then, in awe of that frail young man’s obvious genius, happy to take credit for it when his movies became instant masterpieces. So Mayer reluctantly agreed to film on location in the desert, an ordeal, but worth it. Even after Lillian had the skin on her hand seared off when she grabbed the handle of a car that had been in the sun all afternoon, she never complained. She was the most dedicated actress I’d ever worked with save for Mary, and she gave a towering performance as the young bride driven mad—and to murder—by the relentless prairie wind.

  The ending had to be tragic. The mad bride had to walk out into the wind to her death. She’d killed a man. It was the ending the censors would require—it was the ending the audience deserved—Irving and I agreed on that while we worked on the script.

  Still, I had a premonition. “Not a happy ending, Irving. Not that,” I told him when I turned the treatment in, and he’d agreed.

  But when the film was previewed, the audience wasn’t happy, and Mayer forced us to change the ending. No argument was heard; I found myself on the wrong end of one of Mayer’s increasingly famous icy stares. His little studio had grown by leaps and bounds and was now the grandest of them all, and even though my contract was bigger than most of the studio’s stars, I was still only a writer—a profession that seemed to have shrunk in the last few years. Gone were the days when I cast small roles, worked next to the director suggesting setups or lighting. Gone were the days when I could shape my scripts as I saw them. Mayer—and, to a lesser extent, the MPPDA—was the last word. He was God.

  MGM spared no expense in its productions; my films were guaranteed enormous distribution and publicity. The actors were the best, as were the costumes and sets. But it was all rather like a factory; so unlike those days when Mickey, Mary, and I caught magic in a bottle through laughter and improvisation. But as long as I had Irving’s ear—which I did, and which I cherished—I was spared the worst of it, and allowed some autonomy. To a point.

  And true, I didn’t care as much; I’d allowed myself to idle after the birth of the baby and then the adoption of Richard only a year later. It wasn’t as if I spent all my time in the nursery; Mary had been right about that. I loved my sons but was more than happy for the nanny to do the dirty work. Still, I didn’t pursue projects as passionately as I once had. Fred was doing so well and was enjoying fame far beyond what I’d ever hoped; I found myself stepping back into the shadows so that he could shine even brighter.

  “You’re sublimating your career to his,” Adela pointed out one day. And I had to admit I was, even as I wasn’t very proud of that fact.

  “It’s his turn in the sun.” I shrugged, as if I didn’t really care. “I’ve had mine.”

  “The world would be brighter with two suns shining, you know,” Adela remarked sagely. While I laughed and acknowledged it was true, I still remained in a low gear, my career idling, not racing.

>   Why was that? I’d worked so hard to get here, to step out of Mary’s shadow, and now that I had, why did I want to step into Fred’s? Was I simply incapable of being in the spotlight? I’d had more chances to direct, but turned them all down. I was capable of pushing other women’s careers—I’d urged MGM to get Garbo out of the cheesecake business and play up to her exotic, brooding strengths; I’d pushed Lillian at the studio, gotten jobs for Adela and Anita. But why did I shy away from pushing myself?

  Or did I see Fred’s career as one of my projects, my own creation, and, in stepping back, I was giving my creation room to grow and flourish?

  “I think I’ve learned to be happy where I am, instead of wondering where else I could be. Fred’s done that to me. He’s made me happy,” I answered Adela.

  “You know my grandmother used to say you can’t drive three mules at the same time. Career, husband, children—one of these will get the short end of the stick. I guess you’ve chosen which.”

  “And I’m lucky I got to choose.” The moment I said it, I realized that was the truth; I was simply astonished at my luck—career and family—and not inclined to test it in any way. “I’m happy, Adela. Happy. Completely fulfilled for the first time in my life. No compromises, no disappointments.”

  “You and Fred are the lucky ones,” Adela agreed, then she grabbed her handbag, pulled out a sheet of paper, and made notes. While she was still a screenwriter, Adela was now known as the “Mother Confessor” of Hollywood; she wrote column after column for Photoplay and other newspapers about the comings and goings of the stars. I knew that if I asked Adela not to write about my happy marriage, she would comply; our friendship always came first.

  But I didn’t mind having the truth of my marriage in print, for I was proud of it. It wasn’t easy every day; Fred and I both had a stubborn streak, and we could argue, vehemently, about any topic. But we ended every argument with a handshake of respect and a kiss. And while we both had legions of friends, we preferred each other’s company and made time for evenings spent with our sons, dining in front of one of the many fireplaces at The Enchanted Hill, or mornings riding together before we went our separate ways to work; me to MGM and Fred to FBO, the studio recently bought by Boston banker Joseph P. Kennedy. Fred’s FBO films were huge in the rural markets but FBO had recently lent him to Paramount, to try to boost his box office in big cities.

  Mary and Douglas still were the king and queen of Hollywood, but Fred and I had the marriage most movie people looked up to, maybe envied. More and more, Mary stayed shut up at Pickfair while Douglas was seen out and about town surrounded by a coterie of celebrities, royals, and of course, Charlie Chaplin. He’d built Pickfair for Mary—but it was as if he himself chafed within its confines.

  Mary didn’t always return my calls these days; she hadn’t, since the babies came. Oh, she’d sent beautiful gifts for each of our boys, but somehow had never found time to come and see them. Mary was drifting, that was it; she was drifting, like a fragile water lily, further and further away and I had no idea why, or how to get her back. Adela, Hedda Hopper, Marie Dressler—these were my closest friends now, the ones who were there when the babies came, who didn’t mind scrambling around on the floor of the nursery, who stood up at each christening.

  And Adela, Hedda, and Marie were the ones who were here now, taking turns holding my hand, day after day, in the hospital. They fetched coffee, drove back and forth to the house to check on the boys, gave out bulletins to the press, for anxious fans were sending telegrams and flowers by the bushel.

  But he was too sick to notice.

  That first night, when Fred awoke in terrible pain with a 106-degree temperature, the doctors thought it was kidney stones. After a few days they operated, only to find nothing there, but meanwhile, Fred had lost a lot of blood. He had a transfusion, but that didn’t help his condition.

  And now, ominously, his fever had spiked again, and his jaws had clenched.

  “Tetanus,” the doctors finally said, relief in their eyes, and so for a moment, I felt it myself. But then I realized that they were only relieved at having stumbled upon the right diagnosis; their grim words pierced my heart with terror. Very few people recovered from an advanced state of tetanus. “Did he have any kind of accident or injury lately?”

  “Oh!” My gut was punched by a memory. “Yes, a couple weeks ago—he stepped on a nail in the barn. But he was fine right after—for days! This only just happened.”

  The doctors exchanged glances and nodded.

  “But there’s hope?” I couldn’t help asking even as I knew it was wrong, useless. They’d tell me what I wanted to hear because they were doctors, because they were men and I was merely the wife. The hysterical wife, but that was what I was; the sight of my Fred—my strong, strapping husband—thrashing feverishly in bed, his eyes, when opened, dull with pain. And now his jaw locked so that he could barely moan—that was the worst. The terror in his eyes when he did try to speak, the rigidity of his jaw, his mouth a misshapen slit.

  At one point, I thought I saw him try to say, “Children.”

  “Do you want to see the boys?” Fear invaded my stomach, filling its emptiness so that I was nauseated, but I gripped the rail of his bed, tight, until the wave passed. Did this mean he thought he was dying? Did I want our sons to see their father like this, their last glimpse of him not the laughing man who tossed them effortlessly in the air and caught them with ease, or tickled them until they squealed like little piglets, or chased them all around the tiled fountain outside, splashing them with water? But a wasted nightmare, a clench-jawed monster out of the worst horror movie?

  A tear rolled out of Fred’s right eye, and I caught my breath, stemmed my own tears, and squeezed his listless hand.

  “All right, darling.”

  Our sons were brought from home, sleepy; it was late, but the doctors had given up the fiction of normal visiting hours; this was a death vigil, and so there were no rules.

  “What do you say to Daddy?” I couldn’t control my voice; I couldn’t write a happy ending this time and God, where was L. B. Mayer when I needed him? Why couldn’t he swoop in and tell me this was wrong, the audience wouldn’t like this, Fred must live, and so all I had to do was sit down and cross some lines out and write new ones?

  “Happy Christmas!” Two-year-old Fred Jr. waved, innocently mixing up his holidays, and normally Fred would have laughed the loudest. But he couldn’t do anything but look, and all the love in the world was in that look; all the love he’d never be able to give, an infinite amount.

  Little Dickie was only one year old, and so could only imitate his big brother by waving, too. Fred made a sound—a moan, and, so gingerly, tried to move his head away. Was I sobbing, too? Everyone was, the nurses, the doctors, Hedda, big Marie with her beautifully ugly face that the boys adored—everyone was weeping, and my face was wet and my heart hurt, so I must be, too.

  “Go home, Fran,” someone whispered. “Get some rest.”

  “Mary,” I said again. Or did I? Nobody seemed to have heard.

  Hedda whisked the boys away and the doctors shooed everyone out of the room so they could give Fred a sedative. I sat back down on that metal chair, shivering. There was an empty chair waiting for Mary, right next to me.

  Instead, to my surprise—everything was a surprise now, wasn’t it? There would never be anything familiar in my life again—a cowboy sat down on the chair.

  “Mrs. Thomson?” His battered hat was in his brown, leathery hands.

  I looked up; the narrow hall was lined with cowboys, spurs on their muddy boots, dusty hats in their hands. One of the nurses, far down at the end of the hall, began to sputter and point.

  “We all wanted to come,” the cowboy next to me explained. “Mr. Thomson, he’s one of the good guys. He always treats us well on his films. He respects us, doesn’t try to tell us what to do, but lets us show him how it’s done. We’re mighty sorry, ma’am.”

  “Oh!” I could do nothing
but blink and blink, and I almost laughed. It was official; the line between movies and life had completely blurred, as represented by this hall full of actual cowboys who were standing vigil outside a movie-star cowboy’s hospital room, talking to his screenwriter wife. “Thank you,” I said, and my heart expanded, filled the looming emptiness with gratitude, bittersweet. If only Fred could know how many lives he touched! But he lay listless in his room now, the fever having taken over, smothering him.

  I must have worn a path between this cold metal chair and Fred’s bed, anxious to be with him but once inside, helpless to give him any comfort, unable to rouse any kind of response, and so I’d rush out so I wouldn’t cry in front of him, sit down in the chair but the tears wouldn’t fall, and then I’d get back up and start the whole thing over again. Back and forth, like a distraught hamster. It was funny. It could have been funny. On film, it would have been funny.

  At one point, I looked up from my little chair and saw that I was alone. The cowboys had left, Hedda and Marie and Adela were gone—I thought they’d said they were going home to check on the boys—and all the chairs surrounding me were empty.

  Then I saw a little figure far down at the end of the hall; a figure with golden hair.

  “Mary!” I rose, began to walk, in a trance, down the hall. She’d come! Mary had come, she knew I needed her, she’d left her castle and come despite all the—well, all the things she must be afraid of now, but I didn’t know what they were. All I knew was that Mary was finally here, and all I felt was relief, lifting me nearly out of my shoes as I kept walking toward her. Mary couldn’t change things; that was beyond even her powers. But that she was here, after all—it was the only thing that could have helped me at that moment, and I was simply glad; I held my arms out, already feeling Mary’s warm embrace.