The Half-True Lies of Cricket Cohen

by Catherine Lloyd Burns

  “Really good.”

  “Good! Honey, I’m so proud of you. So you’ll have a draft by the time we get back?”

  “For sure,” Cricket said. She took a deep breath, wondering why she said half the things she said. To make other people happy? To make herself happy? To avoid conflict? To make things worse? Whatever she’d avoided by saying she was working on her memoir was going to be irrelevant when her mother found out she hadn’t written a word. And when she found out the other fact, that Cricket had run away from home? This was some crazy adventure she’d gone on with Dodo. She would definitely have some explaining to do.

  Her phone battery was at 30 percent. Maybe it would die and she’d never have to answer it again.

  19

  OLD MOVIES

  Dodo took Cricket to the Rotunda for afternoon tea.

  “I think we’re the first to arrive,” Dodo said. “I wonder where everyone is?”

  The room was round and the walls were covered in murals. Dodo said there were portraits of celebrities mixed in with the figures of Greek goddesses and historical figures.

  Cricket spotted a double staircase in the middle that she had to explore while Dodo waited for a staff member.

  The stairway led to a large banquet room where Cricket guessed weddings and big parties happened. There were stacks of gold chairs, piles of white tablecloths, crates of dishes and silverware waiting for someone to arrange them. The walls were covered by murals as well. Even though the lights were off, the grandeur was obvious. But there was something scary about an empty room that was meant to be filled with people. Cricket felt the presence of previous guests. Like the room was filled with centuries of ghosts. She wanted to get out of there.

  Dodo had seated herself at a round table. “Have you ever had tea?” Dodo asked.

  “Well, yeah,” Cricket said.

  “High tea?” Dodo asked. “I don’t even like it. But it is very amusing to be served so many ridiculous finger sandwiches. Cucumber and watercress and egg salad. And fresh scones with jam and clotted cream.” She looked at her watch. “Well, I am very surprised by the service here, I have to tell you. They used to be so attentive.”

  “Wait, cucumber sandwiches and scones? I guess I’ve never had that. I thought you meant a cup of tea.”

  “I remember it being so busy. So many people. Why is everything falling apart?”

  “Maybe they’re on a break,” Cricket said. She and Dodo were still the only people there.

  “This poor hotel. Two years after it was built the Depression hit it and the place went bankrupt. Jean Paul Getty bought it for a fraction of the original price and it was back in business. Then many years later there was a heist. It was all over the papers. Eleven million dollars’ worth of jewelry was stolen. The burglars came in a black limousine. They took hostages. It was like out of a movie.”

  “Wow,” Cricket said. It was hard to imagine criminals with guns and hostages being held in terror against the backdrop of such luxury.

  “I wish they hadn’t stolen the tea,” Dodo said.

  After waiting a few more minutes Dodo got fed up. They made their way back to the lobby and she complained about the lack of service to the gentleman behind the front desk.

  “Ah, madam, we no longer serve high tea in the Rotunda. There was no demand for such a formal meal. I apologize.”

  “No demand for high tea?” Dodo said. “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, tastes change. It is a sad but true thing. However, if you will go back to your room we’d be happy to bring it up to you. Or you are more than welcome to order tea in the lobby restaurant.”

  “That is much too noisy. We’ll go upstairs. Thank you.”

  Cricket’s head was still reeling from being in such a swanky hotel, whether or not they had had high tea. After their run-in with the skater in the park, Bunny would have taken them to a hospital. Or to a lawyer to prepare litigation against the roller skater and the park. Or she would have returned them safely to West Sixty-Fourth Street to lock them up away from danger.

  But because she was with Dodo, they’d taken their near fall and dusted themselves off and were embarked on a bona fide glamorous adventure.

  They never ordered tea, but they did order dinner at six-thirty. Cricket let the room-service waiter in. He arrived pushing a rectangular rolling cart covered with a white cloth. In three deft moves he transformed it into a round table, set with dinner. There was even a vase of flowers. All the plates were covered by silver domes to keep their food warm. Dodo signed the receipt and closed the door behind the parting waiter.

  “When I was a girl,” Dodo said, coming to the table, “I’d cut school and go to the movies. I didn’t care what was playing. The minute the lights went out, my heart would start pounding. In those days each studio had a reputation. MGM movies were always glamorous and sophisticated. Warner Brothers movies were cynical, even if they were romantic. I remember one morning I sat down next to a man and we looked at each other and it was my father! We were both so scared of my mother finding out we thought we’d die. We promised not to tell on each other. She would have killed us.”

  Cricket sat down opposite her grandmother and carefully removed the big shield over her steak dinner.

  “What movie was it?” Cricket asked. Her steak was slathered in green peppercorn sauce and there was a side of french fries as well. Dodo had ordered lobster thermidor. Also french fries.

  “I don’t remember. But it was a good one. They were all—well, every one of them was good. Bette Davis was my favorite.”

  They ate dinner as though doing so in a posh hotel room in your own city was perfectly normal. There was nothing normal about it, but it was 100 percent fantastic. Cricket had never had more fun in her life. And if she told people she had run away to a hotel with her grandmother and eaten dinner in their room, no one, not even Lana Dean, would believe her.

  “I loved Bette Davis,” Dodo said. “The studios didn’t know what to do with her. She was too talented for her own looks. She was always offered boring roles. There was a picture called Of Human Bondage and she’d been offered the lead, but she belonged to another studio. She asked them to release her and they were thrilled to do it, they didn’t think she was attractive enough. Have I shown you that movie?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Cricket said.

  “She should have won an Academy Award for that role. It was a very complex part. And even after doing it to such acclaim, she was still offered boring roles. So she actually took out an advertisement asking for someone to cast her in something worthwhile. She really got under people’s skin. Someone observed, after she died, that she would have been burned at the stake as a witch if she’d been born a few hundred years earlier. That’s what they did to women no one liked back then. Can you imagine?”

  That was a pretty horrifying thought. Cricket could absolutely imagine Lana Dean and Juliet Lysander and Heidi Keefe starting an uprising. A movement to get Cricket tried as a witch.

  “What Bette Davis films have I shown you?”

  “All About Eve and The Man Who Came to Dinner.”

  “A drama and a comedy, see. She had quite a range. As a woman, Cricket, you have got to be independent. You have got to create your own life or you’ll get typecast.”

  “What does that mean?” Cricket asked.

  “It means people only see you one way. An ingenue. A leading man. Or, in my case, impossible.”

  “Or, in my case, an unreliable maker-upper of stories.”

  “Cricket, you have an imagination. That is wonderful. It belongs to you. As long as you have that you are going to be just fine. But listen to me: people will try and re-create you in their own image. It will be a struggle. In the end, though, it will be hardest on them. People have got to stop trying to make people be people they aren’t. Your mother wants me to have one of those home aides. I’ve lived alone for twenty-five years. It took me a long time to stop crying every night after your grandfather di
ed, to pull myself together, and I’m not about to become dependent on someone I don’t even have a real relationship with. I’ve had enough reinvention in my life.”

  As if Bunny were eavesdropping, the phone in Cricket’s pocket vibrated.

  “Hello?” Cricket said. She prayed that her phone would die and that it would not die. Bunny’s calls were stressing her out.

  “Cricket?” Bunny said, as if unsure that Cricket was the one answering the phone.

  “’Tis I,” Cricket said.

  “Cricket, there’s no answer at home. Where are you?”

  Hmm. Cricket didn’t want to say she was in a hotel eating room service. Yet she was trying to keep the lying to a minimum.

  “With Dodo.”

  “Is she behaving?”

  “Yes.” Cricket looked over at Dodo and mouthed Bunny.

  “All right, well, we didn’t find a house today. But we’re hopeful about one tomorrow. It’s made entirely of glass. How’s your memoir, are you finished?”

  “I’m working on it right now.”

  “Good girl, Cricket. I love you.”

  “Bye, I love you, too.”

  She really needed to stop lying.

  20

  REINVENTION

  “Was that Bunny calling to check up on me?” Dodo laughed. “Did she ask if I was behaving myself?”

  “Yes, of course,” Cricket said. “But Dodo, what were you saying before, about reinvention?”

  “What was I saying?”

  “Reinvention and how a woman has to be independent.”

  “She does. You’re so right, Cricket. When your grandfather was alive, he worked hard and discovered important things and I packed our bags. He was the scientist and I was the wife. I organized our trips to conferences. I made arrangements for things to do and see between and after these conferences. We traveled all the time. I loved it. We went all over the world. But there was a hierarchy. Dodie and his work were at the top. They came first.”

  Cricket had a tremendous gift for imagining things. But this old-fashioned version of her grandmother was hard to visualize. The Dodo she’d known her whole life believed that women must take care of themselves. She said a woman shouldn’t need a man. It was all well and good to want a man, but that was no reason to depend on one. The Dodo she knew was always surprising people. People assumed that a woman named Dodo would be a ditz (even though the same people were more than happy to think that a man named Dodie was a genius), but she was a formidable businesswoman.

  “When your grandfather died, I was in a sinkhole of grief. I was miserable. But I had to support myself. I had to work. My friend Cassandra was a painting teacher at CalArts. She told me about some young people with talent and I began collecting. They were complete unknowns, but there was something about the silence of these young people’s pictures that really spoke to me. I couldn’t concentrate on reading, but I found I could look at art. I could see myself in the stories art was telling. I chose two artists to take on. I became their champion. That’s the thing about the world, you’re a nobody until you’re somebody. One of those artists, well, you know the story, he got very famous. He’s still very famous. So overnight I became important.”

  Dodo got up from the table and walked around the room. Cricket decided to put on her luxurious bathrobe and wash her dirty shirt in the bathroom sink using some of the fancy hotel shampoo. She hadn’t packed a clean shirt.

  “I have a yen to watch a movie,” Dodo said.

  “Okay,” Cricket said. After hanging up her dripping shirt on the shower rod, she got the clicker and turned on the TV. She was more interested in hearing about Dodo’s life than in watching a movie, but Dodo always picked such good movies.

  “So before the Dodo I know, you didn’t work?” Cricket asked. She was still having trouble wrapping her brain around that idea.

  “Nope,” Dodo said. “I was very domestic. I took care of Bunny and I took care of Dodie and then I spent six years with him and his cancer. Dodie and I were such an old-fashioned kind of marriage, our names matched. Dodie wasn’t his real name. It was a nickname to match me. He thought it was very funny. Your mother thinks I was very selfish. Can you ask the TV to show us all the Bette Davis movies they have? I want to see Bette Davis.”

  Cricket started spelling B-E-T-T. She figured they were going to be staying up late. Maybe they’d even order more room service.

  A list of about fifty titles appeared and Dodo chose Now, Voyager. They propped up all the pillows on one of the queen-size beds and got comfortable.

  The movie took place on a ship, in Europe, in a mansion, and at a mental institution. Cricket loved being transported. Dodo sat quietly, her face frozen in a look of amazement. Cricket squirmed under the covers when the characters in the movie reconciled themselves, for no good reason, to life without love. She couldn’t believe the movie ended with the two people who loved each other not spending their life together. They could have been together so easily. All the man had to do was leave his wife, whom he didn’t love, to be with the woman he did love.

  “Dodo! Why aren’t they together?” Cricket demanded when the movie ended.

  “Because love is an illusion.”

  “Dodo! Do you really believe that?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been alone so long, what do I know?”

  Cricket turned off the TV and the room was dark. “Tell me more about Dodie.” She climbed off her grandmother’s bed and into her own.

  “Well, he was very funny. He was very smart. I loved him with everything I had and if he hadn’t died, I don’t know if we’d still be together. Who knows?”

  “Oh my gosh,” Cricket said. Her mother had almost come from a broken home. This was all new information. Cricket was fascinated. But what her grandmother was saying didn’t make sense. Dodie was the love of her life. Why wouldn’t they have stayed together forever?

  “I’ve had two very good lives. The one where he and I were together and we made Bunny. And the life I made for myself after he died. At the end we had the most languid and romantic time, traveling and trying to fit as much love into the year we had left. It is hard to describe what life’s like when you know someone is going to die soon. I don’t think Bunny thought I did a very good job. Sometimes you try and hold it together but another person just needs to see you fall apart. I was proud of myself for not cracking into a million pieces. But maybe Bunny thought I didn’t love her father because I didn’t let her know I cried into my pillow every night. To be strong.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t want her to worry that she had to take care of me. I was her mother, not the other way around.”

  “So you pretended not to be upset so that she would be less upset, but you made her more upset?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Just like a Bette Davis movie. Dodo, you should have told her you were sad.”

  “I suppose I should have. But sometimes you want something that isn’t true to be true. I didn’t want to be so devastated. I didn’t want Bunny to be devastated. I didn’t do the right thing. She was very angry with me. She felt cut out of her father’s dying, while he and I traveled, and then she felt that I wouldn’t grieve with her. But I couldn’t. It was too much grief for me. We didn’t speak for a long time. And then you were born. We came back into each other’s lives because of you.”

  21

  THE MIX-UP

  “Cricket!” Dodo screamed.

  It was the middle of the night and Cricket forgot where she was. She felt around for her glasses and remembered she was in a hotel. She sat up in her bed and found Dodo in a corner of the room, frantically looking through the duffel on the wooden luggage rack. A little table lamp illuminated her. It looked like a scene from a play.

  “Where are all my clothes? Where is my suitcase?” Dodo continued. “I packed for days, and someone has taken all my things. All my beautiful things. Call the front desk. I’ve been robbed.”

  Cricket tied
her bathrobe. It was two a.m. They were in the Pierre. They’d run away. Dodo had barely packed because when the packing part happened they didn’t have a plan. It was just pretend.

  “Dodo? What do you remember? Because when I was with you, you only packed pants. White pants. And underwear. Then we talked about socks and you were very busy with your tote bag and your suitcase and I don’t know if you put anything else in your bag. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

  “Cricket, I know how to pack. I’m an inveterate traveler. This bag was packed by an imbecile. I’m telling you I was robbed. Things are missing.” She picked up the phone. “Hello, this is Mrs. Fabricant, room 509. There’s been some kind of terrible mix-up and either I’ve been given the wrong luggage or I’ve been robbed. Yes, thank you. I will wait right here.” Dodo hung up the phone. “This is just terrible. I wanted to go out for lunch. I can’t go out in these clothes. They’re dirty and there’s nothing for me to change into.”

  “Dodo, I can wash out what’s dirty, or maybe they even have a laundry service.”

  “That’s a good idea. And then I’ll put it back on, then we’ll go shopping because I want to go to the Matisse show. But first they’ve got to catch the person who did this to me, why do people, why?”

  Why indeed? Maybe her father was right and Dodo was losing it. It was the middle of the night and Dodo was ready to go to a museum. And to lunch. There was a knock on the door and a woman in a dark suit was standing in the hall.

  “Hello, I’m Ms. Michaels, hotel security. Is there a problem?”

  “Come in, come in!” Dodo said. “Your suit is wonderful. Is that yours, or does the hotel provide it? It’s very handsome.”

  The woman looked like she was trying to assess if Dodo was harmless or up to something. Cricket wished they could compare notes.

  “Can I get you a drink? Cricket, offer this man a drink.” Cricket looked at Ms. Michaels, hoping for some direction. Should one of them, for instance, explain that Ms. Michaels was a woman? Cricket didn’t know where to begin.