The Biograph Girl

by William J. Mann

  “And your health? You seem amazingly spry.”

  “Spry?” Flo wrinkles up her face. “I hate that word.”

  “Flo’s in excellent health,” Sister Jean says. “Some arthritis, and she had some eye problems last year—”

  “Cataracts,” Flo tells him. “But I got them removed.”

  “Overall, she’s one of our healthiest residents,” Sister Jean says, looking over at Flo. “It just so happens that she’s also our oldest.”

  “Amazing,” Richard says.

  “We think so,” Sister Jean agrees.

  “What do you attribute it to?” Richard asks.

  “Who the hell knows?” Flo takes another long puff on her cigarette. “Been smoking these damn things for over eighty years. And I’ve never been known to go soft on the Scotch—not until I moved here anyway. Guess God’s just forgotten I’m down here.”

  She is extraordinary, Richard thinks. His excitement seems to catch him by the throat. “And—and—well, where were you born?” he asks as dozens of other thoughts crowd into his mind.

  “Canada.”

  “And what did you do? When did you—” He stops, realizing the enormity of the life sitting next to him. Where does he possibly begin?

  “Flo was an actress, too, like Ms. Murawski,” Sister Jean interjects.

  “These posters,” Richard says, looking up at the faces on the walls.

  “Most are from revues I appeared in,” Flo says, a little less saucy now, more humble. “What was I to do with them? Sister Jean insisted we hang them.”

  “Not standard issue for a Catholic rest home, I assume,” Richard says.

  “No,” Sister Jean admits. “But I got the board to agree. Flo had them all down in storage. The residents love them. We’ve even put them in some rooms. Mr. Soboleski—”

  “Yes,” Richard says. “Gaby Dubois.”

  “Ah,” Flo says, waving her cigarette dismissively. “She was a big phony. Pretended to be French and oh so elegant. Not so elegant when they dragged her body out of the Hudson River, where she’d fallen, stinking drunk. Everybody found out then she’d been just a butcher’s daughter from Michigan.”

  “What about this guy over here?” Richard points at a poster opposite them.

  Flo claps her hands. “Oh, the Great McGinty! How he chased the ladies! Even on one leg!” She laughs. “What a performer. He’d string a wire across the stage and walk along it on his one leg. He’d have the audience on the edge of their seats. I’d watch from the wings, terrified each time that he’d fall. But he never did. Falling just once would’ve meant he was through. You couldn’t fall and get back up again. You’d get pelted with tomatoes and chased off the stage.”

  “This is it,” Richard says, sitting forward in his chair, his face lighting up. “This is the kind of stuff I’m looking for. Do I have your permission to tape record this?”

  “Richard!” It’s Anita, walking into the room, clearly annoyed. “Where have you been?”

  “I thought you were still in the chapel,” he tells her.

  “One Hail Mary doesn’t take very long,” she says.

  “I’m doing an interview,” Richard explains.

  Anita eyes Sister Jean and Flo. “Look, I don’t mean to interrupt, but I don’t want to be here when Aunt Trinka arrives.”

  “But—” Richard looks over at Flo. To leave now could be disaster. Old people had a way of kicking the bucket without much warning. Look at Uncle Stan.

  “So you’re the actress,” Flo observes, sizing Anita up.

  Anita looks surprised. “Yes, I am.”

  “Good bone structure to the face,” Flo says. “See?” She lifts her chin, turning her profile to Anita. “It’s the nose that defines your face. Nose and cheekbones. You ever have any work done?”

  Anita seems taken aback. “No,” she says, and Richard knows she’s lying.

  Flo sniffs. “Me neither. Sex appeal is fifty percent what you’ve got and fifty percent what you can convince ’em you’ve got.” She winks at Anita. “You’ve done films?”

  Sister Jean explains, “Flo was an actress, too.”

  “Really?” Anita says, warming a bit, sitting on the arm of Richard’s chair. “Well, I’ve done some independent short films directed by my boyfriend.”

  “And she’s done a lot of TV,” Richard offers.

  “But I prefer film,” Anita adds quickly, a little haughtily. “TV cameras seem to add ten pounds to me.”

  Flo makes a face at her. “Then make it a point never to eat TV cameras.”

  They laugh, especially Anita. “How about you?” she asks. “Did you work on the stage or in the movies?”

  Flo’s eyelids flutter just a little. She hesitates, Richard notices. But she smiles quickly. “Go look at the poster behind me,” she says coyly.

  Anita obeys. She walks up to a large painted image of a little girl. The child stands on a stage in a white gingham dress and with an enormous white bow in her blond hair. “‘Baby Flo,’” Anita reads, “‘the Child Wonder Whistler.’”

  “The Child Wonder Whistler?” Richard repeats, grinning, looking over at Flo.

  “They came from everywhere to hear me,” Flo says. “In the sticks, they’d arrive in their farm overalls and straw hats. In the cities, they’d line up for five or six blocks. All to hear a little girl put her lips together and blow.” She chuckles. “I was doing it long before that chicky Lauren Bacall came along.”

  Sister Jean reaches over and touches Flo’s hand. “Why don’t you do a song for them?” she suggests.

  Flo arches a stenciled eyebrow. “I’m a bit tired from hawking those Girl Scout cookies all morning,” she protests.

  “Please,” Richard says.

  Flo laughs. That’s all the coaxing she needs, what Richard assumes she’s been angling for. Slowly she pulls her pink lips together, her face creasing in a thousand directions. She purses her mouth as if for a kiss, raising her chin into the air. She closes her eyes. Then, from her old throat, with seemingly the greatest of ease, comes the melodious sound of a nightingale.

  She whistles. Just what tune Richard can’t tell—one of those old, forgotten ditties they used to sing a century ago. Anita settles down next to Richard. She can’t help but smile.

  Flo finishes with a flourish, whistling like a bird calling its mate just as the sun peeks over the horizon. When she opens her eyes she’s looking directly at Richard, a little girl again awaiting the applause of the audience. Richard complies. “Bravo!” he cries.

  The old woman smiles contentedly. She’s not going anywhere, Richard realizes. She’s not going to die unexpectedly. She might even outlive him.

  He leans forward closer to her. “May I schedule a formal interview with you for later this week, Miss—Miss—?”

  “It’s Bridgewood,” Sister Jean says. “Florence Bridgewood.”

  “Yes,” Flo says. She holds Richard’s gaze. She seems as captivated by him as he is of her. “Yes, Mr. Sheehan. You may schedule an interview.”

  December 29, 1938

  Yes, yes—the girl on the hospital slab. I suppose it’s only natural that you would be curious about her. But I don’t know what you want me to say about her. What do you want me to admit? She was just a girl. A girl among the thousands who used to descend like pigeons every week on Hollywood. Who probably still do. Girls with high hopes and ridiculous dreams, girls who wanted to be stars. I remember once saying to Flossie Turner, as we watched them stream through the gate at Metro, that if all those sweet young things were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised.

  Right from the start, Molly reminded me of myself, and of Linda, too—from the very first day I came across her in the wardrobe closet at Metro, her pale blue eyes puffy from lack of sleep. Her skin was so white and so thin you could see the crosshatch of blue veins beneath it. Just like Linda. Soft, translucent.

  She was holding a costume of Garbo’s up in front of her, like a little girl playing dress up.
I asked her her name.

  “Molly,” she’d told me.

  Molly. Just a girl. Among thousands. I took her back to my little cottage, offered her a glass of beer and a cigarette. “No, thank you,” she had said. “I don’t drink and I don’t smoke.”

  Now she was dead. I took in a long, cold breath, sitting there on the beach. The sun was coming up; the sky was turning pink. A flock of gulls landed on the sand in front of me, each one in turn stretching its wings.

  Oh, Lester. What have we done?

  But nothing really. Nothing. “I’d like to repay you, Flo, for all your kindnesses,” Molly had said once.

  You have, my dear. More than you’ll ever know.

  Suddenly I was backlit by a rosy glow, the way Mr. Griffith had pioneered the use of movie lighting. I noticed the long shadow I now cast across the sand.

  Had I really been up all night? I supposed I had, but I couldn’t be sure. There were chunks of time I couldn’t remember, and after a while, the darkness obliterated all sense of time, despite the occasional glare of a passing car’s headlights. How long I’d been sitting on the beach I didn’t know, but the arrival of the sun signaled it was a new day—the first day of my new life.

  I stood with some difficulty. My calves ached. I trudged up through the sand back to the road. I still had no idea where I was going. I just clutched my purse ahead of me and resumed my walk.

  How far had I come? Hollywood seemed far away, yet how far could it really be? I tried to think of nothing except the sound of the waves against the sand. When thoughts tried to intrude, the sound of the constant surf chased them away, like those little birds that scamper across the beach, running from the onrushing waves each time, never learning.

  But I couldn’t entirely banish thoughts of Molly—and they became jumbled in my mind with thoughts of Linda.

  Linda’s voice: “I’m not sure you want to be an actress at all.”

  How the idea had startled me. What an absurd remark. I told her so.

  “I’m not so sure, Flo.” The sun had filled Linda’s white hair. “I think you just want the applause.”

  We were in San Francisco, on a hill overlooking the old town, before the earthquake and the fire destroyed it forever. I was fourteen, fifteen—somewhere in there. The Lawrence Dramatic Company had been on a west coast tour—oh, how excited we were! Mother was in her glory. We received good notices for our costume melodrama, The Winds of Pompeii—less for our performances than for our papier-mâché volcano that spewed real smoke. But we didn’t mind. We were performing. That was all that mattered.

  “You don’t know what you say,” I responded haughtily to Linda. “I was born to be an actress. Just ask Mother.”

  Headlights startled me, wrenching me back to the ambiguous present. I found myself awash in a light incongruous to the dawn. I recoiled. The warmth of the automobile that slowed down next to me felt improper, too familiar, like a hand on my leg on a barstool.

  “Hey, lady, need a lift?”

  In the glare of the headlights, I couldn’t see the speaker’s face, but his voice revealed his gender.

  “It’s still pretty dark out there,” he was saying. He sounded young, innocent. Even kind. “Wouldn’t want you to get run down.”

  I considered his words, the first spoken to me since I’d been declared dead. I glimpsed the whites of his eyes over the steering wheel. The car was large, expensive. A Franklin, most likely—a newer version of the one I used to drive.

  I hadn’t answered him. “Where you headed?” he asked at last.

  “San Francisco,” I told him plainly. I surprised myself as much as him.

  The man laughed. “You’re walking to San Francisco? Lady, you’re nuts. Get in the car. I can take you as far as Santa Barbara.”

  We never got that far.

  “You okay?” he asked me after we’d gone a little way.

  “Yes,” I told him. “I’m okay.”

  He seemed unconvinced. He made a sound—a sigh—then returned his gaze to the road. In the backseat were gaily wrapped boxes. Christmas gifts, I imagined. On the floor at my feet were three empty beer bottles that clinked together as we drove. He didn’t seem drunk, but I could smell alcohol on his breath. I’d gotten very familiar with the scent. Charles, and Bolton, too, had tried to hide their drinking from me, but I’d always been able to tell. I swore I could smell even vodka on their breath.

  Still, I wouldn’t have minded a nip of something myself just then. Sitting there, I had a sudden memory: Mary Pickford, age sixteen, aghast as she watched me knock back a shot of whiskey and light a cigarette nearly in the same gesture. Remembering her reaction, I couldn’t help but smile.

  The driver seemed to notice. He looked over out of the corner of his eye. I kept one hand hovering over my chest, playing idly with the buttons of my blouse. It was still dark, but I didn’t want him to ask about the stains. Certainly I need not worry that he might recognize me. He hadn’t even been born when The Biograph Girl was all the rage.

  I stared straight ahead at the swath of light cut by the car’s headlights on the road before us. Eventually he switched them off. The day was still hazy with the purple of dawn, but the sun was strong enough now to see by. I thought of nothing except getting to where I was going, for now I had a destination. I was going to San Francisco.

  The road passed by under our wheels.

  “Did you have a good Christmas?” The driver’s voice snapped the stillness.

  I looked over at him, not comprehending the question at first. “I was working,” I finally said.

  “Oh, going home now to celebrate?” He smiled. The sun revealed I was right: He was young. Maybe no more than twenty. “Your family live in San Francisco?”

  “No,” I said. “My family’s all gone.”

  He seemed eager to chat. “What kind of work do you do that keeps you busy on Christmas?”

  I would need to become used to questions, I reasoned. I’d have to become comfortable with providing answers. New answers. So I told him, “Odd jobs,” not really lying. “Been out of work. You know, with times being so hard.”

  “They’re getting better,” he said with all the cocky optimism of a child. “Mark my words. Good times are just around the corner. You married?”

  “Divorced,” I told him.

  “Ah,” he said. He was young—and he was new to Hollywood. There was a strange quirk to his voice—I’d heard it before, years ago, playing the tanks all around the country. Midwest. No. Minnesota—that’s what it was.

  Not many divorcées in Minnesota, I thought. And the ones who were —

  “I could get you some work,” he said, deeper voiced suddenly, and he looked over at me full face for the first time.

  I didn’t respond.

  “I’m an agent. For the movies.” He grinned. He still had freckles across the bridge of his nose. “Ever do any movie work?”

  I laughed. “Oh, hasn’t everyone out here at one time or another?”

  “Well, don’t give up. Do you know how many years Jean Harlow had to work as an extra before she caught on?”

  I looked over at him. It was no longer dark enough that he could claim not to see the lines around my eyes, my fallen chin. “Harlow did it the right way,” I told him. “She died while she was still on top, still young and still loved.”

  “Well, I represent a young lady who’s going to be the next Harlow,” he told me. “She’s young. She’s beautiful. She’s very talented.”

  I laughed again, shaking my head. “For heaven’s sakes, just marry her and hop on the next train back to Duluth.”

  He had slowed down. He turned to me. “Do you take me for a child?” he asked, making no effort to disguise his contempt.

  “All men are children,” I said, this time exposing my own scorn. I turned away, considering the conversation over.

  But when he rolled the car to a stop and I turned to look at him, I could see he wouldn’t allow me to have the last word.

>   I’d been raped before. Twice, actually—if husbands can be counted as rapists, as I believe they can. I knew what portents led up to it. I recognized once more the change in the air, the sudden dampness, the precipitate cold. Part of me wanted simply to bear it, to pretend even to like it, just so we could get on, so he would take me at least part of the way to San Francisco. I already knew the terror, the pain of the act, the sting and the shame of the aftermath. I could bear it again if I had to, even in the state I was in, and still come out alive.

  Yet I was free finally, free from all that. I had walked away from the hospital and no one had stopped me. I was charting a new life, starting over. Molly had given me a tremendous gift. To submit to this man would have degraded her sacrifice.

  So I fought back.

  Men don’t like to be laughed at. Especially young men—especially drunk young men whose prim and pure girlfriends from places like Duluth, Minnesota, never allow them more than a good-night kiss. Especially spoiled, privileged young men in their fathers’ cars, who watch with mounting indignation as an older woman—careworn, divorced, one they can tell has “been around”—laughs at them. I remember thinking these thoughts, realizing these truths, as I looked over at him, his eyes hard, his gold pocket watch glittering in the morning sun.

  “You’re awfully pretty to be wandering alone on the highway,” he said to me, his voice lower and deeper than before.

  “No, I’m not,” I said. “I used to be pretty. I’m not anymore.”

  He laughed. “I like mature women,” he said. “Do you like younger men? Maybe I could convince you to forget about San Francisco.”

  He lit up a cigarette, then asked if I wanted one. I accepted, wary of him, using the opportunity for delay. We smoked in silence for a while, the surf still pounding below us. My right hand casually found the door handle and rested there. Few cars passed us on the road.

  He took one last long drag on his cigarette before rolling down his window and tossing the stub out onto the street. I felt the sudden smite of cold air against my face.

  “Whaddya say, honey?” he asked very low and significantly.