The Biograph Girl

by William J. Mann

  “Anita, you’ll have coffee? I’ve made some.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Sheehan.”

  They sit down, but don’t yet slice into the cake. Ben’s mother opens the refrigerator, pours a glass of milk for her son. She’s about five two with completely gray hair. Her elbows disappear into her arms. She wears a polka-dotted dress Ben knows she made herself—she makes most of her clothes now—just a tent with sleeve holes and buttons up the front. On her feet she wears flip-flops.

  “So,” she says, “have you seen Richard?”

  “I see him all the time, Mom,” Ben says.

  “That’s good.” She pours two cups of coffee.

  That’s good. Ben knows what she means. So long as he stays in touch with Richard, he’ll be all right. Richard will look out for him. Richard has all the answers.

  Well, where was Richard when Dad was sick? Where was the perfect son when Dad needed him? For that matter, where were you, Mom?

  “I’ve boxed up some of your father’s old clothes,” Mom is telling him as if sensing where Ben’s thoughts were drifting. Being in the house, looking down the hallway toward Dad’s old room, always brought those days into sharp relief for him again. “You want to take them? Or should I call Goodwill?”

  “Oh, no, I’ll take them,” Ben says.

  “They’re a little musty.”

  “You know, those styles are back in now,” Anita says helpfully.

  No one responds.

  Dad’s clothes. Ben remembers a red-and-blue-checked shirt. He wonders if that was in the box. And his robe. White terry cloth. Dad always wore his robe in bed.

  He died in that robe.

  “Rosemary! Benny! Somebody!”

  Ben would bound down the hall to find Dad struggling to get out of bed, but tipping precariously off the side. He couldn’t walk toward the end, and he would shit himself two, three times a day. The sheets and his terry cloth robe were regularly soiled with what looked to Ben like coffee—with the same consistency, too. There was hardly any odor. Once he got used to it, it really wasn’t so horrible changing his father’s sheets, wiping his father’s ass.

  “You’re a good boy, Benny,” his father would rasp. “A good boy. Just remember to always do your best, never cheat, and work your hardest.”

  “Jesus, Dad, that’s a tall order,” Ben would say, managing a grin as he snapped his father’s diaper around his waist.

  Ben was fourteen. Mom would be on the couch in the living room, sometimes in tears, unable to face what her husband had become. In time, she didn’t even stir when he called, fiercely intent on her afternoon soaps or reruns of Bewitched or Bonanza. They had a visiting nurse for a while, but Ben took to skipping school to stay home with Dad. “He’s needed at home,” Mom told the principal when he called. “I can’t do it alone. And besides, I’d rather have Ben miss classes than Richard.”

  Ben would sit at his father’s side as he struggled to eat, jabbing himself with the fork. Finally, without words, Ben just took the fork and gently began to feed his father. Dad just looked at him with his big, round, sunken eyeballs and gratefully accepted his son’s ministrations.

  It was Ben who rubbed A & D into Dad’s raw butt and legs. It was Ben who placed the cold press on Dad’s head when he cried that the pain there had grown too intense. It was Ben who was with him at the end.

  “He’s gone,” Ben had said simply to Mom and Richard on Thanksgiving morning when each got up in turn, groggy eyed and disbelieving, several hours later.

  “Oh, Lord!” Mom cries now almost spilling Ben’s milk as she tries to carry it and the cups of coffee at the same time. Anita leaps up and helps her. They settle the glass and cups on the table. Mom sighes, out of breath, and then passes out paper plates and plastic forks.

  “Whatsa matter?” she asks. “Don’t you want any cake? Dig in.”

  Ben cuts three slices of the strudel, careful to make sure each is exactly the same size. “Don’t be stingy.” Mom laughs. She sits down and takes a bite. “Good, huh?”

  “Mmm,” agrees Anita.

  “I talked with Richard last night,” Mom tells them, food in her mouth. “He said he knew you were coming but not what you were going to tell me.”

  A plane taking off from Westover rocks the house for a brief second. They wait for the noise to subside, as they’ve become accustomed to doing, barely noticing they’re doing it, and then continue.

  “Mom, we’re not here to tell you anything,” Ben says. “Can’t we just come for a visit?”

  “All the way from New York?”

  “Well, we hadn’t been up in a while,” Anita says.

  Mom tilts her head. Her eyes are small, her lips pink. Ben notices she put on a little lipstick this morning. Well, that’s something, at least. “Benny,” she says, “just come out and ask for it. You know I don’t like playing games.”

  “Mom—”

  “Richard told me something about this new movie you’re planning.” She’s finished her cake. “And I’m afraid to say I don’t have any money to give you. I just don’t.”

  “Mom, I didn’t come looking for financial backing. Is that what Richard said?”

  “No, no, don’t go blaming Richard.” She shrugs. “I just thought it was odd you coming up like this out of the blue.”

  “Mom, Richard and Rex come up often,” Ben says. “I just wanted to come and see you—that’s all.”

  “Well, Richard has a car,” she says, sipping her coffee. “What kind is it again?”

  Ben feels his throat tighten. “It’s a Saab, Mom.”

  “Can’t believe what it costs him to keep it garaged in the city.” She shrugs. “But I guess he’s making good money writing for all them magazines. I was worried when he left his full-time job at the Times to go freelance, but I guess he was right. He seems to be doing just f—”

  “Richard’s got a good head on his shoulders. Right, Mom?”

  Anita looks over at Ben. She makes a face in support. He closes his eyes and swallows his cake with a long sip of milk. Damn it! It always happens. He sits here with his mother drinking a glass of milk, getting a goddamn milk mustache on his upper lip, hearing her talk about Richard—and he’s a kid again.

  “You know, Ben,” Mom had said at this very table, right before Ben and Richard went off to college, “I’m going to leave the house to you. Just you.”

  He had looked up at her. She was sitting right where she is now—but she was sixty, seventy pounds lighter and her hair still had flashes of red and gold. They were eating cake, too, just as they are now. Ben remembers being touched by his mother’s words. As if she were sharing a secret with him, something special between them. It wasn’t often that they shared anything, just the two of them, the way she and Richard would watch TV together and eat sweets.

  “Just me?” Ben had asked. “Not Richard, too?”

  She shook her head. “Just you, Ben.”

  “You’re not sick or anything, Mom, are you?”

  She sighed. “Not any more than usual. I just want to make plans—that’s all. Who knows if I’ll make it through your college years. I know I’m not long for this world. And I just wanted to make sure you were taken care of.”

  “But what about Richard?”

  “Oh,” she said, and she had smiled—Ben would never forget that smile. “Richard can take care of himself.”

  And I can’t. Ben finishes the last of his cake. So I get this run-down old house in the Chicopee Falls projects. That’s taking care of me. That’s all I need.

  What was even worse, Ben thought, was that she certainly had told Richard, too, and Ben could imagine what she had said. “You understand, darling. Ben will need a place to live or at least the money he can get from selling the place. You, of course, darling, will be living in some fabulous Fifth Avenue penthouse by then.”

  “More?” she asks, interrupting Ben’s conceit.

  “No, thanks.” Ben pushes the paper plate away from him.

  “Well,
” Anita says. “Ben has come up with a new movie idea. That much is true.”

  “And what, may I ask, is it about?”

  Ben looks over at his mother. “Mom, have you heard of Marge Schott?”

  “Marge who?”

  “Marge Schott. She’s the owner of the Cincinnati Reds.”

  “I don’t follow football.”

  “Baseball, Mom. Anyway, she’s—”

  “Benny, how can you make a movie about somebody nobody’s ever heard of?”

  He sighs. “Mother, you can’t judge what people have heard of by your own lack of awareness.”

  She makes a face. “You want more cake?” she asks Anita, turning her back to Ben.

  “No, thank you, Mrs. Sheehan.”

  “You gonna play this Marge lady?” she asks.

  Anita grins. “No, I don’t think so.”

  Mom picks up their three paper plates and takes them to the sink, wiping them off with a sponge and setting them in the drainer to dry. “Well, Richard told me he gave you another idea but you didn’t like it,” she says, her back to them.

  Damn Richard. “It wasn’t right for me,” Ben says irritably.

  “What did you think, Anita? Did you like Richard’s idea?”

  Ben feels the anger surge up, as if he’s about to puke out his cake. He can’t hold it back anymore. “Oh, I’m sure Richard told you Anita liked the idea, too. What else did he tell you? That it was about an old movie star? Maybe the two of you used to watch her on the four o’clock movie?”

  “I’d never heard of her.” Mom shrugs. “My favorite is Paula Prentiss—you know: Richard Benjamin’s wife.”

  “Well, Paula Prentiss wasn’t even born when this old broad was on the screen.” Ben gets up and goes over to the back door. Outside, he can see the railroad track, now all grown over with maple saplings and goldenrod. When he was a boy the freight train still occasionally rumbled through those trees, carrying coal and rubber to the factories and plants, its whistle long and mournful in the distance.

  “Talk about making a movie about somebody no one’s ever heard of,” he says, too defensively for his own liking. “I mean, at least Marge Schott has made the evening news. Who ever heard of Florence Lawrence? And besides, it’s not even her.”

  “Sounds as if something strange is going on, to hear Richard tell it,” Mom says.

  Ben’s going to bite his brother’s head off when he next sees him for sharing all this with Mom. But it’s too late to stop Anita: She’s off and running her mouth.

  “I’ll say,” she’s babbling. Mom sits back down at the table to listen. “I went with Richard and Rex up to see her. She’s a real trip, Mrs. Sheehan. You’d never believe it. She’s a hundred and six and is as spry as a—well, a sixty-year-old!”

  Mom makes a small smile. “I imagine she gets around better than I do.”

  Anita laughs awkwardly. “Well, she’s—she’s just amazing—that’s all. And her memory—oh, God, she was telling us about the organ grinders on the streets of New York at the turn of the century and the boys hawking papers on the street and about World War I and the Great Depression—”

  Ben’s leaning against the sink, watching them, his arms folded in front of his chest. “An old lady’s memories do not a movie make,” he says.

  “I know, sweetheart.” Anita tries to contain herself, but can’t. “It’s just that, well, she’s a mystery—that’s all. She was known as Baby Flo, the Child Wonder Whistler, and she was born in Hamilton, Ontario—”

  “Just like this Florence Lawrence actress who killed herself,” Mom says. Richard’s filled her in well.

  “But she says she’s not her. And how could she be, really? I mean, all the papers reported that Florence Lawrence died. There had to have been a body—an autopsy. She couldn’t just have walked away!”

  “Maybe it’s her sister,” Mom says, leaning over and touching Anita’s hand. “Maybe she had a twin.”

  “You know, I’ve thought of that,” Anita says.

  “Oh, come on. The evil-twin theory?” Ben scoffs.

  “Well, anyway,” Anita continues, “Richard’s doing this article for the Times and he’s doing some more research. He’s determined to get to the bottom of it.”

  Something twists down inside Ben’s gut. Not anger anymore really—although it does make him nuts to realize he’s starting to get caught up in this story himself. That’s what’s got hold of him: that old scent of a story. He’s a filmmaker—he recognizes good material. Maybe not the old lady, but Anita’s enthusiasm. Richard’s determination. The mystery of it all …

  No, it’s not timely, he scolds himself. Not like Marge Schott. Who the hell is Florence Bridgewood anyway?

  “I remember once, Benny,” Mom is saying, “when you were maybe ten or eleven, you took your father’s old Super-8-millimeter camera out to see Aunt Bridget at the nursing home. Do you remember?”

  He does, but he doesn’t say so.

  “Well, you got her talking. Remember? She hardly ever spoke. Oh, she was like ninety or something,” Mom tells Anita, reaching over and touching her hand again. “We’d go out to visit her and she’d just sit there. My grandmother’s sister. From the old country. A bitter old lady. Hated being there in the home. But then Benny came out with his camera and started asking her questions. What was it, Benny, a school project?”

  “Yeah,” he admits.

  “Well, he ran out of film! She just kept going on and on. She had actually met—which President was it, Benny?”

  “Teddy Roosevelt.”

  “She talked a blue streak! It was fascinating. Told stories none of us ever knew before. About growing up in County Cork, taking the boat over here, Ellis Island, all that kind of stuff. And do you know what? She died a week later. We still have that film somewhere down in the basement. What did you get on the project, Benny? An A plus or something, right?”

  “It was just an A, Mom,” he says, sitting back down at the table.

  “Well, all this just reminded me of that.” She shrugs. “You want some more cake?”

  The sun slants through the tall windows of the Chelsea town house Richard and Rex share, spilling across the high-gloss wood floors. Ever since they bought the place six months ago, they’ve been constantly remodeling, knocking down walls, adding glass brick and Art Deco tiles. “Sure wish Billy Haines were still alive,” Rex had mused, trying to explain to the young pierced and purple-haired decorator the classic Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer look he wanted.

  It’s a lazy late Sunday morning, and they’re still in bed, mugs of hazelnut coffee steaming on their side tables. The New York Times is spread out in its various sections across the white down comforter. They usually get up around nine on Sunday mornings, make coffee, get the paper, and crawl back into bed.

  But this morning, Richard’s engrossed not so much in the Arts and Leisure or Travel sections—his two favorites—but instead in a pile of photocopies he got yesterday at the Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.

  “Just look,” he says to Rex, who glances over at the papers in Richard’s hand. “Movie Mirror, 1921. ‘The Return of Florence Lawrence.’ She’s making a comeback. And it says here that she spent a chunk of her childhood in Buffalo. Another clue.”

  “Yeah, our Flo said she spent time there, too.”

  “Precisely.”

  Rex lifts a sheet from the pile. It’s Florence Lawrence’s obituary from the Los Angeles Examiner. He reads out loud: “‘First Great Feminine Film Star a Suicide.’” He looks over at Richard. “What do they mean, ‘feminine film star?’ Were all the other ones really butch?”

  “It just means first female star,” Richard says. “According to this, a guy named King Baggott was the first male star.”

  “King Faggot?” Rex laughs. “What’s up with these names, huh?”

  “Read the obituary,” Richard says. “She left a note.”

  Rex looks again at the paper in his hand. ‘“A note lying on the table was addr
essed to “Bob,” a studio employee, who shared Miss Lawrence’s home.’” He looks up at Richard. “Well, well.”

  “Just read.”

  “‘The note read: “Good-bye, my darlings. You’ve all been swell guys. Everything is yours. Lovingly, Florence.”’”

  Rex puts down the paper and looks up into Richard’s eyes.

  “Curiouser and curiouser, huh?” Richard asks. “How could she leave a note, drink poison, get pronounced dead, and turn up at St. Mary’s Home in Buffalo sixty years later?”

  Rex nods, then looks back down at the paper and continues reading. “‘The final act in Florence Lawrence’s life developed when she hammered at the door of her nearest neighbor, screaming, “For God’s sake, get a doctor!” When an ambulance arrived before her home at 532 Westbourne Drive, she had collapsed and was taken to Beverly Hills Receiving Hospital.

  “‘There Dr. Lester Slocum applied a stomach pump and antidotes to no avail. Miss Lawrence died an hour later, at 3:10 P.M.’”

  They exchange googy-eyed looks. Rex gives a brief Twilight Zone “doo-doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo” before resuming reading.

  “‘Deputy Sheriffs Harry Zahn and K.W. Cook found Miss Lawrence’s tiny, flat-roofed home of peach-colored stucco unswept and disheveled, testifying to her upset state of mind. On a stand beside the actress’s bed officers found an almost emptied bottle of ant poison and a partly filled bottle containing cough syrup. A glass standing beside them still contained drops that were a mixture of the fluids.

  “‘The deputies reasoned that Miss Lawrence mixed and drank her poisoned cocktail and lay on the bed to die, but had changed her mind and attempted to summon help—too late.’”

  They’re quiet for a minute. “Oh, I love it,” Rex finally says. “‘Poisoned cocktail.’ So 1930s melodramatic.” He thinks for a minute. “Come to think of it, I made a film by that name, too. Poisoned Cock Tail.”

  Richard playfully slaps him with the front section of the Times.

  “It doesn’t figure,” he says after Rex stops laughing. “If they had been able to save her, there wouldn’t have been a body to pronounce dead.” He’s talking more to himself than to Rex. “It can’t be the same person. We’re being absurd.”