Rex stands up, taking the wet cloth from Richard and dabbing it under his armpits. He lets out a long breath. “You know,” he says, looking down at his lover, “this rivalry between you and your brother is getting very tired. It’s so stupid. What’s it about anyway? Your daddy didn’t love you as much as he loved Ben?” Rex clucks a sound of disgust. “Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve had this need to prove yourself against Ben. You put him down all the time, but the truth is, you don’t want Ben to succeed. You like him being a loser. It’s as if somehow Ben being a loser makes you a winner. Well, it’s bullshit, Richard.”
“All right, all right,” Richard says, standing now. “Don’t get worked up. You need to be cooling down.”
“I’m fine. Really.” He looks up at him. “I love you, Richard. But I don’t like you very much when you get all competitive with Ben. That’s what’s driving this whole obsession with Flo. You’re pissed that Ben stole your girl.”
He shakes his head before continuing. “It’s like how you’d tell me back in high school you’d get so upset finding him hanging out with Mary Kay what’s-her-name.”
Richard just looks at Rex. He finds his eyes, hangs on.
Of course Rex understands you. He understands you better than anyone else.
That’s why you love him.
Rex reaches up to touch Richard’s face. Richard covers it with his own. He has cooled down, thank God.
“You go to San Francisco, sweetheart,” Rex says, gently now. “But promise me one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“If you go, promise me you’re not just following the circus. You’re going to San Francisco so you can put an end to it.”
Richard doesn’t say anything. He just takes Rex’s naked form into his arms. They stand there in the moonlight like that for a long time.
November 1963
So you want to know about after. Oh, dear, there’s so much. Where to begin? Well, I did make it to San Francisco that day with Winnie Pichel, the man I met at Doris’s diner. I lived in San Francisco for nearly twenty-four years. Longer than I was ever in Hollywood. You see what I mean? How everyone wants to know about just a few years, not about the entirety of my life?
I’ll never forget the day I returned at last to my golden city on the hill. It was the second day of 1939. Winnie took me up to the Golden Gate. Oh, it was so beautiful, so magnificent, so—
But, come to think of it, before I get into all that, I think I should tell you first not about the day I arrived in San Francisco, but about the day I left, some twenty-four years later.
You see, I’d gone to San Francisco to find Florence Bridgewood again. But after more than two decades, there was still a piece of her that was missing.
I knew I had to go back. Back east. Back to Buffalo, where I’d lived such a short time with Mother, Grandmama, and Norman.
I bought a car, a ’57 Bel-Air convertible. Oh, it was such a beautiful car. Aquamarine with white leather interior. It had a rearview mirror that kept falling off, but boy, did that baby have power. All the way across the country, I’d just sail across the highways. They were new then, you know, just built as part of the whole interstate system. Quite a change from the old dusty roads I’d known when automobillies first came out. The wind in my hair, the radio on. I drove all the way down to Barstow because I wanted to go out on Route 66. I get my kicks on Route 66 … Oh, how did that old song go? San Bernadino, Kingman, Flagstaff, Arizona … Oklahoma City sure is pretty… Oh, dear, such fun.
You know, I still have that old car. Haven’t driven it lately, but I’ve still got it. Parked there, waiting for me.
How old was I then? Seventy-three, seventy-four. Somewhere around there, I guess. I didn’t feel like an old lady, but I guess I looked like one. When I’d stop for gas, my kerchief snapping in the wind, the sky so big and blue behind me, some young man in dungaree overalls would always insist on helping me.
“You know where you’re headin’, ma’am?” I remember one asking, taking the pump from me and sliding it into the tank.
Such delicious accents down along that route. He pronounced “ma’am” with two syllables. Such a polite young man.
“I sure do,” I told him, opening up my container of rouge and inspecting my cheeks in the mirror. “I’m headin’ home.”
That’s when the damn mirror fell off for the last time. The nice young man offered to glue it back on for me, but instead I just tossed it out the window.
“What’s behind me isn’t what matters anymore,” I told him as I revved up the engine. “Let the rest of ’em look out for me.”
Oh, I know. I wasn’t really heading “home.” I was born in Hamilton. I was a Canadian by birth—and proud of it. But Hamilton was never home. The only memory I have of Hamilton is that wrinkled old codger they called my father, hulking silently over his whittling knife, until one day he snuffed himself out with his coal stove. No, it wasn’t Hamilton I was heading for.
It was Buffalo.
Buffalo—where for a few years at the turn of the century, I’d gone to school, living in my grandmother’s house. I hadn’t been happy there. I don’t mean to imply by calling it “home” that I was or that my memories were nostalgic and carefree. Far from it. During our whole time in Buffalo, I badgered Mother to get us back on the stage. My brother was cruel, taunting me until I’d pop him in the snout. That usually worked to shut him up for a few days at least.
But, you see, Buffalo was where the last bit of Florence Bridgewood still eluded me. Here, in the place where Mother had grown up. Where she had left my father and brother behind to devote herself to me and my career. Where, for a few years out of seventy plus, I’d been just an ordinary girl, going to school, going to church, going to the magnificent world’s fair that ripped a hole right through my innocence …
All together, I was on the road from San Francisco to Buffalo for about a week and a half. I stayed in little motels along the way with names like the Vista or the Weary Traveler. Usually the proprietor’s wife made me breakfast—hot cakes and scrambled eggs and big, fat sausages.
It made me think of all those years, crisscrossing the country with Mother and Ducks and the Lawrence Dramatic Company. Back then, we’d lumber along in horse-pulled wagons, covering in a month the distance I traveled in my Bel-Air in a week. Then, it was Ducks’s harmonica that accompanied us on our journey. Now, I’d turn on the radio with just a flick of my hand and whistle my way with Johnny Cash. When I turned northward, heading up through Missouri and Indiana and Pennsylvania, I was snapping my fingers to Bobby Darin and “Mack the Knife.”
I pulled over briefly just outside Buffalo to check my map. Who knew if my grandmother’s house was even still standing? I had no idea where I’d sleep that night, nor even what I’d come to see. What might I find there? What bit of Florence Bridgewood still remained that I might recognize?
On the radio Frank Sinatra was crooning. Suddenly there was a stutter, followed by a crackle of static. I looked up from my map. A man’s somber voice announced that the young president of the United States had been shot in Dallas.
I turned off the radio and drove the rest of the way in silence.
Grandmama’s neighborhood looked much the same as it had sixty years before. Except now the trees were taller and the houses smaller than I remembered, and a crosshatch of telephone wires interrupted the sky.
I parked the car on the corner of West Eagle Street. Everything was eerily quiet. Like one of those sci-fi movies where the hero’s been off in space and comes back to earth only to find all the people gone. The echo of my shoes clacking on the pavement seemed to ricochet off the houses as I looked for number 115.
There, ahead of me. That was it. The two-story brown Victorian, with the wraparound porch and overgrown lawn. Hedges were spiky and unkempt; the grass was long and starting to seed. A maple tree that once had been small enough to leap over as I eluded my brother now towered above me, its great bare limbs seeming to implor
e the sun. But the sun had gone behind a cloud. I felt a deep and penetrating chill.
As I approached the house, the tinny sound of a radio wafted in the air. A man’s voice—the same, perhaps, who had preempted Sinatra earlier. Up on Grandmama’s porch sat an old man, just a shriveled white figure wrapped in a faded blue afghan, listening to the radio. The announcer’s words filtered down to me on the sidewalk through the quiet of the neighborhood.
I repeat: President Kennedy has died at Parkland Memorial Hospital, due to a gunshot wound to the head ….
I walked slowly up the steps of the front porch.
“It’s not the first time,” I said, disturbing the stillness.
The radio announcer went on about how Lyndon Johnson would be sworn in as president.
“Over at the fair,” I said. “Do you remember?”
The old man didn’t stir. He was hunched down in his chair, the afghan around his shoulders. His face was wizened and spotted. He was almost completely bald.
“You remember, don’t you, Norman?” I asked. “It’s not something we could easily forget. Strange, isn’t it? Live as long as we have, and the world starts coming back around.”
I stood beside him, looking down.
“Who are you?” he croaked.
“It’s your sister, Norman.”
“I don’t have a sister.”
“No, I suppose you don’t.” I sat down in an old wicker chair beside him, its seat frayed and coming apart. I reached over and touched his gnarled old hands, curled like dead bird claws in his lap. “But I’ve come back around, too, Norman.” I sighed. “I’ve come back around, too.”
Norman was blind. Had been for about six years. A nurse came in twice a week to look after him, but the house was a mess. Dishes piled everywhere. Broken glass on the floor. Poor Norman’s feet were all scarred and cut. He’d learned to feel his way around the house, but he was eighty years old, after all. A weak, frail man. Sometimes he’d trip and fall, and instead of trying to get up, he’d just sit there and wait for the nurse. Even if that meant three days.
He’d steadfastly resisted being put in a nursing home. He’d worked hard all his life as an electrician and built up quite a sizable nest egg. It paid for the nurse and his food. Grandmother had long ago paid for the house, and when she died, it was left to Mother, who in turn left it to Norman and me. I remember when I read Mother’s will and realized I partly owned my grandmother’s house. “I’ll never go back there,” I’d sniffed at the time.
I found the deed to the house, filed away in Norman’s desk. My name was still on it. Florence Bridgewood. Well, Florence Bridgewood had come home.
In the parlor stood the old clock I remembered so well, with its deep, heavy chimes in the middle of the night. In the glass cupboard the Irish crystal—brought to this country by my grandfather—was covered by a layer of dust a half inch thick.
“What are you doing?” Norman demanded, coming in from the porch, his hands held out in front of him, the screen door banging shut.
“I’m cleaning up this mess,” I told him, pushing the broom across the floor, sweeping shards of glass, coffee grounds, and egg shells in my path.
“Who are you?”
“Your sister, Norman.”
He was quiet. He stood there staring at me with his sightless eyes.
Finally he felt for the kitchen table and eased himself down into a chair. “Florence,” he said softly.
“Have you eaten anything today, Norman?”
He shook his head no.
“What have you got here in the refrigerator?”
“Whatever they bring me.”
I opened the door of the old Frigidaire. A glass jar of milk. Some apples. Two eggs. A plate of spaghetti covered in tin foil.
“How much do you pay for groceries a week, Norman?”
“Twenty dollars.”
I made a face. “They’ve been ripping you off,” I told him. “From now on, I’ll do your grocery shopping.”
“Flo?”
“Yes, Norman?”
“How’d you manage it?”
I laughed. “They just made a mistake, Norman. So I decided to run with it.”
Of course, it wasn’t long before we spoke of Mother.
“You were all she cared about, Flo. You were her whole life. She never cared a whit about me.”
It was late. Getting close to midnight. I’d built a fire, wondering when the chimney had last been cleaned. Oh, well, I figured. If the house was going to burn down, so be it.
We were sitting in Grandmama’s parlor. Her old rolltop desk was still in the corner, exactly where I last remembered it. The rest of the furniture was new—or rather, new to me. It looked as if it dated from the ’40s. Dusty and worn, covered in old moldy blankets and afghans. There was no television in the house, just a big radio with gigantic knobs. We had it turned down low. They were still rambling on about Kennedy.
“Mother sacrificed a lot,” I admitted.
“It was always you she cared about,” Norman said.
There was no bitterness in his voice. Not anymore. Even though she had left him with our silent, surly father as a very little boy, never to return. Even though she always promised she’d send for him, but never did. We sent him money, of course, after our father was dead and Norman had gone to live with Grandmama. We could afford it then: I was making a fortune. But when the well ran dry for us, we forgot about Norman. By then, of course, he had his own life. A job. A house. Friends. In so many ways, his life had turned out far more fortunate than mine.
“To be honest,” I told him, “I never knew Mother much more than you did. She kept herself hidden from me, and so I did the same with her. Oh, she was with me—can’t say she wasn’t. She did sacrifice a lot for me. She was always there, pushing me onward.”
I paused. “But in truth, she only really knew me as Baby Flo, the Child Wonder Whistler—who later was turned into Florence Lawrence.” I smiled sadly. “Now, Florence Bridgewood—well, Mother never could quite figure her out.”
Norman was quiet, rocking in his chair, staring over at me with his sightless eyes. “How did she die?” he finally asked.
“It was cancer,” I told him.
“Yes. I remember your letter. I remember you writing to tell me that Mother had died, that she wanted to be buried out there in Hollywood.” He paused. “But how, Flo? How did she die?”
I closed my eyes. The older one gets, the more details one wants about death.
“It was hard at the end,” I told him. “We had a small apartment in the garment district of Los Angeles, above a tailor and a shoemaker. I can’t imagine how we paid our bills at that point. But we managed somehow. I did a few parts in the movies here and there. Mother took in laundry—like she used to do in our early days in New York.” I smiled to myself. “You see, Norman? What I mean about those full circles everyone’s always talking about?”
“Did she suffer long?”
“Not too long. Maybe a couple of months. The cancer started in her stomach, and it just ate her alive. Bit by bit she’d go every day. It seemed as if she just shrunk in front of my eyes. Finally she was in her bed all the time, a tiny little creature with enormous eyes.”
I stopped, remembering Mother. “And then she died,” I said. “I’d gone out for licorice. She asked for some, just to suck on. I bought her a gigantic bag, red and black. But when I got back, she was gone.”
He just sighed.
“What about you, Norman?” I asked. “Did you ever marry? Any children?”
“No,” he said. “It was just me. Old Man Bridgewood.”
“It’s a good name,” I told him.
He made a sound.
“What was he like?” I asked. “Our father?”
Norman shrugged. “I was still a child when he died.”
“Yes, but you lived with him. I never knew him. I just remember him glaring down at me as if he despised me.”
Norman laughed. “Despised you? H
ah. He had every clipping ever written about Baby Flo. He had ’em all pasted up on his wall at the shop. ‘That’s me gul,’ he’d say to people. ‘Me gul.’”
I had nothing to say in reply. I just sat there, trying to fit this new image of my father into my mind. It was difficult after so many years.
We sat in silence for several minutes. “I wish I could see you,” Norman finally said. “I can’t remember what you looked like.”
I laughed. “Well, even if you could, I’m quite changed from when you last saw me.”
“I didn’t like you much,” he said.
“I didn’t like you much either.”
He made a snort. It was the closest thing to a laugh Norman ever did. “And what about you, Flo?” he asked. “Did you ever marry? Have children?”
“Yes, I was married,” I told him. “I had a little girl. Her name was Annie Laurie.”
“What happened to her?”
“I’m not sure. I like to think she died young and beautiful.” I sighed. “I’m pretty sure she did.”
History is nothing more than a series of small yesterdays. I have crossed the country in both a horse-drawn wagon and an aquamarine Chevy Bel-Air. In San Francisco, I had signed petitions protesting the military buildup in Southeast Asia. In my grandmother’s house, I found my grandfather’s discharge papers from the War of 1812. My father’s father. He, too, had been an old man when his child was born. He fought on the British side, of course. 1812. I sat reading his papers as the radio spoke of Kennedy. Yes, just small yesterdays. Very small.
History hung heavy in that house. That night, I couldn’t sleep. Norman had nodded off right in his chair, and I decided to leave him there. I explored the house, remembering not only the unhappiness, the loneliness, and the longing for the stage, but also the occasional fleeting moment of joy: spying a robin’s nest in the trellis outside my window, watching fireworks from the roof, playing dress up with the strange, outdated fashions I found in a chest in Grandmama’s attic.
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