Stars Over Sunset Boulevard

by Susan Meissner

  They walked for a few paces in silence.

  “Audrey told me I’d be pretty with my hair down and this makeup on,” Violet finally said.

  “You . . . you are,” Bert said, clearly unskilled in the kind of conversation they were having. “It’s just . . . you looked pretty before.”

  “You think so?”

  He averted his gaze. “Of course.”

  She yearned to hear him say it again. Again and again. That he thought she was pretty. They walked for a few moments in silence.

  “Thanks for letting me come with you,” Violet finally said as they neared the gatehouse to Selznick International and the streetcar stop that lay beyond it.

  “Sure.” Bert shrugged her thanks away, as if such gratitude was truly not needed.

  When they arrived at the bungalow, Violet was happy to see that Audrey was not home—most likely she was already on her way to her rendezvous with the talent scout from Warner. Bert also noticed Audrey was not there.

  A tiny wave of disappointment seemed to wash over him when he realized he couldn’t ask her if she would like to join them to get his new truck.

  “Audrey had plans for tonight, Bert,” Violet said, wanting him to know she alone saw the contours of his heart.

  Bert seemed surprised that she so effortlessly read his mind. “Oh. I . . . I wasn’t . . .” But he couldn’t get out the words. Lying did not come easily to Bert Redmond. She took a step toward him.

  “It’s okay, Bert. I know how much you like her. Of course you like her. Who doesn’t love Audrey?”

  He said nothing.

  Violet used his silence to bolster her courage. She longed to tell him the truth about how she felt about him, even though it could change everything between them. Violet felt strangely compelled to tell him, as though she might not get another chance like this one. She moved closer. “I really like you, Bert. I know I’m not Audrey—I will never be as beautiful and glamorous as Audrey is—but I do so very much want to be your friend and perhaps . . . maybe one day more than your friend.”

  She was only inches from Bert now and she longed to lean forward and kiss him.

  “I . . . I like you, too, Violet.”

  But Violet couldn’t tell if he said it merely to be polite or if he meant those words the same way she did.

  She stood silent for a moment, waiting to see if he would say something else that could clue her in.

  “Do I stand even a chance against her?” Violet whispered.

  Bert’s eyes widened as he realized the depth of Violet’s vulnerability before him. “I . . . I don’t know what to say.”

  “You deserve someone who will put you first, Bert.” Violet leaned forward, bent her neck slightly, and pressed her lips gently to his. She waited for him to respond in kind. He didn’t, but neither did he pull away.

  She stepped back, hoping the kiss would linger as she headed for her bedroom to change into different clothes. She chose a pair of wide-leg slacks, flats, and a blue-checked blouse with eyelet trim. She left the hairdo and makeup undisturbed.

  When she came back out a few minutes later, Bert was standing at the open door as the sounds of evening started to filter inside the bungalow. Birdsong filled the air as the day that was ending was lulled to sleep.

  Violet braced herself for whatever Bert had been thinking about while she was in the bedroom. “Ready to go?” she said nervously.

  He turned slowly. When he spoke, his tone was one of quiet resignation. “I think I’ve known all along that Audrey was never going to want to be anything more than just friends.”

  Violet hadn’t rehearsed how to respond if Bert were to say something like this. Her mouth dropped open a little but no words came out.

  Bert smiled, though it was not a completely happy grin. “I’ve just been kidding myself. Of course I’ve been kidding myself. What would someone like Audrey ever see in someone like me?” He looked away.

  Violet placed her hand on his arm. “Don’t talk that way, Bert. It’s not you. It’s her. She’s just got one thing on her mind—that’s all. Her career. It has nothing to do with you. You are a wonderful, kind, good man. I could see that from the moment I met you.”

  When he turned back to her, the aching look he’d worn a second before seemed to have diminished. He laughed lightly. “I’m apparently not too bright, though.”

  She squeezed his arm. “Yes, you are.”

  Bert considered her for a second and then placed his hand over hers. He looked as though he might kiss her this time.

  You are as bright as the stars in the sky, Bert, that are at last, at last, at last smiling down on me.

  And then he did kiss her. His lips on hers were light and restrained, a sweet tasting of what could be, what might be, when at last Audrey was expunged from within him. He broke away too soon, but Violet found that she didn’t mind. Audrey was still partially wrapped around his thoughts, but the old knots had been loosened. Bert extended his arm and they walked out into the twilight.

  “Maybe we can grab a bite after we get the truck?” he said.

  And it was as if the world was full of nightingales singing.

  • • •

  Two hours later, after a dinner of Reuben sandwiches and apple pie, Bert pulled up to the bungalow in his fixed-up truck, a nut brown, slightly-worse-for-the-wear Chevy Stovebolt. Violet could see from the passenger’s side that the kitchen light was on. Audrey was home.

  Bert either didn’t notice or chose not to comment on it.

  “Thanks for dinner, Bert. It was lovely.” They’d had a great time talking and laughing and eating at a popular diner just off Vine.

  He seemed surprised that she was saying good-bye, perhaps almost relieved. He would need to take their relationship slowly, and she could easily pretend she understood this. She leaned forward on the seat to kiss him and the leather seat squawked.

  Her kiss was soft and nondemanding. “This was fun,” she said when she pulled away.

  “Maybe . . . maybe we can do it again?” His tone was hesitant but hopeful.

  “I’d like that very much.” She opened the door to climb out.

  “So. I’ll see you gals tomorrow morning?”

  “If you’re sure it’s not too much trouble.”

  “Not at all. I’m happy to do it.”

  Violet felt as though she were floating after Bert drove away. She hoped Audrey had had an equally wonderful night and that they would both go to bed happy.

  But when she walked into the kitchen she found her roommate sitting at the table in her bathrobe, her face washed of its makeup, her hair down around her shoulders. A bottle of whiskey and a tumbler sat on the table along with an ashtray full of cigarette butts. As Violet approached Audrey, she saw that her roommate was working at something. She was gluing the little nightingale’s wing. Her eyes were red.

  “What happened, Audrey?”

  She looked up. “I knocked it off the windowsill when I was taking my makeup off. I didn’t mean to break it. I . . . I just didn’t see it.” Her eyes welled with fresh tears.

  “I mean, I didn’t expect you home so soon. What happened with your meeting?”

  Audrey laughed mirthlessly as she set down the bird, pressing on the part of the wing that now bore a tiny fissure and a creamy white seam of glue.

  “My meeting,” she echoed. “Is that what I called it?”

  Violet pulled out a chair and sat down at the table.

  Audrey reached for the whiskey bottle and tipped some of its amber liquid into the glass. “What happened, dear Violet, is time. Time happened.” She placed the bottle down and raised the glass. “Here’s to Father Time!”

  She slung back the glass and the whiskey disappeared down her throat. She grimaced as she put the tumbler back down on the table.

  “Please tell me what happe
ned!” Violet said.

  Audrey’s gaze rested on the bird between them. “This is a rotten town to have birthdays in, Violet. Before you know it, you’re almost thirty-one and everyone around you is ten years younger than you and ten times prettier. And all the while you’ve been fooling yourself into thinking no one has noticed that you’ve gotten older.”

  “What do you mean? Who told you this?”

  But Audrey seemed not to have heard her. A weak laugh escaped her. “And here I thought that I was invisible while I was waiting for my second big break. That people had forgotten all about me. That I could come sneaking back into the spotlight and no one would remember that when was I eighteen I almost had it all.”

  She laid a finger delicately on the bird’s brown head, as if it were a real bird that would fly away if it was startled.

  “I’m a fool, Violet,” Audrey murmured.

  Violet leaned forward and covered Audrey’s free hand with hers. “No, you’re not. You’re beautiful and talented and smart. It’s everyone else who’s an idiot.”

  Audrey seemed to think about Violet’s response for a moment. “I wish that were true, Violet. I really do. But I’m beginning to think it’s Peg Entwistle who was the smart one.”

  Violet had no idea what Audrey was talking about. “Who’s Peg Entwistle?”

  Audrey looked up languidly. For a moment she did not answer. Then she rose from her chair. “No one.”

  She reached for the nightingale and took it gingerly into her hand. Then she turned from Violet, walked to her bedroom, and closed the door gently behind her.

  Hollywood

  March 10, 2012

  The bungalow seems oddly shrunken with most of its contents packed away in boxes. It should look larger, but to Elle, who stands inside the living room with a broom in her hand and a sheen of sweat on her brow, the little house appears smaller without its furnishings.

  Her granddaughters run past, chasing the three-year-old shelter dog they named Jacques. The animal was a consolation present from Daniel and Nicola for uprooting the girls from all their friends in France and moving them to the States.

  “Careful around all the boxes,” Elle says.

  The older girl turns back.

  “Nous pouvons le prendre pour faire une promenade?”

  Elle smiles at her granddaughter. “In English, Michelle.”

  The girl huffs. “May we please take him for a walk?”

  “You may only go in the direction of the Hollywood sign and only for ten houses up. Then you turn back. Oui?”

  “In English, Mamie!” The girl laughs as she and her sister scoop up the dog and his leash and take him outside into the late-afternoon sunshine.

  The bungalow is instantly quiet without the girls. Daniel and Nicola are running errands, and Elle is alone.

  She inhales, breathing in the scent of the passage of time. The bungalow is nearly a hundred years old, and while it has been updated in terms of wiring and plumbing, the aura inside is still tangy with nostalgia, as if at any moment strains of Glenn Miller might suddenly fill the room.

  Inside her pants pocket her cell phone vibrates. She pulls it out to read a text message from Daniel.

  Running late. Will text the resale-shop owner and tell her I’ll pick up the hat tomorrow. Traffic is terrible. Can we meet you and the girls back at your condo around 7? We’ll get Thai takeout.

  Elle is disappointed that the hat will be away from the bungalow another night, despite having nearly forgotten it existed. Her mother had kept it squirreled away in a cedar chest in the attic for decades, hidden from renters during the years they’d all lived abroad.

  She had told her mother—a long time ago—that she could probably sell that hat and get a lot of money.

  And her mother said she didn’t feel right about selling something that didn’t belong to her.

  SIXTEEN

  August 1939

  The moviemakers, half a dozen of them, were seated around a meeting table on the second floor of the Mansion at Selznick International. Cups of hot coffee sent tendrils of steam upward to join a heavier layer of cigarette smoke and the unmistakable atmosphere of fretful purpose. Audrey, taking notes for the art director, William Menzies, was seated just to the right of Selznick’s executive secretary, Marcella Rabwin. She was glad when Miss Rabwin leaned over and told her to crack open a window. The men didn’t notice when she rose from her chair, set her steno pad down on the seat, and headed to the row of windows. When she raised one a few inches, a welcoming ribbon of morning air wafted into the room and trifled playfully with the weightiness of smoke and decision making.

  “The picture’s nearly five hours long,” one of the men said as Audrey retook her chair. “It’s an impossible length. No one will sit for five hours to watch it.”

  “I’m not going to release a movie that is five hours long,” Selznick said easily. “We will edit it down.”

  The man shook his head as a lopsided grin spread across his face. “You say that like you think it will be easy. What can possibly be cut?”

  “We’ll find a way.” Selznick didn’t seem worried in the least from what Audrey could tell.

  The talk turned then to updates on the musical score and the sound effects, the painstaking task of matching everything to the Technicolor reels, the making of the prints, and whether it was even possible to have it all done for an Atlanta premiere in November that could coincide with the seventy-fifth anniversary of the burning of the city.

  While the men went over the mounting particulars of the upcoming premiere, Audrey permitted herself a mental break while keeping her pen poised above her notepad.

  She’d been relieved beyond words to get away from the monotony of the secretary pool and the scores of letters Selznick still got on a daily basis from those who wrote that Gone With the Wind was un-American, reactionary, pro–Ku Klux Klan, pro-slavery, and even pro-Nazi. Audrey had lost count of how many times she had sent the standard letter that was sent to anyone who lodged a concern. She could recite the verbiage in her sleep. . . .

  We are in receipt of your letter concerning our imminent production of Gone With the Wind. We urge you to believe that we feel as strongly as you do about the presentation to the public of any material that might be prejudicial to the interests of any race or creed, or that might contain any anti-American material. We respectfully suggest you suspend judgment until the completion of the picture, which we can assure you will contain nothing that possibly could be offensive to you. In particular, you may be sure that the treatment of the Negro characters will be with the utmost respect for this race and with the greatest concern for its sensibilities.

  The letter was always closed with a tailored response, a sentence or two about the writer’s specific grievance.

  Violet had told her that she didn’t like the way the letters of complaint made her feel, and there was no way to type the needed response without reading them. But Audrey admired the people who had the courage to be honest and state their opinion. She wasn’t bothered by their comments. If people couldn’t be honest with one another, then life was just fluff and pretense. Audrey had told Violet that she could pass any of those letters on to her if Violet didn’t care to respond to them.

  Her roommate had seemed distracted during the past few days. Bert, too. Audrey saw him only in the mornings when he came for them in his truck, and then again when they met for the drive home. His department was busy disposing of the massive Gone With the Wind wardrobe in preparation for the influx of all new costumes for the filming of Rebecca, and for some reason that Audrey couldn’t imagine, Violet found that extremely interesting. Most of the conversation in the truck centered on what Bert was doing or not doing in wardrobe. And while it was nice not having to ride the streetcar and bus to work, Bert and Violet seemed separate from her. As if she were being pulled away from everything that used to hold
her fast.

  She was torn from this reverie when Mr. Menzies said her name, apparently not for the first time.

  “I beg your pardon!” Audrey said, her cheeks blooming crimson.

  Mr. Menzies rattled off a list of things to be taken care of that afternoon and Audrey dutifully recorded them.

  The meeting ended shortly after that and Audrey headed back to her desk, feeling strangely detached from the hum of the activity in the room full of secretaries. She had just begun to type her first memo when the phone at her desk rang.

  “You’ve got a call,” the switchboard operator said when Audrey picked up.

  “This is Audrey Duvall.”

  “Audie, it’s Vince. Can you be at Paramount at two thirty?” He sounded tense.

  “Why? What for?”

  “I think I got you a screen test for the role of Mima in Road to Singapore.”

  Audrey heard every word. Her mind refused to embrace their meaning. “What?”

  “I said, I think I got you a screen test for Road to Singapore! But you have to be here by two thirty. Can you get away?”

  A screen test. For a major motion picture.

  “Audrey, did you hear me?”

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “Can you make it?”

  She willed her pulse to stop its pounding. Stay calm. Stay focused. “I can.”

  “This might be it, Audie!”

  Yes.

  It might be.

  “I’ll be there,” she said.

  Audrey hung up the phone. For several seconds she stared at it, unable to decide what to do first. She looked at her wristwatch. A few minutes before noon. She had to get back to the bungalow and change, redo her hair. She would need to take a taxi there and back again. She had a little over two hours to do it. She rose from her chair and headed for Violet’s desk. Her roommate looked up from her typewriter.

  “I need to take off early,” Audrey murmured. “Can you cover for me?”

  “Where are you going?” Violet’s hands hovered motionless above the typewriter keys.