Kathryn knocked on her mother’s door. No one answered, but a loud bang of metal on wood sounded from inside. She called out. “Hello? Is someone there?” and tried the door, scraping it open with the tip of her crutch. Inside, the place was a disaster. The back corner had half collapsed and the kitchen was flooded with two inches of murky water. Kathryn’s mother stood in the middle, brandishing a two-foot lead pipe.
“Mom!” Kathryn cried out. “You’re okay!”
Francine’s hair was matted with plaster dust. Her torn dress hung from her shoulder and blood dotted her forearm. She eyed Kathryn’s crutches. “Better than you are, by the look of it.”
“Mother, it’s been four years. Don’t I even get a hug?”
“Of course, dear. I’m sorry.” She waded through the kitchen and embraced her daughter limply. “I’ve had a bit of a shock.” She covered a dusty velvet sofa with a newspaper and helped Kathryn sit down.
“I think we all have,” Kathryn said. “They’re saying over a hundred people have died, and probably thousands left homeless. It sure was a doozie, huh?” Francine nodded but said nothing. Kathryn gazed around at the mess. “Looks like this place of yours was really quite charming.”
“This?” Francine barked out a laugh. “My place? Oh, good grief no. You don’t want to see my place. I only use this as my mailing address after my mail started to get stolen last year. No, no, no, it’s my boss who lives here. He’s in New York on a buying trip. He’s going to have an ever-loving fit when he sees this wreck. Wait. What are you doing here? How did you find me?”
“I kept expecting you to write to me, or call me at the Garden, and tell me where you were. But you never did, so I hired a private eye. It took him a while, but he tracked you to this address.” Kathryn paused to let her mother explain herself, but Francine said nothing. Instead, she just sat on the edge of the sofa looking a little disheveled and dazed. “So,” Kathryn said, “this is your boss’ place, then? You do have a job?”
Francine’s face darkened. “If you call working like a slave in a sweatshop a job. I work twelve hour days, six days a week, making uniforms in a warehouse down by the docks. I freeze in the winter and bake in the summer for a measly ninety-five cents an hour.”
Kathryn maintained her smile. Still with the usual dramatics, she thought. Any boss who gave his slave the keys when he was out of town couldn’t be Ivan the Terrible of Long Beach. She felt a speech well up inside her like lava. She tried her best to squelch it, but it blurted out anyway. “Mother! How could you do that to me?”
Francine scowled. “Do what?”
“You moved away and didn’t tell me.”
Her mother’s eyes hardened. “May I remind you, missie, that you did exactly the same thing to me?”
Kathryn glowered at her mother. “That’s not the same thing, and you know it.”
“I most certainly do not.”
“You do, too! We stood there yelling at each other for half an hour and then you watched me pack my crummy little suitcase and march out the front door.”
“I didn’t know where you were marching to.”
“But you knew I was leaving the apartment!”
“Yes, and you knew you were throwing me out of your villa.”
“I was doing no such thing. That stock market story of yours was ridiculous. Did you really expect me to believe —”
Her mother cut her off. “So, I drew the obvious conclusion that you no longer wanted me around, and I took the best job I could find. I figured that if you cared, you’d come find me.”
“Of course I wanted you in my life. I just didn’t want you running it anymore. I never wanted to be an actress. I never wanted any of that — you did. You wanted me to be an actress because when you tried it for yourself, you failed.”
Kathryn couldn’t believe that she finally said out loud what she wanted to say ever since her twelfth birthday, when Francine announced that Kathryn was to become an actress. They’d lived in Los Angeles for five years, and Kathryn had spent her childhood watching her mother doll herself up for auditions in the morning and trudge home in the afternoon, heavy with rejection. Even at twelve, Kathryn couldn’t understand why her mother would want to push her own daughter through that sort of endless loop of rejection. What a shame it took a four-year separation and an earthquake for it to come out, but it was out now and there was no way to unsay it.
The air in the crumbling bungalow turned cold as Francine absorbed her daughter’s anger in silence. Kathryn studied her mother for the first time. The last four years hadn’t been kind to her. Her cheeks had lines that hadn’t been there before and her knuckles were starting to swell, but Kathryn didn’t feel the triumph she’d expected. Gwendolyn was right; this was still her mother.
“Well, then,” Kathryn softened, “how did your own place survive, Mother?”
Francine let out a puh! “This is Versailles compared with my dump. It collapsed like a house of cards on a sand bank in a wind storm.”
“Are you saying you have nowhere to live now?”
“I can stay here until my boss gets back. Then I’ll be out on the street. Again.” Francine shook plaster dust from her hair and tried to pat it back into a fraying chignon. “Maybe I’ll pitch a tent on the beach. Bet I won’t be the only one.”
Kathryn took a deep breath. She knew what she had to do, even if it was going to end in kitchen knives at ten paces. “Mother,” she said, “I want you to come live with me.”
CHAPTER 32
Everyone at the Garden of Allah always made the biggest fuss over Dorothy Parker — Kathryn and Marcus included — but Gwendolyn had never understood why. She’d read enough of Dorothy’s stories to know they were sharp and witty and droll, but reading bleak tales about bored New York socialites and suicidal shop girls wasn’t Gwendolyn’s idea of an afternoon well spent, no matter how many critics applauded.
When Gwendolyn returned to the booze table with one last load of ice, she found Dorothy frowning at the bottles that were lined up like sacrificial virgins. Gwendolyn imagined that this was the happiest day in over a decade for a lush like her. When the morning papers had announced Utah’s ratification of the 21st Amendment, putting an end to America’s dry spell, word spread around the Garden that ‘National Prohibition Repeal Day’ had been unofficially declared and a party to put all Garden parties to shame was started. So why was Dorothy so glum?
Gwendolyn dumped the ice into the aluminum tub. “Something wrong?
Dorothy shifted her graying dachshund from her left arm to her right, rolled her large, nutmeg brown eyes, and sighed. “We’ve waited thirteen years for those clods in Washington to come to their senses, and now that they have, I don’t know if plowing through this stuff will be half as much fun.” She grunted. “I feel like someone’s invited my parents to the party.”
By the time Gwendolyn had hauled the fourth bag of ice in from Schwab’s drugstore, she regretted volunteering. Ever since the earthquake, her wrists ached when her hands were cold. She rubbed them to warm them up.
“So what’s your first legal drink going to be?” Dorothy asked.
Parker was known for drenching herself in a perfume called Chypre by Coty but Gwendolyn had never been close enough to the woman to know if she truly wore it that strongly. It hovered about her like a low-flying cloud scented so overpoweringly that Gwendolyn had to take a step back. “I haven’t decided if I’ll be partaking yet tonight.”
Dorothy groaned. “Don’t tell me you’re a teetotaler. I simply can’t abide people like that.”
“I spent my childhood looking after my mother while she drank herself to death.” It was the first time Gwendolyn had said those words out loud to anyone but Marcus or Kathryn.
Dorothy sighed. “Drinking yourself to death doesn’t sound like such a bad way to go, considering the options.”
Gwendolyn looked at the writer’s bracelets, large orange beads that Kathryn said she wore to hide her scars. “It’s a slow, slow deat
h,” she replied.
“So it’s not the option for a girl in a hurry.” Dorothy still hadn’t taken her eyes off the bottles.
The last nine months had been difficult for Gwendolyn. The earthquake had left deep cuts on her legs and arms and bruised her from collarbone to feet, but the wound that Monty opened with his revelation was slower to mend. About a month after the quake she’d been frying eggs when it occurred to her that she’d always resented her mother for choosing booze over her children. Mama was always too hungover to cook breakfast, and too drunk to cook dinner. Gwendolyn’s eggs burned while she grappled with the fresh understanding that she had come to see Mama’s bottles of gin as the enemy when all along her daddy was the villain. He’d whored around and died an awful death before Gwendolyn formed any memories of him. All this time, she’d seen herself and Monty as victims of her mother’s weakness when really, they were all victims of Daddy’s.
Gwendolyn had avoided liquor because she was afraid she might turn into Mama, and while liquor was illegal, she didn’t have to think about it. But now everything had changed. Maybe it was time to give it a go.
Everyone who arrived added a bottle to the “legal table.” Soon it was laden with every spirit the stores could now sell. Gwendolyn was watching Dorothy Parker make martinis like she was pouring rainbows into pots of gold when she felt Marcus and Kathryn by her side.
“I declare I feel like a beggar at the feast!” Gwendolyn exclaimed.
“You know the rule,” Kathryn said. The afternoon edition of the L.A. Times had declared that everyone’s first drink on National Repeal Day must be virgin out of respect for the Great Experiment. Gwendolyn smiled at the irony. She was finally ready for her first drink, and it had to be boozeless; she poured them each a seltzer water.
“Does anyone know who that is?” Marcus nodded toward a burly man in black pants and a dark green shirt on the far side of the garden. Gwendolyn and Kathryn looked, and Kathryn swung back around so fast that strands of hair stuck in her lipstick. “Ohmygod! That’s Roy.” She looked at Gwendolyn.
“Long Beach Roy?”
Kathryn nodded like a frantic chipmunk.
“Who’s Long Beach Roy?” Marcus asked.
Kathryn pulled her hair out of her lipstick. “How do I look?” she asked Gwendolyn.
“Just peachy,” Gwendolyn said. Kathryn was wearing Gwendolyn’s latest rent contribution: a cranberry red linen dress with dainty snowflakes she’d chosen for Kathryn’s coloring.
“Who is Long Beach Roy?” Marcus asked again.
“Why do you think he’s here?” Gwendolyn asked.
“I never replied to that card he sent me.”
“I thought you liked him.”
“I did. I do! But when he drove me and Mother home, I saw a stripe of white skin on his ring finger.”
“Who is this guy?” Marcus asked.
“No!” Gwendolyn gasped.
“There had to be something wrong with him.”
“Whoever he is,” Marcus said, “he’s coming over.” Gwendolyn and Marcus discreetly turned their backs as Roy approached the cocktail table.
“Hello, Kathryn,” he said.
Gwendolyn glanced down and there it was: a ribbon of pale skin on his wedding finger. He’d had all summer for his tan to even out. What a shame, Gwendolyn thought. He looks like one of those outdoorsy types who can light a fire and fix a radiator and shoot a deer, all at the same time if the situation called for it.
“Roy!” Kathryn exclaimed, perhaps a little too brightly. “What on earth are you doing all the way up this end of town?”
“I was making a delivery at Vendome Café and it occurred to me that I was right near the Garden of Allah.”
“The Vendome?” Kathryn asked. “Billy Wilkerson’s place? Do you know him?”
He nodded. “Friend of a friend. Have I walked into the middle of a party?”
“Only the biggest party of the century!” Kathryn laughed. Roy had missed the news, but he had a little something to contribute, if Kathryn would help him get it out of the truck.
“Wow,” Marcus said. “Lucky girl. I mean, he seems like a nice guy.” Marcus was almost as smitten with Roy’s sweet, rugged face as Kathryn was.
“A nice married guy,” Gwendolyn said. “Didn’t you notice his ring finger?”
“What about it?” But Marcus didn’t hear Gwendolyn’s answer. He had spotted a tall, sandy-haired guy who had just joined the party. He was well over six feet, lean with expansive shoulders, and endowed with a smile as wide as the Pacific. “It seems they’re crawling out of the woodwork tonight,” Marcus said. “Do you know who this one is?”
“Hellman here can answer that question.” From the cloud of Chypres, Gwendolyn knew Dorothy was back. She had returned for a refill with a mannish woman who had lived at the Garden since her last divorce. The two looked like they could mow down a hoard of Vandals without stopping to draw breath.
“You all know Lily Hellman, don’t you?” Dorothy said vaguely.
“That’s a new boy in town,” Lillian said. Dorothy grabbed the scotch like it was a life preserver and filled two large tumblers.
Hmmm, Gwendolyn thought. Scotch whiskey seems to be awfully popular. It sounds so terribly grown up and sophisticated. Maybe I’ll start with that.
“I’m seeing a life in front of the camera for that boy. Aren’t you, Dotty?” Lillian said. “Who cares if he can act or not? With some people, it really doesn’t matter.”
“Do you know his name?” Gwendolyn asked.
“Earl O’Flynn, I think. Something Irish, at any rate. He won’t leave this party alone, that’s for goddamned sure. Some men are just born to be the flame, don’t you find?” The writers quivered off toward a table, shoulder to shoulder and giggling like a pair of teenaged gargoyles.
“He’s very handsome,” Gwendolyn admitted, though her eyes were on the bottle of scotch. Do people put ice in their whiskey? I should have been paying more attention all this time.
She could feel Marcus’ eyes on her as she puzzled over the bar. “I think you’re a flame, Gwennie,” he said.
“I’m what?” she asked. Ice, she decided. Definitely ice. Dorothy probably didn’t use any because it took up too much space in the glass.
“I think you’re a flame, and the rest of us are your moths.”
“Marcus!” she exclaimed, looking into his earnest face. His eyes were a little “boozeshot”–a word one of the Garden’s writers invented to describe how someone looked when they started drinking early. Marcus blinked slowly. “What a terribly sweet thing to say!”
“Why none of the studios have fallen for you yet is beyond me.”
“What a friend you are.” Gwendolyn planted a kiss on his cheek.
“What’s your poison?” he asked.
“Scotch whiskey,” Gwendolyn replied, feeling very sophisticated. “On the rocks please, Mr. Bartender.”
Marcus did a double take. “Scotch? Really? I’d have taken you for a brandy stinger kind of girl. All that crème de menthe and such.”
As he poured them both a scotch, she scanned the crowd for that Earl O’Flynn fellow. It was always easy to spot the stars. There was something magnetic about the big ones that set them apart: Douglas Fairbanks, Mae West, Gary Cooper. But it was more than good looks. Bela Lugosi was no great looker, but when he came in to the Cocoanut Grove one night, he stopped bystanders in their tracks. Even from across the pool, Gwendolyn could sense that Earl O’Flynn had it.
Gwendolyn clinked her glass against Marcus’ and took a sip, letting it swirl around her tongue for a moment before she swallowed. Say, she thought, this stuff isn’t half bad.
“Is it okay?” Marcus asked.
“It tastes better when it’s legal.” She took another sip and soon began to feel slightly blurry at the edges. When her glass was half empty, she drained the rest in one delicious swallow. She was delighted. She marveled at all the time she’d lost thinking she was going to turn into her
mama. She could have been drinking scotch for years!
“I do believe I shall have another,” she announced. She grabbed the bottle and splashed a generous slug into her tumbler. When she looked up, Marcus was clear across the yard, talking with Dorothy and Lillian and a portly guy Gwendolyn almost recognized. Some sort of director . . . ?
“Do you need some help there?”
Earl O’Flynn was even more attractive up close than he was at a hundred paces, which wasn’t usually the case. Her time at the Cocoanut Grove had also taught her that many of the some famous faces owed much to expert make-up and flattering lighting. But this man’s aura didn’t dim the closer he got; if anything, it expanded until you were choking on it, like Dorothy Parker’s perfume.
“I do require some assistance,” Gwendolyn said, although it came out more like ‘sistince.’ She handed him the bottle and he freshened her drink. “My name’s Gwendolyn,” she slurred. “Gwendolyn Brick, but I don’t like it very much. I’m thinking of changing it to Gwendolyn Lawrence. What do you think?”
“I think Gwendolyn is the prettiest name I’ve heard all year.” She couldn’t place his accent, but she got the impression that he was cultured and refined, but not stage actory like Leslie Howard.
“You’re Earl, aren't you? Earl O’Flynn.” Gwendolyn felt glamorous, like an international woman of mystery who held all the answers to all the questions this loverboy could ask.
He did a brief double take. “Close,” he said. “The name is Errol Flynn. I’m new in town; hardly met anyone yet. But surely I’d remember meeting you.”
She heard herself laugh–almost as though she were watching from a distance–and tell him that he was a smooth one. He chuckled and said he wasn’t sure about that.
Oh my goodness, what a rakish smile he has, Gwendolyn thought. She saw him blink like he was surprised. Did I say that out loud? Who cares? I’m a flame. Isn’t that what Marcus said? I’m a flame and this Errol Flynn is my moth.
The Garden on Sunset Page 17
