Was

by Geoff Ryman

  She used a pencil to outline them, no time for a brush, and then used brown for lipstick, just a few shades darker than the skin tone. Finally a bit of powder over the whole thing to kill the shine. The Kid sat still.

  My, but I’ve had to do this in a hurry. Too much talking.

  “Okay, sit up. Now remember, don’t scratch your hair, even when it’s hot. Suppose Lily told you that, too. Should be cooler today anyway with black-and-white.” Kid said nothing.

  They walked out of the trailer, and Judy Garland was on.

  The Kid modulated. Her shoulders went back, the curl to her lip relaxed. She went up to people.

  Kid saw Continuity heading their way and went straight up to her. “Hiya, Jenny, howya doin’?”

  Continuity looked a bit surprised that someone was friendly, then remembered to smile. “Uh. Fine, thank you. How are you today?”

  “Oh, you know. Was your place okay after the storm?” The Kid sounded real concerned.

  “Why yes, thank you.” Continuity’s clipboard strained forward, like it was on a leash.

  “No, the braids are the right length for Kansas, Jen,” said the Kid. “I know, because in Kansas, they’re not long enough to help hide my tits.”

  Continuity’s face froze. The Kid winked at her. Continuity actually laughed.

  “And my makeup is keyed for black-and-white, ’cause I checked the color numbers as Millie put it on. So everything’s okay.”

  “I guess so,” said Continuity, shaking her head.

  Kid did that to everyone. Went up to them and said hi. It was like she was vacuuming them up or something.

  She went up to Bolger. “Say,” she said, looking serious, “don’t I know you?”

  He wasn’t entirely sure she was joking. Poor old Ray.

  “Oh, I know, you’re playing the Tin Man!”

  Then she giggled and kissed him on the cheek.

  She waved to the Monkeys overhead amid their lights and wires. She swaggered up to the technicians on the ground and she was as confident as they were. She played poker with them sometimes—and won. She crept up behind King Vidor and hugged his back. He yelped and spun around.

  “What the—oh, Judy!” the little guy said with relief. He would have taken it only from her. Kid jumped back giggling and covered her mouth. You just had to laugh with her.

  Well, thought Millie. Got to hand it to the Kid. You’d never know there was anything wrong in her life at all. You’d really think she was just some sweet, ordinary kid. Except that she’s a demon poker player and knows all my Panchro numbers. And her lines, from seeing the rewrite just once. And the names of all the technicians. She’s smart. She’s real smart, like some kind of genius or something. Millie found it just the slightest bit creepy.

  They ran through the last scene of the picture. Doesn’t usually work out like that, filming the last scene just about last. The set was tiny, so small they had the Kid’s bed jammed right up against the corner of the window frame. There was only just room for the little table squeezed in between the bed and the other wall. It was the little girl’s bedroom. The wallpaper was covered in poppies.

  It was a simple setup. The camera pulls away from the Kid in bed, and she wakes up and sees the family; Frank sticks his head in through the window and the boys crowd in.

  Only there wasn’t room for them all.

  Vidor intervened. “Uh, Clara. Look, when you take the cloth off Dorothy’s head, put it on the table. Listen to her for a while until the boys need to get on—leave on the dream line. Pick the cloth up and take it to the kitchen.”

  “Why would I do that if my little girl’s just woken up from a coma?”

  Vidor had an answer. “It’s wet and you’re worried about the varnish on the table.”

  Blandwick didn’t look convinced. “Look,” said Vidor. “You’re a farmer’s wife. You’re practical. So you make sure the Kid’s all right, then it’s up, brisk, quick out and then back in.”

  Blandwick held up a hand to stop. “Okay, I’ve got it.”

  Went for a take. No problem. Kid was bright, smooth. There was a bit when Blandwick lifted up the cloth and it pulled up some of the Kid’s hair, right where it was wound into the fall. Kid looked up at Frank Morgan, and brushed the hair back at the same time. It looked real like the little girl had done it without thinking, but the Kid was managing her wig. She knew she had to keep the hair the same from shot to shot.

  Millie watched Vidor. He was smiling, telling them it was fine. He’s not happy with it, thought Millie.

  “Let’s just have a few reaction shots,” he said, the lights reflecting on his funny round glasses.

  “Judy,” he said to the Kid, waving at her to stay on the bed. He sat down and began to talk to her in a low voice.

  Millie wanted to hear. She crept up a bit closer.

  “Like this,” he was saying. “Just breathe out at the top of your register, a whisper right in the front of your mouth.” He said the line for her. Reason he was so good. A bit eccentric. Studios were full of stories about how he would tell producers off. Maybe why he sometimes ended up finishing other people’s pictures.

  The Kid lay back as Continuity fussed with the quilt.

  And something happened again. The Kid’s eyes went faraway.

  King was bustling around with the camera, looking through it on tiptoe. A small man physically, lots of energy. Kid closed her eyes and went still as a corpse.

  “Okay, going for a take.”

  It was just the Kid on the pillow, her eyes closed, and she began to murmur over and over the last line: “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”

  Millie felt a prickle down her neck. Kid really sounded like a little girl, for all that the brace had to hold down her chest.

  “Right,” said King, sounding surprised. “That was just what I wanted.”

  They set up another shot. More huddling between Vidor and the Kid. Millie went to freshen her makeup, but didn’t hear what Vidor said. As Millie touched up the eyebrows, the Kid started to sing to herself, “Zing Went the Strings of My Heart.”

  She kept on singing it, softly, as the lights and the cameras were moved.

  There was a rustle of paper on a clipboard.

  “Dog,” said Continuity. “The dog jumps up on the bed half-way through the scene. And Dorothy is already sitting up and holding it.”

  “Terry? Terry?” called the dog’s trainer. “Dog’s shy,” he explained to Vidor.

  “Where’s the dog?” called Vidor, annoyed.

  “Here, dog,” whispered the Kid. Only Millie seemed to hear here. “Up’n the bed.”

  It sounded like Missouri. Or Kansas. Darned if the dog didn’t come too, right up on the bed out of nowhere. You are a country girl, aren’t you, honey, thought Millie. They couldn’t have found somebody better for this part in a million years. A country girl who got picked up, spun around and dropped into Hollywood and Technicolor.

  Vidor sat Blandwick down and pulled her shoulders into the frame. Cameraman kept shaking his head.

  Ten minutes, maybe twenty. Hours of waiting. It was amazing how these actors could sit and wait and wait and then just launch themselves into it. Mind you, that’s why they were paid. To be able to say lines like they believed them. The Kid started singing again.

  Finally Vidor said, “Okay, let’s go. Dorothy, your last lines from ‘Anyway, Toto, we’re home.’”

  The camera whirred, Vidor pointed, the Kid said her line, and it was wrong.

  On the word “home,” her face crumpled up and she started to cry. Not modulated. Ugly, wet, snotty.

  “No, no, no, no, no,” said Vidor, waving at the cameraman to stop.

  Vidor stepped forward and spoke loud enough for most of them to hear. “Uh, Dorothy. That’s probably a bit too sad. Remember, she’s home, she’s happy, everybody she loves is back with her in one place. She’s probably never been as happy, and probably never will be as happy again. So what we want to see is
joy. Joy like we’ve never seen it. This has got to be the happiest part of the whole picture.”

  The Kid smiled and smiled and nodded yes and darned if she wasn’t still crying. Anything to please, thought Millie, rolling the gum in her mouth.

  They tried again, and this time, the Kid sputtered and burst into tears with a kind of spurting sound. Vidor cut the air with his hand.

  She went too far, sometimes, the Kid. When she first saw Lahr in his makeup, she went hysterical. They couldn’t stop her laughing. She had to hide behind the set and say over and over “I must not laugh, I must not laugh,” and then she came out and started laughing all over again. Finally Fleming slapped her right across the chops. That stopped her laughing all right.

  Vidor scratched his brow with his thumb, thinking. Then he walked up to the bed and leaned over it and spoke low and soft, like a daddy to his little girl.

  “Frances,” he said.

  The Kid turned to him, startled. “Frances, just pretend you’ve gone to sleep, and you wake up back in your own house, just like it used to be when you were little with your mommy and your daddy and your sisters. All there, all home. Just close your eyes.”

  He stepped back quietly. The Kid stroked the dog. It licked her arm.

  “Now open them,” said Vidor.

  She did.

  “And you’re home,” said Vidor.

  The lights came up fierce, and so did the Kid. Suddenly she smiled, and the smile cut through the one wall of the set that faced her and the camera and the lights.

  There was silence. They all waited in silence, and King motioned for the whirring of the camera to keep going. The Kid kept staring. Was she going to say anything?

  She told Toto they were home. Home, like she couldn’t believe it, it was so wonderful to be back.

  And this was her own room, and they were all together, everyone she loved, and she wasn’t going to go away, ever again. Oh yes you are, thought Millie. Life takes you away. Don’t believe that down-on-the-farm shit, kid. “And, oh Aunty Em? There’s no place like home!”

  It was strange. Everyone stayed silent for a while. Somebody coughed, like they were saying: Can we move now? People went back to work.

  There was one thing that Millie could tell people about her job that was true, and that was that the good actors, the ones who could actually act, were really nice, nice inside. Oh, sure they acted up; they were childish; they were like little kids. There was something childish about each one of them.

  “Ray, Bert, Jack,” said King Vidor, and they came in a parade, dressed as farmhands. Lahr who couldn’t sleep from fear. Bolger who wanted to go to college. Jack who showed them how to say their lines like children—rumor was he wanted to start a charitable foundation. He was the one who wanted a heart. Yup, thought Millie.

  All these people working together on something, sometimes it all comes together. Looks like maybe this picture is. That business with the coat. The Professor is wearing L. Frank Baum’s coat. If Judy Garland really is a nice country kid, then maybe the coat is real too.

  And the Kid was beaming, still smiling, in the lights, where home would continue to be. The only place it would be, in the center of attention.

  Santa Monica, California

  January 1953

  The only thing she was good for was spreading chaos and fear.

  — JUDY GARLAND,

  of her mother

  The parking lot looked empty. Ethel swung her car around, looking at the space she was aiming at, and nearly hit an old Ford. She slammed on the brakes, reversed, wrenching the steering wheel around, slammed into forward, straightening the car, and roared back neatly into the space. Her heart was thumping. Late. Late again, darn it, she was never late, and suddenly twice in one week. Why am I always late for everything, she admonished herself. Then she looked at her watch.

  It said six forty-five.

  It was like a blow to the chest. What? She was an hour early. Of all the stupid…She’d misread the time. All that panic, missing her breakfast, dashing out to the car, makeup to be done later. Screaming up Sepulveda, only half noticing how empty the streets were, praising the Lord that the traffic was light for once, tearing into the lot and then thump, here she was, thump, parked in the McDonnell Douglas parking lot an hour early with nothing to do on the coldest day of the year. She looked over her shoulder. Even the chow shop on the corner hadn’t opened yet.

  She sat and went very still. She closed her eyes. Something heavy and sluggish settled over her like mud. What a panic! And for nothing.

  The little Dodge smelled of gas and Ethel felt sick, a queasy, floating nausea that was not altogether unpleasant. After the iron pressure of the race across town, it was nice to find she could sit for a spell and relax.

  When was the last time I was able to do that? Ethel thought. She sat for a few moments with her eyes closed, just listening to herself breathe. Actually, she thought, this is rather nice. A whole hour just to myself. She took a deep, soothing breath and opened her eyes. I might even get used to this when I retire. I deserve it. But knowing me, I probably won’t stop till I drop, just like Mother.

  I can do my makeup, she remembered. Do it properly for a change, like in the old days. The visor was already down as a defense against the low California dawn. Her soft, sagging face stared back at her from the mirror. Her face was flushed. She looked, she thought, surprisingly healthy. Nothing like an early morning crisis to get the blood moving. The light showed the damage the years had done around the eyes, and neck and mouth. I have to smile all the time, she thought, smile just to stop looking like I’m frowning.

  Still, can’t show up for work looking like this.

  I still have my old kit in the glove compartment, she remembered. It’s like in the old days, before going on stage. You start with the base.

  With a professional’s jaundiced eye, Ethel began to pat on the foundation. All those years I did this for the stage, she thought. Who would guess I was ever on the stage now? All that time I spent, year in year out, up and down in that car, going into offices, negotiating contracts, doing all those things a man should have done. All of that.

  Don’t get bitter, she told herself. She managed the different parts of her personality as if they were a family or a team of performers. You can’t repent what was done for love. And if your daughter doesn’t feel she owes you anything for all your love and care, so be it. Your conscience is clear.

  Your pocketbook, too, came another voice. You’ll be in harness all your life.

  The reply came: So who said life was going to be any different? Life was a harness. We knew you had to get on with it, do things; that was the way we were brought up. In those days. We’d rather die than take charity.

  And I can see her point of view, Ethel told herself. She was the one who did all the work, after all. It was her singing, her voice that earned the money. Why should she support her old ma? Parents are there to support the kids, not the other way around. If she is prepared to see her old ma living in a Santa Monica bungalow on sixty dollars a week, what can I say? I can’t prove to her that love and respect might indicate what the law cannot enforce. Maybe she has no love and respect.

  Her hands stopped applying makeup. They sank to her lap. Face it, Ethel. Your daughter hates you. Everything’s gone wrong for her, and she needs someone to blame. So old Ethel has to carry the can again. I have been carrying that can all my life. It might be nice if somebody else did, for a change.

  And it was a mistake to go and sue my own daughter. It was undignified. It was a public squabble. I was the loser, in every way. People know about stage mothers, or think they do. What they don’t know, they can make up for themselves. Suing my own daughter for support.

  Ethel shook her head at herself. What would my mother have said? she thought. Well, Mother, Ethel thought, remembering her mother’s face, I’m afraid we live in a colder world. Life was hard in your day, but other people made up for it. These days, it’s just the reverse; we
have our cars and our Frigidaires, but we don’t have each other.

  Ethel sighed and looked back into the mirror. Now. A bit of color on the cheeks. Her hands rattled through the assortment of compacts and lipsticks and old dried tubes of greasepaint. Her mind was not attending. The containers turned over and over in a jumble.

  Suing was so messy. And vengeful too. All right, I was angry. I was appalled and angry and I really did need some help and I couldn’t believe after all I’d done for her that she would treat me this way. Just cast me off, like I was a piece of stale meat. A dog or a cat would have had better treatment from her.

  Another part of Ethel intervened, broke off the thought.

  She isn’t the same girl, Ethel told herself, she isn’t my little girl anymore. My little girl is dead. Instead, there is some fat, shambling woman who can’t control her hands. Someone who is, for want of a better word, a junkie.

  People warned me. They told me Hollywood kills. They didn’t say how, and I didn’t see how it could reach right into someone and destroy her, how it could take everything and leave a desert.

  She became a horrible person. My little baby, my sweet little Frances. She grew up so selfish, so mean. On another planet. My lawyer shows up to serve a writ and she bounces up to him and says, “Come and hear me sing.” Takes him by the hand! Like he was a family friend. Like we were all still a family. She just did not understand what she had done. Those lies she told about me, those viperish lies. I read about myself in the paper, she tells reporters how awful I was. When all I ever did was try to help her, try to protect her, to get her away from what I knew was coming. It would be Grand Rapids all over again, only with my little girls old enough to understand.

  Ethel Gilmore thought of Frank Gumm. She thought of the sweep of her life.

  She no longer hated him. She thought of him infrequently now that she had remarried and divorced again. When she thought of him at all, it was with a kind of understanding. It must have been awful for him, too. I suppose he wanted to become normal, poor man, and couldn’t. And I have to suppose that he loved me a little bit. I guess he loved playing piano with me. Like he loved playing a husband and father.