The Camera Always Lies

by Hugh Hood

  “I’m just an itty-bitty sing,” Rose would say, showing her dimples. “It’s stupid, but you’re lucky, you aren’t stuck at nineteen forever. You could act on the stage. You can do different things. All I can do is stand around like Myrtle in her kirtle in King Arthur-type epics—that and ingénue parts. I’m stuck.”

  “You won’t be nineteen forever.”

  “I’m not nineteen now, and I’m trying to age gracefully, but can you see me in other parts?”

  “Not right now, no.”

  “But you could play them; you’re versatile.”

  Peggi sighed. “I’d sooner play lovelies, like you.”

  “Oh, ha ha ha. I’ll tell you what I am, Peggi, I’m pretty in the sense that I have a clear complexion and good health, and I’m not obese. I’m no beauty.”

  “You are, you are.”

  “Huh!”

  People didn’t turn around to look at her in the street. Charity now . . .

  . . . and Jean-Pierre wouldn’t be in the city either; it was that kind of day, probably spending a tough weekend with a banker. She rubbed her eyes and massaged her belly, with the memory of their first date vivid in her imagination, the most important opening date of the year, Easter Saturday, and Goody had been spotted in it. You had to give Bud and Danny credit for that at least, and she had a small percentage.

  They can pay that to Mama.

  She put some money in her bag and told Macha that she and Mr. and Mrs. Ponsonby could have the weekend free.

  “. . . till Monday afternoon. I’ll be back here Monday afternoon.”

  “What about messages?”

  “There won’t be any messages, Macha.” She passed a hand over her eyes. “But in case anybody should call, note the name and number on the pad by the phone.”

  The girl smiled dimly as Rose turned away. “Oh, Miss Leclair,” she said softly.

  “What?”

  “I just wondered. Can I get you anything?”

  “I’m going out,” said Rose with surprise.

  “I know . . . I just thought you looked like you needed something.”

  “A few kind words, Macha, that’s all I need.”

  “Oh, Miss Leclair, I’m so sorry. About everything, I mean.”

  “Well, don’t be.”

  “’No.’’

  “Tell Mr. and Mrs. Ponsonby to have a nice weekend.”

  “Yes.”

  “Goodbye, Macha.” She walked west along Sixty-first Street; she didn’t want to do it but was unable to resist. She strolled along, feeling the heat of the fine April sun at her back and on her neck and back hair. She had twisted her hair into an unfamiliar knot and wore no makeup. Nobody would bother her. It took two hours to produce the Rose Leclair you saw on the cover of fan magazines, sometimes longer.

  She was glad there was a lineup, though the picture had been running over a month. She tried to figure what the New York gross might be. Her pictures had always done well in the East, and in New York especially. But let’s face it, she thought, stepping up to buy a ticket, this isn’t one of my pictures and it isn’t one of Tommy’s pictures. It’s a Charity Ryan vehicle.

  She went inside, feeling very tense, and took an aisle seat well towards the back of the house, a long way from where she’d been at the premiere, right down front. She wanted to take a dispassionate look at the print, if that was possible. It wasn’t. From the moment that goddamned song started, from the second the drums took up that boom-boom-boom and the colour went that sickly peach, she stared with frenzied hatred, rage, and self-contempt, at the giant figures, including hers, that towered before her.

  She heard again the voices of Horler and Lenehan sitting along the row from her at the opening, and felt the steadying hand of a stranger on her arm, heard him try to calm her. She watched almost all the long film, shutting her eyes when it got too bad, but it finally beat her. She stumbled out of the theatre in tears of anger and naked shame. It was then that she decided to drive out of the city.

  3

  COMING UP

  1

  When the orange light came on, Lou Aspinall started to manipulate the switchboard apparatus. He jiggled the hook and spoke into the operator’s mouthpiece, which he held awkwardly in his left hand. He didn’t usually work the switchboard, being the boss, but the night clerk had taken the weekend off to go up to Bridgeport to see her parents, and his wife, who normally filled in, had gone to the movies. When he couldn’t get any answer from 34, he thought at first that he was doing something wrong, and that his wife would bug him when she came in for failing to follow her instructions, and annoying the guests. He grew quite anxious to make a satisfactory connection, so he went through a series of maneuvers designed to prove that he was not at fault. He tried everything, but the orange light stayed on and he still couldn’t get any answer from 34·

  He was certain that she was in there. Ever since she’d signed in, he’d been sitting right beside the big window that looked out onto the court. She’d gone straight to her room and stayed there; he was sure of that. Her light was on too. He wondered with growing concern why she had started to phone and then stopped. If she was anxious to get a call through, wouldn’t she come charging out of her room to cause a stink because of his mishandling of the switchboard? New York plates, expensive car—what was she doing in the Cresta Corona Motel at nine-thirty on a Saturday night? Why wasn’t she off somewhere dancing, or making love, a good-looking girl like that?

  He looked at the guest register and this time the name clicked. “Rose Leclair,” he said out loud. “She’s in the movies; she’s even pretty famous.”

  Everything he had heard and imagined about movie people fell into place, and he guessed what she was doing in his motel. He threw down the register and ran through the door and across the court as fast as he could. Some nearby guests watched, wondering what had excited him.

  First he tried to see through the window, but the Venetian blinds were angled down, so he knocked sharply at the door and called, “Miss Leclair, are you all right?”

  Three guests came along the walk that ran in front of the rooms, a man from Detroit and a married couple from Rutland, Vermont. They had been enjoying a small party, sharing a bottle of Scotch and watching Saturday night TV, just down the walk.

  “Is anything wrong?” said the lady from Vermont. She held a glass in her hand without self-consciousness, and looked smart and capable. Aspinall felt glad to see her.

  “I’m not sure,” he said, now quite disturbed. “She doesn’t answer.”

  “Call again.”

  “Miss Leclair, Miss Leclair!”

  “Are you sure she’s in?”

  “Yes, she hasn’t opened her door since she arrived.”

  “Is that the Leclair in the movies, by any chance?” asked the man from Detroit. Suddenly they were all thinking the same thing and knew it. Three of them remembered the recent divorce, and the fourth, the man from Rutland, knew he’d heard something about her recently.

  “I think so. I didn’t take a real good look.”

  “You’d better get the door open anyway. Have you tried the lock?”

  “Oh, I imagine it’s locked, all right.”

  “Let’s just see,” said Mrs. Beard, the lady from Rutland. She switched her glass to the other hand, and tried the door. It wasn’t locked. She opened it slowly and her head and her husband’s and Mr. Aspinall’s came around the door like spies in a spoof of a spy movie.

  They all said simultaneously, “Oh-oh,” and went into the room very fast. The man from Detroit stood in the doorway and talked to the crowd which collected immediately.

  “Give them room,” he said authoritatively. “Don’t crowd around, please.”

  Aspinall said, “Can any of you run a switchboard?”

  “I can,” said Mrs. Beard, “in fact I often do, for him.�
� She nodded at her husband, a Ford dealer with a terrific location on U.S. 7 just this side of Rutland.

  “Please go into the office and call emergency at Norwalk Hospital; the number is right beside the board with some others. Ask them to send an ambulance in a hurry; it looks like an overdose of drugs.” He felt peculiarly unflustered, and was glad he was functioning so smoothly; his wife would be amazed and pleased. “Then call the State Police—their number is there too. Tell them who we think it is.”

  Mrs. Beard calmly finished her drink, put the glass down on a magazine stand near the door, and went out. She had to push through the crowd.

  Aspinall spoke quickly to her husband. “I don’t think we have a doctor registered tonight. But you might ask if any of these folks has a medical or nursing background. I’m going to try to revive her. And then you might clear the doorway, so the stretcher team can get in and out.”

  The Ford dealer obeyed instantly. Aspinall heard his voice, calm and faintly Northern like his wife’s, as he spoke to his acquaintance from Detroit and then to some other guests. “There’s been some sort of accident. I don’t think it will be too serious.” Aspinall felt glad to hear this. The thing to do was to get the whole mess under control. He felt people watching him through the doorway.

  Acting much more assured than he was, he pushed back the woman’s left eyelid. The eyeball didn’t react to the light, and her skin was bluish and slightly cold. He stood up, bent, and straightened her on the bed, loosened her clothes, and went into the bathroom, where he soaked a couple of towels in cold water. He was just improvising but tried to do the right thing. When the towels were icy and heavy with water he came back, sat down beside the woman, and put his right arm under her neck and shoulders, lifting her up beside him. He held her tightly and patted her face and neck with the cold towels. Once or twice he slapped her face lightly, but got no response, or not more than a very faint flicker. In an amazingly short time he heard two sirens approaching from different directions, and in moments both the ambulance and the troopers were in the motel court. There were a driver, an orderly, and an intern on the ambulance crew, and they reacted smartly when they saw her.

  “These what she took?” asked the intern. He picked up two small bottles from the bedside table, and then bent and picked up another from the floor. Somebody had stepped on it, and it was split down the side.

  “I guess so,” said Aspinall, “at least that’s all there is around. There’s nothing in the bathroom.”

  They worked her quickly onto the stretcher.

  “Is she going to be all right?”

  The intern said, “What a drag. I’ll never know why they take the trouble.”

  “You don’t think it was an accident?”

  “She hadn’t gone to bed or anything, and anyway who goes to bed at ten o’clock Saturday night? She didn’t bother to undress.”

  “But she’ll be all right?”

  “Uh-huh. She isn’t too blue yet, so we’ll be in time. Better get going.” In a few seconds they had her stowed away; then they drove off with the siren going, but not so urgently.

  Lou Aspinall’s wife appeared in the court. She stared at the disappearing ambulance, the troopers, the crowd along the walk. She spied her husband.

  “My God, Lou, what have you done now?” she said.

  Aspinall said, “Nothing, angel. I’ve just got to talk to the troopers.”

  His wife grew pale. “He hasn’t done anything,” she said, with the air of someone who lies deliberately out of misguided loyalty.

  “Sweetie, they just want a statement.”

  “I can’t turn my back and you get into a mess. Honestly, Lou, I wonder what would happen to you if I weren’t around.” One of the troopers interrupted her. “Mr. Aspinall’s been a big help. He found her. In fact your husband’s kind of a hero, Mrs. Aspinall, because he saved the woman’s life, I’d say. You can’t let these cases go too long.”

  “Will somebody please tell me what happened?”

  Lou asked the troopers to wait for him a second. He led his wife into the office, away from the listening crowd. “We had a suicide attempt. Look, here in the register, Rose Leclair, she’s quite well known. I helped to revive her.” His wife sat down, amazed, and Aspinall felt superior. “I’m just going over to Norwalk,” he said, “to the hospital. I’ll hitch a ride with the troopers and give them my statement in the car, and they say they’ll bring me back. Don’t worry, it wasn’t our fault.”

  “Why did she have to pick us?”

  “It won’t hurt us. I wouldn’t be surprised we get some good publicity. Didn’t you hear what the trooper said? I’m kind of a hero because I saved her life. It’ll be on television.”

  The troopers called him and he went out and got in the patrol car. His wife watched him leave, and then began to go over what had happened with some of the guests. They all had different stories.

  Riding down to the hospital with the siren going, Lou felt mighty excited as he talked to the officers. The driver said, “Just give us a quick line on what happened. Bert will make notes on it and tomorrow we’ll have it typed up and ready for you to sign. Just the essential details, when you found her, what she looked like. It’ll help to clarify it in your mind, in case the doctors need some information.”

  “I think I’ve got it straight.”

  The other officer said, “Not too fast now, I can’t do shorthand. Maybe you’d better just answer my questions. When did she get to your place?”

  “About nine, give or take a few minutes.”

  “Which way did she come from?”

  “She came up from Wilton. I just took it for granted she’d come up from the city—the New York plates, and her clothes.”

  “How was she acting?”

  “Normally.”

  “Not excited or hysterical?”

  “No. I tell you, though, I thought she was mad about something.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. She just seemed kind of . . . grim.”

  Soon the trooper had all he needed. They came to the hospital, got out of the car, and went into Emergency. Just inside the door they passed a phone booth in which the ambulance orderly was talking eagerly. What he said was, “Name your price, and it better be good, because this is real news.” He was talking to a stringer for a small chain of Connecticut TV and radio stations that ran a lot of local news from all parts of the state.

  “I trust you,” said the orderly suspiciously. “We brought in Rose Leclair tonight. Uh-huh. That’s who I mean. Looks like attempted suicide, but don’t quote me.” He went on to give an only slightly distorted story which included everything but the diagnosis and treatment. And because he had acted promptly, Channel 8, New Haven, had the story first, on its eleven-ten roundup of state and local news:

  Movie star Rose Leclair, 34, who recently divorced her longtime husband, top box-office attraction Seth Lincoln, was tonight admitted to Norwalk Hospital suffering from an apparent overdose of sedative and tranquilizing medication. Miss Leclair was discovered unconscious in her motel room by the owner of the Wilton motel where she was an unaccompanied guest. Latest medical bulletins indicate that she will recover.

  By midnight the item was on national TV. Horler and Lenehan saw it, and Graham Faiers. Lambert Vogelsang saw it, and wired Seth in Paris. Hank Walden saw it and wondered where his client’s interests lay.

  Thelma Sloper heard it on her radio, and cried, and was upset for days.

  Peggi saw it at eleven-ten on Channel 8. She had been spending the weekend outside Stratford, where some of her friends were preparing a season of Shakespeare. She drove down to Norwalk at once.

  Jean-Pierre Fauré saw the same newscast. He had spent Saturday dickering with an exurbanite banker for financing on a projected film; he had a script of a kind to show, not much else. He had to borrow a car because he’
d come out on the New Haven, and he and Peggi arrived at the hospital in Norwalk at almost the same time. They identified themselves as Miss Leclair’s closest friends, and more or less assumed responsibility for her.

  For quite a while they stood together in a doorway to the Emergency waiting room, till they might be able to see Rose.

  “I want to phone her mother and tell her she’s O.K.,” said Peggi, after giving Jean-Pierre a long close look. “I hope she doesn’t hear it first on TV.”

  “Then you’d better call soon. It’ll be on all the late summaries.”

  “Should I just go ahead, without seeing Rose?”

  “Yes, I think she’d like that.”

  Peggi took another good long look at her companion. She liked what she saw, and went at once to the phone booth just inside the entrance to call Mrs. Leclair in Providence.

  Press representatives trickled into the hospital, not very many of them. National coverage doesn’t require the actual presence of many reporters, as long as the story goes onto a wire. There were three or four men from metropolitan dailies, a Norwalk reporter, a remote crew from a TV station taking footage for network news, and a starved-looking freelance magazine writer. Not a big splash, not a horrifying violation of one’s right to agonize in peace, no pushing and shoving. It was remarkable how subdued the whole occasion was. Jean-Pierre heard the doctor on the case give a medical bulletin which was a model of accurate clarity.

  The press people stood around him in a congenial circle. “The only problem in a case like this is time,” said the doctor. “We always get the happy ending if we have enough time.”

  “What actually takes place, doctor?” asked an interviewer, sticking a mike under his nose.

  “Would you move that thing back a little?”

  “Oh sorry, sure.”

  “When the drug is assimilated into the bloodstream, there is impairment of the circulation. In effect, the capacity of the blood to circulate oxygen is drastically lessened. The result is that the brain cells begin to break down from anoxia. There is this brain damage, and damage to the central and peripheral nervous systems, and unfortunately these effects are irreversible. Once the damage is done, it can’t be fixed. So you see it’s important to remove the toxic substance at once.”