Was_a novel

by Geoff Ryman

  Millie never talked about the people she worked with. If people asked her, she’d just say, oh, so-and-so’s really nice. Millie would have a thing or two to say about the Kid, if she had a mind to. Oh, she was charming and all that. Went out of her way to be charming. But the stories she told. Like the story she told everyone about the dressing room. Stood outside it crying, saying that they hadn’t given her the key. Just had to be the center of attention. Make a little drama out of anything. And as for that graduation business. Told Margaret Hamilton that she would have to miss her high-school graduation because the studio was making her tour. Said it was Hollywood High. Well, she goes to University High, which is clean across town from Hollywood, and she doesn’t graduate until next year. So I know better than to believe anything Miss Judy Garland says. There now.

  Millie, chewing her gum, locked the door behind her. Better go see about the boys.

  Millie went down along the stage, into the next room. Six o’clock, there was Ray Bolger, getting a shave.

  “Howdy, Ray.”

  “Oh, hello, Millie,” he smiled, his mouth ringed with shaving soap. She liked Ray Bolger. Quiet and nice.

  “Everything okay?” she asked Bud, who did Ray.

  “Yup,” Bud answered, looking up, smiling. “For once Ray’s out of that mask. Just a standard paint job now.”

  “I feel like a used car,” said Bolger, hugging himself. “The only thing I’m going to remember about this picture, Millie, is sitting in this chair. Even a dentist’s appointment doesn’t take as long.”

  “Well, at least today you’re out of that mask.”

  “And it’s black-and-white.” He pretended to sob with relief. Black-and-white meant cooler lights.

  “Jack’ll be able to sit down,” said Bud.

  Jack Haley’s Tin Man suit dented. He couldn’t sit, for eight, ten hours, so he had to lean on a board.

  “Bert’ll have to find something else to worry about.”

  “Yeah.” Ray chuckled. The boys were a pretty swell team, actually.

  “When’s the Kid due?” asked Bud, wiping the last of the suds off Ray’s face.

  “Not till six-thirty,” said Millie. “I’m going to the canteen, get some breakfast. You boys want anything?”

  “Had mine, Millie, thanks. I’ll just—”

  “Sit around and wait, and sit around and wait some more.” She, Bolger and Bud said it in unison.

  “See you,” she said.

  Millie loved working in movies. Never wanted any other job. Because of the people. It wasn’t glamorous. There was nothing glamorous in it at all, really. She hated the whole concept of glamour. It was more than glamour. It was people working together to make something good, and when you worked for a class act like MGM, you knew you were doing something worthwhile. There were times when Millie could feel the whole giant enterprise ticking away. The sets, the lights, the makeup, the costumes. Like this morning. One set finished with yesterday, it gets struck overnight, painted again, and a new one put up. People working around the clock on something that reached out and got to people. That was what Millie liked. The sheer sociability of a lot of it. She looked at the rafters and the Monkeys, whipping wire. Been there all night probably. Wouldn’t even know the story of the picture. But they could go and see it and say, I put that set up. You wouldn’t have believed how phony it looked, either, but it looks good on film.

  With a small, contented smile, Millie went to have her breakfast.

  Mind you, she thought, listening to her shoes, feeling the delicious California chill again, this one’s shaping up pretty poorly. I mean, doing a fairy tale as vaudeville is pretty risky. You got two different elements. Lahr and the other boys are great, but there is no getting away from it, what they do is pure vaudeville. The Kid, too, she’s pure vaudeville. But the sets, the whole works is Viennese operetta stuff with a little bit of Hollywood Hotel thrown in. And there is just no script. Everybody keeps adding lines. The songwriters add lines. Lahr and Harley throw in old stage routines. They had God knows how many writers on it. And God knows how many directors. Thorpe. He went. Tried to make the Kid into Shirley Temple, and with the best will in the world, she’s not curly-haired and cute. Brought in Cukor, who got her out of the wig, and then Fleming, who at least gets things done, then King Vidor. Picture will be a mess if they aren’t careful. Black-and-white here, color there. And some of the filming really is sloppy. Like that Monkey, flipping a wire out of the way, right in shot, and they went and used it anyway. I just can’t believe that.

  Millie sighed, shook her head. Well. Ours not to reason why.

  More coffee. Doughnut. Bacon and eggs. Long day today and it’s cold. Millie remembered farm breakfasts in Missouri.

  “Hi, Hank,” she said to the man in the white cap.

  Our own little world.

  Millie sat by herself. Not many people in for breakfast just on six. She carefully unloaded things from her tray, like she was setting the table at home. She sat down and sighed. Bushed already.

  Still, things sometimes come together for a picture. Like that coat.

  Frank Morgan says he found it, him and Hank Rosson. They went looking for a coat for the black-and-white stuff. Found it in a second-hand store and showed it to Vic. They wanted something that would look shabby but genteel. The Wizard wears it when he’s Professor Marvel. Vic turns out the pockets and the label says “L. Frank Baum.” Man who wrote the book. He used to read it out loud to kids on his porch, lived in L.A. and that was his coat. Got an affidavit from his tailor, they say. Mind you, they’ll say anything. Too good to be true, like most things around here.

  Millie thought about the Kid. She was nice really. But funny-looking. She wasn’t pretty at all. Our little hunchback, Mayer called her. And her expressions were peculiar. He smile would sort of twist around and look a bit sour sometimes. Then she’d pull herself together for the camera, stand up straight, look like a different person.

  A lot of them could do that. That weaselly little private-school boy who played all the tough guys. Tiny, ropy-looking little thing until he had to act. One star Millie could name looked like an effeminate toad, until the lights came on. Then suddenly his toad neck looked burly, his hands developed wrists, and his voice went deep. Women all over the country swooned. Thought he was the epitome of beefcake.

  Funny about the Kid. She liked guys like that. There she was, the world at her feet, going to premieres, the whole bit. And you’d see her hanging around with all the little fairies from the offices or from Wardrobe. Being real nice to them, nice to everybody, why not? Still it’s funny. It’s like she wants something from them. That little light in her eyes. Odd.

  Millie lit a cigarette.

  God, this hour of the morning, who wants to think about anything?

  Numb.

  Oh. Is that the time? Better move on.

  Millie put everything back on the tray, carried it over to the rack, took out a fresh piece of gum.

  Mind you, Millie Haugaard, who are you calling ugly? Tall, big hips, thin shoulders. Nice tan and nice hair, but thirty-seven is no spring chicken. They say they keep the Kid on some kind of diet. Seems to work. Wish they’d tell me. Millie could feel weight around her midriff move as she walked. Well, there’s no way I could get any more exercise. There just isn’t any time. She decided to check out her own makeup before doing the Kid’s and swept into the powder room. Better get it all over with. It’s a long day till lunchtime.

  Millie got back to the trailer and waited outside it. Kid was late again. She’d be in, all breathless and apologetic. Millie watched as the lights were adjusted. One patch lighting up, then going dark, gels and overlays being tried. It’s like being in a stage show, she thought. Only you constantly set up, hang around, and no one ever gets to act.

  Only sometimes they do a
ct up.

  Millie looked at her watch. Six forty-five. It’s cutting it fine, Kid, starting this late anyway. Too late, you hold people up.

  Then she saw her, the Kid, in a plain cloth coat, hugging herself, looking at the floor as she walked. She walked head bowed as if her shoes were the most interesting things in the place. That, thought Millie, is one unhappy girl. Millie stood up, put out her cigarette and said, “Hiya, Kid.”

  “Hiya, Ma.”

  Kid called her Ma.

  “Anything wrong, honey?”

  The Kid was wrestling with the key to her trailer. “Naw,” said the Kid in a downward-turning drawl. She sighed and stepped inside and turned on the lights and slumped into her makeup chair.

  “You sound like it,” said Millie, fetching the foundation among the line-up tubes and tins. Panchro No. 23.

  “I don’t sleep, Ma,” said the Kid, her voice and her face somehow puffy.

  “Should go to bed earlier then.” Briskly, Millie applied the greasepaint in short dabs over the face and neck.

  “I do,” the Kid whispered.

  Kid looked forty. The Hollywood life. At least you’re not drinking. Yet. I’d smell it on your breath. Actors smell like skunks in the morning. Millie looked at the Kid’s face in the mirror. Always was a funny face. Looked pinched and plump at the same time. Gonna have to put some white stick over those bags. Good thing I brought some along case I had to tone the colors down. Usually only have to use it on someone older.

  Millie poured some water over her fingers and began to spread the paint thinly, perfectly. It had to be perfect.

  “I went back to Lancaster yesterday,” said the Kid, like it was some kind of confession.

  “Oh yeah?” Millie filled in the pores. The slightest little thing, and it would show up.

  Lancaster?

  “That’s way out in the desert somewhere,” said Millie.

  “Yup.”

  “Why’d you go there?” Millie leaned over to get the bit over the ear right.

  “It’s where I’m from. Went to see an old friend of mine. I always called her Muggsie.” The Kid smiled finally, just a wisp of a smile, kind of twisted. “Got there, suddenly found I couldn’t remember her real name. Just Muggsie.”

  “So how was she?” Millie asked.

  “Oh. Just normal. She’s a couple of years older than me. So she’s about eighteen now. Going to get married. It was strange.”

  “Thought you were supposed to be from Grand Rapids.”

  Another studio lie?

  “Well, I am in a way. We lived there until I was two. Then we upped stakes and moved to a dump like Lancaster because my mother wanted to be near Los Angeles so’s we could all become stars.” The Kid sounded sarcastic. “Daddy just wanted to run a movie house and keep us all together. Lancaster was the only place he could find.”

  That face is going to have to have some tone put into it. Millie placed a little jab of darker paint on each cheek. Fresh-faced country kid, so get a nice glow in the cheeks, without it looking like rouge.

  “Thought you spent your whole life touring with your sister,” said Millie, selecting the right jar from the counter.

  The Kid laughed. “No. You can’t do that, Millie. You’ve got to go to school.”

  “Guess so,” said Millie, chuckling too. Wide streak of something down-to-earth in the Kid.

  “I mean everybody thinks we were some big vaudeville family or something. I’ll tell you what we did. We sang in my daddy’s movie house between shows. All of us. Mom played piano; Janie, Jinny, me, we just sang. The only place we were stars was in Lancaster. My daddy was the biggest star of all. He used to sing all the time.” The Kid was staring through to the other side of the mirror, remembering.

  “What’s your daddy do now?” asked Millie. Eyes next. The eyes were the most important thing in makeup.

  “He died,” the Kid said.

  “Oh, honey, I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” said Millie.

  “Nobody knows,” said the Kid. “He died three years ago.”

  The Kid looked like she was going to cry. So, thought Millie, she went back home on the weekend and it stirred things up. Poor kid.

  Millie took time out from the makeup. “Sounds like your daddy was a nice man.”

  “The nicest. He had a temper on him though. He was Irish, through and through. He’d just turn on people, say they weren’t treating his girls right. Then he’d go and let half the town into the show for free. If they were poor or anything. So we always had a full house. People would come over and we’d sing. All of us.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “Thing is that I remember hating Lancaster. I remember thinking it was a really nasty, small-minded place. But when I was there, I started remembering all kinds of good things about it.

  “Like what?” Millie asked, over her shoulder. Getting out the old Panchro—and her little white stick.

  “Oh, like going swimming with Muggsie. We used to run around the old sheds a lot, just playing like kids do. Me and Muggsie and the Gilmores. We had a lot of friends there. People were really very nice to us. We’d go to parties and I’d just hop up onto pianos and sing. There was this place opened up called the Jazz Café, and they asked us in to sing there. And people kept coming to the shows at the theater. They never got tired of the shows, and they must have seen us every week.” The Kid managed to laugh again. “To tell you the truth we probably weren’t all that good. For years and years, the only thing I knew about singing was that you had to be loud.”

  “Oh, every place is a mixture of good and bad,” said Millie. “I got pretty mixed memories of Missouri. Everybody gets into everybody else’s business all the time.”

  “They sure do,” agreed the Kid. She went silent, perplexed, hugging herself. Millie took advantage of the stillness to get the white stick and draw two quick lines over the bags under the eyes. You had to be quick. All these stars got such frail vanity.

  “Okay, now. Hold still, Judy. I’m going to do your eyes.” Millie smoothed even darker brown, No. 30, across the whole of the eyelid and then up to the natural eyebrow. It was a good design, this makeup. It made her eyes look bigger in her face, like a real little girl’s, by darkening everything to the eyebrow and putting on these absolutely enormous eyelashes. Millie had thought it would look phony. Instead, the eyelashes seemed to match the Kid’s own huge dark eyes. And then you didn’t put a thing on the lower lid at all, except for the slightest bit of mascara.

  The huge dark eyes were looking at her, and the Kid was saying something.

  “That’s what I can’t figure,” said the Kid. “I just don’t understand. They were so nice, and then they drove my daddy out.”

  “Drove him out. What do you mean?”

  Millie leaned over and painted in eyebrows lightly with a brush. You had to be careful with eyebrows. Too much, too little, both showed up bad.

  “After we started to get big. They drove my daddy out of town, took away the lease from his movie theater, shoved him out, and a year later he was dead.”

  Millie was silent. She was not sure this was the truth.

  “Why would people do that to him?” the Kid asked, her voice rising.

  “I don’t know. If you were starting to get successful, maybe they were jealous.”

  “He was such a nice man. They killed him, Ma. One year later he was dead!”

  Okay. Millie stopped, put down the brush. She knelt down so that she and the Kid were face-to-face. “What did he die of, Judy?”

  “Spinal meningitis,” the Kid admitted.

  “That’s not Lancaster’s fault.”

  “They still drove him out,” she said, picking at the arm of the chair. “The town drove him out, and my mother had left him for all those men
.”

  Millie stood up. Don’t want to hear about that.

  “I’ve talked to your mother,” Millie said carefully. “She seems to be a nice lady.” Millie used the tip of the brush to sketch individual eyebrow hairs.

  “Seems,” said the Kid.

  “I met a lot of kids’ mothers,” said Millie. She meant the mothers of child actors. “Most of them were real pushy. Yours wasn’t.”

  “She’s just better at it.” The Kid’s mouth went firm, drawn tightly inward. “You better hurry up with the makeup.”

  Okay, Kid, end of conversation.

  “She just sat in the limousine,” said the Kid.

  Okay, not the end of conversation. “Who?”

  “My mother. We got driven out to Lancaster in a studio limousine.” The Kid said it in an imitation English accent, to make it sound snotty. “We drove up in a limousine to Muggsie’s house, and my mother sat in it outside so I wouldn’t stay too long. I mean, she could have gone to see the Gilmores or somebody, but she didn’t. She said she didn’t want to get dusty.”

  Does sound pretty snotty to me, thought Millie.

  “She thinks limousines are the best thing in the world. She thinks it’s real great driving all day. Every weekend, I’d have to leave Daddy and go with her all the way to Los Angeles. To take lessons or go to auditions. If it was schooltime, Janie and Jinny would stay behind. And I’d have to sit in the car alone with her. For hours and hours and hours. All along the Mint Canyon Highway. She used to make me wear the same dresses as my sisters. Only mine were real short so I would still look like a baby. And she put my hair in ringlets. Twelve years old and I looked like somebody’s doll.”

  The Kid shifted in the chair, fuming.

  “The day we finally left Lancaster, I leaned out of the car, and I gave Muggsie a photograph. Just some photograph of me, and I wrote something on it for Muggsie. And you know what? My mother got mad at me. She said I shouldn’t give away a professional photograph like it was a snapshot. To my best friend. And there was Daddy, waiting left behind, trying to smile, trying to look like we were still a family. And we drove away and left him behind.”