Marion's Wall

by Jack Finney

  “Darling,” I said, and Jan and I finally made up for real.

  Friday at the office came and finally went, three long weeks of vacation stretching ahead. We weren’t doing anything much with it, but it was still a vacation, and I came home ready to celebrate: we were going out to dinner with Fritz and Anita Kahler.

  I got home, and Anita had phoned that afternoon: she was coming down with flu; we’d have to postpone going out. I didn’t want to accept it, I didn’t want to stay in for another evening, I wanted to do something to celebrate, I didn’t know what. And finally we went to a movie.

  There was nothing worth seeing; I read through every movie listing in the pink section, the entertainment section of the Sunday Chronicle, which we save to see what’s doing in the week ahead, and not a movie in the entire city or suburbs was worth looking at, but we went anyway. To a Western I’d never heard of, which is rare for me, at the Metro on Union Street, and it was an enormous mistake.

  I bought popcorn, really celebrating, but Jan didn’t want any, and we sat watching the damn thing, a big wide-screen Technicolor job. I tried to interest myself in the scenery, at least, which was pretty spectacular. The accompanying music soared to frequent crescendos and sank to dramatic silences. Wind whistled through canyons, shots barked and pinged in dusty streets, hoofs pounded, wagon wheels creaked, and people of the Eighteen-Seventies, cleverly anticipating the idiom of today, said such things as, “Would you believe two hundred Indians?”

  I sat recalling the names of minor actors and in what other pictures I’d seen them; no movie is entirely a waste of time for me. But when I glanced at Jan in the middle of the thing she was actually asleep, dozing chin on chest. I knew I shouldn’t have dragged her to this, and if she’d been awake I’d have suggested leaving. But I now had a feeble interest in how the picture turned out, and she was sleeping peacefully, so we stayed. Later when I saw she was awake, I turned to ask if she wanted to go, but she seemed to be enjoying it now, smiling faintly, mouth slightly open to listen, so we stayed till the end.

  The lights came up then, the sparse, scattered audience rising, and she turned to me. “How wonderful!” she said, and I smiled at the sarcasm.

  “Yeah, great.” I sat waiting for her to stand but she was staring at the empty white screen.

  “That scenery!” she said, and I realized there was a note of excitement in her voice; the people moving slowly up the aisle beside us turned to stare. “The costumes!” she said, still looking at the screen. “And the color!” She swung to look at me. “Nickie, you bastard, why didn’t you tell me movies were in color! And that the screen was so big!” She leaned toward me, eyes enormous, people in the aisles openly smiling, and her voice dropped to an awed whisper. “And that they talked. Oh, Nickie, I came back for one last look at the world, and it’s lucky I did.” Her voice rose again, excited and exuberant. “Imagine! You can actually hear what they say! Oh, boy. Oh, boy, oh, boy, oh, BOY!”

  She blinked and glanced up at the empty screen. “Oh! Is the picture over?” She stood quickly, turning for her coat. “I’m sorry; I was asleep, I guess.” Pushing an arm into her coat sleeve as we side-stepped toward the aisle, Jan said quietly, “Terrible, wasn’t it? But you know something?” She took my arm as we turned toward the exit. “I have that same kind of glow you get sometimes when you’ve just seen a marvelous movie.”

  6

  It was doubly a sleep-late morning—not only Saturday, but the first day of vacation besides—and I did my best. Eyes still closed, I lay telling myself I was drowsy and would go right back to sleep, but behind the eyeballs, I was wide awake. Because I knew.

  There was no sound in the bedroom, I realized then; no movement, no presence beside me, and my eyes snapped open, head turning to look at Jan’s empty side of the bed, the covers tossed back. Then I sat up fast, looking beyond the bed at the floor. Everywhere I looked fragments of cloth lay on the floor, their edges fuzzed with unraveled thread: Jan’s good black dress torn into dozens of fragments.

  Dressing as fast as I could go, I said, “Damn. Goddamn!” but I heard the false vehemence in my voice, and for a moment stood motionless. Then I nodded, finally admitting it to myself: I’d missed Marion. I’d missed her all week long; it wasn’t anything I could control.

  I’ll say this for myself. Grabbing the first shirt I could find, a white one, buttoning only every other button; snatching a pair of tan wash pants; stepping barefoot into a pair of moccasin loafers—I had the grace not to try and blame Jan. It just took someone else, apparently, someone as wild and exuberant as Marion, to bring out what was undoubtedly not the real me at all but someone else who had a hell of a lot better time. I didn’t like it, didn’t like the implication, didn’t want to think about it; it made me sad; that was how I wanted to feel about Jan.

  The house was silent in the way a house never is if anyone else is in it. But as I stood buckling my belt, I heard the lower door open, heard her footsteps coming up, and I walked out into the hall to the head of the stairs.

  A blond Valkyrie was coming up them, wearing Jan’s black slacks and turtleneck sweater. She looked up at me, smiled, and patted her hair. “Fake. And cheap. But at least it’s not mouse color. Bought it at the salon on Haight Street; Jan has a charge. Hope you don’t mind.” She stepped up beside me. “Welcome me back, Nickie.” She kissed me on the forehead, brushed past, and walked on into the living room.

  “You weren’t coming back!” I followed her. “You said you weren’t coming back!”

  She swung around, her face going hard. “Can that! All bets are off. They’re in color now! On a big wide screen. And they t—” She cut herself off, then grinned. “Hey, they aren’t movies, any more, are they? They don’t just move, they … Hey, Nick! They’re talkies!” She turned to look at the wall over the chesterfield, then walked toward it, reading aloud. ” ‘Marion Marsh lived here, June 14,1926.’ ” She looked over her shoulder at me to nod. “That’s the day I should have gone to Hollywood. With Nick Cheyney.” She looked back at the wall, blond head nodding in agreement with what she was saying. “I’d have had a career. A great one. As big as Joan Crawford’s.” Absorbed in her own vision, she turned away. “That’s how it was meant to be,” she said vehemently, nodding again. Then more quietly, “And that’s how it’s going to be.” She looked up at me. “I’m going to have my career.” Suddenly she grinned. “In color and sound.”

  I walked toward the window seat, pointing at the chesterfield, and after a moment she sat down. On the window seat I leaned forward, forearms on knees, and clasped my hands. “Listen. All your life you acted on impulse, and what happened? It finally got you killed. Well, nothing’s changed. Your old picture shows up on television over half a century later, you come back to see it, and on pure impulse make a grab for me just because I look like your old flame. But all that does is cause trouble, and you find out that everything’s changed since your day anyway. You see that it has! You know it’s no use! But you get a glimpse of a lousy movie in sound and bad color, and whammo—you’re back once more to pick up your old career, not a thought in your head about how. Do you ever think, goddamn it!”

  I’d reached her; I could see it. She didn’t have an answer, and for a moment or two, face sullen, she was silent. Then all she could think of was “Sez you.”

  “Tell me how then.”

  Again she had to hunt for a reply; then defiantly she said, “I had friends in Hollywood.”

  “In 1926, Marion! They’re gone now. Dead.”

  “Baloney! The people I knew weren’t stars, they were kids! Like me.” She thought for a moment. “Like the prop boy on Flaming Flappers, Hugo Dahl! He was only seventeen, third assistant prop boy or something.” She jumped up and walked quickly toward the bookshelves. I keep a few out-of-town directories I’ve stolen from hotels on the living-room shelves: a two-year-old Manhattan directory, one from Portland, Oregon, the three main Los Angeles books, another from Reno. Marion took down the one with BEVERLY HI
LLS on the spine, and standing at the shelves she hunted through the D’s, pages flying. Her finger moved down a column, backtracked, stopped, then she looked up at me triumphantly. “And he’s still there. He’ll help me,” she said complacently, clapping the book shut, putting it back. “He had a crush on me.”

  “Jesus, Marion, he’s not seventeen now, he’s in his seventies!” I said pleadingly. “Probably retired, and long since out of pictures.”

  “Maybe. And maybe not.”

  “Okay, it doesn’t matter, because look: the longest you’ve ever possessed Jan is a few hours. It takes something, doesn’t it? Psychic energy or whatever you want to call it.” She didn’t answer, just looked sullen again. “And you run out of it, don’t you. Then you’ve got to let go, and Jan is back: right?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe, hell. You wouldn’t even get to Hollywood before Jan would take over again and come right back home. And if you did get there, she could do ten thousand things to wreck any comeback before it ever got started.”

  For a good dozen seconds she sat glowering at the floor, then looked up. “She ought to let me go!” she burst out.

  “Let you? Just hand over a … chunk of her life? To you? Why the hell would she!”

  Marion muttered something, refusing to look at me.

  “What?”

  “I said I didn’t mean forever!”

  “Oh? Just how long did you have in mind?”

  “I don’t know. Exactly.” She looked at me, head cocking shrewdly, like someone testing out an offer. “A few years maybe?”

  I laughed, and she blew up.

  “All right, one year, for crysake!” She jumped up from the chesterfield, arms folding tensely across her stomach, hands clasping elbows as though she were cold. And in her blond wig, artificial though it looked, in the black slacks and sweater Jan hardly ever wore, and in the fierce expression of her face as she began walking up and down the living room, she didn’t look like Jan at all. “I don’t know how long it’ll take!” she said. “What the hell does it matter anyway! What does she do with her punk little life? Nothing! Good night; she even plays bridge!”

  I just shook my head. “Jesus … You’re completely ruthless, aren’t you? Completely.”

  “You don’t know your onions!” She flicked me a contemptuous glance. “I’m no more ruthless than anyone else would be. Who felt the way I do.” She walked over to stand facing me, leaning belligerently forward. “That’s what you don’t understand: the way I feel. You’ve thought about Jan. Thought about yourself. Think about me!” She stared at me for a moment longer, then turned away again, walking the room. “I lost everything,” she murmured, to herself as much as to me, “The most anyone could lose. Most of a life that would have been wonderful.” She turned to me again, pleading now. “I’m asking for a gift. Of just a little of it back. Make her do it, Nickie!”

  After a moment—what else could I do?—I just shook my head helplessly, and she turned abruptly away. I sat watching her walk slowly around the room: absently touching a lampshade, feeling the material between thumb and forefinger; picking up an ashtray, glancing at the inscription on the bottom, setting it down; stopping to look at a picture; walking on. “Punk taste,” she muttered once. “Everything dull. Afraid of colors.”

  She walked out to the hall and back. To the front windows, where she looked past me down at the street, then turned away again. “Pacing restlessly,” I said to myself, then realized that was only a phrase, and wasn’t true; she was calm enough. I’ve watched a zoo tiger glide endlessly around and around the limits of his cage, eyes no longer even seeing the curious changing crowd outside it. And realized that he’s not restless but everlastingly patient. He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for. But when and if it finally happens he’ll recognize it: the latch left unfastened one day; the grating gradually weakened by unnoticed rust.

  Marion was simply wandering the house waiting for whatever might happen next; we’d said all there was to say. I watched her; my wife’s face under the absurd blond wig, but not her. Not Jan but Marion Marsh, who might have become a star of the silents. She’d been down there! Actually been in Hollywood in the far-off, almost mythical days of the silents. I said “Marion, did you ever see any of the stars?”

  She nodded. “Lon Chaney; once.”

  “No kidding? Where?”

  “On a studio street. At lunchtime. I was on my way to buy a box lunch at the canteen, and I cut through an alley between buildings.” She stopped before me, and I crossed my legs, looking up at her, listening. “And there he came around the corner walking right toward me. They were making a picture; he was in full make-up and looked absolutely horrible. He had a scar down across his left eyebrow, and his eye was dead white.”

  “Singapore Joe! He was in his Singapore Joe make-up for Road to Mandalay!”

  “Did you see it?”

  “No, I’d sell my soul for a print; I’ve only read about it. His eye was covered with the skin from an egg.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I collect old films, not that I have much: The Mark of Zorro, Broken Blossoms. A couple serial chapters. Some early newsreel footage. But I know a lot about them, and they say that egg skin permanently injured Chaney’s sight.”

  “Well, it looked just awful, Nickie.” She sat down beside me. “He saw I was a little scared, just the two of us alone in that narrow alley. And as he came close, he deliberately closed his other eye so there was only that one white eye just staring at me! I let out a little shriek, and he grinned, closed the white eye, and just as we passed he winked at me with the good one. He was really a very nice man, you know; everyone said so. Actually kind of good-looking, in a tough kind of way.”

  “Lord; to have actually seen Lon Chancy. In his makeup for Road to Mandalay.” I was smiling, shaking my head. “Who else did you see?”

  “Oh … Laura La Plante.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. She was filming on the set next to ours. And when they didn’t need me on our set I’d go next door and watch.”

  I nodded; in silent-film days, noise didn’t matter, and they often filmed pictures side by side on adjoining sets. “What was the picture?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t remember!”

  “No.” She glanced at me curiously.

  “Well, what were some of the scenes? I might recognize it from that.”

  “Oh, Nickie, what’s the diff! She was in a kitchen fixing dinner or something. It was Laura La Plante I wanted to see.”

  “Well, how was she?”

  She shrugged. “Okay. But I was better.” She saw me smile, and smiled, too. “I know. It sounds conceited. And is. But it’s also true: I was far better. Still am. And still will be.”

  “You ever know any stars?”

  “Yes. Well, not really, not very well. But I did get to know Valentino a little; he was on a set next to mine once, too, and we talked a little, two, three times.”

  “My God: Valentino. What did you talk about?”

  “Oh…” She frowned, looking down at the floor. Then she looked up. “About how proud the people of his village were of him, some Italian village. I think he was really a very simple man. And a very nice one. To me, anyway.”

  I sat shaking my head. “You actually knew Valentino. I can’t get over it. There’s a picture of his playing now at the Olympic. The Four Horsemen. I’ve seen it twice.”

  “You really are a movie nut, aren’t you. I knew a man at Paramount who collected films, too. Stole them, actually.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. He worked in whatever you’d call it—the distribution department. He was just a shipping clerk, actually; he’d pack prints of the new films and ship them to distributors. A dozen to New York maybe, half a dozen to Chicago, a couple to Milwaukee, and so on. It was a punk job, and didn’t pay much, but he was a movie nut, too. So was I. So were most of us. We were all crazy about movies; being
in them, being connected with them. One time—”

  “Wait a second: what about this guy who collected films?”

  “I told you. He was crazy about movies, but he knew he couldn’t ever be in them; he had a snub nose, turned way up. I didn’t really like looking at him, though he was nice, and liked me a lot. Pictures he liked, he’d keep, that’s all; just order an extra print and take it home with him.”

  I was slowly standing, turning to face her. I could feel the excitement welling up and tried to stop it: it seemed to me I had to be very careful somehow, or everything I was hearing would break up and fade away like a dream you can’t recall any more. “Marion. Listen. What kind of films did he like?”

  She shrugged, then turned away, thinking. “Oh…” She looked at me again. “Griffith’s, for one. You know; the director? D. W. Gr—”

  “Yes! I know.”

  “Well, he had all his films, I remember; all the features.”

  “All?” I said softly. I felt my knees go momentarily weak and fluid. “All of D. W. Griffith’s features? Oh, Jesus. Do you know that several of them are gone now? Lost! Not a copy known to exist anywhere in the world! And he had them … all?”

  “Yes.” She sat looking up at me wonderingly.

  “What else? Marion, what else did he have?”

  “Nickie, I don’t know. Lots of pictures. He traded prints with friends in the same job at other studios.”

  “Oh, my God.” I sat down beside her, then stood right up again. “Where, for example?”

  “Well, he had a buddy at Universal he traded w—”

  “Universal! NO! Listen, there was a fire at Universal! After your time. Hundreds of absolutely priceless films lost! Fabulous films! Mythical films now!” I stood blank-faced for a moment, staring down at her. “And he had some of them. To think he once had them. Listen, when was this?”

  “Nineteen-twenty-six.”

  “And how old was he then?”

  “Oh … thirty.”

  I did the arithmetic, then shook my head. “Be dead by now. Maybe not, though; maybe not. What was his name?” I swung around, ran to the bookshelves, grabbed up the three Los Angeles books, and hurried back to the window seat. “What was his name, Marion? He just might be alive, just might be in here!” I sat down, the three books in my lap, BEVERLY HILLS on top.