All for a Sister (6 page)

“Pepino.”
These were her favorites back home, and the taste linked the two kitchens. Then Graciela offered a long, red, shiny strip of something unfamiliar.

“
Pimiento.
A pepper, but it’s sweet, not hot.”

Celeste held it gingerly between her thumb and first finger.
“Pimiento?”
The color was vibrant and inviting, and she was about to bring it to her lips when Mother’s voice invaded.

“Just what are you doing?”

“Señora DuFrane. Miss Celeste is such a good helper. And so smart.”

Celeste beamed with pride, hoping some of the praise would warm Mother’s disposition.

“You shouldn’t run off like that,” Mother said, slightly deflated.

“I didn’t run off, Mother. This is our home.”

“Yes, of course it is.” She crossed over into the kitchen and placed a warm, dry kiss on Celeste’s cheek.

“Pimiento,”
Celeste said, dangling the strip of vegetable between them. “It’s a pepper. Only it’s sweet, not hot.”

Mother’s eyes looked sad for just a second; then she opened her mouth wide, and when Celeste dangled the pepper into it, she snapped it shut, cutting the pepper in half.

“What does it taste like?”

Mother was chewing, looking quizzical. “You tell me.”

Enthralled, Celeste popped the remainder into her mouth, and her senses immediately flooded.

“What do you think,
mija
?”

It was new and fresh and sweet. She looked from Graciela to her mother and said, “It tastes like California.”

DANA GOES FOR A DRIVE AND LEARNS TO HOLD ON TO HER HAT

1925

DANA HEARD THE CLATTER
of shoes on the marble floor and braced herself.

“Just a minute! Just one more minute. I can’t find my scarf!”

Dana smiled but remained silent. She wasn’t one to holler in the house, not the way these walls echoed. And what would she say? It wasn’t her place to grant or deny permission. There was a narrow, upholstered bench in the entryway by the front door. Dana sat down on it and commenced fiddling with her pocketbook. It was a small bag made of some sort of thick, tapestry-like material, with a gold-plated clasp. Nothing in it, really. Just a handkerchief, a drawstring pouch with a few coins, a small mirror, and a new lipstick. But Celeste had insisted that every girl needed to carry such things and that they needed to be carried in a pocketbook. As in everything else, Dana acquiesced.

Clatter. Clatter. Clatter.

Celeste arrived, a frothy vision in a dress of sea green and a long, gossamer scarf knotted at her throat, flowing down. How one could ever misplace such a thing, Dana didn’t know. But then, for Celeste, things of beauty were not so rare.

“I’m ready!” Announced as if some great accomplishment. She stopped short in front of the large mirror in the hall for a final inspection. She wore her hair in a bob of soft curls, dark-blonde and perfectly set. She dropped a hat on top of them and tugged it down, studying the result from every angle, then turned. “Well?”

“You look lovely,” Dana said, as expected.

Celeste pouted. “Wish I could say the same to you. Honestly, would it kill you to use a little bit of rouge? It’s one thing to be fashionably pale, but you look absolutely dead.”

Dana shrank under the younger woman’s scrutiny and reached for her long-shorn hair.

“I’m sorry.” Celeste moved to reach for Dana’s arm, but Dana leaped to her feet before she could be tugged up and made a show of smoothing her dress.

“I didn’t think,” Dana said. “I don’t know quite what to do, I suppose.”

She found herself looking in the mirror, Celeste peeking out from behind her.

“That’s understandable. But I can teach you if you want. Just a little bit to pretty you up. Make you look more modern. Younger, even.”

“Do I look that old?”

“Sweetie, you’re thirty-two. You
are
old. But right now, we’re late. Come on.”

Celeste took her hand in an inescapable grip and hollered something in Spanish before opening the door and pulling Dana outside, where an automobile waited at the edge of the short-cropped green lawn. It was the color of pale butter with bloodred leather upholstery and chrome trim that reflected the sun.

Dana eyed the empty seat behind the steering wheel. “Who is going to drive?”

“Silly-nilly.” Celeste broke free and ran ahead. “I am! I’m twenty years old, you know.”

Dana followed reluctantly. “Are you sure?” She’d only known Celeste for a short time, and she knew even less of automobiles, but nothing she’d seen of either made it a good idea for them to be joined together. “What about Mr. Lundi? He drove us yesterday.”

“Roland is otherwise engaged.” By this time she had started the car and was gripping the wheel. “Or that’s what his secretary told me.
Otherwise engaged.
The coward, unless he’s meeting with someone from Metro-Goldwyn. But we’ll see. Are you ready?”

Before Dana could respond, Celeste pounced on the accelerator, and the two women careened into the street. Dana clutched her hat to her head, wondering how it was that Celeste’s remained so perfectly perched.

“Tell me again how he seemed.”

“Who?” Dana said, distracted by the neighborhood shrubbery that seemed far too close.

“Funny. Who do you think? Ostermann. Did he seem interested?”

“He listened quite closely.”

“That’s not what I mean.” She steered the car around a corner, bringing it to a chugging near stop before roaring straight again. “The movie. Do you have any idea what it would mean to me if he went through with it? To have him write and direct a film specifically for me? What am I saying. Of course you don’t. You’ve practically been in a cave—”

She took her eyes off the road and turned to Dana, reaching out to pat her leg. “You know what I mean, darling.”

“It’s fine,” Dana said, pointing out the lorry come to a dead stop in front of them.

“Honestly, it would be hard for anybody to understand—anybody not in the film business. Can you understand, though, how very much I want to be a star?”

“Like that Mary Pickford?”

It was the wrong thing to say, and Celeste expressed her disagreement with a sharp swerve to the left and a fresh acceleration. They were out of the neighborhood by now, practically flying down the open road en route to the studio. The speed picked up the gossamer scarf and sent it billowing back and away from Celeste’s neck, like the tail of a kite. Dana clutched at the door lest she fly with it.

“America’s sweetheart, my aunt Pansy. She’s not even American, you know. She’s Canadian. Those sausage curls, like she’s some sort of stunted schoolgirl. And I swear, if Lundi books me to play one more wide-eyed farmer’s daughter—”

The blare of an approaching vehicle’s horn kept Celeste from finishing the thought. Dana’s stomach flipped over, and since she couldn’t leap out of the car to save herself, she’d try to save the conversation instead.

“I’ll tell him everything. And when I do, he’ll want to tell everybody.”

By the time they arrived at the studio gate, Dana felt a thin sheen of sweat on the back of her neck, and she took the blessed moment when Celeste chatted with the guard to exhale the breath she’d been holding for most of the twenty-minute drive. As Celeste maneuvered the car through the studio grounds, a host of people either waved in greeting or dove out of the way—or both. She parked the car in front of the low-ceilinged, plain white building
labeled
Offices of Rolling Arts Entertainment
, Werner Ostermann’s production company.

Celeste took a mirror from her purse and checked her lipstick and her hair, smiling at different angles while batting her eyes. In a spirit of camaraderie, Dana did the same, holding her little square mirror far enough away to be able to see most of her face. The brisk ride had brought a hint of color to her cheeks, and her hat managed to drift a bit to a most becoming angle. With an unsteady hand, she pulled the lid off the tube of lipstick and touched it to the center of her bottom lip.

“That’s it,” Celeste said with a gentleness Dana had never heard from her before. “Just at the bottom, where your lips are their fullest? And then the top. Then do this.” She mashed her own vermilion lips together, hiding them into one thin line, then popped them out again. Dana followed suit, feeling more self-conscious about this act than she had the actual application.

“Perfect,” Celeste said, and a quick check to her reflection brought Dana to the same conclusion. Maybe not perfect, but better. Brighter.

She almost smiled, saying, “Thank you,” as she fastened the clasp on her pocketbook.

A young man wearing something like a uniform had arrived to open the car door for Dana, then ran to the opposite side to do the same for Celeste, who acknowledged him with a singular movement that encapsulated a wink and a shrug and a curtsy. He tipped his hat and waggled his eyebrows and muttered something about getting behind the wheel of that chassis sometime, prompting her to slap him playfully on the shoulder before beckoning Dana to follow.

“Ma’am,” he said with all the deference a young man would have for his elder. Still, Dana kept a wide berth as she passed.

Inside the tidy office, Miss Lynch looked up from her typewriter, her expression not changing in the least.

“Good afternoon, Miss Lundgren.” Then, noticing Celeste, her face lit up. “And Miss DuFrane! What a wonderful surprise to see you here.”

“Hello, Kippy.” Celeste extended her hand. “We’re here to see Mr. Ostermann. Is he in?”

“Just one moment.” She stood, tucked a pencil behind her ear, and made brisk work of walking from her desk to the door with his name printed in thick, black letters on the clouded glass.

We?
The thought of telling her story, in all its detail, in the presence of this girl of all people was enough to freeze every unspoken word. Dana swallowed, summoning her courage. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to come in with me.”

“Really? I think it would be marvelous. Especially if he decides to let me star in the picture. I’m a part of it, after all.”

“You’re not a part of what I’m telling him. These are things—events—before you were born. And after, I suppose. Still, they’ve nothing to do with you.”

“But if I’m to play you—”

“Eager as ever, I see.” Werner Ostermann stood in the doorway to his office. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbow, and an unlit cigarette dangled from his fingers. “Casting yourself before there is even a script?”

“Well, a girl can’t wait around forever, can she?” She held out her hand, sending a cascade of bangles clattering toward her elbow as Ostermann brought it to his lips.

Dana offered no such opportunity, but he greeted her with no less warmth before returning his attentions to Celeste.

“I had lunch with Frank Borzage yesterday, you know. He said you did fine work in
The Dixie Merchant
.”

“Just a bit part,” Celeste said, pouting. “But I know I could do more, given the opportunity.”

“Time will tell.” He spoke with the gentleness of a father, closing the conversation but leaving plenty of room for hope, as was evidenced by Celeste’s triumphant grin.

“It will indeed.”

“Now, I will be occupied with Miss Lundgren for the next hour or so. Do you have something to do while you wait?”

“Oh.” Her pretty lips formed the letter and the word. “I thought I might . . . That is, I was wondering if I couldn’t sit in.”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” he said, much to Dana’s relief. She couldn’t help but feel her own twinge of triumph. “Wait here.” He disappeared into his office and immediately returned with a book. “Publishers are always sending me these things. Who has time? You read it and let me know if it is a good story or not.”

“Oh,” Celeste said again. “All right.” She took the book and held it as if experiencing the sensation for the first time. Dana felt a familiar twinge of jealousy. Imagine, someone inviting you to read a book. A brand-new one, just given away.

“And you can sit at Miss Lynch’s place, if you like. If Lon Chaney calls, take a message.”