I Don't Know How the Story Ends (14 page)

“Your sister?”

“Little sister. About Sylvie's age she was then. Um, we were on a Hudson River excursion boat, headed out to Governors Island for a picnic, see, and she…” His voice seemed to dry up. I looked at him sharply, but his face seemed unchanged, except for blinking at a single frame. “She was playing tag with some other kids on the deck. Ducked under a guard rope at the stern end of the boat and slipped on a patch of grease. Before anybody could grab her, she fell into the paddle wheel.”

“
Oh
!
” I cried involuntarily. “How dreadful!” Clearly this was the family tragedy Ranger had hinted at.

“Yeah.”

“Did you—I mean—did you see it?”

He shook his head, still staring at the film with a tight-lipped frown. “My mother did though.” A pause followed, stretching longer than I thought a pause ever could. “She didn't handle it too good.” So that was why she didn't come west with the family—the family had a sudden, gaping hole in it.

Abruptly Sam asked, “When are you supposed to be home?” Tactless, but I couldn't blame him.

“Oh dear!” I hopped off the stool. “I'm supposed to be shopping. Mother will look askance if I come home empty-handed.”

“I'll walk you to the streetcar stop,” he offered. “Could use some fresh air.”

Fresh air was just the ticket after being cooped up with developing fumes and tragic memories. We walked down the row of blocky buildings and had turned onto Talmadge Avenue before I thought of anything to say. “Thank you for showing me how to cut. It was quite interesting.”

“Don't mention it,” he said shortly, sticking his hands in his pockets.

The time was already half-past three, which meant that the studios would be opening soon for their late-afternoon shooting schedules. Cowboys in chaps and bathing beauties in ruffles lingered over iced coffee in the studio café on the corner. Just ahead of us, an Indian in full headdress wandered out of a candy store with a little bag, pausing on the stoop to pop a jawbreaker into his mouth. I found myself wondering if I could afford a few jawbreakers for Ranger and Sylvie, and then it struck me: the whole scene no longer seemed strange.

How strange!

“There's Charlie,” Sam remarked, nodding toward a couple coming our way on the sidewalk.

The Little Tramp was out of costume and blended in so well that I might not have recognized him except for his aggressive teeth. He ignored all greetings, deep in earnest chat with his companion—who seemed to be just as intent on him.

And that was a good thing, for she would have been as stunned to see me as I was to see her. As they passed us, Mr. Chaplin jabbering all the while, I turned my head to watch them disappear into the studio café.

“Wonder who's the dame?” Sam observed with a touch of disapproval.

What I wondered was why Charlie Chaplin was taking a late-afternoon stroll with my mother.

A Love Story

My mood was pensive on the streetcar. Also on the street and all the way up the drive. It had been quite a pensive afternoon, especially at the end.

Surely there was a reasonable explanation for a doctor's wife and mother of two to be promenading with the Little Tramp, but I couldn't think of any. And when I walked into the great room of the hacienda, already somewhat overwrought, a Zulu warrior leaped from behind the Chinese lacquer screen and gave a wild ululating cry. I almost jumped out of my dotted-swiss summer frock.

But below the fierce wooden expression and animal-hair topknot I recognized Aunt Buzzy's sensible shoes. Laughing, she lowered her disguise. “Sorry, Belladonna. These masks just arrived—Titus's latest enthusiasm—and when I saw you coming up the drive, I couldn't resist. You should have seen your face—”

Seeing my face, her own expression changed. “Not a good time, obviously. Now I'm
really
sorry. What's the trouble, dear?”

What
wasn't
the trouble? Father in Europe picking bullets out of soldiers who wouldn't stop firing at each other—and perhaps dodging bullets himself! Mother gallivanting—well, strolling at least—with an untrustworthy show-business character. Sylvie besotted with picture-making and a boy we didn't even know six weeks ago, and me… I used to know what to think about most things, but that was before we were uprooted and set down in a strange land of relentless sun and make-believe. Now my thoughts lay in pieces like a pile of random film cuts.

Out of habit, I glanced at the palm-leaf table. “Nothing from Father today?”

Aunt Buzzy's blue eyes swam with sympathy as she set the mask on the nearest armchair. “I'm afraid not. You miss him, don't you, dear? No wonder you're feeling blue. Suppose I ask Esperanza to mix up a couple of glasses of lemonade for us?”

Soon after, I was sipping lemonade in the courtyard while she tried to cheer me up.

“I'm sure your poor father is too exhausted to write, even if he had the time. That was certainly clear from his last letter. But it'll be over soon—I read in the paper just this morning about a major offensive begun by the Allies, and they think the Germans have nearly had enough. Then your father can come home and rest up and get back to his old self. Which, by the way, hasn't changed much since he was a hopeful youth just out of medical school. I remember the night they met… You know that story, don't you?”

I knew it but didn't mind hearing it again. It was as cozy as a fairy tale, for in fairy tales you know the scullery maid will be recognized as a princess, and the children will find their way home, and the three bears will expel the intruder. (I never liked that Goldilocks.) And they live happily ever after. Aunt Buzzy even told it like a fairy tale:

“So. Many years ago, a young medical student named Robert Forrest Ransom Jr. took the West Coast Zephyr from Seattle to Newport Beach to visit his cousin Hugh between school terms. While he was there, Hugh received an invitation to a debutante ball in Los Angeles. The invitation was from Miss Gladys Russell, who was sweet on him. But the feeling wasn't mutual, so Hugh asked his cousin to go to the ball in his place.

“Bobby took the train to Los Angeles, then the trolley to Fremont Heights. From there he had to walk up a long hill, and when he arrived at the Pavilion, he discovered that he'd left his invitation behind on the trolley.

“Of course, he was mortified. They wouldn't have let him in without it, except that they were short of escorts that evening—and he looked so respectable, so
splendid
, really, in his black tie and tails. I was there, serving punch in my green taffeta dress with that scratchy organdy collar, and I can testify there was
quite
a rustle among the young ladies when he came in. When he and Mattie caught sight of each other, their eyes just
locked
.” Aunt Buzzy sighed at the memory.

“They danced and talked the night away, and it wasn't until the party was breaking up that he confessed he was there by a fluke. ‘I'm standing proxy for my cousin,' said he. ‘There's a certain overzealous young lady he is anxious to avoid—Gladys Russell? Is she here?'”

“Your mother blinked in surprise. ‘Gladys Russell? I don't know anyone by that name at the Academy.'”

“‘The Academy?' said your father. ‘Isn't this the Fremont Country Club Debutante Ball?'”

“Then it all came out—the country club was a little farther up the hill. He was at the Barlow Young Ladies' Academy Spring Cotillion—the wrong party!” Aunt Buzzy threw back her head and laughed, as grown-ups always did when they came to this part. “By then the die was cast though. And to think it all came about because he left his invitation on the trolley.”

I found myself writing a motion-picture scenario in my head: an earnest young man in evening dress boards the car, tells the driver where he wants to go, and takes the invitation out of his pocket to be sure of his destination. But just then a lady asks him to hold her packages while she searches in her pocketbook for the fare.

Throughout the trip, every time he remembers to open the envelope, he's interrupted by things more and more fantastic: a little boy swinging on the bell cord, a bear on a unicycle, a funny little man in slap shoes selling flowers (but I nixed that idea because the epitome of funny little men in slap shoes was Mr. Chaplin). Finally, our hero would hear his stop, pull the cord, and step off the trolley. Close-up on the invitation, lying abandoned on the seat…

“…and they lived happily ever after,” Aunt Buzzy concluded. “What began as a mistake turned into a lifelong romance. Life is like that—the strangest or most unwelcome, even the saddest things that happen can come to make sense in the end.” Then she leaned forward to put a hand on my knee. “It's a terrible strain with Bobby gone and the war and all, but this too shall pass, hmm? He'll be home soon and your family story will continue on its—its unpredictable, interesting path. Does that help, dear?”

I blinked, thinking of close-ups and film splices, trying to recall why I needed help. “Oh! Yes, it does. Thanks, Aunt Buzzy. I'm glad we had this talk.” But the person I was now dying to talk to was Ranger.

• • •

Sylvie had brought in her dolls to perform a circus for him, and had rigged up a tightrope and trapeze over his bed. I thought it was clever of her, but Ranger considered himself too mature for dolls. Besides, there had been some trouble with the clown, whom Sylvie had made to juggle two lead soldiers and a juice glass not entirely empty. She wanted to tell me about it, but Ranger interrupted. “Why don't you see if the sugar cookies are done yet? I think I can smell vanilla.”

That worked. Once she had scampered off to the kitchen, he said, “You sure took your time. What did you do, finish our picture and start on one of DeMille's?”

The cutting room seemed long ago already. “No. When I left, Sam was up to the part where you shoot the dog. But that's not what I came to tell you. I have an idea about the scenario.”

“You do?” Ranger straightened up, as I knew he would at the mention of “scenario.” “What is it?”

“First, the father should not be the villain.”

“Come on, Iz. We've settled this. Besides, we've already got him on film and it's terrific!”

“We can still use the film. All I'm saying is that the man at the beer garden is not the girls' father. He's their guardian or something. Maybe their uncle. Their father is a good, brave man who had to go serve his country. And…and the uncle promises to care for the girls, but instead he squanders their money on his own pleasures. Like the stepmother in
Cinderella
.”

“What about the girls' mother?”

“She's passed on, like we have it already.”

Ranger shook his head. “Won't work. The U. S. government wouldn't draft a man who has kids to care for.”

“My father wasn't drafted. He volunteered.”

“That's even worse. He wouldn't have volunteered if you didn't have a mother, would he? Think about it.”

I was thinking he had picked an inconvenient time to start making sense. “But…but this makes the story
better
. The Dauntless Youth is even more outraged that the uncle's not caring for the girls as he should, and there can be a scene of Matchless showing him their father's picture and telling about him, and the youth is touched. And”—I paused, dramatically placing before his eyes the item I had stopped by my room to pick up—“we can use my father's real picture. See, he's in his uniform and everything. The Dauntless Youth can promise to search for him at the front, and…uh…”

Ranger was giving the picture more careful scrutiny than he ever had before. Father's level, serious gaze peered straight into Ranger's eager eyes as if it could do all the persuading. “So when he finds him,” Ranger speculated, “the man is mortally wounded, and the Youth asks for Matchless's hand in marriage, and with his dying breath—”

“No!” I said, snatching the picture back so sharply that Ranger jerked in alarm. I hugged it to my chest. “The man's
not
dying. Field surgeons are too far away from the front to get wounded. Don't you know that?”

We glared at each other in silence until Ranger said, “Well, all right then. If you say so.”

“Could we write the scenario?”

He snapped the bedcover, sending Raggedy Ann and Teddy and Bobo the clown tumbling into the abyss. “Grab that notebook over on the chest.”

I will not go into the artistic process, except to say that a lot of paper wadding, eye rolling, and disgusted sighs were involved. What we finally settled on was this:

The girls' father has been called to France because he's developed a new surgical technique that will help save the lives of many brave, wounded lads. He's left the girls in care of their grandmother (“Where do we get a
grandmother
?” Ranger cried), who has most unfortunately suffered a stroke and is in the hospital. (“Maybe we can find an old lady on a porch,” I slyly suggested.) That leaves the doctor's no-good brother in charge, and while he is not cruel he is certainly neglectful. The scene of Jimmy Service elaborately ignoring little Sylvie's pleas would show that side of him. Matchless struggles to make ends meet—

“Wait a minute,” Ranger interrupted. “Wouldn't she try to get in touch with dear old dad to tell him what's going on?”

“Well, perhaps…” I thought aloud, “she doesn't want to worry him while he's doing important work. Or perhaps she writes to him but the letter goes astray. Close-up on an envelope slipping out of a mailbag and blowing into a puddle.”

“I see,” Ranger mused. “Write that down—establishing shot.”

The Dauntless Youth, we decided, could make his dramatic appearance on horseback as planned and make friends with the girls before marching off to war—

“Where he is wounded,” I improvised, “and taken to the field hospital, where the surgeon happens to be…” I spread my hands.

“Matchless's father!” Ranger crowed, almost leaping out of bed in his excitement. “That's
brillian
t
!” His grin faded. “But how do we shoot it?”

“What if we find a tall man and dress him in a surgeon's coat and shoot him from the back?” I was stretching the fabric of possibility now but couldn't seem to help myself. “And when the Youth comes to after his surgery, he looks up at the man's face and it…it fades or somehow changes to an image of the picture?”

“Dissolves. You're thinking like a cameraman now,” he said, not without admiration. “But this calls for a big recognition scene with tears and all. And the only way we can end this thing is with Dad coming back and punching his brother in the nose and weeping over his mama in the hospital. You've let too many snakes out of the bag—we can't chase 'em all down.”

“But suppose Father still has work to do overseas—”

“I can't figure you out! You want him out as a villain, but now you hafta stick him back in as a hero, and we don't have the time or the film for all this—and what is it with
Father
anyway?”

I couldn't tell him, because I wasn't sure myself. Only that the film-cutting with Sam had shown me something about stories, and I couldn't shake the sense that if we just told it right, it would prove true. “He can write a scathing letter to his brother or send some kind of legal document that takes the girls out of his control.”

“I don't know,” Ranger said. “A letter is weak—”

“Not if it's brought by Dauntless Youth, who comes home with a medal and his arm in a sling. Here's where your train scene comes in, Ranger. The girls meet him at the station and hear his story, and the Youth goes to confront Uncle at the beer garden… Maybe we don't even have to show you two together, but the Youth does his denouncing, and one of the uncle's pals is outraged and punches him—punches the Uncle, not the Youth—and we could cut that floozie in too—so full of righteous indignation she dumps a mug of beer on Uncle's head! The End, on a comic note.”

Ranger chewed on the ending while I chewed my pencil. “All right,” he said finally. “It's not as good as a man-to-man knockdown, and there's a problem with shooting Father” (I couldn't help wincing at his choice of words), “but I like the field hospital. And if we can find an old lady in a sanitarium, that could work too. Tell you what: if you keep Sylvie out of my hair for the rest of the afternoon, I'll be so good Pa will have to let me out of bed, and tomorrow we can meet Sam at Echo Park.”