The Bette Davis Club (21 page)

“Well, there you are. Miss Moore, who had no children of her own, took the dollhouse on a tour to raise funds for children’s hospitals and charities. She traveled with it around the country, and people everywhere paid money to see it. This was during the Great Depression, when most Americans didn’t have a lot of cash, but even so Miss Moore raised about $650,000 for charity. More money even than the castle cost to build.”

A tourist in khaki pants and a T-shirt raises his hand and Kay calls on him. “But why’d she build it so big?” he says. “So . . .”

“Lavish?” Kay says. She tells us that Colleen Moore’s first marriage, to film producer John McCormick, was a great love affair that failed because of McCormick’s drinking. Failed so spectacularly in a public, Hollywood kind of way, that it later inspired that 1937 movie
A Star Is Born
, about a young actress on the way up who marries a fading alcoholic movie star on the way down. And that
A Star Is Born
was remade two more times, with everybody from Judy Garland to Barbra Streisand playing the part based on Colleen Moore.

In the movies, the alcoholic husband always dies, but I guess in real life Colleen’s ex lived on for some time. John McCormick was a handsome, romantic Irish-American, and Colleen had loved him madly. It was when her marriage was breaking up that she began work on the Fairy Castle.

Kay tells us that in the early days of their marriage, when they were happy, Colleen and John had a secret phrase they used only with each other: “Love never dies.” She points to a miniature gold box inside the Fairy Castle that holds the castle’s crown jewels. Engraved on the box is an inscription in Gaelic. Kay says the translation is, “Love never dies.”

And now I get it.

Like an electric lightbulb the size of a grain of rice, my little brain glows with the truth about 1920s film star Colleen Moore. Now I understand why she employed set designers and lighting technicians and a Beverly Hills jeweler to build her a dollhouse. A dollhouse, for Pete’s sake. Now I comprehend why she spent eight years of her life and nearly half a million dollars building this elaborate fantasy.

It was her solace.

It was her distraction. It was her drug of choice. It was how she tried to heal her broken heart. She built a magic castle, a perfect home where no one was ever sad and where love lived forever. She herself called it her folly. But was she talking about the dollhouse or her obsession with John McCormick?

Love never dies
. Ain’t that the truth? And we all go mad in our own way. Glittering dollhouse or bottomless glass of Gordon’s gin, in the end it’s pretty much the same.

Kay finishes her talk and the crowd disperses, although a few people linger to ask questions. When the last of them has drifted away, Kay sits down on a bench. Tully announces he’s off to the museum shop. I tell him I’ll wait.

I park myself on the bench next to Kay. She looks at me a moment, then away, then down at her watch. I have the feeling she won’t stay put for long. Despite the awkwardness between us, I’m dying to ask her a question.

“What happened to Colleen Moore?” I say. “That is, apart from the dollhouse. Why did she stop making movies?”

“She lost her looks,” Kay says matter-of-factly. “In silent films she always played teenage flappers and ingénues. By the time talkies came along, she was in her early thirties. Hollywood decided she was over the hill.”

For some reason I can’t explain, now I feel bad and embarrassed all over again. Maybe it’s because Kay is not at all young, and I can tell she must have been pretty in her day. Maybe it’s because even movie stars lose their looks. Maybe it’s just because everyone’s life is so terribly fragile.

“Listen,” I say. “I want to apologize again for my behavior that day in the hotel dining room. There was no defense for what I said. I don’t usually go around telling people—”

“They’ll be dead soon?”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“I know I wasn’t at my best that morning,” she says. “Had an argument with my daughter on the telephone earlier, and I was taking it out on the waitress. I admit that. Hadn’t slept well either because your niece kept me up all hours. If it improves your opinion of me any, I left that waitress a very generous tip. She’s probably still counting it.”

I shift my position on the bench. “It’s no excuse, but I wasn’t feeling well either,” I say. “I had a headache.”

“You drink,” she says flatly.

This brings me up short. “Well, that’s not anything I want to talk about.”

Kay gives a dry laugh. “No, I don’t imagine. Talking about it means you’d have to face it. But I can spot a lush a mile away. You think I’ll be dead soon? Child, go on like you are, you’ll beat me to it.”

Her gaze softens. She pats my hand. “You’re not alone, you know. Plenty of help out there. Last month, my husband—second husband, met him at a meeting—took me out for my thirtieth anniversary. Thirty years of sobriety, I should say.” She smooths her silver hair. “So, where do you go from here?”

“I appreciate your concern,” I say, a bit ruffled by the implications of what Kay is saying. “But the verdict’s not in yet.”

“Margo, child, I’m not talking about whether you’ll admit to a problem with booze. I’m asking where you and Mr. Benedict are headed after you leave Chicago.”

Oh.

“I’m not sure,” I say, feeling my cheeks flush. “I live in New York, though.” And I’d like to go there right now.

Kay again looks at her watch, and I know it’s only a moment until she gets up to go. “May I ask you one more question about Colleen Moore?” I say.

Kay utters a weary sigh. “There’s a book in the gift shop.”

“That huge dollhouse . . .” I begin.

“You can buy the book,” she says. “In the shop. Souvenirs too. You should take a look.”

“That huge dollhouse,” I repeat. “It seems sad she never had any children to play with it.”

“None of her own, you mean?” Kay says. I’ve recaptured her interest. “Yes, I’ve wondered about that myself. Maybe it was part of why she got caught up with the Fairy Castle for so long. Working something through.”

She studies her wedding ring. “Do you have children, Margo?” she says.

“No,” I say. “I wanted to, very much, when I was younger. There was a man . . .” I swallow. “I didn’t get my wish.”

“Miss Moore wanted children—with John McCormick. She didn’t get her wish either. But ultimately, after her divorce, she fell in love with a stockbroker, a widower with two children, right here in Chicago. They got married. By all accounts she was a very loving stepmother to those children. It was a role she apparently took to with great heart, great affection. Made up for a lot of losses in her life.”

Tully comes into our view, carrying a museum shopping bag.

“And here’s your Mr. Benedict,” Kay says. “Good. I’m off now myself, meeting a friend for lunch.”

She stands and looks down at me on the bench. “So you see, Miss Moore finally found a fella who was right for her. She found the family of her own that she’d sought for so long. I believe we’d have to call that a happy ending. Don’t you agree?”

I’m quiet for a moment, thinking.

Kay grabs my hand and squeezes it. “Have a safe trip home, Margo,” she says. “One day at a time.” She releases my hand and starts to walk away, and I realize I’m sorry to see her go.

“I hope you live forever!” I call after her.

“Already have,” she says, giving a backhanded wave. She rounds a corner and disappears from my sight.

I’d like to be alone for a while. I’d like to sit and think. But Tully comes and stands in front of me.

“Have fun at the gift shop?” I say, looking up at him.

“I got a couple books and some other stuff,” he says. He hoists the shopping bag. “And a Fairy Castle keychain.”

“A keychain?” I laugh. “How about a souvenir T-shirt? Refrigerator magnets?”

Tully doesn’t seem amused. “Look,” he says, “I know what you’re thinking. You think all this is crap. You figure dollhouses fall into the same category as velvet paintings and sofa art.”

Actually, that is pretty much what I believed about dollhouses when I first met Tully, when he first told me about his book. I don’t think I believe that anymore.

“It might interest you to know,” Tully says, “that there’s a reason people build miniatures. Doesn’t matter if it’s guys laying out model railroads or women decorating dollhouses. It’s about control. It’s about reinventing reality.”

Love never dies
.

“Some people get a lot of satisfaction in creating a little world they can escape to. In making things turn out the way they want, at least in their dreams.”

Love
.
Never
.
Dies
.

“I’m writing a book about that,” Tully says. “It’s what I do. I write nonfiction works on unconventional topics. I once wrote an entire book about the history of chewing gum—a volume that had very decent sales, by the way. The project I’m working on now is about people who build and collect miniatures. Coincidentally, for me, writing the book is one way of controlling my own world, my own life. Get it?”

I believe I do.

“And I’m writing it because I have to make a living, and because I have a contract with a publisher who thinks there’s a market for it. So what I got in the gift shop”—he rattles the shopping bag—“some of it I got to help me with research. And some of it I got because . . . because I got it.”

It’s while he’s saying this that I see Tully not as Georgia’s jilted suitor, or the driver of my father’s MG, or even an oddball author of oddball books. No, I perceive him as his own man. I look away and remember how it was traveling with Tully these last few days, just the two of us, to Chicago. I remember that he has his own interests, his own passions. Perhaps even his own demons.

I turn again toward Tully. He smiles. It takes me a moment to realize he’s smiling at me. Tully doesn’t want to argue. He wants to get along. It’s like receiving a blessing—not from Tully, exactly. From life. Timidly, I smile back. I feel the gradual stirrings of desire, a longing for human connection. The same kind of connection I ached for in the days when I first knew Finn Coyle. Is this what happens? Do our lives circle ceaselessly until, at last, we come back to our beginnings?

Finn. It’s time I explain about him.

Of course, you’re not supposed to do that when you tell a story. You’re not supposed to go back and talk about the past. But as I said earlier, I’ve lived a long life. And you have to know about Finn if you’re going to know about me. Because everything I am, for good and bad, everything comes from once being very young and from loving Finn.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

FINN

I
met Finn Coyle at a birthday party on a hot July night in New York City. I was nineteen years old. I had spent the day modeling—catalogue stuff, nothing glamorous—and afterward gone for supper with a couple of the other girls, Amy and Delia. When we finished eating, Amy piped up and said, “I know what. It’s Tommy’s birthday! Let’s go to his party!” So we did.

Tommy was throwing himself a thirtieth birthday party at his SoHo loft. I didn’t know Tommy, had never met him, and I thought thirty sounded ancient. But I was young and, given the chance, never missed a night out.

Tommy’s loft was impressive. It took up an entire floor of one of those old industrial buildings, and that evening it must have held close to two hundred people. Soon after we arrived, Amy and Delia vanished into the crowd of guests. On my own, in search of something to drink, I elbowed my way through the throng and over to the kitchen area. A tall, clean-shaven man stood at a cooking island that was littered with bags of chips, dirty glasses, and empty beer bottles. He was mixing martinis, giving them to anybody who came by, and he offered one to me. When I took it, he introduced himself and told me his name was Finn Coyle.

A few things you should know straightaway about Finn: He had beautiful manners. He was beautiful to look at. And he had a wonderful voice that was sophisticated and full of amusement. I could have drowned in that voice.

I liked Finn immediately. He was fun to talk to. We stood there together, chatting and laughing about everything and nothing. After a while, we eased ourselves off into a corner, just the two of us, and did little else for the next several hours except sit on the floor and visit and drink and, in my case, occasionally spill gin down my front or excuse myself to go pee. At some point during the evening, Finn let it slip that he was thirty-nine years old, which, mathematically speaking, made him old enough to be my father. But there was nothing creaky about Finn Coyle. Quite the opposite. He came off as charmingly boyish.

Finn was intelligent and educated and had a gift for making you feel smarter than you were. He could have been a teacher; he had that way of taking an interest in people and drawing out their opinions. But he wasn’t a teacher; he was an antiques dealer. Part-time, anyway. His real source of income was a small trust fund left to him by his grandparents.

Finn was passionate about the history of Manhattan, especially its architecture. Now this was a coincidence because six months earlier, when I’d returned to America after living in England for eight years at St. Verbian’s School for Girls, I had decided, as a legal adult, not to go back to California. I wanted to dwell as far as possible from the West Coast. I chose New York as my home, and moved into a fifth-floor walk-up in the East Village. Like Finn, I fell in love with the city.

New York is a great place for walking. I could wander for hours admiring the cast-iron buildings in SoHo, the row houses of Greenwich Village, the classic lines of the early skyscrapers. So could Finn, as it turned out. That night at Tommy’s party, we sat on the floor facing each other and ticked off, one by one, some of our favorite buildings: the New York Yacht Club, the Ansonia Hotel—

“Lever House on Park Avenue,” Finn said. “What do you think of that?”

Lever House, built in 1952, is the original glass box: all modern steel, straight lines, sealed glass. It’s a New York landmark, absolutely. But you either love it or you hate it.

“I hate it,” I said.

He laughed. “And why is that?”

“It has nothing to say.” I stifled a yawn. I liked visiting with Finn, but it was getting late.

“It’s cold,” he said.

“It was in the nineties today,” I said, puzzled.

“No, no.” He laughed again. “Lever House. It has no soul, no romance.”

“Agreed,” I said.

“So you’re a traditionalist.”

“I expect I am,” I said, never having thought about it before.

“You’re a classicist,” Finn continued, giving a slight smile. “An admirer of the Beaux Arts style and the early 1900s concept of the City Beautiful.”

His blue eyes were twinkling because he knew he’d gone beyond my range of knowledge, that I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. And I’ll tell you, it was that sort of teasing, playful behavior that ultimately made me mad for him—where he knew something I didn’t, but in the end he’d share it with me. Beginning that night and in the days to come, it was as if Finn held out a present for me every time we met. Some gift of knowledge or truth, of history or philosophy.

“So if you’re a classicist,” Finn said, “what do you know about the original Pennsylvania Station?”

Once again, I was baffled.

“Of course you know it was designed by McKim, Mead & White.”

I knew nothing of the kind, although McKim, Mead & White I’d at least heard of. I was reasonably certain that was the old-time architectural firm that had produced the Washington Square Arch, the one that’s in all the photos of Greenwich Village.

“Penn Station,” Finn persisted, in his schoolmasterish way. “The old railroad station. What else do you know about it?”

“Um, nothing,” I said.

“All right.” Finn paused a moment, gathering his thoughts. “Well,” he said, “it took four years to construct—1906 to 1910—and covered about eight acres from West Thirty-first to West Thirty-third. Between Seventh and Eighth. It was made out of rose-colored granite and Italian travertine. The main waiting room was inspired by the Roman Baths of Caracalla, the ceilings were one hundred and fifty feet high. The grand staircase was forty feet wide. Can you imagine? It was magnificent! The greatest building ever created in New York City. You would have loved it.” He ran a finger round the rim of his glass. “They tore it down in 1963.”

Finn said that some of the shattered remains of Penn Station had been lying for years in a New Jersey landfill. Amazingly, anybody could go out there and haul away chunks of it if they wanted to. Finn wanted to.

Because when I say Finn was an antiques dealer, he was really one of the first in a new field: architectural salvage. He had a downtown warehouse where he sold everything from nineteenth-century marble columns and terra-cotta finials to carved oak fireplace mantels and ornamental stonework. All of it rescued from buildings that had been demolished.

Finn was driving out the next day, Saturday, to New Jersey to try and retrieve pieces of Pennsylvania Station. He asked me if I wanted to come. I said, Yes, I’d like that. He scribbled my address on a paper napkin, and we agreed he’d pick me up in the morning. Searching for the ruins of Penn Station sounded like fun—though by now it wasn’t just ruins I was interested in. It was Finn.

It was three o’clock in the morning, the party was winding down. My two friends, Amy and Delia, came and found me. Time to go, they said, laughing and lifting me off the floor. I said good-night to Finn. He stood and took my hand. His eyes met mine. Then he ducked his head like a schoolboy and kissed me quickly, pleasantly, on the cheek.

As my friends and I descended the stairs to the street, you could hear a few soft voices up in the loft singing, “Happy birthday, dear Tommy.” It sounded like a lullaby.

I’d passed the entire evening without ever meeting Tommy, or even wishing him a happy birthday. But that didn’t matter. I’d met Finn Coyle.

Early the next day, Finn arrived with a pickup truck outside my aging five-story apartment building. He exited the truck and stood in the street, one hand inside the cab, pushing on the horn. I stuck my head out the window and waved.

“Hello!” Finn called, looking up and waving back at me. His clear voice echoed in the street. It was a bonny morning, not so hot as previous days. Pigeons cooed on the roof, a loose-limbed Puerto Rican boy rode past on a delivery bike. Gazing down at Finn, I admired his easy grace, his reddish-brown hair, and I knew that I already had quite a crush on him.

Despite my youth, I was not a virgin. While I watched Finn, part of my brain—actually, most of my brain—was working overtime imagining what it would be like to go to bed with him. Heavenly, I was sure.

Moderately hungover as I was, I don’t think I’ve ever dressed faster. I was still zipping up my jeans when I pulled open the door to my flat and hurried down the four flights of stairs and out into the street.

Finn smiled when I came up to him. “Good morning,” he said. “Turns out the truck is a bit crowded. And since Alec and Sam have volunteered to do the heavy work, I promised they could ride up front.” Two muscular young men in jeans and T-shirts sat in the cab of the truck. They nodded hello.

“I thought you could ride in back,” Finn said. “If you don’t mind.”

This was not exactly my idea of a brilliant beginning to what I hoped would be a brilliant association with Finn. However, in a manner of speaking, it was our first date. And I hoped there would be many more. So I hid my disappointment, and instead turned to look in the bed of the pickup.

There, parked on a blanket with her back resting against the cab, was a woman in her late twenties. She wore sunglasses, tight pants, and a safari jacket. She held a cigarette to her lips and sucked on it as if it contained not tobacco, but life-sustaining oxygen.

Finn helped me climb up into the back of the truck. The woman reached out a hand to steady me. “Bonjour,” she said. “I’m the Baroness Blixen. We’re on our way to shoot lions in Africa!”

Finn waved in her direction. “Meet Dottie Fielding,” he said. “A woman of boundless imagination.”

“Hello,” I said, wondering if Dottie was my rival for Finn’s affections.

“This is my young friend Margo,” Finn said to Dottie. “Margo Just. Try not to eat her.”

“Try not to eat her—or just try not to eat her?” Dottie said.

Finn shook his head. “Whatever you do,” he told me, “don’t encourage her.”

I plopped down on the metal floor and sat, like Dottie, with my back to the cab. Finn returned to the driver’s seat, started up the engine, and the truck roared off. We turned onto First Avenue and jolted our way north.

It was a jarring, uncomfortable ride. To keep my balance, I held tight to one side of the truck. Dottie had some kind of inner gyroscope. No matter how rough the road, she never lost her equilibrium.

We went left at East Thirty-fourth, bumping past the Empire State Building and Macy’s. We were headed for the Lincoln Tunnel and over to the New Jersey Meadowlands, a few miles west of Manhattan.

After Dottie finished her cigarette, she reached into a black case next to her and pulled out a cocktail shaker and a small bag of ice. She removed the top from the shaker and inspected its contents—the way you might look inside your purse to make sure you had your keys—then dropped in some ice, replaced the top, and set the shaker in a pile of chains.

The rough ride, my hangover, and the smell of truck exhaust were all making my stomach unsteady. Searching for something to focus on, I stared at the cocktail shaker as it shivered and quaked amid the chains.

“Martinis!” Dottie said.

I smiled halfheartedly.

We stopped at a traffic light. Dottie, who ten years later would swear off tobacco forever, lit another cigarette. “What do you call this in England?” she said, shaking out a match and tossing it over the side of the truck.

I wasn’t sure what she meant. The ride? Smoking? Mixing martinis in the back of a truck?

My rear hurt from all the bouncing, I’d barely seen Finn, and I was beginning to wonder why I’d come. I answered her question as best I could. “Madness?” I said.

“No, darling,” she said, slightly amused. “The truck. Don’t
les Anglais
have a word for it?”

“Oh. It’s a lorry.”

“Is it? I always thought it was a lolly.”

“A lolly’s like a Popsicle,” I said. The truck lurched. I grabbed again at the side of it. “Lolly also means money, the same way Americans say dough.”

“
Merci
,”
she said. “I’m glad we cleared that up. I have a feeling, Margo, you and I may be good at explaining things to each other.”

I smiled. I liked Dottie. She was two or three years older than my half sister, Charlotte, but not at all like her. She offered me a cigarette, and I took it.