All for a Sister (2 page)

Graciela tsked but said nothing.

“Mother confided everything in you—toward the end, I mean. So tell me, what can I expect? What do you know about this woman?”

“
Nada.
Not much more than you already know. She’s been in prison—”

“Because of what happened to my sister.”

“
Sí.
And now she’s coming here.”

“A prisoner. Here. What are people going to think?”

“It’s none of their business,
mija
. That’s why you did good to send that
periodista
away.
Familia, verdad?
Like your mama always said, secrets don’t hurt anyone until they get away.”

“Easy for Mother to say. She’s dead.”

“Dios la tenga en su gloria,”
Graciela said, crossing herself and punctuating the gesture with a kiss to the tips of her fingers.

“Oh, sure,” Celeste said, “she gets to rest in peace, while the rest of us—”

The three-tone chime of the front door interrupted her thought.

Normally it fell to Graciela to greet guests and visitors, but this time Celeste waved her off. The sound of her high heels bounced between the shining tiles and the high ceiling, a sound that she had always found both powerful and reassuring. At the entry hall, she paused for just a moment to check her face in the mirror. She took a deep breath, grasped the door’s brass handle, and opened it wide.

“There’s our girl,” Roland said with the affection of a favorite uncle. He stood, hat in hand, wearing a crisp, pale-blue suit, accessorized with a blue-and-gold cravat, his black hair slicked to perfection. Once over the threshold, he greeted Celeste with a kiss to her cheek and whispered, “We need to talk. Just you and me.”

She nodded, feeling completely incapable of uttering a word as the woman standing behind him came into full view.

She was smaller than Celeste had expected. In the movies, evil women were always large and looming, casting shadows across entire rooms. They had untamed hair; square, widely spaced teeth; and nostrils that flared to accentuate a maniacal grin. But this girl—or woman, she supposed—seemed perfectly pleasant. Potentially pretty, even, with a bit of makeup and some decent clothes. She wore a cheap dime-store hat that sat on her head like a brown, overtipped bowl, and beneath it, more brown in the uneven tufts of hair. The haircut must be new, Celeste surmised, because the woman’s fingers fidgeted with the ends of it under her scrutiny. Celeste had done the same thing last year when she finally succumbed to fashion and had her own blonde tresses bobbed.

“You must be Dana,” she said at last, remembering that manners must always trump fear.

“I am,” the woman said, holding out her hand only after Celeste’s second prompting. It was small and rough and cold, and Celeste found herself tugging to bring her inside.

“Welcome,” she said. “We have a saying here.
Mi casa es tu casa.
It means, ‘My house is your house.’” She let forth the last of her nerves in a giggle. “I guess, for us, that’s really true.”

Not even the slightest hint of a smile tugged at Dana’s lips. “I’m sorry for that.” She spoke as if unused to any form of conversation. “I had no idea . . .”

“And there’s my spicy chickadee,” Roland said, injecting himself into the dialogue.

“Bah!” Graciela brushed right past him and, without waiting for permission, wrapped the frail stranger in her soft embrace, muttering a message of welcome and blessing. Pulling back slightly, she said, “
Venga conmigo.
Come with me, upstairs. Your room is ready, and you can take a nice bit of a rest before lunch.”

Dana looked to Celeste and Roland for permission.

“It’s all right,” Celeste reassured, eager to be released from the discomfort of this introduction. Perhaps it would be best if they got to know each other in increments. Neither she nor Roland spoke as they watched the two ascend the stairs, Graciela carrying the single satchel and Dana following behind, head down, hands limp at her sides.

“So,” Roland said when the others were clearly out of earshot, “no
Photoplay
?”

“Thank goodness.” She gave him a sidelong glance. “You’ve had better ideas, you know.”

“Indeed I have. In fact, I had a better one on the train. Shall we?”

He took half a step, and she took the hint, escorting him to the room that had been her father’s office. She was in the process of having the whole place redecorated. White—walls, carpet, furniture—with heavy curtains and a wall left empty to serve as a screen for intimate viewings. She sat and he followed, taking a cigarette from his breast pocket and lighting it with the ornate crystal lighter on the low, glass-topped table.

“You made me look like an idiot,” Celeste said as Roland busied himself with the smoking ritual. “They didn’t even send a reporter, you know. Just a photographer. What’s a photographer supposed to do with an untold story?”

“Forget about them,” he said through a first puff of smoke. His voice was low and rough, perfectly matched to the faint crackle of the burning tobacco. “We’re going to tell that story ourselves.”

“Good luck. After today, I’ll be lucky to get my picture in the funny papers.”

“Listen, sweetheart. We’re going for something much bigger than the papers. This story?” He used his cigarette to trace a rectangle between them. “It’s got silver screen written all over it.”

THE WRITTEN CONFESSION OF MARGUERITE DUFRANE, PAGES 1–12

TO MY SWEET GIRL,
Celeste, who has been always the delight and sustenance of my life, I take its waning days to tell you all. It is a rare thing indeed when the counsel of almighty God intersects with that of our given laws, and a declaration brings both condemnation and release. But such has occurred. Although I write this at the insistence of our attorney, Mr. Christopher Parker, Esquire, the confession I write here is nothing short of what I have professed to our Lord. I am assured of his forgiveness in all I shall reveal, and I can only hope to secure your own. And as to others against whom I have sinned—and they are many—I can pray they will not begrudge me God’s mercy, as most have already met him in glory. All except her, for all I know.

The witnessed signature at its end will show this to be the final testament of my life.

You should know, darling girl, that we welcomed your arrival with all the blessed relief and anticipation any child has ever known. As well, you should know that before you came into our life, we had another little girl named Mary. She had a beautiful cap of soft blonde-white curls, and we called her our “Little Lamb.” There are features the two of you share, but she had none of your
fire. She was sweet and shy, if such could be said of an infant. In our short time together, I don’t remember her ever making a sound that could be heard from the next room. We kept chiming clocks in every room of the house, lest we’d forget to feed her.

And, oh, how Calvin adored her. He would touch her sweet cheek and entwine his fingers in hers. Even though he risked the wrath of both myself and the nurse, as his fingers were always dirty from his adventures in the garden, he could not stay away. Perhaps, dear one, that is why the two of you always experienced such strife. As excited as your father and I were when you arrived in our lives, Calvin never completely shared our adoration. You would never be our lovely Mary, our Little Lamb, even though your brother often teased you about being the living ghost of that phantom child. If you could only understand how I have longed to meet her again in heaven. That day draws ever nearer. And yet, for much of your life, through my own diligence, exactly how she left this world was never spoken of in your presence. Nor anyone else’s, for that matter, after a time.

So I begin.

Deep in your earliest memories I’m sure you remember our house in Highland Park. It had been in my family for three generations, built by my grandfather as the first symbol of his wealth. Your own father never liked to acknowledge that our money came from my family. While it’s true he made an acceptable salary as an academic, it was my money that kept us afloat in society while he fiddled with his chemicals and filed his patents and delivered the occasional lecture. Inventors have been known to become rich, but it helps tremendously if they already are. Ask Mr. Edison, should you doubt.

I married your father, Arthur, because I immediately, deeply loved him. At the time, I didn’t recognize this as a spell he was so
adept at casting. He was handsome, and humble, and so passionately intelligent. He had a way, in our courting days, of making me feel like I was the only woman in the world. The only woman who ever had been. Unconcerned with the confines of propriety, he kissed me sooner than he ought, bedded me before our marriage, and once he was properly installed as the man of my house, failed to see me again. Always, he wanted something more; it is what drove him through his world of discovery. Unfortunately, it was what drove him into the beds of countless others.

Until you came along. You, my Celeste, centered him. Settled him. Perhaps because, from the beginning, it was obvious you were his equal in intelligence and curiosity.

But I digress.

I loved that house and I loved your father, despite the eccentricities that would forever set us apart from our Chicago circle. I believe all of our friends saw him as somewhat of a novelty. Always doodling his formulas and leaving the room in sudden fits of genius. But he had the appetites of a man far above his natural status. The best foods, the finest wine, the most beautiful women. Yes, I can tell you this now, as he is gone and your memories of the good, loving father that he was are in no danger. He never made any attempt to hide the fact that he pursued me relentlessly because of my beauty. The portraits of my youth will attest to that. There was a carnality to him that he kept hidden under his intellectual pursuits. So entranced was I with the latter, I feared what might happen should he not have that distraction of the former. While he satisfied his appetite in beds other than our own, there were only two circumstances in which I feared the ramifications of his unfaithfulness.

The first was in the spring before you were born, when our little family consisted of only myself, your father, Calvin, and our
Mary. With the absence of all but the most distant relatives of your father’s in St. Louis, Missouri, we filled our home with friends—sometimes little more than acquaintances—for all celebrations. It was a large house, you remember, built for grand occasions, and in those days there was nothing I liked better than a house full of music and people, dining and drinking with games of charades and pass-the-slipper. Old-fashioned, I know, especially in light of today’s modernity of phonographs and dancing. And perhaps unconvincing, given that you’ve only known my proclivity for solitude.

There was a woman—vapid thing, divorcée—who had nudged her way into our group by refusing to vacate it even after her husband so publicly and disgracefully abandoned her. Mrs. D—— should suffice, as I can tell you now that nothing ever came of it. Sometimes I wonder if the poor woman even knew the qualities she exuded, always hanging about with such a wanton gullibility. We all worried that our husbands would succumb, falling to some great, unfulfilled masculine need. I more than others, I suppose, for I’d suffered the storm of infidelity. I knew the signs to look for, the slight touch, the gaze that lingers too long, the mad scramble to be near one another that they might be thrown together accidentally during one of our silly games.

And so it was that night in October. We hadn’t given any sort of party since your brother’s birthday three months before, largely because of my suspicions of your father and Mrs. D——. How silent our house! Calvin content with his puzzles and little Mary quiet as a pillow wherever she might be. Quiet, too, as your father was so often away, sometimes spending entire nights in his lab, perfecting the components that would eventually bring us here to Los Angeles. Or so he said, and I refused to give myself over to doubt. Besides, Mrs. D—— was having a flagrant affair with a star tenor in our Metropolitan Opera, so my fears were kept at bay.

Thus when my birthday came around, I decided to throw a lavish affair in our very own home. I ordered a cake from a local bakery and, rather than taxing our kitchen staff, arranged to have the food catered by Kruger’s. In lieu of a formal dinner, I opted for a series of heavy hors d’oeuvres so those in attendance could eat and mingle at will, myself included. Two hours before the first guest was due to arrive, I was called to the kitchen. Mrs. Lundgren, one of our regular staff, was too ill to work—a complaint I’d grown used to. In fact, just weeks before, I’d included five extra dollars to finance a visit to a doctor, but we both knew our places well enough to never speak of it.

In her stead, she’d sent her daughter, Dana. The girl was about twelve years old, I’d say, well old enough to enter service, though her mother seemed bent on another course. She wore her mother’s uniform—black dress with the high collar and lace pinafore. I’ll never forget how the garment hung on her, so thin she was.