The Butterfly Plague (23 page)

Octavius watched.

Greta Garbo kept coughing all the time. It was quite unnerving, and by the time she’d finally died, Octavius was relieved, even glad. He wondered if it was true that she was a man. They said she was. He’d read that somewhere in a paper. And that was why she had such large feet.

If she was a man, then playing that role in Queen Christina was a cheat. But if she was a man, then all the other roles she’d played were marvelous. Even Camille.

While the cartoon was playing, Octavius thought about it.

Greta Garbo wore his costumes so well. The padding was extremely well done. His hands were extraordinary. (Octavius waved his own gloved hands down in the darkness in blind imitation.) And Greta Garbo knew how a woman held her neck and her shoulders. He must have practiced that for hours in front of the mirror. Necks and shoulders were difficult. And just exactly how to walk. How not to hurry. Anywhere he went across the screen, Greta Garbo never ran.

But best of all was Greta Garbo’s makeup and his wigs. They were just absolutely perfection to a tee.

Octavius touched his elaborate hair and thought some more.

He had noticed something else about Greta Garbo.

He never played mothers.

9:50 p.m.

The newsreel came on. It was full of the old stuff. China, Spain, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

Dr. Frank Buchman made a speech and told everyone to change. Hitler spoke.

And then came the Hollywood News Vignettes. Little Judy Garland played a tennis game. Norma Shearer was making a movie with Clark Gable called
Idiot’s Delight
, and that was worth noting because Octavius had great respect for Norma Shearer. He’d seen her in
Marie Antoinette
, sitting through it three times just to see the ending over. “Oh, Mama! Oh, Mama!” she had cried, sitting in her tumbrel, “I’m going to be the Queen of France!” It was very sad.

Surely Norma Shearer was not a man.

Then on came lovely Myra Jacobs to make a little speech for Jimmy Fiddler in a radio studio and finally there was a garden party given by Mr. Hearst.

Mr. Hearst’s garden parties were something to behold. One saw so many movie stars at play. This was of great interest to Octavius, because it meant you saw the stars exactly as they really were, without makeup.

Ajax Apollo, the new nineteen-year-old, did a high dive in a loincloth and Octavius was sorry he did not have a picture of that. Cary Grant and Randolph Scott were undressed, too, and that was quite exciting. Marion Davies fell down a flight of stairs and got up and laughed and said it was all a practical joke, but afterwards she limped and Octavius wondered.

Rochelle Hudson put a rose in her mouth.

And there was Louella.

Then there was a movie star he’d never heard of.

Letitia Virden.

She was walking in the Roman part of the garden, with Mr. Hearst on one arm and Mr. Carter on the other. She was quite a tiny woman and the Voice of the Hollywood News Vignettes said her appearance there was startling. Octavius noted that the audience reacted very strangely when she came on, gasping and saying “good heavens” and finally applauding.

The Voice of the Hollywood News Vignettes went on to say that Letitia Virden just might be back to make another film, and wasn’t that exciting, America? And there was more applause and Octavius was very mystified. Who was this star? She was called the Little Virgin. He certainly knew “America’s Sweetheart,” Mary Pickford, but why had he not heard of Letitia Virden?

Mr. Hearst, from what you could tell, did not perhaps have much to say to Letitia Virden (maybe Miss Davies had something to do with that), but Mr. Carter certainly had lots to say to her and she smiled at him a lot. They seemed like friends.

Octavius made a study of her. What a lovely walk she had. What elegant hands. Her clothes were simply stunning and her head was exquisitely shaped.

He rather liked her. Except for one thing. Her eyes. Something was not quite nice about her eyes. They glistened. Oddly. And then, too, she did a startling thing that seemed quite rude. When the camera got too close to her, she suddenly turned away and placed a veil over her face. Then, when she turned back, you couldn’t see her.

Could it be, Octavius wondered.

No. She was much too feminine for that.

Letitia Virden may have been many mysterious things, but she was certainly not a man.

11:45 p.m.

Mother sat once more before the mirror.

She was tired.

It had been an extremely long day.

She took off her little gloves, her jewelry, and slipped off her shoes. She wiggled her toes.

She removed her hair and put it back in its box.

She gave herself a tired stare.

Well.

She removed her earrings. She leaned in closer to the mirror. The shoulders of her lovely green dress made a perfect frame for her face.

She squinted.

If…

She squinted some more.

Yes. If she just…

She sat back, eyeing herself as she might some distant painting.

If she lifted that eyebrow—so.

Mother grabbed up an eyebrow pencil.

Touch.

Yes!

Her hands shook.

And if…

And if she…

And if she thinned out…if she just lengthened her upper lip—so. Like that. Like so…just very carefully so. Thus…

(My God.)

And if she…

Yes. A touch by the eyes.

(Great Jesus.)

Mother.

(Jesus’ mother.)

The Little Virgin.

Mother stood up and knocked over her chair.

She walked away and looked back at herself and then she walked forward and peered more closely and then she walked away again, staring with her mouth open.

She looked at the whole effect.

It was incredible.

Mother was incredulous. She nearly fainted dead away.

How could it be?

Well, never mind how, it was true. That’s all. It was true.

Yes!!

A clock struck.

Mother turned.

Twelve.

Midnight.

The witching hour. Yes.

The hour when carriages turn into pumpkins. Yes.

And mothers into sons.

The Chronicle of
Evelyn de Foe

Thursday, September 29th, 1938:

The Black Stocking Restaurant,

Beverly Hills

12:30 p.m.

When Ruth arrived at the Black Stocking, her father had already been seated and was intoxicated.

He greeted her from a crouching position, neither in nor out of his chair.

Ruth sat down.

The waitress, who wore black stockings on her arms, appeared and disappeared, accepting, in the meantime, an order for drinks.

George glared at Ruth from narrow, blue-red eyes. His lapels were covered with ash and dandruff, one camouflaging the other. He smelled of cocktails mixed over the days and nights inside his stomach. His rust complexion could be only barely seen through the gray patina of ill-health. He rumbled.

“Well,” he said, “you’re not as smart as all that after all. Eh?”

“What do you mean, Father?”

Ruth’s approach was distaste mingled with distrust.

“You couldn’t…stick. Stick it out with Br…uno.”

“It wouldn’t have taken brains to’ve done that, Father.”

“Pizzlesticks! Bah and poop! Don’t you wool-pull on me, daughter. That Bruno is the very rage of Europe. But you didn’t have the sense to stick it out. Only a fool would leave the rage of Europe in his hour of glory!”

“The rage of Germany, perhaps. For now. But not the rage of Europe, Father. Bruno’s mystique, or whatever it is, won’t last.”

“It will last. It will last. He has stamina, that Bruno. Stamina and guts.”

George glared at Ruth, the implication of her lack in these departments quite clear. He smiled his yellow smile.

“So you ran, eh?”

Ruth sighed. Boredom mingled with fear.

“If you want to put it that way, Father, all right—I ran. Now what do you want with me?”

George sidled into the corner of his chair like a giant, molting bird. His little red claws clutched the arms of his nest and he sniffled. Then he wiped his beak with the magenta handkerchief and took a drink. From the way he was drinking, Ruth realized that she was going to pay the bill.

“You’re pretty Jeedy certain I want something, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am, Father. Otherwise you wouldn’t want to see me. So, what is it? A message for Mother?”

This was a mistake.

George immediately bellowed his vulgar laugh and rocked in the chair, nearly falling over backward in the process.

“Ha! That’s a good one!” he roared. “Oh, that’s just peachy precious!”

At once he sobered.

“No! No, I don’t want to send messages to your mother.

I don’t want you to mention your mother. I don’t want to know how your mother is, or what she is. I don’t want to know! Dead! Alive! Anything about your Jeedy mother!”

“Very well, Father. But please be quiet. You’re making a spectacle of yourself.”

“Well, it’s about damn well time I did! Eh? Make a spectacle—or make something.”

He roared an accusatory look around the room.

“They know who I am,” he said. “I don’t need to tell them who I am.”

He stood up.

“All right, Father. Sit down.” (He sat down.) “That’s fine,” said Ruth. “Now please. What do you want?”

“What’s the matter with your hair?” said George, taking another gulp of drink. “You look like a bloody effing lesbian.”

“It was cut off,” said Ruth, as simply as she could. She was attempting to avoid the stare of what felt like the entire world.

“Are you a Jeedy lesbian?” said George.

“No, Father.”

“Hunh. That would be a dandy,” said George. “My son’s a hemo-homo and now my daughter’s a lesbian.”

“No, Father. I’m not.”

The red eyes poked and pried.

“Well, you should be. What else are you any good for? You can’t have babies.”

The last sentence was uttered, word by word, like the separate volleys of a firing squad.

“No.”

“You aren’t going to have any babies, are you? I hope. By God.”

“No, Father.”

“You have tainted blood, you know.”

“Yes, Father.”

“Tainted blood. All my children have tainted blood.”

“Yes. I’m quite aware of it.”

“Tainted blood. Any baby of yours’d bleed to death. In five minutes.”

“Yes.”

“Like my son.”

“Yes, Father. Like Dolly.”

“Don’t call—him—Doll-y.”

“Adolphus.”

“He’s going to die.”

“Adolphus who’s going to die. Yes, Father.”

“A terrible, horrible, ghastly, bloody, awful death. Bleeding. To death.”

“Yes.”

“Aaah! You don’t care. You don’t care. You don’t give a Jeedy damn. You don’t give…”

“
Father!
”

“What?”

“Stop it. Stop. Be quiet. Please”

George pulled his head back and stared, or tried to, at his daughter.

“You telling me to shut up?”

“Yes.”

Silence. The room waited.

The quiet was circular. It surrounded them and held them prisoner until the waitress, bearing more alcoholic ammunition, broke through and set some freshly filled glasses on the table.

“Now,” said Ruth, once the waitress had gone, “what-is-it-you-want-of-me?”

“I won’t tell you,” said George with genuine petulance.

“Oh, really!”

“Don’t you ‘oh, really’ me girl. I’m your father.”

Ruth bit her lip.

“You always were an impudent no-good. A nothing. Cipher. That’s what you are. An impudent cipher. Everything you wanted you had—and all you could do was—talk back.”

This was all so patently untrue that it silenced even George.

Ruth drank for dear life from her own glass. This was unbearable—to have to sit here with this drunken man who everyone knew was her father, and to have to listen to him rant and roar about her private life in public, and not to be able to escape. Unless she could, somehow, contrive to leave him. Perhaps if she went to the ladies’ room. Perhaps…

But escape, at least temporary, was provided for her. The attention of the room was withdrawn from their table by the entrance of someone at first not visible, far away across the restaurant.

It was a movie star, Evelyn de Foe, but she was new and had not got around to being used very much. She did not generally “hit the hot spots” in the daytime. She was a night person, young and still unscathed in appearance. She was very much the new style of girl, the style just coming in, with square instead of round shoulders, and bosoms and bottoms instead of hands, feet, and face.

The new girls, too—like Evelyn—were mostly tarnished looking. Blonde, but not blonde; tanned, but it was makeup. They did not know how to dress and consequently wore too much Technicolor. They were “tough.”

Evelyn de Foe strode in, a painted collage—overlipped and overlashed, with her brassy hair yanked back so that her profile seemed enormous. She wore large gypsy earrings and her ensemble included red trousers with fly buttons, a man’s yellow shirt, and (looped down seductively over ample buttocks), a double length of white angora stole. Her wrists made cymbalic noises, for they were sheathed in bangles and a jangle of other bracelets and beads.

Men walked in front of her, clearing a path for her progress, and behind her there followed a retinue of oddly dressed women with male hair and no makeup.

While George busied himself lighting, misplacing, finding, and relighting a cigarette, Ruth took advantage of his preoccupation to watch the progress of this astonishing creature.

Evelyn de Foe seated herself and arranged her assorted favorites around her. Everyone at her table seemed to be very bad tempered. The reason was quickly obvious. Evelyn de Foe had been pinched beneath her angora by someone standing near the door. Use might have been made of this gesture if the pincher had been someone well known, but since he was of the class
non grata
, nothing could be done with it. Thus, the gesture and Evelyn’s consequent reaction had wrecked the arrangement of her triumphal entry into the room. She had lost her place in the line-up (carefully prearranged in the parking lot) and so it had seemed that one of the male women in the retinue (the masseuse, in fact) was the center of attention.