All for a Sister Read online

  “I’d heard you weren’t feeling well.”

  When I asked her who’d said such a thing, she said, “Everyone,” with an unsettling shift to her eyes.

  I pointed out that I was obviously well enough to meet with her now and insisted upon a response to the order of her business.

  She looked up at me—and I say up because in all this time I’d refused to sit with her and she apparently lacked the training to know that, again, given our social differences and the fact that she was a sometime employee of our home, she should be the one to stand in my presence. Her gaze, however, seemed to bring us to an equal plane, and without a trace of humility, she said, “I’ve come to ask you to help me bring her home.”

  My knees threatened to buckle, and I clutched the back of the sofa to retain my place of superiority.

  “My daughter. My Dana. You have to help me bring her home.”

  But she killed my child.

  “She didn’t. She couldn’t have. And as a mother, you have to realize that. They wouldn’t let me testify at the hearing, since I wasn’t a witness to . . . whatever happened.” She at least had the good sense to look embarrassed. “My hands are tied, you see. But you, or Arthur—I mean, Mr. DuFrane—he was there.”

  The sound of her voice saying my husband’s name brought my too-full stomach to roiling again, and I held my fingers to my lips in an effort to stem the sickness within before asking if that, then, was the reason she particularly wanted to visit with him instead of me.

  “Yes,” she said, looking a little sick herself. She picked at a pill on her wool skirt, her roughened hands snagging on the fabric. “I have heard his account. I was allowed to read his testimony, after. Nothing he says implicates Dana as having done anything . . . wrong.”

  I repeated again the only truth that mattered to me. My child is dead. And then I asked her to leave.

  “Please,” she begged. Her eyes filled with tears and she held her hands as if addressing me in prayer. “I need my daughter.”

  More than I need mine?

  She hesitated long enough that I knew she was considering her answer, which tipped my emptiness to fury, strengthening me in a way peace never could. I didn’t ask her to leave again; I ordered her to do so, stepping back to make a wide berth and stretching my arm in a grand gesture toward the door.

  She stood. “I wish there was something I could do to bring your Mary back. I have prayed every night to wake up and find this all to be a dream, but there is nothing I can do. I cannot bring your little girl back to you. But please listen to me—hear me as a mother. You could bring mine back to me. One word to the judge, and there wouldn’t even be a trial. Certainly you don’t believe that my Dana—”

  I covered my ears, insisting that she stop. Surely she didn’t expect me to extol Dana’s virtues, not when I’d seen her to be a selfish, covetous girl. I told her about that evening, how Dana had touched everything in my baby’s room, complaining how unfair it was that some had more than others.

  “You are certainly misremembering. She is a good girl; you know that. You have known her since she was—”

  A baby, I completed. And she’s obviously grown up with a bitter spirit that has fooled us all.

  Something changed in her expression as I spoke, a hardening I hadn’t anticipated and couldn’t explain. First her lips stretched thin, as if reinforcing themselves to hold back what she wanted to say, and her eyes—a distinctive grayish, mossy color—narrowed, one more so than the other.

  “I can see that you are too steeped in mourning. I will wait and talk with Mr. DuFrane. I don’t think any of us will want this to end with any more unhappiness than it needs to.”

  There it was, an unmistakable threat. Her gaze made me uncomfortable, and I felt every advantage I had of wealth and power and grief begin to slip into weakness. On the cusp of acquiescing, I looked away, intending to gather my thoughts and my strength. It was a fleeting moment, and I will always wonder if it didn’t happen by her express design, but there was something in her stance: the way her posture formed a sway to her back and her hands rested protectively across her stomach. I’d held my stomach in just such a way too, grasping at the phantom remains of my murdered child. But Mrs. Lundgren had no such haunting. I knew in that moment she had a thriving life within her, and a fresh wave of injustice washed through me.

  Without a trace of doubt, I asked her when her baby was due.

  At first, she looked guilty, almost ashamed, and I suppose that is only fitting, given that she was not—as far as I knew—married, not to mention she was in the presence of a woman who had so recently lost an infant child. What was it her wretched daughter had said that night? That if we are all God’s children, it didn’t seem fair for some to have so much and others so little. Yet here we stood, two of his children. I with my child ripped away, and the mother of the murderer poised to be comforted with new life. In just a few months’ time, she would have two thriving, healthy children, and I would forever have only one.

  “End of April,” she said, “as far as I can figure.” She spoke it as a fact, devoid of any sense of joy. Further proof that she did not deserve such a blessing.

  I confided in her that I would never be able to have another child, something that had been a confidence held between Dr. Hudson and myself. For reasons you might understand later, when you are a married woman with a husband of fleeting interest and questionable fidelity, I hadn’t even shared this with your father. The successful end to my pregnancy with Mary had been an unquestionable miracle, one I should never again presume that God would perform. Just one of many secrets held between myself and the Almighty, as Arthur and I continued with the responsibilities a wife and a husband owe to one another. I counted it as divine cruelty that my own coupling would result in nothing but fruitlessness, while here this woman comes to my home, walking right past the black wreath of mourning on the door, with her belly full of blessing.

  Something held my tongue from asking about the father, perhaps because I had no business sullying my own propriety with such knowledge, perhaps because it was none of my business, or—and this I now embrace—perhaps because I did not want to think there was a third party to involve in the idea so recently sprouted in the dark soil of my mind.

  A life for a life. God’s ancient words threw off the taint of revenge and took on the shadow of promise. I summoned the last vestiges of my strength to tug one corner of my mouth into a smile and, with an air of grace that galls me to this day, I invited her to, once again, sit down.

  Then I left her to make a pot of tea, emptying the last bit of my grief feast into Mrs. Gibbons’s small commode while the water boiled.

  DANA GOES TO WARNER BROTHERS

  1925

  “IT’S A COMEDY,” Celeste was explaining as she took the pins from her hair, leaving a cap of curls, which she brushed and fussed into a honey-colored froth. “I play—what else—a shopgirl, only this time I’m not just in the background. I get to flirt with the leading man with dialogue and everything. And my name is going to be on the final credits slide, and I even get to have a part in the big chase scene at the end. Isn’t that exciting?”

  Dana picked up a small jar of cream from the dressing table Celeste shared with two other girls and twisted off the lid.

  “That’s for later,” Celeste said. “Cold cream. When it’s time to take all this off.” She picked up a pencil and set to darkening the already-black rim around her eyes. When she had finished, she dusted her face a final time with a lavender-tinged powder, leaving an unnatural, death-like shade that conjured up painful memories.

  “Dreadful, I know. Papa was working so hard to develop a film that would shoot a more realistic color. Did you know that? He was onto something, too.”

  Somebody opened the door and barked, “Five minutes!” causing a flurry of powdering and primping.

  Celeste turned to her. “How do I look?”

  Dana smiled. “Grotesque. But beautiful.”

  �
�Here.” Celeste handed her a small sewing basket. “If anyone asks, you’re my seamstress. This skirt they put me in is so big, I might need you to take it in a stitch or two at the waist, or else I’ll be in my bloomers behind the counter.”

  Wordlessly, Dana took the basket and commenced following Celeste through a labyrinth of dark hallways, brushing up against one person after another, incurring a “Watch it, sister!” as if their brush against each other had been a serious impediment to progress. Still, she felt right at home in the darkness of the passageways and perfected a narrow-shouldered posture, angling her body to the narrowest space between the wall and those coming against her. Soon, no one noticed her at all, and the sense of invisibility settled over her with a comforting familiarity.

  The feeling disappeared, however, the moment Celeste’s steps stopped and she turned with a dramatic flair, announcing, “Welcome to the fabulous world of movies, movies, movies!”

  Dana took her first step into this “fabulous world” with her breath held tight. The ceilings were vaulted at least three stories high above a wide space without windows or walls. A cacophonous sound of carpentry and machinery competed with that of a dozen groups of musicians playing inharmonious tunes. Occasionally a voice would make its way above the din, though its shouted words were swallowed up.

  Celeste took Dana’s arm and drew her close. “Exciting, isn’t it? We’re over on stage 8.”

  As there didn’t seem to be any clear pathways or direct organization of movement, Dana sidled her steps closer to Celeste’s and allowed herself to be maneuvered through the teeming mass. Scattered throughout the cavernous space were different little rooms set up like a series of three-sided boxes.

  “That one’s for a Western,” Celeste said, pointing to a space paneled with rough-hewn planks. A bar ran most of the length of it, with several stools and a plethora of bottles and glasses on the shelves above. Two men dressed as cowboys were squared off, ready to fight, while a man not three feet away shouted directions about how many blows should land before one or the other took a fall. “I’ve been in three of them. Westerns, that is. One time playing the sheriff’s daughter. I got to spend an entire day crouched under a desk while they dropped all kinds of dust and lumber scraps on top because the bad guys were blowing up the jail with dynamite.”

  “How exciting,” Dana said dutifully.

  “I was eleven, and even then I thought, what a silly thing to do, blowing up the jail. Sure, the wall collapsed, but the bad guy could have been killed in the explosion, right? I mean, prison might be awful, but is it worth getting killed over? But then, it’s the movies and—” She clapped her hand over her mouth, shadowed eyes wide above it. “Oh, my. I am such a doodle-head.”

  Her fingers muffled the words, but her meaning couldn’t have been more clear. Dana felt a small sting just at the base of her neck, and it spread up and around in an instant. Not exactly shame, but embarrassment, and her mind reached for the words to apologize to this pretty, young girl for even having to consider such ugliness in her conversation.

  “It’s all right,” she said, taking half a step, hoping that would be enough to move them forward. “You shouldn’t worry yourself about such things.”

  Celeste dropped her hand and cocked her head, giving Dana a look of pity that hammered a blow more devastating than any careless phrase ever could. “Still, it was thoughtless. I forget, sometimes, that you were ever . . . there. Although I don’t know how I can because why else would you be here? If it weren’t for Mother—”

  “Action!”

  The voice blasting through a megaphone startled Dana so that she jumped, nearly dropping the sewing basket. Thankful not to be scrambling for needles and pins beneath the sea of footsteps, she gave Celeste’s arm a tug, silently forgiving her for the unintended slight and urging the two of them past it.

  Stage 8 turned out to be smaller than most of the other spaces, nothing more than a set of shelves with sundry dry goods stashed upon them, and again a countertop running the width of the floor. Except for the absence of the stools, it looked like little more than a refined saloon.

  “Now, just stand back and stay quiet and nobody should bother you.” Celeste nervously combed her fingers through her hair, shifting her eyes to the left. “That’s my director over there. If this goes well, I could be looking at playing second lead in his next picture. So wish me luck.”

  “You’ll do fine,” Dana said, feeling surprisingly maternal.

  “Fine ain’t gonna cut it. I need to be absolutely effervescent. Do I look effervescent?”

  How she looked was terrified, the brightness of her eyes more like a feverish fear, and her smile a little too wide, but Dana didn’t have it in her heart to say so.

  “You’re the most effervescent person I know,” Dana said, pleased to see Celeste transform into a creature of confidence.

  In the next minute, Celeste was swept away in a tide of people who bustled about, positioning her just so behind the counter, turning her face to and from different angles, looking up, looking down, while the man she’d identified as the director shouted orders to the man behind the camera, the man adjusting the light, and some poor, trembling girl holding a thick stack of papers. Dana took an extra step back, lest the man take it in his head to yell at her, and heard a familiar voice just over her shoulder.

  “You are here to watch the action today?”

  She looked up to see Werner Ostermann, thankful that he had spoken to her first, as she might not have recognized him outside the familiar setting of his office.

  “What are you doing here?” Immediately she felt ridiculous, acting as if she had the right to question anybody about their presence. She quickly apologized for her gaffe, adding, “I suppose you can be anywhere you wish.”

  “Not always.” He took a generous step back and encouraged her to follow. “Newton—” he inclined his head toward Celeste’s director, who was now in the process of reducing the poor script girl to tears—“would throw himself into a fit if he saw me. We do not get along.”

  Dana ventured a look over her shoulder. “He doesn’t appear to get along with too many people.”

  “He is a man of limited talent and great ambition. A combination, I fear, that keeps him in a perpetual state of foolish tyranny.”

  “Celeste hopes to make another movie with him.”

  Werner looked over her head, studying the scene behind them. “She can do better than him. She’s an extraordinary talent, that girl. Watch her.”

  Obediently, Dana turned around, just as Mr. Newton called for action, and a rather plain-looking man walked onto the set, where Celeste stood, her back to him, busying herself with the goods on the shelves. He rocked on his heels in an exaggerated style, puckered his lips to whistle, leaned on the counter, and finally, with an exasperated air, slammed his palm on the little silver bell on the countertop. At which point, Celeste, in a startled flurry, tossed a handful of garments into the air and turned, her hand against her chest as if to calm her heart.

  Dana laughed at the expression on her face and the man’s reaction as he attempted to help her gather up some of what had been dropped, lifting a skimpy negligee, which Celeste snatched away, scandalized, saying, “Get your hands off that!”

  In the next instant, though, she was holding the same garment up against her, her face completely transformed into a coquettish invitation, and said, “Unless it’s exactly what you’re looking for.”

  Here, the young man turned, slowly, while Mr. Newton shouted, “To the camera! To the camera! A little more . . . a little more! And—now!” The actor raised his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug, while Celeste continued her flirtatious posing behind him.

  “Cut!” Mr. Newton yelled, and everybody exhaled collectively.

  “And this is how it is done,” Dana said, so caught up in the moment, she’d forgotten that anyone was close enough to hear her.

  “Deceptively simple,” Werner said. “But now watch. Celeste will do th
at bit where she holds the nightie up over and over again, until Newton is pleased with the shot. And since he is somewhat of a letch, that could be all afternoon. Come.” His fingertips brushed just above her elbow. “Are you hungry? How about a sandwich and a cup of coffee?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, fighting the urge to pull away from his touch, though every nerve within her scrambled at the intrusion. “Celeste told me to wait here.”

  Werner motioned for the script girl to come to them, and she obliged, covering the short distance with rabbit-like steps. “Tell Miss DuFrane that Werner Ostermann would like to meet with her in the canteen when she is finished shooting for the afternoon.”

  The girl’s face dawned with realization, and she nodded for all she was worth. “Yes, yes, of course, Mr. Ostermann.”

  He leaned closer. “And tell her within earshot of Mr. Newton.”

  This seemed a terrifying notion to the girl, but Werner simply laughed and sent her back to her spot.

  “Now,” he said and started walking, leaving Dana little choice but to follow.

  If she’d had it in her mind to disappear within the busy studio again, nothing but disappointment awaited. Werner couldn’t take more than a dozen steps without somebody stopping him to ask a question or hand him a business card. On two occasions he was invited to dinner—or something—by some beautiful woman, and these were the only of their interruptions to give Dana more than a passing glance. She withered under their scrutiny, acutely aware of the plainness of her face and the silly mending basket still clutched in her hand. Werner entered each conversation without introduction and left without comment. Because of his height, she was forced to take three steps to his every one and was nearly breathless by the time they emerged through the door and out into the blinding sunlight.