Amy Bloom: Lucky Us

HE’D NOTICED IRIS ACTON on her first day. There were always a dozen of her kind, even prettier, on the MGM lot on any day of the week, but she was quick and clever, and it was possible she could act. Someone had taught her good manners. She watched what everyone did and didn’t do. She didn’t throw fits. She didn’t make eyes at the movie stars. She was never late. He suggested she take in the back of her dress about an inch right over the roundest part of her rear, and the next day, the girl had put a dart in every dress she had.

After Hedda Hopper kicked Iris’s ass, and no one on the set would even say the girl’s name, he drove over to the Firenze Gardens. He went because he was, as his younger sister liked to say, a big fat pile of pity for every stray dog and mangy cat that crossed his path. Iris was a starlet on the way up for about six months and now she was a stray dog, and she probably didn’t even know it. He had a soft spot for young people. They had no idea what was coming and how much of it was just dumb luck. They thought every asset they had would last forever and that their flaws could be concealed under fabric or false names or foundation until the lights were turned off. If you can feel sorry for a starving mutt, Francisco thought, you should certainly feel sorry for the young and beautiful.

Iris opened the door, her eyes as red as cherries. She didn’t invite him in.

“It’s so nice of you to come by, Mr. Diego,” the little sister said. She brought him a glass of water and put him in the only armchair.

“I came to invite you girls to dinner,” Francisco said.

Iris flinched.

“That’s very nice of you,” the little girl said and she wiped her glasses on her skirt and settled them back on her square face. Iris looked out the window.

“Everyone likes my cooking,” he said.

He made them dinner three Tuesdays in a row, waiting for Iris to tell him what he already knew, so he could help her make a fresh start somewhere. The little sister ate two plates of everything and told him the history of the X-ray and the iron lung. He told the girls about his childhood in the San Fernando Valley on Rancho El Escorpión and how it became the Platt dairy ranch, and how that was pretty much the history of Southern California. He told them about the one-room schoolhouse and riding home on his palomino and his discovery of his feelings for handsome ranch hands and his understanding, at nine, that when he finished high school, he would need to run, not walk, to a big city. He told them about his mother, who was every flashing-eyed, hot-tempered Mexican heroine in history, and her three quiet husbands, all of whom died after fathering Francisco and his two half-sisters — now in New York and prospering, he said, and about as Mexican as salami on rye. He gave Iris a hundred chances to tell the truth, and Iris lied through every meal. He admired the way she talked about leads and interviews. She lied when he handed around the empanadas and she lied right through to the butter-pecan ice cream. She lied while he played cards with the little sister. She lied patting him on the cheek, to say goodnight, and Francisco caught her hand. Next time, he said, it’s your turn to have me over for dinner, just to be nice and, and afterward, we’re playing To Tell the Truth.

NO ONE RETURNED MY SISTER’S CALLS. I MADE KRAFT MACARONI and cheese most nights, with variations. Iris kept looking for work. I know your face, dear, one of the women at Ralphs Grocery told her. Everyone who read the newspapers and the movie magazines knew Iris’s face now.

“It’s like I’ve got the plague,” Iris said. “It’s like being Typhoid Mary.”

I said, “You’re not actually killing people.”

The next morning, I went by Mrs. Gruber’s to see if our old place was available and Mrs. Gruber asked why and I gave her the short version, as I understood it. Mrs. Gruber said, What a bitch, that Rose Sawyer. She said, Azoy gait es , that’s how it goes. Which I’d heard her say so many times, I’d started to say it myself. Mrs. Gruber poured crème de menthe into the gold-stemmed glasses for the two of us, and she said, Of course, you girls can have the room, at your old rate. She said she’d throw people out if she had to, and we clinked glasses. Mrs. Gruber said, Fame and beauty. Believe me, Alle ziben glicken. It means it’s not such a gift, ketzele. You stick with the big books and the little glasses.

BECAUSE OF THE SITUATION, I didn’t want to go out. I didn’t go to the park. I didn’t go down to the Firenze Gardens courtyard. Iris didn’t ask me to stay in with her. She didn’t ask me for anything. She did her exercises and touched up her hair and washed our clothes in the sink. She began packing our things and she told me that we’d move in a week. You don’t need to mention this to anyone, she said. Who would I tell, I said.

Iris did her vocal exercises every morning. She ironed all of our blouses and skirts in silence and generally acted like a person who lived alone, which I understood. I understood it and I tried to act like I didn’t even notice and I hoped that Iris wasn’t thinking about leaving, which I would have been. I wouldn’t have hung around for everyone to crap on and I wouldn’t have wanted a fourteen-year-old girl, who looked twelve and did absolutely nothing but cook food from a box and worry and read, for my sidekick. I sat in the armchair near the window and read The Picture of Dorian Gray , which I’d stolen from the library, and the old Photoplays that were in the apartment when we got here. When I finished the magazines, I found a Bible. I skipped over the slow stuff, the begats and some of the more disgusting parts, but I liked the New Testament, which was full of green hills and blue skies and forgiveness and similes and metaphors. In the Old Testament, there were no metaphors — bushes actually burned, walls fell down, seas parted, and any rational person would dive for cover when that happened. In the Old Testament, God delivered people. He rescued them from their enemies, from the wicked, from famine, from the grave. He waltzed them out of Egypt with a mighty hand and a bag of crackers, and that’s what I had in mind.

GOD’S BURNING SERAPH, OR someone, was leaning on the doorbell while Iris packed and Francisco and I were washing up, after I made us a hot-dog supper. After I dried the last plate, we’d play cards, and after that, I was pretty sure Francisco would stick ten dollars under Iris’s pillow for the move to Mrs. Gruber’s. The bell rang three times. We stood there. We were ducking the manager of the Firenze Gardens. We could pay him for last month or we could pay Mrs. Gruber for next month and have something left over. Mrs. Gruber and the Hollywood Plaza Hotel were our future. Francisco looked at Iris.

“It could be Rose,” Iris said, and I cut in front of her to get to the door. It would not be Rose and I didn’t want my sister to spend even one second thinking that it could be Rose Sawyer, whose name was now my private shorthand for true evil in the world. Rose Sawyer made my mother look good.

“Oh, little Evie,” my father said. He had a white bakery box wrapped with red twine swinging from one finger, a bouquet of sunflowers crushed under his arm, and a suitcase in his other hand.

“Christ, what ugly flowers,” Iris said.

FRANCISCO FOLDED THE DISH towel and moved over to the door. He put his hand on my shoulder. My father looked elegant and exhausted, and I thought that if Francisco couldn’t beat the shit out of him, which he probably could, Iris and I could pile on.