Minnie Flynn/Chapter 20

MINNIE'S heart was heavy with the grief and worries that piled up relentlessly, and while she was making her picture it was more of a struggle than ever to act the rôle of an innocent, happy young girl. Her enthusiasms and animations seemed utterly artificial. Even Minnie, when she watched herself upon the screen, was afraid the audiences would perceive the effort that went into her dancing steps and too animated smiles. Her close-ups were taken over and over again. All the skill of the cameraman was called upon to photograph Minnie so she would look like a sixteen-year-old girl. The wig of curls helped disguise her coarsening neck, but the unmistakable signs of a too full chin, and the sagging pockets at the corners of her mouth and under her eyes betrayed her. The expression of her eyes which had so characterized her youth, lacked resilience, and in repose a dull, sad look would come into them. Her full lips had thickened and turned slightly down at the corners. Only the delicate sensitive modeling of her nose seemed unchanged—it was almost too finely drawn for the rest of her face.

When her studio make-up was taken off, she put on a street make-up almost as grotesque. It was the fad to look like an apricot, with all nature's colors hidden under a thick coating of apricot rouge. Minnie thought the blue powder over her lids masked the finely wrinkling puffs of flesh that had once been firm pink eyelids. "Youth is a tight skin," she remembered Deane saying one morning many years ago when she had been unafraid to stand in the bright sunlight. Her skin was dry now and pleating around her eyes and ​mouth. In another year or so it would be necessary to have her face skinned. Thank goodness, there were scientists who had discovered new skins under old, and who were giving women back their precious youth. If they could only give them back the indomitable and courageous spirit of youth, too.

During the making of this picture, Minnie was thrown into a panic as she watched the drain on her money. It seemed endless. For the first time she chafed under the many useless and trying delays, which cost so much. She became conscious of the clock. Tick-tock—tick-tock . . . and there the com pany stood around, using any excuse to idle the time away. Tick-tock, tick-tock. Why so many extravagant expenditures, and so much prodigal waste that could be avoided, she pleaded with Binns, who had accepted her offer as manager only to help her. When she was not on the stage, she spent her time in his office checking over the voucher slips, asking with persistent irritation, "Is it necessary to spend all this for a day's trip to the mountain location? Is it necessary to put such a high-priced actor in this or that part? And couldn't we cut out some of the scenes, or not have a hundred people in the street set, so many extras at so much a head?"

Binns warned her that if they cut corners too close, the production would suffer: she was making a mistake to weaken her support. But the thousands already spent assumed such terrifying proportions, that she lost all intelligent judgment, and made unwise economical moves which proved later to be ugly, sharp-edged boomerangs.

At night she tossed and turned in burning fever. Often she would rise, switch on the lights and pour herself a glass of whisky. Strong, biting whisky that Pete was getting from the Hollywood bootleggers. She didn't want to touch any of the cases of Gilbert's Scotch. He was so fond of it, and when it was gone it would be impossible to get the same fine brand. ​The whisky made her sleep; but in the mornings her head would pound and ache so badly not even an absinthe frappé would relieve it.

Gilbert's lack of sympathy and understanding hurt her deeply. They never saw each other during the days after he ceased having luncheon in her dressing room. In the evenings he was seldom home. For a long time she believed him when he said that he had been at the Athletic Club with the boys. Then Jimmy told her the truth: Gilbert was with Alicia Adams. Everybody in Hollywood knew it but June. Was she blind that she hadn't seen?

Minnie went to her room and closed the door. There she sat long after night had come and merged the shadows. She had reached the peak of suffering, and yet with that lying hope that keeps a semblance of life in our hearts, she wanted to believe that it was all a lie and that Gilbert still loved her.

He telephoned that he wouldn't be home for dinner; he was working that evening. She knew without getting in touch with the studio that he was lying. At eleven o'clock she called for her car, then drove to a corner near Alicia Adams's home. She walked noiselessly through the garden. As she approached the house, she heard the scuffing of dancing feet, a victrola playing a popular jazz number. The tears sprang to her eyes. "Thank heavens, it's a party," she said almost aloud. "I was afraid I'd find them alone."

Peering through the trees, she saw Gilbert's car, but her heart was beating more steadily now. The sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach had lessened. It was suddenly released when she heard the dancers laughing heartily.

A wave of tenderness swept over her. "Poor boy, I don't blame him looking for a good time away from home. I'm so up to my ears in work and worry, I guess I'm not the liveliest companion in the world." Suddenly there came over her a ​longing to see him, laughing with the others, dancing—what a perfect dancer he was—and if she could only see Alicia, she would seem less formidably attractive than the haunting memories she had of her. So she tiptoed to the window. The shades were slightly drawn. Alicia was in Gilbert's arms, and they were dancing the slow, intimate measures of a one-step. The music ceased and laughing, always laughing, Gilbert drew Alicia away from the others. Minnie heard a door slam. Then their voices suddenly exploded at her elbow! They had come onto the vine-masked veranda. Minnie thought they would surely hear the wild beating of her heart, though she knew the shadows enveloped her, and she could not be seen by them. The pulses in her ears were strumming on her drums, and for several minutes she could not hear what they were saying. Then Gilbert was speaking, and his low resonant voice rose and fell in the old familiar caress she knew so well. When she leaned stiffly forward, she saw Alicia fling herself into Gilbert's arms in a long, passionate embrace.

"Oh, my God!" Minnie cried out in a voice unfamiliar to her own ears. "Gilbert!"

They sprang apart as if a shot had been fired, and stood there defiant yet plainly terrified by Minnie who was staring at Gilbert, her starkly, wide-open eyes fixed upon him, her mouth twitching, her hands beating together. "You—you liar!" she cried out. "You cheat! And I loved you so and trusted you! And I'm working like a dog—sick, I tell you—but what do you care, you miserable, worthless bum!" Her teeth were chattering so that her words were scarcely articulate. "Oh, Gilbert, how could you when you know how I love you!"

Alicia took one step toward the door. The moonlight falling upon the brilliant sequin gown lent a splendid radiance to the skulking figure. It caught Minnie's eye. She darted toward ​her with the same direct flight that a hawk takes in his certain felling of a wild canary. "Damn you!" she screamed, as she caught her, digging her nails into Alicia's soft flesh. Her screams stopped only when her teeth sank into the struggling arms that were beating her off.

Gilbert felt himself jostled by the crowd who had rushed to the veranda at the first outcry. Maddened by his embarrassment, he struck blindly right and left, beating back the men who would interfere. Alicia's face appeared for a moment, green in the moonlight. Then Minnie's face emerged from the shadows, blood-red and distorted.

Alicia, screaming for help, fled into the house. The garden paths drummed under running feet: attracted by the screams, the curious outside world had pushed past the iron gates into the garden.

"What's happened?" they cried when Minnie stepped into the light, still jabbering incoherently, tiny bubbles of blood foaming to her chattering lips. Gilbert was dragging her by the arm toward her car as the chauffeur, recognizing her voice, drove into the garden.

"Get out of the way!" Gilbert called as they crowded around him jostling his elbow. "It's nothing!"

"What's the matter—what's the matter?" in one voice.

Gilbert opened the door of the car, and threw her in a crumpled heap onto the floor of the tonneau. He tucked her legs under her, then slammed the door. "It's nothing, I tell you—the girl's drunk too much—she's ginny—some of your lousy Hollywood bootleggers. Now are you satisfied?"

Gilbert's rage was tempered by the consciousness of his triumph that he had a good excuse to get rid of Minnie without laying himself open to criticism. His guilt in the affair never occurred to him, he was confident that Minnie, ​because she had made a public show of herself, alone would be condemned.

He whetted his anger as he drove home, and during the hour that it took to pack his trunks. Quite often he stopped at Minnie's door. No sounds other than the heavy breathing of the Pekinese dog, the intermittent chimes of the clock. She was there because he saw her cape in the lower hallway. She could be asleep or dead, for all he cared.

Minnie was standing there close to his door. That hatred which is so allied to love seemed to have frozen her very heart. She listened to the mechanical business of packing, followed his gestures, saw his face before her as clearly as if there was no wall between them. There came moments of intense relief when she thought, "I'm glad to get rid of him, he's brought me nothing but unhappiness. I despise him. . . ." But always creeping back came memories of the ecstasy she had found in his caresses, her pride in his good looks, the stunning broad shoulders, how well he dressed, how charming and tender he could be when they were drawn together by their mutual desires, and how empty a future if love were to be taken from her, especially at a time like this when her success seemed to be on the wane. Gilbert was her husband, and he would always have to provide for her, he couldn't desert her at a time like this. . . . Why did she find herself saying over and over again "at a time like this. . . ?" She was in no dire predicament—this picture she was making would put her right back where she had been, once more the biggest star in the business, and Gilbert would come crawling back to her. So she mustn't cry, she mustn't cry, and let her face get all swollen, because the wrinkles were milestones, and she must look young and beautiful if she wanted to win back her public—and Gilbert—no, she must not lose her head at a crucial time like this!

​Gilbert pretended to be so occupied with the strapping of his suitcases, that he wasn't aware of her entrance until her voice, dull in its attempt to appear calm, was saying, "We'd be making a terrible mistake to part like this, Gilbert. Don't go away tonight, let's not make any hasty decision."

He wheeled around and faced her, his narrowed eyes sweeping her scornfully. "Oh, we'd be making a terrible mistake—what do you mean—we? You've made the last God-awful mistake, and I wouldn't forgive you if you crawled on your knees from here to Calvary."

"Don't talk like that, Gilbert, it's blasphemous."

A foul oath fell from his lips.

"Don't look at me—as—as if you hated me. Oh, Gilbert!"

The moment he turned his back, all her resolves to control her emotions were forgotten, her passionate love for him wrought a havoc in her heart, terror of losing him stayed all reason—sobbing, she flung herself upon him, locking her arms around his waist, her tears gushing down the pale gray suit, falling upon his hands as they tore at hers for release.

"For God's sake, Gilbert, have pity upon me! I'll die if you leave me at a time like this!"

He was striking at her clenched hands. "Let me go, or I'll break every damn bone in your body!"

"Listen to me, Gilbert. Don't scream so, the servants will hear you. I'm sorry for what I did tonight, and yet you're to blame for it. You drove me almost crazy when I saw her in your arms. And I've always been such a good wife to you."

"Oh, listen to her!" And his laughter was bitter denunciation. "Good wife—you've got your nerve to pull anything like that on me, when I caught you and Hal Deane holding hands on our wedding night! How do I know what you've been getting away with since then?"

​"As God is my judge, you're the only man I've ever loved."

He knew his mocking laughter cut deepest. "I suppose you said the same thing to your first husband when you kicked him out—and all your lovers since then."

She unlocked her hands and reeled back. When she stumbled against a chair his cane fell to the floor with a light clatter. Slowly Minnie leaned down, picked it up, and before Gilbert could sidestep it whistled through the air and fell upon him with a stinging, glancing blow. Then his fist shot out . . . and she found herself groping through engulfing darkness, the roar of a terrifying vacuum in her ears. . . . Against the chaotic, intangible sounds, the sharp, clear fall of Gilbert's footsteps on the stairs—on the steps outside—the whir of the motor on his car—the far away exchange of horns as two cars rounded the corner. He was gone—forever!

She lay there certain that death would soon relieve her, no human body could survive the pain; her semi-consciousness had not lessened the fierce, pulsing ache of her crushed cheek, the open wound that was her heart. And she was glad to die; life was a rotten, endless struggle—you never knew that you had passed all the real things by until it was too late.

Sometimes Gilbert's face loomed before her in the grotesque distortion of a nightmare. But there was another face that faded in and out of the shadows. Through the darkness she was trying to see it—could it be Billy MacNally—was it possible that he had suffered even as she was suffering?—Oh, no, nobody had ever been so wracked with pain. Gilbert had beaten her, and she had known only shame and humiliation—not ecstasy at such brutal possession as she had once dreamed of. . . . Dreamed of. . . . Why, of course, she was only dreaming. . . . Back in Schultz's boarding house. . . . It wasn't she who was beaten, but Elsie—and she was sitting on the bed listening to Elsie and saying, "Billy's the kind of a guy that ​wouldn't lay his hands on a woman. I—I guess I ain't gonna get much of a kick out o' Billy MacNally."

Telephone bells were ringing, their sharp echoes brought Minnie to sudden consciousness. She groped her way to the table. "Gilbert!" she cried out as she took the receiver off the hook.

"June, it's mama," came Mrs. Flynn's voice. "I'm sorry to wake you up, dearie, but I got good news for you."

"Good news—Oh, what good news?"

"The baby's come—nine pounds! It's a boy, Minnie. Net had a hard time, but she's doin' grand. Run over the first thing in the morning, dear. I'm all wore out, so you telegraph Al for me. You know how I hate to figure out telegrams. He's playing Kansas City this week."

"All right, mama—tell Net I'm glad it's over with. I've got to hang up,—I—my head's aching something fierce."

"You ain't been drinkin' again?"

"No, mama, don't worry."

"I do, dearie."

"Ssh—mama, I'm awfully tired. I must get back into bed."

If only Minnie could have cried!