By invitation of my puzzle partner, Mr. Giovanni Leone paid us a visit at eleven o’clock. In Hollywood, Mr. Leone was to shoes what Miss Marjorie Merrimen was to dresses and accessories. I protested that I had mostly worn slippers, which accommodated my unusual feet well enough. Loretta insisted that slippers would not do. “We’re a walking family, honey. You’ll be taking long walks on the beach with us, long walks in parks. We’ll be going to San Marino from time to time to walk the Huntington estate. Henry Huntington, a dear man, died three years ago, but he left an amazing legacy. Henry was book crazy, art crazy, and simply mad about elaborate gardens. The estate is six hundred acres, and half of it is magnificently landscaped. We sometimes walk around and around there for hours.”
Mr. Leone didn’t merely sell shoes. He and his crew of artisans crafted them to order. All the most stylish people—women and men—wore them. Loretta insisted that I must relent and at once get on with having my feet measured. Mr. Leone’s time was valuable, she said; six pairs of his shoes,suitable for a variety of occasions and activities, would cost us as much as a Ford Model A Victoria. I started to react, but the slightest curve at the right corner of Loretta’s mouth and a certain twinkle in Mr. Leone’s large brown eyes revealed that she was ribbing me.
I said, “If I had been making such shoes for years, I would by now have retired to a villa in Italy.”
Mr. Leone smiled. “When these six pairs are delivered, I will do just that.”
His voice was soft, his manner as gentle as that of a clergyman whose faith was genuine. No doubt Loretta had prepared him for what he would see when I removed my socks and slippers. However, I was touched by the matter-of-fact way he proceeded to take measurements while putting me at ease by telling sweet, amusing stories about some of the celebrities who wore his shoes. He made me feel almost as if my feet were not merely unremarkable but were also fair enough to grace a pair of glass slippers and attract the attention of a prince. By the time he insisted on putting my socks on for me and helping me into my slippers, his tenderness had brought me close to tears. I did not, however, want to become a Weepy Wanda, sobbing into my hanky every ten minutes until it shrank to the size of a postage stamp, so I counseled my heart to behave itself.
To this point in my narrative, I might have left the impression that my three-day journey from life as an enslaved freak to that of the ward of a prominent family in the film business was as smooth and joyful as what any bird might feel when taking flight from a tree branch into the heights of the sky. In fact, though a profound gladness was the greater part of it, I was often also in emotional turmoil—afraid that my ascent would suddenly become a fall, abashed by the upper-class splendor for which I was so unsuited, confused by the manners, traditions, and rules of this new world. Looking back, I can see that it was neither the wealth of my new guardians nor the prospect of freedom, not eventhe love with which they embraced me, that gave me the pluck and resolution to make my way forward and become what they believed I could become. More than anything else, it was thekindnesswith which they showered me, kindness without pity, that encouraged me always onward, and not just their kindness but also that of people like Miss Merrimen and Mr. Leone and so many others who were their friends. The times are mean and meaner every day, and the colony of those who make motion pictures is no less mean than the larger world it entertains, perhaps more so. Somehow, by some quality that Loretta and Franklin possessed, some quality that included probity and integrity and compassion but was not properly described by those words alone, by some quality that surpassed my understanding at that time, they had gathered around them a community of like souls, the kinder people in an otherwise mean and indifferent cosmos.
They preferred that I call them Father and Mother, but I could not. My saviors would forever be Franklin and Loretta to me, nothing less. I would have felt most comfortable using the honorifics “sir” and “ma’am,” but they forbade me from doing so. I thought of myself not as one of the family but as their devoted friend. Although I was granted many privileges, I sought none. I was astonished to have been rescued, to be valued. I challenged myself to bethefriend of the family who would never fail them.
That was the moment I knew I must soon begin to write about them and all they did for me. My material would be far different from the cruelty, narcissism, and carelessness of Tom and Daisy Buchanan and their friends that Nick Carraway had chronicled inThe Great Gatsby. Even if the Fairchilds and their kind had been, underneath the glamor, a “rotten crowd” to equal the Buchanans and their ilk, I did not possess Nick’s keen nose for moral negligence of all degrees. My seventeen years had relentlessly exposed me to the supreme depravityof Captain and his kind, which I imagined had desensitized me to the scent of lesser wickedness.
That night before we made the short trip to Bramley Hall, in the privacy of my own room in the bungalow, where I could not be heard, I cried softly. The cause was not sadness, but quite the opposite. I indulged myself for a short time and then slept. I didn’t dream of Captain, and I hoped I never would again.
Twelve
Tuesday morning, Franklin returned to the Beverly Hills Hotel to have breakfast with Loretta and me before driving us home. He was wearing a blue sport coat with a patterned display handkerchief, a white shirt with an open collar, gray flannel slacks, and black loafers by Giovanni Leone. He looked handsome. He appeared relaxed, too, as though preparing the children and the estate staff for my arrival had been not in the least stressful, though I was sure it must have been.
Marjorie Hollingsworth Merrimen and a valued associate named Selma Skolimowski arrived with the first tranche of my new wardrobe. Everything was lovely. I was more excited than I expected to be, and for the first time in my life, I dressed myself with pleasure. I had never imagined that undergarments could be so comfortable or have such high yet demure style, while covering even my difficult arms. After some dithering, I chose a sapphire-blue robe with a white Peter Pan collar, two-inch white cuffs, and a one-inch white-ribbon hem. Loretta and Franklin said I looked beautiful, but of course they would, and I knew I wasn’t. I must admit, however, that I certainly felt presentable.
On the sunny September afternoon in 1930, when Franklin piloted the yellow Cadillac sedan through the estate gate and parked at theapex of the palm-lined circular driveway, Bramley Hall loomed as monumental as a palace. A chill of inadequacy set me trembling.
Loretta turned in the front passenger seat and looked back at me. “This belongs to you now, dear. All of it belongs to you as much as it belongs to anyone.”
Although she and Franklin had been unfailingly compassionate and kind during the few days I had known them, her glorious promise was so extraordinary that I could not help but wonder if it might be insincere. All the good they had done for me—could it have been a deceitful scheme to lure me into a new kind of servitude even worse than I had known heretofore? No. Impossible. To think as much was to be wickedly ungrateful. My doubt arose from my conviction, instilled in me by others since early childhood, that I was unworthy of a life like those that most people enjoyed. In spite of Bramley Hall’s grandness and beauty, I suddenly worried that its walls encompassed a truth yet hidden from me, a dark and terrible secret.
Franklin put down his window and spoke to someone through the call box. As the halves of the immense gate began to swing inward and as we proceeded houseward on the driveway flanked by colonnades of Phoenix palms, Loretta explained that, at her husband’s insistence, the estate was named in honor of Charles and Eunice Bramley, her deceased parents. I knew there must be a story behind the naming, but I failed to ask because I was awestruck at the sight of the mansion.
The long driveway led under a columned portico that shaded the main entrance. The house was clad in limestone, but the carved features were what most impressed and intimidated me, not least of all two second-floor balconies. A three-part window bay served each, and the majestic surround included a carved cartouche and scrolls. They were the kind of balconies on which a king or a pope would appear to wave at crowds gathered below.
As he parked under the roof of the portico, Franklin said the residence had been built and the grounds fully landscaped in just a year and a half; in those days city regulations were minimal. As I marveled at everything I saw, my breath repeatedly catching in my throat, Loretta turned in the front passenger seat and looked at me and said, “This belongs to you now, dear. All of it belongs to you as much as it belongs to anyone.”
Just then a man in a black suit, white shirt, and black tie opened her door. He said, “Welcome home, Mrs. Fairchild.”
She took the hand he offered. “Thank you, Julian, so good to see you.” He was the majordomo, Julian Symington, whom she’d told me about.He’s a doll,Loretta had said,although old-fashioned and more formal than I wish he would be. I’ve told him to call us Loretta and Franklin, but if he ever heard those names fall from his lips, he would probably have a breakdown. As you’re not yet twenty-one, he’ll feel comfortable using your first name.
Julian was distinguished, fiftysomething, with curly white hair that would have been curlier if his barber hadn’t used straightening cream, heat, and stern discipline to control it. Everyone seemed to know about these efforts, for every two weeks he kept an appointment with the barber and returned home with almost straight hair that, day by day, rebelled against what had been done to it, until it was almost as curly as if he had gone to a beauty parlor to have a permanent wave. Mr. Symington felt that aggressively curly hair was inappropriate for a manager of a great house and its staff.
As Loretta set foot on the pavement and Franklin came around the front of the sedan, Mr. Symington opened my door and offered his hand. “Miss Alida, I am pleased to meet you and to welcome you to Bramley Hall. I hope you will be happy here. You must feel free to call on me for anything you might need.”
After years of dressing like a monk, I felt that I was modestly becoming in my new clothes—until I got out of the car, whereupon I grew self-conscious. Surely anyone could see it was not befitting of me to assume I belonged in such a grand place, among respectable people. My outfit must appear to be an ill-conceived costume, and Mr. Symington no doubt thought I was masquerading as a social equal of Loretta and Franklin in an effort to better my position. I was determined to press on nonetheless, in hope I might win his trust in time, but my voice had a tremor when I replied. “I’ve heard such lovely things about you, Mr. Symington. I couldn’t be anything other than happy to be here. Why, it seems like one step beyond paradise.”
Mr. Symington unloaded the luggage as Franklin and Loretta escorted me up three steps, across a shallow terrace, and through the front door into the foyer. The space might better have been called a “reception hall.” In the event of a party, fifty people could have gathered there comfortably to have a first drink and let anticipation build for the occasion before moving on to the main venue. The floor was overall a cream-colored marble, though more colorful stones were inlaid to form a patterned border and central medallion. The walls were paneled in select mahogany of a rich red-brown hue. At the far end, two curved staircases, separated as are the halves of a wishbone, rose to a second-floor gallery.
Loretta and Franklin intended to take me on a tour of the house and grounds, but first they led me into the library, where the staff that served under Mr. Symington waited to meet me. The size of the room and its thousands of volumes excited me more than anything else had to this point. I turned in a circle, enraptured. The chamber offered five seating areas—armchairs, divans, reading lamps of elegant design and proportions. Before I could explore the shelves, there were five people to meet. They were lined up like soldiers in a reviewing line, obviously curious and all but one of them smiling.
They had not been told anything regarding the fearsome truth of me that my unconventional clothing concealed. The previous day, Franklin sat with the staff to explain that my mother had been an old friend from his and Loretta’s school days. According to the script, she’d recently passed away, with no living relative to take custody of her only child. If my differences were extreme, I was fortunate to have five senses, a good mind, and mobility. He said that I was so sensitive about the tragic legacy of my conception that I should never be asked about it and no effort should be made to catch a glimpse of what Nature had made me endure, which would be an offense that could get even the most valued of them fired. There is some irony in that instruction, considering that over the years, I had been exhibited nearly naked before thousands of oglers for whom I was the most fascinating zoo animal or creature from a nightmare that they had ever seen.
The groundskeeper, Mr. Wilhelm Reinhardt, was the first to step forward. He was perhaps forty, deeply tanned, with a face that, had he been an actor, would have gotten him roles as a kindly priest and a warmhearted country doctor. He oversaw a gardening crew of five men provided two days a week by an outside service. Unmarried and childless, he worked six days a week out of love for the gardens. He welcomed me sweetly and invited my suggestions as to new flowers and plants I would like to see.
Next came the head housekeeper, Mrs. Victoria Symington, wife of the majordomo. She wore a calf-length dress the blue of robin’s eggs and a white apron over it, as did the three younger women who were housemaids answerable to her. She seemed less formal than her husband, rosy-cheeked and quick to smile. She said, “Except for what the cook wants, I do all the shopping. I only need to know what you need, and it will be gotten. You’re going to love it here, child, and we’re going to love having you. If my mister seems a littlest bit forbidding,please know he isn’t. At heart, my Julian is as threatening as buttered toast and a warm mug of cocoa.”
The first of the three maids, Lynette, was a petite brunette in her thirties, as cute as the wonderful playwright Anita Loos, with such large and compelling eyes that I wondered why she hadn’t become the wife of a rich man and the mother of a bevy of children as sweet to look at as she herself. Next to Lynette stood Harmony, a tall and freckled redhead who, though attractive, appeared awkwardly assembled and so full of energy that she could barely hold still. She welcomed me as warmly as Lynette had done, but she grinned broadly, as if the addition of a new member to the Fairchild family promised excitement and adventure. Beside Harmony, Anna May produced a smile as fleeting as the shadow of a bird on the surface of a pond. She was a pretty but solemn blonde. Her greeting was more reserved than those of the others, but I saw no animosity in it. In fact, I suspected that she was preoccupied with troubles in her personal life so entangling that she could not foresee a way to extract herself from them. My long experience of anxiety had trained me to recognize it in others, and I had become somewhat adept at imagining the cause. In her case, I doubted that the reason was anything other than a man; in this I would be proved prescient.
The cook, Luigi Lattuada, would be introduced to me later. He was currently making the rounds of his favorite markets in a panel truck, acquiring food for the weekend. He traveled with three large ice chests specially designed to keep a variety of goods chilled and fresh without freezing them or diminishing their quality with cold burn. “Everyone here adores Luigi,” Mrs. Symington told me, and Mr. Reinhardt said, “He will frighten you at first, but don’t judge him on appearances,” and Harmony said, “From time to time, he’ll scare you even after you know him well and understand what a sweetheart he is, but he’s ever so fun, I swear he is, but never play cards with him.” Thus I was primedto anticipate an encounter with perhaps the most colorful character on the staff of Bramley Hall.
