“But you don’t have to live like I am living. You’re working. You’re acting. And you’re rich.”
“I got lucky, Mel. You know that. If I didn’t have a good friend as the director of this play, I probably wouldn’t have a job right now, either.”
Tears of frustration had sprung to her eyes, and she blinkedthem back. “That man told me it’s likely the committee will subpoena me to testify, Carson.”
“I’m sure he said that just to scare you.”
“You don’t know that! They have summoned others.”
“Hey. Let’s not jump ahead of ourselves, doll. Okay?”
“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life on the blacklist!” Her voice sounded panicked in her ears. “I won’t.”
“You won’t have to,” he said calmly. “I promise.”
Melanie wanted so very much to believe him. It had taken her five years of fruitless auditions and disappointing callbacks and seconds-long walk-ons in low-budget films to finally be asked to screen-test for a major film for a major studio. It was, in fact, Carson who had seen her inThe Seven Year Itch—in which she spoke one line, just the one—and insisted she be tested for the role of his love interest in his next film,This Side of Tomorrow. She’d excitedly called her parents in Omaha when she was chosen for the part, and then had to assure them repeatedly she wasn’t going to have to take her clothes off and that her looks weren’t the reason she got the role. Before she’d hung up she told them MGM was paying her for one film as much as her mother made in an entire year teaching ungrateful fifth graders. She quit her day job at the glove counter at The May Company the very next day and sent her parents an extravagant box of French chocolates a week later for their wedding anniversary.
In the weeks before the premiere ofThis Side of Tomorrowand during its run in the theaters and even afterward, MGM all but insisted Carson and Melanie be seen together. The studio heads were convinced that not only was the film going to be a hit but that there was a chemistry between Melanie and Carson they were relying on for future films. This confidence, which Melanie feltevery time she was on the sound stage or on location, was exhilarating.
If that wasn’t wonderful enough, the months on the set and on Carson’s arm, and even in his bed, had been nothing short of magical.
She’d found measures of happiness after that one disastrous relationship with a talent scout whose only aim had been to get her naked. But none of the men she’d dated since had the charm or the class—or the money—that Carson did. None of them made her feel desired like he did. When the movie premiered and Carson ushered her down the red carpet like she was the headlining star rather than him, she’d never felt so valued.
Her parents had in fact changed their tune when the film was released and their Omaha friends and neighbors began raving to them about it. Her parents had gone to see the film—twice, like many people had—and they admitted how wonderful it was to see Melanie’s name on the big screen like that even though Kolander was her real last name, not Cole, and how convincingly she had played her part, and how very dead she looked in that crashed car. It was scary how real it looked.
Melanie had thanked them. Said she was glad they enjoyed the movie enough to see it twice. Told them the makeup people were exceptionally good at making someone look lifeless.
When Melanie had hung up with her parents, she realized with a start that she finally had everything she wanted. And more. After so many long, hard years of working and hoping and yearning, she had it all.
She would later think of that shining moment in her life as a beautiful but fragile dream, one capable of being torn in two with just a word.
Because it had been. With just a word.
Blacklist.
“Let’s talk about something else,” Carson said now, so gently, so persuasively. “Tell me what you’re wearing. Or not wearing.”
Ten minutes after they’d hung up, Melanie realized Carson hadn’t answered her question.
She’d asked him if he was a communist and he’d dodged it.
6
Melanie awoke in the middle of the night and lay in the dark for a long time before sitting up in bed and reaching for a cigarette.
Her words to Carson from their conversation hours earlier echoed in her head, over and over.
I don’t want to spend the rest of my life on the blacklist!
And his reply back to her.You won’t have to. I promise.
They were the same words that had kept her from falling asleep after she’d hung up the phone and were now keeping her awake because the truth was Carson could not promise such a thing. The blacklist was out of his hands. He had no control over it. None of them did. And it had already been around a long time.
She was still in high school when the list first materialized. Her father announced at dinner one night that the names of ten Hollywood writers and directors were now on a do-not-hire list. They were the same ten men who’d refused a congressional request to testify before the House’s Un-American Activities Committee—a committee formed when Melanie was even younger, just seven, inresponse to the ballooning dread that America had been infiltrated by communists who wanted to turn the Land of the Free into a Soviet state.
But Melanie Kolander, as she was known then, wasn’t paying a great deal of attention to the so-called Cold War. Indeed, her idea of the war against cold—beginning every October in Nebraska and lasting through Easter—was the battle to stay warm and fashionable until the snow melted and she could wear pretty shoes again. Her schoolteacher parents, Wynona and Herb, felt knowledge of current events was important, however, and many evenings they tried to engage Melanie and her older brother, Alex, in dinner conversations about world affairs.
Especially as they related to the evil empire that was the Soviet Union.
