Secondly, her morning hours at Melanie’s were finally being spent actually cleaning—life with an almost-five-year-old was messy—as well as helping Melanie keep Nicky entertained and happy. There’d been no word from Alex, not even a phone call tocheck in and make sure his son was doing all right. The little boy was adjusting fairly well to his new surroundings and caregivers as far as Eva could tell, though there’d been a tantrum or two and severalI want my daddybreakdowns.
She supposed that was to be expected.
Those first few fits had thrown Melanie for a loop but she seemed to have adapted as well, though she didn’t want anyone to know, except for June, that Nicky was there. Especially not Carson. When he’d called a few days after Nicky had been left with Melanie, she’d hand motioned for Eva to take him into the backyard so that Carson wouldn’t hear Nicky laugh or yell or maybe throw something. Eva wasn’t exactly sure of the reason for the secrecy other than maybe Melanie had an image to keep up when it came to Carson, and mothering a little boy wasn’t part of it.
Or perhaps it was because Carson was paying her grocery bill, and now there was another mouth to feed?
Eva had heard Melanie say to Irving when he stopped by with her mail that Carson seemed to be growing tired of financially supporting her. The conversation with the man from Washington the previous week hadn’t resulted in additional scrutiny, most likely because Melanie hadn’t offered any helpful information. What Carson had wanted and needed her to do she had apparently dutifully done. Eva overheard Melanie tell her agent that Carson wouldn’t speculate when he’d be back in California and that he had said maybe she needed to think about going home to Nebraska after the first of the year.
“But I’m not going,” Melanie had said, her voice firm.
And Irving had said if Carson stopped paying the rent on the Gilberts’ house, she might just have to. She would need money if she wanted to stay in California. No production company he worked with wanted to hire a tainted star, not even that one advertisingcompany for whom she had once done a silly toothpaste commercial. He also didn’t want her further destroying her résumé by taking substandard bookings should he even be able to get one for her.
Melanie’s going home to Nebraska would take care of Eva’s problem, to be sure, but not in a good way for Melanie.
Lastly, it was becoming increasingly bizarre to pretend to Melanie that Elwood was leaving his clothes and mail lying around, smoking his pipe, and—judging by his empty plate in the sink—enjoying the meals Eva was making.
“Do you know how his screenplay is going?” Melanie asked one morning. “I know he’s writing one.”
Eva, who’d initially looked up from scraping breakfast bowls, dropped her gaze back to the sudsy water in the sink. Melanie clearly had no idea June pretty much did all of Elwood’s writing. “I guess it’s going fine.”
June was now tapping away alongside Eva at a second typewriter in Elwood’s office in the afternoons rather than spending hours prone on the sofa with the heating pad. The current screenplay was due to the studio at the end of the year, June had said, and she couldn’t be late with it.
It seemed to Eva, however, that June was having trouble with the writing, especially now that a time limit had been imposed on her concerning Elwood. June only had until the day after Christmas before Max would expect to speak to her brother-in-law face-to-face. A week had already passed, and Eva could tell June was worried about that looming deadline, too. She would often stop typing and just stare at the keys, as if willing for them to start moving again on their own. Sometimes June would get up from her chair, excuse herself, and head to Elwood’s bedroom for a few minutes. Eva would pause in her own typing at these times, for as long as she dared, to listen for the sound of voices coming from theroom down the hall. But she was too far away from that closed door. She never heard anything.
Eva supposed it wasn’t just the ticking clock that was impeding June’s progress on the script. It was also what would happen when the ticking stopped. If Elwood was indeed in the house, it could get ugly. Difficult. Men in white coats coming to the house and carting him away, perhaps. If he wasn’t, June would have to come clean as to where he had gone.
Knowing everything was surely about to radically change was perhaps why June had taken to offering random comments about Elwood a couple times a day, while they were typing and even when they weren’t, as if replying to a question Eva had asked about him.
As she did just then, while Eva was rinsing out June’s percolator.
June was sitting at the kitchen table with stacks of typed script and a red pen, making marks and notations on the margins as she read the pages.
“You know, there’s a name for what Elwood has,” June offered from out of nowhere. “It has a name.”
“Pardon?” Eva said. The two of them were expecting Melanie and Nicky any minute so that Melanie could go into Santa Monica to buy some Christmas presents for her nephew. The little boy was likely going to have nothing if she didn’t. Eva had offered her and June’s help with minding Nicky while she went, and June had been amenable. Eva wanted the kitchen cleaned up before they came.
“The doctor that came to the house when Elwood first refused to leave it said there was a term for that kind of reaction to a trauma. Agoraphobia.”
“Agora—what?”
“Agoraphobia. That’s what doctors say a person has if they can’t step outside their own house,” June said. “We didn’t know he hadit those first few weeks after we moved in to take care of him. He was so banged up and so despondent over Ruthie’s death, we didn’t see it. But after six weeks, when he refused to get into the car to have the cast on his leg removed, we knew we had a problem.”
“So…did Elwood say why he wouldn’t get in the car?” Eva asked, wondering if June actually wanted to continue the conversation.
She apparently did.
“He just said he wasn’t leaving the house,” June replied. “And he said it just like that. ‘I’m not leaving the house.’ As in, ever. Frank asked for a leave of absence from the studio but they wouldn’t give it to him. That’s when I offered to be the one to stay with Elwood until he got over it. I didn’t get a leave of absence, either, but I didn’t care. By then I really didn’t like my job anymore.”
“I thought you did,” Eva said, remembering June telling her that she loved working in the film editing department and watching what fell to the floor as not-the-movie and seeing what was kept, and what an amazing thing it was to instinctively know what the movie needed for the audience to love the story and what it did not.
“I got to do a lot of the editing during the war years when most of the men were gone, and it was hard to go back to being an assistant who never touched the footage except to sweep up what had been cut out. Anyway, I was a better cook than Frank and it made sense for me to stay at home with Elwood and care for him. And I wanted to do it.”
“So may I ask…is that when it started?” Eva asked gently, leaving the dish towel she had in her hands on the countertop and taking a seat across from June at the table. “I mean, is that when you started to have deeper feelings for Elwood?”
June smiled weakly. “Ah, yes, I was pretty sure you’d figured thatout. I’m surprised you’re not appalled that I was in love with my husband’s brother.”
“It’s hard to stop loving someone,” Eva said. “Especially if you don’t want to stop. And you were caring for Elwood, doing so much for him. And he needed you.”
