June was quiet for a moment.
“The thing is,” she continued, “nobody knew how much I was changing what Elwood was creating. Even he didn’t. After Elwood would say we were finished I’d keep the script for a few more days and make all kinds of changes. Elwood never knew I was doing that. He didn’t need to know. MGM told Max that Elwood’s scripts were getting better all the time and how pleased they were he was finally coming out of his slump. It made me feel so good to know I was writing as well or better than Elwood Blankenship. Everyone was getting what they wanted.”
“Were you, though?” Eva asked. It seemed to her that the arrangement was highly unfair to June.
“In a way. Elwood was nearly Elwood again. Except for not leaving the house. And Frank died suddenly a couple of years after that, and when that happened all I had was Elwood, this house, and the writing. I loved them all. In my own way.”
“It must have been hard to lose Frank even so,” Eva said.
“Oh, it was awful. For both El and me. I know it sounds ridiculous to say it but I was faithful to Frank. I loved his brother, yes, but that didn’t mean I loved Frank any less. I felt hollowed out those first few days he was gone. Max helped me make the arrangements and drove me to the funeral since Elwood couldn’t. Max stood by my side at Frank’s graveside for the same reason.”
“And when Elwood asked you to stay on, you said yes.”
“Not exactly. He told me I didn’t need to waste the rest of my life holed up at his house when I could still have a life outside it. He still wanted my help as a writing assistant, but he’d pay me a decent hourly wage and also my gas money to come out to the house once or twice a week. He’d hire a gardener and handyman to do things Frank had been doing, and a housekeeper for the laundry and cleaning and such. He told me he was grateful for all that I had done for him, but that he wanted me to know I was free to move on.”
June looked away from Eva then, to the patio door, open to let in the unseasonably warm air.
“It was hard for me to hear those words,” June continued a moment later. “We were both so sad about losing Frank. El was devastated, too, at Frank’s passing. The last thing I wanted to do was leave Malibu, leave El. Leave the life I had here. I thought Elwood might beg me to stay. I actually wanted him to. It hurt when he didn’t.”
“But you stayed.”
“I did. El was just being El. Wise and careful. I think he knew that I was in love with him. But in telling me I was free to go, he was saying in as gentle a way as he could that his affection for me was no greater than that for a sister. And never would be.”
June blinked and two tears traveled down her cheeks.
“You are sure that’s what he meant?” Eva asked.
June shrugged and wiped her face with her sleeve. “It’s what Iheard in his words. If he’d loved me like I loved him, would he have encouraged me to leave?”
The two of them were quiet for a moment.
“In the end, I really had nowhere else to go,” June continued. “I mean, there was nowhere else I wanted to go. So I asked Elwood if I could stay just as we’d been when Frank was alive. He said, ‘Whatever you would like, June.’ He paid two set workers to move his writing room to the upstairs guest room where Frank and I had slept, and he gave me his former office by the kitchen for a bedroom.”
June turned to Eva. “The thing is, my world had shrunk to the size of Elwood’s companionship, writing for him, and making this house my home. And I was fine with that, but Frank’s death showed me how fragile it all was. I started wondering if Elwood had provided for me in his will as his last living relative and friend. I hoped he had but I didn’t know and it’s not the kind of thing you ask someone. The only thing I really wanted was this house. It had become my home and I let myself believe surely he knew this. I knew he didn’t love me like I loved him, but I thought he loved me as his sister at least, especially after all I had done for him. Given up for him.”
June paused a moment and Eva waited for her to continue.
When she did, it was as if a dark cloud had fallen across her.
“But I came across his will not too long ago when I was straightening up the top of his desk. I was just putting everything into neater piles. I didn’t mean to snoop, but I saw that one of the sets of papers was the draft of an updated will. Elwood’s will. I heard him coming down the hall from his bedroom, and I only had time to glance at it quickly. I saw all that I needed to see on the first page.”
Eva stared at June. Waited for her to tell her.
“He left everything—including this house—to Ruthie Brink’s sons.”
16
Melanie sat cross-legged with her nephew in her lap as she tied his shoelaces. He still smelled of the bath he’d had the night before and the dish soap she’d used to create bubbles that he insisted on having.
Had it been safe to plunk a kid down in a tubful of Joy dish detergent soap bubbles? She didn’t know. But he hadn’t broken out with hives or boils or been transformed into a cup and saucer. It surely wasn’t the worst thing she’d ever done, but still, that was one more thing she needed to get when she went into Santa Monica: real bubble bath.
She added it to the list she’d made, which already consisted of presents for Nicky to open on Christmas, ketchup, Frosted Flakes, grape jelly, Ovaltine, and a tin of Band-Aids and Mercurochrome. Carson hadn’t sent her any of what he called “fun” money that month. He’d paid the rent and kept up with the grocery tab, but he hadn’t sent anything extra like he had in October and November.
She detested, a little more every day, that she needed him to. She’d be making these purchases today with what she had left fromlast month’s generosity and perhaps some of her own money from her dwindling savings account.
Melanie could feel Carson distancing himself from her now that Washington had called her and yet hadn’t followed up with contacting him. He hadn’t said it outright but she wondered if he felt Melanie’s continued silence wasn’t something he had to pay for anymore. She’d proven she wasn’t going to be a patsy for the Committee like others had been—others who were now pariahs in Hollywood. She’d made it clear to him she wanted her career returned to what it had been before the blacklist, with her character and fidelity to her coworkers intact.
He’d suggested she return to Nebraska to wait out the HUAC and the studios.
