Mind you, Millie Haugaard, who are you calling ugly? Tall, big hips, thin shoulders. Nice tan and nice hair, but thirty-seven is no spring chicken. They say they keep the Kid on some kind of diet. Seems to work. Wish they'd tell me. Millie could feel weight around her midriff move as she walked. Well, there's no way I could get any more exercise. There just isn't any time. She decided to check out her own makeup before doing the Kid's and swept into the powder room. Better get it all over with. It's a long day till lunchtime.
Millie got back to the trailer and waited outside it. Kid was late again. She'd be in, all breathless and apologetic. Millie watched as the lights were adjusted. One patch lighting up, then going dark, gels and overlays being tried. It's like being in a stage show, she thought. Only you constantly set up, hang around, and no one ever gets to act.
Only sometimes they do act up.
Millie looked at her watch. Six forty-five. It's cutting it fine, Kid, starting this late anyway. Too late, you hold people up.
Then she saw her, the Kid, in a plain cloth coat, hugging herself, looking at the floor as she walked. She walked head bowed as if her shoes were the most interesting things in the place. That, thought Millie, is one unhappy girl. Millie stood up, put out her cigarette and said, 'Hiya, Kid.'
'Hiya, Ma.'
Kid called her Ma.
'Anything wrong, honey?'
The Kid was wrestling with the key to her trailer. 'Naw,' said the Kid in a downward-turning drawl. She sighed and stepped inside and turned on the lights and slumped into her makeup chair.
'You sound like it,' said Millie, fetching the foundation among the lined-up tubes and tins. Panchro No. 23.
'I don't sleep, Ma,' said the Kid, her voice and her face somehow puffy.
'Should go to bed earlier then.' Briskly, Millie applied the greasepaint in short dabs over the face and neck.
'I do,' the Kid whispered.
Kid looked forty. The Hollywood life. At least you're not drinking. Yet. I'd smell it on your breath. Actors smell like skunks in the morning. Millie looked at the Kid's face in the mirror. Always was a funny face. Looked pinched and plump at the same time. Gonna have to put some white stick over those bags. Good thing I brought some along case I had to tone the colors down. Usually only have to use it on someone older.
Millie poured some water over her fingers and began to spread the paint thinly, perfectly. It had to be perfect.
'I went back to Lancaster yesterday,' said the Kid, like it was some kind of confession.
'Oh yeah?' Millie filled in the pores. The slightest little thing, and it would show up.
Lancaster?
'That's way out in the desert somewhere,' said Millie.
'Yup.'
'Why'd you go there?' Millie leaned over to get the bit over the ear right.
'It's where I'm from. Went to see an old friend of mine. I always called her Muggsie.' The Kid smiled finally, just a wisp of a smile, kind of twisted. 'Got there, suddenly found I couldn't remember her real name. Just Muggsie.'
'So how was she?' Millie asked.
'Oh. Just normal. She's a couple of years older than me. So she's about eighteen now. Going to get married. It was strange.'
'Thought you were supposed to be from Grand Rapids.'
Another studio lie?
'Well, I am in a way. We lived there until I was two. Then we upped stakes and moved to a dump like Lancaster because my mother wanted to be near Los Angeles so's we could all become stars.' The Kid sounded sarcastic. 'Daddy just wanted to run a movie house and keep us all together. Lancaster was the only place he could find.'
That face is going to have to have some tone put into it. Millie placed a little jab of darker paint on each cheek. Fresh-faced country kid, so get a nice glow in the cheeks, without it looking like rouge.
'Thought you spent your whole life touring with your sisters,' said Millie, selecting the right jar from the counter.
The Kid laughed. 'No. You can't do that, Millie. You've got to go to school.'
'Guess so,' said Millie, chuckling too. Wide streak of something down-to-earth in the Kid.
'I mean everybody thinks we were some big vaudeville family or something. I'll tell you what we did. We sang in my daddy's movie house between shows. All of us. Mom played piano; Janie, Jinny, me, we just sang. The only place we were stars was in Lancaster. My daddy was the biggest star of all. He used to sing all the time.' The Kid was staring through to the other side of the mirror, remembering.
'What's your daddy do now?' asked Millie. Eyes next. The eyes were the most important thing in the makeup.
'He died,' the Kid said.
'Oh, honey, I'm sorry, I didn't know,' said Millie.
