and hours. All along the Mint Canyon Highway. She used to make me wear the same dresses as my sisters. Only mine were real short so I would still look like a baby. And she put my hair in ringlets. Twelve years old and I looked like somebody's doll.'
The Kid shifted in the chair, fuming.
'The day we finally left Lancaster, I leaned out of the car, and I gave Muggsie a photograph. Just some photograph of me, and I wrote something on it for Muggsie. And you know what? My mother got mad at me. She said I shouldn't give away a professional photograph like it was a snapshot. To my best friend. And there was Daddy, waiting left behind, trying to smile, trying to look like we were still a family. And we drove away and left him behind.'
Okay, okay, so your mother was human. Millie thought of her own teenage boys. They all go through this phase. It isn't pretty. They all go through this phase of hating their poor old parents. Who are only doing the best they can.
'She was the real Wicked Witch of the West,' said the Kid.
'She probably just wanted the best for you,' suggested Millie.
'She thought that whatever she wanted was the best for us.'
Well, that was probably true. Millie was keeping an open mind. Some of what the Kid was telling her was probably true, some of it probably not. Millie couldn't judge which was which and wasn't going to try. Not judging between truth and falsehood is called keeping an open mind.
'After that, Daddy followed us around like a puppy dog. We'd go to Chicago, or up North, and he'd drive all that way, just to see us. And my mother would take us farther away. She left him and took us, and he was all alone.' The voice went thin with pity. 'He was left all alone when everything went wrong, and he lost his movie house, and the town turned on him. He must have thought even we didn't love him.'
'It would have come right again,' said Millie. She knew. Boy, did she know.
'Listen, honey,' said Millie. 'I moved out here with my husband, oh, about 1927. We moved out here, and I didn't know a soul, and then our marriage broke up, and I was left with two boys. I thought it was the end of the world, but I got a job here at Metro, just as it was starting up. So everything came out right. It would have gone right for your daddy, too.'
The Kid shook her head. 'The only way it could have come out right was if he got us back. And he never would have. My mother would have stopped him. He got another movie house in Lomita. We were already calling ourselves the Garland Sisters. And so he called his movie house Garland's Theater, after us. He started calling himself Garland. Just so people would think of us as a family still.'
Either that, thought Millie, or he was cashing in. She kept it to herself.
'The night he died,' said the Kid, and her voice started to shake, 'I had to go on the radio. I had to hug old Wallace Beery and giggle and say how pleased I was to be back on his show.' The Kid spoke in a nasty, piping voice.
'I had to pretend I was oh so happy. Because they were going to announce that I had a contract with MGM, and I was supposed to pretend that it was because I had gone on his radio show, and of course it was the other way around, the whole thing was a lie. So I did my little routine and then I had to sing, and I knew Daddy was dying in the hospital, but they had a radio by his bed.'
The Kid had started to cry, and Millie didn't believe a word.
'And I had to sing this stupid stupid song. 'Zing Went the Strings of My Heart.' ' The Kid rolled her eyes at its stupidity. 'The words didn't mean anything, but I sang it for him just the same.'
The Kid's voice clogged. Millie passed her a Kleenex. Well, there go the eyes. At least I haven't done the mascara yet. If she's lying, at least she believes it herself, thought Millie.
'I don't know if he ever heard it,' the Kid said, in a voice like a rusty hinge. 'He never knew. Any of this.' The Kid made the Kleenex take in the whole of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
'When people die,' said Millie and coughed, 'the people who get left behind have lots of feelings. When my father died, I tried to put the blame for it on all sorts of things. I thought there had to be a reason for it. Sometimes there isn't. And that seems the worst thing of all, that you can lose something for no reason. And so you start to blame other people.'
'We all left him alone.'
Ah, thought Millie. Now I got it.
'Or even worse,' whispered Millie, 'we start blaming ourselves.'
The face in front of her was puffy, closed against her.
'Well, you don't need a lecture from me, I guess,' said Millie and stood up.
'I hate it here,' said the Kid. 'I don't want to be here.'
'You don't like being a movie star?' Millie didn't sound surprised. Most of them didn't, one way or another. But they hated it when it was taken away as well.
'It's okay, I guess,' said the Kid. 'I don't know.' She'd stopped crying, and merely sounded dispirited.
The way they worked this kid over. Pulled all her teeth together, put her on diets to beef her up, put her on diets to slim her down, sent her to physios for her shoulders. No wonder she feels all spun around by everybody. Even me, painting on a different face.
'A lot of people would like to be Judy Garland,' Millie reminded her.
'So would I,' said the Kid.
Millie caught a whiff of self-dramatization. Poor little movie-star stuff. Well, you are a movie star and, until you decide to quit, we both have a job to do. In about fifteen minutes. Millie examined the makeup. Still got the lips to do, and the fall. And her eyes will be all bloodshot. I don't have any eyedrops.
