Bird Read online

  My question fell into the air. It gave me a fright. I hadn’t realised I was thinking out loud.

  ‘Mama?’ I’d asked. ‘What happened to you?’

  Eleanor

  Holy flowers floating in the air, were all these tired faces

  in the dawn of Jazz America

  ‘Do you want the usual?’

  ‘Yes,’ Anna nodded.

  ‘With everything?’

  ‘Yes, with everything.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘A chocolate milkshake, please, June.’

  June turned to me. ‘Make that two milkshakes,’ I said.

  ‘Actually, I have not finished,’ Anna interrupted. ‘I would like a, how you say it, side serve? Yes, a side serve of fries. And a salad.’

  ‘Ranch, mayonnaise or blue cheese?’

  ‘Blue cheese. And a piece of apple pie.’

  ‘Anna!’ I couldn’t help myself; if Mom saw me eat like that she’d have me shot. But Anna ignored me. Anna always ignored what she didn’t like.

  ‘Cream or ice-cream?’

  ‘Ice-cream, thank you.’

  ‘That’s all, dear?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, that is e-nough for now.’

  I first met Anna in dance class. When the teacher asked us why we were there, Anna and I both said the same thing: we wanted to be in musicals. She wasn’t a great dancer but her looks more than made up for it. The thing about Anna was that once you saw her you could never forget her. She was the kind of girl who had some special quality, a quality that meant when she stepped out of a car, or into a club, or in front of a camera, your eyes were drawn to her.

  She was beautiful, which helped. So beautiful it was a burden of sorts. Her eyelids were heavy, her lashes long and dark, her lips full; her face was the shape of a heart framed by golden blonde curls. As for her breasts well…it’s not polite to say, but even back then they were what Miriam, my mom, would call ‘a good asset’. In fact she said that to Anna once and Anna laughed in that way she had: with a kind of abandon that made you worry for her. She looked like Hedy Lamarr, but blonder, or Marlene Dietrich. ‘She’s a European beauty,’ was how I put it to Miriam. ‘A little old-fashioned looking.’

  Mom was always on about me having realistic goals. I was nineteen, and I liked to think my goals were pretty realistic. I used to tell everyone very earnestly that I didn’t expect a big starring role—‘I want to be in the background of every scene, dancing my heart out, making the stars look great like the dancers in all those Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire movies’—but I don’t think I really meant it. The bottom line was that Miriam didn’t approve of a girl getting above herself, and I wanted her approval. Anna, on the other hand, didn’t have realistic goals. I’m sure that was one of the reasons I loved her.

  ‘You didn’t dance as a girl?’ I asked her, that first time we sat down to talk. ‘Don’t they have ballet in Russia? Did you study ballet?’

  ‘No,’ said Anna, in a way that suggested she thought I was an idiot. I suppose I was; ignorant, anyway.

  Anna reached out and touched my face. ‘You are very pretty, Miss American girl,’ she said. ‘Nice eyes, nice skin.’ She looked at me intently. ‘So why do you want to be my new friend?’

  ‘I just thought you’d like a local girl to talk to,’ I said. ‘Someone to help you get into the swing of things.’

  ‘The swing of things? I like that.’ Anna stood up and repeated the phrase. ‘Swing…’ she bumped her hip to the left, ‘of…’ she ground it to the right, ‘…things.’ She bumped back to the left. ‘That is really fantastic. Yes.’

  I laughed. She seemed kind of crazy. We didn’t do crazy at home. We did normal.

  ‘So, you live around here?’ I asked. ‘I’d love to live near Canter’s. I’m stuck out at the beach.’

  ‘Yes. Papa was told this is where all the Russian Jews come to live, so here we are. Actually, I think the person who told us that was trying to be insulting. He was an immigration officer. But Papa does not speak English that great so he doesn’t get the insult. And it is very nice here. No problem.’

  June was back with Anna’s hamburger. Anna began to eat it. Well, actually she began to tear into it like she was some kind of coyote. I made a mental note to suggest etiquette classes.

  ‘How did you get here?’ I asked.

  Anna looked slightly surprised to be spoken to while she had a mouthful of food. She swallowed. ‘By boat.’

  I waited for a few moments to see if she’d say anything more, but she didn’t.

  ‘Do you like Los Angeles?’

  ‘It is like heaven! I love the food. And the blue skies. It is warm all the time. I am never cold here.’

  My shake arrived. In the time I took to drink it Anna had devoured the burger, the fries, the salad, the shake, and then the pie and ice-cream. As often as not, I came to learn, Anna didn’t actually finish her food. Instead she sat, surrounded by debris: chicken skin, crusts, lettuce soggy with mayonnaise, drops of milk and scattered fries.

  ‘I’d be sick if I ate that much food. How do you keep your figure?’

  God knows why I worried about her figure. She was skinny then. Too skinny for a girl of eighteen. She didn’t even get her period. I didn’t know that was a thing with girls who hadn’t eaten enough, I just thought she was a late bloomer. But it wasn’t long after our first meeting that she began to look healthy and that’s when men started to glance at her. Soon the glances turned to stares and even her father, André, began to look shifty around her. I thought so anyway. André took some getting used to.

  Anyway, that first time Anna looked at me in a dazed way, then looked at the devastated plates before her. ‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘In America you shouldn’t eat so much?’ She sat for a moment, embarrassed. ‘I think I will go to the bathroom.’ She practised her American: ‘I need to freshen up.’

  *

  Anna met her first American boyfriend at Canter’s, not long after that lunch. His name was Freddy and Anna told me she was trying to eat a pastrami sandwich when Freddy slid into the booth beside her. She didn’t think he was very good looking (she was right, he wasn’t) but he made up for that with his confidence and his car: a soft-top baby blue Chevrolet that Anna thought was just the cutest thing she’d ever seen.

  ‘He’s fun,’ she explained, ‘and I think he might be useful. But I am not in love with him.’ She certainly wasn’t: most of the time she took me along on their dates.

  Freddy was an expert on figuring out what parties were worth going to, and then talking his way into them. He didn’t complain about me tagging along because it didn’t hurt to be accompanied by a statuesque blonde and a pretty brunette (Miriam’s description). One night we went to a party on Mulholland, a villa with views over the Santa Monica Mountains as well as down onto Los Angeles, and that night Freddy showed us how useful he could be. He got both of us a drink then walked off to work the room while we looked over the back garden and into the woods that fell away to the San Fernando Valley.

  ‘It is very pretty,’ Anna said, ‘city and trees mixed up. We did not have so much of this where I grew up. There was city,’ she straightened her hands and placed them at right angles to indicate the solidity of stone walls—‘or what you call woods.’ Her hands wafted in the air like trees in the wind. ‘Not both, like this, together.’

  ‘We should go hiking,’ I said. ‘There is a walk I love, not so far from where I live in Santa Monica.’

  ‘Da-arling.’ Darling was Anna’s favourite Los Angeles word; she’d caught it from Mary, our agent. ‘I don’t walk.’

  ‘Have you tried? How do you know you won’t like it?’

  Anna laughed. ‘I won’t be trying, darling.’ She looked out across the party. There were dozens of women who looked more polished than either of us. Their gowns were couture. Ours were Broadway. ‘This is a real party, I think.’

  ‘Does Freddy actually know anyone here?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Anna s
aid. ‘I think he is very good at talking the bullshit.’ Anna handed her drink to me while she lit her cigarette. I spent half my twenties standing around holding drinks for Anna. Sometimes men, too.

  ‘I thought you liked him. He’s cute. Or he will be, when he grows a proper moustache.’

  ‘He is a nice boy, really. And last night, we had sex.’

  I tried not to look as shocked as I felt but Anna caught my eye. ‘You are a virgin all of a sudden?’ I was uncertain whether to say I was a virgin or not. I wanted to be hip—I think that was the word back then—but Anna was always going to be hipper, and braver, than me. She must have known that as well, because she took pity on me. ‘Actually, I was not a virgin, if you must know. He seemed kind, you know. He promised to help,’ she laughed. ‘But, you know, I think this boy knows precisely zero big guys. I think he is a…’

  ‘Loser?’

  ‘Yes, that. But actually, it was quite fun. If someone else asks, I might sleep with them also.’ Anna dragged on her cigarette theatrically. After that I spent years trying to smoke just like she did.

  Perhaps Freddy’s ears were burning for at that moment he emerged from the crowd. ‘Anna,’ he said, ‘this gentleman wants to meet you.’ He gestured behind him to a sturdy, plain-looking man with thinning brown hair. ‘Mr Mankiewicz is looking for ladies to play small roles in his film. For a pivotal party scene.’

  The director glanced at me briefly before looking Anna up and down. ‘It is lovely to meet you. To meet both of you. Freddy was right, you look perfect. Just perfect.’

  ‘Thank you Mr Mankiewicz,’ her voice soft and breathy, like a girl’s. ‘It’s an honour.’

  ‘Freddy says you’re Russian, but David…’

  Anna blushed prettily. ‘Davidoff, actually. The other is my, you know, my stage name. But Mankiewicz, that sounds so good I am thinking perhaps I should change it back.’ She laughed—not in the loud way she usually did but in a lady-like way—and touched his arm. I almost choked on my martini.

  ‘It’s not much of a role, I’m afraid. But you’ll get to wear an expensive dress and jewels around your neck. Hold a cocktail while talking to a handsome man.’

  ‘Gee,’ I interrupted, ‘do you think you’re up to it, Anna?’

  Anna ignored me. So did Mr Mankiewicz. ‘It’s about the American dream which is why I think you’d be just right for the atmosphere we need. Freddy tells me you haven’t been here long, but you have great expectations.’

  Anna pouted—though later, when I called her on it, she said she’d only meant to smile—and put her arm through his. ‘This is very exciting. Perhaps we should see how I look holding one of those cocktails? Like an audition?’ and off the two of them walked. Freddy hesitated for a moment, uncertain. ‘Should I join them, do you think?’

  ‘Freddy, I think you’d better find yourself a new girl.’

  ‘Why would I want to meet other girls when I could talk to you?’

  The boy was a fool and I lost interest in being kind. ‘I don’t need Anna’s cast-offs.’

  Freddy was used to rebuffs I guess, he took it all pretty well. ‘Sure. You girls just let me know if you still need a lift home,’ and he wandered back into the crowd.

  I always thought that Mary liked Anna better than me because they had that European thing going on. Mary Ronin’s real name, she told Anna, was Maria Ronaldo. It was Mary’s idea that Anna take another name and she told her so when we were both meant to be meeting with her. As usual it was as if Anna was the only one of us in the room. ‘Anna is good,’ Mary told her. ‘But not Davidoff. It’s too,’ she took a drag on her cigarette, ‘intelligent sounding. Like Dostoyevsky.’ Mary was particularly concerned because despite the fact that Anna was a blonde (an increasingly large-breasted one at that), despite the distraction of cheekbones so beautiful you wanted to put your fingertips to them every time you looked at her, and despite the fact she had no high school education, Anna seemed smarter than ideal for an actress. ‘In Los Angeles we all change our names, darling. It makes us feel at home.’

  ‘What about my name, Mary? Eleanor Phillips? How’s that sound? Should I call myself by my full name or would Ellie be better?’

  ‘Your name is perfect,’ Mary turned to me briefly. ‘Very American. Your mother was very organised to give you such a perfect name.’

  ‘I would like to be called Estella Havisham,’ Anna interrupted to Mary’s alarm.

  ‘Oh no, darling. That’s still very literary.’ It was a miracle that Mary even got the reference. I certainly didn’t. ‘I was just thinking of something simple, like David. Anna David.’

  Anna shrugged. ‘No problem,’ she said. That was the first time I saw the shrug, but now it’s my strongest memory of her: the way she lifted her shoulders slightly then relaxed them. A gesture full of passion, exhausted of emotion. It was love and death, grief and indifference all wrapped up in one elegant movement.

  As it turned out there was a problem with changing her name, a big problem. The problem was André. ‘Ty chto—suma soshla? Have you lost your mind? Are you ashamed of your family?’ he said when Anna told him what she was doing. ‘Of my name? Of your mother’s name?’

  ‘It is just for the movies, Papa. Not for real life.’

  ‘You are cutting yourself off from your history,’ André wasn’t yelling. He was more agitated than that. ‘Bird, you must understand. Our nation was…I mean terrible things happened, of course. But still there is much to be proud of.’

  ‘I am proud, Papa,’ Anna said quickly, but not convincingly. ‘I do not forget. But unless I ever get any work, it’s not even a problem, huh? And actually, Ellie and I are looking for a place together.’ She always had an unerring instinct for making things worse than they needed to be, and you can imagine how that went down. André glanced at me like I was the devil herself then began to yell. ‘Ty menya zdorovo podvela! Nikuda nye godishsya! I bring you all this way and now you leave me? What would your mother say? How well do you even know this girl? Why don’t you have a boyfriend? How could you, my only family left, leave me so alone?’

  ‘Papa,’ Anna began to cry. I hardly ever saw her cry. ‘I will never leave you. I will just be living in another house. We are moving to Hollywood. Maybe only thirty blocks away, I have counted. I am 21. Did you expect me to live with you forever?’

  ‘I am so alone,’ André said. ‘I do not know what I do to deserve being so alone. You make me pathetic, you make me beg.’

  ‘Mama never begged,’ Anna said, angry suddenly. Then she capitulated. ‘Every week,’ she promised, ‘every week—no, twice a week—we will have dinner.’ She turned to me. ‘Won’t we, Ellie?’

  I nodded, though the thought of having André round made me sick. I’d thought André was a creep ever since Anna told me, just after we’d met, about his habit of crawling into her bed when he was drunk. It caused our first fight. What happened was this: Anna had had a tiny part in My Forbidden Past, a part so small that she ended up on the cutting-room floor. But she went to the opening night party and got a bit drunk and Robert Mitchum kissed her. Then, according to Anna, some girl came out—it wasn’t his wife so it must have been some girlfriend—and they had a big fight. Anna left the party soon after that but she said she had never been as happy as she was that night, sitting on the bus, head against the window, trying to remember the exact details of the kiss so she could describe them to me. He’d kissed her mouth lightly, flirtatiously at first. Yes, she was sure that was right. Then she’d put her arms around his neck and he held the back of her head so he could kiss her again, more aggressively. Anna thought the word might even be ‘manfully’. When she got home she tried to be quiet. She didn’t want to wake André when she smelled of alcohol and a movie star’s aftershave. She tiptoed into the bathroom and splashed water on her face. Her makeup ran, but she left it on to remind her of the big event. She didn’t know whether to brush her teeth or not in case that took away the taste of his kiss, but: ‘Every night,’ André always
told her, drawing his lips back so she could see his false teeth, ‘every night you must brush.’ Anna would impersonate him for me, complete with the grimace he gave to dislodge his dentures and display his decaying stumps.

  ‘It is malnutrition,’ she would say to him, ‘that does that. The teeth brushing, it’s not such a big deal.’

  ‘Big deal?’ He hated how quickly she picked up American slang. ‘Is it a big deal that you talk like an American after only one year here? To me, that is a big deal.’

  That night Anna brushed, then tiptoed into her room, smiling at the poster of Robert Mitchum above her bed. Just as she was slipping off into sleep she heard André.

  ‘Sofia,’ he whispered.

  Anna lay very still so he wouldn’t know she was awake. He sat on the bed and repeated her mother’s name. He put his arms around her and nuzzled. ‘Where have you been? What have you been drinking?’ He smelled of metal, she said.

  ‘That metal smell is an alcoholic thing,’ I told her. I knew because Miriam had told me.

  Anna ignored me. She could see I was angry for her but couldn’t be bothered dealing with it. ‘It only happens when he thinks I am my mother. You must understand this one thing about Papa. He has travelled a very long way to keep me safe.’

  ‘It’s still disgusting. Fathers shouldn’t do that,’ I said. That’s when Anna started in on me, as if I was the creep climbing into her bed at night.

  ‘You know, the thing about you Am-er-i-cans,’ she drawled in her bad fake American accent, ‘is that you are always so upset about little things that you are totally ignorant about the big things. You are,’ meaning the entire nation, now, not just me, ‘so dumb. Do you know where my father has come from? How hard he works? Every morning he gets up before dawn to get over to the Valley and build houses for people like your father to sell.’ My dad, Phil, was a real estate agent. ‘So your dad sells nothing. Empty land. It is my father’s labour that makes it worth anything at all. Most nights he is so tired, he cannot speak. So you don’t tell me my papa is disgusting.’ She was furious. She lit up a cigarette and was alternately waving it around and drawing back on it in her exaggerated fashion.