Page 14 of A Map to Paradise

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Nothing was going as June had planned—if whatever this was could even be called a plan. When something disastrous happens, and one must deal with it right then with no time to consider the consequences of their next steps, what is that action even called?

She didn’t know.

What she did know was that Eva knew something was up. That Elwood wasn’t in the house. She was also sure that Eva, who no doubt had been told to update Melanie on her daily visits to the house, hadn’t said anything to Melanie about what she suspected. If she had, Melanie would have demanded days ago to be let in to see for herself if Elwood was or was not there.

True, Melanie had been a little preoccupied the last few days with the sudden appearance of her nephew and the likewise sudden disappearance of that little boy’s father. But still. If Melanie had been told what Eva had surely figured out, she would’ve beaten the door down to get in, maybe while that kid sat on the grass wide-eyed and watched.

Why Eva continued to come over each day without confronting her, June could only guess. There had to be more to it than just her not wanting to give up the free typing lessons. It was almost as if the young woman wanted to help June out of the mess she was in, and there could be only two plausible reasons for that. The first was that Eva understood love and loss, and how tragically complicated it was when the two became entwined.

And the second? Somehow Eva had decided in their ever-lengthening afternoon conversations that this—love and loss, the two together like that—was something they had in common.

June doubted their experiences were all that much alike, but that apparently didn’t matter to Eva. Eva’s knowing looks and careful questions about Elwood suggested she’d guessed June had begun falling for Elwood long before Frank was dead, and yet Eva didn’t seem to care that that was true. How could that not matter? It mattered to June. It was troubling, embarrassing. And unexplainable. It was almost as if deep down June knew she’d been meant to marry Elwood from the very beginning and she had blown it. If she’d gone the way divine Providence had led her, she would have broken off with Frank after meeting Elwood.

It would have been awkward in the beginning, breaking things off with Frank, and maybe Frank would’ve had to weather a few seasons of anger toward his brother, but in the end Frank would’ve forgiven Elwood for stealing away his girlfriend. He would have forgiven her, too. Frank was that kind of person.

So much about her life would’ve been different if she’d been tuned in to what destiny had been whispering to her back then and which she had ignored.

Perhaps the reason Eva had said nothing as yet was because she thought she could somehow help fix the broken mess that was June’s life because she couldn’t fix her own. Eva had assumed an identity that could get her into heaps of trouble, was cleaning houses for a living—a thankless job if you don’t care for the person whose house you’re cleaning—and she was still grieving a man who’d been dead for, what, fifteen years?

And yet…

And yet, there was more to Eva’s grief than just the long-ago death of her fiancé. All she had to do was look as closely at Eva as Eva had been looking at her. Eva was grieving the loss of all that had never been hers, and now never would be—a long and happy life with the man she loved.

Perhaps they were more alike than June first thought.

June remembered everything about the day she met Elwood. She and Frank had been going out for several weeks after a chance meeting at the studio commissary. One Sunday afternoon he’d asked if she’d like to meet his twin brother, the talented screenwriter who lived out in Malibu. June said yes.

She’d wanted to meet Frank’s brother for several reasons. June had already seen a photograph of Elwood at Frank’s half of a duplex on Vermont Avenue, so she knew they weren’t identical, but the brothers were nonetheless near mirror images of each other. She wanted to meet this man who looked so much like the man she was sure she was falling in love with, who had grown up in the same house as Frank, slept in the same bedroom, and attended all the same family gatherings. She also wanted to meet the brother who had, the way Frank told it, saved Frank’s life when they were in the Argonne together as infantrymen in the fall of 1918. Frank had taken a bullet in the back during a hasty retreat and Elwood had gone back for him, despite heavy enemy fire, and dragged him to safety.

And yes, she wanted to meet the screenwriter who had found success in a business that could be as stingy with notoriety as it was generous.

It was a little less than an hour’s drive to Elwood’s place in Malibu—a town by the sea that June had vague memories of having once been to with her mother for a weekend at someone’s beach house.

As they made their way west, June asked Frank how it was that both of the brothers ended up working in Hollywood since Reno was where they’d been born and raised.

“It was all Elwood’s doing,” Frank said. “He was always the smart one, the planner. He knew he would go to college and get a degree and make a career with his writing. That’s exactly what he did, too, when we got back from the war. He was always scribbling in notebooks when we were younger—all kinds of short stories and the beginnings of novels, things like that. College didn’t interest me. I liked working with my hands. Making things, figuring things out, taking things apart. You couldn’t have paid me to sit in a classroom again.”

He told her that Elwood had arrived in Hollywood first, with his brand-new English degree, and got a job at Warner Brothers in the reading room, analyzing scripts. Everyone quickly saw his talent and he was given more responsibility, like working on treatments of movies already in production and then trying his hand at adapting books into screenplays. Elwood had been able to get Frank his job on the Warner Brothers backlot in 1934, just before being lured away to MGM with an offer of a lucrative new contract.

“I don’t know where I would be if not for Elwood,” Frank said. “Not where I am, that’s for sure. And not here with you.” He reached across the seat to take June’s hand. “I was bouncing around from job to job and poker table to poker table. Elwood could see I had forgotten there was more to life than piddly paychecks and playing cards. He’s the one who convinced me to come to Los Angeles and take a job at the studio.”

“He sounds like a wonderful brother,” June said, and she meant it.

“He is.”

“But not married? I would have thought someone like that would have been snatched up years ago.”

“Well…” Frank paused and furrowed a brow, as though needing to think about his next words. “He’s dated over the years, and he’s been to plenty of events with a woman on his arm, but Elwood is kind of…uncomfortable around the ladies, you could say. He has funny little habits that make him seem a little—I don’t know the word. And he got hurt a couple too many times, I think.”

“That’s so sad.”

“I think so, too.”

“Is that why he lives way out in Malibu?”

“That, and he likes being away from the noise and the hullabaloo. He says he writes better where it’s quiet. And he likes the beach.”

“MGM doesn’t care he lives so far out?”

“They’d probably love it if he drove in to the studio every day but they can get what they want and need most from him without him having to do that. They’ll send him a novel or a story idea or a terrible screenplay that needs fixing and they’ll say, ‘How long do you need to turn this into a great script?’ and he can make it happen in a month, a little more if he needs to read the novel first. Sometimes they’ll send a courier out to pick up his work if they want to see it right away. They’re getting the best of Elwood Blankenship without him having to come in to the office much and I guess that makes everybody happy.”

“And Elwood is happy?”

“I think so. It’s kind of hard to tell with him. He never talks about his feelings. But he’s always been that way.”

It was now quite obvious to June that Frank and his twin, even though they could probably pass for each other at a short distance, weren’t really like each other at all. The way Frank was describing Elwood wasn’t like Frank in any way, except for maybe the kindness part. Frank was always looking out for the other guy. He was the most unpretentious and genuinely considerate man June ever met.

“Does Elwood ever go on vacation or do anything just for fun?” she asked.

Frank laughed. “I don’t think Elwood has ever been on a real vacation. He and I drove down to San Diego a couple of years ago—right after he bought the Malibu house—and I took him to Tijuana and we had lobster and cerveza on the beach, and a mariachi band was playing and beautiful women waited on us. I had a great time and he couldn’t wait to get home. Being that far from home didn’t really relax him, I guess.”

They made their way west on Highway 10 through the urban stretch of Los Angeles and toward the sea until June finally saw on the horizon the sapphire ribbon that was the Pacific Ocean, and then Frank turned north. Half an hour later they were exiting the coastal highway in central Malibu and climbing a residential street where both big and small houses had been perched at whatever angle might afford its occupants a view of the ocean. Frank took a couple turns on curving asphalt roads and then began to climb a hill. She read the street sign as he made the turn:

Paradise Circle

Frank continued up the road and then stopped at a brown-and-white, two-story Craftsman at the top of a cul-de-sac. Potted daisies graced the covered porch, bougainvillea climbed the fence, birds-of-paradise flanked a matching garage, and a young jacaranda tree in the center of the front lawn still had a few straggling lavender-hued blossoms clinging to its branches. The house looked like an idyllic place to live with its peekaboo view of the ocean. June could smell the sea when she opened the car door.

Frank had no sooner rung the bell when the door opened and a slightly thinner version of Frank stood before them. Elwood was nearly the same height but a good twenty pounds lighter. His hair was the same color—toasty brown flecked with hints of gray—but Elwood’s waves had been gelled into submission. The eyes, the nose, the chin, the cheekbones—they were all like Frank’s.

Along with a plain white shirt, Elwood wore a bow tie and a sweater vest, two articles of clothing June had never seen on Frank’s person. Or in his closet.

Elwood’s khaki pants were freshly pressed.

He appeared glad to see them on his doorstep but not exceedingly so.

“Hey, Woody!” Frank crossed the threshold, pulled his brother into a hug, and clapped him on the back. Elwood seemed to startle slightly at the intensity of Frank’s embrace.

Frank released his brother and stepped back. He then ushered June into the tiled entry with his arm around her waist. “And here is my Junebug.”

June smiled and put out her hand. “It’s just June.”

Elwood smiled politely and put his hand out, too. “Hello, Just June. It’s just Elwood. Only Frank gets away with calling me Woody.”

She laughed. Elwood’s voice was cashmere soft, and he seemed at ease, other than having paused a second before taking her hand. She wondered what Frank had meant earlier when he said his brother was uneasy around women.

They walked through the main part of the house—nicely furnished and clean—to the patio in the backyard, which was drenched in the September afternoon sunlight. Elwood had laid out pretzels, coupe glasses, and a cut-glass pitcher of a cocktail he called a Picador, a drink June had never had before, concocted of tequila, triple sec, and lime juice. Elwood poured the drinks and then he and Frank fell into easy conversation as they discussed sports teams, studio scuttlebutt, and—when Frank realized June was merely a spectator—their childhoods as sons of a barbershop owner. Frank said she could ask them anything about their growing-up years.

As they talked and sipped the tart and tangy drink, June watched Frank’s brother whenever she could do so without being obvious.

There wasn’t much about Elwood to notice and assess, she discovered. His was a serene, unremarkable presence. He didn’t lean back in his chair and toss his head back and laugh when a funny moment was shared between the three of them; he merely smiled and gave a quick nod of his head, as if to calmly agree that, yes, that was comical. He filled their glasses without comment when they were empty, took in with quiet gratitude the compliments Frank gave him about the latest movie they had seen where the screenplay credit had been his, rose to check on a roast he had in the oven, and easily deflected an offer for help in the kitchen with a simple “Just enjoy yourselves on the patio.”

Frank did most of the talking, and Elwood didn’t seem to mind. Frank steered every conversation, too, and Elwood didn’t seem to mind that, either. When he was asked a question, he answered it without hesitation—succinctly and quickly—and when he posed a question in return, he listened intently to the answer without interruption.

When they moved indoors to eat the supper Elwood had prepared—beef tenderloin, a green salad, roasted carrots, seeded rolls, all accompanied by a plummy red wine—June decided all of Frank’s best qualities Elwood possessed, too, but he simply exercised them with exponentially less volume. She could see where, with Elwood’s quiet personality, he might come across—mistakenly—as inattentive or broody or maybe even self-absorbed, especially to a woman who expected to be put on a pedestal.

She wouldn’t see Elwood’s funny quirks—his need to arrange things just so, the way he liked to play the same record album over and over, not immediately recognizing when she or Frank were sad—until much later. By that time she would see Elwood’s peculiarities as just the uncomplicated inverse of Frank’s intuitive, highly easygoing nature.

June married Frank in the summer of 1939, and Elwood paid for the small ceremony and their honeymoon on Catalina Island as his wedding gift. June had been surprised and touched by that generosity. When she looked back on it, this gift of his had been the beginning of her deeper affection for him, though at the time she did not know it. Frank’s cheerful devotion and happy-go-lucky attitude made for a lighthearted, enjoyable life. But Elwood? His careful, methodical ways made her feel safe. Secure. She’d spent the first ten years of her life not knowing from one minute to the next where home was. Or if she actually had one.

When Frank and June moved into the Malibu house after the accident to care for Elwood, it was the first time she felt she lived somewhere where she belonged.

And yet that she felt that way made no sense to her. No sense at all.

Everything about that arrangement was terrible and unfortunate.

That she loved living in Elwood’s house and caring for him set her mind to spinning because she should’ve loathed what brought her and Frank there.

She should’ve mourned that Elwood could not bring himself to step out the front door.

She should have hated it.