Page 19 of A Map to Paradise

18

Driving to Santa Monica to go Christmas shopping was the first completely normal thing Melanie had done in months. When she parked June’s car near Henshey’s Department Store like dozens of other people had already, she nearly cried at the sheer ordinariness of it.

Aside from her hair in a matronly bun, the ugly scarf around her neck, and the too-big sunglasses, she knew she looked ordinary, too: She was just an average woman with a purse on her arm and a list in hand, shopping in Santa Monica.

Melanie was aware that she was still risking being recognized, but honestly, would anyone suspect blacklisted actress Melanie Cole would be perusing the toy aisles at Henshey’s today? And even if a fellow shopper identified her, how bad could it be? They might stare, yes. Frown, yes. Whisper under their breath, Commie! Possibly.

She didn’t care.

It felt too good to be doing something so natural as Christmas shopping.

If they stared, she’d ignore it. If they frowned, she’d smile sweetly in return. And if someone murmured Commie! as they walked past her, she’d wish them a merry Christmas.

She wouldn’t engage, wouldn’t cause a scene, wouldn’t draw attention, wouldn’t linger. She’d do as June suggested and watch other mothers shop for toys for their little ones. Then she’d pick something up for Elwood and perhaps something for June, too. Maybe a fountain pen for Elwood; he had told her once he thought fountain pens made him write better. That had made them both laugh.

Some fancy bath salts for June, perhaps?

And she’d get something for poor Eva, too. A little bracelet, maybe. Something pretty.

Melanie had been alone, angry, and afraid when the Gilberts’ house had become her home, and she’d assumed she’d make no friends living there, secluded as it was and Carson’s cautions making her uneasy about meeting new people. It amazed her now as she stepped inside the department store how different she was beginning to feel about the place where Carson had dumped her. The house had grown on her, surprisingly enough.

And not just the house—also a sense of belonging was starting to fill her that she would never in a million years have thought would happen.

That first day completely on her own at the Gilberts’ house had seemed like it would never end.

When the sun finally set on that hot July day, Melanie knew she was going to need to make a schedule for herself of what she was going to do to fill her days—and nights—and she needed to do it quickly or she would seriously lose her mind. The following morning on Day Two, she made the list in fifteen-minute increments, from the time she got up in the morning until she clicked off the light for bed. Every activity was on the list, no matter how mundane. She wanted the daily record to be long so that she could feel a sense of accomplishment as each item was checked off, even if it was just teeth-flossing, exercising with Jack LaLanne on the TV in the living room, playing rounds of solitaire, and not eating the peach melba ice cream Carson had included in the first grocery delivery.

On Day Three, Carson called, and she wrote in the activity and checked it off:

Talked to Carson.

She watched the paid gardener mow the front and back lawns in diagonal lines, and she shooed a spider outside and plunked out a melody on the baby grand in the far corner of the living room:

Watched the grass being mowed.

Saved a spider’s life.

Figured out the notes of “Mr. Sandman” on Mrs. Gilbert’s piano.

On Day Four, she added to the daily list to stand on the backyard patio in the mornings for an hour and recite the lines she still remembered from her high school plays.

It was while she was engaged in this activity on the sixth day of her Exile in Paradise, as she was starting to call it, that she first heard Elwood Blankenship’s voice.

She was reciting all of Gwendolin’s lines—the ones she could recall—from The Importance of Being Earnest . She’d just spoken the words, “Pray don’t talk to me about the weather, Mr. Worthing. Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else. And that makes me so nervous,” and was imagining in her mind the character Jack’s reply when suddenly that line was floating her direction from across the fence.

“I do mean something else,” the voice said.

Melanie was only momentary startled into silence. But she was far too curious and hungry for human interaction to think how strange it was for the next-door neighbor—whom she hadn’t even met yet—to be listening in on her, and then, on top of that, playing her little game. She faced the fence and delivered Gwendolin’s next line.

“I thought so. In fact, I am never wrong.”

Jack’s reply glided across to her. “And I would like to be allowed to take advantage of Lady Bracknell’s temporary absence.”

Melanie took a step toward the fence. “I would certainly advise you to do so. Mamma has a way of coming back suddenly into a room that I have often had to speak to her about.”

The next line wafted over the fence as she took another step.

“Miss Fairfax, ever since I met you I have admired you more than any girl…I have ever met since…I met you.”

Melanie grinned at the line everyone always laughed at and took a third and fourth step: “Yes, I am quite well aware of the fact. And I often wish that in public, at any rate, you had been more demonstrative. For me you have always had an irresistible fascination. Even before I met you I was…I was…”

She couldn’t recall the rest of the line. But she was at the fence now and peering over it. She could see a trim, well-dressed man, gray at the temples, sitting in a kitchen chair at the open door to his own patio. The front legs of the chair were just over the threshold. He was as close to the outside of a house as one could be while still being inside it.

This was the screenwriter who never left his house. She’d seen his last name on his mailbox at the curb. Blankenship.

He was leaning slightly forward in his chair, and a cat was rubbing a cheek on his pant leg. The man smiled lightly with a closed mouth.

She smiled back and then tried the line again. “I was…”

But the rest wouldn’t come.

“Far from indifferent to you,” Mr. Blankenship said, finishing it for her.

Suddenly the next part came to her, but only the one sentence. “We live, as I hope you know, Mr. Worthing, in an age of ideals…” Her voice fell away.

His smile widened slightly. “We certainly do.”

“I can’t remember the rest.”

“Been a while?”

“Nine or ten years, I guess. How long for you?”

He laughed lightly. It was a nice sound. “Quite a bit longer. But it’s a favorite. Named the cat Algernon.” He looked down at the cat, who’d plopped down next to his left foot and was now cleaning its face with a paw. Then he looked up again. “You rehearsing for an audition?”

“No. I’m just…killing time. It’s just for fun.”

“Ah.”

“I’m Melanie Co—Kolander,” she said, catching herself just in time. This fellow was a Hollywood man—even way out here—if he was a screenwriter. She’d promised Carson she would be careful. “I’m…I’m housesitting for the Gilberts while they’re in Egypt.”

“Kolander,” he said, thoughtfully. “Ah, yes. Yes. I see.” He nodded. “Don’t worry, Miss Cole. I won’t give you any trouble. You have nothing to fear from me.”

Fear prickled all over her body. “You know who I am?”

“I recognize you and your given name from the newspaper and the magazines my sister-in-law likes. But I assure you, you have no reason to be afraid. I have no desire to make things more difficult for you.”

“No one is supposed to know I am here,” she said breathily, almost as if to just herself.

“There is no one I wish to tell, I assure you. And I will make sure June knows this, too, Miss Cole.”

“June?”

“My sister-in-law. She lives here, too. The name’s Elwood Blankenship.”

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Blankenship.”

“Please. Elwood will do.”

“And I insist you call me Melanie.”

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Melanie. I would get up and walk over there to the fence and introduce myself proper if I could, but I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“Why can’t you? Are you hurt? Is that why you don’t leave your house?”

His eyebrows lifted a fraction. “Touché. I guess you know who I am, too.”

“Not really. Mr. Gilbert said you never leave your house. I don’t think he told us why.”

Elwood was quiet for a moment. “Yes, I guess in a way I am hurt. For a while I could still make it out to the backyard to tend my roses, but even that is starting to be difficult.” He nodded toward an oval of rosebushes across the patio from him. There had to be a dozen different varieties and shades, all in bloom.

“They’re very pretty,” she said.

“They are, aren’t they?” He exhaled heavily. “They are very special to me. I have missed caring for them.”

Melanie was incredulous. She’d heard of people being reclusive, but not someone being powerless, though physically capable, to step out their back door. “You don’t even go into your own backyard?”

“Not very often. Sometimes at night when there is no moon.”

A few seconds of silence hung between Melanie and her neighbor.

“You’re a screenwriter?” she asked a moment later.

He laughed lightly. “I am.”

“Like, a working one?”

The laugh turned into a lazy smile and he nodded. “On contract with MGM.”

“Lucky you,” she blurted. “MGM won’t hire me right now.” She clamped a hand across her mouth, instantly regretting her words.

“I know they won’t. I know none of the studios will. I’m very sorry this has happened to you.”

“I’m not what they say I am. I am not a communist. I’m not even sure what a communist does or wants.”

“I’ve no doubt you’re not. There are a lot of people on the blacklist that are or have been communists but I know there are just as many—more, actually—who aren’t. And have never been. Again, I feel badly for you. You were just in a big movie, too, weren’t you? With Carson Edwards? Your debut, I believe.”

“Yes. I don’t suppose you saw it.”

“No. But I read the reviews. The critics liked you. And the audiences.”

“For the most part. And now everyone despises me. There was another movie in the works for me with an even bigger role and then this happened.”

“To you and Edwards both, yes?”

“Yes. And some other people he knows.”

“And the two of you are…”

“Are what?”

“A couple? My sister-in-law thought she saw Carson Edwards drive up and go inside the Gilberts’ house a few days ago and then leave the next morning. I told her it probably wasn’t him. I’m guessing now it was. I owe June an apology and five bucks.”

“We’re sort of a couple,” Melanie said. “We’re not exactly…It’s not love—it’s…I don’t know what it is. He’s a good friend, the only friend I have right now. He’s paying my rent for this house. I could never afford it on my own. He and my agent thought it would be a good idea for me to get out of Hollywood for a while.”

“I see. You’ll be here until the Gilberts get back, then?”

“God, no!” she exclaimed, instantly appalled by the assumption. “They’ll be gone for two years!”

“Of course. That was thoughtless of me. Forgive me.”

“I’m sorry I yelled, but I can’t live this way for two years. Shut up like this? No, no, no. I’d go nuts.”

He laughed lightly, but she could tell he wasn’t laughing at her predicament but the words she had used. She’d pretty much said if she had to live the shut-up life he was living, it would drive her crazy. Her face instantly warmed.

“Wait! That’s not what I meant! I wasn’t suggesting that you—”

He held up a hand, still smiling. “It’s all right. Don’t worry about it. I’ve surely been called worse.”

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean anything by that.”

“I know you didn’t. Please. Don’t give it another thought.”

He came across as such a genuinely nice man. Kind. Wise.

“You don’t seem crazy at all,” she said, thinking aloud.

He laughed again. “I’m glad to hear that.”

She was about to say how nice it was to talk with someone again when June Blankenship came to the patio door. Melanie could instantly see that June cared for her brother-in-law, was protective of him. It was also clear by the expression on June’s face that she’d heard every word that had passed between Melanie and Elwood.

Elwood introduced her to June, but June did not come to the fence when she said it was nice to meet Melanie and that she hoped she would enjoy living in Malibu. She then told Elwood that his morning tea was ready if he wanted to come inside and have it.

“Have a nice day, Gwendolin,” Elwood said as he rose to step fully back inside his house.

She waved goodbye and he closed the door and was gone.

When Melanie went back inside the house, she added to her list of activities for the day:

Talked with Elwood Blankenship.

And crossed it off the list.

Carson came over that night and she told him about meeting Elwood and that, despite her being careful, he had figured out who she was but he also promised to keep her whereabouts a secret.

“It’ll be nice having a friend to talk to,” she said to him as they sat around the kitchen table eating the chicken and biscuits he’d brought for their dinner.

“But you can talk to me,” he said, frowning slightly.

“Sure, when you’re here. I’m talking about having someone to talk to when you’re not here, which is pretty much all the time. It gets lonely here, Carson. This place is like a crypt.”

“It’s…a really nice house, Mel.”

“Okay, it’s like a really nice crypt. I don’t like being alone all the time.”

“All right, all right.” He took a bite from a chicken leg.

“And why aren’t you hiding out like I am?” she asked, an observation that had been needling her the last three days. “Why aren’t you out here with me if it’s so risky for us to be out and about?”

Carson wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Because I can maintain my distance from hecklers and the press and all that. My house is gated. I have my own vehicle. I can afford private security.”

“But you still get to be around other people. It’s not fair to expect me to speak to no one or to never go out to eat. I’m getting pretty tired of canned soup for dinner. You try eating it five nights in a row.”

A few days later he’d hired Eva for six days a week from nine to three, to cook and clean and no doubt keep her company. Having Eva in the house was certainly better than having no one, but it was Elwood she was drawn to for company.

Over the next few weeks, as July eased into August, Melanie would find herself talking often to Elwood either across the fence, as he sat in the patio doorway, or sometimes as he stood by an open upstairs window and she spoke to him from several feet below and on her side of the fence. Twice in September he welcomed her into his house for short visits, and they talked about plays and movies and acting. Both times June served them coffee and seemed to hover. Melanie thought it was perhaps because Elwood had so few visitors, only his agent and a few studio execs and couriers; Melanie was his only outside-the-studio friend. She hoped maybe June liked that Elwood was opening himself up to someone new from the outside.

She came to learn in the first of those two inside visits—and in general terms—of the car accident years earlier that had a lasting effect on Elwood and made him not want to leave his house.

“Because you’re afraid you might get into another accident?” she’d asked.

“Something like that.”

He’d stood then, signaling that the visit was over, and she intuited this was a topic he didn’t discuss. She would not bring it up again, though it bothered her that this good man was stuck inside his own house by choice. She wanted to be his friend. She wanted him to be hers.

When Carson broke the news to Melanie in October that a director friend had offered him a lead role in a new Broadway play and he would be leaving for New York for a spell, she went to Elwood to lament how jealous she was that Carson was going to be working again. He’d listened as she cried tears of frustration and had offered her his handkerchief, but it was the last time he let her inside the house.

Not long after this she noticed it had been a while since Elwood had stood at the open back door, his chair straddling the interior of his house and the rest of the world. When he spoke to her now, it was from the upstairs window or the occasional phone call. Always from within—fully within—his house.

She expressed concern to June about this, but her neighbor told her sometimes Elwood would drift into a melancholy state for a while and would eventually drift back out. She needed to let him be about it. He didn’t like people fussing over him or telling him how he should feel.

But weeks had now passed and he hadn’t drifted back out at all. If anything, he’d gone further in.

Melanie tucked her shopping bags into the trunk of June’s car and hurried to the driver’s side. She still needed to stop at the A&P before heading back to Malibu to get the last few things on her list. No one had recognized her at Henshey’s as she shopped and then paid for the Tinkertoys and books and farm animals she found for Nicky, nor when she bought Elwood’s fountain pen or June’s lemon verbena bath salts or the charm bracelet she’d picked out for Eva.

She’d made good time in the department store, but she didn’t want June and Eva to have to be responsible for Nicky any longer than they had to be, nor did she want to tempt fate by staying out too long and having some random reporter figure out who she was and start pelting her with questions.

Besides, while it had been enjoyable at first, shopping in the open like any normal person, she knew the whole time it was all a facade. That joyous feeling of being out had begun to lessen as soon as she’d paid for her purchases and walked back out to the car. The shopping trip had been fun but it had changed nothing.

She was still grieving a lost career.

She was still certain Carson was losing interest in her.

She was still worried about Elwood.

She was still wondering how she could stay in California without Carson’s financial help.

Still waiting for Alex to come back into her life and stay there.

She drove to the A&P contemplating that the year would soon end but without the likewise end of her banishment from Hollywood, nor of Carson’s wanting to stay in New York, nor of Alex’s continued absence.

But even so, she felt a strange calm regarding her situation—at least for the moment—because she wasn’t entirely alone.

She had Elwood and June. Sort of. And quiet Eva. She had Nicky.

Christmas wasn’t going to be a lonely affair focused on everything she’d lost.

She would celebrate the holidays with her neighbors, Eva, and her nephew. She’d invite Elwood, June, and Eva over for Christmas dinner, like she’d thought of doing the day Alex arrived. If Elwood wouldn’t come, and he probably wouldn’t, she’d suggest they have a family-style Christmas dinner at the Blankenship house.

There was no way Melanie was going to tuck tail and run home to Omaha with Nicky as June had suggested, and to subject herself to her parents’ immense disappointment in her. Not at Christmas of all times.

Besides, she didn’t belong there.

Here was where she felt the most at home, if home couldn’t be in Hollywood.

After the quick stop at the grocery store for the bubble bath, the ketchup, the Band-Aids, and the other items on her list, Melanie made her way back to Malibu along the coastal highway, listening to Christmas music on the radio with the car window down as far as it would go.

She parked June’s car in the driveway, took out her shopping bags, and ran them over to the Gilbert house. She hid away the gifts in the master bedroom closet and put the A&P bag on the kitchen counter. Then she headed back over to June’s.

When no one answered her light knock, she opened the door slightly and said June’s name. Still no answer.

Melanie stepped into the foyer and heard a laugh from beyond the front door but not inside the house. She made her way through the living room and into the kitchen, and then saw through the window that June and Eva were sitting on a blanket in the backyard in the plentiful sunshine and Nicky was running across the grass with little toys in his hand. At least they looked like small toys.

Everyone seemed to be having an enjoyable time.

She was about to join them when it occurred to her that she’d just been given the perfect opportunity to see for herself if Elwood was truly okay.

Melanie turned from the kitchen, went back through the living room, and began to climb the staircase.

“Elwood?” she said in as gentle a voice as she could from the second step. “It’s just me. Melanie. Mind if I come up?”

No answer.

She continued up the stairs. “Elwood? May I just talk to you for a moment? Please?”

No answer.

Now she was on the top step. She could see the door to his office was ajar.

“Elwood?”

Nothing.

Melanie crept down the short hallway to the office, passing Elwood’s empty bathroom.

“Elwood?” As soon as she poked her head in the room she could see no one was in it aside from Elwood’s cat, curled up on the seat of the desk chair. Algernon raised his head to look at Melanie and yawned lazily.

She turned and retraced her steps to the top of the staircase and the closed door just to the left of them that led to Elwood’s bedroom. She knocked on it softly.

“Elwood? It’s Melanie.”

No answer.

She put her hand on the doorknob. Locked.

“Elwood, are you all right?”

Nothing.

Melanie pulled a bobby pin from her hair and stuck an end into the lock, turning it this way and that, jiggling it, then reinserting the pin upside down and jiggling it again until she heard the mechanism inside the lock turn.

She slowly opened the door.

The first thing Melanie saw was Elwood’s bed, stripped entirely of its linens as though it were laundry day.

She stepped into the room saying his name. “Elwood?”

The bookshelves that lined one wall were in order. The bedside table was clean. The dresser top was free of clutter, as was an amply stuffed armchair and the table beside it. There was no sign of Elwood.

Had he dashed into his closet to hide from her?

“Elwood?” She approached the closet and opened one of its double doors. The inside was full of clothes and shoes lined up with their mates, and boxes in neat stacks on the shelf above the clothes rack. But Elwood wasn’t hiding in the closet.

Elwood wasn’t upstairs.

Melanie dashed to Elwood’s bedroom window that overlooked the backyard, hoping that he was outside at last with the others and his roses and that she had just missed seeing him.

Below her, June and Eva were still on the blanket. Nicky was lining up what looked like chess pieces on the top of a low retaining wall on the far side of the yard.

Elwood wasn’t in the backyard, either.

Melanie made her way as quickly as she could back downstairs, alarm beginning to make her heart race. She looked for Elwood in June’s room, in the garage, in the utility closet, in the laundry room, even in the coat closet by the front door.

But Elwood Blankenship, the man who never left home, wasn’t inside his house.