Page 31 of A Map to Paradise

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Melanie watched through the porthole window of the airplane as Omaha came into focus from out of the cloud cover. Nicky knelt on the seat next to her with his face against the glass in jubilant glee.

“See all the little cars on the snowy roads?” she said, tousling his hair gently, already missing having her nephew to herself. It had been surprisingly wonderful to care for him the last two weeks.

The voice of an airline attendant came over a loudspeaker telling the passengers the plane would be landing in a few minutes and everyone needed to check to see that their seat belts were securely fastened.

“Let’s get your seat belt on,” she said to Nicky as she helped him resettle onto his seat and buckled him in.

Melanie leaned back into the seat cushion and took a deep, calming breath. Flying was still a novelty to her and a bit unnerving. She closed her eyes to picture Eva on her flight the previous evening to Minneapolis, with her brother and Sascha most likely on either side.

How remarkable it was that Eva had been reunited with them. After Eva had introduced her brother and Sascha to Melanie and June, they’d gone to the hotel’s restaurant for what seemed like endless cups of coffee so that they could tell Eva what they’d endured and how they’d been released.

Eva had been unaware that the gulag system had begun to significantly change after Josef Stalin’s death four years earlier, and that tens of thousands of prisoners had received amnesty and been released—and were continuing to be released.

Sascha and Arman had been amnestied in 1954 and traveled to West Germany as soon as they had the resources to do so. They began the search for Eva, Irina, and Tanja right away. It took ten months to locate Irina and Tanja in Budapest with help from Displaced Persons officials and relief agencies, and many more after that to discover that five women by the name of Eva Kruse had emigrated from the many DP camps in West Germany, and then still more months to find that three of those women had come to the United States: one to Dallas, one to Chicago, and one to Los Angeles.

Sascha and Arman had documents and sponsors in place—in St. Paul—to complete their immigration to the United States themselves, but had been holding back on moving forward until they’d exhausted every effort to find Eva. They thought perhaps they had exhausted every effort.

When Melanie and June had left Eva at the hotel, they’d hugged goodbye as if they’d been friends for decades rather than just a month.

“Stay in touch?” Melanie said as they broke away.

“I promise,” Eva said.

“I suppose you’ll have a Minnesota address after today?” June asked with a smile.

“I hope so.”

Melanie and June had driven back to Max’s for the night and then June gave her and Nicky a ride to Los Angeles International that morning.

At the airport curb Melanie had thanked June for the ride and handed her the keys to the Gilberts’ house back in Malibu.

“Groceries come every week on Mondays,” she had said. “You may as well just let them come. Carson might call at some point, I suppose. If you end up talking to him, you can tell him I’m okay, the house is okay, and you can tell him where I am. And I guess you can give him my parents’ number if he asks for it.”

“And if he asks how long you’ll be gone?”

Melanie had shrugged. “I really don’t know. I just want to be home for a little while, you know?”

June had nodded. “I do know.”

A couple seconds of weighted silence had hung between them.

“He might kick me out,” June had said.

“He might. Worry about that if and when you have to. And, hey, listen. I know you’re upset that the script is gone, but you can rewrite it, June. Rewrite the whole thing and everyone at MGM will see it was you all along writing Elwood’s scripts. They will have to believe you because Elwood’s not here to rewrite it. Only you are.”

“They will assign it to someone else,” June had said. “They won’t want to see anything I’ve written because they’ll never accept that I’ve been writing the majority of the scripts. Max doesn’t know how much I was writing for Elwood. Elwood didn’t even know.”

“Make them read it, June. Don’t stop trying until they do.”

June had nodded, smiling weakly. “All right. I’ll rewrite it. What else am I going to do while I am waiting?”

Melanie and Nicky had gotten out of the car, and Melanie leaned in through the open window to say goodbye.

“You take care, June. And if something happens in the next few days where you need me to vouch for you, I want you to call me, okay?”

June shook her head. “I’m not going to do that to you. I’m the one who made this mess I am in.”

“Call me anyway.”

June’s smile had increased. “I’ll think about it.”

Melanie had turned to go but then suddenly remembered her brother might show up to retrieve Nicky. She swung back around. “If Alex comes by wanting his son, you tell him where he can find him, okay?”

“Absolutely. And, Melanie?”

“Yes?”

“I could be wrong, I know, but I’m guessing your mother and father care for you very much and probably tried as best they could to be good parents.”

Melanie had warmed to those words instantly but nevertheless said, “You’ve never met my parents.”

“But I’ve met you. I know you. I know the people you care for are important to you. And that you wouldn’t let any harm come to them if you could help it. Usually someone has to model that to us.”

A car behind June’s at the curb had honked.

“Thanks, June,” Melanie had said as she stepped away from the vehicle. “I’ll be seeing you.”

Now, as Melanie watched the ground rise up closer and closer, she knew the hours before she’d introduce her parents to their grandson had shrunk to minutes.

She turned to Nicky, who still had his face as close to the glass as he could get it while still being buckled in. “Remember who we’re going to see?”

“Grandmom and Grandpop.”

She loved the way he said their names. “And remember what I said they might do when they see you?”

“They might cry.”

“Happy tears, remember?”

“Grandmom might squeeze me too hard.”

Melanie laughed. “She might.”

The plane landed and taxied to a stop. Melanie buttoned up her coat and Nicky’s and gathered his bag of toys and her purse. They made their way down the aisle, and then out of the plane and into the overly chilled air of a December day in the Midwest.

As they entered the terminal, it was her mother’s face she saw first. She was on tiptoe with her arm on her father’s, looking over the heads of the passengers who’d already stepped inside. She waved when she saw Melanie, and then her happy countenance turned to surprise when she saw that Melanie held the hand of a little boy.

“Well, who’s this?” Wynona Kolander said, cheerfully after she’d hugged Melanie.

“Hello, Melanie,” Herb said, planting a kiss on her forehead. “Made a new friend on the airplane, did you?”

“Mom, Dad, this is Nicky.”

Her parents smiled tentatively.

“Hello, Nicky,” Wynona said politely a second later.

“I had a visit a couple of weeks ago,” Melanie continued. “From Alex.”

Herb and Wynona had been looking at the boy but both popped their heads back up to look at Melanie.

“You saw him?” Wynona said.

“I did. For a few hours, anyway. He’s married now but I think he and his wife might’ve hit a rough patch and she left him. Or maybe she’s looking for buried treasure and he decided to join her. All I know is he didn’t stay. And he didn’t say where he was going. If I had to guess, I’d say I won’t hear from him again for a bit.”

“But…” Wynona gazed down at Nicky.

“He left Nicky with me. Nicky is his little boy. And he’s your grandson.”

For a second neither Herb nor Wynona moved so much as a muscle. And then Wynona was on her knees with Nicky in her embrace, Herb standing over them, touching his grandson’s head.

Melanie was quite certain she’d hear from Nicky that Grandmom had squeezed him way too tight.

They’d been at the house for a couple of hours playing with Nicky and Melanie catching her parents up on Alex’s visit, the details of the fire, the state of her stalled career, and the fact that she hoped she could stay for a couple of weeks—or more—when the phone rang.

Herb came back from answering it. “It’s for you, Melanie. It’s Irving.”

Melanie rose from where she’d been sitting on the floor of the living room with Nicky and her mother. They’d found a box of Alex’s old toys in the basement, and Nicky was happily playing with a shoebox full of little wooden race cars.

She made her way to the phone with an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. Melanie had told Irving where she was going and had made it pretty clear this was to be like a vacation from her Hollywood life, a time of introspection and a refocusing of her aspirations. If she wasn’t going to be a movie star anymore, what was she going to do with her life? She needed time away from California to consider such a challenging question. It was the reason she’d extended her trip. If Irving was calling, it was because it was important enough to intrude on this set-aside time with her family.

And that meant it couldn’t possibly be good.

Melanie reached for the telephone in Herb’s office and picked it up, steeling herself to hear the reason her agent had called.

“Hello, Irving,” she said.

“Thank God you’re finally in a place where I could call you,” he exclaimed on the other end of the line. “Please tell me you’ve not had to surrender your passport.”

“What?”

“Tell me you have your passport.”

Carson and other, more notable blacklisted people had been forced to turn in their passports, but not everyone on the blacklist had. Melanie hadn’t.

“I still have it.”

“Hallelujah,” Irving said. “Listen. I’ve been doing a little scouting that I haven’t told you about because I didn’t want to raise your hopes just to see them crushed again. But, Melanie, I have news.”

“What? What is it?”

“You’re wanted in Paris in five days for a screen test. I mean, you’re really wanted.”

Nothing that Irving was saying made any sense. Paris? A screen test? “Irving, what are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about a screen test for an acclaimed French director, baby. Jacques Becker saw you in This Side of Tomorrow . I told him you speak French. He wants you to test for his next film.”

“You told him I what?”

“You had two years of high school French. You told me that.”

“I did, but, Irving, that doesn’t mean I speak French.”

“It doesn’t matter. The film is about a Parisian detective who falls in love with an American tourist who witnesses a murder. You don’t have to speak perfect French. He doesn’t want you to speak perfect French. You just need to understand filming directions. The role is perfect for you.”

“But…the blacklist.”

“There is no blacklist in Paris, Mel. And the HUAC can’t keep you from flying to Paris to make this movie. Melanie, this could change everything for you. You could make it big in French films. Becker said it himself. I already booked you on a flight next week. I want you on that plane.”

For a moment, Melanie could not speak. All she could do was look at her parents on the floor, playing with their grandson, racing wooden cars on the curves of the braided rug they sat upon.

Sometimes life was so hard you could barely breathe.

And sometimes it was so sweet you couldn’t wait to take your next breath…

“Send me the tickets,” she said.