Page 7 of A Map to Paradise

6

Melanie awoke in the middle of the night and lay in the dark for a long time before sitting up in bed and reaching for a cigarette.

Her words to Carson from their conversation hours earlier echoed in her head, over and over.

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life on the blacklist!

And his reply back to her. You won’t have to. I promise.

They were the same words that had kept her from falling asleep after she’d hung up the phone and were now keeping her awake because the truth was Carson could not promise such a thing. The blacklist was out of his hands. He had no control over it. None of them did. And it had already been around a long time.

She was still in high school when the list first materialized. Her father announced at dinner one night that the names of ten Hollywood writers and directors were now on a do-not-hire list. They were the same ten men who’d refused a congressional request to testify before the House’s Un-American Activities Committee—a committee formed when Melanie was even younger, just seven, in response to the ballooning dread that America had been infiltrated by communists who wanted to turn the Land of the Free into a Soviet state.

But Melanie Kolander, as she was known then, wasn’t paying a great deal of attention to the so-called Cold War. Indeed, her idea of the war against cold—beginning every October in Nebraska and lasting through Easter—was the battle to stay warm and fashionable until the snow melted and she could wear pretty shoes again. Her schoolteacher parents, Wynona and Herb, felt knowledge of current events was important, however, and many evenings they tried to engage Melanie and her older brother, Alex, in dinner conversations about world affairs.

Especially as they related to the evil empire that was the Soviet Union.

Melanie found those discussions depressing, useless, and of little importance to her daily existence. Life in Omaha went on week to week as if there was no threat lurking in the shadows. Moscow was a world away, as was its malevolent reach. And for heaven’s sake, the terrible war in Europe and the Pacific was over. Couldn’t people just enjoy peacetime when they’d worked so hard for it? What bothered sixteen-year-old Melanie that November day more than the threat of a Soviet takeover was that she’d been promised Alex’s bedroom when he went away to college. Her brother had been at the Cleveland Institute of Music three months already—on a full scholarship that her parents were outrageously proud of—and yet Melanie was still in the little room at the top of the stairs instead of in the big one.

And yet, even so, she was missing her brother terribly. Alex was no fan of table talk about world affairs, either, but he did love a good debate. Melanie had long admired Alex’s pluck—and his insights. Her older brother was also wildly gifted on the violin—an instrument he’d once told Melanie he actually didn’t care for and that it was hard to be so good at something you didn’t like—but she knew Alex had a clever mind in addition to musical ability. And he wasn’t afraid to tell it like it is, so the saying went. Or to play the devil’s advocate just for the fun of it. On an evening just before Alex had left for Ohio, when the dinner conversation had again wound its way to the monstrous enemy across the globe, Alex had reminded Herb and Wynona that the U.S. and Russia had been allies in the last war. Herb replied that the wartime alliance had been entirely strategic. The two vastly different countries merely had a common goal at the time: to defeat Germany.

“We were temporarily united against a common foe,” Herb had said, in his flannel-soft voice. “We weren’t allies; we were allied.”

Alex had said that was the same thing. Herb said it wasn’t. They went happily back and forth with neither one conceding until Wynona finally ended the contest of wills with offers of seconds on cabbage rolls.

It actually wasn’t until after Melanie had arrived in Los Angeles to try to make it as an actress after one year of college—a decision Herb and Wynona hadn’t been happy about—that she recalled her father having told her several years earlier that there were communists in Hollywood.

She’d been in a crowded hallway, waiting to be called in for her first real audition, when she remembered. Another young woman in that collection of hopefuls mentioned the blacklist—by then in its fourth year—and Melanie heard her mother’s voice in her head, asking Herb if he was sure about there being communists in Hollywood. That didn’t make any sense. What did actors and actresses know about politics? What did they care about politics?

“It makes perfect sense,” Herb had replied back then. “And we’re not talking here about just actors and actresses but the writers and directors, the very people who are creating what people watch. It’s a perfect way to influence the American mindset and way of life. Through the arts, you see.”

He’d tapped the day’s newspaper folded at his elbow on the table and then shared that ten writers and directors had been subpoenaed to testify and they’d refused. The Hollywood Ten, as they were being called, had been found in contempt, fined, and now faced jail terms. And shockingly, a number of movie stars had flown to Washington the month before to protest the hearings before which their colleagues had refused to testify: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Danny Kaye, and John Huston, to name a few.

“And that’s not all,” Herb had said. “The studios—all the big ones, mind you—have responded to this unpatriotic audacity with a blacklist. All ten names are on it.”

Wynona had nodded as she plopped a dollop of mashed potatoes on her plate. “Serves them right.”

“I quite agree. Bogart and Bacall and the rest should count their lucky stars their names aren’t on that list, too,” Herb had replied, and Melanie asked what a blacklist was.

Melanie’s father had been pleased with her interest. “It’s an informal register of people who aren’t to be trusted, supported, or employed. A blacklist means these men won’t be able to find work anywhere in Hollywood. Actions like theirs must have consequences, you see. You can’t blatantly disrespect and disregard all that America stands for and expect to carry on as usual. Anyone who hires these people will find themselves on the blacklist, too.”

“But…but what did they do?”

“I told you, sweetheart. They were summoned to testify before Congress and they refused.”

“No, I heard that. I mean why were they asked to do that? What did they do?”

“They’d been identified as having communist ties and proclivities and they were summoned to address those allegations.”

“So…they hadn’t actually done anything?”

“What they did was refuse a summons. The accusations against them are quite serious, Melanie.”

She’d wished Alex had been at the table that night because the conversation moved on to another topic, and Melanie felt like there was more to be said but she didn’t know what questions to ask. Alex would have known. And Alex would have asked them.

Clever, unafraid Alex…

It was Alex whom she really wanted to talk to now, there in the dark of a Malibu house that wasn’t even hers.

Not Carson.

Not poor, damaged Elwood Blankenship.

Alex would know what she should do the next time the Washington witch-hunters came calling.

Alex would know.

Too bad she had no idea where her brother was.

Six years had passed since Alex Kolander had dropped out of college and run off with the girlfriend known to Melanie and their parents only as BJ. She’d heard from her brother only a handful of times since. There had been a postcard from Alex from London not long after he first disappeared telling Melanie all was well and to tell their parents not to worry.

The police had used that postcard to try to convince Wynona and Herb that their son hadn’t been kidnapped or sold into servitude or been hit on the head to wander the streets forever as an amnesiac.

Melanie could guess and perhaps even understand why Alex didn’t want their devastated parents to know initially where he was. He had walked away from a full scholarship. A full scholarship! Alex probably hadn’t wanted to bear the weight of their parents’ immense disappointment. But Alex had abandoned Melanie, too, when he ran off with BJ. And to maintain that distance from all of them for six years? That part she couldn’t understand.

When Melanie’s movie had come out—was it really only eleven months ago that her name was up in lights?—she was sure Alex would see that she had indeed finally made it and would want to reunite. There had been only a few scattered moments of connection up to that point. A phone call or two. A couple letters.

But there had been no word from Alex when the film released. No flowers delivered. No telephone call. No telegram. Not even a postcard from anywhere bearing a simple Congratulations or I told you you’d make the big time .

Perhaps because he had told her. He’d always believed she’d get to Hollywood someday and find her destiny there.

Melanie knew then, propped there in the darkness against a stranger’s bed pillows, that this was the reason she hung on to Carson even though he did not love her.

Even though he could not help her.

Even though letting him pay her rent, her lawyer’s fees, her grocery bill, and her housekeeper was a bad idea, just like Elwood had said it was.

Carson was all she had.

Her Hollywood friends, if that’s what they had been, had deserted her. What was it her housemates Nadine and Corinne had said when they asked her to move out? We know you wouldn’t want us to jeopardize our own acting careers. We’d do the same for you. Of course we would… She didn’t have that sweet shared house in Hancock Park anymore or any savings to speak of—she’d already blown through much of what the studio had paid her to make the film.

And she couldn’t go home. Her mother and father were appalled by the accusations that had landed her on the blacklist, despite her tearful insistence she was innocent. Her parents were convinced—because they’d feared it all along—that a na?ve Melanie had mixed with the wrong crowd, aligned herself with bad company who had promised her success. Herb and Wynona had believed from the get-go that moving to Hollywood was a terrible idea, not because Melanie was a terrible person, but because it was a terrible place.

But it wasn’t too late to come home to Omaha and return to her abandoned university studies, they’d said, perhaps a better major this time around?

“Everybody makes mistakes,” her father had written in his last letter. “If we can learn something from them, they’re not a complete waste, are they? Come home and we’ll help you get back on the right track.”

She wouldn’t go home.

A delicate tube of ash fell onto Melanie’s nightgown from the cigarette she was holding but not smoking. Melanie flicked it off, and it came apart and fell to the floor beside the bed, shapeless.

She ground out the cigarette in an ashtray on the nightstand and turned on the lamp. She sat up, grabbed her wristwatch, and squinted to make out the tiny hour and minute hands.

Four a.m. and she was wide-awake.

She may as well just get up and make herself some coffee.

Melanie rose and walked over to the chair by the window where she’d tossed a thin robe. Through the sheers she could see that someone was awake next door as well. Lights were on downstairs at the Blankenship house and also on the back patio, just as they had been early the morning before. Melanie pulled on the robe and made her way to the sliding doors in the living room, opening one quietly. The air was still unseasonably warm and dry. If Elwood was perhaps in his backyard, she didn’t want to scare him back inside. She still wanted to speak with him since asking Alex for advice was nothing short of impossible. Elwood was the next best. And she still wanted to make sure he was all right.

Melanie stepped out into the sultry night, walked across the barely dewy grass to the fence, and peered through the fence slats, as Eva had done.

But it was not Elwood in the Blankenship backyard.

It was June. She was sitting in her pajamas at a scrolled metal table on the patio, a tumbler of melting ice and amber liquid at her elbow. A fountain pen rested between her fingers, which were poised over a tablet.

The hand that held the pen was frozen in place inches above the paper, as if the words just wouldn’t come.

“Can’t sleep?” Melanie asked.

June jerked in her chair and immediately put a hand to her back. “Oh. Melanie. You startled me.”

“Sorry. I couldn’t sleep, either. I thought maybe Elwood was out here.”

“It’s just me.”

“You working on something?”

June gazed down at the tablet of paper. “Just helping Elwood with the screenplay he needs to finish. It’s…uh, been hard for him the last few days. As you can imagine. I was just noodling on some ideas for him.”

Melanie looked up at Elwood’s window. The shade was down and the room within was dark. June glanced up there as well.

Melanie brought her gaze back to her neighbor. “I guess Elwood is sleeping okay tonight?”

June regarded Melanie before dropping her eyes back to the tablet in front of her. “Nice that one of us is, hmm?”

Melanie took another step forward, bringing her body as close to the fencing as she could. “I’m actually quite worried about Elwood.” She watched June carefully as she waited for a response. It came quick and effortlessly.

“Well, you don’t need to worry, Melanie. He won’t always be this way.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’ve been caring for Elwood for a long time.”

“But maybe this time it’s different. Maybe this time he actually needs people around him, rather than the other way around. I mean, it’s not like you’re a doctor.”

June tucked in her bottom lip and then gathered up the tablet, pen, and glass, and stood, grimacing as she did so. “That’s true, but it’s not like you are, either. And while both Elwood and I appreciate your concern, the decisions he makes regarding his personal life are none of your business. They’re not even any of my business. Besides. You have enough to worry about with your own troubled life, don’t you?”

The question stung and left Melanie momentarily speechless.

“You know,” June added when Melanie said nothing, “I think I might try to get in a few hours of sleep after all. Before Elwood awakes. Good night.”

While Melanie was still trying to formulate a reply, June turned from her and went inside the house, closing the patio door softly behind her.