The Cat's Pajamas Page 11

  “The idea struck,” said Burnham Wood, “one desert night when a cement mixer passed me at high speed. I wondered if it was on its way to make concrete boots for lost Italian gangsters. I laughed, but the idea haunted me and woke me in the middle of the night months later. I had to fuse my library with this great monster, find a way, I thought, to travel this cement elephant back in time.”

  I skirted the great gray beast as it tumbled and whispered, rotating and ready to travel.

  “The Mafioso Cement-Mixing Machine?” I said. “Explain.”

  Burnham Wood touched the F. Scott Fitzgerald books on their shelf and placed one in my hands.

  I opened the book. “The Last Tycoon, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. His last. He didn’t live to finish it.”

  “Here then.” Burnham Wood stroked his great machine. “Shall I tell you what’s inside? All the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years of time, going back fifty years. We’re going to run those hours and days to help Scotty get some extra time to finish this novel. It was going to be his best but wound up a half-broken record played late nights while we drank far too much.”

  “And,” I said, “just how are you going to do this?”

  Burnham Wood produced a list. “Read. Those are the destinations my machine will visit to do the job.”

  I stared at the list and began to read.

  “B. P. Schulberg, Paramount, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Irving Thalberg, MGM? Darryl Zanuck, Fox?”

  “Correct.”

  “Will you visit all these people?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have directors at various studios, producers, floozies he once knew, bartenders all over creation. What will you do with them?”

  “Find ways to move them, bribe them, or, when necessary, beat them up.”

  “What about Irving Thalberg? He died in 1936, right?”

  “And if he’d lived a bit longer he might have been a good influence on Scotty.”

  “What are you going to do about a dead man?”

  “When Thalberg died there was no sulfanilamide in the world. I’d like to sneak into his hospital room the week before his death and give him the medicines that might cure him and let him go back to MGM for another year. He might have hired Scotty for something better than the things they gave him.”

  “That’s quite a list,” I said. “You sound like you’re going to move these people like chess pieces.”

  Burnham Wood showed me a flush of hundred-dollar bills. “I’m going to spread these around. Some of these moguls might be tempted to move. Stand close. Listen.”

  I stood close to the great rumbling machine. From its interior I heard far cries and gunshots.

  “It sounds like a revolution,” I said.

  “Bastille,” said Burnham Wood.

  “Why would that be inside?”

  “Marie Antoinette, MGM—Fitzgerald worked on it.”

  “My God, yes. Why would he write a thing like that?”

  “He loved film, but he loved money even more. Listen again.”

  This time the gunfire was louder, and when the bombardment ceased I said, “Three Comrades, Germany, MGM, 1936.”

  Burnham Wood nodded.

  There was a ripple of many women laughing. When it quieted I said, “The Women, Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell, MGM, 1939.”

  Burnham Wood nodded again.

  There were more cries of laughter, bursts of music. I recited the names I remembered from old film books.

  “Possessed, Joan Crawford. Madame Curie, Greer Garson, screenplay by Huxley and F. Scott Fitzgerald. My God,” I said. “Why did he bother with all that and why are all those sounds inside your machine?”

  “I’m tearing them up, I’m destroying the scripts. It’s all packed inside with the mix. A Diamond as Big as the Ritz, This Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night. All of them are in there. When you mix all that junk with the really good stuff you’ve got a chance of laying out a new road somewhere in the past to make a new future.”

  I reread the list. “Those are the names of producers and directors and fellow writers over a period of years; some at MGM, a few at Paramount, and more in New York City as late as the summer of 1939. What’s the sum?”

  I glanced up at Burnham Wood and saw that he was trembling with anticipation, glancing at the machine.

  “I’m going to run back with my metaphorical cement mixer and pour shoes for all those idiot people and transport them to some sea of eternity and drop them in. I’ll clear the way for Scotty, give him a gift of Time so that, please God, finally The Last Tycoon will be finished, done, and published.”

  “No one can do that!”

  “I will, or die trying. I’m going to pick them up, one by one, on special days in all those years. I’m going to kidnap them out of their environments and deliver them to other towns in other years, where they’ll have to make their way, blindly, having forgotten where they came from and the stupid burden they laid on Scotty.”

  I brooded, eyes shut. “Good Lord, this reminds me of a George Arliss film I saw when I was a kid. The Man Who Played God.”

  Burnham Wood laughed quietly. “George Arliss, yes. I do feel somewhat like the Creator. I dare to be the Savior of our dear, drunken, foolish, childish Fitzgerald.”

  He stroked the machine again, and it trembled and whispered. I could almost hear the siren of the years rushing and tumbling inside.

  “It’s time,” said Burnham Wood. “I’m going to climb in, turn the rheostats, and do a disappearing act. An hour from now, go to the nearest bookstore or check the books on my shelf and see if there’s any change. I don’t know if I’ll ever return, I may get locked in some year a long while back. I may get as lost as the people I plan to kidnap.”

  “I hope you don’t mind my saying,” I said, “but I don’t think you can mess with time, no matter how dearly you might wish to be the coeditor of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last book.”

  Burnham Wood shook his head. “I lie in bed many nights and worry over the deaths of many of my favorite authors. Poor sad Melville, dear lost Poe, Hemingway, who should have been killed in that African plane crash, but it only killed his ability to be a fine writer. I can do nothing about those, but here, in striking distance of Hollywood, I must try. That’s it.” Burnham Wood brisked his hands and reached out and shook mine. “Wish me luck.”

  “Luck,” I said. “Is there anything I can say to stop you?”

  “Don’t,” he said. “My great American elephant beast here will tumble time inside its guts, not cement, but the hours, days, and years—a literary device.”

  He climbed into his Mafioso Cement-Mixing Machine, did some adjustments on a computerized bank, then turned to study me.

  “What will you do an hour from now?” he asked.

  “Buy a new copy of The Last Tycoon,” I said.

  “Great!” cried Burnham Wood. “Stand back. Beware the concussion!”

  “That’s from Shape of Things to Come, yes?”

  “H. G. Wells.” Burnham Wood laughed. “Beware the concussion!”

  The lid clanged shut. The great Mafioso Cement-Mixing Machine rumbled, turned in the years, and the garage was suddenly empty.

  I waited a long while, hoping that another concussion might cause the great gray beast to suddenly reappear, but the garage remained empty.

  At the bookstore, an hour later, I asked for a particular book.

  The salesman handed me a copy of The Last Tycoon.

  I opened it and turned the pages.

  A loud cry came from my gaping mouth.

  “He did it!” I shouted. “He did it! There are fifty more pages and the end is not the end that I read when the book was published many years ago. He did it, by God, he did it!”

  Tears sprang from my eyes.

  “That will be twenty-four dollars and fifty cents,” said the salesman. “What gives?”

  “You’ll never know,” I said. “But I know
and all blessings to Burnham Wood.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “The man who played God,” I replied.

  Fresh tears burned my eyes, and I pressed the book to my heart and walked from the store muttering, “Oh yes, the man who played God.”

  THE GHOSTS

  1950–1952

  AT NIGHT THE GHOSTS floated like milkweed pod in the white meadows. Far off you could see their lantern eyes aglow, and a fitful flaring of fire when they knocked together, as if someone had shaken a brazier down and live coals were cascading from the jolt in a little fiery shower. They came under our windows, I remember well, every midsummer night for three weeks each year. And each year Papa would seal up our south windows and herd us children like small puppies into another room around north where we would spend our nights hoping the ghosts would change their direction and entertain us on our new meadow slope below. But no. The south meadow was theirs.

  “They must be from Mabsbury,” said Father, his voice drifting up the hall stairs to where we three lay in bed. “But when I run out with my gun, by George, they’re gone!”

  We heard Mother’s voice reply, “Well, put your gun away. You wouldn’t shoot them anyhow.”

  It was Father who told us girls that the ghosts were ghosts. He nodded gravely and looked us in the eye. The ghosts were indecent, he said. For they laughed and pressed their shapes into the meadow grass. You could see where they had lain the night before, one a man, one a woman. Always laughing softly. We children woke and bent out our windows to let the wind flutter our dandelion hair, listening.

  Each year we tried to shield the coming of the ghosts from Mother and Father. Sometimes we succeeded for as much as a week. Along about July 8, however, Father would begin to get nervous. He would pry at us and handle us and peer through our curtains as he asked, “Laura, Ann, Henrietta—have you—that is, at night—in the last week or so—have you noticed anything?”

  “Anything, Papa?”

  “Ghosts, I mean.”

  “Ghosts, Papa?”

  “You know, like last summer and the summer before.”

  “I haven’t seen anything, have you, Henrietta?”

  “I haven’t, have you, Ann?”

  “No, have you, Laura?”

  “Stop it, stop it!” cried Father. “Answer a simple question. Have you heard anything?”

  “I heard a rabbit.”

  “I saw a dog.”

  “There was a cat—”

  “Well, you must tell me if the ghosts return,” he said, earnestly, and edged away, blushing.

  “Why doesn’t he want us to see the ghosts?” whispered Henrietta. “After all, Papa’s the one who said they were ghosts.”

  “I like ghosts,” said Ann. “They’re different.”

  That was true. For three small girls, ghosts were rare and wonderful. Our tutors drove to see us every day and kept us strictly laced. There were birthday parties, now and then, but mostly our lives were plain as pound cake. We longed for adventure. The ghosts saved us, supplying us with enough goose pimples to last the season through and over until next year.

  “What brings the ghosts here?” wondered Ann.

  We did not know.

  Father seemed to know. We heard his voice floating up the stairwell again one night. “The quality of the moss,” he said to Mama.

  “You make too much of it,” she said.

  “I think they’ve come back.”

  “The girls haven’t said.”

  “The girls are a bit too sly. I think we’d better change their room tonight.”

  “Oh dear.” Mama sighed. “Let’s wait until we’re sure. You know how the girls are when they change rooms. They don’t sleep well for a week and are grumpy all day. Think of me, Edward.”

  “All right,” said Father, but his voice was clever and planning.

  The next morning we three girls raced down to breakfast, playing tag. “You’re it!” we cried, and stopped and stared at Papa. “Papa, what’s wrong?”

  For there was Papa, his hands thick with yellow ointments and white bandages. His neck and face looked red and irritated.

  “Nothing,” he said, gazing deep into his cereal, stirring it darkly.

  “But what happened?” We gathered about him.

  “Come away, children,” said Mother, trying not to smile. “Father has poison ivy.”

  “Poison ivy?”

  “How did that happen, Papa?”

  “Sit down, children,” warned Mother, for Father was quietly grinding his teeth.

  “How did he get poisoned?” I asked.

  Papa stamped from the room. We said nothing else.

  THE NEXT NIGHT, the ghosts were gone.

  “Oh, heck,” said Ann.

  In our beds, like mice, we waited for midnight.

  “Hear anything?” I whispered. I saw Henrietta’s doll eyes at the window, looking down.

  “No,” she said.

  “What time is it?” I hissed, later.

  “Two o’clock.”

  “I guess they’re not coming,” I said, sadly.

  “Guess they’re not,” said my sisters.

  We listened to our small breathing in the room. The night was silent all through until dawn.

  “TEA FOR TWO and two for tea,” sang Father, pouring his breakfast drink. He chuckled and patted himself on the back. “Ha ha ha,” he said.

  “Papa’s happy,” said Ann to Mama.

  “Yes, dear.”

  “Even in spite of his poison ivy.”

  “In spite of it,” Papa said, laughing. “I’m a magician. An exorcist!”

  “A what, Papa?”

  “E-x-o-r-c-i-s-t.” He spelled. “Tea, Mama?”

  Henrietta and I ran to our library while Ann was out playing. “Ex-or-cist,” I read. “Here it is!” I underlined it. “ ‘One who exorcises ghosts.’”

  “Run them around the block?” wondered Henrietta.

  “No. Exorcise, silly. ‘To eliminate, to do away with.’”

  “Kill?” wailed Henrietta.

  We both stared, shocked, at the book.

  “Has Papa killed our ghosts?” asked Henrietta, eyes filling with tears.

  “He wouldn’t be that mean.”

  We sat, stunned, for half an hour, getting cold and empty. At last Ann walked into the house, scratching her arms. “I found where Papa got poison ivy,” she announced. “Anyone want to hear?”

  “Where?” we asked, at last.

  “On the slope under our window,” said Ann. “All kinds of poison ivy there that was never there before!”

  I closed the book, slowly. “Let’s go see.”

  We stood on the slope, and there was the poison ivy, all loose and not rooted. Someone had found it in the forest and carried huge baskets of it here to the slope to spread about.

  “Oh,” gasped Henrietta.

  We all thought of Father’s swollen face and hands.

  “The ghosts,” I murmured. “Can poison ivy exorcise ghosts?”

  “Look what it did to Papa.”

  We all nodded.

  “Shh,” I said, finger to my mouth. “Everyone get gloves. After dark, we’ll carry it all away. We’ll exorcise the exorcise.”

  “Hurray!” said everyone.

  THE LIGHTS WERE OUT and the summer night was calm and sweet with flower scent. We waited in our beds, eyes gleaming like foxes in a cave.

  “Nine o’clock,” whispered Ann.

  “Nine-thirty,” she said, later.

  “I hope they come,” said Henrietta. “After all our work.”

  “Shh, listen!”

  We sat up.

  There in the moonlit meadows below came a whispering and a rustling as of a midsummer wind stirring all the grasses and the stars of the sky. There was a crackling sound and a gentle laughter, and as we ran on soft padding feet to our windows, to gather and freeze ourselves in expectant horror, there was a shower of demonic sparks on the grassy slope, and two misty forms moved t
hrough the shielding cover of bushes.

  “Oh,” we cried, and hugged one another, trembling. “They came back, they came back!”

  “If Father knew!”

  “But he doesn’t. Shh!”

  The night murmured and laughed and the grasses blew. We stood for a long while, and then Ann said, “I’m going down.”

  “What?”

  “I want to know.” Ann pulled away from us.

  “But they might kill you!”

  “I’m going.”

  “But ghosts, Ann!”

  We heard her feet whisking down the stairs, the quiet opening of the front door. We pressed to the window screen. Ann, in her nightgown, like a velvety moth, fluttered across the yard. “God, take care of her,” I prayed. For there she was, sneaking in darkness near the ghosts.

  “Ah!” Ann screamed.

  There were several more screams. Henrietta and I gasped. Ann raced across the yard but didn’t slam the door. The ghosts blew off, as in a wind, over the hill, gone in an instant.

  “Now look what you did!” cried Henrietta when Ann entered our room.

  “Don’t talk to me!” snapped Ann. “Oh, it’s awful!” She marched to the window, started to yank it down. I stopped her.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  “The ghosts,” she sobbed, half angry, half sad. “They’re gone forever. Daddy scared them away. Now, tonight, you know what was down there? You know?”

  “What?”

  “Two people,” shouted Ann, tears rolling down her cheeks. “A nasty man and woman!”

  “Oh,” we wailed.

  “No more ghosts ever again,” said Ann. “Oh, I hate Papa!”

  And the rest of that summer, on moonlit evenings when the wind was right and white forms moved in the half-light in the meadow, we three girls did just what we did that last evening. We got up from our beds and walked quietly across the room and slammed the window so we couldn’t hear those nasty people, and went back to bed and shut our eyes and dreamed of the days when the ghosts had drifted over, in those happy times before Daddy ruined everything.

  WHERE’S MY HAT, WHAT’S MY HURRY?