Genuine Lies

philosophy Julia both understood and respected. She began to feel thrumming excitement—the birth of the intimacy that made her work of this kind so successful.
    “Tell me about your family. What it was like for Betty growing up?”
    With her head back, she laughed. “Oh, my older sister will be appalled to see in print that I called our father a philanderer. But truth is truth. He hit the road to sell his pots and pans—always sold enough to keep the wolf from the door. He would come back with little trinkets for his girls. Chocolates or handkerchiefs or ribbons. There were always presents from Daddy. He was a big, handsome man with black hair and a mustache and red cheeks. We doted on him. We also did without him five days out of seven.”
    She plucked up a cigarette and lighted it. “We would do his laundry on Saturdays. His shirts reeked of perfume. On Saturdays my mother always lost her sense of smell. Never once did I hear her question or accuse or complain. She was not a coward, she was … quiescent, accepting her lot in life, and her husband’s infidelity. I think she knew that she was the only woman he loved. When she died, quite suddenly—I was sixteen—my father was a lost soul. He grieved for her until he died five years later.” She paused, leaning forward again. “What do you write there?”
    “Observations,” Julia told her. “Opinions.”
    “And what do you observe?”
    “That you loved your father, and were disappointed in him.”
    “What if I told you that’s bullshit?”
    Julia tapped her pencil against the pad. Yes, there had to be understanding, she thought. And a balance of power. “Then we’d both be wasting our time.”
    After a moment’s silence Eve reached for the phone. “I want fresh coffee.”
    By the time Eve had instructed the kitchen, Julia had made the decision to steer away from more discussion of family. When she understood Eve better, she would come back to it.
    “You were eighteen when you first came to Hollywood,” she began. “Alone. Fresh off the farm, so to speak. I’m interested in your feelings, your impressions. What was it like for that young girl from Omaha stepping off the bus in Los Angeles?”
    “Exciting.”
    “You weren’t afraid?”
    “I was too young to be afraid. Too cocky to believe I could fail.” Eve stood and began to stalk the room. “We were at war, and our boys were being shipped off to Europe to fight and die. I had a cousin, a funny kid who joined the navy and went to the South Pacific. He came back in a box. His funeral was in June. In July I packed my bags. I’d suddenly learned that life could be very short, and very cruel. I wasn’t going to waste another second of it.”
    Travers brought in the coffee. “Set it down there,” Eve ordered with a gesture toward the low table in front of Julia. “Let the girl pour.”
    Eve took her coffee black, then leaned against the corner of her desk. Julia scribbled her observations: Eve’s strengths— revealed in her face, her voice, the lines of her body.
    “I was naive,” Eve said huskily, “but not stupid. I knew I had taken a step that would change my life. And I understood there would be sacrifices and hardships. Loneliness. You understand?”
    Julia remembered lying in a hospital bed at eighteen, a small, helpless baby in her arms. “Yes, I do.”
    “I had thirty-five dollars when I stepped off the bus, but I didn’t intend to go hungry. I had a portfolio stuffed with pictures and clippings.”
    “You’d done some modeling.”
    “Yes, and little theater. Back in those days the studio sent out scouts, more to get publicity than actually do talent searches. But I realized it would be a cold day in hell when a scout got around to discovering me in Omaha. So I decided to go to Hollywood. And that was that. I took a job at a diner, got myself a few spots as an extra at Warner Bros. The trick was to be seen—on the lot, on a set, at the commissary. I volunteered at the Hollywood Canteen. Not selflessly, not because of the GIs, but because I knew I would be rubbing elbows with stars. Causes or good deeds were the last things on my mind. I was concerned with myself, completely. You find that cold, Ms. Summers?”
    Julia couldn’t think why her opinion would matter, but she considered before she answered. “Yes. I also imagine it was practical.”
    “Yes.” Eve’s mouth firmed. “Ambition requires practicality. And it was a heady experience, watching Bette Davis