Page 78 of Mazywood

Only then did Mazelle notice the damp tears Sharpe must have seen on her face. She brushed them away, horrified. Even as a child, she had never wanted Sharpe to see her cry.

A long, terrible moment hung between them. If she opened her mouth, she might wail. She couldn’t explain what had just happened in Lorenzo’s office, even to herself. And knowing about the other girls made it worse, not better. She hadn’t been a happy wife when she left for work that morning, but she’d been a faithful one, at least. Thank goodness Richard was still in Philly for another week. He might see it in her face no matter how much time passed. Mazelle willed her throat to clamp back the sob fighting to be free.

How had she allowed this to happen? Why hadn’t she pushed Lorenzo away?

“Don’t say anything to Millie,” Mazelle whispered. “Please.”

“Are you kidding? She’d come shoot the sonofabitch.”

Her father would shoot him too. Or Brother. Or Richard would shoot her.

Sharpe sighed again and turned on his radio, a mercy. Suspense was on, an episode called “The Cross-Eyed Bear” about a woman who applied for a mysterious, dangerous job. “Get out of it while you can,” another woman warned her, as if she were speaking to Mazelle directly through the car’s speakers.

She and Sharpe didn’t speak for the rest of the drive.

Twenty-Four

MAZELLE’S BROWN SKIN SANG AGAINST ripples of seawater in shiny emerald green. The full-length cocktail dress she wore was exquisite: strapless with long slits in the legs, spun of rare wartime silk instead of rayon, with matching arm-length gloves fit for royalty. It was the finest dress Mazelle had ever worn—or dreamed of wearing. Her premiere dresses had been store-bought, not made by a designer hired to suit her every curve. Mazelle radiated in the dress, the perfect accessory to her dark skin. Rose Morgan, a hairdresser the studio flew in from Harlem, had washed, pressed, and styled Mazelle’s hair like a delicate crown pinned atop her head, with perfect curls brushing her ears.

Mazelle and her mother were standing side by side in the full-length mirror on her old childhood closet door. Her old Cracker Jack prizes, three washboards, lay at arm’s reach in her windowsill, untouched. Mazelle had moved back home after that night with Lorenzo, unable to sleep in her marital bed. Richard was due back from Philly tomorrow, but Mazelle dreaded returning to their house. Part of it was Lorenzo, but that wasn’t all of it; Lorenzo just made the rest pinch harder. In the mirror, their reflection twinned their eyes, but Mazelle’s skin was darker like her father’s, and Mother’s face was starting to sag with frown lines even when she smiled.

“You are a sight,” Mother said. “He’s finally investing in you like he has some sense.”

Even hearing Mother praise Lorenzo couldn’t dampen Mazelle’s pleasure in her dress.

Her father wheeled himself to her doorway to watch the unveiling. She did a turn to model for him, and his delight erased ten years from his face. She was Cinderella in a storybook. “I remember when you were just a baby trying to keep up with us,” Daddy said. “Riding in those dirty train cars.”

“Oh, it’s not so different,” Mazelle said. “Same piss pots and coal smoke. It’s only prettier on the outside. But it pays better, at least.”

Beyond the memory of Lorenzo’s shocking acts in his office, a few of his words that night had stuck: Better than Betty Grable, Gene Tierney, Hedy Lamarr, any of them. Before now, her highest aspirations had been to play a schoolteacher or pastor’s wife or fallen woman like Lena’s Georgia in Cabin in the Sky—anyone who wasn’t a maid. But in the mirror, Mazelle saw herself the way Lorenzo had painted her that night, knowing how she would be transformed by the war chest of the biggest stars. And he had kept his promise, sparing no expense.

She was a leading lady. She was the one who had gotten away, the one who, given a chance, would break Clark Gable’s heart. Mazelle couldn’t stop staring at her own cheekbones, regal beneath Mother’s specially blended makeup to complement her complexion. She had the bosom. She had the legs, smooth and well-defined. She was a knockout and she could do stunts. No other woman in Hollywood was like her.

“Maybe times really have changed,” Mother said.

She stole the words from Mazelle’s soaring thoughts.

Lorenzo played his role of Prince Charming when the limousine arrived at their gate. Instead of sending the driver to fetch her, he knocked at the door himself with a bouquet of two dozen white roses, in a matching white dinner jacket and black bow tie like Humphrey Bogart.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered when he saw Mazelle. Naturally his first words were blasphemy. She was glad that Mother and Daddy hadn’t heard him. She had not seen him since the night in his office, and she wondered if the flowers were meant as an apology, or just a prop.

Lorenzo leaned over to shake Daddy’s hand in his wheelchair, telling him about a new surgery he’d heard about that might help his back. And complimented Mother for keeping a lovely home after a glimpse at the living room. While he chatted, he rested his hand on the small of Mazelle’s back, and she and her parents noticed before she pulled away from him.

“This party is just the first step,” Lorenzo said. “Mazelle already knows this, but I’ll do things for her that no one else will. And I mean no one.”

His smirking glance made Mazelle’s cheeks burn.

“The silent treatment, is that it?”

Mazelle had sat far across from Lorenzo in the cavernous rear of the limo. She stared out her window, looking at the bustle on Wilshire Boulevard. As they passed the Arthur Murray studio, a billboard proclaimed LET’S ALL RAISE FOOD FOR VICTORY—MAKE THIS VICTORY GARDEN GROW. She calmed herself by thinking of Mother’s backyard garden of collard greens, spinach, and tomatoes.

Lorenzo let his window down and lit his cigar. She would reek of his stink by the time they arrived. “I did what I promised, didn’t I? What do you want from me, Mazelle? I’m only human. Look at you. Holy bejeezus, you’re a vision.”

Mazelle was tired of the sound of his voice, so she turned to face him.

“Touch me again,” she said, “and I’ll fucking kill you.” She had rehearsed that line for nearly a week, reserved for the next time she saw him alone. This would have to do.

He whirled away from his window to look at her as if he thought she had a pistol aimed at his temple. She wished she did.