Tim could only look down now. He sank as though inside a great funnel, rivulets of blood coursing down the arm clenched to his ribs, dripping off his fingertips into his right shoe. Ann was waiting for him, must have found him gone, her watch gone and thought... and thought...
If he could only get back to her, he could explain. He could explain everything.
To Catch a Falling Star
by Barbara Callahan
This story gave its author, Barbara Callahan, “a chance to attempt to tell how much movies meant to viewers during World War II, and how much the fashions in the films influenced women.” It was also inspired, she told EQMM, by the sadness she felt when she learned about a star of the ’forties who had a problem similar to that of the actress in this tale. Ms. Callahan makes her home in New Jersey and is a longtime contributor to this magazine.
Stella Stanley came into the boutique last month, the Stella Stanley, the movie star whom I adored in my teen years, the movie star who answered my fan letter by sending me a black-and-white glossy photo of her dipping a toe into her heart-shaped swimming pool. I still have the photo, and I still have the memories of watching her so long ago on Saturday afternoons at the Logan Theater.
In the dark, impersonally intimate movie theater I admired her as the crusading reporter who broke the story of the capture of the Essington kidnappers; I sighed as she lifted her petticoats to skip down the winding staircase into the arms of returning Civil War hero Jonathan Wainwright; I wept when in prison stripes she vainly proclaimed her innocence on the way to the electric chair in Innocence Denied.
At my vanity table with the pink tulle skirt, I hopelessly willed my mirror to transform my besieged adolescent skin into the creamy, rose-tinted complexion of Stella Stanley. My eyes teared as I painfully plucked eyebrows to achieve the perfect arch that enhanced her green eyes. My fingers burned from dipping wads of cotton into peroxide to simulate the luster of her golden hair. My entire body ached from the exercise routine I believed would sculpt me into the size of the costume Stella wore in Slave Girl of Sparta.
Nothing worked. I remained me, plain un-Stellalike me, but nevertheless loved for forty-one years by my husband George. Last year, during the final battle with his illness, he and I watched videos together, mostly starring Stella, that reminded us of our teenage years holding hands in the Logan Theater.
To ease the loneliness of widowhood, I took a job as a sales associate at Be a Star Boutique — Clothes for Making an Entrance. Mostly I worked by myself, except for the few hours a week the owner, Derrick Breen, spared from his jaunts to the casinos. Having inherited the shop from his mother, he enjoyed the income but not the interaction with the clientele, women of a certain age — my age — who, like me, got their fashion sense from the films of the ’forties. No denims or tees in the boutique, but plenty of flared organzas, sequined taffetas, fur-trimmed collars and hemlines, tiny pillbox hats with wisps of veils, large-brimmed hats that dipped coyly over an eyebrow, boalike scarves, fake alligator purses and shoes, and jewelry boxes overflowing with rhinestone chokers, earrings, and bracelets.
Aware of the importance of set design, Derrick’s mother had the walls painted shocking pink and installed black vinyl banquettes to serve as props for discarded mink stoles tossed there in casual neglect by customers imitating the stars of the ’thirties and ’forties. A tape of romantic ’forties songs softened up sales resistance from husbands wrenched from the golf course. On the walls, life-sized posters of stars dressed in outfits from their films gazed haughtily down on the wannabes who came to the store. The Stella Stanley poster featured the actress dressed in a mid-calf cocktail dress with fishtail peplum. Since the poster was in black-and-white, as was the film, I never knew the color of the dress — until she stood last month under her poster wearing the same dress. Fuchsia, it was fuchsia.
When I saw her across the room, I had to stop tallying the day’s receipts and sit down on a banquette. For a moment, I was at a movie, staring at a clever special effect, that of a woman who stepped out of a poster, then turned around to study her likeness. The illusion abruptly disappeared when she moved away from the wall toward the rack of silk lounging pajamas: Time had not stopped for her as it had for that portrait-gazer Dorian Gray. Only her lovely green eyes had been spared. Unnerved by the shock of seeing her so different from her video perfection, I fumbled with the jewelry on the nearest counter and did not gush over to her.
After a few minutes in recovery mode, I straightened my shoulders and started toward her, then stopped to watch a graceful scene. Miss Stanley was draping a long green silk scarf dotted with gold sequins around her neck. To catch the effect, she tilted the three-sided mirror on the accessories counter, pulling both sides inward to view the scarf from all angles. She’s still lovely, I thought, retaining the bone structure and flair of long ago, and I decided to tell her so — until she unwrapped the scarf from her neck and let it slide to her shoulder, then guided it slowly down her arm to her tote bag like a herpetologist returning a pet snake to its carrying case. I backed up to the cash register and waited for her to pay, but she fluffed up her blond bob, swept past me in queenly style, and murmured, “Nothing today, but I will be back.”
Aghast, I realized I had been an audience of one to a role I had never seen Stella Stanley play. Was she really a shoplifter? Could someone of her prestige and wealth — a long career and alimony from three rich husbands — not afford a scarf? Of course she could. She must be one of those sad people afflicted with kleptomania. Reporting her to the police was out of the question. I could not do that to the woman who had brought such blessed forgetfulness to George and me last year.
Nor could I relate the incident to Charley Sutton, the thirtyish gossip columnist who writes the sleazy The Dis List for the local paper, mostly about residents picked up for Driving Under the Influence. He frequently hangs out at the coffee shop next-door to the boutique in the hope of spotting a star shopping for a copy of a dress she wore in a movie. Several of Charley’s items, fed to him by his friend and my boss, Derrick, made it to the tabloids, such as “Former bombshell Dixie Lane was seen at Be a Star Boutique trying to squeeze her size-sixteen bod into a slinky black number like the one she wore in Rhapsody. She burst into tears when the zipper popped, then ran half-clothed out to the street to her patient hubby who waited in his car. He paid for the dress before they sped off to a local watering hole. I hope it had a supply of Twinkies for Dixie.”
Charley slammed into the shop minutes after Stella Stanley left. Meticulously unkempt, most likely to show he was involved in more important things than personal hygiene, he propped his elbows on the counter and stared at me through wire-rimmed lenses flecked with dandruff.
“Well, what have you got for me?” he demanded, wetly transferring a toothpick from east to west.
“Not a thing, Charley.”
“Hey, don’t give me that. I just seen Stella Stanley sashay outta’ here, looking smirky, like she just pulled off something. I read somewhere that she was once picked up for shoplifting but the charges were dropped. So did she make off with some loot?”
“Charley, you’ve got a ketchup stain on your shirt. Try some club soda.”
Rubbing at his shirt, he looked around the shop.
“Derrick in today?”
“No.”
“Okay, but I’ll be checking around regularly. I think the old broad lives around here.”