This was when Sewanee began sensing what it might be like to be Sewanee. She would show up at school in jeans, Tshirts, flip-flops, and ponytails, but every Homecoming or Snow Ball or Prom she was decked out in impeccably tailored vintage and makeup, looking about a decade older than she was.
It was at one of these dances her junior year when a classmate’s father, a television producer, asked if she had any interest in acting. She said it was all she wanted to do. What she didn’t tell him was that her parents had told her she couldn’t until she was eighteen. They lived in Los Angeles, after all, they knew the horror stories. So when the producer asked her to audition for his new show, she did so without telling her parents. Because she was sure she wouldn’t get it. She just wanted to test herself out. Like a first date.
So when she inevitably got the role and was forced to tell them, they said no, of course she couldn’t take the part, hadn’t they discussed this?
But, but, but!
They fought, their first real teenager knock-down drag-out, and Sewanee slammed the front door, got into her rattletrap Jetta, and steamed over the hill to Bitsy’s.
She and Blah had sat out by the pool in the warm October evening while Sewanee sobbed, hurling invectives at her parents. Blah calmly sipped her martini and waited for Sewanee to breathe. Then she handed her the last gulp of her drink, which Sewanee immediately threw back and just as immediately nearly threw up, making a face only a lemon could love. They both laughed; Blah’s aim all along.
She reached into the pocket of her quilted dressing gown, pulled out a lighter and the silver cigarette case her agent had given her in ’58. It was inscribed on the back, “To: A great pair of get-away sticks. May they take you where you want to go.” She tapped out a cigarette, lit it, smoke dancing in the pool lights.
Sewanee had heard the story of how Blah had been discovered many times over the years, but like all of Blah’s stories, new layers were added as Sewanee got older.
“Bitsy and I had moved to Nashville for work. We were cocktail waitresses at a dive in Printer’s Alley. And one day, a man walked in.” Most of Blah’s stories included the line: a man walked in.
“They were location scouting for a honky-tonk in Nashville. Big deal at the time, going on location instead of making a soundstage in Hollywood look like a honky-tonk. So, I sauntered up, talked him into staying for a drink and into using our bar to shoot in. He came back two months later to film, and I went from being a waitress-in-life to a waitress-in-a-movie. I saved my tips, got on a bus, and when I got to Hollywood, I telephoned him. He got me a room at a good boardinghouse. He got me a coat check job at Musso and Frank. He got me my first agent. And all he got was my virginity.”
Sewanee’s mouth dropped open, but Blah waved off her shock. “He was a looker. And it was time to get rid of it anyway.”
“But . . .” Sewanee sputtered. “He used you!”
Blah raised an eyebrow. “Did he? Two people can use each other, you know.”
She barely dared ask. “Grandpa?”
Blah shook her head. “He was later. He was love. He was a playwright out of New York and he thought I was interesting. Imagine that.
“What I’m saying, Dollface, is I never slept with anyone I didn’t want to sleep with. I always had a reason. Was it right? Was it wrong? Who the hell knows. You’ve seen movies about that time. People write their little tell-alls now. Casting couches, randy directors, lifted skirts against a dressing room door.” She scoffed, took a drag. “I’m not saying that’s not how it was for some gals. And I’m sorry if that’s how it was. But for me, it was three-martini lunches and bonfires in Malibu that lasted until the sun came up and ‘my wife is visiting her sister for the weekend, you ever been to Catalina?’ Reciprocal, you understand?”
“But you wanted to be an actress and they exploited that.”
Blah cackled and ashed her cigarette. “I didn’t want to be an actress. I wanted to be famous.”
“But you worked?”
“But I wasn’t good! Shit’s sake, I couldn’t act my way out of a wet paper bag. My choice was, I could be in it the way I was, or out of it because of what I wasn’t.” She pointed her cigarette at Sewanee. “And Doll, I can see on your face that won’t work for you.”
She took a final drag and snuffed it. “You want me to take your side and rail at your parents but–much as it pains me, and Lord knows it does–they’re right. This? Who you are now and what you’re being offered? Is how things end badly.”