Daring Darleen, Queen of the Screen Read online

  And that was when Darleen realized the terrible truth: she had not been afraid. She had been alive. And she was still more or less alive now as she lay panting there on the top of the cliff, though the feeling was already fading.

  There was a force in her that must have been coiled up very tight, just waiting for a moment like this to spring free and unfold. A terrible, powerful, untamable force that did not want to keep its feet on the ground. What danger could be more dangerous than that?

  A force like that might make a person suddenly start clambering up perilous rocks or balancing on tightropes; it might make a person break all the promises she had ever made to the person she loved most: That she would be careful. That she would stay safe.

  Oh, Papa! thought Darleen, and terror on his behalf filled her so suddenly that every one of her limbs started shaking.

  Cliffs and trains and bridges are dangers that stay politely outside us, after all. But when danger wells up inside, there is no place safe to hide, is there?

  And the danger facing Darleen was worse than any broken rope or runaway train. The danger was this: she might be like her Mama after all.

  Ham and eggs, apple pie, and hot, bitter coffee. That was the meal they always had after filming on the Palisades. And they always had it at the same place too. Alongside the road in Coytesville was an inn called Rambo’s, an unpretentious sort of establishment with a porch in front and a single gable raising its eyebrow at the goings-on in the dirt road outside. All the photoplay people went to Rambo’s. Sometimes they even made movies there when they needed a set for a Wild West shoot-out or something.

  In warm weather the guests sat at tables outside under the big tree, but they were now only a couple of weeks on the sunny side of a month of blizzards, and Darleen couldn’t stop trembling, so Aunt Shirley shepherded them all indoors, even Jasper, whose face, far from remorseful, was one big sulk.

  “What got into you there, Jasper?” said Uncle Charlie as they took off their coats and settled into their chairs. “You went and ruined one of my ropes.”

  Jasper scowled.

  And Darleen indulged in a fiery thought for a moment: He almost ruined a whole lot more than a rope!

  “There, there, now, Charlie,” said Aunt Shirley. “Accidents do get people upset. Don’t be riling the poor boy. He had the wrong knife! That would upset anyone, wouldn’t it?”

  Jasper scowled some more.

  As for Darleen, her teeth went for another round of chattering. Wasn’t that just like Aunt Shirley to be fretting on behalf of the boy who had almost sent Dar plummeting to a watery grave?

  Anyway, it smelled of sizzle and salt inside Rambo’s, and that was a comfort.

  “Busy day today out there, was it?” said the waitress as she slapped down their plates, and then she took a second look at Darleen and shook her head. “You look chilled right to the bone, honey. Isn’t your family treating you right?”

  Everybody here knew the Darlings of Fort Lee; the Matchless studios were basically a Darling extended-family operation. The Darlings had been show people and theater people, way back in the past century. And then in the nineties, Darleen’s Papa, who was a genius with machines and chemicals, had gotten a job helping Mr. Dickson (Thomas Edison’s assistant) down at Edison’s laboratory when they were making the first moving pictures out in the backyard in a funny tanklike studio called the Black Maria.

  One of those first pictures had been of Darleen’s Mama, fluttering her silky robes against the black velvet — she had come down from her tightropes and high places to let the camera capture the miracle of her — and that had changed the world, if by the world you meant not only the history of moving photography but also the lives of Loveliest Luna and the young handyman Bill Darling, falling in love as the Black Maria swiveled around to capture the sun.

  They moved to the little farmhouse in Fort Lee to live a different kind of story, a story in which engineers and tightrope dancers turn into people who live quietly in cottages, have a sweet little baby girl, and keep their feet on the ground. . . .

  But then the Golden Bird Theatre burned down over in the big city of New York, and the rest of the family — all those theatrical but homeless Darlings — decided to join their brother in Fort Lee and move right on into the moving pictures, and Papa’s quiet dreams were swallowed up again by chemicals and clever bits of machinery, and the little farm became instead a great barn of glass in which photoplays grew instead of corn or beans.

  “Temporarily!” he said sometimes, with mournfulness around the edges of his words. “We’ll get back to our roses one day, Darleeny, see if we don’t. When the money’s a little better . . .”

  But that’s one thing farms and photoplay studios have in common, seems like: the money is never much better. There is always new machinery to buy and pressure to expand and grow. But building huge glass “barns” so that you can shoot your photoplays in any weather is even more expensive than building the ordinary wooden kind. Matchless was always desperately short of money.

  And the Darlings’ dreams were always one plot twist away from coming to nothing again.

  Darleen thought about cliff-hangers and shivered again.

  “You all right there, young lady?” asked the waitress.

  Jasper made a scoffing noise down where he was sitting, but Darleen took care not to look his way.

  “I’m fine, thank you,” said Darleen. That was acting. She wasn’t actually fine at all.

  She kept remembering what it had felt like, having that wild force of a feeling spread its wings in her.

  I will be so careful, she promised herself (and her Papa). I will be careful forevermore. I won’t go near cliffs. Or steep places.

  She would push that feeling into a squished little ball and push that ball into the corner of her soul and never trust herself again. That’s all.

  “Eat up, now,” said Aunt Shirley briskly. She lifted her fork to demonstrate how it was done. “Nothing like ham and eggs after you’ve had a bit of a shock.”

  “Mmm,” agreed Uncle Charlie. He smacked his lips. “Say, what was that newspaper business you were so excited about, Shirley?”

  “Oh, my, yes,” said Aunt Shirley. “I’ve got it right here. Darleen, I know you think you don’t like it, but drink some of this good coffee. Coffee is medicinal. It will warm you right up.”

  Aunt Shirley unfolded the newspaper. Darleen caught glimpses of headlines about troubles in Europe, troubles in Mexico, flooding in Russia, “The Richest Twelve-Year-Old Girl in the World?” (not about Darleen Darling, clearly!), and a dog show where dogs worth fifteen thousand dollars would be competing for ribbons.

  “No, no, no — oh, here it is!” said Aunt Shirley, pointing to a column on the lower-right-hand side.

  “NEW STRAND THEATRE TO OPEN APRIL 11,” shouted the top headline, and then right underneath: “Full Programme Planned in Modern Wonder Theatre.” Aunt Shirley read the list aloud: “‘Programme will boast a full orchestra with twenty-seven musicians, short subjects, opera stars, the latest episode of the new serial sensation The Dangers of Darleen —’ There we are! There we are! Let’s see now — no, that’s all. Next bit is all about the featured drama they’ll show after intermission. Never mind that now.”

  Down at the grumpy end of the table, Jasper stabbed a piece of ham. Darleen kept her eyes on her aunt.

  “What’s the film, Aunt Shirley?” she said by way of ignoring Jasper more thoroughly.

  “The new Kathlyn Williams photoplay, The Spoilers, set in the wilds of Alaska, apparently. But who cares about that? The main thing is our picture will be there too — before intermission! Darleen, darling, what a thrill this is! And I’ve had the most brilliant idea for making the most of it! Want to hear, all of you?”

  “Spill it, Shirl,” said Uncle Charlie.

  “Yes?” said Darleen with some suspicion. Darleen knew to be cautious when Aunt Shirley had her plotting face on.

  Jasper made some sort of scoffing and
complaining sound — mmmmph — but Aunt Shirley had already set down her fork.

  “Well! Guess what? It’s because of all the things you see in the paper that I had this idea. People follow things in the paper, don’t they? Like the horrible snows we just had, or murder trials, or that old Mrs. Berryman dying and her fortune going to the poor-little-rich-girl orphan granddaughter and suchlike. So that gave me this idea, see —”

  They were all beginning to stare at Aunt Shirley. Even Jasper had stopped chewing for a moment.

  Uncle Charlie banged his spoon against his cup.

  “All right, now, Shirley! Better get to the point. What’s this ‘idea’ you’re talking around?”

  Aunt Shirley added a couple lumps of sugar to her coffee and stirred it happily with her spoon.

  “What I’m saying is, let’s get our girl kidnapped! It would raise such a lovely fuss!”

  “WHAT?” said Uncle Dan, in what Darleen could tell was spoken in capital letters.

  Jasper, down at his end of the table, laughed out loud for a moment and then stabbed another piece of ham. “Kidnapped!” he said, as if the thought made him happy.

  “What I’m saying is, people simply love a good story, don’t they? That’s how people are. That’s why they like The Dangers of Darleen. And that’s why they like the newspapers so well. Good stories! And so we should give them one they can really feast on. Daring Darleen goes to the opening of the Strand — and gets herself kidnapped!”

  Uncle Charlie set down his fork so that the tines were resting against his slab of ham. It was rare for Uncle Charlie to set down his fork midmeal, especially at Rambo’s.

  “Kidnapped? Our Darleen?” he said. “You mean, in the photoplay or for real?”

  “What’s the difference, really?” said Aunt Shirley. “Isn’t it just the most beautiful plan? In the previous episode, she can receive a mysterious invitation to the opening of the Strand. And then our real-life Darleen will show up at the real-life Strand and get herself kidnapped while Dan cranks his camera, yes. And the news will go into the papers, won’t it? Maybe even right into the Pictorial Section of the Times, next to all the visiting princesses and blizzard pictures? See how lovely? So in real life, they’ll all be reading the newspapers and worrying about Darleen, and meanwhile, the whole story of it — the kidnapping, the escape — that gets worked into Episode — Wait, what’ll we be up to by then?”

  She counted on her fingers.

  “Nine! Episode Nine: Daring Darleen, Kidnapped by the Wicked Whatsits!”

  “Salamanders,” said Uncle Dan, who remembered the details of things even though he didn’t do much chattering about them. In the story their moving pictures were telling, the Salamanders were the mysterious masked villains chasing after the Crown Princess Dahlia Louise and the exiled King.

  “Exactly,” said Aunt Shirley. “Kidnapped! All week long in the newspapers — little bits, you know, that we feed the readers now and again — and then, guess who will come to see the picture the next week, to see how our Darleen manages to escape?”

  She tapped her spoon against her saucer: “EV-RY-BO-DY, that’s who. It’s gold. It’s a simply golden idea, you have to admit. And we really need the money, if you don’t mind me reminding us all of that fact.”

  There was a silent moment then while they all digested Aunt Shirley’s golden idea. Uncle Charlie actually went back to chewing on his slice of ham, because he believed thinking worked better on a happy stomach.

  He took two bites, and then he said, “Very clever, Shirl! A sort of real kidnapping at the Strand! I like it!” And then he took two more.

  “But Shirley,” said Uncle Dan. “The police. Won’t they maybe get confused?”

  That was a pretty long sentence for Uncle Dan. Aunt Shirley gave him a warm and confident smile.

  “We will inform the police, don’t you worry,” said Aunt Shirley. “They’ll know to stay away from the Strand that evening — or at least not to worry about kidnappings going on under the bright lights! Jasper, please pass the toast down this way, won’t you, dear?”

  “Oh, please, please, have her kidnapped for real,” said Jasper, and he made a face that Darleen saw only out of the corner of her eye.

  Darleen’s stomach was doing puzzled little flips and twirls.

  “Aunt Shirley —” she said, but then she was interrupted by the arrival of wedges of the famous Rambo’s apple pie.

  “What, dear? You feeling better now?” said Aunt Shirley.

  No. But how could she even begin to explain? She had been dangling from a cliff on a rope — that had been fine. And then the awful Jasper had accidentally (right? accidentally? — anything else was surely too terrible, even for Jasper Lukes) cut her rope, and a new feeling had spread its wings inside her and sent her scrambling in joy up that bit of cliff, when any normal person would have been weeping from fright. And now they wanted to have her kidnapped, at least sort of. And that would make anyone’s insides feel a little peculiar, wouldn’t it?

  Everything today seemed to be leading somewhere she was sure she shouldn’t be going: into danger.

  Her adventure on the cliff had changed something. Had woken something up in her. Even with the tangy sweetness of apple pie on her tongue, Darleen was no longer entirely sure that she was real. She thought maybe she was more like the shell of an egg that might be shattered into pieces by that strange something new trying to spread its wings inside her.

  So that was already about a thousand tangled worries. Darleen settled for the one everyone at that table would surely understand:

  “But what will my Papa say?” she whispered.

  Well, he said no, of course. At first, anyway. Uncle Charlie and Aunt Shirley spent a few hours talking him around in the kitchen of the little house where Darleen and her father lived, and Darleen’s part of the conspiracy was not to let slip any part of the truth about what had happened that morning on the Palisades cliff.

  “No need to trouble your Papa about what’s past and done, now, is there?” Aunt Shirley had said on their way back to the studio in Fort Lee. “Accidents are accidents. The important thing is, nothing bad actually happened.”

  Maybe nothing happened, thought Darleen with some discomfort. But even unspoken, that felt to her like a lie.

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying,” said her Papa to his siblings. “Let Darleen be kidnapped? But that’s illegal. That’s a crime!” They were all stubborn people, each in his or her own particular way, so he had already made that point a couple of times, and they had already repeated what they thought was a clear and rational explanation of the kidnapping plan.

  But Papa didn’t like Darleen being put in any kind of danger. And being an honest and cautious type of person, he really, really, really didn’t like things that seemed like they might be breaking the law.

  “Not really kidnapped! Just for publicity, Bill,” they said patiently. “You know how important publicity is these days. This isn’t the nineteenth century anymore. This is nineteen fourteen!”

  Darleen’s Papa was sitting under the old photograph on the wall, and the contrast between his wrinkled, worried head and the smaller, happier version of himself in the picture made Darleen feel sad and guilty both, so she tried watching her fingers make patterns on the red-checked tablecloth instead.

  “What I don’t understand is, you say it’s for the photoplay story, but then you say they’ll be kidnapping Darleen herself at the new theater. Is it just a play you’re talking about, or is it real?”

  That was a question Darleen kept finding herself wrestling with, too, so she looked up to see what her uncle or aunt might have to say about it.

  “But now, that’s the new way of things, Bill,” said Uncle Charlie. “Blurring the boundary lines, don’t you know, between the story and what’s real. Seems that people like it when the characters they see in the photoplays come out into the world and show how they’re real people too. Makes the photoplays realer for them. Makes th
e people come back and back again. Half real is real good for business, seems like.”

  Darleen’s Papa was shaking his head.

  “What’s a half-real kidnapping? Sounds risky to me, doing that right out there in the world, where people will be confused. We don’t want Darleen in half-real danger. I don’t even like having her in pretend danger! And messing with the law is worse than jumping off trains, seems like to me.”

  Darleen thought about the cliff that morning, and the broken rope, and how far from make-believe the dangers in photoplays sometimes turned out to be, and she bent her head over the tablecloth again, organizing her right hand so that all the fingers were resting on white squares, and her thumb was on a red square. Then she moved her fingers over to the neighboring squares, walking them from white to red. And then back again. It calmed the guilty thump of her heart a little.

  Aunt Shirley didn’t seem to feel guilty at all, though. She just laughed.

  “Oh, Bill! It’s just going to be acting. All pretend. And the police will be in on the joke, don’t you worry. Nothing dangerous about it at all.”

  And that was how they talked him into saying something like yes.

  When they had left, Darleen went over and perched on his knee for a while, like in the old days, when she was littler, with her arm around his worried neck.