Los Angeles, 1925
Dreams
It had been twelve years since I’d seen Lola, and to be honest, I’d pretty much forgotten all about her. That’s why, when she tapped me on the shoulder as I was leaving the studio canteen, I had to do a double take.
“Mara!” she gasped. “Is it really you? I thought so! I’d recognize that beautiful brown hair anywhere!”
We hugged and kissed each other on the cheek.
“I’m so happy to see you, Mara!”
“Me, too,” I murmured. And I was. Of course I was. It’s just that it had been such a long time. I’d thought I’d never see her again. I was taken aback. She seemed so...how can I say it?...so different, and yet, not really. She was all dressed up, very stylish, but I knew enough about fabric to realize that her clothes were not expensive. Still, her hair and makeup were perfect. She talked and moved...not exactly like a movie star...but like she seemed to think a movie star ought to talk and move. She’s still playing the diva, I thought, just like when we were little.
Before I knew it, she’d dragged me into the green room and launched into a long, breathless story:
“With a sweeping movement, she stretches her arms to the heavens as though preparing for flight.” She closed her eyes as if she were reliving the scene. “Fingers fluttering like feathers, she circles the stage en pointe. But then, with an elevation of the elbows, her powerful wings wilt into fragile plumes. She bows her head and folds her wrists across her breast as she turns and rotates in the tiny, close steps of a pas de bourrée. She seems to be sinking into her own soul, detaching herself from all that is earthly. Her legs and arms quiver. Her shoulders hunch slightly, as she continues her descent into darkness. She is a cloud of feathers, as ethereal as a seraph. Gracefully, she extends her right leg and bends her left knee. Then, slowly, she crumples over her outstretched limb. The quivering ceases. The strains of Saint-Saëns’s Le Cygne fade to silence. The swan is dead. I caught my breath. Tears were trickling down my cheeks. The other spectators leaped to their feet applauding wildly, even though the figure on the screen couldn’t hear their accolades. ‘Brava, Pavlova!’ they screamed. ‘Brava, Anna Pavlova!’”
Lola stopped talking and stared at me. What was I supposed to say? Did she expect me to be impressed?
“Ah,” I muttered finally. “So that’s what you were doing while I was sweeping floors and scrubbing toilets all these years. Watching pretty girls flit across the screen in tutus.” I had been happy to see her, but now I felt irritated. You’d think she would ask me what I’d been doing all this time. But no, blah blah blah about this damn Russian ballerina.
“She was so beautiful, Mara,” Lola murmured. “I wanted to dance just like her, to be in a movie just like her! I wanted to be her! Anna Pavlova is the greatest ballerina in the world, and imagine, we were able to see her right there in Mexico at the cinema!
“Once we got out in the street, I floated along as though in a trance. I started to chant, ‘I want to be a ballerina! I want to be a ballerina!’ It had rained while we were in the movie theater, and the air smelled so clean and crisp. The buildings sparkled in the artificial light of the streetlamps. Horses trotted by, splashing muddy water onto the passersby who were maneuvering this way and that to skirt puddles. I struggled loose from Mami’s hand and twirled like a dervish. ‘Lola!’ Mami snapped. ‘Stop it! You can’t prance around in the street like that!’”
“How adorable,” I said sarcastically. But she was too absorbed in her story to notice.
“I said to Mami, ‘If Papá says I can study ballet, will you let me?’ Then I said, ‘Papá, would you let me study ballet? If I study Mexican dance as well, will you say yes? If I don’t play the Victrola too loud... If I if I ifIifIifI...’”
Lola started to giggle. “Fortunately, Papá took my side. He said that dance is good for girls, that it teaches them grace and poise. Mami argued that a señorita from a good family should never perform in public, but Papá said that God had blessed them with only one daughter, and he wasn’t going to deprive her of anything. ‘Find the best dance teacher around,’ he said. ‘If she’s going to study dance, let her learn it right.’”
“I finished high school,” I said dryly. “Did you?”
Lola stopped talking and opened her eyes wide, as though she’d just realized I was there.
“With honors. Straight As in English. The teacher said I had a marvelous imagination.”
Lola looked wounded. “I’m sorry, Mara. I didn’t mean to go on and on...”
“But you are going on and on.”
I really didn’t want to hurt her. “So what happened?” I said after an awkward pause. “You took dancing lessons and then?” I hoped she’d make it short.
“Yes, with Felipita López, a very famous teacher. Ballet, flamenco, traditional Mexican folk dance. I was good at it. They said my extensions were the highest, my pliés were the deepest...but you probably don’t care.”
She was right. I didn’t care, but I didn’t want to sound nasty, so I said, “So how did you get to be Dolores Del Rio instead of Dolores Asúnsolo? How did you get to Hollywood?”
She bit the knuckle of her index finger and looked down. “Are you sure you want to know?” I’d deflated her balloon.
“Go ahead,” I said, not sounding too enthusiastic.
It had all started, she explained, when the ladies from the Hospital Auxiliary asked Doña Antonia to give permission for Lola to dance at their fundraiser. Of course Doña Antonia refused. “It’s not for some cheap cabaret,” the ladies assured her. “It’s for a worthy cause, and only the best people will be there.”
Lola turned the story into a performance, mimicking her mother, stone-faced and stubborn, and the snooty Hospital Auxiliary ladies with their noses in the air. She’s good at what she does, I thought. She really is an actress.
Well, Doña Antonia was in a bind. She didn’t want to anger these ladies, but on the other hand, she didn’t want her daughter performing for an audience, even an upper-crust audience. Finally, she agreed to put it to the nuns at the colegio.
“To Mamá’s horror, my teachers were delighted,” Lola twittered. ‘“A hospital benefit? God’s work!’ said Sister Madeleine.” She did the nun’s voice with a thick French accent.
Still, Doña Antonia resisted. She put off calling the dressmaker to design Lola’s costume. She forgot to buy new castanets. Finally, Lola threatened to do it all herself.
“Mami was perplexed,” said Lola, laughing. “Where was her obedient little girl? Although, secretly, I think she was happy to see me so determined.”
The outfits were another issue. Lola wanted a tight, ruffled, Andalusian dress for the flamenco number, but Doña Antonia insisted on something more discreet. But then, halfway through rehearsals, she changed her mind. Lola would need a sleek, formfitting dress after all, she decided, one that showed off her tiny waist and blossoming curves. She would need a gentle décolletage and short sleeves that revealed her graceful arms. She would need a flattering, curved heel that highlighted her beautiful calves. Why? With her sharp feline senses, Doña Antonia had noticed that the event organizer, Jaime Martínez del Río y Viñent, one of the richest men in Mexico, attended every rehearsal and couldn’t take his eyes off her daughter.
“Ah...del Río,” I said. “You married him!”
“Wait!” Lola tittered. “I’ll tell you everything!”
She plunged back into her story. She made Don Jaime sound like the príncipe azul, Prince Charming. At thirty-four, he was a jet-setter and a smooth talker. His family had hung on to their cotton plantations during the Revolution, and now the money was rolling in. Men were back from the war, and everybody needed clothes. The Americans weren’t producing enough cloth to fill orders, which put the Martínez del Río y Viñent family in an excellent position. Jaime played the part of rich landholder to the hilt. His father looked on indulgingly when Jaime showed off his English suits and Italian ties. He never demanded that his son sit by his side and learn the hard lessons of running a business. “Let him have fun,” he said. “The kid has no head for numbers, anyway.”
Jaime smoked black cigarillos in long, jewel-encrusted cigarette holders and had never been married. People said he was “puffy”—back then, we didn’t use the word gay—but Lola brushed it off. “He’s artistic,” she said, whenever people made insinuations. “He wants to be a scriptwriter.”
She lowered her voice as if confiding a secret. “When I rehearsed, I felt his gaze on my body, caressing my neck like the quivering wing of a butterfly. I began to dance only for him. I imagined him touching my earlobes, my elbows. These are things I can tell only you, Mara.”
Jaime exuded a charisma that Lola found irresistible. A man of dazzling arrogance who moved with the self-confidence of a bullfighter. He wasn’t handsome. He was balding, and his elegance verged on ostentatiousness, but Lola didn’t seem to mind.
Neither did Doña Antonia. For her, Jaime was a catch because class and wealth were everything. He had inherited a fortune—vast land holdings and cash—and for a man like that, you could overlook certain things. You could choose not to hear certain rumors.
Lola didn’t need her mother’s encouragement to flash her huge brown eyes at Don Jaime del Río. She didn’t need Doña Antonia to show her how to thrust her shoulder forward and tilt her head provocatively. At almost sixteen, she was already a sensuous creature.
“One day during a break, he said to me, ‘What a lovely bolero. You know, the bolero is a dance of seduction.’ ‘I’m—I’m not trying to seduce anybody,’ I stammered. ‘No?’ he said. ‘How disappointing. I was hoping you were trying to seduce me!’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you certainly think you’re the last bean in the chili pot!’ ‘And you certainly know how to make a man feel like yesterday’s tortillas!’ he responded.”
I knew I was supposed to laugh, but I didn’t. “Do you know how to make a Marcel curl?” I said suddenly. “It’s quite a demanding process. First, you have to heat the curling iron. Next, you slide it down a strand of hair to warm it. Then, you roll the hair around the iron... You know, you haven’t stopped talking about yourself all afternoon. You’re putting on a show where you’re not only the leading lady but all the bit players besides.”
She pursed her lips. “You asked me about my marriage,” she whispered. She looked contrite. “I was so happy to see a friend from home that I...”
She’d called me a friend. Suddenly, I felt sorry. During those early years in Los Angeles, my mind was on school, work, learning to marcel hair. Kids live in the moment, not in the past. But then, the memories came tumbling back to me—those hours under the ahuehuete tree, the confidences, the giggles. Memories I cherished. Lola was the first real friend I’d ever had, and I still loved her. She hasn’t changed, I thought. She still thinks she’s the center of the universe...but she’s the one who taught me the meaning of friendship. I have to accept her as she is.
“I’m just exhausted,” I said. “I work at a beauty salon called Marie’s. I used to work at Edmond’s, but when Mr. Edmond started paying too much attention to me, Tía Emi yanked me out of there. Miss Marie was one of Edmond’s operators, and she hired me when she bought her own shop. I like her. She’s flexible. Tía Emi is assistant to a costume designer named Madame Isabelle, and Marie lets me take a day off once in a while to help Tía Emi when there’s a crunch. I was at the studio today because they’re doing costumes for a movie called The Panther’s Rage.”
“Sounds like your Tía Emi has done well for herself.”
“Her lot improved when she finally learned how to say more than ‘fuck you’ in English.”
Lola burst out laughing and threw her arms around me. “Oh, Mara, here we are giggling and sharing secrets, just like when we were kids. Tell me how you got to California.”
“We walked from Mexico City to Los Angeles,” I said, exaggerating. “Tell me about Jaime.”
“Well, he asked me to have a cup of coffee with him. We sat down at a table at one end of the room, where they served coffee and sweets, in full view of the ladies of the Hospital Auxiliary. ‘All the angels in heaven are crying today,’ he whispered. ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Because the most beautiful angel flew back down to earth. I’ve heard that line before!’
“That evening, he took me home in his automobile. His chauffeur drove, and we sat in the back seat. I was nervous, Mara. I couldn’t believe Mami had allowed it. He kept looking at my necklace, a gold filigree cross hanging from a chain. ‘It’s twisted,’ he whispered. I raised my hand to adjust it. ‘No,’ he said softly. He brought his lips close to my ear. ‘I’ll do it.’ His breath was sweet, like spiced oranges. The clasp had worked its way to the front, and he took the chain between his fingers and ran the hook around my neck to position it. I could feel his knuckles moving subtly over my skin. I wanted to gasp, but I was afraid he would laugh. Then he kissed me, and I felt something between a tickle and an electric shock. Do you remember your first kiss, Mara?” Her eyes closed. She was reliving the scene.
“It was wonderful being with Jaime,” she went on. “We talked about art and music. He liked cubism and jazz, but also opera and ballet. He especially loved film. He called it the art form of the future. It was the first time anyone had ever shared ideas with me like that. I began to daydream about him. Instead of doing homework, I wrote my name over and over in my notebook—Señora Dolores Asúnsolo de del Río. Dolores Asúnsolo del Río. Dolores del Río.
“I memorized his love letters. ‘My Darling, You are a coffer of treasures that I yearn to possess. Your lips are rubies gleaming with passion; your teeth, precious pearls; your skin, lustrous alabaster...’ I was sure that with a pen like that, he would write spectacularly successful movie scripts—if only, someday, we could go to Hollywood. ‘My darling Lola, My day begins when you appear. You are the rising sun that brings the dawn.’
“One morning, I overheard Mami and Papá talking in the dining room. ‘Well?’ said Mami. ‘His holdings in Durango must be worth millions,’ said Papi. ‘The cotton operation alone generates more than the national reserve. Of course, he’s nearly twenty years older than she is.’ ‘Bah, what difference does that make?’ said Mami. ‘She’ll live like a queen, with plenty of servants to take care of the babies.’
“Before I knew it, the marriage was settled and preparations began. The guest list! The flowers! The food! The music! And the dress, Jaime himself designed it!”
“Your husband designed your wedding dress?” I was incredulous.
“It was a marvel—long and white, with simple, uncluttered lines, slightly puffed elbow-length sleeves, and a train from here to Oaxaca.”
An extended European honeymoon followed. London, Paris, Madrid. I imagined Lola at the opera and at the theater or sipping champagne with Jaime on the terrace of an elegant hotel by the sea, gentle waves rippling like thick, wavy ribbons of blue and green crepe.
“You’re so lucky, Lola!” I breathed. “You married your príncipe azul and had a fairy-tale honeymoon. Your life is perfect!”
“No,” she said, suddenly sullen. “It’s not.”
“But your rich, powerful husband brought you to Hollywood so he could write scripts and you could act!”
“It wasn’t like that.” The color had gone out of her cheeks.
It took a moment for me to realize the truth: she’d fleetingly lost herself in the role of romantic heroine, but then, inevitably, the lights came on and the screen went dark.