Two days later, Greer walked unannounced into her grandmother’s room at the Vista Haven Assisted Living Home.
Dearie had been watching an old black-and-white movie on television, but she clicked it off as soon as she saw her granddaughter’s pale, drawn face.
“She’s gone,” Greer said, tears spilling down her cheeks.
“Come here, child,” Dearie said, patting the mattress.
Greer climbed up and buried her face in her grandmother’s bony shoulder. Every now and again she felt the old lady’s chest rise and fall, and heard her muffled sobs.
“Well,” Dearie said sometime later. “It didn’t take very long, did it?”
“Guess not,” Greer said, sniffling. She took a tissue from the box on the nightstand and handed it to Dearie, then curled up again, in the circle of her grandmother’s arms.
* * *
“I never thought I’d outlive my only child,” Dearie said with a sigh. “That girl was such a force to be reckoned with, seems hard to believe she could be gone.”
Greer nodded, not trusting herself to speak just yet.
“When did it happen?”
“This morning. Sue, she’s the hospice nurse, came in, so while she was there I ran out to the store. When I got back, Sue told me it might only be a matter of hours. She offered to stay, but…” Greer shrugged. “She was slipping in and out of consciousness.”
“Oh, baby. I’m sorry you had to go through this hell.”
“I’m not. Mom was mostly out of it, but I think she knew I was there. It was just the two of us. I wouldn’t say it was peaceful, but there was nobody sticking her with needles or trying to put tubes up her nose or down her throat, which she would have hated.”
“What happens now?”
“You know Lise,” Greer said. “She left instructions. I found an envelope addressed to me, on her dresser. She didn’t want any kind of religious ceremony. Just a small memorial at the funeral home, and a luncheon afterward with a few old friends at the Little Duck, that restaurant where we usually had Sunday dinner. She already had everything all lined up and paid for, including the casket and her burial plot. And, oh yes, she left me strict instructions on what she wanted to wear.”
“That sounds like your mother. When are you going to have the service?”
“This Tuesday,” Greer said.
Dearie opened the drawer of her nightstand and took out her lighter and Virginia Slims.
“You know you can’t smoke in here,” Greer said, reaching for the cigarettes.
Her grandmother batted her hand away. “I know that. But I believe I need a smoke. Let’s go out to the garden.”
Greer glanced around the room. “Are you allowed to walk yet, or should I go get a wheelchair?”
“I can walk,” Dearie said, sliding carefully off the side of her bed. “But I’m feeling a little unsteady right now. Maybe you’d best get a wheelchair.”
Outside, the sky was a brilliant blue, with high puffy clouds and temperatures in the mid-eighties. Dearie clutched her sweater tighter as the chair bumped over the cracked sidewalk.
When they reached the shade of the oak tree, Greer parked the chair and sat on a bench. Dearie shook a cigarette out of the pack, lit it up, and tilted her head back before exhaling through her nostrils. After two more puffs, she handed the cigarette over to Greer, who hesitated before finally taking it and following suit.
She handed the cigarette back to her grandmother.
“Dearie? Can I ask you something?” she said finally. “It’s kind of personal. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
“I think I know where this is headed,” Dearie said. “But go ahead and ask. I guess you’re entitled to the truth.”
“It’s about Lise’s father. My grandfather. Was he really Cary Grant?”
Dearie took off her glasses and cleaned the lenses with the hem of her sweater.
“No,” she said. “That was just a lie I told your mother when she was a little kid. Somehow, the story took on a life of its own. Later on, after Lise started repeating it, and even changed her name to Grant, I tried to take it back, but she believed it was true, and nothing I said could change her mind.”
“You know, I read somewhere that Cary Grant was actually gay.”
Dearie gave her a sly wink. “That was the rumor around town. He always had lots of good-looking young men hanging around, and he supposedly had a thing with Howard Hughes. But he was married four, maybe five times. I think he was at least bisexual.”
“What’s the truth? I mean, about Lise’s father?”
“The truth is I was twenty-two when I got a bit part in this movie Cary Grant was making. Howard Hawks was the director and they were shooting on location, in Germany, in 1949, and it was the most exciting thing I’d ever done. A girlfriend and I went over together. Annelise spoke a little bit of German, which was good, because I didn’t understand a word of it.”
“What was the movie?”
“I Was a Male War Bride.”
“I know that movie,” Greer said. “Cary Grant and Ann Sheridan, right?”
Dearie nodded. “We thought we would have the time of our lives. But mostly, we were miserable. The food was terrible, because the war hadn’t been over for that long. And it was cold.…” Dearie shivered. “I don’t think I ever did warm up, all these years later.”
“Did you ever even meet Cary Grant?”
“Oh sure. My friend and I played nurses in a scene he was in, and I think he said something like ‘Hello, girls, helluva day to work, isn’t it?’ And then I ran into him in the canteen they set up for us on set, and he spilled some coffee on my skirt.”
“That was it?” Greer asked.
“Cary got really sick during the shoot. Hepatitis. They shut down the set for three months, and I didn’t have the money to hang around all that time in Heidelberg, Germany, not that I would have anyway, so I came home.”
“Then … who?”
“His name was Peder. He was a local boy, hired to drive for the cast and crew. He had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen, and he knew some English.” Dearie gave a rueful smile. “Just enough to get me in the sack.”
“Ohhhhh.”
“I didn’t even realize I was pregnant until I’d been home a few weeks. I started seeing this guy, his name was Edward. He was nice, but boring, and he sold appliances at Sears Roebuck. For a salesman, he wasn’t too good at math. I don’t think he ever figured out he couldn’t have been the father.”
“You never told him?”
“I didn’t,” Dearie said. “But his mother—what an old battle-ax she was—she figured it out right away. Lise looked nothing like Edward, who had this thick black hair and dark eyes. And here was my baby with blue eyes and blond curls. The old lady needled me every chance she got, and eventually turned Edward against me. I divorced him when Lise was three.”
“Wait a minute,” Greer said, interrupting. “Your actress friend who went to Germany with you—Annelise? Did you name mom after her?”
“That’s right. I wanted to give my little girl a name that would remind me of her—and my big adventure, and big romance. I still think it’s the prettiest name I ever heard.”
“Dearie?” Greer said. “Why? Why didn’t you just tell the truth about who Lise’s real father was? Why this big lie about Cary Grant?”
“Who did it hurt? Not Lise. She always liked being special.”
“But it’s still a lie,” Greer insisted. “Wouldn’t it have been better for Mom to know the truth?”
“Better for who? Not Lise. She knew as soon as she could talk that she wanted to be in the business. So, maybe you’re thinking it would have been better for you? Who knows? You didn’t turn out so badly, Greer girl. You had a car, you went to college, you had everything you needed. Lise and I saw to that. Didn’t we?”
“Yes,” Greer said, draping an affectionate arm across her grandmother’s shoulder. “All my friends used to envy me for having the coolest mother and grandmother in town. Who could ask for a better life? I had everything a girl could want.”
Except for the one thing she didn’t even know she wanted, Greer thought. A grandfather. A father. And maybe a real life outside a darkened movie house.
As she drove back to Villa Encantada to pack up Lise’s belongings, Greer brooded over her last conversation with Lise about her own father. What if things had been different between her parents? What if she’d known Clint had attempted to attend her high school graduation? What if Lise hadn’t cast him as the villain in their family soap opera?
She rubbed wearily at her eyes. What if, what if, what if? Lise was dead, and if Clint had any real interest in reaching out to his daughter, he could easily have done so by now.
But it was too late now. Wasn’t it?