Crowned Heads (16 page)

One morning in the autumn of 1975, however, the almost invariable and inviolable tranquility of Boca de Oro was shattered by a piercing scream, so loud that it seemed to rush from the
Numero Uno
cabaña, where it originated, all the way across the bay to the village, where the church bell was tolling. It first awoke, then froze, the tenants of the other cabañas, while dogs roused themselves and barked, and the help came running in alarm, first the maids, then the waiters, then the manager, followed by his wife. Scream sounded on scream, while guests tumbled from their beds and grouped themselves outside the cabaña from which the cries issued. Both Alvarezes were inside, discovering what the trouble was, and finally the dread word was heard:

“Scorpion!”

At last the screams ceased, and a measure of calm was restored. Steve, followed by Cupie, backed through the door and shook his head at the assembled group.

Scorpion, no.
Cucaracha,
yes.

So concluded the brief drama over a cockroach. My, didn’t she holler some, they said on their way to breakfast. “She” had arrived the previous evening from Mirabella, not on the excursion boat, but by privately chartered craft. The hotel register gave the name in a not altogether precise hand as Ms. Norah Dunn, though this was not her true identity, which was far better known. But her fellow guests, unaware of who she really was, were nevertheless interested, since she did not appear in the dining room at dinnertime, but asked that a tray be sent to her cabaña. This request had made her the object of immediate speculation, meals never being served in the rooms, but Cupie Alvarez reported that Ms. Dunn was not feeling well after the boat crossing.

After the
cucaracha
episode, she appeared for breakfast only when the dining room had emptied, eating by herself at a corner table. She came onto the beach at midmorning. The beachboy had given her a chair prominently situated in the midst of everything, but Ms. Dunn preferred that it be placed far to one side, close to the library, where nobody sat. She wore a bikini, a Hermès scarf covered by a chic straw hat, and dark glasses. One of the regular guests, a Mrs. Atwater, whose husband owned a chain of lube and transmission-repair stations in Arizona, said that this Miss or Mrs. Dunn must have tender skin because she stayed completely under her umbrella. She had that pale, milky flesh that many brunettes have, though Mrs. Atwater was not sure that Ms. Dunn was a perfectly natural brunette; she thought she detected the tone of Clairol, or Preference by L’Oréal at best. (Mrs. Atwater was not wrong.) She obviously had money, because her bikini was a Gernreich original and her beach tote came from Gucci. Evidently a reader, she had brought out of the tote a number of hard-back books, one of which,
A Guide to Inner Peace
by Dr. Bert Fleischer, she was already halfway through. The dark glasses she wore were large, with narrow gold frames. They looked expensive, too, and hid a good deal of her face. She made frequent applications of sun lotion, rubbing the cream in well and wiping her fingertips with a violet-colored tissue so sand wouldn’t stick. Her fingernails and toenails were immaculately lacquered a frosted lilac shade. She was “busty” and rather large through the hips. She didn’t smoke, but occasionally would pop a Tic Tac mint into her mouth. She obviously took good care of herself; Mrs. Atwater judged that she owed her figure to massage and diet, and was probably fifty if a day.

Ms. Dunn lunched by herself, under a
palapa,
and after lunch she walked up the beach to see the lagoon filling, then was observed entering the American couple’s handicraft shop. She returned after the excursion boat left and retired to her cabaña. She was not seen at cocktail time, but Mrs. Atwater was quick to note that one of the single window tables had been set and there were flowers on it; she surmised (correctly) that arrangements had been made with the management for the new guest to take her meals independent of the family style of the rest. Rather hoity-toity, Mrs. Atwater said. Ms. Dunn did not appear until everyone was seated and forks were already clattering, when she slipped into her place and was greeted by Cupie, who served her herself.

Her history was a curious one. She was not Norah Dunn, but, in fact, Lorna Doone, of the movies. And she had come as a quasi criminal, in flight not only from the law, but from her own problems, fancied or otherwise. Several months before, she had walked out of Robinson’s department store in Beverly Hills, to be apprehended on Wilshire Boulevard by two plainclothesmen who requested that she return to the store, where it was discovered she was wearing, under her own clothes, garments from the ladies’ department, all unpaid for. The ensuing legalities had caused her such acute mental distress that she again began consulting a well-known Beverly Hills psychiatrist—he had treated her on numerous earlier occasions, with no noticeable results. Seven weeks after the embarrassing Robinson’s contretemps she set fire to the shot-silk bedroom curtains of her Brentwood house, which resulted in considerable damage. When the insurance investigators responded to her claim, she said it must have been the fault of the wiring where the lamp plugged in. They could find nothing wrong with the wiring, and because the claim was a large one, including coverage of a full closet of clothes and two fur coats, and since it was the third claim registered by the policyholder in as many years, an investigation more thorough than might have been normal was instituted. Unable to face such fastidious inquiry, and with legal difficulties erupting in the shoplifting matter, she had abruptly decided that she must “get away for her health.”

There was a particular reason she had chosen Boca de Oro, which had nothing to do with its obvious physical attractions. It had been her hope that she would be invited to race with her friends the Sandlers on their yacht, the
MorryEll,
from La Jolla to Cabo San Lucas at the tip of Baja California, and from there to Acapulco. Not that Lorna especially enjoyed sailing, but one of the members of the group was a man in whom she had for some time been interested. The hoped-for invitation not materializing, she had decided to arrive well in advance and surprise the sailing party when they put in at Boca.

She had plenty of time to get herself in hand. The doctor was correct, her nervous crisis had been coming on again for some time, but with the sun, the sea, and some quiet, she would condition herself, and when her friends arrived she would be in the pink. All that was required was that nature should do its work, that she eat and sleep and relax. No one knew where she was, not even her son or daughter, her doctor or her attorney; only her best friend, Nan Pringle. She found it an agreeable condition, knowing there were no telephones to bother her; no lunch engagements to keep; no psychiatrists’ appointments to remember; no letters arriving with disturbing news. The weather was practically guaranteed, and by the time the
MorryEll
put in she would have a very nice tan, thank you. Just getting on the plane had given her a sudden surge of relief, as if when the rubber wheels lifted from the runway she had become a disembodied spirit and that spirit were racing away, somewhere ahead of her, leaving behind those multitudinous heaps of problems, irksome, annoying things. She couldn’t imagine what had made her do such a silly thing, setting fire to the curtains, and she had herself one last good cry—she was certain it was the end of those lachrymose fits that burst on her at the most inconvenient times—and felt buoyant and forward-looking. The past was the past, and once the Sandlers et al arrived, she hoped they would bear her away again under white sails to who knew what, but surely not inconsiderable, joys. All she had to do was get hold of herself.

She really must.

She hated the name. Lorna Doone. When her teachers called on her she had shrunk with embarrassment. In grammar school the other children had called her Lorna Dumb or Lorna Doom. Then one day in the A&P she passed a pyramid display of Lorna Doone cookies, on sale. She stole a box. On the wrapper was a picture of a pretty girl, and the cookies were buttery and sweet. She brought them home and asked her mother if she was named after the cookie. No, from a book, her mother told her. Lorna found the book at the library; it was by Blackmore, the Victorian tale of an English country girl who survives a clan feud, inherits land and titles, and marries the man she loves. In time the real Lorna identified herself with the original heroine, and thought it was all very romantic. Then, on another day, in a stationery store where they sold French records and periodicals, the saleswoman, having learned her name, asked if she was related to the star. What star?
Eeraynee Doone.
Lorna had never heard of Eeraynee Doone. Turned out it was Irene Dunne; Miss Dunne became her idol. From there on, given the book and the movie star and the cookies, her name didn’t sound so dumb to her. She took boxes of the cookies to school and displayed them prominently on her desk, and found the boys stopping by to be offered one. Soon they were all calling her “Cookie,” but she knew it wasn’t the cookies they were after when they whistled “Lookie, lookie, lookie, here comes Cookie, walkin’ down the street.” She knew what they were after, and she knew she had it.

Since babyhood her hair had always been blond; since childhood she had always been told she was pretty. Pretty enough to be in the movies? Certainly. It had not been difficult. The distance from Santa Monica, where she was born and brought up, to Burbank, where she was first put under contract, was less than twenty miles. At fourteen she was a baton twirler with the band at Santa Monica High; she wore a white helmet decorated with gold feathers, a short, flirty costume, and white kid boots. She had the best legs of any of the girls, and all the boys said they were sensational. Her marks were not good. She did the lindy hop to “And the Angels Sing” and “Elmer’s Tune.” At UCLA, after the war, she was still twirling a baton for the Saturday afternoon games. She wore a Ginger Rogers pageboy with her hair parted on the side and held with a silver barrette, and cashmeres, and plaid skirts, and imitation pearls. All the boys were still after her, and they listened to “Racing with the Moon” by Vaughn Monroe; but her marks were still not good. Then her picture was on the cover of
Look,
heading a feature called “Vets Go Back to School … with Girls.” She and nine other beautiful coeds had been picked by the editors to illustrate the article. The agent Viola Ueberroth brought the picture to the attention of a studio executive, a test was arranged, and she was signed at Warners. She had no training and got little help, but they put her in a picture with Dolly the Talking Cow. Her mother, Selma, had told her she was just a dumb bunny and to keep her mouth shut or people would find out how stupid she really was. She did what they told her to. In the studio commissary she would see Alexis Smith, who was working with Cary Grant; and Lauren Bacall, who was working with Humphrey Bogart; and Bette Davis, who was working with Glenn Ford. Lorna was working with a cow.

After that she did a small part in
Nora Prentiss,
with Ann Sheridan, a small part in
Flaxy Martin,
with Virginia Mayo, a small part in
The Adventures of Don Juan,
with Errol Flynn. Her mother worried about her working with Flynn; there’d been the statutory rape scandal, and Selma didn’t want him “in like Flynn” with
her
daughter. Lorna said oh, no, Mr. Flynn was a very nice man, a gentleman. Shortly after that, Warners dropped her. She went to RKO. Went to Columbia. Went to Fox. She did twenty-seven pictures between 1948 and 1953, all B’s. She was always terrified of the camera, never knew what she was doing, she moved where the director told her, said the lines the way the director told her, and if she was required to cry, they blew glycerin in her eyes.

Ann Sheridan was the “Oomph Girl”; the studio flacks decided to push Lorna as the “all-American Cookie” and couldn’t you just eat her all up, mmmmm. Privately she thought of herself as Lorna Dumb. The image of the “all-American Cookie” somehow eluded her. But through trial and error she had concocted a screen persona out of fragments of other personalities, actresses she had watched and who seemed to have something. She always thought of people as “types”: there was the “sexy type,” the “outdoor type,” the “lady type.” She wondered what type she was. The cute type, they told her, the adorable type. You know—“all-American Cookie”? Oh, I get it. But she wasn’t sure. She pieced herself together the way a film cutter puts together a picture, from snippets—a gesture here, a hairdo there, a way of wearing a flower, a penchant for mantel leaning, a manner of sweeping into a room as if she weren’t terrified, and what didn’t work for her she quickly scrapped: Joan Crawford’s ankle-strap shoes, Marie Windsor’s pompadour or Jane Wyman’s bangs, Stanwyck’s walk, Paulette Goddard’s eyebrow arch. The year she’d been named one of the Deb Stars by the make-up artists and hairdressers at the Palladium, she didn’t bother with tiaras or a crown that lighted up by means of concealed batteries hidden under a peplum, the way Lori Nelson had, but simply asked the hairdresser to give her a Grace Kelly French twist and had Wardrobe lend her elbow-length white kid gloves, and she maintained an enviable decorum while the rest gushed like the starlets they were. If Hitchcock needed a new Grace Kelly, here she was, Martha Hyer notwithstanding. She had a little sewing lady on Cynthia Street who could copy anything and run it up on her Singer, and you could be sure the darts would be in the proper places. Publicity was all right, but she had never gone in for gimmicks. Let Debra Paget stick her T-bird all over with plastic jewels, let Vicki Dugan wear a dress cut down to the cleft in her buttocks, let Jayne Mansfield cavort in her pink shag-rugged bedroom, let Debbie Reynolds sell Girl Scout cookies. She maintained an expression that was cool, aloof, even a trifle prissy, but it spoke volumes to the right observer.

She married to get away from her mother. He was a cameraman, Harvey Lacks (Lorna Lacks was a
very
bad name). Harvey was the type person who wanted to adore you, and he thought she was the most beautiful creature he’d ever photographed. He lusted after her at breakfast, would come home from the studio at lunch to have her, would be waiting for her downstairs before they went to a party. They were living in the San Fernando Valley then, in a really sweet ranch-style home, and when she came down he would look at her on the landing, and she was so beautiful he couldn’t take his eyes off her. He would get her on the couch, then the floor, literally tearing her clothes off, and they would never get to the party at all; when he was through with her, her make-up was a mess and her hair, too, to say nothing of the clothes. It was legal rape, she thought.