Read Online Garbo Laughs by Elizabeth Hay - Free Book Online Page A

you know why? Because somebody is a real man.”
    “I hate to say this,” Dinah said to Kenny and Jane, “but somebody in this room is talking too much.”
    “Yeah,”
said Kenny.
    “Yeah,”
said Jane.
    Lew spoke to the newspaper: “I don’t believe that for a minute.” Then he tossed it aside. He didn’t understand whyHarriet was making shortbread when he was allergic to butter.
    The phone began to ring, but Harriet made a policy of never answering the phone if she could help it. “You know the movie I want to see? I’ve never seen it.”
    Dinah’s eyes followed Lew as he headed to the phone in his study.
    “Ninotchka,”
said Harriet.
    And Dinah returned to the interesting unreality of Harriet’s mind. “When Garbo laughed,” she said thoughtfully. “Except no sound came out. Did you know that? They had to dub in her laughter.”
    “Was Greta Garbo’s real name Greta Garbo?” asked Jane, wide awake now.
    “Gustafsson, I think. She was Swedish. Gustafsson,” Dinah said.
    “Greta Garbo has a nicer ring to it than Jane Gold.”
    “Vanity, vanity,” said the mother of the prospective movie star.
    “Well, I like my name but they won’t let me keep it. They’ll make me change it. It doesn’t have a ring to it. Greta Garbo. What’s that called?”
    “Alliteration,” said her mother.
    “Alliteration. I should be Janey Jersinksi.”
    The call was for Harriet. She squared her shoulders and picked up the phone in the study. Her mother said, “First, I want to know how Lew is.” And Harriet felt the hair prickle on the back of her neck.
    “Lew is fine. Why?”
    “Because something happened. And I just wanted to make sure.”
    It would be better not to ask. But she asked. “Tell me what happened.”
    And her mother told her. She and Martin were just back from a dental conference in Trieste: they had stayed on for an extra week, renting a room in a house similar to a bed and breakfast and preparing their own meals in a small kitchen. One night, at midnight, she got up to use the bathroom across the hall. Stepping out into the hallway, she saw a strange man at the end of the corridor and stopped, suddenly aware that she was only in her nightgown. The man was tall and skinny with short hair and glasses. The light glinted off his glasses. He stood outside the doorway to his room, she stood in the doorway to hers, and they looked at each other. Then he turned and appeared to go into his room.
    Those were her words.
He appeared to go into his room
.
    Over the next few days she befriended the woman who owned the house, and her daughter. Their English was limited but she questioned them carefully, and learned that no one else was staying in the house. The daughter was married, yes, here’s my husband’s picture in the photo album. Yes, she had a brother. His picture is here too. Neither man looked anything like the man in the hallway. The man in the hallway looked exactly like Lew.
    Harriet listened to her mother’s low, clear voice telling her that she had seen Lew’s ghost and she felt herself enter the grip of something inevitable and shapely. Her mother had beentwelve when her father died. Jane was twelve. Jane adored Lew as much as Gladys had adored her father.
    Harriet sat beside the phone after she hung up. She would keep this to herself, she decided, as she wished her mother had done. But she felt touched. Touched by the future.
    Harriet ate a shortbread thoughtfully. “Of course, you’re right. I do need to get out more.”
    “Exactly.” Dinah shook her head. “It’s no wonder you’re nuts.”
    “You think I’m nuts?”
    “Certifiable.”
    Harriet cracked up and her face was transformed. It’s notable, thought Dinah, what laughter does for the woman. A different haircut would also help. To say nothing of an adventure.
    “I haven’t told you,” Harriet said.
    “What?”
    “You won’t believe this. I don’t believe it. I’ve been asked to teach a course on comic