The Way Lon Chaney and The Woman He Loves Sometimes Forget
Lon Chaney, the Man of a Thousand Faces, tells the woman he loves he isn’t sure she loves him. The actor can’t feel it in her words, can’t hear her in his heart.
You know how I get, he says, his words pale and wan.
She tells him she knows how he gets.
But I think you forget, I get frightened and sad when I think someone loves me, she says.
Lon Chaney tells her he usually remembers, he tries not to tell her he loves her too often, but sometimes, yes, he forgets. The way he sometimes forgets to put a good face on things.
The way I forget I don’t know what it’s like for you to have all those faces to choose from, she says.
I guess, Lon Chaney says.
He asks if she remembers a movie he told her about, a favorite of his, he plays the World’s Quaintest Clown in a traveling circus. Norma Shearer, who plays a bareback rider, smuggles a soft little heart inside the heart patch she’d sewn onto the front of his clown suit.
Remember? he asks.
I remember, she says.
Lon Chaney tells her he forgot to put on a good face during the scene. The unrequited moment was so beautiful, it was too beautiful, it scared him.
Yes, I know how you get, she says, thinking of the faces of his she’s seen. The footlight suns and greasepaint moons that rise in them. The sunken eyes. The crow’s feet shadows that wriggle like ghosts.
So you know what I mean, you know how I feel, Lon Chaney says.
I think I do, she says. Sure.
In the sh-sh-sh of sure, Lon Chaney hears a whispering creek as it winds past an unmarked crypt. He feels a tug in his soft, smuggled heart. He looks at the face of the woman he loves, the frail moonlight in it, her eyes, the welling in them, and he thinks about a face, one you don't put on, one you don't need a heavy-red curve in your upturned smile to help you remember and, sometimes, forget.
Pat Foran is a writer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His work has appeared in Little Fiction, Okay Donkey, Milk Candy Review, Bending Genres and elsewhere. Find him on Twitter at@pdforan.