Goddess of Love Incarnate. Leslie Zemeckis

truth about her past.

      One sure result of this revelation was that Lili began to compartmentalize people. Few knew of, let alone met, Idella or Alice or any of Lili’s half-siblings. Later, husbands would be told parents were dead. Half-truths. It was easier than explaining the abandonment, half-siblings, the messy, chaotic lies. There was underlying shame in the secrets. Lili distorted the truth and told outright fabrications. Marriages and relationships were not explained. One created the reality they wanted.

      As strange as the story of Lili’s “adoption” by Alice and Ben was, it is only part of the story. Whether she was told another lie by Idella and Alice, or Lili chose to dismiss her father outright by having him conveniently go AWOL with her birth, it is fantasy. It was lies on top of lies and secrets that remained buried.

      Lili’s parents were married eight months prior to her birth. How premature she was at birth is anyone guess, maybe quite premature, as she remained in the hospital and gave them all pause that she might not live.

      Lili was born at 8 a.m. on June 3, 1917, in Hennepin County at Abbott Hospital. Two days later Edward Van Schaack did register, but according to the application for his military headstone he did not go into the army until June 28, 1918, a year after Lili’s birth, possibly because US troops had started landing in France by the end of June. (He would be honorably discharged as a corporal on March 7, 1919.)

      Alice admitted she was desperate for another baby. If Edward remained in the picture, Lili must have lived with her parents at least in the beginning. But records show that as of 1920 Lili (or as she’s listed in the census, Birnee or Binee) was living with Alice as her daughter in Hennepin, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

      Either to discredit or dismiss Edward, Idella did the unthinkable and implied that Lili was “illegitimate.” Idella was capable of such cruelties, or maybe Lili thought it a better story. Lili liked stories of seduction and betrayal and she would dance them on the stage, but Idella and Edward had been married.

      Was a young, excitable, and sick Idella incapable of taking care of a baby? The pair blamed Edward for abandoning Idella. It would taint Lili’s feelings about her father and men forever.

      FROM THAT DAY FORWARD SHE WOULD FANATICALLY GUARD HER PRIVACY and her secrets. She seemed to want to be Lili St. Cyr, fully formed and sprouted from nothing to be presented on the stage with the seven veils of mystery protecting her true identity. No one was interested in little Marie. She wasn’t either.

* For simplicity I will refer to Barbara, Dardy, and Lili by those names

      ** For simplicity the author will continue to refer to Idella as such, because that is how Dardy and others referred to her. But Lili did call her mother Adelaide from that day forward.

      CHAPTER THREE

      It was 1932. The three girls stood in the glassed-enclosed porch that ran along one side of the big rambling house. By spring the green jacaranda trees would explode in a generous veil of trumpet-shaped purple blossoms. Clusters of orange trees threw off heavy fragrance in the yard near the tall eucalyptus with gray bark peeling down the skinny trunks. The sweet and pungent scent mingled with the sharp smell of frost on this early morning.

      The glass walls insulated the girls from the cold morning. Their heated breaths clung to the dusty glass. The house was surrounded by acres of sage and scrub oak and open land. The big rock that loomed nearby from which the area got its name—Eagle Rock—was just ten miles from the bustle of downtown Los Angeles yet seemed further in terms of sophistication. This was rural land with skinny horses roaming and coyotes howling after dark. At night the sky was lit by a canopy of stars, not by the klieg lights of Hollywood. According to fifteen-year-old Lili, it was the sticks.

      Lili often took a bus from Pasadena to visit Barbara and Dardy and teach them ballet. She didn’t have many friends at school, preferring the company of her younger siblings, both long-legged, wide-cheeked, and dimpled like herself. In fact all three bore a striking resemblance to each other.

      Barbara, ten, and Dardy, eight, stood behind their sister, their hands on a ballet bar that ran the length of the wall.

      LILI STOOD IN FIRST POSITION. AT FIFTEEN, SHE WAS ALREADY HER FULL height of five nine and instructed the younger girls to follow her, ordering another set of pliés and jetés in a soft voice that would never change, never dominate, squeaky and high pitched, a startling Minnie Mouse sound. “No, no. Back straight, heels down, soften your wrists. Turn your feet out. Tuck your bottom under,” Lili ordered.³⁸

       Ballerina Lili

      Lili didn’t yet carry herself with the noble bearing she would become famous for. Taller than most boys, she slouched. Alice was constantly encouraging, “You look like a queen, stand like one.”³⁹

      Lili was clearly the more experienced dancer, having taken ballet classes for years from Madame Henderson for $1 a week. Madame H. had taken a particular interest in the pretty girl. It was one of the only luxuries in a spartan childhood lacking many indulgences. The ballet lessons would prove to be prescient; it would be a skill that would bring her fame and fortune and set her apart in her future profession.

      The girls acted like frisky young colts, skittish and exuberant in their youth, long-maned and carefree. Spoiled by Alice and Ian, the girls did as they chose. Barbara and Dardy would tear through the scrubby hills around Eagle Rock on their horses while Lili closeted herself inside, doing nothing more than reading her movie and fashion magazines while daydreaming of living a glamorous life. She thought about designing clothes. She loved beautiful things and would spend hours arranging her drawers of colorful ribbon and lace.

       Lili’s beloved grandmother Alice

      The girls wore pink satin toe shoes, a recent extravagance from Alice. Alice was always encouraging the girls, perhaps to make up for Idella’s lacerating tongue. Lili was no closer to Idella after learning the truth, nor would she ever be.

      WITH HER HAND ON THE BARRE, DARDY, SEVEN YEARS YOUNGER THAN Lili, looked up at her with awe. As Idella’s last child she knew she was her least favorite. “I never remember her telling me she loved me.”⁴⁰ Idella had run out of patience by the time Dardy was born. Idella blatantly doted on the more beautiful Barbara, a mere fourteen months older.

      Idella struggled with loads of laundry, limping through the house, dragging a leg that had been damaged. Bitter and ill-tempered, the once beautiful woman whose life hadn’t turned out as planned must have felt diminished in her family’s eyes. This wasn’t what she had wanted for herself. She didn’t know how to care for this big, chaotic family. “None of us liked her,” Dardy said. They adored Ian. He spoiled the children. He wouldn’t let them lift a finger to help clean or cook. “Not my daughters,” he would say. Neither Barbara nor Dardy would learn to cook or do much of anything domestic. But they were fearless on their horses. And that was more important than domesticity.

       Barbara in Eagle Rock taking care of her horses

      Ian had rescued a half dozen skinny nags from the glue factory. He could barely afford to feed them but offered them to Barbara and Dardy with the stipulation they were to groom, feed, and ride them daily. With no money for saddles,