Their affair was brief, but resulted in a child–Madeleine. She lived in terror of a resemblance to Georgie asserting itself, and took to doctor-prescribed opiates. Two years later Martha was born of Emmett. This felt like a betrayal of Georgie–and she went back to poisoning stray animals for him. Emmett caught her in the act one day; he beat her for taking part in “Georgie ‘s perversion.”
When she told Georgie of the beating, he told her of saving the coward Emmett’s life in the war–putting the lie to Emmett’s version of the story: that _he_ saved Georgie. She started planning her pageants then–how she would get back at Emmett symbolically in ways so subtle that he would never know he was being thrashed.
Madeleine cleaved to Emmett. She was the lovely child, and he doted on her. Martha became her mother’s little girl–even though she was Emmett’s spitting image. Emmett and Madeleine disdained Martha as a fatso and a crybaby; Ramona protected her, teaching her to draw, putting her to bed each night with admonishings not to hate her sister and father– even though she did. Protecting Martha and instructing her in the love of art became her reason for living, her strength in the intolerable marriage.
When Maddy was eleven, Emmett noted her resemblance to Georgie, and slashed her real father’s face beyond recognition. Ramona fell in love with Georgie; he was now even more physically bereft than she–and she felt a parity had been achieved between them.
Georgie rebuffed her persistent advances. She came across Hugo’s _The Man Who Laughs_ then, and was moved by both the Comprachicos and their disfigured victims. She bought the Yannantuono painting and kept it hidden, staring at it as a memento of Georgie in her private hours.
When Maddy hit her teens she became promiscuous, sharing the details, with Emmett, cuddling on the bed with him. Martha drew obscene pictures of the sister she hated; Ramona forced her to draw pastoral landscapes to keep her anger from going haywire. To get back at Emmett she staged her long-planned pageants; they spoke obliquely of his greed and cowardice. Toy houses falling down signified Emmett’s jerrybuilt shacks crashing in the ’33 earthquake; children hiding under store mannequins dressed in ersatz German uniforms portrayed Emmett the yellow. A number of parents found the pageants disturbing, and forbade their children to play with the Sprague girls. Around that time Georgie drifted out of their lives, doing his yard work and rubbish hauling, living in Emmett’s abandoned houses.
Time passed. She concentrated on looking after Martha, pressing her to finish high school early, establishing funds at Otis Art Institute so that she would get special treatment. Martha thrived and excelled at Otis; Ramona lived through her accomplishments, on and off sedatives, often thinking of Georgie–missing him, wanting him.
Then, in the fall of ’46, Georgie returned. She overheard him make his blackmail demand of Emmett: “Give him” the girl in the dirty movie, or risk exposure of a good deal of the family’s sordid past and present.
She became frighteningly jealous and hateful of “that girl,” and when Elizabeth Short showed up at the Sprague house on January 12, 1947, her rage exploded. “That girl” looked so much like Madeleine that it felt like the cruelest of jokes was being played on her. When Elizabeth and Georgie left in his truck, she saw that Martha had gone to her room to pack for her Palm Springs trip. She left a note on her door saying goodbye, that she was sleeping now. Then she casually asked Emmett where “that girl” and Georgie were going.
He told her he heard Georgie mention one of his abandoneds up on North Beachwood. She went out the backdoor, grabbed their spare Packard, sped to Hollywoodland and waited. Georgie and the girl arrived at the base of the Mount Lee park area a few minutes later. She followed them on foot to the shack in the woods. They went inside; she saw a light go on. It cast shadows over a shiny wood object leaning against a tree trunk–a baseball bat. When she heard the girl giggle, “Did you get those scars in the war?” she went in the door, bat first.