Cheat and Charmer (41 page)

“From the kreebnabbers,” he said, using the private nonsense word that was his nickname for their children. “And Gussie. They’re from your own flower beds. She cut them this afternoon.”

“When did you get home?” she asked.

“Six this morning. I came as soon as I could.”

He saw her head drop again, and he took her in his arms. She burrowed her head into his chest and wept again as he held her. She pulled back to look at his face and saw a thin line of tears. Then she reached her arms
around him and they held each other, and she felt now that everything would be all right and wondered why she had been so angry. She looked up at him and smiled, and took his large round head in her hands, like a baby’s, and kissed him where she loved to kiss her children, on the place just between his chin and his mouth.

“Oh, you’re much better,” he said.

“I want a cigarette.”

He opened the bedside table and took out her cigarettes and lighter and gave them to her. She shook out a Camel and put it between her lips. “Do I have any lipstick here? Where’s my purse? I want a hairbrush.”

He explained that her purse was at home.

“Oh-shit-oh-dear,” she said. “I must look like hell.”

“You look fine. A little tired. But good, honey.”

He flicked the lighter and held it while she lit her cigarette. She drew deeply on it and exhaled, and her expression became calm and peaceful.

“Honey?” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Now, do just as I say. Close your eyes.”

He had gotten up and was standing expectantly at the foot of the bed.

“What do you have out there, a camera crew?” But she shut her eyes and smiled. “Wait,” she said, putting the cigarette in the ashtray. Then she shut her eyes again, and put her hands over them for good measure.

“Just stay like that,” he said. “Don’t move.”

Don’t let me cry, she said to herself. Just don’t let me cry when I see their faces. She remembered the stricken expressions—Peter’s and Lorna’s—when her father died and they saw her crying. Was Gussie with them? To gather them around her—the kids, Gussie, and Jake—and to hear their voices: that would make her stop crying for the lost baby, the lost womb.

In the darkness behind her scrunched-tight eyelids, Dinah listened. She heard steps, rustling, and movement, but not the rapid motion of children’s feet.

“Honey—? Okay. You can look now.”

Jake stood back against the dull, hospital-white wall and observed, with a director’s interest, the scene that now took place: Veevi taking unhurried steps toward the bed, Dinah’s eyes widening with what seemed like be-musement, as if she’d been expecting someone completely different and didn’t recognize or know what to make of the figure that was moving toward her. Then the sisters did the same thing at the same time. They
looked at each other and, pressing their lips together and widening their eyes until they resembled the eyes of baby dolls, each made at the other what Jake knew they had as children called a bubby face—the face of an infant, Dinah had once explained to him, squashed up against its mother’s breast. Their mother had invented both the funny face and the name for it, or so they liked to think; nobody really knew where it came from. But here they were, making bubby faces at each other, neither of them saying a word. What fascinated Jake, however, was that Dinah’s bubby face was different from Veevi’s. Dinah’s was worried and questioning, Veevi’s beseeching and contrite.

Then Dinah held out her arms and Veevi sat carefully beside her. Dinah embraced Veevi, then quickly released her. The sisters did not cling to each other. Dinah’s cigarette, Jake noticed, had burned down to a long, thin rod of ash, and now she gestured with her fingers for another smoke, all the while appraising Veevi’s face as Veevi snapped open her purse and offered her a cigarette from a blue packet—a strong-smelling French cigarette.

Dinah shook her head and twisted around for her Camels. Then, with a sharp intake of breath, she said “Ouch!” and snapped at Jake, “For Christ’s sake, honey, hand me a cigarette, will you? And don’t make me l-l-l-laugh, because this incision hurts like hell.”

Jake gave Dinah her cigarette and found a chair for Veevi. Then, with her husband on one side and her sister on the other, Dinah leaned back against her pillows. “This is a hell of a s-s-s-surprise!” she said, smoothing out the counterpane and folding her hands in front of her. “Jake didn’t tell me you were coming.”

“Well, how could I?” Jake answered.

He could have sent a telegram, but he figured she’d be too doped up to read it. Veevi and the girls—Claire and Colette, whom everyone called Coco—had flown to London and then on to L.A. with Jake, who had tried to get Burt Unwin to meet them at customs when Veevi’s passport was confiscated. But Unwin, the lawyer who had coached Dinah in preparation for her testimony, had said there was nothing he could do. Peter and Lorna had been getting ready for school when the exhausted travelers trooped in from the airport, and had instantly fallen in love with Claire and Coco. Peter, Jake said, was already mad about Veevi.

“Natch,” said Dinah, smiling. “He’s male, isn’t he?”

“My God,” Veevi said, “what a swell kid. How did two such unattractive people as you produce such a beautiful kid?” Both Jake and Dinah
laughed, as they knew they were supposed to, Dinah grimacing and clutching her bandaged belly.

There was a brief silence, and they saw that it was dark outside and the hills were dotted with lights.

“We won’t be imposing on you too long,” Veevi said. “I’m going to find an apartment in Westwood, maybe a house. With Dorshka. Dear God, she’s going to live with us.” Veevi rolled her eyes.

Dinah, again clutching her belly, laughed.

“A job, too,” added Veevi. “Have to get a job. A bit of a challenge, that.”

“I’ve been waiting for you to come home for a long time, Vee. Get settled first. Rest. We’ll worry about the job l-l-later,” Dinah said, just as an orderly came in carrying her dinner on a tray. Under the hot steel domes was a slab of dried-out roast beef, a mound of graying peas and discolored cubed carrots, and another mound of lumpy mashed potatoes with a puddle of mud-colored gravy at the center. Dinah took a forkful of mashed potatoes, made a face, and put the fork down. “Oh Christ, the f-f-f-food is god-awful. I’ll be so glad to get home to Gussie’s cooking. What’s she making for dinner tonight? Wait—better not tell me, or I’ll cry,” she said, pushing the tray away in disgust.

“Actually, darling,” Jake said, standing up, nimbly grabbing the slab of beef and devouring it as he spoke, “Reggie Pertwee just happened to call this afternoon, and since he remembers Veevi from the old days we started talking about her situation with the blacklist and the passport, et cetera, et cetera, and he said he’d think about it. I invited him out to Chasen’s with us tonight so he can talk to her himself. In fact, we’d better push off any minute now, since we’re meeting him at seven-thirty. He sends his dearest love to you, by the way. Said he didn’t know about your being ‘in hospital,’ as he put it, and is going to send flowers immediately.”

“You’ve already got oodles,” Veevi said, nodding at the collection of vases with bouquets standing on the window ledge and on a nearby side table. “Of course, by the time you go home most of them will be dead.”

Dinah hadn’t noticed the flowers and looked at them with a puzzled expression. How had she managed not to see them?

“When can I go home?” She was feeling weak and tired again. Her belly was throbbing.

“I spoke to Shelley Zuckerman,” Jake said, “and he said to give it five more days. He wants to talk to me about my deal on the picture—he thinks
Engel’s trying to screw me, that we gave him too many deferrals. He’s afraid the studio’s accounting isn’t kosher. So I thought, Well, let’s get that worked out, and in the meanwhile Veevi can start lining things up right away—”

“Shelley Zuckerman? My OB thinks Irv Engel is trying to screw you?”

“No, darling, did I say that? I mean Reg Pertwee. Christ, I’m absent-minded. Must be the damned airplane.”

He leaned over her plate again and helped himself to the mashed potatoes. “How can you eat that?” she said. “It’s inedible.”

Veevi, she noticed, was wearing a black wool crepe dinner suit with a white silk shirt. “Is that mine?” Dinah said.

“I hope you don’t mind, Ina. Everything of mine is wrinkled. I didn’t want to ask Gussie to press anything, she’s so busy with the kids.”

“It’s fine. I’m glad you found them,” Dinah said. “I’m taller than you, but it doesn’t seem to matter. ‘They’re wearing them long this year,’ ” she said, and Veevi laughed, because years ago they had loved to make fun of fashion talk on the radio. She looked at Jake again and saw that he was wearing a dark blue jacket and tie. They certainly were going to Chasen’s. “Jake, can you just see if the nurse is coming? I want my shot.”

“Darling, I know it hurts terribly.” He leaned forward and took her hand. “Do you want us to stay? I’ll just cancel. In fact, Reggie told me to call if we wanted to change plans. He sends his love.”

“You said that already. Listen, go—go and have fun. Just stop on your way out and ask them to send in some m-m-m-morphine, and a nurse to give it to me would be nice, too, okay?”

Jake and Veevi stood up. “Call me as soon as you wake up tomorrow. I’ll be at the studio, and I’ll come as fast as you can say ‘Jack Robinson.’ All right, darling?” He kissed her on the forehead, though she had lifted her face to meet his mouth with hers.

“I won’t hug you,” Veevi said. “I know how sore you are. Coco was a Caesarean.”

“Fun, huh?”

“Lots,” said Veevi. And the two of them made another bubby face, exactly the same one this time: a bubby-face-of-physical-suffering. That’s the damnedest form of communication I’ve ever seen, Jake thought.

Then they were gone—out the door and out of sight and hearing. Dinah looked at her plate of hospital food, now cold and lumpy, pushed the tray away on its steel rollers, and pressed the button for the nurses’ station.

It was forty-five minutes before a nurse came. “Mrs. Lasker? Remember me? I have your shot.”

Dinah turned slightly, wincing from pain. The nurse gave her the shot in her backside, and Dinah turned around and looked her in the face. “It’s me, Mrs. Lasker, Mary O’Donnell.”

“Oh, Mary,” Dinah said. “Sit down, dear.”

The nurse, who was in her early thirties and had short, frizzy blond hair, promptly sat in the chair that Jake had occupied. She was Irish, and had taken care of Dinah during the births of both of her children. Dinah reached out her hand, and Mary took it immediately. “Why, Mrs. Lasker, dear, what’s the matter?” Dinah’s eyes were suddenly squeezed shut and pouring tears.

“Do you remember the last time, Mary, when my daughter was born? You took me out to the car, where my husband and my son and my housekeeper were all waiting for me. And, as you and my husband helped me into the car, you turned to me and said, ‘Well, Mrs. Lasker, I suppose we’ll see you next year,’ and my husband looked at you and said, ‘Uh-huh, we’ve found out what’s causing them.’ Do you remember that?”

Dinah, whose speech was becoming slurred from the morphine, nevertheless laughed with Mary O’Donnell, who was blushing. “You blushed then, too, dear. Well, Mary”—and the tears sprang anew—“it’s finished. Everything’s gone. I’ve lost my third, and all my pl-pl-pl-plumbing, too.” Her head fell to her chest and she sobbed.

Mary O’Donnell never let go of her hand. “There, there, dear Mrs. Lasker.” She waited while Dinah wept. Then, as the pain in Dinah’s belly subsided and she began to grow drowsy, Mary spoke, knowing that Dinah wouldn’t remember what she said but sensing that the sound of her voice would soothe her patient. “Your body’s had a shock. It’s the hormones, Mrs. Lasker. You know, going from before to after. Soon you’ll be going home to your beautiful son and daughter. I remember those babies, Mrs. Lasker. I saw them come into the world. Beautiful, perfect children, Mrs. Lasker, and they’ll be so happy to see you.” She began to let go of Dinah’s hand.

“Iz punishment?” Dinah murmured anxiously, squeezing Mary’s hand.

“No, Mrs. Lasker. It’s just nature up to her old tricks. Why would God want to punish a nice lady like you?” Dinah drifted off, and Mary felt her relaxing her grip. She waited and withdrew her hand to pull the covers up over Dinah’s shoulder. Then she took her hand again. It was strange, what
Mrs. Lasker had said. Why would she think God would want to punish her? she wondered, recording the time at which she had given Dinah the shot.

Peter and Lorna had seen Dinah cry before, at Papa Milligan’s funeral. Still, it was a shock for them when they went up to their parents’ room after school five days later and she burst into tears. Both kids stopped dead in their tracks. Lorna’s lips trembled, and Peter stared, speechless with horror at the sight of her sobbing, her face contorted in grief.

The two of them—Peter in a white T-shirt and jeans, Lorna in a plaid dress with a sash that tied behind in a bow, and barrettes and braids from which strands of thick blond hair were escaping—looked like statues.

“Lorna, darling, tie your shoe,” Dinah finally said, reaching for a tissue to wipe her eyes. Relieved, Lorna looked down and saw that the laces on one of her scuffed blue-and-white saddle shoes had come undone.