Lillian and Dash (18 page)
The
Queen Mary
was due to dock by midmorning, so Hammett rose early even for him. He sat in very pale winter light in the most comfortable chair in the living room, notebook propped on a knee he folded over his leg. Before he began, he realized that the penalty for mistakes in the book would be more severe than a typescript—his page would be forever marred by corrections. He printed
TALES
and
DASHIELL HAMMETT
on the title page. Had he already made a mistake? Why in the world had he committed to that title so quickly? He looked at the word
TALES
and narrowed his lips in a considered smile. He turned the page and imagined a first line. He wrote,
Everyone hates a drunk
. It wasn’t at all the sentence he intended to write that morning. He had intended to write,
My mama had a capacity for love of humankind so great it was almost self-defeating and very difficult for the rest of us to live with
.
He wrote on:
Everyone hates a drunk. Even drunks know this. And who in this world wants to be hated? Which is why most drunks often go to great lengths not to look like drunks. The very best way not to look like a drunk is to drink with friends. Usually those “friends” are drunks too. The point at which sociability gives way to drunkenness varies from person to person, of course. In my father, Richard Thomas Hammett, it was the point at which he became mean. It came by degrees, but once it was there, the meanness was a fright to my mother, all us children, and most everyone else. I think I’m the same kind of drunk.
One night—I must have been about eleven—Mama sent me to the Bog Hill to try to get Papa home. It was early, but Mama wanted him home
because we were all supposed to go visit Mama’s folks in Grant Mills next morning, a visit I always looked forward to because I could spend almost the whole day by myself in the barn.
I used to carry whatever book I was reading along with me to the bar so everyone there could see I was nothing like my father. Could see right away I was not ever going to be a drunk like him.
I heard shouting before I entered. Sometimes, when the men saw me come in, the place would go quiet, not for long and not on the night I remember. The real shouting was between my father at one end of the bar and Phil Burroughs at the other end. Burroughs’s nickname was Ball-bustin’ Burroughs, and everyone knew what the name signified and that Burroughs had truly earned it. Usually they started out the evening drinking together—two drunks being sociable. Then they would come to differ over something very minor. That and further drunkenness led to a fistfight with bruised hands, torn clothes, and bloody faces.
That particular night my father and Burroughs were still reasonably sober but shouting wildly at one another over the general placement of the Mediterranean Sea. Insults reigned: “ignorant fool” and “jackass” and “dumb bastard.” As best I could make out, Burroughs had sited the Mediterranean correctly
between North Africa and Southern Europe; my father had it between Persia and India. It was not my place to settle the argument. It was my task to get my father out of there and home.
I pushed through the crowd of large men over to my father’s side of the bar and the argument. Two men appeared to have backed my father; everyone else correctly supported Burroughs.
I touched my father’s large-knuckled hand and told him we had to go home to get ready to leave on our family trip in the early morning.
He said, “Right, Sammy. You’re right. Almost forgot.” He smiled at me and announced to the crowd, “Big day tomorrow, boys. Visiting the rich relations … You all know my Sammy.” His body began to unbend itself off the stool. I did not relax.
Burroughs said, “Hold up. You run out of here and never have to admit how wrong as hell you are.” The bar quieted.
“Not wrong.”
“Wrong as hell.”
“Right as rain.”
“Let the boy decide.”
The crowd agreed that was the fairest way to end the impasse. Smart boy. Educated boy. Burroughs said, “Sammy, do you know for sure where the Mediterranean Sea is?”
No one moved. You could hear a pin drop. I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t know what was at stake. I knew perfectly well. And I also knew my options. I could say I didn’t know where it was. I could say it touched India. Or I could say where I knew it to be. So I can’t claim innocence or ignorance as an excuse. I said nothing at all, which was yet another option, and pulled on my father’s arm.
Burroughs approached and touched my shoulder. My father slapped his hand away. Burroughs said, “Well, boy, do you know or don’t you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, where the hell is it?”
“Between Africa and Europe.”
“Not anywhere near India?”
“No, sir.”
The hand, my father’s large, powerful hand, moved suddenly, not more than six inches, from the end of the bar into my face. It was the back of his hand flush on my nose mostly. I flew backward. I saw sparkles and blackness and then dark blood. I was on the floor of the Bog Hill with men’s faces leaning into me, none of which was my father’s.
That instinctive movement of my father’s hand was invoked and powered by shame and jealousy and guilt. I do not know what makes someone a drunk, but I do know those things are always part of
it. Guilt and jealousy and shame. For drunks with money on a higher social rung, like me, add an olive, a touch of vermouth. That’s an even sadder personal cocktail.
End
Dash reread his pages and was surprised to discover errors, lots of them, mistakes he’d not have made had he typed. He made all his small corrections neatly in his notebook, but this new carelessness was now something to worry about. Why, he wondered after rereading, when he wrote about his father, did he never really capture the man? God, he really despised Richard Hammett, and it showed.
D
ASH WAS NOW
seven weeks without a drink.
Hammett’s bags had been packed for days, for more than two weeks actually. But he knew that if he were not in New York when Lilly returned from Spain he risked losing her …
really
did risk losing her. Risked losing this affinity, affection, engagement, caring, stimulation, everything he had with Lillian and with no one else in his life. Why did he not think love when the only word missing was
love
?
Her cable said little and implied much:
DON’T WANT YOU TO SEE ME THIS WAY STOP TAKING QUEEN MARY STOP NY NEXT WEEK STOP SEEKING
SANITY STOP BINDING OF WOUND STOP GREAT LOVE STOP LILLY
The reunions at Pier 54 were always interesting for him to watch. He could be part of this one. The day was clear but cold. Same camel hair coat, same fur cap, Hollywood-thin pants and slipper shoes. He wore the gloves Lillian had bought him before she left. Hammett walked down Tenth Avenue. A wind coming off the river caused his eyes to tear, his nose to run, his cheeks and chin to tingle with frost. Something within him was happy. Bars were already open on just about every corner. He stopped at a coffee shop on Sixty-third Street.
Why hadn’t he tried to find out what time the liner was due to dock and be certain to be there when Lillian debarked? Because this was how Dashiell Hammett dealt with matters emotional, distancing himself with studied nonchalance and carefully misplaced intention. Chance ruled in these matters, he told himself. He sat in the shop too long and wrote nothing in his beautiful notebook. He paid for his coffee, left a big tip, and walked to the river.
The streets were full of taxis and fancy autos. Horns honked. All sorts of anxious people waved and dodged and shouted. Porters were already loading steamer trunks and luggage onto carts and piling them near the curb. Finding Lillian in this crush would not be easy. He had a built-in excuse.
Hammett made his way through the long, noisy shed all the way up to the customs fence, where he was stopped by police. Beyond customs he saw a green awning designated
PRESS
in large yellow letters. Mixed in with cameramen and reporters, some carrying portable microphones, Hammett saw Alfred and Blanche Knopf. Then he spotted Shumlin with Dos Passos and Archie MacLeish, the
Spanish Earth
brain trust.
The newspapers mentioned Lillian’s return. In fact, the Hearst papers had kept a “Hellman Watch” while she was in Spain. Diplomacy, they editorialized, was a very delicate and complicated matter best left to a trained corps of professionals. A fair enough criticism, but Hearst didn’t let the matter die. In an editorial Hearst himself declared, “Miss Hellman does the cause of neutrality and peace a great disservice by stoking up emotions that can only cause discontent and greater violence. One can only wonder what her true motives can be in trying to embroil Americans in what is and can only be seen as a foreign and thankfully very isolated conflict. Miss Hellman should stick her nose only where it belongs, namely in the wings and dressing rooms of Broadway theatres.”
Hammett read that and smiled, recent photos of William Randolph and Adolf Hitler warmly shaking hands in Berlin fresh in his mind.
Hammett saw her first at the landing where the gangway turned sharply for a final descent to the pier. She stood talking to a ship’s officer. Other passengers moved around them. Clearly the press was waiting only for her. Lillian listened
intently while the officer pointed and spoke. Hammett didn’t remember her being so small. He waved modestly with no possibility of her seeing him. When he saw Lilly still speaking quietly, he dropped his arm.
As she came down to the pier, Hammett noticed that she was not searching the crowd for him, and observed that there was something vacant about her, as though she had lost something important and was thinking about where it might be. He wanted to rush forward to help her find it. She looked wounded. Lillian never looked wounded.
He watched her come to the landing. Watched as she embraced her friends. Watched as she did not search the crowd to see if he were there. Watched as she prepared for the rush of reporters. Watched her begin to speak into a microphone as he turned and walked away.
Whenever he sensed emotional paralysis, Dashiell Hammett got himself a drink. This Hammett walked past every bar as he made his way up Ninth Avenue. Although he had a destination, he made the journey seem like a wandering.
She was already in the apartment beginning to make coffee when he arrived, chilled to the bone and looking frail. It was as though he were the one arriving home from the war. They stood and looked at one another. It hadn’t even been a month. It seemed like forever. Nothing had to be said for a while.
Lilly said, as though reading from a script, “They each stood there, frozen for a long moment, gazing helplessly at one another, looking for a sign. The moment was fraught …”
“Yes, fraught, heavily fraught, but fraught with what, he wondered quizzically.”
“Oh, I dunno, just fraughtfully fraught I imagine.” He saw a spark of something in her eyes.
“ ‘I’ve missed you,’ he said, wondering if that wasn’t really her line.”
“Not so terribly that you weren’t there to meet me.”
“I was there.”
“Really?”
“I just didn’t know how to … couldn’t approach you with all that going on …”
“So maybe you could approach me now.” Lillian opened her arms slightly waiting to be embraced. Hammett stepped forward, put his arms around her, chin on top of her head, and picked her up. As he squeezed and released three times she expelled air—“nyah … nyah … nyah.” Lillian said, “Don’t. No more.”
He heard tugboat whistles and car horns. She heard nothing. They stayed together a long while. They said nothing when they separated because they wanted to talk, to tell, but before that there was explaining. Explaining did not qualify as talk.
“The war,” is what he said eventually. “It got to you, the war?”
“Incredibly. Take off your coat. It’s warm in the kitchen.”
“I’m still a bit cold.”
“I feel like cooking. What do we have?”
“Not much of anything, I’m afraid. I didn’t think.”
“So what else is new. Any cheese?”
“Some old cheddar.”
“Eggs?”
“Not sure.”
“Come on, let’s cook. Warm you up.”
Hammett stopped her by placing a hand on each shoulder, forcing her to look up at him. “I think I know how to help you.”
“I haven’t been hit by a car, you know.”
“Yes, you have. If I help you, I help myself. Still selfish, you see.”
There were eggs he hadn’t remembered buying. There was cheese. There was milk and butter and flour and a jar of grape jelly. The oven quickly heated the kitchen and Hammett stood next to her in gray slacks and a knitted sweater, his hair tousled from the fur cap, looking nothing like Gary Cooper anymore but comfortably and domestically handsome. He found the pot and baking dish she requested, measured out exact amounts of flour and milk and butter. Lillian was humming. Occasionally their hands touched. When they did, they stopped and considered each other for a moment. A wonderful thing began to happen then. Lillian asked cooking questions and didn’t receive cooking answers.
“Can you find the sifter for the flour?”
“I called you regularly, you know. Called press offices in Barcelona and Madrid. Left tons of messages. Worried sick about you.”
“How many eggs are there?”
“I saw you at the ship. On the gangplank. I waved. Thought maybe you wanted to be with your friends.”
Her expression said,
You’re my friend
. “Do you know how to separate egg whites?” Of course he did; they had made soufflés together before.
“I’m in a bit of trouble myself. You know my inclination is to run and hide. I’m fighting it.”
Lillian stopped greasing the baking dish and said, “I’m in trouble too. My inclination is to run and hide. I’m fighting it. Et cetera, et cetera.” His hands held eggshells so he pressed her with his elbows. She said, “Put on some really mournful music.”
They ate in the kitchen by candlelight because it was the warmest room in the apartment. Alone, together, in warmth on the eighth floor, each felt safe in a dangerous world, closer than they had been in a long while. They ate and drank ginger ale, still their champagne, and shared wounds.