Make Believe (4 page)

That made little sense to me. “What?” I had no cousins named Irving. I’d know. I did have a pesky older sister named Fanny, and she was trial enough.

Max explained, “Sol plays Cousin Irving on
The Goldbergs
. You know, Gertrude Berg’s wildly popular television show. He started when it was on the radio, but now he’s on television. A star, can you imagine? Molly Goldberg. You know, the nosy woman hanging out of the tenement window, yelling, ‘Yoo hoo, come in, you’ll have a nice glass tea and we’ll talk some.’ Irving is her nebbish cousin, the sad sack in an unpressed, oversized suit, a blunderer…”

“I don’t have a television. Never will. A full meal of no nourishment.”

Sol burst out laughing, enjoying the moment. “For that, all Hollywood moguls like Louis B. Mayer will applaud you.”

“Cousin Irving’s hugely popular, Edna,” Alice added. “He fights with his son, Moshe the doctor.”

“I’ll bet.” I spoke too quickly and, I feared, too snarkily. I could envision the hapless Sol with his Borscht Belt vaudeville slapstick, all buffoon and droopy face.

“Did you read Max’s letter?” Sol suddenly asked me.

“Of course,” I answered. “I can recite parts by heart.” Max wrote of being an American, and deeply proud of it, and the need for a voice of reason in the savage wilderness of accusation and calumny. By law, he stressed, American citizens could not be forced to disclose their political viewpoints, and yet, perversely, these poor men were commanded to do so. “My favorite line: ‘Now we will create American concentration camps for the honest naysayers.’” I liked that. “Noble.”

“They want him to recant,” Sol told me.

“What does that mean?”

“To join a patriotic organization like the American Legion, I guess. To sign a loyalty pledge. To apologize. He should admit any errors he made. Penance.” Sol turned to Max. “But he’s unrepentant.”

Max shrugged, the Yiddish comic by way of Jack Benny. “So what’s to repent?”

“Metro unloaded Doc Trumbo, others. Fox booted out Ring Lardner, Jr. Hollywood has few heroes these days. But Max is one.” He saluted him.

“For God’s sake, Solly, I’m not a saint. I said what I had to say. You got to speak up for your friends. I’m not Thomas Paine.” He grinned. “Just your garden-variety pain in the
tuckus
.”

“A hero.” Sol looked at me, awe in his voice. “I couldn’t have written that letter.” Then, slowly, “Max’s touch is all over
Show Boat
but his name has been erased.”

I harrumphed, grandly. “I aim to see about that.”

“Edna, don’t. Not for me.” From Max, pleading.

“You’ll be blacklisted, Miss Ferber, and branded a Commie sympathizer,” Sol said.

“I’ve been called a lot of things, sir, but I think my Americanism speaks for itself.”

Max hesitated. “I thought mine did, too.” A gleam in his eye. “Though I did cast a vote for FDR.”

Sol added, “America has become a dangerous place.”

Silence: the weight of the declaration, awful and raw.

I sat there, staring from one to the other, my gaze taking in these decent folks, good people, earnest, hard-working, loyal, trustworthy. For a split second my pulse raced, wildly. My heart fluttered. In this modest home, drinking coffee with an old friend, I was hit suddenly, as if by a lightning bolt. Fear flooded my soul.

“Are you in danger, Max?” Fear gripped me.

Max didn’t answer.

Alice looked worried. “Well, there have been threats. Some phone calls, nasty hate mail. Death threats.”

“Dear God!”

“Witch-hunt,” Sol muttered.

“What about your friends?” I prodded him. “Years of work in town. In New York. On the road. Your agency, respected. Your tradition with
Show Boat
—all those crews you worked with. Your name
means
something in this town. Your friends?”

“You.” Max had a wispy smile on his face.

“You’re exaggerating, no?”

Serious: “Edna, there are days I seem only to have enemies. Just enemies.”

Chapter Three

The next day Max and I sat at noontime in the crowded coffee shop adjacent to the Cocoanut Grove ballroom at the Ambassador. We’d been there a half hour, fiddling with empty coffee cups, Max twisting a napkin into shredded bits while I ceremoniously checked my lipstick and hair in a compact mirror. I was nervous. Ava Gardner, of course, was late in arriving, but Max told me to expect that.

“Max, why are
you
so nervous?”

He grinned. “I’m not. You are.”

“You shredded a napkin into confetti.”

“You know I always do that. You’re the nervous one, you, the peripatetic novelist who’s interviewed presidents and battled with Ethel Barrymore.”

“Don’t remind me of that battle-ax. And I always check my lipstick twenty times a day. A minute. A second. I’m hopelessly vain.” I started to withdraw my compact from my purse but thought better of it.

“Edna, you’re
Show Boat
.”

“If you call me that one more time, Max, I’ll scrape the barnacles off your hide myself.”

He scoffed. “Don’t believe Hedda Hopper’s vicious sniping at poor Ava.”

“Well, frankly, I’ve never read a word of that harridan’s incendiary columns. I leave that to the worshipers at the Hollywood shrine. Like moon-eyed George Kaufman, who has told me that Ava’s been known to hurl dinner plates across a dining room and curse like a fishwife at quivering souls…and…”

“All true, Edna. A hellion, to be sure. A bottle of booze in one hand, a Coca Cola in the other.”

“I’ve little patience with…”

“But she wants to meet you, Edna.”

“I don’t tolerate bad behavior unless I’m doing it.”

“She’s had more than her share of bad press, Edna. That’s true. Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, two destructive women, choose their victims and then go for the jugular. Hedda with her outlandish hats. She lives in Beverly Hills in a house she calls ‘the house that fear built.’ They expect you to be afraid, to tremble. But with Ava, they misjudged her.”

“And why’s that?”

“She doesn’t
care
. Her career, her public image, what Metro thinks, what
you
think about her. She’s a fierce woman, strong. You want to know something? Edna, she’s out of one of your novels, one of your determined heroines. She’s like you—a savvy soul who speaks her mind. She’s you with more makeup, higher cheekbones, and an MGM contract.”

“And she’s called the most beautiful woman in the world.”

“She is
that
.” He tapped me on the wrist. “The artist Man Ray said she could only be truly experienced in person—such is her beauty. It’s not important to her, though. Her looks. Hedda Hopper labeled her a home wrecker because of the affair she’s having with a married man, and lots of souls can’t forgive her. She shows me piles of hate mail calling her a hussy and a snake. The seducer of the boyish Frank Sinatra. You’ve heard of him?”

“You say his name with such derision, Max.”

“Well, I don’t care for him. He’s an annoying gnat with a blustery ego. Downright nasty at times, especially to waiters and clerks.”

“A pleasant voice, I think. Too honey-toned for my taste. He sang ‘Ol’ Man River’ in that horrible movie,
Till the Clouds Roll By
, Sinatra perched up on a white Grecian column, that skinny man lost in that oversized white tuxedo…a travesty. People in the theater laughed out loud. What was MGM thinking?”

“Laughable. Truly. Frankie going on about toting that barge, lifting that bale. Only the part about drinking and ending up in jail rang true to some. And Metro now knows it. That finished him. He’s out of a contract now, his career
kaput
.”

“A disgrace.” I went on. “I knew Jerome Kern. He played his songs on
my
grand piano. Thank God he died before the release of that grotesquerie.” I bit my lip and announced, happily, “I’m prepared to dislike Sinatra.”

Max smiled. “You won’t be disappointed.”

The waiter refilled our cups, paused, and then swept up the shredded napkin Max scattered on the table. The young man whistled softly, clicked his heels deliberately, and shuffled off, looking back over his shoulder.

“A bad habit.” Max shrugged. “Sorry.”

Suddenly Max called out to a man strolling across the lobby. “Larry. Larry.” He waited. The man paused, deliberated, seemed ready to bolt out the door, and then thought better of it. Hurriedly, he glanced around the crowded lobby, eyes narrowed, searching, then hesitantly moved toward us. He wasn’t happy. “Larry, you’ve been a stranger.”

“Max,” the man mumbled, as his icy stare took me in.

“Larry Calhoun,” Max told me. “My oldest friend in Hollywood.”

A strange line, considering Max’s assertion last night that Sol Remnick was his oldest West Coast crony. Yet the words betrayed a hint of sarcasm, bitterness I’d never heard before from Max.

“Mr. Calhoun, a pleasure,” I smiled, though I added, “except for the fact that you seem a jumpy rabbit ready for the bush.”

He didn’t smile back, though Max chuckled. “Larry, sit down.” A command, out of character from the soft-spoken man, though Larry—again with the furtive glance around the small room, peering out the French doors into the lobby—slid into a chair. “This is Edna Ferber.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

Again, the sour frown. “Everyone knows you’re in town. You’re…
Show Boat
.”

I glanced at Max. “I really need to reassess my public image.”

Larry sat there, dutiful, hands folded neatly in his lap, a penitent schoolboy. “How are you, Max?”

“Getting more famous by the hour, it seems.”

“I mean…”

Max addressed me, warmth in his voice. “When I first came to L.A., Larry, Sol, and I were inseparable, happy-go-lucky young guys, the three musketeers, tackling Hollywood, making money, climbing up the tinsel ladder, dreaming, dreaming. Back then we invested in an apartment house or two in the valley, some property in the hills, too. Retirement planning, we called it. The three of us shared the little money we had. Years back, of course…when Hollywood was an uncharted Eden and we were three Adams thrashing through the undergrowth. There were no snakes in the garden.”

Larry looked into his face and said in a small voice, “That was then.”

“And now we have a paradise…if not lost, well, at least in the hands of creditors.”

Larry snapped at him, “I don’t see you refusing the monthly check from the real estate folks.”

“True.” Max shrugged. “Edna, Larry was in a few Betty Grable movies. One movie, if I remember, with Myrna Loy. Bit parts, but a line or two. God, how we cheered him on back then! Our friend on the movie screen. The handsome cad. The suave hidalgo, the continental gigolo.” He smiled innocently. “Typecasting.”

Larry squirmed in his seat. He looked the faded actor, the square-jawed juvenile lead, romantic, with his tall lithe body, the chiseled bronzed face, the full head of carefully combed black-gray hair, an elegant Roman nose a little too red these days with blood vessel speckles. Yet he sported unfashionable sideburns, a pirate’s affectation, as though he’d just tottered off the set of an Errol Flynn movie. I imagined he inflamed a few fluttering hearts, even these days, this man with the matinee idol carriage. But his eyes betrayed callowness, a grubbing meanness. They darted too much, the caged animal; their blackness was dull and flat. I didn’t like him, though I didn’t know him.

“I gave up acting, though I get called for parts—small parts—now and then.”

“Are you his agent?” I asked Max.

“God no,” Max said. “Larry set his sights on high ground—his first wife knew somebody who knew Paulette Goddard…”

Larry started to stand, then slipped back into the chair. “Sorry to hear about your troubles, Max.”

Max shrugged his shoulders. “So I’ll live.”

“These are tough times.” He sucked in his breath and glanced away. “But you
asked
for trouble when you fired off that foolish letter. Christ, what were you thinking?”

Max’s voice was rushed. “I was thinking about my friends.”

“And you signed that petition against that mouthy senator, and
Red Channels
listed your name…” He seemed to be checking off a list in his head.

“I didn’t see your name on it.”

Larry snarled, “Nor will you ever. I don’t want to lose my job. I got three ex-wives to support.”

“Just what do you do, Mr. Calhoun?”

My question seemed to take him by surprise, a puzzler, because he furrowed his brow and seemed unable to answer. Then, with pride, “I’m a manager at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre, where, by the way,
Show Boat
will shortly hold its West Coast premiere. It’s a real coup for us.”

Max interrupted. “You don’t come around the house any more.”

Larry stood now, rocked on one leg. “And you wonder why?”

“I know why.” But Max was looking at me.

“You can’t bring us down with you, Max. You have to understand that. The hint of scandal these days, names bandied about like crazy, the mere suggestion of Communist stuff, sympathies—you know, a death sentence.” He swallowed the last two words. “Miss Ferber, good day.”

He hurried into the lobby and he didn’t look back. Pausing at the registration desk, he seemed to be asking for someone, and then idly glanced back at us. For a second my eyes locked with his. Even from that distance, I could detect fear there, palpable, stark. He turned away, his shoulders hunched as he leaned on the desk.

“A coward,” Max grumbled. “The older he’s gotten the more frightened he’s become. He used to be a roustabout soul like the rest of us. I mean—the three of us had the times of our lives. Then he got scared. Now he plasters photos of Joe McCarthy into a scrapbook.”

“I’m so sorry. Some friend.”

Max reached across the table and held my hand, tightened his fingers. His touch was oddly cold, stiff.

A low hum swept through the lobby and into the lunchroom. People walking by stopped, their steps frozen, heads tilted. Everyone seemed to be in motion yet, strangely, no one moved. Nearby a busboy, a freckled, red-faced lad with a hawk nose, had been refilling a water glass from a pitcher but now, oblivious, poured water sloppily onto the table. A comic scene, some foolish Marx brothers routine, but the hum got louder still, almost a titter, until I wondered…earthquake?

When I looked at Max, he was grinning.

Every head had turned, as though on oiled ball bearings, toward the center of the lobby where Ava Gardner, striding across the floor, momentarily stopped and looked around. As epicenter of that seismic shift in the earth’s rotation, she stood there, checking her watch, as all those around her seemed to lose their minds.

It was, frankly, awesome. This presence one woman could have, electric, galvanizing, stupendous. Everyone was smiling, wide-eyed, like little children surprised by a treat. Only Ava herself, standing there naturally in the center of that space, bringing one hand up to check on her hair, seemed unaware of the rumbling sensation she caused. This was Movies, writ large; this was melodrama on the wicked showboat stage; this was Theater; this was, perforce, a blinding of the noontime sun.

I held my breath, enthralled.

She spotted us and smiled, gave a slight, tentative wave that struck me as oddly insecure. The lonely girl in town who spots an old friend at the bus station.

As she approached our table, the busboy dropped the pitcher, and was immediately admonished by the truculent patron whose lap now was sopping wet. The boy didn’t seem to care.

She held out a hand to me, and I shook it. Politely, she’d first slipped off her elbow-length white cotton gloves before she gave me her hand. A nice gesture, and correct. She dazzled, truly, but I was unprepared for her…radiance. A run of movie-magazine catchphrases sailed into my head, and I smiled at them all.

Now I’ve never favored my own plain looks, not back as a young woman with bushel-barrel hair, and certainly not as I approached my seventies. A part of me had always irrationally resented the easy and fashionable beauties who glided through life. But now, slack-jawed, I found myself watching her. The most beautiful woman in the world, they called her, Hollywood exaggeration and utter blather. Now, frankly, I didn’t know who else came close, Helen of Troy having long departed from the world stage.

You saw a woman put together with exquisite care, a black-and-white ensemble of geometric patterns, a white lacy blouse under a sleek black silk jacket with green oriental stitching, over a tight black skirt that hugged her curves at the hip but dramatically flared out at the knee, lampshade style. It was her face that arrested yet excited: those high cheekbones, lightly rouged; the emerald almond-shaped eyes with a slight yellow mote that caught the overhead light; that seductive dimple on her chin, a face encased in a swirl of chestnut curls. Wide, sensual lips, coated in a deep passion crimson, a color so bloodlike it seemed enamel. Luminous porcelain skin with an opalescent cast, vaguely foreign.

“Miss Ferber, I’m sorry I’m late.” A low, husky voice, and I thought of Greta Garbo speaking in
Anna Christie
. She leaned in and I smelled exotic perfume, pungent jasmine perhaps, a sweet elixir, heady as thick wine.

Such women were dangerous.

Deadly, but they compelled one to draw close. Ships were wrecked on the coasts of their attention. You had no choice.

I smiled, stammered, “So you’re the new Julie LaVerne.”

Those green eyes gleamed, catlike. “It’s a wonderful part, Miss Ferber. I don’t have to show my long legs, and there’s even a scene where I’m allowed to look haggard, worn, without makeup. I don’t have to look like the glossy prints in
Photoplay
.” She struck a model’s artificial pose, held it, and then burst out laughing. Her roar was raucous, whiskey husky, a late-night voice, closing time at the bar.

“When Max”—she reached over and touched his cheek, and I swear he blushed—“told me you were his old friend and would be coming out here, I
demanded
a meeting.” She winked. “Men don’t refuse me anything.” She narrowed her eyes. “Except, of course, loyalty. Fidelity. Men seem to be missing those parts of their character.”