Seidel, Kathleen Gilles (8 page)

She thanked Cathy, silently deciding that a birds-of-paradise arrangement would be an appropriate thank-you gesture, and set off for the legal department.

On March 10, 1948, the legal department had read the Estimating Script of
Weary Hearts
and had memoed Miles Smithson with two single-spaced pages of concerns. The British Board of Censors, for example, always deleted quotations from the Lord's Prayer. Smithson would either have to have the dialogue on page fifty-nine rewritten or have Oliver McClay shoot alternative protection for Great Britain.

These two pages told Jill nothing. The legal department certainly would have read the approved script; there was no chance the lawyers had been involved in the deception.

On August 2, 1948, the department advised Smithson that on page eighty-seven of a script marked "Revised and Final: Make No Changes," the line "I wish to
God,"
should be changed to "I wish to
heaven."

Jill thought. Yes, about a third of the way through the movie, Phillip said, "I wish to heaven."

The only interesting thing about these files was that they weren't musty. They had probably been aired out a week ago by a former hotshot college basketball player.

Now that Jill had visited her father's old studio, seen his lawyer and secretary, and talked to the people on his production staff, thoroughness compelled her to see only one other person who had known him: her mother.

Melody had been Cass's second wife. His first wife he had known since childhood; they had grown up in the Valley together. Jill had never met Ellen Casler, but knew that she had come from a good Winchester family, that she had attended Stuart Hall and had graduated from Sweet Briar. After this proper upbringing, she had married Cass and had settled with him in Charlottesville.

She had been content to be the wife of a University of Virginia English professor. Life in Charlottesville had been quiet, she had known everyone she had needed to know, she had understood the standards.

But after Pearl Harbor a bad knee had kept Cass out of combat. He had been sent to the Office of War Information in New York, where he first wrote and then edited training films. Handling film had been, to Cass, everything that "gay Paree" had been to other soldiers. After that there was no bringing him back to the farm, even if that farm was the elegant university founded by Thomas Jefferson.

Ellen had, of course, gone to California with him, but she had not been comfortable there. Hollywood had had a different set of rules, rules that Ellen did not believe in. A Hollywood hostess thought that she should never serve the same menu twice. Ellen could not understand that. Her mother had never given a party without serving Aunt Sally's peanut soup, and there wasn't a soul in Winchester who would have wanted her to.

And the people in California had altogether too much money. Ellens grandmother had been born in 1867, and at that time in Virginia the nice people
never
had money. The movie business was suspiciously full of talented immigrants' sons, and her husband was turning out to be every bit as talented and energetic as these dark-haired men with their long, strange names. She did not approve.

So, after three years of such a life, Ellen had taken her two boys and gone home. For more than a decade she and Cass had lived separately. She was still Mrs. William Casler, treated with respect, enjoying a far nicer income than any other nice lady in Winchester.

She thought that Cass would eventually come home, but at age fifty-one, he suddenly demanded a divorce. The distinguished, Yeats-loving former professor was going to marry nineteen-year-old Melody Johnson. Melody was not from a good Virginia family. She had not gone to Stuart Hall; she did not have a degree from Sweet Briar. What she had was the best pair of legs in Las Vegas.

A year after Melody and Cass married, Jill had been born. Five years later they were divorced. Melody had moved out of the Bel Air house; Jill had stayed.

Jill knew that it was unfair to say that her mother had given up custody of her. The accurate statement was larger: Melody had given up.

Cass had been determined to keep Jill, this delicious golden-haired child who lived in clouds of baby powder, white ribbon-threaded dresses, and stuffed bears. With her silver-handled mother-of-pearl teething ring and her bright pink plastic Brady Bunch lunch box had come the sweet pleasures of late-life fatherhood. Cass had let his two sons go back to their native land; this daughter he was keeping.

There had never been any question of attacking Melody, of threatening to prove her an unfit mother. Cass was too gentlemanly for that, and his lawyers too clever. An attack might have roused the defensive lioness in even the frail and shaken Melody.

Cass's silver-haired attorneys, in their white shirts and dark pinstriped suits, had sat across a long table and done something much more devastating. They asked Melody to speak for herself.

"By what criteria would you select her schools, Mrs. Casler? What type of curriculum do you prefer? Who do you envision being her peer group? How do you propose to cope with the psychological ramifications of divorce?"

And poor Melody, who believed the only thing valuable about her were her legs, had given up. Those legs might have gotten her out of the trailer park she had grown up in, but they weren't going to analyze curriculum for her.

Melody had not given herself enough credit. Of course she could have chosen a school. She had taught herself to dress, she had furnished a Bel Air home, she had learned to converse with writers and producers, she had developed taste and acquired interests, all from reading fashion magazines and watching other people. She had, Jill now knew, an enormously retentive mind with an unerring capacity to distinguish between essence and effect.

As much as Jill understood this, she also knew that she had been better off in her father's care. Her mother would have been a fine parent during her good periods, but Melody had an addictive personality. During Melody's bad times Jill would have suffered terribly.

Melody was currently in one of the good periods. Having married two father-figures—the husband after Cass had been George Norfolk, a federal judge—she was, at age 47, married to a son—Dodger third baseman David Ahearn, who was only six years older than Jill.

The previous summer David had embarked on a hitting streak that hadn't ended until he had tied Pete Rose. For all of David's twelve years in the majors, the pressure and the media were almost too much for him. This brought out the best in Melody. She had been wonderful, traveling with David, making his world private and comfortable. Anything she asked for during those long road trips the Dodger organization gave her. They knew she was essential to keeping the streak alive.

This, much more than her stunning legs, was the basis of Melody's appeal to men. She made them comfortable. A gifted director, a well-respected judge, and an intelligent, articulate athlete had found her irresistible.

But she set too high standards for herself. It wasn't possible to make everything in someone else's life perfect. When she couldn't, she believed herself to be failing. She couldn't forgive herself, she couldn't make a few corrections and go on. She would instead turn herself into what she, at heart, believed herself to be: a woman valuable only for her legs.

Jill knew the pattern well. It would start with shopping. Melody would be drawn to a dress, but couldn't decide whether to buy it in amber, periwinkle, or ivory-on-ivory. She would buy them all and then never take them out of the trunk of her car. She, whose body was so easy to fit, would buy suede suits that needed to be altered, even completely recut. Then she would forget to pick them up from the store. She would buy new linens for all her beds and store them, forever unopened, in her linen closets. Her garage would be lined with boxes of dishes and cookware, still in their original packagings.

As soon as Jill could drive, she would spend Saturday mornings at her mother's house, going through her car, her closets, her poolhouse. Saturday afternoon she would drive all over Beverly Hills, through Westwood and along Rodeo Drive, returning things. She would also go through Melody's desk and for those thing she couldn't return, she would give her father the bills and he would pay them.

Besides the shopping, there were secret, chemical addictions that Jill knew less about. Never alcohol—drinking too much was what people in trailer parks did—but Valium, diet pills, and such. Jill never really knew for sure how extensive these addictions were, but she was well aware of their debilitating effect.

Her mother's latest setback had come at the end of baseball season the previous fall. Jill had felt herself sucked back into all the old caretaking patterns, so she had forced herself to tell her therapy group what was happening. It was the first time she had ever disclosed what was happening to her "back home," and the group had responded well, helping her understand how to stand back, how to stop protecting her mother.

Without Jill's protection, Melody came to a crisis quickly. She had been to Betty Ford before, so this time David, acting with the advice of the Dodgers' management, had encouraged her to go to Hazelden in Minnesota. She had come out energetic and determined. She was still with David and once the baseball season started, she had settled down to write an autobiography, the contents of which Jill didn't care to speculate about. But as it was the first time Melody had had some purpose other than making a man comfortable, Jill had to approve.

She dialed her mother's number.

"Jill, darling." Melody's voice was low, the affection in it genuine. Jill had never doubted that.

They exchanged pleasantries. Then Jill asked her mother if she was free for lunch any day next week.

"Lunch? The two of us? What a lovely idea. Of course, I'm free. Any time. Actually, Tuesday isn't good... although I could cancel—but isn't Tuesday your group? You're still going, aren't you? Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry."

"It's okay," Jill assured her. "I'm still going. Shall we meet on Monday? Is that all right? The same place we went last time?"

"We could go there if you want. Of course we could... unless you want to go somewhere different for a change."

Jill didn't care where they ate. She just didn't want to have an endless conversation about it. "We can go wherever you want. I don't care."

"Oh, I don't either. I just thought that you might—"

Jill hated this. It was clear that Melody had a certain place in mind, but she was unwilling to suggest it herself. She wasn't going to admit that she had any preferences; she wasn't going to risk putting forward an idea that Jill might reject.

This rambling chatter, this inability to be direct, drove Jill nuts. Melody was nervous; she was frantic to please her daughter. It was a sad inversion of the more common parent-child dysfunction: in Jill and Melody's case, the child was the authority figure with love and approval to withhold or bestow.

It was heartbreaking... but also reassuring. A nervous Melody wasn't on Valium.

"I just want to see
you,"
Jill said. "We can eat a hot dog on the beach, for all I care. You think about it and call me back."

"Do you think you'll want French or something lighter?"

"Mother, I don't care. You decide." Resolutely Jill changed the subject. "How's your book coming? Has Brenda's agent had a chance to read the proposal?"

"Oh, yes. She's sending me a contract... but Jill, about Monday, do you know what you're going to wear?"

Jill wanted to scream. Her mother was a high-school graduate, and yet the first agent she had shown her partial manuscript to was accepting it. That was amazing news, something Melody should have been very proud of. But all she could think about was what they were going to wear to lunch.

What difference does it make? So what if I'm in slacks and you're in a suit? So what if I'm in red and you're in coral? Who cares? They're going to let us eat. They're going to take our money.

But Jill knew everything would be easier if she answered. She glanced around the room. The hotel laundry had just returned her dry cleaning. Swaddled in plastic, it was draped across one of the oyster-damask sofas. The garment on top was peach. "I'll probably wear my peach skirt and sweater."

"Your sailor sweater? I really like that. Did you ever get shoes to match?"

"No." Jill wore soft off-white loafers with the calf-length skirt and silk sweater. The skirt and sweater were a pale rosy peach; the sweater's sailor knot and the stripes in its V-neck insert were ivory. So her shoes were fine. Not great, not perfect, but fine, which was enough for Jill. Her mother, of course, had much higher standards.

The restaurant Melody finally chose was a new place in Westwood. The walls were a washed-pink stucco. The windows were deep and recessed, with shutters that folded back into the walls. The Mexican tile floor was a warm, earthy white while the tablecloth and dishes exploded in the colors of a piñata: red, fuchsia, turquoise, crayon yellow. The cuisine was supposedly nouvelle Mexican, something Jill could not quite imagine.

Melody was waiting for her at a fuchsia-draped table tucked into one of the window recesses. She had had her hair restyled since Jill had seen her last. More platinum than Jill's, it was feathery short, wisping about Melody's delicate features. Before Jill could say how much she liked it, Melody leaned forward confidingly. "This place will never make it," she whispered. "It looks great empty. But what about when it's full of clothes? Who wants to spend half a morning getting dressed to be outshined by the plates?"

Jill didn't know, since she would never spend half of the morning getting dressed. Even when her childhood friend Payne Bartlett had dragooned her into going to the Academy Awards last month, she hadn't spent that long getting dressed.

Her mother was reaching under the bright tablecloth. "Look what I found. I think they'll be perfect."

She handed Jill a glossy taupe shoebox. Surprised, Jill opened the box. The tissue paper inside was patterned with a teal-green grid. The stores her mother shopped in always had wonderful tissue paper.