The Carpetbaggers (87 page)

* * *

Jonas followed Jennie into the darkened house. "You're tired," he said gently, looking down at her white face. "It's been a big night. Go on up to bed. I'll see you tomorrow."

"No," she said flatly. She knew what she had to do. She turned and walked into the living room, switching on the light. He followed her curiously.

She turned, slipping the ring from her finger, and held it out to him. He looked at it, then at her. "Why?" he asked. "Is it because of anything I did tonight?"

She shook her head. "No," she said quickly. "It has nothing to do with you at all. Just take the ring, please."

"I'm entitled to know why, Jennie."

"I don't love you," she said. "Is that reason enough?"

"Not now it isn't."

"Then I have a better reason," she said tightly. "Before I made that screen test, I was the highest-priced whore in Hollywood."

He stared at her for a moment. "I don't believe you," he said slowly. "You couldn't have fooled me."

"You're a fool," she said sharply. "If you don't believe me, ask Bonner or any of the other four men at the table who laid me. Or any of a dozen other men I saw in the restaurant tonight."

"I still don't believe you," he said in a low voice.

She laughed. "Then ask Bonner why Pierce gave me that present. There wasn't any mix-up, he meant the razors for me. The story was all over Hollywood, the morning after Bonner left here. How I shaved all the hair off his body, then blew him in a bathtub filled with champagne."

He began to look sick.

"And why do you think I asked you to let me do
Aphrodite
?" she continued. "Not because I thought it was any good. It was to pay Pierce off for this." She walked quickly to the desk and took out two small reels of film. She spun one out at him, the film unwinding from the reel like a roll of confetti. "My first starring role," she said sarcastically. "A pornographic picture."

She took a cigarette from the box on the desk and lit it. She turned back to him. Her voice was quieter now. "Or maybe you're the kind of man who enjoys being married to that kind of woman, so that every time you meet another man, you can wonder. Did he or didn't he? When, where and how?"

He took a step toward her. "That's over now. It doesn't matter."

"It doesn't? Just because I was a fool for a moment, you don't have to be. How much of tonight do you think you'd have been able to take if you'd known what you know now?"

"But I love you!"

"You even kid yourself about that. You don't love me. You never have. You're in love with a memory. The memory of a girl who preferred your father to you. The first chance you had, you tried to make me over in her image. Even in bed — the things you wanted me to do. Did you really think I was so naive I didn't know those were the things she did to you?"

The ring was still in her hand. She put it on the table in front of him. "Here," she said.

He stared down at the ring. The diamond seemed to shoot angry sparks at him. He looked up at her, his face lined and drawn. "Keep it," he said curtly and walked out.

She stood there until she heard his car pull out of the driveway. Then she turned out the light and walked upstairs, leaving the ring on the table and the film, like confetti after a party, on the floor.

* * *

She lay wide-eyed on her bed staring up into the night. If she could only cry she would feel better. But she was empty inside, eaten away by her sins. There was nothing left for her to give anyone. She had used up her ration of love.

Once, long ago, she had loved and been loved. But Tom Denton was dead, lost forever, beyond recall.

She cried out into the darkness, "Daddy, help me! Please! I don't know what to do."

If she could only go back and begin again. Back to the familiar Sunday smell of corned beef and cabbage, to the gentle sound of a whispered morning Mass in her ears, to the sisters and the hospital, to the inner satisfaction of being a part of God's work.

Then her father's voice came whispering to her out of the gray light of the morning, "Do you really want to go, Jennie Bear?"

She lay very still for a moment thinking, remembering. Was that time forever gone? If she were to withhold from confession that part of her life which no longer seemed to belong to her it need not be. They would not know. It was her one real transgression. The rest of her life they already knew about.

To do so would be a sin. A sin of omission. It would invalidate any future confession that she might make. But she had so much to give and without giving it she was denying not only herself but others who would have need of her help. Which was the greater sin? For a moment she was frightened, then decided that this was a matter between her and her Maker. The decision was hers, and she alone could be held responsible, both now and at any future time.

Suddenly she made her mind up and she was no longer afraid.

"Yes, Daddy," she whispered.

His soft voice came echoing back on the wind. "Then get dressed, Jennie, and I'll go with you."

It was almost two years from the night of the party before Rosa heard from Jennie again. It was almost six months from the time she received the dreaded impersonal message from the War Department that David had been killed at the Anzio beachhead in May of 1944.

No more dreams, no more big deals, no more struggles and plans to build a giant monument of incorporation that would span the earth, linked by thin and gossamer strands of celluloid. They had come to a final stop for him, just as they had for a thousand others, in the crashing, thundering fire of an early Italian morning.

The dreams had stopped for her, too. The whisper of love in the night, the creaking of the floor beneath the footsteps on the other side of the bed, the excitement and warmth of shared confidences and plans for tomorrow.

For once, Rosa was grateful for her work. It used her mind and taxed her energy and consumed her with the day-to-day responsibilities. In time, the hurt was pushed back into the corner recesses of her mind, to be felt only when she was alone.

Then, bit by bit, the understanding came to her, as it always must to the survivors, that only a part of the dreams had been buried with him. His son was growing and one day, as she saw him running across the green lawn in the front of their home, she heard the birds begin to sing again. She looked up at the blue sky, at the white sun above her head, and knew that once again she was a living, breathing human being with the full, rich blood of life in her body. And the guilt that had been in her, because she had remained while he had gone, disappeared.

It all happened that day after she read Jennie's letter. It was addressed to her in a small, feminine script that she did not recognize. At first, she thought it another solicitation when she saw the imprimatur on the letterhead.

†
Sisters of Mercy

Burlingame, California

October 10, 1944

Dear Rosa,

It is with some trepidation and yet with the knowledge that you will respect my confidence that I take my pen in hand to write. I do not seek to reopen wounds which by this time have already partly healed but it is only a few days ago that I learned of your loss and wanted to extend to you and little Bernie my sympathy and prayers.

David was a fine man and a genuinely kind human being. All of us who knew him will miss him. I mention him in my prayers each day and I am comforted by the words of Our Lord and Saviour: "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, even if he die, shall live; and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die."

Sincerely yours in J. C.

Sister M. Thomas

(Jennie Denton)

It was then, when Rosa went outside to call her son in from his play, that she heard the birds singing. The next weekend, she drove to Burlingame to visit Jennie.

There were tiny white puffballs of clouds in the blue sky as Rosa turned her car into the wide driveway that led to the Mother House. It was a Saturday afternoon and there were many automobiles parked there already. She pulled into an open space some distance from the sprawling building.

She sat in the car and lit a cigarette. She felt a doubt creeping through her. Perhaps she shouldn't have come. Jennie might not want to see her, wouldn't want to be reminded of that world she'd left behind. It was pure impulse that she had followed in driving here and she couldn't blame Jennie if she refused to see her.

She remembered the morning after the engagement party. When Jennie hadn't shown up at the studio, no one had thought very much about it. And David, who'd been trying to reach Jonas at the plant in Burbank, told her that he couldn't locate him, either.

When the next day and the day after that had passed and there was still no word from Jennie, the studio really began to worry. Jonas had finally been located in Canada at the new factory and David called him there. His voice had been very curt over the telephone as he told David that the last time he'd seen Jennie was when he left her home the night of the party.

David immediately called Rosa and suggested she run out to Jennie's house. When she got there, the Mexican servant came to the door. "Is Miss Denton in?"

"Señorita, she not in."

"Do you know where she is?" Rosa asked. "It's very important that I get in touch with her."

The servant shook her head. "The señorita go away. She not say where."

Deliberately Rosa walked past her into the house. There were packed boxes all along the hallway. On the side of one was stenciled
Bekins, Moving & Storage
. The servant saw the surprise on her face. "The señorita tell me to close the house and go away, too."

Rosa didn't wait until she got home, but called David from the first pay telephone she came to. He said he'd try to speak to Jonas again.

"Did you reach Jonas?" she asked, as soon as he came in the door that evening.

"Yes. He told me to close down
Aphrodite
and have Pierce thrown off the lot. When I said we might wind up with a lawsuit, he told me to tell Dan that if he wanted to start anything, Jonas would spend his last dollar to break him."

"But what about Jennie?"

"If she doesn't show up by the end of the week, Jonas told me to have her put on the suspended list and stop her salary."

"And their engagement?"

"Jonas didn't say, but I guess that's over, too. When I asked him if we should prepare a statement for the press, he told me to tell them nothing and hung up."

"Poor Jennie. I wonder where she is?"

Now Rosa knew. She got out of the car and started to walk slowly toward the Mother House.

* * *

Sister M. Thomas sat quietly in her small room, reading her Bible. A soft knock came at the door. She got to her feet, the Bible still in her hand, and opened it. The light from the window in the hall outside her room turned her white novice's veil a soft silver. "Yes, sister?"

"There's a visitor to see you, sister. A Mrs. David Woolf. She's in the visitors' room downstairs."

Sister Thomas hesitated a moment, then spoke. Her voice was calm and quiet. "Thank you, sister. Please tell Mrs. Woolf that I shall be down in a few minutes."

The nun bowed her head and started down the corridor as Sister Thomas closed the door. For a moment, she leaned her back against it, weak and breathless. She had not expected Rosa to come. She drew herself up and crossed the small room to kneel before the crucifix on the bare wall near her bed. She clasped her hands in prayer. It was as if it were only yesterday that she had come here, that she was still the frightened girl who had spent all her life trying to hide from herself her love for God.

She remembered the kind voice of the Mother Superior as she had knelt before her, weeping, her head in the soft material across the Mother Superior's lap. She felt once again the gentle touch of the stroking fingers on her head.

"Do not weep, my child. And do not fear. The path that leads to Our Lord may be most grievous and difficult but Jesus Christ, Our Saviour, refuses none who truly seeks Him."

"But, Reverend Mother, I have sinned."

"Who among us is without sin?" the Reverend Mother said softly. "If you take your sins to Him who takes all sins to Himself to share, and convince Him with your penitence, He will grant you His holy forgiveness and you will be welcome in His house."

She looked up at the Reverend Mother through her tears. "Then, I may stay?"

The Mother Superior smiled down at her. "Of course you may stay, my child."

* * *

Rosa rose from the chair as Sister Thomas came into the visitors' room. "Jennie?" she said tentatively. "Sister Thomas, I mean."

"Rosa, how good it is to see you."

Rosa looked at her. The wide-set gray eyes and lovely face belonged to Jennie, but the calm serenity that glowed beneath the novice's white veil came from Sister Thomas. Suddenly, she knew that the face she was looking at was the same face she had once seen on the screen, enlarged a thousand times and filled with the same love as when the Magdalen had stretched forth her hand to touch the hem of her Saviour's gown.

"Jennie!" she said, smiling. "Suddenly, I'm so happy that I just want to hug you."

Sister Thomas held out her arms.

Later, they strolled the quiet paths around the grounds in the afternoon sunlight and when they came to the top of a hill, they paused there, looking down into the green valley below them.

"His beauty is everywhere," Sister Thomas said softly, turning to her friend, "I have found my place in His house."

Rosa looked at her. "How long do you remain in the novitiate?"

"Two years. Until next May."

"And what do you do then?" Rosa questioned.

"If I prove worthy of His grace, I take the black veil and go forth in the path of the Founding Mother, to bring His mercy to all who may need it."

She looked into Rosa's eyes and once again Rosa saw the deep-lying pool of serenity within them. "And I am more fortunate than most," Sister Thomas added humbly. "He has already trained me in His work. My years in the hospital will help me wherever I may be sent, for it is in this area I can best serve."