Has he spoken? Helen asked.
The doctor flicked his eyes back and forth between us, again looking at me as if I were a complication. He did, the doctor said, but he wasn’t making much sense. We’re hopeful he’ll make a full recovery. And then he turned to Helen, taking her arm. Could I speak with you alone, Mrs. Haywood?
In the waiting room the three nurses had moved on from men and movie stars.
No, I heard she cut her throat, the poor thing, said one of the nurses. Such a shame.
Must be a person has no hope if they do that, said another.
It’s the children we should feel sorry for, said the third. How can you believe in God when your mother goes and does a thing like that?
Whatever relief I felt that you were alive was instantly undercut by the realization that I had made this happen. My selfishness had done this. If only I had been able to see the venality of my choice a few hours earlier, if I had understood how my egotism could destroy everyone I loved, perhaps that would have been enough to make me face whatever injustice awaited me, however unthinkable and unbearable it seemed at the time. And yet, if I had stayed, I am certain our secret would have come out, and would that not have ruined you, ruined us both, in its own catastrophic way? Or else the struggle to keep what we had secret would have eaten away at us in ways just as destructive. In that hour in the hospital I knew for the first time that I would give my life for you, Myles, even if it meant lying down right there on the hospital floor and letting everything go, or being stoned by a mob, or sitting before a panel of men in bad suits and refusing to betray all the people I counted as friends. I wanted to die that you might live.
Some nights now, alone with Alessio, who is sweet to me but with whom I have so little in common, about whose faithfulness I have constant doubts and yet no sense that I have the right to demand his fidelity given my age and decrepitude, I regret that I did not manage to pull off such a bargain, to give my life to make you whole.
Helen came back into the waiting room and pulled me to a corner away from the nurses, turning her face so that they could not even read her lips as she whispered.
Myles was talking about you before the operation. He was asking for his husband. The doctor thought it was shock or delirium, but I could see he wondered if there wasn’t more to it.
What did you tell him?
I told him it was for a part – a psychiatric patient who thinks he’s his own wife – but I don’t think he believed me. She sighed and looked over her shoulder at the nurses. I wish Barbara was here.
Give me your keys. I’ll pick her up and be back before dawn.
Helen mangled inside her clutch and pressed the keys against my palm. When I said that about the doctor, I didn’t mean you should go, Desmond. If anything, I think you should stay. Barbara could always get a taxi.
The three nurses were silent, watching our little drama unfold.
No, I whispered, it’s better I go.
John
John stared at the pink bedroom, the princess canopy in chintz trimmed with eyelet embroidery flowering above the headboard to the height of the ceiling, the oil portrait of Mary in an ermine stole regarding him from its place above the hearth. Since she had redecorated the room earlier in the year he no longer felt there was a place for him in it.
Mary pushed the bathroom door closed and he heard the lock turn. One day the fire department would have to break down the door to get her out. It would be sleeping pills or a slip climbing out of the tub after too many martinis. He used to assume the recklessness was benign and accepted that while she was not faithful to their marriage she was in every other way loyal to him and determined to advance both their careers. After this day he was no longer certain. It felt as though the partnership had turned into a rivalry and she had arrived the better prepared. Constancy and familiarity were all he could offer. He demanded nothing in return but a convincing performance of devotion for the cameras and the press, her shenanigans kept out of the gossip columns, a certain decorum before their friends and colleagues. The liaisons he knew about had mostly occurred during working hours at the studio or at parties where she would disappear for an hour and resurface looking like a bobbysoxer on heat. Since their wedding, at least until six months ago, they had slept in the same bed each night and had never been apart for a whole day. It was in the contract, page 4, paragraph 6, or so he liked to pretend. Both of them had morals clauses in their contracts with the studio, however, and there was nothing imaginary about that.
When Mary opened the bathroom door again she jumped at the sight of him. What are you doing in here?
Following you. Explain something to me. What is it about Nick Charles?
She blushed and John knew he had been right.
Choice.
I don’t follow, Mary.
We all have choices, right up to the moment we act, and then the old set of choices dies and a new set is born. Each choice leads along another path. In the end, at the close of your life, you find yourself in the place that you’ve chosen, accompanied by those you’ve picked along the way as your companions. I’ve chosen Nick because he represents radical choice. But I’ve chosen you as well.
I’m not enough for you?
I could ask the same of you, John.
I’ve never had an affair.
You’ve had an affair of the heart, and of the mind.
I recognize that line, Mary. It’s on the showreel downstairs. You’re even playing it the same.
Mary scowled. When you lost interest in me you fell in love with that counterfeit belief. You realize you can’t call those people your friends anymore.
Because they don’t fit in with shows like you put on tonight? That was straight out of 1933. I was ready to call Riefenstahl.
They’re enemies of America.
Your America isn’t one I recognize, Mary.
Then you must be blind. We’re at war, even if bombs aren’t being dropped and soldiers aren’t fighting. America is always at war.
Earlier tonight I thought I could love you again.
I don’t care about love.
No, I can see that. Just tell me what you’re doing tomorrow.
I have an appointment downtown.
I guessed that much. And they’ll ask you some questions. I want to know what you’re going to say.
I’ll tell them you and I used to attend meetings. I’ll give the names of everyone I remember who was at those meetings, and at the end of the discussion the authorities will have me on record, and anyone who wants to make trouble will be told I’m clean, and nothing more will come of it.
What happens to me?
You have the same choice. We don’t even have to do it downtown. I could phone first thing tomorrow and ask them to come to the house instead. All you need do is give names and dates. Nothing could be simpler. Do that for me and I have the rest of our future planned.
John sat on the edge of the bed so that the real Mary and the oil portrait of Mary were both in his line of sight. What kind of future would that be? My friends wouldn’t speak to me.
You can get new ones.
And my work?
It doesn’t matter if people like you or not, the studio will be on your side. You’ll spend another ten years making good, honest, American movies before retiring. Then, after a few months’ rest, you’ll announce your candidacy for office. We’ll start small, with the State Assembly, and then move on to Senator or Governor. After that, we’ll look to national office. I see a great future for us together, John. Part of what I’ve realized today is that I need you as much as you need me. Just imagine: President John Marsh.
A Technicolor montage flashed through John’s mind: the whistle-stop campaign tour of California, speeches from the back of a caboose, an open-top Cadillac in a Raisin Day parade in the San Joaquin Valley, talking to fruit packers and migrant workers, aerospace engineers and longshoremen, rubbing shoulders with the titans of California commerce, and then the first oath of office,
speeches from the floor of the statehouse, ribbon cuttings and cocktail parties, his governorship of California, flights between Sacramento and Los Angeles, a barnstorming campaign for President, speaking up and down the country in small towns and big cities, addressing both the common and the great, and then the night of the election, awaiting the results, waking the next morning to find himself elected, the months of preparation before the inauguration, Washington transformed into the best version of itself, America in the morning of its third age, and Mary always at his side, a Madonna for the nation, Liberty made flesh.
The vision almost convinced him, but gazing at the two Marys, the living one and her varnished image on the wall, he thought of all the arguments over the years, her betrayals and duplicitousness, the hungry striving.
I wish I could remember what was good between us, he said. I wish bad memories could be wiped like chalk from a slate and only good memories remain. I wish you could be faithful to me as I have been faithful to you.
Oh, John—
It’s true. If we’re going to do this we have to do it together, as you say. If I must be faithful to my country then you must be faithful to our marriage. That has to be the contract.
Mary raised her chin and looked down at him. He tried to envision her in black-and-white. Bled of color she was most convincing, the good part of her just as present and visible as the bad – Faye and Ursula, Light and Dark, two halves of the same person. That had been his contribution, splitting what had been a single character into two, twins dividing the dual aspects of Mary’s own personality and then, perversely, casting her to play both parts. The experience had nearly driven her mad, he knew, and he blamed himself. Standing before him now in triumph, a goddess or a vampire, light and dark were comingled so that John could not say if darkness was the mate of logic or superstition. All he wanted was for Mary to smile as if she genuinely cared for him, as she had in the past, without derision or irony.
I wish I could forget everything that has ever pushed us apart, Mary.
She did smile, but not without irony.
Dr. Werth gave me something today. A new medicine. He said it would help with remembering what I’ve forgotten. I haven’t tried it yet. Maybe we should take it together.
She floated back into the bathroom and returned with an orange-brown bottle of pills.
How many do we take?
Two to forget all the bad, she said, and two to remember the good. She placed the pills in his palm and he put them on his tongue.
Sweet. Probably a placebo.
They lay down next to each other on the bed, he in his tuxedo, she in her blue gown, listening as bass notes from the music outside rattled the windows. John began to drift into sleep, eyes closing as colors and shapes mutated, metamorphosing against the backs of his eyelids. He thought of the man dressed as the griffin in Mary’s pageant and imagined the monster turning unprovoked to attack her, throwing her from the chariot, and he, John Marsh, dashing forward to save her only to find as he drew closer that Liberty was a harlot, cheaply painted and scuttling across the terrace to embrace the feet of Nick Charles, grown to the size of King Kong and towering over Los Angeles. Nick reached down, plucked Mary with one hand from the terrace, stepped through the hedge surrounding the property, and tramped off into the eastern hills.
John opened his eyes. Mary had one arm flung against her pillow, the other resting across her abdomen. Posed, even in repose.
Daddy? Iris called from the other side of the bedroom door. I can’t sleep.
You better put her back to bed, Mary said without opening her eyes.
John craned his neck to taste Mary’s lipstick, the smoke and alcohol on her breath. Her mouth moved against his in a way that was almost convincing.
In the hallway Iris looked wide awake and flushed, as if she had been drinking. It would not have been the first time.
You should be in bed.
It’s too loud, she whined.
You can sleep tomorrow.
As John opened the door to Iris’s room he glanced over his shoulder in time to see Nick Charles slinking into the master bedroom.
Who’s that? Iris asked.
A snake.
Maybe you should kill it.
Yes, I suppose I should.
Long past midnight, meandering in a maze of text, tripping over slabbed Sunset Boulevard pavements, his senses pulsating under the influence of the drug Mary had given him, having run and cabbed and hiked, footsore, far from home, John believed he was the star in the heavens and everyone else mere planets in his orbit. Nick Charles was just ahead, slouching in a brown cloth jacket adopted for disguise. Lamplight glinted on streetcar tracks, flashing orange yellow red in the gaseous bonfire of twinkling neon signs.
A pale blue car screeched to a halt at the traffic light as the STOP arm swung into place, the letters S-T-O-P picked out in white bulbs beneath the colored trio of lights, and then, as red pulsed to green, STOP’S white letters against red fell back into the mechanical gray body and the GO flag, black on white, swung up to the perpendicular. John stood mesmerized before the changing sign until he noticed SECURITY BANK winking in his direction.
Two girls burst from the shadows beneath a marquee, one in a mint-green smock dress over white blouse with puffed short sleeves, the other in a white dress with ruffles in a V falling from her shoulders to waist, white bow tying up her hair, white patent shoes, white ankle socks.
How’s about it? Mint Green asked.
Two fer one, said Ruffled V.
Yer place or ours, Minty drawled, her accent Bronx-like so it came out owwwahhhs.
John shook his head. The girls stuck out their tongues and cycled on. Time stood rooted in front of Warners’ Theater, a clock sunk in concrete, smiling at the green fabric awnings batting simpering scalloped eyelashes. All the world was in love with John, all trying to seduce him. Nick Charles in brown jacket turned around. He was wearing a mask, didn’t look himself at all, and gave John a come-hither pout.
Streetcar cables hanging above the pavement buzzed harmony with the antennae pulsing from building tops, all that electricity relaying spirit and girdling the world, singing a love song to John Marsh. Time branched, pushed forth leaves, flowers, and fruits, the concrete cracking from time’s growth, searchlights slowing, their golden echoes sweeping skyscrapers, shilling for men massaged in dark back rooms by skillful catamites. Irving Jakobson jacking off the Junior Senator from Wisconsin. America First! That’s what Lindbergh said, the Nazi.
The color of the world was too distracting. Everything should be in black and white, grayscale for clarity. Cars cakewalked streets in Sunday best: drab green, sky blue, kidney red, ink black, canary. A yellow cab with fat red face shook its tail, compelling John with its soft rubber purr: Pursue, Pursue, Pursue.
Walking for hours that split into lifetimes, contemplation at last became possible.
John’s Chemical Contemplations (A Speculation):
1. To snitch or not to snitch, that is the question.
2. Stick by friends and say nothing and so lose everything. Lose wife child house work. Lose everything but life. Lose country. Lose parents. Lose home. To end alone with friends, thus not alone. To start again with nothing but friends. Are friends everything or nothing in the end? To leave with shirt on the back, one suitcase, wallet of bills, talent of one’s eyes. Individual talent as passport and papers. Create a new life as an American no longer American. Live off the backs of friends. Can friends be trusted more than wife?
3. Choose Mary’s side and keep all but friends. Sacrifice friends for wife child house work. Keep everything except for friends. Keep country parents home livelihood. Never be trusted by friends again. To arrive in a room and be the traitor who repented, the comrade who snitched against innocent men.
4. Do one thing (choose Mary’s side) while pretending the opposite. Speak in private and pretend silence. Have it both ways. Hold cake in hands and eat it whole, one mouthful. Sit both sides of the fence
. Impale oneself on falsehood. Live a double life. Lose nothing and be unlivable to oneself, unfathomable to anyone else.
5. Take the child and run with friends: Mexico Argentina India Italy France England Russia: turn against Mary and America: render oneself fugitive but not bereft of family: take the child and raise her right. Only left is right. Fault of the French and tennis court revolutions. Failure of language. Fault of Latin. Nothing sinister about the Left. Nothing correct about the Right. Redirect the debate. Right and Left are meaningless. Above and below. Those on top, those beneath. With one or with the other. Possible to be on top but still with those beneath? Possible to be beneath and support those who would oppress?
6. Find new friends. Become someone other than what one has been. Run for office play the game climb the ladder sit the summit rule the world. No different fundamentally than 3 or 4.
7. Go underground. Fake one’s death. Run solo. Trust no one. No choice there. No different fundamentally than 2 or 5.
8. Suicide. Killing of the self. Real or figurative. Real the only real way out. To do away with in order to escape, to stop.
9. How’d he get away with it?
I always heard he was a Commie.
Why wasn’t he subpoenaed with the rest of us?
Assume he made a deal.
When you assume you make an ass of u and me.
Commies don’t get deals they get punched against the wall.
It’s his wife made the deal.
Two fer one.
Don’t work like that.
I just don’t get it.
Two fer one I tell ya.
I’d a swore he was a Commie spy.
I’d a swore he’s one of ours.
Night for Day Page 47
