Crowned Heads

by Thomas Tryon

  Willie slips the page back into the pile and takes up the first page, which bears these words: “J’ai vécu.”

  “I lived; I existed through it all.”

  Willie leans strongly toward this quotation as the epigraph to his memoirs, courtesy of the Abbé Sieyès, whom he greatly admires. The abbé survived the Reign of Terror and his tenacity saw him safely from the fall of the Bourbons, through the Revolution, to the Restoration. Like the abbé and Joan Crawford, Willie, too, has existed through it all. He is a survivor.

  He has survived vaudeville, the microphone, the Depression, three or four wars, CinemaScope, 3-D, television, he has survived the waning of love, popularity, fortune, the loss of hair and teeth, impaired eyesight and hearing, internal disorders, he has survived his own age and that of many others; he has survived even death.

  Ah, Bee …

  My little feet may be dancing, but my little heart is breaking.

  It was his impaired hearing that caused him to turn up the volume on the TV, where, on The New Treasure Hunt, a black girl was practically in tears because she had muffed her chance at five thousand dollars, and since his sympathies were directed toward the unfortunate girl, Willie did not hear the door chime. The dogs scampered off, barking, but he failed to notice. The cockatoo made him aware that something was happening beyond the range of his hearing. Agitated by the dogs, the bird, in its filigreed cage, was uttering piercing cries as an intruder suddenly appeared in the doorway. Willie at last looked up from the set and stared toward the hall.

  “Howdy,” called a hearty voice.

  Willie could make out only a large hulking shape in the archway. Alarmed, he dropped his napkin into the gravied meat compartment and half rose from his chair.

  “Hope I didn’t scare ya. Guess ya didn’t hear the doorbell. It’s me, Mr. Marsh. Bill Bowie.”

  “Bowie … Bowie … I don’t know any Bowie.”

  Squinting, he could make out a faceless young man, rocking on the balls of his feet and punching a fist into his palm.

  “Sure,” said the young man amiably. “Remember—Friday night—Viola’s? You said come for drinks?”

  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Was he losing his mind? Willie wondered. “You’ve got the wrong night,” he called out. “Tuesday. You’re supposed to come Tuesday.”

  “What?” returned the young man, cupping his ear.

  “I—say—you’ve got the—wrong—night.” Ridiculous, shouting this way. Willie consigned The New Treasure Hunt to oblivion, while the young man stood in the doorway. A swift stillness hung briefly in the room, then they started toward one another at the same instant, both speaking at once.

  “You were supposed to come—”

  “I could’ve swore you said Monday—”

  Willie scooped up the dogs, put on his glasses, and watched a giant Buffalo Bill advancing across the room: long hair and a buckskin-fringed jacket, fringed buckskin pants. His large hand was extended.

  “—Tuesday,” Willie ended weakly. Surely it wasn’t the same fellow; this one looked like another person entirely, not the neat young man in the shawl-collared dinner clothes. Nor was he alone. Half obscured by his large bulk, came a girl, teetering in his wake on wooden platform shoes, which clattered on the tiles. Willie hardly knew what to do, juggling the animals and, to his surprise, taking the offered hand. The young man wrung it, and chucked one of the dogs under the chin.

  “Hey, boy, hey, boy … And this here’s Judee,” he added, with a nod to the girl.

  “Hiyuh,” said the girl. A cloud of reddish frizzy hair topped her head like an Afro, and her eyes were sooty with mascara and Egyptian penciling. Willie set the dogs down and looked from one to the other. Clearly an impossible situation. What had happened was that last Friday night Viola Ueberroth had given one of her biannual parties, a large affair under a lawn tent. Willie had been persuaded by Vi to renounce his mourning temporarily and attend; he regretted it the moment he arrived: faces, faces everywhere, but so few he recognized. It was while standing at the bar, turning from some people who’d been condoling with him, that he came face to face with the young man. Pleasant enough, he introduced himself, explaining that he was Viola’s masseur, and had been invited as part of a contingent of dateless men who could possibly amuse husbandless women. Having scraped acquaintance, and not at all abrasively, he had been complimentary about a number of Willie’s pictures. He seemed well informed about them, and it was then that he had mentioned the much-publicized magazine spread, and expressed interest in the collection of art and movie memorabilia, even going so far as to say he would consider himself lucky to inspect it in person. Willie had at first demurred, but remembering that he’d invited some people up for drinks on Tuesday, thought it the considerate thing to include the young man. “Bring a date, if you like,” he’d said; and here they were—but on the wrong night.

  “Hey, this is quite a spread you got here,” said the young man affably. “Even better than in the pictures.”

  “It’s just like living between the pages of Modern Screen,” the girl chirped, moving past Willie, her large googly eyes gazing around her with the wonder of an urchin at a bakery window.

  “I’m glad you like it,” Willie said. “But I’m afraid tonight won’t do. You see—”

  “Aw, say,” the young man chimed in, “that’s too bad. Boy, are we dumb. Wrong night.” He shook his head woefully at his mistake. He looked at the girl and spread his hands wide. “Gee, Jude, whatcha think?”

  “I think it’s terrific,” she replied, going to tap the cockatoo’s cage.

  “See, the thing is,” the young man continued, “we got up here, but we can’t get down.”

  “Is your car not working?” Willie asked.

  “Naw, see, what it is, we got a ride up. A friend dropped us off. He’s coming to pick us up, but not for …” He looked at his wrist, where there was no watch, then around him, as if the time might appear and announce itself from any corner.

  “I see.” It was all really awkward. “Well, uh—Bob—”

  “It’s—uh—Bill, Mr. Marsh.”

  “To be sure. Bill.” They stood facing one another, Willie abstractedly brushing his pate, the young man slamming his fist into his palm again and grinning. Not knowing what else to do, Willie invited them to sit. The chairs had been resurrected by Bee from the old Turf Club at Santa Anita, four of them grouped around a French lawn basket with a glass top, crowded with glass and crystal ornaments.

  “I see you were watchin’ TV,” the young man said. His cowboy boots were large and colorful, the sides stitched with designs in many hues, the toes squarely pointed and turned up like the toes of a caliph’s slippers.

  “Yes, that Treasure Hunt thing,” Willie replied. The girl was silently watching him with her skittish urchin’s look.

  “Oh, Treasure Hunt, uh huh.” The young man nodded agreeably.

  Willie was still having difficulty recognizing the person he had met before. His hair hung around his face in a long mane. The eyes were clear, if bland, the nose was snub, the face large and square. The round cheeks dimpled when he smiled, which was often. The jawline was outrageous.

  “Well.” Willie glanced tentatively from him to the girl, and back again. “Well, Bob—”

  “It’s—uh—Bill, Mr. Marsh.”

  “Yes, Bill, to be sure—Bill.” He stamped it indelibly on his memory, dismayed by the glimpse he caught of himself in the mirror: the bald spot that the public never saw, since he usually wore a toupee, his wash slacks, the canvas sneakers, the shirt that was getting a second wearing; hardly the picture of dashing elegance he had for so long striven to present to the world.

  “Honest, I never saw so many things,” said the girl. “Did you ever?” she asked Bill. Bill had never, either. He extracted from his jacket pocket a cloth bag and a pack of papers, sprinkled tobacco, and nimbly rolled a cigarette, twisting the end, which he hung on his lip while he searched in his other pockets for a light.

&n
bsp; “Here.” Willie handed him a package of matches; Bill lit up.

  “’S okay, Mr. Marsh—just Bull Durham,” he said reassuringly, as though Willie might think it were something else. He smiled at the match cover and tossed it to the girl. “Look, Jude, how ’bout that.”

  The girl read the inscribed cover: “To a matchless person. Sincerely, Bee and Willie.” She giggled. “That’s cute. I like it.”

  “We thought it was fun,” Willie said. He hadn’t got her name; terribly sorry.

  “Judee, with two e’s, not a y.” She held up a pair of fingers to demonstrate, then vee’d them into a peace symbol. Bill was looking around for an ashtray. Willie leaned to bring one closer, straightening quickly as he realized the unattractive sight the top of his head presented. “Well,” he said again; obviously the matter was not to be avoided. “I suppose, as long as you’re here, you may as well have a look around. How long did you say before your friend … ?”

  Neither of them seemed quite sure; maybe half an hour? The friend had had to run over to the valley; but he’d be back.

  “Well, then … Would you like to watch the rest of the show, while I take care of one or two things?” He was already out of his chair, wheeling the TV dolly to a more suitable position.

  “That’d shore be swell, Mr. Marsh,” Bill said. “Sorry to bother you, though. What a dumb thing …”

  “Not at all, not at all. I’m working on my autobiography, as you can see, so we’ll just hurry through and you can go along and I’ll get back to the typewriter….” He pointed to the card table. “I always write at night; the thoughts seem to flow better.” He clicked the remote wand. “So”—like a magician, as the picture formed. “I’ll be back in a moment.” He would slip quickly upstairs, put on his toupee, give the pair the twenty-five-cent tour, and by that time, with luck, their friend would come to collect them. The wrong night, in the name of God. Carrying his dinner tray, he glanced back several times as he crossed the room. They had sat again, eyes already glued to the set; as he went through the doorway the girl gave him a little wriggle of her fingers.

  “Bye-bye.” She turned back to the screen. “Aw, gee, the show’s ending.” As shrieks of audience excitement were heard, Willie hurried from the room.

  Despite the girl’s remark, the show was not ending, but rather just beginning. The couple’s attention did not stay long with the television set. The young man waited briefly, then got up from his chair, signaling to the girl, who hurried across to the doorway and looked around the corner. Behind her back she wagged her hand at her companion, who moved to the bar, where he quickly stabbed the buttons on the telephone.

  “Hey, you there? We’re in.” Cupping the mouthpiece, with glances over his shoulder to the girl, speaking in low tones. The girl, meanwhile, stayed by the doorway, keeping watch while her friend listened on the telephone, then, “Sure, fine …” Pause. He read off the number from the dial. Another pause. He listened, reported the time from the wall clock, and hung up. He signaled to the girl, and they quickly resumed their places in front of the TV set.

  Which was where Willie Marsh found them when he returned a short while later.

  “Hey—cowboy,” said the young man brightly, eying the togs. Willie had changed into a natty Western outfit: tan whipcords, a plaid Western shirt, tooled leather belt with an enormous silver buckle, and boots not dissimilar to Bill’s. Bill slapped his hands on his thighs, spun out two imaginary pistols fashioned from pointed fingers and cocked thumbs, and poked the muzzles in quick rotations. Choo, he said as one went off, then choo again as he shot the other, then twirled the invisible weapons and neatly reholstered them. “Hugh O’Brian,” he said with a sheepish laugh.

  “Well, now.” Willie rubbed his hands together briskly and gave an affable smile; since his alterations in attire, and with his toupee on, he was of a more amiable disposition. “Where shall we begin, eh?” He looked from the boy to the girl, who got up, and they moved off in a group. Willie took in the room with an expansive gesture.

  “Here’s what you saw in the magazine layout—the Crystal Palace, as we call it. Or the Crystal Womb. That’s a little joke of ours,” he explained. “Years ago, Kay Francis was here for the first time. She came in, looked around, and said, ‘Heavens, a cwystal woom.’” The girl looked at Willie, then at the boy. Willie explained, “She had an impediment, you see, she couldn’t say her r’s. So—‘cwystal woom.’”

  Bill laughed heartily; that was a good one. “Oh, I get it,” the girl said finally, melting into giggles. Then, “Who’s Kay Francis?”

  “She was a movie actress. Very famous. Dead, alas. Now, this room wasn’t part of the original house,” he said, guiding them to a position where they might have a general view. “We added it on after we bought the place. But it’s really the best room—woom?—in the place.” The “woom” was wide and spacious, with a high vaulted ceiling from whose central beam hung the large crystal chandelier, dripping prisms. The wide expanse of floor was laid in black and white checkerboard. It was many things, this room. It was rather like a garden, rather like a zoo, rather like a jewel box, rather like a mirror maze. And best of all, when it grew dark, rather like a grotto—a fantasy of gleaming glittering glass and crystal. Mirrors were everywhere—on the walls, on hinged screens behind the two carved religious figures flanking the fireplace, on the column facings which supported the rafters—all cleverly arranged so that the city panorama was distantly reflected, creating a brilliant confusion of images and endlessly repeating figures like a line of Radio City Rockettes.

  Willie led them around to view the many collections housed in the room. There was the glass and crystal collection, scores of ornaments grouped on tabletops—obelisks, cubes, eggs, pyramids, animal shapes. There was the monkey collection, white ceramic figures, some with black faces and red noses, some hung on silk tasseled cords from the corner beams, others providing bases for end tables, or half hidden in the profusion of indoor plants. This jungle scheme was further carried out in a large mural on the wall beside the bar, where lions, tigers, and leopards peered from behind green foliage, and a dozen more monkeys gamboled.

  “Rather Douanier Rousseau, we thought,” Willie said, then had to explain who the Douanier Rousseau was; one of Bee’s clever painter friends had copied the originals, but Rousseau went down the drain as far as the pair were concerned.

  Then there was the collection of paintings, “the rare and valuable Marsh collection,” as the magazine layout had described it; these were hung along those wall spaces not embellished by mirror. The couple ummed and ohed at the landscapes and still lifes, other modern things which obviously neither of them got the point of. But the richness, the expense, the variety of clever detail in the handsome surroundings were not lost on them.

  The slow path of their movements, guided by Willie himself, brought them in a deliberate progression to what he called his “museum,” and what the two younger people most particularly had come to view. Here were the sentimental objects of memory that were concrete testaments to that long and illustrious career: a well-worn pair of patent leather tap shoes; a top hat and cane, which had seen service during the long run of In Old Montmartre; crossed on a wall two sabers he had swashed and buckled with in The Scarlet Galleon and Quentin Durward; theater programs; sheet music from his numerous musical pictures, Willie’s smiling photograph on each; costume designs. On a specially built stand rested an enormous dollhouse, with miniature furniture scaled to the rooms: the famous Bobbitt house, with authentically costumed figures of the principal characters in the series: Bobby Ransome as Bobbitt, Nellie Bannister as Missy Priss, Mary Astor, Dicky Haydn, and Willie Marsh as Alfie, the butler. In one corner a headless mannequin was garbed in the costume—purple cassock, surplice, stole, and pectoral cross—that Willie had worn in The Miracle of Santa Cristi. The prelate’s biretta, the square purple hat, was exhibited on a Styrofoam block under a glass bell, while another glass case contained the jeweled crown Fedora had worn a
s the Holy Virgin in the same film.

  While Willie proudly pointed out the various items, the girl said little, trailing along in her floor-length flower-dotted skirt, the ruffled hem dragging on the black and white squares, and peering at the various objects through a pair of granny glasses she had fixed on the end of her nose. The young man, on the other hand, talked and talked. His smile blinked on and off like a neon sign; his teeth, Willie thought, were rather unfortunate; he needed a dentist. His large hands appeared used to hard work; they were dry and calloused like a laborer’s, even an old man’s.

  “You know,” Willie observed as they moved along, “you don’t look like the same person. The other night I could’ve sworn you had short hair.”

  “That’s a trick of mine. Sometimes I pull it back and put a rubber band on. Most of the time people don’t notice the diff’rence.”

  “I certainly didn’t. What a clever trick.”

  He took them to view the aquariums, one of the room’s dramatic focal points, ten illuminated glass tanks ranged on glass shelves, creating the illusion of a wall of undersea life where colorful tropical fish eyed their reflections in the mirrors behind.

  “Fish,” said the girl redundantly.

  “Ye-e-s-s,” said Willie brightly, “lots of fish. Fun, aren’t they?”

  And on the piano, lots of photographs, another collection, silver-framed, an imposing array of Catholic prelates. Two popes, Pius XI and Pius XII, Cardinal Spellman, the Los Angeles diocesan archbishop, and the local bishop, all autographed to Willie and Bee, Bee and Willie. In the center of the wall beyond the piano were a pair of tall carved doors with ornate brass knobs. The doors were closed, and Willie passed them by, neither opening them nor making mention of what lay behind them, but instead directing his visitors back to the center of the room, where they stood awkwardly regarding one another, until the girl suddenly turned with a dismayed expression and asked to use the john.