by Lisa Tucker
fifteen
LUCY NEVER KIDDED herself that Charles could have bought another house without selling their old one. If he’d wanted to, he could have moved the family anywhere in Los Angeles or anywhere in the world. But instead he tried to go along with what she wanted, and so she tried not to mind all the things he’d changed when he moved with the children back to Malibu.
She came home from the rehab hospital to find a strange man standing by the front door. Her heart almost stopped, but then Charles explained that was John, their security guard. She found out later that John was the day-shift guard. There was another man for nights, and still another for weekends. And that was just the beginning of the differences.
An ugly electric fence had been installed between the house and the security gates. Dorothea had been moved to a new room, and her old room had been turned into a storage area. The sunroom was the biggest shock. It hadn’t been redone; it had been removed. Gone completely, and in its place was a continuation of the garden that had surrounded the pool—when they’d had a pool. Now two cypress trees stood where she and Dorothea had been swimming that day.
The monitor system had been enhanced with a whole-house intercom system. Charles had rehired his servant Tom and the cook Krista who’d worked for him in Beverly Hills, before he and Lucy got married. He’d managed to get them back by offering more money, and because they’d always liked him. Now there were four extra people at the house nearly all the time: Tom, Krista, the nanny, Susannah, and one of the security guards.
Everything seemed different, but the biggest shock to Lucy was how different the children were. Lucy had seen them in the hospital, but only for very short periods of time. She didn’t know Jimmy was having so many nightmares from seeing her that day that their pediatrician had told Charles he should see a psychiatrist. And she’d never seen Dorothea have one of the breathing episodes that Charles told her often accompanied periods of extremely rapid heartbeat that were so frequent, he was already taking Dorothea to a pediatric cardiologist.
The first time Lucy saw one of these episodes, she wanted to curse her own weakness that she was still using her cane, that her wrist was still so weak. If only she could have grabbed Dorothea and held her tightly in her arms. Her baby was talking so beautifully now, in perfect sentences, with so many new words, but she was gasping between sentences. The longer it went on, the more scared the little girl became. The entire time, she held her hand to her heart, like a tiny Napoleon.
Lucy didn’t blame Charles for not telling her about their children’s problems before. She knew her doctors had told him the less stress, the quicker her recovery would be. Maybe it was even true that if she had known, she might have healed even more slowly.
She finally understood that Charles hadn’t only been withdrawing from her in the hospital. He’d had his hands full taking Jimmy and Dorothea to doctors. He’d been trying to deal with everything as well as he knew how, and she felt bad that she hadn’t given him more credit. Even Janice said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man work harder to care for his family. It really got to me, especially when you were in intensive care. I told Peter that if I ever end up in the ICU, he better get down on his knees and pray for me nonstop like Charles did for you.”
Lucy had a vague memory of this. She was coming out of her coma, and she saw her husband at the side of her bed. She knew he was praying, and she wasn’t surprised. He’d grown up in a traditional Irish Catholic family, and Lucy knew that he still considered himself Catholic, even though the only times they’d been inside a church were when the children were baptized.
The first six months at home for Lucy were spent in a blur of continuing pain and pain pills, doctor visits and daily physical therapy, as she tried to help Charles take care of Dorothea and Jimmy and tried to reconnect with her husband whenever they had time alone. Even after the doctor finally pronounced Lucy physically able to have sex, Charles was so afraid of hurting her that they spent weeks and weeks only holding hands. During one of these nights, he asked Lucy if she would convert to Catholicism and she told him yes. By spring, they were going to church with Margaret and the children, and half the time, Lucy was able to leave her cane at home. But they never went anywhere else, and they never had anyone over.
While Lucy was in the hospital, she’d promised to have Janice and her husband to dinner as soon as she was home. She did invite them several times, but she always ended up canceling. She told Janice that Dorothea was having too many episodes or Jimmy seemed especially stressed, but the truth was, Charles had asked her to reschedule. He thought their family needed more time before they were ready to deal with visitors. He said the same thing to anyone who wanted to see them—not yet.
Walter, who used to spend an evening with them at least every other week, had been over only twice in eight months, and both those visits were less than an hour, up in Charles’s office, purely business talk. Ben Zaleski and Charles’s other assistants used to drop by for drinks, but they’d given up. Everyone was giving up, including all of Charles’s friends and acquaintances from the studio, the actors he had used over the years and stayed friendly with and all the people Lucy had gotten close to during the making of Helena.
By summer, even Charles’s mother was spending most of her time away from the house, visiting friends in Florida again. Though Margaret wouldn’t ever tell her son he was wrong about anything, Lucy knew she’d been missing the social life they used to have, the dinners and parties and going out on the town. Margaret had even seemed sad when Lucy canceled Janice and Peter the last time, though she’d never met them.
It was a Saturday night in early August when, as Janice joked to Lucy, she and Peter were finally allowed into Castle Keenan. They arrived at seven o’clock. The night was hotter than usual because of a thick blanket of humidity that even the ocean breeze hadn’t been able to blow away. They couldn’t swim because the pool was gone. Charles didn’t want to use the pit for barbeque. So they were staying inside, about to have a formal dinner that was being prepared by the cook, Krista.
“How do you afford all this?” Janice whispered. “He hasn’t made a movie for what, two years?”
Lucy and Dorothea were giving Janice a tour of the house. They were upstairs, in the hall where Susannah’s and the children’s rooms were. Jimmy was downstairs watching Charles and Peter play chess.
“He has investments,” Lucy said vaguely. Charles had told Lucy about this many times. In 1971, when the first movie hit, he and Walter started buying property all over L.A. They were only planning to set up a fund for future films, but some of the property turned out to be extremely valuable. Charles said he had enough money now to last the rest of their lives, and he might not make any more movies. He was writing scripts because he could do that at home, but he wasn’t sure if he’d ever want to make them into films. Maybe he would let Walter attach another director. Maybe he’d throw them into a drawer.
The first priority, as Charles said constantly, was his wife and his children. The family was Lucy’s first priority too, but acting had made her feel alive, and she missed it. She missed everything about their life in the business, even the shallow parts like seeing a billboard with her own face or reading the studio’s congratulations ads to Charles.
Not that she was complaining. She was a Catholic now, and she knew that the point of life was accepting God’s will. Still, she was glad for tonight because it was relaxing being with Janice. Even though they hadn’t seen each other since Lucy got out of the hospital, they talked on the phone at least once a week, and Lucy was grateful to have such a good friend.
They were in Dorothea’s room, where the little girl was busy feeding her stuffed animals inside her playhouse. Charles had ordered the playhouse from Sweden because they used natural wood, untreated with any chemicals. It was huge, but it fit easily into Dorothea’s room, which, as Janice had pointed out, was as big as their entire place in Venice. Lucy hadn’t responded. She and Charles had disagreed abou
t whether Dorothea needed such a large room. The playhouse wouldn’t fit in a smaller one; it wouldn’t even fit easily into the downstairs playroom, but that wasn’t a problem to Lucy, who liked the idea of putting it outside, where Dorothea would be getting fresh air and some sun. Charles was afraid she’d hurt herself if she had one of her breathing attacks and lost consciousness. “If she passes out, I want her falling on a rug,” he said. Specifically, the very soft rug, several inches thick, that he’d chosen for Dorothea’s floor.
“And you?” Janice said. “What about you, glamour girl?”
They were sitting on the window seat, watching Dorothea, sipping wine that Tom had brought up for them.
“What about me?” Lucy said.
“When can I tell all your fans at my job to expect the next Lucy Dobbins picture?”
“All my fans? You told me you work with two people, Janice.”
“But those two people loved The Passion of Helena Lott.” Janice laughed. “I think it was their favorite movie ever, except maybe E.T.”
“E.T. phone home!” Dorothea said, sticking her face out the playhouse window.
“I hope Charles doesn’t hear her say that.” Lucy giggled. “He thinks that movie having the highest box office gross ever is proof of the decline of civilization.”
“He needs to do my job for a day. Then let him talk about the decline of civilization.” Janice nodded at Dorothea and lowered her voice. “God, she looks flushed. Does the doctor say that’s part of her heart stuff?”
Lucy deflected the question by getting up and taking Dorothea her bunny. She didn’t want to tell Janice that they’d changed cardiologists so many times, she had no idea what was really part of the heart-racing problem and what wasn’t. Charles was unsatisfied with every doctor they’d found, primarily because the doctors couldn’t find anything to make their daughter all right again. He’d done the same thing with psychiatrists for Jimmy, until they’d finally given up on that altogether.
When she sat back down, Janice said, “So really, Lu, when are you going to be in another movie?”
She sighed. “I don’t know.”
“You are doing something this year, aren’t you?”
“This year? No. It’s already August, and—”
“But I read somewhere that they still need an actress for that movie you were going to be in. I don’t remember the details, but you saw that, right?”
Lucy nodded. She knew all the details by heart. The casting department had found an English stage actress to play the lead in Tell Laura I Love Her, but then the actress backed out because of a dispute over the filming schedule. Ben Zaleski had actually called Lucy’s agent when Ben couldn’t get through to Charles, but Lucy had told her agent it was out of the question.
“Why don’t you call them?” Janice paused. “I think it would be good for you to act again. It can’t be healthy for you to stay trapped at home all the time, even if you do have one damned fine house.”
“It just won’t work.”
Before Janice could say anything else, Susannah was at the door, ready to help Dorothea get her pajamas on. Both children were going to bed before the adults had dinner, the same way they did every night now.
Susannah was still doing most of the child care. Whenever Lucy asked Charles if the two of them could go back to doing it themselves, he said he wanted to give her more time to heal first. It made Lucy sad, even though she knew he was probably right.
“I’ll get her pajamas,” Lucy said.
Susannah said she’d get Jimmy then. Janice said she’d better go see if Peter was all right. “He was a little nervous about meeting the Great Man,” she told Lucy. “I promised I wouldn’t leave him too long without checking in.”
Dorothea was already moving her stuffed animals back to the bed.
“What pj’s, peanut pie?”
“The pink ones with the footies.”
“That will be too hot, honey.”
“Mommy!” The little girl rolled her eyes. “Turn up the air conditioner!”
“There’s only so much air-conditioning in the world,” Lucy began, but then she realized Dorothea was only parroting Charles. He didn’t agree when Lucy tried to tell him they should be trying to conserve energy. He said his family being comfortable was all he cared about.
She went to the drawer and got out the pink footie pajamas.
The one thing Lucy always insisted on doing herself was tucking Dorothea into bed. She would have happily tucked in Jimmy too, but he would rarely let her. He was too old, he said, though he was barely five. He didn’t even like to be walked to his room.
Dorothea usually asked for a song, and singing to her was the best part of Lucy’s day. The little girl didn’t like only children’s songs, and that night she asked Lucy for “Let It Be.” When Lucy was finished, Dorothea clapped and hugged her.
She’d just kissed her daughter when she realized Charles was standing at the door, watching them.
“Good night, sweetie.”
“Night, Mommy.”
She turned off the light, but it wasn’t dark with the three night-lights Dorothea had. They never shut the door either, so Dorothea wouldn’t be scared.
Charles told her dinner was ready. They were halfway down the hall when he said, “Janice thinks you want to be talked into doing Tell Laura I Love Her. She’s asked me to participate.”
Lucy looked up at him. “So, are you?”
“Of course not. I know you don’t want to do it. I’ve told Ben that several times.”
“Several times? How many times has he asked?”
“I don’t know. More than three, less than eight. Several. Why?”
“Recently?”
“A few weeks ago. He said your agent told him no, but he wanted to hear it from me.” Charles stopped and looked at her. “Is there a problem?”
“I think I’m getting another headache.” It was true. She could feel the back of her head throbbing.
His voice grew soft. “Would you like me to rub it for you?”
“Maybe later,” she said, and smiled. He rubbed her head nearly every night, and it helped so much. More than the pain pills Lucy was trying not to take any more of. They made her feel dull and lifeless.
During dinner, they sat together and listened to Peter talk about the rising cost of housing in so many areas of L.A. that was contributing to a sharp increase in homelessness. Lucy wondered what Charles was thinking, since most of his money had been made from this real estate market. Most of their money, she thought, because she was benefiting from the money too. Even this delicious veal and asparagus was a benefit of the money. But she would rather have to cook, herself, which she liked doing, even though she wasn’t good at it like Krista, and know she hadn’t caused someone else to lose their home.
“I was homeless myself,” she said, apropos of nothing. Probably because she’d had another glass of wine. Actually, two more glasses of wine. Her headache was her excuse.
“It’s true, you were,” Janice said. “Peter knows the story of how we met.”
“I mean before,” Lucy said. “I was homeless when I was ten years old, until my uncle and aunt took me in. And then I was homeless again in Nashville for a while.”
Janice nodded. “You know, I think that’s another reason you should do that movie about the Vietnam nurse. A lot of the boys who died in Vietnam were poor, and you could really bring something to the part.”
“Interesting,” Lucy said, and took another drink.
“Thank you, Tom,” Charles said. The servant had just handed him a basket of Italian bread. Charles took a piece and passed it to Lucy, while he explained to Janice why her position, though interesting, was untrue. “Good actors like Lucy don’t need to have a common background with the character. In fact, many of the finest actors will tell you a part that is too familiar hinders their creativity.”
Lucy was expecting Janice to argue with him, as in the old days. Instead her friend was blushing with
embarrassment. “Oh,” Janice said. “I guess I showed what I know.”
“But some actors don’t feel that way,” Lucy said quickly. She turned to Charles. “Remember when Anthony told us that his father emigrating from Germany helped him understand Max?”
Max von Durren was Anthony Mills’s character in Helena: the patriotic German merchant who falls in love with Helena, and ultimately makes a decision to leave Germany to help her save her Jewish pupils.
“Anthony isn’t in the same league as you, my sweet. He is a journeyman; you are an artist.”
Lucy smiled at her husband, even though she was very surprised by how harsh he sounded about Anthony. Anthony was a good actor, who had nothing but respect for Charles. He was also a friend of theirs, or he had been, before.
“By the way,” Peter said to Lucy, “Janice and I both loved The Passion of Helena Lott. We thought you were terrific.”
“Thanks,” Lucy said. Peter seemed nice, and she was happy for Janice. He was such a normal-looking guy, the kind you see everywhere in California: average height, average build, permanent tan, longish blond hair, well-trimmed sideburns and beard, colorful print shirt, blue jeans, sandals. He looked a lot younger than her own husband, and he was: thirty-one to Charles’s forty-two.
“Since Lucy is an artist,” Janice said, “shouldn’t she be making more movies?”
Lucy thought, wow, she is never going to give this up. The thought pleased her more than she would have expected.
“Yes, and she will make more movies,” Charles said. “When she’s ready.”
