by Sam Toperoff
I read her the blurb. “I’m breakfasting with an effing goddess.”
Her tone turned shitty, a reminder of the fight we had the night before about Roosevelt. What is it about that man that prompts such passionate defenses? When I called him a cagey bastard who played everyone against everyone, she bit my goddamned head off. Didn’t I realize the Republicans had him cornered on the war? Of course, he’d act decisively as soon as he could. What the hell was wrong with me? She didn’t just support or admire him, she loved the cunning devil. They all did. She abruptly clicked off the light and rolled over. End of political discussion. End of everything.
Lilly knew the myth, obviously. What she wanted to talk about was what I thought it meant … and then what the meaning meant. Myths are like that, Russian dolls. It pleased me to be her brains in this way. But when the ideas came back after passing through the Hellman filter, they were a fine new vintage in beautiful bottles. I also loved displaying what I knew when she was the student.
Kassandra was desired by a god. What beautiful mortal wasn’t back then? The culprit deity was generally believed to be Apollo. His enticement to seduction was the gift of prophecy, which beats a Swiss watch or an ermine by a mile …
“I’d have taken the ermine. Which reminds me, you haven’t bought me anything for aeons.”
Kassandra would not return his love, don’t ask me why. Since he could not take back his ermine, he made it so that her prophecies always fell on deaf ears. Kassandra could see the truth and the future. No one would believe her truth or her future. She saw it all coming, and they didn’t believe. Lilly knew all this of course. Whenever she became impatient with me, she said, “Yes, yes, yes.” She said, “Yes, yes, yes.”
The essential element in Greek tragedy, I thought, was not the Fates turning on a decent person, it was a tortuous knot of conflicting desires that eventually strangled the best of intentions. Mortals always turn on themselves, we always undo ourselves.
Lilly looked up from the stove and said, “Breakfast, Professor.”
She put the French toast and butter on the table and asked me to pour the coffee and read the blurb again. I did. She remembered that Kassandra told everyone the great wooden horse was a trick, like “Peace in our time.” They didn’t listen, and pffft, there went Troy up in smoke. But Kassandra also should have known they wouldn’t listen, so fuck ’em. Lillian lit a cigarette and said, “If she had Hardscrabble and a guy like you, old Kassandra would be with us still, happily milking the horses.”
We walked to the lawyer’s office even though I was coming down with something chesty. Lillian said walking would make the day memorable. It did in a way. It was a good day in spite of the prospect of living out the rest of our years with a fascist Europe across the Atlantic.
I praised her good breakfast. She said it would be even better when we used our own homegrown milk and butter. Last night’s Roosevelt fight was declared over then, not even entered in the record book as a TKO.
As we ambled, we talked about how I was to pay for my share of the farm. I was strapped for cash just then so the down payment would have to be hers exclusively. Lilly said we could make my repayment an informal arrangement just between us. I needed it to be contractual, something the lawyer could put on paper that day. She said, “Certainly, dear,” in just that way of hers no one could possibly bear. I told her I was serious and would walk out if it wasn’t contractual. “Of course. I understand that.”
What Lillian never understood, still doesn’t for that matter, is how hard it is for me not to be her. She was everything she attributed to me that I knew I wasn’t. She transformed stories into larger, more dramatic truths, and made them even more human in the transforming. She wore her politics wherever she went and in whatever she wrote. And she made a fortune doing it. I didn’t just want to share her life, I wanted to share her. Part of me even wanted to be her. That was the part that let the envy in, but it was just a part, not the whole story. There was always far more admiration than envy, more than enough affection. And as much devotion as I was capable of. I realize it isn’t like me, these admissions. But how could Kassandra know so much about the world and so goddamned little about me?
We were in the park. Everything was still holding together well enough when we came upon Shumlin; rather, he came upon us. It was a little awkward all around. He explained he was walking downtown to the theater and that he needed the time to think about working out some of the problems at the end of the first act of Watch, when it’s revealed that Kurt Muller, the hero, had already killed a Nazi back in Germany. Even though we needed the news as foreshadowing, it had to be softened, made acceptable to an audience that did not understand yet the political context and might be uncomfortable with a hero who was already a murderer. Maybe Lillian could rewrite a line or two, at least come down and see how the scene stood now. She said she would. Later. Maybe Dash would take a look as well. Not on your life, Herman, it’s Lilly’s baby.
Shumlin was not my favorite person. Everything about him was right. Right liberal politics. Right connections. Right attitude about Lilly’s work. Right Broadway instincts. Wrong for Lillian because artistically speaking Shumlin was not a first-rater. I’d often told her how much better off she’d be directing her own material. Problem, she said, was she didn’t really have the time. Herman Shumlin made a career on Lilly’s back and didn’t acknowledge the fact sufficiently for my satisfaction.
Shumlin mentioned the blurb in the paper and extended a hand to me. I told him he had the wrong Kassandra. No, he was congratulating me on the movie deal and how good it must feel to have a real screenplay to write. “I’m sure you’ll do wonders with her material.” I think it was the her material that turned the day for me.
I told him the whole thing was more wonderful than he could possibly imagine. I’d thought about nothing else since I heard the news.
When he left I said, “You know, you’re really something. I’m standing here with my fly wide open and you tell everyone about it but me.”
“I was going to tell you as soon as I was sure it was firm.”
We walked a little farther. All along the way she explained her motives in cutting a screenplay deal for me with Warner without telling me. I didn’t hear what she said. I didn’t want to hear what she said. I just wanted her to stop talking. She would not stop talking. I said something like, “We’ve got thirty feet to the curb. If you say another word, I’m turning around.” She did. And I did.
THE DAY LILLIAN HELLMAN SIGNED THE CONTRACT for Hardscrabble Farm in Pleasantville, New York, did in fact occur shortly after the complete destruction of Rotterdam by German bombs. That day in mid-May was very fine in New York, sunny and in the low seventies.
They did walk crosstown together to the lawyer’s office, but Hammett never arrived at the destination and therefore never signed the purchase contract. Hellman was always the sole owner of Hardscrabble Farm.
During the morning and the walk crosstown the conversation did indeed cover the subject of Kassandra as well as the war, President Roosevelt, and related current events. Yes, they also talked about writing projects and finances, but most of their talk was, naturally enough, about their expectations for life on the farm. That is not exactly what they each appear to have remembered.
They did run into Herman Shumlin in Central Park, although Lillian failed to recall the meeting. Both conveniently forgot their parting words that day: “I hate you.” “I hate you too.”
The two remained friends and intermittent lovers, spending more time apart than either would have wished during the war, but given the intense decade they had already spent together, nothing particularly dramatic appeared to have changed between them. There had always been fights, many far more bitter than this one. This time, however, it was as though a shadow had passed over them on that beautiful day in Manhattan and changed the climate of their lives as Lilly and Dash. That walk crosstown was not the end of them, but it was a marked diminishing.
&n
bsp; What we remember reflects who we were when we remember it. Even the gods have imperfect memories.
. 14 .
Long Shots
HAMMETT REALLY KNEW HORSE RACING and he never missed the Santa Anita Handicap when he was in California. Hammett was as good at analyzing and betting on a horse race as he was at doing a crossword, even though it was a far more speculative enterprise, which was its main attraction. You could be right for all the wrong reasons, and vice versa, but those rare moments when he was right for the right reasons gave him incomparable pleasure. He believed he could make his living as a horse player if he had to, but the effort required far exceeded the return. During his infrequent visits to Santa Anita, Hammett did not lose very often. Getting to the track on time today would prove the hardest thing he had to do.
On the morning of the big race the scene at their apartment would have appalled Lillian, who was ensconced at Hardscrabble trying to get things off the ground. It might even have upset a conscious Hammett, but there was no conscious Hammett. He was unconscious—not merely asleep, unconscious—in his and Hellman’s Santa Monica apartment. He had passed out on the bed around three a.m. with an open tequila bottle cradled in his arms.
There was a second body. Doris Lesser, a woman he had known from his San Francisco days, lay out cold on the sofa. She wore a red bra and torn panties. Doris was slightly battered, the result of sexual roughhousing at the hands of the man she was paid well to call “Daddy.” And wouldn’t he be appropriately contrite and generous when they again revived themselves as normal human beings?
There were two others present in the apartment. Kai Mindao, who took care of the place when Hammett and Lilly were back East and who drove them around and cooked a bit when they weren’t, was in a stupor on the carpet by the bathroom. He wore his chauffeur’s cap but nothing else. When last night’s guests began to peel off their clothes, Kai decided to take part in the activities until someone stopped him. No one did. Ling Huang lay curled between Kai and Doris. Hammett couldn’t keep his hands off Ling but always spared her his violent tendencies. These were women he had known before he met Lillian.
The night had been debauched, but there was nothing new or excessive by Hammett standards, which is to say that he humiliated himself almost as badly as anyone else. When the police arrived a little after midnight, they accepted his apologies for the noise and his promise that things would quiet down immediately. And they did.
Somehow Hammett awakened himself a little after midday and then everyone else enough to get his guests washed up, dressed, fed, and off to the track by the fourth race. Kai understood that last night’s liberties were a notable exception to his normal duties, so he deposited his boss and the two women at the clubhouse gate and knew to wait patiently for their return at the end of the day.
A clubhouse sign demanded APPROPRIATE DRESS. Hammett in a Panama hat, an East Coast seersucker suit, and a rep tie qualified. Doris and Ling in last night’s gowns were inappropriately appropriate. Hammett, particularly pleased with their manner of dress, insisted each take an arm as they made their way through the crowd to a shaded part of the stands. Just glimpsing Pat O’Brien and Jean Arthur, and then having Hammett introduce her to Ray Milland and Franchot Tone, completely restored Doris’s vigor. She moved differently now, as though she belonged here. It was always impossible to tell what Ling was feeling.
Hammett had not come to Santa Anita merely to see and be seen. He was there quite deliberately to make money, a lot of it, on today’s Big ’Cap. He saw the possibility for a killing shaping up days earlier, and now with the morning rain and the track drying out before the handicap, he sensed things very much breaking his way. He gave each of the women fifty dollars to bet. They asked what horses looked good. He didn’t know. He wasn’t betting at all, he said, until the big race, the seventh. Ling put the money in her purse. Doris went off to the betting windows.
While a preliminary race was being run, Hammett studied the Racing Form, carefully circling and underlining numbers with a pencil. He walked down to the railing to take a close look at the texture of the track after the rain. Doris tapped his shoulder to help him acknowledge someone calling his name. Even when he saw the woman, she didn’t register for a moment. Elise Weiss, L.B.’s secretary. “Mr. Mayer,” she said, touching his hand, “would very much like you to join him in his box.” It didn’t feel like a request.
Hammett indicated his friends. “I have my guests to consider.”
“They’re welcome, of course.”
It took a while for them to move through the crowd to Mayer’s box, where Hammett introduced Doris as “My assistant, Miss Jameson,” and Ling as “Madame Tsing-Tzu.” Mayer did not shake hands; he bowed from the waist, as did his wife Margaret. He did introduce the governor of California, a nonentity named Culbert Olson, and his wife to Hammett and his “assistants.” The governor presented the winning trophy annually. If Olson hadn’t shown up, Judge Hardy could have played the role. The governor said he had always been a big fan of Hammett’s mysteries. Hammett said so that Mayer could hear, “As long as I’m not an employee, it’s easy to like my stuff. Thank you, Governor.”
Mayer and Jack Warner had adjoining boxes. Their rivalries in business and at the poker table paled compared to their competition at Santa Anita to beat one another with their thoroughbreds. On the day of the 1941 Santa Anita Handicap, Louis B. Mayer owned over two hundred thoroughbreds, most of them based at his ranch in Perris, California, some of them already of championship quality. Of course, once Mayer committed to racing in such a big way, nothing could keep Jack Warner away. He owned half as many horses but in recent years was doing well against Mayer in head-to-head competition. For that afternoon’s race it was Warner who owned the heavy morning-line favorite, Box Office. Mayer was represented by Bindlestiff, good at the distance, a mile and a quarter. On a wet surface, Bindlestiff moved up a notch. Mayer was hoping for more rain at post time.
The two men owned large adjoining boxes right on the finish line. They were always at the track for big Saturday races, but for the handicap each year they alternated as hosts to a crowd of movie stars and politicians. Neither of the moguls had to actually win the race to have a successful day at the races, since there was a standing fifty-thousand-dollar bet between them on whichever of their horses beat the other to the wire. Their jockeys were told even if they couldn’t win the race to ride their horses hard all the way to the finish line. In past years two very good Mayer horses had broken down while being pushed so desperately.
Mayer indicated the rest of the throng in his box and said to Hammett, “I’m sure you know everyone.” He did indeed. Jack Warner and Selznick, of course, but they were in deep conversation and neither acknowledged Hammett. But there was also William Powell and his friend, the breathtaking Lana Turner, looking demure in a powder-blue suit and large straw hat, dressed more for Churchill Downs than Santa Anita. Mickey Rooney, Mayer’s favorite performer, nuzzled a tall redhead almost twice his size.
Hammett did shake hands with J. Edgar Hoover, the nation’s “Number One Cop,” who also claimed to be a fan of his stories. It wasn’t clear if the head of the FBI was there with the governor or was Mayer’s personal guest. In the rear of the box were Phil Edmunds and Vincent Spinetti. Hammett couldn’t prove it, of course, but he always assumed Spinetti—an ex–LAPD cop and now chief of security at Warners—had masterminded the Waxman killing. He was with his wife, Angel Chung, who Hammett always supposed was the call girl known as “Angel” on the Waxman police report. All in all quite a group of racing fans.
Phil Edmunds sat with Mayer’s secretary Elise Weiss and at least had the modesty to look embarrassed when Hammett tipped his hat. Ling gravitated naturally to a seat alongside Angel; the two acted a bit like old friends, maybe they even knew one another from their street days. Hammett would have to ask. Doris grabbed an empty seat alongside Hoover and was speaking more intently than Hammett could have imagined. He noticed that she already had a
hand on his knee.
Hammett had assumed that Mayer wanted to talk some business or at least set up such a talk. Why else invite him and his unlikely “assistants” to his private box? Most likely it was Hellman business he was interested in. It never occurred to Hammett that Mayer was showing him off to the governor and Hoover, who really did admire his work. Mayer hadn’t intended Hammett’s group to remain but when he asked what Hammett thought about the race, he realized that Hammett was far more than a casual bettor.
“If you’re asking me if you are going to take Warner’s money”—everyone in Hollywood knew about their huge side bet—“I’d say, Where can I get a piece of it?”
“Jack, Jack, come hear. Hammett wants some of your money too.”
Warner turned and the three men, bent from the waist, formed a knot. Hammett said, “I know Box Office is 7 to 5, but if you don’t mind taking back some of your own money, Jack, I’ve got ten thousand that says Mr. Mayer’s horse beats you out.” The “own money” reference was to the draft script he wrote for Watch on the Rhine and which he now knew would be touched up by Lillian. He heard Lilly’s voice hectoring: It’s ten thousand! What the fuck are you doing? He heard his own voice answering: I know this race. I’ve seen it already.
Warner had no choice but to agree or else appear somehow minimized by one of his own employees.
Hammett, expressing a careless bravado, said, “I really don’t believe your horse will even finish in the money.”
They bet an additional five thousand on that very unlikely possibility. Now Lillian said, Jesus Christ, that’s Hardscrabble money.
Mayer touched Hammett’s shoulder: “Glad you have so much confidence in my horse.” Bindlestiff was now the third choice at 4 to 1.
“Don’t get your hopes up, Mr. Mayer. I think he’ll beat Box Office but he won’t—forgive the allusion to trayf—take home the bacon either.”
