Just the sound of those words, “Good-bye, Daddy,” and I dissolved. I know now that I would have done the very same thing at a stranger’s funeral had the stranger’s daughter said “Good-bye, Daddy.” I know now that I had cried as a conditioned response to the words and not the reality, to the familiarity not the pain. And how could I ever have done otherwise? For how many movies had I seen in which Bette Davis did it? And Jennifer Jones and Olivia de Havilland and a whole host of immaculately conceived heroines who loved their parents into the grave and beyond. How many years of good, clean movie-going had primed me for that moment in which I would play the big cemetery scene in my own Warner Brothers melodrama?
The actual facts of Daddy’s death were these: He took all of his paintings, a bottle of bourbon, a vial of pills, a gallon of gasoline—and one dry match. And he put them all together and they spelled Mother—in big, flaming, yellow letters. His whole studio went up in minutes, all of Daddy’s paintings with it. I can only assume (or hope) that he was properly out of it when he struck the match. But we couldn’t know for sure because there was no note and what they found of him was mostly ashes and dental work. It was incredible. He cremated himself and then we buried him. How dead can you get?
It didn’t take Herculean deduction to figure out why he did it. He did it because he finally faced up to the fact that he was and had nothing—no wife, no daughters, no talent. My mother, “The Phantom Maggie,” never showed up or acknowledged his passing.
The lawyers moved in immediately. Daddy’s estate—house, land, stocks, bonds, etc.—came to about $800,000, give or take whatever he left to the servants, charity, lawyers and the inheritance tax. A week before the big bonfire he wrote Maggie out of the will. Even if she had shown up she’d have had a hard time contesting it as no one could honestly say she’d done anything wifely beyond desertion.
So it was $400,000 for me and $400,000 for Mary Ann (to share with the Pancake King), the only catch being that I was a minor, which meant that my share had to be held in trust with guess who as trustee. Worse, she was also my guardian. How many sixteen-year-old girls could actually say that their guardian was a cock-sucker and know it to be a fact?
Within two days the real estate brokers were mincing through the house like it was kickoff time at the Oklahoma land rush. And the antique dealers with their little tongue-moistened pencil points, were tippy-toeing around, placing little tags on everything but the toilet paper. Only one art dealer came by, just to check if any of Daddy’s paintings had survived the fire, a little old man named Mr. Peebles. Over the years he had seen all of Daddy’s paintings and saw nothing in any of them except for the portrait of Maggie. He asked about it, did that burn, too? When told yes he shrugged, went “tsk-tsk” and headed for the door, with me in righteous pursuit.
“Where the hell were you when he was alive?” I shouted, surprised at how angry I was and how shrill my voice sounded.
He looked at me while trying not to. “I’m sorry, young lady, but your father was a minor painter.”
“How would you know, you idiotic creep?”
“It’s my business to know.” He kept moving toward the door, anxious to get out but unable to accelerate.
“Why didn’t you buy something from him when he was alive? Then maybe he’d still be alive!”
“I offered to. The portrait of your mother. He wouldn’t sell it.”
“Maybe if you’d have offered more than eight dollars he would have!”
“I offered considerably more. Excuse me. I must be going. I’m sorry for your trouble.”
“Everybody’s sorry around this fucking place!”
Mr. Peebles left. He was Irish, no doubt, because only the Irish say “I’m sorry for your trouble.” They say it all the time. They say it when someone dies, when someone sneezes, when someone’s coat is stolen. They said it to Othello, Hitler, Xerxes and Attila. “I’m sorry for your trouble.” Translated into English it means, “It’s a fucking shame your old man kicked off but what the hell do you want me to do about it?” Why don’t people say what they mean? I slammed the door after him and a vase toppled from a table and smashed. The tag said: “#356—$148.00.” Right away I owed Mary Ann seventy-four bucks. Fuck her, I thought. I won’t tell her. I’ll tell her the wind did it. I’ll tell her the butler did it.
I went to my room and cried. Not for me. Not for Daddy. Not for the starving masses in India. But just for the hell of it. And maybe, just a little, for all the painters who couldn’t sell as much as a picket fence even if they cut an ear off.
I stopped crying because I became bored with it and I looked around at my chocolate box of a room that I had created for myself, on my own, no help from nobody. It wasn’t that I had manifested any great talent in the decorating department that I was given the assignment. It was merely that no one really gave a damn so they left me alone with the task. I doubt if anyone ever went up there to see what I had eventually committed beyond Sara, our maid. I had done it all by myself, calling the shops, thumbing through swatchbooks, arguing prices. It had all been a great experience. Too bad the result looked like an explosion in Candyland.
I was wrong about no one coming to my room other than Sara. Someone else had been there, and recently: my father. I found the painting in my closet, pressed face against the back wall—the portrait of Maggie. And there was something on the back of it, some writing:
Ginnie—
this is your mother.
I loved her.
Dad
So I cried all over again, new tears, cascades. Somehow, even in the prelude to his suicide, Daddy had determined that I, and I alone, was to have the portrait of Maggie. Somehow he knew that it was worth the not-burning, that it had a value, not necessarily in dollars but in human terms. It was the only thing he left me that wasn’t catalogued in the will. Weird. All I had of my father was my mother.
I held it up to the light. God, it was good, and God, it was Maggie. That face, those eyes, the hair, all caressed onto the canvas with such perfection that I realized, in one awesome rush, that mixed in with all the oil and pigment was the one ingredient that was absent in everything else that the artist had ever done—love. Jesus Christ, Maggie, what did you ever do to deserve it?
There was no doubt in my mind that I’d keep the painting for myself, like a deathbed promise to my father. I’d be damned if I’d let Mary Ann know of its existence; damned if I’d argue over the possession of it or let those graspy appraisers stick a number on it or a pricetag. And as far as my showing it to Mr. Peebles, fuck him and I’m sorry for his trouble.
A fantasy swept across me. The painting was worth a fortune. Properly examined and evaluated, it would rank with the Mona Lisa. But how could I sell my mother? How? Easily. It was my father I couldn’t betray. Besides, I had $400,000 even if I couldn’t get my hands on it for another five years. I settled for a compromise, as follows: If I fell upon hard times before I came into my inheritance or if Mary Ann squandered my share on a vibrating phallus the size of the Alps, I would then, and only then, sell mother to the white slavers—for $250,000. That would be the very least I’d accept for her. A beauty like Maggie Maitland? Hell, what impotent old collector wouldn’t be willing to pay such a small stipend to have a face like that on the wall of his study where he could get his jollies without having to tax his anatomy.
I had already decided to go out on my own, make a run for it, hit the trail, ride the rails, when Mary Ann, the SOS Queen (Spurting Oral Spermatozoa), knocked at my door. She was allowed entrance only after I had restashed Maggie in the closet.
Mary Ann was so overflowing with filial attention I thought, for one fleeting moment, that she had become a nun when no one was looking. Wouldn’t have bothered Walter; that dark-visaged stud would’ve probably found the idea sensational. Nothing like nailing a wife of Christ to the mattress to liven up a dull Palm Sunday.
“Ginnie, I think we should talk.”
“Okay.”
“After
all,” she continued, hands clasped in her lap as if she had lilies growing there, “we are sisters, and, with Daddy gone—”
“Don’t you wish we’d been a little nicer to him? We all treated him like he was a room. All of us.”
Mary Ann pressed on, no time for sentiment. “We don’t know where mother is or if she’s even in the country. Daddy left everything to us. It’s a lot.”
“Bully.”
“I’ll be twenty-one in a month, and, because you’re a minor, I’ll be your legal guardian.” And then she dropped the sweet stuff. “Look at me, you little cunt. I’m not here for my health. I’ve been going over your record at Whittier. Blackmail and hand jobs. I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”
“Who’s asking you to do anything?”
“You’re sixteen years old and you have no parents, Miss Jerkoff.”
“I have a mother.”
“You have the memory of a mother—that’s all. As your legal guardian I’m required to see to your schooling and watch over your investments.”
“And what have you come up with?”
“The Hollyridge School. It’s close enough to Chicago so that you can be home with Walter and me on weekends. They specialize in maladjusted, toilet-mouthed bitches. You’ll fit in well, I’m sure.”
“Right. I’ll tell ’em I’m your sister and they’ll make me captain of the Blow Job Team.” I watched her puff up like a blowfish, which I thought very much in character.
She squinted at me, as though to make certain I was still there. “I cannot tell you with what revulsion I view you.”
“Me? You’re the one who took on the Three Musketeers—and their horses, I assume.”
“You’re my only relative. God damn it, I deserve better.”
“Stick around. Maybe you’ll come up with hoof and mouth disease.”
Right before my eyes, she turned into the wicked stepsister. “You will do everything I tell you to. You will go where I send you—and you will treat me with proper respect. And if you don’t like it—you can shove it up your ass.”
“A pox on you, Mary Ann. As far as I’m concerned, you can throw yourself under a car and kill yourself.”
“Fuck you,” she said, and hoity-toitied out.
I slammed the door after her, shouting, “I’m sorry for your trouble!”
For the next few days I harbored thoughts of running away. But all I had to my name was twenty-six dollars and maybe twenty-three cents. Jesus, I thought, is Mary Ann going to give me an allowance from now on? How could I ever survive that? I considered sneaking the portrait of Maggie over to Mr. Peebles and selling it then and there, cash on the barrelhead, whatever I could get. But that would have been like drinking my last canteen of water before crossing the desert. It was a problem.
I had no trouble avoiding Mary Ann and Walter. The house was big and they were both involved in the selling of things. One afternoon I went to the riding stables, doing an hour on old Snowball who was getting lame and gave me no trouble. Jud Smith was there (he of my sister’s flaming diary) and he offered his condolences, asking that I extend them to Mary Ann as well. I told him thanks and that, if he’d trot over to the house, Mary Ann would suck off both him and his horse. He turned to stone. Best part of it was that, as he was standing there looking stupid, old Snowball drops a load of manure on his boots. I don’t know, but it somehow seemed right.
Apparently, Mary Ann was as much for my running away as I was. What I mean is, I went to bed that night and, as I snuggled my hands under the pillow, what should my wondering hands come upon but a thousand dollars in unmarked bills—fives, tens, twenties and fifties. No note, just the money, in an envelope. Well, never let it be said that Ginnie Maitland couldn’t be bought off. So, next morning at sunrise (it seemed fitting), I took two valises of my most practical clothes, called a cab, and took off for the Stamford station, the portrait of Maggie under my arm, wrapped in a pillow case (it was only twenty-four inches by thirty-six). It was well before the commuter rush, so I got a seat.
Old Greenwich, Riverside, Cos Cob, Greenwich—they all passed by my window, waving good-bye as I did the fifty-five-minute trip to Grand Central. That was the last stop. It was also the first stop because it was New York, and 1949, and I had busted out of San Quentin.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ben
1949
20th Century-Fox, in New York City, was a world within a world. It had its own boundaries, its own rules, its own heroes and its own villains. I was in a strata of that society just above porters, janitors and bootblacks, and just below office boys, doormen, and elevator operators. I was a messenger in Publicity, which meant that I had to endure a form of indentured servitude just this side of slavery.
Despite a semimuscular union, the work day was long and the take-home pay would have been more appropriately given to us in rice. The work was dull, exhausting, and often humiliating. The opportunity for advancement was slight. And though we were all of us good fellows, the competition for a place in the sun was fierce, the name of the game being get out of Publicity fast or languish there, and be forgotten.
Astride the filmic complex was Spyros Skouras, president of 20th worldwide and then some. White-maned and will-o-the-wisp, he was one of a trio of self-made brothers who, deficient in both languages, spoke neither Greek nor English well. But he was an imposing man nevertheless, seeming to be eight feet tall and to possess wings on his ankles—he covered that much ground. Messengers and lower luminaries seldom saw him but knew when he was in the building because the whole thing trembled with his presence. Also, the brass door shone a little brighter and the elevator men stood a little taller, especially around Christmas and Greek holidays when Skouras tossed out ten-dollar bills as if they were sample portions of baklava.
I guess he spent as much time in California as he did in New York, but California and all film production was headed up by the redoubtable Darryl F. Zanuck who could do fifty one-handed chinups while interviewing innumerable starlets for featured roles in upcoming films (or so the legend went). Beyond that, he was a spirited studio head with a good financial track record and that’s what counted (not to us but to the stockholders).
Anyway, back in New York. The vice-president in charge of Advertising, Publicity and Exploitation was W. Charles Gruber and he was something else. Having fallen short as an independent film producer, Gruber fell back on his former experience in the marketing of films. He never made life easy for anyone and was surreptitiously referred to as “the Jewish Himmler.” Under Gruber were Silliphant (Exploitation), Steier (Publicity) and Meyerberg (Advertising). But almost as soon as I got there, Steier was gone, Silliphant moved into Publicity, with Rodney Bush taking over Exploitation and Meyerberg holding fast in Advertising. There was no musical chairs like motion picture musical chairs.
So there I was in Publicity, happy to be there but already fighting to get out. Don had hipped me to the whole deal, pointing out the fate of those who hung on there too long. But we were all young, screamingly liberal, and slopping over with hope. Thus equipped, it was impossible for us to indulge in a dog-eat-dog war for some mythical advancement. Instead, we galvanized our energies into a single striking force and quietly turned it against what we all judged to be a malevolent and medieval management. We did our jobs but we clung together. It was a testimonial to the youth of our generation. Years later we’d be playing a different game.
We were caustic, critical of the scripts and films we saw, derisive of the industry as a whole, and referred to ourselves as “The Men of Last Week.” And we credited ourselves with a greater awareness of what was going on in the business than that of the people we were working for.
Television at that time was beginning to flex its cables, but the studios were a long way from turning it into an ally. Instead, they fought it, denigrated it, looked upon it as a kind of “color radio.” And even though the film studios were turning out the most dismal fare of all time (I defy anyone to find a mo
re shallow film era than the early fifties), somebody still came up with the slogan MOVIES ARE BETTER THAN EVER. It became the banner for the entire industry, an “all for one and one for all” approach, whereas, five years earlier the individual studio watchword was more nearly, “If it ain’t ours, fuck ’em.”
What folly it was for them to insist that movies were better than ever. It was like a drowning man asking, “How do you like my backstroke?” or Icarus saying, “Catch my Victory Roll, Ace.” Still they persisted, the moguls and idols, cheering us on with their brave words and gallant lunacy, charging straightaway into the Valley of Death because no one knew how to execute an about-face.
No matter. We hung the posters and stamped our envelopes and filled the media with MOVIES ARE BETTER THAN EVER, like religionists reverently believing that “Jesus Saves” (the film industry?). And in between came the financial crises, during which dissident stockholder groups merged their forces in efforts to oust the ruling powers, plus “economy firings,” through which twenty people were fired so that one biggie could go on in his chosen profession of plowing 20th under with anachronisms, banalities, and inability.
The Messenger Corps suffered casualties. I will not bother to mention their names because they were too soon gone to catalogue. Roland Jessup, happily and deservedly, was transferred to Advertising where Josh Meyerberg protected him from future economic pogroms by making him an office boy.
The rest of us scroungy messengers dug in our heels, but at wages so close to bare subsistence that building pyramids in ancient Egypt began to look like a better area for advancement—and that was the catch. Management couldn’t fire us, but if we quit voluntarily they didn’t have to replace us. It put the five of us in a fascinating position of power. We could be uppity with management, slovenly in our dress and lope, but as long as we were union members, they had to abide us. By the same token, we could be obstreperous and rebellious with our union, rambunctious, critical and late with our dues, and no one would put us down. The members could call us “The Five Little Shits” (I heard that from the back of the meetingroom one night) but they still needed our numbers for their own insulation. Also, lest we forget, Senator McCarthy and his “Red-hunters” were in the wings, sharpening their lists; and the Guild, though free of communist taint, had recurring nightmares in which one or all five of us was reporting directly to J. Edgar Hoover.
There Should Have Been Castles Page 6
