Leaving Home

by Anne Edwards

  “From your record, I see that you are married? Is that correct?”

  “I am currently separated from my husband. He lives in London.”

  He then informed me that my operation could not be performed until my husband signed a release form agreeing that he gave permission for my uterus to be removed and understood that I would not, therefore, ever be able to bear another child. To say I was stupefied would be an overwhelming understatement.

  “This is a hospital rule?” I asked numbly.

  “It is the law of California.”

  “I need my husband’s permission to save myself from maybe dying?” I cried out in fury. “This is my body, my uterus! No one has the right to tell me what I can do with it!”

  “Please control yourself,” he managed. “It is the law. I can’t do anything about it. Now if you can tell us how to get in touch with your husband . . .”

  “Does California law give a wife the right to say yea or nay to an operation on her husband’s prick?” I shouted.

  “Mrs. Becker . . . please . . .”

  “Anne Edwards. I’m Anne Edwards!”

  “Can we reach Mr. Becker on your behalf?” he went on calmly.

  “Let me see where it says in the California book of laws that a wife has to have her husband’s permission. . . .”

  “I assure you it is a law. Now where can we . . .”

  I cannot to this day believe I did it. But there was a plastic pitcher filled with water on the bed tray, and I picked it up and threw it at him. Water splashed all down the front of his starched white hospital jacket. He jumped up and dashed out of the room, never to return. However, my own doctor was soon by my side.

  “Look, Anne,” he said in his best “trust me” voice, “you can call the governor and petition the state Senate later [something I had threatened to do] but right now, I need to have Mr. Becker’s acknowledgment that he agrees to your surgery. Where can he be reached?”

  Jay called Leon in London but had a hard time getting through. Finally, they connected. Leon called the hospital—as incensed as I was about the situation. The hospital insisted on written approval. And so Leon sent a telegram—which I saw—avoiding the word permission—stating that he understood his wife was in urgent need of surgery to remove her reproductive organs and that he agreed with her that it must be done. Yahoo! Leon!

  Three days after the surgery, Leon appeared by my bedside. He had been given a visa by immigration to enter the country for a short stay due to my illness. This was the first time since he had left for England, in 1952, that he had been allowed to return. He remained with me until I was released to go home, about two weeks later, and then stayed with me in the apartment for another week as I had suffered some complications. When you are as weak and sick as I was during that time, vanity has little place. Leon truly tended to me, made sure in the hospital that I received immediate attention. When I came home he did all he could to make me comfortable. For the first time, I actually did look on him as a husband. He had come through for me, picked up and left the work he was doing, and conquered his own disturbing emotions of being treated as a foreigner in a country that he considered to be his homeland.

  I did, indeed, write letters to the governor, who was none other than Ronald Reagan. I received rather murky replies from an assistant informing me that the matter would be turned over to the proper committee—committee? That appalling law was eventually repealed sometime in the 1970s.

  By early March, back on my feet and on my own again, I realized that Leon had assumed that we were now reconciled (my fault, I fear) and was pressing me to join him in Madrid where he was still shooting A Talent for Loving. I was torn in having to make a decision both by gratitude for his coming to my aid and guilt that I had accepted it unconditionally, without setting any boundaries. He wrote me a letter.

  As you know, the apartment I have here [in Madrid] was always meant for you to share with me. There is a maid to take care of all household tasks. You can take it easy. . . . Yes, we have been apart for almost two years. You have been on your own. But the few weeks we were together after your operation should have shown you that we could, and certainly in my opinion, should, cohabit.

  There is Cathy, as you say. But Jay and Lucy can look after her as they did when you were on the book tour. She is sixteen—a very mature, intelligent sixteen, I might add, with her head in the right place. She also has her good friend Bridgette and Bridgette’s family, who are close by. And we are talking about three weeks, not an elongated period and she has plans, which you have approved, for her to be more or less on her own this coming summer. . . . I will take care of all your travel arrangements and you can be safely returned to LA before her graduation.

  There are problems on the picture but you will like most of the cast and crew (you already know how difficult Topol [one of the stars] has been). Walter [Shenson] is here and his wife, who you like, will also be joining him. ILYVM (you know what that means) [I Love You Very Much]. LEON.

  After much deliberation, I decided that I owed it to both of us to join him in Madrid and see if time and recent happenings had altered our relationship for the better.

  Instead of going directly to Madrid, I flew first to New York for two days to meet with my editor there, then to London for the same purpose as all my books were to be published in Great Britain by Hodder & Stoughton and the editions would vary in small ways.

  I had not yet removed my raincoat nor caught my breath (those evil stairs at Lennox Gardens) when the telephone rang. It was Mickey Deans, who was with Judy in London. Bobby had told him I would be in town for a few days. He gleefully announced that he and Judy were going to be married two days later. They had taken a mews house walking distance from Lennox Gardens, and were broke (“temporarily”). He was now Judy’s manager and working on her “comeback.” Judy was resistant, back on the pills, and had locked herself into the bedroom (the tiny mews house was built as all such homes had been, as staff quarters backing the main house on an alley or cul-de-sac. Judy’s bedroom was small and upstairs over the garage). Would I come over? I asked to speak to Judy. He insisted I just show up. I finally agreed to do so as soon as I could.

  When I arrived a few hours later, Judy was in the living room. I was shocked at her appearance. She was pathetically thin, her face gaunt, her eyes filled with fear as if she was waiting for something terrible to end.

  “Diana Dors, James Mason, Ginger Rogers,” she said, almost before acknowledging my presence. “I don’t know why Mickey’s invited all those people. I’ve been through too many weddings. I don’t want a Hollywood premiere. I just want a marriage.” She grabbed Mickey’s hand. “I’m going to be Mrs. Michael DeVinko!” she said with pride. An afternoon paper was opened on the coffee table with a picture of the two of them. Mickey had released a guest list to the press and sent telegrams (due to the shortage of time) to his invitees.

  Shortly after my arrival, Mickey left the house on an errand. Judy and I were alone. “You’ll come to the wedding, Anne Louise?”

  I said that I would, of course. “Do you love him?” I asked.

  “I do, I do! He hasn’t deserted me like all the rest.”

  She looked truly ill. “Can I make you some tea?” I offered. I glanced toward an open door to a small kitchen. “And maybe something to eat?”

  “No, no. Just sit here with me. He loves me, you know.”

  She was convincing herself, and I did not think it was my place to cast doubt. She was in a pitiable state. I could not see how she could get through the large wedding that Mickey had planned. “I’m sure he does,” I said.

  “We’re going to Denmark! After.”

  “For a honeymoon?”

  “An engagement. A theater as large as Carnegie Hall. Bumbles [Dawson, a designer] has made me a gown. Mickey has handled everything. The orchestra, the arrangements. He says they love me in Denmark. They loved Hamlet, too! Look what happened to him!”

  Between Judy’s situation and
my jet lag, I had trouble getting to sleep that night. About three a.m. the telephone rang. It was Judy.

  “Mickey’s downstairs on the couch having sex with a man,” she whispered. “You have to come over.”

  “It’s the middle of the night, Judy. Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe he just fell asleep on the couch.”

  “No, no! I saw them!”

  I explained that I couldn’t go out at this hour. I kept the conversation going on for a short time—small talk. Finally she said, “I heard a car. He’s leaving.” Then she hung up.

  Leon rang me early the next morning to tell me, quite excitedly, that he was flying up to London late that afternoon to join me. He had some work that had to be done. It would take about three days. He would change my ticket and we could then fly together to Madrid. I told him about Judy and the wedding and he said we would both attend but warned me not to let Judy’s problems weigh too heavily on me.

  Our reunion went exceptionally well. During the day, we both had things to do and people to see. We dined at one of our favorite local restaurants. He was full of stories about the company and production of A Talent for Loving, and had plans that he hoped I would like for some short side trips outside Madrid. He was caring, thoughtful, and loving, the gloom that often had followed his happy moments absent.

  The grand ballroom at Quaglino’s, where Judy and Mickey’s wedding reception was held, was a bizarre sight. Mickey had invited something like three hundred guests, and the room he selected was tremendous. No more than forty or fifty people were present (at least half appearing to be members of the media) and seemed lost in the room’s vastness. Connecting tables bearing large ice statues (one was a lion’s head closely resembling Leo, the MGM symbol!), magnificent mural displays, and silver servers and platters containing an enormous amount of food lined one side of the room. They were manned by at least thirty uniformed waiters. Photographers’ flashbulbs exploded like firecrackers on the Fourth of July. Judy was overwound, appearing shrunken in a blue chiffon dress, too sheer and too short, that revealed her bony knees and her skeletal frame. Around her narrow shoulders was a dyed-to-match boa that reached the floor and that, to avoid tripping over it, she kept tossing over one shoulder as if it were the wires of a microphone, an action she often did on stage. She wore a blue band over the top of her head with pearls that dangled from it onto her forehead. If Bumbles was responsible, she must have thought she was designing a costume for Guys and Dolls.

  However delusional Judy might have become, she was far too intelligent not to know in her heart what a horror the whole thing was. She clung to Mickey and beamed down from the rim of the room’s empty bandstand where a many-tiered wedding cake had been bizarrely set up on a table—obviously for a photo op, as gathered below were a host of photographers clicking away as the wedding couple posed to cut a slice. Although I recall the singer Johnny Ray being in the room, only a very few, well-known personalities—mostly English—attended. At one point Judy pulled me aside. “I think at least Ginger could have come,” she said tersely. (Ginger Rogers was starring in Mame in the West End.) “Mickey purposely arranged the time for when the theaters would be closed!”

  Judy finally sat down (she looked as if she would collapse otherwise). She was all alone in a long line of unoccupied reception chairs. Mickey was mingling with the press, giving details of their upcoming trip to Denmark. I went over and sat down next to Judy. “It will haunt me forever,” I later wrote in my journal, “Judy with a desperate giggle like a distortion on a sound track of her old Rooney MGM films, grabbed my hand, her nails cutting into the flesh of my palms, holding on long after she had said, ‘I’m so grateful you came. Please stay till the end.’” There was no wonder left in those wide brown eyes. Leon approached and she tightened her grasp on my hand. “Don’t leave,” she bit out. She started talking—reeling off the words, really. She wanted to write a book—maybe one with her poetry.

  When the time to part arrived, she grabbed my hand again. “It will be different now,” she said as she walked Leon and me to the doors of the emptying room, Mickey by her side. “I have Mickey now.”

  He told us that Denmark was only the beginning of her new career. He had lined up the best venues for her in Scandinavia.

  I ended my entry in my journal for that day with the comment: “Mickey plans to take over her career as Ethel and Mayer and Luft did. I cannot see how she will survive it.”

  A studio car met Leon and me at the airport in Madrid. This was not my first trip to Spain, having spent a glorious time on the coast for the filming of A Question of Adultery, but I had not gone inland. My view of it through the car window as we headed for the apartment Leon had prepared for our reunion was not inspiring. Madrid, which is the capital of Spain, is a landlocked city, dead center of the country. The outskirts are on a desert plateau. Roads were rutted, dust flew about like volcanic ash as the car’s tires bounced about on the asphalt. Leon had warned me of the horrid extremes of the climate. On this day, the temperature must have been above one hundred degrees. There was mile after mile of small tract houses to pass before the car entered the city, which sat on higher land. Then, suddenly, the ground began to rise and the city of Madrid, like the Emerald City of Oz, dazzling in the strong sunlight, spread out before us.

  • 15 •

  The Emerald City of Madrid

  Leon pridefully led me to the front door of the handsome apartment house on Avenue Generalissimo Franco. In a letter to me when he had rented the flat, he had written: “It is a lovely, three-bedroomed apartment (in an elevator building) with a modern kitchen (even including a garbage-disposal unit) . . . immaculate, completely equipped . . . on the fifth floor . . . with a swimming pool on the roof. . . . I got this large a place with your coming in mind. . . . It is waiting and I am waiting.” Leon did not lean toward extravagance, so I knew that securing a place of such luxury in a high-rent section of the city underscored his wish to have me back. The gesture moved me, and I waited anxiously as he opened the front door to the building and we entered into the colorful Spanish-tiled hallway and made our way to the lift (the driver having deposited our suitcases just inside).

  A note—in Spanish—was taped to the door. Leon translated. The management was sorry for the inconvenience but due to the recent power outage, the lift was not working and tenants would have to use the stairs. We both glanced soulfully at our luggage. It would have to be carted up five flights! Leon said we should just take the lightest (my makeup case and his briefcase) and he would get the superintendent of the building to manage the rest. So up we climbed, and as all the apartments had high ceilings, it was a mighty climb. When we reached the fifth floor, we rested a moment before he turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open.

  We were greeted by a fetid stench and dense darkness.

  The electricity was off and apparently had been for at least forty-eight hours (gathered from the note on the door of the elevator). Leon took out his trusty old Zippo wartime lighter and led the way to the kitchen where he knew there were some candles and a window to let in some fresh (if steamy) air and the strong light of the afternoon sun high in an azure blue sky. The garbage disposal had backed up. When we turned the water on in the sink, it sputtered out and was the color and consistency of coffee dregs. All the drapes and shades in the apartment had been drawn to keep out the heat. With the power outage, the air conditioning was not functioning. The place was stifling. We opened all the windows and I went from room to room spraying each with the small cologne dispenser I kept in my purse. Still, the place did not smell like the house of Chanel.

  Leon was red faced with despair.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I tried to assure him. “New York and LA get plenty of power outages.” I heard someone pounding on the door.

  “Señor Garcia!” Leon said gratefully and let the gentleman in with our baggage. Unlike Lennox Gardens, at least there was a superintendent to mount the steps with heavy parcels! Señor Garcia was an imposing figure,
not much taller than me but surely weighing well over two hundred pounds. He took out a large patterned cloth from his pants pocket and wiped the sweat from his jowly face. “I get fan,” he beamed, his two upper front teeth noticeably missing. Down he trudged again to return with the fan, which we assumed must be battery charged, and then, as he put it down when he returned, shook his head and made a hopeless gesture. “No electricity,” he said.

  Luckily, by evening, a cool breeze had risen. We were both so exhausted from the travel and the heat in the apartment that we fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillows. Some time during the middle of the night we were startled awake by the sound of multiple motors—dishwasher, air-conditioning, garbage disposal all starting up at the same time as the lights came on. By morning, Aurora, the maid Leon had hired, arrived. Leon was right. She was a gem and a very nice woman. She promised to have the apartment in order by the end of the day. Observed in daylight, it was quite comfortable and attractive despite the furnishings being what I had named “postwar Moderne,” seen in newish French apartments as well. Fabrics were in glaring patterns, woods were light. But the rooms were large, the two bathrooms modern, and the view looking across the Avenue Generalissimo Franco intriguing with its fine old buildings.

  Leon took the day off so that he could show me around “the neighborhood.” We had a long, leisurely lunch at a charming cafe. We drank a full carafe of red wine. He seemed happier, more lighthearted than I remembered him being. His dark eyes shone. His voice had a lift to it, and when he smiled (which was quite often) the shadows so often clouding his face disappeared. He took my hand and held it across the table. “Thank you for coming home,” he said. He thought our troubled past had been obliterated, and for the time I decided to let it go at that.