Lone Star

by Ed Ifkovic

  Now Mercy, pushing a youthful forty, reached over to hug me. Dressed in a dull calico flare skirt and a muslin blouse with a corduroy vest (“I’m in costume for still photographs”), she struck me as Annie Oakley, with fierce, intelligent eyes. You saw the wide Midwestern face, the strong carriage, and the nervous gesture of slender fingers casually pushing through uncombed hair. Pioneer woman, with Max Factor rouge and the vaudevillian laugh.

  We chatted like old coffee chums, leaning in, small talk about New York friends and acquaintances. Mercy asked about Kitty Carlyle, Bennett Cerf, Dorothy and Dick Rodgers, others. Theater folks, fine people, all. Though I always maintain that I loathe gossip, I yammered on about dinner parties where all the wrong stuff was served—and said. Faux pas among the four hundred, as it were. Mercy also knew Tansi’s mother, Bea Pritchard, who’d once upstaged Mercy in a Broadway outing.

  “How is the battle-ax?” she asked me.

  I grinned. “Looking for her next husband.”

  “It’s hard to believe she’s Tansi’s mother.”

  I shook my head. “Oh, but of course, Mercy. The wilder the mother got—remember when she wore that revealing gown to the White House and Hoover got the hiccoughs?—anyway, the more outré her mother got, the more puritanical Tansi became.”

  “But she and Jake Geyser will be the death of you,” Mercy said. “Jake is Warner’s menacing bull dog in Oxford camouflage.”

  “Which leads me to ask you, Mercy, what’s going on? Jake Geyser and Tansi hinted at some problem that I’m not supposed to know about. Why on earth does Warner have Jake hovering around me like a dazed summer moth?”

  “I’m not supposed to tell you. We have orders.”

  “But of course you will.”

  Mercy’s mouth drew into a thin line, but the corners suddenly turned up, a timid smile, and the eyes had a glint in them. “Of course.”

  But we both stopped, almost on cue, and turned to the open doorway. James Dean stood there, leaning against the doorframe in costume: the tight worn jeans, the ten-gallon Stetson on his head, wisps of almond-blond hair over his ears, an unlit cigarette in his mouth. A cocky stance, practiced. Yet on his nose horn-rimmed glasses, incongruous, but oddly appealing. His fingers drummed on the wood frame.

  I stared, mute. It was, I suppose, when I thought about it later, a little like looking into the sun, or a cup of cold spring water that slackens a desert thirst. He was, quite frankly, a calculated presence, a deliberate act of utter coolness: the wrestler’s body, so muscular and taut, sinewy through faded denim; and the face—that hint of boyish hair, the strong chin, the half-closed eyes, and the impossible sensual lips. This was either an actor at his craft or, truthfully, the sudden shift of seismic current. Calm down, Edna, I told myself. He’s a boy. He’s an actor.

  And short. I’d thought him taller, I’d thought him towering. I was a tiny woman myself, barely five feet, with a big head. He was a small man with a big head. I knew him.

  “Jimmy.” Mercy waved at him. “Come and meet Edna Ferber.”

  “Madama,” he said to Mercy, using the name he called her in the film. He didn’t look at me.

  “Come in,” Mercy motioned.

  He seemed as though he intended to walk in, in fact, his feet seemed to move, but oddly his hand rested on the doorframe, a statue, all angle and graceful line. The cigarette twitched in his mouth. He bent in, mumbled.

  “What?” Mercy asked.

  “I got another letter,” he said, the words clipped, loud and spaced out. He sounded surprised at his own voice, but there was anger there, too. And frustration. The eyes closed, then popped open, and I thought of boys caught stealing apples from a greengrocer’s stand. I expected him to run away. And now he seemed to see me for the first time. “Miss Edna,” he said, slurring the words and half-bowing, the cigarette bobbing.

  I didn’t know what to say. “Mr. Dean…” I began.

  “Jimmy, ma’am.”

  “I saw you on Broadway in The Immoralist.”

  He twisted his head, intrigued. “And?”

  “You were sadly miscast as the effeminate Arab boy Bachar.” Flat out. Challenging, in control.

  He pulled in his cheeks, making his face look hollow, and held my eye. “Which part of me was miscast, would you say? The effeminate part or the Arab or the boy?”

  I paused. I had no idea what I wanted to say. I recalled the provocative scissors dance the homosexual houseboy Bachar had performed onstage, a seduction of an ambivalent Michel—a stage bit that garnered him incredible praise. But he had seemed so wrong as the weak, ineffectual but manipulative street urchin. In slippers and nightgown, doing a ballet, flitting and snipping the air with a pair of shiny silver scissors. He was too masculine, I’d thought. But what I wanted to say now was that he’d redeemed himself in East of Eden, that his depiction of the troubled Cal Trask, the bad seed Cain of Steinbeck’s Eden, had been mesmerizing. That was believable—and thrilling. But my throat was dry, and my head throbbed. And by the time I opened my mouth to praise him, he had walked out of the room, just turned and walked away.

  When I looked back at Mercy, the woman was laughing softly, and I had trouble looking into her face.

  CHAPTER 2

  Mercy told me that Jimmy had received a troublesome letter a week before. “Troublesome?”

  She nodded. “Scary.”

  And now, she gathered, a new one. All the studio execs, from Jack Warner down, were nervous, though tight-lipped. Mercy had overheard Rock Hudson thundering about it to George Stevens, though he’d looked sheepish when he realized Mercy was nearby. Curious, I began asking questions. I’d always be the insatiable girl reporter from Appleton, Wisconsin. But Mercy just mumbled.

  “What?” I implored.

  Mercy thrust up her hand, traffic-cop style, and said, “I don’t like to gossip, Edna. It’s some matter with a girl in trouble.” She shrugged. “Young people.” She sighed. “You know.”

  No, I didn’t, but I was intrigued, and Mercy seemed on the verge of saying something else, leaning forward. But there was bustling at the door and Tansi, for some reason holding an enormous bouquet of flowers—garish hibiscus at that, a purple so dark I thought of blood clots—sailed in, out of breath, and said they were from a friend’s garden. She’d driven there to pick them. For a second she buried her face in the bouquet, inhaling the heady aroma. I didn’t want them, but Tansi said someone would deliver them to my rooms at the Ambassador. Good, I thought, more dead flowers on my carpet. Browning, curling petals underfoot. The end of a long day at a funeral parlor. I expected a competitive Jake Geyser to march in, maneuvering a wobbly wheelbarrow of bougainvillea, the blossoms bleeding onto his tweedy attire.

  Instead, Tansi said, “I saw Jimmy in the hallway…leaving. Did you meet him, Edna? He didn’t even say hello to me.”

  “He stopped in,” Mercy said.

  Tansi glanced quickly at me, then at Mercy: “Did he bother you about that thing?”

  Mercy was quiet.

  I raised my eyebrows and craned back my neck, deliberately letting Tansi see. That thing? “Tansi, my dear, you seem to be doing a lot of talking about a subject you’re trying to avoid letting me in on.”

  “I’m sorry.” She glanced at the heap of hibiscus she’d deposited at my elbow. One gaudy blossom had broken free and toppled to the floor. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “It’s just that I get so protective of Jimmy. You’ve seen the dailies, Edna. My God, Warner has a goldmine in him.”

  “But what’s going on?”

  Mercy smiled. “Edna, all of us here are a little gaga over Jimmy, I must tell you. Not only those gangly, teenaged girls out there seeing East of Eden for the twentieth time, but middle-aged women and—well, all women. There’s something about the boy. And Tansi here, she’s his guardian angel on the back lot.”

  Tansi grinned. “I don’t exactly swoon, Mercy.”

  “Admit it, Tansi, come on. It feels good to confess infatuation.”


  Tansi shook her head. “I’m forty-five years old.”

  I interrupted. “And I’m nearly seventy. And I still couldn’t find the words to talk to him.”

  Tansi pulled up a chair, as though ready to share sophomoric James Dean stories. But Mercy cleared her throat and whispered, “Tansi, Jimmy just told us he got another letter.”

  Tansi jumped, as though stung. “From Carisa?”

  “I assume so. He left without saying.”

  “Could someone please tell me what’s going on?” I begged, helpless.

  Tansi got serious. “We’re on orders from Jake Geyser, supposedly via Jack Warner, to keep the news from you, Edna. Jake’s as adamant as Warner is skittish. No one’s talking so far, and Jake’s hinting that the release of the film might be in jeopardy.” She shook her head. “It’s all crazy, really.”

  Mercy leaned over the table and covered one of my hands with one of hers. Yet she was looking at Tansi. “I think Edna has a right to know what’s going on.”

  Tansi fumed. “No, please, Edna, stay away from this. Mr. Warner warned us.”

  Mercy looked at her. “Tansi, last night Jimmy stopped by my apartment and asked me to talk to Carisa, because, as you know, I was friendly with her a while back and…”

  Tansi’s voice rose. “Impossible. This has gotten to the point of sheer madness, really. Carisa Krausse is a two-bit washed-up actress who got fired for laziness and…and…Jimmy never did what she said…and…”

  Mercy held up her hand. “I told him no, Tansi. I’m not talking to Carisa. I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to get in the middle of studio business. Warner can handle this.”

  Tansi flicked her head back, nervous. “I can’t believe he asked you to visit her.”

  “He thinks he can charm me into doing his business,” Mercy said, shrugging her shoulders.

  “And can he?” I asked.

  A trace of a smile. “Probably.” Mercy glanced at her watch. “Lord, I’m late.” She stood up. “Edna, dinner tonight?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll invite Jimmy.”

  I noticed Tansi staring into Mercy’s face.

  “Will you join us, Tansi?”

  Tansi was nodding.

  ***

  I looked at my watch. Jimmy was late. Tansi was late. I wasn’t happy. Idly, I munched on a breadstick that tasted like sesame-studded cardboard.

  “Jimmy is something new,” Mercy was saying, “the teenager as hero—all those aching children in the darkened theaters relating to him.”

  We were sitting at the Villa Capri, a place Jimmy suggested for our eight o’clock dinner. He was already a half hour late. I made a gulping sound. “Sounds like another Sorrows of Werther spectacle. All angst and no depth.”

  “Well, Edna, angst is the new attitude.”

  “We’ll see.” I was old enough to have witnessed countless generations of young folks who maintained they owned the world, but somehow lost it in a late-night crap shoot with younger pretenders to the dubious throne. James Dean—well, I meant it. We’d see.

  Mercy ran her fingers through her hair. “Somehow Jimmy seems different, which is why everyone at the studio is nervous. He has to be guarded.”

  “Guarded from what?” I asked.

  “Jimmy likes to lead a sort of mysterious life, a little on the edge,” Mercy said, cryptically.

  Driving me to the restaurant, Mercy had discussed the growing panic at the studio: some fired actress was insisting Jimmy had gotten her pregnant. “I don’t believe it,” she confided. “Jimmy’s foolish, but not that foolish. His career comes first.” Mercy’s fingers drummed on the steering wheel. She glanced at me. “Let’s see what you think, Edna. After you talk to him.”

  I looked around, impatient, unhappy. Overdressed in a shimmering silk dress, with fitted bodice and generous full skirt, a creamy shawl over my shoulders, and wearing my best rope of pearls, I felt grand duchess, intimidating, imperious: the woman of means who means what she says. But the place didn’t suit me, and I’d groaned as Mercy turned into the tiny parking lot, just off Hollywood Boulevard. The drab adobe-style restaurant seemed attached to a seedy, rundown hotel, obviously for transients and miscreants—those drifters who flocked to Hollywood and lost their way. The restaurant itself seemed a mere step up from a highway hash house. Once inside, the owner, Patsy D’Amore, seated us with a flourish, having got a call from Jimmy himself, who, I gathered, was the darling of the eatery.

  “Jimmy. He come here before he’s famous,” the man announced, so loud that other diners looked at us. “He come here all the time now.”

  “It’s his hangout,” Mercy added. She smiled, her voice deepening on the word as though she were pointing out an opium den.

  Mercy, I noted, had dressed more casually, fittingly: a wrinkled gray circle skirt, a wrinkled muslin blouse, a charcoal-gray sweater buttoned at the neck. She looked like she’d just stepped off a bus.

  I didn’t like the place, but I hadn’t expected to. Frankly, this wasn’t the Upper East Side, and the cluttered tables, the dripping red candles stuck into Chianti bottles, the obligatory red-and-white checkered tablecloths (stained—at least ours was), and the sentimental Blue Grotto art work dotting the walls like panels from a stereopticon, all suggested one more cheap Hollywood backdrop for a second-rate Anna Magnani movie. I’d have a lettuce salad, perhaps. Maybe a glass of red wine. No, a martini. No vagrant vermin could survive in that alcoholic concoction.

  “He’s late,” I said again, checking my watch. I was ready to leave.

  Mercy buttered a breadstick. “Of course. It’s part of the new young-actor mystique, really. How to out-Brando Brando. But he’ll come, Edna. I know he wants you to hear his side of the story. You have to, he told me. He knows I told you about Carisa.”

  “Me?” I exclaimed, too loudly. “Everyone is trying to keep me from learning this shocking and sordid tale, and he wants me part of it?”

  “He tells people things all the time. Some people.”

  “Who?”

  “People he trusts.” She munched on the breadstick. “He wants you on his side against Warner and Stevens—the studio.”

  “Me? A woman he’s never met?”

  “He knows exactly who you are: a writer from New York. That means something to him. He’s a little bit of a poseur, trying to be a Bohemian intellectual out here in this sterile land, walking around with a Zen Buddhist paperback in his back pocket, sitting in the commissary with War and Peace. That sort of thing. But whole other parts of him are genuine, truly. You’ll learn that. He likes older women as—well, confidantes. He trusts them—us. Well, me. In Marfa, Texas, he hung out with me in my hotel room when I was sick; he called me ‘Mom’ when I wasn’t ‘Madama’ to him. Surrogate mothers, all of us. I gather he got close to Geraldine Page when he did The Immoralist on Broadway.”

  “So we’re supposed to sooth his fragile ego? I’m one more older woman sucked into his…” I stopped.

  Mercy looked serious. “He is fragile—and aggressive and rude. And often cruel. But I’ll tell you, Edna, I got to know him in the ugly dead world of Marfa, a place that hadn’t seen rain in seven years. At night you could hear your life leaving you. He was like a little lost lamb, shivering under the shadow of Liz Taylor’s beauty and Rock Hudson’s aggressive presence. They were the names. Filming Giant there with these three young stars—well, it brought out something in each of them.”

  “Like what?”

  “In Marfa, pettiness, vanity, and fear took over. Liz had to have someone fanning her ego, Rock kept trying to convince us all he was the Texas he-man. And Jimmy—well, he was the untried scared boy, frankly.” She paused, leaned in. “I’ll tell you, Edna, there were times when the sadness was so raw in him, so deep, I couldn’t look into that handsome face. He kept hiding from everyone. I’ve never met anyone so…lonely.”

  “And it’s not a pose?”

  “Maybe a fraction of it is, but no, it’s there. It used to fr
ighten me. It’s like he doesn’t care if he lives or dies. You should see the way he races around in those cars, like a demon. If I live, I live. If I die, I choose it. You don’t meet people like that. They crave life so much that they cultivate dying for it.” She smiled. “Enough of this. We spend all our time talking about Jimmy Dean.”

  “Well,” I said, grinning, “there’s something about that mouth.”

  Mercy laughed. “Everyone says that. It’s a woman’s mouth. Someone in makeup called it a whore’s generous mouth. Everyone wants to watch those lips move.”

  “Perhaps that’s why he mumbles, barely opening that mouth. He’s rationing its pleasure for us mere mortals.”

  Mercy agreed. “So we mother him.”

  I bit the end of a breadstick, chewed it. “I’ll not be a mother, thank you. I’ve managed to survive that trap for sixty-odd years.”

  “You may have no choice.”

  I looked at my watch and fretted. “I have little patience with lateness, Mercy. And I’m surprised about Tansi.” I looked to the doorway, where some other diners waited to be seated.

  “Don’t look there,” Mercy said. “He comes in through the kitchen.”

  Before long, I heard a brum brum brum, too close to the building, the grunt of shifted gears, the rat-a-tat dying of a loud, intrusive motor. Mercy rolled her eyes. Within seconds, the swinging doors of the kitchen clattered and Jimmy flew in, pausing a moment to look around. Spotting us, he strode across the room.

  “You’re late,” I fumed. I eyed his uniform: the smudged jeans—an oil slick on his thigh—the worn biker boots, the white T-shirt barely visible under a shiny red nylon jacket, collar turned up. His hair was uncombed, looking like damp straw over a creased forehead.