by Judith Gould
'I suppose you're right.' She paused and studied the terrain. 'It's going to be expensive to build here,' she mused aloud. 'We'll have to start off by bringing a road in from the turn-off . . .'
'I know that. And we'll have to have the property walled in for privacy. And the house won't be cheap, either, but you'll be crazy about it. It already looks great on the blueprints.'
'What!' She spun half-around, her eyes flashing silver. 'Louie, do you mean to tell me that you went ahead and had a house designed without even consulting me?'
'Well, yes,' he said, shifting uncomfortably. 'I know what you need and like better than anyone. And I know what I need and like too. Listen, don't get upset. I know you like the house we're renting now, but I guarantee you'll love this one a whole lot more. You'll have a garden like you wouldn't believe. It'll make the Garden of Eden and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon look like weed patches by comparison.' He grinned.
'You did all this behind my back,' she said accusingly.
'Tamara, you're making this sound like some sort of Greek tragedy.'
'Maybe it is.'
'No, it's not. I wanted this to be a surprise, that's all. I only went behind your back because you're so busy that you don't have the time to do half the things you want. I just wanted to make things easier on you. If you want, we'll forget about the house and put the property up for sale. It's not worth having if it's going to come between us. I don't want us to fight.'
'Neither do I,' Tamara said quietly, melting at his words. 'I'm sorry I reacted the way I did. It was just ... a momentary shock.' She attempted an awkward smile. 'I behaved stupidly.'
She raised her head and looked into his face. His eyes were bright in his strong tanned face. She felt a hypnotic pull in them, like the tide tugged at by the mysterious forces of the moon. He took her face in his hands and gently tilted it further upward. Then his lips descended.
His mouth was moist and soft and filled with a thousand warm promises. The last ragged bite of anger and frustration seeped out of her. She was suddenly weak. She could feel the moist beginnings of passion starting up between her thighs. She wanted him to kiss her forever, to take her right on this spot.
But she finally pulled away from him. 'That's enough . . . for now,' she whispered hoarsely with a low laugh. 'There's no telling what I might do if we don't stop.'
'We'll come back . . . often.'
'Yes.'
They walked silently along the dry creekbed to the car, holding hands like teenage lovers. Tamara felt a warm glow of satisfaction. They were always more like young lovers after they'd had a disagreement and made up, as though through some mysterious alchemy, anger became passion.
'What's the next step?' she asked as soon as they reached the car.
He leaned back against the warm hood of the Duesenberg. 'You mean, about the house?'
She nodded.
'Well, it wouldn't hurt to consolidate our finances. The way things are set up, our pay cheques are automatically deposited into our respective accounts. As far as the house goes, it would make things a lot easier if we paid everything out of one joint account.'
'That makes sense to me.'
He smiled slightly. 'Only you're my wife, and I don't like the idea of having to use my wife's money for anything.'
'Why, for heaven's sake? What's wrong with my money?'
He took a deep breath. 'It's the way I was brought up. The man is supposed to be the provider.'
'That's silly!' she scolded him. Then she looked at him closely. 'You're serious, aren't you?'
He nodded. 'Like I said, it's something that I'm just not comfortable with. I'm sure it'll pass.'
She looked exasperated. 'I should hope so.'
'At any rate, what it boils down to now is cold hard cash. I paid for the property and the architect out of my own account, but I don't have nearly enough to pay for the house as well. A joint account would simplify a lot of things. If you don't like the idea, and frankly I don't, I filled out a power of attorney for you. It's only temporary, and all you have to do is sign it. Then, until it's cancelled, I can get to your money without any problem. This way I'll be able to divert funds from both our accounts into one separate account just for payments involving the house, but in essence we'll still have separate accounts.'
'Couldn't I just sign cheques as we need them?'
'I thought of that, but what if I need to get at money in a hurry and you're on a publicity tour?'
'I see your point.' She thought for a moment. 'How much will the house run, do you think?'
He watched her steadily. 'Two hundred thousand dollars.'
'Two hundred thousand!' she sputtered. A disbelieving look clouded her face. 'What are we building here? Versailles?'
'Only a reasonable facsimile,' he joked weakly. 'Actually, it's not all that bad when you consider the overall picture. I looked around, and an average seven-room stucco house in Beverly Hills runs five thousand.'
'A fortieth of what you're proposing.'
'I know that. But you have to take into account that we need something better than average. Also, this property is totally unimproved. There are no roads. There's no electricity. We'll need to dig for water. Arrange for sewage. Wall the property in.'
'How much was this property, anyway?' she asked.
'Twelve thousand.'
She let out a gasp. 'That's . . . that's pretty steep.'
He gestured around the hill. 'It's also twelve and a half prime acres. That's not exactly chickenfeed.'
She looked up at him. 'No, I suppose it isn't,' she said hoarsely.
He looked at her with concern. 'Now what's the matter? You look like you've seen a ghost?'
'The spectre of poverty's more like it,' she said grimly.
'Princess! Get hold of yourself. We're talking about a house, not some plaything like a yacht or a car. Houses are bought and sold every day.'
'They get repossessed every day too. You have only to read the statistics in the papers.'
He shook his head. 'Sometimes I don't understand you. You're intent on harbouring this notion that a house is going to bankrupt us. How many people do you know that that's happened to? Name one.'
'King Ludwig of Bavaria.'
He burst into rich peals of laughter. 'That you know personally,' he spluttered. 'Be serious.'
'I am being serious,' she said anxiously. 'Louie, if we go ahead with a two-hundred-thousand-dollar house, we'll end up broke!'
He laughed. 'No we won't. Besides, it's not like it's got to be paid for all at once. Hell, nobody does that.'
Her face was still pinched. 'But can we really afford it? I mean, we'll have more money going out than coming in . . .'
'With my three hundred a week and your thousand, we're raking in over fifty-six hundred every month! Of course we can afford it.'
'It's not as easy as it sounds, and you know it,' she protested, calculating swiftly. 'We'll be skating on very thin ice. There are taxes to consider.'
'Granted.'
'And our expenses are astronomical. Louie, we can't just build a house and let it sit there empty; we'll have to furnish it. Where's all the money going to come from?'
'Oh, for God's sake, Princess,' he said in exasperation, 'we're rich. Rich. R-i-c-h rich. Can't you get that through your head? You're still thinking of yourself as the girl I met in the coffee shop.'
'Maybe,' she admitted. 'But I never want to go back to that ever again.'
'Trust me, you won't. Another five years and your contract's up for renegotiation. You'll be able to write your own ticket. The money'll just keep rolling in.'
'Like magic, huh?'
'Well, close to it.'
'Then why aren't we saving more than eight hundred dollars a month? Sometimes it's even less. I feel like we're on a perpetual treadmill.'
'To make more, you have to spend more,' he said equably. 'We can't cut down on expenses. It's part of what keeps the public intrigued. They don't want their stars to be just
like the girl next door.'
'And what if,' she said earnestly, her expression clouding, 'something should happen to either one of us and the money doesn't keep rolling in?'
'Trust me,' he said softly. 'Would I steer you wrong?'
She looked up at him and saw the earnest expression in his eyes. 'Of course you wouldn't,' she said softly. 'You know I trust you completely.' She took a massive breath. 'You said you've got the power of attorney on you?'
'Right here.' He fished it out of his pocket with a flourish.
'Got a pen?' she asked, holding her hand out, palm up.
Grinning, he produced a fountain pen, unscrewed the cap, and handed it over.
As impassively as possible, she placed the paper on the hood of the car and scrawled her famous autograph across the document. She frowned down at her name. Her signature was not smooth, self-assured, and fluid, but rather shaky, crimped, and hesitant. Like a miser's signature, she thought. Or at least the signature of someone who had signed against her better judgment.
Chapter 16
When the final figures were tallied a little over two years later, the total cost of the house had climbed to a staggering $440,000. They didn't own it. The bank did. Two weeks after it was completed, there was a second mortgage on it.
Much later, when she would reminisce upon the past, Tamara would pinpoint the moment she had scrawled her signature on the power of attorney as the precise point in time when the wheel of fortune stopped spinning in their favour, when their problems would start to mount, when the good life they enjoyed would begin to go bad.
In the meantime, there was the house. The publicity it generated made it worth every cent. The trouble was, she and Louis had to pay for it, not IA. It wasn't Versailles, but there was nothing humble about it. Members of the press trouped through it, dutifully 'oohed' and 'aahed', and went away impressed and anxious to enlighten their readers. And why shouldn't they have been impressed? Tamara asked herself wearily. Hell, she was impressed. After all, how many people ever really lost their fairy-tale fantasies completely? And that was what the house really was—a dream castle, a spun-sugar confection.
But she had never felt less comfortable in any other house she could remember. It wasn't a home. It was a daunting monstrosity.
For months she couldn't pick up a newspaper or magazine without running across some mention of the house Louis named 'Tamahawk' in Tamara's honour.
Screen Story magazine devoted an entire eight-page spread to the house, complete with seven photographs. The acid-tinged article, written by the much-feared columnist Marilee Rice, was appropriately titled 'Home Is Where the Castle Is.' A smaller, catty subtitle read: 'Eat and drink, Tamara we die,' which set the tone for the article which followed.
'Cut and . . . print!' Louis' voice boomed out through the megaphone.
Everyone on the soundstage, from the director of photography to the best boy, broke into spontaneous applause. Tamara acknowledged her peers' esteem with a gracious bow, the high Viennese hat with its tight cluster of plum-coloured bows and short plumes she wore slipping forward off her head. The wardrobe assistants were momentarily distracted, but Pearl came rushing to rescue it before it could topple to the floor.
'Thank God,' Tamara gasped as Pearl's youthful assistant grabbed the ivory fan out of her hand, unsnapped it with a flick of her wrist, and began fanning her furiously. Now that the heavy hat was off, she felt curiously light-headed. Under her tight curls, her scalp was drenched and she could feel beads of sweat crawling relentlessly down her back. 'I feel like I'm going to faint,' she gasped. 'How hot is it, anyway?'
'The radio predicted it would hit the mid-nineties,' Pearl said.
'It feels more like a hundred and thirty in here,' Tamara groaned. 'These winter clothes are like a sauna! At least the real Baroness Maria Vetsera didn't have to suffer California heat waves.'
'The real Baroness Vetsera had to suffer chilly places and icy hunting lodges in winter, and was shot to death by her crown-prince lover, which is a hell of a lot worse than putting up with our weather, if you ask me,' Pearl retorted.
Tamara glared at her. 'You know just how to cheer a person up, don't you?' she said irritably as she lowered herself into her director's chair, surely the only one of white silk in all of Hollywood. She had to perch precariously on the forward edge because of the ungainly bustle her costume required.
'I look at things optimistically,' Pearl growled, striking a kitchen match on the wooden arm of Tamara's chair and lighting a Lucky Strike.
'Spare me your optimism. And would you please stop using my chair as a matchbox?' Tamara snapped.
'Ooooh,' Pearl observed with raised eyebrows, 'but aren't we getting touchy.'
Tamara shut her eyes and let the fan cool her face. Louis came hurrying over, megaphone still in hand. 'That was a magnificent scene!' he crowed jubilantly. He leaned down and kissed Tamara's cheek exuberantly. 'If you don't watch it, Princess, you will win the Oscar this time around.'
Tamara opened one eye and glared malevolently up at him. 'For what?' she snapped, extending her arms straight out so that the two assistant dressers could unbutton the eighteen pearl buttons on her formal white kidskin gloves. 'Enduring the hottest costume? The heaviest hats? The most deformed, unnatural figure, thanks to this hideous steel-wire bustle? I look like I'm pregnant in my backside!'
'You look beautiful and you know it.'
'I look like a goddamn camel!'
He looked at her in surprise. 'Hey,' he said gently, 'loosen up, will you? I know the costume's not the most comfortable thing under the sun.'
'You're not kidding.'
'Why don't you go and change into something comfortable? Then you and Pearl head on over to the commissary. I'll meet you there.'
Tamara shook her head. 'You both go on. Me, I just want to go to my dressing room, get undressed, and lie down stark naked. That's the only way to cool off in this heat.'
Til have someone bring you a cold salad platter,' Pearl offered.
'Thanks, but no,' Tamara said firmly. The assistant dressers peeled off her gloves and she shooed them away with impatient flaps of her hands. 'Right now, a few gallons of club soda and a tub full of ice'll do more for me than all the food in the world.'
She grabbed a moist towel from a passing grip and pressed it against her forehead. 'Ah, that's better,' she moaned with relief. 'This makeup just doesn't let my skin breathe. Well, I'm off.' She dropped the towel, rose to her feet, and started struggling with the buttons of the restricting chin-high collar of the lapelled, plum-and-black-striped two-layered floor-length dress. 'See you later,' she called back over her shoulder. She continued struggling with the tiny buttons even as she staggered outside into the blinding sunlight on her way to her dressing room across the street. It was high noon, and hotter than ever. In anticipation of her four treasured electric fans, she ran so swiftly that by the time she hurried up the three steps, she was certain she was going to faint. She staggered into the first of her two rooms, unexpectedly colliding head-on with Inge.
Inge grabbed her by the arm to steady her. Tamara stared at her and drew back, her face suddenly going white. 'Inge!' Her voice broke. 'Something has happened.'
'No,' Inge assured her quickly.
'Tell me!' Tamara urged.
'Not to worry,' Inge assured her. Something in the timbre of her voice changed suddenly. 'At home everything is fine.'
'Then what is it?' Tamara asked. 'It's not like you to show up here without calling first. You gave me quite a scare.'
'I know this. I am sorry.' Inge's sombre eyes held Tamara's gaze directly. 'Do you have some minutes?'
'I'm on lunch break. I've got a whole hour to kill. Are you hungry? Do you want me to send for something to eat?'
'Not for me, thank you.' Inge tucked her shapeless grey dress under her buttocks and sat rather primly on the edge of the white couch.
Tamara felt a ripple of uneasiness stir within her. 'Why are you staring at me like that
?' she asked.
'I am sorry.' Inge dropped her gaze and patted the couch cushion beside her. 'Sit, and I will tell you why it is I come here.' Tamara sat down next to her and Inge took a deep breath, steeling herself for what she had to say. 'Ever since we leave Germany, I have try to raise you as best I could. Like you my own child, my own flesh and blood, which is how I think of you, since I got no other family,' Inge began, choosing her words carefully.
'I know that.' Tamara smiled fondly. 'We're more family than most people who are related.'
Inge nodded. 'And I think you know I never try to take your mother's place. I try to keep her . . . her memory living for you always, yes?'
Tamara gasped. 'Then what are you trying to tell me,' Tamara cried. 'Inge, you're frightening me!'
Inge looked upset. 'Please, Tamara, let me tell you my own way. For me this is . . . very difficult.'
'I'm sorry,' Tamara said gently.
'Over the years, I told you as much about your mother and your childhood as I thought was . . .' Inge frowned, searching for the right word,'. . . appropriate. Some things were overlooked of course. I did not see to your religious upbringing, because I do not know Jewish customs. Also, there was always confusion about you being Russian Orthodox. Is very confusing. Anyway, even your mother, Gott rest her soul, was not . . . well, the best when it come to religious matters. As for your father . . . well, I told you not much about him.'
Inge shut her eyes and held her forehead as if she suddenly had a severe headache. 'I should tell you everything long ago, I can see that now. Only, I want to spare you.' She sniffled and wiped her nose. 'I did not want to see you hurt. You must believe this.'
'Of course I do.' Tamara smiled gently.
'Since you will probably learn everything soon anyway, you might as well first hear it from me. You have right to know.'
Tamara was apprehensive. 'Go on . . .'
'Tamara . . .' Inge sat up straight and folded her hands in her lap. 'It concern your father.'
'My father! But ... I barely knew him! For all we know, he's dead.'
'No.' Inge's voice was a strained whisper. 'He is alive.'
