Daisy Buchanan's Daughter Book 2: Carole Lombard's Plane

by Carson, Tom

  Our home base for much of the trip, Jerusalem was a sadder but wiser San Francisco. One afternoon, the Negev was the Mojave, but with a lone tank’s hulk parked, cannon aimed at unseen Salt Lake City: the Dead Sea. I’m afraid Nazareth reminded me a bit of Bakersfield. And so on, leaving me disarmed, often exhilarated, and sometimes mysteriously or not so mysteriously upset.

  With a harsher sun browbeating stonier ridges and more determined plants, the hills that cradled the kibbutz we were driven to above the Plain of Esdraelon were the rugged Middle Eastern cousins of those I’d wound my old convertible and then my new Olds through so many times to Topanga. The local Addison—there was one, the mayor—offered us mint tea, not daiquiris, had defended San Bernardino in the ’48 war (game leg introduced as memento), and spoke of Herzl and the Dead Sea Scrolls, not botany and Keats. The local Eve wore a blue kerchief, had three children and a rifle: “Oh, drat!” her Los Angeles counterpart exclaimed some weeks later when I shared with her what I hadn’t with Gerson. “And me left helpless with these silly brass knuckles”—her jewelry.

  Of course there were differences. The livelier street life in the cities, the dustier, shabbier cars. Gritting its feeble surf as if here came the important part, the thin sea hugged in close, didn’t stretch like the Pacific to beyond of beyond. The music stayed stubbornly foreign. Aside from a few bleary ones in cafés, the only TV set I saw was in our room at the King David Hotel—unused, as may go without saying.

  Yet my double vision didn’t only turn the DeWitts into kibbutzniks. It reframed most Israelis I met. More vigorous, brisker, and far less prone than Californians to talk about real estate—well, then, anyway—they still weren’t total strangers to me. That wasn’t because they were Jewish and mostly spoke English. It was because—oh, at last, Pamidiot, think of Addison!—they were transplants.

  Volunteers. Not a place you were born, one you heard of and struck out for. Then looked to your mettle, new companions, and wardrobe to make “This is who I am now” stick. That’s no longer true, wasn’t by my first trip back with Cadwaller in the Sixties. Even by 1956, it may have been waning if you’d seen Israel earlier. But it was only eleven years since Auschwitz. Eight since nationhood, independence, the Jerusalem convoys battling to get through to the city.

  And Gerson? He was Gerson re-Gersonized. More Gerson than ever, yet a Gerson I’d never known. I wasn’t sure anyone had, Stella Negroponte’s photo not being partial to divulging confidences. In Wife Two’s mental lists of our husband’s attributes, “nimble” had never loomed large. Now he scrambled over rocks, stood on walls, leapt at stairways. He chortled at victories, exulted in landmarks, shut up for a change at Masada. He was camera-crazed the first day or two; I appear goofily white-hatted in much of the evidence. Then he stopped taking pictures, and I doubt he noticed. Let alone had guessed why.

  “I’m so glad you met a me,” said Eve in Topanga the following February. “You watch! One day all the Eves will take over. Who was the you, and where was she? Beersheba? Eyeless in Gaza?”

  “That’s just it. Not a Pam to be found—and I looked.”

  I waggled a ringless finger that’s now long since become Rheuma Three and keeps Pam Cadwaller’s wedding band captive between two grim knuckles. At my age, you can catch yourself stupidly inspecting your own mitts in wonder: “And you were there, and you.” It seems unbelievable all ten of them did the whole trip. Eyes are one thing, but fingers? It doesn’t stay interesting long.

  Still, it had been two months, and I laughed. “But there wasn’t a Gene Rickey, either. For Noah’s sake—and Israel’s!—I hope there never is.”

  Posted by: Pam

  Midway through dinner on what I thought was our final night in Jerusalem, we were joined by a ghost. I had to take his word for it, though. Spiritualism isn’t my pool hall either, and the man who pulled up a chair at my dazed invitation was visibly as corporeal as the next corporal (he’d been one). The ghost I kept squinting and failing to see was someone he had been, not was.

  To prepare us for what I thought was our looming return to Los Angeles, once Gerson’s and my food came Pam broke a vow I’d stuck to all trip. For the first time in nine days, I brought up Glory Be. Cath Charters had been keeping me Posted by: telegram, and for the first time had mentioned the chance of a TV sale. Yet if I thought asking Gerson’s advice on my book’s I-scrim-for-Ike’s-grin prospects would either attract the expert in him or make the topic seem less Pamcentric, I was wrong.

  He glanced around the King David’s restaurant. Doing the same, since our flight was tomorrow—I assumed he’d understood my impulse and wanted a farewell panorama—the vestigial war correspondent in Pam once again liked how the Israeli Defense Forces had apparently never seen much point in dress uniforms. To an IDF officer, more declaratively if they were senior, short-sleeved and open-necked khaki was a fit rig for meeting anyone from movie queen to foreign minister. The only nod to formality was that most I could see had been pressed.

  I liked how even the smartest cocktail dress announced itself as merely occasional, as functional here as pants and boots might be the next day. I liked how even a room this Britishly elegant declared that the purpose of buildings was shelter from wind and night when they came.

  All this was California grown purposeful, California with urgency. Yet Gerson atypically seemed to be eyeing what other diners had on their plates.

  “What do I think?” he said at long last. “Pammie, if Cath sells it, let her. Put the check in the bank and don’t get involved.”

  “But Gerson, it’s my book, for God’s sake. I can’t just walk away and let them ruin it.”

  “They won’t,” he said, chewing tranquilly now.

  “They won’t?”

  “Nope! They’ll just make a bad series. But the book is a book is a book. That’s all she wrote, you could say.”

  Why didn’t I just give up, try again on the plane? A touch of Haroun-Pam-Raschid, I presume. “Well, I’d at least want a say in the casting,” I protested. “I can’t let some Gidget play Martha Shelton.”

  Gerson smiled. “If she’s pretty, why not? A paycheck’s a paycheck and Gidget must live. Pammie, no one on earth knows what most of your people looked like, acted like, sounded like. Not many would care.”

  “I would and I do. I know exactly what Martha looked like and sounded like. If Shelton Wiggins walked in here, I’d recognize him in a New York mi—”

  “Oh my God. That’s ben Canaan,” Gerson furiously whispered.

  Was that the ghost? No, it wasn’t. Not mine, at least. Still, even Glory Be’s author couldn’t bridle at that interruption; it had been ben Canaan’s tanks that had reached the Suez Canal only a month ago. Yul Brynner crossed with Paul Newman, his new eyepatch firmly in place, he joined a large table of archeologists and filmmakers after raking the room with a cerulean gaze I thought turned most chilly when it passed over me.

  “I never realized I looked that American.” I meant to make Gerson chuckle and did. Three different people at three different stops had told us of the latest military celebrity’s bitter estrangement from his blonde U.S. wife, unlike Pam a real nurse but no paragon. She’d scuttled back to the States like a shiksa iguana once she caught on after the ’48 war her Ari meant them to live at Gan Dafna, not here in ritzy Jerusalem. The most memorable verdict came from San Bernardino’s game-legged defender: “Like an actress, she knew she’d been miscast. But here we can’t play first one part, then another. He’s mistrusted Washington since.”

  “Gerson, don’t stare,” I reminded him.

  “Ah, why not? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but someone’s staring at you.”

  I hadn’t. When I scooted my gaze over my salad fork, guided by Gerson’s “Nine o’clock” to his wineglass (he’d learned tactics somewhere: from Stella?), he was still staring steadily and didn’t look away eit
her. Once our eyes met, he smiled, dabbed his lips with a napkin, stood up, and walked over.

  “I didn’t mean to be rude, only sure,” he explained, all smoothly muscular middle-aged vigor and rubicund skin. “You are Pamela Buchanan?”

  “Oh, yes! Of course. I—”

  I’d reached for a pen and come up with a spoon. I’d looked at both his strong hands for a copy of Glory Be that stayed invisible. I’d looked back up for help at his well-tended face and wide smile.

  “Colleague, why didn’t you tell me Paulette Goddard had ended up out of the running? I really think I could have handled it, you know.”

  Did I stare? I stared. Did I gasp? I gasped. Did I leap to my feet as silverware clattered, Gerson vanished, Ari ben Canaan winked, and a wineglass smashed somewhere? I did. All Jerusalem became a mute wedding orchestra.

  “Nachum? Nachum Unger, the poet?”

  We held out our hands and they waltzed.

  Posted by: Pam

  Eventually—I think our coffee’d come by then—Gerson grew back first one eye, then the other. A mouth I’d seen somewhere before requested some sort of modest assignment. For a while all he’d been was a shoe.

  My Gerson and I had been married eight years. On April 29, 1945, I’d talked for eight minutes at most to a reeking, eighty-pound Dachau inmate with unfoulable eyes. But I’d said “I do” to What’s-His-Name at L.A.’s City Hall as kids peddled their papers and routine Cadillacs shuttled. I think we went to Musso’s afterward, can’t be sure.

  Nachum and I were wedded by history—the ultimate shotgun marriage, I know. I don’t think it’s unkind to invite you to guess which day was more memorable to not only two but all three of us.

  The best fuck of my life was my only experience of group sex. It took place in the restaurant of the famous King David Hotel in Jerusalem. No carnal desire was involved. There are things I’ve done in reality—bent this way agreeably, bent that one less so, crocked on brandy or wine—that I wouldn’t blush to admit half as much. I’d never been unfaithful to Gerson, but that night I committed public, conversational adultery.

  Our voices and eyes did the deed right in front of him. We tore off the clothes of the years as he sat there. Do I dare to think we liked having a watcher? As waiters roved, khaki and cocktails went this way and that, palm fronds past the windows mimicked a chuppah and muttered rustling applause—and all stayed perfectly civilized—I played Nachum’s strumpet as I never had with or for Gerson, much less with another man as he looked on and sipped coffee. My own inmate took me as a ship takes the sea.

  The ugly word I detect I’m avoiding is ownership. If it applied, it was mutual. The whole heat of our sex—and I remind you once again: waiters, Gerson, Nachum didn’t take off so much as his wristwatch—was that we owned each other without either being the slave.

  And Gerson? Gerson might’ve grown up in Nebraska. He’d never seen history’s ocean before. He’d studied it, read everything he could get his hands on about it. He’d gone crazy trying to imagine it. But the waves’ crack and the wild air, Panama! The joy of two glistening, mermish bodies as we gasped, splashed, got smacked around, rose, and rioted in the surf of our little acre of history’s ocean: he’d never had that in his life. My poor Gerson had gone from eunuch to cuckold. Had no one to accuse except Martha Shelton and Hitler.

  Occasionally treating us as a plural for politeness’s sake, Nachum told me his story. The displaced-persons camp north of Munich where he’d spent ten months after being sprung from Dachau had separated Jewish survivors from German POWs by only a tripwire: “We got the impression you Americans thought we’d all made a mistake. But as you can see and we all learned, you do make damned good ice cream.”

  A return to now blasted Dresden struck him as a handsome invitation to swim down and reclaim his stateroom in a sunken ship. His decision to turn illegal had been made with his feet, which walked all the way to Trieste.

  “How did you live?”

  “I’d broken into one of your warehouses, took five cartons of American cigarettes. Back then—you remember, colleague—eight would’ve gotten me to Madagascar. When I reached Palestine, I had one pack left. Here it is.”

  Reaching into his pocket, he held it up, now wrapped in Karloffian tape and cellophane. But you could still make out the camel.

  “Will you ever smoke them?” a faint Gerson asked faintly.

  “Oh, I don’t smoke. Would you like one?”

  Fainter still: “No, no.”

  Some years later, Nachum told me he always offered. By then he’d married the woman who said yes. She lit one every anniversary until the pack was gone.

  Trieste still had enough of a Jewish community for him to make contact. He was passed down the line: four months, that part took. Finally he splashed ashore through black surf one night near Caesaria among scrawny kids, impatient Haganah guides, and a woman who started wailing she’d left her overcoat behind; they’d made it to the trucks before the Royal Navy patrol boat’s searchlight came on. Three weeks later, equipped with an old bolt-action rifle and eight rounds of ammunition, he was on the front lines in Jerusalem.

  Now he was a columnist for Haaretz. “Movies?” I asked, and he shook his head: “No, colleague. Politics.”

  “And the poetry?”

  Nachum grinned. “Oh, well. By the time I’d learned it well enough to think of trying, I must say writing poetry in Hebrew struck me as redundant. Colleague, what about you? Tell me about the book you wrote.”

  Did that ever turn out to be an awkward bit of post-coital pillow talk! Of course I thought he meant Glory Be, but Nachum didn’t know it existed. He looked unabashedly baffled when I started going on about the Pilgrims’ landfall and the French and Indian War. Meaning to pay me a professional compliment by treating it as a given, my colleague meant that I must’ve written a book about our war—our own bit of history’s ocean, swirling until it knocked us together on April 29, 1945.

  And I had. I just didn’t especially enjoy explaining that mine was an uproarious American romp through Europe that featured the Holocaust as a clumsily appended afterthought, scrapped outright in the later printings. Can’t say for sure if squeaking Nothing’s title when Nachum wouldn’t take “Oh” for an answer counted as a third awkward moment or just the second one’s continuation by other means.

  “And your role?” he asked Gerson pleasantly. I don’t know if he meant the war, my book, or our shared century, but my husband was too honest to choose any but the least boastful option. God knows it pained him, though.

  “Me? Oh, I turned it into a movie.”

  Slipping the Karloffian camel back into his breast pocket, Nachum beamed at us both with real fondness. “Damned good ice cream,” he said.

  Posted by: Pam

  Nonetheless, that let Gerson back in as more than a landlocked peeping Tom. He was allowed to have hands now. Once he saw he’d been granted permission to perch on the messy bed we’d made of our bit of history’s ocean, he was even allowed, a bit gingerly, to broach topics. Since Nachum had already told us about the 1948 war, my husband wanted to hear all about the one that had ended a month ago with ben Canaan’s tanks on the Suez Canal.

  But Nachum was a real Israeli, impatient above all with simplicity. He knew what Gerson wanted to hear: the IDF on the offensive, armored spearheads in the Sinai. Ben Canaan and Landau conferring over a map, goggles around their necks in the lead chariot’s blue-starred, Hebrew-lettered shadow as sun-baked dust swirled and they seized the initiative. Paying my husband a backhanded compliment (they were to stay great friends for years), Nachum refused to give Gerson that movie.

  “Remember: we colluded,” he told us. “I’ve got no love lost for Nasser, I’d shoot him without batting an eye if that raving pan-nationalist bastard showed up at my door. But we schemed. Not exactly a first for us, sin
ce we made deals with anyone and everyone to get as many Jews out of Europe as we could.”

  Note the “we,” Panama. As I’ve said, “This is who I am now.” Also note its upcoming contradiction, though.

  “Well, it was justified,” said Gerson primly.

  “Of course. You’ll get no argument from me. I just wish they’d made a few more! But this was different. Suez wasn’t survival, it was power politics: our little Israel on Broadway at last. Suez was us in league with the British and French, our former imperial masters—no great love lost there either, but we’ve obviously learned you don’t always marry for love—plotting in secret to smash Nasser and Egypt, who deserved it, to hell and gone. It must just confound our so recent allies that in London and Paris, Suez is the foreign-policy disaster of all time. But in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and this very room, Suez is a triumph and the latest glory of our already much laureled IDF. Same plan, same war! Different publics.”

  “Have you written this?” My husband looked incredulous.

  “Oh, Noah!” Nachum laughed flat-out tenderly. “I’ve not only written it, I’ve said it on radio. To a mixed reaction, yes. Did you think we’d stop arguing just because we’re a country? It would be like the British learning to cook. Or Americans forgetting how to make movies.”

  It wasn’t until we were exchanging addresses that Nachum confirmed Pam’s stymied ghost-seeking stare by admitting he wasn’t Nachum Unger at all. No, not an impostor, Panama: a successor, one Nachum ben Zion. “Not the most inspired choice, colleague, I agree. But as I think I told you both, trying to write poetry in Hebrew struck me as redundant.”