“Doctor Ryker said—”
“I don’t mean he’ll be lying in the hospital. But every time you’re ready to get the divorce, something’ll happen. He’ll fall down and you’ll prop him up.”
“But—”
“No, let me finish. The second reason is that every day I’ll be a bit more ashamed of what I’m doing, hate myself another iota.”
“Oh, Hap.”
“I’ll get more and more dour. I’ll brood about the kids I wanted. And you, being you, will hit out. We’ll argue all the time.”
“I want us to be married; I want us to have children—you know that, Hap.”
“But you can’t give up Barry.”
“He’s deathly ill, you saw him.”
“Love, I’m not arguing. The thing I don’t want is for us to end up hating one another.”
“It doesn’t have to be so grim.”
“It does,” he said.
For a long time there was only the rumbling of the sea. Then she rolled closer to him. Her throat ached, but she didn’t cry. Her grief was too immense for tears. Being your husband is a major part of his self-esteem, Dr. Ryker had said, and she was accepting the truth of the statement. Barry, in his weakness, would always come up with an unarguable reason for not getting a divorce.
Arms around each other, naked bodies pressed together, she and Hap mourned for Alice Hollister, who could never let go; they mourned for the old-fashioned decency somehow inculcated into Hap Cordiner. They mourned for the entwined life they both wanted that was impossibly beyond reach.
42
The weather stayed good for Christmas and the New Year’s day Rose Parade, but as if exacting payment, torrential rains hit in the middle of January.
PD was grateful that he and Beth didn’t have to leave her snug apartment and brave the storm. Over the holidays he had been feeling somberly mortal, his mood caused by that visit to poor old Barry, who was now out of the hospital and locked up in Villa Pacifica. While PD caught up on Variety, Beth stacked their dinner plates in the dishwasher. The phone rang.
She answered it in the kitchen. “Hello?” There was a long pause. “Yes, he is. Wait a sec, Uncle Frank.”
Never once had his parents called him here. PD jumped to his feet as if his father could see him on Beth’s couch, naked beneath his robe. The boyhood guilts, harsh and untamable, still shackled him even though their roles had been reversed. Frank was now the dependent, pathetically thankful to PD for representing him gratis. (PD sweated harder to place Frank Zaffarano than to place any other client, and with lackluster results: Frank’s string of flops barred him from features, and television demanded a younger director schooled in the medium’s breakneck speed.)
Beth came to the dining ell, muffling the phone against her hip. “It’s Uncle Frank—and he sounds spaced out,” she whispered. “You better take it in the bedroom.”
PD went into the other room, sitting on the chair rather than stretching on the rumpled bed. “Say hey, Dad. What’s up?”
“Nothing . . . I just wanted to talk to you.” Frank’s voice was hollow and thin, as if he were calling from some remote archipelago.
“This is a rotten connection,” PD said. “Let me call you back.”
“I’m not home.”
“Where are you?”
“I just wanted to talk. . . .”
After a long pause, PD spoke. “I’m sorry the job with Aaron Spelling fell through. I figured we had it nailed.”
“You did your best, Paolo.”
The old-country name. Imprinted on his birth certificate and draft card, used nowhere else.
“Everything okay, Dad?”
“Remember when I took you to school on your first day?”
“Dad, you didn’t take me, it was Mom.” Lily had deposited him in kindergarten, informing him in her most no-nonsense voice that it was a sin to disobey the teacher, a nun whose chin bobbled like Jell-O over her wimple.
“Oh. It must have been one of your sisters. Also I was thinking about the good times the family had at dinner, enjoying your mother’s good food and all of us talking.” Frank had dominated every mealtime conversation, generally regaling them with his latest method of outmaneuvering the enemy, Art Garrison.
“It’s pissing bullets out there. Dad, tell me where you are and I’ll come drive you home.”
“We used to have fun together, didn’t we? Those Sunday barbecues at your Uncle Desmond’s I remember you tearing around, wild and free. All that energy! Your mother was always trying to get you to behave, but me, I was so proud of you that I thought my heart would bust. You, the leader, your cousins following.”
The group had been ruled predominantly by Hap, with forays into mischief led by Maxim. The crackle on the line worsened. “Dad, where are you?” PD asked anxiously.
“God bless you, Paolo.”
The valedictory remark increased PD’s fears. “Dad, I don’t want you driving. For God’s sake, tell me where you are!”
PD heard the click and knew that the conversation had ended, either by some problem the storm was causing General Telephone or by his father’s volition.
Beth, rubbing sweet-odored cream into her hands, came to the door. “What did Uncle Frank want?” she asked.
“He kept telling me I was a good boy and remembering stuff.”
“That’s not like him at all. You better call back.”
“He wasn’t home.”
“Where was he?”
“I kept asking but he never told me.”
“Aunt Lily’ll know.”
Predictably, Lily’s line was busy. PD dialed the other number. (The Frank Zaffaranos had pared their standard of living to what they considered the bone, firing one of the maids, avoiding Chasen’s, canceling the standing order at the florist and visits from the masseuse and facial lady, but it never occurred to either that it was possible to manage with only one phone line.)
His mother answered the first ring.
“Mom, it’s me. Where’s Dad?”
“Working,” Lily said. “Dear, let me call you right back. Mallie Ryan and I’re in the middle of planning that Knights of Columbus fund-raiser.”
“What do you mean, working?”
“You know, that series at MGM,” she said with a touch of asperity. “He called around six to say they were doing some night shooting.”
PD had difficulty catching his breath. “Dad doesn’t have a job at MGM.”
“But he said—”
“No job, Mom. He hasn’t worked since he finished that Bonanza episode. He’s in some poker game.”
“Impossible,” Lily said flatly. “PD, I didn’t mean to tell you this, but last month I had to sell my emerald ring. Dad knows he simply cannot afford to play.” On the last sentence her voice rose, a shrill wail reminiscent of her atypical hysteria when the IOU from Lang had arrived so mysteriously.
“Beth and I’ll be right over.”
“Beth?”
“I’m at her place,” PD admitted. What use yet another Zaffarano denying the truth?
• • •
Lily wore a trim heliotrope knit suit, and her hair was immaculately coiffed, but her rounded face was the color of oatmeal.
“What a night,” she said in her normal sensible tone. “You children go sit in the den while I make some good hot espresso.”
“Let me fix it,” said Beth, fully conversant with the magnificently equipped kitchen—her childhood treat had been to make cannoli with her aunt.
They compromised, Lily grinding the beans and mashing down the handle of the espresso machine—the large, elaborate type used in Italian cafés—while Beth set out the demitasse cups and spoons. PD, watching, wondered by what vicious quirk of fate he had fallen for his cousin, whom his mother loved and viewed as a daughter.
They were drinking the coffee when the door chimes sounded.
“That can’t be Dad.” Lily’s full cheeks shook. “He never uses the front door.”
The trio stared at one another.
PD couldn’t move. Numbly he watched his mother go into the front hall and admit the two policemen in dark slickers.
• • •
That was the last time he let anyone else take charge.
A few minutes later he was calling the family members, telling them that his father had been killed in an accident on the dangerous, rain-slippery curves of Sunset Boulevard. His Uncle Desmond and Uncle Tim wept, and he comforted them. The superpolite Beverly Hills police drove him to the station to claim a brown paper bag filled with his father’s effects: the keys to the highly financed Rolls, which was totaled; a gold Dunhill lighter; a gold Mark Cross pen and pencil set; a worn Cartier wallet containing a new driver’s license and two dollar bills. Also in the wallet was a note written in Frank’s spiky, European hand, reminding himself of the exact amount of that night’s IOU to his buddy, Joshua Fernauld: $5016.
Later that night, when the family and close friends like the Fernaulds showed up, PD made out a check for the amount. Joshua, who had written the screenplay for Frank’s Oscar nomination, refused it. “I can’t take your fucking money, PD. Mea culpa, mea culpa. Poor Frank—he put on a big act that he didn’t give a damn about losing, but I saw the fear in his eyes.”
“Dad frightened? Not on your life. And he’d have wanted this paid off!” With violent purpose, PD shoved the check into Joshua’s large, liver-spotted hand, thus proving Frank Zaffarano could pay his debts—and proving, too, that the heap of expensive wreckage being towed from Sunset was indeed a rain-caused accident.
PD spoke to Monsignor about the funeral Mass. He arranged the financing on an ornate bronze coffin with white satin lining; he hired the public relations firm of Rogers and Cowan to ensure that adequate space and news time were given to Frank’s obituary.
• • •
A considerable crowd came to honor Frank Zaffarano’s passing.
PD stood at graveside with his arm around his quietly weeping mother. Ranged on either side of them were his sisters, his brothers-in-law and little Jeffrey, who was stamping a foot into the implausibly green grass, which was still soggy from the storm. The rest of the family was grouped on the other side of the deep gash. Aunt Clara with a thin arm consolingly around Uncle Tim, who wept hoarsely. Beth next to her parents. Uncle Desmond and Aunt Rosalynd, who looked like the impressive cow that she was in her black suit and pearls. Maxim stood with his live-in, the married actress. Hap was out of the country.
PD’s mind wandered to the last time he’d seen Hap, who had come to the office to explain that as soon as he’d finished the job at Orion, he was going to Africa.
PD, who wasn’t yet aware that Hap had moved out of the Laurel Canyon house, had innocently asked why.
“Is that any of your goddamn business?” Hap had flared.
“What’s with you, paisan? Your business is my business—and Alyssia’s starting a new film in ten days.”
“She’s not coming.”
“Because of Barry?”
“All I came in to do was to tell you that I’m leaving for Africa and not to line me up for anything!” Hap had stridden from the office, his expression tormented.
PD glanced across the grave at Alyssia. She was standing apart from the family, halfway between them and the first row of nonrelated mourners. Her makeup didn’t hide her pallor or the shadows under her eyes. There was something compelling about her grief, which, PD told himself bitterly, had nothing to do with his father. Her presence grated on him.
His mother was murmuring the responses, and PD joined in, finding comfort with every familiar word.
In this, the ultimate hour of his father’s passage on this earth, he accepted how irrevocably his Catholicism was part of him.
A creaking mechanism lowered the coffin into its final resting place, and PD looked toward Beth. She appeared a will-o’-the-wisp creature forever shimmering beyond his reach. The salt tears blurred his eyes and a chaotic bitterness swept through him, carrying with it an ugly urge to blame someone.
• • •
He had arranged for a catering firm to be at the house, and there was the usual Hollywood wake complete with bartenders, hot hors d’oeuvres, sentimental reminiscences and Industry gossip.
Lily and the girls circulated, pale, red-eyed, but sociable.
PD attempted his usual conviviality, but he couldn’t control his tears. He retreated to the small downstairs room that had been his father’s office.
“PD?”
Alyssia had followed him. “I haven’t had a chance to tell you how sorry I am.”
Angry that she had caught him weeping, he blew his nose.
“It was so sudden,” she said. “What a terrible loss for you.”
Leave me alone, bitch. “I came in here to be alone.”
She backed toward the door.
Realizing he had barked at his top client, he said with forced warmth, “Dad was very appreciative of you making Transformations. Did he ever tell you?”
She gave him a stricken look. For a moment he thought she would break down. Then she said, “Not exactly, but that’s how the older part of the family is.”
Was that a reproach? He decided it was. She was slamming his dead father, blaming his dead father.
When time had mythologized and blurred the moment, he would forget that Alyssia had done the film for zip to pay his father’s debts—and coerced the intransigent Hap into the production, too. He would forget that she had helped raise the PD Zaffarano Agency from a joke to its present substantiality.
He would remember only that Alyssia, the eternal outsider, had slurred his father on the day of the funeral.
PD had his scapegoat.
• • •
“It’s over, isn’t it?” Beth said quietly.
“Jesus, Beth, give me time.”
“Darling, I’m not pushing you about that.”
They were in her living room, fully clothed. Dinner finished, he’d just told her he’d be heading home; tomorrow was a weekday. It was exactly four weeks to the day after the funeral, and he had yet to make love to her.
“Like hell you haven’t been!” he snapped.
“PD, it’s not bed, it’s everything—either you’re avoiding me or barking at me. You’ve done everything but tell me to get out of your life.” Tears ran down Beth’s smooth cheeks.
Hunched in his chair, he watched her weep. He longed to comfort her but he couldn’t. After a minute he said haltingly. “It’s the Church. Bethie, when Dad died, I saw I couldn’t give it up. I’m pretty sure we could get a dispensation . . . that is, if you—”
“Converted?”
“Yes. Aunt Clara’s stronger than you think.”
“When we told them about the engagement, she was ill for months. . . .” Beth’s melodious voice choked. Holding a Kleenex near her eyes, she whispered, “But it’s not only Mother. It’s me. I’m not Aunt Lily, I couldn’t throw myself into Catholicism the way she has.”
“I don’t ask that of you.”
“Judaism’s more than a religion, it’s an entire heritage.”
“Your father isn’t.”
“I’ve told you, PD. In Jewish law, it’s the mother who counts. And what about the children?”
“You know the Church’s position,” he muttered.
“Darling, if I do what you want, every single morning I’d wake up feeling a traitor to my ancestors. I can’t do it, I just can’t.”
She struggled to get the engagement ring from her finger: the diamond clinked as she set it on the marble coffee table.
Though his sigh shook his entire body, he didn’t argue with her to keep it. There was no point in argument. She was right. He loved her still, but it was over.
Picking up the ring, he mumbled, “I’ll see you at Uncle Desmond’s on Sunday.”
After Beth was gone, he began to cry hopelessly. And by some mental quirk, he also bound this ineluctable loss to Alyssia.
BEVERLY HILLS,
1986
Remembering, PD sighed and took a long drink of his Campari and soda. “After Dad died,” he said, “I got a bee up my ass that his death and also certain personal problems were somehow connected to Alyssia. Going through a rough time you dream up crazy things.”
“Dream up?” Beth’s mellifluous voice rose as she turned to her erstwhile fiancé. “She treated you disgustingly.”
“She was my major client for years, Beth, and believe me, the major clients dish out far more crap than she ever did.”
Beth sat up straighter. “Who took the brunt every time she didn’t show up on the set—or walked off?”
“The unreliability,” Barry put in, “didn’t start until after she lost her confidence. From then on she had to fight attacks of unameliorated panic.”
“Yet she always radiated when the camera hit her,” PD said.
“If it weren’t for her, Hap would still be alive.” Beth’s voice shook. “I can’t understand why you’re all defending her.”
“Stop me if I’m wrong, Madame Gold,” Maxim said. “But for a while there weren’t the two of you closer than Cagney and Lacey?”
“She happened to be my sister-in-law. I did my utmost to get along.” As Beth spoke, she felt oddly mean-spirited. But why? It was true. We had nothing in common, but I was so grateful when she reconciled with Barry that I made an effort to be her friend.
Yet, even as this went through her mind, Beth knew it was an ex-post-facto thought.
A decade earlier, her affection for her sister-in-law had been honest and pure. Only later did she come to hate and fear Alyssia for the destruction that she could wreak on Jonathon.
BETH
1979
43
In the white leather datebook embossed MRS. IRVING GOLD, 1979, the neat notation for September 1 showed: Alyssia, lunch, 12:45. Beth finished dabbing on her Norell perfume before twelve thirty.
There’s time to visit Clarrie, she thought.
Clarrie, her only child, had been born June 12, 1974, a few weeks after Clara Friedman Cordiner was buried by a reform rabbi at Hillside, a cemetery not far from where she had lived. Abiding by Jewish custom, the Golds had named their daughter after her deceased grandmother.
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