“That means Charlie will know that Max is in Riverside.”
“He’ll only know for sure Max isn’t in Mexico. We couldn’t do it at all if Max was in Mexico. You see what’s at stake, don’t you?”
“I do,” Thelma conceded, “but I feel like we’re turning on the fan and waiting for the shit to hit it.”
We set up a relay system that stayed in place for the rest of the filming. Charlie telephoned me with the changes Leon wanted, right down to the page numbers. I went to a pay phone, armed with about ten thousand dimes, and telephoned Max, who did the writing. When he was done, Marian phoned the office from a pay phone, asking for a different name every time. Thelma said, “Wrong number.” Marian drove from Riverside. Thelma or I drove from LA. We met halfway and passed the envelope in that cosmopolitan hub, Covina. We met at a different gas station each time. I checked out the Negro Motorist Green Book and refused to meet at any gas station not listed there. Marian thought I was nuts, but since I’d first seen that book the day I met Terrence, I never pass a Shell station without thinking about squatting in a field to pee.
These treks to Covina left me parched and cross; they ate up chunks of my time, and often Marian was late. I sat in the sweltering heat reading scripts, wondering if fate was punishing me for my arrogance in offering to Empire. Or perhaps I was being punished for my stupidity in asking Charlie Frye to front for a comic genius writer like Max Leslie. Charlie, for his part, guessed that Max was living in Southern California (how else could we have the pages so swiftly?), and he once asked me where, to which I replied in French, “None of your damn business.” The grueling handoff/edit/return went on for weeks, especially since the film did not wrap in the allotted thirty-six days, but went on so much longer that it could not be released at the end of 1955. Jonathan told me that when Denise heard this news on-set—in short, no hope of the Oscars for 1955—she went into a full-throttle rage, throwing things and cursing everyone, including Leon himself. She wrecked the set, and they had to rebuild it before they could shoot again. That took time, and tempers frayed all the more.
One night Marian was very late, and I didn’t leave Covina till ten. I called Charlie from a pay phone there. I told him I’d bring the rewrites to the studio the next morning, that he should leave my name with the guard at the gate. I could hear John Philip Sousa playing in the background.
I drove through the Empire gates early, but Charlie wasn’t in the Writers’ Building. Vic Hale told me he was on-set, Stage 17, adding for my benefit, “Charlie’s not much of a writer.”
“He’s better than you on his worst day, you scum-sucking toady,” I retorted.
Approaching the cavernous Stage 17, I entered quietly through a small door, and I stayed at the back in the darkness gazing at the well-lit set, Professor Bleeker’s futuristic lab. They were filming the scene where Professor Bleeker first notices what he believes to be messages from outer space. Jonathan’s comedic timing was perfect. He delivered his lines with airy efficiency as he swathed the emotional ignorance of Professor Bleeker in intellectual innocence. Unfortunately, Leon hated the scene, and he made his views known to the director, Phil Tobin, who instantly called, “Cut!”
Charlie, clutching his clipboard to his chest like a small surfboard in a big storm, joined me in the shadows so I could surreptitiously hand him the revised pages. He walked away without even reading them, and handed them to Leon. Leon told Charlie to wait in the tone of voice you’d use for a cur you ordered to sit. Leon read the revisions, and grunted, nothing more, before he called for a typist. He wanted ten copies made. He wanted to shoot the scene right after lunch. She hustled out at a run. Leon dismissed Charlie, who melted into the shadows.
I stayed in the back where I could watch without being seen. Between takes the set teemed with activity. Jonathan and Barbara Marsh got their makeup refreshed by underlings while Denise was attended by the maestra, Violet Andreas. Violet held her makeup palette as if she were Monet in front of a haystack while Elsie hovered nearby checking each swipe of the brush. Violet was not accustomed to being instructed by novices, and had Elsie been anyone but Denise’s mother, she would have been swatted like a fly. Phil Tobin, a big, balding man with the wide, still-nimble gait of a former athlete, barked and snapped at everyone, but there was no question as to who was the true director of this picture—in fact, who was the director of any universe in which this picture might be made. Leon strode around the set like the lion tamer at the circus, cracking the whip while various minions froze or scurried. His acerbic perfectionism was painful to behold. And as he quarreled with the set decorator, a young man who affected an ascot and sported a pencil-thin moustache, all I could think of was cue the thunder.
“What did you say your name was again?”
The set decorator replied so low I couldn’t hear his response.
“Oh, good,” Leon said, “because I was afraid that you thought your name was Cedric Gibbons, you know, the really brilliant set decorator, because if you are not Cedric Fucking Gibbons, then you’ll do exactly as I say, or you won’t be here tomorrow.”
Cameras rolled again, and I watched take after failed take as Leon intervened to comfort Denise or to chastise whoever was impeding her abilities. At last it was time for lunch. With some relief, I stepped outside and blinked in the sunshine.
Charlie bolted out right behind me. “I hate you. You and your grandfather, and Max Leslie too.”
“Shut up.”
“I wish I’d never agreed to this.” Charlie stalked off.
“What’s wrong with Charlie, Quacker?” asked Jonathan, who had meandered outside, still wearing his Professor Bleeker costume and makeup. “Every day he’s more like Boris Karloff in Bride of Frankenstein.” He closed his eyes, cinched his lips, and stuck his arms out, marching. I had to laugh in spite of myself, but, eager to avoid talking about Charlie (and terrified Jonathan might have heard Max’s name), I immediately complimented him on his performance.
“I must hear more of this. Let me buy you lunch.”
My entrance at the studio commissary ought to have felt like a homecoming, considering the number of years I ate there almost every day during summer vacations, but a lot of time had passed since then. I knew or recognized few people except for Violet Andreas and Frances Hargrove, the costume designer. Nostalgia might have overwhelmed me if I hadn’t seen Vic Hale come in. He sat by himself. Ate by himself. No one would go near him. So perhaps he had saved his job, but he had lost his soul. I felt badly that I’d been so nasty to him. There is more than one kind of career death.
Chapter Twenty
Erotic became my new favorite word, supplanting panache. That little house at Malibu couldn’t contain all the erotic happiness Terrence and I filled it with, the music and laughter, playing with Bruno on the beach, long walks, long talks, even the arguments, high-spirited back-and-forths, card games, and after the shoot for Fly Me to the Moon ended—and Jonathan ceased coming over to complain—we were alone again, and content.
But I did invite Thelma in for dinner one September evening. She had guessed about Terrence as soon as we subscribed to the Challenger, and I did not deny it; in fact, I felt wonderfully liberated to be able to say, yes, I’m in love with Terrence Dexter. He seldom came to Clara Bow Drive, but when Thelma drove me home that day (the MG was at Reg’s), I insisted that she stay for dinner. Thelma’s second husband was a jazz aficionado, so she knew of Buddy Collette, Chico Hamilton, and Dexter Gordon, and had heard them play in Central Avenue bars years before. Terrence adored her, and the feeling was mutual. The evening was a total success, except for my cooking, or rather, my learning to cook. Trial and error, to put it kindly. Tonight’s error included the baked potatoes exploding all over the oven, causing smoke to come wafting out. I was humiliated.
“Don’t take it so hard.” Terrence nudged me after we had opened all the windows and fanned the smoke away.
“You need to use a fork and poke holes in potatoes before you put them in the oven,” said Thelma. “You’ll get the hang of it, don’t worry.”
“Come on, Liza,” he chided me, “smile.” He glanced over at the desk, where he’d set the camera he sometimes took on assignment with him, and handed it to Thelma. “Here, take a couple of pictures of us, will you?” He came back and stood beside me while the shutter snapped several times, and the flash went off. I could not have guessed how precious those snapshots would one day become.
The next day at work, Thelma handed me a parcel in a plain brown wrapper.
“What is this? A sex manual?”
“My mother’s nineteen twenty-three Fannie Farmer cookbook. A gift. My mother was a great cook, and she swore by Fannie Farmer.” Thelma lit her first cigarette of the day and wound clean paper into the typewriter. “Terrence is a good man, Roxanne, a fine man, brains, looks. Someone taught him manners, all right. He seems like a man of real integrity too. You just don’t find men like that nowadays. Especially not in our business. They’re more like Jonathan and Charlie, all riddled with ego and ambition and insecurity, men who drain the life out of their women, and then they move on to a new woman. I admire Terrence, and if he were white, I’d tell you to marry him.”
“Marry him! I can’t even go to the movies with him.”
“Yes, and that’s why I think you should end this affair. You two are playing with fire.”
“We’re not playing. We’re in love.”
“There’s more at stake here than you getting your heart broken, dear.”
“I suppose you’re going to remind me about Diana Jordan and how her career is finished. Do you think that doesn’t cross my mind every day? I think about—”
“Did I say anything about career? No. You’ve proved that you’re willing to take risks with your career. I’m not even talking about you. He is in grave danger. Terrence.” She pointed to the front page of the Challenger, another headline about the grisly death of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi that summer. At his funeral in Chicago, the boy’s mother had insisted on an open coffin. The whole world sickened to see what they had done to her son.
“Terrence wants to go to Mississippi to cover the trial, but Mr. Branch won’t let him, says the trial is a travesty. And it’s too dangerous.”
“And he’s right. Those white men they arrested, they’ll get off. You watch. No one will pay for this boy’s death. You be careful, Roxanne, you and Terrence both. If that can happen to a boy”—Thelma again pointed to the page—“imagine what can happen to a grown man.”
“We live in California, not Mississippi.”
“Yes, and just why are you keeping your relationship a secret from everyone?”
To that question, rhetorical or not, I had no reply.
That night I woke to see Terrence sitting on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. I glanced at the clock: two thirty.
“Terrence, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry, Roxanne, but I can’t stay here. It’s not personal, but I have to go back to Naomi Avenue.”
“Now? It’s the middle of the night.”
“Now.”
“What’s wrong, honey? What’s happened?”
“They keep asking me at the office why I don’t answer the phone. It looks like I don’t care, like I can’t be bothered when they need me.”
“You could give them my number. It’s fine with me.” I stroked his back.
“It’s not fine with me. I can’t be driving down from Malibu while we’re covering the Emmett Till case. It’s not right. They need me at the paper.” He stood, reached for his pants, and slid them on. “I’m going back to Naomi for a while. It’s not personal, baby, but it’s not right either. I need to be where I’m needed. You understand, don’t you?”
I wanted to protest, to fling myself across the door and beg him to stay, but I watched him go and I did not resist. At least I’d learned that much, hadn’t I? Max and Simon and Nelson and Jerrold had all learned the hard way that the unstable alliance of passion and principle, of responsibility and integrity, would inevitably exact costs. Someone like Terrence Dexter, well, he had known that for generations. Someone like me? My lessons lay ahead.
* * *
• • •
Ten days passed (and I was counting). I didn’t see Terrence, but we talked on the phone often. The crisis created by the death of Emmett Till in faraway Mississippi kept him working nonstop at the paper and with the NAACP.
On the eleventh day Irene breezed into Clara Bow Drive, nodded to Thelma, and called out that I must cancel all my appointments this afternoon and go with her to UCLA Medical Center.
I panicked. “Is Leon sick?”
“It’s Clarence. Yesterday they found him writhing in pain on the floor, and they took him to the hospital. No one even knew he was sick again.”
“Again?”
“He was off work for about three months a few years ago. You must have been in Paris. A bad scare, cancer, but he’s fine now. Well, not fine right now. Obviously. He had some sort of obstruction of the bowel and they operated yesterday.”
“And is he all right?”
“He’s recovering. Leon insists we both go see him on behalf of the family.”
“Leon wants me to go too?” I asked, heartened at the request.
“Well, you’re family, aren’t you?”
“Leon hasn’t exactly embraced me of late.”
“And whose fault is that?” she snapped.
I got up and closed the door to my office. I had never told Thelma that Irene had guessed about Max. “Why can’t Leon go?”
“Because he’s Leon Greene! He can’t leave the studio to go sit at the bedside of some old family retainer.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say.”
“What?” Irene looked genuinely puzzled.
“To speak of Clarence like he’s a pet or something. Summit Drive would fall apart without him. What does it matter if he’s black or white?”
“I didn’t say it mattered. What’s got into you?”
“You would have never called him an ‘old family retainer’ if he were white.”
“Oh, Roxanne! Did you put pepper in your Wheaties? What do you care? Just come with me. Let’s get this over with and go out and have a drink. I could use a drink. We’ll get some flowers in Westwood. They don’t have anything decent in Culver City.”
I asked Thelma to cancel my afternoon appointments, but I had an awful premonition that this was a very bad idea. My anxiety was confirmed when we walked into his hospital room and saw Ruby sitting on one side of his bed, Coralee on the other side, and Clarence, shorn of command, wearing a hospital gown. They all three glared at me.
“How nice to see you again,” I said awkwardly, absorbing their ill will. I turned to Irene. “This is Clarence’s wife, Ruby, and his niece, Coralee. They came to Julia’s funeral.” Coralee hadn’t been there, but Irene didn’t notice, and she nodded to each politely and asked how Clarence was feeling.
A little girl, Serena, with a book and a teddy bear, sat in a chair at the foot of the bed. She was Ruby and Clarence’s granddaughter. She asked to see my diamond ring. “You engaged?” she asked.
“No, it belonged to my grandmother.” I took our enormous bouquet of scentless hothouse roses and put them on the windowsill beside an immense floral arrangement of overpowering white lilies; the card read, Get well soon, Leon and Denise Greene. Also on the sill was a peanut butter jar with a few scraggly mums and asters from someone’s garden. I was struck with the vivid contrast: the expensive gesture versus the felt tribute.
It seemed indecent to me to be talking about Clarence’s bowels. I would have rather talked about the mop handle stuck up Booker’s horn. Clarence himself sat stoic in the bed, grim, while Ruby and Coralee
rattled on about his internal viscera. Irene listened, her face a perfect mask of concern.
Suddenly Terrence burst in. “I came as soon as I heard! Oh, Liza Jane!” he cried with undisguised happiness before he saw Irene.
I could feel a deep flush, not just over the birthmark, but over my whole body from the sudden pounding of my heart, and a gushing sensation between my legs that made my eyes widen in surprise. “This is my sister. Irene, Terrence, Mr. Dexter. This is . . .” The man I love? A sonnet? Erotic poetry? Something in French? I stood there speechless.
“Terrence is my nephew,” said Clarence in a cold, corrective tone.
Irene looked from me to Terrence and back again and I could tell from the expressions fluttering across her face that she had assessed everything instantly. Her outrage and anger electrified the room. In her cool blonde-Buddha way she gave Terrence’s hand a wan shake. She was wearing gloves.
Coralee saw the implicit derision in the gesture. “Terrence is the star reporter for the Challenger,” she said defiantly. “A great writer.”
“That’s a Negro paper, isn’t it?” asked Irene.
“The Challenger comes out three times a week,” said Terrence, adding, even more awkwardly, “but we used to print six days a week before the War.”
“Terrence gonna write a book one day that everyone will read,” Coralee insisted. “One day. You watch.” She pointed at me and Irene. “You all will be reading his book.”
“Maybe my sister should sign him up as a client,” said Irene with an icy look at me. “God knows her agency could use someone smarter than Charlie Frye.”
Terrence turned to Ruby and Clarence, asking anxiously after the surgery, and amid even more uncomfortable talk of Clarence’s bowels and viscera, everyone in the room, except for Serena, seemed to exude an unstable brew of shame and outrage. I excused myself and stepped into the hall, hoping like hell that Irene would not follow me and that Terrence would.
The Great Pretenders Page 20
