The Great Pretenders

by Laura Kalpakian

  Eons seemed to pass before he came out, and we ducked into an empty hospital room next door. Terrence flung the door shut and took me in his arms, and we fell onto the scratchy gray blanket covering the hospital bed. He held me, pressed me to him as if he would etch my flesh on his palms forever, both of us breathing deep, seeking each other with our lips and tongues. His fingers fumbled with the buttons on my blouse and sought my smooth breast, my taut nipple.

  “Oh, baby,” I cried, holding his face in my hands, “I love you, baby, and I’ve missed you and you can’t even—”

  “I can. These last ten days, the feel of you, the touch, the smell . . .” His lips went up and down my neck. “I missed the way your eyes light up when you’re happy, the way you crazy moan when I’ve got hold of you.” He brought his mouth down to my lips, and his tongue sought mine.

  I reached down and found where he was hardest, stroked him, and his breath came in sharp gusts. “Don’t ever leave me again,” I whispered against the curve of his neck, his small perfect ears. “I never want to spend another ten days apart. No matter what. Please come home, baby. I miss you. I don’t want to live without you.”

  His hands splayed over my backside, clutched me, and his lips followed the rise of my breast. He murmured along my neck. “You make me crazy when I’m with you and crazy when I’m not with you.” He kissed me again, a deep, searching kiss, until a loudspeaker in the hallway blared out and a hospital cart rattled near the door.

  We got off the bed and stepped away from each other breathlessly. I righted my bra, and buttoned my blouse, and smoothed my hair, while he tucked his shirt back in his pants and promised I’d see him tonight. I stepped closer to him, took his beloved face in my hands, and brushed his lips fleetingly one last time before I rejoined the disapproving others.

  “I was just telling Clarence,” said Irene, glaring at me as I entered the room, “that Summit Drive will probably fall apart in the next ten days while he’s at home recovering. Roxanne, you’ve lost an earring.”

  “I’m sure it’s in the car.” I tasted Terrence on my lips, and my breath came involuntarily quicker.

  Excruciating, inconsequential talk continued, more bowels, the old operation for cancer some years ago, Summit Drive, Ruby’s Diner, what grade little Serena was in. Perhaps ten minutes later Terrence popped back in the room. His tie was still askew, and he had buttoned his sport coat.

  “What’s wrong with everyone?” asked Serena.

  “We should let Clarence rest,” said Irene, rising and picking up her handbag.

  Everyone said awkward goodbyes with well wishes for Clarence’s recovery. I offered Terrence my hand, which he held with exaggerated finesse. “Mr. Dexter. How nice to see you again,” I said without looking at anyone else in the room.

  “Miss Granville.”

  Irene did not speak to me all the way back to her car. She did not answer me when I spoke. I had to walk fast to keep up with her till at last we got to her enormous teal blue Cadillac. Once inside the car, she lambasted me.

  “Have a thought back to Diana Jordan, you dumb cluck! It wasn’t the arrest that finished her off, it was the Negro! She’ll never work again! Not after the whole world knows she was sleeping with a Negro!”

  “Terrence’s brother.”

  Irene started to hyperventilate. “Did you actually meet this man the night of the raid?”

  “Before that. He drove me to Pierino’s one day last spring when my car was at Reg’s. He has a Porsche.”

  “Oh, great god in the morning, Roxanne! You got in the car with a strange Negro because he had a Porsche? Have you lost your mind? Have you stuffed your brains up your twat?”

  “I never knew what it was to be in love before this, Irene. I didn’t know everything that can happen to you, body and soul—”

  “I don’t want to hear about body and soul! Stop! For god’s sake, stop! Who else knows? I mean, other than all the servants at Summit Drive.”

  “Clarence would never tell anyone else. He’s dead set against us. They all are. You saw their faces.”

  “And they should be! This is terrible. Scandalous. Who else knows? Jonathan, does he know?”

  “Yes.”

  “One night Jonathan will drink too much and tell one of his Casa Fiesta sluts. ‘Oh, guess what? Roxanne Granville is having an affair with a Negro!’ You will be ruined in this town forever.”

  “Jonathan wouldn’t—”

  “Shut up. Who else knows? Who!”

  “Thelma.”

  “Well, Thelma will keep her mouth shut, because she’s a Red like the rest of them, and she has a lot to lose.”

  “She’s not a Red. She never was.”

  “Shut up. Oh, Roxanne, you have gone too far! Don’t do this. Don’t. I beg of you. Have you thought what Leon would do if he knew? What Gordon would do? What it would mean to Empire? Oh, I understand it now, your whining when I called Clarence an old family retainer! You’re turning into one of those radical women with your hair in a long braid and sensible shoes and signs calling for Ban the Bomb and racial equality.” She caught her breath. “There never was any affair with Carleton Grimes, was there?”

  “What else could I say, Irene?” I was blubbering now. “I couldn’t tell you about Terrence. Could I say I’m in love with Terrence Dexter, and he has—”

  “You’ll be finished. Disgraced. We’ll all be disgraced. Every client you have will leave you and you’ll never work again. This is the worst kind of scandal you could possibly risk.” She stopped the Cadillac at a red light and put her forehead against the steering wheel. I could hear her crying. I had never seen her cry, not even when Julia died. “You’ll ruin all our lives.”

  “If I ruin it, it’s my life,” I said in a weak voice, undone by her tears.

  “Have you thought what it could mean to Clarence when Leon finds out! How fast Leon will fire him? Thirty years at Summit Drive, and he will be gone!”

  “He’d never fire Clarence.”

  “Really?” The light changed, and the car behind us honked. Irene wiped her eyes with her gloved hand, and moved forward. “Well, he certainly let Max and Simon and Nelson and Jerrold, and a lot of others, go without a second thought, didn’t he? Fired them! Never mind their contracts. Oh, god, that’s right! You’re using that fool Charlie as a front for Max. Oh, sweet Jesus in the dandelions, Roxanne!”

  “What?” I had never seen her so distraught.

  “And I’ll bet Charlie’s not the only one, is he? All those successes you’ve been having! All that television, and the Maurice Allen script you just sold to MGM.”

  “Charlie’s the only one. Honest.”

  “Just shut up. I don’t want to know.”

  I babbled and burbled, and protested my innocence, and when that was obviously such a crashing lie, I fell apart entirely, the months of secrecy just peeled away from me, and I sobbed and gulped and wailed. How could I refuse Max when he had suffered so much? Between wet, wheezy gasps I told her how Kathleen Hilyard came all the way from Phoenix, and how Julia and I had cried our eyes out when we heard how Nelson died, and how Kathleen had lost everything, even Nelson’s name, and all this got flummoxed up with what I felt for Terrence, and what he felt for me, and how we didn’t mean to fall in love, but we did. I was mopping my face with my hands, mascara all over my cheeks, and still she did not say a word. Not a single damned word, just let me blubber and weep till at last she turned onto Clara Bow Drive and pulled in behind the oleanders.

  She left the engine running. She was not crying now, though her perfect face was streaked with mascara. Ignoring everything I had just confessed, she said, “What if you get pregnant? Have you thought about that? A little chocolate drop of a baby?” Her voice was hard as little agates that she threw at me.

  “I won’t get pregnant.” I wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand.

&nb
sp; “We all say that.”

  “I’m not an unsophisticated fool. Julia took me to the doctor when I was in Paris. I have a diaphragm.”

  Irene laughed out loud. “And tell me, are you very careful and use it all the time?”

  I hung my head. “Why can’t people just love who they love? Why can’t I be in love with Terrence?”

  “Because there are things that are simply not done, no matter how much panache you have, or you think you have. I was so wrong about you. You are not a romantic. You are a goddamn fool, and you will come to sorrow, little sister.”

  “If I home-wrecked my way through a dozen married men, I wouldn’t be any worse than Leon or Gordon. If I committed fraud or larceny or . . . or . . .”

  “Those are acceptable human failings! Loving a Negro goes against the laws of nature.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Gravity is a law of nature; love is not. He loves me,” I insisted. “I love him.”

  “Are you really so stupid as to think that matters? You always say Hollywood is a house of straw, and you’re right! One gust from the Big Bad Wolf, and you are gone. One little ember, and you are gone. One rainstorm, and you are gone. Don’t you see? No one can save you. No one can save either one of you. You must end this affair.”

  “I won’t.”

  She seemed to quiver with outrage. “All right, then I don’t want to see you again, or talk to you, until you are finished with him. You choose.”

  Painfully I remembered giving Leon the ultimatum: Denise or me. Choose. I was firm with Irene, though not defiant. “I love him and I won’t give him up.”

  “Fine. Then you’ve made your choice. Now get out of my car.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I was wearing only a black satin slip late that night when I heard the Porsche rumble up behind the house. I stood in the open door looking at the moon, a low-lying gold coin melting into the sea. Terrence leapt up the stairs and pulled me against his body, his hands sliding over the satin, my hands loosening his tie, undoing his belt while we kissed and wove our way inside, kicking the door shut. His pants hit the bedroom floor and we fell on the bed together. I wrapped my leg around his and got his shirt unbuttoned and put my lips to his chest, licking, breathing in the scent of everything I loved about him. His hand stroked my bare leg to the place where I was dampest and he whispered, “What’s this, Little Liza?” And before I could answer he rolled underneath me, his hands guiding my thighs, and stroking my breasts, holding me firm till I cried out over and over again, and I flung my arms up high, my head back, like Galileo looking up at a whole new heaven.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Losing Irene felt like one of those Malibu mudslides where a whole chunk of my life had dropped off. Splat. For years we always had lunch together on Friday afternoons, and I always relied on her cool wit, her sophisticated insight. Besides, she was my sister. Jonathan, when I told him what had happened, took pity on me, insisting that he and I go for a drink at Ciro’s on Friday afternoons to cheer me up. He liked to go to places where he might be recognized, and his eyes darted around the smoky bar while I bemoaned the loss of Irene.

  “You know she’s right about Terrence,” he said without any special sympathy. He lit a cigarette and snapped the lighter shut. “You ought to break it off. He’s no good for you. You’re risking too much.”

  “We’re in love.”

  “Oh, come on, how many men have you kept around till they quit being amusing? Oh wait, I forgot. Terrence is not amusing. Don’t you ever get tired of his asking questions about what everything means?”

  “I like that he’s interested in what makes the world work.”

  “He doesn’t care how it works! He wants to change it.”

  “What’s wrong with that? I’d like to change it too.”

  “Look, Quacker,” he said, keeping his voice low, “he’s a Negro; you’re white. You can flout a lot of rules, but not that one. The point is, when you and Terrence get caught—and you will—you’ll lose everything. Not to be ironic, but you’ll be blacklisted. You simply cannot have a Negro boyfriend, Quacker. It isn’t done. It’s worse than anything you could possibly do.”

  “And love? What about being in love?”

  “What about it? Look at Diana Jordan. She’s been wiped off the face of the planet, hasn’t she? Irv got his revenge. Someone might do the same to you. I’m sure you’ve made enemies.”

  Diana Jordan’s fate was, to me, a living nightmare. Though Terrence and I seldom mentioned her or Booker, I know he felt the same. I lied outright. “I haven’t paid attention.”

  “Oh, well then, I guess you haven’t heard, have you? She finally got an appointment to see my father, and she went up to his office and flung herself at his feet, and said she was sorry about the black guy, she’d never go to another jazz club, and she would do whatever he wanted—whatever he wanted—to get another role in anything at all. Knowing my father, you can just imagine, can’t you, what he—”

  “I don’t want to. Just go on.”

  “So the word is now that MGM is looking for some nice young actor of Diana’s own age and race, someone they’ll take off the star-farm, so it will be good for his career too. Soon you’ll be reading all about it in Secrets of the Stars, how they fell in love and eloped! Surprise! And how they’ll be living in domestic bliss in the Hollywood Hills. Isn’t it romantic?” he added acidly.

  “Don’t you have any compassion? Diana will never be the same woman who took us to the Comet Club that night. How full of zest she was!”

  “She was full of sex, Roxanne.”

  “Terrence and I are in love.”

  “No one cares. It’s the sex people can’t stand.” Jonathan took a long, thoughtful drag on his cigarette. “Miscegenation and homosexuality are the unpardonable sins. No one gets forgiven for those sins.”

  With perfect timing (for me), Bob Mitchum walked into the bar. Conversations stopped, and as he passed by, people, even jaded Hollywood types, smiled and nodded. He recognized us, came over, gave me a quick, insincere kiss on the cheek, shook Jonathan’s hand, and moved on. After that our waiter was more attentive.

  “One day,” said Jonathan, “when I walk into a room, people are going to halt and stare just like that. But in the meantime, I’m still waiting to get offered roles like they give to Marlon Brando or Monty Clift. Natalie got me into a special screening of Rebel Without a Cause last week, and I have to say, I could have done anything James Dean did.”

  We clinked glasses, sadly acknowledging Dean’s death just the week before in a car crash. In a Porsche—a fact not lost on me. I moved the conversation back to Jonathan’s favorite topic. “You’re too sociable to be Marlon Brando, a brooding actor. All those Casa Fiesta parties? That’s hardly the mark of Hamlet.”

  “I’ve quit the parties. Bongo’s moved out.”

  “Really! Are you serious? When?”

  “Oh, a couple of weeks ago. I’m sick of feeding the leeches. People have been using me my whole life. I’m going to see an analyst now twice a week.”

  These revelations struck me as a vast change in Jonathan’s life, and I said so.

  “The shrink has made me see myself in a whole new light. I’m an Oedipal mess, ignored by Daddy, abandoned by Mummy. Oh and remember my father’s third wife? The one who seduced me.”

  “Please, don’t remind me.”

  “The analyst said I should quit trying so hard to please others.”

  “But your charm is one of your great assets, you Duckling.”

  “Charm I wax on old ladies like Elsie,” he scoffed. Then he brightened and did a scathing mimic of Elsie flirting with Phil Tobin at a recent Summit Drive dinner party. “Elsie’s so hot to get laid, even Denise thinks it’s hilarious. She makes fun of her all the time.”

  This was a sobering thought. “I thought she adored he
r mother. They were always a united front.”

  “I didn’t say she made fun of her to her face. Behind her back, of course. Sometimes school has to let out, and Denise just needs to play a little.”

  “Who with?” I asked, alarmed.

  “With me. We’re good together, you know?” He blew a lazy smoke ring, ordered another drink, and steered the conversation decidedly elsewhere, leaving me with the creepy feeling, Peter Lorre creepy, that Jonathan and Denise were closer than they ought to have been. I had watched him go through so many affairs, I could have believed a fling. But if it were a fling, why wouldn’t he just say he had bagged her? And Denise? Why would Mrs. Leon Greene bother with a measly actor, no matter how beautiful he was? I dismissed the whole thing as impossible.

  I returned to Clara Bow Drive, late afternoon, surprised to see a strange car parked behind the oleanders, and to find Thelma drinking coffee and chatting with a sallow, well-dressed, dark-haired matron. Thelma cleared her throat meaningfully. “Of course you remember Simon Strassman’s daughter, Susan.”

  I remembered her, but I certainly didn’t recognize her. Simon’s daughters were older than I, part of Irene’s crowd. Susan Strassman hadn’t so much aged as parched and puckered. She wore a dress cinched at the waist, the skirt and petticoats beneath so voluminous they brushed the doorway on either side as I escorted her into my office. Susan carried a sheaf of scripts that she set on my desk as she started off lavishing praise for my independence, a woman in a man’s business, how brave I was, the long connections between our two families, how her father used to tell her family how cute I was, how smart, how talented, blah blah blah. I listened, saying little. I knew what was coming. I just waited for her to get there. Thelma had gone home for the day by the time she finally did.