The Great Pretenders

by Laura Kalpakian

  With a shriek I dashed to the front door and locked it, and Thelma ran to the back door, locked it, and closed all the kitchen windows. The two of us ran into the bathroom, the only room that had a lock on the door. We crouched down, our weight against the door, holding hands while we listened to the front window take a blow from something heavy and shatter. Other windows shattered too. The crashing seemed to go on forever. We heard male voices call out threatening phrases filled with dirty names. “Dirty Reds! Go back to Russia!” Then the sound of tires peeling out. Then nothing at all.

  We waited, crouched on the bathroom floor for fifteen minutes, fearing they might return. We got to our feet. We opened the bathroom door. The house was quiet. The neighborhood was quiet. We could hear birds. We came out of the bathroom and started slowly down the hall. The rooms that faced the backyard, the second bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom, they were untouched. The windows in my office that faced the front were broken and red paint had splashed inside, with broken glass and red paint gleaming across the desk and floor.

  We timidly made our way to the living room, where shards of broken glass and puddles of red paint lay everywhere, across the floor, across Thelma’s desk and her typewriter, splattered on the file cabinets and the furniture. The wet paint made awful little sucking sounds as it stuck to our shoes and we tracked it across the hardwood floors to the front door. I unlocked the door and opened it, and we gasped to find the long-decaying carcass of a dead dog lying there, and red paint all across the porch, the whole front of the house, glistening, still wet. Red paint spattered as well all over the MG, while lesser flecks dotted the Nash. The paint cans, still oozing, lay about. A big sledgehammer, itself covered in red paint, lay in front of the shattered front window. No point in calling the cops. We both knew that much.

  I remembered Max Leslie sitting knee-deep in the vandalized swimming pool, red paint swirling in the depths. I could hardly catch my breath. “We have to get out of here. Fast.”

  “We can’t leave without taking our files,” said Thelma. “Our files are incriminating, and they could come back, whoever they are.”

  “We can’t carry those cabinets.”

  “My nephews and my brother can. I’ll call. They’ll come right away.” Thelma went back inside, crying.

  I stepped over the dead dog. The flies stirred and buzzed. I walked over to the Silver Bullet as though I were afraid of waking it. No longer silver but streaked with red paint, inside and out. I gently traced my finger through the paint and remembered Max Leslie telling me I was too young to have a past I’d regret. Well, I was certainly old enough now.

  PART V

  The Oubliette

  1956

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Like the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, I had had the stuffing kicked out of me. I stuffed it back in, enough to get up and shamble haphazardly along, but without Terrence, without work, my life emptied of purpose. I bestirred myself enough to clean the seats and interior of the Silver Bullet by hand, and though they would never quite look the same, at least they weren’t visibly stained with red. But for the exterior, I had to find a place that would repaint the entire car without asking too many questions. I finally found one and explained that it was a sorority hazing gone awry, which seemed to satisfy the guy. A week later I had the car back, no longer silver gray but a dark green.

  Other than painting the car, the days, weeks of that early summer seemed to me blurred as though they got left out in the rain, mottled and muddied. Jobless, manless, unwashed hair, unshaved legs, and stinking of failure, I ate nothing but cornflakes and Hostess Sno Balls. I drank way more than was good for me. I slept way more than I should have, though I didn’t wake rested. I read books without pleasure, or even much comprehension. I played the piano, plunking out some of Terrence’s old tunes, vainly trying to ease the ache. The phone never rang except once a day when Thelma called to be sure I was still among the living. I moved the artwork that artists had lent me to the back bedroom. (Mercifully the red paint splashed across our furniture and desks had not reached the walls. Thelma’s brother and nephews rescued the artwork as well when they moved our file cabinets to Malibu.) Methodically I went through the file cabinets, and in the big stone fireplace, I burned anything that might incriminate anyone who had dealt in my subterfuges. I’d regret it at tax time, of course, but it seemed necessary now. Other than that, I dealt with the death of the Granville Agency in a truly immature and unprofessional fashion by leaving everything in the hands of Adam Ornstein, my attorney, who sent me stuff I had to sign. I signed it, sometimes without even reading it through. The past had been so hollowed out that I cared nothing for the future.

  I kept Terrence’s Royal typewriter on the table, beside the pictures of Julia and the music box. Sometimes I put my fingers over the keys, hoping to feel something of his presence; sometimes I put my arms around the typewriter, my head down, and breathed in the smell of ink and metal and ribbon. At night, I put the framed snapshots of the two of us under my pillow. I wore the gold bracelet day and night. I walked on the beach for miles, wearing dark glasses and a floppy hat. The Wilburs chained their dog up, and I could hear Bruno yelping. They kept him on a leash when they walked, and they always went south, away from me. I did not have to speak to them again. I missed their funny, eager dog.

  I went to matinees, if not matins. At least in the movies I could step away from loss and failure. I sat through cartoons and newsreels, coming attractions with their blaring voices and gaudy music. I watched Poverty Row’s offerings, including monster flicks by clients of mine and one of Art Luke’s gangster films. But I also saw The Searchers, and even if I didn’t like John Wayne, or John Ford, for that matter, I recognized an achievement when I saw it. I endured The Man Who Knew Too Much, and had “Que Sera Sera” etched on the brain. I saw Rock Around the Clock, and noted with some morsel of satisfaction that black and white musicians were actually playing together on the screen. That felt like a first.

  I waded into the ocean every day, not swimming, not exerting my body against the sea, just letting the swells roll over and around me, fling me toward the beach, and cough me out on the sand. One afternoon I encountered a fierce riptide that carried me far to the north. I fought it, swimming vainly toward the shore that I could see but could not reach. I wondered if I was going to die out there, carried out to sea. Though my energy flagged, I struggled, and I was absolutely spent when I could finally stand up in the waves, only to be knocked down again and again as if the sea itself wasn’t finished beating me up. Breathless and weakened, grateful to have escaped a watery death, I found myself on all fours, foam pooling around my hands and knees, remembering Terrence and the riptide, and how I had splashed into the waves, and we had rolled over and around each other, and how I had laughed to think of the rolling-on-the-beach scene in From Here to Eternity, and how at last I knew that experience. I wasn’t laughing now, but blubbering with heartache and exhaustion.

  I looked up, and in the distance I saw a figure on my porch, shimmering. I thought the rough ocean had shaken my brains loose, or that the afternoon light was playing tricks on my vision, but as I walked, staggered really, picking up my towel on the way, the figure on the porch did not evaporate. I cried out her name—“Irene!”—and flew up the stairs. I threw my arms around her.

  She held me close, half laughing, half crying, and brushed the salty, sandy mess I’d made from her crisp summer dress. “I told Gordon it just wasn’t fair to blame you for everything.”

  “I’m sure he disagreed.”

  “He did, but I don’t care. He ignores me when I tell him that he should work less, that he should let up, so I get to ignore him.”

  “Is he well now?”

  “He went back to the studio the day after he got out of the hospital. What does that tell you?”

  “That he’s not well and he doesn’t care.”

  She looked around, frowned to see the
snapshots of Terrence and me on the desk, but she did not comment. “Why are all your file cabinets stacked up here?”

  “What else was I going to do with them? I couldn’t leave them at Clara Bow Drive, not after what happened.”

  “Oh, yes. I have this for you.” She opened her purse. “It’s an eviction notice for Clara Bow Drive, and a big fat bill for fixing the broken windows, and removing the red paint and the dead dog. Melvin Grant sent it to me because I signed the lease.”

  In his letter, Melvin Grant also wrote that he had personally talked the city out of suing me for zoning infractions, and the bill for those services would be sent separately. At least I wasn’t evicted from this Malibu place. Ever since Leon had said he was through with me, I lived in fear of that.

  “Melvin Grant will have to get in line to get paid,” I said, flinging the letter to the desk. I went into the bedroom, peeled off my swimsuit, and put on some capris and a T-shirt. Sand still stuck to my skin.

  “Denise had her baby yesterday,” Irene called out. “A boy. Aaron Leon Greene.”

  “Leon must be ecstatic.” I came out, toweling the salt water from my hair.

  “Bursting with joy even though our uncle Aaron looks like a marshmallow with a face.”

  We both started laughing, and suddenly it seemed like old times as I got us two Cokes and we went outside. Sunshine and wind played over us, and we watched the distant surfers bobbing as Irene told me how she and Gordon had gone to the hospital with Leon and waited with him all night long while Denise went through labor.

  “When they put that baby in Leon’s arms, he started to cry, Roxanne. I have never seen him cry.”

  “Probably the last time he cried was in nineteen twenty-one when his first son died.”

  “He’s absolutely besotted with this baby, like a man under an enchantment.”

  “That’s what we used to say about him and Denise.”

  “Yes, well, Denise has no interest whatever in the kid. I mean, like none. She posed for pictures and that was it, handed him off to the nanny they’ve hired, and made a call to her hairdresser.”

  “Is the nanny one of Josefina’s sisters?”

  “Hell no. An Irish Catholic nanny. Mrs. Shea.”

  “Well, I’m glad Leon has the baby to take his mind off Empire’s woes.”

  “Oh, those have all fallen on Gordon. Leon has other problems. The Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals is debating a motion to evict him from the organization.”

  I felt my spirits collapse all over again, and I writhed inwardly. “I had not heard. Leon must be . . . I made a big mistake with Charlie. I should not have trusted him.”

  “You never should have done it at all. Any of it.”

  Perhaps this was true, but in these weeks I’d come to realize that taking on Max’s work had proved to be the single most important decision of my adult life. Everything joyful, or shattering, the heights of happiness, the depths of despair, they were all allied to that one moment. Without Fly Me to the Moon I would not have had that lunch appointment at Pierino’s when I took the MG to Reg’s and Terrence drove me into town. I would not have gone to Casa Fiesta to insist that Jonathan audition for the role of Professor Bleeker, nor ended up at the Comet Club. I would never have seen Terrence again, felt his arms around me as we danced, or his embrace amid the brawl. Would not have fallen a little bit in love with him that very night. Certainly I would not have heard from Kathleen Hilyard, from Susan Strassman. And now? What had actually emerged from all those choices? What had happened to all those people I cared for? Thelma had told me Max was living in a squalid bedsit in England; Marian, homeless, was staying with Thelma indefinitely. The Granville Agency was utterly dead. My writers were disgraced, and worse, suspect, possible frauds fronting for Reds. Thelma was unemployed, probably unemployable. Like Basil Rathbone on the moors, creditors howled after me like the hound of the Baskervilles. My own grandfather had declared himself finished with me, and I had so totally lost the man I loved that I had no idea where he had gone.

  As if reading my mind, Irene observed tartly, “Jonathan sure came out of this smelling like a goddamned rose, didn’t he? The only one. How did that happen?”

  “I don’t know. Fortune favors the bold?”

  “You don’t hear from him at all?”

  “I might never hear from him again. Jonathan’s an opportunist, like Denise, and opportunity presented itself. He’ll never look back.”

  “Oh, Denise might have met her opportunistic match in Jonathan, all right. And more than that.” Irene made tsk-tsk sounds and rolled her eyes.

  “Do you think . . .”

  “I do,” she said crisply. “So does Gordon. But there’s certainly no proof, and absolutely no point in discussing it. Ever.”

  “I agree. Leon deserves his happiness with this new Aaron Greene.”

  She picked up her handbag. “I have to go. By the way, you look awful. I don’t mean just like you washed out of the ocean like a piece of driftwood, which you did. What happened to all that L’Oiseau d’Or panache? Have you forgotten everything Julia taught you?”

  “My L’Oiseau d’Or days are over. The Granville Agency is over. I’m a has-been at the ripe old age of twenty-five.”

  “Oh, don’t be so dramatic. You’ll think of something. You were never like the rest of us, just standing around waiting to get plucked and put on the marriage shelf. Oh no, Roxanne, you are complicated, but you are never dull. You are reckless and romantic, but you are always interesting.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Well, you would be if you cleaned yourself up and did something with your hair. Get it cut.”

  “I don’t go anywhere.”

  “Get it cut anyway.”

  I put my tanned hand on her pale arm. “Don’t leave. Please. It’s so good to see you again.”

  She glanced at her watch. “I have to. I have an appointment with the principal at Junior’s school. They don’t want him back next year, so I have my checkbook at the ready. I can’t bear the thought of finding yet another school for him. Come to dinner on Friday.”

  “Gordon won’t much like that.”

  “Don’t worry. He may not even be home. Sometimes days go by and I only see him in the mornings, sometimes he’s gone to the studio before I even get up. He’s killing himself. If he is there on Friday, you’ll be good for him, give him something else to get twisted about besides the studio. Besides, you’ll be good for me. Come early and let’s play tennis. You want to come to Tahoe next month with me and the children and Josefina?”

  “No. But thanks.”

  “Oh, by the way, Carleton Grimes from Paragon Pictures called Gordon asking for your home number.”

  “What for?”

  Irene shrugged. “Maybe he really does want to have an affair. You could use a good affair.”

  “I thought you didn’t approve of adultery.”

  “You could use a good affair,” she repeated.

  “Not in the mood, sorry.”

  “Oh, you will be.”

  I walked Irene out to her car without contradicting her, but I knew, if she did not, that I was barely upright, that my heart was broken and my imagination might never be equal to another man, or another man equal to my imagination.

  I came back inside and sat with my arms around the Royal for a while, till I heard a fluttering sound and looked up to see a moth bashing itself against the window. I moved swiftly to shoo it away and accidentally knocked the music box to the floor. I was sad to see that the bottom had popped off, and the workings lay scattered on the floor. Amid the tiny wheels there was a gold wedding band and a little envelope, the sort that might have been a baby announcement, with the words Aaron Leon Greene, 1917–1921 in Julia’s handwriting. Inside there was a lock of light brown curly hair tied with a thin, faded blue r
ibbon. The ring, I recognized, was the plain gold band Julia always wore, the one Leon had given her in 1911 before there ever was an Empire Pictures. I started to cry. For all her jewels, her antiques, the cars, the clothes, the furs, the Paris apartment, the Matisse on the wall, clearly these two things were her dearest possessions, and she kept them, secret, in the music box that had been a gift from me. I wept the harder, loving her, missing her, but as I dried my eyes, I could not help but wonder how she would have absorbed the news of another Aaron Leon Greene. Denise’s son to have that name? Julia’s heart would have split into tiny fragments. I put the ring, the lock of hair, and the scattered workings back in the music box that would never again play another tune.

  * * *

  • • •

  A couple of days later, taking a break from pasting Green Stamps in the little book, I went out to the battered mailbox on PCH. Along with the usual bills and bad news, I found a typewritten French aerogramme with no return address. I tore it open, and my heart leapt with joy. Terrence hadn’t gone back to Alabama! He was in Paris.

  Dear Roxanne,

  Mr. Branch sent me newspaper clippings about Charlie and your troubles. He asked me to tell you that you did a brave thing finding fronts for friends who had suffered injustice. I’m writing to say how sorry I am about the agency. I know how hard you worked.

  As you can see, I followed Jerrold Davies’ advice and came here to write a book, to get distance between me and everything I’ve ever known. The French I learned from you isn’t much use to me here in ordinary life, so every day is an adventure. At first I stayed in a crappy hotel on the rue Jacob, but then I met some bad cat musicians who had a summer gig in Nice, so I sublet the drummer’s tiny Montparnasse apartment. It has a hot plate and a sink, and at least I don’t have to share a bathroom. I wash clothes in the bidet. But in Paris no one cares where you live, and no one cares what you drive—no one has a car anyway. Everyone really lives in the cafés and bars. The Left Bank cafés are like theaters, and for the price of an aperitif you can watch for hours, and meet Americans you would never meet anywhere else. They’re all writers, or they edit literary magazines or write for one, or they’re stringers. I’ve sold some freelance pieces, but the book I’m writing takes most of my energy.