The Great Pretenders

by Laura Kalpakian

  “Clarence left?” I couldn’t have been more shocked if he had said the planets all fell from their orbits. “Did you fire him?”

  “I didn’t, but I would have fired him. I would have had to. He said unforgivable things to my wife.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Clarence at all.”

  “Denise apparently made some sort of derogatory remark about his nephew, the one you . . . Why, how this came up, I do not know, I wasn’t there, and Elsie isn’t the most reliable witness, and no one will tell me exactly what Denise said, but Clarence blew up and cursed her. They got into a terrible fight, and then he just walked out. No notice, no nothing. Just dropped his keys on the floor and walked away after thirty years.”

  He went on about Clarence’s disloyalty, about the domestic uproar following his desertion, but I scarcely listened. The news that Clarence had left Summit Drive struck me as inexpressibly sad, like the last sad domino falling from events I had set in motion. But I also could not suppress a little joyful sensation that Clarence had proved himself no Uncle Tom, and that Terrence would have been proud of him. After living for thirty years in a houseful of people addicted to dramatic gestures, Clarence had indulged in one of his own.

  The baby started wailing in earnest, and Leon said he had to go. “You’ll come to Summit Drive, Roxanne, won’t you? Come and visit Aaron?”

  “Of course,” I said, privately vowing that I would never go without Irene at my side.

  “Do you need money? I know you haven’t worked in months.”

  “I’m fine. I’ve got a job with Paragon. Carleton’s offered me a job.”

  He looked slightly crestfallen. “You could always come to Empire, you know. You could have any job you like there.”

  “I know. But I would always be in your shadow there.”

  “I suppose I understand that. Suppose I have to.” The baby squalled. “He’s definitely hungry. I should go.”

  “I’m so glad you came, and I am happy to meet your baby.” Together we walked outside and went down the stairs.

  The driver turned on the motor as soon as we turned the corner, and Mrs. Shea stepped out of the car. “Mr. Greene,” she cried. “I really must insist! His schedule! You’re going to upset his bowels. Oh, his little cap! What have you done with his cap?” She took the blanket-wrapped bundle from his arms as Leon dangled the cap before her. She snatched it and got back in the car.

  He turned for one last look at the sea, glancing at the garage. “I don’t remember a garage.”

  “I had it built,” I admitted. “You’re going to tear the place down anyway.”

  “I’m not going to tear it down as long as you are happy here, Honeybee.”

  “Oh, I’m happy here, Leon! I love this place! I’ve been so worried you were so angry, you were going to evict me.”

  “I’d never do that. It’s yours as long as you want to stay here. Can I ask one thing in return?”

  “Of course.”

  He stepped away from the car so Mrs. Shea would not overhear. “Don’t let my son grow up unloved. I need this from you, Roxanne. Promise me. When I die, please—”

  “You’re not going to die!”

  He put an arm around my shoulders and pulled me so close I could smell the baby-smell still on his cheek. “I want you to be part of Aaron’s life. Never let this little boy feel himself alone or uncared for. Love him, Roxanne, look after him. Irene doesn’t much love her own children; how can I ask her to love mine? Please teach him how to love others, how to be strong and loyal. Teach him how important it is to love. Teach him how to be careful about whose heart he breaks, and who he lets go of.”

  The regret in his voice was heartbreaking, but his words rang for me with an echo reverberating from the past. Life is short and love is long. Love is demanding and rewarding and aggravating, sometimes angering, but it is never finished or over, or done with, not even in death . . . Julia’s letter asking me to love Leon no matter what he had done.

  “Wait here just a minute, will you? I’ll be right back.” I raced up the stairs to the living room, and in the desk drawer I found the letter, the request that three years before I had ignored. I ran back down to PCH and placed it in his hand. “It’s a letter from Julia. She wrote it the month before she died. She sent it to me via Mr. Wilkie. She forgave you, Leon. She wanted you to know that. She wanted me to tell you she’d forgiven you, and I should have told you. I should have given you this letter years ago, but I couldn’t. I was too angry with you. I could not . . .”

  “Can we forgive each other, Honeybee?”

  “Of course. Of course we can. She wanted us to look after each other.”

  “And Aaron. Will you look after him? You’re the only one I trust. Will you do that?”

  “Yes. I promise,” I said, blubbering openly now. “Of course I will love him.”

  “Good.” He kissed my forehead and looked at me with the old affection that so used to cheer my heart. “I trust you to do the right thing. To be brave. You’ve proved that.”

  Astonished, stunned really at the significance of his compliment, since my actions had exacted such a toll on him, I just stood there, speechless, as he got into the Bentley. The driver turned the car around and headed south, leaving me in the midst of emotions so tangled I wrestled with them for days as I thought about the past—not what had actually happened to me, but what could have happened to me if I had not had Leon and Julia to love me, if I had not had Max and Simon and Nelson and Jerrold to cheer me through childhood. My life might have been as blighted as my right cheek. And yet I escaped being unloved, and that escape seemed to me suddenly miraculous, and I saw my life strangely, as if I had somehow survived a shipwreck that had cast others into the loveless deep.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  In that first month or so at Paragon, I made no new friends. Acquaintances, yes, but people were wary of me. As Terrence might have said, I didn’t take it personally. After all, my scandals, plural, were well known, still fresh, and had been widely, publicly aired. Plus, I was closely associated with rival Empire. Still, everyone knew I was the person who had brought Adios Diablo to Paragon. That picture and its massive budget were the studio’s great hope, and also, as everyone knew, its great gamble. But for the moment, only Carleton and I knew what he had planned for its 1957 release.

  Carleton made up a title for me, head of the Story Department, and I spent my days reading, vetting, making suggestions for scripts, shaping material, suggesting casting and directors, rather like the work that Julia did for Leon for years. I was relieved there were no more producers with burn-pocked couches in my line of work, and I confess, I liked being part of studio life, the camaraderie of staff meetings with people who, whatever their differences, all loved making movies. From my old life on Clara Bow Drive, I brought only Thelma and two of the paintings I had borrowed years before. (I bought these from the artist and returned all the others.) I had a swamp cooler in one window, and the sluggish wheel turned and blew damp air around on these hot August days. I had a big desk and a small conference area—couch, chairs, coffee table, and a bar, complete with ice trays in a little freezer and an electric percolator. And my own television set. Late afternoons Thelma and I often drank Campari and soda, or cold beers, and watched the half-hour series The Adventures of Robin Hood on the office television while we waited for the traffic to thin out. We couldn’t tell what scripts Max had written, because of course, all the writers’ names were fake, but we cheered the egalitarian principles each episode underscored. We sometimes left the building arm in arm singing the catchy theme song.

  Outside of Paragon, life meandered on. The Wilburs moved away, and construction crews came in, razed their house, and started building something far more grand, from the look of it. My subscription to the Challenger lapsed. I did not renew. Even Irene gave up trying to set up blind dates. I turned them all down. I put my
couture clothing in zipped plastic bags at the back of the closet. To be head of the Story Department at Paragon didn’t require anywhere near as much socializing as being an agent—no obligatory galas, very few parties, so mostly I just went to work and went home. In place of our old Friday-afternoon custom, lunch at the Ambassador, Friday nights Irene and I had dinner at her house. Josefina had charge of the children, and Gordon was seldom home, though when I saw him I was continually appalled at how haggard he looked. There wasn’t enough time in any one day to wield the kind of power Gordon Conrad now had, and there was never any time to shirk the ominous responsibilities that went with it.

  One hot night in August Irene and I sat by their pool after dinner drinking iced champagne with our feet in the water. Gordon meandered out to the patio, just home from work at nearly ten. Irene rose and kissed him on the cheek. She went to the patio bar, got him a glass, opened a fresh bottle with a practiced pop, and refreshed all our glasses. “Eudonna’s gone for the night, honey, but can I get you something to eat?”

  “I had something at the studio.” He took off his shoes and socks, sat down, and wearily put his pale feet in the water. “I had to stay extra late tonight because Leon brought the baby to the Executive Mansion today to show him off. Work came to a halt, of course, so everyone could bow down to the little prince.”

  “Did Denise come too?”

  “Hell no. That Irish nanny in her white uniform stood there like the commandant. But Denise came later in the afternoon.” Gordon lit a cigarette. “She loves waltzing in, and having everything come to a halt so everyone can fawn over her. ‘What can we get for you, Miss Dell?’ ‘Who do you want to see, Miss Dell?’ Denise will get what she wants, no matter the cost in time or money to anyone else. She didn’t even have an appointment with me, but she demanded that I drop everything—cancel a production meeting!—to sit there and listen to her berate me for an hour.”

  “What for?” asked Irene.

  “Where was the Joan of Arc script I had promised her? I tried to tell her they’re still—”

  “Joan of Arc!” I choked on my champagne so it almost came out my nose.

  “She’s convinced she missed her calling with those Jean Arthur, Carole Lombard sorts of comedies and that really, she’s a great dramatic actress.”

  “She couldn’t say oscilloscope! How is she supposed to lead the French to victory?”

  Gordon turned his gaze to me. His voice was even and acid. “I’d tell Denise Dell she was going to play the Virgin Mary and give birth to the light of the world. I’d tell her she was going to remake the rolling-on-the-beach scene in From Here to Eternity. I’d tell her she was going to play Ilsa in a new Casablanca. I’d swear to her that she would have lines like Bacall in To Have and Have Not, that we were rebuilding Rome on the back lot so she could play Cleopatra, that Mary Pickford will come out of retirement to kiss the hem of Denise Dell, America’s new sweetheart.”

  “You’re overworked, honey,” said Irene.

  “Goddamn right. There are days I wish I’d been a Red, and I’d be blacklisted and driven out of here forever. There are days I think I’ll just go down in my own goddamned bomb shelter and never come out.” His voice trembled with emotion. “Leon Greene was like a father to me, and like a good son, an obedient son, I stood by and watched him turn a great studio into an old man’s plaything. I didn’t question his judgment. I watched him demand loyalty oaths from everyone, but show no real loyalty himself. And now I’m the one who will bear the responsibility.” He poured more champagne and drank it all down at once. He stood up, and his wet, bare feet padded toward the house. “Glory days, girls, as we rumble toward ruin.”

  * * *

  • • •

  To knock or not to knock, that is the question. Did we just walk in like we always had, or were we guests? Irene and I both felt apprehensive. I had not been to Summit Drive since that awful day in May when Leon had said he was finished with me. Irene was tense, because Gordon’s health was cracking under the strain of his burdens at Empire, and Leon seemed not to notice, or if he noticed, he didn’t care. There, in front of the front door that had once graced a French château, we stared at each other. Finally we just opened the door and walked in. A new maid who recognized Irene met us in the foyer. Summit Drive without Clarence was strange, but I was glad he wasn’t there. I couldn’t have faced him again. Not after the last time.

  The maid led us to the French doors and pointed down to the tiered gardens, where Leon was pushing a baby carriage around the artificial lake. Mrs. Shea sat glowering under a nearby arbor. Irene and I waved and wandered downhill.

  Leon was delighted to see us both, and we strolled with him while he chatted about the baby’s many accomplishments. I hadn’t walked these paths with Leon since I was a child, and I had the sense that time had somehow dislocated, gone off its accustomed tracks, the unsettling sense of playing at being a grown-up, as if I’d donned one of Julia’s old hats and long silky shawls to put on a show for the swans.

  “Leon!” cried an imperious voice. I was alarmed to look up to the house and see Denise framed in the French doors.

  “I better go see what she wants,” said Leon.

  “We should leave,” we said more or less in unison.

  No sooner did Leon remove his hand from the baby carriage than Mrs. Shea instantly materialized. She consulted her watch. “The baby has another ten minutes for his walk. Then he will be fed.” The baby seemed to hear this and resent it and started to fuss as she resolutely pushed him down the path.

  The three of us walked back up the terraces to the house. We were about to say goodbye to Leon when Denise came down the stairs. She looked to have been poured into her dress, her bouffant skirt a lilac organza that lilted like a sail picking up a brisk wind.

  “Leon,” she said, flashing me a hateful look, “there was a phone call while you were out. Some relative of that Negro butler. She wanted to speak to you, but I told her we had no interest in anything she might have to say.” With a final, frosty glare at me, she turned and started up the stairs.

  “Why would Clarence’s relative be calling me?” Leon said to us.

  “Bad news or money,” said Irene, “or both.”

  At the thought of bad news, my heart seemed to tighten in my chest. What if Terrence . . . “You’ll call her back, won’t you, Leon?”

  “If it’s important, she’ll call back.”

  “Please, Leon. It was probably Clarence’s wife, Ruby. She owns Ruby’s Diner on Central Avenue. Please call and see what she wanted. For my sake. Please.”

  “All right, Roxanne. Let’s go to the library, and I’ll phone.”

  “I’ll wait here,” I said, feeling suddenly faint. I sat down in one of the Louis XVI chairs in the foyer.

  “This is stupid,” said Irene, after Leon had left us. “Why should we wait? Why do you care what Clarence’s wife wants? I thought that was all over with what’s-his-name.”

  “Terrence, Irene. His name is Terrence. It is over. He’s left the country. But if . . . if there was something important, if something has happened to him, they don’t have my number. They’d call here.”

  As we waited, Mrs. Shea wheeled the carriage in. The baby was squalling his little guts out by now. She lifted him out and carried him up the stairs as his wails amplified, echoing off the marble floors. They sounded eerie and lost.

  Leon was gone quite a long time, and when he came down the stairs at last, he seemed to cling to the rail. He was pale and grim as he said, “Clarence’s cancer returned. They operated, and just closed him back up. He’s dying.”

  Both Irene and I took a few minutes to absorb this awful revelation, though my feelings were complicated with crashing relief that Terrence was not hurt or in trouble.

  “Why would his wife call you?” asked Irene. “Clarence walked out on you.”

  “She didn’t
want to call. He did. I talked to him. He said he is a Christian and believes in forgiveness, and now that the end is near, he asked my forgiveness.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I said, of course, and thanked him for his years of service. He was a faithful servant. I said I’d never forget him. Besides”—he seemed to sigh—“Denise . . . might have started the fight with her unfortunate remark about his nephew.”

  “Terrence.” I didn’t want to shatter the peace I had achieved with my family, but I wasn’t going to pretend he was just some nameless nephew. “Can’t you, both of you, please just say his name?”

  “Terrence,” said Irene begrudgingly.

  And in the same tone, Leon echoed, “Terrence.”

  I gave the keys to Irene. I was too upset to drive. I tried to fathom what this moment meant to Terrence’s family. All those thirty Christmases that Clarence had stood at attention for the Greenes while his own family waited for him. How they must all begrudge us those Christmases, how Clarence himself must regret them as he now lay dying.

  Chapter Forty

  The vast Baptist church was packed, everyone stifling in the September heat, sweating in their dark suits and dresses, their black gloves. I too wore black: a black sheath, Julia’s pearls, and a broad-brimmed black hat that had been battered on the drive here with the top down. I arrived late due to traffic, and the choir was just finishing a hymn as I slid into the last pew at the back. Despite giving me some strange looks, people scooted together to make room for me in the pew. Far ahead, in the front, I could see the back of Leon’s head, his wiry gray halo of hair, and beside him, Denise’s bright blonde shingle. Irene and Gordon too sat there. They were not the only white people at the funeral, but they were the only ones up front with the family. Typical Leon.