It haunted him, and her heart went out to him, knowing that he wasn’t free of it because no matter how hard we try, Vera reflected, no one can fully escape the unfinished business of the past.
“I’ve thought about him. But I wouldn’t know where to begin . . . or if he’s even alive.” Sasha paused, giving his next words gravity. “And he might not want to be found.”
Vera felt the pressure of his hand, its heat seeping into hers, and her heart ached at the thought of Lucie feeling this way too, convinced that Vera had abandoned her for a lack of love, when nothing was further from the truth.
Vera said that sometimes people had to make choices they later regretted with every fiber of their being. “Who knows what your father was up against?” she added, breaking into a half-hearted smile. “You know this better than anyone—with your conflicted heroes who often do the wrong thing, eaten away by guilt.”
“I guess, you’re right,” Sasha admitted, squeezing her hand for a moment before releasing it.
She stared at the ribbon, a red streak in the center of her palm. Sitting here at the kitchen table, hearing lawn mowers droning in the distance, a car door slamming out front, the stillness of the morning light and the weight of the gift in her hand attempted to repair a moment from the past: reading the newspaper in her kitchen, the bright green morning streaming through the windows, Pauline and Conrad playing tennis next door, the ball slamming against the wooden fence—“Sorry!” they yelled out carelessly—while she kept reading in a state of numb shock about the massacre, the floor flying out from under her. But she felt differently now, in this moment pulsating with faith, with all that was not yet lost.
“Listen,” Sasha said, cutting through her thoughts. “I know someone who could help you. His name is Gussie Lustiger. He’s a French kid, fought in our outfit, but he’s in the Resistance, did a lot of translating and scouting . . . The point is, he’s back in Paris now. I have a hunch he could at least point you in the right direction to tracking her down. I contacted him. He’s making inquiries.” Sasha explained that Gussie couldn’t write much, it was still too risky, but Gussie guessed that hundreds of children were still in hiding all over the country. “Once you get there, talk to him, he’ll have names, I’m sure, people you need to contact, places you should go.”
“Sasha!” She threw her arms around him, and he pulled her onto his lap. Maybe Lucie was hiding in a barrel, as Malka Mannerfelt, Elsa’s youngest niece, had done for over a year. Maybe in a Polish hayloft, like Paul. Maybe. Various scenarios rushed through her now, but she couldn’t speak; her voice was trapped in her throat, knotted with fear and yearning.
Chapter 34
SASHA
May 1945, Los Angeles, California
The next afternoon, Sasha drove over to MGM, his palms sweating on the leather steering wheel, still processing what Charlie had cryptically relayed over the telephone this morning: L. B. Mayer, the most powerful studio head in Hollywood, wanted to meet him. Apparently, he’d seen an advance screening of Clementine and was intrigued. Sasha had pressed, “What do you mean, ‘intrigued’? Did he like it?” and Charlie had shot back, “Do you think he sits down to discuss movies he doesn’t like?” Charlie then told him that many of his writer clients, some of whom were quite successful, had been working in this town for years without once treading on Mayer’s snowy white carpet. “What I’m trying to say is: don’t fuck it up.” And then the line went dead.
Because of Mayer’s tight schedule, the meeting had to take place this afternoon, at three o’clock. As he drove over there, Sasha’s thoughts careened between trying to anticipate what Mayer would say and Vera. The conversation they’d had in the kitchen yesterday morning replayed in his mind, revealing a growing desire to go with her and help her navigate the ruins of Europe. But the feeling was new and unformed; he didn’t trust it enough yet to propose the idea.
When the guard waved him through the Culver Gate, his body tensed up with renewed nervousness as he thought over his plan for pitching The In-Between Man to Mayer. Charlie had submitted the script to MGM a while back, and they had passed, but now, maybe he could convince Mayer. This could be his only shot to talk about The In-Between Man in his own words to one of the only men in Hollywood who could make it happen.
On the lot, Sasha walked past New York Street, leafy and lined with brownstones, and next to that, a bombed-out European street, complete with loose cobblestones and grinding tanks, the director shouting at some AD through a bullhorn to get more snow. Taking in the re-created war scene, he wondered if Mayer saw through the loads of mistakes he’d made as a first-time director on Clementine. Or maybe it was the writing that Mayer liked and not the directing, which pricked Sasha with doubt, his dream of directing another picture, of doing this steadily as a real job and not just as a one-time lucky shot because he’d saved Lambert’s kid on Omaha Beach, a delusion.
Quickening his pace, he ran through his pitch, reciting some key points under his breath: “This is a picture about America after the war, struggling to put itself back together again, and about all the men who fought in it now returning to normal life. After witnessing such horrors, how do they wear a suit and tie, ride the train to the office every morning and come home at night to a family, a wife, dinner waiting on the table? This is a story for them, and for our country. For all of us.” He stopped short, letting a flock of showgirls pass, their sequined feathered costumes flashing in the sun. Before he crossed the street, a silver Rolls-Royce lumbered by with Clark Gable in the back seat dressed as a sea captain.
* * *
• • •
Sitting in the waiting room of Mayer’s office, he felt intimidated by how grand and gleaming everything looked, as if every chrome door handle had just been polished, every green lawn outside mowed to perfection. His mother would have been impressed by the private elevator, the wood-paneled waiting room, the battalion of secretaries speaking at a library whisper while they typed away, and the overwhelming sense of power that vibrated behind every heavy door, as if the longer he lingered in these halls, the better the chance he might just catch some of it. Fleetingly, he thought about the last time he’d called his mother, just a few days ago, and Doris had picked up, saying his mother wasn’t at home but at the doctor. When he pressed for more details, she said, her voice dropping a register, “She hasn’t been feeling her best,” before adding, “I’ll tell her you called, dear.”
* * *
• • •
When one of the secretaries ushered Sasha inside the office, he glanced up to find a plaque hanging over Mayer’s door engraved with MGM’s famous motto—Do It Right, Do It Big, Give It Class—and again, the thrill of being admitted into this world, however temporarily, ran through him like an electrical current. The white leather walls, white marble fireplace, and white grand piano amounted to an intentionally blinding brightness after the dim waiting room, and striding through the door, Sasha felt the plushness of the cream carpet under his shoes. Before him, a fortress-like marble desk curved around Louis B. Mayer, who sat with his hands folded in front of him, contemplative yet also ready to strike, Sasha thought. Four white gleaming telephones, all within his reach, waited to ring.
In front of the desk, a lone leather chair.
Mayer gestured for him to sit, a thin smile playing on his lips. He held out his small well-manicured hand, barely reaching across the wide expanse of the desk as if the gesture alone should suffice.
Sasha shook it. A fleshy, warm hand.
“Sasha Rabinovitch, wonderful to meet you. Wonderful.”
“You as well, Mr. Mayer.”
Mayer threw up his hand in an effete gesture.
A figurine of a golden horse hovered at the edge of the desk, along with a fountain pen in its ink pot. Behind Mayer, on the credenza, various photographs encased in heavy silver frames stared back at him: Herbert Hoover. J. Edgar Hoover. Cardinal Spellman before a
crowd.
Mayer settled sideways into his chair, crossing one gabardine pant leg over the other. “You’re from the old country.”
“Yes.” Sasha shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He gulped down air, suddenly nervous again. “We came over in ’22.”
“What part?” Mayer asked.
He didn’t want to talk about the old country, but Mayer seemed intent on unrooting some common thread between them, no matter how insignificant.
“Riga. You?”
Mayer shrugged. “Belarus.”
Sasha nodded, his anxiety mounting.
“And I hear you got a Purple Heart fighting over in Europe.”
“That’s right.”
“Ah,” Mayer said, and Sasha willed him not to ask more, not wanting to talk about any heroics when the war was a bloody mess; some made it out, some didn’t. Distracted for a moment, he ran a hand over his clean-shaven face and felt the tiny nicks along his chin that he’d patched over with little pieces of toilet paper. While speeding up Venice Boulevard on the way here, he’d discarded the pieces into the warm wind.
Mayer began to speak, but then a female voice cut through the intercom, “Dr. Marmorston on line two.” One of the white telephones rang, and Mayer picked up. “Put her through,” he barked. His voice softened into a cloying gentleness. “Hello, Doctor.”
After the call, he poured himself a thimble of scotch from the bar caddie behind his desk, offering Sasha one.
“That was one of my doctors, a specialist in the endocrine glands. Force of nature. Dark, powerful, beautiful. What a woman.” He laughed to himself, as if recalling a particularly erotic episode. “So,” Mayer said, swiveling his giant white leather chair to face Sasha. “I’m impressed. Clementine was a good little picture that you made on a shoestring budget, and the performances are gold.”
“Uh-huh,” Sasha managed, wondering where this was leading, and readied to launch into his pitch.
Mayer took a breath, but then Sasha cut in, unable to contain himself, “So I wrote this script, I know your people might have read it once, but—”
Mayer swatted away his comment, his impatient hand slicing through the air, his grandfatherly eyes glinting with mischief as he pulled out the coverage on The In-Between Man. He started reading aloud: “‘This picture is highly un-American, showing our boys, who risked their lives over there, in a bad light. No one wants another war film, especially not one as pessimistic and unpatriotic as this thing.’”
Mayer stopped reading and tossed the coverage aside. “I guess we better make this damn script of yours. And you’re gonna direct it.”
Sasha held his breath, trying to contain his racing pulse. Mayer’s words were so surreal, he almost feared he misheard them.
Seeing his confusion, Mayer grinned. “Charlie knows how much I wanna steal Humphrey Bogart away from Warner. So he passed Bogie The In-Between Man, and Bogie loved it. He wants to star in it, on the condition that there’s a part for Bacall. They just got married.” Mayer took a breath. “Charlie said great, but only if you direct, and we make it.”
His heart beating in his ears, Sasha managed, “When do we start?” Charlie hadn’t even hinted at this, giving him a hell of a surprise, and Sasha could already hear Charlie’s satisfied laughter rippling over the telephone line later today, when Sasha would call him.
“Bogie’s available end of August. He’s wrapping up a little picture with Bernhardt right now, at Warner’s, about a guy who tries to kill his wife but doesn’t succeed . . .” Mayer grunted.
Then he pulled out a box of cigars for Sasha. “Havanas.”
“Thank you,” Sasha said, plucking one out.
Mayer smiled thinly, revealing a row of little carnivorous teeth. Then he stretched out his hand to shake on it. “Welcome to the big leagues, kid. Don’t blow it.”
* * *
• • •
Sasha walked out into the brash sunlight. A clutch of women in nurse outfits waited outside a sound stage, extras for a hospital scene. He smelled orange juice in the air, and watched a cheerful group of children heading toward the MGM schoolhouse, all of them child stars on long-term contracts. White rosebushes lined the sidewalks, and hummingbirds trembled before him and flitted away. The colonial-style schoolhouse, the vintage streetlights, and the modern commissary done up in the current streamlined décor all presented a unified front of effortless luxury. It was a city within a city, and he could see why people lived here and went to school here, and never wanted to leave.
He got into his car and started the engine.
Switching on the radio, that peppy Dick Haymes song “In My Arms” was playing again, and he switched it off. Driving down the wide-open boulevard toward the ocean, into a dry soft wind, the excitement of making his dream script was mixed with fresh confusion, leaving him unsure of what he should do. Part of him wanted to go with Vera to France. Before this meeting, he’d imagined the possibility of writing over there, and helping her connect with Gussie and his old colonel, Taylor, who could also be useful. But now the choices tore at him; if he left for France, he would threaten his one, possibly only chance of directing in Hollywood with the most powerful studio in town. He’d been chasing this moment for years, never quite managing to gain entry into the inner sanctum of success. And now the door had opened: all he had to do was walk through it.
And if he did this, he might lose Vera forever.
Chapter 35
VERA
May 1945, Santa Monica, California
The streets came alive with celebration, manic with the news that Hitler and Goebbels had committed suicide. Vera’s heart hammered in her chest, anticipating the official German surrender and, with that, a free, unoccupied France. Her mind swirled with what would help her find Lucie, and what she could bring for her. She thought of the mint-green dress, stowed away in the closet of the house she had shared with Max. No, she wouldn’t take it. She shouldn’t even touch it, adhering to the Jewish custom of never buying anything for an unborn child, or even giving the child a name until eight days after the birth, because such arrogance would summon the Angel of Death. In part, she blamed herself for buying that dress for Lucie, and planting roses in the front garden, and her plan to repaper Lucie’s future bedroom after D-Day, when she had imagined Lucie home, but it was this misguided certainty during those first June days that signaled the Angel of Death, like a bell in the night, to cause the massacre. Of course, Vera knew this was impossible. She didn’t have that kind of power, no one did, but logic began to slant and leer at her with its gimlet eye, whispering suggestions in the predawn hours, when her defenses were down, convincing her that she had failed as a mother, and the failure was irreparable, eternal.
Vera recalled her Gentile friends buying trunk loads of white lace layettes, arranging the nursery with utter confidence that soon a real baby would exist there, staring up at a mobile of stars from an elaborate wooden crib. Jews could never afford to be so sure, so certain that their children would live. Perhaps this was why so many Jewish songs were composed in a minor key, a current of melancholy running beneath every good, hard-won thing. Max once explained this as they listened to Schoenberg’s Kol Nidre at the Hollywood Bowl on a warm November night. She looked back with nostalgia at that time, when she still received letters from Agnes, when France still ran through her blood, when she still believed it was home.
A part of her wanted to see Max and to talk to him about the return, to ask what he thought. He might point out details she had overlooked, or mention people she had long forgotten who could help, but she stopped herself from indulging in this fantasy. He wanted nothing to do with her, or with France. His survival depended on it, and to protect him, she left him alone.
* * *
• • •
That night, Vera and Sasha went out to celebrate with Charlie and Jean: the German surrender was surely imminent, Sasha was go
ing to get to direct The In-Between Man—for MGM, no less—and a trial screening of Clementine had been well received. At Perino’s on Wilshire Boulevard an ambient peach glow bathed the curving banquettes and saturated-pink tablecloths, the vested waiters circulating among the tables. With the low-hanging chandeliers and blush carpet, the place felt like an exclusive living room for the rich and famous, a place where Jean and Charlie seemed entirely at ease. Vera sat next to Sasha, holding his hand under the table. Every so often, they would exchange a look full of all that they felt, knowing that this was probably one of their last nights together. Today, she had packed and sorted in a panic, worrying over small things such as what gloves to bring, or how many pairs of stockings she would need, to mask much larger, looming anxieties: Leaving Sasha and America behind, maybe for good. Whether she would find any trace of Lucie. And France, her beloved country, now so changed, so corrupted . . . She could barely stand to think of it. Yesterday had been her last day working at the EFF. The other women threw her a small celebration, with flowers and champagne arranged on her desk, a surprise when she returned from lunch. She was moved by their generosity, knowing she would miss them, after the many months they had worked alongside one another. She still felt their tight embraces, their smooth silky blouses and reassuring floral perfume. Breathing deeply, she squeezed Sasha’s hand, trying to focus on the dinner conversation. Charlie discussed casting for The In-Between Man, and Sasha said he was hoping to get Edward G. Robinson to play one of Bogie’s old war buddies, but he wasn’t sure if they could get him. Charlie remarked, “He’ll want to do it. Trust me.”
Jean gave Vera a sardonic wink. “He said the same thing to me, and now look where I am.”
Charlie elbowed Sasha, “Hey, did I ever tell you the story about Jean and Louis B. Mayer in Paris?”
Those Who Are Saved Page 25
