Hollywood

by Gore Vidal

  “I meant in the Wilson footage.”

  “Oh, that.” She sounded more vague than she intended.

  “You’re not. I’m off to bed.”

  “No.” Emma Traxler made a weary reappearance on the scene. “I’m sorry. I’ve had a hard day. The Griffith studios aren’t available after all.”

  Tim stopped at the connecting door to his suite. “Work’s always hard if you’re not used to it.”

  “What an unusual observation to make to me,” said Caroline Sanford, the first self-made woman newspaper publisher in the world. “I am supposed to be an inspiration to every suffragette in the land.”

  “Your face … ?”

  “My newspaper.”

  “Good night.” He was gone. Habit, thought Caroline, counted for more than love. Could she do without the habit of Tim? As she stared at the dark row of prancing elephants in the gray moonlight, the musical horn of a foreign-made car sounded below her in Sunset Boulevard, like a motif in a romantic opéra-bouffe. But what was Emma Traxler but a figure from Offenbach? Now in danger of turning into one from Strauss, the Marschallin. She had better turn back into her true self, if there was such a thing left. As if to remind herself of that true self, she picked up the latest stack of pages from her daughter, an excited testimonial to Caroline’s perfect failure as a mother.

  Apparently, Tim’s new picture would be picketed by anti-Communists, while Emma Traxler was on a list of suspect Americans. Emma Sanford wrote page after page about the wonders of living in a free country while exulting, simultaneously, in all the publications that her group had managed to shut down as well as teachers fired, politicians defeated, labor organizers imprisoned. The child was mad. Was the country, too?

  Caroline had no real sense of the new United States or, indeed, of the old. She had known the most rarefied of American society, the Hearts of Henry Adams; and she had delighted in the District of Columbia and, most lately, in the exciting unreality—even surreality—of Hollywood; but what, finally, did she know of the actual Americans, starting with her daughter and son-in-law? Were there many others like them out there, with lurid dreams of absolute conformity to some rustic ideal? True, the sometime peasant nation had finally encountered civilized old Europe at last, and Europe had offered it war and revolution and Bolshevism. No wonder the real and would-be peasants were distressed. But what was the true origin of their mindless panic? What were Americans afraid of? She wished Henry Adams were alive to explain it all. But then in lieu of his comforting presence and wisdom, she tore up her daughter’s letter, and threw the pieces into a wastebasket. She felt nothing at all about her own child. But then Mlle. Souvestre had always said that when a woman’s daughter is no longer a child but fully grown and married, the two women, even though one be demi-creatrix of the other, are wise to part.

  Caroline finished her tea and went into the bedroom so seldom visited now by Tim. Plainly the time had come to renew herself; this time with William Desmond Taylor. After all, the clock never ceased to tick even when she was not aware of it. Somehow or other, most of the day was now quite gone.

  NINE

  1

  Jess enjoyed the bright April sun rather more than he did the New York Times editorial that he was reading. “Harding is eliminated. Even if his name is presented to the convention …” Jess felt the saliva beginning to drool down his chin; he wiped it off with the Times and hoped he hadn’t smudged his face. At the far end of the front porch, the candidate himself was seated, talking to the folks who wandered by. All in all, the last two primaries had been discouraging. Harding had carried Ohio as a native son, but even so, General Wood with all of his unfair millions of dollars had acquired—bought was more like it—nine of the state’s forty-eight delegates, and, unkindest blow of all, Daugherty himself had failed to be elected a delegate.

  A week later, at Daugherty’s insistence, Harding had entered the Indiana primary. Wood, Johnson and Lowden had all run ahead of W.G., who managed to win only two of fifty-six counties. Jess knew the reason. There was, simply, no money for Harding. The rich bankers and Roosevelt men were financing Wood, and Mrs. Lowden was financing Governor Lowden. Jess and his co-chairman Daugherty had raised barely a hundred thousand dollars against all those millions, and that was why the New York Times could now write magisterially, “… everyone will know that he is an impossible candidate.” Although W.G. had been deeply distressed by Indiana and spoke, in public, of his own impossibility as a candidate, in private, he was surprisingly serene. “This will all come my way, barring divine intervention,” he had told Daugherty and Jess, while the Duchess, reinforced by more astrological bulletins from Madame Marcia, agreed.

  Harding’s strategy was to be himself. He had particularly ingratiated himself with Lowden by promising not to go after any of his delegates, and the grateful Lowden had reciprocated. Harding had done some simple adding and subtracting and come to the conclusion that if no candidate could be nominated on the first ballot, everyone’s number two would win on the hundredth, or however many ballots were needed. So he would see to it that he was everyone’s second favorite. Daugherty had accepted the strategy, and the two men had quietly crisscrossed the country, ingratiating themselves to everyone and disturbing no one.

  “Jess.” Jess put down the Times and there, to his horror, was Carrie Phillips. She was elegantly got up, he noted, with the eye of a fellow dry-goods dealer and arbiter of fashion.

  “Carrie Phillips,” Jess whispered so that W.G., whose back was to them at the far end of the porch, would not hear or, God forbid, the Duchess, who was inside busy telephoning, her principal activity these days.

  “I thought you weren’t coming round here now.” Jess’s rocking chair was at the porch’s edge, and he was able to lean over so that their heads were practically touching.

  “Oh? I was just out for a stroll, that’s all. It’s a free country.”

  Jess knew that a “final” exchange of letters had passed between Carrie and W.G. For one thing, Jim now knew everything. For another, though the press had as yet shown no special interest in Harding’s campaign, there was always the danger that an ambitious reporter might do some snooping before the convention and what with everyone in Marion knowing everyone else’s business, W.G.’s image of a good family man might easily be altered to … to the Satyr of the Chautauqua, thought Jess wildly.

  “I just wanted to sneak by and say hello. That’s all. See? I’m on tiptoe.” So, on tiptoe, Carrie approached W.G., who was now alone in his rocker at the other end of the porch, reading not the Times editorial but the sports page. When he saw Carrie, he beamed. But she put her finger to her lips and whispered something that caused him to lean forward, head lowered, hand clutching the porch rail. Now their heads were together; and Jess felt ill. What would Daugherty say? What would the Duchess do?

  The Duchess said nothing at all, which was most ominous. Instead, she appeared in the doorway to the house and, for a long moment, glared at the adulterous couple. W.G., as if he had eyes in the back of his head, which indeed he may well have had when it came to his wife, sat back in his chair but did not turn around or otherwise acknowledge the appearance of the Duchess on the scene.

  Carrie continued to talk in a low voice to W.G., ignoring the Duchess, as well as the feather-duster that suddenly came hurtling her way. Then the Duchess, now very red in the face, stepped back inside to collect a metal waste-basket, which she aimed with astonishing accuracy at Carrie, who leapt quickly to one side, while continuing her conversation with W.G., who was now looking back over his shoulder at the Duchess.

  As Florence Kling Harding went back inside for more ammunition, Jess looked around to see who was watching this spectacle: several old citizens of Marion, used to such displays, and an unfamiliar well-dressed man, who stared in horror at this domestic scene. Jess prayed that he was not a newspaperman.

  The Duchess returned, holding in her arms a four-legged piano stool whose swivel-seat was of considerable weight. W
ith the strength, as it were, of ten, the Duchess hurled the homely piece of household furniture at Carrie. En route, the stool narrowly missed the handsome head of Ohio’s famous and, literally, favorite son, and only by a ballet leap to the right did the golden adulteress avoid concussion. Overcome by force majeure, Carrie graciously blew a kiss at Harding, and sauntered down Mount Vernon Avenue, enjoying the spring sunshine. The triumphant Duchess withdrew. She had said not one word; nor had she any reason to when her actions were so eloquent.

  With some dignity, Harding had got to his feet, and said, to his wife’s back: “Florence, this is not becoming, not seemly at all.”

  Later that day Daugherty arrived in Marion, and Jess reported everything, as they sat in the bar of the newly restored Old Heidelberg, where whisky in teacups was available to regular customers in contravention of the Eighteenth Amendment that prevented the American citizen, whose fundamental charter assured him life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, from drinking alcohol. Jess, who was not a constitutional scholar, did wonder, from time to time, how the U.S. could be, as everyone knew, the freest country on earth when there was a government busy prohibiting whatever it thought people shouldn’t have. In Europe, it was said, the decadent old races were laughing at their recent saviors. Fortunately, every town had its Old Heidelberg, and Jess sipped at Scotch whisky from Canada, while Daugherty said, “We’ve got to get her—and him—out of town until after the convention. No!” The brown eye blinked fiercely while the blue eye was tranquil. “Until after the election.”

  “Him? W.G.?”

  “No. No. Jim Phillips. He knows everything, and it beats me why Carrie keeps coming around like this unless …”

  “They want to be paid off?”

  Daugherty nodded. “Of course this’d come at a time when we’ve spent just about everything.”

  “What about Ned McLean?”

  But Daugherty’s active mind had moved on to other subjects. “Jake Hamon’s worth a million to us down in Oklahoma. But his price is a third of the Navy oil lands, and I don’t see how we can promise that.”

  Jess had been immensely impressed by the large loud Oklahoma oil man with his showy mistress and extravagant ways. But Jess had seen no reason to trust him; neither did Daugherty. “W.G.’s counting on a deadlock.” Daugherty was thoughtful. “If Wood and Lowden get stuck they’ll stay stuck and there’s no compromise except W.G.”

  “Johnson?”

  “Never. He’s a red rag to the conservatives. But W.G. figures that maybe a quarter, maybe more, of the delegates will remember him from four years ago when he made that great speech to the convention. Or even from eight years ago when he nominated Taft, and since he’s stayed in touch with a lot of them, they’ll … I wish I was as sure of this as he is.”

  Jess was puzzled. “I thought you was the one supposed to be charging him up?”

  “That’s the way he wants it to look. He’s going to be all maidenly and blushy and modest with a lot of ‘I’m not worthy,’ while I’m the keen, hard-driving manager who seems to be prodding him, like a bullock home at sundown. ‘Course he’s the ideal middle-of-the-road candidate, which he thinks is what the country wants, and if that’s so …”

  “You think he’ll make it?”

  Daugherty shrugged. “How? All the money’s with Wood and Lowden, and the Republican Party’s the money party. Jess, you remember Nan Britton, don’t you?”

  Jess nodded. All Marion knew how, even as a very young girl, Dr. Britton’s daughter Nan had developed a crush on the handsome editor of the Marion Star. She had never made any secret of the fact that she used to cut out pictures of W.G. from the newspapers for her scrap-book; and she would even moon about the Mount Vernon house, to W.G.’s embarrassment and the Duchess’s rage. After Dr. Britton’s death, Nan had moved to New York City; and Jess assumed that by now she was married and settled down.

  “She’s up in Chicago. She’s got a job as a secretary, and she’s living with her sister Elizabeth.”

  “Nice-looking girls, both of them. I suppose they’re all married and … and grown up,” Jess added, vaguely. He felt the saliva begin to form in his mouth. He took out his handkerchief, ready to mop rather than spray, a habit that maddened Daugherty.

  “Elizabeth is married.” Daugherty withdrew a slip of paper from his pocket. “To a man called Willits. He plays the fiddle or something for the Chicago Opera Company. Nan’s living with them. Here’s their address.”

  “Why?”

  Daugherty finished his tea and stared, moodily, at the travelling salesman across the smoky tavern. “W.G. has been carrying on with Nan for … I don’t know how long. I found out some time in 1917 when he got her a job as a secretary in New York and used to sneak up there to see her in these different hotels, where in one of them …” Daugherty stopped. “Well, that’s neither here nor there.”

  “Carrie and Nan?” Jess, unable to be active with his own beloved Roxy, was filled with envy. On the other hand, with the Duchess for a wife, a man deserved some solace elsewhere. “Is she making trouble?” Jess understood blackmail well enough.

  “No. Not yet anyway. She’s in love with him …”

  “Is he in love with her?”

  “What a question!” Daugherty looked at Jess with such disgust that, reflexively, Jess dried his lower lip just to make certain that he himself was not disgusting. “How do I know? What do I care? We’re politicians, for God’s sake. We love the people, the ones who vote, anyway. All I know is W.G.’s still sweet on her. He writes her letters.”

  “Letters.” An alarm bell went off in Jess’s head.

  “Yes. Letters.”

  “Like President Wilson did to Mrs. Peck?”

  “These are a bit homier, Jess.” Daugherty was sardonic. “W.G. swears there’s nothing compromising, but hell, any letter to a girl half your age, telling about hotel rooms and times and places, is going to look real bad.”

  “You want me to buy the letters?”

  Daugherty shook his head. “No. She won’t sell them. I’ve tried. I think she thinks someday the Duchess will die or disappear and she’ll marry W.G. But that’s not the problem.” Daugherty gave Jess an envelope which, from its size and heft, contained currency. “I want you to go to Chicago, and give her this money.”

  “So then she is blackmailing him.”

  “No. Child support. For their daughter, born last October.”

  Jess stared at Daugherty, as though he’d just made a complicated joke that Jess was too dense to comprehend. Should he ask for the punch line again? “Does … does W.G. admit that it’s his?”

  Daugherty nodded. “He helps out all he can.”

  “But the convention’s in Chicago.” Jess was getting panicky.

  “Convenient, isn’t it?”

  On Sunday, June 6, 1920, Jess found himself for what was now the third time in the small parlor of the Willitses’ four-room apartment—6103 Woodlawn Avenue at the corner of Chicago’s Sixty-first Street. He had memorized the address.

  Nan was alone and weeping. “I waited and waited at the Englewood Station, but he never got off.” Even now, with her red eyes and nose, she was an attractive woman. There was no sign of the baby, who was being boarded with a nurse nearby.

  “Well, that’s why I’m here. W.G. was very upset. But the Duchess was with him every minute and there was no way he could get off at Englewood. But he sent me on to tell you he’d try tomorrow about this time, which is Sunday, so your sister—”

  “Oh. I can get them to go to church or something.” Nan dried her eyes. Then she picked up a bamboo-framed photograph of herself holding a baby. “There’s Elizabeth Ann,” she said, “taken on the day she turned six months. He won’t see her, you know.”

  “Well …” was the best that Jess could do.

  “She is the spitting image of him, isn’t she? I just pray he’ll go over and see her or maybe I’ll take her out in the park like I usually do and he can sort of stroll by in a casual way
and say hello. What’s happening at the convention?”

  “It don’t start till Tuesday and they won’t be voting till Friday. Nobody’s locked it up yet. I suspect the thing will be decided in smoke-filled rooms.” Jess, like most of the country, quite fancied the phrase, attributed widely by the press to Daugherty, who had given an interview to the effect that if the convention was deadlocked early, the Senate magnates would then decide, in a smoke-filled room, who was to get the nomination.

  As of today, the Literary Digest poll showed Harding seeded sixth place in the hearts of his fellow Republicans, while according to the number of pledged delegates at the convention, Harding was fourth, with Wood, Lowden and Johnson each far ahead of him. It was a very long shot on which Jess had made only very small bets. Daugherty was busy but pessimistic. W.G. was oddly relaxed, as if he knew something others did not, while the Duchess was convinced that the stars had already made their choice. The previous week, Madame Marcia had been emphatic, and the Duchess kept repeating: “Trine aspect to the moon in the sign of Aries.”

  “I’ve been reading how he’s stopped smoking and drinking entirely.”

  “Well, that’s the Duchess. She doesn’t want any photographs of him with a cigar or, worse, a cigarette, which is what lounge-lizards smoke, so he just chews tobacco when no one’s looking. Chewing don’t show in a picture.” But Nan wasn’t listening. She was at a tall sideboard, where, among the dishes, there were stacks of newspaper cuttings of W.G. … “I think he’s put on a little too much weight here. But here, in the Delineator, he looks wonderful. That was taken when he was on Chautauqua, and I was staying down the road at a hotel where …”

  “Dearie?” The voice was low; and entirely familiar to both of them. Jess jumped to his feet while Nan ran to open the door. There stood Senator Harding, who, when he saw Jess, stepped quickly into the room before Nan could embrace him. “I happened to be in the neighborhood,” said W.G. in a voice so matter-of-fact that Jess, if he had not known better, might have thought that an Ohio senator was simply paying a proper visit to a constituent’s daughter, currently domiciled out-of-state. “So I thought I’d drop in and see you and Elizabeth. At Judge Scofield’s specific request, back in Marion.”