“Oh, me?” he says in response to a predictable question. “Real estate. I’m a Property Man.”
Two hundred bucks for the ticket—more than two hundred. Crazy. And sixteen hours, door to door. Crazier still. TWA Flight 103, “The Golden Clipper,” foie gras, salmon and caviar, even for those in tourist class. But Isidore’s stomach lurches.
The passenger in the seat next to his—fat hands on the tray table, a shaving cream aroma, that’s all the man was to him before this moment—has asked another question. A pushing voice, chunky legs. Like the distance separating love from lunatic need, the space between the TWA seats isn’t as wide as one might hope.
“Yeah, I build homes,” Isidore says. “Long Island.”
“A builder! Long Island!” The man uses his hand to flatten his own slick brown plateau of hair. “Love the architecture out on Long Island!”
Ha ha, very funny. And then, Isidore couldn’t sleep. Thwarted by the small abuses passengers inflict on one another, the border skirmishes of the elbow.
A few months ago, he’d told Harriet: “Of course, the program is narrow”—dismissing I Love Lucy. “I mean, life is more than spousal scheming.”
Faker! But who cares now, he’s got other things on his mind.
“You’ll get to the studio, and she’ll be at the, what’s the word, it’s not studio, the soundstage, and she’ll be wearing that dress from Coney Island that showed off her back”—the plane touches runway; his imagination is taking off—“and she’s not exactly ready to introduce you around, but she’s happy to see you, or maybe that dress is too formal, maybe she’ll have a blouse, and you’ll bring a finger to the brim of your hat—Hello, young lady—or, even better, she just comes up and kisses you on the cheek. A quick one, but with meaning. Or she’ll walk past a lot of TV people with their smiles and teeth and we’ll lock eyes. And maybe you’ll think it’s all foolish, you know, you’ll remember that you have a life at home, and the crooked path is just”—no, come on, why do you do this, even now, even now—“and, all right, maybe you’ll see her and instantly it will be that same forceful thing we had, she’s perfect, and you can be stoic about this and not let guilt overtake you, because you have to do this, you can do it, maybe this is you, maybe more than—just why won’t you let yourself enjoy doing it? and, okay, maybe she’ll come up and whisper something dramatic and movieish, like, ‘If there really is no way that this isn’t doomed, then let it be doomed. If there is no way that this will not be tragic, then let it be tragic. All the great stories are tragic.’ ”
It’s one thing to aim for romance in the luxury of your imagination. Another to find yourself across the country in a just-landed airliner. His being here is preposterous—but he feels robust and happy, even cunning. Maybe he keeps telling himself he’s panicked because he knows he isn’t feeling panic enough.
“The Beverly Hills Hotel,” Isidore says to the cabbie and falls into the back seat. “Ha!” he says. “Sounds like the start to a movie.” Then softer and softer to himself, “The Beverly Hills Hotel. The Beverly Hills Hotel.”
How did he get here? A quick and easy excuse: Oh, sorry, Harriet—um, last-minute business trip, yes, weird, I know. Checking out potential land to buy in Chicago, though. And, uh, Pittsburgh. “Casting a wide net?” she said. When he was a boy, he’d once told his mother, “I’m not going to the movies because I have to study with George or Lew”; his mother had said, “Well, either you’re the worst fibber ever or the best.”
“All right, all right, mac,” says the cab driver now.
Out the taxi window, Los Angeles! The golden gift of the sun may still be tucked in its wrapping paper. But even in a cloudy November, it’s like New York in summer. Better—it’s glamour!
One of Isidore’s Jewish wisdom books has the story of Rabbi Zusya of Anpol. (It had become a favorite story in Isidore’s recent search for answers.) Rabbi Zusya is dying. And his disciples say, “Don’t worry, you lived a good life, why do you fear?” Zusya’s deathbed answer: “When I stand before the Lord’s throne, if the Almighty should ask me, ‘Zusya, why were you not more like Moses? Why were you not more like Solomon?’ I can answer in good conscience, ‘My blessed Lord, you did not grant me the greatness of soul you granted Moses. Nor the wisdom you granted Solomon.’ ” But Zusya realized he did not know what he would say if the Almighty simply asked Zusya, “Why were you not more like Zusya?”
“Famous spot, though,” Isidore tells the cabbie now, blinking away the jet-lag burn. “You must get a lot of fares asking to go there.”
Out the window, the sky has cleared; horseless cowboys meander in the smiling weather, everything bright, everything receiving a kindness from the blissful sun. All of it so familiar, the city that the entire world knows.
“Not really,” says the cabbie.
Once checked in to his room, Isidore sits on the toilet, looking anywhere but the shaving mirror. Today of all days, he doesn’t need another reflection—a further account of the obvious flaws. Each un-Hollywood part—his deep nostrils, his magnified eyes behind those glasses, the fuzz of his hair—feels hot and glowing.
He is supposed to wait. Waiting for her is the plan. But how, when time’s a slug moving through glue? He rubs his face, which takes up a good second. Then what?
Out of the toilet, he turns on the television—a surprise to see a big set holding the room; he’s never stayed in a hotel that’s provided a TV—but watching the idiot box throws extra kindling on his anxiety. First some news program, an atomic test, some irradiated archipelago somewhere, that’s no good, so now it’s onto The Larry Larkin Show. Why, Lucille probably knows this man! Even Larry Larkin is likely intimidated by her.
“Well, hi there, network, come right on in. This is The Larry Larkin Show. And this portion is brought to you today by…Franco-American spaghetti!” Larkin’s voice isn’t simply or even primarily a channel through which his messages run. “America’s favorite ready-to-eat spaghetti and new Italian-style Franco-American spaghetti…with meatballs!” Laughter. Larkin, like any good TV comedian, is attentive to sounds, rhythms, words dropped just behind the beat. He can assemble laughs from anything. Where do they learn that skill, these comedians? And what skill do I have? Maybe Isidore can answer the Almighty’s question Why were you not more like Isidore by saying But now I am trying, even if he didn’t want to be the kind of man who would do this to…No, it’s not fun to go down this road right now.
Writing. I have always wanted to pursue writing. He’s in Los Angeles. It’s time to try writing, for her.
On the desk opposite the bed, there sleeps a pad of paper; taking up a pen, Isidore endeavors to wake it. He begins to scratch out the contours of an idea, and he scribbles the title just under the crest for THE BEVERLY HILLS HOTEL.
Will Lucille really show up?
* * *
—
ONE WEEK EARLIER, on very thin stock paper, Lucille had received a note from the HUAC, written in language you’d expect in a cotillion invite. The presence of Mrs. Lucille Arnaz is formally requested. (The HUAC: the House Un-American Activities Committee.)
Okay, when Lucille was young, or fairly young—before World War II and in a time when we didn’t quite know about the badness of Stalin—her left-wing grandfather had blathered on and on. Do you even care about the working man—will you even sign the pledge? Yes, sure, Grandpa….That was the whole kit and caboodle. And now, look, I’m the most popular American, gal or guy! Forty-five million people watched “Lucy Goes to the Factory.” That episode had her on more magazine covers than Ike’s inauguration. Why, J. Edgar Hoover himself sent her fan mail! What could happen?
They’re doing this to me? she thinks.
Last week, on a dry sunny morning, a tan scarf wrapped at her neck, she was compelled to steer her Ford to the center of Los Angeles—at first, brown scrub hills flanked the road, then palm trees, a
nd then it was all glinting downtown windows. And finally, 201 North Figueroa Street, the Department of General Services, where, tugging her dress straight, Lucille went to meet with an HUAC investigator and his suspicions.
Faltering before the entrance to the lobby. Breathe, she told herself. Swallow, kid. Looking in one of the mirrory windows, she lifted her chin, smoothed her fleshy neck, couldn’t avoid the truth in the glass. Breathe. What a day to show your age.
The elevator let in a gush of hot air before its doors closed. Maybe it, too, decided to hold its breath.
“Ah, Mrs. Ricardo, I was hoping you’d come.”
Someone or other said this. The usual scurry of secretaries and other insignificants—middle-aged women in starchy dresses, middle-aged men with the under chins of an uncle (or a longtime husband)—they were usually her crowd, the unseen folks out there in TV land. She wasn’t going to correct the name now. Let them call me Ricardo. As long as I can leave.
HUAC told Lucille to arrive alone. (I don’t do anything alone but go to the toilet, thank you, she’d thought. Still, she’d come naturally as a little girl to isolation, when her mom had left her with one relative after another.) Desi and their lawyer Herm Gottlieb had coached her, Just say nothing and don’t lie. Meanwhile, she hadn’t told CBS about the letter, the visit, her grandfather’s communism, anything. She smiled now, tried to look unworried. Would the story leak? She needed a moment to herself. No such moment was forthcoming.
The high ceilings and bad lighting of municipal L.A. She exuded anxiety and confidence both. “Where,” she asked, “do I go?”
Why me? I’ve been pretty good—her mind skating away. A pretty good person, even a pretty good wife. Except for a slipup. Or one-and-a-half slipups. And there was another in the cards—which probably wouldn’t happen now, she thought.
Stop, she told herself. I need to concentrate.
“Mrs. Arnaz, come in, come in.” Like more and more young L.A. men, the HUAC investigator was bewilderingly handsome. Johnny Weissmuller mashed into a G-man’s sport coat. Alone with the investigator in his little office now, Lucille thought hmm.
“Golly, a lot of the staff is excited,” he said, rubbing his buzz cut. (Maybe a knack for bewildering the ladies helped with the job; well, two can play at that, she thought, and smiled. But the mirror showed a deep furrow lashed between her brows.)
The investigator stood close. His handsome face like a moon over her. “Okeydokey,” he said. “Just this way. Please. In here. Would you like a Ritz cracker, Mrs. Arnaz? Water?” Sharp jaw, dark hair, delectable squint. His presentation seemed to say, I am the kindest, most sympathetic, and least stuffy employee in the U.S. government. And she understood that her past life, her present associations, even her down-to-earthness were under scrutiny. “No, thank you, Mister…?”
“Oh, the name’s Plates. James Plates Sr.,” he said, and smiled at what he thought of as a joke. “Junior is due in about two months.”
“Mr. Plates, this is all a misunderstanding, is all. My grandfather was a sick man, and I was devoted to him.”
James A. Plates, mid-level investigator, HUAC, nodded, gentled her to a pale blue chair. “Right here.” He had a squeaky voice.
Lucille introduced Plates to the mythic figures of her past: the absent father and sometimes-absent mother in Upstate New York, the grandfather she brought out to L.A. The rise from poverty, family, devotion, the almost hummable American tune. The hushed pink of sundown on the red brick houses, the breeze that smelled of cut grass, the river leaves you saw carried by the Chautauqua. She didn’t mention the melancholy, the blues you felt walking down the empty shaded streets at dusk, the yearning. The insistent wordless voice telling you there is more somewhere else. When my father died, I opened the window and a bird flew in, she said. Broke stuff in the house. Then I got into theater. My grandfather made some requests, and, well…
That was all she had. It would have to do. “Congrats, by the way, in advance,” she said. “On your family’s, uh, impending birth.” Plates hadn’t sat and was now orbiting the room.
“Can you sign this, Mrs. Arnaz?” Handing her a pen, some paper, shrugging his ramrod shoulders. “Sorry to hear about your dad.”
Dad? Oh, that he’s dead? But he’s been dead forever. I didn’t really have a dad. “Sure thing, I can sign.”
The pen sounded scratchy on the paper; the walls of her throat began to inch closer together. “Happy to. I’ve hated birds ever since.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Happy to.”
The document’s signature line, Plates’s desk with the framed photos, the little flag, the big phone. Everything made her want to burrow into the floor, jump out the window, get away.
“Sign in only the one place, sir?”
She looked at him with her enormous blue eyes and worked her facial magic—a shame they don’t give out a Best Smile Oscar. Even with the air so dry that she couldn’t sweat.
Stopping at her side, taking the pen from her trembly hand, Plates made certain Lucille saw him slide the paper in a file—made certain she saw the file—marked LUCILLE BALL-ARNAZ. SUSPECTED COMMUNIST SYMPATHIES.
“You know, Mrs. Ball, pinkoism is a scourge.” Each one of us has a favorite way to show he’s nobody to be trifled with. Plates pointed his ballpoint pen knifeishly.
“It’s just not a good arrangement. Collectivism. Doesn’t make sense for anyone,” he said. “And it can damage you, of course. If you met someone at work and started to talk, or—look, association alone can be dangerous. Bad influence and like that. You understand.”
This was how it worked. Threats and appeals to the American penchant for common-sense decency.
“Of course, I agree,” she said. “As I mentioned, my grandfath—”
“Well. I guess you know that,” he said. His heart not in it? The pen as if on its own lowered. For a while, Plates stayed watching her, as if she were a TV. And then he couldn’t stop himself from gushing.
Not a problem, Mrs. Arnaz, is what I mean. (Walking in circles again.) I follow ya, ma’am.
Every time he passed the credenza, he’d pull a Ritz off an old plate, look at it, and stick it in his mouth. Was this really all there would be? Amid the steam of coffee poured from a government-issue pot, James A. Plates Sr. backed off. Yes, this was all there would be. A daze of steam. Plates had said his piece on communism, done his duty, and now he could be, merely, one more fan. Lucille began to rise, the back of her legs gone damp against the chair’s vinyl.
Plates said, “This will remain confidential.” His solid handshake felt callused and warm, like a summer’s walk across an American backyard. “ ‘Cleared’ is what you can consider yourself, Mrs. Arnaz.”
The threat had lifted, just like that. She’d stopped fretting, had an easeful couple days. And then.
And then, not long after, Walter Winchell announced on his radio program: “A beloved TV comedienne [has] commie connections.” For the next twenty-four hours, Lucille let herself believe Winchell had been referring to Imogene Coca. Then came that front-page article. Star Denies She Voted Commie, Blames Grandfather. And worry splattered through her life, gurgling up her phone line, clotting her husband’s forehead, threatening—would CBS stand by her? Philip Morris?—to drown everything.
And so now, here she is, nervously peering out the window at Chatsworth, waiting for men to come. Please let Desi get back before those vultures show, she thinks; her fingers are still touching the pane when the first strange jeep pulls in the drive.
* * *
—
WHEN THE GROUP of men parts, she walks between them, down the lane of faces.
There are photographers in her yard, there are klieg lights, reel-to-reel recorders, studio fixers, assistants; there are television cameras, there are radio antennae, there are jeeps that have sprouted telescopic arms and some
of the first-ever microphone cannons. By the sage bush, red camera lights blink. But do the palm trees of California usually drop microphone cannons from their fronds? No; Chatsworth is reporter-haunted. “Distinguished members of the newspaper world” gawp at her; TV guys with their clear stares and hearty skin tones gawp at her, too.
CBS set up today’s news conference at Desi and Lucille’s home, giving them a single chance to clear her name. And now Lucille’s heels can be heard poking the soil.
She’s carrying Pinta—her bestest little floppy-eared friend, all yips and wriggles—as if the dog’s pinned to her bosom. I’ll smile, she thinks. A queasy, bad-dream tone rests over everything. Not a single face smiles back. At the end of the human lane sits her thickening husband/business partner, awaiting her with a hand spread over his mouth. His body twists half off his slack director’s chair. He’s eyeing Lucille flatly, steadily. Such discomfort. Is he angry at her? His face bloats from stifled pressure. One guy near the end of the row raises a camera, and like some cruel thought a flash sparks out from his head; but theatrical Desi, now smiling Desi, lifts his hand to take Lucille’s, and she has seen all this already happen, in just this way, she is sure of it.
She sits. Two chairs, husband and wife, accused communist and her Cuban husband, in front of a lot of standing men.
“Shall we begin, fellas?”—Desi. Right behind him, the Arnazes’ quite uncommunistic swimming pool, shimmering blue. And Lucille’s dreamed this all before.
“Thank you for coming,” she says. “I’m here to answer all your concerns,” a line she’s practiced all morning: different inflections, different tempers and humors. And now she’s made good on the delivery.
Lucille has trained to expect applause. None comes.
“Now, before you ask your questions,” Desi says, “my wife would like to explain something.” (Perhaps he has chosen explain because it is part of his catchphrase.)
The Queen of Tuesday Page 16