“Yes, we do. And we will. Occasionally. But we need to find other people. Both of us do.” She kissed him. “I love you, Jack,” she whispered. “In all the ways it’s possible to love someone.”
“I love you, too, Linda—in all the good ways.”
Three
AT JONI’S REQUEST, MO MORRIS HAD TRIED TO FIND FILM work for Sara. When he did not succeed, he offered her a job in his office. To everyone’s surprise, including hers, she fit in well and learned the business rapidly. Six months after she joined his agency, Mo had new business cards printed:
THE MO MORRIS AGENCY
MO MORRIS, President
Samuel Friden
Peter Dole
Sara Lehrer
Offices in Los Angeles, New York, London
Mo was seventy-five years old and was beginning to let his junior partners take on more of the responsibilities of the agency. Friden should have inherited a big client like Joni Lear, but Mo knew she would want her half sister to represent her if possible. He kept his own hand on Joni’s career, but he let Sara take on some of the nuts-and-bolts work.
Sara proved to have a fine eye for small clauses in contracts. Independent producers, including stars producing their own films, had a penchant for departing from standard contracts and writing contracts of their own, with unusual clauses that were often not to the actors’ or directors’ advantage. It was the agent’s job to spot these things—and Sara did.
Though she liked her new name, she stopped pursuing her conversion to Judaism. She began to spend time with a young writer named Brent Creighton. She surrendered her virginity to him, and he introduced her to a commune, where she learned to smoke pot and socialize in the nude.
Four
JONI WON HER ACADEMY AWARD AT LAST, FOR HER ROLE AS Norma in the film adaptation of Jason Maxwell’s novel. In addition she won the New York Film Critics Award and the Golden Globe Award.
Jack made his first major public appearance since Anne’s death at the Academy Awards ceremony. Joni had promised him he would escort a famous actress that night, and with the help of Mo Morris she arranged a date for him. Beaming, he emerged from his limousine, then extended his hand to help Ava Gardner out into the glare of camera lights. She accompanied him, too, to the triumphant supper where Joni clutched her Oscar and received the homage of two hundred guests.
Sara was there, with Brent Creighton. In a crowd where every woman was a spectacle, or meant to be, she attracted attention for her fresh beauty and for her dress: a simple sheath of thin red silk, under which she very clearly was wearing nothing at all. She wore only one piece of jewelry, a diamond-studded bracelet that had been Anne’s.
Liz was also there. She had flown to Los Angeles with her father on a company jet. She was escorted by her brother. LJ had been chosen All-American and had signed a contract to play professional football for the Miami Dolphins. Liz detested him, but she had to admit it was glamorous to be escorted by a looming hulk of All-American football player. She was nineteen years old and did not pretend to compete for attention in the Academy Awards crowd. She wore a silver lamé dress that attracted admiring glances for its bold front and back décolletage.
Linda too had arrived on the LCI jet. In her form-fitting beaded black dress, with dark sheer stockings and black shoes, she was stunning.
After the supper, at two o’clock in the morning, Jack assembled the family in his suite at the Beverly Hilton—just the family, none of the dates or escorts.
He raised a glass of champagne. “Joni . . .” he said quietly. “We are all proud of you. My children are achievers, all of them. If only—” He paused and bit his lower lip. “If only John and Anne could be here. . . . And, Joni—Even Kimberly. She’d be proud of you.”
Five
1970
CURT FREDERICK WAS AS BORED IN ARIZONA AS JACK HAD predicted he would be. When Jack Suggested he come back to New York and do a monthly interview show, Curt talked it over with Betsy, and they agreed. He would have to spend no more than a week or ten days in New York each month. Jack invited Curt and Betsy to stay in the Greenwich house whenever they came east.
Linda was glad to have the Fredericks in the house for a week or so each month. She put them in the master bedroom suite, knowing Jack would not object—and knowing he would not use it. He came out two or three nights whenever they were visiting.
Each hour-long show featured two live interviews. A variety of people were happy to be interviewed by Curt Frederick. He still had a worldwide reputation as a giant of broadcast journalism. President Nixon not only agreed to be interviewed, but came to New York for the purpose. Former Texas governor John Connally appeared and talked about being in the car with President Kennedy on November 22,1963. Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan came to the studio and answered Curt’s questions. Among other showbiz personalities, Dinah Shore, Ingrid Bergman, and Marlene Dietrich sat before the cameras and chatted with Curt Frederick.
One evening in Greenwich, Jack offered Curt a suggestion. Curt leaped at it.
On the evening of Wednesday, April 22, the two guests on his show were Averell Harriman and Jason Maxwell.
Harriman was, of course, smooth, suave, and statesmanlike. Everyone expected that Jason, in the second half hour, would offer a dramatic contrast.
Jack sat down in the greenroom where guests waited to go on. Jason had been made up—that is, he had been slightly dusted with powder—and was ready for the cameras, but he was tense with nervous energy.
“I’m gonna have a Scotch, Jason. Join me?”
“Well, maybe one.”
“One Scotch. You got it.”
Jason sat staring at the ceiling, nervously rubbing his hands together as Jack poured their drinks. He did not notice that Jack took a small glass vial from his jacket pocket, shook it, then poured it into a glass. He poured a generous shot of Scotch over it and added ice.
“Here y’ go,” he said to Jason as he handed him the glass. He returned to the little bar and poured Scotch over ice for himself. “Cheers!”
Jack tipped back his glass and took his drink all at once. Jason frowned but did the same.
“Well. We could have one more,” Jack said. “Two little drinks before you go on—”
Jason nodded. “The problem, you know, is that authors on talk shows usually don’t have anything much to say. We pour all we have out on the page.”
“You used to keep Anne and me in stitches with your stories.
“But I can’t tell those stories on television.” He glanced up at the monitor, where Averell Harriman was solemnly answering some question put to him by Curt.
“Tell about your new book. What’s it gonna be called?”
“Haven’t figured that out yet,” Jason said as he downed his second Scotch. “Tha’s th’ hardest part about writing a book: thinkin’ up a . . . title.”
“You want one more? A little one?” Jack asked.
“Jus’ a li’l one.”
Jack was less generous with the third one. He didn’t want Jason to pass out before he went before the cameras.
A young woman knocked on the door and said, “Three minutes, Mr. Maxwell!”
Jason straightened his tie and ran a brush over his hair. The director came for him, and they went out into the studio.
Jack picked up Jason’s glass with a handkerchief. He took it in the bathroom and rinsed it out. He returned it to the room and poured a tablespoonful of Scotch over two ice cubes. Back in the bathroom he took the little vial from his pocket, put it on his handkerchief, and stepped on it. He flushed the shards of glass down the toilet, together with the tiny plastic cap.
Jason did not stagger into the broadcast studio. He walked to the chair assigned to him and sat down. He wriggled as though it tickled when the sound technician clipped a microphone on his lapel and ran the wire under his jacket and out the back.
“Our second guest this evening is Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jason Maxwell. His credits include the nov
el Norma. Joni Lear, playing the title role, won an Academy Award for best actress. Mr. Maxwell, Miss Lear has personally asked me to thank you for the wonderful role you wrote for her.”
Jason grinned and nodded. “An’ I never even slept with her,” he said and then laughed.
“You have met her, though?”
“You bet! An’ lemme tell ya. Till you’ve seen tits like hers, you haven’ seen tits.”
Curt changed the subject. “It is said of you, Mr. Maxwell, that your novels are romans à clef, which is to say that your characters are based on real people. I suppose everyone has guessed who Norma was. But do you want to say?”
Jason pursed his lips and nodded, “Sure. Nnnnorma Jean. Maramuh. Maremem Mum-ROE!”
“Does your character Norma accurately reflect the real Marilyn Monroe?”
“Why not? Idn’t it?”
“Mr. Maxwell, it has been suggested that you don’t write your novels and stories, that they are in fact written by your cousin Gladys Maxwell. Is there any truth to that?”
“Gladys cou’nt write a letter!”
“Then who wrote her novel? It’s been well received. Did you write it?”
Jason shook his head. “I never even slept with Glad—Glad-uss.”
“I suppose not, since she’s your cousin.”
Jason began to nod rhythmically. His mouth hung open. “Well . . . Pull th’ curtain of decentness! De—”
“Mr. Maxwell, don’t you feel well?”
The camera was not able to turn away fast enough to avoid sending out over the whole network the image of Jason Maxwell vomiting.
“We’ll take a commercial break,” Curt said loftily.
THIRTY - SEVEN
One
1970
AFTER TWENTY-ONE SEASONS THE SALLY ALLEN SHOW WENT off the air. The American public seemed to have lost its taste for variety shows. Sally was not upset. She was fifty years old, and a little long in the tooth, she thought, for dancing in tights and singing. Even so, Jack was not about to lose her as a talent. He offered to star her in a picture to be made by Carlton House Productions. Since the soundstages were all committed to television production, Jack told Len, who would write the script, to set the entire film on location. He did. He wrote a touching comedy set in a beach house at Malibu. It needed some doctoring, though, and Sara suggested Brent Creighton. The resulting script was a masterpiece. It was a love story about two couples, and Mo Morris offered Joni for the second female lead.
Dick Painter, with all his faults and ambition, had been a first-class programmer. In the three seasons since his departure, the network had lost market share. Mary Carson suggested bringing him back. Jack adamantly refused. He did, though, acknowledge the necessity of finding another programmer attuned to what he insisted was the deteriorating taste of the American public. Mary raided CBS and brought over one of their vice presidents, Ted Wellman. A believer in what Jack called small-minded shows—sitcoms and cop sagas—Wellman soon had LCI’s ratings climbing. Jack shook his head and kept his peace. He still didn’t think Jack Benny was funny.
TWO
IN ONE SENSE JACK WAS A LONELY MAN. IN ANOTHER SENSE he wasn’t.
Though he stopped sleeping regularly with Linda, she never ceased to welcome him. He brought Rebecca Murphy down from Boston to spend occasional weekends with him in Manhattan. These women—his thirty-five-year-old daughter-in-law and the fifty-year-old investigator—gave him their sympathy and affection, but it was plain that neither of them would become the third Mrs. Lear, if indeed there was going to be a third Mrs. Lear. Gossip columns suggested there would be, but Jack had no intention of marrying again.
In the summer of 1970 he began to see a woman the columnists immediately fastened on as the successor to Kimberly and Anne.
Valerie Latham Field was heir to a quarter of the Latham fortune and half of the estate left by her late husband Ralph Wiggams Field, which made her a multimillionaire. In the stuffy tradition of the more conservative society pages she was called Mrs. Latham Field. Otherwise she was known as Val.
Every summer a charity match was played on a polo field in Greenwich. The sponsors served a champagne luncheon under a tent, and the wealthiest and most notable people in the town gathered.
Jack and Anne had attended for many years. In 1969 he hadn’t gone. In 1970 Linda urged him to. So, on a Sunny Sunday afternoon he appeared under the big tent, with Linda on his arm.
Val was selling raffle tickets and so was circulating through the crowd. They had met before, several times. “Jack,” she said, “I’m glad to see you.”
“Val, this is my daughter-in-law, Linda.”
“Oh, yes,” said Val. “Make Jack buy you lots of tickets. This necklace is one of the prizes.”
Val was wearing a spectacular emerald-and-diamond necklace. At fifty-six, she had a few small wrinkles at her throat, which the necklace covered nicely. She also wore diamond earrings and a diamond-studded bracelet. Her blond hair stood out in a bouffant style. Her face was long and thin. Her mouth was wide. She was a handsome woman, and she was dressed handsomely in an off-white linen jacket and a burnt-orange skirt, not quite mini but well above her knees. She was obviously a woman who was content with herself and who didn’t look to anyone else for approval.
Jack bought a dozen raffle tickets at fifty dollars apiece. He gave them to Linda, and during the drawing she won the necklace.
Beaming, Val took off the necklace and fastened it around Linda’s neck, as everyone applauded.
Val sat down beside Jack. They began to chat and laugh. That was all it took for the rumors to start. Before the afternoon was over, there was talk under the tent that Valerie Latham Field and Jack Lear were a pair.
He didn’t know. But Val was sensitive to these things and guessed what was being said. It amused her. When he asked her to dinner, she promptly agreed. They left the tent, Linda on one arm, Val on the other.
Three
THEY SAW EACH OTHER FIVE TIMES IN AUGUST, USUALLY FOR dinner, though once he took her to a baseball game at Yankee Stadium. He decided to fly to Los Angeles in September, to see how things were going on the location at Malibu, and he asked Val to come with him.
It was aboard a company jet forty thousand feet above the Mississippi River that Jack kissed Val for the first time. He’d been under no compulsion to press her—after all, he could sleep with Linda or Rebecca whenever he wanted to—and had allowed the relationship to develop slowly. She was a woman of presence and dignity, he felt, and to have pawed at her would have driven her away, for sure. They had discovered they shared certain interests. He admired her and enjoyed her company but was not certain he felt romantically inclined toward her.
Then on the plane he was driven by a sudden impulse to draw her into his arms and kiss her.
She put her arms around him and participated in the kiss. “I hope we won’t be sorry about that,” she said quietly.
They sat close together, and Jack kept his arm around her, but they did not kiss again during the flight.
He asked her if she would mind sharing his two-bedroom suite. She smiled and shrugged.
They went on the set and watched a shoot. Early in the evening they went to dinner with Joni, David, Sara, and Brent. At the end of a pleasant day they retired to their suite.
As Val opened the door to her bedroom, Jack kissed her again. She returned his kiss by gently nibbling on his lips. She relaxed in his arms.
“Jack . . . this is kind of silly, isn’t it?” she whispered, pointing at the doors to the two bedrooms. She pushed her own door wide open. “Come on in.”
Val was unique. At least she was in his experience. She undressed. She lay back on the bed and waited for him. She welcomed him into her. With her eyes wide open, studying his face, showing no particular expression on her own, she thrust upward to meet his downward thrusts. She grunted a few times, and her breathing became heavier; otherwise she stared into his eyes and smiled faintly until she felt him come, whe
n her smile broadened and she used her arms to draw him down on her. He was reluctant to let all his weight settle on her, but she pulled him down and seemed to luxuriate in being pinned beneath him.
She reached up and tousled his hair. “So far, so good,” she said. “Monsieur Le Maître, you live up to your billing.”
“Oh no, Val! I’m not Le Maître.”
“Of course you are. How’d you manage to get that slimy little creep so drunk before he went on the air? Nembutal?”
Four
1971
WHEN THE FAMILY GATHERED ON ST. CROIX BETWEEN Christmas and New Year’s, Val was there. She was the only one in the party who could water-ski. Jack tried but consistently went over on his face.
When the rest of the group left the island, Jack and Val flew to New Hampshire, where she owned a ski lodge. Jack did not ski, but she did and enjoyed it exuberantly. She skated, too.
Back in Greenwich in the spring, she introduced him to horseback riding. That he could do, but he could not conceal from her the fact that he did not enjoy it. When she took a fence, Jack would not even try it. Then came sailing. Val had friends who owned a sloop, and she was a skilled crewman. Jack tried. He pulled on the ropes as they told him to do, but he didn’t understand what he was doing or why and was not a quick study. What was more, he didn’t play golf.
Val placed a great deal of emphasis on outdoor sports. But she didn’t play bridge. Jack had not played much in recent years, but he was still a formidable bridge player. People in Val’s circle knew of his prowess at the table. Aboard the sloop, while Val and her closest friends were on deck working the sails, Jack and three others would sit at a table in the cabin and contentedly play bridge. That annoyed Val.
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