by Howard Fast
“Wait, wait,” Joe said. “What are you telling me, Sally? You didn’t fall for that kind of thing? It’s a racket.”
“Won’t you listen to me, please? It’s not a scam. I’m not a fool, Joe, or some little babe in the woods. Now listen to what happened. I spent an hour reading the script. It’s a Western, and I don’t think it’s any great shakes, but it’s all right. It’s called Purple Sage. Then Hargasey took me to this huge sound stage that had about four different sets in it. They were just using one of the sets because it was there, a western saloon, and the part they wanted me to read happened in a western saloon, but they haven’t any sets for the picture yet because they haven’t even started. But the set was lit up with all these big klieg lights, and there was a cameraman, and this man—his name is Mike Bordon and he’s Hargasey’s production manager—well, this man read a few lines as cues, just a page, but I memorized my lines on the page. I read along with him, and they filmed it. Then they had me do some other things that they filmed, and then we talked, and they were both of them so nice and kind, and they asked me to come back tomorrow, when they’ll have the developed film, which they call the rushes, and Mr. Hargasey says that if I film all right, he’ll give me the part, because he’s sick and tired of looking for someone to play the role who doesn’t exist. I mean, that’s the way he talks. He’s a Hungarian, but very nice. And he said not to worry about acting, because he’d find me a coach, and he thinks I’m a natural actress, whatever that is.”
She stopped and waited. Joe looked at her and said nothing, his brows knit, his face tight and worried.
“Joe?”
“I love you so much,” he said.
“Joe, you haven’t looked at me in weeks. Sometimes I wonder if you know I exist.”
“That’s just the way I am,” he said unhappily. “You know that, Sally. That’s the way I’ve always been. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you. You’re the most important thing in my life.”
Impulsively, she leaped to her feet, ran around the table, and cradled his head in her arms.
“You used to say I was dumb. I’m dumb,” Joe said.
“Oh, no, no, you’re not dumb. You’re the kindest, best man I ever knew. Joey, don’t you want me to do this?” She let go of him and stood by the table, staring at him wide-eyed. “If you don’t want me to—”
“You want it, don’t you?”
“It’s like a dream. Oh, Joe, I would love to be the kind of person you want me to be, and stay here and have children and keep the house for you and always be here when you want me—but I can’t, and I’m not that person, and I’ve been so miserable.”
“You want this a great deal, don’t you?”
“More than anything in the world.” She closed her eyes and stood still for a moment, her hands clasped; looking at her, Joe could understand what had happened at the studio. She was like some wild, strange creature, raised in captivity but never civilized, never truly tamed or subdued.
“We’ll work it out,” he said. “Don’t worry, Sally. You go ahead and do it, and we’ll work it out somehow.”
When Sally returned to the studio the following day, Hargasey introduced her to a Mr. Jack Lesser, a neatly dressed, bespectacled man in his forties. “Lesser here,” Hargasey said, “is from the William Morris Agency. That’s a very respectable agency for actors, makes sure they shouldn’t be cheated by people like myself. I had him meet us here. I’m going to make you an offer, and he’ll tell you what I offer, it ain’t enough. That’s his work. I could hire you for peanuts, but you’re Danny’s daughter-in-law, and anyway I like you. But,” he said to Lesser, “you should be paying me. I got to teach her to act, to walk, to talk.”
“My heart bleeds for you,” Lesser said, and to Sally, he added, “I work for an excellent agency, Mrs. Lavette, but you can’t let Hargasey inflict me on you. You have to engage me of your own free will, because I’ll ask you to sign a contract with our agency. The money you earn will come through our agency, and we deduct a ten percent commission. Now, do you want me to represent you?”
“Yes. I’ve heard of the William Morris Agency. Yes, of course, I’d like that.” Then she added, “If Mr. Hargasey feels I need an agent.”
“You will need one,” Hargasey said. “Believe me.”
***
Dr. Kellman called Barbara and asked her whether she could see him at his house the following evening. “I would ask you to dinner, Barbara,” he said, “but I can’t get home much before nine. Would nine-thirty be all right?”
“Yes, certainly,” Barbara said. “Is it about daddy?”
“No, not really. But let’s talk when you get here.”
Kellman lived within walking distance, in one of the new apartment houses on Jones Street. It was a cool, lovely summer evening, and Barbara enjoyed the walk. She had been spending too many hours at her desk, and she thought longingly of the horse she had once kept at Menlo Park, of rides on shaded hillside bridal paths, of the heated gallop around the track, the wind rushing in her face. She had sold the horse, Sandy, a gift from her father, in 1934, just as she had sold everything she owned then to buy food for the soup kitchen in which she worked during the longshore strike. It had been fourteen, almost fifteen years, and she had never been on a horse since. Had there truly been a time in her life when Sandy had been the most important object in the world? She recalled the endless hours of currying. What had happened to Sandy? What had happened to her whole wonderful, aimless, untroubled girlhood? Or had it ever been wonderful or untroubled? And by what right did she complain? She had been loved and she had given love, and she had known heights of exultation as well as depths of despair. It was deep in Barbara’s nature to emerge from despondency almost the moment it found her, and by the time she reached Dr. Kellman’s apartment, she was quite relaxed and cheerful and only moderately interested in the reason for his summons.
From all her mother had told her, Dan was not behaving as a convalescent patient should, and she was sure that Dr. Kellman was going to ask her to bring her influence to bear in that direction, although it did seem a bit odd that he should turn to her. So all the more her astonishment when she entered the Kellman apartment and walked into a living room crowded with people. It took only moments for Barbara to realize what the occasion was.
Here were the eighteen people who had contributed money toward the medicine for the hospital in Toulouse: Dr. Kellman and his wife; Professor Brady from Berkeley and his wife; Mrs. Seligman, eighty-nine, doyenne of the old San Francisco society; Dr. Montrosa and his wife; Dave Appelle, an accountant; Eloise and Adam Levy; two old friends of her childhood, Ruth and Leslie Adams, sisters, with their husbands; Professor Gladstone, the historian; Arnold Dell, who worked on the Examiner; Mrs. Gifford, a widow; Mrs. Abramson; Jed Kenton; Stephan Cassala; Dr. Murphy; Fred Cooper; and Carl Anson from the longshore union—all of them here, crowding around her, embracing her and telling her how delighted they were to see her.
It was very moving, and Barbara fought to hold back her tears. Finally Dr. Kellman clapped his hands for silence and said, “All right, ladies and gentlemen. The greetings are over, and now find chairs or places on the floor, because this is a meeting, not simply a social occasion, and as a meeting, I have to call it to order. I suppose I tricked Barbara into coming here this evening, and for that she’ll have to forgive me. Will you, my dear?”
Not trusting herself to speak, Barbara nodded and spread her hands. Blinking, rubbing her eyes, she sat down on a chair someone offered her.
“Drinks and refreshments later,” Dr. Kellman told them. “Right now, the business of the night—a night, I may say, which was no easy matter to put together. You are certainly as busy and preoccupied a group of people as I have ever known. But since this meeting was Mrs. Seligman’s idea, I’ll give her the floor and let her explain. Please, don’t bother to stand,” he told the old woman, who sat in one corner, leani
ng on her cane. “You can talk to us from right there.”
“Not that I can’t stand,” Mrs. Seligman said. “This ridiculous bias against old people—first, that they’re feeble, and second, that they’ve taken loss of their wits. Well, you might as well know that I personally tricked Barbara into giving me your names, every last one of them. I invited her over for tea, and trusting me, as she should not have, she discussed the whole thing. Then I put my head together with Milt Kellman here, and we decided that we would get in touch with each of you. You see, my dear,” she said, turning to Barbara, “there are five persons here tonight who might put themselves and their jobs in jeopardy if their names were revealed. That leaves thirteen of us who just don’t care, and we have come here tonight to tell you how proud and grateful we are to you for trying so hard to protect us. But that is over. Tomorrow we shall release our names to the press, and that will be the end of it and, we trust, the end of your difficulties.”
There was a ripple of applause, and all faces turned toward Barbara. She rose uncertainly.
“You have the floor,” Dr. Kellman said.
“Only it’s hard for me to speak, because what I would truly like is to sit down somewhere in a corner and have a good cry. You are so good and dear and brave. I guess this is one of the nicest things that ever happened to me. But you can’t do it.”
“But we certainly intend to,” Mrs. Gifford called out.
“No, please—I’ll try to explain. You see, this stupid thing, this contempt of Congress that they are accusing me of, well, it’s something that I did, and only I can void it. It would do absolutely no good for anyone, not for me and not for you, to have your names in the press. I would still be in contempt.”
“Then you will give our names to the committee,” Dr. Montrosa said. “Is there anyone here who would object to that?”
When the heads had stopped nodding agreement, Barbara said, “I’m afraid I would.”
“Barbara, why?” Dr. Kellman asked.
“You’re all so kind about this, and you feel that I have been trying to protect you. Well, there’s a little truth in that, because I do have an obligation to each of you. I came to you and I accepted money from each of you, and that makes it my obligation, not yours—”
There were cries of “Oh, no!” “You’re wrong.” “We all share it.”
“Please, listen to me. That’s only a part of it, and whatever you think about it, whether or not I have an obligation to you, I do have an obligation to myself. That’s something only I can decide, because I have to live with myself. And I have decided. I will not give the names of innocent people to that wretched committee. I will not do it, and there’s nothing you can say that will make me change my mind. I know I sound stubborn and inflexible, but this is something I have thought about a great deal. And it doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate what you’ve done in coming here tonight. But that’s the way it is.”
The arguments went on for another hour, but Barbara would not give an inch, and in the end it was agreed that there would be no public announcement of the names. Barbara left with Adam and Eloise, and once outside, Eloise said, “Bobby, I am so proud of you. I know that in your place I would just cave in.”
“I don’t think you would.”
“Just remember,” Adam said, “that we’re here whenever you need us. We’re only an hour away.”
They dropped Barbara at the house on Green Street. It was almost midnight. Whenever Barbara came home late at night and let herself into the house, she had a sense of depletion, of emptiness. Not that the house was empty; Anna was there, and so was Sam. The feeling of emptiness was inside herself, and the feeling communicated itself, like a ghostly presence walking in front of her. She switched on the lights in the living room and stood and looked around her. The hooked rug, the old black horsehair sofa that had been Sam Goldberg’s, the two leather chairs in front of the fireplace—the only chairs, Bernie would say, that fit his bulk—the pile of magazines on the coffee table—all of it soaked up the emptiness inside her.
She fairly ran up the stairs, fleeing from it, then tiptoed into Sam’s room. The night light burned. In his crib, Sam was happily asleep, fat and untroubled, pink-cheeked and healthy. She tiptoed back out of the room and went downstairs, thinking what a wonderful placebo a well-fed little boy could be, aware that the moment of misery had slipped away, and wondering whether there was not something deeply wrong with her nature, so easily did she shake off depression. If I were normal, she thought, I would be deeply sorry for myself right now, but I don’t feel sorry for myself at all. What nice people!
She was not sleepy. She made herself a cup of tea and put the Bach Inventions on the record player. She dropped into the big leather chair that had been Bernie’s favorite, sipped her tea, half-closed her eyes, and listened to the marvelous ripple of sound. She dozed off and was awakened by the scraping sound of the record changer.
Chilled, she went up the stairs to her bedroom. Anna always turned down the heat before she went to bed, and the summer nights in San Francisco were cold and damp. Barbara stripped off her clothes and then stood for a moment, naked and shivering, looking at herself in the mirror. She touched her breasts, still high and firm, and ran her hands over the flat surface of her belly. The scar was almost invisible.
“What a waste!” she whispered. “What a stupid, stupid waste.”
Then she pulled on her nightgown and crawled between the icy cold sheets. Lying there, waiting for the heat of her body to warm the bed, she said aloud, “What about it, Bernie? Am I right?” Laughing and crying at the same time, she said, “How alike we were! Why didn’t I ever see how alike we were? I know exactly what you’d say—‘Fuck them,’ in your own inimitable style. You crazy bastard, to go off and get yourself killed!”
***
Boyd Kimmelman called and said, “Barbara, they’ve finally set a trial date, first week in September, the federal courthouse in Washington. Now you are not to lose any sleep over this. Remember what I told you, even if it goes down the river and we lose hands down, there is still the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court.”
“Boyd,” she said, “by now this has become a normal function of my life. The truth is, I’m happy the waiting is over. Much better this way.”
“Harvey and you and me, we’ll want to sit down and hash this over a bit—you know, lay out a line of approach. When can you come by?”
“Soon, Boyd?”
“The sooner the better. How about tomorrow afternoon?”
“I can make it.”
“Good. We’ll clear the decks for you and push it around all afternoon if we have to.”
Barbara began to giggle. A part of her mind had been occupied in counting the clichés. In the two minutes or so since she had picked up the phone, she had reached a count of seven. “Boyd,” she said, “you’re great.”
“Why? Did I say something?”
“See you tomorrow.”
She put down the telephone, went into her study, and wrote in her daybook: “Three o’clock, lawyers for the defense.” She shook her head at the sight of it, looking so sinister and important. She had committed a misdemeanor. Returning home from Washington after the hearing, she had looked up the word and found it explained variously as ill behavior, petty misconduct, less than a felony. Spitting on the sidewalk was in many places a misdemeanor. Smoking in a no-smoking area. Using foul language in certain places. Walking naked on San Francisco streets. “And refusing to answer a question put to you by ill-mannered boobs,” she added.
But now the ten writers and directors in Hollywood, who had also refused to answer questions, had been sentenced to prison, most of them for a year less a day, so one did not take it too lightly. Kimmelman had called just as she was preparing to leave the house with Sam. She had finished the working draft of her novel the day before. It was now almost five months since Bernie had died.
During the first weeks after she received the news, she had felt she could never write again, never think coherently again, but now the book was done. She planned to spend the day with Sam at Golden Gate Park. Jean had promised to pick them up, and then the three of them would lunch somewhere, Sam’s first restaurant lunch at the age of twenty months.
The doorbell cut through her reverie. Jean was there, and Sam welcomed her with delight. “Hand in hand,” she told the little boy, taking his hand and leading the way to her car. “You are a handsome young fellow. And a great walker.” Her car was a new Cadillac convertible, pearl gray and loaded, as she explained to Barbara, “Dan’s present for my birthday. It has everything, does everything except talk. Isn’t it a love?”
Barbara held Sam in her lap as they drove off. “What a great big wonderful world we live in,” Barbara said. “Daddy gives you a Cadillac convertible as a birthday gift, and Tom tosses John Whittier out of granddaddy’s business, right on his ear, which is practically patricide—”
“You heard about that?”
“Is there anyone in the city who hasn’t? I have the most amazing brother there. He reminds me of the Emperor Caligula, only with a certain lack of restraint that Caligula may have practiced.”
“I’m thankful I know nothing about this Caligula of yours. I do think you and Tom should maintain some kind of relationship.”
“But we do, mother, only I don’t enjoy myself in the role of Red Riding Hood. And to go on with the family catalogue, my brother Joe is studying to be a saint or Father Damien or something down there in Los Angeles—”
“Who on earth is Father Damien? I think your problem, Barbara, is overeducation. It comes of too much time spent alone reading. Where the rich are concerned, my love, a minimum of education is all that is called for, a light touch of Princeton, for example, such as your brother Tom was exposed to. Anything more than that can awaken something called conscience. About Father Damien?”