by Sam Toperoff
“—the hell out of my way. I’m getting a cab.” Lillian was sidestepping the man when a smaller man put his hand on her shoulder. She smacked it away.
The large man said, “Not here, madam. It’s better in the privacy of—”
“Privacy, my ass. Get the hell out of my way.” Now they had her pretty well wedged between them.
“You have a receipt for your purchases?”
“Who the hell are you anyway?”
“Your receipt, please.”
“Get your goddamned hands—”
“Don’t let’s allow this to be a public situation. Just show me your receipt and you’ll be on your way. Nothing untoward.”
The untoward got to her. “There’s nothing fucking untoward. Two items, I purchased two items. This bag. This wallet. Here.” The receipt was in the bag with the wallet. She fished it out. The man looked at it carefully, nodding the whole while. Lillian expected an apology.
The man said, “The item in your coat pocket, madam, I don’t believe is quite covered by this receipt.”
Lillian put her hand in the pocket indicated and touched something that did not belong there. A pen of some sort. Her surprise quickly replaced by comprehension, Lillian put out her arms and said, “Okay, you got me. Put me in cuffs.”
“Please let’s go back to the privacy of the shop.”
Why the fuck does he call it a shop! It’s the most famous fucking store in the world.
Lillian walked between the men back into the shop. In the elevator she said, “Just for the hell of it, why don’t you show me your identification.”
They did. Store detectives. Hammett once held such a job, briefly. He quit. He identified too closely with the shoplifters.
In an upstairs office, she sat before a desk with the detectives standing behind her by the door, hats in hand, apparently waiting for someone important. The store manager entered, a Mr. Kittle, and offered to shake her hand. He was accompanied by another man in a tan raincoat who remained nameless.
Mr. Kittle asked to see the item. Lillian handed him a beautiful silver pen, an item she might have bought had she seen it in the showcase.
Kittle dismissed the two cops and said, “Since you possess no receipt for this item, Mrs. Hellman, I must assume it to be confiscated.” He paused for a response. She offered none.
“We would never wish to accuse publicly someone of your renown of—”
“Who he?” Lillian threw a thumb back over her shoulder without turning.
“—the theft of an item from Harrods.”
“I said, ‘Who he?’ ”
“I’m not important. I’m only here to witness the proceedings and make sure there is justice done in case …”
“In case what?”
“In case things begin to spin out of control. We wouldn’t want a mere misunderstanding to grow into some mad cause célèbre by misjudgment or mischance.”
“I’m sure we wouldn’t. By the way, you’re not the little putz who put this thing in my pocket downstairs? No, you wouldn’t be. You’d have used a woman for that, wouldn’t you?”
The man behind her said calmly, “Please consider your practical options, Miss Hellman.”
She said, cutely, “It looks like this poor little un-American Jew-girl doesn’t seem to have a great many options against big, strong British gentlemen like yourselves. Still, I’m inclined to go the Please-call-my-lawyer route.”
“Be very, very sure about that decision,” the voice said. “Harrods also has a very big stake in the situation. When I entered the store I was stopped by a reporter from the Telegraph who wondered what I was doing here. In terms of public opinion, the press trumps the law in England, I’m afraid.”
Lillian realized then that un-Americans like her not only had to fight Congressional committees, the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service, various other governmental agencies, and professional reputation spoilers, the blight had spread to foreign governments as well. Word had gone forth from some office in Washington to another office in Whitehall—Get her! And on the first floor in crowded Harrods on a busy shopping day, they did just that. Hammett’s Crooks and Cops were of course one and the same, only now internationally so. Amazing. Disgusting. Yet impressive in its way.
Since she had nothing to do that afternoon, Lillian opted to stay silent, curious to see what would ensue. Evening came. The mystery man said, “Fifteen minutes more, I’m afraid, Miss Hellman. We can place you under arrest formally. I can then call my friend at the Telegraph.”
“Or, of course,” said Mr. Kittle, “you may offer to repurchase the item.”
“As a souvenir of my memorable visit to Harrods?”
The voice behind said, “Of your visit to the United Kingdom, I believe.” A threat.
Lillian recalled Chaplin’s comment: So why then aren’t you with him now?
FINALLY, DASHIELL HAMMETT was Lillian’s United States of America.
She returned to him after an enforced absence of sixteen months. Foolishly, she chose to surprise him at the cottage in Katonah. The visit was not impetuous. She called Childs first to get an idea of what shape Hammett was in then. Childs said, “He’s skinny and he’s drinking. It’s not really awful, but what he needs more than anything is a good home-cooked meal and some conversation.”
Lillian called Katonah from her New York apartment. She simply wanted to be sure he was there. They had talked a bit about their lost years over the phone, not in any great detail and not where they could see what they were saying. She intended to tell him her Harrods story at length and in depth.
They needed hours and hours across a table, across a sofa and even a bed, to be Lilly and Dash again, if that were ever possible. She doubted it could happen quickly. He doubted it could happen at all. Perhaps something new could be created.
His voice on the phone was deep, resonant, without slur or interruption. He had just started the day’s drinking. Lillian said, “Before we were so rudely interrupted,” and immediately wished she hadn’t.
“Where in the world are you?”
“The city.”
“I’ll bet you miss London more than I miss London.”
“I’ll take that bet and raise you ten. Tell me, young man, how’s your health?”
“My health is fine. I just don’t know where I put it.”
“Yuk, yuk, yuk.”
“Actually, it’s my gun shoulder, it’s sore as hell.”
“What’ve you been shooting?”
“Haven’t been. That’s the problem.”
“How bad?”
“More than annoying.”
“See a doctor?”
“Only doctor I know is a Commie, so how can I trust him?”
“I know a reliable true-American doctor. Interested?”
“It’ll pass. Rheumatic condition, I think.”
Lillian asked with unconvincing casualness, “So what’re you doing up there all alone, as if I didn’t know.” She hoped he was writing a Spade script at least, or a family memoir at best.
He said, “Reading.”
“Marx or Lenin?”
“Mao Tse-tung.”
“Who?”
“Actually, Lao-tzu.”
Lillian had already planned the home-cooked meal—fried chicken, potato salad, coleslaw, chocolate mousse—and a trip to Katonah even before she said, “You interested in coming down here? We can play a game of rescue-one-another like in the old days.”
“That’s the best offer I had since Mayer bought The Thin Man.”
“We could dress up like Nick and Nora, thirties-style, and do the town. Sound good?”
“Only if you let me pick up girls.”
“Let you? I’ll solicit.”
“I’m on the next train.”
“No. You stay right where you are.”
Lillian hadn’t worn an apron for well over a year, hadn’t done any real cooking in all that time, and certainly had not been this happy while not doing it. She was hummi
ng quietly as she mixed the batter for fried chicken that she had learned in her aunts’ kitchen from Sophronia as a girl in New Orleans. Surprisingly, Zenia didn’t know it, so Lillian taught it to her at Hardscrabble. Oh, Hardscrabble. The loss still throbbed.
She cut up the chicken expertly, dipped each piece, and deep-fried them in cooking oil. She watched them turn golden in the oil as she rolled them with a long fork. Not so quietly she began to sing. “I’ve got a crush on you, Sweetie Pie …”
The chicken cooled on a plate as she prepared the potato salad he loved. Dill was her secret there. For the coleslaw she whipped up her own mayonnaise; she squeezed a lemon flat to give it the bite that pleased Hammett. Her happiness, rare as it was, began to feel comfortable again.
She packed the dinner in a picnic basket even though it was too cold and too late for a picnic. She took two bottles of champagne out of the closet but put one back before she left. Where were the car keys?
As she drove upstate via the Triborough, the sunset to her left begged attention; orange clouds piled on flaming coals. The world became beautiful again, at least for this evening. The aroma of the fried chicken, her fried chicken, their fried chicken, created just the right amount of expectation.
Katonah was almost dark as she drove through cautiously—the town was a well-known speed trap; she’d been ticketed there once. Lillian welcomed expectation’s last obstacle. She remembered the turnoff to his cottage, which she used to miss as often as not. His place was at the end of the road.
All the lights were on in the cottage, a welcoming sign. The front door was open wide. That made her smile. She carried the dinner inside, expecting some sort of surprise.
The front room was a mess, wherever she looked disorder. He did not jump out and shout Surprise. He did not walk up behind her and tap her on one shoulder and duck the other way for an embrace. Lillian said, “Okay, where are you? Let’s clean up this place.” She cleared some used plates from the table and put down her basket.
Hammett wasn’t there. The back door was also wide open and Lillian’s long shadow led her outside to look toward the woods that encroached. She saw a something, a looming shadow, or thought she did. She heard a something, a barking, or thought she did. The moon had risen. The night was clear.
“Hammett. Don’t fool around. I’m serious.”
She saw movement now, in the trees, out beyond the trees. “Damn you, Hammett, don’t ruin this.” As Lillian stepped out toward the first stand of trees she almost tripped over something. It was a pair of pants. She instinctively picked them up and began folding. Then a pair of white shorts. Those she left.
She stopped abruptly and caught her breath, striking a pose she’d have thought silly in one of her actresses, one hand on her chest, mouth agape, the other hand to her forehead.
Hammett was naked in the moonlight, a long gray man bent backward like a birch. He was holding a bottle low at his side. He dropped his head and raised it up to the moon and howled, a sound so mournful, so unhuman, so wolflike. It was Lillian, not Hammett, who fell to her knees and closed her eyes.
Lillian heard the howling continue and realized she had to go toward him, help him come back to something. She suspected it would be dangerous. He would flail at her touch.
She came up behind him saying his name, calling him Samuel, loudly yet comfortingly. Howl still followed howl. A man, a drunken, broken man, a man she loved, baying at the moon. She sensed that only her touch could make him stop.
Lillian wrapped her arms strongly around his waist—my god he was thin—and continued to call his name. Hammett tried to throw her off at first; his efforts flagged but he ended his howling. He tried to pull away from her and stumbled; she hung on dearly and they fell in a tangle on wet grass. His attempt to howl when he was grounded produced only gutturals and then coughs. At no point did he attempt to attack or even repel her. Still she clung to him. It almost became an embrace. She was stronger, finally, than he.
Hammett quieted in time.
“Think I can get you up?”
“Not. Yet.”
“You tell me when.” The ground was very cold and very wet; still they remained.
“Now?”
“Okay.”
Lillian Hellman helped Dashiell Hammett off the ground, to his feet. She offered him his pants. He required help putting them on.
They were near the back door when he said, “D.T.’s. All ruined. D.T.’s.”
He was shivering.
She gave him a long hot shower—at least until the hot water gave out—dried and dressed him, and put on the tea water. He remained cold and silent for a very long while.
Hammett sat wrapped in Lillian’s arms, a quilt covering him from his neck to the floor. She patted his head with a towel as though he were a child. For some reason she said, “You’re not supposed to know you’re having the D.T.’s when you’re having the D.T.’s.”
“If I can say it, it means I’m away from them.”
“So say it to me again.”
“I don’t have to now. I’m back. Thank you.”
“So say thank you again.”
“Sorry, only one per customer.”
. 20 .
Ends
SHE SOBERED HIM UP at the end.
She got some color back in his cheeks; in fact, she even managed to give him those cheeks by putting some weight on him. She had the cottage neatened up by a cleaning service and retaught a sober Hammett how to live in it. She visited once a week whenever possible. Even more often, he stayed with her in Manhattan.
Little by little her career returned. Money—not big money but steady money—was finding its way to her bank account and through her to him. She brought her interpretation of Jean Anouilh’s L’Alouette—The Lark—to Broadway. It was about Joan of Arc. In this version of the tale, Joan lives. As Hammett had been urging for years, she directed the play herself and realized she was good at it.
Leonard Bernstein, her political fellow traveler, did some incidental music for the play and afterward Lillian asked him to consider a musical version of Voltaire’s Candide. She told Lenny at one of his lavish East Side soirees, “Look around. If this isn’t the best of all possible worlds, what the fuck is?”
No one saw through American naïveté in 1956 more clearly than Lillian Hellman. Richard Milhous Nixon was a heartbeat away from the presidency, and what could be more dangerously or darkly comic than that? If America needed anything right now, Lillian decided, it was a strong dose of someone like Voltaire. But America did not have a Voltaire; it only had Hellman and Bernstein to invite him over.
The night Hammett was to accompany her to the Broadway Theatre for the premiere of Candide, the sudden pain in that gun shoulder almost doubled him over in the limo. She told the driver to return to the apartment. Hammett insisted they go on. “I’m a selfish bastard, there’s no doubt, but I don’t upstage a coronation. I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”
“Good. Because I was just about to call Sigmund and tell him I’ve discovered the first confirmed case of unambiguous vagina envy.”
Throughout the performance she couldn’t help notice him wincing or biting his lip. He could not applaud but instead blew kisses to her. Lillian held his left hand throughout. When they got back to the apartment, he took two more painkillers and went to bed.
Lillian Hellman had indeed come all the way back. For her, New York really had become the best of all possible worlds. Briefly.
Hammett’s ailing gun shoulder perplexed two highly regarded Park Avenue doctors, and since they were perplexed they settled on a particularly painful “rheumatoid arthritic condition,” a diagnosis as vague as a wish but certainly nothing life-threatening. It was a diagnosis a stoical Hammett was glad to try to soldier his way through. He called it his “shootin’ ” pain.
Lilly and Dash did not socialize a great deal thereafter. He did some of the cooking when he could; she most other times. A relative of Zenia, a cousin she said, stayed over on weekends, an
d then more often, to take care of Hammett’s increasing needs and later to cook and clean full-time.
Hammett read books on Asian art and philosophy mostly but also the works of the English Romantic poets. When he found one he admired, Coleridge for example, he read the autobiography and then collections of his correspondence as follow-ups. As far as Lillian was concerned Hammett was living well and thoughtfully through other writers’ lives.
In the evening they spoke about her work. Lillian said she wanted to write another family drama and direct it herself. She had been dreaming a great deal about her father Max and his two sisters, all now deceased. An incident she observed as a girl in the rooming house had begun to emerge more and more clearly as she drifted off and then woke from sleep. Max had come down the back stairs looking strangely confused and upset; Hannah followed, her arms forward, either beseeching or accusing, Lillian then couldn’t be sure, but something had occurred on the stairs. Whatever it might have been struck Lillian now as extremely important. The stuff of drama.
Just as they had done all those years ago with the Drumsheugh story, so now they began to suppose dramatic relationships among the Hellmans, as they had among the Marxes.
“Sexual?” Lillian wondered.
“Ever see them kiss?”
“I can’t honestly remember. Why?”
“Just fomenting.”
THE DOCTOR WHO FINALLY conjectured accurately about the gun shoulder had a practice in Katonah, not on Park Avenue. His name was Feldman. The nature of the pain, Dr. Feldman believed, indicated that it was referred, probably from the chest area.
Lung X-rays at Lenox Hill Hospital revealed cancer. Advanced. Inoperable.
They would share the time left as they had since Lillian’s return from England. A hospital bed was installed in the West Side apartment. Hammett avoided it by making very bad old vaudeville jokes: “Oy, Doctor, Doctor, do you know I’ve got a bed cough? So get out of bed. No, no, it’s not a bed cough, it’s a bed cough … a very bed cough.”