Lizzie ignored the second question and answered the first. “We don’t have the time.”
“It doesn’t take long.”
It was their mother’s humor. They smiled.
“It’s not making them,” Lizzie said. “It’s everything else.”
“Is Joe too old? He must be nearly my age.”
Lizzie frowned. “We can’t all find men thirty years younger.”
Nelly smiled. “My boys aren’t for making babies, dear.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Deirdre Mull Heyward, called Didi, was born the summer of 1948. Even in the basinet she was an intense, restless child. It was a good year to be born in Los Angeles, off to a perfect start. The Rose Parade had never been more glorious. Whatever miseries affected the rest of the world, Los Angeles, cut off by its deserts, mountains, and ocean, remained apart. It still took three days to arrive by train from the East, just a little less than to cross the Atlantic. Hollywood quickly adapted to the postwar era. Gone was the slapstick of the twenties, the shootouts of Prohibition, the frothy romances of the late thirties and battle triumphs of the war years. Westerns were more popular than ever—the lonesome sheriff standing up to the gang was the perfect metaphor for America in a nasty world. If some didn’t agree, the House Un-American Activities Committee and Sen. Joe McCarthy were there to persuade them.
Cal was Didi’s godfather, just as he was godfather to her cousin Robby. Maggie had considered asking Joe, but Joe was in jail and would have his hands full when he got out with Robby, who made it clear from the first that he didn’t like having a new cousin. With Joe gone, Lizzie hired a UCLA co-ed as nanny in exchange for room and board. Terry questioned if Didi really needed a godfather, but the Mulls, on both sides, Catholic and Presbyterian, had always had them. Godparents are there when the birth parents aren’t. So once again, for the hundredth time in her life, she turned to Cal, deprived of a godfather himself for having been born in China and still without wife or children of his own.
Maggie and Terry lived in a brown, two-story wood shingle house on Montreal Street in Playa del Rey, up the hill from the stables and looking out across Santa Monica Bay. Hughes Airfield was ten minutes away, and either of them taking off flew directly over the house just before reaching the ocean. Nelly was right: Terry was good for Maggie. Love, no. Arnaud was for love. Five years older, Terry was a good guy and lucky or skilled enough to have survived a war of island-hopping in P-38s. He was a bachelor and intended to remain one until he met Maggie. He’d paid $15,500 for his house and spent most of his spare time just down the hill at the Westport Beach Club. Maggie had been the boss’s girl, but when she wasn’t seeing the boss anymore Terry invited her to Westport for dinner and before long she was sleeping over. Maggie regarded herself as equal to any male pilot, but Terry had thirty-two known kills in the war and been shot down and fished out only once, and no one could match that. He was slow and easy and loved her madly, the opposite of Hughes, who was a dervish of motion and constant agitated calculation and didn’t offer love as much as he took it.
With no churches in Playa del Rey, the christening on a hot summer Sunday afternoon was at St. Michael’s in El Segundo. Afterward, they returned to the bar at Westport, a potted-palm, beachy room with the usual netting, cork, and seashells. An upright piano with stains telling many tales stood on one side ready for the piano player if he showed up or anyone else if he didn’t. The dozen bamboo tables between piano and bar would be full by then. They ordered rum drinks and whiskey for Joe, who was just back from prison, and the children stayed until they got noisy and were driven up the hill by their grandmother. A sitter had been arranged, and Nelly would come back for dinner and dancing. Claude, her latest dance beau, would join them.
Playa del Rey was a special place for the Heywards, a sleepy little village surrounded by Ballona marshlands, beach, and ocean. The village consisted of grocery store, drugstore, a couple of burger joints and a gas station. The trolley tracks from downtown to Redondo Beach were still there behind the paddle tennis courts, though the trains weren’t running anymore. The Westport was the center of activity, but was a monastery compared with the snazzy beach clubs up the way in Santa Monica and Malibu. The village was Maggie’s favorite place back to her stable days. The crash with Billy Todd might have rubbed some of the magic away but hadn’t. She joked with Terry that it was as much the village as the man that had seduced her.
Aside from the christening, the occasion was to welcome Joe back. His appeal denied, he’d served nine months in a Tennessee prison with some of his friends and returned to a Hollywood that wanted no part of him. Prison had not changed him. The nanny was gone, and Joe was babysitting again, writing and giving Lizzie more time downtown, which she needed. The second Pitts trial had resettled the former district attorney at San Quentin, and she had moved on to investigating why the Los Angeles City Council had allowed the world’s greatest transportation system to be sold to a shell company serving as front for General Motors.
Cal passed a letter from Howard Hughes around as their drinks arrived. “This came last week. He wants to meet to discuss the land. It’s up to you all, of course. I’m just your lawyer. Just tell me how to answer him.”
“How about lawyer and adviser,” said Maggie.
“And negotiator,” said Lizzie.
“I heard you hung up your shingle,” said Joe.
“In Echo Park,” said Maggie, smiling. “He just can’t break away.”
“From . . .?”
“From the past—what else?”
“It’s where the memories, reside, my dear,” said Joe. “We are all prisoners.”
“Howard wants to speculate on the land,” said Cal, trying to get back on subject. “I can’t see any other reason he’d be interested. He’s certainly not going to expand his airfield with L.A. International so close. He knows he’ll have to shut it down one of these days.”
“One of these days will be when jet planes arrive,” said Terry. “No way the FAA allows two airfields so close with jets buzzing around.”
“So why sell?” said Maggie. “We can speculate as well as Howard can.”
“Keep those awful wells?” said Lizzie. “Howard promised to pull them out.”
“And keep the stables,” said Maggie, sipping her Daiquiri.
“I’m glad Nelly’s not here,” said Cal. “She loves the wells and hates the stables.”
“For Howard, it’s always money,” said Maggie.
“The wells are coming out sooner or later for the marina,” said Cal. “My guess is that Howard thinks he can make money by holding the land for a few years and selling to the county, and that you’ll sell now because you want out of the oil business.”
“So do we meet with him?”
“Of course,” said Cal. “Find out what he’s up to.”
“You just told us,” said Maggie.
“There could be more to it. He might have his eye on the land between the wells and the airfield, the wetlands of Ballona. But why? We won’t know until we sit down with him.”
“Include me out,” said Joe. “Howard and I don’t mix now that I’m a criminal.”
“I think you should come,” said Lizzie. “Howard Hughes is a feast for writers.”
Joe smiled and patted his wife’s hand. “Right as always.”
“I’m out,” said Terry. ”This is for the girls.”
“You’re coming,” said Maggie. “You’re the only one Howard likes.”
♦ ♦ ♦
He’d put it off but could not put her out of his mind. She had asked him to drop over some time, but did she mean it? He decided to write rather than call, and he put it in a short note. After a few days the answer came: Come for a drink at seven the following Tuesday. Tuesdays were a slow day for preachers. It had been the same for Willie. He caught the Big Red Car direction Burbank and got off
at Los Feliz. He walked across the Los Angeles River to Lambeth Street and up the hill. The house, a villa really, was set back from the street and hidden by palms, deodars and junipers running up toward Griffith Park in the San Gabriel foothills. Built with small windows in the Spanish style, the house was meant to be cool in summer and warm in winter. He stood a moment in the front courtyard under a tall rubber tree wondering what he was doing. He felt tense.
Dressed in flared pants and a loose cotton sweater, with a dangling pendant that looked to be a tiny elephant with ruby eyes, she answered the door herself. They embraced, and she led him by the hand into the cool salon overlooking a rear patio. The house was not small, surely she had servants, but none were visible. In the rear, behind another patio, a cottage in the same Spanish style was partly hidden by cedars and ficus trees, possibly a servants’ quarters. He saw a fountain burbling. The living room had tall ceilings supported by heavy oak beams. A gallery walkway ran around the second floor. The staircase was at the front of the living room, just off the hallway.
She had chardonnay cooling on the bar and poured two glasses. She pulled her legs up as they sat together on the couch, exactly as she’d done the first time on Willie’s couch on Sunset. He still remembered what she was wearing that night: the red and blue checkered cotton blouse and swishy skirt. Her legs were bare. He’d been overpowered by her, by the pull of her sensuality. It seemed like a lifetime ago, but was hardly more than a decade. She’d kept her youthful figure. He remembered that she’d worn no make-up that night. She wore more now but not a lot more, and it was not to hide the scars. The scars were to remind people of the wars she’d been through. Been through and won. Her hair was exactly the same: fluffed, tossed over an eye. A little lighter, maybe some gray in there somewhere, he wasn’t sure about that.
“Silent Cal,” she said, smiling.
“You can’t imagine what I’m thinking.”
She laughed. “I’m thinking the same thing.”
He joined her. “You two chased me out.”
“Better that way, don’t you think?”
They sipped their wine and talked, never about Willie and never about Jesus. He’d always liked that about her. When she was with him she was a different person, not a famous preacher, but an interesting, alluring woman. She could be funny, something she never was on stage. After another glass they walked down the hill to Los Feliz and ate steaks and salad in a local restaurant. She was incognito in her own neighborhood. Walking back up she asked if he had a car, and he said he had one but mostly took the trolley. She offered to drive him back home. When he didn’t answer, she slipped her hand into his. He knew.
Hungry, insatiable, relentless, these words would come to him later. A caged animal who had been let out. The other Angie had been repressed for so long that when it was freed it could not hide its joy and exultation. They said very little, but he understood. She was trapped, as Willie had been trapped, into a personage that only represented half of what she was. The other half had to be suppressed, buried, there was no other way. He understood what she meant without being told. She was not safe, could not trust any man but him. It was that simple. It had been the same for Willie. She wrapped her naked brown body around his and would not let go. He refused to let his mind wander, would not let it go where it might have gone. That was then. This was now.
In the morning he slipped out as he had come, took the trolley home. She was awake when he left. Neither said a word. Time would do its work.
Chapter 31
Joe Morton worked in the study of his Brentwood house, a room that gave onto the backyard where Lizzie had planted flowers and vegetables. He liked looking into the garden as he wrote, taking inspiration from plants that grew a little each day, just like his scripts, even if they didn’t sell anymore. Even in winter he kept his eye on the ground, knowing the roots were down there gathering strength, waiting for spring to struggle up again, just like his scripts would one day see daylight again. Among the flowers, he liked lilacs best, seeing them shoot forth each spring in colors unlike any others, watching them reign over everything before their brief moment was gone. Writing was like that: short fertile days, long fallow ones.
During the day he took care of Robby. The boy’s full name was Robinson Adams Morton, the first two names taken from Joe’s mother’s side. Lizzie was up each morning to dress Robby and give him his breakfast, make coffee and leave for downtown. When she’d left, Joe read the paper until Robby was finished eating and shitting. Afterward they headed into the study. Robby had no trouble amusing himself while his father tapped out strange rhythms on the black machine. He liked the racket, and Joe didn’t mind the racket made in turn by his son, which got closer to language each day. Occasionally he glanced over into the boy’s deep blue eyes, a genetic anomaly, and wondered what he was thinking. When he looked into Robby’s eyes, Robby always stopped what he was doing to look back. His gaze never wavered. Even in the crib he understood a contest.
That was their routine during the early years, with time out when Joe went to prison. Nine to eleven in the study and then into the garden. Robby liked to toddle over to the Seville orange tree and prop himself up against the trunk like Ferdinand the bull against the cork tree. One day Joe watched his son pick an orange off the ground and bite into it. Why warn him, Joe thought, let him find out for himself about bitter oranges, sourer than lemons. Instead of spitting it out, Robby smiled across at him and took another bite. Another challenge met. After lunch he would put his son to bed, sometimes to sleep, and return to the study for two more hours of work. At four, they went walking to the stores on Montana or sometimes down to San Vicente, father pushing son in his pram, enjoying sunshine and exercise.
When Lizzie took on the new assignment instead of book leave, Joe discovered he didn’t really mind. He and Robby had their routine, and where would she have worked at home? The spare room was Robby’s, and the study wasn’t big enough for two people, for two desks. Could he work with someone in the room tapping out rhythms in a different key? He had his quirks. He read out loud. He talked out loud. He paced. He argued and fought with himself, sometimes acting out scripts in different voices. Robby enjoyed it, thought it was normal adult behavior, but it wouldn’t have worked with Lizzie there. They would have had to move into something bigger, and he didn’t want to move. He was writing again, that was the important thing. He liked the study, liked the house, liked the orange tree. Where else could he find another orange tree bitter enough to keep his son happy?
With time, they found a preschool at a neighborhood co-op on Montana across from the Wadsworth Veterans Home on Sawtelle. It was only fifteen minutes away, and Joe and son would walk together. If they were running late, they hopped the trolley at Barrington to the Veterans Home. Joe was back to fetch him when school let out at three. On the way home they would stop at the stores and be home by four, in time for the afternoon goûter. Robby had cookies and milk like a normal child, and Joe would have a beer or a scotch, depending on his mood and the weather and how writing had gone that day. From his college days at NYU, he’d always enjoyed his drinks. As husband, father, ex-con, and unemployed middle-aged writer, he’d tapered off, usually making it to teatime before his first drink. He hated tea.
The result of their long routine was that Robby knew his father far better than he knew his mother. As an infant he’d hungered for his mother but by age five had fully adjusted to masculine life. To his parents he seemed normal enough, though his teachers said he didn’t bond well and was on the bossy side. He had an edge, but why wouldn’t he be?—an only child being raised by an edgy father and a missing mother.
Fathers, if they have a mind to, can do all the basic stuff mothers do: they can change diapers, empty potties, walk children to school, go shopping on the way home, read to them, sit with them for the afternoon goûter. They can do a lot but they aren’t mothers. They don’t touch as much, hug as much, smile as much, aren
’t as unconditional. They tend to ignore children and go off in their own worlds, no one more than writers. Robby knew more about his father than about his mother, but more important, knew more about his father than his father knew about him: he knew his tics, his tastes, his moods, his habits, what tickled him, what angered him.
One thing he didn’t know was why he spent so much time pounding on the noisy black machine producing reams of paper that often ended up in the wastebasket.
♦ ♦ ♦
“Okay, Joe, ten minutes, no more. Come on back.”
He’d tried for months to make an appointment with Buddy Fix at RKO, finally deciding the hell with phone calls and planting himself at reception outside Fix’s office. He’d skipped lunch and already been there an hour, but had two more before it was time to pick up Robby. Ten minutes was a start. He’d had no trouble getting through the front gate. They’d taken away his studio pass when he went to prison, but the guards all knew Joe Morton. He’d stood with them on the picket lines.
“What can I do for you, Joe?” said Fix, swinging his ample bottom around the desk and planting it on the cushioned swivel chair. Joe heard a fart slip out. Buddy had not skipped lunch. Joe sat down without being invited.
“Got a helluva script, Buddy. Think you’ll love it.”
Fix loved steaks and beer and French bread slathered in butter and his beefy body paid the price. The hair on his face grew faster than the hair on his head, and he gave off a sweetish odor no matter how many times a day he changed his shirt. They’d been friends of a sort in the old days, or at least colleagues, and Joe’s scripts had made the studio some money. Joe had never ranked Buddy up with the really bad guys, the high and mighty studio schmucks who couldn’t do a deal without diddling everyone.
Fix leaned back and clasped his hands in the prayerful manner. “And so say I love it, Joe, like I probably will, like I usually do with you. What then? You’re untouchable. You know who owns this studio now.”
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