Eventually she began having nightmares about their discovery. She dreamt that Hugo ordered the police to smash open the cash box in her secret closet. Out of it blasted deadly light and radioactive rays as from the exploding suitcase at the end of the noir film Kiss Me Deadly.
Alternately, she dreamt that the forest fire raged again, burning Rupert’s cabin to the ground. Only her smoldering cash box remained in the ashes, where Rupert knelt and wept over it as if it were her coffin.
Such nightmares, along with panic attacks of guilt, became her way of life. She was the accountant of her bigamy: keeping double books, ever fearful of discovery as a love embezzler.
When Anaïs was most honest with herself, she recognized there were advantages to her trapeze. For one thing, her cyclical appearances and disappearances kept her marriages fresh. Her husbands never tired of her because, unlike the usual wife, she could not be taken for granted. When she was gone, each man longed for her as for an absent mistress.
For another thing, her double life tempered her restlessness. After her affair in Paris with Henry Miller, she had been infected with Henry’s lust and taste for variety, a greater threat to her marriage to Hugo than this predictable pendulum. Now she no longer picked up men at parties, no longer engaged in affairs. Her need for adventure, her appetite for wildness, was satisfied.
Sometimes she could even see humor in her high-wire act, and sometimes it gave her an almost insane high. On the ground, she felt acutely and sorrowfully the shortness of life, measured by clocks and charts and heartbeats; but flying, she transcended the limits of time. Thirty thousand feet in the air on a Constellation jet, suspended between her men and safe from their demands, she was released from gravity. Aloft, she was Sabina—who defied life’s cruel restrictions of one love, one spouse, one life, one self.
When the moon was a sliver, she eyed it from her window seat and imagined herself as Hecate, the moon’s dark face, flying invisibly and freely in the night sky. When the moon was round and bright, she thought of herself as Artemis, the huntress, the goddess owned by no man. And when the planet Venus greeted her at dusk or dawn, she knew herself as Aphrodite, faithful only to the essence of love.
CHAPTER 17
Los Angeles, California, 1964
TRISTINE
A DRY CRACK OF LAUGHTER came from the back of Anaïs’s throat. “I believed my absurd double marriage could not last a year, and it has lasted a decade.”
I quickly calculated: when I’d met Anaïs in 1962, she’d already been a bigamist for seven years! I was excited by her daring. She was an outlaw like the bad boys I’d always been keen on, dangerous and sexy because they took risks and defied convention. I loved her terrible secret; she’d beaten the system of marriage that kept women down, and now that I knew it, she would have to keep me close.
Her penciled eyebrows pinched irregularly and her eyes sought mine. “Now I’m dangling from the trrapeze by a thread and I need your help!”
“I’ll help you,” I responded. “I think it’s great that you’re a bigamist!”
“Please don’t use that word.”
“Why not? I think it’s fantastic!”
“It’s an ugly word. And besides it’s illegal.”
“Well, smoking pot is illegal, but I know a lot of people who are doing it. So is refusing military service, but it shouldn’t be.”
“So you don’t think I’m terrible now that you know?”
“Terrible? I’m awed by you! I’ve never heard of a woman with two husbands. Only men have done it until now.” I thought her adventurous leap beyond women’s traditional roles as remarkable as walking on the moon. She may not have been a great writer, but she was a pioneer, a breaker of boundaries, a daring explorer!
I could see that she was pleased that I’d recognized her extraordinary courage, but she cautioned in a hushed voice, “You must never reveal it. People don’t understand.”
“Well, I understand,” I said, pleased that I was uniquely qualified to do so. She had figured out how never to be abandoned, never caught short of a man. “It’s because your father abandoned you like mine did. By having two husbands you’re protected. You’ll always have a spare.”
“That’s not it at all!”
“It isn’t?”
“No. I can’t leave either man because I know how it feels to be abandoned. I couldn’t inflict that on someone I love. I’m trapped by my compassion.”
She looked completely sincere, but to me, an extra husband as an insurance policy remained a much more compelling reason.
To emphasize her more altruistic perspective, Anaïs asked, “Don’t you recall the terrible pain when your father left? Could you cause someone that pain?”
“No,” I said uncertainly. “But remember I told you I was glad my father left.”
She was scrutinizing me. “If you cannot understand the cruelty it would wreak on Hugo and Rupert to learn of my double life, how can I trust you to keep my secret?”
“Because I gave you my word.” I looked her in the eye. “Once I give my word I’ll never break it. It’s a matter of honor.”
“At twenty-one, you haven’t had much opportunity to test your honor.”
“Yes, I have. For some reason people have always told me secrets, and I always keep my word.”
“What secret did someone ask you to keep?” She leaned into me conspiratorially.
I thought about it. Which secret could I tell that wouldn’t harm anyone and might also impress her? “That my father was Jewish.”
“Did someone ask you not to tell that?”
“My father. I found out by accident when I was sixteen, when an aunt I’d never heard of came to see a play at the Coronet Theater and recognized my name on the program. She took me out to Canters Deli after the play and told me my father had broken off from his Jewish family and changed his last name. I was thrilled to find out I was half Jewish, because my best friend was, but when I talked with my father about it, he told me never to tell anyone.”
“And now you have just told me.” She gave me a hard smile.
She had caught me!
Finally, I thought of what to say. “My relationship with you is different. I took an oath with you. We’re now like blood sisters who tell each other everything, and it’s sacred between us.”
She still did not look entirely convinced, so I tried again. “I only told you my father’s secret because you asked for an example, and that was the only one I could tell. All the other secrets people have told me will go with me to my grave.”
Her face relaxed. “You really are a little soldier, aren’t you?”
“If you mean I can be trusted, yes.” I was proud that she’d entrusted me with a confidence so radical and dangerous.
“So you will help me save my marriage with Rupert as well as with Hugo? You did so well with Hugo.” She looked happy for the first time that day.
Unwilling to disappoint her when it was apparent her happiness now depended on me, I said yes. I had been willing to help her save her marriage with Hugo, and so far I had succeeded. Now she was asking me to help her save both her marriages, to keep her suspended on her trapeze, to partake in her daring feat. I would be the person on the ground, holding her safety line, ever vigilant to keep her from falling. I would have the close-up view of her trapeze, how she worked the pulleys and leapt from husband to husband, both of them reaching for her as she spun in glorious, airborne freedom. There wasn’t anything as amazing—not on Peyton Place, or The Addams Family, or Bewitched. Her life had elements of all those TV shows, and it was dangerous and thrilling, but it was real. And I’d been cast in an essential role.
“Before Rupert gets home from teaching,” she charged on, “we should talk about how you might keep an eye on him while I’m gone.”
“Keep an eye on Rupert? What would that entail?”
“For instance, if Rupert gets suspicious about me in New York, you should phone me, and, well …” Her hands waved and seemed
to reach for something that wasn’t there. She averted her eyes when she said, “I wish I didn’t have to mention this. It’s so unfair. Ever since I fell in love with Rupert I have been absolutely faithful to him.”
“Except for Hugo.”
“Well, yes, but I was already married to Hugo. That’s different. I’ve been completely faithful to both of them, but I can’t trust either of them when I’m out of town.”
I might have pointed out a fault in her reasoning, but as I understood our relationship, she was the mentor and I the apprentice, so it wasn’t my place.
Instead I said, “What am I supposed to do, track Rupert like a detective?”
A mischievous smile brightened her face. “Not a detective, a spy. A Spy in the House of Love.”
I was confused. “You can’t mean you want me to follow him around?” I was, at once, terrified and titillated by the idea.
“Yes, I do,” she said, “but in plain sight. You need to befriend Rupert. That is why I asked you to stay for dinner and listen to his music group this evening.”
“Is his family coming?” When she’d invited me, I’d fantasized meeting Frank Lloyd Wright’s descendants.
“No, Rupert has formed a new chamber group with friends closer to his age. I know you’ll like them, and they’ll like you. Two of them are teachers at his school. They know me as Mrs. Pole, so that is how you should refer to me, either as Anaïs with no last name or as Mrs. Pole.”
Her hands went to reach for something again. She saw my eyes follow. “I quit smoking,” she explained. “Rupert and I are both quitting. Do you have the habit?”
I shrugged noncommittally.
“The only time I miss it is after making love.” She sighed and returned to her agenda. “Tonight, after the musicians finish playing, you should go up to Rupert and tell him how much you enjoyed listening and that you hope to be invited again.” I was furiously scribbling notes; she barely paused for a breath. “Rupert will say you are welcome any time.”
“You know he’ll say that?”
“Yes. You can then come every Tuesday early enough to hear the gossip.”
I looked up. “You just want me to listen for gossip?”
“Yes, get the other musicians to trust you. Just be easy and charming.”
“Be an actress,” I said.
“You told me when we first met that you wanted to be an actress!” Her laugh jingled. “Tristine, do you think you could spare a few weekend afternoons in addition to the chamber group evenings?”
“I guess so.”
“Good. Then when you are saying goodnight next Tuesday, volunteer to help Rupert clear the land he bought in Silver Lake on which he plans to build me a house.”
“Rupert is building a house?”
“Yes, unfortunately. His half-brother Eric designed it.”
“You don’t like the design?”
“Oh, yes I do. Eric is very talented. He’s Frank Lloyd Wright’s grandson, after all. But I don’t want to be tethered to any house. It’s Rupert’s attempt to bury me in permanent soil.”
I nodded; I wouldn’t want to be tied down to a house, either.
She continued, “Don’t strain yourself when you join Rupert at the building site. He prefers to do the work himself but he enjoys company. Bring him some cold beer. It’ll get him to talk.” She dug a wallet from her purse, pulled out three twenties, and squeezed them into my hand. “For Rupert’s beer.”
“That’s a lot of beer,” I said.
“For your trouble, gas.” She waved the money away.
“Okay, but I really don’t think Rupert is going to confide in me.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” she said. “You’re a good listener. And that’s all you have to do; just be there to listen. If he doesn’t confide in you, that’s fine, but stay around to keep your eyes and ears open. There’s just one more thing you must promise me.”
Another promise. “What?”
“That you won’t fall for Rupert even if he makes a pass at you.”
“Anaïs! I would never do that!”
“Yes, but Rupert can be irresistible.”
“I promise you.” I looked into her eyes so she could see my sincerity. “I could never do that to another woman.”
“Why not?”
“My father, before he left for Mexico, had an affair with my mother’s best friend. I know the pain it caused my mother.”
Anaïs nodded, her delicate features taking on her expression of infinite compassion.
I added to reassure her, “Besides, Rupert isn’t my type.”
Rupert’s fellow musicians all arrived on the dot at six o’clock. Anaïs greeted them warmly and introduced me to each, dropping a tidbit that would provide a topic for conversation after she was gone. In no time the instruments and players were in place, forming a semicircle beside the piano.
Anaïs and I sat on the scratchy brown couch, off to the side of the musician’s circle. As they tuned their instruments, she picked up the leather journal resting in her lap and her gold-and-black Montblanc and began to write, completely blocking everyone out, including me, as if she had stepped behind a shower curtain and could hear only rushing water. I resolved to bring my diary the next time to write in as she was doing, so I wouldn’t have to just sit there and listen, and so I could record any gossip before I forgot it.
Rupert stood and gave a lecture for my benefit about what they were going to play and how they had adapted the score for their instruments and limited abilities. I imagined he must be a good teacher, though his discourse on the Brahms concerto seemed at odds with his Venice Beach tan, white teeth, and toned physique. I found myself imagining Anaïs’s robust sex life with him. When I glanced back at her, she seemed annoyed for being pulled from her diary writing by Rupert’s theatrical emphasis on certain words and phrases: “The second piano concerto, called The Holy Terror!”
She capped her pen with a snap. “Tristine is not one of your students, Rupert! Just play.”
As the musicians began to play, slightly out of sync, I took it as my cue to get into character. The givens were that I was a highly cultured, ladylike coed, sitting knees together, ankles crossed, hands gracefully folded in my lap. I was so interested in chamber music that I really wanted to be invited again to listen to Rupert’s quintet. In my imagination I practiced the lines I would say to him before I left, so that he would invite me back in Anaïs’s absence, and I could do my surveillance.
My life had gone from being that of a shy girl from the Valley in hand-me-downs to that of a future college professor, who was also a spy like Mata Hari inside a sophisticated, decadent world. I was doing espionage for the world’s only female bigamist. It was surreal, as I now understood surrealism from the woman who’d known the surrealists in Paris. I was living inside her dreamscape and flying with her past ordinary life as though lifted by a sudden wind, free from the grim realism of existentialism.
Anaïs had quieted her breathing and adjusted the rhythm of her diary writing to Rupert’s strokes on the cello. The script from the fine point of her Montblanc slanted deeply forward, pulled by the future, her high loops reaching for the sky. I marveled at the serenity of her face, the face of Djuna, wise and centered, calm as the mirrored surface of a lake. How was it possible with the life she led?
CHAPTER 18
Los Angeles, California, 1964
TRISTINE
EVERYTHING WENT ACCORDING TO PLAN. When Anaïs left for New York, Rupert invited me to his chamber music evenings and accepted my offer to help at the construction site. The first Saturday I showed up and desultorily added some small rocks to a wheelbarrow, as Rupert hauled lumber around shirtless and went on about how much he missed Anaïs whenever she was gone. He didn’t express any suspicions about her, nor did I have to fight off any advances from him.
At the next chamber music evening he complimented me on looking pretty, but he regularly complimented every woman there. However, the following Saturday, when
I wore jeans to help him move rocks, he said, “You should wear skirts. I’ve seen your legs; you shouldn’t hide them.” Thereafter, I wore pants, even to listen to Mozart.
I finished my semester-end exams and watched my fellow students cheerfully disperse for the winter holiday. I was already depressed at the thought of going to my mother’s house for Christmas. Rupert, too, was blue when I visited him at the building site. Anaïs wouldn’t be back until after the holidays.
He took a swig from the beer I’d picked up and asked, “Do you want to go to a party with me tonight?”
“You mean like a date? No.”
“No, as Anaïs’s friend.”
I thought about it. What would Anaïs want me to do? My instructions from her were to keep an eye on Rupert, so I agreed to meet him at their apartment and follow him in my car to the party at film director Curtis Harrington’s house.
Later in my old Buick, I followed Rupert up a winding road, and when we arrived at Curtis’s driveway, valets ran into the street to take our cars.
Rupert offered me his arm as I struggled up a steep incline in my high heels. A young woman wearing a minidress with pinwheel-patterned stockings passed us as she ran down the hill we’d just climbed, calling back, “Dennis Hopper just left! I’m on to another party! Merry Christmas!”
“How do you know Curtis?” I asked Rupert.
“Anaïs’s friend Renate Druks introduced us,” Rupert said. “They’re part of a Hollywood crowd we used to run with.” I wondered if Renate and her football star husband would be guests at the party and what she would think of my being there with Rupert. I had tried to phone her when I’d rushed home to change, to make sure that I was doing what Anaïs would want, but no one had answered.
We entered the hall where a bust of Medusa, snakes sprouting from her head, glowed under a Tiffany lamp. As Rupert and I crossed into a high-ceilinged living room, I felt as if we were entering the House of Usher. There were thick velvet drapes over the windows, ornate Art Nouveau furnishings, porcelain masks, darkly erotic Aubrey Beardsley posters of Oscar Wilde’s Salome, and a stuffed, mounted raven sitting on an end table. I even saw a man dressed all in black and with a long cape like an Edwardian sorcerer.
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