The Western Coast

by Paula Fox

  “How did you track me down?”

  “I called the St. Vincents.”

  “He wouldn’t tell you. I bet it was that stinker, Hope. How is that stinker?”

  “They gave me your number at MGM.”

  “Getting married! My God! I should think you’d be cured of that before you even begin!”

  “The address, Bea?”

  “Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t,” Bea replied.

  “Bea!”

  “If he were a real artist, he wouldn’t spend all his time marrying. He wouldn’t have had you, my girl! He’s a senseless man. Senseless! All right. Let me go get the address, and luck to you. Why don’t you just shack up with your hero?”

  “It was hard, but I got it,” Annie reported to Walter.

  “Then wire him right now.”

  “Why are you in such a hurry?”

  “Don’t be stubborn with me, Annie.”

  “I thought Communists were all for free love…”

  He looked prim. “That’s capitalist propaganda,” he said.

  She laughed.

  Chapter 10

  An answer came the next evening in answer to Annie’s telegram.

  “I think you’re crazy,” it read. “I give you my permission to marry as no one can be dissuaded from craziness. Love.” It was signed “Papa.”

  “Papa!” she exclaimed. “I’ve never called him that in my life. ‘Tony,’ that’s how he always signed his letters.”

  “He’s smarter than you are, baby. ‘Tony’ can’t give you permission to get married.”

  The details of this endeavor had been so cumbersome, obscurely threatening and clearly irrevocable—the call to Bea, the wording of the telegram to her father, the nervous wait in a narrow shop where an aged hollow-eyed jeweler had fumbled among a tray of wedding bands while Walter watched her try on rings with amused condescension, as if it were all some lunatic scheme of her own, the earlier visit to a doctor whom she’d found not far from the apartment house, alone in his office, patientless and morose, who fitted her roughly with a hard-rimmed rubber contraceptive. And now Walter was telling her that the final act was to take place tomorrow in Los Angeles, he’d made all the arrangements. Each stone was fitting into place across the cave entrance. They were to marry each other. Why did she feel that it was she who was being walled in?

  “During my fifteen-minute lunch break?” she asked with conscious irony.

  He stared at her patiently.

  “If I tell them I’m sick, they’ll fire me.”

  “That would be a good thing,” Walter said quietly. “It’s the worst job I ever heard of. Only you could have found it.”

  “It is a job. And I can’t do anything anyhow.”

  “There are other jobs where you don’t have to know anything, but they pay better.”

  The morning began with a disagreeable conversation with the store manager. It was clear he didn’t believe her. She had an impulse to tell him she was in an advanced state of leprosy. But instead, she apologized immoderately, oppressing both the manager and herself. She said she would be in the following day no matter what. Then, when she returned from the drugstore where she’d made the call, she saw Johnnie Bliss heading into the apartment house. Oh, she should have kept him away, written him a note, said she was leaving town for good! Walter would detest him. He would hold her responsible for his very existence!

  It didn’t turn out as she had anticipated. Walter was excessively hospitable to Johnnie, pressing him to smoke up the cigarettes, offering him a drink—“At this time in the morning?” Johnnie purred demurely—and when Johnnie left shortly after, clasping his hand warmly. Annie walked down the hall with him. “Are you all right?” she asked him.

  “Of course I’m all right!” Without warning he grabbed her hand and pinched her wrist hard. “You’d better worry about yourself,” he said spitefully. She gasped with pain. “Why did you—”

  But he walked away quickly and waddled out of sight down the stairs. “Johnnie?” What had she done?

  “Put on your new coat…we’re due at the courthouse at eleven o’clock.”

  They went to the Los Angeles Courthouse, where Walter led her through an empty courtroom that smelled of institutional polish. A man in overalls was sweeping the floor. Later, along with a young clerk, he served as one of their two witnesses. The ceremony lasted only a few minutes. The judge had distinguished hair and an overly sweetened voice. Annie fought down a powerful wave of laughter that threatened to engulf her, wash her into the street. The witnesses, smiling at her, left. A ray of sunlight streaming through the large window directed its principal blessing toward the judge’s hair. She looked at the dust motes. Her throat still rippled faintly with laughter. Then she realized Walter and the judge were having a heated argument, something about Murmansk…the Murmansk run.

  “But how can you leave your young wife so soon?” the judge was asking indignantly. Walter answered him with a constrained patience that implied the judge was mentally deficient. The Murmansk run was so perilous that an extra bonus was given; it amounted to a considerable amount of money. As for his young wife, said Walter, she could damn well take care of herself as women did all over the world. The judge patted Annie’s hand and gave her a pitying glance.

  Afterward, as she and Walter walked along the street, she said, “What is Murmansk?”

  “Nothing…we’re married! What do you think of that?” She was fiddling with the ring on her finger; it was neither heavy nor tight, but it made her breathless, as if two fingers pressed against her throat.

  “Annie Vogel!” Walter said.

  No! she cried silently. And then, all at once, she felt a vast ease, unexpected and overwhelming. Walter had stopped to look at the pictures behind the display case of a movie house. He’d slipped his hands into the back pockets of his trousers, and he bent forward to look more closely at the pictures. He looked surprisingly young. She drifted over to him, catching sight as she did so of a man across the street. She was sure it was the one who’d given her the ride to San Diego, Max Shore. She turned away quickly, afraid he might remember her, might feel constrained to come and speak to her. She had often thought of Max Shore, of the way he’d looked at her, his comic irritation with that woman who drove the car. He had seemed so sad to her.

  “Let’s go to the movies!” said Walter. She laughed at the perversity of such an act on their wedding day, and said yes.

  They sat in the nearly empty movie house watching Ida Lupino with her tough, pretty, small-dog’s face. Annie was hardly conscious of the story. Walter’s hand was on her knee. The ring continued to disturb her and, furtively, she slid it back and forth along her finger.

  Walter bought them lamb chops and a bottle of wine and two large potatoes.

  They had an early supper; she cooked while Walter read a newspaper he’d picked up before they’d come home. She looked down greedily at the frying chops. There were two for each of them, unprecedented luxury…

  “God!” exclaimed Walter.

  “What?”

  “This girl. A girl on the society page. She’s marvelous looking!”

  Annie went to the bed where Walter was lying, the paper held up over his head. She reached for it. He snatched it away. She jumped up on the bed and grabbed it, then looked rapidly through the pages. There was no society girl, only a small photograph of Merle Oberon on the movie page. He was laughing insinuatingly.

  “Why did you say there was a girl?”

  “Hunh?”

  “Walter?”

  “You’re such an easy mark, Annie. It’s so easy to get a rise out of you.”

  She sat in the chair and looked at him wordlessly. Whatever he was thinking, his expression didn’t, immediately, change. It held the mocking interest of someone watching the predictable but comic antics of a fool.

  “I am not a fool,” she said as lightly as she could.

  “No,” he agreed. “But you are foolish.”

  She wa
nted to cry out that she was young! In the same way, she had once defended herself against her father’s charge that she was “pleasure mad” because she’d wanted to go to see two movies in one afternoon. “I’m only a child!” she had said to Tony. Recalling that now, she smiled ruefully. It was as though youth was a form of epilepsy which one was obligated to explain, even in the throes of its convulsions.

  Why had Walter married her? What did he really want with her? An uncanny question presented itself to her: Who was it that Walter had married?

  He didn’t look mocking now. He looked reflective and gloomy. He sighed suddenly. He looked so melancholy that his face seemed softer. She would have liked to ask him about his thought, but she was afraid…

  He drank a good deal that evening, talking fitfully about his acting days. He seemed to be speaking to someone who was not there. He fell asleep in his clothes. She took off his shoes without waking him. As she placed his shoes side by side beneath the bed, she felt concern for the unguarded, sleeping man, a rush of intense sympathy. As she made herself a place next to him, the strain of not waking him giving her a singular pleasure, she thought suddenly of Max Shore. What would it be like if Max Shore were here in this bed? Her half-closed eyes flew open.

  Miss Gluck spotted the ring as soon as Annie began to straighten out blouses in a display case.

  “No! I’m psychic! I said to myself yesterday that I just bet you weren’t sick. I knew you were up to something. And look what you’ve been up to! And whom did you manage to snare in your little web? Unless you’re just wearing that ring because you’re living with someone…are you? Look out! Here come the natives. I’ll speak to you later.”

  Although Annie tried to avoid close proximity to Miss Gluck, the older woman’s eager eyes sought her all day. She caught up with her just before closing time.

  “Is it true? Are you really married?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who? I declare! You’re just a baby! I hope he’s got some money.”

  And, after Annie had told her the shortest possible story, “A sailor! My goodness!” Miss Gluck dissolved into strange, intense laughter. Annie saw her speaking to the scowling manager. He marched over to Annie. “I can’t say I appreciate your lying to me. You might have told me. You could have had the day off—instead of stealing it.”

  Walter was waiting for her outside the store. She dragged him away, fearful of what Miss Gluck might say to him. She sensed Miss Gluck, once having seen them together on the street, might construct for herself more intimate pictures of them. The thought horrified her, as though Miss Gluck were handling her body.

  “It’s nice of you to come and get me,” Annie said. Walter smiled remotely, then put his arm around her shoulders. He took her to a diner. Something incomprehensible happened at once. Next to Annie at the counter sat two mannish, angular-looking women. They were not young. They both looked quickly at Annie. She instantly removed her wedding ring. Looking up, she saw Walter had observed her do it. His grin was wolfish. She put the ring back on. She had lost her appetite.

  “Why’d you do that?” whispered Walter.

  Her humiliation was complete. She looked down at the Swiss steak bathed in greasy gravy. It was one thing to accept Walter’s “taking her in hand.” But what she had done with the ring made her vulnerable to him in an excruciating way. Oh, if she could only take back the moment, the impulse. Yet Walter seemed merely amused in his usual bullying fashion. What had she been up to with those two disagreeable-looking women?

  Later, she hardly noticed where they were walking.

  “Annie, we’re here,” Walter said.

  “Here?” she echoed miserably. Then she looked up to see the Los Angeles bus station. He went directly to a wall of lockers, Annie trailing behind him. There, he took a key from his pocket, unlocked a metal door, and dragged out his sea bag. He turned to face her. People milled around them; some hurried to loading platforms.

  “I filled up the gas tank of the car,” he said. “It’s parked right in front of the apartment house.”

  “But where are you going?”

  “New York.” He took her hand. “I’ve got to go. We’re almost out of money. I have to go back and get another trip.”

  “Trip? Where?”

  “Maybe the Murmansk run, this time.”

  “But you didn’t say anything!” she burst out.

  “No,” he acknowledged without emphasis. “But one or two more runs and I’ll have enough for a stake. The car, you know, and your clothes, big outlays of cash. After, I’ll be back and get a job out here. Won’t that be good, Annie? You must have known I’d have to leave soon. You’ve got to find a better job—that’s what you have to do. And keep in touch with the people you met. Paul Lavan is going to get you into some kind of political activity. I want you to get involved with the party—you need that, Annie…”

  “You didn’t tell me,” she said again, forcing her voice to be quiet, as though only in quietness could she convince herself of the enormity of it.

  “I didn’t decide until yesterday. When I worked out the money situation.”

  “But we were married yesterday!”

  “And I knew I had to go.”

  “Why can’t you get a job now?”

  “I want some choice. I’d have to take anything now. This way, I’ll come back with enough money to look around. Come on, baby, calm down.” He shook her gently. They went to the platform where the New York bus was loading up with baggage and passengers. She felt ill and leaned against him.

  “Listen, you take care of things. You’re a good girl. You’ll do that.”

  “When will you be back?” Her voice trembled. She was trembling.

  “Six weeks, two months maybe. It depends on the run. If I take the Panama run, it may be shorter. But I’ll write, Annie, and you’ll be awfully good, won’t you?” He kissed her neck and was gone.

  As the bus pulled out, Annie stood there, looking up at Walter’s face. He pressed his nose against the glass, made faces, grinned at her comically. She left before the bus backed out of its slot. She ran into people inside the station and looked mutely into their indignant faces. She was surrounded by emptiness. What she had so passionately wished for only a few days ago had happened. She was alone.

  She took the streetcar home, but once there, could not bear to go up to the room. She found the car parked where Walter had said it would be. She drove out toward Beverly Hills. At the turning into Arizona Canyon, she felt hesitation, but the emptiness around her was a force that drove her on. The worst St. Vincent could do was to tell her to leave.

  The Saint Bernard loped up to her as she shut the car door and went up the walk. But it was Andrew, St. Vincent’s son, who answered the door, not Jim’s butler and literary adviser. She sensed behind the boy an empty house. Andrew blinked at her, then smiled uncertainly. His eyes were set closely together; he had Jim’s narrow head.

  “Oh, I thought Mr. St. Vincent—”

  “Partying,” interrupted Andrew. “Out partying with the girls …” He laughed shrilly.

  “Well, then—”

  “Don’t you want to see me? Come in and see me, it’s boring when I’m here alone. Even the servants are off somewhere.” He snapped his fingers in a parody of St. Vincent’s restless habit, as though evoking his father’s presence by imitating him. “Daddy talks to me except when he’s working. I don’t like being alone.”

  He saw her hesitation. “I have some cake,” he offered hopefully.

  “All right,” she said.

  She followed him directly to the kitchen where he took a plate from a cupboard, holding the remains of a chocolate cake. Like the one she’d noticed that first night at the St. Vincents’ diningroom table, this one was also caved in. Maybe after making it, the cook, in a fit of rage, smashed her hand down on the cake. Andrew cut them each a large piece, got two princely goblets from a cabinet and filled them with milk. On the wall was a box with numbers printed on buttons. She knew
its function from all those movies about the lives of the rich. One summoned the maid for breakfast by ringing a bell that buzzed here in the kitchen.

  “We’ll pretend the milk is Scotch,” said Andrew. He raised the goblet. “Here’s to itself!” he cried, and swallowed a great gulp. The milk trickled down his chin. He laughed and she joined his laughter. “I look foul, don’t I?” he said. He jumped up, a gnomelike figure out of a fairy tale. He snatched a linen towel from a rack and wiped his entire face, peering out at her. The cake was rich and delicious. “We can eat all of it,” he said.

  He wiped up the icing on the plate with his little fingers. “I only like cake,” he said gravely. Then, in the same tone of voice, “I know your father. I remember him. He’s a frightful drunk,” this last observation in a voice not quite his own, a stolen adult judgment.

  Oh, she remembered her father too. She was always remembering him. Life had gone along quietly at Uncle Greg’s for several years, then one night when she was around eleven, there had been a flash of light as her bedroom door had opened and closed.

  Tony, smelling of liquor and tobacco, had come to sit on her bed. She’d sat straight up from sleep to full waking. He held her hand. He told her things were going to be different. Soon, he would be coming to take her away with him. Would she like to live in the Canary Islands? He’d heard of a fine boarding school in Switzerland. They would have splendid parties in Paris. Everything was possible. He’d kissed her good-by. The door had opened, then it was dark again. In the morning, he was gone. Uncle Greg was agitated all day. No, no, he didn’t know when Tony was coming back; it had been an unexpected visit after all that time. She wandered around the old house all day, unable to eat, dizzy with hunger. The Canary Islands…

  “He’s not a frightful drunk,” Annie said. “He just drinks.”

  “My father, known as Jimmy by some people, was his best friend,” Andrew said gently, as though he understood he’d wounded her. “They often got drunk together.”

  “I got married yesterday,” Annie said impulsively. “And just before I came here, I saw my—husband—off to New York.”