by Anne Girard
“What makes you think Marino Bello has even the slightest desire to get back to work?”
“They’re family, Chuck. I don’t mind helping them.”
“And Bello sure as hell knows it!”
“We were having such a nice evening,” she said, showing a half pout of disappointment as he strutted across the bedroom in search of his trousers.
Part of her knew—and had always known—that he was right about Marino. Still, she couldn’t be swayed to side against her mother.
Back when she had contracted scarlet fever at summer camp, without a thought for her own health, her mother had raced to her aid, and refused to leave her side while she nursed her daughter back to health, amid the angry protests of the camp director.
Harlean didn’t like to talk about it but she had been weakened by that illness and still sometimes she did not feel as robust as she knew that she should. It always reminded her then of what her mother had done for her, her devotion to her only child. It was an event they rarely spoke of but one of the many things that had so tightly bonded them.
“I just hate him, I really do, and I’m not overly fond of your mother, either. Why do they always have to get in the way of what’s between us?”
“Stop it, Chuck, please. Why the hell do you always have to ruin a good thing?”
She stood and wrapped herself in her silk dressing gown. It shocked her how quickly her heart could take her from adoration to pure disdain of him, especially when the topic was her mother. Harlean certainly didn’t feel that his level of contempt was justified. It made her feel that something else must be at play tonight. Whether he was feeling more threatened than usual by her working, or whether it was those suppressed feelings of loss and grief over his own mother rearing up, she couldn’t know. And clearly he was not about to tell her. The frustration she had begun to feel over that was overwhelming.
Chuck shoved his arms through his shirtsleeves as she took two steps nearer to him. “You knew how I felt about Jean when we got married,” he said hotly. “She didn’t like me or trust me. And the feeling is mutual.”
Her mother would never be able to forgive the fact that he had run off with her sixteen-year-old daughter, her only child, and Chuck was not going to let go of the animosity, either. It appeared to her right now that none of them were ever going to get past that and move on.
“You knew how much I love her. That is never gonna change!”
She did not even try to keep the warning tone from her voice now. Harlean was too disappointed in him even to try. She might like to be agreeable when she could, but she was fiercely devoted to those she loved. Mother, Daddy and Grandpa Harlow topped the list. For a while, in the glow of a new love and marriage, she had lost sight of that. She would never abandon her mother for Chuck, or the other way around. Sooner or later, they were both simply going to have to learn to share.
He sat on the edge of the bed and shoved his shoes over his bare feet as she watched.
“Where are you going?”
“Out,” he grunted. “We’re done here, aren’t we?”
“Chuck, that was crude!” She gasped at his icy tone when only moments before they were so intimate with one another.
“Your mother brings out the best in me.”
“She’s not even here.”
“Oh, she’s here, all right, every day, every night, in our kitchen, and in our bed with us, because she’s in your head!”
She tried desperately to think of a retort, but she was so upset by his cruel comments that the words simply would not come to her.
“Please, let’s not fight. Stay and we can read together and talk about the poems, like we always do.”
He glanced at himself in the mirror over the bureau, as he raked a hand through his hair. Then he paused to look at her. “I’ve lost my interest in poetry, doll. Why don’t you call your mother? I’m sure she’ll be happy to come over and keep you company.”
“Where are you going?”
“Does it matter?”
She followed him, padding barefoot, to the front door with the question hanging unanswered between them, and her fury growing with each footstep. Once, she would have wanted to answer him. She would have meant to answer—to say something that would make him stay because that was what she had always done. But she was growing up finally and ridiculing her mother had been too much on top of everything else that was happening. This was infuriating, and so was he.
“All right, then go, damn you! And go to hell, too, while you’re at it!” she declared as he walked away.
He hadn’t heard her, but it didn’t matter. Harlean simply could not find any more compassion for him at the moment, no matter what dark demons, or insecurities, might be driving him. Even as he slid into the car, slammed the door, started the engine and drove away she shook with indignation and she could not press away the feeling that she was glad for now that he was gone.
Chapter Ten
To Harlean’s delight, even by her third day on the set, the cast and crew at the Hal Roach Studios showed a strong camaraderie, behaved almost like a family and welcomed her into it. She enjoyed being around them immediately, and they genuinely embraced her, treating her like part of the team even though she was just a bit player. Everyone referred to the studio as The Fun Factory, and that’s exactly what it was. The long drive out to Culver City didn’t bother her a bit and she sang to herself all the way to work in the morning.
Oliver Hardy, who everyone called Babe, and Stan Laurel—known as the comedy duo Laurel and Hardy—quickly became her favorite fellow actors. It was guaranteed that they could reduce her, and everyone else, to fits of happy laughter after every take.
Portly, cherubic Hardy took particular joy in making Harlean giggle, and between scenes they began to chat endlessly about their lives. The things they shared cemented the bond between them. His wife, Myrtle, was battling alcoholism, so Harlean felt safe talking to him, as she did to no one else, about Chuck.
“How go the wars today, Sunshine?” he asked her in his charming way, a way that made her want to tell him everything by Friday of her first week.
“I think it’s a war I’m losing, Babe,” Harlean said sadly as she glanced up from the book she was reading. She sighed and closed it.
She hadn’t heard him approach but she was glad to see him. He was just so endearing with his cherry cheeks, shoe-black hair and thin mustache which he colored in with a grease pencil. Around them, production assistants moved some of the scenery as Stan Laurel spoke with the director. Babe had insisted she use his nickname from the first day and now he had given her a nickname of her own. Sunshine was a term that had fit her since that day she and Chuck had first drove down Hollywood Boulevard.
“Another argument?” he asked.
“One seems to run into the next, I’m afraid.”
He shrugged his shoulders in empathy, and then exhaled a great breath. “When Myrtle drinks, she can be damn vicious. She’s always sorry in the morning, but the insults still sting. I’m a fat bull one night, a clumsy ox the next. Sometimes I wish she would be a bit more creative with her disdain.”
She turned her lip out in a pout, not knowing how else to react. “I’m sorry, Babe. You deserve a lot better.”
“We both do, Sunshine.”
The truth was, she and Chuck had argued every night that week. It was difficult to admit that, even to Hardy who would have understood. The fights felt so raw and futile, since they always seemed to revolve around Mother. Harlean pled with Chuck to agree to disagree. In spite of her warnings against ever putting her in that position, increasingly, he insisted on making her feel as if she must choose between them, and that had begun to fray the one thing that had always tethered her to Chuck—her passion for him.
“Mr. Roach offered me a contract,” she finally
admitted to Babe as he sat down beside her and she put away her book. “Five years. A hundred dollars a week.”
Hardy looked at her. His eyes were wide.
“He said I register well on film.”
“You don’t need film for that, Sunshine. You’re a beautiful dame, wherever you are.”
She felt herself relaxing and letting go of her anxiety over her marriage. Her new friend always seemed to have that effect on her. “Thanks, Babe.”
“Is that what you fought about with Chuck last night, whether to sign a contract or not?”
“He didn’t object. He’s just so jealous sometimes.”
“I’d be jealous, too, if you were my wife.”
“I love him so much, but things are just so difficult right now. I’m not eighteen yet so he’s required to cosign the contract, and that just stirred things up between us all over again last night. I resent having to run everything past him like I’m looking for permission.”
“His permission...or his approval?”
“I don’t know, both, maybe.”
When the assistant director called for “places,” he reached over and gave Harlean’s knee a supportive pat. “Come on, Sunshine, let’s go give ’em their money’s worth.”
“Make ’em laugh, you mean?”
“Yep, loud as possible. That way you’ll never feel your own tears. Words to live by these days.”
Harlean knew he was talking about his wife but he could as easily have meant Chuck. Unfortunately, the motto fit them both.
* * *
By Friday evening of that first week of her working for Hal Roach, Chuck insisted that he was proud of her and, to her surprise, he willingly cosigned the contract. To celebrate her success, and because she wasn’t needed back at the studio until the following Wednesday, he proposed a trip to San Francisco for a few days.
She had always wanted to see the famous city by the bay. She knew perfectly well that spending time alone together—particularly away from the Bellos, was something that really mattered to him, and something they both needed so she eagerly agreed.
His mood lightened the moment the train pulled away from the station in Los Angeles. Perhaps this getaway would be really good for them. Perhaps it would help to get them past the tumult of the past few weeks and back on a solid, loving footing with each other. And maybe, just maybe, she could convince him at last that there was enough love in her heart for both of the people she held most dear.
The St. Francis Hotel on Union Square was elegant and so full of history that Harlean had been eager to stay there. Former president Woodrow Wilson had once been a guest, along with numerous celebrities. But the most delicious story was of the ingenue companion of silent film star Fatty Arbuckle, who had died in his suite there after a party. People still gossiped about that.
There was a vase filled with cut orchids and an iced bottle of bootleg Champagne waiting in their room when they arrived. Despite Prohibition, Chuck always managed to find people who knew people to arrange getting alcohol. She adored Champagne, but after everything that had recently happened, her heart sank seeing it there.
As he opened the bottle, she went to the window and gazed down at the crowd of people in their heavy coats and hats milling around the square, going this way and that. She could hear the distinctive clanging of the cable cars.
“Like the suite, doll?” he asked as he poured two glasses.
“It’s beautiful.”
She was reluctant to take the glass from him, but it was delicious. It was definitely her weakness. Champagne and Chuck McGrew.
She watched him drink the whole glass in one swallow and she said nothing about it. Then she let him wrap her up in his arms as another cable car clanged in the square below.
He kissed her tenderly, taking her chin in his hands. She felt the defenses she had built up over the tumultuous past few weeks very slowly begin to fall away as she gazed up into his eyes. They were beautiful green eyes that were bright and happy in this moment, mirroring her love for him back at her.
She felt new hope flare brightly.
“I’m proud of you, doll, getting the contract and all,” he said tenderly after they had kissed. “Ivor says Rosalie always tells him how much competition there is to get one of those.”
“That’s sure true. Most days on the lot there are pretty girls as far as the eye can see.”
He let go of her and she felt the shift in him as he walked back to the Champagne bottle, poured another glass and drank that in one swallow, as well. His biceps flexed as he held the glass and, for a moment, she was afraid it might shatter beneath the force of his grip. She had no idea what the devil she had said this time. Her heart was fluttering like bird’s wings in her chest.
“Makes a fellow wonder.”
“Wonder what?” She suddenly wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
“What might happen if you turned the head of some handsome actor. You even told your mother that French guy, Maurice Chevalier, flirted with you.”
“Damn you, Chuck. Not again!”
“Don’t say it’s not a possibility.”
He poured a third glass of Champagne for himself and drank it swiftly. She wrapped her arms around herself and tried to wait a moment so that she didn’t speak from the place of anger that she felt. The fury had returned so swiftly that it almost made her dizzy.
“You said you were happy for me and I guess I was a fool to believe you, hmm? Acting is the first thing I’ve ever been good at and you want to ruin that for me.”
“Technically, not the first thing, doll. Hence, the root of my concern. After all, you do know how to use your charms when you want to. You could have any man in the world if you put your mind to it.”
He might be trying to bait her to get her reassurance but still she was going to stop herself from striking back at him, which would just keep this going. Harlean tried yet again to see past his insecurities—beyond those defenses that could even make him say something cruel or rude, and through to his fragile core, even though that was becoming more difficult by the day. Summoning her love for him and wrapping it up tightly inside of her compassion, she went back to him, determined to be as gentle as she could. They might be young but they could both do with as much understanding for each other as they could manage these days.
She reached out and touched his arm. He did not look at her at first, but she saw his jaw tighten. Another streetcar passed by below, and the clanging was loud in the silence between them. Yes, Chuck was too volatile, she thought, but then she hadn’t exactly given him the consistency she had promised, which could have calmed these insecurities. She bore some responsibility for assuring him that she had no real ambition outside the home, only to have had a rather abrupt change of heart. That much suddenly was becoming very clear.
Harlean had understood from the day they married what a stable home life meant to him after his earlier loss. Even so, she had been evasive about Dave Allen, and about her first few casting calls. From the start he’d had a right to know about how she was changing inside. The truth was that she simply hadn’t been brave enough to share it because she didn’t want anyone to be angry, or disappointed, with her—Chuck or her mother most especially.
“There is no other man but you, Chuck. Whether I work or not, that can’t happen because you are all I see, all that I love,” she said with all the reassurance she could gather.
Finally, he looked at her and his eyes were wide with sincerity. “I’m sorry, doll, that was a low blow earlier about your charms. It’s just a lot for a fella sometimes when things are changing so fast, knowing full well what it feels like to lose someone you love and having no control over it.”
“You won’t lose me. I want—I need a partner to go through all of this crazy stuff with... I want you. I’m depending on you.”
&nb
sp; “Do I have your word on that?” he asked.
Her heart melted again and the pressure of this raging whirlwind between them made her want to weep with him. They were both so young, naive to the world, and there was so much unknown in life ahead of them. Still, she nodded.
“You will take my soul with you, if you go,” he warned.
“Then always come with me?”
“I’m trying, Harlean. I really am. I’m glad we finally are having some time together, just the two of us,” he said. “We really need that.”
* * *
They ate at a restaurant down on Fisherman’s Wharf as a cold October rain buffeted the window glass beside their table. But it was cozy inside, all varnished wood and red leather. They were warmed by steaming bowls of clam chowder and hunks of crusty sourdough bread, as Celtic music played by a duo nearby drifted melodically around them.
Chuck sat across from her in a cable-knit turtleneck sweater, his curly copper hair untamed tonight, and his green Irish eyes twinkled as he dabbed a bit of soup from her top lip. They spoke of the things they wanted to see while they were in San Francisco and about how happy they both were to be there.
After dinner, they huddled together beneath a single black umbrella and took a walk through the rain out to the end of the pier nearby. A thick layer of fog swirled at their knees and Harlean was glad for the heavy coat Chuck had bought for her earlier in the day. She clutched his arm tightly as a seagull cried out plaintively as it flew past.
“So, what do you think of San Francisco so far, doll?”
“I love everything about it. It’s amazing.”
“Well, you make it amazing.” He kissed the top of her head and drew her closer against him. “I want a child with you, Harlean. I really do.”
“I want a couple of them, too, you know that.”