by Anne Girard
“But I mean now. If we had a child we’d be tied together for life. Bonded. Nobody could tear us apart.”
She understood that this was still coming from a need for reassurance about her career, and their argument earlier, so she lay her head tenderly on his shoulder as they walked. “We already are bonded, silly, it’s called matrimony.”
“That didn’t bond your parents,” he reminded her. “Look at them. Your mother loathes your father.”
“True, and they had a child. Me. Even that couldn’t save them.”
The thought stopped him.
His cheeks were ruddy from the cold and she could feel his mind working. “But a baby, Harlean, something that would be just ours. God, she’d be gorgeous because she’d look like you.”
She gripped his arm more tightly as they gazed out past the harbor into the dark water. She could never replace his mother, or the trauma of losing his parents so horrifically, but just maybe if she gave him a baby all of this insecurity of his would stop.
“And what if it was a boy?” she asked.
“Then my son could say, for the rest of his life, that the most beautiful woman in the world was his mother.”
She felt a shy smile turn up the corners of her mouth. How did he always manage to do that? They were the epitome of tumultuous together. Their marriage had begun to feel like they were living out a performance of The Taming of the Shrew. They could be furious with one another one moment and then crave each other the next. That truly was a thing beyond her understanding. But there was no doubt in her mind how much in love they both were.
Feeling his obsession with her was a powerful draw.
“At least, can we go back to the hotel and practice?”
“Mommie always says practice makes perfect.”
She watched his smile fall like icing on a cake, and her heart sank along with it. “Always her, isn’t it, Harlean? Even when we’re hundreds of miles away, she’s here with us. Why don’t you tell me what Marino always says, too, while you’re at it.”
He pivoted away and began to walk back up the pier.
“I really thought we were getting to a better place of understanding with each other!” She could hear the disappointment in her own voice as she caught up to him.
“I thought so, too. But then, like a bad dream, no matter where we are, no matter how many hundreds of miles I have to drive, there’s your mother wedged right in between us. Forget it, doll. The mood is gone. I’m not angry with you, I just need to go back to the hotel for a drink.”
“Then if you’re going to drink, I’m drinking with you. What did you bring?”
“Gin. Lots of it.”
“Good.”
“Stop it, Harlean. You can’t compete.”
“Does it have to be a competition? I just want to be in your world, Chuck, whatever that means.”
“My world is lots of heartbreak, over ice, easy on the introspection.”
“Then let’s go drink. But only after you make love to me again and we practice for that baby of ours, hmm?”
She was surprised that he flashed a hint of a smile at the suggestion before it crawled back beneath his frown. He seemed to be only half listening to her, as if thoughts and memories had taken the rest of him away. A child meant the stability of family to him, yet his history had made family as much about grief as it was about longing. She wondered again now, as she had so many times, what Chuck saw—what he felt—when he remembered his parents. He needed to get to the other side of all this stored up pain, she thought, and she so badly wanted to be with him when he did. But he certainly wasn’t making it easy for her.
Two hours after they had returned from dinner, and with the moonlight glinting in through the uncurtained windows, they lay together sprawled across the sofa. Clothes and shoes were strewn around the suite, his white pair of socks dripping like melted ice cream from the edge of the coffee table. The scent of alcohol and damp wool from his wet sweater moved through the air.
Harlean watched him as he reached over, tipped back his head and drank directly from a bottle of the gin, not bothering to use a glass. When she rose from the sofa and reached over for her dress, he playfully swatted her bare bottom.
“Mine, all mine. Every glorious inch of it,” he slurred.
I belong to myself, first and always, she nearly said, but she held her tongue. She reached for the empty Champagne bottle and glasses to tidy up the table instead.
“Leave that for the maid, doll. That’s why people come to a hotel, after all. One of the reasons, anyway,” he said and chuckled at himself. “I’ll bet that fella Roach would love to be in my place in a hotel room with you. He hasn’t, has he?”
“Hasn’t what?”
“Been in a hotel room with you. That’s not why you were suddenly getting all these parts, is it, a fringe benefit from the big-time director?”
He leaned forward and dangled the bottle from one hand. She knew he thought he was teasing but it wasn’t funny to her in the slightest after their earlier argument. Lately they seemed to go from one to the next with hardly any breaks in between, and it felt as if his jealous insecurity was starting to choke the life out of her.
The husband she adored was physically present in the room right now, yet every time the alcohol took him away like this, Harlean felt herself missing him less and less. Even though she tried to deny it, it was true.
“You know perfectly well I wouldn’t do that,” she said flatly.
She walked into the bedroom and he followed her. Harlean fought the queasy feeling that was growing inside her over what she knew was about to happen.
“Why not? He’s a powerful man.”
“He makes two-reel comedies in Culver City. Hardly President Hoover or King George,” she shot back, outraged at the ridiculousness of his charge.
“Well, I’m just a nobody with a trust fund. Maybe that’s why we don’t have a baby yet. Maybe you’d rather have a little Roach tyke.”
She busied herself with slipping on a bathrobe. This was madness. “Please stop it, Chuck. We had such a lovely evening. You’re tired. You wouldn’t be talking like this if—”
“If what? Say it, Harlean, you think I’m a drunk.”
“I think you’re tired. I know I am. I’m going to bed.”
“Are you dismissing me? Just like you do every day when you leave me to go see your hoi polloi studio friends?”
She glared at him then, unable any longer to hold her tongue, or her frustration, for the pure venom she heard in his voice. Something in her shifted. The realization was painful. She would not take this abuse. Nothing was worth that, not even love. “All right, I do think you’re drunk, quite drunk, which is becoming all too frequent, if you ask me.”
He tripped on the leg of the dressing table chair, stumbled, then grabbed it and tossed it toward the bed. “Well, I’m a grown man and I can do whatever the hell I want when I want to, do you hear?”
“Well, same goes for me!”
“Yeah, you and Roach—foul, fat, greasy bastard!”
“At least Mr. Roach respects me too much to scare me!” she declared in a shattering cry.
“Because he wants to get into your damn drawers, if he hasn’t already!”
“This isn’t you, Chuck, it’s not! It’s the grief that’s taking control of you!”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” he brayed.
“Well, I know that if you don’t deal with the horrible death of your parents, and how insecure it’s making you feel, it might well be the death of us!”
“You’re not changing the subject. You’re not clever enough for it!” he yelled, then picked up her slip from the edge of the bed, balled it up and pitched it at her. “You wear this for him, doll, did you?”
“You are
being crude!”
“Maybe if you wore a damn brassiere I wouldn’t have to be half out of my mind with worry!” He picked up a tube of her lipstick and tossed that next. She held up her hands to him but he continued. “And this war paint, maybe if you wore less of this, men wouldn’t think you were a damned floozy!”
Harlean’s hands were trembling so badly that she struggled to tie the sash as he began tearing up things, bedding, pillows, pulling drawers out of the dresser and casting them aside. He was like a different person when he got like this. He was a person she didn’t even know.
As she headed for retreat in the safety of the bathroom, Chuck put the bottle to his mouth and tipped his head back, intent on draining the contents, but it was already empty. “I warned you last time, don’t you dare walk away from me!”
Then, in a motion that seemed as terrifying as it was fluid, he hurled the empty gin bottle at her. Harlean gasped, ducked, and it hit the wall, then tumbled onto the carpet.
The moment seemed to sober him and the crimson fury on his face quickly paled to parchment white. There was a long silence as they stared at one another, both shocked. She wrapped her arms around herself again, trying to rein in the desolation she felt.
“I am so sorry, Harlean,” he murmured.
“Please leave, Chuck. If you don’t, I will.”
He held up his hands in total surrender to her warning. “No, I’ll go. You’re right, I drank too much, I admit it... Everything will be all right in the morning.”
She didn’t respond as he took his jacket, then went toward the door to their suite. She could say nothing because she knew then that it would never be all right between them again.
Right now, all she wanted was to sleep, and to escape everything.
In the morning, she would see if she still wanted a divorce as badly as she did at this moment. Until now, when she thought of divorce, she still saw her father’s face. The absolute despair in her father’s eyes when her mother had walked out on him remained a vivid, haunting image. It was one she could never quite forget and one of the reasons she had given Chuck so many chances—that and her sympathy for the death of his parents.
She needed to take her time, think it through. She still loved him with her young and open heart. She just wasn’t certain any longer if the love they shared could ever be enough.
* * *
Early Wednesday morning, she was back at work on the set of a picture called Thundering Toupees. As much as she adored the comic duo, Harlean was relieved that this first one did not feature Laurel and Hardy. She wasn’t certain she could confess to Babe the details of what had happened in San Francisco without completely breaking down.
She had not told Rosalie about it, either. No one knew the pain she was enduring.
After a tense train ride home, where she kept her nose in a book to avoid conversation, she and Chuck had tiptoed around each other. They’d met Mother and Marino for dinner at the popular Paris Inn on Market Street. Mother liked it there because she had seen the handsome actor John Barrymore there once. Harlean had forced herself to be believably cheerful, telling them all about Fisherman’s Wharf, the cable cars and Union Square.
Chuck as well seemed to want to pretend that the incident had never happened. He was sweet to her, contrite, and even solicitous to Marino and mother. He filled the house with flowers, not gin. But it had loomed between them the entire time—the great, silent giant in the room, his unresolved grief, the insecurity, the outbursts of anger and the way he suppressed it all with alcohol.
When they returned home that evening after dinner, Harlean told him she had a dreadful headache. He offered to sleep in the guest room, as he had since their return, so she wouldn’t be disturbed and she had not objected. She rose, dressed and left the house for Culver City before he was awake the next morning.
A week later, when Hal Roach temporarily suspended productions so the studio could be modernized to shoot talkies, Jean interceded. Rather than allow Harlean to remain idle, she took it upon herself to obtain permission from Roach for Harlean to take a role in a movie at Paramount called Close Harmony. The star was Buddy Rogers, her first crush as a girl. His film three years earlier with Thelma Todd and Clara Bow had been her favorite movie.
She had always marveled at her mother’s steadfast determination when there was something she wanted. Jean Harlow Bello was not a woman who could be dissuaded once she had made up her mind. Heaven help anyone, or anything, that stood in the way.
“I’m so glad you got me that role, Mommie,” she said as they shopped for new dresses at Robertson’s Department Store on Hollywood Boulevard. It wasn’t quite as chic as the Bullock Wilshire near downtown, but the fashions were not inexpensive by any means.
“You leave all of that nasty business dealing to me and you just worry about seducing the camera, hmm?”
Harlean nodded. “Don’t tell Chuck I said this but Buddy Rogers is dreamy.”
“Tell that jealous brute anything? Believe me, Baby, your secrets are safe with me.”
“He just loves me so desperately, that’s all. Wasn’t Daddy ever like that?”
“Far from it. Although, if he had been, if he’d shown even just a bit of passion...” She stopped herself from finishing the sentence.
The day she married Marino, Jean had told Harlean that real passion mixed with love was life’s blood. It was something Harlean had hungered for without knowing what it was. The day she met Chuck, she felt she understood what her mother had meant. Now she was trying to hold on to that very powerful feeling in the face of a toxic brew of confusion and doubt.
A model stepped out of the dressing room in a striking dove-gray belted dress and began to pose in front of them. “How do you think I would look in that one?” Jean asked her daughter as they watched the model pivot and turn.
“Gee, that looks expensive. How much is it?” Harlean asked the clerk.
Jean held up her hand to stop the clerk from responding. “Whatever it is, Chuck can afford it. We’re all doing well enough for a few frocks.”
“Chuck thinks Marino should maybe look for a job.”
“Does he now?”
“You know it wasn’t that much money his parents left him. Not compared to the fortunes our friends here have. He worries a lot, and I think that’s part of what’s been wrong lately, the pressure to keep up with that group.”
Jean laughed dismissively. “Don’t let him fill your head with that ‘poor me’ nonsense. An inheritance of a quarter million dollars is a fortune and if it’s not enough for him, maybe he should look for a job since he’s a hell of a lot younger than poor Marino.” She waved over the clerk. “We will take that one, and the dress before it, we’ll take two. One in my daughter’s size, one in mine.”
She looked over at Harlean and added her favorite line. “Then we will look just like twins! Won’t that be fun?”
Chapter Eleven
After what had happened in San Francisco, Harlean appreciated even more the camaraderie of The Fun Factory that existed at the Hal Roach Studios. Although she had gone through the motions of being a contented wife, and keeping the truth of her doubts from her mother, Chuck’s twenty-second birthday celebration in November and the holidays that followed felt brutally tense. New Year’s Eve with Rosalie and Ivor hadn’t been much better, since the whole evening she feared a repeat of what had happened at the speakeasy.
By the second week of January, with the news that the renovations at the studio were complete, Harlean was back at work on another film. Enough time had passed that she was thrilled to be assigned to another picture with Laurel and Hardy, even if it was entitled Double Whoopee, which sounded completely risqué to Chuck. But to Harlean’s surprise, he said nothing more than, “Good luck today. I’m sure you’ll be great,” as he kissed her forehead at the front door and tenderly
tucked a wisp of hair back behind her ear.
“Welcome back, Sunshine. We’ve missed you around here,” Babe Hardy declared in greeting.
Harlean gave him a warm hug as she walked into the makeup room and set down the satchel of books she always brought along. “Hi, Babe.”
He smiled at her and rocked back and forth on his heels, then tickled the tips of his fingers placing them beneath his chin. She found his signature comedic move as endearing as the rest of him. Stan Laurel was more reserved. Between takes, he sat and wrote letters or smoked, so she was glad she and Babe connected so well, and she appreciated how patient he had been with her.
“I just read the script. You lose your dress in this one. You ready for that?”
“I’m ready to make it memorable.”
“That’s a girl. Make ’em laugh?”
“Till you can’t feel your tears.”
He gave her a compassionate smile. “Gorgeous and a quick learner—one with a great memory. What more could we ask for?”
Harlean was set to appear in only one scene later on in the film, so as the other extras talked, she sat in the shadows and watched Laurel and Hardy work together. She found their chemistry both brilliant and fascinating. Their sense of timing was perfect. She marveled at how much skill was involved to make slapstick look spontaneous and funny. She would have to do what she could in order to stand out and keep up with their pure comic genius.
“Harlow,” Lewis Foster called out to her from his director’s chair.
She rose and, in a silk dressing gown that covered a black lace teddy, went to where he sat, arms crossed over his V-neck sweater and with his face scrunched into a frown. “Yes, sir, Mr. Foster?”
“Are you properly underdressed beneath that for your scene, young lady?”
He indicated her body with his eyes.
Harlean was surprised by his unexpected sense of humor. It would make filming her scene at least a little less awkward. He was making sure she wasn’t wearing a brassiere or panties which, under such a skimpy costume, might show up awkwardly through the camera lens. That was a relief.