by Anne Girard
The dial slipping back and forth after each number made a telltale sound. Harlean held her breath until she realized there had never been a dial tone.
Marino came up behind her.
“Sorry about that, Baby. They cut our phone service earlier this afternoon.”
Harlean lowered the receiver into the cradle and looked back at him. “I gave Mommie the money yesterday to pay it.”
“With everything going on about the premiere, she needed a new pair of shoes for her dress. You understand.”
“She spent the phone money on shoes?”
“You know your mother. I’ll take care of it myself first thing in the morning. If you can spot me a few dollars, that is.”
Desperation clawed at her. “But I’m leaving first thing in the morning! We won’t have a phone tonight!”
“It’s only one night, my dear. Surely you can do without it until you are on the road,” he said with that slickness that always made her slightly uneasy.
With no phone, she’d have to get the message to Chuck in person. She dashed toward the front door, grabbing her handbag and her shoes on the way.
“Where the devil do you think you’re going at this hour?” Jean said as she barreled toward her daughter.
“I need some fresh air!”
“You need to pack.”
“You don’t understand!”
Jean’s face took on a malevolent expression. “I understand perfectly well, and I also know what’s best for you. Haven’t I always? Now,” she said more evenly, “go in and start packing.”
She might as well have said, I’m barring the door, and locking you in to keep you from Chuck McGrew. Harlean knew at that moment the result would have been the same, no matter what words she used.
* * *
Rosalie rode along the next morning to see Harlean, Kay and Mother Jean off at the train station. The air in the car was thick with tension. It not only came from mother and daughter, but Jean and Marino had not been getting along. The daily bickering between them had escalated to such a fever pitch in the past two days that her mother had volunteered herself as chaperone for this trip, in spite of what Harlean knew was her desire to decorate the vast new rented house on the hill before they all moved in.
She thought her mother also meant to be her unspoken jailer on this whirlwind swing through New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. In spite of her newfound celebrity, Harlean still believed herself to be the property of others, a circumstance from which she longed to break free. But that would not change overnight. There were few things worse in her mind than her mother’s wrath. That, coupled with the flicker of disappointment in Mother Jean’s eyes that Harlean saw when she challenged her, often felt worse than going up against her. She was working hard now to work within the framework of her mother’s consummate skill at manipulation without making things more tumultuous. Howard Hughes’s professional claim over her only sealed Harlean’s seeming compliance to the will of others. It was difficult to find her way back to Chuck through the tangle of all that.
Rosalie nearly swooned when she looked across the platform in front of the great shiny train, the Sante Fe Chief, and saw the tall, dark-haired Hughes and his strikingly pretty girlfriend Billie Dove talking to an elegantly dressed James Cagney, as the trio waited to board the car.
“Mr. Hughes sure is handsome in person, don’t you think?” she drawled.
Harlean watched her friend’s face flush as a porter lifted her traveling trunk up the train steps. “I suppose so. If you like domineering, power-hungry men with a phobia about germs.”
Rosalie gasped. “No kidding?”
“He never touches anyone. Not to shake hands or anything.”
“That must make romance a bit of a challenge,” Rosalie quipped as they both looked over at smartly dressed Billie Dove, who wore delicate white gloves, along with a beige suit and heels.
“Golly, I’m gonna miss you, Harlean, even if it’s just for two weeks. I feel like we’ve been through so much together.”
Harlean felt that, too. “I need you to do me a favor.”
“Sure, honey, anything.”
“I need you to telephone my aunt Jetty in Long Beach. Jetta Belle Chadsey. Tell her about this sudden trip, and that I might not be able to telephone her myself. Chuck is staying with her. I trust her, she’ll get him the message.”
“Land sakes, Harlean, your mama isn’t gonna let you telephone your husband, and you a big movie star now?”
“You know both of them. I think they mean to fight to the death over me.”
“That must be plain awful, being in the middle of all that between them.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Harlean sighed as the train whistle blew.
* * *
When at last they arrived in Chicago, there was a throng of young women all waving magazines and squealing. Harlean was glad Howard Hughes stepped onto the platform first and led the way into the crowd. He was, after all, a celebrity in his own right. But the crowd ignored him and began screaming more loudly. Accustomed to the attentions of women, Cagney descended next with a jaunty smile but, to her surprise, they ignored him, as well.
“Well, I’ll be,” Jean murmured with a broadening, pleased smile. “It’s you they want, Baby.”
“That can’t be. The picture only just premiered.”
“True. But Mr. Hughes’s whole publicity team has been working overtime for weeks cultivating your image for this exact moment. You’re already a household name.”
Harlean was instantly enveloped by the crowd when she stepped off the train and they saw her. Very quickly the group of girls became a mob, all squealing and shoving their magazines at her to sign.
In the midst of the melee, Howard Hughes himself became an impromptu bodyguard as he and James Cagney ushered her toward the waiting car.
“They just kept saying, ‘We love your hair. How do you get it that shade?’” Harlean said breathlessly as she felt herself melt against the back of the car seat, and her heart throbbed with the exhilaration.
The next stop was the same, and the next after that.
It was a blur of interviews, radio appearances and cheering crowds.
Yesterday, few had even known who she was. Today she had a millionaire bodyguard, a police detail and a bevy of clamoring fans everywhere she went. It was a great deal for a girl from Missouri to take in.
Slowly yet steadily on this trip, and much to her surprise, the young, uncertain teenager was slipping back behind this new, stronger version of herself and Harlean felt herself becoming Jean Harlow. But she would only tolerate this blonde vamp persona for so long, that much she had absolutely decided. She had far more bubbling up inside her now—ambition, vision and her own dreams—and her newfound desire to unleash it on her own terms was growing each day. Every move she made from here on out must be deliberate, not just in public but in her personal life, as well.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The two-week tour was an exciting, if slightly blinding, blur of accolades and interest in everything about her. Exhilarating as that was, Harlean was glad now at last to be returning home. She had managed secretly to mail a single letter to Chuck, reiterating what she hoped Rosalie had told Aunt Jetty by phone. She had given her missive very quickly to the concierge at the hotel in New York before she was whisked away by her entourage to a newspaper photo shoot with a group of local “meet the movie star” contest winners.
After they dropped off Kay and were headed back to the bungalow on Maple Drive, Jean glanced over at her daughter. “Baby, I wanted you to know that I’ve done a lot of thinking on this trip and Chuck McGrew isn’t the only deadbeat husband who needs to be gotten rid of.”
Harlean looked across at her mother, whose expression was one of resolve.
“I’m going to divorce Marino.”
Her mother’s penchant for catching her off guard never ceased to amaze her. “But I thought you loved him.”
“Passion is not love. You and I both have confused the two for far too long.”
With her thumb, Harlean spun her own wedding ring that was hidden at the moment by the tight clutch of her other hand. She and Chuck were nothing like Mother and Marino. “I honestly don’t know what to say.”
“Say you’re happy for me. I know now that I should have done it a long time ago.”
The driver pulled the limousine up to the curb, turned off the engine, opened Harlean’s door and went around to retrieve their luggage. Jean covered Harlean’s hand with her own.
“We will move to the new house, just the two of us. Make a fresh start of things, hmm? And after your divorce is final, you’ll be free to see that dear Mr. Bern more often.”
“I don’t love Paul Bern, and I’m certainly not attracted to him. He’s incredibly nice, thoughtful and smart, but—”
“Well, that’s a beginning. Good, stable marriages have been built on far less than that.”
“Mommie, I am married. I still feel married.”
“A temporary state of insanity for which I am convinced there is a treatment, I assure you.”
As they withdrew from the car beneath a starry night sky, Harlean caught a glimpse of a car at the end of the block with its headlamps dimmed. The car was distinctively green in color.
“Come on, let’s get you inside. You have another big day tomorrow; an interview, a photo shoot and that party up at the Pickfair estate. Perhaps, you should take me as your date, two lovely single blonde ladies, who knows who we would meet,” her mother mused as they neared the front door. An invitation to the Pickfair, the Beverly Hills mansion of silent-screen stars Mary Pickford and her husband, Douglas Fairbanks, was the most coveted one in town.
Harlean considered arguing about the marital status of each of them, but decided she was simply too weary at the moment even to try. She turned around one last time to look down the street but the area had already been submerged in the black of night.
Marino met them at the door wearing a black velvet smoking jacket, crisp black trousers and burgundy-and-gold monogrammed slippers. Harlean thought he still looked more like a gangster than a movie star—although she was well aware that the latter was the look he sought.
Jean let him kiss her cheek before she pushed past him, and Oscar welcomed Harlean home by barking and nipping at her heels to be picked up. Tuck sidled against her calf as she reached down to scoop Oscar into her arms as Nip approached. She was always so happy to be reunited with her pets.
“Do be a dear and make us a couple of stiff drinks, then it’s off to bed for both of us,” Jean directed her husband. “The Baby and I have another hectic day of publicity rounds tomorrow.”
Harlean could see that his wife’s tone had surprised Marino. “I assumed you’d want to see the progress up at the Club View Drive house, dear. The decorators are nearly finished, and they have done a splendid job.”
As Jean ignored him and headed toward the master bedroom, Harlean could only offer a sheepish shrug. Then she went to her own bedroom on the opposite side of the house and closed the door, grateful for a bit of solitude at last. As she sat down on the bed, her eyes found the framed photograph of her and Chuck from their honeymoon cruise still set out on the bureau. God, how she missed that moment when their naivety and love had made the fairy tale of forever actually seem possible.
Could that have been only two short years ago? It felt like a lifetime.
She fell into a dreamless sleep after that and it seemed she had only just closed her eyes when she woke to clattering noises. She squinted at the bedside clock and saw that it was half past four just as her bedroom door swung open, crashing back on its hinges and hitting the wall. As she struggled to sit up, Chuck staggered toward her, wild-eyed and very drunk.
“I’ve had it with waiting, do you hear me? Time to take the bull by the horns myself, doll!”
He stood swaying inside a cone of light and shadows cast from the hallway behind him. His ginger-colored hair was tousled, and his face was unshaven. The prominent coppery stubble on his chin surprised her most. She had never seen him so unkempt.
“What the hell are you doing here, Chuck?”
“Once and for all, Harlean, will you come away with me and let me take care of you like a proper wife?”
His eyes blazed red with desperation and his words were slurred. Harlean sprung from the bed and dashed toward him.
“Shhh, Chuck, for heaven’s sake, it’s the middle of the night!”
“I need you, Harlean... I’ve waited and I’ve been patient. God knows I have, and we’ve played our games with each other, but I need my wife back! I need things the way they used to be!”
“The way they used to be, Chuck, was tumultuous and drunken. That doesn’t seem to have changed,” she declared. A hint of bitterness she could not fight crept into her whispered tone.
“Well, I’m not letting you go this time,” he continued, slurring. “One way or another, you will remain my wife!”
“You’re threatening me?” she asked as incredulity tumbled over her anger, and her heart began to sink again beneath the weight of a thousand disappointments in him that had come before this one.
“Two hours from now I’ll be on a plane back to Chicago, with or without my wife. You will never find me to serve your final divorce papers on me if you allow that to happen.”
Love between them, such a fragile thing, shattered inside of her then. “Get out of here before they hear you, Chuck! Go sleep it off,” she grumbled as she slipped on a silk dressing gown and tied it at her waist.
He reached out and drew her against him, but Harlean pushed herself away.
“Stop it, Chuck.”
“You’re my wife, I have rights!”
Harlean slapped him hard, hoping to startle him. Her voice shook with anger. “I don’t want you. God, you make me sick when you’re like this!”
“You bitch!” he growled like a wounded animal, gripping his jaw.
The word hit her as sharply as if he had struck her in return.
Chuck’s expression fell very swiftly then from anger to contrition. He collapsed onto the end of her bed and surrendered his face to his hands, utterly inconsolable. She heard a small sound, an attempt to make an excuse, leave his lips but he stopped himself.
“Jesus, I’m sorry,” he murmured.
“Everything all right in here?”
Harlean hadn’t heard Marino approach, but suddenly he was standing in the doorway, his black dressing gown tightly knotted at his stout waist. “Come on, son,” he said with a surprising tone of calm. “I’ll put a pot of coffee on. Let’s go wait for it and then have a cup while we let her dress.”
Harlean was instantly suspicious about the sudden gesture, especially when she saw that all of the lights in the house were already on. Harlean had no idea how much they had heard, but Mother was curiously absent from the scene and the house was small.
As Marino scooped fresh coffee grounds into the pot, Harlean leaned against the kitchen doorway arch and crossed her arms over her chest. As she watched him sit there like a scolded boy, she felt the passion she had loyally held for Chuck all this time slip further and further away now, with each beat of her wounded heart. Why, she wondered, had he needed to come here like this and chase away the last vestiges of her compassion?
It was Jean who answered the front door a moment later and ushered in their silver-haired attorney. He was dressed sharply in suit and tie, which seemed odd for this hour of the still-dark morning. Harlean’s heart skipped a beat when he set down a valise that he was already unzipping.
“Good morning, Mr. McGrew,” he sa
id.
His clipped tone of voice was all business as he set a stack of documents onto the kitchen table directly beside Chuck’s coffee cup. He loomed over the table until Chuck pulled his head from his hands and picked them up.
“What the hell are these?”
“Your divorce papers, Mr. McGrew, citing your violent nature, to which, since I could hear you all the way out on the street, I can now attest personally with the judge. You’ve been served. In spite of your clever attempt at evasion, there is no avoiding the inevitable now.”
“I’m not signing them!”
“Doesn’t matter, son, you’ve been formally served.”
The suddenness of the declaration rocked even Harlean and, for a moment, she could not move, nor find her voice. A week ago, perhaps even hours earlier, she would have come to Chuck’s defense but amid the maelstrom, the fight had simply followed the passion out of her, even though her mother once again was involved.
Mother must have seen the car as she had when they returned, and summoned the attorney, and then Marino had kept Chuck there cooling his heels until he arrived. Mother had wanted their divorce all along, and finally a moment had arrived for her to prevail and she had taken it. Chuck jumped from the chair, toppling it behind himself in reaction.
“Really, Charles, can’t we all behave like civil adults?” Jean asked in a tone of calculated calm that Harlean knew all too well.
“You’re not a civil adult! You are a pariah, a cold and ruthless human being!”
“It’s not all her fault, Chuck, we’ve had our problems.”
He shot her a look. His eyes were blazing. “Why the hell doesn’t that surprised me that you would take her side? I’ve never had a chance with you, Harlean, not against her! Evil witch wants you all to herself, so now she has you,” he growled and bolted for the kitchen door.
Harlean was absolutely frozen.