By Myself and Then Some

by Lauren Bacall

  After a night at the Ambassador East in Chicago we flew home. The three of us were very close. We’d gotten through our first holiday without Bogie.

  Home looked beautiful. It had been good to get away and it was good to get back – until I went upstairs. I still half-expected to see Bogie in our bed, and remnants of that odor hung in the air. But I felt better than I had before leaving.

  There were flowers from Frank to welcome me home.

  Soon afterward there was a closed-circuit prizefight – the middleweight championship. Sugar Ray Robinson and Gene Fullmer. Frank had bought a row of seats in some theatre and invited me to go. He had meticulously striven to keep his private life out of the news – not easy when you are a natural news-maker. I had never thought much about celebrity after the insane exposure I’d had at the time of To Have and Have Not and my marriage. Bogie was a natural news-maker too, almost everything he said or did making a very loud noise in the press. I just lived my life, and the press and I had for the most part been on good terms. I gave no thought to being noticed on such a quiet evening, even with Frank, but when we emerged from the theatre there were photographers waiting, and the resulting pictures ended up in newspapers around the world. It was my first public outing in Hollywood – the first time Frank and I were linked, even tentatively, in a romantic way. I could never figure out how they knew I would be there. Much later I remember telling a friend I couldn’t understand why the press cared so much about Frank and me – why it made such a stir. This friend looked at me unbelievingly. ‘Don’t be a fool – you and Frank can’t go anywhere without causing a commotion. Individually you make news, but together it’s insane.’ The next eight months were to prove him right. Indeed, the next months were filled with intense and difficult moments of every kind.

  One afternoon Harvey became ill – he lay down and started to foam at the mouth. I got him into the station wagon, had the vet alerted, and raced over to the Valley, shaking all the way. Harvey stood up in the back of the wagon with the white foam all around his muzzle, looking as though he didn’t understand what was happening. I kept saying, with quavering voice, ‘It will be all right, Harvey – lie down,’ kept talking to him while I couldn’t breathe, frantically trying not to hit a tree or another car. After examining him, Dr Winston said he’d had a heart attack – that he should stay quietly in the kennel for a couple of days. I hated to leave that dog. The next day I could see he was even weaker. The doctor said, ‘I know how much you love Harvey – he’s a great dog. He’s had a good, healthy life – you don’t want to see him disintegrate. It would be a terrible thing for him to have to be confined. You can take him home if you want to in another day or so, but you must seriously consider putting him to sleep.’ I said I’d call the next day. Before leaving, Harvey had happily licked my face, telling me how glad he was to see me and how much better he was. About thirty minutes after I got home he called: ‘Harvey just died – he was happy – he’d just seen you, had just eaten his dinner and lay down and died. Lucky for him.’ I was destroyed, collapsed in tears. My Harvey – another big piece of my married life gone.

  In August, Harry Kurnitz offered me his penthouse in New York. I’d never lived like a bachelor girl in New York in the summer when the city was empty. I decided to try it for two weeks. Steve was still in camp, Leslie in a play group – I’d return in time for her birthday party.

  Harry’s apartment was perfect – tiny, with a balcony, on the corner of 75th and Park. It was fun to be in New York when only real workers were there. I had my little flirtations – and Mother. Walking in the city at night with the streets so empty made me feel as if I owned it.

  Mother and I spent most of the days together. She loved going around with me. She’d come into Manhattan to meet me and we’d shop for the children – linen for my bed – antiques. My nights were my own secret adventures. A couple of mornings after our last shopping expedition she called me. ‘Can you come? I’m at Doctors’ Hospital.’ Her voice sounded funny, faraway. Then silence. I panicked – didn’t even know where Doctors’ Hospital was. I looked it up, rushed over, and, after hysterically questioning every nurse in sight, found her – in an oxygen tent. I shall not forget walking into that room, seeing her lying there, face to one side under the plastic tent, towel on her forehead. Unconscious. It was so unexpected. No warning. I started to shake. They – those faceless theys, I didn’t even know her doctor’s name – told me the first forty-eight hours were crucial. We’d just have to wait. I found a phone. The family started to arrive. Lee – white-faced. Charlie and Rosalie. Renee. I just stood at the foot of the bed, looking at my mother. What had happened? How had it happened? Why didn’t I know more? Would she be all right? I was so frightened. I prayed all day – all night – whispering to myself, ‘Please let her be all right – please.’ I stood vigil with Lee in that damn hospital for forty-eight hours. The bad lighting – whispering corridors – uniforms – waiting. She was going to be all right. She’d had a massive coronary, the kind Eisenhower was to have. Six weeks in the hospital, a couple more at home. She was a good patient. She wanted reasons for what had happened to her, to give me clues to prevent it ever happening to me. She’d unpacked an enormous barrel of china the day before – ‘Take a lesson from me, Betty – never do that – never lift anything.’ She was always after me to stop smoking – ‘If I can stop, anyone can.’ I stayed for two weeks until she was well out of the woods, but she wanted me to get back to the children. ‘You can’t leave them for too long – Steve will be coming home from camp – Leslie’s alone.’ Also I was going to work again – at last. Not a marvelous picture – a remake, sentimental – but Negulesco would direct and we loved working together. It was to start at the end of September. The Gift of Love.

  Once I was home, Frank and I became a steady pair. We flew to Las Vegas for The Joker Is Wild opening – he took me to the Pal Joey opening in town – at all his small dinner parties I was the hostess. People were watching with interest. It seemed to everyone – to his friends, to mine – that we were crazy about each other, that we were a great pair; that it wouldn’t last; that Frank would never be able to remain constantly devoted, monogamous – yet that maybe with me, he would. My friends were worried I’d be hurt – he wasn’t good enough, couldn’t be counted on for a lifetime. But just then it was all going smoothly. I sat in on some of his recording dates – I was the center of his life at the moment. At least I thought I was – I felt I was. It seemed perfect, no way for it not to work. And I was happy. Surface happy.

  I can’t really remember how it all began – there must have always been a special feeling alive between Frank and me from earlier days. Certainly he was then at his vocal peak, and was wildly attractive, electrifying. And Frank had always carried with him not only an aura of excitement, but the feeling that behind that swinging façade lies a lonely, restless man, one who wants a wife and a home but simultaneously wants freedom and a string of ‘broads.’

  The last few months of Bogie’s illness he was away working off and on. If in town, he came over at least twice a week. When he didn’t come, he never failed to call. Toward the very end he seemed instinctively to be there at the key moments. Having lived the better part of a year in the atmosphere of illness, I guess I not only began to depend on his presence – the voice on the other end of the phone – but looked forward to him. He represented physical health – vitality. I needed that. Unwittingly I must have begun to feel that illness was all there was. It had become a way of life. Bogie had always paid an overabundance of physical attention to me – he had incredible energy – he was life. I was used to it, and I needed it.

  I don’t know what I became during Bogie’s illness. I wasn’t aware of any change in my behavior – only more protective of him. I paid total attention to everything to do with him. But a part of me needed a man to talk to, and Frank turned out to be that man. He was life as usual – I was not. I was a healthy young woman with tremendous energy. Work was a channel. People
, fun, activity – I needed them all for health. I didn’t feel consciously deprived – resented nothing – even had worked for part of that time; God knows what would have happened if I hadn’t had that as some release. But there was the odd hour of the odd day when I wanted something normal – a normal conversation. That need was magnified a thousandfold by the time Bogie died. So that my dependence on Frank became greater and greater. It wasn’t planned. It simply was.

  After Bogie’s death I focused all my remaining energies on my children. To somehow keep life going – to have something to smile about even for a minute. The house had been so quiet for so long, then so noisy for the week after Bogie’s death, then so quiet again. The nights especially. I had never known that kind of quiet before. Or that kind of aloneness. I felt as though a large chunk of me were missing. I felt physically mutilated.

  I wanted it all to come back. I wanted to wake up smiling again – I wanted something to look forward to – I hated feeling that my life was over at thirty-two.

  If I was included by friends at any small dinner, it was natural for Frank to pick me up if he was going. He was alone too. And he always made me feel better – I was even able to laugh. He was a good friend. We enjoyed being together. He was helping me, looking after me. Swifty Lazar was another who was alone – who from the beginning made it his business to stop by my house daily. His devotion and care for me went beyond friendship in any ordinary sense, and I needed him and valued him and would forgive him any slip in years to come for what he had been to me when I was desperate and without hope. But Frank answered a more basic, unarticulated need. When I was in New York and he called all the time to see how I was, I loved those calls. Even began to feel rather girlish – giddy. There was a man somewhere – a man who was alive – who cared about me as a woman. I came to expect those calls – to wait for them. And somewhere in my subconscious I intended that they would happen every day.

  The fact of my being alone was crucial. Up to that time there had been either my mother or Bogie to lean on. Now there was no one. If I’d stopped to verbalize that, I’m sure I couldn’t have functioned. Would have been paralyzed with fear. All these years later, I see how hopeless it was from the start. How there was no way for me to think straight, how there was no way to really feel anything positive – like loving; no way for there to be a solid, good future for me and Frank. I was silently asking more than anyone has a right to ask – burdening him with my terrors, my unspoken demands. Had he been sure of himself and his own life then, it might have worked. But he wasn’t.

  We continued for several months as close friends – he attentive, me overly receptive. Then suddenly he didn’t call at all for over a week. I couldn’t understand it – again someone lost, again alone. I tried to rationalize it, didn’t discuss it with any of our friends, but I was miserable.

  Everything hurt. I loved my house, yet I couldn’t walk into the Butternut Room without seeing Bogie in a chair – or our bedroom without seeing him in bed. And there was the weekly nightmare that would literally have me waking up screaming. I didn’t know what to do. I had no work offers, though maybe with Designing Woman in full release that would all change for me.

  I wanted a life. I didn’t want to stay home simply waiting for Steve and Leslie to get back from school – have dinner with them in that quiet dining room, with three large, empty, quiet rooms waiting for no one after dinner – a little television with them before bedtime – then me with myself – by myself – to read, to stare out a window or at nothing, to cry. Worst of all, I suppose, to possibly have to face what my life really was. I wish I had stood in the middle of a room and just screamed – screamed until there was no scream left. Instead I continued bottling up all emotion.

  People always ask what you’d change if you had your life to live over again. I wouldn’t change a lot of the unhappy times because then I would miss something wonderful. But I would change that period like a flash – me during it – how I behaved with Stephen and Leslie, either short-tempered or over-affectionate – avoiding everything I could that had to do with Bogie, with my past life – my insane desire to get out of my house. As if that could erase anything.

  After a week of talking to myself – explaining to myself why Frank hadn’t called, why it all had suddenly stopped, carrying on imaginary conversations, what I’d say to him if I saw him, etc. – the phone rang. Frank on the other end telling me – just telling me as though I’d understand – where he would be taking me every night for the next week. I was so happy to hear from him that I pretended I did understand. I’d find out why later. But with Frank, forget about ‘why.’

  I can only guess he’d taken that week to work out his feelings about me and decide whether he could take me on or not. That’s when our relationship really changed. No promises were made – it was just a fact. We were together. Where he was asked, I was. A couple.

  People react in funny ways. My friends, who secretly felt this would not be a good choice for me, accepted us as a pair – thought it was serious. Except for my most intimate friends, they probably thought I could take care of myself. Frank’s friends, on the other hand, warned me not to push – thought I would be better for him than vice versa, and, knowing him, didn’t think he could last in his new role of fidelity. And some of the wives of his friends were strangely possessive toward him and not crazy about me. I was not just an arm decoration, not one to sit in a corner waiting for him to give me a smile or a sign that it was time to leave. I was too much of an individual for that – too established as a positive half of a positive pair.

  I didn’t really know where I stood with Frank. I expected him to call – I expected to see him nightly, to become a permanent part of his life. I never understood the love game, I could never play hard to get. I had been married to a grown-up. Bogie knew what he was about and he wanted to know where he stood; if a woman loved him, he felt better, stronger, not threatened. Frank, on the other hand, liked to be kept off balance. I was the wrong girl for that.

  But he made me feel I was the one for him. Maybe that was his art – or maybe for a time he really thought I was. We’d planned a great Fourth of July – he’d charter a boat, invite three other couples on board. It sounded wonderful – Frank had introduced me to a world of charter planes and boats filled with his friends. Then, a couple of weeks before the Fourth, he withdrew again. Became remote – polite, but remote – off on his own. I couldn’t figure it out. Did it mean the Fourth was off? That I wasn’t invited? I had to make plans, I did have two other lives I was responsible for. Should I corner him, ask why? Frank was bad when cornered – better not. Again rejection. My insecurity moved to the forefront once again, took over. Frank was capable of a scene, and I dreaded scenes. A friend of his said, ‘Just sit tight – do nothing – be pleasant and pretend it doesn’t matter. Your life will go on.’ I followed that advice and it was right. But it was hard to do. Every time Frank acted this way I’d feel sick – scared – awkward.

  Certainly none of my friends understood that kind of carrying on. If you loved someone, that was it – you were together all the time unless there was a fight. Something specific. But with Frank, forget specifics. He’d had so many scars from so many past lives – was so embittered by his failure with Ava – he was not about to take anything from a woman. ‘Don’t tell me – suggest’ – God knows how many times I heard that. But I didn’t know how to suggest.

  It seems ridiculous now. It was so painful then. It embarrassed me to have to say I didn’t know if I’d be with Frank on a night when people were sure I would. It threw them off. Had there been a quarrel? No. Then why? I was miserable. Of course. I couldn’t think of anything else. My mother always said that was my trouble – over-concentrating on any one subject. Zeroing in. I tried to change me and I couldn’t. It was too deeply ingrained.

  Then suddenly another phone call – the Fourth was on again, as if nothing had happened – no explanations. I swept all doubts under the rug and was in heaven. I lov
ed being with him. I felt like a woman – no man had ever made me feel more wanted and more rejected, all in a week’s time.

  This time I was determined to be cool. I succeeded for a while – it worked like a charm, but it had nothing to do with the kind of woman I was or am. When things started going well, I was on such a high. All my juices were flowing, I felt so alive. I refused to remember how low the lows had been. It was just that commitment was such a big step for him. When it got too big, he backed off. Simple. Sometimes he would sing his songs to me – irresistible. When he was away working clubs – far away, that is – he called constantly. He seemed to need me as much as I did him. A few of my friends were terrified I’d marry him – knew I was riding for a fall. But I had the bit in my teeth and there was no stopping me.

  I sold my house – had my gardener dig out all my clivia plants and take them to Frank’s house, as they were his favorite color, orange. I knew if I moved out of that house he’d feel better. He never mentioned it, but I knew Bogie’s ghost would always be there – always coming between us. I had to erase it – I would never have a future unless my surroundings changed. I didn’t realize then that you take yourself with you wherever you go.