Make Believe aefm-3

by Ed Ifkovic

  On the phone later that day Ava insisted drinks that night at her home would be fun. “Just a few friends. Alice and Max, of course.”

  “I’m not good at cocktail parties,” I told her.

  “I swear I won’t throw anything, Edna. I’ll behave.”

  I hesitated, uncertain. I planned a quiet evening in my suite, reading Kathleen Winsor’s Star Money, though I fully planned to despise it. I’d avoided Forever Amber, but I found her newest potboiler at the airport, and for some reason I bought it. I’d already dipped into it and didn’t like it. Sentimental balderdash, overwrought emotions, but, said Kitty Carlyle, a boiling read. I’d see about that. “No, Ava, I’m planning to order a pot of coffee with whipped cream and…”

  Someone grabbed the phone from her. “I promise I’ll behave.” Frank Sinatra spoke rapidly. “It’s time we met, Miss Ferber. Don’t believe what the gossip sheets say about me.” Ava said something to him that I couldn’t catch. “I’ll send a car with my personal bodyguard.”

  An image of some simian lug head flashed into my mind, some monster with greasy-black hair, his knuckles dragging the ground. A vocabulary of four-letter words grunted at me. A toothpick stuck between his missing front teeth and an odoriferous cigar dancing merrily from his drooling lips.

  “Sounds like fun to me.” My voice was a little too sarcastic.

  “You will?” Ava was surprised.

  A small cocktail party at her Nichols Canyon home, a few friends. Three or four people. George Sidney, the director of Show Boat, promised to attend but I wasn’t to believe that. He always promised and then never showed up. Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson, possibly. “Edna,” Ava said in what sounded like an afterthought, “I live in the country. You have to see my yard.”

  “Sounds like fun to me,” I repeated, softening my voice.

  “Edna, don’t be mean to me.”

  “I’m mean to everyone, especially my friends.” But I was beaming.

  “So you’ll come?”

  I breathed in, eyed the already dog-eared copy of Star Money lying on the nightstand. “I’ll come.”

  Ava’s small house nestled among towering palm trees on a knoll above a wooded canyon beyond Ogden Drive, high up a steep chaparral-banked hillside, a quirky pink stucco house that seemed a prop in a Disney cartoon: a splash of brilliant color against a fantasyland grove of impossibly well-positioned tropical foliage. A white-washed picket fence, incongruous as a frilly bonnet on a streetwalker, surrounded the place, with clumps of brilliant purple and yellow ice plants dotting the landscape. Yellow roses climbed the picket fence, pungent honeysuckle covered a trellis, and beds of petunias lined the driveway.

  Odder still, I spied a clothesline behind the small house on which some lace blouses flapped and bellowed in the slight early-evening breeze.

  Who was the bizarre woman, Ava Gardner? None of these trappings struck me as femme fatale accoutrements, the battler in the nightclubs. Well…maybe the pink stucco. A Negro maid opened the door, and Ava rushed over and introduced her as Mearene. “My Reenie.” For some reason Ava squeezed her shoulder, an affectionate gesture that brought a smile to the maid’s face, though she scurried away into another room.

  “Max and Alice are already here,” Ava told me. “Come in.”

  The walls of the front rooms were painted a daffodil yellow, a burst of springtime that jolted, yet oddly soothed. I expected sleek, chrome-studded Italian sofas and polished glass tables with faux Archipenko statues. I discovered overstuffed sofas and armchairs, and stolid wooden tables that I’d expect to find in some old-guard oceanview cottage in Massachusetts. Ava the night owl, always out on the town, doubtless found sanctuary here when she straggled back home, exhausted, at four in the morning.

  “I chose everything,” she stressed. And she pointed to a row of exquisite Degas prints gracing the walls, ballerinas silhouetted against pastel backgrounds. I complimented her.

  She led me to the hallway in back-I waved at Alice and Max, sitting on the huge charcoal sofa with drinks in hand-where one wall had floor-to-ceiling walnut bookcases filled, most likely, with Thomas Mann and Charles Darwin. My fingertips grazed volumes of Sinclair Lewis and Hemingway. Madame Bovary.

  The opposing wall held a succession of black-and-white photographs mounted in simple black frames: stills from earlier productions of Show Boat. There was Helen Morgan sitting atop an upright piano, looking forlorn; a doe-eyed Laura La Plante emoting before a handsome Joseph Schildkraut; Jules Bledsoe on a cotton bale chanting the universal dirge, “Ol’ Man River”; a stern Edna May Oliver admonishing a rapscallion Charles Winninger, the irascible Cap’n Andy. A kaleidoscope of Julie and Joe and Queenie and Magnolia and Gaylord Ravenal and Parthenia Hawks and Cap’n Andy. On and on, an awesome collection.

  “A gift from Max,” Ava whispered. Then she winked. “More good omens, Edna.”

  By the time I returned to the living room Max and Alice were talking to a newly arrived guest. Max stood. “Edna, this is Lorena Marr.”

  The woman rushed over and grasped my hands. “I only came because Ava said you’d be here. Cocktail parties-even Ava’s-made me take to my bed, so much posing and…” She stopped. “Just as I’m doing right now, the first culprit.”

  Alice spoke up. “Lorena is a reader at Paramount.”

  Ava added, “And the ex of Ethan Pannis. One of Francis’ Hoboken buddies.”

  A slender woman in a gold lame cocktail dress and a small sequined hat planted to the side of her close-cropped hairdo, she dropped my hands, half-bowed, and picked up her martini with one hand, a cigarette in the other.

  “Shaking hands, Miss Ferber, gets in the way of my cultivating my only two vices.” She bowed deferentially. “I’ve read Show Boat so many times there are nights when I return from Ciro’s after imbibing too much bubbly that I swear I can hear the iron-throated calliope all the way from the mighty Mississippi.”

  Ava handed me a martini that I gingerly sipped. Ice cold, perfect.

  “That calliope is the sound of coins being deposited in my bank account,” I quipped.

  “Lord, Miss Ferber, you searched for a gold mine in the muddy river beds while foolish men hammered at rocks in the Rockies.”

  “Pure luck.”

  “I doubt that.” She grinned. “You’ve played with the big boys-and won. I admire that.”

  I liked her, I decided: sharp, quick, clever, attractive. A slick Hollywood concoction, perhaps, but funny. Something about her words seemed practiced and nervous-a desire for my approval? — but the clipped words couldn’t disguise the warmth in her eyes.

  Ava broke in. “Lorena is a strange Hollywood divorcee. She kicked Ethan out, but still goes out to dinner with him. They’re best friends.”

  “Who exactly is this Ethan Pannis?” I asked.

  “Ethan and Tony Pannis. Brothers,” Lorena told me in a tone that suggested I should know them. “Frank Sinatra’s loyal entourage. Scattering rose petals in his path.”

  “I was a Pannis bride, too,” Alice suddenly announced.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Her voice was hesitant. “I was married to Lenny Pannis, their older brother.”

  Max cleared his throat and spoke rapidly, his voice hollow. “Edna, Lenny died from a fall, and his brothers blame Alice to this day. It’s all foolish stuff. Lots of anger there.”

  Suddenly I remembered George Kaufman’s description of Alice: the black widow. George had shown me a sensational clipping from a tabloid: a hollow-eyed Alice sitting in a Los Angeles squad room. Those nasty accusations of willful murder. I’d paid so little attention. Rag-tag journalism, yellow at the edges.

  “Well,” Lorena confided, “I had to leave darling Ethan. He’s somewhat of a prig, a man who measures life with algebraic equations and a calculus disposition. I found him delightful…for three years. Actually two of those three years. The third was bitter lemon. I liked his drive and ambition-at first. Cutting back the sails on his dreamboat lessened the m
an, I’m afraid-made him petty. Nasty.” She grinned. “Now that we’re divorced, I find him amusing.”

  Ava jumped in, grasped my elbow. “Don’t you love cocktail parties, Edna? We can talk about our exes with abandon. Wait till I get started on Mickey Rooney. My first Hollywood lover. The chipmunk with bedroom eyes. The boy next door as Casanova. Love finds Andy Hardy.”

  Lorena raised her eyebrows. “Randy Andy by the picket fence.”

  Alice was the only one who didn’t laugh. “Ethan was a mean drunk, Edna.”

  Lorena defended him, shaking her head vigorously. “That was then, Alice. A bad time. He’s a teetotaler now. Ethan paints all his pictures inside the lines. A kindergarten teacher would love him.” She sipped her drink, but I noticed she watched Alice over the rim of her glass.

  Alice frowned. “It took a slap across your face to crash down your house.”

  Lorena looked annoyed. “All right, Alice. All right. I walked out.” She shrugged her shoulders. “So now we’re friends. Dinners, movies. We like each other. We didn’t when we were married.”

  Alice was shaking her head. “I’d never be comfortable…”

  The two women stared at each other, eyes wary, bodies tense.

  “Lenny’s death sobered him up-a dose of cold water in the face. But by then our marriage had crumbled.” She took a drag on her cigarette. “We’re different people, you and me, Alice.” She glanced my way. “You’ll meet Ethan…and his brother Tony.” A little chuckle. “You won’t be happy.”

  Alice smiled now. “Lorena and I have become best friends, Edna. Exiles from the Pannis clan.”

  Lorena grinned at her.

  A yelping dog came barreling in from the kitchen, a pudgy corgi Ava introduced as Rags. The dog yipped and spun around, circling the maid who walked in with a tray of appetizers, passed them around, and then, bizarrely, sat next to Ava, chitchatting and smiling. She munched on a canape. For a second Ava and Reenie giggled about something. Oddly pleasing, that sudden tableau, which told me a lot about Ava.

  From across the room Max asked, “And where’s Frank?”

  Ava stood and looked out the window. “God knows. He promised to be here early. It’s going to be the few of us. Pop Sidney backed out. So did my manager. So did Howard and Kathryn. Everyone waits for a better invitation.” She bit her lip. “The last time they were here Francis insulted them all.” Ava lit a cigarette and sat back down. “Max, you know you’d like it if Francis didn’t show up.”

  Anxious now, Ava kept glancing out the front window, biting her lip, distracted. From where I sat, I could watch the driveway. Finally I heard the prolonged blare of a horn, a teenage boy’s shrill announcement of arrival, and a sleek Cadillac convertible swerved off the street, breakneck speed, and slammed to a stop on the pebbly driveway alongside a privet hedge. The trellis of honeysuckle shook.

  I could hear raised voices from inside the car, shrieks of laughter, someone bellowing what sounded like barroom barroom barroom.

  Ava, her face pressed against the window, was trembling, her face hard, severe. She sucked in her breath. Her glance took in Max, then Alice, then me, a sweep that communicated apology and sadness.

  “Goddamn it.” Under her breath.

  Frank trooped in, followed by three other souls lined up behind him. “Guess who was hiding out at mi casa, dipping into my liquor cabinet.” Frank addressed all of us-all, that is, except Ava, who was fuming, arms folded, her back to the window.

  So this was the bobby-soxer phenomenon, this crooner of dreamy hit-parade ballads. The Voice smoothing its way through Italian bel canto rhythms. So scrawny and bony, a pencil, emaciated, a protruding Adam’s apple, his body hidden in an oversized black tuxedo jacket, a floppy red bow tie under a hard chin. He flashed an onyx pinky ring. He smiled at me while he was talking to Ava about something I didn’t catch, and those riveting deep-sea blue eyes electrified the otherwise skeletal face. A skinny little man, I realized, with a pronounced receding hairline and ears that reminded me of a New York taxi cab barreling down Broadway with both doors wide open.

  Ava gulped down a drink and smiled at me. “Time for the floor show, Edna.”

  Frank approached me. “Miss Ferber, we haven’t met. A pleasure.” He shook my hand with a surprisingly weak grip.

  Then, betraying nervousness I didn’t expect, he nodded at the two men standing near him. “Edna, my two buddies, Ethan and Tony Pannis.” He didn’t introduce the bizarre woman who’d flounced in behind them, now standing in a corner. Both men abruptly moved too close to me and I tried to shrink my already diminutive self. “From New Jersey. Although I knew their big brother Lenny first. He was my good old buddy from the neighborhood-and got me through some tough jams. He saved my life, really.” He stopped, seemed in awe of his own words. “These two were youngsters then. Ethan”-he indicated the slender, twitchy man in a severely pressed gray linen suit-“is an accountant at Metro, a money man. And this is Tony.” He pointed to a chubby man, his India-ink black hair permed into a Little Orphan Annie bowl of curls, a man dressed in a sequined tuxedo jacket that barely contained his protruding belly. “His younger brother.”

  “You probably know me as Tiny Sparks, the, you know, comic.”

  “I’ve never heard of you.”

  “You got to get out to the valley. I headline at Poncho’s Comedy club.”

  Frank sang a line, his voice a little shaky, “Down in the valley, the valley so…so…very, very low…”

  Ethan shot Frank a puzzled glance, then leaned into him, motioning toward Alice and Max. “You didn’t tell us they’d be here.” Frank shrugged and chuckled. He’d obviously had a few belts at his…casa.

  I didn’t know what to think of this contradictory duo. The slick accountant with the neat haircut and horn-rimmed glasses, the sensible pale-blue necktie, a conservative feathered fedora held discreetly in hand. And the carnival act, all glitter and riotous confection and blubber.

  “We’ve been dying to meet you,” Tony/Tiny said.

  I said nothing.

  Ava made no attempt to hide her distaste. “Francis,” she began, her words low and angry, “what are they doing here?”

  He didn’t look at her. “They were at my place in Palm Springs when I got back.” He smiled. ”You said it was a party. I brought a party with me.”

  Ava glanced at Alice and Max, both sitting on the sofa, looking uncomfortable. “Damn you.”

  Tony seemed to be happy anywhere that would allow in a man who happened to be wearing a dynamited clown tuxedo covered with green and red and silver buckshot sequins. Tony, I guessed, now spent most of his offstage time as…Tiny. A Hippodrome elephant in a Groucho Marx fright wig.

  Ethan looked as though he wanted to be home adding up a column of figures, far from the maddening brother, though, as his brother’s resident sheriff, he immediately frowned as Tony walked to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a martini from the pitcher resting there.

  “Christ, Tony,” he muttered. He nodded at me. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Ferber.”

  He nodded at his former wife when she glanced his way, and for a moment they both smiled at each other, though Ethan’s quickly disappeared. Lorena, I noticed, seemed to be waiting for something. Ethan stepped closer, and the hard, set face relaxed, became almost boyish.

  Oddly, he spoke now in a stilted Elizabethan voice, so lilting it compelled us all to pay attention. “‘How now! What do you here alone?’”

  Lorena, obviously settling into an old and familiar playfulness, became a fluttering heroine, her voice equally Elizabethan. “‘Do not chide; I have a thing for you.’” She winked.

  He grinned. “‘A thing for me? It is a common thing-to have a foolish wife.’”

  She bowed.

  For some reason Ethan addressed me, and his severity had returned-that rigid jaw, those unblinking eyes. “And Hollywood said I couldn’t write dialogue.” He glared at Max, who was ignoring him.

  “Well,” I countered, “
if you’re going to plagiarize, you might as well go for the best.”

  He grumbled. “Shakespeare is over-rated.”

  A stupid remark, best ignored. Said by the court jester who never learned to jest.

  Ethan turned away, a little flustered, but what caught my eye-and sadly so-was the look in Lorena’s eyes: a lingering affection there, perhaps unwanted but unavoidable, a bond she’d refused to relinquish. It saddened me, then. I realized that Lorena, despite her feisty, tough-as-nails demeanor, that hard-bitten exterior, might be a foolish woman.

  “Ethan,” she announced. “You’ve brought the circus.”

  “Be nice, Lorena,” he pleaded.

  “Why would I go out of character?”

  He laughed, a dry, brittle laugh that seemed more sardonic than celebratory. Immediately he disappeared into a corner of the sofa, and began picking a trace of Rags’ generous dog hair off a pants leg. “In Arabian countries,” he told no one in particular, “it’s considered unclean to have dogs inside a house.”

  “I’m a hard-shell Baptist,” Ava told him.

  “Christ,” he mumbled.

  Ava looked toward Max and Alice, shrugged her shoulders, and mouthed the words: I’m sorry. Max waved back, a thin smile on his face.

  Reenie circulated with more appetizers, but deliberately rolled her eyes when she approached Tony, who was mixing his drink with his index finger. For a few minutes I talked quietly with Lorena about her life in the script department of Paramount, but it was a strained conversation. Everyone seemed to be keeping a deliberate, if tense, distance from one another, the two hostile factions content to drink in corners and eye the others over the rims of their whiskey glasses. No one was happy, but maybe Tony/Tiny.

  Lorena told me, “As you can tell from our opening skit, Ethan used to be a scriptwriter.”

  From across the room Ethan shook his head. “For God’s sake, Lorena. Not really. One measly script doesn’t count. I’m a numbers guy.”

  “You mean a racketeer,” Frank joked. He was pouring himself a drink.

  “Yeah, sure thing.” Ethan didn’t look happy.