“I’m so . . . cold.”
“Mama’s home.”
“. . . and frightened.”
“Mama’s with you.”
Roy, watching her mother rock her sister in her arms, crooning as if Marylin were a little baby, felt her own face and ears go hot. What a juvenile she’d been to leap to the melodramatically wrong conclusion. Then her eyes filled with tears. That dreamy dreamy guy, she thought. To atone for her evil misconception about her sister’s purity, she put away groceries onto the crowded, messy open shelves.
“Marylin.” She went to the bed. “Want me to call BJ? She’ll know what’s going on.”
Marylin jerked from her mother’s arms. “That’s a wonderful idea! Maybe he’s been found. I’ll do it.”
Her hands shook and she could not thumb through F’s in the slim Beverly Hills phone directory, so Roy looked up the number and dialed, handing her the phone.
“May I speak to BJ?” Marylin asked.
Roy could hear a colored maid’s voice at the other end explaining that Lieutenant Fernauld was missing and the family was not taking calls. The febrile excitement drained from Marylin’s face, and she stood holding the instrument as if she did not know what to do with it.
NolaBee hung up and led Marylin to her own bed.
* * *
During the night, Roy awakened to hear her mother’s voice, intense and throaty: “You can’t, darling, it’s just plain impossible.”
“And what about that operation? Mama, it’s murder, murder.”
“Marylin, listen to me, listen. What’s inside you now is nothing, a tiny nothing—”
“It’s part of Linc.” Marylin’s voice convulsed in ragged little sobs that to Roy were even more pitiable than her earlier tears of irreconcilable grief.
“Hush, hush,” NolaBee soothed.
“I won’t kill Linc’s baby.”
“You know what people will call it, I reckon. Darlin’, we can’t let our baby be a bastard.”
“Linc’ll come home!”
“’Course he will. But it won’t be in time. After, you can be married right and proper, and have lots of other babies. This one, Marylin, it’s not fair to the poor little innocent. Even if you do carry it, you’ll have to give it away. A child needs a name, a father, a right proper life.”
Her mother’s Southern voice spoke the common-sense truth, and Roy knew it—yet wasn’t there another, more human truth of life and love?
The covers rustled as if somebody were turning over.
“I can’t do that thing, it’s illegal, and besides, I just can’t. This is Linc’s baby, part of him. Mama I’m so confused, so miserable, but don’t try to make me do it. Because I won’t.”
“Darlin’, it’s the only way. A mistake like this could ruin your life forever. I reckon you’d never get a chance at a career.”
“I hate acting!”
“You hate everything now.”
“I’ve always done what you’ve told me, Mama, you know that. But not this time.”
“It’s only like, well, a scraping. Somebody I know on the wing assembly had it done last month, she had a right good doctor.” NolaBee’s voice cracked and Roy knew her mother was crying. “Oh, my sweet beautiful, as if I like it any more than you do! But there’s no other answer.”
“Why don’t we move?” Marylin said in a stronger voice. “Pretend the baby’s yours. Or that I’m married—”
“Marylin, you know as well as I do how close we are to the bone. Where would we get the money to take care of a baby?”
“I’ll leave school and work,” Marylin said.
“And who would raise it?”
Marylin’s awful, ragged little sobs started again. Roy’s eyes were oozing in sympathy. “Me,” she said, the syllable loud in the darkness.
“Roy. You shouldn’t be eavesdropping,” accused NolaBee.
“I’d have to be stricken deaf not to.”
“You go back to sleep.”
But Roy got out of bed, stumbling around the big wardrobe to the double mattress that her parents had shared, crawling in next to Marylin, putting her arms around the fragile, shaking body. Even now, in her tears and unhappiness, Marylin had a tenderly sweet smell, not Apple Blossom cologne but her own unique bodily scent.
“Marylin, I’ll leave school too. I’ll look after the baby.”
“Roy,” NolaBee said, lifting up to reach over to pat her younger daughter, “you’re being right sweet, but you girls aren’t talking sense. We can’t ruin Marylin’s life and the baby’s too. There’s just no way out except . . .” Her voice broke into a gasping sob.
The three Waces wound their arms around each other, rocking together as they wept.
Toward dawn, Roy and NolaBee drowsed.
Wedged between her mother and sister, Marylin lay with her aching eyes wide open, her fingers clenching the initialed silver ring, ALF.
Suddenly a plan came to her, a crazily simple plan.
She would go to Linc’s father.
The famous Joshua Fernauld. Rich and powerful. A writer of noble novels and screenplays that celebrated the dignity of human life.
She would explain about Linc and her . . . No. She would give Mr. Fernauld Linc’s stories—Linc had written far more eloquently of what they meant to one another than any words she could utter.
Mr. Fernauld would not let his grandchild be scraped away.
10
Trudging northward in her bobby socks and navy gabardine suit, a reconstructed hand-me-down that was the most somber outfit she owned, Marylin cradled the box containing Linc’s short stories.
A cold April wind had blown away the mist, revealing each architectural embellishment on North Hillcrest Road—a lavishly tiled Hispanic dome, the ornamental stonework on Norman crenellations, the elegant fanlight of a Colonial mansion. The impeccably pruned trees and shrubbery were rattling money, money, money.
Marylin added awe to her morbid churn of emotions.
This morning NolaBee had been determined to call Hughes that a family emergency was keeping her home, but Marylin had summoned her every tenuous acting skill to convince her mother that she was fine now, sound of mind and body, and could rest in bed alone.
After her mother and sister had left, she remained immobile, her eyes fixed on the long, twisting water stain on the ceiling, her mind filled with the horror in the burning cockpit. Though she no longer suffered the immediacy of that first horror-struck paroxysm, a bleakly miserable anxiety enveloped her, and she held tight to that thin shred of comfort: he was missing, not dead. Around nine she attempted to focus on her approaching face-to-face confrontation with Joshua Fernauld, but the incalculable importance of this meeting with the famous stranger paralyzed her already dislocated mental processes. Finally she accepted that her sole chance of success lay in preparing as for a role. Tearing a sheet of three-holed paper from her notebook, she struggled with her dialogue: Mr. Fernauld, I’m so very sorry about Linc. I’ve been dating him—more than dating. I’ve brought along some stories he’s sent me. The ones he wrote about us are on top. I need to ask your help about something. When you’ve finished reading, you’ll understand. She rehearsed in front of the bathroom mirror, after a while managing to say her lines without a sob.
At 10:20—she had determined eleven the earliest acceptable hour to call—she had set out, mechanically repeating the speech as she covered the miles.
She crossed Elevado to the seven hundred block, where the Fernaulds lived. Big, gleaming cars lined both sides of the street, and Marylin absently determined a ladies’ club meeting was in progress nearby. The only other time she had been to the Fernaulds’ was when she and Linc had dropped off BJ, and then she had been too involved to fully take in how dismayingly impressive the large Tudor-style house was. She gazed up in dismay at the massive heap of crimson bricks traced with Virginia creeper.
The front door opened. A man in a natty blazer emerged, and during the moment that the door remained ope
n, the roar of voices blasted out.
A party? Marylin reacted with confusion and fear.
Her preconceptions had staged this scene between two players, her and Joshua Fernauld—Linc’s anxious father.
Though she had always been forced to conquer her fears, she had never viewed herself as a bona fide coward, and now she asked herself how—in the midst of her flaying cares—how could she be in such a panic about entering Linc’s house simply because for some crazy reason it was filled with owners of Cadillacs, Chryslers, and chauffeured Lincolns?
Think of what Mama wants to do, she told herself.
Racing up the path, she desperately clunked a polished brass door-knocker shaped like a mermaid.
The door was opened by a colored woman with reddish processed hair and a fine figure beneath her gray silk uniform. Hadn’t Linc—and BJ, too—spoken with warm affection of a black couple? Yes, Coraleen and Percy, who had been with the Fernaulds since BJ’s birth.
“Yes?” Coraleen inquired pointedly.
The sound of convivial voices blew about them, and Marylin could not speak.
The servant’s red-tinged eyes peered questioningly at her. “You’re a friend of BJ’s?”
“No . . . yes. Marylin Wace.”
“Come on in, honey. I’ll get her.”
The maid’s kind tone soothed Marylin a trifle, and she stood in the cathedrallike entry, gazing around. Other than on a movie screen, she had never seen such pure swank. Each detail was perfection from the intricate spoolwork on the massive curving staircase to the sparkling, handsize drops on an enormous chandelier surely imported from Versailles.
Through the archway to the dining room, she saw a man moving around a long oval table helping himself from various silver bowls and platters whose contents were works of art. Food that appeared a gorgeously different substance from the haphazard if tasty brown meals that NolaBee served up. Flowers made of bright radishes and carrots adorned thinly sliced, radiant pink meats—you’d never guess there was rationing. A monstrous crystal bowl refracted the jewel-hued balls of out-of-season melon. Loaves of every ethnic variety stood sliced yet left in their twisted or rounded or oval shapes. Marylin could only guess the delicacies in the twin chafing dishes, but even the humble potato salad lay beneath a glinty blackness that she accepted must be the first caviar she had ever seen. On the sideboard, an elaborately chased silver tea service was flanked by a rich variety of frosted cakes and cream pastries. Queasily Marylin turned away.
Across the hall, in a living room filled with bright chintz and antiques, a pair of bald, gray-suited men gesticulated a conversation. The main orchestra of voices, however, came from behind the living room.
The general air of a large, jovial party, while unnerving to Marylin, roused a wacky hopefulness in her. The Fernaulds are celebrating, so that must mean Linc’s been found, she thought with a fast-beating heart.
The voices blared louder.
BJ, wearing a draped black date dress and ankle straps with spiky heels, had opened a door behind the stairwell and was coming toward her. Her pompadour wisping in black strands, her lipstick worn off except at the well-defined corners of her mouth, she looked completely herself. “How swell of you to come, Marylin,” she said warmly. “Did you cut school?”
“I heard yesterday,” Marylin said. “I tried to phone you.”
“We aren’t taking calls.”
“Your maid told me . . . BJ, this party—does it mean Linc’s been found?”
BJ’s eyes closed. Marylin could see the lashline was red and puffy. “He’s dead,” she said in a small voice.
“No!” Marylin denied with unaccustomed vehemence. “Missing in action.”
“At first it was only missing in action, so there was some hope. But Dad got on the horn, calling every top brass he knows in Washington, and we heard for sure last night. Linc was on a mission involving a big, well-armed Jap convoy—we don’t know where, of course. But it was fierce. Linc’s been credited with two direct hits. Evidently quite a few of our planes . . .” She made a spiral gesture downward. “Linc made it through the attack and started back with the survivors, but his plane was damaged. He couldn’t keep up. A whole group of Zeroes zoomed in, he couldn’t maneuver . . . Three of our planes saw his go down.”
“No parachute?” Marylin whispered.
“The TBM has a three-man crew. There were no chutes . . . none . . . Linc’s dead.”
Marylin’s heart slowed, her head felt weird and hollow, and she felt exactly as she had in the school corridor yesterday. I can’t faint again, she thought, clutching the box closer. She tensed her muscles, as if readying herself for physical combat, and with a tremendous effort thrust from her mind what BJ had just told her. She had the rest of her life to consider that ultimate obscenity, Linc’s death, and only the next few minutes to rescue his child.
“Word is we wrecked their convoy,” said BJ, vainglory pitiable in her thin voice.
Marylin began to cry.
BJ, though unaware of Marylin’s full relationship with Linc, had heard the confession of love coming from her friend’s beautiful lips, and because Marylin Wace was a Somebody at Beverly High, this stamped the crush with a validity lacking in other schoolgirl pashes.
She held out her round, black-crepe arms. The large-boned, plump girl and the delicately fragile small girl held each other in a mourners’ embrace.
They wept several moments, then pulled apart.
“What makes you think this is a party?” BJ blew her nose. “Behold a Class A Beverly Hills wake. The heads of three major studios have already passed this way. Come on in.”
Across the rear of the house stretched a paneled card room with four substantial, green-baize-topped tables surrounded by large velvet-upholstered armchairs. Behind an ornately carved bar, a maroon-jacketed colored manservant (Percy?) dispensed drinks to a group of men already boisterously drunk. Beyond this room was a sunporch bright with wicker and big pots of daffodils, and beyond the sliding glass doors, an aqua oval swimming pool. In both rooms, suntanned, resplendently attired men and women held glasses and chatted—Marylin wondered if that really could be Edward G. Robinson, and was that redhead in half-profile actually Greer Garson, or somebody who looked and sounded exactly like her? Could that big, handsome naval officer possibly be Clark Gable? BJ led her around conversational groupings (“. . . I’m using Van for the part . . .” “. . . buying the handmade sterling flatware from Porter Blanchard . . .” “. . . stationed in London, thank God . . .”) to a chair.
Here sat a diminutive woman whose dyed blond hair was carefully arranged around a face so thin that the small bones of her cheeks and jaw showed clearly.
“Mother,” BJ said, “I’d like you to meet a really good friend of mine, Marylin Wace.”
“Mrs. Fernauld,” Marylin said, swallowing, “I’m so very, very sorry. . . .”
“Thank you, dear,” Mrs. Fernauld said hastily, as if fearing that overt sympathy might endanger her fleshless composure. “How kind of you to come.”
“We’re very good friends,” said BJ.
“People are being so nice,” said Mrs. Fernauld. “Why don’t you get her something to drink, BJ, dear. A Coke? Ginger ale?”
A candle was burning in a glass with Hebrew letters around it. Seeing Marylin’s glance, BJ said with defiant truculence, “For the half-Jewish side.”
Marylin had never wearied of hearing Linc talk of his colorful Jewish relations, but BJ never mentioned them.
“The yarzheit candle comforts Grandma, I’m sure Emma understands,” said Mrs. Fernauld, her bony fingers twining with BJ’s large, plump ones. “BJ, dear, you remember Mrs. Harper?”
BJ was drawn into Mrs. Fernauld’s group. Marylin sat down, holding the box awkwardly on her lap.
On the couch next to her, a tiny, very wrinkled lady, also with bright blond hair, had turned to stare. “So, pretty little girl, you’re a friend of BJ’s?” she asked in a buoyant accent.
�
��Yes. . . .”
“So you’re the only one here who didn’t know Lincoln, so that means you can make with a few honest tears?”
Marylin had not realized she was crying.
The old lady handed her a wadded, moist handkerchief. “If you don’t mind a used one?”
“Not at all. Thank you. . . .”
“They grieve, you mustn’t think they don’t grieve. They show it different, that’s all.”
“I understand. . . .”
Tears welled into the old lady’s eyes. “You tell me what God means, letting a boy like that be killed. A Phi Beta Kappa, all the promise in the world. Such a decent, good boy, such a mensch.”
At the word, BJ broke away from her mother’s group. “Oh, you met Gramma. Mrs. Lottman, Marylin Wace,” she said hastily. “Come along, Marylin, let’s get something to eat.”
“Eat?”
“It’s lunchtime. There’s tons of food.”
“I have to talk to your father.”
“Dad’s pretty stinko.”
“I’d wanted to tell him . . . how sorry I am. . . .” Marylin wiped at her eyes.
BJ accorded her friend Juliet-widow’s rights. “Come along,” she said, leading her back into the card room and toward the bar, where the drunken group was arguing with simultaneous obstreperousness about Roosevelt and the need for a second front.
BJ waited for a lull, then put her hand on the arm of the largest, loudest man.
Big-chested, he was dressed in a gaudy Hawaiian sport shirt and white duck pants. His fatherhood could never be in doubt. Here, below deeply tanned forehead ridges, were the thick brows and bony promontory of a nose inherited by both his children. His long onyx eyes, also a genetic imprint, were bloodshot and angry.
“How’s my Beej?” he said. “You guys all know her?”
“Know her?” said a red-faced man, teetering back and forth alarmingly. “Jesus fucking Christ, Joshua! I’m her godfather.”
“Must be pretty far in my fucking cups to forget that,” said Joshua Fernauld. “Beej, what can I do for you?” His voice was unusual, reverberating deep and gravelly within that barrel chest.
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