“Mama, without Linc there’s no sense to anything.”
“They say a woman never gets over her first love. But nothing’s the same, darlin’, nothing’s the same anymore. Think of Billy.”
“That’s why I need the money. For Stanley Rosewood’s fees. He’s the best man in town. He’ll get me custody of Billy. Then we can go to live with Linc.”
Swallowing smoke, NolaBee coughed violently. “In Detroit?” Her small eyes peered in distress at Marylin.
“Yes, back East.”
“That’s right ridiculous! How can you leave? You have your career, everything. Why, you’re far bigger box office than that trampy Rita or that simpy Lana.”
“The minute the divorce is granted, I’m getting married. A normal life is all I ever wanted.” At her mother’s wince, Marylin halted. “Mama, Linc and I have always belonged together. He and Billy are what matter to me. And you’re being a dear about the money, but you’ll get every penny back.” Her voice shook.
NolaBee patted her arm. “Darlin’, you’re in a state. I’ll fix us some lunch, then we can talk.”
While NolaBee headed for the kitchen, Marylin went to use her mother’s telephone, sprawling on the bed—once she and Linc had lain here, each holding a palm over the other’s racing heart.
There was no answer at Linc’s. Of course not, she reproached herself. He’s working at the library.
He answered a few minutes after three, Pacific Coast time. She explained that Stanley Rosewood had agreed to take her case, and she had been reinstated at Magnum. “I’m already on loan to Metro. A twelve-week shooting schedule.”
“I’ll take a few days extra off at Christmas and fly out.”
“Linc . . . Art Garrison laid down the law about us. And Stanley Rosewood must know something’s in the air. He says I must be very discreet, because of the custody.”
“You’re saying we can’t see each other?”
“I’m sorry, darling,” she said miserably.
“It’s okay, Marylin, we can write or telephone every day.” His voice faded, and long-distance wires seemed to buzz louder. “I wish I were hotter on the financial aid.”
“That’s silly. Darling, I miss you so much already.”
“Me you.”
As Marylin hung up, slow, forlorn tears were seeping down her cheeks and onto the white wool of her suit collar. By some incredible savagery of fate—or Joshua—she was cut off from both Billy and Linc.
* * *
The following morning Marylin reported to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s walled fortress in Culver City.
The comedy-mystery, tentatively entitled Blazer, was one of those hard luck films. Gene Kelly, her intended costar, had been commandeered for a musical and his part in Blazer was given to Harvey Jameson, a mediocre actor from the Metro stable. When shooting began, the script was still undergoing major surgery, and each morning a small stack of colored pages, dialogue changes, was handed out. The director, an old-timer with a light hand, fell prey to hepatitis; his replacement barked out commands that overemphasized every comedic nuance.
Marylin, outfitted in forty-two bitingly chic costumes, was foil for the private eye, turgidly played by Harvey Jameson. An elegant clothes horse, a role without the least challenge.
So even under the camera she was easily distracted by her anguished problems, which were expanding like algae in a contaminated pond. Joshua’s law firm frustrated every legal procedure aimed at peaceful dissolution of their marriage. Linc caught a bad case of flu and she worried about him alone in his apartment. Her vaginal discharge continued, and when she went to her gynecologist, she shamefacedly whispered what had befallen her. Dr. Dash, his face tense with outrage, performed stitchery in his examining room, then put her on an antibiotic that dragged her out.
Working, she longed to be at home, where she could drowse. Sleeping, she was harassed by anxiety nightmares.
Yet her purpose never wavered. She was going to spend the rest of her life with Linc.
* * *
Joshua, through friendship with a judge, had secured a court injunction that kept her from Billy. He had also deleted Roy and NolaBee from the child’s visiting list. Marylin knew that her husband’s cruelty was not gratuitous but the by-product of his love for her; however, in her lonely wretchedness she found herself visualizing him with longer teeth and a wild expression, a subhuman from a horror movie.
Ross, the kind young Scotswoman, Billy’s nurse, risked unemployment by telephoning on her days off to report on her charge. Marylin read between the lines of the woman’s cheerful burr. Billy, taking her prolonged absence badly, had become an unmanageable little monster.
Ten days before Christmas, Marylin splurged at Uncle Bernie’s, and the toy shop delivered her purchases to North Hillcrest Road. On Christmas morning when she stepped outside for the paper, she found on the doorstep the lavish miniature station wagon, the Flexy, the cowboy outfit, and the assortment of games, all were sloppily rewrapped in their bright paper. Nothing was missing, not even the lollipops attached to the crimson ribbons. Tidings of comfort and joy from her husband.
* * *
By the middle of January Blazer was almost in the can.
That last Wednesday of shooting, Marylin rode an electric horse while a projector electrically synchronized with the cameras threw rushing vistas of wintry woods through the blank screen behind her. Ticket buyers would see Rain Fairburn in a chic habit cantering her black Arabian steed toward—what else?—a deserted mansion.
As she dismounted from the wood-and-steel contraption, her dresser came over with a long-corded telephone. “Marylin, a call for you.”
Marylin reached for the phone, assuming it was her mother. Worried about her, NolaBee drove her to and from Metro, either remaining on the set or calling four or five times to check on how she was managing.
“Marylin?” Joshua said.
As the hated, feared, familiar voice rumbled against her ear, she was struck dumb with foreboding.
“Dammit, I’ve been cut off.”
“I’m here,” she whispered. “Is it Billy?”
“He’s been in an accident.”
She was hurled into a nightmare where there was no warmth, no mercy, no hope, only one eternal moment of terror. “Is he . . . ?” She couldn’t voice the final word, dead.
“He’s in the examining room.”
“Where are you?”
“St. John’s.”
“I’ll be right over. Oh, God! Mother drove me! God—”
“Marylin, you have to hold on tight.” The voice rumbled more deeply. “What if Billy needs you?”
“But how will I get there?” Her question was a screech of agony.
“Tell them to send you in a limousine.”
40
The windowless waiting room—fraudulently bright, adorned with a crucifix and two small, unevenly hung religious prints—was empty except for Joshua, hunched in a corner. As she came in, he stood.
His shirt and trousers were marked with rusty splotches. His tanned cheeks sagged heavily in a single plane, and the twin lines from the corners of his mouth were gouged so deeply that the chin appeared hinged in the manner of a ventriloquist’s dummy. The emotions she felt on seeing him—hatred, anger, fear, pity—were like a few sparse snowflakes in comparison to the raging polar blizzard of her maternal anguish.
“Is Billy all right?” she demanded.
“No word yet. It’s less than an hour since we got here.”
“An hour!” Into her mind came an ominous vision, Chilton Wace’s death watch, she and her mother waiting with the docile humbleness of charity patients while chubby little Roy screamed her protests at a hostile nurse. “And you haven’t asked!”
“Damn right I’ve asked! If there’s one thing I’ve done, it’s ask. The hospital’s a fucking octopus. No matter which tentacle I attack, the answer’s always the same. No word.” He gave a loud sigh. “Maybe it does take time when it’s a head injury.”
“I’m not even sure of that. Maybe it’s internal. But he was unconscious and the back of his head was bleeding.”
She could feel the blood drain from her own head.
“Marylin, for God’s sake, sit down.”
She remained standing. “Did he fall?”
“It was all my fault.” With his hands at his sides, his big shoulders sagging in the bloodied shirt, this was a Joshua she had never seen, a penitent, frightened man.
She sat down. “What happened?”
He took the chair near her. “We were on Beverly Drive. You know Billy, always in a hot sweat to look in the pet shop. Since you left, he’s been more impatient than ever. And why not. Marylin, I told him that the reason you left was you didn’t want to live with him anymore. You’d left him.”
“Oh, my God.”
“I’m a saintly figure, aren’t I? A real prince.”
“No wonder he’s been wild.”
“Yes, when it’s not bed-wetting it’s tantrums. So there the two of us were on Beverly Drive, Billy jumping up and down demanding to see the pet shop, Big Joshua determining now was the time to teach his kid the fine art of patience. I had something important to check out, I told him. In good time we’d go look at the puppies. Then I examined every single damn piece of equipment in the camera shop window . . .”
“He ran out in the street?”
The massive chest shook with an assenting sigh. “The first thing I knew was brakes squealing. An old jalopy had swerved to avoid him, but he was thrown into the gutter. He lay there absolutely still, his head all bloodied. Crumpled, so small, so godawful small. The cops were there immediately—that’s the Beverly Hills police force, always on hand ex post facto. They said something about an ambulance. But who could hang around waiting? I picked him up and drove him here, leaning on the horn all the way, keeping my foot down to the floorboard. As soon as they took him from me, I called Rhenquist—he’s the neurosurgeon William Randolph Hearst keeps on retainer. He was tied up with office hours, but I convinced him to come.”
“What does he say about Billy?”
“He hasn’t gotten here yet.” Joshua’s very dark eyes fixed on her. “The cops said it would be a mistake to pick Billy up, but I did. Do you think I hurt him?”
Had she ever heard Joshua beg reassurance? “I don’t know, Joshua, I don’t know.”
“There’s a chapel down the hall,” he said.
His heavy steps faded. She was alone in the windowless waiting room, her mind circling like some crazed, rabid rat through the mazes of anguished fear.
She followed Joshua.
The chapel had a different odor from the disinfected hospital, a honeyed beeswax aroma that came from the votive candles flickering in their ruby-red glasses. In the front pew knelt Joshua, his massive graying head bent, his mutters disturbing the silence. “Mary, Mother of God, blessed art thou among women, Holy Mother of God, pray for us now and in the hour of our death, Holy Mother of God . . .”
For an indeterminate time she watched her husband tell a nonexistent rosary, praying for intercession with a God in whom he did not believe; then she moved up the thick carpeted aisle.
He turned to her, burying his face in her natty jodhpurs. “Marylin, I’ve screwed up in the worst way with my two sons.” His muffled voice rumbled against her. “They were the joy and hope of my life, and I’ve lost them both. When Linc showed up, I was so delirious I could have written all over the sky, ‘He has risen, he has risen.’ But he wanted you, you wanted him. Those obscene things I shouted at him! Imagine calling your own son a kike? He’s a brave, decent man, far better than I am, and I’ve always been proud of that—so why have I always been utterly incapable of telling him? With Billy it was like I was given a second chance, and what did I do? Oh, Jesus, what did I do?” His arms were clasped tightly around her waist and he swayed from side to side on his knees, rocking them both.
She touched the damp gray hair. “Joshua, we have enough trouble without going into the past to borrow more.”
Releasing her, he sat on his heels, flinging out both arms. “Behold and enjoy. Joshua Fernauld, the Great I Am, getting his comeuppance.” It was theatrical yet sincere.
“Mr. Fernauld? Mrs. Fernauld?” said a dry masculine voice.
They jerked around. A tall, narrow figure was outlined in the doorway of the chapel.
“I’m Dr. Rehnquist,” he said, coming toward them.
Marylin was freezing in her Arctic dread, yet even so she felt a whisper of surprise. She had figured that Joshua must be well acquainted with the renowned neurosurgeon to lure him from his office—but obviously this assumption was false. With what domination of character had her husband, over the telephone, compelled a total stranger to leave his busy practice and come to the aid of their small son?
Joshua, standing, clasped her hand so tightly that the huge rhinestone ring—part of her costume—cut into her flesh.
“I’ve been examining Billy,” the doctor said.
“Well?” Joshua growled. “No sugar-coated crap, no bullshit. I want the truth.”
“There’s a depressed fracture of the skull and, I believe, subarachnoid hemorrhaging—that means one of the veins on the surface of the brain has been torn. I’m on my way to scrub.”
“Must Billy have brain surgery?” Marylin’s whisper shook.
“It’s the only chance,” Rehnquist said.
Joshua was sweating heavily, and those deep-gouged lines of his jaw appeared yet more like polished wood.
It was Marylin who asked, “If the operation is successful, will Billy . . . will he be all right?”
The neurosurgeon looked at her intently, recognition dawning in his eyes. “I don’t know the answer to that, Mrs. Fernauld, I’m sorry.” The dry voice was gentle.
When they got back to the waiting room a party of sorts was straggling into being. NolaBee, Roy, BJ, and Maury were there. One of Joshua’s friends lugged in a silver ice bucket, two bottles of Johnnie Walker, and some Dixie cups while his wife followed with a covered chafing dish that held hot garlic-and-cheese-scented hors d’oeuvres. More friends and family arrived. The purposefully bon vivant chatter skirted the subject of the emergency operation as well as the Fernaulds’ separation.
Joshua sat next to her, grasping her hand and pressing it against his thick thigh. This is the man who raped me, she thought. Who defamed me to my four-year-old and returned my gifts with unseasonal cruelty, this the man who has done everything in his power to tear me from Linc. Do I hate him, pity him, what? She had no answer, but she did not pull her hand from the thick, familiar warmth.
“I can’t take much more of this waiting crap,” he rumbled to her.
“What can they be doing for so long? He’s got such a little head.”
“Why the hell don’t they send out some word? They’re a pack of sadists, surgeons, they have to be, it goes with the territory.”
After three long hours, Dr. Rehnquist came to the noisy waiting room. He wore a blood-spattered green surgical suit, and a mask dangled from his fingers. His eyes were weary, his face gray and drained of expression. “Mr. and Mrs. Fernauld,” he said in that calm, dry voice. “Let’s go someplace we can talk.”
The dinky office was crowded by a gurney. The doctor offered Marylin the one chair. As she sank into it, she thought: I am in this closet with two men wearing clothes splattered with Billy’s blood. How much blood can a four-year-old lose and still live?
“We removed a splinter of bone and repaired the damage to the vein,” he said.
“Then he’ll be all right?” Joshua growled.
“We’ll know in time.”
“How long?” Marylin asked.
“Again, we can’t say. Hopefully only days. But it could be weeks, months even.”
“What are the odds he’ll pull out intact?” Joshua asked in a strangled voice.
“I don’t like holding out false hope, any more than you wa
nt me to,” said Dr. Rehnquist. “The sooner he regains consciousness, the better the prognosis.”
“When can we see him?” Marylin asked.
“He’s still in recovery. Tomorrow morning.”
* * *
At her mother’s house, Marylin telephoned Linc to let him know what had happened. She would always draw a blank when it came to remembering his words, but she would never forget the comfort his voice brought her.
41
Billy was not in the children’s wing but on the surgical floor. In the center of the large, bright room, tended by a private nurse, amid a miraculous trellis of tubes and monitors, his body formed a flat, pathetically truncated line down the center of the full-size hospital bed. Against the turban of white bandages, his face showed a jaundiced pinky-yellow. His respiration was slow and machine regular, his thick brown lashes never quivered. Even in sleep, Billy was a restless child, turning erratically and mumbling small, incoherent sounds.
Marylin stepped into the room while Joshua hung back in the doorway. She bent over the bed, her mouth dry, nausea caught in a hard spasm at the base of her throat. This was her first glimpse of her son in more than three months, and if it weren’t for that slow rise and fall of his chest, he could be a wax effigy.
To reassure herself, she touched his cheek: below warm, petalsmooth epidermal surface, the flesh had a loose, vanquished plasticity.
“It’s all right, Miss Fairburn, nothing will disturb our little patient.” The nurse fiddled with the bleached mercilessly taut blanket cover, her narrow wedge of a face fixed avidly on Marylin—Rain Fairburn.
Joshua muttered, “He’d be better off dead than like this.”
“Never . . .” Marylin replied.
“When my mother finally died, the priest called death her final healing.” Joshua spoke in a low, angered rumble. He backed toward the door. “If you need me, I’ll be in the waiting room.”
Marylin nodded. She had learned from her craft that each character must react with a different obsessiveness to life-and-death anxieties. Just as it was unbearable for Joshua to look upon their insentient child, so she herself had been plunged into a superstitious dread that without her to stand watch, Billy might slip away.
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