No money coming in.
And the Fernaulds were in dire need of a huge secure income.
In 1962 Paramount had not renegotiated Joshua’s contract. Like many another forcibly retired bigshot, he called himself an independent producer, entering into the search for a hot property that (he repeatedly boomed at Marylin) would make very big bucks. In the meantime he brought in nothing. Always a big-handed giver, he overcompensated with ferocious generosity. No matter how the business manager cajoled, Joshua would buy Porsches for Billy and Sari and BJ’s children, Van Cleef jewelry for Marylin, book passage for the entire family on the Lurline to Hawaii. He continued to keep extravagant court in the big Mandeville Canyon place that they had purchased many years earlier. He was forever putting option money down on plays or novels.
When the concept of The Rain Fairburn Show had come along, there had been no choice for Marylin. She had signed the contract.
The hairdresser stepped forward to cover the rubberized strings with a crimson velvet ribbon, recombing her gleaming pageboy, which was longer at the sides, around the headband—a much-copied style that had become known as “a Rain Fairburn.”
Marylin stepped behind the louvered screen, slipping off her nylon makeup smock to don Roy’s wardrobe contribution, a soft crimson blouse and matching midiskirt.
The door burst open.
“Boss lady, hey hey. I see you back there,” Billy called, grinning.
Her son was one of The Rain Fairburn Show’s three writers, but nobody whispered the word nepotism. Billy, when he was eighteen, had started out at the top, working the Carson show. After a couple of years, seemingly without rhyme or reason, he had quit—but then, Billy’s swift moves were always inexplicable. On his return to Los Angeles, Marylin’s producers exultantly snagged him.
Billy lacked his father’s (and half brother’s) height. He was a scant five-ten of wiry, nervous motion, forever fidgeting, gesturing, readjusting his glasses on his hereditary beak. He had grown from a movie brat into a witty, highly intelligent, neurotic, somehow endearing man. Other than the nose, he had nothing of his father about him—he did, however, bear a passing resemblance to Woody Allen, whom he knew and idolized.
Marylin stepped from behind the screen. Still buttoning her blouse, she tiptoed to press a fond kiss on Billy’s cheek, wondering not for the first time what a psychiatrist would make of her trinity of men, married to the father, still in love with the son, a doting mother to another son.
“You smell adorable and look delicious,” Billy said. “Too good for today’s crowd.”
“You’ve already been in the green room, then?”
“Does it show?” He clapped his hand to his T-shirted shoulder. “Has the tension in there caused a giveaway attack of dandruff? Hey, think terminal dandruff changes your status to 4-F?”
For a moment, Marylin’s throat caught so she could scarcely breathe. Like the other mothers in America, she worried about her son’s draft status. Billy had no college deferment, his long-ago concussion appeared to have left no damage. All that kept him out of Vietnam was a mercifully high draft number.
Billy was saying, “I met your anti-porn lady and I’ve hacked out one remark for you to work in with her. When she goes into her number that humanity is being debased by the repetition of four-letter words, ask her which ones she means.”
“Billy, be serious.”
He scratched the back of his neck. “Would The Rain Fairburn Show write me a major paycheck if I were?”
The hairdresser and makeup man were laughing, and so was Marylin as she did up the final button.
“Now you’re decent,” Billy said, “I’d like you to meet a new buddy.”
She pretended dismay. “Another comedy writer?”
“No. Carlo Firelli—the living one, not the legend. He calls himself plain, regal Charles.”
Marylin shivered as if her hand had unexpectedly contacted something damp and cold.
Althea’s son. . . .
She had never been able to accept Roy’s renewed friendship with Althea Cunningham Firelli Wimborne Stoltz. How could Roy bear to be near the woman who had without conscience wrecked her marriage and then destroyed her husband? Yet Roy—incorrigibly steadfast Roy!—saw Althea whenever geographically plausible and the pair talked by telephone almost every Sunday. Althea had endowed the Gerrold Horak Gallery at UCLA. And, tit for tat, when Althea’s third marriage, to Nicholas Stoltz, had gone on the rocks, Roy had taken off, her first vacation since buying Patricia’s, spending a month bolstering the new divorcée’s spirits in the lavish confines of a borrowed Coyne château near Aizy-le-Rideau.
Billy opened the dressing room door wider. “Hey, Charles, it’s okay. Come on in.”
Charles Firelli had inherited his mother’s height and attenuated elegance. The length of his lean, hard legs was not disguised by his gray slacks; his wide shoulders were bony beneath a rather shabby, magnificently tailored navy blazer. He had Althea’s ash-blond hair—though without the pellucid streaking—her long, handsome face. His broader, higher cheekbones gave him masculine strength.
He moved toward Marylin with inflexible dignity, seeming to anticipate respect. Ice water in his veins, just like his mother, Marylin thought as Billy introduced them.
“Mrs. Fernauld, it’s wonderful to meet you in person,” Charles said with courteous ease. “I’ve admired your films, especially Island.”
“Charles, buddy, it doesn’t take discrimination to admire a classic. Now let’s hear it for her performance in Lost Lovers of Tahiti.”
“That bomb,” Marylin said, smiling at her son. “Are you out here to visit your grandparents, Charles?”
Charles’s eyes went flat, as if he preferred not to share his emotions. “In an unfortunate way, yes,” he said. “Mother and I are here because my grandfather is having surgery tomorrow morning.”
“I am sorry to hear that,” Marylin said. “Is it . . . serious?”
“He’s had four other operations,” Charles said in a remote tone. “Our doctors don’t hold much hope. This is all that’s left.”
“Will you give your mother and grandparents my best?” said Marylin, ticking herself off for hating Althea while Althea was beset by tragedy.
“I certainly will, Mrs. Fernauld. And I hope I see you again, soon.”
“Tonight,” Billy said. “I’m bringing you to dinner.”
Briefly Marylin put her hand on her son’s arm, an involuntary cautioning gesture, then asked herself why her dislike and fear of Althea should spill over onto this tall, good-looking, unemotional young man.
Billy pulled a disreputably crumpled sheet of paper from the pocket of his cords. “Here you go, Rain Fairburn,” he said. “The latest from the salt mines.”
“Thank you, dear.”
“Come on, Charles, let me guide you through more of the glamour of televisionland.” Billy did a soft-shoe routine to the door. Contrasted with the self-possessed Charles, he seemed more frenetic—and adorable.
After the two young men left, Marylin rehearsed the lines that Billy had patterned to fit her mild, nonmalicious humor, little jokes that she could feed to the day’s guests.
The program was shot live in front of an audience of about fifty people on wooden bleachers. Marylin skillfully guided her sweating visitors through their hustles.
By one o’clock she was in her car, driving herself home—Percy and Coraleen had retired, replaced by Elena and Juan from El Salvador, and Juan was a rotten driver.
Depleted by her performance, Marylin often succumbed, as she did now on this forty minutes along Sunset from the studio to Mandeville Canyon, to thoughts of Linc. She had neither seen nor communicated with him since she had made her long-distance renunciatory speech so many years ago, but from BJ she knew a good deal about him, including his marriage to “that Norwegian girl,” and his subsequent divorce from her.
He lived in Rome in a book-jammed flat on the third floor of an amber-colored building. His ser
vices were respected by producers and authors in search of authentic and accurate historical detail—“Research! What a criminal waste of a Pulitzer Prize!” BJ would cry. He skied in Arosa and Davos. He had kept his shape and his thick, graying hair. BJ would show Marylin snapshots, bragging with a tinge of envy, “Come on, wouldn’t you guess he’s my younger brother? It’s because he’s kept away from the Beverly Hills rat race, the sweetie.”
BJ and Maury had gone to Rome for Linc’s wedding at the Norwegian embassy, they had seen Gudrun several times during the two years and three months span of the marriage, as a couple they obviously felt warm toward Linc’s wife, yet BJ seldom spoke about her to Marylin. (To Joshua, they never mentioned Linc at all: whenever his firstborn’s name came up, Joshua either charged from the room or diverted the conversation.)
BJ’s atypical tact had earned Marylin’s wholehearted gratitude.
Hearing about Mrs. A. Lincoln Fernauld made her head throb with a sense of fullness behind her eyes. Indeed, during the entire time of Linc’s marriage she had been in a mild depression. She had caught cold easily, she had begun suffering from these darn sinus headaches. The physical dimensions of her jealousy—for she had come to realize that jealousy was at the base of her problems—shamed and repelled her. She had a life of her own, a husband, children, she cherished Linc, so why couldn’t she rejoice in his marriage? In her reasonable mind, she did wish him well, yet her subconscious remained an intractable dog in the manger, grudging him his Scandinavian wife.
When BJ had broken the news that the couple had split amicably, nasty little quivers of exultation had passed through Marylin’s entire body, and her hands had begun to tremble. Even though she felt pangs of guilt—after all, Linc must be going through a rough time—she could not dim her happiness.
He’s single again, she would think. Billy and Sari are grown, so why have I never made an overture toward him? The answers to that were twofold. First, how could she desert Joshua, that aging lion? She did not kid herself that it was simple duty that had kept her with her marriage but a complex array of feelings that ranged from pity to irate exasperation to warm, sharing affection.
Furthermore, over the years she had begun to doubt that the capacity for romantic love still existed within her. What was love, anyway? The sentimental inclinations and heightened hormonal secretions of youth. Love was for the young, not the mother of two grown children.
Sighing, Marylin turned right on Sunset, steering along the rustic folds of Mandeville Canyon, after a couple of miles turning right again at a shrub-secluded private driveway. She pressed the small remote-control box on the car seat. Wrought-iron gates swung open, closing behing her. She echoed across the wooden bridge that spanned an effervescent stream. During the rainy season the streambed filled naturally; otherwise a pump kept water rushing over the boulders. Live oaks spread luxuriantly, as did chemiso and manzanita, shrubbery that was for the most part native chaparral, yet nevertheless the Fernaulds’ acreage required the full-time services of three gardeners. Up the hill to her left she glimpsed the rustic cottage that Joshua used as his office. Ahead of her, surmounting a long, grassy slope, lay the house.
Built more than forty years ago by Tessa Van Vliet, widow of the silent-movie star Kingdon Vance, the long, comfortable building was designed in the Californio style, with appurtenances once more coming into fashion—balconies, ornamental iron window grates, tile roof, massive exposed beams, rough white stucco.
Exuberant masculine voices resounded in the rear patio. Joshua and his elderly buddies were playing pinochle amid a scattering of largecurrency bills, drinks, lavish platters of cold cuts.
She said hello, smiling at their admiringly scurrilous gallantries, then plodded upstairs to stretch out on the bed.
When she awoke the light was waning.
Joshua stood over her.
An unmotivated shiver passed through her. Although Joshua had never been physically violent since that brutal rape, when he surprised her like this she was unable to quell her initial fear.
He went to press the door bolt, then sat on the bed undoing the pearl buttons of Marylin’s robe, staring down at the small sensual body, which had changed remarkably little, the breasts as high and round, no dimming of the pearl luster that caught the light so incredibly. Joshua, though, bore the stigmata of age on his body: the tanned, white-haired barrel chest and imposing belly had gone lax, blue veins knotted the thin shanks. Time’s wounds humiliated him, so he unzipped and unbuttoned but left on his clothes as he lay down next to her.
He caressed her with all of the technical skill of his earlier years—and none of the spirit. Now his carnal transactions had an almost frantic quality, as if he were racing from failure. Like the creative demon that had ridden his youth, Joshua’s concupiscence had waned. Still, after a few minutes he moved onto her, and she arched up for his entry.
Then . . .
Nothing.
He groaned, moving off her. She held him tenderly while her pulses slowed to normalcy. Joshua was her husband and if she did not love him, she felt much for him, and his mortification hurt her, too.
“I’ll make an appointment with Webber,” Joshua growled. “Jesus Christ! Isn’t that the almighty shits, having to go to a quack urologist for a shot before making love to my wife?”
She cradled his head against her still-taut breasts. Any remark would provoke him to call her a ball-crushing star-type. He resented her financial support, he resented her youth, he loved her desperately.
Below was the sound of a car driving up: Tuesday was inviolably family night.
“I better get dressed,” Marylin said, kissing Joshua’s sweat-and-pomade-scented white hair. Despite her hapless condition, married to an often impotent, vindictively jealous husband, she had never considered infidelity. The man she yearned for dwelt on another continent, belonged to another life.
59
Eucalyptus logs crackled, throwing waves of spicy warmth from the dining room’s massive fireplace.
Joshua bulked at the head of the oval Georgian table that Ann Fernauld had bought at auction, Marylin graced the other end; between them were ranged Sari, NolaBee, Roy, Billy, and Charles Firelli. The table leaves had not been put in, for BJ’s contingent was absent. BJ, Maury, and their two younger daughters had flown to Israel two weeks earlier: Annie, married to a kibbutznik, had just given birth to her first child. Joshua viewed his ascendancy to the role of great-grandfather with a mingling of patriarchal pride and sheer terror at further proof of time’s inexorable passage.
The gathering had just attacked enormous slabs of pink rib roast, over-sized baked potatoes, emerald-flecked spinach soufflé.
Joshua beamed down the table. “Is everybody happy?”
“The beef is perfect,” said Charles, turning toward Marylin.
Marylin’s lovely smile was a shade fixed. Since Charles had entered the house, she had been experiencing flurries of vague distrust that boomeranged back as an abrasive question. Why couldn’t she see Charles as the handsome, assured heir of a vast fortune rather than as Althea’s son?
Charles slit his potato skin. Steam burst out.
“Here, Charles,” Sari said, her dark eyes fixed on the cut-glass bowl of thick sour cream that she was pushing toward him.
Sari looked like a thin, shy waif in her faded jeans and a loose madras blouse. She neither plucked her brows nor straightened her cloud of soft black hair, and at nearly twenty she could have passed for thirteen. She had dropped out of her junior year at Mills College to “get my head straight,” a fairly typical move for Sari. She was forever attempting to reconcile her considerable intellect with her extraordinarily vivid emotional range. She would disappear for hours, sometimes hiking through the canyon, sometimes leaning against the trunk of an oak tree staring dreamily at the stream. Behavior, Marylin and Joshua had decided jointly, befitting an incipient poet. But Sari, alone of Joshua’s offspring, had never had any literary aspirations.
“Thank y
ou, Sari,” Charles said in his grave basso.
Sari darted him a smile.
“The way you girls today let your hair hang, it’s right unglamorous. No style at all,” NolaBee pronounced, tossing her own ratted coiffure, which was now dyed a dashing shade of marmalade.
“Not everybody can be a sexpot like you, Grandma,” said Billy.
“Oh, you!” NolaBee cried, fluttering her eyelashes flirtatiously. She adored both her grandchildren; however, her Marylin remained the one person on this earth for whom she would willingly lay down her own life. “But I reckon us Fairburn and Roy women always did have the knack of being belles.”
“You tell ’em, NolaBee,” said Joshua.
Everybody laughed.
Roy, choking a bit, took a sip of her Perrier. The others had Beaujolais, but Roy, since her siege with the bottle, had come to dislike the taste of wine. Besides, a glassful had nearly a hundred calories and, as usual, she considered herself five pounds overweight—that other bane of her existence, the curl in her brown hair, had been tamed into a sleek, straight curve by a Vidal Sassoon blow dryer. Her face had a pleasant certainty, a by-product of her success with Patricia’s. “Well, Charles, what do you make of my family? Aren’t they exactly like I told you?” On her buying trips East, she had made it a habit to visit Gerry’s secret son at Groton, then at Harvard. “Did I exaggerate?”
“Yes, Charles,” Billy said. “Let’s hear your opinion of the humble peasantry of Beverly Hills and Mandeville Canyon.”
Charles, though one sensed humor was alien to him, retorted in the same vein as Billy. “Your women are spectacular, your men talk either too much or too loudly.”
“Amazing, isn’t it,” Billy said, “how engaging we humble folk can be?”
“I fear for you, Billy, if this is your opinion of humble.” Charles glanced around the well-appointed, beamed dining room.
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