Getting Garbo

by Jerry Ludwig

  “Know what makes a movie star?” Norm asks. He’s not a collector, but he likes analyzing movies. “They never blink. When it’s an important moment, you never see them blink.”

  “Unless it’s like Scarlett O’Hara, batting her eye lashes, flirting.”

  “I’m talking about highly dramatic moments. No blinks. Check it out.”

  I’d never noticed that before, but as I think back on the high points of my favorite movies, it makes sense to me. Blinking indicates hesitancy or even shiftiness. Not blinking means sincerity or determination. Garbo never blinks. Gable winks, but when the chips are down, he never blinks.

  Norm’s car radio is on, tuned to KLAC, and now there’s a newsbreak. They announce that police have confirmed that the Hollywood Hills burglar, who killed TV star Roy Darnell’s wife, has been caught and killed in a high speed chase. I’m stunned. “Didn’t you hear that before?” Norm asks. “Been on the radio all day.” I’m flooded with relief. I knew Roy didn’t do it.

  Norm pulls up in front of my apartment house and I get out. As I walk toward the stairs, I enjoy the moment. It’s dusk, the time just after the sun’s gone down, but before it’s totally dark. The palm trees look charcoal black, silhouetted against the last light of the day. I can smell raked-up leaves burning in the backyard incinerators, mingling with some of the cooking smells from the kitchens of the apartment house.

  Not ours, though.

  Mother always comes home too pooped from the bank to cook, so she nurses a drink or two until I pull some Swanson’s dinners out of the freezer. On the evenings when I’m out, she just boozes until she passes out.

  I unlock the door and step inside gingerly. Like Fred and Gingerly. When I was a kid, Mother might be hiding behind the door to pounce and pound me for some sin like not making my bed. Tonight the lights are on in the living room, and I saw the car at the curb downstairs, so I know she’s come home.

  “Mom,” I call. But she’s not here.

  My shoes hurt—my new penny loafers with the stack heels that Mother bought for me—and they make me feel like Li’l Abner. I wore them for the interview at Twentieth because the rest of my shoes are sneakers. Before I can kick them off, I hear shuffling on the landing and Mother enters. Carrying her drink in one hand and the empty garbage can from under the sink in the other hand. She bangs into the doorjamb coming through it. Girlish giggle. Really blasted tonight.

  “Why hello. And how’s the little princess?”

  “Hadda work late.”

  “Y’coulda phoned. In case I was worried.”

  I snort. “About what?”

  “If maybe the pirates or gypsies or perverts have snatched you off the streets. The places you go and the company you keep.”

  She’s worse than usual. Better get some food in her. “Want the chicken dinner or the Salisbury steak?” I’m at the freezer.

  “Surprise me,” she says. Shoving the garbage can back under the sink. And giggling again.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all. Just how some things seem so damn hard, totally out of control, impossible, but—they don’t have to be.”

  “For instance.” Sliding the TV dinners in the oven.

  “How I’ve been begging you, and praying, that you’ll finally get over this insane obsession with the autographs. It’s just not normal, Reva! There’s no room for anything else in your life. Anyway—” pouring herself more booze “—my prayers have been answered.” Yet another giggle.

  “Hallelujah! And what’s the answer?”

  “Don’t mock. Disrespect.” Waving her glass, spilling some booze. “God’ll punish you. Not your fault. Head filled with nutsy nonsense. You’ll thank me, Reva. Know what the gardeners say, when they’re cutting back the rose bushes to a stump? ‘Y’gotta be cruel to be kind.’ That’s what they say. So I decided to treat you with total kindness. You’ll see, you’ll thank me later, you will.”

  I feel icy. Standing absolutely still. “What have you done, Mother?”

  “Asked you a million times, give it up, a grown-up girl like you, chasing cars like a deranged hooker, making a grotesque display of yourself, consorting with the scum of the earth, in order to spend a few precious seconds with the great stars who don’t give a flying fuck about anyone but themselves, and now to make it worse, you’re in trouble with the police, not once, but twice in the same week, so what choice did I have?”

  “Mother,” I repeat, “what have you done?”

  “Don’t be upset, honey.” She’s pleading, really scaring me. “This way there’s an end to it, it’s the only way, now you’ll have time to go to dances, meet somebody, have a family, a life—”

  I run to my bedroom door and see that the padlock has been clipped off. It’s on the floor. She’s invaded my space. I push open the door and instantly spot what’s wrong. I turn back to her and our gazes interlock.

  “Where are my autograph books, Mother?” The entire shelf is empty.

  She giggles again. I rush over and grab her arms and shake her and yell in her face, “Where are they?” and I can read the fear in her eyes, as she mumbles, “For your own good...”

  “The garbage,” I guess. “You threw them in the garbage!” She ducks her head, so I’ve got my answer.

  I race out the front door. Her voice following me. “You’ll thank me someday.” They don’t pick up the garbage until tomorrow morning, so there’s time, and I take the stairs down two-at-a-time and skitter on the pathway in these stiff new shoes and almost fall on my face, and speed around the corner of the apartment house to the garbage dumpster, and then I see the smoke trailing up into the night sky from the backyard incinerator. Two evenings a week the city allows us to burn. And I know what my mother has done.

  I yank open the incinerator door and my reflex urge is to shove my hand inside and save whatever’s left, but there’s nothing left. Just a pile of ashes, some glowing embers, a few pulsing flames still nibbling on the smoldering covers of my star books, the pages all devoured by the fire, except for a page or two curled into blackened ash. I poke them with a stick and they crumble. I drop the stick and sink to my knees and cover my face with my hands and begin to cry, the kind of tears that rip at your insides and scorch your cheeks. “Mama,” I hear myself saying, “you shouldn’t have, Mama, why couldn’t you leave me alone...”

  Then I’m choked with tears and can’t speak. I rock back and forth, weeping as if I’ll never be able to stop, and I’m not even aware that there’s anyone else here until I hear a voice. The voice I know better than any other.

  “Reva…what’s wrong? Can I help you?”

  And I look up at him. Standing there. Alone. As if he’s in my dream.

  “Hi, Roy,” I say. Smiling foolish and bleary through my tears. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to see you,” he says. “About something special.” And he gives me that smile I love so much on TV, that devil-may-care Jack Havoc smile.

  33

  Jack Havoc

  I’m in the driver’s seat now. Not a fuckin’ moment too soon. Hey, this is no power grab. Roy wants to step aside. Really does. Wants me to handle this. Finally agreed on that on the ride over. Not a question of guts. I give Roy a lot of shit, but I know he’s basically one tough hombre. He just can’t do certain things. And I can. No problemo.

  See, if Jack Warner had asked me that question, I’d’ve given him the answer in a mini-second. “Fuckin’ right I’m a survivor.”

  All I’ve got left now are two hurdles. Getting rid of Reva is the easy one. Talking Roy back into the TV series is gonna be a tad tougher. He’s a dreamer, my boy Roy. I want him to realize his dream. Be a big movie star like Bogie. But how’s it gonna hurt him to keep me alive for another season or two? He’s still on the fence on that score, but after tonight he’s gonna owe me big time.

 
So here we are at last.

  In Reva’s backyard.

  Staked her out at the theater. Tailed her back here. Waited for my moment. Couldn’t have hoped for a better shot. Gotta stop her bawling. Make nice. Roy’s not the only actor in this family. She tells me what happened. Fuckin’ mother burned up her autograph collection. Hey, my heart’s not made of stone. I feel for the kid. Watching your dreams go up in smoke.

  I soothe her, calm her, tell her I came by to discuss something important, something she may like a lot. Can we go get a cup of coffee? It’s that easy. Out of the backyard and into the car. The gods are with me: no one sees us. Now we’re really rolling.

  She’s still whimpering in the front seat. “My memories.”

  “Hey, Reeve, gotta think of the future,” I say. In that warm fuzzy way Roy would. Roy’s whispering guidance in my ear when I need it. He’s in the back seat, but still on the team.

  “What future?” she asks.

  “Yours. Since Killer Lomax took off on me, I need some help. Scheduling appointments, keeping track of money, screening calls, handling requests and sorting mail, generally making sure I’m where I’m supposed to be when I’m supposed to—”

  “Are you asking me to be your secretary?”

  “More like an overall kind of executive assistant, you know, taking charge of my life.”

  She stares at me. Like Cinderella must’ve at the Prince when he turned up with the glass slipper.

  “I—I never did anything like that,” she finally says, “I wouldn’t want to mess you up.”

  “You wouldn’t mess me up. You’re smart, you’re loyal—that’s number one, I can trust you, everything else I can show you and you’ll pick up real fast.”

  “Well, if you think so.”

  “You’d really be doing me a favor.”

  Kid’s got a knockout smile. Radiant. “When would you want me to start?”

  “How about now? I’ve gotta swing past the studio for a second, pick up some things. If you’ve got the time to go with me.”

  She says she does.

  Then she reaches in her pocket. “Got something of yours.” She brings out the jackpot. The locket. “I’m sorry I took it. I wanted to give it back to you. I came by your house, but you weren’t there.”

  I take the locket. “You’re probably wondering how I got this—and the other stuff,” I say.

  She shrugs, like who cares? But I know she does.

  “I went to Addie’s house and found her dead. Who knows who did it? She ran around with a lot of freaks. But I knew I’d be blamed, so I made it look like a robbery.”

  “I knew it was something like that!” She’s so relieved.

  See how easy it can be, I beam silently to Roy.

  Just don’t scare her, he whispers in my ear.

  • • •

  She’s chewing my ear off. Won’t stop talking. All through the Sepulveda Pass into the Valley. Yak-yak-yak. About her monster mother. No wonder this kid’s so fucked up. Be doing her a favor, put her out of her misery. If she doesn’t stop telling these mama stories, I’ll pull over and do it right here.

  Bad attitude, Roy murmurs. You can’t be that way.

  Why not? How should I be?

  Like you are on TV. Jack Havoc who cares for the little people.

  But what do I say to her?

  Just change the subject. Ask her about something else.

  “Hey, Reeve, what’s up with your father? Where’s he?”

  Good tip from the Royster. Kid lights up.

  “My dad, you’d’ve liked him. Everybody did. Never yelled, never hit me, just went to work, came home, read the paper, listened to The Cisco Kid on the radio. He never said it, but I knew he loved me.”

  “He, err, passed away?”

  “Yeah. Right before we came to California. He was an electrician, worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard during the war, first real steady money he ever made. We were doing pretty good. Then he fell off a ladder and scrambled his brains.”

  “Was that the medical diagnosis?”

  “That’s what my mother called it. He didn’t die for a long time. They put him in a Navy hospital on Staten Island. A sanitarium, really. He could remember stuff that happened when I was a baby, but he couldn’t always remember what happened an hour ago.”

  “Like shell shock.”

  “I guess. I’d go visit him. Took the subway to the Battery for a nickel and then the Staten Island ferry for another nickel. Sail past the Statue of Liberty, over to the hospital.”

  “You and your mom.”

  “Well, she only went with me once. She said she was stopping off on the way home after work a few times a week, but I think she was lying. Anyway, on Saturday mornings, I’d go there by myself. On the way over I’d be so excited, coming back I’d always cry.” She looks out the window. We’re on Ventura Boulevard now, heading for Burbank.

  “Sounds grim. Didn’t you ever, like, horse around, share a laugh?”

  “Not much. Well, there was this one time. We were walking on the hospital grounds with all the other nutcases and their visitors, and I’m telling him all about how I got Red Skelton, who always writes “I dood it” above his autograph, and I thought Dad would be interested, ’cause that was a kind of private joke between us when I was younger, but it doesn’t seem to register on him now. All he suddenly says is, ‘Doctor.’ Which startles me because it’s like the first word he’s said all morning. And I see this tall guy in a white lab coat with a stethoscope dangling steaming toward us on the path. ‘My—doctor,’ Daddy says.

  “The guy stops in front of us and smiles. ‘I’m Dr. Borovac,’ he says and I know he’s waiting for Dad to make the introductions, but I know how hard that can be for him. So I jump in. What’s goin’ through my mind in that instant is that the ladylike thing is to say, ‘How do you do?’ But for some reason, I feel this real urge to say ‘Howdy.’ Kinda casual and western, you know? Anyway. When I open my mouth what comes out is ‘Howdydoodleedo.’ The doctor gapes at me. Then, like he understands, he smiles even bigger and says, ‘So this is your daughter.’”

  I explode. Cackling, clutching the wheel. She’s laughing along with me. “I could’ve gone right through the ground straight down to China if there’d been a hole deep enough.”

  “I bet.” Wiping away my laugh tears. “So that’s it, huh?”

  “Well, there was a little more. The doctor walked off. I kept strolling with Dad. Neither of us talking, because I was ashamed. I was sure my father wanted to make a good impression and I blew it. But then while we were strolling, Dad took my hand. Very unusual. He never was much on touching. And then he put something in my hand. It was this ring he always wore on his pinkie. It was gold and had his initials on it in zircons, ‘R.H.,’ same as mine, his name was Renko, and he puts the ring on my finger.” She wags her index finger. No ring. “It was the only gift he ever gave me. ‘Thanks, Dad,’ I said, ‘I’ll wear it always.’”

  Reva stops. Looks away out the window. We’re on the Barham Pass. “So where’s the ring now?”

  “Oh, I lost it. Back in New York.” She looks sort of funny.

  Say something to her, Roy whispers. She’s hurting.

  “Easy come, easy go,” I say. Just like I do on TV every week.

  Kinda soft, she repeats. “Yeah, easy come, easy go.”

  • • •

  We reach the crest of the Barham Pass and there’s the Warner Bros. lot down below. Lockheed’s aircraft factory is farther out in Burbank. But in the dark, the two places look alike. Hangar-size sound stages. A water tower as tall as an air traffic controller’s flight deck. We’re approaching the main car entrance. Opposite a billboard that proclaims, Warner Bros. Studio—Combining Good Citizenship With Good Picture-Making.

  “Reeve, you need a pass to get on the lot and I didn’t th
ink to call—”

  “I can wait outside for you.”

  “No, no, I want you to come in. See the Jack Havoc stage. Maybe if you duck down on the floor ’til we get past the gate man.”

  She does it. Without question. Good kid. I toss a car blanket from the back seat over her and I greet the studio cop on the gate.

  “Hey, Teddy, they swipe any sound stages tonight?”

  “Not on my watch, Mr. Darnell.” He raises the metal bar and waves me through.

  As soon as we turn the corner, I give Reva the all-clear and up she pops. Eagerly looks around. We stop in front of Stage 11 and although the entire street is empty, I park in the space marked ROY DARNELL ONLY. Usually when they give you the boot off the lot, they paint over your name even before you’re out the front gate. It’s a Hollywood tradition.

  So why’d the Colonel keep my name here? Roy mutters.

  Maybe he had ’em put it back today—after he made you the new offer.

  Jumpin’ the gun, isn’t he? Devious old fucker.

  Keep an open mind, Roy. “We’ll discuss this later.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Reva asks.

  “Just thinking out loud. Reminding myself. Something I’ve gotta do.”

  I open the heavy soundproof door and guide her inside the stage. Only the security light on, but I go to the master switch and announce in a deep Roy Darnell voice, “Let there be light.” I throw the switch and the gloom lifts enough so Reva can see the permanent sets. It takes her breath away. She’s really in Jack Havoc Land.

  “Is it okay to walk there?” Inside the sets.

  “You’re with me. You can go anywhere you want.”

  She starts forward. Slowly.

  Isn’t that cute, Roy? Like she’s in Buckingham Palace.

  This isn’t going to work. It’s a bad plan.

  Whaddaya mean? It’s a great plan. Your number one fan sneaks onto the lot. Who knows how? She goes to the Jack Havoc sound stage. Tragedy strikes. In the dark, something falls on her. Or she trips on one of the cables, bangs her head, all this equipment around. You happen to stop by, discover the body. You call the studio cop. Perfect!