by Rick Lenz
Margaret gets up and moves toward another drink.
I return Jerry Kennents’ call and introduce myself. Kennents is mystified but was happy to negotiate my contract for me. He got me double-scale for the day’s shooting. He says he’d like to have a meeting and discuss representing me on a permanent basis. I tell him I’ll drop by his office Monday afternoon.
I climb the stairs to my room, unlock it, go in, turn the key in the lock from the inside, undress, and take a shower. It’s the evening of April eleventh. I have to survive past three a.m. tomorrow morning.
I dry off, go back into my bedroom, and open my underwear drawer. The revolver is where I left it. I give a little thought to getting into the Olds, driving to a motel, checking in, locking the door and staying there until dawn, but I’m afraid I might not find time to sleep at all if I did that. Anyway, she no longer has a gun.
Downstairs again, I serve myself a plate of roast beef and take it into the living room.
“It’s burnt, isn’t it?” says Lily.
“It’s a bit well done, but it’s delicious.”
“You’re shameless.” Margaret doesn’t look up. “How did you happen to get a job with a film company?”
“They heard about me, I guess, and called to see if I was available.”
“Why didn’t you mention it when you first came in?”
“Didn’t I?”
She stares at me with glacial eyes. Then, apparently looking for anything to hang onto, her features patch themselves into something like hopefulness. “Might there be future jobs with film companies?”
“Maybe.”
“It would be nice to have a little security.”
“I feel confident that our financial fortunes are looking up.” I’m thinking about some information I remember from the World Almanac. I know that a horse called Needles, ridden by D. Erb, is due to win the Kentucky Derby on the first Saturday in May. The National League can be counted on to take the All-Star Game seven to three, and at the beginning of October, the Yankees will beat Brooklyn in seven to win the World Series. Don Larsen will capture the Series MVP by pitching in game five the only perfect game in World Series history.
We watch the TV show about the marines who drowned at Paris Island and Grace Kelly’s upcoming marriage. I decide not to stay for Dragnet and Ida Lupino going nuts in the lighthouse from the rats. I tell Margaret and Lily I have work to do.
Looking puzzled, Margaret starts to speak, but I tell her as firmly as I can, “I’ve got to get this work done tonight, right now.”
I go up to my room and lock the door.
I lie down on the bed and try to concentrate on the script. “You have more love and kindness in your eyes,” Lawrence says, “than I’ve found in this whole damned state.”
“Gag me with a spoon.” Richard doesn’t understand why Jack said that, but by now, almost nothing he says surprises him.
I think of my favorite theatre story: A young actor has been waiting for his big break. He writes in a journal, “Dear Diary, tomorrow I’m going to be a star. I have a great role in the best play of the season. I have a wonderful, moving soliloquy that I’ve worked on as diligently as I’ve ever worked on anything. I’m on stage all by myself, except for the character actor who has no lines and simply sits upstage at an old desk, writing a letter. There is no possibility I won’t be brilliant. I will have the audience in the palm of my hand. Tomorrow, I am a star.”
The entry in the next day’s journal read, “Dear Diary, he drank the ink.”
I freeze.
Someone is tapping on the door.
It’s 11:30. There is a pause. The only light in the room comes from my bedside lamp. The tapping is repeated, not loud, but insistent.
I hear footsteps moving away from the door.
At least ten minutes after that, I move silently to the bureau and slide open the underwear drawer. The gun is exactly where I put it.
Leaving it there, I close the drawer, tiptoe to the bathroom, and rinse my face with cold water. My adrenaline will keep me awake until I safely pass three in the morning, the hour of Richard’s previous departure.
I get into my bed again, sit upright with my back against the headboard, and turn my attention to the script.
THURSDAY, APRIL 12, 1956
I wake up confused and angry with myself for nodding off. I wonder if there’s some other convoluted self in there with a death wish. I hear Santa Ana winds. They’re buffeting the house over and over, striking, then waiting for a few seconds, then gathering force and pounding at the windows and shutters again.
Richard’s Bulova is on the bedside table.
It is 3:30. I’m perspiring. In dreams I was flying into dark clouds, and again found myself at the top of the stairs.
I look at my hands. For a moment, groggy, I don’t know whose they are. I move to the mirror in the bathroom and turn on the light.
It’s Richard Blake.
It’s also 3:30 in Kingman, Arizona. Jack Cade is squalling in the nursery of Saint Mary’s Hospital. I imagine my father, whom I barely remember except from pictures, standing in the waiting room, elated but nervous as hell, looking through the window at his brand-new son.
I picture Rita, holding her baby boy, studying his little feet.
I did not die at the predesignated time. The changes I’ve made—both those that I know about and those that I don’t—have caused other changes that have caused …
There is noise in the hall. It sounds like somebody with a broom. I unlock the door and cautiously peer out.
At the end of the hall, the glow from the lamp in the foyer below illuminates the top of the stairs.
I put on my robe, go out into the hall, close and relock the door, and move quietly toward the stairs. There’s no light coming through the passageway from the living room. The sound of the sweeping broom gets louder.
I realize what it is. I go downstairs to take a look anyway. Several limbs of the pepper tree outside the living room are whipping up against the cornice above one of the front windows.
I’m ravenous. The burnt roast beef and cold potatoes and green beans from dinner are all I’ve eaten since breakfast. I go into the kitchen and open the refrigerator. Cold meat and cheese, white bread, no mustard, only mayonnaise. I fix myself an unsatisfactory sandwich and devour it by the light of the refrigerator.
“Richard?”
“Shi-iit!”
I’m sitting on a stool next to the serving table, facing the refrigerator, still eating my sandwich. I whirl around on the stool to find Lily standing in the doorway to the kitchen. She’s barefoot, wearing only a thin white nightgown.
I whisper fiercely at her, “You scared me to death.”
“I’m not sleeping, Richard.”
“What are you doing up?”
“I’m not sleeping. I got up. I was awake.”
I take a deep breath. “Did you tap on my door earlier?”
She shakes her head no, and I know it’s the truth. It was Margaret. I’m surprised she didn’t just use the key she’s had made and walk right in.
I take my robe off and help Lily into it. She sits down on another stool.
“Why are we awake, Richard?”
“I was hungry. You’d better whisper. We don’t want to wake anybody.” In the light from the refrigerator, I see her eyes roll to the side as she looks toward the kitchen door. “Would you like something to eat?”
“Is it breakfast?”
“No, I’m just having a snack.”
“A snack,” she echoes. “I’m not hungry.” She stares at me. “You didn’t come to my room. You didn’t want to dance with me, and then tonight you didn’t come to my room.”
There’s nothing I can say.
“You didn’t come to my room.”
“I know. I mustn’t come to your room anymore.”
Her eyes widen. “Why?”
“Because I shouldn’t. It’s a bad secret. I don’t want you to have to keep that se
cret anymore.”
She puts a forefinger to her lips. “It’s a secret.”
“You don’t have to keep the secret anymore. But I mustn’t come to your room.”
“You think Lily is stupid, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t think you’re stupid at all.”
“I think you do.”
“No, I don’t. I’ll tell you why I can’t come to your room anymore. Because it’s not fair to you, and it’s not fair to Margaret.”
“You think I’m stupid.”
“No, I don’t, Lily. Come on.”
I close the refrigerator door. I take her up to her room, then return to mine, shut the door behind me, and turn the key in the lock.
I’m exhausted after this day and evening, but I also have a bad case of nerves. I have three shots of Scotch and go to bed.
Jack remembers watching Sophie asleep next to him in what used to be their bed, when Leonard Cohen’s line, “Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm,” ran through his mind. But Sophie’s hair is not golden, it’s a dark chestnut brown—almost black.
I dream of Sophie this night. She’s at her sexiest. And that is sexy.
To my padded-cell mind, it’s very strange timing for this dream.
And again it seems … too real …
Oh, Jesus!
I sit bolt upright in bed.
The door to my room is open.
Horrified, sweating, spent, I stare at the clock. It’s 5:15.
With all the strength of will I have, I force my mind back to the scene I’m going to be doing today. After a while, I shower and shave.
18
Downstairs, I make a pot of coffee and drink two cups. I don’t feel like eating.
At 6:30, I put my script back in my work case and let myself out the back door.
As I’m unlocking the Oldsmobile, Margaret whispers harshly at me from her window on the second floor, “Richard, when will you be back?”
“Not till this evening.”
“We need to talk.”
“We should have talked last night.”
“I tried to say something to you last night, but you had to work.”
“But why didn’t you … Never mind. We’ll talk tonight.”
I get into the car and drive off.
I feel good—safe, a moving target. I’m not so easy to kill. I’ve learned a few things. I’m flying through spring like a hawk, lifting from the earth. As I travel to Twentieth Century Fox Studios, countless mica chips in the surface of the Los Angeles streets glitter like diamonds in the morning sunlight.
We’re on stage seven. The gate guard directs me to it.
When I walk into “Grace’s Diner,” the crew is already busy at work, preparing the set where Cheri and Lawrence will play their scene.
Logan takes Marilyn’s stand-in and me through it a couple of times for the cinematographer, the camera operator, and the lighting and sound guys, then I go out to my trailer to wait for the call to go to work. It’s eight o’clock.
Just short of 8:30, the second assistant director knocks on my door. “We’re ready, Mr. Blake.”
Marilyn is only twenty-five minutes late.
By 4:30 in the afternoon, we’ve gotten the scene. Logan tells us it’s perfect.
Marilyn is wrapped for the day. She gives Logan a kiss and goes to her trailer. I thank him profusely for the job and go to mine.
There’s a knock at the door. It’s Marilyn.
“Hi.” I’m pleased but not completely surprised. Some oddity of my brain briefly causes me—as I look at this young woman—to picture her as Sophie out there, waiting at my dressing room door. They don’t look anything alike. Well, maybe a little—something behind the eyes.
“May I come in?”
“Of course.”
She’s in jeans and a loose white shirt again. She sits down on my couch and looks around at my cracker box of a dressing room. “It’s not much, is it?”
“I don’t mind,” I say.
She continues gazing around the small space, at the shabbiness, remembering. “I never did either. Now I’m not satisfied with a palace. Did you know I might have been Princess Marilyn of Monaco?”
“No, I didn’t,” I lie.
“Prince Rainier made inquiries about me. But I think they decided I was too crazy. They were right. But I could have left this whole thing, especially now that I’ve gotten to such a”—she struggles for the right word—“a crossroads, I guess.”
I sit down in the chair that, because of the tiny quarters, is right next to her.
She looks at me unsteadily. “I’m not on the call sheet for tomorrow.” She looks off with her faraway smile. “I’ve got an early day on Monday.” She takes a deep breath. “But if you’d like to, we could be together until then.”
I hold her hands.
“What do you want to do?” she says.
“I want to go to Arizona. Let’s go to Arizona.”
The phone rings eight times before Margaret picks it up. I can tell by the careful way she pronounces each word that she’s drinking gin.
“I have to go on a field trip,” I tell her.
“Where?”
“Arizona. I’m going to Kingman, Arizona. I’ll be back Sunday night.”
“Aren’t you coming home first?”
“It wouldn’t make sense to drive all the way out to the Valley just to turn around and have to come back south on my way to Kingman.”
She doesn’t say anything.
“Margaret?”
“Yes.”
“Can you hear me?”
“Yes, Richard, I hear you. Do you know what I wish?”
“No.” I don’t want to hear it. “What do you wish?”
“I wish I was dead.”
“Don’t do that to me.”
“I’m not doing it to you. You’re doing it to me.”
It comes out gutturally, as if from deep in a cave, “This is not me, Margaret.”
“Drive carefully.” She hangs up.
It takes us a little over five and a half hours of hard driving to get to Kingman. It crosses my mind to tell Marilyn the whole story from the beginning because she, more than anyone I can imagine, might listen, and maybe even believe me, but our time together is short, and I have no idea how to begin.
We roll through the nighttime flatlands of inland Southern California along Route 66 into Arizona and then up to Kingman. Sometimes we talk, other times she leans her head on my shoulder as the vast desert terrain slides by us, ghostly silent.
East of the Mojave Desert and Needles, after we’ve crossed into Arizona, I look out at the bulk of a huge saguaro cactus, then beyond it to an endless desert wilderness dotted with moon-frosted creosote bushes, prickly pear cactus, Joshua trees, and patches of night-blooming cereus. A mountain range rises darkly from the desert floor in the distance like an immense notched roller coaster, and part of me remembers being here before. I hear my young mother’s voice as we drive in the opposite direction I’m traveling now. She’s telling me that everything will be okay, that everybody has to die someday, and that it was my father’s “time.”
From the city limits of Kingman, it’s only five minutes to Saint Mary’s Hospital.
It’s still Thursday the twelfth.
11:15 p.m.
I think about finding out what motel my father is staying in but then decide that he will undoubtedly be at the hospital in the morning and I’ll see him then. I have to get to the hospital now.
Marilyn hasn’t even asked me why I want to stop at the hospital. I say, “Aren’t you curious?” She smiles and shrugs very slightly. I tell myself I’ll come up with some kind of explanation later.
The moment for that never happens.
Not this time.
She stays in the downstairs waiting room. She has no makeup on. She wears jeans, an oversized sweater, and dark glasses. It’s her usual camouflage, the one she wears to walk around New York City. No one gives her
a second glance, even though she is now at the peak of her career. She has a practiced way of withdrawing into herself to reduce the frequency of those awkward moments when she doesn’t want them. Susan Strasberg called her “a consummate disguise artist.”
Marilyn holds her head down and might be a patient’s anxious wife or sister or daughter.
I go to the elevators, push the button, and am surprised, when the doors open, to see an elevator operator, a short sixtyish man with steel-gray slicked-back hair. He looks ninety percent asleep.
“Obstetrics ward, please.”
He doesn’t look at me, just closes the doors with a sudden and surprisingly muscular motion and sets the elevator creaking and whirring up to the third floor.
There is a painstakingly hand-painted sign over the controls that reads: The way up and the way down are the same.—Heraclitus. Elevator humor.
On the third floor, the doors chunk closed behind me. I find a sign that says OB and follow the arrow down a corridor with green-and-white-speckled wallpaper and an old, cracking, but highly polished linoleum tile floor. There is a pair of green double doors at the end. I push through them and walk into the obstetrics waiting room.
There are seven babies in the nursery. I stare dumbly for a while, trying to comprehend that one of the infants I’m staring at is me.
After a minute or so, a nurse who has completely white hair but can’t be over forty-five appears on the babies’ side of the window. Approaching me, she says, “Is there some way I can help you?”
“I wondered if I could see the Cade baby. Jack … John Cade? I’m his uncle. I know it’s way past visiting hours, but I’ve come a long way.”
“All right.” She starts toward the babies then turns back. “John who?”
“Cade. C-A-D-E.”
She looks puzzled. “We have a four-day-old named John Harrington … I’m sorry, we don’t …” Her face darkens. “I’ll have to ask you to leave, sir. There is no baby here named Cade.”