by Rona Jaffe
On Valentine’s Day he bought her the Elsa Peretti gold heart on its threadlike chain. Passing the television set she saw on top of it a discarded bill, the faint writing from the carbon paper: Two Peretti hearts.
Two? A mistake? But then Susan realized he had also bought one for Laura. This time there was just a pang of jealousy. But then she thought how unimaginative he was about jewelry, and how she had been the one who liked Peretti in the first place. She never said a word to Clay about finding the bill, and of course he never mentioned it. On the one hand she wanted to get rid of Laura, to prove to him how easy she, Susan, was to live with, how different their union could be. And on the other hand, she knew that Laura’s existence made their “marriage” possible. She didn’t know quite why—it was simply something she understood.
On television that year people were watching and laughing at Archie Bunker, the outrageous loudmouthed bigot; their hearts were warmed by the Waltons with their old-fashioned family values struggling through the Depression in the rural South; and there was a plethora of one-hour detective shows. Columbo in his sloppy raincoat acting dumb but actually very smart, cowboy detective McCloud, sophisticated McMillan and his cute wife who kept getting involved in solving murder cases, were just a few. Clay was developing a new pet project for RBS that would include aspects of all the more popular shows (except for All in the Family, a show he never really understood).
He had seventy-five projects in the works from ideas to full fledged scripts, of which very few would actually make it to the home screen, but his true spirit was with his own creation: “The Stevenson Family Detective Hour.” In this projected one-hour show a large close-knit Middle American family of various ages and personalities was always getting involved in solving crimes. There was dashing bachelor Uncle Luke for sex appeal, tough physical oldest brother Dean for violence, the precocious young siblings Crissie and Peter for the younger viewers, Mom for moral support and an occasional murder solving of her own to please the female viewers, and Dad to make a speech at the end.
There would be glorious production values, magnificent scenery, big guest stars, music and occasional singing, blood and gore, intrigue, and homilies. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue; Clay was thrilled.
He had a love/hate relationship with television and the people who watched it. “Everything’s been done,” he told Susan. “You just rework it. There isn’t a show on television today that wasn’t once something else—another show, or radio, or a movie, or a classic novel brought into the present. There are only seven basic plots in the world, and they’re all stolen.” He laughed.
One day Clay left a script of “The Stevenson Family Detective Hour” lying in the bungalow, and Susan read it. To her dismay she thought it was terrible. She remembered the series she had created for him when they first met, the one he had said was too good to put on. Now she understood. Clay was The Great God of Programming and she was still an idealistic amateur. But still … No, she wanted to be positive and encouraging, and there were shows on TV that had been as bad as this; who was to know what would click and what would not? She thought it was best not to mention it at all.
He worked very long hours, and she was sure that a woman who didn’t have work and a life of her own could never be happy with him. She felt lucky to have found such a perfect fit, and wondered how Laura could put up with her charade of a marriage. Apparently many women did; the revenge shoppers she saw along Rodeo Drive, buying too expensive clothes they might wear only once, and charging them to their inattentive or absent or cheating husbands. Clay had contempt for those wives and called them “hookers.” He said they had married those men for their money and had gotten what they deserved. Susan’s answer to this, while he was creating the fall schedule, was to interview several of those frustrated women and sell an article about them. She called it “The Orchid Growers.”
The Stevenson Family Detective Hour was getting a tremendous amount of publicity. While Clay wanted it to be the same as what people were already watching, he also wanted it to be different, seem newer and better. To this end he spent an enormous amount of money, and unabashedly went over budget. A week before it aired he had a lavish press party. He was excited and happy, moving around the room to talk to everyone, charming and charismatic, winking at Susan the way he had at the press party the night they first met; but this time she would go home with him. “How’s the monkey?” he murmured as he passed her, and she glowed with joy.
But she was not with him when the reviews came in because he was already at the office. MISHMOSH FAILS, Variety headlined. The Hollywood Reporter and the newspapers were as brutal. “The only thing The Stevenson Family Detective Hour lacks is jokes,” one reviewer wrote, “which perhaps is a mistake since the whole mess teeters on the edge of satire.”
“Never mind,” Clay told her. “There have been hits that were massacred by the press and shows that got rave reviews and died. People don’t care about reviews.” He took out more ads. Apparently, however, people didn’t care about ads either. The ratings were so low that the head of the network demanded Clay take the show off after only ten episodes. If he hadn’t been so emotionally involved Clay would have taken it off himself.
RBS was losing advertisers. The old shows were weakening from age and Clay had to perform a mercy killing on two more of his new shows that had started the fall season. He knew that he had to find or create a new series that would make up for some of these lost ratings. Then a pair of young writers came in with a script for a half-hour comedy show called “Nail Soup.”
Every episode would start with the hero facing the audience and telling them about his grandfather back in the old country who was a peddler traveling around the farms selling a “magic” nail. “All you have to do is put this nail in a pot of boiling water with a little salt and pepper, my grandfather would say to the lady of the house, and you will have the most delicious soup. Cheap too! Only one ruble. So she’d buy the nail. Oh, my grandfather would say, I notice you have some old potatoes lying around you weren’t going to use anyway. You should put them in the soup they shouldn’t go to waste. So okay. And maybe you have an onion, or a piece cabbage? Yes? Good. It wouldn’t hurt to throw them in as long as they’re here. This is a magic nail, you don’t need anything else, but I wonder if you have around a chicken that died already … So she puts in a chicken. And an hour later the soup is ready and she tastes it and it’s wonderful. My grandfather reaches in and pulls out the nail and holds it up triumphantly and says: See, nail soup!”
The hero would go on to say that he had inherited his late grandfather’s talent, and then his adventures would begin. Everyone at the network thought it was a delightful idea with a great deal of promise, and a search began for the proper actor to play the part of the modern con man. The authors wanted a comedian; someone young, new, slapstick and off the wall. Clay wanted a name actor, someone more sleek and sophisticated, a Cary Grant.
There was hardly a battle. Clay was in charge and he won. He hired Gregory Serdry; continental, handsome, suave, middle-aged. The show went on as a midseason replacement.
Gregory Serdry’s persona skewed the premise—Nail Soup wasn’t wacky and it didn’t work. Variety attacked again with RUSTY NAIL, and The Reporter called it “Stale Soup.” People didn’t watch.
But Clay had no intention of giving up, and when the show came on again the following fall the grandfather had been replaced by a great-grandfather, and Gregory Serdry had been replaced by twenty-two-year-old, round-faced Mike Seeg, who looked completely lost whether he was acting lost or not. He wasn’t either pretty enough or sexy enough to attract a teenage following, and adults were not interested. It was simply another example of the wrong chemistry, a mistake anyone could have made, but not twice with the same show. Nail Soup went off the air.
Susan was surprised at how calm Clay seemed. He was a bit angry at the network but took it as a learning experience. “I’m never going to be forced a
gain into using people my instinct told me were wrong, just because we were in a hurry,” he said. He never referred to Mike Seeg by name, pretending he had forgotten it, and referred to him as “that little fat kid,” even though he wasn’t fat. He didn’t mention Gregory Serdry.
“Let’s get an apartment,” Clay said. “I’m an adult; I shouldn’t live in a hotel like a gypsy all my life. This bungalow is too cramped for the two of us.” He no longer went through the pretense of renting the additional room for Susan—they had been together four years, after all—and no matter how hard she tried to straighten things up she had begun to feel she was a visitor in a filing cabinet.
“An apartment!”
“Would the monkey like that?”
Their California apartment … It was not just the additional space and welcome privacy, it was stability; but most of all it was romantic. “Oh yes!”
He gave her a map of Beverly Hills with the acceptable area marked. It had to be Beverly Hills because that was prestige, but he didn’t want to spend too much money, so he had also marked certain streets. He told her to start looking while he made a fast trip to New York to meet with the head of the network.
When Clay came back three days later Susan had already compiled a list of places she wanted him to see. His choice was immediate. It was a very nice two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment with a small terrace, on North Oakhurst. She was proud of herself because it cost even less than the limit he had given her.
He took her to dinner at a quiet little restaurant at the beach. “We’re going to start a new life,” he said. He looked very pleased. “I’ve quit programming for RBS and I’m going to be an independent producer. I have a contract with them for a two-pilot deal, to start; with offices, salary, all my overhead, expenses; now I can spend my time being creative and stop worrying about satisfying idiots. I’m going to do great things. I’m excited about this.”
So that had been the meeting in New York. She looked at his glowing face and was filled with love for him. He would always be young and adventurous. “It will be wonderful,” she said.
“And,” he added happily, “if any of my shows becomes a big hit I’ll be very rich.”
The two of them furnished his new apartment in three days. Clay dragged her everywhere until she was exhausted: he needed everything from a bed and linens to plates and towels. They ordered furniture, and a carpenter was hired to build bookcases. Clay wanted the decor to be spare and modern, very different from his apartment in New York. The second bedroom was to be an office for Susan’s work. He had two phones put in with two different numbers, one of which would be hers, and both of them had answering services. Of course this also insured that no one who was not supposed to would know she was living with him.
There was a garage for his beloved vintage Thunderbird and her rental car. The name outside the front door of the apartment was, naturally, only his. But from the moment they moved in the people in the building assumed they were a married couple. And somehow they were.
She couldn’t believe how far they had come. She felt as if she were floating along on the crest of a river—exciting, peaceful and good—not knowing where it would lead but letting it take her, secure in his strength and love.
13
1974—BEVERLY HILLS
He was still Clay Bowen. Nothing could change that. He was the cat who landed on its feet. His new offices were impressive, all his business expenses were taken care of, and there were fresh flowers twice a week.
He had contacts; people knew him, they owed him, they liked him. He knew more about the business than almost anyone.
None of that mattered. He was a seller again, not a buyer. The cat had been declawed and defanged. That bastard upstairs had given him a “saving face” contract because RBS didn’t like to fire people directly; it looked as if they had made a big mistake. In this business you were only as good as your last success or failure. The competition was too rough, the stakes too high. Of course Susan had believed him when he told her this was to be a creative move for him, exciting and good. What else would she think? People always believed Clay Bowen.
No they didn’t. Not the professionals. They knew he had lost his job.
He still went to the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel for his drinks meetings, and even when he had no one to meet he would drop in to see who was there. It had been his club for many years. Contacts were more important than ever now. Sure, people sent him scripts—a man with a two-pilot deal had an in, had power—but now he had to go out and look for them too. So what? It was fun to discover new properties, to develop new ideas. RBS, financially, still treated him like one of their most prized men. He concentrated on the work at hand.
He was driving home to the new apartment from a meeting when the nausea hit him. Suddenly his heart began to pound with a ferocity that terrified him, and he was doused in cold sweat. Everything around him—the road, the sidewalk—was distorted, wavery, unreal. His hands were so numb he could hardly feel the wheel, and disoriented, breathless, he had to stop the car and pull over to what he could make out to be the curb.
He slumped there in his car, trying to wait out the attack without panicking further. It was the same as that episode so long ago at the Emmys, when he had been a young man just starting out. Now he was an older man starting out, beleaguered with this sickness. He had thought it was gone forever, but it was back. Oh God, this was all he needed!
Finally, after what seemed an eternity, the panic attack receded. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his face. Looking at himself in the rearview mirror he saw with relief that only his eyes looked different: they were almost glazed with fear. He waited until that, too, went away.
To explain his damp and disheveled appearance he told Susan the air-conditioning in the office had broken down during the afternoon. The next morning he went to the doctor and got another batch of tranquilizers. He had been lucky: what if it had happened on the freeway? This time Clay was careful to carry the medication with him.
He had found himself calling Laura more often lately, secretly, to tell her his troubles. “I had to give up the bungalow,” he told her. “I’ve rented a little place in Beverly Hills.” She wanted to fly out to help him furnish it. “Oh, no,” he said, attempting a chuckle. “It’s already furnished; it came that way. And it’s so small I can’t fit in another thing.” She expressed interest in seeing it and he told her she wouldn’t want to. He resented that she was spending money, and he made things sound worse than they were. Finally she dropped the subject. Concerned, she was more interested in his career and his future.
“Who knows?” he said. “But I think it’s time you fired Boo.”
“Oh, dear,” Laura said. She hated confrontations.
“Nina is almost fourteen and too old for a baby-sitter. I’ll fire her myself if you want me to.”
“I’ll do it.” So Mrs. Bewley left their lives.
Clay told Laura he hadn’t been feeling well. Of course she was worried and sympathetic. He didn’t know why he called her when most of the time she drove him crazy, but being able to tell someone about it, even if it was only her, was comforting.
“Did the doctor tell you you’ve been working too hard?” Laura asked.
“I always work too hard,” Clay said. “I wouldn’t know what else to do.”
“Smell the flowers,” Laura said. “Watch the sunsets.”
“You sound like your nutty friend Tanya.”
“Well, sometimes she’s right,” Laura said.
He wondered what she was on now. “I better get off the phone,” Clay said. “It costs too much money.”
He hung up in the middle of her sigh.
14
1974—NEW YORK
Laura had always been able to handle physical pain; she was used to it. She was a good, basic, athletic animal, instinctive, not intellectual, and it was emotional pain she was unable to bear. It dug too deeply and was too frightening. During all these years with Clay,
no matter what he did to confuse and grieve her, her instinctive response had been to inflict a substitute pain upon herself, something physical and familiar, to cover the emotional pain and shove it away. Starvation. Hours and hours of ballet practice. A hundred laps in an unheated pool.
But even that was not enough, and then the pills came to her rescue. She was still only in her early forties, and while the possibility that her drugs might some day destroy her hovered at the edge of her mind, for now she felt safe. Besides, what difference did it make if they killed her, when she could no longer live without them?
They made it possible for her to believe that the life she was leading was normal, the way it was supposed to be: She was the lonely wife of an ambitious man. She could have married someone else, but Clay was like the drugs, and no matter what he did to her she could not live without him either.
When she had been healthier Edward had asked her why she stayed with Clay. “I love him,” she had answered. “And he’s my husband.” She refused to discuss it further, and now no one bothered to ask.
She wondered if Clay ever felt loneliness, and somehow she doubted it. He never said that he missed her, but he phoned, and lately he had been confiding in her about his business worries. They had been married almost seventeen years. She had never heard any scandal concerning his private life while he was so far away, and judging from his behavior with her she had decided that his sexual desires were completely sublimated to his love of working.
Her own sexual desires had been dulled by her eroded self-esteem, her determined willpower, frantic activity, and the pills that sent her into a dreamless stupor every night the moment after her head touched the pillow, before her hand could investigate and awaken her need. She had been a sensual young woman once, but now she made little jokes about being unwanted, and would not dream of looking for a lover—afraid of not finding one, more afraid of finding one and losing that tenuous thread that bound her to her phantom marriage: her fidelity.