“What came in the post, Maman? More business leiters?”
“Of course. It is always the business letters.” Mickey laughed.
“Open it and tell me about it,” Philippe said in the grown-up voice he affected when he wanted to sound serious.
“You remind me of a precocious squirrel, chéri,” Mickey said as she obediently opened the packet from America and quickly scanned the contents. “Now, what is it you wish to know?” she asked, smiling.
Philippe’s head went up as he stuffed his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. The little boy looked so much like Reuben with his mannerisms that Mickey’s heart fluttered. “Everything.”
“Very well.” Mickey made a pretense of reading the papers again. “This paper says your brother Simon’s grandfather is perturbed about…certain matters.”
“Why do you just call him Simon’s grandfather? If he is my brother’s grandfather, then he is mine, too. I should have a grandfather if Simon has one,” the boy grumbled.
Mickey’s voice grew stern. “We have gone over this several times, Philippe, and I have no wish to do it yet another time. It is unfortunate that you do not have a grandfather. There is nothing I can do about it.” She hated herself for the lie, but she had no other recourse. Perhaps at some point in the future she could tell him the truth. “It will do you no good to glare at me, Philippe. If you persist, I will not tell you what else is in these letters.”
The boy dropped to the grass and hugged his knees, the dogs and cat at his side. “I will listen…respectfully.” He smiled, and Mickey’s heart melted.
“Now, listen to me very carefully, chéri. This paper,” she said, holding up the stiff, folded document, “says you, Philippe Bouchet own…Are you ready to hear what you own?” Mickey teased.
“Yes, yes, yes…. What do I own, Maman?” the little boy squealed. Surely it was a pony cart or a sailboat—something grand, at least. His heart pounded in anticipation.
“You own 51 percent of Fairmont Studios in America. Isn’t that wonderful?”
Tears gathered in the little boy’s eyes. “But I cannot play with a studio, Maman.”
“Big boys do not cry when they are disappointed, chéri…. Now, do you wish me to continue?”
“Yes, Maman.”
“All right, now, listen to me. When you own 51 percent of something, that makes you the major stockholder. In other words, you are the boss. Your papa works at Fairmont Studios. He is a very important man. More important than Simon’s grandfather. Are you following me, Philippe?” The little boy nodded, his head buzzing with questions. “Someday, when you are old enough, you will go to America and take over your studio. You will be your papa’s boss.”
“How can that be, Maman? Papas are grown-up people. I am only six years old. That will not be for a very long time.” He sounded so dejected and forlorn. Mickey took him into her arms.
“Right now it seems like a very long time, but time moves very swiftly, sometimes too swiftly. You will be president and chairman of the board. It will be a tremendous responsibility, Philippe, and that is why you must study hard so you will be able to operate the studio.”
Philippe wiggled in Mickey’s arms. He was getting too big to sit on his mother’s lap, but he didn’t want to hurt her feelings by jumping off. “Will I share the studio with my papa and Simon?”
Mickey’s throat constricted. “Only if you wish to do so,” she said quietly.
“Yes, I will do that. I will share. Is my father ever going to come and see me? Will Simon ever come and see me?” the boy asked wistfully.
“No, Philippe. We’ve gone over this many times. When you are of age you will go to America. Now, shoo, into the house with you.” The little boy raced off, Jake three laps ahead of him, Dolly and Molly doing their best to keep up. Mickey knew where he was going, where she would find him when she entered the house.
“Now everyone has to be quiet while I look at my papa,” Philippe said, wagging his finger at the animals squatting by his heels. “Shhhhh.”
How he loved this picture of his papa and his uncle Daniel! They looked like the heroes in his picture books. Surely they did all kinds of wonderful things. “If you were here, you’d build me a tree house, wouldn’t you, Papa?” he asked sadly. “I wish you’d come just once. I would be good and you would like me. I would be a very good boy. Jake and Dolly will behave. Dolly is Jake’s…” He struggled for the proper word. “May be baby…a girl,” he said, laughing. “When I say my god-blesses at night, I do one for you and one for Uncle Daniel. Maman says that is right.” Tears began to trickle down his cheeks. Jake whined at his feet and Dolly tried to snag his socks with her puppy teeth. Philippe dropped down and cuddled the dogs to his chest. “If he liked me just a little bit, he’d come to see me. Just a little bit…”
Bebe Tarz woke one morning in the summer of 1929 with a fierce headache. She lay still, trying to remember what she’d done the previous evening to warrant such vicious throbbing. But the harder she struggled to remember, the worse her head pounded. It frightened her, this inability to remember details that were only hours old. Then her fear turned to panic when she thought she might be losing her mind. Alcohol and drugs ate at your brain, Reuben had told her once.
The timid knock on her door sounded like a thunderclap to her ears. The maid entered with a silver tray containing her coffee and the morning paper. Thank God, maybe the coffee would help her headache. Impatiently she waved the maid away when she started to open the curtains. What she really needed was a drink. Maybe if she could get through the morning without tapping a bottle, she could think a little better. With an ease born of practice, she tumbled eight aspirin into her hand and swallowed them down with a deep gulp of coffee. But this time her tried-and-true home remedy failed; five minutes later she was in the bathroom throwing up, and when she returned to her bed it was all she could do to climb in. If Reuben could see her now, he’d be nasty and contemptuous toward her, and she wouldn’t blame him.
My God, why couldn’t she remember where she’d been and what she’d done last evening? Again, she tried to think. Yes, she recalled dressing to meet Adam James, Fox’s answer to Miguel Paola, the Latin lover. Adam was a wonderful lover, always telling her how beautiful she was, how glamourous she looked, and how thrilled he was that she wanted him, not her handsome husband, the head of Fairmont Studios.
Bebe massaged her throbbing temples. They’d driven up the coast highway and had dinner, after which they’d gone to a hotel and made love. Then they’d smoked a reefer each, snorted a line of cocaine, and had a few drinks from Adam’s flask. It was around midnight when they’d left…. Adam had dropped her off where she’d left her car. And that was it, all she could remember. How and when had she gotten home? God, why couldn’t she remember? Maybe if she put it out of her mind for a little while and read the paper, the evening’s events would come back to her.
The coffee cup slid unnoticed from her hand when she opened the newspaper to the front page. The headline glared at her: STAR’S WIFE COMMITS SUICIDE OVER OTHER WOMAN. Bebe ran for the bathroom a second time as the finale to her evening surfaced at last. The wrath of God was going to come tumbling down on her head now.
It was all rushing back so fast, her head was spinning. Adam had brought his car to a stop beside hers. They’d both gotten out of his car, and he’d kissed her, a long, lingering kiss. Stupidly she’d professed her love for him in a clear voice, a voice that had carried to the figure crouching alongside her car. Adam had said something equally stupid about loving her, about getting a divorce and marrying her, but she’d been too drunk to do more than laugh at his words.
Suddenly he’d shouted, “Melissa! My God, what are you doing hiding in the bushes? Spying!”
Melissa was a timid little soul, or so Adam had said previously, so timid she believed anything he said. But the Melissa she’d seen last night was anything but timid. She’d pulled a gun out of her pocket and aimed it first at Bebe and t
hen at Adam, calling them every name she could think of. Too shocked to do anything but stare at the gun, Bebe had listened to Melissa’s tearful tirade. Then, when she’d tired of her verbal attack on Adam, she’d switched her attention to Bebe, the gun wavering in her fist.
“Tramp! Slut! Home wrecker!”
“Please, Mrs. James, it isn’t what you think,” Bebe shouted, not knowing whether she was more afraid of the woman holding the gun or her father and Reuben.
“I’ll see both of you smeared all over the papers! Slut! We just had a new baby,” Melissa shrieked. “Did he tell you that? You don’t deserve to live, either of you!” Her voice was shaky, the hand holding the gun shakier.
“Please, I have a son,” Bebe pleaded, backing away. “Take your husband home and I swear I’ll never see him again. I swear it!”
The handsome actor advanced on his wife. He smiled, hoping she would calm down and give him the gun. Instead, she backed up, the gun still shaking in her hand.
“Do something, Adam, she’s crazed,” Bebe screamed. “We could die here!”
Adam lunged at his wife and they struggled. When the gun went off, Bebe buried her face in her hands.
“Please don’t kill me, please don’t,” she sobbed, too drunk and panicked to think clearly. “Please, please, please.”
“Shut up, Bebe!” Adam barked. “Melissa is dead; the gun went off when we were struggling. We have to get out of here. Oh, God, I don’t even know how she got here. Listen, you and I didn’t see each other tonight. No—wait a minute—the restaurant where we had dinner, someone will remember. Maybe we should say we met accidentally and had dinner. That won’t prove Melissa knew or didn’t know. Look, go home. I’ll go home, too, and tomorrow I’ll call the police and say she didn’t come home this evening…. God, where in the hell did she get the gun?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” Bebe cried. “She was deranged and could have killed me. You’re no hero, Adam, and I don’t know what I ever saw in you. You killed your own wife!” She marched around to the driver’s side of her car and got in. “Don’t bring me into this. She’s your wife! Well, she was your wife.” With that she drove off in a cloud of dust, leaving Adam and his dead wife in the bushes at the side of the road. Another performance worthy of Clovis Ames.
“Oh, God, oh, God,” Bebe bleated now as she hopped out of bed. Wild with fear, she started throwing clothes into suitcases. Where would she go, what would she do? Adam would incriminate her. If the situation were reversed, she’d sing so loud they’d hear her in Canada.
Reuben. She had to tell Reuben. He would know what to do. If this scandal were to explode in his face, he’d hate her. But anything was better than going to prison, she thought wildly…wasn’t it?
She dressed as quickly as she could, throwing on pieces of clothing in a careless frenzy that left her looking no better than she had when Reuben had carted her off to Palm Springs. Oh, God, she’d been safe there, protected. Yes, Reuben could take her back to Palm Springs. Things could be all right again. Christ, right now she’d kill for a drink! “I didn’t mean that,” she cried. “I’d never kill anyone.”
Barefoot, Bebe tottered into the dressing room, picked up the phone, and dialed Reuben’s office number. “I want to speak to my husband, Margaret, right now. Right this minute. I don’t care what he’s doing, get him on this phone!” she cried hysterically. The second she heard Reuben’s voice she relaxed. “You have to come home, Reuben! Now!”
“Did something happen to Simon?” he asked anxiously.
“Simon? No, of course not. Why would something happen to Simon? I want you to come home, Reuben. Immediately!”
“I can’t leave right now. If Simon is all right, why should I come home?” His voice was so cold, Bebe started to tremble.
“If you don’t come right now, I’ll take Simon and leave this goddamn house. I mean it!” she shrilled. “I’ll give you thirty minutes and that’s it!” She slammed the phone down so hard, she winced at the noise.
The minute she heard the sound of squealing tires in the driveway, she ran down the steps. When Reuben rushed through the door, she burst into tears. Between blowing her nose, wringing her hands, and pacing up and down, she told her husband about her affair with Adam James. “It’s your fault, Reuben! If you were a real husband to me, I wouldn’t have to go somewhere else to find what I need. You’re as much to blame as I am. Get me out of here and keep my name out of the papers. Take me back to Palm Springs and stay with me. We were so happy there, remember? I won’t drink, I’ll give up the drugs. Make me well again, Reuben, please. You know I love only you. That…that woman…she was so crazy, she was going to kill me…she was going to kill me! Adam will tell, I know he will. Daddy will blame you. He’ll fire you. Our names will be all over the papers, and that hateful man—what’s his name?—will sling all kinds of dirt at us. And it’s all your fault! Damn you to hell!”
At that moment, Reuben realized how much he hated his wife. Even looking at her sickened him. For all her sobbing and carrying on, he noticed her eyes were dry—dry and calculating. When he had his emotions under control, he sat down on the step beside her.
“You have too much faith in my abilities, Bebe,” he said softly. “I will try to do something, but because I’m willing to try does not mean I can accomplish anything.”
“Maybe…maybe they didn’t find her yet. Adam was going to call the police this morning…and…and tell them she didn’t come home last night.”
“Was he worth all this?” Reuben asked coldly.
Bebe raised her head. “When you don’t have anything…yes, for the time, he was worth it.” Her dry eyes were defiant.
Three hours later Bebe was bound for Palm Springs with the same bodyguards she’d had on her last visit. Reuben sat in Simon’s room, staring at his son. “I don’t want to do what I’m about to do, son, but I don’t want you to have a mother in prison,” he whispered.
It was a full three months before Adam James was officially arrested for the murder of his wife. During that time there was no mention of Bebe Tarz, just speculation about numerous women involved with the handsome actor.
Bebe was on the mend, suffering only occasional bouts of withdrawal, but living through it. Her memory lapses weren’t frequent. She was beginning to feel more like herself with each passing day. Each morning she read the papers, searching for some word, some phrase that would incriminate her. Eventually she began to feel safe—until the morning she read that Adam had been arrested. Reuben would take care of things, she told herself, but she wasn’t certain. There’d been no word from him since her arrival in Palm Springs, not even news of Simon. Her father hadn’t called, and neither had Eli. She was a pariah now.
Adam James never made it to court. The county prosecutor had no choice but to let him go. “Without a murder weapon and witnesses, I can’t put the taxpayers to the expense of a faulty trial. The industry Adam James works for will mete out whatever justice they think he deserves.”
Will Hays, paragon of virtue, snuffed out James’s career with one breath. Months later he took pleasure in announcing that the actor was working in a filling station and living in a trailer.
Bebe Rosen returned to Los Angeles a changed person. She was tanned and fit, with only faint lines around her eyes to indicate she was anything but a respectable matron married to a studio executive. With genuine enthusiasm she plunged into her new life by redecorating the house in Laurel Canyon. Like a dutiful wife she moved back into the master bedroom, and only she and Reuben knew that she slept on one side of the bed and he on the other. As part of the game she ordered fashionable clothes and gave small intimate dinners that Reuben attended; she played with her son and joined every civic group Los Angeles had to offer. She was a model of decorum.
The hatred Reuben felt for his wife dwindled, replaced with pity. During the long dark nights he hungered for what he couldn’t have, his only sin that of omission. He knew he could never love his wife. Once h
e’d made the declaration to himself, he eased into a new mode of living. Friends now, he and Bebe were able to chat amiably together about business, the other studios, and her civic work. He made a point of calling home at least once a day to check on both his wife and Simon.
Life wasn’t blissful, but it was tolerable. Reuben had his work, his friends, and his son.
In early January a cold spell rocketed through California, causing crop damage and leaving frost on the ground for over a week. Bebe and Reuben reveled in the crisp cold air. At night they lighted the fireplace and made popcorn for Simon. They were speaking civilly to each other, often laughing and making jokes. By the middle of the week Bebe had the sniffles. Reuben ordered her to bed, fearful that the frail Simon would come down with her cold.
“How do you feel, Bebe? Can I get you anything before I turn off the light?” he asked, concerned.
“Do you have a way to keep me warm?” Bebe asked, her teeth chattering. “I already have three blankets on my side of the bed.”
Reuben slid under the covers and turned out the light, aware of the distance between them. He lay quietly, trying to pretend he couldn’t feel Bebe’s shivering. At last he inched over until he was next to his wife, then drew her close, hoping his own body would warm her. “Don’t you have anything but this silky thing to keep you warm?” he asked gruffly.
Startled by his actions, Bebe could only shake her head. “You’re so toasty,” she sighed as she cuddled closer to her husband.
Reuben shifted a little so she would be more comfortable. Even though she was shivering, her body felt incredibly warm. “I think you have a fever, Bebe, possibly a high one,” he said in a strangled voice.
“No, I don’t. I took my temperature a little while ago. If I feel warm, it’s because I’m here with you like this. Reuben, I’d like it if you’d make love to me. I can feel you. It…it doesn’t have to mean anything if you don’t want it to,” she said shyly. “The other two…what I mean is we never…This would be nice, the circumstances are right, if you know what I mean. Neither one of us is angry with the other.” Bebe held her breath as she waited for Reuben’s reply. It was so long in coming, she thought she would burst.
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