Around him and spreading over the waters, many trees and their shadows were reflected. Down below, and as far as he could see, wavery depths, and at the bottom, plants. He’d laughed to himself, for he felt like diving in. Instead, he allowed the rowboat to drift. He leaned back on the bow, musing that in two days he would have to go back and play Lance Stewart, private detective. And for a few brief moments he thought of himself floating across the lake on the kind of fairy-tale vessel that he had once seen in a storybook, a boat shaped like a swan and piloted by a goddess. Pure comfort awaited him on the shore and he felt that the sunlight beating down on his eyes was human, female. The warmth of the water, and the pull of the current on his hand, which he was dangling over the side, possessed a kind of female nature. He fell asleep. The rowboat drifted out toward the edge of the lake, and when he woke up, a wind had started to rock the water. He looked around, trying to discern his future, and could not, for the life of him, determine where he should go.
— His First Marriage —
He would marry twice. His first marriage came about because of a piece of fan mail that he received one day in 1956, a letter from an eighteen-year-old girl who, gushing great love for the actor, had invited him to her forthcoming wedding in a small Montana town. (“…I’ve never written to a movie star before, but I couldn’t keep myself from writing to you. I’ve always loved every single one of your films, some of which I’ve seen three and four times. But the reason why I’m writing to you is that I am going to marry my old sweetheart, Jack, in September. My mother told me to invite anyone I care to, as long as that person is important to me, and because I’ve been one of your biggest fans I was wondering if you would be at all interested in attending my wedding. I know that you probably get asked this kind of thing all the time, but nothing would make me, or my family, happier than if you would consent to be a guest. We could put you up at the hotel if you like, or you can stay with my family, although I would understand if you wouldn’t want to… In any case, I’ve enclosed a formal invitation for September 12, 1956, and, as I’ve said, nothing would make me happier than if you could accept. It would be the thrill and honor of my life, and I just want to say that, even if you can’t, I will remain your most devoted fan. With sincerest regards, and high hopes, Sally Monroe”)
The letter had arrived in late July, on a day when Emilio was feeling restless. Now and then he’d receive similar requests and ignore them, but fan adulation had of late been tapering off. From the twenty or so letters he received that week, he set that one aside. She had enclosed a high-school graduation photo of herself, from the previous year, and what he saw appealed to him: an innocent and pretty, freckle-faced blonde in blue gown and mortarboard, exuding the kind of small-town purity from which he was now separated. He was making a Tarzan picture at the time and carried that letter about with him for several weeks. Then, on a whim, as he sat around, bored between takes, playing cards with the grips, he decided to accept. Lounging about in his loincloth and his robe, and feeling that his greater acting aspirations were behind him, he’d written a brief note saying that he’d been moved by the invitation, that, though he did not usually do this kind of thing, he, being “touched by her sincerity,” would make an exception.
A few weeks later he drove to Sally Monroe’s town of Crystal Falls, Montana. He had not minded the long drive and had, in fact, enjoyed the break from his usual routine. Envisioning a grand reception for himself, he imagined all the townspeople lining the sidewalks waiting for him, for Miss Monroe knew that he would arrive sometime on the afternoon of the eleventh. Instead, he found a town so sleepy and deserted that a great gloom came over him, the kind of feeling that would settle on him when, on an impulse, he would succumb to the female influence and, for the hell of it, pick up a woman at a party, even if he did not particularly like her. His delicate and manly ego suffering its first defeat, it occurred to him that perhaps he had made a mistake. As he turned off the main road, looking for the street where Sally Monroe’s family lived, he realized that once again he had allowed himself to be taken in by his own desire.
Dressed in a tan suit and wearing a shirt with an open collar and an ascot, he arrived at the Monroe residence, a two-story white clapboard house. Tall, tanned, and radiant before their screen door, he heard much commotion from inside even as his footsteps sounded on the porch. Sally’s father opened the door, a pleasant man in his fifties, a lawyer, greeting Emilio, “Well, my goodness, Mr. O’Brien, please do come in.”
In the parlor, a radio was playing and a table was set with cold cuts and a bottle of champagne in a bucket, and an arrangement of flowers glowing under a lamp. In a corner, there was a framed photograph of a soldier—he would learn it was Sally’s oldest brother, killed in Korea—and a little cabinet with a few medals, a Purple Heart and a Silver Star, and a miniature American flag on a stand. Pictures, too, of more elderly relatives, in oval frames on the wall, the kind of house, he figured in those moments, of one of his typical fans—and it occurred to him that in part he had driven all that way to see how his “most ardent fan” lived.
Then he met Mrs. Monroe, a matronly woman with deep blue eyes—Irish, he imagined—who must have been quite pretty in her youth, and she said, “We’re all just so amazed that you would take time out to see us.”
Mrs. Monroe called up the stairs, “He’s here. Mr. O’Brien is here,” and all of a sudden Sally Monroe, beside herself with happiness, came down into the parlor, all dressed up, with earrings and makeup, her blond hair in a coif. She gave Emilio Montez O’Brien a peck on his right cheek and, blushing, said, “I can’t believe you’re really here. Oh, thank you, thank you for coming.”
And because she did not know what to do, he took her hand, saying, “It’s my pleasure,” and kissed her forehead in greeting.
At dinner, in a place called the Mountainside Inn, Emilio passed the evening answering questions about Hollywood stars for Sally’s Aunt Ethel and her husband, Herbert, and for her quivering teenage friends. He went through stories about his friendships, which movie stars were nice and who was snooty, rarely speaking about himself. He got through the evening—Sally sitting beside him, and her father across the table—by drinking. Back at the house, they’d opened their bottle of champagne. Everyone else seemed thrilled with one glass, but he drank three, and when that was gone, he went out to his automobile to retrieve a bottle of good, high-priced French brandy for them—or him—to drink. At the restaurant earlier, he’d also consumed a heavy sweet wine that was nearly undrinkable, and by the evening’s end he was a little drunk. (He’d remember that the groom-to-be, Jack, had shown up with some of his friends to say hello and that he had stood up at the table, ever handsome and earnest, to shake the fellow’s hand, saying, “Well, you’re very lucky, my friend.”)
In the waning hours of the evening, Emilio became quite silent—he did not want to say anything because he was afraid he would betray his condition by slurring his words—entertaining many inward thoughts: the house in Cobbleton and the sensation of walking into the security of the parlor when all his sisters were there, with their feminine, nurturing presence; or driving up the rocky dirt road to Monte Cassino with Major Strong, and looking out into the distances of Italy, where, with the buzz of cicadas in his head, everything seemed possible; and those days when he had fallen in love with Antonella and his heart beat so rapidly when he passed her house; or cutting back to some party on Barrow Street in New York with actor friends, circa 1947, and remembering that first moment when on a certain night he had met, by the punch bowl, a pretty actress who was having her troubles, and that they would sit on the couch talking quietly about their desire for a life in the theater and in film, and that later he would blink and find himself suckling her tart red nipple; or thinking in an instant what his mother, Mariela Montez, and his father, Nelson O’Brien, were doing while he sipped at his wine, the two very old now and perhaps at the end of their days, feeling that he should have been a better son—why had he g
one to Crystal Falls and not just flown to Cobbleton?—or thinking about his sisters and wishing each well and in an instant reviewing their lives in his mind, all the while looking around the table, his eyes met with endless smiles.
Mr. Monroe suggested that they put the actor up in the hotel, but Mrs. Monroe, friendly and motherly, asked that he spend the night with them. Sally, eyes wide and happy, concurred. “Yes, stay with us!”
It would be easier, for his automobile with his luggage was still sitting in front of their porch, and in any case Mr. O’Brien was tired and would probably dislike the inconvenience of checking into the hotel. And so it was agreed that he should stay with the family, that night before Sally’s wedding. Later they led him to his room—kept intact from the days when Sally’s older brother, Robert, was alive, with model airplanes hanging from the ceiling and collections of baseball cards and technical manuals, all still on the shelves, a narrow, claustrophobic room on whose bed Emilio Montez O’Brien could finally lay down his tired body. Mrs. Monroe showed him in and he undressed, looking out through the window at the darkness of the night in that middle-of-nowhere Montana town. He was dozing off when, about three in the morning, there came a rapping at the door.
And there she was, on the eve of her marriage, Miss Sally Monroe in a nightgown.
“I didn’t want to bother you, but I couldn’t sleep, thinking how nice you were to come all the way here from Hollywood for my wedding. I just wanted to let you know that it means a lot to me, and if you’ll allow me, I just want to give you a thank-you kiss.”
“You shouldn’t do that, honey,” Emilio found himself saying, but she knelt before his bed, moving her fingers through his wavy hair. “I’ve dreamed of doing this for a long time,” she said and gave him a long tongue-kiss, and he started to caress her breasts through her gown and, loving it, she whispered, “I cannot believe this is happening, with you.” They kissed again and Emilio reached around, his hand slipping under her gown and into the terrific heat lingering there beneath lamb-soft small-town girl panties. But she said, “For the life of me, I can’t. It feels so good, but I can’t.” And she went on like that until he grew bored and, aware of the strangeness of the situation, allowed his head to fall back on the pillow, and he said, “Maybe it would be better if you went to sleep.”
Then, blushing and ashamed, she left the room.
***
By morning—her father awakening him at the door—Emilio regretted that he had come to this wedding. But he was a gentleman. Forgoing breakfast, he remained in Robert’s room, biding his time, and at eleven, as the family prepared to head for the church, he appeared, resplendent in a white silk suit. When he entered the church, his presence in town was widely known, and people whispered and murmured and went over to him to say hello—he, ever cordial, shaking their hands. After the ceremony, they all retired to the reception hall, and that’s where Emilio Montez O’Brien got himself into trouble.
Sally Monroe’s father made a speech, thanking his guests for coming, and at the end he mentioned the presence of “a certain actor, whom we all know and love… an actor whose films have moved us all, Montgomery O’Brien.” As the celebrants applauded, Emilio noticed the longing expression of the bride, who would beam at him from time to time—awakening the memory of their brief moment of near-intimacy on her dead brother’s bed. He had also become aware of the attentive gaze of one of Sally’s friends, a tall and buxom brunette who had been trying to make eye contact with him for much of the afternoon. She was wearing a tight sequinned dress and spent much of the reception with her family and friends at a nearby table, sipping cocktails through a straw, her escort beside her looking a little bored (they were on the verge of breaking up). As the afternoon wore on, and her escort went off to the men’s room, she had walked over to Emilio and said, “You are the most gorgeous man I have ever seen in my life and I would do anything to get to know you.”
“Really?”
Later, she and her escort argued and the poor fellow left the reception, and as the Crystal Falls Hot Cats began to play a Tommy Dorsey number, she went over to Emilio and asked him to dance. He should have known better, but entertaining the fire chief and his wife with yet another story about Hollywood did not interest him, and so he made use of the opportunity to escape. Still, there was a bluntness about this woman that shocked him. Shortly after he’d learned that her name was Betsy MacFarland, she joined him at his table, saying, “It was my idea that Sally invite you here, and when she told me you would be coming, I nearly died. When you went out to dinner last night, I was supposed to come, but my boyfriend likes to keep me on a leash and wouldn’t let me go, and we had such a fight about it that it left me in tears. He wants to get married, and though he’s a nice guy, like so many of the men in Crystal Falls he’s a bore, and I just know what my life would be like with him. If you want to know the truth, I would brush off a hundred guys like him just to have a moment with someone like you. I’ve been in love with you ever since I saw you playing that priest, Father Byrne. I sleep with your picture under my pillow and I have collected every single itsy piece about you from the movie magazines and I feel so in love with you that I would do anything for you, do you understand, anything, and even though I know you’re beyond me, your life is so impressive I want to be with you, if only for a night.”
“Are you propositioning me?”
“I most certainly am.”
The revelation that she had been behind the wedding invitation, that Sally Monroe was doing her friend a favor, slightly disheartened him, for he felt touched by Sally’s essential purity, even if she had come into the bedroom to kiss him good night. (He supposed that she couldn’t resist the idea of having a little treasured memory for her future.) He was used to the ambitions of young actresses, who would attach themselves to him, but (thinking of womanly strength) he had been impressed by Betsy MacFarland’s straightforwardness and said, with a slight weariness in his voice, “What do you propose?”
She lifted a Hawaiian paper umbrella from her frothy drink and said, “My family’s got a little house about twenty miles from here, a real private place. Why don’t you come see me there tomorrow, say at eleven.” She told him how to get there and thereafter, so as not to appear conspicuous, left him and rejoined her friends.
Photographers snapped his picture sitting at the table, and he posed with the bride and groom and was interviewed by a reporter from the local newspaper. (“It’s not every day that the folks of Crystal Falls see a movie star like you. What brought you out here?”) Later, as the party wound down and the bride and groom went off in a ’56 Chevrolet with a “Just Married” sign hanging off the trunk, the actor left with his hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Monroe, who drove him back to their house. Sitting with Emilio out on the porch, Mr. Monroe told him: “The house is going to be pretty empty from now on. You know, Mr. O’Brien, we lost our boy, Robert, at Inchon, in Korea.” And he looked off into the distance, sadly. “But Sally, she found a good man in Jack—he works for a gasoline distribution company—and I suppose that soon they’ll be having kids and those kids will be coming over here on Sunday afternoons, running around the halls and raising hell. Which would be fine with me. Do you have any kids?”
“No, sir, I don’t.”
“Well, it’s a heck of a pain in the neck, I’ll tell you, but in the long run it’s worth it, bringing life into the world and all that. And it makes for pretty cheery Christmases, most of the time.”
“I know the feeling,” Emilio said. “I come from a big family. I was the youngest of fifteen children.”
“Fifteen?”
“And fourteen of them females.”
“Fourteen sisters?” That made Mr. Monroe guffaw. “My Lord, must have been all hell breakin’ loose all the time, in your house.”
“Yeah, I would say it was kind of pleasant and cheerful.”
And Emilio went on to describe how life was turning out for his family, with his sisters here and there, and his own feelings o
f separateness from the world making him unhappy.
“The crazy thing is that when you’re an actor, making pictures—Have you ever seen Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard?”
Mr. Monroe shook his head.
“A great movie—I’d give my eyeteeth to work with a director like Billy Wilder—you wake up feeling like yourself, whatever that might be, and then an hour later you’re becoming someone else. When your daughter invited me to her wedding—”
“It was wonderful that you could come.”
“—I was working on a Tarzan movie. You know what it’s like to wake up in the morning—I get up at five-thirty on days when I’m working—and come out of a dream that makes you think you’re a kid again and it’s 1932 and you’re moving through the rooms of your childhood and everything seems so real, your family sitting around in the living room, one of your sisters playing the piano, another reading a book, and in the dream you swear that now is back then, but you can’t tell if it’s a dream from childhood in which you’re imagining your future. Do you follow me?”
“Yes.”
“And something happens. I have this sister who’s a great cook, God bless her, Irene. And whenever berries came into season, Irene would go out into the field behind our house in Pennsylvania and poke around for blueberries and blackberries. She’d spend the afternoon collecting what she could find into a basket, and when she did not have enough, she’d go to the Farmers’ Market in town and buy some more, and the next thing you know, she would be in the kitchen baking pies or making jam. In any case, I remember a pot of these berries, which she’d cook up, and she’d call my sister Gloria or me or one of my other sisters over and she’d let us have the pot, and we’d eat up the filling. It was so good that I find myself, years later, tasting it still, the sensations so pure, and then the goddamned alarm goes off and an hour later I’m on a soundstage in a mock-up of African trees, and because it’s a low-budget picture, we have to do everything in fast takes. You can’t forget for a second that you’re not in Africa, and you feel a little stupid, because everything inside you is set aside. We had one scene where I’m playing Tarzan and I leap into a river, and what you see onscreen is Tarzan diving into the Congo, but all I’m really doing is jumping down into a safety net. I remember jumping and thinking about the taste of jam, and for one moment I had the sensation that at the end of this take I would open my eyes and find myself back in the house where I grew up, in 1932.”
The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien Page 36