AT ONE DISTANT POINT IN HER LIFE, IT SEEMED AS IF A WHOLE TEAM OF ATTRACTIVE YOUNG JEWISH MEN WERE COURTING LILLIAN BARDEN. SHE NEVER TOLD HER MOTHER UNTIL IT BECAME TOO IMPORTANT NOT TO TELL HER MOTHER. AND THAT WAS THE END OF THEM, WHOEVER THE HELL THEY WERE. ONCE SHE TOLD HER MOTHER, THAT WAS THE END OF THE JEWISH BOYS.
Why was Lillian thinking about this on the drive to Newport Beach? Oh, she knew what it was. When they came over the top of Newport Boulevard and could see the ocean for the first time, it reminded her of the way Manhattan could sometimes surprise her when she returned to it from the Bronx. When she was a teenager, she would think, Oh my God, I’m really going back to New York City. Even though she was born there, she had grown up in the Bronx, and the fact of Manhattan could make her happy to her heart’s deep core. And now, with her husband Frank driving them toward the Pacific Ocean, toward Newport Beach beside the Pacific Ocean, she thought, Oh my God, I’m really going to John Wayne’s Christmas party.
Phil and Arlene Szabla were in the backseat counting their blessings. Lillian turned and lifted her arm over the seat back to give them encouragement, although she wasn’t much engaged with the conversation. To a greater or lesser degree, everyone in the car was a star-struck teenager willing themselves to become the appropriate adult who would be worthy of this great honor.
“Tell me about the boat again,” Phil said. He was the kind of midwestern man California was full of. With a well cared-for mustache and circumspect manners, he made corny jokes out of anything that happened to him. “Maybe they’ll take me on the crew.”
“A ship,” Frank corrected him. “It’s practically a ship.”
Arlene made a noise like a puppy, a mewing bark. Lillian smiled and thought about Jewish boys who might now be her husband. She had to marry a Catholic; she couldn’t marry a Jew. Why was she thinking about this on the night that everyone in the car agreed was the night of Frank’s triumph? She didn’t even know any Jewish men in California.
Duke Wayne lived at the end of Bayshore Drive, just a few minutes off Pacific Coast Highway. She had visited his house before because Frank had remodeled it. The details of its reconstruction and enhancement had obsessed him for more than a year, and Lillian couldn’t help but share his obsession, as she shared his obsession with most houses he worked on.
Apropos of nothing that had been said in the car up to that point, Arlene mentioned that she was making a list of the celebrities she would like to see at the party but didn’t think she would see at the party. Arlene was a twitchy young woman who looked as though she would never be more comfortable than at her own kitchen table, chain-smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and talking her way through her children’s lives. Recently, she and Phil had moved to Lompoc, a town northwest of Santa Barbara that was as near to nowhere as Lillian had ever been.
Frank, who until now had been driving with the inevitable concentration of a chauffeur, fell back for a moment from his mission and seemed to take offense at the suggestion that there could be anything wrong with John Wayne’s Christmas party. Actually, for a moment there, he demonstrated a very John Wayne–like bewilderment. His brow creased as his eyes got small and sad and terrifically focused. His mouth closed into a thin, severe line. Lillian saw his thoughts. She leaned back toward Arlene.
“Now, who wouldn’t be there tonight, Arlene?” She spoke the way she might speak to her children, calculating how to cajole them into good sense.
“Elvis Presley, first of all. I don’t think Elvis Presley’s going to be there. David Brinkley. Ricky Nelson. Neil Armstrong …” Frank turned to offer a severe face into the backseat. Arlene continued more quickly, “… Gore Vidal. Hugh Hefner. Roman Polanski.”
“That’s an odd list of names,” Lillian said. “What makes you think they won’t be there?”
Phil, obviously straining to support Lillian’s position, said, “Ricky Nelson was in a movie with John Wayne, and Elvis has made more than a few Westerns.”
“Only three,” Arlene corrected him, “Charro! and Love Me Tender and Flaming Star. I don’t want to argue about that. Besides, I’m not trying to make a point that these people won’t be there. I just feel like they won’t be there. Anyway, I think my heart would just burst if I started concentrating on who I think will be there. Just thinking about meeting John Wayne himself is enough to kill me.”
For some reason, that put the smile back on Frank’s face and he continued to drive with dignity and focus. Lillian watched this transition with the curiosity of a scientist. What was it exactly that made this man happy?
After a moment of contented silence, Frank began to explain what would happen to them when they arrived. “We’ll give the car to the valet parking fellow, and then we’ll walk through the house toward the tent that Duke’s set up on the lawn. That’s so the party can’t be ruined by rain. That’s where most of the action is going to be. Once we get settled, I’ll show you the work we did on the house. Oh yeah, there’s also this business of getting back and forth to the Wild Goose. There’s gonna be a little ferry, and maybe later, we can go out and take a look at the boat.”
“Ship!” Phil corrected with mock sternness.
“You got me,” Frank said. “Ship.”
Up to a point, the first hour of the evening went just as Frank had predicted. The parking attendant took their blue-black Buick Electra and stashed it somewhere among the many other cars that lined the drive to Wayne’s house. Unaccustomed to surrendering her vehicle, Lillian wondered how they would ever find it again. There was no John Wayne at the door to greet them, but Pilar, his wife, made a very nice impression on Arlene and Phil by kissing Frank on both cheeks and embracing Lillian like the dearest friend. After a few moments of introduction and Pilar’s fond compliments to the man who had remodeled her probably already beautiful home, the two couples found themselves somewhere beneath the red-and-white-striped tent that covered the better part of John Wayne’s lawn. They had been introduced to yet another couple, but somehow that third couple had drifted away from them toward another end of the tent. The party was just getting started and there were still great spaces between groups of people. Lillian wondered if she should feel slighted by Pilar’s efficiency. Frank seemed grateful to spend a moment trying to inhabit his tuxedo. Phil and Arlene were looking to Frank and Lillian for clues as to how they should feel about anything.
“I’m seeing lots of people I think I know but can’t put a name to,” Arlene whispered to Lillian. “Everyone in that area over there seems like they’ve got their own TV show.”
“They act like it anyway,” Lillian said.
“Oh,” Arlene said. “We’re playing it cool. Is that it?”
“I’m waiting for the real stars to show up,” Lillian smiled. She remembered the day a boy had taken her ice skating in Manhattan and she’d seen Lauren Bacall shepherding a flock of children up Fifth Avenue. There had been moments when Lillian wanted her life to have as much reality as Lauren Bacall’s, but until tonight she hadn’t thought this way for years. John Wayne’s house and that phony pumped-up party feeling—her anticipation, like everyone else’s, of what this night would bring—were making her think deep thoughts about her ability to shape the universe around her, or maybe just the ten or fifteen inches that surrounded her skinny young woman’s body.
Fifteen inches was about how far her husband Frank stood from her. He was trying to look like a man, which wasn’t too difficult, but maybe he didn’t know that. He was a big, blocky ex-marine just starting to go soft at the edges. He had heroically strong arms and a flattop the barber leveled every other week. He was a sweet but mostly fearful man whom God graced from time to time with the courage for one good idea that made Lillian shudder with excitement for their future together. Although she could see that he hadn’t been her best choice, by now they had three children, and she could also see that neither had he been an entirely bad choice. He held his hands together behind his back like a beat cop stretching himself. Frank looked down at the floor and then up at Lillian.
“We’re going to go get a drink,” he said. “You gals want anything?”
The only movie that had ever meant anything to Lillian was Ben-Hur. She dropped from her life for one whole day in 1959 to watch it three times in a row from the same seat in the Ziegfeld Theatre in Manhattan. She was engaged to Frank by then—although she changed her mind every day—and she had a good job at Teachers Insurance Company in the city. She was twenty-two years old. Sometimes still, she fell asleep at night thinking about Stephen Boyd’s twisted face as he confronts Charlton Heston for the last time. The villain is dying. The light in his eyes has almost gone out, and the whole world waits to see if this Roman scum has it in his heart to offer some consolation to Judah Ben-Hur, the Jewish prince whose life he has destroyed and who has now, in turn, destroyed him. But there is no mercy. There is no consolation. With his dying breath he reveals to Judah that his mother and sister have become lepers, that Judah’s situation, even at the moment of his triumph, is worse than he could possibly have imagined. Now in her mid-thirties, Lillian still remembered the vicious look on Stephen Boyd’s face.
But beyond Ben-Hur, the movies hadn’t been much of a force in her life. The same was probably true of her husband Frank. They saw what everyone else saw. They watched television. It wasn’t until Frank started to work for John Wayne that this world opened up for them, that they imagined any mystery or meaning behind the stories up on the screen.
Arlene led Lillian through the larger crowds that now surrounded John Wayne’s house. They had taken a ferry to the Wild Goose and somehow lost their husbands in the process. A few minutes earlier, John Wayne himself had appeared for a moment through the sliding glass door that connected his house to the patio, but he had an air of business, as though he hadn’t yet entered the party. Inspired by John Wayne’s brief appearance, Arlene was determined to display goal-oriented behavior. They made their way toward the house as though they knew what they were doing. They had no idea where their husbands were. A path cleared toward the patio, but they hung for a moment in the middle distance, Lillian holding Arlene back from her headlong advance. It seemed to her as though there were too many men who had turned too many faces toward them. The urgency in the men’s faces made the women who attended—most of them dressed more beautifully than Arlene and Lillian would have imagined appropriate—suddenly seem like so many grazing beasts.
“Bruce Cabot,” Arlene whispered, nodding toward one of the bright faces calculating their hesitance. Lillian watched herself watched by a tall, slightly overweight, more than middle-aged man whose skin was bronzed past any recognizable flesh tone. He seemed pleased with himself to such an extent that self-congratulation had become a habit which had etched strong lines in his face. He held his drink a little too high, and although he was a handsome older man, there was something foppish in the way he protected his drink from the world, as though he were afraid someone would grab at it from below him.
“I don’t know,” Lillian said.
“He was in King Kong. He’s been in a lot of John Wayne movies, too.”
Lillian took some pleasure in the fact that she didn’t know him, and as she and Arlene talked, the man continued to stare at her long after the other bright faces had turned back toward their drinks and their partners. Lillian looked away from him toward Newport Harbor. Balboa Peninsula looked like a Christmas tree turned over on its side and half-sunk into the ocean. Lights of green and blue and red stretched and shimmered and softened as they reached across the water toward John Wayne’s lawn. The air was almost cool, barely suggesting the season. Lillian said, “This is not far from where we live, is it?”
In spite of Lillian’s digression, Arlene was still engaged with the party. “I guess he’s never been that appealing to me,” Arlene said, “but I remember him, which says something in his favor. There are so many people whose names I wouldn’t remember.”
As Lillian returned her attention to the party, she saw Frank floating toward her, his shoulders secured by Bruce Cabot’s arm, Phil following close behind. It was as though her inattention had conjured them.
Bruce Cabot’s smile was still full of sexual mischief, even up this close, even with his arm around her husband. Or maybe because he had his arm around her husband. When Frank introduced them all, the movie star offered big hugs to the two women, which startled Lillian and tickled Arlene. Lillian thought she felt a hand wander below her waist and over her ass. Cabot smelled of booze and stale cigarette smoke and another woman’s perfume. There was no telling where he’d been and whose ass he’d been fondling before he got to Lillian’s.
“Frank’s going to build me a big house, too,” Cabot said, lifting his drink. “Bigger than Duke’s if I have anything to say about it. Somebody’s got to keep these nouveau riche Hollywood assholes in line, and Frank and I are the guys to do it. Phil, too. Right, Phil?”
“Right, Bruce.”
“Pardon my bad manners, ladies, I’m just a little exuberant with the party. Sorry to swear.”
Lillian realized that nothing was required of her but a nod. A man like Cabot was capable of generating his own conversation. She barely listened as Arlene attempted to join whatever world Cabot belonged to.
“Oh, Bruce, you know you can talk anyway you want around us.”
Lillian watched Bruce Cabot’s once handsome, now harshly lined face, and she gave herself a moment to consider what was going on around her. The party was filling the way a pool fills with water. The tables, which had looked stark beyond the caterer’s attempts to dress them up—large displays of orchids and snapdragons and mums at the center of each, festive cards announcing Pilar and Duke Wayne’s pleasure to be having another Christmas party—now began to seem genuinely festive as the different-shaped glasses holding different-colored drinks brought a randomness to each arrangement that reminded Lillian of weddings and the delight that people took in disarray after careful and complete order. It was this moment, too, when she began to see stars whom she really recognized—she wouldn’t have known Bruce Cabot from a greengrocer. Johnny Weissmuller was on the other side of the room looking old but still massively beautiful. He reminded Lillian of her plain-faced husband. Hugh O’Brian was hugging another man just to the left of her. Jill St. John was speaking loudly to three sharp-faced tuxedos beside John Wayne’s pool. Richard Boone was now grazing in the middle distance on a handful of party snacks.
Bruce Cabot asked her if she’d ever been an actress herself. The line had a tired elegance. Years of use must have worn it down into smoothness. She met her husband’s eyes and willed him to respond for her—put up a wall against Cabot’s flirtation—but Frank seemed anxious to hear her answer.
“No,” she said brightly. “I’ve always been a little too stiff and shy for that. I like to stay at home and read about glamorous lives. I don’t think I could ever live one.”
“It gets easier after a while.” Cabot smiled. “It’s like any game. You hit your stride if you play it long enough.”
“How long have you been playing it?” she asked. Indeed, Lillian was hitting her stride just now as they spoke. Her husband had nothing to add, and he seemed a little numb but proud of the familiar way she engaged Bruce Cabot. She was even beginning to feel a little proud of herself when a voice from behind the three men—Phil, Frank, and Bruce Cabot were facing her, and Arlene was a little off to her side—shouted out, “He’s been playing that game longer than anyone here but me!” And then two great but somehow delicate hands rose behind Phil’s and Frank’s shoulders.
It was John Wayne.
Although Lillian had met him before, she wasn’t prepared for the way he appeared to her this evening. All the people on his lawn, all the conversations begun in his name, all the attention to his person, reinforced his fame in a way that made her uncomfortable. She realized she had become the focal point of the little group because John Wayne stepped between Frank and Bruce Cabot in order to kiss her on the cheek. From there, he was introduced to Arlene and Phil.
Frank always straightened a little in Wayne’s presence. His restless eyes became attentive, his sometimes vague body took shape, his big but anxious hands awaited instructions at his sides. It would be easy to demean him at a time like this, but Lillian never felt the urge. Wayne appealed to something in Frank that was more mysterious than his desire to please, more meaningful than his ambition to be a great man. She had to admit that being Duke’s employee ennobled him, somehow.
John Wayne was always bigger than she had imagined. And so much more boyish. Her own husband had a bit of that kind of charm. But what Frank had a bit of, Duke had abundantly. In spite of his size, he was never sexually threatening. She couldn’t imagine him having the kind of edge Bruce Cabot had. And therefore, at least for Lillian, he was attractive beyond all accounting.
“I guess I can always trust Bruce to find the prettiest ladies in the crowd. That’s why I’ve been following him around for such a long time.”
He took Frank’s hand for the second time, as though he had forgotten the first or needed to reinforce it. “I’m glad you’re here, Frank,” he said.
Wayne was gracious to point out different aspects of his property that Frank had improved. Cabot looked a little dull with the fact that he was no longer the center of attention, but Phil and Arlene were enormously pleased to be the object of this explanation—even though they had heard it earlier from Frank. They looked down the length of John Wayne’s arm toward whatever he pointed at as though he were describing some great prize he’d just given them. Lillian was relieved that this moment had come for them—meeting John Wayne—and that they seemed to be enjoying themselves.
After Wayne left them—as everyone knew he would have to—Bruce Cabot wandered off as well. He did his best to reclaim the attention he had lost when Duke showed up, but it wasn’t possible. Arlene glowed, and Lillian wasn’t certain her friend understood that Duke was no longer with them. Phil watched Frank nervously. Lillian imagined that Phil was calculating what effect long exposure to Duke Wayne might have had on Frank’s personality. For a moment, Phil seemed uncomfortable with envy. Lillian was just glad she didn’t have to endure Bruce Cabot anymore, and she was looking forward to the rest of the party, as though Wayne’s attention had relieved her of the desire to seek Wayne’s attention. She was free to be enthusiastic about drinking and eating fancy food and recognizing movie stars.
She asked Frank to dance. Or rather, she asked Frank to ask her to dance. “Why don’t you ask me to dance?” Frank was shocked, not by the circumlocution or his wife’s presumption, but by the entire notion of dancing. He lifted his eyebrows as if to say, Oh, we could do that, too, couldn’t we? Frank was a fine dancer who loved to show off at parties like this. A few moments earlier—although he hadn’t noticed it—the twelve-piece orchestra on the patio beyond the pool had left off their moody the-party-is-just-starting music and moved into a swinging tune that Lillian liked but didn’t recognize. If they hurried, they might be the first couple on the floor.
Fortunately for both of them, Frank was in his initial moments of boozy exuberance. Duke’s appearance at his side had given him a push that scotch and soda would smooth into a glide which might last for the next few hours. Lillian recognized the “dramatic arc”—a term she had learned in her college lit class just a few weeks earlier—of her husband’s drinking. At the moment, he was rising toward his zenith, and with any luck he might still be rising until it was time for him to go home.
As other couples began to gather around them, Lillian said, “It was nice of him to make Arlene and Phil feel at home. Sometimes he seems to me like such a good man.”
“When did you ever think he wasn’t a good man?” Frank asked.
“I guess I don’t always like his movies.”
Frank lifted his head to make certain no one was listening. “It’s a funny time to talk about this,” he said.
“No one will throw us out.”
“No one but me.” Frank smiled.
“I liked True Grit,” Lillian conceded, “but you can have the rest of them. He always plays the same character—himself.”
“You say that as if it were a bad thing. It’s not a bad thing.”
Lillian pulled Frank a little closer, set her cheek to his cheek, and whispered, “Okay, sweetheart.”
After swinging through the rest of the tune that Lillian didn’t recognize, the orchestra segued into “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” which energized Frank into a glide and twist that made Lillian forget how much she despised the song. Frank caught her laughing as she imagined Arlene looking around the party for Burt Bacharach. The dance floor became thick with couples who must have loved the song, and Frank was forced to restrain himself a little, dance closer, concentrate harder. With Frank so firmly in control of her body, Lillian allowed her attention to wander through the other couples who shared the dance with them. Although it was still early in the party, one middle-aged man was acting out the song between disordered two-steps with his wife. When they got to the part where the singer sang,
“and all the stars
that never were
are parking cars
and pumping gas,”
he shuffled away from his wife and made a gesture with his hands as though he were paying someone from a stack of bills. The rest of the crowd was undistinguished. If a lot of stars had arrived at the party, none of them were dancing yet. But at the far end of the dancing area, near the swimming pool, a couple joined the music with such gentle confidence in their possession of the moment that Lillian imagined they might be celebrities whom she didn’t recognize. Like many of the men at the party, this one had the kind of longish hair that looked a little dangerous touching the collar of his shirt. He was dark-featured and deeply tanned, and he had the kind of strong face that Lillian remembered from her youth. He was a city boy done well in California, she was sure of it. He was about Lillian’s age, and he had the look of belonging to the movie industry even if he wasn’t necessarily a star himself. The woman he led to the dance floor seemed a little older, but just as attractive. She was the kind of pleasantly buffered Nordic blonde whose hair and face seemed to have been designed for sunshine. She couldn’t have been any more different from him. He was dark, maybe Mediterranean, and his gaze over his strong nose was terrifically focused.
Lillian thought, Maybe he’s Jewish.
Whether he was Jewish or not, Lillian couldn’t take her eyes off him, couldn’t keep herself from wondering whether he was the husband of this woman or just her escort. Whether he was an actor or a writer. A lawyer or a businessman. As Frank turned her away from the couple, she followed them as best she could. He danced well, although not as well as Frank. Moment to moment, he seemed fearful that he might carry his partner away into a turn she wasn’t prepared for. This made Lillian think again that she might not be his wife. He was reticent and unfamiliar like a bachelor. Maybe he was a homosexual. She didn’t think she had ever met a homosexual in California, but she imagined that a Hollywood party—even one being held in Newport Beach—was likely to be full of them. He was concerned about himself—she could see by the way he wore his hair. Maybe he is queer. But then the strangest thought she’d had that evening entered her head. Lillian was often proud of her strange thoughts—they kept her separate from her husband and children, kept her sane deep within herself—but this one made her uneasy. Wouldn’t he be what one of her Jewish boys would look like today? Couldn’t she give one of them fourteen years and make him into such a man? Before she had a chance to completely scare the hell out of herself, the band moved into another tune and Frank pulled her in the opposite direction.
Although Frank was a wonderful dancer, he didn’t have much endurance. He became bored and tired after a few songs. The crowd was getting a bit much for Lillian, too. She lost track of her urban-boy-done-well-in-California, and as a consequence, she lost interest in the dancing.
Frank wanted another drink, and they picked their way toward one of the five bars that studded the lawn. All around Lillian, the party was approaching its peak, and the noise insulating all of them from the night was layered like blankets on a bed. While Frank drew her up to the bar, she tried to imagine herself sensitive enough to pull her friends out from that huge noise.
Lillian had already spent too much of her life watching men drink. And now it seemed to her that there had been years of her marriage devoted to nothing else. Giving Frank booze was a chemistry experiment: he could have a good night and be charming, he could have a bad night and become a thug. Different amounts had different effects on different nights.
And yet Lillian knew she had to let him go sometimes. And she had known even before they arrived at the party that this was going to be one of those nights. Children get to be greedy on Christmas morning. Grandparents get to be cranky on their vacations. Frank gets to be drunk during John Wayne’s Christmas party. As much as she hated his drinking, she hoped that for tonight she could become that different kind of wife, the one who could tolerate, maybe even enjoy, his drinking.
Frank ordered a scotch and soda for himself and a Tom Collins for Lillian. It was maybe his fourth drink of the evening. As the bartender went to work, Frank addressed Lillian theatrically. “Duke has told each one of these guys that if they don’t keep the drinkers happy, they will be shot at dawn.” The bartender, perhaps true to his instructions from Duke, smiled warmly and accepted Frank’s handshake.
Lillian took a sip of her Tom Collins, and it reminded her of how much she could enjoy booze if she ever allowed herself.
At that moment, as if he’d been cued, Duke Wayne himself appeared beside them at the bar; he had his big, rangy arm around the shoulder of Lillian’s young man from the dance floor. Wayne smiled at Lillian in a way she believed was genuine. Lillian flattered herself that she could tell when a man liked her, and Wayne seemed to like her. She had seen the pleasure in his eyes, as though meeting her again meant more to him than he could easily say. Wayne pushed the young man in the direction of Frank. And then he took Lillian’s hand.
“You throw a rock at this party and you’re going to hit a couple of New Yorkers. But you three are the only ones that I really trust. Michael Grau, this is Frank and Lillian Barden. They’re from the Bronx, you’re from the Bronx. Michael’s a big bean counter for Warner Brothers. Frank here built my whole fucking house again last year.” Wayne’s eyes widened and he looked a little startled. He hadn’t yet let go of Lillian’s hand, but now he took it up again in earnest. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, my foul mouth.” Lillian nodded as though to excuse him, but he didn’t let go of her hand.
“You two don’t know each other already, do you?”
Michael put his hand on Duke’s shoulder in a gesture Lillian would have thought presumptuous for a “bean counter” had not Michael done it with such tenderness. He said, “Duke, the Bronx is a very big place.”
“Yeah, right.” Duke let go of Lillian’s hand. “But California’s an even bigger place and I know half the people in the goddamn state.”
He turned to take Lillian’s hand again. She nodded in a gesture of forgiveness—she was starting to get the hang of this—which Duke must have understood because he aborted his apology, returned his attention to the men, and shook hands all around before leaving to rejoin the party.
Michael was a tall man, although not as tall as Frank. His tuxedo hung from his body as though it had been made for him, and it occurred to Lillian that maybe it had been. His body was still lean enough that she could imagine him as a twenty-three-year-old “bean counter” looking for a job in New York City. Her husband’s body, poised between the two of them, bore much less relation to the body he’d had at twenty-three. He used to be sinewy, now he was just strong. Michael was more like Lillian herself: a tall drink of water.
Duke had left them with a man Lillian was afraid would patronize her husband. Maybe because she could imagine him as one of her suitors, she was worried that the movie business would look down on the construction business, that the obviously college-educated Michael would have fun with her thick-handed Frank. She was rallying herself to prevent that when she realized that Michael had wanted to meet them.
“You’re an accountant?” Frank said, mindful of John Wayne’s absence. “Maybe you’re a CPA?”
“I haven’t found the time to get my certification yet, but that’s on the list. They keep pushing me up the ladder just the way I am, and sometimes I think I may never get my CPA. Sometimes I’m not sure I need it. You’re a builder?”
“Framing. Room additions. Remodeling jobs like this one. Apartment buildings.”
Lillian could already see the beginning of a problem as her husband tried to make himself comfortable. The apartment buildings part was not quite true. Wayne was talking to Frank about that, but it wasn’t reality yet. Frank didn’t yet know whether Michael was above him or below him in the hierarchy of the party. Frank had great difficulty with men who had been to college, and Michael had the kind of self-confidence that was often the result of a good degree.
Doing his best to figure out where he stood, Frank said, “It’s exciting for Lillian and I to see all these movie stars in one place. Working in the picture business, you must be used to that by now.”
Michael smiled. “Not too many people are interested in my income projections for their next film, but when they are, I guess I’m just as excited to shake hands with a movie star as the next fellow. I know Duke because he likes to stop by and poke his nose around the office when he’s got a few days between pictures. Nobody really loves an accountant, but Duke seems to understand what we do better than most of them I’ve met.”
“Who else do you know?” Lillian asked. She wished she hadn’t. It wasn’t a party question. It showed too much desire for an answer.
Michael just smiled, which made Lillian feel her embarrassment even more acutely. He shuffled his shoes along the pink concrete as though it wasn’t necessary to display his connection to a world that Lillian would never be connected to. He stared down at his shiny black shoes and then, his smile a little darker, looked into Lillian’s eyes. He patronized her so effortlessly it made her think that this was the real advantage of a college degree, that this was what Frank had always envied about men like Michael.
Frank, lost from the conversation for almost a minute, taking stock of the swelling crowd, taking stock—again—of his improvements to the Wayne hacienda, said, “One really good way to get to know a man is to remodel his house.”
“I imagine that’s probably a very good way,” Michael said.
And then Frank left them because he had to: Lillian recognized the landscape of her husband’s drinking. He was entering a long plateau characterized by restlessness and bold sentences that defied the context of conversation. It was the time when he often left her alone at parties.
“I’m going to go find Phil and Arlene,” Frank said.
Michael was surprised to be so suddenly alone with Lillian. She wouldn’t have expected that. He searched his jacket for pockets which were sewn shut; and then, having met that obstacle, decided to invest his hands in the pockets of his pants, ruining the line of his beautifully tailored jacket.
“I liked this house the first time I saw it,” Michael said. “I remember asking myself what a fellow like Duke would have to do to keep a house looking so good. And now I know: he gets someone smart like Frank to rebuild it every few years.”
Lillian didn’t like the sound of that, and she was determined to change the subject. “What part of the Bronx did you grow up in?”
“Parkchester mostly. My parents moved us to Manhattan for a while when Dad was doing well, but we always seemed to return to Parkchester. You?”
“My family never left the Bronx,” Lillian said. “We made one apartment change from one block to another, and that was it. I never even had my own bedroom until I moved in with my husband.”
“What part of the Bronx?”
“Around Castle Hill. East 177th Street.”
“You wouldn’t call that Parkchester?”
“I guess you could call it Parkchester. I never thought about it as Parkchester. Parkchester seems so … you know what I mean.”
“I think I know what you mean.”
“High school,” Lillian said. “What high school did you go to?”
“Bronx High School of Science.”
“I’m impressed.”
“You should be. I worked my ass off. And you?”
“You won’t be impressed.”
“Try me.”
“You’re right. I’m not impressed.”
“I was valedictorian, though.”
“Okay, I’m impressed.”
“I’m glad I’ve impressed you with something.”
“Oh, you’ve been impressing me with many things. You’ve been impressing me since I first saw you on the dance floor.”
“Are you flirting with me?”
“Of course I’m flirting with you,” Michael said. “That’s why they invite me to these parties, to flirt with people like you. You don’t think they invited me because I’m a powerhouse in the movie industry?”
Lillian smiled. “I don’t know why, but it’s a real pleasure to speak with you.”
“You know why.”
“Okay. I get the feeling that you don’t care what I think of you. Somehow, that’s pleasant.”
“On the contrary,” Michael said. “It’s myself that I’m insensitive to. You I care about a lot.”
Talking this way, more than anything else about the party, was making Lillian happy. Among this sea of smiling faces and sweetly expensive finger food and bright drinks, she had almost forgotten how sharp a conversation could be.
Michael turned from her toward the crowd beyond the bar. He surveyed it as though it were a house he was afraid to enter. By now, famous people were standing everywhere, providing the significance that the party needed to be considered successful by people like Arlene and Frank and Phil. Lillian stood apart from all that now. Her conversation with Michael had set her in a different place entirely. Now that it was completely night, the red-and-white-striped tent seemed to be stealing color from the guests beneath it. Lillian imagined she could see the compliments and the flirtations and the back talk, all of it accumulating beneath that circus tent, mixing all around with the cigarette smoke and the smell of good booze. Michael stood, just looking into the crowd, for much longer than Lillian felt comfortable. Either he would talk to her soon or she would have to leave and look for her friends.
“I dated guys like you before I married Frank,” Lillian said.
That did it. He turned around. “And what do you mean by guys like me?”
“Smart alecks, fellows who couldn’t contain their energy in the normal ways, so that it was always leaking out in ways that made other people uncomfortable. Frank beat up a guy like you once. He was just smarting off and trying to make Frank feel stupid. The guy was hitting on me, too, but I never told Frank that. Frank was drunk and he might have killed him.”
“Why do I get the feeling that we’re talking about something else here? What are we talking about?”
“We’re talking about the fact that I’ve always liked smart alecks but I didn’t marry one. I married a guy who beats up smart alecks.”
“You don’t think I can take care of myself? Do I look feeble to you?
“You look fine,” Lillian said. “I’m just talking, trying to draw you back into the conversation.”
“You’re doing a good job.”
“I was afraid you were about to leave,” she said. “I’m not ready to talk with anyone else.”
“I’m here,” Michael said. “You know, I’ve met guys like your husband before, too. I like guys like your husband. Some of my best friends were Irish Catholic thugs. I like to think of myself as a Jewish thug.”
“Do I look Jewish?”
“Yes, you do.”
“Frank doesn’t look like a thug, either,” Michael said.
“No, he doesn’t.”
“Let’s see. I imagine he’s the kind of man who hates blacks and is wary of Jews on principle, but he makes lots of exceptions for the people he meets. All blacks are lazy except for my friends. All Jews are greedy except for my friends. Am I in the ballpark?”
“Yes, you are.” Although she had certainly courted it, Lillian wasn’t prepared for this kind of honesty.
“How about you?” Michael asked. “How do you feel about Jews, Miss Lillian?”
“I like them fine. I grew up in the Bronx, didn’t I?”
“That doesn’t mean anything. And if you’d really grown up in the Bronx, you’d know that doesn’t mean anything.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“So how was it? Would your mother let you date a Jewish boy?”
“Of course she would.”
“Marry one?”
“Nope.”
“What if she thought you were … you know, behind her back?”
“It never came anywhere near that.”
Michael smiled. He must have felt as though she’d made an enormous concession. Lillian knew that it wasn’t much of a concession at all.
“So then I could have been the boy that you didn’t marry. I could have even been the boy that you didn’t sleep with. I could be the bitter bachelor who you passed up because of the prejudices of your parents. Couldn’t I?”
“Parent. Only one.”
“Couldn’t I?”
“Yes, maybe you could. But you’re not.”
“Don’t be so sure, Lillian.”
At that moment, Arlene emerged from the crowd. Somehow, both her complexion and her cocktail dress were more vibrant than they had been earlier that evening. She’d been drinking, that was for sure. But then again, so had Lillian. She’d found that if she set down her Tom Collins and smiled at the bartender, she didn’t even have to ask for another.
“Arlene, this is Michael. He grew up in the same neighborhood as Frank and I. We were just talking about how much we both like California.”
Arlene lifted her eyebrows. Oh really? She was reaching for an affect that was almost beyond her.
“But we didn’t know each other when we still lived in the Bronx. We just met here a few minutes ago. Duke introduced us. Where’s Frank anyway?”
Michael shook Arlene’s hand and told her he was pleased to meet her.
“Frank’s over by the bay designing houses for anyone who wants one.”
“Phil?”
“Phil’s helping Frank design the houses. And what do you do?” Arlene asked Michael.
“I’m an accountant,” Michael replied.
“Are you Mr. Wayne’s accountant?”
“Not exactly.” Michael smiled coolly. “I keep an eye on things for Warner Brothers, where Mr. Wayne has made a few of his pictures.”
“Warner Brothers?”
“Yes.”
“That must be really interesting.”
“You really think so?”
“Arlene really thinks so,” Lillian offered. “She’s probably more fascinated by you than anyone she’s met at the party.”
“Yeah,” Arlene said. “I think I can see by the cut of your jacket that you’re an accountant’s accountant, right? You’re one of the big accountants.”
“Either that or I rented a very expensive tuxedo.” Michael smiled. “Yes, I guess you could say that. I’ve worked hard.”
“Well, tell me,” Arlene said. “Do folks court you? I mean, I’m guessing that a smart person would court you. You have the power of the pen. Looking at the numbers one way or another, you could probably make or break someone’s career.”
“Numbers don’t lie, Arlene.”
Arlene made a face that said loudly and clearly, Don’t treat me like a boob from Lompoc, California.
Michael caught her look and relented. Actually, he seemed a little ashamed of himself for underestimating her. “The numbers can be squeezed a bit, I guess. I don’t do it on purpose. Sometimes an executive will ask me to do it. Sometimes I’m just … well … in favor of someone’s success and I notice somewhere down the line that I wasn’t as objective as I might have been.”
“That’s more like it,” Arlene said. “I guessed that.”
Just then Frank returned with Phil in tow. They were both showing the effects of drink, but they managed to draw a circle around Lillian and Arlene that excluded Michael.
While Lillian’s attention was with her husband—while she tried to gauge where he was in the evening’s adventure—Michael drifted toward another group of people a few yards away. Hugs and kisses and handshakes welcomed his drift. She was surprised to discover that he had left so quickly, but she imagined it was for the best. She didn’t want to spend her time at this fancy party comparing a man she hardly knew—Michael—to a man she knew too well—Frank. She hoped her life could be bigger than that.
Frank and Phil coaxed their wives away from the bar, and they all sat down in patio chairs beside a glass table. The commotion in Lillian’s head didn’t die down quickly. Her husband saw to that.
“And now where is your friend from the Bronx?” Frank asked.
“He’s just over there,” Lillian said.
“I’m guessing he left at just the moment we returned. Am I right?”
Lillian said nothing. Frank checked the distance between himself and Michael. “We probably shouldn’t turn our back on him, Phil. He might try to poke us up the ass.”
Among the men she had grown up with—and Frank was one of them—a certain level of drunkenness always brought on talk of homosexuality. It was as certain as wetness after rain.
“Frank,” Lillian admonished.
“He’s a homo,” Frank said. “I don’t blame him for it. God makes mistakes.”
“Keep your voice down.”
Drunkenness had increased Frank’s catalogue of facial expressions as well. He dropped his chin and looked at his wife from under his wide and severe brow as if to say, I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. For a quick moment, booze had turned her husband into an expressive individual.
Lillian began to speak to Arlene, and by the time she finished, Frank and Phil were off again, looking for someone to talk to who wouldn’t confuse them by talking back.
She heard his voice before she saw his face. His voice had already become familiar to her. She thought she could imagine how California had softened it, although she knew that it was probably as hard as it had ever been in the Bronx.
“So what would we have been like, dating each other in our green youth?”
Lillian turned and so did Arlene. He had come up behind them, seated himself in a chair, and now looked as though he had all the time in the world. Arlene was more amused than Lillian, and perhaps as a concession to the way good booze made her feel—less like a housewife from Lompoc and more like a beatnik schoolgirl—she turned to Michael and told him what it would have been like.
“Lillian would have worried that you were a little too fast and experienced for her. She would have kept you within strict boundaries for the longest time. You would have been lucky to get your tongue in her mouth by the seventh date.”
“Jesus, Arlene!” Lillian said.
“It’s the truth, honey.”
“But after she’d learned to trust me,” Michael said. “How would we have been then?”
“You would have told her—because this was the kind of kid you were—that so long as you were dating her, you would never take her to the same restaurant twice. In fact, you would tell her, I’ll never even take you to a similar restaurant twice. Always a new and interesting restaurant for you two. It would have been one of the main things that convinced her to keep going out with you.”
Lillian remembered this. It was, in fact, how Frank had courted her, and it was for a while the only reason why she continued to see him—her wonder at the way he could keep producing these small romantic restaurants with great food. She was certain she had never told Arlene about any of this.
“How did I keep it up? All those restaurants?” Michael asked.
“How the hell should I know?” Arlene laughed. “It’s not my fucking story.”
“I kept it up,” Michael answered his own question, “because I had lots of friends and business acquaintances already, and at the end of any conversation with anyone, I would ask them about their favorite places to eat in the city.”
Lillian was surprised again. It was becoming too convincing.
“And what happened as things moved along?” Arlene asked. “Did your friendship … deepen?”
“I was conscious of the fact that I was dating someone who had to be taken seriously,” he said. “Let’s just say that I was an attractive young man with some money in my pocket …”
“Let’s just say that,” Lillian added sarcastically.
“… and I’d been dating more than a few women for longer than a while, but after I met Lillian, I had this big sense within myself that I was entering a project which wouldn’t yield to fifty percent of my effort, wouldn’t even, for that matter, yield to ninety-seven percent of my effort. I had to give her all of my attention or I wasn’t going to get anywhere with this thing.”
“This thing?” Lillian said. “This thing? You’re talking about human beings, not a cost-benefit analysis.”
“What are you so angry about?” Michael smiled.
“I don’t like the way you’re talking about me.”
“Are we talking about you?”
“Hypothetically, you’re talking about me,” Lillian said. “I mean, you’re imagining something about me, and I don’t like the way you’re doing it.”
“Tell me where I’m wrong. How should we be telling this story differently?”
“Well, it’s not as though I was some block of marble that you had to carve a woman out of. Maybe I wanted to be courted as much as you wanted to court me. Maybe I had some thoughts about you long before you started all the fancy maneuvers.”
“And what did you think?” Michael said. “What did you decide about me?”
“I don’t know what I thought!” Lillian said. “This isn’t about a real person. This isn’t about me. I’m just saying that you should think harder about what the woman wanted, about her point of view.”
“For years, that was all I thought about,” Michael said.
Arlene, who suddenly seemed impatient with a conversation that threatened to leave her out, directed the question back to Michael, who seemed a little confused in the aftermath of arguing with Lillian.
“What did you want?” Arlene asked him. “What was your objective?”
“I wanted everything,” Michael announced. “My objective was Lillian Rose Hedendal herself, that sweet Swedish smarty-pants from the wrong side of the tracks, that tall drink of water, her skinny legs poured into slacks, her face always on the edge of a heartbreaking frown. I wanted Lillian.”
God help me, Lillian thought. Jesus Christ, help me. It wasn’t quite a prayer, but it was as close as she’d come in years.
The party, having grown and prospered for several hours, was now beginning to recede. The three of them had become quiet, too. For the first time in the last half hour, Lillian could see her husband. Frank was across the lawn talking to a man who looked like Dean Martin but probably wasn’t Dean Martin. Something she’d heard in school the week before came back to her with the force of revelation—something Professor Wolman had said as an aside before he began in earnest his stultifying examination of the role of hats in Conrad’s novels. “Bing Crosby has always seemed like an evil man, don’t you think?”
She knew that her mind was only capable of such tricks, such wildness, because she was near Michael. He was watching her at just that moment. Maybe they had loved each other at some time in the past, way back in a life she was no longer connected to. Why couldn’t she remember? She guessed that anything was possible. She remembered that time she’d gone to a consciousness-raising group for women who were married to alcoholics. Alanon. She’d gone only once, but she’d heard a woman describe her inability to accept the extent of her husband’s drinking, her incredible denial of the fact that it was ruining her family life. Lillian felt close to that woman. Maybe, Lillian thought, I have lost a part of my life because I am too afraid to look at it?
And then Michael asked her to dance.
She could imagine being shocked by his request because it crossed a line she hadn’t intended to cross. She could imagine being delighted by his request because it was just the kind of intimacy she had been hoping for. As it was, she was neither shocked nor delighted. It was, rather, as if the whole thing had already happened and she were just putting her body in a place where it had already been.
Now that the party was waning, only three or four couples pushed each other around the dance floor beside the pool. Michael was a tall man, but no taller than Lillian. It seemed like a luxury to look into his eyes, to be looking neither up nor down at a man. Michael was not a dancer the way her husband Frank was a dancer. Even when Michael took her along the rough edges of a song the way Frank did, it was with a sense that he would give her only as much as she wanted. Lillian didn’t know how much she wanted. She became afraid the other dancers would recognize her small contentment to be in Michael’s arms for what it was.
“It takes you a little while to relax, doesn’t it?” Michael asked.
“I’m still not relaxed. I feel like I’m dancing with an old boyfriend and my husband’s watching me with daggers in his eyes.”
“Daggers in his eyes?” Michael laughed.
“Yes.”
“Is your husband watching you?”
“No, I don’t know where he is. I saw him a few minutes ago, but now he’s off somewhere.”
“It seems like he’s been off somewhere all evening.”
“Yes.”
“And you feel like you’re dancing with an old boyfriend?”
“I am dancing with an old boyfriend. That’s what you told me, isn’t it?”
“That’s right.”
The band went from “Fly Me to the Moon” into “Yesterday.” The Beatles were about as racy as they got all evening. Maybe now that things were starting to wind down and people were thinking about going home, the bandleader felt he could risk a tune that didn’t concede so much to the taste of the host, who had a hard time thinking about music unless it was made by a man or woman whose hand he’d shaken.
Lillian loved that song. She sang it to herself around her kitchen. She’d heard her children singing it. Once, when she was on her way to the allergist’s office with her oldest son—he had such bad asthma, he was allergic to so many things—she pulled her red Dodge Dart to the side of the road so that she could listen without losing part of the song to her nervous concentration on the road. As she sang along, her son watched as though he didn’t recognize her. And, really, she didn’t recognize herself. Seeing that uncomplicated joy reflected in her son’s distrusting eyes, she wanted to leave the car and walk away from her life forever. She felt like that now with Michael, as though two more moments of happiness might kill her.
When one of the four other couples left the dance floor, Lillian found her excuse. She begged off the rest of the dance with some words about leaving Arlene alone that she didn’t even hear herself speak. She hated this part of herself—the schmaltzy, heart-broken-to-pieces-like-a-little-girl part. She didn’t know who she might become in Michael’s arms, but she wasn’t ready to find out.
When they returned to the table, Arlene still seemed happy and drunk. She was watching the party as though it were her television set. She had her cigarettes out and she had another drink and she didn’t care who knew about it. When someone who looked rich or famous passed her table, her eyes followed them frankly, as though they were plates of food she might order if only she knew the names.
Lillian sat down, but Michael didn’t. He stood in front of Arlene, his feet spread like an American man’s, his hands in his pockets.
“And then what happened?” Michael asked. The glibness was gone. He really wanted to know.
“What are we talking about?” Arlene asked.
“What happened between Lillian and Michael.”
“What happened was …” Arlene engaged him as well as she could, despite her suddenly increasing drunkenness. “What happened then was she met Frank, and she realized that she couldn’t go out with anyone anymore that she liked as much as she liked you.”
When they located Frank and Phil among the ruins of the party, the two men were sitting on a couch together in John Wayne’s living room watching a group of certainly more famous and powerful men play poker at a table near the center of the room. Phil was falling asleep, but Frank watched the progress of the game as though his livelihood depended on it, which it did not because he wasn’t playing the game. Arlene cleared up that point right off. “Why aren’t you playing?” she asked her husband and her good friend Frank.
“We don’t know how to play,” Phil admitted.
Oblivious to both Arlene’s question and Phil’s answer, Frank continued to watch the game.
Lillian, coming from behind Arlene through the sliding glass door that opened the living room to Newport Bay, saw three men she recognized and five she didn’t. Duke Wayne was there, as were Bruce Cabot and Johnny Weissmuller. Another five men played, but their features—because their faces were not known to Lillian—washed together like so many patrons of a Wild West saloon, sitting in the midst of action but somehow never part of the action. John Wayne looked more like an ordinary mortal man than she had ever seen him. Like all the rest of the men at the card table—actually four card tables pushed together—he smoked a cigarette. His toupee had abandoned his head, and thatches of unkempt hair from the sides crawled over his clean dome as though they were trying to recapture lost territory. His hands, holding his cards before the reading glasses on the end of his great nose, were liver-spotted and looked as though they had been tanned by fire rather than sun. When Lillian and Arlene came through the door, he recognized them over the frames of his glasses. He smiled at them. He winked.
Her own husband hadn’t noticed her entering the room, but John Wayne did. She remembered something she’d read in a romance novel late at night, after Frank’s tortured snoring and terrifying mumbles of fear had woken her up: “Each sadness reminded her of all the other sadnesses that had preceded it.” Lillian didn’t want to be in this room right now, and even John Wayne’s wink wasn’t much consolation.
She sat beside her husband on the couch. She put her hand over his big hand, great like John Wayne’s hands were great, but not as old and maybe a little damaged by carpentry, not as perfect as an actor’s hands could be.
“Frank, we’re all tired. Don’t you think it’s time we went home?”
At first, he didn’t acknowledge her. He continued to watch sharp cards slice the air between big men. Weissmuller, whom Lillian had enjoyed when she was a girl, said, “There will be a hell of a price to pay for that. Let’s thank God most of us can afford it.” John Wayne watched his cards and then watched Weissmuller before saying, “Maybe you can afford it, boss, but I still need to work for a living.”
“Come on, Frank,” she whispered. “Can we go home now?”
Frank continued to ignore her. Lillian thought, We are trained from birth to find them beautiful, but they are not beautiful. Children are beautiful. Often, young women are beautiful as wild horses and well-bred dogs and considerate zoo creatures are beautiful. But men are not beautiful. They are boxes that fill up with toil and regret and anger. And if women were that way, too—and Lillian guessed that they were—at least women got to keep the dignity that came along with loving their children more than themselves. Most men never experienced that much dignity in their whole lives.
“Pay attention to me,” she said.
Frank turned to her, and uncertainly lifting his hand to her knee, he shook it violently for a second and said, “We’re going to stay here and watch these boys play poker for a while.” His eyes were blue. His gaze held Lillian precisely. And he was as dead drunk as she’d ever seen him while he was still able to speak.
“What do you mean we?” she said. “We’re getting tired, we want to go home.” It occurred to her that he was a sick man. His dead eyes had told her that, but she couldn’t keep the thought. She had imagined for a moment that this might not be the best tone to approach him with, but she couldn’t keep that thought, either. She guessed that she should be embarrassed to fight with her husband in front of John Wayne, but she wasn’t.
He shook her knee again, this time returning his eyes to the card game across the room, this time more gently, although his hands seemed palsied to her; his hands vibrated like an old drunk’s. “You calm down, honey,” he spoke quietly. “You calm the fuck down.”
She stood up from the couch, but almost before she could, Frank’s hand had reached after her to restrain her. He held her wrist without pulling her back down, as though he hoped the energy of her anger would lift him with her. Phil and Arlene looked away. No one else seemed to notice.
“She wants to get back out and see her Jew boy.” Frank spoke to Arlene, although Arlene was studiously ignoring him, watching the drapes, watching the harbor lights just beyond the living room drapes. “I know things about her that the Jew boy will never know. I know that she’s no good in bed. I know she wishes … I know that she’s a fucking …”
His brain seized up for a moment, choking on all the alcohol and resentment. He coughed like a diver too grateful for air. He spit out half-formed words like teeth before he coughed once hard, and then asked Phil, with half his breath, “You could see that guy was queer, couldn’t you? You could see that guy was a fucking fruit?”
Phil looked terrified, but he nodded. It was the most conviction he could risk under these circumstances. Lillian snapped her hand out of Frank’s grasp. Frank didn’t react. He seemed pleased to have his own hand back.
“Just let me have the fucking car, Frank. Give me the ticket. You can find some way to get home.”
She held out her hand as though the gesture had some kind of weight for him, as though he were her smallest child and might be cajoled into cooperation.
The poker players acted as though they were used to such displays. Indeed, they probably were. The scene gathered familiarity for Lillian as she realized that this was often the way it was in a Wild West saloon. No matter what mayhem might be worked out near the center of the room, the chances were good that a poker game might continue somewhere in a corner. The men around John Wayne flipped cards and shuffled and moved chips, but they didn’t speak quite as loudly once the Bardens began to fight. Bruce Cabot, supremely unperturbed by the scene, even ordered himself another screwdriver at precisely the moment when Lillian seemed in the most danger of being struck by her husband. John Wayne, exercising his prerogative as host of the party and master of the house, cast his eyes in Frank’s direction from moment to moment as though he were encouraging him not to strike his wife. Maybe Wayne knew what most heavy drinkers knew: it wasn’t the man who made a lot of noise who became violent, but the man who didn’t make much noise at all.
Frank wasn’t making much noise.
“Why don’t you walk home, you skinny slut?” he whispered.
Lillian felt as though her soul had been smuggled out of the world. A peculiar calm settled over every object in the room, as though the earth had lost its soul as well. Ashtrays and highball glasses, cigarette cases and novelty cuff links, a small sculpture by Remington in the corner and the way Arlene’s dress fluttered over her skin as an unexpected breeze blew in from the bay—all of it seemed to Lillian like the day after a bombing in which many small children had died. She looked around at the men who played poker—“supernumeraries,” her professor would have called them, “spearcarriers” in spite of fame or power—and she saw in each of their faces the same qualities: an empty discipline and an astounding lack of warmth.
John Wayne straightened in his chair. He had short legs for a man his size, and therefore he was a taller man sitting down than he was standing up. He had been sitting low in his chair so that he wouldn’t have to look down so much on the other card players. Lillian was no longer watching for the light behind his eyes when he said, “Lillian, let Frank stay and play poker with us for a while. He can drive home in my car, and that way you folks can leave just as soon as you want.”
She couldn’t bear to look at John Wayne. She continued to face her husband. She said, “Give me the ticket, Frank.”
And his soul did not return to his eyes as he offered up his independence from the pocket of his rented blue tuxedo.
As Lillian drove above the ditch that would one day become the newest segment of the San Diego Freeway, she wondered aloud at the word she had first heard when she was twelve years old.
“Anarchy.”
They were all three of them too tired. Phil and Arlene hadn’t responded to the word, and this made Lillian question whether she’d even said it. She was thinking about that time in the attorney’s office as she sat waiting to meet her father, her two sisters beside her, stiff as dolls. The humidity of a late summer day in New York City prickled their backsides on the leather couch, but not one of them wanted to admit that she was uncomfortable. The smartly dressed lawyer who had taken their deposition—and would now take them to see the judge—had left his office door open. Lillian watched him skip across the room to give his secretary a piece of paper, and he said, “There could end up being anarchy if we don’t get this out of the office by tonight.” Then, as now, Lillian let the word stand between the back of her throat and the tip of her tongue. There was magic in a word that she didn’t yet know the meaning of. She scooted a little across the leather and tipped her head to see inside the lawyer’s door before it closed, but she learned nothing else.
Now, leaving behind the hardscrabble construction of Newport Boulevard for the cosmic ease and unthinking gravity of the newly built Newport Freeway, her mind was painting itself with all the troubling colors that the word brought to her. Her father’s face in the judge’s chambers was the color of her palm after she’d been making a fist. Her father’s hair was blond like dead grass. Her mother’s eyes looking at him were brown and astonishing like shit discovered under your heel. As they passed through Irvine, Phil pointed at the ancient blimp hangars that dominated the Marine Corps Air Station and said the same thing he must have said on the way out to John Wayne’s party.
“Huge!”
The judge had wanted to know what the children thought of their father, what it was like to live with just their mother, if there was anything the judge could do to improve the quality of their lives. He was an odd but not so very old man, maybe even near her father’s age. He obviously enjoyed talking to children, although he wasn’t good at it. He asked long, complicated questions when simple ones would have been better. He even asked simple questions that the children couldn’t understand. He tried to reassure each of the little girls by touching them, but neither Lillian nor her sisters enjoyed being touched. Lillian’s mother later called him “that relentless little faggot” in a burst of profanity unnatural to her tight little mouth. Although the judge was willing to recognize the evil that had been done by Lillian’s father, he didn’t extend himself too much in making good of it. At one point, he asked all three children, “Don’t you think you would be happier if you could spend some more time with your daddy?” Lillian could feel the air around her mother stiffen, and Lillian was afraid that her own fine white teeth would come flying out of her mouth if she only opened her lips to speak.
Phil repeated himself. “Huge!”
Nothing ever turned out the way she imagined it. And Lillian had a good imagination. Neighborhoods that should have been green and full of lush, bursting trees became neighborhoods that were dry with concrete which was too clean and new, and the few trees there were had to be supported by stakes. Tonight, of all nights, she didn’t want to become the kind of woman who regretted her life. But there it was: she regretted her life. The world, which had been so full of her ambition for herself and her family, now seemed empty and “incomplete,” like the newly built homes that filled the field beside their house on Milford Road. She had wanted to become more than she was, and maybe that was the precise nature of her sin. Until tonight, she hadn’t known herself well enough to understand that these notions were more smoke than fire, more dust than brick, more shudder than real movement in a real direction. If someone were to ask her, she wouldn’t be able to tell him what she’d made with her life. The easy consolation of three children and a home seemed like shit to her. She wanted another context and there just wasn’t any.
“Huge!”
Orange County was growing all around her, but except for those blimp hangars which Phil couldn’t get unstuck from his drunken imagination, there was none of it taller than three stories. It wasn’t like Manhattan, it wasn’t even like the Bronx. Orange County was a short-pile carpet of concrete and wood that the giants of the earth had flopped over the dry desert of Southern California. Lillian had the sense that they could pull it back from the earth whenever they wanted. Although she remembered how much she had hated living there, how much she hated the bonds of family and an old world, New York City was durable in a way California would never be. Back East was where great hard fists of brick adhered to an earth that was solid like the screaming pain of labor, solid like the hardness of hope and the grinding of great dreams.
As they passed out of sight of the blimp hangars, she turned to see if Phil would say it again. He did not.
Arlene smiled, and then, as if called to defend Southern California by a force she was too human to understand, she roused from her highway hypnosis into a sense of herself as the person in the car who had been assigned to keep Lillian happy and alert.
“It sure was a nice party,” Arlene said. “And I wasn’t scared of anyone there. Do you think that was really Dean Martin? Or just someone who looked like him?”