At the Oceana Apartments, he reads the newspaper and drinks his tea. Even after all these years in the United States, he retains a fondness for British habits and British food: tea, treacle pudding, Brussels sprouts, liver with bacon and onions, ginger beer, Black & White whisky.
He is still A.J.’s son.
He is killing time. His mail for today has been answered. The television people have scheduled one of his pictures for later in the afternoon. There is no logic or order to the transmissions. Old follows older, silent follows sound. Sometimes it seems that his past has been cut into pieces and tossed in the air, let the fragments fall where they may.
In the quiet of his apartment, he hums an old music hall tune.
My old man said “Foller the van,
And don’t dilly dally on the way . . .”
Lois, his daughter, liked hearing him sing that song, although he was never a great singer. Babe was different. Babe would sing to pass the time on set. Babe would sing for the joy of singing. Babe would sing “Shine On, Harvest Moon” with Lois on his knee, over and over, and never tire of it, and never tire of her.
He thinks it is a shame that Babe did not have children of his own.
Another lyric intrudes, distracting him, but he cannot place it, not at first.
I love you so
Oh I love my darling Daddy.
He tries to put a melody to this, but he cannot. It must be another music hall song. The lyrics have a certain rhythm, although he could be erring by forcing them into an inapposite form, but they also boast that sickly taint of sentimentality familiar to him from a hundred dusty stages, the singers working to lift the final line to the gods, straining against the molasses glut of mawkishness that threatens, in the hands of the wrong performer, to reduce it to the stuff of mockery.
I love you so
I love you so
Oh I love my darling Daddy.
He sets aside the newspaper, snagged on a spicule of memory.
A card left in Babe’s dressing room. Babe is using the card as a bookmark, the book lying face down, its boards reflected in the mirror. It might have been a study of politics, but he cannot be sure.
When was it: 1928, 1929? He cannot be sure of this either.
But he remembers that the card is handwritten, and the script Myrtle’s. He does not intend to read (he wants to believe), merely glance, but this glance takes in everything before he can look away.
Even now, at the Oceana Apartments, he is ashamed of his actions.
He tells himself that his curiosity is born out of concern for Babe, but if it is, then this concern is tainted by prurience. Despite what Babe has shared with him of his life with Myrtle, and what he has learned from others of Babe’s troubles, he is privy to very little that goes on behind the walls of Babe’s home. He and Babe rarely socialize together outside working hours. They do their socializing on set. They speak regularly on the telephone, but their conversations mostly revolve around scripts and gags.
Perhaps, though, they do not have to speak. Perhaps it is enough to be in each other’s company.
He knows this to be true, because he was there at the end for Babe’s slow dying.
He touches the card with his fingers, turning it to the light, just as, at the Oceana Apartments, he reaches out a hand as though to stop the ghost of himself from intruding on another man’s life, even one bound so intimately to his own. He can visualize the card before him. Why should this moment have lodged when so many others have drifted away?
I am so thankful I have had you all these years may God be good enough to let us go through life together. I love you so, Oh I love my darling Daddy.
Your own honey girl,
On our seventh anniversary, may there be seventy more. And lots of little Hardys to carry it on . . .
Just one “I love you so.” He had it wrong, but not so very wrong.
This is Myrtle, Myrtle the drunk. He wonders how many shots Myrtle had consumed when she wrote this anniversary card to Babe. Just enough, probably: another hour or two and Myrtle would have been writing Babe a very different note, if she could write at all.
There would be no little Hardys. Babe must have known, even then. Babe and Myrtle might have discussed the possibility of children when Myrtle was temporarily sober following one of her periods in the sanitarium, or when she was telling Babe how sorry she was after she relapsed, and Babe would have lied and told his Sweetest Little Baby that, yes, they would try, and, yes, she would be a wonderful mother, and yes, yes, yes, but Babe knew. There would be no children, not with this woman, and none at all if Babe remained with her.
Yet Babe could not abandon Myrtle.
So Babe would go to work, and sing “Shine On, Harvest Moon” to the children of other men.