CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Los Angeles, 1950

I sat on my bed, looking around my room. There wasn’t much left here of me. It reflected the decorator who had taken over after we moved—a woman with the husky voice of a Lauren Bacall. Wearing a slash of scarlet lipstick that always looked like it had been applied in anger, she had burst in with authoritative confidence. That quickly intimidated Mother, and I had ended up nodding assent to pretty much anything she decreed.

As a result, my four-poster bed now hoisted high a white dotted-swiss canopy that felt to me appropriate for a ten-year-old. The decorator took down my movie posters of Bing Crosby and Perry Como, but I had rescued them from the trash and stuck them under the bed. The only fight I put up was over the big poster of Ingrid as Joan of Arc. It had been rehung, but right now, as I stared at it, I felt empty.

I realized, even before opening the first envelope, that I didn’t belong here anymore.

Stanford University is pleased to report that you have been accepted as a member of the freshman class of 1950. Congratulations.

I sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the official-looking welcoming message, waiting for the wave of euphoria I had expected would wash over me. It didn’t come. More slowly this time, I opened the three remaining, staring at each one.

Bennington College. Congratulations.

Marymount College. Congratulations.

UCLA. Congratulations.

Still no euphoria. I should be bursting through the bedroom door, announcing this triumph to my parents, basking in their delight and pride, feeling on top of the world. It wasn’t happening.

I sat as still as I could, listening to the Baby Ben clock ticking away on the nightstand, counting the seconds, sorting out my thoughts. I knew within a few minutes what I wanted—and suddenly felt calm.

Which college was farthest away?

A click; the doorknob turned.

“Okay,” said my father as the door swung open. “What’s the story? Don’t shut us out, kid.”

“No rejections,” I said. “And scholarship money, too.”

Mother smiled with that clearly relieved, brittle smile she reserved for good news these days. “Well, congratulations, Jesse,” she said. “Maybe—”

“I’m going to Bennington.”

“You’ve decided already? Vermont? Jesse, Bennington is a fine college….” Mother stopped, perhaps sensing anything she said would be coming too late.

“No, I’ve decided.”

Father was staring at me. “You would turn down Stanford?” he said. “They don’t admit many women; it’s an honor to be accepted. For God’s sake, why Bennington?”

“I think it would be a good place for me.” I couldn’t quite bring myself to tell them the truth, but I knew it with full conviction. I wanted to get as far away from here as possible, and I didn’t ever want to look back. I had been given a pole vault, and I was going to use it.

The cloud over my father was not going away. When I caught vague snatches of his conversations with Mother, I heard the word “pinko” a few times, which wasn’t surprising. Everybody in the movie business was suspected of being a communist these days. Even Mother was gently told by the unwed mothers’ home that her help would not be needed “for a while,” pleading “overstaffing.” She didn’t complain. I didn’t try to say anything, but volunteered to do the dishes when I heard the news. Talking wouldn’t help.

As for reaction to my Redlands speech? Louella Parsons was happy to stoke the flames. I had hoped she would ignore it, maybe have a little sympathy, claiming my father as a “friend,” in Hollywood terms. But it only took her a couple of days to dedicate her entire column to my “scandalous” behavior, quoting generously from the speech. She accused Ingrid Bergman of besmirching the morals of even this young daughter of Hollywood. How uncaring could that selfish woman be?

“The tragedy?” Louella, a devout Catholic herself, wrote. “Bishop Francis Doyle had no choice. He had to order Jessica Malloy’s removal as valedictorian of the graduating class at Saint Ann’s Academy to avert further scandal. A price must be paid.”

Father gently pulled the paper from me. “The vultures are gathering,” he said. “They’re after me, not you.”

“What do you mean? You said she was mad because you didn’t give her an exclusive on Ingrid’s baby.”

“It’s gone deeper. She knows how to get on the winning side,” he said.

I saw that now familiar tense look on his face, and felt my worries about him resurfacing. At the same time, I struggled to detach. I could do nothing about those worries; I could only remind myself I wasn’t going to be swallowed up by them. I would concentrate on what I had achieved, and try to forget how quickly my big honor had turned to dust. I had done something good, not bad. And nobody could take away the speech tournament prize—no bishop or sniping columnist, nobody whispering behind my back; nobody, especially not my parents. Only my father could truly hurt me. And he had already done that.

I was late leaving school a few days later, hurrying for the bus stop, slinging my book bag over my shoulder. My bus was just pulling away. Frustrated, I plopped down on the bus bench. Couldn’t something go right?

“Hi.” A boy’s voice. I squinted into the light.

It was Malcolm, the boy from the Redlands Tournament, his dark hair flung back carelessly, a friendly grin stretching his mouth wide. “I just thought I’d drop by and see how you were doing,” he said with genuine casualness. “I kind of got you into all this.”

“Yeah, I guess you did.” I wasn’t giving an inch for anybody.

He sat down next to me. “You were really good,” he said. “And you should give the finger to people like Louella Parsons and the rest of that crowd.”

I smiled, felt myself relenting. “What’s your last name?” I asked.

His last name was Carvello, and he was Italian, and a junior at Dorsey High. He wore a pair of baggy chinos and his hands were short and thick, and he was funny. He made jokes. I didn’t have to endure guarded sympathy; he just straight-out said I had been “fucked,” just like that, and I wasn’t put off at all. We talked about getting into speech work, how much fun it was, about the excitement of winning, about our very different schools. Easy stuff, natural. No pauses, no tension.

My next bus was turning the corner; it would be here in a few seconds. I really didn’t want to go.

“Do you want to come up to my house?” I asked impulsively.

He shrugged and gave me his grin. “Sure, why not?”

The bumpy ride went faster than usual, and I felt relaxed for the first time in a while. I was opening the front door when he reached down and pulled up a postal package half hidden by one of Mother’s azalea bushes.

“Did somebody miss this?” he said.

I looked at the return address and took in a sharp breath. “What I won? My cup—they’ve engraved it?”

He laughed. “Jeesh, how many people forget winning a gold cup?”

“Oh, Malcolm…” I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.

We went inside and sat down in the living room. Mother was in the kitchen, but I didn’t want to open this in front of her. I quickly tore off the wrappings and pulled out my dazzling cup, hoisting it up for a critical look.

“Oh God, it’s not real gold?” Malcolm gasped. “Shouldn’t you complain?”

I laughed, tracing the engraved letters of my name with my finger, feeling suddenly, unexpectedly, and happily proud of what I had done. When I heard Mother coming into the living room to meet Malcolm, I quickly stuffed the cup back in its box and tucked it behind the bookcase. Malcolm raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. His eyes were sympathetic.

We took a long walk that afternoon, trudging along the lush hedges on winding roads through Beverly Hills. I showed him some of the glamour spots, like the house where Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford had lived, but mainly I told him about meeting Ingrid Bergman when I was a small girl, and why she mattered to me. He said that he understood loyalty, that his hero was Jackie Robinson, and no matter what he was or ever did, Malcolm would never desert him. He told me about his family—too many brothers and sisters, but they were okay—and did I like hot dogs, because if I did, he knew where we could get the tastiest ones in the city, if I didn’t mind walking a few miles; they didn’t sell hot dogs in places like Beverly Hills. “Probably too much to do today,” he said.

And I heard myself respond, “Well, maybe tomorrow?”

We began meeting each other a few days a week after school, doing offbeat things like taking a bus to Chinatown, where he took me into a Szechuan restaurant and introduced me to a duck dish smoked over tea leaves and twigs. “It’s from the camphor plant,” he told me, as if I was supposed to know what that was.

He saw my befuddlement and grinned. “I learned that by reading the back side of the menu,” he said.

I realized in the first several days that Malcolm never pretended to know more than he knew, no matter what. We talked school, we talked movies; only when he enthused over baseball did my attention wander. He would laugh at himself for not being as up on chemistry as I was, and tell me he never could keep his shirt tucked in properly, which drove his mother crazy.

“I like the look,” I said impulsively.

He gave me an almost shy glance, his expression thoughtful.

Two weeks in, we were swinging together in a neighborhood playground one afternoon, when he silently took my hand. We swung in rhythm—for once, in silence. Comfortable silence.

“My senior prom is coming up,” I ventured. “I’m wondering, would you be interested in that?”

“You mean, be your date?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said slowly. “But you should know, my mom’s Jewish, which means I am. And my dad is Italian, sort of a Catholic, I guess, but he hasn’t been in any kind of church for years.” His voice was very matter-of-fact.

“So what?”

“Won’t your school disapprove?”

I laughed; I actually laughed. “They can’t do anything to me anymore,” I said. And I truly began to believe it.

My parents were a little startled when I told them I had a date for the prom. Not so long ago, my dad would have wanted to meet Malcolm first, but that seemed the least important thing as the weeks passed, to them or to me. Oh, they asked about him. I didn’t mention Malcolm’s role in what happened at the speech tournament. My mother raised an eyebrow when I said Malcolm was a junior at Dorsey High, but neither of them reacted when I told them he was half Jewish. Their focus was on other things. It felt like our house was collectively holding its breath, waiting for something—I wasn’t sure what. I would catch snatches of their murmurings, enough to learn they were thinking of selling the house, just in case. Father’s face had a pasty look all the time, and it was Mother who seemed the strong one now. But cold. It was as if she had turned to ice.

Malcolm showed up on the night of the prom with a big grin and an orchid in a little plastic box. “My mother insisted,” he said as he shook hands with my parents. “Personally, I think roses are prettier.”

“Me, too,” I said, liking him all the more for not being deferential.

It was a little jarring to see an older man with Malcolm’s same cheerful grin sitting in the driver’s seat of the car. I tried not to show my surprise when he introduced his father. I hadn’t thought about the fact that Malcolm was only seventeen, too young yet for anything more than a learner’s permit. I tucked that small piece of reality away to think about later. Malcolm was casual about it, and his father assured us he would disappear the minute he dropped us off.

I had dreamed of prom all through high school. It was always held in the glamorous Beverly Hills Hotel, allowing each year’s senior class of convent-school girls to sail through the lobby, peeking around corners to spot various Hollywood stars, feeling resplendent in their ice-cream-hued gowns adorned with net. But I couldn’t play the fairy-tale game anymore. I felt I was an actor in a play that was no longer real.

Oh, I had a reasonably good time. Kathleen gave me a quick thumbs-up after I introduced her to Malcolm, telling me in the ladies’ room she thought he was more mature than any of the other boys there. Malcolm and I danced past Philip and his new date, and I could see the flush of red around Philip’s collar. Good riddance to you, I wanted to shout. There were awkward moments—Malcolm was asked a few times where he was going to college, given that it was the topic upmost on all of my classmates’ minds. “Don’t know,” he said breezily. “I don’t graduate until next year.” I saw the darting, giggly looks from the other girls when they heard that.

Midnight. The lights dimmed, and the band swung lazily into “Good Night, Ladies.” Malcolm pulled me close, so close I could inhale the scent of his body. I felt an unexpected stirring as he placed my hand close to his chest; his fingers resting—no, moving—near my breast. I wanted to press closer.

What was I thinking? I pulled back.

Malcolm gazed at me steadily as the band finished the song. Flustered, I asked if he could bring my wrap from the cloakroom; it was time to go home. He did, tucking Mother’s best shawl over my shoulders with gently lingering pressure. “Let’s talk,” he said.

We tucked ourselves into a shadowy corner of the spacious hotel lobby with its richly dark-paneled walls, his arm now resting comfortably around me, reliving the evening as we waited for his father to arrive. He seemed his breezy self again.

“Do nuns always forbid strapless gowns?” he asked. “I saw a couple of your classmates getting scolded. Seems kind of strange.”

“Yes,” I said, feeling a little embarrassed. We must have seemed awfully provincial to him.

“If dressing kind of…demurely is important, why do they have the prom here?”

We both scanned the room. It was filled with the usual opulence of Hollywood—women in pearls wearing low-cut silk and swinging jeweled purses; men in cashmere jackets, draped languorously against the lobby bar—everything a world of money and sophistication away from a convent school.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Good question.”

“It doesn’t work, does it?” he said quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“You and me,” he said.

“Why do you say that?”

“We’re not very much alike. Your friends think I’m kind of different or exotic, and I think they are.” He said it easily, no mockery.

I wasn’t sure what to say.

“Look, I got you through your prom, and I know that mattered. I’m glad I could do that.”

“Malcolm, I didn’t ask you just to get me through the prom,” I said quickly.

“I know, and I didn’t come over to your house just to see you unwrap your ersatz gold cup. But maybe it’s not enough.”

He leaned close, as if to kiss me on the cheek, but, in a reflex motion, I drew away. His eyes showed disappointment.

“Malcolm…” I paused. I had all sorts of things I wanted to say, but nothing seemed up to his matter-of-fact statement. He was trying to give me a bridge; I had to use it.

“I’m going off to college in a few months,” I said. “It doesn’t make sense to start anything now.”

Just a moment, a pause; an assessment. “I know that. You’ve got big stuff coming up,” he said.

I could have said something about coming home at Christmas, but I wasn’t sure if I would. “I like you very much—” I began.

He broke me off. “I’ll tell you something, Jesse Malloy,” he said quietly. “We’re only talking about right now.”

He flashed a grin, then waved to his father, who was now in the lobby, scanning the crowd. “And guess what? I’ll even have a driver’s license.”

I laughed. He was such a relaxed friend. Yet I doubted we would see each other after the summer. It was true, he made me feel like a grown-up when I was with him, not just a girl attracted to a funny boy. Maybe there could be more. But there was no way I would come back to Los Angeles to find out.

Late April floated past in a haze of showers and blooming marigolds, drifting into May. We seniors were wearing saffron-hued cotton summer skirts now, a privilege that was intended to make us feel like grown-ups, to lighten the mood, to build anticipation for graduation. I liked being free of my black dress and tie, but I felt too old for the party atmosphere, oddly free of everybody.

Those last days of my years at Saint Ann’s were bittersweet. I wandered the halls and gardens in a mood of nostalgia, trying to knit it all together. I could easily remember that first day, when Mother brought me here, when I dreaded being swallowed up by strange teachers swathed in black. And now, in many ways, I loved this place. It had been a haven, of sorts.

But the nostalgia didn’t last. I refocused on the fact that there were no more newspaper stories about Ingrid that featured me, so I could walk into class without feeling sick to my stomach. And I sensed an aura of sympathy from some of my classmates, and even from some of the nuns.

I also felt increasingly impatient with my father. He wasn’t the same person anymore, and I didn’t bother trying to talk with him more than was necessary. He held his shoulders tight, almost hunched, at the dinner table. There were no lighthearted stories about the stars, no gossip about impending Hollywood divorces. No laughter. Worse, very little warmth between Mother and him.

Still, she spoke in his defense one evening. “Your father is enduring a tough time,” she ventured, watching him settled into his living-room chair, staring at the newspaper.

“Well, he caused some tough times, too,” I retorted.

“He’s being targeted by rumors,” she said.

“Oh, I heard you talking about ‘pinkos,’ ” I said airily. “He’s not a communist—at least, that’s what he says.”

“He has friends who are.”

“Like Jerry Feldstein?” I felt that was daring of me. There had been more phone calls between him and Father, though no poker games.

Mother ignored my question, looking away as she spoke. “The rumors could weaken Gabriel at the studio. Your speech just added to the tension.”

Was this her version of forgiving him? I didn’t know; if it was, it was qualified. I wanted to worry about my father, but even after his apology, I couldn’t forget his anger that night in the parking lot. And Mother? Remembering her weeping over those awful letters on the dining-room table made me cringe inside. So much passion, and now she was all locked up, as usual. So I said nothing.

She leaned down, opened the oven door, and brought out a Pyrex dish of baked chicken, then briskly changed the subject. “I haven’t heard you mention Malcolm since the prom. He seemed like a nice boy.”

“He’s too young for me,” I snapped.

She didn’t ask for more. In a display of righteous superiority, without asking permission, I picked a chicken leg out of the dish and strolled out of the kitchen.