CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Los Angeles, 1959

“He’s going to call you. Even though you were a bit snappish.”

Kathleen and I were sitting in her living room late that afternoon, finishing off a bottle of wine. Actually, I was sitting, and Kathleen was prone on the sofa, her legs propped up on cushions. The sun was setting, sending a soft wash of gold through the room as we talked. We had almost effortlessly bridged the gap that distance had imposed, and I was grateful for that. It felt peaceful to follow each point of light as it touched briefly on my friend’s chairs, pillows, and framed movie posters. The life she was stitching together seemed so much more solid than mine.

“I’m not even thinking about him,” I said. “Anyway, this isn’t high school anymore. I don’t need romantic fantasies.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t be so stuffy,” she said with a giggle.

I relented; Kathleen had a way of pricking almost every balloon I ever launched. “It was strange, seeing him,” I said. “He’s too much part of all that happened.”

Our lunch had been fine—though, as I thought about it, I suspected I had shared more than he had. Or was it just that he listened better? I wondered how it would have gone if Kathleen hadn’t been there.

“Maybe that’s not fair to him, you know?”

I gestured at the walls. “What happened to that framed poster of Ingrid as Joan of Arc you had?”

“Okay, we’ll change the subject if you want.” She sighed and shook her head, her unruly copper hair catching the golden light. She had never bothered much with the latest hairstyles—no careful pageboy for her. “I hung it for a while, but it opened too many conversations.”

Mildly surprised, I raised an eyebrow. “That doesn’t sound like you. Conversations between whom and whom?”

“Between me and Ingrid, if you want to know. I looked at it one day and decided maybe both of us were done with phony saintliness.”

Just as I started to answer, the phone rang. Kathleen smiled in a maddeningly knowledgeable way and reached for it. I quickly took a deep gulp of wine.

It was indeed Malcolm, and I could see how pleased Kathleen was to be right. Grinning, she untangled her extra-long cord, handed the phone to me, and pointed to the back hall. “I work all day tomorrow,” she whispered. “So plan away.”

He suggested lunch, which sounded reasonable; I said yes.

“Good, I’ll pick you up at noon,” he said. “I’ve got something to show you.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s up at the observatory.”

That could only mean the planetarium up in the wilds of Griffith Park. Odd spot for lunch: it was mainly a tourist destination, and usually filled with kids. I had been there several times. “I’ve seen the stars,” I said, a little too briskly. “What is it you want to show me?”

“Something closer to home; you’ll find out. We’ll eat on the grass; I’ll bring picnic stuff.”

He showed up precisely at noon the next day, driving one of those strange German cars they called the Beetle. They weren’t that popular in New York, but I had already seen a number of them zipping along on the highways here, and couldn’t figure out what made such a charmless auto so popular.

“Quit frowning at my poor car,” Malcolm said. He was wearing a wrinkled pair of khakis and scuffed shoes. “I know it’s dirty, but when I get it washed, it’s a pretty decent shade of blue. Great mileage, too.”

I laughed and eased myself into the front seat, uneasy about the lack of any normal-sized car hood in front of us. “Where’s the engine?” I asked.

“It doesn’t need one.”

He grinned at what must have been a startled expression on my face. “It’s in the rear,” he said. “Don’t worry, it’ll get us there.” He nodded to the back seat, where a rattan hamper sat. “And I even remembered to chill the wine.”

The road up through the park to the observatory wound in twists and turns through wide swaths of greenery—I had forgotten how spectacular the view of the city was from up there. Slowly, I relaxed. Malcolm was easy to talk to, full of jokes and banter. I didn’t feel wary, as I had yesterday.

“Do you have any great desire to go into the planetarium itself?” he asked as we pulled into the parking lot at the top of the mountain.

“Not really. I’ve been here several times.”

“Good.” He switched off the engine and pulled the key from the ignition. “What I want to show you is on the west side.”

We walked toward the Astronomers Monument—an Art Deco sculpture honoring six of the world’s astronomers—at the front of the observatory, and I stopped for a moment. “I loved this as a child,” I said. “Copernicus, Galileo—”

“They should’ve put Einstein up there, too,” Malcolm said. “But he was still alive in ’34. They decided it was a bit hasty to include him.”

“A case of being better off dead?”

He chuckled, and pointed. “Here we are.”

In front of us was a large bronze bust crowning a white column. Engraved into the column was a gold star—and a name: “James Dean.”

I peered close at the inscription. “James Dean? The actor? What is he doing here?”

“Surprised, aren’t you? They shot a big scene of Rebel Without a Cause up here early in ’55. Then Dean died in that auto crash; instant sainthood.”

“And they were ready to either toss or auction off Ingrid’s plaque for The Bells of St. Mary’s.”

“Just another case of being better off dead?” His eyes actually danced.

“You want me to laugh.”

He shrugged. “Why not? Contradictions abound; we might as well laugh.” He took my arm. “Okay, let’s go find a spot on a nice private hillside up here and drink some wine.”

We found a place out of sight of the crowds. Malcolm spread a tablecloth, then pulled out two turkey sandwiches, a thick slab of Parmesan cheese, a smaller one of Gruyère, and a package of crackers. Next, he hoisted the bottle of wine. “Is this restaurant okay?” he asked. He actually looked a little anxious.

Everything in me was relaxing. “More than okay.”

Stretching out finally on the soft grass, staring up at the small puffs of clouds above us, he told me how he missed his brother, a brother who had moved to Israel. How his father—who had driven us to and from my prom—had suffered a stroke while Malcolm was in law school. He recovered, but never completely, and wasn’t able to go back to managing full-time the dry-cleaning store that had been the family’s livelihood.

I was more guarded. I told him a little about my years at Bennington, my doomed romance—I could be a bit flippant about it now—which took me to New York; about trying to launch a writing career after the romance was over. He asked what I was writing besides the Barbie-doll piece. I told him about some of the topics, how nothing seemed to jell; how my boring job at Newsweek was paying the bills. I tried to make it sound a little lighthearted, but it didn’t quite work.

At one point, we fell into silence.

He broke it first. “I’ve been thinking about the Redlands speech tournament,” he said.

“Oh dear, that.”

“Your win changed your life. You must have some resentment of me for being part of it.”

“No, it isn’t important. It’s all long ago.”

He was persistent. “I’ve wondered why you cut me off so quickly after your father died.”

A vague wave of irritation swept over me. “What are you talking about? It had nothing to do with you. I had to get away from here.”

“I know that.” His voice was steady. “But something was building between us.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. How could we have any future? We were just children.”

“I wasn’t, damn it. And neither were you.”

I sat up. The mood of the afternoon was shifting.

He reached out a hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m too blunt. I have this way of saying exactly what I’m thinking—bad habit.”

I took a deep breath. “It’s nice to see you again, but, please, don’t push.”

“Okay.” He pulled himself up to a seated position next to me. We were both silent, listening to a pair of quarrelsome hummingbirds in a nearby oak tree darting and jabbing at each other.

“We’ll let them quarrel, right?” I said.

“Yep. Better them than us.”

But something in me wanted to talk. Slowly, at first. Then more and more. I told him how that summer after my father died had changed me. How I kept feeling he was still in our hollowed-out house, how my mother kept pacing at night in the darkness. How I couldn’t sleep. How I threw out all the flowers from the funeral because the mixed smell of roses, lilacs, carnations, and everything else made my stomach lurch. The flowers would decay, just like my father would. He was in an unconsecrated grave, and that didn’t mean anything to me now, but it did then. I avoided dwelling on Mother’s blaming me—there was no use bringing up that terrible deathbed scene. I said I had decided that heroes were laughable, not worth anything. Even Ingrid Bergman.

“Maybe you expect too much.” He said it gently.

“Maybe. What about you?”

“I don’t revere anyone.”

“Do you even believe in God?”

“Not in the sense of some great guy waiting for me in heaven.” He pointed toward the oak tree. “Hey, did you notice? Those two hummingbirds made up and flew away.”

Maybe I knew all along it was going to happen. But when he turned toward me then and reached out a finger to touch my lips, it felt natural. I closed my eyes, the scent of the grass and the earth mixing with the scent of his skin, and let myself gravitate in his direction. It was quick, but startling. We almost jumped apart, looking at each other with surprise.

“Wow, a hummingbird kiss,” he said. “Want to try again?”

I laughed and shook my head. I had a flash of memory: my father, laughing, kissing my mother, demonstrating Ingrid’s artful “hummingbird kiss” in Notorious. “That’s enough,” I said.

He propped himself up on one elbow and looked at me gravely. “Well—I decided at your prom that I would really kiss you someday.”

“Like an item on your must-do list?”

I wanted it to sound playful, but a look of hurt crossed his face—and I knew it hadn’t quite come out that way.

The kitchen in Kathleen’s apartment that night was steamy from a pot of bubbling spaghetti. Frowning, her forehead glistening, Kathleen lifted the pot and drained the water in one quick, expert motion as I finished chopping an onion and tomatoes and flipped them into the frying pan.

“Great, put in some oregano,” she said. “We’re working pretty good as a team. Maybe we could launch a cooking show.”

“Or you could, and I’ll write about it.”

“So how did it go with Malcolm today?”

“It was good,” I said. I struggled with the best way to put it; I was still figuring it out myself. “I think it put some things to rest for him. He seemed touchy about my not saying goodbye.”

“Well, you’re touchy about a few things, too.”

“Sure, but not the same things. Things a lot more important than a high-school romance.”

We sat down at the table, now facing two heaping plates of pasta.

“So did he kiss you?”

“Kathleen…” I wanted to protest, but couldn’t put my heart into it. “A little, okay? It didn’t mean anything. And it’s sort of private.”

She paused, holding a forkful of spaghetti halfway to her mouth. “It never has been before,” she said gently.

Which was true, of course. “It’s just…I’ve got enough to think about here. He was not expected.”

Kathleen shrugged. “You know, I’ve got something to suggest for tomorrow,” she said. “There are some new properties going on the market that I need to check out, and I thought you might like to come along with me. Unless you want to shop for a dress for the Academy Awards.”

I had brought a black skirt and a ruffled blouse, but I knew from the baleful look Kathleen had given them when I unpacked that they weren’t quite up to the job.

“Or…” she added, “we could do both.”

“Let’s start with your houses,” I said, smiling.

“Actually, it’s one house,” she said. “I got the listing last week. And I may already have a buyer.”

There was something odd in the tone of her voice.

“Where is it?”

“Beverly Hills.”

I put down my fork. “Kathleen—”

“Look, I told you I would walk through the past with you. My interested buyer is bringing his family by late in the afternoon—let’s go before they show up. Let’s do it, Jesse.”

I closed my eyes. I knew where we were going, right back to the house where my father and mother had shaped the puzzle of my life, with all the small pieces thrown together, everything from the memory of the evening light playing on their golden cocktails to my mother’s angry protests when my father took me to Italy on that futile, bizarre attempt to bring Ingrid Bergman back to something called “home.” I didn’t want to go. That was the last place I wanted to see.

“Jesse?”

I nodded. “Okay,” I said.