“Hello yourself. How’re you doing?”
“All right, I guess. They don’t complain about me. I may be getting out of here soon. Maybe.”
“Good news, baby.” I kissed her. She didn’t look so hot. “Not off your feed, are you?”
“A little.” She pulled a droll face. “How’s Jenny?”
It was my turn to make a face. I explained that Jenny was still in London and for the time being we’d agreed to disagree. I said I’d been in touch with Donna, but just now April seemed more interested in my vicissitudes than in my correspondence with her mother. I dealt with my boring story briefly, then maneuvered the conversation around to her again. “Well, beauty, how’s it going? And remember, this is your old pal Chazz. Don’t try to kid me.”
“I guess you know—I lost the son and heir, woe is me.” Woe is her was right. When I touched her hand, it started to tremble and her face began working; I slipped quickly to her side and put my arms tight around her.
“Don’t, hey, don’t, please.” I might have said, “Hey, it won’t help,” but maybe it would have; whose arms had she cried in lately? Who was there for her to turn to except guys with Easter Island faces and shrink degrees from Vienna? She had every right to shed tears. What worse calamity for a woman than to lose the baby of her body? April was a staunch and stalwart girl; but I knew that she’d suffered profoundly the loss of this child—Frank’s child, which she’d endured so much to bring into the world, only to find out eleven days later that the baby had died in its crib, what the doctors call S.I.D.—Sudden Infant Death—fine one minute, not breathing the next. It had been a bitter, bitter blow, one she never fully recovered from. Her guilt had been overwhelming. Did people think she’d suffocated it on purpose? Did Frank think she’d been negligent? Had she been? Lots of nutty ideas like that.
In time her body healed, but her mind was something else again; that was unstitched, too, and soon began to unravel.
“Sorry, honey, I’m so sorry. I know how much you wanted it.” She had me weeping against her cheek; this scene really undid me. I mean, what do you say? Frank’s kid.
“He wanted it so much,” she said, pulling some Kleenex from a box on the table, some for her, some for me. We blotted up each other’s faces. “I guess it just wasn’t in the cards.” She sniffed and balled her tissue, then backboarded it into the waste-basket. “Bad genes, maybe. I read this article that says everything’s in the genes. I wanted him to be a present to Frank. He wanted it so much. Damn. I screwed up his kid. And now there won’t be any more, doctor says.”
I told her she wasn’t the first one all this had happened to. “It’s how things happen sometimes.” In my heart I pitied her, a thing I knew she’d hate me for, and I masked it as best I could, saying that since it was such a lovely day outside, why not enjoy it?
Outside, nature seemed to spread itself generously on all sides as if purely for our benefit—green, green everywhere, with patches of flowers and attractive glimpses of water. I could see that she was receiving good treatment, and what was better, she seemed to be responding. But she was having problems, lots of problems. By now it was pretty clear to her that the movie career was in jeopardy, but she didn’t care about that. Surprisingly, she also failed to show much interest in ever getting it together with Frank again. It was a case of a bit too much water over the dam, I thought, too much blood under the bridge.
“Frank…” I began, then stopped, wondering how to go on with what I had to tell her.
She smiled. “Yes? Frank what?” She spoke quickly, as if to dispense with the matter in a businesslike fashion. “What about him?”
“I talked to him the other day. I told him—in fact I promised him I’d come and see you.”
“How is Frank?” she asked. I didn’t like the way that question sounded; flat, impersonal, uncaring.
Fine, I replied, Frank was fine.
“He always is, isn’t he?” I glanced quickly at her, searching for something behind the words, but I could tell from her blank expression there was nothing hidden intended; it was only a commonplace. “What’s he up to these days?”
Those last words answered my unspoken question; she hadn’t heard from him, was probably ignorant of the recent changes in his life. I mentioned one or two matters involving him that I thought might arouse her interest, but she showed little. Then I said, “I’m supposed to tell you—he wants you to know: Frances is in the hospital.”
April was genuinely upset. “Nothing serious, I hope.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Oh.” She lowered her lids as though to obscure her thought. “Poor, poor Frank. As if he didn’t have enough problems. What is it? Not cancer?” I nodded. “Can they do anything?”
I shook my head. “It seems to be that old question of time.”
“Oh.”
I paused fractionally, then: “April?”
“Yes?”
“Do you understand what that means? If Frances dies, I mean?”
“Oh God.” She shut her eyes again and sat down abruptly on a bench, as if her knees had given out all at once. “Don’t say it. Please, Charlie, I don’t want to hear it.”
“Hear what?”
“What you’re getting up the nerve to say. Whatever you’ve come here to tell me. If it’s about Frank—I don’t want to hear it.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do. Charlie—this is it. I’m not going to see him anymore. I’m sorry his wife’s dying, but I don’t want to see him. I’m cutting off. I’m getting out. Before—before—”
“Before you hurt him more, you mean.”
“No! Before I go—g-go down the tubes.”
“You’re not going down the tubes—don’t say that.”
“I am, I am, I feel it, every day it gets worse. They can’t really help me here, I tell you it’s not going to work!”
“What makes you think that?”
Her sad smile as she shook her head; I’ll never forget it. She was turning in her number; they’d retire it, of course, but the game was over. And what then?
“April, honey, listen to me, you’re upset. The baby, Frank—don’t—don’t tell him this, not now—not yet.”
“No, Charlie. I want you to tell him. I want you to go to him and tell him I’ve stopped loving him, that no matter what happens I can’t marry him, that he can’t marry me. It isn’t possible anymore. It’s too late. The boat sailed. The good ship Lollipop.” She gave a hopeless shrug, then laughed. “It’s like Rebecca, isn’t it? The first wife, reaching back from the grave to twist the lives of those who come after; the second wife, who’s so mousy she doesn’t even have a name—except Rebecca had a happy ending, didn’t it? I don’t think there’s a happy ending for me and Frank.” She shook her head sadly. “No, I don’t think so….”
She trailed off into some vague distance. I had to say something, just to break the silence. “He’d come and see you if you’d let him. Let him, honey, please let him.”
“No, I don’t think so. Paris was—well, Paris, but I don’t want to see him anymore. Besides, it’s bound to get into the papers—Hedda would have a field day. So let’s skip it, hm?” Her voice was hollow and she spoke with utter finality. “Do you need any more explanation?” she added.
No, I said, not really; she didn’t owe anyone any explanations. Except maybe Frank.
“You’ll do that for me, won’t you, please? Put it the best way you know how, tell him—” She broke off, got up, walked in a circle with her hands over her face. After a little while she took them away and I saw her defeated look. She tried to brighten it a bit, saying, “I’m really sorry about Frances, though. It’s an awful thing, cancer. I dread the thought.”
I, too, was dreading the thought—the thought that, for no reason I could comprehend, she was turning thumbs down on any possible future with Frank. Worse, I had this feeling about her—this really bad feeling. Screws were being loosened, the back door was coming off its hinges.
; When I asked about her future plans, she grew cloudy, the light dimmed. “Will you be coming back to Hollywood?” I asked. “I saw in Variety how they’re holding the Wilder picture open for you.”
“It’s a lovely part, but I don’t think—I’m sure I won’t be doing it. I don’t think I’d be up to it.”
“Well, Frank mentioned he was looking for something for you, his own production, good part… lotsa bucks?”
She shook her head. “Frank’s just being frivolous again. I don’t think—well, I just think he’d be unwise. Anyway, I couldn’t make another picture, I can’t act anymore. I’d be too afraid.”
I hated it all, but I had to take it as the gospel according to April. She volunteered the information that her mother was coming to stay with her, and I thought that was a good idea. Certainly someone should be with her; the doctor said she was disinclined to make friends among the patients. Then she rose abruptly and faced me.
“You’re sweet, Chazz,” she said, “and I appreciate your coming to see me. But—” She shaded her eyes. “Here comes Miss Menzies. It’s time for my routine. Miss Menzies is really a clockwork nurse.”
I felt devastated. More, I was angry. Here I’d thought I was bringing her tidings that could alter her entire life, and she’d just steamrolled the whole thing. Down, down, she was on the down escalator. I couldn’t get her off it.
I left her in the garden and drove despondently back to New York. The car radio wasn’t playing but I kept hearing music in my ears, sad, bitter music. I was being forced to acknowledge something I didn’t want to believe: no matter what help she was getting at the Retreat, it wasn’t going to be enough. Nothing was ever going to be enough now; there wasn’t any cure for what ailed her.
Donna did come on; she stayed in the Hartford area for over a month, doing her best, but her best wasn’t good enough. She had a job and was obliged to return. It was through Donna that I learned that Bud Ayres had taken over the watch, was in fact staying at a nearby hotel to be close to April. This news naturally made its way into print, and soon reporters began descending on the place from New York and Boston. By this time Bud was adept at dealing with the press, and, using his considerable charm, he fended off the reporters as well as anyone could. You had to hand it to them, though; the guys were sympathetic to his plight, for he made it plain that he loved April and wanted to marry her as soon as she was well enough. The old saw rang true, “All the world loves a lover,” and April and Bud had everyone rooting for them. People wanted them to win out, to get together and be a married couple; they wanted them to have the success and happiness that were supposed to accrue to them by virtue of their being movie stars. It went with the package: there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
As for the other leading couple in the drama, the matter of divorce between Frances and Frank, of course, hung fire as she faced her illness and eventual end. And if Frank had any idea of what was going on in Hartford, he certainly wasn’t saying—not to me, not to anybody. With time Frances’s condition had become stabilized and she was reported to be in remission. He spent hours, days, at the hospital, where there was little he could do to help. But he was there.
Then he had a bad blow, a terrible one. Maxine Fargo died unexpectedly. He’d gone down the week before and taken her out to dinner; afterward they’d stopped by the Buckaroo to have drinks with Angie, then started for San Bernardino and home. He noticed that Maxine looked tired, but she kept insisting she was all right. Three days later Chui Alvarez, the Mexican on the place, telephoned to say that she was real bad and Frank should hurry. He’d promised Frances to come to the hospital, and this delayed him, so that by the time he got to San Bernardino, Maxine was gone. Chui took him out to the garden to show him where she’d had her attack.
“There, Señor Frank, in the tomato patch.” He pointed to the flattened plants where she’d been stricken. Frank sank down on an overturned peach basket and wept. “Mamma mia, Mamma mia.” He was not to be comforted, and Chui had to drive him back to town. For weeks after, he remained profoundly shaken, trying to encompass his loss. It was as though Maxine dead meant that everyone in the world was fallible, everyone’s time must come, including his own.
Desperate to do something, he declared that his mother was going to have the biggest and best funeral anyone ever had, though his mother had expressly asked for a quiet end. He argued with the priest for hours, but finally gave in. The obsequies were limited and circumspectly handled. He wanted her buried at Forest Lawn, but Father Mendoza said that her desire was to rest in the desert, the closer to her garden the better.
Among the host of condolences he received was one he showed me. It was a typical Hallmark type card with suitable sentiments inside, signed not with a name but simply as “a friend.” He asked me to look at the handwriting; was it April’s? I examined the words, but truthfully I couldn’t tell. I even compared it with the signature on a birthday card she’d once sent me, but still I couldn’t tell.
One day Feldy Eskenazy telephoned, asking if she could come and see me; she had something to tell. Yes, I said, come up soonest.
Feldy was much more a part of our lives in this period than I’ve probably indicated. Far more than just my acting coach, she’d become a friend. There was no nonsense to her, and she told me straight out what she’d come to say. Yesterday afternoon April and Kit Carson had married in Connecticut and were honeymooning in Nassau. Our first thought was naturally of Frank: had he heard, and how would he take it? Feldy thought it better for me to break the news—that was what April had wanted. I stopped by his office that evening and relayed the details. He took it philosophically, but I could see how badly it hurt him to hear it. Despite everything that had happened, he had hoped against hope that things would somehow iron themselves out, but now she’d turned to Bud, and that was that.
Later he went to Orgell’s and sent them a classy Georgian wine cooler as a wedding gift.
We stood by, along with all his other friends, helpless to do much more than stay close. He handled everything with strength and sureness. A stranger couldn’t have told from his calm demeanor that he was being torn to pieces inside. At the office it was business as usual, and he had a new girl he’d discovered and was going to bring along. He did things—went to dinners, or down to the Springs overnight to play some tennis with Angie, see his friends, have a few laughs with Alice Faye and Phil Harris at the Racquet Club, then hop back to town and take up his chair at the hospital again.
And he was always interested to hear news of April and Bud. By now Bud was doing a picture in the East (this was Red Coat Hunt, being shot in the Tidewater and fox-hunting country of Virginia) and his co-star was none other than his bride. It was April’s wedding present to him, her promise to do the film, since she’d already said she wouldn’t make any more pictures. It proved to be a lucky gamble. Bud had talked her into it as a therapeutic device, the doctors had approved, and the result was the most popular picture either of them ever made—as well as the last.
Frank never said anything about it to me, but I learned through his office that, although he’d found the story and originally set Bud up in the deal, before shooting began Bud had written asking for his agency release and April’s as well. I thought then that it was a lousy thing for him to have done, but later I saw that he was probably right, that they both should have representation elsewhere. Things were much too close with Frank, and they needed a less personal professional environment. Frank took it all with good grace. Then, when the picture was finished, Bud and April stayed on in the East, having fallen in love with the state of Virginia; soon afterward, they bought a farm there and took up being horse folk.
Almost at once the Carsons were in solid with the hunting set, and would make another picture only if they really liked the script. Meanwhile, they were enjoying country life and starting a herd of Herefords. The apple trees blossomed pink and white in May at High Farm, the purple clover came in and the alfalfa, and the two-year-old
s threw their foals, and Squire Carson and wife were out in rough-out boots, chopping kindling and digging postholes for a new paddock. There was never talk anywhere of any baby; there was no nursery room at High Farm. Remembering Passy, I already had the answer there: no little Kits or Kats would be running about the pastures of High Farm in Virginia.
Then Frances died in California. By now Jenny and I had made up our differences and she’d returned from London. We’d taken a jaunt down to an isolated little spot in Mexico we were fond of, and one afternoon a boat carried over a message from Frank. We caught the next plane out of Puerto Vallarta and arrived home in time to catch him on the eleven o’clock local news. He looked haggard, and a host of reporters and cameramen were shoving microphones at his face.
With Frances’s death, he was bound to assume the burden of guilt. He’d experienced a lot of anguish, bad health had dogged him through the preceding four or five years, and he was feeling the strain. He’d set himself a Spartan vigil to see Frances through to the end, knowing it was what she wanted, to go out as though nothing had ever come between them, nothing had happened in their married life to cause the least rift, the slightest pain. With her, appearances were everything, even the passage through Death’s Door. She had herself well buttressed with the Church, the Bishop, the Archbishop, the old family priest, Father Mallory, the nuns, and of course her own blood sister, Sister Mary Rose, all gathered around, joining hands as though to ward off the evils attendant on her for having been for over twenty-five years the devoted wife of the well-publicized and controversial Hollywood figure, the loving, patient, and understanding wife of Frank Adano.
Frances was laid to rest in the family vault at her aunt’s house in Pasadena. I was there, and when I saw those bronze doors swing shut on the sepulcher I thought of that poor, unhappy woman and all the misery she’d caused in one lifetime. Afterward, Frank asked me to ride back in his car and I sat beside him amid the gray velvet upholstery, watching the freeway traffic hustle by on both sides. Most limousine drivers are such careful drivers, pokey, even, wouldn’t speed if their lives depended on it. We crept and thought, and he swigged some from the flask he’d brought along. I’d brought a flask. He didn’t talk, neither did I. But I thought we must be thinking the same thing: Frances was dead, Frank was free. But where was April? Foxhunting in Virginia.