“And, tell me, do you like the movies?” she asked.
“Oh yes!” I exclaimed. “I’ve loved movies all my life—there’s nothing like the movies, nothing in the world.”
“Well, nobody could ever call you a cynic, could they? I’m glad when people get excited about something—even the movies. Maybe you’ll take me some night; pick out something fun and we’ll go.”
A date with Maude Antrim? How much could a fellow take? It wasn’t so very long before the moment came when I presumed to spring on her the lines I’d rehearsed. I straightened in my seat and said, “You wouldn’t remember, I know, but we have met before.”
She didn’t bat an eye. “I remember. It was Christmas of fifty-five or -six—at the post office, just before closing, you were driving a gray Ford convertible, you pulled into the parking lot and I had trouble backing out—wasn’t that it?” I stared, speechless with admiration. “You were very gallant,” she pursued. “You said ‘Merry Christmas, Miss Antrim,’ and waved me off. I’ve kept up with you, you know. Frank has few secrets from me; I’m always interested in his clients.”
I sat mired in astonishment; this was nearly twenty years after the fact. I could remember, sure, but she? She smiled at me as if such computerized memory were nothing remarkable.
Soon she began asking the kind of questions that seemed to indicate genuine interest in me, and as we talked she grew and enlarged in my favor. By now I’d had two cups of tea and had stayed nearly an hour; it was time to drag myself away. “Oh, please don’t go,” she said quickly as I set down my cup and stood up, “I hate sending you out into this mess. Why not stay a bit and we’ll have a little tuck right here by the fire—get acquainted. Ling will broil us a steak, a few steamed vegetables—we can just put the potatoes in the coals. Please say you’ll stay, won’t you?”
I would. I did. And a joyful thing that was, one of the unforgettable evenings of my life. I’d come at six, I stayed well past ten. While the Asp slipped in and out with trays of dinner, quiet as a snake, we talked and talked, shoes, ships, sealing wax, cabbages, even kings. I had to keep pressing her to talk about herself; she couldn’t imagine anyone’s being interested in someone her age. “I’m just a used-to-be, Mis-tah Caine.” She was equally reluctant to discuss her films, but was flattered I’d seen so many of them, all the way back to that one with Mr. Cooper.
“Most of the new films are so awful, aren’t they? Really, why can’t they make better ones? I suppose the wonder is that anyone ever manages to make any good ones at all. It’s so difficult. Comes of joint effort, you know, teamwork. You have to have a good creative team, that’s all. Now all they care about are deals. Well, I did have some darned good pictures. Crispin and I both were lucky that way. Good writers, we had some good writers. It’s all the story anyway; you know that, I’m sure. This film Blindy’s doing—not a terribly good script, I’m afraid. Well, she has a couple of good scenes. Some meat on the bones. And as long as I’ve brought up her name—Blindy—of course I’ve done it on purpose, Mis-tah Caine, because I want to thank you for what you did for her.” When I started to protest she stopped me with a gesture. Imperious Maude. “No, no, I’m sure you don’t want to be thanked—but I thank you. Blindy’s very valuable to me. She’s m’girl, you know. She’s hoed a rough row and she’s come through with flying colors, thanks to you and others. Wonderful thing, your group—friends of Bill, hm?” Her look became intimate, signifying that what we were speaking of was just between us. “And what Frank’s done for her!” she added. “I swear to goodness, he’s made another woman out of her. You wait till she gets here, you’ll see what I mean.”
“Have you spoken with her lately?” I asked.
That laugh. It pealed out and rang bells. “You wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t,” she said. “I don’t rent to just anybody, you know. It was Belinda who gave you the imprimatur.”
“I’m flattered you let me come.”
She waved a feathery hand, created a moment out of thin air. “No need, no need. Enjoy—enjoy!”
“Frank tells me she’s in good shape these days.”
“Fortunately, she is in good shape, after a very bumpy road, thank you. Gallant, she is. Crispin used to say a gallant horse, a gallant woman, and a halfway decent port were the stuff of life. I’d die if anything happened to Belinda. ’Nuff said on that score.”
When I asked when Belinda would be arriving, I got a shrug. “You know Blindy, she’ll come when she comes. One morning she’ll pop up, who knows when. She has Faun with her these days. I’m sure you know about Faun.”
The way in which she said “Faun” spoke loud and clear. Viola had told me one day that Belinda was experiencing her usual troubles with her daughter, who was now twenty-four years old. Old enough to know better, I thought. At any rate, I didn’t pursue the topic.
Maude went on, deftly maneuvering the conversation away from herself, talking about my books—clearly she had read them with care, and I was ridiculously flattered, but who wouldn’t be? And, inevitably, Frank’s name came up again. She spoke of him at length, and fondly; she’d known him for so long.
“Do you know,” she said emphatically as she sliced into her steak, “I met Frank Adonis the very night he arrived in Hollywood, the very first night? There was a large party—perhaps it was at the Goldwyns’—my mind isn’t the trap it once was for the distant past—and Frank came in with the Colmans and some other people. Wasn’t he good-looking, though! How debonair! I thought he was a gangster, black hair all slicked back and the best-cut dinner jacket you ever saw. The women positively swooned on the rug. We saw lots of Frank after that, I liked him so much.”
“Did your husband? Like him, too?”
“Crispin?” She debated. “Why-y, yes, I believe he did. Cris came from a different background, you see—but I know he admired Frank for the way he’d pulled himself up by his bootstraps.”
I supposed Crispin Antrim must have been a bit of a snob, and this was mere noblesse oblige; still, it made me like him more. And I particularly liked listening to the way Maude perceived Frank, her rich appreciation of his character in its various facets, the little wop out of Hell’s Kitchen making it big in the Big Time. She loved the whole movie-style story—“Very George Rafty.” And I especially liked the way she called him “Frank” instead of “Frankie.” It seemed to confer extra status, as if she had a fuller, deeper purchase on him than others did.
When Ling had cleared our trays away, he returned with the coffee things.
“Do you think they’re good for each other?” Maude asked me rather pointedly, handing me my cup. “Belinda and Frank, I mean?”
“Maybe not back then,” I suggested. “But they do seem to be now.”
Maude nodded firmly. “I agree. He’s her lodestar, I think. And I don’t mean that in the purely romantic sense, though there is that, too, let’s face it. But he’s been her mentor for a long time. He’s helped her over many a bump, many a bump.”
I tried not to watch the hands of the clock on the mantel move, the pendulum ticking away the minutes that had become so important to me. Looking back on that evening, I still find it such an extraordinary experience, for how often do the Maude Antrims of the world invite you to supper? On the other hand, there was something quite commonplace about it, almost as if we’d done it before, many times. And though there was no wine on the table, still it seemed as if we’d both been imbibing, and more than once I noticed the way the little room rang with our laughter. “Snuggery,” snug, safe.
I’d realized how at the mere mention of Crispin’s name she beamed, and I could tell that she enjoyed talking about him. I knew that Crispin had been dead for over twenty years—yet her lips had only to pronounce that magical name and they took on a tone, soft, affectionate, fondly caressing. I decided this was a one-man woman, a woman who’d never had another lover since she’d married him. She pointed out that the chair in which I was sitting was the chair he’d always sat in, because it faced
the portrait of herself on the wall—while her chair faced his matching portrait on the opposite wall.
And as she went on speaking, the very walls of the room where we now sat grew more precious to me, for she was peopling it with the famous of another time. I eased farther back in my place, and across from me sat Valentino—Rudy, if you please. And there was Vilma Banky in the doorway in chiffon and gaudy bracelets; Rod Laroque, sleekly Latin, was at her side. Cecil De Mille sat just opposite us, knees crossed, tapping his leg with his riding crop as he told an anecdote about Maude as Dido in The Walls of Carthage. Crispin, he was there, too, standing just to the left of the refectory table, his adoring eyes fastened upon the figure of his wife, who threw back her head and laughed. Which was lovelier, I asked myself, the laugh or the line of the slender white throat that made it?
“Listen,” said she, “I believe it’s stopped raining.” I got up and looked out: so it had. I took it as my cue to leave.
“Well, I shan’t keep you longer,” she said, getting up with me, “I’m sure you’ve many things to do.” She moved close but didn’t touch me. “How I’ve enjoyed this evening. I hope next time we won’t be so formal. Let me call you Charles—Charlie?—and you must call me Maude.”
Reluctantly I tore myself from her snug and cozy room and the magical thing it had come so quickly to represent. She led me through to the studio where she painted, slid open the big glass door, gave me the power lamp, and let me out into the wet air. It was chilly, but the magic lingered like expensive perfume. We said our final farewells; she invited me to come again, insisting I come up and swim in the pool as often as I liked, it was good for my back. “I’ve had the pool heater turned on. It will soon be swimmable. Any time, truly, don’t be a stranger and don’t be shy. I won’t bother you down there because you’re working. If you need anything, just ring, the number’s on the kitchen jamb.”
As I started away, she put her hand on my arm, the lightest touch. “If you can take time off for a bite of lunch tomorrow, come up around one. I’ll have Ling put a nice salad into you. Goodness, just look—the moon. Very dramatic. Very Alfred Noyes.”
She struck a theatrical pose and recited:
“The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door….”
I applauded, enchanted. “I’ll bet no one’s heard you do that in a long time.”
She pressed my hands with hers. “Now, off you go. Into the night. Write well. Sleep well.”
She waved and was gone, into the house, where Ling waited, holding the candle to light his mistress’s way to her room. Had it really happened? In the gusting wind, the tears of dripping rain, I doubted my senses. But rain was never wet in dreams, was it?
Thus I entered into a new and extravagantly pleasant phase in my existence, one that was to center around this delightful person called Maude and bind me to her for the rest of her life, and mine, too, for even after her death I have kept the memory of her warm and alive. In a matter of days I found myself completely under her winding spell; our relationship was the least complicated I’d ever had with a member of the opposite sex, and one of the most rewarding. I had struck pay dirt, and I mined and mined.
Some things in life become merely habit, boring and unappreciated through constant repetition; not so with me, not at Sunnyside. I’d been given carte blanche—to come and go as I chose, to use the tennis courts, to play the piano, to swim. The more I saw of her, the more certain I became that this was one of the most appealing women who’d ever walked the earth’s face.
Daily she took her exercise in her heated pool, which was positively sybaritic to swim in, and afterward she’d walk around the perimeter a dozen times or so. Her idea of heaven was putting some Mozart on the stereo and floating in the water on an air mattress, eyes closed, listening and dreaming. I knew she wasn’t asleep, but she’d “let go.” A secret she’d learned years ago, it was part of what kept her so young, “letting go.” She had two hobbies, gardening and painting, the latter of which she’d taken up after Crispin’s death. Her work showed the same winning grace the artist herself exhibited, and since I, too, occasionally dabbled, she was quick to invite me to set up an easel in the studio she’d converted from Crispin’s former billiard room, where we could go at it together, side by side, over a bunch of flowers or a bowl of fruit.
As for life in general and the considerable age she’d attained, she maintained a philosophical attitude toward both. “The future is folly, my dear,” she said once. “The past is a dead cat. Only in the present do I live. I’m ready, I’ve been ready since Cris died. Any time they want me they can come and take me. They know where to find me.”
Having been raised in the New England work ethic, I was disciplined when it came to turning out my daily quota of pages; but when it came to sharing Maude’s company I gladly shirked. “I’m keeping you from your machine,” she’d say, and I’d promise her she wasn’t and we’d do a couple more laps. The rain had departed and the sun shone in all its golden warmth—very warm for February. Sometimes we’d have a game of croquet on the side court, and she told me how Crispin used to keep a full pitcher of martinis at each post, and whenever you hit the post you were permitted to refill your glass.
Her tales of Sunnyside in the old days were tales of glory, of entertainments and escapades in which the famous of the world paraded themselves past my eyes. It seemed as if the history of Hollywood itself had been written on the stones of that old house.
“Aren’t you afraid I may write about all this—tell all your secrets?” I asked her. I saw her pale for a second, as if she really thought I might. I assured her that I was joking and promised that I never would—without her approval, of course. When I told her that her secrets were safe with me, she held my look a moment longer—as if to be sure of me?—making me wonder if she did indeed have things to hide. But how was this possible, when her life had always been an open book?
To my questions about Belinda’s return to Sunnyside she still shrugged, saying that her daughter-in-law’s movements were in God’s hands, not hers. Sometimes I’d come up in the late afternoon to find her at her Steinway in the large living room that fronted the house. I’d slip in quietly and sit listening while she played some Chopin, some Schubert—some Gershwin. Believe it or not, George Gershwin had sat on that same piano bench and played his own songs; back in the early thirties, before he suffered the stroke that killed him. And one night when the Mountbattens came to dine Claire Regrett had stood in the bow of the piano and sung “Depuis le Jour” from Louise.
“How did she sound?” I asked.
“A lit-tle thin,” Maude recalled. “I believe she accomplished it by rubbing her legs together.”
I was to learn that Maude’s wit was often sharply and verily to the point. She wasn’t being mean about Claire, she simply saw her as she was—as everyone who knew her saw her, myself included.
When I expressed interest in the Playhouse, she asked Suzi-Q to open up the place and gave me a tour.
This, the famous Playhouse, had been the boyhood home of Perry Antrim, and for Maude it was a house of memories, the oft-photographed Christie murals turning the rooms into a child’s fantasy. As Maude took me around, pointing out various mementoes and keepsakes of Perry’s, I perceived it wasn’t just a house of memories, but also a memorial to her dead son, as if throughout these fairy-tale rooms his memory burned the brightest. The horned and hairy bison heads still hung along the carved beams; there was Perry’s pool table and ivory cue, rows of his books, his trophies and many photographs taken on his travels. In the second-floor bedroom stood a tall stove of shiny blue porcelain, brought by Crispin from Sweden.
Just now these cozy sleeping quarters with th
eir mullioned windows and vividly carved and painted beams, the romantically swagged bed that had been Claire’s and Perry’s honeymoon bed, showed signs of having been recently lived in: there were makeup things spread out on a dressing table, a pink hair dryer, a set of brightly painted false fingernails in a dish, and on hangers in the closet some female clothes, plus a lynx fur coat. These items, I learned, belonged to Faun Potter, Belinda’s errant daughter who on those occasions when she was around enjoyed occupying her father’s boyhood room.
Amid these charming, nostalgic surroundings Perry Antrim had lived—on his own: Crispin’s edict so the boy would learn independence. Maude hadn’t liked the idea, and it was obvious that while he’d lived, she’d thought the sun rose and set on her Perry. She never dreamed that when he went out into the big bad world to seek a mate and bring home the bacon, the bacon he brought home would be Cora Sue Brodsky of Brooklyn, and—oh, the lengths she’d gone to to snag him.
Maude was in no way vindictive, but after fifty years she knew her man—or in this case, woman. She had never been deluded about her daughter-in-law, with whom she’d never been able to make friends, and all of whose tricks she was on to. Everyone knew Claire was a climber, from Sam Ueberroth to Frank to God knew who else. When she’d met Perry at a dance in Santa Monica, she’d got the message quick enough: to be “Claire Antrim” could hardly hurt her career.
The union of the heir to the name of Antrim and the rising Hollywood star had filled newspapers and magazines for months, and theirs had been an all-too-public affair. It was Crispin’s notion that he wanted them to be as happy in their early married life as he and his Maude had been in theirs, and no one was more surprised than he when his idea backfired. The young couple had lived their life, so to speak, in a golden fishbowl. When they returned from a Polynesian wedding trip, they took up their married life in the Playhouse, ogled by everyone who came and went. Not that it was ever boring, for Claire soon found herself in fairly breezy company: Aldous Huxley came to Sunnyside and dined on broiled kidneys, and so did the Prince of Wales, just an omelet, thanks, and Leopold of the Belgians ate Belgian endive, and Marie Queen of the Romanians ate romaine, and the niece of the Russian prince Youssoupoff, who’d shot and poisoned the mad monk Rasputin and then helped to drown him in the Neva; Maude couldn’t recall what the niece ate.