“Oh, bless you, darling! And I you! I hope we’ll do it again. My prediction is—” And I got a bouquet of flowery sentiments as to my budding screen career.
At the party her husband was conventionally cordial; we exchanged a few trite remarks and that was about it, but I knew he didn’t give me much. He was even rude to Jenny when she arrived, and at the last minute he managed to get in a word. “In my contree,” he said to me in an aside, “I would know what to do with a cochon bleu like you. Now you can say to zee world you have kissed zee wife of Yves de Gobelins.”
“And you, my friend, can say you’ve kissed the ass of the man who kissed the wife of Yves de Gobelins.” I stepped back and he lunged, tripped, and fell out the doorway, where a group quickly gathered. I made a good show of helping him to his feet and brushing him off, ministrations he was forced to submit to. “They ought to do something about that first step,” I said as I went to gather up my gear, “it’s a bitch.”
He and Claire were flying off to Vegas in only two hours, and at that moment Claire chose to reappear in her “traveling outfit,” oblivious to the altercation. She looked like Wilma in Buck Rogers, a stripped-down movie-star model none of us had ever had a gander at before. Except for lipstick and her long eyelashes, her face was devoid of makeup, and the healthy skin gleamed from the oil or grease she’d slathered over it. She was tricked out in a khaki jumpsuit with couturier lines, mid-calf boots, military epaulettes, and a designer aviator’s helmet—with pink-tinted goggles. She had three diamond bracelets slung on one wrist, a baguette diamond the size of a plum on one finger, her waist was cinched with a gold kid belt and the jumpsuit was unzipped nearly to the waist, with a generous revelation of braless freckled boobs. “The only way to fly, gang!” she laughed, wafting a glass at us. Then we got the “Bless you, darlings” routine, and at an opportune moment she drew me aside and pressed something into my hand.
“Just a little remembrance,” she said. She wasn’t kidding, either: a lambda peace symbol in a little plastic box. “Peace,” she said, and kissed my cheek ever so butterflyly. “It was fun, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, fun.”
“Let’s do it again sometime.”
“Yeah, let’s.”
“Bye, Charlie. You’re a good hard worker—I like that.” She gave me one of her deep, meaningful looks. “Bless you, darling—and thanks for your forbearance. I’m sorry if Yves was acting like a putz.” At that moment I saw something I hadn’t seen before, something not fully expressed, which hinted at the more sincere modes of feeling common to the race. Then she blew it. “Bless you, bless you,” she tacked on in her best Greer Garson voice.
Not four days later, I received a communication through the mail.
Charles, dear [she wrote on the famous violet stationery with a Vegas postmark, and up at the top was the Gobelins coat-of-arms Yves had paid a Paris heraldry firm to design for him], Again, I can’t tell you how truly nice it was working with you last week. Imagine, my “TV lover” turning out to be that cute signalman I did the Lindy Hop with! God bless you, my Knight in Shining Armor, may you always have your heart’s desire and your very own “Oscar” one day.
Devotedly
Claire Regrett Gobelins
(Mme. Yves de Gobelins)
P.S. Yves has been contrite as can be over our little countertemps [sic]. Such things are best forgotten, don’t you agree? Our little secret.
B.Y.D.
(Bless You Darling)
And for the next five Christmases I received a card from her, no longer signed as above but rather as plain Claire Regrett and lavishing me with endless B.Y.D.’s.
Sometime during that period I got a call from an indignant Viola. “Charlie, why don’t you ever send Claire a Christmas card?”
I was somewhat taken aback by this unexpected assault, and explained that I’d stopped sending cards years ago. “I don’t even send my mother one.”
“She thinks you’re being very rude. After all, she sends you one every year.”
“Does she do it just so she’ll get one back?”
“Well… think of it this way, dear; you’re on her A list. Very few people make her A list.”
Vi made me promise to be sure and send one, but I never did, and after a while Claire’s card stopped coming. I knew I’d been dropped from her A list and stuck on her shit list.
When I got to New York, I went about settling into my apartment for the duration, however long it would take to get my play on. As it happened, Vi was in New York, too, and I called her. The first thing she did was book me for dinner on the night of the Academy Awards. She had an apartment in New York, and had invited “one or two others” to watch the show, too.
When I reached her building, I gave the name of Miss Ueberroth and was astonished when the doorman informed me that I was expected: “Miss Regrett just went up five minutes ago.”
So I’d been tricked. Miss Ueberroth would pay for such betrayal. I was tempted to abandon her without even putting in an appearance, but persuaded myself that, given a chance, it might somehow end up an interesting evening after all. I was not to be proved wrong. As I was admitted to the foyer, I heard that laugh I knew so well, heh heh. Star of stage, screen, radio, and TV was in the other room. I’d been framed. Yes, someone would pay.
As I came in, my eye fell immediately on Claire, seated in a high-backed chair by the fireplace, a champagne flute in one hand, a cigarette holder in the other (“The Queen is discovered onstage in a thronelike chair, etc.”), and in her lap—wonder of wonders—her own Oscar (“… in case anyone wanted to see what they really looked like”). Viola interposed her small, rotund figure between us, giving me the chance to let her know I was displeased by this unexpected turn of events. Ignoring my signals, she put her withered cheek up to be kissed. “Charlie dear, how nice that you’ve come; do you know—” and she introduced me to several people, among them a noted cellist and his wife, a well-known British stage actor, and a duo of butch ladies in butt-sprung slacks and sensible shoes, producers in the current Broadway theatre. “And of course you know our darling Claire,” Vi said as we ended up before Madame, ensconced upon her pickled-walnut throne. When I put out my hand, she pulled a meant-to-be-charming pout.
“What, Charles—no kiss?” I bent to administer a dutiful peck, looking down into her cleavage, which was badly raddled. A diamond brooch glittered there, radiating dollar signs, and I caught a heavy whiff of perfume. “I only dab a touch of perfume,” I remember reading in her book; “men don’t like to be smothered in heavy scent, floral or otherwise.”
She made me pull up a footstool and there I was, sitting at her feet, just where she intended me to be. She started off with “I’ve read every one of your books. How did you ever manage to write them?” Before I could reply, she seized both my hands in hers and held them tight while she looked deeply and entreatingly into my eyes, giving her head tiny, earnest quivers of intensity, and said, “What made you want to change from acting to writing? Did you always know?” Before I could respond she hurried on. “I know—you don’t have to tell me—you longed for another mode of expression, isn’t that it?” When I opened my mouth, she laid her fingers over it. “Don’t say it, I know, I really do.” Now her eyes began to coruscate in the light. “Frank was so damned proud of you! And I know—I really feel sure that we were destined to stumble across each other this way. Do you believe in destiny, Charles? Of course you do, you must. You’ve always been metaphysical, at least I always thought so. I can usually tell, you know. You and I are on the same wavelength, aren’t we?” She leaned her bare, conspiratorial shoulder at me. “It’s part destiny, part luck, but mostly just plain hard work, isn’t that so?” She handed away her glass for a refill. “You and I know that, don’t we? I’m a workaholic, so are you, we’ll go to our graves working. I in my socks and buskins, you with ink-stained fingers. How I wish I could write the way you do! You make it seem so easy, as though it all just comes dribbling out from
your fingertips, as if you didn’t even have to think about it a single moment.”
I regarded these words as damning with faint praise, but let them pass. A brouhaha with Madame was not what I’d come to New York for, and I sat back, silent, while the flood of encomiums engulfed me. “Look at me, everyone!” she proclaimed with a little laughing sob, bringing all other conversation to a halt. “I’m crying over one of his stories! I want you all to know this fella is one of the best goddamn writers we’ve got! And little Claire knew him when!”
“I’ll bet,” declared the more mannish of the two lady-producers.
Claire put her hand up and spoke behind it, sotto voce. “I wish somebody would stick a finger in that dyke.”
“Come on,” I protested, and she shot me an angry look.
“I can take any perversion, darling, but the picture of two diesels riding a boomerang simply starches my collar. Vi only invited them because they got a Tony. How, I’ll never know. Oh, darling, did I tell you I’m a legend?” she went on, veering sharply from her former topic. I told her I’d seen the magazine ad, and I saw that she was gratified.
Meanwhile, the party was rearranging itself. The uniformed help were setting up TV tables and I clutched at the opportunity to relocate my seat. Excusing myself, I went to the bathroom, but when I came out Claire crooked a finger at me, indicating the empty chair now set close beside hers.
“This one’s for you, darling, come sit.”
“Maybe…” I glanced toward the ladies.
“Don’t you dare!” she muttered, reaching to pull me into the chair and resetting the folding table as though to trap me. “Now I have you, my handsome friend, I want to tell you what I’m up to.” Here it comes, I thought, and gave Viola a grim look. Claire launched her rocket. “Charles, I’m writing, too. What do you think of that?”
I said I thought that was fine.
“Claire’s starting her memoirs,” said Vi, fortuitously appearing at my side. “She’s got six chapters.”
“Seven, but who’s counting?” Claire said with a laugh meant to amuse as well as to demean her paltry efforts. “Writing’s hard, or maybe you hadn’t heard, Vi, dear.”
“Don’t I know it, dear. Pity Tolstoy.”
“Art’s hard,” I ventured, my favorite solecism.
“Ain’t that the truth!” exclaimed Claire, clutching my arm as if she intended detaching it from my person. “Oh, to be an artist, not just a—a hack.”
I thought that was slicing the ham pretty close to the bone and looked to Vi for help but, miserable bitch, she only encouraged Claire.
“I’m ga-ga for good art,” Claire said. “I absolutely haunt the galleries and museums. I can’t seem to get enough.”
The lady-producers were heard to titter—lasciviously, it seemed to me.
“Good for you,” I said, sliding a sharp look to Vi before asking, “Who are your favorites, Claire?” I saw those great eyes widen, and as she swallowed I could tell that she was thinking frantically. “Well-l—let’s see—I—um—I adore the one with all the dots….”
So much for Seurat.
Despite Viola’s intimations that Claire wasn’t well, I thought she looked quite well, blooming, in fact. She had always been a Rembrandt with her face brushes; tonight she looked as airbrushed as her fur advertisement. Certainly she didn’t look her years—which were how many? Seventy? Seventy-three? -five? I remembered Dore once having said that the only way to find out Claire’s age was to saw her in half and count the rings.
“Showtime, everyone!” Vi snatched up the remote control and hastily turned on the TV set. Demanding to have her glass refilled again, Claire received it and semi-subsided. Everyone was quickly in place, digging into twelve-inch plates heaped with food from the buffet, while out in California the show began.
This year’s celebration was to be no worse than that of other years, but, alas, no better, either. Naturally the big item of the evening was whether or not Belinda would cop the Oscar, and it was easy to tell how the people seated around me felt. It was Belinda all the way. Claire had adopted a condescending attitude, declaring, “When a woman reaches Belinda’s age I think she deserves to be honored. But she’ll have to be satisfied with the nomination, they’ll never give her the statue.”
In panning the audience, the camera had caught a closeup of her in her seat. This sight threw Claire’s switch and she really started in. “Wouldn’t you think she’d do something different with her hair? She’s been wearing it like that since World War Two.”
“Back when you played her mother, you mean?” one of the lady-producers muttered.
“I heard that, just in case you think I didn’t.” Glaring at the woman, Claire went on to criticize Belinda’s gown, which I’d already seen firsthand and knew hardly bore criticism. Finally Vi sidled up again and did her best to get Claire to put a cork in it.
The next two hours were an excruciating form of torture. It was as if nothing in God’s world could keep Claire from bursting out with the most tasteless and idiotic remarks. “Sor-ree,” she’d say when someone shushed her, grimacing at her own forgetful-ness, but then out would pop another crack. Plates were cleared during the commercials, coffee and dessert appeared, and with them after-dinner drinks. I stared as Claire put away a brandy stinger as if it were sarsaparilla.
It seemed as if three days had elapsed by the time the male presenter for the Best Actress category asked for the envelope. You could almost feel the waves of suspense and emotion as he fumbled with the flap and then took his time in announcing the name. When it came, the auditorium burst into a spontaneous, rousing cheer. Belinda had won!
This was no round of polite applause, but a heartfelt tribute to the survivor of them all. I saw her blonde head bobbing as she hurried down the aisle, and the way she lifted the skirt of her gown as she went up the stairs was regal in the realest sense. Breathless, smiling, waiting for the applause to die, she clutched the Oscar in one hand and spoke in a voice filled with emotion. When she began the traditional litany of thanks, Claire angled her head and made mock-snoring noises.
“Claire!”
“Oh, all right, I’ll shut up. I won’t say another word, not one more syllable. My lips are sealed.” She pantomimed locking her lips and throwing the key away.
Belinda looked marvelous, really radiant and youthful. Hollywood loves nothing more than a tribute to a beloved star, and their tumultuous reception touched her deeply, you could see it. When she’d made a few generous remarks, she lowered her head for a moment, then looked up again.
“I especially want to thank a gentleman who unfortunately is unable to be with us tonight. Who is there here who doesn’t know the name Frank Adonis?” A wave of applause greeted this, and I had a lump in my throat. “This Oscar I hold in my hand is really for Frank. He’s the man to whom I owe so much—to whom so many of us owe so much.” She began reeling off the names he’d brought to stardom: Babe Austrian, Kit Carson, Julie Figueroa, April Rains, all of those whose lives Frank had touched; all but Claire’s name. At Viola’s, a hush fell on the room, and from where I sat I could see people stealing glances at Claire, who sat with her glass frozen in mid-air, her face a mask.
Belinda started away from the podium, but at the last instant she turned and leaned to the microphone again. “I just realized I’ve been remiss in leaving out one name, the name of a terribly important star—another of Frank’s discoveries, the greatest star of all, of course you all know who I mean—Miss Claire Regrett.”
Claire’s was one name no one ever expected to hear from Belinda’s lips. I glanced at Claire, staring open-mouthed at the TV screen.
Belinda went on: “As you all know, Claire has left us—and Hollywood—abandoned us for the glitter of New York, where she lives high up in the sky—the way a real star should. I’m sorry to hear she’s been a bit ill recently, and, Claire, if you’re watching back there, everyone here wishes you good health and happiness.” She ended by thanking all the “fri
ends of Bill,” then went offstage to more applause.
Astounded by the unexpected tribute, a teary Claire had to borrow my handkerchief, carefully maneuvering her head while she dabbed gingerly around her eye makeup. “What the hell does she think she’s doing anyway?” she growled as she handed back my handkerchief. “Telling the whole damn world I’m sick. I’m not sick! Where does she get off saying something like that on network television? I’ll never get another job, not if they all think I’m back here croaking.”
“She ought to be grateful,” I heard the butch lady-producer mutter. “It’s free publicity, isn’t it? Something she doesn’t get too much of these days.”
At the opposite end of the room, Vi lent an avid ear, but failed to catch any exchange as Claire asked, “Do you think Belinda really meant what she said?”
“I’m sure she did,” I replied.
“But you know she hates my guts,” she protested, blowing her nose.
“Damn it, Claire, if she did, would she have said anything?”
Her brow furrowed as she considered, and I made a move to the bathroom. When I came out, I found Vi waiting to pounce: “Wasn’t it marvelous? Can you imagine? What did Claire think? I’m fascinated. Tell all, dear.” I recapped the dinner hour, while Vi hung wide-eyed on every word.
When the program ended, I decided to make a hasty retreat, but Vi slipped an arm through mine to ask, if it wasn’t too much trouble, would I be good enough to drop Claire off?
“Would you, darling?” Claire gushed at me. “How sweet that would be of you. What a wonderful evening it’s been, hasn’t it?” She claimed my arm and gave me an intimate squeeze. Then she circled the room, shaking hands with each guest, her euphoric mood stretching as far as the team of lady-producers, for each of whom she managed a friendly word and compliment. I could see that she was a bit wobbly on her feet; the evening had been a long one and she’d made free with the champagne and the after-supper stingers.