“After that I used to stop in from time to time, and that’s where I met Hazel Conklin. She came in one rainy afternoon, her umbrella had blown inside out, and I tried to help her fix it. I saw that sweet face, that lovely smile, and we talked. We became friends right off the bat, and then we found out we lived near each other and we both knitted. I invited her up for tea. She sat right there where you’re sitting, and I realized I’d made an important friend. Hazel Conklin’s a saint, I swear she is.”
This much I’d already figured out. I’d never met a kinder, nicer, more thoughtful woman in my life. And she had a mission in life—to see that Claire Regrett ended hers as easily, peacefully, and happily as could be arranged. There are only ten of Hazel Conklin in the entire world; I was lucky to meet one in my lifetime.
But how long would Claire hold on? Who knew? Sometimes I expected to get the bad news at any moment; other times I thought she might just keep on rolling along like Ole Man River. Tenacious, that was Claire; she’d clawed her way to the top; now with those claws she was clinging to the side of the cliff, with the pit yawning below. I’ve heard people laugh, or anyway titter, at Claire’s religious leanings—“pretensions,” I’ve heard them called. But, look, who is she to be laughed at for her faith? Why shouldn’t she investigate, search, hope, yearn, need? Why shouldn’t she want that thing outside and beyond ourselves that every human being gropes for? Just because she was Claire Regrett, did that mean she didn’t have a soul? I guess people think that if you get as much as she did out of life, you don’t need a soul, but those people are full of shit. Claire dying was a far more interesting specimen than Claire living; at least that’s how I saw it, and if I’d laughed at her before, I wasn’t laughing anymore.
One evening, when I’d spent a couple of hours with her going over some notes and trying to pin her down on a few of the more elusive statements she’d made into the recorder, she seemed especially cranky. We’d been talking about the time she won the Oscar and, as had happened several times before, I could see that she avoided rhapsodizing over that special evening in her life, the triumph that had capped her career. Why, I wondered, did her voice drop, why was she bored, and, more particularly, what was she hiding?
“Your fans will want to know,” I reminded her. She made an exasperated sound, but nothing prepared me for the storm that was in moments to erupt and pass through the San Remo tower like a Kansas cyclone.
“Oh Christ, why don’t they just let me die, then?” she muttered, fretfully toying with the sash of her robe. “Why don’t they just forget about me and let me go, why do they keep trying to get at me? Hate ’em, hate ’em, hate ’em.”
As she muttered, she was staring hard at the gold statuette itself, her face a mask of scorn, as if the winning of a cheap titanium trophy that hundreds of others had won was a self-defeating waste of time. The look in those still-expressive eyes was one of rage mixed with bafflement, disappointment, even desperation, asking what in life was really worth anything. Somewhere along the line they’d all shortchanged her—her mother and stepfather, her sister, Sam Ueberroth, those marines on the train, Louie B., all four husbands from Perry to Natchez, and all the other guys who’d bedded her for the ladies’ hour and then gone home to momma or wifie or to the club. What did it all mean, the eyes wondered, what happened to pie-in-the-sky, her piece of the cake? Where? When? How? Why?
“Frank’s work, all Frank’s work,” she went on in a low, unhappy voice. “Forty years, and for what? As for our little twelve-dollar friend here,” she went on, waving the statuette at me, “nobody knows the real story about this little gold-plated bastard.” She paused theatrically, slowly closing the skirt of her housecoat, the eyes glittering, the mouth an ugly grimace. Then the dam burst and it all came pouring out. She brought up her arm and with a burst of violence she sent Oscar crashing against the mantel, where it struck with a metallic sound, then bounced into the air again and fell to the floor. She hurried to snatch it up, then began smashing it repeatedly against the mantel, sobbing with every blow.
I was riveted, yet I did nothing; it was better to let her get it out of her system, whatever emotions were moving her to this appalling sacrilege. At that moment it seemed as if she hated everything in the world; the Oscar had become some bizarre symbol of all her frustrations, all the years of people laughing at her, of disappointments, slights, and hurts, the symbol of Hollywood achievement that she thought she’d pinned down but never really had. I watched her loft the statuette and wing it at her portrait over the fireplace. It struck the canvas, tore a hole in it, then bounced to the floor a second time. She spun wildly around, searching for something else to vent her wrath on.
Leaving Oscar where he lay, she headed for the fireplace, where with one violent sweep she cleared the mantel of its array of bric-a-brac, then seized the fireplace tools from their brass stand and sent them clanging across the room. Next she began yanking the pictures from the wall, hurling them to the floor and stamping on them.
Sobbing, panting, she dashed out into the passageway, where she attacked the trophy wall, tearing from their hooks the collection of framed certificates, plaques, photographs, and other memorials. “Memory Lane” was soon only a bare wall. Then she flung open the office door and went to work on the filing system. Methodically she pillaged it section by section, pushing the buttons so the apparatus revolved, then yanking out the files and flinging them frantically about. There was a carton of photographs in the corner and she lugged it out to the terrace, heaved it onto the parapet, and overturned the contents into the wind.
I’d followed her and stood transfixed by the amazing sight of hundreds of faces—that fabulous face—rising and falling all about me, 8 x 10 glossies with the famous lipsticked smile, the arched eyebrows, those two huge eyes staring out at me, here, there, everywhere. The face seemed to mock the world: “This is where I am, this is where I got to, damn it,” the expression still said. I leaned over the parapet to look down into the street, where pedestrians were peering up, reaching to capture a photograph as it fell toward their outstretched hands.
She’s flipped, I thought; she’s flipped straight to Mars.
I turned back inside to find her collapsed in a chair, no longer sobbing, but staring mutely. Her hands hung limp over the ends of the chair arms and every few seconds they’d twitch.
“Claire?” Her swollen lids fluttered. “You’ve cut yourself. You’d better come in the bathroom and let me have a look at that hand.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she returned dully, then got up and wearily left the room. I went after her to find her sprawled on her bed, the blood from the cut running onto the pillow. I wet a washcloth and tried to wipe away the blood; she groaned with impatience and pushed me away.
I went to use the office phone and called Hazel Conklin, who listened patiently, then said she’d come within the half hour.
By the time I returned to the bedroom, Claire was flooded with remorse, and for the very first time I heard her admit she was wrong about something. She was abject over her behavior and seemed afraid that she might lose me as a friend. “I wouldn’t blame you if you hated me,” she said, adding, “I deserve it. I deserve the hate of everyone in the whole world, everyone I’ve ever met. What a mess, what a lousy mess I am.” She lay back against the pillow, spent and exhausted, and in her eyes I saw a desperate pleading to be helped, to be understood. She turned away and stared up at the window; the lights had gone on in the building next door and the stars began to show themselves in the darkening sky.
“‘Starlight, starbright, first star I’ve seen tonight…’” she murmured and folded her hands under her chin in a particularly childlike gesture. She could have been a little girl in bed saying her prayers to her mother.
I leaned down to see which star she was looking at. She stirred under the bedclothes, unlaced her hands, and for an instant her fingers touched the back of my hand. She murmured something in amusement.
“What?” I asked.
“Do you want to know something? I’ve never told anybody else in my whole life, and this is strictly off the record—I don’t want any Panasonic listening in.”
“Okay. I’m listening.”
“Of course you are—you’re always listening—like one great big ear. But after I’ve told you, I want you to forget you ever heard it, understand? I’m going to tell you all about little Claire’s dream of Hollywood—I should say, little Cora Sue’s dream. You remember that fire escape I showed you, where I used to grow my geraniums and raise tomatoes? And how we used to sleep out on hot nights? When I’d be out there and I’d look up at the sky and see all those stars, I used to imagine—now, don’t tell me it’s crazy, I know it—I used to pretend that every one of those stars was a movie star. I believed that every time a star was born—a Hollywood star, that is—the star in the sky would dim. And that meant that the star had come down to earth, where all the movie stars lived together in this big white tent, like a circus tent. Every star had her own little canvas cubicle, and they’d all sit around in there, waiting until they were called on to come be in a movie. There were costumes hanging on the wall, and a makeup table with lots of bright lights and little brushes and pencils and paints and putty noses laid out on a towel, and wigs on a stand, and whatever anyone needed to step in front of the camera.
“After they were finished on whichever their movie was, they went back to their cubicle to wait for the next one. And while they were waiting they could all mingle together and get to know each other, they could dance and kiss and make love—there was even this big pool in the tent so they could wear their bathing suits and go swimming. It was the most glamorous thing in the world. It used to make me so happy to think of living in that white tent.
“Then, when they got old and were dying, somebody came and took them away to this place out in back of the tent and dumped them on this big trash heap that was there, and then when nobody was looking, they’d put out their hands and float away. They’d be carried back up into the heavens and there the star that had dimmed before would brighten again. And the stars would stay bright forever and all the people who were still alive on earth would look up and remember them….”
She trailed off, then darted me a sheepish little smile and drew the covers over her face. Lowering them again, she asked, “Isn’t that silly? I was only seven or eight, but it’s funny how I always remembered it.”
“You must have wanted it a lot. To be a star.”
“You have to, you know. I never wanted anything so much in my life. I really couldn’t believe it would happen, but I kept hearing this little voice somewhere….” She was quiet for a moment and I had to prompt.
“What did it say, this voice?”
“I’m not sure, but something like ‘Do it, Cora Sue, do it, you can do it, and don’t worry, everything will be all right.’”
“And so you did it.”
“Yes. I did it.”
“Have you always heard that voice? Do you still?”
“Not always. It stopped. One day I suddenly realized I wasn’t hearing it anymore. It had left me. But you know, the wonderful thing—I got them both back, my faith and my voice, too. Yes, I can hear it these days. Not very loud, but I can hear it.”
“What does it say now?”
“Same thing. Everything’s going to be all right.”
“Good. You keep listening, it knows what it’s talking about.”
She smiled again; her lids drooped, closed; I tiptoed out. In the passageway I came across Mrs. Conklin taking off her coat.
“How is she?” she asked.
“She’s all right. Just corked off.”
She walked me to the door. “Sometime get her to tell you about the big circus tent,” I said as I rang for the elevator.
“You mean where all the movie stars live? Goodness, I know all about that tent. She’s told us all a hundred times. Good night, now, sweet dreams.”
I buzzed for the elevator, and when it came, the operator apologetically handed me a sheaf of badly soiled glossies, speculating as to how they’d blown off the terrace. The doorman had collected them out on the street; there were others blowing all over Central Park West, and should he send the porter to gather them up? No, I said, it wasn’t necessary. There were plenty more where those came from.
Leaving the building, I could see the photographs scattered everywhere, face-side up and down, caught, like pamphlets after a parade, in the street gutters and in the branches of the trees. Those smiling red lips, those big brown eyes… S-T-A-R.
April Fool. I ask myself again, will there ever be a book? I cry on the shoulder of Miss U, who got me into this mess to begin with. “Don’t worry, dear,” Vi says, “you need a rest, then you can get back on it. Sweetie, you don’t know what you’ve missed!” (Ah, do I not? Viola reports that Claire invited her friends—Viola, the Sadikichis from downstairs, the Steins from upstairs—and read them a chapter or two—or ten or fifteen. That must have been quite an evening; happily, Belinda and I were in the country eating our curds and whey.) The thing’s a “treat,” Vi says. Loved the part about the catfight in Loper’s dress salon. Only this time Claire’s the winner and all-time champion, not Angie. So much for truth.
My screenplay’s done, the film’s in pre-production. I’m outlining another book; not biographical. On Saturdays and Sundays Belinda’s leaving hobnail prints all over the golf course. I chop wood and get muscles—a few small ones. Spring’s around the corner; the weeping willows are greening, always the first to show a leaf. The country’s fine, calm and placid; too placid. I hanker for the bright lights. I miss them. Woody Allen doesn’t have the only patent on The Big Apple. Sometimes I think of “Manhattan Tower,” that forty-year-old chestnut concocted by Gordon Jenkins and recorded on Capitol Records, that rousing paean to big-town highlife in a Manhattan highrise:
No-ah, oh-oh No-ah,
Get out the glasses, get out the ice,
’Cause we’re havin’ a party
And the people are nice.
Like the guy in the song I’m lured back, always back, to my Manhattan tower, my piece of real estate that’s part of the Big Apple skyline. It seems to me the lights shining from my penthouse windows are part of the whole picture. If I’m not around to turn them on, people could be missing those lights.
So much for trips abroad, trips to California, trips anywhere. I’m back.
The first familiar face I stumble across in the street is herself, Viola Ueberroth. She seems glad to see me. Why aren’t you in L.A., I ask? Why aren’t you? she counters. We abandon Bonwit’s for the Four Seasons and a pow-wow. There’s lots to palaver about. With Vi there always is.
Since lunch was her idea—I really haven’t time for lunch today—I order well and expensively and will enjoy seeing her pick up the check. I seem to recall another lunch, right over there by the fountain, a lunch for which I am still owed. Vi is occasionally neglectful, especially in money matters.
Over my steak tartare a host of names was arrayed before me. It seems sometimes that the whole world of show business in all its ramifications grows out of Vi Ueberroth’s personal and private knowledge of that world, which she seemed to have hiked onto her shoulders like a female Atlas. From the pink stucco villas of the Springs of Palm to the walnut-boiseried offices of Beverly Hills to the storied penthouses of Manhattan, Vi knew what film projects had been given their start dates, which wives were dumping their husbands and taking which Impressionists with them, which husbands were screwing their secretaries or the stars of the movies that had got their start dates, if Burt Reynolds was at present bankable, what was to become of Robert Evans, and if the holograph was going to make it as the latest entertainment wrinkle. Ah, sweet Viola, my love, while you live, Louella Parsons is not dead.
She saved the best—or worst—for last. It was over the chocolate mousse cake that there fell from her lips the fatal name of Claire Regrett.
“Yes?” I said, sitting up brightly
, paying attention. “I was just about to ask.”
Viola drooped her lids and wagged a solemn head at me. “Oh dear, you’ve no idea what I’ve been through with that poor creature. It’s so sad, really, terribly sad. You’d scarcely know her, she’s changed so much.”
“Changed how?”
“She’s très malade, dear. Between you and me, this must be the end.”
Right away I started feeling guilty. “Is she seeing a doctor?”
“You know she won’t have a doctor. It’s against her religion.”
“Do you see her?”
Vi nodded. “Much as it distresses me. It’s all I can do to go up there, honestly. She’s like a gothic movie. She slops around that penthouse with no one but that poor Ivarene to look out for things. And, dear, you can’t imagine the scene I witnessed last week. Up I went, and what do you think? When I came in, I glanced through to the living room and I saw this character sitting in this wheelchair, staring out the window. He was wearing dark glasses, and hadn’t the faintest idea who he was. Can you guess? Of course you can’t. It was Natchez, dear. Natchez Calhoun. He had a beard and his hair had all gone stark white. He could have been Santa Claus, dear.”
“What was he doing there?”
“Well, when I pressed Claire for details, she confided that he’d recently been released from a hospital down in Virginia. He was stony, he’d lost all his money and was now nearly destitute. The poor man was living over there on West End Avenue with some relative, and once every couple of weeks she invited him to the apartment and cooked dinner for him. The place positively reeked of liver and onions.