All That Glitters (42 page)

I noticed the manila file on his desk and read April’s name upside down. I slid the folder toward me and began glancing through the pages of transcription. I hadn’t got very far before another nurse came in and archly confiscated the file. But I’d seen enough to realize that April’s illness was more serious than I’d suspected.

That evening she was transferred to the Medical Center, where she was kept under observation. I was permitted to visit and saw a gratifying daily response to treatment. I tracked Frank down and he flew home immediately. Rather than turn her over to another team of doctors, he suggested she be sent back to the Hartford Retreat and be put in the care of her former doctors there. He insisted on taking her himself and seeing her installed, and he stayed as long as he could. I know that before he left, the head psychiatrist confided to him that the prognosis wasn’t good and told him not to hold any great hopes for a cure. As for thinking of marriage, that was really out of the question now. The next time I saw Frank, after he’d returned to Los Angeles, he looked like a ghost, and I asked myself when it was going to stop. When?

Then, to everybody’s surprise and relief, she began getting well. The doctors declared themselves pleased with her new approach to reality, and they recommended her return to a normal kind of existence. Again Frank flew direct to Hartford to bring her back. Few knew she was coming, few cared. This wasn’t the old days when she could hardly go anywhere without a dozen or more
paparazzi
on her trail. Now she was a has-been, which was how she wanted it. I went to meet the plane at LAX, and as I caught my first glimpse of Frank and April disembarking, I had the feeling that everything was going to be okay now. Since she no longer had a place to stay (her apartment had been emptied, her things were in storage), she went to a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, using the side entrance and keeping out of sight. The first thing she wanted was to visit Donna’s grave, where she placed flowers; then she wanted to go to the County Museum to see the current exhibition of Rembrandts. She wore dark shades and a scarf; not a soul recognized her, or if they did they left her alone.

Frank persuaded her to leave the hotel and come stay with him at the beach. At first she didn’t want to; then she gave in. She would be entering Frances’s house again, and it was going to be
Rebecca-
time, yet she did it anyway. For his sake.

They seemed now to have come full circle, for they had come back to Malibu, the place where it all seemed to have begun. Here they resumed their life together, the life of man and wife, for though they were not yet made one in the eyes of church or state, they were one in love and purpose, and as happy as they could be. She was well again, they both lived in that belief, and with her well they could afford to plan, to look forward to the day, not so far off, when they would really be married.

He didn’t want to push her. Didn’t want to corner her or make her feel trapped, by him or by their circumstances. What had been had been, the bad things were all in the past now, they must look forward to the happiness that had been waiting for them. They believed it. I did, too.

And yet… and yet. Something wasn’t quite right, I could tell. And it wasn’t just the vestiges of her illness, either. She appeared perfectly well, at least to my untrained eye. She
seemed
well, put it that way. And Frank stated that she was. But mental illness is a tricky business.

I took care not to intrude on them, but they seemed eager for my company, so I’d drive out at least once a week, sometimes more. It was then—sitting outdoors in sweaters, for it was in the winter and though there weren’t any storms it was chill and gray, “unicorn” weather, as April called it—it was then that she told me about the Aiken poem, and about the time she’d come to this same house with Frank and had lost her virginity. Not “lost” but voluntarily surrendered.

Frank was nervous about leaving her alone in the house, but he was buried in business deals at that point and had to be at the office every day. Sometimes I’d take my work along and spend the day with her; she’d make lunch, we’d talk, go for walks, but it was strange—the more time I spent with her, the more I realized just how much she’d changed. Subtle changes, admittedly, sometimes you couldn’t put your finger on them, but changes nonetheless. Small wonder, I told myself, after what she’d been through; but now where was she heading?

They were to be married in the spring, in April, which coincidentally was her birth month, too. She was making bridal plans, picking out a dress and so on. They would be married right there in the beach house, with just a few friends present; then they were going to honeymoon in Italy. They wanted to go back to Capri, where they’d been so happy, and see Civitavecchia again. Dodi Ingrisi had died several years back, but friends had bought the villa and would make it available to the bridal couple for two weeks in June.

On a Friday, Jenny and I drove out to Malibu for the weekend—mainly at April’s insistence. Frank, too, seemed happy to see us, though I thought we’d end up as fifth wheels. Things went pleasantly enough. We got there an hour or so before sunset; Jenny and I threw on our sweatsuits and joined Frank and April for a run on the beach. When April lagged, Jenny hung back with her, while Frank and I huffed and puffed until we were winded. We returned to our blankets, where we sat wrapped in them, our bare toes dug into the damp cool sand, to watch the sunset. The sun was going down behind a silvery veil of cold mist. The light died slowly at first, then more and more quickly.

“Say, what was that poem, anyway?” Frank asked suddenly, speaking to April. “The one about the white unicorns, the guy with the sore back?”

She laughed, and Jen squeezed my hand: that was good. April remembered the Aiken, those romantic lines from the Evening Song of “Senlin.”

“
The stars hang over a sea like polished glass
…

And solemnly one by one in the darkness there

Neighing far off on the haunted air

White unicorns come gravely down to the water
….”

April recited the lines in a hushed tone, as though afraid to put her voice to them. But they resonated in the quiet air, and though I was warm in my blanket I felt a chill. “The haunted air,” that was it. Was that what Frank was asking? I didn’t know. The lines floated away with the spindrift. I had never read the poem, but Frank had told me about that time—right over there on Seal Rocks—and I wondered if he was reliving it, the night they first made love.

Glancing at them side by side, I could see their two profiles in silhouette; they looked like bedouins in their blanket, she tanned but without makeup, he with his five o’clock beard that made him look so swarthy. He had her hand resting on his knee, and he kept touching it with his lips as if it were his most treasured and precious possession. He told me afterward that he was trying to believe his good fortune, that she was well again and they’d soon be married.

Jenny had a call to make, so, leaving the others, we went on inside. While she telephoned her sister I made a fire, then went outside to bring some things in from the deck. I could see the dark huddled shape Frank and April made, sitting where we’d left them, eerily frozen in that same spot as they stared out to sea. Together, finally, and I breathed my own calm contentment at the sight.

It was full dark before they came in, still blanket-covered, teeth chattering as they hopped around in front of the fire. As she passed me, April paused to give me a quick kiss on the cheek. “That’s for being you,” she said. I glanced over at Frank, still at the fire, watching with an intent expression, his dark eyes flashing in the firelight.

“Ain’t she somethin’?” he muttered when she’d gone upstairs. He came toward me with his buccaneer’s grin. “She’s fine, Chazz,” he said in a low voice, “she really is.”

“And you? You fine, too?” I asked.

“Believe it, kiddo. I’m right as Rains.”

I winced at the pun, he put up his dukes, then gave me two playful jabs, one on each cheek.

“I’m hitting the showers,” he said, and disappeared upstairs two at a time.

By seven dinner was on; the girls made the salad and coffee, Frank let me cook the steaks; he was on the phone now. He came in with a joke about Sam Ueberroth, whose house was a stone’s throw up the beach. “Sam wants us to come down after dinner,” he said.

“I’m not budging,” April said. I thought, Good god, don’t tell me Sam’s still chasing after all these years? Jen must have read my thought; she smiled at me and Frank caught it. His look was noncommittal. We dined right there around the fire, off pewter plates, with a deep-red burgundy that had plenty of tang and matched itself well to the rare beef. Frank and April sat as close as possible. It crossed my mind that Frank hadn’t enjoyed himself like this for many moons. He kept cracking the latest office jokes and telling how Sam had made a fool of himself at the last Producers’ Guild meeting, when he got up to make a speech and couldn’t remember his words. Vi had to lean over and prompt him. I decided Frank looked younger, healthier, and more relaxed than I’d seen him in a long time, and I told myself this was the big turnaround, from here on in everything would be fine.

As things turned out later, Frank was thinking the same himself. The fact that we were all together again, a reliving of the Summer of the Purple Grape, that we were laughing and having fun, seemed to put things in their proper perspective. They even talked us into being in the bridal party, I best man, Jenny matron of honor.

During coffee he brought out a small box, the kind jewelry comes in; she opened it to find inside a pin in the shape of a unicorn, encrusted with diamonds, the horn a shaft of platinum.

“
That’s
why you wanted to hear the poem,” Jenny said. “It’s a set-up.”

Jenny and I carried out the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen, taking lots of time; then by prearranged agreement we came in yawning and saying it was time for bed. “Wait a minute,” Frank said, grabbing the last bottle of wine, “we want to drink a toast, April and I.” He filled glasses and Jen asked whom we were toasting.

“You, woman,” Frank said. “And Chazz here. We want you to know how grateful we are, April and I, that while all the rats were deserting the ship, you stuck by us. We haven’t forgotten it, and we won’t. Just promise us you’ll let us go on sharing our happiness with you.”

I never heard anything so touching, especially from Frank, who wasn’t the kind to vent his sentiments. But he was Italian, and he felt things, and Jen and I were both flattered to have him express them in this manner.

Before going to sleep, we lay under the down comforter, talking about that touching moment, how well they both looked and how happy, and how swell it was that things were finally coming together.

Meanwhile, downstairs, Frank and April lay stretched out in front of the embering fire, also talking. He couldn’t believe that his prayers finally were being answered; he wished Maxine were there to see it.

“Don’t say that,” April said, laying her fingers across his lips. “We mustn’t wish for too much. Let’s just be happy with what we’ve got.”

He put his nose in her hair, the way he always loved doing, and held her closer. They talked about their coming trip to Italy, waxing nostalgic about places they’d been, things they’d seen and done. It was good to laugh again, freely and without constraint, and not have to glance nervously back over their shoulders to see what monsters were traveling in their footsteps. He kissed her over and over, while she whispered love words in his ear. They laughed about the time the flokati rug caught fire and the fire department came and embarrassed them, here in this same room. What a long time ago that was. They even spoke of Frances and felt sorry for her. It was a luxury they could afford, now that she was gone.

The sound of the waves lulled them, the clattering rocks under the foundation; they didn’t want to make physical love, they were just happy being together like this, in the place that had meant so much to them. Feeling as he did, with the euphoria that comes from knowing that the heart’s desire has at last been won, he began talking about how he was going to find the perfect role for her, that he was going to see her make her comeback in a really big way, that if he could work things right she’d end up with an Oscar. She grew alarmed at his words, saying she didn’t want an Oscar, didn’t want to act again. He should have read the signs, but he was too happy, too far out on a pink cloud; all he could think of was making her happy and putting her back on top. Those were the terms he was used to thinking in; he wanted to see his filly back at the gate, wanted her to run the race and win it; he forgot that the filly was gate-shy and never wanted to run again. She wanted to be put out to pasture, not to stand in front of an audience hoping to be liked.

What happened next might have happened anyway, in some other time; the fact was, it happened that night, and, regrettably, it was Frank’s fault. We heard the door slam, heard Frank’s call after her; then the door opened and he ran out. We sat up, frozen with alarm, straining to hear something. Jenny shoved me out of bed and urged me to go see. I hiked on my pants, and sweatshirt and crept down the stairs. The wind was rushing through the open door, which swung on its hinges without banging. I ran out onto the deck and looked. I could make out the small figure of Frank way up the beach, but he was alone. I thought, If he goes that way, I’ll go the other.

I walked north to the far end of the Colony, but there wasn’t a sign of her. The houses were mostly dark; a dog barked at me and followed me a ways, then disappeared.

I was out of the house for an hour, and when I came back Frank was having coffee with Jenny, so worried he could hardly talk. I had never seen him so upset; he simply came undone at the seams. Wouldn’t call the police, didn’t want her name in the papers again; she’d come home, we’d just wait it out. He blamed himself, over and over; he smote his brow for a fool. Why hadn’t he seen what he was doing? What could possibly have come from his foolish desire to see her a star, Oscar in her hand? What had possessed him to even bring up such a thing when he knew how much she’d hated it all?