All That Glitters (77 page)

Like a mongoose awaiting its cobra prey, Claire had bided her time. She did not call me; I called her to say I was back on the dime and her willing and obedient servant, ready to do or die. I was surprised when I heard a cheery, full-throttle voice on the phone, telling me to get my ass over there, we had work to do. Before another hour elapsed I was back on Memory Lane again, listening to Madame crack the Hollywood eggs and serve up another of her romantic omelets. By now it was tough sledding and I was feeling the strain, but, resolved to keep my end of the bargain, I resumed where I’d left off, grinding it out as well and as quickly as I could.

In the following weeks things became more or less routine: either she talked and I queried, or she allowed me to rummage around among the chock-a-block filled drawers in that famous automated filing system. If drawers could only talk! And these did; Claire Regrett had the only talking drawers in all the world. It was like cleaning the Augean stables—how much horseshit would get swept out, how much would go into the book. Still, one persevered. I’d lunched with Vi and she listened glassy-eyed while I told her some of the things that had been going on. “You mustn’t give up, dear, it’ll be fine, you’re sure to have another best-seller—and the respect of your peers as well.” I’d left Vi realizing there was bullshit and then there was
bullshit.

Now I became confronted with a further distillation of the Myth of Madame R. The stories of her were legion and I had a good time remembering some of them, even though I was determined never to swallow them whole. Yet there were tempting moments, to wit: the minor, perhaps even apocryphal, incident concerning film and TV star Loretta Young’s famous “swear-box.” It seems that in her heyday the famous actress took exception to the use of profanity on her set, and any time she heard a member of her cast or crew use a four-letter word, she required him or her to drop a coin in the slot of her “swear-box,” the amount determined by a sliding scale, ten cents for a “damn,” say, twenty-five for a “shit,” fifty for a “son-of-a-bitch,” and so on. Once, hearing Claire divest herself of a four-letter word, Loretta wagged a finger and said her “goddamn” would cost her half a buck. “Really, darling?” queried Claire; “and how much will it cost me to tell you to go fuck yourself?” Loretta’s reply is not known to history.

Give her this: Claire never did less than speak her mind, and her mind was a receptacle for endless bits of interesting trivia of old Hollywood. She thrived on tales of the Golden Days, and through them she kept her past close around her; it was the warm fur mantle that shielded her from life’s wintry blasts.

Much of her life was now being made plain to me merely by pushing the buttons of the filing system, where she allowed me to roam at will. Needless to say, I was both awed and fascinated by that miniature Hall of Fame she had stuck away in the back room. I loved it that there were separate files tabbed “Husbands: Antrim,” “Husbands: McCord,” “Husbands: Gobelins,” and “Husbands: Calhoun.” Each of these folders was filled with sentimental savings, the bits of string and tinfoil from forty years of marital disaster, valentines, birthday cards, snapshots, pressed flowers (true), due-bills and billets-doux, folders of sundry material in divorce proceedings, bills stamped “paid” for jewelry and other presents, a pipe for one, a gold lighter or belt buckle for another, plus lists of the individual failings and flaws of each gentleman, character sketches from her own hand, fragments of languid verse, all the flotsam and jetsam gathered on the choppy seas of matrimony.

Since I knew only a little about him I was particularly interested in the folder marked “Husbands: Calhoun.” Natchez Calhoun’s was an especially sad tale, though it started out like all of the rest of her romances, on Cloud Nine, drinking pink champagne from a glass slipper while the dish ran away with the spoon. From the purple passion expressed in some of Our Author’s love notes, it appeared that he was energetically devoted to sex with his bride and would lay aside his typewriter at any moment to throw her in the sack.

It was interesting if predictable to trace the downward spiral of this union. With Claire’s having publicly declared herself just one more Hollywood bachelor-girl after the debacle of Yves Gobelins, and her having stated via Hedda’s column (where everything was always writ in stone) that she’d never wed again, it had come as something of a surprise when she married the famous southern playwright and Pulitzer Prize winner Quentin “Natchez” Calhoun in a midnight ceremony held in the haybarn at his farm in Cornwall, Connecticut. Thereafter she changed the engraving on her stationery and promised fervently and worldwide that “this time it was for keeps,” a quote she’d already employed to advantage several times before.

She now entered upon her pastorale period, retiring to the mountain greenery (where God paints the scenery) of Black Beauty Farm, whence she dispatched frequent bulletins to a faithful public. She was Little Bo-Peep and Old MacDonald rolled up in a great ball of calico and kitchen rick-rack. (She even wore a straw hat—by Farmer John Fredericks.) She got up with the chickens and went to bed with the cows, and as usual
Modern Screen
and
Photoplay
came round to record the wedded bliss.

Because of her association with a spate of Muses on the highest level, she got bitten by the creative bug. She attempted short stories (one was published in
Liberty
), brought out a slim book of verse (dedicated to “My Only Quentin and Eliz. Barrett Browning,” why, no one could figure). As if these triumphs weren’t sufficient, she began formulating an awesome plan that they, Mr. and Mrs., should become one of the great teams of the American theatre. A large, expensive studio was built, half of which was hers to paint in, the other half his to write in. It was leaked (by Claire?) that the Pulitzer winner was currently working on a play to star his actress-spouse in her initial theatrical foray. In this piece she was to essay not one but three historical characters whose trials had been unjust—Joan of Arc; Mary Johnson, a minor Puritan figure tried and hanged for witchcraft; and Emma Goldman, the notorious anarchist. It was called, simply,
Three Women.

From its inception things boded ill. Rehearsals went on indefinitely, with the large cast invited up to Cornwall for extended stays, and as time and money wore on, Claire was bulletined as having contracted a variety of ailments. Avoiding a local tryout, the cast trekked west, where the show played four nights at a Detroit theatre and where, since they were already in bad trouble, Claire took up the pen herself and performed major rewrite surgery. Not a good idea. Josh Logan was called in to doctor it: another not-good idea. After the worst notices in the history of the city of Detroit, the play shut down. “No Regretts” was the contemptible joke, and Claire was heard to say it was the last time she’d “ever screw around with any historical broads.”

From this debacle, Natchez Calhoun was bound to have emerged a sadder man, but how wiser remained to be seen. Suddenly all the flaws in his wife, heretofore well disguised, began to be made apparent and Natchez was quoted as confessing to intimates that he wondered why he’d ever married her. Certainly not for her mind, and her body was then fifty years old. This union was to be her last. Thumbing her nose at gingham and calico, Claire hied herself back to Manhattan by hired limo to oust her sublease tenants from her penthouse (for leaving the windows open while they were summering on Fire Island, thus ruining her carpets). She replaced the rugs, had the floors sanded where they’d been marred, and set about writing her memoirs, second edition.

A name unmentioned in that masterpiece—and, in fact, never spoken by her at all—was that of Dore Skirball. As far as she was concerned he’d never existed, and, ever avoiding conflict, thus far I hadn’t broached the subject. But one afternoon when we were digging through some old boxes of photographs, I came upon him, camping in one of her big hats, jeans rolled to show off a pair of anklestrap shoes. As I chuckled, Claire snatched the picture from me, tore it to bits, and threw them on the floor.

“I thought I’d got rid of all of those. I can’t stand the sight of that queen,” she muttered.

The moment had come to do a little mining of gold; I remembered how unhappy Dore had been over the breakup of his friendship with Claire. “You used to like him, didn’t you? You and he were great friends at one point.”

She spun around and gave me a glare. “Dore Skirball’s not anybody I want to talk about—not to you, not to anyone!”

“All right, if you don’t, so be it. Scratch Dore Skirball.” I drew a line through the air.

“That silly bastard, that—never mind, let’s skip it for something more important.”

“He was very fond of you. It hurt him that you’d fallen out with each other.”

“Then he should have watched his step. I told him time and time again one day he’d go too far.”

“How far did he go?”

“Well, for one thing, he wasn’t loyal. I demand loyalty in my friends or we simply aren’t friends, that’s all. I have to
depend
on my friends, who else have I anymore?”

“How was he disloyal?”

“He bitched me behind my back. He told Vi I was worth more dead than alive.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because they could use my skin to make alligator bags.” Suddenly she laughed, as if in spite of herself. “He really
was
divinely fun, you know. I felt sorry for him, I
tried
to help him. Even Frank was fond of him, but—And then he insisted on being friends with Belinda and Angelina Brown and, frankly, I didn’t like that. And then he betrayed me! He betrayed me in public, he held me up to public ridicule in that act of his, and I never forgave him. Never
will
forgive him! Who the hell did he think he was, anyway? Nobody can do Claire but Claire. Anyway, I don’t want to hear any more about Dore Skirball!” she blazed.

I could see she was getting upset, not good for her precarious health, but if she had a bug up her ass, so did I. And I wanted her to understand about Dore.

“I don’t think you realize how much he cared about you. And he was a major talent, even if you couldn’t see it.”

“What
I
saw was a mediocre drag queen trading on his friendships with me and other famous people. In the end he never made it, he lived and died in obscurity, where he belonged. Truthfully, I never understood why a clever man like Frank Adonis could go around telling people Dore would be a star. I know star quality when I see it, and he was not it.”

I rejoiced, thinking of the gasket she’d blow if I laid it on her about Dore’s not being a star, but I wasn’t going to level, not yet, not with this Claire. She sat there with such a smug look that finally I opened up.

“Claire, you know something? You’re really full of shit sometimes.” The words popped out of my mouth before I could help it. She leaped up and threw her glass away. It smashed on the wall and spattered one of her bug-eyed urchins.

“You really don’t like me much, do you?” she demanded with narrowed, appraising eyes.

Her question caught me off guard; I knew I’d gone too far and I all but stammered my reply. “Sure. Sure I do. Why do you say that? Do I act as if I don’t?”

“Come on, buster, I mean it. I want you to level with me. You
don’t
like me, do you? You really don’t. Don’t be afraid to say it.”

I actually backed away from her. “Why? Why do you want me to say it? You never like hearing negatives about yourself.”

She softened a little, and I could see she was getting Sincere. By now I knew all about Claire and Sincere. “Yes I do. I really do. When they’re positive negatives. I’ve lived long enough to be able to face up to my flaws. My errors. Isn’t that a nice word? It’s so gutsy. So come on,
you
be gutsy and come across with the truth. I
want
you to tell me the truth about myself. I
need
to hear it.”

I watched her expression carefully, trying to decipher it, wondering whether I really should pump her full of truth slugs. “Sure, sure I like you,” I told her. “You’re okay, Claire, you really are.
You’re
really gutsy, you know. You’re a survivor and I admire that will to survive. You’re your own memorial, your own testament to the long battle. And I respect that.”

“Maybe, but you still don’t
like
me, do you? Come on, level with me. Just say it. I won’t get mad or anything, I won’t hold it against you, I just want to know. I really like to know where I stand with people. Especially ones close to me.”

“Oh shit,” I thought, “how can I get her off this dumb kick?” I didn’t want to be having this conversation, this bared-soul confessional kind of thing. I knew her and the whole cast of characters she loved parading before people—the Iron Maiden, the Poor Little Match Girl, the Ice Queen, Carrie Nation, the Duchess of Brattlebutt, Mother Earth, Nurse Edith Cavell, Mary Baker Eddy, the whole kit and caboodle. But most of all I disliked the present company, the Great Searcher After Truth. It was the phoniest in the whole pantheon, since I judged her unable to recognize the truth if she fell over it.

I felt her eyes staring at me with increasing awareness. I saw them express by turns dawning realization, apprehension, puzzlement, hurt, then fear, and, inevitably, anger.

“Why, you lousy son of a bitch!” she blazed out at me. “You really
don’t
like me! Do you! God damn, you
don’t
! Who the hell do you think you are, anyway? Here I’ve gone out of my way, bent over backwards to help you, trying to get this book just the way it should be, trying to instill an honesty in it, to make it
memorable
—here I sit pouring out my heart to you night after night, dredging up all my secrets, and you dare to sit there looking so goddamn
smug
and telling me you don’t like me! Who the hell are you not to like
me
!
You don’t even know me
!”

I stared hang-mouthed at this explosion. But before I could protest, she was at me again.

“You know, you really ought to take a good look at yourself, buster! As if
you
knew anything about what it’s like to be me! As if you could feel all the things I feel, the lousy rotten dirty things they made me feel. Well, let me tell you this, I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think of me. Got that? It’s so easy to criticize others, you know? All you have to do is open your mouth and all the shit comes spilling out. And, you know, when you come right down to it, I don’t think I really like you, either. I don’t know how I got you around here, anyway. It’s all Vi’s fault, Mrs. Buttinski as usual, always sticking her nose in things when she isn’t wanted.”