An Inconvenient Woman (42 page)

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“I’m Mrs. Mendelson,” said Pauline to Mimosa Perez at the admissions desk of the emergency entrance.

“Oh, yes, Mrs. Mendelson,” said Mimosa, transfixed by the elegance and serenity of the woman standing before her.

Cyril Rathbone knew better than to speak to Pauline Mendelson, or even allow himself to be seen by her. He leaned back on the bench where he was sitting and raised the
Los Angeles Tribunal
to cover his face as he listened to Mimosa Perez give instructions to Pauline on how to get to the intensive care unit. Cyril followed fashion each season and could identify with precision one Paris collection from another. He wrote in his spiral notebook that Pauline Mendelson was wearing a dark green traveling suit, with tattersall blouse, by Givenchy, when she arrived at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center by chauffeur-driven limousine, after having landed in her husband’s sixteen-seat 727 from Bangor, Maine, where she had been visiting her ailing father, the sportsman Neville McAdoo. He also wrote that Rose Cliveden was sent home in the same limousine by Mrs. Mendelson.

When Pauline walked into her husband’s room in the intensive care unit, Flo March was still there. Jules lay unconscious on the bed. She was sitting on the edge of his bed, rubbing his hand and whispering encouragement in his ear.

“Everything’s going to be okay, Jules. Just think positive. You’ll be up and around in no time. It’s just the strain you’ve been under that caused this. With Arnie Zwillman, and the statehood of Europe, and everything.”

Pauline stared at the scene before her. “I would like to be alone with my husband, please,” she said.

Flo jumped, as if an electric shock had gone through her. She stared at Pauline, aghast, and put her hand to her mouth. Her face was wet with tears and running mascara and smeared lipstick. Her skirt was ripped. She had washed the blood off her knees, but she knew they looked scraped and ugly. “Oh, Mrs. Mendelson,” she said. Her voice was weak and barely audible. She knew that this woman would never cry in public.

Pauline went to the other side of the bed. Taking the hand of her unconscious husband, she spoke as if Flo did not exist. “Hello, Jules,” she said. “It’s Pauline. The nurses all say outside that you can’t hear when you’re in a coma, but I’ve never believed that. My father said he could hear everything
we said to him last year when he had his stroke. Do you remember? The plane was hours late. Terrible storms in Maine. Landing problems in Los Angeles. Father sends his love. Of course, he doesn’t know what’s happened. Rose came to the airport to break the news to me. She was so drunk. I’ll tell you about it when you’re better. It will make you laugh, I know. I’ve talked with Dr. Petrie outside. He’s terribly nice, and I’m sure he’s a good doctor. They’re flying in Dr. Rosewald from New York, for a consultation. I insisted on that. In a few days, if all goes well, they’re going to move you to the Mendelson Wing. What’s the point of giving a wing if you can’t use it. Right? You’ll be more comfortable there. You’re going to be all right, Jules. Dr. Petrie has great hope.”

Flo was overwhelmed by the assurance of Pauline Mendelson. She had never seen a woman with such beautiful posture, with such a long neck, with such an aristocratic face, or heard a woman speak with such a deep contralto voice. Like a fired maid, Flo edged her way toward the door, listening to every word that Pauline said.

As she put her hand on the knob, the door opened, and a nurse came in.

“There can only be one person in here at a time,” said the nurse, in an angry voice.

“I am just leaving,” said Flo.

She turned to look back at Jules once more, and Pauline turned to look toward the door. The eyes of the two women met, but Pauline’s eyes moved from Flo’s eyes to her earlobes and became fixated on them. The large yellow diamond earrings that Jules had given to her on the night of Casper Stieglitz’s party, and that she had returned to him the following morning when they had breakfasted together in the sunrise room of Clouds, were now on Flo March’s ears. Pauline’s coolness and reserve evaporated. Her face flushed with anger.

“You,” said Pauline. “Now I remember you. I thought you looked familiar. You’re the one who backed into my car. Why didn’t I realize it was you? What a fool you must have thought me that day. I think I even complimented you on your suit.”

“No, I didn’t think you were a fool, Mrs. Mendelson,” answered Flo.

“Did it strike you funny later? Did you laugh about it with my husband?”

“Never. Never. I swear to you,” said Flo.

Staring at Flo, Pauline remembered the moment on her terrace after Hector Paradiso’s funeral when she had asked Jules who the red-haired woman in the Chanel suit was he had been talking to outside the Church of the Good Shepherd, and he had pretended not to know her. Even then, she realized, she was being deceived.

“Get out of this room,” she said, in a low and even voice.

“I said I was going,” said Flo, frightened.

But Pauline had not said enough to assuage her anger. “You tramp,” she added.

“I am not a tramp,” said Flo. Tears came to her eyes. The word
tramp
hurt her deeply. Once she had heard a man call her mother a tramp.

“Call it what you will,” said Pauline, turning back to Jules.

Flo’s anger matched Pauline’s. “You can afford to be so high and mighty, Mrs. Mendelson. For your whole life, you’ve had everything handed to you on a silver platter. You’ve never had to earn your living.”

“Is being kept for sex what you call earning a living?” asked Pauline.

“Yes,” snapped Flo, meeting her gaze. She did not say that she took care of needs that Pauline did not, or could not, or was disinclined to take care of, but Pauline understood her meaning and her gaze without having to hear the words.

Pauline looked away. “I won’t ask for details,” she said.

“No, better not,” replied Flo. “I might tell you.”

“I asked you to leave this room before this nurse asked you to leave. So please go,” said Pauline.

From the bed Jules let out a moan.

The nurse, who had been watching, said, “Yes, miss, you must let your mother be here with your father. Only one person at a time.”

“Her mother!” cried Pauline, in an outraged voice. “I am not this tramp’s mother. Is that how she passed herself off?”

“Don’t you call me a tramp again,” said Flo. She walked out of the room.

The duty nurse could not believe the scene she had just witnessed. Within minutes she told the desk nurse outside, and the desk nurse told one of the interns, who told another of the interns. Before an hour had passed, the news had trickled
down to the emergency entrance on the first floor, where Cyril Rathbone wrote in his spiral notebook, “Contretemps between wife and mistress in intensive care unit, as Jules Mendelson lay unconscious between them. ‘Don’t you call me a tramp,’ cried Flo March.”

Flo’s Tape #18

“Cyril Rathbone says it’s because of me that Jules didn’t get to be the head of the American delegation to Brussels. That’s not true, you know. Jules lost that appointment before the world ever heard of me. Not long before, but before. I happen to know why he lost it. I happen to be one of the few people who do know. Not even Pauline knew. Jules never told her. But he told me. Arnie Zwillman knew too. You know, the gangster? Arnie Zwillman was responsible for Jules not getting the appointment. Arnie Zwillman blew the whistle on Jules because Jules wouldn’t play ball with Zwillman. Believe me, I know it. Jules knew it too. He told me that afternoon before he had his heart attack.”

C
yril Rathbone once had higher literary aspirations than to be the gossip columnist for
Mulholland
. At his English university, he had affected the mannerisms, flamboyant dress, and speech patterns of a latter-day Oscar Wilde, and his undergraduate plays, which were
hommages
to the great playwright, had attracted a certain youthful notoriety. However, his subsequent postgraduate forays into the West End theater in London did not live up to his early expectations. He had then arrived in Hollywood, a dozen years ago, as a promising screenwriter. He let it be known that he was the illegitimate son of a British aristocrat, an earl, who was, of course, dead. He let it be known that he had come to seek his fortune because his father’s legitimate heir, the present earl, could not bear the sight of him and made his life in England impossible. His story had a romantic quality that gave him an instant social entrée. Witty and urbane, stylishly dressed in the English manner, and wickedly entertaining in his storytelling, he was snapped up by the wives of producers and studio heads as a new and amusing extra man.

People said about the hostess Pearl Silver that she must watch the airport, because she always knew before anyone else when someone new arrived in town. Pearl, who entertained at lunch and dinner several days a week, was always on the lookout for interesting newcomers, and she became the first of the movie crowd to ask Cyril Rathbone. Then Sylvia Lesky, who entertained less frequently than Pearl but in a grander manner, and was considerably harder to please, found Cyril an amusing addition at her parties. “He is a breath of spring,” she said about Cyril at the time. “We need new blood from time to time. We see much too much of the same people.”

Sylvia doted on Cyril for an entire season and was even
instrumental in having her husband, Marty Lesky, the head of Colossus Pictures, the same studio that her father had once been the head of, sign him up as a staff writer. But none of Cyril’s three screenplays, for which he had been paid handsomely by Marty Lesky, was ever produced. “Too fairyish,” said Marty at the time. Cyril’s option was then dropped. Afterward, he was no longer invited to the Leskys’ house, where only the very successful were invited. Pearl Silver continued to have him, although more for lunch than for dinner, because he was, like Hector Paradiso, who became his friend, one of the few men who could always be counted on for lunch. Over the years, as success eluded him, Cyril changed groups several times. Then a writing stint for the society page of the
Tribunal
led to his column in the weekly magazine
Mulholland
, and the success that followed was sweet to him, although it was less than the success that he had always imagined would be his.

Some people did not believe his romantic story of being the illegitimate son of an earl. Pauline Mendelson was one of those people. To her observant eye, his excellent manners appeared to be manners learned by imitation, rather than manners acquired as a child from a parent or a nanny. He popped to his feet too fast when a lady entered the room, or held out a chair with too much flourish when a lady sat down to dine. And his accent, which was perfect to most ears, sounded altogether too florid to her well-tutored ears. Pauline was a student of English life. When she was young, her sisters thought she might marry Lord St. Vincent and live in Kilmartin Abbey in Wiltshire, but that had not come to pass. Neville McAdoo didn’t possess the kind of fortune Lord St. Vincent needed to keep up his abbey, so he married one of the Van Degan heiresses instead, and Pauline married Johnny Petworth. It was Pauline who asked the present Earl Rathbone about his father’s illegitimate son in Los Angeles. “An impostor, a total impostor,” said the earl. “My father knew nothing of him.”

Pauline was not the kind of woman who would repeat such a story, and did not. To her it was of no importance that Cyril had created such a background for himself. It was only after he became a celebrated social scribe and wanted, in that capacity, to be invited to the Mendelsons’ parties at Clouds that she spoke up, when Hector Paradiso intervened in his friend’s behalf.

“Do have him, Pauline,” said Hector.

“Jules despises social publicity,” said Pauline. “It’s not good for his position in the administration.”

“But Cyril is different,” insisted Hector. “You know, of course, that he is the illegitimate son of the last Earl Rathbone. He’s a gentleman.”

“No, he’s not,” said Pauline.

“Not what? A gentleman?”

“That’s for anyone to decide. He is not the illegitimate son of the last Earl Rathbone. It is an entirely bogus story.”

“How do you know such a thing?” asked Hector.

“I asked.”

“Asked who?”

“The present earl, the one who supposedly drove him out of England. He didn’t drive him out of England. He never heard of Cyril Rathbone. You must never mention this, Hector.”

“On my honor.”

One of Hector Paradiso’s lesser deficiencies was that he was utterly unable to keep a secret. When he passed on to Cyril Rathbone what Pauline Mendelson had told him, Cyril laughed in an altogether charming way. “But of course that’s what Peregrin would say,” said Cyril, referring to the present earl’s denial of him. And he dropped the matter. But Cyril Rathbone remembered slights. He was in no hurry. He knew the time would come when he would get even.

Flo March’s encounter with Pauline Mendelson at Jules Mendelson’s bedside in the intensive care unit of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center left her shattered and shamed. When she returned to her home, the first thing she saw in the glare of the Bentley’s headlights, as she drove up her steep driveway, was the body of little Astrid, in the place where she had left her five hours earlier, in her haste to follow the ambulance to the hospital. It had never occurred to Flo, who secretly cherished the dream of meeting her next-door neighbor, Faye Converse, and being invited to her parties, that her introduction to the great star would finally come when she rang her doorbell to tell her that she had killed her dog.