Everything and More (22 page)

Moving swiftly, Joshua gave a cry that garbled her name, then collapsed.

Over his shoulder in the lusterless mirror Marylin could see an indistinct reflection: the back of a large, thickset, gasping man, his buttocks startlingly white in the middle of his tan, curled on top of a slight girl.

The image was no more real to her than the flickers on the screen earlier tonight.

*   *   *

Numerous retakes were needed on
Island.
Marylin reported daily to the Paramount sound stage, where the excessive tension that had possessed actors and crew was dissipated, replaced by an easy, jocular camaraderie as they wrapped up a film everyone knew would be good. Joshua took her out to leisurely lunches. Unaware that these were the final days she would be able to appear unselfconscious in public, she enjoyed his bravura conversation. Joshua had an inexhaustible supply of industry anecdotes that he related with outrageous accents and masterful humor that cracked her up completely—once she lay down in the booth, actually lay down, in a helpless ravagement of laughter. His range of knowledge extended far beyond Hollywood. He read vastly and catholically, and he peppered
his talk with literary references. He had a firm historical command of politics, the causes and implications of the war. He understood and explained the works of Einstein and Freud. Never a bore, he let her have her say. When she spoke, timidly, about the craft of acting, his tanned, deeply lined face was heavy with concentration.

She looked up to him as she would a brilliant professor. This nonerotic suggestion of being his student extended into the Lanai Motel. Never once did she feel as she had with Linc, an equal partner.

*   *   *

“I reckon you ought to start going out,” NolaBee said. Since quitting Hughes, she was constantly fussing around the kitchen concocting dishes to tempt the fugitive appetite of her beautiful child. At this moment she was stirring a great dollop of butter—bought with the last of the Waces’ red ration stamps—into mashed potatoes.

“I have lunch with Joshua.”

“That’s not what all I mean, and you know it. He’s Linc’s father.”

“Verdon Conant.” Marylin mentioned a young actor that Magnum publicity often teamed her with.

“He’s one of
those,”
NolaBee said, letting her hand dangle from her wrist. She was peering worriedly at Marylin. “Been over a year, darlin’. I won’t have you moping around. You’re going to be a star. Now it’s time for you to have fun with beaux, maybe meet Mr. Right.”

What famous screenwriter was seen těte-à-těte at the Hollywood Brown Derby with luscious oh-so-young
Island
star Rain Fairburn?

—
Louella Parsons’ column, Hearst Press, November 3, 1944

D-DAY

—New York Times
Extra, June 6, 1944

Almighty God, our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity. Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, thy heroic servants, into thy kingdom.

—
Broadcast prayer of President Roosevelt, June 6, 1944

Of all the thunderous hits in the successful annals of Magnum Pictures, we’re proudest of
Northern Lights
with that wonderful new Magnum luminary, Rain Fairburn. When you play this great new box-office attraction, you will experience not only the biggest hit of the year, but you will enjoy an equally important success, the heartfelt gratitude of your patrons.

—
Ad in
Motion Picture Herald,
April 9, 1945

The 1944 Pulitzer Prize for fiction goes posthumously to Lincoln Fernauld for his wartime novel,
Island.

—Time,
May 7, 1945

Ingrid Bergman
(Gaslight);
Claudette Colbert
(Since You Went Away);
Bette Davis
(Mr. Skeffington);
Rain Fairburn
(Island);
Greer Garson
(Mrs. Parkington);
Barbara Stanwyck
(Double Indemnity)

—
Nominees for Best Actress, 1944, Motion Picture Academy

  
19
  

1944 was Roy and Althea’s sixteenth year: on their birthdays they would be eligible for State of California drivers’ licenses. In spring, though, because Belvedere was classified as a farm, Althea achieved an early license and ownership of a car.

It was not, of course, a new model—no new cars had rolled off the line since the war began—and neither was it the convertible for which Althea had pleaded and raged. It was one of the cars used around Belvedere, an Oldsmobile station wagon, a utilitarian vehicle square of line and homely with its green hood and varnished wood body, not zooty at all. It possessed, however, one consummate virtue: Hydra-Matic transmission. There were no gears to strip, no clutch to burn out.

After a couple of days cruising around Belvedere’s graveled roadways with the chauffeur, both girls could drive. (This was by far the longest time Roy would ever spend at the estate.) Althea passed the driving test, and Roy, who had only a learner’s permit, could drive when her friend was in the car.

Althea, with her casual generosity, designated the station wagon as joint property, and together they stenciled “Big Two” with dark green paint on the wood of both front doors.

The previous summer Marylin had forever departed Beverly High. This June BJ had graduated. Roy adhered to Althea’s unstated wish that they remain an inviolate duo.

With their standoffishness, their knowing, secret-code badinage, and their outré makeup, they had garnered reputations as “cinches”
or “hot stuff—though no Beverly High boys had dated them.

Althea and Roy gave rides to pairs of hitching servicemen. More often than not, these men asked them out. If the guys were young, reasonably c&c (couth and cute), the girls accepted. In their draped, shoulder-padded dresses, they descended with their dates on Hollywood, sitting in movie cathedrals or dancing at the Palladium.

These dates infused Roy with a tiny amount of self-esteem. Althea, though, gained no such confidence. What, she would ask Roy, did an evening with a GI or a gob signify? What triumph was there in jitterbugging to the razzmatazz beat of Gene Krupa when all around on the huge, crowded dance floor a thousand girls were likewise dancing with that most ubiquitous of commodities, an enlisted man? Privately, Roy considered Althea a little cold-blooded about it. Yet if they parked afterward—and they often did—on one of the secluded ledges along Tower Road, she would hear slithering, shifting, groaning sounds on the front seat of the station wagon.

Roy herself didn’t mind kissing, not even those saliva-exchanging French kisses, but when hot hands inevitably snaked toward her cotton brassiere or her pink rayon panties, desolation overcame her, for she understood that her date had lost his embryonic regard for her.

That summer NolaBee, once again a housewife, fixed Roy a late breakfast every morning, and Roy, joyous at securing her mother’s total attention, ate her Shredded Wheat recounting a bowdlerized version of her previous night’s date. That summer Marylin bought Roy two brand-new size-twelve dirndl dresses at Taffy’s, and Roy had no hickeys on her freckled skin. That summer saw monstrous battles along the coastlines of Europe, blood drenched the circumference of the globe, yet the sun chose to confer its benevolent warmth on Roy Wace in the prosperous, peaceful little town of Beverly Hills, California.

*   *   *

That summer, the girls met Dwight Hunter.

They were driving home from the beach along Wilshire, peasant blouses over their swimsuits, both a little groggy from too much sun. It was Roy’s turn to drive. At the intersection of Santa Monica a clanging red streetcar held up traffic. Near the landmark fountain with its graceful kneeling statue stood a sturdily built young man. Wearing covert slacks with a white shirt, he had a sandy crewcut, and from this angle showed a profile somewhat like Van Johnson’s.

He held out his thumb.

I’d pick him up in a snap if he were in uniform, Roy thought. (The
girls had resolved a convoluted system of boy-girl mores; in the Big Two’s books, if you gave a ride to a serviceman you were patriotic, to a civilian, just cheap.)

He turned, glancing into the open window directly at her. As they regarded one another across Wilshire Boulevard, Roy felt a strange quiver in her abdomen.

He gestured with his head at Santa Monica Boulevard in the direction of the ornate dome of the Beverly Hills City Hall, whose tiles—green, blue, gold—were brilliant in the late pink sunlight. Roy was continuing along Wilshire to her house. Yet with only a fractional hesitation she nodded. He jogged across the street.

Althea turned to her. “Why are we picking
that
up?”

“He’s sort of Van Johnsonish.”

“Yes, they’re both masculine,” Althea retorted. “Besides, dear heart, he’s heading along Santa Monica. Which we are not.”

“So we’ll zigzag a few blocks,” said Roy, leaning over to pull at the back-door handle, releasing the lock.

“Thanks, I was giving up hope,” the man said. “Big Two. . . . I don’t get it.”

“A sobriquet,” Roy said. “Which as you doubtless know means—”

“A nickname,” he finished. “Yours?”

“Bright boy,” Roy said.

He and Roy chuckled. Althea was silent. The streetcar had passed. As the traffic moved, Roy cut a sharp left onto Santa Monica. “How far are you going?” she asked.

“Crescent.”

Roy twisted around, taking her eyes off the traffic to gaze exultantly into his eyes. “Coincidence of coincidences!” she cried. “I live on Crescent too. The house next to Ralphs.”

“I’m on the six-hundred block, north,” he said.

“The right side of the tracks,” Roy said. “Do you go to Beverly?”

“UCLA.”

“Oh?” Althea drawled with a faintly deprecatory smile. “Waiting to get caught in the draft?”

Roy, watching in the rearview mirror, saw him redden. She said hastily, “I’m Roy Wace, and this is Althea Cunningham. We’re seniors.”

“I’m Dwight Hunter. We moved here last April.”

Roy asked, “From where?”

“Up north, Marin County,” he said. “Hey, Roy, stop!”

They had reached the block-long Beverly Hills post office that by some architectural blunder faced grandiosely onto the tracks. Roy
swerved to the curb, jamming down the brake. Dwight jumped out, then leaned on the window. “Thank you.”

“De nada,”
Roy said.

“It won’t be
nada
in one second,” Althea said. “The police will be upon you.”

Roy gave Dwight her sparkle smile and pressed on the accelerator. They swerved around the corner.

“Yech,” Althea said.

“I thought he was c and c. Also intelligent.”

“I
heard no sign of brilliance, only that he was 4-F.”

“He never said he was. Maybe he’s a medical student or underage.”

“How about that limp?” Althea asked.

“What limp?”

“You didn’t notice?”

“No.”

“You need glasses.”