Everything and More (42 page)

“Thank you Joshua,” Marylin murmured.

“Oh, I am the soul of Christian forgiveness.” The eye was ticking vehemently. “I absolve you of every past trespass. In the future, alas . . .” Joshua poured himself another drink. “If in the future you persist in trespassing, John Q. Public will get to sniff those dogshitty tracks—Rain Fairburn disappears with stepson. Heartsick husband breaks down and admits Rain and son have long-term affair.”

“I don’t care about acting.”

“Who’s talking careers, my pocket-size Venus? Tell me, do you honestly believe any judge would give over a four-year-old innocent into a ménage that defines the word ‘motherfucker’?”

“Oh, Joshua . . .”

“Listen to me, and listen carefully. You persist in spreading your sweet movie-star twat for Prizewinning Novelist—”

“That Pulitzer really bugs you, doesn’t it?” Linc broke in, his fists clenching.

“—and I hire the best frigging lawyers in town. They’ll fix me up with custody and you won’t get visiting privileges with Billy from eleven-fifty-five until midnight on February 29.”

Linc said, “We’ll hire lawyers too.”

“Are you so flush from that big-time job in the Detroit Public Library?”

“Marylin has the royalties from
Island.”

Joshua gave an ugly laugh. “You just don’t know the full generosity of our blessed Saint Marylin-Rain of the Motion Pictures. She has not only endowed numerous charities but also supported her family.”

“Lest you forget,” Linc said, forcing his fury into the channel of that regrettable archness, “this is a community-property state.”

Joshua’s tan was muddy. “That Pulitzer and those A’s at Beverly and Stanford don’t mean a rat’s fart, do they? Why, you asshole half-kike, what do you know about life? You grew up in a big house with a Jewish mother to spoon-feed you caviar-matzoball soup whenever you sneezed. Whereas I—I had the real advantages. I learned to steal my daily bread before I was five. I know enough to always go direct for the jugular.” He drew a loud breath. “Our joint accounts are closed out. The community property’s buggered.”

“You bastard!” Linc’s voice rose into a note that chilled Marylin’s spine. And she realized that it was not only Linc’s outrage on her
behalf but a retroactive horror for his dead mother that caused him to reach across the desk and grip his father’s collar. The chokehold pulled the drunken older man to his feet.

“Please stop it,” Marylin whispered.
“Please stop it.”
Her hands were clasped and she was actually wringing the small fingers.

She was at the end of her emotional tether, and some of this must have cut through Linc’s fury, for he released his father, who slumped back in his chair.

“Joshua,” she said, “why are you acting like this? We both love Billy, we want what’s best for him. And you love Linc, too—you know you do.”

Joshua gulped his drink, hurling the glass at the brick fireplace, where it shattered in a noisy explosion. “Yes,” he said bitterly. “I love Linc.”

“Then why destroy us?”

“Jesus frigging Christ, listen to her. ‘Then why destroy us?’” Joshua mimicked Marylin’s soft voice. “After all these years, haven’t you the least clue what I feel for you? Am I so fucking inscrutable? I can’t help myself, I cannot help myself!” He glared at Linc. “Now, get your prizewinning Jew ass out of my house!”

“Let’s go, Marylin,” Linc said in a level voice.

“Tell Billy I’ll see him later.”

“What do I have to say to make you understand?” Joshua’s face was darkly twisted as he stood to stare down at his wife. “The choice is between my sons. You can pick one or the other. Not both.”

The telephone rang, but neither Joshua nor Marylin moved to pick it up. He swaying, she gripping the old desk, they continued to examine each other above the spindly old typewriter. On the third ring either the caller gave up or was answered on another extension.

Unequal adversary that she was, Marylin felt the dangerous power of those bloodshot, willful eyes. Yet she was fighting for what she loved best, Linc and Billy. “Judges give children to the mother,” she said.

Joshua blinked and his jaw sagged with surprise. “You mean you’re going through with a divorce?” he asked, his voice as full of disbelief as his expression.

She nodded.

“You’re damn well telling me you’re walking out on Billy?”

“I’ll get him, Joshua.”

He swiveled to face the yard, where Percy was using a long-handled net to fish eucalyptus leaves from the pool. She stretched her
hand, as if to touch her husband’s thick, quivering shoulders, but Linc pulled her from the Spartan room.

*   *   *

While Linc arranged in the motel office for them to stay through Sunday, she dialed Leland Hayward’s number to see what her agent could do about her suspension—not that she desired armistice with Magnum; she would infinitely prefer returning to Detroit with Linc. But she needed money, money, money, in order to pay sharp lawyers to get Billy for her. Therefore, work she must.

The secretary put her on immediately and her agent greeted her with his most hearty tone, informing her he had been trying to reach her. Metro was hot to borrow her for a light comedy with Gene Kelly, and if she reported to Magnum Monday morning, all would be forgiven.

“Have you heard that I’m leaving Joshua?”

Rather than answering directly, her agent referred to Clause Fourteen in her contract. “You agreed in writing, and I’m reading this, Marylin, ‘not to commit any act or become involved in any situation or occurrence or make any statement which will degrade her in society or bring her into public disrepute, contempt, scandal, or ridicule or which will shock, insult, or offend the community, or which will reflect unfavorably on the company.’”

“A divorce isn’t immoral.”

The four-times-married Hayward agreed heartily through the telephone. “But let me throw it all on the rug, Marylin. Garrison says before you get through the Magnum gate, you have to promise no more fooling around with your stepson.”

The sky was clouded, giving an ugly purplish cast to the sea. “Do I have to give you ten percent of my heart, too?”

“Marylin, I don’t make the rules. This Bergman brouhaha has everybody running scared. The exhibitors won’t touch her new film with a ten-foot pole.”

“Linc,” she murmured, “is going back to Detroit.”

“Good. Now we’re in business.”

“I need more money,” she said. “A lot more.”

He said he’d try to hammer out a reasonable raise.

  
39
  

Magnum’s head set designer had corrected for his employer’s deficiency in height by providing a dais for the outsize desk. Marylin, her mind empty of everything except panic to earn a salary that would bring her salvation, stood on deep-piled carpet below this intimidating altar listening to Art Garrison roar out the riot act. There would be no more episodes like her disappearance, there would be no more of that incestuous crap. If there were, she would find herself in
serious trouble.

Serious trouble
spoken in this poisonous half-whisper meant only one thing. Blacklisting. Intangible and unprovable, the blacklist was the studio system’s ultimate weapon against its alcoholic or homosexual or intractably scandal-prone luminaries. A more formidable anathema than a papal excommunication—the religious outcast, after all, can embrace another sect to worship God, but every one of the rivalously embattled studios bowed in obedience to the elusive interdict. A blacklisted actor, no matter how big a star, never again acted in front of a Hollywood camera.

I need the money, I need the money, thought that most valuable property, Rain Fairburn, whose shapely, dimpled knees were like water. She nodded agreement.

To ameliorate the harsh ultimatum, the voice that spoke from the depth of purple upholstery gave Marylin dispensation to separate from Joshua. But—a hairy finger waggled at her—none of that Oedipus shit. Again ritual balm eased the harshness. Out of the corporate goodness of Magnum’s heart, she would henceforth receive a thousand a week. The raise was a pittance compared to Rain Fairburn’s true worth, but Marylin, in her desperate need, babbled her gratitude. It was Garrison’s ritual to personally hand the upper hierarchy of his vassals the first paycheck of a raise. Marylin ascended three shallow steps to take the yellow paper that normally was mailed to her agent’s office. Without a glance, she thrust it into her purse.

She drove directly from the studio to Stanley Rosewood’s offices
on Wilshire Boulevard. The broad, slab-faced attorney shared honors with Greg Bautzer when it came to arm wrestling over sticky settlements and alimony, but Stanley Rosewood, everyone agreed, had the edge in custody messes.

In his sunny private office—far more
gemutlich
than Art Garrison’s—Stanley Rosewood went through an obligatory attempt at disuasion. Marylin firmly restated her intention to terminate her marriage.

The lawyer’s facial planes relaxed. “You know about my fees?” he inquired.

Joshua had taken charge of those personal negotiations not handled by the business manager; Leland Hayward hassled out the professional finances. Marylin had a sinking sense of her fiduciary ineptitude that she covered with a spirited smile. “Refresh my memory,” she said.

“The initial retainer is twenty-five hundred.”

A sum so dismayingly beyond reach that her bright expression must have sagged.

Stanley Rosewood added smoothly, “Under friendly conditions, that often covers it. Let’s be frank, though. Joshua Fernauld is a powerful man in this town, used to throwing his weight around. You tell me he’s opposed to this divorce. He’s hardly going to toss in the towel about the minor child.”

“I’m Billy’s mother.”

“It’s true, custody is generally awarded the mother. But in one of my other cases, where my client has proved herself unfit, I can do nothing.” A discreet professional pause to let Marylin recall that Ingrid Bergman had retained Stanley Rosewood—she was beginning to feel herself harnessed in tandem with the misfortunately philoprogenitive Swedish actress. “There the court will decide for the father.”

“But I’m a fit mother.”

“I’m only saying we’d better be prepared for a court battle. And your behavior will have to be irreproachable. Your husband might use detectives.”

“Spy on me? Yes, he would.”

Stanley Rosewood nodded. “Above reproach, then. You do understand that the preliminary payment is made in advance?”

Please, God, let Mama have that much to lend me, Marylin thought as she said, “Of course.”

In her car, she took out her paycheck. The thousand dollars, less the diverse deductions, amounted to $715.23, out of which must
come Leland Hayward’s hundred-dollar agent’s bite. With a worried frown she took out an envelope, scribbling numbers on the back. As she added the column her soft, beautiful mouth drew into a bleak curve.

Since the best part of her old salary was already pledged to supporting the house on Crescent Drive, the hoped-for maternal loan would take a long time to repay.

She had not yet discussed her divorce with NolaBee. The previous night when she had called home, her mother had been out, so she had broken the news to Roy that she would be moving into the house, explaining why. Roy had steadfastly backed her decision, insisting Marylin take her bedroom:
The couch’ll be fine for me, Marylin, I mean it.

NolaBee, however, had not taken the dissolution of her beautiful older daughter’s marriage with the same loyal equanimity. In a state of nerves, she had not slept. Though it was nearly noon, she answered the door in her old blue kimono with the dragon on it—no matter how many robes her daughters presented her with, NolaBee favored this disgraceful garment.

She flung her arms around Marylin. “Roy told me! Darlin’, darlin’, you can’t mean it!”

“I do, Mama.” Marylin, battling to hold on to her precarious composure, released herself from her mother’s clutch. “And I need to borrow a huge amount of money. Twenty-five hundred dollars.”

“There’s something like that, I reckon, in the savings, but—”

“I’ll pay it back as quickly as possible.”

“Oh, Marylin,
you
gave me that money, it’s yours. But a divorce? Why, nobody in our family ever, ever got one! And let me tell you, some of our women put up with an awful lot.”