Land of Dreams: A Novel (22 page)

He looked down at my hands holding his, then smiled brightly up at me until I thought he might try to kiss me.

Instead, he raised his brow to let me know that it was not outside the bounds of possibility, then raised both my hands to his lips, kissed them sweetly and said, “Ellie, I can never feel worried or dejected when I am with you.”

Mostly Stan called over to our house.

His last movie score written, he was now on a break.

“I am supposed to be writing,” he said, “but who can work when I can come here and eat this delicious bread?”

Bridie could not quite get the measure of Stan, and he was smart enough to let on that her baking was the thing that drew him down from the grand hills to humble Los Feliz.

“We Jews, we make the best bread, but this woman—
this woman
with her Irish bread . . .” And he clasped his hands dramatically to his chest.

“Why do you keep bringing these bloody foreigners in among us?” she said one day after he had left. “There’ll be trouble . . .”

“We were foreigners too once, Bridie,” I reminded her.

“It’s not the same,” she said, but I didn’t bother arguing with her. I knew her comments were just Bridie’s way of marking my card; of warning me not to “get involved” with Stan because she didn’t want to see me getting hurt again. “You’re barely widowed a year—don’t go making a show of yourself.”

“We’re just friends,” I said, and then, to wind her up, “the same as you and Frank.” Frank was the man who delivered Bridie’s shopping each week. I could just as easily have collected our weekly groceries from the store, but she insisted that we have them delivered. She had taken to dabbing on a bit of my lipstick before answering the door to him (he always knocked at the front—never the back); I had it hidden in a hall drawer and had caught her at it a couple of times, but said nothing. It wasn’t fair to tease her.

“Don’t be disgusting,” she said. Then, turning away, she added almost to herself, “Anyway, Frank is from Vermont.”

On this particular day Stan arrived earlier than expected, coming straight around to the back door. I was still in my working clothes, having been up since dawn painting.

“You are still working,” he said, looking at my paint-stained apron. “I’m sorry. I thought I would come early and take you out for lunch. Can I take a look?” he said, walking straight through to the makeshift studio in our fourth bedroom.

I had started work on a large portrait of Suri. The piece of my heart that was in it was more about my burgeoning friendship with this interesting woman than it was about any strong desire to explore portraiture.

Two days after the Schoenberg party Suri had telephoned me and we had met up for coffee. I was fascinated with her stories of the Japanese internment camps and the terrible injustices therein. She told me that there were no separate toilet facilities, so that older women had to sit in toilet cubicles with no doors, alongside the men. They had a cardboard box they would pass around and place over their heads to hide their shame.

“That’s appalling,” I said, horrified. “Why is there nothing in the papers to highlight this terrible injustice? Nobody knows this is happening—clearly if they did, something would be done.”

Suri shrugged, a small fast shrug, her lips tight. Her anger was palpable, even though she tried to hide it.

“People hate the Japanese,” she said. “There is a war on, and people lose sense of reason—that’s what happens.”

I understood that irrational hatred for the enemy. How I had once hated the English, for repressing us Irish for hundreds of years. They had destroyed our native language, stolen our land and, on a more personal level, English soldiers had shot my husband. At one time the mere sound of a hee-haw cockney accent would put me into a rage. Yet since the struggle for independence in Ireland had ended, I had met many English people I liked. Individuals should not be judged by their nation’s sins. It was not always easy to put one’s prejudice to one side, but it was the only way justice could prevail.

“But your in-laws are not even Japanese?”

“Hatred runs deep,” she said.

“There must be something we can do,” I said. “It’s just terrible that your parents-in-law are suffering so greatly.”

Suri gave me a sharp look and for a moment I thought she was going to tell me to mind my own business, but then she artfully changed the subject instead, saying, “What a bore I am being. That’s enough about my troubled life, Ellie—tell me all about yourself. You’re an artist . . . how do you find the art world in LA?”

I had given her a brief outline of my life, but as I had grown older I found talking about my experiences boring and uncomfortable. Life was for living, not for recounting, so I took out my sketch pad and began to draw her in order to create a diversion. It was a party trick that seldom failed me and, sure enough, that afternoon of casual sketching had led to my offering to paint her. Before I had really made a proper decision to do so, I found myself back working again, unwrapping my oils and building a canvas in my makeshift bedroom studio. I built the canvas as large as I did (six feet by eight) partly to kill time and defer the actual painting process. However, as the weeks passed I put paint on the canvas and found myself pottering through the work in a not entirely unenjoyable rhythm.

Suri had come and sat for me a few times, but as our friendship developed I found that our conversations were so interesting they inhibited my work. We talked about politics and what was wrong with the world. We were both avid newspaper readers, and the two of us were interested in subjects I had rarely, if ever, discussed with other women friends—politics and human rights, the details of the wars raging at home and in Europe, of which the papers were packed. So as we talked over coffee or lunch I sketched, capturing her expressions, the shadows of her emotions as they crossed over her face—then used these rough pencil drawings to help me work on the painting afterward, alone, as I always liked to work.

The portrait itself was shaping up to be a tolerable piece of work, Suri’s face and character captured with reasonable accuracy. Suri herself had not seen the picture yet, but Stan had been watching me develop it and, of course, thought it a work of genius, which it most certainly was not. However, while I feared I might never again get lost in the abandon and commitment of my landscape work, I had contented myself that I could hold back the wall of creative depression by painting
something
. If I could not satisfy myself with my work, I could at least satisfy others—and make the painting a gift for Suri and her family.

I did not mind Stan looking at my work-in-progress because I did not care about it enough as a piece. It did not represent me as an artist; it was more about Suri than it was about me.

“This is wonderful,” he said, “really wonderful.”

I became irritated. I didn’t need his false flattery.

“Let’s go for lunch,” I said, pulling at his arm.

“You don’t like it?” he asked.

“It’s fine,” I said, “let’s go.”

“But I am interested,” he insisted, “in your work: how you paint, how you arrive at your themes, why you use one color over . . .”

“This is not representative of my work,” I said. “It’s a simple portrait of a friend—that’s all.”

“Oh no”—he wouldn’t let it drop—“it is much more than that . . .”

I felt an irrational anger rise up in me and could not help but snap, “You don’t know
anything
about my work, you don’t know
anything
about me—you have
no idea
what you are talking about, so for God’s sake will you just leave it!”

I was immediately embarrassed by my insane outburst, but Stan just stood passively as I ranted and then, when I was done, took off his glasses and looked at me with the intense seriousness of a seasoned intellectual. There was no discussion, no reprimand, nothing personal. It was the reaction of a fellow artist; of somebody who understood me completely. He looked lean and dark and quite brilliant, and for a moment I wondered what it would be like to belong to such a man. My eyelids flickered and my body weakened in anticipation of being touched, but then my friend shrugged and simply said, “Okay, let’s go for lunch.”

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-O
NE

We lunched at the Hollywood Brown Derby on North Vine, so named because of its domed roof that looked like a man’s brown derby hat. It had a number of branches, including one on Wilshire Boulevard that was closer to where I lived. Brown Derby was not a fancy restaurant chain, but the Hollywood branch was fancier than the others because it was frequented by the Hollywood set. A famous gossip columnist called Louella Parsons was never out of the place—according to Bridie, at least, who devoured her column in the
Los Angeles Examiner.

“Have a good look around this time and tell me if you see Hedda,” Bridie had said. Hedda Hopper was Parsons’s rival columnist at the
Los Angeles Times
, and Bridie was such an avid fan of both that it was as if she knew them personally. Since I had made the mistake of telling Bridie that I saw the Marx brothers at Stan’s party she had harassed me for movie gossip.

I had little or no interest in movie tittle-tattle, but Stan insisted the burgers were better at the North Vine branch.

“You’re a fusspot,” I said. “Why must we always go to the fancy one?”

“I am in a fancy mood today.”

“Well, I’m not dressed fancy.”

I was wearing slacks and the same blouse I had put on that morning. My working apron had no sleeves and there was a smudge of green paint on my cuff. I did not want to change.

“You look wonderful,” he said (my insisting that I was underdressed and his insisting that I looked “wonderful” was becoming a habit). “Besides, I have my reasons.”

Often, when Stan and I went out, we also went through the comic routine of my trying to persuade him into the pickup, and him declining on account of his snappy outfit. I would then insist it was my turn to drive—we were teasing each other—lampooning his aspirations to style, and he lampooning my preference for the “redneck-Irish” car.

“Please can you move your truck to the bottom of the hill,” he said the first time I visited him at home. “Such vehicles are only allowed in this area with a tradesman’s license—you can’t leave it outside my door. It’s the law.”

I thought he was serious and was very put out as I got back in to move it, until I saw him laughing.

When Stan laughed it was sunshine on a cloudy day. Even though my composer friend loved to laugh, never passing up the opportunity to tease or play a practical joke, he looked like—
was
—such an elegant, erudite man that raucous amusement from him was always an unexpected pleasure.

However, today we were both in a more solemn mood. Perhaps it was my outburst, but I sensed too that Stan had something on his mind, so I got straight into his car without saying anything. I only ever traveled in Stan’s cream Chrysler Royal on short journeys like this. However, as soon as I got into the ridged front seat I always felt warm and cosseted. The soft red leather of the interior was plush and, with the heat of the Los Angeles sun, it was like entering a womb. Stan drove in silence and I slid my body down the warm leather, leaned my head back and enjoyed the comfort of the car. I was pleased we were traveling that bit farther, so I could enjoy the pleasure of just being driven by good company in a luxurious car.

We parked and went inside. The manager made a small fuss of Stan and it seemed that he had booked us a booth.

As we walked through the restaurant several people stopped Stan to greet him, including one suited fat cat, flanked by two young women, whom I recognized from the paper as a local politician.

“Stan! Come and join us? Who’s the doll? Sit down—sit down!”

Stan quipped, “And have you rob her off me, Harry? Another time.”

“Idiot!” he said as we kept walking.

“You’re quite the popular guy,” I said. “Is there no one in this town you don’t know?”

“You have parties—you get popular,” he said. Stan’s popularity was an incidental sideline of his job and his gregarious nature; it didn’t interest him. What interested Stan was me.

As soon as we sat down I knew that something was up. The waiter took our drink orders and, when he had gone, Stan just sat smiling at me, saying nothing.

“Are you up to something?” I asked.

“You’ll see,” he said, still smiling.

The waiter brought us our drinks and handed us our leather-bound menus with more than the usual flourish, and as he and Stan exchanged a glance I opened mine and two tickets fell out.

“What are these?” I said.

“You know George Szell?” he said. “The conductor and composer? I introduced you to him at my party.”

“Oh yes,” I said. I had not the faintest idea who he was talking about.

“He is conducting Wagner at the Met in New York next week, and these are two tickets for the opening night.”

He ran his hands across the table with a flourish.

I didn’t know how to react, truth be told.

“Okay—and I assume these tickets are for us?”

“Of course,” he said, delighted with himself.

“But the Met is in New York, Stan. How will we get there?”

“It is all arranged,” he said, beaming. “Eleanor—you remember Eleanor Steber, the soprano who sang at one of my parties, the first one you came to?” I really must have been very drunk that night. “She is performing, but on loan from her radio commitments, so her sponsor is flying her from Los Angeles to New York the night before, of course with several other musicians. I have secured us two seats on the flight there and on the return.”

I did not want to go. I could not leave my children and go flying off across America. I liked Stan, but . . . this was too much. Yet he had gone to all this trouble. I didn’t know what to say, so instead I asked, “Where will we stay?” As soon as I spoke I knew it was a stupid thing to ask, because we both had apartments in New York—a fact that made the answer all the more shocking.