I wake with a start, glance at the clock on the nightstand. Is it really five in the morning? An absurd hour to be startled awake, neither late night nor hazy morning; a limbo hour, the hour of desperate souls caught between lives. It’s the new draperies, I decide, hung poorly, perhaps, so that watery early morning light, creeping over the Manhattan skyline, filters into the dim room.
But that’s not it. I sit up, as panic floods me. But I’m more annoyed than frightened. I might be dying—but I know this isn’t the case. I’ll die when I’m damn good and ready, thank you. I’ll pencil in my own death on a distant calendar. I have novels to write. Research. Travel. Notes to take, organize. In the dim light, my mind drifts to Alaska—all that cruel ice and bitter cold.
Ice Palace
: in the works. Death will have to wait.
What did my pesky sister Fanny say when the topic came up last year? “It’s the one force of nature you can’t control, Edna.” We’ll see about that.
My eyes dart around the shadowy bedroom, locating the shapes of the comfortable accoutrements I’ve placed here: the pen-and-ink sketch of me by James Montgomery Flagg, the Baccarat bud vase given to me by Heifetz, the gilt-framed letter from Teddy Roosevelt. Artifacts of my monumental and cherished success. On the small mahogany table by the window is a photograph I placed there yesterday, positioned so I can stare at it, smile, shake my head, grin. Now, suddenly, I want to avoid it, as if it holds a voodoo spell.
An hour later, dressed, I go into the kitchen, surprising Molly who stands at the stove, yawning. “I’ll be back,” I tell my housekeeper, who eyes me nervously. “I need to walk.”
So I stroll down Park Avenue, but I’m dressed inappropriately in a coal-gray cashmere sweater and a jade-green cotton summer dress. I turn back, chilled. I stare into the autumn New York sky—that awful gunmetal gray, as dull as armor plate, yet pale and fuzzy in the far distance, with unlovely, sooty clouds hovering over New Jersey, where, of course, they belong.
As I enter the lobby, I tell myself, triumphantly, that the answer is obvious: I’m still covered with the glitzy fairy dust of Hollywood. July and August in California—well, that explains my uneasiness. All that brutal sun, that wispy late-afternoon fog, those cartoonish royal palms dotting the landscape like a cheap nightclub backdrop. That West Coast ambiance lingers, confuses.
New York in September—what is today’s date? October the first?—is desolate and quiet, Manhattanites pulling themselves back, tucking in the corners of their summer lives, readying, like worm-white rodents, for the long numbing cold.
Dreadful Hollywood. All that smiling and bowing, that sycophantic obeisance. Miss Ferber this, Miss Ferber that. May I get you…How pleased we are…I must say you look stunning in those pearls…Your novel, well, let me tell you…And the heat. Dry, not humid really, but monotonous, deadly. There’s too much space out there. People fall apart, become unhinged, jaws slack, bodies sagging. It takes too long to cross those endless boulevards.
It was such a comfort to return to New York. Emerging from the limo—ostentatiously provided by Jack Warner, no less—I stepped out onto litter on Park Avenue, a discarded half of a pastrami on rye, stuck to a piece of white butcher’s paper. I was back home.
Molly is waiting with a pot of tea. “I forgot my coat,” I say.
“Did you hear the phone ring late last night?” Molly’s Irish brogue is rich and soft.
“Of course not.” A full eight hours in my bed, requisite, solid puritanical sleep; that’s what I demand of myself.
I scan
The
New York Times
, placed so carefully on the breakfast table. I turn the pages aimlessly, refusing to stay on any one page. A wave of panic—again. Shaking, I flip the sheets quickly, driven, oddly understanding that I have no choice. By the time I get to page ten, the phone is ringing. I listen to Molly’s greeting. I wait. Because now I know. For there—as piercing as a dagger to the heart—is the bold headline: “James Dean, Film Actor, Killed in Crash of Auto.”
September 30, 1955. Yesterday. Already a lifetime away.
For a freakish second, I am relieved. It all makes sense: the disruption of my sleep, the edgy morning, the panic.
Henry Ginsburg, producer of
Giant
, tells me what I’ve just read. His exact words: “The boy is dead.”
Those frenzied weeks in Hollywood make sense now, yet make no sense at all. As I left for the airport, he followed me out to the limo. Hovering, holding onto me, he whispered, “Edna, you’ve known me all your life.”
At the time I smiled, used to his cryptic asides, inarticulate mumbling, and pebbles-in-the-mouth announcements. But that line stayed with me on the long flight back.
Now, reeling, I walk into my bedroom and find myself drawn to the black-and-white photo I’d propped up on the table, situated so that it caught the blaze of high noon, the afternoon light, the twilight shadows. Hunched over, gripping the table with trembling hands, I stare into the face of the dead boy. This exquisite photo arrived two days ago. Jimmy in his Jett Rink ranch-hand costume, the slouch, the ten-gallon hat shading his brow, the light-blue eyes almost absent, the cigarette insolently poised at the corner of his mouth—those sensual, impossible lips. He’d signed it: Jett Rink. Staring into that chiseled face that suggested so much raw emotion by the slightest movement, I touch the photo—my small, knobby fingers on the slick surface. No flesh here, no dimension, no power. I want to tear it into shreds. This boy, this imp of the perverse.
The afternoon the photo arrived, I sent him a letter, a brief thank-you note really, in which I foolishly joked and vamped. Lord, how could a twenty-four-year-old boy make an aging novelist behave like a Victorian damsel in a revival of
Tempest and Sunshine
? Or like some simpering
ingénue
in a revival of my own
Show Boat
? I ended the note: “Your steely profile, which so reminds me of John Barrymore, a soul you’ve probably never heard of—well, Jimmy, you have
that
profile. But your hellfire car racing and tearing through the Hollywood Hills at breakneck speed will soon take care of that.”
But he couldn’t have gotten the letter. Nor will he.
As I turn away, my hand brushes the photograph onto the carpet, where it’s lost in the shadows. I’m unable to pick it up. If I bend down, I will topple into his death.
A whispered voice, “Edna, you’ve known me all your life.”
Yes, of course I have. I always have. The rebel, romantic fool, the afternoon of a faun, the soul in chains, the voice of the turtle.
But now that life is over.
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