A Way of Life, Like Any Other Read online

  My father commented on each photograph of my mother: the circumstance of its exposure; the professional history of its photographer; the public reaction to its appearance in whatever magazine, newspaper, or publicity vehicle; the facets of beauty and character emphasized by it. One in particular, showing my mother in sable-trimmed, leopard-skin cape and platform shoes, hair banged and crowned with a Spanish comb, eyes intently bold, mouth heavily lipsticked and faintly curled, curved fingernails lifting the fur’s nap, pleased him.

  “That one belongs on the wall, Salty, don’t you think?”

  “Strictly up to you, Dad.”

  “I remember it well. It was a marathon session, but I kept the car waiting. Then we headed for the Grove. We danced all night, rumbas, sambas, your mother was a great dancer, she was a great kid in those days. Rick Cortez was there and we ended up out at the beach house at five in the morning. When the sun came up we all hit the water. Nothing like the surf after a big night. Huevos rancheros, flapjacks, the works. And how about five sets of tennis? That’s right. Your Ma didn’t play tennis. A great horsewoman, though. We used to ride along the beach, before the motels and the supermarkets.”

  “That was some life,” I said.

  “Hey,” my father said, “I’ve got an idea. Tell you what it is. When we knock off today, we grab our trunks and a couple of towels and head for the beach. How’s that?”

  “Fine.” My father was taut with enthusiasm.

  “And we’ll call up old Marsh and see if he wants to come along.”

  I tacked up the photograph next to a framed letter from Admiral Arleigh “3D Knots” Burke, Naval Commandant, later Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, commending my father for service beyond the call of duty for his participation in a Fourth of July pageant honoring John Paul Jones and Commodore Perry.

  I had not seen Marshall since our story conference, as my father’s illness had delayed follow-up meetings, and there had been no meetings scheduled since. At the beach Marshall kept his shirt on. He was self-conscious about his battle scars, my father explained.

  “Let’s hit the water.”

  We plunged in and rode the waves together as of old, my father hurling himself shoulder-first into a breaker, hollering, exulting, swimming again, skimmed along, floating, thrashing father, alive, confident as waves. Hero. We caught some beauties, and Dad was pleased I had not forgotten the bodysurfing skills he had imparted to me. He did complain that I was underweight and needed filling out if I was going to develop my stamina. As for him, how old did I think he looked? I told him he could pass for a man in his mid-forties. In truth he looked to me both older and younger than he was, nearing sixty. The fat made him younger and the muscles were awesome, but, lying next to him on the beach, I noted the spots and crinkles of age. He had plenty of hair left, but I had discovered a bottle of dye in his desk during one of my private inventories. If he reached seventy, he would try to look sixty. Youth meant everything to him.

  Marshall was in a bad way. His ex-wife was taking him to court about the alimony. He didn’t have the money, and he knew that she could throw him in jail. For a man who had done so much for his country to end up in its jails seemed unjust. There ought to be a fund for divorced war heroes. And automobile sales were slumping. This was because of commie propaganda, of course, but short of a military takeover, he didn’t see what could be done about it. They ought to lob one into the men’s room of the Kremlin. It was the same with this tobacco cancer scare thing. That was a bold-faced attempt to undermine the economy of the South by so-called scientist dupes. He was going to do a novena.

  My father asked me later had I got the impression that old Marsh was trying to touch him for a loan. I said that it had occurred to me and that if I had any money I would probably give him some. My father said that this was the wrong approach, that you never helped a man by trying to make things easy for him. You had to pay your own way, that was the only way you learned a lesson in life. Marsh would learn, and if he had to go to jail, well, everything in life taught a lesson, and if he was a real man, he would come out the stronger for it. I told my father that I knew a girl whose father loved her so much that he was going to pay for her husband’s education and support them until they could make it on their own. My father said that was the worst thing in the world and it would only breed trouble. The first time those young people hit rough water and old Dad wasn’t around to bail them out, they’d have to find out the hard way. He had seen people like that split up. People who came up the hard way together stayed together. I tried to take some satisfaction from this. Maybe in fifteen years I would run into Linda coming out of her psychiatrist’s or her lawyer’s office. I envied Marty his ten or fifteen years with her, but maybe I would get her in the end. I thought about her all the time, but at school I found it difficult to speak to her, she was so godamned lighthearted.

  In the old days secretaries had dealt with Dad’s fan mail. Now it ran to half a dozen letters a year, and these he had undertaken to answer himself. But he had fallen about five years behind, so I assisted him in working through the correspondence. Seven of the outstanding letters proved to be from one person, the wife of the dean of a small college in Illinois. The seventh letter inquired whether he was dead. She would cease pestering him if this were the case. She wanted an autographed picture to add to her scrapbook of his life. As a young girl in Los Angeles, she had seen all of his movies. She used to stand outside the Hollywood Athletic Club waiting for a glimpse of him as he emerged from a morning workout. He had given her an autograph in 1938, but he probably wouldn’t remember. She had hundreds of clippings. She had a shot of my parents on their wedding day. That had broken her teenage heart, but even then she had wished him every happiness. At my father’s dictation I sent this letter to her:

  Dear Mrs. Voelkel,

  Thank you very much for your kind letters, which I have been unable to answer owing to pressing business. I have a number of deals on the fire, and you know how it is with these Hollywood people. They keep at you. I am delighted that you and your husband are involved out there in education, because there is nothing as important to our youth today. My son, Salty, is very involved in education himself and will soon be going to college. I never went to college myself, although I have often regretted it, because you can’t beat education. But instead I chose the road to adventure in the pioneer days of Hollywood, and I’ve never looked back. Thank God I also had the opportunity to serve my country in the United States Navy, and it isn’t many men who have had two careers. But my greatest career has been my wife and son. Please convey my best regards to your husband, and keep up the good work out there in Illinois. I enclose an autographed photo, so you can keep your scrapbook up to date.

  He had stacks of these pictures, which I filed for future use. In them he was pensive, menacing, grinning, wistful, his head thrown back in a careless laugh; in cowboy garb, dinner jacket, boxing trunks, plus fours, football gear, stripped hurling a discus. For Mrs. Voelkel he chose a shot of himself in Lieutenant Commander’s uniform, gazing out to sea through binoculars.

  Many of the other letters were from the Orient. Over these we labored carefully, for my father reminded me of many strange customs in that part of the world and of the obligation of the Westerner not to offend. The American especially must remember that he travels always as a representative of his country.

  Mrs. Voelkel’s scrapbook gave me the idea of compiling one of our own, a master scrapbook out of the scrapheap. My father welcomed the suggestion. In public life you ought to have a scrapbook, because the pressure of time and events is such that you could be caught off guard when the biographers came along, not knowing which end was up. He guessed, although a writer’s projects were his own business and under international copyright, that someday I might undertake myself to write his biography. In my spare time maybe. He owed it to his public and to me to see that all the material was there. In cases like this only a scrapbook stood between you and a pack of lies. If s
omeone came along and said such and such was so, or your father was a rotten so and so, you could pull out the scrapbook and give them the facts. I got clippings to prove it, you could say.

  He made proud use of his new vision, rereading each clipping with naked eyes. He kept the chronology straight. He corrected or elaborated. Without him I could never have completed the task. For convenience I followed standard library practice in binding periodicals, with a separate volume for each year, each indexed. In the later volumes we left many empty pages, so we would have room for material that might turn up later. I found an announcement of my birth in Ed Sullivan’s column.

  16

  SELF-DECEPTION

  THE TELEPHONE.

  “Hello, dear. Don’t die of shock. It’s your old mother.”

  It had been two years since I had spoken to her. She sounded very close.

  “Of course not. You think I’d be calling from Europe at those prices? You ought to have your head examined. I’m right here in dear old L.A. I’m staying with Maggie and Sterling. They were sweethearts to put me up. Sterling isn’t well, poor thing. You wouldn’t recognize him.”

  She had no special reason for coming except that prices in Rome had gone sky high and she had to figure out a way to live within her income. I had calculated that what she had left from the divorce settlement gave her about $15,000 a year, better than a Sicilian linguini farmer anyway. Times were tough all over. I had done quite a lot of calculating lately. I had decided that I was better off manning my battle station on my father’s flagship than I would be running with her again. For one thing, there was no telling what the new Anatol might be like. I wanted out of the next losing proposition.

  It was Thanksgiving again. She had a swell idea but she wanted to discuss it with me first before I mentioned it to my father. Maggie had offered to fix a turkey. Mother would do a plum pudding and I could fix the hard sauce. It would be just like old times.

  “Plum pudding is for Christmas, Mother,” I said.

  “Oh what the hell difference does it make! Use your little genius brain. Here I’m making a perfectly decent suggestion. Do you think your father will come?”

  “You’re inviting him?”

  “Of course I’m inviting him. That is if he can be civilized.”

  Just like old times. What was up? Had she found the new Anatol already? Gigolo sounded like an Italian word. Darlings, I want you to meet Paulo. He doesn’t understand a word of English so you’re free to tell me he’s the most beautiful boy you’ve ever seen.

  “I think,” I said, “Dad was planning to invite Marshall Marshall over here.”

  “Who in God’s name is Marshall Marshall?”

  “Never mind. I’ll ask Dad. I’ll let you know how he feels.”

  “Well don’t take forever. We have to do the shopping. If he wants to accept my gesture, fine. If not, to hell with him.”

  I postponed telling my father. I considered calling her back and offering to meet her on neutral ground, say a church. I told myself I ought to be more excited about seeing her, but I felt dreadful. I wanted more from her than a turkey. I conveyed her message.

  “Your Ma and I have been married twenty-five years,” my father said, “and every year I learn something new. That’s what makes life interesting. If you stop learning, you’re dead. You know that because you’re a student of life yourself.”

  My inquiries into human understanding had taught me that my father was as constantly constant as a rock and my mother as constantly inconstant as the sea, and that wasn’t much to go on. A rock as big as my father you could not throw, but you could hide behind it and rest in its shadow. When it fell into the sea, it sank.

  “I’m not sure how the evening would turn out,” I said. “It could be all right, and then again it couldn’t.”

  “All you know from one day to the next is that the sun will shine, unless it’s raining. You can’t predict what a woman will do, and your mother is a woman, Salty. Maybe she’s finally come to her senses.”

  “How?”

  “Maybe she finally realizes what a mistake she made.”

  “It’s possible. I sort of doubt it.”

  “I wouldn’t of married her if I thought she was all crazy, and she wasn’t. If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have gone away to World War II.”

  “She’s done some pretty erratic things. I don’t think she’s been very fair to you.”

  “You can’t expect fairness. Tell me, Salty. You’re getting to be a man. Did you ever think your Ma had a little of the lesbian in her?”

  “I never thought of that,” I said. “It’s a possibility.” Here was something new. I remembered Mother telling me about the time a certain famous actress had made a pass at her on a yacht. They were lying off Catalina and all of a sudden the woman’s hand was where it oughtn’t have been. Mother said this showed why the woman liked playing Rosalind. Did my father have any evidence?

  “I’m not saying it against her,” he said, “but some people have problems. The time she brought two fags around. I tell you, if we ever got together again, I’d put a stop to that. No more fags. I think she thought it was fashionable or some kind of a thing. She brought these two fags around, and it turned out they wanted my picture. Can you beat that? They were fans of mine. Hell, I got nothing against fags. But I got out of there. I hadda get busy.”

  “What are you going to do about the invitation?”

  “I look at it this way. I got plenty of reasons for not going, right? Some you know, some you don’t know. Maggie, for instance, turned against me in the divorce. You don’t know this, but she was your mother’s witness. She told a lot of lies, son, and I don’t forget it. Can you imagine? She told the judge that I didn’t care about a home and family. Said I came back from the war and didn’t care about my wife and son any more. That really hurt. You know I’m the greatest family man that ever was.”

  “I know that.”

  “And it ruined my career, too. That’s what ruined my career. It was all over the papers. That she was divorcing me because I didn’t love my family any more. That was the biggest lie ever told. Are you with me?”

  “Yes.”

  “So I got my reasons. But nobody ever accused me of being small. I leave that to the others. So if you ask me am I going to accept this invitation, I say, why not, I’m a big enough guy to forgive and forget, and there’s one other thing, let it never be said that I wouldn’t do anything for my family.”

  He slept little before the Thursday. He got out all his old clothes and brushed them and tried them on. He asked me whether he ought to go in uniform but I said I thought civvies were in order. He was up one minute and depressed the next. Entirely out of character, he brought home a bottle of beer that we shared, man to man. He had stomach troubles, malaria coming back, he said, and paced around the house in his underwear farting a lot.

  “You look marvelous,” Mother said to him as she opened the door. “Good God, I always knew you’d bury us all. Hello, my darling boy. It’s so wonderful to see you.”

  We kissed and she held onto me. There was a boozy odor. She seemed to have shrunk. She held me and then looked at me at arm’s length and held me again.

  Sterling was unable to get out of his chair but was otherwise unchanged. Maggie gave my father a showbiz hug:

  “You old son of a bitch. I could get you a part right now.”

  “I’m all tied up in a couple of deals,” my father said.

  “There’s this war picture and a TV thing I’m working on. Coupla fellas doing an underwater thing. I know the ropes.”

  I accepted a martini from Sterling, who had everything set up beside his chair. My father had a coke. Mother’s drink was invisible.

  “You off the sauce?” I said to her.

  She cast me an eye of hurt shock.

  “As a matter of fact I am,” she said, very queenly. “It’s not easy to admit you’re an alcoholic, but I’ve done it. I’ve joined AA in Rome. We have a wo
nderful chapter of Americans.”

  “I’m proud of you,” my father said. “It’s a step in the right direction.”

  Mother talked about AA for the next fifteen minutes. We heard about the pledge and the steps to sobriety and not taking a drink this one day. The people in real trouble would telephone her at all hours and she would talk them out of that fatal first gulp. God played a role. It had been so long now since she had had a drink, she wasn’t even tempted any more, or hardly ever. In AA you formed enduring friendships. Alcoholism was a disease, like diabetes or an allergy. Some people got puffed up if they ate nuts. She regretted having to miss so many AA meetings being over here. She could go to a local chapter but her real friends were in Rome now.

  “It’s too bad,” I said. “Drinking is a part of life, isn’t it? I mean drinking and getting drunk. Making an ass of yourself. Even making things unpleasant for other people. It’s too bad if you can’t do that any more. I would feel very deprived if I thought I couldn’t do that for the rest of my life.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mother said. “You’re very young.”

  “AA sounds very boring to me,” I said. “It sounds like some half-assed evangelical sect. People sitting around talking about not drinking. Why not tie one on and go to sleep?”