All the Stars in the Heavens (25 page)

“Thanks, Gretch.”

“For what?”

“For talking to me.”

“You're a delight, Mr. Gable. Intelligence goes nicely with that handsome mug of yours.”

“Hey, kid, I have a question. What happened with Chet and Alda? He wouldn't tell me.”

“He's old-fashioned.”

“Oh, that.”

“Yes, that. Alda had a boyfriend when she was young, and Chet took it as an affront to his manhood and her virtue. He was very rude about it.”

“She's a grown woman.”

“But grown men can do whatever they please, but turns out they want their women out of a convent.”

“How do you feel about the subject?”

“Convents?” she teased him.

“You know what I mean.”

“Oh, you mean sex.”

“You say it awful plain.”

“You asked.” She looked at him. “I think it has to matter.”

“It?”

“Making love.”

“It can work either way, Gretchen.”

“And I bet it has for you.”

Gable laughed. “I'll see you at breakfast.”

“Sweet dreams.”

“You can count on 'em.” The separation he felt as Loretta left him to go inside the inn sent a chill through him that had nothing to do with the night air.

Gable reached into the pocket of his coat and retrieved a flask of whiskey. He took a swig and looked into the fire. He wondered if his feelings for Loretta were a result of the isolation, the bitter cold, or Wellman's challenge to him not to make a play for her. Gable imagined he cleaved to Loretta because she was confident, and he liked the way she viewed the world. She said what she believed, direct and plain, like a good Ohio woman. Gable was fed up with the southern charm Ria drizzled on him like Tupelo honey. He yearned for a peer, someone who understood his work, and therefore, him. Only a fellow actor could understand the anxiety of performing for the camera, the pressures that came with trying to please a director, and the temptations that were part of being isolated from home life and routine. Gable couldn't be sure that Loretta was his best match—she was so young. But if he were a gambling man, he'd bet she could be someone he could love, a girl he could get serious about.

It seemed everyone in the cast and on the crew of
The Call of the Wild
was weary of the snow, the sub-zero temperatures, and the mountain. But for an outdoorsman like Gable, the delays were an
opportunity to challenge himself, to make himself useful and get to know the mountain as he chopped wood, hunted, and hiked. Mount Baker was the perfect place to hide as he sorted out the rest of his life. The last thing he wanted to do was go home to Ria, the pâté on the dainty crackers, and the Aubusson rugs that couldn't take a cigarette ash.

When Gable pictured himself happy and free, he saw the mountaintop in his mind's eye. Snow swirled all around him, a bright sun blinded him, and the only sound he heard was the wind hissing through the canyons. As the picture widened out and took in all of Mount Baker, the fields, cliffs, and ridges, it turned out he was not alone. There was somebody with him. A woman. He could see her as plain as day. He saw a girl named Gretchen by his side, and she was laughing.

“That's it for me, kids,” the cook said to Alda as she hung the last copper pot on its hook over the stove.

“Thanks, Elvira,” Alda said.

“Lock up on your way out.”

“I will.” Alda took off her apron and pulled on her coat.

Luca was sitting alone at one of the community tables in the dining room, waiting for her. She passed him on the way to the door.

“You going to lock me in here?”

“Not if you leave now,” she said.

“Alda, why won't you talk to me?”

“I don't plan on ever talking to you.” She opened the door. A dusting of snow blew in. “I'm locking up.”

“Wait a minute,” Luca jumped up and closed the door. “At least let me explain.” He leaned against the door, blocking her.

“You were perfectly clear that night.”

“I thought about it. I was wrong.”

“Too late.” She was resolute.

“I apologized. I meant it. What kind of person is incapable of forgiveness?”

“I am capable of it.”

“But not for me.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“I hurt you.”

“You should be sorry because you believe the things you said to me, not because you said them.”

“I'm sorry for that too. I've had time to think about it. I was out of line. Old-fashioned. You're a working girl. You're independent.”

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“Then what is it?”

“I don't want to look into the face of a man who judges me, who thinks less of me for decisions I made when I was sixteen years old, who believes he can do or say whatever he pleases because he fell in love with a tramp.”

“I never called you that!”

“You called me spoiled. It's the same thing.”

“But I don't believe it.”

“Why did you say it?”

“I don't know. I got scared. I don't want to be compared to anyone else.”

“But it's okay if I am. If I can't live up to the chorus girls, or the background talent or the ingenues, that's fine with you—if I feel badly about myself, that you could live with?”

“It's different for a woman.”

“Because we're used to being put-upon.”

“No, it's not that.”

“Then what is it, Luca? Surely you've been in love before. Surely you weren't using all those women, were you?”

“Of course not. I promise you, I've changed my thinking.”

“What assurance do I have that you've changed?”

“I can't give you any. It would take time.”

“I have two gifts to give anyone that loves me and that I love in return: the gift of myself, and my time. I already know how you feel about the gift of me, but I'm confused as to why you still want to take my time.”

“I'm in love with you.”

“That doesn't give you permission to hurt me.”

“I understand that. I want to prove my love.”

“Well, there's your trouble. You can't prove love. You can only offer it.”

“I'm offering! I'm offering!” Luca was vehement.

“Just let me go. You'll fall in love soon enough when we're off this mountain. Once we're back in Hollywood and you're back on the lot, you'll have a bouquet of eager girls to choose from. Let me go. I don't understand you.”

“What is there to understand? I need you. You need me. We love each other. It's at the heart of it all very simple.”

“Why do you insist on making this hard for me?”

“Because I'm not wrong about us. I said a terrible thing. A terrible thing I didn't mean.”

“You might as well have slugged me.”

“I understand that now. I come from men who blow hard, say whatever they're thinking, and give very little consideration to what those words can do. I learned my lesson here. But you won't give me another chance. Why?”

“Because I'm happy alone, Luca. Nobody hurts me. Nobody breaks my heart. Nobody makes me feel worthless.”

“Who are you if you don't love somebody? What kind of a life is that?”

Alda's eyes filled with tears. “I was going to be a nun because I didn't want to hurt anymore. And for seven years, all I did was work with girls who were hurting—some more than me, and there were days when I didn't think that was possible. I wasn't able to tell you everything about myself, because you judged me before I could. The story gets worse, Luca. I had a baby with Enrico. But the baby was stillborn. My son.”

Luca's heart began to race. He wiped his brow and leaned against the door.

“I was a mother. For a flash. For an instant. For a moment, after a very long labor. I made love with a man, and I had his child. And every morning, of every day since, the first thought I have is of my son, the baby I lost. He'd be ten years old, Luca. It's as if he waits for me on the other side of my dreams.”

Luca took both of her hands in his. She pulled her hands from his.

“I looked to you as someone who might understand me, who cared about me, who appreciated who I was no matter what I might have done or failed to do in the past. I was hoping for a new life, with the old one as part of the story. I refuse to be ashamed for having feelings and acting on them. I refuse to be ashamed of my son. I don't want to forget him. But you needed me to be your idea of pure, to throw away my past, as though it was worthless. I could have lied to you, but I wouldn't, because I thought that highly of you—I believed you could help me carry my burdens. Do you know how happy I was that this long road had led to you? I believed in everything again. A new start. Love. Redemption! All that suffering led to you. And instead, with your words, you caused more pain. So please, forgive me for praying to God to let me stop loving you. For me, it's the only way forward.”

Alda walked out the door and onto the porch. Luca followed her.

“You love me.” Luca put his arms around her. “As long as you love me, even a little, we can work this out.”

Alda wept because it was true, she loved him, but that didn't mean she had to endure more pain because of it. She didn't want to love him, but she did, and she knew that true love meant forgiveness, not looking the other way but holding him accountable for any pain he caused so he could be better. A good woman makes a man better. She knew the nature of love was connection, but she also knew forgiveness made that bond eternal.

Luca held Alda for a very long time. She wanted to walk away, but she couldn't, which was the great surprise of that night with the sky of pink stars. She thought she was strong and that she could do it. But real strength isn't about being right, it's about being true and letting someone else be strong for you when it's required.

“What was his name, Alda? Your son.”

Alda looked into Luca's eyes. He wasn't trying to win her heart. He'd asked the question because he cared, because he loved her. So she told him the name of the secret she had buried so long ago in the hills outside of Padua, in the cemetery by the lake. “His name was Michael.”

Without letting Alda go, he pulled her closer and whispered, “I'm sorry about Michael.”

Alda didn't feel the wind or the cold, or the desolation that had lived in her heart for all these years. She felt Luca holding her up, and given the true healing power of forgiveness, that night, she let him.

L
oretta dragged the black rotary phone from her nightstand across the coverlet. She had set her hair in rags, strips of flannel, and rolled them tight to her scalp to curl her hair overnight. Her head looked like the top of a pot of flowers in bloom. The fire she had built was dying down, so she pulled the blankets up to her neck.

Loretta gave the operator the phone number.

“Gretchen, why haven't you called?”

“I'm calling now, Mama.”

“Mr. DeMille called—they're delaying
The Crusades
start date. The word around town is that
The Call of the Wild
may never be finished.”

“It sure feels like it. Some days it feels like we're buried under an avalanche.”

“Are you enjoying the work?”

“It's rugged.”

“How's Wellman?”

“Big and mean and adorable as always.”

“How's Gable?”

“He's all right.”

“Gretchen . . .”

“Mama, don't lecture.”

“I'm worried.”

“You're always worried.”

“Do I need to be, in this situation?”

“No.”

“That's what Alda tells me.” Gladys exhaled a sigh of relief.

“Believe her. She's my chaperone, and she sees everything.”

“Is he persistent?”

“Yes. He is about everything. He is determined to win, whether he's playing cards, chopping wood, or acting.”

“But you are steering clear.”

“Mama, we're marooned. We are snowed in on a mountain. I can't steer clear of him. We eat all our meals together, and the rest of the time we're working.”

“Mrs. Gable will be relieved to know that nothing is going on.”

“Is she yakking to Louella Parsons again? Why doesn't she become a reporter? All she wants to do is sniff around stories.”

“She does more than that. She investigates. She came to see me.”

“What did she want?”

“She wanted me to go up there and set you straight.”

“Oh, please.”

“Gretchen, you tested my patience with Spencer. Let's not go down this road again.”

“I know.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise. While you're praying for me, say a few for Alda.”

“What's wrong with her?”

“She fell in love up here. With our scene painter. He's Italian too. Italian American from Brooklyn.”

“I thought something was going on. She was awfully quiet. Do you like the man?”

“He's a fine man.”

“Oh, well, then, good for her.”

“It had its moments, but they seem good now.”

“At first every love affair seems effortless. But once you have opinions, all that lovey-dovey stuff goes out the window.”

“I know, Mama.”

“You'll find your true love someday.”

“I always save my last decade of the rosary for true love. Why not, right?”

“Why not?” Gladys laughed.

“If God can't send me a good fella, who can? I'll holler when the end is in sight up here.”

Loretta hung up the phone and leaned back on the pillows. She said a quick Hail Mary; she had lied to her mother. She had fallen for Clark Gable and was now on the other side, the hopeless side, where honoring those feelings would bring them nothing but heartache, but ignoring them would leave her bereft. Gable had Loretta when she started to care so deeply; the pain seemed secondary.

In many ways, Gable was not the man she had expected him to be. She had heard that when it came to the ladies, he was insatiable, and she had certainly seen that with her own eyes, but the gossip had never gotten around to the good stuff. Gable was also down-to-earth and kind. His impeccable manners were not about artifice or position but making everyone around him feel comfortable, including her. If the crew needed a hand, he'd pitch in unasked. How many leading men had she acted with who never lifted a finger to help for fear of ruining a manicure? If a less experienced actor was having trouble with a scene, Gable was patient, taking the brunt of the director's wrath when the clock went into overtime. She had seen directors eviscerate an actor in front of the crew; if Wellman came close, Gable stepped in and defused the situation. Gable had done so for Loretta. Gable was sensitive regarding people's feelings, and, it appeared, he didn't judge them.

Gable had a rule: he didn't work past five o'clock. At first Loretta thought that was ridiculous, but eventually she admired his rule; it benefited the entire company. Crews could get home to their families at a decent hour. In his quiet way, Gable supported working people by demanding fairness on the set. It was something everyone who worked with him noticed and appreciated. In her opinion, his reputation as a lover and romantic idol was overstated; he was mostly a decent man and a fine friend. Loretta, however, at
twenty-two, liked the combination of danger and the protection that Gable represented.

Loretta knew she was hooked on Gable when she felt sad on hearing the weather report that the snow had cleared, and they could get back to work. Every frame of film shot was another frame toward the completion of the picture, to the wrap, which meant the end of their time together. Their inevitable return to Los Angeles seemed like a punishment after this long winter. She knew that when the bubble burst, the snow globe would shatter like blown glass, and there would be no putting the picture inside back together.
Not again
, Loretta said to herself. But yes, for certain, it had happened again.

Loretta Young had fallen in love with Clark Gable.

Zanuck had secured a large barn in Mount Baker to use as a sound stage. Finally the blizzard blew through, the roads were plowed, and the crew made it to the barn. Industrial heaters were brought up from Bellingham to thaw out the makeshift studio to film the interiors.

The set designer camped out in the barn, overseeing his crew as they built a two-story saloon set, with a Victorian decor, including an ornate banister from which a stunt man would be thrown through the air during a choreographed brawl, a staple of Bill Wellman's pictures.

The set designer's job was to create the place, and it was Luca's job, as the scene painter, to bring the set to life with color that would read in hue and tone on black and white film. Luca had researched the world of turn-of-the-century hucksters, panhandlers, and chiselers and devised a palette that played brightly against the grim background of the Gold Rush's muddy streets, rough-coated horses, and tattered players.

Luca had painted a main street of a mining outpost in four parts, which would serve as a series of murals in a saloon. There was a mountain scene, featuring prospectors combing the creeks for gold, and another of cancan girls dancing on a stage lit by rustic oil lamps as they are cheered on by miners. A third showed a mother tending her children by a hearth, and in the fourth a fundamentalist preacher admonished his frightened flock against the backdrop of a sinful Yukon.

Luca looked to early-twentieth-century French art, the ruffles and flourishes of Degas' dancers, an explosion of color and celebration of the theatrical world to create the American version. Luca's rendering of the times was painted in a fantasia of vivid swirls of green, fuchsia, and deep blue. The contrast would look lively in black and white on camera.

Alda stood against the wall and watched Luca transform the barn into a saloon.

“Alda, honey, lend a hand?” Luca hollered.

Alda went to the set and helped hold up the mural as Luca scaled a ladder to lift the flat into position. While Alda enjoyed being a secretary, she loved being on the set. She found the stagecraft of filmmaking fascinating, though she was pretty sure she was interested in it because of her interest in Luca.

“Hand me that hammer.”

Alda gave Luca the hammer.

“Now the nails.”

Alda reached for the nails. Before she handed them to him, she said, “
Per favore
?”

“Yeah, yeah, please. All right. Please.”

Alda placed the can of nails on the floor and walked away.

“Hey, where are you going?” Luca said from the top rung of the ladder.

Alda went to the far side of the barn and sat on a bench.

“Alda, get over here!”

When Alda didn't move, Luca got off the ladder and went to her. The crew stayed busy on their detail work, but every person in the barn was aware of the brewing argument.

“What's the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on, what is it?”

“I'm not your servant.”

“Alda, I'm in the middle of working. We're running over time. Don't take it personally. I'm barking orders at everybody.”

“That's no excuse. I know you're important.
Grande artista!
”

“I'll watch my tone from now on.”

“Thank you.”

“But you need to do something for me.”

“
Va bene
.”

“Let me in.”

Alda was confused.

Luca continued, “Let me into your life. You've given me a second chance, but I'm not feeling the heat—you know what I'm saying?”

“I'm trying.”

“Try harder. Marry me.”

“Luca.” Alda looked around. The sound stage had emptied out, the crew gone on a break, though no one had called for one.

“I mean it. Marry me. The only way in the world to get through to you is complete surrender. Well, here I am, surrendering. If we have a chance, we have to work it out. We just have to live together and work it out.”

“Are you ready for that step?” Alda wondered aloud. She was really asking herself the question, but Luca was eager to answer it.

“I'll learn on the job.”

Alda thought about it. Isn't every job a process of learning something new, making mistakes and sorting out the rest? Her practical nature took over her emotions. She took Luca's hands in hers and looked him in the eye.

Luca threw his hands in the air. “Damn. I don't have a ring.”

“I don't need a ring.”

“What do you need?”

“You,” Alda cried. She had spent the last seven years of her life trying not to need anyone. She was tired of fighting. If she was honest with herself, she craved connection. She was ready to build a life with someone she loved, and who loved her. Alda wanted the peace that would come from a good marriage, and the stability that would come from a home of her own, with a fence covered in roses.

“Is that a yes?” Luca Chetta said as he covered her in kisses.

Reginald Owen, a British actor, played Gable's nemesis in the movie. He would only be with the production for a month, as he would die
by drowning in the third reel. His imminent demise did not keep him from beating Gable, Wellman, and Oakie at poker, however. He pulled the chips toward him, then drew out a starched handkerchief to hold the booty.

“Gentlemen, it's been a pleasure.” Reginald bowed his head.

“I thought you said you were lousy at poker,” Oakie groused.

“I said it with my poker face.”

“I don't like my ass handed to me by an Englishman.” Wellman puffed on his cigar.

“But we do it with such grace, Mr. Wellman,” Reginald said. “I doubt you even felt the pinch.”

“I'm feeling it in my wallet,” Gable said as he shoved it back into his pocket.

Luca and Alda blew through the door with the crew and a gust of cold wind, which always sent up a round of complaints among those gathered by the fire. Snow blew in with them, showering the floor with a dusting of white. Luca pushed the door closed. He kissed Alda on the cheek, summoned up his courage, and went to Bill Wellman. Alda went up the stairs to wait in her room.

“Sir, I need a favor,” Luca began.

“Bad time,” Wellman said.

“Reggie just beat him bad at poker,” Gable said as a warning.

“What I have to ask is a little more important than your lousy card game.”