All the Stars in the Heavens (42 page)

“I don't know how I can tell her. It was her dream. She wanted a lot of children. I wanted her to have everything she wanted.”

“Oh, Chet.”

“I screwed up, Loretta, I screwed up.”

“What do you mean?”

“On
Mutiny
. There was a girl.”

Loretta felt a punch to her gut. “What happened?”

“I walked away.”

“Good.”

“But she came to my room. And I was so lonely. I missed Alda. I let her in. I'm being punished for what I did. And now Alda is being punished for what I did.”

Loretta went to the water fountain and poured a cup of water. She gave it to Chet and sat down next to him.

“You must never tell Alda about the girl.”

“I have to. I have to let her know what I did. I can't live with myself.”

“You have to find another way to atone. She can't give you absolution. And if you tell her, you will only hurt her. Especially now. Especially after all she has been through.”

“All right.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise you that I won't say a word about it.”

“Forget it,” Loretta said. “All that matters is Alda and your life together.”

“Mr. Chetta?” A nurse stood before them. “You can see your wife now.”

Loretta watched Chet walk through the doors with the nurse. She put her head in her hands and prayed.

“Hey,
piccina
.” Chet peeked through the curtain at Alda, who lay in the hospital bed.

“What happened?”

“You're going to be just fine,” he said tenderly.

“What happened to me? Tell me,” she said softly. “It wasn't my appendix.”

“No, no, but you're going to be fine.”

“I was pregnant, wasn't I?”

“Yes.” Chet's eyes filled with tears.

“I'm sorry.” She reached out to him. “I lost the baby.”

“I'm sorry.”

“For both of us.”

“How did it happen?”

“The doctor called it ectopic. You wouldn't have been able to bring the baby to term.”

“I can have more children, can't I?” Alda asked him the question even though she already knew the answer. She had seen the truth on the face of the nurse and read it in the countenance of the doctor. Her abdomen was heavily bandaged, which meant she'd had major surgery. The news would be terrible; that much she knew from her days at Saint Elizabeth's.

“The doctor had to save you. He couldn't do that without operating.”

“He gave me a hysterectomy.”

“I'm sorry, Alda.” Luca knelt next to the bed and wept. He felt a deep shame for his behavior, which soon gave way to regret. The dream of their family in the house in the valley was over.

Alda ruffled his thick hair with her fingers. This intimate gesture reassured him but he didn't deserve her affection. Alda didn't cry, which frightened Luca. She seemed to be in a state, with a faraway look in her eye.

“You have to leave me, you know.”

Luca lifted his head. “What do you mean?” He was bereft.

“You can't stay with a woman who can't give you a family. There's no purpose in that. I have no purpose.”

Luca gripped her hand. “You listen to me. I will never leave you. You will not leave me. We love each other. This is a terrible thing. But you made it through. You're going to be fine. So what? So we don't have kids, we can adopt them, we can do whatever we want. You're here. That's all that matters.”

Alda shifted in the hospital bed, making a space for Luca. He carefully slipped into the bed next to her, cradling her.

Alda believed she was paying for her mistake with Enrico, and in that sense, she was relieved that the debt had finally been paid, that she would no longer be haunted, wondering when her punishment would reveal itself and what penance would follow. Now she knew.
What she hoped to salvage from her life of mistakes was a new beginning. When she met Luca, she believed it was a turning point. But it was not to be. She had almost been a mother twice. She had held her son Michael. The baby she lost that night would remain a dream.

“I'm not going to be a mother. You won't have a son who will draw and paint. I won't have a daughter who will learn how to sew.”

“I don't care about that, Alda. I have you.”

“I'm going to have to be enough.”

“You are enough.”

Alda drifted off to sleep. Luca lay awake, looking at her. He was certain he was paying for his sins, but he could not understand why Alda had to lose everything to atone for his transgressions. When he closed his eyes to pray, he couldn't. Luca had lost his faith, and he wondered if he would ever find it again.

Loretta drove over the canyon to Venice Beach. Her heart raced. She wept at the news of Alda's loss, and it made her frantic. She needed to hold Judy, to be with her baby. She had deep feelings of self-loathing as she sped toward Rindge Street. She hated herself for every decision she had made about her daughter. Hiding her. The secret. The cover-up. It all came down on her at once, crushing her spirit, elevating her anxiety.

How dare she dress up and go out on the town in a gown and jewels when she had a baby to take care of? How dare she work and spend a moment away from her? How dare she hide her? What had Judy done? She was free of sin and entirely innocent. Loretta hid her as though she were ashamed of her. Was she protecting her daughter, or her reputation, or the money she would make as long as Judy's identity remained secret?

Loretta felt sick. She pulled over, got out of the car, and threw up. She was feverish with regret. She pictured the Mayfair Ball, hours earlier, with Gable, the games that were played, the silliness of it all. The gossip, the posturing among the women, and Gable at the center of it, a new father acting like a fool. She observed him as he flirted and joked and felt up every woman in the place. It was too much, and
Loretta was heartily sorry for her part in any of it. That nonsense was beneath her; it was beneath their baby daughter. There were real problems in the world, real pain, the kind of agony that Alda was experiencing that night. Loretta got back into her car.

Loretta wept so much her cheeks began to itch. She rolled down the window and let the night air, cool and light, blow across her face. What good had her earnings been? She had investments, she owned property, and she had the money to pay a nurse to care for Judy, but what good was any of it if she couldn't have her daughter with her? There was something terribly wrong with the way she was living, in fear for her career and reputation, instead of reveling in the days of joy her daughter brought just by having been born.

Loretta parked in front of the house. She didn't care. Usually, she parked around the corner in a carport that Gladys rented so they wouldn't be discovered. She ran up the walkway, fumbled for the key, and entered the house. She called out softly, “Evelyn, it's Loretta.”

There was a small bedside lamp on in the back room. The nurse was feeding Judy.

Loretta ran into the room. To see her baby so peaceful soothed her. Loretta inhaled deeply to calm her racing heart.

“May I?” Loretta said.

“Of course.”

Evelyn handed the baby to Loretta, who sank down into the rocking chair, holding her daughter. She held the warm glass bottle of milk and fed her baby, beginning to rock in the chair. Baby Judy looked up at her mother, serene and calm. Her downy hair was like spun gold, with waves. Loretta gently touched her daughter's hair. Judy was a perfect baby, pink, robust, sweet, and tranquil. Alda would never know this particular joy. Tears streamed down Loretta's cheeks when she thought about what Alda would miss.

Evelyn, standing by, reached for a handkerchief for Loretta, who took it and dried her tears with one hand while feeding her daughter with the other.

“I missed her,” Loretta said, explaining her unannounced visit.

“It's like that,” Evelyn said. “You always need them more than they need you.”

L
ouis B. Mayer's grand office suite on the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot was decorated with fine English furniture and heavy Scalamandré silk drapes that would have been appropriate decor in a bank president's office. The scent of lemon oil and the mogul's cigar wafted through, carried by the fresh California breeze that blew in from the open windows.

Mr. Mayer set the stage for his omnipotence in the movie business with careful attention to detail. The accents of polished brass, carved walnut, and gleaming crystal were deliberately formal. His mahogany desk was massive. His chair was positioned higher, while visitors' seats were lower, an arrangement that gave the boss leverage. It was easier for Mr. Mayer to say no in an environment that made actors, directors, writers, and agents feel small. In that sense, Louis B. Mayer was the best set decorator in Hollywood.

Ida Koverman, Mayer's eyes, ears, and intellect as well as his private secretary, stirred her tea as she read. Her large walnut desk was polished to a glossy sheen. Her typewriter, a black-and-white Underwood, was positioned on a specially built arm that could swing the typewriter out of the way so Ida might use the broad surface of her desktop to lay out pages of scripts or publicity photographs, or line up the drawers pulled from her card catalog of artisans, producers,
actors, and writers her boss wanted her to contact at a moment's notice.

Ida adjusted her eyeglasses, crossed her arms on the desk, kept her head down, and kept reading. She looked like any white-haired grandmother engrossed in a gripping
Saturday Evening Post
short story. In truth, the only trait Ida shared with grandmothers was the jar of hard candy she kept on her desk. Ida was a Hollywood insider, a player who could tip a project into production or kill it.

Anita Loos, the screenwriter—diminutive in height only—paced in front of Ida's desk, hands on hips. She wore a trim navy cotton chemise and matching high-heeled lace-up Mary Janes, tied with large bows of blue velvet laces. Anita's jet-black hair was chopped in a modern pixie cut, with a thick fringe of bangs over her kohl-lined brown eyes. She wore a deliberately
jeune fille
red grosgrain ribbon in her hair.

No one knew how old Anita Loos actually was, but she was closer in age to the sixty-one-year-old matron Ida Koverman than she cared to admit. Anita was funny and bright and eager; she packaged herself with as much zeal as the studio packaged its stars. As a perennial hot writer on the MGM lot, she used her petite figure, courant designer wardrobe, and jet-black hair to sell her pithy scripts, loaded with sex, adventure, and smart social commentary. Anita had been writing scenarios since the silent era. In the front office, whatever age you are when you first make it as a Hollywood writer is the age you remain all of your career, until the bosses change.

Ink doesn't age.

In the mid-1930s studio moguls Mayer, Zukor, Warner, Cohn, and Zanuck were in a death fight to hire the best writers. Loos needn't have worked so hard on her image; her writing talent was more than enough to recommend her. A funny woman adept at writing comedy was pure gold, and she'd earn plenty of it when she put it on the page.

“What do you think?” Anita peeked out through the venetian blinds at the MGM lot. A ground crew of gardeners had parked a golf cart loaded with rakes, clippers, and shovels next to the building as they tended to the boxwood around the Mayer building, giving it a haircut with the same attention to detail as the studio barbers in
the MGM makeup department gave the leading men. “Big movie. It's big-ticket, don't you think?”

“I think two million.”

“Lot of effects,” Anita admitted.

“Yes, but they'll make history. Mr. Mayer wants Academy Awards, and this one would get them.”

“You like it.” Anita assumed the script would please Ida.

“You can't miss. It's an epic. San Francisco earthquake. Turn of the century.” Ida made notes in the margin of the script. “Love story.”

“Harlow for the girl?” Anita offered.

“You'd have to make her a dancer. She can't sing.”

“Spencer Tracy for the priest?”

“He plays good guys so often, people think he's a saint in real life.” Ida chuckled.

“Not if they saw him out last Friday night.”

“Always the way. The most angelic are the biggest devils. And the biggest drinkers.”

“Gable for Blackie Norton.”

“Of course. He can do anything he wants after
Mutiny
,” Ida said.

“But will he want to do this?”

“I don't see why not. Let Mr. Mayer sell him if he has doubts.”

“
The Call of the Wild
was turn-of-the-century too,” Anita reasoned.

“It's doing great business.”

“Loretta Young and Gable are marvelous together.”

“Too much chemistry.” Ida stopped reading and looked over her glasses. “Mr. Mayer would never hire her now.”

“
Never
is a long time in Hollywood,” Anita said wryly. “About forty-eight hours.”

“Do you think it's true?” Ida said without looking up from the script.

“About the baby?”

“They say she gave it up for adoption.”

“I doubt that.”

“Do you know something?”

“Not really. But I ask you, woman to woman, would you ever give up Clark Gable's baby?” Anita leaned on the desk.

“I guess I couldn't.”

“There's your answer. I couldn't either. And I'm about as maternal as that ashtray.”

“So where is the baby?”

“I have no idea. Maybe one of her sisters is keeping it, or her mother.”

“Good point. But no matter who you are, it's hard to hide a baby.”

“I haven't kept up with the latest gossip. I'm up to my ears in
San Francisco,”
Anita admitted.

Koverman picked up her phone on the first ring. “Send him in.” She winked at Anita. “Mr. Gable is on his way.”

“Kismet.” Anita smiled.

“I left word for him to come over if he was on the lot.”

“Like I said, Kismet by Koverman.”

“Nice title.” Ida laughed.

Gable pushed through the door to Ida's office. “My favorite writer,” he said to Loos, kissing her on the cheek.

“And you know you're my favorite everything else, Mr. Gable,” Anita said, flirting. She was forever gulping air around Gable, like a fish he'd caught, as if there wasn't enough oxygen to maintain a steady heart rate. Clark Gable was Anita's idea of male perfection. He was funny. Well-read. Beyond the personality was the sex appeal. Those dimples. The shock of thick black hair. Those gray eyes. And he was tall. Anita liked tall men.

Gable grinned. “What have we got?”

Anita clapped her hands together to sell. “San Francisco earthquake, turn of this century. No ponytails. Keep your mustache. You wear a tuxedo through most of the movie. We want Tracy for your best friend the priest.”

“Nice. Who's the girl?”

“We were thinking Harlow,” Anita said.

“No Harlow on this one.” Louis B. Mayer stood in his office doorway. “I like Jeanette MacDonald.”

“Not for me, L. B.,” Gable said.

“She's pretty, and she can sing. And most importantly, she is box-office gold.”

“With Nelson Eddy,” Gable grumbled.

“They're not paying to see him,” Mayer huffed. “Jeanette could sing with a moose, and they'd pay for the privilege.”

“Not to be a hat pin, but they have,” Anita joked. Gable laughed.

“Ganging up on me doesn't work,” Mayer assured them.

“Come on, L.B. Spence and I are a pretty good bet on our own,” Gable reasoned.

“But you're fighting over this lady in the story.”

“We're always fighting over a woman. All I'm asking is, give me one I'd want to take a slug for.”

“Let me see what I can do. We have a few scripts for you to look at before this one.
San Francisco
is going to be a megillah in preproduction. Miss Loos brings the entire city down with an earthquake,” Mayer complained. “That's going to cost.” He grabbed his hat and went out the door.

“Nice to know the San Francisco earthquake was my fault.” Anita buried her hands in her pockets.

“No Jeanette MacDonald,” Gable said to Anita. “Or I'll take a loan-out to Warner's and do a picture with Bette Davis.”

“Oh, no, you won't,” Ida assured him.

“Then get me Harlow.” Gable kissed Ida's hand. “That's a girl that does it for me.” Gable tipped his hand to Anita and left.

“Good to know he chooses his roles based on the script.” Anita sighed.

Ida Koverman laughed. Anita Loos couldn't.

“You okay over there?” Loretta asked Alda as she drove through the streets of Venice. The Pacific Ocean sparkled bright blue in the morning sun beyond the shoreline cluttered with cottages.

“Yep,” Alda said. There was no use explaining that she was depressed. The only reprieve she got from her pain was her work. Saint Patrick's Day was the anniversary of the birth of baby Patricia at Saint Elizabeth's, and every year since, Alda had thought about the baby's mother. She wondered where she was, if she was all right, and how she was coping with the sadness of giving up her baby. She pictured
the infant, who would be a toddler now. Thoughts of Patricia made her think of her own losses, of Michael and of the baby she miscarried and never named.

“I'm worried about you, Alda.”

“Please don't.”

“But I do.”

“I'm getting better.”

“How's Luca?”

“He can't do enough for me.”

“That's what I like to hear.” Loretta pulled into the carport and parked next to her mother's car.

Gladys had arrived earlier that morning to relieve the babysitter. Judy was five months old now, her head covered in golden curls. She reached for her mother. Loretta took her daughter into her arms and covered her in kisses.

“Mama, why did you want to see us here?”

“I don't trust the phones. Ria Gable is sparing no expense to find out about Judy.”

“She wants to ruin Mr. Gable,” Alda said.

“So we need to make some decisions. And fast. Louella Parsons called me. Ria Gable says she has proof that you and Clark had an affair, and she's going public with it. She mentioned rumors of a baby too. She refuses to give Clark a divorce, and is blackmailing him with the baby.”

“Let her. I'm tired of all these games, Mama. All that matters is Judy.” Loretta fantasized about selling everything and getting out of Hollywood. She was tired of being emotionally blackmailed by the likes of Ria Gable.

“Gretchen, we have to do something.”

“Judy can stay with Sally for a while,” Loretta offered.

“She can't stay with your sisters.”

“I'll take her,” Alda said.

“You can't. They know who you are and your relationship with Gretchen. They would find out everything. Ria Gable has detectives.”

“So, Mama, what can we do?”

“I don't know.” Gladys became emotional.

“What about Saint Elizabeth's?” Alda sat down and outlined a plan. “Mother Superior could take her. Judy would be loved and cared for—you could go up whenever you wished. And Judy would be safe.”

“Then how do I get her home?”

“Once Mr. Gable has his divorce, no one will notice,” Alda said.

“Oh, they'll notice,” Gladys said glumly. “You'll have to invent a story.”

“Sally is pregnant—the baby is due in June. Maybe we can bring Judy home when Sally brings home her baby.”

“You could pretend that you adopted Judy,” Gladys added. “Because you wanted to be a mother like your sister.”

“I don't want to do this,” Loretta said.

“You have to,” Gladys insisted. “Ria Gable wants to blame someone for losing her husband, and she would be thrilled to use you as the excuse.”

“Tell our lawyer that Ria Gable's accusations are nothing but petty gossip.”

“Gretchen, Clark is a bigger star than you. MGM has all the power in this situation. They're going to protect him. Paramount will do nothing for you.”

Loretta turned to Alda. “Will you please call Mother Superior?”

“I'll do whatever you need.”

“Are you sure it's a nice place?” Loretta's eyes filled with tears.

“The sisters are kind, and there's a garden,” Alda reassured her.

“I trust you with my daughter, Alda,” Loretta said as she held Judy tightly.