All the Stars in the Heavens (58 page)

“Everything, right?”

“I would have held on to my work. It came easily to me, and I figured it would last—that I would last. You know? It was a gift, that talent. We don't treasure the skills and the breaks and the good things that come naturally. At least, I didn't.”

“Look at all the great things you did. You helped build this hospital. Your name is on the plaque with the original trustees.”

“Fire insurance, baby. Fire insurance.”

“What do you mean?”

“You Catholics invented it. It's called an indulgence. You do all the good you can to make up for the sin.”

“But all sins are forgiven when the sinner is contrite.”

“Sure. But that doesn't mean the sinner feels the redemption. Sometimes the sin overpowers the forgiveness. That's why we build hospitals. We don't feel clean.”

Loretta wanted to go back in time with Mae. She didn't like this conversation; it reminded her that sometimes the story of a life doesn't end as it might in the movies, in one happy frame, sealed with one glorious kiss. Sometimes it ends like this, in a room with one gown and a spare. At least the window was big, and beyond it a view of a green field and a blue California sky.

Loretta wanted to cheer Mae up, so she asked, “Do you remember
The
Primrose Ring
?”

“No.”

“Nineteen seventeen.”

“Oh, honey, that was almost century ago.” Mae laughed.

“You played a nurse. I was four years old and played a fairy. My first job in show business.”

“You remember that?”

“Every moment. In my four-year-old way. I flew from the grid in a harness. It was cinched so tight, it left a mark. But Mama rubbed coconut oil on my stomach for six months afterwards until it faded. But I didn't care. When I was on the sound stage, I was flying.”

“You never feel pain when the camera is rolling. Why is that?”

“Never figured it out.” Loretta patted Mae's hand. “Bobby Leonard was a good director. Taught me how to play checkers.”

“A fine man and a good husband.”

“You started Tiffany Pictures with him.”

“And I should've stayed there. And I should've stayed with him. But he really wanted a child. Well, I went on to have one—with the wrong man. And I heard he had children. Why do we let the good ones go?”

“I don't know, Mae. That's one of those questions I plan on asking God when I see Him.” Loretta's eyes filled with tears. She remembered Spence and Clark—both gone, and neither knew the depth of her feelings. She might have shown her feelings on the screen, but in life she kept them hidden. Safer that way, or so she thought at the time.

“Oh, let's not go down that road. It's got a terrible view,” Mae joked.

Loretta took Mae's hand. It was as soft as it had been decades ago. Actresses never go in the sun, if they're wise. They preserve the skin, and when they preserve the skin, they lengthen the career.

They sat in silence for a few moments. Mae looked out on the fields behind the actors' home. There was a lemon grove. The manicured trees were full of ripe fruit, the bright yellow bursting through the green like canary diamonds on a velvet evening glove.

“Bobby used to say, Don't act, Mae. Just be. And that's all I tried to do all my life, just be. But staying in the moment, it has its price. You're sewing the days and years together, and when there's no plan, you drop stitches here and there.”

“Not many. You changed my life, Mae.”

“Oh, honey, I wish I would've steered you to a different racket. Pictures are for suckers, and movies, what are they really? It's art you can put your hand through. It's just light and air and silver. It'll dissolve in those canisters and turn to dust. Just like us. Well, me a helluva sooner than you.”

“Along the way, you make people laugh and cry and think.”

“They'd do that anyway, honey.” Mae closed her eyes. “Can you come and see me again sometime?”

“I will.”

“It took you a long time to get here.”

“It did. Too long.”

“Well, we fixed that up, didn't we?”

“You rest, Mate-zee. And I'll see you soon.”

Mae closed her eyes and went off to sleep as though the ability were on tap. Loretta walked down the hallway. She would remind herself to visit Mae, and to buy her a proper robe and slippers, something in velour, something in a shade of lilac.

A bright red bird landed on the windowsill. Loretta sipped her coffee and watched the bird through the glass. The bird looked her straight in the eye, which sent a chill through her.

Loretta went outside and picked up the newspaper on the driveway.
The paperboy had missed the entrance, and the roll had landed on the lawn. She tiptoed through the wet grass and picked it up. She unrolled it and began reading as she walked back to the house. It was March 24. The night before, Mae Murray had died in her sleep.

Loretta sighed as she read the litany of bankruptcies, lawsuits, and failed projects that had dogged Mae, and for a moment wished for the days of the powerful studios, when an obituary was a love letter and not a police blotter. Eddie Mannix, or any of the boys in the front office who controlled the flow of information, would never have allowed this—it reflected poorly on everyone.

Loretta stopped and took a deep breath. She sat down on the front step of the porch and wept. She decided to put a swing on the branch of the oak tree in her front yard. Her granddaughter Maria would enjoy it, and it would be a fitting tribute to Mae Murray, who taught her that to play was to live.

L
oretta waited in the baggage area of LAX for Judy. Occasionally someone would see Loretta Young out running an errand and figure she was
somebody
, but at this stage of her life, so long away from pictures and television, they couldn't figure out who she might be. She carried herself like a star; maybe age had brought a different kind of sophistication and beauty, but the elegance that had made her special was still there.

When Loretta saw her daughter come down the escalator, she was thrilled to see her.

“Mom, this car is crazy.”

“It's a brand-new nineteen sixty-six Rolls-Royce.”

“And you're still a bad driver.”

“No, the man who sold it to me assured me that if I bought it I would instantly be a better driver.”

“Money talks. Or should I say, money lies.”

“No kidding.”

“Should we go out tonight?” Judy asked.

“I called your brothers—they've got plans, but if you stay through the weekend, they'll come over for supper on Sunday. We'll get all the aunts together, Mama. The whole shebang.”

“Where's my stepfather?”

“He's around.” Loretta and Tom were living apart. Once she decided to retire from acting, and the boys were grown, there was little to hold them together.

“I don't want to see him, if that's all right with you. I'm old enough now to choose how I want to spend time.”

“That's fine.”

“I wish you would have put him in his place when I was a girl.”

“That's in the past.”

“I still think about it. He resented me. I'm a mother, and I can't understand how he could look at me at five years old and consider me a rival.”

“I didn't see it then.”

“You couldn't. You never had a father, and you had no idea how good fathers treat their children. Well, I can tell you this. A good father doesn't make a child feel unsafe, unworthy, and unwanted, and your husband made me feel all those things and still does.”

“When I met Tom I thought he was a good man. I thought he was strong and principled.”

“I didn't spend much time with him before the wedding.”

“Judy, that's not how it was done back then. Children and parents were separate.”

“I know, the old children-should-be-seen-and-not-heard. But the problem with that is that children grow up and they find their voices, and by then, we can't be silenced. So look out.”

“No kidding.” Loretta drove onto the freeway to a cacophony of car horns. Judy's stomach turned, and she gripped the leather handle on the door. “Careful, Mom.”

“I'm always careful.”

Judy believed that her mother was incapable of being cautious; Loretta Young was ruled by her emotions. She had never been careful. She was so lax, she'd had an affair with a married man and became pregnant. Judy knew this for sure because she was the product of that carelessness. She had enough proof of her paternity: the time line, her aunts' whispers, the open secret in Hollywood finally revealed to her, and of course the surgery on her ears to remove the last obvious detail of her connection to Clark Gable. Loretta had spun
a Hollywood melodrama, and Judy felt that she was placed in the center of it against her will. And now, finally, after years of trying, Judy had flown to California to confront her mother and demand the truth.

Loretta pulled into the driveway. Judy grabbed her overnight bag from the back seat and climbed up the stairs behind her mother.

Judy marveled at her mother's physical countenance. She floated into a room, and on the stairs that night her feet barely brushed the steps. She made Hollywood entrances and exits in her real life, using all the tools of the great stars—costumes, makeup, even the right vehicle, the brand-new Rolls-Royce befitting a star who'd shone most brightly during Hollywood's golden age.

Judy caught her mother up on the details of her and Maria's lives, including her divorce, whose details Loretta listened to carefully. Loretta might not have been a good example for Judy when it came to marriage, but she had taught her daughter well about divorce. Divorce was as big a business as the movies, the accompanying paperwork and contracts sealed and signed as if Louis B. Mayer himself were pushing the paper across a polished desk.

For all their differences, Judy was her mother's daughter: she was charming, intelligent, and unlucky in love. Evidently the Gladys Belzer strain of bad romantic luck had been passed along through Loretta's line down to Judy.

Judy threw on her pajamas and went across the hall to her mother's room.

“You know, it's always strange when it's just the two of us.”

“Are you going to complain about all the time you gave up babysitting your brothers?”

“No, I had fun with Peter and Chris. I love them.”

“You were lucky—you got two brothers.”

“You had Uncle Jackie.”

“He was not built to live in a house of women.” Loretta laughed.

“He didn't have a father, and that's tough. Peter and Chris had Dad, so they had a better time of it.”

“They had an ally, for sure,” Loretta said. “I always worried he was spoiling them.”

“He spoiled them, because I got the opposite,” Judy said.

“I don't feel well,” Loretta said. She was queasy; she had gotten shots to travel abroad, so her arm was sore and her stomach was upset. She went into her bathroom and closed the door. Soon, she was throwing up.

Judy rapped on the door gently. “Mom, do you need help?” She sighed. Every time she tried to have a serious conversation with her mother about her father—not her stepdad, but her real father—something derailed it. Judy hadn't persisted because she didn't want to hurt Loretta—but the truth was, she was past worrying about everyone else's feelings. Judy Lewis wanted the truth. She wanted to know who she was and where she came from. For years she'd believed it wasn't in her mother's sphere of knowledge, but now she knew that wasn't true.

Judy had enough pieces of the puzzle. She knew who she was, but she wanted her mother to corroborate what she believed. Judy believed that if Loretta would acknowledge the truth, it would allow Judy to move through the rest of her life in the light, instead of the constant emotional fumbling she had known since she was a girl. Judy wanted her place at the Young/Belzer table as a Gable.

Judy pushed the door open. Her mother was at the sink, washing her face.

“I think it's the shots for my trip,” Loretta said.

“I'm sorry.”

“Can't travel without them, I guess.”

“Mom, I just turned thirty-one.”

“I know how old you are, honey. I'm your mother.”

Judy smiled. “I need your help. I want to know about my father.”

“Why do you bring this up now?”

“Mom, I have a knowingness that I've had since I was a girl. I began to figure it out—your sisters would say things, the kids at school would make comments.”

“Judy, what would they know?”

“More than me. Evidently everybody knew but me. On my wedding day I got sick not because I was nervous, but because I was getting married and I didn't know who I was. I'm not blaming you—I
assume you have your reasons—but I want to understand who I am from your perspective.”

“You're my daughter.”

“And I have a father. Is Clark Gable my father?”

Loretta put her hand on her heart, and felt it racing. She was at long last tired of the secret; she could no longer keep it. It didn't matter what was for the best, or what Loretta's intentions might have been. It was time to tell the truth. It was as if a storm had blown through the house, shattered the windows, blown down the doors, and crumbled the bricks. The secret that had taken her energy and her focus and her determination as it lay dormant and hidden had finally defeated her. The world had changed—not the one outside her home, the one within it. There was no reason to hide Judy's father from her any longer. It was just the two of them, mother and daughter. Loretta knew she might lose Judy when she confirmed the truth, but it was too late now. What was hidden had to be revealed.

“Mom, I'm going to ask you again. Is Clark Gable my father?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

Loretta sat down on the edge of the bed. Judy knelt before her. “Your father was married, and it was awful. I got pregnant, and I was supporting our family, and our faith—well, I would never have an abortion, so I had to have you, wanted to have you, but I couldn't marry your father.” The facts tumbled out at a rate that made Judy's head spin. Loretta had never pictured this scene the way it was playing out in real life. “I couldn't marry him!”

“Did you want to?”

“Yes. And he wanted to marry me. But there was no way to make it work. You have to understand the time. We lived in fear of all of this”—Loretta motioned around the room—“going away. We'd lose our jobs, our livelihood.”

“Your fans.”

“That was secondary. It was our way of life. We had built up our family from nothing, without the help of a man, without the help of our fathers, they were gone. We had to take care of ourselves.”

“How did I become a secret?”

“Out of necessity. For you. For your safety. You see, your father's wife would call me, and I wouldn't answer the phone. Alda figured out how to handle her, but we had to take pains never to run into her. She wanted to ruin me, hoping that would keep your father in the marriage. Your father called me and called me, and I was so afraid someone would figure it out. It would have ruined his career and mine, and so I pushed him away.”

“Did you love him?”

“Madly.”

“Did he ever come to see me?”

“He came to the Venice house, and he was wild about you. Couldn't put you down. You were perfect, a little angel that fell out of the sky. You had gold hair in ringlets, and he was besotted.”

Judy held back her tears. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“Do you remember when your father came to visit you at the house on Camden?”

“Yes, I thought it was strange.”

“We were trying to have you spend time together. I wanted to tell you then, but you weren't interested. And your father said, ‘Leave it alone. She's beautiful and smart and well-adjusted.' Remember when I begged you to come to the set when we were making a movie? You were fifteen, a teenager, and I didn't want to force the issue.”

“Mom, you should have made me go to the set. That's no excuse.”

“Your father thought it would devastate you at that point in your life.”

“That's the moment you let him make decisions about my future? How could you let me get married without knowing who my father was?”

“I invited him to your wedding, he and Kay, thinking that might be a fresh start.”

“But he didn't come to my wedding.”

“So then I thought I didn't want anyone or anything to hurt you. So I let it go.”

“Mom, everybody in the world knew but me.”

“Everything I did was because I loved you. And the problem with a secret is that it lives, and as it lives, it gains power, and it got too big for me. And I thought it would be too big for you. After Clark died, I thought about telling you, and I was afraid you'd hate me for it.”

“Mom, you understand why I'm struggling. I struggle with everything. On the surface, my life is like one of Grandma's rooms. Every aspect appears perfect, every chair is placed just so, the draperies hang without a wrinkle, and there's a fire in the hearth, just as there should be in any home. I look fine. I look like you and my father. I appear to have everything I needed. I was loved by my aunts and uncles and cousins. I have two half brothers who love me, and I love them. I had a stepfather who didn't care for me, but that was okay, I had you and Alda and Luca, and LaWanda at the studio, and your friends, who were so kind to me. And I was almost content to live the rest of my life with my daughter in the bubble, with the truth banging on the glass and me inside with no way to let it in. But I can't do that to myself anymore, I can't do it to Maria, and I won't do it to you. You should know me as a person who owns her truth. If I was born of a mistake, I forgive it. And if I was born of love, I have a right to revel in it, to share it with my daughter, and someday for her to share it with her children. That's what family is, that's what history means, and that's all we have to offer each other going forward, our mutual truth.”

“It's true,” Loretta said softly. But the truth brought neither the mother nor the daughter the joy they had dreamed of—the admission only confirmed the sadness of all that had been lost.

Loretta folded down the coverlet on her bed. She kissed her daughter.

“Will you stay with me?” Loretta asked Judy.

“Of course, Mom.”

Judy got into bed next to Loretta. She reached across and embraced her mother, who began to weep.

“It's all right, Mom.” Judy cried too, not for her mother's sadness, though it hurt her—she cried for the father she'd never know, the father who lived only in her imagination, in her dreams, and when she wanted to visit him there, on the silver screen.