An Idol for Others (44 page)

One of the things that bored Clara most at the parties they went to was the amount of time the ladies of Hollywood devoted to the discussion of their insides. They were fountains of gynecological lore about birth control and abortions and, under the subheading of pregnancy, about breast care and postnatal treatment for sagging abdomens and similar afflictions. In these edifying conversations, the name of Dr. Smallfield kept cropping up. The ladies of Hollywood couldn’t do without him.

Clara had never accepted the possibility that her abortion had had anything to do with her subsequent barren state, but she had been to several specialists for what she told herself were routine examinations and had been assured that everything was in order.

Eventually the name of Dr. Smallfield had been so dinned into her ears that she decided she might as well see him. Not that there was anything wrong with her, but if he were such a wizard with birth control, he might know a trick or two about making things work the other way around. When she went back to him a second time to learn the results of the X rays, he spoke of tubes and scar tissue and suggested that she have a small operation. She agreed and was vague about it with Walter.

She stayed in a hospital for two days and went without intercourse for another week, and before Walter had finished his second picture, she was able to announce casually one evening that she was pregnant. He looked at her incredulously.

“You needn’t look at me like that,” she said, brushing aside six or seven years of waiting and wondering. “We knew it was bound to happen eventually.”

“Is that what the operation was all about?” he asked, still not able to believe it.

“Don’t be silly, dearest. I told you that was just a little female thing. Of course, I suppose anything that’s done there could make some sort of difference.” She watched his face light up with his impish smile and sat back in triumph. Her timing had always been right. After the lull of Hollywood, she would move back into the center of their lives. She had always known how to give him what he needed, when he needed it. Once he was a father, another Mark would be out of the question.

She gave birth to her first child after he had started work on his third film. Parenthood immediately set a limit to their time in Hollywood. Neither of them could imagine bringing up children there. Walter didn’t expect that becoming a father (this time, of his wife’s child) after all these years would affect him very deeply, but it did. Now that it had happened, he realized that it meant even more to him than he had thought. This was finally what life was about. The little flurries of passion, the small dissatisfactions and reproaches he had allowed to accumulate to Clara’s discredit, were nothing compared to the wonder of their bringing children into the world together.

To his surprise he found his attitude to his work changing. He grew more relaxed, almost indifferent when he couldn’t come up with an original solution to a problem. He was no longer driven to excel himself. He had been an innovator and a trailblazer; he began to look forward to a future of interesting but undemanding work that wouldn’t impinge on the comfortable framework of money and family life. Tenderness of a sort that had never existed between them entered into his relationship with Clara.

She was pregnant again in less than a year’s time after the birth of the first boy. He made a fourth film, started a fifth, and began to read play scripts that were still being mailed to him from New York. He found several that he liked and, shortly after the birth of the second son, notified the studio that he was leaving on completion of his current picture.

He had saved a lot of money, and he put most of it into the purchase and remodeling of two houses on East 75th Street. Alice had kept the office going during the four-and-a-half years he had been away. He was soon back in business as Walter Makin Productions, with the very big difference that Clara didn’t pitch in with him.

She had examined the role of mother and found that it suited her for the present. She was aware that his imagination was no longer wholly gripped by his work. He liked spending time with the babies. A lot of his energy was going into the creation of a grand setting for them. He was more interested in discussing with her the acquisition of a picture or a piece of furniture than his production plans. He was looking forward to the elegant dinner parties she would be able to give in the dining room he was planning. She knew her new value to him as a wife and hostess and mother; to become his business partner again would be a retrogression.

The independence he had enjoyed at the studio was consolidated as he became once more his own boss, and he made the most of it. In reaction to Hollywood’s repressive atmosphere, he went out of his way to find staff that would be shunned by the movie moguls. He found a business manager and old friend of David’s who had been one of the first victims of the Hollywood witch-hunt. He heard of a newspaperman who had refused to testify before some congressional committee and hired him as his press representative. A bright, personable–probably homosexual–young man came to him with high academic qualifications and a strong recommendation from an experimental theater in Texas and became his assistant. As the father of two, Walter didn’t see why he shouldn’t hire gay youths if they were good at their jobs. He let it be known that he would give receptive attention to plays by Hollywood writers who figured on blacklists. He told Alice to try to find out where Johnny Bainbridge was. He had dropped out of sight several years earlier.

It was one of those coincidences that were constantly occurring in the city. On the day he told Alice to look up Johnny, he ran into him in the street. He saw him approaching, as light and worn and self-contained as ever, and had a moment to remind himself not to expose Johnny to the full flamboyance of his manner before they were in front of each other. Johnny looked at him without a flicker of expression or break in his pace. Walter swung around and grabbed his arm.

“Hey, Johnny. What’s up? Have you gone blind?”

Johnny stopped without looking at him. “Let go. I don’t want to speak to you. Isn’t that clear?”

“What is this? You must be mad. Only this morning I asked the office to look you up. I was hoping you might have a play.”

“If I had, I wouldn’t give it to you. Now, can I go?”

“No, damn it. What’s it all about? You’ve got to tell me?”

“You know.”

“Do I? I’m Walter Makin. You’re Johnny Bainbridge. We went to school together. I’ve produced a couple of your plays. I can’t see any reason there for our not speaking to each other.”

“Oh, for God’s sakes. You’ve never heard of the House Un-American Activities Committee? You’ve never heard of Sidney Magnus? You’ve never heard of a list denouncing your friends and working associates?”

“I’ve heard of some of it. I’ve never heard of a list. Do you think I would … This is insanity, Johnny. What in hell are you talking about? Tell me, please.”

“I’m talking about the list you gave Magnus. Everybody knows about it.”

“A list?
I
gave Magnus? Come on, Johnny. This is serious.” Walter assumed that his indignation was convincing because Johnny allowed himself to be hustled into the first bar they came to on Rockefeller Plaza. Walter had been on his way to the office. He ordered drinks for them and turned to Johnny. “All right. Let’s have it again. Everybody knows
I
gave a list of my subversive friends to Magnus?”

“So Magnus says. That’s the rumor.”

“It would’ve been quite a list. When am I supposed to’ve compiled this major work?”

“I don’t know. Three years ago? I know you’d finished your first film. About the time I got dropped, not that you had anything to do with that I’d have been out much sooner if I’d been more important.”

“You were on my list? Yes, that figures. I remember Sidney asked me about you. Come to think of it, he did want a list. In essence, I told him where he could shove it. They put the screws on me for a while at the studio, and then they let up. I guess Sidney told somebody I’d cooperated so he could save face.”

“No. I remember Gilbert Lukas was mentioned. That could only have come from you.”

“Gilbert Lukas? That musician friend of Clara’s? I hardly knew him.”

“You. Clara. Six of one, half a dozen of–”

“Oh, no, Johnny,” Walter cut in harshly. He peered into his glass. He didn’t want to believe what he was thinking. He continued his interrogation. When they parted, the tenderness he had been cultivating in his relationship with Clara had turned to cold condemnation. Johnny had presented conclusive evidence of her having acted on his behalf. Again. His arrogant assumption that he could make Hollywood dance to his tune was criminal nonsense. Thanks to Clara, his success there had been an abject defeat. He could forgive a personal injury. He could never forgive being put in the position of betraying everything he believed in. Even thinking of her as the mother of his children didn’t soften his heart toward her. It was finished. He would never turn to her again as the partner of his inner life. There was no point in confronting her with it on the off chance that there had been a misunderstanding. Confrontations with Clara never led to anything. He had already isolated himself from her in his work. He would isolate himself from her in every area of life that was important to him. They would act out a charade of compatibility and glamorous living. If he ever wanted to leave her, there would be no further need for justifying himself.

His return to the city soon created a stir. He started lucky with two successes, and his old reputation as the Boy Wonder was revived. There was a big project brewing regarding a cultural complex to be called Lincoln Center, and he was asked to revive Theatre Today for it as a showcase of the nation’s theater. He was tempted–he would have a chance finally to be in on the planning of a theater from the ground up according to his specifications–but finally refused. He could no longer afford to be an innovator and a leader. He had put himself in a position where he had to make lots of money. The alteration and decoration of the house, or houses, on East 75th Street was costing a fortune, and he was determined to fill it with treasures. He needed money to live in a way to which he had yet to become accustomed. He needed money for instant mobility. He needed money to retain some control of the children, whatever happened. If this required lowering his professional standards for a while, he was at least aware why he was doing it.

When his third show flopped, he had to scramble for cash for several months. He raised a loan to pay the office staff and was grateful when the French couple suggested that they could wait for their wages. His fourth production was a trivial bit of nonsense and a smash success. He paid off his debts and bought some pictures and realized that this was the way life was going to be–ups and downs, the sense of adventure and the vaulting ambition gone, the routine of a craft mastered, which had earned him an eminent place in the city’s life. Honors and awards became commonplace. At 35 he had become as much of an institution as anybody could in the unpredictable world of the theater. Just when it couldn’t matter less, Clara’s case went to a final court decision, and she was awarded possession of her money. It had grown considerably. As far as he was concerned, it was entirely hers. It simply enforced his need for money of his own to match it.

Groping blindly for something that seemed to have eluded him, he had brief affairs with several young actresses, but this too quickly turned into routine. It taught him that he couldn’t expect a body, his own or any other, to offer any more revelations.

He dropped in at gay bars with his assistant from time to time when they had been kept late at the theater. Alone, he went back to the first one he had been taken to, with the half-formed hope that he might hear some news of Mark or even run into him. It had been too long, as time was measured in the constantly changing city, for this to be likely, but he was in the neighborhood and went in. One of the bartenders remembered Mark and said he had left town long ago.

There were others that weren’t frequented by a theatrical crowd, and Walter found them a cheerful convenience when he felt like shedding the demands of being Walter Makin. He liked the anonymity and the air of expectancy, eyes sliding to the door to check each new arrival, the sense of impending encounter. He always attracted suitors, so he was assured of companions who didn’t know who he was.

One night a particularly uninhibited group of youths swarmed around him immediately upon his arrival at one of the places he sometimes visited. The exclaimed over him shrilly.

“A divine man.”

“Take your hands off him, Gladys. He’s not yours.”

“Look at his smile. What a wicked dish.”

“We’ve got to take him with us.”

“Calm down, girls. Let him take his pick.”

Walter laughed as he disentangled himself from them to order a drink. There were five or six of them, all appearing to be in their early 20s except for one who was even younger, probably not out of his teens. They continued to carry on behind him. The young one pressed up beside him while he waited for his drink.

“I’m Kenny,” he said. “You’re the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen.”

The boy was tall, almost as tall as Walter, and very slight. He had a dissolute and expensive look. His pale skin and chestnut hair looked as if a lot of money had been spent on them. His features were agreeable but without marked character and reminded Walter of someone.

“I’m Walter.” He took his drink from the bar and eased himself around to face the boy.

“I do anything. I have a big cock, if you’re interested. You will come with us, won’t you?”

“I don’t know where you’re going.”

“To Roger’s. For an utterly depraved orgy. There’s a prize for the biggest cock. Something tells me you might win. You’re such a gorgeously big hunk of man.”

His voice and manner were also reminiscent of something. Walter began to puzzle over it. “Aren’t you awfully young for this sort of thing?”

“I’m 18.” The boy put a hand on Walter’s crotch and coolly evaluated what he found there. “I thought so. That feels like the answer to a maiden’s prayer. I can’t wait to see it.”