Family Album (18 page)

“Six weeks.”

“Good. That'll give me some more time with the kids.” He noticed that she didn't mention Ward, and hadn't for quite a while, but he wasn't surprised at that. He wouldn't have given ten cents for the chances that their marriage would survive. Ward was apparently not adjusting to their circumstances, from the little Faye had said, and sooner or later, Faye would dig her way out and leave him behind. It was easy to read the handwriting on the wall, or at least Abe thought so. He had never fully understood how deeply attached to Ward she was. Without family or many close friends, and having given up her old life as a star for him and the kids, she had been totally dependent on him for years and still was. She needed him, just as much as he needed her, or so she thought. And it came as an enormous shock when she saw him return from Mexico. He was tanned, healthy, happy, with a long, thin Cuban cigar in his teeth, an alligator suitcase in his hand, and wearing one of his old white linen suits. He looked as though the Duesenberg would still have been parked outside if she'd looked. And he only looked slightly sheepish when he looked at her as he came in. He had expected her to be in bed at that hour. It was well after midnight, but she was studying the new script.

“Have a good trip?” The chill in her voice hid all the loneliness and pain she had felt since he'd left. But she was too proud to let him see that … yet.

“Yes … sorry I didn't write …”

“I imagine you didn't have time.” Something in his face made her feel sudden anger at him. There was sarcasm in her voice, and anger and bitterness. He wasn't sorry he had gone at all. She could see it instantly, and she rapidly sensed the reason why, “Who were you with?”

“Some old friends.” He set his bags down, and sat across from her on the couch, aware that this was more delicate than he had told himself it would be.

“How interesting. Funny you never mentioned it before you left.”

“It came up pretty suddenly.” Something nasty lit in his eyes. “And you were busy with your film.” That was what it was really all about. His revenge for her finding a job when he had not, and she knew that too, but it wasn't fair of him.

“I see. Of course then I understand. Next time you leave for three weeks, you might try calling me at work before you go. You may be surprised at how easy I am to reach by phone.”

“I didn't know that.” He was growing pale beneath the tan.

“I guess not.” She looked deep into his eyes and knew the truth. She just didn't know how to confront him with it. But the papers made it easy for her the next day. It was all there. All she had to do was throw it across the bed at him. “Your press agent's pretty good, and your travel agent must be too. I just don't happen to think much of your taste in girls, or your judgment about who you take along on trips.” There was a gash in her guts that felt as though it would kill her on the spot. But she refused to show him that. She didn't want him to know how much pain he'd caused her with this flagrant affair. And she knew too that it was his way of coping with all that had happened to them, of pretending that he was still part of the world he had just lost. But no matter how hard he pretended all that, it was over for them … unless he married that world again.

Ward almost gasped as he read the words. “Bankrupt millionaire Ward Thayer I'V and Maisie Abernathie should be back from Mexico any day. They've been lolling on her yacht outside San Diego for three weeks, and went down to Mexico to meet friends and play with the fish. They look awfully happy and everyone is wondering what he did with his retired movie queen …” Faye stared at him with terror and hatred in her eyes for the first time in her life. “You can tell them I quit. It won't make headlines anymore, but at least it'll clear things up for you and Miss Abernathie, you sonofabitch. Is that how you're going to handle what happened to us? By running around with people like her? You both make me sick.” Maisie Abernathie was a spoiled, self-indulgent heiress who had slept with almost every man they knew … “except me,” he used to tease. And now the list included him as well.

Faye walked out of the bedroom and slammed the door, and when he came downstairs, he found that she had left to take the four older children to school. She had been spending most of her time with them for weeks, to make up for the months she'd worked and would work again now. She missed them terribly when she worked, but she wasn't thinking of them as she walked back into the house and found Ward waiting for her, downstairs, in a blue silk dressing gown he'd bought in Paris years before.

“I have to talk to you.” He looked terrified as he stood up, and she brushed past him on her way upstairs. She was going to do her reading at the public library.

“I have nothing to say to you. You're free to go whenever you want. I'll find a lawyer, and he can call Burford.” She was beginning to convince herself that Maisie Abernathie was not only for real, but for good.

“It's that simple, is it?” He grabbed her arm as she swept by, avoiding his eyes. But now she looked him full in the face and it almost frightened him. He had never seen such contempt, let alone felt it, and it almost broke his heart as he realized what he'd done. “Faye, listen to me … it was all a stupid mistake. I just had to get out of here … the children screaming all the time … you gone … this depressing house … it was more than I could take.”

“Good. Then you're out of it permanently. You can move back to Beverly Hills with Maisie. I'm sure she'll be happy to take you in.”

“As what?” He looked at his wife bitterly. “Her chauffeur? For chrissake dammit. I can't even get a job, and you're at work all the time, what the hell do you know about what I feel? I can't stand this life. I wasn't brought up for this … I don't know …” He let go of Faye's arm and she stared unsympathetically at him. This time he had gone too far. The drinking, the self-pity, the inability to work, the lies as he wasted the last of his money before she found out, she could forgive him all of it, but not this. This was it. But he looked pitifully at her anyway. “I can't help it. You're stronger than I am. You have something inside you that I don't. I don't know what it is.”

“It's called guts. And you've got them too, if you'd just give yourself a chance, and stay sober long enough to get on your feet.”

“Maybe I can't. Has that occurred to you yet? It has to me. Every day, in fact, until I went away. And maybe that's something I should do for good.”

“What?” She looked blank, but she felt terror crawl up her spine again.

He looked strangely calmer now, as though he knew what he had to do. “I mean get out of your life, Faye.”

“Now? That's a stinking thing to do.” She was horrified, she didn't want to lose this man. She still loved him. He and the children were all that mattered to her. “How can you do a thing like that to us?” There were tears in her eyes and he forced himself to look away, just as he had forced himself not to think of her in the last few weeks. He couldn't stand the guilt anymore. What had happened was all his fault, and there was nothing he could do to help. He had nothing to offer her and she seemed to be doing fine on her own. At least that was what he told himself, and what he was telling himself now, without looking at her. Had he looked, he'd have seen the agony in her eyes as she stared back at him. “Ward, what's happening to us?” Her voice was husky and hoarse, and he sighed deeply and walked across the room to look out the window at the nonexistent view of their neighbor's unpainted house, and the trash in his yard.

“I think it's time for me to get out of here, find a job on my own, and let you forget we ever met.”

“With five kids?” She would have laughed except that she wanted to cry. “Are you planning to forget them too?” She stared at the back of his head in disbelief. This couldn't be happening to them, except it was. It was like a nightmare or a very bad script.

“I'll send you everything I can.” He turned slowly to face her from across the room.

“Is it Maisie? Are you serious about her?” It was hard to believe, but anything was possible now. Maybe he was that desperate for their old life, and Maisie was certainly part of it. But Ward shook his head.

“It's not that. I think I just need to get out of here for a while.” He looked almost bitter as he said it. “I feel as though I ought to leave you alone to build a new life for yourself. You could probably wind up married to some successful movie star.”

“If I'd wanted that, I could have had it years ago. But I didn't want that. I wanted you.”

“And now?” He felt the first surge of courage he had felt in years. It was all out now. There was no place left to go but up. He had nothing left to lose, if in fact he had lost her.

She stared at him with sad, empty eyes. “I don't know who you are anymore, Ward. I don't understand how you could go to Mexico with her. Maybe you'd better go back to her.” They were words of false bravado, but he snapped at the bait.

“Maybe I will.” He stalked upstairs then in a rage, and a moment later, she could hear him crashing around their bedroom, packing his things. She sat in the kitchen, staring blindly into a coffee cup, thinking of the last seven years and crying bitterly, until it was time to pick the children up at school again.

And when she came home from picking up the kids at school, he was gone. The children had never realized he was back, so she had nothing to explain to them. She fixed dinner for them that night, lamb chops that were overcooked, baked potatoes that remained like rocks, and spinach that she burned. She wasn't at her best cooking for them, but at least she tried, and all she could think of that night was where he was, with Maisie Abernathie undoubtedly, and had she been wrong to blow up at him? She lay in bed that night, thinking all the way back to Guadalcanal, the good times they had shared … the tenderness, the dreams, and she cried long into the night, and finally cried herself to sleep, aching for him.

CHAPTER 9

The second film Faye worked on was far more difficult than the first, the director was constantly there, making demands on her, giving her orders, criticizing what she did. There were times when she would have dearly loved to throttle him, but when all was said and done, he gave her a rare and very special gift. He taught her all the tricks she so desperately needed to know for her new trade, he demanded the utmost from her and got far more than that, and at times he let her take the reins and then corrected her. When they finished the film, she had learned more than she might have otherwise in ten years and she was grateful to him. He paid her an enormous compliment before walking off the set for the last time and there were tears in her eyes as she watched him go.

“What did he say to you?” one of the grips whispered and Faye smiled.

“He said he'd like to work with me again, but he knows I won't. That I';ll be directing my own movie next time.” She sighed deeply and looked at the actors hugging and kissing and celebrating the end of their hard work. “I hope he's right.” And he was. Two months later, Abe offered her her first job as director, at MGM again, without being assistant to anyone. Dore Schary had given her her big chance, and she had lived up to it.

“Congratulations, Faye.”

“Thanks, Abe.”

“You deserve every bit of it.” The new movie would begin in the fall. It was an enormous challenge and she was pleased. The children would be back in school by then. Lionel was going into second grade, Greg into first, the twins were still in nursery school for this final year, and Anne was not yet two years old, straggling behind the others, anxious to keep up, and somehow always outrun by them. Faye always meant to spend time with her, but somehow she never had enough time. The others clamored for her, now she would have the script to study and read for several months, eventually the movie to do. It was difficult to stop everything and spend time with a baby again. Anne was different from the others, not only younger, but also so much less able to communicate. It was always easier to leave her with the nurse, who loved her so much, and Lionel had always been especially attached to her.

Faye was excited about the new film, it was an opportunity she was excited about, except that day in, day out, she still thought of Ward and wondered where he was. Since the day he'd walked out, they'd never heard from him. She'd read about him in Louella Parsons once, but the piece told her nothing at all. At least it hadn't mentioned Maisie Abernathie.

In light of that, the movie gave her something to do. She had been anxious to keep her mind occupied since finishing the other film. She had asked Abe for a lawyer's name several months before, but somehow she had never gotten around to calling him, although she promised herself that she would. Something always came up, and the memories would flood her again.

And then suddenly, one day in July, Ward appeared at her front door. The children were playing in the back, in the yard they had all so carefully planted with flowers, and the nurse had built a swing for them, proud of their accomplishment and ingenuity, and then suddenly, there he was, in a white linen suit and a blue shirt, looking more handsome than he ever had before. For an instant, she felt the old familiar pull toward him, but she reminded herself that he had walked out on her, and Lord only knew who he was involved with now. She felt shy as she looked at him, and lowered her eyes before glancing up at him again.

“Yes?”

“May I come in?”

“Why?” She stared at him nervously and he looked uncomfortable, but it was obvious he wouldn't go away until she let him in to talk to her. “It'll upset the children if they see you here.” They had only recently stopped asking for him and she assumed that Ward was planning to disappear again.

“I haven't seen my children in almost four months. Can't I at least say hello to them?” As she hesitated, she noticed that he was thinner than he had been before. It made him look younger than he had in years. She hated to admit to herself how handsome he was. There was no point falling in love with him all over again. “Well?” He wasn't backing off and finally she stepped back and held the screen door open for him. The house looked even uglier to her than it usually did, seeing it again through his eyes, as he stepped inside and looked around. “Well, nothing's changed here.” It was a simple statement of fact and it riled her immediately.