Girl of My Dreams (55 page)

Thelma's small support group was fierce. Her woman friends wanted to make sure she'd be well-treated and not simply displayed as a mannequin for a star who needed what one of them referred to as a cunty cover. The only toast at the wedding, given just before the ceremony, was by a tall willowy writer from Toronto, Charlotte Gelfano. She had graduated from title-writing for silents to slick dramas in the talkie era. They were marketed as women's movies, disdained as soap operas by male critics, but they had recognizable women in them facing realistic crises. “Raise a glass,” Charlotte Gelfano said, “to a fine woman and, from what I can see, a good man. I've known Thelma five years, and as good an actress as she is, she's an even better friend because her greatest talent is listening. My fondest wish for this union, this surprising but hopeful union, is that you, Trent, will prove as adept at listening as Thelma. Then your worries will be temporary and your pleasures lasting. To Thelma and Trent.”

“Hear, hear,” said Randolph Scott, “and listen, listen.”

The unlikely couple stood next to the justice of peace under the live oak, while the guests sat in a semicircle in folding chairs. Thelma held a bouquet of
flocon de neige
roses—whiter than snow, really, whiter than white—provided her by Mossy's gardening wizard, Obie Joyful. Obie himself, wearing his customary green leather jacket, stood at the edge of the wedding party, looking as pleased as if he'd just stumbled upon woodland nymphs in his bower. When the justice, a bewhiskered gentleman of the old school, came to the part where the groom said, “I, Trent, take thee, Thelma,” for some reason he couldn't express, Trent knelt. Perhaps he had done this in a movie. Touched by the gesture and thinking well, that's what you do, Thelma did the same. Obie Joyful put two fingers in his mouth and piped out a soft whistle. Cued, the wedding guests sucked in their collective breaths and found themselves clapping. The nuptials finished quickly.

The half-minute kiss at the end of the ceremony was duly captured from several angles by the
Photoplay
photographer, who sneered as he shot. He cracked to Trent's agent that this would surely be the first and last time this couple ever touched each other. Champagne flowed for an obligatory hour, in the service of form and
Photoplay
, before the guests tired of felicitations and movie chat and scattered, including me. The real reception was at Trent's Mulholland mansion, where a party lasted, according to my pleased informants who eventually included Thelma herself, for a good six hours. Boy Boulton, released from his manacles of public behavior in Mossy's garden, became a kind of emcee as the celebration—minus Randolph Scott, minus the agents and their wives, but plus several more of Thelma's friends—resounded through Trent's many rooms. A half dozen young men of Hollywood, considered too
louche
, or too flaming, to be invited to the nuptials themselves, joined the festivities. “Pansies arise,” Boy Boulton announced as he stood under the arch that led to the two-story living room in Trent's Spanish colonial, “you have nothing to lose but your brains.”

“Then I have nothing to lose anyway,” said a tattooed motorcyclist.

“Oh Grandma, what tight pants you have,” said Boy Boulton.

Thelma poured herself a straight Scotch. She expected everyone, including Matt Sampson, to be gone soon. Then she and Trent would sit down and devise the plan for how to live together for the shortest possible time. She watched a pair of women who had played a mother and daughter in her last Western dancing together, shortly joined by two male couples. She saw a romp developing, and she wasn't thrilled. She felt like a stranger among the men who began dancing to a Rudy Vallee record. Vagabond lovers. “Don't you hate queers?” Matt whispered to her as she poured her own drink, a tumbler of bourbon. “Congratulations, baby,” Matt said as she and Thelma clinked glasses.

To my naïve surprise when the evening was described to me, Tutor Beedleman bounced in, Jubilee's cheery writer who managed to stay on the right side of Mossy even on bad days. He made a courtly gesture toward Trent and went to greet Thelma. “Hello, I'm Shirley Temple's mother,” Tutor said, breaking whatever ice had accumulated between the men and women in the room. “So happy to see our sisters well represented,” he went on, kissing Thelma on the cheek. “Congratulations to the blushing bride. You're getting an ace of hearts in every way.” Thelma smiled, and Tutor bowed low before he crossed to the other side of the room where the men and drinks were.

Following the proclamation of their banns in Mossy's hospital room at Cedars, the bride and groom had met only once more before the wedding itself. Deciding they needed to be seen in public, they swept into the Brown Derby for lunch one day. Conversation didn't come easy. They fell back on professional comparisons of actors and directors, but they scarcely knew any in common. It was like a blind date that wasn't going too well. Trent gallantly asked what Thelma would like to have in the house for breakfast. This suddenly depressed Thelma, and she could barely say she didn't care before she began to cry. When Trent patted her elbow and thoughtfully produced a monogrammed handkerchief, she was touched enough to put her hand on his.

After lunch they went across the street to Laikin's Jewelry store in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. They quickly picked out a wedding ring for Thelma, a simple gold band, and were on the point of leaving, Max Laikin having already had his picture taken with the most talked about affianced couple in town, when Thelma was struck by an idea. “Hey Sweetie,” she said bravely, “what about an engagement ring?” The jeweler was overjoyed as he quickly led them to the gemstone case. When he asked what she had in mind, Thelma said, “Something really flashy.” She laughed. Trent frowned, but then he laughed too. He was suddenly both resentful and proud. Could this woman be taking him?—a thought immediately followed by his realization that he was finally doing something in real life that the hearty males he played in movies did. His betrothed selected a diamond the size of a grape ringed by a quincunx of emeralds, and they waltzed out of Laikin's with Trent gratefully poorer by twelve thousand dollars.

The next time they saw each other was in Mossy's garden, their wedding a semipublic event, and now in Trent's house they were supposed to be alone together, in private Thelma had thought, only they were not. Trent was sipping Champagne with Boy Boulton and Tutor and another man Thelma recognized as a slick character actor, often a gambler or thug, in crime films. A foggy-voiced lounge singer was with them. Other men had begun to leave the dance floor and wander elsewhere in the big house.

“I don't know what I'm supposed to do,” Thelma said. She drank quickly, poured herself another Scotch, and drank that too.

“I do,” said Matt, and she guided Thelma to the stairs. Trent, who had one arm around Boy Boulton and was ruffling the hair of the slick racketeer with the other, let go of Boy and raised a glass to his wife as he said, “Turn right at the top, lovey, I think you'll like the second room on the left.”

Thelma was warmer after the Scotches, but she still felt a stranger. She liked the chintz on the bed, two Swedish-looking chairs, curtains with nymphs and shepherds on them, windows overlooking the Valley. She drifted to the window in search of anything familiar, but Tarzana was too far to the west.

“We christen this bed,” Matt said.

“Matt,” Thelma started to laugh, “This is my wedding night. I don't even—”

“I said now,” Matt said.

Downstairs, the music was louder, jazzy, and the dancing faster, almost frenzied. Three couples and a single—Boy Boulton—were whirling around the floor. The men paused only to drink, and a few of them used straws poking at hand mirrors; cocaine had recently blazed its powdery trail to Hollywood. Trent had gone outside with someone.

By the time Thelma and Matt descended the stairs, few were dancing. The men were mostly on the floor. The lounge singer and the movie thug were entangled with Boy Boulton, and Trent joined them when he came inside with the motorcyclist. The mother and daughter from the cowboy film, hardy frontier survivors of an Indian raid, were spread-eagled on a couch the size of a small boat and covered in mink. Thelma recognized Fernald Gespours, from eastern wealth, on top of Tutor Beedleman on a Persian carpet. “A tight little squadron of lesbos,” Matt said as she and Thelma dove toward the mink couch. People were laughing. Legs and thighs everywhere. Men caressing and drilling, women tonguing and caressing. The air was moist enough to have signaled rain.

Sometime later Thelma heard a man say Trent was in his steambath with two cowboys. She was unsure what was meant by cowboys. By and by a waltz was on the phonograph, and when she looked up Thelma saw her husband in a latticework of figures on the carpet, each man submissive to Trent as if waiting for the star to declare his pleasure. Tutor Beedleman was part of this knot, eager, ardent.

Could Eden have been like this? Thelma wondered. What if Eden wasn't just one couple but a small community, which was actually more probable. An amazing wedding night, she thought, genders observing preferential segregation, but sex everywhere.

Arising at last, Trent cleared his throat to address the congregation. From somewhere he found a huge bath towel and with his characteristic élan draped it over his shoulders. Trent had a natural tendency to graciousness onscreen, toward both men and women. In time the tendency became a conviction with him, which in turn became an ideal, and then an obsession until at last he came to engage in caricatures of grace. As often happens in Hollywood, it was decades after his best work, in self-parody as a supporting actor, that Trent won his Oscar.

“Ladies and gents, boys and girls,” Trent said, “Our revels now are ended. The cavort is over.”

It was as if a bell had rung in the school playground marking the end of recess. Thelma watched as everyone pulled on clothing and began to clear out, including—to her grateful amazement—Matt herself. “Call me, baby,” was all Matt said, almost as a plea, as she made her exit.

“I came in as Shirley Temple's mother,” Tutor said cheerfully to the bride and groom, “but I'm going out as Joan Crawford. Don't call me.” He swept his head upward with Crawfordian hauteur and spun on his heel as he went for the door.

The others disappeared with equal dispatch except for Boy Boulton, who clearly expected to spend the night. Trent rendered him a wordless wave. Boy's face underwent the metamorphoses that kept getting him little spot jobs in films. In perhaps seven seconds the Boulton visage went from hopeful to disbelief to shock to downturned mouth to defiance to resignation. Thelma watched with awe as Trent asserted his authority.

“'My gracious lord I am glad it contents you so well,'” Boy squeaked out. Boyard Boulton would never be asked to play Faustus himself, but he knew Trent Amberlyn had, and he hoped his parting shot would be over the bride's head. Thelma, however, knew a concession of defeat when she heard one. Trent stuck with Prospero: “‘These our actors,'” he declaimed, “‘As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air.'” With his last phrase Trent swept his hand toward the exit. Boy was already in the doorway. He managed to say over his shoulder, “A night to remember, honey.”

Thelma was surprised she was still there herself, still there in a pair of panties but no bra. Modestly, she crossed her arms over her breasts. Trent behaved as if her presence were as natural as the moon. “Your room all right, love?” he asked.

“Oh sure, it's simply grand,” Thelma heard herself say, uncertain as to where
grand
had arrived from.

“Well, the boy dancers and girl riding instructors have fled,” Trent said. “The reception went well then, didn't it?”

“Who could ask for anything more?” Thelma said, smiling, quoting.

The newlyweds were on the point of shaking hands when suddenly they began to laugh. In a moment they fell into each other's arms. Thelma was unexpectedly comfortable. It was temporary.

“Well, then, after you,” said her husband, gesturing toward the staircase. Strangers, they said good night and went in opposite directions at the top of the stairs.

When she had showered, Thelma wanted nothing so much as a cup of tea. She padded downstairs in a yellow negligee that Charlotte Gelfano—who had made the toast about the couple listening to one another—had given her as a wedding present. The water had almost boiled when who should appear after his own shower but her bathrobed groom. He made the tea. “A funny night, wasn't it?” he said. “Fun and funny,” she said. “I didn't want it to end, yet I did.” “My own sentiments,” Trent said, “precisely.”

As they reached the top of the stairs and his wife turned right to head off to her own room, the room she had frolicked in with Matt, Trent turned left and said, “If you'd like to see the master suite, love, come right this way.”

She didn't know what she wanted, other than to sleep, but Thelma followed Trent through a dressing room that seemed to hold a hundred suits and two hundred pairs of shoes, on into an expanse featuring windows on three sides, a chaise longue that overlooked the pool and beyond it the twinkling lights of Beverly Hills, and a vast bed covered in white fur.

“Ermine,” Trent said, noticing Thelma's gaze of disbelief. “Touch it.”

It made the mink on the couch downstairs feel like sandpaper.

“The bed has room,” Trent said. “Would you like to sleep over?”

Thelma imagined Trent having orgies in the bed, which made her feel misplaced, but then she imagined herself there, under the ermine, queenly. “Uh, thank you.”

To Thelma's dismay, Trent removed the ermine. “We'd bake,” he said, putting on a cotton blanket and climbing in beside her. “Bed is big enough, isn't it?”

“About the size of Montana,” Thelma said, “but the sheets are cold.”