Hollywood (46 page)

“Shall I die with my eyes open or shut?”

“Shut.” Tim went on writing.

“Open, I think. I’ve been practicing. All you have to do is let them go slowly out of focus.”

“You’ll blink.”

“I won’t. I’m having lunch with your new star, Mr. Wilson.”

This got Tim’s attention. He put down his notebook. “When?”

“Sunday. The day after the speech.”

“I’m photographing inside the Shriners.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I can always use that footage of him in Seattle in any labor story.
Anti
-labor, of course.”

“Of course. But why photograph him at the Shriners?”

“Something might happen.”

“You think they’ll shoot him?”

“Wouldn’t that be wonderful?” Tim’s blue eyes were ablaze with pleasure. “But I’ve never had that kind of luck.”

“Thank heaven. I quite like Mr. Wilson.”

“No one has ever taken scenes from real life—you know, a president on a swing around the circle and then intercut it with a made-up story.”

Caroline saw the possibilities; and the dangers. “What, then, is the made-up story?”

“Oh, something political. Maybe to do with the League of Nations even, but it’s also got to be a personal story.”

Caroline thought of Mary Hulbert, a story so wonderfully inconsequential yet odd that fiction could not properly account for it while lovers of the real world would reject it. She tried to visualize the President’s letter to the editor of the
Ladies’ Home Journal
. Then she looked at Tim and beheld the red flag behind him or, worse, the cross. “The possibilities for trouble are endless, my darling,” she said, shifting to Emma Traxler, warm and understanding yet, gently, chiding. “A. Mitchell Palmer is longing to put you in jail for treason and only the
Tribune
has stopped him.”

“Keep on stopping him.” Tim was blithe.

“Why bother with politics?”

Tim looked inspired. “Because I have to.”

“Are you a Communist?”

“I might be. One day. Why not?”

Caroline sighed. “You will ruin yourself.”

“I thought it was a free country.”

“Did you? Then don’t
think
, my darling, ever again. Because your mind is not your most … formidable asset. It is your heart that does you—and me—so much credit. I am talking exactly like a title card so that you won’t.”

“What have I created?” Tim was delighted with Emma Traxler, less pleased with Caroline Sanford. “I’m sure you never talked like that before I met you.”

“No one,” said Caroline, “talks like that outside photo-plays. The only freedom that an American has is to conform, as you’ve discovered.” Caroline did not in the least mind the disparity between the country’s shining image of itself and the crude reality. She was entirely on the side of the rulers, ridiculous and unpleasant as so many of them were. She felt a certain generalized pity for the people at large, but there was nothing she could do for them except report murders in the press, and commit suicide on the screen—with her eyes wide open, she decided; and though smelling salts be broken under her nose, she would not blink, she vowed. “Leave politics alone.”

“The Warners are doing all right with that ambassador’s book …”

“That’s leftover anti-Hun material.” A mockingbird started its song outside the window, and Caroline got up and looked out over Hollywood. In the distance, the huge remains of the Babylon set beautifully, insistently, filled the eastern sky with prancing plaster elephants. Hollywood, she decided, could be anywhere—except on earth and in time.

The Alexandria Hotel was very much in the United States and in present time. The lobby was crowded with Secret Service men, state troopers, police, political delegations, all waiting for a signal from on high that the President would receive them. The intermediary was the President’s Secret Service man, Mr. Starling, who sat at a gilded desk near the elevators. He had a list of names in front of him, a telephone, and the abstracted look of someone who had chosen invisibility. As it was, only those who had business with the President were presented to Starling by a tense assistant manager.

To Caroline’s surprise, Mary was late. As she came across the famous million-dollar rug that covered the floor of the lobby, Caroline noted that she had a slight limp.

“I missed the red car. They only run on the hour where I live.” Mary started toward the main desk but Caroline led her to Mr. Starling, who rose when he saw her. “Nice to see you again, Mrs. Sanford.”

“Mr. Starling.” Caroline smiled a Sanford smile. “This is Mrs. Hulbert. We’re expected for lunch.”

Starling frowned at the list on his desk. “I thought it was Mrs. Peck.”

“I am Mrs. Peck, too.” Mary was suddenly the First Lady of the Land. Starling gave her a long curious look: then he led them to an elevator. “This goes directly to their floor. The policeman will take you on in.” Starling went to his telephone, and the ladies ascended.

“Mr. Griffith lives here.” Caroline made conversation. “Or used to. Actors like hotels better than houses.”

“Poor things.” Mary was compassionate.

A policeman met them at the door to the elevator and escorted them into the drawing room of a large suite, where Edith Wilson stood. At close to six feet tall, she could appear quite menacing in the fullness of her flesh. She greeted Caroline warmly. Then, with perfect courtesy, she extended her arm to its full length and took Mary’s hand in hers. “I am so happy to meet you, Mrs. Peck.”

“And I you, Mrs. Wilson. You know, I’ve gone back to my old name, Hulbert.”

“I
am
sorry,” was the ambiguous response. Brooks, the Negro valet, opened the door to the bedroom, and the President entered, smartly turned out in a blue blazer and white trousers. He looked somewhat sunburned, and yet not at all healthy. The eyes behind the pince-nez were dull. But the smile was
genuine. “Mary,” he said, and he shook her hand for a long moment. “You don’t change,” he added.

At the far end of the room, Brooks helped a hotel waiter prepare a lunch table for five. The President gestured for the ladies to sit. “Mrs. Sanford, I still remember how we watched your photo-play with you, and never guessed that it was you we were watching.”

“
I
guessed, Woodrow.” Edith was serenely knowing.

“You
suspected
,” he corrected her. “But neither of us was certain. Now you act in everything!”

“It just
seems
like everything.”

“How do you weep so easily?” asked Edith. “I mean, never having acted before.”

“But we’ve all of us been acting all the time all our lives …”

“I have,” agreed the President. “But I thought I was unique.”

“You were a born actor,” said Mary, fondly. “I’ll never forget the King Lear you did on the beach at Bermuda, just for Mark Twain and me.”

Very good, thought Caroline, glancing at Edith, whose smile looked as if it had been carved in the firm butter of her round full face.

“I wasn’t there last night at the Shriners.” Caroline decided on an intervention. “But the
Times
is delighted, and Mr. Farrell, you remember, my director, said it was thrilling.”

Wilson nodded vaguely, eyes on Mary, who was lighting a cigarette. Edith continued to smile. “But aren’t you speaking too often? I mean for your …” Caroline substituted the word “voice” for “health.”

“Of course he is.” Edith was firm. “But once he’s made up his mind …”

“I must match the opposition. Hiram Johnson is all over the state, attacking the League. The worst is the … the …” Wilson paused; and frowned. Edith’s smile was impenetrable. Caroline suspected aphasia, something she herself suffered from when tired: the needed word, no matter how simple, was suddenly not there.

“… the acoustics,” said Mary, accurately, to Edith’s great displeasure. “Those sounding-boards are never in the right place.”

“But San Diego was even worse,” said Wilson, pleased to be on course again. “They have something new called a voice-phone. You must remain absolutely still and speak into it and somehow it connects with loudspeakers—like radio, I suppose. I’ve never had such a difficult time. I like to move about, you know, but there I was, under sentence of death, if I moved.”

“It was terrible for Woodrow. But thirty thousand people heard him as if he was talking into each one’s ear.”

“No. No.” Wilson frowned. “That’s not true. Just opposite me there was a section that could hear absolutely nothing, nothing.” The face was red. He shook his head and coughed. “Asthma,” he murmured into his handkerchief. “Imagine! Now.”

Suddenly, Admiral Grayson was in the room. He greeted Mary and Caroline, and took the President’s pulse and smiled and said, “Lunch is ready. This was to have been our Sunday of rest.”

Caroline thought that this was directed at Mary, but as the President led them to the table, he described their midadventures that morning. “I wanted to see an old friend of my wife’s—my late wife’s—who lives here but has no telephone. So, first thing, we went down the back way, and escaped the press and the crowds, and drove to her house only to find she wasn’t there. Then the Secret Service discovered that she had gone to the train station to get a look at me, so off we rush to the station, and there she is …”

“You can imagine,” said Edith, “the sight of the two of us tearing about Los Angeles, with the Secret Service either too far behind or ahead …”

“Like Mack Sennett,” said Wilson. “Do you know him?” He turned to Caroline, who radiated an Emma Traxler silent affirmation.

“Tell him I can’t get enough of Ben Turpin. He reminds me of the Senate …”

“He reminds me of you, this morning, so undignified.” Edith was placid. “Anyway, there was Ellen’s old friend on the train in the station, so we did have an intimate talk, surrounded by a thousand curious voters. Then I hurried back here to arrange for lunch, and Woodrow followed me.”

Caroline could see why Edith was less than pleased to divide the Biblical day of rest between a lady-friend of the first wife’s and her husband’s former mistress. Mary didn’t add to Edith’s joy when she said to Wilson, “Do you remember this dress?”

It helped even less when Wilson nodded and said, “You wore it in May of 1915, at the White House.”

Edith raised her menu. “What,” asked Edith in a voice of muted thunder, “is—or are—abalone?”

Fortunately, the President’s passion for movies now surpassed that of his ancient passion for Mary, so Caroline gained innumerable points in Edith’s eyes by telling as many Hollywood stories as she could think of. The President was particularly interested in what his son-in-law, McAdoo, had accomplished with United Artists.

During lunch, Tumulty would look in from the next room, and say, “Converts, sir,” and Wilson would be obliged to go into the next room and shake
hands with visiting delegations. Mary and Edith would then discuss the merits and demerits of California, a state that they had, finally, rejected for retirement as being too far away. Edith did not specify from what.

Finally, converts and lunch done with, they sat in the sitting room of the suite, and Mary described how persons unknown but suspected had ransacked her house and stolen letters from Wilson. “Which darling Caroline was offered and rejected, which is why I invited her here.”

“Who offered them to you?” Edith turned to Caroline but her eyes never left the President’s weary face.

“A journalist that we know. He wouldn’t say how he’d got them. Journalists never do. I turned them down, of course.”

“To think, poor Mary, you’ve had to go through all this for me.” Wilson sighed.

“Well,” said Edith, with an attempt at lightness, “where there’s so much smoke there must be
some
fire.”

“But surely
you
were not von Bernstorff’s mistress.” Mary’s sudden savage riposte made it quite clear why Wilson had once delighted in her company. Before Edith had married Wilson, she had indeed known—how well?—the notorious German ambassador.

Edith handled the assault with a liquid Southern charm that involved a simulated Negroid chuckle of delight followed by, “I declare, the stories that they invent about us are a lot more interesting than the movies.”

Fortunately, Wilson had not noticed—or taken in—this exchange. “I’ve considered resigning,” he suddenly said; and put his finger to his lips, as a not entirely mock warning that all this was secret.

“But you look so well.” Mary was interested now in her own problems, and Caroline could see that a letter from the President to, perhaps, her landlord might be required.

“Not on grounds of health. On the League of Nations. If I have difficulties with the Senate, and I pray after this tour I won’t but if I do I, shall propose that we all resign, the Vice President and I
and
the senators opposed, and that we then hold a national election to determine whether or not the League be accepted.”

Caroline could not believe that the President was serious; but when she saw Edith’s Buddha-like bobbing of the head, she realized that Wilson had entered a new and dangerous phase. “The governors are willing, we hear,” said Edith. “They are the ones who must call the election, state by state.”