Land of Dreams: A Novel (15 page)

“I’ve an announcement,” Freddie said. He was beaming, as was Leo, standing beside him. “Meet Leo Irvington,” he said, his hands on my son’s shoulders, “the new face of Paramount Pictures. He just got cast in his first big movie role today.”

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

I rang Maureen and asked her to bring Tom to me in Los Angeles. She did not say as much, but I could tell she thought I was crazy for not dragging my son back to New York—kicking and screaming, if necessary. Part of me thought maybe I was making the worst decision of
his
life, but the winning part of me knew it was not my decision to make anymore. I had to hold Leo’s hand on this part of his journey.

Maureen had collected Tom from Fire Island a few days beforehand and, while she assured me he was fine, I could tell by her tone that he was missing me. Tom and I had not been apart for more than a single night since he was an infant and, from the moment I had located Leo, the ache of my worry had simply transferred itself to missing my baby. Tom was like another limb to me—always within easy reach. It did not feel natural, being apart from him. Maureen was a little taken aback that I was staying in Los Angeles, but said that she would get them both on the first train she could. One hour later she called me back and whispered down the phone, “Bridie is insisting on coming with me. I can’t seem to dissuade her!”

“That’s not like her—she hates going anywhere,” I said.

“I
know
,” Maureen spat, still whispering, but her voice was raised. “She became really peculiar when I said I was going with Tom, and insisted that I book a ticket for her too. Then she went upstairs to her cashbox and counted the notes out and wouldn’t leave it alone until I took them.”

“Did you tell her it was only a temporary thing?”

“Yes—but she was
adamant
. She says her bones will not endure another New York winter and she wants some West Coast sun.”

“Well, that’s a lie—she hates the sun. What’s got into her?”

We eventually agreed that, once the old bird got an idea into her head, there was no stopping her, and Maureen would just have to make the cross-continent journey with the old lady in tow.

Maureen groaned. “She’ll hardly make it, Ellie.”

Bridie was getting old—although, to me, she had always been an old woman, but she was nonetheless coy about her age. I had calculated that she must be in her eighties. Maureen and Patrick were looking after her more than she was looking after them, these days. Between running the business and trying to get their children set up, the Sweeneys had busy lives, and Bridie, I feared, was becoming more of a burden than a help to them.

“Bring her here anyway,” I said. “Sure, it’ll be great to see her.”

Three days later I took a taxi to Union Station to collect them. Leo had wanted to stay back at the Chateau with Freddie and Crystal, but I had made him come with me. The movie he had been cast in,
Five Graves to Cairo
, did not start shooting until January, but the studio had set up some more screen tests for him and wanted him on hand for other castings that might be coming up. The director of the film, Billy Wilder, was a young man—not yet forty and an Austro-Hungarian Jew. The fact that he was a foreigner, an outsider, made me trust him somehow, and he had a gentle, likable demeanor—I could see that he was an intelligent man. Our meeting in the lobby of the Chateau (ordered by me, via Freddie) was brief, but I was satisfied that he was a decent, creative person and not out to exploit my son, so I gave my permission for Leo to be cast as a young soldier in his war film.

“Your son is very talented, Mrs. Irvington,” he said as he was leaving for his next meeting.

I sensed that he was just being polite as he walked off toward the courtyard and, doubtless, a much more important person than some young actor’s nervous mother. He was barely out of earshot when Freddie almost exploded. “He’s about to become a
very
big director,” he said, “this could be
it
for Leo, Mrs. Irvington.”

Whether or not my son was being groomed for stardom by anyone other than this relentlessly optimistic young scout, I had noticed a change in Leo. After agreeing to stay in Hollywood, and after a few days spent living a relatively ordinary domestic life together in our small hotel apartment, I had felt him returning to me. He slept on a settle bed on the floor next to mine and had taken to preparing coffee for us both in the kitchenette before I woke. Half asleep, I’d gradually wake up to the muted sounds of small domestic clattering and could almost believe it was Charles or John moving around behind me.

One morning, as Leo was leaving the coffee by my bedside, he leaned down to kiss my cheek. There was nothing sweeter. No matter how old my son (I refused to call him my stepson), no matter how tall or manly he grew, there would never come a time when I would not welcome his innocent kiss. Leo’s displays of affection were all the more important to me because, as I was not his natural mother and had come into his life late enough for him to know that, I never fully felt I had a right to expect affection from him.

In the past two days, however, I could feel him pulling back from me. It was natural—I knew that. Being on the other side of the world, after running away so impulsively, he had at first been relieved and glad to see me. Now, like any young man, he didn’t want his mother clinging to him. He wanted me there, in the background, doing his bidding and available for support should he need it, but taking a back seat publicly, so that he could be the big actor. I would do that for my son, make myself thanklessly invisible, yet I would never have done it for his father—or indeed any other man, not even John. The idea of them even requesting such a thing was anathema to me, yet I was utterly helpless when faced with my son’s desires. Here I was, in Hollywood of all places, following Leo’s dreams. My dreams were back in the solitude and the sky of Fire Island—not in this gaudy place with its imported foliage and fake people. Yet I loved him so much, there was nothing to do but fold myself into his dreams.

When Leo ran away from school, I thought I had lost him. Now that I had found him, I knew I could lose him just as easily again.

He didn’t want to come to the station.

“Maureen and Bridie are dying to see you.”

“Won’t they be angry with me for running away?”

“Don’t be silly,” I said. “Don’t you want to see Tom right away?”

“Oh yes,” he said with a sudden burst of enthusiasm, having been reminded that his brother was coming.

As we traveled in the back of the car I reached over and took his hand. Leo’s hands were long and elegant and smooth, my own much smaller, the nails dry, the skin lined and roughened with work. These were the hands of an aging mother. I brushed the thought aside and resolved to get a good cream and a regular manicure, and as I did so, Leo curled his hand up from under mine and gave it a comforting squeeze, as if intuiting my thoughts.

“I can’t
wait
to see Tom,” he said. “Do you think Maureen will have brought us any treats from New York?” His eyes were shining with the same excited anticipation that he had shown before his first audition, and it was all I could do not to laugh.

I realized that, while he looked and behaved (as it suited him) like a young man, Leo was still only a child, excitedly waiting for his next bag of sweets. He needed me there to bridge that gap for him, between childhood and adulthood.

Maureen and Bridie were already walking through the station concourse by the time our tardy taxi driver got us there. Tom ran toward us and I wept as I swept him up in my arms and hugged him all but inside out, while Leo shuffled impatiently beside me waiting for his turn with his brother. Poor little Tom’s lip was quivering and his eyes filled with tears when he saw Leo. He had become lost in this somehow, but at the age of seven he was old enough to intuit what was going on.

“We’re all together again now,” I said, stroking his head as he rubbed his eyes with his chubby hands, pretending not to sweep away the tears. “We’ll never be apart like this again, Tom—I promise.”

“What in the name of all God’s good grace were you doing running away like that, child!”

If I had any worries about being an overprotective mother, Bridie had no such doubts. She was standing square in front of Leo and, for a moment, I thought she was going to raise the large, brown leather handbag she had brought with her from Ireland in the 1890s and clip him around the ears with it.

“You have frightened your mother half to death! You stupid, silly boy—why I’ve half a mind to . . .”

Then she pulled him into a viselike grip-hug, from which we all began to worry that she would never let him go.

Maureen and I exchanged a look. This was why Bridie was here.

Finally she let Leo go, turned to me and simply said, “Dragging me across the country like this—an old woman—you should be ashamed of yourself!”

With more guests arriving at the Chateau, they had moved me to a three-bedroom poolside bungalow. It was more spacious than either our hotel suite or Freddie’s tiny cottage, but even at that, the basic kitchen—designed more for mixing cocktails and managing deli takeouts than for preparing big, hearty dinners—was not up to Bridie’s standards.

“Two saucepans! Look at the size of this colander! No loaf pan—for goodness’ sake, how am I supposed to bake bread?”

“Bridie, sit down and relax for a few minutes, would you? You’ve just traveled across the whole—”

“Matter a damn about that,” she said, “look at the size of this oven. Sure, you’d barely fit an egg in it—never mind a chicken!”

“We get most of the food delivered in,” I said.

“Aayyyyyy—Abbott!”

Tom and Leo were sitting on the floor of the living room listening to
Abbott and Costello
on the radio. Leo had his legs spread out in front of him in a wide V, and Tom was leaning back into his chest. He was holding a large bag of cookies that they had found in a cupboard, which the two of them were dipping into at ferocious speed. Every now and again there would be a shot of laughter from the radio, and Tom would automatically laugh along with it, not understanding the joke, then looking up at his brother for approval.

For a moment I stood and watched them, thinking,
It doesn’t matter where we live, as long as we are together.

Bridie was frantically opening and closing kitchen drawers.

“Where did I put my green apron?”

“Here it is.” Maureen had preempted a full attack on the hotel kitchen and had opened the old woman’s case, removing her apron, two favorite dish towels and a box of “good” tea, which she dumped on the kitchen countertop.

Bridie seemed calmed by the sight of her belongings, tied on her apron and set about filling the kettle.

Maureen called me aside into the hallway.

“She’s gone completely crazy, Ellie—pure upside down! She barely slept the full journey to Chicago, but was up trying to make her own tea in the buffet car. Then she was so tired she went out cold, asleep at the lunch table in front of cousin Anne, and we had the devil of a job trying to haul her back onto the train again, with Bridie flustering about opening and closing bags, and up and down to the toilet every five minutes. She wouldn’t let anyone touch her bag or carry it for her—not even Patrick—and it seemed to me that it weighed a ton. I know she’s old, Ellie, but how in the name of the good Lord Jesus I got us all here, without throwing her off the train, is a miracle. Wee Tom, for all his jumping and excitement, was a pure pleasure next to her!”

“Well, you’re here now,” I said. “Things will calm down.”

“I mean it, Ellie—she’s got worse.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant. For months now Maureen had been complaining about Bridie’s erratic behavior, but I had put her concerns aside as petty criticisms. Perhaps it was all to the good that Bridie had come to Los Angeles. I could use her help, and the presence of an older woman around the place was good for the boys. Her age brought an authority that was as helpful as, and certainly more consistent than, the male voice we were missing. In any case, this blustery old housekeeper was the closest thing I had to a mother now and, with the loss of Charles, it would be no harm shoring up our small family with another person.

Bridie finally conceded that we could bring in cold meats and salad from the deli, but she simply would not rest until she had the ingredients for making her own bread. Sunset Strip did not have an “ordinary” neighborhood corner store to hand, so I had to send Freddie down to the hotel kitchen, to charm flour and milk and baking soda out of the kitchen porter.

“No egg?” she said when he handed her the tray. When her back was turned, Freddie mimicked slapping her on the bottom and I laughed, then briefly thought how like Charles this young, carefree man was, and wondered if that had been why Leo had run off to Freddie as he had.

“Can I go to the pool now, Mam? Can I? Can I?” Tom was chomping at the bit to get outside and cause mischief.

“I’ll take him,” Leo said.

As the light faded, our party gathered around the pool. Freddie and Crystal balanced on a lounger, while Maureen and I sat on chairs under a parasol with Bridie. Tom was pounding in and out of the water, his tanned skin goosepimpled as he rubbed his arms, before flinging himself into the pool with such ferocity that I was afraid he would hit the bottom and break his neck. Leo was in the water beside him, his body slimmer and his skin paler than his younger brother’s. He was splashing and laughing, grabbing Tom and swinging him in and out of the water, head-locking and play-fighting in a way he had never done with boys of his own age. Their brotherhood was a unique friendship—the delicate older son made more manly by his younger acolyte. They needed each other, and I felt a tinge of regret that I had ever parted them by allowing Leo to go to boarding school.

“To be sitting out under the open sky at this time of night . . . ,” Bridie grumbled, as she poured from the full tray of tea things that she had made us bring up from the bungalow, including a plate of her own soda bread, which she continued to munch. “It’s just not right.”