Land of Dreams: A Novel (33 page)

On the day Freddie left there were two large suitcases in the hall, the back seat of his small car was piled with clothes, and another battered old case was tied to the back of the car.

“I don’t know how you managed to acquire so much
stuff
,” I exclaimed.
Because you had nothing when you arrived
was on the tip of my tongue, although I didn’t say it out loud.

He laughed. “Most of it belongs to the lady,” he said. By “lady” he meant Crystal. I bit my tongue.

The letter about Leo’s contract being renewed had come through from Paramount less than a week after I had been to see Stan. It was addressed to Mr. Leo Irvington, and said there had been a mistake and that they would be delighted to offer him another contract. Leo was thrilled, and I was surprised at how relieved I felt, not just at his joy, but at the contract itself. While he strutted around the house, vindicated by the mistake—“I thought you were mean, not going to see Stan, Mammy, but look! You were right! There was no need to pull strings, the studio had just made a mistake all along!”—I realized that what I had thought was vanity and childish foolishness was, in fact, my son’s heart’s desire. When I was his age I had no idea who I was or what I was to become. I knew what I
didn’t
want—and that was to take Holy Orders, as my father had assumed I would. I also knew that I loved John Hogan, and I was barely more than Leo’s age when I married him. John was my heart’s desire—my whole world—but I wondered now whether, had I discovered the artist in me as a young woman, I would have bothered getting married at all?

I realized that Leo was lucky to have discovered his passion for acting so young. It was not what I had pictured for him. Leo was a highly intelligent child—he could have been a doctor or a lawyer and have had an easy, comfortable middle-class life. He was also such a sensitive child, innocent, trusting and easily hurt, that it frightened me to think of him wrestling his way through the tough, competitive world of the movies. I had believed he was carving out a life of hardship for himself, and merely wanted to protect him from it. One evening, after he was happily settled back in the studio, chattering about being cast as the next big thing, I said as much to him.

“I worry about you,” I told him. “I just want you to be happy. Are you happy, Leo?”

“Yes, I am happy, Mam,” he said. “This is what I want.”

I saw such clarity in Leo’s eyes—a certainness that I remembered seeing in his own father, who had also defied his parents as a young man. Charles had worked on the docks, where his father’s shipbuilding empire was. His father had wanted him to run the business, and at Leo’s age (or maybe younger) had thrown his spoiled, wayward teenager in with the working serfs, to “harden him up” and teach him the value of an “honest day’s work.” The plan backfired when Charles discovered that he preferred the life of a dockworker to that of a privileged shipping heir, and ended up siding with the men and leading them in the unionization of his family business—all but causing its downfall, in the eyes of his stubborn father.

Everyone—even I—had thought that Charles, for all his good intentions, had caused the split in his family. Looking now at his son, I realized that my own impulses to protect Leo were the same as old man Irvington’s; if I were to stand between this young man and his dreams, all I would do was cause the same rift.

Knowing what you want in life—a conviction to do the right thing by yourself, or indeed others—is a gift. I had spent most of my life grabbing opportunities and fighting disasters as they presented themselves to me, without giving any true thought to what I wanted myself. I married John at seventeen because I was in love with him; I rushed to America to earn money when the marriage was not even four years old; became a typist; returned home to Ireland, then stayed; started my businesses, then rushed off to America for a second time as a reaction to my grief over John’s sudden death. I started the homeless shelter and the women’s cooperative shop not out of any deep conviction, but from a need to escape the pain in my own life by throwing myself into other people’s. For all that I loved John, I never relished the role of being his wife, and the one thing I valued in our marriage was the one thing he struggled with—my independence.

The only role I felt certain I was put on Earth to achieve was that of a mother, and God cruelly denied me that gift. When Tom was abandoned into my lap by his own young mother, it seemed a miracle to everyone else, but it did not feel like a miracle to me. Possibly this was another of God’s cruel tricks and, any day, his real mother might return to reclaim him. Tom was my sunshine, pure joy and light, but one day the dream might pop and, if it did, the pain would be unbearable, so that the fear of losing him both intensified my love for him and tarnished the freedom of loving him that I should have felt.

Leo was more of a certainty. In marrying his father, I had claimed ownership of this shining young man and of his future. Legally, he was my son and my charge. I had known I was meant to be his mother. I had relished every moment, not just of seeing and helping him reach maturity, but of the certainty of my status as his “mother.” I was reluctant to let him go, because I loved him, but also because I liked being in charge. I liked being in charge of other people because—and Leo’s unerring conviction to be an actor showed me how much this was true—I did not feel entirely in charge of myself.

Leo was an actor like I was an artist. It was who he was. Yet, since the move to LA at least, his conviction to follow his dream had proved stronger than mine. So I realized, eventually, that by standing in the way of Leo and his heart’s desire, I had stood in the way of my own dream as well. In order for my son to be free, I had to let him go—but I came to realize that, as his mother, I also had to let him go to achieve the level of freedom that I needed to live my own life.

Crystal gave me a cursory peck on the cheek now, before rushing out and ensconcing herself in the front seat of Freddie’s car, beeping the horn at her beau to hurry up. We had undergone a small routine for a few days after I discovered the injuries on her back resulting from the abuse, but I ministered to her silently, as she obviously did not want to discuss the matter further with me. In the past few days Crystal had barely spoken to me, and I guessed it was because she was afraid of my disapproval, or that I might try to interfere with her moving into a house with Freddie. It was as if she believed she had brought the whole thing down on herself, and that her presence in his home might drive this sweet young man to the same kind of cruel behavior. Or perhaps it was because she was afraid that I would warn Freddie off her. Whatever the case, there was nothing to be achieved by picking over what had happened, so I let her be.

“My baby ain’t much of a cook . . . ,” Freddie said at the door.

“That’s an understatement,” I interjected.

“. . . so I guess I’ll be back scrounging for a dinner before too long.”

Freddie had filled out and grown up—with a “real” job, money in his pocket and his Hollywood-agent plans put away in a file marked “Dreams.”

So much had changed for him in the few, short months I had known him, and yet how much had changed for me? I would not be here, were it not for Freddie, and the strange set of circumstances that had led him to encourage my son to chase off to Hollywood to become a movie star, and which had me following Leo with such panicky determination. Yet when I looked back at all that had happened in my life, how strange were these circumstances really? Perhaps they were just life happening: sucking you along its path, winding and straight, until you reached some satisfactory destination, settling there for a while. And just when you thought it was safe to relax—
whoosh!
—life’s strange circumstances came and grabbed you again.

Freddie had been the cause of my LA movie odyssey, and yet—while it seemed to be over for him—for Leo it was still going on. Freddie leaving us felt like the end of something for us all. For me, it was another person I didn’t have to be responsible for any longer. As I stood at the door, straightening his collar and patting his suit jacket and telling him to mind himself, I was not sure if that was a good or a bad thing.

Bridie wandered in from the porch, and Freddie stopped at the door and gave her a cuddle. I watched as the old woman’s eyes closed in a reverie of affection, her mouth stretching back into the smile of a delighted child, and I wondered at the mysterious and immense nature of ordinary love.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-T
WO

Leo and I grew close again after Freddie moved out.

Perhaps it was because he no longer had Freddie as his minder, or perhaps it was because I had let go of trying to get him back to New York. I also believed that our closeness grew out of Leo’s beginning to come to terms with his father’s death.

One evening my eldest son asked me to help him read a scene from
Henry V
. I thought they were just teaching him rubbish at the studio, how to dress and walk correctly and address people in a fake English accent, like Leslie Howard, so I was delighted that he had come home with something educational. I sat in the chair with Tom at my feet, as Bridie gazed out the window in some distant reverie.

I read Sir Richard Talbot, and he was John Talbot, my son—the scene was a war scene.

“If we both stay, we both are sure to
die
,” I read, smiling down at Tom and raising my eyebrows in mock fright.

Leo answered me:

Then let me stay; and, father, do you fly:

Your loss is great, so your regard should be;

My worth unknown, no loss is known in me.

Upon my death the French can little boast;

In yours they will, in you all hopes are lost.

Tom was mesmerized by his brother’s change in stance, and I had felt a lump gather in my throat from the first line.

Flight cannot stain the honour you have won;

But mine it will, that no exploit have done:

You fled for vantage, everyone will swear;

But, if I bow, they’ll say it was for fear.

Every line was drenched with meaning and emotion. Goodness me, but my son could act—and I felt terrible that I had not taken his aspirations more seriously before now—but as I listened, as his insistent, passionate tone demanded that I listen, I heard only the anguish he felt for his lost father:

There is no hope that ever I will stay,

If the first hour I shrink and run away.

Here on my knee I beg mortality,

Rather than life preserved with infamy.

Leo’s relationship with Charles had never been an easy one. Charles’s biggest fault as a father was giving Leo the impression that he was disappointed in him. Or, rather, leading Leo to believe he was not the son Charles had hoped for. Charles seemed closer to sturdy, playful Tom, even though Tom was not of Irvington blood. That in itself, I believed, was the problem. Leo was too like the gentle, cosseted soul Charles had been, before his father sent him to work at the docks and turned him into a “real” man. Blond and delicate, his son was a living reminder to Charles of the vulnerable soul that lay beneath his male bravado. Charles was ashamed of his blood, ashamed of his background, and he saw both things reflected in the face and the gentle manners of his son. Like all sons, Leo longed only for his father to be proud of him.

These are by no means unusual feelings that can stand between a father and a son’s love for each other, and they may take a lifetime to express and resolve. Charles and Leo were not given a lifetime. I had betrayed Leo by discouraging his dream, but there was no time for the indulgence of self-recrimination and guilt. I had to make things right at once.

“That was wonderful.” I clapped with such vigor that Tom whooped alongside me (although doubtless not entirely sure why). “Your father would have been so proud of you.”

“Really?” Leo said. “Do you really think he would?”

“Oh,” I said, “for certain. You may have not known this about your father, Leo, but he had a
deep
admiration for actors. He thought it was a fine profession. He would have been thrilled to see how well you are doing.”

Leo looked at me with the slightest hint of skepticism. “I never knew that,” he said queryingly.

“Why would you? He was always too busy to go to the theater or movies, but when we were younger . . .”

I was, of course, lying through my teeth, Charles loathed all forms of entertainment except drinking and carousing with his fellow men—he thought going to the pictures was a terrible waste of time.

“You could not keep him out of the movie theaters. Want to know a secret?”

Leo and Tom, almost ten years apart, nodded in exactly the same childish way.

“I think he would have become an actor himself, if he’d had his own way.”

“Really?” Leo’s eyes were shining with delight.

“Oh, most definitely,” I said. “The problem was that your father was not talented, like you. He would have been so proud to see you perform, Leo.”

“He can see everything—he’s up in heaven watching you,” said Bridie in a precious lucid moment, a gift, “and I mean
everything
,” she finished, directing emphasis at my big fat lie.

From that moment on, everything changed.

I did not care that Leo’s newfound happiness was based on a lie. What harm did it do? Charles
should
have been more proud of his son, his beautiful, adventurous son, when he was alive. And now that he was dead? Who was to say that he hadn’t had a change of heart and wasn’t looking down, bursting with pride, at his son reciting Shakespeare? The important thing now was that I was proud—and I showered Leo with my admiration and respect at every opportunity. As a result, the insufferable arrogance that he (and the rest of us) had been struggling with was transformed into the strong, quiet confidence of the lovely young man I had always known Leo would grow up to be.