Land of Dreams: A Novel (34 page)

As our friendship flourished once again, I regretted that I had not told Leo sooner how much his father loved him and was proud of him, and I felt grateful that I had been given the opportunity to make things right, albeit by random intuition rather than by design. There is no rule book—I knew that now; no right or wrong way to be a mother and protect your child from the slings and arrows of life. Even if you tried to shield them, they would get hit, and diligence was no protector. I was right to follow Leo to Hollywood, but I must have been doing something wrong for him to have run away in the way he did. Perhaps if I had done things differently: been more sympathetic, more alert to Leo’s needs after Charles died . . . But then, as Bridie occasionally said in crude moments when Maureen and I would drive her mad with our endless analyzing and regrets, “For God’s sake, if my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle!”

At the beginning of the summer we were invited to another big party at the studios.

This time, it was I who didn’t want to go.

I had barely been outside the door for months. Unable to get to my painting, my life had become a routine of grocery shopping, housekeeping, cooking for the family, nursing and negotiating with Bridie.

I was content, in the sense that this was how my life had panned out. One day I would get back to my work, and I was anxious that it would happen at some point. Bridie was not a chore, as long as I didn’t wish for things to be different—and so I didn’t. Susan’s support ensured that I never became overwhelmed with looking after her, and as for life beyond that? I had little interest in it. My boys were living with me; we ate and listened to the radio together. I was content.

However, the prospect of getting dressed up to go out to a function, especially one where I might run into Stan? The very idea horrified me. I could not remember the last time I had looked in a mirror, or had any reason to.

In that spirit I was amazed, but flattered, that Leo had even asked me to go.

“I can’t leave Bridie,” I told him. “You’ll be grand on your own. Bring that nice girl you’re always telling me about—the makeup girl . . .”

“Collette,” he said, “ah, yes, I have some plans for her that night.”

So that was that, until the afternoon of the night of the party, when Susan came to look after Bridie—at Leo’s invitation.

Unbeknown to me, Leo had gone to our neighbor, behind my back, and booked her for an overnight stint. Shortly after Susan arrived and grabbed the dinner things off me, Leo’s young friend Collette—a hair and makeup girl he had become friendly with—arrived at the door and announced that she would be attending to me.

“The car arrives at seven,” she said, looking me up and down, “so we don’t have much time.” It was barely 4 p.m.

Collette was a pretty young girl, a year or two older than Leo, and from the way she was looking at my dashing son, I could tell she was madly in love with him. I felt bad for her, because I could tell equally that Leo had no real interest in her whatsoever, beyond her friendship and her skill in bringing his frumpy old mother up to scratch for this big event.

“Collette is a miracle worker, Mam.”

“I wasn’t aware that I needed a miracle,” I bristled, “and I’m not going, Leo, no matter what you’ve arranged.”

I could not have objected more heartily, especially when I saw that Collette was carrying bags full of evening wear. “I hope they fit you,” she said, then called across me, “Leo, you were right, she looks about the same size as Barbara Stanwyck!”

Susan nearly fainted. “Barbara Stanwyck! They’re her clothes?”

“Well, the wardrobe-department clothes, but technically . . . ,” the girl said.

Susan already had me by the arm and was dragging me into the bedroom.

“Ellie, you
have
to go. She’s going to make you look like a movie star! For goodness’ sake, sit down there and let the girl get on with her job. You’ve got less than three hours.”

“I don’t know what’s the matter with the lot of you,” I said, but inwardly I was pleased with the fuss; that my son had thought enough of his mother to set this up for me, and that I had made a friend of Susan, so that she was pushing me to get out and enjoy myself.

As I sat down at Collette’s makeup table and she told me to “relax,” I had a moment of déjà vu. The last time somebody had applied makeup to my face had been when I first arrived in America, back in 1920, and was working for the socialite Isobel Adams, under Bridie’s watchful eye. One weekend, left to our own devices in the apartment, my fellow maid, Sheila, and I had raided Isobel’s wardrobe and gone to The Plaza masquerading as a couple of fine ladies. Sheila had cut my long hair into a bob that day, and I had worn it in that style for the past twenty years, until recently, when I had become tardy with myself and let it grow out. I remembered the sense of revelation as I was transformed from Irish country girl to glamorous city woman. It had seemed like such a significant journey back then: appearing more elegant, more sophisticated than I felt; being admired as I walked down the street gave me a sense of pride, of belonging.

How different the experience was now. Had life itself changed me, or simply the passing of time? I had believed myself plain as a girl, yet it seemed to me now, looking back, that I had been quite beautiful. Although time had taken its toll, I thought more of myself now than I did then. I had taken the abundance of youth for granted—as all young women do—but for all that, I did not miss it now that it had passed. I would not trade fresh, plump skin for the richness that my life experience had given me. I was lucky, in that I had no craving for my past. Whether that meant my life had been a success or a failure thus far, I could not say.

Collette pinned my hair back into fat curls and I closed my eyes as she administered her powder and paint, leaning back into the kind touch of her young, soft hands on my face. I didn’t care so much how I looked at the end of it (there would be an improvement anyway), for the journey itself was the gift. As the young girl chattered to Leo about what colors she might use, and what would go with this dress and that, I could only think of what a pleasure it was to be sitting down, feeling the soft brush sweeping across my cheek, and the unusual circumstance of being ministered to—instead of the other way around. Susan came and put a cup of coffee in front of me, placing her hand on my shoulder as she left, in a signal of camaraderie. Another sister who had been sent to me, on my walk through life. I felt lucky. Really, despite everything, I had a lot to be grateful for.

“There,” Collette announced, “ready to go.”

I opened my eyes and saw: myself. The myself I had forgotten, the elegant, ladylike Ellie who had cared about fashion, and style; the meticulous young woman who had applied powder and lipstick and rouge to her face every morning as a matter of course. With the miracle of makeup and Collette’s magic touch, I looked the same as I had ten years ago; I smiled at myself in the mirror and it was like saying hello to an old friend.

Collette and Leo had picked out an outfit that would have looked at home on Ginger Rogers in a big dance number. It was a calf-length, emerald-green cocktail dress, low-cut but fashioned from a heavy duchesse satin that clung to my curves a little too tightly, but its pleated folds made it reasonably forgiving nonetheless.

Collette dusted my décolletage as I tried to arrange the satin neckline somewhat more modestly around my bosom.

“Pearls,” Leo said, standing back and observing me with the sharp eye of a wardrobe mistress, “she needs her pearls.”

I wondered at my son’s interest in fashion, but then men in the film world were different. More sensitive, artistic—with their talk of “hair” and “makeup” and “wardrobe”; the constant focus on their appearance and image gave them an almost feminine air sometimes. I thought of my friends Conor and Dan on Fire Island and of their struggle to fit into society and wondered, briefly, if my own son was going to experience the same problems, and how my own liberal ideals would stand up, if that were the case. I pushed the thought aside, and filed it away in the already overflowing drawer of things I must worry about as the boys got older.

The party was in full swing by the time we arrived. “Fashionably late,” Leo said. He was wearing full top hat and tails, with Collette (in the full-length frothy feathered costume I had refused earlier) on one arm and me on the other. The studio had been decorated in zebra-print wall hangings, mimicking the famous New York nightclub El Morocco, which I had been to in my younger days with my wild friend Sheila. That fact alone made me feel instantly sophisticated, and I sashayed across to the mirrored bar (doubtless also erected specifically for that evening), ordered a martini, then reached into my handbag for the long cigarette holder that Collette had insisted I carry. I filled it from a box that was sitting on the countertop and allowed my delighted son to light my cigarette using the smart, slimline lighter he had recently acquired specifically for the purpose. I had fought with Leo about it, but he had easily won me over, arguing, “I may not have learned to smoke properly yet, Mam, but I should at least be able to light a lady’s cigarette with style.”

This, I decided, looking around the room, was a good idea after all. I had not been out to a party for a long time. Not on my own terms. The last time I had accompanied Leo and Freddie on an occasion like this I had been there for their sake alone, but on this night, with my dress and the cigarette holder, and my clever, marvelous son at my side, I felt as if I could truly take the room. As I finished my martini and ordered another, I thought,
I might well do just that,
when I looked across the room and saw him.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-T
HREE

Stan was surrounded, but not so much that I could not see the woman standing next to him. She was around my age and elegant, as described to me by Jackson, with shoulder-length, naturally sandy-colored hair set into thick waves. She flicked the edges back on one side, so that I saw her profile: a long aquiline nose, sharp cheekbones and bright, intelligent eyes. She was drawing on a cigarette and blowing the smoke upward as she listened intently to Stanislaw. As he reached his punch line she threw her head back. She had magnificent Hollywood teeth, I could see that from the other side of the room. Aside from that, she was understated, in a simple navy day dress and medium pumps. She was dressed like a writer, an intellectual—above all this actors’ frippery; like me, before my son and his cohort had lured me into this ridiculous charade of an outfit.

“Look, there’s Stan over there.”

Leo was bored already. The novelty of our grand entrance had worn off and he wanted to be off, mixing with his friends. Before I could fully take it in, my son had decided that he could palm me off on Stanislaw.

“Stan! Stan!” he called across.

He looked up and saw us. I raised my glass to him and smiled, as brightly as I could possibly manage. I must have drawn a line under the communication, because he made no attempt to come over, merely raised his glass back and smiled briefly at me. His girlfriend looked vaguely over, to see whom Stan had raised his glass to, but failed to identify me. She asked him something then. “Who was that, Stanislaw?”

“Nobody.”

I could not hear either of them, but I knew what they had said. I also “knew” that she called him Stanislaw, and not Stan. She had that formal, intellectual look about her that did not go in for shortening names, or for Americanizing European ones. She had the look of educated money.
She will have been to university,
I thought,
probably in Europe; possibly in England.
I hated her.

As for him. A “nobody,” was I?

“You go and play with your friends, Leo—I’ll be fine here on my own.”

“Are you sure, Mam?”

It was a far cry from his abandonment of me at the last party we’d been to here. He was getting so grown up, so mature, my son.

“Go,” I said, and shooed Collette to follow him. “I’ll be grand. So,” I called over to the barman, “do you work all these parties?”

“Sure do, lady,” he said.

“I bet they get pretty wild sometimes?”

“Sometimes,” he said coyly. He was an actor, for sure. Would this be what Leo would end up doing, in a few years’ time when the next contract didn’t get renewed? Or the one after that? Tending the bar at studio parties, still hoping to score a big break?

“Do me a favor,” I said to the barman, throwing back my second martini. “I’m in the mood for a party tonight, so mix me up another one of these, and tell me, who is the wildest cad in this room?”

“You’re sitting right next to him, lady,” said a man who had slid smoothly into the seat next to me, as if on cue. “You gotta be Irish in a dress that color?”

Either this guy was in fancy dress or he was a ladies’ man all right. Thin mustache, chiseled face, tuxedo jacket and tie slightly askew. He was straight off the set of
Casablanca
—in fact he looked a bit like Errol Flynn.

“Matter of fact I am,” I said. “Eileen Hogan—pleased to meet you.”

I didn’t relish the thought of trawling around the room, so it was convenient that this Unsuitable Suitor was close at hand.

“I like Irish girls—you Catholic?”

“Is there any other religion?”

“Not that I know of,” he said. “Catholic girls are great; experts on sin, every last one of them! Lovemaking is no fun if there isn’t a bit of sin involved—whaddya say?”

He was a regular sleazeball and rather drunk. In fact, I wasn’t entirely sure that this wasn’t Errol Flynn himself. Either way, it didn’t matter to me. I just wanted a good time. Or rather I just wanted to be seen having a good time, to get one up on Stan.

We drank some more, and I noted Stan looking across once or twice. My cohort, who had yet to introduce himself properly (giving me all the more reason to believe he
was
the notorious Flynn), dragged me over to the dance floor and, despite the state of him, turned out to be a very masterful dancer. He led me in a Lindy Hop and I amazed myself by keeping up with him. Fueled with drink and the heat of the dance, and with anger toward my ex-beau, a strange alchemy occurred in me, whereby I was able to do dance steps that I had never done before, and before long it seemed that the whole room was gathered around us, clapping us on.