The Ruby Slippers (29 page)

Stunned, she sways on her feet, her mouth opening and closing like a landed fish, such sinfulness an impossibility. He stands over her, pointing in her face. His teeth are bared and his body all of a-quiver, the crazed appearance of him telling her that she speaks at her own peril. She cowers beneath him, feeling his shocking power over her, until at last he puts down his hand and skulks away to his room.

All afternoon she cries, and all afternoon he sits with his head jammed against the head of the bed, his dirty boots up on the quilt, his thoughts cannoning between God and the devil, as he prays on the one hand to be released – to let the shoes go and come out clean – and on the other to keep on going, get his dues and make his enemies pay. And it is this constant collision of dark desires that finally sends him off to sleep. And when he wakes up with a start only a quarter-hour later, although it seems like six, he can hear her out in the kitchen, crying still, her heart all this time stricken with sorrow. I am sick, he says to himself. I am bad. But the demon is not yet dead in him: ‘God take this from me,’ he says in one breath, and, ‘Fuck them all!’ he says in another. If he can’t have what was his to have, then he will take them all to hell with him.

■ ♦ ■

All of next morning James stays firmly in his shell. Marcia and the others tiptoe around him, hardly daring to speak. He makes it through to lunchtime, aware by now that Jack has not shown up for work and not sure whether to be relieved or concerned. He goes to Sergio’s for lunch, where the waitress, an old friend, practically, tells him to carry on regardless. So what if people saw? For every person who saw a show on a two-bit channel, there’s a hundred others who didn’t. ‘You don’t understand,’ he tries to explain. ‘I’ve been a damn fool!’ He hasn’t told her about the close encounter he had with Jack, which made even more of a dumb-ass of him, and he doesn’t want to go into how he has lain awake all night with the realization that he has been a victim of his own delusions in just about every way.

When he gets back from lunch, the first person he sees is Jack, up a stepladder, sorting outsize art books into order. It’s as if he has positioned himself in the most conspicuous spot for James to see him, and his dress is particularly simple and sober – the message being that he is ordinary and at his work, although his eyes are firmly turned away, and neither man acknowledges the other’s presence.

Later in the afternoon, James takes coffee in the workroom and is properly alone, a blessed relief, with no Jack to trot around after him and hang on his every word. Well, he knows now why the guy kept popping up all over the place; if only the penny had dropped earlier. ‘What the hell possessed me?’ he says to himself, thinking of Jack and the botched chat show, but also of his whole involvement in the Ruby Million farrago. Even as he is wincing at the thought, his phone rings, and there is Steve on the line, the one of few words, but sounding a little excited.

‘Hi, Steve,’ he says, a little wary. ‘Wassup?’

‘James, thought you should know. We just hit the mark.’

■ ♦ ■

It was after The Wizard of Oz that Tom started to get small parts in cowboy films and even learned to ride a horse. I thought it was such fun really and not too badly paid. And he was so happy, always saying to me, ‘Howdy pardner,’ and to other people that the work was as easy as falling off a horse. But never did his career get off the ground. At one time he tried to push me into the movies, saying I could be like Garbo, the new Garbo, but this was ridiculous, and after one dreadful test where my accent was to me a handicap, I did not go back and was happy, anyway, working in costume, so long as I had my man. Even if he did not have a great career, Tom had many friends, not only in the studios, because he came, as I say, from a well-connected family, and this brought us into many social occasions. As well as the premieres and gala nights, there was many wonderful parties where champagne flows like water, and we even were invited for weekends onto yachts right out into the ocean, which always I loved. This was when I was most happy. It could be said that I had no right to behave so greedy and selfish when before I had behaved so shamefully, but these memories were my comfort when others have been my shame
.

It was mentioned before that my father was musician. Well, some of his musical gift must have come to me, because I had a good ear and could sing well without any noticeable accent. And this is how I sang to large numbers of people, many of them famous, songs like ‘Putting on the Ritz’ and ‘Night and Day’. It is hard to imagine that I should ever behave in such a way – even on one occasion to stand on the lid of a grand piano to perform. It seemed the sun was always shining on this life I had, and with all this I had forgotten everything I had come from and my sorrows had gone away. Perhaps I am selfish, perhaps I am cruel, but it was only when the war came to America that I stopped to think again about my family so far away, but by then it was too late
.

When war was declared, Tom did not even care at first to see other men go off to fight; he continued to try for parts. Eventually, when the fighting was all in the east, he signed up to fight for his country, but I noticed that it was only after his career did not go right that he became the patriot. I did not want him to go, but he asked of me to be strong and wait for him, and so I did. And when I did not hear from him for at least six month, I thought at first he may have perished and waited and waited to hear the news, but never it came. As I was not his wife, it was impossible for me to receive information from the military, and his family was never approving of me. And so I was in the dark, until I hear from a friend, with such a shock, that he is alive and kicking and living in Chicago – and is besides married. This friend I shout at and give abuse, which I later regret. She supplied to me a number, and I call this, but as fate would have it, it is not Tom who answers, but the woman. I ask of her: ‘Is your husband there, your husband Tom?’ And she says, ‘Yes, who’s this calling?’ So then I put down the phone. What was the use? What difference would it make now? The clock could not be turned back. Emotionally, this was a very bad blow for me, and I found it a terrible struggle just to carry on, because all this time I have waited for him and worked so hard to live and make sacrifice in the belief of his return
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I think I truly loved this man, and even now I see his lovely face and lovely smile and hear the voice that could melt my heart but never make him a star. He will be long dead now, but if there was some magical way that I could meet him again, I believe that I would forgive him and still love him for ever
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Things become difficult for me after this – I was not happy in the studio any more and saw no point in it, and the films they make seem poor in the imagination and have no charm. For this reason I drift away from Hollywood, drift away from the world of fantasy to which I never really belong, and go back east and fall to all kinds of crazy behaviour, drinking all the time, which was never really before the case, and falling into relationships with men for whom I had no respect. Which is to say I had lost respect for myself and gone back into the careless place in me. Of this time I cannot find much to write, although it was a long time in my life, from when I leave Hollywood in 1942 to the time that Magda came, which was in 1947. Five years, yet there is so little to say. When the experience is so painful and of such sorrow, what is there to do but bundle it up small and throw it away
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It was when I was in Jersey City that Magda and Mihails came to me, although I do not know how they fell upon my address. It was the worst meeting in all my life, because Magda had lost her dear Janis and blamed me because I had not reached out and helped them. His death was on my head and who was I to argue? It was terrible: she spat at me, which I should have suffered, but I spat back and shouted, too. Never have I been so hateful a person. I did not know this was in me, and I drove them from my door. All this happened in front of darling Mihails, who was not then even in his teens and looked so young and trusting. I could see that he had come there wanting to love me, and now he was shocked at what he saw. I wished to stop and take him into my arms, but Magda was still screaming for my blood and telling me to take my eyes off from him. Even as I wished for them to stay, I was screaming for them to go. Both of us knew what really lay behind this argument, which was not the death of Janis, but neither was strong enough to say the truth
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For certain this was the end of any hope to come together as a family again, and I licked my wounds
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Among the bad I found one half-good man, a photographer called Gerry Clyde, who had talent but also a desire for drink, and these were always at war with each other. The worst of it was when I looked at him I saw a person on the same path as myself, and neither of us could save the other, which is not the best situation for making a life together. There were wonderful pictures that he had taken when he was younger, beautiful things of nature within the city, wild things among the creations of man, but these things were all of the past, and the free spirit that had been in him then was now smothered. Somehow, however, we stayed twenty years under the same roof – which changed, by the way, several times – and I end up with him in New York in the very apartment in which I write this history. I had long ago stopped being seamstress because no one wants hand-made dresses at this time, and became instead typist to pay the rent, then shop girl, then working as a cleaner, because I could not keep up any kind of appearance. So it goes, always downhill from here, but slowly. And I was forever crying and complaining because I remembered the good times that had been mine. Twenty years to watch Gerry drink away all hope, and me sometimes to help him do it. In the end, I find out what it is like to be hit by a broken man and then kissed again when he saw what he had done, and this is what it is like for such a time, until one day he goes out and does not come back. This happened to me. He went from me – a bad man, no; a weak man, yes, but most of all an unlucky one, and because his misfortune happened from the time he meets me, it is me who is to blame. Of course he forgets to mention that it was in a bar that we first meet! And so I was left already down, already in growing confusion and desperation all the time
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What is madness? Is it something that we make for ourselves out of the chaos of our life? Or is it something that lies inside us, even before we are born? Or is it that both of these must come together? This cord that is stretched so tight inside us, and the burdens that we carry so heavy, one by one hooking themselves to hang upon the straining line
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So now I was more and more out of touch with things to cherish and a life in which to believe. I became strange and faraway to people, except by chance I come to know Mihails and his wife, Grace, because they have opened up the Sunrise store not far away. It was through them that I learn that Magda has died, and I wept then in front of him, but still I could not bring myself to explain the deepest cause of my weeping
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This I can say for them, that they reached out with compassion to me and hoped to give me help, but by then I was gone far away within my head and imagined only that they try to interfere with my life and, of course, there was this terrible thing between us that, in a better life, would bring us together, but in this life had always kept us apart
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For some reason, I was at this time starting to acquire possessions but throwing nothing out – keeping everything, even trash. First of all, these were things I thought precious and things that I believed I could make good. For example, there would be a dress and I would keep it, knowing I could alter it, but not having the machine to do so – illogical thinking like this. Later, it is not just clothes and ornaments, but everything, even to scraps of food that anyone should throw away. Of course it is crazy, and that is easy to see for those who are not crazy. In all these years there were times when I was not so crazy and could see clear as day what I had done, but then I had not the strength to do anything about it
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I entered then into great argument with the landlord and neighbours and I turn away from them and anybody who could hurt me with the truth. Among them was Mihails – he more than anyone, as he had tried to help me most. Now and again I would feel the wish to go and unburden myself to him, and so many times I go to the store exactly to do this, and sometimes reach out to him, but never the words would come, and in the end I stopped from using words altogether. I remember going for a time for treatment and the doctors helped to bring me to reason, but always I fall back. How is it possible to see the silver lining in the cloud when always the rain falls on your head?

I
T
is the day of the auction. He will not go there, will not play their game. Trade being dead as a dodo, Michael has spent the whole afternoon cleaning brass, a thing he normally does once a year, strictly to schedule, but today he has polished and buffed and buffed and polished, directing all his venom into making something at least bright. At five, Benjy comes in for his shift and Michael gets him dusting and polishing, too, to make gleaming and perfect the big jars containing grains, beans and pastas. Business remaining slow, he takes Rosa’s letter pad from under the counter, where he has kept it all this time. He has read it nearly to the end and has been astonished by the contents. The part where Rosa showed such awareness of her own mental condition was so harrowing that he has been unable to turn the page and read on. His own name has come into her story, and he knows from the lead-up that something monumental awaits. He cannot at this moment in time bring himself to take any more of it, not with everything else he has been going through. He puts the pad down on the counter and goes to the cold room for ham.

Later, hurrying towards the counter where at last a customer has appeared, he catches Benjy standing there, leaning over to peer at the letter pad. He swipes it from under the boy’s inquisitive gaze and goes behind the counter, stuffing it in his inside pocket and gesturing angrily at Benjy to go get on with his work.