Til the Real Thing Comes Along (26 page)

And then Gino, who was played by Uncle Jackie Welles, picked up his head just a little bit and looked at her, and even though
he was wincing with pain he still managed to say,
“Do
you love me, Red? Do you really? Well then, maybe my life was worth something after all.”

Right after that there was that real close shot of Davey’s mother. Her sweet freckled face looking so pretty that when it
filled the screen like that, Davey got a warm runny feeling in his chest as if he’d swallowed honey. In the movies her eyes
were always so wet that even when nobody was dying in a scene she looked as if she were about to break down and cry.

At any rate, Uncle Jackie Welles saying “Do you love me, Red? Do you?” was always Davey’s cue to leave the screening room,
because after that his mother just said something like “You bet I do, Gino, and I always will,” and maybe a few more mushy
things, and then there was a siren and an ambulance and lots of people rushing. And the camera was moving up and away like
it was going to sit in a tree to watch what was happening, and then there was some real gooey music and the movie was over.

By then the guests would be saying the kind of thing they always said when the movie was over: “My God, Lily. How could you
ever give it up? There hasn’t been an actress like you since.” And then they would say the other thing that they always said,
which was something like: “Mal must be quite a guy for you to have given up your dazzling career just for marriage.” His mother
would smile her pretty smile at his dad, and his dad would smile his special smile in return, and by that time Davey would
be in his room, in his bed, sound asleep. Sometimes dreaming of his mother. And when he did, in the dreams he was Gino, or
he was Lance Caulfield, the soldier of fortune Uncle Jackie Welles played who was in love with Lily in
Diamond Ke.

Lily. There wasn’t anyone else like her. Everyone knew that. Even his teachers in school asked him about her when the other
children weren’t listening. “Lily Daniels is your mother,” they would exclaim, as if he didn’t already know that. Their eyes
would burn with admiration and curiosity and they would ask, “Isn’t that exciting? To have her as a mother?” Davey didn’t
know what to compare it to because he’d never had anyone else as a mother. “Will she ever make another movie?” they would
ask, sometimes in a whisper as if the answer were a secret and Davey could reveal it to them. He would shrug an “I don’t know,”
because what he did know was that she still got lots of telephone calls from people in the movie business trying to get her
to come back, and scripts in the mail from people
who wanted her to star in their movies, but so far she was still saying no.

“Is she just like she was in those movies in real life?” they would ask, and Davey would nod a definite yes to that, because
she was. “Full of spunk,” his father always said about her and her spirit of adventure. Taking flying lessons, organizing
trips all over the world for her group of friends, and traveling everywhere she could with his father. Except for the last
few months. She’d been staying home a lot. Not going anywhere. Davey was glad to have her around because some nights, instead
of her hurrying out to some dinner party the way she mostly did when his father was in town, she and Davey had dinner alone
together in her room on snack tables. And one night, when all the servants were off, she even ordered Chinese food that was
delivered right to the front door. But there was something about the way she was staying home so much lately that worried
him. Never leaving the house. Never even going out with friends to play golf. Sleeping very late and often staying in her
dressing gown to eat dinner. Once, when Davey came home from school he thought he saw Dr. Weyburn’s car pulling away from
the house.

Kan, sir. Cancer. My mother has cancer and she’s going to die. He overheard it in the kitchen, where he overheard all the
important news, so it was probably true. He was sitting where he liked to sit, under the big kitchen table playing with his
trucks. It was the same place Davey had been sitting the time Rico the chauffeur told Yona the Maid that his divorce was final,
then put his hand under her skirt and she squealed and then they kissed a kiss like Davey had never seen before. Making noises
in their throats like people never made when they kissed in movies. Under the table was also where Davey was sitting when
Yona told Rico she was going to have a baby and Rico looked real nervous and gave her some money and then Yona told Davey’s
mother she had the flu and stayed away for a few days.

Today, Yona was folding the sheets she had just washed and, when they were folded, putting them on the chair next to the table
under which Davey sat running his cement truck through the obstacle course of table and chair legs. Davey could smell the
fresh smell of the detergent in the sheets, and Yona rustled them so much while she folded
that the rustling noise drowned out some of what she was saying.
Gonna buy,
it sounded like. Rico must have not heard her either because he was running the water at the sink, but then he turned it
off and said, “Who’s gonna buy? Buy what?”

Davey turned to lie on his stomach now. That way his face was closer to the floor, which made the tiny trucks look bigger
and more real.

“Not buy.
Die,”
Yona said. “Lily. She has cancer. The doctor says she’s gonna die. Soon. Maybe a few months.” Die. The only person Davey
had ever heard of who died, except for people in movies, was Grandma Colleen when he was very little. And Lily had told him
it was because Grandma Colleen was very old. Lily wasn’t old.

Davey put his face down on the kitchen floor. The red-and-yellow cement truck sat touching his nose. He couldn’t move. Ever
again. Maybe, he hoped, maybe they were talking about a different Lily, an old Lily who was supposed to die, not his mother.
There must be lots of ladies around named…

“Poor little Davey,” Yona said. “What will he do?”

“Poor little thing,” Rico said, and then again: “Poor little thing. What will he do without a mother?”

It wasn’t a different Lily they were talking about. It was his mother and later that night when he went to her room and looked
at her, there was no doubt. She looked worse than she had in the death scene of
Captive Hearts,
when she played a nurse who caught some terrible disease in a Japanese prison camp. At least in that death scene she’d worn
makeup. Now she wore only a gray, pain-filled face.

And soon his father, who had never been home a lot, was home every minute. Sitting by Lily’s bed, which was now a hospital
bed, in the darkened bedroom next to the big double bed they used to share, holding her hand and kissing her gray face, which
Davey was afraid to do, and hated himself because he knew his mother knew he was afraid.

“It’s okay, Davey,” she would say. Even her voice was different now. As if it was hard for her to talk. “You don’t have to
come close to the bed if you don’t want to.”

And Davey would think to himself the only thing he wanted to say. But he couldn’t say it because his mother would probably
laugh, since they weren’t his words—they
were from the movie
Woman on the Run.
They were the words Red said to Gino at the end. “I love you more than anything, and now it looks like you’re leaving me.”
Over and over he thought those words but couldn’t say them.

Two days after Davey watched them take his mother’s body from the house, Yona woke him and told him that even though it was
Monday he wasn’t going to school. Instead he was going somewhere with his father. His father. The thought of going somewhere
with his father made his stomach hurt. In the last two months, since his mother’s sickness, his father had changed. Not that
he had ever been silly or funny the way Lily could be, but sometimes he would read Davey a story, or watch a baseball game
with him on TV, or ask him about school. Now he said nothing. The only time he spoke to Davey was right after the doctor pronounced
Lily dead. Rand Malcolm strode outside where Davey was lying on his stomach by the edge of the pool driving a tow truck along
the precipice of brick.

“Come over here now, fella,” his father said.

Davey had been so startled by the sound of his father’s voice that he dropped the tow truck into the deep end of the pool,
watched it sink to the bottom and then stood.

“Sir?”

His father was more handsome than ever today. His blue tie was the color of his blue eyes. And the way his hair was brushed
made him look just like the portrait of him that hung in the Rainbow Paper Company building downtown. When he got almost to
where his little son was standing, Rand Malcolm stopped walking and squatted so he would be closer to the boy’s size when
the boy came to him. When he did, the man put a hand on each of his son’s shoulders.

“Your mother is dead, son,” he said. He smelled bad. The way Lily’s room had smelled for the last few weeks, and Davey held
his breath so he wouldn’t have to smell it. “And do you know what her last words were?” his father asked. The man’s eyes were
red and veiny. Last words? How could he possibly know?
Do you love me, Red, do you?
were the only last words Davey could think of, so he didn’t answer. Just shook his head.

“She said, ‘Don’t forget,’” Rand Malcolm said to his son. “‘Don’t forget Monday’s Davey’s birthday,’ and
then…” The man took a deep breath and stood. “So we’ll go and celebrate. Somehow we’ll go and celebrate.”

Today was Monday. So it must be the day of the birthday celebration, Davey thought. By the time he was dressed and downstairs
his father was already in the back of the limousine reading the newspaper.

“Morning there, fella,” he said. “Happy birthday.”

Davey opened the folding seat and climbed on, so he could ride backward with his feet up on the back bench seat, which was
the way he liked riding in the limousine even when he was the only passenger. His father didn’t look up from the paper until
they got to Santa Monica Airport. The car drove out onto the airfield and right up to
The Lily Two.
Hooray, Davey thought. They were going for a ride in
The Lily Two
to celebrate his birthday. A man who worked for his father, named Fred Samuels, opened the car door and let Davey out. When
Rand Malcolm stepped out of the car, the man put an arm around him. Mr. Samuels looked very sad too.

“At least there’s a nice day for it,” he said to Davey’s father, and they all boarded the airplane.

Davey loved
The Lily Two.
It wasn’t the only airplane he’d ever been on. He’d flown in commercial planes too. But this was his father’s own DC-3, so
he didn’t have to stay in some boring seat for the whole flight. There was a sofa, and a folding table for cards, and a bar
that always had a full refrigerator with soda pop and juices and fruit. And there was a little sliding-door closet under the
bar, and when you opened it there were jars and jars of salted nuts, and packs of every different kind of chewing gum. And
there were playing cards that had the Rainbow Paper Company insignia on the back of each card.

“Got your seat belt on there, fella?” his father called back to him.

“Uh, huh.”

Davey could hear the voices from the air traffic control tower talking to his father and Fred as they taxied
The Lily Two
down the runway, then lifted into the Santa Monica sky. Always before when Davey had flown in
The Lily Two,
his mother had been sitting next to him and she would hold his hand during the takeoff. This time he held tightly to the
armrest. After a few minutes, as they leveled off he looked out the window. The ocean was waveless, calm. Davey
remembered how last year his father had flown very low as they traveled north so Davey and Lily could try to catch sight of
the migrating whales. And the time they flew inland and looked down at the grounds of the huge Hearst castle, where his mother
and father had met each other a long time ago.

This was a great way to celebrate his birthday, Davey thought as he took a toy fire truck and a small white toy ambulance
with a red cross painted on it out of the pocket of the blue blazer he wore, unfastened his seat belt, and lay down on his
stomach so he could run his toys around the carpeted floor of the airplane. The fire he was imagining was a big one and there
were lots of injured people. Davey had two other ambulances at home and he wished he’d brought them so that more of the injured
people could be cared for at one time. But he’d have to make do, and the one ambulance would just have to take as many trips
back and forth as possible.

He was so involved in his play he didn’t even notice that Mr. Samuels had walked past him and was standing on the left side
of the door of the plane, fiddling with the latch as if he was about to open it. In fact, all at once he did release the heavy
catch and the sound of the rushing wind startled Davey away from his fantasy fire and he clutched the leg of his seat in fear.

“That’s got her,” Mr. Samuels said, and when he did, the airplane suddenly swooped very low. They were still over the water,
and Davey watched Mr. Samuels sit back down in the cockpit and his father get up and walk toward the door. He carried a brown
paper bag in his hand that looked as if it was probably heavy. When his father got to the door he held the bag to his chest
and spoke aloud, but very softly, and the noise from the wind and the sound of the plane made what he said nearly impossible
to hear, but it seemed to Davey as if he said, “Lil, I’ll never love again.” Finally, he threw the bag out the door, leaned
heavily on each side of the opening with both hands, and looked down after it, his hair blowing wildly, his tie flying back
over his shoulder. After a second or two he stepped back, pushed his weight against the heavy door, and closed it with a loud
thud. Then he turned, walked past Davey toward the cockpit, and took his seat again at the controls.

What was in the bag? When people died did they
shrink up so small that you could just put them in a bag and throw them away like that? Maybe it wasn’t all of his mother
in the bag. Maybe it was just some part of her. Like her face. That beautiful face. And why in the ocean? She wasn’t even
a good swimmer. This was the strangest birthday celebration Davey had ever had. Now he could feel the plane descending, so
he put the fire truck and the ambulance back in the pocket of his navy blazer, got back into his seat, and fastened his seat
belt. A few minutes later they were on the ground in Santa Barbara.