Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See (24 page)

The house was completely dark and very quiet when I got there. Usually Ellen left the light in the front hall on for me when she knew I’d be home late. The long narrow bedroom hallway was dark too, but there was a sliver of light coming from under our door. I’m not sure why but I knocked before entering my own bedroom. When there was no answer, I slowly, carefully opened the door. What I’d expected to find was Ellen asleep with the TV and lights still on. Instead, she was wide-awake, sitting on the edge of the bed. Her eyes were red and swollen. She hadn’t done anything to hide the fact she’d been crying. Maybe all day. I probably should’ve canceled my dinner.

“Hey,” I said gently and leaned in to kiss her. But she backed away. “I know. I was an asshole. This can’t begin to make up for it, but …,” I said, pulling out the box from Cartier.

She opened it silently, then turned it over and read the inscription. And laughed.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”
she whispered and threw the watch against the wall.

“Ellen, come on—”

“No, you can’t buy me off. I don’t want your expensive guilt jewelry. I never wanted it.” She went to her dresser, picked up her jewelry box, and dumped the contents on the floor. “Haven’t you noticed I never wear the shit you buy me after one of your Jekyll and Hyde moments?”

She kicked at the pile and began to sob. “I can’t do it anymore, Grey. You’re up, you’re down, you’re fine for weeks or months, and then suddenly the ground shifts under my feet. I never know who I’m going to wake up with or how long it’s going to last.” She sat down heavily on the bed.

She was scaring me. Things had been bad before. Much worse than this. Hadn’t they? But she sounded … I was on my knees in front of her, pulling her hands away from her face.

“Please, Ellen. I’m so sorry. I love you. I love Willa. Don’t—”

“I know,” she said, continuing to cry, “but it’s not enough. You’re not good for her and you’re not good for me. And you won’t get help.”

“I will, I will, I’ll get help, I promise.” And I meant it this time. I really meant it.

Ellen laughed. It was a nasty, bitter laugh. “That’s what Dr. Brody said you’d say.”

“Brody? Your shrink told you to do this?”

“She didn’t tell me to do anything.”

“Who does she think pays her fucking bills?”

She stood up. “I want you to leave,” she said calmly. She wasn’t crying anymore.

She pulled open the double doors of one of our huge bedroom closets, wallpapered—at the insistence of Deena Divac, coveted decorator—in the same tasteful jungle-floral print Deena had chosen for the other walls. And the bedspread. And the armchair and the love seat and the curtains. I felt like I was sleeping on the set of South Fucking Pacific.

“Ow! Shit!” Ellen yelled from inside the closet.

“You okay?”

“Fine,” she snapped, clearly not.

I stood just outside the door, not knowing what to do. I wanted to know how she wanted me to be. Then I would be that way and this would stop. My job was convincing people to do what I wanted, but now … now I couldn’t think of a single word to close the zero-gravity galaxy that had just opened between us. It was infinite and unreal and I hadn’t seen it out there on the horizon. Not even a little.

She picked up the biggest suitcase, pushed me out of the way, and threw the bag onto the bed.

“Pack.”

“What?”

“Pack. Pack some clothes and leave. You can come back for the rest later.”

“But … Ellen … It’s almost midnight.”

“Oh come on, Grey, you’re an important guy. I’m sure the concierge at the Beverly Hills Hotel can make room for you at the inn.”

When I left my own house that night, I was the one who was crying. “I know this is hard but it’s better this way,” Ellen whispered. Then she kissed me on the cheek and shut the door.

I sat in my car at the bottom of the driveway of the Beverly Hills Hotel. I had driven there like a robot. Not thinking, not feeling, just following the same route I always took, the same shortcuts and side streets until, in less than twelve minutes, I found I’d arrived at the last place I wanted to be. And I didn’t know what to do. In the past I’d zipped right up to the valet, exchanged my keys for a bright orange stub, which I slipped into my breast pocket as I strode briskly into my breakfast/lunch/drinks meeting.

But there was no meeting. It was a Tuesday night and my wife had thrown me out. Pull one thread and the sweater unravels. I couldn’t breathe. My hands were sweating. I saw myself pulling up to the valet, taking my orange ticket, checking into one of the beautifully appointed Beverly Hills Hotel suites and using my necktie to hang myself.

“Good evening. Checking in, sir?” I was so startled I leaned on the horn. “Sorry sir, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you. I just noticed you’ve been here a while and I thought I’d see if you—”

But I didn’t let him finish. I put my foot on the gas and flew past the red-carpeted entrance to the hotel and out the other side, swerving left onto Sunset, my heart racing even faster than my car.

By the time I got to Victor’s I was ascending the peak of a full-blown panic attack while at the same time trying to rationalize my appearance well past midnight at the home of my favorite client—a client with whom I had a friendship of sorts. The kind of friendship that would allow him to show up on my doorstep in the middle of the night, no questions asked. But not the reverse. Sure, our families socialized and we had a history—insofar as anyone in Hollywood has history—but I was the confidant, the caretaker, the troubleshooter. I had kept his marriage together, made his son’s DUI disappear, got rid of the bogus paternity suit. That’s the way it was supposed to work. Not the reverse.

And so I stopped for a moment as I walked up the stone path toward his giant Beverly Hills Tudor mansion, took out my handkerchief and wiped my eyes. Then I stuffed it back in my pocket and straightened my tie. I’d left my suitcase in the trunk of my car but I carried my briefcase. I hoped I looked like I was on my way to a meeting. That it happened to be 1:00
A.M
.—well, there wasn’t much I could do about that.

I rang the doorbell. It wasn’t like ours, the normal ding-dong kind that chimed twice and was done. Victor’s went on and on like a goddamn church organ. Eventually the tiny eye-level door within the giant door opened. Then, seeing it was me, Victor’s maid opened it. She was wearing a robe and had one curler in the middle of her forehead.

“Good evening, Mr. Todd.”

“Hello, Zelda. Sorry to wake you.”

“No trouble. Please come in.”

Zelda closed the door behind me and reset the alarm.

Victor came creeping down the stairs, hair standing on end, holding a baseball bat.

“Greyson?”

He put the bat down. “Zelda, you can go back to bed. Thank you for … just—”

“Yes,” I said. “Thank you, Zelda.”

“It was no bother. Good night.”

Victor watched until she was out of sight. Then he turned to me. “What the hell’s going on? Why are you—?”

“Well,” I said, popping open my briefcase, “there are a few things in your contract I wanted to go over before I meet with—”

“Greyson, what are you doing at my house at …,” he said and looked at the clock on the mantel, “one twenty in the morning?”

“Ellen … uh …” I felt pressure behind my eyes, tears building. I cleared my throat, trying to force them back.

“What? Ellen what?”

“Threw me out,” I whispered.

Victor and Kate insisted I sleep in their guest room for as long as I wanted. For the first few days I was able to play the part of the merely despondent, recently separated spouse. But then I stopped being able to sleep. At all. And I couldn’t control the crying. Every day the feeling of profound loss and overwhelming panic, feelings which existed concurrently, ate me alive. And the only person I could tell—the only person I’d ever been able to tell—wouldn’t talk to me.

And so, late at night, when Victor and Kate and the kids and Zelda and the live-in nanny were sleeping, I would walk the grounds and halls of Victor’s mansion wearing a borrowed bathrobe and sobbing, begging Ellen to take me back. And in the morning I would shower and shave and make sure no one knew. Until I got caught.

I was huddled in a corner of Victor’s kitchen. As if I were talking to Ellen. Crying and talking. And rocking back and forth, because the motion—I don’t know why—created a tiny buffer against the panic. It was a particularly bad night.

That’s bullshit. If I’m honest, it was a night like any other during that time.

“Jesus, Grey.” When Victor turned on the bright overhead light, I turned my face to the wall. I was humiliated. He walked over and pulled me up and I leaned on him, shaking. I wanted to give in; to let myself fall apart and be held by him, by this man I knew wanted to be my friend. I wished more than almost anything that was an option. Instead, I did my best impression of someone who was pulling himself together.

“I’m fine,” I said, quickly turning to stone. “You can’t tell anyone about this.”

Victor put his hand on my shoulder. “Grey, it’s perfectly understandable, you just—”

“No!” I shook my finger at him and left it suspended in the air pointing at him. There was a fine but noticeable tremor in my hand. We both saw it and I lowered my arm to my side. “Nobody! Do you understand?” I stood inches from his face. He didn’t move and his eyes didn’t leave mine.

“I think I do,” he said, nodding. “Nobody. I promise.”

I nodded back. And then I let him hug me. Because I knew he needed to.

Beverly Hills, 1961
. On the ride out to Sears, Ellen actually got me to tell her a little bit about Pop. Not a lot, but more than I’d told anyone else except Alan Rothman.

At one point when we were stuck in traffic, she turned to me and put her hand on my knee. “You know, Grey,” she said, “I haven’t met your father, but you’ve never met my mother, and trust me when I tell you she is a ball-busting bitch on wheels. On a good day.”

I was so stunned I almost rear-ended the guy in front of us. And that’s when I knew I was in love.

By the time we got back, the pool party was over. I took her to see
Touch of Evil
starring Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh instead. Then I drove her home in Van Gilder’s truck. We sat on the hood down the block from her house and I kissed her good-night. Not such a bad day after all.

I felt pretty great all night and even woke up smiling, until I heard the sound of a loud, persistent car honking. I tried to block it out and replay the date. Ellen. And for a moment the noise went away. But it wouldn’t stop. I went to the window and leaned out. There was my father sitting outside our house in a light-blue Eldorado, leaning on the horn. Neighbors be damned. My mother came rushing outside in her bathrobe.

“Well, whaddaya think?” he asked, with a manic grin on his face.

My first impulse was to get as far away as I could. But I knew I would never do that. There was my mother and Hannah and Jake and Ben. And now there was Ellen. I wondered if there was any way I could keep her from ever meeting him.

Beverly Hills, June 1982
. I’d made a reservation at the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel. They had an enormous Swedish apple pancake that Willa loved and an enormous Bloody Mary that would get me through Father’s Day brunch with Ray. My first Father’s Day without Ellen. Without Ellen to act as a buffer between my father and me. To hold my hand and reassure me for the millionth time. And I needed it this year more than ever. Because six months earlier I had accepted Sydney Freeman’s offer to come work for him at the studio. He’d been bumped upstairs and needed a new President of Production. I couldn’t pass it up. And I was terrified of running the place into the ground.

No one but Ellen knew how frightened I was of getting close enough to catch what my father had. As if failure were contagious. I’d thought about asking Ellen to come today but I knew she wouldn’t. Despite the fact that I had met all of her demands—medication, therapy, all of it—she still wouldn’t let me move back in. Those were the requirements for seeing Willa, she said, not her. I wasn’t going to go looking for more rejection. So I didn’t even bother to ask.

Willa and I climbed the stairs to the outdoor balcony that led past apartments 2A through F and down to the corner unit where Ray lived. Some of the doors were closed but most were wide open, the screen doors providing a sort of Emperor’s New Clothes nod to privacy. I should have told Willa not to stare in, but I couldn’t help looking myself. Old people sat in front of their TVs eating alone, being fed by an aid or feeding their own rapidly degenerating spouses. We stopped in front of Ray’s door.

I rang the bell.

I was feeling guilty and defensive. Which was absurd. Hannah, Ben, Jake, and I had looked for weeks before I signed the lease on this place.

I knocked.

So, it wasn’t Club Med. But it did have a central courtyard with a pool. And there was a senior center across the street that did mixers, outings, and Trivial Pursuit parties for single seniors. It wasn’t my fault if he didn’t go. Was I supposed to drag him there myself?

I knocked again.

Not to mention it was in Beverly Fucking Hills. This was no goddamned nursing home. I refused to feel guilty.

We waited.

“Maybe he’s asleep,” Willa said, setting down the Saks bag that held the expensive overcompensation gift I’d bought my father.

I looked at my watch. “No, sweetie. Grandpa knows we have a reservation. And he can’t wait to see you.”

I took out my keys and sifted through them, looking for Ray’s. It was shiny and bright and unused. “Okay, we’re goin’ in,” I said, trying to make the familiar dread, anxiety, and disappointment I felt sound like an adventure.

The apartment was dark and silent. The sharp slivers of sunlight that managed to sneak through the closed blinds did nothing but illuminate the layers of dust and lint that had settled on every surface. The place smelled of dirty laundry, bad breath, and sour milk. Shit. Either the cleaning lady I’d hired was falling down on the job or she and my father had had a falling out. Some time ago.