All the Stars in the Heavens (55 page)

“That's what it is, Elena. It's an obsession. It's a calling.”

“Like becoming a nun.”

“I can't imagine Luca without a paintbrush in his hand. He taught me about form and line and light and shadow. I looked at the position of the sun differently, the way the moon moved, how it left a trail in the sky, if you knew how to look for it between the shadows.”

“What an Italian way to live, to see the world and the sky that way.”

“We were all we had. Each other. We had time to look at things, to take them in.”

“An artist's life. You had it too.”

“Because of him. Your brother was an artist down to his bones, and it was my privilege to observe him at work. It's what made me fall in love with him in the first place.”

Polly draped her leg over the side of Loretta's canvas chair, taking a bite of Loretta's sandwich. Sally stood close by with her hands on her hips, holding a Brownie camera to get a shot of Loretta as she came out of the doors used on her television show.

“Cue Loretta,” the stage manager hollered. The lights on the set poured on, streams of pink and white bathed the stage. Loretta opened a set of French doors trimmed with brass details and walked through to center stage. She wore a yellow organza cocktail dress embroidered with black velvet sunflowers. Her hair was cropped in the Italian style; her lips, a bright magenta, were courant.

Every week, Loretta opened her show by going through the French doors on her soundstage, dressed in a glamorous dress designed by Jean Louis and greeting her audience at home.

“Cut!” the stage manager called out.

“Is that it?” Polly asked.

“For Loretta.”

“When do they need us?”

“In a minute.”

“Over here, Georgie!” Sally called out to their baby sister.

Georgiana, now a mother, smiled and made her way over to her sisters, skipping over the wires. Georgie was a homemaker who had left show business to raise her family, but you couldn't tell from her movie star looks. She was as lovely as any ingénue working.

“Come on, girls, let's go.” Loretta motioned to her sisters.

Sally, Polly, and Georgie gathered around Loretta to have their picture snapped by the show photographer.

“Mama will love this,” Loretta said.

“Who are you kidding? You're just superstitious. You want to win another Emmy.”

“Well, we did have our picture made before the first one,” Loretta demurred.

“That's all right. We want you to win, sis.” Polly smiled.

Loretta's sisters were proud of her. She was the first woman to star in and produce her own television show, which caused Joan Crawford to call her old friend and tell her that for the first time in her life, she had been wrong. Joan promised to come off her high horse about the movies, and down to earth where television was king. From now on, she was going to listen to Loretta.

The attention had shifted from the Young sisters to the new generation. At twenty-three years old, Judy Lewis was engaged to be married to a young television director named Joe, who had worked on
The Loretta Young Show
.

Alda sorted through the response cards. She pulled a regret card from the pile: “Mr. and Mrs. Clark Gable will be unable to attend.” A couple of years before, after his short, unhappy marriage to Lady Sylvia Ashley, Gable had married Kay Spreckles, who had two children. It was an old friendship; Gable had known Kay when she was a young starlet in Hollywood in the 1940s. Just as in any small town, eventually the eligible bachelors and single ladies cycle through, and re-meet, and sometimes sparks fly anew. They did for Gable and Kay.

Alda was troubled by the regret. Gable and Loretta had been on friendly terms since they made
Key to the City
eight years earlier.

“Alda, have you seen my mom?” Judy asked.

“She's at the studio.”

“How are the invites coming?”

“You're going to have a standing-room-only crowd.”

“Anybody say no?”

“Here's the regret pile.”

Alda handed the cards to Judy. She shuffled through them and stopped to look at the Gables'.

“I remember meeting Mr. Gable.”

“You do?”

“He came to see me when I was still in high school.”

“Your mom and he are old friends.”

“I think she dated him. You were there. Did she?”

“Your mother had so many beaus.”

“No one could keep up. I know, I know. But wasn't Mr. Gable a special one?”

“Why would you think that?”

“She can't talk about him.”

“Your mom dated Spencer Tracy,” Alda offered, getting the conversation off Gable.

“I know. I can't see that one, though. Not her type. Mom is strictly the tall, dark, handsome type.”

“Like you.” Alda smiled.

“I am my mother's daughter.” Judy laughed.

Alda watched Judy walk out of the office and jump into her car. She wanted to tell Judy the truth, but it was not her place. It was time to confront Loretta one final time, to do what Alda thought was the only thing to do—the right thing—to tell Judy the story of how she came to be.

Gable skippered the sleek white speedboat from Naples to Capri over the turquoise waves of the Tyrrhenian Sea. The sun glittered on the surface like speckles of diamond dust. Kay Gable held onto the rig,
the wind blowing in her platinum hair as they hit waves in the open sea. Gable smiled at his wife before he turned to guide the boat into the Marina Grande at the foothills of Capri.

Gable was fifty-eight years old, hired to play a lover to the starlet Sophia Loren in
It Started In
Naples.
He laughed when he got the offer; he couldn't believe anyone would still pay him to star in a romantic movie and give him the most popular actress in the world as his costar, an international sex symbol who happened to be thirty years younger than he.

“Where are we going?” Gable turned to his wife.

“Up the mountain.” Kay, a petite blonde in her early forties, had vowed to go anywhere in the world Gable wanted to go, and promised to be with him on location. Gable had finally found the woman whose sole purpose in life was to take care of him. Kay adored him, and he was crazy about her.

Kay had been to Capri, and she wanted her husband to see it, but she also had a mission in mind. As they jumped into the caravan jeep that would take them to the top of the mountain, Kay kissed her husband.

“What's the big treat here?”

Once on the mountaintop, Gable helped Kay out of the jeep and onto the glorious town square that overlooked the Mediterranean. Bougainvillea draped the limestone walls in bursts of purple and hot pink, while beach roses in shades of magenta covered the sandstone walls.

Kay took Gable by the hand to a small shop, Da Costanzo's, off the town square. Gable had to duck to enter the tiny shop, filled with shoes. Kay rang the bell on the desk.

“Costanzo!” she shrieked, throwing her arms around the young proprietor. Costanzo was compact and small, his black hair receding, though he was still in his thirties.

“Clark, this is Constanzo. I knew his father years ago when I was a girl—my parents brought me here, and he made me sandals. They were the most comfortable shoes I ever owned. Costanzo, my husband's feet hurt. Make him shoes. I'll be back in two hours.”

“Where are you going?” Gable asked.

“To get my hair done.”

Gable sat down with Costanzo and looked around the shop.

“Is something wrong with your feet?”

“I'm old.”

“That's not a problem.”

“Not for you.”

“I'm going to make you a pair of slip-on loafers. You like suede or leather?”

“Suede.”

“Blue, brown, or black?”

“Black.”

“You like brass bar or no brass bar?”

“No brass bar.”

“Follow me.”

Gable followed Costanzo to the garden behind the shop. He pulled up a seat for Gable and then poured Gable a glass of limoncello.

“What's this?” Gable sniffed the glass.

“I make it myself. It's booze.”

“Now you've made me a happy man.”

Gable sat back, lit a cigarette, and sipped the limoncello as Costanzo measured his feet.

“
Kay e bellissima!
”

“Thank you. She's wife number five.”

“Five? You're crazy!”

“No kidding. Let me tell you about divorce. I've had three of them. It's like a twenty-dollar bill. You keep tearing off a piece, a piece for this one, a piece for that one, and pretty soon you're broke.”

“That's why I only married one woman.”

“Do you like her?”

“She's my life.”

“You're lucky.”

“No, no, she's lucky. Look what she got.”

“I've used that strategy and it got me nowhere.”

“Who did you love the most? Out of the five.”

“The current one, of course. Kay. Your friend.”

“Good answer.”

“I'm very grateful. I'm almost sixty, and I have some wonderful memories.”

“You're going to have a baby.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Kay is going to have a baby.”

“How do you know?”

“I have a feeling.”

“Are you a shoemaker or a fortune-teller?”

“Both.”

“I'm going to come back to this island some day with my baby.”

“I'll make the baby shoes.”

“I'm going to hold you to it.”

Loretta cut the rose deep at the stem. The petals were closed tight. She added the flower to her cutting basket. She planned to make a large bouquet to bring to Judy at the hospital where she had just given birth to her first baby.

Loretta thought about calling Clark when Judy gave birth to their first grandchild, Maria, on November 16, 1959. She was a perfect baby, and Loretta would have loved to share the news, but she couldn't. Gable was on location in Arizona shooting
The Misfits
, his wife Kay was with him, and after they sent their regrets to Judy's wedding, Loretta had given up any hope of bringing their families together. Kay made it perfectly clear when she didn't send a gift that any further contact was not welcome. This was nothing new in Hollywood. The new wives always set the social agendas. Any small acknowledgement of Judy would have been welcome, but it was not to be. Loretta felt better about never having shared the truth with her daughter. Perhaps Clark had been right so many years ago when he said that the truth would only make Judy unhappy. Judy had her own family now; what good could possibly come from opening old wounds? Loretta surveyed her rose garden. She had cut at least two dozen roses from the patch, but the garden was so lush, it was as if she hadn't taken any.