All the Stars in the Heavens (33 page)

“Won't give me a tumble,” Gable admitted. “And it's killing me.”

“I thought you were after Myrna.”

“I'm horsing around,” said Gable. “With the idea of Myrna.” Gable ducked out the door after Loretta.

Left behind, Spencer looked around the dressing room. Loretta's stock had risen since
Man's Castle.
Back then she had lowly but lovely white carnations in her dressing room; now she had graduated to roses, and lots of them. Her dressing room was bigger, this one the size of a single-story house. There was a living area, a kitchenette, and an elaborate makeup and hair room. He looked at the photographs on the mirror—a series of color shots of Loretta's face, with instructions for makeup beneath them. Tracy looked at them closely and shook his head. Even now, it was hard to look at her. Months had passed; he hoped he was over Loretta, who, it appeared, had moved on. Tracy had too. His home life was solid, and when he fancied it, Louise looked the other way, and he'd take a girl to dinner. The affairs were brief, but they kept his mind off his troubles and off Loretta, the only woman who might have ended his marriage.

Gable caught up with Loretta and Alda on the way to the set. “Miss Young, may I have a moment?”

Loretta looked around. She forced a smile, but was terrified that some press person would walk by, figure out the truth just by looking at her, and plaster it all over the newspapers.

“I'm on my way to the set, Clark,” she said breezily. “Call me sometime.”

“Sometime? I've been calling you ten times a day. Alda, have you delivered my messages?”

“Don't put her on the spot,” Loretta said quietly.

“Alda?” Gable implored.

“I deliver all phone messages.”

“Follow me,” Loretta said to Gable. She looked around for a private place to talk, and motioned to him. He followed her into the electrics trailer. She pulled the door shut behind them, and Gable put his arms around her.

Loretta wanted to kiss him. But she knew that if he spent any time
at all this close to her, he would know the truth, and she couldn't bear the idea of telling him about the baby. Yet.

Gable was direct. “I'm getting a divorce. I want you.”

“Myrna told me you chased her around Ciro's.”

“I was fooling around. It was nothing serious. I can't stop thinking about you.”

“Do you think about me when you're dancing with Elizabeth Allan at the Mocambo?”

“That's nothing.”

“It's something to me.”

“What am I supposed to do? Elizabeth is strictly a studio setup. It's just business. I'd rather be with you. But you won't see me. I want to be out on the town with you. I want to show you off. I want to drive you over to Santa Monica. We could walk on the beach. I want to take you up to Lake Arrowhead to my cabin. Don't you get it? I'm crazy about you.”

Loretta put her hands on his face. Gable had said the words she was longing to hear. In fact, his plea was better than the scene she had imagined. She wanted to trust him.

Alda rapped on the door.

“I have to go,” Loretta said softly.

Gable pulled Loretta close and kissed her. When their lips touched, it filled her with the kind of desire that had gotten her into trouble with him in the first place. He kissed her cheek, her neck, and her lips once more. Loretta closed her eyes and remembered how he had kissed her in the snow.

Alda rapped on the door again.

“Don't forget me,” Gable said before he opened the door.

As if I ever could, Loretta thought. With the sun behind him, Gable filled the frame of the door, just as he had on Mount Baker the first night when he'd offered her an extra blanket. He'd seemed bigger than the world outside the door that night, and the same was true on this day. How different things would be if she had followed her instincts and never let him in.

“I'm sorry, Miss Young is not in,” Alda said firmly into the phone.

Loretta stood in her bedroom between the French doors at Sunset House, looking out over the pool, which was being cleaned by a man in a blue uniform. Loretta watched as he pushed the long silver pole slowly in rows, vacuuming the bottom.

“I understand, Mrs. Gable. I have given her your messages. I'm sure if she needs to speak to you, she will call. . . . No, she is not avoiding you. . . . I will deliver the message when she returns home from work.” Alda hung up the phone.

“What is her problem? Besides me, of course.” Loretta sat on the bed.

“She wants you to hold a press conference and tell the world—those are her words—that you did not have an affair with Clark Gable on location. She gave me the exact wording for your press conference.”

“There's a brilliant use of American journalism. Let me make a list of all the men I'm not in love with. She's out of her mind.”

Georgie ran into the room, chased by her new puppy, a brown-and-white mutt named Pickles.

“If that dog goes on my new rug . . .” Loretta smiled.

“Mom will just get you a new one.”

“Good point.”

“Gretch, are you in love with Clark Gable?”

“Georgie! Who told you such a thing?”

“Lois Patranzino. Her mom reads
Photoplay
. They said you and Mr. Gable had a snowball romance.”

“Maybe she meant snowbound,” Alda said softly.

“It isn't true.”

“I'll tell her. Lois was pretty sure about it, though.”

“Don't you girls have better things to do than repeat stories?”

“Not really. Erika Vellucci told me that Jean Harlow is actually bald from the peroxide she puts on her hair, and that she wears a wig.”

“That's very rude of Erika.”

“Her mother's a hairdresser, and she said that peroxide kills the roots.”

“Well, you tell Erika and her mother that Miss Harlow has every hair on her head, and that she brushes it with a horsetail hairbrush from Paris every night. And I know because Miss Harlow gave me the same hairbrush when I admired her hair.”

“Okay.” Georgie skipped out.

Loretta and Alda heard a whistle from the garden. Loretta went to the French doors.

“Oh, good! You're home for dinner!” David Niven said from the garden.

“You look handsome.”

“Goldwyn loaned me out. I have a part in
Barbary Coast.
Don't ask. One line. I play a Cockney. You know I'm not Cockney.”

“What are you, David?”

“I'm bangers-and-mash British, of course.”

“I'm coming down to dinner. Meet me in the dining room.”

“Good girl. I want to catch up with you and the gaggle.”

Loretta had hardly seen Niven since she returned from Mount Baker. She heard that he had been dating Merle Oberon, who, she had heard, also had a crush on Gable. Sometimes Hollywood was too small a town, and Loretta wished to break free of it as much as David Niven wished to own it.

Niven took a seat at the head of the table at Gladys's invitation. “Where's Father Pass the Butter?”

“He had a prior engagement.”

“Poor him and lucky me,” Niven said as he spread the napkin in his lap. “The life of a priest, burying, marrying, and scaring.”

“We have to mind our manners when Father is here,” Georgie complained. “But not so much when you're here.”

“Feel free to be your unfettered self, Georgie.” Niv smiled.

“We're always happy when you can make it to dinner,” Gladys told him.

“Thank you. I've had such a rigorous filming schedule. You know how it goes when you're a one-line unfeatured player—you arrive at dawn and leave at midnight like a werewolf. Might as well be a piece of scenery.”

“One line isn't very much.” Georgie crossed her arms.

“How astute. Will you be my agent, Georgiana? I have a feeling you could do a better job than the one I've got.”

“I'm only eleven years old.”

“It's never too early to get your mitts on raw talent and turn it into a hamburger.”

“I don't think you're a star.”

Niv laughed. “Are you sure you haven't been talking to my agent?”

“You're being rude, Georgie,” Polly chided as she brought a platter of golden fried chicken to the table.

“A real star wouldn't live in our pool house.”

Sally placed a basket of hot biscuits on the table. “A lot you know, Georgie. When the Barrymores arrived in Hollywood, they lived in a tent until they could afford a hotel room, and look at them now. They are the greatest actors in the world, and they live in castles in the Hollywood Hills.”

“You owe Mr. Niven an apology,” Loretta told her.

“Sorry,” said Georgie.

“It's quite all right, Georgiana. I'm incapable of holding a grudge. One of the positive side effects of a pickled brain.”

Ruby brought a serving dish of okra to the table. “Sally always leaves the okra. Just because you don't have a taste for it doesn't mean the rest of them don't.”

“Sorry, Ruby.” Sally passed the okra to Niven.

“Thank you, Ruby. Dinner is delicious,” Loretta said, and her sisters chimed in.

“Better than any of the restaurants on the strip, Ruby,” Niven agreed.

“Why of course, Sir Niv. I know my talent. But the way you people act, you'd think I only serve food out of the can around here.” Ruby sniffed as she returned to the kitchen.

“Oh, no, Ruby,” Niven called after her, “we don't take you for granted. I know food out of a can. This is gourmet.” Niv looked at Georgie. “That's French for homemade.”

“Big deal,” Georgie said under her breath.

“Have you thawed out yet?” Niven asked Loretta.

“Almost.”

“While you were gone, something wonderful happened, Gretch.” Polly turned to her sister. “Carter asked me to marry him.”

“Polly! How thrilling!” Loretta hugged her sister.

“We're going to be married. Very small. We'll have a mass at church, then a dinner here at home.”

“Do I get to be in the wedding?” Georgie asked.

“Of course.”

“I'll have to scrounge up a date,” Sally said.

“That won't be hard,” Niven told her. “There's always me.”

“You won't have to go very far.” Georgie reached for the chicken.

“That's right, Georgie. I'll roll out of bed and come in my pajamas.”

The girls had a good laugh, but Loretta felt tears sting in her eyes. Her oldest sister was getting married. Carter Hermann and Polly Ann Young would have a high mass at the church; their union, a sacrament, would be blessed by the Holy Roman Church. The good news made Loretta feel worse about her own life, but she wouldn't ruin Polly's moment. Loretta would be happy for her. Polly had done everything right.

T
he top was down on Clark Gable's forest-green Jaguar convertible as he sped under the heavy purple blossoms of the jacaranda trees on Doheny before turning onto Sunset. Loretta lived in close proximity to him, yet he saw her so infrequently that she might as well have been on another continent.

Gable didn't spend much time in solitude, healing his romantic bruises or business dustups. Women of late, however, in all corners of his life, were a source of irritation. Loretta had disappeared from his life since the wrap of
The Call of the
Wild
. Minna Wallis, his agent, despite his protestations, had stepped aside after he won the Oscar because she felt he could do better, so Gable had signed with a new agent. Ria was dragging out the separation agreement, which attenuated the divorce proceedings to a crawl.

Clark Gable had regrets.

He flicked his hand-rolled cigarette onto Sunset at the stoplight and took a deep breath. As Gable drove up to the portico of Sunset House in his Duesenberg, Alda waved to him from the front steps.

“Is Gretchen here?” Gable asked through the open window.

“No.”

“It's just the mother?”

Alda nodded.

“You want to tell me what's going on?”

“I can't.”

“All right. Maybe you want to tell me why Gretchen still won't return my phone calls after she said she would.”

“I don't know.” Alda looked away, uncomfortable.

“She's back with Tracy, isn't she?”

“No, she isn't.”

“Then what's this about?”

“Could you park in the back?” Alda motioned to the service drive off the side of the house. “I'll meet you at the kitchen door.”

Gable chuckled to himself. He was making his first entrance into the Young house not through the front door but through the kitchen. If that wasn't a message, he didn't know what was. When it came to Loretta Young, he was on par with the gardener.

Gladys Belzer was waiting for Gable at the kitchen table. When he walked into the room, she immediately understood why her daughter had been captivated by him. While Gladys had seen Clark in the movies, she wasn't prepared for the impact of his presence in person. Gable translated from the silver screen to real life in a Panavision all his own. He resembled John Earle Young, Loretta's father and Gladys's ex-husband. Both men had star quality—but Gable had used his allure to worldwide effect, while John Young used his to seduce the laundress.

“Clark, this is Mrs. Belzer, Loretta's mother.”

Gable took Mrs. Belzer's hand and smiled. “It's a pleasure, Mrs. Belzer.”

Alda excused herself as Gladys poured Gable a glass of ice tea, and one for herself. He toasted her and took a sip. Gable was well mannered and appeared to be a man who would own up to his responsibilities, unlike Loretta's father, who was cowed by any serious demands made upon him.

“Are you southern, Mrs. Belzer?”

“North Carolina.”

“I can tell. Sweet tea.”

“Are you from the South?”

“Of a fashion. Southern Ohio.”

“Large family?”

“I'm an only child. My father and stepmother live with me now.”

“That's a hallmark of southern people. We take home with us wherever we go. We live with our families all of our lives. It's a gift to take care of our parents as they get older.”

“It's my responsibility.”

“There aren't a lot of young people who feel that way.”

“Mrs. Belzer, I have no idea why you called me here today, but if I may, I'd like to share something with you. I've tried to communicate with Gretchen, but she ignores me. She doesn't answer my letters or return my calls. I explained that I was separated from my wife, but that the divorce proceedings were slow going. That's not an excuse, it's a fact.”

“How do you feel about my daughter?”

“I'm crazy about her.”

“Well, we have a dilemma.”

“I'll stop badgering her if she doesn't want me. I get it. I make a lot of movies, and an on-set romance rarely sustains itself once everyone is back home. We're all grown-ups, we understand the game.”

Gladys realized that Gable must have told Ria that a romance blossomed on Mount Baker, and that's where she'd gotten the information to sic her press pack on Loretta.

“Your wife came to see me while you were on location.”

“I had no idea.”

“She accused Gretchen of stealing you away. She wanted me to intervene. Since Gretchen came home, she's been calling her incessantly. She wants her to give an interview and tell the world that you and Gretchen are not in love.”

“I will speak to Ria about this.” Gable thought about it; perhaps this was the reason Gretchen avoided him.

“Gretchen is getting it from all sides, Mr. Gable. We can navigate it on our end but all of this is beside the point.”

“If Gretchen is hurt by my actions, or anyone that I'm associated with, I'm sorry.”

“I will tell her. Thank you.”

“I'd like to tell her myself.” Gable was frustrated with Loretta. He hadn't seen her play games, or hard to get, as they shot
The Call of the Wild
; in fact, he believed she was a straight shooter. The current twist in her behavior made him think that he had pegged her wrong. “But there will come a moment, and it's soon, Mrs. Belzer, that I will stop trying.”

“Mr. Gable, she has good reason not to contact you. Gretchen is pregnant with your child.”

Stunned, Gable sat for a moment, taking in the information. His mind went clinical whenever he was hit with something so deeply emotional that his heart could not withstand the information to process it. He would appear stoic when inside, his emotions raged. He felt many things in that moment. He had clarity about Loretta; he understood why she might not want to contact him or be seen with him, but he was also afraid of what could happen if Ria found out, and he was sad that he could not be happy about the news due to the circumstances. All of these feelings added up to a state of confusion and frustration.

News of out-of-wedlock pregnancies was nothing new to Gable. He'd been hit with paternity suits, which the studio settled quietly and efficiently, the same way he exited most of his love affairs. But this was different; he cared. This should have been joyful news because he loved Loretta.

Gable stood up, went to the sink, and looked out the window. He was a married man with a wife who refused to let him go. He had married a woman beyond her childbearing years; there was no possibility of a baby of his own with her, and he'd known that when he married her. He had three stepchildren with Ria, and was, in his fashion, good with them. Gable had settled on the notion that if there were to be children of his own, they would come in the future, down the line when his career had ebbed, after he had milked Hollywood for all he could, and could leave it altogether with enough cash to last the rest of his life. He had a simple dream. Gable planned to buy a ranch and farm, raise children, love their mother, and be happy. Ria was not a part of his long-term picture.

Gable leaned against the sink. “Gretchen was married. I thought she knew how to protect herself.”

“If I had to guess, I would say that neither of you was thinking clearly on Mount Baker. And as for protection, we're Catholic.”

“I know all about that, Mrs. Belzer,” Gable said wearily. “Where we take our communion doesn't do us much good now.”

“No, I suppose it doesn't. What do you propose we do?”

“What can I do? I'm still married to Ria. My lawyer tells me that I have to remain separated from her for a year, and beyond that, the divorce could take another two years.”

“So your answer is nothing.”

“Mrs. Belzer, you've just hit me with an enormous bit of news. I am trying to figure out what to do—not so much what to say to you, but what to do.”

Gladys looked at him. “You agree that we have to keep this situation private.”

“Absolutely.”

“You must not tell anyone. Your wife calls here constantly, and we ignore her. She must not find out about the baby.”

“She won't.”

“We have a plan.”

“What is it?”

“She'll finish her work on
The Crusades
, and then we'll go to Europe.”

“She'll have the baby there?”

“We'll tell the press that she's been working nonstop since she was four years old, and she's exhausted. Our physician will diagnose her with an illness. We'll stay in Europe long enough for any rumors to die down.”

Gable was frustrated. He wanted to do something, but he wasn't sure what. Loretta had sidelined him; he felt powerless. “Is there anything I can do?”

“I don't know.” Gladys eyes filled with tears. “I would rather that you were my son-in-law and that this had happened within the sacrament of marriage. I want to be happy about this—I want the whole family to be happy.”

“I'm sorry, Mrs. Belzer.”

“Gretchen has a big heart. I knew it would get her in trouble someday, but I never thought this would be the trouble.”

The blue sky over Bel Air was strewn with wispy clouds that floated overhead like white feathers. The light streamed through the trees behind Sunset House in threads of gold. David Niven sighed as he looked out the window of the pool house, sad to leave the place that had been home as he transitioned from a day-rate extra to an employed actor with an agent and a brand-new studio contract.

David Niven had enjoyed his time in the Belzer/Young compound. He had been comfortable, his laundry washed and pressed, his room kept spotless. Hot meals were on time and delicious, and when he took them in the dining room, Niv was surrounded by gorgeous women. The pool house was his notion of Shangri-la.

As he folded the last of his clothing into his suitcase, Loretta knocked on the door.

“Must you go?” Loretta sat down on the bed, surveying Niv's belongings.

“I must. Merle Oberon has a terrible temper, and she has decided that I can no longer retain my membership in the YB Sorority. She thinks there's a conflict of interest between my friendship with you and her sexual needs. She can't understand how I live here and keep things platonic. And frankly, neither can I.”

“You have to go, then.”

“Either that or she'll kill my family. My sister Grizel can be a pain in the arse, but death is too steep a punishment for a lousy personality, myopia bordering on blindness, and a congenital neediness.”

Loretta laughed. “Poor Grizel.”

“Don't worry about her. Worry about Merle. I live in fear of her, you know. She's a pistol, and she owns several. I do what I'm told. She insists I move to the beach and live with the boys—too much temptation at Sunset House for her liking. She'd rather me live with a couple of actors. Thinks I'll be safe.”

“Will you?”

“Of a stripe. I'm hoping it will be fun. I'll be pickled by autumn, but I will have a roof over my head.”

Loretta began to cry. Niv dropped his pressed shirt and went to her.

“Oh, no, you're not in love with me too?”

Loretta laughed through her tears.

Niv knelt next to her and took her hand. “Is this going to be one of those awful Jeanette MacDonald farewell scenes with all the weeping and none of the screwing? Must I sing my way out of your pain?”

Loretta wiped away her tears. “No, no.”

“What can I do for you, my dear girl?”

Loretta laughed.

“Why in God's name is that funny to you?”

“It just is, David. Your eyes. They get like big blue golfballs when you care.”

“Big and bulging like a blowfish. Hmm. That's attractive.” Niven stood and went back to his packing.

“Will you be my friend always?”

“You don't even have to ask. You have been so kind to me, Gretchen, it's as if I was your long-lost brother. And the irony is: you already have a long-lost brother, that phantom Jackie. So you see, I take my role in your life very seriously.”

“I've gotten myself into some trouble.”

“Go to confession. It's the only reason to be Catholic. You have the joy of sin and the instant relief of contrition. What a system!”

“I'm serious. I'm in trouble.”

“I hope you stole. Stealing is one of the great sins. You get something out of it, and the theft itself is an art form, like a dance. What did you take? You were on loan to Warner's recently. Let me guess. A bracelet from Bette Davis's paste collection? You could have done better. Bette isn't known for her jewelry.”

“No, nothing like that. It involves your friend, Mr. Gable.”

“What is it?”

“I'm having his baby.”

Niven, who could find the humor in any situation, suddenly couldn't. He was speechless, sobered by the news because he knew what this meant to Loretta.