All the Stars in the Heavens (56 page)

Kay Gable was around five months pregnant when she called the ambulance to come to the ranch in Encino. Gable could not sleep.
He had pain in his arm, he was feverish, and he refused to go to the hospital. Kay forced him to go anyway.

Kay stood in the hallway outside her husband's room.

“How bad is it?” she asked the doctor.

“He had a massive heart attack. But he's very strong. We think we can help him.”

Kay's eyes filled with tears. “You have to. He has to help me raise our baby.”

“Don't lose faith. You got him here in time.”

Kay went into Gable's room and sat by the bed. Gable opened his eyes, and when he saw his wife, he smiled.

“Ma, I want to get up,” he said.

“You stay in that bed, or I'll kill you,” Kay teased. She ran her fingers through his thick gray hair.

“How's our baby?”

“Growing.” Kay placed Clark's hand on her stomach.

“I got to get out of here and build the crib.”

“You've got plenty of time, Pa. Don't worry about your chores.”

Gable took Kay's hand and kissed it. “You've made me happy.”

“We have years ahead of us,” Kay promised.

“You more than me.”

“I don't want years without you in them.”

“You need your rest. Go and lie down.”

“I don't want to leave you.”

“Doc says I'm fine. I'm checking out in the morning. Now go.”

Kay kissed him tenderly. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Look. I got a stack of magazines here with photos of me looking jowly and fat.”

“But they ran the Rhett Butler.”

“Him. Pain in my ass.”

Kay laughed. “Honey, I'm making a blanket for the baby.”

“Pink or blue?”

“Yellow, to be safe. I want to name the baby John Clark Gable.”

“I like it. But what if it's a girl?”

“I've always loved the name Gretchen.”

“Gretchen?” Gable's eyebrows arched.

“It's my middle name. Do you like it?”

“I like it just fine.”

Clark kissed his wife and sent her to rest. He flipped on the television set. The program was about paintings in the White House. Gable remembered his friend Luca Chetta, the great scene painter. He had a feeling of doom as he remembered how Chet had died suddenly of a heart attack.

The noise of the television bothered him, so Gable turned it off. He had a funny feeling in his head. He was dizzy, but he figured that was the inactivity, lying in the bed all day. He couldn't wait to get out of this hospital.

Gable opened up the newspaper. He closed it. He leaned back on the pillow and thought about his wife, and the baby on the way.

Gretchen.

He remembered a raft on a river, and saving a girl with gray eyes, who had his baby. He remembered the years. Carole. The war. A royal flush with Hattie. The chocolate brown hood of a new Packard. A blue sky. A silver marlin.

The dizzy feeling turned to a throbbing pain in his head and spread through his body. He felt as though he were falling through space and time. He tried to speak, but no words would come. He opened his fist to reach, but he could not hang on. He let go.

A nurse passed the open door to Gable's room. She took one look at him and knew something was wrong. She rushed to his side. She took his pulse. He was gone.

Alda slipped into the back pew of the Church of the Recessional at Forest Lawn. Clark Gable's casket was covered in a sheath of red roses, with a small crown of burgundy roses anchored in the center. Gable's favorite Strauss waltzes were played as the mourners took their seats.

Kay Gable walked down the aisle in a black suit, hat, and veil. Alda recognized a lot of the old faces from MGM, men who had worked with her husband and Clark. As the pallbearers filed in, she felt a hand on her shoulder.

“Alda,” Spencer Tracy said. “I got old.”

“We are all getting old.”

“Not you. Never the Italians,” he whispered. “How's Gretch?”

“Come see us.”

Tracy nodded and joined Robert Taylor, Jimmy Stewart, Howard Strickling, Eddie Mannix, Ray Hommes, and Eric Dunliner by the casket. As they lifted Gable's casket, even the men wept. When a man's man dies, it brings out the deepest feelings in everyone, especially the stoic men. Kay Gable rose to kiss the casket a final time. Alda remembered when Gable stood up for her and Luca when they got married. Clark Gable had been their best man. It was an appropriate title for him. It would be how Alda would remember him.

Loretta picked up the paper in her office at NBC. She was scanning the news when her eyes fell on an item in Louella Parson's column.

Kay Gable gave birth to John Clark Gable on March 20, 1961, in Beverly Hills. Mother and son are well. Gable predeceased his only child by a few months. His final movie,
The Misfits
, was released on February 1, in honor of Gable's 60th birthday.

No, it wasn't in honor of his birthday, Loretta thought; it was in pursuit of big box office. Loretta shook her head, remembering how, when Jean Harlow died, MGM had rushed to release
Saratoga
seven weeks after she died to capitalize on the grief of her fans. Twenty years later, and the studio bosses were still up to their old tricks, profit over decorum.

Loretta got in her car to drive home for dinner with Tom. Instead of going over the hill, she found herself driving to Forest Lawn Cemetery.

Every night before sleep, she remembered her conversation with Clark in her dressing room when he gave her his advice about Judy. She remembered how his hands felt in hers when he said he loved her.

Loretta parked behind the Great Mausoleum. She went inside. The cool chamber had the scent of carnations as she made her way
through the crypts. She read the names as though she were searching the stacks in a library. When she found Carole Lombard, she found Clark. The finality of his passing became real to her. She knelt before his crypt, bowed her head, and as she had done every day of her life since falling in love with him, she said ten Hail Marys for the repose of his sweet soul. When she rose to her feet, Loretta took a moment to place both hands on his crypt. To his right was Carole; to his left, Kay's crypt was already marked.

“I never really had you,” Loretta whispered, “but none of us did.”

It bothered her that Kay's son was listed as Gable's only child; it wasn't true. But she still had no idea how to set the record straight, or if she ever would.

The mass at Good Shepherd during Lent in February 1965 was standing room only. Judy sat with her mother and took her hand after communion. Loretta looked over at her daughter and marveled at what a beauty she had become, inside and out, as a mother, as a daughter, and now as her friend. Judy would turn thirty that November, and it seemed as though it couldn't be possible.

As the members of the congregation filed out, Loretta fished for change in her purse.

“You want to light a candle, Mom?”

“Sure. Do you?”

Judy nodded. “How about at the shrine of the Blessed Lady?”

Loretta snapped her purse shut and rose from her seat. She followed her daughter out of the pew. Judy genuflected, and Loretta did the same. When Loretta rose from the kneeling position, she was face to face with a lovely blonde in a blue pillbox hat and matching bouclé suit. Her eyes were sky blue. Loretta knew instantly it was Kay Gable.

“Hello, Kay.” Loretta smiled.

“Hello, Loretta.” Kay smiled back at her, but it was a polite greeting, not particularly warm. “This is my son, John Clark Gable.” An adorable boy, around five years old, in a navy suit with short pants and white oxfords, was busy staring off at the statues. Kay tugged her son's arm, and the boy looked at Loretta and nodded.

“This is my daughter, Judy,” Loretta said to Kay.

Kay nodded and walked out of the church with her son.

“Mrs. Gable is too old to have a boy that small,” Judy whispered.

“She's a few years younger than me.” Loretta bit her lip. She knew more about Kay than she'd admit. She remembered that there was a three-year age difference between them: Kay was forty-nine, Loretta fifty-two.

“You're a grandmother.”

“Anytime is always a good time to have a baby—old or young.”

“I guess.” Judy shrugged.

Loretta drove Judy back to her house, where Gladys had made brunch after mass. She turned to Judy. “I'll meet up with you later. I have an errand to run.” Loretta watched as she walked to the front door. She turned and looked at her mother and waved before going inside.

As Loretta drove off, she thought it was odd that Kay Gable was attending mass at Good Shepherd. She was a member of Saint Cyril's; everyone knew she had baptized her son there.

Had she come to Good Shepherd to show Loretta her son with Clark, or was it just an accident, one of those strange show business coincidences? Either way, Judy wasn't wise to Kay, and surely did not suspect that John Clark Gable was her half brother.

No matter how many times over the years Loretta revisited Judy's paternity in the confessional, there was no epiphany on the subject, no resolution. It remained a dreary, dark corner in her subconscious and a heavy burden on her soul. She dreamed about Gable, and the dreams were always chaotic. Once he held her hands as they navigated the river at Mount Baker on a raft; in another, he called to her in an empty mansion, and she searched for him room to room and couldn't find him, only her baby sleeping in a dresser drawer. Loretta had consulted so many priests on the subject that she couldn't count them. It was an ongoing source of frustration for her, but no one in her life knew it.

Polly and Sally and Georgiana knew the truth, but it had been so long since it was discussed it seemed that they too had almost forgotten the story. They were busy in their lives and marriages, with children of their own. The fear that Loretta had instilled in them on
the subject of secrecy was so deep that it stayed buried next to the truth of their father John Young, or with the divorce decree rendered to their stepfather Belzer.