Cheat and Charmer (3 page)

How on earth, she wondered now, as the aspirin eased her headache, had she managed to dance with Irv and Jake or down even one glass of champagne? More astonishing still was how she, who was almost constitutionally unable to keep a secret from Jake, hadn’t said a word to him when he came home from the studio late that afternoon, elated, expansive, joking with the guys on the pool crew, playing a brief game of catch with Peter, then thumping upstairs and locking the bedroom door, grabbing her by the crotch and steering her to his bed, where he insisted on some highly athletic pre-party efforts at starting the first of the three new babies (one per picture) he’d promised her in light of his newly secure situation at Marathon. After their lovemaking, while she raised her legs and rested them against the bedroom wall, he had fallen into a deep sleep with the bedspread pulled high over his head. When she woke him up to get ready for the evening, he asked her to keep him company. So after her shower, dressed in a light blue bathrobe, she went through his dressing corridor and the extra bedroom he used as an office to his bathroom, announcing her presence with “ ‘Here I am, all freshly b-b-b-bathed and scented,’ ” in imitation of Jessica Tandy’s soft southern accent, and perched herself on the closed toilet seat. She sipped Scotch on the rocks and smoked a cigarette while he regaled her with the dirty lyrics he had written to “It Could Happen to You,” which he crooned in a Yiddish accent. She watched him shave and breathed in the scent of Yardley’s gooey green brilliantine, which he slicked on over his thinning hair, and broke up when he grabbed the Oscar from the shelf he’d had installed for it and kissed it on the mouth. Later, when she came downstairs, hair, clothes, and makeup in place, she found him sitting at the kitchen table with Gussie and the kids, stealing bites from their Gussie Fried Chicken and Gussie Sugar Rice and telling them about plans for his next movie—the locations he would use, the visits to the set he would arrange for them, the movie stars they were going to meet.

She had said nothing during the long drive out Sunset to the Palisades, nothing throughout the long glittering evening, the smiles, the hugs, the jokes, the congratulations, the dinner, and the dancing. Her head was still
throbbing, but it was time to go back to the party. Standing before the mirror and applying bright red arcs of lipstick to her full mouth, she looked hard at herself and adjusted her expression until it became the smooth empty plate of a party face, then she pressed a handkerchief between her lips, blotting the fresh lipstick, snapped her clutch, and went back to the Engels’ patio. Anya had disappeared from the table and, it seemed, from the party itself. Dinah wasn’t surprised; Anya hardly ever lasted out a whole evening.

The party was still going on at one. Enchanted by the spring air, the guests danced on and on, and told stories and forgot that the maid was asleep in the den, her aching feet propped up on the ottoman, and the TV long since gone to snow, while the children threw off blankets, and the neighborhood cats prowled through the ivy, searching for mice and momentarily stopping the cricket song.

Eventually, however, the band stopped playing. The musicians packed up their instruments, and Dinah and Jake, after the requisite farewells, were sprung into the night. The parking valet, a blond kid with a crew cut, brought them their dark green Cadillac and, stifling a yawn, held the door open for Dinah as Jake slipped him a buck. Moments later, the Laskers were wending their way down the serpentine streets of Pacific Palisades and soon came to a gentle stop at Capri and Sunset, where the traffic light glowed red. Showing no fatigue and whistling contentedly and vaguely off-key, Jake reached over to stroke the back of Dinah’s neck. “Lovely evening, darling, wasn’t it?”

“Mmm,” she murmured. Her hands clutched her purse.

“That was a helluva speech he made. Actually, I was kind of embarrassed. If I believed everything he said I’d be the biggest schmuck in America.”

She opened the purse but took out only a cigarette. “I think he meant it.”

“Honestly?”

“Yeah, honestly.”

Just after dinner, looking, with his bow tie and slightly rounded shoulders, exactly like a college president, Engel had gone over to the microphone and tapped it with the bandleader’s baton. “Ladies and gentlemen, friends and members of the Marathon family and this great industry of
ours,” he began. “Tonight we celebrate, just among ourselves, without reporters, photographers, and sculptured ice swans, the achievements of a man who has made Marathon Pictures synonymous with quality entertainment. In picture after picture, Jake Lasker has touched the hearts of real people. My friends, Jake Lasker knows how to make America laugh. Jake Lasker keeps alive the one thing without which no democracy can survive. I am speaking of
irreverence
: the ridiculing of authority, the poke in the ribs at pretension and folly, scoundrels and fools—and the rest of my relatives. But seriously, friends, in America today humor and democracy go hand in hand. If we forget that, then we forget ourselves, and that’s when the windbags, the fanatics, and the pious frauds take over. I won’t name names. We all know who they are. They’re dangerous. Very dangerous. Well, let
Cousin Jonnycake
tell ’em a thing or two. What else was this country built on but the native shrewdness of country bumpkins like Cousin Jonnycake, or the guts and persistence of greenhorns like my father? Like millions of others, Lionel Engel landed in this country at the age of sixteen with two bucks in his pocket and not a single word of English. And where did he end up? With a major studio, his own table at Hillcrest, and a corned beef sandwich created in his name!

“So just think about it, friends: where would we be without the little guy, the guy who outsmarts the city slickers? That’s what makes
Cousin Jonnycake
the American classic it is. You could send that picture all over the world and say to millions of people, ‘Now,
that’s
America.’

“So—” He picked up a glass of champagne from a tray held at shoulder height by a Negro butler in livery and white gloves. “Here’s to you, Jake Lasker—to you and your wonderful wife, Dinah, and your wonderful kids—and your example to all of us that Hollywood’s a place where wholesome family life goes hand in hand with first-class family entertainment. And here’s to many more wonderful years and classic pictures we know you’re gonna make right on the back lot of Marathon, because I’m gonna hold you to every last word of your deal! You belong here, and we’re for you one thousand percent.”

“You mean that’s my cut of the gross?” Jake piped up. “I can live with that!”

Now, recalling the laughter and applause, Dinah gnawed the inside of her cheek and sighed.

“Tired, sweetheart?” he asked.

She sighed again.

“Are you okay, darling?” He took his eyes off the road and scrutinized her face. “You looked a little pale tonight. You don’t think you’re preggers, do you?”

They were at the stop where the UCLA campus torqued away from Sunset. To the left he could see the ghostly white of the statue of the Virgin Mary on the front lawn of Marymount School. Aware of the tightness of his belt, he was looking forward to getting home, taking off his clothes, and putting on the pajama top and boxer shorts that constituted his sleep-wear. He also had very tightly fitting teeth, with no spaces in between, and as he waited for the light to change, not pressing Dinah to answer his query, he slid his thumbnail between two molars and tried to dislodge a piece of food.

“I’m not pr-pr-pr-preggers, Jake.”

“Oh, too bad, darling.”

“But something did happen today.”

“Oh?” he said distractedly.

She opened her purse and took out the pink document. “A guy in a gray hat came to the front door today and served me.” She rustled the piece of paper. “It’s a subpoena.”

“The Committee?”

“Yeah.”

He glanced over at her. “And?”

“They want me to testify in Washington, in three weeks.”

The light changed. Dinah put the document back in her purse and snapped it shut. Jake pressed down on the accelerator. “Well,” he said, “as your mother used to say, ‘Oh-shit-oh-dear.’ You waited all day and all night to the end of the party to tell me, didn’t you, honey?”

He reached over and stroked her neck and shoulder.

She felt tears welling up, but she didn’t want to cry.

“Listen,” she said. “I’ll just go and do it. I don’t care. I don’t want anything to happen to you or the kids.”

“Wait, honey. We’ve got to talk about it. You can’t just decide like that. You’d have to live with it for the rest of your life.”

“So?”

“You don’t mean that, honey.”

“Sure I do. It’s s-s-s-simple, Jake. If I don’t …”

“Sweetheart. Calm down. We’ll talk about it at home.”

With his right hand still planted on the nape of her neck, he steered
with his left hand, his elbow jutting out the window, weaving almost drunkenly from lane to lane, as if he were the only driver on the road.

“We are not going to lose everything we’ve worked for just because I spent a f-f-f-few years trying to get a secondhand college education.”

“Shh. When we get home we’ll sit down and have some hot chocolate and discuss this like two rational people.”

“I don’t care about being rational, and there’s nothing to discuss!” She wanted the whole matter settled right then, at that instant. The thought of waiting, thinking it over, having discussions, weighing pros and cons, filled her with dread. “I’ll do it, and then we’ll go on just like before. I won’t let them ruin our life. Or your career,” she said.

“What makes you think this has anything to do with me? There’s nothing on that subpoena that says anything about me, is there?”

“Oh, Jake, come on.
I
don’t matter to them. Any idiot can f-f-f-figure that out. If
I
refuse to testify,
you’ll
be up shit creek. They’ll blacklist you. We’ll have to sell the house and move. Though God only knows where. To Mexico, maybe, like the Allens and the Salanders and the Gorkys.”

“So? What’s so terrible about that? I can write anywhere.”

“Where would you get work? We’d starve, have chronic turista, and live like holy fucking martyrs for the rest of our lives. Angry forever and grateful to friends for sending us secondhand cashmere sweaters, like the ones Evelyn Morocco and I sent Pat Gorky in Cuernavaca last week.”

“Well, Mexico’s out. It’s gotta be someplace with a delicatessen.”

He yawned, a loud, luxurious, full-bodied yawn, the yawn of a tired child who has had a long, good day and expects to have another one tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that—forever. The yawn was real, but in every other way he was performing. He had no intention of letting her know it, but the subpoena was a shock. He hadn’t been expecting it, but he had decided, in the instant following Dinah’s announcement, exactly what he would have to do.

“Honey, relax. I’ll go in and see Irv first thing tomorrow morning.”

“And what do you think he’s going to say? You know damn well he’s completely knuckled to the Committee. That’s why that speech was pure horseshit.”

“I thought you said he meant it.”

“The part about you, yes. The rest—forget it, Ch-Ch-Ch-”

“Charlie,” he said, completing her sentence.

“Look, darling,” he said, moving his hand to her thigh. “We’ll face this just like we do everything else: together. We’re one person, you and I. One body. If you’re in trouble I’m in trouble. Whatever happens to you happens to me.”

“So you always say,” she said, giving in to a leaden fatigue. She put the cigarette out, slid over, and rested her head against his shoulder.

At home, she left him behind in the kitchen while she made her way to the den, where she found Gussie sleeping in her uniform, her cheek against her fist, her long legs in their lace-up shoes stretched out on the ottoman. On the television, slender phantoms hunched and crouched as they careened around the track in
Roller Derby
, Gussie’s favorite late-night program. Dinah gently touched her shoulder. “We’re home, Gus.”

“All right, Mrs. Lasker,” Gussie said, waking instantly. “Let’s go up then.”

An artful arrangement of blue irises rose from a crystal vase at the center of the Early American table next to the love seat. Gussie leaned over and began to gather up the cut stems.

“Leave them, Gus. They can wait till morning. The fl-fl-flowers look great. You always do such wonderful things with them. Ready?”

They went upstairs together, and then parted at the landing, Gussie going to her room above the garage and Dinah to the master bedroom, where, as she had expected, she found Lorna asleep in Jake’s bed.

“Mommy,” the child murmured as Dinah gathered her up in her arms. Jake stood on the landing, holding a tray with two cups of hot chocolate. “Want me to take her?” he asked, holding out the tray. She shook her head. “Maybe next year. She’s still small enough for me to do it.”

“Do you think by the time she gets to college she’ll be sleeping all night in her own bed?” Dinah smiled. Jake had made this crack before, usually when he was the one carrying the warm bundle of sleeping child back to her own bed.