Crowned Heads (17 page)

After Harvey came “Brownie” Brown (a little better, Lorna Brown), a packager of frozen foods. They had two children, Jeffrey and Carrie; eventually broke up, reconciled, took a “second honeymoon” cruise to the South Seas and Far East, broke up again, divorced. By that time she’d worked her way back from Van Nuys to the other side of the hill; from ranch style to English Tudor. Then there was Cape Cod, followed by Southern Plantation. There were plenty of men: Jerry the jockey, who used to hit her; Wes the stunt man, who hit her harder; and Stan the baseball player, who didn’t hit her but would have liked to. In between, an assortment of musicians, small-time directors, actors. She hadn’t really known any of them, any more than they’d known her. Why was it always so difficult for someone really to get to know her? Somehow it didn’t matter in the end; she was a rolling stone, and what moss she gathered was mostly accidental. She did, however, learn to do centerpieces out of vegetables—flowerettes of broccoli and cauliflower, and little cherry tomatoes for accent. Pillar to post, man to man, and she kept looking for the one she could really love, really respect, really worship, but somehow it never panned out. She was a man’s woman and she needed a man to tell her what to appreciate; she never dared laugh at the theater until he laughed first and then she knew it was all right. One of them—Brownie, she thought it was—said she’d invented herself, which was probably as close to the truth as she could get. Eventually she was hidden away in the hills behind a wall, where she was maintained in style by a famous industrialist-movie producer notorious for his eccentricities and the women he kept hidden behind walls in the hills; Lorna knew of at least three others in similar situations. She didn’t care; the checks came, the bills were paid; she saw him seldom, and she had a Georgian silver tea set on the sideboard and original oil paintings.

Through Viola she met Sam Ueberroth. He was an important man, up by his bootstraps and his sister Viola’s help, but people said he was a cold fish. He told her he liked her class, would put her in a picture, an A. She moved out of the industrialist’s house to an apartment, where Sam could visit her when his wife wasn’t looking. One night at Ciro’s she was overheard from a partially open telephone booth: “Listen, Sam Ueberroth, if you don’t give me that part, the fuck’s off!” She was very angry. The part was that of the girl in
The Miracle of Santa Cristi.
She got the part; afterward she got Sam.

She had done nothing but B’s—oaters, cops and robbers, and programmers—and now she had done her first A. The picture was religious, but hardly faithful to the book. Fedora’s presence in her comeback role as the Virgin caused a sensation. The premiere was at Hollywood’s famous Carthay Circle and she had swept under the long canopy in a Jean Louis strapless and a white fox, and Steve Allen interviewed her on TV. She was “very excited,” she “knew it was going to be a wonderful evening,” and afterward the audience had risen en masse and applauded the actors. Irene Dunne, who was a good Catholic, said she had been greatly moved, and Louella Parsons, who was gooder because she was converted, wept positive buckets. Later, at the post-premiere party, Louella poked her face between Willie and Bee Marsh’s heads for the photographers: The Three Converts. Lorna envied them their faith.

She intended to retire and become a Brentwood matron. Sam had bought a large house, she wore Chanel suits and good jewelry, drove a Mercedes and carried status pocketbooks. She involved herself in Good Works.

Acting had never been an end with her, but a means to an end. She was never good at equations, but one she knew: Work + Bed = Success. Success = Fame = Happiness. For men she had filled as many beds as there were to be filled. She hopped in and out and in again without chagrin; remorse she never knew. With her fine, supple body, and her voluptuous breasts that tipped provocatively upward, and her legs that seemed to go all the way up to her armpits, she had done all right. Still, she wasn’t terribly happy. And then, somehow, Stan the baseball player had come back into her life, and Sam threw her out. After that she had her first nervous breakdown.

Selma had already had hers, six or seven of them. Lorna’s poor mother was halfway between Culver City and Beverly Hills, the same distance between sanity and madness, in a “home” on Motor Avenue, behind a wire grille. She couldn’t remember anything that had happened since Eisenhower was president and Perry Como was on TV. When the astronauts went to the moon and she watched it on television, she maintained that it was a fake and had been staged in a New York studio; anybody knew that men couldn’t go to the moon.

Lorna did not permit herself the luxury of feeling sorry for herself, about either her family or her own lack of success with husbands and men in general. She never thought the world owed her a living. She assumed this task herself, but because she lived for the future (believing she had not lived in the past), she did not realize she was not living in the present. In the thirties she had dreams, in the forties she worked hard and faithfully, in the fifties she got her big chance, in the sixties it somehow all went sour, in the seventies—a big question mark. She asked herself those questions any thinking person asks:

Who am I?

What am I doing here?

Where am I going?

Is there more?

She asked, but found no answers. She thought it all rather funny; had been good at laughing at herself, until her breakdown. Then she had become frightened and had skulked away to Menninger’s, where they tucked her into bed and a doctor came and talked to her.

She had already begun manifesting “odd” behavior patterns. She had been swiping things from stores since grammar school; once she’d been caught, and it had terrified her that Selma should find out. Still, it was a thrill. Only her friend Nan Pringle had known of this aberration, and had cautioned her: what kind of headlines would it make? She would go into Bullock’s gift department with a shopping bag, and start loading things into it. If a salesperson asked if she wished to be helped, she replied airily, “No, thank you; just looking.” The swag was monumentally stupid, things she didn’t want or need. Once she stole a bottle of expensive perfume from a countertop and when she got it home she discovered it was a display item, filled with colored water. She was furious, wanted to return it and demand her money back.

Then, one day, she had noticed one of her gowns hanging on a closet door. The skirt was tulle, and for no reason she touched a match to the hem to see what would happen. It went up like a shot, singeing the front of her hair so she had to cut bangs again. But she liked the sensation of fire, and she would toss lighted matches into the paper-towel containers in ladies’ rooms, and leave the place in smoke. Or she would drive through the alleys that ran behind the streets in Beverly Hills, touching off trash cans with lighter fluid, then wait to hear the sirens.

She went back into analysis, and a nice new doctor dredged up enough of her childhood to determine that she had a condition of hyperkinesis, which meant simply that she was the victim of senseless and uncontrollable urges. The cure: love and understanding. Lorna could not resist the impulse to laugh in his face. He was good, that doctor, but not so good that he could resist her body; she invited him to her place, he succumbed, it became a futile relationship, she left analysis again.

When money ran short she got into the habit of kiting checks and it provided problems for her business managers. The checks were usually for small amounts, so she was never prosecuted, but it was embarrassing. The time came when the money Sam had settled on her ran out; she called Vi and said she wanted to go back to work. Vi was kind, said she’d look around, came back with the answer that things were difficult just now. Lorna saw what that meant: nobody wanted her. Naturally, the problem was Stan. Though they only saw one another privately, word had got about in certain quarters. Still, they wanted her on
Hollywood Squares,
for scale. Then, almost apologetically, Vi came up with an offer to do a series of commercials for Perkies, the pop-up breakfast tarts. She became known as the “Perkies girl,” friendly and ladylike, with just the touch of class to push the fake blueberries that were inside the “mouth-watering” tarts. Then she made that oh-so-foolish scene at the Biltmore Hotel, in front of the whole baseball team, and when the scandal hit the papers she was finished with her sponsor. “Tart’s tarts” they called Perkies; and then the fire. Nan Pringle had told her about Boca de Oro, and though there was no money in her account, she kited one more sizable check, devil take the hindmost, and flew away. Behind her was one burned bridge after another; ahead, the abyss. She did not know why she did the things she did, or neglected the things she did. She did not know why she suffered anguish, felt afflicted, sensed hopelessness. All she knew was that things had a way of not panning out, and that she was becoming terribly afraid.

Peace, she thought, peace. Peace had not come readily to her, she was so used to turmoil in her life; but peace was coming, was just around the corner. Nan was right: Boca was both restful and gay. There was a mariachi band consisting of young men from the village who played familiar melodies like “The Mexican Hat Dance” or “La Paloma,” which Lorna knew meant “The Dove.” And “South of the Border” and “Maria Elena,” which was one of her old Glenn Miller favorites. She adored that parrot up in the tree; the whistle, too fresh. She loved the wash of the waves that lulled you, the sprinkling hoses, the brush of the brooms, the children’s cries, the profusion of flowers. The hotel help were polite and clean-looking. The maid who did her cabaña—her name was Rosalia—was considerate and friendly. Rosalia had a narrow waist, flat hips, and breasts like apples, and at fifty-two, Lorna could well envy her.

The manager, Mr. Alvarez, was both too casual and too condescending to suit Lorna’s tastes. He was small, lean, dark, and slightly seedy with a Clark Gable mustache and bland brown eyes, one of which seemed to be covering the guests while the other stayed riveted to the cash register behind the bar. He maintained a proper, businesslike attitude toward everyone, leaving Cupie to deal with the social amenities. And no friendlier creature than Cupie had Lorna ever discovered. She was enormous, and never cared what she looked like, but was happy and merry the day long. Her face, for all its poundage, was really very sweet; she must have been a pretty girl at one time. Everyone loved her. Even with all that weight she moved gracefully, on light feet, but how she could have let herself get so large was a mystery Lorna wasn’t prepared to plumb. Each morning she would bring her child, Sashia and the baby, Heidi, out for their morning swim. You couldn’t help adoring Sashie either, only four years old but already a coquette. She had a plastic mirror-and-comb set which she carried everywhere, her ears were pierced with gold hoops, and her mother let her use lipstick. She owned “a whole buncha” dresses, and wore a doll-size bikini. How daintily, how balletically she would point her foot into the water, how she would laugh, squeal, flirt with the world. Lorna’s daughter, Carrie, had certainly been no Sashia….

When Lorna arrived at Boca de Oro she had initiated a strict regimen which she observed religiously, a kind of back-to-health-and-sanity program, and adhering to this self-imposed discipline gave her a sense of worthiness. She had not had a cigarette since boarding the plane in Los Angeles. She did not drink, but permitted herself one glass of wine with lunch, another with dinner. She avoided starches and desserts. She performed her exercises unfailingly, both physical and mental. She spent two half-hour periods meditating, and she did her gymnastics twice a day, and swam three times, once in the morning, twice in the afternoon. When she came out of the water she was always careful to cream her elbows.

When her skin had adjusted to the climate she began working on her tan, step by careful step. Meanwhile she kept to herself behind her glasses, under the hat, and improved herself with Dr. Fleischer’s
A Guide to Inner Peace.
Still, complete concentration was impossible, for her eyes, behind their plastic lenses, wandered continually, following the steps of the boy named Emiliano. She had been watching him since the very first day.

The awful business of the
cucaracha
hadn’t got her off to a particularly good start at Boca. It had been in her bathroom, crawling around the shower pan—imagine mistaking a cockroach for a scorpion! When she finally composed herself, she had to sit on the patio and meditate until the other guests left the dining room; she couldn’t face them after such a scene. It was while sitting, admiring the view, that she had a second shock, but of a different kind altogether—a shock of joy, of recognition, yes, even of mystery. She had had in her mind for some time pictures or images of two particular types of men; one was a solid, down-to-earth pipe-and-tweeds sort, stable and intelligent, who would act as her anchor, her rock, who would tell her what to do, and when and how to do it. He represented Security. Richard, who was on the
MorryEll,
was this type. Then there was a second type, a man whose sheer physical impact caused her heart to beat faster when she just looked at him, made her juices gush, made her feel all hot and cold—a man who might carry her off without a thought of what had gone before, of what was left behind, into some bright, silver-shining future where there would be only love and passion through every day and every night. Naturally this man represented Romance. For her, he would be a god she could worship, and how strange it was, how incredible, how miraculous, that on this very first morning at Boca de Oro the god should have appeared to her.

She had completed her meditation period and was looking out past the point of rocks extending from the walk below her patio, where the water lay calm and blue in the early sunlight. Suddenly she saw a shape under the limpid surface of the water. She thought at first it was a large fish of some kind, until the shape came closer to shore, and closer, and then with a sudden, wet, dazzling rush, emerged from out of the depths, walking through the shallows. This god. A type of merman, with fishfeet, and carrying a kind of trident, which had a fish impaled on it. Like a sea god. His face was masked, so she couldn’t see it, but she knew how beautiful he must be. His skin was brown and shining, he had a perfect body, a torso like a piece of Roman armor. She thought she could span his waist with her two hands, it was so slim. On he came, drops of water like jewels flinging about as he shook his arms, his hair, that dark, glossy blue-black hair.