Daisy Buchanan's Daughter Book 2: Carole Lombard's Plane (14 page)

“It just seems unfair!” I told Gerson once we were strolling ourselves. Balmy night for December; we’d only hail a cab when we tired. “I’m your bloody wife and if I so much as mention the word, you look for the pogrom in your martini. But
you
two—oh, no. You can joke all you like, but heaven forbid I join in.”

“Minority privilege, Pammie.” Gerson was in a good mood. “It’s the one kind you’ll never enjoy.”

“Even if I converted?”

“You’d be a fire engine on a golf course.” Then Gerson looked anxious. “Pammie! Jake didn’t mean, did he…”

If Jake had, my husband would have been perfectly pleasant, but only if warned. Thanks to the way he’d learned about Eddie Whitling, one rule on New York trips was that I’d never introduce him
unadvised
to anyone I’d slept with, giving me a fairly sheepish five minutes when I hung up after Roy Charters asked us to cocktails. Unsure of the rule’s rules, I had no idea what I’d do if we ever faced lunching with Dottie Idell, but no Crozdettis were listed in any edition of the Manhattan or even Queens, Brooklyn, Bronx, New Jersey, or Connecticut phone books between 1950 and 1956.

My turn to laugh, though. “Oh, God, Gerson! No. My name would’ve had to be Paul.”

That amused him for blocks. He kept calling me Paula for the rest of our stroll and in the cab we flagged down near the Flatiron Building. Kept it up as we spun through our hotel’s door. With new decorum, he stopped when we got  in the elevator—just before, needless to say, it might’ve got interesting.

Posted by: Paula

Though it was no longer fucking in either temper or name, that side of our lives had stayed satisfactory. We had our signals, our favorite spots around the house and on each other, our understood preludes and aftermaths. No matter how tempted Gerson might be to get dressed or read, he knew I needed five minutes’ Pompeiian stillness before we uncoupled. Especially with Eddie Whitling behind me—well, I had certainly better rephrase
that
,
Ard—Gerson horizontal charmed Mrs. Gerson with the same virtues he had when vertical and clothed: thoughtfulness, humor, paradoxically self-assured diffidence.

Demanding he wasn’t, and since he was Gerson, I took it for granted this was his preference and had no complaints of my own. What a relief for us both that he was so civilized! And he was, so stalwartly and helplessly it drove him to despair.

At least to Pam, though, he only voiced that despair once. What he told Stella Negroponte’s photo is none of my concern, but I’m sure he’d stayed courteous, good-humored, paradoxically self-assured, and the rest of the bland bit when Stella was around in the flesh. Otherwise, her picture wouldn’t have been on open display in the den: not if Gerson was Gerson, as he couldn’t help being.

The once followed a celebratory Musso & Frank’s dinner.
Gerson had given the pashas notice he was switching to their Antichrist—television—as the new head of production at Rik-Kuk. One natural way to cap off the night would have been to triumphantly turn on our set, tiny regatta flags that spelled out
“screw metro”
fluttering on its antennae. At a time when prissier households—especially movieland’s—preferred keeping theirs hidden behind cabinet doors (it fooled nobody, Panama, wasn’t meant to; simply acknowledged the sight was a rude one), our big fifteen-inch RCA Gleason was on bombastic display in the living room.

In those days, however, TV stations went off the air at the witching hour. My mind boggles at the mobs of Fifties-born children conceived to either “The Star-Spangled Banner” (newlyweds) or a test pattern’s monotone foghorn (younger sibling, perhaps calmer, perhaps not). In our marriage, spawning any such diapered thingummy wasn’t on the table: Pam’s one stipulation before I’d said yes, agreed to by Gerson with not only alacrity but something like gratitude. But from our usual preliminaries—him jangling the car keys, me instantly shoeless with an “Ah!” in the foyer—neither Mr. nor Mrs. was in any doubt we were going to screw Metro by screwing.

Once the bus cleared the hill, though, he felt distracted. (I mean literally
felt
: to me, from collarbones to knees. My feet were less sure, rubbed the sheet like a hunchback for luck.) At least by his considerate standards, the post-coital Pompeii was brief. Then he turned on the lamp.

“Gerson, what is it? Aren’t you”—as always when light fringed his fine hair that way, I was reluctant to say “sleepy”—“tired?”

He was glaring so fixedly at the opposite wall that I thought he was going to suggest putting a TV set in the bedroom, one thing we’d agreed we’d never do. I’ll spare daisysdaughter.com readers the multiple rounds of “Well, whats?” and “Oh, nothings”—married life’s version of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”—it took to get something out of him.

He still wouldn’t look at me, though. “Nothing, I guess. I just thought it would maybe be different.”

“Different? We ran out of different on our first anniversary. Good riddance too! I just looked damn silly in that Frederick’s stuff. You must know what you’re in for by now.”

“That’s just it. No, it’s not! But it’s part of it.”

Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily and so forth.

“Well, don’t we know what we’re like? That’s what makes it nice,” I said. “I know what you’re like. You know what I’m like.”

“Do I?”

“What kind of question is that?”

Life is but a dream! Row, row, row.

“Pammie!” he finally said. “What’s the one thing
everyone
knows about you?”

“Nothing, so far as I know.”

God, it was awful for him. “The whole
world
.
Knows you put your
finger
.
Up Murphy’s
ass!
”

“Thank you, dear, for reminding me. So?”

“
So!
Don’t you ever once
consider
.
Putting your
finger!
Up—” he’d run short on breath; it came out as a squeak—“
mine?
”

I was baffled, since I’d done that and worse to him. He’d done much, much worse to me as I lay there and quailed, though I have to admit those bits usually ended up striking me as funny, not vile. But only, of course, in my Pamagination. I kept its unwelcome glimpses of ransacked disgust as sequestered from him in bed as I did my Dachau flashbacks out of it. Never really sank in that Gerson horizontal and Gerson vertical might both be gripped by dread he’d missed the important part.

“Why, I never thought you’d want me to. That’s all,” I said, knowing it wasn’t.

“I don’t even know if I do! Fun it doesn’t sound like. That’s not the point.”

“What is?”

“I don’t know! But it’s here somewhere.” He smacked the bed. “Here.”

If you ever find yourself in a like situation, Panama, listen to me. Do it, don’t do it, try something else next time and if it’s a bust, laugh! And skip off in the nude like a wood sprite, bikini girl. But don’t offer.

“Why, Gerson,” Pam offered, both hands waving helplessly. “I mean, I suppose I could or whatever, if you—”

“No!” he literally shouted. “I can’t explain, but never. Not once I had to ask. Don’t you see—” and here my Gerson spoke the dignified words that inadvertently restored our marriage to its old easy terms, at the cost of a distant ship scooting away—“now it would only be painful.”

I couldn’t have quashed that chuckle if our lives had depended on it. In a way, Gerson’s did: a life where, without needing to ask, he could be someone other than Gerson, Gerson,
Gerson
every cursed minute. Because he was Gerson, he gaped at Pam’s chuckle and then understood it. And because he was Gerson, he sheepishly smiled and then laughed.

I’ve never sent a man to prison before or since. In my defense, he went willingly, and they say jailbirds get rattled easily when they’re on the outside. I can’t imagine and wouldn’t want a marriage or even friendship without laughter, but beware when it’s the only language of endearment you share.

Once we’d gotten done laughing, he looked at me tenderly. “Ah, Pammie. Not me! Not us, I know. Let’s both try to get some sleep, what do you say? I’ve got my first day of school with Gene Rickey tomorrow.”

“Oh, that’s right!” I said. We managed a few rounds of married life’s happy version of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” before he switched the lamp off again.

Whether Gerson’s omission of
Not you
from the litany was deliberate, I can’t say. Yet I sometimes marvel he didn’t
stick a TV set in the bedroom, which I’ve still never done in my life. Kelquen used to sleep atop the one I’ve just glanced at in such puzzlement, since it can’t be ringing.

My God! That’s the t

Posted by: Gramela

Elephone, yes. It was the elephone. But all clear, daisydaughter.com readers! Pink Thing and Gray Thing are in their proper casings. Cadwaller’s gun is relapped and unused. I still know Potus’s voice only from TV.

It was Panama, daisysdaughter.com readers. (Meet the legend at last.) Panama, her dad, granddad, mom, dog, and kid brother, all clustered on speakerphone. “Hallooo, Grammie! Happy birthday. Oh, Scarf, just stop it. Scarf, now!”

I fumblingly lowered my pistol. Great-grandfather’s gun, meet great-granddaughter’s squeal. I could’ve fired midway through and she’d never have known.

“Oh this is so sweet of all of you perfect dears,” I squawked back. At my advanced age, you can pull that crap out of your hat without blinking. Do you think we don’t know how we sound? “It’s so nice to be remembered.”

“We don’t need to remember you, Gramela! We know you! We all love you! Scarf too. Scarf, say happy birthday in dog!”

“Pan, don’t be silly.” That was her dad. “Oh, Christ, what am I saying? Go right ahead.”

“Is Scarf new?” I asked to ask something.

Tim groaned. “To Scarf first and foremost. Three months, says the pound.”

“You’ve got to meet him, Gramela!” Panama squealed. “He is adorable.”

“If I don’t shoot him first,” said her mom. “Pam, you remember my favorite couch?”

“Dozed on it often as CNN played.”

“No more.
Siempre los desastres.
But how are you really? The truth.”

“Still right here with you! Knock wood.”

“Ouch! Hey, Pan, quit.”

Chris cut in. “Pan! I’m not saying it’s wrong for you to hit your little brother. He’ll never learn otherwise about girls. But that’s the oldest dumb joke on the planet.”

“Shit, Grandpa Chris. That was just my excuse, not my reason.”

“Oh, all right then. Hi, Pam.”

“Hi, Chris,” I grinned. (Grinned? Oh, yes. I’ve had this gun in my lap since 6:20 a.m. Right then it too just felt like part of the family.)

“I guess you know my dad would be thinking of you,” he said without false pomp or unctuousness. “We’re not him, but we do what we can.”

“Well, I’m certainly thinking of Cadwaller. But I don’t need a birthday for that.”

“Neither do I,” Chris bragged affectionately. “I wish he could’ve met Pan, though. She’s turning into such a cutie, one of these days this old man may ask her to pose in the nude.”

“Grandpa!”

“I only wanted to prove I can scandalize
you
, my young miss…”

“Oh, BFD. Guess what, Gramela? At my school? At my school, we call scandals flipflops! They’re all just what we have on our feet.”

“Oh.” Love of language comes first and then you grow discriminating. “Is your father still there, dear? How’s the next book coming, Tim?”

“Oh fi—”

“
Liar!
Black liar. He hasn’t been working on it at all. Dad just got back from France, Grammie! I’m soooooooooooooooo jealous. He
worships
Marie Antoinette.”

“News to me, Tim. And I damn near wrote a book about her once,” I said, chortling but flipflopped. “What would your grandfather say?”

“No, no.
Marie Antoinette
,
ital, a movie,” Tim laughed. “It’s not coming out here ’til October, but I saw it at Cannes. It’s pro-Marie, too. The Europeans were booing, but I swear I think it’s wonderful.”

“October? Yes, that sounds interesting,” said I pleasantly, toying with Cadwaller’s gun. “Yes, hello, Scarf!
Hello.
But my God, Tim: who plays her? Who could possibly get me to sympathize with that—”

Posted by: Kirsten Dunst’s Oldest
A
dmirer

Son, as they say, of a bitch. Son of a bitch, son of a bitch, son of a bitch! Son of a bitch, son of a bitch, son of a bitch! Son of a bitch, bitch, bitch!

It was Ned Finn who realized that was the lyric to Beethoven’s Fifth. You’d hear him singing it under his breath in our tiny embassy in Nagon when a file went missing or the Department asked for something absurd. Nan told me the Finns used to bellow it on car trips, only their youngest barred from joining in by infancy and then delicacy. Ned died before she got permission, and then of course Stacy Finn ended up with the best reasons of all to sing “Son of a bitch” to the Fifth Symphony.

Until mine. Damn this country! When all’s said and done, damn this country. It can push and gnaw away at you until there’s no bloody give left. It can drive a dotty old bag who’s read too many obits and too many news reports of a senseless killing to hike up the Paris footlocker’s lid, ignore her mother’s chaotic pages of
The Gold-Hatted Lover
,
and wait for a White House phone call or an Omaha-indigo sundown to do herself in. And then this country, this country!, springs its favorite trap. Flipping through “Coming Attractions” as if it’s no matter at all, this country, this country!, casually asks, “Don’t you know Kirsten Dunst is Marie Antoinette?”

October. Could I phone the White House myself and gently explain dear Bob got my birthday’s date wrong? Then sit here for four addled months with Cadwaller’s gun, ordering buckets of tuna salad from Sutton’s as
Siempre los desastres
splatters cable and each morning’s
WashPost
makes my woozy head orbit with obits
just so I can close mimsy borogoves that have seen Kirsten, my Kirsten, as a queen—as a queen! And Tim, curse him too, had to tell me it’s wonderful. Why couldn’t it at least be one of her lesser efforts, not that there are many of those?

For personal reasons I’ve often wished she’d star in a gals’ romp set in New York in the early Forties:
The Refrigerated Lovers
, say. But Versailles will do in a pinch. Oh, Ard, oh, Ard! The world goes all to mud in your head and then silver sparkles at a theater near you.

Gerson’s shade groaned at the way tag-team genius would’ve Metroized my new dilemma: batty Peg in a trance as she sets down the elephone (“A bit more unsteady, Miss Harrington”) and her liquefied thoughts about the gal she’ll leave behind rivulet down her face’s cracked map. Stuff and nonsense. I had all those Cadwallers and a very annoyingly voluble dog on the line. Barely had time to coo “Oh, I do like her” when Panama rebolted from the blue.

“Grammie! For once in your whole stupid life, will you say yes to Provincetown? We’re all getting fed up, it’s disgusting. Stop being such an old bag, you old bag.”

“
Pan!”
That was her mother.