In My Father's Shadow (26 page)

“What do you mean ‘if.’ You will do what Jackie and I think is best for you with no ifs, ands, or buts.”

I waited for her to stop frowning. “What I meant was that after I finish business school and get a job as a secretary, couldn’t I see Daddy then?”

Now she was glaring at me and barely able to control her exasperation. “Once you’re out on your own and supporting yourself, you can do anything you like, and I won’t be able to stop you, will I?” She stabbed out one cigarette while reaching for another. We sat in silence for a while, my mother drawing the smoke of her freshly lit cigarette deep into her lungs as though it were life-giving oxygen. When she spoke again, it was in the firm voice of one who has arrived at a difficult decision. “Since you
will
be on your own in the next year or so, I think it’s time I told you a thing or two about Orson. You’re old enough now to hear this father you adore has some serious faults. You should know who you’re dealing with, and I don’t think you do yet. That’s why I’m ending your visits with Orson for now, until you get your head on straight about him. Do you understand what I’m saying, Chrissie, or does that awful look on your face mean you hate me?”

I could be just as tough as she was. “What is it about Daddy that you think I don’t see?”

“Well, for one thing, you believe he really cares about you when the truth is, and I honestly don’t want to hurt you, Chrissie, but the truth is …”

“He
does
love me. I know he does!”

“No one knows better than I how seductive Orson can be,” my mother went on as though I hadn’t spoken. “He can make you believe you’re the most important person in the world to him and he can’t live without you. Then the next thing you know, he’s fallen in love with somebody else.”

“But he’s not
in love
with me,” I protested. “I’m his daughter.”

“The trouble is that Orson has no idea how to be your father. Does he behave like a father when you’re with him?”

“Well …” I hesitated. “Daddy treats me like an equal, but I can’t say he always behaves like a father.”

“At least you see that much.” The houseboy stood hovering in the doorway, and with an impatient wave of her hand, my mother signaled that he was to remove the tea tray. He moved so softly that I could hear the whisper of his starched white uniform as he bore the teacups away. “I think that’s enough truth for one morning,” my mother remarked after he had left. “I’ll just say this for now: As long as you think you really matter to Orson, you’re in for a lot of heartache and disappointment. I’d hoped to get through to you, but I see I haven’t been very successful, and you’ll have to find out the hard way, like I did.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll tell you some other time.”

“Please tell me now.”

“I said. Some other time.”

O
NE EVENING
,
AFTER
my mother had gone to bed early complaining of a headache, I sat with Jackie in our spacious living room. Each of us occupied a comfortable armchair before the fireplace. A recording of Beethoven piano sonatas played in the background. At such moments, I was seduced by the seeming coziness of “home.” Even Jackie sounded friendly when he asked, “What’s that book you’re reading, Chrissie?”

I showed him my copy of Anouilh’s play
Antigone
, and then went on to tell him I had given a dramatic recitation before the whole of Florissant, playing Antigone, and everyone, including Madame Favre, had thought I was wonderful. Then, before I could stop myself, “I want to be an actress more than anything.”

“Do you?” It was not a question but a mocking statement. “I suppose this is Orson’s doing.”

“No, Daddy’s tried to discourage me.”

“Quite right, too. What on earth gave you the idea that you could be an actress?”

“Well …”

“So you’re ready to go on the stage, are you? Do you already see your name up in lights, Chrissie? How extraordinary!” The contempt in his laughter made my skin prickle. “I’m sorry I can’t agree with Madame Favre and your friends at Florissant, but I think I know you better than they do. After all, I’ve
known you since you were a little girl of eleven, and in all that time, Chrissie, you haven’t shown the slightest talent for acting or anything else.” He paused to make sure his words were having their intended effect, but I guess I wasn’t looking crestfallen enough because he added, “You are a very ordinary person, and the sooner you accept that, the better off you will be.”

There were furious questions to hurl at the suave man sitting opposite me, smoothing down his mustache with one finger, but I fought them down. Nothing was going to change Jack Pringle’s low opinion of me or his relentless need to put me down. The silence lengthened and deepened in a room that had lost any trace of coziness.

“I’
VE ARRANGED TO
have you spend this Christmas in Paris with the de Courseulles,” my mother announced one morning while we were having our eleven o’clock tea. In less than a week, I would be flying back to Switzerland for my second and final year at Florissant. “Orson wanted you to be with him for Christmas, but that’s out of the question.”

“Then you’ve heard from Daddy? Where is he now?”

“As a matter of fact, he’s living in Paris with some Italian countess or other.”

“Then couldn’t I see him?”

“No.”

“Not even once?”

“Don’t be so tiresome, Chrissie. I’ve made it very plain why you are not to see your father, and if I find out you
have
seen him in Paris or anywhere else …” She left the threat hanging in the air.

“But how am I going to tell Daddy?”

“Tell him what?”

“Why I can’t see him. He won’t understand why I’m in Paris, and he isn’t hearing from me.”

“He’ll understand all right. Don’t you worry about that! I’ve written him a stinging letter and told him exactly what I think of him. I’m one of the few people in Orson’s life who’s never been afraid to stand up to him.”

“But I have to call him at least once, I have to, so I can explain to him.”

“And what are you going to
explain
to him, pray tell?” Her jaw was clenched.

“That you don’t want me to see him—”

“That’s right. Blame me! Blame me for everything!”

“But—”

“If you want to go on seeing Orson and let him ruin your life, I guess that’s what you’ll do, and no one is going to stop you, me least of all, apparently.” She gave her little laugh, the one that meant life was a cruel, cosmic joke beyond her control. “But there’s something you should know first.”

All at once I began to dread that I was about to hear what she had
not
told me several days ago when she had said, “Some other time.” She reached for a cigarette, lighting it, inhaling, languorously blowing out the smoke. She was making me wait. Deliberately.

“I swore I’d never tell you this,” she began, “but you’re so pigheaded about Orson, you leave me no choice. I was seven months pregnant with you, and we were living in Sneden’s Landing.” She was referring to the rambling farmhouse with a garden and swimming pool that she and my father-to-be had rented in a wooded enclave not far from Manhattan. Then she fell silent, bending her head over her sewing. The South African sun streamed into the alcove where we were sitting.

“What happened at Sneden’s Landing, Mummy?” I prompted her.

She looked up with a smile. “I’ll get to that in a moment. I was just remembering the summer I found out I was pregnant with you. It was one of the happiest times in our marriage. The theater season was over, and we were safely tucked away in Sneden’s Landing where none of the people clamoring for Orson could get at him, especially all those shameless women waiting at the stage door who literally
threw
themselves at him. You had to see it to believe it, Chrissie, how those hussies ran after him down the street, grabbing at his clothes. Of course, there was no way Orson could hide out with me indefinitely. He was already too famous and the offers were pouring in from radio stations and even Hollywood studios, although Hollywood didn’t interest him yet, thank God.” Her voice trailed off and she was bent over her sewing again, smiling to herself, while I sighed and fidgeted. After a few moments, she continued, “Orson devoted himself to me that summer. Every day we swam in the pool and lazed in the garden. We paid no attention to Doctor when he wrote us from Chicago, ‘I hear you have a lovely house with four spare bedrooms.’“ She laughed, sounding girlish. “We didn’t need any company except each other and Budget.” Budget was the cocker spaniel they had named in honor of their early days of thrift.

The idyll lasted, she went on, until Orson’s partner arrived unannounced one sultry August evening and stayed for dinner. Known to his friends as
Jack, John Houseman had teamed up with my father when he was becoming a big radio star but was still eager to work in the theater. Their first smash hit was a production of
Macbeth
with an all black cast. “Orson and Jack started reminiscing about the sensation they’d caused in Harlem and on Broadway, and how the two of them had made theater history more than once, and suddenly Orson leaned forward and asked Jack, ‘Why don’t we start our own theater?’ And that’s how the Mercury got started, the idea of it anyway. They took the name from an old magazine I fished out of the fireplace …”

Why was she telling me all this, I wondered? When were we going to get to the terrible thing my father had done?

The first Mrs. Orson Welles.

“Orson and Jack found a dilapidated theater on Forty-first and Broadway,” she continued. “They fixed it up in no time and renamed it the Mercury Theatre.” They planned to open their first season with Shakespeare’s
Julius Caesar
. “Now Orson told me he needed to go off by himself for ten weeks so he could work on adapting
Julius Caesar
without any distractions. Ten weeks! I could hardly bear the thought of being without him all that time and rattling around that big house on my own — I was still having morning sickness, thanks to you — but what could I say? I told him that of course he must go and not to worry about me. I’d be fine.” She gave me the plucky smile she must have given him.

“The night before Orson left for his mountain retreat in New Hampshire, I asked him if he’d write in a part for me in
Julius Caesar
. I didn’t care how small it was, I told him. Well, he stared at me as though I’d lost my mind. How could I
dream
of staying up all night in the theater when I was going to have his child? I had to swear on his mother’s grave that I’d stay home every night, drink my milk, and be in
bed by ten o’clock.” She laughed. “He was
so
concerned that I take proper care of myself and our unborn child and yet he was leaving me alone for ten weeks … and there you have Orson in a nutshell.” She paused, studying my face. “Shall I go on? I’m not sure I should, really.”

I was feeling sick with anxiety, but I nodded. “Please go on, Mummy.”

“All right. It’s high time you got the stars out of your eyes and realized what it’s really like to live with Orson.”

Once Orson began rehearsing
Julius Caesar
, she told me, he was hardly ever home. In addition to spending anywhere from sixteen to twenty hours a day in the theater, he was also doing his regular radio shows. “When I begged him to cut back on his radio work, he reminded me that if it weren’t for the big bucks he was making in radio, we couldn’t afford to live in Sneden’s Landing or to start a family.” Not only that but his lucrative earnings also paid for the motorboat he used to ferry himself back and forth across the Hudson when he did manage a trip home. “That was becoming such a rare event that I told him he might as well give up the boat and swim across. I meant it as a joke, but he didn’t find it funny.”

“Weren’t you awfully lonely with Daddy away most of the time?”

“Yes, I missed Orson like mad, but I read a great deal and took Budget for walks in the woods. I’ve always been able to amuse myself, but it helped a lot when Chubby and Whitford came to see me.” She was referring to the actors Hiram “Chubby” Sherman and his partner, Whitford Kane, who were members of the Mercury Theatre company. “They were such dears. They brought me the latest gossip and what Chubby called ‘tales of Orson.’“ She laughed. “I can laugh about it now, Chrissie, but it wasn’t funny then.”

“What did Chubby mean?”

“I’m getting to it.” She poured herself another cup of tea, then sat drinking it in a reverie. “Being married to Orson was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, but it was also the most thrilling,” she finally resumed. “I was just remembering how I came out of seclusion and went to the opening of
Julius Caesar
. You have no idea what a novel idea it was then to put on that play, or any play, in modern dress. Now it’s been done so often, it’s become a theatrical cliché, but then it was electrifying and people talked of nothing else for weeks.”

Why was she taking so long to “get to it”? Surely the fact that my father worked day and night and rarely came home was not the reason she had decided to end my visits with him.