Star (28 page)

He wondered if she would go to Hollywood to look them up. Part of him wanted her to, and another part of him wanted her to wait to begin her life until he got back from Korea. He knew it wasn't fair, but now that he was so far away, he was afraid to lose her. She was young and beautiful and she had a right to a full life. But he was desperately afraid now that she'd find a life without him. But there was less danger of that than he knew. All she cared about was Spencer, as she waited.

She heard from him less frequently now, but she knew from him that conditions had grown worse, and the constant attempts at a truce were failing, with new deaths and countless disappointments every time. Spencer sounded depressed when he wrote to tell her about it. Like everyone else, he wanted the war to end, but it seemed to go on forever. And Crystal was startled too, when he told her that Elizabeth had met him in Tokyo for R and R. He almost made her sound like a casual acquaintance, but Crystal was passionately jealous just thinking of it. Why couldn't she go to Tokyo too? He had been gone for so long, as she waited devotedly for him, living at Mrs. Castagna's and singing at Harry's. There was no other man in her life. She didn't want anyone. Only Spencer. And no man she ever met ever measured up to him. She was twenty-one and beautiful beyond words, and she loved him more than anything. His only flaw was that he was married. Her friend Pearl tried to encourage her to find someone else, to no avail. Crystal wasn't interested, and she had plenty of offers. The men who came to Harry's to hear her sing went wild over her, and she was constantly being invited out, but she never went. She was faithful to Spencer.

She seemed to get more beautiful each year, and by that summer, Harry thought she had never looked better. There was a luminous quality about her as she sang that made the whole room go quiet. And there was a gentleness and a sweetness about her that made her more beautiful still. Harry was curious, too, about why there was no man in her life, and he wondered sometimes if there was someone she was seeing quietly, but Crystal never talked about her love life, and Harry never asked her.

In Washington, Elizabeth had gone to work, assisting with the House Committee on Un-American Activities investigations. She was deeply committed to her work, and she had a prestigious job. They were single-handedly changing the course of several lives in Hollywood, and in May, Elizabeth was particularly enraged by the testimony of the well-known playwright Lillian Hellman. She refused to testify on the grounds that although she might not be a Communist herself, her testimony might affect the lives of the people she worked with and liked. Elizabeth had long talks with her father about it at night, and she wrote about all of it in letters to Spencer, explaining to him about what she was doing, and how she felt about McCarthy. He stayed off the subject when he answered her, and inquired about her health and her parents, but not her job. He hated everything she was doing. She knew he disapproved of it, but she had to do what she believed in, and she liked the job. And she wouldn't have given it up for anything, except if Spencer came home and went back to work on Wall Street. But she was intending to talk him into moving to Washington anyway. And in the fall of 1952, she decided to give up his apartment for good. She bought a house on N Street in Georgetown from the money from her trust fund, and put most of Spencer's belongings in brown boxes. It was a pretty brick house, and it suited her perfectly. It was near Wisconsin Avenue's better shops, and she bought antiques with her mother when she had time, and that winter there were photographs of the house in Look magazine, which she sent to Spencer. And as he looked at the article, it struck him that none of the photographs included anything of his. He wondered what she had done with all his belongings. And suddenly he felt as if he had no home to go to when the war was over. He didn't even know where they lived, he couldn't visualize it, except for the photographs in the magazine. And it all looked so sterile and perfect. He couldn't even imagine making love to her in the fussy little bedroom where she'd posed. And seeing it only made him lonelier for Crystal, and her room at Mrs. Castagna's, which only made him feel crazy again about what he was going to do when the war was over. Did he have an obligation to Liz? Or to himself, to do what he really wanted?

Elizabeth spent Christmas in Palm Beach with her parents, as usual, that year, and after that she flew to Tokyo again to see Spencer for R and R. He had dreaded seeing her this time, and he had reminded himself that she was his wife, after all, but as they lay in bed side by side, he could hardly bring himself to touch her. All she did was talk about her job and Joe McCarthy.

Why don't we talk about something else, he said politely. He looked tired and thin and he didn't want to hear about the war she was waging on imagined Communists in McCarthy's name. All she had was an investigative job, but listening to her one would have thought she was McCarthy's avenging angel, and hearing her depressed him even more. He knew who the real Communists were and he was tired of fighting them. He had been in Korea for more than two years and he wanted to go home, but the current truce had been violated again, and he was beginning to feel he would never get out of Korea. And all he wanted from her was a little warmth and comfort. But she was the wrong woman for that, as he was beginning to see very clearly. She hardly seemed to notice him, all she thought about was her work and her friends and her parents. It didn't even seem like a marriage to him, and yet she was his wife and not Crystal.

And when he tried to talk to her about the war and his disillusionment, she brushed him off, and made it seem unimportant.

You'll be back on Wall Street before you know it . He didn't answer her at first, but later he told her what he had been thinking, just to test the waters.

I don't think I'll go back. She nodded, pleased. That fitted in well with her plans. She wanted to move to Washington permanently anyway. She had come to love it.

There are plenty of good law firms in Washington. You're going to love it, Spencer.

I want to rethink my life when I get home. He eyed her seriously, tempted for a moment to tell her about Crystal. The charade had gone on too long, and it was exhausting. But now was not the time. Instead he suggested they go out and wander the streets of Tokyo and enjoy the luxuries of the Imperial Hotel.

Most of the men on R and R stayed on Lake Biwa but her father had made their reservations. He wanted them to go first class. Elizabeth loved to talk about her father's generosity. She was constantly telling him about the antiques her father had bought them for the new house, the little French chandelier, the Persian carpet. Spencer was sick of hearing about it And he felt like a fraud as he listened, pretending to be interested or pleased or grateful. He had signed on for a lifetime of gratitude, he realized now, and he knew that wasn't what he wanted. It diminished him and made him feel unimportant because he didn't have as much money and power as they did. That was all that mattered to them, Elizabeth and her parents. And he had no desire to compete with them. He wanted a life of his own in a world where he was respected. But he couldn't begin to tell her that, not in a few days before he went back to the war in Korea. Everything she talked about seemed so unimportant now. He had seen women and children die, he had cried over dead babies he had found by the roadside and buried. He had lived with shattered ideals and distant dreams for too long now. And when he tried to say that to her, she didn't even want to listen, or hear him. She was totally self-centered and totally unaware of the agonies he'd endured in the past two years. And in the end he was sorry he'd gone to meet her. He vowed to himself not to do it again if the war went on. He would wait and resolve their differences when he got back to the States. Here, it was too unreal, too strange, and in an odd way too painful.

He went back to the war even more depressed this time. He felt alienated from everyone, and he had developed a passionate hatred of Korea, and the miseries he had to endure there. He tried to write to Crystal about it at first, but when he reread the letters, he always decided not to send them. They sounded whining and cowardly, and unmanly. So what she got instead were long silences interrupted occasionally by a brief letter that told her only that he was still alive, and said tersely at the end that he still loved her. He was unable to communicate with anyone anymore, even Crystal. He couldn't describe how brutally tired he was, how sick with dysentery, how demoralized by the constant killing, how angry at the death of his friends. And eventually it all boiled up inside him, until finally he was silent.

When that happened, Justice Barclay had military connections check on him, and they said he was fine, just busy winning the war. But Crystal had no connections to turn to. All she knew was that he had stopped writing to her, and at first she thought he'd been killed but when she checked, his name appeared on none of the casualty lists of those wounded or killed or missing in action. He was alive somewhere, and he was no longer writing to her. It took months for it to sink in, that he wasn't dead, the letters weren't getting lost, he simply wasn't writing. And she assumed that it meant their love affair was over. It was hard to believe at first, after all they'd said and shared, but there was no hiding from it after several months, it was over. After years of her waiting for him, he had simply decided to stop writing. He had probably seen his wife again, and decided to stay married. But he could have told her at least, he could have said something, instead of simply disappearing into silence. It hurt terribly at first, and left alone with her own confusions, she mourned him. She mourned him almost as she would have if he'd died, and it felt like it for a while. She even took two weeks off and went by herself to Mendocino. She did a lot of thinking there and when she came back, she knew she had to move on, with or without him.

She called the agents then, the ones who had approached her months before, and after a brief conversation, she agreed to go to Hollywood for an audition.

She told Harry the night she went back to work, and he was surprised at first, but he had always known it was only a matter of time before someone found her and gave her the chance she'd waited for all her life and deserved. She had nothing else to wait for now. The moment had come and she knew she had to grab it.

Who are these guys? Harry was suspicious of everyone, and for years now he had protected her like a father, keeping drunks away, and the men who constantly tried to harass her. Do you know anything about them?

Just that they're agents in L.A., she said honestly. There was still an aura of innocence about her.

Then I want you to take Pearl with you, she can stay as long as you need her. And if it doesn't work out, you come right back here with her. Another chance will come along one of these days. I want you to wait for the right offer.

Yes, sir. She grinned at him, looking like a kid again, and thrilled that Pearl was going to go with her. The prospect of Hollywood still scared her, but she knew more than ever that it was what she wanted. People had been telling her for years that she'd be a star one day, Boyd, Harry, Spencer, Pearl, and now she wanted to try it.

Harry gave her a farewell party before she left, and he gave them money to stay at a decent hotel, and she spent most of her savings on a new wardrobe. It was hard leaving Harry. It was a little bit like leaving home. She had made friends and found safety there, and now she was going out in the world to find fame and fortune. It would have terrified her if she hadn't wanted it so badly.

It was hard leaving Mrs. Castagna too. She left a bag there, but she gave up her room. And the old woman had cried and offered her one last glass of sherry. It tore at Crystal's heartstrings to leave her, but she promised to write from Hollywood and tell her about the stars she met there.

You see Clark Gable, you give him my love! she admonished over the last glass of sherry. And you take care of yourself! You hear me! Crystal had kissed her when she left, and she had cried openly when she left Harry.

If you need money, kid, you call me! But he'd been too good to her already. She wouldn't have dared ask him for more, and she was determined not to. Besides, if her screen test went well, maybe she'd get a part soon. She had high hopes as she and Pearl left on a Thursday afternoon, by train because it was cheaper. They had already reserved a hotel room in L.A., and Crystal had an appointment with the agents the following morning.

She walked into their office with trembling knees, wearing a plain white dress and white shoes, with her hair pulled back off her face and very little makeup. She looked clean and pure, and incredibly beautiful. At twenty-one, she was even better-looking than they remembered. And as they stared at her, they were overwhelmed by their good fortune.

But what Crystal didn't know, and Pearl smelled, was that they were ranked among Hollywood's least successful agents. Still, they were able to arrange a screen test for her the next day, and set up an appointment with someone they wanted her to meet. He was someone who could be extremely useful if he chose to.

The last twelve girls they had sent him had been rejects. But even Ernesto Salvatore would agree, this one was a beauty.

The screen test almost frightened her to death, but it was exciting, and after she started to relax, she did well. She and Pearl spent the rest of the day visiting the sights. They took the tour of the movie stars' homes, and went to Grauman's Chinese Theatre. They walked up and down Sunset, and stood at Hollywood and Vine as Crystal laughed and let Pearl take her picture. And she and Pearl giggled as they noticed passersby staring at her, wondering if she was a starlet. She was suddenly noticeable here, and two little girls asked for her autograph, convinced that she was someone, and Crystal loved it.

They went back to the agents' building. At the end of the day they had asked her to return to their office, but they hadn't explained further. She wore a black dress Pearl had picked out for her, shiny black patent high heels, and she wore a stiff petticoat that made the dress stand out. The dress was strapless and it revealed the creamy pink satin of her shoulders. There wasn't an inch of spare flesh on her. Everything was smooth and silky and perfect. And Pearl had insisted she wear a big picture hat, and showed her how to tuck all her hair in with one graceful twist. And she had instructed her exactly how to take her hat off.