The Memoir of Johnny Devine (14 page)

Her heart raced. “Your New
York editor wants to …
meet
me?”

John smiled. “Of course. But I told him
you’re a very busy, in-demand writer and would have to check your
calendar.”

Eliza could only stare at his handsome
smile. Was he mocking her? No. With a strange certainty, she knew
he would never do that.

“
He’s traveling to San
Francisco soon and asked if you’d like to join us for lunch. I
think you’d enjoy meeting him. But it’s up to you. No harm done if
you don’t.”

Duncan came in and left a stack of mail on
the edge of Eliza’s desk, then touched his cap and nodded at Eliza.
Sniffing the air, he tromped off in the direction of the
kitchen.

“
Did Mr. Wharton say why
he wanted to meet me?”

“
No, but I’m sure it’s
because he knows the difference between a ten-thumb hack and a real
writer. He noticed a ‘phenomenal improvement’ and said the writing
was ‘exceptional.’”

Did John resent that? No, his face was only
calm and composed. “Perhaps I could meet him,” she said. What was
she setting herself up for?

“
Excellent. Did I mention
he’s soon to be the publisher at Covenant Press? The business has
been in the Wharton family for generations.”

She gasped.
“
Publisher
?”

John nodded. “His father will retire at the
end of the year and will pass it down to him.”

Eliza stared at the blank page, thoughts
churning. The fact that John’s editor wanted to meet Eliza wasn’t
what was slowing John down. She met his gaze. “So, what else did
Mr. Wharton say about your manuscript? The part that has you
stalling now?”

John studied her for a moment, then rose and
came to her.

Her pulse sped.

He reached down and took the stack of mail
Duncan had left on her desk and sorted through it. “You’re very
intuitive. Yes, Fred wants me to slow down and delve deeper into
the difficult things. The things that drove me to the edge.”

Eliza waited until he returned to his chair,
then readied her pencil out of sight. Maybe if he thought he was
only talking to her, he wouldn’t let his worries about how things
sounded interfere with his spoken thoughts.

“
Deep down, I knew I was
just a shooting star, a flash in the pan, a momentary light on the
verge of burning out and disappearing without leaving a trace of
anything to show for my existence. And the clearer that became, the
harder I worked to be the biggest reprobate I could.”

She wrote quickly. “So … if you can’t be
good, then be good at being bad. Is that it?”

John was staring at something far beyond the
room. “Something like that. Yes.” He turned to her. “I want people
to understand that God gave me a second chance in spite of all that
I’d done. I don’t think it’s coming across. I was aiming for rock
bottom as hard and as fast as I could, and yet, in His mercy, God
took hold of me and lifted me out of that pit. He forgave me. For
the first time in my life, I felt real peace. I didn’t get there on
my own—I couldn’t. It was purely God.”

Eliza nodded and wrote it all. “That’s good.
And I know you’re eager to express that message. But I think you’re
getting ahead of yourself. Perhaps we should build up to that.”

“
You’re right. I suppose I
just want to hurry up and put all this behind me.”

“
I know.”

He looked at her, expression softening. “You
do?”

“
Yes.”

John studied her for a very long time. He
sighed. “Will you please read back what you last wrote?”

As Eliza read it aloud, John closed his
eyes. This was not a lying cheater. This was a man reliving things
he desperately wanted to forget.

“
Everything was about
indulging myself,” he said after she finished. “Keeping my name at
top billing, playing the game but hating it, using and being used,
running before a woman got too serious—or, if I’d been
honest—before she got any ideas of ditching me. I tramped from one
relationship to another like a stray dog, never staying in one
place long for fear of being trapped. Boozing it up every night
until the demons disappeared. It was as if the hounds of hell were
chasing me, and I wondered how long—no, I
knew
I couldn’t stay ahead of them
much longer.”

Eliza looked up.

John was staring at her notepad. “I’m not
trying to make any excuses. I hope that’s clear.”

“
I’m sure it will
be.”

“
No, I mean,
you
know I’m not trying
to justify what I was, don’t you?”

Eliza nodded, warmed by his concern about
what she thought of him.

“
I accept full blame for
everything I’ve done.”

“
I know,” she said softly.
This certainly came as no surprise.

John picked up his glass of tea and swirled
it, making the ice spin. “There were women. Married, single,
engaged—it didn’t matter.” His words came out tight, laced with
regret. He set his glass down slowly, as if to give the memories
time to scatter. “I married twice even though I knew it wouldn’t
last. There was no real commitment on my part. Both marriages ended
badly.”

He lapsed into silence again, giving Eliza’s
mind a chance to wander. With all those relationships, it was odd
that John had never fathered a child. Perhaps he was infertile.
Eliza had never become pregnant and had always supposed it was
Ralph who was infertile. But, of course, he later proved that
theory wrong.

“
The sad thing is,” John
said, “everyone knew what I was. Including the studio. And yet
everyone turned a blind eye, because reviewers adored me, other
studios made competitive offers, and critics raved about the
‘Devine’ magnetism and charm.”

“
The studio turned a blind
eye?” Eliza said. “But I thought your agent was always bailing you
out of scandals because it looked bad for the studio.”

He shook his head. “By that time, I was
getting truckloads of fan mail and my fame skyrocketed. The studio
ate it up and gave me a huge raise. As long as the lines at the box
office were growing, studio owners looked the other way. But I
guess the truth is not everyone turned a blind eye. Vivienne, my
second wife, divorced me in 1940.”

“
Second? What about the
first?”

John sighed. “I married
co-star Veronica Neumann in 1934. Then in 1938, while
filming
Back Alley
Business
, I met another co-star, Vivienne
LaPlante. Veronica didn’t appreciate my habit of collecting
co-stars. As soon as my divorce to Veronica was final, I married
Vivienne.”

Eliza started to write, but paused and
looked at John.

“
Yes, I suppose you should
write that,” he said, voice weary. “Surely everyone knows.
Unfortunately, by the time my second marriage ended, I didn’t even
care. I was getting stone-cold drunk every night. From then on, my
address was the Hollywood Roosevelt.”

With another sigh, he rose and went to the
fireplace. “I’d lost all sense of honor. A real man strives to
leave a lasting mark in this world, you see. Make it better somehow
because he was here. But I had no such ambitions, not by that time.
I was topping all the charts, but even with so much fame, all I had
to show for my life was a stack of films and a long line of women
who wished I’d never been born. Even if I’d wanted honor, you
couldn’t find a trace of it in me. If there was ever a time in my
life I’d longed for true significance, it was long past.”

Eliza’s pencil froze. True significance? The
words echoed, taunting her. She had believed everything John said
so far, but his last statement struck her as ludicrous. Could a
Hollywood star with scores of fans truly have any concept of the
quest for significance? Could a man whose name had emblazoned every
marquee in the country understand the void that she—a penniless
nobody—had so long struggled to fill?

Don’t think, just write.

She finished his lines, then waited.

John paced the floor. “I felt vacant, no
matter how much I tried to fill the emptiness with women and booze
and night life. Deep down, I knew I had become something completely
opposite of what my father and Will had been. I was completely
careless about anyone but myself.”

Eliza glanced at him.

John looked away. “There
was a young starlet in 1940—Jeanette Lovell. She was pretty, eager,
full of life and raw talent, but she was green. She had no insider
savvy. I …” He crossed the room and stood at the window, leaning
hard on his cane as if braced for whatever he was about to say. “It
should have mattered that she was a newlywed, married to her high
school sweetheart. It
would
have mattered to any kind of
real
man, but …”

Her eyes were clamped shut, perhaps in some
childish attempt to block out what was coming next.

“
Dear God,” he whispered.
“I can’t do this.”

Eliza opened her eyes as John left the
library, his awkward gait more pronounced in his hurry. He headed
through the sitting room and disappeared.

T
here will be some consequence, some price yet to pay for my
sins. I just don’t know if I’ll be able to pay when the bill comes
due.

~
The Devine Truth: A Memoir

Eliza
watched him leave, thoughts whirling. What else did John have
to confess? And how much more would she have to hear?

Millie stepped into the library from the
kitchen, drying her hands on an embroidered tea towel. “Miz Eliza?
I got a small favor to ask. Might you step in the kitchen a
minute?”

“
Of course.” Eliza
followed Millie.

At the stove, Millie picked up a dish
containing a golden, round pastry oozing with sticky syrup and
topped with sparkling sugar. A half dozen more sat in a pan on the
stove. The scent of cinnamon filled the room.

“
Somethin’ funny with this
batch. Could you taste it?” Millie nudged the dish into Eliza’s
hands.

Eliza took a spoonful of the pastry, tasted
it, and closed her eyes to savor the tangy blend of spiced, sweet
fruit and flaky pastry shell. “Millie, this is marvelous. There’s
nothing wrong with it.” She cut another spoonful and popped it in
her mouth, eyeing the old woman. “What are you trying to pull?”

Millie shrugged. “Just needed a woman’s
opinion, that’s all.”

“
Mm-hmm,” Eliza said,
chewing. “You know what they say about lies coming back to get you
later, don’t you?” She licked her spoon and scooped another
bite.

“
Yes, ma’am.”

“
So you’re trying to tell
me you honestly think there’s something wrong with this—what
is
it, by the
way?”

“
Apple dumplin’. All
right. Truth is, this here my grandmama’s recipe, and it won more
blue ribbons than you can shake a stick at.”

Eliza’s brows rose. “Impressive. I can’t
even peel an apple without destroying it.” She chuckled and took
another bite.

“
Oh, I ’spect you can,
ma’am. You just need to stop listenin’ to voices sayin’ you
can’t.”

Eliza swallowed hard and studied the woman
who only looked frail, because anyone who knew Millie knew better.
“What do you mean?”

Millie nodded at the television at the other
end of the counter.

Harriet Nelson was taking a full plate of
food away from Ozzie. The audience roared.

“
Do you like that Ozzie
and Harriet program, Miz Eliza?”

Eliza shook her head. “Not especially. I
mean, I’m sure it’s entertaining, but I’m afraid it encourages
women to believe that they are of lesser value to society just
because they’re women. So many forms of oppression are not only
accepted in this country, they’re encouraged.” She took another
small bite, pondering. “I’ve been trying to get people to recognize
the injustice of racial and gender inequality, and to show the need
for change by writing about them. I don’t know if I’m doing any
good, but I have to do something.”

“
Ah.” Millie nodded at the
television. “But what if a nice home and all the latest things is
all Miz Harriet wants?”

Eliza hesitated. Had Millie never dared to
want more for herself? “But there is more to life, don’t you think,
Millie? Surely a nice home and fancy appliances isn’t all a
woman—if she’s honest with herself—wants out of life?”

Millie peered into Eliza’s eyes. “They’s
plenty worse things, ma’am.”

The ridiculous irony of their conversation
suddenly struck Eliza, igniting heat in her cheeks. “Millie, you
don’t have to call me ma’am.”

Millie lifted another
apple dumpling from the pan and placed it in a bowl, then added a
spoon. “Maybe
you
not offended when a colored woman neglect to address you
as
ma’am
, but the
next white woman I meet just might be. I appreciate you want to see
change. And I believe change is comin’. But it gonna take prayer
and lots of grace for those folks not mature enough to accept the
kind of change you want. The Bible say we not to flaunt our freedom
in front of those who are weak and who may stumble and have a
guilty conscience on account of what we do.” Millie set the bowl on
a serving tray.

Stunned, Eliza set her bowl on the counter.
“Are you saying … the Bible tells you to be submissive to people
who are too selfish or ignorant to know how wrong it is?”