West of Sunset (26 page)

GLAD
TO
,
Max wired that afternoon.
LOOKING
FO
RWARD
TO
PAGES
WHEN
READY
.

Ober's response, when it finally arrived, was long and closely reasoned, betraying, in spots, like an editorial, a moralistic tone. Its theme was that darling of the prosperous, self-reliance. By becoming Scott's banker, Ober had done them both a disservice. He'd hoped that finally squaring their accounts would put an end to the loans and prod Scott to live within his means—which, given how much he'd made last year, were comparatively generous. If he needed more to cover his expenses, he could take on more assignments there, or they could ask Max for an advance on the novel, once he had a sizable chunk of it done.

Though he could argue that he'd never worked harder, or in worse circumstances, there was nothing he could fully refute, and no point. The sentiment was clear. Ober had carried him for years, like the corner grocer in Buffalo extending credit to his mother when they were short. No more. When he was flush Ober would be there to collect his share, but in the lean times Scott would have to fend for himself.

What galled him most was how slowly Ober had gotten back to him after he'd wired the second time. Once again he'd made the mistake of thinking publishing was a gentlemen's game. Before he wrote to break formally with him, saying how sorry he was and how much he appreciated him and Anne giving Scottie a home, he sent the two new stories to
Esquire
and offered
Collier's
first serial rights to the novel.

Max, who was a gentleman, asked him to reconsider, as if he were being rash, until Scott explained it wasn't a case of him losing faith in Ober but vice-versa.
I'm
sure it's a result of those wintry afternoons memorizing the Baltimore Catechism—apostasy being the ultimate sin. All shall be saved who believe in me.

He had a harder time explaining the break to Scottie, who, with the egotism of the young, thought she was the cause of the problem. She and Zelda were in Saluda, awaiting her operation. He'd made a deal to pay the doctor on the installment plan, as if he were buying furniture, and lied when she asked how much it was. He still had to pay the hospital and the day nurse.

“Put your mother on,” he said. “I love you, Pie.”

“I love you, Daddy.”

Zelda sounded mousy and abstracted, like her own mother. She spoke haltingly in her impassive drawl, the dreamy belle. “You'd like it. It's cool at night. We're having a lovely time, just the two of us.”

He wondered if she was drugged. After he'd hung up he realized he hadn't talked to her on the phone since she was at Pratt.

The day of the operation, he had Frances send Scottie her favorite, gladiolas. She was fine, already bragging about her battle scar. He was at Universal, where Swanie had gotten him on a dog of an academic comedy called
Open That Door
. A milquetoast geology professor leaves his ivory tower to climb a mountain and finds gold—and romance. Six weeks at three-fifty. It folded after one.

Esquire
accepted a story, a reprieve, but he'd lost momentum on the novel, and with Scottie coming, he'd only have to set it aside again. He hadn't heard back from
Collier's
, which worried him. Having broken with Ober and already put the touch on Max, the list of old friends he might implore was short. Just contemplating borrowing money from Sheilah paralyzed him. Out of pride he wouldn't bother Ernest or Dottie, though, good comrades, they had it to burn. Bogie and O'Hara he didn't know well enough, or Pep or Sid. Ring would have given him fifty thousand without blinking. Sara and Gerald were a possibility, though Sara hadn't been happy with him after
Tender
.

In the end, heeding Ober's call of self-reliance, he took to bed with his lap desk and ashtray and churned out two more stories for
Esquire
. Frances sent them airmail, following up with a wire.

He wasn't new to ruin. He'd ducked creditors before, in Westport and New York, Montreux and Rome. After paying Zelda's monthly bill at Highland he couldn't make rent, and so, the day before Scottie arrived, against doctor's orders, dressed in his rube's suit, he drove the Ford to a hock shop on Wilshire. Frances followed in her Pontiac, waiting in the lot while he signed over the title and pocketed a hundred and fifty dollars. It would have to last until something else came through. He had nothing left worth pawning.

“Merci, Françoise,”
he said as they rode through Hollywood.

“Mais bien sur,”
she said.

Scottie was to understand the car was in the shop. He'd promised her driving lessons this trip and used the excuse to have Frances take her out in the Pontiac, the two of them cruising around Encino like best friends home for the summer. Along with her appendix she'd lost the last of her baby fat and her hair was light from the sun. In the afternoons the pool was full of boys from back East. At night they barbecued and sang campfire songs under the stars. Ober, maybe in conciliation, forwarded a check for radio royalties, and the car was fixed. To help celebrate, Sheilah made a rare appearance, meeting them at the Troc for an anniversary of sorts, though, wary of his lungs, they barely danced.

“She seemed different,” Scottie said when they were alone at the end of the evening, sitting in Erleen's kitchen, eating blackberry pie.

“How so?”

“I don't think she was having much fun.”

“She's worried about me.”

“I worry about you too. I don't know, she felt different to me.”

“You're not turning mystic on me.”

“Stop,” she said, and regrouped, looking at her hands in her lap, then seriously at him, as if she had grave news. “I told mother, and I wanted to tell you in person. I'm writing a novel.”

“God help you. Is it about us?”

“That's what she asked. No.”

“That's wonderful, Pie. And very brave of you, I must say. How far along are you?”

“Not quite a hundred pages. I was hoping, maybe later, if you have time—”

“I'd love to see them,” he said, thinking with alarm that she was ahead of him.

“They're not ready yet.”

“When they are, just let me know. I'd be honored. Will you be showing them to your mother as well?”

She wasn't sure of the right answer.

“She'd like that,” he said.

“I will.”

“Oh God, we've failed. Our baby's a writer.”

Her visit raced by like a week at the beach. It seemed she was always leaving. Her last day, she passed her test, acing the course in the Pontiac. At the train station she hugged Frances like a sister, and he felt rich.

Friday the Germans invaded Poland. England and France declared war. It was the first of the month, and he couldn't pay his rent, let alone her tuition. While the world burned, he closed his door and carefully wrote Gerald and Sara.
As Keats said, illness and want are poor companions.

He didn't wait for them to save him. Monday morning he bothered Swanie, who called in a favor at Fox and got him on the lot. He did a story conference for
Everything Happens at Night
, a thriller starring Sonja Henie and the Gestapo that Ernest would have loved. He thought it had gone well, but they never called him back.

In his desperation he resurrected a treatment he'd done for the silents,
The Feather Fan
, from one of his early stories, punching it up on spec. It was the kind of romance he'd excelled at when he was beginning, a boy and a girl and the shifting mores of the times. What passed for honesty, for honor? He had to admit, on this count Scottie was right. The story seemed so old-fashioned he thought it might play as a period piece. He asked Swanie to show it to Metro. With the war there was a market for nostalgia, and no one was more nostalgic than L.B.

He paid Frances and Erleen and the pharmacy bill, letting the rest hang. The morning mail arrived just before eleven. He stood at his window, peeking through the blinds as the truck pulled up to the gate. A hand yanked down the lid, shoved in a bundle and slapped it shut again.

“Fran
ç
oise, if you would do the honors.”

He watched her on the way back, weaving as she leafed through the envelopes.

“And what does the great wide world have for us today?” he asked, though he could tell by her face.

Bills and overdue notices from collection agencies. His
Princeton Alumni Weekly
, previewing the football season and asking the faithful sons of Nassau for donations. If nothing came through soon, he supposed he could go back to Max.

He'd given up on Metro when Swanie called. They'd passed on
The Feather Fan
, but he'd had lunch with Goldwyn and persuaded him to give Scott another chance. Next week he was starting on a remake of
Raffles
, with David Niven as the dashing jewel thief and Olivia de Havilland as his highborn ideal. They were reusing Sidney Howard's old script, God rest his soul.

“What happened to Sidney?”

“His tractor ran him over.”

“Jesus.”

“He's a shoo-in for the Oscar.”

“That's rude.”

“It's true.”

Sidney had been a Harvard man, a Pulitzer winner who just wanted to be a farmer. Scott would doctor his dialogue on the set. Four weeks at five-fifty. The schedule was tight because Niven was going off to fly Spitfires for the RAF, a fate Scott thought noble and doomed.

He was glad to be on the lot again—Frances was thrilled, gawking at the stars—but after
Open That Door
and so many other crack-ups, he didn't count his chickens. He loaded his briefcase with Cokes and showed up on time, dictating to Frances between set-ups and jotting down details on the shoot the two of them would have to decipher later. True to their characters, Niven was a gentleman, de Havilland a pill, keeping to her dressing room. The stage was insulated from the light of day but also from any suggestion of a breeze. The air smelled, like an old attic, of baking dust. By lunch the swing gang and cameramen were soaking, and makeup had to redo the players' faces.

Occasionally Goldwyn stopped in and sat with the director, leaning over as if giving him notes. His real name was Goldfish, the -wyn was his own invention. He was of the generation before Thalberg, the money men, ruthless as gangsters. Scott wanted to thank him for the opportunity, but never got the chance. The fourth day of the shoot, while Scott watched, Goldwyn and the director engaged in a shouting match that ended with the director stalking off the set. The next morning, without explanation, Scott was let go.

“I should have told you,” Swanie said. “He's one of my guys.”

“I see,” Scott said. “A package deal.”

Payday wasn't until Saturday. The mail held nothing of value. There were no last-minute telegrams. He'd put off Magda long enough, and drove the Ford over the pass, through Hollywood and down Wilshire again. Frances followed in the Pontiac.

The man knew the car but not his name, for which he was grateful.

She was waiting for him with the engine running.

“Merci beaucoup,”
he said.

“Mais bien sur, monsieur.”

G
erald and Sara rescued him, temporarily. He arranged with Vassar to pay Scottie's tuition in installments like her hospital bill, and still he had to beg Dr. Carroll for a month's credit, and then another and another while Zelda's mother pestered him to let her come home. He sent a synopsis of the novel to
Collier's.
They were going to pay him fifteen thousand if they liked the first sixty pages. It was too early—he was just beginning to know Stahr.

By November he was close. The voice wasn't quite calibrated, but he could fix that later. He was braced for an editorial letter he'd do his best to ignore. He never expected they'd decline it outright.

He tried the
Post
.

They said no.

All along he'd seen the serial rights as his deliverance.
Esquire
was buying stories but paid so little he couldn't get ahead of his bills. Without Ober he didn't know where to turn. He wouldn't let the uncertainty undermine his work, but at the end of the day, when Frances and Erleen left, he was alone and, frustrated, began to drink.

He caught himself, calling the doctor and bringing in a nurse before he did too much damage, and then, just after Thanksgiving, when he was almost better, he got into a bottle, argued with her and went on a rampage, smashing a lamp and chasing her from the house. She called Sheilah, who tried to calm him with Mozart and tomato soup. Like an infant, he threw the bowl against the wall.

The nurse stood there with her useless needle.

“Lily Shiel's her real name. She didn't tell you she's a Jew, did she? No. Lily Shiel. 'er royal 'ighness from the East End, shaking 'er tits all over London.”

He shimmied, laughing, then ran. When the nurse blocked the door to his room, he kicked her in the shin and ransacked his bureau for his gun. Sheilah called the police, but, being in the country, they were miles away. While the prowl car wailed down the valley, he locked the bathroom door and swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills.

Later, sedated and penitent, he remembered none of it, which only magnified his shame. The nurse returned. Sheilah didn't.

He thought she would forgive him once he was recovered, but she wouldn't answer her phone. He had Frances leave roses on her doorstep, and sent ones he couldn't afford from the florist with their favorite poems. Every day he expected her to call or show up at the gate and say she'd been out of town. She stayed away, and he was afraid he'd ruined things.

Erleen took her side.

“The way you were cutting up, I don't blame her. What you need to do is go over her place and set on her stoop till she comes home.”

“I don't think she wants to see me.”

“You let
her
tell you that. Whatever she says, you listen and don't say a word. When she's all done, you say you're sorry and you'll never do it again, and you mean it. If that doesn't work, nothing will.”

He wasn't brave enough to risk her gambit. She didn't know Sheilah the way he did. Waste my life, she'd said. He could argue, but at heart, in his misery, he agreed.

There's no excuse for what I've put you through,
he wrote in his most painstaking hand.
Clearly after this last time it's not a matter of me being drunk or sick but a pathology in which I take advantage of your kind and generous nature. You've been overly patient with me, Sheilo, far beyond what I deserve. I promise I won't bother you anymore.

After work he drove to her place so he could deliver it in person. Her car was gone, her grass shaggy. He still had the key she'd given him and thought of dropping it in her mail slot with the letter, but didn't, as if holding back a last chip. He remembered their first date with Eddie Mayer playing chaperone, dancing close with her at the Clover Club. He didn't know her at all, this fascinating stranger. Everything he'd learned about her since then only made him like her more, yet he'd chased her away.

Though he was tempted, he wouldn't embarrass her by sitting on her stoop all night. He got in his car and wound down the hill to Sunset, poking his nose out like she'd taught him, waiting for someone to let him in.

As a test, for Christmas Zelda was going home without a chaperone. Scottie was in Baltimore with the Finneys. He had nowhere to go, no money and no one to share the day with, but enlisted Frances to help find presents for everyone, including, for Sheilah, a jewelry box that played the Moonlight Sonata. Christmas Eve he left it on her doorstep. The next morning, Frances reported, it was gone.

Dear Miss Graham,
he dictated,
Mr. Fitzgerald has often warned me not to involve myself too closely in his personal affairs. At the risk of overstepping my position I feel I should let you know he feels awful about treating you and Miss Steffen so badly. With the help of Miss Steffen he is now fully recovered and regrets everything that happened and dearly wishes to make amends. I believe he is sincere and can personally vouch for his recent behavior.

I would be careful,
Sheilah wrote back.
Mr. Fitzgerald has a tendency to hurt the people closest to him. He's a selfish, angry little man who thinks he's superior because he reads poetry and was famous once twenty years ago. If he ever treats you the way he's treated me, I hope you have the courage to leave and never speak to him again, because that is what he deserves.

He nodded, shrugged. “It's progress.”

She'd left things behind. For weeks, around the house, he confronted her in a cigarette case, an address book, a nightgown. Now he bundled these up with a handwritten apology, saying he'd leave Hollywood altogether if that would make her happy—a fake ultimatum, really an appeal for mercy.

He heard nothing for several days, as if she were weighing the offer. The rainy season was upon them again, Southern California's poor excuse for winter refilling the great basin, giving the farmers hope. In the airless spare bedroom he and Frances toiled on the novel, cobbling together episodes. It had been pouring all morning when, just before lunch, the drumming slowed and stopped and the sun appeared, glinting in the trees. He went to open the window beside her desk but it was stuck, swollen shut. He'd grown so weak resting in bed. When it resisted him, out of habit he gripped the top like a weightlifter, planting the heels of his hands under the sash, and pushed, and from the twinge in his chest, knew he'd made a terrible mistake.

This time the world didn't turn purple but black, the light fading like a dissolve, the trees outside melting into a dark mass. He reached for the wall and found it, solid, but he was blind now, as if hooded, and before he could reach for his pills, he tipped sideways, his leg caught on the desk, and he toppled against Frances like a corpse, making her scream, though he would know this last part only later, a comic bit to leaven the telling.

The first person Frances called was her father. The second was Sheilah, who met them at the hospital, in tears.

“If you died I'd never forgive myself,” she said, her fear taking the place of logic.

From then on they were together, Frances their boon companion. For now he stayed in Encino. At the end of the day Frances handed him off to Erleen, who handed him off to Sheilah, like guards changing shifts. He didn't have a moment alone to break his promises.

When Sheilah moved to her new apartment a block from the Garden of Allah, he thought she might ask him to live with her, but she never offered. She was still inscrutable, the beauty who turned down the marquis. He was always forgetting how young she was, how tough. She thought Swanie was doing a bad job and found Scott a new agent who helped sell
Babylon Revisited
to an independent producer. A thousand for the rights and ten weeks at five hundred, guaranteed, plus a bonus if a studio picked it up. The story was set in Paris and based on Zelda's sister Rosalind trying to take Scottie from him after Zelda was first committed. He would write the script with an eye toward Shirley Temple, which he thought hilarious. He would be Cary Grant.

“At least they got the chin right,” Sheilah said.

“I'd rather be Bogie. Plus, he'd be cheaper.”

The weeks evaporated as his savings grew. In April, at the Oscars,
Gone with the Wind
won big, and he thought, happily, that some small part of Sidney Howard's award belonged to him. It wasn't just vanity. In less than three years Margaret Sullavan and now Vivien Leigh had taken Best Actress with his dialogue. Whatever else he did in Hollywood, he could be proud of that. Funny how much easier it was to be magnanimous with money in the bank.

Now that he could pay for Zelda's treatment, Dr. Carroll sided with her mother and recommended she be released. Scott was afraid she'd relapse without professional care and exacted a promise from the doctor that he'd readmit her if that happened, and then, on leave, a week before she was supposed to go home, she was seen at an Asheville soda fountain drinking a chocolate malted.

The doctor cabled him as if she'd stabbed a matron. Her parole was on hold pending a board meeting.

Scott would have understood if Highland were a fat farm, but it seemed vainglorious to keep her in a mental ward for enjoying a milkshake when the Germans were marching into Denmark. He cabled, pleading her case, and that Saturday she was free.

I'm sorry the world you're returning to is so unsettled,
he wrote.
At least there you can count on your mother and Sara and the comforts of home. Do let me know if thirty dollars is enough of a clothes allowance these first months, as I imagine you'll need all new things. My hope is that Scottie will be able to visit you in June before heading off to summer school. Now your mother can tell her friends we have a daughter at Harvard.

It is restful,
Zelda wrote,
to think of Scottie among the Puritan repositories of knowledge when all and sundry are declaring war
.
Here the morning garden twitters with impatient rondelets of birdsong and Melinda clattering in the kitchen and the pure solemn bells of St. John's defining the hour. The town is green and welcoming to my prodigal heart which overflows with succulent nostalgias. I might be six, taking the streetcar to the library with Mama where they give me a new card. Do-Do, please don't fret about me. If I have a place in the world this is it. I am grateful and will strive with every ounce of health to achieve that regular life that brings happiness.

He could have said he was trying to do the same. As she acclimated in Montgomery, to escape another valley summer Sheilah helped him move to an apartment in Hollywood around the corner from her. The building had once been a fleabag, with a brass cage protecting the front desk, and the furniture seemed to be holdovers. His couch was a dark broccoli green, lesioned with cigarette burns. His neighbors were starlets and grips hoping to do better. Across the hall lived an obese woman who sold her screams to the movies and treated them to free samples, rehearsing at all hours. Next door was a leggy redhead improbably named Lucille Ball whose Cuban boyfriend played the Bamboo Room and didn't get off till two in the morning. After the tomblike quiet of Encino the sounds of life were inspiring, if detrimental to sleep.

He could have afforded a more chichi address but the location was ideal, close to the studios and old haunts like the Victor Hugo and the Troc. He and Sheilah stayed in, eating dinner together, one night at her place, the next at his. They shared her cook, Mildred, who, like Erleen and Flora before her, was a champion baker of pies, but sometimes when they'd been cooped up all day they dismissed her and walked down Sunset to Schwab's and sat at the counter, leafing through magazines and eating French dips and cottage fries and hot-fudge sundaes, strolling back hand in hand at twilight as swallows skimmed the treetops and cars flared past.

They were careful sleeping together, proceeding gently. Like any muscle, given enough rest, the heart would heal itself. Every visit the doctor brought last week's cardiogram to show Scott his progress. Like Zelda, he had restrictions. No more coffee, and absolutely no more Benzedrine. He still snuck a cigarette here and there, but not enough to matter. He'd smoked his whole life. It wasn't like he'd get his wind back. Since he'd quit, he'd developed a potbelly he was keenly aware of in bed. He'd always been slender, a natural bantamweight. Now even a sit-up could kill him.

“Are you all right?” she asked, because he'd gone silent beneath her. Sometimes he was so focused he forgot to breathe.

“Yes.”

“How's that?” she said.

“That's lovely.”

He wished she wouldn't talk. Zelda had, and in the dark he saw her face, her wanton smile. He reached up to touch Sheilah, the taut hollows of her ribs.

“Be careful.”

“I will,” he said, and he was. He wanted to stay right here and never leave.

Deep in the night there were sirens, shouts, bottles smashing. He'd missed the city, and lay awake with a hand on her soft bottom, imagining the streets running down to the sea, the lone cars roving the coast highway out past Malibu. Where was Stahr at this hour? Where was his girl? He wanted to offer them this boundless feeling of luck while it was still ripe, as if it might save them. They must know it won't, he thought, and yet it's everything.

In the morning the notes he'd scribbled in the dark were cryptic, useless. He had an
Esquire
story to finish before Frances arrived, and all day on the script, which was taking too long. He showered and started coffee for Sheilah before kissing her good-bye and was let down to find the world outside unchanged.

“Bonjour, Françoise.”

“Bonjour, monsieur.”

She liked the new place, despite the clientele. She could sleep later now that she didn't have to make the drive. With Sheilah right around the corner, there were no more late-night calls, no Cyrano-like errands, though she was too polite to say so. She tucked her skirt under and hitched her chair closer to the desk, straightened her pages. The
Esquire
stories were broad comedies set on the lot, and as she typed he attended her laugh like a lover's sigh.