Strangers in the Night, page 27
Suddenly I was reminded why I was in Tahoe in the first place: to escape the madness Frank and I made together. And it was definitely time.
Chapter 38
Frank
Ava didn’t show in court or sign the divorce papers she’d sworn to file after Tahoe, and neither did I. We couldn’t seem to get there, and I held on to a shred of hope that we might reconcile.
If my personal life was a mess, my career rocketed to new heights. Nearly all of my singles hit the Billboard charts. Roles for new pictures flooded in from multiple studios. When Time magazine called, I lost it—I drank myself into a stupor to celebrate. I’d never forget seeing Ava on the cover, being awestruck by her fame, and now, the deadest man in Hollywood who couldn’t get a single person to take a call was on the cover of Time. I’d even received a second Oscar nomination. I was unstoppable.
I started thinking about investing in my own record label and in shares of a casino, but those decisions were still for the future. For now, I spent money like water. Gold key chains for staff and other people who were good to me, extravagant parties with flowing champagne in my suite at the Sands. I bought my daughter her first car and I bought a car for Ava, too. She paid me back well with a quick visit and a hot weekend, leaving my head reeling and my heart wanting her all over again. We weren’t together but somehow, we couldn’t be apart either.
When I didn’t win the Oscar for playing a one-armed man in The Man with the Golden Arm, Ava was the first person I called.
“What is it, Francis? You’re upset.” Her voice came over the line.
“I lost,” I said, disappointment rippling through me again. I’d worked so hard on the role, read and researched, and met with doctors to understand what it was like to lose an arm, including the pain, the phantom limb sensation, and even the inevitable shame from people staring at you and making you feel like you’ve become a freak. But it wasn’t enough.
“The nomination is what counts, baby,” she said. “And you were brilliant, no matter who won the award. It should have been you and everyone knows it. Besides, you’re on top everywhere. People aren’t comfortable with winners. Not for long. And you, baby, are a winner.”
Something inside me released at those words. I ached for her, wanted to be consoled in a way that only she could provide. “I need to see you. How about I come to Madrid?”
“I’ll keep the bed warm,” she said, her drawl pronounced.
I thought of Betty, Bogie’s wife, and how we’d been quietly seeing each other the last few weeks as he declined. I wasn’t comfortable sitting with that truth. Still, she wouldn’t like me flying off to see Ava, but comparing my feelings for Betty to those I felt for Ava was like comparing a pastel watercolor to a Van Gogh canvas of vivid, bold strokes with layers upon layers of color and emotion. They weren’t in the same universe.
“Tomorrow, Angel,” I said.
When I arrived in Madrid, Ava greeted me with the biggest grin, her green eyes sparking, her curls wild in the hot wind. My heart squeezed at the sight of her, and as we walked toward each other, I knew I was done for all over again.
“It’s good to see you,” she said, looping her arms around my neck.
“I love you,” I said, covering her mouth with mine.
When we parted, she said, breathlessly, “I love you, too. Always will.”
We made our way to bed, and everything else vanished. For a time.
When I returned to the States, I felt unstable, missing her and once again slammed with guilt for sleeping with my best friend’s wife. Sometimes I thought Bogie knew Betty and I were fooling around. He’d look at her with a pained expression and then at me, and contempt would flash in his eyes. I knew he loved her, but I also knew he’d been in love with his hairdresser, Verita Thompson, for years. The woman had meticulously cared for Bogie’s toupees before cancer and after, and they’d had a serious and long affair. Betty knew about Verita, and I knew Bogie loved Verita more than he could ever care for Betty. Sometimes those were the breaks.
Soon after my return, I got the call I’d been dreading for months.
Bogie, dead.
It didn’t matter that he’d long been suffering and I’d seen it coming a million miles off. I struggled with the fact that I’d never see him again, knock around some jokes with him, talk about things that mattered in life and things that didn’t. I locked myself in my New York apartment, smoking one cigarette after another until my hands shook and my head ached with fatigue and nicotine. I contemplated the arbitrary nature of life and made a vow that night to not waste a single moment. What a fool I’d been, to attempt to take my own life. I hadn’t seen what was precious there, in those moments. Now it was undeniable, mirrored in the life of a dear friend, lost against his will and far too soon.
I asked Betty to marry me on a whim one night after wistful memories and bottles of wine. A day later in the clear, bright sunshine, it didn’t feel right. I’d gotten carried away. Sometimes I couldn’t stop the runaway train of my emotions.
“Let’s keep our engagement quiet for now,” I said the following evening. “We’re not in any sort of rush anyway, are we?” We didn’t acknowledge the fact that I wasn’t even divorced yet.
Though Betty agreed, within weeks, a newspaper caught wind of our engagement—that’s when I knew she’d told someone. When she called the next day to explain, I refused her phone call. I ignored her barrage of messages and made sure I wasn’t home for weeks. With time apart came clarity: I was relieved to have a reason to let her go. I didn’t want to marry her—she was my friend’s girl—and the guilt was eating me alive. Betty and I had shared something intense while Bogie was dying, but that was all it was. An understanding, a companionship.
I ignored her calls and never spoke to Betty again. As for Ava, I’d soon learn she was leaving the U.S., for good.
Chapter 39
Ava
When I learned of Francis’s alleged engagement, I lost a few days to gin martinis, had a raucous night out with Lena Horne and her band, and followed it with a day of wallowing with my sister. In the end, the news made it easier to leave Los Angeles. Seven months after I’d vowed to pack up my life in Los Angeles for good, I finally decided to go for it. Reenie, my sister, Bappie, and my dog, Rags, were loaded into a plane and off we went.
I rented a ranch home twenty minutes from Madrid on a couple of acres of lawn with towering pines and sweeping willows, and dusty brown hills rolling in the distance. I connected quickly with the wealthy expat society I’d met a year before while dating Luis. Betty and Ricardo Sicre became my nearest and dearest friends. Not only was I amazed by their stories of being former World War II spies—and falling in love during their time at war—but they knew how to party with the best of them.
Betty and I grew so close, I passed her the scripts sent my way from Hollywood and turned down the offers if she didn’t like them. I also turned them down when I didn’t want to leave home. I knew I was cutting myself off more and more from life in the spotlight, but I welcomed the reprieve. The Spanish let me live my life. They didn’t chase me down alleys to catch a glimpse of me or to take a photograph. They didn’t behave like parasites, as Francis used to call the media, sapping me of energy and taking from me something that couldn’t be easily replenished: my privacy, my happiness.
During my free time, I traveled all over the country and learned the way of the land—the mountains and cooler temperatures in the north; the seaside towns on the eastern shores; the blazing hot, dry region to the south. The customs and the endless salty, oily seafood dishes. In the end, I felt most at home among those who were considered vagrants in Spain. Bands of people who roamed from town to town, often along a river, living off wages gained from their bewitching music. I was drawn to their vivid earthiness, which reminded me of my North Carolina upbringing and reminded me just how pretentious and false everything was in the city I’d left behind. These people came alive at night like I did, beginning their evening after a ten-o’clock dinner, and carrying their music and dancing through the black hours until the sky streaked purple with dawn’s first light. When the morning came and my new friends began to trickle home, sometimes I’d invite them back to my place, luring them with a currency of wine or a tidy sum I knew they needed to buy food. I felt most myself in their presence, wild with joy or deeply philosophical, and at times, celebrating my own private pain.
In the end, the wine-soaked nights began to add up and I felt the caution that had ruled my professional life in public disappearing. What did I care if I was portrayed as a wild child, participating in orgies and the like with the wicked and the banished on the fringes of society? I didn’t. It didn’t matter, none of it—not what others said or thought or believed. I could only be myself, even if I was changing without knowing precisely how.
As for my career, it was changing, too.
The script adaptation for another Hemingway book arrived and I called the man myself. Hemingway—whom I’d had the pleasure to meet at a bull ranch and whom I’d adored instantly—asked for a copy of the script for The Sun Also Rises and I sent it immediately.
When he called, I grew nervous.
“I hate to be so blunt,” he began.
“Out with it, Papa,” I said, using his nickname. “I need to know what I’m getting myself into.”
“The script is a piece of shit.”
I laughed at his directness. “Well, you really should work on telling me how you feel.”
Now he was the one who laughed.
“I don’t have a choice but to take the film,” I said. “I keep turning down their scripts and I’m still under contract.”
“Good luck, Daughter,” he answered, calling me by his pet name for me. “Let me know how it all works out.”
I tarried over whether to try to get out of the film, but David Hanna firmly backed me into a corner.
“I don’t care if it’s the worst damn thing you’ve ever read,” David said. “You need to get on that plane to Mexico. You’ve turned down one script too many and you’re still under contract.”
I reluctantly packed my bags, knowing there was one other thing I must do while on that side of the world. I packed the divorce papers right along with Francis’s records in my suitcase.
When I arrived in Mexico City for filming, I was bused out to a horrible set and even worse lodgings—if you could call the ramshackle huts lodgings. One had already caved in on several crew members. I demanded to be given sufficient lodgings outside of the camp. I demanded my hairdresser be flown in from Hollywood. I demanded the press be barred from the set. I also charged my liquor to the studio account. I was no longer a clueless young starlet—I was a seasoned actress who wasn’t in any mood to put up with the baloney that came with my ridiculous job. And if MGM didn’t like it, they could cut me loose from my criminally low-paying contract. I longed to be a free agent, anyway—most of the bigwigs already were by now. I was just biding my time until it ran out.
One day on set, a member of the camera crew made a snide comment: “Tequila is the hardest on the skin, you know.”
I looked a little puffy that morning, for sure, after bar time the night before, but I obsessed over the man’s comment. For the first time, I stared in the mirror, noting the circles under my eyes and the little lines that had begun to form on my forehead and around my mouth. I bought up all the tabloids I could find to study the unflattering pictures of myself—and then I snapped.
“I’m not coming to set if you don’t bar those photographers from the production,” I said, storming out of the scene one afternoon.
“Ava! We have two more scenes left,” the director called after me.
I whirled around to face him. “Then get them out of here so I can focus and we can all go home!” I motioned to the handful of press photographers that showed up almost daily.
He did as I asked after more threats and shouting, and I stumbled blindly through the rest of the picture. The real motor behind my horrible behavior was something I thought I’d accepted—that Francis and I were through and it was time to move on. That didn’t mean I had to like it.
I finally signed and sealed the divorce papers, and had them delivered.
Francis didn’t even fight it. He signed and filed immediately.
I was as relieved as I was devastated on a level I didn’t understand until the middle of the night, left alone, my heart racing from three gin martinis too many. I stared at the ceiling of my hotel room, my eyes drawn to a spider crawling into a crack in the corner. I didn’t know what I was doing, where I was going. I didn’t know what my next move would be—and God forbid my beauty was truly slipping. Hollywood would have nothing to do with me. I was only as good as my last picture, as my last photo shoot used for pinups.
I tortured myself with visions of Francis and Betty. Would he really marry her? I slipped out of bed, put on Francis’s latest hit on the record player, and listened to him sing to me until I’d cried all the tears in the world. Tonight, the world was black and my chance at love was a blurred spot on the horizon.
* * *
On my first day home in Madrid after the terrible filming experience in Mexico, I received a call from Los Angeles.
“I’ve got another film for you,” David, my publicist said. “It’s in Rome.”
I groaned. “How many more are there?”
“You’re almost done with your contract,” he said. “Hang in there. Soon, we’ll start making you some real money.”
The power had shifted to agents and managers and best of all, to the actors. We could call the shots about which pictures we agreed to do rather than be one of a stable of actors forced to work on a film. Now, our team negotiated the deals. I could hardly wait to be done with MGM for good.
“So back to Rome, I guess,” I said, sighing.
In Rome, I was hounded every minute by the press. I was recognized everywhere, harassed, photographed, followed. It was surreal: ducking into alleyways to hide, covering my hair with scarves and my face with sunglasses, or waiting to leave the house at odd hours. Exhausted by it all, and desperate for a reprieve, I was glad to escape to Monaco for Grace Kelly’s wedding.
I was happy for Gracie, but something about her getting married unsettled me deeply. I was envious, sure. What woman wouldn’t want to go from Hollywood starlet—a difficult and winding career—to Her Serene Highness, Princess of Monaco? Or perhaps I felt left behind while everyone moved on with their lives and settled into a normal, fulfilling family life. One thing was certain, I was nervous as a bedbug that I’d run into Francis and his flavor of the month. I didn’t think I could stomach it.
On the day of the wedding, I wore a tasteful silk dress with full skirt and pinned my hair into a smooth bun. A wedding for a princess required class and taste. Besides, the crowd would be a who’s who and I wanted to look my best—especially if Francis would be there. I don’t know why I cared. We were divorced, after all, and hadn’t spoken to each other in months. I thought about our wedding, on a miserable day in November, the pouring rain an omen for what was to come. I should have called it quits right there. And yet, I knew I would never regret my time with Francis, even as tumultuous as it was.
Gracie, on the other hand, had a morning of cerulean skies. I marveled at the magnificent cathedral where the ceremony would be held; crowning the cliffs of Monaco and overlooking the stunning Mediterranean Sea, it was all white stone flanked by lush palms. As I was ushered inside the beautiful cathedral, I didn’t have to put on a fake smile—I was truly happy for Grace.
The organ music began, and Grace walked down the aisle on her daddy’s arm as MGM cameramen were poised in every corner of the church, doing their best to make the ceremony into a spectacle. MGM had agreed to free Grace from her contract early only if she allowed them to film the entire ceremony. A dirty move, but Grace had consented. I got the feeling her prince didn’t want her doing pictures anyhow.
Once Gracie had been given to Prince Rainier and the Latin mass began, I found my gaze straying. I searched the crowd for a familiar face, the one that I hadn’t seen in far too long. I don’t know why I looked for him—seeing him with a date would have wrecked my good mood—but I couldn’t seem to help myself.
But Francis hadn’t come.
As the disappointment hit me, the familiar ache of missing him began. I tried not to dwell on it and put on a smile for the happy event.
Gracie was beautiful in her stunning, high-collar lace gown, glowing with happiness and assured footing, moving toward the thing she wanted most in her life. As she turned to swear her love to the prince who would become an integral part of her life, I saw myself in her, swearing my love and devotion to Francis all over again. But we weren’t meant to be; our destinies had collided and now moved in opposite directions.
And yet . . .
I still wished I was holding his hand, here in front of God and everyone, in the back of this beautiful church.
Chapter 40
Frank
When I received the invitation to Grace Kelly’s wedding, I declined. It didn’t work with my schedule, but I also had a pretty good idea that Ava would be there. We weren’t talking at the moment and if I showed up, we’d argue and ruin the whole damn affair in front of half the town of Hollywood and a prince besides. I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
After a year of breakups—Ava, Betty, and a young singer named Peggy Connelly—I needed a new pad; some place no one would bother me, and a home where only my kids and the closest of my friends were allowed. I bought a house in the mountains in Coldwater Canyon, a beautiful and rugged place with an incredible view of the sky. I set up a telescope and spent my few quiet nights gazing up at the stars, thinking about what was out there while classical music played in the background. I liked the house a great deal, but the reality was, I hardly spent time there. I was almost always on the road. Bright lights and even brighter women, a sea of new faces from one night to the next, cigarettes and bottomless bottles of whiskey, and hours and hours of filming or performing in every time zone—I barely knew where I was or what day it was. I topped the Billboard charts, had smash hit singles, and fended off the rising popularity of the rock-and-roll music that I so despised. And yet. All the success, the whirlwind of dazzling nights didn’t take my mind off the one thing that meant more to me than any of it: Ava, the woman who had taught me more about passion—and about heartbreak—than any one person or one thing could ever do. My heartache kept me up most nights. My pal Jimmy Van Heusen, who crashed at my house often enough, saw the burden of that pain in nearly everything I did.
