Make Believe

Max cleared his throat and spoke rapidly, his voice hollow. “Edna, Lenny died from a fall, and his brothers blame Alice to this day. It’s all foolish stuff. Lots of anger there.”

Suddenly I remembered George Kaufman’s description of Alice: the black widow. George had shown me a sensational clipping from a tabloid: a hollow-eyed Alice sitting in a Los Angeles squad room. Those nasty accusations of willful murder. I’d paid so little attention. Rag-tag journalism, yellow at the edges.

“Well,” Lorena confided, “I had to leave darling Ethan. He’s somewhat of a prig, a man who measures life with algebraic equations and a calculus disposition. I found him delightful…for three years. Actually two of those three years. The third was bitter lemon. I liked his drive and ambition-at first. Cutting back the sails on his dreamboat lessened the man, I’m afraid-made him petty. Nasty.” She grinned. “Now that we’re divorced, I find him amusing.”

Ava jumped in, grasped my elbow. “Don’t you love cocktail parties, Edna? We can talk about our exes with abandon. Wait till I get started on Mickey Rooney. My first Hollywood lover. The chipmunk with bedroom eyes. The boy next door as Casanova. Love finds Andy Hardy.”

Lorena raised her eyebrows. “Randy Andy by the picket fence.”

Alice was the only one who didn’t laugh. “Ethan was a mean drunk, Edna.”

Lorena defended him, shaking her head vigorously. “That was then, Alice. A bad time. He’s a teetotaler now. Ethan paints all his pictures inside the lines. A kindergarten teacher would love him.” She sipped her drink, but I noticed she watched Alice over the rim of her glass.

Alice frowned. “It took a slap across your face to crash down your house.”

Lorena looked annoyed. “All right, Alice. All right. I walked out.” She shrugged her shoulders. “So now we’re friends. Dinners, movies. We like each other. We didn’t when we were married.”

Alice was shaking her head. “I’d never be comfortable…”

The two women stared at each other, eyes wary, bodies tense.

“Lenny’s death sobered him up-a dose of cold water in the face. But by then our marriage had crumbled.” She took a drag on her cigarette. “We’re different people, you and me, Alice.” She glanced my way. “You’ll meet Ethan…and his brother Tony.” A little chuckle. “You won’t be happy.”

Alice smiled now. “Lorena and I have become best friends, Edna. Exiles from the Pannis clan.”

Lorena grinned at her.

A yelping dog came barreling in from the kitchen, a pudgy corgi Ava introduced as Rags. The dog yipped and spun around, circling the maid who walked in with a tray of appetizers, passed them around, and then, bizarrely, sat next to Ava, chitchatting and smiling. She munched on a canape. For a second Ava and Reenie giggled about something. Oddly pleasing, that sudden tableau, which told me a lot about Ava.

From across the room Max asked, “And where’s Frank?”

Ava stood and looked out the window. “God knows. He promised to be here early. It’s going to be the few of us. Pop Sidney backed out. So did my manager. So did Howard and Kathryn. Everyone waits for a better invitation.” She bit her lip. “The last time they were here Francis insulted them all.” Ava lit a cigarette and sat back down. “Max, you know you’d like it if Francis didn’t show up.”

Anxious now, Ava kept glancing out the front window, biting her lip, distracted. From where I sat, I could watch the driveway. Finally I heard the prolonged blare of a horn, a teenage boy’s shrill announcement of arrival, and a sleek Cadillac convertible swerved off the street, breakneck speed, and slammed to a stop on the pebbly driveway alongside a privet hedge. The trellis of honeysuckle shook.

I could hear raised voices from inside the car, shrieks of laughter, someone bellowing what sounded like barroom barroom barroom.

Ava, her face pressed against the window, was trembling, her face hard, severe. She sucked in her breath. Her glance took in Max, then Alice, then me, a sweep that communicated apology and sadness.

“Goddamn it.” Under her breath.

Frank trooped in, followed by three other souls lined up behind him. “Guess who was hiding out at mi casa, dipping into my liquor cabinet.” Frank addressed all of us-all, that is, except Ava, who was fuming, arms folded, her back to the window.

So this was the bobby-soxer phenomenon, this crooner of dreamy hit-parade ballads. The Voice smoothing its way through Italian bel canto rhythms. So scrawny and bony, a pencil, emaciated, a protruding Adam’s apple, his body hidden in an oversized black tuxedo jacket, a floppy red bow tie under a hard chin. He flashed an onyx pinky ring. He smiled at me while he was talking to Ava about something I didn’t catch, and those riveting deep-sea blue eyes electrified the otherwise skeletal face. A skinny little man, I realized, with a pronounced receding hairline and ears that reminded me of a New York taxi cab barreling down Broadway with both doors wide open.

Ava gulped down a drink and smiled at me. “Time for the floor show, Edna.”

Frank approached me. “Miss Ferber, we haven’t met. A pleasure.” He shook my hand with a surprisingly weak grip.

Then, betraying nervousness I didn’t expect, he nodded at the two men standing near him. “Edna, my two buddies, Ethan and Tony Pannis.” He didn’t introduce the bizarre woman who’d flounced in behind them, now standing in a corner. Both men abruptly moved too close to me and I tried to shrink my already diminutive self. “From New Jersey. Although I knew their big brother Lenny first. He was my good old buddy from the neighborhood-and got me through some tough jams. He saved my life, really.” He stopped, seemed in awe of his own words. “These two were youngsters then. Ethan”-he indicated the slender, twitchy man in a severely pressed gray linen suit-“is an accountant at Metro, a money man. And this is Tony.” He pointed to a chubby man, his India- ink black hair permed into a Little Orphan Annie bowl of curls, a man dressed in a sequined tuxedo jacket that barely contained his protruding belly. “His younger brother.”

“You probably know me as Tiny Sparks, the, you know, comic.”

“I’ve never heard of you.”

“You got to get out to the valley. I headline at Poncho’s Comedy club.”

Frank sang a line, his voice a little shaky, “Down in the valley, the valley so…so…very, very low…”

Ethan shot Frank a puzzled glance, then leaned into him, motioning toward Alice and Max. “You didn’t tell us they’d be here.” Frank shrugged and chuckled. He’d obviously had a few belts at his… casa.

I didn’t know what to think of this contradictory duo. The slick accountant with the neat haircut and horn- rimmed glasses, the sensible pale-blue necktie, a conservative feathered fedora held discreetly in hand. And the carnival act, all glitter and riotous confection and blubber.

“We’ve been dying to meet you,” Tony/Tiny said.

I said nothing.

Ava made no attempt to hide her distaste. “Francis,” she began, her words low and angry, “what are they doing here?”

He didn’t look at her. “They were at my place in Palm Springs when I got back.” He smiled. ”You said it was a party. I brought a party with me.”

Ava glanced at Alice and Max, both sitting on the sofa, looking uncomfortable. “Damn you.”

Tony seemed to be happy anywhere that would allow in a man who happened to be wearing a dynamited clown tuxedo covered with green and red and silver buckshot sequins. Tony, I guessed, now spent most of his offstage time as…Tiny. A Hippodrome elephant in a Groucho Marx fright wig.

Ethan looked as though he wanted to be home adding up a column of figures, far from the maddening brother, though, as his brother’s resident sheriff, he immediately frowned as Tony walked to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a martini from the pitcher resting there.

“Christ, Tony,” he muttered. He nodded at me. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Ferber.”

He nodded at his former wife when she glanced his way, and for a moment they both smiled at each other, though Ethan’s quickly disappeared. Lorena, I noticed, seemed to be waiting for something. Ethan stepped closer, and the hard, set face relaxed, became almost boyish.

Oddly, he spoke now in a stilted Elizabethan voice, so lilting it compelled us all to pay attention. “‘How now! What do you here alone?’”

Lorena, obviously settling into an old and familiar playfulness, became a fluttering heroine, her voice equally Elizabethan. “‘Do not chide; I have a thing for you.’” She winked.

He grinned. “‘A thing for me? It is a common thing-to have a foolish wife.’”