Make Believe

Chapter Eight

“Ava,” I began, and started to cry.

The two of us hung on the line, neither speaking, our mutual grief filling in the spaces.

“I’m a prisoner here,” she said, finally. “In my own home. There are photographers camped out in the bushes. The phone keeps ringing. Reporters. Me and Max. Over and over. Reenie hangs up on them.”

I could hear someone talking in the background. Reenie, perhaps, a soft, soothing murmur. The sound of her yipping dog Rags.

“I have to be at the studio later today.” Ava sounded as if she were talking to herself. “But all I think about is…Max.”

“Is Frank there?”

A long pause. “He’s been avoiding me. We fought over that scene at the Beachcomber.”

“Tony Pannis told me people are suspecting him.”

Again, the long silence. “I know, I know. I heard it on the radio. Francis won’t talk about it. So all I do is sit here and sob. Poor Max. So…horrid.”

“Well, it is,” I agreed. “But whoever did this must be caught.”

“Who would…”

“That remains to be seen, Ava.”

“You don’t think it was Francis, do you, Edna?”

“You tell me, Ava.” My voice even, crisp.

“Of course not. I mean …”A deep intake of breath. I could hear her striking a match. “Edna, I need to see you. To see…or to…talk to someone.”

“I don’t know.”

“There’s a little coffee shop up the block from you. On Wilshire. The Coffee Pot.”

“I’ve gone by it.” I gazed out the window. “Okay, we’ll meet there.”

“Could I ask Sol to join us? He’s called here a number of times. The man is a wreck, Edna. You can feel his pain through the phone line.”

“Of course. I’d like to see him.”

“He’s so…helpless.”

***

I sat waiting in a booth, expecting her to be late. Lateness was a cardinal sin in my book, certainly; but I supposed I could excuse someone who confessed to being an insomniac, who only dozed off at early morning light. And now, especially, having to slip out to avoid the pesky reporters.

A woman entered The Coffee Pot, the country-store bell clanging noisily, and slipped into the booth opposite me. What in the world?

“Edna.”

My eyes got wide. The unglamorous Ava Gardner was smiling back at me. “Ava?”

But, of course, it was. Not a trace of makeup on her, not a hint of blush or lipstick or rouge, and yet, unmistakable, that face compelled, drew you in. But I hadn’t looked into that face. She was wearing a baggy lime peasant blouse, loose over calf-length pedal pushers, with a pale-green organdy kerchief covering her head, tied under her chin. She wore the most outrageous pair of tortoise-shelled eyeglasses, so matronly I expected her to deal a hand of canasta and kvetch about the agony of her sciatica.

“I’m near-sighted,” she told me.

“So this is what you really look like?”

Again, the small laugh. Yet there was no disguising that whiskey voice, so low and rumbling I kept thinking she had a cold. At first she whispered, but then, checking out the empty eatery, began to speak naturally. She debated between pecan waffles or pain perdu-“Edna, it’s nothing more than French toast with an attitude”-before choosing the waffles. The bored waitress, pencil buried in her messy hairdo and an order pad tucked into a stained apron, paid her no mind. I loved it. A practical woman, I ordered tuna on wheat toast. Coffee with whipped cream.

Ava reached across the table and grasped my hand. For a moment we sat there, silent, though we stared into each other’s faces, and she sobbed a little girl’s cry: short, raspy breaths, swallowed. Finally she sat back, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. “I still don’t know what to think, Edna.”

“None of us do, Ava.”

I glanced around the empty eatery at the tacky tablecloths, a blackboard listing specials, a dropped napkin under a nearby table, the waitress chewing gum as she leafed through the newspaper.

We spoke in fits and starts, random chatter about Alice, about Max, about the…horror of it all. “What do you know?” she kept asking, but I knew nothing. She leaned in. “Francis has taken a vow of silence. It’s driving me crazy.”

“Well, does he have anything to hide?”

That shocked her. “Oh no, Edna. It’s just that he keeps stuff inside.” A sliver of a smile. “I’m the opposite-I yell and fret and let everyone know my insanity. He’s…he broods inside, cool, stewing…it’s deadly.” A pause. “I don’t mean…deadly.” She stopped. “I’m not making much sense, am I?”

“Very little, Ava.”

She laughed. “You don’t let people get away with much, do you?”

“No reason to.”

“You haven’t seen the best of me, you know. The fights, the bickering…” She slipped her hand across the table and touched mine. “I’m so sorry, Edna. I want you to like me.”

“Ava, I do like you.”

“You do?”

“Of course. Max adored you. That tells me something.”

Her eyes filled with tears.

The curious insecurity bothered me…I didn’t expect it from a movie star. The love goddess of A Touch of Venus. The girl in the bathing suit on the cover of Photoplay. Max once told me she’d been on over three hundred fan magazine covers, an ocean of lipstick and eye shadow and sun- tanning lotion. Mechanics in innumerable garages across America checked off the months on calendars that showed her come-hither smile.

What I liked about her was hard to define. For one thing, she was a strong woman who was hell-bent on defining her own life, regardless of public censure. She set the terms. This woman could be hungry for caviar at Romanoff’s, yet publicly insist on sticking up for a battered friend. Max. Dear Max. Here was a woman who drank and cursed and slapped lovers, but she refused to be cowed by random and thoughtless authority.

Yes, admittedly not my life, my prim and spinsterish life, purposely chosen. Being a spinster, I famously told everyone, was like drowning, a delightful sensation once you ceased to struggle.

Ava’s terms were otherwise: men, sex, more men-even scrawny crooners with circus bowties-dancing at the Trocadero, nightlife, cigarettes, coffee, and plenty of booze. Spiked ten-inch heels on the dance floor. Life on her terms. Perhaps it was the fist raised against the hypocritical constraints of Metro and Hollywood and Hedda Hopper, the phony and disingenuous morals clause that no authoritarian mogul himself felt compelled to follow, given the stories of sexual peccadillo on the casting couch. A man’s world, scripted narrowly for women.

Ava said no! In thunder!

You had to admire that in a fleshpot.

“I’m so sorry for everything.”

“Stop saying that, Ava.” I made the sign of the cross, or at least I think it was, never having executed the benedictory papal gesture before. “I absolve you of all sin.”

“If only it was that easy.” She laughed so loudly the waitress glanced over.

“Where’s Sol?” I wondered out loud.

She looked toward the front door. “Funny. He’s always early. But he seemed so…so broken on the phone. Those sobs that erupt from inside him. Everyone’s shattered, Edna. I understand Lorena is distraught, too.”