Make Believe

movie. You wait, anxious, until she reappears on the screen. When she and Steve leave the showboat, a scene filmed in murky darkness with the ponderous strains of “Ol’ Man River” rising solemnly behind them, you have the movie’s rawest moment. Suddenly, startlingly, I thought of Max, expelled from Metro and Hollywood. Like Julie, a soul dispossessed of life. Exiles from the garden of earthly delights.

Then Ava ends the movie, standing on the shadowy wharf as the showboat drifts down river, Gaylord and Magnolia reunited through her intervention, Julie blowing that final kiss to them and her life on that boat, her only safe haven. She is left now to end her life a drunk and a whore.

I was breathless. Tears blurred my vision.

Silence.

Ava spoke into the darkness. “Damn, I’m good.”

I laughed. “You are…Julie.”

She looked into my face, a moment of doubt there, surprising me. A little girl’s voice. “Thank you, Edna.”

She started crying, and the two of us sat there sobbing like high-school girls in a malt shop swooning over some matinee idol. Within seconds, catching our breaths, we giggled.

“You’re a treasure, Edna,” Ava whispered.

The moment was shattered when Desmond Peake slinked in behind us. “The car is ready to take you back to the Ambassador, Miss Ferber.”

“Desmond, Desmond.” Ava pointed a finger into his chest. “You’re not a good host. Edna and I will have coffee in the commissary first. I’ll drive her back.” Ava reached out to touch his cheek, and for the first time I saw Desmond tremble. A slight twist of his head suggested that he could also collapse under Ava’s innocent flirtation. A moment I relished, though short-lived, for he pulled himself together, backed up, gripped the back of a seat, and spoke in a gravelly voice. “All right.”

He walked with us to the commissary. At one point Ava stopped to talk to someone, an assistant director who’d called out to her, and she told me she’d catch up. Desmond and I moved ahead.

“Miss Ferber,” he began in a hurried voice, “I feel I need to warn you.”

The word startled. “Warn?”

“The company you keep.”

“You mean Ava Gardner?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Actually, I don’t.”

That gave him pause. His fingers played with the lapel of the suit jacket. “Reputation is everything.”

“You’re wrong, sir. Reputation is often the threat that petty folks use to manipulate others into behaving their way.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Of course you do. You’re an intelligent man. Don’t worry about others’ reputations, Mr. Peake. Worry about your own.”

“I’m in charge of Metro’s reputation.”

I stopped walking and faced him. “Then you’re clearly failing at your job, given the reports circulating in the gossip sheets. I seem to recall Walter Winchell reporting that at Metro…”

He cut me off. “Hanging out with Commie sympathizers…well, Metro needs to clean house.”

I grimaced. “Then your expulsion of Max Jeffries must have helped.”

“He endangered my job. He did.”

Now this was a sudden burst of truth, an unexpected revelation.

He walked away as Ava rushed up. “What did you say to Desmond? He doesn’t look happy.”

“He warned me to be careful.”

Ava glanced down the hallway. “He wants the world to be at attention.”

In the commissary, sipping coffee, we chatted about the movie. People walking by watched her, warily, admiringly, joyously, and she nodded and smiled at them.

“I never come here,” she admitted. She waved at someone. “You know, Louis B. Mayer is a real bastard. But like most cruel people, he has a sentimental streak. He demanded homemade apple pie served here, and the chicken consomme is his own mother’s Old Country recipe. It’s delicious.” She lit a cigarette and sat back. “Ignore Desmond, Edna.”

“I already have.”

She took a sip of coffee, put down the cup too hard. The saucer rattled, as coffee sloshed onto the table. “You know, Francis is getting a little nervous. I guess they’re getting to him. I mean, he’s telling folks the only organization he’s joined is the Knights of Columbus. He’s been named as sympathetic by Red Channels, America First claims he’s a front for Communists, and Hedda Hopper continues her snide remarks. You want to hear something bizarre? Hedda actually addressed a column just to us. ‘Ava and Frank: Behave Yourselves.’ Bold headlines. She mentioned that Francis has been investigated by the FBI for Mafia activities, along with Lenny Pannis. Blood oaths and codes of silence and amici nostri. Well, Francis didn’t care about that. But now this ‘pinko’ label has thrown him off balance. He’s told me to back off.”

“Back off?”

“He wants me to stay away from Max’s memorial this afternoon.” She raised her eyebrows. “Of course, Desmond Peake warned me not to be there, too. But Francis is running scared.”

“You’re in a frightening place, Ava.”

She rolled over my words. “His career is stagnant. No more screaming bobby-soxers fainting in the aisles, girls running into barber shops to grab snippets of his hair, a slip in record sales, MGM not renewing his contract. He’s angry, sullen, a pouting little boy.”

“But you love him to death.”

She winked. “But I love him to death.” She leaned in, confiding. “I’m pushing folks at Columbia to give him the part of Angelo Maglio in From Here to Eternity. He wants it desperately, but we don’t talk about it. It will save his career, push him back on top. He has it in him. But he’s telling everyone the mob is pushing for him-his buddy Joey Something-or-the-Other, a cousin of Al Capone-because he doesn’t want people to know a dumb broad-his lovely words-has that kind of control over his life.”

“And you allow this, Ava?”

She breathed in. “I’m not painting a good picture of him, I’m afraid. That’s so wrong of me, Edna. There is a good side to him, a decent side. He can be funny and charming…”

“So, I gather, was Mussolini.”

Ava roared. “Oh my God, I have to tell him that.”

“Please don’t, Ava.”

“It doesn’t matter. He’s already told me he’s not fond of you.”

“Good, then we meet on the same playing field.”

As we strolled into the hallway, she stopped and placed her fingertips on my shoulder. A woman a half-foot taller than I, she dipped her head into my neck. “Edna, I’m worried about Sol Remnick.”

“I know. I could see it in your face when we had lunch. He’s so…shattered.”

“He used to be one of the funniest men around. He could crack me up, have me and Max and Alice rolling on the floor. He plays that lovable schmeil Irving on The Goldbergs, of course, but I swear Gertrude Berg had to base Cousin Irving on Sol himself. She had to. He is that character already.”

“He’s just so…sad, Ava. I sensed it. It’s as though he’s lost his heart. Even before Max died.”

“That’s my point.” Ava drew her lips into a thin line, a red gash on her face. “People like Desmond and his America First group have a mission to destroy people like Max and Sol. Now, with Max gone, he’s a…shambles. He lives in a world where people cross the street to avoid him.” Her face took on a bittersweet look, haunting. Now she was Julie in the creeping shadows, watching as the showboat chugged away, and with it…her hope for a life.

“And Sol?” I found myself choking up.

“The rumor is that he’s on the chopping block.”