Ed Ifkovic - Make Believe

Cold, cold-that was how he described his brother. “I knew he was burning with something from the day Lenny was murdered.” So the gun was no surprise. “Ethan takes care of me. How could I say anything?” he asked Frank. “I thought he’d kill Alice. He hated her. Not Max.”

The stewardess poured me more coffee as I stared at the black-and-white photo. She glanced at the newspaper in my hands. “Oh, Hollywood royalty,” she gushed. I nodded. Frank was dressed in a spiffy black tuxedo with a dark bow tie. Ava wore a strapless gown with elaborate folds and twists of fabric, bunches of ruffles across the bodice. I wondered about the colors, though I assumed the dress was a vibrant assault of greens and blues and reds. Vaguely oriental looking. With her hair pulled back to accentuate those high cheekbones, Ava appeared exotic, the wild woman. Frank held a Show Boat program in his hands, as both smiled for the camera. Behind them Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh looked the proper couple, not like the glamorous woman in front of them. I smiled at that: Ava, Ava, the woman as temptress of the night. The article mentioned the success of Show Boat and of Ava’s stellar performance. A film classic, it was called. A monumental achievement. Metro’s Technicolor extravaganza.

I’d sat with Ava in her dressing room at Metro for hours, and she made a pot of tea for both of us, hovering, solicitous. “Thank you, Edna,” she’d whispered, but I’d simply closed my eyes. Exhausted, I needed to fly away from Metro, get back to the Ambassador, and start to pack my suitcase.

But that night, kidnapped from my room, I sat with Ava, Frank, and Alice in Alice’s living room, and we talked and talked. Alice wept, and then Ava did, and then I did, too, the three of us chain-linked to Max. A bond, we three women, a cherished closeness. Frank, I suppose, learned not to cry when he was a blustery boy in hardscrabble Hoboken, but he had the sense to be quiet. No, that is unfair: he made his feelings known by his gestures-touching Ava’s cheek as he passed by on the way to the kitchen, squeezing Alice’s hand as she sat on the sofa-and with me…a spontaneous hug as I stood to leave, so serendipitous that Ava and Alice both smiled.

Ava had told me he’d decided I had “class,” a favorite word. Some women had it. That’s why you loved walking into restaurants with them, their arms linked with yours.

So Frank wasn’t always a cad and a bounder, this Francis Albert Sinatra, though I feared I might be too forgiving at the moment. That could change.

When both drove me to the airport and Ava held onto me for a long time, Frank simply shook my hand. “You know, Frank,” I said, “I’m afraid I misjudged you.”

A mischievous gleam in his eye. “No, Edna, you really didn’t.”

Ava smiled. “Keep dreaming, Edna. Wait until the next scuffle with a photographer.”

The night before he’d sent flowers to my hotel suite, an enormous-and vaguely funereal-spray of carnations and roses. But when I leaned in to smell their bouquet, there was none. Of course not. In L.A., where sunlight covers you like a shroud, the flowers have no scent.

Late yesterday afternoon, returning from a walk about the Sun Club Pool, I spotted Lorena Marr waiting for me in the lobby. She watched me approach, her eyes on me the whole time. I stood in front of her, looking down, and waited. “Edna, could I talk to you?”

“Of course, Lorena.”

“Please sit with me.”

I hadn’t spoken to her since Ethan’s arrest, so I began, “Lorena, I’m sorry it worked out…”

She spoke over my words, her head going back and forth. “Stop, Edna.”

I sat in a wing chair next to her. “Are you all right?”

“No, I’m not.” A feeble smile. “But it’s not your doing. I’ve been thinking about what happened…Ethan…Max…and I need to tell you something.” A rasp from deep in her throat. “Christ, Edna, I’m sorry. I let myself be blinded. That’s the word-blinded. Ethan had changed since he was my husband. He’d stopped drinking. He was always rigid and severe but he got…deadly serious. I even thought we might get back together. I liked him. I used to love him. I suppose I still do. I wanted to believe I could have something with him. Foolish, foolish. I thought our friendship was sweet and cosmopolitan and enviable, very modern Hollywood, after the messy divorce.” She fumbled in her purse for a cigarette and lit it. She slumped in her seat and closed her eyes.

“But you were bothered by something?”

She nodded quickly. “I ignored things. That driven personality. He masked an emotional upheaval, covered it over. I realize now everything had to do with revenge…on Alice. And Max. A double slap to his face. Alice killed the beloved brother. She ruined all their lives and took away a promised future. He plotted…and Max was the target. How best to hurt Alice! He hated Max, the instrument of his failure. There were signs, Edna-comments that slipped out, little vicious angers, ugly, mean, then simply smiled away as banter. I didn’t know the depth of his obsession, though I should have.”

“Lorena, you’re not to blame.”

“A part of me is. You can’t talk me out of it, Edna. I didn’t want to see it. He wished her dead. Him dead.” She sucked in her breath. “I knew he had guns from Lenny. He kept them hidden from me, but I knew. Once, late at night, I woke up and heard him in the living room. Quietly I looked in. He was there in the shadows, in his pajamas, drunk, aiming his gun out the window and whispering, ‘This is how you die.’ He looked like he’d given himself over to evil, Edna.”

“Lorena…”

She held up her hand. “When Max was killed, I knew in my heart that it was Ethan. I knew it. That’s why I was so distraught.”

“But you didn’t know …”

A thin smile, haunted. “In Hollywood if you’re not a character in someone’s dream, you have nothing. A lonely life, a shell. Look at Sophie Barnes.”

“But Ethan gave you only nightmares.”

“It was better than…nothing.” She bit her lip. “Nothing.”

She stood, took one last drag off her cigarette, snuffed it out in an ashtray, and turned away. “I guess I could never be the kind of friend I wanted you to see me as, Edna. Like Ethan, I failed.” An unfunny smile. “And now it’s too late.” She walked past me and out the door.

I finished my coffee and put down the newspaper. The pilot was announcing altitude and clear skies. We were free of L.A.’s noxious smog. A nap, I thought: a rare nap. Six hours to go on the flight to New York. Instead, I opened the carrying case I’d placed on the floor, taking out some folders. Alice had given me a parting gift, which stunned me: the script of the 1936 Show Boat , much tattered and frayed, a working script, with Max’s notations in the margins. On the title sheet an abundance of signatures, inscriptions to Max (“You’re the best, Max”; “Sing a song for me, pal”) and signed by Irene Dunne, Allen Jones, Paul Robeson, Hattie McDaniel. A sheet filled with praise and love and honor.

“Max would have wanted you to have this. He prized it highly.” Then she’d added, “Even though Max told me what you thought of that movie.”

I’d laughed. “It was one of our jokes, you know.”

So I cradled the script to my chest, cherishing it. She’d also tucked into the script four black-and-white photos of Max on location, deep in conversations with Paul Robeson, with others.

Ava had also given me a gift, though she made me promise not to open it until I left L.A. Now, unwrapping the package, I found another photograph, an eight-by-ten of her with Max, arms linked around each other. Ava was dressed as Julie LaVerne, her head tilted backwards, her shoulders hunched, the beautiful mulatto standing on the seedy wharf. Oblivious to the intrusive camera, they were smiling at each other, and it looked as though they’d just shared a private joke. They looked happy, the two of them, the Hollywood backdrop behind them.