Mario Puzo - Fools die

Before she drove away, I asked her, “Do you really not mind?”

Her face perfectly composed, beautiful in its serenity, she said, “No, I really don’t mind. Janelle was hysterical after the first showing when everybody came up to me to congratulate me. She’s just that way and making her happy is more important to me than getting all that bullshit. You understand that, don’t you?”

I smiled at her and kissed her cheek good-bye. “No,” I said. “I don’t understand stuff like that.” I went back into the house and Janelle was nowhere in sight. I figured she must have gone for a walk down the beach and she didn’t want me with her, and sure enough, an hour later I spotted her coming up the sand walking by the water. And when she came into the house, she went up to the bedroom, and when I found her up there, I saw that she was in bed with the covers over her and she was crying.

I sat down on the bed and didn’t say anything. She reached out to hold my hand. She was still crying.

“You think I’m such a bitch, don’t you?” she said.

“No,” I said.

“And you think Alice is so marvelous, don’t you?”

“I like her,” I said. I knew I had to be very careful. She was afraid that I would think Alice was a better person than she was.

“Did you tell her to cut out that piece of negative?” I said.

“No,” Janelle said. “She just did that on her own.”

“OK,” I said. “Then just accept it for what it is and don’t worry about who behaved better and who seems like a better person. She wanted to do that for you. Just accept it. You know you want it.”

At this she started to cry again. In fact, she was hysterical, so I made her some soup and fed her one of her blue ten-milligram Valiums and she slept from that afternoon till Sunday morning.

That afternoon I read; then I watched the beach and the water until dawn broke.

Janelle finally woke up. It was about ten o’clock, a beautiful day in Malibu. I knew immediately that she wasn’t comfortable with me, that she didn’t want me around for the rest of the day. That she wanted to call Alice and have Alice come out and spend the rest of the day. So I told her I had gotten a call and had to go to the studio and couldn’t spend the rest of the day with her. She made the usual Southern belle protestations, but I could see the light in her eyes. She wanted to call Alice and show her love for her.

Janelle walked me out to the car. She was wearing one of those big floppy hats to protect her skin from the sun. It was really a floppy hat. Most women would have looked ugly init. But with her perfect face and complexion she was quite beautiful. She had on her specially tailored, secondhand, specially weathered jeans that fitted on the body like skin. And I remembered that one night I had said to her when she was naked in bed that she had a real great woman’s ass, that it takes generations to breed an ass like that I said it to make her angry because she was a feminist, but to my surprise she was delighted. And I remembered that she was partly a snob. That she was proud of the aristocratic lineage of her Southern family.

She kissed me good-bye and her face was all rosy and pink. She wasn’t a bit desolated that I was leaving. I knew that she and Alice would have a happy day together and that I would have a miserable day in town at my hotel. But I figured, what the hell? Alice deserved it and I really didn’t. Janelle had once said that she, Janelle, was a practical solution to my emotional needs but I was not a practical solution to hers.

– -

The television kept flickering. There was a special tribute in memory of Malomar. Valerie said something to me about it. Was he a nice person? and I answered yes. We finished watching the awards, and then she said to me, “Did you know any of the people that were there?”

“Some of them,” I said.

“Which ones?” Valerie asked me.

I mentioned Eddie Lancer who had won an Oscar for his contribution to a film script, but I didn’t mention Janelle. I wondered for just a moment if Valerie had set a trap for me to see if I would mention Janelle and then I said I knew the blond girl who won a prize at the beginning of the program.

Valerie looked at me and then turned away.

A week later Doran called me to go out to California for more conferences. He said he had sold Eddie Lancer to Tri-Culture. So I went out and hung around and went to meetings and picked up with Janelle again. I was a little restless now. I didn’t love California that much anymore.

One night Janelle said to me, “You always tell how great your brother, Artie, is. Why is he so great?”

“Well,” I said, “I guess he was my father as well as my brother.”

I could see she was fascinated by the two of us growing up, as orphans. That it appealed to her dramatic sense. I could see her spinning all kinds of movies, fairy tales in her head, about how life had been. Two young boys. Charming. One of your real Walt Disney fantasies.

“So, you really want to hear another story about orphans?” I said. “Do you want a happy story or a true story? Do you want a lie or do you want the truth?”

Janelle pretended to think it over. “Try me with the truth,” she said. “If I don’t like it, you can tell me the lie.”

So I told her how all the visitors to the asylum wanted to adopt Artie but never wanted to adopt me. That’s how I started off the story.

And Janelle said mockingly, “Poor you.” But when she said it, though her face smiled, she let her hand fall along the side of my body and rest there.

– -

It was on a Sunday when I was seven and Artie was eight that we were made to dress up in what was called our adoption uniforms. Light blue jackets, white starched shirt, dark blue tie and white flannel trousers with white shoes. We were brushed and combed and brought to the head matron’s reception room, where a young married couple waited to inspect us. The procedure was that we were introduced and shook hands and showed our best manners and sat around talking and became acquainted. Then we would all take a walk through the grounds of the asylum, past the huge garden, past the football field and the school buildings. The thing I remember most clearly is that the woman was very beautiful. That even as a seven-year-old boy I fell in love with her. It was obvious that her husband was also in love with her but wasn’t too crazy about the whole idea. It also became obvious during that day that the woman was crazy about Artie, but not about me. And I really couldn’t blame her. Even at eight, Artie looked handsome in almost a grown-up way. Also, the features in all of the planes of his face were perfectly cut, and though people said to me we looked alike and always knew we were brothers, I knew that I was a smudged version of him as if he were the first out of the mold. The impression was clear. As a second impression I had picked up little pieces of wax on the mold, lips thicker, nose bigger. Artie had the delicacy of a girl, the bones in my face and my body were thicker and heavier. But I had never been jealous of my brother until that day.

That night we were told that the couple would return the next Sunday to make their decision on whether to adopt both of us or one of us. We were also told that they were very rich and how important it was for at least one of us to be taken.

I remember the matron gave us a heart-to-heart talk. It was one of those heart-to-heart talks adults give to children warning them against the evil emotions such as jealousy, envy, spitefulness and urging us on to a generosity of spirit that only saints could achieve, much less children. As children we listened without saying a word. Nodding our heads and saying, “Yes, Ma’am.” But not really knowing what she was talking about. But even at the age of seven I knew what was going to happen. My brother next Sunday would go away with the rich, beautiful lady and leave me alone in the asylum.