Ugly Money

‘Off your mind and onto mine. You must have thought how it would be for me.’

‘Of course we did. But isn’t the truth always better if … if it can be told?’

‘No, lies are better.’

‘Oh my dear …’ She held out her arms and Marisa let them enfold her. She intended to play this right. At the feel of those arms, which had always been there when she needed them, she felt the press of tears, but she was damned if she was going to cry in front of either of them. Tears were a form of acceptance, and she was accepting nothing.

Jack, home from another preproduction meeting, found her staring blankly out of her bedroom window. He said, ‘It doesn’t matter, my dear, please try to see it that way. We’ve always loved you and we always will. It’s just … we couldn’t bear cheating on you.’

She looked at his handsome square face, tanned and healthy, curly hair graying at forty-seven, and said it again: ‘I’d rather be cheated. Maybe it’s easier for you, it sure as hell isn’t easier for me.’

‘But it was right. In the end you’ll see that, and we’ll all be … We’ll be closer because of it.’

‘I hope so. What do I call you?’

‘Oh for God’s sake, Marisa, don’t overplay it. You call me Dad, Father, just as you always have.’ She accepted the flash of impatient anger – he didn’t suffer fools gladly; she admired that, it kept you on your toes; kept cameramen and actors, and more particularly wayward actresses, on their toes too. She could feel her love for him trapped inside her. OK, how was she going to let it out of the trap?

When he’d gone she raised her eyes and stared at the famous ‘Hollywood’ sign, deep in thought. As usual, a small group of the faithful were toiling up Griffith Park towards it, and as usual a small group of guards had gathered to send them packing – in case any of them had fire, explosives, or even suicide in mind.

Like many other younger movie people touched by success, Jack and Ruth Adams had never even considered living in Beverly Hills, but had taken to the real hills of old Hollywood where so many of the old and great names had once lived. After them came the realtors and ‘Hollywoodland’. How many of the devotees who regularly photographed one another with the sign in the background knew that this modern Mecca had been erected to advertise a housing development? And what did it matter in a town where fairy tales are all and the truth less than nothing? Lop off a last syllable and you have a myth.

So, gazing at ‘Hollywood’, Marisa wondered who would remember her mother’s past, who would know? Well, for a start there was Ruth’s own mother, Corinne. She would certainly know but, as certainly, would refuse to say; and would at once report to her daughter: ‘You’ve told her, haven’t you? Nothing else could make her ask questions like that. What a mistake – why do you never listen to me?’ Or something along those lines. Anyway she no longer lived in Los Angeles but had gone back to New York: ‘I know it may be dangerous but no more dangerous than LA, and at least it’s alive.’ She was a jaunty old girl. When you’re seventeen, sixty-six is a great age. No, Grandmother was out. Who then?

Seventeen years ago, or around then, her mother had been an actress, not, she often said, a very good one. Jack disagreed: she was good all right, but she’d never had the essential overriding ambition, and no chutzpah. Ruth invariably replied that in any case it was a matter of simple arithmetic: two show-biz careers into one family don’t go. As for ambition and chutzpah, yes she must have lacked both because she was a happy woman.

Who would have known her in those days? Adult faces flitted through Marisa’s mind, parental friends who had come and gone while she played house with Joanne under the bougainvillea on the other side of the pool – while she stood before the bedroom mirror wondering if she would ever reach sixteen. She hadn’t even been interested in the ones who had since become famous.

But wait a minute! There was a couple who came to dinner every now and again. Hadn’t they once been agents? Hadn’t names flickered around the table? ‘Whatever happened to … ?’ ‘Didn’t you handle … ?’ The kind of show-biz gossip which makes the young, if present, tune out. Sagging old faces, she could almost see them now. They must have been agents, they must have ‘handled’ Ruth Shallon, as she then was, or they wouldn’t be friends, people who came to dinner as opposed to the rabble which attended the twice-yearly free-for-all around the pool. They had a Dutch name – Van-Something. Van-What? There couldn’t be many Vs in the red book which lay beside the phone in the hall. There weren’t, and there were only two Van-Anythings. The first lived in Amsterdam, the second was VanBuren, Henry and Barbara, Sunset Palisades. Marisa knew Sunset Palisades, one of her school friends lived out there in summer: nothing to do with the Boulevard, a new development way north of Malibu, north of Zuma: big houses on ledges, cleverly concealed one from the other by means of earth moving and skillful planting. Sounded kind of retired, but you could never be sure.

Was there still a VanBuren Agency? Yes there was, but a call confirmed that Henry and Barbara had sold out long ago, to the mega-operation Dermott-MacNally; they had probably been unable or perhaps unwilling to cope with the new Hollywood, which was really the old Hollywood wearing a different hat and a funny nose. OK, definitely retired. Now, how do you approach mother’s old retired friends, almost certainly old agents, without setting off the jungle drums? You make up a story; doesn’t have to be a good one, not in Southern California where anyone will believe anything, in fact crazy is better.

She found Henry and Barbara VanBuren next day, Friday, living in a splendid modern house with its feet, or anyway its private steps, in the ocean. Like many elderly people who have led active and interesting lives at the center of the whirlpool, they were bored to find themselves placidly rotating at its lazy outer edge. They had their golf, he had his fishing, she had her weaving (beautiful things), they both had their old friends, a few of whom like Ruth Adams had once been clients. Having met them, Marisa couldn’t wait to get away from them, they depressed the hell out of her, and it was their careful politeness, eagerness to please the young in their old age, which depressed her most. Handsome, healthy, well-to-do old Californians, into their seventies with nowhere to go.

‘You see,’ she heard herself saying, ‘I had this great idea. I should have done it on her fortieth but I guess her forty-second will be just as good.’ She intended to give her mother a surprise, a real This is Your Life, wasn’t that a fabulous idea?

The VanBurens exchanged a quick glance which told her that they thought the idea less than fabulous, but they weren’t about to hurt her feelings.

‘And I wanted somebody who knew her way back when she was acting.’

Gently they explained that of course they’d known Ruth in those ancient far-off days, she’d been their client and they adored her, but they were sure Marisa wouldn’t mind if they, personally, opted out of this absolutely fantastic plan, This is Your Life, Ruth Adams. Too old, they hated to admit it – but of course they’d keep the secret, it sounded such a fun project.

Acting intense disappointment, Marisa said, ‘Well, perhaps you know someone else. Maybe some other actress, she must have had friends.’

Henry VanBuren pounced on this like a drowning sailor bumping into a floating life-saver: ‘Barbie, who was that gal who brought Ruth around to the office – when she first came to town?’

Marisa wanted to shout, ‘Where from? Tell me where she came from,’ but that would have set the drums beating all right. She sat mute. ‘You remember, dear, Julie Something. They’d just made a picture together, hadn’t they?’

‘Oh yes.’ Barbara VanBuren’s eyes congratulated him on finding this perfect escape. ‘You mean Julie Wrenn – I saw her in Hughes Market a couple of weeks ago.’ And to Marisa, benevolently, ‘An actress would be much more fun than a couple of old agents, she’d give you a real performance. And I bet your mother hasn’t seen her in years. You’re right, Henry – you clever old puss! – it was Julie Wrenn who introduced Ruth to the agency.’

Before leaving them to their boredom, from which they hadn’t even wanted to save themselves, Marisa again swore them to secrecy: it would all be spoiled if Ruth got so much as a hint of what was being planned. They stood together on their shining wraparound deck, with their expensive ocean view behind them, waving their bony, liver-spotted hands in farewell, and the breeze lifted their scanty white hair, showing the pink scalps beneath. Oh God, Marisa thought, turning back onto Pacific Coast Highway, save me from that, let me die young. Well, youngish.

She paused at this point, blue eyes inward turning on her thoughts. I noticed that she had taken something from her pocket and was holding it in one hand, touching it gently with the fingertips of the other. I said, ‘What’s that?’

She smiled, revealing a piece of green soapstone carved into a toad, the kind of thing the Chinese turn out by the million. ‘Nick gave him to me.’

Nick, drinking beer, said, ‘She’s kinky that way.’

‘I always take him with me if I’m … you know, going to do something a bit way out.’

‘Like coming a thousand miles to look for Biological Dad.’

‘Right. He brings me luck.’

Nick grimaced. ‘Didn’t bring you much luck today.’

Ignoring him she added, ‘He’s called Cross-eye.’ She leaned towards me, a child suddenly, showing me how a fault in the stone did indeed make the little creature look cross-eyed. Then she put it back in her pocket. I remembered now that when I’d seen her at intervals over the years there had usually been some kind of talisman in her life: a round stone with a hole in it, found on the beach; an old one-dollar chip from Las Vegas; things like that. Now the toad. I said, ‘OK, we can eat.’ I carried the dish of pasta to the table; Nick followed with the salad; Marisa brought up the rear with hot French bread, two loaves – I’d remembered about teenage appetites.

Pouring wine, I asked, ‘Did you find this Julie Wrenn?’

‘Did I ever!’

The lady had not been at home when Marisa first called; but she was at home on the Saturday morning, and she was every bit as dispiriting as the VanBurens but in a different way. It seems she had the kind of hangover which sticks out all around its owner like the horns of a naval mine – touch one and they explode. She lived in a shabby street off La Cienega near Olympic Boulevard; immediately led the way out of the cramped little rented house onto an equally cramped patio where dead plants drooped in their pots, long unwatered: she probably knew the living room stank of booze and a sink full of dishes waiting to be washed. The sunlight made her wince and shade her eyes. ‘Ruth Shallon’s kid, well I’ll be darned! She should never have given it up – your dad being who he is, she’d be getting roles till she dropped.’

Marisa couldn’t see the This is Your Life angle going down too well with this defeated, once-pretty, maybe even once-slim bag of lard. Impossible to believe she must be roughly the same age as her mother; the difference was heart-rending. She sat down gingerly on a rather sticky lounger. Julie Wrenn kicked off her slippers and wiggled her toes; they were far from clean.

And Marisa had been right: in such a setting This is Your Life, Ruth Adams sounded surreal, but she played it to the hilt, deducting a couple of years from her age in the process. She wasn’t sure Julie Wrenn even believed her, such pretty little excitements being so far, far outside the life to which she’d condemned herself. And the idea of her actually taking part in the mythical romp was grotesque – Marisa hastily added, ‘I mean, I’m not asking you to, you know, be in it. I just thought you could tell me someone who knew her back in her acting days. I mean she must have had agents, things like that.’

‘Batty old Barbara VanBuren. Saw her the other day in … I forget. Saw her anyway; she’s still around.’

Marisa said, ‘I’ve kind of heard of the VanBurens. Were they your agents too?’

‘Long before they were hers. I introduced her.’ A touch of … what? Pride, combativeness, sagging into indifference.

‘Of course! You made a movie together, didn’t you?’

‘She had a bit part. Local girl.’ She scratched between her sagging breasts. Marisa all but held her breath: would the oracle continue to speak? The oracle took a gulp of orange juice: ‘All I ever drink in the mornings. Want some?’ Marisa could smell the vodka from where she was sitting. No orange juice for her, she didn’t fancy using one of those smeared glasses.

‘Sure we made a movie. Small budget. Your dad’s first.’

A piece fell into place. (‘He saved me from a very awkward situation.’)

‘Can’t remember the title, something about a wagon. Total bummer. I wonder he ever got another job, let alone …’ A wave of the grubby fingers sketched the upward trajectory of Jack Adams. ‘Luck of the draw, dear, that’s what they call it. All about the pioneers coming to Oregon. Crap, arty crap. Didn’t do me a blind bit of good. I played the daughter, nice part.’

Marisa sat very still, not even daring to look at the woman. She said, ‘Oregon’s beautiful, isn’t it?’

‘Kind of quiet, but … yeah, it’s beautiful.’ Oh God, she seemed to have come to a stop. Or maybe just searching her pickled memory for names: ‘The Columbia. And that other river, what’s it called? Runs through Portland.’

Marisa felt that too many questions might seem suspicious, might dam the flow; but questions had to be asked. ‘Did you … Did you like Portland?’