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Ugly Money
Ugly Money

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Ugly Money

Язык: Английский
Год издания: 2018
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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?’

‘It’s OK. Better than this asshole city ever was, even in its good days.’

A local girl. Portland, Oregon. She could hardly believe how much she’d managed to discover in so short a time. Jack Adams’ first movie had been something about a wagon, about pioneers coming to the West. An arty failure. This pathetic woman had played the daughter, and her mother, the local girl, had been given a bit part. How come? Obvious – she’d been an actress up there in Portland; sometimes she spoke about acting on the stage, but she had never done it in LA, therefore it must have been in Portland. And if the wagon movie was being made on a small budget they would have depended on local talent, would have visited the theaters to find it, had found Ruth Shallon.

And when shooting was finished she had left Oregon to come to LA – to hide her pregnancy? – just another out-of-town girl trying to make the big time; and Julie Wrenn had introduced her to the VanBuren Agency. How did things then stand between the young actress and the young director?

Sitting there in that dreadful desolate patio, Marisa realized what thin, thin ice they’d been walking on, those two loved people. As a child of Hollywood she knew very well what would have happened if the media had caught the faintest whiff of what was going on. Young actress, pregnant by another man, sets her sights on up-and-coming young director and brings it off. The fact that this not-unheard-of scenario sounded laughable when applied to Ruth and Jack made her suddenly proud of them. Perhaps, unknown to her, pride was the first step in coming to terms with the hurtful truth.

Yet even while she thought of them with pride and love, that determination still urged her on: she must talk to her true father, she must ‘feel his genes’ in her; that was her way towards the light at the end of the tunnel, the light in which she would find peace and happiness again.

But right now she knew that she had to keep Oregon in Julie Wrenn’s mind, or vodka would take over, destroying the whole chain of thought: a rusty chain, many links no doubt missing. She said, ‘Pity the movie was a bummer. But it must have been a fun location.’

The eyes which were raised to hers already had that soggy, dulled look. ‘What location? Oh … Portland.’ The regard sharpened somewhat. ‘Hooked on that, aren’t you? What are you after?’

‘I thought … thought maybe I could find a couple of Mom’s old buddies from up there. For the birthday thing.’ She could see that this detail had also been forgotten. ‘You know – like I told you …’

‘Oh sure, This is Your Life.’

‘People she hadn’t seen for years – that would really be a surprise, wouldn’t it?’

A sly glance. ‘Too much maybe.’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘Could dig up the wrong ones, couldn’t you? Old boyfriends. Your dad wouldn’t like that.’

Marisa’s heart lurched. Her mouth seemed to have dried up. She couldn’t find words to unearth this buried gold; managed, ‘Oh. I hadn’t … thought of that. How would I know?’

‘For a start, honey, you can avoid the name Hartman.’

‘Was that … a boyfriend?’

‘The boyfriend, I heard tell.’ She waved her glass, vodka and orange slurping. ‘Oh Christ, I’m being a bitch. Who knows, who cares? It was a thousand years ago; it’s her business, not mine, not yours.’

Marisa’s heart was thudding so hard that it seemed to be shaking her whole body. Hartman – it might be exactly her business. ‘Was he … ? I mean, was he a serious boyfriend?’

‘I don’t know. Rich as hell … Forget it.’ She reached for her jug of orange juice and managed to change the subject with an almost audible grinding of gears. ‘Matter of fact, your mom and I did another movie together. Down in New Mexico, what’s the place called, hell hole? Stranger in Town, good movie. Harold Gage directed …’ Marisa could see that the oracle had no intention of returning to Oregon. And she’d better get away before all kinds of random reminiscences began piling up like rush-hour traffic, the way they did at her parents’ dinner parties. But in fact New Mexico had been a small bonus – she’d been born in New Mexico: Santa Fe.

In reply to her polite thanks and goodbye, Julie Wrenn merely nodded, at the same time refilling her glass. Marisa went home, clutching her golden nugget: Hartman – the boyfriend. What next? A year ago she might have gone storming up to Portland right away, but at the ripe age of seventeen she took a shower, lay on her bed for a while, and came to the conclusion that some kind of confirmation was called for. Ruth had never mentioned the Oregon connection; this in itself was a negative confirmation – she’d hardly mention it if she had things to hide.

Marisa rolled off her bed, pulled on jeans and a T-shirt and went down the hall to the small room known as Mother’s Den. Mother was out, Marisa had checked the cars. The room was cool and pleasant, facing north. A Japanese couple were teetering at the top of the steep bank which fell away from the Adams property; they were trying to get the ‘Hollywood’ sign behind their heads before their friends took the photograph. If they weren’t careful they’d go slithering down the crumbling hillside and find themselves at the mercy of spiny yucca, all kinds of cruel thorns, maybe poison oak.

In the bottom drawer of Ruth’s desk there was a pretty red and gold book which came out of hiding in November: ‘Christmas Cards’. Only three days ago Marisa would never have dreamed of poking around among her mother’s private belongings. She thumbed through the neat pages and almost immediately stumbled over Koskela, Beth, who lived in Beaverton, an extension of Portland, Oregon; and here were Greg and Kathy Nelson of Oregon City, no less; and here also was Lina Thomassen of Eugene, Oregon. (And yes, of course, here was her one-time Uncle Will: a long list of deleted addresses, a wanderer over the face of the earth: at present roosting in Astoria, Oregon – maybe he’d be getting a visitor before very long.) She found several more Oregon addresses – no other state was so well represented; the name, Hartman, was conspicuous by its absence – not a negative omission, in Marisa’s opinion, but a positive one. So Julie Wrenn’s bibulous evidence was partly confirmed, the Oregon connection certainly existed.

What next? Next she called her friend Nick Deering, and got an earful.

Her friend Nick Deering pushed his plate away – they’d both eaten two enormous helpings of pasta – and said, ‘I’ll say she got a earful, why not?’ He was a good listener, rare at any age, even more so at seventeen, and only spoke when he had something to add, as now: ‘For God’s sake. I’d called her a hundred times, I was shit scared. I mean, this was Saturday, and on Thursday night she’d been next thing to suicidal.’

‘Thursday night seemed like another world.’

‘Great. All you had to do was tell me.’

She put a hand over his. ‘I’m sorry.’ Nick looked at me. ‘Then she calls and says she has to go up to Oregon.’

‘And he shouts Oregon as if I’d said Botswana.’

‘Sure. I thought you’d gone crazy – with school starting Monday and both of us supposed to get top grades.’

I grabbed this one: ‘Yes, what about school? I’m a dad from way back, remember? It’s been worrying me.’

Marisa nodded. ‘Worries me too.’

‘Considering what your folks pay,’ said Nick, ‘it should.’ And to me, ‘I’m good old Hollywood High, pushers’ paradise.’ He looked as if he could take it. Ruth and Jack wouldn’t even consider it for their daughter; they reckoned just growing up was a big enough problem for a girl without that; and anyway they had the money for a private education. I knew it was no time to be going on about school; I said, ‘So where are we now? Day before yesterday, right?’

Nick replied, ‘Right – Saturday evening. We started north on Sunday. Had to wait until her folks were out of the way.’

‘Brunch,’ added Marisa. ‘All that poolside crap, out at Bel Air. They weren’t surprised I wouldn’t go, I never do. So we started late and had to spend Sunday night in Medford. Hit Portland around noon today.’

‘Hit being operative,’ said Nick. ‘Or did it hit us?’

Marisa had been sure that as soon as she saw the Portland phone directory she’d find her Hartman; she was wrong. Several Hartmans, yes, but their addresses didn’t add up to being ‘rich as hell’, Julie Wrenn’s words.

Nick said, ‘Figures. Rich-as-hell people have unlisted numbers.’

They had brooded over this for a while. He was all for continuing their journey to Astoria, finding not-Uncle Will and enlisting his help; she, spurred by her ‘Sherlocking’ successes in LA, felt that a little application, a little tenacity, would still lead them to a male Hartman who was not only rich but about the right age to have been her mother’s lover seventeen years before. What age? Probably older than Ruth who had been twenty-four; maybe a man of around thirty, now around forty-seven.

It was when even Marisa had all but abandoned hope – when they were driving through downtown Portland to pick up Interstate 5 – that they both saw it, at exactly the same moment: ‘Hartman’, written house-high in aggressive steel lettering against the sky: a big new building, some twenty-five floors of it, dominating its neighbors with self-assured power. The surprise made them both laugh; Marisa said, ‘There he is, that’s him!’

They parked opposite the building – no easy task: it took a half-hour and involved four circuits of the downtown area – then walked across the street to look at it. A palatial sweep of steps led up to massive steel doors, six of them, which flashed in the sun every time anyone went in or out. Beyond the doors was an enormous atrium carpeted in acres of scarlet, and on either side of them were two ever-changing display systems which informed the world that Hartman was transportation, including airlines; was oil; was hydroelectric power; was software and timber, steel and mining, hotels and real estate. While they were staring, a group of young men in suits emerged from the place laughing and joshing; some of them went across the street to Steve’s Espresso. Marisa and Nick followed. Unsurprisingly, she never has difficulty in finding young men who are happy to talk to her. One, Adrian, natty in dark gray with a subdued tie, junior exec, personified, proved to be a mine of information. Oh God, yes, Hartman was money all right; Hartman had been money around here for a hundred and fifty years. Those goodies shown on the display were only the tip of the iceberg – OK, call it the acceptable tip – you could add anything you cared to think of and you’d probably be right.

It appeared that the existing Hartman wasn’t too interested in the source of his wealth, hardly ever put in an appearance over the road. But that was what big money was for, wasn’t it? The ultimate liberating factor. Clearly young Adrian himself couldn’t wait for the seniority which would ultimately liberate him. Right now he had to go, business was business, but (a cautious glance at Nick, twice his size) if Marisa wanted to know more they could meet some evening … Marisa hugged Nick’s arm and said she was sorry, that wouldn’t be possible. The junior exec, personified withdrew.

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