An American Love Story (10 page)

“I don’t understand. Has this happened before?”

“Once. It was somewhat different, but out of control. It seems to help when I take her away; she’s less … intense.”

“Why don’t you take her to a psychiatrist?”

“For her religious beliefs?”

“That’s not religion. I adore Tanya, but sometimes she’s such a mishmosh of things she’s read, like she’s always looking for something. I wouldn’t mind at all if it made her feel better, but sometimes she gets …”

“Out of control?” Edward said.

“Yes.”

“Paris helps,” Edward said. “It’s so strongly in and of itself. It’s so … grounded. So real.”

“So that’s why you go there for vacations? I thought you liked Paris, period.”

“It’s both.”

“Then it’s happened to her more than once before,” Laura said, suddenly realizing.

Edward nodded. He looked very sad. “She’s really all right most of the time.”

“What are you two doing in there?” Tanya called.

“Fucking,” Edward said. Tanya laughed.

“Maybe she had another past life and it was as a Frenchwoman,” Laura said ironically. “It was the only life except this one in which she was happy.”

“I’d do anything for her,” he said.

“I can see that.”

“I wish I could help you, too.”

“No one has to help me,” Laura said. “Just keep on being my friend.”

“I always will,” Edward said. “And so will Tanya. You can rely on that.”

“Crazy or not?” Laura said. For an instant she thought she shouldn’t have said it, that she’d gone too far.

“Yes,” Edward said quietly.

“I remember her as a little girl,” Laura said. “We were little girls together and neither of us was crazy at all. In fact, when you think about it, she was much saner than I was.”

“And then you grew up,” Edward said.

“And we’re both crazy in our own ways.”

“Maybe that’s why I love you both so much,” Edward said.

“Well, I hope not,” Laura said. “What if I open that champagne you brought? My sleeping pill has ceased to work and the night is young. Besides, champagne will help us plan our trip to the land of a thousand vintages.”

She wondered if Clay would really miss her. Why not? He was used to her being there waiting for him, the doll on the shelf, the wind-up doll; first Rudofsky’s dancing doll, then Clay’s wife doll, always waiting. She would be an independent woman now, travel to Paris with her best friends, do what she pleased, take her child too, give her some foreign culture. Clay would see his wife had changed. It was the first time she had ever done anything like this. It might not startle him, but it certainly would give him pause.

He had to miss her, he had at least to notice.

6

1944—GLENVILLE

H
is name was Clay Bowen, and he was nobody. Just another teenager in another small town; a nondescript lanky boy, too light to make the football team, father worked in a liquor store, never enough money; bright enough to wish he could get out of there and be something better than what everyone expected him to be. The town was in Connecticut, just over the border from New York, and it was generally considered that it only existed because it had four liquor stores and people came there to save the tax. It was also very near Greenwich, Connecticut, where rich people lived on vast estates, some of them actually unaffected by the war, some of them even enriched by it. After school, Clay delivered wine and liquor to those rich people who lived on those enormous estates. He saw how bored they were and was not fooled: he wanted to have all those things, but not at the expense of giving up an exciting life. That year, the year he turned
fourteen, Clay Bowen decided he wanted to live and work in New York in some area of show business.

When he wasn’t working or in school, he spent his time glued to the radio, and when he had money saved up he went to the movies, and sometimes even into New York to buy standing room for a play or to sneak in free for the second act. When years later people asked him how he got his gift for putting on television series that people loved he would say it was from years of watching too many second acts. Nobody knew what that meant, but it was a good line.

In Glenville, Connecticut, in 1944 he was fascinated by a woman named Rose Ossonder. She was twenty-six, twelve years older than he, and married to a man who was rumored to be over fifty. Clay had never seen Max Ossonder, who rode in a chauffeur-driven limousine, but he had seen Rose, driving in her sporty convertible with the top down. This magic couple, who lived in an estate as large as a small country (it seemed to Clay), even had gas coupons when his father did not.

Rose had been born at a time when women were named after flowers. Clay felt the name became her: vivid, brightly hued, fragrant, thorny. She had straight black hair tied back with a red headband, and bright red matching lipstick. She drove too fast and looked reckless. She was beautiful, and once she smiled at him. One day he had been allowed to deliver a case of champagne to their estate, but he had been let in the back door, addressed by a colored maid, and sent away with a quarter tip, unable to see anything of the house in which his mystery lady lived. But she was more of a symbol than a person to him anyway, and he settled for the girls at school, at least the ones who liked boys with charm, for he always had charm, even when he had nothing else.

Clay had suspected for a long time that he had a way about him, as his mother put it, but it was around fourteen when he discovered how strong his “way” was, and what he could do with it. Partly it was his smile, which transformed his looks, and partly it was the things he was able to say at the spur of the moment that made men look at him with new respect and women melt. He spent a good deal of time trying to figure out how he did it so it
would always be at his command when he wanted it. His mother said it was a gift, and his father said it would probably get him into trouble.

He read about Rose Ossonder’s death in the Greenwich paper. The story was brief, and said “accident.” Local gossip was more specific. Rose had shot herself through the heart with one of her husband’s guns, she had bled all over the white carpet: an appalling sight. The colored maid who had given Clay the quarter had discovered her, and had become so hysterical that she had quit. There was not much of interest going on in town except for the war, and people talked about Rose Ossonder’s death for at least a week until they forgot about it. Clay did not forget.

In his mind’s eye he saw that white carpet, thick and clean, the red blood the color of a velvet petal seeping and staining, her sad pale face with a look of surprise at what she had actually done. If he had been delivering an order, and if he had been allowed into the house, and if there had been no one there, he might have been the one who found her. It would have been a lesson to him that money could not buy happiness, and that other people’s marriages held strange and terrible secrets. It might have changed his life.

And as it was, it did. Perhaps some other incident might have, for it was inevitable, but this was the one that did. Four years later, when Clay escaped his hometown and went to New York to City College, he found himself sitting in someone’s small apartment with a group of students, all talking about their lives, and he realized that nothing interesting had ever happened to him. He remembered Rose. He had thought about that dreadful suicide off and on through these past years, and every time it became more real to him, more as if the grisly discovery had really happened to
him
, that he was there. Rose had happened to him, and her death had happened to him—who was to say not? And in that instant, that small click of the mind, the delicate difference between truth and fantasy, between creativity and lying, disappeared.

He told his new friends the story of how he had found Rose’s body. As he told it his voice caught in his throat and his eyes filled with tears. They were moved. Years later he would tell the story to Laura Hays.

Changing the truth was always easy after that. He saw it as it was, and then as he wanted it to have been, or to be, and he believed it. Sometimes, if it was necessary for his career, he was quite aware he was lying. But even then, there was a sincerity about him, because a part of him wanted so much to believe what he was saying, wanted it to be true.

After a year at City College, Clay couldn’t wait any longer: he got a job at Artists Alliance International, at that time the most prestigious and powerful talent agency in America, starting in the mailroom and lying, saying he was a college graduate. He said he was twenty-one. With charm, intelligence, and long extra hours, he quickly worked his way up to being an agent with his own clients, and by then when he finally admitted to his boss that he wasn’t a college graduate and was really two years younger than he’d said he was, his boss laughed and thought it was great. They called him the prodigy, and later, the golden boy.

He thrived on action and success, and became indispensable to his clients, spending as much time with them as they wanted. He was best friend, nurse, sounding board, adviser. He stopped short of being lover, to the difficult female client who wanted him, because he knew that was a way to make a future enemy. He managed to put her off and keep her as a friend, which was not easy, since saying no at the beginning was as dangerous as saying it in the end. He knew some other agents had affairs with their clients, but he didn’t want the aggravation.

He knew he wasn’t going to be an agent forever. His goal was to be head of a studio, or even a television network. It was the Fifties now, the cable link between the East and West coasts was complete, and America had nationwide television. Clay had a creative mind, and he put together ideas for shows for his own people, selling two to the networks in one year. He put together packages, which was what the large agencies like AAI wanted because they could get work for more of their clients and take a percentage off the top.

His shows were hanging in there, his clients had become famous, and in the business they knew his name. Everyone said he would be a wonderful producer—someday. Clay knew it would
happen sooner. He was on a lifetime roll. It frightened him a little, like being on a ride at the amusement park, but this one was for real.

His first attack happened at the Emmys. Several AAI actors, writers, and producers had been nominated, and Clay felt proud to be a part of the agency and eager to be on his way to bigger things. He looked around the enormous room filled with people; so many household names, so many kingmakers, so many sweaty palms. These were his peers and his competition; his world. And out there, unseen, was the bigger world, the real kingmakers: the public. You could laugh at them and say they were stupid, you could jeer at their level of taste, but they owned you. His future, all he had ever wanted, was in the control of people he only pretended to know. He suddenly felt very sick.

His heart was pounding so hard he could feel the beat of it in his ears. It seemed ready to rip itself out of his chest. He broke into a cold sweat. The room began to reel, the faces in it seemed distorted and out of focus, and he thought he was going to throw up. He thought of running to the men’s room, but he was too dizzy to stand, or to even move. He couldn’t catch his breath. He felt the perspiration pouring down his body, soaking his suit. For a moment he was sure it was a heart attack. But, a man in his mid-twenties with no history of heart trouble didn’t.… People were looking at him.

“I ate a bad clam,” he said. His voice sounded like a croak.
Had
he eaten a bad clam? No, he’d been living on black coffee and lukewarm hamburgers at his desk. And he hadn’t been out to dinner for … He felt his heart pounding at his temples now, his head threatening to explode. His fingers had turned numb.

If he could only catch his breath … just breathe … he was going to die, he knew it. Or pass out … maybe it would be better if he passed out, then he could relax and breathe.…

And then, slowly, slowly, his heart began to return to its normal beat, and he was able to breathe again. His shirt looked as if he’d taken a shower in it. He closed his fingers into fists and opened them; he could feel them now. One of the clients from the agency had won and he hadn’t heard the announcement. These had been
the most terrifying moments of his life. He didn’t even know how many moments it had been. He would go to the doctor the first thing in the morning.

The doctor he found through someone outside the agency, so there would never be any gossip if he were seriously ill, gave Clay a thorough checkup including an EKG and pronounced him in excellent health. It had been an anxiety attack. Was there something bothering him? Some problems at work? No, nothing. He was on a roll. Life was good. The doctor prescribed a mild tranquilizer in case it happened again.

Back at the office Clay told the people who had seen his anxiety attack that clams were really dangerous. It turned out that although he had looked very sick and peculiar it had been nothing compared to the way he felt, and no one was particularly interested anyway since it was a new day with new work to be done. The next attack didn’t happen again for a long time, and Clay began leaving his little vial of tranquilizers at home. He didn’t want to wonder why it happened and he didn’t want to think about it. He knew who he was and who he wanted to be. Self-examination only screwed up your life.

Time went by, he was almost twenty-seven now, and most of his friends were married. You took out a girl, and if you didn’t propose after a few months she did. Then you broke up. One of these days he’d have to marry somebody, he supposed, but she would have to be the best. A man should marry and have a child, that was part of a normal life, but Clay wanted a wife who would be able to keep up with him as he rose in his career, someone who would attract attention and be admired, but who would also think
he
was the best. He was getting too old for his stark, sophisticated bachelor apartment; it had become a cliché. He wanted a real home and antiques. He also wanted to be in love, or at least completely infatuated, swept away. He didn’t know who this future mystery woman would be, but he’d know her when he saw her, and he wanted her to be his trophy.