Her Leading Man (56 page)

Christina settled herself on the sofa next to
Martin.
Her
behavior might have been considered forward,
but she didn’t care. Now that
her future plans had
been blown sky high, she needed all the comfort she
could get. Martin
lifted his hand, and she reached
out to take it in hers.

He surprised her. Instead of gripping her hand, he
reached into his
breast pocket and withdrew a folded
letter. “Here,” he said, presenting it to
Christina. “I
believe you’ll find this to be of great
interest.”

His expression was sober, buts his eyes twinkled
alarmingly. The
overall effect was to make him look
rather like an imp
.
Christina gazed at him for several
seconds, until her grandmother
snapped, “Well, open
the damned thing, girl!”

Christina complied. She felt her eyes grow round.
Her mouth fell open.
She gasped.

“
Well?” Mrs. Mayhew barked. “What does it
say,
girl? This is a fine time for you to go weak in the
knees. I don’t
approve of young women—”

But neither Martin nor Christina cared what she
didn’t approve of.
Christina whooped and hollered,
“Martin!
I
can’t believe you
managed this!” And
crushing the
letter against his back, she threw her
arms around him

By the time the two of them let each other go,
Mrs. Mayhew was
quivering with suppressed temper
and Christina was crying. Martin laughed,
although
h
e looked a little shaky
himself.

“
So,” he said, “you’ll be admitted to
medical
school at Los Angeles University. Every single one
of the regents
signed that thing.” He pointed at the
letter. “You can see there. I made them do
it. What’s
more, we can get married any time we want to,
and
they won’t say a
word
.”

Mrs. Mayhew
gasped.

Wiping her eyes, Christina kissed him once more
before asking, “How
much did this cost you, Martin?”

He
shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I’m rich.”

Caught somewhere between laughing and crying,
Christina kissed him
again. “How nice it must be to
have influence.”

“
It
helps sometimes.”

“
Good Go
d,”
said Mrs.
Mayhew
. “
Good God.”

Miss Christina Mayhew and Mr. Martin Tafft were
married at St.
Mark’s Episcopal Church in the lovely
community of Altadena,
California
,
on October 19,
1913.
Christina’s
second cousin served as matron of
honor. Martin’s two brothers were
groomsmen. Both
sets of parents attended the ceremony. So did all of
the invited guests,
a majority of whom worked in
the motion picture industry. A swarm of
reporters
lurked outside the
church, waiting to capture the
happy couple and publish
photographs in newspapers
and
magazines.

Grandmother
Mayhew cried.

So did Christina’s mother and Martin’s mother, but
there was nothing
unusual in that.

Since
the university at which Christina attended
medical school was
located in the western part of
Los Angeles, near the Pacific Ocean, the
couple
rented
a house there for the duration. As soon as
Christina received her medical
degree, they moved
to Pasadena, where Martin had been busy building
a house with an
office for his wife, the doctor.
They were happier than Christina had known
married
people could be.

Martin wasn’t surprised by that. What surprised
him was that
Christina’s
grandmother turned almost
human when their first child, a little
girl whom they
named Elizabeth, was born.

Pasadena,
California,

November,
1920

Martin carried three-year-old Elizabeth on his
shoulders up to the
voting booth. Christina and her
grandmother marched ahead of him, their
chins high,
their backs straight. He figured they deserved to
lead
the
way.

His marvelous wife had worked hard for this day,
not so much by
marching and protesting, but by
being
who she wa
s.
She devoted most of her
medical
practice to unfortunates who didn’t have enough
money to pay
expensive doctors for medical treatment.
What made that marvelous was
that
s
he’d have
done the same thing even if she hadn’t had a
rich
husband.

As for Martin, he still owned half of Peerless
Productions,
and Peerless was still considered the top
production company
among moviemakers. Peerless
was known throughout the world as purveyors of
a
quality
product.

The motion pictures hadn’t spread world peace as
Martin had once
hoped. The World War was just two
years over, and most of the world
still suffered
from its aftermath.

But he held on to his dreams, as Christina held
on to hers. Between
them, and Elizabeth, Martin
knew this old world was a better place. Their
own
personal
triumvirate might not be able to cure all the
world’s problems, but they were
certainly making inroads.

“
Can I
vote, too, Daddy?” Elizabeth piped up.

“
Not this time, sweetheart,” he said, kissing
her
as
he set her on the sidewalk. “You have to be
twenty-one to vote
.
” But
you no longer needed to be
male
.

“
Twenty-one?” Elizabeth made a face. “That’s
a
long
way away.”

Martin feared it wouldn’t be long enough. He
grinned at
Christina, who grinned back. This was an
emotional moment for both of
them.

He nearly fell over in a dead faint when he saw
Grandmother Mayhew
brush her gloved hand across
her withered cheek in order to wipe away
her
tears.