The Master of Happy Endings (31 page)

“My family,” she said, selecting one small figure to stand in the palm of her hand. “All mute.” She laughed. “They don't yell at me like the directors when my acting stinks. Or write nasty things in reviews. Unlike the men in my life, they don't nag at me to retire and come live in South Dakota, or northern Quebec. And unlike my widowed sister, they don't remind me that I might have had children instead of making a public spectacle of myself.”

After replacing the figure, she took up a multicoloured bag off a chair and looped it over her shoulder. “Now! Shall we eat?”

She led him out across her small patch of greenery and onto the canal-side walkway, which they followed past several small houses, some of them identical to hers, with windows through which you could see someone moving vaguely in the shadows. Thorstad reduced the length of his stride to match hers, conscious of her hip brushing lightly against him. He was again aware of the unnamed scent she must have worn all her life. Half a century had passed since they had walked together, or touched. His body hadn't forgotten. His body's instincts would have him run a hand lightly down her bare arm, if he dared. He'd known the feel of it once. He knew the feel of it even now, in his nerve ends. That he had loved this woman fiercely once was not an imagined thing, though he'd sometimes feared it might be. She had done her best, for his sake, to pretend she hadn't noticed.

Sooner or later the question had to be asked. He asked it now, while they weren't facing one another. “Is there a reason we haven't really talked about Topolski?”

“We haven't talked about what's-his-name either—Barry Foster. Did someone tell me once the man was in jail?”

“He wouldn't be in jail after all this time, surely—not for cooking the company books.”

“What a grouch!” She paused to breathe in the scent of a scarlet hibiscus alongside the path. “Think what damage he could have done if he'd stayed!”

Eventually they came out from between two buildings onto the broad walkway bordering a pale expanse of sand that stretched to the sea and off in either direction along the city's edge. Tall palms grew up from both sand and grass like long-handled feather dusters, some of whose trunks had been decorated with blue and red graffiti. The lower fronds of the closer palms hung grey and ragged as ostrich tails, possibly dead.

“Sometimes you'd see a fellow juggling three running chainsaws down here,” Oonagh said, “while standing in a ring of fire.”

“Much as I felt at the beginning of every September.”

“Your whole career?” She turned abruptly to him, obviously surprised. A stage actress should have understood first-day jitters. “You proved yourself a fine chainsaw juggler in your very first month—that was my impression.”

“It took most of September every year to get it back. I feel a little like that even now. Dealing with Elliot Evans is much like facing a class of future mechanics who resent the fact they're forced to read
Elegy in a Country Churchyard
.”

Oonagh stepped aside to avoid colliding with a cyclist in a head-down hurry.

To Thorstad, this walkway appeared to be an orderly sort of flea market, with painters sitting before their easels and craftspeople displaying their wares on a blanket. They passed a row of open-faced shops selling postcards and T-shirts, purses and belts and mugs. Rows of shoulder bags hung from hooks. Most of the tourists or shoppers wore flip-flops on their feet, with shorts and skimpy tops, or in the case of some young men no top at all. Elaborate tattoos crawled up muscular arms.

“Were we ever that young?” Oonagh said. She'd stopped to watch several tanned youths involved in a game of volleyball. Young males waiting for the ball to come their way explored their own bare chests with the palm of one hand. “We played our own games on a sandy beach, so I guess we must have been.”

She, too, remembered. Or remembered what she called “games.” Certainly they'd been two young people at play, though Axel Thorstad hadn't thought at the time that they were merely playing games.

“Yvonne De Carlo was Miss Venice Beach,” she said. “Did you know that? In 1938, while you and I were in—what?—Grade Two? You remember Yvonne De Carlo?”

“I do. I also remember a Yvonne De Carlo look-alike flouncing down Hollywood Boulevard.”

“Oh Lord! Yes!”

Beyond the volleyball players and the outdoor cafés and children's playground the grass was available to the less energetic. Some lay on blankets to take in the sun while others chatted over a picnic lunch. A group that might have been a high school class sat discussing something in a remarkably low-key manner. At the foot of a palm tree a young woman in a straw hat and pale green dress sat with her knees pulled up to support the book she was reading.

“Somewhere along here is where my mother was given the news. While she was reading a library copy of
David Copperfield
. You may remember knowing this.”

He supposed it was ridiculous for a seventy-seven-year-old man to be shaken by a surprise reminder of his mother as a young woman. Well, the world must think so anyway, but it felt natural enough to him. Your mother remained your mother, though she had long ago gone from your sight, and your father remained the man who leapt from the building as recently as yesterday. Sometimes what they called the “distant past” seemed as close behind you as your heels.

Oonagh placed a hand on his arm. “You seemed to think your father's accident was the most important thing about you. Surely you've left all that behind by now.”

No doubt she could see that he hadn't. “Does anyone know where Centurion Pictures used to be?”

“Well, we found it once, didn't we? Long ago.” She started walking again. “We could look again, I suppose, if it's important.”

Three young men in skimpy swimsuits were suddenly upon them, throwing their arms around Oonagh. This was a noisy reunion—with male shrieks and explosions of laughter and much dancing about. No one seemed to listen to anyone else. The pleasure in this reunion seemed an end in itself. Oonagh stood unmoving, apparently accustomed to this, her smile wide and steady and patient.

Then, as suddenly as they'd appeared, they rushed off, the one in the middle holding a hand on either side, their flip-flops slapping the pavement. Oonagh was left behind to shake her head and smooth back her hair. “So many boys without mothers.” She took hold of his hand and led him down a narrow alley between two buildings painted aquamarine. “Half the young hopefuls in L.A. have camped in my little house.” She seemed to find this amusing. “Mother Courage or Mother McCree, I'm not sure which.”

The air inside Roberto's smelled powerfully of seafood, though all the windows were open—were, in fact, without glass. Inside a tank of bubbling water several lobsters crept across the false sea floor, perhaps hoping for a tunnel that would lead to a safer ocean. The nearest of them might have been appealing to Axel Thorstad for help. A slight young man with dark eyes and a broad head of black hair turned away from the table he'd been serving and threw his arms out wide to welcome Oonagh with a grand embrace. He shook hands with Miss Farrell's “very much welcome guest.”

“A friend of my youth,” Oonagh said. “The amazing thing is that neither of us has aged a day.” Her laughter rumbled just beneath her words.

Roberto smiled, and dipped a shallow bow. “But of course.” He led them to a small table in the back corner. Some Spanish was exchanged, haltingly on Oonagh's part. Elena's widower understood little. Apparently Roberto's tooth was painfully
roto
. He pulled down his bottom lip to display.
“Debo ver un dentista.”

Once Roberto had received enough sympathy from Miss Farrell, as well as the name of a good dentist, he hurried away to disappear behind a beaded curtain.

Oonagh had taken the liberty to order ahead. “I hope you still like seafood. He has created his own Mexican seafood thing—a sort of crepe.” She removed a handful of brochures from her bag. “The Huntington.”

She had put a bookmark on the page describing the Ellesmere manuscript, which would be, he saw, displayed in the first glass tower inside the exhibition hall, setting off a tremorous thrill in the pit of his stomach. The opened-out first pages of the illuminated
Canterbury Tales
were presented here in a photograph, a flowering vine in blues and reds down the left side and across the bottom to serve as perch for a tiny winged dragon.

Apparently it was also possible to see a draft of the Magna Carta, the manuscript of
Piers Plowman
from the fifteenth century, and a first edition of Dante's
Divina Commedia
. “A first edition of
Pilgrim's Progress
. The first edition of
Gulliver's Travels
. The whole of my English Literature course has been down here all along. You could have invited me years ago. Thirty-five students sleeping on your floor!”

Why hadn't he known about the Huntington during that long-ago Christmas holiday? He might have organized a field trip. School bands earned money to take themselves to Seattle. He had taken students to a performance of
Death of a Salesman
in Vancouver but he hadn't known what was available down here.

Roberto came out from behind the beaded curtain to set down two glasses and a carafe of white wine before rushing off to welcome new customers at the door. Thorstad seized the opportunity to ask again about the invisible Andrzej Topolski. “If I knew where Topolski could be found I'd suggest he come to the Huntington with us.”

“He would do his best to spoil it for you.” She watched him pour wine for them both. “If you're asking where he
is
I can tell you. I know where he is because I write the cheques that keep him there.” She tasted the wine and nodded. Her voice dropped to a whispery growl. “He suffered a series of small strokes. Now he's in an Assisted-Living Home—and not especially happy about it.”

Thorstad shuddered.
Assisted Living
. Two simple words, but terrifying when put together. “Poor man! Sometimes I have this awful feeling that somewhere one of those places has an empty room with my name on it.”

She laughed. “Not this place, I promise you! Only corporate crooks and celebrities can afford it. There won't be a single high school teacher there, unless there's a charity wing I don't know about.”

When he asked if Topolski had inherited his promised duchy, she rolled her eyes. “The family mansion was a pile of rubble and the land beneath it radioactive swamp. But a wealthy brother died in France with no heirs, and darling Andrzej came into most of his fortune. Of course he used the money to make more money, then lost it all, several times.” She paused, and looked out the nearest window at the deserted alley. “We divorced years ago, Thorstad. Axel.” She'd dropped the tale-telling tone from her voice. This was something more intimate. “Obviously you don't read the tabloids, or didn't at the time. It was a disastrous marriage. Exciting, I suppose, if you think violent battles are fun!” She spoke to her glass. “After a while we gave up. Lived apart for years. Not long ago he showed up out of the blue, in terrible shape—financially, physically, the works.”

Thorstad had always assumed the marriage had been a happy one, that he'd heard nothing about it simply because she'd kept Topolski out of the magazines. And Elena had not kept in touch with her cousin, who had been, it turned out, only a very distant relative, his wedding simply her excuse for a trip to North America. He'd seen Oonagh and Topolski as the perfect couple from the moment he acknowledged the failure of his own hopes—the extravagant beauty and the sophisticated older man from Europe and Montreal. Otherwise . . . well, otherwise. He did not want to think of otherwise.

“When he lost most of it in some stupid business scheme, he came back to Laguna Beach to live with his sister, but his sister died and left him her house. He suffered a series of strokes soon afterwards.” She paused to examine her glass for a moment. “I visit him now and then, though I'm not sure he's pleased to see me. He seems to be more irritable by the time I leave than when I arrived.” Again a rumble of laughter. “Which may explain the marriage.” She raised her eyes to his. “The past few years I've been with a kind and patient architect outside of Toronto who keeps my feet firmly on the ground.”

Had she decided he was anxious lest she might assume he'd come with higher hopes? Which perhaps he had, he wasn't sure. He was relieved that at least he hadn't allowed his imagination to initiate some foolish action. And yet he experienced something like indignation as well. Why had she felt it necessary to set his mind at ease? Why had she assumed he didn't want to be thought of as a man with a man's hopes? Did she think he had gone beyond such things?

Well, he supposed Oonagh Farrell had remained a certain boy-man's enduring fantasy, surviving somehow in a corner of his soul, even throughout his happy marriage. Oonagh was simply being kind to what remained of that young fellow. Maybe it wasn't easy for a well-known actress to be simply a friend to a man of any age.

Roberto burst out through the beaded curtain with a large red plate in either mittened hand.
“Caliente!”
he warned. He placed a plate before each of them and stood back, ready to accept their praise. “For the fabulous Miss Farrell and her guest.”

The fabulous Miss Farrell breathed in the aroma. “Bravo,
señor
!”

“So,” she said, once Roberto had turned to other customers and they had tasted the seafood dish, which was indeed very
caliente
, “you told me the television world has conspired to make sure you can't do your job. The first question that has to be answered is: What difference does it make if one more adolescent fails a few exams?”

Thorstad did not believe this deserved an answer. Instead, he explained that things had got even worse. “Now he's having trouble on the set. This morning I had to stand by while he kept forgetting his lines. If it happens again I'll be tempted to step in and help!”