The Property of a Lady (64 page)

Hollywood

The carefully tended gardens of the big house on Lexington Drive looked peaceful under the golden summer sunshine: Birds sang, cicadas fretted, and the pool glittered invitingly, but somehow, no one had the heart to accept its invitation.

From his vantage point at the end of the terrace with the dogs sprawled beside him in the shade, Zev watched Missie serving iced tea, wishing he could turn the clock back a year and that Grigori Solovsky had never been to New York. They had just returned from visiting Azaylee at the Rancho Velo Clinic, up the coast a way in Ventura County. It was the first time in a month that the doctor had permitted them to see her. She had walked slowly toward them clinging to the nurse’s arm and they stared at her, horrified.

They had cut her lovely blond hair to facilitate the use of electrodes on her head in some new form of treatment they swore by, and it stood out like an angel’s halo. Her face was so shrunken and pinched all that seemed left were the eyes, as velvety golden and inhuman as the pansy flowers they had always been compared with. Her scrawny body and rake-thin limbs looked barely capable of supporting her.

“She won’t eat,” the doctor told Missie. “There’s no reason for it. She is not physically ill. But she just refuses nourishment.”

“She wants to die,” Missie said flatly. “She wants to be with her father.”

“We are drip-feeding her, of course. It will keep her alive, but if she doesn’t start to eat soon….” He shrugged graphically, and they all knew what he meant.

Azaylee glanced distantly at them and their false eager smiles faded as they realized she didn’t recognize them. Suddenly she clutched Missie’s hand and said, “Have you brought him, like I asked you? Have you brought Alexei to see me?” Tears stood in her beautiful eyes.
“Milochka,”
she whispered, “tell me that Papa is safe after all. Tell me he will come for me soon.”

And then she retreated again into a no-man’s-land of dark despair, locked behind her blank gaze with the tears still streaming down her cheeks—and theirs.

Zev stared down the terrace, troubled, as Missie suddenly put her head in her hands and began to weep. He could think of nothing to say that would comfort her. Not for the first time, he wished they had children of their own, but it seemed it was not to be.

“I can’t stand it any longer,” Rosa exploded, leaping to her feet and stalking the terrace angrily. “Every time you see her, she’s worse. They are killing her with their treatments in that fancy clinic. Bring her home, Missie. If she’s going to die crazy at least let her do it here, where we love her.”

Of course, Zev thought with a faint smile, Rosa, with her practical mind, had got right to the heart of the matter. After picking up the intercom, he told his chauffeur to have the car ready in five minutes.

“But where are you going?” Missie asked tearfully.

He kissed her and said, “I’m going to bring her home, of course.”

Ignoring the doctor’s warnings, he wrapped Azaylee in a shawl and held her in his arms all the way back. But in his heart he thought he was bringing her home to die. Her room had been prepared but he refused to let them shut
her away. “Let her stay here with us,” he ordered. “Let her be aware that life is continuing normally around her. She will sit at the table with us even though she may not eat. She will rest on the terrace, walk in the gardens. Rosa is right, she must be with her family.”

Her borzois, Rex and Baby, leapt around barking excitedly, and she patted their heads absently. Whimpering with delight, Rex rolled at her feet and she sighed and suddenly said, “Hello, Rex.”

Then she looked at Rosa and said, “Am I going to bed now?”

“So? Why are you going to bed?” Rosa demanded. “You are not sick.”

“Am I not?” She looked at them, bewildered.

“Sit here by me,” Missie coaxed as Zev helped her into a long comfortable chair. The dogs flopped at her feet and Missie held out a glass of cinnamon milk. “Grandmother Sofia’s special,” she said with a smile. “You know how you always like it.”

“Thank you.” Azaylee held it absently, gazing around her at the beautiful flower-laden terrace and the gardens under the serene evening sky, then she sighed. “How lovely,” she said, closing her eyes.

They clustered around her silently, all except Jakey, who was leaning against the stone balustrade, drinking scotch. Zev said sympathetically, “I know how hard this is on you, Jakey. I want you to know that we would not blame you if you just left and never came back. No one would hold you to an offer of marriage to a girl who is … a girl as unstable as Ava.”

Jakey shrugged and drained his glass. “I’ll do my best to help her, C. Z., but it’s kinda tough when she doesn’t even know I’m around. If only I could forget it for a while, maybe if I had a project at the studio I could bury myself in, something really meaty that took up all my time. I’ve been thinking, after the success of
Hollywood Girl
I’d kinda like to have a shot at producing a movie.”

He glanced sideways at Zev as he poured himself another scotch. “I’ve come across a script I think you might find interesting, C. Z. Maybe you’d like to see it?”

“Send it to my office first thing Monday.” Zev threw a friendly arm across Jakey’s shoulders. “I’ll see what I can do to help.”

The next day they began to ease Azaylee back into a normal way of life. She was woken in the morning at the same time as they and sat with them at the breakfast table. Her blank stare swept over them unnervingly, but they kept up a normal conversation as they forced down their food while her plate was removed, untouched. Afterward Missie and Rosa walked up and down the terrace, supporting her between them until she seemed so fatigued that they were forced to stop. Lunch was served and again she ignored it, staring into space. Another little stroll, and at dinner the same blank silent routine. Even Rex seemed depressed, lying limply at her feet, never moving until she did.

After three days they felt they were going crazy too, and at another silent dinner Rosa exploded. “So,” she exclaimed with an angry snarl, “are you just gonna sit there and not eat? You don’t remember the days when Missie worked her hands to the bone to buy food for you? Are you too grand a movie star now?”

Azaylee’s shocked eyes met hers and Rosa stared at her nervously, afraid she had gone too far in her anger and frustration.

“I’m sorry,” Azaylee said meekly, picking up her spoon and tasting the soup. “I know how hard Missie works.” She patted Rex at her feet and added, “She always makes sure Viktor gets his food too.” She smiled at Missie and said, “Thank you,
matiushka.”

They realized Azaylee thought she was a child again, but at least it was contact. She was talking and she was eating.

Zev approved Jake’s script and made him a producer
with a big budget, a hefty salary, and the rare freedom to choose his own cast and director. The studio was flourishing but Zev had another interest. For the past few years he had been doing what he could to help refugees fleeing from Nazi Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, sending large sums of money through various organizations.

He followed the political events in Europe with dread in his heart. When on September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland and two days later Britain and France declared war on Germany, he bowed his head and wept.

Missie was absorbed in helping Azaylee on her slow return to reality, and for the first time in years he felt that deep sense of helplessness. To forget he threw himself into his work. In the next eighteen months Magic’s production increased by 30 percent and their profits by 50 percent. Jakey’s film scored a small success and made enough to ensure him another, and Azaylee had lost that terrifying blank stare and looked like her old self again. She smiled and chatted to Rachel and her boys and she lighted up whenever Jakey came to see her.

On December 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, precipitating America into the war, Dick Nevern was one of the first to enlist. “They say I’m too old at forty-one,” he said proudly, “but I talked ’em out of it.”

“Then you’d better talk them out of the desk job they’ll give you too.” Jakey laughed. But he didn’t follow Dick’s example even though he was only thirty-three. Instead he got exemption on the grounds that he had important work making propaganda movies about the war effort. And he asked Azaylee to marry him again.

It was as if someone had turned on the klieg lights and suddenly she became Ava Adair. She grew beautiful again before their eyes, she talked, she laughed, she sparkled. She acted like a woman in love—or rather, Ava Adair in love. Missie and Zev stared worriedly at each other as she said one more time, “Oh, please,
please
, Missie,
say
yes…
.” She was a grown woman. How could they say no, even though they were worried?

The wedding was the grand affair she had always wanted. The bride was breathtaking in a silvery sheath of heavy white satin. There was a big marquee on the lawn and the guests, many of them in uniform, drank vintage champagne from Zev’s private stock and devoured lobster and caviar as if there were no tomorrow. When the bride and groom left for their honeymoon, Zev thought what a contrast they made, Jakey so swarthy, almost as wide as he was tall, his ugly face fixed in a grin; his bride so slender and frail and so blond and beautiful.

“Don’t worry. You are not losing me,” Azaylee whispered as she hugged Missie and Zev good-bye. “Soon I’ll have a baby and you can become doting grandparents.”

They stared at each other helplessly as they waved good-bye to the happy pair, knowing it was impossible. “Let’s just allow her her dreams,” Zev said, “as long as it makes her happy.”

As soon as they returned from the honeymoon, Jakey announced his plans to star his wife in a new movie,
Sweetheart of the Forces
, an all-singing, all-dancing, big-band blockbuster featuring battleships, aircraft carriers, and airplane wings as backgrounds for dance routines. The movie was a success and Azaylee plunged right into the next one, working long days at the studio and rushing to help at the Hollywood Canteen at night as well as making time to sell War Bonds and help scrap metal drives. And as Jakey went from success to success, Zev gave him more and more freedom.

Dick had beaten the age ban and had been sent to Britain as a special movie correspondent. He expected to be sent to join Montgomery’s forces in the desert at Alamein and was whiling away his time impatiently in London awaiting news of a plane on which he could hitch a ride. He was at a bar with some other American news correspondents
when it received a direct hit; they were all killed instantly.

Azaylee forgot about everything, including her own problems, in her attempts to console her friend Rachel, a widow at thirty-two with three young boys aged between ten and five. Then Sam Brockman died suddenly of a heart attack, and Zev insisted that Rosa and Rachel and the children all come and live with them for as long as they wanted.

“It will fill up this big house,” he said with a smile, but inside he was devastated by Dick’s death. Dick was his friend and ally, and he had planned that Dick should be heir to the studio he had helped make such a phenomenal success. Without him Magic seemed to lose its point, and Zev realized that he had fallen out of love with the movie business just as quickly as he had fallen in love with it. He was fifty years old and he was tired of movies, tired of wars and troubles. All he really wanted to do was be with Missie.

Maryland

“So, there we were,” Missie said to Cal, “living in the big house on Lexington with Rosa, Rachel, and the children, and instead of masterminding the studios Zev was acting like a father to them, taking Dick’s place. He went to their school meetings and inspected their report cards, got them tennis and swimming coaches and took them to baseball games. And more and more, he let Jakey Jerome take over Magic. At first Jakey used to make a great show of consulting him, but it soon became apparent that it didn’t matter what Zev said: He was running it his own way. Zev would go there two or three days a week to check production and sit in on the meetings they told him about, but he knew nothing about the other meetings—the secret ones.