Melting the Snow on Hester Street Read online

  ‘I am afraid so.’

  ‘What will you do? Return to your job at the police force?’

  ‘I think so. If they’ll have me …’

  She shrugged. She hardly cared. She passed him a large envelope. ‘Five thousand dollars. In cash,’ she said. ‘Do you want to count it?’

  ‘Hardly! No. Gosh no. I’m sure it’s correct … But I asked for—’

  ‘You asked for too much.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. She wondered what kind of a man he was, to crumple so quickly. ‘I suppose you are right.’

  She leaned forward … Lily of the Valley, shimmer and stardust … He felt a little faint. She dropped her voice to a low whisper, removed her sunglasses, fixed her fathomless green eyes on his. ‘Understand this, Mr Gregory,’ she said quietly. ‘I have told you things nobody else knows. Nobody in the world …’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘If I hear a word: if a hint of a whisper of a word of what I have told you ever comes out—’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I will come after you … Understand?’

  ‘Yes, Yes. Yes, of course …’

  ‘I will find you. And your little daughter. And your wife. And the new one, on the way.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And I will send a man to kill you.’

  He stopped, as if, for a moment, he might have laughed. But then he looked at her again, through the haze of shimmering stardust, into the green eyes that had seen so much. And he nodded. Patted the envelope. Without another word, he slipped out of the car and scampered up his garden path, to his beloved daughter and to his wife with another-on-the-way, closed the front door behind him and didn’t look back, not once, nor ever again.

  60

  Sitting at his well-ordered desk in the swankiest office at Lionsfiel, fiddling idly with a fountain pen of heavy gold, always so pleasant to the touch, Butch Menken reflected, briefly, on his considerable achievements, and felt dissatisfied.

  Reflection of this sort was always a bad idea. Normally he was clever enough to avoid it. But on this occasion, on the cusp of so much, and with nothing urgent to distract him, he could hardly help himself. Time was crawling, according to his platinum watch. He missed Eleanor.

  He missed Max.

  It was all very well, a man’s life going according to plan. And on every front, it appeared, he couldn’t put a foot wrong. Even now, while America floundered in confusion and debt, Butch Menken was making money. He hadn’t sold his interests in the stock market. For a man who liked to pit his intelligence against the world, it would have been too simple. He was still out there, still buying and selling. But he was betting on a falling market. He was selling short, and cleaning up. Black Thursday was a golden Thursday for Butch. He made $250,000 in a single day. And now, since money itself never had been a driving force, he had more money than really interested him.

  And Max was down and out. For the moment, at least. Butch had seen to that.

  And he was about to embark on the job he had always wanted. He was going to create a super-studio in his image. He smiled, struck briefly by the inelegance of his insatiable ambition. It would be only be a matter of time, he calculated – five years, let’s say, before the studio was renamed Silverman & Menken Pictures. Menken & Silverman. Menken.

  In any case, this morning, he had achieved it all, he had it all – more than he knew what to do with – and he felt lonely and empty and (which was more unusual) even a little bored.

  A man could be too clever. And he wanted Eleanor home.

  It was noon. He’d sent her another wire early this morning, and she ought to have received it by now. Why didn’t she call? Did she not realize how much she needed him? Damn her.

  It was just then, just as he was damning her for not needing him enough, that the call from Reno came through. Eleanor. He could tell from the way she spoke his name – one single syllable – that something inside her had shifted.

  ‘Butch?’

  ‘Baby! I’ve been worried! Where are you?’

  ‘I am still in Reno. I’m coming home.’

  ‘You’re coming home! Thank God! Are you all right? What happened?’

  ‘Nothing happened. I went to see my detective, that’s all. I gave him a lot of money. And it’s over. I know it’s over. I’m coming home.’

  He felt a leap – of triumph, perhaps. Or was it disappointment? Was it possible, he wondered, to feel both at the same time? ‘What’s “over”, baby? What are you saying? Are you OK? You sound strange.’

  ‘I’m saying …’ And then she said it. The thing she needed to say – what she had called him to say. To practise saying aloud, before she said it to Max. She had said it to the mirror. She had said it to Mr Gregory. And now she said it again. ‘That I have accepted it.’

  ‘Accepted what?’

  ‘That my Isha is gone. She is dead, Butch. She died. A long time ago.’ And this time, as she said it, though her voice was level – she sounded to Butch almost conversational – the tears coursed down her cheeks.

  It wasn’t what Butch had been expecting to hear. He had almost … it seemed absurd, but he had already almost forgotten about the child. Isha. Isha … Of course, she was in Reno to find the child. He didn’t know what to say. What was he meant to say? Or to feel? Until yesterday he’d not even known ‘Isha’ existed.

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ he said, and could hear how inept it was. ‘Are you all right, darling?’ He wanted to talk about the new contract. There was so much he wanted to talk about – things that were relevant. Things that weren’t dead.

  ‘She died in 1913. With her grandmother. I think they must have died together – at the same time. On the same day. I think so.’

  ‘I guess so …’

  ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘Yes … Is it?’

  ‘It’s OK.’ But of course it wasn’t. She was weeping. ‘People die. Children die. People die every day, don’t they Butch? People die …’

  ‘Honey?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘Baby, I think you need to come home.’

  ‘I’m coming home. I told you.’

  ‘You sound—’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You want me to come out to Reno?’ he asked, gently. She was not fine. ‘I can come and get you, baby. If you need me. I can rent a plane and bring you home. It would be easy—’

  ‘No. Thank you, Butch. I’m leaving some things here, and I’m taking the train. There’s stuff I need to say to Max … And then I’ll come back here. It’ll probably take a few weeks, won’t it?’

  This time, he knew what she meant. He felt another skirmish of emotion: triumph tinged with sadness. And alarm. His landscape was shifting, he wasn’t sure quite how, nor if he liked it quite as much as he had always supposed he would.

  ‘Baby – listen to me,’ he said. ‘There are a couple of things I need to tell you. A couple of things that have happened since we spoke. And a couple of things I meant to tell you, which I should have told you before. But you need to know them, before you speak with Max.’

  ‘I know about the crash,’ she said quickly. ‘I suppose Max and I have lost a lot of money …’

  ‘Well,’ Butch shrugged. ‘I don’t know about that … You said he was in pretty deep.’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘Have I what?’

  ‘Lost money?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh.’ Eleanor let his answer settle. ‘Well. That’s good,’ she said kindly. ‘Clever Butch.’

  ‘Max got fired.’

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘He’s lost his job. Silverman had to let him go … I fought for him. I did what I could …’

  Eleanor listened, confused. Why would Butch fight for Max? Why would Butch have anything to do with it? Why was Butch telling her this – now? She said nothing, waited for him to continue.

  ‘Joel didn’t like the final cut for Lost At Sea,’ Butch continued. ‘And he was right. It was unreleasa
ble. He said Max had to go back to the edit – and Max wouldn’t do it. He destroyed all the dailies. God knows what he did with them. But they’re gone.’

  ‘He did that?’ In spite of everything, the deadness in her heart, Eleanor smiled at the story, at Max’s indomitable spirit. ‘He loved that movie,’ she said.

  ‘It wasn’t his best.’

  ‘It’s a good movie, Butch.’

  ‘Well, we have to disagree on that.’

  ‘But you never saw it.’

  Another hefty pause. Finally he said: ‘Actually, I did. Actually – this is what I’ve been trying to tell you. This is my final day at Lionsfiel, El. Next week I start at Silverman. If you’d been in town this past week, you would have heard about it before, but it was announced in the trades day before yesterday …’ Butch couldn’t keep the small trace of pride from his voice: ‘Executive producer, El …’

  A crackling silence on the line.

  ‘Look out Irving Thalberg, huh?’ he said.

  Still, she didn’t speak.

  ‘It’s good news for you too, El,’ he continued quietly.

  ‘I’m sure it is,’ she said vaguely. ‘Well done, darling.’ But why was he talking about Thalberg? She had called to tell him about her daughter.

  ‘… need to know that Carrascosa isn’t going to renew …’ he was saying. ‘But you realized that, didn’t you? Your contract with Lionsfiel ends month after next, and they’re not renewing.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ she said.

  ‘I told you. I warned you … El, did you even look at the script they sent?’

  ‘Script?’

  ‘PostBoy.’

  ‘PostBoy …’ She sounded the word. ‘I didn’t see it, no.’

  ‘Well …’ He sighed, frustrated with her. Even now, she didn’t seem to care. ‘El – I know things are difficult for you right now. I understand. But, baby, your contract’s been up for renewal. Your numbers have been lousy. You didn’t think the script might have offered you an indication? ‘

  ‘Indication of what?’

  ‘Come on, El! Your future here at Lionsfiel.’

  ‘I left in a hurry …’

  ‘You should’ve read it, baby. You would’ve been prepared.’

  Eleanor felt an urge – inexplicable – to laugh. She said: ‘prepared for what?’

  ‘You don’t even come in until midway through Act Three! You play the girl’s mother!’

  It wasn’t something she wanted to think about. Not right now. It was the last thing on earth she wanted to think about. ‘Butch – can we talk about this when I get home? I know it’s important. Of course it’s important. Everything is so important, isn’t it? Oh poor Max! I must speak with him. Have you spoken with him, Butch? Is he OK?’

  Butch pictured Max as he’d seen him last, spatters of Butch’s blood on his shirt, pleading with Butch to tell him the whereabouts of his wife as he was dragged from this very room. ‘Max is OK,’ Butch said impatiently. ‘Max’ll be just fine. Baby, it’s you I’m worried about. Are you still there? Your voice is terribly faint.’

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I said I’m here.’

  ‘Baby – can you hear me? Listen El, I’m going to get you a new contract. A nice, watertight contract at Silverman. It’s the first thing I’m going to do. Understand? You’re going to be OK. I’m going to look after you and we’re going to make some great movies together! … El? Can you hear me?’ The crackling was getting louder: a precursor, normally, to the line cutting off altogether. So there was an urgency in Butch’s voice. He wanted her to travel back to LA comforted by the knowledge that, in spite of everything, she would be all right. He would take care of her.

  ‘What about Max?’ she asked.

  ‘Max?’ Butch smothered his irritation. ‘I told you, Max can look after himself. Better than anyone else I know,’ he added bitterly.

  ‘Except you, Butch.’

  ‘Huh? What’s that? I can’t hear you! Baby, can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes! I can hear you. But I have to go. Or I shall miss the train.

  ‘El?’

  ‘Yes, Butch?’

  His voice lost its edge. ‘Take care of yourself,’ he said softly. An image of her supple body, warm and giving, floated through him: all the passion she revealed in his bed. Damn, he missed her. ‘I want you home …’

  She sighed. A long, low sigh, audible above the crackle. It could have meant anything. She hardly knew what it meant herself. But she missed him, too. In all sorts of ways.

  Perhaps, she thought. Perhaps …

  And the line went dead.

  61

  Saturday 26 October 1929

  She sent a wire to Max before she left Reno, telling him she was coming home. But he wasn’t at the station to greet her.

  She took a taxicab to the Castillo, the house they had built together, and as the car turned up the short winding drive she knew, somehow, that he wouldn’t be there. She gazed at it – her home. In all its redundant grandeur, it seemed to mock her: for the hope it once represented, for everything she and Max had once invested in it. It offered the opposite of comfort.

  Teresa and Joseph came out to welcome her as if she were a forgotten soldier returning from the front. In the few days since Eleanor had left, the world had turned upside down. It said so in every paper. Max had all but vanished. And they were frightened for their livelihoods.

  ‘Where is Mr Beecham?’ Eleanor asked, as they unloaded her cases for her. ‘Have you seen him today?’

  Teresa shook her head. ‘We haven’t seen him. Not for two days at least. It’s been so quiet here. And then, with all the stories …’ She stopped, uncertain if it was her place to continue, but unable to resist. ‘The big stock market crash. It’s all anyone talks about. Somebody is ruined. Somebody else is ruined. They are throwing themselves off the top of buildings, Mrs Beecham! I say to Joseph, and Joseph says to me: “We sure hope Mr and Mrs Beecham aren’t ruined!” But you’re not ruined, are you, Mrs Beecham?’

  Eleanor smiled. ‘Of course not,’ she said wanly. ‘And whatever happens, Teresa, you and Joseph mustn’t worry. We will look after you.’

  They had come into the house and were standing together at the foot of the grand stairway, the stairway Max had designed. He had come home to the little bungalow on Poinsettia, where they were living while the Castillo was being built. He was carrying some early sketches, something he had drawn in ink on the back of a linen restaurant napkin, just as he sometimes sketched the sets for his own films.

  There would be black-and-white marble floors, he said, and, from the marble floors, the stairs would sweep in two expanding spirals: like a stage set, he said, like something Cinderella might have swept and spiralled along herself, in her magical dress, on her way to the prince’s ball. It’s what Max had said when he first showed her the drawings.

  ‘You can pretend you are Cinderella,’ he said. ‘Every single morning, when you come down for breakfast!’

  She had laughed. ‘Who? Me or you? We are both Cinderellas, aren’t we?

  ‘Certainly not!’

  ‘Well then, who are you, darling? If not someone who has hauled themselves from the gutter and the dust … And the cinders …’

  ‘I, my love,’ he kissed her tenderly, ‘I am a phoenix. Risen from the cinders without any help from any goddamn prince. Thank you. And so are you.’

  It wasn’t true, though, and she knew it. Without Max, she would still be in New York, probably bent over a sewing machine, probably counting the hours and the pennies … It was Max who had turned her into a star.

  In any case, there was no phoenix, nor any Prince Charming awaiting her at the Castillo this morning. She wondered why the memory came to her today, of all days. The house was too painfully empty. Maybe that was it. It had been built with hope, and today she returned to it with none.

  ‘Teresa,’ she said. ‘Could you run me a bath? And perhaps could you a
sk Joseph to prepare the car? I think I’ll change and go straight into town.’

  ‘Will Joseph be driving you?’

  ‘No. Thank you. I shall drive myself.’

  Eleanor knew where Blanche Williams lived; she knew the block and the apartment number. She knew where Max was. She intended to drive directly to the address, to sit outside the building’s entrance until she could slip in unnoticed. How she would get into the apartment itself, she had yet to consider, but after so many years of looking away, it’s what she intended to do. She wanted to walk right in there and catch them at it.

  As she turned from Teresa, she pictured them, tangled together – Max and Blanche.

  Eleanor and Butch.

  Him, eyes glazed, shoulders glistening, a moment passing; watching the two of them being lost in each other … Blanche seeing her first, perhaps. Max turning, glazed eyes unglazing. Snapping into focus.

  No. There was no need for that.

  ‘You know what?’ she said to Teresa. ‘Don’t bother Joseph.’ She smiled. ‘On second thoughts, I prefer to track down Mr Beecham via the telephone.’

  62

  Their limbs were not tangled. Far from it. They were hunched over the newspapers at Blanche’s sunny breakfast table, reading reports on the Wall Street meltdown. It was the second consecutive night – the only two nights – they had spent together, and they had resurfaced this morning to a changed world.

  Blanche, at Max’s urging, had engaged his stockbroker, but she had gambled less heavily than he. She had held out against buying stocks on margin and, this morning, looking at Max’s handsome face, grey beneath the California burnish, she was more grateful for it than she could say. She would rather die (so she said) than turn to her parents for financial help. Now – thank God – she didn’t need to. Her savings had taken a knock but she was still solvent.

  That Saturday morning the papers seemed to be convinced that the markets would stabilize. Readers were being urged to snap up bargain stocks while prices were dipping.