I asked, “How long were you kept in Mercy Village?”
“More than three years. By then Loretta was almost thirteen. I was fifteen and could pass for eighteen. Those days, less than half of kids graduated—or even attended—high school. There were no laws against child labor. Everywhere kids our age were working for low wages, pitiful wages, but they were on their own and eager for it. We knew how hard it might be. Many children worked twelve hours a day. But some prospered. If we stayed in Mercy Village, we had no hope of prospering. It was a rough-and-tumble time.”
“The orphanage just let you walk out?” I asked.
“We didn’t ask, Addie. We just left one night. The next four years, through 1913, we did piecework in the garment industry.”
Word by word, his voice grew softer. He stared past me at the house, his mind conveying him to another time. Considering how well his life had gone these past two decades, I might have expected a modest smile, a suggestion of quiet satisfaction. But his face composed itself into a somber expression.
When he returned to the moment, he said, “President Wilson was promising peace while ensuring World War I, meanwhile imprisoning his domestic adversaries without trial. American troops deposed the president of Mexico. That same year, Loretta and I were married. Cecil B. DeMille’s movieSquaw Man, the first full-length picture, was a huge hit. Motion pictures were exploding in popularity. I was twenty. My bride was seventeen. We needed to get out of the threads-and-needles business and find what we wanted to devote our lives to. Back then, thechoices seemed to be either working for a company that made guns and bullets or one making movies.”
I said, “You’re not a guns-and-bullets guy.”
“I’m not,” he agreed, “but I’m glad they exist. Without them, the only movies we’d be making would be about what a great, kind man Kaiser Wilhelm was. Anyway, Loretta and I didn’t have much to offer Hollywood other than energy. Loretta was as pretty as they get, and she had writing talent. I had nothing more than a line of bunkum, hokum, and humbug. But Hollywood usually treats a fast-talking guy with a good-looking girl on his arm as if he’s a genius and she’s pretty damn smart in her own right for recognizing his potential. It’s pathetic, but that’s how it was, is, and probably always will be. So we faked our way into low-level crew jobs and bootstrapped each other out of the trenches and into the executive suite.”
The expression that had persisted since he’d alluded to World War I suddenly gave way to a far more cheerful aspect. His eyes were done with melancholy in favor of warm satisfaction. The arc of his smile was as good a definition ofaffectionas any in a dictionary.
I followed the direction of his stare and saw Loretta standing on the terrace, outside the library, casually but smartly dressed for dinner at the beach, a radiant figure in the oblique sunlight. She waved at us.
Franklin and I got up from our lounge chairs, and I said, “I’m amazed to be here. I can never repay you or find the words ... the words to ...”
His frown was not of disapproval but of dismay, and it lasted only an instant. Perhaps he saw that I might break into tears and that breaking into tears was the last thing I wanted to do. He said, “Listen, kid, the truth is we brought you here because we’re selfish Hollywood narcissists who ruthlessly use people, use them and use them until they have nothing more to give. We do so without shame or regret, and infact with wicked glee, so you had better continue to give more than you get or you aregone. Is that clear?”
He had managed to transform my pending tears into laughter. Hugging him, I said, “Yes, sir, it’s very clear. I’ve seen Mr. Max Schreck inNosferatuin your very own screening room, so I know the kind of creatures I’m dealing with.”
“Good,” he said. “Now, I’m going to dinner with my wife, where we can spend a few hours scheming against not only you but also our other children. It falls to you to have dinner here and to pretend to Chef Lattuada that you enjoy his food.”
He kissed my brow and headed up the garden path toward the house. Loretta waved again, at me this time, and I waved back.
And so, after spending some time in the gardens, I went into the house and lied to Chef Lattuada, assuring him that dinner was marvelous when in fact it was so much better than that.
Thirty-Five
The remaining months of 1934 passed without surprises but with many moments of joy. There were birthdays to celebrate, including Rafael’s sixth, and holiday parties. Mr. Groucho Marx and his lovely wife, Ruth, came to dinner. He said, “On this one occasion, I will tolerate children at the table in order to convince my better half that the two we have at home are more than enough. Ruth, dear, as the chaos and mayhem unfold at this table, keep in mind that these Fairchild hellions, though terrible, are better behaved than other children who are allowed to assemble in groups.” Gertie decided Mr. Marx was, after all, both funnyandnice.
On the afternoon of Saturday, the third of November, I found Harry in the game room, where he had combined the two tables. With scores of miniature war-blasted trees that he crafted himself and stones that represented boulders, he had laid out an approximately accurate portion of Belleau Wood in France, where a critical moment in that famous battle had played out. The smaller detachment of cast-lead soldiers wore painted-on German uniforms, and the others were American Marines. Some were lying prone, some kneeling, others standing erect, sheltering as best they could behind whatever cover the landscapeprovided. Harry was sitting on one of four stools that provided him with various perspectives on the scene, alternately studying the tableau and consulting a book of military history.
I perched on another stool. “So you still haven’t won Belleau Wood? You’ve been on this one for—what?—two weeks now?”
“It’s not a game you play and finish in an afternoon, Addie. It’s not a game at all. Probably there’s no way to figure out how to win it faster than they did in 1918.”
“I’m not patronizing you, Harry. I know it’s more than just play to you. If it was just play, you’d have been done with it ages ago. You’ve been studying one battle or another most of the year.”
He put aside the book but continued to study the arrayed infantry. “A brigade of Second Division Marines figured to clear Belleau Wood of Jerries in maybe eight or ten hours. It took them twenty days. They wereMarines, the toughest fighting force in the world, and still it took them twenty days.”
I studied him as he studied the battlefield. Eventually, I said, “How many Marines died in Belleau Wood?”
“Five thousand and two hundred. The German general, Ludendorff, positioned hidden machine-gun nests behind pretty much every boulder and fallen tree. Our guys were slaughtered.”
For a while, I thought about that number before I said, “Are you going to be a Marine?”
“I just turned thirteen, Addie. Anyway, there’s no war now. And there won’t be another. Counting civilians and military, ten million died in the last war. Nobody is ever going to be crazy enough to start another one.”
What history I knew was from good novels, likeWar and Peace. Tolstoy had written that one seventy years ago. Technology raced forward, but the human heart was as it always had been. “If you ever try to go off to war, Harry, you’ll have to deal with me first.”
He looked up from Belleau Wood and grinned. “You’ll do what—shoot me in the foot so I’m disqualified by a limp?”
“If I have to. But that won’t be necessary. I’ll just tell the Marines your middle name is Percy.”
