Melanie had turned to step outside and then felt his hand on her arm. She looked up at him.
“Don’t say a thing to anybody about this. Not to your roommates, not to the cabdriver, not to a neighbor, or your mailman, or the guy that cuts your grass. You understand, Melanie? No one. And God, Melanie, no reporters. You understand? Especially not reporters.”
“Why? I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Because the press loves this kind of dirt. They will only want more of it. Whatever you say, they will use to create more dirt. Trust me. So say nothing. They might even be at your doorstep when you get home. Tell them nothing, Melanie. Not a word. If there are government people wanting to talk with you, say nothing to them, either, not on the phone, not to their faces. Tell them you need to consult with your lawyer.”
“I already told you I don’t have one. And why should I need a lawyer? I haven’tdoneanything.”
“Maybe…maybe you won’t need one. I don’t know. I’ll find out. Just don’t say anything.”
She’d paused on the threshold as she looked at him, wanting again his kiss, his embrace, his assurance.
“You should go,” he had said. “Remember what I said about the reporters. Just stay at home until I can figure this out, okay? You’re not going to want to be out and about right now anyway. Lay low. I’ll call you.”
When Melanie had arrived home, the neighborhood was quiet; the sidewalks and curbs and her own doorstep were empty. No one was camped outside waiting, and her two housemates were away at their day jobs. She indulged in supposing MGM had discovered it was wrong about her having been named, too, or maybe the HUAC had realized she was not someone they needed to be worried about after all. But the relief was short-lived. By four o’clock that afternoon the doorbell had rung half a dozen times, and each time from her vantage point as she peered from behind the curtain at the front room window it looked like a reporter on the welcome mat, with a photographer standing just behind him. One of these cameramen saw her and focused his lens on her before she could duck away. That picture of a hiding-behind-the-drapes Melanie Cole would find its way to a gossip rag the following day when all of Hollywood was agog about Carson Edwards, his ties to the Communist Party, and the shocking and disastrous influence he’d had on his current love, Melanie Cole. Her dismayed housemate Nadine had brought the magazine home and shown her.
Everything about the photo and the article was wrong. She was not Carson’s “current love.” He didn’t love her and she didn’t love him. And she hadn’t been hiding behind anything. She was insideher house, looking out the window like millions of other people did every day when someone rang their doorbell.
When Carson had called her the following evening, she told him what the article had said and what the caption under the photo had read. He told her to stop looking at gossip magazines and newspapers.
“But they’re talking about us. About me! And none of it is true.”
“And that’s why you shouldn’t talk to the press. Any of them. They don’t want the truth from you. They want to keep the story alive. They don’t care it’s not a true story. Talk to them and you keep the storytheywant to tell alive. You need to trust me on this.”
She hadn’t cried two days earlier at the pool when the news was fresh and surreal but she cried then. Six months earlier, when the movie had come out, the gossip rags and movie magazines and news outlets had adored her. At least that’s what it felt like. It felt like adoration. Tears slipped down her cheeks and fell onto the phone handset as she told Carson this. She tasted salt on her lips.
“That wasn’t adoration,” Carson had said. “That was greed, Mel, pure and simple. Those people just want to be where the money is. That’s all anybody in this town really wants. They know if they stay close to the cash, close to what people will line up in droves to pay for, the money will start falling on them, too.”
Money. She hadn’t brought up the topic to him yet nor had he to her, not that he would. He had gobs of it. But how long would she last without an income? Without work? How long could she lay low and live off what remained from signing the contract forThis Side of Tomorrow? There wasn’t that much of it left, and no contracts had been signed yet for the upcoming Hawaii movie.
At the beginning of shooting, she’d been careful with what she’d been paid at signing. But Carson and pretty much everyone she knew kept asking her why she was continuing to live like anunderpaid glove counter salesgirl. That wasn’t who she was anymore. She’d made it to the venerated silver screen with the new film and there would be other movies to follow. Plenty of them. And as a result, plenty of money. Janet Leigh could easily command one hundred thousand dollars a film. Easily. And Melanie, who Carson said outshined Leigh by leaps and bounds, could expect the same in the not-too-distant future.
Enjoy the fruit of your labor, Melanie! Live a little!
So she had.
She’d gone clothes shopping at the expensive stores and didn’t look at the price tags. She bought big-ticket jewelry, Italian shoes, had multiple manicures and massages, took taxi cabs instead of the Red Car or the city bus, bought French wine and Spanish leather handbags and Swiss confections. She purchased cashmere sweaters, silk blouses, designer evening gowns, and beaded cocktail dresses. She dined out with abandon and invited her housemates to join her when she wasn’t eating with Carson. When he wasn’t pampering her and treating her like a princess, she pampered herself. What her mother made in a year as a veteran elementary school teacher, Melanie spent in six months.
She had figured she had enough to pay for groceries and her third of the rent for the next two months and then that would be it. She’d be broke.
“How long is it going to be like this, Carson?” she’d asked him gloomily. “I need to know how long.”
He had half laughed into the phone. “You think I don’t want to know the answer to that, too?”
His flippant tone had annoyed her. This situation, if it dragged on, wasn’t going to hurt him like it was going to hurt her. He was a millionaire. Couldn’t he see the difference? Besides, it was becauseof him she was in this mess. Had he really done all he could to free her from this predicament thathehad technically caused?
“Why can’t you just do what that man did? Offer to testify and clear your name?” she had asked testily. “Do we really have to suffer like this?”
“And lie like he did? He pretty much accused me of being a card-carrying communist. And he accused you of being in bed with one. He named my closest friends in this town. People who have been kind not just to me but to you, too. People who welcomed you into their homes and onto their sailboats and at their beach cottages as my date. Roger. Stan. Al and Jeannie. Brandon and Anita. He’s putting them through hell just like us. That asshole gave them names because HUAC wanted names. You telling me that’s all right with you? To call out peoples’ names just to have names to give?”
She’d clearly hit a nerve. And she had not asked him to lie. “Carson, look. I—”
But he had cut her off. “If I testify, you can bet your bottom dollar they will call you in to do the same. You want to list all the names of the people you saw when you were on Brandon and Anita’s sailboat? Or when you went to Al and Jeannie’s New Year’s Eve party? Or all those times we met Roger and Stan for drinks and other people joined us? You want to list all the names of all the people I had over to my house while you were there? People who have Oscars on their shelves and the respect of everybody in this business but happened to be seen by you in my company? You want us off the list or do you want to do what’s right?”
He had been angry, maybe not exactly at her, but her question had made it worse. But still.
“Well, what if some of those people actuallyarecommunists, Carson?” she had asked.
