Great Big Beautiful Life(51)

Her face went red with anger. “I should hope so, given your position at Royal Pictures.”

She named three of her films. One he’d never heard of. Two he’d seen, and of those two, one was a smash hit. “Why would he be trying to get rid of you?” he asked.

Most of the time, he understood his father’s decisions.

Ms. Bernhardt snorted again and waved down her length with a flourish.

“Because of your dreadful wardrobe?” Freddy said, flummoxed, and he saw the first flash of what Doris Bernhardt looked like when she was smiling.

Like a cat with three canaries lined up in its jaw, little yellow feathers sticking out in a row. He couldn’t look away, could barely stand to blink and miss a second of that expression.

“I don’t have much sway here, Ms. Bernhardt,” he said.

“Bernie,” she interjected.

“Bernie,” he said. “As you pointed out, I do very little and know even less about this industry, and as for my father—well, he may have built a castle, but I assure you I wasn’t raised anywhere near either it or him. But you’re right that offering you less money is insulting, after what you’ve brought in. I’d be insulted too. Which might be the point. But if I had to guess—and of course I do—it has less to do with willfully insulting you and more to do with taking a gamble that you won’t walk, because you can’t. Because Universal and MGM won’t want you. He found you. He gave you your chance and cultivated your talent, and now he thinks he can get you for cheaper than you’re worth, because, very likely, he can.”

With another angry huff, she threw out her arms. “So it doesn’t matter that I’ve proven myself again and again in this business?”

He arched an eyebrow at her. “Judging by what I’ve heard from the many women I’ve come to know in the business, this is the industry standard. It’s…realistic.”

She collapsed back into the chair, a look of exhaustion sweeping over her, and though she was tall and angular, she looked delicate then. He both wanted to comfort her and suspected she would sock him in the jaw for his trouble.

He cleared his throat. “I will ask him though. I’ll plead your case.”

Her gaze narrowed warily. “Why?”

With total honesty, he answered, “Because I want your next movie. I want it here, at Royal Pictures.”

She surveyed him for a long moment, then rose from the chair. “Thank you for your time,” she said, not with deference but not with sarcasm either. “But I won’t be renewing my contract with Royal.”

She turned and walked from the room, and Freddy felt that loss, that emptiness, that moroseness he sometimes awoke to in the morning, multiplied tenfold.

He wanted something. He wanted something he couldn’t name, and so couldn’t reach out and take.

After that, he was a goner.





16




“My mother,” Margaret says, “was a magnificent woman.”

“Everything I’ve ever read about her agrees,” I say quietly, matching Margaret’s volume, trying not to jerk her from the memory fogging over her eyes. I want her to linger. We’ve finally reached the people who shaped her most, and I want to stay here.

“My father loved her,” she says. “Dearly. It’s important that you know that.”

I nod, my pen going motionless in my hand.

“Because so much of the news was about their divorce,” she says. “And what they wrote about him was true. He loved her, but he didn’t treat her like he loved her. At the time, I couldn’t make sense of this, but now I understand it perfectly.”

“Could you explain it to me then?” I press.

“He didn’t love himself,” she says simply. “I know how trite that sounds. Even hearing it come out of my mouth, a part of me is thinking, Margaret, get a grip. He was a weak, jealous man. But then I remember the early days, and it breaks apart that easy, clean-cut story. He adored her. He adored all of us. You know they spoke on the phone every single day until she died?”

“I’d heard that, yes,” I say. “But I didn’t know if it was true.”

“They were best friends,” she says. “That’s how it started, and that’s what they got back to. Eventually.”

“Well, not how it started,” I point out. “You did just tell me she tore him a new one the first time they met.”

Her lips part on a grin. “That was his favorite story to tell. She’d chime in with, I thought he was a real prick.”

“So what changed then?” I ask.

“Well, she got her MGM contract, for one thing. And when word got out, he sent her a huge bouquet. Which she didn’t care for. She hated seeing cut flowers, made her sad. I never see them without thinking of her, which makes the way I feel about them more complicated, I suppose. Sad, then a little happy, then sad again.”

“I get that,” I say.

She gives me an odd look. “Do you?”

“I think so.”

She waits for me to go on, so I do: “My sister and I had this cartoon we always watched when we were kids. The Busy World of Richard Scarry. We basically only ever watched it while she was too sick to do anything else. So every time I see anything to do with it, that’s what I think of. And maybe it’s different, because she’s okay now, but the memories attached to it…I don’t know. They’re complicated.”