And he understands, because he loves Babe also.
How could he not?
175
At the Oceana Apartments, he reflects that in all their years together, Ben Shipman has never uttered to him the words “I told you so,” although Ben Shipman has been offered ample opportunity. Instead Ben Shipman has quietly followed him from crisis to crisis, like a valet with a dustpan, ever ready to sweep up the broken shards of his master’s relationships.
Ben Shipman calls him on the telephone, as Ben Shipman does every day. There is always some small business matter to be discussed, some offer of work to be declined: a script, a television interview, a personal appearance. When there is no business, there is a mutual acquaintance encountered on the street, or a kind mention in a newspaper column in Peoria or Des Moines.
But he has been spending much time lately in contemplation: of Babe, of the errors of his life. It is how he knows that he is dying.
So he asks Ben Shipman the I-told-you-so question.
Why would I have said that? Ben Shipman replies.
Ben Shipman is old, but Ben Shipman is still a lawyer, and is therefore never happier than when answering one question with another.
I knew I’d told you so, Ben Shipman continues, and you knew I’d told you so, so why would I have to tell you that I’d told you so?
—Because I might have learned my lesson.
—What lesson? That you weren’t entitled to try for happiness? That you’d be better off dying alone behind high walls, with a nurse feeding you from a spoon? What lesson is that to teach a man?
—I’d be wealthier.
—But I’d be poorer. You’d prefer to see me out on the street? Don’t be so selfish. If you hadn’t spent all your money on lawyers and alimony, you’d have found another way to rid yourself of it. And it’s only money. You never own money. You hold on to it for a time, you die, it goes to someone else. You give it to someone else, you get something in return, you die. Those are the two options. Where is this coming from, anyway? You have regrets now? You’re too old to have regrets.
They talk some more. Ben Shipman promises to call again tomorrow. Ben Shipman does not need to promise this, but Ben Shipman always does, just as Ben Shipman always calls.
In the past, when he felt this way, he might have gone fishing, or taken a trip to Catalina Island, but he no longer has the strength for such pursuits. Instead he sits by his window, and seeks comfort in the fading light. He smells the sea, and listens to the waves break in time to the beating of his fractured heart.
176
Behind the walls of his fortress, he and Ruth fight and cry, but it is not as it was before. There is a predictability to the cycle, and he is weary of it. He no longer wishes to fuck anyone else—not even Alyce Ardell, even if she would have him—but neither does he particularly wish to fuck Ruth. Within a year of remarrying they are separated again, and he is back in court, this time accused of “general cruelty,” whatever that might mean.
I once—Ben Shipman tells him, as they wait for the hearing to begin—represented a man whose wife accused him of general cruelty because this man, her husband, each morning insisted on putting on his right shoe before his left. Her husband kept doing this, she said, even though her husband knew it irritated her. And then her husband would cough. Always the same cough. A little—
And Ben Shipman puts his fist to his mouth and offers a low, polite report, as of one seeking to interrupt a conversation of his betters without appearing presumptuous.
—She pointed out to the judge that no one needs to cough after putting on his shoes, not like that. Maybe once in a while a man might cough after putting on his shoes, because sometimes people just have to cough, whether a shoe is involved or not. She tried to be elsewhere in the house when her husband was putting on his shoes, but then she claimed she’d always be waiting for the cough. Or she’d hear the cough, and would know that her husband had put on his right shoe before his left, even though she wasn’t present to witness the event.
Did she try talking to him about it? he asks.
—Of course she tried, but her husband would tell her that this was just an instance of a man putting on shoes, and a man has to put on shoes or else a man can’t go out to make a living, unless the man is a bum and makes his living by being a bum, which is not much of a living.
—And the coughing?
—Her husband said that a man has to cough, and some men preferred to get their coughing out of the way before they went to work.
—What kind of work did her husband do?
—Her husband was a salesman.
—What did her husband sell?
—Her husband was employed by a pharmaceutical company. Her husband sold cough medicines. Her husband submitted that nobody would buy cough medicines from a salesman who coughed. It stood to reason.
—And how does this help me?
Their case is called. They rise to enter the courtroom.
Because general cruelty is meaningless, says Ben Shipman. General cruelty is the way of the world. It’s specific cruelty that’s the problem.
177
So many things come to an end in 1945, although not necessarily in order of personal importance.
The war ends.
The contract with Fox ends.
And his latest marriage to Ruth ends.
At the ensuing divorce hearing, Ruth testifies about the nature of this man to whom she has three times uttered the words “I do.”
When he has something, Ruth tells the court, he doesn’t want it, and when he hasn’t got it, he wants it. But he’s still a swell fellow.
Ben Shipman thinks that this may be the most succinct summation of his client’s character ever offered.
But 1945 also represents a beginning, for he hears a singer in a Russian nightclub.
178
On May 6th, 1946, Ben Shipman’s secretary detects a cry from her boss’s office as of a being in agony, and fears Ben Shipman is having a heart attack, or that someone beloved of Ben Shipman has died.
When she enters the office, Ben Shipman is holding a newspaper in one hand, and trying to pour himself a drink with the other.
Jesus Christ, says Ben Shipman, he’s married another Russian.
He does not just marry Ida Kitaeva Raphael: he elopes to Yuma with Ida Kitaeva Raphael. It is, as reporters delight in noting, his third elopement, his fourth bride, and his seventh marriage—or his eighth ceremony, if one counts the officiations of Rasputin.
You’re a fifty-six year old man, Ben Shipman tells him, when Ben Shipman finally manages to get him on the phone at the Grand Hotel in San Diego, to which he has repaired with his new bride. You have no business eloping. It’s bad for your health. Worse, it’s bad for my health.
Ida Kitaeva Raphael is thirty-nine years old, the child of White Russians. Vera, Ben Shipman reflects, was also born of White Russians, but in her case it was the cocktails. Ida Kitaeva Raphael is a widow. Her first husband was Raphael, Concertina Virtuoso, of whom it was said that there was none to surpass him in drawing from his instrument silken strains of song. Raphael performed before FDR, the King of England, and the Tsar of Russia. Raphael also played suppers at the Waldorf-Astoria, supporting Hugo Mariani’s Tango Orchestra.
The elopement was a spur-of-the-moment decision, he tells Ben Shipman.
—You don’t say. According to the newspapers, you woke a justice of the peace at his home at five o’clock in the morning.
—We hoped to arrive earlier, but we got lost. And Justice Lutes operates a marriage parlor from his house. It’s called Cupid’s Corner. Justice Lutes went right back to bed after the ceremony.
—I don’t care if Justice Lutes fled to China after the ceremony. You got married somewhere called Cupid’s Corner? Where’s the honeymoon going to be, Lover’s Lane?
—We haven’t decided yet.
—My God. I just have one more question I want to ask.
—Go ahead.
—And I want an honest answer.
—I’ve never given you any other kind.
—Cross your heart?
—Cross my heart.
Ben Shipman takes a deep breath.
—I am reading this from the newspaper. Listen carefully. Are you listening?
—I’m listening.
—Okay. “Lutes—” Incidentally, Lutes is the man who married you and your new bride.
—I know. I just told you his name.
—I was concerned that you might already have forgotten. After all, there have been so many, you may be having trouble keeping track. “Lutes said the blonde woman, who gave her age as thirty-nine and her birthplace as Russia, did not further identify herself. Her description resembled that of his third wife, Vera Ivanova Shuvalova, the Russian dancer known as Illeana, from whom he was divorced in 1939.” So my question is this: you haven’t accidentally married Illeana again, have you?
He hangs up on Ben Shipman, although he is too polite not to say goodbye first.
179
At the Oceana Apartments, Ida plumps his cushions, and checks his blood sugar. She asks if he needs anything, but he does not. He hates being a diabetic, but the disease has saved him. Liquor was always his weakness. It made him foolish. Without it, he is less foolish, but still, like all men, a fool at heart.
He follows Ida’s progress as she walks away. He thinks that Ida is beautiful, whereas he is merely old.
Why did you stay with me when all the others left?
Why did you love me, and never stop?
This is the waning of the day, the twilight. Soon it will be dark.
And yours will be the hand I hold when night falls at last.
180
What is left for him and Babe?
Nothing.
Nothing but pictures imagined yet unfilmed.
Nothing but pictures that will never be made.
Ben Shipman calls him.
—We’ve had an offer.
He does not want to hear it. What studio will take them now? Republic? Monogram? He will not end his days on Poverty Row.
Not pictures, says Ben Shipman. Live performance.
—The circuit?
He is not sure that he can return to cold dressing rooms and darkened train stations, to unfamiliar bedrooms musty with the spoor of others. And most of the venues with which he was once familiar are now no more, converted instead into picture houses. He thinks that it would break his heart to perform as part of a variety bill between features.
Formerly in pictures.
And nightclubs, or cabaret shows? He no longer has the energy. He cannot even drink as he once did. As recently as the wartime fundraisers, the Victory Caravan, he and Babe and Groucho Marx did not know a sober day. Now he will never again know a drunk one.
Not here, says Ben Shipman. England.
In Britain, the war has preserved them in amber. The British have not seen the Fox pictures, or the MGM disasters. The British remember them only as they once were. In his homeland, there has been no decline. In his homeland, they have not faded. They will fill the theaters ten times over.
Or so Ben Shipman says.
But Babe is fifty-five, and he is older still. He has grown to resemble A.J., as though in fulfillment of a destiny long denied yet ultimately inevitable. In England, the Audience is in love with the men he and Babe once were, if they are truly recalled at all. It is a long way to go only to disappoint, and be disappointed in turn.
But he is broke once more. He has so little money that when he marries Ida he cannot afford a ring for the ceremony, and so she reuses the one given to her by Raphael, Concertina Virtuoso. He would like to see England again, but he does not possess the funds to travel unaided.
Babe’s pockets are also empty, but neither does Babe enjoy being idle for long. Work is Babe’s justification for hours spent on the golf course, or betting on the horses, and one cannot place a gentlemanly wager on a round of golf, or back a pony, without pennies in one’s purse.
It’s good money, he tells Babe. We’ll stay in nice places—the girls, too. They’ll pay for all of us to go.
—But will they remember us?
—Ben says we’re still big over there. Maybe not as big as before, but we’ll make more than we would here. And last I heard, Hitler failed to bomb all the golf courses. There’s also this: I want to see home, but I can’t do it without you, and I won’t.
Babe and Lucille like Ida. To travel together as couples for two months is no great imposition.
Then I’m happy to go, says Babe.
But with the arrangements in place, Lucille takes ill, and faces a long convalescence.
The doctors won’t allow her to travel, Babe tells him.
—What will you do?
—I can’t leave her.
Babe would rather be forced from his home by penury than abandon Lucille when she is ailing.
Can you perform without me? Babe asks.
He does not know. He supposes he could go to England alone, but the routine on which they have worked hardest, the Driver’s License sketch, requires two people. Even if a substitute could be found for Babe, he doubts that the payments would remain the same. He will be lucky to receive half of what was promised, and the houses will be commensurately smaller. This worries him. He loves Ben Shipman, but he does not believe that he will be welcomed as rapturously in England as before, either alone or with Babe beside him. He came up through vaudeville: if someone promised an orchard, you planned for an apple. He has learned to manage his expectations.
But he will not allow Babe to suffer financially because of Lucille’s incapacitation. This is not their way. The money, whatever it may amount to in the end, will be paid to their company and divided equally, whether Babe is part of the tour or not.
This is their way.
So Babe informs Lucille of his decision to stay with her, and Lucille, were she not laid horizontal by the problems with her lower spine, would have responded by grabbing Babe by the collar and shaking him. Instead she sets Babe straight on matters pertaining to money, and his career, and their future together.
In February 1947, Babe joins Ida and him on the Queen Elizabeth, bound for England.
181
He stands with Babe on the deck of the Queen Elizabeth, Ida sleeping in a cabin below. It is the night before they are due to dock in Southampton, but he may be guilty of altering the timeline for effect, because this is how it would have been in a picture.
They can see no stars, only the lights of another vessel in the distance. He is wearing so many layers of clothing that his head resembles a pin poking from the collar of his coat. Babe’s jacket is open. Babe does not feel the cold in the same way.
He is worried about what they will find the next day. He has seen the photographs, the newsreels: whole streets demolished, cities on fire. He knows of those from his past who have died in bombing raids, and others who have given their children to holes in foreign soil. What place, then, for two aging men come to trade on former glories, their gray hair a reminder of all that has been lost?
It’s not important, says Babe.
—What isn’t?
—How many come, how big the houses are.
—It’s important to Bernard Delfont.
Bernard Delfont is the English impresario who has convinced them to make the journey. He does not wish to be responsible for Bernard Delfont’s impoverishment.
I think it may be more important to you, says Babe.
—I don’t want to come all this way just to be forgotten. I could have stayed back in California if I’d wanted to be forgotten.
He is exaggerating. Their old pictures have begun showing up on television, making more money for Hal Roach, if not for them. But television does not yet seem quite real to him. He was raised on the Audience. He does not wish to watch a picture on a box, alone.
And if the Audience does not come, if the theaters remain empty, then what is he?
> He is just a man in a box, although not alone. Babe will be with him.
I’m glad I didn’t stay back in California, says Babe. I miss Lucille, but I never thought we’d have the chance to take another trip like this. I figured we were done. And if someone was prepared to put us on a ship, I believed it would be in steerage, not first class.
—We could have stoked the boilers, paid our way.
—With what we could shovel, we wouldn’t even have made it out of port.
—I’m glad you’re here. I’m happy you’re with me.
Babe pats him on the back.
—I’m going to bed. When morning comes, we’ll be in British waters.
—Don’t dream that you’re awake, and wake up to find yourself asleep.
—Wise words.
Yes, he says, they are.
182
At the Oceana Apartments, when he cannot rest easy in his bed, and the silence is too loud, he sometimes walks to the window, and looks out at the sea, and remembers Southampton, 1947:
The dock emerging from the mist, and figures glimpsed in the half-light, so many that he believes he must be mistaken, that he has peopled this land with specters. Perhaps he has briefly transmuted to his younger self, reaching for a past when he was still vital. But he can feel the moisture on his skin, and the heat of Ida’s hand in his, and beside him Babe is waving, waving, and now he too is waving as the fog clears, and the faces become visible, and he thinks that he has never seen so many people gathered in one place, and a great wave of human warmth rolls toward him over the water, a tidal wash of emotion, and he is smiling, smiling, and he never wants to leave this ship or this moment, Babe on one side, Ida on the other, and he misses only his daughter, and wishes that she were here with him to see this, to be a part of it, so that everything he loves might be in one place, sealed in this single instant of perfection.
Then it comes to him, now as before, rising like the song of unseen birds, ascending from the dock and the city beyond, carried by the wind to where he stands.