“Are you still in touch with the nuns there?” Gladys asked.
“I’m very close to them.”
“What are you thinking, Mama? Do you think I should go up there and have the baby?”
“Maybe.”
“I don’t know, Mama.”
“How else will you keep this story private?” Gladys countered.
“The sisters would take good care of you,” Alda assured Loretta. “And they would understand your predicament.”
“Think about it, Gretchen,” her mother said.
“Luca has lunch with Mr. Gable most days at the commissary. Mr. Gable asks my husband a lot of questions. I don’t tell Luca anything, so he doesn’t have to lie when Mr. Gable presses him. But if you want me to go to Europe with you, I have to tell him everything.”
“We can trust Luca,” Loretta told her mother.
“Alda, will you speak with the Mother Superior and see if this is a possibility? If they can care for the baby until you can bring him home, it will help us keep the press off the story. By the time you have the baby, believe me, there will be some other headline occupying their minds.”
“Where were you thinking of going in Europe?” Alda asked.
“England,” Gladys said.
“The press in England is worse than New York or Hollywood. They would badger Loretta.”
“So what shall we do?” Gladys was worried.
“I’d like to take Loretta to Padua. Since we’ll be there a while, I can see my family, and they’d take good care of us.”
“It’s a fine idea,” Gladys said.
“You’ll love Italy. Everywhere you turn, there’s a shrine, or a chapel, or a fresco. It will give you peace of mind.”
Loretta took Alda’s hand and squeezed it. “Whatever luck or providence or answered prayer brought you into my life, I cannot be grateful enough.”
“I’m here for you,” Alda said.
Alda poured the coffee into the elegant urn. She served the pound cake and the coffee. Despite the plan they had hatched that day, for a moment it was as if no time had passed, and their lives were as simple as they had been the day Alda left Saint Elizabeth’s and walked into the house on Sunset.
Loretta told stories about the making of The Crusades to keep her mind off her troubles. Gladys laughed, as she hadn’t since Loretta came home with the news. It was the last carefree afternoon the women would have. It was time to tell Clark Gable he was going to be a father.
Lost in thought, Spencer Tracy was walking across the MGM lot with his hands in his pockets when a chocolate-brown coupe nearly ran him over.
“Get in the car, Spence,” the driver said.
Tracy removed his sunglasses. “What the hell, Gable?”
“You should watch where you’re going.”
“You almost hit me.”
“Close, but no cigar.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m running over to Paramount. They want to talk to me about a script. You’d be perfect to costar.”
“How’s the dough?”
“There’ll be plenty.”
“If you’re in it, the pot goes to you.”
“Not if I tell ’em I won’t make it without you.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“It’s true love, buddy.”
“I always thought so.”
“Get in—let’s go turn old Adolph Zukor upside down until his pockets are empty. It worked for me with Zanuck.”
“I’m in.” Spencer jumped into the car. “I didn’t recognize you. How many cars do you have?”
“A few.”
“Save some for the rest of us, will ya?”
“You can buy yourself a new car with what you’ll be making.”
“You’d really slum with me in a picture? I’m touched.”
“Don’t go all soft on me. I have enough heartache.”
“Lady kind?”
“Always lady kind.” Gable smiled.
“Who is she?”
“I’ve been chasing Myrna Loy,” Gable admitted.
“Have you caught her?”
“Nope. Have a funny feeling I never will.”
“Me too.” Tracy looked out the window.
“You’re after Myrna?”
“Won’t give me a tumble.”
“I feel worse.” Gable sped across La Brea.
“If this were poker, I’d bail. You’ll end up with her eventually. Give it time, Gable. Give it time.”
“That’s all I’ve got is time. I’m taking my cues from you. You get the girls. You’re the teddy bear.”
“That makes me sound fat.”
“Sorry, pal.”
“How about you?”
“I’m trying to extricate myself, that’s what my lawyer calls it, from the most expensive marriage on record. The throw pillows on Mrs. Gable’s Louis Quatorze chaise alone are worth a fortune.”
“Give her half and get out.”
“That’s what my lawyer says. Of course he’s getting half of my half.”
“They always do.” Tracy shook his head.
“I have a better use for my money. I’d rather help those in need. I should just empty my bank account and stand on La Brea and hand out ten-dollar bills until every penny I have is gone. Ria would get half of nothing.”
“You’d still have to pay the lawyer.”
The gates to the Paramount lot opened, and Gable drove through. “Here to see Adolph Zukor,” he said to the guard.
“Building C.”
“How do I get there?”
“You gotta give it a couple of minutes. There’s a parade going through.”
“For what?”
“DeMille is filming The Crusades.”
“Hey, is Loretta Young on the lot?”
“Bungalow seven.”
Spencer Tracy shifted uncomfortably in his seat at the mention of Loretta’s name. Gable pulled onto the lot and took a back alley behind the parade, peeling through the standing sets.
“Hey, you passed building C.”
“We gotta drop in on Gretchen,” Gable said breezily.
“I don’t know about that, pal.” Tracy was nervous. He hadn’t spoken to Loretta since she sent him the good-bye letter. He had seen her across the aisle in church at Christmas, but he had to look away because she looked so winsome.
Loretta’s dressing room was full of bouquets of roses. Her favorite flower was everywhere—long-stemmed red roses in vases, clutches of pink baby roses in small ceramic pots, and a crystal bowl with gardenias floating in white rose petals on the coffee table.
“You know a star by the number of bouquets in her dressing room,” David Niven had said.
Loretta stepped into her costume, an emerald green velvet gown trimmed in gold. Alda zipped up the back of the dress. When it still fit, Loretta beamed.
Alda slipped silk shoulder pads into the costume. She placed a flat of padded linen around Loretta’s rib cage, which, as she zipped up the dress, made Loretta’s waist seem small. Loretta was eight weeks along in her pregnancy, but with Alda’s help the actress was still able to hide the truth.
“You’re a genius, Alda.”
“We’re lucky we wrap today. Another week, and there would be no hiding it in these costumes.”
Gable and Tracy barged into bungalow 7 like a couple of schoolboys. Loretta and Alda were taken aback. Gable was wearing a gray silk suit, while Tracy wore an open collared shirt and chinos. Alda had been in Hollywood long enough not to react to the dynamic presence of a leading man, and here were two, so different, yet each in their way possessing a mesmerizing power over women, especially over her boss.
“Miss Young, you’re wanted on the set,” Gable said.
“Is it time to burn you at the stake?” Tracy joked.
“Wrong picture.” Gable laughed.
Loretta felt her face flush. She did her best acting and joked with the men. “Mr. Tracy, you’re a good Jesuit; you should
know your Bible stories. I’m not Joan of Arc in this picture. And Mr. Gable, it’s well known that you’re a lousy Catholic, so you probably think this is a remake of Polly of the Circus.” Loretta checked her lipstick in the mirror.
“I was good in Polly.”
“You were terrible,” Loretta corrected him.
“The worst. I saw it too. Gretchen is right,” Tracy agreed. “Lot of treacle, that one.”
“This coming from a man who either plays an angel with cardboard wings or a priest in a cardboard Roman collar.”
“I take what I’m offered.” Tracy shrugged. “But you’re a national treasure. You play those he-man roles, and we need those guys in the movies—right, Gretch?”
“Gives a girl something to dream about.”
“What about him?” Gable pointed to Tracy.
“Girls dream about him too,” Loretta assured them.
“They dream about me fixing their faucets,” Spencer said. “I’m the plumber of American cinema.”
Gable laughed. “You sell yourself short, buddy.”
“Compared to you, I am.” Tracy smiled.
“Let’s go, Loretta, or we’ll be late,” Alda chided her.
“All right, boys, give sister a kiss.” Loretta extended her cheek toward Tracy and then Gable, and each gave her a platonic kiss on the cheek. “You’re good friends, but I have to go to work.”
Loretta and Alda left the men in the bungalow.
“God, she’s gorgeous,” Tracy said.
“Won’t give me a tumble,” Gable admitted. “And it’s killing me.”
“I thought you were after Myrna.”
“I’m horsing around,” said Gable. “With the idea of Myrna.” Gable ducked out the door after Loretta.
Left behind, Spencer looked around the dressing room. Loretta’s stock had risen since Man’s Castle. Back then she had lowly but lovely white carnations in her dressing room; now she had graduated to roses, and lots of them. Her dressing room was bigger, this one the size of a single-story house. There was a living area, a kitchenette, and an elaborate makeup and hair room. He looked at the photographs on the mirror—a series of color shots of Loretta’s face, with instructions for makeup beneath them. Tracy looked at them closely and shook his head. Even now, it was hard to look at her. Months had passed; he hoped he was over Loretta, who, it appeared, had moved on. Tracy had too. His home life was solid, and when he fancied it, Louise looked the other way, and he’d take a girl to dinner. The affairs were brief, but they kept his mind off his troubles and off Loretta, the only woman who might have ended his marriage.
Gable caught up with Loretta and Alda on the way to the set. “Miss Young, may I have a moment?”
Loretta looked around. She forced a smile, but was terrified that some press person would walk by, figure out the truth just by looking at her, and plaster it all over the newspapers.
“I’m on my way to the set, Clark,” she said breezily. “Call me sometime.”
“Sometime? I’ve been calling you ten times a day. Alda, have you delivered my messages?”
“Don’t put her on the spot,” Loretta said quietly.
“Alda?” Gable implored.
“I deliver all phone messages.”
“Follow me,” Loretta said to Gable. She looked around for a private place to talk, and motioned to him. He followed her into the electrics trailer. She pulled the door shut behind them, and Gable put his arms around her.
Loretta wanted to kiss him. But she knew that if he spent any time at all this close to her, he would know the truth, and she couldn’t bear the idea of telling him about the baby. Yet.
Gable was direct. “I’m getting a divorce. I want you.”
“Myrna told me you chased her around Ciro’s.”
“I was fooling around. It was nothing serious. I can’t stop thinking about you.”
“Do you think about me when you’re dancing with Elizabeth Allan at the Mocambo?”
“That’s nothing.”
“It’s something to me.”
“What am I supposed to do? Elizabeth is strictly a studio setup. It’s just business. I’d rather be with you. But you won’t see me. I want to be out on the town with you. I want to show you off. I want to drive you over to Santa Monica. We could walk on the beach. I want to take you up to Lake Arrowhead to my cabin. Don’t you get it? I’m crazy about you.”
Loretta put her hands on his face. Gable had said the words she was longing to hear. In fact, his plea was better than the scene she had imagined. She wanted to trust him.
Alda rapped on the door.
“I have to go,” Loretta said softly.
Gable pulled Loretta close and kissed her. When their lips touched, it filled her with the kind of desire that had gotten her into trouble with him in the first place. He kissed her cheek, her neck, and her lips once more. Loretta closed her eyes and remembered how he had kissed her in the snow.
Alda rapped on the door again.
“Don’t forget me,” Gable said before he opened the door.
As if I ever could, Loretta thought. With the sun behind him, Gable filled the frame of the door, just as he had on Mount Baker the first night when he’d offered her an extra blanket. He’d seemed bigger than the world outside the door that night, and the same was true on this day. How different things would be if she had followed her instincts and never let him in.
“I’m sorry, Miss Young is not in,” Alda said firmly into the phone.
Loretta stood in her bedroom between the French doors at Sunset House, looking out over the pool, which was being cleaned by a man in a blue uniform. Loretta watched as he pushed the long silver pole slowly in rows, vacuuming the bottom.
“I understand, Mrs. Gable. I have given her your messages. I’m sure if she needs to speak to you, she will call. . . . No, she is not avoiding you. . . . I will deliver the message when she returns home from work.” Alda hung up the phone.
“What is her problem? Besides me, of course.” Loretta sat on the bed.
“She wants you to hold a press conference and tell the world—those are her words—that you did not have an affair with Clark Gable on location. She gave me the exact wording for your press conference.”
“There’s a brilliant use of American journalism. Let me make a list of all the men I’m not in love with. She’s out of her mind.”
Georgie ran into the room, chased by her new puppy, a brown-and-white mutt named Pickles.
“If that dog goes on my new rug . . .” Loretta smiled.
“Mom will just get you a new one.”
“Good point.”
“Gretch, are you in love with Clark Gable?”
“Georgie! Who told you such a thing?”
“Lois Patranzino. Her mom reads Photoplay. They said you and Mr. Gable had a snowball romance.”
“Maybe she meant snowbound,” Alda said softly.
“It isn’t true.”
“I’ll tell her. Lois was pretty sure about it, though.”
“Don’t you girls have better things to do than repeat stories?”
“Not really. Erika Vellucci told me that Jean Harlow is actually bald from the peroxide she puts on her hair, and that she wears a wig.”
“That’s very rude of Erika.”
“Her mother’s a hairdresser, and she said that peroxide kills the roots.”
“Well, you tell Erika and her mother that Miss Harlow has every hair on her head, and that she brushes it with a horsetail hairbrush from Paris every night. And I know because Miss Harlow gave me the same hairbrush when I admired her hair.”
“Okay.” Georgie skipped out.
Loretta and Alda heard a whistle from the garden. Loretta went to the French doors.
“Oh, good! You’re home for dinner!” David Niven said from the garden.
“You look handsome.”
“Goldwyn loaned me out. I have a part in Barbary Coast. Don’t ask. One line. I play a Cockney. You know I’m not Cockney.”
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“What are you, David?”
“I’m bangers-and-mash British, of course.”
“I’m coming down to dinner. Meet me in the dining room.”
“Good girl. I want to catch up with you and the gaggle.”
Loretta had hardly seen Niven since she returned from Mount Baker. She heard that he had been dating Merle Oberon, who, she had heard, also had a crush on Gable. Sometimes Hollywood was too small a town, and Loretta wished to break free of it as much as David Niven wished to own it.
Niven took a seat at the head of the table at Gladys’s invitation. “Where’s Father Pass the Butter?”
“He had a prior engagement.”
“Poor him and lucky me,” Niven said as he spread the napkin in his lap. “The life of a priest, burying, marrying, and scaring.”
“We have to mind our manners when Father is here,” Georgie complained. “But not so much when you’re here.”
“Feel free to be your unfettered self, Georgie.” Niv smiled.
“We’re always happy when you can make it to dinner,” Gladys told him.
“Thank you. I’ve had such a rigorous filming schedule. You know how it goes when you’re a one-line unfeatured player—you arrive at dawn and leave at midnight like a werewolf. Might as well be a piece of scenery.”
“One line isn’t very much.” Georgie crossed her arms.
“How astute. Will you be my agent, Georgiana? I have a feeling you could do a better job than the one I’ve got.”
“I’m only eleven years old.”
“It’s never too early to get your mitts on raw talent and turn it into a hamburger.”
“I don’t think you’re a star.”
Niv laughed. “Are you sure you haven’t been talking to my agent?”
“You’re being rude, Georgie,” Polly chided as she brought a platter of golden fried chicken to the table.
“A real star wouldn’t live in our pool house.”
Sally placed a basket of hot biscuits on the table. “A lot you know, Georgie. When the Barrymores arrived in Hollywood, they lived in a tent until they could afford a hotel room, and look at them now. They are the greatest actors in the world, and they live in castles in the Hollywood Hills.”