“Where are we going?” Gable turned to his wife.
“Up the mountain.” Kay, a petite blonde in her early forties, had vowed to go anywhere in the world Gable wanted to go, and promised to be with him on location. Gable had finally found the woman whose sole purpose in life was to take care of him. Kay adored him, and he was crazy about her.
Kay had been to Capri, and she wanted her husband to see it, but she also had a mission in mind. As they jumped into the caravan jeep that would take them to the top of the mountain, Kay kissed her husband.
“What’s the big treat here?”
Once on the mountaintop, Gable helped Kay out of the jeep and onto the glorious town square that overlooked the Mediterranean. Bougainvillea draped the limestone walls in bursts of purple and hot pink, while beach roses in shades of magenta covered the sandstone walls.
Kay took Gable by the hand to a small shop, Da Costanzo’s, off the town square. Gable had to duck to enter the tiny shop, filled with shoes. Kay rang the bell on the desk.
“Costanzo!” she shrieked, throwing her arms around the young proprietor. Costanzo was compact and small, his black hair receding, though he was still in his thirties.
“Clark, this is Constanzo. I knew his father years ago when I was a girl—my parents brought me here, and he made me sandals. They were the most comfortable shoes I ever owned. Costanzo, my husband’s feet hurt. Make him shoes. I’ll be back in two hours.”
“Where are you going?” Gable asked.
“To get my hair done.”
Gable sat down with Costanzo and looked around the shop.
“Is something wrong with your feet?”
“I’m old.”
“That’s not a problem.”
“Not for you.”
“I’m going to make you a pair of slip-on loafers. You like suede or leather?”
“Suede.”
“Blue, brown, or black?”
“Black.”
“You like brass bar or no brass bar?”
“No brass bar.”
“Follow me.”
Gable followed Costanzo to the garden behind the shop. He pulled up a seat for Gable and then poured Gable a glass of limoncello.
“What’s this?” Gable sniffed the glass.
“I make it myself. It’s booze.”
“Now you’ve made me a happy man.”
Gable sat back, lit a cigarette, and sipped the limoncello as Costanzo measured his feet.
“Kay e bellissima!”
“Thank you. She’s wife number five.”
“Five? You’re crazy!”
“No kidding. Let me tell you about divorce. I’ve had three of them. It’s like a twenty-dollar bill. You keep tearing off a piece, a piece for this one, a piece for that one, and pretty soon you’re broke.”
“That’s why I only married one woman.”
“Do you like her?”
“She’s my life.”
“You’re lucky.”
“No, no, she’s lucky. Look what she got.”
“I’ve used that strategy and it got me nowhere.”
“Who did you love the most? Out of the five.”
“The current one, of course. Kay. Your friend.”
“Good answer.”
“I’m very grateful. I’m almost sixty, and I have some wonderful memories.”
“You’re going to have a baby.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Kay is going to have a baby.”
“How do you know?”
“I have a feeling.”
“Are you a shoemaker or a fortune-teller?”
“Both.”
“I’m going to come back to this island some day with my baby.”
“I’ll make the baby shoes.”
“I’m going to hold you to it.”
Loretta cut the rose deep at the stem. The petals were closed tight. She added the flower to her cutting basket. She planned to make a large bouquet to bring to Judy at the hospital where she had just given birth to her first baby.
Loretta thought about calling Clark when Judy gave birth to their first grandchild, Maria, on November 16, 1959. She was a perfect baby, and Loretta would have loved to share the news, but she couldn’t. Gable was on location in Arizona shooting The Misfits, his wife Kay was with him, and after they sent their regrets to Judy’s wedding, Loretta had given up any hope of bringing their families together. Kay made it perfectly clear when she didn’t send a gift that any further contact was not welcome. This was nothing new in Hollywood. The new wives always set the social agendas. Any small acknowledgement of Judy would have been welcome, but it was not to be. Loretta felt better about never having shared the truth with her daughter. Perhaps Clark had been right so many years ago when he said that the truth would only make Judy unhappy. Judy had her own family now; what good could possibly come from opening old wounds? Loretta surveyed her rose garden. She had cut at least two dozen roses from the patch, but the garden was so lush, it was as if she hadn’t taken any.
Kay Gable was around five months pregnant when she called the ambulance to come to the ranch in Encino. Gable could not sleep. He had pain in his arm, he was feverish, and he refused to go to the hospital. Kay forced him to go anyway.
Kay stood in the hallway outside her husband’s room.
“How bad is it?” she asked the doctor.
“He had a massive heart attack. But he’s very strong. We think we can help him.”
Kay’s eyes filled with tears. “You have to. He has to help me raise our baby.”
“Don’t lose faith. You got him here in time.”
Kay went into Gable’s room and sat by the bed. Gable opened his eyes, and when he saw his wife, he smiled.
“Ma, I want to get up,” he said.
“You stay in that bed, or I’ll kill you,” Kay teased. She ran her fingers through his thick gray hair.
“How’s our baby?”
“Growing.” Kay placed Clark’s hand on her stomach.
“I got to get out of here and build the crib.”
“You’ve got plenty of time, Pa. Don’t worry about your chores.”
Gable took Kay’s hand and kissed it. “You’ve made me happy.”
“We have years ahead of us,” Kay promised.
“You more than me.”
“I don’t want years without you in them.”
“You need your rest. Go and lie down.”
“I don’t want to leave you.”
“Doc says I’m fine. I’m checking out in the morning. Now go.”
Kay kissed him tenderly. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Look. I got a stack of magazines here with photos of me looking jowly and fat.”
“But they ran the Rhett Butler.”
“Him. Pain in my ass.”
Kay laughed. “Honey, I’m making a blanket for the baby.”
“Pink or blue?”
“Yellow, to be safe. I want to name the baby John Clark Gable.”
“I like it. But what if it’s a girl?”
“I’ve always loved the name Gretchen.”
“Gretchen?” Gable’s eyebrows arched.
“It’s my middle name. Do you like it?”
“I like it just fine.”
Clark kissed his wife and sent her to rest. He flipped on the television set. The program was about paintings in the White House. Gable remembered his friend Luca Chetta, the great scene painter. He had a feeling of doom as he remembered how Chet had died suddenly of a heart attack.
The noise of the television bothered him, so Gable turned it off. He had a funny feeling in his head. He was dizzy, but he figured that was the inactivity, lying in the bed all day. He couldn’t wait to get out of this hospital.
Gable opened up the newspaper. He closed it. He leaned back on the pillow and thought about his wife, and the baby on the way.
Gretchen.
He remembered a raft on a river, and saving a girl with gray eyes, who
had his baby. He remembered the years. Carole. The war. A royal flush with Hattie. The chocolate brown hood of a new Packard. A blue sky. A silver marlin.
The dizzy feeling turned to a throbbing pain in his head and spread through his body. He felt as though he were falling through space and time. He tried to speak, but no words would come. He opened his fist to reach, but he could not hang on. He let go.
A nurse passed the open door to Gable’s room. She took one look at him and knew something was wrong. She rushed to his side. She took his pulse. He was gone.
Alda slipped into the back pew of the Church of the Recessional at Forest Lawn. Clark Gable’s casket was covered in a sheath of red roses, with a small crown of burgundy roses anchored in the center. Gable’s favorite Strauss waltzes were played as the mourners took their seats.
Kay Gable walked down the aisle in a black suit, hat, and veil. Alda recognized a lot of the old faces from MGM, men who had worked with her husband and Clark. As the pallbearers filed in, she felt a hand on her shoulder.
“Alda,” Spencer Tracy said. “I got old.”
“We are all getting old.”
“Not you. Never the Italians,” he whispered. “How’s Gretch?”
“Come see us.”
Tracy nodded and joined Robert Taylor, Jimmy Stewart, Howard Strickling, Eddie Mannix, Ray Hommes, and Eric Dunliner by the casket. As they lifted Gable’s casket, even the men wept. When a man’s man dies, it brings out the deepest feelings in everyone, especially the stoic men. Kay Gable rose to kiss the casket a final time. Alda remembered when Gable stood up for her and Luca when they got married. Clark Gable had been their best man. It was an appropriate title for him. It would be how Alda would remember him.
Loretta picked up the paper in her office at NBC. She was scanning the news when her eyes fell on an item in Louella Parson’s column.
Kay Gable gave birth to John Clark Gable on March 20, 1961, in Beverly Hills. Mother and son are well. Gable predeceased his only child by a few months. His final movie, The Misfits, was released on February 1, in honor of Gable’s 60th birthday.
No, it wasn’t in honor of his birthday, Loretta thought; it was in pursuit of big box office. Loretta shook her head, remembering how, when Jean Harlow died, MGM had rushed to release Saratoga seven weeks after she died to capitalize on the grief of her fans. Twenty years later, and the studio bosses were still up to their old tricks, profit over decorum.
Loretta got in her car to drive home for dinner with Tom. Instead of going over the hill, she found herself driving to Forest Lawn Cemetery.
Every night before sleep, she remembered her conversation with Clark in her dressing room when he gave her his advice about Judy. She remembered how his hands felt in hers when he said he loved her.
Loretta parked behind the Great Mausoleum. She went inside. The cool chamber had the scent of carnations as she made her way through the crypts. She read the names as though she were searching the stacks in a library. When she found Carole Lombard, she found Clark. The finality of his passing became real to her. She knelt before his crypt, bowed her head, and as she had done every day of her life since falling in love with him, she said ten Hail Marys for the repose of his sweet soul. When she rose to her feet, Loretta took a moment to place both hands on his crypt. To his right was Carole; to his left, Kay’s crypt was already marked.
“I never really had you,” Loretta whispered, “but none of us did.”
It bothered her that Kay’s son was listed as Gable’s only child; it wasn’t true. But she still had no idea how to set the record straight, or if she ever would.
The mass at Good Shepherd during Lent in February 1965 was standing room only. Judy sat with her mother and took her hand after communion. Loretta looked over at her daughter and marveled at what a beauty she had become, inside and out, as a mother, as a daughter, and now as her friend. Judy would turn thirty that November, and it seemed as though it couldn’t be possible.
As the members of the congregation filed out, Loretta fished for change in her purse.
“You want to light a candle, Mom?”
“Sure. Do you?”
Judy nodded. “How about at the shrine of the Blessed Lady?”
Loretta snapped her purse shut and rose from her seat. She followed her daughter out of the pew. Judy genuflected, and Loretta did the same. When Loretta rose from the kneeling position, she was face to face with a lovely blonde in a blue pillbox hat and matching bouclé suit. Her eyes were sky blue. Loretta knew instantly it was Kay Gable.
“Hello, Kay.” Loretta smiled.
“Hello, Loretta.” Kay smiled back at her, but it was a polite greeting, not particularly warm. “This is my son, John Clark Gable.” An adorable boy, around five years old, in a navy suit with short pants and white oxfords, was busy staring off at the statues. Kay tugged her son’s arm, and the boy looked at Loretta and nodded.
“This is my daughter, Judy,” Loretta said to Kay.
Kay nodded and walked out of the church with her son.
“Mrs. Gable is too old to have a boy that small,” Judy whispered.
“She’s a few years younger than me.” Loretta bit her lip. She knew more about Kay than she’d admit. She remembered that there was a three-year age difference between them: Kay was forty-nine, Loretta fifty-two.
“You’re a grandmother.”
“Anytime is always a good time to have a baby—old or young.”
“I guess.” Judy shrugged.
Loretta drove Judy back to her house, where Gladys had made brunch after mass. She turned to Judy. “I’ll meet up with you later. I have an errand to run.” Loretta watched as she walked to the front door. She turned and looked at her mother and waved before going inside.
As Loretta drove off, she thought it was odd that Kay Gable was attending mass at Good Shepherd. She was a member of Saint Cyril’s; everyone knew she had baptized her son there.
Had she come to Good Shepherd to show Loretta her son with Clark, or was it just an accident, one of those strange show business coincidences? Either way, Judy wasn’t wise to Kay, and surely did not suspect that John Clark Gable was her half brother.
No matter how many times over the years Loretta revisited Judy’s paternity in the confessional, there was no epiphany on the subject, no resolution. It remained a dreary, dark corner in her subconscious and a heavy burden on her soul. She dreamed about Gable, and the dreams were always chaotic. Once he held her hands as they navigated the river at Mount Baker on a raft; in another, he called to her in an empty mansion, and she searched for him room to room and couldn’t find him, only her baby sleeping in a dresser drawer. Loretta had consulted so many priests on the subject that she couldn’t count them. It was an ongoing source of frustration for her, but no one in her life knew it.
Polly and Sally and Georgiana knew the truth, but it had been so long since it was discussed it seemed that they too had almost forgotten the story. They were busy in their lives and marriages, with children of their own. The fear that Loretta had instilled in them on the subject of secrecy was so deep that it stayed buried next to the truth of their father John Young, or with the divorce decree rendered to their stepfather Belzer.
Her husband still did not know the truth. Tom had heard the rumors too, but chose to ignore them. When he married Loretta, he learned not to press her. He figured she was entitled to her privacy. If she wanted him to know something, he was certain she would tell him.
Loretta had successfully built a wall around the truth, sealed the windows, latched the door, and dug a moat. No one, if she remained vigilant, would ever get near it. She was determined to leave the story in the past—it could not possibly do anyone any good now. Besides, Gable was gone. All that was left behind was the legacy of his career, his fifth wife, and their only son.
Judy couldn’t have a relationship with her father now; he was gone. No attempts that Loretta had made, or that Clark had initiated, had taken with their daughter. Gable’s own words r
ang in Loretta’s ears. Judy is a great girl. Why upset her? Let it go. As for her half brother, Judy had a daughter his age. John Clark Gable could hardly be a brother to her now. At every turn the situation seemed impossible, but then again, the truth deferred always is. With a revelation, an unveiling, an exposure, comes the regret, the wild river of emotions, for which there are no explanations or solutions that make sense, only more questions, only more bad dreams, worse nightmares and sadness. And of course, in the face of the truth, there would be accountability. Loretta, for all the energy she had expended on the matter, could not see what good would come by owning her mistakes to the world, her family, and Judy, when she had already sought and received forgiveness from her God.
Loretta thought about the gift of her daughter, who initially had been a challenge, but luckily grew out of her teenage years to become a practical and intelligent woman with a keen mind and a good heart. Could Loretta have wished for more for her? Loretta saw aspects of all the women in the Young family in Judy. Her daughter had inherited Loretta’s sisters’ creamy skin and her grandmother Gladys’s dazzling eyes, like agates really, which sparkled when Judy spoke and disappeared when she laughed. Loretta worried whether Judy loved her. She loved her daughter for sure, but she was a young mother, and young mothers have neither the benefit of experience nor the knowledge that a career, personal goals, and private dreams can wait. Loretta didn’t know any of that at the time. All she knew for certain was that she had done her best, without the benefit of a husband, a true partner, and the father of her daughter, helping her navigate the perils of parenthood. She had longed for that and hoped for it with Tom Lewis, but the marriage had stayed on a plateau; there had been no deepening of trust to make her feel secure enough to reveal her deepest secret to him. It was his pain, and her loss. Maybe the truth would have made a difference in their marriage.
The secret had become a member of the family. It had its own space; each person bore a responsibility to it in their fashion. No one other than her sisters, her mother, and her secretary could ever know the truth. But the problem with any lie is that it is as transparent as the truth. Loretta had denied it for so long that she made the mistake of thinking it dead. But it wasn’t.