All the Stars in the Heavens

  “I didn’t see it then.”

  “You couldn’t. You never had a father, and you had no idea how good fathers treat their children. Well, I can tell you this. A good father doesn’t make a child feel unsafe, unworthy, and unwanted, and your husband made me feel all those things and still does.”

  “When I met Tom I thought he was a good man. I thought he was strong and principled.”

  “I didn’t spend much time with him before the wedding.”

  “Judy, that’s not how it was done back then. Children and parents were separate.”

  “I know, the old children-should-be-seen-and-not-heard. But the problem with that is that children grow up and they find their voices, and by then, we can’t be silenced. So look out.”

  “No kidding.” Loretta drove onto the freeway to a cacophony of car horns. Judy’s stomach turned, and she gripped the leather handle on the door. “Careful, Mom.”

  “I’m always careful.”

  Judy believed that her mother was incapable of being cautious; Loretta Young was ruled by her emotions. She had never been careful. She was so lax, she’d had an affair with a married man and became pregnant. Judy knew this for sure because she was the product of that carelessness. She had enough proof of her paternity: the time line, her aunts’ whispers, the open secret in Hollywood finally revealed to her, and of course the surgery on her ears to remove the last obvious detail of her connection to Clark Gable. Loretta had spun a Hollywood melodrama, and Judy felt that she was placed in the center of it against her will. And now, finally, after years of trying, Judy had flown to California to confront her mother and demand the truth.

  Loretta pulled into the driveway. Judy grabbed her overnight bag from the back seat and climbed up the stairs behind her mother.

  Judy marveled at her mother’s physical countenance. She floated into a room, and on the stairs that night her feet barely brushed the steps. She made Hollywood entrances and exits in her real life, using all the tools of the great stars—costumes, makeup, even the right vehicle, the brand-new Rolls-Royce befitting a star who’d shone most brightly during Hollywood’s golden age.

  Judy caught her mother up on the details of her and Maria’s lives, including her divorce, whose details Loretta listened to carefully. Loretta might not have been a good example for Judy when it came to marriage, but she had taught her daughter well about divorce. Divorce was as big a business as the movies, the accompanying paperwork and contracts sealed and signed as if Louis B. Mayer himself were pushing the paper across a polished desk.

  For all their differences, Judy was her mother’s daughter: she was charming, intelligent, and unlucky in love. Evidently the Gladys Belzer strain of bad romantic luck had been passed along through Loretta’s line down to Judy.

  Judy threw on her pajamas and went across the hall to her mother’s room.

  “You know, it’s always strange when it’s just the two of us.”

  “Are you going to complain about all the time you gave up babysitting your brothers?”

  “No, I had fun with Peter and Chris. I love them.”

  “You were lucky—you got two brothers.”

  “You had Uncle Jackie.”

  “He was not built to live in a house of women.” Loretta laughed.

  “He didn’t have a father, and that’s tough. Peter and Chris had Dad, so they had a better time of it.”

  “They had an ally, for sure,” Loretta said. “I always worried he was spoiling them.”

  “He spoiled them, because I got the opposite,” Judy said.

  “I don’t feel well,” Loretta said. She was queasy; she had gotten shots to travel abroad, so her arm was sore and her stomach was upset. She went into her bathroom and closed the door. Soon, she was throwing up.

  Judy rapped on the door gently. “Mom, do you need help?” She sighed. Every time she tried to have a serious conversation with her mother about her father—not her stepdad, but her real father—something derailed it. Judy hadn’t persisted because she didn’t want to hurt Loretta—but the truth was, she was past worrying about everyone else’s feelings. Judy Lewis wanted the truth. She wanted to know who she was and where she came from. For years she’d believed it wasn’t in her mother’s sphere of knowledge, but now she knew that wasn’t true.

  Judy had enough pieces of the puzzle. She knew who she was, but she wanted her mother to corroborate what she believed. Judy believed that if Loretta would acknowledge the truth, it would allow Judy to move through the rest of her life in the light, instead of the constant emotional fumbling she had known since she was a girl. Judy wanted her place at the Young/Belzer table as a Gable.

  Judy pushed the door open. Her mother was at the sink, washing her face.

  “I think it’s the shots for my trip,” Loretta said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Can’t travel without them, I guess.”

  “Mom, I just turned thirty-one.”

  “I know how old you are, honey. I’m your mother.”

  Judy smiled. “I need your help. I want to know about my father.”

  “Why do you bring this up now?”

  “Mom, I have a knowingness that I’ve had since I was a girl. I began to figure it out—your sisters would say things, the kids at school would make comments.”

  “Judy, what would they know?”

  “More than me. Evidently everybody knew but me. On my wedding day I got sick not because I was nervous, but because I was getting married and I didn’t know who I was. I’m not blaming you—I assume you have your reasons—but I want to understand who I am from your perspective.”

  “You’re my daughter.”

  “And I have a father. Is Clark Gable my father?”

  Loretta put her hand on her heart, and felt it racing. She was at long last tired of the secret; she could no longer keep it. It didn’t matter what was for the best, or what Loretta’s intentions might have been. It was time to tell the truth. It was as if a storm had blown through the house, shattered the windows, blown down the doors, and crumbled the bricks. The secret that had taken her energy and her focus and her determination as it lay dormant and hidden had finally defeated her. The world had changed—not the one outside her home, the one within it. There was no reason to hide Judy’s father from her any longer. It was just the two of them, mother and daughter. Loretta knew she might lose Judy when she confirmed the truth, but it was too late now. What was hidden had to be revealed.

  “Mom, I’m going to ask you again. Is Clark Gable my father?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Loretta sat down on the edge of the bed. Judy knelt before her. “Your father was married, and it was awful. I got pregnant, and I was supporting our family, and our faith—well, I would never have an abortion, so I had to have you, wanted to have you, but I couldn’t marry your father.” The facts tumbled out at a rate that made Judy’s head spin. Loretta had never pictured this scene the way it was playing out in real life. “I couldn’t marry him!”

  “Did you want to?”

  “Yes. And he wanted to marry me. But there was no way to make it work. You have to understand the time. We lived in fear of all of this”—Loretta motioned around the room—“going away. We’d lose our jobs, our livelihood.”

  “Your fans.”

  “That was secondary. It was our way of life. We had built up our family from nothing, without the help of a man, without the help of our fathers, they were gone. We had to take care of ourselves.”

  “How did I become a secret?”

  “Out of necessity. For you. For your safety. You see, your father’s wife would call me, and I wouldn’t answer the phone. Alda figured out how to handle her, but we had to take pains never to run into her. She wanted to ruin me, hoping that would keep your father in the marriage. Your father called me and called me, and I was so afraid someone would figure it out. It would have ruined his career and mine, and so I pushed him away.”

&nbs
p; “Did you love him?”

  “Madly.”

  “Did he ever come to see me?”

  “He came to the Venice house, and he was wild about you. Couldn’t put you down. You were perfect, a little angel that fell out of the sky. You had gold hair in ringlets, and he was besotted.”

  Judy held back her tears. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Do you remember when your father came to visit you at the house on Camden?”

  “Yes, I thought it was strange.”

  “We were trying to have you spend time together. I wanted to tell you then, but you weren’t interested. And your father said, ‘Leave it alone. She’s beautiful and smart and well-adjusted.’ Remember when I begged you to come to the set when we were making a movie? You were fifteen, a teenager, and I didn’t want to force the issue.”

  “Mom, you should have made me go to the set. That’s no excuse.”

  “Your father thought it would devastate you at that point in your life.”

  “That’s the moment you let him make decisions about my future? How could you let me get married without knowing who my father was?”

  “I invited him to your wedding, he and Kay, thinking that might be a fresh start.”

  “But he didn’t come to my wedding.”

  “So then I thought I didn’t want anyone or anything to hurt you. So I let it go.”

  “Mom, everybody in the world knew but me.”

  “Everything I did was because I loved you. And the problem with a secret is that it lives, and as it lives, it gains power, and it got too big for me. And I thought it would be too big for you. After Clark died, I thought about telling you, and I was afraid you’d hate me for it.”

  “Mom, you understand why I’m struggling. I struggle with everything. On the surface, my life is like one of Grandma’s rooms. Every aspect appears perfect, every chair is placed just so, the draperies hang without a wrinkle, and there’s a fire in the hearth, just as there should be in any home. I look fine. I look like you and my father. I appear to have everything I needed. I was loved by my aunts and uncles and cousins. I have two half brothers who love me, and I love them. I had a stepfather who didn’t care for me, but that was okay, I had you and Alda and Luca, and LaWanda at the studio, and your friends, who were so kind to me. And I was almost content to live the rest of my life with my daughter in the bubble, with the truth banging on the glass and me inside with no way to let it in. But I can’t do that to myself anymore, I can’t do it to Maria, and I won’t do it to you. You should know me as a person who owns her truth. If I was born of a mistake, I forgive it. And if I was born of love, I have a right to revel in it, to share it with my daughter, and someday for her to share it with her children. That’s what family is, that’s what history means, and that’s all we have to offer each other going forward, our mutual truth.”

  “It’s true,” Loretta said softly. But the truth brought neither the mother nor the daughter the joy they had dreamed of—the admission only confirmed the sadness of all that had been lost.

  Loretta folded down the coverlet on her bed. She kissed her daughter.

  “Will you stay with me?” Loretta asked Judy.

  “Of course, Mom.”

  Judy got into bed next to Loretta. She reached across and embraced her mother, who began to weep.

  “It’s all right, Mom.” Judy cried too, not for her mother’s sadness, though it hurt her—she cried for the father she’d never know, the father who lived only in her imagination, in her dreams, and when she wanted to visit him there, on the silver screen.

  Loretta and Tom’s attenuated divorce settlement was nearing an end. She had longed for her freedom and looked forward to making her own decisions again. The process of divorcing Tom Lewis was illuminating for Loretta. If she had it to do over again, she never would have become Tom’s business partner. She had seen it so many times in Hollywood. A star would turn over her financial interests to a husband who was a successful businessman in his own right, and hope that he would take as good care of her business as he had of his own before entering into a marriage with her. But for some reason, it never worked out that way in show business. Show business, it turned out, engaged more than goods, services, and the manufacturing and distribution of products, it also peddled egos, and those, it turns out, are priceless.

  “Your lawyer sent the last of the divorce papers for you to sign.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “You tried to make it work.”

  “I suppose I could have tried harder. Tom is still making me feel like I can’t do anything right.”

  “It wasn’t to be.”

  “This leaves me time to take care of Mama, to give her the attention she deserves.”

  “You could be happily married and still look out for your mother.”

  “That’s true. The children are on their own now. It’s funny, Alda, nobody ever told me motherhood was temporary. You think you have years and years with them, but the truth is, you don’t. Had I known that, I might have handled things differently. I would have done everything differently with Judy. She really suffered.”

  “She was loved. That saved her. It saves all of us.”

  “But it can’t make up for what she missed. I will carry that always. Alda, I have always wanted to ask you something. Why didn’t you and Luca ever adopt a child.”

  “I lost a baby boy, and then another, and by the time I learned to move with my grief, the years of motherhood were over for me. It’s just the way it went. I remembered the parents at Saint Elizabeth’s, their joy when the baby was placed in their arms, and somehow I knew that joy would never be mine. I would have other kinds of happiness and plenty of it. We all get some, we have to be satisfied with our portion.”

  “That’s the key, isn’t it? To be grateful,” Loretta said.

  “I guess so.”

  “You’ve been a good friend to me, Alda.”

  “I had hoped to. You’ve been everything to me. Boss. Sister. Friend. Confidante.” Alda patted Loretta’s hand.

  “What did I ever do?”

  “You were my maid of honor. You were my witness on the happiest day of my life.”

  “And on my wedding day, you told me to run for the hills,” Loretta joked. “I should have listened.”

  A petite lady around forty years old stood under the portico. “Miss Young?”

  “May I help you?” Alda asked.

  “I’m Susie Tracy.”

  Loretta sat up. “Spencer and Louise’s daughter?”

  “Their one and only.”

  “I’m going to make a tray for us,” Alda said, rising slowly from her chaise.

  “Please don’t—I can’t stay.”

  Loretta winked at Alda, who went to make tea anyway.

  “I have something for you, Miss Young.” Susie handed Loretta an envelope.

  “What is this?” Loretta opened the letter and remembered. She recognized the handwriting: it was her own. The drafts of the letter came flooding back to her, along with the feelings she’d had at the time. She had been so madly in love with Spencer Tracy, and it was high drama—swings of desire and despair, craving something they couldn’t have, wishing they had met at a different time, under different circumstances, all the puffery of young love and dreams.

  “My mother said there were two women in my father’s life. One was her, and the other was you.”

  “Your father was a remarkable man.”

  “Mom was always grateful that you sent the priest to see him when he was dying. She wasn’t Catholic, and even though she went to church with him, she didn’t think of it.”

  “Your father believed in a good confession.”

  She nodded. “He did. But you thought to send the priest. And I wanted to thank you for that.”

  “Your mother was the most important woman in your father’s life. I saw a lot of marriages come and go in Hollywood, including my own, but your parents were the real deal.”

  S
usie’s eyes stung with tears. “I read so much junk about my parents. I remember one article said they had an arrangement.”

  “Every marriage is an arrangement. It’s a construct of two lives, and the two people in it have to work it out. No matter what you hear about your parents, you cling to what you knew about them, and that’s the truth. All the rest of it is chatter.”

  “Thank you for that.”

  “I know people have said things about your dad and me, and we were good friends. Every woman that met him adored him, but none rivaled your mother. That’s why they stayed married. They were devoted to you and John completely.”

  “I know that.”

  “You hold on to what you know. Don’t let anyone tell you who your parents were. You know your family. You know who you are. This is a town that thrives on made-up stories—if we aren’t telling them, we’re filming them. Don’t take any of it too seriously.”

  “I won’t.” Susie gave Loretta a kiss on the cheek. By the time Alda had made it outside with the tea, Susie had left.

  “What was that all about?” Alda asked.

  Loretta handed her the letter.

  “What do you think, Alda?”

  “Never put anything in writing.”

  Loretta chuckled. Alda remembered the drafts of the letter, and how she had burned them. She hadn’t worked in Hollywood much more than a week, and she had already learned how to torch evidence.

  “Nobody thinks about the children,” Alda said. “I know they’re matinee idols, but they’re real and they have lives, and their children have feelings.”

  “We trade all that in when we become famous. It’s what I love the most about being retired. I don’t have to think how my actions that day will affect my audience or my ability to do my work. It’s a ridiculous burden.”

  “That brought you a great life.”

  “No question. But was I any happier than you were with Luca in that house in the valley? I don’t think so.”

  “Do you think Mr. Tracy was happy?”

  “He had a wanderlust. Not physically, not as a traveler, but in his heart. He wanted to see and know everything he could. He had a worldview from that Irish heart.”