“I’d be grateful.”
“Got a sweet tooth?”
“Legendary.”
“Are you going to marry my sister?” Georgie asked.
“Georgiana!” Loretta glared at her.
“Which one?” Spencer teased.
“Polly is going to get married someday. She’s almost bagged a big fish. At least, that’s what she said on the phone.”
“Listen here, you little snitch,” Polly reprimanded, “it isn’t necessary to repeat everything you hear.”
“But it sure makes for interesting dinner conversation,” Spencer said.
“Daddy!” Georgiana suddenly shrieked. She got up from the table and ran to her father. George Belzer stood in the doorway, extending his arms to his daughter. He was an attractive man around fifty, conservatively dressed with a receding hairline. He looked like an accountant, which he was by trade.
Polly, Sally, and Loretta looked down, and for the first time that evening, they were quiet. Spencer looked at Father McNally. George Belzer lifted his daughter off the ground and embraced her. He looked at the table and saw the priest sitting in his chair. Gladys smiled and stood up at the table.
“Won’t you join us for dinner, George?” Gladys asked.
“No, thank you, I’m here to see Georgie’s report card.”
“All A’s,” Georgiana said proudly.
“Had to see it with my own eyes.”
“I’ll go get it.” Georgie ran into the living room.
“This is my friend Spencer Tracy. Spencer, this is Mr. Belzer,” Loretta said politely.
Georgie ran back with her report card. Her father looked at it. “Well, Georgie, you weren’t kidding.”
“I almost won the spelling bee too.”
“Almost?”
“I couldn’t spell alabaster.”
“You have to make flash cards,” her father reminded her.
Alda placed her napkin on the table. “I can help you with that, Georgiana.”
“That’s not necessary,” George told Alda.
“Will you help me with them, Dad?”
“Of course.”
Georgie took her father’s hand, and they went up the stairs together.
“Ruby, can you bring coffee up for Mr. Belzer and me? We’ll be in Georgie’s room.” Gladys excused herself and followed them up the stairs.
Loretta and Spencer walked down the filigree steps in the Belzers’ front yard to Sunset Boulevard.
“I never use these steps,” Loretta admitted.
“Why not?”
“Who walks in Beverly Hills?”
“We are.”
“I drive everywhere.”
“Georgie tells me you’re a bad driver.”
“That kid!”
“She’s the baby—she’s the one with the goods on everybody.”
“I guess. Did she also tell you that I never exercise? If I could drive from my bedroom to the dining room, I would.”
“That’s not what your figure says.”
“I owe this figure to—”
“Your mother and her mother and the mothers that came before.”
“How refreshing! A man that pays attention.”
“A man pays attention when he’s interested.”
Loretta ignored his flirting and steered the conversation back to work. “Do you like the movie business?”
“I’m getting used to it.”
“They say when you start your acting career on the stage, it never leaves you. You will always long for it.”
“That’s true for me.”
“Are you going to get a house here?”
“I have one.”
“Why do you stay at a hotel?”
Spencer walked along without answering the question.
Random thoughts swirled in Loretta’s mind, as she imagined what Spencer’s personal story might be.
After a few steps, he stopped, his hands in his pockets, turned, and faced her. He went up and down on the balls of his feet, which she had now come to recognize as a quirk, signaling that he was collecting his thoughts and was about to say something that mattered to him. Spencer Tracy had his own way of moving through the world, and Loretta was getting used to his cues.
“I’m separated from my wife.”
Loretta was taken aback. There was no wedding ring on his hand, so she’d assumed he was single. Besides, Spencer seemed too lonely to be connected to anyone or anything on a permanent basis. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not going well. But we have two children. Susie is a baby, and our son John is around Georgie’s age.”
“Is he as annoying?”
“No, he’s a good kid. He has a problem with his hearing. We figured it out pretty early on. He’s deaf, but he understands us and can speak. His mother spends all her time trying to find help for him—I kind of got into the pictures racket because of him.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Salaries are better in pictures than they are in the theater.”
“Oh, I see.”
“It wasn’t my intention to ever act in movies.”
“Well, you’re a natural at it.”
“Thank you. Every day I don’t get a pink slip is a win. Once they get a load of me on camera, they may change their minds and invest elsewhere.”
“You’re a great actor. That matters more than a pretty face. Unless you’re a woman, of course. They want us pretty and young, although the biggest star in America right now is neither glamorous nor young. Marie Dressler is so good, her appearance is beside the point.”
“So am I the male Marie Dressler?” Spencer joked.
“She started out in the theater, too.”
“I feel worse now.”
“Don’t. I already told you that you’re handsome.”
“You didn’t use that word.”
“Well, I am using it now.” Before another long Spencer silence could set in, Loretta filled the gap. “That was a long day. I was hoping that you’d be able to relax at our house. I’m afraid it was a circus.”
“I liked it. It was a little strange when Mr. Belzer arrived.”
“Wasn’t it? My mother is divorcing him.”
“That would explain Father McNally at the head of the table.”
“We always bump the man of the house for the priest.”
“Good to know. Was he a good stepfather?”
“Good enough.”
“Where’s your father, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your mother is an interesting woman.”
“She’s the center of everything.”
“As my mother is in our family.”
Loretta walked Spencer up the sidewalk to the hotel. “See you tomorrow, Spencer.” She turned to go.
“This won’t do,” he said. “I have to walk you back home.”
“That’s unnecessary. Really. I know the neighborhood.”
“What kind of a gentleman would I be if I let a lady walk home alone? Regardless of the swank factor of your neighborhood.”
“But you can see my house from here!”
“Doesn’t matter. What if you fall on those fancy steps? They wouldn’t find you in that Garden of Babylon for months.”
Loretta laughed. “I’ll be fine.”
“Come on,” he said. “It’s a couple of minutes more at the end of a long day. You’re good enough company for a round trip.”
Spencer took her hand on the walk back to Sunset House. It didn’t make her nervous; it felt natural, almost too easy, as though they had an understanding and a history.
Spencer felt the same, but his longing for Loretta was far from simple and loaded with guilt. He knew that there was no hope at home with his wife, but his goal was never to leave her. Loretta surely wasn’t the first woman he had walked home outside of his marriage. He’d had a few lovers of late that filled the separation from his wife, but the affairs never led to anything beyond se
x. He wasn’t proud of his dalliances, but in his mind, Loretta was different. Being with her and her family felt like a new start.
They walked without saying much, until Loretta let go of his hand and turned to him. “I’d like to meet your son sometime.”
“Sure.”
“We’ll be fine friends, Spencer.”
Spencer looked into her eyes and held her gaze. He smiled and took her hand. He wanted to kiss her, but didn’t want to risk rejection. They were colleagues, coworkers, that was true, and even though they had just met, there was a connection that had nothing to do with work. He saw potential beyond platonic friendship for the two of them. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. It reminded her that men could be courtly, but she pegged Spencer Tracy as way too down-to-earth for that sort of thing. Spencer Tracy, it turned out, was full of surprises.
He smiled at her, the funny crooked smile. “Good night, Gretchen.”
Loretta stood and watched Spencer as he went down the stairs. “How’d you know to call me Gretchen?”
He turned and looked up at her. “I do my homework, you know.” Spencer made his way down to the bottom of the stairs. When he reached Sunset, she could hear him whistling.
4
Loretta had never enjoyed making a picture more than Man’s Castle. Perhaps it was her age: she was finally twenty-one, playing her first adult role. She played a character she could relate to, a young woman in love who worked hard to take care of those around her. Loretta quickly outgrew her trepidation about Frank Borzage and came to admire his vision of the movie and the way he ran the set.
Loretta would listen when Borzage and Tracy conversed about classic literature and the theater, committing the writers they discussed to memory so she might look them up later. She read the works of playwrights Eugene O’Neill and George S. Kaufman, and discovered The Confessions of Saint Augustine and essays by Erasmus, writers Tracy read time and again.
The Central Park setting in the heart of Manhattan inspired Loretta to make plans to spend time in the real place. Having spent a brief time there, she longed to visit the city’s museums, libraries, and theaters, instead of just racing through to promote a movie for the studio.
Her esteem for Spencer Tracy grew with each day of work. What began as lunches on a bench outside the set or in the commissary became dinners after work to catch up on the day’s events. They became inseparable. They took long drives to find a dive diner on the outskirts of Los Angeles and, in relative anonymity, order scrambled eggs and coffee and talk into the night.
Alda observed Spencer and Loretta’s simpatico relationship, and figured that this kind of connection happened between the actors on all movie sets. While Tracy didn’t look like a typical matinee idol, Alda understood why he had such an appeal to women. He took an interest, paid attention to details, and listened. When Alda shared stories about her family home in Padua, a few days later Tracy brought her a mass card with a drawing of Saint Anthony on it. It was a small gesture, but a meaningful one.
Spencer became a part of life at Sunset House. He played cards with Loretta’s sisters, ate seconds of Ruby’s cuisine, and made himself at home by the pool. Gladys was worried about Loretta, but she also grew fond of Spencer, as all the members of her family had. Spencer’s marital status was a concern. Loretta assured her mother that she and Spencer had not taken the relationship to a serious level, but it soon became obvious that Loretta, in her wildly romantic way, was deluding herself.
Spencer wanted Loretta to meet his son John. Susie was still a baby, but John, who Spencer could talk about for hours, was a delight. Tracy said little about his estranged wife, Louise, except that he had a deep respect and affection for her, and admired her as the mother of his children. He never complained about Louise to Loretta, though he held out no hope of returning to his wife and resuming life as it had been before he left.
Loretta had heard the rumors about other women in Spencer’s life. She believed some of the stories, and ignored the rest. Leading men generally fell for their costars; Loretta figured that was a matter of proximity meeting opportunity. But it was different with Spencer. She knew for certain that when he was with her, he wasn’t distracted.
Loretta parked her car behind a sea of automobiles in an open field next to the Brentwood Little League field. She wore sunglasses, a wide-brimmed hat, and a simple cotton madras sundress that she had made herself. She was finally going to meet Spencer’s beloved son.
The game had already begun. The stands were full of parents who had their eyes focused on the field, which made it easy for the movie star to slip in unnoticed. Loretta climbed to the top of the bleachers and found a seat. She scanned the field, looking for Spencer and his son. Finally, she found them on the visiting team bench, watching the game with intensity. She didn’t try to get Spencer’s attention.
It was Johnny’s turn at bat. Spencer took him by the shoulders and moved his face close to his son’s. He coached his son, using sign language and gestures. The boy nodded intently, taking in his father’s instructions. Loretta smiled; she knew when Tracy had a point, he could take his time making it. A few of the parents stood up and groused—“Move it along,” “Get in the game, kid,” that sort of thing. The carping from the stands didn’t deter Spencer from taking his time.
Man’s Castle was to wrap soon, and Loretta couldn’t bear the thought. Movie after movie, job after job, she made friends, and then the company moved on to new projects. They promised to get together, which they seldom did, or simply said, “Hope we do another picture together.” At the time, she always meant those words, but her friendship with Spencer Tracy was different.
As time went on, Spencer wanted a romance with her, and she longed for one with him. She tried to stay away, to balance her time away from work with other activities, but felt compelled to be near him. She felt sure that she was of use to him, that he had a need for her support, counsel, and advice. She couldn’t help but notice that she made him happy. The brooding Irishman disappeared in her presence, leaving her to observe his earnest nature, his depth, and how ardently he rooted for her happiness.
There was also a spiritual connection. They went to mass together every Sunday. They didn’t discuss their religion, but the act of meeting at church, sitting in the same pew, and taking their sacraments together week after week connected them in a way that was deeper than the physical attraction they shared.
They were buddies. Their interests were similar outside of work. They liked hobbies they could get lost in; he painted, and she sewed. As much as they enjoyed their conversations, they could spend hours together in complete silence. He might refine an aspect of a painting; she might rip out a hem and reset it. This was the kind of relationship Loretta had hoped for, but whenever she thought about their future, she became confused.
Loretta watched as Johnny chose his bat. The boy had a laserlike focus on the game. He had his father’s coloring, a smattering of Irish good luck freckles on his nose and cheeks just like Spencer, but a willowy build.
Johnny also had his father’s intensity. Just like Spencer, he took everything in. He spied the boys on base, the pitcher, and the stands. He squinted and threw a few swings over home plate. He looked at his father, who gave him courage with a big smile and a two-fisted wave.
The pitcher threw the ball. Johnny hit the ball with force, a grounder to right field that sent everybody on the field scrambling. Johnny tossed the bat and ran to first base. Spencer was thrilled for his son, jumping up and down as though he had just hit a line drive that would secure the pennant. The crowd went wild.
Johnny was safe on first base. He stood tall, dusted himself off, and kept one toe firmly planted on the white rubber mat, the other safely inside the diamond’s base line. He reached forward toward second base, catching the eye of the pitcher, who thought about throwing the ball to force him to run to second. Instead, the pitcher threw the ball toward the batter.
There was a bright sun, the dazzling bas
eball diamond, a determined boy, and eager fans hungry for a hit. And there was the father of the boy, full of admiration and belief in his son’s ability. It was the picture of an authentic family life that Loretta longed for. She had never seen Spencer so happy. Free of his guilt and focused on his son, he was wide open, full of joy as a father and as a man. She would remember the purity of this moment.
Spencer shielded his eyes and looked up into the stands. Loretta raised her hand to wave to him just as she saw his wife, Louise, run behind the batting cage and join her husband on the green. Loretta sat back down, blending into the crowd in the stands as Spencer put his arm around his wife’s waist. Louise buried her face in Spencer’s shoulder, just as Loretta had dozens of times when she was weary at the end of the day and she needed to be close to him.
Louise was attractive, slim and simply dressed in a sunbonnet, skirt, and sandals. She looked like a fulfilled parent and a happy wife.
Loretta was neither envious of nor angry at Louise. Loretta was practical and knew that a marriage in its particularity was a deal; each had its own rules and interpretation. Spencer may have been separated from Louise when Loretta fell for him, but her conscience was beginning to bother her. What she saw between the Tracys was not so much romantic devotion as a deeper, more profound love between two people in a common cause to take care of their family and their son who was in need of their attention.
Loretta and Spencer were wildly attracted to one another on a physical level, and he was nurturing her young intellect, but neither of those truths would hold up against the sturdy marriage Loretta witnessed that day. Spencer may have insisted that he could divorce Louise to marry Loretta, but she didn’t want him to; she couldn’t break up their family.
As the next player took his turn at bat, Loretta seized the moment to slip out of the stands unnoticed. She ran for her car. She shoved the key in the ignition and backed the car out of the lot. On the road heading for home, she began to cry. What had made her happy was not to be. The months of confusion had given way to total clarity. Loretta couldn’t be the other woman. She had to find the strength to say good-bye to the man she loved. She had to let go of Spencer Tracy once and for all.