he: A Novel Page 8

  Mae watches her common-law husband act alongside Katherine Grant, and understands that it is the beginning of the end for her.

  When he returns home that evening, he finds Mae weeping.

  She weeps, and she cannot stop.

  43

  He works without rest. He is driven. This time, he knows he is not going to be cast aside after three or four pictures. He notices also that Jimmy Parrott is drinking more than is advisable, and chews diet pills for breakfast. As Jimmy Parrott becomes more unreliable, so too does his own star rise.

  Yet it remains a low star: low wages, low advances, low percentages. Harold Lloyd, who has his own unit at Hal Roach Studios, is making as much as Chaplin, while he is not even clearing $200 a week.

  But then, he has not made a picture like Safety Last!

  He sees Safety Last! at a studio screening: March, 1923. He goes into the theater feeling as though he has found a home at last on the lot – greeted with enthusiasm, the prodigal son returned, Hal has high hopes for you – and emerges after seventy-three minutes with the realization that his ambitions so far have been modest, and his talent is more modest still.

  It does not matter that the most dangerous stunts in Safety Last! are performed by a double.

  It does not matter that Harold Lloyd, a control freak, cannot bring himself to watch this double work.

  It does not matter that the clock face from which Harold Lloyd hangs is a façade constructed on the rooftop of another building.

  It does not matter how the trick is done, only that the trick is done, and done well.

  Climax upon climax, gag upon gag: the picture is a source of wonder to him, dreamed into life by a man with a false forefinger and thumb who is almost blind in one eye, all because of a prop bomb carried in the right hand on the wrong day.

  (When he meets Harold Lloyd for the first time on the lot, he asks for any advice that might prove useful. This is what Harold Lloyd tells him:

  – Always check the fuse.)

  He knows what they say about Harold Lloyd: that Harold Lloyd has become too big for his boots; that Harold Lloyd requires multiple takes to film the simplest of scenes; that Harold Lloyd cannot even position a camera without hours of debate.

  Even when Harold Lloyd is praised, the plaudits are conditional.

  Harold Lloyd is not a comedian, Hal Roach informs his listeners one afternoon. Harold Lloyd is an actor. Harold Lloyd is the best actor I’ve ever seen in a comic role, but still just an actor pretending to be a comedian.

  What of it? he thinks.

  I am a stage comic pretending to be a screen actor.

  Mae is a married woman pretending to be my wife.

  Chaplin is a daemon pretending to be a human being.

  Is this fair? No, of course it is not fair.

  Chaplin, like Harold Lloyd, is a genius. But Harold Lloyd is not a genius like Chaplin. No one is.

  And perhaps that is for the best.

  44

  Still Mae makes her demands, still Mae seeks her roles, but a new bitterness creeps into her claims upon him.

  Mae wants her cut.

  They fuck less often now. He tries to stay out of her way, using work as his excuse – and it is a valid one, for the most part, although he still likes a drink, even needs a drink, especially before returning home to this woman.

  – Why don’t you get rid of her?

  It is Jimmy Finlayson who asks, Jimmy Finlayson with his Scottish burr, and his false mustache, and two toes missing from his left foot. Jimmy Finlayson has moved from Jack Blystone to Mack Sennett to Hal Roach, and now Hal Roach has promised to make Jimmy Finlayson a star, like Ben Turpin. Jimmy Finlayson doesn’t entirely believe Hal Roach, but whatever happens, it’s better than working and dying in a Larbert foundry.

  They are drinking in the basement of Del Monte’s in Venice. He thinks Del Monte’s has improved since it was forced to become a speakeasy. The company is better.

  Jimmy Finlayson has married a woman named Emily Gilbert, who is nineteen and believed herself to be marrying a man of thirty, because Jimmy Finlayson, like an elderly spinster seizing the moment, has shaved some years from his age. Maybe Emily Gilbert wasn’t thinking at all, because fond though he is of Jimmy Finlayson, Jimmy Finlayson is nobody’s idea of an Adonis. Now Emily Gilbert is living with Jimmy Finlayson and Jimmy Finlayson’s sister, Agnes, in a house in Los Angeles that would be too small for all three of them even if it were ten times the size and occupied an entire city block. This is why Jimmy Finlayson is sitting here in the speakeasy of Del Monte’s, just as he is sitting with Jimmy Finlayson for very similar reasons.

  Jimmy Finlayson is convinced that the marriage to Emily Gilbert will not endure for very much longer. Jimmy Finlayson is grateful for this. Jimmy Finlayson also believes that, in a similar manner, the man beside him would be happier if Mae were no longer in his life.

  I can’t divorce her, he tells Jimmy Finlayson. We’re not married.

  If that joke was ever funny, it has long since ceased to be.

  I wasn’t talking about divorcing Mae, says Jimmy Finlayson. I was talking about killing her.

  He almost chokes on his bourbon – in Del Monte’s the liquor is good, for those who can afford to pay – until Jimmy Finlayson gives him that squint, and he has to hide his face in a handkerchief, he is laughing so hard.

  It is September 21st, 1923. They are at leisure because Mother’s Joy has finished production. The picture is poor, but he has not yet begun to worry. Roughest Africa is about to be released, and the word is that Motion Picture News will describe it as a humdinger. And he works well with Jimmy Finlayson, so well that Hal Roach has begun to pair them regularly.

  But there is no respite from Mae, not at home and not in the studio. Mae is with him for Mother’s Joy, and will be with him when Near Dublin begins filming on Monday. At least Mae has a named role in Mother’s Joy. In Near Dublin she will be credited only as a Villager, along with Hal Roach’s other makeweights.

  Why didn’t Mae ever get a divorce? Jimmy Finlayson asks.

  – Her husband wouldn’t grant her one.

  This is not, of course, the only reason why he and Mae have remained unmarried. He is sure that Rupert Cuthbert might be persuaded to let Mae go, for money if for no other reason. Mae knows this, too. He could probably afford to make it happen. He does not think it would take much for Rupert Cuthbert to sign the papers. But some fuss might arise, and the gossip hounds would sniff it out. Hal Roach would not like this.

  In truth, he would not like this either.

  How bad is it between the two of you? asks Jimmy Finlayson.

  – Bad. Bad as it’s ever been. What about you and Emily?

  – The last time I fucked her, I got frostbite.

  He laughs again.

  – How old is Emily now?

  – Twenty-three, going on a hundred.

  – And how old does she think you are?

  – She still thinks I’m thirty. Arithmetic was never her strong point. At least I can say I once got to fuck a nineteen-year-old.

  Mother’s Joy is inaptly named. Filming it is a chore: cheap sight gags, and Mae’s unhappiness at playing old fruit beside the new. Increasingly, she is being given jobs only to satisfy his stipulation that she should work with him, even when there is no suitable role for her. Flavia in Mother’s Joy is another of these parts, and Mae knows it. Her detachment is visible on the screen, so much so that it’s hard to tell if the chill she exudes is real or assumed.

  But there is one scene in which Mae manages to display genuine emotion: the wedding sequence, when she, as the heiress, rejects him at the altar, announcing that she has taken a dislike to him, and he responds in kind. As he watches Mae say her lines in her wedding gown, he understands that at this moment she is not acting, and neither is he.

  But he will not let Mae go, and Mae will not let him go.

  Not yet.

  45

  Chaplin meets the great Russian di
rector Sergei Eisenstein.

  Chaplin tells the great Russian director Sergei Eisenstein of his admiration for Battleship Potemkin. The great Russian director Sergei Eisenstein thanks Chaplin, and asks Chaplin for $25,000 to make a picture in Mexico.

  Chaplin politely demurs.

  The great Russian director Sergei Eisenstein taps someone else for the money, spends $90,000, and returns from Mexico with a set of holiday snaps.

  Chaplin is nobody’s fool.

  46

  He is arguing with everyone. He is arguing because he is unmoored, and troubled in his heart. He is arguing because he feels undervalued. He is arguing because he is tired of barely getting by.

  And he is arguing with Mae, and he is arguing because of Mae.

  Hal Roach isn’t paying him enough. Even Mae says so, and in this much, at least, Mae is not wrong, because Mae knows the value of a dollar. Worse, Hal Roach pays slowly, and Hal Roach takes too long to sign off on pictures. Harold Lloyd is a star, and Hal Roach’s treatment of Harold Lloyd is of a different order to how the rest of the actors are treated. He is not a star, and Hal Roach lets him know it.

  He wishes A.J. were here. A.J. is taking care of his business affairs outside the United States, but A.J. is in Ealing, not Hollywood. Whenever he calls A.J. in frustration, and raises the possibility of returning to vaudeville, A.J. counsels him to stay in pictures. A.J. has at last smelled the dying of the music halls, and vaudeville must surely follow.

  What can he do? He can stay with Hal Roach, or he can show some spine and leave. Mae tells him that he should go elsewhere, but he no longer feels comfortable trusting Mae’s instincts.

  He no longer feels that he can trust Mae at all.

  Friends have ceased to call on them. Invitations to join dinner parties as a couple have dwindled to nothing. He works better when Mae is not on set, so he no longer campaigns for her.

  And Mae knows. Mae, like Chaplin, is no fool.

  You don’t listen to me, she says.

  – I listen to you. You don’t give me any choice.

  – I only want what’s best for you, what’s best for both of us.

  – Maybe they’re not the same thing, not any more.

  – What do you mean? Do you want to leave me?

  But he does not answer, because she is Mae, and he loved her once.

  47

  It is early morning. He is asleep.

  Mae, naked, stares at herself in the bathroom mirror. She observes the softness of her body now transmuting to fat, the curve of her hips blurring into her waist, the sad sag of an aging mother’s breasts. She sees the stretch marks on her belly, and the pock marks on her thighs. She sees the gray in her hair, and the lines at her eyes. She sees the yellowing of her teeth, and the loosening of her mouth. She sees the wattle of tissue beneath her chin, the rolls of flesh beneath her arms, the red veins in the whites of her eyes.

  She is now thirty-seven years old. Sometimes she looks a decade older.

  But yes, she was beautiful once.

  He says that he still seeks parts for her, but she does not believe him anymore, and when the parts do come they are background roles. One scene, maybe two: no name, no character. She hears the crew laughing behind her back, but the faces are always averted when she turns to look.

  She remembers the first time she saw him on stage, how handsome he was, even as he played the clown. She remembers the first time they made love, and the first time they performed a routine together, the two acts coalescing so that each step on the boards is a kiss, each stumble a caress, each fall a thrust, each gale of laughter a sigh, each round of applause a climax. She remembers the chill of railway platforms, the coarseness of sheets, the cheapness of meals. She remembers the feel of him against her, the heat of him inside her, the taste of him in her mouth. She can remember all these moments, yet she cannot remember the last time they made love.

  He is thirty-five years old. Sometimes he looks a decade younger.

  Hope is slipping away from her.

  He is slipping away from her.

  And what will she have left when both are gone?

  The bathroom door opens. Usually he knocks before entering. He is bleary-eyed. He came in late last night: problems with the edit. This she believes, for she smelled no liquor on him, no unfamiliar perfume.

  He looks at her. He does not ask what she is doing. He is simply embarrassed to have discovered her like this, embarrassed for him and for her. He has not seen her naked in so long.

  And she wants him to come to her, and she wants him to hold her, and she wants him to say that he is sorry – not for anything he has done, but for all that must come to pass.

  Instead, he closes the door on her. When she returns to bed, he is sleeping.

  And a spark of hatred for him blossoms into flame.

  48

  Percy Pembroke, who wishes to be a great director, and will act for a time as his manager, offers to help him out.

  The comedian Joe Rock has progressed from stunt doubling, to acting, to producing pictures. Percy Pembroke knows Joe Rock, and intercedes with Joe Rock on his behalf. Joe Rock offers him a twelve-picture deal at fifteen percent. He informs Hal Roach that he is leaving. Hal Roach tells him he is free to go.

  He is hurt. He tries to hide it, but he fails.

  That’s it? he says. You’re not going to put up a counter-offer?

  – No.

  – Why not?

  – Because you’ll be back. Now go make dime pictures for Joe Rock. You know where to find us when you’re done.

  Hal Roach’s words hang over him.

  They hang over him as he makes Mandarin Mix-Up, and Detained, and Monsieur Don’t Care.

  They hang over him as he makes West of Hot Dog, and Somewhere in Wrong, and Twins.

  They hang over him as he makes Pie-Eyed.

  By the time he makes The Snow Hawk, he knows that Hal Roach is right. Twelve and a half percent of one Hal Roach picture is worth more than fifteen percent of twenty Joe Rock pictures. He will return to the Hal Roach lot, just as soon as he can finish these damn pictures for Joe Rock.

  Joe Rock will not give Mae roles in his pictures, not even as a villager, not even as a tree. This is stipulated in the contract he signs with Joe Rock. He knows that in signing it, he is hurting Mae. He does not inform her until after the deal is concluded.

  What’s in it for me? she asks, as she always does.

  – I don’t know. We’ll work it out with Joe.

  – But I don’t know Joe.

  – Joe’s a good guy.

  – But I don’t know him.

  In his heart, he acknowledges that he did not sign with Joe Rock solely because of the percentages. He signed because of Mae. He signed because Mae will not tolerate being sidelined. Mae will either be forced to change or to leave. But Mae cannot change, and so Mae must leave.

  And Joe Rock has introduced him again to Lois Neilson. He remembers her from a picture they made together for Hal Roach back in 1919. Lois Neilson was twenty-four then, and beautiful. She is thirty now, and still beautiful.

  The picture they made together was called Do You Love Your Wife?

  He tries to put the title out of his mind the first time he takes Lois Neilson to bed.

  The Snow Hawk films at Arrowhead Lake, in the mountains of San Bernardino. Mae has insisted on accompanying him. They are sharing a cabin, and in the cabin they fight. Joe Rock can hear them. Everyone can hear them. The cast and crew of The Snow Hawk are bearing witness to the death of a marriage. It does not matter that it is a common-law marriage. It does not matter that no two people bearing these names have ever truly existed. It is mortality nonetheless.

  Mae is screaming and crying. Mae claims that Joe Rock tried to fuck her – here, in their cabin. Mae says this because she wants to hurt him. Mae says this because she wants him to believe that someone might still want to fuck her even if he does not.

  Joe Rock did not try to fuck Mae. Joe Rock does not want t
o fuck Mae. Even if Joe Rock did want to fuck Mae, Joe Rock’s wife would not let him.

  Joe Rock takes him to an empty cabin. Joe Rock opens a bottle of liquor. Joe Rock pours two glasses, and then pours another two glasses, because he has swallowed the contents of the first two glasses before Joe Rock can even put the bottle down.

  She’s killing your career, Joe Rock tells him.

  – I know.

  – People are talking.

  – I know.

  – Why do you think Hal Roach let you go? Hal Roach was sicker of Mae than you are.

  – I know.

  – It’s over between you.

  – I know.

  Joe Rock informs Mae that her common-law husband will be sleeping in another cabin that night. Joe Rock tells Mae that she should go back to Los Angeles. When they’re done with The Snow Hawk, everyone will sit down and talk.

  Mae does not argue. Mae has no arguments left. Mae has seen the change in him. Mae believes that he is sleeping with someone else, the taint of this woman on his mind and his body.

  Mae knows that she has lost him.

  Later, stories will be told: that Mae is put on a boat back to Australia with a ticket paid for by a loan from Joe Rock; that Mae is given her jewelry to take with her; that cash is left in the care of the purser and handed over only when the ship is at sea, just to ensure that Mae cannot renege on the deal.

  Perhaps there is no ship. Perhaps there is no purser.

  But there is money – not as much as Mae wants, not as much as she is worth, but better than the alternative.