“Don’t you dare try to turn this back on me!” She couldn’t believe what he was telling her. “Are you—are you having an affair with her?”
Harry waved his hand. “No! Nothing like that.”
“How could you do this?” Her voice broke. She stood up, knocking the silverware to the floor. “And with Jack being sick—”
“I know Jack’s sick, damn it!” Harry banged his fist on the table. He lowered his voice. “Would you sit the hell down? You’re making a scene.”
“Oh, God forbid I make a scene at your party.” The room seemed to spin around her. Bess sat down and folded her trembling hands in her lap. “Tell me it’s not true, Ehrich.”
Harry winced.
“I’m the only one who knew you when you were him. Did you forget that?”
“Damn it, Bess,” Harry said. “I’m not sleeping with her. It’s not about Charmian anyway. It’s about Jack.”
“What about Jack?”
“The man’s dying, for Christ’s sake.”
Bess drew in a breath. “What?”
“Charmian’s in love with her husband, not with me. She asked me to dinner to talk about Jack. Apparently you got loose-lipped with her about my own kidney injuries. She wanted to know if I could help her find him a doctor.”
“And . . . could you?”
Harry shook his head. “He’s been to everyone I would have seen.”
“Oh, God,” Bess said. “Is he really—?”
Harry nodded.
My little lump of sugar down in Dixie, mine all mine, Jolson sang. The room seemed to still around her. The doors to the patio were open and the room was cool with the breeze and the women’s long dresses rustled as they danced.
Suddenly none of it seemed to matter any longer—the celebrity, the ocean, the lemon trees in the yard—and the sense that she had her own work, her own value, in Hollywood. She would, Bess realized, leave it all behind for Harry. For perhaps the first time in his career, it wasn’t about the money for him. He was asking her to leave California because the place had broken him. People didn’t understand that the tricks he did on screen were authentic, that they nearly cost him his life every time. Another actor could replicate them any day with a few well-placed camera angles. His talent was in live performance, where audiences could believe that his magic was real. In Hollywood everything—romances, magic—was manufactured. Harry could never be the Great Houdini in Hollywood. And he couldn’t live without being the Great Houdini.
“I bet we’re the only people in here who’ve actually been to Dixie,” Bess said quietly. “Remember the tiny trailer we used to live in?”
Harry smiled. “I had to cut holes in the walls of our bedroom, just to try to get some relief from the hot nights.”
“Those were some crazy years.”
Harry’s face crumpled. “Don’t you see, Bess? I’m yours till the end. In this life, and after.”
Chapter 14
CENTRAL PIER
June 1929
The house was not at all what she expected. It stood, a monument of gray stone, four blocks from the ocean, the porch white as washed linen. The grass was cut to an inch in height, and, inside, the rooms were shining. There were no dishes in the sink, and no shoes in the hall. A single black hat hung on a rack by the door. She would never have guessed that a single man lived there.
“Do you own this?” she asked, running her hands along the wooden banister. She turned to Gladys to describe it. “It’s nearly perfect.”
Charles shrugged. “I purchased it a few years ago. Thinking, perhaps, I would have a family one day.”
“You still can,” she said. “You don’t have to be a priest, you know. It’s not too late to choose a different path.”
He continued to surprise her. She had not expected him to forgive her so quickly at the train station, nor had she expected that he would have agreed to let her go back to New Jersey with him. But she was certain now that Harry had brought them together, for some greater purpose.
It made sense, now, why Harry had refused to adopt a child all those years. All along, he had been looking for his own son. Adopting someone else’s son while his own was out in the world without him must have seemed unbearable.
Bess looked through the window onto the green, square yard. The house, on the eastern side of Ventnor, was far from the chaos of the Atlantic City tourist area. The lawns of the neighboring houses were cluttered with children’s bicycles.
“It’s a very pretty neighborhood.”
“Yes, I feel sometimes I don’t quite fit in here.”