The Chelsea Girls(97)

Maxine’s facade, the one built on movie star glamour and a breathless beauty, had completely slipped away. She looked faded and lost.

“I’ll accept my responsibility, I promise,” said Maxine softly. “I’ll do whatever I can.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN


    Maxine


March 27, 1967

The worst, with Arthur, was when we were driving somewhere together and he asked me to pull out the huge atlas and figure out the directions. It didn’t matter if we were cruising around the Hollywood Hills or looking for some unmarked door in Queens to make a drop-off, the very request would get my heart pumping like I was running alongside the car, not sitting in the passenger seat. I would look up the name of the street in the back as quickly as I could, then locate the appropriate square on the map, but I was never fast enough.

Looking back, I can see that he got great pleasure in flustering me, in getting angrier and angrier until he was screaming at me to tell him which way to turn, swearing until I wept. He’d apologize afterward and I’d stupidly presume that the balance of power had shifted over to me, which generated a rush that was probably equal to his own. The same rush I felt when I passed off secret documents, or raced to the Chelsea Hotel to rescue Arthur. Arthur was my life. I had attached to him like one of those round-mouthed fishes on a shark, and I wasn’t going anywhere.

This is no excuse for what I went on to do, for having ruined the lives of the people I loved. But being kept off-balance like that was a terrible, terrible fate. Never mind walking on eggshells, I tiptoed on shards of glass whenever he was around. I was so eager to please, and never quite measured up. I placed my passion in our mission, in our cause, to prove to him that I was worthy of his love.

I thought I had reason to hate the same things Arthur did: capitalism, American greed. Only later did I realize I was viewing my life through Arthur’s particularly warped perspective, as if we were standing in front of a fun-house mirror that elongated certain truths and shortened others.

Magnild. An ugly name, he’d told me. He only used it when he was angry at me, hitting the consonants hard with contempt.

I wonder who she might have become, this Magnild, if she hadn’t been twisted into Maxine Mead.

Instead, I became a follower, content to do what other people told me to do. As an actress, that worked in my favor. If a director told me to cry, I cried. Laugh? Done. I could bring any emotion up from my very bones and let it cascade through my mouth, my eyes, so that you knew exactly what I was thinking. Or what you thought I was thinking.

It’s kept me employed for a long time, eons in this industry. I graduated from dishy ingenue to wisecracking dame, and that’s perfectly fine with me. More substance to play with, even if the lines are fewer. Shooting movies suits me, as the cast bonds like long-lost family members for the course of a couple of months and says goodbye at the wrap party with giddy promises to be in touch, but never does. I have the illusion of being part of something, without the closeness.

I’ve missed Hazel terribly these past many years. Missed being able to pop down the hall and have a laugh, to meet at El Quijote for a drink after a long day of rehearsal and let all the insanity fade away. That’s what good friends do—all that stuff that builds in your head into something terribly important that might bring you down at any moment—it dissipates when you see each other, turns into feathers that float away.

Seeing Hazel onstage, standing just a few feet away from me, had almost been more than I could handle. There she was, my dearest friend, yet she might as well have been a total stranger. Sure, she looked terrible, in dire need of a makeover, but I adored the fact that she didn’t care. That was my Hazel, all right. She was fierce in her gray streaks and her blazing eyes, and I wanted to hold her in my arms and tell her how much I loved her, how much I’d missed her.

To my surprise, after that terrible confrontation with Charlie and Hazel, they let me go. It would have been better if they’d hauled me away, right then and there. Instead, I went back down to the party and drank whatever came my way, until my agent guided me upstairs to my room and told me to get some rest, closing the door behind him. I didn’t do what he said. I ripped off my gown and put on some dungarees and a sweater. The clock said two in the morning, but I wasn’t tired. This was my last evening of freedom before my carefully constructed world came crashing down, and I wouldn’t waste a second of it.

I pulled on a hat with a wide brim and caught a cab downtown. We cut through Times Square, where the lights were still as bright as ever.

Part of the reason I’d been a good actress—and how funny that I am already speaking in the past tense—was that I had a terrible fear of disappearing, of being a nobody. That’s what I thought the Party was all about. That’s why I fought so hard for a country that I’d never even been to. Because communism stood for everyone taking care of each other, for being valuable and worthy, being equals.

In the intervening years, we were all proven wrong. Wrong that I was valuable, and wrong that communism would protect us from economic ruin or fanatical leaders. Stalin killed millions who disagreed with him, they simply disappeared. For a long time I denied the reports, unwilling to believe such a thing. But even the most authoritarian government can’t evade the truth, it rises like steam from the fissures of a volcano. Still, the world is run by men who want power, who will say anything to attain it, and do anything to retain it.