he: A Novel(46)

Hanging, he tells Jimmy Finlayson, may be a little extreme for Myrtle.

And Jimmy Finlayson raises the eyebrow that has made his career, and says:

– Really?

But one fine March evening, Myrtle leaves the Rosemead Lodge sanitarium in Temple City and does not return. Babe is informed, and is also advised that Myrtle is believed to have more than $100 in her change purse. Even allowing for the price of illicit liquor under Prohibition, $100 offers the promise of intoxication on a grand scale.

It takes two detectives one day to discover Myrtle, insensate, in the St Paul Hotel.

Myrtle is sent to stay with her sister Mary Pense on Ben Lomond Drive. Myrtle requires someone to watch her constantly, and Babe is wrung out. A doctor will look in on Myrtle, prescribe whatever is necessary to keep her calm, and help her through the worst of the DTs.

Myrtle has other plans. Myrtle sneaks out of her sister’s house, and vanishes. This time she makes it as far as the Balboa, a favorite haunt. Her room is pretty, and has a view of the ocean, although Myrtle is not enjoying it because Myrtle is trying to drink herself into oblivion. When the police eventually find her, Myrtle threatens to jump from a window, so the police call the fire department. The fire department sets up outside the hotel just in case Myrtle does decide to jump, at which point Babe – as Babe tells him the next day over the phone, when he gets in touch to see if there is anything he can do to help – feels as though the whole affair has mutated into the plot of one of their own pictures.

The police and the fire department decide that Myrtle might respond better to a woman’s entreaties, since she shows no signs of wishing to be spoken to by men, and by her husband in particular. The only policewoman available works for the juvenile department, which seems to equip her perfectly for the task of dealing with an intoxicated Myrtle, who permits the policewoman to enter the room through the door without Myrtle first exiting through a window.

At the jail, Myrtle gives her name as Myrtle Hardy, and her address as 3687 Fredonia, but declines to use her one phone call to talk to Babe. Instead, she contacts Mary Pense, while outside the reporters convene. Naturally, the police are curious as to how Myrtle came by the liquor in her possession, and pose this question to Mary Pense when she arrives to post bail. Mary Pense informs them that the alcohol was prescribed by a physician for an unspecified condition – which, the look on Mary Pense’s face makes clear, is one endured only by women, and is therefore not a subject fit for discussion in a police station.

Every newspaper in the country reports the story. The studio claims that Myrtle is suffering from melancholia and a nervous breakdown, a statement that at best contains euphemisms, and is at worst a lie, and is fatally undermined when Myrtle is subsequently charged with excessive use of liquor. Myrtle’s attorney waives arraignment in psychopathic court, and advises the judge that there is nothing wrong with his client mentally.

Myrtle is paroled, but only on condition that she will cooperate with her treatment at a private facility.

Back to the sanitarium. Back to Rosemead.

The name, for Babe, has become a joke.

But Babe is sanguine, even cheerful, when Hal Roach eventually reopens for business. Babe looks relaxed. Babe has used the opportunity offered by the studio going dark to take Myrtle on a restorative cruise to Cuba, with every bartender on land and at sea under strict orders to serve her nothing stronger than water.

Viola Morse understands Babe’s situation, or if Viola Morse does not understand, then Viola Morse maintains a pretense of understanding for Babe’s sake, just as Alyce Ardell does for his.

He, too, has just returned from a cruise, in his case Hawaii, accompanied by Lois, and his daughter, and Lois’s mother Ella. Strange, he thinks, that he and Babe should try to save their marriages in the same way, even as they both sleep with other women.

He feels sorry for Babe, but sorry for Myrtle, too. Myrtle may be a drunk, and she may be making Babe’s life a misery, but her own life is worse. Myrtle has no career, and no interests beyond drinking, but she has a memory of what was lost, which is why she drifts back to the Balboa, where she once danced and drank with the rest of the Balboa Amusement Producing Company when Long Beach, not Hollywood, was the heart and soul of the motion picture industry.

When she was pretty Myrtle Reeves.

When she might have been a star.

Now Babe has Viola Morse, but Myrtle has no one, no one but Babe.

And soon, he cannot help but feel, she will no longer even have Babe.

Getting arrested might be the best thing that could have happened to Myrtle, Babe tells him. I think she just needed to be frightened into seeking help.

It may be that Babe believes this. Perhaps by saying it aloud Babe can even make it true. Babe has bought a new house on North Alta Drive in Beverly Hills, and what man invests in a house for his wife and himself if there is no future for them?

And in their new home Myrtle now sits, fresh from Cuba, fresh from Rosemead, and wonders how she will fill her days without drinking. Babe leaves her each morning to work on pictures, and to see, whenever possible, Viola Morse. If Babe is no longer being faithful to Myrtle, then Babe is at least endeavoring to retain his sanity.

I hope you’re right, he tells Babe.

Jimmy Finlayson, standing within earshot, eyes hidden behind tinted glasses, ears picking up every word, raises again the eyebrow that has made his career, but this time says nothing at all.