I can write a book anytime as long as I have my husband with me. Chuck really is the only thing that matters to me when it comes right down to it.”
After she dropped Rosalie off, Harlean rushed home. She burst through the door and called out for Chuck, eager suddenly for the assurance of his arms around her again, but the only sound that came in answer was from Duke Ellington’s orchestra. Chuck had forgotten to turn off the radio before he’d gone out.
As she glanced around she saw that he hadn’t even left her a note. There was only the Saturday Evening Post spread open on the sofa and a half-empty cup of coffee on the floor in front of it. She worked hard to press back her disappointment. She wondered what he would think if she told him about what had happened earlier at the Fox studio but of course she had no intention of telling him. He wouldn’t be pleased, it might even make him angry because Rosalie was right, he did get jealous easily. He’d said more than once that he couldn’t bear even the thought of losing her, which made sense to her after the traumatic way he had lost both parents, so she tried to be understanding about it.
After all, that was the deeper reason he drank so much, wasn’t it? He hadn’t yet fully grieved their loss, or accepted that he was not at risk of losing her to some sudden pull of fate, too. She had tried so many times to talk to him about it since that first night, but he always swiftly changed the subject. She wanted desperately to help him, but she just wasn’t sure how to do it. Right now, the blissful calm between them seemed reason enough to leave it alone for now.
Since he wasn’t home, Harlean went into the bedroom and stuffed the letter from the studio executives into a hatbox in her closet, then closed the door. When she turned back she saw their silver-framed photograph of the two of them taken on their honeymoon cruise displayed next to the orchids. He must have set that out before he left, and the assurance that seeing them gave her was enough to bring a smile back to her face.
Yes, the letter was certainly flattering but it was going to stay right there where she had hidden it. Her marriage meant more than the momentary whim of a collection of casting agents.
“Breakfast in bed, milady,” Chuck said with a gallant nod as he set the tray on her lap one morning after they had been out late the night before with Rosalie and Ivor.
He was barefoot and wearing only a pale blue pair of pajama bottoms.
Harlean struggled to sit up as she brushed the hair back from her face. “What’s this for?” she sleepily asked.
“Just for being you. I brought all of your favorites—hard-boiled egg, orange juice, coffee and toast with marmalade. Look, doll, I know I’m not the easiest person sometimes, so I have to work that much harder at things.” There was a single pink rose in a bud vase beside her coffee. She leaned in to smell its sweet fragrance before she looked up at him.
“You’re perfect just as you are, Chuck.”
He drew back the draperies and morning light flooded their bedroom. His expression was calm and she could see that he was totally at ease. “If only that were true.”
Harlean pushed away all thought of the hidden note and pressed a happy kiss onto his cheek. “I’m starving.”
“I knew you would be.”
He sank onto the bed beside her and propped himself back against the headboard as she took a sip of coffee. “I have something for you,” he said.
And with that, he drew from his end table a small leather volume and gave it to her. He was awkward with it, this humble offering, one he did not fully appreciate, but it was an offering nonetheless to the woman he loved—an early volume of Keats’s poetry. Harlean gasped seeing it. Tears brightened her eyes.
“How did you know?”
“I’ve listened to every word you’ve ever spoken and I’ve heard them all. Read me one,” he bid her.
“Are you sure?”
In response he very tenderly said, “I’m not going to pretend I understand any of those poems, but read me a bit of something and I promise to try.”
And so she read him her favorite poem by John Keats, taking time with each exquisite line, because it was the one that had always reminded her of love, of marriages, and how they came apart sometimes, as her parents’ marriage had. It also made her the more insistent that her own never would.
Afterward, she kissed him again but more deeply this time. Her heart was so full of love for this complicated, tender young man, and it made her worry for him. She so wanted him to be happy here. Then she asked him about his new world here, and how his golf game with the others was coming along.
Chuck had been disappearing from the house for hours at a time when she and Rosalie were off shopping for furniture. She knew he was working to be included in the group of young men in the neighborhood. But for now the saving grace in Harlean’s mind was seeing him carefree, his demons hopefully put to rest. Winning them over was at least an objective and she decided that it was better for him to have some sort of goal than none at all.
As she had predicted to him over dinner one evening a few days earlier, he was eventually invited to the country club to join them for a game of golf and then for tennis. Their days of sporting routinely ended with drinks at the country club bar in a private room where a blind eye was turned to the dictates of Prohibition.
“I’m pretty pitiful at it really,” he said of his golf game. “But my aim at this point is to charm them sufficiently so that they don’t care.”
She pressed another breezy kiss onto his cheek, rose from the bed, then yawned and stretched in a long butter-yellow ray of sunlight. “If you haven’t won them over yet, you will soon enough.”
“You really do believe in me, don’t you, doll?”
“One hundred percent. I just want you to be happy. And thank you for the book.”
“You really like it, then?”
She heard the familiar catch in his voice, just a note—but it came from that fragile need for reassurance. “You knew I would. It’s incredible. It’s a very rare volume, you know.”
“I’d like to think I’ll always know what you like.”
“You sure don’t have to win me over like that with things, Chuck. You know I adore you already. I always will.”
He searched her face for a moment and when she saw him finally give away just a hint of a smile, she knew that he did.
Later that day they decided to go to the pictures. Harlean was thrilled that Chuck was willing to sit through a romantic comedy because she knew he disliked them. He didn’t even complain about this one, though, and he told her he actually enjoyed it as they walked back to their car. Marriage was give-and-take, and it was so good to feel that they were both doing their part. Harlean couldn’t imagine anything that could be better than what the two of them had together right now. She loved decorating their home, and learning to cook. Even thoughts of writing a novel began to fade from her mind. The only thing lacking was that she missed her family more every day, her mother most especially, but she tried her best not to think too much of that.
* * *
Over the next few days, Harlean relished seeing how happy Chuck was here in their lovely hideaway, and how at ease he was when they were together, cooking together, or when she was trying to teach him about poetry. Please let things stay just as they are, she found herself thinking. She repeated that to herself daily until it became almost like a mantra. Coming to California had been good for him. He had left everything behind in the Midwest just as she had. She said it to herself even that evening a few days later, when his new set of friends delivered him back home, propped up between them after an afternoon of carousing.
“Ol’ Chuck sure is the life of the party. He was dancing