Jump ahead now, again to 1950, back at that Buffalo drugstore with Desi; Lucille feels sick, and she is sure it’s the fault of all these memories. (It isn’t.)
DeDe and her second husband, Ed Peterson, had gone off to Detroit without Lucille or her brother. DeDe and Ed were seeking “respectable jobs in the skilled or semiskilled industries.” And so, at the Weideman Cigar Co. of Michigan, for a while there, DeDe very nearly got a— Okay, well, next she inquired at the Krolik garment factory and almost, or just about— But, see, then DeDe did find partial employment, at least a couple days at— DeDe ended up taking classes in “domestic science and household arts.” This was at the Lansing Young Women’s Christian Association’s vocational school: old-crone teachers, parchment diploma, good luck to you.
When Lucille was nine, DeDe finally returned to Jamestown for good. And daughter looked up at mother and new father.
Lucille said, “DeDe, will you and Ed stay and be my parents?” Ed Peterson eyed her, and not a thing in the man smiled.
* * *
—
IT’S 1:30 A.M. now, in Buffalo, and Lucille has left that drugstore counter; she’s walking arm in arm with Desi. The screen of every storefront’s window is playing its late show of the moon. Lucille notices just one stranger halfway down the long, dark street, in front of a lunch stand, lurking—maybe a fan, maybe a drunk, could be both—and when this man sees her, he begins waving frantically, without a sound. She’s glad to have the manly shield of a husband between her and this person. She leans against Desi as they cruise smoothly to the hotel.
Desi’s all right. This is how she’d patched things up with him after dancing with Hold-on: Desi had said, “Did you know that Jewish guy?” She’d answered, “It’s not like we drank out of the same bottle.” Then Desi’d snorted, closed his eyes, opened his eyes, smiled at her, and that had been that.
The hotel doorman has Bill Holden’s manly glossed hair, neat even at this hour. But he doesn’t have Holden’s shoulders or dimply chin. We all have one or another thing. Only the Bill Holdens of the world have them all.
Lucille and Desi open the door to room 258, the suite, such as it is. Their longtime maid, Clara, is there. “Mr. Arnaz!” Clara says, her plump, milky face clotted with worry. “I told them you were out, but they insisted.”
“ ’S’okay!” Desi says. His hand thrusts out to receive the newspapermen—all three of them—who now cross the drawing room.
“Miss Ball,” one wearing a blue suit says. “Give us a quote!” the second says: “You certainly made us wait all night.”
All of them men, she thinks. Men, men, men. Are there no real-life Lois Lanes? She can feel their eyes on her body.
This is what it means to be a beautiful, famous woman. Or famous enough for the press to come out in Buffalo. Not that the fame was ever much. Even before its current fade-out. And perhaps the beauty, too, now. She can feel eyes prod her face, prod her skin, the exposed real estate under her throat. Her breasts. It is not friendly. She can feel eyes prod her hips and her thighs; it’s too forward. And even if she doesn’t want the attention, she’s cursing the scratchy crinkles around her own eyes—those little autographs signed by years. Do other actresses feel what she feels? This staring, these invasions? I hope I look all right. Ugh, the hungry insistent searching eyes of men.
It half-reminds her of some other time, some other night, some other man, very young, who looked at her like that. What was that kid’s name?
“How’s it feel to be back home, Miss Ball?”
The reporters appear lumpy compared to Desi; undercooked.
“She’s not from Buffalo,” one says. “Don’t tell me you call Jamestown Buffalo, Harry.”
And now, implausibly, two of them start talking to each other as if she and her husband weren’t there:
“Ah, it’s all the same once you get west of Syracuse.”
“A coffee-and-doughnut hole like Jamestown, though?”
“Fair enough. A dump if ever there was one.”
The third reporter catches Lucille’s attention. “You know,” he tells her, “there is the Buffalo Audubon Center. Might be fun for you. The mornings are nice and cool here.”
“Boys,” she says. “Boys.”
Why do they treat me as if fame works retroactively? she wonders. Why would it change where I was born? Do they think I don’t know it here?
She goes to bat now for a place she’s always putting down.
“Here’s the thing about Jamestown,” she says. “You ever try to enjoy some crowded, dirty California beach after seeing how pretty Lake Chautauqua looks in August?”
“Well,” Desi says. “ ’S nice, but Jamestown’s not the Playa del Este, now, is it?”
His voice still surprises her after all these years. How it loses its characteristic tightness when easing into Spanish.
“Cuba, gentlemen,” he says. “Cuba.”
“Bet the Chiquita banana girls down there are nothing compared to Miss Ball,” says reporter No. 1 in the blue suit. His voice is a vocal leer.
Desi has numerous ways he might answer this: Hey, my mother is Cuban, for one. My mother is no banana girl.
“Ah,” Desi says, giving himself a small, calming breather.
One of the things he’s good at is frightening the type of men who could use a good fright. Does he curl his hands into fists now?
“Ah,” he says. “Gentlemen.”
And with effort that only Lucille notices, Desi smiles his widest: his big-timey smile that would light up a million cathode-ray tubes behind a million screens, if only given the chance.
“I may be Cuban Pete,” he says, “but you’ve got something there, fellows: She is Sally Sweet.” A meeting with the press was not a time for fists.
In his smile there are just top teeth, a dimple nuzzled in one cheek. And his wink shows charm, and material comfort, and striving itself. The reporters nod like a troop of baboons.
Where had these reporters kept hidden these pads they’re now scribbling in? “Oh come now,” Lucille says, “my hubby’s just getting sentimental about me, fellows.”
Normally she’d be up for this banter. She’s a bit ill now, though. Tired and sort of nauseated, and she wants to speed these men toward the moment they’ll bow out of the room and her life.
She senses Desi sensing her restlessness. A twitch in the hand he’s rested on her back. So she feels the first rattles of her own smile coming on. Even though sleep’s begun to pull at her eyes and brain. Because ambition isn’t a targeted dreaming; you can’t knock down any one enthusiasm without knocking down the whole pile of matchsticks.