“HONEY, THAT EARLY STUFF in Hollywood we talked about yesterday is so fucking boring. I think we should start the next part of my life with Whistle Stop, the picture I did with George Raft. It was my first leading role. It got me the part in The Killers, with Burt Lancaster. Nobody remembers the shit I did before that. I barely remember it myself, fahcrissake.”
I was shocked. It was a terrible idea. It would mean eliminating much of her early life in Hollywood, and probably a good deal of her marriage to Mickey Rooney. Why would she want to do that? It didn’t make any sense at all. But I made a show of giving it some thought.
“What about the stuff we talked about last night? It would be a great shame to lose the story of your start at MGM, and we can hardly ignore your marriage to Mickey Rooney. We already have some wonderful stuff on that,” I reminded her.
“I don’t mean we cut it out completely, honey,” she said.
That sounded better, but I was still cautious. “What do you mean?” I said.
“I just don’t want to dwell on it, honey. Mick has already written his book. All the stuff about our marriage and the divorce is in there. I don’t want to go over that ground again. It’s old hat, honey. Ancient history. Nobody cares about that stuff today. We’ve all moved on from there, fahcrissake.”
“When you say you don’t want to dwell on it—”
“I mean I don’t want to dwell on it, period,” she said flatly. “We can say what we need to say in a few lines.”
“A few lines?”
“It’s worth no more than that, honey, believe me,” she said serenely.
“But it’s a transitional part of your life—the end of your hillbilly days, the start of your Hollywood career. So much was happening. I don’t think we can skate over it like that, Ava. No one else can talk about that time more knowledgeably, more entertainingly, than you can—especially about your marriage to Mickey Rooney.”
“This book is about me, Peter. Not about fucking Mickey Rooney.”
“Dick Snyder will definitely expect us to cover it,” I said.
“Mr. Snyder can whistle for it,” she said.
I knew that one rule of ghostwriting is that you must never let the star make the rules. But I also knew that now was not the time to argue about it. I suspected that somebody had put ideas in her head since we discussed our schedule the previous evening. “I don’t see how we can avoid it,” I said reasonably.
“You don’t like my idea?”
“Not really, Ava. No.”
“Fuck you,” she said.
“Don’t beat about the bush, Ava. Tell me what you really think,” I said. I wasn’t trying to be a smart-ass. I just thought it would make her laugh and ease the tension that was growing between us. Instead, it made her very angry. I’d forgotten another rule of ghostwriting: never tease a movie star.
“I’ll tell you what I really think, baby,” she said. “I think you want me to get into the whole fucking thing about my drinking with Mickey. You want me to say I was a teenage piss artist. If that’s what you want, you can forget it right now. You’re not going to lead me down that path, baby.”
“Baby” was a dangerous word. “Honey” was fine, but “baby” usually meant trouble.
“People have warned me about you, baby,” she said.
“Who?” I asked. I was curious, although I could guess.
“Lots of people,” she said.
“Do you want to give me a name?”
“Friends of mine.”
“Then why did you hire me, Ava?” I said.
“Because I figured I couldn’t shock you. I felt I could say anything to you, and we could talk it through. I thought we were going to decide together what goes in the book,” she said.
“Isn’t that what we’re doing?” I said. I now realized who she had been talking to. They were Spoli Mills’s anxieties, not hers. I decided not to make an issue of it. “We can still talk things through,” I said. “I don’t want to put words in your mouth, Ava.”
“Then what the fuck are you here for, baby? I thought putting words in my mouth was your job. The whole point of you.”
“But they will be your words, Ava. I just have to clean them up a little.”
She still didn’t smile.
She said, “I thought we had a deal—if I don’t mention it, you don’t ask about it, right?”
“I don’t remember that deal, Ava,” I said.
“Well, I’m reminding you of it now, baby. And I was never a fucking hillbilly, by the way,” she said. She seemed to have no idea how much of her life was already in the public domain. But I didn’t reply. I didn’t want to start another argument about the contents of the book, about what she would say, what she wouldn’t say. I wanted to stay clear of that debate for the time being.
“And you were never a piss artist,” I said as reassuringly as I could manage.
“Well, I was certainly having a damn good time giving the impression of being one,” she conceded, and that made her laugh, although it was more mirthless than I would have liked.
“Is that what’s worrying you?” I said.
She stared at me, frowning. “That story’s been told a thousand times, honey. It doesn’t worry me. The scandal magazines write about it every goddamn week,” she said.
That wasn’t true anymore, of course. Forty years ago it might have been so, and for a moment I had a flash of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard telling William Holden she was still a big star, it was only the pictures that got smaller. That made me sad, but I think I understood her a little better.
I reminded her that Mickey Rooney had been an important figure in her life—“at least for a year he was,” I said. I thought it might make her smile again. It was worth the risk.
“He stuck around longer than that, honey,” she said, but didn’t smile. “I didn’t shake him off until he joined the army.”
I agreed that Rooney had written his own book, and he’d covered their marriage and divorce in that, but people were going to want to hear about that time from her perspective, I said. The publishers would certainly expect her to deal with it, I added.
“I’ve already told you about him, honey. If you want more, you’ll have to make it up. Go ahead, Mick won’t mind. Just give him some good lines. He’s not going to complain. He’s an old hambone.”
It was impossible to reason with her when she was in this mood. But at least we were back on “honey” terms.
“I’m not going to make it up, Ava. It’s your book, not mine,” I said.
“I’ve told you all I know about Mr. Rooney, honey.”
“I don’t think so, Ava.”
“It’s all you’re going to get, honey.”
“You’ve told me some funny anecdotes, some funny bits. But we haven’t gotten to grips with your life together at all, Ava. I haven’t a clue how that relationship develops. Unless you give me a little more, I have no idea how I’m going to handle this chapter,” I said.
“Howard was kindness itself to Mama when she was dying. I nearly killed the fucker once but he was marvelous to Mama when she was dying,” she said. “All her life she had to roll with the punches. I got my survival instincts from her. But Howard got her the best palliative care money could buy. I could never have afforded the things he did for her. He sent two specialists from New York. Another from L.A. When I think of Howard Hughes now, I think of his kindnesses to Mama, his sweetness, not the fights we had.”
The startling change of subject made it clear that she was bored with the subject of Mickey Rooney, and was not going to discuss it anymore. We had clearly gotten off on the wrong foot, and I knew that I had to let it go for now. I was grateful that the storm had passed.