Mama had put on her glad rags, a green silk dress, with silver appliqué at the neck, which I knew Daddy had always loved her in. She had lost a bit of weight, I thought. That was the time Inez told me Mama had the big C.
Does she know? I said. I was shocked. “Of course she knows, honey, just as sure as anything in this world, but she doesn’t want us obsessing over her. She’s dying, but she refuses to let on, and neither must you,” Inez said.
I didn’t tell Mickey about Mama’s condition, not right away, but he was marvelous anyway. He couldn’t have been nicer, kinder, or more attentive. He might have been playing a command performance for the Queen of England. He sang to her—“Oh, You Beautiful Doll,” which was one of her favorites, “Carolina in the Morning,” “You Do Something to Me,” he did a whole bunch of those numbers, “The Bells Are Ringing”—he clowned, he told her funny and mildly scandalous stories about her favorite movie stars: Judy Garland, Gable, Spencer Tracy. Mama had such a good time, the years just rolled away. She didn’t seem to have a care in the world.
When we were getting ready to leave, she held me in her arms. “Ava child, you’re a pretty woman now, and you’ve sure filled out nicely, but you’ll always be my little girl,” she said.
“I know that, Mama,” I said.
“If only your Daddy was here to share this moment with me. He would have been so proud of you.”
Remembering that moment, I began to cry. All those happy days came flooding back to me. Imagining that I was weeping over the failure of our marriage—he was a conceited little sod but I suppose, at least partly, so was I—Mickey said: “Hey, what’s with the sob stuff, honey? Don’t let a little old divorce between friends spoil your day, sweetheart. It happens all the time in Tinsel Town. It means nothing.”
When I told him that my Mom had died that morning, he broke into tears, too. He could cry at the drop of a hat. I told you that. He and Louis Mayer were the best criers on the MGM lot. But that was the first time I knew his tears were as genuine as mine.
The evening my divorce was made final, I had dinner with Howard Hughes. We had been seeing each other on a regular basis since he read in the newspapers that I had started divorce proceedings against Mickey. I didn’t know it at the time, but Howard had a weakness for newly divorced women. He’d moved in on Kate Hepburn immediately after her divorce from Luddy Smith, he pursued Lana Turner straight after she split with Artie. I’m sure there were plenty of others. “Wet decks,” Johnny Meyer called us, God knows why, although knowing Johnny, I’m sure it had some sexual, if not downright dirty, connotation.
Howard’s appeal was the opposite of Mickey’s. He was an older man and he was infinitely more serious and smarter and sophisticated than anyone else I’d dated up to then. He was richer, too, of course.
He was still seeing plenty of other women but that didn’t stop him proposing to me all the fucking time. The fact that I had said yes to him once—the time he wanted me to get a quickie divorce from Mick in Nevada before my California one became legal and I succumbed to his flattery and said I would—only encouraged him. I told you, Louis Mayer talked me out of that, thank God. “It wouldn’t be fair to Mick,” he’d said. The hypocrisy of the man! Or maybe he was just sticking to the routine double standards of Hollywood in those days.
Anyway, that night, my first night back in circulation—at least officially—Howard took me to dinner at the Players, an exclusive private club on the Strip. I liked the Players. It was owned by his friend the movie director Preston Sturges. I never worked for Sturges but he ran a great club. Howard had taken it over—complete with its dance orchestra—just for the two of us. The events in Sturges’s films often bordered on the surreal—he made Sullivan’s Travels, a satire on Hollywood—and he must have loved the irony of his usually jam-packed club being exclusively possessed for the whole evening by two people.
By now, I was used to Howard’s excesses, and this was not the first time he had persuaded Sturges to hang a “closed” sign on his restaurant when he didn’t want to be disturbed or seen by other diners.
The first couple of times were amusing—although dining a deux in an empty restaurant can lack a bit of atmosphere, even if the service was great—probably because I knew that he wanted to seduce me with his wealth, and I was determined not to be impressed. That probably sounds blasé, but by this time there was no surprise, only a feeling of routine. It felt as if we were a couple of actors being served by other actors on a candlelit stage.
“Howard,” I said, up front, “you really don’t have to try to impress me. You know my answer is still going to be no.”
He looked puzzled. “I haven’t asked you the question yet,” he said.
“Yes you have, several times. By the time we get to the lamb chops, you are going to ask me to marry you—again.”
“How do you know that?” he said.
“You couldn’t have made it more fucking obvious. Couldn’t you have invited a few extras along to cheer the place up a bit—or at least look happy for us? Waiters’ smiles are a poor fucking substitute for genuine happiness, Howard,” I said.
He didn’t like me swearing, or drinking too much. He didn’t drink himself. He definitely didn’t like me making fun of him. Both of which I enjoyed immensely. I often did it just to annoy him. I knew there was no way I was going to marry him. I don’t know why I ever said I would the first time. Perhaps I just wanted to put distance between Mickey and me. At least it helped me to ease my way out of Mickey’s bed.
Although Howard was crazy about me—this was before I realized that he was just plain crazy—we still hadn’t slept together. I enjoyed the power I had over him. I enjoyed his frustration.
I knew that he had a reputation as a cocksman, but I always suspected that was a story Johnny Meyer had put around town for him. The powder-room scuttlebutt was that he was no great shakes in the sack—or he shtupped like a snake! Or he liked to make it with a couple of girls at the same time. Or he was a fag. You got all sides of the story in the powder room.
Anyway, I am not going to go into any details here, but I’ll say this: he knew how to take his time with a lady. At least with this lady he did. He was a patient sonofabitch, the complete opposite of Mickey Rooney. In fact, Howard and I didn’t get it on—I don’t think he even tried to kiss me, apart from the mildest kiss-on-the-cheek good night—until after my final decree from Mick. I gave in to him—or my curiosity finally got the better of me—a couple of nights after our dinner at the Players, actually.
As a lover, I still only had Mickey to judge him by, of course, but let’s say Howard Hughes was a pleasant surprise. He didn’t have Mick’s vivacity, his cheerfulness between the sheets—nor mine, to be honest. But Howard’s timing was nearly always perfect. He taught me that making love didn’t always have to be rushed. “Slow down, slow down, kid. We’ll get there!” he’d say. He was like a fucking horse whisperer. We usually had a good time in the feathers.
Once, when I told him how satisfying he was in bed, he said: “That’s because I don’t drink, kid. Especially when I’m with a lady I intend to please.” It took me a while to work that one out. That shows you how innocent I still was!
Although I never loved him the way I loved Mickey, nor the way I would love Artie, and Frank, he was a big part of my growing up and I loved him for that. We fought all the time, but I fought with all my men. It was my way of life, my way of loving, I suppose. But whatever it was, our intimacy never deepened. It never grew. We had no sense of complicity at all. We didn’t even share a sense of humor. I could laugh with Mick, I could cry with Frank, but with Howard there was always this kind of… shortfall, I suppose you could call it. Something wasn’t there. It wasn’t just the age gap thing between us, because that wasn’t really so bad, especially the longer it went on, but there was always something missing.