The Age of Dreaming (29 page)

But I realized something else as I watched her that night. Even without the endorsement of the New York film critics, she still would have been this happy. She had never acted in films or worked in the theater for attention or approval. She had not needed recognition or an adoring crowd to make her feel that she was doing something valuable. Although she had now received a major award, the victory was almost redundant. In pressing on for all those years, she had already won.

I saw Hanako only one more time, a few weeks after the party. She had sent me a card thanking me for my attendance at Yoshimura and inviting me to tea at her house. Although I was somewhat apprehensive about seeing her alone, I was also—I must admit—rather pleased. In the time that we were colleagues, we had shared many hours of pleasant conversation—just the sort of give-and-take I had missed so much in the intervening years, as my life had grown more solitary. I was curious to see whether our minds still met in this fashion; whether there was still the same ease between us.

As I drove out to her home in the Palisades, the decades fell away. Highway 1 was wider than it had been in 1912, when we used to drive out in William Moran’s company car, and there were many more houses cramped together along the beach. But the hills were the same, and the ocean, and I might have been twenty-one again, driving along the coast to my fantasy job beside a talented and beautiful woman.

Hanako lived in a small house that was nestled in the hills. The yard was a shaded alcove that cut into the hill itself; from the back, one could just make out a sliver of the ocean. The setting was peaceful and we talked easily in English, which came more naturally to me, now, than Japanese. The garden had a carp pool and a small arching bridge, fianked by two stone lanterns. Other than Hanako’s beloved cacti, which lined the side of the house, the scene reminded me of gardens from my youth.

“This looks like Japan,” I remarked as she led me over the bridge and to a small table at the far end of the garden. “I had the lanterns shipped over four years ago,” she said. “I went home soon after the war. My sister’s husband and children were lost in the bombings at Osaka, and I wanted to make sure that she was able to care for herself.”

“I am sorry to hear that. My family was fortunate. They were in Nagano-ken, and were spared any serious damage.” She gestured for me to sit, and poured green tea from a porcelain pot. “It is incredible—the great destruction, and now new cities rising whole from the ashes. Japan is reinventing herself and shaking off the past. Have you visited since the end of the war?”

I shook my head. “No, I haven’t been back at all since I first came to America.”

She looked at me strangely. “Why such a long absence?”

“I don’t know,” I said, although of course I did. I had never been as popular as Hanako in Japan, where people had viewed films like
Sleight of Hand
with disapproval. And after the passage of the immigration laws, there was such a backlash against all things American that Hollywood films—including mine—were despised. Then, of course, there were the events of 1922. For the several months that followed, I thought about making a trip to Japan after my career had resumed. By the time it became clear that it would never resume, I was simply too ashamed to go home.

Hanako considered me sadly, and then said in Japanese, “That’s truly unfortunate, Nakayama-san.”

I looked down at my tea, and then over at the pond, where several large carp, all fiecked orange and white, were pressing their mouths to the surface of the water, working their lips like mute humans.

“But I suppose,” said Hanako, returning to English, “your decision to stay here isn’t hard to understand. When I came to America as a teenager, I never thought I’d spend the rest of my life here. I always believed I’d return one day to Osaka.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“There was too much opportunity. I don’t know if I could have had such a varied career in Japan. Certainly I could not have run a theater company.” She looked at me over her cup of tea. “You always knew you would stay here, didn’t you?”

“Not at first—I planned to go home after university. But I suppose I knew I would stay once I entered the theater.”

“It was so simple in the beginning,” said Hanako. “It was as if we would always be acting in good productions, working with talented people, with the whole world ours for the taking.”

I nodded. “I could not have imagined a better way of life.”

“But even more than the work,” she said, “I loved the newness of it all, the sense of possibility. The excitement of working with other people who inspired and challenged me.” Here she took a sip of tea and looked out over her garden. “It’s funny. Some of my best memories of that time don’t involve the films at all. Some of my dearest recollections have to do with you, for example, and all the hours of conversation we had together.”

I gazed out where she was looking, between the hills and toward the ocean. “Yes,” I said, “it was a wonderful time.”

“Do you ever wonder,” she said, “what might have happened if we had lived our lives differently?”

And at first I thought she was referring to professional choices, my leaving Moran and her staying with his company. Then I thought she was referring to my lifestyle as a young man, the parties and liquor and women. Then I thought of Ashley Tyler’s death and all the events that preceded and followed it. But finally I came to think that she meant something else entirely, something my mind had often circled around but had always declined to embrace. “There is no use,” I began, trying to find the right words, “in wondering what might have been.”

“Indeed. But perhaps I speak not merely of what might have been, but of what may someday still be.”

I glanced at her briefly and found her eyes searching my face. Her hair was tied back into a neat bun and she wore a silk Western blouse and long skirt. And in this simple, unmannered outfit, she looked more lovely than a thousand gilded starlets. “I am far past the age of dreaming,” I said to her gently. “I am an old man now, simply living out his days.”

We were silent for several minutes. Two birds were calling to each other plaintively from opposite sides of the garden, and the wind was softly rustling through the trees. “Mr. Nakayama,” she began again, finally, “why did you stop working?”

I turned to face her. “You know why, Miss Minatoya. You know very well. Certain circumstances made continuing very awkward.”

“But that only limited your career in film. You still could have worked in the theater.”

“I was fine, I didn’t need money,” I said. “I bought property, and with rents and investments there was enough to last me through several lifetimes.”

“I’m not talking about your livelihood. I’m talking about the work. What about the
work
? You could have had a whole new career. Certainly you would have been welcome in my company. It’s tragic that your talent went unused.”

I shook my head and stared up at the trees, trying to find the calling birds. “I am fiattered that you think so much of me, Miss Minatoya. But I had no interest in returning to the theater.”

“You mean, after having been such a star in the movies, the theater was no longer enough?”

“No, I didn’t say that. I simply would not have been fulfilled. My ambitions had always been of a larger scale.”

“Perhaps that’s true,” she said after another silence. “But perhaps your ambitions were so large that they could never be fulfilled. You never married either, never had children.”

“That’s hardly fair. You have a lovely house and a successful career, but no husband, no family, no children. You speak of me, Miss Minatoya, but you are really no different. You are equally alone in the world.”

She shook her head. “I may have no family, but I am far from alone. And unlike you, it wasn’t my choice to remain unmarried. I
did
want to have a husband.” Now she looked at me directly. “But it was not in my power to make that happen. And there was no one else I wanted to marry.”

She continued to look at me, and I turned my eyes away. The implications of what she’d told me lay heavily on my mind, and there was no proper way to respond. “This tea is delicious,” I said to her finally. “Did you have it sent from Japan?”

I felt her eyes on my face, the weight of their disappointment. “Yes,” she said, “it came from Shizuoka.” And in that brief moment, all the tenderness had gone from her voice.

We had a few more strained exchanges, and it was clear we would not return to our former ease. After another twenty minutes or so, I prepared to take my leave. Hanako reiterated her interest in having me work with her company, and I said I would consider it, although we both knew that I would not.

At the door, she bowed deeply, a formal parting. “Goodbye, Nakayama-san,” she said in Japanese.

“Goodbye, Minatoya-san,” I responded, following her lead, and then I turned and walked slowly away.

And as I drove down Highway 1, retracing the route I knew so well, my mind ventured back to another exchange with Hanako, at the Pasadena Playhouse thirty years ago. For it occurred to me that the moment when I greeted her backstage; when I stood speechless and astonished by the power of her work—that moment could describe my entire life. I didn’t keep my silence, I realized now, because I did not know what to say. I kept my silence because words would have diminished what I felt, and the strength of those feelings confused me. And now, when it was many, many years too late, I mourned this inability to speak my own heart, as well as the empty decades that have followed. For it seems to me now that I have been reliving that moment through all the long years of my life. It seems to me that I have always been standing there with joy within my grasp, wanting to reach for it, but forever holding back.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

November 4, 1964

T
his bar, the Oak Grove Pub, is only three blocks from my town house, but I have never had occasion to stop here until tonight. It is a dark place with wooden interiors, as its name would suggest, with a clientele of plainly dressed, middle-aged people who are all clearly regular customers. I have walked by the green door many times—it is usually propped half-open—and wondered what the place was like inside. When I finally ventured in several hours ago, all the patrons turned toward me and squinted at once, like cave dwellers startled by a sudden light. Despite this rather inauspicious beginning, the bar has been a comfortable place to pass the evening. The bartender—a hard-of-hearing man named Tom—has kept my glass full of whiskey all night.

“Sure you’re all right to drive there, John?” he asks with every refill, although I’ve told him several times that my name is Jun and that I live close enough to walk.

“I’m fine, thank you,” I say now, forgoing the explanation. “How much do I owe you?”

“Own it?” he says, while he pours a pint of beer a bit further down the bar. “No, I don’t own it, I’m just the bartender. The owner, he’s one of those old Hollywood types. I never see him but he sends my checks on time.”

I wonder who the owner is, and if it’s someone I once knew, but refrain from pressing further. I don’t wish to discuss old Hollywood. Indeed, all I wanted to do when I got home this afternoon was to drink some good Scotch and pass the evening alone. I don’t have much of a taste for alcohol anymore, which explains why my liquor cabinet was empty, thus forcing me to venture outside. But this morning’s events were so trying, and my sense of equilibrium so consequently shaken, that I needed something to calm me down before I slept.

It is not surprising that my meeting with Nora Minton Niles should be so discomfiting. It’s been over four decades, after all, since we last spoke to each other, and the circumstances of our parting—which I’ve put out of my mind for so long—were anything but simple. But perhaps because of my own ability to dull the edges of memory, I had somehow managed to convince myself that our meeting would be nothing unusual, and that the past would remain safely in the past.

I drove to Nora’s house in Brentwood after my midmorning tea, arriving at 11 o’clock. Although I had not actually spoken to Nora directly—David Rosenberg, true to his word, had helped make the arrangements—I felt confident that her agreeing to a meeting with me was indicative of her general good will. I was—I must admit—rather apprehensive, an anxiety I tried to temper by telling myself that she wouldn’t receive me if she harbored bad feelings. Nonetheless, as I got ready, I took extra care to ensure that my hair was well-combed; that the pants and jacket I wore were neatly pressed. Approaching the address that Rosenberg gave me, I stopped at a small fiower shop and bought a mixed bouquet. Then I drove the last few blocks to Nora’s home.

The house was small and undistinguished, a white Spanish-style affair with a red tile roof. The hedges in front of the windows were overgrown, and grass sprouted up through cracks in the walkway. As I got closer, I noticed that the windows were covered with a thin gray layer of grime. There was nothing special about this house, nothing to mark it as the home of a former actress who had once been one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. When I knocked at the door, it was opened immediately by a middle-aged woman with red hair and a stern expression. I thought I had come to the wrong address, until the woman said, “Mr. Nakayama, I presume.”

“Yes,” I said, “I am Jun Nakayama. I have come to pay a visit to Miss Niles.”

“So they told me. They said you were a contemporary of Miss Niles. I’m sorry to say I’m not familiar with your work.” Then she seemed to remember herself, and moved aside. “Excuse me, sir. Please do come in.”

I stepped into the house and took off my jacket, which I hung over my arm, declining her offer to take it.

“I’m Amanda,” the woman said, closing the door behind me. “I’ve been with Miss Niles for fifteen years.”

“This is a lovely house,” I ventured, not knowing what else to say. “How long has Miss Niles resided here?”

“Oh, for thirty years at least, since she auctioned off the mansion. She lived here with her mother until Mrs. Cole passed away ten years ago.”

“You knew Mrs. Cole?”

“Yes, I did.” Although she was too polite to say anything unpleasant, the distaste in her voice, the wrinkled nose, made it clear that she did not hold Nora’s mother in high regard.

“I trust that Miss Niles has been well all these years?”

“I suppose so, sir, under the circumstances.”

I wondered which circumstances she was referring to. Did she mean the fact that Nora’s career had been aborted in the prime of her youth, when by all measures her greatest accomplishments should have lain ahead of her? Did she mean the sad truth that Nora lived with a bitter, dominating woman who chased away her daughter’s every chance at happiness?

Amanda lowered her voice and gestured for me to step into the living room. “She hasn’t had many visitors over the years, Mr. Nakayama. I’m afraid that you’ll find her much changed.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant by this, but I did not have time to wonder, for in another moment we had entered the living room. It was small, full of heavy furniture, with thick, drawn curtains that shut out the midday light. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw that several movie posters hung on the walls, from some of Nora’s biggest successes. Piled on the old piano, and on the lion-footed coffee table, were stacks of programs and old movie magazines. Framed photographs hung everywhere, mostly stills and publicity shots of Nora. And sitting in the middle of the large brown couch was Nora Minton Niles herself.

It was—there’s no sense in hiding it—rather a shock to see her. She looked unreal—or perhaps I couldn’t accept the reality she presented. Nora’s hair was plentiful and still very dark, but it had the dull, lifeless quality of a stuffed animal head, which only mocked its previous vitality. Her face was carved with deep wrinkles, and her skin so worn one could practically see through it. When she glanced up at us, her eyes—once such a dazzling blue— were muted and slightly unfocused. Had I not known her true age, I would have guessed her to be eighty. In truth, she was sixty-two—eleven years younger than I.

Amanda went over to the couch and sat down beside her, while I remained at the periphery of the room. “Miss Niles,” she said gently, touching Nora on the shoulder. “Miss Niles, Mr. Nakayama is here to see you.”

“Who?” Nora’s voice was incongruously loud, and she sounded distinctly annoyed.

“Mr. Nakayama, your former colleague. Mr. Rosenberg arranged it. You spoke with him last week. Do you remember?”

She shook her head, baffled, but then she looked up at me. I held the bouquet out toward her, and her face softened a bit. “I remember you. You’re the fiower man.”

After a moment of uncertainty, I stepped forward and said, “Yes. Yes, Nora. I’m the fiower man.”

“I loved your film,” she said. Then her voice changed again. “My mother thought it was indecent.”

“I am sorry to hear that. But I think she couldn’t always have disapproved of me. After all, we did eventually work together.”

Nora gazed at me intently, which was rather unsettling, for I did not know whether she was seeing me as I was, or as she had known me in the past. “You and I? My mother let us work together?”

“We appeared in six films together, don’t you remember?
The Noble Servant
was the first.”

At this point, Amanda must have felt that our visit was going well, for she stood up and smoothed down her apron. “I’ll go bring the tea. Would you like something to eat?”

I shook my head, and felt slightly panicked at the thought of her leaving the room. She must have sensed my apprehension, because she smiled and said, “Don’t worry, Mr. Nakayama. She’s perfectly harmless.”

When Amanda departed, I sat rather uncomfortably in the armchair directly across from Nora and held my jacket in my lap. Her mind seemed to have wandered off again, and she stared smiling at a spot beyond my shoulder. I took the opportunity to study her more closely. Beneath the mass of wrinkles, the face was familiar but distorted, as if I were looking at her through a slab of cracked glass. Her lipstick was dark red, and her mascara too thick; beneath her hair I could see the gray roots. She wore a cream-colored dress with wide, elaborate folds, which was buttoned up to her neck and ruffled at the sleeves. The bottom of the dress was dark with dirt, and her shoes—cream—colored as well, and rounded like a ballerina’s slippers—were worn and dirty. Suddenly I realized that the outfit looked familiar. Surely it could not have been her costume from
Flying Princess
, her comedy from 1917. But as I glanced around at the old furniture, the posters and pictures, I knew it was entirely possible.

“How have you been, Nora?” I asked, my voice too loud.

She didn’t respond for so long that I thought she hadn’t heard me. Just as I was about to repeat my question, she said, “I haven’t made a picture in a very long time. But I’m writing a book now. A novel. Would you like to hear it?”

I hesitated, but then said, “Certainly.”

She stood up and then, more nimbly than I would have expected, rushed over to her piano. There, she picked up an untidy stack of papers and sat down on the piano bench. “Wayward Winds,” she announced, and she began to read. While I understood that the story was about a river and some trees, I could not determine anything more about it. The sentences did not connect, the words were like the spewing of a broken water sprinkler, plentiful but erratic. What struck me more than anything was the sound of her voice, which was at once so familiar and so changed. If I closed my eyes, I could have imagined that this was the Nora of my youth—except I could not, and the person before me was a worn, unbalanced woman, a sad caricature of the lively girl she once had been.

After fifteen minutes or so, she stopped reading and looked up at me expectantly. “It’s wonderful,” I said. “Have you been writing long?”

“Oh yes!” she said smiling. “It helps to pass the time. It gives me something to do until my next role comes along.” At this moment, Amanda reentered the room, bearing a tray of tea cups, a pot, and some scones. She placed these in front of us and poured our tea, and then, after determining that all was in order, turned around and left us again. “Have you been working?” Nora asked, and I was sure now that she knew who I was.

I thought about Bellinger’s film and my upcoming screen test. But looking at her holding that yellowing manuscript, I said, “No. It has been some time since I appeared in a film.”

“We were good actors, weren’t we, Jun? Everyone used to love us.”

“Yes, we were.”

“Everybody loved us. You and me, and Mary, and Elizabeth Banks, and Charlie Chaplin, and Ashley Tyler.”

“Yes, Ashley Tyler,” I said, and my pulse quickened at speaking his name. “As a matter of fact, Nora, I wanted to talk to you about him.”

“I miss Ashley.” She gazed sadly at the floor. “He was always so good to me.”

“I believe that he cared for you deeply.”

“My mother said he only wanted one thing from me, but it wasn’t like that. He loved me for my mind.”

I paused for a moment, wondering how much she knew. “Your mother perhaps did not see Mr. Tyler for who he truly was.”

“He said I didn’t have to do what she told me to do. He treated me like a grown-up. He believed in me!”

I did not know what to say to her, so I looked down at my tea.

“I saw him again,” she said. “I saw him before they buried him. I paid a funeral attendant to let me in, and I kissed him and gave him a rose. I wanted to lie down there in the casket with him, but the attendant took me away.” She stared at a spot beyond my head, and I wondered what she was seeing. Then she said, “It wasn’t his baby, was it?”

I held fast to the chair to steady myself and worked to calm my breathing. “No, Nora,” I managed to answer. “No, it wasn’t.”

“My mother thought it was his, you know. My mother thought it was Ashley’s. But he never loved me that way. Never. Not even when I wanted him to.”

I drew myself up straight and spoke softly, as if trying to keep a frightened animal from scurrying away. “Excuse me, Nora, but there are some matters I’d like to discuss with you about that time. Or rather, some things I hope you’ll choose
not
to discuss. There’s a young man from Perennial named Josh Dreyfus, who happens to be Benjamin Dreyfus’ grandson, and he may come here asking questions about me.”

She looked at me as if just noticing my presence. “Benjamin Dreyfus’ grandson?”

“Yes, do you remember Benjamin Dreyfus, from the studio? His grandson may want to know a few things about me, and perhaps about you as well. About some of the things that we experienced together.”

“Benjamin Dreyfus’ grandson,” she said. “Yes, he was already here.”

I had just leaned over to pick up my tea, and at this, my hand stopped in midair. “Josh Dreyfus was already here?”

“He came last week. He wanted to know about you. I didn’t like him and asked Amanda to send him away.”

I sat back, my mind racing in several different directions. “So you didn’t tell him anything about the past?”

“He tricked me! He said he was Benjamin. But I saw his hair and his sunglasses and I didn’t want him in my house.”

I wasn’t sure whether or not to believe her. In her condition, she might remember an encounter with Ben Dreyfus as if it had occurred last week. “If he comes back, are you going to talk to him?”

“He wasn’t a nice man! I don’t want him in my house!”

Her voice was loud and she sounded upset, and I knew her state of mind would not be improved by the question I had to ask next. “Nora,” I said gently, “what happened to the baby?”

“Gone, baby,” she said in a sing-song voice. “Gone, baby. Baby gone.”

“What do you mean by
gone
, Nora? Did you go to the doctor?”