Some people there knew who she was, most didn’t, but from what she wrote, none of them cared. One of the good things about living there was that Austrians were generally unimpressed with celebrities, unless they were famous conductors or opera singers. Leonard Bernstein and Jessye Norman were mobbed for autographs on the street; Arlen Ford was not. She loved that. In one of her letters she said, “Sometimes living here I feel like a child hiding from my parents under the bed covers. I know they’ll be angry when they find me, but until then down here it’s cozy and safe. I get the feeling if I just stay still and don’t move, maybe they never will find me.”
Wishful thinking. Her disappearance was quickly noticed, and rumors started flying. After the one about her committing suicide (they hadn’t found the body yet), Roland issued a press release saying only that she was very much alive and well and was traveling in Europe. People believed what they wanted. One whisper had it that she was at a rehabilitation center trying to kick a drug habit, another that she was dying of cancer at the Mayo Clinic. One rumor even said she was married and living in Oslo. I sent that clipping. Her response was “At least they got the continent right. Please ask your husband if he thinks married life in Oslo would be a good career move for me.” We worried about her, but also believed she was happy far away in her new anonymous life.
While she was gone there was certainly no lack of offers of work. Roland sent innumerable Federal Express letters to Vienna describing the many different roles being offered, not to mention the princely salaries that accompanied them. Her answer was always no. She was too content, too involved in work on the house, not ready to come back yet. One of the few times she called us, I asked point blank if she thought she would ever be ready.
“Don’t scold me for being happy, Rose. If you do, you’re not my friend.”
She was right and I felt contrite, until I realized I hadn’t asked the question in a scolding tone. I simply wanted to know if she would ever return to acting. Since Roland had been listening in on an extension, I checked with him to make sure my voice hadn’t had anything hard or accusing in it. Agreeing with me, he said he thought her remark came from guilt at having dropped out of a life so many millions of people would love to have.
“Yeah, but that life was destroying her. She didn’t have anything left.”
He shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. Don’t forget that guilt keeps score. She’s happier now in one way, but we both know the woman’s talent and potential; no matter how fulfilling it is to repair a door or plant roses, something in her is probably howling to act again. The more talented they are, the more voices are inside disagreeing about what they should be doing.”
“That’s sick! Why should anyone feel guilty for being happy?”
He came up and put his arms around me. His familiar and beloved smell was suddenly there, as was his heavy chin on my shoulder. “Real happiness doesn’t last long. If it goes on any longer than a week or a month, all our bad parts start shouting something’s wrong here. Fire! Man overboard! Call the cops!”
I was nose to nose with him. “Do you believe that?”
He kissed me. “Yes, I do. We want happiness, and we work hard to get it. But when it comes, we end up looking over its shoulder for the bill or—”
I hated the thought. He was absolutely right but I hated it. To stop whatever else true and horrible he was about to say, I put a hand over his mouth, then my mouth against my hand. We stood looking at each other until he closed his eyes.
When the repairs on her house were finished, Arlen invited us to spend a few weeks in Austria with her. As usual, Roland was working too hard and said it was impossible for him to leave. I blew my top and gave so many good reasons why we should go that it shamed him into a compromise—a ten-day trip to Europe.
We flew directly to Vienna, where we were met at the airport by a curiously subdued Ms. Ford. Both of us had expected her to be exuberant, full of the lust for life and energy she had lost in California. It was only logical to expect it after reading her sparkling letters from here. But driving back to town, she was quiet and almost monosyllabic when answering a question. I was torn between wanting to see the sights and immediately getting all the news from the new Arlen Ford. I kept looking to see if her face showed any clues. Her hair was a shock and an indication of something. I just couldn’t figure out what. She’d cut it short as a man’s, and looking at her new profile, for a few beats you really didn’t recognize the famous Arlen Ford. The lines on her face hadn’t disappeared but had softened, despite the fact she wore little makeup. Lines come from making the same faces a hundred thousand times. Whatever had been happening to her in this European life, she was not making the same faces here as she had in Hollywood. I thought she looked more beautiful than ever.
As we drove along the Danube a few miles from her place, Roland slid forward on the back seat till he was right behind me and said, “You don’t sound different, Arlen, but you do look slightly more saintly. Probably from all this spartan living you’ve been doing.”
She glanced at him in the rearview mirror and pursed her lips. “There’s so much going on that I have to tell you about. You know how much I love the two of you, but it feels strange having you here. You guys are American and L.A.; this is Vienna. I feel I’ve been living in a cloister all these months and this is the first day I’ve been allowed visitors.”
“Yeah, to us Hollywood types you’re Ford, the movie star. But to Vienna, you’re Sister Marie Thérèse in the cloister.”
“Exactly! Well, not exactly, because Weber Gregston’s at the house. He’s been here a few days. Broke into the cloister and pulled me out before you arrived.”
“Weber’s here? Why?”
“He wants me to be in a new movie.”
“And you said no.”
“Roland, it might be too good a role to pass up, damn it.”
Roland grabbed the back of my neck and gave it a quick squeeze. “Are we going to talk about this now or should we wait till I’ve finished my seizure?”
“We’re going to wait and talk it all over together. I want Weber in on it. He’s part of the family too. But not now. Want to see the hospital where Franz Kafka died? It’s right near here.”
She was a completely different person in Vienna from the one I had known. Her house was the first indication. Inside, it was so empty that it gave me the instant one hundred percent creeps. Her home in Los Angeles was full of tsatzkes from everywhere—flea markets, antique stores, the different countries where she’d made films. I loved the way it exuded life and a lovely eccentricity.
By comparison, the Vienna house was stark. A black leather couch and an exquisite black-and-white Chinese carpet, and that was it for the living room. You could have gone bowling in there, it was so empty. But compared to the other rooms, it looked as crowded as a discount furniture showroom. The floors were all gorgeously finished parquet, the walls cloud white. There was a futon in her bedroom, even a television that sat on the floor in a corner squat and lonely. Arlen liked to watch the news to see how much of the German she could pick out. But where were her clothes? The high piles of books that were invariably in any Ford residence? A radio? Pencils? Pots and pans in the kitchen? There was a pot, a pan. Where were the other things? The stuff that goes into a day in the life of anyone? I didn’t ask, for fear she’d say there weren’t any.