For Faye and Ward it was like leaving their youth behind them for good. The house in Palm Springs had to be vacated by June. But in the meantime, it gave Faye and Ward a place to leave the children for a few weeks. She had leads to several houses to rent, and the furniture would wait in storage until then. She was going to drive down to Palm Springs with all of them, and then go back to Los Angeles alone to find a house, while Ward oversaw the packing up of the house in Palm Springs. He insisted that it was the least he could do, after all she had tackled alone in L.A. She didn't have to touch a thing this time, she just had to find them a decent place to live. And she knew it wasn't going to be easy to do. With the sale of the shipyard, the house in Beverly Hills, all their furniture, their art, the collection of rare books, the cars, and the house in Palm Springs with most of its contents too, they would have just enough to pay off all of their debts, with about fifty-five thousand to spare, which, carefully invested, would eke out barely enough to support them all. They were going to rent a house, and Faye was hoping she could find something cheap. And as soon as they were all settled in, and the children went back to school in the fall, she was going to see about getting a job. Of course Ward was talking about getting one too. But she had more faith in her own abilities to find work, and it would be easier for her. She had worked before, and even if she was thirty-two, she certainly wasn't over the hill yet, not for what she wanted to do. And Lionel would be starting first grade, Greg would begin kindergarten, the twins would be in nursery school, she would have plenty of free time. She was keeping only their nurse to keep an eye on all of them, and the baby as well, and do the housework and cook. Baby Anne was only four months old and not much trouble yet. It was a perfect time for Faye to leave home. And as she thought of it on the drive to Palm Springs, she felt suddenly guilty about the baby again. The others had all spent so much time with her at the same age, but this time she hadn't had a moment to spare for her. She had barely seen the baby since she'd been born. But disaster had struck so immediately after her birth, it was impossible to even think of her more than now and then, she had so many other things on her mind. Ward glanced over at her several times as they drove, noticed the frown and patted her hand. He had promised her he would drink less once they got to Palm Springs, and she hoped he would keep his word. The house was smaller there and the children would have been much more aware of it if he was drunk all the time. Besides, he had a lot to do, and Faye hoped it would keep him occupied.
She went back to Los Angeles two days later, by train, and moved into a small room at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel when she arrived. The houses she saw were depressing beyond words. In bad neighborhoods, with tiny backyards and small ugly rooms. She combed the papers, and called all the agencies, and finally, desperate, by the beginning of the second week, she found a house that was not quite as ugly as the rest, and was large enough for all of them. It had four good-sized bedrooms on one floor. She had already decided to double up the boys, and the twins, and the nurse and Anne could also share a room, and the fourth bedroom would be for her and Ward. Downstairs there was a large somewhat gloomy cheaply paneled living room, a fireplace that had not worked in years, a dining room that looked out on a bleak little garden, and a big old-fashioned kitchen, big enough to put a big kitchen table in. The children would certainly be closer to her than they ever had before, and she tried to tell herself that it would be good for them, that Ward wouldn't hate it and refuse to live in it, and the children wouldn't cry when they saw the dreary rooms. The best thing about it was the rent, which was an amount they could afford. And it was in a family neighborhood in Monterey Park which was a long, long way from their old life in Beverly Hills. There was no kidding anyone about that, and when she returned to Palm Springs, she didn't really try to. She told them all that it would be “for a while,” that it was an adventure they would share, that they would all have chores to do, and they could plant pretty flowers in the garden which would grow. And when Ward faced her when they were alone, he stared at her openly and said the words she feared:
“How bad is it really, Faye?”
