He stood in the doorway to the ugly house in Monterey Park, looking at her. “Do we give it another try? … No … more correctly, will you give me another chance, Faye?” She looked at him long and hard, and slowly a small smile dawned in her eyes. It was a smile born of wisdom and disappointment and pain. She was no longer a young girl. Life was no longer the same as it had been a few years before. Her whole world had turned upside down, and she had survived. And now this man was asking her to walk along beside him again. He had hurt her, deserted her, cheated on her, betrayed her. And yet, deep inside, she still knew that he was her friend, that he loved her, and she him, and that she always would. He didn't have the same instincts that she had, and was not nearly as well equipped to survive. But perhaps, side by side, hand in hand … maybe … just maybe … in fact, she was sure of it. More important, she was sure of him again.
“I love you, Ward.” She smiled up at him, feeling suddenly young again. It had been an endless few months without him. She never wanted to live through that again. She could survive anything but that, even poverty.
He stood kissing her then, as the children looked on, and suddenly they all began to laugh, and Greg pointed at them, laughing the hardest of all, as Ward and Faye began laughing too. Life was sweet again, as it had been long before, only better now. They had both been through hell and back, not unlike Guadalcanal in some ways. But they had won the war. Finally. And now life could begin again. For all of them.
CHAPTER 10
Ward gave up his furnished room in West Hollywood, without ever staying there again, and he moved back into the ugly house he hated so much in Monterey Park, without ever noticing this time how dreary it was. It looked wonderful to him as he carried his bags up the stairs to their room.
They had three idyllic weeks before the children went back to school, and Faye began her new film. And when she did, he insisted that she take the car, while he took the bus to work, which saved her hours on the bus at 4 and 5 A.M., and she was grateful to him. He was nicer to her than he had ever been before. And if it was no longer emerald pendants and ruby pins, it was dinners he had prepared for her with his own hands, and then kept warm until she came home, little presents he bought when he got paid, like a book, or a radio, or a warm sweater for her to wear on the set. It was massages he gave her when she was so tired she wanted to cry, and the hot baths he ran with bath oil he had bought. He was so good to her, at times it almost made her cry. Month after month he proved to her how much he loved her, and she proved the same to him, and from the ashes of their old life emerged a stronger relationship than they had ever had before and the ugly months began to fade. Still they rarely allowed themselves to reminisce about the old days. It was too painful for both of them.
In many ways Faye enjoyed her new life. Her first job as director went very well, and she was given three pictures to do in 1954, all with major stars. Each of them was a major box-office hit. She had begun to make a name for herself in Hollywood again, not as a pretty face or a big star, but as a director with a fine mind, a great gift, and amazing power with her stars. She could get a heartrending performance out of a rock Abe Abramson said, and Dore Schary didn't disagree with him. They were both proud of her, and when the first offer of 1955 came in, Faye demanded what she had wanted from them for years. She had been grooming him ever since he came back, and she knew he was ready now. Her agent almost fell off his seat when she explained her conditions to him.
“And you want me to tell Dore that?” He looked shocked. The guy didn't know a damn thing about pictures and Faye was out of her goddamn mind as far as he was concerned. He had thought she was crazy when she took him back. It was the first time he had ever disagreed with her, but he never told her what he thought. Not then. But he did now. “You're nuts! They'll never buy a package like that. He has no background at all. The guy is thirty-eight years old, Faye, and he has no more idea how to be a producer than my dog.”
“That's a disgusting thing to say, and I don't give a damn what you think. He's learned something about finance in the last two years, he has a sharp mind, and he has some influential friends.” But more importantly than that, Ward had finally grown up, and Faye was enormously proud of him.
“Faye, I just can't sell a package like that.” Abe was sure of it.
“Then you can't sell me, Abe. Those are my terms.” She was as hard as rock, and Abe wanted to reach across his desk and strangle her.
