Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1940)

Want A Divorce (Continued from page 29) looked flushed and angry. "David went home," she said. "He got sore. You'd think I'd know. Men! They're — they're savages, at heart." Moonlight lay golden on the water as they sped homeward in the taxilaunch. Wanda sat white-faced and still. Suddenly she turned and hid her face on Mac's shoulder. She was crying. Jerry stared at the moonlight. Her heart felt cold and tired. Maybe Wanda was right. Marriage was an awful gamble. You took your life in your hands. But what could you do when you were in love? You could stay away from it, use your head. I won't go fishing with him, she thought furiously. I won't ever see him again. I won't let myself get all messed up with love and marriage and divorce. Over Wanda's bent head, Mac said, "How's for Friday — that's a good day for fish." "I'm not going fishing," Jerry said crossly. "You said you would." "Well, I won't. I'm too busy. I haven't time to go traipsing around on fishing boats with people." "Hey," said Mac, "who did what to you? You will too go fishing." "I won't," Jerry said furiously. So on Friday she went fishing. Jerry had never seen a fish until after it was cooked, but she sat, wrapped in her oldest coat, beween Mac and Jeff at the rail of the old boat and was happier than she had ever been in her whole life. Conversation was spasmodic and desultory. Jeff said, "Fish are restful. You can trust a fish. Women — you can't trust women." "You can too," Jerry said. "Not any you'd bother to marry," Jeff said. "I wish I knew a good lawyer. My wife wants that divorce, but I don't trust lawyers. You think you got a simple little speeding ticket and the first thing you know they're putting the black cap on you." Jerry found it tactful to say, "Mac's going to be a lawyer." "You know about divorces?" Jeff wanted to know. "They got me bothered. I told her, I says, you wait until I get me a lawyer I can trust to leave me one pair of shoes to walk home in and you get a divorce. Not until." "I'm not going to take divorce cases," Mac said. "I wouldn't be a divorce lawyer for anything. Besides, I've got to pass my bar exams first and if you think that's a pipe, you're crazy." "I bet I could help you," Jerry said. "Why don't you bring your books up some night and we'll study — I can cue you. I majored in English Lit and I'm not so bad." "You got something there," Mac said. He liked her. She knew that. But a hoodoo hung over them, a jinx rode Jerry. Try as she would she couldn't seem to be glamorous. Something always went wrong. Fishing wasn't glamorous, with your nose getting sunburned and your hair blowing and when it got rough, a little green-around-the-gills tinging your complexion — and what did you end up with, a big smelly fish. nOR. as it turned out, could glamour be achieved when helping Mac get ready for his bar exams. She had thought it might be. A sort of lady with a lamp, inspiration and Madame Recamier touch. Far otherwise. The first night Mac came she put on her best negligee and arranged the lights Wanda's way and put perfume behind her ears and turned the radio on to Guy Lombardo. But when Mac came in, loaded with law books, and enormous notebooks and a brief case full of loose papers, he promptly turned up the lights and turned off the radio. The negligee escaped him. He was a different young man from the gay companion of boats. He said tensely, "You see, I've got to pass these. I've got to. Dad's business— what there is left of it — won't stretch to me any more. If I don't pass, I'll have to give it up for good and maybe I can get me a job driving a truck or dealing blackjack. I've got to pass." Jerry said, "You will." They went at it hot and heavy. She cued him and checked him on his lists ■ — they had long words that weren't familiar but she concentrated and, of course, when she concentrated she shoved back her hair and forgot about being like Wanda. IT was something that Wanda said, something about wasting her time on penniless law students that sent Jerry posthaste the next day out to the country to see Grandma B. She didn't exactly know why, but she thought it would make her feel better inside. Grandpa was on the porch in the rocking chair. "Your Grandma's down irrigating." he told her. Jerry found her old rubber boots and an old pair of overalls and went out to find Grandma. There was something immediately comforting in the sight of the square, sturdy figure in matching boots and an old sunbonnet. Something permanent and courageous about the way she attacked the earth and the water and growing things. Jerry and she worked for a while in silence. The tension in Jerry's body began to lessen as she moved, the hot sun on her body, the smell of wet earth in her nostrils. It was easier to talk than she had dreamed it could be. "How long did you know Grandpa before you were married to him?" she asked. Grandma B. gave her a shrewd look from her rakish sunbonnet. "Knew him most all my life," she said. "We was raised up together, you might say. But." she smiled grimly, "but I never noticed him much, if that's what you mean, until just before he asked me." "I've met a man — " said Jerry, and stopped, her throat feeling hot and dry. "It's about time." said Grandma B. "Myself, I'm all for young marriages, younger the better, once you're fullgrowed. A sapling'll bend a lot easier than a tree and there's a heap of bending to do in marriage." "He's — pretty swell," Jerry said, "but — I don't think he cares anything about me. He hasn't any money, either, and he hasn't passed his bar exams yet and — he used to be in love with Wanda." Grandma spaded in silence, opened the ditch, the water boiled down into it, turning yellow brown as it ran. "You're wuth a dozen of her," she said. "She's a nice girl and she's all right for looks, like her ma. But she's a lightweight. Maybe he was just infatuated with her." "Would you marry a man if you loved him a lot and could get him even if you knew you were second choice?" Jerry asked. Grandma chuckled. "Second choice is better'n no choice, my girl," she said. "Girl might be second choice to start with and finish up being first. Your grandpa, when he used to race trotting hosses, always said what happened in the stretch counted most and they pay off on the finish line." It was then that they were interrupted. It was Mac, disheveled and hot, dusty and distraught. He hadn't shaved and his hair was stranger to a comb. His collar was wilted. His eyes were, actually, wild. He shouted, "What'd you go off like that for and not tell me where you were going? Fine thing. I got lost — in this heat — " Jerry said, "This is my grandma, Mac," and Mac shook hands with Grandma without looking at her. She regarded him sternly, her old eyes keen, peeling off the outside things which she knew didn't matter. Mac said, "Here it is with the bar exams tomorrow and you — you go off and just when I need you most. I never heard of such an un — unconsiderate woman in my whole life." Grandma laid down the shovel. "I'll go on up to the house," she said. "Grandpa's probably needing something or other by now. I'll be pleased to have you stay for supper, young man." Mac said, "Thank you," absently, and then, as she vanished, "Jerry — it's awful. I can't remember one thing. I tried today and I can't remember one thing. I can't even remember the Code. It's all gone. Seven years working like a slave — going without everything— trying like a fool the whole time — and now the time's come and — I'm sunk." "You're not either," said Jerry. "You're nuts. Everybody feels like that before examinations. I always thought I was going to die myself." "But I can't remember anything," Mac said wildly. "How can you answer any questions when you don't remember one single thing?" "You'll remember when you get in there," Jerry said. "It's like stage fright." "No," said Mac, "I won't. I thought I'd sail through. I won't. I'll flunk the whole silly business and make a jackass out of myself and then I can't be a lawyer and there aren't any jobs and how the devil can we get married if I don't pass the bar exams?" Jerry put her hand against a tree trunk to keep from falling. Here she was again, in rubber boots and overalls June Duprez cools off between final Technicolor fakes for "The Thief of Bagdad" — in Arizona and with mud smudges on her face, and — he had proposed to her. "What did you say?" she said. Mac glared at her. "You don't seem to care," he said. "Anybody would think it was no concern of yours — you act as heartless as a stone image. Here I am losing my mind and my memory's gone and I don't know torts from contracts and there you stand, cool as a cucumber — how can we get married if I don't pass?" "But — I can't marry you, Mac." That stopped him. He stared at her furiously, whitely, forlornly. "You mean to say," he shouted, "that you've been encouraging me — and sitting up nights helping me and even going to sleep in the same room with me ■ — and pretending you cared whether I passed or not — and all the time you didn't love me?" "It's not whether I love you," Jerry said steadily. "It's you not loving me that counts." "I told you I'd gone crazy," he said, "I told you. Do you think I'd let any girl I didn't love — do you think I'd talk to her and tell her all about how I feel inside of me and everything if I — " "But you never said it." "Said it? I said it a thousand times — " he stopped and came over and took her hands. "You've got the dirtiest face and I love it and I love you and if you don't marry me I'll — I'll jump in that ditch and drown myself." "I'm not the kind of a wife you want," Jerry said. "I'm not a bit like your ideal — I'm just me — I'm not very goodlooking — " "You're going to start telling me what kind of a wife I want?" Mac said. "I want you — -oh, Jerry, don't. I can't stand it. I need you so much — " She put her face up then for his kiss. IERHAPS it was the memory of that kiss that gave Jerry the courage to face Wanda's displeasure. More than displeasure. It was a definite and violent disapproval. "Marriage," Wanda said, "is tough enough. But what you want to throw yourself away on a nobody like Mac for is beyond me." "He's somebody to me," Jerry said. "He hasn't even a profession yet," Wanda said. "Have you got any idea how many starving young lawyers there are around these days? Look, youngster, the world's not a pretty little garden for you to play house in and that love in a cottage business — there's only one way to make it work. You've got to use your head." There was a good deal more. Some of it was bitter. Above all, Wanda said that Jerry was too young. How could a girl at twenty-two know what she wanted? "But I want to marry Mac," said Jerry. "And he'll pass the bar exams and then we'll be all right." Thus the bar exams became the one great thing in life. The one thing of real importance. If Mac passed, they could get married right away. They wouldn't, of course, have much money, but Mac would have a position with Hymer and Brandon. Brandon was the lawyer who had handled Wanda's divorce. He was a brilliant young man, always getting his name in the papers. He and Mac had been at college together, but Brandy had been able to go straight ahead with his law course, while Mac worked nights and summers in his father's store. Brandon had dough of his own, he was handsome and wore his clothes like a movie star and had the same flair for publicity, and he had consequently revived the ancient Hymer firm and done amazingly well. He wasn't a worker and his reputation wasn't spotless. There were plenty of (Continued on page 78) 76 PHOTOPLAY