The Chelsea Girls

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Maxine

March 27, 1967

The worst, with Arthur, was when we were driving somewhere together and he asked me to pull out the huge atlas and figure out the directions. It didn’t matter if we were cruising around the Hollywood Hills or looking for some unmarked door in Queens to make a drop-off, the very request would get my heart pumping like I was running alongside the car, not sitting in the passenger seat. I would look up the name of the street in the back as quickly as I could, then locate the appropriate square on the map, but I was never fast enough.

Looking back, I can see that he got great pleasure in flustering me, in getting angrier and angrier until he was screaming at me to tell him which way to turn, swearing until I wept. He’d apologize afterward and I’d stupidly presume that the balance of power had shifted over to me, which generated a rush that was probably equal to his own. The same rush I felt when I passed off secret documents, or raced to the Chelsea Hotel to rescue Arthur. Arthur was my life. I had attached to him like one of those round-mouthed fishes on a shark, and I wasn’t going anywhere.

This is no excuse for what I went on to do, for having ruined the lives of the people I loved. But being kept off-balance like that was a terrible, terrible fate. Never mind walking on eggshells, I tiptoed on shards of glass whenever he was around. I was so eager to please, and never quite measured up. I placed my passion in our mission, in our cause, to prove to him that I was worthy of his love.

I thought I had reason to hate the same things Arthur did: capitalism, American greed. Only later did I realize I was viewing my life through Arthur’s particularly warped perspective, as if we were standing in front of a fun-house mirror that elongated certain truths and shortened others.

Magnild. An ugly name, he’d told me. He only used it when he was angry at me, hitting the consonants hard with contempt.

I wonder who she might have become, this Magnild, if she hadn’t been twisted into Maxine Mead.

Instead, I became a follower, content to do what other people told me to do. As an actress, that worked in my favor. If a director told me to cry, I cried. Laugh? Done. I could bring any emotion up from my very bones and let it cascade through my mouth, my eyes, so that you knew exactly what I was thinking. Or what you thought I was thinking.

It’s kept me employed for a long time, eons in this industry. I graduated from dishy ingenue to wisecracking dame, and that’s perfectly fine with me. More substance to play with, even if the lines are fewer. Shooting movies suits me, as the cast bonds like long-lost family members for the course of a couple of months and says goodbye at the wrap party with giddy promises to be in touch, but never does. I have the illusion of being part of something, without the closeness.

I’ve missed Hazel terribly these past many years. Missed being able to pop down the hall and have a laugh, to meet at El Quijote for a drink after a long day of rehearsal and let all the insanity fade away. That’s what good friends do—all that stuff that builds in your head into something terribly important that might bring you down at any moment—it dissipates when you see each other, turns into feathers that float away.

Seeing Hazel onstage, standing just a few feet away from me, had almost been more than I could handle. There she was, my dearest friend, yet she might as well have been a total stranger. Sure, she looked terrible, in dire need of a makeover, but I adored the fact that she didn’t care. That was my Hazel, all right. She was fierce in her gray streaks and her blazing eyes, and I wanted to hold her in my arms and tell her how much I loved her, how much I’d missed her.

To my surprise, after that terrible confrontation with Charlie and Hazel, they let me go. It would have been better if they’d hauled me away, right then and there. Instead, I went back down to the party and drank whatever came my way, until my agent guided me upstairs to my room and told me to get some rest, closing the door behind him. I didn’t do what he said. I ripped off my gown and put on some dungarees and a sweater. The clock said two in the morning, but I wasn’t tired. This was my last evening of freedom before my carefully constructed world came crashing down, and I wouldn’t waste a second of it.

I pulled on a hat with a wide brim and caught a cab downtown. We cut through Times Square, where the lights were still as bright as ever.

Part of the reason I’d been a good actress—and how funny that I am already speaking in the past tense—was that I had a terrible fear of disappearing, of being a nobody. That’s what I thought the Party was all about. That’s why I fought so hard for a country that I’d never even been to. Because communism stood for everyone taking care of each other, for being valuable and worthy, being equals.

In the intervening years, we were all proven wrong. Wrong that I was valuable, and wrong that communism would protect us from economic ruin or fanatical leaders. Stalin killed millions who disagreed with him, they simply disappeared. For a long time I denied the reports, unwilling to believe such a thing. But even the most authoritarian government can’t evade the truth, it rises like steam from the fissures of a volcano. Still, the world is run by men who want power, who will say anything to attain it, and do anything to retain it.

Outwardly, I was Hollywood royalty. Inside, I was a nobody, just like Arthur had said.

I had the taxi pull up on the far side of Twenty-Third Street. The Chelsea Hotel, where I’d been embraced and felt safe, where nonconformists were the norm. When I came back to New York for a quick visit a few years ago, I put on glasses and a scarf and watched from the bar across the street until I saw Hazel appear. She walked to the newspaper stand, exchanged a word with the owner, then down the street to buy flowers, before disappearing back through the lobby doors. I knew exactly what vase she’d put them in, the white ceramic one with the narrow neck. I missed her so much.

This evening, I could see a few lights on, even at this late hour. Not surprising, in a building full of artists and musicians. I crossed the street and entered the lobby, which had hardly changed. There were more paintings on the walls, and some kind of awful papier-mâché sculpture hung from the ceiling, but these were hardly a distraction from the room’s decaying Victorian splendor.

A man behind the counter looked up from a dirty magazine.

Suddenly, I was so tired. I motioned to one of the couches. “Do you mind if I sit here a moment? I’m waiting for someone,” I lied.

He shrugged. “Do whatever you like.”

If David Bard had still been alive, he would most likely have been up at this hour, overseeing a midnight installation of new carpet in the hallways so as to avoid paying union wages or some other ridiculous enterprise. He would have sat with me and talked on and on about the hotel, filled me in on the latest gossip. That would’ve been nice.

What was I doing here? I wasn’t sure. I suppose I wanted to feel part of Hazel’s world one last time.

The lobby door opened and a couple of young rockers stomped by in matching black boots. The girl, who had acne-scarred skin and a head of blond corkscrew curls, turned and scrutinized me. “Hey, I know you.”

I shook my head and pulled my hat lower. By now the booze was beginning to wear off. I’d have a terrible headache soon. “I don’t think so.”

“Sure, you’re that lady. My mom loves your movies.”

I nodded but didn’t answer. Luckily, her boyfriend hadn’t broken his stride, and she hurried off to catch up. A minute or so later, a high scream echoed down the stairwell, tapering off to a muffled yelp. I moved to the edge of the couch, ready to spring into action, but the desk clerk didn’t even look up.

“Is everything all right?” I asked.

He stared at me as if I were the one who’d screamed. “Some junkies having a fight. Nothing I can do about it.”

I worried about Hazel living in a place like this. It no longer had the innocuous, creative vibe of the fifties. Today, a different kind of creature lurked about, desperate and dangerous.

I wished I had the courage to get up and knock on Hazel’s door, insist she invite me in. Tell her that I loved her.

The clock said five in the morning. I had four hours before I was due to be at the address Charlie had given me, downtown in Foley Square. In spite of the changes, it felt good to sit in the Chelsea, to feel part of the hotel once again. I thought of all the people who’d found their creative muse here, created poetry and plays, music and art. I had missed out on the best of it by heading to Hollywood, missed Mark Rothko, Dylan Thomas, Arthur Miller, Jack Kerouac. What if I’d stayed, and not headed west to the antiseptic wasteland of Los Angeles? I could have been part of the legend of the Chelsea Hotel. Like Hazel would be, once her play was revived on Broadway and her career resurrected. No chance of that now, for me.

I rose and approached the counter. “Can I get a room?”

He looked at the wall of keys and plucked one from it. “How long you staying?”

“Just for one night.”

“It’ll be twenty-eight dollars and seventeen cents.”

“That seems like a very arbitrary figure.”

“Just saying what’s in the book here.”

“That’s fine.” I pulled the bills out of my wallet and counted out the change.

“You got any luggage? I can call a porter to take it up for you.”

I shook my head. “I’m traveling light these days.” I put my hand in my coat pocket, checking that my second-most important possession was still there. It was. The most important one was in my satchel: my diary, which I’d kept writing even after turning over the earlier pages to Lavinia. How ironic that Hazel didn’t write anymore, yet I’d never been able to stop.

“The room’s on the second floor. You can take the elevator or the stairs.”

“I know the way.”

Room 225 was in the west wing of the building, the door located off a side hallway. The hotel had been carved up since I’d been in it, larger suites divided into two—more profit and less space. The chamber lacked all of the glorious details of my old room, with just a twin bed and side table squeezed between two dingy walls. Something sharp had sliced through the lampshade, leaving a six-inch vertical scar. The stained-glass transom above the door was the only reminder of the hotel’s original elegance.

I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the bottle of pills, placing them carefully on the side table next to a smudged water glass. I carried the glass down the hallway to the shared bathroom and filled it up to the top.

Then back to my room. All was silent. The night sky outside the window had turned from turgid black to a dark gray. The sun wouldn’t be up for another couple of hours. I could feel the ghosts of the hotel gathering around me, keeping vigil.

I closed the curtain, a dusty damask that had seen better days, and sat back down on the bed. I undid the bottle, took a couple of pills in my hand, swallowed them down, took a couple of pills, swallowed. Over and over until there were none left. As I lay down on the bed, waiting for whatever was going to come next, a memory of my grandmother giving me a pill when I was sick came back to me. She’d crush the white tablet into a chalky powder and mix it with raspberry jam on a spoon. The pill was bitter, as I’d known it would be, but the sweetness of the berries and the pretty way they glistened on the spoon overrode my distaste.

I wished I had a jar of raspberry jam next to me now. And a spoon to taste it with. If only I had that.

If only.