Brando_ Songs My Mother Taught Me - Marlon Brando [124]
Lenore’s husband, Arthur, was very intelligent but affected an aw-shucks persona. He pretended to be unsophisticated and said things like “Gosh!” “Gee whiz!” “Golly!” and “For heaven’s sake!” On the other hand, he kept a loaded Saturday night special in his room.
One summer night, I climbed over the fence and found the door unlatched as usual. After opening it, I turned to tighten the latch; I was supposed to lock the door after entering. While I was doing so, Arthur walked out of the kitchen and was standing two or three feet away from me in the dark when I turned around. I jumped about four feet, and he beat me by at least two feet. “Oh my gosh!” he said. “You scared me.”
I was paralyzed and couldn’t think of anything to say. My brain simply stopped working, though it functioned enough to remember Arthur’s gun. A headline flashed through my mind: ACTOR KILLED—MIDNIGHT INTRUDER SHOT, MISTAKEN FOR BURGLAR. It had happened to more than one playboy. After a few seconds I said the first thing that came out of my mouth: “Boy, am I glad to see you.”
Then I tried to find the right face to go along with the words, whatever they meant, but there wasn’t an expression I could come within a mile of, so more words came out of me like bubbles: “God, Arthur. I’m really glad to see you. I’ve got to talk to somebody about this …”
These words flew out of my mouth as if they were coming from someone else, and I thought to myself, What are you talking about, you maniac?
Finally I said, “Arthur, can we talk?” I put my hand on his shoulder. “I’ve got a problem.” I went on. “Can we talk?”
“Why, sure,” Arthur said.
“Let’s go out to the sunporch,” I said. I knew the house well and that a walk to the sunporch would give me about forty-three feet and thirty seconds to come up with something to explain why I was in his house at 2:50 A.M., to say nothing about the door being unlatched.
When we got there, I slumped down in a chair, looked over at him and said gravely that one of my sons was missing from home. “Have you seen him?”
“My gosh, no.”
“You haven’t seen him at all today?”
“No.”
Now I had a toenail grip on a theme, but only a toenail; if I made a slip, it was a straight drop about nine hundred feet down. But I gained a little more ground by saying, “You know, he’s not home. I don’t know where he is. He hasn’t been home all day. I’ve been worried sick.”
My son was home asleep, of course.
“Well, we sure haven’t seen him around here,” Arthur said sympathetically.
“I don’t know whether to call the police or what,” I said. “Maybe he’s just out joyriding with some friends, or maybe he’s in trouble, but I’m worried. The only thing I could think of was that he might be here—you know, the kids are always staying overnight with each other. I thought of telephoning, but I didn’t want to wake everybody up.”
Then I realized I had taken the wrong road; instead of telephoning, I had merely jumped over his fence, climbed up his driveway and opened his back door with the apparent intention of waking up the whole household. I wanted to escape from this cul-de-sac as fast as I could, but before I could say anything, Arthur said, “Well, maybe Lenore might know where he is.”
“Lenore? She’s probably dead asleep.”
But Arthur said, “Well, gee, let me wake her up. I think she’d want to know about this …”
At that moment, Lenore came down the stairs in a sexy peignoir, looking radiant, with her hair beautifully combed, ready to receive the paramour who had climbed over her fence. As she descended the stairs, she looked at Arthur and me sitting in the sunporch and burst out laughing, howling one of those laughs that go on and on and