• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 906 0

it clear that he wanted us to pick up where we’d left off, which really set the cat among the pigeons. I was flattered but refused to meet him secretly. Palm Springs was too small, and everybody knew everybody else’s business. What if Zeppo found out? And how long was my fling with Frank likely to last? I couldn’t risk everything for what might turn out to be just another of his fleeting romances. If Zeppo threw me out, the only place I could go was the house I’d bought for my parents. I could have done it (and gone back to work if I’d needed to), but after years of not earning a living, it would have been that much harder. Bobby had gone to the Sorbonne as he’d hoped, and it would cost money to keep him in Paris. He’d spent some time in Monaco and a summer with his father in Rome. He’d even helped Bob make a movie called Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks, in which Bobby, his grandmother, and his father all had minor roles. The film bombed, of course, which meant that Bob would never be able to help with his son’s education, or anything else for that matter.

The idea of living with my parents held little appeal. My father wasn’t in the best of health, and my mother was still complaining about him even though they remained locked in their love-hate relationship to the exclusion of everyone else. When she found out that my marriage to Zeppo was in trouble, she was furious and warned me not to succumb to the Sinatra charm. That was until one day when Frank telephoned her house to speak to me. She picked up the phone, and Frank, mistaking her for me, said something romantic and sexy. I was standing right next to her and watched as she melted. “Oh, my God! That voice alone could send a girl!” she said as she handed me the receiver in a daze.

Frank never stopped pursuing me, and whenever we saw each other, he’d try to get me on my own. He’d walk away from me singing “If It Takes Forever I Will Wait for You” or some other tune that I knew was intended for me. He was a great actor and a great singer, so he knew exactly how to tug at the heartstrings. He was so romantic, but I still held him at arm’s length and carried on my unmerry way. One night Pat DiCicco, a friend of Frank’s, cornered me. “How does it feel to have three men in love with you at the same party?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

He reeled off the names—Zeppo, someone else I can’t recall, and Frank. I shook my head and laughed, but what he’d said about Frank struck a chord.

Zeppo and I were still living in the same house, although not the same bedroom. We put up a good front and went out together as husband and wife, visiting our usual haunts. In spite of the fact that Frank and I weren’t seeing each other (or perhaps because we weren’t), there was still a constant frisson between us. Even sitting next to him made me jittery. When Zeppo began to pick up on that sexual tension, he became irrationally jealous even though he was far from faithful. I suppose the fact that he thought I might be falling for Frank Sinatra was finally something to be jealous about.

Whenever Zeppo flipped out about Frank, I neither denied nor confirmed anything. After all, I hadn’t done anything wrong since Monaco. Eventually, Zeppo drove himself crazy and announced abruptly, “I can’t take this anymore, Barbara! I think we should separate.”

“I think that’s a wise decision,” I replied cautiously. “How do you want to do this?”

“Damn it, I’ll give you a divorce,” he said as if that was what I’d been asking for all along.

Ironically, having never paid much attention to Bobby when he was a kid, Zeppo began to take him to Tamarisk for lunch whenever he was home from school. In his stepson’s company, he’d get loaded and start acting out. I’d hear it from other people in the club, never from my loyal son. It was an increasingly uncomfortable situation for us all, and I knew that, as soon as our divorce was negotiated, I’d have to move out. I just didn’t know where I should go.

Eden Marx, Groucho’s third wife, owned a small house right near the golf course off Tamarisk that she wanted to sell.