“Yes, I should like that.”
“So should I. Let’s get together as soon as I’m back.”
Before she returned, she had nearly died in London with the lining of her brain inflamed by an infected tooth. The first of the millions that Twentieth Century-Fox was going to pour down the drain had vanished in Cleopatra. But the women of America, who’d been ready to all but stone her, forgave everything because of her illness. She had been back in town forty-eight hours when the telephone rang: “Will you come over, Hedda?”
“I’d love to. Will Liza be there? I’m anxious to see her.”
Before I left, I wrapped a gift Mike had given me one Christmas along with other things—a music box that played the theme of Around the World. I took a present for each of the two boys, too. Liz and her sons were drawing pictures for each other when I arrived. The children accepted their gifts graciously, then Liza wound her box, the first she’d ever seen.
After she had played the tinkling little tune over and over, she gravely allowed each brother one turn apiece. Then she wound it again and danced with each of them around the room. At last it was my turn. We held hands tight and waltzed until everyone but Liza was completely exhausted. But she still went on winding and winding the key to play the tune again.
Liz looked pale, quite different from the woman I’d last seen. “You won’t know me,” she said. “I came so near death I’m just thankful to be alive. I lie out in the sun, listen to the birds sing, look at the blue sky, and say: ‘Thank God for letting me live.’”
I believed her. She felt in that mood that day. Later, inevitably, we talked about the telephone call she had made one shattering September morning in 1958 and how she was “betrayed.”
“I considered you my second mother,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I loved you better than I loved my mother. You were kinder to me than she was. That you could do what you did nearly killed me.”
“That one line you spoke did it, Liz. I couldn’t take it. That was why it was done.”