Nick Adams—Mom, I’m Sorry I Lied To You

Nick Adams stood under the sign marked “arrivals” and, fiddling nervously with the cigarette lighter he held in his hand, looked over at the large clock which stood by the gateway. Only one minute before the bus was due.

He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow. It was a hot, sultry afternoon and the wide concrete expanse of the station gaped vacantly at him, missing its usual bustling activity.

A rumbling caught his attention and he turned to watch the huge bus come slowly into the station and pull up before him.

He looked up at the windows. Mom! He almost said the word out loud as he saw her face smiling at him through the dusty glass . . . still with that same old look he remembered from way back. Then she shook a finger at him and he suddenly felt like a little boy again.

Nick went around to the front of the bus and waited while the passengers came down the steps, one by one. Then as his mother came to the head of the steps, he put a hand up to help her. And as he did so, he was struck by how tired she looked and how much greyer her hair had become.

“Nicholas . . . my Nicholas,” she choked, holding back her tears. It had been more than eight years since they had last seen each other.

“Did you have a good trip, Mom?” he asked.

She nodded and stood back, staring at him. “Let me look at you!” she cried, her Jersey accent sounding suddenly so familiar. “You’ve lost weight. You’ve not been eating well . . . I know you haven’t.” She stopped abruptly and suddenly her face became softer. “My boy a star, a real star,’ she whispered.

“Aw . . . Mom.”

Nick looked at his mother. “It’s good to see you, Mom, real good,” he said quietly. Then he looked questioningly over at a pile of baggage which stood by the bus. “You show me which are your bags and we’ll get along home,” he said.

“These two—that blue one, and the green,” she said, pointing to them.

Nick picked up the cases and they walked across the concrete. “Gee . . . Mom, they’re heavy. What have you got in them—bricks?” he laughed, and pretended to stumble.

They reached the parking lot and Nick, walking just a little ahead, guided his mother to the car.

“It’s this one over here,” he said as they came to a low-slung, up-to-the-minute model.

“Such a beautiful car, Nick,” she answered overawed.

He put down the suitcases and opened the door to help her in. Then he piled the bags onto the back seat.

“So tell me,” he said, as he started the engine, “how’s Dad . . . and Andy?”

She smiled across at him. “I’m afraid your father’s beginning to feel the years,” she said slowly, “but thank God he’s well. And Andrew—he’s such a fine doctor now. We’re so proud of you both . . .”

Nick’s thoughts raced back over those early days with his family as he drove slowly through the wide Los Angeles boulevards, pointing out the sights as they passed by. Then he turned the car uphill towards his small one-bedroom apartment. Suddenly there it was ahead, looking like a Swiss chalet with its wooden frame set into the side of a mountain in the Hollywood Hills.

“That’s it, Mom,” he said proudly, pointing ahead.

“Why it’s beautiful, Nick.”

And as they turned into the narrow winding road which led up to it Nick slowed, and leisurely coasted down to the front of the house. “It’s lovely, isn’t it?” he said softly.

His mother nodded and smiled.

Then as they stopped Mrs. Adamshock fumbled for the handle of the car door. “No . . . let me. I’ll open it for you,” Nick scolded, hurrying out from the driver’s seat and around to the other side.

Nick took a key from his pocket and opened the front door while his mother stood anxiously beside him. Then, as the door swung back and she caught a view of the charming modern living-room crammed with dozens of curious little knicknacks, she gasped.

“Oh . . . Nick,” she sighed at length. “Just like your letters.”

“Those letters,” he began, “I’ve been wanting . . .” But he stopped and seeming to change his mind said, “You must want to look around; of course you do. Here, come inside.”

And she followed him through the house as he showed her first a framed copy of his first movie contract which he kept proudly over his bed and then pages of early fan magazine stories which he had pasted attractively on the whitewashed walls of the living room. In one corner were photos of himself with James Dean and Elvis Presley and on low coffee tables were ashtrays from Ciro’s, Romanoff’s, and all the many many wonderful places she’d read so much about.

“Oh, Nick . . . It’s just so wonderful,” she said, as they left his small but compact kitchenette and walked back towards the living room.

“I’m glad you like it, Mom,” he said, rather selfconsciously. Then he motioned her towards a chair. “Now you just relax here and I’ll fix some coffee. You must be tired.”

“Now Nick,” she scolded. “I’ll do that . . . Im still your mother, you know.”

“No, next time—in fact I expect you to cook for me for the rest of your stay!” he joked.

When the coffee was ready Nick came to sit beside her.

Now, darling,” she said, “I want to know all about Hollywood . . . about everything right from the beginning. Because all I know is what you have written and what I’ve read in the papers.”

“Well, Mom . . .” he began, then he stopped short, picked up a spoon and stirred the coffee a little too vigorously. For a moment neither of them spoke.

Suddenly a look of alarm flashed across Nick’s face as he saw she was taking a tiny bundle—a bundle of letters—from her purse.

“l’ve brought you some of your old letters, Nick,” she said. “I thought you’d like to see them.” And she began untying the narrow string which held them together.

“Aw . . . Gee, Mom. Those letters . . . Oh, well, I guess I’d have had to tell you sometime.” And he looked down at the patterned carpet. “It’s like this. Those letters—the early ones. I didn’t want to worry you . . . so I guess I just made them up.” He hurried over the last few words.

“They weren’t true!”

“Well, not exactly, Mom,” he said softly.

“But . . . but . . .” she looked puzzled and lost. Then she said slowly, “What really happened, Nick? You can tell me. I want to know. I won’t be angry.” And she passed him the top letter from the pile.

He looked at the scrawled handwriting and the crumpled corners of the paper. She’s kept them all these years, he thought. He began to read the words.

The letter was dated February 15, 1950. “Dear Mom, Pop, and Andy. Since my last letter I’ve found a job. I’m working for Warner Bros. . . .”

Nick looked up and suddenly he felt the way he used to when he was a small boy and had done something wrong. Then he said slowly, “I guess I can tell you that story now, because in a way it was funny.

“You see, Mom, it was sort of true. I did have a job with Warner Bros. . . . as a combination doorman-usher at one of their movie houses in town. I got the grand sum of twenty-five dollars a week but I didn’t want to tell you because . . . you see, with rent ten dollars a week and the money I needed for food and transportation it didn’t exactly leave me rich and frankly I was scared.” Nick noticed she had her eyes focused on her lap and was sitting very still, her feet tucked in under the chair.

“I was so sure I was going to be discovered,” he went on. “It was only a matter of time. I had it all planned. My job was to stand at the door taking tickets and I decided that if I saw anyone famous, I’d stall when they gave me their stub and pretend to drop it. Then I’d start doing a Jimmy Cagney or Cary Grant in ‘Gunga Din.’ I was so sure one of them would say, ‘Hey kid, you’re terrific. Here’s my card. Be at my office first thing in the morning.’ Well, after two-and-a-half months of getting nothing but stares and only occasional laughs and no one tapping me on the shoulder and saying, ‘We want you,’ I got desperate. It’s hard when you want something so much and you get that sinking feeling that nobody’s interested.

“So I went out in front of the theater one time when I noticed that the guy who changes the marquee was across the street getting coffee. And I grabbed a handful of ‘A’s’ and an ‘I’ and the rest of the letters I needed and climbed the ladder. Then I put my name up in big letters all across the front of the theater. I was thinking of using my real name, Mom, but really—Adamshock—what could you do with that. It’s so long it would have turned the corner of the marquee. So I just used Adams like I used to sometimes back home.” He noticed her mouth curl up slightly in a smile.

“I was so sure they’d know me after that. But what actually happened was that a couple of killjoys went to the manager and said, ‘Who’s this Nick Adams?’ Well, the manager took one look at me and told me politely to hang up my uniform and try my stunts elsewhere.”

“So that was it, Nick. I wondered sometimes . . .” And she began to unfold another letter. “What about this one, Nick? What about all those wonderful places you told me you’d been?”

Nick took the letter and began reading. “. . . don’t faint,” it said, “but in three hours I’ll be out on the town. I’m going to Romanoff’s and then to the two biggest night-clubs, Ciro’s and the Macambo.” He looked up.

“I did go, Mom, but not exactly in the way I told you. I met a pal who said he’d show me those places and we did actually go. But we stood outside and I just managed to see in when the door opened and people came in or out. Remember how I wrote you in that next letter that I’d seen everyone from Clark Gable to Shirley Temple? I did it because I knew you’d be excited. But what really happened was that I read all the Hollywood gossip columns the next morning before I sat down to write to you. I had to be very careful because I know how you follow every word of those movie columns: and I couldn’t let you catch me in a lie.”

As he finished speaking he noticed his mother begin reading through yet another letter. “And this one, Nick. The one where you told us you had all those important interviews.”

Nick lit a cigarette and took a deep draw.

“Four months had gone by by that time, Mom, and I couldn’t let you know I’d gotten nowhere. Id been in and out of more than a hundred casting ‘agencies by that time and most of them wouldn’t let me past the receptionist. I was a nobody with a new face that wasn’t in demand. I kept asking how I could ever get to be an ‘old face’ if I didn’t get a chance to be a new one. They gave me one answer: Keep trying.” He began fiddling with an ashtray on the table beside him.

“I had no money saved, no job, and only my little ‘reserve sinking fund’ which was sinking very fast. I felt like forgetting the whole thing that day and telling you I was coming home. But how could I, Mom? After all those things I’d said. The whole town must have thought I was on my way to becoming famous. No, Mom, I just couldn’t come back. They’d all have laughed at me.” Nick shrugged his shoulders. “So I kept on trying and trying.”

“You could have come home . . . you know that. No one would have laughed, son,” she said softly. “We’d all have understood. But that wonderful new apartment you said you moved into that first Christmas. And the new contract?” Her voice grew louder.

“Mom,” he said quietly, “I guess . . . I guess I’ll never know how I ever had the nerve to write you all those lies! But after ten months of going nowhere I didn’t care what I said. I think this was the blackest period of my life. Sure I got a contract—for a Pepsi Cola commercial. But all I made was thirty-five dollars and a dozen bottles of soda pop. I hadn’t worked in weeks, I was hungry and I had to move because I was behind in my rent. I didn’t know I could ever feel so depressed or ever get so hungry.

“That new apartment, that was really letting my imagination run away with me. Mom, the place was awful. I saw an ad for a handyman and I was so down and out I applied. The woman needed someone to water the lawn and take out the trash and feed her ten cats when she was away. I said I’d take the job but that I needed a place to stay, too. She took me out back to a shed near the garage. She said I could stay there in exchange for working.

“The place had a bed as narrow as a board, and the mattress was so thin I could feel the slats of the bed. That tile bathroom I referred to—well, I had one, five blocks away at the YMCA where I went to take showers. The heating unit, that was an old coal stove. I couldn’t afford to buy fuel so I went around collecting wooden coat hangers to burn. And those cats—I got so hungry one day that I stole the liver she asked me to cook for them. I felt lower than a rat, stealing their food. But I hadn’t eaten in two days.”

Nick looked at his mother’s face. She seemed sad. Then he said gently, “I’m sorry, Mom. But I just couldn’t tell you all those things at the time. I had such big dreams.”

“The car, Nick. That wonderful sports car you wrote about?”

He took another draw on his cigarette. “That was a lie too, Mom. And I felt pretty bad when you wrote and told me how worried you were when you thought of me driving around in it and asked me to be careful. That woman I told you about—the rich one I met at a party who said she’d gotten mad with her new sports model because all those gears made her nervous and who wanted to self it cheap? She didn’t even exist, Mom. What really happened was that I desperately needed something to get around in so I bought a 1938 pickup truck that I saw on a lot advertised for two hundred and thirty-seven dollars. I gave the man the last fifty from my sinking fund and the payments were fifteen a month, But I couldn’t pay and after two months they ame and took the truck away from me.”

“You bought something without the money!”

“I thought I could pay . . . I thought, maybe my break would come that month, Mom. I wasn’t trying to steal, honestly I wasn’t.”

“But that letter,” her voice was rising, “that letter you sent from Honolulu . . . that couldn’t have all been lies!”

“No, Mom, that was the truth. That was the first time I really told you the truth.”

“I have that letter here,” she said softly.

“Could . . . could I see it?” And he watched his mother look through the small package until she came to one letter dated August 31, 1954. She handed it to him. He carefully unfolded it.

“. . . Dear Mom, Pop and Andy: I guess you must be surprised to see a letter from Hawaii and also be wondering what’s been happening to me because it’s now quite a while since I last wrote. Well, so much has happened I hardly know where to begin.

“First, I am overjoyed to be able to tell you I have now finished sea duty in the Pacific. A sailor’s life was getting me down! Well, as soon as I came off sea duty, the Navy assigned me to a radio station near Hollywood on account of my training as an actor. It was at the station that I heard about the film part—the part I’m working on now, here in Honolulu. I’d heard that John Ford was doing ‘Mister Roberts’ and was looking for sailors. So I put on my best uniform and my ribbons and went down to the studio. I got by the gateman by saying my clothes were from wardrobe and I was one of the sailors in the movie.

“Then I managed to get to Ford’s office. I knew Ford had been in the Navy and also that James Cagney was in the picture. So before Ford could get a word in I did an impersonation of Cagney and then followed it with Cary Grant and Marlon Brando.” Nick paused for a moment, then read on.

“. . . I was afraid that if I stopped acting Ford would kick me out. Anyway, finally he lifted his eyepatch and said to another man who was in the office, ‘Spunky little guy, isn’t he?’ Then to me, ‘Square that hat.’ I pulled my cap from the back of my head into regulation position.

“Ford snapped, ‘You’ve got your ribbons upside down.’ I told him that I thought he was wrong because I’d looked in the book. So he laughed and said, ‘Sign him up.’

“So folks, that was it. They wanted sailors and they got me—direct from actual sea duty. And now we’re down here shooting the film and they seem very pleased with my work. I’ve even spoken to Cagney himself!”

Nick looked up from the letter. He smiled softly at his mother and put his hand on her arm.

“From then on, Mom, they were true . . . all the letters. I didn’t need to lie any more. Even the parts about my being friends with James Dean and Elvis Presley. It’s all quite true.”

Mrs. Adamshock didn’t speak for the moment. Then she smiled at her son, looked admiringly around the room and said, “Don’t worry, Nick. We’re so proud of you now, so very proud.”

—BY BEATRICE MARCH

SEE NICK ADAMS IN WARNERS’ “THE FBI STORY.”

 

It is a quote. PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE APRIL 1959