“I remember Mavis,” I said, a little embarrassed I had no recollection of her last name. “She was always nice to me, had warm tapioca pudding for me when the chauffeur brought me home from school.”

“Yes. Aunt Mavis used to say how sweet you were, but spoiled rotten, and your grandparents let you run wild. She felt sorry for you that you didn’t have your own mama and daddy.”

“I didn’t feel sorry for me,” I replied with a touch of hauteur. I could feel my birthmark flooding with color. “My mother . . .” How to say My mother can’t stand the sight of me? I let that thought pass. “My father went back to England. My father is Sir Rowland Granville, the famous British actor.”

“My father is James Dexter, the famous American auto mechanic,” Terrence replied.

“Then why do you take your car to Reg’s?”

“He’s dead. Both my parents are dead.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Thanks, but you don’t have to be. I don’t need your sorry.”

He was awfully testy for what was after all a mere conventional expression. “I don’t remember when Mavis left Summit Drive.”

“When Mr. Greene put a loyalty oath in front of everyone in nineteen forty-seven. They all had to sign it, swear by Almighty God that they had no intention of overthrowing the government. If you didn’t sign it, you got fired, and probably your name turned over to the FBI.” He glanced over at me. “Why do you look surprised? Your granddaddy is great friends with J. Edgar Hoover.”

“I’m . . . I mean, I know the studio requires everyone to sign a loyalty oath. I just didn’t think Leon would ask it of people who worked in his home.”

“Clarence was happy to sign it, yes sir, and happy to have the job there for twenty-five years, and looking forward to the next twenty-five, thank you. Everyone signed except Mavis. Mavis said, ‘I’m a freeborn American, and ain’t no one gonna make me sign an oath.’ Easier for her than for some. She’s a great cook. She cooks for Lana Turner now.” He drove for a few minutes in silence, then added thoughtfully, “The loyalty oath impinges on the First Amendment, and it’ll go through the courts, and be defeated, but that’ll take forever. Seems like everything takes forever.”

He talked some more about the courts—appeals courts and the Supreme Court, subjects in which I had no interest whatever, as we started up the Sepulveda Pass, a two-lane highway bordered on either side by woods. He took another curve at alarming speed. The glove box popped open and a book fell out. The Negro Motorist Green Book.

“What’s this?” I asked, leafing through it, state by state.

“When was the last time you peed in a field, Miss Granville?”

“I have never peed in a field, thank you.”