Free In My Father's Shadow by Chris Welles Feder Page B

screen door. He was between his second and third Cobb salad when one of them approached our booth, armed with a menu and a pen. “May I have your autograph, Mr. Welles?”
    “Certainly. Where would you like me to sign?”
    “Right here, Mr. Welles, and I just wanted to say …” Eager to spout his opinions of
Citizen Kane
and
The Magnificent Ambersons
, the stranger lingered while my father continued smiling, nodding, murmuring, “Thank you so much. That’s so kind of you.”
    Why does this always have to happen when I’m alone with Daddy?
    “Autographs are stupid,” I burst out after the interloper had returned to his booth.
    “Shhh!” My father put a finger to his lips. “I happen to agree with you, but you can’t tell a person that something he wants is stupid. That would be very rude.”
    “But, Daddy,” I babbled on, “kids at school have autograph books, and they go around showing them off to other kids and boasting they’ve got Elizabeth Taylor or Clark Gable, and sometimes they get into fights about who’s got the biggest stars in their book. It’s so
stupid
!”
    “Now I know what to get you for Christmas!” He gave me a twinkling look. “An autograph book!”
    “You know, Daddy,” I rushed on, “one of my teachers asked me to get your autograph, but I told her you were away, making a movie, and I didn’t know when you’d be back.”
    “You shouldn’t have said that.” He looked at me reproachfully, then sighed. “What is your teacher’s name?” After I told him, he scribbled a message on the back of a menu. “Now you give this to your teacher the next time you see her, and don’t ever refuse another request for my autograph.”
    “All right, Daddy.”
    “When someone asks for your autograph, they’re paying you a compliment, don’t you see?”
    “But why do they have to bother us when we’re having lunch? Why don’t you ask them to come back later?”
    He laughed though I hadn’t meant to be funny. “Well, Christopher, I hope for your sake that you never become famous.”
    “Oh, I don’t want to be famous, Daddy.”
    “You don’t? Why not?”
    “I want to be a civilian, like Marie.”
    “So you’re going to grow up to be a nanny. Well, now I’ve heard everything,” and he laughed so long and with such gusto, throwing back his head, his chest heaving, that he had to wipe his eyes with a napkin.
    When my father hugged me goodbye that day and told Shorty to drive me home, neither one of us realized that the next time we met, it would not be in Hollywood. In going to Italy, my father assumed he would not be there any longer than it took to shoot his scenes in
Black Magic
. While abroad, he also hoped to find financial backing for a movie of his own based on Shakespeare’s
Othello
. He had no idea that his jaunt to Europe to appear in a movie would stretch into years of wandering from country to country, hat in hand.
    So ended the Hollywood chapter of our lives.

3

Going to Daddy’s School
    “I F I HAVE TO go to Daddy’s school in Woodstock, why can’t Marie go with me?” I demanded of my mother during the “safe” hour when she was having breakfast in bed. How fresh and beautiful she looked in the early morning, her skin glowing as though a thousand tiny candles had been lit inside her.
    “You’re too old to have a nanny, Chrissie.” She lit an unfiltered Camel cigarette, her hand trembling.
    “I’m not too old. I know lots of kids my age …” I was not yet ten.
    “Besides,” my mother rushed on in a too bright voice, “you’re going to be living with Hortense and Skipper, and you know how much they love you. Orson lived with them when
he
was a little boy. Why, the Hills are practically your grandparents.”
    “I don’t want to live with them, Mommy.”
    It was as though she couldn’t hear me. “They’ll take
marvelous
care of you, you’ll see, darling, and after a while you’ll love being with them and you won’t miss Marie at