have a lot of potential. The studio thinks it would be a good idea if you went on a few dates, if you were seen around town with some guys like Pete Greer and Brick Thomas. Maybe even Don Adler.” Don Adler was the hottest actor at Sunset. His parents, Mary and Roger Adler, were two of the biggest stars of the 1930s. He was Hollywood royalty. “Is that going to be a problem?” Harry asked. He wasn’t going to mention Ernie directly, because he knew he didn’t have to. “Not a problem,” I said. “Not at all.” Harry nodded. He handed me a business card. “Call Benny Morris. He’s a lawyer over in the bungalows. Handled Ruby Reilly’s annulment from Mac Riggs. He'll help you straighten it out.” I went home and told Ernie I was leaving him. He cried for six hours straight, and then, in the wee hours of the night, as I lay beside him in our bed, he said, “Bien. If that’s what you want.” The studio gave him a payout, and I left him a heartfelt letter telling him how much it hurt me to leave him. It wasn’t true, but I felt I owed it to him to finish out the marriage as I’d started it, pretending to love him. I’m not proud of what I did to him; it didn’t feel casual to me, the way I hurt him. It didn’t then, and it doesn’t now. But I also know how badly I’d needed to leave Hell’s Kitchen. I know what it feels like to not want your father to look at you too closely, lest he decides he hates you and hits you or decides he loves you a little too much. And I know what it feels like to see your future ahead of you—the husband who’s really just a new version of your father, surrendering to him in bed when it’s the last thing you want to do, making only biscuits and canned corn for dinner because you don’t have money for meat. So how can I condemn the fourteen-year-old girl who did whatever she could to get herself out of town? And how can I judge the eighteenyear-old who got herself out of that marriage once it was safe to do so? Ernie ended up remarried to a woman named Betty who gave him eight children. I believe he died in the early 90s, a grandfather many