The Wedding Dress

by Danielle Steel

  Alex and Eleanor could feel her slipping through their fingers whenever they talked to her. They couldn’t stop her. Flash was paying her, which gave her some independence, and they knew that if they tried to hold her back now, she’d be gone in an instant. They watched her leave for the tour with tears in their eyes.

  “Please take care,” Eleanor begged her fervently, and Camille laughed at her.

  “I’ll call you from the road,” she said vaguely and got in the cab. She was meeting Flash at the airport, and they were flying to L.A. to start the tour. They would be heading east from there, into the South, through the Midwest, and end up in New York at the end of the year in December. It sounded grueling, but it was what she wanted desperately, and Flash had become her hero. He had made it all happen for her, or said he would.

  They heard from her sporadically after that, sometimes once a week, sometimes not for a few weeks. They were playing almost every night, and driving from one town to the next in a bus with the other band they were opening for. They played a venue in Coney Island, in New York in December for the last night of the tour, and she said she’d be home after that for Christmas, but they didn’t hear from her and she didn’t show up until New Year’s Day. She just walked in, and stood staring at them as they ate dinner in the kitchen. She looked jaded and tired. She was scantily clad, and had dark circles under her eyes. This time, there was no doubt in their minds. She was on drugs. There was no sign of Flash. She said he was visiting his mother in New Jersey.

  “We signed up for another tour,” she said, “opening for a bigger band. We go back on the road in two weeks.” She had signed on for a hard life, and they were frightened by the destruction they were afraid Flash was leading her to. But she was on an express train they couldn’t stop. They tried talking to her about it while she was there, but she had no interest in what they said, and she was an adult and they couldn’t lock her up. She was gone in a few days, and they didn’t hear from her for two months after that. Thinking about her was an agony for her parents. They never knew where she was or what she was doing. All they knew was that she was on the road somewhere, with Flash, and on drugs. The child they knew and loved was lost to them.

  She turned nineteen in June, and showed up again a few days later. They hadn’t seen her in five months. She seemed a little more sober than the last time, but not entirely, and Eleanor could see the minute she walked in that she was pregnant. She was shocked but could no longer be surprised by anything their daughter did. She had taken the road to perdition a year before, and now she was on drugs and pregnant, and the sex slave of a bad guy, all in the name of her music career. It took all of Eleanor’s self-restraint not to cry when she was talking to her.

  “What are you going to do about the baby?” she asked in a low voice of despair. Alex hadn’t seen her yet, and she knew he would be devastated. Their daughter had been ruined by a man called Flash, and what would become of the child?

  “I’m going to have it. Why?” Camille looked surprised.

  “Are you and Flash going to get married?” Eleanor asked cautiously, afraid to enrage her.

  Camille shrugged as though it didn’t matter.

  “Maybe. Later. I don’t know.” She didn’t look embarrassed, just confused.

  “Where are you going to have it?” She wanted her to come home now, for Camille’s sake and the child’s.

  “I can’t leave the tour. I’ll have it wherever we are. It’s not a big deal, Mom. Women have babies all the time, drop them in fields, and keep going.”

  “Is that what Flash told you?” Eleanor said, wanting to kill him for what he was doing to her. He had brainwashed her, and was keeping her supplied with drugs, Eleanor was sure. He must have found her easier to deal with that way, and it was how he lived too.

  “Yeah, one of the girls had a baby last year. She had it at the hotel, and was onstage the next night.” She looked unconcerned.

  “Camille, you need to come home, so we can take care of you and the baby.” She said it as gently as she could and Camille bristled instantly.

  “Flash and I can take care of the baby. I don’t need you for that.”

  “You’re on drugs.” Eleanor decided to be honest with her. “You’re going to damage your baby, and yourself. Come home, at least until the baby is born.”

  “Hell, no!” she said vehemently. “I’m not leaving Flash. You’re just jealous because I have a good life with him and I’m happy.”

  “I wouldn’t call it a good life. You’re in a different city every night. God knows what he’s giving you. You could lose the baby or die yourself. You need to come home.”

  “Don’t waste your breath,” she said angrily, as her father rolled in in his wheelchair and saw the pregnant belly. His eyes flew to her face with a look of shock.

  “What’s that?”

  “Your grandchild, Pops.” She grinned at him. She had never called him that before and he wanted to burst into tears but he didn’t allow himself to.

  “Are you married?” She shook her head and looked disappointed.

  “You sound like Mom. I don’t need to be married to have a baby.”

  “It would be preferable,” he said in a raw voice, and he could see she was on drugs too. “You need to come home and take care of yourself.” She had left a year before, and was on a straight trajectory to her own destruction.

  “Flash takes care of me now. He’s going to deliver the baby. He did it once before.” She sounded blasé about it.

  “You need a doctor, a hospital, and us to take care of you. We love you,” he pleaded with her and she turned away from him. He was interfering with her life and she would allow nothing to come between her and Flash, surely not her parents. Flash had warned her that they would try to do that and told her to resist. He’d been right, and she followed his advice.

  She spent two days with them, while they argued constantly, and on the third day, when they woke up, she was gone, back to Flash again. They didn’t even know how pregnant she was and neither did she. She looked four or five months pregnant to Eleanor, but there was no way to be sure. The situation was heartbreaking and there was nothing they could do.

  They hardly heard from her after that and worried about her constantly, and the baby. It ravaged Alex noticeably. His only child was in the clutches of a terrible man. Eleanor was just as devastated, but worried about Alex, which gave her something else to think about. He was sixty-three and his war injuries, age, and the stress Camille was putting them through aged him overnight. Eleanor was forty-nine, and hardier than he was. She was younger and in better health. But it was taking a toll on her too. Worrying about their daughter was always at the back of their minds, whatever they were doing. And they talked about her constantly, wondering how and where she was.

  They got a collect call from a number in New Jersey on the first of December. They accepted the call immediately. It was Camille. She sounded almost too weak to talk. She was in a hospital in Newark.

  “I had the baby last night. It’s a girl. I think she was early, she’s kind of small. She weighs four pounds. I had her when I came offstage. I didn’t know it was happening, so we went back to the hotel, and did some…” There was a silence while they filled in the blanks, they had done drugs, which may have been why they didn’t know she was in labor, or didn’t care. “Flash delivered her. It wasn’t too bad, but I bled a lot. They said something was wrong with the placenta. Someone called an ambulance, and they gave me a transfusion. I’m okay. Just tired. I can leave in a few days, but she has to stay in the hospital for a while until she gets bigger, and can breathe better.” Camille sounded drugged out, but they couldn’t tell if they had given her something at the hospital, or if she was still high from whatever they had taken the night before. Either one was possible, and they could both envision a seriously damaged infant, who might not even survive, or might be ment
ally or physically disabled if she did, from her mother’s drug use. “She’s cute. She looks like you, Mom,” Camille said weakly, “except she has red hair.”

  Both of her parents were crying openly at the situation both their daughter and grandchild were in. “I’m going to leave her with Flash’s mom when she can leave the hospital. We have to finish the tour and I can’t take her with me. She’s too small.”

  “We’ll come and get her,” Eleanor said, sounding desperate.

  “No, that’s fine. Flash’s mom said she’d keep her till we can come back to get her in a few months.”

  “I want to come and get your daughter,” Alex said suddenly in a booming voice. They had been through enough and so had the baby, only hours after its birth. He and Eleanor remembered only too well what a miracle Camille had been to them when she was born nineteen and a half years before. This was a nightmare, and if they couldn’t save their daughter just yet, at least they could save her child.

  “I don’t want you to, Dad,” Camille said in a thin voice. “Flash wouldn’t like it. She’s his baby too. He wants her with his mom. You probably wouldn’t give her back, and you’d make her do all those things you tried to make me do, like be a debutante and go to a fancy school.” The baby’s life was at stake. This was not about fancy schools. The baby had drug addicted, irresponsible parents, and they had no idea if Flash’s mother was any better than they were.

  “We want to see you,” Alex said in a voice choked with tears, “and the baby. Where are you?” She told them the name of the hospital in Newark, and then her voice seemed to fade away, she was too weak to talk to them any longer.

  “What’s the baby’s name?” Eleanor asked before Camille hung up.

  “Ruby Moon,” Camille said with a sigh. “There was a beautiful moon last night when I had her. The sky was full of rainbow colors, and the moon was bright red. Ruby Moon Allen.” They could easily guess that she’d been on LSD when the baby was born. And then she hung up.

  * * *

  —

  Alex and Eleanor flew to Newark that night, and went straight to the hospital when they arrived in the early morning. They found Camille’s room in the maternity ward easily. She was sheet white, with dark circles under her eyes and was getting another transfusion. Her eyes were closed and she opened them as soon as she heard them, and started to cry when she saw them.

  “Don’t take me home,” she pleaded with them. “I want to be with Flash and my baby.” She was immediately agitated and her mother tried to calm her down, as Alex turned away so Camille wouldn’t see him crying. They couldn’t take her home anyway, or the baby. She was legally an adult.

  “We want you to come home with us, but we can’t force you,” Alex said quietly when he turned around and Camille closed her eyes again, reassured that they weren’t going to kidnap her and the baby. Flash had said they would try to do that. They were the enemy to Camille now. He had convinced her of it. Alex could see it whenever she spoke to them. She turned to her mother then.

  “It hurt more than I thought it would, even though she’s so little…and there was blood everywhere.” Eleanor could imagine it and was grateful she hadn’t died. But she looked terrible, and they went to see the baby a few minutes later. She was the smallest infant they had ever seen. She was in an incubator, and they were giving her small puffs of oxygen. Everything about her was tiny. She stared at them through the glass with enormous eyes, and gave a lusty cry when a nurse changed her diaper. She was being bottle fed because Camille was too weak and sick to nurse her.

  They went back to see Camille then, and she was asleep. They left and checked into a hotel and for the next two days, they visited Camille. Flash never came to see her. She said he was busy in a recording studio preparing to make the single he had promised her. They tried to convince her to come home with them, but got nowhere. And on the third day when they showed up, Camille was gone and had taken the baby with her. They spoke to the doctors in the nursery who said that being removed at such a low birth weight wouldn’t kill her, but would leave her vulnerable to complications which could prove fatal. Alex and Eleanor had no idea where to find her, where they’d gone, if they’d taken the baby with them, or left her with Flash’s mother, as they said. They didn’t even know Flash Storm’s real name, or his mother’s, or how to reach the band. They had no phone numbers or names. They tried every avenue they could think of to make contact with Camille, to no avail, and a week later, they went home, without their daughter, or the baby. They were both deeply depressed and worried about the baby, and Camille. They had no choice but to accept their own helplessness. Camille sent them a telegram a week later from a Western Union office in New York. “Ruby and I are fine. I’m with Flash and Ruby is with his mother. Don’t worry. I love you.” It was small consolation, and Eleanor could hardly think straight when they went back to the shop and put a good face on for their customers. No one knew that their hearts were breaking. But at least they knew that both Camille and the baby were alive when she sent the telegram. They just hoped that it stayed that way.

  It was a rugged Christmas, worrying about both of them. They were haunted by the vision of the tiny baby they had seen in the incubator. They were having breakfast on Christmas Day, the shop was closed until after New Year’s, and they were planning to go to Lake Tahoe for a few days. The phone rang while Eleanor was clearing away the dishes and Alex answered. Eleanor had a sudden premonition that something was wrong and watched his face. He looked stone faced as he wrote down some information, hung up, and bowed his head, bracing himself before he turned to face his wife. He was fighting tears and couldn’t hold them back.

  “What is it?” But she knew before she asked him, and took a sharp breath. “Camille?” He nodded.

  “It was the Boston police. They played at some bar last night. She and Flash OD’d sometime during the night afterward at their hotel. Their drummer found them this morning. They’d already been dead for several hours. She had us on her ID card in her wallet,” he said, sobbing, as they rushed into each other’s arms. Their little girl was dead. Flash had killed her. The worst had finally happened, a year and a half after she’d left home with him. And Eleanor suddenly remembered the baby.

  “Where’s Ruby?”

  “They didn’t say. Her telegram said she was with Flash’s mother.” They had no idea where to look for her, or what the woman’s name was.

  Alex called the Boston police back a few minutes later. The sergeant who had called them before said that their drummer had identified the bodies, so the Boston coroner could release Camille’s body to be sent home. Alex asked about the baby, and if they knew anything about the whereabouts of Flash’s mother.

  “You mean Herbert Goobleman?” he asked in an angry tone. He hated stories like this one. The girl was just a kid. Goobleman was thirty-six years old, and had tracks all over his arms and legs. He had obviously been doing hard drugs for years, and he had a police record for possession and sales. “That’s Flash Storm’s real name. We have a next of kin listed on his driver’s license. Florence Goobleman. We just called her. We couldn’t reach her, her boyfriend said she’s in jail. We checked. Passing bad checks, possession of a firearm, and some minor drug charges. She has a record an arm long, and some old prostitution charges,” the sergeant said disapprovingly.

  “My daughter left her baby with her,” Alex said, sounding panicked. “The baby is three weeks old.”

  “I’ll look into it,” the sergeant said sympathetically. Alex reported what he’d said as they waited. The phone rang half an hour later.

  “The infant is in Child Protective Services, in foster care in Newark, New Jersey. They took her when Mrs. Goobleman was arrested a week ago. She has no formal custody arrangement. They were trying to track down the parents, but Goobleman wouldn’t give them any information, she probably didn’t know.”

  “We’ll be ther
e as soon as we can get there,” Alex said, sounding frantic. Camille was dead. Her baby was in foster care somewhere in New Jersey. Their whole world was upside down and had fallen apart. He explained the situation to Eleanor as they rushed to pack.

  They were on a flight to Newark that night, and they went straight to Child Protective Services from the airport in the morning after they landed. The case worker was extremely helpful, and they met with a judge of the family court later that morning. The circumstances were clear, as was their right to custody. The foster mother who had been assigned temporarily brought the baby to court, she was a kind, sympathetic woman. The baby was still tiny, and the foster mother said she’d been malnourished when she got her but was eating well now. She handed the baby over. Alex and Eleanor signed all the documents, and the judge extended his condolences over the death of their daughter, whose body was on its way to San Francisco for burial. He wished them luck with the baby. A doctor at Child Protective Services cleared her to fly to California with them. They gave them enough formula, diapers, and clothing to get her home, and last them for a day or two.

  By that night, they were on a plane to San Francisco with Ruby in Eleanor’s arms. She slept peacefully, as they cried over their daughter, and gazed in wonder at the gift she had left them. They prayed that they could do a better job with her than they had been able to do with Camille. Ruby Moon was theirs to love now. It was the only thing left they could do for their daughter. And on a lonely flight from Boston, Camille was on her way home in a casket.

  Chapter 14

  When Ruby came to live with her grandparents, it rejuvenated them in some ways, and exhausted them in others. It cast them backward in time to when Camille was a baby, and they loved Ruby as much as if she had been their own. As she grew up, they took her to school, and to Tahoe with them for holidays and vacations. They attended school plays and all her sports events and ballet classes. Eleanor hired a young girl to help her when Ruby was an infant, but as much as possible, with their successful business, they took care of her themselves, sharing their life with her.