Sharleen listened in silence, knowing that there was nothing she could say. She’d known all along that her momma could not live through any more beatings. Her momma had no choice. Sharleen was glad she was getting away. And, being such a good girl, she didn’t stop to think that there would be no one for her now. No one except Jesus, who she couldn’t see, and Dean, who she had to take care of.
“Don’t say nothin’ to Dean until tonight. I don’t want no fuss,” Momma said.
Sharleen nodded, and she and Dean got on the school bus. She turned around in the rear seat to look back at her mother. The frail woman raised her hand and waved twice, then turned very quickly and walked along the main road in the opposite direction, toward the Trail ways bus stop near town. Sharleen had turned forward in her seat after she lost sight of her mother. She wouldn’t cry. She just wouldn’t. Because, once she started, she thought, maybe she’d never stop. She had bit her lip, then turned to her brother. “Dean, I’m going to take care of you now,” she told him. He said nothing for a while, then just leaned his head against her shoulder and closed his eyes.
“It was a real good puppy,” was all he said.
Sharleen remembered it all, standing there under the thin trickle of the shower. She hadn’t heard anything, lost in the memory of her momma and the sensation of the falling water. But suddenly Daddy was holding open the shower curtain with his shaking hand, his odor filling the steamy stall with his intrusion.
“What the hell are you doing?” her father growled. “Wakin’ me up. You crazy?”
She jumped at the voice and backed up to the rear wall of the tiny tin shower stall. Her practiced eye measured her father’s condition. Drunker than ever. It had been eight years since her momma had left, and her daddy had been mean and drunk for all of them. But he’d never done this before. Please, Lord, she thought. Please.
“Daddy,” she managed to breathe, trying not to show her fear. “Wait a minute and I’ll be right out.” She squeezed past him while he watched her nakedness. She took the towel off the peg on the wall and, feeling less vulnerable with it wrapped around her, walked toward the living room to the safety of her clothes and the outside door.
She heard the motion before she felt it. His hand fell like a stone on her wet head. Then he grabbed a handful of hair and he pulled her back, back toward the smelly den of his bedroom. The towel fell, leaving her bare. She screamed at the suddenness and the pain, and tried to stop him by holding on to the slippery handle of the old refrigerator. He reached around her and, with his free hand, wordlessly pried her fingers loose.
She went limp out of instinct, hoping he would have to loosen his grasp, reposition himself to carry her, but instead he just pulled her along the floor by her hair. The first words escaped her lips since the struggle had begun. “Noooo!” she shrieked. “No, Daddy, no!”
He stunned her silent with a slap of his broad, callused hand, hitting flat across her face. “Don’t start with that, you little tease. I know what you are. Heard ’bout them T-shirts over to school. Struttin’ yourself around in those tight pants. Tossin’ your hair like some kinda Jezebel.”
As he dragged her down the hall, she went limp again. Then her father scraped her over the threshold of his door, and he let her fall at the foot of his bed. Holding a sheet around her, she started to scramble to her feet.
But he was too fast for her. He lashed out, quick as a striking snake, and threw her over his knee, viciously ripping away the sheet.
“I’ll teach you some respect for me if I have to beat it into you,” he told her. Face down in the rank bedclothes, she tried to struggle off his lap.
“Please, Daddy, no. I’m sorry,” she cried, but his hand slapped her across her bare buttocks, hard. “Please!” she cried again, but he hit her harder. When she tried to struggle up, he put his other hand on the back of her neck, pushing her head so hard into the mattress that she could barely breathe.
Her bare butt already stung, but once he had her pinioned helplessly he slapped it again and again and again. “Little slut,” he cried. “Tease. Just like your mother. How many of them boys you fucked? Boyd Jamison and who else? No-good little slut.” He grabbed one of her reddened buttocks and squeezed it viciously. Sharleen screamed at the pain and the shame of it.
“Don’t you make one sound,” he warned her, swinging away at her again, and, despite the unbearable hurt, she didn’t. After a time, he slowed down, then he stopped, but he still kept his one hand on her neck, pinning her. She felt smothered, and had to tell herself to keep breathing, small little breaths, despite the choking feeling in her throat and chest.
Then, with a chill of horror, she felt her father’s hand move up between her legs, touching her there, in her private place. He grabbed a handful of her hair, there, down below, and tugged it. “You let the boys up under your skirt?” he asked, his voice thick.
“No, Daddy,” she choked out.
His hand blessedly moved away, but then it was back to cup her right breast, hanging down over his left knee. “You let them touch your titties?” he asked.
“No,” she cried again. His hand closed over her nipple, and he pinched it between his thumb and forefinger. The sharpness of the pain shot through her. “You sure?” he asked.
“I’m sure,” she sobbed.
“Good,” he told her. “Be sure you don’t. Else you’ll be a whore like all the rest of ’em.” He stood up, tumbling Sharleen, naked, onto the floor. He looked down on her with disgust.
“Get yerself decent. I’m going out,” he told her, and was gone.
Sharleen stumbled out of the close room and returned to the shower. The hot water had run out, but she hardly felt the difference. She stood in the cold flow, let it run over her back until the hurt cooled a little, then stepped out and carefully patted her raw skin with the thin towel. Thank God, Dean wasn’t home, she thought. At sixteen, he weighed 185 pounds and was six-foot-two. She knew that Dean could hurt the old man, and once again knew she could never tell Dean of this. But Daddy was getting worse and worse. She flushed with the shame of it, feeling again her father’s hand on her body. Worst of all was what she had felt against her belly while he hit her: her father had pressed his erection against her. She was afraid for herself, and also for what might happen to Dean if he knew. He’d fight their daddy, and then Daddy would kill Dean. He needed her to protect him, and she had promised her mother that she always would.
She put her hands up to her forehead, pulling back her hair as if she could pull the ugliness from her mind, and began, slowly, to dress in the skirt and blouse she had carefully made for what she was hoping would be an important occasion. With a trembling hand, she managed to put on lipstick in front of the flyspecked mirror nailed to the kitchen cabinet, then stopped for a moment to will herself to calmness. Lord, grant me this, she prayed. She had looked forward all week to her date with Boyd Jamison tonight, and wasn’t going to let anything take away from it.
Sharleen took yesterday’s meatloaf—mostly bread crumbs, not meat—from the refrigerator, cut off two big slices, and placed them in a pie tin. She scooped out the rest of the leftover instant mashed potatoes and added them, as well as a small can of creamed corn. She covered this all with aluminum foil and left it in the oven, then wrote a note to Dean telling him how to warm up his dinner and that she was going to the dance at the school. She didn’t mention anything about Boyd or a date.
Turning back to the mirror, she examined her neck to make sure there were no telltale signs of her father’s attack. There were none, except her sore behind and her still-trembling hands. On the outside, Sharleen looked just perfect. So she left the trailer to wait for Boyd, in front so he wouldn’t have to sound his horn.
5
Theresa O’Donnell has been world-famous for over thirty years. We know about her movie career, her mansion, her disastrous marriage, her failing career, her brilliant comeback, her slide, and even more than most of us would like to about her famous drunks. Bu
t it’s hard to remember that only three years ago no one had heard of her daughter, Lila Kyle. Our fascination with the lifestyles of even the rich and fading let us in on Theresa’s latest album attempt, the perfume she was launching, and her troubles with the IRS. But not her daughter. And Theresa liked it like that.
A reader who didn’t already know what was going to happen to Mary Jane and Sharleen might wonder how these two females are linked, and whether Laura Richie had not—as we say in the trade—lost control of her material. But you, gentle Reader, are savvy enough to have known from the beginning how these two are to be bound in a knot of fame, sexuality, and merchandising unmatched by any circus since the days of P. T. Barnum. And of course you would be wondering about the third part of the trinity, the most famous—or infamous—of them all.
The Rolls Corniche purred through the west gate of Bel Air, moved up the hill effortlessly, swung slowly into the gently curving driveway, and came to a stop under the porte cochere. Lila Kyle opened her door, jumped out, and strode up the wide, cracked Carrara marble steps, through the enormous carved wooden door, slamming it behind her. She looked about at the once-grand foyer, the huge crystal chandelier, the curving staircase. “It’s not home, but it’s much,” she murmured to herself, and headed upstairs. Her mother’s housekeeper came into the gallery from the dining room, the expression on her face a combination of surprise and anger, just as Lila hit the first step to her bedroom suite on the floor above.
“Lila,” Estrella called out from below. “Don’t slam the door. I’ve told you a hundred times.”
Lila stopped, her hand holding tightly to the alabaster banister. She turned slowly toward Estrella, swinging her stuffed handbag over her shoulder. Lila wasn’t only the daughter of a world-famous mother. Her father had been Kerry Kyle, the matinee idol of the forties and fifties. She was going to have to get into it with this bitch—again. When was Estrella going to get it? Glaring down at the Mexican woman, Lila said, “Are you telling me what to do, Estrella? In my home?” Lila walked slowly back down one step, paused there, then said, “You’re way out of line. Anyway, you’re only the housekeeper, you know? Hired help. And I’m not nine years old, for chrissakes.” Lila watched as Estrella’s face flushed. It was a look that was becoming increasingly familiar to Lila. Like that teacher in school she’d had to straighten out that time. Or the saleswoman at the Rodeo Drive boutique. Panicky. Embarrassed to be reminded that they were only staff. Which was all they were. Because Lila had decided a long time ago that you couldn’t buy these bitches’ friendship, but you could demand their respect. Too bad her mother had never learned that lesson.
When she was satisfied that Estrella was in her place, Lila turned and began to retrace her steps. As she continued to walk up the stairs deliberately, she called over her shoulder, “And send me up something to eat after my swim. You know, something I’ll enjoy. Give it some thought, Estrella.”
Lila walked through the sitting room of her suite and through the double doors to her bedroom. She tossed her bag on the bed, wiggled out of her tight jeans and three-hundred-dollar silk jersey T-shirt, and walked into the bathroom. Without pausing, she turned on the sauna. While it was heating up, she moved to the huge walk-in closet and took down the chenille robe she favored, threw it around herself, then went down the hall to the bedroom on the opposite side of the house to look out over the pool. It was the room her two “sisters,” the wooden dummies that Theresa had made famous on her TV show, shared. The puppets lay in their twin beds, staring at the ceiling. She wrinkled her nose at the smell of mildew that had gathered in the unused room. Why the fuck does she have to let it go like this? Lila thought. It’s not that the Puppet Mistress’s money was gone—Lila knew it wasn’t. But Theresa was getting creepy, letting help go, not keeping things maintained. Jesus, Estrella and Perez were the only household help they had, and most of the time Estrella just sat on her fat brown ass and watched TV with Theresa. The bitch is losing it, Lila thought. Well, that’s not my problem. So long as the money is there.
Leaning out the window, she was able to see the entire pool area. From up here, it didn’t look too bad. It was when you got close, and saw the cracks in the pool tile, or the overgrown weeds next to the pool house, that you knew that Theresa was ready for more than just her fucking close-up, Mr. DeMille. One of these days, Lila figured, Bill Holden’s corpse would be floating out there.
The house had been built by a very big star in the thirties. In those days, before he’d gone out of style and bankrupt, the actor had set the standard for wretched excess in Hollywood, which most people in this town today had succeeded in topping. At the height of her career, Theresa O’Donnell had bought the place, and restored the house and grounds to their former splendor. But that was a long time ago.
Now Theresa O’Donnell, like the guy who’d preceded her, was over the hill. No more musical-comedy roles, no more movies, no more stupid TV shows or even recordings. Still, she held on to what she had—a hefty income from very carefully managed investments—but the glamour life was gone. Some people had said that Theresa was gone, too, but not Estrella, her resident fan, or the circle of aging men—the Court of the Faggot Queens, Aunt Robbie called them—who loved to come over to Theresa’s and dress up. Jewelry, makeup, wigs. Dresses and shoes. Trying on and changing. Imitations of Judy Garland being topped by Bette Davis. With the final coup de grâce: impressions of Theresa singing her theme song, “The Loveliest Girl in the World.”
Lila scanned the lounge chairs around the perimeter. Good, she thought, no one’s there. I’ll have it all to myself. None of the usual bunch of her mother’s hangers-on and moochers (although Lila knew that even they had been thinning out the last few years). Those few who remained were falling apart as badly as the house. But there was a new development: the faggots were being replaced by what Lila thought of as the Cinema Dweebs. All those young guys with glasses and hollow chests, who came from places like Akron, and wanted to write a book about the symbolism of breasts in Frank Tashlin’s comedies of the 1950s. They ogled Lila and worshipped her mother. A lot of good it would do them. All Theresa wanted was to sit in the screening room and watch her old movies endlessly. The Lady’s in Red, Cruising Down to Buenos Aires. All the old crap that Lila herself used to watch. And, of course, Birth of a Star.
At least Kevin was different. He might have come to interview Theresa, but once he’d seen Lila he had stayed to talk to her. He was working on his film masters at UCLA, but he didn’t look like a Cinema Dweeb. He looked great—tanned, fit, and very handsome. And he was smart. He came from back east somewhere, and he’d read like a million books. He gave her East of Eden, and she read it, even though she’d seen the movie. Kevin was interesting. And now that she’d dropped out of Westlake, Lila was bored.
Kevin paid attention to her. He played tennis with her. He jogged with her. He took her down to the Long Beach Marina and sailed out to Catalina. Stuff her mother was too old or too drunk to do. He was polite to Theresa, but he listened to all Lila’s complaints about her, and he agreed. And sometimes he put his arm around Lila, though he never did anything more.
It felt good. He was taller than she was—the Dweebs came only up to her chest—and even more athletic, and it felt okay—just to be held. That was all she wanted, and that was all Kevin asked for.
Still, when Theresa had cooked up the idea of their marriage, Lila had been enraged. Kevin was her secret. Just for her. And, after all, she was only seventeen, too young to get married. Plus, it was none of the Puppet Mistress’s goddamn business. It was embarrassing. Kevin might not be that interested in her. But, without even telling Lila, the Puppet Mistress spoke to him and got it all settled. At least she thought she had.
Just as she thought she had the reception all arranged. Theresa chose the date—to coincide with the start of the hiatus of the television shows—so they would have the biggest attendance possible. And the caterer was to be the one used by Jack Wagner’s wife for all her parti
es. Theresa was knocking her brains out trying to make a decision between Ed McMahon and Pat Sajak for master of ceremonies. Lila could tell she had begun planning this as the beginning of another comeback caper. But Lila also knew there wouldn’t be any reception, not to mention a comeback. Because Lila wasn’t going to perform for the Puppet Mistress yet again, just so that Theresa could make a splash with Industry people. If Theresa wanted another job, let her get it herself.
But marrying Kevin was Lila’s ticket out of this mausoleum. Lila didn’t know where Kevin was now, but she assumed he was up at the tennis courts with his instructor. Even though Lila was starting to feel bored, she was glad to have him occupied for a while. Sometimes she just had to be alone. People, even Kevin, closed in on her. She wasn’t in the mood. The Puppet Mistress had promised her that this would be accepted by Kevin, after the wedding. It had better be. Lila padded on her bare feet back to her room, and stripped down to her panties to sit in the welcome dry heat of the sauna. The thick door made her feel safe. Sweat began to bead the top of her chest and drip down her beautiful breasts. She’d been taking hormones that Theresa had gotten for her since she was ten, but on her sixteenth birthday she’d also had implants—her mother’s sweet-sixteen gift to her. Now they were perfect—round and upthrust, with tiny pink nipples that pointed high. They hadn’t hardened with scar tissue or anything, the way some girls’ had. Still, she didn’t want anyone touching them but herself. She thought about Kevin again, and getting married. He hadn’t squeezed her breasts. He’d never tried. Or done anything worse. Sometimes she felt he understood something about her that she didn’t know about herself. Maybe that was enough.
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