Blood and Oranges

by James O. Goldsborough

  “Ram offered me money for an abortion,” she said, staring hard, unblinking, “but I wouldn’t take it. I don’t want an abortion. As crazy as that sounds for a single girl like me, I don’t want an abortion. I don’t know how I could possibly earn a living with a child, but I don’t want an abortion. It’s nothing religious or anything like that, just instinctive. Ram threw me out, said how could he be sure the child was his—which is absolutely untrue and unfair.” This time the tears fell. “Who else’s could it be?”

  He took the handkerchief from his breast pocket and passed it to her, holding her hand briefly. Warm hand. She tried smiling again, but her heart wasn’t in it.

  “I thought of you because you could talk to Ram’s mother. I thought—she’s lost her son, but might like to have a grandchild. She seemed like such a nice person, though we only met that one time at Didi’s party, the same time I met you. Actually, I saw her once after that, which put the thought in my mind.” She handed the damp hanky back to him. “Stupid of me, isn’t it, giving a baby away that isn’t even born, but I wouldn’t be giving it away, would I? Not really. I could still be there. It might work out for everyone. Just like Didi’s baby.”

  She’d packed a lot into those sentences.

  “You know about Didi’s baby?” he said, at length.

  “I do know. I know that Eric—that’s his name, isn’t it?—is being raised by his grandparents after Didi’s death; that he apparently shows no signs of being a drug baby. How very, very hard it must be for Didi’s mother. I can’t imagine something like that. I don’t think Ram liked Didi, but she was so beautiful. I met her just that once at her grandmother’s party, and I did like her. Ram didn’t want to go to the funeral.”

  He’d stopped eating, unable to take his eyes off her, so gentle, so vulnerable. “The arrangement with the van Swerigens has worked out well.” he said. “Kenny sees Eric when he can. Kenny’s at UCLA Medical School, you know. Didi’s grandma would have approved of the arrangement. Do you remember Nelly Mull from the party?”

  “I do remember her.”

  “A lovely woman, like a mother to me. She was very fond of Kenny. Nelly passed away you might know. Another funeral Robby missed.”

  “No, I didn’t know.”

  “Didi was clean when she married Kenny. We don’t know what happened, why she went back to using.”

  “Ram said the baby wasn’t Kenny’s.”

  Cal froze, his eyes boring into the girl. “He is lying.”

  She dropped her eyes. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  He struggled not to say more, not to say everything he knew about the man she was living with. Maybe she knew already.

  She fixed him in the eyes but did not dispute him. They sat in silence, picking at their plates. He was mad. Rarely did he lose his temper, but he could not let pass such calumny. He needed to calm down.

  “You know, Dominique, in this state a woman has rights. You have lived with Robby and become pregnant by him. Any court will see that you obtain a decent settlement. Perhaps you could afford to keep the child. Robby is a wealthy man.”

  “No,” she said. “No, I couldn’t accept money from him now. That’s why I thought of Ram’s mother. If Kenny’s parents are raising Eric, Ram’s parents might want to raise my baby.”

  He wondered about her own parents. From the Midwest somewhere, wasn’t she? If she was breaking up with Robby why wouldn’t she think of her own parents instead of Robby’s? Why didn’t she know what train she was catching? And to where? The Super Chief to Chicago? Leaves every day at four.

  “And your own parents?”

  Slowly, she shook her head. She said nothing, but it was not hard to imagine: One more pretty girl breaking with her family, coming to Hollywood and getting lost. She went back to eating, her body demanding nourishment. He wondered how far along she was. Maybe it did show under the jacket. How different it was to be a woman! A woman obsesses about it, and a man doesn’t even notice. He thought of Angie, the young Angie in the swishy skirt and tight sweater. Angie always knew what she was doing. He was not so sure about Dominique.

  “I’m going to order a margarita,” he said. “Would you like one?”

  She shook her head. He ordered just as the mariachis came in from Olvera Street, strumming their way across the floor toward them in their gaudy charro outfits. A few other inside tables were occupied, but why wouldn’t musicians head for the table with the pretty girl? The lead guitar said something and they began singing “La Llorona.” Had they seen her tears? He wondered if she understood the song of the woman crying over her lost lover.

  She caught his eye, trying to be brave, trying to let the music comfort her. Even when sad, mariachis never depress, always manage to convey something infinitely human in their laments. What kind of man abandons a woman like this; any woman in such a situation? He would not think about that; he would throw himself into his work in hopes of making a better world for the little ones hiding in the wombs of girls like Dominique. He wished she’d called Lizzie rather than him, but understood. He didn’t know how Lizzie would react to raising a grandchild, to skipping steps, as Nelly called it. No, of course she would agree. Joe, now in his eighties, would become a new daddy.

  He had his own situation to think about. One way or another Robby would hear of this meeting, and how would that affect the hearings? Tampering? He was not tampering; he was a family member whose advice had been solicited on a delicate matter that had nothing to do with their legal dispute. He’d wondered at first if Robby might have had something to do with this meeting, but it was impossible. The girl was guileless.

  His drink came. The cool tequila felt good in his veins. The mariachis were on to “La Norteña,” a happier piece. He lifted his glass. “Here’s to you and your baby, Dominique.”

  She smiled gently, a ray of happiness in there somewhere.

  Chapter 50

  April 29, 1986. Lizzie stood alone in the center of the children’s room in the Los Angeles Central Library. For Barton Pitts, she’d given her reading in the library’s main room, beneath the rotunda, under the sweeping Cornwell murals depicting California’s history, a spectacular setting but she might as well have been in the Hollywood Bowl for all the intimacy. ForTransportation Conspiracy and Sister Angie, she’d chosen the children’s room, long and narrow, crammed with books and tables under exposed beams and leaded windows and a dozen tall reading lamps; large enough to seat two hundred yet intimate like a comfy den or the corner of an old bookstore. For her fourth book, she was back again.

  “Why did you write this book, Ms. Mull?” asked a prim, middle-aged lady probably more comfortable with Austen or Trollope than with contemporary memoirs. “It is so personal, so—so intimate. Your son can’t be too happy. Didn’t you feel you should hold something back?”

  Laughing would have been rude. She’d finished her reading, now the readers got their turn. “You tell what you know. I wanted a story about my city in my century. The Mull family tells that story, from the aqueduct to Playa Vista. It’s all in there, the good and the bad. Any memoir that holds back or embellishes is a lie. My son can write his own book.”

  She’d aged well, some said better than her sister, but then she was a year younger and her life had been less turbulent—at least in the beginning. Her thick flaxen hair had turned gray and grown thinner, which she didn’t mind. In her seventieth year, her weight hadn’t changed more than a few pounds, nor had anything given out on her yet. Her eyesight wasn’t what it was, but she remained healthy and active and walked constantly around Brentwood, even more now that Joe was gone. It was a good neighborhood for walking. She greeted neighbors she’d known for years.

  With Joe, they would write mornings and walk in the afternoon. She set up her desk in Robby’s old bedroom, leaving Joe alone to work in his study. After work, they’d take a light lunch, putter around in the ga
rden, pick some oranges off the Sevilla for orangeade (sweetened, of course) and do a little more work before heading down San Vicente to Thirty-One Flavors for coffee and ice cream. Sometimes they walked up to Sunset. There was more traffic than there once was, but they’d scrapped the trolleys hadn’t they? The traffic was no better anywhere else, so they stayed put. They’d grown used to Brentwood.

  When Joe died and they buried him next to Terry in Westwood—just down the path from Baby Snooks—she’d thought of moving into something smaller but as things turned out was glad she didn’t. Little Maggie moved into Robby’s old room when she arrived, and Lizzie moved her work into Joe’s study, redecorating to not drown in nostalgia. Before long, she was walking Maggie to school, the same walk Joe once made with Robby, and home again to make coffee and eat the bagel picked up at the bakery on San Vicente. She’d be showered and at her desk by ten and sometimes go straight through to mid-afternoon when school was out. Twice a week she spent the day in research at the central library. She was as busy as ever.

  “What’s your sister think about you revealing all her secrets?” asked a neat little Miss Marple type in rimless spectacles and a gray chignon. She sat next to the Austen lady.

  “Maggie’s sitting behind you. You can ask her at the signing. I didn’t reveal all her secrets because I don’t think I know them all—thank heaven.”

  She laughed with the audience.

  “Oh, I will ask her,” said the lady, turning around to look. “I want to know all about Howard Hughes.” More laughter.

  Following the question period, the audience would queue up at the table next to the podium for the signing. One of the librarians was there to help. A young girl roamed the room with a microphone. Always happier asking than answering, writing than speaking, Lizzie had learned to endure these sessions. Readers generally were fans, though not always. She’d been threatened over the Pitts book and sued over the transportation conspiracy. She’d learned to scrutinize her audiences and decided this one was fine except for the blond boy who kept moving around in the back, in and out, never sitting, something on his mind.

  “Are you worried about libel suits?” asked a knife-faced man in a baggy brown suit and wearing an ugly purple and gold tie. A reporter? “The Chandlers can’t be too happy.”

  “Newspaper people don’t sue each other,” she answered. “We don’t want readers to get any ideas.”

  It was a large, mostly friendly crowd. Library people, she’d discovered over the years, were different from bookstore people. She’d done readings at Campbell’s in Westwood and Vroman’s in Pasadena, pleasant enough places, but her favorite site was the central library. Something about a library, especially one as grand as the central, commanded a reverence you didn’t always find in bookstores. The silence? Or to be surrounded by the prophets of the ages staring down on you from the heaven of their high shelves. Be in awe. Be respectful. Check bad thoughts at the door. She looked out on an audience of maybe a hundred and fifty, smiled toward Maggie and Cal, still there for her, as always.

  Someone with a camera made her think of Luis Ortega and their trip to Baja in search of Uncle Willie. The Times had a plaque for Luis in its rotunda, as it did for all its people killed in action. There might be a Times reporter here as well, though she’d scheduled an interview later in the week. She scarcely recognized the Times anymore, which had returned to the bad old days. She still had some friends there, but rarely saw them. Poor Otis turned into a recluse grinding his teeth up the coast at Ojai. The revenge of the family coupon-clippers. He’d put it to them for a while, cut into their dividends and interest to build a newspaper worthy of the city.

  “What makes your family different from any other?” a man asked. “Lots of families arrived with the aqueduct. That’s why they built it.”

  Long mustache and longer bolo tie, made her think of Henry Callender. No aggression in the question, just curiosity. She didn’t see a book in his hand. Potential customer. Be nice. He was seated near Rosie and friends from her Ballona group. “That is for you to judge, sir. You’re here for a reason. Must be something about the Mulls that interests you.”

  “Yes, there is,” he said, quickly, before the girl could get the microphone back. “The Reverend Willie Mull. Goodness gracious, could we use him today in this godless place!” Some embarrassed tittering, but clapping as well, the god-fearing against the godless. “He wasn’t your pa, that would be Eddie, but maybe you could tell me this: Why did he do it, Ms. Mull? Why did he run off to Mexico with that little tramp?”

  He sat down amid a few hisses. Don’t speak ill of the dead, she thought, especially when she’s been murdered. Cal would hate that. She glanced toward him. Cal and Angie. He just couldn’t do it, not after his father, though who knows what might have happened had she lived. More people remembered Angie these days than Willie. The strange young blond man with long hair appeared in the door and was gone again. Like he was reconnoitering.

  “Last time I heard, the Temple of the Angels was filled every Sunday and still doing its broadcasts,” she said. “People remember the good that Sister Angie did for Los Angeles and for its people.”

  A man stood up who bore every mark of a reporter except the fedora with a press pass in the brim. Couldn’t be the Times. Maybe the Herald-Examiner. He held up a copy of the book.

  “You’ve made enemies with this book, ma’am, just like you did with the Pitts book. You must know that. Trevor Bonfeld: he’s big in Hollywood. Kids love his movies. Provides lots of jobs. Fred Goering is one of our foremost architects. You dismiss them as misguided narcissists. Are you being fair to them?”

  He sat down, and she stared at him for some time. Doing his job, she supposed, just as she’d done in her time. No, not just as she’d done. This man’s snarky comments were not meant to elicit information but to provoke her into saying things she’d regret, make her sound like she was settling scores rather than laying out a well-documented history of events.

  “Am I being fair? Once you’ve seen Playa Vista it’s pretty hard to be fair. The studios own the mountains all around Hollywood. Plenty of room up there. No lagoons and wildlife to destroy in the mountains. Up there they like things like that, which make movies more authentic. I used to go up there on shoots with my husband.” She paused to put on her reading glasses and glance through the book’s index, finding what she wanted and turning to the page. “You want to know Bonfeld’s attitude toward nature? This is what he said at the Wonderworld press conference with Summa. She read from the book:

  “‘All those people worried about the frogs at Playa Vista can rest easy. I’ll put frogs in my movies.’”

  She looked up and saw heads shaking.

  “No other single comment, in my opinion, played a greater role in Summa’s defeat than that one. It was so . . . so arrogant, so incredibly supercilious. My hope is that Bonfeld withdraws from this project before he does himself more damage.”

  The reporter wasn’t done. “And Fred Goering?”

  The blond with long hair was back. What was he up to? She’d lost her thread. Fred Goering, yes. The architect. She was no public speaker, but the reporter had challenged her.

  “Let me tell you about the ordeal we went through—the ordeal of taking on the rich and powerful in this city—and we took them all on, developers, lobbyists, Hollywood, everyone who saw in the beauty of Ballona personal fortunes to be made. All through this battle, which we were given no chance of winning, the one name I kept hearing was Ayn Rand—Ayn Rand the patron saint of capitalism, Ayn Rand the sworn enemy of government, Ayn Rand the purist who prefers death to compromise. In one of her novels, Rand’s protagonist is an architect named Howard Roark. When Roark’s drawings are altered, Roark dynamites the buildings.” She paused to look out at the audience. Rand’s reputation had faded badly in recent years except among fanatics, but these library people would remember. “Like Roark, Goering thought he
could do it his way. He was wrong. He lost. We won. We used no dynamite.”

  Some in the audience started to clap, but she held up her hand. “We proved that the people, not money, still rule this country. The Coastal Commission, established by the people of this state, was crucial in stopping Summa. This building we sit in today, this beautiful library, was built and paid for by the people of this city, not by some corporation selling shares, acting in its own interest. It is up to us to be stewards of what we’ve inherited—both of natural treasures like the lands of Ballona, and manmade ones, like this library.”

  The blond boy had stopped to listen and was grinning. He was carrying something. Then he was gone again. A young woman in the audience had the microphone.

  “Your niece, Didi Heyward, was my sorority sister at UCLA. We were Tri Delts. I came to the graduation party your mother gave for her in Bel Air. Such a sad story, so tragic, such a beautiful girl. Do you blame Archie Zug for what happened to Didi?”

  Blame? She glanced toward Maggie. She wouldn’t get into that. “We tried to help Didi. Maybe none of us tried hard enough but there’s a limit to what you can do when someone is self-destructive. It’s up to them. Didi left behind a beautiful boy, Eric Van Swerigen, being raised by her husband Kenny and his parents. Eric has a bright future.”

  A trim young man in crimson sweater with gold USC letters took the microphone. He cleared his throat and fiddled with the microphone until it cracked and the library girl told him to stop. Self-conscious but determined.