There Should Have Been Castles

by Herman Raucher

  Tweren’t no one in the house but me. I went back to the fuse box and threw the current emphatically back on, like an executioner. And I returned to my living room where I sat down to think things out. There was no doubt but that Sam Gaynor would be coming after me. The only question was when. I had no weapons other than some salad forks. I’d use them if I had to.

  Alone in my California funk, she occurred to me. Ginnie. Ginnie the Incredible. There I am, sitting and waiting for the wrath of Sam Gaynor, and my mind goes plying ghost mists in search of a faraway girl. And out of the swarmy myopia, her face comes through. One sweet face as if in answer to all the fool questions. One light in the attic. One carrot on a stick. One Rosebud. One Grail.

  I loved her. God, how I loved her. From the apex to the brink, I loved her. I loved her once and I loved her still, and staying where I was, mired in inertia, was to accept the conclusion that, after paying every toll, catching every light, and hitting every drawbridge from Pittsburgh to LA, all I was going to end up with was a dead skunk on my bumper.

  There had to be more. You don’t start out life with a slap on the behind only to conclude it with a kick in the ass. I got back into my trusty car and pointed my life south, to the airport.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Ginnie

  1953

  After burning up New York City with countless weeks of shameless highlife, Johnny took me with him—first to San Francisco and then on to LA. San Francisco was indescribable. Glittering and expensive and fun. We spent weeks there and in the environs—Big Sur, Carmel, Monterey. Johnny would have to leave from time to time but I always found things to do as San Francisco was a fantastic place. And the drive down the Pacific Coast Highway, and San Simeon (Hearst’s place), were beyond words.

  But it was strange as hell being in LA because I knew Ben was there, somewhere—Hollywood or Beverly Hills or Bel Air, which was where we stayed—at the Bel Air Hotel in a suite they could have shot Ben Hur’s chariot race in. Johnny spent a lot of time playing golf with bigwigs whom I never saw until dinner time. And, to keep me happy, he leased a little white Mercedes convertible—just for me. It was a dandy, like having a pony again.

  The first day I had it I pranced it all the way out to Santa Monica, where I stopped to look at Southern California’s view of the Pacific. There were some crazy surfers out there, trying to get killed, but nothing could kill them so I headed back for Bel Air.

  Driving, I became aware of a sports car that was sure as hell trailing me. It was the brightest red and, in my mirror, I could see the driver; but, because the sun was behind him, I couldn’t make out his face. I figured he was some kind of death-defying kid, and because, a couple of times, he came so close to running into me I was determined to shake him off.

  Making a hard right turn into a congested gas station, I watched the red idiot sail by. I waited awhile, apologized to the people I had almost killed, and drove back to the hotel.

  Though I knew how to drive I was not quite the best driver because I had barely learned to drive before I was shipped off to those damned schools. Anyway, I got back to the hotel in one piece and got ready for dinner. We ate at Chasen’s. Joan Crawford was there and it was all I could do not to run over to her and pester her for her autograph, or a lock of her hair, or a clove from her salad, or anything.

  It was hard for me to keep track of the time. Everything was so meaningless, so frivolous. I took tennis lessons from some pro, only he wasn’t really watching my stroke, he was watching my ass. And even though I was a beginner, I knew there was no such thing as an “ass” fault. I had to put the kibosh on that right away because I wasn’t learning how to play tennis, and he was about ready to put a topspin on both of my boobs. So ended my tennis lessons—with a whimper and not a bang.

  I swam a lot and sunned a lot and collected a crowd at the pool a lot, even though I didn’t try, so I usually ended up driving out to the beach a lot. And I mean why out. Past Malibu. All the way to a little spot in some rocks where people left me alone. I dubbed it Point Vista, only don’t ask me why. It was not pointed and had no vista at all. It just sounded like something I’d heard in a movie somewhere. Very glamorous and lots of sand flies.

  I would drive up to Point Vista, sometimes with a book, and just let my mind wander every which way. I was sneaking up on twenty-one years of age and I was beginning to feel that, once that happened, I would be over the hill and could no longer occupy myself with daydreams. Until that time, though, I’d still be a kid. Some kid. A millionaire’s mistress, in a bikini, on a blanket, on a beach, a billion miles past childhood, a 180-degree turn away from virginity.

  Johnny simply did not travel in any kind of Hollywood set. His friends wore blue blazers and white flannel trousers and were so WASP that they thought pastrami played second base for the Chicago White Sox. So there was no chance I’d ever run into Ben at any of their homes. Still, the thought of Ben’s being so near often kept me awake at night, as well as beating the crap out of my days. I missed him. Not as a lover, I don’t think, because that time was too long dead to exhume, but as a friend and as a part of my life when I was terribly young and frighteningly vulnerable and, I fear, alarmingly stupid.

  The memories were not harsh. A year and a half had smoothed away the sharp edges. If I were to meet Ben again it would not be the classic meeting of the spheres. It would not be Siegfried crashing into Brunhilde at the Mardi Gras in New Orleans. It would be more like Donald O’Connor bumping into Debbie Reynolds at the roller rink in Yonkers. We’d say, “Hi, there,” and go arm-in-arm, two turns around the rink, while the organ played “Abba-Dabba Honeymoon” and the pair of us ate our way out of cotton candy.

  Ben Webber had been my first lover. I had given him my so-called innocence. In him arms I had lost my virginity. What an archaic term—“lost my virginity”—as if it had been in a brown paper bag that I’d left on the Fifty-seventh Street crosstown bus. I had only known two men since Ben and none before—not a particularly high count for a racy woman of the world. Richie Pickering had been an affair without passion, a port in a storm and a misguided port at that. He had used me badly and I left him. Johnny Farrar, I had to admit, was an affair on the rise, a relationship based more on potential than on day-to-day fulfillment. I was allowing it to happen. I was giving it room and air. I was not lost in it, off the deep end in it, throwing caution to the wind in it. I was playing it as I had seen deep sea fishermen play a marlin. I was giving it all the line it wanted, and if I hooked it—great. I’d pose beside it for Sports Illustrated. But if it got away, hey, I’d just go chumming for another.

  What I didn’t like about my existence was that constant feeling of lukewarm. You can cook with lukewarm but you can never boil with it. And by the time something gets hot in it, you can already be bored with it. Lukewarm was steady-as-she-goes, when what I thrived on was hard-rudder-right, girl overboard.

  Three weeks in LA and the outskirts (Palm Springs and Santa Barbara) and the ants were in my pants. Johnny was fine, delightful and attentive. But he was also a little possessive, which led to his taking me for granted, something I never could stand since my days as a kid sister. The only time I had gotten a rise out of him was when he walked in on my “dinner for five” that night in the Delmonico. I didn’t know it then, but I liked that he was annoyed. I mean, he really looked at me when he looked at me. His voice had more charge when he spoke, his fists clenched, and his jaw twitched. I knew I was alive is what I’m getting at. I knew it because I was afraid he was going to hit me.

  Christmas in Palm Springs, New Year’s in Acapulco. January telescoped in to February and April was goosing March. More restaurants, more parties, more idle wealth than I’d ever imagined. And more tedium than I’d ever been designed to tolerate. Johnny went away a, couple times, to Denver, never staying for more than three days but leaving me alone at the Bel Air just the same. I handled the few mashers without incident, never breaking stride and never getting cornered. But what I could n
ot handle was the pointlessness of it all, the waste of it. And the waste of me.

  Had I come all those years to merely dress up a pool? Was that the measure of my worth, the depth of my contribution to the year 1954? Was I really in love with Johnny Farrar or did I just want to be? And should I wait around and then leave whenever I felt like it, as he had invited me to do, or should I cling around, and sweat it out, and hope to so fascinate him that he would beg me to marry him? And in that Atomic Age we then lived in—were those the questions that the history books would list as the most pressing of the time?

  I felt like drinking but knew not to, at least not alone. I felt like screaming, and that I did—alone on Point Vista, where I had been spending most of my daylight hours. I had, of course, developed an incredible tan but at great expense as my skin began to feel like dried-out leather; and I wondered what to use on it—moisturizer or saddle soap.

  When Johnny came marching home I was so gorgeous that even I couldn’t take my eyes off me. And instinct told me that that was the time for me to make my move—my play, so to speak. For I would never be more beautiful. From that point on it would all be downhill. Wrinkles and flab, crow’s-feet and triple chins. Stretch marks, liver spots, and facelifts so often that my feet would be off the ground.

  So I got myself all made up like some kind of sacrifice to the Gods. White dress—snug, deeply cleaved, and slashed down one side. Flowers in my hair—courtesy of Ophelia. And barefoot. I was goddamned barefoot in the lobby of the Bel Air Hotel, and for no other reason than that the idea of it knocked me out. And when I saw Johnny coming in, I moved at him as if out of a dream, and I put my arms around him and surrounded him with my perfume. And as I tongued his ear, I whispered, “Welcome home, my Johnny. I have only one thing in mind.” To which he replied, “Get dressed. We’re having dinner with the Barringers. And, for Christ’s sake, wear shoes!”

  So much for bare feet and good intentions. As to dinner with the Barringers, it had been coming for some time. It was not merely a flash bulletin on the six o’clock news. I had, up till then, given a great deal of thought to how I might worm out of that appointment should it finally land on me. Johnny had mentioned it to me in New York, and because Johnny never concerned himself with anything but reality, I knew that the confrontation would one day take place. To get out of it I had considered and rejected: hepatitis, mononucleosis, turned ankles, false pregnancy, inexplicable vomiting, swoons, desertion, and suicide. There was no way to get out of it without turning invisible. I tried turning invisible. A tall, suntanned blonde cannot turn invisible so don’t try it.

  “I want you to look incredible,” said Johnny, jumping into the shower. “You have to go all out if you’re going to look good next to Maggie.”

  “Oh? Is she that special?”

  “I don’t know. Was Cleopatra special?”

  “Cleopatra was sixteen. How old is Maggie Barringer?”

  “Oh, maybe thirty.”

  “That old?” Fat chance, Johnny. Still, if anyone could have done it, it would have been Maggie. Except that it would have meant that she had me at nine years of age and Mary Ann at five. Very precocious—or a fucking miracle.

  Oh, I knew it was going to be a trauma. Not for her—she’d probably find the reunion enchanting—but for me, because I would no doubt stammer and piss in my panties. The only advantage I had over Maggie was that I knew, ahead of time, that we’d be meeting at dinner. Unless—“Johnny?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Does Mrs. Barringer know anything about me?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “Not even my name?”

  “I told her nothing. I want her to be surprised.”

  I didn’t comment. Yes, Maggie would sure as hell be surprised—but not shocked. Nothing could shock Maggie, of that I was certain. Unless—unless when we met, Johnny was naked and I was standing behind him, pumping his cock while saying, “There’ll always be an England.” That might do it.

  I was scared. I saw no reason to lie to myself about that. Whoever Kevin Barringer was, he was also my stepfather. I had a rich stepfather, goddamnit, which right away put me one up on Snow White. When had Maggie remarried? It would have had to have been almost two years prior, before the St. Regis fiasco because she was already using the name Barringer at the time. Also, to have remarried, she would have to have known about Daddy’s death. She wasn’t at Daddy’s funeral so how soon after it had she learned of it? And had she made any claim on Daddy’s estate—because, if she had, and was successful, then more than likely I was wiped out. My share of the estate, as well as Mary Ann’s, disappearing into Maggie’s treasure chest. Was Kevin Barringer really up to his ass in oil, or was he living off of what was formerly my inheritance? And me only weeks away from the age at which I had planned on claiming it. Things were askew in paradise as I dressed to the teeth for my meeting with Mama. Some skeletons were rattling around in the closet and wanting out. It promised to be a fun night.

  Johnny—God, he looked beautiful. He was a beautiful man. Should have been a movie star. Could have been had he studied with Helga Nathan, as I had, and been able to withstand her flashing tit. He was wearing velvet—a midnight blue velvet tuxedo with silver piping about the lapels, and trousers to match. Me? I was so gorgeous, so breathtakingly beautiful that I could have been coronated and England would have bought it—a pale, powder blue satin evening gown so clinging that, had it been a flesh tone, I’d have been arrested for nudity. Low-cut back, down to my sweet ass, and low-cut front, down to my lowest rib, all of it held up by two cute boobs and a strong knot behind my neck. Diamond necklace and diamond earrings. Diamond ring, too, but because I had bitten off two of my best nails I chose to wear gloves to my elbows. So no one saw my ring.

  We went by limousine but I don’t know to where. It was dark and my mind wasn’t so much on where we were going as on how the hell I’d act when we got there.

  We were somewhere in Beverly Hills. Truesdale Estates or something. Imagine, a private section of already private Beverly Hills. It would be a private home, of course, not a restaurant. And a frightening twinge electrified the nape of my neck as I asked myself the amusing question, “Would Johnny and I be the only other couple?” The answer: a rousing yes—because we were the only other car in the driveway and were already a fashionable one hour late.

  The house was unacceptably unbelievable. Spanish. White and wrought-iron things squiggling all about. Gates and fences, big and black. And floodlights bouncing off the walls as if we were arriving for the world premiere of Gone With The Wind. As to the swimming pool, it was more of a lagoon. No, make that a lake. Not just any lake, but Lake Michigan, done over with underwater fights that gave everything an aquamarine sheen. Obviously it was a house that MGM had built as a memorial to Esther Williams, though she must have been underwater at the time because she never would have allowed it—it had no orchids, no Van Johnson, no Lauritz Melchior.

  Johnny was reading my mind. “Don’t worry. It’s rented.”

  “From who? The Aga Khan?”

  “Fellow named Tyler. Diamonds.”

  “And we’re the only dinner guests?”

  “Appears that way.”

  “Seems a shame to fill the lake just for us.”

  “What?”

  “Shouldn’t we have brought bathing suits?”

  “I’m sure they’ll have some for us.”

  “Yeah, but can platinum float?”

  “Honey, I think, tonight, Maggie Barringer is going to meet her match.”

  “You mean Greta Garbo’s coming?”

  The liveried chauffeur eased our battleship under a marble portico and a man in a white jacket leaped to open the door. “Hurry!” I said to him, “the pains are coming every thirty seconds!”

  Johnny gave me a little elbow-nudge in the boob to express his displeasure with my gamesmanship.

  Our limousine disappeared as the white-jacketed footman (I guessed that he was the footman as he certainly wasn�
��t a greengrocer) led us up the stairs to where another white-coated man (the pharmacist?) held the fortress door open for us. All I could see was hallway—a hundred miles of hallway, spotted every ten yards with black candelabra that had real candles going. I was either about to be initiated into some sorority or I had stumbled upon a witches’ convention.

  My heart did a timestep as our hostess came sweeping at us from the opposite end of the hall. Damn, but she moved well. Damn, but she had style in that black dress that billowed as if pushed along by a fan in a wind tunnel. And as she drew closer I could see that—damn—she was still beautiful. Wrong—she was more beautiful than ever, another of those slender, regal women whose age is never guessed at because it’s never of any consequence. And I had a sudden rush of immense pride—my mommy was so pretty.

  She saw me but if she recognized me she didn’t let on, and Johnny made the introductions. “Maggie Barringer, may I introduce Ginnie Maitland.”

  Maggie extended her hand to me. “Ginnie, I’m so glad that you could come.”

  To which I said, “Vive la France.” And Johnny figured I’d gone bonkers.

  Maggie smiled but did not bat an eye. I had fired my Big Bertha at her, my Doomsday Weapon, and it had sailed right past her, out the window, over the pool, and on to Malaya where the dawn came up like thunder. It was the only line I had rehearsed. After that I was on my own. The Stan Arten Show was never like that.

  Maggie hooked an arm through one of mine, and the other through one of Johnny’s and walked us into the bar. All of us were in step like we were opening the Jackie Gleason Show.