“What’s it to you?”
“Just interested.”
“Balls!”
“How’re the boys?”
“With DeeDee.”
“Did Vic’s teeth come in?”
“Crooked. Look. You’re here. Fine. Let’s get the meat on the rug.”
If I cry I die. Cry and die. Weep and leap. “Please don’t.”
“What’re you muttering about?”
She motioned downward with her hand.
“We’ll play it your way, then. How,” he mimicked her low voice, “are your dear parents?”
You know, she thought, that it’s never been right between me and them since I left Philip. She said, “I haven’t seen them much.”
“Delighted they’re doing so well. And that prize horse’s ass, Schorer?”
“Listen, Dan—”
“Terrific he’s so great. And you, anyone can see, are blooming.”
“Have you moved?” she asked.
“To the Beverly Wilshire. Why?”
“I called the house.”
“If you couldn’t get me there, didn’t it enter your brilliant, artistic head to try here?”
“A lot of times. Didn’t Georgia tell you?”
His mouth opened, his eyelids quivered. It was as if she had slid a knife through the summer-weight jacket and into his ribs. Georgia had called him Dan once too often. Georgia and Dan. Dan and Georgia. So. She smiled. So. What once would have torn her apart, now didn’t mean a thing. Why was she lying to herself? The smile cost her. Oh Dan, she thought, remembering. A mourning dove fluttered to the ledge, stretching its wings and raising its slender neck. Dan went to the window, lifting his fingers to rap.
“Don’t,” she said sharply. “It’s tired.”
He turned to her. “So I’ve been getting laid,” he said, his voice drained of the anger that had ridden it, drained of vitality.
The dove had settled its head under one speckled wing, throat pulsing, ruby eyes turned into the office.
“Do they live on the ledge?”
“It’s not my idea of marriage, alone in a hotel.”
“They probably nest nearby,” she said.
“We don’t have much community property, but you’ll be better off than in that dump I hear you’re hiding out in.”
“Across Wilshire there’s trees.”
“Get yourself a lawyer.”
“Or maybe it doesn’t live around here.”
“You’ve gotten a divorce before.”
“They fly long distances.”
“Look, I’m trying to discuss something important.”
What is important? Where a mourning dove nests? If a sparrow falls? If one twelve-year-old boy dies? Does it matter to Anyone? She had put the question to Rabbi Jacobson and he had replied, Is it up to Gott to explain His vays to us? Vy lay vaste to yourself demanding explanations? He smelled of mothballs and had married her to Dan and so knew the whole story more or less. At first he had smiled kindly with stubs of yellow teeth, but as she had grown more insistent that the Lord our God, the Lord is One, is also a runaway Father, he’d become stern.
“I don’t remember doves around here.”
Dan shouted, “Who has time for all this bird shit?”
She tried to block his loudness.
Couldn’t.
She heard water pouring. Cool glass was put into her hand. “Drink,” he said quietly.
She drank. “It’s any loud noise,” she explained. “Dan, what’s the time?”
“Why the worry about time?”
“Alix,” she said, thinking about the bus schedule. She had committed to memory those routes needed for her brief forays. The Hollywood bus left at two thirty-five.
“What’s with Alix?”
“Nothing. She’s out, and I like to be home when she’s there. What is it?”
“Two, about,” he said.
“There’s time to talk.” Her voice faded, then returned. “Dan, do you think it was some kind of punishment?”
He understood. Jamie. “No,” he said. “But you do.”
“More than that.” She glanced at the resting bird. “All my life I’ve been looking for a meaning, a pattern. I think that’s really why I started to paint. Painters and writers are searching for some kind of order. They always have been. Take the writers of the Bible. People always’re being punished unto the third and fourth generation. The cruelties of life made some sort of sense if they were punishment by Him, even if for a very remote crime.”
“Take it easy,” he said.
“I’m not coherent? I never am, am I? But think about it, Dan.” And she went on, as incoherently, that she didn’t believe life is meaningless, she did believe that certain people, certain families, certain groups are pursued by tragedy. She cited the Greeks, and paused, taking a deep breath. “Groups pursued by tragedy.”
Her fingers pressed down until the nails were purple shells. “Would it have happened if we weren’t Jewish?”
A gagging noise came from Dan’s throat. “Why I ever made such a half-ass remark.”
“You meant it.”
“Like hell.”
“If I were Caroline and you were Gene, would he have killed Cricket?”
“Look, why don’t we knock this off? Raymond Earle is a certified lunatic.”
“Dan?”
“I make one stupid remark, and you blow it into—”
“‘If you were Gene?”
Dan sighed. “God knows.”
“I’m sure He does. But what do you think?”
He sighed again. “It wouldn’t have happened,” he said, and leaned across letters and leases. “But this is me. On the subject I’m meshugenah. Both of us are.” Pause. “Gene Matheny got you here.”
She heard Gene’s name, but it didn’t register. Dan’s admission had soothed the cranial pressure that had been with her since that afternoon in the hospital. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said. “It was, but it wasn’t.” This made no sense, but when did reason matter to Beverly? “What is it now?”
He consulted his watch. “Twenty of three.”
Her muscles coiled and a panic of adrenaline burst through her. The Hollywood bus had left! Five minutes ago, left. Without her. Fumbling in her purse, spreading brown leather wallet. Two ones. For two dollars no cab will take you from Beverly Hills to Hollywood. No way. Dark grasscloth and Dan’s bright kudos whirling. Around her. She stood. She must get to Hollywood.
“Hey!” Dan called.
Beige silk pleats slapped against her thighs. She struggled with the knob. Her palm was wet. As the door jerked open, Dan called, “Beverly!” Georgia was a moment of fake gardenias. Another tug and Beverly was racing down carpeted hall. At the elevator she jabbed her finger on DOWN. Maybe it’s a ten and a one, she thought, opening her purse, spilling Revlon lipstick, two zinc pennies, a Kennedy half-dollar, and a used Kleenex. She scrabbled. Dan was helping her.
“What the hell’s with you?”
“The bus has gone!”
“So?”
“I told you. Alix’ll be home!”
“Then you’ll be a few minutes after her.”
“Anxiety symptoms don’t work that way. Dan, would you lend me five?”
“For what?”
“A cab.”
“I’ll drive you.”
“Your appointment—”
“Screw that!” he shouted. Then, quietly, “You think I’d let you run around like this? You really think that?” His hand started to reach for her, then fell to his side. Sweat beaded his forehead, darkening the Band-Aid.
In the dim underground lot, their footsteps echoing, he led her to a Cadillac. “The Jag’s at the knackers,” he said.
He did not take out his keys.
“Dan, let’s go.”
“I ever get you home late?”
“It’s not exactly irrelevant that I can’t leave her alone. Please, Dan?”
“Look.” He pointed to the ca
r clock. “Quarter of. No. Twelve of. Say, fifteen minutes to Hollywood. When’s she due back?”
“Half past.”
“So I can talk to you a few minutes without the world coming to an end?”
In the entry, outlined by gaudy sun, an attendant stretched his arms above his head, circling at his sides, like that drawing of Leonardo’s. Beverly exhaled.
Dan took a cigar from his shirt pocket, clipping and lighting it. “The way you took off,” he said. “Five months I’ve been planning exactly how to knock your teeth down your throat. But now—”
“That I’m a crazy lady?”
“Whoever figured you for sane? I’m trying to apologize for being such a shit up there.”
“A first.”
He chuckled. “Don’t think it came easy,” he said. “Other than that, is it so rough being with me?”
It wasn’t. Besides, hadn’t she been able to talk to him easily, few holds barred? “You’re the only person left who understands me,” she said.
“Jamie was too young to understand you.”
She closed her eyes.
“Still as bad, isn’t it?” he asked gently.
“Worse.”
“Nobody could accuse us of taking it well.” A car drove down the ramp, roaring into a space. “Did I say something derogatory before? You look good—for a crazy lady.”
He smiled. She smiled back.
“That’s better,” he said, resting his knuckles on her cheek, lightly, lightly. “Buzz?”
The questioning note was clear. He meant, get back together. His features seemed heavier than she remembered, and there was a slackness below his chin. Drinking, Gene had said, and guilt. She could hear Dan’s watch, time ticking away on a golden Omega, and he was waiting for her answer.
Dan tapped ash in the tray. “Worried he’ll get her back?”
“No. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to. He’s been very nice.”
After a pause, Dan asked, “You don’t love me anymore? That the problem?”
It was. She didn’t. So how could she reply?
“Well, I still do you, Buzz, if that means anything.” Another pause. “It won’t be like it was.”
Like it was. Sadness choked her, and she could hardly breathe. She was thinking of the joy she used to feel with him. Irrecoverable. Unevokable, even. She had been in love with Dan so much for so long: for many excellent reasons had she loved him. Well, Jamie’s death broke that up. Our guilt is shared, isn’t it? she thought, and our innocence, too? There’re too many questions. And the only answer I have is that Dan acted, Jamie died, and now I can’t even remember love. Her pupils, enlarged by dim light, rested with bewildered misery on Dan. Smoke hung between them. How had she once seen as perfect, near to a god, this heavy-featured, middle-aged businessman who (like every stereotype in those grotesque Nazi propaganda cartoons) held a cigar in his mouth?
He stubbed it out. His eyes met hers. In the few heartbeats that they stared at one another, she felt as if her silk dress had dropped off. It was not her naked body he saw, Dan, but her naked mind.
Going back betrayed the dismembering price she had paid to come to him in the first place. Going back betrayed the love she once had felt for him. If she went back she betrayed herself.
Yet she was a passionately gentle woman. Any form of cruelty, even subconscious, horrified her. One moment in an underground parking lot when Dan read her thoughts, and the die was cast for Beverly.
She reached for her husband’s hand, intertwining her cold fingers in his warm ones.
“You’ll come home?” he asked. “You and Alix?”
Beverly nodded.
He started the car. “Buzz,” he said. “I’ll get to the bottom of those pigeons, I promise you.”
“Mourning doves.”
“Doves, then.”
And she searched for an equal pledge of good faith, coming up with something as the Cadillac’s tires squealed up the ramp. “Alix,” she said, “doesn’t call you Mr. Grossblatt anymore. You’re Dan.”
He laughed. He was still laughing as they emerged into the too-brilliant August sun.
And Now
Chapter Seven
1
The letter from Radcliffe came on a Saturday. Alix, who had been waiting for it, got to the mail first.
She took the unopened envelope to her room. In an ell decorated with charming blue-flowered upholstery, a private spot for her and her innumerable friends, she stood, tearing along the sharp edge. She read the letter once. She refolded paper in the envelope, locking it in a lacquer box. As she turned the tiny key, her smile was unhappy yet accepting. She brushed her dark hair. Licked a forefinger to arch her brows. Adjusted her new lime-green sweater. She went out through her private patio, thus avoiding the family room where she could hear Beverly’s soft voice and Fat Sam’s loud chortles. She drove her Mustang to the Book Shop, moving between paperback racks, stopping to speed-read a paragraph here and there, selecting eight of the fattest, novels all, rapidly printing Dan’s charge. Home, she pressed the lock of her door, giving herself up to Portrait of a Lady, the longest.
Radcliffe had rejected her.
This she would keep secret from everyone until she was able to recount the facts as a comic anecdote on herself. Rejections are painful to everyone. Rejections shook Alix more than most. To her they seemed the direct result of some personal ineptitude, like a bra strap showing. At this time, 1968, she was eighteen, an immaculate girl, sharply compulsive, and—possibly because of this—she considered rejection inevitable.
Physical beauty, true beauty, is so rare that it might as well be myth. Alix possessed it. Yet when told she was great-looking, she assumed this the routine line handed out to every passable girl. She saw a lower lip too full, hair not dark enough to be black, feet unusually long and slender. She worked constantly on her appearance. Also, she was reputed to be a brain—but then, she let nobody in on the fact that before each quiz she studied far into the night. By nature she was affectionate. She was ticked off at herself for being aggressive. A natural athlete, she discounted her skill, deciding that anyone who had a mind to could get on the tennis team, say, or ski the advanced runs. She noticed only the rare few better than she.
One thing Alix did give herself.
She caught on fast.
Her most important lesson had come immediately upon Philip’s departure. With a child’s egoism, she had believed that like the (training) bra strap which other people could see and she could not, she must have done something to make her parents quarrel. She loved her family. The idea that her mother bore full responsibility for the divorce was as incomprehensible to Alix as the quantum theory. On Bellagio Road School’s upper playground, she had voiced her belief she’d caused the separation. One of her friends had snickered. Alix had bent over on the green bench, trying to hide her tears. The others, a flock of chickens pecking to destroy a wounded sister, had joined the ugly laughter. Then, miraculously, a voice had whispered inside Alix’s head: Pretend you were kidding. With superhuman effort she had stopped weeping, somehow managing a laugh. “Boohoo, boohoo. I mean, my mother’s boyfriend couldn’t have one thing to do with it, could he?” The laughter continued, but differently. They were with her again.
Alix had learned this: If you were wounded deeply, you joked your way out of it. Brown eyes sparkle, a show of perfect bite. Charming Alix. The facade, yes, oozing confidence. And since the facade is what shows, everyone, including Mother, Father, even Dan (who saw through most people) assumed here lived the golden girl, a Beverly Hills princess of the blood. When the hurt proved too great, there was always reading. Novels never left you in the lurch. Novels prevented you from thinking. Alix drifted on blue-flowered fabric to the formal tranquillity of Jamesian life.
2
Caroline, Cricket, and Beverly curved around the sofa in the family room.
Caroline and Beverly, like many childhood friends grown to different lives, kept in intermittent touch, see
ing one another maybe once a year, maybe less. Alix hadn’t seen Cricket since Cricket was a tiny preschooler who had napped on Alix’s bed, wetting it, in the other house, the other existence.
Fat Sam chased around the coffee table, pulling down his toys. He was almost two. As Alix came in, he galloped to her, lifting his arms. “Swing,” he demanded. She swung him between her knees. Dan’s slanty blue eyes set in a wide Harpo Marx face. Thin. Wiry. Funny-looking little kid. Alix was queer for her half brother. As she swung, she heard Caroline murmur, “My God. Luv, she is a knockout!” Alix, still holding Fat Sam, pressed her cheek against Caroline’s scented pink one. “I love your suit,” she said and turned to Cricket. “Welcome.” And Fat Sam shouted, “More! More!” “Here’s your train, keed.” “Chug, chug, chug,” Fat Sam puffed, guiding his Tinker Train in and out of legs. Any conversation must center on him.
CAROLINE: How could he have grown so much in a year.… Here, Sam … No, luv, don’t pull.… (The gold chains adorning her red Chanel suit.) Beverly, I don’t see how you do it.… (Hint of that enticing chuckle.) Me, I’m too old for this game.… (After Alix removed him.) He’s a funnyface.
BEVERLY: Sam, here, play with your keys.… Sit on Mommy’s lap.… Oh, it’s a matter of adjusting. I always did want to be the senior citizen of the PTA.…
ALIX: Here, Fat Sam, here’s a graham cracker.… It’s on your diet.… Come on, cut that out. (Caroline’s chains still entranced him.) Later, I’ll take you to Roxbury Park and you can pick on men your own size.… (Tickle, whisper, tickle.)
Cricket remained silent. Approximately eighty pounds of girl topped with Orphan Annie masses of yellow curls that she made no attempt to straighten—Alix would have. Small freckled hands relaxed on a nondescript gray skirt. Face innocent as if emerging from babyhood. Was she all that young? No, almost the same as Jamie. Sixteen or thereabouts.
Caroline set her daughter up. “Cricket, remember Alix?”
Cricket nodded.
“What do you remember?” Caroline.
“You had this real pearl necklace.” Cricket spoke in a clear soprano.
“Genuine Add-a-pearl,” Alix said.
“I figured it made you an honorary adult.”
Rich Friends Page 16
