by Ann Bannon
Toby, the boy, turned his pockets inside out. “I gave you all my money yesterday,” he said, glum and embarrassed. To Beebo he said, “I’m sorry,” with the pathetic air of a child who is struggling to assume the responsibilities of dissipated parents. He was a good-looking boy; in his early teens, Beebo guessed, and finding life with a movie-star mother a stormy combination of high excitement and humiliation. He was not the type to take it lightly.
“Toby, don’t you have something in your piggy bank, dear?” Venus persisted, aware of Beebo now.
“You threw my piggy bank down the incinerator shaft,” he mumbled.
“I did?” She blinked at him with incredible blue eyes, encircled by long black lashes.
“A year ago,” Toby said wearily.
“God, that was careless. Was there anything in it?” Venus said.
“Two-fifty in pennies. I was saving up for a catcher’s mitt.”
“Well, that wouldn’t be enough anyway. For the pizza, I mean.”
“Excuse me—why don’t you charge it?” Beebo said. She was somewhat abashed to have walked in on a Love Queen in the midst of a common little argument.
“Do you think they’d let me?” Venus said, turning to Beebo at last, her voice melting off her tongue like buckwheat honey. Toby slammed out of the kitchen in utter disgust.
“I think so,” Beebo said, smiling.
Venus came to take the pizza from her, opening the container for a taste. “Somebody said it was ‘peerless pasta.’ Is it that bad?”
“It’s good.”
Venus put it on the breakfast table and tore off a bite. “You’re right,” she said. “Want some?”
“No thanks,” Beebo said, staring at her. Perhaps now was the time to back out and run, as Paula suggested.
“Don’t be shy,” Venus said. “Toby, come back and eat, dear,” she called through the kitchen door. “We have a guest.” Toby shuffled in while Venus explained to Beebo, still hesitating at the back door, “No cook tonight. She just quit for the hundredth time. Bring some plates, Mrs. Sack. I’ll get the milk for these growing children.”
“Miss Bogardus, I can’t possibly stay; I—” Beebo said, but Venus interrupted her, as if she hadn’t heard her, with a stream of cordial inanities.
Toby’s face colored. “Mother, will you listen?” he said in an angry hiss. “She doesn’t want to stay.”
“I know, darling. Now shut up and sit down, all of you.”
They did. It seemed to be the thing to do. But Beebo had a tingling feeling that the whole building would fold under her as soon as she touched down on the seat.
Venus opened the refrigerator and a loud smell came out. “God, look at the mess!” she cried. “I’ll bet that bitch hasn’t cleaned it for weeks.”
“If you’d come home long enough to look at it once in a while, she would have,” Toby said.
“Darling, I look at it every day, when I put the champagne in to cool.”
She joined them, passing the milk around, and badgered Beebo to eat more than Beebo wanted. Toby couldn’t stand it.
“Leave her alone, Mother!” he said, rising from his seat.
“Don’t behave like a nervous girl, Toby,” Venus reproved him breezily.
“I’m not a girl,” he said in real anguish.
“Of course not, dear. Boys wear pants and girls wear skirts. That’s how I’ve always known you were a boy.”
Beebo became abruptly conscious of her chino slacks and found it hard to keep eating naturally.
“I’m sorry,” Toby said again to Beebo. “My mother’s a little cracked. It comes from getting her own way all the time.”
“God, how dreadful to be fourteen,” Venus said, gazing at her son pityingly. “I don’t know how I lived through it myself.” She ate for a minute quietly while Beebo plotted an escape. “I’ll have to tell Leo about this; it’s really marvelous,” Venus said, cutting another bite.
“Leo’s her husband,” Toby said, making a face.
“You’d think they loathed each other,” Venus said, glancing at Beebo. “Actually, Toby gets along better with Leo than with any of the others.”
“It’s a good thing I get along with him, because you sure don’t,” Toby flared, to the accompaniment of horrified shushings from Mrs. Sack.
“One more crack like that and you can leave the table,” Venus said sharply. “God! What do you do with children that age?”
“I don’t know. What do they do with you?” Beebo said.
Toby turned to her with an amazed grin.
“And how old are you, darling?” Venus asked Beebo, her eyes shining through their black fringe like hard chips of sapphire.
“Fourteen,” Beebo said, and evoked a chuckle of relief from Toby. Beebo smiled at him, and suddenly they were in league; two friendly conspirators subverting Venus’s authority.
“I’d have said twelve, to judge from your table manners,” Venus cooed.
And unruffled, she continued eating, giving Beebo a chance to study her surreptitiously. Her face had been called the most perfect in the world when she was a starlet twenty years before. And still she was very lovely, even without make-up on her face. The lines about her eyes and mouth were faint and fine. You had to look for them, and somehow they made her beauty the more poignant, emphasizing as they did the perishability of human loveliness. She was probably in her late thirties, Beebo guessed.
“Tell me, darling,” Venus said unexpectedly, startling Beebo. “Do you live in town somewhere with your mommy and daddy? I mean, surely a fourteen-year-old child isn’t out delivering pizzas for a living.”
“I live in town,” Beebo said. “My father lives back in Wisconsin.”
“How primitive,” Venus said, with a smile that told Beebo she was aware of her own oversophisticated nonsense. She made it rather charming. “Just one father?” she said. “Toby has six.”
“That must be a record,” Beebo said quietly, trying to focus on her food.
“It’s Mother’s record, not mine,” Toby said. “As far as I’m concerned, you can throw all six in the East River. All but Leo, anyway.”
“Darling!” his mother cried, more amused this time than angry, perhaps because she shared his view. “After all the lovely presents they’ve given you, too.”
Beebo watched her curiously. Venus was not dense or callow. But her glamour and her fortune obviously hadn’t spared her the problems of raising a pubescent boy. Most mothers approached their kids with a mixture of love, common sense, and frazzled tempers. Venus approached hers with all the gorgeous razzle-dazzle, passion, and impatience that made obedient slaves of the older men in her life.
Toby, at fourteen, was supposed to react with the fascination of an adult male three times his age for a beautiful and tempestuous woman.
If he ever does, Venus will get the shock of her life, Beebo thought with amusement.
Instead, of course, Toby lashed out at her in frightened confusion. He loved her very much, but he was afraid and overawed, and bitter about the life she made him lead.
He wanted a mother comfortably middle-aged and unpretentious, like other people’s mothers. Instead, he had what other people thought they wanted: a glittering courtesan who couldn’t kiss him at night for fear of smudging her mouth, who took him on vacation trips with her lovers while her husband—and Toby’s friend, Leo—stayed behind in Hollywood.
Beebo sensed much of this in the pointed wordplay between mother and son. Their mutual love stood aside, forlorn and unexpressed, while they took out their grievances against one another.
Beebo stood up to leave as soon as she decently could.
“Heavens, you’re not going!” Venus protested.
“I have a heavy date,” Beebo smiled. “Thanks very much, Miss Bogardus.”
“You’re welcome. Who’s the lucky boy?”
Beebo frowned uncomprehendingly at first, till she realized Venus meant her date. “Oh,” she said, humiliated to know she was blushing. �
��Just an old friend.”
“Bring him around.”
Beebo began to stammer excuses and Toby came to her rescue. “Let her go, Mom,” he said, ashamed of Venus, as usual. He liked Beebo for taking his side; for making him laugh and getting one up on his mother. And it galled him to see Venus tease her. He was not too young to see how uncomfortable Beebo was. When Venus turned to him with a dangerous smile, he said, “I just wish you’d act like a mother now and then.”
“Why, I act like a mother twenty-four hours a day,” she said innocently. “I am a mother. There sits the proof, eating his pizza like an absolute boor.” She turned elegantly to Beebo, who had just noticed her dainty bare feet under the table. “All right, darling, go. But do come again some time,” Venus said.
Beebo smiled her thanks and got as far as the door before Venus called her again. Her voice, even though Beebo half expected it, sent a wave of shivers down her back.
“I forgot to ask,” Venus said. “What’s your name? I mean, so we’ll know when we order peerless pasta again.”
Toby had had it. Venus was practically flirting with Beebo. He clambered over Mrs. Sack and started out of the kitchen. Venus turned in her seat and said, “Damn it, Toby, you come back here!” Her eyes sparkled.
“What for?” he said blackly.
“To finish your dinner.”
“I’ve lost my appetite, Mother.” He glanced at Beebo and added, “I apologize for my mother. I hope you don’t have a rotten impression of us.”
“Not at all,” Beebo said, moved by his distress, his anxious efforts to protect her opinion of them. She wondered if he had any friends at all up here in his gilded cage. A Manhattan apartment isn’t the ideal place to raise a spirited boy.
Mrs. Sack rose to her feet clucking, but Venus waved her down. “Oh, the hell with him, Mrs. Sack,” she said. “He’ll be right back…. He’s a lovely boy,” she told Beebo. “He’ll outgrow this rebellious stuff in another year or so.” She spoke confidently but Beebo knew it was a cover-up for deep concern. “Now—what did you say your name was?”
Beebo answered in a low voice, “Beebo Brinker.”
“You’re kidding,” said Venus.
“No.” Beebo smiled.
“Lord, that’s even worse than mine. Did your press agent dream it up? Or don’t you delivery boys—excuse me, girls—have press agents?”
“I have dozens, but they’re all starving,” Beebo said.
“Mercy, we’ll have to find you a job,” Venus said. “Are you literate, by any chance?”
“No, I’m perfectly normal,” Beebo said. She had learned not to get mad at the wild assortment of jibes people tossed at her. It was better to catch and toss back than to fall and lie as if dead; make a sideshow of your strangeness.
Venus put her head back and laughed, and Beebo felt suddenly very warm and nervous, looking at her. From across the room her face looked flawless. “Poor Beebo,” Venus said, enjoying the name. “Came all the way up here in the rain to bring me a pizza, and I didn’t even pay her for it.”
“You fed me part of it,” Beebo said.
“Well, I’ll order spaghetti next time. When the sun is shining and I have a few nickels in my jeans,” Venus promised. “I suppose you’re in a mighty rush to get home to your heavy date?”
“If you don’t mind,” Beebo said politely.
“Of course I mind, but go anyway. I’ll see you on spaghetti day,” Venus smiled, and Beebo slipped out the back door with her spine still prickling.
Beebo wondered, all the way downtown in the truck, what sort of kicks Venus got out of inviting a strange delivery girl in for an unpaid-for dinner. She had a bad day and I amused her, Beebo thought. The cook cut out, Toby bugged her, and all six husbands are out of town.
She approached Pasquini’s wishing she could leave the truck somewhere else for the night, just to avoid seeing Pete. But he was out of sight, if not off the premises, and she parked and left without incident.
Under a streetlight she looked at her watch. She had been away three hours instead of one and she was anxious about the trusting girl she had left behind. She ran most of the way to Paula’s place.
It surprised her when Paula left her waiting in the entry almost four minutes before she buzzed to open the door.
No one was in the living room when Beebo came in. She called, feeling her heart quicken with alarm.
“Paula, where are you? Are you all right?”
“In here.” Paula’s voice was faint and Beebo rushed into the bathroom to find her, standing quiet and sad in front of the mirror. A bottle full of pills, with the cap off, rested on the bowl. Paula had an empty glass in her hand.
Beebo looked at her face in the mirror and then saw the bottle.
“Sleeping pills?” she said, picking it up. Her eyes went dark and she grabbed Paula by the shoulders. “You didn’t!” she said. “Good God, Paula!”
“No, I didn’t,” Paula murmured. “The bottle’s still full.”
Beebo emptied it into the toilet and flushed the pills away. She turned to Paula, trying to comfort her, but Paula averted her face and broke into tears. She flung her arms around Beebo. “Where have you been? You’ve been gone for hours,” she wept.
“She wanted me to eat the damn pizza with them,” Beebo said clumsily. “Come on, honey, lie down on the bed.” She pulled a protesting and white-faced Paula toward the bedroom. “What’s the matter?” Beebo said as Paula’s resistance stiffened.
“I think she’s afraid of a scene,” came a cool, unexpected voice. Beebo whirled and saw Mona Petry sitting on Paula’s bed, smoking calmly. “But she needn’t worry. Will you please tell her I don’t plan to stay more than a minute? I tried to tell her myself, but we don’t seem to speak the same language.”
Beebo looked back at Paula, who had covered her mouth and cheeks with tight-pressed hands while tears spilled out of her eyes. Beebo stood between the two jealous girls; one frightened and hurt, the other pleased to have her so. It was up to Beebo to restore peace.
Beebo walked into the bedroom, leaving Paula in the hall behind her. “All right, Mona, I’m sorry,” she said briefly. “If you’re angry about it, remember you’re the one who stood me up.” Her voice was sharper than she intended. She wanted to get it over with.
“I didn’t stand you up at all, Beebo,” Mona said. “I told you to call in one hour. If you had, we could have spent the night together. Instead, you walked out and disappeared.”
“I called too soon,” Beebo said, recalling the man’s voice through Mona’s door.
“Not on the phone,” Mona said, and through her disdain, Beebo could see the flash of real anger. “Do you mean you eavesdropped?”
“I didn’t have to, Mona. I went in to use the phone in the front hall, and you were throwing things and arguing with some guy. So I left. I just figured you had a taste for men that night.”
“Did you really?” Mona said acidulously. “After the way I acted with you? Knowing that any man in my apartment must be an uninvited guest?”
“An uninvited guest doesn’t get in with his own key,” Beebo shot back. “I didn’t like the idea of sharing you with a man, Mona.”
“I fought with the man,” Mona said, standing up. “I wouldn’t have fought with you, ever. Now, it can’t be helped.” She crushed her cigarette on the floor under her shoe as a gesture of contempt for Paula’s tidy bedroom, and smiled. “Or did you think we could all be buddies? We three?”
Beebo colored up with anger. “Three’s a crowd, Mona. You make such a thing of it. Why didn’t you call me? I waited for days. I wanted you to call.”
“Wanted. Past tense,” Mona said, looking at Paula. “Besides, Beebo, I was wronged, not you. The least you could have done was let me explain. Now you don’t give a damn. Well, just know that I don’t either. I wouldn’t dream of taking you away from Paula. She needs somebody to count the sleeping pills for her.” She hooked her sweater on her index finger, and swung it over h
er shoulder with an air of satisfaction. Paula was distracted and Beebo was exasperated with Mona. This was Trouble and it exhilarated her.
“Is that what you came here to say?” Beebo demanded.
“That’s most of it,” Mona said. “It’s only fair to warn you, though…I may drop some more bricks before I’m through. You turn such a nice color when you’re burned, Beebo.” She sauntered deliberately through the hall, past Paula, who shrank from her, and to the front door, where she turned for one last shot.
Beebo had followed her and stood in the middle of the living room with her arms folded over her chest, the way she faced Pete when he crowded her.
Mona looked her over and then blew a poisonous kiss toward Paula. “I hope you two will be happy,” she said. “It’s obviously one of those marriages made in hell.” She pulled the door shut very slowly till Beebo reached over and gave it a hard shove to.
Mona thumped against it on the outside, laughing at the show of temper.
Beebo turned to Paula, mystified. “What in hell was all that about?” she said.
Paula was leaning against the wall, still pale and quite exhausted. “You’ve heard of jealousy,” she said tiredly.
“She had something more than that on her mind,” Beebo said. “She looked like she wanted blood. You can be jealous without being plain mean.”
“Mona can’t. That’s how she makes her life interesting. It’s funny. You think of a man being sadistic, coldhearted, capable of evil just for kicks. But when a woman’s that way, it shocks you. Mona just—enjoys it, I guess.”
“Enjoys tormenting people?” Beebo said. She had known people like that back in Juniper Hill, but it was hard to believe about someone you had so recently admired.
Paula nodded. “I think she came here tonight because she’s mad at Pete and she can’t find him to give him hell. Pete sent you over to bug Mona, and it worked. And you and I went right along with his game and fell for each other. Mona likes to think she’s a femme fatale, and I guess to Pete, she is. She jilted him once and he never got over it. She’s always telling me I’m a ‘goddamn milkmaid’ and nobody wants a milkmaid these days. She must have really wanted you, Beebo, or she wouldn’t have been so hurt to lose you.”
