by Ann Bannon
Pete looked back with cold wrath. “I got five kids on those stairs says you’re a liar,” he said. “Or are you saying you ain’t a real woman?”
“Don’t fake with me, Pasquini. I know what you pretend in bed,” Marie shouted. “You married me to prove you was a man, and once we left the church, you figure you proved it. Well, it ain’t that simple.”
Pete walked toward her and Marie paled and stiffened, ready for a blow. But he passed her and went to Beebo, who could only stand her ground like Marie and hope he’d go on by. But he stopped, putting a hand on her shoulder, and pulled her aside.
“Don’t listen to her, she’s cracked,” he said softly. “I told Bogardus you’d be up with the spaghetti this afternoon. Does that make me your friend?”
“After your cracks about Paula?” she said, shaking his hand off roughly.
“I told you where to find Paula, too,” he reminded her, and his eyes glittered. “I always say nice things about that one. She’s a nice girl.”
Beebo looked at him with revulsion. “You sent me there to even some secret score of yours with Mona. Don’t act noble about it.”
He chuckled. “Still, I sent you, butch. And you went. You tell me if you’re sorry. You tell me if I ever done one thing you want to complain about.”
“We’d be here all day,” Beebo snapped. She turned to start working on the morning’s orders, but he followed her into the store, leaving Marie and the others to understand he was through fighting. Beebo heard Marie say wearily to Mrs. Pasquini, “So how come your son looks so good in Bordeaux and so lousy in New York? Okay, don’t yell, go see about the kids.”
Pete and Beebo worked in silence but whenever she glanced at him he seemed to have glanced at her first and was waiting for her eyes with a smile. He got his orders packed ahead of her and loped out the back door at a jaunty pace. Beebo watched his retreating back with relief. Before he drove away he leaned in and called to her.
“Don’t forget—Bogardus wants her pasta at five-thirty,” he said. She straightened up and glowered at him till he laughed and withdrew.
Beebo finished the orders quickly, her mind teeming with ideas for another job. Anything would be preferable to Pete’s endless leering. It was one thing for him to chase pretty Lesbians like Mona. But that he might desire Beebo—big and rangy, almost more boy than girl—seemed as utterly perverse and unnatural to her as that she might desire him.
She was surprised when the front bell rang and Pat Kynaston walked in. She was just ready to leave.
“What are you doing here!” she exclaimed.
“I brought Marie some goodies for her cockroaches,” he said, shaking a colored cylinder full of powder. “The Last Supper. Going to make some deliveries?”
Beebo nodded.
“Take me along,” he said pleasantly. “I haven’t anything to do, and the heat in that apartment is godawful.”
She relented after a moment’s indecision, and gave him a smile. “Okay, bring those boxes and follow me,” she said. “You can take my mind off things.”
Late in the afternoon they arrived at Venus Bogardus’s apartment on Park Avenue. Beebo parked in the service entrance, letting her hands drop between her knees with a sigh. Pat lighted her cigarette and they sat and smoked a minute.
“Kind of a stuck-up looking dump, isn’t it?” she said, squinting up at the glistening windows, stacked with parallel nicety clear to the clouds. “Well, let’s go do it.”
She got the hot spaghetti and, on a sudden inspiration, included a jar of kosher dills intended for a different customer.
“Who are we going to see this time?” Pat yawned on the way up.
“Probably another maid,” Beebo said.
“Whose?”
“Venus Bogardus’s.”
Pat straightened up and stared at her.
But it was Toby, Venus’s problem child, who let them in. “Hi, Beebo,” he said, pleased to see her.
“Hi, buddy. Where’s your mama?” She was sorry at once she had asked. There was a cook by the stove this time, apparently the one who ditched Venus periodically, but always came back. She was thin and sticky with butter, and she looked inhospitable.
“I hear Venus threw some food around last night,” Beebo smiled at Toby. “I brought her a peace offering. Sweets to the sweet,” and she handed Toby the pickles. “This is a friend of mine, Toby—Pat Kynaston.” They shook hands and a silence ensued. All Beebo had to do now was wait for her money and leave. But she heard herself asking again, “Is Venus here?”
“Come on in. I’ll go see,” Toby said unwillingly.
He left the kitchen briefly and returned, his hands jammed nervously in his pockets. “She’s in her room,” he reported. “In a goddamn peignoir. She only wants to see you, Beebo. I told her about Pat and she said she didn’t want any peace offerings. She wouldn’t even listen about the pickles.”
“Oh, God,” Pat whispered to Beebo. “I suppose I go to the cook as a consolation prize.”
Toby walked over to them. “I have a good collection of records,” he said diffidently. “And guns. That’s one thing all those fathers are good for. I didn’t go for the guns at first, but I’ve gotten kind of interested. If you’d like to see them…I mean, I think Mom is busy for a few minutes.”
Beebo was touched by his loneliness, his eagerness for company. She had the feeling that he was choosy about his friends, and living a life where he could hardly meet any anyway. It made her seem quite important to him.
He grinned at her. “You’re still on my side, aren’t you?” he said.
“All the way,” she laughed. “I just want to apologize to your mother for our delivery boy. I guess he got fresh.”
“No,” Toby said, his face lengthening. “She did.”
The cook absorbed all this with silent disapproval. She was the type who disapproved of everything—even food.
“I wish you wouldn’t see my mother,” Toby confessed unexpectedly.
Beebo’s mouth dropped open a little. “I thought somebody ought to ask her pardon for last night,” she said, embarrassed. “The Pasquinis don’t want to lose her.”
“They don’t need her,” he said, looking at the floor.
“Hmp,” said the cook to the spinach during the shocked pause that followed.
“That’s no way to talk about your mother, Toby,” Beebo said.
“You heard how she talks about me,” he countered. “What am I supposed to do? Pretend I’m deaf?”
Beebo listened, full of compassion, but afraid of the big-eared cook. Toby spoke as if she were no more than another kitchen appliance, like her stove.
But he saw Beebo’s glance, and pushed the kitchen door wide. “Come on in my room,” he said. “We can talk there.”
Beebo put the spaghetti on the counter and followed him, with Pat behind her. The apartment was richly decorated and unkempt.
In his room, Toby sat on the bed, and Beebo and Pat found places on chairs. He had his guns in two glass cases hung on the wall, and the rest of the room was a jumble of phonograph records, books, and school mementos.
Toby wanted to talk frankly to Beebo, and yet they were more strangers than friends. But he needed to talk, to melt the strangeness away and find the friend. At last he began, rather abruptly, “I just don’t want my mother to turn you against me. I mean, you’re a good kid and I want you to know me the way I am. Then you won’t think I’m such a dumb baby when she starts talking about what a ‘lovely child’ I am, but she can hardly wait till I outgrow it.”
Beebo heard this awkward speech with an ache of recognition. How it hurt to be so young, so at the mercy of your elders, and, often, lessers. So full of rainbows and music and romantic love…yet always cracking your head against the walls of reality.
“I know she says some silly things, Toby,” she said seriously. “But you love her anyway, don’t you?”
“I guess so. But I’ve seen her with so many guys it just about makes me sick,”
he said tiredly. “Until this year. Now, she says they all bore her and she’s sworn off men forever. I hope she means it. It’s been three months since she had a date. She’s terrible to men. They make such fools of themselves for her. I don’t know what she does to them, honest. And I’m not stupid!” he added quickly. “I mean, I know what she does—technically.” It was a toss-up whether his contempt was greater for his mother or her men.
Pat cleared his throat to camouflage a smile. Toby was conversant with sophisticated sex beyond his years; yet it was difficult and embarrassing for him to talk with friends his own age. Venus could take the blame for it, and Beebo felt a swell of righteous anger at her.
“You know what I think?” Toby said thoughtfully. “I think she’s bored with me, too. Well, after all, I’m a male.” He said it with pride and resentment, as if it were a fact not always respected in his family. “She needs somebody new to hurt and tease. If you make yourself available, I’ll bet she picks on you. It’s no fun, either.”
“Me?” Beebo said incredulously.
“You see her today and you’ll find out,” he warned.
Beebo, conditioned by Venus’s flirting and by the mood of her night with Paula, said incautiously, “You mean she’s interested in me? I mean…” Her voice trailed off, giving her meaning away, and Toby’s cheeks turned crimson. She realized she had shocked him, but he thought it was his fault for making the wrong implication.
“Not that way,” he explained hastily. “She’s not sick.”
“Oh,” Beebo said. “Excuse me.”
Pat frowned at her, and she looked at her knees.
“She wants somebody around to admire her and say yes to her,” Toby said. “Somebody whose feelings she can hurt. You have to be tough as Leo to get along with her. Leo doesn’t have any feelings…at least, they never show.”
“Leo—her husband?”
“Yes. He’s the only man in her life who won’t get down on his knees to her. But I think he’s the only one who really loves her, too. The others love the glamour, but Leo knows her through and through, and he loves her.” He shook his head as if it were incomprehensible.
“You love her too, Toby,” Beebo said.
He hunched his shoulders. “She’s my mother. What can you do?” he said with heartbreaking, youthful cynicism. “Even if the old bag did raise me.”
“Who’s the old bag?”
“Mrs. Sack. She’s my—well, you might say, my nurse…she’s been around so long, she’s part of the family, even if I am too old for her now.” The blush on his face deepened, but he needed terribly to share his burdens, and he felt safe with Beebo. She was a girl, so she couldn’t fall in love with his mother. And she had spirit and humor, which she had used to defend him. Besides, his solitude weighed desperately on him.
“Mrs. Sack was there when Mom brought me home from the hospital, and she’s done everything for me since then. Mom just sat around and blew kisses at me between lovers.”
“She must have done more than that or you’d hate her,” Beebo said.
“I do hate her!” he flared. “Leo hates her, too. That doesn’t mean we don’t love her, but she makes it awful hard.” In a knowing voice he added, “There are two things in this world my mother really loves, and one of them is not men.” Pat and Beebo stared at him. “She loves herself and money. Mostly herself. She’ll tell you that if you ask her. She’ll tell the whole damn world. That’s how full of shit she is.”
“Toby,” Beebo said gently. “Maybe you just see all the bad things now. Maybe when you grow up and get away from her, you’ll see her good side.”
“If she has one,” he said. “She calls me ‘darling’ all the time, and five minutes later she’s calling a complete stranger ‘darling.’ I mean about as much to her as the stranger.”
“I think it’s just a habit with her,” Beebo guessed. “Like some people calling everybody ‘honey.’”
“And secretly hating them all,” Toby said. “I wish just once in my life she’d call me Toby—when she wasn’t mad at me, I mean. That is my name. She gave it to me.”
Beebo wanted to pat him on the back, wanted to smile and say, “She will—I guarantee it.” He was a perceptive boy and very appealing. But she had nothing to comfort him with. “Well, if it’s any consolation, I’ll call you Toby,” she grinned, and was pleased to see him answer her smile.
There was a difficult silence until Pat said, getting to his feet, “That’s quite a bunch of guns. Who gave you the Japanese bayonet?”
Toby followed him to the case and began an animated conversation. Beebo sat pensively listening. Evidently it never occurred to Toby that Beebo could be sexually attracted to his mother. All his precocious knowledge of sex was confined strictly to his mother’s—admittedly free-wheeling—activities. And while Venus had done many things with many people, she had not, to Toby’s knowledge, done everything.
Beebo was surprised to feel so concerned about the boy. She was better acquainted with him now. His descriptions of his mother’s character were so youthfully lopsided they revealed more about him than they did about her. But it seemed certain that one thing he said was true: he did honestly both hate and love her very much.
The three of them were startled when Toby’s bedroom door swung open and Venus stood in the hallway. “Well, darling, why didn’t you send my visitor to me?” she demanded of her son.
Toby turned around, his chin jutting forward, ready for a tilt with her. But she merely inclined graciously all around, her smile flitting over Pat as though he were just another gun and settling on Beebo.
“Come in and talk with me,” she told Beebo. “I had a dreadful experience last night and it’s all your fault.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Bogardus,” Beebo said, standing up and feeling like a bumpkin dripping hayseeds in front of her.
“Don’t go, Beebo, it’s a trap,” Toby said sardonically.
“Darling, what a lyrical sentiment,” Venus fired at him. “Come on, Beebo.” She turned and sailed down the hall, and Beebo felt angrily like a toy dog, expected to jump when Venus snapped her fingers.
Pat went to her and whispered, “If you feel yourself getting friendly, scream for help.”
“Big help you’d be,” Beebo said.
“Well, at least I won’t be tempted to sin,” he said. “I don’t go for peignoirs.”
“I hope you don’t go for guns, either,” she warned him in a whisper. And aloud, she said to Toby, “Don’t worry, I won’t turn traitor.”
Then, with a sense of exasperation, shame, and excitement, she followed Venus to her room.
It was a real boudoir: a luxurious old-fashioned bower, a glamorous retreat where a coveted woman makes herself irresistible in perfumed privacy, receives the gifts of rich and handsome men, and strikes them helpless with adoration. At least, that was the general idea.
The rug was white, the walls pale blue, and the dressing table wore six silk chiffon petticoats.
“Well, darling?” Venus said. “Do you like my little nest?”
Beebo began to laugh in spite of herself. “If you’ll forgive me, Miss Bogardus,” she said. “It’s one great big gorgeous cliché.”
“Of course it is,” Venus smiled. “I planned it that way to offend Leo…. You know, you sound like you’ve made it in more boudoirs than Errol Flynn.”
“Oh, no,” Beebo said, taken aback. “I’ve just read more bad novels. The sirens always have a boudoir like this.”
Venus turned around and studied her with amusement in the oval mirror above her dressing table. “Come over here and tell me why they sent that ghastly man over with the pizza, when I asked for you with spaghetti.”
Beebo stood her ground, suddenly aware that there was nothing under the “goddamn peignoir” but naked Venus. “That ghastly man owns the place,” she said. “He sent himself.”
You wouldn’t look at Venus Bogardus without admiring her form. Even in her late thirties, it was fine: the kind men hope
and dream all women will have, especially their wives. She was small-waisted, full-breasted, with a firmly swelling hipline and long shapely legs; the whole package wrapped up in mathematically right proportions that hadn’t changed since Venus was a bouncing daisy of sixteen.
Venus scratched something on a piece of paper and swept across the room with it in a cloud of cologne and blue silk. “Here you are, darling,” she said. It was her autograph. “Take this to your boss and tell him I hope he gets the sauce out of his ears.”
“He’ll be overcome, I’m sure,” Beebo said, tucking it in her shirt pocket.
Venus stood a few feet from her, watching her and making up her mind to open a difficult subject. “You know, poor Toby is absolutely terrified we’re going to like each other,” she said restrainedly. “He’s quite ashamed of me.”
Beebo was far more embarrassed by Venus’s admissions than by Toby’s. Toby was still a child you could pity and help. But who could pity someone with the blinding assets of his mother? Who had enough crust to offer her any help?
“Miss Bogardus, I’m sorry about the pizza thing. I—” She hesitated, wanting only to duck out and avoid facing the new feelings taking shape inside her.
“I only threw it at him because he wasn’t you,” Venus said, and Beebo allowed herself one quick startled look at That Face. She felt perspiration under her arms and knew her face was damp, too.
“Sit down, darling, you look feverish,” Venus said. And when Beebo stuttered something about going home, Venus laughed. “Why Beebo, I think I’ve got you going,” she said. “I’ll bet I’m not the first girl who ever did that to you.” It was said in a light friendly tone intended to tease, but it made Beebo so intensely uncomfortable that she began to tremble. It became acutely clear to her that she desired that remote and laughing goddess very much; so much she suddenly lost her voice.
