“Have you mentioned this to Frank?”
She nodded. “He doesn’t think she’ll ever go through with it. Says she’s rattling sabers. But I’ve got news. This young woman’s got a memory like an elephant and she’d do the whole town in if she could. Charlie—you don’t know what she’s really like.”
I said I’d think about it, but I honestly didn’t know what I could do.
Over the past five or so years it seemed that Faun Antrim had experienced an alarming number of emotional reversals, which her mother and grandmother had been forced to deal with. Faun had been financially well off by most standards; her father’s will had provided her with a substantial sum of money, to be held in trust and released to her in part when she was eighteen, the balance when she turned twenty-one. To everyone’s shock, the first amount she’d turned over in its entirety to the Maharishi, not an uncommon practice among his devotees. It wasn’t long, however, before she had had a falling out with the entire cult, after which she’d shaken them and gone to live in a commune at Telluride.
It was there that her child with Dane Potter had been lost, another devastating blow to the entire family. Faun had had her boy with her in a van at a drive-in movie, where she and her male companion had gone one evening. They’d left Dane untended while they went to the refreshment stand, and during the space of those few minutes someone had made off with the child. There were witnesses who stated that the abductor had been a black woman; in any case the boy was never seen again.
In the end, it seemed to friends that it was Belinda who suffered more from the loss than the actual mother, who more or less brushed the matter aside, refusing to talk about it and destroying all pictures of the baby.
Shortly after that period she’d come home, tail between her legs, and proceeded to go through the rest of her money as well as two or three shrinks over on Bedford Drive. Having given up the search for divine wisdom, on a more worldly tack she’d next decided to go to New York in search of work as an actress. Considering her notable theatrical background, you might think she’d have found some success, but nothing much materialized except when a couple of unscrupulous producers attempted to capitalize on the name. Her reviews were not encouraging, one critic writing that he found her vapid, while another said her stage personality was sharp and abrasive. Claire Regrett had been photographed attending a performance of The Petrified Forest in which Faun was playing Gaby, and was quoted as saying she was a chip off the old block; but which block or which chip she didn’t explain.
After her New York “phase,” Faun headed for London, where she camped so extensively with the parents of a school-friend that she was asked to leave. After further ups and downs she’d wired for money, which Belinda sent, and she’d come home to take up residence again in the Playhouse. In an attempt to establish a better relationship with her daughter, Belinda had been keeping her close by—in Palm Springs, in Acapulco, in Phoenix—hoping she’d get interested in some attractive young man but so far the score was strictly nothing to nothing.
Angie and I were still gassing when we heard the sound of a motor, which I recognized as Maude’s little golf cart; I went to investigate, Angie behind me. It wasn’t Maude, however, but the subject of our conversation, the Princess Faun herself, who came tootling up to my door, switched off the ignition, and stuck tanned legs out in an attractive pose.
“Mummy’s looking for you,” she told Angie. “I think she needs you to help her with her hair.”
“Her hair?” Angie gave me a suspicious glance. “What’s wrong with her hair?”
“How should I know? Probably the roots need a touch-up. Don’t they always? I’m just playing messenger.”
“I’d better run up and see,” Angie said to me. She bent to kiss my cheek and whisper in my ear, “Don’t forget—see what you can do.”
“Angie dear, you don’t have to go whispering about me behind your hand, you know,” Faun said sarcastically.
“Does your grandmother know you’re using her cart?” I inquired, after Angie had started the climb up to the house.
“She lets me drive it. She doesn’t care.”
“As long as you’re going back, why didn’t you offer Angie a ride?”
“Because I’m not going—not just yet, that is,” she said suggestively as she walked toward me. “I thought you might ask me in for a drink. And don’t say you haven’t got anything. I brought this.” She held up a bottle of champagne—Dom Pérignon, if you please. “Ice cold, too. Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
I was about to send her packing; then I thought, What the hell. “Sure, why not? But, I’m afraid you’ll be drinking alone. I don’t indulge.”
“That’s all right, it won’t be the first time.” She obviously thought that was a good one. I found it odd: here was a young woman of twenty-four, divorced and a mother, to all intents and purposes a grownup, yet I kept getting the impression of a much younger person, almost a teenager. It was in her baby voice, the way she used her face and body, her pouty expression, as if she were somehow afraid of becoming mature.
“So this is where the great writer lives and works,” she said, brushing by me into the Cottage and looking around.
“This is it, kid.”
Her look was sharp. “Don’t call me ‘kid.’”
I apologized and went to find a glass. “We’re not really equipped for champagne around here,” I said, going into the kitchen. When I came back again I found her poking around my bedroom. “Just what is it that you’re looking for?”
“I’m looking around for all the girls you’ve probably got hidden away here.”
“Look away, you won’t find them. I’m getting cured of a separation.”
She picked up on this. “Are you heartbroken? I heard she treated you shitty.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Mummy. You certainly have her sympathy, don’t you? Of course, she cries at card tricks. You have to carry a sponge.”
“You know—you ought to speak more generously about your mother.”
“Oh, God, are you going to tell me she’s this absolutely fabulous creature, a goddess? Well, you’re wrong—she’s just another old movie broad. No one cares about her anymore—if they ever did. She’s a has-been, that’s all.”
“They did, believe me,” I said softly. “People loved her. Still love her. And I don’t see how you can say someone’s a has-been when she’s about to take on a plum film role.”
“Oh. That. Don’t you know she only got that picture because Frankie has something on one of the producers? They wouldn’t have touched her otherwise. It’s simple: Frankie gets her work, so she puts out for him. She goes wild for that big thing of his.”
“You seem to know a lot about Frankie.”
“Oh…”—she shot me a little sidewise glance of naked prurience—“I know lots of things. You pick them up, specially around here. My mother may be old, but she’s still no better than she should be.”
“And you, are you better than you should be?”
“Not unless I absolutely have to be. I’m just what you see. Me. You don’t like it, that’s your problem, not mine.”
“Forget it. Your champagne’s getting warm.”
“That’s all right, I like it that way. But… most men would pour it for a lady.”
“I might have, were there a lady in the room.” Sorry, Belinda, I couldn’t resist.
I poured her some more and it foamed over the lip. She dug into her bag and brought out a sparkly little gadget. She slid the handle and it expanded into a little gold metallic brush—“for the bubbles,” she explained. Her stepfather had sent it to her for her fourteenth birthday. I asked myself what kind of father sends his daughter a gold swizzle stick on her fourteenth birthday.
“From Tiffany’s,” she added. “I have breakfast there all the time. Ha ha.” She used her pink tongue on the swizzle.
Before today I hadn’t spoken a dozen words to this young woman, yet I felt
that I knew her, and I realized that to know her wasn’t necessarily to love her. Yet I wanted to like her, to make some contact—if only for Belinda’s sake, and Maude’s. Seeking neutral ground, I volunteered the information that we’d once met.
Her brows quickly arched above the plastic rims of her glasses. “Oh? Clue me in.”
I described the occasion a dozen or so years before when Frank and I had seen her with friends at the Beverly Boulevard pony ride. She frowned, then dismissed my recollection with “You must have me mixed up with someone else.” I let it go.
After she went putt-putting off in Maude’s golf cart I was left thinking about Belinda. The fact that she’d birthed this maverick, this voluptuous creature with a snake’s tongue, both interested and troubled me. Certainly they were nothing alike, mother and daughter. Faun was like the squalling changeling whom the wicked fairies had left in the cradle after stealing away the good child. Maybe the parents were to blame; it’s a generally acknowledged fact that celebrities don’t necessarily make the best mothers and fathers in the world, but you couldn’t go through life shoving the blame onto them; you had to take some of the responsibility yourself. Setting fire to the house and stabbing your riding instructor weren’t the best ways to get on in the world, particularly if you then falsely accused him of rape. As it happened, Bucky Eaton was a really decent sort; I’d met him once when he was riding at Madison Square Garden and I was doing some research on dressage, and over drinks he told me the real story; he’d never touched her, while she kept coming on with him, wearing tight jodhpurs and turtleneck sweaters that shoved her tits at him every time he came over a jump.
Well, I promised myself that I’d make the attempt, I’d give it the old college try, but really what chance was there? The twig was bent, the tree grown; I thought its fruit would be bitter.
As the days went by, I watched her. Sometimes she’d put on her cutesie act and be pleasant and beguiling—quite effective, except you could tell that she was after something. She was clever enough not to come right out with it, but sooner or later out it would pop—could she borrow a hundred bucks, take your car, would you drive her somewhere, take her to dinner at the beach? It was amazing how she could turn it on and off, the same way she did with the tears. It was her way, probably the only one she knew. God knows she had learned it superbly.
She didn’t seem to choose her companions with much care. Her boyfriend these days was a self-styled rock musician named Bobby Spurting, the wastrel son of a Beverly Hills movie producer. A couple of years younger than Faun, scrawny, with a prominent Adam’s apple and riotous red hair, Bobby quickly became persona non grata at Sunnyside—which, of course, made Faun all the more determined to parade him before us. She ran him, nagged him, told him off, threw him out, but always back again he’d come for more. Maude was stiffly polite, while Belinda made no pretense of hiding her feelings.
It was plain from the moment she came home that where she set her foot, disharmony and discord were sure to follow. One thing seemed clear: since learning of the current closeness between her mother and Frank Adonis, Faun had fostered an intense dislike of Frank. Behind his back she referred to him as “Al Capone” and “Legs Diamond.” She called Belinda “Bonnie Parker” or “the gangster’s moll,” and kidded her unmercifully. “I’ve got to hang up now,” she’d say on the phone to a friend, “Mummy’s waiting for a call from her hood,” or “We’ve got Dillinger coming for lunch today,” things like that. The family ignored all this, but that didn’t deter our Faun.
The rest of us were happy for Frank, happy that he and Belinda were together. After Frances died and he lost April, he had suffered in ways none of us really could understand. He never talked about it, but his close friends could tell that he’d been enduring the torments of hell. The months had become years—one year, two years, three, four, five years—while he traveled that road out to Libertad to the dreary building with the green walls. Five years of devotion to a dream that had become an unending nightmare, or, if it had an end, he was the one who had to write it. And he had. Suddenly, after the Christmas of the fifth year, he simply stopped going. He’d been beating his head against a stone wall, and he cut her out of his heart as she’d cut him out of hers when she was in the Retreat; and amen to that.
Her long suffering may have had its point; his was needless, there was nothing to be gained by prolonging things. Ugly as the facts were, they were nonetheless facts: those woebegone buildings weren’t about to surrender their prisoner; she’d drawn a life sentence, no time off for good behavior. This, his friends agreed, was the better way. Love her but leave her; goodbye.
Lap dissolve: another two years and here we were at Sunnyside, and the sun was truly shining, that golden California sunshine the Chamber of Commerce raves about; the sweet orange juice was flowing in the streets and the world had turned and everything was nifty once again. I couldn’t think of a grander pleasure at that time than to be a witness to this new love affair, to watch this ex-hotshot lover and man about town, pal of Bugsy’s, wooer of Babe and Claire and the rest of the broads, shyly holding hands with the ex-tootsie and movie-blonde whose initials were imprinted like dinosaur prints in the cellar cement of my boyhood house.
So Frank came and went, a constant visitor to Sunnyside, and a welcome one—to most of us. But not to all.
Tap tap tap tap-tap-tap-tap.
George Sand is hard at work on her latest “thing,” her “magnum opus.” The Life and Times of a Hollywood Brat. Good title, no? (It’s mine; I doubt she’d think of it.) Under the umbrella she sits in her atoll bikini, eyes hidden by shades, plastic bracelets rattling on her wrist, a vodka tonic beside her. Tap tap tap. By God, she’s really doing it. Every day the pile of pages grows; that thin little stack is getting thicker day by day. Tap tap tap.
Our Jane Austen has been laboring at this enterprise for some weeks, really going at it as though her life depended on its getting done. Her little get-rich scheme, and why not? It wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened. Lillian Roth did it (Lil’s the one who started this whole “celebrity confessions” number—I’ll Cry Tomorrow—but at least she was showing herself naked, not her family). They say it’s a way of ridding yourself of your doubts, fears, repressions, and so on. Put it all down on paper where you can see it, where the ink is dark and legible, and you can deal with it. Out goes paranoia, in comes the Greater Peace of Mind, while other folks’ reputations fall by the wayside. Tap tap tap.
The radio is playing that Glière symphony, I can’t remember the name, but it’s the one that sometimes sounds like Respighi, sometimes like “The Poem of Ecstasy.” Maude’s over there in the pavilion, reading a new book. She looks quite comfy in her chaise, face shaded by that old straw hat that’s become such a favorite. I’m laboring over a legal-size yellow pad on my lap this morning—not the play; I’m working out a new monthly budget.
No sign of Belinda yet; she must be sleeping late. The white-winged flickers are twittering about the branches of the trees, the gardeners are sweeping, the sun is bright and warm, you couldn’t ask for a grander day. All is serene, happy, content, cozy.
Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap. Phew!
From time to time she glances my way; once or twice she lowers her glasses to make eye contact. I know she wants my involvement in this sublime piece of literature, if only for me to tell her she mustn’t do it. She’s been leaving typed pages lying about invitingly, just asking for little glances, comments, “How’s it coming today?” or “Is it all working out?” I never say a word. Naughty girls who pen memoirs of their famous mothers for the public’s edification and their parent’s sorrow, should be squashed like the nasty bugs they are.
Maude would be the first to agree with this, and I can see how worried she is. Here is something that she has no means of governing, something threatening to those she cares for. Sometimes while the typewriter taps away our looks connect, Maude’s and mine, we speak a silent language. Then her look drops
to her page.
Now she has laid her head back, thinking. What to do? What to do, what to do, that’s what everybody around here is thinking—what to do? I’m fantasizing that maybe an accident could happen, a small fire or a large wind—a “mysterious disappearance.” Maybe the trolls could come out of the woods and slip dear Faun away, no one the wiser. Or maybe—ha ha!—she’ll decide to go on her own steam. What’s a twenty-four-year-old woman doing living at home with Grandma to begin with?
Sometimes I’d catch Maude observing her, absently biting her lip and reflecting, as though over the sad flaws in her granddaughter’s character. Wasn’t it a mean trick of fate, I thought, that the Antrims had descended to this—this one—all that was left of that great acting tribe? Why couldn’t she act? Why would the klieg lights no longer light up the sky with that illustrious theatrical name? And why must that name now be dragged through the mud, because of some slip in the genes, the bad seed making mischief through the House of Antrim? These days “Sunnyside” was not so sunny.
Tap-tap.
April was upon us; the last of the rains came and went; the bright sun shone, opening up the world and making a beautiful spring. At Sunnyside everything burst into mad bloom, Maude’s gardens were glorious, and there were times I imagined I was back east, after a winter of deep snows, seeing the welcome buds opening in green New England landscapes. May, often deceptively gray and overcast, was this year clear and bright, auguring good things. My divorce was “in work,” my work was proceeding, there were no clouds on the horizon—unless we’re calling Miss Faun Miss Cloud. And that wouldn’t be right; nothing soft or lamb-fleecy about her.
She certainly wasn’t lamblike around Frank but, rather, seemed to go out of her way to be bitchy, even insulting. Her disdainful look always seemed to be saying, “What business have you here today?” But Belinda, not her daughter, was the star attraction at Sunnyside whenever Frank turned up. As soon as Faun had glowered her way across to the Playhouse, Belinda’s hand would slip into Frank’s, they would move closer, share looks, smiles, half words, and only the profoundest entreaty would keep Maude and me from beating a tactful retreat so they could be alone. Useless for them to pretend otherwise, for they’d been bitten and the love poison was spreading in their veins. Those were happy times, sweet times, I thought; and I allowed myself the sin of envy, for I was still feeling the sting of marital failure. I let it get into the columns that I was currently seeing a certain young lady, a new client of Frank’s who reminded us both of April Rains. Her name was Lily, but she was young—too young—and our mutual interest faded in the gloaming, leaving me Looking but Not Finding.