I fled upstairs, running along the hall, where I encountered Maude coming out of Belinda’s room. As she came toward me she faltered and I reached to support her. “No, no, let me go,” she said, pulling away. “I’m quite all right.”
But she wasn’t; I could see it right away. I let her guide me along the hall to her room, and when she sank into a chair and her face came into the light of the floor lamp I could see how white it had gone and how taxed she was. Despite her attempts to disguise it, I noted her trembling hand.
“Have you a cigarette?” she asked, to my surprise. “That’s right, you don’t smoke.” She gestured wearily for me to pull the bellcord in the corner; then as I sat again she eased herself against the back cushion of the chair. I said nothing, waiting for her to collect herself. When Ling appeared, she asked him, “Are there some cigarettes anywhere in the house? I would like one if there are. And please bring me one or two ounces of that good Napoleon brandy.” When Ling had gone, she turned to me. “Bit done in this evening, I’m afraid,” she apologized. “I’m awfully glad you’re back, I’ve missed you. I didn’t want you to go into Blindy’s room until I’d had a chance to talk to you. She’s all right now—you can see her in a little while.”
“But what happened?” I asked.
“What a mess!” she exclaimed, and as she finally began explaining, her voice broke several times. I could see how deeply she’d been affected.
It was one more scene from a Monogram cheapie. Friday night Belinda and Faun had had yet another quarrel—over the Goon, with whom Faun claimed she’d patched things up and whom she’d dragged home while she changed clothes. “He’s my closest best friend in the world; I can’t not see him, can I?”
Belinda, however, forbade him ever to enter the house, which provoked Faun to threaten—again—to leave forever! Belinda said that would be fine with her, it would probably be best in the long run. Faun had stormed out, dragging Bobby after her, and later Belinda and Maude had had dinner on tables in front of the TV and watched one of Maude’s favorite shows.
Maude was sleepy; Belinda kissed her and said good night. She seemed in perfect control, though Maude sensed she was brooding over the scene with Faun. Sometime later Maude awakened, thinking she heard voices. There was the sound of a glass breaking, then a piece of furniture being overturned. She was about to investigate when a lengthy silence suggested there was no need, so she lay back on her pillow and dropped off to sleep again. When she awoke Sunday morning, all seemed serene. Belinda wasn’t down yet but there were no signs of breakage or disturbance in the studio. The minute Ling came in, she questioned him. Yes, he’d found a stool overturned, a broken glass as well.
“And, Missy Maw’, some blood, too.”
“Blood? A lot?”
“Little bit, Missy.”
“Whose blood?”
Ling showed helpless hands. “Maybe… Missy Blindy?” He ventured the name with the greatest delicacy.
Maude was instantly on the alert.
“Why Miss Belinda? Why not Faun?”
“No, no, Missy Maw’, Missy Fonn no come home. No home aw’ night.”
Maude went to knock on Belinda’s door. No answer. She tried the knob. The door was locked. She spoke through the linenfold paneling. No response. After persisting for a while, she gave it up. She went to her own room, where she remained through the morning, intermittently attempting to rouse Belinda. Still no reply. At lunchtime Viola Ueberroth drove up as arranged to take her to the Bel Air Hotel for lunch, but Maude was fearful and wouldn’t leave the house, so Vi came in and stayed with her.
They were sitting by the pool, talking quietly, when there was a loud crash from inside the studio and, looking in, they saw Belinda at the bar, with bottle and glass. She’d tipped over another stool. Her hair was half over her eyes and she was staggering badly. Suddenly spying the two women outside, she whooped, threw up her glass in a skoal gesture, and with outflung arms lurched toward the door.
“No! Belinda, wait!” Viola screamed as Belinda rushed forward, bottle and drink held high. Maude later told me she was actually running by the time she hit one of the sliding glass doors. There was a terrible shattering sound as she crashed through and the pane fell in hundreds of pieces around her.
“It was terrible,” Maude said, her head trembling until she hid it in her hands. Belinda had suffered forty separate cuts and lesions, on her face, neck, shoulders, arms, breasts, thighs, and legs. Over a hundred stitches had been taken, many across her forehead.
I could see the headlines:
BELINDA CARROLL SCARRED FOR LIFE IN DRUNKEN FALL
We spoke about it as such disasters are spoken of, going through and under and around, saying the same things over and over, and the question we repeated the oftenest in the next two hours was, Where had she got the bottle from?
There hung the burning question, and now, as we sat together in her bedroom, Maude showed herself at a loss to answer. I was thinking hard, trying to assimilate it all. What had happened to pop Belinda off on a drunk? Upset her enough to push her off the wagon, then provide the wherewithal? Yes, indeed, someone had set the stage, and very cleverly, too, then shoved the unsuspecting Belinda onstage in front of the footlights to play out her scene. But who? I damn well knew who got my vote. And clearly Maude was thinking the same thing. I walked over to her, pressed her shoulder. She rose and we started downstairs.
“Maude?” I said as we went down in the elevator.
“Yes, quickly, tell me what you’re thinking.”
“Where’s the bottle? I want to see it.”
“Good! I thought you would. I’ve saved it. Come along.”
She took me to the butler’s pantry and there on the sideboard sat the empty bottle, which had escaped the crash and the fall onto the tiles. I stared at the label, though I’d already recognized it from a distance. It was a bottle of Zubrovka vodka, the Polish brand with the blade of buffalo grass in it, one of Belinda’s old favorites. Where had it come from?
I walked to the wall where a calendar hung, with the telephone number of the liquor store the household generally used. I dialed the number and got a girl; I asked if she could tell me if anyone had purchased a bottle of Polish vodka in the past twenty-four hours. Oh yes, she said, several people! Was one a blonde woman in her fifties? Oh, she thought—no, she couldn’t remember any blonde of fifty, but there had been a young dark-haired woman of twenty-five or so. Was she alone? No, the girl said, she was with a male companion, a hippie type with long red hair….
“What did they say?” Maude asked when I hung up. “Was it—?”
I nodded. Who else? After her quarrel with Belinda, Faun had hopped down to the liquor store and bought the stuff. Then what? How had she worked the thing, how had she insinuated the bottle into the house so the servants wouldn’t notice but Belinda would? Most important, how had Faun known her mother was ready to start drinking?
Maude, poor lady, was exhausted, and she began weeping softly. I looked at her and shook my head. “Go to bed, Maude,” I told her, “we can’t do anything tonight.”
“I want to be up when Faun comes home.”
“No you don’t. Not tonight. If she does come, it’s not the time for a showdown. Wait. Wait until tomorrow; bad things can always keep.”
“You’re right, of course. I’ll go.” She paused just in front of me and suddenly my arms went around her. She needed my help, and I was glad to be the one she needed. At that instant I was in love with her, Maude Antrim. There are people you’ll gladly die for; she was one.
She reached up and kissed my cheek. “Thank you, my dear; I really don’t know what we’d do around here without you.” I wanted to cry, honest to God. I held the swinging door for her and escorted her to the stairs. Then I went and sat in the Snuggery. I heard the clock strike the half hour, but I didn’t know which half, I’d lost track of the time. I turned on the TV and realized it was ten-thirty. I shut off the set, and crossed the hallway. Just then h
eadlights flashed as a car circled the drive. I sat down in the hall and waited. Presently I heard voices, then a key in the lock, the door opened, and there was Faun, accompanied by Jojo the Dog-Faced Boy.
“Well,” she exclaimed indignantly, as if I had no business in her house.
“Well,” I repeated, hardly an answer.
“My, don’t we look glum,” she said. “What’s the matter, did your elephant run away?”
I took her arm. “Come in here, I want to talk to you.” As I pulled her along toward the Snuggery, she yelped, then wriggled free of my hand.
“Get you, man. Who was your slave last year? I’m starving. We’re going to make sandwiches.”
“You’re not going to do anything until we’ve talked,” I said, “so get your ass in there and just shut up.” True, I wasn’t operating in a very adult way, but in my anger I’d lost track of the niceties.
“You don’t have any rights over me. You’re not my father.”
“A blessing for which I’ll be eternally grateful.”
Bobby tittered and I whipped around at him. “Look, you little creep, do you think everything’s funny? For two cents I’d paste you one.”
“Leave him out of this,” Faun said.
“I’m afraid I can’t. And if you won’t come in there where we can talk, we can have this thing out right here where we stand.”
“What thing?”
I tried to sound offhand. “I’d just like to get your side of things before I call the police.”
That did something. “The police? Whatever for?” She tried to laugh; miserable failure.
“Guess.”
She pretended not to have a clue. Her heels rapped on the marble as she tottered about, glancing here and there. “What’s happened? Where is everyone?” She moved to the foot of the stairs and looked up. “Where’s Mummy? Has something happened to her?”
“Look, pussycat, don’t start with that holy innocent crap,” I said, “I’m not in any mood.” I grabbed her arm again and swung her around, then gave her a shove toward the Snuggery doorway.
“Hey, man, lay off.” Bobby started toward me with a menacing look. I struck out and knocked him back against the wall.
Faun cried out, and then marched on me in fury. “I’ll have you charged with assault.”
“Fine. You just go right ahead and do that, cutie, because in a very short while I’m having you charged with murder.”
“Murder!” She paled and shrank back from me, squeezing her arm in that characteristic gesture of hers.
“You heard me,” I said. “Murder. Both of you.”
“Yeah?” said Bobby. “Who are we supposed to have murdered?”
Ignoring him, I looked hard at Faun. “Just your mother.”
I walked into the Snuggery, sure that this ploy would finally get her in there. Leaving Bobby in the hall, she came trotting in, already sobbing.
“Who killed her? How did she die?”
“A lot you care.”
“She’s my mother! My mother!”
“Well, she didn’t die—though she damn well could have. And you did it!”
“I didn’t! You’re wrong—I haven’t even been home since yesterday and I can prove it.”
“Maybe you can, but it won’t matter. I have proof that you and your cone-head boyfriend out there poisoned your mother. They’re going to call it attempted manslaughter. You’ll each get five to ten, easy.”
She ran at me, began frantically pummeling my chest. “You’re crazy crazy crazy! You shouldn’t say such things! I never poisoned anybody! I don’t know anything about any poisons! You’re crazy!”
Bobby appeared in the room, touching his lip, which was bleeding, and he seemed groggier than ever. “Hey, man, what’re you talkin’, anyways?”
“You heard me, man!”
His look was venomous. “I can get you charged with fuckin’ slander, man, fuckin’ perjury. My father’s Ed Spurling, y’know that?—you ever heard of E. J. Spurling? Made The Girl in the Polka Dot Bikini? He’s a big man in Beverly Hills, he’ll step all over you.” His jutting jaw made a neat target and I longed to punch it, but I restrained myself.
“Maybe. But I wonder what you’ll say when I tell you I can prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that you, Mr. Bobby Spurling, and you, Little Miss Daisy Duck, yesterday morning purchased a fifth of Polish vodka at the Sunset Liquor Store and brought it into this house.”
Bobby stuck his hands on his hips and hung his face out at me. “Yeah? Since when is that against the law?”
“Moreover, I can prove that you did it with the sole malicious purpose of getting your mother to drink it, and drink it at the peril of her life.” I swung my look on Faun. “Your mother is an alcoholic and you know damn well that for her any alcohol is a toxic substance.”
“You’re crazy! We bought it for ourselves!” Bobby screamed. He was terror-stricken and had tears in his eyes.
I turned on him again. “No, you didn’t. You bought that bottle and left it out on the sinkboard, right under the cabinet where Faun’s mother keeps her tea things—you put it there knowing she’d be bound to find it. You left it in a champagne bucket with ice, knowing that was how she liked it, ice cold. You even took the trouble to open it. Just in case she mightn’t bother.”
“Liar! Liar! Liar!” Bobby was screaming. “You’re trying to frame us.”
“Bobby—shut the fuck up!” Faun was a tiger now. “What happened—are you telling me she’s dead, then?”
“She’s had a very serious accident. She nearly bled to death. She walked through a plate-glass window. Go look in the studio if you want to.”
“Oh Jesus! Jesus!” Bobby was shouting, spitting venom, the white spittle from his lips. “You scared the shit out of me. I thought she was dead!”
With a roar he jumped me from behind and tried to bear me to the floor. I whipped my shoulders around and shrugged him off, but before I could attack, Faun had grabbed my arms and swung her body between me and Bobby. I lashed out with my foot, the only way I could get at him, and caught him smack in the nuts. As he flopped over in pain, I shoved Faun aside, then dragged Bobby across the hall and out the front door, where I dumped him on the stoop.
“All right, Funny Face, you’re out of here.” I went back inside and slammed the door. I locked it, turned out the front lights, and ran back to the Snuggery. Faun was collapsed in a chair, sobbing into her hands.
“All right, Miss Blue-Bitch, you can turn off the waterworks now,” I told her. “I’m not interested. You’re acting’s every bit as lousy as it was last month, so can it. What I want to know from you, now that Jo-Jo’s incapacitated, is—whose idea was it? I mean, did you think it up or did he?” She’d gone all white-faced and was biting her lip hard. “Well, damn it, did he?”
“Stop it! Stop saying that! I didn’t try to murder her! I can buy a bottle if I want to, can’t I? I’m over twenty-one. You haven’t got a thing on me! Now I’m going out to Bobby.”
But Bobby had apparently found the good sense to get lost; we heard the screech as his car went tearing across the gravel and through the front gates. As Faun started to dash after him, I held her forcibly by the wrist, and we tugged at each other until Ling appeared in the doorway, with Maude, white-faced, behind him. Faun began to sob and wail, then she sagged and among us, we helped her to her quarters in the Playhouse. The room was chilly, there was only the porcelain stove in one corner and neither Ling nor I could get it started, so we covered her with an extra blanket. Maude got a couple of Tuinals into her, and when she’d subsided, we tiptoed out. We went back to the Snuggery, talking quietly; then I left.
The next day I talked with the doctor, who assured Maude and me that Belinda would be all right, though she’d indeed had a narrow escape.
While by no means fatal, Belinda’s accident had given us all a very bad scare, a worse one to Frank, who again let business slide in order to stay close by in time of need. Angie drove up from the desert also,
to be on hand during Belinda’s private recuperation—the sordid details of the accident were kept from the press, even friends (one paper reported she was in the hospital for a face lift, another claimed a full body retread). When the bandages came off and the stitches were taken out, she asked me to take her to an A.A. meeting. I’ll never forget her standing up in that church activities room and saying, “I’m Belinda Carroll and I’m an alcoholic. I’ve been sober for nineteen days.” Nineteen days, after her seven long years of hard-won, so-precious sobriety, and badly robbed of it by her vicious daughter and a dumb turd of a boyfriend.
But despite what might have been a real tragedy, despite the fall from grace, that momentary lapse with the Zubrovka, Belinda bounced back. She had enormous resiliency, she was the original survivor (Maude used to say Belinda would have walked home from the Titanic sinking), and her injuries quickly mended. Luckily her face had escaped irreparable damage, and between the lot of us we soon had her in good spirits again. Few but the “friends of Bill” knew about her having ingested nearly a bottle of Polish vodka (she joked about having a thing for buffalo grass), and the incident resulted in no flare-up of her addiction. She confided to me that she thought that by now she’d completely lost her taste for alcohol and we counted that a blessing.
In the meantime, Faun didn’t show much remorse. She was pure brass, still denying any wrongdoing in the matter. Some people are without shame; she headed the list.
Maude had a long, serious talk with her behind closed doors, though what good such talk did I couldn’t have said. Still, certain changes had come about: Bobby was permanently banished. No music blared, no lights burned late. And now there was no more talk about the “tome,” about pub dates and book-and-author luncheons and best-seller lists, no more tap tap of the typewriter, which she put away in her closet. The new broom swept clean, and Faun quickly renovated her whole style; she began wearing clothes more suitable to her age. It was a tonier, more uptown sort of look, lots of status symbols—stack heels, rings on only two fingers, hair held back with barrettes, her good jewelry. There’d even been a speech change, not so slangy, and I’d hear her toss in bits of French or Italian. Now she came around with a whole contingent of Continentals she’d fallen in with at the same club.