"You have two, two-minute soft-boiled eggs," she said, lifting the cover to show me. "Did you want anything else? Hot cereal, different juice? I have freshly squeezed grapefruit or prune."
"No, this is fine, but I could have come downstairs," I said, uncomfortable with all her fussing.
"Only Mr. Livingston comes down for breakfast as a rule," Christina replied with a smile. "He reads the morning papers and doesn't mind eating alone. Mrs. Livingston always takes her breakfast in bed. Do you have everything you need?" she asked, walking into the bathroom. "More towels, anything?"
"I'm fine at the moment," I said, drinking my juice. "Thank you."
She nodded at me and watched me take a few bites of the croissant.
"I hear you're from the East and this is your first trip to California," she said.
"Yes."
"I've never been to New York, but I hope to go one of these days. I have a daughter who can't be much younger than you," she added. "Her name's Stacy. She's starting community college this year, working at a department store and taking some courses. She wants to be a grade school teacher."
"That's great," I said. "I guess she likes working with children."
"Yes, she's a great help with my others. I wish we could afford to send her full-time, but . . . we just can't at the moment."
"How many children do you have?"
"I'm raising four," she added.
"Four?"
How did she manage raising four children while working as someone's maid, and have such a pleasant personality? I wondered.
"The youngest is six, a boy." She paused at the doorway. "Just leave everything beside the bed. I'll be up later," she told me. "Let me know if you need anything," she added as she left.
I couldn't help feeling guilty about being pampered so much while I had yet to make contact with Mommy, so I ate the delicious breakfast quickly, then showered and dressed, taking more time than usual with my hair. Dorothy had made me so selfconscious about my looks I was afraid she would rush me off to the beauty parlor if I didn't look pretty enough to greet the California morning.
Mr. Livingston was just leaving the house when I came down the stairs. He wore a pin-striped suit and maroon and white tie. He stopped at the front door to look up at me as I descended.
"Good morning," he said.
"Good morning."
"I hope you had a good night's rest," he said without a smile.
"Yes, thank you."
"Well, enjoy your day," he added. He looked uncomfortable speaking to me alone. He fumbled with his briefcase and then hurried out the door.
I thought about dialing Gina Simon's number again, but imagined I would only get the answering machine. It was better to go over there in person. I had to wonder if Sandy Glee had told her she had a visitor and then described me to her.
"Excuse me, miss," Alec said, seemingly appearing out of nowhere. "You have a phone call."
"A phone call? I do?"
"Your name is Melody, is it not?" he asked sharply, as if he thought I was being critical.
"Yes."
"Then, you have a phone call. You can take it in the parlor," he said nodding in that direction.
"Thank you."
I hurried in and lifted the receiver.
"Hello."
"Hi," Holly said. "Sorry I missed you yesterday, but I had a reading to do and by the time it was over, I thought it might be too late."
"That's all right."
"How are you doing? Did you meet the woman in the catalogue yet? Kenneth called me early this morning to see if I had heard from you."
I told her about my visit to the apartment complex and the things Sandy Glee had told me about Gina Simon.
"I'm not getting good vibes, Melody.
Remember what I told you. Pack up and come back if things aren't what you hoped they would be," she said.
"I will," I promised.
"Good. How's my sister treating you?"
"Like royalty," I said. I told her about my room and my breakfast in bed.
Holly laughed.
"I hear you. She's a character, huh? And Philip, did he say more than two words?"
"About seven or eight," I said, laughing. It was so good hearing Holly's voice, hearing the sincerity and the warmth. "It's nice of you to call, Holly. It's nice of you to care."
"Would you be any different if roles were reversed?" she asked. "Billy sends his regards, too."
"Tell him hi and I'll call you guys as soon as I know . . . anything," I said.
"Okay. Take care and don't let Dorothy talk you into a face lift while you're there," she warned before hanging up.
Before I had even set the phone down, Dorothy appeared.
"Good, you're up," she said as she entered the room. "The stores are just opening."
"I'm sorry I overslept. I'm usually up a lot earlier than this."
"Overslept? Nonsense. A woman needs her sleep. That old fashioned idea about beauty rest happens to be true. If you don't rest your skin, it gets old faster. I never get up much earlier than this unless I have a very important reason. Anyway, I've called for the car. I just have to tell Selena what Philip wants her to make for dinner tonight and then we'll be off to the shops."
"Dorothy, really, I just want to go back to the apartment complex, see Gina Simon and(r)"
"You need something decent to wear first. Then you'll go," she insisted.
"Really, I--"
"Deaf," she said, shaking her head with her hands over her ears. "Meet me outside. Spike's bringing the car around."
She left for the kitchen. There was nothing to do but let her be generous, I thought, and then pay another visit to The Egyptian Gardens.
Anyway, I couldn't help but be impressed with the stores on Rodeo Drive. Papa George and Mama Arlene, who had lived next to to us in Sewell, West Virginia, used to say their grandparents came to America thinking the streets were paved with gold. This was the closest anything came to that, I thought. The designer clothing stores with their richly draped mannequins in the windows, the grand art and antique galleries, the beautiful restaurants and expensive jewelry stores all made it look like shopping for the rich and privileged. Everywhere I looked, I saw Rolls Royces, Mercedes, and other expensive automobiles, as well as limousines like ours with chauffeurs in uniforms opening doors for people who looked like they were all in a contest to outdress each other.
"Right here, Spike," Dorothy ordered and turned to me to say, "I know this boutique well. They have the sort of clothing young girls like these days. You'll see," she promised.
When we entered the store, I thought it was going out of business. There were so few things on display, each item was treated like a special work of art. Toward the rear of the store was a bar where a bartender prepared cappuccinos, lattes and espresso for the customers. The saleslady recognized Dorothy immediately and hurried over, her high heels clicking on the Spanish tile.
"Enchanted, Mrs. Livingston. How have you been?" she asked, her hand out limply. A gold bracelet filled with diamonds dangled from her small wrist. She looked like she had spent a half a day preparing her makeup and hair. Not a hair was out of place and she had the most even pancake complexion I had ever seen, which made her look tan down to the base of her neck, after which there was a milk-white line. Dorothy just squeezed her fingers quickly.
"Very well, thank you, Farma. This is my sister's friend from the East Coast. She had to rush here and wasn't able to pack her better things. So I thought we would just pick up something nice for her to wear during the day and something for the evening."
"Oh, how nice," Farma replied and gleamed at me with dollar signs in her eyes. "We just received this Italian pants suit in a perfect color for . . ."
"Melody," Dorothy said. "I knew you would have something appropriate."
"Come dear," she said, drinking me in to measure my size. "What a delicious little figure you have." "Doesn't she?" Dorothy said.
I never felt anything
as soft as the material out of which the pants suit had been made. It was a creamy white color with swirls of pink through it and it did fit perfectly. When I gazed at myself in the mirror, I felt my ego swell. Then I glanced at the tag dangling from the left sleeve and I almost fainted. It was fourteen hundred dollars!
"She looks fantastic," Dorothy said. "What a wonderful choice for day wear," she said, without even checking the price. "Now, let's think about something for the evening. I plan to take her to Chasens tomorrow night, and you never know who might walk in."
"Oh, I have a darling black dress, just in from Paris."
Farma hurried off to get it and I spun on Dorothy. "Dorothy, look at the price of this!" I exclaimed. She gazed indifferently at the tag.
"What of it, dear? Decent things are going to be expensive these days."
"But this--"
"Please," she said widening her eyes, "don't embarrass me. I know all the salespeople in these stores and they know me. Oh, that does look sweet," she said when Farma brought out the thin-strapped evening dress. Reluctantly, I tried it on and it also fit perfectly, flattering my figure, but it was eighteen hundred dollars! I couldn't swallow after Dorothy told her to wrap up the evening dress.
"She'll wear the pants outfit now," she declared.
"Very good," Farma said.
"Dorothy . . ." I stood, astounded.
She stepped up to me so she could lower her voice.
"If I don't spend my money, Philip will only invest it in one of those dreary annuity funds and tie up the money for years. As it is, I never get to spend all of my monthly allowance."
"You have an allowance?" I asked, amazed at the idea of a grown woman being given an allowance.
"Of course I do. And if I don't use it, I can't get him to raise it, can I? He's too smart. He'll simply say I don't spend what I get now, so why raise it? All of my friends get allowances and I happen to be at the top. I don't intend to lose that position," she added.
"Besides," she continued, "I don't enjoy giving my money to charity as much as I do buying something for a pretty young girl. It makes me feel . . ." She smiled. ". . feel younger myself. I used to have a figure like yours . . naturally. Now go put on that suit. We're going to go someplace special for lunch and many of my friends will be there."
She smiled triumphantly.
"When Spike takes you back to the apartment complex, people will pay more attention to you and be more impressed with you. They'll take you more seriously. You'll see. Here everyone's impressed by clothes and cars first, and then they consider the person wearing the clothes and driving the car. You'll learn."
"I feel like they should have given me a passport when I left the East Coast," I remarked and she laughed so hard she had to tell Farma what I had said. Then they both laughed again.
While I changed into the Italian pants suit, Dorothy bought herself three blouses and two skirts. The bill at the end of our visit was enough to keep a family of four in food and shelter for months back in Sewell, I thought, but I dared not utter another complaint.
Before Dorothy had Spike take us to lunch, she insisted on buying me a pair of shoes to match the pants suit and a pair for the evening dress. Then we had lunch at a little cafe off Rodeo Drive where a sandwich cost as much as an entire meal anywhere else in America. Dorothy seemed to know everyone there, introducing me as her sister's close friend. I listened to them chatter about clothes and jewelry, and all the things they had bought that morning. Everyone managed to get in how much they had paid, as if the higher the cost, the more justified they were in buying it.
My head was spinning from this spending whirlwind by the time Dorothy had Spike drive her home. Alec was brought out to carry my packages up to my room, and then I was finally excused to pay another visit to the apartment complex.
"You look great," Spike said. "You belong in expensive clothes."
"Nobody belongs in things that cost this much. It's outrageous," I said. He laughed.
"It's supposed to be. This is Hollywood. Later, I'll take you up to Grauman's Chinese Theater and you can look at the footprints and handprints of the stars."
"I'd rather find the footprints of my mother," I mumbled and sat back, hoping this time I would have more success.
Now that I knew the buzzer on the directory at the front of the complex didn't work, I simply entered through the main gate and followed the path past the pool. There were a half dozen young men and women sunning themselves on the lounges, some holding reflectors under their chins. Unlike the first time, no one paid any notice to me. I didn't see Sandy Glee anywhere. As I approached the building in which I knew Gina Simon's apartment was located, I heard a loud, familiar laugh. A woman I was sure was Mommy came out of the entrance accompanied by a short, stout man with thinning gray hair and a bulbous nose. He had thick lips and was wearing a pair of thick-lensed eyeglasses that made his eyes look like the eyes of a dead fish.
I knew it was Mommy because when she saw me, she gasped, brought her hand to the base of her throat, and paused. Her escort looked at her curiously and then at me. Mommy regained her composure with a deep breath and smiled at the man.
"Anything wrong?" he asked. I stood waiting, my heart thumping like a parade drum. "You forget something?" he followed when she didn't reply.
"No," she said quickly. "It's all right."
"Well, we had better move along. Gerry Spindler is the sort of producer who likes to be the one who's late for a meeting, not the person he's interviewing. Not that I think there's a doubt about you, sweetheart. He'd have to be made of stone to pass on you," the stout man said and laughed grotesquely, his jowls shaking and his lips curling. Mommy fixed her eyes on me as they continued toward me.
"Mommy!" I exclaimed when she was only a few feet away.
"Pardon me?" she said.
The stout man brought his head back.
"Mommy, what's going on? Alice found your picture in a catalogue and sent it to me in
Provincetown and Kenneth found out who you were and where you were," I said quickly. "Grandma Olivia gave me the money to come out here. Mommy, don't you recognize me?"
"What?" she said laughing.
"Who is this?" the stout man asked.
"I have no idea," Mommy said. Her eyes turned as cold as two small stones in a West Virginia mountain brook.
"It's me, Mommy. Melody. Don't you recognize me? Really?"
"First, honey," she said in a sharp, hard voice I didn't recall, "I could never be your Mommy. I'd have to have been six when I had you."
The stout man roared with laughter.
"And second, I never saw you before in my life. I wish they would fix that damn security system here," she told the stout man. "Any riffraff can walk in off the street and you know what we have walking the streets around here these days."
"Yeah," he said nodding and gazing at me.
"Mommy . . ." Tears burned under my eyelids. I tried to swallow so I could continue, but the lump in my throat felt like a chunk of coal.
"Maybe it's someone's idea of a joke," the stout man offered. "Anyway, don't worry about the security system. You get this job and you'll be able to move into a classy place, honey. And so will Mr. Marlin."
"Please, listen," I finally uttered. Mommy glanced at me and then quickly threw her head back to brush the hair from her eyes. I was shocked by how empty she could make her eyes, as if she knew how to turn all her emotions off. She tightened her hand around the arm of her fat escort and continued down the walkway as if I didn't exist.
I stood there, gaping after them, watching her disappear around a turn. She laughed at something the man said and then threw me one final disdainful look before she disappeared. I sank to the stone bench at the side of the walkway, stunned, feeling cold, actually shivering in the hot California sun. Despite her coldness, there was something in Mommy's eyes that told me she had recognized me, that she wasn't suffering from amnesia, but at the same time, there was something that said, "Be gone, don
't you dare come back into my life, especially now."
How could she pretend to be a woman in her twenties? She looked it, but she knew she wasn't, and how could she leave me standing here, amazed and in shock after I had come so far? I buried my face in my hands and started to sob. I had come all this way to be ignored and rejected by my own mother, who I had hoped would be so happy to see me it would even cure amnesia. I took a deep breath and sat back. I remained there, staring, shaking my head, feeling nauseated and sick. Tears streamed down my cheeks, dripping off my chin, but I made no attempt to wipe them away.
A handsome dark-haired, young man and a very pretty blond-haired woman came hurrying down the walkway. They both glanced at me and smiled as if seeing someone bawling on a bench was just part of the scenery around here. They hurried into the building, their laughter tinkling behind them. Above me, a window was open and Latin rhythms came pouring out. This was not a place to be mournful, I thought and rose to my feet. I actually wobbled for a moment, the world around me taking a spin. I held on to the back of the bench and waited for the vertigo to pass, but it lingered like cramps that wouldn't dissolve.
"Hey, what are you doing?" I heard and turned to see Spike standing there. "You all right?"
"No," I wailed.
"What happened? I've been waiting and waiting. I thought I had better come in and see if I could find you. Hey," he said and lunged at me to prevent me from crumpling to the cement walkway.
Only minutes later I woke in his arms. He was sitting on the bench with me in his lap, gently slapping my cheek.
"Melody . . . Melody . . ."
"What happened?"
My eyes fluttered open again and the world came back into focus.
"You fainted," he explained.
"Oh. I'm sorry," I said, feeling horribly embarrassed. Fortunately, no one else had come by to gawk. We were still alone. Spike helped me sit up.
"You all right? Take a deep breath. Go on. That's it. What happened?" he asked when the color returned to my face.
"I met her," I said. "Right here. She came out of the building with some man and I was no more than a foot away from her."