Everything and More (41 page)

Unlike the majority of her House, she had not trapped herself a returned veteran, but on graduation last January, she had landed a good job. If one stretched it, one could call it a career. Mr. and Mrs. Fineman, who owned Patricia’s, a tony women’s specialty shop on South Beverly Drive, had hired her to do the books and help out the secretary. Patricia’s clientele were the wealthiest women in Beverly Hills, and they expected skilled advice about their fashion dilemmas. After two months, the Finemans had allowed Roy to wait on a few of these exacting ladies. She discovered a flair for putting together Dior’s New Look on young second wives. The Finemans, who liked her, had rewarded her with two raises.

Slight reverberations warned Roy that somebody was descending the stairs, and she pushed BJ and Maury’s plates out of the way before turning to see it was her sister.

“Oh, Marylin. So you’re up,” Roy said cheerfully. Then she noted that the pale cream lounging pajamas were buttoned wrong. Marylin always looked as if she had stepped from the proverbial bandbox, so this was no minor aberration.

Roy felt the weight of protective anxiety slip over her. “Marylin, honey, what is it?” she asked, getting to her feet.

“Where’s Linc?”

Roy, arriving just before Marylin had gone up for a rest, had seen her sister and Linc exchange a tender glance across the crowded den. The situation, in all its romantic glamour, was as explosive as an A-bomb. Roy nervously avoided it. “You really do look wiped out,” she said. “Why not rest upstairs a bit longer?”

Marylin darted a queer, terrified look up toward the bedrooms. “No! Is he still in the den?”

“Mr. Wyler was taking photographs there a few minutes ago.” As she spoke, NolaBee’s raspy laughter sounded above the congenial chatter in the dining room. (NolaBee, with her energy, slapdash clothes, and gregarious Southern loquacity, had made a big hit with the movie crowd.) “Mama’s playing hostess. You really should finish your nap.”

“I need Linc!” Marylin’s huge blue-green eyes were shadowed, as if she were ready to cry.

Roy draped her arm around her sister’s delicately proportioned shoulders. “Honey, I can see you still have it bad for him, but let’s not go around wearing the old heart on the sleeve.”

A tear trickled onto the sculptured pale cheek.

Roy said hastily, “Hush, it’s okay. I’ll go find him for you.”

Just then a stout man and an excessively thin redhead came into the hall.

“Marylin, darling, isn’t it the most about Linc?” rasped the redhead. “We’re absolutely thrilled for Joshua, for all of you.”

“Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Rimmerton,” Roy answered for her sister. As the couple moved into the dining room, she whispered, “Marylin, better go wait someplace where you’re not so available.”

Wordlessly Marylin headed toward the front door.

“It’s freezing,” Roy said.

But Marylin was turning the bronze knob. As she slipped outside, Roy thought If that’s love, I’m better off without it. This particular notion held a couple of sour grapes: her perennial worry was her regrettable virginity. Was she frigid? Did she have impossibly high standards for a mate? (She would never consider giving in to anyone who didn’t have honorable intentions.)

She began her search for Linc in the living room, where Johnny Mercer was accompanying himself as he rasped out “Skylark.” Linc was not in the crowd gathered around the grand piano. Neither was he part of any of the chattering groups eating at the permanent card tables. She went into the overheated kitchen, where Coraleen, Percy, and the caterers bustled. None had seen Linc recently. Roy ran upstairs. The door to BJ’s old room was ajar, and she could see Annie curled in sleep by the bars of the crib kept there for her.

A faint light shone around the closed door of Billy’s room.

She heard Linc’s voice. “—I had the books in that case and the games and stuff in this one.”

“Linc, was this your room? I mean, really truly?”

“Use your noodle, brother. Where else would they put a guy and all his junk?”

The half-brothers were sitting on the floor with the lights out, and as Roy opened the door the tall candle between them flickered, casting wavery light, chiaroscuro, on the faces of child and man.

“Linc.” Roy switched on the light.

“Turn that out, Auntie Roy!” Billy shouted. “This is us brothers’ campfire!”

“Hey, Billy Boy, hey charming Billy,” Roy said. “Linc, M-a-r-y-l-i-n wants you. She’s a-l-l u-p-s-e-t—”

“You spelled my mommy’s name!” Billy shouted. “Get out, Auntie Roy!”

Linc was pinching out the flame with his fingers. “Brother, old buddy, we’ll continue the powwow after you put on your PJ’s.”

As he reached Roy in the doorway, he asked quietly, “Where is she?”

“Outside, in front.”

The bad leg didn’t impair his speed, Roy noted. He charged down the curving staircase, ignoring the plump, outstretched arms of a motherly woman to duck out the front door.

They were still wild about each other, that was only too obvious, and though Roy lacked knowledge of why Linc had chosen to return so tardily to Beverly Hills, she understood he had everything to do with Marylin’s jumping off the publicity jaunt. They were like two comets racing in tandem. How could Joshua miss seeing the brilliance? What a murderous mess, she thought as she turned to soothe her outraged nephew.

*   *   *

When the door opened, Marylin flung herself, gasping and shuddering at Linc.

“Hey, hey. You’re shivering all over.” Pulling off his sport coat, he wrapped her in wool warm from his body. “Love, what’re we doing out here?”

She pressed against him. She had calmed enough to think in somewhat linear coherence. Joshua’s his father, she thought; he loves him, and there are enough stumbling blocks in the relationship already. How can I tell him?

“Nerves,” she said.

He took her chin between his fingers, staring down at her. The light from his mother’s prized Georgian carriage lanterns cut his face into harsh planes and prominences. “Dad went upstairs a while ago,” he said slowly.

“He passed out on the bed.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing.”

“Marylin?”

Memory burst within her, the liquor smell, the heavy, scalding weight crushing her, the pain. She could not suppress her shudder.

“For God’s sake, Marylin. Did he bat you around? Does he do that?”

“No. . . .”

Linc continued to examine her. A dog barked up the block and other nearby dogs joined in.

“I didn’t want him,” she whispered.

“He raped you?”

“I didn’t want him,” she repeated.

Linc’s eyes went flat as obsidian stones, and his body tensed. After a moment he said quietly, “I’ll get you out of here.”

*   *   *

Without any luggage, she wearing his jacket, they checked into a motel a mile or so south of the Fernaulds’ summer rental in Malibu.

  
38
  

The following morning she discovered she was spotting. Her period wasn’t due for two weeks.

“I better find a doctor,” Linc worried.

“No!” The rape had filled her with a victim’s shame, and Joshua’s kneeing was too poisonous to speak about, especially to his son. “Linc, I’ll be fine.”

Linc crossed Pacific Coast Highway to the general store, buying a box of twelve Modess, aspirin, and a paperback by Faulkner,
Mosquitoes.

Understanding her need for quiet, he sat reading. His presence and the grumbling of the sea soothed her and she was able to talk, with burning cheeks and guarded circumspection, about the few agonizing minutes in the bedroom.

“. . . he was very drunk. I guess that’s why I can’t keep on hating him . . . very much, anyway.”

“That’s how it is with him. You want to despise him, then for some reason you find you can’t. God, I’d forgotten the whole syndrome! When I was fourteen, I figured out about his girls. What took me so long, I can’t tell you. Arrested development, maybe. God knows, he never kept them a secret—when he attached himself to a new one, he all but took out ads in the trades. On Mother’s behalf I loathed him, yet on my own, I harbored admiration. At least my old man had the guts not to be a hypocrite like the others.”

“To my knowledge, he’s never cheated on me.”

“Why would he? You’re his goddess, it’s written all over him. Now,
why
he fell for his son’s girl, well, there’s something only a good psychiatrist could figure out.”

It was after five when she felt up to navigating the hundred feet to the motel office with its exterior telephone booth. Linc produced a handful of silver, then strolled to the sandy ledge to look down at breakers, the kind of tactful consideration about personal privacy to which Joshua never succumbed.

Percy answered the phone.

After the greetings, Marylin said, “Get Billy for me, will you, Percy?”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Fernauld,” Percy said embarrassedly. “But Mr. Fernauld, he say, well, he say anything regarding Billy must be cleared with him. He’s been drinking heavy all night and day, drinking like he done when Linc died—when Linc was missing. If I put Billy on the phone, he’ll fire us, sure. I feel awful about this, Mrs. Fernauld.”

She closed her eyes. “That’s all right, Percy. Tell Mr. Fernauld I’ll be over in an hour or so.”

“He stepped out a while ago. And, well, you know how it is with him. Tonight he might get some sleep. Best to try in the morning.”

She hung up and rested her aching forehead against the sand-pitted glass of the booth.

Linc returned. “That was quick.”

She explained Joshua’s interdiction.

“What a shitty thing to do,” Linc muttered.

She sighed. “Billy must be positive I’ve run out on him.”

“The poor little kid.”

“You warned me, Linc, I know, but it seemed impossible Joshua would act like this.”

“The aging bull elephant defends his territory every dirty which-way he can.”

“I said we’d go there tomorrow morning. I’ll explain it all to Billy then.”

*   *   *

Joshua opened the door. His thick gray stubble showed, and he had on the same slacks and Mexican wedding shirt, now rumpled and food-spotted, that he’d worn for the festivities of Linc’s return.

“Well, if it isn’t my beauteous helpmeet and my devoted offspring.” Joshua, a heavy drinker, held his liquor well, but when he was loaded, his tendency to hectoring elaboration grew more pronounced.

She pushed by him into the hall. “I came to see Billy,” she said.

“Billy, my lovely, is in the companionship of his peers. The young of Beverly Hills attend nursery school, my beauty, despite the adulterous storms raging behind the handsome facades of their homes.” He wove unsteadily to his writing room.

Marylin and Linc followed.

The desk was littered with bottles and dirty dishes, and the air smelled dead, a combination of sweat, stale food, liquor, stubbed-out cigarettes.

Marylin said, “I’ll pick him up.”

Joshua was pouring a tumbler of J&B. “The fuck you will, beloved.”

“He’s mine too.”

“A fact you seemed happy enough to ignore when you departed this roof two evenings past.”

“You know damn well why she left,” Linc said in a low, shaking voice. His face was suffused with passionate rage. “I should have killed you.”

In reply, Joshua downed his drink.

“Can’t you remember?” Linc demanded. “Were you too blind drunk to remember what you did? Let me give you a hint—Marylin’s still bleeding.”

Joshua sank into the worn maple seat of his captain’s chair, the only chair in the room, momentarily permitting his unshaven chin to rest against his soiled shirt, a position of either grief or irrevocable defeat; then he raised his head. “I goddamn well remember doing to
my
wife what the law allows, a privilege you, my small-balled, long-lost scion, have to sneak,” he said savagely. “Now, get out before I beat the living shit out of you.”

“You really think I’d leave her alone with you?”

“You knew from the beginning, Joshua,” Marylin said. “You understood why I married you.”

A tiny muscle was working in the lid of Joshua’s left eye. “The pair of you! Puling children! What do you think, you’re playing on the swings in Roxbury Park? This clawing, painful
vérité.
Marylin-Rain, you leave Joshua Fernauld for Abraham Lincoln Fernauld and his hotshit Pulitzer, and you’ll find yourself smack in the middle of a big, juicy dog turd of a scandal.” He gestured at a heaped mass of newspapers on the floor. “Have you been keeping up with the news? No? Well I have. The front sections carry a paragraph about the miracle raising of the dead Pugh-litzuh Prize-winning author of
Island
from his watery grave, and the entertainment pages are full of questions about Rain Fairburn’s suspension. The star, in seclusion, could not be
reached for comment, but her devoted husband avers she has been laid low with a dire, mysterious bronchial ailment ever since she wore herself out shooting
Versailles.”