Alexandra Waring (66 page)

“Okay,” Jackson said quietly, holding his hands out. “Belinda and Langley, go in and use the bathroom. And then come out and sit down.”

Langley and Belinda looked at each other. Langley let go of her, dug in his back pocket for a handkerchief and handed it to her. She pressed it to her mouth and walked into the bathroom, Langley following her. The door closed.

“She’s taking some kind of pills, Langley said,” Cordelia whispered. “He said something about him thinking that that’s what’s wrong with Baby B.”

“Oh, God,” Jackson sighed, covering his face with his hands a moment. Then he dropped them, looking over at Big El and then back at Cordelia. “It’s okay,” he whispered, steadying the air with his hands, “it’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.”

In a few minutes Belinda came out with Langley, her face washed, and with a robe on. She looked at Cordelia, at her father, at Jackson, and then edged closer to Langley.

“We’re scaring her,” Langley said quietly, putting his arm around her. “Belinda honey,” he said, kissing the side of her head and giving her a squeeze. “I don’t want to scare you. I don’t want to hurt you.” He sighed, tears springing up behind his glasses again. “I love you, honey.”

She turned in toward him, hiding her face in his shoulder. After a minute he led her over to Jackson and handed her over to him. And then Langley left the room, came back in and tossed down a big red book with several pieces of paper in it. It was a copy of
The Physicians’ Drug Manual
. And then he walked over to the bookcase in the corner, took down a stack of books, reached inside and pulled out a small silver box and tossed it on the bed. And then he went to another shelf and extracted a vial of pills, and another from yet another place in the shelves. He went into the bathroom and then came out with a towel, which he dropped on the bed and opened to reveal some vials from the medicine cabinet. And then he went into the dressing room and came back with a jewelry box, opened it and poured a pile of pills on the bed. And then he went to Belinda’s bedside table, opened the drawers and pulled out two more vials and tossed them on the bed. And then he picked up Belinda’s pocketbook from the chair, opened it, reached in, took out a gold case and threw it on the bed. Cordelia picked this up and opened it. It was full of pills. Different colors, some capsules, some not, some round, some triangular.

And then Langley stood there, looking at his wife, who was clinging to Jackson—and who had, during all this, alternated between watching Langley and hiding her face in Jackson’s shoulder—and said, “I’m not going to try to find all of them, Belinda. I can’t keep them from you. I can only ask that you not take any more tonight so we can talk about what we’re going to do. You and me.”

Jackson then sat down in a chair and held Belinda in his lap—who simply cried on his shoulder—as Langley told and showed Cordelia, Jackson and Big El all that he knew. That Belinda had several overlapping prescriptions for Valium and Librium and Ativan from doctors here in New York, but that he knew she had sources he did not know about, because she had lots of loose pills, stockpiled without vials, which he had looked up and found in the book: Xanax, Dalmane, Restoril and Halcion.

When Langley was through, they were all silent, looking at Belinda, who did not even have the energy to cry anymore but was simply cowering in Jackson’s arms. After a long while she finally said, hiding part of her face behind Jackson’s upper arm, “I have to have Valium and Librium to sleep, to calm my nerves. I only take other pills sometimes.” She looked like a child, an ill and frightened child in her father’s lap. “I have to take them, Langley. The Valium and Librium. The others I don’t, I admit it. But you have to believe me, if I don’t have my medication, I’ll go crazy. Forever, I’ll go crazy.”

After several moments of silence Langley sorted through the pills, looking at the vials, tossed four of them to the side and then wrapped the rest of the pills up in the towel and handed it Cordelia. “Why don’t you take these and you guys go on to bed or whatever you want to do? Belinda and I need to be alone.”

After murmured expressions of concern, Cordelia and Big El both went over to kiss Belinda and then left the room. Belinda climbed out of Jackson’s lap so he could stand up, and she held his hand while Jackson told them that he would stay over. And then he too left the room.

Jackson and Cordelia and Big El sat up, talking, and in a couple of hours, a little after two, heard Langley and Belinda in the kitchen, and Jackson went in to check on them. They were making hot chocolate, he reported back to Cordelia and Big El, shrugging and holding his hands up to indicate he wasn’t sure what was going on either. Big El went to bed then, the emergency apparently over, and after Langley and Belinda went back into their bedroom Cordelia and Jackson moved into the kitchen to make themselves waffles from scratch.

Sitting there, at three—thirty in the morning, Jackson told his sister that he was in love with Cassy Cochran. Cordelia looked at him, her fork—with a piece of waffle on it, dripping syrup—stopped in midair. “Tell me about it,” she finally said, her voice very gentle. And so he did. The whole thing. About his feelings and Cassy’s feelings and about her divorce and her son and where she lived and being at the Plaza and everything. And then he talked about Barbara and about how he still missed her and how he loved her and how messed up the kids were and how he felt responsible, and he talked and he talked and talked and ended up telling his sister everything—everything—in a way he had not done since Barbara had died.

But this time he didn’t have to have a nervous breakdown to do it.

Jackson and Cordelia were even laughing—a little gaga with fatigue at this point—when Langley came into the kitchen at eight-thirty and told them, while making a tray of breakfast for Belinda and himself, that the Petersons had decided to go to California. To Palm Springs.

“What?” Jackson finally said.

“Two of Belinda’s friends went to the Betty Ford Center,” Langley said, pouring orange juice. “One of them had a prescription drug problem too. Belinda isn’t sure she wants to do it and I promised her I wouldn’t make her.” He opened the refrigerator door and put the orange juice back and turned around to look at them. “But she agreed to go out to Palm Springs if I would go. Just be in the vicinity and see how she felt about it. Look into it. It’s just down in Rancho Mirage—and Belinda has friends in Palm Springs and we can play golf and things.”

“Golf,” Cordelia repeated, blinking.

“And I told her she could take her pills with her,” Langley said, moving back to work on the tray. “The Valium and the Librium. She took some to sleep before, I watched her. She told me the exact amount it would take for her to sleep for five hours and she took it and it was exactly five hours.” Langley looked at them over his shoulder. “I don’t know what you think about that, about my letting her take pills out there with us, but I can’t pretend I know anything about this.” He turned all the way around. “But, from what she says and what I’ve read in that book, she’s addicted—and I’m no doctor, and some of those pills were apparently prescribed for good reason.”

“I think being near the Betty Ford Center is a good idea,” Jackson said. “I think they could probably talk to her or something. She could go see someone, just to talk about it maybe.”

“That’s what I think,” Langley said, leaning back against the counter. He pushed his glasses farther up his nose, turning his attention to Cordelia. “Cordie, I’m sorry, I hate to leave you in the lurch, but I’m resigning. This morning. Now, actually.” He turned around, fussing with something on the tray. “I don’t know how long I’ll be away. Or what we’ll be doing.” He picked up the tray and turned around. “We can’t go on like this—Belinda and I.” He hesitated, looking as though he were in pain. “It’s not just Belinda. I can’t—and don’t want, the whole shebang anyway. It’s too much.”

“You don’t worry about a thing,” Cordelia told him. “You just go on with Belinda and sort things out. We’ll be fine.” Then she looked over at Jackson, who was grinning at her, batting his eyelashes provocatively. “Oh, you,” she said, rolling her eyes and dismissing him with a wave of her hand. “01’ Mr. Snake Oil’s a—comin’ to call.” She looked up at the ceiling. “Good Lord, preserve us from the bill of goods he’ll be tryin’ to sell to us now.”

51
Gordon and Alexandra Plan Their Future

What a week. They were shooting now in a castle near Rye Harbor and Vanessa Winslow was sick with strep throat; Constantine was alternating between raging and crying and so Gordon feared he was back on cocaine; and while giving an afternoon cricket ‘lesson, the company caterer accidentally whacked one of their supporting leads in the mouth and broke his front teeth. Meanwhile, every time the phone rang on Monday and Tuesday it seemed to be about some new bizarre turn of events at Darenbrook Communications: Jackson was fired, Langley was chairman and Cassy was president of DBS; hello, seventy five percent of the miniseries had secretly been sold to Hargrave Studios; hello, Alexandra was going to
buy
DBS News—hello, Alexandra was
not
going to buy DBS News—hello, Alexandra
might
buy DBS News; hello, Alexandra was coming to London and so was Cassy.

Come Wednesday morning, while Alexandra was telling him the latest news over the phone—that Lord Hargrave had made her an offer to launch a global newscast—Hargrave called on the other line to make him a very generous offer to develop and run a whole new international special-series television division for him.

“That’s good timing,” Alexandra said, back on the other line, “because I think what Cassy wants to see you about is how you’d feel if DBS sold the rest of its interest in the miniseries to Hargrave Studios.”

“She tell you that?” he asked her.

“No,” Alexandra said, “but the notes from the board meeting said they discussed getting out of feature production.”

Gordon laughed. “And how the hell do you know what’s in the notes from the board meeting? Ethel’s not one of your spies.”

“No,” Alexandra said, “but everybody in the copy center is.”

Driving up to London that day, Gordon felt in good spirits. He thought the idea of him and Alexandra living in London was wonderful. Get out of New York and start over, the two of them, in a city strange to them both—and be so near to Christopher! It would be a whole new ball game with his son—a game that would be no game at all, really, but merely an extension of what Gordon had begun to build with him in recent weeks.

He loved that little boy. And Gordon felt he was really getting to know him, and that Christopher was getting a distinct knowledge of what his real father was like, and how deep and genuine his love for him was. And it was so strange, because he and Julie were getting along—albeit over the phone—but he knew it was because, well, like she said, “Fatherhood suits you, Gordon. It brings out in you all that is very right, and is very good.” (Though, admittedly, his thought in response to this had been,
Then why didn’t you stay with me in California, you bitch?
)

But what frankly surprised him was how easily—no, not
easily
—
coldly
Alexandra seemed to be contemplating leaving DBS. In fact she sounded almost angry on the subject. It was an extraordinary opportunity that Hargrave was offering her, and it had been a very rough tenure for Alexandra at DBS, but it was very out of character for Alexandra to say—in response to his question about what it would do to her emotionally to leave DBS—”It will make me feel guilty, like it always makes me feel guilty to leave anywhere. But they’ll get the global newscast at a bargain, if they want it, so I’ll hardly be leaving them high and dry. And at least in England I won’t get shot every six months—and we can have some privacy. I think I’m really sick of there being no boundaries at home—the tabloids, the fans, even at West End, everybody’s into my business and I hate it! I’m
sick
of it.”

But she was exhausted and, as she said, was in no shape to make a final decision until she had thoroughly discussed it with him. (“So absolutely no hints to Cassy that I have an offer, okay?” Alexandra said. “We want her just to go home today—so we can think this through together.”) She had not gotten to sleep, she told him, until near six, and Will had scheduled four interviews for her to do at the BBC and ITN, the first of which was at one. After she finished the interviews, they agreed, she would go back to the Ritz and take a nap and then would meet him at the Groucho Club for dinner at eight. He’d drop her off at the studio; she’d come back to the Dorchester after her newscast; tomorrow she’d have her things brought over to the Dorchester; after her newscast early Saturday morning they’d drive out to an inn in Kent and stay the weekend; and then Alexandra would fly back to the States Sunday evening.

The only damper on things was how guilty Gordon felt about Betty. After all of the time they had spent together, to suddenly leave her with Christopher so he could be with Alexandra seemed slightly awful. And yet Betty had insisted she’d rather be with Mrs. Twickem and Christopher than anything else.

The real reason why he felt so guilty, the real problem, Gordon knew, was that Betty was in love with him and he had no right to keep ignoring it. But thank God he had not slept with her! At least he had not done that. (And now that Alexandra was here in England, he thanked God he had not slept with anyone else, either.) He enjoyed Betty’s company enormously and she was just terrific with Christopher, but while he knew she was having the time of her life, that she was learning so much on this project and was making a very good amount of money, he knew in his heart that he should hire a new assistant, promote Betty to an assistant producer and, back in London, ship her over to the May Fair and out of his daily life. This wasn’t good for her; it wasn’t fair of him to continue this arrangement—this happy domestic play in which they were engaged—when she could only get hurt in the end.

Gordon met Cassy in the restaurant of the Connaught Hotel and had a friendly, cheerful late luncheon, during which he assured her that it made no difference to him if DBS sold their remaining interest in
Love Across the Atlantic
to Hargrave Studios or not. And then they gossiped about what was going on back at West End, and then worked their way to the subject of Alexandra. Gordon said he wanted to apologize again for his behavior in New York and to say that Cassy had been right and he had been wrong—that he and Alexandra were going to be just fine, and it had just been the strain and stress and long hours and travel that had been getting both of them down. And then he told her about their weekend plans (“Sleep, sex and maybe Sissinghurst Castle,” he said, laughing), which she said she thought sounded wonderful.

Cassy had a little time to kill before leaving for the airport, and Gordon had time too, so he walked her over to some shops she had passed on her way back from Lord Hargrave’s this morning. He helped her pick out presents for her son, Henry (bookends), Chi Chi (a small blue perfume bottle covered in silver latticework) and for some unidentified friend (a tweed cap).

Then he had a short and very pleasant meeting with Lord Hargrave and went on to the Dorchester to make some phone calls and do some work. At seven-thirty he took a cab over to Dean Street, to the Groucho Club, a private club that catered to a mostly publishing and TV crowd, and in which Gordon had always maintained an out-of-town membership. It was a nice place to hang out, particularly since there always seemed to be someone there he knew and liked enormously. (As opposed to hotels and restaurants, where there always seemed to be someone he knew and wished to avoid—which he supposed was the purpose of a private club in the first place, and certainly the reason why London had so many of them.)

He waited for Alexandra in the front room, where the bar was, and sure enough, just after Alexandra came in, someone he knew and liked enormously was going out. He introduced Alexandra to Marianne Velmans, a book publisher he had met through a mutual friend, and who, having a terrific young son of her own, had been invaluable in suggesting things he could do with Christopher in London over the summer. Marianne had just come downstairs from a book publishing party in the Soho Room and introduced to them a charming woman named Susan Watt, the editor-in-chief of a competing house, who had, Marianne told Gordon, no less than four sons of her own—so if Gordon was looking for a true expert on the subject of raising wonderful boys, then he was to look no further. And so when Gordon said that it looked as though he would be spending a great deal of time in London over the next few years, maybe even live there (he winked at Alexandra), Susan told him a little a bit about the kind of educational advantages London had to offer, in between her introductions to the people who kept stopping by to say hello to her (Mary Loring, Barbara Boote, Nick Webb, hello, hello, hello).

It wasn’t until Marianne and Susan said good night and he and Alexandra were seated at a table in the back dining room that Gordon saw how unwell Alexandra looked. To anyone else she would look fine —she was, after all, an expert at pulling her appearance together—but to Gordon, who knew her body very well, she did not. Her eyes seemed a little puffy; under the makeup he knew there were circles; and she was very thin—thinner than he had ever seen her.

Of course, she had nearly been shot and killed recently, to say nothing of being on the road for weeks, to say nothing of having very little sleep for several nights running, to say nothing of a lot of corporate chaos and, now, a time of personal decision with enormous ramifications.

He was touched by her efforts to be cheerful through dinner, but he realized that this morning’s enthusiasm for moving to Hargrave World Communications had turned into something a little more scary to her. Not that she admitted this. In fact she talked about where she would like for them to get a flat in the city, and where she hoped they might look for a house in the country, as if her decision were already final. They discussed Lord Hargrave’s offer to him, and his offer to her, and about how excited and supportive Alexandra’s agent, John Mohrbacher, was about the whole idea. And then, over coffee, she really caught him by surprise.

Alexandra reached over to hold his hand and said, “If I do this, if I sign for ten years, then I’ll be settled here, and we could have a child. Maybe two children. What do you think?”

He was so stunned, for a moment he didn’t say anything. But then he did. “I love you,” he said, and leaned over to kiss her, not caring who watched. But, inside, he felt scared and wasn’t sure why.

“You do want children, don’t you?” she asked him, looking into his eyes. “You’ve always wanted children, haven’t you?”

“Have you?” he asked her.

She nodded.

He smiled. “Me too. And I hope they look like you. Are like you.”

She nodded, her eyes tearing a little.

He should be happy, he knew that. And he was—in a way.

So why, while driving Alexandra to the BINS studio, he felt this sick pit of anxiety in his stomach he wasn’t sure. He kissed her for a long time before letting her out of the car, but as he watched her go into the building he realized he was terrified of the whole thing—of London, of getting married, of Alexandra! There was something—was it him? Or was it her? But there was something, something wrong. Something scary about this whole thing. Or maybe Alexandra was being scary. There was something reckless about her in this, about how she was handling this—more like a drunken sailor on leave than like the cool, level-headed Alexandra who normally wished to examine options forever before opting for one.

He went back to the Dorchester and reminded the desk that there would be two staying in his suite now, went upstairs, drank two scotches in rapid succession and went to bed, setting his alarm for four so he would be awake when Alexandra came home from the studio. He slept, the alarm went off and he was awake when she let herself in.

“Hi,” he said, sitting up in bed, naked under the covers, praying that sex might make things feel right again—make this awful anxiety in the air go away.

“Hi,” she said softly, coming over to the bed. She bent over and kissed him, lightly, lingering for a moment though, and then she sat down on the edge of the bed, putting her work bag down on the floor.

“How’d it go?” he asked her, reaching for her hand.

“Good, good,” she said, nodding, “it was fine. Dr. Kessler did something to match the studio commands with the broadcast signal, so they were coordinated on our end. It made it easier.”

“That’s great,” he said, not knowing what she was talking about because he was not listening. She did not look good. She looked utterly beaten and drained, and was just sitting there now, her hand limp in his, looking down at the floor. “Why don’t you take a hot bath to relax?” he said. “I’ll bring you a glass of wine.”

She nodded, murmuring, “That would be nice,” but then, a moment later, she was holding her face in her hands.

“What is it, Lexy?” he said, trying to put his arms around her. Her whole body was shaking. “Are you sick?”

She backed away slightly, raising her head to look at him. “No, it’s not that.”

But she did look sick. He had never seen her like this.

“I can’t marry you, Gordon,” she said then.

For one crazy instant he wondered if Alexandra had cancer or something. He didn’t know why he had that thought, but he did and chased it away. “Why?” he heard himself say then, wondering if the subject of this conversation was going to register, or if he was going to continue to feel as weirdly detached from it as he did now.