Belinda (23 page)

I wanted to say something, I really did. But I was just staring at the tapes, just staring back into time, into that first moment when I saw her in the bookstore. I was looking back over all of it. What had always been my worse fear? Not scandal or ruin, no, I'd been courting that from the beginning. It was that the truth would take her away from me, that the truth would mandate some action that would divide us forever, and she'd be lost, like a little girl I had painted out of the imagination, no more a warm and living being in my arms.

"Jeremy, this is a fucking bomb that can go off any minute in your face."

"Dan, find out where the fuck this Swiss school is and if they really think she's over there, goddamn it, if she's somehow pulled the wool over her mother's eyes."

"Of course, she hasn't. It's a cover-up, it has to be. Sampson's got to be working for Moreschi, and that's why he's sneaking around with these pix of the kid, and it's all so hush-hush in LA?"

"Is that legal? Not even to report her missing? What kind of people are we talking about here? She splits and they don't even call the LAPD?"

"Man, you are in no position to throw stones!"

"Fuck it, we're talking about her mother."

"Do you want them to call the LAPD? Are you crazy?"

"You have to find out-"

"And you have to get rid of her, Jeremy, before Sampson tracks her to your door."

"No, Dan."

"Look, Jer. Remember I told you I thought I'd seen her before? It was probably the news magazines, Jet, could have even been on the tube. This girl is famous. The tabloids chase her mother all over this town. They might blow the lid off it before Sampson finds her, don't you see what this could mean?"

"Zero in on the parents. Find out when she disappeared. I have to know what went down."

I hung up before he could say anything more.

Seemed impossible to move then, to gather up the tapes, to carry them back upstairs.

But I did it.

And I stood there dazed, heart still overloading as I stared at the closet shelves.

The old film magazines were in a pile at the very bottom. And on the top of that pile was Bonnie smiling up at me from the cover of Cahiers du Cinema. And underneath that was Bonnie again on an old Paris-Match. And, yes, Bonnie on the cover of Stern, and Bonnie on the cover of CineRevue. And all those that didn't have Bonnie's face on the cover had her name somewhere there.

Yes, every single one of them had some connection to Bonnie.

And as I opened the most recent, the Newsweek that was over a year old, I found immediately the big color picture of the dark-eyed sex goddess with one arm around a gaunt black-haired man and the other around the radiant blond womanchild I loved:

"Bonnie with producer husband, Marty Moreschi, and daughter, Belinda, poolside in Beverly Hills as 'Champagne Flight' prepares for takeoff."

[20]

Six a.m. Gray sky. Chill wind.

I was walking up Powell Street towards Union Square from the metro stop, not even sure where I was going, what I wanted to do. Looking for a place to rest, to think.

Left her sleeping in the four-poster, the old-fashioned quilts piled on top of her, her head to the side, her hair flowing over the pillow. Washed and scrubbed, all traces of the rock concert and the punk street kid gone.

And I had left a note by the bed.

"Gone downtown. Business. Back late afternoon."

Business. What business? Words calculated to hurt and confuse. Nothing was open except the bars and the dingy all-night restaurants. What was I going to do? What did I want to do?

One thing was for sure. After last night I couldn't go on until I came to some resolution.

SCREAMING fight when she walked in after the rock concert.

And I was the one drunk on Scotch by that time, and she sober and wary, glaring at me through the mask of punk makeup. "What's the matter?"

"Sometimes I just can't stand it, that's all."

"Stand what?"

"Not knowing. Where you came from, what happened, why you ran away." Pacing the kitchen. Anger in my voice, boiling anger. Goddamn it, you are a fucking movie star/

"You promised me you'd never ask me about all that again." Chewing gum. Eyes flashing like gaudy jewelry. Stop playing Lolita.

"I'm not asking you. I'm just telling you that I can't stand it sometimes, that I feel sometimes like, like this is doomed, do you understand me?" Smash of glass into the sink.

She had stared at the broken glass.

"What's doomed, why are you acting like this?"

"You, me. Because it cannot be right. It just cannot be right."

"Why isn't it right? Do I hound you about your wives, your old girlfriends, the times you've been to bed with men? I go off to one rock concert by myself and you flip out and we're doomed suddenly."

"That has nothing to do with it. I'm going crazy, like you've taken over my life and yet I don't even know you, where you came from, how long you'll stay, where you're going-"

"I'm not going anywhere! Why should I go?" Hurt suddenly. Break in the voice. "You want me to leave, Jeremy? You want me to leave? I'll leave tonight."

"I don't want you to leave. I live in terror that you might leave. God-God damn it, I'd do anything to stop you from leaving, but I'm just saying that sometimes-"

"Nobody just says anything. I'm here, you can take it or leave it, but those are the terms. For God's sakes we've been over and over this. This is us, Jeremy. This belongs to us!"

"Just like your body belongs to you?"

"For the love of God, yes!" California accent dried up, elegant clipped voice taking over, the real Belinda, Miss International-film-actress.

But she was really crying. She had bowed her head, rushed down the hall and up the stairs.

I had caught her at the bedroom door, taken her in my arms.

"I love you. I don't care then, I swear it-"

"You say it, but you don't mean it." Pulling away. "Go up and look at your damn paintings, that's what you feel guilty about, what you're doing, that they're a thousand times better than the goddamned illustrations you did before."

"To hell with the paintings, I know all that!"

"Let go of me!" Shoving me. I reached out. Her hand came up, but she did not slap me. Let her hand drop.

"Look, what do you want of me, that I make something up for you, to make it easy? I didn't belong to them, don't you understand? I'm not their fucking property, Jeremy!"

"I know." And I know who them is, and goddamn it, how can you keep it secret? How can you stand it, Belinda?

"No, you don't know! If you did, you'd believe when I tell you I am where I want to be! And you'd worry about the damned paintings and why they're better than all that slop you did before."

"Don't say that-"

"You always wanted to paint what was under the little girls' dresses-"

"Not true. I want to paint you!"

"Yes, well, that's genius up there now, isn't it? You tell me. You're the artist. I'm just the kid. It's genius, isn't it? For the first time in your fucking life it's not a book illustration. It's art!"

"I can handle that. I can handle what's happening to my life. What I can't handle is not knowing whether or not you can handle what's happening to you! I have no right-"

"No right!" She came closer, and I thought this time she would hit me, she was so furious. Her face was positively scarlet. "Who says you have no right! I gave you the right, goddamn it, what do you think I am!"

I couldn't endure it, the expression on her face, the pure malice.

"A child. A legal child. That's what you are."

She made some low sound as if she was going to scream. She shook her head.

"Get out of here," she whispered. "Get away from me, get away, get away!" She started shoving me, but I wouldn't go. I grabbed her wrists, and then I pulled her close to me and put my arms around her. She was kicking me, digging the toe of her shoe into my shin, stomping the heel into my foot.

"Let me go," she was growling. And then she did get her hand loose, and she slapped me hard over and over, hard stinging slaps that must have hurt her hand.

I pushed my face into her neck. My ears were ringing. Her hair was scratching me. Her hands were pulling at me. I just held her.

"Belinda," I said. "Belinda." I kept saying it until she stopped struggling.

And finally her body relaxed. The heat of her breasts was right against my chest.

The tears had made the mascara run down her cheeks in black streaks. She was trying to hold in her sobs.

"Jeremy ..." she said, and her voice was small and fragile. It was positively pleading. "I love you," she said. "I really do. I love you. I want it to be forever. Why isn't that enough for you?"

Two o'clock. Must have been. I hadn't been looking at the clock however. I had been sitting at the kitchen table smoking her clove cigarettes. Sober by then, probably. Headache, that I remember. Bad headache. My throat had been sore.

Why had I looked at the damn films? Why had I called Dan? Why had I talked to Alex? Why hadn't I left it alone, done what I'd promised I would do?

And if I told her everything now, confessed the snooping, the prying, the investigation, what would she do? Oh God, to think of losing her, to think of her struggling to get away from me, to think of her going out the door.

And what about the other pieces of the puzzle? The damned Swiss school scam and the jackpot question, yes, why, why did she leave all that? She had come downstairs in her nightgown. Not Charlotte's anymore, just hers. And she had sat down near me and reached out and touched my hand.

"I'm sorry, darling," I had said. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

But you still won't tell me, will you? Not one fucking word about any of it. Bonnie, Susan Jeremiah, Final Score. And I can't look you in the eye.

Her hair had been loose and like foam over her shoulders in the light of the overhead lamp, all clean and sweet from the shower.

"Jeremy," she had said. "Listen to me. What if we were to go away, you know, really far away?" No answer.

"Like what if we were to go to Europe, Jeremy? Maybe some place in Italy. Some place in the south of France."

"And you wanted so much to be in America," I whispered.

"I can wait for America, Jeremy. If we were in Europe, you wouldn't be worried about detectives or cops or whatever the hell it is you keep worrying about. We'd be safe and you could paint and we could just be alone."

"Darling, can't you just tell me who you are?"

"I'm me, Jeremy. I'm Belinda."

Our eyes had met and the heat had threatened, the awful, torturous heat of the fight again, and I had gathered her to me. No more of that. No, no more.

She had allowed the kisses. She had allowed the tenderness and even yielded to it for a moment.

But then she'd backed off. She had stood looking down at me, and her eyes had an icy ageless expression that had nothing to do with her tears.

"Jeremy, I am telling you now for the last time, make your decision. If you ask me one more time about the past, I will walk out the front door and you will never see me again."

Six o'clock. Downtown.

Taxis in front of the Saint Francis. No cable cars sliding down the track. And why are you so angry with her? Why do you stomp up Powell Street away from her as if she had done something to you? The first moment you ever saw her you knew she was no ordinary kid. You knew it. And that is why you love her. Nobody had to point that out.

And never, never has she lied about any of it! Not like you've lied, about Dan and about snooping in her room and watching her fucking videotapes. Her terms were always: Do not ask me about it. And you accepted them, didn't you?

And you know damn good and well you wouldn't have missed it for the world.

But everything is coming apart. That's the bottom line right now. You can not continue until you resolve it. Make your decision, that is what she said.

I WENT up the steps of the Saint Francis, through the dark heavy revolving door into the gilded silence of the lobby. No night or day here. Enchanted stillness. Image of her the way she had looked standing there by the elevators that day, as coolly elegant as anything around her. Making movies since she was six, maybe even before that. And superstar Bonnie for a mother, imagine.

I went down the long right corridor past the shut-up flower stand, the dress shop windows. Like entering a little underground town, this. What did I want? The magazine store? Books, newspapers? Oh, it was too easy.

There was the paperback bio of the goddess mother right there on the book rack, one of those mass market quickie jobs with no bibliography or index, and enormous print, all the information in it obviously gleaned from other peoples' interviews and articles. That's OK. Got to have it. No quibbles about that now.

Yes, grainy little black-and-white photos in the middle.

One, a grinning Bonnie in sunglasses on the terrace of her Greek island home.

Two, famous nude of Bonnie from Playboy of 1965. Yes, exceptional. What genes to be inherited.

Three, the famous picture of Bonnie in glasses and man's white shirt open down the front, advertising Saint Esprit perfume.

Four, Bonnie nude with dalmatians, by Eric Arlington, the poster that had ended up on a thousand dormitory walls.

Five, Bonnie's Beverly Hills wedding last year to Marty Moreschi, producer of "Champagne Flight," and guess who's there in a high-neck dress with filmy sleeves, looking as lovely as the bride? Belinda.

Six, that picture again of mother and daughter by the de rigueur pool.

All of this right here in just the kind of book she knew that I would never buy. She could have left it lying around the house! She could have read it right in front of me. I would never have even looked over her shoulder.

And oh yes, seven and eight, Bonnie in scenes from "Champagne Flight," of course, and with whom? Alex Clementine. My old friend.

I got out the three dollars to pay for this invaluable little piece of trash, then checked the magazines. I had seen Bonnie's face so often in the past year she was damn near invisible. National Enquirer, OK, big juicy cover story: BONNIE SAYS ITALIAN AMERICAN LOVERS ARE BEST. AND I'VE TRIED THEM ALL. Get that too. Can you believe this, you are buying the National Enquirer?