Chocolates for Breakfast (7 page)

Chapter 7

H
er mother was furious. She had gone on to dinner, assuming angrily that Courtney was having dinner with Barry. She had said little to her that evening, and Courtney had gone to bed in disgrace. The next morning she got up before her mother was awake and slipped out of the house. She went to the pool. Al Leone was there, and Courtney was pleased to find a friend. The incident of three days ago was unimportant in her present ostracism.

“Hi, Al,” she greeted him brightly.

“Hello, Courtney.”

That was odd. He never called her Courtney.

“Did you ever get home last night?”

“What do you mean, Al?”

“I saw you, propped up at a bar with Barry Cabot. I thought I warned you about him. If you knew what you looked like sitting at a bar in your blue jeans with a guy like Cabot,
drinking
!”

“Christ, you can't do anything in this town,” she said angrily.

“You looked real cheap,” Al said curtly.

“Cheap! I've never looked cheap in my life!”

“Then this was the first time. Look, what kind of a reputation do you want to get?”

“That's what Mummy said last night, for Chrissake. Only she said, ‘How do you think it makes me look?' That made me mad.”

“I don't care about your mother. I care about you.”

“Oh, Al, shut up! Stop criticizing me! First I'm criticized for being a prude and sounding like a social worker or something, then I'm criticized for looking like a cheap broad. How am I supposed to live? Under the water or something, coming up only to say, ‘I beg your pardon if I disturb you by coming up for air. I'll do my best to remain submerged.' ”

“Stop being silly. I'm serious.”

“Oh, go to hell,” she said angrily, and left.

I shouldn't have said that to Al, she thought as she walked to the villa. But I meant it.

“Well, well, Courtney,” her mother greeted her as she came in. “I'm pleased to see you're spending the morning here, and not having breakfast with some indigent actor.”

“Mummy, please.”

“How do you think people will feel about me when they see you drinking until all hours of the night with some actor in a bar?”

“Only until about eight o'clock, Mummy.”

“Only until about eight o'clock,” she mimicked. “Think of me, and how it looks!”

“Think of you, think of you! That's all you care about, what people will think of you! I'm sick of that, sick of it, and I'm sick of your criticism!”

“You may like to think of yourself as an adult, Courtney, but you're still a child, and as long as you are, you will obey me and behave in good taste.”

“I'm not a child,” she said angrily, thinking of the other morning with Al Leone. “I'm nearly a woman.” Suddenly she was glad that Al had made a pass at her, glad because it proved to her that she was a woman and that she was wanted by men. She almost wished her mother knew; that would shut her up!

“Almost a woman,” she scoffed. “You overestimate yourself, my dear.”

“Someday you'll see! Someday you'll know!”

She ran from the house. She couldn't stay in the house, and she couldn't go to the pool because she would receive more criticism from Al. There was nothing for her to do but walk along The Strip.

She walked north, away from the stores and the people who stood outside Schwab's and Googie's, the restaurant next door. She walked feeling somehow unrelated to the trees and the cars and the sidewalk. She felt detached, as she had at school, with that strange, dizziness that was not exhaustion but was very like it. As she walked, her anger changed to imagining. She quieted herself by pretending that she was talking to Miss Rosen, and telling her what had happened.

“You must understand your mother,” Miss Rosen was saying gently. “She was only thinking of what people would think of her, and she wasn't really so angry with you.”

“But what about Al?” Courtney said.

“Maybe he was a little jealous,” Miss Rosen smiled.

“Maybe,” Courtney grinned. “Maybe that's it. Maybe that's why he called me cheap, after my rejecting him and then sitting with Barry Cabot.”

She was pleased with those thoughts, and she rejected Miss Rosen because she did not need her any longer. She had satisfied her hurt, explained it away, and then she was able to notice the trees and the sunshine and the pastel houses with the swimming pools. She was almost in Beverly Hills! She must have been walking over half an hour. There was the Beverly Hills Hotel, and above it were the hills in which her mother said they would live. But she knew that they wouldn't live there, she knew that it was just another promise that would be defeated by reality. A role in Nick Russell's picture. She knew these promises that her mother had built into realities.

Beverly Hills was a lovely town, totally discrete from The Strip area, and different again from downtown Hollywood where the studios were. The Strip area was a compromise between working Hollywood and the purely residential Beverly Hills. There were apartment houses instead of homes, but they had lawns and most of them had pools. It was quiet off The Strip, and there was a relaxed air that she did not find in Beverly Hills. Beverly Hills seemed self-consciously pompous and wealthy, like a Wall Street broker who had worked up from office boy.

She wandered through the palm-lined, broad streets until the sun was high in the sky and harsh on the pastel houses. Then she turned and walked back to The Strip, past the expensive stores and the broad lawns, toward the Hollywood that she knew, the Hollywood of Schwab's and Googie's and the Thespian.

She had seventy-five cents in her pocket—she didn't want to ask her mother for money—so she went into Schwab's for breakfast. She walked down to the end of the counter. Dick, a young actor who had come from Ohio a year ago, was behind the counter. He looked up as she came in.

“Hiya, Court. Home for vacation?”

“Home for good,” she smiled.

“Your usual breakfast?”

“Please.”

She got up and went to the newsstand. She looked through the racks and picked up a
Hollywood Reporter
and a
New Yorker
, and sat down again. It was understood that as long as they did not soil the magazines, the regular patrons could read them without paying, returning them as they left.

Dick brought her two eggs, ham, whole wheat toast, orange juice, a side order of French fries, and black coffee, and set the check for fifty cents beside her.

She read through the casting in the
Reporter,
looking for people that she knew, looked at the gossip columns, skipped the news about unions and box-office receipts, and drank her coffee. Dick refilled the cup. She began breakfast.

“Dick,” a young man beside her said, “give this note to Walter.”

Dick took the note and gave it to a slight young man at the other end of the counter. Then he came back.

“He broke up. What did the note say?” Dick asked the man.

The young man giggled. “It was dirty,” he said.

Courtney picked up
The New Yorker
and thumbed through the fiction.

“Well, Charlie,” said a man a few stools down from her to his companion, “how did the audition go?”

“Pretty well, I think. You know West, he never gives any reaction. I kind of sensed that he liked me. It's a real good part. He asked me if I'd dye my hair red for the Technicolor, and of course I told him I would. I think that's a pretty good indication that he wants me for the part.”

“Well, I'm on Kraft next week, you know.”

“That's
great!
With Marilyn Patten?”

“I'm afraid so. She's a bitch.”

“Helluva good actress, though.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

Courtney looked up absently from her magazine. In the mirror that ran the full length of the counter she saw Barry Cabot walk in. She tensed, and then her whole body began to tremble. She dropped her fork, and, very embarrassed, she picked it up and resumed eating.

What's happening to me? she thought. What's wrong with me?

She could not control the trembling of her body, the inner tension that took possession of every muscle. She didn't look up.

“Hiya, Court,” Barry said pleasantly, and sat at the other end of the counter.

Dick filled her cup again. She wanted to talk to Barry, but she knew that she had no right to. She knew that she must not presume on him. All these men were so terrified of possessive, chasing women. Her mother had told her that. He didn't talk to her, he read his
Hollywood
Reporter
and ignored her. She finished her coffee, paid her check, returned the magazines, and left. She was confused.

She walked out into the street. She didn't want to go to the pool or to the villa. Yet she didn't dare go back into Schwab's. She stood undecided outside Schwab's for a moment; she had twenty-five cents. She went into Googie's next door.

As she walked into Googie's, most of the men who sat with their backs to the door swung around on their stools. There was no mirror at Googie's. Seeing that it was no one of moment, they turned back to their breakfasts.

“Cup of coffee, please,” she said to the waitress. “Black.”

They didn't know her very well.

She was perplexed, and upset. She had gotten in trouble with her mother, Al Leone was disappointed in her, and she thought that it all would be worthwhile because she had made contact with Barry Cabot. Now Barry ignored her, was even rude to her, and she found herself more alone than before. She couldn't figure it out. She always made the wrong move, because she never thought.

Another group came in the door, and Courtney found herself looking, too. It was George, wearing Levi's and a leather jacket, with two other men.

“Hello,” she said automatically as he passed her. He simply looked at her, giving no sign of recognition.

I can't handle
this!
she thought. I don't know where I am!

She drank her coffee and went back to the pool. There was no one around that she knew very well, and she was thankful. Patrick Cavanaugh greeted her, and then resumed reading
The
New
Yorker
. The three boys were in the pool. They were racing each other. When they finished they got out of the pool, laughing, and stretched out along the rim in the sun. She envied them. She wished that she could join them, and leave this strange world of adults and emotional intrigues. But she was afraid to go over to them. She had been rejected by her own too often.

Instead she went up to the roof of the double villa, locking the door behind her. The roof smelled of sun-tan oil. There were no buildings nearby, and it was used as a solarium. She took off her clothes and lay down. She sun-warmed and spread her body. She ran her hands down her ribs and along her hips. She liked her body. She could trust her body. It was strong and beautiful and it never disappointed her. It would swim as many laps as she asked it to; it would play many hours of hockey; it moved with grace; it relaxed when she wanted to sleep. She certainly couldn't trust in her mind that way. Her mind slept when her body wanted to live. Her mind would lose her in daydreams and force her to sleep when she wasn't tired. At times she hated her mind.

“This body,” she said to herself. “This body should be loved and admired. This body wasn't made for me to hold to myself, to secrete in the damp corners of solitude.” But then, she didn't really feel that way. She didn't want to make love. She knew how foolish it was for a woman to make love, how a woman hurt herself. She knew these things as she knew most things of life, from what her mother had told her and what she had seen. Besides, it was sinful to think sensual thoughts. She would have to confess that in church tomorrow, along with the dreadful thing she had done three days ago. She was becoming very sinful. The way her body had trembled when Barry Cabot came in. She was afraid when that happened. She didn't know why it had happened, but she knew it had something to do with sex, and it frightened her that her body should act that way without her control. She was a little afraid of herself these days. And as she lay there thinking these thoughts, as she had one day on the hockey field, she knew that she must leave again and go someplace where people were.

There was no one at the villa when Courtney entered. It was dim. She hated dimness. All the houses her mother had ever lived in were dim. At Scaisbrooke and at camp she had insisted on keeping the shades up all the time, even though the sun woke her up often at dawn.

For some reason—she had no idea why—she went to the kitchen and took out the bottle of vodka. She took a swallow from the bottle. It tasted ghastly, and she cupped her hands under the faucet and drank some water. But she liked the idea of having a drink, and she took another swallow. She didn't take any more, because her mother would notice it was gone and she didn't like the taste anyway. She went into the living room, pleased by the gesture. She didn't try to explain it to herself. She picked up her Baudelaire.

Youth, she thought irrelevantly, is a ghastly time.

Chapter 8

T
he harsh, sudden August rain closed in the living room and made it dim and solitary. Courtney got up and turned on some lamps. She put on the radio. The news was on. Korea. Something depressing about Korea. She wondered what her mother and Nick were saying. Her mother had left in high spirits, wearing the black suit she got in New York and the French perfume Courtney's father had brought from the Virgin Islands. They were going to Chasen's to talk about Nick's new picture. “We'll have champagne when I get back, darling—champagne and lots of money.” This rain was depressing as hell.

Courtney got up, put a shot of vodka in some tomato juice, and lit a cigarette. Now that she was sixteen by two months, her mother allowed her to drink and smoke. The news was off and they were playing records. It was a jazz station. “Abstraction!” They were playing Stan Kenton's “Abstraction.” She wondered what Janet was doing now. Some house party on the Island, no doubt. Courtney had written Janet all about Barry Cabot and then when he ignored her more and more pointedly, being casually sociable when they met at a party of her mother's—which was even more insulting than ignoring her—she didn't write Janet for a while because she was embarrassed at having to say that she had built something in her mind which was implausible and nonexistent.

She went to the movies once with one of the boys who swam, and after the movies they had coffee. That was that. She decided to confine herself to her mother's parties, where too, she had a chance of seeing Barry. It was nice that she could smoke and drink. It made her feel older and more a part of the parties.

She wondered what it was like for her mother and Nick, who had been married and had slept together and all, to see each other. She thought that, sometimes, about her mother and father, but they had been divorced so long ago that their present relationship was of longer duration than their married life. Anyhow, Courtney gathered that the sleeping together part wasn't as important with her parents as it had been with her mother and Nick, because her mother and Nick hadn't been able to—hadn't wanted to—establish any other sort of relationship. What the hell, she didn't know anything about that. It was a whole sphere of life that she couldn't know anything about—the only one, she thought, that she couldn't even guess at.

Her mother should be home soon. They had gone to dinner and that was at seven. She had an idea. She went to the phone and called the liquor store.

“This is Miss Farrell, at the Garden?”

They would probably think it was her mother.

“Yes, Miss Farrell.”

“I'd like a bottle of Piper Heidseck, 'forty-seven.”

That was what her father always bought.

“Anything else, Miss Farrell?”

“Some potato chips.”

“Villa nine, isn't it?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“We'll send it right over.”

She was pleased by the idea. Her mother would like coming home to find that Courtney had bought the champagne, and they would eat potato chips and wouldn't have to go out in the rain. That would mean more to her mother than if they went out someplace. It was the kind of thing her father would have done.

After the champagne came she decided against having another Bloody Mary, because she was a little afraid of the idea of sitting and drinking all by herself, so she had a cup of coffee and picked up a novel by Evelyn Waugh.

When she heard her mother come in, she was pleased; and excited. The champagne was iced and the potato chips were in a bowl on the cocktail table. Everything was ready.

When Courtney saw her mother as she opened the door, she knew something was wrong. Sondra looked older and tired as she always did when she was upset. Courtney could tell that she had been crying. Immediately she decided against the champagne. She took her mother's coat.

“May I get you a drink, Mummy?” That was all she said.

“Yes, please, dear.”

Courtney made a Scotch and water, putting in two full jiggers of Scotch and only enough water to disguise the liquor. Then she looked at the color and decided it was safe to put in another splash of Scotch. She muddled the drink with her fingers and sucked the finger, checked the color again and brought her mother the drink.

Then she went back to the kitchen and made herself a Scotch on the rocks because her mother didn't like to drink alone. She came back to the living room and sat down, not saying anything.

“Courtney,” Sondra said finally.

“Whom did he give the part to?” Courtney asked.

“The studio is about to drop him. Because of those two flops, the ones that I was in—and the TV scare, it's the same at every studio. So they gave him this one picture, with a very powerful book, as a final test. He can't take another chance.”

“Stop excusing him.”

“No, really, Courtney. He needs a star with a big following, box-office insurance. He can't take a chance.”

“Did he give it to that bitch he's been sleeping with?”

“Courtney! Don't say things like that!”

“Well, did he?”

“That doesn't make any difference. The point is, I didn't get it.”

“The son of a bitch.”

“Courtney,” she said, “Hollywood is a tough town. Nick said that to me when I came out here the first time. He was right. It's a struggle for survival, and everyone must look out for himself. There's no room for sentiment. You can't ask a man whose own career is in jeopardy to destroy himself to help an actress who is hitting the skids.”

“You're not, Mummy!”

“I can't fool myself any longer,” she said wearily. “I didn't tell you this before, because I thought I would get this part and everything would be all right. We're in debt to the Garden for over a thousand dollars. We've got to move out.”

Courtney didn't say anything, because she didn't want to upset her mother any more. Move out of the Garden! She wouldn't see Al any more around the pool, she wouldn't be able to swim and sun-bathe on the roof . . . there wouldn't be any chance of her seeing Barry Cabot even at Schwab's or on the street.

“Where are we going to go, Mummy?”

“There's an apartment building on the outskirts of Beverly Hills that a girl of Al's used to live in. He told me about it. It's very cheap, and rather nice. We can get a studio apartment there. It's near the Fox lot.”

Near the Fox lot. On that great, cold, broad street with all the gas stations! How horrible.

“When are we going,” Courtney said quietly.

“Our week at the Garden ends this Wednesday.”

“Wednesday.” Wednesday! Only two more days!

“We'll still be near Beverly Hills,” her mother said hurriedly, “near enough so that you can go to Beverly Hills High. And we won't have to stay there long, only until I get some TV work, you know, there's such a demand in TV, only I didn't want to get committed before, thinking I'd be going into Nick's picture, but now I'll really look into it. I have some good connections with NBC, you know—”

And she stopped short because she saw Courtney staring at her.

“I promise you, darling. And as soon as we can we'll move into a house in Beverly Hills, with a swimming pool—”

“I don't want to live in Beverly Hills,” Courtney said miserably. “I want to live right here.”

And then she was sorry she said that.

“Look, Courtney, we can't live here. Don't you think I'd like to, too? If it weren't for you, with just a little television work I could have a room here by myself, but I brought you out here because you refused to go back to boarding school. Don't make things harder for me than they are.”

“I'm sorry, Mummy. Really.” That had been a childish thing to say. She should have thought before she said that. Of course her mother wanted to stay in the Garden.

“May I fix you another drink?” she said.

“Yes.”

Courtney made her mother another drink and then excused herself.

She knew she shouldn't have gone to bed when her mother was upset; she knew she should have stayed with her. But she didn't want to. She wanted to be by herself, to be in bed. She was sick of thinking of other people. She was terribly tired of assuming part of other people's unhappiness. She wanted to nurse her own disappointment. She cried herself to sleep, leaving her mother alone in the living room.

When she got up in the morning it was still raining, that miserable rain. She went into the kitchen and cooked herself a couple of eggs. When she got the eggs she shoved the bottle of champagne behind some milk, so her mother wouldn't see it when she got up. She noted that the bottle of Scotch, new the night before, was nearly empty. She didn't want to be around when her mother got up. A hangover added to everything else would be too much to face. It was already eleven o'clock. Some of the men in the Garden would be playing gin rummy in the room with the fireplace, but she didn't want to go there and watch them play and feel like a nuisance.

Then she knew where she would go. She would go to see Al. Only she would have to call him first, of course, because he might not be alone. It was still kind of early.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Al, this is Courtney Farrell.” She always gave her full name on the phone; she liked the sound of it.

“Oh, hi, Court.”

“I hope I didn't wake you up—”

“No, sweetie, I've been up about fifteen minutes.”

“Oh, good. Al . . . I wondered if I could come by and talk to you.”

“Sure, Court. Something wrong, baby?”

“Not really. I just wanted to talk to somebody. I hope I'm not intruding or bothering you or anything.”

“If you were, babe, I'd tell you. No, come on over and have some coffee while I have breakfast.”

Al had an idea of what Courtney wanted to talk to him about. Yesterday the manager of the Garden had come to him and told him that Sondra would have to leave security or pay at least half of the bill before she left. Knowing that the Garden bill was not the only one that Sondra owed, Al had made the arrangements. That was yesterday, and Sondra was perfectly willing to leave security, sure that the arrangement would never have to be put into practice.

Courtney took her cup of coffee and put it on the table beside the couch. She set some pillows under her head and lay down.

“Get to bed late?” said Al as he brought his breakfast in.

“No,” Courtney said. “I'm just awfully tired, for some reason. I got to bed kind of early, but I could hardly get up this morning.”

“Mmm. Rainy morning,” Al suggested. “Want some toast?”

“No, thanks, I'm not very hungry.”

“Al,” Courtney said suddenly, “we've got to move out of the Garden.”

“I know, sweetie.”

“Nick gave somebody else the part.”

“The bastard. I knew he would. He's that kind of a guy. I kind of think that's one of the reasons your mother fell in love with him. She never did know how to handle kindness.”

“No,” Courtney said, looking at Al. “She's always been a little afraid of people who were kind to her, like Daddy. Al—what's this place like that we're moving to?”

“Not bad, baby. Not bad at all for the money. A room with a couple of studio couches, and a legitimate kitchen. Of course, it's no Garden of Allah, but you ought to be just as glad that you're getting out of there. Don't think I haven't noticed the way you follow Cabot around. And when you go to confession you go down Havenhurst, so that you'll pass his apartment house. Don't think I miss that, sweetie, when I see you pass here. And you never eat breakfast in the second shift at Schwab's any more, because you know he always eats at two. Everything here is in about a three-block area, so nobody misses a thing.”

“Nobody who's looking for it.”

“Well, you're knocking your brains out, kid, and making a fool of yourself. He doesn't want to get involved with a young girl. And if he did go out with you, it would be for only one thing. That's no good. I admit I looked at you that way, too—once. But then I realized that you were just a kid. That's what Cabot realizes, and you ought to be glad.”

“Well, I'm not glad, Al. Honestly, I get so lonely sometimes. And now we're going to move out by Beverly Hills, and I'll never see anybody but Mummy.”

“You'll be starting school pretty soon, and you'll have dates and friends your own age.”

“No, I won't, Al,” she said soberly. “You don't know what it was like at school. I don't have anything in common with people my own age. I had one real friend at school, my roommate. For all the years I was at Scaisbrooke, only one friendship grew out of it. I don't know what's wrong with me, Al, why I don't fit in. But it's no use telling myself that when I move to a new school I'll suddenly have a group of friends, because all I have to do is look at the record.”

Al shook his head.

“Crazy mixed-up kid. In a few years you'll find some guy, and you won't be lonely any more. There's a helluva potential there, and some guy is gonna see it.”

“Yes, in a few years. The rest of the time I just go on like this. And, Al, I'm frightened. I don't know if you'll understand this, but this morning I couldn't get up, even though I'd had a lot of sleep. And last night I just wanted to get to bed, even though I wasn't really sleepy. It was an effort for me to walk over here, as though I'd had about three hours' sleep. That hasn't happened since I left Scaisbrooke, and it means something is wrong. Something is happening to me, and I don't understand it, and it frightens me because I can't control it.”

Al didn't understand what Courtney meant, but he understood when she suddenly rushed to him like a small child and buried her head in his chest.

“I'm afraid of it, Al,” she said, her words muffled. “And I'm afraid of being so alone with it.”