Princess Daisy (30 page)

Daisy had not, of course, been able to visit Dani from Santa Cruz, but during the long breaks at Christmas and Easter she always flew to England to see her, and every summer was spent with Anabel at
La Marée
so that she could be within a few hours of Dani by plane. The staff at Queen Anne’s School took photographs of the two sisters
together whenever Daisy visited, and these photos, which covered a period of thirteen years, were pinned up on a special cork board in Dani’s room. Often she pointed it out to her friends and teachers with great pride. “See Day? See Dani? Pretty?” she would ask, time after time, knowing that their answer would always be, “Yes, yes, pretty Dani, pretty Day!”

During her years at college, Daisy had received letters from Ram, since all her school bills, all her travel bills and clothing bills were sent to him for payment, and her allowance checks had to come from him, too. Daisy could not tear up the letters and throw them away unread. Unfortunately money matters still gave Ram a hold on her and she could barely wait to graduate to get a job and become completely self-supporting.

During 1967 and 1968, Ram’s letters had been totally impersonal, noting only that he had paid the various bills she had sent him out of her income from her stock. Then he had started dropping disquietingly intimate sentences into his communications. The first time this happened he had written, after disposing of business, “I hope that my actions of the past won’t be held against me for the rest of my life. I’ve never stopped condemning myself for what could only have been a case of temporary insanity.” The second quarterly letter was even more upsetting. “Daisy, I’ve never forgiven myself for what I did to you. I can’t stop thinking of how much I loved you and how much I still love you. If you would only write to say you forgive me—and that you are now able to understand that you
literally
drove me crazy, you would relieve me of a great burden.” This letter had struck a chord of terror into Daisy. It was as if Ram had reached out and tried to touch her. She looked around the room she shared with Kiki, trembling at the thought that her only safe refuge was here, and yet even here he was able to enter, if only in a letter.

When she opened the first letter Ram sent her in 1969, she hoped that her lack of any answer to his last two letters would have caused him to return to simple business matters. But instead, he wrote, “I understand why you don’t feel ready to answer me yet, Daisy, but that doesn’t change the way I feel about you or the fact that I feel I
must
have, some day, a chance to gain your forgiveness
in person
. No matter what you think, I am still your brother and I always will be and nothing can change that—just as
nothing can change my memories. Can you really forget the eucalyptus grove? Have you really no feelings toward someone who loves you so much?”

The next time a letter came from Ram, and every time thereafter, Daisy dropped them, unopened, into the big trash basket in the coffee shop, unwilling to put them into the wastebasket near her desk. The arrival of one of them in her mail cubbyhole was like the sight of a curled-up snake. Her fear and loathing of Ram had grown stronger every year and his pleading words were vomitous, somehow menacing even in their humility.

Long hours of introspection had permitted Daisy to understand that her premature sexual experience had been possible only because of an incompleted mourning process for her father that had catapulted her into a state in which she felt that she had lost a part of her own
self
, and so had fled to Ram to become whole again. She could never stop blaming him, never stop reassuring herself that
it had not been her fault
, but his. And yet, somehow, the guilt lingered, the guilt she knew she had no reason to feel, and she was angrily unwilling to venture into sexuality again. Daisy walled off and defended herself against sexual feelings—they caused pain, confusion, shame. She knew that she wasn’t being rational, but her emotions could not be reached by logic.

Instead, she threw herself into a schedule of activities so full that her energy was consumed. Besides her regular classes and her daily trail ride, she became a member of the crew responsible for the stage sets of the many performances put on in the various Santa Cruz University theaters. She was so eager and ready a volunteer that more and more of the work fell on her shoulders until, by the fall of senior year, she was in full charge of all scenic design, and leader of a crew of scenery painters and builders called “Valensky’s Vassals” because of their devotion to their demanding chief. During her time at college Daisy created many stage sets which combined ingenuity with illusion in a highly professional manner. She also became familiar with all the varied crafts of stage décor: lighting, set dressing and costume design, as well as her own specialty of scenic design. She loved the stage of a theater as much as Kiki did; Kiki, who had become such an iridescent personality, as she acted in play after play, that to most people but Daisy, she seemed a splashy, spangled creature, so colorful that the details of her real
self were overlooked in the glitter. But while Kiki appeared in front of an audience, Daisy’s feelings for the stage were based on the handling and working of actual materials and seeing what could be made of them. She took rich pleasure in seeing a freshly painted backdrop laid out on the grass of the sculpture garden of College 5, and later transforming it, with furniture and props, into a startling reality, as much as she loved creating a set for a dance group, using nothing but a curtain of long ropes of Christmas tree ornaments and spotlights. Daisy didn’t know what kind of job she would eventually get in the theater, but that was her ambition, and, until graduation, she planned to cram as much of stagecraft into her life as possible.

Early in the fall of her senior year at college, Daisy was engrossed in sketching costumes for a futuristic version of
The Tempest
when an excited Kiki, shouting, “Hey, Daisy, where are you?” burst into their room at a run. “Oh, great—you’re here. Listen to this, I just got a letter from Zip Simon, head of advertising at old Dad’s company and he’s coming out next week and we’re invited!”

“What does an executive of United Motors want with our humble, but admittedly lovely selves? And by the way, you’ve interrupted me. How do you think Prospero would dress on a spaceship?”

“In a spacesuit—just leave that alone for a sec—I told you ages ago that Zip promised me that the next time they shot a TV commercial anywhere near here, he’d let us watch—and they’re going to do one in Monterey next week. It’s to introduce the new model of the Skyhawk. You know, the car that’s been such a secret.”

“A television commercial! Oh, really, how
gross!
Stop kidding, Kiki,” Daisy said disdainfully.

Students at Santa Cruz made it a fetish not to watch television except for an eccentric few who followed “As the World Turns” and insisted on being proud of their addiction. As far as commercials—all commercials—went, their contempt knew no bounds. Kiki, as an heiress to a vulgar Detroit fortune, was often hard-put to swallow her thoughts when she heard the lofty, utterly impractical ideas of her fellow students on American industry in general, and television advertising in particular.

“Daisy Valensky!” she said indignantly. “Don’t you know that Marshall McLuhan said that historians and
archaeologists will one day discover that the ads of our time are the richest and most faithful daily reflections any society ever made of its entire range of activities?”

“You’re making that up!”

“I am not! I memorized it because I’m just so sick and tired of the way everyone goes on around here—talk about ivory towers—wait till they try to get jobs, they’ll find out. Oh, come off it, Daisy, maybe you’d learn something from seeing them do the commercial.”

“I suppose one can always learn something—like how not to do things.”

“Oh, you’re so fucking condescending! You’ve been at Santa Cruz so long your brain’s decayed.”

“Spoken like a true daughter of noble Detroit.”

“Elitist swine!”

“Capitalist pig!”

“I got to say swine first, so I won,” Kiki said, delighted at her victory in their long-playing game of insults.

A week later, on historic Cannery Row in Monterey, less than an hour’s drive from Santa Cruz, the two girls approached a roped-off section of the street where a small crowd of spectators had already collected. A gigantic truck, with the word “Cinemobile” printed on its side, was parked close by. There was also a large Winnebago, and a truck carrying the new Skyhawk that was draped in heavy canvas. A vintage Skyhawk, in perfect condition, stood on the street.

Kiki and Daisy edged cautiously through the crowd up to the ropes and inspected the scene of the commercial shoot.

“Nothing’s going on,” Daisy observed.

“Weird,” Kiki whispered, looking at the crowd of people inside the ropes who were frozen in widely separated groups. Two of the groups were made up of conservatively dressed men in dark suits and ties muttering together in low tones. She pointed to them with knowledgeability. “Our gang’s from the agency, the other’s from the client—my old dad’s guys.”

“Those must be the crew,” Daisy said, indicating a tangle of men and women in jeans so shabby that they wouldn’t have looked out of place on campus, all of whom were drinking coffee from plastic cups and munching leisurely on doughnuts as if they were on vacation. Both
girls looked with more interest at two people, isolated from everyone else who, at least, showed signs of animation. One was a tall red-haired man and the other a young, plump, severely tailored woman.

“This doesn’t look right to me,” Kiki said snappishly. “I’ve seen them shoot commercials before and they’re not supposed to be just
standing
there.”

“Look, you’re not in charge here,” Daisy reminded her.

“Yeah, but Zip Simon is. Hey, Zip! Over here!” Kiki called boldly, with all the assurance of the client’s daughter, which is second only to the assurance of the client’s wife.

A short, bald man broke away from one of the groups in business suits and came over to escort them through the ropes which were being guarded by policemen.

“Kiki, how are you, kid?” He hugged her. “Who’s your friend?”

“Daisy Valensky.”

Zip Simon sighed gloomily. “Well, gals, it looks like you’re not going to see a commercial made after all. We’ve got big, big trouble. And I still can’t believe it. North is the best damn commercial director in the business and he can’t shoot. It’s a disaster.”

“What’s the disaster? Is someone sick?” Kiki asked.

“Unfortunately not—that we could ignore. We’ve had this fucking commercial—sorry, Kiki—planned for months and now we’ve blown the location.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Kiki asked.

“It’s been fucking
renovated
—that’s what. North used a location scouting service and the bastards showed us perfect photos—Cannery Row in its prime. When we got here we found it’d been turned into a Design Research store, and there isn’t a building left in this whole lousy town that looks old anymore. Oh, shit! Sorry, Kiki. Excuse my language, Kiki’s friend.”

“Why does it have to look old?” Daisy ventured.

“Because of the story board,” he said, as if that would tell them everything they wanted to know.

“What’s a story board?” Daisy asked. He looked at her incredulously. Such ignorance was not possible. On the other hand, she was another person he could complain to.

“The story board, Kiki’s friend, is a big piece of paper
with cartoon figures drawn on it and balloons coming out of people’s mouths with words written on them. Got it? It’s like the Bible to us simple folk in advertising. And in this story board you see an old Skyhawk convertible parked in front of a restaurant on Cannery Row forty years ago, see, and then a couple in period costume come out and drive off, and then you have another funny picture and you dissolve into the new model Skyhawk, in front of the same old place, and a couple in modern clothes walk out and drive off and voice-over you hear—now get this: The United Motors Skyhawk—
still
the best car you can drive!’ ”

“I love it,” Kiki squealed.

“It’s a gem—simple but eloquent … and we’re going to shoot the same scene all over the country in historic, picturesque locations—or, at least, we were.… Now, who knows?”

“But, why can’t you un-renovate the building—build a set?” Daisy wondered.

“Because we don’t have time. Tomorrow the new car has to be on a plane headed back to the factory in Detroit for the unveiling at a stockholders’ party—a gigantic affair—don’t even ask how many people are invited. And if we don’t get this shot done today, well blow our first air date. Does it hurt to commit hara-kiri?”

“Oh, Zip, don’t be so hard on yourself—you didn’t screw up the location,” Kiki said fondly.

“I was going to do the hara-kiri on North, not me.”

“Which one is North?” Daisy asked curiously. Zip Simon pointed to the red-headed man. “That’s the son-of-a-bitch, and the gal with him is his producer, Bootsie Jacobs.”

Forty feet away from Simon, North was speaking so quietly that no one could overhear.

“Bootsie, this is as careless as expecting an ear, nose and throat man to look up your ass with a flashlight and tell you why you’ve got a sore throat.”

“That location scouting service will be out of business next week,” she said, struggling for her usual taut composure. “Palming off pictures that were two years old—
two years!
Okay, okay, North, it was my fault for not double-checking. There’s no one you can trust—I know it, it never fails—especially when you have the client and his whole mob and the agency and their shitheads all watching this little road show. Wonderful! They outnumber us two to
one, even counting all the models and hairdressers and make-up people—I told that lot not to set foot out of the Winnebago. It looks bad enough already.” Panic was seeping through her crisp tone. “If they’d only let us keep that new Skyhawk for a couple of days, we could go to EUE’s big Burbank studio and shoot down there—but that’s absolutely not possible.”