Scruples Two (3 page)

Vito and Billy were wearily saying good-bye to their last guests when one of the gatemen called the house to say that another person had arrived, asking for Mr. Orsini.

“Tell whoever it is I’m sorry but it’s too late, Joe, the party’s over,” Vito said.
“What?
What? You’re sure? No, it’s all right, let the taxi through.”

“Totally impossible,” Billy muttered, “even the catering crew on the picture was here tonight. Vito, make an excuse, don’t dare let anyone in this house. If I can find the strength to climb the stairs I’m going to bed, I’m beat.”

“Go on, darling, I’ll handle it.”

Ten minutes later, when Billy had stripped off her clothes, put on a robe, and was starting to take off her makeup, Vito entered her dressing room and closed the door behind him.

“Who on earth was it?” Billy asked, drooping with exhaustion in front of the mirror.

“It’s.… a long story.”

There was a note of utter disbelief and shock in Vito’s voice that told her this had nothing to do with a guest who was too late for the wrap party.

She spun around and looked at him searchingly. “It’s bad news, isn’t it?”

“Don’t look so frightened, Billy. This isn’t about us, this isn’t about you.”

“Then it’s about you! Vito,
what’s wrong
?”

“Oh, Jesus,” he said, dropping onto a chair and looking past her, his eyes seeming to focus on the wall. “There are so many things I’ve never told you.… it’s unforgivable. From the second we got married I’ve been so fucking preoccupied with the picture, not a minute to spare, I kept promising myself that as soon as all this craziness was over I’d tell you the whole story, the minute we had some peaceful time together.… I should have told you the day we met, but it was the last thing on my mind, it didn’t seem to matter then because I didn’t know we were going to get married … the only thing that I could think of was the present, the past was the past, and then everything happened between us so quickly.…”

“Vito, if you don’t get to the point—”

“My daughter’s here.”

“You can’t have a daughter,” Billy said flatly.

“I can. I do. I was married before. It didn’t last a year. We were divorced and she’s lived with her mother ever since.”

The shock of his words kept Billy’s voice almost even. She struggled so hard to keep from shouting that she almost whispered.

“A
child
? I wouldn’t care if you’d had ten other wives, but a child, Vito? In the year that we’ve been married, are you trying to make me believe that there was never,
ever
a single minute when you could have told me this, for Christ’s sake? My God, so what if you’ve been divorced, but a child! We’ve had hours and hours, you could have told me during any one of hundreds of meals, before we went to bed, when we got up in the morning.… Don’t tell me there was never any peaceful time!”

“I was always going to tell you, it just didn’t happen,” he mumbled.

“Vito, give me some credit for intelligence. You let it go too long and then you didn’t want to rock the boat. You should have told me before we got married, it wouldn’t have made any difference, but
now
, springing it on me now? I just can’t believe this is happening. What’s her name?”

“Gigi.”

“Why did she come here tonight?” Billy asked, fighting the desire to scream. She had to remain calm because Vito looked as if he was going to faint. “Because of the Oscar?”

“Her mother.… her mother died.… she was buried.… yesterday. In New York. Gigi sent me a telegram. It must be with all the others. When she didn’t hear anything from me, she got on a plane and just.… came.”

“Where is she now?”

“In the kitchen. I gave her a glass of milk and some cake and told her to wait until I’d talked to you.”

“How old is she?”

“Sixteen.”

“Sixteen!”
Billy screeched. “Sixteen! My God, Vito, that’s not a child, that’s a teenager! Practically a woman. Don’t you know anything about sixteen-year-olds? Vito, get me a brandy, a large brandy. Never mind, just bring the bottle.” Billy scrubbed off the cream that was still on her face and hurried toward the door.

“Billy …”

“What?”

“Shouldn’t we talk more before you meet Gigi?”

“About what, Vito?” Billy asked incredulously. “She wouldn’t be here if she had another place to go, would she? She hasn’t seen you in at least a year because I’d know if she had, so if she flew all the way across the country without even hearing a word from you, you’ve got to be her only refuge, wouldn’t you say?”

“Oh, Christ! Billy, you’re not giving me any credit for anything. This is an old story, it was over fifteen years ago, and you’re being as judgmental as if it had just happened.”

“I’m being realistic,” Billy said. “It
has
just happened—to me.” Billy turned and quickly made her way down to the big kitchen. She hesitated only a second before pushing open the double doors, hearing Vito still on the staircase.

A small figure was sitting very still on a high stool behind the big butcher-block table. In front of her were an empty glass and an empty plate. On the kitchen floor was a small, battered suitcase. When Billy walked in, Gigi looked up and slid off the stool, standing wordlessly, without moving. Billy’s first thought was that Vito must be wrong, she didn’t look old enough to be a teenager. And she didn’t look like Vito. What was visible of her face through a mess of plain brown hair was delicate, oddball, somehow immediately and indefinably elfin. In the several baggy, rather ragged sweaters she wore layered indiscriminately over her jeans, she seemed to be a waif, a scrap, a sprite, blown into this grand, bright kitchen by a teasing gust of wind.

Gigi remained still and speechless for a long minute, enduring Billy’s inspection. In her straightforward stance, poised squarely on her cowboy boots, standing as straight and tall as she could, there was nothing of apology or of defiance, yet somehow, tiny and nondescript as she was, she had presence, immediate, undeniable presence. She was tired and very sad but not pathetic, she was alone but not needy. Something about her was deeply interesting. Gigi’s eyes met Billy’s, Gigi smiled—and a piece of Billy’s heart she didn’t know she possessed fell in love.

The main thing, Billy told herself frantically, as soon as the necessary, conventional words of greeting and comfort had been said, was to postpone absolutely everything, every explanation, every plan, every bit of discussion, until tomorrow. None of them was in a condition to think clearly. Vito, steadily nipping brandy, was silent and visibly utterly confused in a way she had never imagined he could ever be; she herself was in the grip of a combination of so many conflicting emotions that they merged into pure bewilderment, which her own large brandy did nothing to minimize, and Gigi, who had just downed the first brandy of her life, was clearly knocked out from fatigue and grief.

“We’ve all got to get a night’s sleep,” Billy announced, sweeping them out of the kitchen. “Gigi, do you want to take a bath before you go to bed, or are you too tired?”

“A bath, please.” Her voice was so young, Billy thought. No regional accent that she could detect, a clear, pure and innocent sound with just the hint of a promise of a lilt, a musical note, in spite of her weariness.

“Vito, take the suitcase,” Billy said, and putting her arm around the girl’s almost childlike waist, she led the way to one of the many guest rooms, which were always kept in immaculate readiness.

“I’ll show Gigi where everything is. Vito, say good night to your daughter and get out of here,” Billy said as Vito stood staring blankly and unhelpfully at the suitcase he’d carried upstairs. Billy ran a bath while Gigi unpacked her few things, and as the girl soaked, Billy turned back the bed, opened the windows just enough and closed the curtains. Finally she lay back in a deep chair and had another brandy since she couldn’t think of anything else to do that was useful, appropriate or sensible, and she couldn’t let Gigi put herself to bed all alone.

Billy closed her eyes and drifted, her mind refusing to deal with the problems the girl’s arrival created. What she really needed, she thought, was one of those French fatigue cures where they keep you fast asleep, except for meals, for three weeks, and you wake up looking twenty years younger, only they seemed to have closed those clinics. Perhaps they’d found out that three weeks of a steady diet of barbiturates wasn’t good for people? Or maybe she should go to one of those frightful, cruel spas where they made you run five miles up a mountain before a juice breakfast and gave you only chopsticks to eat with so that each tiny meal of chopped vegetables would seem to last longer? In any case she needed to do something to rouse her from the spin her mind was in. She swallowed another brandy.

“Billy?”

She half opened her eyes and saw a diminutive, forlorn figure enveloped in white, who looked exactly like Casper the Friendly Ghost.

“You’re singing,” Gigi said.

“I am?” Billy was amazed. “I must be drunk.”

“ ‘Look for the Silver Lining.’ My … my mom used to sing that song.”

“Betcha all women do.… betcha a couple guys wrote it to string them along.”

“Yeah, Jerome Kern and some other guy.”

“How come?”

“How come what?”

“How come you know that?”

“My mother was a gypsy.”

Billy’s eyes popped open.

“Do you.… well, don’t you.… what I mean is, wouldn’t you have a … 
tribe
.… or something?”

“I wish. No, not that kind of gypsy. She was a dancer. She was touring with a revival of
Annie Get Your Gun …
she’d been dancing with pneumonia, she didn’t let anybody know, she didn’t see a doctor … she wouldn’t pay attention to it because she couldn’t afford to lose the gig, so by the time she couldn’t hide it anymore it was too late for antibiotics … gypsies … they’ll do dumb things like that every time.” Gigi tried to speak matter-of-factly, but all her words poured out in a shaking rush.

“Oh, Gigi,” Billy cried, holding out her arms and drawing the bundle of towels down onto her knees. “I’m so terribly sorry. I can’t even think of how to tell you how sorry I am. If only I’d known! I had no idea, not the slightest, not a word! And I would have helped if I’d known, you know I would.”

Gigi sat stiffly upright. Her voice quavered from her attempt to sound in control. “Mom always said she was sure you didn’t know about us. She was too independent … she never counted on Dad, never tried to keep in touch. It had been—a while—since we’d heard anything from him. A long while. But it’s always been that way.”

“How—how old was she?”

“Thirty-five.”

My age, Billy thought, just my age. She felt a bolt of pure rage shoot through her. Vito’s career had been up and down, at times he’d been what passed for broke in producer circles, but nothing, not one single reason on earth, could excuse neglecting his child.

“Gigi, I promise you, it’s never going to be that way again,” Billy vowed, smoothing the girl’s hair. Gigi allowed herself to be caressed, but she remained awkwardly perched on Billy’s knees, obviously willing herself not to give in to emotion. With Gigi’s wet hair covered by a towel, Billy could see the details of the girl’s face. She had a straight, small nose that just missed turning up at the tip; small ears that just missed coming to a point; light brown eyebrows that formed a decided point over beautifully formed eyelids and large eyes of an indeterminate color in this dim light. Her mouth was small, her lower lip fuller than the upper. Her upper lip curled upward at the corners so that even when she was as grave as she was now, she wore the slightest tantalizing promise of a smile. Her forehead and chin were nicely rounded and her jawline oval, so that her entire head seemed cunningly and carefully made. She could be pretty, Billy thought, she just doesn’t know it, or doesn’t care. Without her messy hair hiding her face, Gigi reminded Billy of illustrations of flappers from the 1920s, with their sleek, pert, impish look.

“Is that your real name, just Gigi?” Billy asked, searching for a neutral topic, respecting her desire to be grown up.

“It’s what everybody calls me. I never tell my real name.”

“My real name is Wilhelmina, so there’s no chance that yours can be worse than that,” Billy probed, curious.

“Oh yeah? How about Graziella Giovanna?”

“Graziella Giovanna.” Billy said the words slowly. “But that sounds so beautiful; it’s melodious, like an Italian princess from the Renaissance.”

“Maybe to you, but not in grade school, not in high school, not anywhere in this century. Those were Dad’s grandmothers’ names. Mom insisted on them, I don’t know why. Her own grandmothers were called Moira and Maud. Moira Maud … ‘Come back to me my darlin’ in the evenin’ in the gloamin’ ’ … it sounds like an Irish love song—I’d rather be called Gigi, no matter what.”

“Graziella … Graziella … I wonder what I’m going to name my own baby?” Billy asked dreamily. “I only have six or seven months to decide.”

Gigi jumped to the floor. “You’re going to have a baby!” she exclaimed.

“Oh my God, I’ve told you! I wasn’t going to tell anybody until I told Vito. I just found out yesterday. But, Gigi, what’s wrong, why are you crying?”

Billy staggered, getting up from the chair, and with determination grabbed Gigi and fell back down again, cuddling her tightly. It was good for her to cry, to cry her heart out. Many minutes passed as Gigi wept in Billy’s arms. Finally she stopped and let Billy pat her wet face dry.

“I never cry,” Gigi muttered at last, sniffing fiercely, “except for good news. I’ve always hated being an only child.”

By the time Billy had tucked Gigi in and returned to her bedroom, Vito was sprawled all over the bed, plunged into a heavy sleep. Billy stared at him, her elbows akimbo, her rage returning and mounting. Suddenly he was a total stranger. This man who had not told her, in almost a year of marriage, that he had a daughter? It was not an omission that could be explained away. She didn’t know him, she had never really known him. He hadn’t seen or mentioned Gigi in a year.
Must that not mean he wouldn’t want their child?