The Chameleon (54 page)

“Come on, you voyeurs. Let's change the subject. So what else is new?” Watching the two women, it dawned on Lefty that the stories about his wife were as mired in mystery as Lana's alibi.

Then he knew it in his gut. Now he understood why Sara wouldn't accept her mother's affection. Sara was guilty.

Sara showed up unexpectedly at the back door. It was almost a year to the day after Lana Turner's morose daughter had been acquitted and three tense visits later from Claire's edgy teenager. Usually Sara's appearances were preceded by three-way calls between Tom, Lefty, and the doctors at Wolford, the high-priced country club of mental institutions where behind hewn hedges the problem heirs of the very rich were sent for warm baths and electroshocks whenever their behavior crossed the line between eccentric and embarrassing. Ophelia had insisted on Wolford, although Claire despised the sanatorium, where Sara's behavior vacillated from cold detachment to aggressive boldness. After her therapy sessions began, Claire never knew which Sara was coming: the quiet, moody one, or the brat who packed a wallop.

Sara's little holidays were big letdowns for Claire. She offered egg-salad sandwiches and open arms while Sara responded with sneers and icy stares. And when Sara defied her mother with her bad behavior, Claire swallowed her pride and covered it up.

“I don't think the inmates in
The Snake Pit
had worse manners than your little darling.” Lefty seemed to be the only one who could tell the difference between Sara's real pain and her cool manipulation of all the adults around her. Like the time they had all had a family barbecue around the pool and Sara had watched in silence, arms folded across her chest, as her mother's Hermès scarf blew over the grill and caught fire. After Lefty had stamped out the flames, he turned to Sara.

“Why didn't you pull your mother's scarf out of the barbecue?”

“
She
doesn't care about material things.
She
told me.”

Tonight Sara showed up unexpectedly with a look in her eye that implied she had much more to throw on the fire. Lefty thought she resembled a teenage mutant from a sci-fi movie, her face a phantasmagoria of white against a backdrop of unruly red hair.

“I hitchhiked all the way from Wolford,” she bragged. Claire wasn't expecting her for her hard-won half of Sara's summer vacation for at least another week. With her tank top embedded with dirt and a leather jacket hanging loose from her shoulders, Sara hardly looked like the sweet sixteen-year-old the Aunties carefully shopped for.

“I just blew out of there with this suicide psycho. We went over the wall.”

“The fuzz on your tail?” Lefty had cast enough B prison movies to play along.

Sara laughed. That was a good sign. Real nutcases couldn't laugh at themselves.

“The wife having another party?” Sara sounded more like mumbly James Dean in
Rebel Without a Cause
than herself.

“You on drugs?”

“Only antidepressants and some Di-Seds to sleep. All the regular junk the doctors pump into me. Why? You got some?”

“Just my Bromo-Seltzers and phenobarbital. Ulcer's kicking up again.” He rubbed his tummy.

Straight talk from Lefty always seemed to summon up Sara's saner side. A grin curled her mouth as she peeked over his shoulder into the living room, where Lucille Ball was leading the guests in a spirited game of charades. “Hey, are deaf and dumb actors
her
newest cause?”

“We're having a fund-raiser for Eleanor House. They're playing charades for money.”

“I'm good at that. Play it all the time in the nuthouse.”

“C'mon in. Your mother will be thrilled to see you.”

“Yeah. I bet. If I walk in looking like this I'll probably embarrass her in front of her friends. But she'll pretend not to notice as usual and just give me one of those precious hugs.”

“Well, you do look kind of creepy. What's with the hair under the arms?”

Lefty wondered if he should invite some of Hollywood's equally crazy offspring to soften the effect of Sara. He hoped he had convinced Claire that what Sara needed now was a swift kick in the rump.

The minute Claire saw her daughter, she put down a platter of guacamole and ran to hug her. Her usual gesture. Sara eluded her embrace, leaving Claire alone with empty open arms. Grabbing a beer from the bar, the swaggering escapee arranged herself cross-legged on the arm of a banana leaf–covered couch and stared down her mother's guests with an “I-dare-you” look.

Lefty walked into Claire's hug. She let her arms rest on his shoulders as he whispered into her hair. “It's time for a tougher kind of love, Toots. You took the rap for the murder. Why should she get all the sympathy?”

He could feel every vertebra in her spine stiffen. “I never said—”

“Yeah, yeah, so my street-smarts intuition is pretty damned good. I didn't get where I am by my looks, you know. I think the kid wants you to put up your dukes. For Pete's sake, Claire, she's pushing you into the ring.”

Claire was speechless for a long moment. Her fingers fell from Lefty's shoulders and grasped his hands.

“But she just got here. If I push too hard, she'll vanish again.” Claire was terrified of Sara's moods. If she challenged her daughter tonight there might not be any vacation to enjoy together. She had looked forward to it for months. Only Lefty knew the toll these visits took on her. Claire smiled gratefully at her husband and put her lips to his ear. “No one's ever cared for me the way you do.” She took Lefty's face in her hands and kissed him even as she watched Sara blowing smoke rings at the guests.

Lucille Ball's charades team was silently acting out movie titles. The loser would donate five thousand dollars to Eleanor House. The leggy comedienne with hair the hybrid color of strawberries and oranges was wildly acting out one of her own comedies.
The Long, Long Trailer.
Determined not to lose, she bawled out her Latin husband when he ruined her team's chances by confusing “trailer” with “tailor.”

“But on da piece of paper I didn't see da
rrrr
!” He spoke with the same mambo beat that accompanied the bandleader's singing. “I am da man here. Only a bimbo shouts at her husband!”

The former showgirl and current head of Desilu Productions, one of the most powerful women in Hollywood, belted her husband with a Swedish meatball. “Yeah, and I got confused because I'm the breadwinner in this family. Why don't you go home and beat your bongos!”

Desi's retort eluded the crowd, as it was fired off in rapid Spanish. Lefty's team was next.

Just as he reached his hand into the hat to read the name of the movie a member of his team would act out, Sara stood. She raised one arm high over her head, like in school, asking for permission to join his team and exposing a tuft of red hair almost the color of Lucy's under her arm. Lefty explained to a horrified Lana Turner, to whom body hair was more repellent than murder, that all the rich people in New York were going beatnik this season. But he was visibly unnerved as he read the title of the Alfred Hitchcock film they were pantomiming before Sara snatched it out of his hands.

She went for the second word first, drawing a rectangle in the air with her dirty fingers and pretending to peer out.

“Close up!”

“Mirror!” The actors tried to guess.

Sara now unlocked the invisible square and lifted it.

“
The Postman Always Rings Twice!
” Lana's only frame of reference was her own movies.

“Window!” Someone cried out, and Sara signaled with a gnawed finger that the guess was correct.

Now she was going for the first word. By the time Lefty gauged what she was doing, it was too late. The meatball he was holding was too small to cover her scrawny derriere as she turned her behind to the room and dropped her jeans, exposing her naked rear.

“Rearrr Window!”
Desi cried out winning for his side. And in the startled living room, with Sara's jeans bunched around her ankles, Lucy and Desi jumped up and down and hugged. “I love you, you adorable Latin lover!” She pinched his cheeks. “No buts about it!” she cracked. And she pursed her overblown red lips and kissed him madly as Lorenza hurriedly pulled Sara's jeans up to cover her nakedness and dragged her out to the kitchen.

A very controlled Claire simply put her hands together as if to applaud the winning stunt, but couldn't quite make a sound.

“Hey Claire. Your kid's got a great sense of timing. And a great tuchis!” Lucy bellowed.

It hadn't escaped Claire's notice that Lucy had drawn the line when Desi had fired off an insult. She'd set off a fiery, name-calling blowout, but five minutes later they were in one another's arms. Claire had tried to give her troubled daughter what she wanted—her favorite foods, the permission to hate her if that was what she needed, the leeway to keep jackknifing into the swimming pool, purposely keeping them all on edge—when maybe what Sara really wanted was to be rudely awakened from her own nightmare. Maybe Lefty was right.

Claire's hands finally made a loud, sharp sound as she slapped them together, almost as if they had made a decision without her. Jaw set, she marched after Sara into the kitchen.

It wasn't with gentle understanding that she swung Sara around by her bony shoulders.

“How dare you walk in my home and plant your poison!” Her broad shoulders brushed against the kitchen's miniature ferns, setting them swinging.

“Oh, playing out our anger at last, are we? Oh, goody. We do this all the time at Wolford. It's a great game. You'll love it. At Wolford, if you're good enough at anger, the doctors let you sit down and be the fourth at their game of bridge.”

“I've fought so hard not to let the Charlotte Hall crowd put you in straitjackets and on drugs. But maybe that's what you want. Then you don't have to think about the past.”

“That's all I think about. Six is dead, and you're not.” The pallor that had dulled Sara's features was replaced by a vivid shade of red. It was almost as if someone had defibrillated her dead heart.

“I can see you're very good at anger therapy.”

“And you’ re a very good actress. You've got to be the best Lady Macbeth in La-La Land.”

Claire thrust her hands within an inch of Sara's face. “I wish these hands
had
murdered Duccio. I'm guilty, too. Of wanting to kill him. It could have been me. I was only seconds away from doing the deed. And then you would have been the one to make the decision. Would you have protected me?”

The blood pulsing through Sara's face swelled the veins at her temple. This game wasn't as much fun as bridge or anger therapy. “But
I
was the one who killed him.”

“And I was proud you did.”

“Then why didn't you let me have the credit? You took the only courageous thing I ever did away from me.” There was ice in her voice. “You get to be a celebrity murderess”—she laughed bitterly—“and I just get to be crazy.”

For a moment Claire lost her balance. The scene in the guest house between Lana and herself whirled through her head. Would Sara be better off now if Claire had let her be hauled away in handcuffs and tried for murder? Seconds. She had had only seconds to make the decision. Maybe Ophelia wouldn't have even wanted Sara if she knew she was a killer. Then her daughter would have been freed from one of her prisons.

“I thought I was saving you.”

“Some life raft.”

“Well, you're still here.”

“Sort of.”

The tears welling up in Claire's eyes were almost on the surface of her irises, but she strengthened her resolve and pushed them back. Along with her compassion. She knew she had to tough this out. Be as bad as Ophelia had said she was. Maybe if Sara disliked her enough, her daughter could shut this swinging door that led back to Rome and open a new door to her future. Claire was jeopardizing everything she had with Sara in order to set her free. Did she love her enough to let her go?

“I'm sending you away.”

“Where? Back to Wuthering Heights? Or Sing-Sing?” Beneath her sneer Sara's body was trembling.

“Away from all of us.” Claire's voice was dead calm. “Someplace where you have to start over. Like I did in that Roman jail cell. Like Grandma Violet did as a shop girl when her husband left her penniless and pregnant with me. She composed a life for herself and she did it with grace and dignity, not thrashing around like a vulgar brat like you. I've tried to compose a life that includes you, but I can't force you to participate. There are other people who have suffered, too, Sara. If you're not a murderess, and not crazy, who are you, Sara?” Claire's tongue almost swallowed her words. “Maybe it's time you seek yourself out. All you're doing right now is bumping around like a car in an amusement park, trying to collide with the rest of us. Get on the road that's going to take you someplace. Replace the people who have disappointed you with people who won't.” Claire hoped she wasn't slamming the door on herself. “Go as who you are to this place and don't take the baggage of the rest of us with you.”

“I don't like walking through doors if I don't know what's behind them.”

“Leave it ajar in case you want to come back.”

“And I wouldn't have to see any of you?”

“You don't even have to use your real last name if you don't want to. Just think of it as your summer vacation away from all of us.” She paused. She was sending Sara away, and maybe she wouldn't return. “I'm sending you to work at Eleanor House.”

“No word from Sara?”

“Sorry, Toots. But here's something from Val-Kill.”

Claire took the long envelope from Lefty's hand. The tidy cursive was definitely Eleanor's. Claire had to smile at the stamp, a purple rendering of Franklin's head in profile.

In her letter, Eleanor complained that there had been too much “misguided historical fiction” about her achievements as well as her personal life and embraced the opportunity to work with an old friend she could trust to set the record straight for posterity. And what Claire thought might have worked against her—her glaring past notoriety—Eleanor saw as an empathetic experience that enabled Claire to understand how misconceptions and character slander could chip away at important accomplishments, particularly controversial social reform like hers. Claire didn't have to be told how Eleanor had been maligned when in fact her enemies were really undermining her civil rights efforts and battles for women's equality.