Trouble With the Truth (9781476793498) (8 page)

“Who could tell?” said Felicity, smiling back at him. She seemed to know and appreciate instantly the image of himself he was offering for her approval. “Even the champeens don't fool around that far out in the ocean.”

“Sorry if I frightened you.” Ben didn't look sorry about anything in this world. I was glad for him that it all came out in one register. “I'm Ben Briard,” he continued. “She's Lucresse—my sister.”

“She told me.”

“I know who you are. Felicity Gorham.”

“Mrs. Mead Peddicord,” she corrected.

“I've seen you in the movies.”

“Yes.” She was suddenly bored.

I didn't remember seeing her in any movie. And if Ben had, without me, he hadn't mentioned it before this. It was the name Peddicord, coupled with the blinding gem on her finger, that held my interest now.

“Our father sure would like to meet you,” I said.

“Oh my God.”

From that, and Ben's tormented face, I knew I'd said the wrong thing. But I couldn't fathom what the right thing might be, to a woman who had that color hair and was famous and wore a ring that was
the reason I was trying to remember my homeroom teacher's name.

“Don't tell me your father's president of the Everglades Fan Club?” she said good-humoredly, as though she was afraid she had hurt my feelings.

“No. He doesn't like movies very much.” I hoped that would lend him, and me, an aura of sophistication.

“Miss Gorham,” Ben began again.

“Mrs. Peddicord,” she corrected again. “Mrs. Mead Peddicord, Jr.”

“Mrs. Peddicord didn't come to Palm Beach to
meet
people,” Ben said to me.

On top of his rebuff, she smiled at me and said, “Thanks, anyway.” She didn't want my feelings to be hurt again.

“Can you sit down?” Ben asked. It was a logical question, considering the fit of her wavy-haired bathing suit.

“No. Not here. This suit might decide to curl up and die if it got wet. I only put it on to take a walk down the beach in. I always dress for the occasion.”

Ben laughed immoderately. “Go get one of Fred's sheets, Lucresse.”

I ran to Fred. “That's Mrs. Peddicord,” I told him breathlessly. “The one Daddy has to see.”

He peeked out at her with interest. “My word,” he said and gave me the sheet wrapped over his legs.

When I came back with it, Ben was saying “…any
one
role, one great role…is there
one
you want to play?”

“Uh
-uh,” she said as I spread the sheet and we all sat down on it. “I don't want to play anything. I'm through with pictures.”

“Oh, you're going to do a play!” Ben gifted her with his own preference.

“I've
never been on the
stage
,” she said with surprising vigor.

“You mean you're retiring at your age?”

I thought she was between thirty and thirty-five, which I didn't consider young. Actually, she was thirty-eight.

“I've
been
retired—since the stinkeroo before the last. And that's just dandy with me. No more skin off
my
nose.” She laughed and Ben did too, though I could tell he didn't see what was funny any more than I did.

“I don't think I'll ever retire,” he said. “I'm going to be an actor, you know.”

“Now, I know.”

“When I'm too old for leads, I'll play character roles. Some of the greatest roles are character roles.”

“Is that right?” she said, smiling an easy warm smile that had a touch of pity in it. It was the first of countless times that I imagined that Ben was younger than I. He didn't understand her smile, and she knew he didn't.

“Our father isn't retired, and he's sixty-eight,” I said, thinking out loud. “But then, he didn't start working until he was forty-five.”

“Honest?” she said. Her big eyes had the same round naïveté as some of my earlier confidantes' at my tall tales.

“Our mother's dead,” I volunteered.

Any other time I'd told that to a grown-up, I'd felt that I should sound sad about it. But strangely, this woman gave me the feeling that you could tell her anything, just the way it was. “But she didn't die from
work
,” I continued. “It was from something wrong with her uterus, after she had me.”

“Lucresse, for God's sake,” Ben reprimanded.

I ignored him. He had tried with every word to hold her interest, and now, for reasons I didn't know, I had it all. She looked fascinated.

She said, “And you don't feel
guilty
about it? You don't feel
wrong
all the time?”

“No…just most of the time. But not about
that
. She would've died if she had somebody else instead of
me
, or Ben and me.”

“Lucresse!” Ben warned.

“Lucresse, you are wonderful, absolutely wonderful,” Felicity said.

I loved her.

“You must have a wonderful father.”

“Well…he's pretty old.”

“Lucresse, gol-ly!” Ben pleaded.

“Tell me, why does he want to meet me? The truth.”

Ben and I became dumb. We didn't want to put this striking new acquaintance on a commercial basis. Finally, Ben spoke. “It's sort of a business deal.”

“He wants to get
you
started in pictures?”

“Oh, no,” Ben said.

“What does your father do?”

I recalled one of the titles he'd once used. “He's a merchant.”

“Then he wants to sell me something.”

“Oh, no,” Ben said.

“So what's the big mystery? You're sure it's me he wants to meet?”

“Yes,” I said. “Why don't you come home with us and find out all about it?” I wanted to be around when she and he got together. “Come for dinner.”

She laughed a throaty laugh. “Thanks for the invite, but I couldn't possibly.”

It occurred to me that if she was “Mrs.” Peddicord, there must be a “Mr.” She might even have children, back at the mansion.

“Your husband could come too,” I urged.

She coughed. “No, Lucresse. He's not here. I'm here for both of us.” She stood up. “Tell your father he has a very nice daughter and son, and that I don't want to buy anything. Good-bye.”

She was already walking, fast, as Ben and I got to our feet. At fifteen yards, she turned and waved and we waved back.

Ben acted as though her loss was my fault. “You say the damnedest things to people. What makes you think a woman like Felicity Gorham is interested in how old Dad is, and Jen's uterus?”

I folded up Fred's sheet. “She wasn't interested in character acting.”

“You just don't know the first thing about people, Lucresse. You act like you're twelve.”

We walked together, slowly, to Fred, hating each other.

At home, the feeling grew stronger as we interrupted each other telling my father whom we'd met at the beach. From what Ben reported, he and Mrs. Peddicord could have had a rewarding discussion about the theater, if I hadn't been in the way, barging into their intelligent conversation with unbelievably inane comments. Moreover, he was particularly sorry about my misbehavior because it would make my father's future meeting with her embarrassing, if not impossible. He finished the tirade, “She ended up inviting her to dinner. Of all the gall! Of course Mrs. Peddicord walked away.”

“She said I was wonderful.”

“She was
acting
, you fool,” Ben said.

“I didn't see anything wrong with inviting her to dinner.”

“Oh, no, except that was when she ran away.”

“But nothing unpleasant happened,” my father mused. “And you told her I didn't want to sell her anything…I'm going to call her.”

“She already said no,” Ben protested.

“I know,” my father said.

As he rattled through some papers on his desk looking for the note he had made of her address, I, too, wished he wouldn't call. If Ben was right, I didn't want to see him be cut off, because of me.

In my fourteen-year career of eavesdropping, I hadn't heard anything more interesting to me than his part of that telephone conversation. He started, rather formally, introducing himself and mentioning that she had met Ben and me. There was a short silence, and when he spoke again, his voice was changed. “This
is
Mrs. Peddicord?” he said very seriously. Then his pleasant humor returned. “It was at the beach, not more than an hour ago… You don't have to be sure—I'm
sure. Yes, I've often thought they were exceptionally nice people…I wouldn't think of discussing it over the telephone… No, it's extremely important business—to me, not to you. No…no…you're not even warm. No…you may call me Walter. No…this is foolish, Felicity. We must satisfy your curiosity at once. What is it you're drinking?… We have some of that here…I understand that Lucresse invited you to dinner. I'll send Fred for you immediately…” He laughed. “Well, you're going to tonight, Felicity. Now listen carefully. Wash your face and comb your hair and don't drink any more until you get here. Fred will pick you up in twenty minutes. Good-bye, Felicity.”

I had tried on four dresses to choose one I believed made me look less skinny, before Fred brought her back. She wore a chiffon gown whose bodice caressed her breasts and whose skirt swirled in a hundred soft folds. It and her silken shoes with sharp heels were the same orange color as her hair. I was impressed that she walked more gracefully on her orange stilts than she had barefoot on the beach, and her eyelashes seemed to have become longer and thicker since we'd met. The ring was still on her fourth finger.

She came in saying, “Hello, Walter Briard. Lucresse. Ben. I should write a book on how to get stoned and sober in twenty minutes. Or, almost sober.”

“Then it won't do to continue drinking standing up,” my father said, escorting her to the sofa, past the long wall covered with paintings and tapestry and the bookcases and secretary and small, marble- topped tables, all loaded beyond capacity with unrelated objects of my father's collection.

“Where I come from, people put everything away when company's coming,” Felicity said. “Looks like you get everything
out
.”

She dropped onto the sofa, kicked off her shoes, and tucked her feet under her chiffoned buttocks.

“Where is it that you come from?” my father said, bringing her a drink.

“I'll be damned! First question out of the bag! I could say a lot of places.”

“So could I.”

Felicity took a full half-inch of her drink in one swallow. “I could say Hollywood. But nobody comes from there. They go there.”

“The way they go to hotels.”

“The Peddicords come from Short Hills, New Jersey, you know. And I'm Mrs. Mead Peddicord, Jr., yet.”

“I know.”

She sipped at her glass. “I won't be for long. I'm sitting out the divorce now. The decree comes on November thirtieth. That's a Thursday.”

“Oh? I didn't know that,” he said.

“So.” She took another large swallow. “Where do I come from? You don't know the kick it gives me to tell you. For twenty years you could of killed me before I'd tell.” She drained her glass. “I am Frances—only it was ‘Fanny'—Goldstein, from the Bronx, New York, One Hundred Sixty-fourth Street. I made it Felicity when I was six, and Felicity Gorham when I was fifteen. I didn't make Peddicord till twenty-seven. That was harder. The move from One Hundred Sixty-fourth Street to Short Hills takes a hell of a lot of work.”

My father signaled Ben to refill her glass. “It usually takes two generations, roughly fifty years.”

“You can do it by yourself in ten, if you learn how to tell a lot of crumbs how great they are and don't mind having part of your nose cut off.”

“If you think that's what you have to do.”

“If you think so, so it is,” Felicity said. “Now I know why I let you talk me into coming here. I
wanted
to say this out loud to somebody. You see, now I don't give a damn about it and there's nobody to tell. It gets awfully frustrating in that big barn I've got, with nobody to tell. I got to be Mrs. Junior—with this to prove it—” She lifted her hand, wrist up, fingers
U
-ed, to display her ring. “—and all these
insights after four years and two months with a psychiatrist and now nobody to let it all out on.”

Ben was gazing at her, his opinion confirmed that she was from a different and infinitely superior world. I felt a little troubled, but no less adoring.

“I'm very glad you came,” my father said, “for any reason.”

“Of course I pretended it was that I wanted to know what you wanted. I guess that's why it took me four years and two months on the couch; I can make myself believe anything, for a while. Incidentally, why
did
you want to see me?”

“I warned you. For commercial purposes. I'm a salesman.”

That was a new variation of the “merchant,” “businessman,” and “antique dealer” that had appeared on my admission cards.

“A salesman of what?” she said.

“Of things. Things you see around here.” He gestured to the house in general.

She looked over the room and her eyes stopped on an iron and bronze bell about three inches high that was relegated to silence on top of the secretary. It was a cowbell from Greece that had survived the wagging of Athenian cows for centuries and Fred's wagging in more recent years to call Ben and me in to dinner. It was heavy black and burnt metal, indestructible looking.

“That's kind of interesting,” she said. “Bet it makes a hell of a noise.”

“It does. But it's not for sale. Nothing here is for sale, to you.”