Unfinished Symphony (11 page)

"I'll just call a cab."
"Philip," Dorothy said.
"I'm afraid I have to be firm on this," he told me.
"I understand. You've both been very kind and I'm grateful for your hospitality."
"It's not the first time my sister-in-law has put me into a difficult situation," Philip remarked.
"Why don't you wait until morning, Melody? Maybe then things--"
"Regardless of whether it's day or night, I don't want our car involved," Philip repeated, raising his voice. Dorothy sat back as if she had been slapped.
"I'll just go catch a cab," I said rising.
"You don't catch a cab in Los Angeles. You call for one to pick you up," Philip said. "I'll see that Alec does that for you."
He marched out of the dining room.
"Please be careful, dear," Dorothy said.
"I will." My heart racing ahead of me, I hurried upstairs to get my purse. Actually, I was happy Spike wasn't going to be driving me anyway. I wasn't sure I could look him in the face after what had happened in his apartment.
The cab was just pulling in when I stepped out of the house. I hurried to it and gave the driver the address. I was off for what I had decided would be my final attempt to approach Mommy. If I failed, in the morning I would go back East.
The Egyptian Gardens looked different in the evening, even seedier, if that was possible. Some of the lights in the lanterns along the walkway didn't work and some of the lights on the buildings were dead as well. The shadows draped longer, deeper, darker. The gate squeaked when I opened it and entered. Ahead of me at the pool, two young men were talking and drinking something from tall glasses. They turned my way as I continued past them. Just as I reached the far corner and started toward Mommy's building, I saw a man step out of the doorway and pause to light a cigarette. The flame of his match danced on his face and hair for a moment and I gasped and retreated into the shadows. It was Archie Marlin. I'd recognize him anywhere.
He still had short orange-red hair and skin the shade of milkweed, with freckles on his chin and forehead. Everyone back in Sewell always said he looked ten years younger than he really was, although no one knew his exact age. No one knew very much about Archie Marlin. He never gave anyone a straight answer to questions about himself. He always joked or shrugged and said something silly. But he had filled Mommy with enough promises to sweep her off her feet and have her go off with him.
I held my breath as he walked past me, a slick, small smile on his orange lips. He strolled down the walkway and went around the corner. I let out my breath, my heart pounding. I didn't want to face him just yet, if ever; but seeing him was the last and final assurance that the woman upstairs in that building was beyond a doubt my mother.
My legs felt as thin and weak as a scarecrow's legs of straw as I entered the building and went to the elevator. When the doors opened, I stepped in quickly and pressed Mommy's floor. My heart seemed to have risen into the base of my throat. How horrible, I thought, how horrible that I should have all this trepidation about seeing my own mother. In moments I was standing in front of her doorway, hesitating, my fingers lingering over the buzzer. Finally, I stabbed at it and waited.
The door was thrust open and Mommy was standing there in a bathrobe, her hair unbrushed, no makeup on, her eyes glassy. She wobbled and spoke before she saw who it was.
"What did you forget now, Richard?" she asked and then focused on me. Her expression froze, first with a glimmer of delight and then quickly with a look of annoyance. "You again?" she said.
"Mommy . . ."
She stared,_then she leaned out farther to look up and down the hallway.
"I see I won't get rid of you so easily. Get in here," she ordered as she dragged me into the apartment.
Mommy closed the door quickly behind me, gazed at me sourly and then walked into the living room. She kept her back to me.
"Why are you pretending not to know me, Mommy?" I asked and wiped one of my tears away quickly.
"Because I don't know you," she said. "I don't know anyone from that life. I can't, I just can't," she said, slamming her fists against her thighs and spinning on me. "Why did you come here? How did you find me?"
"Alice saw your picture in a catalogue and sent it to me. I brought it to Kenneth and he studied it and said he felt sure it was you. Then he called a friend in Boston who helped track you down for me."
"Kenneth?" She relaxed her lips into a tiny smile, and then realizing what she had done, drove the angry, hard look back into her eyes. "I don't know anyone named Kenneth, except Ken Peters at ICM. You've got to go back," she said. "Tell them . . . tell them I'm not who you thought I was and--"
"But why, Mommy?"
"It's better for everyone all around," she said. She folded her arms under her breasts and stiffened her shoulders like one of Kenneth's statues, firming up her resolve, strengthening her resistance. I just started to cry more openly. "Stop it," she said. "Don't you see? You'll mess everything up, ruin my chances just when I was starting to get someplace. I might have a good part in a movie and another, better modeling job. I'm meeting important people. Just when it's finally happening, you pop out of nowhere and nearly sink my boat."
"I don't understand, Mommy." I took a deep breath. "How did you do this? You had everyone back home believing you died. There was a body. You're buried in the family plot back in Provincetown."
She laughed, went to an imitation ivory cigarette box on the yellowish brown coffee table and took out a cigarette.
"You mean Olivia Logan permitted the poor corpse to be deposited in her precious family ground even though she believed it was me?" She laughed again, found a match and lit her cigarette. Then she fell back into the worn, cotton print easy chair and stared at me as she puffed away. "You look good," she said. "You filled out nicely. Jacob didn't throw you out on the street, I guess."
"He's very sick, Mommy. He had a heart attack and nearly died. Now he's back in the hospital."
"Doesn't surprise me. He's too much like his mother to enjoy life or let anyone else enjoy it. Probably finally soured his own heart." She took a deep breath, shook her head and gazed through the sliding glass doors of the balcony. "I can't have a daughter your age," she said. "I wouldn't get a decent job in this town."
"Why not?"
"It's just the way it is. Young people get everything here, especially women. Look, you don't belong with me, honey. I'm not a good mother. I never was and I never will be. It's just not in my nature."
"Why not?" I asked.
"Because . . . because I'm too self-centered. Chester was right about that. Don't you remember? It was always Chester who did the important things for you, not me. And you spent most of your childhood next door with Arlene and George."
"Papa George died, Mommy," I said sadly.
"Did he?" She nodded. "He was pretty sick when I left. I didn't think it would be too much longer. You see," she said, snapping her head up and firing a look of fear my way, "you see how short life is, how quickly your chance to do something fades? I won't get a second chance out here, Melody. This is it for me. That's why I did what Archie suggested when the accident happened."
"I don't understand, Mommy. What happened?"
"Archie was really in an accident," she said, waving her cigarette. "He was returning from a party at a bar where there
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was supposed to be a gathering of producers and agents. He had one of his younger clients with him. The girl was really very young, but had everyone fooled, except Archie of course. Anyway, he had me lend her my identification for the night. On the way back, Richard, as you know he's called now, lost control of the car and as soon as it crashed, it caught fire. He was thrown, but the girl was trapped and killed.
"When the police found the body and my identification, Archie and I discussed it and decided it would be better if I took advantage of it to cut myself off from family. So I took on a new identity. I'm Gina Simon, Gina Simon, do you hear? Everyone here thinks I'm years younger than I am!" she added in defense. "I can't get anywhere unless I'm this young, so I did it. Don't look at me like that," she fired. "I knew you were doing well and you were with family. It wasn't as if I left you stranded somewhere."
"Family," I said, my face twisting with rage. "You left me with a family that you knew disliked you."
"Yes, but you're not me," Mammy said. "I figured that in time they would see that and not punish you for being my daughter. And they're all well off, even Jacob."
"Not anymore. His business is struggling and it's hard work and now that he's very sick--"
"You can't live with me. Why did you come here? How can I take you in? Go back and wait until I get established and make a lot of money and then I'll send for you," she promised. "You've got to go before anyone realizes who you are. Where are you staying?" she asked quickly, realizing there might be people who already knew.
"I'm staying with Holly Brooks's sister, Dorothy Livingston, but not after tonight," I said.
"Holly Brooks? I know that name."
"She's a friend of Kenneth's."
"Oh. Oh yeah. Is she living with him?"
"No, she lives in New York City. She's been very nice. She helped me get here."
"And this Dorothy . . . what does she know about us?" "Just what I've told her . . . how you pretended I was someone you didn't know."
"Good. Go back and tell her you came here again and you had made a mistake. Then go back to Jacob and Sara."
"I can't go back to Jacob and Sara," I said. "If I go back, I have to live with Grandma Olivia."
"Olivia? Why?" she asked. I sat on the sofa and began to tell her the story of my discoveries, how I had visited with her mother, my grandmother Belinda, and how I had learned that my mother's father was really Judge Childs.
"I finally understood why Kenneth and his father don't get along. He blames his father for his losing you," I said.
Mommy smiled.
"Kenneth," she said softly, reminiscing. "I suppose if things had been different, he and I would have married.
You don't know how handsome he was and bright. All my girlfriends were crazy about him. He was always different, always exciting to be with." Her smile faded. "But when I learned the truth and brought it to him, it was as if I had hit him with a
sledgehammer.
"They're all so prim and proper on the outside, the blue bloods who made me feel inferior. I was the poor, discarded little girl, the waif living off of Olivia's kindness and generosity. How she continually reminded me of it. She took me in just to reduce the embarrassment, but she hated every moment I was there and she brought her boys up to think of me as contaminated. Only I fooled her, didn't I? I won Chester away from her and for that, she hated me forever.
"Was she smiling at my funeral? I wish I had been there just to watch the hypocrites," Mommy said and puffed her cigarette violently.
"No, she wasn't smiling. She was dignified. It was a very nice funeral. Kenneth was there, too."
"Poor Kenneth. Was he very upset?"
"Yes."
She sat back, pleased.
"It's not so bad to bury yourself once, especially when you're burying the ugly past too." She stared blankly at me. "But that's all gone, six feet under, Melody. You can't dig me up. It's not fair. I've finally thrown off the chains, the weight of my past, and I have opportunities now, new friends . . ." She gazed around. "This is just temporary. After my next few jobs, I'll be living in a plush condo, maybe in Brentwood. Archie assures me," she said.
I looked down, my heart so heavy I thought it might fall out of my chest.
"Why does Olivia want you to move in with her now?"
"Because Uncle Jacob's so sick and because she wants to keep the lid on any scandal. I told her I wanted to live with Kenneth since he's really my uncle, but she says that will only stir gossip."
"Oh, she's right about that. Olivia knows her territory.
Maybe it's not a bad idea anyway. It's a beautiful house. I did enjoy living there when she wasn't breathing down my neck or screaming at me for one thing or another."
"She wants to find a proper school for me and she said I have an inheritance from Grandma Belinda's half of the Gordon fortune."
"That's great. So you see, you should go back and quickly."
"But . . . it's not money I want or a snobby girl's school, Mommy. Olivia isn't my mother. She's not even my real grandmother. I'm afraid to live with her, afraid she'll make my life as miserable as she made yours."
"She wasn't completely at fault. I brought a lot of it on myself," Mommy confessed. "I was angry at them, all of them, and I wanted them to pay for my unhappiness."
"They'll always see you when they look at me," I said. "Olivia does, no matter what she tells me, and Uncle Jacob certainly does. Even Kenneth," I added and she perked up.
"Oh?"
"He had me model for him just the way he had you model," I said.
She widened her eyes.
"Really? And you did it?"
"Yes. He's created a wonderful new piece of sculpture. He says it's his greatest work, Neptune's Daughter. But the face on the sculpture is more your face than it is mine," I told her. I saw she liked that.
"Stand up," she asked suddenly. I did so. "You really did fill out. You're a very attractive young girl. Kenneth doesn't miss much." She thought again for a moment. "Didn't you like it at all back there, meet anyone nice?"
"Cary's nice, very nice. I miss him and I love May, but I've missed you, Mommy. I really have. I don't like being . . . alone. It's not fair."
She nodded and crushed her cigarette.
"It did bother me to leave you, to lie to you," she said. "Maybe not as much as you would have liked it to have bothered me, but it did. I didn't like leaving you behind, but there was just no other way to do all this. You understand?"
I nodded, even thought I really didn't.
"I had to listen to Archie. He's had much more experience with all this," she said in defense. "What are we going to do?" she asked herself.
"Please, let me stay with you, Mommy."
She gazed at me and smiled.
"You were always a sobering influence on me, weren't you, Melody? When I stayed at Frankie's bar and grill too long in Sewell and came home, I would take one look at your face and feel so damn guilty I lost my buzz in an instant. I hated you for that, too," she admitted, "but later, I would love you for it, as much as I could love any child, I suppose."
She straightened up.
"I don't have very much here, yet," she said. "It's not even a drop in the bucket compared to what Olivia has and what she can offer you."