by Rona Jaffe
Thinking this made her feel better. When the right man comes along, I’ll know, Felicity told herself over and over. If it can happen for Theodora, of course it can happen for me, too. And my husband will be a winner. I feel it, I know it. Someone wonderful will come along for me soon.
Chapter Fourteen
EVE HAD BEEN STRUGGLING in Hollywood for four years. When she looked at her friends, who were also trying to be actors, she realized she wasn’t any worse off than they were, but that was not what she had intended for her life. She knew she was special. She had an agent who still believed in her, although Beverly hadn’t gotten her any movie roles or, in fact, anything but go-sees that seldom turned into auditions, and she had begun to wonder if her agent was any good. She still had faithful Juan, who was doing so well as a house painter he had put his dreams of being a star on the back burner for now. She had never been a woman who needed a man to represent her in the world, so if Juan didn’t want to be an actor that was his business, although she thought it was a waste. As long as he paid his share of the rent . . .
But Eve had known all along that she had never been in love with him, and now she began to wonder if it was time for her to move on, go East. Friends she had made were telling her the work was in New York. There was theater in New York, and off-Broadway, where you could be discovered, and there was television, and long-term work in soap operas. Los Angeles was a one-company town, in some ways a very small town, and while this was good for developing contacts, it was also limiting.
Nicole was still with Eve’s mother, who was getting impatient now that the baby had turned into an active little girl. Eve had hoped she would get so fond of her granddaughter that she would want to keep her, the way you read about from time to time in those custody battles, but no such luck. Even though Nicole wasn’t actually living with her, Eve had to pay most of her support, as well as take care of herself, and she was always looking for ways to make extra cash.
Another waitress who was also an actress, her friend Joanne, had been moonlighting as a clown at children’s birthday parties. That summer she talked Eve into trying it. The pay was very good for only a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon, and she would be in a billowy clown suit, a red wig, and white face paint, so no one would know her. Besides, there wouldn’t be anyone there she knew. They were rich movie executives and stars, and their wives, and the little brats she was to entertain. The husbands probably wouldn’t even be there, except for the birthday father. She would blow up balloons, keep up a clever patter, do rudimentary magic tricks that she had learned from Joanne, give out party favors, and generally make a fool of herself. Joanne told her she could think of it as another kind of acting experience, but Eve was dreading it anyway. She didn’t even like children. But money was money.
It was a hot day. The party was in a mansion in Beverly Hills, on Crescent Drive, or more precisely outside the house, where the kids couldn’t do much damage. In the driveway there was a pony wearing bows in his mane and ribbons on his saddle, and there was a man dressed in white holding his halter so the kids could take turns riding around. Eve left her car with the valet parking guy who had been hired for the event and, in her full clown costume and makeup, carrying her knapsack filled with magic tricks, went out back by the swimming pool.
The birthday girl and her friends were already there, some with their mothers or governesses, and the lone father, who had nothing to do because there was a professional cameraman taking the home movies. Most of the parents would come back later to pick their kids up. Some of the kids were all dressed up, and others had changed into bathing suits. Eve looked at the pool longingly, and at the lucky brats jumping into it. She was bathing only in sweat. She could tell this would be a long party.
“Hello, hello,” she said with a fake chuckle. “I’m Yahoo the Clown, and we’re going to have a good time.”
“Are you a boy or a girl?” one little boy asked, poking her.
“You’ll never know,” Eve snapped. She saw the mother looking at her peculiarly. “I mean, I’m just a clown person,” Eve corrected herself. “You can call me Yahoo.”
The first part of the party she had to wander around and be sociable, and then, before the ice cream and cake, she had to do her act. It must be over ninety out here, Eve thought resentfully. The little brats were the age of her own daughter, and her daughter had never had such an expensive party with a clown and a pony.
Sometimes she thought about her daughter and her feelings surprised her. For instance now, when she had to act like a clown for the extra money so she could send it to her mother to buy Nicole just basic clothes to replace the ones she’d grown out of. Part of her felt embittered when she thought of the burden of another person in her life, but another part felt badly that her daughter couldn’t have any of the advantages these kids had. Nicole was getting cuter all the time, and she would have looked wonderful in one of those party dresses from Bambola that cost as much as the whole check Eve was going to receive today, the dresses the little girls here were rolling in the grass in. What did they care when they probably had a closetful at home?
She was so tired of scrimping and saving, of being poor, of having to parade herself in front of strangers who rejected her before she had a chance to say more than a sentence. Once she had even been rejected at an audition because she “stood out too much.” Wasn’t that what they wanted? You always noticed the person with star quality.
Eve blew up a balloon and deftly shaped it into an animal, bowed, and presented it to the birthday girl, who smiled. She made a camera appear from her sleeve and gave it to the kid too, then another camera for someone else, and another. Some party favors. Where she came from you got gum.
“Me! Me, Yahoo! Me next!” the kids were clamoring. A few more years and they would be so jaded she would have to produce car keys for them.
Eve helped herself to some lemonade. She couldn’t perspire through the white greasepaint on her face and she felt as if her skin was burning. In New York it would be cool, and there would be seasons. Her old car needed expensive repairs almost constantly now. In New York she wouldn’t need a car. She would sell the heap. Beverly could probably get her more work in New York than she’d had here, because Hollywood actresses all looked so bland. Eve began to feel she had an Eastern energy, which is why she had never fit in anywhere, not in Florida, and not here.
“Showtime!” she announced.
The little kids all sat down on the grass to watch her. Their mothers and governesses were under the cool roof of the patio; they were no fools. Eve sang some kids’ songs, told some jokes, and did her magic tricks, but the kids were not impressed. They had seen clowns before. All they were interested in was more presents, and the chance to play and be wild. It was time for the Mickey Mouse watches. That got their attention again for a few minutes. While Eve was distributing this bounty she automatically kept track of how many cameras and watches she had not yet given away, since she was planning to appropriate one of each for her own daughter. By now she was an expert at filching, having done it on a minor level in restaurants for years.
When her act was finished the kids raced for the birthday cake. The adults had canapés and champagne. Eve took a break to go to the bathroom, which was a major project since she had to take off the clown suit, and on her way there she picked up a couple of watches and cameras that the kids had already abandoned and tucked them into her knapsack with her magic stuff, along with the watch and camera she had kept back. She might as well take souvenirs for Juan and herself too.
When she got out of the bathroom two of the kids were crying. “Somebody took my camera,” one of them wailed.
“Where’s my watch? I want my watch. I want my watch, Mommy. Mommy, I want my watch.”
“Yahoo, give her another one,” the birthday mother said. She was all dressed up in tight silk jeans and high heels and a ton of diamonds, and Eve knew her for one of those youn
g Beverly Hills matrons who had to drive a Bentley into town to have lunch and go shopping when she lived three blocks away. Well, how could a woman like that carry a package, or walk in those heels? She never had to hike to the bus stop twice a day the way I did, Eve thought, resenting her and her money and privilege and fancy house.
“There are no more,” Eve said, opening her eyes wide.
“That can’t be. I bought extra ones.”
“Yahoo took them,” a little girl said. “I saw him.”
Eve turned and glared at the little girl, who was three feet high and standing there with her tiny hands on her hips and her button eyes filled with smug malice. “Yahoo is neither a he nor a she,” Eve said. “Yahoo is a clown.”
“Well, do you have more?” the mother said.
“No.”
“You do too. I saw you,” the kid said.
“You are very short, and you are mistaken.”
The kid kicked her in the ankle.
“That’s it,” Eve said. “I’m leaving.” She turned to the mother. “Give me my check and I’m out of here.”
“We need to talk privately,” the woman said, taking Eve by the arm. She led her to the kitchen, where a maid and a caterer were fussing around. “You are not to take the party favors for yourself,” she said.
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Do you mind if I look in your bag?”
Rage filled Eve like a fever. She wanted to tear the woman’s teased, bleached blonde hair out by its stringy roots. “You dare to accuse me?” Eve snapped.
“I just want to see. If you didn’t take them you’ll let me look.”
“What do you think this is, fucking Customs?” Eve said, having seen movies about smuggling although she had never been anywhere. “Are you the fucking government?”
“You don’t have to be obscene.”
“You don’t have to be such a bitch.”
“Get out of my house.”
“Give me my check.”
“I’ll give it to you in the driveway.”
“You’ll give it to me now.” Sweat was pouring down her body even though the kitchen was air-conditioned, and the itching of her sensitive facial skin under the greasepaint was almost more than she could bear. Her red clown wig felt like a hornet’s nest. Eve pulled off the wig and grabbed a handful of paper towels and rubbed at her face. Her hair was wet and matted, and she was sure she had a rash. “You’ve given me a fucking allergy attack from this stupid costume,” she screamed. “I ought to charge you hazard pay.”
“I ought to call the police,” the woman screamed back. She grabbed Eve with her slim, muscular arms, iron-strong from tennis, and pulled her out of the kitchen, through the back door, and out to the driveway. The little kids who had been lined up to ride the pony were giggling their heads off. This was the first thing about the party that they really liked.
“My check!” Eve said, holding her knapsack closed with one hand, the other hand outstretched.
The woman took the folded check from the pocket of her silk jeans, where she’d had it all along, and finally gave it to her. “You’ll never work for my friends again,” she said.
“I don’t intend to.”
A man was standing there, having come to pick up his kid. A skinny guy with glasses. Eve recognized him. It was Sophocles Birnbaum, from her long ago waitress days at the Confident Onion, and he recognized her, too. She’d read in the trades that he had gotten even more successful since she had last seen him. It had never occurred to her before that he had a private life as well as a professional one, that he had a wife, and a kid who went to birthday parties, like a normal person. She didn’t know if she should say hello to him or pretend she was someone else.
She didn’t have to choose. He cringed away and sidled into the house, his face turned away, as if he had never seen her before and was not seeing her now. She wondered if it was tact or if he really didn’t want to know her.
Eve’s rage abated and she suddenly felt terribly sad. The valet parking guy had come with her car and she got into it and drove away. As she drove down the clean quiet streets under tall palm trees, past mansions that seemed uninhabited, all the things she had once dreamed would someday be hers, Eve’s eyes filled with tears, and she realized with a vengeance how much she hated this phony town.
When she left for Florida to see her mother and daughter for Christmas, it was with all her belongings, on her way to move to New York. She had parted from Juan with more nostalgia on his part than on hers, and from Hollywood with none. She knew Juan would find another girlfriend in fifteen minutes. People left other people and places all the time. If she ever came back here it would be as a star, or not at all.
Eve had not seen Nicole since last Christmas, and she was surprised at the change in her. She was five years old, almost ready to start school. She was bigger than she had seemed in her pictures, which anyway were six months old. Nicole looked just like Eve, as if all Eve’s genes had been dominant. Her posture and body language were just like her grandmother’s, which was not surprising, so she gave the appearance of being a tough little kid, but she smiled all the time. Eve could not imagine from whom she had inherited this sunny disposition. Her wardrobe consisted of jeans, just as Eve’s had, but times and fashions had changed since Eve was a child and everybody else dressed like Nicole. She did not have to feel out of place and ugly the way Eve had.
“You did a good job with her, Mom,” Eve said. She gave Nicole all her presents but forgot to give her a hug. Nicole didn’t seem to care.
“Thank you,” her mother said. “And Nicole, what do you say to your mommy?”
“Thank you, Mommy.”
“She has a Southern accent,” Eve said disapprovingly.
“What do you expect?”
Eve hadn’t even thought about what she should expect. She had gotten rid of most of her Florida accent over the past years through her own hard work, feeling it would limit her choice of roles, and now with this difference between them the child seemed even less like her own.
“How long are you staying with us?” her mother asked.
“I’ll leave the day after New Year’s. I sublet a friend’s apartment in Greenwich Village, and later I’ll get something of my own.”
“Then you’re planning to settle in New York City?”
“You bet. I’m finished with Horridwood.”
“Horridwood!” Nicole said, and laughed.
“She has your sense of humor,” her mother said.
“I didn’t think you’d noticed I had one,” Eve said.
“Oh, I noticed.”
Christmas dinner was just as dismal and lonely as it had always been. There was her mother and her daughter and herself, the scraping of fork and spoon on plates, the sparse and forced conversation, the hole of sadness in the pit of her stomach when she thought about other families having raucous and jolly Christmases full of people. At least with Nicole there, obliviously chatty about the events of her little life, it gave her and her mother something to talk about. The holiday dragged Eve back to her isolated and frustrating childhood, all those years she had dreamed of getting out, and she reminded herself that she was on her way, that she wasn’t a helpless little girl anymore.
She helped her mother wash up while Nicole went out to play with her loot. “Next year,” her mother said, “I’m going to have Christmas dinner at a hotel, in the hotel restaurant.”
“We could have done that this year,” Eve said.
“Well, this was a farewell.”
“To what?”
“To Nicole. To you. You’re going to take her with you to New York and pretend to be a real mother for the first time in your life, and I’m taking Logan Bewstar in as a partner and letting him run the farm while I get myself a nice job in Miami Beach and see some of the high life.”
“A job as what?” Eve asked, incredulous.
“A bookkeeper. I’ve been doing all the paperwork around here forever, you know. A farm is a business just like anything else.”
“But . . .”
“But nothing. You think you’re the only person who has a right to be free? I sacrificed my whole life for you, and now it’s my turn to have some fun before I’m too old to notice I’m having it.”
“What sacrifices did you make for me?” Eve asked.
“Who did you think I did all this for, myself? I did the best I could. If you don’t like it, that’s just too bad. How did you think you got to be so independent? Because I taught you how. I made you special. Now, go out and do whatever you’re supposed to do with your life. I’ve got all Nicole’s clothes washed and ironed, and I bought her a new suitcase for her toys. She hates eggs, you ought to know, and she likes to sleep with a night light on. She sleeps with her teddy bear, and you have to read her Dr. Seuss before she’ll close her eyes.”
“Who is this Logan Bewstar?” Eve demanded.
“You remember him.”
“No, I don’t. Is he your boyfriend?”
Her mother laughed, a deep happy laugh that came from a place inside her that Eve had never known existed. “Boyfriend? God, no. If you saw him you wouldn’t have to ask that question. He’s a twenty-eight-year-old hippie with long hair and a girlfriend, but he loves the idea of a chicken farm and he’s going to do a good job. It’s funny, isn’t it? I thought my way of life would become obsolete with the new generation coming along, but kids like Logan want peace and quiet and I’m the one moving on.”
“Miami Beach is hardly the high life,” Eve said.
“It is to me.”
“What is Nicole going to think about all this?”
“As if you care.”
“I do care,” Eve said, insulted.
“I’ll tell her tonight, and it will give her a week to get used to the idea. She knows you’re her mother, and she knew you were coming back someday to get her. I’ve always told her that. She was looking forward to her adventures in Hollywood, but now she’ll look forward to the ones in New York.”