There Should Have Been Castles
Page 52
Kevin Barringer was white-maned and tall and looked the billion dollars he was reputed to be. There was a bartender and a waitress, plus the four of us, in a room as big as the Gay Nineties. Huge globed lights like the front of New York’s Plaza Hotel. And everything was done in that dark stained mahogany that I always found so opulent. There was a Persian carpet on the floor that had to run the forty yards in record time, and set into the walls were floor-to-ceiling panels of stained glass that were lit from behind. And a bar—thirty feet long if an inch, polished with a slippery lustre and armed with, a brass rail. Before it stood a dozen leather-topped chairs, each of them as tall as I was.
The small talk was decidedly small—minuscule, infinitesimal—most of it supplied and indulged in by Johnny and Kevin. I had trouble believing that Johnny was so fluent in that archaic tongue but he was. Polo and regattas and all the stuff that mattas.
Maggie and I were cutely sparring, getting ready for what we each felt the other might instigate. Maggie got off the best one by saying aloud, when the bartender popped the champagne “Vive la France!” The menfolk didn’t know what it meant but I did and laughed. And it crossed my mind that, under different circumstances, Maggie and I might just have been sensational friends.
The men went off into the billiard room or the war room or the trophy room, and for the first time, Maggie and I were alone—in the center ring, fully lit. She smiled, that glorious smile on that incredible face, and asked, “Any questions?”
“Yeah. Lots.”
“Fire away.”
“Is Kevin my stepfather?”
“No. He’s your mother’s fella.”
“You use his name.”
“And his credit cards.”
“You’re not married.”
“No more than you and Johnny.”
“You know that Daddy’s dead.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t come to the funeral.”
“I didn’t know there was one. I didn’t find out until much later when I called your sister to wish her and Walter a merry Christmas and all that fa-la-la. And that was long after you found me and Ben. Want to talk about that?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
“Only because I’m curious as to what happened afterwards.”
“What happened afterwards was that I left him.”
“Did you ever give him a chance to explain?”
“Nope. Could he have explained?”
“He was a lovely, intelligent boy. And he didn’t have the slightest idea that he was in both of our lives at the same time. Whatever became of him?”
“He’s out here, writing movies.”
“Do you see him?”
“Do you?”
“No, but I might like to.”
“I’ll get you his phone number.”
“Please do. It would be nice to keep him in the family.”
“How do you stand with Daddy’s estate?”
“Exactly where I want. Out.”
“You made no claim?”
“Did I have a right to?”
“You hurt him very much. You hurt me, too.”
“Yes. I thought I might. But I couldn’t go on with that hypocrisy. I was a lousy mother and would have hurt you even more if I continued to try to play that role. I was right. You’re good. You’re on your own. You’re tough. And you’re still young.”
“I don’t think I’m all that young anymore.”
“You’ll be twenty-one in a couple weeks. That ain’t old.”
“I’m surprised you remember.”
“Don’t be. Don’t assume that I never look back—and wonder. And regret. I don’t mind that you think me a hedonist and a whore. You have every right to think that. But don’t think me a total nonperson. Because you’d be wrong.”
“Okay.”
“You’ll be coming into a great deal of money.”
“If Mary Ann hasn’t already gone through it.”
“She hasn’t. It’s in the State National Bank, in Stamford. All waiting for you.”
“You keep tabs on it?”
“As much as I can in my crowded schedule.”
“Do you like the life you lead?”
“Yes. Do you?”
“How would they take the news that we were mother and daughter?”
“With a grain of salt, I imagine.”
“Wouldn’t it—take the gloss off your image?”
“Decidedly. Planning on telling them?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“You’ve been thinking about it all evening. Do as you like. I’m sure you have no secrets from Johnny.”
“Johnny and I are going to be married.”
“Does he know it?”
“I think so.”
“In that case, congratulations.”
“How long can you go on as you’re doing?”
“Probably until Kevin gets tired of me.”
“He may never get tired of you. You’re quite beautiful.”
“You ain’t bad yourself.”
“Does Kevin give you money?”
“Oh my, yes.”
“Do you save any of it?”
“Oh my, no.”
“You might someday wish you had.”
“No, my dear. Keeping the money makes a woman a whore. Spending it makes her—dangerous.”
“I’ll try to remember.”
“Will we be friends, Ginnie?”
“I don’t see how.”
“Neither do I. Come. Let’s go to dinner. Do you like squab?”
“Yes. Especially his Fourth Symphony.”
“Funny.”
“You’ve fucked-up my life, Maggie.”
“By scaring off your Ben?”
“That’s part of it.”
“A secret. I’ll tell you a secret, all right?”
“Please.”
“If he loved you he would have come after you. He’d never have let you slip away without raising a ruckus.”
“He tried.”
“Not hard enough though—apparently.”
“Well—”
“Come, dear. We mustn’t let the squab get cold. Beats the shit out of the woodwinds.”
Dinner was served in a diningroom that was czarist Russian. Heavy brass and clunky crystal. And draperies that had to have been smuggled out of Nicholas’s palace before Lenin busted in to say, “Show’s over, folks.”
Eating squab is like dining on hollowed-out grapefruit. Most of it is air, the rest of it is skin. And the sight of that little dead bird served up in its entirety made me feel ikky because I identified with the poor thing. There, but for the grace of some hunter’s arrow, was I, pretty on the outside, nothing on the inside, legs up and on my back ready to be taken because that’s what I was best at. Forks up, gentlemen. Show’s over, Ginnie.
Wine and wine and wine. Different bottles for different courses. Different jockeys for different horses. Different cups for different saucers. This rhyme is Spenser’s—or is it Chaucer’s?
“Ginnie? Are you all right?” That was Maggie, looking at me from over the lip of a brandy snifter. Brandy from Peru. Pasco Pisco. Whatever it was, it wasn’t Nabisco. “Ginnie?”
“I’m fine. I love squab.”
“That was two courses ago.”
“My love is everlasting.”
The men laughed. I wanted to Pisco in their Pasco. “Ginnie?” Maggie was standing, affecting a delicate tipsy. “I think I’ve had a little too much wine. I’d like to get some air. Will you come with me? These blokes are talking too much shop anyway. Would you gentlemen please excuse us?”
Johnny and Kevin jumped up like toy soldiers—rounded faces, squared-off shoulders. And Maggie, mercifully, steered me out of the room.
“Don’t you just hate them?” I asked her.
“A little. Yes. I think it’s required.”
“They’re so full of squab.”
“The whole world’s full of squab.”
“Where we going?”
“Out by the pool. It’s cooler.”
“You’re gonna throw me in, yes?”
“No. You’d swim away and I’d never see you again. Here, sit down.”
“How’d you feel if I threw up in your pool?”
“Not too good, but you’d feel better. Put your feet up. For God’s sake, relax! Christ, are you that afraid of me?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Because I’m a little afraid, too.”
“Ha-ha-ha.”
“I am.”
“Ho-ho-ho. Why are you afraid?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You’re afraid I’ll tell ’em you’re my mother.”
“I told you, that’s your privilege. Your weapon. If it’s loaded, fire it.”
“I’m loaded.”
“I know. Sometimes you think more clearly when you’re loaded. It strips away the artificials. And the truth jumps out and says ‘Here ’tis!’ And it’s irresistible.”
“You’re loaded.”
“Maybe. A little.”
“I hate you, Mommy.”
“Good. Feel better now?”
“You left me and never came back.”
“I was running for my life. That’s not an excuse, it’s an explanation.”
“I still hate you.”
“As long as you do maybe I ought to give you a little more to hate me for.”
“You ran away and never came back. Answer the question.”
“What question?”
“How come you do me like you do, do, do?”
“That’s not the question. You asked me why I was afraid,”
“You said you weren’t sure. That’s no answer.”
“I think—now I’m sure. Want to hear?”
“I ain’t goin’ anywhere.”
“I know.”
“Huh?”
“That’s why I’m afraid. Not for me, but for you. When I ran away it was from a life I couldn’t deal with, a marriage that was strangling me, kids that were sucking me dry. I had something to run away from. You’re running away and you’re not running away from anything. I was cowardly. You’re just—nuts.”
“Fuck you, Ma.”
“Want me to stop?”
“No. That means continue. Whenever I say, ‘Fuck you, Ma,’ that’s your signal to continue. Fuck you, Ma.”
“Ginnie, I was fifteen years older than you are now when I took off. I knew what I was doing. You don’t. Do you know what you’re doing? I mean living with Johnny Farrar?”
“Yeah. I know what I’m doing.”
“Then tell me, because I don’t.”
“I’m living with a man who makes me happy. He gives me everything I want—takes me places. I’ve lived in basements, Maggie.”
“People get out of basements. They don’t always get out of gilded cages.”
“I can get out of living with Johnny anytime I want.”
“Who sez?”
“He says. He told me. Anytime I want to go I’m free to go.”
“He’s too smart for you.”
“Fuck you, Ma.”
“You don’t need him. In a very short time you’ll have money of your own. It’ll be close to half a million dollars. Christ, twenty-one years of age, an heiress, a body like Venus, a face like the Mona Lisa—why the hell are you locking yourself in with a phony like Johnny Farrar?”
“Johnny’s not a phony. He’s a very successful man. He’s in electronics. Travels the world. Meets with consuls. Does business in Russia! Where the hell you getting your information from? You never met Johnny until a couple months ago!”
“Ginnie, I travel in a certain set. Three, four hundred people who know more about each other than they know about themselves. You’re not in yet. When you are, you’ll know everything that I know. What I’m doing now is trying to see to it that you’re never in.”
“What do know about Johnny? Jesus Christ, have you slept with him, too?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Boy! You’re something! How come you didn’t meet him at the door and give him the old ‘Vive la France’?”
“Ginnie, why aren’t you and Johnny married?”
“Because he’s not divorced yet!”
“Do you know why he’s not divorced?”
“Because he’s still married!”
“The reason he’s not divorced is that he’s never been married. Now, do you want to take a minute to let that sink in?”
“Fuck you, Ma.”
“Johnny Farrar has a girl in Amsterdam, younger than you. She’s waiting for his divorce, too. And, there’s a girl in Denver. A ski instructress.”
“Denver?”
“Yes. We were there with them, Kevin and I. We just got back. Not the most beautiful girl but evidently great on the slopes. Ginnie, there’s a sort of a code in our crummy set. We don’t tell on one another. If we did we’d have no set. And we need a set, otherwise we wouldn’t have each other—just ourselves, which would be pretty unbearable. As much as I love Kevin, the thought of being in his company one hundred percent of the time would have me running back to Stamford. I’m telling on Johnny because he’s messing with my daughter. So—fuck the code. When Johnny Farrar goes to Moscow, he goes not to sell computers or electronics. That’s all done automatically by a board of directors. He goes to plug in on Olga, or Natasha, or Catherine the Great—or whoever it is he calls comrade and beds down with in the Kremlin. Johnny Farrar is just playing and laying. That’s all he does. When he gets to Kevin’s age, perhaps he’ll cut down and concentrate on just one. But he’s got twenty years to go and I give you—maybe—two of those.” She tossed her cigarette into the big pool and smiled at me. “Love is a crapshoot, Ginnie. You think you have gossamer—and it turns out to be orlon. Tell you what, here comes your Johnnykins now. I’ll start the ball rolling and you can take it from there.”
Johnny was walking toward us, carrying a drink and looking like the cat who just ate the squab. “What’re you two girls gabbing about? You’ve been out here forever.”
Maggie smiled at Johnny and gave it to him straight. “Ginnie is my daughter and we had much to talk about.” Then she turned and walked back into the house, heading off Kevin who had been coming out to join us. She just turned him around in his tracks and took him back inside, leaving Johnny and me alone.
“What the hell was that all about?” He asked.
“The lady thinks she’s my mother.”
“Is she?”
“First I heard about it. I think your Mrs. Barringer’s a little bit bombed.”
“I guess so. She just didn’t seem to be doing all that much drinking.”
“I think she started before we got here. I think she started at reveille this morning.”
“Hmmmmmm.”
“Johnny. I don’t want to end up like that.”
“Come on. Let’s go back in.”
“She let it slip. She’s not married to Kevin. He can walk out on her anytime he wants.”
“Maybe so. But it works the other way around, too. She can walk out on him.”
“At her age? Where does she go from there? Or maybe it isn’t Kevin’s concern.”
“I don’t know. I don’t really know them all that well.”
“I guess not. She didn’t seem to know you were married.”
“Well, I don’t go around discussing my private life with everybody. Come on. Dessert’s on the table. They set fire to Alaska just for us.”
“Let it burn for a little while, okay? Johnny? If you were divorced, would you marry me? On the spot?”
“In a minute.”
“Where does your wife live? Chicago? Maybe I can go see her, have a little talk with her.”
“Since when did you become Bette Davis?”
“Since I decided to stop being June Allyson.”
“Let me see if I understand this correctly. You want to see my wife, to talk to her, to ask her to—l
et me go, right?”
“Yes. Something like that.”
“What you’re really saying is that you don’t think I have a wife.”
“The thought has occurred to me.”
“You think I’ve been lying.”
“Well, there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there. And, if I’m wrong, I’ll apologize.”
“That’s too easy. How am I supposed to feel at the fact that you distrust me?”
“Well, you might try being flattered. It shows interest.”
“Ginnie, I am so disappointed in you—”
“I know. But where do I reach her? Give me a phone number, Johnny. Any number. Make one up. Hey—how about color of hair? Eyes? Any distinguishing features? Does she have any hobbies?”
“Nothing doing, Ginnie.”
“Which, translated, means there is no such person. Well—there’s a howdy-do.”
“Where you going?”
“I don’t know. Denver, Amsterdam, Moscow. Wherever the fair wind blows.”
“Ginnie—”
“You told me I could leave anytime I wanted to. Well—I want to leave now.”
“What did she tell you?”
“Not as much as you just told me by telling me nothing.”
“Ginnie—”
“Love is a crapshoot, Johnny. You think you have gossamer and it turns out to be shit—something like that.”
I walked around the edge of the pool and never, never looked back. The moon was in the pool and I wondered how come I was so high up that I could look down on it—but it didn’t stop me from leaving. Bette Davis was leaving. I knew I’d compromised Maggie a little with those direct allusions to Denver and Amsterdam, but I figured she’d be able to work her way out of it. I also figured I was doing what she wanted me to. If Johnny wanted me, if he really, truly loved me, he’d come after me. I just didn’t think he would. Ben hadn’t. Johnny wouldn’t. Maggie had said it and Maggie was right. Because when you get right down to it, mothers know best. I had learned something else. I had learned that a woman never leaves a man who tells her she can leave anytime she wants to. She only leaves the man who begs her to stay forever. Philosophy for a summer’s night, while walking out on a rich boyfriend. Put that in your tampon and stuff it.
I found our limousine and driver out by the garage, behind the house. He snapped to as soon as he saw me, and he ran around to open the door for me. “Home, Miss?”