Emerald

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  Monica’s moving hands, the veins and brown spots made invisible by her quick gestures, further caught my imagination with their familiar enchanting grace. I hurried on, lost in my own fantasy.

  “That emerald ring is part of the mosaic! I must write about that as well. May I see it, please?”

  The ring hung loosely on her thin finger, and I could see why she wouldn’t wear it much anymore. She slipped it off and gave it to me across the table. Sunlight still backlighted her and I couldn’t see her face sharply, but the touch of her fingers felt cold on mine, and the ring was cold, too, as I took it. The great square emerald that fanciful writers had likened to an oasis in the desert glowed green in my hand as I turned it about. The setting had been imaginatively wrought, with tiny gold iris leaves instead of prongs, intricately twisted to hold the gem. The intaglio carving of the flower was tiny and simple in its execution, though quite perfectly an iris.

  “What a search was made for that stone!” It was Monica who sounded dreamy now. “That’s a Colombian emerald, you know. They’re the finest in the world. Of course the emerald and the color green have always belonged to Venus—that’s what Saxon said, and he thought it appropriate.” Her voice hardened a little. “You can see how brilliant it is, with no trace of yellow or blue. An elegant, unique stone!”

  “Your secretary, Peggy Smith, carved it, didn’t she?” Linda asked.

  Sadly, Monica nodded. “She was my friend as well. A gifted artist, you know. The one person I could really trust. You can see that the ring is a small masterpiece in itself. Usually such carving is done on lesser stones to hide a flaw or lack of clarity. But Peggy herself found this perfect emerald, and it cost Saxon a pretty penny. How we flung money around in those days!”

  I was holding a bit of romantic history in my hand. Monica watched me, and after a moment she went on.

  “I wore it on my right hand during the picture, but it was really an engagement ring. We were going to be married when we finished making Mirage!”

  “How wonderful.” Linda sounded rapt. “You never told me that. Saxon Scott and Monica Arlen!”

  “I seem to remember reading something Louella Parsons wrote about the ring,” I said.

  “She made up most of that. We didn’t tell anyone, except Peggy, of course, since she was part of the secret. I’ve never spoken about our breakup, but perhaps now—if Carol writes this book—the time has come to talk.”

  Linda and I exchanged a quick look and kept very still, waiting for revelations.

  Monica was lost in the past. “Of course it wasn’t any secret when we parted and our careers ended. I was miserable—thoroughly unhappy before that picture was finished, and Saxon was behaving horribly. So there wasn’t any marriage, though he wouldn’t take back his ring.”

  I watched her, absorbed in what she was saying, savoring this moment. When she’d rejected even the sight of me earlier, the shock had as much to do with the destruction of a myth I’d lived for, as with my worry about where we would go if Monica put us out. The darkening of a bright beacon that had pulled me through so many bad times was devastating. Now, even though age lay heavily upon her, she could still summon old illusion, and make us believe. I loved her for that. She was still my beacon, even though my feeling for her was tinged with sorrow.

  Monica had never had a small mouth, and cameras always played up its full-lipped lusciousness and up-at-the-corners warmth. Which made it all the more sad to see how the years had pinched it, taken away that wide generosity of the lips. Now her smile was thin and melancholy.

  “What a terrible loss when Peggy died!” she went on. “She was a gifted sculptor, though I’m afraid I kept her so busy with my affairs that she never had much time to develop her own talents. I’m sorry about that now. I still have a few pieces she did. Some of them are large-scale sculptures, but she liked to work in miniature too, with gold and gems. So when Saxon asked her to design a ring for our engagement, she found the emerald after months of searching. She did the incising herself with the iris in reverse relief, working in Paris with a man from Carrier’s. She even made the setting and mounted the stone—everything.” Monica broke off, touching the ring as I held it out to her. “So much talent lost, wasted, never brought fully to what it might have been. I was partly to blame. Why she had to die, I’ll never understand.”

  “It was suicide, of course,” Linda reminded me. “She was found out in the desert, where she went to kill herself. She—”

  “Let’s not talk about that!” Monica broke in. “It was all too terrible, too senseless.” Abruptly, she repudiated the ring. “No—you keep it, Carol. It reminds me of too much I can’t bear to think about. And my fingers are too thin for it now. You can’t write about any of this in your book.”

  I said nothing. I’d been told this before by those I was interviewing, and I always respected my subjects’ wishes. But in Monica’s case, these were the very things I would need to write about. Clearly I must be careful with my questions until she was ready to trust me, ready to talk.

  In a sudden change of mood, Monica laughed, and the sound had a bitter echo, its musical quality harshened.

  “I surprised you, didn’t I?” she challenged us. “Ralph thought I was crazy when I started downstairs looking like this. But what does he know? I had a feeling that I could still do her—that I wanted to do her—that Monica Arlen of a long time ago. And I succeeded, didn’t I? In being my real self again?”

  “You’re marvelous,” I told her warmly, and slipped the ring on the fourth finger of my right hand. “I’ll be proud to wear this for a little while, but of course I’ll give it back to you.”

  Monica sighed and began, quite visibly, to fall apart before our eyes. The crumbling was from the inside out, as though the strength of spirit that had driven her until now had finally sapped her energy, leaving only a shell that she presented to the world. Her performance had been due not only to the trappings of wig and costume, but to something inner that was suddenly gone. Curiously, it was as if seeing me put on her emerald had subtly drained her own fading vitality.

  Linda got up quickly. “I’ll help you to your room, if you like.”

  Monica could still lift her chin and answer sharply. “No! Call Ralph. He can get me up the stairs. He’s a stupid boy, but useful. And he can play the game when I want him to. He can pretend I’m really the old Monica Arlen, even though he’s never even seen Mirage.”

  Her laughter had a faintly wicked sound as Ralph appeared at Linda’s signal and helped Monica from the table. What a fascinating and complex woman she was. She would have been wonderful to write about even if she hadn’t been a legend.

  At the terrace door, she turned to speak to me again. “When you visit the Desert Museum tomorrow, you’ll find a small piece of me there. Ask Linda’s brother to show it to you.”

  Then she was gone, and I sat staring after her, entirely spellbound.

  “Well!” Linda said, and I heard excitement in her voice. “She’s always pulling these reversals. But I didn’t dream she had this in her anymore. Your coming has made a big difference. Perhaps now the whole story will come out. And Saxon—” She broke off abruptly and the odd, almost guilty flush that I’d noticed before rose in her cheeks. I had, never seen a mature woman who could blush so easily, and I wondered again what her secrets were.

  “Why didn’t you tell her what your friend Wally is planning?” I asked. “I mean about the benefit affair at the museum, with Monica and Saxon onstage together? This would have been a good moment to reach her.”

  The flush faded and Linda regarded me with amusement. “I didn’t tell her because you’re going to,” she said.

  Before I could protest, Keith came in from the terrace looking woebegone because he’d lost his playmate—Ralph. “Mom, what shall I do now?” It was the familiar cry of childhood.

  “Let’s go upstairs and see what we can find,” I said.

  From the first, I’d known that it would be hard to keep
an active little boy occupied without ever taking him out, and I wondered if I might do as Jason had suggested and bring him with me to the museum tomorrow. It was so close to the house. And surely Owen’s thugs wouldn’t be active in Palm Springs this soon.

  As we went through Linda’s office, the phone rang on her desk. She picked it up, and the sudden tension in her voice stopped me.

  “No,” she said. “There’s no such person here. You must have the wrong number.”

  “Run upstairs,” I told Keith. “I’ll be there in a minute.” Then I turned back to Linda.

  “It was a man who asked for Mrs. Barclay,” she said. “But Monica’s telephone isn’t listed. So how did he get this number?”

  “Owen can always find out whatever he wants. What did the voice sound like?”

  “Rough. Not at all cultured.”

  “He wouldn’t call. Not the first time. He’d want to make sure first. And he has a good voice on the phone. He must already know where I am. Oh, Linda, what am I to do?”

  “Take it easy. He can’t climb in here on the telephone wire.”

  Once more I could glimpse what my life in the next months—years?—was likely to be, even while Smoke Tree House offered us a temporary haven. I would shy at shadows, jump at the sound of a telephone ringing, be constantly terrified for Keith’s safety—if I allowed myself to live like that. I knew Owen well enough to realize that he would do everything he possibly could to frighten me, and would enjoy doing it. But I was no longer as weak, or as vulnerable, as he might think me. Somehow, I must find a way to win this battle. Win it on a permanent basis—for life.

  Writing about Monica Arlen could be a big step in the direction of freedom. I might even be in a position to use publicity itself against Owen if I had to. The very fact that Monica had refused interviews for so long gave me a certain power. The public and press might even back up a woman who was fighting against tyranny, and fighting for her child. I might be able to threaten Owen back!

  If I could do a good honest piece of writing, it might be lifesaving for us both. Monica needed money now, and I needed not only an income, but something I could throw myself into and work at with all my heart. A straw to the drowning! All the sources were here to draw from. Monica herself, of course, but there would also be a great many people alive who had touched her world in the old days. And I knew exactly where I should start.

  “Linda,” I said, “will you go ahead and get me that interview with Saxon Scott?”

  SIX

  The next morning, when Linda drove me down to the Desert Museum, I left Keith behind in spite of his protests. After that disturbing phone call, I couldn’t risk taking him out. As it happened, I was very glad that I hadn’t brought him with me.

  Not far from the gatehouse at the end of Monica’s private road, a blue Chevy was parked. I noticed uneasily that it started up as we turned toward the museum and followed us along the road past the golf course. This might not have meant anything, except that the blue car trailed us the short distance to the museum parking lot. When we left our car a man got out of the Chevy and stood watching us boldly. He wore dark gray slacks and a pullover that matched the car. I knew the type. One of Owen’s “thugs.”

  When I told Linda, she said I was probably being paranoid, and Keith was perfectly safe on the mountain.

  She led the way to the front entrance of the museum and stopped. “Just stand here for a minute and look.”

  A central fountain sent plumes into the air in continuous crystal motion, and there were sunken gardens below the walls on either hand. The low, wide building, with its outflung wings, echoed not only the colors of the desert, but the very texture of rock and sand as well. Its unexpected angles were the angles of the mountains around Palm Springs. Directly behind the museum rose the bare brown backdrop of Mt. San Jacinto, and the man-made buildings seemed to belong at its foot as though they’d grown there.

  Huge, windowless wings faced with volcanic rock framed the entrance. Rock that with its eternal wearing qualities matched the subtle tones of the mountain—charcoal and black, tinged with burnt sienna and lavender and warm umbers. These were the real colors of the mountain, if one looked closely enough.

  Everywhere the desert itself had been dramatized. In structured concrete walls that lined the sidewalk, the formalized ripples of sand dunes had been reproduced, and this play of light and shadow gave the eye variety and pleasure.

  I knew now why Jason Trevor had warmed to such enthusiasm when he spoke of the uniqueness of this museum. Only here in Palm Springs could it exist so suitably; the architect had matched it perfectly to the place.

  Double outside stone steps rose on either side of the fountain, offering wide access to the level of the main floor, ten feet above. When Linda started up the right-hand flight, I went with her. The overhang of the building had a coffered ceiling, while underfoot large quarry tiles of olive brown warmed the floor with their natural sheen.

  At the top of the steps I stopped and looked down. The man from the blue Chevy stood on the sidewalk watching us. It didn’t matter, I told myself—this was to be expected. It was exactly the sort of harassing Owen would try. But this hood of his couldn’t really do anything. Linda had already alerted the guards whose business it was to keep strangers away from Monica. I mustn’t panic or I would spoil every moment of my life here. There would always be someone following me now, and I must learn to accept it without falling apart.

  Jason Trevor came to meet us at the door, and Linda patted my arm. Away from the house, she seemed freer this morning, easier to be with. Though she hadn’t mentioned an appointment with Saxon as yet, and I hadn’t pressed her further.

  “Don’t look so worried,” she said. “Everything will work out. Jason, Carol really is going to write a book about Monica.”

  “Interesting,” he said in a tone that indicated the contrary.

  I resented the arrogance of his disapproval. “I find her an interesting subject. As much so as a museum. Though she isn’t quite that yet.”

  He actually grinned at me. “You haven’t seen this museum.”

  In the sharper light of morning his hair seemed more sun-streaked then ever, and his brown eyes with the concentration lines between them still regarded me warily. At least he had smiled.

  “Where is Keith?” he asked.

  “It was wiser not to bring him.” I hesitated. “I do have a reason. Do you see that man down there on the sidewalk? He followed us here from Monica’s gate.”

  “Do you want me to speak to him?” Jason asked.

  “Not yet. It doesn’t matter if he follows me. I just want you to notice him, in case anything comes up later.”

  Linda needed to get back to the house. “Call me when you’re ready to come home,” she said, and left us together.

  Jason led the way into a great high-ceilinged central room. The museum’s huge open expanses had the feeling of desert and sky. The coffered ceiling of the entry gave way to airy space, with skylights high along one side to make the adjustment from sunlight easier for the eyes.

  Vast stretches of carpet suggested desert sands, and more walls of lava rock with its subtle shadings gave again the feeling that the outdoor environment of mountain and desert had been brought inside. Against one wall a huge abstract painting had been hung, its brilliant colors lending contrast to the desert hues.

  In spite of my resistance to Jason, I reacted with a sense of awe. “It’s stunning. Tremendously impressive.”

  He actually smiled again. “We’ll break you in a little at a time, so you can do us justice in your article. Let me show you around. First, though—a view.”

  We walked toward a gallery of paintings on the left, and when he turned me to face the big central room, I saw why. This was indeed a view!

  I seemed to look across the great room, not as though I gazed through a window, but as though I looked straight out into the panorama of desert and mountain. It was there, and the sweep of it was surely real,
even to the effect of what seemed to be sunlight flooding the wide scene from some radiant, hidden source.

  It was a diorama, of course, but I’d never seen one more effectively presented.

  “Yes!” I said. “That’s it exactly. It matches everything I remember.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I spoke half to myself, remembering. “One of the foster homes I stayed in when I was ten belonged to a woman—a widow—who’d grown up on a ranch in the Southwest. Mrs. Johnson told me endless stories about the desert, and about her life as a child—riding horses and all the rest. I loved to listen to her. I think she wanted to shut out the ugly neighborhood where she lived and remember the sun again. She gave me a feeling for the desert before I ever saw it.”

  Jason was watching me curiously, and when he spoke his tone had softened. “Come along and I’ll show you more,” he said.

  We crossed the central room to the National Science wing. Embraced by the diorama, it was again as if we stood in the open, with the desert stretching away under a blue California sky to bare mountains that rose in the distance. Nearby palm trees were real, as was the nearest stretch of sand, so that the demarcation between the real and the painted scene was hardly to be detected. Little desert animals seemed ready to dive into their holes, and the sense of far reaches was so convincing that I began to feel soothed and calmed, as though I really stood outdoors.

  “It’s strange,” I said. “When we drove through desert country coming here, I didn’t feel at home with it, as I’d expected to. It frightened me a little.”

  “That’s a natural reaction. Though with some people it never wears off. You either love the desert—or you hate it.”

  “I’m going to love it.”

  “Don’t be sure too quickly. It’s not a place for romantic notions. We leave all that to Palm Springs.”

  “Tell me about this.” I gestured toward the diorama.

  “All right—I’ll do my thing. This is the Coachella Valley—where we are—as it was before anything was built out here. It’s still this way when you leave the towns behind. There’s a lot of empty country—space—and I hope it stays that way. Man always has to pave and build and domesticate.”