“I bet it was one of them druggies,” the quarterback said. “The bastard had to be strung out on some pretty bad shit to do what he did to that kid.”
“I just can’t fathom such cruelty,” said another one of the regulars, an editor of a fashion magazine, “coming from a woman. We’re simply not capable of it.”
There had been a lull in the storm. The rain rustled like taffeta skirts. It was eerie, as though Dulcie Mariah were just outside, peeking in on us, wrapped in the wide, diaphanous scarf she’d worn on her last album cover. She’d been pregnant with Charlie in that picture. Even though I didn’t have a stereo, I’d bought it. It was up in my room right now, still in its cellophane wrapper. “DULCIE: Knocked Up—Knocked Out.”
“She couldn’t have, she wouldn’t have,” Dudley said, to no one in particular. “There’s no reason. No motive.”
Blackmoor shifted slightly on the bench. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “Dulcie was always searching for the ultimate high.”
“That’s outrageous!” Geoffrey cried in his best your-honor-I-object voice.
Dudley cut him off. “Let me get this straight.” He turned away from Dane Blackmoor, playing to the crowd. “You think once the party started winding down, Dulcie got bored, and—on the prowl for something new and exciting—she suddenly thought”—a snap of his fingers—“hey, why don’t I just go wake up Charlie, and bash in the little bastard’s head?”
“I can’t say whether she did it alone,” Blackmoor replied, “or somebody else did, and she just stood by. What matters is, it happened.”
“Buy why?” Dudley asked shrilly. “Why would she kill her own kid?”
“He was an innocent. For some people”—again, that telepathic locking of the eyes, Dane’s to Dudley’s, as if to say for people like Dulcie, and you, and me—“innocence is a mirror. What it reflects isn’t easy to take.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about but somehow I had the feeling it went way beyond the Mariah trial, that it had to do with both of them, and my mother, and maybe even me. I thought about The Story…my Real Father…all those endless, silly plots. Looking at these two men’s faces now, I realized I was not ready for nonfiction. Not tonight. Maybe not ever.
I tried to stand up, but Blackmoor took my hand. “Faced with innocence,” he said, looking steadily at Dudley, “such people only have two choices.” He pressed my palm to his mouth, a gesture that was something less than a kiss. His lips were dry, his five-o’clock shadowed chin pricked me. “We can kill it. Or we can corrupt it.”
It was one of those moments played out in a time zone where every second is a dog’s year—just Blackmoor holding my hand staring at Dudley staring at Blackmoor holding my hand staring at Dudley staring at Blackmoor. Finally, Dane released me. “Of course,” he said, “I’m not sure that killing isn’t the kinder way to go.”
I’d never seen a volcano erupt, but I’d swear this was what Mt. Vesuvius had been like, just before it blew. I pictured us frozen this way—Geoffrey Nash, his Tom Collins glass to his lips. Sherrie, legs tucked up, panties showing; the football player’s thick brow drawn up in concentration, as though wondering who to tackle first—every last one preserved mid-breath, for all eternity, as the lightning-swift current of molten wrath washed over us, turning our suspended silence into ashes. I saw Dudley’s lips draw together dangerously, cheeks inflating—and I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll—
But he never did.
Because that was the precise moment the man came crashing through the window.
SEVEN
Focused as we were on the unfolding parlor drama, the man’s entrance seemed all the more fantastic. It took a few seconds for my brain to register that—no, the explosion hadn’t come from Dudley, but from another part of the room altogether, a corner window through which a human projectile sailed, finally coming to rest, in a heap, on the Aubusson carpet, camera straps twisting around his neck like a noose.
Of course, I recognized the lump of brown polyester immediately. I could have said so, but I saved my breath. There were too many outcries, too many people talking all at once. Only Blackmoor seemed disinterested, which was ironic, because he was the reason the flying paparazzo had performed his feat of daring in the first place, as unsuccessful as it proved to be.
The football player and the country-music singer hunkered over the guy, two angry bulls pawing the carpet, steam coming from their noses, no doubt grateful for the opportunity to show off in front of Sherrie. Quite amazingly—especially because I’d nosed through every inch of the room and I couldn’t imagine where it was hidden—Dudley had produced a small, elegant revolver.
“Don’t shoot me.” The man cowered, clutching his camera to his chest. “I’m not a burglar, I’m a photographer.” His eyes lit on me. “I just wanted to get a shot of Blackmoor. Ask the kid.”
Once again I found myself the center of unwanted attention. “I—I saw him hanging around outside a few weeks ago,” I stammered. “I told him to get lost, or we’d call the police.”
“Which is exactly what we’re going to do,” Dudley said, training the gun just below the man’s sagging belt line. Geoffrey Nash picked up the phone.
Dane Blackmoor stood up and stretched. On his way out of the drawing room he looked down at the frightened photographer, put an imaginary camera up to his eyes, and made a click-click sound with his tongue. Then, flashing enough teeth to pass for a smile, he headed for the door.
The captive photographer sat sullenly on a small wooden chair, press card in hand, waiting for the cops to come and rescue him. His sudden arrival had acted as a high-pressure weather front, pushing Blackmoor’s stormy presence out to sea and leaving a party atmosphere in its wake. Everyone was mixing fresh drinks and talking. Sherrie sat on the arm of Dudley’s chair, stroking the barrel of his fine gun.
Instinct told me this would be a good time to disappear. I didn’t bother to say goodnight. No one would miss me, and I hoped Dudley would be sufficiently distracted by Sherrie’s sculpted lemon-ice profile, the gun, the gin, and the trespasser to forget that I’d figured—although how or why I still wasn’t sure—in tonight’s aborted mutiny.
I slinked out, running into Cilda, carrying a silver platter of fruit. “You in big trouble wit me, lady,” she hissed.
“Leave me alone,” I told her wearily. “I’m sick.”
She stopped hissing and started fussing. “Wait in the kitchen,” she ordered. “I got me a good root for the burn.”
“I need some air.” I bolted out the front door, off the porch, and down into the bushes, where I threw up twice. For a few minutes I just stood there, in the shrubbery, on wobbly legs. The rhododendrons were black and wet with rain. I pressed a big, dripping leaf to my face, wiping first my mouth, then my cheeks and eyelids. The burn on my legs had seeped into my bones and turned them to scorched rubber. My throat ached from vomiting. Tomorrow I’d catch hell from Cilda, and probably Dudley, too, but it didn’t matter.
Inside the house, the phantom pianist was playing a song I’d heard on the radio. I remembered that it was from a new Broadway musical called Hair. Cathy had said she wanted to see it because the actors took off all their clothes onstage. Humming softly, I began to sway. The motion sent showers of rain down from the bushes. Fairy cups of water sploshed off of leaves, onto my head, and down my shoulders. My hands moved independently, unbuttoning my damp dress and letting it fall to the ground. My underwear looked glow-in-the-dark white.
Sa-ba-si-be-sa-ba
I twirled around until I was dizzy, feeling powerless to stop—around and around, Saint-Vitus-dancing, half-naked through the wet garden. The stiff points of leaves and stems and branches flogged me, saturating my thin undershirt and panties.
Police sirens shrieked in the distance on their way to apprehend the peeping paparazzo. They were coming, and I had no clothes on.
It’ll be okay, I told myself. The guests are in the drawing room. Cilda’s in the kitchen. All
you have to do is tuck your dress under your arm, and calmly walk up the steps. Then open the big front door, climb the center staircase, and keep going until you get to your room. No one would see me. No one would ever know that I’d thrown up and danced in the garden in my underwear. I’d wrap myself in a robe, slide between the sheets, and fall instantly asleep.
The cop cars were getting closer.
Move it, Garner, I ordered myself, just move. Surprisingly, my body obeyed. I emerged from the bushes, sopping wet, dress balled up in the palm of my hand. Steps first. Fine. Then the porch. Easy. Now the door.
A whisper ruffled the darkness. “We have to talk,” Blackmoor said softly. “Tomorrow.”
I froze for a moment, my back to him, so achingly, humiliatingly exposed. The sirens were approaching fast.
“Sleep well, Garnish,” he called. They were like a blown kiss, those words.
I pushed the door open and fled.
EIGHT
But by the morning he was gone, and he didn’t come back. At least not right away.
To compound matters, the trial wasn’t going well, and Dudley began staying in New York during the weekends. One by one, the houseguests dispersed to other haunts—places where there were more laughs, less tension—until finally only an eccentric down-at-the-heels painter remained. I never knew his name, although he often talked to me, beginning each sentence in the middle, picking up the conversation exactly where it had been left off. He was always the first one in the dining room, eating every meal as if it were his last, rolling hunks of food into the table napkins and tucking them into his shirt with palsied, paint-stained hands.
Except for him, and Cilda, and the household staff, I was alone. I wondered how I’d stood it before, the life I lived here. Mornings in the kitchen. Sneaking off to the beach. Talking to Pete. Arguing with Cilda. The kitchen, the beach again. Had it always been this dreary?
Just to have something to do, I followed Cathy around while she changed the sheets. “If these ole bedsprings could talk, huh?” she said, tucking a fresh pillowcase under her chin.
“What do you mean?”
She slipped the pillow inside, tossing it against the headboard with a little spank. “This was Dane Blackmoor’s room, silly.” She touched the mattress, hissing as though she’d gotten burned. “The guy was hot.” She sat down on the bed. “Wanna know a secret?”
I did. I really did.
“I came in here one morning, late, knocked and everything,” she whispered excitedly. “And there he was sittin’ in that chair, with his shirt off, drinking whiskey. So I go, real sweet, ‘Oh, Mr. Blackmoor, I didn’t know you was here, I’ll come back later,’ and he goes, ‘Oh, that’s okay,’ and he holds out a glass, and he goes, ‘Care to join me?’—you know, with that voice—I mean, I almost wet myself.”
“What’d you do?” (With my father.) I asked, very cool.
“What’d you think?” Cathy laughed.
“So what happened?” (With my father.)
“Not a helluva lot,” she sighed. “Just then the bitch with the tits walked in.” I had to get out of that room, had to stop Cathy from going on and on—picture it, Dane Blackmoor, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, and a bed, whoa, whoa, whoa…
“Ga’ner! Ga’ner Quinn!” Cilda called from downstairs.
Thank you, God.
I took the steps two at a time, hoping to shake loose the chokehold of emotions around my throat. Maybe having Dane Blackmoor as a father wasn’t such a great idea. For the rest of that day whenever I had a thought about him, I tried to drive it out of my mind. But by the following evening the bleakness of my situation hit me dead-on. I needed the comfort of The Story to get me through the long days and nights.
So what if he drinks too much? I asked myself. He’s a sculptor, a creative mind. He probably did it for inspiration. That he did it for inspiration with the teenaged help was a bit of a stretch; but then, Cathy had walked in on him. My spirits surged. I imagined the dawn of a new era in kitchen gossip. With a nudge from me, Cathy might talk some more about Blackmoor. Just the idea of hearing his name from another person’s lips was thrilling. That, and my daily fix of the trial in the newspapers would be enough to make life almost worth living.
Around the beginning of August, the headlines took a turn for the worse—NEW EVIDENCE IN MARIAH TRIAL, NANNY SAYS MARIAH WAS NO MOM, SEX, DRUGS, AND ROCK ’N’ ROLL KILLED CHARLIE. Except for one hour on Sunday evenings, I was not allowed to watch television, so every morning in the kitchen I pumped Cathy for information.
“They say she never took no interest in that child,” she said, thoughtfully sipping a Coca-Cola. “That once, when he was crying, she said to the guy in her band—”
“Ben Slater?”
“The cute one, with the moustache—”
“Ben Slater.”
“Yeah, him. One of the backup singers heard Dulcie telling him to give the kid a hit of something to shut him up permanently.” Outrage and Cover Girl Flamenco Ice eye shadow battled for domination of Cathy’s eyes. “Can you believe it?”
Margaret grunted, “Rich bitch. They’re all the same.”
“What else?”
Cathy considered for a minute. “Well, they showed the people going out the courthouse, and guess who was there? Roger Daltrey and Neil Young. Swear to God!—I mean, can you imagine sitting in court right next to Roger Daltrey? I’d cream my pants.”
I didn’t know who Roger Daltrey was. “Was anybody else there you knew?”
Cathy rolled her eyes. “Lawyer types, I dunno.” She shrugged. “Mr. Quinn kept saying how they were gonna prove the witness wasn’t reliable. Then he put his arm around her, and they got into a big stretch limousine.” Cathy shot a knowing glance to Margaret.
Her, I supposed, was Dulcie Mariah. But what the knowing glance was for I didn’t find out until later.
NINE
The following Friday Dulcie Mariah came home with Dudley for the first time. I was asleep when they arrived. When, the next morning, Cilda made me go outside to play so I wouldn’t wake “the lady,” I assumed her to be just another in the long line of Dudley’s blond companions, and did as I was told.
Pete was raking the gravel in the drive. “Hey, starstruck,” he called, “seen Dulcie Mariah yet?”
“Dulcie Mariah?”
He kept raking. “Whatsa matter, ain’t she up?”
I ran into the kitchen. Margaret was having her cup of coffee. She didn’t like anyone, except maybe Cathy, talking to her while she was having her cup of coffee. “Is it true?” I asked breathlessly. “Dulcie Mariah is here?”
“Rich bitch,” sipped Margaret. A definite yes.
Later I saw her with my own eyes. She came down the stairs with Dudley at dinnertime, looking as though she’d just gotten out of bed. Her hair, so pale it looked silver, appeared to have been hacked instead of cut, and there were things stuck in it, long slender needles with enamel beads on the end, clips as big as rodent traps. But nothing—not the fringe of greasy bangs, the soiled camisole, or her dirty bare feet—took away from the splendid beauty of the woman. I glanced down at my perfectly ironed, spotlessly clean cotton dress and wanted to die.
“This is Garner,” Dudley said, adding exultantly, “and this is Cilda.”
The famous half-moon grin broke out onto Dulcie’s face. “What a pleasure,” she said, with a little curtsy that was somehow not mocking. They walked into the dining room. Cilda brought the sliding pocket doors together, cutting off the view and reminding me that, until further notice, I’d be eating in the kitchen.
After that first time, I was to see Dulcie Mariah only twice, although she spent many weekends at the beach house. Dudley opened up the largest adjoining bedrooms as a suite for his guest. Special linen was shipped in from an exclusive shop in Manhattan; and the list of what Miss Mariah would and would not eat made Margaret even crankier than usual.
I wondered where her husband, C. J. Stratten, was, and why he never accompanied his wife
on these jaunts. Once I even asked Dudley.
“She’s tired, Garner. She needs to be away from everything,” he told me, adding, “And I don’t want you pestering her, you hear?”
When I told Cilda how Dudley had answered my question about Mr. Stratten, she just laughed. “Tired? What’s that one tired of, except maybe ’aving an ’usband on ’er back?” I noticed that while Dudley’s guests always fawned over Cilda, she was seldom won over. Dulcie would not prove an exception.
I remained on constant Mariah-alert, loitering in the upstairs hall, in the foyer, outside the dining room. When I was chased away, I set up a chair on the lawn below Dulcie’s rooms, hoping to catch a glimpse of her at the windows. But the drapes stayed drawn from morning till night.
After weeks of dogged vigilance, she turned up in the least likely place of all.
It was about four o’clock, a Saturday. Light rain had forced me back from the beach early. I climbed the stairs to my room, bored and disheartened, peeling off my sundress as I went, stripping down to my dowdy bathing suit. As soon as I opened the door, I smelled it—a sweet, pungent fragrance, which Cathy called eau de pot.
Dulcie Mariah stood, her back to me, looking at the bookshelves. If she heard me come in, she didn’t show it. She just kept studying everything, the botanical prints on the wide moiré sashes, the ruffled curtains, the jewelry box painted with rosebuds.
“Very girlish.” She broke into that ripe watermelon of a smile. I wasn’t sure whether she referred to the decor or my bathing suit. Without another word she brushed past me, the tiny bells on her long print skirt tinkling.
She’d left me a souvenir. The “Knocked Up—Knocked Out” album was on my pillow. Dulcie Mariah had autographed the cover with my brand-new Bonne Belle eyebrow pencil: “To Garner, xxx Dulcie,” the Xs scrawled across her pregnant belly.
I picked up the record. The neat cellophane wrapper had been slit.
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