The Gilded Life of Matilda Duplaine

by Alex Brunkhorst

  It came out of the sky, as if the question was flitting about with the rest of the birds in the aviary.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you still?”

  “That’s a bit of a trick question,” I said.

  “It seems to me it’s a yes-or-no question.”

  “Does it?” I asked. “I guess you’re not one for gray areas.”

  “Not when it pertains to love. You’re either in it or you’re not,” Carole said. “I’m guessing your love is the unrequited type.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Because those are the types that fade into gray. The other person has already killed it, but you hang on because you think the longer you keep it in your heart the longer it still breathes. Who is she?”

  “A girl from college.” It felt good to say it. Talking about Willa brought her to life again, and part of me wanted to hold that crisp memory of her forever. “She was supposed to be the one.”

  “‘Supposed to’ is a terrible phrase because it’s always followed by something nice that didn’t happen,” Carole said. “Were you good to her?”

  “Too good. It screwed up my life.”

  “Your life is too young to have screwed it up,” Carole said. “My mother always told me you were supposed to marry someone good to you. But you know what? That’s a lie. ‘Good to you’ never inspired me to be good in return.”

  Willa had left me easily it seemed, as easily as leaving a party that had run out of alcohol and grown dull, and for the first time I wondered if the problems between us had been as simple as I had thought.

  “I’m not one to give advice,” she began, but in fact, she was. “Be careful. I know this—” Carole meant the aviary, the estate, the group of people sipping dessert drinks in the conservatory “—can be very intoxicating, but everything has its price, Thomas. You’ll get charged without knowing it, and you won’t know the price until the bill comes in the mail.”

  “Are you saying I can’t afford it?”

  “I make twenty million a picture and I can’t afford it.”

  The conversation had turned dark all of a sudden. A canary flew into Carole’s pale palm. She touched its matted yellow back, and then the canary flew away, toward a feathery green plant.

  “So what are you suggesting I do?” I asked. “Walk away?”

  “I’m saying be careful. I wish someone had warned me when I was younger. But no one did.”

  She stared at herself in the glass for a moment, and then she turned out the lights and the aviary went dark.

  “Come, Malcolm, you sweet dog.” Malcolm did as Carole ordered, and the three of us walked toward the mansion.

  Through the leaded glass I saw David, Lily and Emma hovering near the bar laughing, huddled together like schoolgirls sharing a secret. George was off to the side typing into his phone, and by the clip at which his fingers were moving I suspected he was tending to a work crisis. Only Charles looked toward the windows.

  * * *

  The butler helped Lily into a black shrug.

  “Goodbye, dear,” Carole said to Lily. “Let me know if you find anything for the aviary. The lack of pillows is driving Charles to drink.” Carole then focused on me. “Good night, Thomas. I enjoyed our conversation.”

  “I did, too,” I said, walking into the brisk night, where two drivers waited in the motor court and George’s car purred.

  Once inside the car, Lily turned to me. “What did you and Carole speak about?”

  “A press junket she’s doing for her next movie,” I lied, because I wasn’t a guy who betrayed confidences, and I was under the distinct impression my conversation with Carole was the off-the-record sort.

  “I should have figured as much. She’s very self-absorbed, you know. Actresses always are. And she can’t be trusted. She spends so much time acting she can’t differentiate truth from reality anymore.”

  “Can you blame her? Being someone else for ten hours a day may muddle things a bit.”

  “That’s no excuse,” Lily said. She fingered her bracelet, a series of ivory pyramids bound together by gold. I had noticed Lily had a habit of touching her jewels, stroking them like talismans. “Don’t spend another second thinking of Carole. What is it the psychiatrists call it? Narcissistic extension. The more you think about her, the more she’ll think of herself.”

  In fact Lily might have been thinking of Carole, but I wasn’t—not per se. Instead I was thinking of our haunting conversation. My guard was up, but what could they want from me? I was a waiter standing in front of them with an empty tray. I could offer them nothing.

  “By the way,” Lily said, as she intently stared down at her wrist and twisted her pyramids into symmetry, “George is going to be phoning you. Look out for his call.”

  “Thanks.” I could only assume that George’s call would bring something good—a story, a scoop, a party invitation.

  We dropped Lily off. Kurt drove me out through the pillars of Bel-Air, and we then passed by the mansions on Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills. Eventually, we made our way to the other side of town—the part where I lived.

  I thought again of Carole’s forecast, and I wondered if it had come too late.

  Nine

  George called me two days later, asking if I would cover an album launch. The artist happened to be one of the most famous pop stars in the world, and the album was a surefire catapult to number one. The story included an exclusive interview worthy of a Rolling Stone cover. At the end of the conversation George happened to mention that the gang was leaving on separate holidays that afternoon. Emma and George were heading to Wyoming for some rest and relaxation on their horse ranch. David was flying to London on his plane for a series of meetings, and the others were “hitching a ride”—George’s term, not mine—as if David’s plane was no different from climbing into the backseat of a buddy’s convertible on the way to a party.

  It sounded like a case of meticulous planning. David would first drop Carole and Charles off in New York where they kept a pied-à-terre—more specifically, a five-thousand-square-foot prewar brownstone on Fifth and Eighty-Second. David would then stop in Martha’s Vineyard, where Lily was embarking on an off-season remodel of her summer home. Finally, David would fly across the pond to London, and the same exacting flight plan would occur in reverse ten days later.

  Within minutes of hanging up, I received a phone call from a private number.

  “Thomas, love, it’s Lily.”

  “Hello, Lily,” I said. “Shouldn’t you be at the airport?”

  “How did you know?” she asked with a hint of paranoia.

  “George phoned me and mentioned you were leaving today.”

  “Oh, good,” she declared with a sigh of relief. “I’m glad you’re communicating with George. He adores you. It’s good for you at the paper. And, yes, to answer your question, I absolutely should be at the airport. David’s going to have my head. He hates it when his schedule is disrupted, particularly with that god-awful stop at Teterboro. I do love Carole, but she’s so selfish sometimes. If she weren’t so cheap she would stop glomming off David and buy her own plane already.”

  I didn’t know Carole well, but judging by her roughly hundred million dollars in residential real estate holdings and her affinity for off-the-runway fashion, I wouldn’t have pegged her as cheap.

  “The reason I’m phoning—and I do realize this is very last-minute—is that Kurt’s mother in Taiwan is very ill, so he has to leave for Asia unexpectedly. I was hoping you might consider house-sitting for me.”

  I immediately fast-forwarded to the near future: I was lounging in Lily’s grand living room, sipping tea while writing.

  “I’m in such a bind,” Lily added. “It’s terribly dangerous to leave a house in LA vacant for ten days. I know someth
ing dreadful will happen, Thomas.”

  “Of course. I think I can make that work,” I said, I hoped not too eagerly.

  “Delightful. I owe you a huge favor in return. Pick whatever you’d like, but you don’t have to answer now,” Lily said, ironically, since my life had been replete with favors from Lily Goldman. “Kurt will deliver the gate opener and key to your office, and if you need anything while I’m away, don’t hesitate to go to David’s. His staff is incredibly attentive.”

  I again fast-forwarded: I was already imagining excuses—however flimsy—to visit David’s estate in hopes I’d see the girl again.

  “That’s all you need to know,” Lily declared. “You went to Harvard—you can figure out the rest. Now I must go or I’ll be flying commercial to the Vineyard, which would be an absolute nightmare or may be impossible for all I know. Au revoir.”

  Less than fifteen minutes after Lily’s phone call, I received a summons from the front desk informing me that I had a delivery. A square and oversize linen envelope was waiting for me, my full name written on the front in a prim and feminine penmanship. It was the type of envelope that should have been sliced with a silver letter cutter, but I tore it open.

  There was a clicker and a single key and no accompanying note.

  * * *

  I left my apartment in Silver Lake and drove through the now-familiar white pillars of Bel-Air.

  When I arrived at Lily’s, I pointed the clicker at the gate—covered in so many wildflowers it had nearly disappeared—and I drove up the steep driveway, past Lily’s own smaller version of David’s oak tree.

  I walked through the twelve-foot French doors into the foyer. The house was cold and dark. Unlike my previous visit, there was no fire crackling in the fireplace and no gentle opera music filling the air.

  The guest bedroom had been set up with a silver pitcher on one side of the bed and a glass bottle of Evian and crystal glass beside it. The towels were not only laundered but appeared to be brand-new. A jasmine candle sat on a writing desk.

  I took a hot shower before lying in bed. The leaded glass windows overlooked giant specimen trees lit by the moon, and the breeze cast odd, ever-changing shadows over the grounds. Lying there, staring at those trees, I thought once again that I had walked into a fairy tale, and I was a hero on someone else’s pages.

  * * *

  Two days into my house-sitting assignment, I was already growing restless. That evening, as Bel-Air’s soft sunlight was fading, I transcribed my interview with George’s artist in anticipation of the album that was dropping on Tuesday.

  Despite being a journalist, I had prided myself on never being the snoopy sort. The private corners of others’ lives were strictly off-limits.

  I don’t know if it was the eerie quiet that made me do it, or the feeling, however oblique, that I was so close to a story that I could feel its breath on my neck. Whatever the case, I walked down the hall to Lily’s bedroom and tried the hefty antique latch, almost hoping it was locked.

  It wasn’t.

  I first looked for video cameras, but there were none. Lily’s writing desk was spare: three perfectly sharp writing pencils rested in a hollowed-out tusk, monogrammed paper sat lonely in a drawer. The only other object was a silver-framed photo of a thirtysomething Lily and her father eating lunch at an outdoor café in Europe. Lily wore an oversize scarf in her hair and stared up at her father, as if he could solve any problem the world threw her way. Joel, on the other hand, leaned into the photographer aggressively, staking his claim on the photo the way powerful men put their mark on everything.

  I moved away from the desk to two bedside tables. One held a silver pitcher and a crystal glass. The drawers were empty.

  A wall of wood-paneled doors served as Lily’s closet. Inside were dresses so delicate I was afraid my fingers would disintegrate the fabric if I touched them. Their labels read Chanel, Valentino and Yves Saint Laurent. Handbags in Hermès boxes were piled high, and shoes were arranged according to color. The closet smelled of fine leather and lilacs.

  I was ready to close the doors and retreat to my bedroom when a man’s suit caught my eye. I pulled the suit off the hanger. The inside pocket was monogrammed with the initials JG. It had belonged to Lily’s father.

  I felt the urge to try it on. I slipped on the coat and glanced at myself in Lily’s full-length mirror, feeling vaguely empowered by wearing a jacket that belonged to the most powerful man in the history of the movie business.

  When I pulled the jacket off, I felt something in the interior pocket. I reached in and pulled out a key and a letter. The key was a single one, dangling from a key chain with a handwritten tab that said “Honolulu” in a man’s quick hand. As for the letter, it was written on the powder-blue lightweight airmail stationary of its day and postmarked Cap d’Antibes, France. There was no date. It said:

  Dear Daddy,

  I am sending this to the studio in hopes Mommy doesn’t read it, as God knows she has had enough to deal with in recent months.

  You have left a mess of things in France, a much bigger mess than you realize. I need to return to the States for my wedding and to a fiancé who is waiting for the same, but I cannot do so before you come back here. This isn’t one of your movies, Father, this is real life. There are not a bevy of directors, writers, actors, designers and editors to set this film. It is yours alone.

  Please telegraph me when you have received this along with a definite arrival date, at which point I will pick you up at the station.

  Despite all of it, with much love still,

  Lily

  Deception begets deception.

  Four days after I discovered the letter, I found myself in Lily’s grand living room, staring at a lonely Saturday. It was one of those days distractions had no appeal, but the alternative, sitting home alone waiting for dusk to descend, had even less. Stories were in, deadlines struck. I sat in a stiff-backed armchair sipping a tea and reading the morning paper—more specifically, my article on George’s pop star. It was a gold mine of a story because the star was typically elusive and press-shy but in this case he had opened himself up to me like a book.

  I finished reading the story and looked outside. It had ceased raining for a transitory moment, and I could see a sliver of brightness between the clouds.

  The iridescent sky was enticing. I grabbed a bath towel and walked outside up wooden steps to the grassy pad that held Lily’s swimming pool. The air was wet but warm.

  The pool resembled that of the Blooms’. Long strands of thin grass drooped into the pool’s muddy walls, and the water’s tint was green rather than the vivid sky blue one expects from a swimming pool. Everything around the pool was wet. Fabric chairs had soupy middles to them, and concrete and wood were soaked. A large damp wooden structure sat beside the pool, and it covered a fireplace, a few half-burned logs in its center.

  A heart-shaped cocoon of a hornet’s nest rested in the trees, and wasps were everywhere. The nest might have arrived by accident, but I suspected it was now here on purpose. I could imagine Lily’s staff informing her of the hornets, and Lily trudging up the hill, examining it closely—because she seemed scared of nothing—and then, in appreciation for its natural beauty, a beauty even she couldn’t manufacture at her shop, instructing the staff to leave it.

  I jumped in the pool without as much as dipping my toe because, despite days of cold rain and a strong chance this pool had never been swum in, I had no doubt that Lily insisted the water be kept warm.

  The water felt good.

  My strength as a journalist was reading and interpreting other people, so I was befuddled why I hadn’t been able to piece together this mosaic of clues to create a clear picture.

  I thought about the letter that had gnawed at me for days, and then there was the photograph still sitting in between the pages of my note
book. I thought about Lily—who lived alone in this big house with dead ivy crawling up its walls, about a wedding that was supposed to happen but never had.

  As I toweled off, I remembered the strange encounter I’d had with Carole the night of the dinner party. There was something about those birds in the glass aviary that was foreboding and sad. They could fly, but they had no sky. The one who had escaped—the homing pigeon—was mourned, but shouldn’t he have been celebrated? He had freedom; he had escaped his predictable route between Malibu and Bel-Air and was now flying in bigger and brighter skies, with a flight plan that was spontaneous and new.

  And then there was the girl: I had forced myself to forget her but was only successful for an hour or two, and then she would creep back in, the way a spider returns to a musty corner of a room to spin her web.

  My love for Willa remained long after she had gone, as water continues to ripple in the wake of a disturbance. I thought of Willa constantly, but I never called her after she had left me. The timing never seemed perfect, the event not glamorous enough to invite her to, and there was always tomorrow.

  Likewise, it had been three weeks since I had seen the girl on the tennis court, and life was again leading to that dangerous and nebulous place of gray. The girl captivated my thoughts, yet I hadn’t made any attempt to see her again. I was beginning to realize something about myself: I preferred to live in hope than take a risk—a risk that may have quashed it.

  I needed to change that.

  I walked inside, tossed the towel into the washing machine and decided I would take a gamble. It was a quick toss of the dice, a snap decision. Sometimes the impetuous bets can be the best ones. Throw a few bucks on a derby long shot, and you may defy those odds and emerge a winner. I wasn’t sure if this was the case here, but I was ready to step up to the proverbial table and test my luck.

  I put on a dress shirt and pants and prepared to take the few blocks’ drive to the house that belonged to David Duplaine.