“Did I ever?”
“Who remembers? Let’s hear how you came by the fucker.”
Linc explained about his TBM being shot out from under him, his rescue, and the Japanese medic. When talking to his father, Marylin noted, he fell into an atypical loud archness. And Joshua became a caricature of himself, benevolent yet boomingly profane. The masculine rivalry between the reunited pair tangled deep into the roots of their obvious love.
Percy set out platters of smoked salmon and whitefish, of crimson corned beef and warm pastrami—fatted calf, Beverly Hills style. Afterward he lugged in Ann Fernauld’s heavy Georgian tea set, which was removed from its place on the sideboard only on state occasions, while Coraleen bore in a richly fragrant offering from her own hands, small caramelized coffee cakes that had been kneaded and baked within the hour. “I remembered how crazy you were about these, Linc.”
Joshua speared a pecan-rich pastry onto Linc’s plate. “Jesus H. Christ, can you believe it, can any of you believe it? It’s as if all the mystic Catholic bullshit my mother believed in has come to pass—Kyrie eleison, Gloria in excelsis deo! My son returned unto me.” This was as close as he had come to mentioning Linc’s prolonged absence. He had drunk and eaten heavily, as if fueling his fevered pleasure. (Marylin, like Linc, had eaten practically nothing.) “And by God, you’ve beaten me at my own game, won yourself the Pulitzer.”
“How long do you figure it would take a roomful of monkeys to type Hamlet?”
“None of that modesty crap. Linc, work like Island is never accidental. Don’t tell me, I know.” He faked a punch in the direction of Linc’s jaw. The servants left, and Joshua continued in the same unrestrained, endlessly voluble strain.
The evasions boomed unbearable against Marylin’s ears. “Joshua, did you get my telegram?” she asked quietly. “Let me explain—”
“Sure I got the wire,” Joshua interrupted with a stagy chortle. “Believe you me, flying the coop like that was a stroke of genius! It’s about time you showed a little temperament. Angelpuss, haven’t I told you over and over that you let those bastards work your ass too hard? You’re always too damn willing to please, so naturally they take you for granted. Well, this has set Art Garrison back on his heels. We aren’t friends anymore, but I say this without spite or malice. The dwarf’s a roaring little bully. It’s time he had another think about you. Suspension, hell! The squeaky wheel gets greased. Shouldn’t be surprised if Leland won’t get him to tear up the old slave contract and write you a new one. Hell, you’re a star. Let ’em pay you like one.”
“Last June,” Linc said, “I went to see Marylin at the stu—”
Joshua jumped to his feet. “Great God!” He slapped his forehead. “We’ve forgotten Beej! She doesn’t know! Linc, she’ll kill me. Beej’s married, Mrs. Maury Morrison. Maury’s the sweetest guy, in his last year of law school. Those two stinkers, they’ve made an old granddad out of me. Wait until you get a load of the infant—Annie’s the spit of your mother.”
He crossed the hall to the den, from whence they could hear him announcing to BJ that her older brother was alive, yes, dammit, alive.
Linc pushed away his coffee cup. There was a new vertical line between his eyebrows. “I didn’t think I’d feel so much, seeing Dad,” he said. “Love and the whole bag.”
“We have to tell him when he gets back.”
“He knows, Marylin, he knows. Poor old Dad, he hasn’t changed one iota. He’s going to bull his way through.”
“Linc!” Joshua roared from the hall telephone. “Come say hello to your sister. The brat’s convinced I’ve slipped my tether.”
The house filled quickly. First came BJ and her husband, Maury, sandy-haired and tall, with Annie, who though teething and drooly, did remarkably resemble her maternal grandmother. A brace of Linc’s wealthy Cotter cousins. BJ’s in-laws. Y. Frank Freeman, big boss at Paramount. Leland Hayward, Humphrey Bogart, and a swarm of Joshua’s other friends.
Joshua forced celebratory drinks on everyone, and loud laughter spilled through the big den and sunroom onto the brightness of the pool deck. Trimly uniformed cateresses began passing hot hors d’oeuvres while the extended dining table was being set up as a buffet. Though Marylin had become accustomed to these lavish impromptu gatherings, her weary mind kept shifting back and forth between the present and that long-ago Beverly Hills wake. She forced herself into the role of hostess.
BJ, Maury, and Joshua stayed close to Linc. Women fell on him, reddening his cheeks with lipstick, men clapped his shoulders. Marylin heard endless congratulations on the Pulitzer for Island. She heard eerily few probes into his delayed postwar return home—it was almost as if the force of Joshua’s will were silencing such questions.
This was the first time Marylin had viewed Linc in the Beverly Hills surroundings that were his birthright. He was at the same time more charming and more brittle, his face showing tension and a light gloss of sweat.
Billy veered around the adults, constantly darting back to squander his supply of riddles on his newfound brother—not a mere kid like everybody else’s brother, but a regular grown-up.
The crowd grew.
Finally, around five, right after Roy and NolaBee arrived, Marylin felt she would quite literally expire if she remained another minute in this high-decibel mob scene. Without excusing herself, she escaped up the curving staircase, kicking off her high heeled pumps to stretch fully clothed on the elaborately quilted, raw-silk bedspread.
She slept heavily.
The sound of the door opening awoke her. It was dark outside, but otherwise she had no sense whatsoever of the time. The sounds of revelry continued unabated. Joshua fumbled for the light, closing the door, moving unsteadily toward their bed.
“Took a nap,” she murmured.
The bed springs bounced her as he sprawled heavily on the mattress next to her. He brought into the cool room the smell of expensive cigars, liquor, overspiced food.
“My angelpuss,” he muttered.
Reaching both arms around her, he roughly pressed one heavy leg between hers. Then he was pulling up her skirt, which sleep had rucked. For a moment she was too startled to realize his intention.
“No,” she said, sharp.
“Yes, I say goddamn yes.” His words were slurred, but his movements were iron-strong. He yanked roughly at her silk panties.
“Stop!” she cried.
But she was a tiny woman and his muscles were thick and strong from tennis and swimming daily laps.
Marylin, struggling, could not believe in Joshua’s metamorphosis. Never, even when totally swacko, had he forced himself on her. She hit at his face.
With a grunt, he rammed his knee upward into her crotch.
The agony blinded her.
For a moment she saw nothing but darting white lights; then his face came back into focus. The big features were loose, animal. He lurched his body onto hers.
“No,” she whimpered. “No.”
But a hot, sweaty, implacable two hundred and fifty pounds crushed down.
As Joshua forced entry into that terrible ache he had just inflicted, she screamed, and her scream became part of the hubbub. I hate you, I hate you: the thought seared her brain with each thrust.
He fell away from her. “You’re mine.” His slurring voice came from deep within his barrel chest. “Gonna stay mine.”
“I love Linc . . . you’ve known that always.”
He pushed from her, hoisting himself off the bed, staggering to the dresser. Small objects clinked and thudded as he emptied out her purse. He held up a gleaming object that through her teary blur she recognized as Linc’s ring.
“See this? Take a last look, for we are about to bury it in the ocean deep, where it belongs.”
He stumbled into the bathroom. She heard a splash, and then the toilet flushed.
Returning to the room, he teetered over the bed. “Mine,” he sobbed, and toppled down. Almost immediately, snores burst from him.
; She sat on the edge of the bed gathering strength to move. She loathed Joshua with all her wounded, violated body, all her enfeebled, spinning brain. Her one thought was to escape her husband’s house.
37
Roy sat on the stairs balancing a plate of beef Stroganoff and endive salad; on the step below her were the half-empty dishes that BJ and Maury had deposited a minute ago when Willie Wyler had called them to come have one of those new instant Polaroid snapshots taken with Linc.
Sitting like this, her full, cerise striped skirt draped around her, her soft pink wool blouse tucked into the cinched waistband, her makeup purposefully light, her brown curls cropped in a stylish new poodle cut, Roy was charming. If there had not been the inevitable comparisons with Marylin’s ethereal loveliness, people would have called her a looker. As it was, she dwelt eternally in the shade. She considered herself plain, untalented, and, God knows, no brain.
Years ago, when she had told Althea Cunningham that she wanted to be ordinary, she had meant it with her whole heart, and since then the ordinary had become her hazy, unattainable fata morgana. To Roy, her KayZee sorority sisters possessed the glamour of unflappable normality, so she had bent every effort toward becoming like the others. But she never could suppress herself. Enthusiasm, like her brown curls, burst out all over the place. This inability to fit into the pillared chapter house she attributed not to any lack of the sorority, but to her own unworthiness.
Unlike the majority of her House, she had not trapped herself a returned veteran, but on graduation last January, she had landed a good job. If one stretched it, one could call it a career. Mr. and Mrs. Fineman, who owned Patricia’s, a tony women’s specialty shop on South Beverly Drive, had hired her to do the books and help out the secretary. Patricia’s clientele were the wealthiest women in Beverly Hills, and they expected skilled advice about their fashion dilemmas. After two months, the Finemans had allowed Roy to wait on a few of these exacting ladies. She discovered a flair for putting together Dior’s New Look on young second wives. The Finemans, who liked her, had rewarded her with two raises.
Slight reverberations warned Roy that somebody was descending the stairs, and she pushed BJ and Maury’s plates out of the way before turning to see it was her sister.
“Oh, Marylin. So you’re up,” Roy said cheerfully. Then she noted that the pale cream lounging pajamas were buttoned wrong. Marylin always looked as if she had stepped from the proverbial bandbox, so this was no minor aberration.
Roy felt the weight of protective anxiety slip over her. “Marylin, honey, what is it?” she asked, getting to her feet.
“Where’s Linc?”
Roy, arriving just before Marylin had gone up for a rest, had seen her sister and Linc exchange a tender glance across the crowded den. The situation, in all its romantic glamour, was as explosive as an A-bomb. Roy nervously avoided it. “You really do look wiped out,” she said. “Why not rest upstairs a bit longer?”
Marylin darted a queer, terrified look up toward the bedrooms. “No! Is he still in the den?”
“Mr. Wyler was taking photographs there a few minutes ago.” As she spoke, NolaBee’s raspy laughter sounded above the congenial chatter in the dining room. (NolaBee, with her energy, slapdash clothes, and gregarious Southern loquacity, had made a big hit with the movie crowd.) “Mama’s playing hostess. You really should finish your nap.”
“I need Linc!” Marylin’s huge blue-green eyes were shadowed, as if she were ready to cry.
Roy draped her arm around her sister’s delicately proportioned shoulders. “Honey, I can see you still have it bad for him, but let’s not go around wearing the old heart on the sleeve.”
A tear trickled onto the sculptured pale cheek.
Roy said hastily, “Hush, it’s okay. I’ll go find him for you.”
Just then a stout man and an excessively thin redhead came into the hall.
“Marylin, darling, isn’t it the most about Linc?” rasped the redhead. “We’re absolutely thrilled for Joshua, for all of you.”
“Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Rimmerton,” Roy answered for her sister. As the couple moved into the dining room, she whispered, “Marylin, better go wait someplace where you’re not so available.”
Wordlessly Marylin headed toward the front door.
“It’s freezing,” Roy said.
But Marylin was turning the bronze knob. As she slipped outside, Roy thought If that’s love, I’m better off without it. This particular notion held a couple of sour grapes: her perennial worry was her regrettable virginity. Was she frigid? Did she have impossibly high standards for a mate? (She would never consider giving in to anyone who didn’t have honorable intentions.)
She began her search for Linc in the living room, where Johnny Mercer was accompanying himself as he rasped out “Skylark.” Linc was not in the crowd gathered around the grand piano. Neither was he part of any of the chattering groups eating at the permanent card tables. She went into the overheated kitchen, where Coraleen, Percy, and the caterers bustled. None had seen Linc recently. Roy ran upstairs. The door to BJ’s old room was ajar, and she could see Annie curled in sleep by the bars of the crib kept there for her.
A faint light shone around the closed door of Billy’s room.
She heard Linc’s voice. “—I had the books in that case and the games and stuff in this one.”
“Linc, was this your room? I mean, really truly?”
“Use your noodle, brother. Where else would they put a guy and all his junk?”
The half-brothers were sitting on the floor with the lights out, and as Roy opened the door the tall candle between them flickered, casting wavery light, chiaroscuro, on the faces of child and man.
“Linc.” Roy switched on the light.
“Turn that out, Auntie Roy!” Billy shouted. “This is us brothers’ campfire!”
“Hey, Billy Boy, hey charming Billy,” Roy said. “Linc, M-a-r-y-l-i-n wants you. She’s a-l-l u-p-s-e-t—”
“You spelled my mommy’s name!” Billy shouted. “Get out, Auntie Roy!”
Linc was pinching out the flame with his fingers. “Brother, old buddy, we’ll continue the powwow after you put on your PJ’s.”
As he reached Roy in the doorway, he asked quietly, “Where is she?”
“Outside, in front.”
The bad leg didn’t impair his speed, Roy noted. He charged down the curving staircase, ignoring the plump, outstretched arms of a motherly woman to duck out the front door.
They were still wild about each other, that was only too obvious, and though Roy lacked knowledge of why Linc had chosen to return so tardily to Beverly Hills, she understood he had everything to do with Marylin’s jumping off the publicity jaunt. They were like two comets racing in tandem. How could Joshua miss seeing the brilliance? What a murderous mess, she thought as she turned to soothe her outraged nephew.
* * *
When the door opened, Marylin flung herself, gasping and shuddering at Linc.
“Hey, hey. You’re shivering all over.” Pulling off his sport coat, he wrapped her in wool warm from his body. “Love, what’re we doing out here?”
She pressed against him. She had calmed enough to think in somewhat linear coherence. Joshua’s his father, she thought; he loves him, and there are enough stumbling blocks in the relationship already. How can I tell him?
“Nerves,” she said.
He took her chin between his fingers, staring down at her. The light from his mother’s prized Georgian carriage lanterns cut his face into harsh planes and prominences. “Dad went upstairs a while ago,” he said slowly.
“He passed out on the bed.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing.”
“Marylin?”
Memory burst within her, the liquor smell, the heavy, scalding weight crushing her, the pain. She could not suppress her shudder.
“For God’s sake, Marylin. Did he bat you around? Does he do that?”
“No. . . .”
Linc continued to examine her. A dog barked up the block and other nearby dogs joined in.
“I didn’t want him,” she whispered.
“He raped you?”
“I didn’t want him,” she repeated.
Linc’s eyes went flat as obsidian stones, and his body tensed. After a moment he said quietly, “I’ll get you out of here.”
* * *
Without any luggage, she wearing his jacket, they checked into a motel a mile or so south of the Fernaulds’ summer rental in Malibu.
38
The following morning she discovered she was spotting. Her period wasn’t due for two weeks.
“I better find a doctor,” Linc worried.
“No!” The rape had filled her with a victim’s shame, and Joshua’s kneeing was too poisonous to speak about, especially to his son. “Linc, I’ll be fine.”
Linc crossed Pacific Coast Highway to the general store, buying a box of twelve Modess, aspirin, and a paperback by Faulkner, Mosquitoes.
Understanding her need for quiet, he sat reading. His presence and the grumbling of the sea soothed her and she was able to talk, with burning cheeks and guarded circumspection, about the few agonizing minutes in the bedroom.
“. . . he was very drunk. I guess that’s why I can’t keep on hating him . . . very much, anyway.”
“That’s how it is with him. You want to despise him, then for some reason you find you can’t. God, I’d forgotten the whole syndrome! When I was fourteen, I figured out about his girls. What took me so long, I can’t tell you. Arrested development, maybe. God knows, he never kept them a secret—when he attached himself to a new one, he all but took out ads in the trades. On Mother’s behalf I loathed him, yet on my own, I harbored admiration. At least my old man had the guts not to be a hypocrite like the others.”
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