by Ann Bannon
Beebo was too mad at him and too proud to admit any such thing. “The end won’t come, Leo,” she flared. “She’s in love with me and that makes her a different woman from the one you’ve always known. You can’t make predictions about her.”
“I can predict anything about that woman, Beebo,” he said in a sad voice that mourned the passing of mystery in his love. “I wish there were something left in her for me to worship. You forget that there was a great love in her life before Beebo Brinker came along and that love will last to the end, long after Beebo falls by the wayside. That’s self-love. She loves herself more than she loves you.”
“You’re unjust, Leo. She’s told me—”
“Sure—that she only loves the money, the career. Why, Beebo? Because they glorify the woman. The woman she loves—herself.”
Beebo stared at him, silenced.
“You flatter her, you kid her, you make a good try at understanding her, despite your blind spots. And you’re also nuts about her, which she finds very ingratiating. Plus the fact of your femininity…something I will never understand. You know, she’s tried this Lesbian stuff before.”
“She said you objected pretty violently.”
“Hell, yes. It’s much more dangerous than a normal affair. I’m no blue-stocking. I’m for falling in love and making it work, as long as it doesn’t hurt other people. It has nothing to do with my emotional prejudices. Intellectually, I’m damned fair. The only two people Venus hurts are me and Toby. I give her hell about Toby; I try to protect him. But letting Venus hurt me is the abiding condition of my life. The rock on which our marriage is built.”
Beebo listened, rooted with fascination, shock, pity, distaste. He was making an accomplice of her by revealing the secrets of his life with Venus; putting her in a spot where she would be virtually obligated to help him, if only to save all their skins.
“But when I see disaster coming,” Leo went on, “that will crush our son, destroy her career, ruin all our lives—I have to act. Beebo, you’re eighteen. You’re among the adults. I lay this on the line to you. I’d ask you to leave of your own free will, if I thought you had any left. But you’re too infatuated for that. All I’ll say now is, stay out of sight, watch the servants, and do as I say.”
“Look, Leo, I know you’re bending over backwards for me,” Beebo said. “I appreciate it. Since I’ve been here you’ve been just a face to me, but a kind enough face. Now I see you’re not just an operator—you’re an intelligent and honest man. And it’s too bad Venus won’t admit it. I think she could have loved you if she had.
“But if you’re working up to telling me that no matter how good a kid I am, I’m going to have to pack up one of these days and blow, I’m sorry. I can’t go.” Unless, she thought, I go for Paula. I’ll never go because I’m pushed.
“No,” he said. “I’ll tell you precisely what the situation is. I should have talked to you about this before. You should know where I stand. It must never—under any circumstances—get out that you’re queer, much less involved with Venus.” He spoke without self-consciousness, his voice coming sharp and sure. Beebo wondered if his long experience with “artistic” types had made him a little wiser than other men.
“I found Venus when she was about your age: just plain Jeanie Jacoby from Fostoria, Ohio,” Leo said. “She wrote me a letter saying she was beautiful, available, and hated her family, and would I please make her a star. She enclosed a snapshot. And she added that she was writing me because I was the biggest agent in Hollywood. It was pure guff, but her picture got me.
“Later I found out she wrote the same letter to twenty other guys. But I was the one who fell for it and sent her a ticket for L.A. I figured if only half of what I saw in the pic was for real, I could still sell her and make a fortune. Well, she came. I saw. She conquered. I named her Venus for the obvious reason, and Bogardus because I guessed I’d never have the chance to give her my own name any other way. I never thought we’d marry.
“I loved her the day we met, for all the wrong reasons, and I love her still. My reasons haven’t improved any.
“I was just an agent, but I went out and worked my ass off and got her going. I launched her. She would have sunk after a couple of the flops she made if they hadn’t let me direct her finally. I made an actress out of her and saved her career.
“When her star rose, so did mine. Her success was the only thing we loved together and cried over and cherished—together. I watched her run through five lousy marriages in ten years. And when she was weary and demoralized, I stepped in like Sir Galahad, thinking I could make her happy. I was delirious when she said yes, and I think even Venus was pleased. Till the honeymoon was over.
“I suppose she’s told you what it was like. Things have been more peaceful with you around. But we’ve driven each other to mayhem in years past. She thinks she wants her freedom. But she’d come back to me, Beebo, even if she got it. She needs me as much as I need her. (Don’t tell her that, she won’t believe it.) I’ll never divorce her. I love her enough to prefer the torment of living with her to the torment of living without her.”
He stopped a moment, fixing Beebo with his silver eyes to impress his next words on her. “That is one hell of a terrible lot of love, Beebo,” he said slowly. “I doubt if you could top it. There’s one thing Venus and I agree on: I made her and I’m keeping her on top. If she didn’t care about that, she wouldn’t care about me, either.
“Listen, Beebo. I don’t want her ever to love you more than herself. And if I see it coming, I’ll fight you. I’ll bring out every drop of self-love and self-pity and money-lust in her system—and she’s got more of it than she has blood. Because if she drops her career, she’ll drop me with it.” He paused and they looked at each other.
“That’s it, Beebo,” Leo said at last. “I’m sorry if it sounds egotistic to you. You just mind me, and maybe we’ll make it for a while. I don’t know what you can do about Toby. He doesn’t get the picture about you and his mother yet, but he will. He’s a bright kid. But don’t go out of your way to tell him. It’s going to stagger him. I’ll try to explain when he catches on.
“If anything comes up, deny it. I give you this chance because of what you’ve done for Venus. Don’t make me regret it.”
“I don’t know whether to thank you or kick you in the slats,” Beebo said sourly. “You make it sound like a great life.”
“Did anyone tell you to expect something else?” Leo said. “You’ve been living it the last two months. You should be used to it.”
“Used to it but not fond of it,” she said.
“But fond of Venus…enough to put up with it? Because if you aren’t, say so. I’ve been honest enough with you to hurt myself, Beebo. You be that honest with me.”
Beebo’s gaze fell. “I’ll put up with it,” she said, but her voice was rough with resentment.
“I’m sorry, Beebo,” Leo said, and though his masculine aversion to her was as real as he declared, he was still capable of a restrained sympathy for her. “The world wasn’t made for dykes, you know.”
“No,” she flashed. “It was made for movie queens and their tyrannical husbands.”
Leo hunched his shoulders, unoffended. “The world was made for normal people,” he said. “The abnormal in this world have a tough go. If they keep their abnormality secret, they’re damnably lonely. If they broadcast it, they’re damnably hurt. You were born with that, and you’ll have to live with it, the way I have to live with Venus’s faults.”
Beebo was impressed with his sensitivity. But she answered moodily, “I don’t feel so damned abnormal, thanks. I feel as normal as you do. I eat three meals a day, I pay my bills, I respect the other guy.”
“Well, I can tell you, society doesn’t give a hoot in hell how normal you feel, Beebo. You look queer, and that’s enough. People are waiting around to throw some crap your way.”
“What about the queers who look normal?” Beebo demanded.
“They have a chance,” he said. “They can hide. You can’t. And when the stuff hits the fan, I don’t want Venus anywhere near you. You can have it all to yourself.”
“You’re a pretty goddamn infuriating individual, Leo,” Beebo said.
“Sure,” he agreed, getting up and stamping the cigar butt into the tile floor. “An honest man always is. I’ve said some harsh things to you, but they were true. And I’ve permitted you to stay on—conditionally. You know the conditions, my friend, and if you feel like ignoring them, you’d better feel like saying goodbye, too. You dig?”
“I dig,” Beebo said, glowering at him from the sofa.
She wrote to Jack that night, sitting in one of the unused spare rooms, where she was shunted when Venus was out. She recounted a little of what Leo had said.
“God, Jack, it makes you want to go out and convert the whole damn world to homosexuality,” she told him. “Just so you can walk down the street with your head up.
“Maybe I grew up too fast, maybe that’s my trouble. I feel so lost out here…hung up between two worlds; half-kid and half-adult, half-boy and half-girl. And sometimes it seems like I get the dirty side of both. Leo’s whole life is one long compromise…maybe that’s what he was trying to tell me about mine.
“I wanted Venus and I got her, but I’m not sure having her is worth the shame and secrecy of it. I’m strong and tall as a boy, but I’m not free as a man. I wanted to be gentle and loving with women, but I can’t be feminine.
“Venus tries to make it better for me. She argues with Leo to let me out more. She gives me things all the time—money, clothes, anything—and it makes me realize how much she thinks about me when she’s working. She’s even been going to Toby’s PTA meetings.
“And damn it, Jack, I know she loves me. She proves it to me whenever she’s home. But that’s the catch—that whenever. It gets later every day, and she’s so tired. She never says no, but I feel like a dog.
“You know something? I wish all this had happened to me ten years from now. You said that about Paula, but you were wrong. Paula was just what I needed. I miss that girl, Jack. I sit here on these long empty days and dream about her. My letters to her are awful, I don’t know what to say. Say I love her for me, will you?
“No—better not. Because I don’t know how I can leave Venus, and I’m still not sure I want to. God, what a mess!”
Leo confronted her one morning two days later and said, “Lay off Venus a little, Beebo. She has circles under her eyes.”
Beebo, still half-asleep by herself in Venus’s bed, mumbled at him and sat up.
“Her eyes don’t photograph well. She looks her age and that’s no good,” Leo said. “She gets home at midnight, pooped, and you light into her for another couple of hours. She’s too crazy about you to say no, but she has to get up at six-thirty next day, while you lie around till noon.”
Beebo rubbed her eyes. “Leo, I don’t force her to make love to me,” she said, trying to clear her head. “She wants to.”
“Well, she can’t. Not till next Tuesday. That’s the première showing and we’re all under a hell of a strain till then.”
“My God,” Beebo whispered, almost to herself. “I have to give that up, too? Leo, what else is there?” She turned to him, scowling.
“After Tuesday night, whether we sink or swim, the whole cast and crew get a week off, and you can make up for lost time,” he said, gazing at her long form with curiosity; wondering how it could appeal to anybody, yet respecting his wife’s intense admiration. “I’m sorry, Beebo. It’s either continence, or I take her to a hotel. You choose.”
“I have so little of her, Leo. You’re asking me to do without even the little I have.” She put her head down on her knees.
“Just for a few days.”
She lay down on the bed, turning her back to him, and Leo watched her a moment before he shut the door.
In the half week before Million Dollar Baby showed, a one-liner appeared in a trade gossip column. It said, “Who’s been picking Venus Bogardus up at TV City in a silver sport coupé these days?”
Leo spotted it, underlined it in red, and left it on Venus’s dresser, where Beebo picked it up the next morning and read it with round-eyed shock.
The next day, another columnist asked, “What’s this about Venus Bogardus taking a personal interest in her son’s friends? Especially one near and dear to the family?” Leo underlined that one, too. Beebo read it while she was sitting alone in the spare room again. She was sleeping there till Tuesday night.
Leo made no comments in the margins. He didn’t have to. Beebo was scared enough at the unembellished print. She hadn’t seen Venus for a couple of days. Venus was too busy and after the hints in the papers, she and Leo removed to a hotel. Beebo was afraid for Venus, afraid for their love affair, and afraid for herself. If only Jack were there to help her. If only it had been possible to tell all to her father long ago and run to him now.
Toby saw how blue she was later in the day and tried to cheer her up. “Hey, don’t look so gloomy,” he said. “What’s got you down?”
Beebo looked at him. “Toby,” she said, almost hoping he wouldn’t hear. “Did you read the newspapers today?”
Toby’s face reddened and she wished immediately that she hadn’t brought it up. “I don’t read them,” he said. “I heard about it at school. Everybody wants to know which friend of mine they’re talking about. But they all think it’s a boy, naturally. I—I mean…” He paused, flustered, unwilling to hurt her. “There was a thing like this once before, Beebo, and it just wasn’t true. Leo proved it. He’ll get Mom out of this, he always does. There’s always some jerk waiting around to throw a scandal at the movie stars.” He sneaked a look at her to see if he was helping any.
“I know it’s not true, Beebo, so don’t worry,” he said putting his hand on her arm “You know I don’t believe that junk. You kid around, but you wouldn’t do anything like that.”
Beebo looked away from him. “I wouldn’t hurt your mother—” she began.
“I know,” he said, with surprising warmth and sympathy. “She’ll be okay, don’t worry. The thing that scares me is…well, I don’t want you to leave us, Beebo. You’ve done so much for us. Besides, who’d help me with my biology? Honest—these gossipers—they’ll say anything about anybody.”
Beebo was touched by his anxiety. “I’m not going anywhere, buddy,” she said. But she meant, Not right now. Tomorrow, I may have no choice. And Toby realized it.
Beebo was a thin line away from despair. All the charmingly confessed selfishness that had seemed adorable in Venus at first had become Beebo’s prison.
And having nothing else to do, Beebo studied Venus’s faults as never before. The self-love, the endless clichés. Venus might laugh at them, but she couldn’t abandon them. People said there was only one great glamour queen left in Hollywood: Venus Bogardus. And Venus thought they meant her trimmings—her velvet-paved boudoirs and flashy conceits; not her Self.
Beebo loved her with excited fascination still. And Venus loved Beebo as well and truly as she knew how. More, certainly, than anyone but Toby. And yet…was that enough?
Beebo stood looking out the window of her room at twilight, taking in the grounds of the estate and the evening star. Venus. So high and bright and beautiful. And as far out of reach at that moment as ever it was when she was growing up back in Juniper Hill.
That night, when she tried to write to Jack again, she spoiled her page twice with tears and gave it up. She was trying not to admit that Venus had no room in her life for a gay lover; that theirs was a time-bomb romance, set to explode in their faces. The papers had lighted the fuse. And Beebo, looking at that perfect point of light in the black sky, knew in her heart that her days with Venus were numbered.
The morning of that crucial Tuesday, a nationally syndicated columnist who wielded huge power in Hollywood said she was checking a New York source for verification of a shocking news item about one o
f the town’s greatest stars…a woman, currently headlining a TV series.
Two other columnists pretended special information on the same subject, but all refused to reveal their information or describe the scandal till it was authenticated.
Venus was on trial that night. One columnist had snickered, “If Leo doesn’t mind, I don’t know why I should. After all, he’s been through this a dozen times.”
Even at that they had let her off pretty easily. But the atmosphere around her crackled. Fortunately, advance notices on Baby were good. They had had a good schedule and an extravagant budget. And Leo, with bench-coaching from Beebo, had wheedled a radiant performance out of his wife.
Venus and Leo watched the broadcast on monitors at Television City with the whole Baby company, and went on afterwards to a baroque party on the famous Restaurant Row of LaCienega Boulevard. They hit most of the eateries, picking up celebrities en route, and capping the bash at the home of a popular singer who had guest-starred on the opener.
The party was noisy and crazy, and Venus, a showstopper in silver sequins, took Hollywood under her thumb, with the subtly effective aid of her husband. She had her arms around every man present at least once, as graceful and captivating as any lovely woman aware of her success. When she was twitted about the dark secrets mentioned in the papers, she laughed and told everyone she was screwing her cat, and the whole subject was swept away in the laughter that followed. Only Leo remained grave, smiling slightly and talking, but inwardly seething.
And Venus, if the truth were known, was even more disturbed than he.
Beebo saw the show in the Bogardus rec room with Toby. The house was eerily quiet. All the servants had been given the night off, except Venus’s correspondence secretary, a fussily officious young man; and Mrs. Sack, who never went anywhere anyway.
The show had hardly started before the phone began to ring: telegrams, roses at the front gate, long distance rhapsodies. The secretary took the calls, but Beebo and Toby picked up the red wall-phone and listened in to some.