"Because . . . because I'm too self-centered. Chester was right about that. Don't you remember? It was always Chester who did the important things for you, not me. And you spent most of your childhood next door with Arlene and George."
"Papa George died, Mommy," I said sadly.
"Did he?" She nodded. "He was pretty sick when I left. I didn't think it would be too much longer. You see," she said, snapping her head up and firing a look of fear my way, "you see how short life is, how quickly your chance to do something fades? I won't get a second chance out here, Melody. This is it for me. That's why I did what Archie suggested when the accident happened."
"I don't understand, Mommy. What happened?"
"Archie was really in an accident," she said, waving her cigarette. "He was returning from a party at a bar where there-was supposed to be a gathering of producers and agents. He had one of his younger clients with him. The girl was really very young, but had everyone fooled, except Archie of course. Anyway, he had me lend her my identification for the night. On the way back, Richard, as you know he's called now, lost control of the car and as soon as it crashed, it caught fire. He was thrown, but the girl was trapped and killed.
"When the police found the body and my identification, Archie and I discussed it and decided it would be better if I took advantage of it to cut myself off from family. So I took on a new identity. I'm Gina Simon, Gina Simon, do you hear? Everyone here thinks I'm years younger than I am!" she added in defense. "I can't get anywhere unless I'm this young, so I did it. Don't look at me like that," she fired. "I knew you were doing well and you were with family. It wasn't as if I left you stranded somewhere."
"Family," I said, my face twisting with rage. "You left me with a family that you knew disliked you."
"Yes, but you're not me," Mammy said. "I figured that in time they would see that and not punish you for being my daughter. And they're all well off, even Jacob."
"Not anymore. His business is struggling and it's hard work and now that he's very sick--"
"You can't live with me. Why did you come here? How can I take you in? Go back and wait until I get established and make a lot of money and then I'll send for you," she promised. "You've got to go before anyone realizes who you are. Where are you staying?" she asked quickly, realizing there might be people who already knew.
"I'm staying with Holly Brooks's sister, Dorothy Livingston, but not after tonight," I said.
"Holly Brooks? I know that name."
"She's a friend of Kenneth's."
"Oh. Oh yeah. Is she living with him?"
"No, she lives in New York City. She's been very nice. She helped me get here."
"And this Dorothy . . . what does she know about us?" "Just what I've told her . . . how you pretended I was someone you didn't know."
"Good. Go back and tell her you came here again and you had made a mistake. Then go back to Jacob and Sara."
"I can't go back to Jacob and Sara," I said. "If I go back, I have to live with Grandma Olivia."
"Olivia? Why?" she asked. I sat on the sofa and began to tell her the story of my discoveries, how I had visited with her mother, my grandmother Belinda, and how I had learned that my mother's father was really Judge Childs.
"I finally understood why Kenneth and his father don't get along. He blames his father for his losing you," I said.
Mommy smiled.
"Kenneth," she said softly, reminiscing. "I suppose if things had been different, he and I would have married.
You don't know how handsome he was and bright. All my girlfriends were crazy about him. He was always different, always exciting to be with." Her smile faded. "But when I learned the truth and brought it to him, it was as if I had hit him with a
sledgehammer.
"They're all so prim and proper on the outside, the blue bloods who made me feel inferior. I was the poor, discarded little girl, the waif living off of Olivia's kindness and generosity. How she continually reminded me of it. She took me in just to reduce the embarrassment, but she hated every moment I was there and she brought her boys up to think of me as contaminated. Only I fooled her, didn't I? I won Chester away from her and for that, she hated me forever.
"Was she smiling at my funeral? I wish I had been there just to watch the hypocrites," Mommy said and puffed her cigarette violently.
"No, she wasn't smiling. She was dignified. It was a very nice funeral. Kenneth was there, too."
"Poor Kenneth. Was he very upset?"
"Yes."
She sat back, pleased.
"It's not so bad to bury yourself once, especially when you're burying the ugly past too." She stared blankly at me. "But that's all gone, six feet under, Melody. You can't dig me up. It's not fair. I've finally thrown off the chains, the weight of my past, and I have opportunities now, new friends . . ." She gazed around. "This is just temporary. After my next few jobs, I'll be living in a plush condo, maybe in Brentwood. Archie assures me," she said.
I looked down, my heart so heavy I thought it might fall out of my chest.
"Why does Olivia want you to move in with her now?"
"Because Uncle Jacob's so sick and because she wants to keep the lid on any scandal. I told her I wanted to live with Kenneth since he's really my uncle, but she says that will only stir gossip."
"Oh, she's right about that. Olivia knows her territory.
Maybe it's not a bad idea anyway. It's a beautiful house. I did enjoy living there when she wasn't breathing down my neck or screaming at me for one thing or another."
"She wants to find a proper school for me and she said I have an inheritance from Grandma Belinda's half of the Gordon fortune."
"That's great. So you see, you should go back and quickly."
"But . . . it's not money I want or a snobby girl's school, Mommy. Olivia isn't my mother. She's not even my real grandmother. I'm afraid to live with her, afraid she'll make my life as miserable as she made yours."
"She wasn't completely at fault. I brought a lot of it on myself," Mommy confessed. "I was angry at them, all of them, and I wanted them to pay for my unhappiness."
"They'll always see you when they look at me," I said. "Olivia does, no matter what she tells me, and Uncle Jacob certainly does. Even Kenneth," I added and she perked up.
"Oh?"
"He had me model for him just the way he had you model," I said.
She widened her eyes.
"Really? And you did it?"
"Yes. He's created a wonderful new piece of sculpture. He says it's his greatest work, Neptune's Daughter. But the face on the sculpture is more your face than it is mine," I told her. I saw she liked that.
"Stand up," she asked suddenly. I did so. "You really did fill out. You're a very attractive young girl. Kenneth doesn't miss much." She thought again for a moment. "Didn't you like it at all back there, meet anyone nice?"
"Cary's nice, very nice. I miss him and I love May, but I've missed you, Mommy. I really have. I don't like being . . . alone. It's not fair."
She nodded and crushed her cigarette.
"It did bother me to leave you, to lie to you," she said. "Maybe not as much as you would have liked it to have bothered me, but it did. I didn't like leaving you behind, but there was just no other way to do all this. You understand?"
I nodded, even thought I really didn't.
"I had to listen to Archie. He's had much more experience with all this," she said in defense. "What are we going to do?" she asked herself.
"Please, let me stay with you, Mommy."
She gazed at me and smiled.
"You were always a sobering influence on me, weren't you, Melody? When I stayed at Frankie's bar and grill too long in Sewell and came home, I would take one look at your face and feel so damn guilty I lost my buzz in an instant. I hated you for that, too," she admitted, "but later, I would love you for it, as much as I could love any child, I suppose."
She straightened up.
"I don't have very much here, yet," she said. "It's not eve
n a drop in the bucket compared to what Olivia has and what she can offer you."
"I don't care about that, Mommy. I should be with you."
"You can't be-with me," she whined. "I just can't have a daughter your age."
I thought quickly, remembering what her friend Sandy had thought.
"I could be your younger sister. You told people you had one," I suggested quickly.
"How do you know that?"
"I met some woman here the first time I came. Her name was Sandy and she thought I was your younger sister surprising you," I said.
"She would." She smiled and looked at me. "We do look like sisters. I mean, I look young enough to be your sister, don't' I?"
"Yes, Mommy, you do."
"See," she pounced jabbing her forefinger at me. "That's just the problem. You can't call me Mommy. A younger sister doesn't call her older sister Mommy, does she?"
"I won't.
"You'll forget."
"I won't," I insisted.
She relaxed as she thought about my
suggestion.
"If I had a younger sister here, it would certainly make everyone believe me even more," she thought aloud. "That's right, it would," I said nodding.
"You can only call me Sis or Gina. You can't even forget and call me Haille."
"I never did, Mommy."
"Mommy!"
"Well, there's no one here right now," I said quickly. "Archie's not going to like this. He'll be furious with me," she said with a shake of her head.
"He has no right to be furious with you. You've done everything he wanted, haven't you?"
"Yes, yes I have," she said. She stared at me and then she smiled. "He won't be unhappy when I tell him he has another prime client anyway," she said.
"Another prime client?"
"You, silly. You're beautiful. You can become a model and an actress, too. We'll tell everyone I called you out here to develop your career. Just like me. Then we really will be sisters!" she exclaimed. "Maybe we'll even get to do something together." I shook my head.
"I could never--"
"Sure you could. It's so easy. You smile when they want you to smile and you bat your eyelashes when you have to and before you know it, you have an assignment and they're paying you hundreds of dollars an hour just to pose."
"I don't know if I can do that," I said, recalling what I had learned from Spike already about the business.
"Believe me, you can do it," she said. "Okay, you can have the second bedroom and we'll try it. If it doesn't work out, you have to promise you'll return to the Cape and go back to school. Well? You wanted to be with me, this is how you can be with me. Make up your mind."
I stood there, speechless for a moment. Could I really turn down a chance to be with Mommy again? To wait for the perfect opportunity to find out who my father was? Before I had a chance to really think about her suggestion, we heard the doorbell.
"Who the hell is that so early?" she muttered and rose to go to the door. It was Sandy Glee.
"I saw you," she sang looking past Mommy at me. "I saw you from my patio coming up the walkway. So, Gina. Aren't you going to introduce me to your surprise?"
"Melody," Mommy said turning to me, "you see why you can't keep any secrets here. Everyone's a snoop. This is my kid sister," she said, eyeing me warily.
"I knew it," Sandy remarked with a clap of her slender hands.
"She's coming to stay with me for a while and try her luck in Hollywood like the rest of us nitwits."
"Richard's going to represent her, too?"
"Yep."
"Good. Welcome to the fight," Sandy said. "I'm having a few people over tomorrow night for a pot luck dinner if you want to introduce her around," Sandy said. "About seven."
"We'll be there," Mommy promised.
"See you later, Sis," Sandy said waving. She left the apartment and Mommy spun around to me with a wide smile on her face.
"It worked. I knew it. I do look young enough to be your sister. In this town everyone believes everyone else's lies. It's a perfect place for people who hate the truth.
"Welcome home, Melody," she said sincerely. "I can finally throw my arms around you."
Even as she hugged me, giving me the affection I so desperately needed, I had to wonder: What had I gotten myself into?
7
New Beginnings
.
Mommy made us some coffee and we sat and
talked in her small kitchen, catching up on what had happened to both of us since the day she had left me in Provincetown.
"I really did hate leaving you behind," she said. "You remember how hard it was for me to do that, don't you? I think I cried all the way from
Provincetown to New York City, but Archie, I mean Richard, was right in advising me not to take you along. It was a hard trip, struggling for work along the way, trying to get meetings with important people in the big cities, going from one cheap motel to the other, sometimes barely having enough money to feed ourselves. You would have hated every minute. Many nights you would have been left alone in some crummy motel room. Some of them didn't even have television sets in the rooms.
"How could that life compare to being in the fresh ocean air, going to a good school, eating well . . . You understand why I did it, don't you, honey? You don't blame me anymore?" she asked, her voice shaking.
I took a deep breath and shifted my eyes away so she couldn't see how deeply I had been hurt. Kenneth had once told me I might as well have had translucent skin. It was that easy to see my thoughts and feelings. However, there was no sense being dishonest and lying to my mother now that I had found her, I thought.
"I used to hate you for it, Mommy," I admitted. "I used to sit there in Laura's room and listen hard through the walls for the phone to ring and hate you for not calling, hate you for making promises you wouldn't keep."
"I know. And that bothered me, too, but Richard kept saying, 'If you call her and can't send for her, it will be even more cruel, won't it?' He was right."
"He wasn't right. I needed to hear your voice, Mommy," I insisted.
She slammed down her coffee cup so hard it nearly shattered on the table.
"You've got to stop blaming me for things. I can't have any stress," she whined. "Stress brings on age and wrinkles and makes you look terrible and then you can't get jobs. The camera picks up every little detail, you know. They don't want you if they can't use you for close-ups. I won't get any work. Is that what you want to happen? Richard won't stand for it anyway. He won't let you stay here," she warned.
I gazed around the apartment, just realizing what she was saying.
"Does he live here, too?"
"Well what do you think? You have no idea how expensive it is to live and work in Los Angeles. Apartments like this are hard to come by. What would be the point of both of us having our own apartment and paying two rents?"
"Are you married?" I asked, holding my breath.
"No, we never got married. I don't want to get remarried for a long, long time; but Richard is . . . well, he's more than my agent; he's my financial manager. He takes care of all our money needs. He does that for all his clients."
"How many clients does he have?" I asked.
"A half dozen, but none earn as much as I do right now, so you see why it's so important everything remains smooth for us," she repeated. "No more talk about the terrible past," she said, waving her hands over the table. "I don't want to hear about how you suffered and I don't want to be reminded about what I did when I lived there. Don't ask me any questions about any of them, and don't even bring their names up in front of me," she ordered. "That's the rule if you want to live here, understand? I mean it, Melody." She glared at me, her eyes colder than I ever recalled them.
"Even Kenneth?" I asked.
"Yes, yes, yes, even Kenneth. Nobody. I forbid it. I didn't have a life before this. That's the way I want to think now. It's what Richard says I should do. These are changes we had to make for our ow
n wellbeing. I hate being selfish, but it's a good selfishness because it helps us find success."
"Why did he have to change his name, Mommy? I never believed that story about Archie being his nickname."
"You're right. Archie was never his name. It was his older brother's name and he took it so he could be thought of as older when he first left home. That's a big difference between men and women. Men like to be thought of as older. They don't get punished for being older and turning gray with wrinkles, but we do.
"Anyway," she continued, "his brother got himself into big trouble with loan sharks and the like and as soon as Richard found out, he dropped that name like a hot coal so they wouldn't mistakenly come after him. That's why he never liked to talk about his family. He was ashamed of them. His father wasn't any better. Now, don't mention any of this in front of him. Understand? He would be furious with me. He's very sensitive about it."
"I won't say a thing," I said, not really believing the story anyway.
"Good. As long as you do what you're told, we'll be fine. I think," she said, still not sure.
She looked at me hard again and then tilted her head, smiling.
"I like that outfit you're wearing."
"Dorothy Livingston bought it for me."
"Did she? You and I are almost the same size. We can share things, but you've got to take good care of whatever I give you to wear, okay? Some of my things are very special and designed for auditions. Did you bring a lot of your own stuff to California?"
"Not a lot, no."
"Where are your things?"
"At the Livingstons'."
"Well, I guess you'll have to go get your stuff. Don't tell her too much when you go back." She thought a moment. "I know what you should say," she added with excitement. "Tell her you're going back to Provincetown. You probably won't see her again anyway, and that way, she'll tell everyone else who asks about you that you left."
"Why don't I just tell her the truth?" I asked. She laughed.
"You never tell anyone the truth if you don't have to, honey. That's something you keep in your back pocket as a last resort. Take it from someone who's had to make her way on the road of life the hard way. I know from where I speak. The less you tell people about yourself, the better off you'll be later. There's always a jam to get out of and the truth can reduce your options. Richard taught me that lesson real well," she said, nodding.
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