Read Everything and More Online
Authors: Jacqueline Briskin
Everything and More (73 page)
The den-guestroom opened onto the living room, and the door was ajar. Sari slept.
On the short drive home from Patricia’s, the girl had briefed Roy on the situation. When Roy had attempted to show her sympathy, Sari had murmured in a wispy, shredded voice, “Please don’t say anything, Aunt Roy. I just can’t hack talking about it yet.” At the house she had eaten a carton of peach yogurt, then gone silently into the den to make up the convertible sofa. Roy, leaving the dishes on the breakfast table, had stationed herself like a guard dog outside the room, keeping her ears pricked for any sound—there had been none.
Without thinking, Roy munched the last cookie, then clasped her arms around herself. Her self-indictments had reached unbearable proportions and she must either go clear screaming out of her mind or seek solace—of any kind.
She ran into the kitchen, where her voice would not disturb Sari, dialing a number she knew by heart: the exchange told her Dr. Buchmann was unavailable tonight. Roy barged back into the living room, going to the hutch that served as her home desk, opening the top drawer for her pink scratchpad. The psychiatrist had suggested when the overpowering blues hit her she should jot down her thoughts as a cathartic measure to rid herself of her worst self-indictments.
Althea,
she wrote, then chewed on the end of the ball-point.
Until now she had always accepted that she kept up the friendship out of her innate sentimental attachment to the past—loyalty, if you will. Now, though, listening for the least sound from Sari, Roy came around to Marylin and NolaBee’s contention that she possessed the best of reasons to avoid Althea for all eternity.
So why did I have to renew the friendship?
The answer twisted into a question:
Was this another way to tie Gerry to me?
Did it somehow keep him closer to be around his mistress and his son—the son he never knew about?
Gerry never loved me, we were separated when he died, so why have I dragged my widowhood everywhere, like a security blanket? Men have asked me out from time to time—why didn’t I accept? Why immure myself? I’m not Queen Victoria. I built a monument for him, The Gerrold Horak Gallery, wasn’t that enough?
Roy’s eyes moistened.
For years I’ve known that Althea was, as Marylin put it, a snake, so why did I bring both Billy and Sari within striking range of her venom?
She stared down at her round, legible questions, biting her lip.
Why do I assume Althea broke it off between Charles and Sari? For all I know, Charles was delighted to dump the poor, loving baby and begin anew in Stockholm with some gorgeous Scandinavian blonde. Oh, so what? He’s Althea’s son, and without good old Roy, Sari never would have met him. Without my good offices, Althea never would have gotten her nympho hooks into Billy
—
There was a rustling within the den. Swiftly Roy moved to the door, opening it a wedge wider.
Her niece slept facedown, both thin arms hugging the pillow. In the color-drained shadows, the hair on the pillow was a dark stain. Like blood, Roy thought with a shudder.
Sari, in her brief explanation, had made it clear that she had no intention of an abortion.
An illegitimate baby?
A great roaring filled Roy’s mind.
Gazing at the dark splotch on the pillow, she felt her throat tighten in a convulsion of pitying love.
She peered at the sleeping girl, her expression changing until she wore her workaday look of competence and decision. Returning to the couch, she picked up the scratchpad, this time not for easement of her soul but to draft a letter. “Dear Charles,” she wrote; then her hand stilled. Roy’s correspondence, mostly business letters, was dictated concisely to her secretary. Now she composed a meandering paragraph, then crumpled the paper. She floundered through the procedure four times before getting out her box of monogrammed stationery.
She wrote one sentence.
Signing her name, she folded the paper into an envelope, addressing it to
Charles Firelli/ Sveavagen 56/ Stockholm/ Sweden
—she knew
the address by heart, having already sent Charles several letters that purposefully mentioned Sari. (He had replied in his impeccable hand, never mentioning Sari.) Pulling on her coat, she again peered in at her sleeping niece before going out into the misty night, hurrying in long strides to the corner of South Beverly Drive, where the mailbox stood.
Swiftly she pushed the envelope inside, and the slot clinked shut.
At this moment Roy’s second thoughts rushed out. Maybe Sari’s right, maybe Charles
has
dumped her. How do I know whether he’s a love-’em-and-leave-’em type? If he is, better she get over him now. Being trapped in a marriage with one-sided affection is a hell I wouldn’t inflict on my worst enemy much less this vulnerable-hearted girl whom I adore. Between us, the family could give the baby enough love to make up for lacking a father. What have I done?
She raised the slot, reaching her hand inside to encounter cold, rough metal.
Her letter had been swallowed by the hump-topped inviolable United States mailbox.
Charles would read her words.
The faint haze in the air sent chills of premonition traveling down Roy’s back. I never should have left Sari alone. Her front door lamp shone iridescent ahead of her, and she ran gasping up the steps.
Sari had not stirred.
* * *
At breakfast Sari asked whether she could stay a few days. Roy, with a very human elation that she was needed more than Marylin, waited until she got to work to call her sister at the television station.
“But she’ll be alone all day,” said Marylin’s gentle, worried voice.
“That’s what she said she wants. To crash someplace until she can get it together.”
“She told you . . .”
“Yes.”
“Roy, Dr. Dash said she’s run-down and needs to put on weight.”
“She had two eggs, English muffins, orange juice, and a glass of whole milk for breakfast,” Roy said. “I gained a pound watching her.”
“Be right with you, Jack,” Marylin’s voice said from far away. Then she spoke into the instrument. “Roy, you wouldn’t believe the scene going on here. A guest didn’t show. I’ll get back to you—oh, my God, all I can think of is Billy and Sari. How am I going to manage today?”
“The show must go on, hon,” Roy said. “It’s the same for all us working girls.”
* * *
Sari was still at Roy’s house four days later when the letter came from Billy.
68
Normally Joshua’s morning walk from his cottage-office to the mailbox by the electric gate was the highlight of his morning. He would climb back up to his little house with the letters, not showing them to Marylin, purposely implying importance to their contents. On this particular hot, smoggy Wednesday he was attending the funeral of Pearlie Lubold, former chief of production at Magnum, a form of final obligation to his industry friends that was becoming onerously frequent.
Therefore a neat pile of letters, magazines, and junk mail (the bills were mailed directly to the business manager’s office) awaited Marylin on the hall table.
The smog and lack of sleep bothered her eyes, and she squeezed her lids shut before she shuffled through the envelopes.
When she came to a thick letter addressed to them in Billy’s handwriting, the heap thudded onto the uneven handmade floor tiles. Billy never wrote to them, he always telephoned—and since she had made that calamitous New York trip, he had not called anyone in the family.
She picked up her son’s letter. Tears filled her eyes—Sari’s troubles and Billy’s desertion had made Marylin weep easily.
After a long hesitation, she slit the envelope’s edge. In the shadowy silence, the tearing noise sounded very loud.
June 5, 1970
Hey Dad,
After scrutinizing the envelope to reassure herself that she had indeed been included on the address, she did not even try to tell
herself that this omission in the body of the letter was unintentional. Obviously her son was paying her back for that disastrous
těte-à-těte
in the Regency Hotel: when hurt, Billy took on Joshua’s clever vengefulness, a heavy streak of malice that her milder nature found incomprehensible.
Let’s rap awhile about what’s going on in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I get the feeling this war is an enormous put-on, all done with mirrors and dress extras for the telly. A gigantic scam to sell advertising on primetime News, not to mention bumper stickers.
Is there really such a country as Vietnam? Or are the battle scenes shot in the Philippines? Is Premier Ky a little-known off-off-Broadway actor with his eyes taped? Is Saigon really on the back lot? You made enough flicks to understand my question. Reality versus sleight-of-camera? And what about the My Lai massacre—was it a cleverly concocted script?
And how about this protective incursion Nixon has ordered on the alleged country “Cambodia”?
I mean, is that or is it not far-out humor?
Could there, in reality, be such black comedy as daily body counts? I for one cannot believe it.
The question I am aiming at is: has our beloved St. Richard the Nixon figured out a means of aiding the flagging economy of this great land of ours by inventing Southeast Asia?
Wars give a jab in the arm to industry, so why wouldn’t a dedicatedly patriotic president appoint a clever bunch of show-biz types to invent one?
You can understand my frame of mind? Good. Then you’ll also dig why I went into a recruiting office.
Marylin sank onto one of the paired hall chairs. Her hands were too shaky to hold the letter, so she smoothed the pages on her lap.
The sergeant on duty, a bluff old party, a ringer for Satchel Paige, embraced me. “Welcome, son, welcome,” he wept. “We don’t get you college-type honkies often.” I received similar heartwarming unctuousness from everyone.
Imagine my shock, Dad, to hear I am physically deficient. Me, William Roger Fernauld, bred in clear Beverly Hills air, raised on Wheaties and fresh orange juice,
me,
unwanted by my everloving Uncle Sam.
Marylin was mouthing the words, for the writing here fit Billy’s sharply overwrought jibing. T’s remained uncrossed, O’s unclosed.
This was my first concrete proof that the so-called battle for democracy in S.E. Asia is pure government bullshit. I ask you, if there really were a war, would they discard a volunteer able to count the bodies even into the hundreds simply because he once had a skull injury?
Marylin breathed a great sigh, retroactively blessing the driver of the car that had hit Billy.
By now my curiosity is thoroughly aroused. I have, therefore, used my friendship with the guys at
Rolling Stone,
and am on the payroll as a correspondent to bring home the real dirt on the situation. What ho, a foreign correspondent just like Bogey played so often. (Yes, Dad, I remember that you were his drinking buddy, I remember meeting him and wondering why he had hair in his movies.) I’ve had my shots and am booked on a flight to “Saigon.”
As soon as I find out the straight dope, I’ll clue you in.
Give my love to Sari.
Marylin clasped the pages against her abdomen.
Billy in Vietnam. This was the bitter fruit of her weekend in New York.
Slowly she climbed the stairs to the large bedroom she shared with Joshua, to await his return from Pearlie Lubold’s funeral.
* * *
“I do not believe this letter. That half ass, overintelligent clown of ours enlist? Sweet loving Jesus, he’s more against this fucking, stupefying crusade than anyone in this torn-apart country!” Joshua’s flamboyant bluster was all front. In his own demanding, overpowering manner he deeply loved all four of his children, but Billy, son of his old age, was his illusionary self projected into the future to conquer this gadget-ridden second half of the twentieth century.
“The letter’s not him—his humor’s never overworked or cute.”
Joshua slammed a hand on his bureau, and his silver-topped military brushes bounced. “He sounds like he’s been experimenting with LSD, dropping acid or whatever they call their mind meddling.”