Glitter Baby

  Belinda was wearing Pucci.

  After Fleur made her selections for lunch, she dragged her mother up the steep path from the Monte Carlo market to the palace, eating a ham and poppy seed roll as she walked. Fleur spoke four languages, but she was proudest of her English, which was flawlessly American. She’d learned it from the American students who attended the couvent—daughters of diplomats, bankers, and the bureau chiefs of the American newspapers. By adopting their slang and their attitudes, she’d gradually stopped thinking of herself as French.

  Someday she and Belinda were going to live in California. She wished they could go now, but Belinda wouldn’t have any money if she divorced Alexi. Besides, Alexi wouldn’t let her get a divorce. Fleur wanted to go to America more than anything in the world.

  “I wish I had an American name.” She scratched a bug bite on her thigh and tore off another bite of sandwich with her teeth. “I hate my name. I really do. Fleur is a stupid name for somebody as big as me. I wish you’d named me Frankie.”

  “Frankie is a hideous name.” Belinda collapsed on a bench and tried to catch her breath. “Fleur was the closest I could get to the female version of a man I cared about. Fleur Deanna. It’s a beautiful name for a beautiful girl.”

  Belinda always told Fleur she was beautiful, even though it wasn’t true. Her thoughts flew in another direction. “I hate having my period. It’s disgusting.”

  Belinda delved into her purse for a cigarette. “It’s part of being a woman, baby.”

  Fleur made a face to show Belinda exactly what she thought of that, and her mother laughed. Fleur pointed up the path toward the palace. “I wonder if she’s happy?”

  “Of course she’s happy. She’s a princess. One of the most famous women in the world.” Belinda lit her cigarette and pushed her sunglasses on top of her head. “You should have seen her in The Swan, with Alec Guinness and Louis Jourdan. God, she was beautiful.”

  Fleur stretched out her legs. They were covered with fine, pale hair, and pink with sunburn. “He’s kind of old, don’t you think?”

  “Men like Rainier are ageless. He’s quite distinguished, you know. Very charming.”

  “You’ve met him?”

  “Last fall. He came for dinner.” Belinda pulled her sunglasses back over her eyes.

  Fleur dug the heel of her sandal into the dirt. “Was he there?”

  “Hand me some of those olives, darling.” Belinda gestured toward one of the paper cartons with an almond-shaped fingernail painted the color of ripe raspberries.

  Fleur handed her the carton. “Was he?”

  “Alexi owns property in Monaco. Of course he was there.”

  “Not him.” Fleur’s sandwich had lost its taste, and she pulled off a piece to toss to the ducks across the path. “I didn’t mean Alexi. I meant Michel.” She used the French pronunciation of her thirteen-year-old brother’s name, which was a girl’s name in America.

  “Michel was there. He had a school recess.”

  “I hate him. I really do.”

  Belinda set aside the olive carton without opening it and took a drag on her cigarette.

  “I don’t care if it’s a sin,” Fleur said. “I hate him even more than Alexi. Michel has everything. It’s not fair.”

  “He doesn’t have me, honey. Just remember that.”

  “And I don’t have a father. But it’s still not even. At least Michel gets to go home when he’s not in school. He gets to be with you.”

  “We’re here to have a good time, baby. Let’s not get so serious.”

  Fleur wouldn’t be sidetracked. “I can’t understand Alexi. How could anybody hate a baby so much? Maybe now that I’m grown up…But not when I was one week old.”

  Belinda sighed. “We’ve been through this so many times. It’s not you. It’s just the way he is. God, I wish I had a drink.”

  Even though Belinda had explained it dozens of times, Fleur still didn’t understand. How could a father want to have sons so much that he would send his only daughter away and never see her again? Belinda said Fleur was a reminder of his failure and Alexi couldn’t stand failure. But even when Michel was born a year after Fleur, he hadn’t changed. Belinda said it was because she couldn’t have any more children.

  Fleur had cut pictures of her father out of the newspapers, and she kept them in a manila envelope in the back of her closet. She used to pretend Mother Superior called her to the office and that Alexi was there waiting to tell her he’d made a terrible mistake and he’d come to take her home. Then he’d hug her and call her “baby” the way her mother did.

  She tossed another piece of bread at the ducks. “I hate him. I hate them both.” And then, for good measure, “I hate my braces, too. Josie and Celine Sicard hate me because I’m ugly.”

  “You’re just feeling sorry for yourself. Remember what I’ve been telling you. In a few years, every girl at the couvent will want to look just like you. You need to grow up a little more, that’s all.”

  Fleur’s bad mood slipped away. She loved her mother.

  The palace of the Grimaldi family was a sprawling stone and stucco edifice with ugly square turrets and candy cane guard boxes. As Belinda watched her daughter dart through the crowd of tourists to climb on top of a cannon that overlooked the Monaco yacht basin, she felt a lump form in her throat. Fleur had Flynn’s wildness, his restless zest for living.

  Belinda had wanted to blurt out the truth so many times. She wanted to tell Fleur that a man like Alexi Savagar could never have been her father. That Fleur was Errol Flynn’s daughter. But fear kept her silent. She’d learned long ago not to cross Alexi. Only once had she beaten him. Only once had he been the helpless one. When Michel was born.

  After dinner that night, Belinda and Fleur went to see an American Western with French subtitles. The film was half over when Belinda saw him for the first time. She must have made some sort of sound because Fleur looked over at her. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Belinda managed. “It’s…That man…”

  Belinda studied the cowboy who’d just sauntered into the saloon where Paul Newman was playing poker. The cowboy was very young and far from movie star handsome. The camera moved in for a close-up and Belinda forgot to breathe. It didn’t seem possible. And yet…

  The lost years dropped away. James Dean had come back.

  The man was tall and lean with legs that didn’t stop. His long, narrow face looked as if it had been chipped from flint by a rebellious hand, and his irregular features projected a confidence that went beyond arrogance. He had straight brown hair; a long, narrow nose with a bump at the bridge; and a sulky mouth. His slightly crooked front tooth had the tiniest chip at one corner. And his eyes…Restless and bitter blue.

  He didn’t look at all like Jimmie—she saw that now. He was taller, not as handsome. But he was another rebel—she felt it in her bones—another man who lived life on his own terms.

  The film ended, but she stayed in her seat, clutching Fleur’s impatient hand and watching the credits roll. His name flashed on the screen. Excitement welled inside her.

  Jake Koranda.

  After all these years, Jimmie had sent her a sign. He was telling her she mustn’t lose hope. A man is his own man. A woman her own woman. Jake Koranda, the man behind that off-kilter face, had given her hope. Somehow she could still make her dreams come true.

  The boys of Châtillon-sur-Seine discovered Fleur the summer before her sixteenth birthday. “Salut, poupée!” they called out as she emerged from the boulangerie.

  She looked up, a smear of chocolate dotting her chin, and saw three boys lounging in the doorway of the pharmacie next door. They were smoking cigarettes and listening to “Crocodile Rock” on a portable radio. One boy stubbed out his cigarette. “Hé poupée, irons voir par ici.” He made a beckoning gesture with his head.

  Fleur glanced around to see which of her classmates he was talking to.

  The boys laughed. One nudged his friend and pointed at he
r legs. “Regardez-moi ces jambes!”

  Fleur looked down to see what was wrong, and another dab of chocolate from her éclair dripped onto the blue leather strap of her Dr. Scholl’s sandals. The taller of the boys winked, and she realized they were admiring her legs. Hers!

  “Qu’est-ce que tu dirais d’un rendezvous?”

  A date. He was asking her for a date! She dropped the éclair and ran up the street to the bridge where the girls were meeting. Her streaky blond hair flew behind her like a horse’s mane. The boys laughed and whistled.

  When she got back to the couvent, she dashed to her room and stared at herself in the mirror. Those same boys used to call her l’épouvantail, the scarecrow. What had happened? Her face looked the same: thick, marking-pen eyebrows, green eyes set too far apart, mouth spread all over. She’d finally stopped growing, but not until she’d reached five feet, eleven and a half inches. The braces were gone now. Maybe that was it.

  By the time August arrived, Fleur was nearly sick with excitement. A whole month to be with her mother. And on Mykonos, her favorite of all the Greek islands. The first morning as they walked along the beach in the dazzling white sunlight, she couldn’t stop talking about everything she’d been saving up.

  “It’s creepy the way those boys keep calling out at me. Why would they do something like that? I think it’s because I got rid of my braces.” Fleur tugged on the oversized T-shirt she’d pulled on top of the apple-green bikini Belinda had bought to surprise her. She loved the color, but its skimpy cut embarrassed her. Belinda wore an oatmeal striped tunic and a chrome Galanos slave bracelet. Both of them had bare feet, but Belinda’s toenails were painted burnt umber.

  Her mother sipped from the Bloody Mary she’d brought along. Belinda drank a lot more than she should, but Fleur didn’t know how to get her to stop.

  “Poor baby,” Belinda said, “it’s hard not being the ugly duckling anymore. Especially when you’ve been so dedicated to the idea.” She slipped her free arm around Fleur’s waist, and her hipbone brushed the top of her daughter’s thigh. “I’ve been telling you for years the only problem with your face is that you hadn’t grown into it, but you’re stubborn.”

  The way Belinda said it made Fleur feel as though that was something to be proud of. She hugged her mother, then flopped down on the sand. “I couldn’t ever have sex. I mean it, Belinda. I am never getting married. I don’t even like men.”

  “You don’t know any men, darling,” Belinda said dryly. “Once you’ve gotten away from that godforsaken convent, you’ll feel differently.”

  “I won’t. Can I have a cigarette?”

  “No. And men are wonderful, baby. The right men, of course. Powerful ones. When you walk into a restaurant on the arm of an important man, everyone looks at you, and you see admiration in their eyes. They know you’re very special.”

  Fleur frowned and picked at the bandage on her toe. “Is that why you won’t get divorced from Alexi? Because he’s important?”

  Belinda sighed and tilted her face into the sun. “I’ve told you, baby. It’s money. I don’t have the skills to support us.”

  But Fleur would have the skills. She already excelled in math. She spoke French, English, Italian, and German, even a little Spanish. She knew history and literature, she could type, and when she went to the university, she’d learn even more. Before long, she’d be able to support them both. Then she and Belinda could live together forever and never be separated again.

  Two days later, one of Belinda’s Parisian acquaintances arrived on Mykonos. Belinda introduced Fleur as her niece, something she always did on the rare occasions when they ran into a person she knew. Each time it happened, Fleur felt sick inside, but Belinda said she had to do it or Alexi would cancel their trips.

  The woman was Madame Phillipe Jacques Duverge, but Belinda said she’d once been Bunny Groben, from White Plains, New York. She’d also been a famous model during the sixties, and she kept pointing her camera at Fleur. “Just for fun,” she said,

  Fleur hated having her picture taken, and she kept running into the water.

  Madame Duverge followed, clicking away.

  As one white-hot Mykonos day gave way to another, Fleur discovered the young men who roamed the sandy Greek beaches were no different from the boys of Châtillon-sur-Seine. She told Belinda they were making her so nervous she couldn’t enjoy her new snorkeling mask. “Why do they have to act so stupid?”

  Belinda took a sip of her gin and tonic. “Ignore them. They’re not important.”

  When Fleur returned to the couvent for her final year, she had no way of knowing her life was about to change forever. In October, shortly after her sixteenth birthday, a fire broke out in the dormitory, and all the girls were forced to evacuate. A photographer for the local newspaper rushed out and caught the daughters of France’s most exclusive families standing by the blazing building in their pajamas. Although the dormitory was badly damaged, no one was hurt, but because of the notoriety of the families involved, several of the photos made their way into Le Monde, including a close-up of the nearly forgotten daughter of Alexi Savagar.

  Alexi was too intelligent to keep Fleur’s existence a secret. Instead he’d simply look pensive whenever her name was mentioned, and people assumed his daughter was handicapped, perhaps mentally retarded. But the astonishingly beautiful young woman with the wide mouth and startled eyes could never be mistaken for anybody’s closet skeleton.

  Alexi was furious that the newspaper had identified her, but it was too late. People began asking questions. To make it worse, Solange Savagar picked that particular time to die. Alexi couldn’t tolerate the vulgar speculation that would grow even worse if the obviously healthy granddaughter who’d been so recently photographed was absent from her grandmother’s funeral.

  He ordered Belinda to send for her bastard.

  Chapter 7

  I’m going to meet my father today. The words tumbled through Fleur’s head as she followed a maid down the silent, forbidding hallway of the gray stone mansion on the Rue de la Bienfaisance. When they reached a small salon with a pilaster-framed doorway, the maid turned the knob, then slipped away.

  “Baby!” Liquor splashed over the edge of Belinda’s glass as she shot up from the silk damask couch. She abandoned her glass and held out her arms.

  Fleur rushed forward, only to stumble on the Persian carpet and nearly fall. They hugged each other, and, as she inhaled her mother’s Shalimar, Fleur felt a little better.

  Belinda looked pale and elegant in a black Dior suit and low-heeled pumps with pear-shaped openings at the toes. Fleur couldn’t bear having him think she was trying to impress, so she’d dressed in her black wool slacks, cowl-necked sweater, and an old tweed blazer with a black velvet collar. Her friends Jen and Helene had told her to put up her hair so she’d look more sophisticated, but she’d refused. The barrettes on each side of her head weren’t an exact match, but they were close enough. Finally she’d tucked her silver horseshoe stickpin in her lapel for confidence. So far, it wasn’t working.

  Belinda cupped Fleur’s cheek. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  Fleur saw the shadows under her mother’s eyes, the drink on the table, and hugged her more tightly. “I missed you so much.”

  Belinda grasped her shoulders. “It’s not going to be easy, baby. Stay out of Alexi’s way, and we’ll hope for the best.”

  “I’m not afraid of him.”

  Belinda waved off Fleur’s bravado with a trembling hand. “He’s been impossible ever since Solange got sick. I’m glad the old bitch is dead. She was getting to be a trial, even for him. Michel is the only one who’s sorry to see her go.”

  Michel. Her brother was fifteen now, a year younger than she. She’d known he’d be here, but she hadn’t let herself think about it.

  The door behind them gave a soft click. “Belinda, did you telephone the Baron de Chambray as I asked? He was especially fond of Mother.”

  His voice was low and
deep, filled with authority. The kind of voice that never had to be raised to be obeyed.

  He can’t do anything more to me, Fleur thought. Nothing. Slowly she turned to face her father.

  He was surgically well groomed, his hands and fingernails immaculate, his thin, steel-gray hair impeccably neat. He wore a necktie the color of old sherry and a dark vested suit. Next to Pompidou, he was said to be the most powerful man in France. He gave a short, elegant snort as she saw her. “So, Belinda, this is your daughter. She dresses like a peasant.”

  Fleur wanted to cry, but somehow she managed to lift her chin and look down at him. She spoke English deliberately. American English. Strong and clear. “The nuns taught me that good manners are more important than clothes. I guess things are different in Paris.”

  She heard Belinda’s quick intake of breath, but the only reaction Alexi showed to Fleur’s impertinence was in his eyes. They drifted slowly over her, searching for the flaws she knew he’d find in abundance. She’d never felt bigger, uglier, more awkward, but she matched him stare for stare.

  Standing off to the side, Belinda watched the duel taking place between Alexi and Fleur. A rush of pride swelled inside her. This was her daughter—strong, full of spirit, achingly beautiful. Let Alexi compare Fleur with his weakling son. Belinda sensed the exact moment when he saw the resemblance, and for the first time in longer than she could remember, she felt calm in his presence. When he finally looked her way, she gave him a small, triumphant smile.

  It was Flynn’s face Alexi saw in Fleur, the young, unblemished Flynn, with his features softened and transformed, made beautiful for his daughter. Fleur’s face had the same strong nose and wide, elegant mouth, the same high forehead. Even her eyes bore his mark in their shape and generous spacing. Only the green-gold irises were Fleur’s own.