And I have to admit, I felt pretty angry at you, too. I was angry that I wasn’t enough for you, that you had to know about my past, that behind my back you’d sent your lawyer down south to check me out, that you would never let the whole subject alone.
What did you want to do? Decide for me whether I had a right to run away from home? Yeah, I was angry. I have to admit it. Scared and angry.
But I didn’t want to lose you either. That we were once-in-a-lifetime, that is what kept going through my head. Someday, somehow, I wanted to do something like you had done with your paintings. I wanted to be like you/
Can you understand this? Do you know what it means not just to love a person but to want to be like that person? You were somebody worth loving. And I just could not think of life without you.
Well, I was going to get us both out of this somehow. There had to be a way.
A lot of things came back to me—jams I’d been in—my escape from Uncle Daryl, sneaking down hotel fire escapes in Europe when the film company had stuck us with everybody’s bill. The drug bust in London when I stood in the door of the hotel room holding off the cops with every line I could think of while Mom flushed the grass. And then the time in Spain when she had passed out on the stairway of the Palace Hotel and I had to convince them not to call an ambulance, that she was just drowsy from her medicine and would they please just help me to get her upstairs. Yeah, there had to be a way out, there had to be, and what Ollie Boon had said about power kept running through my head.
But I didn’t have the power, that was the problem. I had the stalemate, but not the power. Who had the power? Who could call off all the dogs now?
Well, there was only one person who could do it, and she had always been the center of the universe, hadn’t she? Yes, she was the goddess, the superstar. She could make them all do what she said.
l picked up the phone and I called a number that I had had with me in my purse since the day I left. It was the number of the phone by Mom’s bed.
Six thirty. Mom, be there. Don’t have gotten up yet, don’t have gone to the studio. And three rings and I heard her same old low slurred voice barely breathing the word, hello.
“Mom, this is Belinda,” I said.
“Belinda,” she whispered, like she was afraid someone else would hear. “Mom, I need you,” I said. “I need you the way I never have in my life.” She didn’t answer me.
“Mom, I’m living with this man in San Francisco and I love him and he is a gentle and kind man and I need you, Mom. I need you to make it all right.”
“Jeremy Walker, is that what you’re telling me?” she said.
“Yes, Mom, that’s the one.” I took a deep breath. “But it’s not the way Marty told you, Mom. Until yesterday, I swear to you, Mom, this man did not know who I am. He may have had his suspicions and all, but he didn’t know for sure. Now he does know and he’s terribly terribly unhappy, Mom. He’s confused and he doesn’t know what to do and I need your help.”
“You’re not ... really living with Marty?”
“No, Mom, never, not since the day I left.”
“And what about the pictures, Belinda, all the pictures this man has done?”
“They are very beautiful, Mom,” I said.
And here was a long shot, but I had to try it. I said:
“They’re like the movies Flambeaux made with you in Paris. They are art, Mom, really and truly that is what they are.” I tried to hold steady in the silence. “It will be a long time before anyone ever sees them, Mom. They are not what is worrying me now.”
Again she didn’t answer. And then I took the biggest gamble of my whole life.
“Mom, you owe me this one,” I said gently. “I am talking to you as Belinda to Bonnie. And, Mom, you owe me this one. You know you do.”
I waited, but she still did not answer. I felt like I was on the very edge of the cliff. One mistake and I was over the edge.
“Mom, help me. Please help me. I need you, Mom?’
And then I could hear her crying. And she said so softly in a brokenhearted voice:
“Belinda, what do you want me to do?”
“Mom, can you come to San Francisco now?”
At eleven a.m. the studio plane landed, and she looked like a corpse when she stepped out the door. She was slimmer than I’d ever seen her and her face was like a mask, every line smoothed out. But her head was down as always. She never looked me in the eye.
All the way into the city I told her about you, I told her about the paintings, I asked her if the snapshots she’d seen had given her any idea how good they were.
“I know Mr. Walker’s work,” she said. “I used to read his books to you, don’t you remember? We had them all. We’d always look for his new books when we went to London. Or Trish would send them from back home.”
A knife went into me when she said this. I could remember us lying together and her reading to me. The backdrop might shift from Paris to Madrid to Vienna. But there was always a double bed and a bedside lamp. And she was always the same with the book in her hands.
Now she was a stranger who looked like a nun all this time under the hood of her cloak with her head down.
“But you’re lying,” she said, “when you say you never told him about me.”
“No, Mom, I never told him. I never told him anything at all.”
“You told him awful things, didn’t you? You told him things about me and Marty and what happened, I know you did.”
Again I told her I hadn’t. And then I told her just how it had been. How you’d asked me and I made you promise and how maybe you had sent your lawyer to check on Susan because I had those posters of Susan in my room.
I couldn’t tell if she believed me. I went on to explain what I wanted her to do. Just talk to you, tell you it was OK if we were together and we would never bother her again. Just call off all the lawyers and the detectives. Call off Uncle Daryl and let us alone. Then she asked: “How do I know you’ll stay with this man?”
“Mom, I love him. It’s the kind of thing that happens once to some people, and to other people never at all. I won’t leave him unless he leaves me. But if you talk to him, Mom, he won’t do that. He’ll go on with his painting. He’ll be happy. And we’ll both be OK.”
“And what will happen when he shows these pictures?”
“Mom, it will be a long time before he does that. A long long time. And the art world is a thousand light years away from our world. Who would ever make the connection between the girl in those pictures and Bonnie’s daughter? And even if they did, who would care? I’m not famous, Mom, the way you are. Final Score never got released in this country. Bonnie is the one who is famous, and what would it all matter to her?”
We had turned off on Seventeenth now, and we were passing the house, because she wanted to see it, and then we drove on up the hill. We parked up there at the lookout point on Sanchez Street, facing all the buildings of downtown.
Then she asked if I had seen Marty since the day I left LA. And I said only when he came here to check on me, and we had only talked together. Marty was her husband now.
She was silent a long time then. And then she said softly that she couldn’t do it, just couldn’t do what I asked.
“But why can’t you?” I was pleading with her. “Why can’t you just tell him it’s OK.”
“What would he think I was doing, just giving my daughter to him? And what if he decided to tell somebody I’d done it, just handed you over to him. Suppose you ran out on him tomorrow. Suppose he showed the paintings he’s done. What if he told the world that I had come and just given him my teenage daughter, said take her, like I was turning her out like a pimp right on the street?”
“Mom, he would never do that!” I said.
“Oh, yes, he could do it. And he’d have something on me all my life. That lawyer of his probably already knows plenty. He knows nobody picked up the phone to the LAPD when you ran off. He knows something happened with you a
nd Marty. Maybe you’ve told them both more than that.”
I begged her to believe me, but I could see it was no use. And then it came to me. What if she thought she had something on you in return for what she was doing? What if she thought she had the upper hand? l thought of the Artist and Model pictures. I knew those pictures. I liked them. I’d been through all the prints a dozen times. And I also knew that not a single one of them proved a damn thing. You couldn’t see who I was in them. And you could hardly make out who you were either. They were just a real mess. Really grainy, lousy light.
But would Mom know that? Mom could hardly see even with her glasses when she was doped up.
I decided it was the best shot I had. She listened while I described them to her. “You could tell him your detectives got them out of the house when they tracked me down. You’re doing it for my safety, holding the pictures over him, you know, and that you’ll send them all back to him when I’m eighteen. By that time it won’t really matter, Mom, whether or not I’m with him or whether or not he shows the paintings. It will all be past. He’d never hate you for it, Mom. He’d just figure you were trying to protect me.”
The car took me back down to Sanchez and Seventeenth and I went up to the house. I was hoping and praying I wouldn’t find you there yet. The phone rang, and it was Dan Franklin of all people. I just about died.
I almost brought her the prints for Artist and Model, but then she might see that they proved nothing at all. So I got the negatives out of your file in the basement, and I was just leaving when the phone rang again. This time it was Alex Clementine. I thought my luck is really running low.
But I made my getaway then. And finally, after we went over and over it, Mom had the plan pretty well clear in her mind. I’d go on down to Carmel, she would wait for you and then use the argument we’d agreed on to get your promise to take care of me.
Then a slight change came over her. She lowered the hood of her cloak for the first time and she looked at me.
“You love this man, huh, Belinda? Yet you give me these pictures? You just put his neck in the noose like that for your own little schemes.” She smiled when she said it, one of those real ugly bitter smiles that people do, that make things so much worse.
I felt the breath go out of me. Back to square one, it seemed. Then I said real carefully, “Mom, you know you can’t ever really use your pictures. Because if you did, I’d send Marty straight to jail.”
“And you’d do that to my husband, wouldn’t you?” She asked me, and she looked at me very intently, as if she was trying to see something very important to her.
And I thought for a moment before I answered, I thought about what she really wanted here, and I said:
“Yes, for Jeremy Walker I’d do that. I really would.”
“You’re some little bitch, Belinda,” she said. “You have both these men by the balls, don’t you? Back in Texas we would have called you slick.”
I felt such a sense of injustice then, I started crying. But more important, I could see by her eyes that I had said the right thing. Marty had no part in what I was doing. I was in love with you. She was convinced at last. Yet she was still looking at me, more and more dangerous. One of was right.
“Look at you,” she said real low so I could hardly hear her. and I could feel the moment getting those speeches again, I thought, and I
“All those nights I cried over you, wondering where you were, wondering if maybe I was wrong about your being with Marty, maybe you were off all alone out here. I think I kept accusing Marty of lying ‘cause I couldn’t face the other possibility, that you were really lost and maybe hurt. But that wasn’t it at all, was it, Belinda? All the time you were in this fancy house with this rich Mr. Walker. Yeah, slick is the word for you.”
I held steady. I thought, Belinda, if she says the sky is green, agree with her. You have to. That is what everyone else has always done.
“You don’t even resemble me, do you?” she asked. Same flat voice. “You look like G.G. You sound like G.G. It’s as if I had nothing to do with it at all. And here you are peddling your ass just the way G.G. always did since the time he was twelve years old.”
I held steady. I was thinking I had heard this side of her before. It would come out in flashes when she talked to Gallo or when she told Trish or Jill about somebody that was mean to her. But she had only shown it to me once before now. Chilling it was to see her smiling and hear the vicious things she was saying. But again, I thought, Belinda, get the job done.
“G.G. ever tell you how he got started,” she asked, “hustling the old queers for money on his way up? Ever tell you how he lies to those old ladies when he curls their hair? That’s what you are, aren’t you, a liar like G.G. And you’re hustling Mr. Walker, aren’t you? Got him tied up in ribbons and bows. I was a fool not to think that G.G.’s blood would come through.”
I was boiling inside. I think I looked out the window. I’m not sure. My mind wandered, that much I remember. She was talking still and I could hardly follow what she said. I was thinking to myself how hopeless this all of it. The truth will never be known. And all my life I have lived with this kind of confusion, everything mixed up, just giving up over and over again that anything would ever be understood.
She and I might never see each other again after this. She’d go back to Hollywood and live on drugs and lies until she finally did do it with a gun or pills, and she’d never know what had driven us apart. Did she even remember Susan or the name of our movie? Would anyone ever get through to her about those times when she had almost killed me in trying to kill herself?.
But then a terrible thought came to me. Had I ever tried to tell her the truth myself?. Had I ever tried for her sake to reach her, to make her see things, just for a moment, in a different light? Everybody had lied to her ever since I could remember. Had I gone along for reasons of my own?
She was my mother. And we were going our separate ways in hatred. How could I let that happen without even making an effort to talk about what had gone on? Good God, how could I leave her like this? She was like a child really. Couldn’t I even try?
I looked at her again. She was still looking at me. And that ugly smile was there just like before. Say something, Belinda. Say something, and yet if it goes wrong and you lose Jeremy—And then she spoke instead.
“What are you going to do, little bitch,” she asked, “if I don’t blackmail your friend, Mr. Walker? Tell me, what you’re going to do to us all, G.G.’s daughter? Bring us all down?”
I was staring at her, kind of on hold, and stunned like she had hit me, and then I said:
“No, Mom. You’re wrong about me, all wrong. All my life I’ve protected you, taken care of you. I’m still doing it. But, so help me God, you hurt me and Jeremy Walker, and I will look out for myself and him.”
I got out of the car, but I stood there with the door open. And then after a long time I leaned back inside. I was crying. I said:
“Play this last role for me, Bonnie. I promise you, I’ll never darken your door again.”
The look on her face then was terrible. It was heartbroken. Just heartbroken. And in the most tired voice with no meanness at all she said:
“OK, honey. OK. I’ll try.”
I talked to her one time after that. It was close to midnight and I went out to the phone booth in Carmel and I called her private line, as we had planned.
She was the one crying then. She was stammering and repeating herself so badly I could hardly make out what she said. She told me something about how you took the negatives from her, that she hadn’t pulled it off. But the awful thing was that she’d tried to turn you against me. She said she didn’t mean it, really she didn’t, but you kept asking her questions and she had said the meanest things about me and Marty and all that.
“Don’t worry, Mom, it’s OK,” I said to her. “If he still wants me after all this, then I guess it’s just really fine.”
Then Marty came on the line. “The
bottom line is this, honey. He knows we’re on to him. He won’t use those pictures if he’s got a brain in his head.”
I didn’t even answer that one. I just said, “Tell my mom I love her. Tell her now so that I can hear it.” And after he did, I heard him say, “She loves you, too, honey, she says to tell you she loves you.” I hung up.
But, you know, after I left the phone booth, I went walking on the beach, letting the wind just sear me to the bone. And I kept seeing her when she said: “OK, honey, OK. I’ll try.” I wanted so to run the tape back and be in that moment again and just to hold her in my arms.
“Mom!” I wanted to say. “It’s me, Belinda, I love you, Mama. I love you so much.”
But that moment would never come again. I’d never touch her or hold her again ever. Maybe never even hear her voice speaking to me. And all the years in Europe and on Saint Esprit were gone away.
But there was you, Jeremy. And I loved you with my whole heart. I loved you so much you can not imagine. And I prayed and prayed for you to come. I prayed to God you would not ask me anything else ever, because if you did, I might spill everything and I could never never tell it and not hate you for making me tell.
Please, Jeremy, just come. That was my prayer. Because the truth was, I’d lost Mom a long time ago. But you and me—we were forever, Jeremy. We really were once-in-a-lifetime. And the paintings would live forever. Nobody could ever kill them the way they killed Susan’s movie. They were yours, and someday you’d have the courage to show them to everyone else.
Well, now you have it, Jeremy. We have come to the finish. The story is finally told. For two days straight I have sat in this room writing in this notebook, filling every page both sides. I am tired and I feel the misery I knew I’d feel when all the secrets were finally revealed.
But you have now what you always wanted, all the facts of my life and past before you, and you can make the judgment for yourself that you never trusted me to make.
And what is your judgment? Did I betray Susan when I went to bed with Marty the very night after he killed her picture? Was I a fool to want his love? And what about Mother in those crucial weeks in Los Angeles? All my life I’d cared for her, but I was so in love with Marty that I stood by and did nothing as she starved herself, got hooked on the medications, the plastic surgery, and all the other things that turned her life into sleepless nights and bad dreams. Should I have gotten her out of it somehow to some place where she could have taken stock? And was I guilty all along of a worse betrayal of her, of never trying, for her sake and mine, to break through the games we all played?