All That Glitters (54 page)

I suppose that many of the psychiatric and psychological fraternity would deem it natural for a daughter to be jealous of her mother—and certainly Faun was. She seemed intent on vying with Belinda in every way she could think of, as if they weren’t mother and daughter at all but sorority sisters at college, after the same guys to take them to the Saturday football game. On the one hand it was ridiculous, on the other it was tragic; what a waste of time and energy, and what futility it led to.

Faun’s feelings toward her mother’s friend—“boyfriend,” if you like—must have been of the most ambivalent kind, for it was obvious that she was disguising her attraction to Frank, that she was really eager to have him take notice of her. But she was a good bit past the age of infatuation for an older male, and in one of her chameleon moods she could change in an instant, one minute going out of her way to play up to him, the next contemptuous and sarcastic. She liked to think she could chop him off at the knees any time she wanted to, while he gallantly fended off her poisoned barbs with his usual good humor. Try as she did, she seemed unable to provoke him. Poor Faun!

The time came for Belinda to leave for the eastern location of her film
The Light in the Window
; Frank was coming to drive her to the airport. When I went up for my morning swim, I glimpsed Faun as she appeared in the Playhouse doorway, her bags packed as well. She waved, I waved back.

“Going away again?” I asked when I got closer.

“Santa Fe.” She had a new boyfriend over that way, a full-blooded Indian at that.

“Terrific.”

“We’re going to white-water the Colorado. It’ll be real fun. You ought to come along.”

“Sorry, got to work.”

“Oh, you.”

She was away six days, then came back in love with her Hiawatha, who no doubt wore a feather in his hair and sat in the town square selling fake souvenirs to tourists. She raved about how marvelous he was and how she loved him, a deathless love that lasted about another six days. Now, question: where does all the money come from to do all this tootling around? Who
buys
all this white-watering, etc.? You know. Nana does.

She was always buttering up Maude for big bucks. “Nana dear, I got this absolutely ridiculous thing from the bank this morning. I don’t know what it means.”

“It means you’re overdrawn.”

“Really? How am I supposed to know that?”

“It’s stamped, dear. Three checks. NSF. Nonsufficient funds.”

“What do I do about it?”

“Put some money in, dear. That’s what people do with banks—put the money in.”

“But I haven’t any.”

“Too bad. First of the month.”

“First of the month” meant that cash would be deposited to her account on an automatic basis. The first of the month was always nice for her, but sometimes the first was fifteen days away or more. Maude somehow always made up the difference. “Oh, Nana darling, I could just kiss-kiss-kiss you!” Kiss kiss kiss. Maude hated it, but she put up with it. If she withheld comment or criticism, that was her business; if she indulged her, that, too, was her business, but what, I asked myself, was the result to be?

One evening I managed to persuade Maude to let me take her down the hill for a bite and a movie. She was going out more these days, and though I wanted to make it special and go somewhere glamorous, she said she wanted a hamburg, so we went to the Hamlet in Westwood. Afterward we went to see the new Woody Allen film at the Bruin. She enjoyed it and was full of talk on the way home. As we pulled in through the upper gates and approached the house, I saw headlights and a car came speeding in our direction. I gave way and the car sailed out the gates.

“Wasn’t that Frank?” asked Maude in surprise.

You bet it was Frank, going like a bat out of hell. I grew wary when I considered this hasty exit. Peering through the trees, I saw the Playhouse door flung open, and Faun came running across the lawn, crying out to us, her arms waving frantically. I pulled over and jumped out, to have her rush sobbing into my arms.

“What’s happened?” I asked, trying to see her face. “What is it?”

“Did you see him? Did you just pass him?” she cried. “You saw, Nana—Frank, it was Frank—” She was trembling and her words faltered. “Thank God you got here in time!”

A concerned Maude spoke up. “Faun, what is it? Come indoors, you’ll catch your death out here. Are you hurt?”

She spoke firmly and with some impatience, and I felt Faun clutch at me as if for moral as well as physical support. We got her inside, where Ling came to meet us; Maude took Faun into the Snuggery and wrapped her in a blanket, then asked for an explanation.

“He attacked me, he t-tried to—to—he—I—oh God! Oh
God
!” Faun babbled incoherently and her eyes were wild.

“What are you saying?” I asked. “Do you mean he raped you?”

“He was going to! I’m sure he would have if you hadn’t come. He took my robe off me—” She sobbed some more, hid her face as if in shame, sobbing into the blanket. I reached to raise her head up and stared hard at her, saying I didn’t believe her. She pulled away and sobbed some more.

Maude sat down on the sofa beside her. “Faun—are you telling us that Frank Adonis came up here and attacked you?”

Looking up with wet eyes, she talked more foolishness. I knew she had to be making the whole thing up. Remember Bucky Eaton? When we’d assured ourselves that she wasn’t injured in any way, Maude had Ling turn down the bed in Belinda’s room and tucked Faun into it. I went to the phone and called Frank, but there was no answer. Leaving a message on his answering machine, I waited for Maude to come down again, but Ling came with the message that Faun was resting and for me to go down to bed. Once in the Cottage, I tried Frank several times more before going to sleep.

Next morning he called before eight and I could tell he was angry. I met him on the Strip for coffee and got the whole story. It wasn’t terribly complicated, but it was hair-raising all right. This is what he told me:

Around seven last evening (soon after Maude and I had gone down the hill) Faun had telephoned Frank at his office. Ordinarily Minnie would have fielded the call, but since Faun sounded upset she put her through.

“She said she had to talk to me right away,” Frank said. “About her mother. When I asked what about her mother, she said she couldn’t tell me on the phone, it was too personal. I said I couldn’t just go running up there—you know how ——’s been kicking up the dust”—he named one of his most elevated movie clients, who was suffering studio as well as marital troubles—“I said I’d get there as soon as I could. She started crying and said please could I hurry, she didn’t know who else to turn to.

“I got away by nine and drove up. She was standing out on the lawn waiting for me—in a houserobe. Get the picture? When she saw me, she threw herself into my arms, bawling like hell. I walked her inside the Playhouse. She was still crying and at first I couldn’t get anything out of her at all, but bit by bit I managed to drag it out of her. I thought she was going to say she’d got knocked up by one of those yoyos she hangs out with, but no, nothing like that. It was all about Blindy.”

“What about her?” I asked.

“‘Mummy’s dying,’ she says.”

“
What
?”

“Relax—it’s all bullshit. She was doing one of her bits. Blindy had X-rays taken a month or so ago; they showed a spot on one of her lungs, just a tiny dot, nothing to worry about. But Faun had been listening in on the extension so she decided to see how big she could blow the whole thing up. I finally got her calmed down and then, when I got up to go, she started coming on with me. ‘What’s your hurry, big man?’ she says. ‘Nobody’s home, Nana’s gone to the flicks, let’s get cozy,’ and like that. And damned if she didn’t have the champagne all iced—she turns on the stereo, all warm bunny-rabbit as can be. I’m being set up.

“I tell her I’ve got work to get back to, and she begins crying again. She wasn’t kidding me, I knew it was one big act, but I think, Stay a couple of minutes, maybe we can get a few things nailed down between us. So we sit there on the couch, I’m asking her questions about what she wants to do with her life, what plans she has, and all of a sudden she comes out with ‘Frank, I’m in love with you.’

“I tell her if we’re going to talk, then talk sense, and she says, ‘I
am
talking sense.’ Then she says she’d been in love with me ever since that day you and I saw her at that pony ride. Remember?”

I was as shocked by this as Frank: she couldn’t have been fourteen at the pony ride.

“Doesn’t matter. She said men don’t realize it but young girls are filled with all kinds of sexual cravings. ‘I dream about you,’ she said. ‘I’ve talked to my doctor about it, he says it’s natural.’ Meanwhile, she’s inching closer to me on the sofa. ‘Don’t you think I’m pretty?’ she says. ‘Don’t you think I have a nice body, Frank? Come on, you can level with me, Mummy’s not around.’

“‘And a good thing she isn’t,’ I said. ‘Don’t you think you ought to turn your ignition off?’

“‘What for?’ she says. ‘What are you afraid of? What I have in mind won’t hurt you. Won’t hurt me, either, I enjoy it.’

“I suggested she call up her chum Bobby.

“‘But I don’t want to do it with Bobby,’ she says, ‘I want to do it with you.’ With this, she gets up and excuses herself, she’s got something she wants to show me. She steps around the corner. For some crazy reason I wait, and in seconds she’s back. Now she’s got her robe off and she’s standing there, holding out her arms to me.”

“You mean she was naked?”

“Not a stitch. I said if that’s how things were going to be I was getting the hell out of there. She comes running after me, catches me at the door, and throws her arms around me. ‘I’ll make it good for you, Frankie,’ she says. And—get this—‘I’m much better than Mummy, you’ll see.’

“‘You’ve got a disgusting mouth,’ I tell her, ‘and you ought to have more respect for your mother.’

“She laughed. ‘Who could respect
her
?’ she says. ‘Everybody knows Belinda Carroll was the biggest whore in Hollywood!’

“Then I slapped her; once, but hard.

“Then she really flared. ‘She is! She’s a
whore
, you hear me?
Whore
—
whore
—
whore—
!’

“I grabbed her by both shoulders and began shaking her until she stopped, then manhandled her back to the sofa and pushed her down. She fell against the cushions and I waited until she was still. ‘By Christ!’ I said when I had her attention. ‘If I ever hear you talk like that again you’ll wish you hadn’t, you got me?’ I got her robe and threw it at her; then I went out the door and headed for my car.”

It was just as he’d turned on his lights and started his engine that Maude and I had driven through the front gates. Then, when he’d gone, too angry to stop, Faun had come screaming out the door with her wild talk of rape.

I turned brick red when I heard Frank’s story, but it really wasn’t news to me. Even when I confronted Faun with the truth she stuck to her guns, saying she wasn’t the one who was lying, but Frank, and that if he ever came near her she’d call the police. It was really pathological. Maude was so ashamed she hardly knew what to say to Frank.

Evidently she talked to Faun’s psychiatrist—this was hers to do, since it was she who had picked up the tab for years, a hefty one, too—and Faun was finally persuaded to apologize, saying she’d been “a little carried away.” Frank graciously agreed to scratch the whole thing and we contrived that Belinda should be told nothing of what had happened.

This unattractive incident was shortly followed by yet another, and after that I felt sure Faun’s Sunnyside days were numbered. She’d casually mentioned at lunch that she was having some friends over that evening and named a well-known rock star. I saw the corners of Maude’s lips involuntarily make their little quirk of exasperation; then she quickly said that it sounded like fun. Later I suggested to Faun that her friends use my gate and go up to the Playhouse via the garden stairs so as not to disturb anybody.

I went out that evening and when I came home, around eleven, to my shock I found my driveway jammed with cars, a glitzy array of expensive vehicles that threw off dollar signs all over the place. Faun’s “little get-together” comprised far more than “a few friends,” and since my garage was blocked, I went to have a look.

The higher I climbed, the louder grew the noise. A full blast of “Yellow Submarine” hit me like an electronic thunderbolt when I came onto the esplanade. While the main house lay in darkness, the Playhouse was lit up like a department store at Christmastime. The music, I suddenly realized, wasn’t taped but live—the rock star had brought his whole group as well as their instruments, and the place was wired.

As I came closer I could smell the blatant odor of grass, and from the looks of some of the ones I passed, that wasn’t the only drug going around. I moved into the house, looking for Faun. A red-haired girl in a leather dress put her body up to mine and gave me some Hiya-big-boy stuff. “Where’s Faun?” I asked; she covered her teeth the way Japanese girls do when they laugh and pointed upstairs.

“She’s up there. With Ragtime Cowboy Joe.”

Though I hadn’t heard of that gentleman, I got a load of him quick enough. He was in Faun’s bedroom, in her bed. Faun was with him, looking out of things, and I figured she’d been on the golden spoon again. I had to shake her to get her to listen to me. I told the guy to get the hell out of there, if he didn’t the police would see to it. This threat shook some sense into Faun; she began pulling herself together. I got Cowboy Joe out, and when Faun could walk I got her downstairs. I went to the wall and yanked out the plug to the amplifier. “I think you’ve all partied enough,” I announced, “and someone’s blocking my garage, so why don’t you all just get out of here?”

Cowboy Joe grabbed me the way I hated anyone to do, but I didn’t hit him. “That goes for you, too, Gene Autry,” I told him.

“But we were having fun,” Faun wailed in my ear. “You don’t have the right anyway; this isn’t your house.”

“Should I remind you that it isn’t yours, either? You’re a guest here, so start acting like one, for Christ’s sake.”