Gift of the Golden Mountain (33 page)

If the wedding had been Philip's, the reception was Karin's, not by plan but by time and circumstance. Wildwood was the perfect setting for a dress-up party. A few years before, the dress would have been very proper, quite prescribed. "Dress-up" in 1970 was a free-for-all: any time period, or any mix, fantasy was fine and so was fun, and a large number of the five hundred who came took full advantage and made it something of a costume party.

     Guests poured in from all parts of the country: Philip's publishing friends in New York came, and the movie people he knew in Los Angeles, along with many of the Mount Holyoke girls who had graduated with Karin and May, and a large contingent from Berkeley.

     Karin set the tone. Her long flowered dress had been designed by a young woman with a romantic theatrical flair. It was pink and green and vaguely Edwardian. May's was simpler. Of yellow silk, it was ankle length and skimmed her body. Her hair was pulled back with a spray of white orchids.

     May had flower leis flown over from Hawaii, and floated them around our necks so we could breathe in the fragrance of frangipani and ginger and tube roses. The setting was sublime, we could lose ourselves in the loveliness of the day, and the place and the music and the people.

     "A little island in time," Kit reminded me, "grab and hold on tight. Isn't that right, Israel?"

     Israel stationed himself beside me on the pretext that I might have difficulty maneuvering my wheelchair over the flagstones. He looked splendid in a beige silk suit he had borrowed from a cousin,
set off by a midnight blue silk shirt, but I could tell that he was not entirely comfortable in this setting. That changed when Eli and Hayes arrived, escorted by May who came beaming, arm and arm between them, saying, "Just look who I found lurking about."

     "Hey brother," Eli called to Israel. "I admire your style, I certainly do, and I especially admire that pretty lady you came with." He kissed me on the cheek and Hayes stood holding one of my hands while May clung close enough to him so that I could hear her when she told him to remember to find her again when the music started.

Sam's wedding gift to Philip and Karin was to be an album of photographs from the wedding and the reception. He shot from four o'clock, when the first guests began to arrive, until all light was gone and the Japanese lanterns were lighted, transforming the gardens. He was making his way back to the house with his camera equipment when he came upon
Time's
bureau chief and his Swiss wife. Sam asked if they would like a private tour of the house. May happened onto them in her bedroom, where she had gone to get an aspirin for one of the Mount Holyoke classmates.

     "Miss Reade," the woman, whose name was Eugenie, said in thick accents, "I am so happy to meet you. I am reading about you just yesterday—I wonder do you know about that
Paris Match
story, the one called 'America's Rich Girls'?

     May frowned and said she didn't know.

     "Oh yes," Eugenie went on, her hands with their bright red fingernails shaping the air, "it is all about women beneath"—she said
be-knees
—"thirty, who are very wealthy, and they say you are one of them, and that little is known about you—you are mystery. The photograph of you was, I think, when you are little girl, with your father in some courtroom, I believe."

     May sat down on the bed. Sam put his hand on her shoulder,
rubbed it. "Not all that many Americans read
Paris Match
," he said, "I don't think you have to worry."

     May tried to smile. "As long as
Time
magazine doesn't decide to do a little feature on rich girls."

     "What rich girls?" the
Time
man said gallantly.

May found Eli walking back from the tennis courts. "You can get high just breathing in down there," he told her. "That little chubby blond woman from Iowa, the one with the innocent eyes? She must have about ten pounds of what she swears is Acapulco Gold. Did you know one of your old classmates is a dealer?"

     May laughed. "It's her looks. That flower-sprigged innocence covers a charming, larcenous little heart. Carrie likes money and men and wild parties, in that order. Dope falls into the first category—I hope she isn't selling it today."

     Eli shook his head and slipped his arm around her. "While we're on the subject of old college pals, I've been wanting to ask . . ." he began.

     Sam waved to them from across the pool; May noticed he was still with the
Time
couple. Seeing Sam reminded her, and she interrupted, "I've been wanting to ask you something, too. What was it Sam did that he had to explain to you? I heard part of the telephone call."

     Eli tightened. "No big deal," he said.

     "Maybe it isn't, but I know it involves Hayes, too, and I'd like to know."

     Grudgingly, he told her, "I thought Sam had used our names— mine and Hayes's—to get into a meeting of the Panthers that was supposed to be closed. He got one of the Brothers to pose with some guns . . . not a very smart thing to do, given the current climate of public opinion. Anyway," he looked away, "Sam worked it all out, it's okay."

     She knew by the way he said it that it wasn't. "My turn now," he went on, "while we are on the subject of Hayes."

     She took his arm, moving him across the terrace to the ballroom. He bent his head to hers so he couldn't be heard. "Hayes and you—what I don't understand is why, if it works, you don't let it."

     "If it works," she said, "I'm not sure it does."

     "I'm sure it could," he came back.

     She tried to explain. "Hayes is full of doubts . . ."

     "About himself, yes, but not about you," he answered.

     "But he has to come to terms, sort things out . . . and I have some things that need to be resolved before I can be any good for anyone . . ." She stopped, looked at Eli and something about the way he looked back at her moved her to speak with a searing, blunt honesty. "My mother deserted me when I was one month old, and it crippled me. I've been trying to come to terms with it—her walking out on me—all of my life. I don't know why it gnaws at me . . . I hate it . . . but I know I have to settle it before I can get on with my own life."

     "Hayes knows about this?"

     "Yes," she said, smiling wistfully, "he knows that I have to find her, to tell her . . . so I can get free of it. . . ."

     They walked for a time in silence. "I'm sure it could work for the two of you," Eli said softly, "and I think it should. You could make him happy, pretty May, and he deserves to be happy, my friend Hayes does. I have a powerful wish to see the two of you together, where you belong."

     She slipped her arm around his waist and leaned her head lightly on his shoulder, to show him how he had touched her.

"Miss Reade," called a small man with a moustache that brushed big on his face so that his mouth looked like a small, pink, wet thing. "I'm Ira Rossman—Philip's agent in L.A. I'd like to speak
to you—privately, if I could." He shot Eli a glance of dismissal. Eli looked at May, she tugged him closer.

     "Well Ira Rossman," she said, "I'd like you to meet Eli Barnes . . . friend, lover, Boy Scout, Black Panther, to name a few of his accomplishments. Eli and I have no secrets—except for Panther meetings which I am not allowed to attend. Bunch of racist snobs, the Panthers."

     The small man snorted and sneezed at once to cover his confusion. Eli's laughter saved him. May gave in and smiled.

     "I see," Rossman said, laughing to show he could take a joke. "What I wanted to talk to you about . . . I read this article in
Paris Match
about you . . ."

     May cut in. "About me?" she said. "What did it say? What could it possibly say? What was the article called? Tell me."

     Her quick switch confused him. His hands tried to shape the air into an answer. "Well, I didn't actually read it myself, I heard about it—the gist of it—and it seemed to me there might be something there . . . I mean, I know a lot of people in the Business and . . ."

     "What business is that, Mr. Rossman?" May came back, mock innocent now. Eli watched, fascinated. He had never seen May so taunting.

     "The movie business, May," the little man said, his pink gums flashing between swaths of moustache. "I think we might be able to put together a package . . ."

     "A package of what exactly?" May came back. "You say you haven't read this story, but you think there's 'something' in it. Perhaps they talked about my work—is that what interests you?"

     Ira Rossman tried grinning and shrugging, a gesture meant to be boyishly charming. "I think we could . . . it would be possible, certainly . . . to work that in."

     "Work what in?" May demanded.

     "Man," Eli laughed in a big, loose-jointed way and lapsed into street language: "You got to do your homework before you come
lookin' after the doctor here. The doctor, she don't suffer fools graciously, you've got to know that. She likely push your belly in boy, send you flyin' out on one of those volcanoes she done study all the time. That's so, man, that's perfectly so, you don't watch your step this lady here about to blow, like Stromboli, like Krakatoa. No shit. You got to watch out there."

     Ira Rossman lost control. He began to trip over words. "Investments . . ." he said, "Many people find films an interesting investment, not just dollar return but the people you meet. A whole lot of very interesting people . . . Brando," he said, his voice rising, "John Huston," he went on, "fabulous people."

     "John Huston you say?" Eli repeated. "No shit."

     "Miss Reade?"

     "I could never bear fabulous people," May told him, "ask Philip."

     May and Eli walked toward the music. The sky was a deep, dark blue, the night was almost upon them. The colored lanterns lit their way, swaying in a soft and welcome breeze, come to cool the day's long warmth.

     "God this is a good party," Eli said, shedding the accent he had affected for Ira Rossman. "I said to myself when I came in here today that I would leave the rest of the world outside, the whole bloody mess, festering out there. Today I called myself a time-out, just to be with my friends and have a nice time for now, that's all."

     "Don't stop being my friend, Eli," May said, "or Hayes's. Please."

     She could see his teeth shining against the dark of his face, and his eyes studying her. "Hayes is the best man I ever knew," Eli said, "black or white. If the two of you don't find each other sometime, some place, I will never forgive you. Never. Because I love you both, you two honkies. God help me, I do."

     He gave her a fierce look and said, "Come on woman, let's dance." The "Sweet Relish" version of "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" drifted out to them, soft and throbbing. She swayed down the path, moving with the beat, soft and easy and rhythmic. Eli lifted his hand to Hayes who put down his glass, as if their
movements were synchronized. He walked to meet them. "I'm going to ask the bride to dance," Eli said to Hayes. "You take hold of the bridesmaid here."

     "Always the bridesmaid." May sighed as she moved into Hayes's arms. "Never the bride."