Never Too Rich (4 page)

“
Ruby!” she called out, peeling off
her blue leather gloves and slapping them against the palm of her
hand. “I’m home!”

Ruby bustled in from the direction of the kitchen.
The housekeeper did a double-take and her mahogany face broke into
a cheerful white smile.

“
My Lord, Miz Edwina!” she cried.
“You’re back already!”

Edwina smiled and stepped forward to hug her. “Ruby,
your face is a sight for sore eyes! How I’ve missed you.”

Ruby made a face. “If you’d called, I’d have told
you to stay away a day or two.” She tilted her head back and
scowled at the staircase curving gracefully up to the second floor.
“Hallelujah, she said she’s sick, so she can’t go to school, and
what does she do? Piles up the bed like she was Princess Di and
plays that jungle drum music so loud I can’t hear myself think!”
She shook her head despairingly.

Edwina looked worried as she slowly took off her
electric-blue mink cape. “Is it anything serious? Does Hal show a
fever?”

Ruby flapped her hand. “If you ask me, she shows a
serious dislike for exams, that’s what,” she growled. There was a
fierce expression in her brown eyes, but she had the soul of a
mothering angel and a heart of gold—and there was something warmly
comforting about her big-busted, ample proportions. She moved like
the bowsprit of a ship parting the seas.

“
You have a good trip?” she asked,
taking the mink cloak and scowling at it. She had long ago made it
clear that only fools and pimps sheared a good mink and then dipped
it in blue dye. “I just don’t know what’s gotten into that child
the last two weeks,” she said disconsolately. “That is not the same
girl you left. I don’t think it’s that record that’s brain dead, I
think it’s
her.”

Now Edwina was beginning to look very alarmed. “What
do you mean?” she asked falteringly.

“
Go up and see for yourself,” Ruby
invited darkly, muttering under her breath as she went to hang up
the despised blue fur so she wouldn’t have to look at it any
longer. “But if you do, take my advice and have yourself a good
stiff belt of brandy first.”

Edwina looked startled. What did Ruby mean? she
wondered. What could have happened to her perfect, sweet little
girl?

Only last year Hallelujah had been determined to
become a ballerina, the year before that an opera singer. The
latest craze had been to become a classical violinist. For the last
few months, everything had been Juilliard this and Juilliard that.
The apartment had always been filled with the melodious
classics.

And now? With this ghastly apocalyptic noise—

“
Brain dead
. .
.”

Edwina half ran up the steps, the noise growing more
deafening the closer to Hallelujah’s room she got.

The door to the lacy princess haven with its
lace-canopied bed, lace-skirted vanity, and lace curtains was
closed. She knocked.

There was no answer.

Well, how could there be? she asked herself
reasonably. It was a wonder that Hallelujah’s eardrums hadn’t burst
already.

Pressing firmly down on the brass door handle, she
opened the door and gasped in speechless horror.

There was such an air of unreality about the room
that she felt as if she had stepped into a Steven Spielberg film,
opening a perfectly normal door that led straight into hell.

What had happened to the beautiful walls that had
been hand-stenciled to look like lace? Where were all the Belgian
lace skirts, and curtains, and spreads?

Edwina could only slump against the doorjamb and
stare. In the two weeks since she’d left, the expensive lace
stencils had become crude black-and-white zebra stripes that
crossed even the ceiling, and the exquisite lace-draped furniture
had been stripped to its bare essentials and painted acidic enamel
colors: the barren four-poster in sizzling pink, the vanity a
putrid chartreuse. Leopard-patterned acrylic throws were
everywhere—flung over the shapes she vaguely remembered as graceful
slipper chairs, spread over the bed as a furry cover, and tacked,
like tent flaps, across the windows. The beautiful parquet, which
had been hand-painted with a wreath of flowers that went all around
the room, was now hidden under a layer of bilious green fake
fur—the type usually used to cover toilet seats. And on the
television, a violent rock video was flickering; even Edwina, a
novice to rock and punk music, could tell that the TV sound was
turned down. The video images and the music didn’t mesh: it was the
noise from the CD player that was deafening.

And there, amid it all, was the creature who had
been her recently exquisite daughter. Hallelujah Cooper was
kneeling in the center of the bed, her long chestnut hair of two
weeks ago cut short and standing straight up in black and yellow
spikes, her perfect, creamy complexion hidden beneath a mask of
ghoulish white makeup accentuated with almost-black lipstick and
Marlene Dietrich eyes.

And her
clothes!
Edwina shuddered. Where on
God’s earth had Hal found these throwaway horrors? Where were her
real clothes? She’d never even seen the things Hal had on now—an
old scuffed black leather motorcycle jacket, scarlet latex halter
top, black lace tights, and dirty white sneakers. And hanging from
the jacket’s epaulets, from the belt loops, and from Hallelujah’s
ears, wrists, neck, and even from around one ankle, was the biggest
collection of rhinestone jewelry this side of Las Vegas.

Edwina blinked. Caught her breath. Shook her head as
though to shake the image away. Ruby, she realized, had for once
understated the situation. This . . . this abomination of a . . .
girl? . . . could not possibly be her daughter. While she had been
gone, goblins had come, stolen the real Hallelujah, and left a
changeling in her place.

Finding her feet, Edwina stiffly crossed the room
and switched off the blaring CD player.

The sudden silence was jarring. The soundless video
on the TV continued flickering.

Hallelujah bounced off the bed. “Yo, Eds!” She
beamed at her mother and blew a giant pink bubble of gum.

Yo? Eds?
What had become of “Hi” and “Ma”?
She peered more closely at the apparition that was supposed to be
her daughter. “Hal?” she asked shakily. “Is that really you?”

“
Like, you know, it should be
somebody else?” Hallelujah rolled her tawny yellow-brown eyes.
“Give me a break. You think I skipped town and you came back and
it’s like: Where’s my little girl?”

Edwina nodded. “Something like that, yes,” she said
slowly. Suppressing a shudder, she sat down on the edge of the bed.
Bowing her head to momentarily inspect the chipped polish of a
magenta talon, she took a deep breath and then looked back up,
meeting Hallelujah’s eyes straight on. “Hal, darling,” she said
succinctly, “I think we have to talk.”

“
Oh,
Maaa!”
Hallelujah
wailed, and rolled her eyes expressively again. “You’re gonna get
on my case now, right?”

“
I worry about you, that’s all.
Darling, Ruby told me you were sick.”

Hallelujah averted her gaze. “Well ... I didn’t feel
too
well. It was, like I was coming down with something? You
know?” She sneaked a sideways peek to test the waters.

From her mother’s expression, they looked chilly.
Positively freezing.

“
Indeed?” Edwina asked coldly. “And
would you care to elaborate on what you were coming down with,
young lady?”

Hallelujah set her square chin firmly. “Oh . . . you
know . . .”

“
Hal,” Edwina said carefully, the
only outward sign of her inner consternation being a vein she was
unable to keep from throbbing at her temple, “I thought we’d agreed
to come to decisions together.”

“
Oh-oh.” Hallelujah went on full
alert. “This sounds like it has all the beginnings of a major
lecture coming on.”

Edwina ignored her and arranged herself into a
stiffly formal posture. “First of all, about this room—I can’t say
that it doesn’t come as somewhat of a shock. You should have talked
it over with me before going ahead and ...” She was at a loss for
words. “... and, well,
trashing
it.”

“
Ma,” Hallelujah said in a voice of
weary exasperation, “you never listen! I told you on the phone last
week that I wanted to redecorate, and you said, ‘That’s nice,
darling!’ So I naturally thought—”

“
You mean, you
conveniently
thought. But you knew better. Well, what’s done is done.” Edwina
compressed her lips. “Now, about these clothes . . . and the
makeup.” She paused, frowning, and tilted her head questioningly.
“Has your father seen you like this?”

“
Like what?” Hallelujah was
suddenly all innocence.

“
Cut the bullshit,
kiddo.”

“
Really, Ma! What’s gotten into
you? I mean, you’re really coming down strong on me, you
know?”

“
That’s because you’ve taken steps
you knew would invite that. If you’re old enough to strike out on
certain paths, then you’ve got to face the music as
well.”

“
You’re treating me like a
child.”

“
If you want to be treated like a
grown-up, then you should act li—”

Hallelujah suddenly spied something on the TV and
let out a screech. Lunging for her remote control, she turned the
sound all the way up. Edwina stared at the TV to see what had
electrified her daughter.

On-screen, a blond-and-black-haired youth with the
same spiky hair as Hallelujah’s, the same makeup, and nearly the
same leather-and-tights outfit, launched into the very number she
had just switched off on the CD player.

“
Brain Dead.”

“
It’s Bad Billy!” Hallelujah
squealed excitedly, shouting to make herself heard above the
raucous noise.

Edwina ground her teeth. So that was the inspiration
for Hallelujah’s hideous new outfit!

Hallelujah waited until the song was completely over
before she switched the sound back off. She was positively
glowing.

Edwina wasn’t. Her ears were ringing, and she tried
to blink away the nightmarish images of the video. Bikers,
vampires, vultures, mad doctors, and Bad Billy as a kind of punk
Frankenstein. She shuddered. It really did make you yearn for
The Sound of Music
or
Bambi.
Saccharine or not, she
would take Julie Andrews over Bad Billy any day.

Hallelujah’s eyelashes fluttered. “Isn’t he just the
sexiest thing
alive?”
She sighed dreamily.

Whoa! Edwina looked startled. Since when had Hal
begun using words like “sexy” to describe a man?

She took a deep breath and strove to make her voice
sound neutral. “You’ve got to understand, darling. I’m just trying
to be a good mother. It isn’t an easy job, you know.”

Hallelujah sighed. “Neither is being a kid.” She
blew a half-hearted bubble.

“
No, I don’t suppose it is.” Edwina
knew her words sounded lame and trite, but they expressed what she
felt. She sighed to herself. If only Hallelujah knew that she
really
did
understand. Her own upbringing had been far from
conventional; in fact, it had been downright bizarre.

Edwina had been born in New York. She never knew her
father, and her mother, Holly Robinson, never talked about him.
About all she had ever learned was that her father’s name really
was Robinson and that her mother’s perverse sense of humor showed
on her 1956 birth certificate and would haunt her to her grave:
Edwina Georgia Robinson.

Edwina G. Robinson.

It didn’t take long before everyone took to calling
her—what else?—”Eds.”

An odd name hadn’t hurt Edwina, but her mother’s
absences did. Holly Robinson was the original party girl. She loved
to play and travel, and moved on the edges of the jet set, relying
on the generosity of men and the invitations and gifts from friends
and acquaintances to get by. She was showered with both, because
she was ravishingly beautiful and her razor wit and bubbling
personality brought life to any party. She was a fixture at all the
fabulous playgrounds of the world: Paris, Sardinia, Monte Carlo,
London, the Caribbean. Wherever the jet set descended, so too did
Holly. There was never any real money, and she and Edwina often had
to move from one residential hotel to another, sneaking furtively
out at night without paying their bill. But there was never a
shortage of gowns and furs and jewels, charge accounts and airline
tickets, and constant house-party and yachting invitations. Holly
Robinson’s beauty and personality were her ticket to another world.
But it was a ticket for one: children weren’t included.

When Edwina was two, Holly left her with a childless
couple, a school friend and her young doctor husband. “I’ll only be
gone a few days,” she promised them vaguely. “I mean, what’s there
to do on Mykonos? You’ve seen one island, you’ve seen them all.”
Then she blew kisses to her daughter, waggled her fingertips to her
school friend, and didn’t return for nearly three months.

It was the beginning of a pattern.

When Edwina was three, she spent more than half a
year being shuttled between Holly’s various friends. And never the
same ones twice. One long visit, and they all knew better.

When Edwina was four, the half-year turned into
nearly nine months.

And when she was seven, Holly, running out of homes
to stick Edwina in, left her with two men who lived together in
Greenwich Village.

“
This is Alfredo, and this is
Joseph,” her mother had said in her whispery, breathy little-girl
voice. “They are your uncles, darling. Be good, and Mama will be
back soon.” Holly blew Edwina the by-now-familiar kisses, wrapped
herself in her newest sable, and was gone to a party in a chateau
halfway around the world.