Stars (The Butterfly Trilogy) (12 page)

     A week later they were on the Tiburon ferry, crossing the choppy, gray bay, and they stood on the foredeck of the boat, cold and shivering, but laughing. Christine clung to her father and never wanted to let go; she loved the feel of him, the strong, solid man feel. When she hugged him like this,
it gave her the sense of self-worth and self-esteem that she so badly lacked whenever he was gone. Every time Johnny returned, Christine could feel the marrow creep back into her bones; she became real again, existing and deserving to exist.

     "There you go, Dolly!" he said, pointing toward the shore. "Tiburon," he said, and she thought he made it sound so romantic and adventurous, like Shangri-la and El Dorado, not just a part of San Francisco Bay.

     They had brought blankets, a picnic basket, and a Scrabble game, all of which were being carried by the bodyguards, Hans and Will, who kept an eye on their boss from a discreet distance. After the ferry docked, Johnny and his daughter walked along the main road until they came to a country lane, and they headed down it, shaded by a canopy of trees. The air was young and biting, seasoned with salt from the sea and ringing with the cry of sea gulls. They searched for a place to have their picnic; Johnny wouldn't settle for just any place. It had to be special.

     Finally he found a clearing on a rise where the grass was just right, the flowers perfect, the wind not too strong, the sun soft and warm. He spread the blanket and had Christine sit down, like a princess, while he opened the basket and set out plates and napkins, knives and forks, and two crystal goblets. He did everything with a flourish, calling her "madam" and making her laugh. There was enough food for a crowd of people, but they ate it all: cold fried chicken, dill pickles, and hard-boiled eggs accompanied by pumpernickel with cream cheese and two large bottles of milk, which Johnny poured into the goblets.

     While they ate Johnny asked Christine about her schoolwork. Did she like her teacher? What were her favorite subjects? And Christine asked him about his latest business trip but, as usual, Johnny was disarmingly evasive. Then they washed their hands on the soapy cloths Mrs. Longchamps had put in a jar, and they settled into a friendly, competitive game of Scrabble.

     When they grew tired of the game, they meandered into the conversation they nearly always had in special moments like this. "Tell me again about Mommy," Christine said, and a change came over Johnny. The flash left him, the fast talk vanished; he grew tender and sentimental. "She was the most beautiful woman in the world, Dolly," he said, lying on his back
and studying the clouds as if Sarah Singleton's face floated up there among them. "She was always rather fragile, like a porcelain figurine, and there were times when I was afraid to touch her. I never knew what she saw in a guy like me. When we first met, I had rough edges. When I spoke, Brooklyn came tumbling out. I said things like 'ain't' and 'nothin." And I thought acting tough was the smartest thing a guy could do."

     He lifted himself up on one elbow and looked at Christine. "Your mother was a genuine lady, Dolly. She was all class, and she made me into a gentleman. She corrected my speech and picked out my clothes and took me to the opera. And everywhere we went people stared at us, they were so impressed."

     "You still miss her, don't you, Daddy?"

     He put a hand on Christine's cheek and said, "Dolly, that's the understatement of the century. When your mother died, when the cancer took her, part of me died, too. I pray to God that I go to heaven someday, because I want to spend eternity with your mother."

     Christine was suddenly overwhelmed with feelings of love—for her father and for the mother who had made him so happy. Christine wanted him to talk about her like that someday. "Do I look like her, Daddy?" she asked, because in the few photographs they had of Sarah Singleton, the resemblance between mother and daughter wasn't evident.

     Johnny sat all the way up and ran his hands over his slick hair. "You're like her in spirit and heart, Dolly, and that's what counts the most."

     They decided to go for a walk then, and Christine saw an opportunity to bring up the subject of his business again. "What exactly do you do, Daddy?" She was anxious to know because Martha Camp said that her father had called Johnny a crook, a gangster, and she needed to tell Martha that her father was a liar.

     But Johnny only said, "Don't let other people's opinions of us bother you, Dolly. It's how we feel about ourselves that counts. Respect yourself and others will, too."

     She thought about other things Martha Camp had said, about Johnny being a draft dodger and not going to war like everyone else. But Christine knew her daddy had volunteered to enlist, but that he had been rejected
because of a punctured eardrum—just like Frank Sinatra. And Christine also knew that Johnny had secretly tried to help a Japanese-American family relocate in another state, but she had to keep it a secret because what he had done was considered unpatriotic.

     "We don't want to waste our time talking about me, Dolly," Johnny said as he helped Christine over a muddy stream. "Let's talk about my favorite subject—you! Tell me, what do you want to be when you grow up?"

     That was not an easy question to answer, because Christine's choice of destinies seemed to change each week, depending on which magazine she was reading at the time or what movie she had just seen. At the moment, she wanted to be like Myrna Loy in
The Best Years of Our Lives
and take care of Fredric March. So she said, "I want to get married, Daddy. I want to have a husband and children and live in a lovely house."

     "Baby Doll," he said, "you can be anything you set your heart on. You don't have to settle for marriage just because all the other girls do. You can reach higher than that if you want. See that bird up there, going from tree-top to treetop? He isn't satisfied with just sitting on a perch and being taken care of. He's free. He's soaring. Look at him!"

     She squinted up at the sky, and when she saw the bird spread its wings and glide on the currents, she thought, Daddy's just like that. And she felt her own heart soar. And in the next instant she knew what she wanted to do when she grew up. "I want to go into business with you," she said.

     He laughed and hugged her, and she frowned. "But...how do you make money, why are we rich?"

     "I make wise investments, Dolly. That's all there is to it. I just know where to put my money. Do you know what makes a good investment, Dolly? You find out what people want and you put your money into that."

     "But how do you know what people want?"

     "By asking yourself what you want. Tell me, what would you like most in the world, if you had one wish?"

     She thought for a moment, then said, "A pill that would make me thin."

     "Ho, Dolly! If I could come up with that I'd be the richest man in the world! But what's a young girl like you worrying about her weight for? When you grow up, you'll be thin, you'll see."

     Christine could hardly wait for that, to be grown up and thin. Then Martha Camp and her friends couldn't tease her anymore, like the time Christine was in the lobby of her apartment building when Martha and some other girls came in, and when the elevator doors opened and Christine stepped in, the others jumped back, saying that the elevator was going to crash with so much weight in it. As the doors slid closed she had heard their laughter.

     When Johnny saw her glum expression, he stopped on the wooded path and said, "You can be anything in the world that you want to be, Dolly. You might have to fight for it, but if it's your dream, then it's worth it. I haven't always been rich; I grew up in a poor neighborhood that was rough, and fighting was an everyday thing, just to survive. I was determined to rise above that and make something of myself. Do you know what General Eisenhower once said? He said that what matters is not the size of the dog in a fight, but the size of the fight in the dog. Believe in yourself, Dolly, and you will achieve anything you want."

     They resumed their walk through the woods, and when Christine realized that her father's mood was growing too serious, she began to feel a small coil of panic tighten in her breast; she had a premonition about what was coming.

     Finally, Johnny said, "I have to go away again, Dolly. I'm sorry."

     Christine was crushed, but she was not surprised. He had been vague and distracted all week, talking for hours on the phone, leaving the apartment at odd hours. He had that restlessness that always came over him when, as he put it, a deal was working.

     She walked away from him, trying not to cry. She saw her immediate future once again, just like she always did, empty and bleak, with her all alone in that penthouse, lonely, craving the sound of her father's laughter, trying to eat Mrs. Longchamps's dietetic dinners. And mostly staying in her room.

     "I'm sorry, Dolly," Johnny said, coming up and putting his arm around her. "I don't like it any more than you do, but the kind of deals I work, well, they have to be done where the money is and where the connections are. You'll understand someday." He took her face between his hands. "But I want you to know that I love you, Dolly, and I always will.
You're the reason I go away so much—I want you to have the best life. Each other is all we've got."

     She hugged him tight, forgiving him the business trips and the girlfriends and her loneliness. Everything was going to be all right, she knew, when she was no longer a child but a grown-up. Then they would be in business together, and he would take her wherever he went.

     Christine was going to do her secret, forbidden thing again. She couldn't help it; she felt miserable.

     Whenever Johnny was away, the housekeeper put Christine on a diet, but Christine's system wasn't used to digesting fresh vegetables and salad greens. They gave her an upset stomach, and she had tried to remedy it with her own cooking. Now she had a terrible stomachache.

     Sitting miserably in the spacious penthouse living room, with its polished floor, deco art on the walls, and clock ticking in the entryway, making the place feel like a museum, Christine gazed morosely at her father's latest gift.

     The day after he had left for New York, a hi-fi player had been delivered to the apartment, complete with all of Como's and Crosby's LPs; the bodyguards Hans and Will had set it up for her. It had been exciting at first—not even Martha Camp had a hi-fi yet! But after a while the excitement wore off. It was no fun having a hi-fi if there was nobody there to share it with her.

     She had decided that there was only one thing that would make her feel better—she would do the forbidden thing.

     She dressed hurriedly, and a few minutes later she was down on the foggy street. She hurried along California Avenue until she came to the cable-car stop, then she climbed on board and held on to a pole, even though there was room to sit inside, because riding the cable car through the fog was part of the excitement.

     She got off at the end of the line and joined the evening pedestrians on Market Street, hurrying, looking over her shoulder now and then to be sure she hadn't been seen. Then, finally, she was there, bathed in the light of a thousand bright bulbs, feeling her excitement mount as people milled beneath the marquee, buying tickets, going into the theater lobby.

     Already her spirits were rising, because her friends were here, inside, waiting for her. After purchasing a ticket from the woman in the booth, Christine went straight to the candy counter, where she bought a large box of buttered popcorn, which was what she and Johnny always had when they went to the movies.

     Movietone News came on first, with a report about Senator Joseph McCarthy warning President Truman that there were communists in the State Department, followed by a brief fashion announcement on the new Christian Dior look: "This year's French chic will be narrow peg-top skirts with cummerbund or belt. And here's good news, ladies. Thanks to modern methods of ranch breeding, you can have that mink stole that every woman yearns for, at an affordable price and in a variety of colors." A Woody Woodpecker cartoon came next, which meant that the feature was about to start.

     Christine sat in the darkness of the movie house, happy and solaced and feeling as if she belonged. She loved the smell of a movie theater and the shared anticipation that always rippled through an audience as the main film was about to begin—row upon row of escape seekers, like herself, bracing themselves for the adventure. This was Christine's most favorite place in the whole world, and when Johnny wasn't around, it was her world, it was her secret disobedience. Johnny Singleton didn't disapprove of movies themselves, it was simply that she could only go to them with him. Sometimes he was just too protective.

     When the main feature came on, Christine felt her heart begin to race:
King Solomon's Mines.
She had already seen it six times.

     Movies took away the loneliness, they made her forget Martha Camp's cruel words, Charlene's Chubbies, and Mrs. Longchamps's vegetables. Movies were like enormous doorways, opening wide and beckoning to her to step inside and, for a little while, live another life in another world. The first time Christine had sneaked out to see a movie on her own was three years ago, when Johnny was away. Before he left, he had taken her to see
It's a Wonderful Life
, and they had cried together at the end, telling each other that, yes, there were such things as angels and miracles. When the pain of missing him got to be too great, she had gone back to recapture that closeness and intimacy. Although she had discovered that going by herself wasn't
anywhere near as much fun as going with her father, she did derive a certain pleasure from it, and she had been surprised, two hours later, to realize that, for a short time, she had been happy.

     After that, every time Johnny went away, Christine escaped into a movie. In the movies, no one made fun of her, or scolded her for being fat, or, like Johnny's blond girlfriend, looked at her almost in disgust. The characters in films accepted her as she was, they drew her in and welcomed her into their adventure, whether it was sailing the Spanish Main with Errol Flynn or solving mysteries with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Christine might dance with Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly; she might be Maureen O'Hara being kissed by Cornel Wilde. Best of all was to be Valentina Cortese in
Thieves' Highway
or Susan Hayward in
House of Strangers
, because those were Richard Conte movies, and he looked so like Johnny.