Belinda Page 22

  I’d just come in from classes at Tulane and hurried up the stairs to see her. I guess I thought she’d be sick forever. And the minute I saw that bare mattress I knew, of course, that she had died while I was gone.

  As it turned out, they’d had to take her to the funeral parlor. It was too hot that summer for them to leave her till I came home.

  “Walk over to Magazine Street and see her,” the nurse had said when she finally caught up with me at the bedroom door. “They’re waiting for you.”

  Five blocks through the flat quiet tree4ined streets of the Garden District. Then Mother in a refrigerated room. Good-bye, my darling Cynthia Walker. I love you.

  Well, Belinda wasn’t going anywhere. Not yet!

  I brought up the box I’d brought from Saks, and I unfolded the white and silver dress an d hung it carefully in the closet on one of the padded hangers.

  Then I went up to the attic, leaving the door open so I could hear her if she came in.

  I took stock.

  There were now twelve completed paintings of her, done over this the strangest summer of my adult life.

  The last picture completed was another Artist and Model, from the series of timer photographs of us making love. I did better by this one than the first, though I loathed painting my own naked body on top of Belinda. But the work itself was terrific, I knew it, and I saw now, as I looked at it, the resemblance of her profile here to the profile of her beneath the caresses of the woman in Final Score.

  Was she a woman or a child in this picture? Because you could not see her baby face well, it was pure woman with the hair of a fairy princess, or so it seemed.

  Unfinished was another “grown woman” study, Belinda in the Opera Bar, nude as always against the backdrop of gilded mirrors and cocktail tables, except that she wore high-heel shoes and a pair of black kid gloves.

  Macabre, the deeply detailed figure, the mouth almost pouting, the unwavering gaze.

  Ah, it gave me shivers to look at it. And when that happens, I know everything, absolutely everything, is going to be fine. But no time to lose.

  I started carrying the canvases down to the basement, first the dry ones, then the moist ones, then the wet ones, and slipping them one by one into the metal rack inside the van.

  Some smudging to the very edges was inevitable, but no more than a half inch on either side.

  I could mend t!aat when we got to New Orleans. The rack would keep them safe, like so many sheets of glass, until we got all the way home.

  And then I’d know the next step in the series. It would come to me when we were in Mother’s house. I knew it would.

  just come home, Belinda. Walk in the door now and let me hold you and talk to you. Let us begin again.

  After all the canvases and supplies were loaded, I packed up all my own clothes.

  I wanted to put her suitcases in the van, too, but I knew that was going too far.

  And she wouldn’t just bolt without those things, she wouldn’t do that. I mean, she had left her own little sorry.. suitcase, too, and the overnight case and—

  But the grandfather clock was chiming three when I finished and she was still not there.

  Where to look for her? Where to call?

  I sat staring at the phone on the kitchen wall. What if I called George Gallagher, what if I asked—? And what if he wasn’t the “oldest buddy in the world” and hadn’t told her anything? What if she was merely unhappy over last night’s argument, what if, what if?.

  No, he was the “oldest buddy,” and he had put things together. Damn it, Belinda, come home!

  I went to the front windows to see if the MG-TD was parked out there. Why hadn’t I thought of that before? If she had the car with her, I’d know for sure she was coming back, she wouldn’t steal the MG, would she? But there it was, damn it, parked where she frequently parked it, right across the street—and not too far from a big long black stretch limousine, of all things.

  Big black stretch limousine.

  For a second I panicked. Had I forgotten some damned book signing or something? Was that limousine here to pick up me? Frankly that was the only time I ever saw a limo in this neighborhood, when they came lumbering into my driveway to pick up me.

  But, no, that was all over, Splendor in the Grass in Berkeley had been the last one, the farewell one. And the driver of this limo was just sitting in it, smoking a cigarette. Tinted glass in the back of course. Couldn’t see who was or was not there.

  OK. Belinda’s not driving the MG. That means she may be somewhere near and she’ll come walking in soon.

  When the phone finally rang at three thirty, it was Dan.

  “Jeremy, I’m going to say it again before you stop me. Get the fuck away from her now.”

  “I’m way ahead of you. We’re dropping out of sight for a while. You won’t get any mail from me, but you’ll hear from me by phone.”

  “Look stupid. Saint Margaret’s in Gstaad was asked on November 5 to accept Belinda Blanchard though the semester had already started, and on November 8th they were told that she would not be coming as planned. She is not now and has never been at Saint Margaret’s. However, they have been asked to forward all her mail back to a law firm in the States. It is a cover-up.”

  “Good work, but I knew it was.”

  “And the shooting took place the night before the call to Saint Margaret’s.”

  “Right. What else?”

  “What do you mean, what else?”

  “The connection between the shooting and Saint Margaret’s, do you have it? Why did they send Belinda away?”

  “Don’t wait for the connection. The point is, if I could get all this simply by calling a friend in Gstaad and wining and dining a United Theatricals secretary, the Enquirer will eventually get it, too. Run for cover now.”

  “I am, I just told you.”

  “I mean without her. Jer, go to Europe. Go to Asia!”

  “Dan—”

  “OK, OK. Now listen to this. There are more detectives in this besides Sampson’s people.”

  “Fill me in.”

  “Daryl Blanchard, Bonnie’s brother, he’s got his own men on the case, working just like Sampson. The mail goes from Saint Margaret’s to his firm in Dallas. The girl from United Theatricals says he’s a real pain. He and Marty scream at each other a lot long-distance.”

  “Not surprising.”

  “But, Jeremy, think again. The reason for this cover-up, what is it?”

  “I can guess what it is. Something happened that night between her and this stepfather of hers.”

  “Very likely.”

  “So they don’t want the slightest hint of that to get to the papers, and it’s also what we figured in the beginning, she could be kidnapped. She’s just a kid.”

  “Maybe. But study the pattern here. Jer, Saint Margaret’s deals directly with Texas Uncle Daryl. Daryl deals with Moreschi. There is no evidence that Bonnie even knows her daughter is not in school.”

  “Wait a minute.” I was stunned. I had thought I was ready for anything at this point, but that was too much.

  “Bonnie may be the reason for the cover-up. They want to keep her working, they don’t want her to know the little girl took off.”

  “That would be too ugly!”

  “But don’t you see what this means? These guys stink to high heaven, Jeremy. If they do get on to you and they do try anything, we can poleax them both.”

  What had she said to me that night? Even if they did find out about us, they wouldn’t dare do anything? Yes, that had been exactly what she said.

  “Bonnie is absolutely the legal guardian,” Dan said. “I checked that out.

  She’s been in court fighting the kid’s natural father for years.”

  “Yeah, George Gallagher, the New York hairdresser.”

  “Exactly, and he’s crazy about the little girl by the way. These guys Moreschi and Blanchard will have to get busy covering up their asses with him, too, if this gets out.”<
br />
  “You’re keeping records of everything—”

  “You better believe it. But I’m telling you, old buddy, these guys aren’t the enemy. What I’m really scared of is the press. This woman’s in every tabloid this week—”

  “I know it.”

  “—and the story’s too juicy. It’s just lying there waiting to be discovered, daughter of superstar on the run, holds up with children’s author who paints little girls. I mean, ‘Champagne Flight’ will keep you on the front pages for two weeks.”

  “But how dumb is this Bonnie? Wouldn’t she even call Belinda at school?”

  “Dumb’s got nothing to do with it. Let me tell you what you’re dealing with here. This is a woman who for years has not answered a telephone, opened a piece of mail, hired or fired a servant, even written a check. She does not know what it means to handle a rude salesclerk or bank teller, to have to pick out a pair of shoes for herself, to hail a cab. Her house has been adding live4n personnel steadily for the last twelve months. She now has a haiMresser, a masseuse, a maid, a cook, a personal secretary. She goes to the studio every day of her life in a chauffeured limousine. And Marty Moreschi is never out of sight. He sits and talks to her when she’s in the bathtub. She probably doesn’t know who’s in the White House. And this is not a new condition for this woman. On Saint Esprit her brother, her agents, and her Texas cronies maintained her in the same protective cocoon. And your Belinda was no small part of that. By all reports she took her turn at sentry duty whenever Mother was feeling panicky, right along with the rest. And there was a roadside attempt at suicide that nearly killed Belinda—”

  “Yeah, I know about that one. But it’s illegal what they’re doing—”

  “Oh, you said it. And I’ll tell you something funny, Jer, something real funny. You know, if I just happened on this whole story without knowing the kid was safe with you, I’d think she was dead.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s like the cover-up of a murder, Jer. She could be buried in the garden or something. I mean the school scam, all that. What would happen if Susan Jeremiah went to the LAPD and demanded an investigation? These guys could wind up indicted for killing this kid.” I laughed in spite of myself. “Beautiful!”

  “But, back to the matter at hand. We’ve got a counterstrategy if these guys find you. With the press we do not.”

  And I’ve got a new problem, I was thinking. A stunning one.

  “What if you’re right,” I said, “and they are keeping it from Bonnie but Belinda doesn’t know?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Bonnie would call the cops, wouldn’t she? Bonnie would call the goddamned FBI to find her daughter, wouldn’t she? I mean, there must be a bond between mother and daughter here that’s closer than just about anything else in this woman’s life.”

  “Could be.”

  “And what if Belinda thinks her mother doesn’t even care? I am telling you that would explain a lot of things, Dan. It really would. I mean, here is this kid and something bad happens with this guy Marty and what do they do-they try to pack her off to Switzerland and she runs. And then she realizes her mother isn’t even looking for her. No police, no nothing. I mean, this is bad. Here she makes her big gesture, and these guys write her out of the script.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. She may know everything, Jeremy. I mean, the girl can put two quarters in a telephone, can’t she? She could call this Bonnie.” Didn’t she call George in the middle of the night? “Could she get to Bonnie?”

  “Hell, she could call Jeremiah. She could call the next door neighbors in Beverly Hills, if she wanted to. She could call somebody! No. If you want my guess, your Belinda’s hip to everything that is going down. And just decided she’d had it, that’s all.”

  “OK, look. As I told you, I’m splitting tonight. I’m going far away from here, and when you hear from me again, it will be by phone—”

  “For God’s sakes, be careful. You know how the Enquirer operates. They’ll give you some bogus reason for the interview, then run upstairs and photograph her clothes in the damn closet.”

  “Nobody’s interviewing me these days for any reason, believe me. I’ll be in touch. Oh, and Dan. Thank you. I really mean it, you’ve been great.”

  “And you’re being stupid. They’ll crucify you if this hits the papers, I mean it, they’ll make Texas Uncle Daryl and Stepdaddy Moreschi look like saints who found her in the Child Molester’s Den.”

  “Good-bye Dan.”

  “They’ll come to court with the canceled checks to prove what they paid the detectives, they’ll say the cover-up was for her own good.”

  “Take it easy—”

  “And you’ll get fifteen years for molesting her, goddamn it.”

  “And what about Moreschi?”

  “What about him? There’s nothing on record says he touched her. She’s living with you!”

  “Bye, Dan, I’ll call you.”

  I CHECKED and double-checked the house. Everything locked up tight, windows, doors to the upstairs deck, dead bolt on the attic, dead bolt on the darkroom downstairs.

  All paintings, photographs, cameras, clothes loaded in the van.

  Except her suitcases sitting there on the white counterpane of the brass bed.

  Please come home, my darling, please.

  I’ll tell her everything at once. All I know, even about Bonnie maybe not knowing. Then I’d say: Look, you don’t ever have to talk about it, it doesn’t make any difference, but I want you to know I’m on your side, I’m here to protect you, I’ll protect you from them if it comes to that, we’re in this together, finally, don’t you see?

  She’d see. She’d have to. Or would she just gather up those suitcases and carry them downstairs to the cab she had waiting for her, saying as she went past me: You betrayed me, you lied to me, you lied all along.

  If only she were a child, if only she were a “little girl,”

  “just a kid,” a “minor.” Then it would be so much easier.

  But she’s not a child. And you’ve known that from the start.

  Four thirty.

  I sat in the living room, smoking one cigarette after another. I looked at all the toys, the carousel horse, all the trash we were leaving behind.

  Should call Dan and tell him to sell this stuff better yet, donate it to some orphanage or school. Didn’t need it anymore, this lovely rubbish.

  What I’d been feeling with her for the last three months was what people call happiness, pure and sweet.

  And it struck me suddenly that the misery I’d felt last night was almost equal in intensity to the happiness I’d known before. These feelings had a searing heat to them that was like the desire I felt for her. And these were extremes I hadn’t known for years before she came.

  In my mind they were connected with youth really—the awful storms before success and loneliness became routine. I had not known how much I missed this.

  Yes, it was like being young again, just that bad and just that magical. And for one moment I found myself thinking of it all from an unexpected distance and I wondered if I would miss this in the years to come, this second chance at joy and misery. I was so alive at this moment, so alive with love and foreboding, so alive with terror. Belinda, come back.

  When the grandfather clock struck five, she had still not come home. I was getting more and more frightened. The house was dark and cold, yet I couldn’t bring myself to turn the lights on.

  I looked outside, hoping, praying to see her coming up the street from the metro.

  No Belinda.

  But the limo was still there. The driver was standing beside it, smoking a cigarette as if he had all the time in the world. Now what would that thing be doing here?

  Rather ominous it seemed suddenly. Downright sinister. Maybe those cars always are.

  Throughout my childhood they carried me to funerals, sometimes two and three times a year. They had meant death then exclusively. And it h
ad always seemed an irony that these same luxurious black monsters carried me to television and radio stations, to newspaper offices and literary luncheons and bookstores, to all the inevitable ordeals of the standard publicity tour.

  Didn’t like the look of them, their heaviness, their darkness. Rather like coffins or jewel boxes they seemed, all padded and silent.

  A chill came over me. Well, that was stupid. Detectives didn’t stake you out in limousines.

  Six o’clock came and went. California daylight outside.

  I was going to give it one more hour, then track down George Gallagher somehow. George was the only one who could have tipped her off.

  Nothing respectable in the refrigerator to ear. Get some steaks. One last meal together before the road. No. Stay here. Don’t leave this house till she comes.

  The phone rang.

  “Jeremy?”

  “Belinda! I’ve been out of my mind. Where are you, baby darling?”

  “I’m OK, Jeremy.” Shaky voice. And noise surrounding her as if she were in an outdoor phone booth somewhere, a dim rolling sound like the ocean behind it all.

  “Belinda, I’ll come get you now.”

  “No, Jeremy, don’t do it.”

  “Belinda—”

  “Jeremy, I know you went into my closet.” Voice breaking. “I know you looked ar my tapes. You didn’t even rewind them—”

  “Yes, it’s true, I’m not going to deny it, honey.”

  “You knocked my things all over the floor. And—”

  “! know, darling, I did, I did. It’s true. And I did other things, too, to find out about you. I asked questions, I investigated. I admit it, Belinda, but I love you. I love you and’you have to understand—”‘q never told you any lies about me, Jeremy—”

  “I know you didn’t, sweetheart. I was the one who told the lies. But please try to listen to me. We are OK now. We can leave tonight for New Orleans, the way you wanted to, honey, and we will get far away from the people who are looking for you, and they are looking, Belinda, they are.” Silence. And a sound that I thought was her crying.

  “Belinda, look. My things are all packed, all the pictures are loaded in the van. Just give me the word and I’ll load your suitcases. I’ll come and get you. We’ll get right on the road now.”