her pardon for last night,” she said, embarrassed. “The Pasquinis don’t
want to lose her.”
“They don’t need her,” he said, looking at the floor.
“Hmp,” said the cook to the spinach during the shocked pause that
followed.
“That’s no way to talk about your mother, Toby,” Beebo said.
“You heard how she talks about me,” he countered. “What am I supposed to
do? Pretend I’m deaf?”
Beebo listened, full of compassion, but afraid of the big-eared cook.
Toby spoke as if she were no more than another kitchen appliance, like
her stove.
But he saw Beebo’s glance, and pushed the kitchen door wide. “Come on in
my room,” he said. “We can talk there.”
Beebo put the spaghetti on the counter and followed him, with Pat behind
her. The apartment was richly decorated and unkempt.
In his room, Toby sat on the bed, and Beebo and Pat found places on
chairs. He had his guns in two glass cases hung on the wall, and the
rest of the room was a jumble of phonograph records, books, and school
mementos.
Toby wanted to talk frankly to Beebo, and yet they were more strangers
than friends. But he needed to talk, to melt the strangeness away and
find the friend. At last he began, rather abruptly, “I just don’t want
my mother to turn you against me. I mean, you’re a good kid and I want
you to know me the way I am. Then you won’t think I’m such a dumb baby
when she starts talking about what a ‘lovely child’ I am, but she can
hardly wait till I outgrow it.”
Beebo heard this awkward speech with an ache of recognition. How it hurt
to be so young, so at the mercy of your elders, and, often, lessers. So
full of rainbows and music and romantic love ... yet always cracking
your head against the walls of reality.
“I know she says some silly things, Toby,” she said seriously. “But you
love her anyway, don’t you?”
“I guess so. But I’ve seen her with so many guys it just about makes me
sick,” he said tiredly. “Until this year. Now, she says they all bore
her and she’s sworn off men forever. I hope she means it. It’s been
three months since she had a date. She’s terrible to men. They make such
fools of themselves for her. I don’t know what she does to them, honest.
And I’m not stupid!” he added quickly. “I mean, I know what she
does—_technically_.” It was a toss-up whether his contempt was greater
for his mother or her men.
Pat cleared his throat to camouflage a smile. Toby was conversant with
sophisticated sex beyond his years; yet it was difficult and
embarrassing for him to talk with friends his own age. Venus could take
the blame for it, and Beebo felt a swell of righteous anger at her.
“You know what I think?” Toby said thoughtfully. “I think she’s bored
with me, too. Well, after all, I’m a male.” He said it with pride and
resentment, as if it were a fact not always respected in his family.
“She needs somebody new to hurt and tease. If you make yourself
available, I’ll bet she picks on you. It’s no fun, either.”
“Me?” Beebo said incredulously.
“You see her today and _you’ll_ find out,” he warned.
Beebo, conditioned by Venus’s flirting and by the mood of her night with
Paula, said incautiously, “You mean—she’s interested in me? I mean....”
Her voice trailed off, giving her meaning away, and Toby’s cheeks turned
crimson. She realized she had shocked him, but he thought it was his
fault for making the wrong implication.
“Not _that_ way,” he explained hastily. “She’s not _sick_.”
“Oh,” Beebo said. “Excuse me.”
Pat frowned at her, and she looked at her knees.
“She wants somebody around to admire her and say yes to her,” Toby said.
“Somebody whose feelings she can hurt. You have to be tough as Leo to
get along with her. Leo doesn’t have any feelings ... at least, they
never show.”
“Leo—her husband?”
“Yes. He’s the only man in her life who won’t get down on his knees to
her. But I think he’s the only one who really loves her, too. The others
love the glamour, but Leo knows her through and through, and he loves
her.” He shook his head as if it were incomprehensible.
“You love her too, Toby,” Beebo said.
He hunched his shoulders. “She’s my mother. What can you do?” he said
with heartbreaking, youthful cynicism. “Even if the old bag did raise
me.”
“Who’s the old bag?”
“Mrs. Sack. She’s my—well, you might say, my nurse ... she’s been around
so long, she’s part of the family, even if I am too old for her now.”
The blush on his face deepened, but he needed terribly to share his
burdens, and he felt safe with Beebo. She was a girl, so she couldn’t
fall in love with his mother. And she had spirit and humor, which she
had used to defend him. Besides, his solitude weighed desperately on
him.
“Mrs. Sack was there when Mom brought me home from the hospital, and
she’s done everything for me since then. Mom just sat around and blew
kisses at me between lovers.”
“She must have done more than that or you’d hate her,” Beebo said.
“I do hate her!” he flared. “Leo hates her, too. That doesn’t mean we
don’t love her, but she makes it awful hard.” In a knowing voice he
added, “There are two things in this world my mother really loves, and
one of them is not _men_.” Pat and Beebo stared at him. “She loves
herself and money. Mostly herself. She’ll tell you that if you ask her.
She’ll tell the whole damn world. That’s how full of shit she is.”
“Toby,” Beebo said gently. “Maybe you just see all the bad things now.
Maybe when you grow up and get away from her, you’ll see her good side.”
“If she _has_ one,” he said. “She calls me ‘darling’ all the time, and
five minutes later she’s calling a complete stranger ‘darling.’ I mean
about as much to her as the stranger.”
“I think it’s just a habit with her,” Beebo guessed. “Like some people
calling everybody ‘honey.’”
“And secretly hating them all,” Toby said. “I wish just once in my life
she’d call me Toby—when she wasn’t mad at me, I mean. That _is_ my name.
She gave it to me.”
Beebo wanted to pat him on the back, wanted to smile and say, “She
will—I guarantee it.” He was a perceptive boy and very appealing. But
she had nothing to comfort him with. “Well, if it’s any consolation,
_I’ll_ call you Toby,” she grinned, and was pleased to see him answer
her smile.
There was a difficult silence until Pat said, getting to his feet,
“That’s quite a bunch of guns. Who gave you the Japanese bayonet?”
Toby followed him to the case and began an animated conversation. Beebo
sat pensively listening. Evidently it never occurred to Toby that Beebo
could be sexually attracted to his mother. All his precocious knowledge
of sex was confined strictly to his mother’s—admittedly
free-wheeling—activities. And while Venus had done many things with many
people, she had not, to Toby’s knowledge, done everything.
Beebo was surprised to feel so concerned about the boy. She was better
acquainted with him now. His descriptions of his mother’s character were
so youthfully lopsided they revealed more about him than they did about
her. But it seemed certain that one thing he said was true: he did
honestly both hate and love her very much.
The three of them were startled when Toby’s bedroom door swung open and
Venus stood in the hallway. “Well, darling, why didn’t you send my
visitor to me?” she demanded of her son.
Toby turned around, his chin jutting forward, ready for a tilt with her.
But she merely inclined graciously all around, her smile flitting over
Pat as though he were just another gun and settling on Beebo.
“Come in and talk with me,” she told Beebo. “I had a dreadful experience
last night and it’s all your fault.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Bogardus,” Beebo said, standing up and feeling like a
bumpkin dripping hayseeds in front of her.
“Don’t go, Beebo, it’s a trap,” Toby said sardonically.
“Darling, what a lyrical sentiment,” Venus fired at him. “Come on,
Beebo.” She turned and sailed down the hall, and Beebo felt angrily like
a toy dog, expected to jump when Venus snapped her fingers.
Pat went to her and whispered, “If you feel yourself getting friendly,
scream for help.”
“Big help you’d be,” Beebo said.
“Well, at least I won’t be tempted to sin,” he said. “I don’t go for
peignoirs.”
“I hope you don’t go for guns, either,” she warned him in a whisper. And
aloud, she said to Toby, “Don’t worry, I won’t turn traitor.”
Then, with a sense of exasperation, shame and excitement, she followed
Venus to her room.
* * * * *
It was a real boudoir; a luxurious old-fashioned bower, a glamorous
retreat where a coveted woman makes herself irresistible in perfumed
privacy; receives the gifts of rich and handsome men, and strikes them
helpless with adoration. At least, that was the general idea.
The rug was white, the walls pale blue, and the dressing table wore six
silk chiffon petticoats.
“Well, darling?” Venus said. “Do you like my little nest?”
Beebo began to laugh in spite of herself. “If you’ll forgive me, Miss
Bogardus,” she said. “It’s one great big gorgeous cliché.”
“Of course it is,” Venus smiled. “I planned it that way to offend
Leo.... You know, you sound like you’ve made it in more boudoirs than
Errol Flynn.”
“Oh, no,” Beebo said, taken aback. “I’ve just read more bad novels. The
sirens always have a boudoir like this.”
Venus turned around and studied her with amusement in the oval mirror
above her dressing table. “Come over here and tell me why they sent that
ghastly man over with the pizza, when I asked for you with spaghetti.”
Beebo stood her ground, suddenly aware that there was nothing under the
“goddamn peignoir” but naked Venus. “That ghastly man owns the place,”
she said. “He sent himself.”
You couldn’t look at Venus Bogardus without admiring her form. Even in
her late thirties, it was fine: the kind men hope and dream all women
will have, especially their wives. She was small-waisted, full-breasted,
with a firmly swelling hipline and long shapely legs; the whole package
wrapped up in mathematically right proportions that hadn’t changed since
Venus was a bouncing daisy of sixteen.
Venus scratched something on a piece of paper and swept across the room
with it in a cloud of cologne and blue silk. “Here you are, darling,”
she said. It was her autograph. “Take this to your boss and tell him I
hope he gets the sauce out of his ears.”
“He’ll be overcome, I’m sure,” Beebo said, tucking it in her shirt
pocket.
Venus stood a few feet from her, watching her and making up her mind to
open a difficult subject. “You know, poor Toby is absolutely terrified
we’re going to like each other,” she said restrainedly. “He’s quite
ashamed of me.”
Beebo was far more embarrassed by Venus’s admissions than by Toby’s.
Toby was still a child you could pity and help. But who could pity
someone with the blinding assets of his mother? Who had enough crust to
offer her any help?
“Miss Bogardus, I’m sorry about the pizza thing. I—” She hesitated,
wanting only to duck out and avoid facing the new feelings taking shape
inside her.
“I only threw it at him because he wasn’t you,” Venus said, and Beebo
allowed herself one quick startled look at That Face. She felt
perspiration under her arms and knew her face was damp, too.
“Sit down, darling, you look feverish,” Venus said. And when Beebo
stuttered something about going home, Venus laughed. “Why Beebo, I think
I’ve got you going,” she said. “I’ll bet I’m not the first girl who ever
did that to you.” It was said in a light friendly tone intended to
tease, but it made Beebo so intensely uncomfortable that she began to
tremble. It became acutely clear to her that she desired that remote and
laughing goddess very much; so much she suddenly lost her voice.
“You were full of beans the last time you were here,” Venus said. “Don’t
be a square now. Tell me all the nice things you know about me. I
promise not to take any of them seriously.”
Beebo got her voice out finally by blasting on it like an auto horn. “I
only know what everybody knows,” she blurted.
“The gossip columns?” Venus said. “You can’t be so naive that you
believe that crap, darling. I’ll bet Toby’s been talking to you. Telling
you stories about his wicked mama.” From the look on Beebo’s face, she
concluded he had.
Beebo didn’t want to insult her. “Why should he?” she said, wishing all
the while that she could open a window somewhere for fresh air.
“Oh, he thinks I’m dreadful. And of course I am. But I’m kind of sorry
he realizes it already.”
Beebo saw a real regret shadow her face, and all at once it seemed
possible—almost—to feel sorry for her.
“If you don’t want him to know it, you’ll have to put blinkers on him,”
Beebo said quietly. “I was fourteen a few years ago. You don’t miss
seeing much at that age.”
“When he was born,” Venus said, “I was much too young and ambitious to
give a damn about him. Now, when he matters, I find I’ve done everything
wrong ... everything I’ve bothered to do for him, that is. I haven’t
bothered to do very much.”
“You don’t need to tell me these things, Miss Bogardus,” Beebo said,
amazed to hear Venus speak such damaging truths about herself, to see
the steel surface of her go-to-hell gaiety buckle and crack.
“He likes you,” Venus said, somewhat self-conscious now. She lighted a
cigarette and shrugged. “He’s such a baby. I love him awfully, but he
makes me so damn mad.”
“He’s a nice kid, Miss Bogardus,” Beebo said. “Maybe if you could see
his side now and then.... It’s so easy to ruin a kid that age.”
“I’m a nice kid, too, darling,” Venus flashed, and Beebo realized from
her anger that she had spoken too bluntly. “And I’ll do whatever I damn
please with Toby. That includes ruining him if I feel like it.” She sat
down suddenly on a satin-topped stool, tired. “I—I ruined him anyway,
and I never felt like it at all,” she said, as if too weary to repress
the truth.
“I don’t want to bore you, Beebo. But I do want to know what he’s been
saying about me. I know he’s been talking to you the last half hour.”
She looked across the room at Beebo. “Please,” she said. Her voice was
rough with fatigue.
Beebo shifted her weight and her legs felt almost boneless. “Well,” she
said uneasily. “I don’t suppose it’s anything he hasn’t already said to
you.” Venus looked directly at her, and Beebo wondered if it might not
impress her more to hear these things from somebody other than Toby. “He
loves you very much, Miss Bogardus,” she said. “But I don’t think he
likes you.”
Venus merely nodded. “That’s no news,” she said. “He’s like all the
other men I know.” She looked disgusted.
“He said you didn’t like men,” Beebo said.
“I beg your pardon!” Venus exclaimed. “I absolutely _adore_ men. All but
Leo, anyway.” She stood up and walked briskly back and forth for a
moment, as if she intended to hear no more—at least not till her
feathers settled.
“Tell me about yourself, Beebo,” she said, and again Beebo was miffed by
the offhand order.
“I’d bore you to tears,” she said. “You don’t want to hear about my
daddy’s cows and chickens down on the farm.”
“I think I do,” Venus said sincerely. “I never had a daddy. Or a
chicken.” Beebo began to protest about leaving again and Venus waved at
her impatiently. “All right, all right, but before you go, tell me the
rest about Toby.”
Beebo didn’t know what to make of her. Hadn’t she heard it all from him
herself? Venus glanced at her. “He’s been chattering about you since you
brought that pizza over,” she explained. “He _likes_ you. That means
he’ll talk to you. He only shouts at me.... Sit down, Beebo.”
Beebo obeyed her out of growing curiosity. It seemed clear to her now
that she had inadvertently become a line of communication between mother
and son; that perhaps Toby did say things to Beebo he refused to mention
to Venus—or at least, said them more candidly.
“There isn’t much to tell,” Beebo said, trying to squirm out of it.
Venus looked very worried. “He just seems lonesome. I think it was a
relief to him to spout off at me.” She smiled.
Venus sighed. “He’s a bewildering little devil,” she said, “but I guess
he’s the only human being I’ve ever loved. Or ever will love. I loathed
him when I was carrying him. I thought he’d ruin my waist. I scarcely
looked at him till he was nine or ten. Mrs. Sack brought him up. He
grumbles about her, but there are times when I’d give anything if he’d
grumble about me the same way ... times when I actually hate that
woman!” Beebo watched her blow her nose on a tissue on the dressing
table and realized with a twinge that she was crying.
“He calls her ‘the old bag,’” Beebo said kindly.
“And I’m ‘the old bitch,’” Venus said. Her voice was unsteady. “I should
never have let him slip away from me. But he scared me, to tell the
truth. Not just that he was a baby, and I resented him and didn’t know
where to begin caring for him. But he ... he had convulsions and things.
Terrifying things that absolutely paralyzed me. And Mrs. Sack was so
efficient and reassuring. Oh, hell, it’s no excuse. But it seemed like
one then.”
“Convulsions?” Beebo repeated, surprised.
“Yes. He has epilepsy. The _grand mal_ kind. Big stuff.” There was a
shocked silence and Venus added sharply, “Well, it’s not a oneway pass
to the bughouse.”
“No, no, I know,” Beebo replied. “I—I’m just so sorry.”
“Well, I’m sorry, too,” Venus said, and she had control of herself now.
The tears had stopped. “Most of the time he’s perfectly normal—whatever
_that_ is for boys of fourteen. But every so often, when he’s especially
tired or nervous, he gets these ... seizures. He gets rigid as a post.”
She faced Beebo. “Have you ever seen it?” she said.
Beebo shook her head. “But I’ve heard about such things. It’s like a
muscle spasm, isn’t it?”
Venus’s eyes drifted away, seeing it in her mind. “He shoots up from a
chair like a jack-in-the-box, and falls straight and stiff as a pole.
His saliva foams. We have to be careful that he doesn’t swallow his
tongue.” She took a breath. “It’s frightening to see your own child like
that.... Well, then he goes to sleep, a stone-dead sleep, and when he
wakes up he usually can’t even remember it. He just wants to be quiet
for a while, by himself. Read books and stare out the window, sometimes
for a couple of days.”
“What do you do for it?” Beebo said. “Is there anything?”
“There are treatments,” Venus said. “Shock therapy, chemotherapy. He
hates it but it helps. He hates to talk to me about it. Mrs. Sack always
rescued him while I ran screaming from the room. He thinks it makes him
repulsive to me. I’ve tried and tried to explain—I’m just a coward!—but
he’s so jittery about it now, I don’t dare bring it up.”
Beebo sat looking at her linked fingers, young enough to wonder why the
fair and fortunate of this world are afflicted with sorrows as humbling
and frustrating as those of the poor. Venus, whom men feared and
worshipped, women feared and disliked, and children simply feared;
Venus, herself afraid.
“Toby said some hard things about you, Miss Bogardus,” she said at last,
“but he also said he loved you, and you don’t get that kind of mush out
of fourteen-year-old boys unless they mean it.”
“I wish he’d say it to me!” Venus cried. “I love him so terribly, but
all I do is drive him nuts. I can’t talk to him and he clams up with
me.” She came and put a perfumed hand on Beebo’s shoulder. “He hasn’t
made a new friend in years,” she said. Her hand was tight and warm and
busy, twisting Beebo’s cotton shirt. “I haven’t made much sense, I’m
afraid,” she said. “I’m trying to be honest and I’m not used to it.” She
gave a clumsy little laugh. “He seems so impressed with you. That was
half the reason I wanted you to come back. I thought if you could draw
him out somehow.... Did he say anything else?”
Beebo was worried about that expensive and beautiful hand on her
shoulder. About that “half the reason I wanted you back”—what was the
other half? About Toby’s opinion of his mother’s beaux?
Venus guessed the last part. “My admirers?” she said. “I know he can’t
stand them. Neither can I.”
“He thinks you’re too fond of....” Beebo stopped and cleared her throat.
“Don’t get scared off all of a sudden,” Venus pleaded. “I couldn’t take
it. I’m too fond of _what_?”
“Money. And yourself.”
“He’s wrong,” Venus said, frowning. “I know it looks that way. And I do
like money. But myself I hate. I hate, hate, hate!” Her voice broke and
her hand held tight to Beebo’s shoulder, steadying her. “Money and my
career. That’s all I have in the world. That’s why I hang on so hard to
them both.”
“You have Toby,” Beebo ventured, wishing she dared to look up at Venus’s
face, knowing it was kinder not to.
“Toby isn’t mine,” Venus whispered bitterly. “He just lives here. He
won’t let himself be loved. I gave birth to him, but Mrs. Sack is his
mother.” She was weeping again.
Beebo reached up and touched her hand, her eyes still down. The whole
mess was so sad and ugly; sadder still for having been preventable.
Beebo was moved and hurt by Venus’s words because she was moved by Toby:
his loneliness, his hopeful trust in her, and now the revelation of his
illness.
“You’ve reached him, Beebo,” Venus said. “He wants to be friends with
you. You could help me.” She came around the divan and sat down next to
Beebo. The swift drum-bump of her heart was visible under the gauzy blue
silk and it made Beebo want to touch her there; hold her and say
something wise and therapeutic. But she hadn’t the wisdom to manage her
own life yet, let alone someone else’s.
“I don’t know much about love, Miss Bogardus,” she said shyly. “I just
know if you love somebody, he can’t stop you. All you have to do is keep
loving him till he believes in it, I guess.”
“That’s not enough, or he’d be happy,” Venus said.
“Maybe if you did things with him,” Beebo said. “My dad used to spend a
lot of time with me. We walked, we talked things over, we played chess.”
“I don’t know the black from the white,” Venus said miserably.
“Toby’s pretty big on guns right now.”
“I don’t even know which end the bullet’s supposed to come out,” Venus
said. But after a pause full of self-examination she added, “But I guess
I could learn ... guns. God.”
“It might make all the difference,” Beebo said.
“Will you come back and see him?” Venus said. “That would help.”
“Sure,” Beebo said, but she looked away. Venus had touched her arm
again. “He could drive around with me while I make the deliveries
tomorrow. Would he like that?”
“He’d probably die of joy. Anything with a motor in it sends him into
rhapsodies.”
Beebo stood up, her own heart beating so fast now that she felt near
suffocating. “It’s getting late,” she said. Venus followed her to the
door.
“He might resent it if I start sticking my nose into his guns all of a
sudden,” she mused.
“Not if you’re really interested,” Beebo said. “He won’t hold it against
you, Venus ... beautiful Venus.” It was an unpremeditated explosion of
admiration. Beebo clamped her mouth shut suddenly, mortified.
But Venus was restored by the slip to good humor. She laughed, and this
time it was a pretty sound, a charming answer to a compliment.
“Maybe Toby will turn out all right,” Venus said. “You’re bound to be a
good influence.”
Beebo smiled in embarrassment. “He’ll probably disgrace you by turning
into a model citizen,” she said.
“I hope he does.” Venus walked the rest of the short distance between
them and put her hands on Beebo’s shoulders. She looked very solemn and
a bit surprised at herself. “Thanks,” she said.
“For nothing.” Beebo shook her head. She had a wild impulse to pull
Venus’s hands off and run.
“Beebo,” Venus said thoughtfully. “Do you want to kiss me?”
In the electrified pause that followed, Beebo heard Toby’s voice echoing
in her ears: “Not _that_ way. She’s not _sick_.” It pounded through her
like a pulse and she knew the answer was obvious to Venus. She reached
down and touched Venus’s waist. “Yes,” she murmured. Venus seemed
reassured, almost pleased. She was on home ground again. She lifted her
face and gave Beebo her lovely mouth.
It was an astonishing kiss, long and warm. And after it, they stood with
their arms around each other a while, faces averted. Beebo didn’t
realize how hard her embrace was until Venus began to giggle. “Darling,
you’re crushing me,” she said. Beebo released her and backed off
hastily, mumbling apologies.