to you. You just mind me, and maybe we’ll make it for a while. I don’t
know what you can do about Toby. He doesn’t get the picture about you
and his mother yet, but he will. He’s a bright kid. But don’t go out of
your way to tell him. It’s going to stagger him. I’ll try to explain
when he catches on.
“If anything comes up, deny it. I give you this chance because of what
you’ve done for Venus. Don’t make me regret it.”
“I don’t know whether to thank you or kick you in the slats,” Beebo said
sourly. “You make it sound like a great life.”
“Did anyone tell you to expect something else?” Leo said. “You’ve been
living it the last two months. You should be used to it.”
“Used to it but not fond of it,” she said.
“But fond of Venus ... enough to put up with it? Because if you aren’t,
say so. I’ve been honest enough with you to hurt myself, Beebo. You be
that honest with me.”
Beebo’s gaze fell. “I’ll put up with it,” she said, but her voice was
rough with resentment.
“I’m sorry, Beebo,” Leo said, and though his masculine aversion to her
was as real as he declared, he was still capable of a restrained
sympathy for her. “The world wasn’t made for dykes, you know.”
“No,” she flashed. “It was made for movie queens and their tyrannical
husbands.”
Leo hunched his shoulders, unoffended. “The world was made for normal
people,” he said. “The abnormal in this world have a tough go. If they
keep their abnormality secret, they’re damnably lonely. If they
broadcast it, they’re damnably hurt. You were born with that, and you’ll
have to live with it, the way I have to live with Venus’s faults.”
Beebo was impressed with his sensitivity. But she answered moodily, “I
don’t feel so damned abnormal, thanks. I feel as normal as you do. I eat
three meals a day, I pay my bills, I respect the other guy.”
“Well, I can tell you, society doesn’t give a hoot in hell how normal
you _feel_, Beebo. You _look_ queer, and that’s enough. People are
waiting around to throw some crap your way.”
“What about the queers who look normal?” Beebo demanded.
“They have a chance,” he said. “They can hide. You can’t. And when the
stuff hits the fan, I don’t want Venus anywhere near you. You can have
it all to yourself.”
“You’re a pretty goddamn infuriating individual, Leo,” Beebo said.
“Sure,” he agreed, getting up and stamping the cigar butt into the tile
floor. “An honest man always is. I’ve said some harsh things to you, but
they were true. And I’ve permitted you to stay on—conditionally. You
know the conditions, my friend, and if you feel like ignoring them,
you’d better feel like saying goodby, too. You dig?”
“I dig,” Beebo said, glowering at him from the sofa.
* * * * *
She wrote to Jack that night, sitting in one of the unused spare rooms,
where she was shunted when Venus was out. She recounted a little of what
Leo had said.
“God, Jack, it makes you want to go out and convert the whole damn world
to homosexuality,” she told him. “Just so you can walk down the street
with your head up.
“Maybe I grew up too fast, maybe that’s my trouble. I feel so lost out
here ... hung up between two worlds; half-kid and half-adult, half-boy
and half-girl. And sometimes it seems like I get the dirty side of both.
Leo’s whole life is one long compromise ... maybe that’s what he was
trying to tell me about mine.
“I wanted Venus and I got her, but I’m not sure having her is worth the
shame and secrecy of it. I’m strong and tall as a boy, but I’m not free
as a man. I wanted to be gentle and loving with women, but I can’t be
feminine.
“Venus tries to make it better for me. She argues with Leo to let me out
more. She gives me things all the time—money, clothes, anything—and it
makes me realize how much she thinks about me when she’s working. She’s
even been going to Toby’s PTA meetings.
“And damn it, Jack, I know she loves me. She proves it to me whenever
she’s home. But that’s the catch—that whenever. It gets later every day,
and she’s so tired. She never says no, but I feel like a dog.
“You know something? I wish all this had happened to me ten years from
now. You said that about Paula, but you were wrong. Paula was just what
I needed. I miss that girl, Jack. I sit here on these long empty days
and dream about her. My letters to her are awful, I don’t know what to
say. Say I love her for me, will you?
“No—better not. Because I don’t know how I can leave Venus, and I’m
still not sure I want to. God, what a mess!”
* * * * *
Leo confronted her one morning two days later and said, “Lay off Venus a
little, Beebo. She has circles under her eyes.”
Beebo, still half-asleep by herself in Venus’s bed, mumbled at him and
sat up.
“Her eyes don’t photograph well. She looks her age and that’s no good,”
Leo said. “She gets home at midnight, pooped, and you light into her for
another couple of hours. She’s too crazy about you to say no, but she
has to get up at six-thirty next day, while you lie around till noon.”
Beebo rubbed her eyes. “Leo, I don’t force her to make love to me,” she
said, trying to clear her head. “She _wants_ to.”
“Well, she can’t. Not till next Tuesday. That’s the première showing and
we’re all under a hell of a strain till then.”
“My God,” Beebo whispered, almost to herself. “I have to give that up,
too? Leo, what else is there?” She turned to him, scowling.
“After Tuesday night, whether we sink or swim, the whole cast and crew
get a week off, and you can make up for lost time,” he said, gazing at
her long form with curiosity; wondering how it could appeal to anybody,
yet respecting his wife’s intense admiration. “I’m sorry, Beebo. It’s
either continence, or I take her to a hotel. You choose.”
“I have so little of her, Leo. You’re asking me to do without even the
little I have.” She put her head down on her knees.
“Just for a few days.”
She lay down on the bed, turning her back to him, and Leo watched her a
moment before he shut the door.
* * * * *
In the half week before _Million Dollar Baby_ bowed, a oneliner appeared
in a trade gossip column. It said, “Who’s been picking Venus Bogardus up
at TV City in a silver sport coupé these days?”
Leo spotted it, underlined it in red, and left it on Venus’s dresser,
where Beebo picked it up the next morning and read it with round-eyed
shock.
The next day, another columnist asked, “What’s this about Venus Bogardus
taking a personal interest in her son’s friends? Especially one near and
dear to the family?” Leo underlined that one, too. Beebo read it while
she was sitting alone in the spare room again. She was sleeping there
till Tuesday night.
Leo made no comments in the margins. He didn’t have to. Beebo was scared
enough at the unembellished print. She hadn’t seen Venus for a couple of
days. Venus was too busy and after the hints in the papers, she and Leo
removed to a hotel. Beebo was afraid for Venus, afraid for their love
affair, and afraid for herself. If only Jack were there to help her. If
only it had been possible to tell all to her father long ago and run to
him now.
Toby saw how blue she was later in the day and tried to cheer her up.
“Hey, don’t look so gloomy,” he said. “What’s got you down?”
Beebo looked at him. “Toby,” she said, almost hoping he wouldn’t hear.
“Did you read the newspapers today?”
Toby’s face reddened and she wished immediately that she hadn’t brought
it up. “I don’t read them,” he said. “I heard about it at school.
Everybody wants to know which friend of mine they’re talking about. But
they all think it’s a boy, naturally. I—I mean....” He paused,
flustered, unwilling to hurt her. “There was a thing like this once
before, Beebo, and it just wasn’t true. Leo proved it. He’ll get Mom out
of this, he always does. There’s always some jerk waiting around to
throw a scandal at the movie stars.” He sneaked a look at her to see if
he was helping any.
“_I_ know it’s not true, Beebo, so don’t worry,” he said putting his
hand on her arm. “You know I don’t believe that junk. You kid around,
but you wouldn’t do anything like that.”
Beebo looked away from him. “I wouldn’t hurt your mother—” she began.
“I know,” he said, with surprising warmth and sympathy. “She’ll be okay,
don’t worry. The thing that scares me is ... well, I don’t want you to
leave us, Beebo. You’ve done so much for us. Besides, who’d help me with
my biology? Honest—these gossipers—they’ll say anything about anybody.”
Beebo was touched by his anxiety. “I’m not going anywhere, Buddy,” she
said. But she meant, _Not right now. Tomorrow, I may have no choice._
And Toby realized it.
Beebo was a thin line away from despair. All the charmingly confessed
selfishness, that had seemed adorable in Venus at first, had become
Beebo’s prison.
And having nothing else to do, Beebo studied Venus’s faults as never
before. The self-love, the endless clichés. Venus might laugh at them,
but she couldn’t abandon them. People said there was only one great
glamour queen left in Hollywood: Venus Bogardus. And Venus thought they
meant her trimmings—her velvet-paved boudoirs and flashy conceits; not
her Self.
Beebo loved her with excited fascination still. And Venus loved Beebo as
well and truly as she knew how. More, certainly, than anyone but Toby.
And yet ... was that enough?
Beebo stood looking out the window of her room at twilight, taking in
the grounds of the estate and the evening star. Venus. So high and
bright and beautiful. And as far out of reach at that moment as ever it
was when she was growing up back in Juniper Hill.
That night, when she tried to write to Jack again, she spoiled her page
twice with tears and gave it up. She was trying not to admit that Venus
had no room in her life for a gay lover; that theirs was a time-bomb
romance, set to explode in their faces. The papers had lighted the fuse.
And Beebo, looking at that perfect point of light in the black sky, knew
in her heart that her days with Venus were numbered.
* * * * *
The morning of that crucial Tuesday, a nationally syndicated columnist
who wielded huge power in Hollywood, said she was checking a New York
source for verification of a shocking news item about one of the town’s
greatest stars ... a woman, currently headlining a TV series.
Two other columnists pretended special information on the same subject,
but all refused to reveal their information or describe the scandal till
it was authenticated.
Venus was on trial that night. One columnist had snickered, “If Leo
doesn’t mind, I don’t know why I should. After all, he’s been through
this a dozen times.”
Even at that they had let her off pretty easily. But the atmosphere
around her crackled. Fortunately, advance notices on _Baby_ were good.
They had had a good schedule and an extravagant budget. And Leo, with
bench-coaching from Beebo, had wheedled a radiant performance out of his
wife.
Venus and Leo watched the broadcast on monitors at Television City with
the whole _Baby_ company, and went on afterwards to a baroque party on
the famous Restaurant Row of LaCienega Boulevard. They hit most of the
eateries, picking up celebrities en route, and capping the bash at the
home of a popular singer who had guest-starred on the opener.
The party was noisy and crazy, and Venus, a show-stopper in silver
sequins, took Hollywood under her thumb, with the subtly effective aid
of her husband. She had her arms around every man present at least once,
as graceful and captivating as any lovely woman aware of her success.
When she was twitted about the dark secrets mentioned in the papers, she
laughed and told everyone she was screwing her cat, and the whole
subject was swept away in the laughter that followed. Only Leo remained
grave, smiling slightly and talking, but inwardly seething.
And Venus, if the truth were known, was even more disturbed than he.
* * * * *
Beebo saw the show in the Bogardus rec room with Toby. The house was
eerily quiet. All the servants had been given the night off, except
Venus’s correspondence secretary, a fussily officious young man; and
Mrs. Sack, who never went anywhere anyway.
The show had hardly started before the phone began to ring: telegrams,
roses at the front gate, long distance rhapsodies. The secretary took
the calls, but Beebo and Toby picked up the red wall-phone and listened
in to some.
At the station break, the secretary put his head in and said, “Beebo?
Telegram for you.” He handed her the yellow envelope.
Beebo felt the bottom of her stomach sink southward. She was sure it
couldn’t be good news. Not when she had left so much angry confusion
behind in New York.
The wire was from Jack: “Get home, pal. N.Y. safer than L.A. Couple of
people want your scalp. Jack.”
_What does he want me to do, go back and give it to them?_ she wondered,
taking her worry out on Jack.
“Was it bad news?” Toby said, looking at her face. Beebo pursed her lips
and nodded.
“A friend in New York. He says my enemies want me dead.”
Toby paled, started to ask about it, and suddenly turned back to the TV
screen as if afraid to know the truth.
When the show was over, Toby and Beebo went for a walk on the lawn,
meandering side by side and speaking little. Beebo was full of the
shadow-image of Venus on the screen; glittering, gorgeous, inaccessible.
Finally Toby stopped in a garden path, standing stiff-legged and staring
back at the lighted windows of the empty living room. “Beebo,” he said.
“You’re not going to leave, are you?” It was not just Beebo he feared to
lose. It was his mother as well.
Beebo’s hands curled into fists. “I don’t know,” she said, so softly it
was hard to hear her. She knew she was going to have to, that she was
way beyond herself here. And yet not even the discouragements of
boredom, shame, and abstinence had completely crushed her. She kept
thinking of how it might have been.
“I feel so bad about it all,” Toby said. “They have no right to say
those things about you. It makes me sick. Stay with us, Beebo. Leo will
take care of you.”
His faith in Leo moved her. She wished she could risk the truth with
him, without destroying him. She wished he could know somehow what she
was, and that the knowledge would not make him loathe her.
Beebo stood beside him, silent in the night, letting him rant against
the cruel accusations in the papers with youthful outrage, protesting
his trust and affection, and she felt a terrible sob coming up in her
throat.
Leo had forbidden her to tell him she was his mother’s lover. But it was
the meanest sort of cowardice to let him stand there and thank her, and
beg her to stay on, when all the while she was betraying his gratitude.
“Nobody in this world ever did so much for Mom and me,” he was saying.
“Honest, Beebo. If you go now, it would ruin everything. I don’t see—”
“Toby, stop it! Please! Oh, God,” Beebo cried. The sob broke and her
voice went hoarse. “Stop it, stop it, stop it!” She covered her face
with her hands for a few agonized moments. Toby stared at her as if she
had taken leave of her senses, very much distressed at her sudden
explosion. He tried clumsily to calm her.
“Did I say something wrong?” he asked apologetically.
“It’s no use, Toby,” Beebo cried, so brokenhearted that he was stunned.
“I have to go.”
“Go where?”
“New York.”
“You said there were people back there who want to hurt you,” he
objected, turning white again. “Beebo, if that’s true, you _can’t_ go. I
won’t let you.”
“Anything would be better than here,” she said, looking at him in
torment. “They’ll flay me alive out here—if not tomorrow, then the next
day. Oh, Toby, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” The sobs silenced her for a
minute. “Please believe me. I wouldn’t do this to you for the world,
only—”
Toby turned and walked away.
She pursued him, calling anxiously, “Toby! Toby, wait!” She caught up as
he was letting himself down gingerly on a stone bench, moving for all
the world like an old man with bursitis. Beebo joined him, reaching out
to touch him, then pulling back when he turned away.
“I don’t understand,” she heard him murmur. “I told you—Leo—don’t you
believe me? He can help—if it were true, but it’s not—”
He frightened her. The words were so breathless and disjointed, the
voice so small and hurt. He was rocking back and forth, as if shaken
with sobs, but there was not the slightest sound audible now from his
throat. “Toby? Are you all right?” Beebo said.
He moved around, again with that strange parody of crippled age, and
seemed about to answer her, when all of a sudden he startled her by
springing straight into the air with a weird howl. In the elapsed time
of less than a second, Beebo realized he hadn’t sprung at all; he had
been thrown upright by the abruptly powerful tensing of his entire
muscular system. He was having an epileptic seizure.
And before she could move to help, he had fallen forward, rigid as a
cigar store Indian. He struck his head on a decorative rock across the
path when he hit the ground. Beebo cried out, horrified, and then dashed
to his side, lifting him carefully off the gravel and onto the soft
grass.
Her years of experience with sick animals and illness steadied her a
little. She knew he mustn’t swallow his tongue but it was too late to
put anything between his teeth. His jaws were locked shut. She rolled
him gently on his side, thinking that he could breathe better and would
be less likely to choke on his own saliva, which came foaming out of his
clenched jaws. He was quivering like a vibrator machine and groaning
uncontrollably while the white suds oozed from his mouth. It was a
ghostly wail that made Beebo shiver. And yet she knew that a
seizure—even one as alarming to see as this one—shouldn’t be a cause for
panic. Aside from his contortions, it was the blow on his head that
worried her, but she couldn’t get a look at it.
Toby’s feet were pointed downward, tight and hard as a toe dancer’s, and
his arms were glued to his sides. Beebo was relieved when finally she
felt him go limp. But it was then that she saw his forehead and gasped.
There was a gash in it, deep and ragged. She began to tremble with
alarm. Now that Toby was relaxed, the wound opened like a fountain. Such
quantities of blood flowed over his face and onto Beebo and the ground
beneath them that she felt almost sick.
She tried to pick him up, but her legs failed her momentarily and she
collapsed beside him, sweating frantically.
“This won’t help him, idiot!” she berated herself. “Get up!” She tried
again and made it, desperate to get him in the house and clean the
wound. She wanted help, anybody, a doctor—Mrs. Sack. “Mrs. Sack!” she
shouted suddenly, but there was no sound from the house. Mrs. Sack’s
room was on the other side on the top floor and she would never hear
Beebo calling from the lawn below.
Beebo lifted Toby and carried him into the house. She put him down on a
satin-upholstered sofa, watching with pity and fear as the red blood
soaked into the pink silk. She pressed her bare hand down hard on the
wound and the flow abated slightly. Nearby was one of the house intercom
phones, and Beebo reached it with her free hand.
“Mrs. Sack,” she said breathlessly. “I’m in the living room with Toby.
He had an attack and hit his head. Call the doctor and then get down
here—fast!”
Mrs. Sack rushed into the living room moments later, armed with rolls of
gauze and tape and disinfectants. She stopped at the sight of Toby, so
limp and colorless, except for the scarlet stains on his face and the
sofa.
“I’ve been waiting for something like this all my life,” she said
grimly. Beebo was astonished to see how firm and fearless she was; not
at all the comfortable muffin she seemed when all was well with her boy.
“We’ve had some bad falls before, but not like this.”
“Is the doctor coming?” Beebo asked.
“Yes, in ten minutes.” She knelt by Toby, washing the wound while Beebo
watched.
“Shall I call Venus?” Beebo said.
“No,” said Mrs. Sack emphatically. “She’s worse than nothing in a
crisis. She goes all to pieces. It doesn’t help Toby and it certainly
doesn’t help the doctor.”
Beebo thought, _I should be grateful she’s here—she knows just what to
do_. And yet she was distressed to think that Venus should be playing
goddess at a party while her son lay hurt and bleeding—and no one was
making a move to tell her.
“She has to be told, Mrs. Sack,” Beebo said.
“Go and tell her, if you must,” Mrs. Sack said. “She can meet us at the
hospital. At least over there they can give her a sedative.”
Beebo stood uncertainly by the phone, trying to picture herself walking
in on the fancy party in her bloody slacks; infinitely preferring to
call.
Mrs. Sack looked around. “Beebo, this boy is more my child than hers—she
says so herself,” she said unexpectedly. “All his life he’s come to me
when he was hurt, and I’m the one who knows how to care for him. Not
her. It’s my job. My life.” She was as proud and strong in her words as
a soldier bristling with defense.
To Beebo, staring at her, it became clear that Venus didn’t just give
Toby up. Toby was deftly taken from her by this plump, kindhearted woman
who never had a child of her own, but was obviously made to mother one.
She believed Toby was truly her child because Venus had forfeited her
right to him, even the right to be there to comfort him and patch his
wounds.
“Mrs. Bogardus could have had him when he was born,” Mrs. Sack went on,
ministering to Toby. “But she practically threw him at me. And I was
overjoyed to have a little son to raise and love. She can’t walk in here
like a queen and demand him back, just because he cuts himself and
scares her.”
Beebo went over and patted Mrs. Sack’s shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she said
gently. “Nobody’s criticizing you, Mrs. Sack. But Venus is his mother,
no matter how much you’ve done for him or how much you love him.”
“If you call that woman,” Mrs. Sack said, turning around and standing up
to italicize her words, “_I will not be responsible_ for the condition
of this boy. Beebo, you’re a nice youngster and you’re his friend. It’ll
be bad enough for Venus to see him at the hospital, but if she comes
racing in here shrieking bloody murder, she’s likely to make Toby
believe it. Do you want a sick boy or a dead one on your conscience?”
Beebo ran a distraught hand through her hair. “But Mrs. Sack, I _can’t_
go get her.”
“Nonsense. Just change your clothes and drive over. It should take you
about half an hour, and by that time the doctor will be with us and Toby
will be at the hospital.”
“But the papers ...” Beebo muttered.
“I don’t read the papers, Beebo, but I’m quite sure they’ll forgive you
for getting the mother of a sick boy from a party.” She had turned back
to Toby. “It’s an emergency and there’s no one else to go.”
“What about Rod—her secretary?”
“He doesn’t drive. And besides, he overdramatizes everything. He’d
really fix Mrs. Bogardus.” Mrs. Sack didn’t seem to care whether Beebo
ever got there. But Beebo knew Venus had to be told at once. Venus
herself had admitted to hysterical behavior in the face of Toby’s
attacks. Perhaps the only way then was to pick her up and drive her to
the hospital, as Mrs. Sack suggested.
Beebo put on some clean clothes in her room, and as she ran down the
stairs again, headed for her car, she heard the newly-arrived doctor
saying on the phone, “Yes, a concussion. Get an ambulance over here.” He
looked up and saw Beebo.
“Are you Miss Brinker? Get his mother, will you? Tell her not to worry—I
don’t want two patients on my hands tonight. Better not say much about
the wound. Just tell her it’s a bump. We’re hospitalizing him till the
risk of hemorrhage is passed.”
“Yes, sir,” Beebo said, and ran out to the garage.
* * * * *
She left her car directly in front of the main entrance to the house
where the party was, and went in.
“Excuse me, this is a private party—” said a doorman, but Beebo, with
that peculiar air of authority that came to rescue her from various
crises, interrupted him calmly.
“Where’s Miss Bogardus?” she said, scanning the living room. “It’s an
emergency.”
The butler, who read the gossip columns like everyone else, gazed at her
with new interest. “I believe she’s occupied,” he said with a venal
smile. Beebo gave him a twenty-dollar bill, too worried even to begrudge
it.
“You’ll find her in the back gardens. Out the French doors,” he said,
gesturing toward them.
Beebo strode through the champagne-stained living room. Many a famous
face glanced at her, and a columnist whispered to his scribe to take
notes.