They fell into the routine then which became so dull and empty to Beth
over the next few years. At first she was too busy getting settled in
her new home to be bored. She inspected the holly, the palms, the
poppies, the bamboo that grew, rare and exotic, in her own back yard.
She breathed in the mountains in back and the sparkling valley in front.
But little by little she grew used to them. You can’t live with the
marvelous every day and keep your marvel quotient very high.
Charlie and Cleve worked hard on the toys, and Charlie loved it. He
liked keeping his own hours, being the boss, running the show. Almost
imperceptibly he began to take on the lion’s share of the work and, with
it, the lion’s share of the decisions. He was willing to spend nights in
the office working out new plans or briefing new men. It made Beth
cranky with him. And the crankier she got the more he stayed away. It
was the start of a vicious circle.
“It must be my fault. I must bore you to death!” she cried.
“No, Beth, you don’t bore me,” he said, climbing into his pajamas while
she watched him from her place in the bed. “You scare me a little, but
you don’t bore me.”
“I _scare_ you! Ha!” She said it acidly, but only to cover her chagrin.
She didn’t dare to ask exactly what he meant, and he didn’t bother to
tell her. But her fits with the children, her depressions, her lack of
interest in the love that should have sparked between them, had
something to do with it.
Charlie reached the point where he couldn’t tell if Beth ever wanted him
or not. She got him, because he didn’t have the strength or the patience
to turn monk. But there was none of the old smoldering response that had
used to thrill his senses and reassure him of her answering passion. She
was quiet and she made the minimum gestures mechanically. As he had
blurted unintentionally, it scared him. Dismayed, he had tried once or
twice to talk to her about it. Not knowing how to be subtle, he simply
exclaimed that something was wrong and she had damn well better tell him
what it was before it got worse. But Beth had given him a smirk of half
amusement and half contempt that had withered his pride and driven him
to silence.
So things rolled along. The business was never quite good enough to get
them a bigger house or the flashy sportscar Beth wanted. Cleve was never
quite drunk enough to botch his job. Beth didn’t have enough love and
Charlie didn’t have enough insight. And that was their life.
For Beth it was dismal. She yearned for a diversion, an escape hatch,
_anything_. Travel, a new car, an affair even. But all she had were her
boisterous children, her irate husband, and bowling twice a week with
Jean Purvis. Her mood was desperate.
Things took an odd turn finally, one night when Jean and Cleve invited
Beth and Charlie to a birthday party. It was for Cleve’s sister, Vega
Purvis. Beth remembered Vega very well. She had met her shortly after
she arrived in California, and though she had never gotten to know Vega
well, she was interested in her.
Vega was a model. She was a very tall girl, at least as tall as Beth
herself, and excruciatingly thin. Throughout her twenties she had worked
at modeling in Chicago and then suddenly came down deathly sick with
tuberculosis, ulcers, and Beth had never known what else. Everything. It
had meant the temporary finish to her working days and a long trip to
the West Coast, where she went directly to the City of Hope for help.
She was there for over two years.
Vega had sacrificed a lung to her tuberculosis, a part of her stomach to
her ulcer, and perhaps more of herself to other plagues. And still she
was stunningly beautiful. Still she smoked two or three packs of
cigarettes a day—something that struck Beth as insane but rather
wonderful, as if Vega had taken a bead on Death and spat in his eye.
Nobody else would have gotten away with it. Vega brushed it off,
laughing. “The first thing I asked for when I came out of the
anesthetic,” she said, “was a cigarette. The doctor gave me one of his.
Tasted marvelous.”
Vega had deep-set eyes, almost black, and fine handsome features, and
she was witty and interesting. She was running her own model agency now
on Pasadena’s fashionable South Lake Street—mostly teen-age girls, with
one or two older women who took the course for “self-improvement.” Or,
perhaps, self-admiration.
Beth recalled the night she had first met Vega. They waited for her,
Cleve and Jean and Beth and Charlie, in a small restaurant near her
studio. Vega came late. It was necessary to her sense of well-being that
she arrive late wherever she went. So Charlie and Beth and the Purvises
waited for her in a small booth in the Everglades, where everything was
chic and expensive.
Vega swept in at last, forty minutes late, wrapped in a red velvet
cloak, and she was so striking that Beth had stared a little at her. She
sat down and ordered a Martini—double, dry, twist of lemon—before she
greeted anybody.
She had a lovely face but it was, like the rest of her, painfully thin,
with the fine bones sharply outlined. It soon became apparent why she
didn’t put on weight. Vega rarely ate anything. She drank her dinner,
though they had ordered her a steak. She seemed to depend on booze for
most of her calories. Cleve persuaded her to take one bite, which she
did, promising to finish the rest later—but of course she never did.
Charlie and Cleve finally split the meat and ate it, but the rest was
wasted.
Charlie was interested in her too. Beautiful women interest almost any
man without making much of an effort.
“What do you do here, Vega?” he asked her. “Cleve said something about
modeling.”
“I _teach_ modeling,” she said, accepting a fourth drink daintily from
the waiter. “Women are my business. Men are my pleasure,” she added,
smiling languidly.
Charlie smiled back, unaware of the silly look on his face. Beth saw it,
but it didn’t alarm her. It struck her funny, and before she had time to
think about it, she was laughing at him. And suddenly the fun and flavor
went out of the game for him, and he turned his attention to his meal.
Beth saw his embarrassment and rebuked herself.
_I should have been quiet, damn it_, she thought. _I should have let him
have his fling. Such an innocent little fling. What’s wrong with me?_
But it was too late. Charlie was carefully casual with Vega the rest of
the evening. It didn’t console him much, when he got home that night, to
check his muscles in front of the mirror or stretch to his full six feet
two. He was baffled and shamed by his wife, who laughed at even his
normal masculine reactions. He was almost defeated by his inability to
make Beth’s life mean something.
On Vega’s birthday night they waited, as before, at the Everglades for
her entrance, drinking whiskey and waters, and talking. Beth felt warm
and relaxed after the first two drinks and she squeezed Charlie’s arm.
It caused him some concern, instead of reassuring him, because it was
unexpected.
“Good whiskey?” he asked, nodding at her glass. That must be the source
of her pleasant mood.
“The best,” she said and smiled. “Why aren’t you nice like this all the
time?” she teased clumsily.
“I’m only nice when you’re a little tight,” he said. “The rest of the
time I’m a damn bore.”
It was so short and sad and true that it almost knocked the breath out
of her. She looked at her lap, despising herself for the moment, feeling
the tears collect in the front of her eyes. When she had to reach for a
piece of tissue to stem the flood he murmured, “I’m sorry. God, don’t do
that in here.” He had a masculine horror of scenes, especially in front
of Cleve and Jean. Jean had noticed the little exchange between them and
her smile—her permanent smile—wavered, but Cleve was talking to her and
didn’t see.
“Come on, honey, this is a birthday party,” Charlie whispered urgently
in Beth’s ear, exasperated and helpless like all men before a woman’s
public tears.
Beth pulled herself together. She would save her bad feeling for later.
Now she wanted to enjoy herself, to let the liquor take over, and the
muted lights and the piped music. She wanted to forget her kids, forget
she was married. Charlie lighted a cigarette for her.
“Peace pipe,” he said. And when he snapped out the match he saw Vega
coming and added, relieved, “Here comes the guest of honor.” He got up
as she approached the table and took her coat for her.
“Thank you, Charlie Ayers,” Vega said with a smile. She had a habit of
calling a man by his whole name, as if it made him completely special,
unique, valuable—and perhaps a little bit labeled. But the men loved it.
It sounded foolish when you tried to explain it to somebody else,
because it was impossible to imitate Vega’s intonation, her peculiar
lilting voice in its contralto register; but when she said your name,
your whole name soft and low and very distinct, the whole company
reacted. You were looked at, and the beautiful woman who had spoken to
you was looked at, and it was a wonderful, slightly silly, but charming,
ceremony.
Vega sat down between Cleve and Beth, and the waiter, who was an old
buddy of hers, came up, as soon as she had adjusted herself, with her
usual order: a Martini, double, dry, with a twist of lemon. The waiter
went up to the bar as soon as she had thanked him for it and began
mixing the next. She always took the first three or four on the run. It
amazed Beth to watch her. Oddly, Vega never seemed drunk.
Vega was all in black with a single small diamond clip at her throat and
diamond earrings. On her they looked real, whether they were or not.
Vega looked very very expensive, though she was quick to tell you the
price of anything she was wearing. Her clothes were usually bargains
picked up at sales in the better shops. Some of the shops gave her
discounts, in return for which she told people she bought her clothes
exclusively from them. She had this arrangement with at least five
shops, all of them unaware of the others, and she lied to them all with
charm and grace.
Beth watched her with an interest that intensified as the total of
highballs went up. There were two gifts in the center of the table, one
from the Ayerses and one from the Purvises. Vega ignored them.
“I’ve been teaching my girls how to walk,” she told them. “To rock and
roll records. Are you familiar with Elvis Presley?”
“Polly’s got a crush on him,” Beth said. “I think he’s godawful myself.”
“You’re wrong,” Vega said. “He’s very useful. Especially with a gang of
teen-age girls. You put one of his records on and suddenly you’ve
got—cooperation.” She emphasized the word and smiled. “They walk around
the studio like so many duchesses—just what I want. I used to play Bing
Crosby for them but all it got me was a slouch and a lot of
behind-the-hands giggling. Now I play crap and suddenly they’re ladies.”
She turned to Cleve. “Explain that to me, brother,” she said. “You know
all about ladies.”
Cleve ran a finger over his moustache in the wrong direction. “Simple,”
he said. “You have one rule: treat a bitch like a duchess and a duchess
like a bitch. Never fails.”
“What has that got to do with Elvis Presley?”
“You didn’t _ask_ me about Elvis Presley.”
“Cleve, are you drunk?” Vega said. “It’s against the family rules. You
can’t be. We never get drunk,” she explained to Beth and Charlie.
“Limber, but never drunk.”
“You’re right.” Cleve ordered another round and when the drinks came he
stood up and Beth saw that he really was pretty high. “A toast,” he
remarked, “to my charming sister, who is thirty-nine years old today.
For the fifth time.” He glanced down at her and Vega smiled seraphically
at the ceiling. “Her company is charming,” Cleve went on, while heads
turned to grin at him from across the room, “her face is beautiful, her
manners are perfect. Thank God I don’t have to live with her. Vega,
darling, stand up and take a bow.”
Vega stood up with a lovely smile and told him tenderly, “Go to hell.”
They both sat down and drank to that while Jean laughed anxiously.
“They’re always like that,” Jean said. “It strikes me so funny.”
Beth wanted to put a gag on her. Jean only wanted to make it seem
friendly, teasing. Everybody in the Everglades had heard her husband and
his sister. She wanted them all to know it wasn’t serious.
But Beth liked to think they really hated each other, for some weird
romantic reason. It gave an edge to the scene that excited her.
They ordered their meal and Vega, as always, ordered with them. Beth
wondered why she bothered. Maybe it was just to give the men an extra
helping. Maybe it was to ease her conscience about her drinking. At
least if she had a plate of food in front of her she could always eat;
she had a _choice_. If she didn’t order anything her only choice would
be to drink, and the people with her would take it for granted she was a
lush. That would never do, even when she was with her own friends, her
own family, who knew the truth anyway. It just didn’t go well with her
elegant exterior, her control.
So she ordered food, and ate one bite. It was a sort of ritual that
comforted her and shut up the worriers in the party who tried to force
French fries or buttered squash down her. When they had all finished she
could divide her meal among the men unobtrusively.
Beth yearned to ask Vega how old she really was, but she didn’t dare.
She wondered at her own curiosity. Everything about Vega seemed valuable
and interesting that evening. The glamorous clothes, the strange feud
with Cleve, the dramatic entrance, the illnesses, the modeling.
_I wonder how she’d like being a suburban housewife_, she mused, and
almost laughed aloud. Vega, with kids. Vega, doing dishes. Vega,
with—God forbid—a husband! On some women all the feminine ornaments and
virtues only look out of place. Those women seem complete in themselves,
and so it was with Vega. Beth couldn’t imagine her, sleek and tall and
with a hint of ferocity beneath her civilized veneer, being domesticated
by any man. There was something icily virginal beneath her
sophistication that made Beth doubt whether Vega had ever given herself
to a man.
Vega opened Beth’s birthday gift to her while the rest of them ate. “How
did you know?” she said, so quietly that Beth almost missed it.
“It’s only a book,” Beth murmured.
“You picked it out yourself. I’ve been wanting to read it, too.”
It was such a personal exchange, almost intimate, that Beth was taken
aback. Vega treated the book like a private present from Beth—as if
Charlie, who after all paid for it and wrote his name on the card with
his wife’s, had nothing whatever to do with it.
Beth found herself oddly drawn to this lovely, rather secretive woman;
to the warmth of her voice and the way she spoke. Vega articulated
carefully, conserving the small quota of air in her one remaining lung.
And yet her voice carried. She had turned the handicap into an asset,
learning to develop and project her voice with the skill of a musician.
It was pleasant to hear her talk, and she arranged her breathing so
artfully that one was never aware that it was a chore, or that her very
life’s breath came to her in half doses.
At the end of the evening the three women went to the powder room
together. Beth found herself impatient with Jean, wanting her out of the
way.
_What for?_ she thought, amused at herself. And still her impatience
persisted. She stood next to Vega at the mirror while Jean leaned
against the wall and waited for them to finish with their makeup. Beth
wanted to say something, something memorable and witty and complimentary
to Vega, but her mind was too busy admiring the woman. She only stared
at Vega’s large brown eyes and parted lips and puzzled over her.
“You know,” said Vega, startling her, “you should model. You have a good
figure for it.”
Beth was nonplussed. When could Vega have studied her figure? But Vega
was adept at observing people without seeming to. She had seen the
restlessness in Beth, just as she had seen the ardent mouth and purple
eyes and short brown curls, without apparently even looking at her. Now
she turned to appraise her.
“I speak purely as a professional,” she said, her mouth showing a
humorous twist at the corners. She gazed frankly at Beth now, up and
down, stem to stern. “Turn around,” she said.
Beth said, “Vega, I could never model. I’m too old.”
“Nobody’s too old. Except my mother, and she was born fifty years B.C.
You have nice hips, Beth.”
The remark, so casual, sent an unwelcome tremor through Beth, who tried
to shrug it off. “I’m thirty,” she said. “Who wants to show their
clothes on a thirty-year-old when they could show them on a teen-ager?”
“You’d be surprised,” Vega said. “Me, for one.” Beth stared at her. “Oh,
not my own clothes. Only a scarecrow like me can squeak into those. I
mean I like the way a woman your age wears her clothes, and so do the
men who hire them. They have something no teen-ager has.”
“A woman my age?” Beth repeated dolefully.
Vega laughed. “You still look like a college girl, Beth. You aren’t, of
course, let’s face it. But you look it.”
Beth gave her a wry grin. “I don’t know the first thing about modeling,
Vega,” she said.
“I’ll teach you.”
Beth was secretly pleased, very pleased. But she wasn’t thinking of the
makeup tricks, or the poise she might acquire. She was thinking, in
spite of herself, of the pleasure of spending some time in Vega’s
company. She had never been able to bring herself to form a lot of
friendships with women. It was not possible for her to be friendly with
them, curiously enough, just as it is rarely possible for a man to be
friendly with women. Beth had known Jean Purvis for years now and knew
her well, but they were still only acquaintances, not friends. And Jean,
though she regretted it, understood this, and had given up long ago
trying to pull Beth closer to her.
“I don’t know if I could afford it—” Beth began, but Vega interrupted
her.
“It’s free, darling,” she said, with an injured air, and Beth,
transfixed, felt the “darling” echo through her head with a dangerous
delight. She hardly heard Vega add, “Charlie won’t mind. You have a
housewife pallor, anyway. You need to get out. Come on down next week
and we’ll make you over. Not that you need much remodeling.” Vega
glanced again at Beth’s trim torso and smiled. Beth smiled back and
there was a single brief electric pause before Vega said quickly,
“Everyone all set? Let’s go.” And turned to leave.
The three of them filed out, Beth so close behind Vega that she stumbled
against her once.