Belinda (42 page)

Mom played all this very sympathetically. She is sad and wounded and philosophical as always, and when the young guy takes off in shame and embarrassment, she looks at the screen where they are showing the love scenes from her old pictures, and we see tears in Mom's eyes. That was the heart of the plot. The show ends with her in control of the airline, getting rid of the bad guys, including this cousin, and trying to find out who killed her father, of course.

OK, TV, I know. But it was perfect for Mom, and, of course, the budget was outrageous, the sets sumptuous, the costumes great. Even the sound track was a cut above the usual thing.

The big hit "Miami Vice" had had a powerful influence on Marty. He was horribly jealous of it. And he had sworn to make "Champagne Flight" stylish, more sophisticated than the other nighttime soaps. He also wanted a cop-show pace. The old "Kojak" was his model in that regard. And to tell the truth, Marty did what he set out to do. "Champagne Flight" had a cop-show feel to it and a rock-video look.

Actually there is an old cinema term for what Marty did, though I don't think Marty would know it. The term is film noir. "Champagne Flight" is probably the only film noir prime-time soap.

Marty waited like a maniac for the ratings. And within hours we knew everybody in America had tuned in to see Mother. "Champagne Flight" was a hit. It even made the news all over the country: Bonnie and Bonnie's old films.

After that, the reporters were after us constantly. The tabloids hounded us. And suddenly Marty could not be out of Mom's sight. Mom insisted he sleep in the room next to hers, moving Jill out of it, and she kept waking up, in spite of the sleeping pills, and getting confused about where she was. At three o'clock in the morning he'd be feeding her a little breakfast and telling her how good things were going and how they were all going to mop up.

Even getting Mom a full-time nurse didn't help the situation. Marty had to be there. The masseuse, the hairdresser, the lady's maid who took care of Mom's room and nothing else-they all took directions from Marty. Then one night some reporter from a European paper got over the electric fence and started photographing Mom with a flashbulb through the glass doors of her room. She woke up screaming. And Uncle Daryl had to bring her a gun from Texas, though everybody told her, You are crazy, you can not shoot that gun. But she had to have it in the table by her bed.

Of course, they were still shooting all through these early weeks, revising future episodes as reactions came in to what was already done. And Mom was OK when she was working. She was OK acting or even reading a script. It was any other time that Mom got crazy. Mom is one woman who has never minded working late.

Maybe three weeks into the season I realized I had not been alone with Marty since the night of the premiere. Then I woke up early in the morning and I saw Marty standing at the foot of my bed.

"Lock the door," I whispered. I knew damn good and well Mom might get up and start wandering around in a drugged-out state.

"I have," he told me. But he just stood there in his robe and pajamas and did not get in the bed. I think I knew even in the dark that something was terribly wrong with him. Then he sat down beside me, and he turned on the lamp. The look on his face was awful. He looked embarrassed and cut up and crazy.

I said: "It's Mom, isn't it? You went to bed with Mom."

His mouth was all out of shape. He couldn't seem to talk. He said in this very strained voice that when a woman like that wanted you to go to bed, you just couldn't say no.

"What the hell are you talking about?" I asked.

"Honey, I can't turn her down. Nobody in my position ever turned her down. Don't you see?"

! just stared at him. I couldn't say anything. My voice was absolutely gone. And right before my eyes he started to choke up, to cry.

"Belinda, I don't just love you, I need you!" he said to me in this choked whisper. And he reached out to put his arms around me. He started to kiss me.

I couldn't do this. I didn't have to think about it. I knew it. And I had gotten out of the bed and away from him before I even made up my mind what to do. But he came after me, kissing me, and then I was kissing him, and this chemical thing had taken over and, of course, the love, the real strong love, that probably didn't even need the chemical thing anymore.

I did a lot of arguing and saying no, but we were already back in bed together, and we did it, and I cried myself to sleep.

Of course, he wasn't there when I woke up. He was with Mom again. And nobody even noticed me pack up and leave the house.

I went down to the Strip, to the Chateau Marmont, and I got a bungalow there, and I made a couple of calls. I told Trish to cover the bills, I had to be there right now, and please don't ask me why.

"I know why," Trish said. "I've seen this coming. Just be careful, Belinda, will you?" She called the Chateau and took care of the credit. And that evening she left the message that she had squared it with Mom, and Mom had signed a nice check for my bank account.

And there I was, sitting on the side of the bed in the Chateau Marmont and everything was over with Marty, and Susan was in Europe shooting a TV movie, and my mom, of course, did not even care apparently that I had moved our of the house.

Well, I went wild in the next few weeks. I roamed the Strip at night, talking to the bikers and the crazies and the runaways. I called back all the Beverly Hills kids who had called me when I first got here. I went to their houses, their parties, even drove with them to Tijuana one afternoon. I hung around Hollywood High sometimes when school let out. I made the sights of the city, the studio tours and even Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm. I just ran around. Anything not to bc alone, not to be by the phone. But I made sure I checked in with Trish at least once every afternoon. And the report was Mom was just fine. Just fine.

Mom probably didn't even notice my absence. And I was being driven out of my mind trying not to think about Marty, telling myself that it had to be over with Marty, that I had to decide about my future right now.

Now when I look back on it, I wonder what would have happened if I had called G.G. in New York. Mom might not have cared at all then if I had gone to G.G. Mom did not need me the way she had years and years ago. But the truth was, I could not bear the thought of losing Marty. I was in pain, just terrible pain.

And so I just ran around town. And of course some rather irritating things were happening, too. I was finding out I was a legal child.

For example, I'd known how to drive since I was twelve, but I couldn't get a license in California until I was sixteen. I couldn't go into places that served alcohol even if all I wanted was a Coke and the right to sit at a table and listen to the comedian who was doing the show. And, of course, I couldn't really confide in the kids I met. I wasn't about to tell them about my affair with Marty.

And I wasn't like these kids. I didn't get their mixture of being grownup and childish, real hard little LA kids on the one hand and babies on the other. I could never never figure it out.

Who had my friends been in the past? Trish, .Jill, Blair Sackwell, my dad. That's who. Not kids.

Things stayed superficial, if not downright artificial. Nothing really worked.

Well, of course, Marty showed up at the Chateau Marmont.

If he hadn't, I think my faith in life would have been crushed. I mean, not even one visit to see what had happened to me? And I don't know what I wanted then except maybe to see him and tell him that I would not sleep with him while he was sleeping with Mom. But I tell you, I was not prepared for the scene that Marty threw.

This was Marty's first big Italian opera number on me.

It was the middle of the night when he came to the door of the bungalow. And he was in some state when he came in.

First off, he wanted to know what kind of family did I have? Didn't they care that I was living down here on Sunset in a place like the Chateau with absolutely no supervision? That word again. I laughed.

"Marty, don't give me this shit," I said. "Don't wake me up to tell me my family doesn't give a fucking damn what I do. I've known that since I was two years old."

What about school? he demanded. Didn't anybody in the whole family care that I wasn't going to school?

"You dare suggest such a thing and I will kill you, Marty," I said. "Now get out of my room and leave me alone."

Then he got very embarrassed and upset, and he was almost crying when he said that Bonnie was asking for me. Bonnie didn't understand why I was never there.

"You tell me that," I said. I was crying.

And without another word spoken we were in each other's arms. I said no, of course, I said no over and over, but I didn't mean it and Marry knew it. And we were in bed together and it was iust as it had always been. I suppose in some bittersweet way it was better, and then Marty was lying there holding me and trying to tell me what a hell this had all been for him.

"You know, sweetheart, it makes me think of the old saying, 'Be careful what you ask for, 'cause you might get it.' Well, I did. I asked for Bonnie, I asked for a number-one show. And I've got both of them, sweetheart, and I've never been so miserable in my entire life."

I didn't answer him. I was crying into the pillow. I was thinking mad things, like what if we got married, ran away to Tijuana and did it and then came back and told them, what would happen then? But I knew such a thing would never never happen, and I felt this rage inside me, just burning up all the words I might have said.

Marty went on talking. Marty went on saying things, until I realized what was going on. He was telling me he needed me, that he couldn't do it without me, that he couldn't get through the season the way things were. "You've got to come back, Belinda, you've got to. You've got to think of this thing in a different light."

"Are you putting me on? You think I'd live there in the house with you and Mother and her not knowing that you were sleeping with me, too?"

"Belinda, a woman like your mother doesn't want to know things," he said. "Honest to God, she does not. She wants to be taken care of, lied to. She wants to be used and use everybody else at the same time. Belinda, I don't really think you know your mother, not the way I do. Belinda, don't do this to me, I'm begging you."

"Don't do this to you!"

If you think you ever saw me throw a fit, you should have seen me then. I got up out of the bed and I started hitting him and screaming at him and telling him to get out of there and go back to her. "Do this to you!" I kept screaming. And then he grabbed me and he shook me and he sounded like a madman.

"Belinda," he said, "goddamn it, I'm only human, that's all I am."

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?" I asked him.

He sat on the side of the bed with his elbows on his knees. He said that the pressure was building and building and if he blew, Mom would blow, too.

"Look, honey, we're all in this together, don't you understand? She's banking it hand over fist, and that's your money, and we're riding this wave. Just please don't turn against me now, honey, please."

I just shook my head. Banking it hand over fist. What could I say? "Come back to the house," he said, taking my hand. "Stick this out with me, Belinda. I am telling you, honey, the time I have with you is all I've really got left."

"You really think I would do that, Marty?" I asked.

And then he just broke down. He cried and cried, and I was crying and then it was time, he had to go back. If he wasn't there when she opened her eyes at five a.m. all hell would break loose.

He got dressed, and then he said, "I know what you think of me. I know what I think of myself. But Jesus, I don't know what to do. All I know is, if you don't come back, I can't fake this much longer, I'm telling you the truth."

"So it's my job to hold it all together, is that what you're saying? Marty, how many times do you think I have held it together for her? How many times do you think I've just swallowed it all and did what had to be done to make it OK for Mom?"

"But it's all of us, honey, it's you and me and her. Don't you see? Listen, those Texas chicks, they're leaving soon, I know they are. And there'll be nobody in that house but all those creatures, the nurse and the masseuse and that crazy hairdresser-and her and me. I tell you, I'm going to take that gun out of her dresser drawer and blow my brains out or something. I'm going out of my head."

I didn't have any more to say. I expected him to go then. He was already late. And I was thinking about calling G.G., asking if it would be all right with Ollie Boon if I stayed with him and G.G., but I knew I didn't have the courage to do that just yet.

Then I realized Marty wasn't leaving. He was just standing by the door. "Honey, she and I ... we're getting married," he said. "What?"

"Big outdoor wedding by the pool at the house. The publicity's going out today."

I did not say one word.

Then Marty made a speech. In a very quiet manner unlike himself he made a speech.

'q love you, Belinda," he said. "I love you like I never loved anybody before now. Maybe you are the pretty girl I never had in high school. Maybe you are the fancy rich kid I could never touch in New York. I only know I love you, and I have never been with anybody outside my own family back in New York that I loved and trusted so much. But life's played a filthy trick on both of us, Belinda. Because the lady has announced that she wants to get married. For the first time in her whole fucking life she wants to get married. And what the lady wants, the lady gets."

Then the door closed behind him. He was gone.

I think I was still lying there alone and in a state of shock, when Trish came. If she knew Marty had been there, she never said so to me. She told me the wedding was supposed to be Saturday, that Mom wanted to do it right away and Uncle Daryl had already left Dallas and would be at the house sometime this afternoon.

"I think you should go back to Europe," she said. "I think you should go to school."