Bells of Avalon (12 page)

He pulled back and looked at her. He placed both hands on the side of her jaw and studied her face. She let him look as long as he wanted, and closed her eyes when he moved in to kiss her.  The kiss was a tranquil thing until her body began to respond. His lips softened but moved in pressing appeals against her mouth, more urgent this time. Her material mind began to drift away and the last voice she heard told her to stop him. The pleading urge echoed through what remained of her mind…more sing-songy than ever before. But soon, even that was gone. The whole world was just them—and the sound of rushing water as it curled around the starboard side of the
Santa Catalina
.

      When they docked, he was humming nonsense words into her ear. Over his voice she heard the bells from Avalon tower. They rang three times, as if to welcome them back to a world where time passed too quickly. They explored their fool’s paradise from every vantage point, walking the lengths of endless byways and beaches. The further they walked, the less they bothered to fill the spells of silence that fell between them. When the fine sand turned to tinny rock, she saw something inside Danny change.  Even in the diffused light of the setting sun, his face grew pale.  Daniel sadly pondered the rise of rock impeding their path. She said nothing. Even amongst Daniel’s rolodex of changing faces, she would have known that look anywhere. It was the look you made when you sent your mind walking.  She left him to it while they stood in silence. When she sensed his dark mood shift, she touched his hand. His head snapped to the side and his shoulders flinched, just as she’d known they would. His greenish eyes held the spark of anger from before, but she wasn’t afraid of him.  Sure enough, the warmness returned to his eyes—the cold streets of New York to the California sun. He gave her an agonized smile, and they walked back up the beach from where they’d come. When the sun set and the air grew chilly, they heard music from the casino ballroom overlooking the bay. They snuck in a service door on the bottom floor, following the music until they reached the dance floor in the seashell pavilion. They danced together, underdressed teenagers in a sea of tweed suits and eyelet evening gowns. With each step, she felt the scattered grains of sand in her shoes. When his hands ran through her hair, she clung closer to him.

Later when Daniel left her to fetch drinks from the bar, she walked to one of the massive portico windows circling the ballroom. She looked out on the black ocean, wondering if she could find the very place from which she’d looked on as a child. She was glad when she saw nothing.  Daniel reappeared with two gin drinks. He stood with her against the window, looking out as she had. He placed his arm around her waist, and she felt something like hope show through her smile.  He smiled back, saying nothing—but he hadn’t needed to. She heard the words inside her. Not from the man he was but from the boy he’d been.
Not everything that happens is worth talking about, is it Katie Webb?

They hadn’t spoken since they picked up the car at Marina Del Rey. He’d wanted her to stay the night on the island, but she’d refused. She wanted to go home and they’d barely caught the last boat out of Avalon.  But as she’d lain against him on the ride back, eyes closed while Daniel watched the black ocean pass by, she remembered like a jolt that home was not home anymore. Her stomach turned. She sat up straight and went pale. He’d asked what was wrong. She told him it was the gin and the boat ride. It was neither. She’d realized it didn’t matter if she spent the night in Catalina or Paris, France. There was no one waiting for her, not even a dumpish press agent to report to. By the time they docked, Roberta would have locked up behind the moving men, leaving the house on North Rockingham Avenue mopped of her presence forever. Everything she owned was packed in boxes underneath an archway of a rented house on Fiske Street. It might as well have been Nestle. She didn’t even remember the house number, to which Daniel responded with an irritated look when they turned off Sunset. To her relief, the house wasn’t hard to find.

He pulled alongside her newly rented address and parked. He left the engine running and she fumbled for the key ring in her purse. She looked over the little brass key that
Tad to his friends
had given her the day before, not so different than the hotel key in New York. She’d been so excited to receive that key, while Daniel traipsed around the city with Max and Albert—doing God knew what. She’d thought it was an adventure. But everything was different now. Now Daniel sat next to her, his eyes brooding and staring ahead at nothing. The thick bevels of his expensive watch shining against the streetlights. She thought of the sound the watch had made when it clanked against the table at the hotel, about his wilted dress socks on the radiator.

Her legs were like lead against his upholstery. The weight on her chest returned and the words she wanted to say lodged in her throat. She’d gotten away with that once before, but she couldn’t any longer. Furthermore, she didn’t want to. Not after she’d known what it was to lie alongside him while he’d kissed her in New York, not after she’d felt his arms around her on the dance floor or seen the shape of his bare shoulders in the dark.  She’d thought once she was in love with Mrs. Gallagher’s son. She knew now that she’d had no idea what love was. The twinge of pain she felt when she glanced at him over the dinner table, his face tanned and beautiful. All of it was nothing compared to the fear of his leaving if she didn’t tell him what she needed to say. He turned to her, let out an impatient breath but said nothing. She felt his irritation growing with the weight on her chest. She looked down to the key in her hand, swallowed, closed her eyes, and told him what she’d wanted to tell him in New York.

She looked at him and saw the angry spark in his eyes. For a moment she thought he would lose the battle to be patient with her. She repeated the words and, this time, they came easily. His lips parted and she heard the clinking, almost scoffing sound of his tongue, but the anger in his eyes was gone. It was replaced by wariness.  When she stepped out of the car and walked up the pathway—he followed.

From the master bathroom, she heard him root through her boxes. Above the mirror, three globe light fixtures were mounted on a tulip base. Two of the three bulbs had burned out, and the one that remained barely lit the room. She looked at her tired complexion in the mirror. Her coral-colored gloss was in Daniel’s car, along with her purse. The rest of her belongings were in boxes, of course. One of which Daniel was sifting through just outside the door. She heard the sound of tearing paper and looked again at herself in the mirror. She took her hair down and it fell messily around her shoulders. She kicked off her leather sandals and undressed to her satin bra and toreador pants. She opened the bathroom door to the bedroom. Daniel was gone, but he had rolled up a bath robe and two jackets into the green pillowcases. 
How had she forgotten pillows? Why hadn’t she bought a million other things? Why had she just bought bed sheets—and why green?
What she didn’t know about stocking a house could fill a mansion. She sighed, breathing out the smell of fresh paint clinging stubbornly to the walls.

A frond of cold air crept through the room. It smelled of concrete before the rain and cigarette smoke. She walked barefoot through the kitchen nook and found Daniel on the patio, his back to her, the French doors splayed behind him. His spine was straight, hands flat on the rails. A ribbon of pale smoke trailed off from the cigarette in his hand. The patio light reflected off his watch face, forming a perfect circle of light. The reflection broke when he turned and saw her. At first the look in his eyes was too close to anger, too close to annoyance. But when she looked again, she saw it wasn’t really anger. It was surprise. She made him feel vulnerable…exposed, and she guessed he didn’t like that much. She smiled, that power sitting in her stomach and melting through her like a wonderful shockwave.

The blaring smell of wet concrete was stronger than ever as she stepped out to him. The ground was wet against her feet. The finest of mists coated Daniel’s watch face, the dark hairs on his arms, and the bevels of his watch. He looked over her with a softer expression. His usually gleaming, gelled hair was softer too. It fell in clippy, half-curls around his temples and forehead.

“C’mon. Let’s go inside,” he said softly and crushed the cigarette under his boot. When they were inside, he shut the doors behind them, turned, and placed his hand on the side of her neck.  He brushed her hair from her shoulder, stepped forward until her back was against the wall.  She felt the cold, Spanish tile on her shoulder blades and flinched.

“What’s the matter, satin doll?” he whispered, and there it was again: the panic clogging her chest. The swell of brass instruments that only she could hear played out in her head, followed by the warbling radio voice. She looked at him, his face familiar and handsome. She thought again of the outline of his body in the dark, the clandestine thrill of his hand on hers as he’d pulled her behind a curtain. Warmth filtered through her body and pooled in her stomach. He kissed her the way he had on the boat deck, and it was enough to silence the singing voice once again. What remained was blotted out when he pulled her up from the wall, and it was as if she’d sent her mind walking. But this time—she was numb to everything in the world except for
him
. There was still the feeling of something being done to her—his solid arms around her as he carried her into the bedroom, his lips at her jaw—but having it done to her now was different. It was different now because she had chosen it for herself.

Sometimes she thought about running away to a place where no one knew her. She wondered if she had the guts it took to disappear. Go incognito—forever. But until she felt the pull in her belly as her crushed her close, she hadn’t realized how wonderfully easy it would be to vanish. She felt the green bed sheets at her back, far scratchier than the ones in New York, but that didn’t matter now. She opened her eyes and looked at him in the dark. She’d seen this version of Daniel Gallagher before, but only in tiny glimpses: his showy excesses boiled down to flinty confidence. It was the way he’d looked at Violet Clayworth in Chicago, the way he moved around the girls he went with, his hands masterfully at their cotton blouses while he walked them down the hallway. She felt the rough material of his pants on her legs and realized, with another pull in her stomach, that he’d long since removed her clothes. He made a quick twist of his wrist and they were skin to skin. She could see the warm glow of his shoulders, naked but for the green sheet draped over their curved-down sinew. The muscle dip in his shoulder leveled when he eased his full weight over her. He kissed her, broke away—then pushed inside. She tasted the salty skin of his chin, combed her fingers through his hair, soft and dried from the rain. He moved slowly, stokes unfurled like beach wave. When he returned his lips to her, she felt all of her oddities inside dislodge and melt away—and for or the first time, she was no longer a girl dispossessed.

Chapter Eleven

New York City, New York

1966

Katie stared out the window overlooking the park, her hand resting on the plastic dial of the phone. Only a few words—a startled hello, the sound of her name on his voice, that odd goodbye then the click of the phone line. That was all it had taken, and she was sixteen again. A sixteen year-old in love, an eighteen year-old pressed against him at a jazz club… twenty-one and fearful when he hadn’t come home when he’d said he would. So many times at the Fiske Street house she’d waited at the window with her hand on the phone—just as she did now—worried he wouldn’t show up, then worried he would. Would his eyes be bright and alert, or his pupils tight and drugged? It was a lifetime ago, but after she’d heard his voice, it might as well have been yesterday.

Her hand tightened around the phone receiver, pulled it to her chin, sighed and hung -up again. She
had
to call the club,
had
to let him know—but what if he was out? Or worse—what if she called and got Max instead. But it was Tuesday—Max’s night off…at least she thought it was. She’d have to call Albert now. Albert always knew what to do.

Katie thought of Albert as he’d looked that night. Also another lifetime ago, during those first blurry moments as she woke in Danny’s crashed car. She saw him standing in the rain, his face stubborn, diluted only slightly by the chaos around them.

The night had begun full of promise: a premature celebration at La Scala. They’d ordered a fortune’s worth of white truffles and antipasto, but it all went to waste in favor of red wine and cigarettes. Katie closed her eyes against the view of the park. In her mind, she saw the spread of thinly-sliced raw meat and dark greens as though it was in front of her. She could still smell the leather upholstery of the booth. Still see Max’s golden hair under the glow of low light. That summer had been full of evenings like that, but never so recklessly drunken. Even Albert, who rarely drank too much, seemed to have something to prove that night. Stranger still, Danny ordered bottles of wine upon wine, but drank none himself. In the very back of her mind, she knew he was buying their distraction. His mood was darkly alert, his arm holding her tightly against him as though she would escape.

You’ll get the part. They’ll never give it to that other scrawny broad
, she thought it was Max who’d assured her a dozen times. She hoped that she would, but her manager hadn’t called. The wine had helped to soothe her nerves, helped silence the sing-songy voice telling her again and again that she’d never fall from her bumble-gum pedestal and work as a legitimate actress. Danny stepped out of the booth to settle their bill—while the rest of them piled into his car. He drove to a liquor store on Wilshire Boulevard for more cigarettes and a fifth of Irish whiskey. Katie thought he’d been gone for something like a half an hour before he slid back in the driver’s seat, calmer than he’d been before.

The rain was light, at first, as Danny’s roadster climbed the winding ascent of Mulholland Drive. As they drove the rain became heavier. It was streaking the windshield just before the car fish-tailed and crashed against an oak coast tree. The sounds of shattering glass and bent chrome quickly squashed their high spirits. She felt a blow to her head, followed by a slicing wet pain along her wrist. When she came to, the car was, amazingly, on the road again. She looked blearily to her left. Albert was driving, shirtless, with his eyes frantically on the road ahead. She looked down. His white shirt was tied around her wrist and rendered crimson with her blood.

She didn’t wake again until the next day. She shifted in the hard hospital bed at the sound of Albert’s angry whispers.
Godammit, Danny, I’ll be damned if I ever cover for you again. You could have killed her. You do it again, and I’ll let you rot in jail.

Her eyes flashed open in the bright room. Danny sat in a chair beside her bed, his head down but his eyes bright and alert. Albert’s face softened as her eyes met his. She let them believe that she hadn’t heard.

The doctor told her the cut up her wrist would heal without a scar. She should have known better. She hadn’t trusted a single doctor since. The lateral wound gave birth to a rough, pink line of scar tissue that never faded. In the privacy of her hotel room, she’d left the scar uncovered. She looked down at her wrist. Danny told her it didn’t look nearly as bad as she thought it was. To her, it looked a million miles long.  He got angry when he caught her piling bracelets up her arm, wearing long sleeves in summer. She was sure she could conceal it forever. The same way she could conceal her real name, her sister, and the thing that had happened in the blue-tiled bathroom. But she could never fool Daniel.

“Will you tell us we’re right if we guess it?”

She thought of Max and Albert begging Danny in the studio commissary when they were just kids.

“Nah, you’ll never guess it. I suppose I could just tell you.”

“Don’t you dare!” she’d called out amongst the laughter, already feeling the familiar way in which things usually shifted in Daniel’s favor, “I’ll never speak to you again.”

“You promise?” he asked.

“Daniel,
please
.”

“
Oh, Daniel, please
!
”
the brothers mocked, throwing their fists up in childish tremors. “Why don’t you just tell us, Katie?”

“She won’t tell you.” Daniel said.

“Oh come on Katie, can’t be that bad. Al’s middle name is Egbert.” Max nudged her in the ribs. She squealed and pushed him away.

“Oh it is bad. Could be the worst name I ever heard. It’s no wonder they made her change it.”

“Then why the hell did she tell you?” Albert asked.

Daniel only smiled for a moment and changed the subject.

The only other person she told was Sheila Cassidy. They’d shared a room in Hershey Hall the spring she’d taken classes at UCLA. She was a feisty girl with an uncomplicated confidence about her. Katie had liked her immediately. Best of all, Sheila was completely unimpressed with her. Most of her family had worked in the studios as janitors or film cutters. Katie loved that she viewed her Hollywood past with absolutely no novelty. She’d been the first woman, besides Mrs. Gallagher, who hadn’t treated her like a delicate hothouse flower.

Two months after they met, they were lying on opposite brass beds of their room smoking cigarettes after a party.  She didn’t know what had spurred her to tell.  It could have been the suffused tiredness after a night of cocktails and too many faces. Maybe she was just weary of carrying the secret around in her mind with no one to carve up the burden.  Their giddy chatter had faded into casual silence and, in the space of the still air, she opened her mouth and recounted everything that had happened when she was thirteen. She told the tale exactly as it had happened, with no platitudes to soften the blow. While she spoke, her voice hadn’t sounded like her own. It sounded almost—American, as if the soft tinges of her accent were never meant to describe such wicked things.  She didn’t stop, couldn’t stop until it was done. When it was over she felt the blood rushing to her ears. She finally turned her head...and saw Sheila’s pretty face calm with sleep. A gentle wave of russet hair fell along Sheila’s cheek and slid down into a lazy camber over her drooped arm. Katie turned to the side and pulled a pillow to her chest.   She wept in the dark, considering it one of life’s rare do-overs. She wept for the sheer relief of telling a secret in the dark—with no one the wiser in the morning light. 

She never saw the Dancer again after that night at the Riviera.  Although far too often, she’d come close to being at the same party, attending the same function.  For years they ran in dangerously close circles—until he died in 1964.

She’d been driving the same stretch of road as Danny’s crash when she heard the news. She hadn’t realized how close she’d been to the site. The coast oak tree was long gone, as were any signs of trauma. With several years between, it was just a patch of road like any other.  It was then, with her eyes transposing a dark sky over Daniel’s twisted car, that she heard the news.  An embolism, they’d said—started when he fractured his ankle during a dance rehearsal. His nimble feet had been tripped up at last. He was set to be buried at Oakwood Park. She’d pulled the car to a soft shoulder, her chin drooping to her chest.  It rested there for several minutes, nothing focal in her thoughts but the memory of Mrs. Gallagher—also now dead and, through some cruel twist of fate, buried in the same cemetery. But somehow, some way, Katie could suddenly smell the cotton-vanilla scent of Daniel’s mother mixing with the brackish sea air.

Happy as Larry, Mary?

She’d started the ignition and pulled back onto the highway.  As she drove north, the wind blew through her hair like dry medicine. She took two deep breaths, and the egg-shell numbness of her body faded away—for good this time. 

Katie opened her eyes from the memory. It had started snowing. The sky was grey, and the tree tops were nearly pure white. She picked up the receiver to call the man whose middle name may or may not have been Egbert. The only boy who knew nearly as much as her old friend Daniel Gallagher.