Chocolates for Breakfast (10 page)

In the morning she woke up late, and the first thing she thought of was her hand. She looked at it. The bleeding had stopped in the night. That was good, she felt embarrassed at her weakness and childishness. Her mother had gone out for lunch. She got up and took off the toilet paper and with an edge of Kleenex she gingerly cleaned her fingers. The cuts were clean and, being in the joints, they didn't show. They would heal soon. Until then they would hurt, to remind her.

Chapter 13

T
here was spring in the early California evening, and as Courtney left the sanitarium with her father she was glad to be among people again; she was glad that the psychiatrist had said she could leave. Two months ago there had been nothing that she had wanted more than to leave life, to be taken care of and not asked to decide anything. But now she was anxious to be a person again, and only a little afraid. She looked at her father, sitting beside her in the cab. She was glad that he had come to California for her release. She liked the way her parents seemed so anxious to be with her, and to do things for her, since she had gone to the sanitarium.

Robbie took her to a restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, a very good restaurant that he always went to when he came here on business. Courtney had never been there, because it was not a place frequented by Hollywood people. It was very New York, which she liked. Her father must know that she wanted to be far away from Hollywood and its associations. But, of course, Courtney thought as she looked out the cab window, he couldn't really know that much about her. Probably he was just ill at ease in her mother's Hollywood world.

“I hope you like this place,” he said as they got out of the cab. “This is your evening,” he smiled.

They had talked little in the taxi, and they were uneasily silent as they sat down at the table. The things uppermost in their minds had been left at the gate to the sanitarium, and were forbidden subjects. Whatever had driven her to seek brief asylum was known only to Courtney, and though Robbie wished he could talk to her about it, perhaps help her, he knew that he must not invade her privacy. Perhaps it was just as well that he did not know it. They had shared so little—occasional afternoons and evenings over a span of so many years—that Robbie found himself searching his mind to make conversation with his daughter.

“What would you like to begin with?” he asked.

“I'd like a drink, please.”

Yes, she drank now. He should have remembered that.

“A martini,” she said. “Very dry, with no lemon peel or anything.”

He ordered two martinis. He wondered where she had learned to drink martinis. With her mother, of course.

“It's good to be with you, Courtney,” he said. “It's been a long time since we had dinner together.”

“Yes,” she said. “I guess it was when you saw me off to California. It's been about a year, I guess.”

“You've grown up a lot in a year.”

“Yes,” she said. “I have.”

The waiter brought the martinis.

“When I take you out to dinner now,” Robbie said, “people must wonder what I've got to be going out with such a lovely young girl.”

“I don't know. You're very attractive.”

“Thank you,” he said. “How is your martini? Dry enough for you?”

“Yes, thank you. You know,” she said, fingering the glass, “it's funny how a drink seems reassuring. Because of its associations, I guess. It's always been a permanent fixture of home.”

“Well, I don't know about that. It's always been a permanent fixture with your mother, but you're a little young to find a drink reassuring.”

“Daddy, really. Let's not have the New England morality routine.”

“No, Courtney. You are too young to drink.”

“I know,” she grinned. “Have you ever thought that by the time I'm old enough to drink, I'll have been drinking for seven years illegally?”

“I'd rather not,” he said drily.

Courtney sipped her drink defiantly.

“You're certainly your mother's daughter.”

“Yes,” she said leaning forward. “I'm Mummy's daughter, and I'm decadent, alcoholic at sixteen, blasé . . .

“Now, Courtney.”

“Anything else you'd like to add?”

“Courtney, I didn't mean . . .”

Courtney leaned back. She took out a cigarette and he lit it for her.

“Why are you so worried about me? I remember when I was little, and insisted that you take me someplace nice like Twenty One or the Plaza when you took me to dinner, you always said ominously that I had my mother's extravagance. That's not such a bad thing, you know. To insist on good things, to be able to drink well. You know you wouldn't like to have a daughter who thought Longchamps was the height of elegance, and a furtive sip of ale or a cigarette in the john a great adventure.”

“Let's not pursue the subject further.”

“That's all right with me. You brought it up.”

They were silent. Robbie sipped his drink and studied his daughter. He resented her sophistication. He resented her not being a little girl any longer. She argued with him just the way her mother always had. They even used the same phrases, the same images, as though the only alternative to their ways was a boorish conventionalism. Her mother always used the picture of the gray-headed mother, with knitting on her plump lap. It made him angry that Courtney should have become like Sondra, and that it should have happened so quickly. He resented having been cheated of the years that other fathers took for granted, dancing with their daughters at country-club tea dances, and surveying their dates with a protective and slightly jealous eye.

“You know,” Courtney said looking around her, “I feel a little the way I used to when I came to New York from boarding school. I remember how I used to be surprised by all the colors on the street, and all the people. But most of all, it was the fact that the people weren't wearing Scaisbrooke blue that amazed me—like a man getting out of the army or something.”

“Remember how you used to astound the waitresses at Schrafft's by ordering two desserts?”

“Yes,” she said. But she was not interested in remembering.

She used to be so delighted at leaving school, Robbie thought. She didn't take things for granted then. He would take her to a play. Once he took her to
Pal Joey,
and was disturbed because she enjoyed it. But what she liked most was the year the D'Oyly Carte Troupe was in town, before she went to boarding school, when he took her to a matinee every Saturday. They must have seen all the Gilbert and Sullivan in the repertoire, Robbie thought wearily. It was always an occasion for Courtney to see her father. That was too bad, in a way.

“Daddy,” Courtney said suddenly, “what did Dr. Wright say to you? What did he tell you?”

“Very little,” Robbie said. “That you were tired, that too much responsibility had been thrust upon you. I know your mother is a problem to you,” he said.

“No. No, not at all. Only when I was very little, and she would go into tirades that I didn't understand, and get angry with me.”

“I know,” Robbie said. “It was always hard for you to understand that her tempers had nothing to do with you. I still remember the day you went into her room one morning to ask her if you could go into New York with a friend of yours to see the rodeo, and she got furious with you and wouldn't let you go, because you woke her up. She was in a play then.”

“Yes,” Courtney said. “I remember that very well. I remember I called you, to ask you if you would go with us so that it would be all right with Mummy, and you said no.”

“I couldn't interfere with your mother's discipline, even if she was wrong.”

“I was as angry with you as I was with her. I always thought you were the sane one, who would mediate.”

“I couldn't take responsibility for your disobeying your mother.”

“Of course you could. But that was years ago, let's not argue about it now.” Courtney sipped her martini. Why did they always have to argue? Her father was always defending himself.

“You're still doing the same thing,” Robbie said. “You're still playing one of us against the other.”

“I play one of you against the other! You've got it backwards. You're always putting me in the middle, like a pawn. When I do something that displeases you, or when I need something that's a bore—like having to go to the dentist—you disown me, I suddenly become a child of parthenogenesis.”

“What would you like for dinner?”

“I don't know,” Courtney said petulantly. “I want another martini.”

“One is enough.”

“What are you trying to do? Suddenly legislate for me? You gave up that right a long time ago, you know. Maybe when you wouldn't take me to the rodeo.”

“All right. Have another martini. Get loaded, I don't care. It's not my responsibility, since you refuse to do anything I say.”

“I've never gotten bombed. Never in my life.”

“What a remarkable record to hold at sixteen. How could you go all those years with an unblemished record? To say nothing of the pre-natal cocktail parties.”

“You mean when Mummy was walking around pregnant and loaded, like
Tobacco Road
? You know she had never gotten tight, either. It just makes you mad that we can drink and spend money and never pay some black Protestant fee for it.”

“Stop talking like your Irish mother.”

“Look, why are you always maligning Mummy? You know I never believe what you say, anyway.”

“I know. But your mother's word is gospel. It means nothing that I'm paying for your sanitarium, and the psychiatrist. I don't suppose your mother mentioned that.”

“So what? Why do you always talk about money, as though money means something?”

“Because it does, to you. You're just like your mother. All you care about is what you can get out of me.”

“You want another drink, Daddy? Do you feel a crying jag coming on? Nobody loves me, they just want to bleed me white, and leave me battered by the roadside?”

“Don't be disrespectful, young lady.”

Courtney grinned. “You could at least have a sense of humor.”

“I don't see anything amusing.”

“You wouldn't.”

“Now, look here—”

“All right. Let's drop it. I'd like another drink, please.”

Robbie sighed. He had so looked forward to this evening with her. He had not seen her in so long, and he had hoped that now, since her mother's world had gone to pieces, she would want to trust in him a little. But he had had another daughter in mind, a prototype daughter who needed people, who depended on her parents and looked to them for help. Courtney was like her mother. If she were drowning, she would wave off the rescuers, in a last gesture of defiance, because they were fishermen in a rowboat and she wanted to be saved by a yacht. He ordered two more martinis.

“Daddy,” Courtney said, serious again, “was that really all Dr. Wright said to you?”

“Yes,” Robbie answered. “Whatever you told him was in trust. Whatever it is that you are so afraid of our knowing, you can be sure he didn't tell us.”

He lit a cigarette. What could it be that it should weigh on her mind so? She was so young, despite all her sophistication. What could worry her so, at sixteen? It must be that she had told the psychiatrist things about her parents, feelings that she didn't want them to know. God knows, there was enough that she might have said. Something had gone wrong somewhere to make her so unlike other daughters. But then, how could she be like other young girls? There weren't many mothers like Sondra, fortunately for the future of the race.

“Your mother and I were talking about your future, Courtney,” he said as their drinks were brought. “We decided that we should leave it up to you; you know better than we do what you want. There is one thing that we have decided, though. As you know, your mother isn't finding much work here in Hollywood, so she has decided to come to New York—TV is opening up a lot of work.”

He took a sip of his martini.

“Now don't get defensive when I say this, but your mother's future will be very uncertain for awhile. We don't want you to have any more insecurity than you have already. In the fall you can go back to Scaisbrooke if you like—”

“I don't want to go back to boarding school.”

“We thought you might feel that way. There are a lot of schools in New York just as good as Scaisbrooke, so that presents no problem. The question is—and I want you to think about this a little—we both know your mother's instability, and when she isn't working her moods are worse. Your mother realizes this, and our concern now is your welfare. We both think it might be a good idea if you stayed with me. Temporarily, until Sondra gets some good parts, if that's the way you want it.”

Courtney ran her fingers along the stem of her glass. Robbie knew what her answer would be. Why was he put in this position, of begging for his daughter's favor? Why did he have to put his petition in her mother's mouth? He would never understand her devotion to her mother. Sondra had done so much to hurt Courtney, yet as he watched his daughter he knew her mind was made up and that she was only going through the pretense of making a decision because he had asked her to.

“Well,” Courtney said, “I'd want to live with Mummy.” She looked at her father and tried to think of a kinder way to put it. “You know, Mummy depends on me. And—well, even if she is unstable and moody and all, I'm used to her, and that really doesn't make any difference to me. It's all a part of the way I've grown up. This is the kind of life I'm used to. You know,” she said hopelessly.

Yes, he did know. How could he expect her to stay with him, even temporarily? She had never known him very well. She had been brought up as her mother's daughter; he had let that happen from the first, when he had given Sondra custody of Courtney, and it was too late now to reverse his position. It was probably just as well. He wouldn't really know what to do with a daughter.

Robbie wondered when it was; he wondered if there was an exact date, when he had lost his daughter. Perhaps at some point he could have done something. Perhaps in all the confusion before Sondra married Nick, when she had been torn between Nick and Courtney's welfare. He had taken Courtney aside then, and tried to explain to her that when her mother got very angry with her it was not because she didn't love her daughter but because she was very unhappy. Perhaps then he could have done something, taken Courtney away to live with him instead of trying to explain her mother to her. But then he would have had to change his life for Courtney. He probably would have had to marry again, and moved to Westchester, to make a home for Courtney. He had never wanted to marry again, he had never fallen out of love with Sondra. This was his life sentence. He had never gotten angry or fed up enough with Sondra to want to take Courtney away from her. So now he had lost Courtney, too. Now Courtney would feel about him as Sondra did, that Robbie was always there if you wanted something from him.