Rich Man, Poor Man (59 page)

She hadn’t seen or heard from her brother since that one night in New York and she knew almost nothing about boxing, but she knew enough to understand that if he was working as somebody’s sparring partner, Thomas had gone downhill since the winning bout in Queens. She folded the paper neatly, hoping that Colin would overlook the photograph. She had told him about Thomas, as she had told him about everything, but she didn’t want Colin’s curiosity to be aroused and perhaps insisting on meeting Thomas and seeing him fight.

There were sounds from the kitchen now and she went into Billy’s room to wake him. He was sitting crossed-legged in his pyjamas on the bed, silently fingering chords on his guitar. Pure blond hair, grave, thoughtful eyes, fuzzed pink cheeks, nose too big for the undeveloped face, skinny, young boy’s neck, long, coltish legs, concentrated, unsmiling, dear.

His valise, with the lid up, was on the chair, packed. Neatly packed. Somehow Billy, despite his parents or perhaps because of his parents, had grown up with a passion for order.

She kissed the top of his head. No reaction. No hostility, but no love. He fingered a final chord.

‘You all ready?’ she asked.

‘Uhuh.’ He uncurled the long legs, slid off the bed. His pyjama top was open. Skinny long torso, ribs countable, close to the skin, skin California summer colour, days on the beach, body-surfing, girls and boys together on the hot sand, salt and guitars. As far as she knew he was still a virgin. Nothing had been said.

You all ready?’ he asked.

‘Bags all packed,’ she said. ‘All I have to do is lock them.’

Billy had an almost pathological fear of being late for anything, school, trains, planes, parties. She had learned to be well in advance for anything she had to do with him.

‘What do you want for breakfast?’ she asked, prepared to feast him.

‘Orange juice.’

That all?’

‘I better not eat. I puke on planes.’

‘Remember to take your Dramamine.’

Yeah.’ He stripped off the top of his pyjamas and went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. After she had moved in with Colin, Billy had suddenly refused to be seen naked in front of her. Two theories about that. She knew that Billy admired Colin, but -she also knew that the boy admired her less for having lived with Colin before they were married. The strict, painful conventions of childhood.

She went to wake Colin. He was talking in his sleep and moving uneasily on the bed. ‘All that blood,’ he said.

War? Celluloid? It was impossible to tell with a movie director.

She woke him with a kiss under his ear. He lay still, staring blackly up at the ceiling. ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘it’s the middle of the night.’

She kissed him again. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘morning.’ He rumpled her hair. She was sorry she had gone in to see Billy. One morning, on a national or religious holiday perhaps, Colin would finally make love to her. This might have been the morning. Non co-ordinated rhythms of desire.

With a groan he tried to lift himself from the bed, fell back. He extended his hand. ‘Give a poor old man a lift,’ he said. ‘Out of the depths.’

She grasped his hand and pulled. He sat on the edge of the bed rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand, regretting daylight.

‘Say,’ Colin stopped rubbing his eye and looked at her alertly, ‘last night, at the running, in the next to the last reel, there was something you thought was lousy …’

He didn’t even wait for breakfast, she thought. ‘I didn’t say anything,’ she said.

‘You don’t have to say anything. AM you have to do is breathe.’

‘Don’t be such a naked nerve,’ she said, stalling for him. “Especially before you’ve had your coffee.’

‘Come on.’

‘All fight,’ she said. ‘There was something I didn’t like, but I didn’t figure it out why I didn’t like it.’

‘And now?’

‘I think I know.’

“What is it?’

‘Well, the sequence after he gets the news and he believes it’s his fault…’

‘Yes,’ Colin said impatiently. ‘It’s one of the key scenes in the picture.’

‘You have him going around the house, looking at himself in one mirror after another, in the bathroom, in the full-length mirror on the closet wall, in the dark mirror in the living room, in the magnifying shaving mirror, at his own reflection in the puddle on the front porch … ‘

“The idea’s simple enough,’ Colin said irritably, defensively. ‘He’s examining himself - okay, let’s be corny - he’s looking into his soul in various lights, from different angles, to discover … Okay, what do you think is wrong about it?’

Two things,’ she said calmly. Now she realised she had been gnawing at the problem subconsciously ever since she had come out of the projection room - in bed before falling asleep, . on the terrace looking out over the smoggy city, while going through the newspaper in the livingroom. Two things. First, the tempo. Everything in the whole picture has moved fast up to then, it’s the style of the whole work, and then, suddenly, as though to show the audience that a Big Moment has arrived, you slow it down to a drag. It’s too obvious.’

That’s me,’ he said, biting his words. ‘Obvious.’

‘If you’re going to get angry, I’ll shut up.’

‘I’m already angry and don’t shut up. You said two things. What’s the other thing?’

‘You have all those big close-ups of him, going on forever and I’m supposed to be seeing that he’s tortured, doubtful, confused.’

‘Well, at least you got that, for Christ’s sake …’

‘Do you want me to go on or should we go in and have breakfast?’

“The next dame I marry,’ he said, ‘is not going to be so goddamn smart. Go on.’

‘Well, you may think that’s showing that he’s tortured and doubtful and confused,’ she said, ‘and he may think he’s showing that he’s tortured and doubtful and confused, but all I get out of it is a handsome young man admiring himself in the

mirror and wondering if the lighting is doing all it can for his eyes.’

‘Shit,’ he said, ‘you are a bitch. We worked four days on that sequence.’

‘I’d cut it if I were you,’ she said.

The next picture,’ he said, ‘you go on the set and I’ll stay home and do the cooking.’

‘You asked me,’ she said.

‘I’ll never learn.’ He jumped up off the bed. I’ll be ready for breakfast in five minutes.’ He stumped off towards the bathroom. He slept without the tops of his pyjamas and the sheets had made pink ridges on the skin of his neatly muscled, lean back, small welts after the night’s faint flogging. At the door, he turned. ‘Every other dame I ever knew thought everything I did was glorious,’ he said, ‘and I had to go and marry you.’

They didn’t think,’ she said sweetly. ‘They said.’

She went over to him and he kissed her. ‘I’m going to miss you,’ he whispered. ‘Hideously.’ He pushed her away roughly. “Now go see that the coffee’s black.’

He was humming as he went in to shave, an unusually merry thing for him to be doing at that time of day. She knew that he had been worried by the sequence, too, and was relieved now that he believed he knew what was wrong with it and that in the cutting room that morning he was going to have the exquisite pleasure of throwing away four days’ hard work, representing forty thousand dollars of the studio’s money.

They reached the airport early and the lines of worry on Billy’s forehead vanished as he saw his and his mother’s bags disappear across the counter. He was dressed in a grey-tweed suit and buttoned-down pink shirt, with a blue tie, for travelling, and his hair was neatly brushed and there were no adolescent pimples on his chin. Gretchen thought he looked very grownup and handsome, much more than his fourteen years. He was already as tall as she, taller than Colin, who had driven them to the airport and was making an admirable effort to bide his impatience to get to the studio and back to work. Gretchen had had to control herself on the trip to the airport, because Colin’s driving made her nervous. It was the one thing she thought he did badly, sometimes mooning along slowly, thinking about other things, then suddenly becoming fiercely competitive and cursing put other drivers as he spurted ahead of them or tried to prevent them from passing him. When she couldn’t resist

from warning him about near-misses, he would snarl at her, ‘Don’t be the All-American wife.’ He was convinced he drove superbly. As he pointed out to her, he had never had an accident, although he had been caught several times for speeding, incidents that had been discreetly kept off his record by the studio fixers, those valuable, doubtful gentlemen.

As other passengers came up to the counter with their bags, Colin said, ‘We’ve got lots of time. Let’s go get a cup of coffee.’

Gretchen knew that Billy would have preferred to go stand at the gate so that he could be the first to board the plane. ‘Look, Colin,’ she said, ‘you don’t have to wait. Goodbyes’re such a bore anyway … ‘

‘Let’s get a coffee,’ Colin said. ‘I’m still not awake yet.’

They walked across the hall towards the restaurant, Gretchen between her husband and her son, conscious of their beauty and her own, and happy about it as she caught people staring at the three of them. Pride, she thought, that delicious sin.

In the restaurant, she and Colin had coffee and Billy had a Coca-Cola, which he washed down his dose of Dramamine.

I used to puke on buses until I was eighteen,’ Colin said watching the boy swallow the pills. Then I had my first girl and I stopped puking.’

There was a quick, judging flick of Billy’s eyes. Colin spoke in front of Billy as he did to any grownup. Sometimes Gretchen wondered if it was altogether wise. She didn’t know whether the boy loved his stepfather, merely endured him, or hated him. Billy was not one to volunteer information about his emotions. Colin did not seem to make any extra effort to win the boy over. He was sometimes brusque with him, sometimes deeply interested and helpful with his work at school, sometimes playful and charming, sometimes distant. Colin made no concessions to his audience, but what was admirable in his work, Gretchen thought, was not necessarily healthy in the case of a withdrawn only child living with a mother who had left his father for a temperamental and difficult lover. She and Colin had had their fights, but never on the subject of Billy, and Colin was paying for the boy’s education because Willie Abbott had fallen upon hard times and could not afford to. Colin had forbidden Gretchen to tell the boy where the money was coming from, but Gretchen was sure Billy guessed.

When I was just your age,’ Colin was saying, ‘I was sent off to school. I cried the first week. The first year I hated school. The second year I endured it. The third year I edited the school

newspaper and I had my first taste of the pleasures of power and although I didn’t admit it to anybody, even to myself, I liked it. My last year I wept because I had to leave.’

‘I don’t mind going,’ Billy said.

‘Good,’ Colin said. ‘It’s a good school, if any school these days can be said to be good, and at the very worst you’ll come out of it knowing how to write a simple declarative sentence in the English language. Here.’ He produced an envelope and gave it to the boy. Take this and never tell your mother what’s in it.’

Thank you,’ Billy said. He put the envelope in the inside pocket of his jacket. He looked at his watch. ‘Don’t you think we’d better be going?’

They walked three abreast towards the gate, Billy carrying his guitar. Briefly, Gretchen worried about how the school, which was old New England Presbyterian Respectable, would react to the guitar. Probably no reaction at all. By this time they must be prepared for anything from fourteen-year-old boys.

The plane was just beginning to load when they reached the gate. ‘Go ahead on board, Billy,’ Gretchen said. ‘I want to say goodbye to Colin.’

Colin shook Billy’s hand and said, ‘If there’s anything you need, call me. Collect.’

Gretchen searched his face as he spoke to her son. The tenderness and caring were real on the sharp, thin features, and the dangerous eyes under the heavy black brows were gentle and loving. I didn’t, make a mistake, she thought, I didn’t.

Billy smiled gravely, en route from father to father, disturbing journey, and went aboard, guitar held like an infantryman’s gun on patrol.

‘He’ll be all right,’ Colin said as the boy went through the gate and out on to the tarmac where the big jet waited.

I hope so,’ Gretchen said. There was money in that envelope, wasn’t there?’

‘A few bucks,’ Colin said carelessly. ‘Buffer money. Ease the pain. There are moments when a boy can’t survive education without an extra milkshake or the latest issue of Playboy. Willie meeting you at Idlewild?’

‘Yes.’

‘You taking the kid up to the school together?’

‘Yes.’

I suppose you’re right,’ Colin said flatly. ‘Parents should be present in twos at the ceremonies of adolescents.’ He looked

away from her, staring at the passengers going through the gate. ‘Every time I see one of those ads for airlines with pictures of people smiling broadly as they climb the steps getting on to a plane, I realise what a lying society we inhabit. Nobody’s happy getting on to a plane. Are you going to sleep with ex-husband Willie tonight?’

‘Colin!’

‘Ladies have been known to. Divorce, the final aphrodisiac.’

‘Goddamn you,’ she said. She started towards the gate.

He put out his hand and held her back, gripping her arm.

‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I am a dark, self-destructive, happiness-doubting, unforgivable man.’ He smiled, sadly, pleadingly. ‘Just one thing - don’t talk to Willie about me.’

‘I won’t.’ She had already forgiven him and was facing him, close to him. He kissed her lightly. The public address system was announcing the last call for the flight. ‘ ‘See you in New York in two weeks,’ Colin said. ‘Don’t enjoy the city until I get there.’

‘Not to worry,’ she said. She brushed his cheek with her lips and he turned abruptly and strode away, walking, as always, in a way that made her smile secretly to herself, as though he were on his way to a dangerous encounter from which he was determined to emerge the victor.

She watched him for a moment, then went through the gate.