Rand Malcolm and Eleanor Benning (David always thought of his stepmother as Eleanor Benning, even after she’d been Eleanor Malcolm for five years) slept in separate bedrooms. And for some reason—the most likely being that before a certain age matters like that don’t interest one—David never noticed until he came home from Hollingsworth that summer. He was fifteen, nearly six feet tall, having kissed and been kissed more times than he had his wits about him to count, and filled with a deep and abiding interest in who was sleeping in the same bed with whom. Probably in the case of his father and Eleanor, he might not even have noticed if it hadn’t been for Eleanor’s frequent complaint that the family’s very grand Hancock Park house, which had four huge bedroom suites, was inadequate because it had no guest bedroom. Let’s see, David thought There’s my room and one for Douglas, and one for… Ahhh, he realized. There were two others. One for Eleanor and one for his father.
“Night-night,” Eleanor would say when a dinner party was over, not even making a pretense of going to her husband’s room first and then slipping, via some secret entrance, into her own, the way she would in a Restoration comedy. No, in a Restoration comedy, David remembered now from literature Class, she would have slipped out of her own chambers and into his father’s. At any rate, it was clear to David Malcolm that his father and his stepmother were not “getting it on”—which is how they referred to sex at Hollingsworth, but only when they were being very polite.
On the other hand, Yona, who was the head housekeeper and laundress, and Rico, her husband of nine years who was the family chauffeur and sometime houseman, couldn’t conceal the passion they still had for each other. Rico would tickle his wife provocatively as they passed each other in the hallway of the Malcolms’ Hancock Park home. And she would pinch him lustily as he bent over to check the various mousetraps he had set everywhere since the mice hid decided, as the Malcolms had, that this year they would summer in Los Angeles.
And David watched it all, the passion and the dispassion, through the screen of adolescence—to which one’s lifetime judgments too frequently stick. And it made him feel so lonely that, for the first few nights after his arrival, he spent the endless dark hours longing for the girls at school. The teasing writhing of Cathy Kirk, or even the steely mouth-full-of-braces kisses of Linda Martin, which weren’t much but at least had filled his time.
Of course he needn’t have given it another thought, for as F. Scott Fitzgerald tells us, a young man with a large income lives the life of a hunted partridge. After David had been home for only a few weeks that summer, he could sense that the hunt for him had begun in earnest. His first due was when the mother of a fifteen-year-old girl he knew only vaguely invited him out to the dub to caddy. When he agreed and arrived for the early-morning tee-off, there was the woman’s daughter, her makeup perfect, her hair pulled back under her headband, her long tanned legs nearly as brown as her Bass Weejuns, as she perched on the back seat of the golf cart. She had decided—at the last minute, she told him, although her appearance spoke to endless preparation—to join him and her mother for the ride. At six-thirty A.M.
And there were a few brothers of girls who dutifully made overtures of friendship. One in particular invited him over to the house to hit tennis balls. Coincidentally, in the adjacent pool was Sis, doing the stroke that had won her kudos and medals at Westlake. What a surprise when she emerged from the water, wearing her brand-new bikini, to find David Malcolm, back from the East and staying around for the summer. And not nearly as subtle, but certainly worth notice, was the carful of girls who drove by the Malcolms’ house on their way to and from the Maidborough summer school and yelled “Dayveee” every time they did, frequently waking him from his hot adolescent dreams, which despite their extraordinary cast of characters were becoming less interesting than his hot adolescent reality.
The phone rang relentlessly in the Hancock Park house, and Yona, answering it with a knowing grin on her face, always reported in her deep husky voice as she handed David the phone: “It’s a woman.”
David, who had learned above all else to be a gentleman, did what he thought was right, which was to take each girl who presented herself as available at her word, and pursue her. As numbers would have it, many of them turned out to be less interested in him than their mothers thought they should be. Many others were less interesting to him than their mothers wished they would be. Finally, after careful thought and consideration David culled out the one who was the obvious choice to be his summer love.
Her name was Alison, and she was very beautiful. In fact, she looked like him, with thick red hair and blue eyes. She played a great game of bridge and sometimes she would be his partner in beating Eleanor and his father. She was on the varsity tennis team at Westlake and she was older. Sixteen and a half. And she had her own car. She seemed to be very aroused by his kisses, and always made him believe it was with enormous effort and terrible regret—and because of the restraints placed on her chastity by her fiercely overprotective parents—that she didn’t submit to him completely. And best of all, she let him know that in a moment of rebelliousness, which could strike at any time, she might one night let him have his way no matter what her parents said. So for all of those reasons, even before the end of July had arrived, she owned him. Eleanor Benning hated her.
Eleanor hated every girl he had brought home. And always with good reason. Big legs, too short, brainless, she had said when the girl had barely closed the door behind herself. As if anyone had asked her opinion. But All stopped Eleanor cold, because there was nothing she could find about the girl that didn’t work. Ali had perfect manners, wrote prompt and lovely thank-you notes, dressed appropiiately,”spoke when spoken to. So all David’s father’s wife could do was pick on David’s preoccupation with the girl, which she did every day.
“My word, aren’t we wasting away our summer?” she said as David emerged from his blackout-curtained bedroom one day at eleven after a late evening with Alison. “If there’s one thing I know about, it’s boys,” Eleanor said, an absurd statement, since she knew nothing at all about boys and yet that was what she loved to say about herself. “At least my Douglas has found an outlet for his adolescent energy. Not necessarily one of which I approve but…”
Her Douglas. Everyone at school thought Douglas Benning was the biggest dork alive, and unfortunately everyone knew, because “her Douglas” never left it alone, that he and David were brothers. “Stepbrothers,” David would always tell them hastily, clearing it up, so no one would think that fat turkey was a part of his natural family.
“Stepbrothers,” Douglas would always repeat, and then as his perverse idea of a joke, and undoubtedly insulted by David’s renunciation of their kinship, would step hard on David’s foot and laugh. God, was it great that Douglas wasn’t at home this summer! David wouldn’t have to see his nasty pimply face every day, the way he had at school, or last summer on the Orient Express, or the summer before when they sailed around the Caribbean on the Sea Cloud. Stuck with him on a family vacation in a compartment of a train or a cabin of a boat. It was torture. This year, oh blessing of blessings, “her Douglas” was at school where he was learning how (and every time David thought about it he laughed at the picture that came into his mind) to race high-performance cars.
Imagine Benning—“Gutterball Benning” at the bowling alley, “The Tilt” Benning on the pinball machine, Benning, who couldn’t even hold onto his fork in the cafeteria—having the reaction time necessary to race those cars. But he had whined to his mother so loud and so long, she had finally sent him the money and agreed to let him go there. An outlet for his adolescent energy.
“Why does Mrs. Malcolm hate me?” As the icing on the cake to all of her other virtues, All was very observant
“Why do you care?” David asked. He was unbuttoning her blouse in the back seat of her GTO convertible, while a movie neither of them had any intention of watching played on the drive-in screen.
“Because I admire her.” The answer so startled him that, before he regained his presence of mind, he almost rebuttoned the hard-earned buttons he had opened.
“Ali” was all he could say, but for a moment he was sure he might be spending the rest of the evening actually watching the movie.
“I mean, she was a very successful socialite when she was married to Keaton Benning, and then she was a great patron of the arts while she was a widow, and then she married your father, and everyone says she’s just right for him and…”
Ali went on, but David had stopped listening. There was something about her having all that information that he didn’t like, because it spoke to research into his family of a kind that he was hoping she hadn’t done. In fact, the reason he had finally chosen her over all the others was that she seemed very blasé about who he was, and seemed sincerely interested in who he really was.
After that night he noticed her cozying up to Eleanor whenever she could, a feat which, if she could accomplish it, would be nothing short of a miracle, considering nobody else ever had, could, or wanted to. Yet somehow, Mrs. Malcolm, as Ali always called her, seemed to be falling for it. Eleanor seemed to like the girl so much that once David was certain he overheard a conversation in which she was actually trying to sell her Douglas to Ali. “Thoughtful, dependable, a perfect boy,” she said. “And I miss him so much this summer.” She hadn’t telephoned him once, and vice versa.
No. Eleanor didn’t like Ali. She was a phony. One of the great phonies of the world. She’d call everyone “my love,” as in “It’s so grand to see you, my love,” and they’d leave and she’d criticize everything about them down to their shoelaces.
She’d give formal dinner parties in honor of this one and that. Lambaste the servants until the dinner, the flowers, and the musical ensemble were just perfect. Then insist that his father stand up and offer a toast, which she reacted to as if she hadn’t heard it a dozen times while she was rehearsing him. And when everyone was gone she would go around the long rectangular table in her mind, and one by one annihilate each person’s virtue, taste, intellect. Whichever trait she decided he or she didn’t have. And every time he saw her do it, David, who thanked heaven for boarding school, watched his father retreat into his newspaper or some work he’d brought home from the office, and a vague memory of Lily would flash through him. Her laugh, or the way she and his father had sung duets or looked together at a particular event. Pulling each other close as they danced.
“I totally despise P.D.A.,” is what it sounded as if Alison said softly as she eased her body away from his hold that night at the club. It was the first time they had ever danced.
“Despise what?” he asked, loving the way her hair smelled and wondering what time they could elude the chaperones, sneak away to the parking lot, climb into the back of her car, and make out. The thought of that made him pull her against him again, and now he realized something was wrong. She strained to pull away, and this time she stopped dancing, even though the band was still playing. Now she stood with her hands on her hips, looking hard at his face. Ali, my God. What was wrong?
“Public display of affection,” she said. David looked quickly around the floor at the seven or eight other couples who were dancing, to make certain none of them had heard her. None of them seemed to.
“It’s not right,” she said, looking at him as if to say “If you don’t agree, I’ll walk right off this dance floor.”
“All right,” he said to get her to start dancing again, for God’s sake. What did she mean? He hadn’t kissed her hair or, instead of holding her hand in his in the classic dance position they’d both learned at Miss Beckworth’s Cotillion, put his aims around her waist so she would put her arms around his neck. Nothing like that. And two of the other couples were dancing that way. He guessed that just pulling her tight, feeling her breasts pressed against him, was P.D.A., and he hadn’t known. God. He never imagined it would upset her this much. When they were alone she always let him undo her bra.
“What we do when we’re alone is no one’s business, David,” she said, knowing exactly what he was thinking.
“You’re right,” he said. Lying. Lying to get her to dance again before everyone saw they were having what looked like a fight. But the music ended and Ali turned coolly and walked to the buffet table with David following. After dinner, when he asked her to dance again, she said no, she didn’t feel like it.
Later, in the driveway of his house with the rain pouring all around them, an unseasonable time for rain, she let him go a little further than last time, and the windows of her GTO were steamy, and he told her: “I’m crazy about you,” because he wanted to save saying I love you for a little longer. But all she said was, “Oh, yikes, it’s eleven. My father will kill me.” Then she sat up, hooked her bra, adjusted her dress, gave him a quick kiss, and kind of nudged him out into the rainy night, where he stood for a long time without going inside, because he needed the pounding wet rain to cool himself off.
“Oh, my God. Oh, no, please. I can’t stand it. No.” He heard the cries coming from the kitchen when he unlocked the front door. “Ohhh, God.” It was Yona. Moaning. Maybe she and Rico were fighting and he should stay out of it and go upstairs, but it wasn’t a fight, because now Rico’s voice came gently. “Don’t cry, mi amore. It is the way things must be.” And then Yona sobbing again, so he went to the door that separated the kitchen from the dining room and looked through the glass square that the servants used to make sure they didn’t collide with one another when they served and cleared the table. He was about to push it open when he realized he was barging in on an intimacy. Yona was kneeling on the kitchen floor weeping, and Rico sat on the floor next to her, a loving aim moving up and down on her back. David could see wet spots on the floor where Yona’s tears had fallen, and another and another as they continued to fall. As Yona took a deep breath in between sobs, Rico put his face next to her neck.
“Cara, it wasn’t so important,” Rico said gently.
“No,” Yona protested. “It was a life, like you and me. A creature of God and now it’s gone. Maybe it was a mother or a daddy of a baby, and the baby will look for it and long for it.”
David followed Yona’s gaze, and realized now she was talking about the tiny mouse lying pinioned to one of Rico’s traps. Dead.
He pushed the door open. Yona looked up at him with wide tear-filled eyes.
“Davey, see,” she said. “Isn’t there a way? There must be a way to catch them and send them away someplace instead of doing this to them. Without killing the poor little things.” Then she looked down sadly again at the tiny brown field mouse pinned to the wood trap. “Isn’t there?”
She looked so beautiful, sitting there so sad-eyed and trembling.
“I don’t know,” he said, then turned to Rico. “There might be more humane traps. I mean, traps that don’t kill them.”
“Mrs. Eleanor,” Rico said. David noticed that neither of them could bring themselves to call Eleanor “Mrs. Malcolm.” “She wants them killed.”
Yona began to sniffle as if she was going to cry again, and Rico promised to think of a way, to find some way of not having to kill any more of the little mice. David said goodnight, and as he closed the door and walked back into the dining room he took one glance back through the glass panel and saw Yona, still seated on the floor, and Rico, who was on his knees next to her, his arms around her, rocking her back and forth while she wept some more.
“I may just decide to keep this,” Ali said, grinning at David and then looking down again at his Hollingsworth ring. Although it was much too big for her, she slid it up and down on the ring finger of her left hand. They had just been to the polo match in Montecito to watch Ali’s cousin Robin play, and now they were having lunch at a restaurant in Santa Barbara. “And I don’t just mean for the summer,” she said, her eyes dancing. She was so pretty and the only real girlfriend he’d ever had. And this wasn’t the first time she’d taken his hand, held it for a while, then licked his finger and wriggled his ring off the way she had a few minutes ago in the car, before the valet-parking boy had walked up and opened the car door and welcomed them to the restaurant. She “borrowed” it a lot, and he knew she wanted him to give it to her. To ask her to go steady with him. Come to Hollingsworth to visit next year. Be waiting for him at home when he arrived for school vacations. And he didn’t know what to do.
To begin with, it was rare for him to be in Los Angeles during any given school vacation, and his presence always depended on his father’s plans. Probably he couldn’t even promise her that he’d be here for Thanksgiving, and that was in a few months. He thought he’d heard Eleanor say that they’d all be in London in November, and New York for Christmas. Or maybe it was the other way around. He had stopped thinking about those logistics a long time ago. Always a week or two before the vacation he would get a call from Fred Samuels, who would laugh and say, “Guess where you get to spend this lovely holiday, David!” Like the announcer on a game show. If it was Gstaad, someone would make certain that his skis, poles, and clothes were in his room when he arrived. If it was the Caribbean, his snorkel mask, fins, and wet suit were waiting. The sameness of school had made travel exciting to him again, and now he arrived at each place eager for adventure.
“You could spend Thanksgiving with my family,” Ali offered. “Christmas too.”
“That’s a nice thought,” he said. But there was something wrong. Cloying. Too eager, and he wasn’t sure how nice it was. But still he was with her every day and night, and another time when she took the ring he let her keep it overnight. The next day she said, “Um, listen, I’ll tell you what about the ring—I’ll just keep it until it’s time to go back to school. Okay?” And he said okay. But he was glad she had asked him that on the telephone and not in person, because if it had been in person she might have been able to tell that he was confused.
He knew the summer was over when he actually started missing Hollingsworth. God, he must be bored if he was missing that rat’s nest Not the classes, and certainly not the disgusto food, but his room and the friends he’d made in the dorm, and the football games. He was finally thriving among his peers for the first time in his life and he loved it.
Late one night—he remembered it was very late, because Johnny Carson had been over for a few hours—he lay in bed in the silence of the big old house, thinking about how much he wanted to get back there, when the phone rang. He sat up, trying to imagine who it would be. Ali. Neither of them had their own phone numbers, and once in the heat of a kiss they had made a pact that at exactly two A.M. the next morning he would call her, and she would grab the phone quickly and they would talk all night. It had been hot to be under the covers and to taunt each other from far away. Maybe this was… It rang again, and then somewhere in the house, someone else answered it.
In the darkness he felt around until he found the phone on his night stand and he grabbed the receiver. A man’s voice was talking very seriously, but it wasn’t his father, and it wasn’t Rico. “Don’t know if it was a change in track conditions because of the weather or a tire problem or exactly what, but we’re investigating all the possibilities, and in the meantime I extend my deepest sympathies and if there’s anything any of us can do, please know that we will….” Benning. A brain fade is what David once heard race-car drivers call it when their concentration broke just long enough for them to lose it, get reckless, and crash. Benning was always in a state of brain fade. And now he was dead. David heard Eleanor Benning Malcolm’s voice say thank you, and he hung up the phone. Now he could hear Eleanor and his father talking, and by the way the lights were lighting up under the phone lines, he could see that phone calls were being made. Probably to the pilots to let them know they had to get the plane ready to take his father and Eleanor to pick up Douglas’s body.
Body. Dead. God. When somebody died, even if it was someone like Benning whom you couldn’t stand, it hit you like a train running over your chest, because you had to think about all the things that person was going to miss out on by not being alive. Like graduation and having your own place at college. It made you glad it wasn’t you who died, and guilty for being glad.
After a while he heard his father’s heavy footsteps walk downstairs, then Eleanor’s high heels. They would probably wake up Rico to take them out to Clover Field Aviation. David realized now that the day was breaking, so he got up and put on his navy terry-cloth robe and walked to the top of the steps. Afraid to see Eleanor’s face and yet with a feeling he would not admit until years later was fascination to see her pain and grief. What could he say to her?
In the living room, he could see his father offering Eleanor a tiny snifter with brandy in it, but she gestured it away. She was completely dressed in a fashionable black suit he had seen her wear before. His father was wearing a suit too. He was holding his wife’s hand, in the consoling way a doctor does a patient’s. After a few silent moments she opened the black purse she had placed on the table next to her, looked at herself in a little mirror she had inside, and then closed it. His father held the brandy up to her lips again and offered it to her. This time she took a tiny sip. The two of them were silent for a long time, and instead of announcing that he was standing on the landing, David just watched them. He could hear Rico in the servants’ quarters hurrying around getting dressed.
“Well,” Eleanor said to his father, putting the glass of brandy down on the table. Then she sighed, shook her head, and said, “At least now we have a guest room.”
And David turned, walked quietly into his bedroom, and went back to sleep, until noon. When he woke up he called Ali and asked her to come over.
“And if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like you to bring my ring with you, please,” he said. “Because I really would like to have it back.”