Angel Eyes (7 page)

Down the hall she opened the door to her mother's study; her father had his in the other wing of the house. Nothing much had changed here; it never would. The walls were coated with layer upon layer of black lacquer so that they shone with a kind of opalescence.

These walls, along with a baby grand piano, a Regency fruitwood escritoire and commode, satinwood side tables bracketing a sofa covered in French floral chintz, were all festooned with a galaxy of framed photographs, mostly in black and white, though some were in color. These photos were either formal publicity photos or stills from films. They were all of Laura Nunn.

In these shots, Tori's mother was bathed in a luscious combination of moonlight and dreams. It was an underappreciated art, Tori thought as she roved among the gallery, to manufacture such ethereal and subtle illumination. No wonder so many men fell in love with her, and so many women envied her.

The Hollywood Reporter had once dubbed Laura Nunn "the Last of the Great Movie Goddesses.'' Over the years, her films had not diminished in impact; in fact, many of them had taken on an added historical importance beyond being directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, or John Huston. They were illustrative of a woman refusing to remain in the manufactured star mold that had characterized the studio-dominated motion picture industry. Laura Nunn might have been a goddess, which

made her something both more and less than most of her fellow performers, but she could also act. That had made her invaluable.

Tori tried hard not to see herself in her mother's visage, but, as always, she failed. Her childhood had left her with the vaguely superstitious notion that if she looked like her mother, she would end up being like her. Of course, her subsequent training had taught her the fraudulence of such notions, but the ties that bound child to parent were, like roots, often resistant to change.

Tori slipped out of her mother's study and into the adjoining suite. Greg's room. But here, oddly, things had changed. She saw the same masculine blue and white theme he had liked, the banners from Cal Tech, the medals, the sports trophies, firsts in the nationals in diving, track, and lacrosse. She saw the usual pictures of her older brother. But now there was more.

As if caught in time, Tori gazed at photos of herself, the quintessential cinnamon girl of California, long blond hair streaked by the sun, trim, athletic body with wide shoulders and powerful thighs. Green eyes, wide apart and so direct they are without a trace of guile, but filled with the spark of competitive fire. For the first time it occurred to her that all the shots were lit both by sunlight and by reflections from water. The swimming pool.

The pool at Diana's Garden was both a haven and a repository of memories. A kind of museum of the mind. Thinking of the pool, she remembered ... the waiting, the tension at the edge of the diving board, the extension of her body, the launch through space, twisting and rolling as she plummeted down, taking one quick visual fix on the water as she spun, then her breath in her ears, foam in her nostrils, the cool water closing over her head, and her father bent over the side of the pool, saying, Almost as good as Greg does it, Angel. Almost...

I don't want to be back.

Then, stuck in a corner of a frame, she saw two yellowed bits of paper. Her heart thumped as she reached out, unfolded them. The first was a newspaper photo of Greg and the cosmonaut Viktor Shevchenko, their hands clasped triumphantly over their heads, smiling at the camera, in their space suits with the special combined NASA-???? logo, as they headed toward the launch pad at the Tyuratam/Baykonur cosmodrome in Russia. In the background it was possible to make out the gigantic launch vehicle, the SL-17 Energiya with its six strap-on booster rockets.

TYURATAM, USSR, May 17 (??)-History was made today as American astronaut Gregory Nunn and Soviet cosmonaut Viktor Shevchenko successfully lifted off in their Odin-Galaktika II module from this cosmodrome deep inside the Soviet Union on the first leg of what is hoped will be mankind's first manned exploration of the planet Mars.

So vast and expensive was this undertaking that the two major superpowers decided to pool their technological resources in the effort. NASA officials had been on site here for more than a year in preparation for this event. . . .

Tori stopped reading; she knew the events by heart. She returned to the photo of Greg and Viktor Shevchenko, and was struck again by how similar their faces were, both handsome, strong, confident, as if spacemen were a breed apart, unconcerned by the petty differences of race or nationalism. But then again Greg, like Tori, was of Russian heritage. She thought that somehow ironic now.

How proud she had been of Greg that day. She had been glued to the television, watching the great white plume fill the bright blue Soviet sky until the space vehicle was a mere point of light, glittering like a star. Reluctantly, she folded the photo away.

Tori had known what the second newspaper clipping would be even before she saw the reproduction, blurred by the newsprint paper, of Greg's official NASA photo. Perversely, she forced herself to begin reading.

MOSCOW, Dec. 11 (??)-Gregory Nunn, the American astronaut teamed with his Soviet counterpart, cosmonaut Viktor Shevchenko, was declared officially dead, it was jointly reported by the Soviet news agency Tass and American diplomatic personnel Friday.

Mr. Nunn had been one half of the historic American-Soviet effort piloting the Odin-Galaktika II module in the first manned attempt for a landing on the planet Mars. That mission was aborted six weeks ago when "an event of unknown origin" apparently killed Mr. Nunn and severely damaged the Odin-Galaktika II module.

With the successful reentry of the damaged space vehicle, and its subsequent recovery just after midnight yesterday morning, officials were able to verify Mr. Nunn's death. There is no word yet as to the condition of Mr. Shevchenko, although it is known that he survived the flight.

A severe winter storm in the Black Sea splashdown area hampered rescue operations following the Odin-Galaktika II's emergency landing, and, for a time, it was feared that the module would be lost at sea. However, the Soviet heavy cruiser, Potemkin, was called in when smaller ships began to founder in the heavy seas and near-zero visibility ...

''Dear God,'' Tori whispered, jamming the news articles back in their niche. Abruptly, she could no longer bear to look at the bannered walls, the shining trophies, the photographs of who she had been and, in part, must still be.

Suffocating, she got out of there as quickly as she could. She leaned against the closed door, breathing hard in the hallway, in the presence only of the power-laden Florentines of old and of her own memories.

Late in the day, with the California sun slipping through the ornamental lime trees and the oleander, Tori was summoned to meet her father. As she walked through the familiar gardens she wondered at how quickly the spell of this place had overtaken her. It was already difficult to focus on the world outside, to think that anything existed outside this self-contained, all-encompassing environment. Just like old times.

Ellis Nunn was waiting for her at the near end of the sturdy teak pergola he had had built beside the Olympic-size swimming pool. It was overhung with knotty twists of white and lavender wisteria. Wisteria was a tough, drought-resistant plant whose beauty Ellis Nunn could admire.

He smiled when he saw her, embraced her hard in his typical bearlike way. "Hello, Angel." At least he hadn't spoken to her in Russian, as he often did despite Tori's protests-"so you will not forget where your family was born," as he used to say. He smelled of tobacco and cologne, a pleasant mixture that Tori remembered from years past.

Despite the fact that Ellis Nunn tried hard to be very American, he was invariably taken for a native in Europe. He had the kind of Nordic good looks combined with a typical Slavic thickness which marked him as a Russian on the Continent, where such things still mattered.

Tori's father had changed his name before he applied for admission to Stanford. It was not then the power university it eventually would be, but in any event, he received an outstanding education. He became Ellis Nunn not so much because he was ashamed of his real name, but because he loved America so much that he longed for what he thought of as an American name. Tori still did not know what an American name might be.

He was a big man, exceptionally fit despite nearing seventy; he worked out in his pool every day for an hour and a half. his hair was more gray than blond now, but it was just as thick as had been when he was a young man. his vaguely almond-shaped gray eyes were set on a slight slant. his wide mouth could be as expressive as a comedian's. The oddest feature of his face was his nose, which, to Tori's way of thinking, did not fit with the rest of his Russian features. No wonder-Ellis had had it redone in his youth to be the very paradigm of an Anglo-Saxon nose. Again, vanity had little to do with the change; his desire to fit into American society did. Ellis Nunn was a man of light; the man of light, some said. He had taken his father's light bulb manufacturing business and, with the knowledge he absorbed at Stanford, brought it west, in the process turning it into the largest and most innovative creator of film illumination. If you needed low light to film by, dazzling light to illuminate a gigantic set, spectacular lights to augment explosions, lights to simulate night or any time of the day, delicate, fairytale twinklings to highlight a love scene, you called Ellis Nunn's This Magic Moment. his companies extended into almost every part of the globe that was a filmmaking center: Italy, France, Spain, even Hong Kong. Today, his computer-generated networks of lights could do literally anything and everything Hollywood could ask of them, especially now that he had the latest laser technology from his own R&D department to draw on.

his work had made him rich in his own right. He was not, and never had been, one of the sad Bel Air bassets, as they were cruelly known: husbands of movie stars who lived off their wives' breathtaking incomes.

As they strolled under the pergola. Tori thought of all the times she had seen her father walking here with Greg, wondering what it was the two men were speaking of, wondering why she had only rarely been granted the privilege of walking and talking like this with her father, and never here beneath the twining wisteria, Ellis Nunn's favorite spot.

They reached a patch of sunlight and Ellis Nunn stopped. As if divining her thoughts, he said, "Do you know why I love it here in my pergola? Because here no one can see me, no one can hear me." He laughed. "There are too many people padding around my house." He shrugged, began to walk again."Well, there's no sense in fighting it. That's how it's always been. Your mother's doing. Personally, I can't abide strangers in the house. Who knows where they are and what they're really up to when they 're out of sight." He grinned at her. "They don't know what I'm up to when I'm here, out of their sight.''

"Does that include Mom?"

"Of course it does," he said. "She's the nosiest of the lot. Trouble with her is she wants to run everything. Can't do it, no one can, but she's never learned. Not surprised. She's never been good with the basics. That's why she needs all these people, really. Her mind's on other, more esoteric matters. Who she'll be today. Flexing those prodigious emotional muscles of hers. Miss Emotional Universe. I used to call her that in the old days. Nothing much has changed since then, I suppose, but us. Well, not your mother. She never changes, not reallyI mean, not deep under the surface.''

The patch of sunlight illuminated the stone statue of Diana, a reproduction of the one in Mexico City.

Ellis Nunn pointed at it. "There is your mother: Diana, the Huntress. Did you know that she was born Diana Leeway? No? I'm not surprised. No one does. I can't imagine her telling you. No one left in any of the studios now to recall it, either. I can't remember whose idea the name Laura was. Anyway, the producers liked the sound of Laura Nunn, so that's what she became, in reality as well as on the screen. Well, as much as your mother knows what reality is."

"How did you put up with her all these years?" Tori asked. "You not only survived, but thrived."

"Well, I don't know about thriving," he said, "but as for surviving . . ." He put his forefinger against his lips, thought a moment. "Do you know the story of the Zen Policeman? No? Odd, with all that time spent in Japan."

"Dad-"

"My God, Tori, look at you." He only called her by her Christian name when he was angry with her. "You're a grown woman of thirty-six, and what do you have to show for it? No discernible job, let alone a career. And as for starting your own family-well, that's something of a joke, isn't it? Face it, Tori, you've made a mess of everything, and here you are standing in front of me, while Greg-" For a moment he could not go on. He looked apoplectic. Then he seemed to gain hold of himself. "You're the one who has studied Oriental philosophy. Tell me, why is it that Greg, who had everything going for him, who had his whole life laid out as clearly as a road map, a career distinguished by-Jesus God, he was going to become one of the first two men to live in space, and then to land on Mars . . . Have you any conception of what that means?" He passed a hand over his face.''Why did it happen. Tori? Why is he gone?''

Tori said nothing. What was there to say?

"Greg was destined for great things, I knew it the moment he was born.'' Ellis Nunn seemed drained of the spasm of anger that had gripped him. He seemed genuinely confused. "Why was he taken from us? Your mother says it's God's will. Well, if that's so, then God's an unforgivably cruel and capricious creature."

Now Tori felt the words coming; she could not help herself. "So that is what you think I've done with my life: nothing. Well, I'm not what you wanted me to be, an astronaut, stretching the envelope of space. I'm not like Greg. You trained him; he wanted to be just what you wanted him to be. It was the perfect union of generations. You were so proud of him. You understood what motivated him; Greg was like an open book to you. But you couldn't fathom why on earth I would want to go to Japan to study. Of course you couldn't. You've spent all your adult life here in L.A., in many ways as far from global politics and economics as Fiji. This is the original land of Nod, and you built yourself Diana's Garden, a dream within the dreamland of L.A. Is it any wonder that yon have no conception of what makes me tick? 'Japan,' I remember you saying. 'What the hell could be so damn important in Japan?' You never understood. You never wanted to." She shook her head. "I must be such a disappointment to you."