Belinda (54 page)

An hour later, the Cable News Network ran live footage of Bonnie and Marty mobbed by reporters outside the offices of a lawyer on Wilshire Boulevard. And there was Marty in his tight gray three-piece suit, gold watchband flashing, stabbing his finger at the reporters:

"This is her daughter you're talking about! And now we find out she's been living with this screwball painter in San Francisco? How do you think she feels?"

Glimpse of Bonnie, dark glasses, head bowed as she passed through the glass doors of the building with Marty behind her.

Then suddenly "Saturday Morning Charlotte" was staring at me from the screen.

I GOT the first hate call about three that afternoon. The speaker was on, so Dan could also hear it.

"Child molester! You like painting little girls naked? Some children's author you are!" Click.

I got chills all over. Dan crushed out his cigarette and walked out of the room. After that, it was maybe one hate call to every five from friends or reporters.

AROUND four I decided it was time to check out the Carmel house. I dreaded going there, finding it cold and empty, but what if by some miracle Belinda was there?

I picked up G.G. at the Clift and we drove south in the MG-TD, with the top down. The wind felt good.

The radio told us that prominent Dallas attorney Daryl Blanchard, brother of "Champagne Flight" star Bonnie, was on his way to Hollywood to see his sister regarding Belinda's disappearance. Daryl refused to make a statement to the press.

I wasn't surprised to find everything in Carmel the way Belinda and I had left it-even the soft little loft bed still rumpled-and no evidence that she had ever returned on her own to the place. Agony to come back to this little house.

I sat down and wrote a long note to her and put it on the kitchen table. G.G. wrote a note of his own, giving her the number at his hotel. Then I left her some money in the loft upstairs-several hundred dollars in a white envelope on the pillow. Then it was time to go.

The fog was rolling in. Carmel was ghostly. I felt a touch of fear. I stood in the door of the cottage for a long time, looking at the scattered primroses in the sandy garden, the great twisted limbs of the Monterey cypress reaching up to the gray sky. The fog was blowing up the street. "God, I hope she's all right, G.G.," I whispered.

He put his arm around my shoulder. But he didn't say a word. All through the last week in New Orleans he had been so encouraging, so optimistic. But I knew he made it his business to cheer up others. I'd seen the same trait in Belinda. They smiled for others, said the right things for others. I wondered how deep you had to dig to find out what G.G. really felt.

When I looked at him now, he gave me one of his subtle protective smiles. "It's going to be fine, Jeremy. Honest. Just give her the time to find out."

"You say that like you really believe it," I said. You're not just trying to make things OK?"

"Jeremy, when I saw the paintings," he said, "I knew everything was going to be OK. Come on, give me the keys, I'll drive back if you're tired."

WELL, we got back, we had dinner in the kitchen with Alex and Dan. Alex had brought a good bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and some excellent steaks, the kind you can hardly find in a market, and some cold lobster for salad. G.G. and I were the cooks.

We ate in silence, with the machine on as the voices came one after another into the room:

"Jeremy, this is Andy Blatky. Have you seen the Berkeley Gazette! I'll read it to you, man, listen: 'Though the final judgment can only be made from the canvases themselves, there is little doubt from the catalog that these paintings constitute Walker's most ambitious attempt to date.'"

"People like you should be prosecuted, do you know that? You think just because you call yourself an artist you can get away with painting filthy pictures of a young girl?"

"Listen, you don't know me. I loved your books, but how could you do it? How could you do something so dirty? How could you do that to us?"

"Turn if off." Alex said.

THE New Orleans papers didn't run the story till Thursday and they were rather polite. IN THE SOUTHERN GOTHIC TRADITION? asked the headline over the grainy black-and-white newsprint photos of the top half of Belinda with Doll House and Belinda with Communion Things. "Children viewing these remarkably realistic rendered paintings of the nude Belinda should at least be accompanied by adults."

The Thursday Miami Herald said the exhibit would destroy my reputation forever. "This is smut, call it what you will, and the crassness with which these so-called catalogs were mailed to the press represents a cynicism which might leave even old-time big-city porn peddlers stunned."

A local commentator on one of the San Francisco television stations said pretty much the same thing.

Network news reports showed a big, hefty dark-suited Daryl Blanchard landing at LAX to a mob of microphones and questions. "We have been sick with worry over my niece since her disappearance. I know nothing about this man in San Francisco. Now, if you gentlemen will please excuse me-"

My ex-wife Andrea called late that night. She was both sarcastic and genuinely concerned. Had I seen the San Jose newspapers? I'd always wanted to destroy myself. Was I happy now? Did I know what I'd done to her and to Celia? The San Jose papers had printed photographs of three of the Belinda pictures with the headline: PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION-AN EMBARRASSING CONFESSION. A local feminist, Charlotta Greenway, had blasted the work as the "exploitation of teenage Belinda Blanchard," saying the exhibit, which hadn't even opened yet, ought to be closed down.

Andy Blatky called again Friday from Berkeley to tell me that the story in the Oakland Trib had featured a photograph of a book exhibit at Splendor in the Grass on Solano Avenue, with the statement that my autograph party there two months ago might be the last appearance as a children's author that I would ever make. "Hang in there, man!" Andy said.

But by the weekend it was the New York Post that had gone the farthest, quoting freely from Midnight Mink president Blair Sackwell, who had been "ranting" about the "Belinda scandal" on every TV and radio talk show that he could book. He had publicly blasted Marty Moreschi and United Theatricals for covering up Belinda's disappearance and trying to ruin G.G.'s famous salon in New York.

"You don't get AIDS from a hairdresser," Blair was reported as saying, "and G.G.'s employees don't have it and never did." G.G. had closed his doors officially three weeks ago. One loyal customer, Mrs. Harrison Banks Philips, was quoted as saying it was perfectly atrocious what had happened to G.G. She'd gotten four anonymous phone calls in one day warning her not to use his services. G.G. should sue.

"Of course, United Theatricals won't comment," Blair had thundered in a later telephone interview. "What the hell are they going to say? Isn't anybody asking why this girl ran away from home in the first place? When she ended up with Jeremy Walker, doesn't sound like she had any place else to go!"

Blair had "waved" the catalog to television viewers on the David Letterman show. "Of course, they're gorgeous paintings. She's beautiful, he's talented, what do you expect? And I'll tell you something else, too, it's damned refreshing to see a picture that doesn't look like a two-year-old threw a carton of eggs one by one at the canvas. I mean, the guy can draw, for God's sakes."

On the Larry King show Blair had railed against Marty and Bonnie. Belinda had disappeared the night after the shooting. Blair wanted to know what had happened in that house. The pictures were not pornographic: "We're not talking Penthouse or Playboy here, are we? The man's an artist. And speaking of pictures, I have a standing offer: one hundred thou to Belinda if she'll do Midnight Mink. And if Eric Arlington won't take the picture, I'll take it. I've got a Hasselblad and a tripod, for God's sakes. For years I've been telling Eric how to make those photographs, I say, yeah, that's it, now do it. All he does is press the button on the camera. Well, hell, I can do that myself."

Syndicated columns were now carrying items about Blair and the exhibit all over the country. Jody, my publicist, called from New York to say there'd been another big piece in the LA papers all about Susan Jeremiah and the film that was "censored" by United Theatricals.

My LA agent left two messages on the answering machine, but no comment. My New York editor did the same thing.

At seven P.M. Sunday night I sat at the table with a glass of Scotch in front of me. That was dinner. I knew that the museum people were just arriving at the gallery on Folsom Street. Rhinegold had notified them of the special showing a month ahead of time. And then mailed the catalogs all over the world as instructed.

It was these people-from the Whitney, the Tate, the Pompidou Center, the Metropolitan, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and a dozen other such places-who would have the first crack at the work.

But a good two dozen other people would be there tonight, the big rich art patrons, the millionaires from London and Paris and Milan whose purchases carried almost as much distinction as the museum purchases because their collections were "so important," the people whom every art dealer sought to impress.

These were the people who meant everything to Rhinegold. These were the people who meant everything to me. Though anyone could buy one of the Belinda paintings, these people were given first choice.

But would they come to a nameless gallery on Folsom Street in San Francisco even for Rhinegold, who had always wined them and dined them in the proper places in Berlin and New York?

I sat back with my arms folded, thinking about years and years ago in a studio in the Haight-Ashbury when I wanted to be a painter, just a painter. I hated these people, the gallery system, the museums. I hated them.

My mouth was dry, as if I were about to be shot by a firing squad. The clock ticked. Belinda didn't call. The operator didn't break in on the voices talking into the answering machine to say, "Emergency call from Belinda Blanchard, will you release the line?"

It was late when Rhinegold came in. He was scowling. He wiped his face with his handkerchief as though he was uncomfortably hot. Still he didn't take off his black overcoat. He hunkered over in the chair and glared at the glass of Scotch.

I didn't say anything. A wind outside was lashing the poplars against each other. The voice talking to the answering machine said so low I could hardly hear it: "-should call me in the morning, I was the one who hosted your tour in Minneapolis, and I'd like to ask you a few questions-"

I looked at Rhinegold. If he didn't say something soon, I was going to die, but I wasn't going to ask.

He made a face at the Scotch.

"You want something else?"

"How gracious of you," he sneered. It seemed he was trembling. With what, rage?

I got the white wine out of the refrigerator, filled a glass for him, and set it down.

"All my life," he said slowly, "I have struggled to get people to look at art dispassionately, to evaluate the accomplishment that is there. Not to talk previous sales and status buyers, not to talk fashion or fads. Look, that is what I say to my clients. Look at the painting itself."

I sat down opposite him and folded my hands on the table. He stared at the glass.

"I have loathed gimmicks, publicity tricks," he continued. "I have loathed the devices used by lesser artists to publicize their work."

"I don't blame you," I said quietly.

"And now I find myself in the midst of this scandal." His face reddened. He glared at me, his eyes behind the thick glasses impossibly huge. "Representatives from every museum in the world were there, I swear it! I've never seen such a turnout, not in New York or Berlin." I could feel the hairs rising on the back of my neck.

He grabbed the glass of wine as if he was going to throw it at me. "And what can one expect from such a situation?" he demanded, eyes flashing on me like goldfish bumping the aquarium glass. "I mean, do you realize the danger?"

"You've been warning me about it continuously since this started," I replied. "I'm surrounded by people who warn me about everything. Belinda used to warn me three times a week."

So what the fuck happened? Had they spit at the canvases? Walked out sneering? Told the reporters on the curb it was trash?

I let the Scotch warm me. I felt sad suddenly, immensely and awfully sad. Just for one second it was Belinda and I alone upstairs in the studio, the radio playing Vivaldi, and I was painting and she was lying on the floor, her head on a pillow, reading her French Vogue and the deadline for this pain was "someday."

"Someday." I'd been sitting in this room for five days. That's not very long. Not very long at all, and yet it seemed forever. And she was where?

A loud coarse voice broke through the lowered volume of the answering machine: "Jeremy, this is Blair Sackwell, I'm in San Francisco at the Stanford Court. I wanna meet you. Come down here now."

I lifted the pencil and wrote down Stanford Court. Rhinegold did not even seem to notice, to have heard. He continued to stare at the glass.

I looked at the blank television screen in the corner. On the eleven o'clock news would they say the experts had pronounced the work trash? I looked at Rhinegold. His lower lip was jutting, he was squinting as he studied the glass.

"They loved it," he said.

"Who?" I asked, unbelieving.

"All of them" he said. He looked up. Face reddening again. Heavy cheeks trembling. "It was electric in that room. The people from the Pompidou, who bought your last painting! The people from the Whitney, who would never even consider your work. Count Solosky from Vienna, who once told me you were an illustrator not a painter, don't talk to him of illustrators. He looks me in the eye and says, 'I want the Holy Communion. I want The Carousel Trio.' Just like that, he says it. Count Solosky, the most important collector in Europe!"

He was in a fury. His hand had curled into a fist beside the glass. "And that's why you're unhappy?" I asked.

"I didn't say I was unhappy," he said. He sat up straight, adjusted the lapels of his coat, and narrowed his eyes. "I think I can safely say that in spite of all your efforts to destroy my integrity and my reputation, this exhibit will be a triumph. Now, if you will excuse me, I am going back to my hotel!"