Secrets (6 page)

For chrissake, Sandy, you just got busted last night. Will you lay off?

I just have to see someone for a little while. He took two quick strides and crossed the small kitchen to grab her arm and hold her there.

Don't feed me that shit anymore. I'm taking you to the hospital right now. Right now! And I don't give a damn if you never see me again, but you're not going to go on like this until you OD in some stinking shooting gallery or someone sticks a knife in you somewhere. Do you hear me? She was suddenly crying, with regret, with the sickness, with all she felt for him, and the terrible pull of the drugs, and he was crying too, as he pulled her into his arms and began to sob, wondering where the girl he had loved had gone to.

I'm so sorry, Billy ' I'm so sorry ' No one had ever called him that before, and it tore at his heart now. He wanted so badly to save her.

Please, babe ' I'll stay with you all day ' I'll stay at the hospital with you. We'll do whatever we have to. But she only shook her head as the tears coursed down her cheeks.

I can't '

Why not?

I'm not strong enough. Her words were the merest whisper, and he pulled her closer to him. There was nothing left of her but bone, but he didn't care. He knew that deep down he still loved her.

Yes, you are. I'll be strong enough for both of us.

You can't. She pulled slowly away from him, their tears mingling on her cheeks, and she reached up and smoothed his hair away from his eyes with a pale, trembling hand. I have to do it myself ' when I'm ready' .

When will that be?

I don't know ' not yet' .

He felt a hand clutch his heart. It was like watching her die. I can't wait anymore, Sandy' . He had never regretted anything so much in his life, but he knew that he couldn't help her.

I know ' I know. She nodded and then stood on tiptoe to kiss his lips, and as she turned from him, he saw that she was no longer wearing their wedding band. And he suddenly realized that she must have sold it. She stood looking at him for a moment, as the dog whined softly behind him, echoing how Bill felt, and then quietly, she was gone, and this time, he didn't stop her. He knew he couldn't have anyway. There was nothing he could do. Nothing. He wiped the tears from his cheeks, and fought back waves of fresh tears as he went to brush his teeth, remembering how it had once been ' how pretty she had been ' how crazy they were about each other ' they had met only two years before, and now it seemed a lifetime ago ' a lifetime in the depths of hell with a woman he had once loved, and still did, although she was long gone. The woman who had been arrested for prostitution the night before was no one he knew anymore ' she was no one' .

The house in Pasadena was a long white shingled L shape, with stone fireplaces at either end, rosebushes in tidy rows in the front, and a vast expanse of green lawn leading to a huge rectangular pool filled with shrieking children. They all appeared to be in their late teens, and they were throwing a volleyball amid screams of outrage and delight, shouting each other's names, and hurling friendly insults, as a woman with a body that would have stopped traffic anywhere appeared oblivious to them. She lay, as though dead to the world, in a black bikini, her fair skin heavily oiled and tanning lightly in the morning sun, with a large straw hat over her face and a stack of towels next to her. Her breasts were large and full, spilling from the black bikini top, and then her torso narrowed sharply to a tiny waist only to move outward again to round, sensual hips that tapered into long, thin legs. She had the body of a beauty queen, which was how she had begun after arriving from Buffalo almost two decades before. Jane Adams was thirty-nine years old and her body showed no sign of having borne three children.

She opened one big blue eye and peered out from under her hat to make sure the children were all right and then went back to dozing in the sun. She wore no jewelry save a narrow gold wedding band and simple gold hoop earrings, yet the house had a definite look of substantial suburban opulence and there was a Mercedes station wagon in the garage, which she drove, a Volvo for the maid and kids to drive, and her husband had left for work in his Mercedes sedan. And the pool was large, even by Pasadena standards.

Hey ' over here ' you guys!' come on! ' The ball flew out of the pool, landing near her chair, and she bounded up with almost childlike grace, adjusting her bikini top with one hand as she ran to get it, and the young men in the pool found themselves staring at her as they always did, while her son glowered at them. It always annoyed him when his friends stared at her as though she were one of them. Thank God she wore enough clothes to cover herself most of the time. She wasn't given to low d+!collet+!s or slits in her skirt. Most of the time she looked respectable, in old Oxford shirts and wraparound skirts and espadrilles. She appeared unconscious of her striking looks. And once her body was out of sight, the rest of her looked quite unremarkable. She was a nice-looking woman with a pretty face and warm smile she shared with everyone. She had red hair and freckles on her chest and arms, and big blue eyes that seemed filled with innocence, as she threw the ball back to the children.

Ready for lunch? she called out to them, but they were already involved in the game again by the time she sat down. She always made trays of sandwiches for them, and kept the refrigerator filled with the sodas they liked and ice-cream sandwiches. After eighteen years of motherhood, she knew the things they liked best. Jason was going to UC Santa Barbara in the fall, and both girls would be in high school that year. Alyssa would be a freshman finally, after what seemed to her a lifelong wait, and Alexandra a junior, angling heavily for her own car. She claimed the Volvo was too big and too old and she wanted something racier, like the car Jack Adams had given his son the month before when he turned eighteen. Jason would be driving a Triumph to Santa Barbara in September. Alexandra thought that might be a nice car for her too. And their mother smiled to herself as she stretched out again. They were such typical teen-agers, and it was such a far cry from her own youth in Buffalo. She had almost frozen to death getting to the high school, until she turned sixteen and ran away. She got to New York and was terrified, and worked there just long enough to make the money she needed to get to L.A. ' Los Angeles ' Hollywood ' land of her dreams ' and it was there that she had won her first crown as beauty queen. She had been seventeen ' there had been modeling jobs ' and a thousand different jobs serving hamburgers at drive-in eateries ' and finally a small part in a horror film. She had honed her screams to perfection and she was doing well, she thought, when she met Jack Adams. She had been only nineteen. And she had fallen madly in love with him. Mr. All American. He had gone to Stanford, and was working for his father in his brokerage firm, and he had been twenty-three. She had never seen a man as beautiful, she thought, or so clean-cut. He had taken her home to meet his folks on their fourth date, and he had told her what to wear and what to say and how to act. It was better than acting in horror films, and a lot more fun. They had a beautiful brick house on Orange Grove, and Jane had been in awe of them, and of Jack, so grown up and mature, and wonderful in bed. He was the sweetest man she'd ever known, until he started pressuring her to give up her acting career. But acting was everything she'd always dreamed and she knew that if she hung in long enough she'd get somewhere and really make it. But Jack wanted no part of it. He hated the place she lived, her friends, the movies she made, hated everything she did, except the way she made love to him. He had never known anyone like her, and as he buried his head between her legs in the golden nest of curls she shared so generously with him, he knew he'd never give her up, no matter what his parents said. They thought she was a tramp, his mother even dared to call her a whore, but only once. And he refused to give her up. He forced her to give up her dreams instead. He made her careless in a way she'd never been before, and she was not quite twenty-one when she found out that she was pregnant. And that was the end of it. Jack wouldn't let her get rid of. She had gotten the name of an abortionist in Tijuana, and she sobbed the whole story out to him. He proposed to her that night, and they were married two weeks later at a small church near his parents' home, and that was the end of the horror films and her career. She became Mrs. John Walton Adams III, and Jason was born six months afterwards, a bouncing, smiling baby boy with a shock of her red hair that stood straight up for the first year. He was so sweet, and Jack was so good to her that she barely missed the world she'd given up. She hardly had time to miss it for the first five years. Alexandra was born when Jason was two, and Alyssa two years after that. Alexandra looked like Jack, and Alyssa like no one at all, except, Jack's mother thought, an aunt of hers. They were the perfect family, and Jane was happy taking care of them. They kept her busy all day long, and Jack kept her busy all night. He never seemed to get enough of her. He hungered for her night and day, and sometimes took her in the bathroom for just long enough to come between her breasts while the children were watching TV at night, or eating dinner. He could hardly wait for her to come to bed, and they made love every night even if she was too tired to think or talk or eat after a day of running around with the kids and satisfying him. She sometimes felt as though she had no time for herself, but she didn't really care. She wanted to be the perfect wife, perfect mother and keep everyone satisfied and happy. She rarely, if ever, thought of herself. She was just grateful to have come so far from Buffalo, and she loved being Mrs. Jack Adams. It was the best role she'd ever had, and it was only when the children went to school that she began to long for all that she'd given up for him. She was twenty-seven by then, but she didn't look much different than she had ten years before, especially when she swam naked in their pool. Jack would watch her there, late at night, and he would turn off the lights, and slip in after her. She didn't have to worry about the children seeing them then. She didn't have to worry about anything. He took care of everything for her, their bills, their life, he told her who to see, what she could do, what to wear. He molded her into his perfect fantasy, and the only thing that wasn't part of it was the love she had for the work she'd done. Sometimes she'd talk longingly about going back to work again, but he would hear none of it.

You don't belong there anymore. You never did. His voice was harsh when he spoke of it. That's a world of tramps and leeches. She hated when he talked like that. She'd loved the world of Hollywood, she still missed some of her friends, and he never let her see them. All of her old roommates had drifted away, and when he saw her writing a Christmas card to her agent once, he threw it out. Forget it, Jane. That's all over now. He wanted it to be. Desperately. He wanted her to forget all of it ' even the parts she'd loved ' the people she'd known ' the dreams she'd had' . Alyssa was only three when a man in a supermarket had handed her a card. He was a talent scout for some agency, and it was like the old days of Hollywood. He invited her to come to his office for a screen test, and she laughed. She'd heard plenty of that in the old days, especially when she first got to L.A. But she was surprised at how insistent he was, but she never called him, and threw away his card eventually. But he had stirred forces in her she had quelled for too long. She called her old agent one day, just to say hello, to see how he was, and he begged her to come back. He said he could find work for her. And six months later, when she was shopping in L.A., she dropped in to see him, just for the hell of it. He threw his arms around her, and begged her to let him take some photographs. She even sent him a few other snapshots after that, and then the big decision came, four months afterwards. He had a part for her. On a soap opera, he said. It was perfect for her. She tried to laugh it off, but he wouldn't let her off the hook. He begged her to audition for it, just for practice he said, for old times' sake, for the hell of it ' for him ' for yourself ' for all that hard work you did ten years ago ' She lay in bed at night, thinking about it, wishing she could try out, worrying about what Jack would say. She tried to mention it to him, but there was nowhere to start, no way to explain the emptiness she felt, the loneliness with the children at school. But all he wanted from her was between her legs. He wouldn't listen to her. He never talked to her. No one did. And ten years later, he was as hungry for her as he had been when they first met, and she knew she should be grateful for it. Her friends complained that their husbands paid no attention to them, never wanted to make love, had no interest in them sexually ' and here she was with a man who was insatiable, he whispered things like I'm gonna fuck your brains out tonight ' over the children's heads, and she was always terrified they would hear. But she couldn't talk to him. He had no idea what was in her head, her heart ' her soul ' but her agent knew too well. He had seen it all in her eyes the day she'd dropped in on him in L.A., and he wasn't going to let her go again. She had something he knew he could sell, always had had, and it was more than sex appeal. There was a humanity to Jane, a decency, a warmth, she was motherly and yet the sexiest broad he'd seen in years, like Marilyn Monroe with kids, she appealed to women and men, and he'd never met anyone who wasn't drawn to her. She had a kind of inner warmth that drew people like babies looking for a teddy bear ' and what a teddy bear, she made the term tits and ass sound bleak. There was so much more to her.

She went to the audition, finally, on a hot day in June, although they were trying out for a different part by the time she went. And she insisted on going in a black wig she'd bought. When Lou saw her afterwards, he whistled and then erupted in a big happy grin. She looked like a sexier, richer, younger Gina Lollobrigida. And she got the part. They didn't even question the black wig. They wanted her. Immediately. And Jane sat in Lou's office in tears.