The Son of Someone Famous (6 page)

“Not really,” I said. “I think she takes after her mother. I
think she's a gift-wrapped package no one can get to.”

“She's not as pretty as her mother was,” Grandpa Blessing said. “She shouldn't be playing that hard to get.”

“Well what about me?” I said. “I'm no bargain, either.”

“What makes you say a thing like that?”

“No one's exactly knocking themselves out over me,” I said.

“Well,” he said, “that may be my fault.” He put the money back in his pocket and slumped down on the couch. “It's going to be harder being my grandson than being your father's son. Reflected glory is bad enough to live with, but reflected blame is worse.”

“Blame for what?” I said. “What'd you ever do wrong?”

“I became the town drunk, for one thing,” he said.

“I've seen my father drunk a lot of times.”

“That's different, A.J. . . . If you get drunk now and then at a big party at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, that's a way of life. If you get drunk in a little house all by yourself, that's a way out of life. I've been ducking out.”

“That's your business,” I said.

“Maybe this whole idea of you coming to live with me is a bad one,” he said. “How're you ever going to make nice friends?”

“And that's
my
business,” I said. “I'll learn.”

I was glad the telephone rang then. We were both working our way into gloomy moods. It was almost time for me to meet Billie Kay's bus. Usually Billie Kay took a limousine from an airport to a town she was visiting, but she'd decided she'd be less conspicuous arriving in Storm
by bus. No one expected to see an old movie star getting off a Greyhound.

My grandfather was in the kitchen talking to someone on the phone.

I heard him say, “Is he eating? Is his nose warm?”

More free advice, I thought, and then I thought of the Christmas Eve party at the Cutlers' . . . and of Christine Cutler telling Brenda Belle she could come on condition she didn't bring me.

For some reason, at that moment, I could picture Christine Cutler very clearly in my mind. I could see her blonde hair spilling to her shoulders, and I could remember how she moved down the hall at school. She had that way of walking that was almost a strut, and I wondered why I was suddenly able to recall quite a lot about her: the fact that she wore white most of the time, and the tiny gold bracelets that jingled at her wrist, and her voice, breathless-sounding and soft.

I remembered one time when my father was trying to get this new Hollywood starlet to go out with him. She wasn't even famous; he was so much more famous than anyone she probably knew. She didn't even seem surprised he'd called her. She didn't try to draw the conversation out, or explain why she wouldn't go on a date with him. She simply rejected him. I heard the whole thing. When he hung up, I waited for him to curse and make some sort of derogatory remark about her.

Instead, he said, “By God, I like her style!”

Then he sent her six dozen long-stemmed white roses.

At the time, I simply didn't understand it. Then this Psychology teacher we had at school enlightened me on the subject. He had his own name for it: the Groucho Marx syndrome. He called it that because there was a story about the comedian Groucho Marx. Groucho had been trying for years to get a membership in this fancy club, but the club kept refusing him. When the club finally relented and asked him to join, Groucho said he didn't want to belong to any club that would have him as a member.

In a way, my father was like that about women. He chased the ones who weren't interested. When one became interested, he lost his interest.

It was a form of masochism. Our Psych teacher said it was rooted in a deep inferiority complex. I'm not sure I bought that. My father was the last man you could imagine having an inferiority complex. He had everything going for him, and even if he did chase women who weren't interested at the start, it wasn't long before they did an about-face.

I
did
have an inferiority complex. To be frank about the whole matter, and I was being frank with myself that Christmas Eve afternoon, I was plain inferior. I was. I tried to compare myself with my father at my age. He'd been a brilliant student; he'd really sweated to get where he was. Nobody'd handed him anything, and he'd come from a real nothing family. . . . Then look at me—all I was, was the son of. I wasn't even a person in my own right. I couldn't even make it in a hick town like Storm.

I just hoped I wasn't going to turn into this masochist; I made a little promise to myself then and there that
I wasn't. The hell with the Christine Cutlers of this world. If they didn't want the pleasure of knowing me, their loss, I told myself,
their loss!

From the kitchen, I heard my grandfather say, “No, don't worm him! People should never worm their animals themselves. Take him to Dr. Cutler.”

I sat there looking at the tree with the beer cans tied to it and listening to my grandfather. It was a funny thing, but I loved him a whole lot right at that moment. . . . Because no matter what life had done to him, he wasn't mean.

I didn't imagine life had many goodies in store for me, either, and I just hoped I'd make it through without being mean, too.

Because there were times when you could feel the meanness creeping into your own soul, times when you wanted to hurt someone, wanted someone to have a party where no one would show up. . . . things like that.

Notes for a Novel by B.B.B.

Dear Christine,

This is a note to tell you I see through your dumb Christmas Eve invitation, and I think you are a louse for trying to use me. If you only knew what a neat person I thought you were before you pulled this on me. I thought about you a lot, honestly. Christine, honestly, you were one person I wanted to trust because you were special to me. I guess you don't care what I think of you, which is a shame because you were maybe the only person I really—

“Brenda Belle,” my mother said to me late Christmas Eve afternoon, “did you write this note?”

“What are you doing going through my wastebasket?” I said. “Living here is like being investigated by the FBI.”

“I'm glad you decided not to finish it,” my mother said. “You're getting to be a little old for this kind of schoolgirl crush.”

“I don't have a crush on her,” I lied.

“You've had a crush on her for some time. I wonder if you're aware how often you've brought up her name.”

“Excuse me for living,” I said.

“I'm not trying to humiliate you,” my mother said, “but I do want you to think more about your femininity.”

“What do you think I was thinking about when I ripped off half the skin on my face?” I told her.

“Femininity is inside, not outside,” my mother said. It's a feeling one has about oneself, a feeling that one is a woman.”

“One finds that difficult to believe when one is sprouting a mustache,” I said.

“A little facial hair is normal, Brenda Belle.”

“Tell that to the bearded lady in the circus.”

“Brenda Belle,” she said, sitting on the edge of my bed and folding her hands in her lap, “your Aunt Faith was very much like you when she was young. She was very busy being the smart aleck, slapping her knees when she laughed, getting to her feet in company to mimic someone—she just never thought very much about how she looked to the opposite sex. Our mother just let her develop into a boisterous type, heedless of how it would affect her relationships with men. . . . I'm afraid she missed out on the important things in life. She married too late, and old Doc Hendricks never gave her a child. I don't want that to happen to you, dear.” My mother always said a man
gave
a woman a child, as though the woman had no part in its conception.

I felt like asking my mother about her own marriage to my father. I doubt very much that it would go down in history as one of the more successful undertakings between
two people. My mother seldom spoke well of my father; she seldom spoke about him at all.

I said, “I'm not planning to imitate Aunt Faith.”

“Whether you're
planning
it or not, you remind me of Faith at your age.”

She tossed my note to Christine Cutler back into the wastebasket and said, “Christine Cutler is no one to look up to, believe me. I know things about her father that are repulsive and revolting.”

“For instance?” I said.

“I don't intend to repeat them,” she said, “but you can take my word . . . and blood will always tell.”

“What does that mean, what does ‘blood will always tell' mean?”

“It means that she's his daughter and she has some of him in her makeup,” my mother said.

I said, “Oh, everyone knows he cheated Charlie out of the business. That's old news.”

“Everyone does not know everything,” my mother said. “Now, tell me about Charlie's grandson.”

“What about him?”

“He seems like a nice boy.”

“You've never even met him, Mother.”

“Why don't you invite him over so I can?”

“He's easily bored,” I said.

“Then try to be interesting, Brenda Belle. Play one of your little piano pieces for him. Show him your avocado plants. I'll bake a chocolate ripple fudge cake for the occasion.”

“I'll think about it,” I said.

“Promise?”

“Yes,” I said. “I'll think about it.”

What I was really thinking about was what repulsive and revolting things Dr. Cutler was supposed to have done. He was a mild-mannered man, balding, bespectacled and bossed around by Christine's mother. A few years ago I owned a cat, and once when I took her to Dr. Cutler, I got a glimpse of that marriage. There was an intercom in his office which was connected with his house. Every few minutes Mrs. Cutler's voice would come blaring over the intercom. She was nagging at him about staying too late in his office; she was saying things like: “Ted, I'll give you three minutes to get here or we'll eat without you!” and “Ted, did you
hear
me?” There was an old ski cap of his hanging on a hook behind him, and finally he just put it over the intercom, as though he were pulling it down over her mouth. . . . I'd also heard that Ty Hardin's nickname for Mrs. Cutler was “Screamer.”

For Christmas, my mother had ordered an electric blanket from Sears for my Aunt Faith. It was supposed to arrive by bus late that afternoon. Around five o'clock, my mother and I piled into her old Oldsmobile and headed for the depot.

“I always feel sorry for poor Faith at Christmas,” my mother said en route. “I think of all the Christmases when you were a little tyke and poor Faith had no child.”

“I know a lot of kids who plan never to get married,” I said. Actually, I didn't, but I'd read about it in magazines.

“Every woman wants to get married, Brenda Belle.”

“What about woman's liberation?”

“That's just television talk-show fantasy, Brenda Belle. That's just a lot of talk from New York City. Women are very hard there, and they're not typical. Actresses and slutty types.”

“Maybe I'll move to New York after I get out of school,” I said, thinking maybe I'd move to New York
before
I got out of school.

“You wouldn't be happy in a big city, dear. People aren't friendly, and all the men are married.”

“Nobody'd nag me about getting married, though.”

“Nobody will nag you here, either. Do you think I'm nagging you? Would you rather I just ignored you, and let you grow up to be some lonely woman who's missed out on life? Do you want to become someone like Ella Early?”

She didn't wait for my answer. She said, “If I didn't have you, Brenda Belle, I'd consider myself a failure.”

“But what if I turn out bad?”

“I'm not going to let that happen,” she said, giving my knee a little squeeze.

“There is such a thing as a dud avocado,” I said. “You can lavish all the care in the world on it, but it just won't come up like the rest.”

“You're not an avocado,” my mother said, which was about the only reassuring word I'd heard all day.

After my mother parked the car, we walked down to the hotel on Central Avenue. The bus depot was next to
the hotel. The bus was just pulling up when I saw Adam Blessing waiting near the benches out in front.

“That's Adam Blessing in the navy pea jacket,” I said to my mother.

“This is your chance to introduce me,” she said.

The bus was letting off passengers. I tried to get Adam's attention by waving both my hands over my head.

My mother pulled down my left one. “Wave with one hand, not both,” she said. “Don't appear too eager.”