A Woman of Intelligence Read online

  “Current tried to pull me under today. Strong as a neat tequila. But I fought back,” he said.

  “Please do keep me company after Kip drowns,” said Arabella, turning to me. “Instead of swimming far out where he should, he chooses to breaststroke just where the waves crash.”

  “I like to feel the power of the ocean. Better for your muscles,” he said, flexing his toned left biceps.

  “I’ll be sure to have them write that into your eulogy,” said Arabella, though she reached out and touched his arm with approval.

  As Arabella and Kip took my things upstairs, I took in their home. The ocean aside, it couldn’t have been more different from 820 Fifth Avenue. The floors were a beautiful light oak and the rooms were exploding with light up through the vaulted ceilings. On the shelves near the Steinway piano were framed pictures of their children. There was one of Bettina in a cobalt blue bathing suit with a medal around her neck, her hair wet and slicked back, hitting just above her shoulders. She looked like everything that was good about America—youth and sunshine and athleticism and grace, all wrapped up in one pretty package.

  “Max Greco, a photographer out here for the Los Angeles Times, snapped that of Bettina after she won athlete of the year at the L.A. swim club,” said Arabella as she came back downstairs.

  “She looks wonderful,” I said admiringly.

  “The man who wrote the piece that accompanied the photo called her the next Ann Curtis, but I hope she can do one better and win the gold in the hundred freestyle.”

  “The U.S. national team doesn’t know what they’re missing by not hiring Arabella Rowe to coach their women,” Kip added. “She wouldn’t let them out of the pool until they were eating world records for lunch. Though it would be nice if she just let Betty be a teenager for a while, too.”

  “He says that, but he’s secretly the proudest father in the world and just happy that I’m the one doing the pushing so he doesn’t have to,” said Arabella. She leaned her head on his shoulder and batted her long eyelashes.

  “I’m left to take care of the boys,” he said to me with a wink. “They have potential, too, not quite like Bettina, but Scottie might get there.”

  “Scottie is built like a sea turtle, I’m afraid,” said Arabella, descending the stairs. “Lots of midsection, not enough limbs. But stranger things have happened.” She walked over to the piano and patted the picture of Scottie on the shelf. He was not photographed in a bathing suit, clearly not having earned that honor. “But tonight it’s not about the boys, or any boys at all, it’s all about Ingrid Bergman,” she purred, rolling her R’s. “Don’t you think that’s how Rossellini says it?”

  “Oh, is she married?” said Kip, winking at me.

  “Rina is going with you tonight so she can make sure that you are still married in the morning,” Arabella said, doing an exaggerated version of her husband’s wink.

  “Good,” said Kip. “Everyone who comes to Los Angeles for … the first time?”

  “Third,” I said.

  “For the third time needs to visit the Beverly Hills Hotel.”

  I looked out at the water, at the waves crashing on the beach. They sounded crisp, as if the water were closer than it really was. It was because there were no sounds in the house.

  After a long, brisk walk on the beach with Arabella, whose stride was as fast as my jog, she sat me in the kitchen to feast on a bowl of unidentifiable “but abundantly healthy” grains, which she claimed were second to none at absorbing champagne, and then helped me get dressed for the evening. I had worried I was going to spend the whole day thinking about the boys, about guilt and motherhood and whether I should have even gone to Los Angeles in the first place, but keeping up with Arabella had me thinking about little else besides my inferior build. One really did seem more productive with an extra six inches of leg.

  In the guest room, Arabella watched me open my large suitcase, remove a few dresses, and then decide on a black dress with a high neckline. I undressed and put it on over my silk slip.

  I took a look at myself in the long mirror, turning in a slow circle. I wasn’t going to make the cover of Vogue, but I looked far better than I had in years. The smile on my face helped.

  Arabella eyed me in silence then stood up. She pulled at the fabric around my neck. “What is that?” she asked, fingering it. “Is this wool or burlap?”

  “A silk wool blend,” I said defensively. “Good for travel. Doesn’t wrinkle easily.”

  “Rina,” she said, singing out my name. “You’re going to the Beverly Hills Hotel in April. Even the walls there are the color of bubblegum.”

  “I’m afraid I didn’t think pink while packing,” I said, looking down at the clothes I’d selected.

  “Still,” she said, frowning at me. “This is California. Didn’t you bring anything a bit more colorful? You look like you’re about to bury a monarch.”

  “I didn’t,” I said, sifting through my dresses, all of them dark colors. “A lot of my old clothes just don’t fit. My breasts…” I said, my voice trailing off.

  “Right, that. Well, yes, I do understand the predicament. They are the size of spring melons. But I think we need to simply embrace them. We’ll stuff your bra with handkerchiefs to prevent an embarrassing situation and find you something else to wear. You’re going to Beverly Hills; there’s nothing people love more in Beverly Hills than breasts. Breasts and an MGM contract, but you’ve only got the former on offer. Come. Let’s look in my closet.”

  “But you’re so much taller…” I protested as she dragged me to her bedroom.

  “Rina, even a pup tent would be an improvement,” she said as she flung open the door to her enormous closet.

  Two hours later, I was sitting next to Kip in one of Arabella’s dresses—light blue chiffon, revealing and too long—as he wound his car down Sunset Boulevard to the palm tree–lined driveway of the hotel that had “more glamour than a pound of caviar,” according to Arabella. She didn’t have time for such Hollywood theatrics, she’d repeated when Kip had pressed her to come, saying she planned to wake up early to swim in the ocean before “the sharks start moving.”

  “Arabella finds all this stuff rather silly,” said Kip, slowing the car as we reached the valet line.

  “So would Tom,” I replied.

  “I’ll admit to you that I love it,” he said. “I can’t wait to see Ingrid Bergman. Don’t let me throw myself at her and start weeping.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said, grinning.

  I looked out at the commotion in front of us, the people pushing their way through the door. I didn’t recognize a soul, but everyone looked like a movie star.

  When we reached the front of the line, we were helped out of the car by valet attendants in vanilla-colored dinner jackets. One quickly whisked away Kip’s Jaguar, a flashier blue version of Arabella’s, and we prepared to walk inside.

  Ahead of us were men in tuxedos and women in colorful dresses, all silk and gauze, materials that were appropriate for eighty degrees. No practical wool blends in sight.

  We wandered into the famous Polo Lounge. I was too nervous to even blink, feeling completely out of my element. But this was my vacation, my reward from Tom for being tethered to children for two and a half years. And I had once been a girl who kissed bartenders in dark corners and was eager to swing from chandeliers. A small trace of that woman had to be in me somewhere. “Do you know anyone—” I started to ask Kip when a voice interrupted me.

  “Is that Kip Rowe? asked a man behind us.

  “Mic Archdeacon!” Kip said with delight as he whirled around. “I didn’t realize you’d grace a place like this with your presence.”

  “Well,” said the man, who was just as tall and blond as Kip, “when Ingrid calls you up personally and invites you, you certainly don’t decline the lady.”

  “Oh, did she call you?” said Kip. “She just rolled over in bed and asked me.”

  Both men laughed heartily while I stood t
here with an awkward smile, holding up my dress with one hand. When their abdominals were done contracting, Kip introduced me, then quickly turned back to his acquaintance, blocking me out of the conversation. I listened as they exchanged gibes about each other’s looks, barbs about women, and sexual innuendos about actresses neither of them had ever met. I took a step back, reluctant to leave the only person I knew at the party, but too repelled by the conversation to stay. I still heard snippets of it as I backed farther away—“upside down … lubrication … try the sautéed shrimp…”

  “Psst,” I heard someone hiss. I glanced around and saw an attractive woman in a white strapless dress waving me over.

  I looked back at Kip and his friend, who was making a spanking motion with his hands, and walked quickly over to the hissing woman. “Sorry, was that directed at me?” I asked.

  “Yes, I was watching you,” she said, pushing her hair off her shoulder. “You were considering whether to edge back into that conversation, and I wanted to save you before you did. That man you were hanging about with, he’s not your husband, is he?”

  “My brother-in-law,” I told her. She was about my height, but was wearing bright gold high heels and had the same air of command that statuesque Arabella had when she entered a room. She also had hair the color of a redwood. Altogether, she was as glamorous as a pound of caviar.

  “Oh, good,” she replied. “If he were your husband, I would have told you to start filing for divorce. Actually, I’m a lawyer. I could have started the paperwork for you.”

  “Are you?” I asked. “How fascinating. Are there many female lawyers in California?”

  “Of course not,” she said, shrugging her bare shoulders. “But I’m one of them.”

  “And you work on divorces?” I asked politely. I needed to keep the conversation going, not wanting to be alone again.

  “Often,” she said, swirling her drink around. “Divorces and other sorts of jams.”

  “Is there a worse jam than divorce?” I asked, feeling like an idiot the second I said it.

  “In this town?” she said, laughing. “We have several flavors of jam. Many of them more terrifying than a little divorce. Faye Buckley Swan,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m sorry I hissed, but I couldn’t stand to watch you insert yourself into a conversation where you clearly weren’t wanted, especially when you could just start your own. There are an awful lot of interesting people about—why not try someone else?”

  “That’s good advice,” I said. “I used to be rather good at this, but recently, my ability to mingle has atrophied. Or died, actually. I think it threw itself off a bridge a few years back.”

  “And why is that? The bridge and all?” she asked.

  “Just out of practice, I suppose,” I replied, which was the honest answer.

  “Well,” she said, looking around the room, now even more packed, “this is a good place to dive back in the deep end.”

  “Bit of an intimidating room,” I said, eyeing the perfect humans swanning around the beige, half-moon-shaped leather banquettes and leaning against wallpaper printed with enormous banana leaves.

  “Nonsense.” She pointed to a group of particularly striking young women in pastel colors. “Get closer, they all have fangs. So, tell me, whoever you are. Were you ill? Or perhaps in prison? What caused the bridge-jumping thoughts?”

  “No,” I said after a pause. “I wasn’t ill. I just had children. Two of them in quick succession. I haven’t been able to leave the house much these past couple of years, and my social skills withered.”

  “That sounds a lot like prison to me.” She put her empty glass on a waiter’s tray and reached into her bag. “If you need me to spring you from it, give me a jingle,” she said, handing me her card. Then, as I was reaching for a drink, she winked and walked away. “I’m Katharina Edgeworth,” I said into the air, but she didn’t hear me. Alone again, I downed half the drink at once and looked at the thick white card I’d been handed. Faye Buckley Swan was indeed a lawyer.

  I looked for Kip, but he had disappeared. I finished my drink in two more swallows, not the least bit at ease alone. What I’d said to Faye Buckley Swan was no exaggeration. I truly did not know how to mingle anymore. At the medical gala, Mrs. Morgan had taken pity on me. But no woman here looked a day over forty.

  For an hour I wandered in and out of various rooms, all buzzing with excitement because Ingrid Bergman was rumored to be on her way. I tried to figure out what the party was for, besides to gawk at Bergman, but was told by a waiter only that it was a “studio party.” I tried to speak to another woman who was on her own, but she walked away as soon as I smiled at her, having sized me up as not remotely famous.

  Two hours later, I saw Faye again. I rushed over to her, dress in hand, this time fueled by six or seven cocktails. I grabbed another as I homed in.

  “Hello, lawyer,” I said, trying to place my hand on her shoulder. I missed and nearly put it down her dress instead.

  “Hello,” she said, looking me up and down. “How did you get so drunk in such a short amount of time?”

  I opened my mouth to answer and she held up her hand. “Never mind, don’t answer. I forgot what it’s like to come to a party—especially one like this—and not know a soul. You have to settle for the company of Jack Daniel’s.”

  “I’m a gin drinker,” I said. My whole face buzzed. Even my eyes were tingling.

  “Old Tom, then,” she said, looking at my glass.

  “I’m married to an old Tom,” I remarked. “I mean, my husband’s name is Tom. I suppose he’s not that old, though he acts rather old sometimes. Then again, so do I. But I’m not really that old, am I? How old am I?”

  “I don’t know how old you are, but I do think you’re quite amusing. And you seem happier than when you walked in.”

  “I’m Katharina Edgeworth. Rina to people who don’t like four-syllable names.”

  “It is a bit long,” Faye said, considering it. “Parents might as well have named you Rachmaninoff.”

  “That’s my brother’s name,” I said, raising my glass.

  “It isn’t!” Faye exclaimed.

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Ah. Well, Rina, you’re an amusing drunk. Tell me, do you live here? Or are you just in Los Angeles to visit that ghastly man you were with and his wife?”

  “His sister,” I replied. “No, not his sister. He didn’t marry his sister. She’s Old Tom’s sister. And Old Tom thinks I may be in the throes of a nervous breakdown, so he sent me here.”

  “Are you?” she asked, her face lighting up.

  “I don’t believe so,” I said, looking at my hand holding the drink, as if for confirmation one way or the other. “Not at this precise moment, anyway.”

  “And why does he think you are?” she asked.

  “Because I’m a mother. And sometimes I’m not very good at it.”

  “What were you before you were a not so good mother?” she asked.

  “I worked for the United Nations.”

  “But no nervous breakdown there?”

  “None at all.”

  “Only stimulated nerve endings, I hope,” she said with a wink. “Wait!” she exclaimed. Look! There she is. Ingrid Bergman. She’s really here!”

  I turned to look where Faye was gesturing. Just fifteen feet away was the actress of the hour, beautiful, room-commanding, effervescent Ingrid Bergman. She was wearing a dress the color of snowflakes, and she floated through the room, flanked by two young men, parting the crowd with her electric smile.

  “She’s here!” I squeaked. I was not a woman who squeaked. But seeing a Hollywood star made me squeak. Or perhaps squawk. I’d had so many drinks, I’d lost control of my mouth.

  “Come, let’s get closer,” said Faye. She started walking slowly toward Bergman, and I followed, until I found myself just steps away from her. She was like gravity, and I couldn’t fight the pull. Suddenly, I was right in front of her. I smiled, feeling the heat of her fame r
adiating off her. I took one step closer and then somehow tripped over the hem of my very long dress. As I fell, what was left of my drink flew into the air.

  “Ingrid!” I heard someone scream. “Are you all right?” I tried to pick myself up, but suddenly there were hands all over me, pulling me away.

  “Get her out at once!” I heard a man’s voice say.

  “Please! Let her go. I’ll take her home. Leave her be!” It was Faye. She put her arm around me and walked me out of the room. I closed my eyes, not wanting to comprehend what had happened, which, if my sloppy mind was functioning at all, was that I’d spilled a gin and soda on Ingrid Bergman.

  When I opened my eyes, Faye was pushing me into a car. We took off with a screech of tires. “Are we going to the jail?” I asked.

  “Pacific Avenue in Venice,” she replied. “That’s where you just told me to go. Is there a jail there?”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  That was the last word I remembered saying.

  When I woke up the next morning, the hangover I’d had the day I’d left Gerrit bleeding in Central Park felt like child’s play. I crawled to the guest bathroom, blinded by the California sun, and forced myself to throw up. I took a shower, then after standing in the hallway for five minutes, terrified, I walked downstairs with utter dread.

  “Look! It’s John Wilkes Booth,” Kip exclaimed as I walked into the kitchen. I was holding the wrapped presents I had brought for the Rowes. It was a ridiculous thing to do, to choose that moment to give them the gifts, but I had no other idea of how to proceed.

  “I did not shoot Ingrid Bergman,” I said quietly, placing the boxes on the counter. “I tripped on Arabella’s dress.”

  “You might as well have shot her,” said Kip, watching me climb onto a high-backed wooden chair. “At least that takes precision. Falling down drunk just takes stupidity.”

  “Are you all right, Rina?” Arabella said coldly, her voice sounding just like her mother’s. Her hair was wet, and her cheeks were pink. She’d clearly been busy swimming while I’d been busy retching.

  “I’m extremely embarrassed,” I replied. “Mortified. I don’t know what happened. One minute I was walking, a bit excited perhaps, and the next minute—”