Chapter
14
It
was pretty obvious that the mysterious caller was Salas but it wasn’t so obvious
how he knew that the 13 year old was pregnant.
When
I asked Lyle about it, he told me that Salas had got him in a full Nelson and
nearly broke his neck, forcing him to tell. Salas was 6 feet4 inches tall, weighed
about 250 pounds and his father was in San Quentin
for armed robbery.
Lyle
said that if I wanted to try to prosecute Salas for raping Marlo,
he would deny, under oath, everything he had said to him about the 13 year old.
The
next night I awoke in the middle of the night, my muscles twitching with rage.
I went into the living room, got my father’s loaded Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum
from its hiding place and sat down on the couch, trying to find reasons why
I shouldn’t kill Salas. Late into the night, I convinced myself that Dr. Orenstein
was right, that I never should have got involved with Candy and Marlo
in the first place. I put the gun back in its hiding place, went back to the
bedroom and crawled back onto the waterbed next to Candy.
I
fell asleep and dreamed that my mother was showing me pictures in a photo album.
She pointed to a picture of Marlo and Candy sitting
together on my couch and said, “Candy is Marlo’s little
sister.”
I
awoke at
Marlo
was spontaneously happy to see me but very quickly disguised it.
“Is
something wrong?” I asked.
She
said, “I had a bad night last night.”
“I’m
sorry.”
I
looked around. The apartment was full of books and antiques. Reproductions of
paintings hung on the walls. I recognized them the way one recognizes a face
without knowing where one has seen it. In those days, I knew little about painting.
I
felt happy among the things that I imagined had surrounded her from her earliest
childhood and for a moment, banished the single, imperative purpose of my visit
to the furthest point of my mind. But after awhile, I blurted out, “Let me see
your album. Like you promised.”
“I
never promised.” Her eyebrows arched and her blue eyes danced with amusement
at my clumsy lie.
“I
want to see the pictures of you when you were young. When
you were that scruffy little kid you told me about.”
“Are
you really going to make me haul out those stupid pictures?”
“I
won’t leave until you show them to me.” I got up and studied an extravagant
assortment of flowers on the coffee table. “Which one of you
intends to sacrifice yourself for the princess? You?
No, you. Off with your head!” I pulled a top heavy Chrysanthemum out by its
long stem and handed it to her. “If it please your
Ladyship. A flower for your album.”
Her
blue eyes danced again. Silently, she took the Chrysanthemum, lifted it to her
nostrils and fixed me with a self-mocking, bottomless gaze. Then she turned
and walked towards the hall. She said, over her shoulder, nuzzling the petals
again, “If my mother saw you sitting there, I don’t know what she would say.”
My mouth opened, but I couldn’t answer. She stopped at a door at the end of
the hallway and turned around. Her voice was high but serious. “You know Brad,
she doesn’t approve of you.” She paused and added thoughtfully, “And she doesn’t
even know you.”
I
said, “Maybe when we met in the hospital that time, it was hate at first sight.”
She
didn’t answer, but her brow was troubled with thought. She turned, abruptly,
and disappeared into the room. She returned with a large photograph album and
sat down next to me.
“Brad.”
“My
Lady?”
“Be
serious! My mother thinks she doesn’t like you.”
“She
doesn’t know me.”
“She
knows that Rhonda Bradford is your mother.”
“I’ll
convince her that I’m not my mother. I’ve done it before.”
She
looked at me skeptically.
“Believe
me.”
Her
expression softened and she opened the large album so that its covers rested
on our laps. She turned the pages and we saw the familiar birthday parties and
vacation places and the school pictures and favorite pets. She stopped at a
large color photograph of herself smiling and surrounded by flowers.
“How
old do you think I am there?”
She
looked about 11. I said, “Twenty?”
She
pinched my ribs and I jumped. “It was in the middle of my sophomore year.”
“I’ll
bet you look like a fetus in your baby pictures.”
She
laughed and turned the pages. She stopped to look at a black and white picture
of a serious, well-proportioned young woman holding a baby. The woman’s skin
was very white and her hair was very dark. There was none of the innocent rapture
and bewildered self-satisfaction that one associates with young mothers, and
I imagined shadows of great sorrow in her face.
“Is
that your mother?” I asked.
“Yes.
She looks so young, doesn’t she?”
“She’s
ravishing.”
“She
doesn’t think she’s pretty.”
I
stared at the picture. “It’s true. She isn’t pretty. She’s beautiful.” I reached
out to turn the page. “Let me see a larger picture.”
“There!”
On the next page there was a large, dramatic portrait of a very young, serious,
dark-haired woman.
She
said, “ I don’t look like my mother. I used to look
at my father’s pictures trying to figure out what part of him I inherited.”
“Your
mother has a regal, stunning face. It is full of character and depth.”
She
turned the page until she got to a picture of her father. It was a poorly colored
Kodak portrait of a dashing young man that filled most of the page. He was blond
and athletic, and I judged him to be about my age. One thing was certain. There
was no mistaking it he was Candy’s father, the evangelist Robert Hollyfield.
She
said, “That’s my father.”
I
hid my emotion as well as I could. “I can see it. The eyes.
The hair. The eyebrows.” A very tender
feeling came over me and I felt a great responsibility and I wanted to protect
her at all costs.
When
she got up to go to the bathroom, I turned the pages of the photo album back
to the small, black and white picture of Hollyfield
standing next to Marlo’s mother, pried it loose from its little, black festooned
corners, and put it into my shirt pocket. I pried another picture of her father
loose and put that in my pocket too.
She
didn’t come back for a long time. I was about to go in search of her when she
appeared in the hall doorway.
“Where’ve
you been?”
“I’ve
been resting on the bed.”
“Are
you sleepy? Do you want me to leave?”
“No.”
I
was silent, not knowing what to say.
“Brad.”
“Yes.”
“He
called last night.”
My
stomach tightened. “Who.”
“Luis.”
“Salas!”
“Yes.”
“What
did he want?”
“He
wanted to meet me, to apologize for what happened.”
I
felt my face burning with shame and anger. “What did you say?”
“I
said no.”
My
fingers had searched out the pearl handle of my father’s .22 Ruger
on their own, and gave it a little squeeze. “The gall.
The nerve. The unmitigated gall.”
It was an expression that my mother used.
She
said, “I thought I should tell you.”
“Why
did you wait all this time?”
“I
didn’t want to hurt you.”
My
fingers found the locked trigger.
“He
was very gentle. He said he was sorry. He said they thought I was Candy.” She
stopped and looked into my eyes. “He wanted to make up for what he did. He was
very sweet and gentle with me.”
She
sat down next to me again and I took my hand out of my pocket. We sat together
in silence for a long time. “Marlo.
Talking to him isn’t a good thing to do. He raped you.”
“It
was my fault. Anne was right. I shouldn’t have hitch-hiked at night.”
“It
doesn’t matter. He raped you.”
“Brad.
I don’t want to talk about it, please.”
“I
played baseball with George Nicholson, at
Her
little voice was strong and forceful. “Brad.”
“Will
you promise to hang up if he calls again?”
Her
eyes brimmed with tears and she got up and ran from the room. I sat there with
a rock of frozen feeling in my stomach. I felt the pistol pressing gently against
my ribs and suddenly my hatred of Salas seemed absurd. I watched it move to
a distant, isolated corner of my mind and when it got there, I stood up and
prepared to leave. But I knew that she needed me and so I sat down and struggled
with my feelings. I had been sitting there for at least ten minutes when I heard
a key being inserted into the front door lock. The doorknob turned, the door
squeaked open and the darkened living room was flooded with light. It was her
mother. She stood there in the doorway, unseeing. After what seemed like a very
long time, her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she recognized me standing
in front of her coffee table, staring at her. Contempt flashed across her face.
It
was a brisk, windy, late spring day, and she wore a fur cap that covered the
top of her hair. The dark fur was almost invisible against the dark brown color
of her hair. She was dressed in a pinstriped suit with an open collared white
shirt underneath. I wouldn’t have recognized her if I hadn’t been standing in
her apartment. Her brown curls covered her neck almost to her shoulders and
her eyelashes were painted. A quarter inch of eye shadow lay beneath her lower
lids. Her eyes smoldered and I averted my glance.
“Where’s
Marlo?” Her voice was full and throaty, and a slight
rasp betrayed tiredness. Out of nowhere, I recalled the Reverend Robert Hollyfield’s
high-pitched voice and my mother telling me that it was the cause of his failed
acting career.
“She’s
... I think she went to the bathroom.”
“And
you’re William Bradford.” Her eyes moved over my body with extraordinary rapidity,
taking in details like a sculptor or painter. She walked to the coffee table
behind me, dropped her purse onto it and stood very close to me. She was far
more beautiful than I remembered her in the hospital or in the photographs.
I held my breath. She said, “My, how you’ve...” She stopped in mid-sentence
and her smile dropped. She didn’t lower her head, but her eyes looked down,
and an antic sorrow was in her face. I leaned forward, smelling for alcohol.
My nostrils filled with feminine scent and perfume, and I rocked back on my
heels. When our eyes met again, she gave a little disgusted laugh that was a
quick expulsion of air. She made a half-turn, and like a queen, glided to the
kitchen and drew a glass of water. She drank from it, slowly, put it on the
counter and turned to face me.
Marlo
appeared standing motionless in the frame of the hall door. Her jaw was set
and her face was livid and alert. She walked towards me, slowly, with her eyes
cast down. When she reached me, she turned towards her mother and stepped forward,
placing herself slightly ahead of me. Their eyes met and her mother’s full,
vibrant body collapsed, imperceptibly, into itself. I saw the serious, sad eyes
of the young woman in the photograph, holding the baby.
Her
eyes moved back to mine and the contempt came into her face again. Her low voice
rasped, “I can see her in your eyes and hair. And in the way you hold your hands.”
I
asked, sharply, accusingly, “How do you know my mother?”
Her
eyebrows arched and the eyelids were cast down, like a woman assessing a poker
hand pressed very close to her chest. She walked towards us in a circle, like
a cat. When she got very close to me, her eyes flashed and she said, “I suppose
you think I’m a sinner?” She took off her fur hat and dropped it ceremoniously
on the coffee table between us. Her face moved to within a few inches of mine
and her expression was defiant and erotic at the same time.
Marlo said, loudly and ferociously, “Mother! Brad is my boyfriend.
Don’t you dare speak to him in that tone of voice again.”
With
great dignity and grace, her mother moved backwards. Her hands reached behind
her into the darkness and when her ankles touched the armchair, she sank down
into it. Her dark eyes blazed and she said in a low voice, almost to herself,
“I’m the Antichrist.”
Marlo
whispered into my ear, “You’d better go now.”
Her
mother raised her arm into the air and said, in a loud voice that was a good
imitation of my mother, “I’m Rhonda Bradford. The savior of
souls.”
I
got up. “Mrs. Phillipe! Please don’t...”
She
interrupted me. “Please, William. Call me Jeannette.”
I
said, “I’m not religious. I don’t believe in God.” Marlo
put her arm around my waist.
Jeannette
said, “I’m bouche bée. Congratulations
William. Or is it Bill?”
“Mother!
His name is Brad.”
She
got up from her chair and moved towards me again. “I like it. It’s a nice....
solution. It would make your father very happy. ‘Brad.’ ” She turned the
word over in her mouth like it was an hors-d’oeuvre
that she had never tasted. “And you’re 22 years old.” She stopped in front of
me and her face was a few feet from mine again. “You’re nice looking and it
sounds like you have a brain too. How unusual.” She
turned to Marlo. She said, sharply, “Why didn’t you tell me he had a
brain?” Her face was very near and I was astonished that I felt like grabbing
her and kissing her. She said, “You’re all right.” Then, very suddenly, the
smile on her face dropped and she said, “Get out.” She turned her back to me
and crossed her arms. Her head shook back and forth slowly, and she said, without
raising her voice, “Get out of here.” She walked back into the kitchen and stood
there, with her back to us.
Marlo
whispered into my ear, “You’d better go Brad. She acts like this sometimes.
Don’t worry. I’ll call you.” She almost pushed me through the door.
It
was only when I pulled into the parking lot of my apartment building that I
remembered the 2 photographs in my shirt pocket. I turned around and drove to
my house in
At
home, I found a picture of Reverend Hollyfield and
Jeannette in one of my mother’s albums. Scrawled on the bottom of the photograph,
in my mother’s legible hand, were the names, Bob Hollyfield
and Jeannette Phillipe. I suddenly remembered the
name Phillipe from my childhood and all the pieces came together.
Jeannette was Robert Hollyfield’s runaway wife. She
had moved to
When
I returned to my apartment, I put the photograph of Candy’s father, Robert Hollyfield,
on the kitchen table, leaving the two photographs of Hollyfield
and Jeannette in my shirt pocket.
Candy
asked. “Where did you get that?”
“From
my mother’s picture album.”
She
picked it up. She asked, absently, studying the photograph, “Why did you have
to see Marlo this morning?”
“She
said Salas called her. He wants to see her.”
“Who’s
Salas?”
“One
of the guys who raped her.”
She
put the picture down.
I
said, “I think she wants to see him.”
“That
doesn’t seem very smart.”
I
said, “Now you know why I was so upset this morning.”
She
asked, “What’re we going to do?” She looked at the picture of her father again
and smiled. “He looks like a movie star, doesn’t he?”
“Yes,
he does.”
“He
could have been in the movies, you know.” She smirked. “But he sacrificed his
acting career for God. I heard so many sermons from him on the Evils of Hollywood.”
I
pulled another picture from my shirt pocket. I handed it to her.
She
said, “She’s pretty, isn’t she?”
“Yes.”
Now
I knew why Jeannette refused to visit Marlo in the
hospital. But Candy was unrecognizable. How could she have known? I reached
for the .22 caliber Ruger in my pocket and cradled it in my hand. Once again,
I wanted to kill Salas. I wanted to see his body fall onto the floor and see
blood spurting from little holes in his massive brown torso and I wanted to
watch the spasms and cries of his death.
She
looked into my agitated face. “What’s wrong? You look like you’re fighting with
the Devil.”
I
loosened my grip on the pistol. I took my hand from my pocket and placed it
on her shoulder. I said, tenderly, not demanding, “Let’s make love.”
“The
doctor said to give it a rest Brad.”
“Don’t
worry.”
Afterwards,
she reminded me that I had promised to rent a little farmhouse in the hills
of Hayward and that I had also promised to buy a horse for her, even though
neither of us knew anything about horses.
I
hadn’t told her that I had almost a hundred thousand dollars in the bank from
the Fields Medal prize and from my investments, but I knew that she assumed
that I was rich anyway, because I was Rhonda Bradford’s
son.
She
got the telephone number of the landlord from her purse and I called him. We
drove to the place and I agreed to pay first and last month’s rent and a deposit.
The farmhouse was on three acres of land and there was a large barn on it. It
had a nice kitchen garden and I thought it was a steal at $350 dollars a month.
We
spent the whole day buying second hand furniture and carrying it to the farmhouse.
I spotted a brown and white 1957 Chevy Nomad for sale, parked on
I
was sitting in the apartment nursing a can of beer and Candy was at the farmhouse,
filling the waterbed when the telephone rang. I lifted the receiver. There was
no answer. I waited for a few seconds, and asked, gruffly, “Is this Salas?”
I heard heavy breathing. “You can’t scare me man. Don’t try.” My rib cage shook
with emotion. A woman’s voice said, “Brad. It’s Jeannette, Marlo’s
mother.”
“Oh.
I’m sorry. I...”
“Why
did you steal the pictures of me and Reverend Hollyfield?”
I
was stunned. After a few tense moments I said, “I didn’t steal them ... I wanted
to look at them. I was going to return them.”
“You
took them from the album.” Her voice was calm but edged with emotion. “Is there
something you want to tell me?”
“Jeannette.
I’m sorry for the trouble I’ve caused you. I really am.”
She
allowed a silence to gather and then said, “Marlo
swore to me the rape happened after you came into her life. Is she telling
the truth?”
“I
don’t understand what you mean.”
She
was silent.
I
didn’t know what else to say so I said, “She came to baseball practice. We kissed
on the lawn. That was all.”
“How
much do you know about Reverend Hollyfield and me?
What did Rhonda tell you?”
“Nothing.
She never mentioned you and I didn’t even know Hollyfield
had a daughter.”
“I
don’t believe you.”
“I
swear to you, ... Jeannette ... I’m telling the truth. But ... I discovered
some things... by myself.” I paused and took a deep breath. I knew that I would
be incapable of hiding the truth from her. “I discovered that Reverend Robert
Hollyfield is Marlo’s father.”
There
was a long silence. “OK so what else did the bitch tell you?”
“Nothing.
She didn’t tell me anything. I discovered it myself. It was a hunch.”
She
said, curtly, “We need to talk.”
“I
like Candy and Marlo both.”
“I
understand.” Her voice was husky and tired sounding. “Can you see me tonight?”
“Tomorrow
would be better.”
She
said, “Let’s meet out of town somewhere. Could you meet me in
“I’ve
got an appointment in
My
appointment was with Dr. Orenstein.
“
“No.”
“Do
you know where
“No.”
“You
don’t get around much do you?”
“What
do you mean?”
“
“Oh.
Yes, of course.”
“Why
don’t we meet in the Fior d’Italia, opposite
“Fine.”