Five Women Page 9

  It was oppressively hot and humid most of the year in Florida. The heat started in March, and went on until something even worse—hurricane season—came in the fall. Even the winter, when the tourists came pouring down to stay on Miami Beach, was too tropical for someone with Eve’s intrinsic heat of body and personality. The sweet-rotten smell of chicken shit, of the birds themselves, which she had taken for granted and ignored in her childhood, now nauseated her. The dry flapping of wings, the greedy clucking, the tiny, almost prehistoric heads with mean beaks and stupid eyes mocked her. She dreamed of her career, of escape.

  John’s parents refused to come to see the baby whom they felt had ruined their son’s youth, if not his life. They were hoping he would come to his senses and get divorced when a suitable time had passed, he told Eve. They had made him apply to college. He told her this not to hurt her but because he thought his parents were acting unnaturally, and he wanted her to agree with him that their marriage would only get better as time went by, and to stand by him. Eve didn’t reply. She was secretly glad they were on her side.

  No, she knew she was not maternal. There were girls only a little older than she who had married their high school sweethearts after graduation and were happily anticipating their first babies, surrounded by the love and approval of their family and friends. There was the crop from the year before, their infants in canvas carriers attached to their own bodies, wheeling their carts down the aisles of the supermarket, looking proud, buying paperback books on how to feed your baby while they scooped up jars of baby food and gallon jugs of milk. Those girls smiled shyly when people stopped to tell them their babies were cute. They would bend to kiss the downy head between their breasts, and then they would glow. When people told her Nicole was cute, and they always did, Eve just kept hoping they worked for a modeling agency so she could get the baby a commercial and make some money.

  She had already started sending Nicole’s pictures out to the local modeling agencies. A couple of them wrote back telling her the baby was very promising but too young, and to send photos later on. She filed the letters and called an employment agency about getting a job as a cocktail waitress in one of the big hotels on the beach, since she had been dieting and had her body back. John had been accepted at three colleges, but he was looking for a job instead. Eve knew she couldn’t wait any longer.

  “I want a divorce,” she told him. “I want you to go to college. I’m leaving this town anyway to get on with my sidetracked career.”

  He was appalled, upset, confused. He offered a compromise. He would go to the University of Miami and get a part-time job on the side so that nothing much would change. He couldn’t understand how she could give up so easily when they had a future together.

  “No, we have a future separately,” she told him. “Go to college. You deserve it. Forget me.” She did not add, although she thought it: I intend to forget you.

  He begged, reasoned, even wept. Eve was adamant, and finally he caved in. His parents were happy. She got complete custody because she was the mother, and didn’t ask John for anything because she didn’t want him to hold it over her. She told him if he didn’t come around butting in about her child care it would be easier for everybody, and to her surprise he agreed. Eve realized it had been her he had loved, not the idea of their little family. Another life lesson, she told herself philosophically.

  Her mother was concerned about the divorce, but understood. After all, she had encouraged her daughter’s independence all these years. She was only sorry Eve hadn’t asked John for money. She herself had nothing much to contribute financially, but she agreed to act as a part-time baby-sitter now that Nicole was older and not so much trouble.

  Every afternoon Eve left her mother with the baby, walked a mile and a half to the bus stop, rode the twenty miles to Miami Beach, put on her sexy little cocktail waitress uniform, and worked at the Queen of the Sea. It was a tourist hotel a little past its prime, where most of the male guests were too old and too married to pinch her, but rich enough to tip. This was God’s waiting room, someone told her. Mine too, she thought, but I’m not going to die.

  She kept a strict budget and stole whatever she could from the kitchen to take home. The money she would have spent for food went into her bank account, along with the remainder of her salary after minimal expenses and what she considered an unjust withholding tax. Nobody dressed nicely anymore, so she didn’t have to buy many clothes, and what she did buy came from thrift shops where she was able to cultivate her offbeat image. In a year she had enough saved for the down payment on a car.

  “I’m going to drive to L.A., Mom,” she said one day.

  “For how long?” her mother asked, thinking she meant it was a vacation.

  “I don’t know. I’ll send for Nicole.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m going to get established in Hollywood and then you can put her on a plane.”

  “She’s too young to travel alone, and you know it.”

  “She won’t be when I send for her.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” her mother exclaimed, upset.

  “Maybe I’ll be rich and then you can bring her out. Wouldn’t you like to see the studios?”

  “I don’t want to take care of my grandchild full-time at my age.”

  “You’re young.”

  “What happened to your job?”

  “It served its purpose.”

  “But what about your plans for Nicole to model?”

  “She can model in L.A. later. I can’t just sit around here.”

  “You never were a natural mother,” her mother said. “You never picked her up when she cried, you never played with her. You liked to fuss with her hair, but that was it.”

  Eve shrugged.

  “I understand your ambition, Eve, but this child is your responsibility. I took care of you, now you have to take care of her.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you had too much fun taking care of me, either,” Eve said matter-of-factly, but she was a little hurt.

  “I never had that luxury.”

  “Well, neither do I.”

  “It didn’t mean I didn’t love you,” her mother said.

  “I love her,” Eve said. Did she? She wasn’t sure. She didn’t feel the way other mothers did, that she knew. She wondered if her mother was just saying it, the way she was.

  She looked at her mother: a strong woman in overalls with her gray-streaked hair cropped short, a baseball cap on top of her head, steel-rimmed eyeglasses, no makeup, her skin leathery and wrinkled from years of smoking and being out in the blasting Florida sun, looking older than her years. She was a no-nonsense woman who had done what she had to do, but she still had dreams, if not for herself then for Eve. Eve had never given much thought to whether her home life was less loving than anyone else’s, or the same; it had always just been what it was. It was hard to blame her mother for much. She thought about her own nature. On the outside she seemed like a volatile and passionate person, but inside there was a core of coldness and probably it ran in her family. Her father had never even tried to keep in touch with her after the divorce except to send her a Christmas card with a dollar bill in it every year. He had obviously never heard of inflation. She got tips better than that. He also sent her a birthday card, but it usually came late. Everybody knew when Christmas was, but he couldn’t remember her birthday. They were well rid of him.

  “I promise it won’t be for long, Mom,” Eve said. “Just till I get an apartment and a job that pays enough for me to hire a baby-sitter. I know I’m going to be a star.”

  “I hope so too,” her mother said.

  The next day Eve left.

  It was an exciting adventure driving to Los Angeles, and when she got there she was very busy just trying to survive, as she had known she would be. She found a waitress job at the Confident Onion
, a health food restaurant on the Sunset Strip, she rented a tiny one-bedroom apartment in West Hollywood, she got lost and angry on the freeways, she went to open casting calls, and she tried to meet influential people, or just anybody. She had been prepared for hard work, but what she had not been prepared for was the terrifying, gut-wrenching loneliness. She had never lived alone before. She had thought it would be a wonderful relief, but to her amazement, it wasn’t.

  It was the first time in her life Eve had ever been scared. Every problem has a solution, she told herself. Her apartment was noisy, and at night she couldn’t sleep, listening to the cars going by and the people yelling on the street, congregating in front of the clubs and the coffeehouses. She put up with a few nights like that and then she was out on the streets with them. It was like a party, and she didn’t need much sleep anyway. She talked to strangers and made them into friends. Everybody loved everybody during those California nights in 1969. They gave each other flowers and wore love beads, and there was as much sex as you could possibly want. Eve started on the Pill and assigned herself a new project: a boyfriend.

  She met him at the Troubadour, a club where you could go to see acts. His name was Juan. John the Second, Eve thought, smiling to herself. She recognized a certain familiar passive streak in him that made her feel comfortable.

  He was dark and gorgeous and sexy, he was an aspiring actor, as she was, and he supported himself painting people’s houses. When he said he was a painter people often thought he meant he was an artist, but Eve knew right away what he meant. She didn’t mind at all. House painters made a lot more money than artists unless they were Robert Indiana or someone like that. She knew because she had a cheap reproduction of Indiana’s red, blue, and green LOVE poster on her living room wall like everybody else did. A week after they met Juan was living with her, contributing to the rent, painting her walls (for free, of course), and he was just as smitten with her as John the First had been.

  Juan was so good-looking that people sometimes wondered what he saw in her. Eve knew that and laughed to herself, because she knew what it was. It’s my energy, she thought. I’m the local Esso station. They come to my tank to be filled up. It was the first time she had really become conscious of what she now began to think of as her power. There was flower power, and people power, and now there was Eve Bader power. She was glad now that she had come to Hollywood, and felt more optimistic than ever.

  She called her mother once a week, before eight o’clock in the morning when the low night rates were still on. It was three hours later back home. “Things are good,” Eve would report. “I went to two go-sees this week and they liked me. I’m hoping they’ll call me back to read. I may have to get an agent. My friend Juan has an agent and I’m going to see her.”

  “You mention this Juan a lot,” her mother said, finally. “Is he your new boyfriend?”

  “Yes, for now.”

  “Are you living together?”

  “Of course not,” Eve lied. “What would make you think that?”

  “Somebody in your apartment coughs like a man and I know it’s not you.”

  Eve laughed. She felt closer to her mother now, far away from her, having their weekly phone calls, than she ever had living in the same house with her. “He keeps me from feeling so alone,” Eve said.

  “You wouldn’t be alone if you had your child with you,” her mother said. “She’s talking a lot now. You’re missing her development.”

  It had never occurred to Eve that she was missing anything. “I don’t have enough money yet,” she said.

  “Nicole keeps asking: ‘Where’s Mommy?’”

  “Tell her I’m in Hollywood trying to become a movie star, and when I am I’ll make her one, too.”

  “She’s so cute,” her mother said. “I’m sure you could get her a part in a movie.”

  “She’s too young,” Eve said. “For little kids they use identical twins.”

  “Twins?” her mother asked, confused. “I never see twins.”

  “Separately,” Eve said. She had become more knowledgeable and liked to impress her mother with inside information. “Little kids can only work limited hours in front of the camera, so they take turns.”

  “My goodness. Then it’s too bad you didn’t have twins.”

  “I hope that’s a joke,” Eve said.

  “It is.” They chuckled at each other. “Just do me a favor and don’t get pregnant again,” her mother said. “And that’s not a joke.”

  “I’m never going to be pregnant again,” Eve said, and she meant it. She had quickly learned you could get anything you wanted in Hollywood, including an abortion, not that she intended to need one, but it was comforting to know about all the same.

  “I have bad news,” her mother said. “Mayhem Two died.” Mayhem Two was the successor to Eve’s childhood cat, Mayhem, who had run out into the road and been killed by a car.

  “Died of what?” Eve asked, more surprised than brokenhearted.

  “He ran under the tractor.”

  “Ugh!”

  “I plowed him right into the field.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “Nicole is very upset. She keeps asking: ‘Where’s Mayhem?’ So many losses for a baby her age.”

  “I’m not lost,” Eve snapped. Where were you when I had my losses, she thought angrily. A father is a bigger loss than a cat. “You should get her another kitten right away,” she said. “A three-legged one, so he can’t get far.”

  “You’re still a character,” her mother said.

  “So are you.”

  Their phone calls always ended with her mother putting Nicole on the phone. “Mommy, come home,” she would say, but she didn’t sound sad. It was better this way, Eve thought. And it was temporary.

  The Confident Onion was quite a popular restaurant with music and movie people, particularly at lunch, because it was conveniently located and the food was good. Eve read the trades every day and was now able to recognize the people who might help her. There was a hot young screenwriter named Sophocles Birnbaum who came there often. He was a nerdy-looking little guy with glasses and bags under his eyes. The first time she found out who he was she introduced herself and gave him one of her head shots, which she always kept with her for encounters like this. “In case you’re writing a part that would be right for me,” she said.

  He put the photo into his folder of papers. “How’s the soup today?”

  “Good. It’s curry lentil. What’s your new movie about?”

  “I’ll have the soup,” he said.

  “Is it a comedy?”

  “Why?”

  “Duck Soup,” Eve said. “Get it?”

  “It’s not a comedy. It’s a road picture.”

  “I’d be great for a road picture,” Eve said brightly. “I’m like somebody you’d meet on the road. A lot of character parts in there, I bet. I played Lady Macbeth in high school. I have a lot of intensity.”

  “If you’re an actress,” Sophocles Birnbaum said, “why don’t you try playing a waitress?”

  “I’d be a perfect waitress.”

  “Right now, I mean,” he said.

  “Funnee,” Eve said cheerfully, undaunted, pointing her finger at him like a gun, and went off to get his soup.

  She liked that she had established a speaking relationship with him. He came in at least twice a week, usually alone. When he didn’t sit at her station she would go over to talk to him anyway. If she wasn’t busy she would perch on the banquette opposite him in his booth.

  “How’s the script coming?” she would ask. “Do you have a title yet? Are you writing a part for me? I don’t care how small it is. I’m willing to start small.”

  She read in the trades that the script was finished and they were starting casting. “Don’t forget me,” she would say now when she saw him. “Eve
Bader.”

  “I know your name.”

  “Just reminding you.”

  “I have to ask you something,” he said one day.

  “What?”

  “Are you kidding? I mean, are you putting me on?”

  “Why would I kid about something as important as this?”

  “Do you think I could eat a meal in peace if every actor who’s a waiter came over to ask me for a part? Think about it.”

  “If I didn’t ask you, how would you know I wanted one?”

  His regular waitress came over and glared at her, so Eve stood up. “I have an agent now,” Eve reminded him. “Beverly Kensington. See you later. Next time sit at my station.”

  That afternoon the manager suspended her. “I’d fire you, but he said not to,” the manager said. “He just said to make you leave him alone.”

  “I can’t believe he would say that,” Eve said, hurt.

  “Well, he did. You’re off for a week, without pay.”

  She used her free week to investigate acting classes. She didn’t think she really needed lessons, but Juan had told her class was a good place to make contacts. She had some money saved by now to pay for them. She decided to go to the acting school where Juan went, which was in a rundown-looking office space in a small building that housed spiritualists, fortune tellers, and a head shop that had incense burning all the time. The teacher was a failed actor. The whole room smelled of fear. Juan didn’t notice because he was so passive, but Eve thought there were negative vibes. She was sure of this when during the coffee break between people’s scenes she overheard one of the other girls telling her friends she was up to read for the new Sophocles Birnbaum movie.

  Eve called her agent the next morning and protested. “How could you not send me? He’s a friend of mine. We talk at least twice a week. He told me all about his movie.”