CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“DO YOU MEAN IT?” she asked solemnly.
He nodded. “I mean it, all right. And while we’re at it, how do you feel about becoming a Catholic?”
She lowered her eyes to his chest. “I used to go to a Catholic church, once,” she said, without revealing when or where. “I could do it again.”
He relaxed. He tipped her eyes up to his. “I want to marry you.”
Her heart felt as if it could fly. “I want to marry you, too,” she whispered. “And live with you always.”
He drew her to his heart and held her there, wrapped up hungrily in his lean arms. His eye closed. “I’ve never had anyone of my own, except Mama. Now I’ve got you.”
“And I’ve got you.” She clung closer. Her eyes closed. God protect me from my own mother, she prayed silently. Make her go away, just for a little while, so that I can have just a taste of happiness and peace and love.
But Marlene didn’t go away. The letter was followed by another, later in the week. And even the delight of knowing that she and Curry had a future together didn’t soothe the wound of having Marlene back in her life again. Marlene wanted to come to New York, despite the increased amount of the check Ivory had sent by express mail. She wanted Ivory to pay for the ticket, too. And there were more veiled threats.
Ivory put her head in her hands. She’d just been interviewed for another magazine article. They were calling her the “crystal sensation.” She’d been invited to a famous couture house in Paris, to an exclusive showing. She was scheduled to do one of the best talk shows. Her designs were selling out in the stores. And just now, just when Curry wanted to marry her, just when she had it all...she could lose it all in a heartbeat. Because of Marlene.
“What will I do?” she asked aloud.
The answer was obvious; she’d do what she had to do. She’d pay for a round-trip ticket for Marlene, send her shopping and then send her home. Some luxuries might satisfy the woman for a time. At least, until she could plan against any future upsets.
The tricky part would be keeping Marlene from meeting Curry. But she should be able to manage that. She’d find reasons why he couldn’t come to her apartment, why she couldn’t go out with him. He was spending more and more time with his mother, anyway. Perhaps she wouldn’t even have to make excuses.
She sent Marlene the ticket. Then she waited anxiously, and with obvious trepidation, for her mother to make the trip up from Texas. All the while, she worried. Her apprehension was so great that it was noticed by everyone, especially by Curry.
“What’s bothering you?” he asked her at lunch, the very day her mother was scheduled to fly in to LaGuardia.
She managed a wan smile. “Oh, I’m just nervous about that new talk show they want me to go on,” she lied. “It’s controversial, you know. They like to dig for dirt.”
“What could they dig up about you?” he scoffed, touching her hand lightly. His dark eye looked warmly into hers. “You’re a crystal-clear pool. No dirt. No ugly secrets.”
She felt guilty and lowered her eyes before he could see what she was feeling. “No ugly secrets,” she echoed. In her mind were flashing pictures of herself as a ragged, but happy little sharecropper’s daughter playing in the freshly picked cotton with her friends, all black and Hispanic, in the autumn fìelds back in Texas. Being poor was a way of life in those days for many kids, of all colors. Even poor, she had her grandparents, who loved her. But they died. Then there, screaming drunken abuse at her, was Marlene in her red lipstick, with a drink in one hand and a lighted cigarette in the other. Marlene, haranguing her, laughing at her, telling lies about her to anyone who would listen. Back home, everybody believed those lies. Everybody thought that Ivory Costello was a petty criminal. Marlene had told them so.
“Come back,” Curry chided. “Where were you?”
In a nightmare, she could have said. One that might never end. She looked into his face and ached to tell him the truth, before it was too late. But he thought she was the product of a privileged upbringing. He thought she had a mother who loved her, a fine family name. What was he going to feel about her when he knew that she came from poverty even worse than he’d endured, and that she had an unwarranted but black reputation in the small town where she’d grown up? What if Marlene told him?
“I was just...thinking. About my mother,” she added, which wasn’t really a lie.
“When am I going to meet her?” he teased. “You’ve met mine. I want to get to know my future mother-in-law.”
She caught her breath. It was a natural enough question, but it gave her the shock of her life. She couldn’t ever introduce him to Marlene. It wouldn’t take more than a few minutes with Marlene to give the show away. Despite her traces of remaining beauty, Marlene had a Texas drawl and she dressed like a tramp. Her idea of haute couture was a dress cut to the navel with tassels; she smoked like a furnace, drank like a fish and her conversation could make a sailor blush.
“Well, she’s in Europe right now,” she began.
He scowled faintly. “Does she live there? Every time you mention her, she’s overseas.”
“We have relatives there. She stays with them.”
It sounded weak, and he looked suspicious.
Her fingers curled around his. “Will you take me to the opera?” she asked. “I’ve always wanted to go.”
He relaxed and began to smile. “There’s something we have in common. I love opera.”
The comment led to a lengthy discussion about composers and tenors that lasted until lunch was over.
Marlene’s plane was due to arrive at three forty-five, and it was impossible for Ivory to get away to meet her. She sent a limousine, with instructions to take Marlene straight to the apartment. She’d already phoned the apartment manager and arranged for Marlene to be let in.
But her plans went awry in the most extraordinary fashion. She became tied up in a business meeting. The car was late getting to the airport and didn’t arrive in time to meet the plane. Marlene, as usual, grew impatient and refused to wait. She hailed a cab and had it take her to the offices of Kells-Meredith.
Just after a viciously angry Marlene strode into the building and demanded to see her daughter, Curry Kells came in the front door. He and Marlene arrived at Ivory’s office at the same time.
“Allow me,” he said politely, and opened the door, wondering who the woman was. She looked vaguely like one of the street people. She was wearing a tight, cheap suit, shoes with run-down heels and a green silk jacket. Her long hair, worn in a French twist, was fastened with a rhinestone clip, and she was coated with enough makeup to furnish a drama department. She reeked of cheap perfume. He couldn’t imagine what such a woman would want with Ivory, unless this was one of the women from the shelter where Ivory and Dee volunteered. He was about to ask her when Ivory’s head lifted from some sketches she was showing to two of the salesmen.
“M...Mother!” she stammered.
Curry had never been lost for words in his life. He was now. In one word, Ivory had made a liar of herself. If this was her mother—and now he did see a resemblance—then everything she’d told him about her background was false. This woman was no Louisiana socialite, nor was she from any impeccable European background.
He looked at Ivory and saw her face go as pale as the paper in her shaking hands.
“So there you are,” Marlene said, containing her temper. It had occurred to her that the man standing next to her in that expensive suit was some important person in the company. She couldn’t afford to rage at Ivory. “You forgot me, didn’t you, dear?” she asked plaintively, and looked up at Curry with sad, resigned eyes. “She doesn’t like her friends to know about me. She’s ashamed of her poor old mama, aren’t you, honey?”
Curry, whose own mother was second best to a saint, couldn’t conceive of any other sort. He stood stiffly beside Marlene, with his unbelieving eyes on Ivory.
“I sent a car, Mother,” Ivory said uncomfortably.
“Did you, honey? It wasn’t there.” She shifted her purse in her hands. Every finger except the thumb wore a cheap costume ring. “It’s all right. I got a cab. It’s waiting downstairs. Could you let me have some money to pay the driver, and get my bags out?” she asked sweetly.
“I’ll attend to it,” Curry said. He took another look at Marlene, and then at Ivory, and walked out without another word.
Ivory felt sick. The salesmen and even Dee were giving her covert looks. She’d planned so meticulously to prevent her mother from coming here. But her plans had backfired. Curry’s face had said everything. He knew she was a liar. He’d think she was ashamed of her mother, and he’d hold her in contempt for it, because he knew nothing about Marlene. All he knew was that he’d been lied to, by the woman he loved.
“Why don’t you go home with your mother, Ivory?” Dee asked gently. “I’ll carry on here. I’m sure you want to visit.”
Ivory glanced at her, but there were doubts in her friend’s face, too. It was the past all over again. Marlene was framing her.
“Yes, dear, we have so much to talk about,” Marlene said, smiling at everyone. “So, this is where you work! How exciting. I didn’t know... She never writes or phones me,” she explained gently to Dee. “I had to beg her to let me come, so I could see where she lives, and make sure she’s all right. She’s the only family I got, you know.”
Ivory flushed. Lay it on with a trowel, Marlene, she was thinking.
Marlene looked at her tall daughter and smiled. It was a smug, cold smile, but the others couldn’t see Marlene’s eyes.
“Let’s go home, then, Mother.”
“Aren’t you going to introduce me to these nice people, Ivory?” Marlene asked, rubbing it in.
“Of course.” She made the introductions, and Marlene charmed the whole group. By the time she left with her daughter, Ivory felt two inches high.
When they were in the hall on the way to the front door, Marlene gave her a cold glare.
“You got what you asked for, leaving me standing at that airport like a country hick!” she raged. “You didn’t send a car!”
“I did,” Ivory said through her teeth. “It’s probably still there waiting for you. He was to hold up a sign with your name on it. Did you even look for one?”
Marlene’s chin lifted. “There was a sign with ‘Keene’ on it,” she said with a sarcastic smile. “My name is Costello. So was yours, until you decided to change it and start everyone talking.”
Ivory stepped back at the revolving door to let her mother go through. She wondered how she was going to manage to get through the visit without screaming. In the back of her mind was the fear of what Curry would think of her now, and what he might do. She’d lied to him. He knew it. How could she ever explain it away?
She took Marlene to the apartment in a cab, because that was now an affordable expense. As they entered the small but tidy rooms, Marlene gave her surroundings a cold appraisal.
“Well, it ain’t the Ritz,” she drawled. “But I guess it could be worse.”
“There’s a bedroom,” Ivory said. “You can sleep there. I’ll sleep in the living room.”
Marlene turned and looked at her, her eyes lingering on the pale blue suit with a patterned blue scoop-necked blouse that Ivory was wearing. “Don’t you look elegant,” she said. “In that fancy suit, using that polished accent. Who was the one-eyed man in your office?”
“Curry Kells,” she said. “My boss.”
“He looked shocked when he realized who I was. What did you tell him about me, Ivory?” she demanded.
She put her purse on the end table. “I told him my people were a well-to-do Louisiana family, and that my mother was visiting in Europe,” she said flatly, glaring at Marlene. “Not that he’ll believe it anymore. Not after he’s seen you.”
Marlene’s eyebrows rose. “Backtalk? I’m amazed. You never talked back at home.”
“What good would it have done?” Ivory asked wearily. “You’d tell a lie even when the truth would suit better. Why did you have to come here and ruin everything for me?” she demanded. “Why couldn’t you have taken the money I sent and stayed home?”
“I saw your picture in that magazine and read that article,” Marlene said, shaking with anger. “You didn’t even tell them your real name. You put on airs and made yourself out to be some rich socialite, didn’t you? Well, it was a lie, and your boss knows it now, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, thanks to you. What if he fires me?” she continued, facing her parent with cold contempt. “There won’t be any money to send you then, will there?”
Marlene scoffed. She reached for a cigarette and lit it, ignoring Ivory’s glare. She pulled up a pretty candy dish to catch her ashes. “He won’t fire you for lying,” Marlene said carelessly. She looked around again. “You’ve spent a lot of money fixing this place up, haven’t you?” She reached out and lifted a silver-framed photo of Curry and laughed mirthlessly. “Well, well, so that’s how it is. He’s your lover, is he?”
Ivory’s face drew in. “What he is doesn’t concern you.”
“You’re my little girl,” Marlene taunted. “Of course it concerns me. I want to know what his intentions are.”
“He wanted to marry me until an hour ago,” Ivory said.
Marlene’s eyebrow jerked. “If he loves you, he still will.”
Ivory wrapped her arms around her chest and laughed. “Oh, sure,” she said. “He’ll be rabid to marry me when he finds out what I really am: the daughter of a sharecropper and the town drunk!”
Marlene’s hand shot out and caught Ivory’s cheek viciously. “Don’t you ever call me that again!” she spat, her pale blue eyes blazing. “Don’t you talk that way! I’m no drunk!”
Ivory touched her cheek, amazed that the violence didn’t affect her as it always had before. She looked at her mother and really saw her for the first time. Why, Marlene was all bluff. It was an act, that maniacal rage. She knew exactly what she was doing, but she was pretending to be out of control, to make Ivory afraid.
The younger woman pulled herself to her full height and dropped her hand to her side. “Feel better now?” she asked with deceptive softness. “Try that again and see what happens.”
Marlene’s instincts bristled. She restrained the hand that wanted to deliver a second blow, because Ivory’s eyes were telling her that it would be returned, with interest.
“You’ve changed,” she said.
Ivory’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve had to,” she said. “You made me into the town joke. I was laughed at and taunted and ridiculed and held in contempt because of the lies you told. I got out. Nobody laughs at me here, and nobody thinks I’m lower than dirt.”
“Yet,” Marlene said, making a veiled threat of it.
“Oh, you did a little damage today,” Ivory conceded. “But nothing irreversible.”
“Think so?” The older woman finished her cigarette and ground it out viciously, her long red fingernails curled around the stub in a death grip. “Wait and see.” She looked up. “You’re going to make me over,” she said. “I want new clothes, a stylish haircut, a manicure and some things for my face. I want a new coat, too—a mink, maybe.”
“Where will you wear a mink in Texas?” Ivory asked coldly.
“In department stores,” Marlene replied. “It’s your fault I never got anything. When your papa knocked me up, his folks and mine made me marry him,” she said with pure venom. “I gave up all my dreams to look after you.”
“You never looked after me!” Ivory shot back. Her fists were clenched by her sides as years of anguish tumbled past her lips. “You never cared what I did! After Papa died, you had one boyfriend after another until your last rich man took you on. And they made my life hell!”
“You asked for it,” Marlene said haughtily. “Parading around in tight jeans and low-cut blouses!”
“They were all I had! Your castoffs!” she choked. “You let them handle me...!”
Marlene let out an angry breath. “Don’t carry on so,” she snapped. “You weren’t raped or anything.”
“I was handled!” Her lower lip trembled as she stared with wounded eyes at her mother. “You can’t imagine how repulsive men were to me because of that. And you laughed about it, so drunk you could hardly sit up at all, you and your lecherous boyfriends!”
“You’re exaggerating, as usual.” Marlene refused to argue. She lit another cigarette. “I want to go shopping tomorrow,” she said. “Then we can go out to eat, somewhere fancy.” Her pale eyes lit up. “21, maybe, or Sardi’s.”
“Wrong decade,” Ivory said tersely. “Try The Four Seasons.”
Marlene shrugged. “Whatever.” She turned on the television and moved the dial to the shopping channel, grinning as she saw the merchandise being offered. “Look, isn’t that pretty!”
She sat down, captivated by the screen, while Ivory stood beside her and watched her watch television. Marlene wasn’t a conversationalist. She liked soap operas and talk shows, and not much else. When she wasn’t glued to the television screen or having her hair done at the beauty parlor, she was reading pulp magazines or drinking. She had no intellectual life and very little social life because her looks no longer attracted men.
Ivory could have wept as she studied the other woman and compared her to Curry’s fiercely loving mother who would have sacrificed anything for her children. Marlene wouldn’t have given up a bottle of nail varnish to buy a carton of milk for a hungry infant.
“Didn’t you ever want me?” Ivory asked aloud in a hushed tone.
“What?” Marlene wasn’t listening. “Look at this watch, Ivory. I sure would love to have one like that. I’ll look when we’re out shopping. Get me a drink.”
“I don’t have anything alcoholic.”
“Then go out and buy me a bottle!” Marlene snapped. “I’m not going without my gin.”
Ivory grabbed her purse and went out the door, blind and deaf as she stalked down the hall with cold resignation. Neighbors called to her but she didn’t answer. Her mind, like her spirit, was tied in knots.
She tried to phone Curry but he wouldn’t talk to her. His secretary at work, and then his valet at the apartment, gave her the same message over and over until she finally accepted defeat and stopped trying.
“Won’t the big boss talk to you?” Marlene asked, hefting another slug of gin to her mouth. “Poor baby!”
“Why don’t you get help?” Ivory asked as she looked down at the woman who had borne her. “Don’t you even realize that you have a drinking problem?”
“This isn’t a problem! It’s the solution.” Marlene toasted her before she swallowed, smiling dizzily. “It feels good. I can’t do without it, and I don’t have to. I’ve got you to take care of me.” She lay back in the chair with a satisfied sigh. “You don’t want me to tell your friends that you neglect me.”
“Why not?” Ivory said heavily. “You’ve been telling people that all my life.”
“All your fault,” Marlene said heavily. “Never wanted to get married, never wanted to get pregnant. You made me get married. You ruined my life!”
“You let it happen!” she shot back, sick of being accused for something she hadn’t done. “You did! You could have said no, couldn’t you?”
Marlene blinked. It wasn’t like Ivory to talk back. This was an odd situation. She frowned. “He said he’d buy me a new dress if I let him,” she explained. “A pretty one, with embroidery on the hem.”
Ivory folded her arms over her breasts. “That’s why I’m here? Because you wanted a new dress?”
“More or less.”
“Didn’t you love Dad?”
“For about ten minutes, I did,” Marlene said, laughing at her little joke. “But he was always in a hurry. I never even had any fun doing it with him.” She sprawled her arms. “Now Larry could make love!” she said, recalling her rich boyfriend. “And he bought me pretty things. But he died.” She lifted her head and looked at Ivory. “So now, you can take care of me.”
“Why can’t you take care of yourself?” Ivory asked her.
Marlene’s eyes widened as if this were some foreign language. “What?”
“Get a job,” Ivory said. “Go to work.”
“What would I do? Pick cotton?” she chided.
“Why not? You made me do it,” Ivory returned coldly. “You put me to work on your boyfriend’s place with the day laborers and took off for Corpus Christi with him on a fishing trip!”
“Hard work never hurt anybody.”
“You’d know all about that!” Ivory could hardly breathe through her anger. “But what you didn’t know was that I felt like part of a family with those people. The Gonzalezes taught me how to speak Spanish like a native, and the Joneses treated me like one of their own kids.”
“Don’t I know it!” Marlene said with contempt. “You didn’t even think of yourself as white when you started to high school. Always sitting with the colored children and the Mexican kids instead of your own kind!”
“Careful, Mother dear,” Ivory said coolly. “These days, it’s not politically correct to spew racial hatred. In fact, it can get you into a lot of trouble in New York City.”
Marlene made a sound in her throat. “Naturally!” She sat up. “Tell me, honey, do you mix with that sort up here? Or do you play the rich society girl to the hilt, right down to avoiding everybody who doesn’t belong to a country club?”
Ivory thought about the shelter and Tim and his mother and sisters, and Mrs. Payne, and the other people who lived there. She didn’t even bother to answer Marlene. It didn’t matter. The woman was three sheets to the wind already and getting stiffer by the minute. Eventually she’d start falling down and then she’d be sick, and then she’d sleep. It was the old pattern, all over again. Ivory had never felt so alone or so frightened, despite the fact that she was coping better than ever before. She wanted Curry in her most desperate hour, but Curry wouldn’t even speak to her.