Platinum Doll. Anne Girard

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СКАЧАТЬ tipped his head, and she knew that he had heard the change in her tone. “Like what?”

      “Oh, gosh, I don’t know, just something to do with my days, that’s all.”

      He ran a hand behind her neck and gently pulled her close so that he could kiss her again. It was so tender and sweet between them just then that she felt badly admitting to him that she could ever need anything else but his love and their marriage.

      “Something more than keep our home and cook those wonderful meals you do?”

      “I’m a horrible cook.”

      “You are not.”

      “Well, you are biased.”

      She smiled as he caressed her neck with skillful fingertips, but she pulled away from him suddenly, sat back up and busied herself with pouring a second cup of lemonade. This was not the place for them to get carried away with more than a few kisses.

      “What do you do when you’re gone from the house?” Harlean asked.

      “I just knock around with the guys here and there, whatever they’re doing. No big deal. Got to stay in their good graces, you know. What’s with the third degree, doll?”

      “I’m just curious.”

      But of course it was more than that. She didn’t want to believe he had a serious problem with drinking, but his behavior with his new friends, and what happened on the cruise, had startled her enough to put the thought into her mind. She couldn’t help but worry now every time he took a drink because she saw that it changed him.

      After lunch Chuck took the picnic basket back to the car. Then they hiked along the trails up through the hills of the park where they talked about a bit of everything, and nothing, as young couples do. As they wandered, she told him the vision she had for decorating their house, and then he proposed the possibility of taking a trip up the coast to Santa Barbara. Later, she asked him whether he’d yet been convinced of the beauty of poetry through reading the Keats volume together in the evenings. Harlean loved how he could make her laugh one minute, and say something poignant the next. She liked to think they could talk about anything, yet she still could not make herself tell him about the dare. Besides, flattering as it was, it wasn’t going to come to anything. Dave Allen had been polite but there really had been nothing more to it than that.

      They held hands on the way back down to the car just as the afternoon air began to cool and the trees around them bristled.

      “I need a long hot bath when we get home. I’m sore from all this walking,” she said.

      “I’ll scrub your back.”

      “Chuck!” She gave him a slight smile.

      “The privileged life of a happily married man,” he declared, looking to her in that moment much older than he really was. Even when he smiled, there was always that deep sadness behind his eyes. Tragedy had a way of doing that to people, she thought, suddenly sorry she had never gotten to meet his parents. She had a feeling Chuck was a lot like them, and she found herself hoping they would have liked her.

      * * *

      Later that evening, after the dinner dishes were done, when Chuck himself surrendered to a bath she had drawn for him, Harlean had a moment to herself and picked up the telephone. While she had her mother’s aunt Jetty nearby out in Long Beach, who she could telephone from time to time when she got lonely, she had longed for days to make a call home.

      “Oh, Baby, it’s so wonderful to hear your voice.”

      “Yours, too, Mommie. You’ll never guess what happened, not in a million years!

      “It really was the strangest thing.” She lowered her voice and cupped her hand around the heavy black phone receiver as she explained about Dave Allen.

      In response, her mother gasped. “You’re joking! Why, that’s absolutely wonderful!”

      “No one will call me of course, but I had to tell you about it.”

      “Of course you did, my sweet baby girl. We tell each other everything. I’d have been hurt if you didn’t!”

      Harlean felt herself relax just hearing her mother’s voice and the urge to confess further grew.

      “I told them my name was Jean Harlow. I’m not sure why I did it. Maybe so Chuck wouldn’t have to know for now.”

      “Sounds like you’re dealing with the same jealous Charles,” her mother said flatly. The dig at Chuck notwithstanding, Harlean still felt a familiar surge of longing for her mother’s company. She never realized so fully until they spoke again after a few days’ absence, just how much she missed their tender mother-and-daughter confidences.

      Harlean could hear a sudden muffled exchange with a man on the other end of the line, her mother’s hand over the receiver. “You know, as it happens, Baby, Marino and I have been talking about taking a trip out to California ourselves, maybe staying awhile.”

      She could hardly contain her joy at the prospect. Her dislike of her stepfather paled in comparison to her overpowering love for her mother.

      Her father and slick Marino Bello were polar opposites. Mont Clair Carpenter, a prosperous dentist, had tried to give his beautiful blonde wife everything in order to keep her happy. As the marriage began to fall apart, he had worked hard just to keep her. In the end, no amount of money was able to do that. The fact that her mother had replaced her quiet, tenderhearted father with a huckster like Marino was as foul a thing as Harlean’s romantic mind could conjure. But her mother loved him, so Harlean had resolved long ago to keep her silence about him.

      “Well, that would be really wonderful. I mean, if it’s no trouble for Marino.”

      “Don’t be silly, Baby. Marino loves you as if you were his own daughter.”

      She didn’t believe Marino really loved anyone other than himself, but as usual, she resisted saying it for her mother’s sake.

      “And while I’m there, I can go with you on auditions. After all, I do know my way around the studios, so things will go so much more smoothly for you, my darling Baby. Fear not,” Jean Harlow Bello exclaimed, “Mother will be there soon.”

       Chapter Six

      Things were going so well between them that Harlean still hadn’t found the courage to tell Chuck about the impending visit by her mother and Marino. She and Chuck sometimes spent long, lazy mornings reading the newspaper together with breakfast in bed, and wonderful afternoons—when he wasn’t with the boys—ambling through quaint antiques shops in Santa Monica, hunting for special pieces to accent their home. She only wished it could be more often. In the evenings, they often played backgammon, or cards with Rosalie and Ivor. But her hesitation over revealing the visit sooner than she must was not without reason. Chuck found Jean Bello overbearing and controlling. And despite Harlean’s best efforts, he could not be swayed to see what it was that she loved so much about her mother.

      A yipping sound, a high-pitched bark, woke her very suddenly one morning, a few days after their hike through Griffith Park. Harlean СКАЧАТЬ