you say 5633, lady?” The driver’s voice startled her.
“Yes, 5633 Laurel,” she managed to say. Impatiently she checked her watch. Two-fifteen A.M. Bebe looked up and saw that the driver was half slumped onto the front seat. “Could you please use the gas pedal with some authority?” she whined. “I’d really like to get home as soon as possible.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and sullenly pressed his foot down on the gas. His passenger’s furtive swigs from the silver flask had not passed unnoticed. Snippy, boozin’, society dame, he said to himself.
Less than five minutes later the cab driver turned onto the long driveway and brought the car to a grinding halt in front of the large, stately mansion. “Fifty-six thirty-three Laurel, lady. It doesn’t look like anyone is awake,” he said matter-of-factly, and shifted on his seat to stare at her. “That’ll be fifteen dollars.”
Bebe handed him a twenty-dollar bill. “Keep the change,” she said magnanimously.
The driver glanced at the twenty, then at her, and sniffed his displeasure. “If you want your bags carried inside, that’s an extra five dollars,” he said boldly.
“All right,” Bebe said wearily as she fished around in her purse for another bill. All she found was a wad of twenties crunched in a ball. When she handed him one and was rewarded with a smile, she decided not to ask for her change.
It was no surprise to her that the house was still the same even though she’d been gone for three months. It was always the same. Only she changed; each time she returned she was different in one little way or another. It took some effort, but she straightened her back as she climbed the steps.
“Just leave the bags by the door,” she said to the driver.
“My pleasure, lady,” he said tartly, setting down the six suitcases in relief. Tipping his hat politely, he clambered into his cab and slowly drove down the long driveway. When he looked into his rearview mirror at the still, dark house, the woman was gone.
The door closed behind Bebe with a loud click. It would be nice to have a dog or a cat to welcome her home, she thought, at least something warm and alive. The servants would be asleep, of course, and the children were elsewhere; and certainly her husband didn’t care when and if she ever came home.
Some of the other arrivals she had made to this house flashed through her mind. The day she’d arrived with her infant son Simon, for example, under Reuben’s armed guard—bodyguards he had hired to dog her every step after he was informed that she was drinking and smoking dope in her last weeks of pregnancy. It didn’t matter to Reuben that she’d begun to abuse her body because of him—because she’d realized that he really didn’t care about her health, only the baby’s.
Or the morning she had come back to plead with him to help her after she had witnessed her lover accidentally kill his wife. Reuben had tried to make her feel guilty for her infidelity—had even asked her if it had all been worth it. At the time, anything was worth not feeling as dead inside as she felt with him.
God! What’s the use of thinking about all this, she asked herself wearily. It’s all water under the bridge.
Drunk and weepy, Bebe crept into the house like a thief in the night. It wouldn’t do to wake the master and have him see her like this again and so soon. Not in the house he’d magnanimously allowed her to live in after they had both realized that their marriage was a total and unsalvageable disaster.
Bebe looked down at her travel bags, beautiful calf leather, battered and scuffed now, mute testimony to her wanderlust. Reuben had told her once that the household was happiest when she was away. And she believed him. Lately she always believed Reuben. It was easier that way. Picking up her makeup case, she made her way up the stairs to the bedroom she’d taken for herself. It was a pretty room, decorated in periwinkle blue and white. The double bed welcomed her. The blue-and-white satin spread was the same, the shams artfully arranged against the white headboard. The crisp organdy curtains looked as though they’d been freshly laundered, and the flowers, bright red roses, Reuben’s roses, were fresh, too.
Had Reuben placed them on her night table, she wondered. Instantly she realized that the thought was too silly for words. Reuben didn’t care if she lived or died, so he certainly wouldn’t place his precious roses on her nightstand.
Bebe was dressed in the latest fashion; everything about her shrieked of elegance and wealth, thanks to her husband’s generosity. She’d been beautiful once, with clear green eyes and a lovely heartwarming smile. But the clear eyes were dull now and coated with garish makeup; the heartwarming smile was forced and oddly cold. Her hair was bleached these days, the ends dry and frizzled, the roots a dirty blond streaked with gray. Somehow, though, she’d managed to maintain her figure, which was soft and womanly. She dieted constantly, nibbling on things like toast, celery, and tiny bits of chicken, preferring to drink her calories in the form of liquor. Of course, she smoked too much, both tobacco and marijuana, and her fingers were stained yellow with nicotine. The physical abuse she’d subjected her body to over the years had finally taken its toll. The fine lines around her eyes were deeper now, the slight droop at her mouth more noticeable with her thinness. She’d even noticed wrinkles on her earlobes.
Bebe Rosen was no longer the beautiful woman she’d once been.
Tired as she was, Bebe knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep, so she began to search the old hiding places for a bottle. It took her four tries before she found what she was looking for. Holding her prize aloft in mock victory, she walked out onto the tiny wrought-iron balcony. The half moon was still brilliant, and the sprinkling of stars overhead winked down upon her. Welcoming me home, Bebe thought inanely.
She kicked off her shoes and peeled down to her slip and stockings, throwing her blouse and skirt over her shoulder into the room. The cool breeze offered comfort to her body—but not to her mind.
There’d been times in the past when she’d felt alone and lonely, but never like this. The end of the road. So why did she stay? Why did she go off on what Reuben referred to as her toots? Surely she didn’t still love him. The children were seldom home and never needed her anyway, so she couldn’t use them as an excuse. Reuben didn’t want her, and she didn’t think she wanted him any longer.
For so long now she’d been trying to come up with a name or a term to describe her relationship with Reuben. Now she knew what it was. It had come to her as she was paying the cab driver downstairs. Parasitic—Reuben fed off her, and she fed off him in many ugly ways. Her whole life was ugly. She was forty years old, and all she had to show for it was a guest bedroom in a house owned by a husband who didn’t love her, two children who didn’t need her, and a host of rich and worthless acquaintances. Not a true friend in the bunch. Bebe drank from the bottle in her hand.
So many unanswered questions…Why did she drink so much? Why did she take drugs? Why wasn’t she a better mother? Why couldn’t she find peace and love? Why?
She wanted to sleep—she needed sleep. But the only way she could do that when she got like this was to smoke marijuana. She lurched into the bedroom, her hands groping hungrily through her makeup case. She pulled from it all the items needed to roll a fat one, then did so with trembling fingers. The first drag was always the best. As she felt it spread through her body and rush to her brain, she sat on the floor of the room and pulled a pillow from the bed to hold against her chest, her eyes heavy, a smile playing about her lips. She imagined the face of her mother and then began to cry when she realized it was not her mother’s face at all, but the face of her aunt Mickey.
“I
