“God, how dreadful to be fourteen,” Venus said, gazing at her son pityingly. “I don’t know how I lived through it myself.” She ate for a minute quietly while Beebo plotted an escape. “I’ll have to tell Leo about this; it’s really marvelous,” Venus said, cutting another bite.
“Leo’s her husband,” Toby said, making a face.
“You’d think they loathed each other,” Venus said, glancing at Beebo. “Actually, Toby gets along better with Leo than with any of the others.”
“It’s a good thing I get along with him, because you sure don’t,” Toby flared, to the accompaniment of horrified shushings from Mrs. Sack.
“One more crack like that and you can leave the table,” Venus said sharply. “God! What do you do with children that age?”
“I don’t know. What do they do with you?” Beebo said.
Toby turned to her with an amazed grin.
“And how old are you, darling?” Venus asked Beebo, her eyes shining through their black fringe like hard chips of sapphire.
“Fourteen,” Beebo said, and evoked a chuckle of relief from Toby. Beebo smiled at him, and suddenly they were in league; two friendly conspirators subverting Venus’s authority.
“I’d have said twelve, to judge from your table manners,” Venus cooed.
And unruffled, she continued eating, giving Beebo a chance to study her surreptitiously. Her face had been called the most perfect in the world when she was a starlet twenty years before. And still she was very lovely, even without make-up on her face. The lines about her eyes and mouth were faint and fine. You had to look for them, and somehow they made her beauty the more poignant, emphasizing as they did the perishability of human loveliness. She was probably in her late thirties, Beebo guessed.
“Tell me, darling,” Venus said unexpectedly, startling Beebo. “Do you live in town somewhere with your mommy and daddy? I mean, surely a fourteen-year-old child isn’t out delivering pizzas for a living.”
“I live in town,” Beebo said. “My father lives back in Wisconsin.”
“How primitive,” Venus said, with a smile that told Beebo she was aware of her own oversophisticated nonsense. She made it rather charming. “Just one father?” she said. “Toby has six.”
“That must be a record,” Beebo said quietly, trying to focus on her food.
“It’s Mother’s record, not mine,” Toby said. “As far as I’m concerned, you can throw all six in the East River. All but Leo, anyway.”
“Darling!” his mother cried, more amused this time than angry, perhaps because she shared his view. “After all the lovely presents they’ve given you, too.”
Beebo watched her curiously. Venus was not dense or callow. But her glamour and her fortune obviously hadn’t spared her the problems of raising a pubescent boy. Most mothers approached their kids with a mixture of love, common sense, and frazzled tempers. Venus approached hers with all the gorgeous razzle-dazzle, passion, and impatience that made obedient slaves of the older men in her life.
Toby, at fourteen, was supposed to react with the fascination of an adult male three times his age for a beautiful and tempestuous woman.
If he ever does, Venus will get the shock of her life, Beebo thought with amusement.
Instead, of course, Toby lashed out at her in frightened confusion. He loved her very much, but he was afraid and overawed, and bitter about the life she made him lead.
He wanted a mother comfortably middle-aged and unpretentious, like other people’s mothers. Instead, he had what other people thought they wanted: a glittering courtesan who couldn’t kiss him at night for fear of smudging her mouth, who took him on vacation trips with her lovers while her husband—and Toby’s friend, Leo—stayed behind in Hollywood.
Beebo sensed much of this in the pointed wordplay between mother and son. Their mutual love stood aside, forlorn and unexpressed, while they took out their grievances against one another.
Beebo stood up to leave as soon as she decently could.
“Heavens, you’re not going!” Venus protested.
“I have a heavy date,” Beebo smiled. “Thanks very much, Miss Bogardus.”
“You’re welcome. Who’s the lucky boy?”
Beebo frowned uncomprehendingly at first, till she realized Venus meant her date. “Oh,” she said, humiliated to know she was blushing. “Just an old friend.”
“Bring him around.”
Beebo began to stammer excuses and Toby came to her rescue. “Let her go, Mom,” he said, ashamed of Venus, as usual. He liked Beebo for taking his side; for making him laugh and getting one up on his mother. And it galled him to see Venus tease her. He was not too young to see how uncomfortable Beebo was. When Venus turned to him with a dangerous smile, he said, “I just wish you’d act like a mother now and then.”
“Why, I act like a mother twenty-four hours a day,” she said innocently. “I am a mother. There sits the proof, eating his pizza like an absolute boor.” She turned elegantly to Beebo, who had just noticed her dainty bare feet under the table. “All right, darling, go. But do come again some time,” Venus said.
Beebo smiled her thanks and got as far as the door before Venus called her again. Her voice, even though Beebo half expected it, sent a wave of shivers down her back.
“I forgot to ask,” Venus said. “What’s your name? I mean, so we’ll know when we order peerless pasta again.”
Toby had had it. Venus was practically flirting with Beebo. He clambered over Mrs. Sack and started out of the kitchen. Venus turned in her seat and said, “Damn it, Toby, you come back here!” Her eyes sparkled.
“What for?” he said blackly.
“To finish your dinner.”
“I’ve lost my appetite, Mother.” He glanced at Beebo and added, “I apologize for my mother. I hope you don’t have a rotten impression of us.”
“Not at all,” Beebo said, moved by his distress, his anxious efforts to protect her opinion of them. She wondered if he had any friends at all up here in his gilded cage. A Manhattan apartment isn’t the ideal place to raise a spirited boy.
Mrs. Sack rose to her feet clucking, but Venus waved her down. “Oh, the
