Beebo was shocked. After a moment she said, “Well, maybe you can’t love somebody you don’t know, even if he is your father. But aren’t you curious?”
“Oh, he’s probably a dirty dog like the rest of us. At least if I never meet him, I can pretend he’s something better.”
Beebo felt a stinging sympathy for him. “My father means a lot to me,” she said.
“How come you don’t live with him, then? You said he lived in Wisconsin. Did you run away, Beebo? You’re awful young to be on your own here. How come?”
He had scored a bull’s eye. She wondered how many years of lonely introspection it had cost Toby to become that perceptive; that quick to see the truth beneath the social tricks.
“I had some tough problems, Toby,” she said. She was suddenly so grave that he retreated from the subject, afraid of hurting her. Beebo was thinking what it would do to him to know that she was a Lesbian; how desperately he would worry about her and his mother.
“I’m not the dope Mom thinks I am,” he declared. “You can talk to me.”
“No, you’re no dope, but I am, for running away. And I’ll tell you something, buddy. Fathers are something special. Even yours.”
“Sure. He and Mom got together and manufactured me. Something special. A gorilla could have done the job better, Mom says. Or a test tube. Sometimes I think that’d be okay—a test tube. Then I’d never even have to know his name.”
Beebo felt a little like crying. But it would ruin her prestige with him. She swallowed and said, “He must write to you. Send you birthday presents, and things.”
“The only present he ever gave me was epilepsy,” Toby said in a flinty voice. “Mom says it came from his side of the family. So I haven’t much to thank him for. Do you know what that is—epilepsy?” He had said the word so many times there was no longer any drama in it for him.
“Your mom told me,” Beebo said. “Does it…make things rough for you? Like at school, with the other kids?”
“Not too bad,” he said. But she looked at his face and thought differently. It had made him shy and apologetic about himself, and, consequently, fiercely defensive. At any time, he might become a major source of inconvenience or even panic to his schoolmates, though the seizures hit him infrequently in their presence. Still, it was those times he remembered better than any others.
“Leo is good about it,” Toby said. “He’s a pretty good guy. I’d rather have him around than Mrs. Sack, even.”
“What’s Leo like?” Beebo said, suddenly afire to know.
“He stands up to Mom, if that’s what you mean. She hates him, naturally, but she respects him. Leo gave her her name. He knew her before anybody else in Hollywood. He was her agent, and he got her started.”
“What’s her real name?”
“Jean Jacoby.”
“That’s pretty…. Why won’t Leo divorce her?”
“He really loves her, I guess. Boy, what a glutton for punishment,” Toby marveled.
“If she hates him, why did she marry him?”
“Oh, she talked herself into a crush on all her husbands,” Toby said, and Beebo wondered who had explained it all to him with such authority…. Leo? Mrs. Sack? “They were all rich and good looking and married to somebody else till she came along. I think it was sort of a challenge.”
Beebo absorbed this in silence, disapproving and yet oddly amused. “What does Leo do?” She pictured him as a sort of legitimatized gigolo for his stunning wife.
“He’s a director now. He directs all her films. That’s why people think she’s an actress. He can get a performance out of her nobody else can. She hates to admit it, but she loves her reviews. If they ever did get divorced, she’d have to let him keep on directing.” His words made Leo Bogardus seem like more of a man than Beebo would have liked. She lighted a cigarette.
“Hey, can I have one too?” Toby said, with the light of friendly collusion in his eyes. “It’s okay, I’ve smoked before.”
She handed him her pack. “I’m contributing to the delinquency of a minor, you know,” she grinned. “It’s your fault, buddy. You’d better kick the habit before they haul me in.”
He did not inhale the smoke, but he was very pleased with himself, and with Beebo. He held the cigarette in a self-conscious imitation of a man’s gesture, taking a cautious mouthful occasionally and blowing it out with dreamy satisfaction.
“Do you get along with Leo, Toby?” Beebo asked.
“He’s been real decent to me. He does things with me, even when they’re things I don’t want to do. It’s nice of him…you know? And sometimes I end up liking the things I didn’t think I would. It’s funny…he tries to make them interesting. I guess you could say I like him.”
Beebo grinned at him, impressed by his adolescent acuity; and aware, despite his wary phrasing, that Leo was quite an influence in his life. “You’re pretty grown up for your age, aren’t you?” she said seriously, and made him smile at the flattery.
But his answer startled her. “I had to grow up,” he said, “with men climbing in and out of Mom’s bed while I played on the floor with my blocks.”
“God! Was it that bad?” Beebo said.
“They all thought I’d be the best adjusted kid for miles around,” he said with psychological detachment into a cloud of very grownup smoke. “I don’t know why all that stuff should embarrass me now that I’m nearly fifteen. I used to sit there and watch the whole show when I was little.” His face lengthened. “It never got to me then.”
Beebo saw the resentment on his face flash and alternate with confusion, even love, for Venus. She wondered how much Venus was trying to show her love for him these days, and if it was making Toby all the more suspicious of her.
“Toby,”
