Beebo understood from his answer how little aware he was of his mother’s relationship with her. He had grown to trust Beebo, as well as like her, and as far as he knew, she was there only to help out with the horses during the day and look over his homework at night. The fact that she had been able to encourage Venus and Toby to try to know and respect each other at last was the frosting on the cake.
But after he went to bed, Beebo would go to Venus’s room. They were lovers at night, but during the day, if Venus was home, she had to be as breezy and casual with Beebo as she was with everybody else.
As for Leo, Beebo didn’t meet him for nearly a week. He got up at six A.M. and left the house by seven, before Beebo was stirring. He looked in on her with Venus once. Beebo was awakened early by the click of the bedroom door shutting behind him. But when she asked Venus about it, Venus only said, “I told him you were a farm kid. He likes that it makes you a sort of walking health exhibit.”
“Does he like the fact that I’m a girl?”
“Not a bit,” Venus said with a grin, refusing to spoil the moment by elaborating.
Beebo dodged around squads of empty orange-juice glasses for several days with the eerie feeling that the ghost who emptied them would come cackling out of the rafters at her before long.
The night they finally met, Beebo had been living under Leo’s roof for over two weeks, using his hospitality without ever having seen or spoken to him.
She was sitting in the huge recreation room with Venus and Toby, watching TV and listening to Venus tell about the casting problems, wardrobe, scripts she had read.
Beebo commented quietly, “It takes up your whole life, doesn’t it?”
Venus looked at her anxiously. “You’re lonesome during the day, aren’t you, darling?” She threw a guarded glance at Toby, but he spoke without taking his eyes off the TV screen: “What do you mean, lonesome, Mom? She’s busy all day. Besides, I get home from school at four, and I’m better company than you are.”
Venus smiled and reached out to hug him. She startled herself as much as Toby, but he endured the embrace with less embarrassment than he would have felt the month before in New York.
“When is that PTA thing at school?” Venus said. “I want to go with you, Toby.” Toby. His name. The first time in memory she had called him that when she wasn’t in a rage. Beebo saw the smile in his eyes.
“You can go if you promise not to call anybody ‘darling’ or wear a knit dress,” he said.
Venus gasped and Beebo laughed at him, looking behind his back at Venus. “All right, darling, I promise,” Venus said wryly. “If you promise not to ditch me this year, and tell lies to your friends about how I do the dishes every night, like all the other mothers.”
Toby smiled without looking at her, and it was a bargain. Beebo felt her own satisfaction at this bashful honesty between mother and son. And then Venus surprised her by saying, “Beebo, I’m going to get you a car. It isn’t fair to make you shovel manure all day.”
“What would I do with a car?” Beebo said, mystified at the sudden generosity.
“You could ferry Toby around. Pick up the groceries for Miss Pinch. Maybe we’ll get something to eat that isn’t poisonous for a change.”
“Miss Pinch doesn’t use poison,” said a gravelly voice. “Just too much paprika. It’s her Hungarian heritage.”
Beebo turned around with a start to see, at long last, Leo Bogardus coming down the wide steps to join them.
“Well, darling, you should know,” Venus said. “You and Miss Pinch have such a beautiful thing together.”
Leo strode across the room, a solid, rather squarely built man; gray hair and gray suit; neat and natty and silver-eyed behind his black French-framed glasses. He was about Beebo’s height and attractive without being handsome.
Beebo stood up to greet him, somewhat subdued. “Mr. Bogardus? I’m Beebo,” she said and held out her hand.
Leo put a just-drained orange-juice glass on a table. “I know,” he said. “I hope you’ll be comfortable with us for as long as you stay, Beebo.” He shook her hand briefly.
Beebo wasn’t sure if he meant to be sarcastic or not. She let her hand drop awkwardly and sat down again as Bogardus settled in a chair, trying to size him up. His face was clean-lined and his manner decisive. She imagined him quick to anger, stubborn, and hard to handle when he was mad.
“You’re picking them younger every year, Venus,” Leo said five minutes later, without once having looked at Beebo in the meantime.
Venus grimaced a warning at him over Toby’s head to shut up. Leo nodded wearily.
“I don’t pick them, darling; they pick me,” she said in a pointed whisper.
To Beebo’s discomfiture, Leo gazed straight at her then and laughed with a honk of mirth. Moments later he got up and left as abruptly as he came, and Beebo spoke not another word to him for several more days. She had just begun to hope she wouldn’t have to at all. It would have suited her, not because she disliked him—she didn’t. Considering her position in his house, he was more than decent. But he scared her. He was no ghost, but he was still the unknown quantity.
Fortunately, the next few times they saw each other there was only time for small talk, and no more.
Venus got her the car before the end of the week—a silver sport coupé—and Beebo and Toby cruised around Hollywood and the coastal communities when he got home from school in the afternoons.
Toby kept on talking, confiding in her, and she began to see how much he
