Sandy can jump rope faster than any girl in the neighborhood, attends public school, has a perfect, slender nose and a mom who wears aprons and makes heart-shaped Jell-O. She is enviably normal, which is why I can’t stand her. That, and she’s sneaky, a girl who wins adults over with her smile and sticks her tongue out at their backs.
“You just don’t want me to beat you,” she sneers.
“Maybe I just don’t want to die of heatstroke.”
“At least I don’t stand in the street staring out like an idiot,” she calls, jump roping past me, her shoes click-clacking away as she makes her way down the street, heading to the park where other girls will be clustered around the drinking fountain or sailing high on swings, their socks falling around their ankles, shiny calves catching the sunlight.
I have no interest in them. I’d rather be by myself.
It is uncomfortably hot, but I don’t want to go inside yet. I stand for a long time watching the heat waver off the pavement like shimmery, blue liquid wishing something dreadful and exciting would happen. If only there were a spell to turn my grandmother into a soft-eyed old lady who didn’t care about boarding schools. If only dry grass could swoop off the lawns and turn my stepfather into the Scarecrow like from The Wizard of Oz, turn him stupid and lifeless. Something dreadful is necessary, I think, so you and I can be together.
Only, once the dreadful, unknown thing takes shape, it is out of the scope of my twelve-year-old imagination.
Chapter Four
* * *
Rio Bravo
Daughter,
I admit that I did not think about you that night at Duke’s party. Or if I did, it was only to wonder if Sandy had come over, or if you’d eaten all of your dinner and not upset your abuela. I was instead absorbed in the rumors that Republic Pictures was shutting down and I’d be losing my contract.
As the iron gates of Duke’s estate slide shut behind our car, suppressed memories rise up. Grant and I were here just three days before he died. He was in an unpleasant mood and hadn’t wanted to go out that night. His drinking had gotten worse, and war memories haunted him. We spoke of divorce and fought over the most insignificant things, things that became huge and meaningful to me after his death, like fighting over going out when we could easily have stayed home. Why did I insist? Maybe all Grant needed was for me to pay more attention to him, to have listened.
I look over at Alfonso as he parks the car behind a black Buick. I am someone who moves forward, onward and upward, keeps at it. Alfonso was my keeping at it. We met in the bar at Radio City Music Hall. He and his brother were jugglers. They could juggle sticks of fire and knives while riding unicycles in circles around the stage. We’d seen each other perform, and our attraction was instant.
Alfonso turns off the engine and leans over, kissing my shoulder, and I want to slither down into the seat under the sweet smell of his skin. Instead I kiss the top of his head and wriggle away before he lays a hand on my breast.
“Not here,” I scold and haul open the heavy car door.
Duke’s walled-in property is lush and lively, the hillside watered green, the burned earth a crusty outline behind the sweeping ranch house. Music and chatter drift from the patio, car doors slam, and people shout in greeting.
I loop my arm through Alfonso’s, focusing on the distinct scent of his vetiver cologne and the muscular feel of his arm as we make our way down the flagstone steps to the pool house. If I hold him tight, stay enchanted, I can ward off the memories.
Pilar Wayne greets us at the door, drawing me away from Alfonso before I can protest, all smiles as she places a martini in my hand and drops me on Duke’s arm. “I expect you two to get right down to it,” she says with a wink before gliding back to her post, her dress a red flame behind her.
Duke smiles down at me, the skin around his eyes crinkling. “Glad to see you, sweetheart.”
The sound of his gravelly voice, his woody scent and the smell of tequila swimming in his glass flood me with memories spent drunk under the sunshine beside the pool, Grant’s hands on my bare thighs, his mouth over mine. The nights we didn’t make it home, Pilar and Duke retiring to the ranch house, the pool house all ours. The things Grant and I did on this marble floor, I think, as shame and pleasure pulse through me.
Taking a huge sip of my martini, I fold my grief into a tight square and shove it into the pit of my stomach, glancing around the large, open space for cheerful distraction. There’s a bar at one end, a black lava-rock wall at the other. The white leather couches, rattan chairs and marble floor do their best to absorb the heat beating at the windows. In a few hours, the sun will set and the place will cool to a soft blue. I miss the cooling hour. At home, I am always hot.
Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, I spot Maureen O’Hara on the patio wrapped in pink chiffon, cheeks rouged, hair aflame, pool water shimmering behind her. The other preened men and women look dull in her presence, and I am glad to be inside.
“That new fella of yours treating you right?” Duke nods at Alfonso, who has settled onto the sofa next to a blonde in a short, boxy dress.
“He treats me like a queen.” I smile, all girlish charm as I tilt my head back to catch Duke’s eye.
“As he should.” Duke plants a kiss on my forehead, endearing and fatherlike. I don’t mind. I will never be a Maureen O’Hara. Carmen Miranda is the biggest Latina star Hollywood has, and she’s still known as the lady in the tutti-frutti hat. If Hollywood had its way, all its women would be white and blonde, the more ambiguously blonde the better.
I learned this early on, sitting on a bale of straw on the set of Cuban Fireball. My director must have assumed I’d gone to lunch with the others or else he didn’t care if I overheard. He leaned against the porch railing of our make-believe saloon and boasted to a cameraman about casting Grace Kelly in High Noon. “I’m after the drawing-room type. The real lady who becomes a whore once she’s in the bedroom. Poor Marilyn Monroe has bedroom written all over her face, and Grace Kelly isn’t very subtle, either.”
What’s the difference? I thought. One way or another, all men want is to sleep with us.
Which makes me appreciate the fatherliness of Uncle Duke. I’ll take a man who pats the top of my head instead of my bottom any day.
“Come, I want to introduce you to someone,” Duke says now, and I follow him onto the patio where he waves over a woman dressed in white with copper hair falling in shoulder-length waves around her dewy complexion.
“Estelita Rodriguez, meet Angie Dickinson, soon to be the brightest star in Hollywood.”
“That’s flattering but ridiculous.” Angie’s voice is thick and husky, her attitude bold and deeply sexy. She yanks up her glove, smoothing it over her elbow, and I have no doubt Duke is right. She has an open-faced purity and seductive brown eyes that could easily command a room.