Part 28 (1/2)
I lunged and grabbed the gun from his hand. He collapsed into his desk chair. I knelt next to him. His eyes were closed, mouth open. A perfect expression for a producer, I couldn't help but think. Thankfully, I could hear him breathing.
”Is he all right?” Olin ventured.
Standing, I shoved the gun into his hand. ”Make sure he doesn't get near this and that he doesn't choke on his own vomit. Where's Mrs. Zaitlin?”
”Living room.”
Looking lost, Gwyn stood in the middle of a room designed for entertaining important people. From their gilt-framed oil paintings lining the walls, the women of another century peered out from behind parasols, up from their baths, or over the top of their books at Gwyn and me.
”Why are you trying to get hold of Heath?” I asked her. ”So he can fix what Ben and Jenny have done?”
”I don't know what you're talking about.”
”I'm talking about them blackmailing your friends, your business acquaintances. The people you need to keep up your important position.”
She slapped me. I felt every bone in her hand. I slapped her back with equal fury. Eyes watering, breathing hard, we glared at each as our cheeks turned red. Neither of us apologized. The women from another era were not amused.
I took the photo from my pocket and handed it to her. ”I think Ben dropped this after he trashed Celia's house this morning.”
”He was at her place?” She traced Ben's tiny face and body with her finger. ”He was so small. Where is he now?”
”The last I saw of him, he was driving north on PCH.”
She grabbed her cell from a table and punched in a number. ”Heath, Diana said he was driving north on Pacific Coast Highway. What time?” she asked me.
”Let me speak to him.”
”It's his voicemail.” She handed me the phone ”Heath, it's Diana.” As I relayed what Ben had told me earlier, Gwyn slumped on the sofa, staring at the photograph again.
”What have you and Celia done?” I tossed the phone onto the sofa next to her. ”Celia wasn't one to keep photographs, Gwyn. I never saw any. She didn't want a family life. Why did she keep that one?”
”I guess because that's when we were friends and we cared about each other. That was before she took my husband away from me.”
”You weren't the one who was pregnant, were you? It was Celia.”
She stiffened. ”Are you saying I imagined my rape? Even crazy women know when they've been violated, Diana.”
”Parson was here. Robert was trying to kill himself, and Ben is driving G.o.d-knows-where. Yes, it would be terrible to lie about being raped. It would be equally terrible to lie to Robert and to Ben.”
With restless, jerky movements she got to her feet and went out onto the veranda. I joined her. We stood where Ben and I had talked on his birthday night. But instead of a party tent and a cake, there were gardeners sweeping the gravel paths with palm fronds.
”They sweep when Robert's working at home.” She watched them. ”That way he doesn't have to be bothered by the noise of the blowers.” She wrapped her arms around herself so tightly she could've been wearing a straitjacket. She faced me and continued. ”I got crazy. Celia got pregnant. I wanted a baby, Diana. I wanted a mooring, to keep me from blowing away. Do you know what that feeling is like?”
”Yes.”
”No, you don't. You're always so together. Except for the night you found Jenny's body and wouldn't let go of your mother's ashes. But that was the exception. Even when we were young and sailing down Sunset in your mother's car, you were the one in control. Even then, I knew I was cracking into little pieces. And no matter how hard I tried to hold onto ... something ... I couldn't.”
I remembered her jealous expression reflected in the rearview mirror as we picked out the houses we were going to live in when we grew up. Now I understood what she had envied. My self-confidence, which of course I didn't have. I was a good actress even then. I just didn't know it.
”When did you find out Celia was pregnant?” I asked.
She relaxed her arms. Turning back to the garden view, she rested her hands on the stone bal.u.s.trade. ”Not until she visited me at the sanitarium in Switzerland. She wanted to have an abortion. I talked her out of it. It wasn't difficult. No matter how much she rebelled against her Catholic upbringing ... she was still Catholic. As the baby grew inside her, I grew saner. After Ben was born I paid a doctor to make the birth certificate out in my name.” She paused, looking at me. ”I loved Celia for what she did. She gave me a reason to try to be normal.”
”Who was the father?”
”I thought you figured that out. Robert. They had a brief affair. He wanted to marry her. Not because she was pregnant, she never told him. But Celia being Celia, she didn't want marriage. So she left him and went traveling around Europe ending up in Switzerland. Looking for help from crazy me.”
”And you knew Robert was Ben's father when you married him?”
”When I returned to L.A., Robert and I began to date. He was on the rebound from Celia. When he asked me to marry him, it was out of hurt and anger over her.”
”Why did you accept?” I persisted.
”I was a wealthy woman who had had a mental breakdown, who supposedly got pregnant by an act of rape. I was well aware that for whoever married me, it would be for my money. Robert was more than I could have hoped for.”
”And you never told him he was Ben's father?”
”No. Celia didn't want him to know.”
”And you?”
”I didn't want him to look at Ben and see Celia. Ben was mine this way. What I didn't expect was Celia and Robert becoming involved again.”
”Because she could be closer to Ben?”
”That's what I thought at first. But all she wanted was Robert on her own terms. No child. No marriage.”
”How did Ben find out he was Robert and Celia's son?”
”I don't know. He came to the house last night and said to me, you're not my mother. Robert was there. I had to tell him the truth. Robert felt betrayed by Celia, by me. How could he not? All the years he'd kept his distance from Ben. The woman he really loved had never told him. And the woman he didn't love had kept him obligated.”
”And his reaction to Ben?”
”Robert attempted to put his arms around him but Ben wouldn't let him. He said things like 'Now you care?' 'Now you want to be my father?' Then he ran out and got into his car and drove away so fast I thought he wouldn't make the sharp turns of the driveway. I thought he would kill himself.”
”So you let Ben grow up thinking he was the son of a man who had taken advantage of a mentally ill woman.”
”It had to be believable, Diana. n.o.body doubted it.”
”And it made you more of a saintly victim, a woman who had kept her baby against the worst possible odds.”
”I was raped. I just didn't get pregnant.”