The Son of Someone Famous (7 page)

A woman in furs got off the bus, and Adam made a dive for her. They hugged each other and the woman kissed him several times on the cheek.

My mother said, “That woman looks very familiar.”

She was a tall woman with golden hair, the sort of woman who looks like she's wallowing in money. The fur was mink. Her coat was open, and there was a huge gold necklace against a white cashmere sweater. She wore a black-and-white scarf with tiny red hearts on it, and her fingers were loaded with gold rings, one with an enormous diamond the size of a radish.

My mother and I stood right next to them.

“Oh, A.J.! A.J.! How good to see you!” the woman was shouting.

Then Adam looked up and saw me.

He looked flustered.

My mother was saying to herself, “I know her. I know I know her.”

I knew I knew her, too.

“Hi, Adam!” I said.

“Hello, Brenda Belle.”

“This is my mother,” I said.

“How do you do, Mrs. Blossom,” he said.

“I'm glad to meet you, Adam,” she said. She looked at the woman then and said, “Aren't you—”

Adam interrupted. “This is Mrs. Waite. Mrs. Waite, this is Brenda Belle Blossom and Mrs. Blossom.”

“How do you do,” she said.

My mother said, “I could have sworn you were Billie Kay Case, the famous old-time movie actress.”

Adam winced at the word “old-time.”

Billie Kay Case smiled at my mother and said, “People are always telling me that. Thank you very much, but I'm afraid I have to disappoint you.”

“It's a remarkable resemblance,” my mother said. “Even your voice.”

“Do you hear that, A.J.?” Billie Kay Case said to Adam. “I should be very flattered.”

“I have a taxi waiting,” Adam said. “Grandpa Blessing's expecting us, Mrs. Waite.”

“Oh, no, honey, no!” Billie Kay Case said. “I'm not ready to meet your grandfather until tomorrow. I'm dead, honey. All I want is a hot bath in a quiet hotel room, and a whole evening with nothing to do.”

“But he's made a punch and stuff to eat!” Adam protested.

“No way, honey,” she said. “You just point me toward the hotel and we'll call it a day for now. I need my beauty sleep.”

“We trimmed a tree and everything,” Adam kept protesting.

“You just get Janice down from the coat rack inside the bus, honey,” she told Adam, “and that will be that for now. I can't meet the public when I've just popped off a Greyhound, love. You understand, love.”

In an aside, my mother said, “Someone's probably told her too often that she resembles Billie Kay Case. She's beginning to believe it. She's picked up all her mannerisms. Pathetic.”

I didn't say anything. I remembered that Adam had asked me not to tell anyone she was in Storm.

While Adam went inside the bus for whatever Janice was, I said, “Are you staying in Storm long, Mrs. Waite?”

“No. Only through tomorrow,” she said.

My mother said, “I guess I'd better ask the driver about our package,” and she went around to the back of the bus.

Billie Kay Case asked me, “Are you a friend of Adam's, dear?”

“I guess I'm his best friend in Storm,” I said, wanting her to like me. I was really excited, knowing who she was and having it a secret.

“Then you should take my place tonight,” Billie Kay Case said. She looked over her shoulder at Adam, who was coming out of the bus carrying a small animal case. “Adam!” she called out. “I have a divine idea!”

“What is it?” he said, setting the case down on the snowy sidewalk.

“Not on the sidewalk, honey,” Billie Kay Case said. “I
don't want Janice to freeze. Pick her up, love. . . . Listen, sweetheart, why don't you invite Betty Belle here to take my place tonight?”

“
Brenda
Belle,” I said.

“She's going to a party,” he said.

“No, I'm not,” I said. “I was uninvited.”

“You were invited,” he said. “You told me so.”

“Then I was uninvited,” I said.

“You see, love?” Billie Kay Case said. “It works out perfectly! Betty Belle will go back in the taxi with you.”

“She can't,” Adam said. “She's with her mother.”

My mother suddenly materialized. “I couldn't help overhearing,” she said (she never could), “and I think that's a lovely idea. You have my permission, dear.”

“Perfect!” Billie Kay Case said. “Then it's all settled.”

“I don't think he wants—” I tried to say.

“Fine!” my mother interrupted. “Don't stay too late, dear.”

From the Journal of A.

I was disappointed that Billie Kay wouldn't come back with me, because I had an idea Grandpa Blessing was really looking forward to meeting her.

“Does she go under the name ‘Mrs. Waite' a lot?” Brenda Belle asked me in the taxi.

“Well, she used to be married to this man who was never around,” I said. “She was always waiting for him, and we got the idea to call her ‘Mrs. Waite' then.”

“I know who she married,” Brenda Belle said. Then she named my father.

“Yeah,” I said. “That's who she married. I was their neighbor.”

“Did you ever meet him, Adam?”

“Sure,” I said. “I told you. We were neighbors.”

“Oh wow! What's
he
like?”

“He's like anyone,” I said.

“He's
not
like anyone,” Brenda Belle said. “How could he be like anyone? He's practically more important than the President of the United States of America!”

“Okay,” I said. “He is a big man. I won't deny that. His
jokes are always funny, even when they're not.”

“What does that remark mean?” Brenda Belle asked me.

“It's something he used to say about rich people,” I told her. “It's a verse he liked to recite. ‘Money is honey, my little sonny, and a rich man's joke is always funny.' ”

Brenda Belle sighed. She said, “You've had kind of an interesting life, haven't you, Adam? I mean, being expelled from a private school, and living next door to famous people. Nothing much has happened in my life. That's why I'm such a mess.”

“You're not a mess,” I said. “Anyway, maybe things will start to happen.”

“That's unlikely,” she said. “Do you feel like you've been forced into this evening by my mother and Billie Kay?”

“No, I don't feel that way,” I said. “It is Christmas Eve, after all. And my grandfather
is
expecting company.”

“I'm glad that I refused to go to Christine Cutler's,” she said.

“You said you were uninvited.”

“I just said that because my mother and Billie Kay were standing there,” she said. “The truth is I refused to go. I said that I wouldn't go anywhere where you weren't wanted.”

“Really?” I looked at her with an uncontrollable smile tipping my lips.

“Certainly,” she said. “One thing I am is loyal.”

I reached over and took her hand. I'm a real sucker for loyalty. I'm a loyalty freak. I've seen too many examples of people not sticking up for their own, or people walking out
on their own, or people just forgetting their own. I believe you ought to stand by, stick with and stay near the people you picked out to be your friends or your lovers. With relatives, it's different, maybe; you can't always put your heart in it because you never chose them, but you shouldn't let anyone trash your own blood either, unless you're related to men who run wars or women who're mean to little children, people like that.

“Brenda Belle,” I said, “stay around.”

“I'm not going anywhere,” she said.

When we arrived at my grandfather's, he wasn't there. There was this note on the kitchen table:

I am off paying my Christmas respects to old friends. Please enjoy my home, punch bowl and repast. Season's Greetings. C.B.

The words didn't even sound like Grandpa Blessing; they sounded stilted and phony, and I realized he probably imagined I'd read the note to Billie Kay. I wondered who he meant by “old friends,” since as far as I knew, my grandfather had no friends in Storm.

“What repast is he referring to?” Brenda Belle asked me. “I'm starving.”

“It's just some salami and some cheese and hard bread,” I said.

“I'd love to,” Brenda Belle said.

“I guess Grandpa decided to give me time to be with
Billie Kay alone.”

“I'll bet this is the dullest Christmas she's ever spent,” said Brenda Belle. “No offense, Adam, but you know what I mean.”

Then she saw the tree. “Oh my Glory! Adam! Beer cans!”

“We made it,” I said defensively. “We like it.” Brenda Belle began this little conversation with herself and her imitation of her mother. “Did you have a good time, dear? . . . Oh my yes, Mother, we sat before the tree of beer cans! . . . I beg your pardon, dear, I thought you said something that sounded like— . . . Beer cans, Mother? . . . Yes, I thought you said beer cans.”

I said, “I suppose your tree has the usual five-and-ten crap hanging off it, hmmm?”

‘‘Of course not,” she said, “we decided to trim ours, this year, with old banana peels.” She threw her parka across for me to catch and hang in the closet.

“Banana peels are such old hat,” I said, “I heard the Cutlers did their tree in carrot tops.”

“Not true,” she trilled back at me, “simply not true. I have it on the best authority that the Cutler tree is trimmed with turtle turds.”

“Ah, turtle turds,” I said. “Tinseled, too, I trust.”

“Indubitably!” said Brenda Belle. “Did your grandfather mention a punch bowl as well as a repast?”

“Indeed he did,” I said.

“Fantastico!” she said. “Joy-ex Noel, Adam Blessing.”

“Hark the Herald” I said.

It was a very strong punch, but I was fighting back because I was a little concerned about my grandfather. I wanted to be sober if he came home with a load on.

Brenda Belle was tossing them back at a fairly fast clip.

“Adam,” she asked me, “I want your honest opinion on something.”

“All right. On what?”

“On me. Did it ever cross your mind for one minute, one half a teeny tiny second even, that there might be a certain mix-up in my genes?”

“I've never even seen you in your jeans,” I said.

“G-e-n-e-s, Adam. Not blue jeans. Human genes.”

“What do you mean a mix-up?”

“A confusion,” she said, “as though my body wasn't sure what I was supposed to be.”

“I don't get you.”

“Do you think of me as a feminine being?”

“Yes.”

“Totally?”

“Yes,” I said, “totally.”

“You don't think there are masculine undertones?”

I had to laugh at that idea.

She shoved her elbow into my chest. “Don't laugh! I'm serious!”

“I'm not laughing at
you.
I'm laughing at that idea. Whose idea is that?”

“My mother suspects I'm slightly unnatural,” she said.

“Did
she
say that?”

Then she just started bawling. “No, she didn't say that, she didn't have to say that. I'm a social flop. It's obvious. I don't have dates, telephone calls. I don't get valentines. I'm a zero.”

“Isn't it a little early to decide that, Brenda Belle?”

“A little too Ella Early?” she said. “Not where mater is concerned. Old mater is afeared I am a trick of nature.”

“Don't cry,” I said.

“That's why I have this scabby mustache. I was trying to correct nature's nasty.”

“Brenda Belle,” I said, “I'm nothing too.”

“At least you know what sex you are.”

“I know what sex you are, too,” I said. “Brenda Belle, please don't cry. I have an idea. We could make a pact.”

“What kind of a pact?” she whined.

“We could stick by each other. We could stick by each other and be friends to all the nothings. We could establish Nothing Power.”

“We could go steady.”

“What?”

“I said, could we go steady?”

“Why not?” I shrugged. “We could say we were going steady.”

“We
could
?”