Sins of the Flesh Read online

  Less than five minutes later the cab driver turned onto the long driveway and brought the car to a grinding halt in front of the large, stately mansion. “Fifty-six thirty-three Laurel, lady. It doesn’t look like anyone is awake,” he said matter-of-factly, and shifted on his seat to stare at her. “That’ll be fifteen dollars.”

  Bebe handed him a twenty-dollar bill. “Keep the change,” she said magnanimously.

  The driver glanced at the twenty, then at her, and sniffed his displeasure. “If you want your bags carried inside, that’s an extra five dollars,” he said boldly.

  “All right,” Bebe said wearily as she fished around in her purse for another bill. All she found was a wad of twenties crunched in a ball. When she handed him one and was rewarded with a smile, she decided not to ask for her change.

  It was no surprise to her that the house was still the same even though she’d been gone for three months. It was always the same. Only she changed; each time she returned she was different in one little way or another. It took some effort, but she straightened her back as she climbed the steps.

  “Just leave the bags by the door,” she said to the driver.

  “My pleasure, lady,” he said tartly, setting down the six suitcases in relief. Tipping his hat politely, he clambered into his cab and slowly drove down the long driveway. When he looked into his rearview mirror at the still, dark house, the woman was gone.

  The door closed behind Bebe with a loud click. It would be nice to have a dog or a cat to welcome her home, she thought, at least something warm and alive. The servants would be asleep, of course, and the children were elsewhere; and certainly her husband didn’t care when and if she ever came home.

  Some of the other arrivals she had made to this house flashed through her mind. The day she’d arrived with her infant son Simon, for example, under Reuben’s armed guard—bodyguards he had hired to dog her every step after he was informed that she was drinking and smoking dope in her last weeks of pregnancy. It didn’t matter to Reuben that she’d begun to abuse her body because of him—because she’d realized that he really didn’t care about her health, only the baby’s.

  Or the morning she had come back to plead with him to help her after she had witnessed her lover accidentally kill his wife. Reuben had tried to make her feel guilty for her infidelity—had even asked her if it had all been worth it. At the time, anything was worth not feeling as dead inside as she felt with him.

  God! What’s the use of thinking about all this, she asked herself wearily. It’s all water under the bridge.

  Drunk and weepy, Bebe crept into the house like a thief in the night. It wouldn’t do to wake the master and have him see her like this again and so soon. Not in the house he’d magnanimously allowed her to live in after they had both realized that their marriage was a total and unsalvageable disaster.

  Bebe looked down at her travel bags, beautiful calf leather, battered and scuffed now, mute testimony to her wanderlust. Reuben had told her once that the household was happiest when she was away. And she believed him. Lately she always believed Reuben. It was easier that way. Picking up her makeup case, she made her way up the stairs to the bedroom she’d taken for herself. It was a pretty room, decorated in periwinkle blue and white. The double bed welcomed her. The blue-and-white satin spread was the same, the shams artfully arranged against the white headboard. The crisp organdy curtains looked as though they’d been freshly laundered, and the flowers, bright red roses, Reuben’s roses, were fresh, too.

  Had Reuben placed them on her night table, she wondered. Instantly she realized that the thought was too silly for words. Reuben didn’t care if she lived or died, so he certainly wouldn’t place his precious roses on her nightstand.

  Bebe was dressed in the latest fashion; everything about her shrieked of elegance and wealth, thanks to her husband’s generosity. She’d been beautiful once, with clear green eyes and a lovely heartwarming smile. But the clear eyes were dull now and coated with garish makeup; the heartwarming smile was forced and oddly cold. Her hair was bleached these days, the ends dry and frizzled, the roots a dirty blond streaked with gray. Somehow, though, she’d managed to maintain her figure, which was soft and womanly. She dieted constantly, nibbling on things like toast, celery, and tiny bits of chicken, preferring to drink her calories in the form of liquor. Of course, she smoked too much, both tobacco and marijuana, and her fingers were stained yellow with nicotine. The physical abuse she’d subjected her body to over the years had finally taken its toll. The fine lines around her eyes were deeper now, the slight droop at her mouth more noticeable with her thinness. She’d even noticed wrinkles on her earlobes.

  Bebe Rosen was no longer the beautiful woman she’d once been.

  Tired as she was, Bebe knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep, so she began to search the old hiding places for a bottle. It took her four tries before she found what she was looking for. Holding her prize aloft in mock victory, she walked out onto the tiny wrought-iron balcony. The half moon was still brilliant, and the sprinkling of stars overhead winked down upon her. Welcoming me home, Bebe thought inanely.

  She kicked off her shoes and peeled down to her slip and stockings, throwing her blouse and skirt over her shoulder into the room. The cool breeze offered comfort to her body—but not to her mind.

  There’d been times in the past when she’d felt alone and lonely, but never like this. The end of the road. So why did she stay? Why did she go off on what Reuben referred to as her toots? Surely she didn’t still love him. The children were seldom home and never needed her anyway, so she couldn’t use them as an excuse. Reuben didn’t want her, and she didn’t think she wanted him any longer.

  For so long now she’d been trying to come up with a name or a term to describe her relationship with Reuben. Now she knew what it was. It had come to her as she was paying the cab driver downstairs. Parasitic—Reuben fed off her, and she fed off him in many ugly ways. Her whole life was ugly. She was forty years old, and all she had to show for it was a guest bedroom in a house owned by a husband who didn’t love her, two children who didn’t need her, and a host of rich and worthless acquaintances. Not a true friend in the bunch. Bebe drank from the bottle in her hand.

  So many unanswered questions…Why did she drink so much? Why did she take drugs? Why wasn’t she a better mother? Why couldn’t she find peace and love? Why?

  She wanted to sleep—she needed sleep. But the only way she could do that when she got like this was to smoke marijuana. She lurched into the bedroom, her hands groping hungrily through her makeup case. She pulled from it all the items needed to roll a fat one, then did so with trembling fingers. The first drag was always the best. As she felt it spread through her body and rush to her brain, she sat on the floor of the room and pulled a pillow from the bed to hold against her chest, her eyes heavy, a smile playing about her lips. She imagined the face of her mother and then began to cry when she realized it was not her mother’s face at all, but the face of her aunt Mickey.

  “I hate you, Michelene Fonsard!” she spat out, crying now in earnest. “I hate you with a passion that knows no equal!”

  There it was, out in the open for her to examine. The war news…that’s what had started this whole thing. Reuben would be remembering France, the war, and the time they’d spent at Mickey’s château. Reuben and Daniel would reminisce about the good times and the life they had shared with Mickey…until she’d come along and changed everything…for all of them. She was the catalyst that had destroyed their little idyll…and Reuben had never let her forget it. He’d made her pay and pay. Even on the night they had decided to patch things up, when Reuben had garnered the Academy Award, he had insulted her by referring to Mickey—calling her the most important person in his life. In front of the whole world.

  “I hope those dirty Germans destroyed your precious château and confiscated all your money,” Bebe muttered, reaching again for the bottle. “I hope they kill you! Then Reuben will be free of you once
and for all. Damn you, Mickey!”

  This time she’d come home for one reason: to watch her husband pore avidly over the newspapers, hoping for any news of the war in France. Masochist that she was, she’d come home to torture herself by watching her husband torture himself over his lost love. Almost immediately she had begun to pack after she had read in The New York Times that France had been occupied by the Germans.

  And when she’d had enough of that, she’d ask Reuben for a divorce—get herself a good lawyer and take him to the cleaners. Bitter resentment rose like bile in her throat; revenge is sweet, kept running through her head. What a perfect way to exit. What a perfect note to exit on. Finally she would see him turned inside out, and then she’d step on him.

  Maybe if she were free, she could start a new life someplace other than perennially sunny California. All the other times she’d been coerced by Reuben to dry out. This time she’d try it on her own. If she failed, she would have no one to blame but herself.

  Bebe looked at the rolled cigarette in her hand. She tried puffing on it, but it had gone out. She lit it again and resumed smoking.

  Canada! She’d go to Canada. That was far enough away. If she wanted to, she could even change her name. A clean start, a clean identity. No one would know about her tarnished past. Such good intentions, but she never followed through because it meant she couldn’t drink, and besides, making plans was too much trouble.

  John Paul, that was the name she’d given her firstborn. The baby in the cradle who’d clutched her finger with such wondrous strength. The tawdriest part of her past. The single thing that unerringly made her cringe at herself. Was he a loyal Frenchman now fighting for his country? A country that he thought of as his own? He would be old enough. She thought about John Paul every day of her life. Whom had Yvette given him to? Was he as handsome as his father? Maybe John Paul was behind all her misery. The thought of her son lying dead on some battlefield, never knowing he had an American mother and father, shattered Bebe’s heart. She said a prayer then for her faceless son, asking that his life be spared if he was among the French soldiers fighting the Germans.

  Bebe slept on the floor that night just as she was—the pillow on her chest, the bottle clutched in one hand, and the half-smoked cigarette dangling from her limp fingers.

  Chapter Four

  The sleepy French countryside appeared peaceful and calm in the evening twilight, but to those inhabitants who lived in the tiny villages off the narrow dirt road it was anything but peaceful or calm. Every man, woman, and child in the villages knew that in every church, in every clump of gorse, in every cluster of trees, German soldiers lurked with guns cocked waiting for straggling partisans loyal to France and in need of temporary sanctuary. They also knew that when the loyalists emerged to forage for food and shelter in the darkest part of the night, they would be gunned down like wild animals. Then, within minutes of a shooting, hostages would be dragged from the villages and a second round of machine-gun bullets would rain down upon the peaceful countryside.

  There were many who were not afraid—small numbers, to be sure—who would willingly give their lives to help those who might be able to thwart the hateful Germans. What these simple country farmers lacked in weapons they made up for with fierce loyalty and an intense desire to help their mother country drive the Boche back to their own land. Cries of “Vive La France!” were mouthed as often as daily prayers, as a toast with the first glass of wine at dinner, when tucking children into bed, as salutations in the street to friends and neighbors.

  It was to one of these small villages that Michelene Fonsard, her son Philippe, and her friend Yvette were headed—on foot now since bicycles had proven dangerous at night on roads deeply rutted by the constant German concourse of armored cars and tanks. They were weary and hungry; their small supply of food had been exhausted days before. Now they were resting, something they had learned to do more often toward the end of the day, in a field of tall grasses that afforded them a suitable hiding place. When they spoke, if they spoke at all, it was in whispers. Quietness and stealth meant survival. So much could be said with one’s eyes or with the flick of a finger or wrist.

  But tonight Yvette could hold back no longer. Although at the onset she had agreed to come along with her lifelong friend, her doubts were beginning to overcome her commitment. When she had determined that the young man traveling with them was out of earshot, she spoke. “This is a foolhardy thing we’re doing, Michelene,” she hissed into her friend’s ear. “You yourself said you don’t even know if Daniel heard all of your message when the wireless went out. In your frenzy to protect Philippe you may be taking him to his death. The Germans are everywhere, like lice. How, Michelene…how will your American friend get here? You are dreaming…” Yvette hesitated, then continued in a softer tone, “But I cannot fault you for wanting that dream to come true for your son.”

  Michelene had never known motherhood, yet in all her years Yvette had never seen a better example of a good mother than this woman lying beside her in the reeds. And the boy she had mothered, sleeping just a few feet away, wasn’t even her son.

  For some reason, Yvette thought grumpily, Mickey looked the same to her tired eyes as she’d always looked. Certainly she was old enough to be the boy’s real mother, but her beauty had a timelessness to it, as though God had created her full blown and forbidden her to age. Her hair was the same dark chestnut, still thick and lustrous, adorning her head like a sable crown. Finely arched natural brows and incredibly dark lashes emphasized her warm, dark eyes—bedroom eyes, Yvette called them. There were no lines on her fair skin, a fact Yvette bemoaned whenever she compared herself with her friend. She truly believed God had created perfection in Michelene Fonsard, whose curvaceous figure was the envy of many a younger woman in Paris.

  Once she herself had been beautiful, at least men had thought so, for she’d had her pick many times. During her youth she’d been fashionably thin, but now she was round in all the wrong places, which often caused her to grumble good-naturedly that she was “one size from the neck down.” True, she still possessed a certain sultriness, perhaps because of her rich auburn hair that when she released it from its pins tumbled luxuriantly to her waist. But even though she was skillful with makeup and knew how best to complement and enhance the titian beauty of her hair, her hands gave her away—her hands and the depth of suffering in her eyes, which no amount of makeup could obscure.

  Thus she considered herself and Mickey old, perhaps not in appearance but in years. However, age was supposed to bring wisdom and peace, and here they were with neither. Running from the Germans out of fear, never knowing if the day that followed would be their last. Hatred kept them alive, so Yvette nurtured their hatred as she would a fragile seedling. Whatever it took to stay alive she would do. Whatever she had to do for the boy she would do because Mickey was the only person in the world left to her, and whatever Mickey loved was beloved to her as well.

  “Daniel will come,” Mickey said now with more confidence than she felt. “He knows about war, remember? He will not let me down, I know this, Yvette, in here.” She thumped her breast.

  Yvette snorted. “Then he is as stupid as we are. We, at least, know our own country. What does he know of traveling as we have for the past five days? And if he does come, he could be shot for his efforts. Then how will you feel, knowing you brought an old friend here to have him killed?” she said sourly. “You should have called the boy’s father instead of Daniel. Daniel has nothing at stake here. Reuben would move heaven and earth to reach his son—if you had only told him he had a son. Bah!”

  Mickey Fonsard felt only love for the woman by her side. Her crankiness, she knew, was merely the way she chose to express her frustration at their situation. There was no better friend on earth than Yvette. Mickey smiled and embraced her tenderly. “He will come, Yvette. He will come. He will head to the château, not Paris. Daniel is a powerful man in Washington,” she said proudly.

  “And
that is going to do us a lot of good here…. Chérie, you are dreaming. No one can help us but ourselves and other loyal Frenchmen. Forget Daniel,” she said wearily.

  “No. You must believe with me, Yvette. You must. In any case,” Mickey continued in a firm whisper, holding Yvette’s reluctant gaze, “you pledged to help me get Philippe to America, and part of that pledge is believing that Daniel will come.”

  Yvette let out a frustrated sigh. “Old friend, I want to believe, but this is my concern. If he does manage to get here, his chances are not what ours are. What will we do about Philippe if something happens to Daniel?”

  Mickey had thought of nothing else over the past three days. She was as worried as Yvette but by sheer will had managed to hide her fear. “Then we will head south and try to cross into Spain.”

  Mickey’s heart beat furiously in anticipation as she awaited her friend’s response to her proposal. Yvette’s next words were a surprise.

  “You should have told him your intentions when we started out. It will be such a shock.” Both women looked over at the sleeping young man.

  Yvette explained herself to Mickey before she could protest. “I know, I know. In your heart you were not sure Daniel would come. Why stir things up, eh? You are so much a mother, chérie. It matters not if that young man is of your flesh or not. You are his mother, and I for one applaud you. I am proud you chose me for his godmother.” Tears burned Mickey’s eyes as she kissed Yvette on both cheeks.

  Across the meadow and to their left, a long, low whistle echoed across the fields. Instantly they were alert. In the next few moments they waited, hushed and expectant, but nothing further happened to alarm them. The night became quiet again with only the familiar sounds of summer filling the warm evening. Soon it would be totally dark and they would move from their hiding place. Mickey looked up at the sky, hoping for the clouds to move in from the west, but they did not. The light of the quarter moon was bright and silvery, ribboning through the tall grasses like brilliant threads.