Chapter 1
There was the possibility that the woman riding in the back seat of the car would someday be her sister-in-law, so Lena held her tongue. But she couldn't resist closing her eyes, as if in torture, as the woman went on and on in that domineering voice of hers.
"Ahh, Hollywood! Thrills the hell out of me every time I just pass through it. Think of the history here! C. B. DeMille, and Clara Bow and the days of silent movies that could be ground out on a hand-wound camera for less than a thousand dollars. And the atmosphere's still here, don't you think? In those days this neighborhood was what Beverly Hills is today. Just as naughty too. Don't think they didn't have pool parties then every bit as raunchy as the ones the rock stars of today have. And wait until you see the house we've picked out! Your parents will love it. Nostalgia, and all that good stuff. You can just feel Clark and Carol and Lana and their whole crowd around the pool. Turn right here, Dana, darling. Up Wilcox, oh, I love it!"
She didn't like the woman, and maybe that was why Lena was seething.
Seething to say: "Who asked you to go hunting for a house for my parents to live in? I didn't. Dana and I aren't married yet. I'm not even altogether sure we're engaged. So how about you keeping your nose out of my personal affairs?"
But she couldn't say anything of the sort. She didn't want to hurt Dana, who seemed to imagine, just as his sister herself imagined, that she was specially equipped by nature to run the world and everybody in it. A natural-born busybody, Corinne.
"Well, let's go in and have a look around." Dana turned to ask Corinne if she had the key.
Of course she had the key, Corinne snapped, her tone implying that she was the kind of competent, efficient person who always had the keys, or anything else she was supposed to have.
Lena said: "Two hundred thousand dollars sounds like a lot of money to me."
"Not for this piece of property. And your father can certainly afford it."
Lena turned and looked thoughtfully at Corinne, a bulky, fortyish woman with blue-gray curls and size twenty curves which she insisted upon squeezing into size fourteen suits. But of course, her things did come from I. Magnin's. Corinne wouldn't have been caught dead in any other shop, not even Carlton's, where Dana was assistant manager, and which he claimed was every bit as good as Magnin's.
"How do you know what my father can afford?" Lena asked politely, but with an edge to her voice sharp enough to cut a hot cake neatly.
"He's come out here to retire on money he made in Texas oil, hasn't he? That's what you told us, Lena dear."
"I never told you that Dad was an oil millionaire, if that's what you're getting at." She had been so very, very careful not to give any wrong impression. Her dad owned two small properties where oil had been discovered. It was no big deal. It simply meant that he was assured a comfortable income, could afford to give up the ranch and take things easy.
"If you and Dana have any silly idea about my folks being filthy rich, you couldn't be more wrong. And if Dana is looking for a rich gal to marry, he doesn't want me." It was a cutting, hurtful thing to say and uncalled for. But Lena couldn't hold the words back.
She'd been under nervous tension for days. She resented the way Corinne had taken it upon herself to find this house for two elderly people she had never seen and who wanted no assistance from her. What was more, Lena couldn't forget that Dana had never discussed marriage, in so may words, until after he heard about the oil property.
"Well," Corinne snapped, "that's a fine way to talk, I must say."
"Oh, skip it, you two." Dana smiled his charming, lazy smile as he patted Lena's hand. "This beauteous gal knows it's her face I can't resist, not her fortune. Come on, honey. Let's go exploring."
They got out of the car. Corinne strutted ahead, every inch the drum major, with Lena bringing up the rear. As they went down the steep stone steps leading to the flagstone patio, Lena watched the sun glinting on Dana's shiny black hair with the faintest of waves in it. Her gaze touched his broad shoulders, and her eyes were warm and loving as he turned to smile at her and catch her hand.
She thought of that first day, nearly two years ago, when she had walked into his office at Carlton's to apply for a job. In a matter of seconds she had decided that here was the best-looking man she had ever encountered. The most charming, too, with such beautiful manners. There was no, "Hi, kid," vulgarity about Carlton's dignified young executive, at that time in charge of personnel.
Instead, he had apologized for staring at her. "But you are so lovely to look at, Miss Anderson. So forgive me if I do look, won't you?" Not that there was anything offensive or even irritating about the way he allowed his gaze to take in her pale, silvery hair, her lustrous eyes, the sweet curve of her wide, full lips. It was as if he were appreciatively studying the perfections of a master painting.
It had taken him no more than five minutes to make up his mind, to tell her: "I think you're exactly what we need at the cosmetics counter." Then he asked her how she would like to be the beauty consultant in charge of Rose Garden cosmetics, their most expensive line.
Lena had left his office walking on air. That this miracle should happen to her-a small-town girl with a Texas drawl, two years in a Texas cow college, no business experience whatever, and a dime-store lipstick in her bag.
She still had that dime-store lipstick. She had kept it for luck.
Corinne led the way into the house through ceiling-to-floor glass doors. They went into a living room where the sun streamed glaringly through vast stretches of glass. Lena had to squint her eyes against the glare as she moved obediently, silently, down the long expanse of tufted white carpet. White walls, white drapes, white everywhere you looked except for three chairs done in sharp green, and two matching divans in Chinese red. Her dad would lose his mind in this room. There was no place to put his feet, his cigar ashes, or his cat.
"My mother-likes small windows," Lena heard herself saying, "where she can put up gingham curtains with ruffles."
Corinne paused in her conducted tour to stare at Lena with a glassy eye. "Do you mean to tell me you don't like this room, dear? Don't you know a perfect room when you see one? Come here, Lena. I want to show you something."
Meekly Lena crossed to one glass wall. Her gaze followed Corinne's pointing finger to an elaborate pink stucco house built on a hillside beyond a small canyon. Corinne breathed the name of a famous Hollywood star, a woman notorious for her figure rather than for her acting ability. "That's her house," said Corinne. "She and your parents would be practically neighbors. What would your mother think about that?"
"I don't think Mom could care less," Lena said flatly. She managed to hold herself in check until she'd looked at the two tiny bedrooms, the shell-pink tile of the bath. It was when they reached the kitchen "area," that tiny cubicle of space crammed with every electrical gadget dear to the hearts of the Madison Avenue advertising boys, that she announced coldly: "I'm sorry, but this place would never do for Mother and Dad. It's too ridiculous to consider. Dana, would you mind taking me home, please? I have a headache."
Dana had been roaming about the living room, examining this and that, smoking, saying very little. Now he came out to the dining area, where Corinne was breathing hard, obviously trying to check her anger by wiping nonexistent dust from two pottery lovebirds on the metal and glass table.
Dana was frowning, and he sounded very much as he did when he was calling down a troublesome salesgirl at the shop. "Frankly, Lena, I'm a little surprised at your attitude. My sister has gone to a lot of trouble to do you a great favor. This house, as she says, is a real find. It's a perfect house for two aged people who want to take life easy."
"My dad," Lena interrupted, "is fifty-two. Mom is forty-nine. I don't call that exactly aged. I repeat, would you mind taking me home?"
"Presently. But first I think we should talk this out." Dana drew a deep breath, looking troubled and worried and definitely out of patience with Lena's childish behavior. "For one thing, Lena, I'd like to talk this matter over with your father in person. Your parents are the ones who would be living here, and you may have a wrong slant as to what they would like. Or to put it another way," Dana gave a nervous cough, "when can I meet your father and discuss things with him?"
"That's a good question" Corinne proclaimed instantly. "When are we to meet your parents, Lena? It's been three weeks, I believe, since they arrived in Los Angeles. I've tried several times to arrange a little dinner party where we could meet. According to Dana, you always have some excuse. Why, Lena?"
Lena hunted in her bag for a cigarette. Dana disapproved of her smoking as he had, from time to time, disapproved of other "little flaws," such as her Texas drawl, her slouchy way of walking, her unfortunate way of making warm friends with utter strangers. Lena had spent a good part of her spare time in recent months working to correct these "little flaws." She had lost the drawl and gone to a charm school to learn to walk like a model. She had learned to restrain her natural friendliness with strangers until she learned for sure if they were "worth cultivating," as Dana put it. She had cut out cigarettes except for an occasional one when she was nervous and upset. Right now she was extremely upset and didn't care what Dana thought. She was furious at him for taking sides with Corinne, lecturing her in his lordly way. He might get away with that at the shop with kids who were afraid of losing their jobs, but not with her.
She lit the cigarette.
"Odd as it may seem to you," she said, "I think I know my own parents well enough to say what would appeal to them as a home. I've already told you in a general way what my mother and father are like. They are plain people, ranch people. They're used to a big, roomy, comfortable house. They don't like imagine trimmings, and I can assure you they wouldn't be impressed by looking out the window at a movie star's house. My dad," said Lena, "would much rather have a fine, freshly painted barn to look at."
"Obviously, Lena dear, you are in a highly nervous state," Corinne commented.
"You don't seem like yourself. Such childish talk, so lacking in the sophistication we expect from you. And you still haven't explained why you refuse to let us meet your parents."
"I haven't refused. I'm simply waiting for them to get a little settled and used to things out here. Then, too, Dad has had a virus infection, and it hasn't been convenient."
"And just when will it be convenient, may I ask?"
"I'll let you know," Lena said vaguely. "Next week, possibly, or the week after."
Lena was stalling for time, and she was a little ashamed of herself for doing it.
"There's something very peculiar about these excuses of yours, Lena. Dana and I have talked it over, so I know that he agrees with me. He thinks, as I do, that an explanation is called for. As you know, my dear, I'm a blunt-spoken woman, and I'm going to speak bluntly now. Is there something about your parents you're trying to hide from us? There's no disgrace in your family, is there?"
Dana spoke quickly from the window where he was standing, looking out over the hills burned brown and dry by the summer sun. "That's going a little too far, Corinne."
"It isn't going too far. You and Lena are practically engaged, as I understand it. Therefore we have the right to meet her people as soon as possible. If we are not permitted to meet them, there must be a reason."
"You want to look them over, to pick them to pieces! That's why you're in such a lather about meeting Mom and Dad," Lena said furiously. "And since you've asked, that's the reason I've been putting it off as long as I can."
She snatched up one of the pottery lovebirds, and pointed it at Corinne like a dagger. "You think you're so darned important, so superior to most people. Why? Because you write a column about Gracious Living and run all over southern California giving lectures to women with nothing better to do than to come and listen to your B.S. And Dana is a rising young executive! Both of you have inflated opinions of yourselves. You think you have the right to criticize anybody who doesn't dress and talk and do exactly as you think they should. Nobody really suits you unless they're rolling in money or get their names in the paper. You make me sick, both of you."
"Well, I never," said Corinne.
Dana came and put his arm around her. "You're saying things you don't mean, honey. You're upset. Come along now. I'll take you home."
Lena jerked away from him. "Of course I'm upset. But you two started this, and I'm going to finish it. In the future, I'll thank Corinne not to go house hunting for my parents until I ask her to. I have nothing to be ashamed of. I'm proud of my parents. They're superior to all the Hollywood phonies both of you think are such big shots, I can tell you that much."
She paused to take a good deep breath. The hand that held the lovebird was shaking, and so was her voice as she went on: "I'll arrange to have you meet them when I get around to it-if you still want to meet them. If you don't-" She stared hard at Dana. "If you want to call everything off, right here and now, that's okay too."
Very carefully she set the pottery lovebird back on the table, back to back with its mate. She turned to look at Dana. Suddenly her eyes welled with tears. "I've behaved badly. I'm sorry. If you don't want to drive me home, will you call a taxi?"