Picture Perfect Part 23

I was so excited by the time I got back to the house that I fairly flew up the stairs. I threw open the door of the sitting room and came face-toface with Alex. "You're late," he said tightly. I beamed at him. "You're early." I thrust the box behind my back, hoping he hadn't noticed it.

A muscle jumped at the edge of Alex's jaw. "You said you'd be here when I got home. You didn't tell anyone you were going out."

I shrugged. "I told John," I said. "I had an errand to run."

Alex hit me so swiftly across the chest I didn't have time to see it coming. Stunned, I looked up at him from the floor where I had fallen, crushing the box, its festival of ribbons.

I did something I hadn't done in the three years this had been happening: I cried. I couldn't help it; I had believed that we'd started over, and now Alex, who had never disappointed me, had taken us back to the way it was before.

When he started to kick at me I rolled away from him, feeling his shoe strike me in the back, the kidneys, and the ribs. I crossed my arms protectively over my stomach, and when Alex came to his senses and knelt down beside me I would not look at him. I rubbed my palms over this life I was holding like a good-luck charm. I listened to his whispered pleas, his apologies, and I thought, I hope this baby hates you.

BARBARA WALTERS WAS MUCH PRETTIER IN PERSON THAN SHE WAS on the air, and she moved through our house with the self-a.s.surance of a general, strategically moving furniture and flowers to make room for lights and cameras. She was planning to interview Alex for about an hour, and then she wanted me to step in so that she could ask me questions as well. In the meantime, I sat very straight next to the segment producer, trying to ignore the pain in my back and my side.

When the camera began to film, it was focused directly on her as she gave her prewritten rundown of Alex's career, beginning with Des- perado and ending with the ongoing production of Macbeth. "Alex Rivers," she said smoothly, "has shown himself to be more than just another pretty face. From his very first feature film, and in nearly every movie thereafter, he has shied away from traditional romantic leads to play, instead, flawed and frightened men. It has set him apart from other talented actors, as has his unheard-of near sweep of the Oscar nominations with his first attempt at direction, The Story of His Life. I spoke with Alex at his Bel-Air home."

At that line, the cameras swung to include Alex in the shot. "Many people use your name to define the word 'star.' What would you say characterizes a star?"

Alex leaned back against the sofa. He crossed one leg lazily over the other. "Charm," he said. He grinned. "And whether or not you can get a table at the studio commissary." He shifted slightly. "But I'd rather be thought of as an actor than a star," he said slowly.

"Can't you be both?" Barbara pressed.

Alex tilted his head. "Sure," he said. "But one is a serious vocation, and one is smoke and mirrors, and it's hard to be considered a dedicated professional when you're labeled a 'star.' I never asked for all the trappings. I just happen to like doing what I do."

"But unlike many actors, you weren't a struggling waiter for ten years before you broke into the business."

Alex smiled. "Two years. And I was a bartender, not a waiter. I can still mix a h.e.l.l of a Long Island Iced Tea. But no, I got very lucky. I happened to be in the right place at the right time." He glanced at me.

"Actually, that's sort of been the story of my life."

Barbara smiled at the neat segue. "Let's talk about that- The Story of His Life. How autobiographical is that?"

For the slightest moment, Alex looked unnerved. "Well," he said slowly, "I had a father, but the similarity ends there." I glanced away, staring out the window at the storm that was gathering. We were going to tape this outside by the pool, but the weather had been too risky.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I was aware of Alex feeding Barbara Walters the lines he'd fed me in Tanzania about his childhood before he told me the truth. I blinked at a streak of lightning, and I thought of how very tired I was.

"Some critics say that you've pushed past being a s.e.x symbol and that you use your looks to get to the c.h.i.n.ks in the armor, so to speak- to expose what lies beneath a character." Barbara leaned forward. "What sort of c.h.i.n.ks are there in your own armor?"

A smile slipped sideways over Alex's face, the same smile that was going to make a million women catch their breath when they watched on Oscar night and that, even now, had my heart racing. "What makes you think I have any?" he said.

Barbara laughed and said it might be the perfect time to introduce me, Ca.s.sandra Barrett Rivers, Alex's wife of three years. She waited for me to settle myself on the couch beside Alex as I had been directed to do, and then let the cameras start up again. "You two have certainly been spared a great deal of the negative publicity that usually strikes couples in Hollywood." She turned to Alex. "Is that, again, a matter of being in the right place at the right time?"

I sat as quiet as a stone, smiling up at Alex like an idiot. "It's more a matter of not being in the wrong place at the wrong time," he said.

"But then again, we're a pretty ordinary couple. We stay home a lot. I guess we don't really give people much to talk about."

"You think viewers out there believe that you two eat crackers in bed and watch cartoons on Sat.u.r.day mornings and jog on the beach?"

Alex and I looked at each other and laughed. "Yeah," he said. "Except Ca.s.sie doesn't jog."

"You're an anthropologist," Barbara said to me, swiftly turning the conversation. I nodded. "What attracted you to a celebrity as 'big' as Alex Rivers?"

"I wasn't attracted to him," I said flatly. "The first time I met him I intentionally poured a drink in his lap." I told the story of my arrival on the movie set in Tanzania, and while Alex squirmed uncomfortably in his seat, most of the crew Barbara had brought with her started laughing. When filming picked up again, I leaned imperceptibly closer toward Alex, a show of support. "I suppose I don't see him as a lot of other women do," I said carefully. "He's not a celebrity to me; he never really has been. It wouldn't have mattered if he sold used cars or worked in a coal mine. He's someone I happen to love."

Barbara turned to Alex. "Why Ca.s.sie? Out of all the women in the world, why her and only her?"

Alex pulled me closer, and my eyes glazed a little as my sore side touched him. "She was made for me," he said simply. "That's the only way I can explain it."

Outside, there was a roll of thunder. "One last question," Barbara said, "and it's for Ca.s.sie. Tell us what America doesn't know about Alex Rivers that you think they ought to know."

Shocked, I stared at her, my mouth slightly ajar. The air in the room became heavier, and the rain hit like a fall of stones against the French doors. I could feel Alex's fingers digging into my shoulder, and with every breath there was a quick ache under my ribs. Well, Barbara, I could say, for one thing, he hits me. And his father was terribly abusive. And he's going to have a baby, but he doesn't even know that yet because I'm too afraid of his reaction to tell him the truth. I forced myself to relax in Alex's grasp. "Nothing," I said, my voice just over a whisper. "Nothing you would ever believe."

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

I used to think my suicide note would have read, You won. Not that it had been a game-but at the very worst times, I knew that Alex could always act better than I could; that when I cracked under the pressure and told someone the truth he would still be able to save face.

And in Los Angeles, a city he commanded, who would people believe?

But the real reason I could never tell anyone the truth about our marriage had less to do with my fear of not being believed than with Alex himself. I just didn't want to hurt him. When I pictured him, it wasn't standing with his fists above me. I saw him slow-dancing with me on the veranda, latching the clasp on an emerald necklace he'd just brought me, moving inside me with a striking sense of wonder. This, to me, was Alex. This was the man I still wanted to spend my life with.

I never would have left him if there weren't somebody else involved.

But I forced myself to set an ultimatum in my mind. One more time, I thought, one more threat to this life inside me, and I will go. I tried not to think of it as leaving Alex; I imagined it instead as saving my child. I didn't let myself think about it any more than that, because so much of me was hoping that it wouldn't happen.

But then Alex had heard, the day he left for Scotland, about being placed second on the Barbara Walters broadcast, instead of third. And he was superst.i.tiously sure that it was a forecast of what was to come at the Academy Awards in March. He wouldn't win his Oscars; he would be a failure. He had told me these things, and then he had lashed out.

Well, you know the rest. I must have pa.s.sed out from the head wound sometime after I left the house, because I knew enough to leave.

I met you purely by accident at St. Sebastian's cemetery and you took care of me until Alex came charging in from Scotland and took me home.

So I had come full circle: in late February, several days after you'd turned me over to Alex at the police station, I was standing in my bedroom closet getting ready to pack so I could return to Scotland with Alex. Then I found the box with the extra pregnancy test. And I tried to make myself believe that I would be taking a piece of Alex with me when I ran away again.

AN HOUR AFTER I'D LEFT THE HOUSE I WAS WELL OUT OF BEL-AIR, but I had nowhere to go. The banks were closed and I had less than twenty dollars in my wallet. I didn't think of you, not right away. Again I considered running to Ophelia; and again I couldn't, because it was where Alex would expect me to go.

I didn't feel comfortable enough to turn to a colleague from UCLA, and I couldn't hide in my office, since that would be the second place Alex would check. And then I remembered what you said to me Wednesday morning, and the way you looked at me after Alex's fight at Le Do me. I knew you would take me in; I knew it maybe even before I left the house, so I waited at the corner for a bus that would take me toward Reseda.

Your home could fit into a corner of ours, and the trees on your front lawn are all in varying stages of death, but I have never seen any place so inviting. A warm yellow light floods the front porch, and when I step under its glow I feel protected, not on display.

You open the door before I have a chance to knock. You don't seem surprised to see me; it is as if you have been waiting all along. You pull me into the tiny entry hall and close the door behind me. It seems perfectly natural that you haven't spoken a word when you begin to run your hands gently over my back, my ribs, my hips, hesitating at the spots where I have been bruised. You sense the places through the cotton of my shirt, as if you are feeling for the change of temperature that comes with pain.

And Will, when you are finished, you look at me. Your eyes are as dark as Alex's during a rage. I stare back at you, not knowing how or where I am supposed to begin.

I don't have to. You put your arms around me, giving me the simple beat of your heart to measure time. I keep my hands balled at my sides, stiff in another man's embrace. "Ca.s.sie," you whisper into my hair, "I believe you." Outside, an owl sobs. I close my eyes, lean into your faith, and I let myself go.

1993 Along time ago, when the world had just begun, six young women lived in a village set beside a huge boulder. As was their custom, one day while their husbands were out hunting, they went out to dig for herbs. Some time pa.s.sed, each of the women rooting with her digging stick, and then one of the wives found something new to eat. "Come and try this," she told her friends. "This plant tastes delicious!"

Within minutes, the six women were all eating sweet onions. They were so tasty that they ate until the sun set. One of the wives looked at the dark sky.

"We'd better get home to cook dinner for our husbands," she pointed out, and they all left. When the husbands came home that night they were exhausted but happy, since they had each killed a cougar. "What smells so awful?" one man asked as he stood in the doorway of his lodge.

"Maybe it is some food that has spoiled," another husband suggested. But when they leaned over to kiss their wives h.e.l.lo, they realized where the odor was coming from. "We found something new to eat," the wives said, bubbling with excitement. They held out the onions. "Here, try them."

"They smell terrible," the husbands said. "We won't eat them. And you're not going to stay in the same lodge as us, not smelling like that. You'll have to sleep outside tonight." So the wives gathered their things and slept beneath the stars. When the husbands left to go hunting the next day, the wives returned to the spot where they had dug up the wild onions. They knew their husbands didn't like the smell, but the onions were so delicious that the wives could not help but eat them. They filled their bellies and stretched out on the soft red earth.

The husbands came home that night, gruff and irritable. They had not caught any cougars. "We smelled like your onions," they accused, "so the animals ran away. It is all your fault."

The wives didn't believe them. They slept outside a second night, and a third, until a week had pa.s.sed. The wives kept eating the onions that were so delicious, and the men could not catch any cougars. Frustrated, the men yelled at their wives, "Get away from us! We can't stand your onion smell."

"Well, we can't get any sleep outside," the wives countered. The seventh day, the wives took their woven ropes with them when they went to dig the onions. One wife carried along her baby daughter. They scaled the large rock beside their village and turned their faces to the sinking crimson sun.

"Let's leave our husbands," one wife suggested. "I don't want to live with mine anymore." The wives all agreed. The oldest wife stood on the boulder and chanted a magical word. She tossed her rope into the sky, and it hooked over a cloud so that the ends hung down. The other wives tied their own ropes to the one that was swinging and then they stood on the frayed edges of the ropes. Slowly they began to rise, swaying around like starlings. They moved in circles, pa.s.sing each other, reaching higher and higher. The other villagers saw the wives ascending in the sky. "Come back!" the People called as the women floated over the camp. But the wives and the little girl kept going. When the husbands returned that night, they were hungry and lonely. They wished they had not driven their wives away. One of them got the idea to go after the women, using the same kind of magic they had. They ran to their lodges and brought their own ropes, and soon they too were rising in the night. The wives glanced down and saw the husbands coming after them. "Should we wait for them?" one woman asked calmly.

The others shouted and shook their heads. "No! They told us to leave. We won't let them catch us." They danced and swung on their ropes. "We will be happier in the sky." When the husbands were close enough to hear, the wives shouted for them to stop, and the men stayed right where they were, a little behind their wives. So the women who loved onions stayed in Sky Country. They are still there, seven stars that we call the Pleiades. The faintest of all is the little girl. And the husbands, who will not go home until their wives do, remain a short distance away, six stars in the constellation Taurus. You can find them shining up at their wives, wishing maybe that things had turned out a different way.

-Monache Indian legend

CHAPTER TWENTY.

IN the dark, beneath a pouch blessed with good medicine, Ca.s.sie told Will the story of her life. She talked the whole night. At times Will only watched her; at times he held her while she cried. And when her voice fell quiet, Will sighed and leaned back against his nearly new couch, painfully aware of the awkward and suffocating silence. Ca.s.sie sat now with her head bowed, her hands clasped between her knees.

Will could not have said how, but he'd known Ca.s.sie was going to show up on his doorstep. He'd known before she flattened her shirt against her stomach that she was pregnant. He'd known that it was up to him to spirit her away. What he could not understand was how, even now, she could worry about hurting Alex.

"I just have to leave for a little while," she said abruptly, startling Will. She nodded slightly, as if she was still trying to convince herself.

"It's the end of February now, and I'll have the baby in August."

"I could be wrong," Will said carefully, his first words in hours, "but I don't think Alex will just sit around for six months, waiting."

Ca.s.sie turned her face up to his. "Whose side are you on?" she asked.

The problem was that Alex Rivers had the money and resources to find her anywhere. "What I need," Ca.s.sie mused, "is a place where he'd never even think to look."

And that was when Will understood why the spirits had brought Ca.s.sie to him at St. Sebastian's, a week ago. He pictured the tar paper shacks that served as houses in Pine Ridge, the willow skeletons of sweat lodges that dotted the plains like the carca.s.ses of mythical beasts.

Like everyone else, the government had basically forgotten about the Sioux; most Americans didn't know living conditions like theirs still existed. For all intents and purposes, the reservation could have been on a different planet.

Will listened to the fragile hitch of Ca.s.sie's breathing and turned her hand over in his, palm up, as if he could read her future. "I think,"

he said quietly, "I have just the spot you're looking for."

SO AFTER BEING IN LOS ANGELES FOR ALL OF TWO WEEKS, WILL FLYing Horse boarded a plane and headed to the place he hated more than anywhere else in the world.

When he arrived in Denver to make the connecting flight, his throat tightened up and his head spun. He was imagining, already, the red dust of the Pine Ridge Reservation; the vacant-eyed Lakota, who waited for their own lives to speed by them. He stared out the scratched window of the plane, knowing it would be at least an hour, but still expecting to see the sharp, rocky needles of the Black Hills. He pictured them ripping through the belly of the little plane, scattering gray and wine-red luggage.

Beside him, Ca.s.sie was asleep. He wanted to wake her up, just to remind himself why exactly he had come full circle when he'd been running in such a fixed line. But she'd had so little rest the night before that the skin beneath her eyes was blue-bruised. He envied her-not her exhaustion, and certainly not her life, but her ability to look at this trip as a fresh start instead of a foot-dragging trudge backward.

He would get her set with his grandparents, but that was where his obligation ended. He'd go back to L.A. and pick up where he'd left off: days filled with traffic detail and speeding violations, and stifling, quiet nights. He could make detective in another year, and if he got out more with the guys, he could find some leggy young thing to stretch across the other half of his bed.

The truth was that he did not understand his newly adopted city.

He couldn't remember the LAPD's special rules about arresting politicians or celebrities. He didn't know what to say in bars when flawless women told him they read crystals, or were on the water diet. His breath caught every time he merged on the freeway and saw a rolling carpet of cars, more people concentrated in one steel knot than in the entire town where he'd grown up. But regardless of what he cared to admit to himself, this is what he would tell the Lakota people he saw during the weekend: Life's great out there; I'm on the fast track; I wouldn't trade it for the world.

In her sleep, Ca.s.sie's head lolled to the right, coming to rest on his shoulder. She restlessly crossed her arms over her abdomen, protecting her child.

Now, that was something Will could understand. Not the egoserving me-first att.i.tude of Los Angeles, but the concept of extended family. h.e.l.l, his own parents had died, but there had always been people to look after him, even if it meant giving up something in their own lives.

Will breathed in the honey of Ca.s.sie's hair, shocked by the smell of his own shampoo. He rested his cheek against the curls, calmed by the awesome responsibility of being her deliverance.

DURING THE EIGHTY-ONE YEARS HE HAD BEEN ALIVE, CYRUS FLYING Horse had made and put up fence posts, taken care of cattle, dug potatoes, ridden broncos for prize money. He had been a rodeo clown, he had repaired roads, he had exterminated rattlesnakes. Up until three years ago he had been working at a factory that manufactured fishing hooks, but now he just fashioned hooks for the h.e.l.l of it; he was technically retired, which as far as he could tell only meant there was never enough to make ends meet. And this was even with Dorothea working three days a week in town at the cafeteria. She brought home minimum wages, a perfume mixed of grease and labor, and the leftover fish sticks and meatball subs. But Cyrus worried more about filling up his day with activity than about a lack of money. He had relatives, and that was the Lakota way-you took care of your own, even if you barely had a pot to p.i.s.s in.

He sat on a stump outside his government-built house, the wood having softened to his bottom after all this time. The snow was melting; it was still cold, but nice enough for you to forget winter if you stayed long enough in the sun. Today, he was doing a crossword puzzle. It was not exactly a mental challenge; he'd gotten it from Arthur Two Birds, who had erased all his pencil answers, so even when Cyrus got stuck he could take out his bifocals and peek at the shadows of the words that wouldn't come.

His face was lined, like the craggy landscape of the Badlands, the otherworldly patches of the Black Hills where, as a child, he had believed evil spirits lived. Of course, he knew now that evil did not seat itself in rocks. Instead it seeped into people, becoming as distinctive a part of them as their scent or their fingerprints. Had he not seen it in the glittering blue eyes of the wasicu clerk at the BIA? In the tired mouth of the banker who had repossessed the first truck he'd ever bought? In the dazed, drunken glow of the traveling salesman whose careening car had killed his only son a hundred years ago?

Cyrus sighed and bent his head to the frayed paper. Some of the clues were beyond him: Marla's man had filled in as Trump, which Cyrus had always believed was an ace; and apparently Bert's buddy was Ernie. He was especially pleased when he'd get an answer without having to check Arthur's work. "Outcry of the greedy," he read aloud, tapping the pencil to his temple. He hunched closer to his lap, carefully forming the letters in the four little boxes. M-I-N-E.

"He can really dish it out," Cyrus said, turning the phrase over and over, giving emphasis to different words in hopes that the answer would come in a flash.

"Chef," said a voice behind him; then a light laugh. He hadn't even seen Dorothea approaching, but he nodded and filled in what now was crystal clear. He rolled the pencil into the crossword puzzle and stood up, stamping slush from his boots. He followed his wife into their oneroom house.

Dorothea shrugged off her parka and began to unpack containers of coleslaw and turkey loaf, the blue plate special of the day. Her hands fluttered nervously over the plastic tablecloth like two scattering birds.

Finally, she sat down and turned bright black eyes to her husband.

"Today," she told him. "Uyelo. He is coming."