“Don’t hurt him!” Sabra exclaimed when Lunch let out a yowl of pain.
“Dogs aren’t supposed to be on the beach.” I put in my two cents.
“What are you doing here then?” Monty asked me, but he finally had to give up and jog away so Lunch would follow and desist.
Monty called over his shoulder, “Better not let Harriet catch you, Wither-Away!”
“Who’s Harriet?” Sabra St. Amour asked, when we could hear each other again.
“Just some fellow I know,” I said.
She laughed.
“Does he smoke?” she said.
“Sure he does,” I said. “Harriet’s very suicidal.”
“Is he around?” she said.
“He’s around someplace.”
“Would he have a match?” she said.
“Harriet’s out of cigarettes, not matches,” I said. “He smokes Merits. May I take him those?”
Then I did a crazy thing, maybe out of excitement over who she was, maybe out of self-consciousness at who I wasn’t: I began to try and get the pack away from her. She held on to it hard, and we began this tug-of-war, laughing and pushing each other, stumbling around together on the beach until she finally wrenched herself free and ran toward her towel. She scooped it up, along with a beach bag, and headed toward the hardpacked sand near the surf, running fast, but calling over her shoulder, “Good-bye!”
“Wait a minute!”
“I can’t. Good-bye!”
I didn’t follow her. I read somewhere in one of my mother’s movie magazines that a lot of famous female stars sit home alone at night because ordinary guys are afraid to pursue them, afraid to be rejected or just figuring someone like that has a whole life going for her, and certainly doesn’t need some average clown butting in.
That was my feeling as I watched her speed down the beach on her long legs; she was a fast runner, too. I had the feeling she didn’t expect me to follow her, and wouldn’t welcome it.
So I just stood there, going over the little interlude detail by detail in my head, fixing the memory of her so I could tell someone about it: Harriet or my sister—my mother, most of all. My mother’d love it that I met Sabra St. Amour on the beach. She’d tell her hairdresser about it and they’d cluck and twitter over it for a whole wash and set.
Then I looked down and saw the large, gold cuff bracelet in the sand. It must have fallen off during our little wrestling match.
I picked it up and read the inscription inside.
After I left him standing on the beach, I walked back through the surf remembering this book an actor brought onto the set once. It was called All About Sex After Fifty. When you looked inside there was nothing but blank pages. I could write a book just like that called What I Know About Boys.
There was a time when we were all living in suburbia that I wrote a long love letter every day to Elvis Presley. I had his pictures plastered all over my walls, and I played his records so often even Mama complained. I went from Elvis to David Cassidy, and from David to John Davidson. After I started in daytime, I got a crush on an actor who played my father, and when his story-line ended, I lost so much weight Mama had to force cans of Metrecal down me on the set. . . . But none of it was ever real.
“You think it’s real,” Mama would tell me when I was down and dragging myself around, “but it’s like the difference between plastic and wood, honey. The real thing is wood. When it happens to you, you’ll know, because it’ll splinter, crack and burn. You just be patient.”
It’s a pretty ironic situation, when you consider that my new legal name means Saint of Love. The only date I’ve ever been on was one with another daytime actor arranged by Hometown’s publicity woman, for a Soap Opera Digest awards banquet. We never saw each other before or after the affair, though there were various items about our “romance” in the gossip columns. Most of what you read in gossip columns is sent in by a press agent, and a lot of it is just made up.
When I got back to our beach house, Mama was waiting for me out on the deck.
“I thought you were just going for a little walk?” Mama said.
“I was. I did.”
Mama looked at her watch, the face of which simulates the dashboard of the Porsche automobile, black with red hands and luminous white dots. The watch cost $325, which is cheap compared to some of Mama’s watches. Mama has a thing about watches and shoes: She buys them by the carload. She has shoes she’s never even worn, never even taken out of their boxes. When Mama was little she was the youngest of four girls, and she always wore shoes that had already been worn by one of her sisters. That explains her obsession with shoes. The watches are something else again. Maybe she had a compulsion to buy all of them because she looks at a watch constantly, trying to fit everything into our elaborate schedule: my classes at Manhattan School of Performing Arts; my acting lessons with Mrs. Chaykoffsky; my twice-a-week sessions with my shrink; my hair appointments and my fittings.
“Well you don’t have to worry about getting a sunburn anymore,” Mama said. When you do a soap, you have to worry about things like that. You can’t have a sunburn unless your storyline has you in a resort area, or it’s mentioned you were at the beach.
Mama wasn’t the type you told about meeting a boy at the beach. I think anybody’s mother would like the looks of Wally Witherspoon. A casting department would file him in the “All-American Boy-Next-Door” category, with his short, straight black hair; round, light blue eyes; longish thin nose and great wide white smile. But all Mama would think about if I told her we’d met was what was I doing striking up a conversation with a stranger! Hadn’t I ever heard of rape and murder?
Mama was the type who’d read every word in the Daily News about some young psycho, look up from her paper at me and say, “Here’s another one. All the neighbors say he was an angel, never missed Sunday school and adored his old mother, but he picked up a hatchet and committed bloody murder on an innocent girl he’d done God knows what to beforehand!”
My shrink warned me I was too dependent on Mama, but I wouldn’t be anything, including able to afford a shrink, if Mama didn’t watch out for me. Maybe I wouldn’t need a shrink if Mama let up, but I probably wouldn’t be an actress, either. Practically everyone on the show has a shrink, or was in analysis at one time or another. Mama says acting is a demanding profession, and it’s good to get out all the kinks so they don’t interfere with the discipline all actors need.
I don’t think I really miss a social life—I don’t know because I’ve never had one. But I would miss acting. I’ll miss being on Hometown, too, I can’t deny that. Once my ulcer quiets down, I’ll try for something besides daytime T.V. I’d like to try Broadway again, or act in a film.
Mama likes to tell me to hold myself dear while I’m young.
“They don’t make chastity belts anymore, Mama,” I tease her.
“I’m not talking just about that,” says Mama. “I’m talking about having a value on yourself, your whole self, not just what’s below your waist. You. Sabra St. Amour.”
“I don’t even know who I am,” I say.
Mama says, “You’re a first-class talent. Someday you’ll be a wife, and a mother, but before that day comes you’ll build yourself a good, big bank account so you’ll never have to depend on anyone for your security.”
After I changed out of my bathing suit, I put on a robe and got out the backgammon set. Mama