Glitter Baby

Belinda’s Baby
Chapter 6

The man cracked an ugly black whip over his head, and the younger girls squealed. Even the older students, who had just last night agreed they were much too sophisticated to be frightened by the fouettard, felt their throats go dry. He was ferociously ugly, with a filthy, matted beard and a long, dirt-stained robe. Every December 4 the fouettard singled out the very worst girl at the Couvent de l’Annonciation to receive his bundle of birch twigs.

For once the convent’s dining room was free of its customary morning chatter, delivered in as many as five different languages. The girls pressed more closely together, and delicious quivers of fear shot through their stomachs.

Please, Blessed Mother, don’t let it be me. Their prayers came more from habit than any real fear since they already knew whom he would chose.

She stood slightly apart from them, near a plastic Christmas wreath that hung alongside construction paper snowflakes and a poster of Mick Jagger the sisters hadn’t yet spotted. Even though she was dressed in the same white blouse, blue plaid skirt, and dark kneesocks as her classmates, she looked different from the rest. Although she was only fourteen, she towered over all of them. She had huge hands, paddleboat feet, and a face too big for her body. An unruly ponytail contained the streaky blond hair that fell well past her shoulders. Her pale hair contrasted with a set of thick, dark eyebrows that almost met in the middle and looked as if they’d been painted on her face with a blunt-tipped marking pen. Her mouth, complete with a full set of silver braces, spread across the bottom of her face. Her arms and legs were long and ungainly, all pointy elbows and knobby knees, one of which bore a scab and the dirty outline of a Band-Aid. While the other girls wore slim Swiss wristwatches, she wore a man’s chronometer, the black leather strap fitting her so loosely that the face of the watch hung to the side of her bony adolescent wrist.

It wasn’t only her size that set her apart, but also the way she stood, her chin thrust forward, her funny green eyes glaring defiantly at anything she didn’t like-in this case the fouettard. Her rebellious expression dared him to touch her with the whip. No one but Fleur Savagar could have managed that look.

By that winter of 1970, the more progressive areas of France had outlawed the fouettard, the wicked “whipper” who threatened to give badly behaved French schoolchildren birch sticks instead of presents for Christmas. But at the Couvent de l’Annonciation changes weren’t made lightly, and the sisters hoped the shameful notoriety of being singled out as the worst-behaved girl at the couvent would breed reform. Unfortunately it hadn’t worked out that way.

For the second time the fouettard cracked his whip, and for the second time Fleur Savagar refused to move, even though she had good reason to be worried. In January she’d stolen the keys to the mother superior’s old Citroën. After bragging to everyone that she knew how to drive, she’d run the car straight through the toolshed. In March she’d broken her arm doing bareback acrobatics on the couvent’s bedraggled pony, then stubbornly refused to tell anyone she’d hurt herself until the nuns had spotted her badly swollen arm. An unfortunate incident with fireworks had led to the destruction of the garage roof, but that was a mild transgression compared to the unforgettable day all the couvent’s six-year-olds had disappeared.

The fouettard pulled the hated handful of birch twigs from an old gunnysack and let his eyes slide over the girls before they finally came to rest on Fleur. With a baleful stare, he placed the twigs at the toes of her scuffed brown oxfords. Sister Marguerite, who found the custom barbaric, looked away, but the other nuns clucked their tongues and shook their heads. They tried so hard with Fleur, but she was like quicksilver running through their disciplined days-changeable, impulsive, aching for her life to begin. They secretly loved her the best because she’d been with them the longest and because it was impossible not to love her. But they worried about what would happen when she was no longer under their firm control.

They watched for signs of remorse as she picked up the twigs. Hélas! Her head came up, and she flashed them a mischievous grin before she clamped the twigs into the crook of her arm like a bouquet of long-stemmed roses. All the girls giggled as she blew kisses and made mock bows.

As soon as Fleur was certain everybody understood how little she cared about the stupid fouettard and his stupid twigs, she slipped out the side door, grabbed her old wool coat from the row of hooks in the hallway, and raced outside. The morning was cold, and her breath formed a frosty cloud as she raced across the hard-packed earth away from the gray stone buildings. In her coat pocket, she found her beloved blue New York Yankees hat. It pulled at the rubber band on her ponytail, but she didn’t care. Belinda had bought the hat for her last summer.

Fleur could only see her mother twice a year-during the Christmas holidays and for a month in August. In exactly fourteen days they’d be together in Antibes, where they spent every Christmas. Fleur had been marking off the days on her calendar since last August. She loved being with Belinda more than anything in the world. Her mother never scolded her for talking too loud, or upsetting a glass of milk, or even for swearing. Belinda loved her more than anybody in the whole world.

Fleur had never seen her father. He’d brought her to the couvent when she was only one week old and never come back. She’d never seen the house on the Rue de la Bienfaisance where all of them lived without her-her mother, her father, her grandmother…and her brother, Michel. It wasn’t her fault, her mother said.

Fleur gave a shrill whistle as she reached the fence that marked the edge of the couvent property. Before she got her braces, she’d whistled a lot better. Before she got her braces, she hadn’t believed anything could make her uglier. Now she knew she’d been wrong.

The chestnut whickered as he came up to the edge of the fence and stuck his head over the post to nuzzle her shoulder. He was a Selle Français, a French saddle horse owned by the neighboring vintner, and Fleur thought he was the most beautiful creature in the world. She’d give anything to ride him, but the nuns wouldn’t let her, even though the vintner had given his permission. She wanted to disobey them and ride him anyway, but she was afraid they’d punish her by telling Belinda not to come.

Fleur planned to be a great horsewoman someday, despite her current status as the clumsiest girl at the couvent. She tripped over her big feet a dozen times a day, sending serving platters crashing to the floor, flower vases wobbling off tabletops, and the nuns scurrying into the nursery to safeguard whatever baby she might have taken it into her head to cuddle. Only when it came to sports did she forget her self-consciousness over her big feet, towering height, and oversized hands. She could run faster, swim farther, and score more goals at field hockey than anyone else. She was as good as a boy, and being as good as a boy was important to her. Fathers liked boys, and maybe if she was the bravest, the fastest, and the strongest, just like a boy, her father would let her come home.

The days before the Christmas holiday dragged endlessly until the afternoon arrived for her mother to pick her up. Fleur was packed hours in advance, and as she waited, the nuns passed through the chilly front hallway one by one.

“Do not forget, Fleur, to keep a sweater with you. Even in the South, it can be cool in December.”

“Yes, Sister Dominique.”

“Remember that you’re not in Châtillon-sur-Seine where you know everyone. You mustn’t talk to strangers.”

“Yes, Sister Marguerite.”

“Promise me you’ll go to Mass every day.”

She crossed her fingers in the folds of her skirt. “I promise, Sister Thérèse.”

Fleur’s heart burst with pride when her beautiful mother finally swept into their midst. She looked like a bird of paradise descending into a flock of chimney swifts. Beneath a snow-white mink coat, Belinda wore a yellow silk top over indigo trousers belted at the waist with braided orange vinyl. Platinum and Lucite bangles clicked at her wrists, and matching disks swung from her ears. Everything about her was colorfully mod, stylish, and expensive.

At thirty-three, Belinda had become a costly gem, cut to perfection by Alexi Savagar and polished by the luxuries of the Faubourg St.-Honoré. She was thinner, more prone to small, quick gestures, but the eyes that drank in her daughter’s face had not changed at all. They were the same innocent hyacinth-blue as they’d been the day she’d met Errol Flynn.

Fleur bounded across the hallway like a Saint Bernard pup and threw herself in her mother’s arms. Belinda took a small step backward to steady herself. “Let’s hurry,” she whispered into Fleur’s ear.

Fleur waved a hasty good-bye to the nuns, grabbed her mother’s hand, and pulled her toward the door before the sisters could bombard Belinda with an account of Fleur’s latest misdeeds. Not that Belinda paid any attention. “Those old bats,” she’d said to Fleur the last time. “You have a wild, free spirit, and I don’t want them to change one thing about you.’”

Fleur loved when her mother talked like that. Belinda said wildness was in Fleur’s blood.

A silver Lamborghini stood at the bottom of the front steps. As Fleur slid into the passenger seat, she gulped in the sweet, familiar scent of her mother’s Shalimar.

“Hello, baby.”

She slipped into Belinda’s arms with a small sob and cuddled into the mink, the Shalimar, and everything that was her mother. She was too old to cry, but she couldn’t help herself. It felt so good to be Belinda’s baby again.

Belinda and Fleur loved the Côte d’Azur. The day after they arrived, they drove from their pink stucco hotel near Antibes into Monaco along the famous Corniche du Littoral, the serpentine road that twisted around the cliffs of the coastline. “You wouldn’t get carsick if you’d look straight ahead instead of out the sides,” Belinda said, just as she’d said the year before.

“But then I’d miss too many things.”

They stopped first at the market at the foot of Monte Carlo’s palace hill. Fleur’s stomach quickly recovered, and she bounded from one food stall to another pointing at everything that caught her eye. The weather was warm, and she wore khaki camp shorts, her favorite T-shirt, which said, “Draft beer, not students,” and a new pair of Jesus sandals Belinda had bought her the day before. Belinda wasn’t like the nuns about clothes. “Wear what makes you happy, baby,” she said. “Develop your own style. There’s plenty of time for high fashion later.”

Belinda was wearing Pucci.

After Fleur made her selections for lunch, she dragged her mother up the steep path from the Monte Carlo market to the palace, eating a ham and poppy seed roll as she walked. Fleur spoke four languages, but she was proudest of her English, which was flawlessly American. She’d learned it from the American students who attended the couvent-daughters of diplomats, bankers, and the bureau chiefs of the American newspapers. By adopting their slang and their attitudes, she’d gradually stopped thinking of herself as French.

Someday she and Belinda were going to live in California. She wished they could go now, but Belinda wouldn’t have any money if she divorced Alexi. Besides, Alexi wouldn’t let her get a divorce. Fleur wanted to go to America more than anything in the world.

“I wish I had an American name.” She scratched a bug bite on her thigh and tore off another bite of sandwich with her teeth. “I hate my name. I really do. Fleur is a stupid name for somebody as big as me. I wish you’d named me Frankie.”

“Frankie is a hideous name.” Belinda collapsed on a bench and tried to catch her breath. “Fleur was the closest I could get to the female version of a man I cared about. Fleur Deanna. It’s a beautiful name for a beautiful girl.”

Belinda always told Fleur she was beautiful, even though it wasn’t true. Her thoughts flew in another direction. “I hate having my period. It’s disgusting.”

Belinda delved into her purse for a cigarette. “It’s part of being a woman, baby.”

Fleur made a face to show Belinda exactly what she thought of that, and her mother laughed. Fleur pointed up the path toward the palace. “I wonder if she’s happy?”

“Of course she’s happy. She’s a princess. One of the most famous women in the world.” Belinda lit her cigarette and pushed her sunglasses on top of her head. “You should have seen her in The Swan, with Alec Guinness and Louis Jourdan. God, she was beautiful.”

Fleur stretched out her legs. They were covered with fine, pale hair, and pink with sunburn. “He’s kind of old, don’t you think?”

“Men like Rainier are ageless. He’s quite distinguished, you know. Very charming.”

“You’ve met him?”

“Last fall. He came for dinner.” Belinda pulled her sunglasses back over her eyes.

Fleur dug the heel of her sandal into the dirt. “Was he there?”

“Hand me some of those olives, darling.” Belinda gestured toward one of the paper cartons with an almond-shaped fingernail painted the color of ripe raspberries.

Fleur handed her the carton. “Was he?”

“Alexi owns property in Monaco. Of course he was there.”

“Not him.” Fleur’s sandwich had lost its taste, and she pulled off a piece to toss to the ducks across the path. “I didn’t mean Alexi. I meant Michel.” She used the French pronunciation of her thirteen-year-old brother’s name, which was a girl’s name in America.

“Michel was there. He had a school recess.”

“I hate him. I really do.”

Belinda set aside the olive carton without opening it and took a drag on her cigarette.

“I don’t care if it’s a sin,” Fleur said. “I hate him even more than Alexi. Michel has everything. It’s not fair.”

“He doesn’t have me, honey. Just remember that.”

“And I don’t have a father. But it’s still not even. At least Michel gets to go home when he’s not in school. He gets to be with you.”

“We’re here to have a good time, baby. Let’s not get so serious.”

Fleur wouldn’t be sidetracked. “I can’t understand Alexi. How could anybody hate a baby so much? Maybe now that I’m grown up…But not when I was one week old.”

Belinda sighed. “We’ve been through this so many times. It’s not you. It’s just the way he is. God, I wish I had a drink.”

Even though Belinda had explained it dozens of times, Fleur still didn’t understand. How could a father want to have sons so much that he would send his only daughter away and never see her again? Belinda said Fleur was a reminder of his failure and Alexi couldn’t stand failure. But even when Michel was born a year after Fleur, he hadn’t changed. Belinda said it was because she couldn’t have any more children.

Fleur had cut pictures of her father out of the newspapers, and she kept them in a manila envelope in the back of her closet. She used to pretend Mother Superior called her to the office and that Alexi was there waiting to tell her he’d made a terrible mistake and he’d come to take her home. Then he’d hug her and call her “baby” the way her mother did.

She tossed another piece of bread at the ducks. “I hate him. I hate them both.” And then, for good measure, “I hate my braces, too. Josie and Celine Sicard hate me because I’m ugly.”

“You’re just feeling sorry for yourself. Remember what I’ve been telling you. In a few years, every girl at the couvent will want to look just like you. You need to grow up a little more, that’s all.”

Fleur’s bad mood slipped away. She loved her mother.

The palace of the Grimaldi family was a sprawling stone and stucco edifice with ugly square turrets and candy cane guard boxes. As Belinda watched her daughter dart through the crowd of tourists to climb on top of a cannon that overlooked the Monaco yacht basin, she felt a lump form in her throat. Fleur had Flynn’s wildness, his restless zest for living.

Belinda had wanted to blurt out the truth so many times. She wanted to tell Fleur that a man like Alexi Savagar could never have been her father. That Fleur was Errol Flynn’s daughter. But fear kept her silent. She’d learned long ago not to cross Alexi. Only once had she beaten him. Only once had he been the helpless one. When Michel was born.

After dinner that night, Belinda and Fleur went to see an American Western with French subtitles. The film was half over when Belinda saw him for the first time. She must have made some sort of sound because Fleur looked over at her. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Belinda managed. “It’s…That man…”

Belinda studied the cowboy who’d just sauntered into the saloon where Paul Newman was playing poker. The cowboy was very young and far from movie star handsome. The camera moved in for a close-up and Belinda forgot to breathe. It didn’t seem possible. And yet…

The lost years dropped away. James Dean had come back.

The man was tall and lean with legs that didn’t stop. His long, narrow face looked as if it had been chipped from flint by a rebellious hand, and his irregular features projected a confidence that went beyond arrogance. He had straight brown hair; a long, narrow nose with a bump at the bridge; and a sulky mouth. His slightly crooked front tooth had the tiniest chip at one corner. And his eyes…Restless and bitter blue.

He didn’t look at all like Jimmie-she saw that now. He was taller, not as handsome. But he was another rebel-she felt it in her bones-another man who lived life on his own terms.

The film ended, but she stayed in her seat, clutching Fleur’s impatient hand and watching the credits roll. His name flashed on the screen. Excitement welled inside her.

Jake Koranda.

After all these years, Jimmie had sent her a sign. He was telling her she mustn’t lose hope. A man is his own man. A woman her own woman. Jake Koranda, the man behind that off-kilter face, had given her hope. Somehow she could still make her dreams come true.

The boys of Châtillon-sur-Seine discovered Fleur the summer before her sixteenth birthday. “Salut, poupée!” they called out as she emerged from the boulangerie.

She looked up, a smear of chocolate dotting her chin, and saw three boys lounging in the doorway of the pharmacie next door. They were smoking cigarettes and listening to “Crocodile Rock” on a portable radio. One boy stubbed out his cigarette. “Hé poupée, irons voir par ici.” He made a beckoning gesture with his head.

Fleur glanced around to see which of her classmates he was talking to.

The boys laughed. One nudged his friend and pointed at her legs. “Regardez-moi ces jambes!”

Fleur looked down to see what was wrong, and another dab of chocolate from her éclair dripped onto the blue leather strap of her Dr. Scholl’s sandals. The taller of the boys winked, and she realized they were admiring her legs. Hers!

“Qu’est-ce que tu dirais d’un rendezvous?”

A date. He was asking her for a date! She dropped the éclair and ran up the street to the bridge where the girls were meeting. Her streaky blond hair flew behind her like a horse’s mane. The boys laughed and whistled.

When she got back to the couvent, she dashed to her room and stared at herself in the mirror. Those same boys used to call her l’épouvantail, the scarecrow. What had happened? Her face looked the same: thick, marking-pen eyebrows, green eyes set too far apart, mouth spread all over. She’d finally stopped growing, but not until she’d reached five feet, eleven and a half inches. The braces were gone now. Maybe that was it.

By the time August arrived, Fleur was nearly sick with excitement. A whole month to be with her mother. And on Mykonos, her favorite of all the Greek islands. The first morning as they walked along the beach in the dazzling white sunlight, she couldn’t stop talking about everything she’d been saving up.

“It’s creepy the way those boys keep calling out at me. Why would they do something like that? I think it’s because I got rid of my braces.” Fleur tugged on the oversized T-shirt she’d pulled on top of the apple-green bikini Belinda had bought to surprise her. She loved the color, but its skimpy cut embarrassed her. Belinda wore an oatmeal striped tunic and a chrome Galanos slave bracelet. Both of them had bare feet, but Belinda’s toenails were painted burnt umber.

Her mother sipped from the Bloody Mary she’d brought along. Belinda drank a lot more than she should, but Fleur didn’t know how to get her to stop.

“Poor baby,” Belinda said, “it’s hard not being the ugly duckling anymore. Especially when you’ve been so dedicated to the idea.” She slipped her free arm around Fleur’s waist, and her hipbone brushed the top of her daughter’s thigh. “I’ve been telling you for years the only problem with your face is that you hadn’t grown into it, but you’re stubborn.”

The way Belinda said it made Fleur feel as though that was something to be proud of. She hugged her mother, then flopped down on the sand. “I couldn’t ever have sex. I mean it, Belinda. I am never getting married. I don’t even like men.”

“You don’t know any men, darling,” Belinda said dryly. “Once you’ve gotten away from that godforsaken convent, you’ll feel differently.”

“I won’t. Can I have a cigarette?”

“No. And men are wonderful, baby. The right men, of course. Powerful ones. When you walk into a restaurant on the arm of an important man, everyone looks at you, and you see admiration in their eyes. They know you’re very special.”

Fleur frowned and picked at the bandage on her toe. “Is that why you won’t get divorced from Alexi? Because he’s important?”

Belinda sighed and tilted her face into the sun. “I’ve told you, baby. It’s money. I don’t have the skills to support us.”

But Fleur would have the skills. She already excelled in math. She spoke French, English, Italian, and German, even a little Spanish. She knew history and literature, she could type, and when she went to the university, she’d learn even more. Before long, she’d be able to support them both. Then she and Belinda could live together forever and never be separated again.

Two days later, one of Belinda’s Parisian acquaintances arrived on Mykonos. Belinda introduced Fleur as her niece, something she always did on the rare occasions when they ran into a person she knew. Each time it happened, Fleur felt sick inside, but Belinda said she had to do it or Alexi would cancel their trips.

The woman was Madame Phillipe Jacques Duverge, but Belinda said she’d once been Bunny Groben, from White Plains, New York. She’d also been a famous model during the sixties, and she kept pointing her camera at Fleur. “Just for fun,” she said,

Fleur hated having her picture taken, and she kept running into the water.

Madame Duverge followed, clicking away.

As one white-hot Mykonos day gave way to another, Fleur discovered the young men who roamed the sandy Greek beaches were no different from the boys of Châtillon-sur-Seine. She told Belinda they were making her so nervous she couldn’t enjoy her new snorkeling mask. “Why do they have to act so stupid?”

Belinda took a sip of her gin and tonic. “Ignore them. They’re not important.”

When Fleur returned to the couvent for her final year, she had no way of knowing her life was about to change forever. In October, shortly after her sixteenth birthday, a fire broke out in the dormitory, and all the girls were forced to evacuate. A photographer for the local newspaper rushed out and caught the daughters of France’s most exclusive families standing by the blazing building in their pajamas. Although the dormitory was badly damaged, no one was hurt, but because of the notoriety of the families involved, several of the photos made their way into Le Monde, including a close-up of the nearly forgotten daughter of Alexi Savagar.

Alexi was too intelligent to keep Fleur’s existence a secret. Instead he’d simply look pensive whenever her name was mentioned, and people assumed his daughter was handicapped, perhaps mentally retarded. But the astonishingly beautiful young woman with the wide mouth and startled eyes could never be mistaken for anybody’s closet skeleton.

Alexi was furious that the newspaper had identified her, but it was too late. People began asking questions. To make it worse, Solange Savagar picked that particular time to die. Alexi couldn’t tolerate the vulgar speculation that would grow even worse if the obviously healthy granddaughter who’d been so recently photographed was absent from her grandmother’s funeral.

He ordered Belinda to send for her bastard.