“Show-off.” He teased her and she blushed.

“That's not what I meant.” She looked ravishing in a black velvet dress that showed off the still firm perfectly rounded breasts and he slipped a hand inside her dress now as she shooed him away. She wanted to look perfect tonight. Everyone would be so beautiful and young, and she was forty-seven now … forty-seven … how did it all happen so fast? It seemed like only last year when she was twenty-two … and twenty-five … and she was madly in love with Ward Thayer … and they were dancing at Mocambo's every night. She looked dreamily at Ward, remembering the distant past, and he kissed her gently on the neck.

“You look beautiful tonight, my love. And I think you're going to win.”

“Don't say that!” She didn't even want to think of it. But things had been wonderful between them ever since they got back from their trip. There was an aura of romance which shut out everyone else sometimes, but she didn't mind. She loved being alone with him, in spite of the children they loved so much. They needed just each other at times. And as they left the house that night with the twins, all dressed up in long gowns and the strings of pearls Faye had lent each of them, Faye saw Anne standing in her room and stopped in to kiss her goodnight. She looked like a lonely lost child and Faye was sorry they hadn't invited her too, but she was so young, just fifteen … and it was a Monday night after all, she had told Ward. Anne had school the next day. Yet, she reproached herself for not taking her. “Goodnight, sweetheart.” She kissed Anne's cheek nervously, and her youngest looked up at her, still with that puzzled air that always seemed to be asking her who she was. She had hoped that after she sat through childbirth with her, they would be friends, but it hadn't worked out that way. Secretly, Anne blamed her for causing her to give up the child, and as soon as she had come home from the hospital, the doors had closed again. There was no getting close to her. Except for Lionel, of course. He was both mother and father to her.

“Good luck, Mom.” She called it out carelessly as they left, and then helped herself to something to eat.

They picked up Lionel at his place on the way. He looked very handsome in an old tuxedo of Ward's, and he jabbered with the twins in the back seat of Faye's Jaguar, and Ward complained all the way that it wasn't driving well again, he didn't understand what she did to it. It was one of those nervous nights, when you pretend you're not thinking what you really are. Everyone was there, Richard Burton and Liz, both of them nominees for Virginia Woolf, and she wearing a diamond the size of a fist. The Redgrave sisters were there, both of them nominated as well … Audrey Hepburn, Leslie Caron, Mel Ferrer. Faye was up against Antoine Lebouch, Mike Nichols, and more for best director. Anouk Aimee, Ida Kaminska, the Redgraves, and Liz Taylor were vying for best actress. Scofield, Arkin, Burton, Caine, and McQueen for best actor. Bob Hope kept everyone amused as emcee, and then suddenly it seemed they were calling Faye's name … she had won for best director again, and she flew toward the stage with tears in her eyes, still feeling Ward's kiss on her lips, and suddenly there she was, looking at all of them, the golden statue clutched in her hands, just as she had held him so long ago the first time she won for best actress in 1942 … a hundred years ago, it seemed and only last night … twenty-five years … and the thrill was still there for her.

“Thank you … all of you … my husband, my family, my co-workers, my friends … thank you.” She beamed and left the stage, and she could hardly remember what happened for the rest of the night.

They came home finally at 2 A.M., and she knew it was too late for the twins to be out, but it was a special night. They had called Anne from the Moulin Rouge but she hadn't answered the phone. Val had suggested that she was probably asleep, but Lionel knew better than that. It was her way of shutting them out, of getting back at them for not including her. And, like his mother, he knew they had made a mistake by not bringing her.

Long afterward, they dropped Lionel off on the way home, and he kissed his mother's cheek again. The twins were strangely silent for the rest of the drive home. Vanessa was half asleep, and Val hadn't said anything to Faye all night. She was seething with anger over her mother's award. Lionel and Vanessa were well aware of it, but Faye seemed not to realize how jealous Val was of her.

“Did you have a good time, girls?” Faye turned to look at them in the car, thinking of the Oscar she had won. They had taken it to be engraved, but she still felt its presence, as though she still held it in her hands. It was impossible to believe it had happened to her again. Now she had three. She beamed at Val, and was startled to see something chilly in her eyes, something she had never recognized quite that clearly before. It wasn't just anger this time, it was jealousy.

“It was all right. You must be pretty pleased with yourself.” They were unkind words, and no one else seemed to hear them quite the way Faye did, but they were aimed straight at her heart, and Val had hit her mark.

“It's very exciting, it always is, I guess.”

Val shrugged as she looked at her. “I hear they give them out of sympathy sometimes.” The comment was so outrageous that Faye laughed at her.

“I don't think I'm quite that over the hill yet, although you never know.” And of course it was true, sometimes they passed one up and then made it up the next year, although they denied that it worked that way, but everyone felt that it did. “Is that what you think this was, Val?” Her mother searched her eyes. “Sympathy?”

“Who knows?” She shrugged indifferently and looked out the window again as they drove up to the house. It irked her that Faye had won and she made no secret of it. She was the first to leave the car, to reach her room, to close the door, and she never mentioned the Oscar again, not even to Anne the next day. Or when her friends mentioned it in school, and congratulated her. That seemed strange, she had nothing to do with it after all and what did she care anyway? So she just shrugged and said, “Yeah, so what? Big deal.” And changed the subject to something that interested her like the Supremes. She was sick of hearing about Faye Thayer. She wasn't so hot. And one day, she would show all of them, she would be an actress who would make Faye Price Thayer look pale by comparison. She only had a few months left before she could get out there and show them her stuff, and she could hardly wait. She'd show them all. To hell with her Mom … three Oscars? So what anyway?





CHAPTER 28




The twins graduated from high school two months after Faye won the Academy Award, and Greg came home for the summer just in time to attend the graduation ceremony at his old school.

This year their eyes were dry. Ward leaned over to Faye halfway through the ceremony to say “I feel as though they should be giving us a diploma by now.” Faye giggled softly and rolled her eyes. He was right, and they would be back again four years from now, for Anne. It seemed to go on forever. And in two years, Greg would be graduating from the University of Alabama. They seemed to be spending half their life watching young people line up in gowns and mortarboards. But it was touching when the twins got theirs, in spite of how many times they'd seen it before. They wore simple white dresses beneath their gowns. Vanessa's totally plain with a high neck and embroidered hem, Val's a slightly too dressy organdie with a pair of very sexy high heels that set off her legs. But the shoes weren't Faye's biggest disagreement with her. Valerie had staunchly refused to apply to any college, East or West. She was going to model, act, and in her spare time go to acting school, and not the drama department at UCLA, the kind where “real actors” went between jobs, to perfect their skills. She was sure she would find herself in classes with Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford and she was equally sure that she was going to set the world on fire, despite everything Ward and Faye said to her.

It had been a heated argument for the past several months, and she was more stubborn than either of them. In desperation, Ward had told her he wouldn't support her if she didn't go to school, and that seemed to suit her fine. Someone had told her about a coven of young actresses in West Hollywood; for only a hundred and eighteen dollars a month, she could have a bed and share a room. Two of the actresses had jobs on soaps, one of them did porno films, though Val didn't tell her parents that, one was a big star in a horror film the year before, and there were four others who modeled regularly. It sounded like a whorehouse to Faye, and she told Val so, but the twins were nearly eighteen now, and Valerie reminded her of it constantly. It was an argument which they couldn't win. A week later, they knew that she would be moving out. Vanessa had done exactly as she planned. She had applied to a handful of schools in the East, been accepted at all of them, and was going to Barnard in the fall. She was staying until the end of June, and then she was going to New York to work for two months before starting school. She had gotten a job as a receptionist in a publishing house and she was all excited about it. Meanwhile Greg was going to Europe with friends. Only Anne was staying home this year. They had tried to talk her into camp, but she insisted that she was too old, and she wanted to go camping with Lionel for a week or two, but he was working on a new film for Fox and didn't have time. And Ward and Faye were starting a biggie too. Ever since the Academy Award, the offers had been rolling in with even greater regularity than before. Faye had three projects lined up back to back for the next year, and no spare time at all. Ward reminded her that it was a good thing they'd made the trip to Europe when they had, and she agreed.