The Gilded Life of Matilda Duplaine Read online

  “I don’t know if I want to go anymore.”

  “You would love the world, Matilda,” I said quietly. “You’d love the taste of snow on your tongue, what it feels like to get pushed underwater by a wave and for a split second feel like you may drown. There are so many different types of people, but no two look alike. Some will scare the heck out of you. Some will be so awe inspiring they’ll make you believe in God. There are museums where you can see whole dinosaurs and prehistoric animals, and chapels in Italy where famous artists painted entire scenes on the ceilings.” I paused, thinking of the enormity of it, what I took for granted. “I’m so jealous you’re going to get to experience the world for the first time—to see everything new. I’ll never remember what my first snowflake tasted like because I was too young. I can’t remember what it was like to first lift off the ground in an airplane and fly through the clouds. But you have this all ahead of you.”

  “Maybe I’ll never see those things.”

  “You will. I promise. Even if I have to kidnap you and take you away with me, you will.”

  The only sound then was of our breathing, which had synchronized. We swam for a few more minutes before retreating to the pool house and wrapping ourselves in fluffy, oversize towels that were warm, as if they’d just come out of the dryer.

  I had stumbled upon a secret that was far bigger than just one girl; I was now suspecting it was a story vast and far-reaching, one that was created by some of the most powerful people in the world. Being here was a risk, and I couldn’t afford another misstep. I didn’t know how Lily was involved, but I was most certainly sneaking behind her back by visiting her best friend’s house surreptitiously. She had reignited my career. I had been on life support before her, and she and David had the power to pull the proverbial plug.

  I looked at Matilda—the girl I was gambling my life for. A fire burned in the fireplace of the pool house, and as embers grew into flames that disintegrated into ash, we made small talk and sometimes sat in silence listening to the crackle of the fire. All the while, though, I couldn’t help but sneak glances at David’s floral bathing suit, still folded on the chair.

  Fourteen

  It was Hector who had called me on an otherwise dull Wednesday to inform me that he would be by that evening to pick me up, and that I should prepare a suitcase with enough provisions for a week.

  Fortuitously, the Bel-Air group had disappeared, to Hawaii or Aspen, or Australia or Chicago. It might have been none of those places or all of them, for I cared about nothing but Matilda in that time. The world could have tipped on its axis or, for that matter, come to an end and I wouldn’t have noticed.

  As Hector drove through Bel-Air’s grand pillars, I thought about the first time I had traveled that same journey. Like Lily’s car, David’s still smelled of the factory. I tried to garner clues through it, but there were none. There were no newspapers left on the seat, the radio was off and the seat compartment was vacant of things like sunglasses and quarters. Had I taken a microscope to the vehicle I would likely have found no DNA. Like his house, and his eyes, and his expressions, David’s car was sterile. I had learned that was how things worked in their world. They gave away nothing for free.

  I am not a delusional man—in fact, quite the opposite, as I am practical and tied firmly to earth, to a fault—but as we traveled through flower-lined streets, my mind played a trick and I was fooled, for just a moment, into believing that I was going home.

  We drove past Emma and George’s property. Halloween had come and gone. The jack-o’-lanterns weren’t around anymore, the gates went unguarded by ghouls and now only video cameras kept vigilance. The orange lights in the trees had been replaced with yellow lights, but only at the highest branches. The lower branches were bare of leaves and color.

  One turn and a few seconds later, we drove through the gates of David’s estate.

  Matilda stood at the front door, waving. It had only been a few days since we had last seen each other, but it had felt like a lifetime.

  “Thomas,” she said with bright enthusiasm. “You’re here!”

  She hugged me, then looked over to Hector, as if asking permission for a fait accompli. Hector nodded discreetly.

  “Most of the staff is away this week on vacation, so we’ll have a lot of time together, alone. We’ve prepared the reading room, so we could do work together,” Matilda said. “If that’s okay, of course. I have an amphibian biology exam in the morning and I am utterly confused between the larynx of the throat of the eastern newt and that of the salamander.”

  “And I can’t imagine you’ll be able to exist in the world without that knowledge,” I said.

  “I’ll fumble through life—for the whole rest of it—if I don’t figure it out. So, come, I’m hoping you like chocolate-chip cookies. They’re warm, just out of the oven. I was persnickety on the timing of it all, and I asked them to include pecans in the recipe. I want to have everything—absolutely everything—exactly right for you.”

  Besides my evening in the bowling alley, it was the first time I was privy to the inside of the estate. The house smelled of dark chocolate, exotic spices and nuts. We passed the foyer, then walked through an intimate parlor, a waiting room. My knowledge of art was limited, but I knew enough to know who Jasper Johns was. Two of his paintings hung in the parlor.

  When one thinks of the word mansion, particularly in Los Angeles, one imagines double staircases, marble and gold. In fact, the estate’s decor was a study in richness. The luxury of the house was in the materials—the stain of the woods, the thread count of the fabrics, the softness of the lighting, the veiny leaves of the plants. And, of course, the art. I felt as if I had crawled into the pages of a book on seminal twentieth-century art, and I was granted permission to sleep in its pages and touch whatever I wanted, leaving fingerprints behind—fingerprints that would be gently dusted off by someone other than me.

  The reading room was cozy, with paneled walls and a gentle fire beneath its mantel. The flames snapped like fingers, and I kept thinking they were trying to tell me something or jolt me back to reality, though I wasn’t certain what reality was anymore.

  There were three wooden tables, each with lamps to illuminate them, and Matilda had situated herself at one. A bottle of water, some sharpened pencils and two chocolate-chip cookies meant for me sat on another. I looked over at Matilda’s table, where a few remnants of some coconut cookies sat on a plate. Matilda, who was consummately polite, mustn’t have learned the etiquette of waiting for others to eat yet, since there hadn’t been any “others” in her life until now.

  She leaned over on my desk and cupped her chin in her long fingers. Matilda’s cherubic face made her seem youthful and soft.

  “I’m so very happy you’re here,” Matilda declared. “It’s going to be a wonderful week.”

  It was not only a wonderful week, as Matilda had predicted, it was blissful. Everything was taken care of for us: an entire suite on the servants’ wing of the house was made up for me, and I went the whole time without going to my own apartment. My nine iron was buffed daily, my tennis rackets restrung and a bowling ball had been provided for me. There were tennis, golf, tea and scones in the morning, movies and horseshoes until late in the night and midnight swims.

  It was during those days that I began to piece Matilda together, little by little. Her life was very different from that of other girls. Matilda’s contact with the outside world was limited. Had she had a phone, the address book would have been devoid of contacts. Matilda had no friends, which made her impervious to things like peer pressure, social standing and even knowing her place in the world. Matilda spent hours reading through fashion magazines, but she had never been to a boutique. Instead, she would put Post-it notes on the clothes she wanted, and they would be sent to her. What Matilda wanted, Matilda got—be it tennis rackets, golf clubs, custom ribb
ons for her hair, or the latest in shoes, handbags and eye shadows.

  Matilda’s schedule was rote and simple. Every morning, she would traipse across the lawn to the large auditorium-like classroom on the back of the property. Courses were taught by former Ivy League professors who were handsomely remunerated and tied to strict confidentiality agreements. Whether it was due to her extra time, DNA or brilliant professors, Matilda was the most book-smart person I would ever meet. She had already mastered fluency in French, Spanish and German and was now studying Mandarin; she was enrolled in abstract mathematical theory because she had already conquered concrete math. She had read Chaucer, Faulkner and Dostoevsky years earlier.

  After school Matilda partook in her limited scope of activities. She played tennis for three hours a day with her tennis coach, who had taught her how to play at the age of four and whom Matilda spoke about adoringly. Besides Hector, Matilda’s tennis instructor was her only friend. After lessons they would sip lemonade and eat pineapple and talk in the tennis pavilion, sometimes for hours at a time, about “everything—absolutely everything” according to Matilda. In the rare times her coach couldn’t teach due to travel or another work commitment, Matilda would practice serves on the court alone, hit with a ball machine and precisely follow a charted map for her practice. While Matilda preferred tennis, she also played golf, bowled, fished and tossed horseshoes in the pit. She played croquet on the vast lawn and violin in the conservatory.

  Matilda was seasoned—a pro, in fact—at the estate’s limited activities, but her social skills seemed stunted. She was brilliant, but when it came to common sense she was sometimes lacking. The same for niceties. I could say, “That dress brings out the green in your eyes,” for example, and she would respond with a comment like “Thank you. Why are your sunglasses always full of dust?” Colloquialisms befuddled her, and in cases where a harmless lie was in order, she would choose the honest insult instead. It was as if her father had forgotten to hire her a tutor for social behavior.

  In the evenings, when David was in town, he and Matilda would dine together in their formal dining room, at a table that could seat twenty. I had never seen them together, so I couldn’t imagine what they spoke about. After all, David entertained tens of millions of people a year, and Matilda entertained only herself. After dinner, David would retreat to his library to work, and Matilda would be left alone. Matilda used television and the internet sparingly because, as she later told me, she didn’t want to know what she was missing out on. So she spent her evenings watching old movies in a screening room. I was discovering that Matilda had adopted her unusual syntax and mannerisms from figures like Bette Davis and Audrey Hepburn—appropriate for yesteryear, but not for current times.

  Around eight o’clock, Matilda would retreat to her bedroom suite. I wasn’t allowed to visit Matilda’s bedroom, but I imagined it as a dreary and sad place, because that was how Matilda described it. She would take a bath with extra bubbles in a claw-foot bathtub made of porcelain so it wouldn’t chill. Next Matilda would close the door to her bedroom, turn off the lights and turn on her music. Matilda’s knowledge of music was encyclopedic. She said that music had saved her life on multiple occasions, and the more I got to know Matilda the more I realized this might not have been an exaggeration. She confessed to me that in those late nights alone she would listen to music and dream about the world. She had a finely tuned imagination, so she was able to dream of the real world so vividly that for a moment or an hour she escaped the estate. Her fantasy life would often replace her real one. She dreamed of gossiping in dorm rooms with friends, of a first kiss. Other times she imagined winning the French Open, hoisting a trophy over her head and squinting at the flashbulbs of the international press. She imagined shoe shopping in a fancy boutique with her tennis coach, playing eighteen holes of golf instead of one.

  But more and more often, Matilda said, she dreamed of me.

  * * *

  Our last evening scurried in too quickly. David was due to return the next morning, and my belongings had already been packed, all evidence of our joyful week carefully removed by Hector, who, I knew, was risking his job and his welfare allowing me there. My tennis racket had been messengered back to Silver Lake, my footprints fastidiously swept from the court. In the bowling alley, my ball was nowhere to be found. Matilda’s once again sat alone on the rack.

  The Santa Ana winds had carried the stars in from the desert, and Matilda and I lay on our backs on a plaid cashmere blanket in the sculpture garden, where just days earlier she had introduced me to artists like Richard Serra and John McCracken. Her cotton skirt fluttered gently in the languid breeze. It felt as if time was moving in slow motion, as if it knew it was running out.

  Matilda rolled over and moved closer to me. My shirt had crept up a bit, exposing the row of chestnut hair that led down from my belly button.

  She looked at the hair curiously and then reached out to touch it, before reconsidering and placing the back of her head on it instead. Throughout the span of the week, she had touched nearly every part of me, in a nonsexual and exploratory way, the way one might examine a diagram in biology class. None of these gestures ever seemed to lead further, but I respected her pace lest I scare her away.

  “Look,” Matilda said, when she had turned her gaze to the sky. “That’s Orion’s Belt.”

  I followed her stare upward. Most of Orion was covered in the depth of the black night, but I could see the three stars that would have covered the tops of his pants, if a mythological god really did wear trousers.

  “That’s my favorite constellation,” Matilda said. “Someday, when I die, and you’re looking for me, you’ll be able to see me in the middle star. The buckle. That’s where I’ll be hanging out.”

  “Don’t say that. That’s sad.”

  “It’s the plain old truth. And someday, in the way distant future, if I die before you, you’ll be happy I said it, because you’ll know exactly where to find me. I’ll be twinkling for you.”

  “I’ll die before you anyways, because I’m older,” I said.

  “That’s a broad assumption based upon the fact that we will both die of old age when, in fact, one of us may be struck with a terrible disease or a tragic event,” Matilda said.

  “I can’t think of you gone, relegated to a star so far away we’d be hundreds of years apart,” I said.

  “Because I am very much here, lying on your stomach, on that patch of hair that leads to someplace I have never been.”

  I smiled. I wanted her to visit that place, but I knew it wasn’t going to happen—not tonight, not in the near future. We had never even kissed because I hadn’t known if it was appropriate.

  I looked at the oak tree as a distraction. The top branches were covered in glittering yellow lights. Then I understood: Emma had decorated her trees to blend in with the star-covered sky.

  “Thomas,” Matilda said, “would you consider me pretty?”

  “Of course. Haven’t you noticed the way I look at you?”

  “Hector says people are attracted to each other because they like each other’s smell.”

  “Hector’s simplifying things a bit,” I said, thinking that it would all be so easy if love was only the result of one sense.

  “What am I like, Thomas?” she asked. “I have no one to compare myself to. Am I shy or loud?”

  In fact, that was a difficult question to answer. Sometimes Matilda seemed coy and demure, but other times bubbly and vivacious.

  “Someplace in the middle I think,” I replied. “But I’m not sure yet.”

  “Smart or dumb?”

  “That one’s easy,” I said, smiling. “Brilliant, like your father.”

  “Tall or short?”

  “Another easy one. I’d say about six inches taller than the norm,” I said, glancing down, obviously, at Matilda’s beautiful, coltish legs
that were so long they stretched beyond the bottom edge of the blanket.

  She giggled when she saw me looking at her.

  “Compassionate or selfish?”

  I didn’t answer right away because I didn’t know.

  “Thomas?” she prodded, stroking my arm. “Which am I?”

  “I haven’t seen you around enough people to know. But my guess is compassionate. You’ve always been that way with me.”

  “And what about this boy I’ve fallen for? What is he like?” Matilda asked flirtatiously, but also curiously.

  I looked toward the sky, finding my cheeks redden with embarrassment.

  “I don’t know,” I said, focusing my gaze on a star. “Boring, I guess.”

  “Are you telling me I’ve fallen for a boring boy? I don’t believe it. My taste is far better than that.”

  She wasn’t letting me get off easily. She looked at me with anticipation.

  “Well, like you, I’m taller than the norm. Is that enough?” I asked jokingly.

  “Are you intense or laid-back?” Matilda asked.

  “Intense—definitely intense.”

  “Are you an open book or a closed one?”

  “Both. Sometimes I’m as easy to check out as a library book, other times I’m out of print.”

  Matilda laughed. “Athletic or clutzy?”

  “Adonis.” I thrust out my chest and smiled.

  “I thought so. Persistent? Or do you give up easily?”

  “Persistent—ridiculously persistent.” I thought of my days at Harvard, of that almost maniacal ambition that had allowed me to escape my humble beginnings. “I grew up—well, I grew up different than you, and that’s putting it mildly, but I was also a guy who always believed that where I grew up had nothing to do with where I would end up. And because of that I go into things with passion—maybe too much, but I think that’s my biggest strength. And maybe my biggest weakness, too.”