The Gilded Life of Matilda Duplaine Read online

  I paged through the photos, enthralled by a life that had started so ordinary but turned extraordinary almost overnight. I turned to the last page of the album, and it was then that I saw it. The photo was so haunting the hairs on my arms stood straight up. It had been snapped somewhere along the Mediterranean. Carole was around seventeen or eighteen, and she sat on a rocky beach. Beside her, leaning into her and whispering into her ear, was Joel Goldman. He was sixtyish, but handsome in the way powerful men of that age are. Carole was looking away from him slightly, head tilted toward the rocks. Despite the coquettish body language, she had the smile of a girl basking in the bright light of a man’s attention. That photo was the only one of Joel and Carole together, but it told me everything that I needed to know.

  I considered taking the album with me, but instead pulled the photo of Joel and Carole out of its sleeve, and I blanketed the book in its coronation-purple cloth, returning it to its hiding place. I locked the safe behind me, putting the key in my pocket. I crawled up the ladder and again went to the bedroom that I had assumed was Lily’s—with more purpose this time, because I had a strong hunch the room hadn’t belonged to Lily at all.

  Once in the bedroom, I opened the bottom drawer of the dresser, sifting through its clothing. There was a formfitting floral dress made of an inexpensive rayon fabric, a tight skirt in cinched jersey and a one-piece bathing suit with a cleavage-baring V.

  Lily’s closet in Bel-Air had been filled with couture. Valentino, Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel and Hermès. Even as a teenager Lily had dressed in a way that implied she was a girl who would never come cheap.

  The clothing I was sorting through, on the other hand, was made of inexpensive fabric, with labels I had never heard of. And not only that, the size of the clothes would have been too big for a teenage Lily Goldman. In fact, it would have been too big for the Lily Goldman of today.

  This wasn’t Lily’s clothing.

  The perfume bottle still sat on top of the dresser, and I again dabbed my finger into its scent. It smelled like Matilda’s mother, and like Matilda.

  The breeze had picked up, and heavy tropical rain clouds were moving in over the ocean. I went out to the veranda, collecting my research and computer and bringing them inside. The doors slammed against their frames, and I shut all but one, locking them.

  I looked at the photo again. Carole’s smile was unmistakably Matilda’s smile. Her lips were Matilda’s lips. Matilda’s body had Carole’s length and curves. They had the same pointed nose, the same square face.

  Joel Goldman had been blond and so was Matilda. And then there were the eyes. Lily and Matilda shared the same striking emerald-green eyes, which had thrown me off because I had believed Lily to be Matilda’s mother. In fact, those eyes were Joel Goldman’s eyes, too.

  I had now come to figure out that the bedroom had belonged to Carole Partridge, not Lily Goldman. And I was just about convinced Matilda Duplaine belonged to Carole Partridge, too.

  * * *

  I didn’t sleep at all that night. Instead, adrenaline as thick as syrup kicked in, and I was brought back to the days of frenetic research and the nights of burning the midnight oil, to deadlines barely struck, to running across the newsroom with a piece of paper in hand to make the next day’s paper in time. All that was missing were the celebratory beers with friends.

  Early the next morning I began substantiating my facts. I first called Carole’s high school to confirm the dates of her attendance. Sure enough, Carole had been a student there, but she’d never graduated. She had dropped out, never to return. They could not provide a reason for her departure, but according to some old biographical pieces on Carole I had dug up, she’d said she had dropped out to pursue her acting career. It was worth noting that there had been two years between when Carole dropped out of school and when she starred in her first picture—a film produced by Joel Goldman. As Willa had aptly pointed out, I had always had a good memory, and I cataloged the pieces I had pulled together over the past few months. I thought back to the letter I had discovered in Joel Goldman’s coat pocket from Lily, referencing the “mess” he had left in France. I remembered the photo of Joel, Lily and Carole on the red-clay tennis court. My bet was the fourth double’s player was Carole’s brother—Lily’s fiancé. And then there was the brunette who had once been a house sitter or member of the staff. It was certainly possible the striking brunette had been Carole.

  I called Jacob for another fact check, and he called me back within minutes this time. A Matilda Partridge was born in Nice, France, to Carole Partridge on April 20, 1988. The father was listed as unknown. Anticipating my next question, Jacob had already researched Carole Partridge’s return to the States. She had come back on May 30, 1988, and her destination had been Honolulu.

  The pieces were falling into place, but I was still tormented by the thought of Joel and Carole as Matilda’s parents. It was strange, but at first I had blamed Matilda for her lineage, as one might blame a loved one for dying. When I got over that irrational line of thinking, I simply felt sorry for her. She had been raised by a father who wasn’t her real dad; in fact, David Duplaine was, in a sense, the highest-paid actor in Hollywood. And Matilda’s mother had not only abandoned her, but was apparently having an affair with the man pretending to be her father. That, in my opinion, had almost been a worse sin than leaving her entirely.

  Those were the facts, but there was a lot I was still missing. Carole was eighteen when Matilda was born, Joel sixty-one. Had the relationship been consensual? Was there even a relationship? Or had Joel Goldman raped Carole Partridge and then covered it up? Why hadn’t Carole had an abortion?

  I didn’t know what I was going to tell Matilda. I didn’t know if I was going to publish this story for the world to read. I had been unjustly fired from the Journal, and the possibility of breaking this story seemed my due reward. But it felt wrong. I suspected there was one person who had the answer to my questions, one person who could tell me if I should bury my story or break it.

  And the next day I was going to see him.

  * * *

  My destination was about an hour away. I swiveled inland, through the hills of a dormant volcano. I had the top down on the vintage car, and I felt strange driving it now. Not just because it wasn’t mine, for I had always known this life of shiny things was temporary, but because everything related to Joel Goldman—his house, his car, the papayas plucked off his trees, even the birds that flew over his yard—now felt immoral.

  It didn’t make sense, and I knew that.

  It was almost four months since I had first walked into Lily’s shop. I had been swept into this world like the tropical winds sweeping in from the ocean. I didn’t know the stakes then, but now I did—and they were high.

  The ranch was nestled into the hills. There were two structures: a modest bungalow and a barn that could probably shelter three or four horses. In between the two, a single horse grazed on dead grass. He was a stunning animal, all muscle and grace. His coat had a recently brushed sheen to it, and he looked as if he belonged at a derby rather than in these humble surroundings. Beside him were a few bales of hay, dead and yellow, stacked one on top of another.

  It was a flawless day, and the sky was blue as far as the eye could see, uninterrupted by a single cloud.

  I turned off the car. The beast of a racing engine seemed gauche in this quiet and rustic setting.

  The front door was open, with only a screen door between the living room and me. I knocked, and the whole house seemed to rattle. The siding was rotting, half a rain gutter sat on the dirt and the screen was ripped where someone had cut it open near the lock.

  “Hello,” I called. “Anyone home?”

  The wind whistled. It wasn’t strong, but it felt like a warning. I headed back toward the car, and the horse gazed at me lazily. The streak on the crown of his head was white like baby powde
r.

  I heard the man’s footsteps behind me, crunching on the dirt. I turned around and tried to reconcile the man in front of me with the one I had seen in the photographs. I tried to pick out the light eyes, the mischievous smile, the blond hair, the broad shoulders and arms.

  But there was nothing of that guy left.

  “Is there something I can do for you?” he asked in a voice that sounded as if it was filled with years of cigarettes and drink. He sideswiped the car with his eyes, and only then did I realize that he had probably figured out the matter I was here for. It was, after all, Joel Goldman’s car.

  “I’m not sure,” I said, looking down at the dirt, suddenly feeling selfish for being there. “My name is Thomas Cleary, and I’m a friend of Lily Goldman’s.”

  I tried to detect something in Michael’s face, but there was no reaction. It was silent, except for the sound of the horse rubbing his back hoof on the ground.

  “I’m sorry to intrude like this,” I continued. “I’m just looking for some answers. Not that I expect you to give them to me.”

  “There aren’t any answers here. I think you should leave.” His tone was firm but not hostile.

  I opened the car door, and I felt the antique lever in my grip. It was so exact in its design—it was from an age when things were crafted by hand, with hands in mind. I thought of my story: I couldn’t complete it without this interview. There were too many holes to be filled.

  “I’m in love with a girl by the name of Matilda Duplaine,” I said. “And I know that Carole and Joel are her parents.”

  I am not an expert in human behavior, but I fancy myself pretty close by nature of my occupation. And I believed that Michael Partridge had chosen these hills in order to escape the exact story I was crafting. But he was also a man from my father’s generation and my father’s stock: he was a man who gave nothing away. His emotions weren’t readable. All he did was squint at the sky as if looking for something in it.

  “What do I have to do with it?” he finally asked.

  “I know you were supposed to marry Lily.”

  “So what do you want to know?”

  “I want to know what happened,” I said.

  “It was a long time ago,” he replied. He didn’t elaborate, but I could tell he wanted to open up. When subjects want to keep things hidden, they retreat and grow defensive, but Michael had not. He stood his ground and I stood mine, waiting for him to continue.

  “I hear Joel died,” he said. “Funny, because I waited for so long for him to die. I don’t know why—I don’t know what I was waiting for. It wasn’t going to change anything. And I can say whatever I want about it now, because the truth is buried somewhere in Los Angeles six feet under.”

  I nodded. “I know. And I also realize that it’s intrusive for me to be coming here. But I didn’t know where else to turn. I thought you would understand.”

  I felt the brilliant sun warm the tops of my shoulders, my sunburned neck and face. Suddenly I felt as if we understood each other. I saw the creases on the sides of Michael’s eyes relax. He trusted me.

  “I’m an honest man,” he said, and I believed it. “It was his fault—of course it was his fault. She was seventeen years old when she got pregnant and he was sixty, so he should have known better. But my sister was born with stars in her eyes. She wanted to be famous since she was a little girl. She believed she loved Joel—she really and truly believed that, and even to this day she does—but it wasn’t him she loved. It was his life, his wealth, his fame.”

  Even now, years later, Michael shuddered at the thought. “It only happened that once, and she got pregnant. Of course he wanted her to have an abortion, but Carole wouldn’t hear it. Our family was Catholic, and on top of that I think Carole knew that with the baby she would always have a part of Joel—that stardom she desperately wanted. You never met him?”

  I shook my head no.

  “Joel was a man who took care of things. That’s what men like him do. A problem comes up and they find a way to solve it. So here was this baby that he didn’t want and a girl who wanted to be a star. And then there was David, who wanted to be Joel—in pretty much every way. David was Joel’s protégé. At the time he was starting his production company, and he needed money to get some movies going, and he was best friends with Lily. So the solution became simple—give the baby to David to raise, fund David’s company and pay Carole for her confidentiality.

  “Simple enough, right? But there was a hiccup. Carole had the baby abroad and didn’t want to give her up. She was incredibly attached to her. She fled France and moved to Joel’s house in Hawaii. That’s when I came to help her out. It was clear it wasn’t going to work, though. Carole was eighteen and broke. She couldn’t be a mother. After six or so months she gave in to Joel’s demands, and he cast her as a lead in one of his movies. He made her a star, but she stayed a star because of what had happened to her. She brought the sadness and anger of her life to her roles.”

  The evening in the swimming pool when Matilda had reflected on her past, she had told me that she had dreamed of the ocean, wide and gray during a storm. She had dreamed of salty air and of a woman whom she believed to be her mother. Matilda must have been thinking of Hawaii, of her time with Carole.

  “Carole had it written into her contract with Joel that she could spend three hours a day with Matilda. And she did, religiously, always. She visited under the guise of Matilda’s tennis coach, and she loved those hours—they were the jewels of her day. It was known in Hollywood Carole wouldn’t shoot in the late afternoons, and she very rarely would travel for roles.”

  At first I wasn’t sure I’d heard it correctly, but then it sunk in. Carole Partridge was Matilda’s tennis coach. It had always struck me as odd how much Matilda adored her coach, but now it made sense.

  “Didn’t Carole want to tell her the truth?” I asked.

  “Carole promised Joel she wouldn’t tell Matilda. She almost did, once or twice, but she thought it would have been worse for Matilda. Matilda would have never been able to live a normal life, and Carole knew it. And after so many years in captivity on the estate, how would she possibly explain it? Not just to Matilda, but to the world. It would be a media circus. They were trapped in the lie.”

  Michael went quiet and looked at the sky again contemplatively.

  “How’s Lily?” he asked tentatively.

  “That’s tough to answer,” I said honestly. “I don’t really know. She seems sad.”

  “Did she ever get married?”

  “No.” I shook my head.

  Michael’s body language relaxed slightly. “We used to ride for days, Lily and I. She’s great with horses, you know.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Yeah.” He smiled. It was Matilda’s and Carole’s smile—wide and off center. For just a flash, I saw the guy from the photograph, the man Lily had fallen in love with. “That girl wasn’t scared of anything. Life was so good then, so fun.”

  I couldn’t imagine Lily ever having fun. She seemed so serious now. My heart ached being there—for Matilda, for Michael, for Lily. For all of those loves and lives gone awry.

  “I’m not going to say I see a lot of women up here, because I don’t, but to this day she was the prettiest girl I’ve ever laid eyes on. I couldn’t ever believe she was mine. And maybe she wasn’t really.” Michael looked down at the dirt after he said it, as if he was somehow ashamed.

  “Why did you leave her?” I asked.

  “I blamed the wrong person for the wrong thing,” Michael said.

  “You blamed Lily for her father?” I already knew the answer, but I asked it anyway.

  “It was the easier thing to do—or maybe it was the cowardly thing.”

  “Maybe you can call her?” I suggested, thinking of Lily sadly holding that photograph.
/>   Michael smiled wryly. “You’re still young, but you’ll learn as you get older that the thing about life is that it hands you these golden moments, but every one of them has an expiration date stamped on the bottom of it. If you don’t use them, they go bad.”

  Michael retreated a step. It was my cue to leave.

  I opened the car door and glanced one last time at Michael’s humble ranch. It was then that I noticed the hibiscus tree. Its magenta flowers were in bloom, brilliant and full with fertile golden centers. The tree was incongruous with its surroundings—the dirt, the man weathered from the sun and life.

  I turned around to see Michael, his hand on the battered screen door. I thought he was going to say something else, but the words seemed caught in his throat. Instead, he walked inside, and behind him the screen door gently bounced back once, then twice, and the third time it latched and I heard it lock.

  Twenty-Seven

  Thursday morning I finished my story. There were still holes, but it was tight. Facts were substantiated, the prose brushed, commas and periods in their correct positions. Whether I broke it or not was another story, but for now I had twelve double-spaced pages of the best writing of my career.

  It was my ticket to the moon, my vindication for everything that had happened in New York. I could take it to Vanity Fair, to the movie studios, to a publisher. I could walk into Rubenstein’s office with it—the supreme act of gratitude for what he had done for me. I could use it to blackmail David Duplaine. After all, what was a million dollars to a guy who had a hundred? My father could retire from his minimum-wage job at the lumberyard. He could move to Los Angeles into a little house David would buy him, and we could run through the sunny hills of Bel-Air in the mornings as we had during those snowy days in Milwaukee.

  But the decision wasn’t as easy as that.

  I needed to clear my head, so I changed into my running clothes and set out for my morning run. It was my longest one yet, and I could feel the strain in my lungs, but it felt good. It started to drizzle by the seventh mile, and the rain refreshed me. As I ran up the driveway, my pace hadn’t slipped at all. My breathing was still in tune with my music.