Blood and Oranges by James Goldsborough (latest books to read txt) 📗

in at Bel Air, where the crusts were always removed, the sandwiches never squishy and tuna never served. For her part, Nelly was thrilled. She was starting over again, a second chance. She knew Didi would love Westlake, an exclusive girls’ school where the girls would be just as stuffy and fussy as she was. It meant a half-hour drive each day, each way, but Nelly had Ralph. Many of the girls at Westlake had chauffeurs like Ralph.

Nelly bonded with Didi in a way she never had with her daughters. With the girls, there’d always been a gap, based on what, Nelly was not sure but sensed that the girls never looked up to her. She hadn’t been able to guide them the way other mothers guided their daughters. It was like she did not have a single quality or idea her girls admired. She was proud of what she’d done with her life: from the farm to Woolworth’s to Mull Gardens to Bel Air; Iowa to the Blue Book and Junior League. She’d tried all the things the other Bel Air moms tried, but her girls weren’t interested. With Didi it would be different. They were birds of a feather.

Looking back, she decided she’d never had any fun with her girls, never got to do the things the other moms did. Most Bel Air girls went to Westlake and Marlborough, but private school wasn’t for Maggie or Lizzie, little public-school democrats from the start. She’d talked to Eddie about it, but Eddie didn’t care. With a son he might have felt differently, but she couldn’t give Eddie the son he wanted, and Cal and Eddie were never close. Cal wasn’t that close to his own father, and it hurt Willie, she knew it did.

Such thoughts bothered her more now than they had at the time. At the time, she’d had no problem turning the girls over to Cal so she could spend her afternoons shopping and playing bridge. She’d gotten used to wine spritzers in the afternoon and sometimes even martinis. Thinking back on it, she would have loved to do what the other moms did, take her girls to birthday parties and sleepovers and dances. She could easily have given up a shopping day or even bridge to take the girls to the club for tennis or golf or to the Wilshire Ebell for dance lessons. It wasn’t her. It was the girls who wouldn’t go!

Worst of all, neither girl would attend the coming-out ball at the country club where the Bel Air debutantes always got a mention by Miss Adelaide Nevin. For moms, debutante balls are the sublime reward for seventeen years of work and worry. Their darlings are officially presented to society and can find husbands who, with any luck, one day will have their own homes in Bel Air. Two Junes in a row Nelly had opened the newspaper to Miss Adelaide Nevin’s column and found all the Bel Air girls mentioned but her own. She still felt the pain and embarrassment. This time would be different. With Didi, she was starting over. Didi had loved Bel Air from the moment she’d set her little baby booties in it.

Neither of her girls had made what Nelly would call a good marriage—a good second marriage. Nor had either one shown any inclination to move up in status and give their children what they’d had themselves. A stucco in Brentwood and a wood shingle in Playa del Rey waiting for a cigarette to drop was all they could show for the millions they’d inherited from Eddie. Nelly had never approved of Maggie’s running around, from poor Billy Todd to Howard Hughes. As for Lizzie, Nelly had liked Asa of the Aldridge Furniture Store family well enough, but not Joe Morton, who was now an official criminal.

Didi was her chance to make amends. Nelly had read an article in the Woman’s Home Companion called “Skipping Steps” about how children often reject parents and bond with grandparents because grandparents are more indulgent and more tolerant of their imperfections. The bond is just as strong in the opposite direction, according to the author, because grandparents have learned from their earlier mistakes and now have more time and affection—and money—to spend on children.

Exactly!

Chapter 34

Calvin Mull, discharged with hundreds of others from Pacific Electric, the world’s most extensive interurban railway system, opened the Sierra Club’s first Los Angeles office downtown in the Richfield Tower, the tallest structure in the city thanks to a 130-foot tower in the shape of an oil derrick on the roof. The Richfield was a glorious amalgam of New York’s Rockefeller Center and Chrysler Buildings and an historic landmark from the day it opened in a city with few of them. For the Sierra Club, an oil building made a strange headquarters, but Cal liked the irony. From Richfield’s observation deck he could see oil wells pumping in every direction—Signal Hill, Santa Fe Springs, La Brea, Beverly Hills, Baldwin Hills and, of course, Venice. Los Angeles had become one gigantic oil field.

Howard Hughes had long coveted Eddie Mull’s Venice fields. Rumors of a vast marina to be built in the Ballona wetlands had circulated for years, and in 1949 the Army Corps of Engineers completed a study showing that a harbor for eight thousand yachts and small boats could be dredged for $25 million. The marina would replace the oil fields. Study in hand, Los Angeles County obtained a loan from the state, which appealed to Washington to make Marina del Rey a federal project. The people of Los Angeles deserved more than just highways. Hughes flatly refused to come to Richfield Tower, which he regarded as enemy territory. Cal was not surprised by the refusal. He had no role in his cousins’ decision, other than acting as their legal advisor. It was agreed to hold the meeting in the offices of Hughes Aircraft, looking out over the marshes, dunes, and oil wells that Hughes