Indiscretions - Elizabeth Adler [29]
It hadn’t always been easy being Jenny’s daughter, and India had alternately basked in her glory and hidden from it, particularly when it came to dating boys and at art school. Boys, because everyone knew—or thought they knew—the real story of how Jenny Haven had made it, though even India didn’t know for sure how much of it was true. But she was nervously aware that the boys speculated how much she might be like her mother. It was a fact that Jenny had run away from her small hometown in North Carolina after winning a talent competition singing and tap-dancing in a local beer hall. With the fifty dollars’ winnings in her pocket she’d hopped on the Greyhound bus and headed west to the beckoning bright lights of Hollywood, aged thirteen and looking seventeen, tall, blond, sexy, and innocent. Until she hit town. The legend that she had been seduced by a famous old-time movie director with whom she lived for three years while he “guided her career,” asserting all the time that he was nothing more to her than a benevolent old uncle, was one that India suspected was true. Jenny’s progress in her teens through the arms of the famous older stars, the casting couch to success … how much was exaggeration, how much reality? Jenny herself had always laughed at the stories, and dismissed them casually. But she had never denied them, had she?
Anyway, Jenny’s bitterness was not at any sexual exploitation. She’d quite enjoyed that—or most of it; there were some scenes she’d rather have forgotten if she could—but at her ignorance. Jenny Haven was convinced that had she had the education, or the “right” background, or better still a combination of both, she would not have had to claw her way to success but could have stepped calmly into her allotted place in Hollywood’s halls of fame simply on her looks and talent alone. But would she have? wondered India. Hollywood is filled with astonishingly beautiful girls, many with talent and many without. And who is to say which will succeed?
It was for all these reasons that Jenny, who had married none of her daughters’ fathers, was determined that they should be brought up as ladies, that after their first tender years they should be removed from the potential taint of Hollywood and the label of being Jenny Haven’s indiscretions. Her girls would grow up only in the best places, they would be educated at only the most exclusive schools, they would be cultured and learn about art and music and books. Any talents that emerged would be encouraged, the right college would perfect them for the road to success. Because, of course, each of her girls would be successful. How could they fail? They were her daughters. Jenny had been willing to spend any sum necessary on their education, she’d bought them extravagant gifts, she’d met them in Europe and they had stayed at the grandest hotels. But once their education was finished she had informed them that they were now ready for “life.” They would never have to climb the ladder of success the way Jenny had, ignorant, painfully young and desperate, but nevertheless they would “make it” on their own. Jenny had earned her own millions—and so must they.
India sighed with sad remembrance of the burden of being Jenny Haven’s daughter with only a minor talent. She’d deserted Vassar to take an art history course in Venice and had fallen in love with Italy. There had been idyllic days at art school in Florence where she had learned her pretty accomplishment of watercolor