He sounded somewhat relieved, but not entirely, at her explanation. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“I didn’t want to worry you, and there’s nothing you could do at this distance. I could have called Penny if I needed to.” He felt bad, realizing how alone she was at times. He didn’t think about it often, and had no need to until something like this, an accident or an injury or potentially an illness, happened. On the weekends, she was all alone, and Deanna was in Massachusetts. She could have driven down, if it was warranted, but his mother made it sound like a much smaller deal than Deanna had in her text. He hadn’t called her back, he had called his mother instead to hear it from her directly.
“You shouldn’t be on a ladder when you’re alone, Mom,” he said gently. But he also knew that she was on and off ladders all the time in her studio. She’d been doing it all his life.
“I know. I won’t do that again. I leaned too far and the ladder fell, and I didn’t have time to jump clear. Deanna got all wound up about it. She wants me to hire someone to live in. This house isn’t made for that. It would be crazy. I don’t want someone sitting here, waiting for me to fall on my face. It won’t happen again.” But they both knew it might. Accidents happened. She could cut herself badly or slip on the stairs. He’d almost fallen on her stairs several times himself. His feet were too big for the shallow steps, and they were slippery. Laura was terrified of them, and everything in the firehouse, for their kids, and never wanted them to go there. Their whole house in Belvedere was childproofed, but there was no way to make the firehouse entirely safe, even for adults.
“Are you feeling okay otherwise?” he asked her. There had been a tone of panic to his sister’s text, as though there was something wrong with their mother and she was somehow slipping. He had picked up on it immediately.
“I’m fine. You don’t need to worry about me. How are Laura and the kids?” She changed the subject to get the focus off her, but she was touched that he had called her. His call was of filial love, and didn’t have the ring of accusation like Deanna’s.
“Everyone’s fine here, busy, as usual. I was just worried about you when I got Dee’s text.”
“She got very wound up about it last night, when she called me about something else and I told her. I’ll admit, it was stupid of me. I’m not going to hire a live-in person, though. It would drive me nuts. She’s always hated this house. She thinks I should be living uptown in an apartment. This suits me better.” Ben knew it was true, it expressed her individuality, and he knew how independent she was.
“Just be careful, Mom. Don’t go sliding down the fire pole every day,” he teased her.
“I’ll try not to, at least till I’m off crutches.”
“I’ll call you in a few days and see how you’re doing. I’m late for a meeting. I’ve got to go. I love you.”
“I love you too, sweetheart. Thank you for calling. Give my love to Laura and the kids.” It meant a lot to her whenever her children called her, more than they knew.
She spent the rest of the day getting ready for the shoot on Thursday. It was a Vogue cover of a famous movie star. She was older and a beautiful woman. Maddie had a knack for photographing mature women and making them look terrific. She hadn’t shot for Vogue in a while, and she had always wanted to meet the actress. It was going to be a fun day, and she was looking forward to it. She was smiling when she checked the studio, with everything set up the way she liked it. It was a good distraction from her ankle and the cast. She felt back in control again, which was a relief after the weekend. She had just sat down at her desk, and propped her crutches against the wall behind her, when she heard the doorbell, and Deanna walked in two minutes later, unannounced as usual. She never called to ask if it was convenient. Her mother’s schedule was irrelevant to her.
“You look terrible” were the first words out of her mouth as she stared at her mother and sat down across the desk from her without being invited to.
“Thank you. You, on the other hand, look great.” Deanna was casually dressed in one of her own designs, and meticulously put together as usual, with her dark hair tightly pulled back in a knot, a chic trench coat, and high heels. She was the epitome of fashion. Maddie was wearing baggy jeans and an old black sweater, with one running shoe on, and her crutches close at hand in case she needed them, since she couldn’t put any weight on her left foot.
“You look tired, Mother,” she said, studying Maddie’s face, as though looking for signs of an illness.
“I had a lousy weekend. I feel better today.” She had felt brighter as the day wore on, and was pleased that she had gotten a lot done for the Vogue shoot that week, despite her cast. She had even picked the music they would listen to during the session, which set the mood for the subject and the crew. “Did you come down here to check on me?” She smiled at her daughter and gave her the benefit of the doubt. Or maybe she had come to harass her about putting the firehouse on the market or hiring a live-in aide. Deanna always had an agenda. It was the way she worked.
“Actually, I came to talk to you about the benefit we need to give here. No other venue will work as well for us.” For the moment, selling the firehouse and hiring a caretaker for her mother were on the back burner. The benefit was the hot item of the day, and she had come to convince her mother in person. Deanna was on half a dozen boards and committees, and she was good at getting her way. She was fearless about asking for donations, expensive items for charity auctions, or, in this case, her mother’s house as the location for their cocktail party. “Everyone loved coming here last time.”
“The problem was, I didn’t love having them here. They were invasive, disrespectful, and you had twice as many people as you told me you would,” Maddie reminded her.
“We sold more tickets than we expected,” she said without apology. “We’ll put a limit on it this time.”
“I don’t want food dragged all over my house. I just don’t want the intrusion, Deanna. Or curiosity seekers turning up in my bedroom. I saw photos on Instagram afterwards of all the rooms where they weren’t allowed. If they can’t follow the rules, which they’ve already demonstrated, you can’t use the house. End of story.” She had to be firm with Deanna or she’d run right over her, as she did with everyone, at work and at home. It made her tough in business and got her results with sewers and patternmakers and textile mills. But Maddie didn’t like having her daughter’s powers of persuasion turned on her.
“I assumed you’d let us use the house again,” Deanna said, narrowing her eyes at her mother, “so I told them we could have it. We have to send the invitations out in a week. They’re already at the printer. We don’t have time to find another venue.” It was extremely presumptuous of her.
“Well, you’ll have to. I told you last time I wouldn’t do it again. It wasn’t a good experience for me. This is my place of business and my home, and I can’t have people screwing it up. I have delicate equipment here.”
“I didn’t think you meant it,” Deanna said plaintively, trying another tack, which wasn’t going to work for her either. As always, Maddie was gentle but firm, and could be as stubborn as her daughter.
“Well, I did. So you’d better get busy finding another location.” Deanna looked furious as she stood up. The gloves were off.
“I think that’s incredibly inconsiderate of you. Aren’t you afraid of how that will look? The great Madison Allen refuses to help a shelter for homeless children. It won’t do you any good in the press, if someone leaks that you refused.” And who would leak it? Deanna? She was capable of it.
“That’s blackmail,” Maddie said smoothly. “If that’s how you want to play it, I can’t stop you. But the answer is still no. This is my home, I have a right to protect it.”
“It’s a ridiculous place to live anyway. I hope you’re giving some serious thought to selling it now, after your disaster this weekend.
”
“My ‘disaster’ had nothing to do with the firehouse. I could have fallen off a ladder just as easily on Park Avenue.”
“One of these days, you’ll fall down those stairs and break a hip or a leg,” Deanna said ominously.
“I hope not. I’m very careful.”
“You should at least put in an elevator if you want to stay for a few more years.”
“What about a wheelchair ramp?” Maddie said sarcastically. “I’m not incapacitated yet,” she pointed out again.
“No, but you will be before you know it. This is how it starts, with accidents at home, then you fall on the street and break a hip. You need to be sensible about this, Mother. You’re not as young as you think.” They were all low blows, and Maddie tried not to react. It was hurtful listening to her. “You should sell the place before you have another accident here.” Listening to her reminded Maddie of the alarm Deanna had suggested the day before, with a button to press for help if she fell. The thought of it made her want to cry. She hoped Deanna was wrong, and this wasn’t the first of many future accidents she had in store. It was a grim prospect. “David agrees with me, he thinks you should move out too. You could even invest in a unit in one of those apartment complexes with assisted living facilities you can move into later.”
“Do you suppose I could set up a studio there?” Maddie said wryly.
“You can’t work forever, Mother.” She was the only one of Maddie’s children who called her “Mother,” and made it sound like an insult. With one fell swoop, Deanna was suggesting that she retire, hire a caretaker, sell her house, move into assisted living, and wear an alarm. She was catapulting her mother into old age at fifty-eight. Maybe sooner or later it would happen. It probably would, but hopefully not for a long time. And some people stayed active, alert, and youthful, and even working, until they were very old. Maddie planned to be one of those.
Maddie was nowhere near wanting to give up the way she lived, and there was no need to. But Deanna saw it all happening on fast forward. Maddie hoped she wasn’t right. She felt as though she had her nose pressed against the glass, looking through a window at her worst nightmare, being old and infirm and dependent, no longer productive, and waiting for the end. What she envisioned for herself was working far into the future, at a great age, still expressing her talent, and leading a full life in her own home, not a retirement facility where she would end her days, however luxurious or genteelly disguised. Deanna was pulling back the curtain and showing her what it could really look like, in the worst case. It made Maddie feel as though her days were numbered. It seemed absurd at the age she was now, but maybe it wasn’t and Deanna was right. It was Maddie’s greatest fear.
Deanna only lingered for a few minutes, her mission not having been accomplished. And Maddie was sure Deanna would try again about the benefit at the firehouse before she gave up. She hobbled around her desk, keeping the weight off her left foot, to kiss Deanna goodbye. Deanna didn’t waste time on a hug, kissed the air near her mother’s face, and left a minute later. Penny walked in as soon as she heard the front door close behind Deanna.
“What did the Ice Queen want today?” Penny asked, and sat down across from Maddie’s desk.
“The firehouse for her charity event, as the first matter of business. After that, she thinks I should invest in a facility with assisted living.”
“Now?” Penny looked horrified. “Is she crazy?”
“Maybe not now but soon. She thinks it makes perfect sense, since I’ll need it someday. That’s not how I see my future,” Maddie said bleakly. Nor did anyone else who knew her.
“That’s ridiculous, you seem and act younger than I do.”
“No, I don’t, and even if I appear young, you are young. There’s a difference. And who knows, maybe she’s right. If my health fails, it will all go down the tubes, my work, the firehouse, my freedom. No one can predict that.”
“There’s some woman in Florida who’s a hundred and twelve and still going strong,” Penny said stubbornly, wanting to keep Deanna’s demons away from Maddie. She was so toxic.
“More power to her. I’m not sure I want to live that long. God knows what she looks like. But I’ll settle for ninety-something, and still working. Deanna is predicting a rapid decline in the near future, with my ankle as the first sign. She’s trying to convince me of it.”
“Don’t believe it,” Penny said, wishing she could strangle Deanna for the things she said to her mother. She was hateful.
“I’m trying not to. I think my worst nightmare would be if my children ganged up on me and forced me to live in a way I don’t want to. That’s the kind of thing that breaks people’s spirits. What if they take control of my life one day?” It was one of her greatest fears, although she didn’t think of it often, but it gave her shivers when she did.
“I won’t let them,” Penny said staunchly.
“You won’t be able to stop them, if it comes to that,” Maddie said sadly, “and neither will I. I hope I get run over by a bus before that. It’s the kind of thing you think will never happen to you, but sometimes it does. I would hate that, sitting in a chair, staring out a window, remembering the past, with nothing to look forward to. I’d rather be dead.”
“Don’t say that.”
Maddie nodded, but thinking about it made her feel like she wanted to run away, seize life by the horns again, and not just sit there. She didn’t want to be helpless, waiting for what Deanna said was inevitable.
She wanted to live her life to the fullest, and she knew she hadn’t for a while. She was wrapped up in her work, always running to the next assignment. She wasn’t taking much time to smell the roses anymore. With no partner to share it with, she hardly ever took time off now. She just worked, day and night, and now and then she saw her kids. But not often. She hadn’t seen Ben in six months and Milagra in almost nine. But Milagra had been working on two books for months, and Ben and Laura just hadn’t been able to figure out a good time for her to visit. She hadn’t seen her New York granddaughters, Kendra and Lily, in more than two months, almost three. Heads of state of some nations weren’t as busy as all of them, and Maddie had a heavy schedule too.
She had a shoot coming up in Shanghai in six weeks, and she had two important shoots in New York in the next week. One on Thursday, and another one the following Monday. She had five weeks free before Shanghai after that, but Maddie knew that other bookings would come in on short notice. They always did. Art directors and editors called her all the time. There was no particular world event she wanted to shoot at the moment. She’d been working for months on projects back to back. And now, she suspected her ankle would slow her down. She was amazed by how tired she was after her first day at work with a cast and on crutches. She had to go back to the hospital on Friday, to get a walking cast. She hoped she would be less tired with that. Using only one foot and the crutches was exhausting.
Penny didn’t leave until after she had seen Maddie get up to her room, on her bottom on the stairs. And then she waited until Maddie’s dinner had been delivered by a nearby restaurant and brought it to her in her bedroom on a tray. Maddie had her laptop set up on the bed and was reading emails. She had work to do that night. Her ankle was hurting, but she didn’t want to take a pain pill and blitz herself. She needed to focus and concentrate on her work.
After Penny left, she nibbled at her dinner on a tray between emails, and when she finished responding to all of them, which took well over an hour, she thought of the box of letters again. On a whim, she decided to follow Penny’s suggestion to look the three men up on the internet. Why not? It couldn’t do any harm. Curiosity had been gnawing at her since she had opened Pandora’s box, once she got it out of the closet.
She started with Jacques Masson, and typed in his name for a Google search. It came up immediately as the owner of a string of restaurants in the Chicago area,
one in Palm Beach, and another in Las Vegas. He had seven restaurants in all. She studied his website carefully, and his CV, which had lengthened considerably since she’d last seen him. He was only a simple chef then, fresh from France. Their affair had been twenty years before, when he first arrived from Paris with a green card he’d won in the lottery. She went out with him for six months. She was thirty-eight and Jacques had been thirty-five.
They had had a great time together. She fell prey to his French charm and took him seriously for a brief time. He was one of the most entertaining men she’d ever gone out with. She was crazy about him, until she discovered he was a cheater like Stephane. He kept promising her he’d stop, but he never did. Because they only went out for six months, she’d often wondered if she had given up on him too soon, and what would have happened if she’d stuck it out for longer and given him a chance. But he had slept with everyone: sous chefs he worked with, waitresses in the restaurants where he cooked, and two of Maddie’s friends, which had destroyed the friendships. It was untenable, and she knew she’d never trust him. She knew it was Stephane all over again, once she had discovered his affairs. Jacques was a much nicer human being than her ex-husband, and he had insisted that he genuinely loved her, but some woman always came along and provided a distraction and a lure he couldn’t resist. He was a man who loved women, every size, every color, every type, every age. He tried to tell her that he was a “collector of beautiful women,” like men who loved art or fine wine. But his passion for women made it impossible to take him seriously for the long haul. At the time, she had still wanted to remarry eventually. He wasn’t a viable option, and she had ended the relationship without bitterness. Eventually he drifted away and they lost touch. He had been thinking about moving to Chicago already by then. He had a job opportunity there, and she didn’t want to uproot her kids to move with him.
Lost and Found Page 5
