I knew the answer to that question—but I didn’t articulate it. Because I just couldn’t.
“Would you do something for me?” I finally asked.
“I doubt it. But, go on—try me.”
“I want you to ask Dorothy to meet me.”
“Forget it. I may not hate you anymore. She does. She always has. And now . . . now the lady’s got enough problems to handle without trying to forgive you. Which—I promise you—she never will.”
“I don’t want her forgiveness. I just want to . . .”
“I don’t care what you want to do. There is absolutely no way that my sister-in-law will ever agree to meet you.”
“Hear me out,” I said.
Meg did just that. And sat quietly for a moment or so after I finished talking with her.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
A few days later, she called me at home.
“I’ve spoken with Dorothy. It took some work—but she’s agreed to see you. I didn’t explain much to her. In fact, I kept it all very vague—except to say that I thought it was important you met. Believe me, she was very reluctant. But I brought her around—telling her that you had a crucial matter you needed to discuss with her. Don’t expect this to be pleasant, Sara. She feels you’re responsible for many of her problems.”
“She’s right. I am.”
“There’s a coffee shop on the corner of Amsterdam and Eighty-sixth. Can you make tomorrow at four? I’ve arranged to leave work early, so I can stay with Charlie and Kate while she meets you.”
I agreed. The next afternoon, I got to the coffee shop just before four. I found a booth at the back. I ordered tea, and found myself stirring it constantly as I waited for Dorothy to arrive. She showed up ten minutes late. She was dressed in a simple tweed skirt and a Peck & Peck blouse. She looked very tired—the dark moons under her eyes accentuated by the way her hair was pulled back in a tightly woven bun. She sat down opposite me. She did not exchange a greeting. She simply said, “You wanted to see me.”
“Thanks for coming,” I said, sounding deeply tense. “Coffee?”
She shook her head.
“Anything else. Tea? Hot chocolate? A sandwich?”
“Nothing. You wanted to see me. Here I am. I have about twenty minutes, no more.”
“Isn’t Meg with the kids?”
“Yes, but Charlie’s got tonsillitis—and we’re expecting the pediatrician to make a house call around four thirty. So this will have to be fast.”
“Well . . . ,” I said, clearing my throat, really not knowing how to broach the subject I was about to bring up. “Meg was telling me you were having some difficulties.”
“My sister-in-law has a big mouth. My difficulties are my business, not yours.”
“I wasn’t trying to pry or be nosy. It’s just . . . I would like to try to help.”
“Help?” she said with a hollow laugh. “You help me? No thanks.”
“I can understand why you might feel . . .”
“Don’t patronize me, Miss Smythe.”
“I’m not patronizing you.”
“Then don’t tell me how I feel. I know how I feel—which is angry. Angry that I didn’t have the courage, ten years ago, to tell Jack that we didn’t have to get married, just because I was pregnant. Angry that I stayed in a marriage when there was no love between us. And angry that I didn’t have the guts to end it when he first told me about you.”
“I never pushed him to leave you.”
“Oh, I was well aware of that. He told me that you refused to play the happy home wrecker; that you were oh-so-understanding of his need to keep his family together—even though you oh-so-adored him.”
“I did adore him.”
“Congratulations. He was just as gooey about you. It was like living with a lovesick adolescent. I don’t know why the hell I put up with it.”
“Why did you put up with it?”
“Because there was a child. Because I was brought up to believe that you lived with your mistakes. Because I was also brought up to believe that respectability meant everything. And because I’m a stupid, weak woman who didn’t have the courage to realize that she could live without a husband. And then, of course, it turned out that my husband was a stupid, weak man who also ratted on others.”
“He only did that because he was terrified of losing his job, and undermining his ability to support you and Charlie.”
“Don’t tell me you’re defending him now? Especially after you emotionally crippled the fool by rejecting him. Anyway, the great dumb irony of the situation was that, by turning snitch, he lost everything: you, the job, me for a while . . .”
“You took him back, though . . .”
“More weakness on my part. Charlie missed him desperately. I decided that he needed his father.”
“But you didn’t?”
Long silence.
“Of course I needed him. I didn’t love him . . . but I still needed him. And then, after he got sick . . . it’s a strange thing, isn’t it, how we sometimes discover our real feelings about people a little too late. It was awful watching him go. Awful. And I was suddenly desperate to keep him. At any cost. That’s why he went to Boston—because I’d heard of this specialist at Mass General who was trying a new sort of treatment for leukemia. Jack didn’t want to go—mainly because he knew how much it was going to cost, and because we didn’t have the money. But I insisted. Because I so wanted him to live.”
“Then you did love him.”
She shrugged. “Eventually. Yes. When he was finally free of you.”
I said nothing.
“He never made contact with you after you came back to the city?” she asked.
“No.”
“Are you telling me the truth?”
“Yes, I am,” I said, trying my best to look truthful.
“I’m glad to hear that. Because I didn’t want him to see you again. Because you didn’t deserve . . .”
She broke off, and absently began to shred the paper napkin on the table.
“How I hated you,” she whispered. “And the reason I so hated you is because: you had his love.”
“But then I threw it away.”
“Yes, you did. And I’ll admit something rather ugly: I was so pleased when you did that. Because I thought: she will come to regret this. Which you have.”
She tossed away the shredded napkin. We fell silent again. I said, “I know that you now have financial problems.”
“What concern is that of yours?”
“I’d like to help you.”
“No way.”
“Please hear me out. When Eric died, there was an insurance policy from NBC which was worth forty-two thousand dollars. I had it invested. It’s now worth almost sixty-five thousand. What I’d like to propose is this: I give you eight thousand straight away to settle all the medical and funeral debts. Then I take the remaining fifty-seven thousand, and set up a trust for Kate and Charlie. The trust will generate an income which you can use for their school and eventually college, and anything else you think . . .”
She cut me off.
“And what do you want out of this?”
“Nothing.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“It’s the truth.”
“You’re actually willing to give me and my children nearly sixty grand . . . with no strings attached?”
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do.”
“Or maybe because it’s a way, for you to salve your conscience.”
“Yes, maybe it is.”
She reached for another napkin, and began to shred it.
“No strings?” she asked.
“None,” I said.
“I am not a charity case.”
“This is a gift, not charity.”
“And what will you live on when you’re old and no longer writing columns?”
&n
bsp; “I had quite a reasonable divorce settlement. It’s all invested. One day, it will turn into a very nice pension.”
The napkin came apart in her fingers.
“You couldn’t have children, could you?” she asked.
I met her gaze.
“That’s right: I couldn’t have children. He told you that?”
“Yes, he did—as a way of assuaging my fears that he’d start a second family with you, and then disappear. At the time, I was really pleased that you’d never have children. Isn’t that terrible? But that’s how much I hated you. In my mind, you threatened everything I had.”
“Isn’t that always the basis of hate?”
“I guess it is.”
Pause.
“I want you to take the money, Dorothy.”
“And if I did . . . ?”
“It’s the end of the matter. The money is yours.”
“This . . . gift. . . . will never, never give you any entitlement to Kate or Charlie . . .”
“I expect nothing in return.”
“You will get nothing in return. That’s the one string I will attach to this gift: I will accept it only if you agree that, as long as I’m alive, you will never make contact with my children. And one more thing: after today, I never want to see or hear from you ever again.”
Without hesitating, I said, “Fine.”
“I have your word?”
“You have my word.”
Silence. She reached into her handbag and pulled out a little notebook and a pen. She wrote a name and a number on a leaf of paper, then tore it out and handed it to me.
“This is the phone number for my lawyer. You can talk to him about setting up the trust.”
“I’ll get on to it tomorrow morning.”
Silence. Then she said, “You know what I think sometimes? How if he hadn’t run into you again that afternoon in Central Park . . . I remember that afternoon so clearly. We were out walking. He was tired. He wanted to go home. But it was such a beautiful day I insisted we stop by the gazebo next to the lake. Suddenly, there you were . . . and everything changed. All because I asked him to loiter for a bit by the lake.”
“It’s the way things work, isn’t it? Chance, happenstance . . .”
“And choice. Things might happen accidentally—like me getting pregnant, or you meeting an old lover and his family in the park. But then we make choices. That’s what we have to live with: not the accident, the fluke—but the choices we make in the wake of it. Because they really determine our destiny.”
She glanced at her watch. “I must go.”
She stood up. I did so too.
“Goodbye then,” I said.
“Goodbye,” she said.
Then she quickly touched my sleeve and said two words: “Thank you.”
I never saw her again. I never spoke with her again. I never came near her children. I honored the conditions she demanded. I kept my word.
Until she died.
PART Four
* * *
Kate
TWENTY-SEVEN
UNTIL SHE DIED.”
The manuscript ended there. I held the last page in my hand, staring down at that final line. After a moment, I let it drop on to the hefty pile of pages scattered on the floor by the sofa. I sat back. I gazed blankly out the window, trying to think, not knowing what to think. Dawn’s early light was cleaving the dark sky. I glanced at my watch. Six fifteen. I had been reading all night.
Eventually, I forced myself to stand up. I walked into the bedroom. I stripped off my clothes. I stood under a shower for a very long time. I got dressed. I made coffee. While it percolated, I gathered up the manuscript pages and returned them to the box in which they came. I drank the coffee. I picked up my coat and the manuscript box. I left the apartment. The doorman hailed me a taxi. I told the driver I was heading to 42nd Street and First Avenue. As we cruised downtown, I turned on my cellphone and made a call. Meg answered, her “Hello” accompanied by a bronchial wheeze.
“I’m coming over,” I said. “Now.”
“What the hell time is it?” she said.
“Just after seven.”
“Jesus Christ. Has something happened?”
“Yes. I’ve been up all night. Reading.”
“Reading what?”
“I think you know.”
Silence. I broke it. “Just as I think you know where I was yesterday evening.”
“Haven’t a clue,” she said.
“Liar.”
“I’ve been called worse. Should I put on a flame-retardant dress before you get here?”
“Yes,” I said, and hung up.
She was actually dressed in a pair of men’s pajamas and an old bathrobe when I arrived. The requisite two cigarettes were already burning in an ashtray. The television was tuned to CNN, the volume far too loud. As always, there was a pile of books and periodicals by an armchair. The remnants of a recent supper—a half-eaten Chinese takeout—had yet to be cleared off the little table that doubled as a desk and dining area. The apartment was the same as I’d always known it all my life. It was just as Sara must have seen it—when she came here on the night of my father’s funeral in 1956.
“I’m never talking to you again,” I said, as I walked in and tossed the manuscript box on her sofa.
“Glad to hear it,” she said, clicking off the television. “Coffee or coffee?”
“Coffee. And an explanation.”
“For what?” she asked, pouring me a cup from her old electric percolator.
“Don’t go coy on me, Meg. It doesn’t suit you.”
“And there I was, thinking that I might try ‘coy’ for Christmas.”
“Quite a book,” I said, nodding toward the manuscript box. “I presume you’ve read it?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ve read it.”
“She didn’t hire you as her editor, did she?”
“I read it as a friend.”
“Oh yes, I forgot. You and Mystery Woman just happened to have been bosom buddies for the last four decades. And now I suppose you’re going to help her get her book published?”
“She doesn’t want it published. She wrote it for herself.”
“Then why did she want me to read it?”
“It’s part of your life. You needed to know.”
“I needed to know now? Right after my mother’s funeral?”
She just shrugged and said nothing. I said, “You should have told me, Meg. You should have told me everything years ago.”
“You’re right, I should have. But Dorothy was very insistent. Because she made it very clear that she wouldn’t touch the trust if either of you found out.”
“She should never have touched the trust.”
“If she hadn’t, you would never have had that fancy private school education of yours . . .”
“Big deal.”
“It was a big deal . . . and you know it. Because it took a lot of guts for Dorothy to do what she did. Jesus, imagine it: having to rely on money from your late husband’s lover to get your kids through school.”
“But I thought Uncle Ray paid for our school and college.”
“Ray never gave your mom a dime. He was the original WASP tightwad. No kids, a big white-shoe practice in Boston, an even bigger bank account. But when his sister and her husband were in dire straits—after Jack lost his job at Steele and Sherwood—Ray pleaded poverty. Even when Jack was dying at Mass General, that asshole didn’t once pay him a visit . . . even though the hospital was only a ten-minute walk from his Beacon Hill townhouse. Worse yet, he didn’t exactly spend a lot of time comforting his sister during that time. One lunch on the afternoon before Jack died, during which he told his sister that she should never have married ‘that Brooklyn mick.’ Dorothy hardly spoke to him after that. Then again, I don’t think they ever really liked each other anyway. He always disapproved of everything to do with Dorothy. Especially when it came to my brother.”
“But I was st
ill told that Ray was my great benefactor.”
“Your mom had to find some story to tell you about the money. God knows, it sickened her to accept Sara’s gift. And though she never said much about it, I know that it ate away at her. But she was the ultimate pragmatist. She couldn’t afford your education on what she made as a librarian. So she was going to swallow her pride—as she always did, the fool—and do what was best for the two of you.”
“You mean, like keeping all this from me until my midforties?”
“She was adamant that neither of you knew. Because I think she feared what you both might think. Anyway, a week before she died, I went to see her at New York Hospital. She knew she only had a couple more days. And she asked me: ‘Once I’m no longer around, are you going to tell her?’ I said I’d stay silent if that’s what she wanted. ‘It’s your call,’ she told me. ‘But if you do decide she should know, let her tell Kate. It’s her story as much as mine.’”
“But how did she know even where Sara was?”
“From time to time, she’d ask me about her. She knew that Sara and I had become good pals, that we were in pretty regular contact. Just as she also knew that, through me, Sara was keeping tabs on you.”
“Keeping tabs on me? Judging by that photo gallery by her door, not to mention the album she sent me, she was doing a little more than that. With your help.”
“You’re right. I gave her all the photographs. I supplied her with all the newspaper clippings. I kept her abreast of all that was happening to you. Because she wanted to know. Because she genuinely cared about you. And because I felt she deserved to follow your progress.”
“Mom didn’t mind that?”
“She didn’t say. But, about ten years after Jack’s death, she did make this passing comment about how ‘that woman has been very good about staying away from us.’ A couple of years later—when you were in Guys and Dolls at school—Sara showed up at a performance. I was with your mom, and I know that Dorothy saw her. But she said nothing. Just as she said nothing when she showed up at your graduations from Brearley and Smith. Again, Dorothy knew she was there—but she also saw that Sara was playing by the rules. And I think, in her own curious way, she liked the fact that she was so interested in you, and how you were doing. Remember: by the time you graduated from Smith, your dad was dead for twenty years. And Dorothy realized that the trust had made all the difference when it came to raising you and Charlie. So, in her own unspoken way, she was grateful.”
The Douglas Kennedy Collection #1 Page 59
