by Belva Plain
So quickly had he dismissed her! Still, she supposed, you couldn’t blame him. What if somebody were to tell her that her own father—it would be unthinkable.
Sometime soon, though, she would have to try again; she would have to relate the other part, by far the worst part, of the story. But not now. She ached for sleep, a few hours of forgetfulness. If only the fortress-prison did not loom again in her dreams …
Chapter Seventeen
February 1991
Amanda jumped off the cable car on the peak of Nob Hill. The soothing air of spring touched her face and she was not yet ready to go indoors. In a small park where children were still playing, she sat down; an extraordinary sense of lightness came to her as she watched them.
The day at the agency had been especially long and even more filled with desperate interviews than was usual. There had been one in particular, a runaway, sixteen years old, a delicate girl, sensitive and secretive. She had seen this girl twice before and been unable to pry much information from her. But something today had lit a lamp in her own mind and before she knew it, words had come tumbling from her mouth.
“I was molested,” she confessed. “My uncle did it to me when I was younger than you. I was ashamed to let anyone know, and that was my big mistake.”
The girl had looked at her with such eyes—the startled eyes of some poor caught animal—and burst into tears. And after a while, with Amanda’s arm around her shoulders, she had begun at last to talk.
It might not have been professional, and very likely was not, she thought now, but it had worked. The girl had agreed to see a doctor and go to live in the home, shelter or halfway house or whatever you wanted to call it, that Amanda supported.
Thinking about all this, she was swept again by that extraordinary sense of lightness. She sat until it was almost dark, thinking about many things, and was still thinking, over her solitary supper, about that odd sensation of lightness.
“Sheba,” she said to the cat, who had curled itself over her ankle, “it is because a secret is a very heavy thing and that I’ve carried mine for too many years. So I had to get rid of it. But do not think that lightness means automatic happiness, whatever happiness means, for that matter. No, it does not. It only frees the mind to work more intelligently.”
When she had eaten, she went to sit by the window where the view spread widely over the bay to the bridge and the far, far East. When the cat sprang up beside her, turning up to her its heart-shaped little face and its wise green eyes, she spoke to it again.
“How that man lived with his secrets, I shall never fathom. I hope he sweated in agony through every sleepless night. But most probably he did not. It’s funny, it took me all these years to come to a resolution: that I would go there and face him, accuse him and make him pay. Of course, as Sally said, it would have been blackmail, and that is a very ugly thing. So his death spared me from doing that ugly thing, or shall I say ‘cheated me’? At any rate, it’s over.
“And here’s another funny thing: I do not want the money anymore. It isn’t worth the struggle. I have enough, more than enough. As Todd once said—I wonder what’s become of him? It’s been almost a year since he was here, sitting in that chair. ‘You’re getting your fair share,’ he told me, and he was right. The lawyer thought I was a fool yesterday when I phoned him to say that I was dropping the case against Grey’s Foods. ‘They’re loaded,’ he said. ‘They’re bound to give you something if only for nuisance value.’ Nuisance value! No, I don’t want to be anyone’s nuisance. I think too much of myself for that. ‘But we can take over the business,’ he said. ‘I’ve already got people with plenty of cash, Amanda.’ No, the case is closed.
“And I feel good about it, Sheba. I never really wanted to hurt Dan, or any person who hadn’t ever hurt me. Especially now, because something tells me that Dan is in terrible trouble.”
She stood and went to the telephone, picked it up and put it down, uncertain what to do. The message to Dan about the company stock was simple; indeed, it would be a pleasure to feel again how reasonable, how magnanimous she really wanted to be. There was something else, though, which had been troubling her for over a month now, ever since, on that day of tumult, she had left Scythia.
I do believe Sally did it, she said to herself for the hundredth time. Remember how carefully she let me know that she had gone to the movies that night? She was so nervous that she could barely speak. Unless I am an utter fool …
There was too much coincidence for it to be coincidence. That man’s death, her own story, which Sally had heard with such visible horror, the carousel, Tina’s sick behavior, and at the last moment on the stairs, the horror again on Sally’s face as if, in that very instant, the truth had struck her down … It all fitted.
They don’t miss a thing, those detectives. They even gave me a hard time simply because I hadn’t returned the rented car until the morning after I was at Dan’s house. They will surely find out what happened. They may lie low for months but they will come up with the proof.
My God, poor girl, poor children, my poor brother!
This time she took up the telephone and dialed. It was evening in the East and Dan would probably be at home. When someone answered, who she guessed was the nanny, she asked to speak to him. After a short delay, it was Sally who came to the telephone and offered to take the message.
“Well, it’s something about the business and you said you never have anything to do with it,” Amanda said.
“That’s so, but I can take a message.” Sally hesitated. “The fact is, Amanda, that Dan doesn’t want to talk to you. He’s very angry, angry and hurt. I told him about Oliver and he doesn’t believe it.”
“But you do?”
“Yes, yes I do.” Again she hesitated. “Dan loved Oliver so much, you see. He feels such gratitude, such respect, and he’s infuriated that you can say such things about him.”
With all the gentleness, there was fire in Sally. She wasn’t afraid of an unpleasant truth. She could have covered up by saying that Dan had guests or wasn’t feeling well, but she had not. She had been direct. Amanda liked that. And then, in the instant, she thought, it is this very quality that makes me all the more sure that she took things into her own hands that night.
“I understand,” she said, meaning it. “Then please tell Dan, and he can tell the others, that I withdraw the lawsuit I was planning, that I am satisfied with the financial arrangements we have always had, and that for my part they can do what they will with the forest.”
Sally was astonished. “But your project, your work with needy girls! The acreage you want to buy, and all your plans!”
“Dan told me once in an argument that my plans were grandiose, and they were. I can be just as helpful, perhaps more so, on a much smaller scale.”
Dan had also accused her of wanting to be admired and he hadn’t been far wrong there, either.
“I didn’t really need all that money. I only wanted to torture Oliver.”
“I understand very well,” Sally said in a voice so low that Amanda was not sure she had heard, and asked her to repeat it.
When she had done so, Amanda asked, “Are you sure you’re all right?”
At once the answering voice became brisk with the intonation of surprise. “Of course. Why shouldn’t I be?”
And Amanda knew that her innocent-seeming question had gone too far. Sally was on guard. Nevertheless, she had to press further.
“And how is Tina?” she asked.
“Oh, fine. I’m sorry you saw her just when she was in an ornery mood. But as you said, we all have them now and then.”
“That’s for sure.”
“I’ll give Dan your wonderful message. It’ll be very welcome, especially now with everything that’s happened, and Clive so ill. I know you’ll hear from Dan once he starts feeling like himself again. He’ll be very, very grateful.”
So, politely, the conversation closed. Amanda had learned nothing. Still, she couldn’t very
well have expected Sally to burst out with I killed Oliver Grey, could she?
One Saturday, on a brilliant afternoon, she sat alone with a book. The day was too fine to be spent indoors, but a mood had come over her, not of melancholy exactly, but tinged with it, a feeling of loose ends, that something significant had been left undone.
She had no intention of pursuing any man, least of all Todd, and that simply because, paradoxical as it might seem, she had really loved him. For all she knew, he could be married by now. But somehow it mattered to her that he should have a good opinion of her. It was shameful to think that in the future, if ever by chance he should be reminded of her by someone’s mention of her name, he would recall their last few hours, which had certainly not been among the best hours of her life. She wanted him to know that her lawsuit against the family firm had been dropped, exactly as he had advised. And so she sat down and wrote him a simple letter, merely half a dozen lines, in which she told him so.
Two days later the answer came by telephone. When she heard his voice, that rich, actor’s voice about which she had once teased him, her own almost failed. But she had not lost her pride.
“I didn’t want to intrude on you,” she began.
“You’re not intruding at all! That was a very beautiful letter. I want to thank you for it.”
“Well, it was just something that needed to be said.”
“Well, it was a very beautiful letter.”
Here they were, connected across the city by a complex mesh of wires and unable, apparently, to disconnect with grace. Having said this much, there seemed to be nothing more to say.
In bumbling haste she came up with a dull question. “Everything going well with you, I hope?”
“Oh yes, work as usual. And I took a trip to Mexico with my brother and his family last month. That’s about all.”
Then he was not married, and probably didn’t have a serious commitment either, or he wouldn’t have gone on vacation with relatives. Then she felt a sudden flush of embarrassment: What could she be thinking of? A year had gone by. It was long over, dead and buried.
“What about you? Has anything interesting been happening?” Todd asked.
Interesting. Rage. Crisis. Murder.
“Yes, rather. But it’s a long story, too long and boring for the telephone.”
“I don’t bore easily. What if I were to come over tonight to hear it?” And before she was able to get her reply out, he added, “I don’t know how you feel about seeing me again, so if you don’t—”
“No, no, come over. I’ll be glad.”
Amanda was never one to agonize over what to wear. “Take me as I am,” she would have answered anyone who brought up the subject. This evening however was different, and it was almost time for the doorbell to ring before she had gone over all her sweaters and skirts of various colors (too schoolgirlish), a velvet housecoat (too seductive and in the circumstances, all wrong), a smart black silk shift (too formal), and a pink woolen shift (no, it’s candy-box pink). Then the doorbell did ring. And there he stood, bearing a little pot of pink tulips in one hand.
“They were selling these on the corner,” he said. “Something told me you might be wearing pink.”
“Angelicas, my favorite.” A lovely pink, they matched her dress exactly.
In the living room, facing the famous view, they sat down. They were so stiff and awkward, it was almost funny. Or else you might say, it was sad that this had happened to two people who had once been so close—but not close enough.
Todd opened the conversation, “Sheba looks fit and sleek, I see.” For the cat had come in, and wound herself around his ankles.
“Oh yes, the best of care. All the vitamins.”
For a moment again, there was nothing to say. Or perhaps, Amanda thought, too much to say.
“You had a long story, too long for the telephone.”
A year ago, she reflected, she would have almost died rather than disclose such ugly shame to Todd, to him of all people. That thought flashed, and then, taking a long breath, she began courageously,quite simply now. “After my parents died, when I went to live at Hawthorne …”
He did not stir. She was aware that his eyes never left her face, although her own eyes were fixed beyond his head on the bay and the bridge.
“That’s what it was all about, you see,” she said when she had finished the story. “I wanted to ruin him, to cut up his beloved forest, take a piece of his company and throw everything into turmoil. Everything.”
Todd had been listening with great concern. Now he said gravely, “I wish you had told me sooner. It would have explained many things.” He reached over and held her hands. “Don’t you think you need some help? Need to talk to somebody? It’s not so simple that you can do it alone, I think.”
“I believe I can. If I need help, I’ll get it. But it’s incredible how, the moment I told Sally, I felt that the monkey had fallen off my back. I hadn’t been free since it happened to me and then all at once, I was. I didn’t feel wonderful, but I felt free.”
“You deserve to feel wonderful, Amanda.”
The lowering sun had laid a broad band of silvered gold over the mirror on the opposite wall. And glancing there, she saw a tableau: woman seated, and man leaning toward woman in a posture that might be one of interest, or solicitude, or could it be of desire? And she thought, now that I am ready to belong to a man, to belong in the best way, the only good way without inhibition or fear, I hope so much that it may be desire.
“I have to make a confession,” he said abruptly. “You’ve been on my mind almost constantly these last few months. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to the telephone, put my hand out to call your number, and then withdrawn it. I wanted so much to be in touch, to touch you again. But something held me back. I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?” she asked.
“That I would only be asking to be hurt again. That last time was so final. I didn’t think you’d want me.”
“But it was the same for me! Even when I wrote that note a few days ago, and the minute after I put it in the mailbox, I thought I shouldn’t have sent it.”
“But why?”
The only way now, she knew, was total honesty. “I thought,” she said, “you had surely found someone less complicated, easier to be with than I was.”
He shook his head. “No. There were plenty of people, and there was no one.”
Their eyes made contact, his the remembered ocean blue, so astonishingly soft in the angular face.
“You’ll find I’m different,” she said.
“Not too different, please.”
“Only in one way.” She stood up. “I’m going to say something I wouldn’t have been able to say before now.”
“Darling Amanda, say it quickly.”
“I would like to make love to you. If you want me. If you don’t, please tell me right out and I shall never bother you again.”
He did not answer, but putting his arms around her, led her into the bedroom and laid her down, kissing her throat, her mouth, and her eyes; then he leaned over her, took the phone off the hook, and possessed her.
Chapter Eighteen
February 1991
Ever since his father’s funeral Clive’s mind had been turned toward death. That was nothing to wonder at, Roxanne thought; the murder of Oliver, with all the rest of his suffering, could squeeze the strength out of a stronger man than Clive.
“What the hell difference does it make whether I live or die?” he demanded. “I’m not going to leave anything behind. Lovely house—a shell. Lovely pregnant woman—not mine, neither the woman nor the child.”
What consolation could she give? It was unspeakably tragic, all of it. Sad too, she thought, that a person had to be sick before receiving so much attention: Happy had made a Japanese bonsai garden in a jade-green dish; even Amanda telephoned from California, and Sally, all unknowing, had given him a photograph of her, Roxanne. She had made her look angelic
in three-quarter profile, with head bent over a tight bouquet of rosebuds tied to ribbon streamers, and had placed it in its silver frame on the table where Clive, from his recliner, could not help but see it every time he looked up.
“You don’t want to keep this here, do you?” Roxanne asked him.
“Leave it. I like looking at the frame.”
His tongue, which had once spoken only the softest words to her, now cut like a knife. And she understood that he was trying to make her feel what it was to be cast aside, thrown away, without hope.
One day she said timidly, “Ian would like to see you.”
“Oh, so you’re in touch with him?”
“On the telephone only. He wants to talk to you.”
“I can’t imagine what about.”
“About what’s happened.”
“There is nothing more to say about it. And tell him not to try coming here, because I’ll have him thrown out. Do you understand?”
“Yes. You said that night—you said you were going to throw me out, and you haven’t done it. So do you want me to go?”
“Suit yourself.”
“You need care, you need to be built up, I can cook for you,” she said, aware that her tone was humble, although she had not meant it to be.
He gave her a derisive look. “It’s not so hard to hire a cook, you know.”
She hung her head. It was a new experience to feel so humbled.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Is Ian through with you?”
“Yes, he’s finished.”
“I don’t believe it. Has he told you so?”
“No, but I can tell. A woman can tell a lot of things.”
“Oh yes, a woman can tell a hell of a lot of things. What are you crying for?” he taunted as she wiped a tear with the back of her hand. “You may stay. It won’t be for long. You’ll all be at the cemetery again before summer.”
