One Must Wait

by Penny Mickelbury

  When she awoke the following day, it was, to her surprise, almost noon, and she felt rested. And hungry. And something resembling her normal self. But she didn't get out of bed immediately. She lay there feeling small and alone, feeling the finality of the knowledge that she never again would share this space with another person. She scanned the room, its almost monastic austerity a testament to the man it reflected: The king size bed on its low platform of dark rosewood and an overstuffed chair were the only furniture. An antique brass swing-arm lamp stood guard at one side of the chair, and contrasting high-tech halogen-beam lamps sat on the headboard. And everywhere—on the floor beside the chair, on top on the headboard—stacks of books. Wardrobes and chests of drawers were built into the closets. The television was in the den, as was the telephone. For Al, the bedroom was a place of peace. In it he wanted to meditate, to read, to make love, to sleep. She allowed herself to feel the peace. Then she got up.

  In the kitchen she found a note from Dave and Mitch outlining their schedule for the day: Visits to the bank, to the insurance company, to the stock brokers, to the investment counselor, to the accountants. People Carole Ann didn't know, didn't know existed. She offered a silent prayer of gratitude for the two men and opened the cabinet containing the coffee beans. She was a coffee aficionado. A good cup of coffee could improve her disposition as quickly as a bad cup could ruin it. She studied the array of beans before her, chose the Sumatra, and performed the familiar and comforting ritual of grinding and measuring and adding water and inserting the filter and waiting for the sound that preceded the first aroma by just a hair of a second, followed by the first drop of the brew into the pot.

  She'd had a cat once, a huge, lazy, gentle, black and white named Patch, who loved the coffee making ritual as much as she. Every morning he'd race her to the kitchen, leap on to the counter, and watch as she ground and measured. Then he'd hunker down, tail flicking back and forth, and wait for that first drop to fall, knowing that it would, and being happy and surprised anyway. Al was allergic to cats, but she'd had Patch first and Al insisted he could adjust. And he had. So well that when, at twelve, the fat cat succumbed to the kidney ailment that frequently challenges older male cats, it was Al who wept like a baby in the vet's office. And for three weeks, every morning, it was Al who watched for the first drop of coffee to fall into the pot.

  Carole Ann stood watching and remembering and wondering how many forgotten things about Al would surge to the surface of her memory. Then she wondered what she would do with herself for the remainder of the day, for she would be alone today. Cleo had a new job to prepare for. Her mother was back home in Los Angeles. And, judging from their schedule, it would be dinnertime before Mitch and Dave returned. Which meant that she was alone. Totally and completely alone. She poured herself a cup of coffee and considered her options. Everything she thought of doing—going to a movie, going shopping, going hiking or biking or antiquing—were all things she did with Al. And perhaps one day she'd do them alone. But not today. Or tomorrow.

  She poked around in cabinets and drawers and discovered that Cleo had anticipated the return of her appetite. With coffee, apple juice, and a bagel smeared with strawberry preserves, she settled herself in front of the television and switched on CNN. She recognized almost instantly that she didn't care what was happening in the world. She punched the remote control pad, stopping to watch the next thing that caught her interest, music videos on BET. After the third one, she concluded that she didn't like the performers or their music or the jerky camera movements, so she cruised the channels again, stopping this time to watch an exercise program. Muscular young women and men were flexing glutes and abs and obliques on a sandy beach, the ocean shimmering blue in the background. Carole Ann decided that she'd spend the afternoon at the karate studio, and then have a massage, a facial, and a manicure, and then come home and cook dinner for Mitch and Dave.

  They arrived at six-thirty looking simultaneously grave and happy and told her was time for a serious talk. She told them it was time for dinner, and refused to listen to whatever they had to say until they'd eaten. Preparing the meal—chicken kebabs with spicy peanut sauce cooked on the gas grill on the balcony, saffron rice, salad, and a very sinful, very Southern peach cobbler—had made her feel good. Earlier telephone conversations with Cleo and her mother had soothed and relaxed her. Had made her feel almost happy. Now, both exhausted and relaxed from the karate workout and the massage, and comforted by the act of cooking and by the love she felt from Cleo and her mother, she felt quite content. The obvious enjoyment of these two men, always special to her but now crucial to her, was as important as it was gratifying.

  Finally, settled in the living room with coffee and music and the warm, moist breeze from the river circulating, compliments of the open balcony doors, Carole Ann opened herself to listen to them, to hear and receive their advice.

  "You're a very wealthy woman, Carole Ann," her brother began, delivering the news as if it were a jury verdict, and using her name as if it were a title.

  Carole Ann shrugged. "I know, Mitch. Al told me we were well off the day before he..." She stopped herself. She didn't want to say the word. It would shatter this peaceful place she'd found for the day. "He told me we didn't really need to work." How long ago it seemed. And how unimportant.

  "Not well off, Carole Ann," Dave said, clearing his throat. "Wealthy."

  "Not Hollywood wealthy, Al said, but comfortable," Carole Ann said smiling, remembering. And, like a five-year-old, beginning to fidget, as if she'd sat still for as long as could be expected.

  "Hollywood, hell!" Dave snorted. "Half the Hollywood high rollers would trade their careers for your solvency. As of this moment, you're worth—”

  "Wait, Dave!" Mitch grabbed the older man's arm, genuine alarm in his voice. "She hates money. Really and truly. Don't tell her the numbers." He turned to her: "Sis, you've got a lot of money. A lot. More than you can imagine. More than well-off. More than you want to know about. Am I making myself clear?"

  She shook her head at him, numbed by the possibility of what he was saying, and aware of a creeping annoyance. Al wouldn't have lied to her, any more than her brother would. So what was he saying? Carole Ann kept shaking her head as something ugly and uncomfortable began nudging the good feeling she'd worked so hard to achieve. She didn't need this. Dave and Mitch were supposed to come and file the will and notify the insurance company and pay the funeral home and balance the check book. And she planned to ask Mitch if he'd take over bookkeeping and other money matters for her. She'd pay him, of course.

  "You need to know, Carole Ann, so you can tell us what you want to do." Dave spoke slowly, enunciating carefully, as if addressing a small child or a person for whom English was a new language experience. "We have a meeting scheduled with your broker tomorrow and we need to be able to tell him something."

  "I don't have a broker," Carole Ann said, snappishness creeping into her tone of voice. "And I don't want one. And I don't want you overreacting like this about some money. Just leave it in the bank account and let it collect interest." She crossed her arms protectively in front of her breasts and looked away from them, looked out the balcony doors into the night.

  "You don't leave several million dollars in a bank account to collect interest," Mitch snapped, out of patience with her uncomprehending response. Then he collected himself and leaned forward, across Dave, and took both her hands in his large, square ones, forcing her to look at him instead of at the darkness. "You own a three thousand-acre working farm in Nebraska and half interest in a five thousand-acre cattle ranch in Texas and another thousand acres of forest preserve in New Mexico and you hold majority interest in resorts in Texas, California and Florida, all of which turn handsome annual profits. Except the forest preserve, which merely increases in value each year. In addition, you now own, outright, this apartment and two others in this building, and an eight-unit building on Capitol Hill, all of which pay you rent every month. The insurance
company is waiting to give you a check for two million dollars. But you have to go get it, Sis. They won't give it to us. And Sis? This is just the big-ticket stuff."

  "Is any of it worth living for, Mitch?" She withdrew her hands from his and rubbed them together, as if they were cold. "Can I cash it all in and buy Al back? What am I supposed to do with it?" She looked from one to the other truly expecting an answer. "You two talk and act like I'm supposed to care about some stupid money." She jumped to her feet and, arms wrapped around herself, began to pace. "Well, what good is it to me now? Tell me!"

  "You can take some time off, Sis."

  "I've got all the time in the world, Mitch! I quit my job the day Al died! We both did. We were going to...I don't know what we were going to do."

  She was halted by a sound Dave made in his throat, a sound like choking or gasping. She looked at him and was about to ask what was wrong and then the realization hit home: Nobody but Cleo and her mother knew what she and Al had done on that last day of his life.

  "Al quit? And he told them, didn't he?" Dave's eyes were open wide and his voice was tight and hoarse.

  "Told who what, Dave?" She was as confused by his demeanor as by the question; so confused that she almost calmed down and almost relaxed. She stood beside him.

  "Those idiots he worked for. Did he tell them he quit?"

  "Of course. We both submitted formal letters of resignation."

  "Did he tell them why?" Dave sat perched on the edge of his chair, tension coursing through him like electricity.

  Carole Ann considered the question and its meaning, considered Dave's entire response. It was not news to him that Al planned to quit, merely that he'd already done so. But it clearly was important to Dave whether Al had given a reason. And Carole Ann didn't know the answer to that. They'd discussed at lunch that last day how explicit their reasons needed to be, and whether Al needed to restate his already on-the-record concerns about Parish States Petroleum. Had he articulated those concerns in his resignation letter? She didn't know, and she told Dave as much, told him what they'd discussed and how they'd returned to their respective offices to write their individual letters.

  Then she remembered the message on the answering machine and the three of them rushed down the hall to the den. Carole Ann punched the rewind button. The message tape already was at the beginning. She punched the play button and heard silence. Her heart ached to hear Al's voice but there was nothing but the silence of the empty tape. After almost a month-and-a-half and several dozen phone calls, it wasn't surprising, and yet she was surprised. At herself for not having the presence of mind to retrieve the tape; and at her mother and Cleo for not thinking...but then how would either of them have known? And now the sound of his voice, the sound of his last words to her were lost to her forever. Beside the answering machine, shoved almost beneath it, there was a cassette tape. She grabbed it up, opened the top of the machine, removed the existing message tape, inserted the newly discovered one, and pressed the "play" button.

  "Hey, Babe. The cowboys have circled the wagons and I think I'm the native in the woodpile. I've been in meetings since I got back from lunch, and there's no end in sight. The head honchos are livid, accusing me of breach of contract, among other evils. Larry has been screaming—and I do mean screaming—for the last three hours that I'm wrong about Parish Petroleum. To tell you the truth, he's making me a bit nervous. I've never seen him this out of control. Anyway, we're having dinner with the boys from Louisiana at eight at Pierre's. If I eat fast and walk home even faster, I'll see you about midnight. Think you can stay awake that long? I'd be most grateful. Love you. Bye."

  She again exchanged cassettes, hugging the one with Al's message to her breast and silently thanking Cleo—certain it had to be Cleo who'd preserved Al's final words to her—and wondered how many times she'd play it, just to hear his voice. She placed Al's voice in the top desk drawer, and stopped suddenly, hearing him say, To tell you the truth, he's making me nervous. And that made her nervous, raising to the surface the queasy feelings she'd had about Larry Devereaux's two visits.

  She followed the men down the hall back to the living room, Mitch looking like the last kid picked for the team with his shoulders hunched and squared and his bottom lip protruding, demanding to know why he was left in the dark. And she told him—about herself and Tommy Griffin, then about Al and Tennessee and Parish Petroleum. Then she went silent because she needed to wonder about Al's apparent fear of his own boss, for she had heard fear in his voice in the message cassette. Then she returned to the moment, to Mitch and Dave.

  The one, a stranger really, yet so familiar. She'd always liked Dave but they saw him once a year, usually in the summer. Al's parents had divorced when he was nine and Dave left New York and started a new family and a new life with an Atlanta law firm. Father and son had communicated superficially but hadn't bonded until Al decided to go to law school, a decision that still rankled Adrienne Crandall more than twenty years later. The two men liked and respected each other, and, Carole Ann believed, were beginning to love each other. Not the required kind of love that fathers and sons expect of each other, but the earned kind.

  Then there was her big brother. That they loved each other was unquestionable. They'd been bound by the kind of love that only loss can forge. But Mitch was a different kind of man than Al and Dave. Mitch held his emotions and feelings tightly. Too tightly, Carole Ann thought. She wouldn't have wanted to be married to a man like her brother, and her brother's wife wouldn't have anybody but Mitch. As a brother, he was perfect: All her life he'd been there for her and he always would be. That she was sure of. And because of that, she opened the door she'd slammed shut earlier.

  "What do you want me to do about the money, Mitch?"

  "Will you tell me first whether you'll consider trying to get your job back?"

  "Goddammit, Mitch, am I rich or not?"

  "You are." His jaw worked as he struggled to contain and control his anger.

  "Then what do I need with a job?" Carole Ann was weary in body, mind, and spirit.

  Mitch sighed resignation, acceptance. "I suppose you don't need it, not for the money. But it'll give you something to do, something to take your mind off...so you don't just sit around moping."

  "I've a right to mope, Mitch. I've earned it. And anyway, the job wouldn't help. I was sick of it before so going back there won't do anything for my morale."

  Mitch raised his hands, palms up, and shrugged. He slid his already loosed tie out of its knot and freed it from his shirt collar. He rubbed his eyes and then stretched and settled back into the arm chair, met Carole Ann's eyes, and waited for her to talk to him. She knew he would say no more of his own volition. She looked at Dave, who was staring at some non-existent thing on the ceiling.

  "When did Al tell you he was planning to quit?" she asked Dave. It still rankled that her husband had held this knowledge, this plan, for a long time before he discussed it with her. That he'd discussed it with anyone first hurt deeply.

  Dave sighed and, like Mitch, rubbed his eyes before facing her. "He never told me he was planning to quit. What he told me was that he couldn't, in good conscience, continue to work for an outfit that condoned illegal activity."

  She thought about his reaction a few moments earlier. "And you disagreed with him?" She couldn't conceal the surprise she felt. Would Dave actually have counseled Al to engage in activity he knew to be criminal?

  "I agreed that he should get out as soon as possible but without divulging the reason." Dave was sitting erect now, and watching her, like a lawyer.

  "Why shouldn't he give a reason?"

  "I shouldn't have to tell you that, C.A. You, of all people." There was a slight derision in his tone and Carole Ann bristled. But before she could voice her objection, he continued. "You, of all people, should know that crooks don't like to be called crooks."

  She emitted a burst of laughter that came off as a snort. She was about to tell him that she hadn't met a si
ngle criminal who objected to being called what he was—murderer, drug dealer, rapist—until the image of Patrick Delaney flashed before her eyes. Delaney and the others like him—the fat cats, the suits, the front office criminals—to a man, denied the moniker, "criminal." They always were the victims of circumstance. The hard asses, the street criminals, shrugged off their predicament with some degree of understanding that if you broke the rules often enough, long enough, you'd eventually get caught. She was about to explain all this but something about the way they were looking at her changed her mind. She could imagine that in their minds, her explanation would come off sounding like a defense of killers and drug dealers, and she didn't feel the need to justify herself at the moment. Besides, she couldn't expect that an accountant and a tax attorney would or should understand the finer points of the criminal psyche.

  "I don't know exactly what reasons Al gave for resigning, but I'm pretty certain that he didn't point fingers." And the memory of Larry Devereaux's two fact-finding missions flashed red warning signals in her brain. Cold, calculating Larry Devereaux. Al had called him a nasty bastard, and he was that. Nasty and suspicious.

  "Al didn't didn't have secrets from you Carol Ann. You must know that." Dave's words came out in a rush, as if his sudden understanding of the reason for her discomfort, and his denial of it, could eradicate it. Concern creased his face and his resemblance to Al in that moment was startling. Carole Ann looked at him and knew what her husband would have looked like had he lived long enough.