Lorna Mott Comes Home

by Diane Johnson

  Over a few days, Gilda began to sense correctly that their solid parental stand was dictated mostly by her father, and that her mother would always be on her side in her heart, however much she sided with Ran officially. Gilda understood that Amy would kind of like a baby. After dinner a few nights after the tormented scene, she knocked on their bedroom door and said, “Parents, I love you and I know you love me and want what’s best. This time I know what’s best.”

  Ran said, “No, you don’t.” Amy suddenly sobbed and pushed shut the bedroom door.

  * * *

  —

  At his office the next day, Ran turned over various possibilities. Whatever they did about interrupting the pregnancy, which he would certainly insist on, Gilda should see her doctor immediately, and maybe he should talk to the doctor first. Definitely also her therapist, Mrs. Klein—she had had a therapist since her initial diagnosis with diabetes, to help her adjust, to hear her fears, to generally support her. Like many people in their demographic, white and Protestant, he and Amy had a certain indifference to psychotherapy; didn’t disbelieve it, of course, but thought it was mostly for people who believed in it. Wouldn’t have liked to spend all that money on themselves but had never begrudged spending it on Mrs. Klein for Gilda. This was their attitude to faith generally, that it was fine for others; also, they weren’t in the right zip codes—New York or LA—where the shrinks were mostly to be found.

  Gilda had never expressed much interest in seeing Mrs. Klein, but dutifully went once a month and discussed her classes and friends. Now Ran wondered if Amy would consider seeing someone, too—maybe even their minister, not that they had much contact with religion. He seemed to remember that his college friend Phil Train was now the dean at Grace Cathedral. Someone to reassure Amy, whatever they did.

  “Why would I do that?” Amy asked.

  “Just to help you get through this. Someone more sympathetic than I am.”

  “You aren’t supporting me?”

  “You know what I think. I’m concerned about Gilda’s health uppermost.”

  “And I’m not?”

  “No, of course you are, but you’d like a dear little baby, too.”

  “Okay,” Amy said, which meant We Aren’t Discussing This Anymore.

  Eventually Amy had proposed they call Ran’s granddaughter Julie to help talk to Gilda; she and Julie seemed to be friendly.

  “I think Gilda looks up to her, she’ll be able to talk to her,” Amy said. “I couldn’t be a co-grandmother with horrible Ursula Aymes, though,” she added.

  “Ursula isn’t so bad,” Ran said. “I have no idea about the child-molester son.”

  “Well, call Julie,” Amy said. “Invite her to dinner. I suppose we should invite the Aymes boy, too,” though they didn’t.

  * * *

  —

  And Ran had more than one thing to worry him. He continued to get communications—phone calls and emails—from Harvey Avon, the colleague of Curt’s, the shakedown-artist colleague, who seemed to believe Ran would somehow cover his grown son’s debts, or putative debts, or poorly advised investments, or whatever you wanted to call them. Ran had so far refused the temptation to sic the guy on Donna, who after all would be the one more responsible than he for Curt’s financial obligations, and now, moreover, thanks to Amy, could afford to deal with them. She could sell the fancy house if she had to. He didn’t mention Donna to Avon in part because he couldn’t really believe the guy was on the level, such were the outrageous claims, the extremely bizarre investments, his descriptions of behavior he could not recognize as Curt’s. He feared, though, that Donna would be intimidated and fall into some trap of Avon’s, and he resolved to have a talk with her, and also to confront the guy again.

  Another of his concerns was personal; he needed to understand what he himself wanted from the accursed young man who had abused and impregnated his daughter. He could be made to marry her; he could be jailed for statutory rape; he could be sued for—for what? Ran felt intensely that Ian Aymes should pay in some way, should face the consequences of his crime. In his ears the encouraging whispers of men down the ages who had been made to take responsibility, as he himself had been made to take responsibility, to pay through the nose for every bang, why not this twerp as well? Indignant fathers down the ages seconded Ran’s motion, they carried him on their shoulders. Gilda’s life had been ruined, or at any rate changed irreversibly, why not Ian Aymes’s, too? It was only fair.

  In the middle of all this, he was not entirely surprised to get a call from Amy’s financial person Drake Titian, saying he’d been alerted by the people who monitored the web and print media on their behalf—the alert was set for “Hawkins”—about an article that detailed the crimes of Curt Mott, stepson of Silicon Valley figure Amy Hawkins, on the lam for nearly a year, funds missing from companies he co-owned, himself out of the reach of prosecution, probably in Shanghai. Ran typed in the web address and saw the headline “Former MacChester Star Mott Disappears—with the Money?” MacChester referred to a consulting firm Curt had worked for just out of business school, and risen quickly within, and then left for his own pursuits. The article that followed detailed Curt’s crimes in spurious and vengeful detail, even linking them to his stepmother Amy and other family members, clearly the invention of a disgruntled enemy somewhere, perhaps even an enemy of his own, someone bent on slandering both his son and his wife—the disinformation included plenty of aspersions on Amy as a dishonest bankroller and the brains behind the scams. He knew it could not be true. It was one more thing in a day, a week, filled with nothing but vexation and worse.

  * * *

  —

  Julie found a message from her grandfather on her phone: Could she meet him and Amy for dinner to discuss Gilda? Along with the little chill of fear—the feeling that she was to be somehow blamed in the Gilda situation—she felt pleased to be included in her grandfather’s general consciousness and his specific thoughts when, she knew, that wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t bearded him in his office that time. She texted a response, and also texted her roommates that she had to exchange her turn cooking that night with one of them, on account of an important summons.

  28

  “I have it,” cried Barbara Levier to the Pont-les-Puits council before they had settled in their chairs to discuss the mounting costs of the cemetery cleanup: “We have only to sell the tableau belonging to the mairie. It is ours to sell, Monsieur Woods donated it to us himself. With this, we pay for the cemetery cleanup and much else without having to claw back these tiny sums from each descendant, quelle poisse after all. It is valuable, I am told.”

  People advanced various objections—no art dealers in Pont-les-Puits, no familiarity with the art market, doubts about its value, logistical issues, general ignorance about sales procedures. But Monsieur Dumas, when he came in a bit late, agreed with the project. There might be export issues, to be sure, since their Woods had been painted in France and therefore belonged in France, but it probably would sell better in the U.S. where Woods was more of a name. He put minds at rest about the logistics of an important transaction in the art world by pointing out that Madame Dumas, despite their estrangement, could be trusted to conduct a sale; she was familiar with the art world and was conveniently in America.

  “Export will be easier if my wife can take it as a personal effect,” he mused, “along with some of her other things she’ll be sending for. Her silver, some furniture, in connection with our divorce…”

  Silence. No one liked to comment on the Dumas split, the rumors of which he was now confirming. “Never mind, I’ll make inquiries,” he said.

  Now, in June, the season when the American food world began to stake its claims in various French villages and regions, well-known California chef Susan Warner-Ford brought the first of her cooking tours to Pont-les-Puits. She would have three such sessions over the summer.
She had begun these tours mostly with women from San Francisco as clients, where her cooking show originated; but gradually participants were also drawn from Marin County or Napa and came to include men and couples. She accepted a group of eight for each session, they stayed at La Périchole—the one small hotel in Pont. They had classes in the mornings: Pastry/Knife Skills/Braising, or Bread/Hors d’Oeuvres/Le Rôti. In the afternoon, they absorbed the touristic wonders of the region, shopped at the open market for the local onions and mushrooms, toured the cheese makers, examined the churches, with a certain amount of free time for trying local restaurants on their own, and hiking or pursuing photography, which seemed to interest a high percentage of Susie’s students, all passionate Francophiles.

  The group was barely settled in at La Périchole when one of their number, Tory Hatcher, a brisk and competent blonde from Larkspur, went out with her camera to explore the village and wandered by the market hall where the ongoing forensic examinations were visible through the screened-in walls. Astounded when she thought she perceived long tables arrayed with packets topped by skulls! Astonished and revolted by the grisly apparition, without doubt the aftermath of some local massacre or sinister religious rite! She had lifted her camera—one of those assertive, protruding, black weapon-cameras—and opened the screen door to what was obviously a public space, planning to steal in for a close-up photo, when a deep male voice behind her said, “Madame?” She turned.

  “Madame, s’il vous plaît, this is a sensitive area, a grave site, if you will, and I’m not sure it is correct to photograph here.”

  Tory, like the other members of her party, was extra concerned not to commit faux pas or offend the sensibilities of French people, or call attention to her own Americanness. She’d seen how badly her countrymen sometimes behaved, not anyone of course among their group.

  “I’m so sorry,” she gasped. “What is…it, exactly?” Now she saw that the man who’d reproved her was a handsome though stout person, sixtyish, gracefully graying at the temples, unmistakably French but with perfect English, like a film actor playing a French diplomat. His expression was more amiable than outraged, which relieved her.

  He explained the cemetery catastrophe, and as they fell into conversation, Tory discovered that the man had San Francisco connections—had been married to someone from there—and undoubtedly knew lots of people she knew. She accepted a coffee at La Fringale. He then invited the whole group for a drink at Fringale at the end of their day, with the promise of some local lore and info on the onion growers and potters of the area. This was a pleasant addition to the food adventure they were embarked upon. All was to be possible.

  When they assembled at six o’clock, including their leader, Susie Warner-Ford, Armand-Loup bought her and the eight cookery acolytes a round of drinks. Tory lost out with the handsome though stout ex-museum director to Susie Warner-Ford herself, whom he invited to go up with him to his room over the bakery, ostensibly to plot out some promising local food experiences in nearby villages he knew about. He was called Monsieur Dumas, no relation to the writer. Later that evening, Susie and Monsieur Dumas were seen eating at La Roulette and sampling turban de sole au saumon, sauce à l’oseille, an old-fashioned specialty of Monsieur Wake, the chef. They drank a Meursault, it was reported, and then a Montrachet.

  Later, Tory googled Armand-Loup Dumas. In his working life as director of a museum, he had been influenced by the Frankfurt School and especially the work of Jürgen Habermas, with its whiff of Marx and Hegel, influences found in his published articles discussing the economics of the art market. What a wicked bunch, art dealers and such! It made her happy that their new friend was a well-known figure in the museum world. Part of the allure of these art-and-food trips was the off chance of a little fling.

  29

  Let winners run.

  This was one of Dick Willover’s favorite investment maxims.

  He had had investments with Curt Mott, his erstwhile brother-in-law, and when Peggy and he divorced, he hadn’t liquidated them; he’d left his money in Curt’s enterprises—a promising hydroponics program with brick-and-mortar installations underway, other agricultural software, a motorcycle-insurance scheme, a biking video game, some iPhone apps, some computer peripherals being manufactured in China—all of which had sounded good to Dick, or good enough, assembled in his portfolio as Mott Development. As investments, they were never going to be Netflix or Apple, but all had been showing signs of vigor, and then when Curt was in a coma, it seemed insensitive to the Mott family for him to pull his money out. Above all, he hadn’t wanted to irritate his former father-in-law, Ran Mott. He stayed on good terms with Ran at both the Bohemian Grove and the Cal Club—though Ran didn’t play very often anymore—and Dick wanted to keep it that way. Family riffs often do but need not cause business ruptures. He satisfied himself that Harvey Avon was running the show with sufficient competence.

  He and Peggy talked from time to time, Dick in the role of a kindly stranger, almost as if they’d seldom met, which Peggy understood was to avoid his getting drawn into the cost of Julie’s college or any of her own financial troubles. She did tell him about Donna’s windfall. This animated an unexpected wellspring of indignation from Dick on Peggy’s behalf, that she should be passed over to the benefit of Curt’s horrible wife. He had expressed this indignation to several people in the Cal Club locker room and bar, also at a Bohemian Club event. He regretted his resentful outbursts lest they get back to his former father-in-law Ran, but maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if they did?

  “So then Amy Hawkins came up with three million dollars in cash to pay off Curt Mott’s—my brother-in-law’s—mortgage, out of the kindness of her heart, but left the other kids out in the cold. My wife Peggy”—he often mentioned Peggy, as if to consolidate his former heterosexual creds—“gets nothing, her other siblings, either, just Curt. Of course there was no reason for her to help any of them, Hawkins is only their stepmother. Her and Ran’s own kid, Gilda, will get all the money. Still…” He knew that several of his auditors, taking note of Donna Mott’s windfall, would soon be getting in touch with her on behalf of the Sierra Club, Yosemite, Save the Bay, Marin Headlands Preservation, the San Francisco (no-kill) SPCA, Berkeley Humane, dolphins, whales, beavers, Marin County deer, and much else—if she wasn’t already on their rolls.

  The skinny at the Cal Club, when Dick wasn’t around, and especially when Ran Mott wasn’t around, was that Curt Mott, with a serious cocaine problem, had taken off to the source to avoid vengeful dealers he owed money to in the Bay Area. There was a certain ironic pleasure to hear of the stranded wife’s windfall, out of his reach. Go, Donna, go. But certain of his creditors, too, had begun to feel anxious, and whereas they had been reluctant to call in their chips while he lay in a coma, they now felt resentment at the idea of him disporting himself in Southeast Asia, with its lurid opium dens and sexy dragon-lady bar girls. Harvey Avon was but the first of these to make appointments to see Ran Mott.

  * * *

  —

  Lorna had just been thinking about Peggy when Peggy called, with the gossip about Gilda and other things: the loan shark lurking outside her house, the garbage disposal incurably blocked, and so on. Lorna was ashamed of the glint of Schadenfreude that flashed through her thoughts when she heard about Ran’s troubles with his younger daughter; part of her felt, guiltily, a sort of glee that Ran would have trouble with his late child with the rich princess.

  Her own daughter with him, Peggy, had been a model of trouble-free adolescence. All of their children had skated through that life phase, had not had many of the usual troubles of adolescents, were not even derailed by the divorce of their parents. Neither Peggy nor granddaughter Julie either had frightened them with unwed pregnancy scares.

  “And apparently the boy, the responsible party, is the son of that real-estate lady friend of yours, Mama.”

  “Ursula?” Lorna laughed. “I
wonder how she’s taking it. I almost feel sorry for Ran.”

  Maybe it was Gilda’s great expectations that had run her aground—rich kids got into trouble, disaster always lurked for them, though usually via drugs or motor vehicles. Since she didn’t know Gilda, the situation was abstract to Lorna, and almost comic.

  Lorna had understood for a long time that Ran had lost interest in the problems of their children together once these became the usual problems of adulthood, normal and predictable—money, cholesterol, the PTA. He had ponied up for large expenses—chiefly down payments on houses or medical crises—but was not really concerned or involved beyond perfunctory help. Not estranged, but detached, and it was Lorna who had taken on the responsibility of the worrying, and about Peggy especially. She noted as a passing thought that these concerns had become more intense now that she was back in California.

  On the positive side, her French troubles with Armand and wifedom had faded to a bearable background hum, a kind of tinnitus. Her immediate problems were to do with her lecture life. She had received an invitation to Ann Arbor, Michigan, but only for September, and nothing before then. America was not proving as welcoming as she had hoped; what did she expect after twenty years away? She’d fooled herself.

  Lorna had confided to Peggy her ambivalence about calling Philip Train and reminding him of his offer to invite her to give her lecture to his Altar Forum. She didn’t explain to Peggy the humiliation she felt about being pushy this way, not something she would expect Peggy to understand, Peggy being in such a, well, different line, wind chimes. Lorna had always been careful not to disparage any of her children’s activities, even while trying to suggest to them that they were meant for great things. One of the hardest tasks of Motherhood, she had always found, was keeping this delicate balance between helping children maintain their self-esteem on the one hand, and giving them the requisite little pushes from time to time. But that had been mainly in the era before she had copped out and fled to France.