The Benefactor

by Sebastian Hampson

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ the woman said. As she looked up, Maggie recognised her as Beth. ’Mr Calder. I’m sorry. Running late for work, not paying enough attention.’

  Maggie was about to slink away, but it was too late—Beth had seen her, next to Henry. They all stayed silent.

  ‘Sorry,’ Beth said again. ‘I’ll leave you two to it.’ She continued up the avenue.

  Maggie sighed, bracing her hands behind her head like a marathon runner, then sprinted straight after her, calling out her name.

  IT wasn’t Martha’s childhood house. Her parents had moved here from Mount Pleasant since she left for college in DC, downscaling—by a Southern measure—to this townhouse on the Battery. It was antebellum in style: pastel walls, wide verandahs, louvred shutters, manicured shrubs, the works. Firmly planted on its historical foundations, preserved as a shrine to the years of burgeoning wealth that had paid for its construction. Most of which could be traced to the slave trade.

  Henry held back, standing across the street on the edge of White Point Garden. A group of joggers went past—old women, their hair an unconvincing shade of blond. Going about their morning as though it were any other, ignoring the stranger hanging around on this quiet street because there was no place for him in their vision of the neighbourhood.

  A maid answered the door—at least, Henry presumed she was the maid, judging by her frilly apron, the like of which he hadn’t seen since the sixties. He explained that he was an old college friend of Martha’s hoping to speak to her mother. The woman retreated, leaving him on the porch for several minutes, until a new face appeared at the door. Not Cathy, though. Martha’s sister-in-law, clutching a small child. Using it as a shield.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she said, lingering inside.

  ‘I’ve come to see Cathy. She sent me something the other day and I’d like to discuss it personally.’

  ‘This isn’t a great time. The whole family’s staying.’

  Christmas. Next week. A poinsettia wreath hung on the knocker. How had he missed that?

  ‘I won’t stay long,’ he said. ‘I’m not trying to intrude.’

  She sighed. ‘Wait here.’

  The child had been staring at him with big glassy eyes and an open, wet mouth.

  The door swung shut and Henry shuffled around on the porch with only the fallen leaves for company. He’d decided to resurrect the peacock shirt and linen blazer combination, but now it felt like Henry Calder Goes South. Samuel Clemens as reimagined by a nineties creative director.

  The maid opened the door again. ‘Mrs Beaucanon will see you on the patio. This way, sir.’

  She led Henry down a service corridor to the kitchen, avoiding the living room. It reminded him of Christine’s house: dark wood and fireplaces and fussy furniture, everything crammed together. A side door took them through a courtyard with trash cans to the garden gate. Mossy brickwork. Fountains adorned with stone cherubs. Lollipop privets in big concrete urns.

  Cathy was a wispy figure—you could imagine her going up in smoke if left out in the sun for too long. A pearl necklace with a gold flower-shaped pendant hung low over the damaged red skin of her chest. She wore matching earrings, and her eyebrows were plucked to invisibility, so you couldn’t tell if her sagging grimace were confrontational or amused.

  ‘Fancy you coming here, Henry,’ she said, not bothering to get up from the cushioned canvas recliner that was, in throne-like fashion, indisputably hers. ‘I guess this is what happens when you’ve got no family of your own—you think everyone else is so lonely they’re waiting for a visit as well.’

  ‘I apologise, Cathy. I should have called ahead, but it couldn’t wait. How’s Gus?’

  ‘Struggling. He’s upstairs now, in bed. Has been for months. Count yourself lucky. He wouldn’t have let you in. Please do sit.’

  Much as Henry wanted to deny it, Cathy was clearly her daughter’s mother. She had that same cool energy, the same reserve. He hadn’t seen it when he’d met her at the Plaza all those years ago—had never seen it until now, in fact.

  ‘Why the sudden rush to see us?’ she continued. ‘You made your position very clear at the funeral. What more do you need to say?’

  ‘I was a mess. Whatever I said—whatever I’ve ever said—you shouldn’t read too much into it. You…you sent me that piece of the Berlin Wall.’

  No reaction.

  ‘It hurt. I’m sure that was the desired effect.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Cathy. ‘I was cleaning out the storeroom and found it.’

  ‘But Cathy, please…in all these years you’ve never been in touch with us.’

  ‘I’ve been in touch with her, not with you.’

  ‘Okay. Still, I don’t understand why she’d keep a thing like that hidden from me, down here.’

  If he was honest, Henry had to admit he was seeking a fight. The thought that somebody else could lay claim to those unresolved aspects of his wife—that made him particularly nervous.

  Cathy regarded him impassively—this man who breezed into her home uninvited, on his own schedule. She’d always found his vanity laughable—the ridiculous clothes, the expensive cologne, the put-on New York accent. She didn’t know what Mattie had seen in this man—or perhaps she did, though it wasn’t an easy thing to admit. Her daughter had been vain too, in her own way. He’d indulged Mattie’s posturing, encouraged it. He never questioned her self-serving assumption of the moral high ground, never pushed her to be what she could have been. He was weak, and his weakness had cost Mattie her happiness.

  Mattie had stopped coming home to Charleston once she was married, but a couple of years ago she’d appeared one day out of the blue. No luggage, dressed in a pantsuit. Carrying nothing but a piece of beaten-up concrete. Cathy hadn’t asked too many questions, so she wasn’t sure if Henry knew his wife had come home to her mother and father. Mattie had refused to discuss it. All she wanted, it seemed, was to return to an essential state for a few days—to re-enter the shell she’d cast off so readily.

  Cathy had never thought of her daughter as self-assured. To her eyes, Mattie had always been lost. Searching for more superficially interesting people to compensate for her natural shyness, which, perhaps, she’d found a way to hide since New York had forced her to grow a skin. Her husband hadn’t seen it, though. He’d believed her performance, always expecting her to play the strong one.

  ‘You won’t find any answers here,’ Cathy said. ‘That’s not something I can provide. Not something anyone can provide. Mattie’s gone and you won’t find her anywhere. I know because I spent a long time trying to find her for myself.’

  ‘You didn’t know your own daughter,’ Henry said. ‘You can’t blame me for that.’

  ‘We were close. What, that’s a surprise? We were close until she moved to New York, until she met you. And we were close right at the end. She came to me with her diagnosis before she could think about telling you. I’d never heard of glioblastoma before.’ Saying that word still made her feel physically ill. ‘We talked through a lot of things in those final six months, and from what I gather you didn’t—you buried your head in the sand. So don’t tell me I don’t know her.’

  ‘It’s easy for you to say that now she’s gone.’

  ‘She could have been happy, you know. With a different man, a better man, one who knew himself and what he wanted. A man who knew her, and what she could be. You never encouraged her—you only held her back.’

  He’d slumped in his chair, arms folded like a surly teenager. Cathy wouldn’t have felt confident in these assertions if Mattie hadn’t made them herself, when she was in hospital and Cathy spent hours at her bedside while Henry was at work. She remembered that phone call she’d received, her daughter breathless on the other end of the line, telling Cathy she had an incurable tumour and she didn’t know how anything could be resolved now.

  ‘She worried about you,’ Cathy said, ‘how you were never satisfied. She thought she was so smart, that
you both were, but you couldn’t figure it out, could you? You can’t deny a woman children and then wonder what it is you’re missing, what’s wrong with your marriage.’

  ‘Martha didn’t want children, Cathy—that’s not what this is about.’

  ‘How would you know? If you’re told you have a finite amount of time to live, it does make you rethink some of those decisions. I can say that because I received a poor prognosis of my own ten years ago, which obviously I survived. It brings a lot to the surface that you might not have considered otherwise.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s true. She chose to spend her life with me, so I’m in a better position to judge.’

  Cathy rested her bosom against the table, arms spread wide, as if they were facing off across a boardroom or a game of poker. ’What can I do for you, Henry? If that’s all you wanted to tell me, you’ve wasted an airfare. We already know what we think of each other.’

  ‘Okay. Here’s the question, and I want you to give me an honest answer: were we happy? From your perspective, I mean.’

  Cathy disliked the element of possession found in most marriages. She’d already accepted the loss of her daughter, long before last year. Instinct told her to deny their happiness, even if there had been any. She saw now that he was beaten, but she couldn’t feel sorry for him. He’d come here hoping to make himself feel better when what he needed was to listen.

  ‘She’d hired a divorce lawyer,’ Cathy said. ‘And she was figuring out the terms when she told me about her diagnosis.’

  She took obvious pleasure in sharing this news, Henry thought. She’d been weighing it in her hidden hand from the moment he appeared on her doorstep. Divorce. Distributing its weight across the whole sentence and dropping onto him like a toppled pillar.

  ‘There was another man?’ he said.

  ‘Not that I’m aware of. Does it matter?’

  ‘You’re making this up.’

  ‘She sent me the papers, Henry.’

  He would have called her bluff, if it had been one. He didn’t have to. Instructing him to stay where he was, she went inside the house and returned a few minutes later with an envelope, which she thrust onto the table with some satisfaction.

  He opened it and took out a document. Marital Settlement Agreement (No Children). Their names at the top. Hereby swearing that the agreement served as a final settlement of all matters arising from the dissolution of their marriage. The watermark read draft copy.

  ‘Why would she give this to you?’ he said. The best question he could come up with.

  ‘I’m her mother, Henry. I’ve been giving her advice since she was old enough to string along her first beau. She trusted me.’

  Henry squinted as he skimmed the contract, with its carefully neutral language, searching for accusations, for blame, for evidence of wrongdoing. There was no trace of resentment to be found, nothing but the facts—details of their properties, debts, bank accounts—straightforward and unembellished, recorded dispassionately by some Manhattan attorney.

  ‘Mattie did come down here once,’ Cathy was saying. ‘For a few days. Told me you’d had some kind of a fight and she had to get away. Nothing more specific than that.’ She hesitated, and Henry wondered if she was telling the whole truth. ‘Look, Henry, it’s not my place to say it, but you can’t deny that things between you two weren’t working. What else were you hoping I’d have for you?’

  ‘I…I’m not sure, Cathy. Something I could disagree with.’

  A face appeared at the gable window. The child. It breathed against the glass, creating condensation, in which it drew a heart.

  Cathy turned around and waved. Then Martha’s sister-in-law came along and scooped it up.

  ‘So maybe I messed up,’ Henry said.

  ‘I think maybe your problem with Mattie was a problem with yourself. You understand what I mean?’

  Henry nodded.

  ‘What have you been doing with yourself this last year?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing. I lost my job.’

  ‘And you haven’t let it go.’ Cathy smiled, but it was almost kind. ‘That magazine counted for everything to you—but where did it get you? Don’t you think now might be a good time to focus on the people who care about you? Gus and I were always happiest when the rest of the family was happy. It’s a basic barometer. I hate to say it, but if any good’s come out of this tragedy, it’s that I don’t have to worry about Mattie being unhappy anymore.’

  Despite her self-righteous tone, Cathy’s words managed to cut him.

  ‘Why are you turning up here uninvited,’ Cathy said, ‘a week before Christmas? It’s the holidays. You should be with your own mother, your own family. Ah, no, hang on.’ She raised her head in smug understanding. ‘I see. You’ve cut them off too, haven’t you? The way you tried to cut Mattie off from us.’

  Henry stared down at his shoes—Italian loafers, tapering off to a smooth point—which he tapped nervously against the leg of the table. He must have picked up this habit from Fogel without realising. Strange how something borrowed from another person could become an inescapable part of you.

  He hadn’t seen Maggie again before he took the late flight out of LaGuardia, but he’d gone into the guestroom and picked through her belongings. The outrageous clothes thrown in piles, unwashed. The sketches she’d done on scraps of paper, napkins, brochures, opened envelopes from her bank. Plans for new installations, their ambitious scale suggested by a tiny stick figure drawn next to them. The viewer.

  Henry wondered if what Cathy was saying about Martha held true for this girl. If what she needed was for somebody to recognise what she was capable of and give her the wherewithal to achieve it, to ask about her desires and give them space to breathe rather than assuming they aligned with his own.

  ‘I’m sorry for interrupting the holidays,’ Henry said, shaking himself out of the daydream. ‘Must be good, having the family around.’

  ‘Remember, Henry, that we didn’t force you out. It was mostly the other way around. Do you have a hotel?’

  ‘Already checked out. I’ll be going home this evening.’

  Still no offer to stay for lunch. Henry couldn’t imagine a worse punishment than being treated as an outsider by people you knew to be always warm and hospitable.

  ‘Thanks for your time, Cathy,’ he said. ‘I’ll show myself out.’

  He reached down to shake her brittle hand, then began walking towards the side gate.

  ‘Henry,’ she called after him. ‘You’re not the type of man who needed to be married in the first place. Something tells me you’re going to be all right.’

  It didn’t seem as though she was saying this because she felt she had to.

  Fog had rolled in over the Battery. Though tempted to go and drown himself in bourbon at one of the bars on King Street, Henry drifted, following his feet to the edge of the promenade. The confluence of the Ashley and Cooper rivers merged here before flowing on to the open expanse of the Atlantic.

  He braced himself against the railing, the breeze ruffling his linen jacket. There was no view beyond grey mid-tones, the sea and the cloud collapsing into one shade. Had Martha stood here, the statue of the Confederate defenders behind her, gazing out into the void while a patter of raindrops began to fall around her?

  Perhaps she’d brought her high school steadies here. He saw her, in a sleeveless shirt and rolled-up jeans, an ordinary teenage girl, trying too hard to bronze her arms in the southern sun. Not a great beauty. Not a model. A confused character from one of those Joyce Carol Oates stories she liked so much. Hunching her shoulders awkwardly, crossing one leg over the other calf.

  Did she have steadies? Perhaps not. She might have been quieter than that. Did she do homework here? Lie in the grass of White Point Garden, reading? He couldn’t imagine her alone, though. He wanted her to be surrounded, always—a flame that drew others in but burned too bright to touch.

  Henry’s hands shook as they gripped the railing, and he cried. Scre
wed-up, pathetic, childlike crying. Not tears of sorrow, but of despair, exhaustion.

  Groggy from the residue of his hangover and a sleepless night, Henry stood at the edge of the water for a long time, waiting for a beam to shine through the fog and burn it away. A container ship sailed gracefully around from Wando terminal, fully loaded and wending its way out to sea.

  SHE could have gone already.

  Henry saw it, as he was taking a taxi across the Williamsburg Bridge, stuck in the beginnings of the rush-hour pile-up, trying to stay awake, head propped up on his wrist: the bed stripped, every sign of her erased, his apartment returned to the same pristine-but-not-quite state, a bottle of wine and a plate of cheese, jazz on the stereo.

  This prospect made the remainder of the taxi ride unbearable. He couldn’t be abandoned again. Whatever he’d done to deserve this punishment, he wanted to fall to his knees and recant, promise atonement. But to whom? He had no faith.

  His anxiety mounted with each footstep as he approached the door to his building, got in the elevator, waited for it to lurch past the warped bit of railing on the fourth floor, as it had for the last twenty years. His hand shook turning his key in the lock, so that he almost lost his grip. He wondered, briefly, if he could stay out here all night, in the non-space of this corridor.

  He hoped his relief wasn’t too apparent when he found Maggie had turned on all the lights (at least all those with functioning bulbs). She was curled up on the sofa, legs twisted a little uncomfortably—the same way Martha used to sit there, but cradling a sketchpad in place of his wife’s mess of paperwork. Right next to the ink stain Martha had left on the cushion one day, when she fell asleep and dropped her pen.

  ‘How was your trip?’ Maggie said without looking up from her work.

  He dropped his bag, trying to ignore the crack in his dining table. ‘I’m not sure yet. Might never be. What have you been up to?’

  ‘Oh.’ She dug into her paper with the nib of her pencil, snapping it. ‘I lost my job. Beth didn’t like me living here, or my explanation. Said she’d already thought there was something weird happening. So she told the boss I’d been stealing bottles, and cash from the till.’