by Warren Adler
Mom,
Somebody has got to take charge here. We have to think of ourselves first. If you can't, I'll have to think for both of us. This doesn't mean I don't love you. In fact, I'm doing this because I love you and I hope you'll understand. I'm taking the car and bringing the clothes to a secondhand consignment shop. I'll bring the car back. Darryl is meeting me in front of the apartment. He'll take me to school. I know you think I'm being terrible and disobedient, but sometimes I believe I have to save you from yourself. Please don't yell at me when I come home tonight. I still love you.
Jackie
Grace read the letter again, then let it float to the floor. It was obvious by now that she had little influence over her daughter, and this letter, she supposed, represented the end of parenthood for her. She felt utterly helpless and discouraged.
For a long time she sat on the couch and contemplated how she should react. It was, she knew, pointless to get hysterical. No one was actually hurt by her act, except perhaps the poor and homeless or others who might have needed the clothing. And it was true that these expensive designer clothes were incongruous to their situation.
Of course, she was concerned that somehow this might get to Sam's attention, which would be a disaster. She would lose all credibility. Worse, aside from being unmasked as a liar, a hypocrite and a cheat, he could bring charges against her for theft. She tried softening the anxiety with logic. Yes, it was worrisome. Yes, there was a risk of exposure. Jackie's disobedience would be of little value as an alibi. The fact was, that revelation itself would explode Grace's plot to snare Sam Goodwin as a husband with all its ludicrous scheming and weird duplicity.
She could adopt a less pessimistic notion, she decided after a bout of serious rumination. After all, the clothing's ownership was theoretically anonymous. She had made no representations to Sam that she was going to reveal the true donor. Not really. And Jackie didn't have a clue as to the clothing's owner. It did occur to her that, perhaps, she should have gone through the pockets for any identifying items. There was always a chance that the storeowner might question where the clothing had come from, but somehow she felt certain that Jackie was resourceful enough to provide the owner with a logical cover story.
Whatever the consequences, she decided not to brood over the issue. Moreover, she also decided to heed the voice of destiny. This plan of hers was having side effects she hadn't banked on. Her clothes ploy had backfired. In fact, the entire process was getting too complicated for her to continue. Hypocrisy, she was learning, with all the associated baggage of dissimulation and invention, was much too stressful for her.
Her eye drifted to the clock. It was past eleven. Sam had already returned from his walk along the beach. Destiny was shifting gears, driving her life in another direction. Should she turn back, retreat?
Perhaps it was time for this caper with Sam Goodwin to end. She was getting in over her head. Mrs. Burns, she screamed inside of herself, go to hell.
CHAPTER TEN
"Okay, okay," Sam said to Marilyn, who was pawing his leg with impatience. He looked at his watch. It was nearly nine-thirty. It was a beautiful, sunny day. He had waited long enough.
Not that she had actually said that she would meet him. He had merely suggested it. For some reason, he had felt that she would jump at the chance. Why? He had disobeyed one of his prime caveats: never assume. And he had assumed. Vague assumptions almost always resulted in disappointment.
He stepped out on the beach. The sand was still cool as he walked to where the water hit the beach. Marilyn had shot out ahead of him and was sniffing the edges of the wire rubbish baskets placed at intervals along the beach, safe from the tide.
Perhaps he had talked too much about Anne. Maybe the heaviness of his grief had put her off. Unfortunately, there was no way to hide it or avoid thinking about Anne. He supposed that time would soften the terrible sense of loss.
Last night he had awakened at three a.m. He hadn't had a complete night's sleep since Anne had come back from the hospital. Declared terminal, she had wanted to die in her own bed. She had gotten her wish.
He had felt Marilyn's weight at the foot of the bed. She hadn't stirred. Then he had reached out and patted Anne's side of the bed. The emptiness was palpable, instantly recalling the pain of his grief, the terrible reality of his loss.
Yet, there was no alternative to accepting the fact of her death. Death was final, the end of life, but far from the end of memory. Memory survived in the living. Anne was still alive in his memory. Not only the memory of his visible life with her, but also the memory of his invisible life, his secret life. It was odd that he was more troubled about this secret life now that she was gone than when she was alive.
The fact was that he had been a liar and a cheat, a fraud. He wished that he hadn't been so successful in keeping his dirty little secrets. Perhaps that would have eased his current pain. He had let her go into oblivion with this unfinished business hanging in his mind and conscience.
The only bright spot in his nocturnal thoughts was that Grace might be walking with him along the beach in the morning. Grace was pleasant and attractive, easy to talk with, unthreatening, a tonic. He sensed no hidden agenda on her part, no wish to get involved. She seemed open and honest. Getting emotionally involved with another woman was, at this stage in his grieving, the furthest thing from his thoughts.
He dreaded what was coming up in that regard. Even in those few calls that he took from old friends and from his children, their concerns were ominous. When the appropriate time came, if it ever did, he supposed that their warnings might have some validity. He could understand their protectiveness and tried to be tolerant of their cautionary views.
He was, in fact, a rich widower and ambitious, fortune-hunting ladies would be expected to swarm around him, like hyenas around carrion. Examples abounded among his circle of foolish older men getting involved with younger women whose eyes were more on the money than the man. Did his children think he was stupid enough to fall for that?
Nevertheless, both he and his children would have to accept the risk of his single state. Perhaps he would be vulnerable, although he doubted it. And if he was, so what? It was his business, not theirs. He felt a growing belligerence rise to the surface of his thoughts.
He had no intention of cutting himself off from life, although he wondered if he would still be comfortable in the world in which he had lived with Anne, the world of country clubs, golf and tennis, dinner parties and charity balls, the world at the so-called pinnacle, where the old, moneyed WASP aristocracy mixed on occasion with the new, rich, super-achievers of the meritocracy, even if they were Jews. Big money was a great leveler, allying the old aristocrats of Palm Beach with the new money, providing they greased the skids of their favorite charities. Indeed, the fuddy-duddy, bigoted old guard had let some of the barbarians, like him, through their guarded gates for a glimpse of their restricted strongholds.
Anne had been his guide and mentor in this world. Without her it would not be the same. Not being Jewish, she knew the turf and made him acceptable, or made him behave in ways that assured his acceptability. Actually, he had learned to tolerate many of the people in that social world, overlooking their narrow focus and overblown sense of entitlement. They were different enough from what he had come from to appear exotic. Often they struck him as some alien species lost in a time warp. They were often amusing, if one didn't take them seriously. Some were even comical.
He picked up a piece of driftwood and flung it into the foaming surf. Marilyn dived in after it and brought it home clutched in her jaws. He patted her wet muzzle and pulled her ears, then moved on, leaving Marilyn temporarily nonplussed. Marilyn would never tire of the repetition of retrieval.
God, he missed Anne. He sat on the sand, pulled his knees to his chin and looked out to sea, rippling and glistening out toward the horizon. Seagulls floated gracefully overhead and little sandpipers strutted along the ocean's edge. Marilyn came up and sat down beside
him.
Without Anne, he knew he was adrift. She had been the Pied Piper who had led him into the social web of wealth and privilege. She had an unerring instinct about what having money really meant. She knew how it was done; her sense of direction was flawless as she led them through the minefields into the privileged oasis.
She had known how to dress and how to dress him, what to say, what not to say. She knew the chitchat and the nomenclature, the various procedures and protocol, how to walk into a room with memorable dignity and flair and, equally important, how to walk out of a room toting your aura with you.
He marveled at her uncanny talent to magnetize people and capture them as loyal friends. Indeed, he had the sense that he was more than simply her husband but an honored member of her coterie. Without her, he knew, he was lost in that world.
And the other? With an extreme effort of will, he pushed it out of his mind. His life with Anne, he knew, was really half a life. But he had participated in that half joyously, obediently, and he had kept it totally segregated, a world apart from the other half.
He got up, patted away the sand, then continued his walk, Marilyn beside him. Even dogs, he thought suddenly. Even dogs, like Marilyn, seemed to have pledged their fealty to Anne.
It was one of the great ironies of fate that she went first. All of his planning for the future was dependent on him being the first to die. She was the one who was supposed to be the survivor, to deal with the details of passing their fortune to the next generation.
While Bruce portrayed himself as the loving son, which he might very well have been, he couched his concerns in lawyerly ways, concocting scenarios that would move "the fortune" into his generation with the least tax impact. Apparently, he had consulted a number of his peers, who had provided numerous methods to make such a transfer possible.
Carol was more emotional and less subtle, but the bare bones of her motives were clearly evident through her skein of daughterly love. Her various peccadilloes had already cost him a small fortune. She seemed to specialize in liaisons with artistic types with profound appetites for extravagance. Her present lover seemed to be world class in that persuasion.
If Anne had been the last survivor, Sam knew that she would not have been able to stand up to their relentless pressure. She would have capitulated early and gone along with their various allegedly unselfish scenarios. A streak of strong guilt ran in Anne, far more than he was able to muster.
These days he almost dreaded Bruce's calls. Sometime during the call he would profess to have an "expert" on estate planning waiting in the wings, by which he probably meant the wing chair that faced his desk. Each step of this strategy, he knew, had been gone over with his wife, whose covetousness was far more transparent than Bruce's, if that was possible.
He handled Carol differently, offering relatively small donations to the cause periodically, not quite enough to keep her off his back but to keep the spaces of her entreaties at longer intervals.
He had never confessed to Anne how terribly disappointed he was in the way their children had turned out. He would have wished for more loving children, more devoted, more demonstrative of their love and respect. He would have liked his son to have joined him in business and would have preferred his daughter to have stuck to some single enterprise instead of fishing all over the lot for so-called "fulfillment" and consorting with men who used and abused her.
Yes, he decided, as far as Bruce and Carol were concerned, Anne's death before his own was an awful blow in more ways than one. She would have been a lot easier to deal with.
He had no illusions about his children. He no longer had any confidence in their attachment to him as a loving father figure, another fantasy destroyed by life's experiences. If this was the ultimate reward of money, he wanted no part of it.
He doubted that either his son or his daughter would be there for him in his hour of need. His exit, he knew in his heart, would, if left to them, be lonely and forlorn. He would leave this earth unloved, in pain and despair, suffering their lip service and hypocrisy. It was, of course, a painful idea, horrific in many ways, but he was convinced it was the truth.
What had he expected? He wasn't sure. Certainly not gratitude. It was a paradox. He had loved his parents to the end and beyond, and he had never once doubted their love and admiration for him, their respect and encouragement. He supposed that in many ways he had failed his children, but he wasn't sure how. Perhaps he was exaggerating his disappointment or developing a case of galloping paranoia.
He would have liked Grace Sorentino's company. Perhaps it had been impossible for her to get going that early, he thought hopefully, although it was more likely that he had offended her in some way.
She wasn't at the house when he returned. But then, no specific time had been imposed on her, and he had no reason to believe that she had abandoned the project of disposing of Anne's clothes. Yet his disappointment at her absence surprised him.
He showered, dressed, went off to the club, where he was greeted by the regulars with handshakes, pats on the back and whispered condolences. Somehow, he knew, the calibration had changed. Anne knew better than he how to mix and maneuver in this world. Without her, he felt unsure and uncomfortable, less secure about his place in that world.
When Anne was alive, he actually enjoyed, or allowed himself to believe that he enjoyed, the country club life. Or, more to the heart of the truth, he tolerated the life because of her. Please, he urged himself, no more heart-of-the-truth personal confessions. Not yet. Not now.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
When Grace did not show up the next day either, or the day after that, he began to speculate on possibilities. Had he insulted her in some way? He continued to recycle their conversations in his memory, but nothing he said seemed untoward or offensive.
On the other hand, he was also annoyed. She had made a commitment to him to dispose of Anne's clothes. A deal was a deal, and he had turned down other offers. Such thoughts gave his concern another dimension, anger. At himself, for not sensing her unreliability. At her, for not having the courtesy to call and give him the status of her situation. She owed him that.
By the fourth day of her absence he worked up a full head of steam. She had not kept her word. She had let him down. She had betrayed him. In his business dealings he would write off anyone who behaved in that manner. He was especially put out by his own lack of insight into her personality. A sixth sense was at the heart of his business acumen, his one great talent. Was he losing it?
He tried to analyze why something about this woman engaged him. He eschewed any idea of a sexual motive. He hadn't even thought in those terms, as if such ideas would be a betrayal of Anne's memory. Not that his life with Anne would have provided anything that could induce a sexual memory. The fact was, her interest in sex was, to be kind, tepid. Yet never had he blamed her for his own transgressions.
By the evening of the fourth day he had decided that he had better call someone else in to dispose of Anne's clothing. But before he could reach for the phone, he decided that he owed her one last opportunity to explain herself. Perhaps she was ill, or worse.
It was a simple matter to find her telephone number. She had told him that she lived in West Palm Beach and that her name was Grace Sorentino. He dialed. A voice answered that seemed much younger. He assumed it was Grace's daughter.
"This is Mr. Goodwin," he said. "May I speak to your mother?"
"I'm sorry," the voice said. "She's not home from work yet."
"Work?" She hadn't mentioned work to Sam. But then, he had not asked her directly. Besides, it could mean charity work.
"Is this her daughter?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Would you give her a message that Sam Goodwin called?"
"Can I tell her what's it's about?" the girl asked.
"Just tell her it's Mr. Goodwin and to please call me back."
He hung up, wondering if he should have probed more. In his business dealings he would have done
just that.
When she didn't return his call that evening he was beginning to feel that he had, indeed, said or done something that had been offensive to her, but he couldn't remember what that was. When he awoke the next morning he began to dwell on the idea that he had wronged her in some way. He felt pummeled by a terrible wave of contrition. He called her number again. It was a little after eight; too early, but he wanted to be sure to catch her in.
"Yes?" a sleepy voice said hoarsely.
"Grace?"
He heard a sigh and a long silence.
"Don't hang up please. It's Sam."
Again a long silence.
"Yes, Sam?"
"Did I wake you?"
"Sort of."
"I'm sorry. But I felt obliged to call."
"Obliged?"
"I just wanted to be sure you got my message."
"You left a message?"
"With a woman. I think it was your daughter. She must have forgotten. Children are like that."
"You can say that again."
There was a moment of silence.
"It's been five days," Sam said hesitantly. "I was going to call someone else to do the job. Should I? I mean, have you abandoned it?"
"I guess you might call it that," Grace said hesitantly.
"Was there something ... something I might have done or said that...?"
"Oh, no," Grace said hurriedly. She seemed awake now, more alert to the conversation. "My fault ... really." She seemed suddenly flustered.
"Your fault?"
"I guess I let you down, Sam," Grace sighed. "It hadn't been my intention to do that."
"I'm relieved, Grace," Sam said. "It was really giving me a fit ... the thought that I had inadvertently said something..."
"I'm sorry that such a thought jumped into your head."
"So am I."
There was a long pause. Finally Sam spoke. "I guess it was your daughter I spoke with last night. She said you were at work..."
