Beyond Eden

by Catherine Coulter

  “How much do you earn?”

  Lindsay knew what the rent was. She also realized he was a man, and men, in general, simply couldn’t comprehend a woman earning a whopping lot of money. She said, her chin up, “I can afford more than half, with no strain on my budget, if that’s what worries you. I can even afford the security deposit, all by myself. I can even afford the whole thing.”

  “Good. Half will be just fine. I don’t want to miss my trip to France in the spring or have to eat onion soup at the end of the month. Shall we sign the lease?”

  Lindsay found that when she signed her name, her real name, on the line beneath Taylor’s, to the one-year lease, she didn’t even hesitate. But she did notice his signature. He hadn’t crowded her. He hadn’t looked down to see what she’d written. He’d even walked away while she was signing the lease. When she folded their copy of the lease and stuffed it into her purse, he still remained quiet. She’d tell him when she was ready. Evidently that wasn’t just yet. He was surprised when she said, “You signed S. C. Taylor. What does the S.C. stand for?”

  “I’ll tell you on our wedding night.” Didn’t she realize he could play a tit-for-tat game? Evidently not. He saw the shock on her face at his words and tried very much to disregard it.

  * * *

  They moved in on the twentieth of January with only the requisite number of New York moving screwups. Their belongings together didn’t fill up the apartment, but Lindsay was coming to realize that it was more fun this way. Now they’d be able to plan, to argue, to decorate and compromise. It was the compromise part, the sheer fun of discussing everything together, that made her life, all of it, immensely fuller and richer. It made her life more normal because her focus now took into account another person’s feelings and moods and opinions. It felt odd. It also felt wonderful.

  It was also a commitment the size of which she never considered possible in her life. It was a commitment that shouted for honesty. Soon, she told herself, soon. Taylor was too important to play games with, much too important. Important to her.

  On February 2 they’d taken an afternoon to look at Persian rugs for the living room, and had argued and insulted each other’s taste, all in all having a fine time. They’d bought a Tabriz, all in soft blues and creams and reds and pale yellows and pinks. It was beautiful in the living room. Taylor claimed credit, as did Lindsay. They fought and yelled at each other. They laughed and drank tea even though Lindsay would have given anything to eat some ice cream. And it was that night, at ten minutes past eight, that the phone rang.

  Lindsay answered it, cutting off the middle of a sentence to Taylor. She was still laughing when she said, “Hello!”

  There was a brief silence; then, “Lindsay, this is your father.”

  She clutched the phone in her fist, all laughter gone. “What’s wrong?”

  “Your grandmother is dead. Your mother is dead as well. Your mother was drunk and driving your grandmother to one of her interminable board meetings. They went flying down Webster Street, out of control, and hit four other cars, all empty, thank God. Your mother—”

  God, she hated him. She stared at the phone. “When did this happen?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Why didn’t you call me yesterday?”

  He was silent and she could almost picture his impatient shrug. “I’m calling you now. The funeral is on Friday. You might want to consider flying out here.”

  “Yes, I will. Thank you for calling me. It’s quite decent of you.”

  “I don’t need your sarcasm, Lindsay. It doesn’t become you any more than your absurd height does. I spoke to Sydney yesterday. She’ll be flying back from Italy.”

  Of course he’d called Sydney immediately. But not her, not Lindsay. Her mother was dead. Her grandmother, the timeless old lady, was dead. Gates Foxe, a San Francisco fixture, seemingly immortal, always on the move, always active. And her mother. Drunk? No, she couldn’t accept that, she couldn’t. She hadn’t gone to San Francisco at Christmas. She’d been delighted when Kennedy had closed down with the snowstorm. She’d made no attempt to get another, later flight. She didn’t get to see either of them. And now they were dead.

  “When you arrive, just take a taxi to the mansion. I suppose you’ll have to stay here.”

  “Yes,” she said, and gently hung up the phone.

  She raised her eyes. Taylor was looking at her intently. She said, “That was my father. My grandmother and my mother are dead. They were killed in a car accident yesterday. I’d best call the airline now for a reservation out tomorrow morning. The funeral is on Friday.”

  Taylor watched her dial information and ask for United reservations. She was calm, far too calm. But he waited, listened to her voice as she spoke to the reservations person.

  When she hung up, she said, “Oh, dear, I’ve got to call Demos. I won’t be able to make that photo session tomorrow. It’s sportswear, in January. Isn’t that odd? I don’t remember—was I doing something on Friday? Taylor, do you know?”

  He walked to her and very gently drew her into his arms. She was stiff and withdrawn. He didn’t know what to do so he just held her and stroked his hands up and down her back.

  “Why don’t you go take a nice hot shower. I’ll call Demos for you.”

  “Thank you, Taylor.” She pulled away from him and walked out of the huge, half-empty living room, down the long corridor to the master bedroom.

  He called Demos.

  “You going to San Francisco with her?”

  “I don’t know. She hasn’t asked me to.”

  “Maybe it’s best you don’t,” Demos said after a goodly silence. “I understand her father is a real jerk, her stepmother is a bigger jerk, and there’s her half-sister, Sydney, who’s—well, that’s neither here nor there. Oh, God, it’s not fair, is it? Take care of her, Taylor.”

  “Yes, Demos, I will.”

  He walked into the bathroom. She was lying in a full tub of hot water, her head back against the rich pale pink marble, her hair wet and thick against her shoulders, covering her breasts.

  “You all right, sweetheart?”

  She was naked but she didn’t care. She opened her eyes and turned her face to look at him. He was sitting on the toilet seat, the look of worry on his face real and honest. It touched her deeply.

  “I’m all right. It’s such a shock. My mother—I haven’t really been close to her since I was sixteen and she and my father sent me away to boarding school in Connecticut. My father said she was drunk and responsible for the accident. But my grandmother. It’s hard, really hard to believe she’s gone. She was always there, always.”

  Still, there were no tears in her. Only a vague worry.

  “Do you want me to come with you?”

  She shook her head. “No, no, I don’t want you to meet my—It doesn’t matter. I’ll be coming back Friday night. I won’t stay there, in the mansion, any longer than I have to. I’ve always hated it there.”

  The mansion? There was so much he wanted to know, so very much, and she’d been getting closer to him, closer by the day. They’d had a wonderful argument just the day before, and had ended up in each other’s arms, laughing and even kissing a little bit. And now this.

  “Call me when you arrive.”

  “All right.”

  That night he held her close as he did every night. She was very quiet and his impression was that it wasn’t pain holding her silent; it was shock and disbelief, a numbness that invaded the brain so that one could deal with the enormity of the loss. Quite normal, he supposed. Two violent deaths at the same time. He wished she wanted him with her. But he wouldn’t push. Not now.

  She took a taxi to Kennedy.

  At least he knew when she was due back. He’d pick her up when she returned. Maybe by then she’d need him, really need him.

  San Francisco was sunny, sixty degrees, paradise on earth. Lindsay breathed in deeply as she walked from the baggage claim outside to where the taxis were lined up.
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  Thirty minutes later the taxi pulled up in front of the mansion. The man whistled. “Quite some digs. You live here, lady?”

  “Oh, no. I’m just an occasional visitor.”

  “It must be great to be the folk who do live here. Can you imagine all the bucks?”

  “No, not really.”

  She didn’t want to press the bell. She didn’t want to see Holly, her stepmother, or her father. She still felt nothing save that vague stillness that seemed to be coming from inside her. It was only two o’clock in the afternoon. Odd, back home in New York it would be dark now. What would Taylor be doing? Would he be home?

  Home. It sounded wonderful.

  She rang the bell.

  Holly answered the door. A fat Holly, with a double chin, a pasty complexion, and bloodshot eyes. From crying? Lindsay doubted it. She recognized the signs from her mother. The bloodshot eyes were probably from drinking too much for too long too often.

  “Well,” said Holly, stepping back. “You’re here. Come in, Lindsay.”

  She was wearing a loose flowing top over very tight knit pants and sneakers. She looked like a forty-year-old woman trying to look like she was twenty-two and thirty pounds lighter.

  “Hello, Holly. I hope you’re doing all right.”

  Holly smiled. “It’s your family, not mine. I will miss the old lady, though, odd as that might sound.”

  “It doesn’t sound odd at all.”

  “You didn’t have to live here day in and day out as her daughter-in-law, taking orders, not being able to do what I wanted to do, always having to beg, to plead, to get anything I wanted. Your father was her own personal puppy. God, you’re lucky you lived three thousand miles away.”

  “You don’t have to stay, Holly. All this was your decision.”

  She gave Lindsay a malignant look, then shrugged as she walked into the main drawing room. The heavy brocade drapes were pulled closed. The room was chill and damp.

  “Jesus,” Holly said, and went on a rampage, jerking open every curtain in the vast room. “That miserable housekeeper, I’m going to fire her ass on Monday. Yes, on Monday I’ll be the boss here and anyone who doesn’t like it can just get the hell out. And that includes your precious Mrs. Dreyfus. All the old bag can do is snivel and talk about how Mrs. Gates would have done this or that. Jesus.”

  Lindsay set her single bag down in the hall, then walked to the vast Carrara marble fireplace. “I’ll light a fire, all right?”

  “Yeah, sure. It feels like bloody death in here.”

  Lindsay’s hands jerked.

  “I need a drink.” Lindsay watched Holly walk to the drink tray and pull the stopper out of a Waterford decanter. It was Glenlivet and Holly poured herself a double shot, neat.

  “Drinking more, Holly? Really, dear, you should try to control yourself. People will be coming by to offer their sympathy. The last impression you want to give is that the new lady of the house is a lush.”

  Sydney was wearing a slender black wool dress with three-inch black heels. Her stockings were black with seams up the backs of her legs. Her hair was pulled back from her face and held with gold combs. Her makeup was restrained, perfect. She looked pale and fragile and utterly beautiful.

  Lindsay said from where she remained in front of the fireplace, “Hello, Sydney. When did you get in?”

  “Last night. It was a very long flight from Milan. You’re looking about the same, Lindsay. How was New York when you left?”

  “Cold and sunny.”

  “And Demos?”

  “The same.”

  “Really, Holly, dear, not another shot? Surely you’ve had more than enough. You’re much more in the open about your drinking than Lindsay’s mother ever was. You’re also fatter than her mother ever was. And this fixation you seem to have with mirrors—isn’t it a bit painful to look at yourself now?”

  “Go fuck yourself, Sydney!”

  Sydney laughed. “I doubt I’ll ever have to resort to that, unlike you. Poor Holly. All that fat you’re carrying around turns men off, don’t you know that? Particularly my father.”

  “Just stop it, both of you!”

  Sydney and Holly both stared at Lindsay. She was on her feet, pale, furious. She’d had enough. “Listen, no more sniping. Sydney, just keep your nasty comments to yourself. For God’s sake, Grandmother and my mother are dead. Just stop it, damn you both.”

  “Such passion,” Sydney remarked in Holly’s general direction. “And here I had thought the prince had sucked all of it out of my little sister.”

  Lindsay dumped the two fat logs she was holding on the floor. She watched them roll over the beautiful golden oak. One log dented the oak badly when it struck. She said nothing more, merely walked out, shoulders straight, feeling like death herself. Nothing ever changed. Things just seemed to get worse, and now that Grandmother was dead, there was no one to put on the brakes.

  She didn’t see Mrs. Dreyfus.

  She went to her bedroom, locked the door, and unpacked the few clothes she’d brought, putting them away, paying no heed, really, to what she was doing. Her brain was numb and she was grateful for it.

  She wondered what her grandmother had been doing with her mother. There’d really been no love lost between the two women, as far as she knew. But she’d been gone a long time. And sometimes things did change. Just maybe her grandmother preferred the ex-daughter-in-law to the current one. Now Lindsay would never know.

  Lindsay closed her eyes. She saw Taylor, laughing, pulling her against him and hugging her tight, nibbling her earlobe, whispering that she had abysmal taste in Persian carpets, that Bokaras were too flimsy and far too red for his taste, which was, of course, superb. Then he went on to her fresh-meadow air freshener. It clogged his sinuses, he said, and got under his fingernails. It smelled like a brothel. It smelled like a cat box in a rich house. God, she missed him, his normalcy, his humor, his balance. She saw Taylor as he’d been last night, worry in his eyes, and helplessness, because he didn’t know what to do, what to say to her.

  Dear God, he was so dear to her.

  At seven o’clock there was a knock on her door. Lindsay was dressed, sitting in front of her window, staring toward Alcatraz Island. Waiting for someone to fetch her. Knowing she’d have to see Sydney and Holly again. And her father.

  She followed Mrs. Dreyfus downstairs to the drawing room. The first person she saw was her father, Judge Royce Foxe, standing in a stark black suit with white linen, looking handsome and elegant as always and laughing at something Sydney was saying to him. He looked up at Lindsay, and his laughter died.

  16

  Lindsay

  “I see you came,” Royce Foxe said, nodding slightly toward her in acknowledgment. Whatever Sydney had said to make him laugh was dried up, gone, now that Lindsay had shown up on the scene. There was no welcoming smile for her, but she hadn’t expected one. She wondered vaguely when a day would come that it wouldn’t hurt her very core, this inevitable and inexplicable dislike he had for her.

  “Hello, Father, Sydney,” she said, and turned toward Holly. She was holding a glass tightly in her hand, a whiskey glass. “Good evening, Holly.”

  “You want something to drink?”

  “A Perrier would be nice, thank you.”

  Sydney smiled at her. “Yes, just so, Lindsay. Oh, I forgot to have my secretary send you a thank-you for Melissa’s Christmas gift. Melissa is so spoiled she didn’t pay that adorable bear much attention, but it was a nice thought on your part. The prince thought so as well. He told me to thank you.”

  “I’m pleased she liked it for even the brief time she gave it her attention.”

  Mrs. Dreyfus, red-eyed, head bowed, appeared in the doorway to announce dinner.

  Royce thanked her, then turned to Lindsay. “You’re so thin I can see your pelvic bones, and you’re wearing those ridiculous high heels again. I told you before to take them off but you disobeyed me. You looked absurd then and you do now.” But he didn’t dema
nd that she take them off this time. She’d won again, this time by omission.

  Lindsay smiled. It was odd, but this time, somehow, he didn’t seem to touch her so closely. She said simply, “I’m sorry you feel that way, Father.”

  Royce took Sydney’s arm, and Holly and Lindsay followed them into the dining room. He didn’t say another word. She felt his anger toward her, but again, it didn’t come quite so close as it would have before. Lindsay felt a spurt of unaccustomed power. It felt good.

  Holly said when they reached the dining room, “On Monday a decorator is coming, a friend of mine. I’m cleaning out this bloody officious room, every heavy dark corner of it.”

  “Oh, dear, I do trust you won’t go with chintz, Holly,” Sydney said, looking back at her stepmother.

  Holly looked equal parts angry and hurt. She looked toward her husband for support, but he wasn’t looking at her, but at Dorrey, the cook, who was placing a large rack of lamb before him on a huge silver serving tray. He was smiling at Dorrey and thanking her, telling her everything would be all right.

  He turned to Sydney. “What is this about chintz?”

  “I was just wondering aloud how Holly intended to decorate this room.”

  “Decorate this room?” Royce repeated slowly. He turned to his wife, an eyebrow rising. “Why, she isn’t going to touch a thing. Not without my permission, in any case. Though it is rather dark and heavy in here, don’t you think so, Sydney?”

  “That’s what your wife said.”

  “Well, doubtless she misunderstands the concepts of shadow and light. No matter.”

  Holly gasped, but father and daughter ignored her. “Tell me what you think should be done, Sydney,” Royce said.