Trust Fund Babies

by Jean Stone

  “Aunt Margaret trusted Lester, so I guess we all did.” She wondered if Sam noticed the perspiration that had formed across her brow. Turning toward the tiny stretch of jetty that made its way toward Chappaquiddick, Gabrielle said softly, “When I was a girl, the barrier connected this part of the island to Chappy. Except during high tide. I used to love to walk across it.…”

  Sam was not interested. “What else do you remember about Lester Markham? Did he ever visit you in Europe?”

  Gabrielle winced, even though she’d tried not to. Tiny muscles in her jaw and her neck and her fingers began to tingle. Why was he asking all these questions?

  “Gabrielle?” Sam asked.

  She rubbed the back of her head, hoping it would help her pull an answer together. “Sorry,” she said quickly. “I was trying to remember. No, no, Lester never came to see me.”

  Sam didn’t seem convinced, but he got up. “I don’t want to upset you any more than I already have, Gabrielle. But if you can think of anything that will help us find Markham …”

  She stood, too. “Of course,” she replied. “I’ll let you know right away.” She was so grateful he left she did not say good-bye.

  Mary Beth made a cup of coffee and went into the library of the big house on the Vineyard. Her head was utterly pounding inside and out from the senseless chatter of Carla DiRoma. At least Charlie had taken them to LaGuardia so the duration of the trip was shorter than if they’d driven; at least when the island taxi had pulled onto the estate, there appeared to be solitude: The only vehicle around was a shiny motorcycle parked by the lighthouse. Mary Beth wondered with a chuckle if Nikki had taken up with a bad boy, a biker who wore leather and had an armful of tattoos.

  She’d told Carla to go upstairs and make herself at home, to pick out a room, any room, except Shauna’s, which was the first one on the left. She said they would all meet downstairs for cocktails at seven, though she had no idea if the bar had been stocked or if Nikki was anywhere to be found or if that detective was still on the island or if he’d gone off looking for Lester.

  Then she decided to check the messages on her cell phone, which she’d turned off yesterday to clear her mind and get started on the fast-growing list of what she needed to take care of there on the island and how little she could get away with paying out in cash.

  She sat at the desk with her notebook and the phone. Two messages from Shauna; one from Hank; one from Roxanne, was everything okay? And Tiffany’s, God bless them, the bubble wands were in, and God bless the fact that they were safely on her credit card. There were also four calls from Phillipe, the caterer.

  Four?

  There were no calls from Eric.

  She decided to tend to Phillipe, because right now, he was the most important, her daughter notwithstanding. “We need to talk about the truffles, darling,” his first message said with a tone that was friendly and very much him, grand master of l’art culinaire at Image de Pomme.

  “Truffles, darling,” his second message said.

  Then, “Get back to me today. Puhhhh-leeeze.”

  Then there was a hang-up, but it could have been him, because his next call came this afternoon and was not at all nice.

  “Mary Beth. We MUST talk.”

  She tried to dissect the tone of his voice: It almost was angry, over what, a few mushrooms? As if there weren’t more critical things in her life?

  She studied the desk, the same desk where Aunt Margaret had sat when she’d told them of their trust funds. Then Mary Beth closed her eyes and considered her options if Lester were never found, if her money had disintegrated into the intangible world of stocks and bonds and not-so-mutual funds.

  Would she have to sell the estate? Surely it would bring enough to survive. Yes, it was prime land; yes, it was the Vineyard. But now that the Clintons were in New York, she supposed they would summer at the Hamptons. The Bushes, of course, would be in Maine, leaving island real estate in an unattractive flux.

  She might survive, but she would not be rich, not like her friends.

  If she kept the old place, it needed work. Eric had promised to take charge of getting it painted in time for the wedding; hardly possible now, even if he were so inclined. She did not, after all, even know where he was so that she might remind him that his daughter’s wedding was just days from now.

  She could ask Mack to take care of the house, but she hated asking anyone for favors and God knew she couldn’t pay him.

  With a heart-heavy sigh, she reached for her phone book and looked up Phillipe’s number.

  The communications journey at Image de Pomme navigated her through a receptionist and two assistants before Phillipe finally came on the line. Mary Beth wondered how it happened that a chef could become so important. She suspected it was connected to the size of his invoice, which she could no longer afford though he didn’t know it.

  “I’m here,” she said. “Now what can possibly be so urgent about truffles?” She tried to sound humorous, but knew she was not funny. In that moment, she reminded herself of Aunt Margaret, an unpleasant thought.

  “You want Provençal truffles accenting the soup?” He did not humor her in return.

  “You know I do.” She picked up a pen and doodled in her notebook. No sense asking if they could economize and eliminate them. The menu, like the bubble wands, was a done deal. What the hell, Mary Beth thought, there was always the chance that Lester would show up in time for the reception. She silently snickered, then hurled her pen over the desk and across the room. Life would be so much simpler if one could live in denial, or at least in Alzheimer’s, the world of her mother.

  “Mary Beth, we’ve been friends a long time,” Phillipe said.

  She did not comment that business associates—hired hands, for God’s sake—were not exactly friends, but Phillipe had done most of her functions for the past several years. And she certainly deserved credit for throwing other business his way—dozens of weddings, showers, numerous bar and bat mitzvahs, and several New Age debutante balls. Shauna’s wedding, of course, would be his most extravagant, and perhaps even earn him yet another assistant.

  “What are you getting at, Phillipe?” Though his ego tended to inflate to the size of Manhattan, he should not be so upset that she hadn’t returned his calls sooner.

  “Money.” He blurted the word out so fast that her head quickly reeled.

  She opened the desk drawer and fumbled around. Weren’t there any cigarettes left in there somewhere? Last year’s would do. They’d be dry and tasteless and would burn her throat, but …

  Money?

  She stopped searching for smokes. A slow veil of darkness crept into the room. No, she thought, then wanted to wail, N-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o.

  “I need money up front.”

  She snorted a couple of times. She shut the desk drawer. She stared straight ahead to the French doors that led to the terrace that led to the grassy slope that led down to the sea. “Excuse me?”

  Phillipe seemed to exhale and haul his bulk from one stool to another. “Mary Beth,” he said, “this is difficult. But this is an expensive wedding and I have to protect myself. Ordinarily I wouldn’t ask, but, well, there’s a rumor going around that you don’t have any money. That it’s gone. That you’re broke.”

  The fire that crawled up her spine and into her cheeks made the dog days of summer seem cool and refreshing. She tried stretching her neck to unlock the heat. Her vertebrae crunched. “Phillipe,” she barked, “what the hell are you talking about?” Barking, she knew, was nothing more than a defense, a thinly veiled mechanism that probably did little to disguise the fact that she did not know what else to do.

  A rumor? What rumor? How the hell had he heard?

  “Please, Mary Beth. I’m willing to settle for half up front, although under the circumstances, I must ask for cash. Or a cashier’s check. For seventy-eight thousand, including the truffles.”

  A white-hot flash of rage burst somewhere inside her. “Fuck the truffles,
” she shouted. “You’ll have your goddamn money within the week, Phillipe, and this will be the last event you do for me or anyone who is anyone, anywhere in Manhattan. I hope that makes you happy.” She threw the phone across the room along the same route her pen had just taken. Then she sat there a moment, trying to stop shaking, wondering how she was going to come up with seventy-eight thousand dollars in a week’s time and if Shauna’s wedding was the beginning of the end of Mary Beth’s life.

  She looked back toward the French doors and the lawn where the white tents would stand, where the three ladies with harps would be sprinkled among the guests, where the twelve-piece orchestra would play during dinner, where the DJ would set up for later. She looked at the shady spots where the flower-woven trellises would stand; where the huge pots of fragrant blossoms would create summer gardens; where translucent bubbles would float through the air; and where Shauna would emerge, a princess in white; and all would be as it should be, and all would be right.

  She’d envisioned this for so long, had planned it so thoroughly, it now seemed like a dream that had already happened, like when she thought about the abortion she’d been forced to have, or when the doctor had said firmly, “Your mother has Alzheimer’s.” It seemed like a dream that she no longer wanted because it was painful and there was no damn way out.

  Then she closed her eyes on the dream and suddenly was aware of one undeniable thing: It had to be Eric, that cocksucking son of a bitch.

  15

  There really was a God, and Carla had, at last, found Him. After a lifetime of nothing, she’d finally crossed the tracks and moved up on the hill.

  She sat at a round, chintz-covered table in the bedroom, nibbling on a cereal bar that she’d brought from home, trying to absorb all that she’d experienced in the last couple of hours. The ride to the airport had been exciting, even though it was only a Lincoln, not a real limousine. (The driver, however, had held the back door open while no fewer than six neighbors—plus Donnie—had watched from the sidewalk.) Once they’d picked up Mary Beth, Carla had tried to imitate her every move so no one would know she’d never boarded a small plane and flown to the Vineyard like Mary Beth did, with nonchalance that implied she did it every day—which she probably could have, though not anymore, not without her trust fund.

  It was all very glamorous, just as Carla had expected. And the house, if not glamorous, surely was impressive.

  Taking another bite, she put her feet up on a chair, then leaned back and surveyed her surroundings as if she were an Atkinson, as if she were a goddess, ensconced in her room upstairs in the mansion, or as the family called it, the “big house.”

  The room she’d picked was big, too, almost as big as her entire apartment at home in the Bronx, including the storage room in the back hall. Surprisingly, the room’s only bed was an old-fashioned double kind, but it was a four-poster with plump pillows and a down comforter that must have cost at least five hundred dollars! The wallpaper had giant pink and blue flowers that looked like the ones blooming in the gardens below. Best of all, from the huge picture window, Carla could see the lighthouse and the dunes and the water.

  A travel agent would have called this an oceanfront room and would have quoted a premium in-season rate.

  So Carla had selected it and hung up her clothes as if she had moved in.

  Well, why not? She’d earned the right, hadn’t she? All those years of schlepping for Lester, keeping his society life fluid and organized, making sure his attire was proper and dry-cleaned, ordering flowers for his day-after thank-yous—she could have been his wife for the attention she gave him. Could have been, should have been at least a lady for him to escort to the Met or the theater or one of a hundred thousand gallery openings he went to every year.

  She took a last bite of her cereal bar and turned to the big manila envelope that she’d put on the table. She held her breath a moment then undid the clasp. Reaching inside, she carefully took out the contents: the newspaper and magazine clippings, some still fresh and visible, some yellow, faded, brittle. Slowly Carla scanned them, the pictures of Lester, in his tuxedo, in his glory. In early photos his wife stood next to him: He held a nondescript cocktail; he smiled. In later photos he appeared more confident, as if his money and position had finally afforded him the kind of life he wanted.

  In many photos, of course, he was with her, Carla DiRoma, though her head was often too big or too small for the body that wore it. She bet if she’d had the courage she could give the pictures to her son, Donnie. He’d know how to doctor it on one of those new-fangled computers to make it look as if the baroness or the dame beside him really had been her.

  But, of course, she could never ask Donnie; he’d send her to Bellevue without asking questions.

  She studied the clippings and realized with sorrow that there would be no more now, not unless they found Lester. She sighed again, then divided everything into two piles: one for the detective, the private ones for her. She slid hers back into the envelope and returned it to her suitcase.

  She checked her watch—two hours until “cocktails.” She eyed the big bed. Then she took off her navy blue pumps, tested the plumpness of the comforter, and, with a smile, lay on top of the bed to daydream about Lester and the life they could have had if she’d been an Atkinson, and if she had lived there.

  It would be harder on Gabrielle if she knew they were lovers as well as best friends. Nikki felt certain that would be the case, though Mack was not agreeing. He, in fact, had not seemed to be listening or thinking or anything all afternoon. He had merely walked beside her on the boardwalk along Moshup Trail out at Aquinnah where the tourists did not venture too far from the cliffs. Then they’d sat quietly on Philbin Beach, the somber shore where John Kennedy, Jr.’s, belongings had washed up, a private beach only for residents. No one, however, would bother Mack and Nikki. Though they lived down-island, they’d spent a great deal of time there on the beach, their solitude and their love safe from the eyes of those who might think it was wrong.

  Today they sat all afternoon.

  “She lives in Tuscany,” Nikki said at one point. “Did you know that?”

  He fixed his eyes on the horizon, where the sky met the water and the line in between separated one from another.

  “She has a daughter, a little girl.”

  He nodded; he had heard that time.

  Later Nikki had the courage to say, “Gabrielle is quite beautiful, Mack.” But a tightening in her throat and a cauldron of tears that waited to spill out would not let her add, “She looks just like Rose.”

  Mostly, however, they sat in long silence. They held hands; they listened to the gulls; they watched the small surf. Even as the sun began its slow descent into the west, Nikki could not bring herself to leave this man she loved so much.

  “Where the hell is Nicole?” Mary Beth shouted into the phone as Carla waited in the doorway. She had followed the sound of her hostess’s voice and arrived downstairs in the drawing room, she supposed they called it. Pressing her fingers to her temples, Carla was beginning to wonder if being an Atkinson was really so great, and if Mary Beth ever spoke in anything but a shout. “Well, as soon as you see her, make sure she comes home. And I want to meet that detective tonight, unless he’s missing, too.”

  At last Mary Beth hung up and looked at Carla. “Alice claims she has no idea where my cousin is, that she called after lunch and said she’d be gone for a while.”

  Carla nodded as if she had any idea who Alice was, or why Mary Beth felt the need to confide.

  An old clock on the wall struck seven. Mary Beth looked relieved.

  “I don’t know what’s in the liquor cabinet, but I know we have wine.” She motioned to a rack that seemed to hold more bottles than the corner liquor store back home.

  “Wine is fine,” Carla replied. She wondered if Mary Beth noticed that she’d changed into a lavender chiffon caftan, “perfect for a casual dinner overlooking the sea,” the clerk had said. She had not s
howed Donnie the dress, and she was glad, for Mary Beth still wore the same white knit top and khakis that she’d worn on the plane.

  Carla accepted a stemmed glass that must have been crystal, just as someone knocked on the front door.

  They stayed in the drawing room, Mary Beth and the detective, Sam, while Carla went upstairs and retrieved the news clippings for him. When she returned, she sat and listened, trying to pay attention, all the while peeking into every corner, snapping mental pictures of the furnishings and décor. Especially intriguing was a cherry desk in back that had many tiny drawers. How she’d love to see inside them, just to learn what an Atkinson kept there, like keys to old treasure chests or small pieces of silver.

  “How well did you know Lester?” Sam asked, though his question was directed at Mary Beth, which was stupid because Carla was the one who really knew him, not her. “What about family? Did he have family?”

  “He had a wife once,” Mary Beth replied. “But she died. Cancer, I think.”

  “Lung cancer,” Carla interjected. “She smoked like a fiend.”

  Mary Beth raised her eyebrows as if she hadn’t known that, but Carla knew it well. Until the woman was gone Lester always came to work looking handsome as ever, but always leaving a trail of stale, secondhand smoke that he was lucky hadn’t killed him as well.

  “Anyone else?” At last Sam was looking at Carla. “No,” she replied, then told him that Lester’s parents were long dead, his sister had committed suicide years ago, and he and his wife hadn’t had any children. Suddenly she had their attention, because she had more answers than the hostess did. She crossed her legs and settled back in the wing chair, sipping from the crystal and feeling like Queen for a Day. She decided not to elaborate that after Lester’s wife died he had been “seen” with many wealthy, snobby women, because she did not want to offend Mary Beth. She merely mentioned he had many friends “abroad.”

  “Did he drink?”

  “No. Not that I know of.” Well, there had been that one time when he’d kissed her and given her hope. It was twenty years ago—no, twenty-one. A bottle of Dom Pérignon was delivered to the office. It was meant for an attorney down the hall, but the man had recently joined Alcoholics Anonymous so he’d given it to them.