Trust Fund Babies

by Jean Stone

  Inside the massive stone structure it was quiet and cool and softly glowing from the hundreds of candles that burned in the side alcoves, each flame casting hope or thanks or remembrance for people and life lived or lost.

  She should light a candle for Rosa and Stefano, for God to keep them safe until she returned. And for them to forgive her, if that were possible.

  She should light a candle for herself, to ask God’s forgiveness of every wrong she had done, of every secret she’d harbored since she was a child.

  Lowering her head, Gabrielle felt a tear run from her eye and drop onto her lap. Most times she’d been able to handle her secrets; most times, she had been able to keep them close to her heart and know they hurt no one as long as they stayed there.

  The earliest she remembered was when she was at school, when she’d told the other students that she was an orphan, that the woman who visited every year on her birthday was an eccentric old maid who once had known her mother. She’d never had to explain who her father was because the time he’d come, she’d simply walked away.

  When she lived in London she told her roommates she’d been raised in an orphanage and had never known her parents, but that a check came every month from their estate. She didn’t know why she said these things. Self-pity? Attention? Perhaps it was only a way to explain the loneliness she felt, the way she always felt poised on the edge of a cry, certain everyone knew, but that they did not care.

  In Paris she denounced her wealth to everyone she met, not with words but with lifestyle, waiting on tables, living in a walkup studio on the Left Bank that once had been trendy but by then was just old. She denounced her wealth, and then she’d denounced her father to his face. All to keep her secrets. The way she kept the trust fund from Stefano. And the worst secret of all, letting him believe that Rosa was his daughter, when she was not. Instead, Rosa had been the untimely gift of a brief affair with a very married man who’d wanted neither of them when he’d learned Gabrielle was with child.

  She closed her eyes as more tears came. She had come to hate her secrets, had come to feel the pain they could inflict. It was too late for her, but maybe not for Nikki.

  Nikki who, starting with The Rose Foundation and working backward, had given all her dollars to those less fortunate. And now Nikki deserved some peace. She deserved the right for her legacy to continue; she deserved to be free of the secret that the money now was gone.

  Gabrielle could only hope Nikki would understand why she’d done what she had done.

  The bell tower chimed eight-fifteen. She fumbled in her purse and lit several candles on her way out.

  “You’re beautiful,” Connor said as he gazed at her across the candlelit table at Chez Aiglon.

  “Ha!” Nikki replied. “You’ve always been far-sighted.” She sipped her wine, unable to decide if she found his words flattering or if they made her squirm.

  “I’m serious, Nicole. The Vineyard is good for you. You look so unstressed.”

  She shrugged. “What’s to be stressed about? I have my work, I have my art, I have my—”

  “Independence?”

  In spite of herself, she smiled. “Yeah. My independence.”

  He smiled something that looked like a sad smile. He lowered his eyes and straightened his silverware. Nikki felt an urge to reach out and put her hand on his, to say she was sorry for the pain that she had caused.

  “Our daughter is turning out a lot like her mother,” he said.

  She was glad she didn’t have wine in her mouth or she would have sprayed it across the room. “I think you have me confused with someone else, Connor. Dee is precise and organized, a very anal business mogul. She is you. She is my mother. She is not me. She is not even close.”

  “Oh, she’s every bit you. She’s stubborn and independent—there’s that word again.”

  Nikki straightened. She had never thought Connor was so out of tune that he would not know his own daughter, or his ex-wife. Then again, she thought … stubborn … independent.

  No. No way. Dee could not be like her.

  “And in every relationship she falls in love with the idea of being in love. But she does not really fall in love with the person. Did you know that?”

  Is that what he thought Nikki did?

  She frowned. “I hardly know what Dee looks like any more, never mind how she thinks. Mother and daughter don’t communicate real well.” She did not mention lunch today because she did not want to talk about Gabrielle or Mary Beth or even Eric, for that matter.

  “Maybe if you tried a bit harder to understand, instead of always being braced for confrontation …” He dismissed his words with a wave of his hand. “Enough. You and I can find other things to argue about without talking about Dee.” His smile softened his statement.

  Nikki tried not to sound defensive. “I assumed that’s why we’re having dinner. To talk about our daughter.”

  “No. Not at all.”

  The waiter arrived with their chateaubriand. As he carved tableside, Nikki dutifully watched and feigned a hearty appetite that surely the filet would cure. But she wasn’t hungry. Getting ready for tonight, racing downstairs, finding a black satin hair clip, then pacing until he showed up, and now, hearing him say that dinner was not about Dee, the daughter with whom Nikki was “always braced for confrontation”—Nikki was not hungry. Instead, she was feeling guilty about Mack. Could dinner with her ex be construed as cheating?

  The plates were served and Connor dug in with the gusto she did not feel.

  “Okay,” she said. “So if not to talk about Dee, then why are we here?”

  He smiled again. “Can’t I invite my ex-wife out for a meal? Was there something about that in our divorce decree?”

  She tried to relax. She sliced her carrots.

  Then he groaned and set down his fork. “I cannot tell a lie,” he said. “Did you ever make a promise that you couldn’t keep?”

  She frowned. “Sure. To love, honor, and cherish till death do us part.”

  The hurt that dulled his face made her regret she’d been sarcastic.

  “Anything a little less … dramatic?”

  She picked up her wine. “Connor, tell me what’s going on. You are terribly inept unless you are being direct.”

  “You’re right,” he replied. He slow-blinked his eyes as if taking a deep breath. Then he said, “I know, Nicole. I know that your trust fund is gone.”

  The white noise of the restaurant rose and fell in natural cadence as if Connor had not just said what he’d said, as if they were discussing the news or the weather or the flavor of the steak.

  “Well,” she said, as she took her napkin from her lap, folded it, twisted it, then put it back. “I guess that’s direct enough.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know if you wanted me to know you’d have told me yourself.”

  Yes, she would have. She even might have, until now, until she’d developed an uneasy sense that she’d been duped.

  “I need to ask who told you,” she said, “only because I need to know who else knows.”

  “That’s the ‘promise’ part.”

  She leaned forward. “Fuck the promise,” she said. “You already blew it.”

  He smiled that sad smile. “Your cousin, Gabrielle,” he said. “She called me this morning. She’s worried about you, Nikki. She’s worried about, as she put it, your kids. She’s afraid your pride is going to ruin your good work.”

  Nikki did not answer, because the wine that she’d drunk and the small amount of food that she’d eaten were making their way back up her throat. Gabrielle? What gave her the right …

  “I can help,” he added quickly. “I think you’re doing a wonderful thing with the foundation. But please, Nicole. For once, just let me help.”

  She picked up her napkin again. This time she set it on the table, next to her plate. “This is my fight, Connor, not yours.”

  “But …”

  Nikki stood up. “Please, finish y
our meal. But I’m going back to the hotel, and I’d rather be alone.”

  20

  It was the way she held her head, tilted to one side, chin slightly up, as if awaiting conversation or cause for a smile: That was how Gabrielle recognized Aunt Dorothy, despite the years since she’d seen her, despite the woman’s illness.

  Gabrielle paused by the entry into the garden and wondered why Nikki would not come this morning. Had Connor told her Gabrielle called him, and if so, what did one thing have to do with another? All Nikki said this morning over coffee was “We’ll talk about it on the way home,” and “No, I won’t be going to see Dorothy.”

  Smiling a small smile, Gabrielle entered the garden and went to where Dorothy sat.

  “Aunt Dorothy,” she said, “do you remember me? It’s Gabrielle, Rose’s daughter.”

  The slightly tilted head looked up. She did not respond, but seemed to study Gabrielle’s face. Pulling a chair from the table, Gabrielle sat and faced the woman. Then she took one of her hands. She was surprised at how brittle the aging skin felt. Was that how skin felt once it had passed seventy?

  “Remember when you visited me in England? You came every year on my birthday, and, oh, what fun we had! You took me to London and we went to Harrods and the theater and the sweetshops …”

  “Rose,” Aunt Dorothy said, her faded eyes brightening, a light tint of pink rising in her cheeks. “You look wonderful, dear. Just like yesterday.”

  An aura of slow motion filled the fragrant garden air. Somewhere nearby a songbird chirped a sweet song, but its soft voice was muted by the distance between Gabrielle and her aunt, the distance between reality and remembrance. Gabrielle felt a sudden sorrow, not for Aunt Dorothy, who seemed to sense some delight, but for Mary Beth, who had to witness her mother’s slide from the present, who could never bring back her mother as she’d once been.

  “This is my sister, Rose,” Dorothy said happily, and Gabrielle realized her aunt was speaking to a woman who moved past with a walker, its small rubber wheels traversing the flagstone. “Isn’t it nice that she’s come?”

  The woman with the walker slowed and said, “Hello, Rose,” and Gabrielle smiled and said, “Hello” in response.

  Though Gabrielle’s back was to her, Mary Beth could hear the conversation from where she stood, a few feet from the garden. She had wanted to join them; she had hoped Gabrielle’s presence might trigger Dorothy’s memories of Lester. But standing there, watching Gabrielle pretend that she was Rose, seeing the gentleness with which Gabrielle held Dorothy’s hand, feeling the … feelings … Mary Beth knew she needed to leave. After all, she could not stand around in tears when so much needed to be done.

  * * *

  As they drove up I-95, out of the city and back toward the Vineyard, Nikki clutched the steering wheel and leaned into her door as if a black widow spider had roosted on the passenger seat. Gabrielle had tried to make small talk about Dorothy, but Nikki had not wanted to listen.

  “I can’t believe you betrayed our confidence,” she finally said just outside of Stamford, once the skyline of Manhattan had faded far behind them.

  “Oh,” Gabrielle replied. “He told you.”

  “Yes, he told me. I was his goddamn wife. I am the mother of his daughter. Yes, he told me.” She was not sure what being his ex-wife and Dee’s mother had to do with Connor’s confession, but it did not seem to matter.

  “I’m sorry,” Gabrielle said, but added nothing more.

  They drove along the Connecticut shore through Westport and Fairfield and the last of the bedroom communities whose tony neighborhoods would once have seemed middle-class compared with the Atkinson fortune.

  When they reached New Haven, Nikki spoke again. “You had no right, Gabrielle. No right to interfere with my life.”

  Gabrielle did not say she was sorry again, but simply, “I didn’t see it that way.”

  The CD did not play; the radio was not on. They rode another hour in silence, each with her thoughts.

  The worst part for Nikki was that, in Gabrielle’s shoes, she might have done the same thing. It looked so good on paper: Nikki was broke, hundreds of sick kids depended on her income; Connor had piles of money; Connor had once loved Nikki and she had loved him.

  What harm in asking?

  But Gabrielle didn’t know that Nikki loved Mack, that she no longer wanted or needed her ex-husband. “For once, just let me help,” he’d said, as if she weren’t capable of taking care of things herself, as if he were her mother, who could do a better job.

  “I forbid you to leave him,” Margaret had shouted when Nikki returned from that fateful world trip. “If you dare disobey me, you will not see one penny more from me or from Connor, I will see to it.”

  Connor, of course, represented all that her mother—or any of the Atkinson women—had never had: He was a clever businessman who underscored her importance insofar as it looked to the world and who actually put up with her self-important shit.

  Clearly, however, her mother had never gotten it, that Nikki didn’t want or like the Atkinson money. Margaret’s threat to Nikki became one more challenge, yet another vehicle for thumbing her nose.

  She went ahead with divorce and took it a step further: It was then that she decided to give away every cent she had, every dime that had been earned, stolen, or invested in the Atkinson name.

  Mary Beth thought she was crazy, but she always had. When Nikki asked if she’d let Nikki live in the lighthouse, Mary Beth had laughed.

  “Why would you want to? Have you forgotten about the padlock that we thought kept the ghosts inside? My God, Nikki, have you forgotten Aunt Rose died right there on the jetty?”

  No, Nikki had not forgotten.

  She never challenged her mother’s threat about asking for one penny either from her or from Connor. She moved into the lighthouse, gave away the income from her trust fund every month, worked at the bakery, and sold enough of her paintings to afford a meager existence. She had gone on with her life.

  She had not been unhappy, even before Mack. From time to time, she was lonely, but she’d not been unhappy.

  She hung onto the steering wheel now and did not mean to say out loud, “Dealing with Mary Beth is difficult enough, Gabrielle. I do not need my ex-husband behind the scenes of my life, too.”

  They crossed the border into Rhode Island. Gabrielle turned her face from the window and Nikki saw that she’d been crying.

  “It’s worse than you think, Nikki,” Gabrielle added. “Mary Beth suggested I tell him. She called our hotel room after you went to meet your agent yesterday. She’s in big trouble, Nikki. She really needs money. She convinced me Connor might help her, too, if he knew what was really going on.”

  Nikki pulled off the highway onto the shoulder. She dropped her face into her hands. “Oh, God, Gabrielle, I can’t believe you were fished in by our manipulative cousin.”

  “I know what she is, and I know who she is. But I also know Mary Beth is the only one of us left with a mother, and she has the responsibility of caring for her. She can’t help the way she was raised—any more than we can change the things that happened to us.

  “But you’re the one who said it, Nikki—we’re family. I haven’t told her yet, but I’ve decided to give Mary Beth some money to help keep Aunt Dorothy comfortable. I’d be glad to give you some as well, but I figure you wouldn’t accept it.

  “I’m sorry if I crossed the line; I was only trying to help make everyone happy. And by the way, Mary Beth thinks your ex-husband still loves you, and she said you might not be such a martyr if you would just get laid.”

  It was one of those summer mornings when humidity loomed, threatening to suffocate New York as if it were Alabama. Mary Beth had returned home from Harriman House and wanted to strip off her beige linen dress and put on some shorts. But the Sotheby “movers” had already arrived, and she must look her best, even for them.

  Besides, there was always the chance Eric would come home, and she wou
ld not let him think she had “let herself go,” that she was mourning his ridiculous departure. Let him get down on his knees and beg for her mercy, but let him do it while she was in Donna Karan and not Levi Strauss.

  She stood in the library, dabbing her forehead with a fingertip towel, grateful that Shauna was not there to witness the parade of Louis XIV, XV, and XVI marching out the door, or to have to watch the good servant Marta Hendersen studiously checking the list on her clipboard once, then twice.

  Mary Beth stood and dabbed and watched the performance, because she did not know what else to do. Should she turn on the air-conditioning? (Could she afford it?) Perhaps she should just sit quietly and thumb through a magazine. She supposed that others in her circle would have left this supervision to the trusted help. But even if Mary Beth had had a live-in, she’d have had to let her go by now, because of the money or lack thereof, of course.

  If this were Victorian times, she could sit at her small desk and attend to her correspondence. But her desk, like other things, would soon be in Marta’s hands.

  So she stood, arms folded, and tried not to think about her mother and about how childlike Dorothy had looked this morning, and how she would feel if she were there, as the wood and silver and china pieces of her life were snugly wrapped, then carted away by muscle boys named Bruce and Pete and Manuel.

  At least her mother was safe for another month, maybe more. But what about after the wedding? Were there things at the house on the Vineyard that no one would miss if Mary Beth were careful and didn’t sell too much?

  She wiped another line of perspiration that had surfaced on her brow. She could have smoked a cigarette but did not know where she’d hidden her last pack, and besides, it was difficult enough to breathe.

  The phone rang. She darted to answer it: Aha, something to do!

  It was Beverly McGuire, of the Palm Beach McGuires. “Darling, I have such sad news,” Beverly drawled in her slow, Southern drawl. “Lamar has been having some trouble with vertigo again, so I’m afraid we won’t be at the wedding. Flying, you know. It’s bad for his inner ear.”