by Nash, Jean
“Susanna,” the woman said in a hauntingly familiar voice, “don’t you recognize me?”
“No, I don’t,” Susanna said slowly, but something stronger than memory raised the hairs on her arms.
The woman lifted her veil, revealing a face Susanna remembered. It was a sadder, older face, but one whose exotic beauty time had only enhanced.
“Mother?” The word was a breathless gasp. “Is it you?”
“Yes, it is,” Augusta said softly, her eyes luminous with unshed tears. “Have I changed that much, Susanna? You’ve changed, I see. You’re a woman now—and so lovely, so lovely. During all those years we were apart I used to try to envision how you’d look as an adult. But I never dreamed....” Her voice broke. She pressed both hands to her mouth.
Susanna stared at her mother, unable to speak, hardly able to breathe. How often she had imagined this moment, how often she had played out in her mind scenes of outrage and condemnation, or of overwhelming joy. But now that the moment was here, now that Augusta stood before her, this woman who had left her children without even a note of farewell, Susanna could think nothing, feel nothing but a paralyzing numbness of all emotion.
Why was she here? Why, after all these years, had she come back, as if nothing were changed, as if she expected to be welcomed with no words of recrimination.
“What do you want?” Susanna demanded, freed at last from the torpor that had numbed her. Her emotions were fully functional now, hot, fierce, and mercilessly unforgiving. “How dare you come back here after all these years without once letting us know if you were dead or alive?”
“But I wrote you!” Augusta said, stunned. “I wrote to you many times.”
“Don’t lie to me!” Susanna cried. “We never heard a word from you. You didn’t even have the decency to tell us you were leaving. Do you know that after you left, Dallas wept every night? Papa used to tell him to stop behaving like a child. But he was a child, Mother! He was only ten years old. And you broke his heart.”
She stopped, out of breath, a word away from weeping. Her body trembled with emotions she could no longer contain. How much was she to endure? First Papa’s death, then Jay Grainger and his chicanery, and now the hellish reappearance of her treacherous mother. The Fates were too cruel. It was not to be borne.
She turned to leave, to escape this intolerable situation, but just as she reached the door, it swung open and Dallas entered the room bearing a tea tray heaped high with steaming delicacies.
“Sunny?” He saw his sister’s distraught face, glanced curiously at the stranger, then quickly set down the tray on Susanna’s desk. “What’s the matter?” he demanded. “What’s happened here?”
“What’s the matter?” Too enraged to explain, Susanna gestured toward Augusta. “Ask your mother.”
“My...mother?” Dallas looked again toward Augusta, saw a face that mirrored his, saw a quivering mouth, dark eyes filled with love and repentance. His own eyes widened with amazement and fascination. He moved toward her slowly as if drawn by an invisible silken cord.
“It is you, isn’t it?” His voice was soft and incredulous. “You haven’t changed at all. You look exactly as I remember you.”
“Dallas,” Augusta whispered and reached up to touch his cheek. “If you only knew how much I’ve missed you, how much I’ve yearned to see you.”
Susanna said bitterly, “Is that why you stayed away for eleven years?”
Dallas turned on her sharply. “What’s wrong with you, Sunny? Is that how you speak to your mother?”
“She’s no mother to me,” Susanna retorted. “Nor to you, Dallas. Have you forgotten we grew up without her?”
“Sunny, for God’s sake!”
“Children, please!” Augusta said, distressed. “Don’t quarrel on my account.” She picked up her purse and gloves from the window sill. “I’d better go. I should never have come here.”
“No!” Dallas detained her with a firm hand on her arm. “You’re not leaving. I won’t let you.” Then, realizing to whom he was speaking: “I beg your pardon, Mother. What I mean is, I don’t want you to leave. You’ve obviously come here for a reason, and I want to hear what it is.”
His hand was still on her arm. Augusta covered it with hers. “Dear child,” she said, “of course I’ll stay, if you wish it.”
“I do wish it.” He led her to a chair and looked darkly at Susanna. “Sit down, Sunny,” he commanded. “At least grant Mother the courtesy of hearing her out.”
Only because she loved him did Susanna obey him. She sat down stiffly at her desk, facing her mother. Dallas, as if presiding at a social function, poured three cups of tea, handed one to Augusta and another to his sister. With his own cup in hand, he sat down next to his mother and urged her to try some tea cakes.
“Not just now, darling,” Augusta said, casting a brief glance at her daughter. “There’s so much I need to explain to you first.”
“Take your time,” Dallas said gently.
Infuriated, Susanna wondered how he could treat his mother cordially when she had treated her children so abominably. But when she saw Dallas’s hunger for love being fed by Augusta’s mere presence, some of her anger faded. She wondered then if Augusta, who had mortally wounded Dallas, was the only person on Earth who had the power to heal him.
“I apologize, Mother.” Susanna’s tone was grudging. “I shouldn’t have spoken to you the way I did.”
“My dear!” Augusta said. “Please don’t apologize. I’m the one who ought to beg your forgiveness for leaving you both as I did.”
“I’m sure you had your reasons,” Dallas said graciously. “But, Mother, why did you never write us?”
“I was just trying to explain that to Susanna when you came in, son. I did write to you, many times, but I never received an answer. I can only assume that your father....” She trailed off and left the rest unsaid, as if despite her checkered past, to speak ill of the dead was a line she wouldn’t cross.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Dallas said.
But Susanna had her doubts. “Papa died two years ago,” she said to her mother. “Why did we never hear from you then?”
“Susanna, after awhile I stopped writing. I realized it was useless. I just recently learned of your father’s death. That’s why I came back. I had to make you both understand that leaving you was not a choice I made voluntarily. It was...forced on me.”
“I just knew it,” Dallas muttered. “That bastard probably made your life a— Forgive me, Mother, I didn’t mean to swear.”
“That’s all right, darling.” Augusta gave him a rueful smile. “I can understand your shock after all those years of thinking that I—”
“Are you saying that there was no actor?” Susanna asked bluntly.
Augusta placed her teacup on the desk and looked down at her lap. “There was someone, yes, but if it hadn’t been for your....” She paused, raised her head and faced her daughter squarely. “Susanna, it would be very easy for me to blame your father for what I did, but it would serve no purpose. Furthermore, he’s not here to defend himself. The fact remains that I left my children, an act I shall regret until my dying day. But I’m here now to stay—forever, if you’ll have me.”
“Of course we’ll have you!” Dallas said at once. “Sunny, we both want her to stay, don’t we?
He turned eagerly to his sister, his dark eyes pleading. In all her life, Susanna had never been able to resist that look.
“Yes, I want her to stay,” she said, and hoped the lie was convincing—more convincing than the lies Augusta had just told them.
Five
Augusta’s return caused Susanna to almost, but not quite, stop worrying about losing the Sea Star. A month passed with no word from Jay Grainger, nor did he send one of his people to help manage the hotel. Instead of being comforted by this, Susanna grew more and more uneasy, as if a stalking tiger lurked just outside her door.
What was he up to? What manner of skullduggery was
he devising in his lair in New York City? Susanna knew she hadn’t heard the last of him. That would be too good to be true. And yet, whenever she thought of him, she sometimes wished she would hear from him, would see him, if only to end the ever-present apprehension that tormented her.
At the oddest times—in bed, in her bath, or on the beach where she walked late at night to relax—she would think of him, unable to banish him from her thoughts. She would hear his low voice, the expressive intonations that fell so easily on the ear. She would see his eyes, blue-gray like the sea at dawn, and feel the sure touch of his hand at her back when she had danced with him. He haunted her every waking hour and, more often than she liked, she dreamed of him. It was almost like having a lover—except that Jay Grainger was the last man on Earth she wanted for a lover.
When she wasn’t thinking of Jay she worried about Dallas. Although Dallas had signed away his half of the hotel, Susanna still gave him a weekly stipend, for which he did nothing in return. But that bothered her less than the fact that, lately, he seemed to have an unending supply of money.
He was forever buying things: a new gold watch for himself, a Morocco-bound set of Shakespeare’s works for Susanna, new clothes for himself and Augusta. Augusta had arrived at the hotel with only the black dress she wore and two others in her portmanteau. Now she appeared every day in a different stylish frock, grayish green silk in a large-branched broché design, Parma-violet faille, an ecru satin gown for evening wear with a bodice of gold thread embroidery.
Where was this money coming from? Whenever Susanna questioned Dallas, he always said negligently, “I’ve been having a good run of luck at Dutchy’s.” But Susanna was not convinced by this pat answer.
Another thing that bothered Susanna was the unquestioning faith with which Dallas had taken Augusta to his bosom. He was the model son, escorting her to church on Sundays, taking her on shopping expeditions, dining with her every evening without fail—things he had never done with Susanna. If Susanna was jealous of the attentions he paid their mother, she didn’t consciously know it. She was happy that Dallas seemed happy, but she was suspicious of the motives that had brought her mother home.
Augusta was too sweet, too subdued, too eager to prove to her children that “circumstances” had forced her to leave them and that she “mortally regretted” any pain she had caused them. She often invited Susanna to her quarters in the north tower “for a little chat,” and she would talk of the old days when they’d been together, when they’d been happy.
If Susanna should question her about where she’d been for the past eleven years, Augusta would give some vague response or deftly change the subject. Once, when Susanna pressed the point, Augusta said sadly, “I’d rather not talk of that time, Susanna. It’s a period of my life I regret and prefer to forget.”
“If you regret it so much,” Susanna was compelled to say, “why did you stay away so long?”
“If I had returned,” Augusta said pointedly, “would your father have permitted me to stay?”
She had answers for everything, none of which either enlightened or satisfied Susanna. Susanna became so distrustful of Augusta that she eventually began avoiding her, a fact that didn’t go unnoticed by Dallas.
“What the devil’s wrong with you?” he asked one night in late August. “You’ve been ignoring Mama for the past two weeks.”
“Oh, it’s ‘Mama’ now, is it?”
“Jesus, Sunny, this isn’t like you at all. Can’t you forgive her? Can’t you find it in your heart to have some compassion for her?”
“Compassion, Dallas? For a woman who left us without even a farewell? You’re the one who’s not behaving like yourself. What is this sudden spate of love for a mother you rarely mentioned all the time she was gone?”
“I couldn’t talk about her,” he said shortly. “It hurt too much.”
“And now the hurt has stopped?”
“No it hasn’t. But she came back to us, Sunny. Can’t you try to overlook the past? You were all too willing to overlook Papa’s faults, and he was far from a saint, in case you’ve forgotten.”
Yes, she had forgotten her father’s faults. He’d been a demanding perfectionist, sometimes to the point of tyranny. He’d been close with his money, so close that Susanna had sometimes felt that he bordered on being miserly. His death had completely obliterated them from her mind. But Augusta was very much alive, and Susanna found it difficult to overlook what stared her in the face daily. And yet, for her brother’s sake, she knew she must try.
“Very well,” she said unwillingly. “I’ll spend more time with her, if that’s what you want.”
“Sunny, I love you!” He gave her a bear hug. “I knew you’d change your mind once we talked.”
But she didn’t change her mind. She remained as distrustful of Augusta as she had been before. She did spend more time with her but not nearly as much as she could have. She was too busy with the hotel to spend hour after idle hour, as Dallas and Augusta did, reliving old times and looking forward to a bright new future. Susanna’s future looked anything but bright to her. She had a failing hotel on her hands, a partner she didn’t want, and she was twenty-four years old with no prospect of ever having a family of her own.
She was tired of working hard and constantly worrying about the fate of the Sea Star. She wished Jay Grainger would come back to Atlantic City and put an end to this endless waiting once and for all. She had to know what the future held in store for her. This unsettling state of uncertainty was driving her mad.
She got her wish the second week in September. On a spectacularly beautiful Monday afternoon, a day drowsy with heat yet undeniably portending autumn, Jay Grainger walked into Susanna’s office as she was straightening out accounts. She didn’t hear him knock or open the door. She was so deeply immersed in her work, so worried about which one of her many creditors was the most pressing, that it wasn’t until a shadow fell across her desk that she was aware someone had entered the room.
When she looked up, the sunlight from the window momentarily blurred her vision, casting an aureole of radiance about the visitor’s dark form. As her eyes became accustomed to the light and she saw who it was, her heart began pounding and she was reminded of a Rembrandt portrait of a nobleman she had once seen. The same counterpoint of light and dark had blazed from the canvas, a contrast so startling yet so exquisitely rendered, it conveyed an almost mystical vision of unity and beauty.
Jay had brought into the room with him that pleasurable scent of sea and sun and open air. He was wearing dark blue, which intensified the color of his eyes, and his white linen shirt shone against the strong sun-browned contours of his face. Although Susanna had thought of him often in the past few weeks, she had forgotten how heart-stoppingly attractive he was, how the laugh lines about his eyes gave vitality and warmth to the stern contradiction of his hard handsome mouth. She stared at him in silence. He gave her a smile—which only increased the rapid beating of her heart.
“Mr. Grainger.” Her mouth was bone dry. She found it difficult to speak. “What brings you to Atlantic City?”
He didn’t answer her question. He only watched her with that smile, as if the sight of her gave him immense pleasure.
“Forgive me for disturbing you,” he finally said. “I didn’t know you were working.”
Susanna quickly closed the journal when she saw his eyes scan the debit columns. “I can finish doing this later,” she said, regaining her composure. “What can I do for you, Mr. Grainger?”
“Well, Miss Sterling.... May I sit down?” And when she nodded, he took a seat at the side of the desk and said, “It’s more a matter of what I can do for you.”
“What do you mean?” she asked warily.
“Construction has begun on my new hotel here,” he explained, comfortably crossing his legs, “and I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone by spending some time in Atlantic City. This way I can supervise construction on the hotel, and I can also assist you in
alleviating the Sea Star’s present difficulties.”
“I don’t need any assistance.” Her sweet mouth was mutinous.
“I think you do.”
“I don’t care what you think, Mr. Grainger.”
He sighed and uncrossed his legs. “Miss Sterling, I know you’re unhappy with our present arrangement. If it will make you feel any better, I want you to know that I wouldn’t have touched the Sea Star if I’d known how strongly you feel about it. But the deed is done, isn’t it? We might as well accept the situation. After all,” he added reasonably, “aren’t we working toward the same end? Don’t we both want what’s best for the hotel?”
“No,” she said, “I think you want only what’s best for you.”
He sighed again, impatiently. “Miss Sterling, let’s not split hairs. What’s best for the Sea Star is best for me and you. Come now,” he appealed to her, “meet me halfway. Let me work with you, let me help you. You won’t regret it, I promise you.”
She was about to answer, sharply and in the negative, when she suddenly noticed the black band around his coat sleeve. “Are you in mourning?” she asked before she could stop herself.
“Yes,” he said. “My father died last month.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, and meant it. She had never thought of him in connection with a family. He had seemed unique, alone, impervious to human suffering. But he had suffered, he had lost a father, as she had. She imagined his grief, felt it touch and meld with hers. The rancor he had earlier aroused in her slowly faded, and in its place grew a fledgling feeling of kinship.
“Had he been ill?” she asked softly, remembering her impotent anguish as her father lay dying.
“Yes,” Jay said. “For a long time. When death finally came, it was a blessing.”
His eyes, dark with memories, caused Susanna to lower hers. “I shouldn’t have been so rude to you,” she said. “If I had known about your loss...”
