Tides of the Heart

by Jean Stone

  “If they’re looking for the child they gave up, they’re not going to find it legally.”

  Just what he needed. A children’s rights specialist who was going to give him a hundred reasons why he shouldn’t be doing this, why his “client” had no right to interfere in the child’s life. He squared his jaw. “I know that,” he said, trying to soften the bristle that had come into his voice. “But I told my client I’d make an effort.”

  Nicole eyed him slowly, as if sizing him up. “Well,” she said, matter-of-factly, “there are services that do searches. Most are private. Very discreet.”

  Private. Discreet. It sounded exactly what Jess would want.

  “You’re not going to find them in the library, though,” she added. “But I have a friend who knows someone …”

  Phillip shifted on one foot. A friend-of-a-friend was often the safest way to gain gray-area information. He suspected that with the type of law Nicole’s father practiced, there were many friends-of-friends in the family.

  “That would be a big help,” he replied, not wanting her to know she had just saved his life, for the sooner he could wrap this up, the less chance there would be for Joseph to find out.

  “I’ll call her tonight. After I’m finished with my own research.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Right. Terrific.” He had no idea what to do now. Nicole had a lot of work to do. He could tell her he might as well leave, that he had nothing to look up if that was the case. But her scent filled his nostrils again. “Guess I’ll go look up some precedents on a merger I’m working on,” he said lamely, though there was no such deal in the works. Later, he would smell her musk more deeply. Later. After her work was done and her friend was contacted, and he’d felt he’d accomplished something on Jess’s behalf.

  They picked up a vegetarian pizza on their way back to Nicole’s. Phillip would have preferred to go to his place—where they could sit at a real table, drink wine from real glasses instead of plastic cups, and eat off real plates instead of paper towels. But his apartment was thirty blocks from Columbia, and if it meant he could spend the night with Nicole again, it was worth the inconvenience. Besides, he thought now as he sat on the edge of the bed juggling a pizza slice while Nicole phoned her friend, it was apparent that she’d changed the sheets.

  “Got it,” she said, after hanging up. She walked toward him, holding out a scrap of paper towel on which she’d written a phone number. “It’s a woman named Marsha Brown. She does adoption searches.”

  Phillip took the paper and looked at the number, noting the absence of an area code. “Where is she?”

  “Right here in Manhattan.”

  With a small disappointment, Phillip realized the woman probably only did searches for New York State. He had not, after all, told Nicole that he needed Connecticut. “Perfect,” he lied. “Now sit down and eat your pizza,” he said, patting the mattress.

  “Gulp it might be a better term,” Nicole said, picking a slice from the box. “I have to study tonight.”

  He got the message. “Oh,” he answered, folding the paper towel scrap and slipping it into his jeans. “I understand.”

  “I knew you would,” Nicole responded. “Dating someone who’s been through law school has its advantages.”

  He took another slice of pizza, pleased that at least she’d described them as dating, yet unhappy that it meant he’d be sleeping alone tonight.

  Jess had decided that she really needed to get a life. Waiting for Maura to come out of her snit, waiting for Phillip to find her other daughter, waiting to finish the country club job while worrying about who she would run into next—it was all making her miserable.

  So Jess had done the unthinkable: She’d called Kiki Larson, the grande dame divorcée. That was how she’d ended up sitting on a hard chair in a cappuccino café, sipping a mocha latte and listening to a bearded man read poetry.

  It was awful.

  “This is fun,” KiKi said to Jess, sweeping her black-fringed shawl over one shoulder.

  Jess wondered how soon she could tactfully leave. Thank God she’d brought her own car.

  The man finished one poem, then started another. Maybe KiKi had heard he was single, and that was the real reason they were here.

  KiKi leaned toward her. “You have to admit it’s better than listening to those horticulture speakers Louise Kimball was always digging up.”

  Jess had always found the occasional gardening lectures at the monthly club meetings interesting—a welcome change from the who’s-doing-what-to-whom gossip that had become mainstay entertainment among the ladies.

  “Speaking of the club,” Jess whispered, “I’m afraid I have to go shortly.”

  “Go? But darling, we just got here. You have to give it a chance.”

  She smiled. “I have to be at the club early to install the new drapes. And I’m really exhausted.”

  KiKi rolled her eyes.

  Jess stood up and picked up her purse. “It’s been … great,” she lied. “I’ll be in touch.”

  As she left the café, she decided that if this was a “life,” maybe she’d rather not get one.

  Monday morning Jess met her assistants at the club at eight o’clock—an hour at which she’d be assured of not running into any of her old friends. Though it was now April, the grounds were still too wet for golf, so she should be safe from interruptions—at least long enough to have the draperies hung before the arrival of the lunch crowd.

  Standing back, she surveyed the floor-length drapes as her assistants adjusted the coordinating scarf across the top of the traverse rod. They had done a good job, even though Grace was now gone. Jess was especially impressed with Carlo’s perseverance and attention to detail: perhaps his work had been overshadowed by Grace’s. Jess made a mental note that Carlo could become her second-in-command and could nicely take some of the workload off her.

  Smiling at this revelation and at the work now finished before her, Jess felt more satisfied than she had in a long, long time. The butter yellow and hunter green had been a perfect choice for the room; the new wallpaper was up, the carpet had been installed, and it looked like a new room in a new place. If only it were a new place, she thought. If it were a new place it might be somewhere she might enjoy going, where she might enjoy being escorted by … whom?

  She stopped herself from laughing out loud. Last night had confirmed what she’d always suspected: Life spent alone was far preferable to the struggle of trying to fill it with a man—any man—just because everyone else was doing it. For now, the only man in her life would be Carlo, and the only relationship they would have would be on opposite sides of the sewing machine.

  “A little to the right,” she instructed him now, making sure the fall of the scarf was loose and lovely, looking as if it were not rigid, but casual.

  From the ladder, Carlo nodded, then looked past Jess at something that had caught his eye. He tugged the scarf slowly to the right. “Is this okay?” he asked.

  “Looks good to me,” said someone behind her.

  Jess stared at the drapery, her good mood dissolving like sugar in hot tea. She did not want to turn around. She knew the voice and did not want to be feeling the way she was feeling. “It’s perfect,” she said. “Now let’s do the same in the dining room.” She was surprised that her words came out so evenly. She was not surprised that her feet were pinned to the floor, unable to move.

  “You’ve done a wonderful job,” the voice said again.

  Jess did not reply.

  “Jess?”

  She sighed and slowly turned. “What is it, Charles?” He was tanned and healthy-looking, his light brown hair made blond by the Caribbean sun, the whites of his eyes looking whiter, the teeth that showed with his smile looking brighter. “I heard you were re-doing the place. It looks great.”

  “Only the banquet and dining rooms.” She picked up her bag and headed toward the dining room. “And we have work to do, so if you’ll excuse me …”

 
; He stepped forward and touched her arm. “Have you talked with our daughter?”

  Jess’s mouth went dry; spiny needles prickled up her back. “She called to say she was back safely at college.” She did not want to meet his eyes. She did not want to talk with him. And more than anything, she wished he’d get his hand off her arm.

  “She told me what you’re doing,” he said.

  “Everyone at the club knows I’m redecorating.”

  “I meant about that other thing. That baby.”

  From across the room the ladder snapped shut. Jess jumped at the noise. “It’s none of your business, Charles.”

  “It’s my business when it affects my daughter.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Maura is upset about this, Jess. Haven’t you put her through enough? Is finding that baby worth more to you than Maura’s peace of mind?”

  Heat flamed in her cheeks. She wanted to kick him. She wanted to slap him. She wanted to shove him out of her way. Instead, she said, “I repeat, Charles, it’s none of your business.” She turned to her assistant. “I’ll meet you in the dining room,” she said, then brushed past Charles without looking back at him, without saying another word, and without letting him see the tears that had formed in her eyes.

  “It will take three to four weeks,” Marsha Brown told Phillip when he’d given her the information about Jess’s baby. It apparently did not matter that she was from New York, that the baby had been adopted in Connecticut. “I’ll contact the right people, but it will take that long.”

  “And you’ll find her?” he asked. “Just like that?”

  “Just like that,” she replied.

  He did not ask how she would find her. He did not want to know the illegal methods needed to break through the sealed records to locate the children who had been meant to disappear. Children as he himself had once been. “Thank you,” was all Phillip said, then he gave her his office number and told her to call when she knew.

  As soon as he hung up, he called Jess’s house. “We’ll know in three or four weeks,” was the message he left on her machine, “Keep your fingers crossed.”

  He sat back in his chair, looked around the sparse office, and realized that in three to four weeks he and Joseph would be ensconced in their new headquarters on Seventy-third and Park, and that maybe Nicole was going to bring him good luck.

  Devonshire Place was probably done shooting for the season. Ginny stared at the television screen, watching her daughter, in the role of Myrna, plot to steal her best friend’s husband. As Lisa/Myrna strutted around the room of the penthouse set, Ginny studied her movements—determined, gutsy, unafraid. They were moves that had once defined Ginny—never Lisa. Never sweet, nice Lisa. Sweet, nice Lisa who had clearly lost her mind, who desperately needed to be saved by someone other than Ginny, who needed to be told she was making a big, fat mistake to have fallen in love with Brad. She was, after all, too sweet. Too nice.

  Then again, Ginny thought, maybe she hadn’t really known Lisa at all.

  She knew Lisa had been raised by the Andrewses—a middle-aged, middle-class, middle-everything couple from New Jersey who, after Lisa, had adopted twin girls. Ginny had met them three—no, four—times, when they’d flown to the East Coast to spend a few days with Lisa each year. It was then that Jake had taken them all to dinner: a few hours, once a year, were all Ginny had as reference on Lisa’s upbringing. And they had been pleasant enough. Pleasant, certainly, to Ginny, who probably didn’t deserve their congeniality, although they told her many times how grateful they were that she had brought Lisa into the world, that she had allowed them to raise her.

  Allowed. As if she’d had a choice. As if she could have considered anything else. For one thing, she couldn’t very well have brought home a baby whose father was Ginny’s stepfather—a baby who’d been conceived in one of his drunken, groping moments. Nor could she have brought herself to have an abortion: in 1968, those that could be found were the back-alley, coat-hanger kind.

  So much for allowing the middle-class Andrewses to have Lisa.

  But Lisa’s life could have been worse. Mr. Andrews was an insurance salesman; the missus worked in the school cafeteria where Lisa and the twins had gone. Pictures of their home revealed a three-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath ranch, with a carport “done over” into a family room, an aboveground swimming pool in the backyard, and a small vegetable garden where tomatoes were staked and zucchini sprawled. It was the kind of home that sent shudders of entrapment through Ginny—an image of a place like she had only ever imagined, never experienced.

  She had also not been able to imagine any child of hers being raised in such a house. But the photos of Lisa on her eighth birthday, laughing, seated at a Formica kitchen table, an angel food cake with candles in front of her, told the story, as did the shot of her standing before a black marble tiled fireplace, wearing a pretty pink organdy prom dress, a white corsage on her slender wrist, and a big smile across her happy face. Lisa had been a happy child, she had told Ginny so. But that had been in New Jersey, a century ago.

  “You’ve come a long way from the tomato patch,” Ginny said to Lisa’s image on the television now.

  Then she realized that maybe the Andrewses could talk some sense into Lisa about Brad. They’d take one look at him and, in their middle-class way, they’d know he was not right for their daughter. She wondered when they’d be coming for their annual visit; soon, she thought. They were usually here in the spring.

  Eyeing the phone, Ginny decided there would be nothing wrong in hurrying things along. She hadn’t called to thank them for the flowers they’d sent when Jake died—the too-large bundle of red and white carnations. The flowers were ugly, but the Andrewses had meant well.

  Ginny pulled her address book from the drawer of the end table, looked up the number, and placed a call to the opposite coast. Surely they could talk some sense into Lisa.

  Mrs. Andrews was so glad to hear Ginny’s voice! “It’s been so long, Ginny … we were devastated for you about your husband … I’m sure Lisa’s been a big help to you … we’re all peachy-keen, the twins graduate from the university this year so, no, we hadn’t planned on coming west. We were hoping Lisa would come here for their graduation, do you think there’s a chance? And, of course, we’d love to have you, too … we could put you in the basement … we’ve done that over and it’s a rec room now.…”

  Ginny regretted that she’d called. She said good-bye without mentioning Brad, without a hint that Lisa was not speaking to her, nor she to Lisa, without the slightest innuendo that everything was not just peachy-keen, too, out here in L.A.

  She hung up the phone, flicked off the TV, and knew there was only one other person capable of talking sense into Lisa. Only one person whom Lisa would dare not cross: Harry Lyons, her director.

  Slinging her feet to the floor, Ginny decided to pay a call on Harry and have him haul out his big guns of persuasion. But first, she had to bring out hers.

  • • •

  At forty-seven, Ginny supposed her legs weren’t exactly what they used to be. Then again, she figured, pulling onto the studio lot where only days before she had been evicted, Harry Lyons was far from the catch of the century. She supposed, however, that he believed otherwise. After all, he was a man.

  Glancing around nervously in case she needed to dodge that grip named O’Brien, Ginny got out of the car and checked her reflection in a glass door. Thankfully, she’d found a minidress that was loose and flowing and did not reveal her newly added pounds. It would be easier to convince Harry she needed his help if she had any interest in sex—specifically, his. It would not be the first time Ginny had had to fake it, but that, she reminded herself, had been back in the days when she could count on her libido to make up for her apathy.

  But she had to give this a shot. It was her only chance.

  With her chin held high and her eyes fixed straight ahead, she stepped inside the cavernous building and strutted toward the director
’s office as if she belonged there, as if she came there every day. She marched toward the dressing rooms, past several closed doors until she reached the door just past the one where she’d last seen her stepson screwing with Lisa’s mind.

  She held her stomach to stop it from rolling. Then she took a deep breath, raised her hand, and bravely knocked.

  “Yeah?” came a voice from within.

  Ginny sucked in her gut, undid another button at the neckline of her dress, tossed back her hair, and strolled into the room.

  Harry was there, seated at a desk, as bald and bulky as Ginny remembered. On the edge of the desk perched a fat woman smoking a cigarette.

  “What d’ya want?” Harry asked.

  Ginny stepped forward and extended her hand. “Harry,” she said smoothly, “it’s so nice to see you again. I’m Ginny Edwards, Lisa Andrews’s mother.”

  “Shit,” he said standing up quickly and taking her hand into his sweaty one. “Ertha, leave us alone, will you?”

  Ertha—whoever she was—gave Ginny the once-over, then left the office.

  “I’m glad you found me.” Harry motioned for Ginny to sit in an overstuffed vinyl chair. “Two more minutes and I’d have been outta here.”

  “I’m glad, too,” Ginny said, swallowing her pride—if she’d ever had any at all. She glanced around the photo-lined walls. “So this is where Harry Lyons hangs out.”

  He chuckled, the many folds of his neck rippling in response. “This is only my studio office. My real office is across the lot.”

  Ginny smiled and crossed her legs. She let her dress inch upward, silently grateful for the fat woman who had preceded her. No matter how puckery Ginny’s thighs had become, she had a long, long way to go to match Ertha. “I need to talk to you, Harry.”

  He grinned, sat back in his chair, and lit a plump cigar. “If you’re looking for work, have your agent contact me,” he said in a directorish sort of way.

  She laughed in return. “I don’t need work, Harry. Though I’m sure you’re the best to work for, if I were so inclined.”