The Edge of Doom

by Amanda Cross

  Reed pointed out to her that their feelings of violation, to say nothing of disgrace, were hardly to be condemned out of hand. Louise had been their mother as well as Kate’s; no doubt they now considered her more their mother than Kate’s; she had not behaved in so wildly appalling and unaccustomed a manner before their arrival in the Fansler family.

  “Now, Reed,” Kate said, responding with more irritation than she knew to be deserved, “there’s no need to act as though we were all living in some earlier time—if there ever was an earlier time when bored and lonely women did not have lovers.”

  Reed did not take up this argument, which he doubted Kate even intended to pursue. “You must understand, dear Kate,” he went on in a kindly manner certain to increase her irritation, “that their mother embodied their ideal of womanhood. No doubt they chose their wives because they assumed them to resemble their mother in all important aspects.”

  “ ‘I want a gal just like the gal who married dear old dad,’ ” Kate sang, with something regrettably close to a sneer.

  “She was their mother also,” Reed repeated in a more conciliatory tone. “I think you should meet with them and offer them sympathy, pointing out your own state of shock and, incidentally, the fact that you had hardly planned for your biological father to turn up in that tumultuous way.”

  “He wasn’t a bit tumultuous; he was as cautious as possible; even you noticed that.”

  “What on earth is the matter with you, Kate? I’ve never known you to be so intolerant and so impatient. Try to see it from their point of view.”

  “If you learned tomorrow that your mother had had an affair, even that your father wasn’t your father, would you get your knickers in such a twist?”

  Reed seemed to consider the question. “The truth is, I can’t imagine such a possibility. But don’t you see, that’s just the point. Neither could they. And this new DNA technique doesn’t offer them the chance to call Jay a liar and an impostor. The same method even proved Jefferson’s congress with a slave, and he was one of the authors of the Declaration of Independence though a little less certain about the independence of slaves.”

  Kate abandoned her protests. “Say you’ll come with me, Reed. Do you suppose we’ll meet again at Laurence’s club, or perhaps in the Oak Room?”

  “If I know Laurence,” Reed said, “we’ll meet in his office, with the door shut. Laurence behind his desk, William and David in chairs side by side, and you and I on a couch opposite the three of them. You must promise me to listen, to sigh sympathetically, and to indicate in your looks as in your speech that you too are devastated by the thought of your mother’s perfidy.”

  “Devastated? I think it’s the best thing that ever happened to her, and it’s made me happy to know she had it off with a good lover, at least for a time.”

  “Kate!” Reed was glowering. “I’m not accompanying you to that meeting unless you promise to behave as I have indicated.”

  “It’s a promise,” Kate said. “I’m certainly not facing those three alone, even if I have to pretend that adultery in women is far more serious a matter than a husband’s fling.”

  “There is no need to exaggerate,” Reed said.

  They met the following afternoon, late, after Kate’s class and office hour. She arrived alone. The men had all preceded her there, and rose at her entrance, though not without simultaneously glaring at her, the Fansler faces devoid of smiles. She was not offered any refreshment, and might have asked for something—surely a cup of tea would have been appropriate—but Reed glared in his turn, and she subsided on to the couch beside him. She could not, she realized, remember when she had last been in a room with all three of her brothers and no other Fansler. She regarded them now as though they were strangers to whom she had just been introduced. They wore suits with vests and somber ties, although their colored shirts would surely not have been thought suitable in earlier times. David even had a white collar on his blue shirt, quite dashing in its way. Kate had been tempted that morning to put on a skirt, but banished the thought; she wore trousers, with a silk blouse under an elegant jacket, and pearls. Well, one owed something to one’s family, however prelapsarian. And then the pertinence of that word—for her mother had certainly had a “fall”—so pleased her that she smiled before quickly repressing it.

  All this had been the matter of a minute at most. Laurence cleared his throat. “The question is,” he announced, his opening words having, as was obvious, earlier been decided upon, “what are we going to do about this appalling situation?”

  They all looked at Kate.

  “Do?” she asked. “Is there anything to do?”

  “We must try to keep it from the children,” Laurence said. “I have not mentioned it to my wife, and have advised William and David to act likewise. The fewer who know, the better. We must avoid scandal at all costs.”

  Kate, who had been congratulating herself on the mildness of her intentions, let out an exclamation of amazement.

  “Scandal! Laurence, what century are you living in? We’ve recently entered a new one, or didn’t you notice? There hasn’t been such a thing as scandal—politics aside—since 1970 at least. Anyway, who the hell would care if the story were published in the Post?” Kate never read the Post but she had somehow gathered that that was where scandals came home to roost.

  Reed put a hand on Kate’s arm; with a frown of apology, she subsided lower into the leather couch. “What Kate means, I think,” Reed said, “is that we are speaking of something that happened more than half a century ago. Your mother, though perhaps tempted, did not run off with Kate’s father. She stayed to serve as an admirable mother to you all. Surely that is what should be remembered.”

  “That’s as may be,” William said. “But had it been known that Kate was not the child of our father, she would not have inherited. His will was perfectly clear on this point, as we would expect it to be.”

  “Are you saying you want me to give you back my share of the inheritance?” Kate asked, without anger. She sounded genuinely curious.

  “As I’m sure you are all, as lawyers, aware,” Reed remarked, “a child who might possibly be the child of the woman’s husband—even if, as in one notorious case, he has been absent for eleven months—such a child is considered to be the husband’s, legally and in every other way. Unless your father had explicitly disinherited her in his will—and we know that he did not even suspect that she was not his daughter—she has every right to her inheritance. That was before DNA, of course,” he added apologetically.

  “We don’t want her money,” Laurence all but shouted. “William was just pointing out that this is not just an insignificant matter.” The other two nodded in agreement.

  Kate pulled herself together; she sat up straight, and looked at each of her brothers in turn.

  “I’m truly sorry this has happened,” she said, speaking slowly, “and had I had a choice, had I been offered the opportunity, I would have prevented it. As you know, Jay came to Laurence first, not to me. Had I been the first to hear of this, I would have . . . “ She paused. “To be honest, I don’t know what I would have done, but I believe I would not have gone forward without considering your feelings. I never had the opportunity to consider your feelings or my own. Let me also add that Laurence thought of Edith Wharton when he first heard from Jay, and there cannot be, or ever have been, anyone more proper than Edith Wharton’s family. Edith Wharton herself, by the way, had a passionate love affair while married, though with more cause than our mother had.”

  “What on earth do you mean?” David asked.

  Kate chose to interpret his question as relating to Edith Wharton. “Edith Wharton,” she explained, “had a feckless, unreliable, generally disgraceful husband. Our mother did not. All the same, I just want to point out that this sort of thing can happen in the best of families. The very best.”

  She sat back, looking apologetic.

  “Why the hell are we discussing Edith Wharton?” William
shouted.

  “The point we want to make here,” Laurence said, ignoring William and looking at Reed, “is our desire, certainly justified, to know more about this man, this person. He says he’s an architect, but is he? I know his motives may not be sinister, but I, we, would all feel better knowing more about him. Don’t you agree, Reed?”

  “Of course we both agree,” Reed said, taking Kate’s hand, whether in sympathy or to shut her up she was not sure. “Did you want me to undertake an investigation? I would of course report all findings to you.”

  “No need for that,” Laurence said, rising. “I just wanted to be sure we saw eye to eye on the matter, at least to that extent.” The other two rose also. Reed and Kate took rather longer to extricate themselves from the deep leather couch. When they were all on their feet, a slightly more amiable atmosphere could be felt.

  “We didn’t intend to blame you, Kate,” William said. “Of course you know that.”

  “Of course,” Kate agreed. She believed that in recent years, certainly since her brothers had all become responsible adults, married and with families, more and more established, richer and richer, they had resented her for a good deal, not least for keeping her name, Fansler, instead of taking Reed’s name when, far later than they considered appropriate, she had married him. Kate’s carryings-on under the name of Fansler had caused them all embarrassment, and, in addition to rebuking her, they would, if they could, have gladly banished her to the outer Hebrides. And if they had always blamed her in a general way, they now knew how right they had been: even the circumstances of her birth had turned out to be a disaster.

  “We must do our best to shut this man up,” David said, and Reed feared the whole discussion might begin all over again. The Fansler men could not believe that Jay did not have a menacing motive. Reed took a firmer grip on Kate’s hand and pulled her from the room. Kate waved goodbye as they went.

  Reed and Kate began walking uptown, each of them pondering what to make of the Fansler brothers’ fears and comments. Kate held Reed’s arm, wanting to feel close to him, partly as comfort after the unsettling feelings her brothers always evoked in her, partly because his wonderful good sense compared to them filled her with gratitude. Reed carried her briefcase in his other hand. She knew he was going to speak about the meeting they had just left, and waited for his words.

  “They’re certain to hire an investigator,” Reed said. “No doubt of that. They all but said so.”

  “Did they? I always hear threats, but nothing definitive about the form the threats will take, if any. I understand the fury in their words, but not the words, as Desdemona more or less put it.”

  “Desdemona denied her father, and you found yours. Well, I can hardly blame your brothers,” Reed said. “I wanted to investigate the man myself. I think it’s a way we feel we can get some control in a situation that was so unexpected and startling. Probably it’s rational to be suspicious, at least to some degree. What strikes me as intriguing is that you seem the least curious about him, when you might be the most curious.”

  “I know. I seem more to worry about what difference knowing he’s my father makes than about what he’s been doing between my birth and now. Which doesn’t make much sense, since what he’s been doing would tell me what sort of person he is.”

  “Your brothers,” Reed said, squeezing her arm against his body in acknowledgment of her words, “can call upon a lot of influence. I suspect that the investigator they hire may be very well connected indeed.”

  “Not a poor, foolish amateur like me. What difference does it make if he’s well connected?”

  “For one thing, he’ll have access to criminal and other records.”

  “Reed. Do you think Jay is, or has been, a common criminal?”

  “I don’t know. I’m wondering if we should warn him.”

  “You mean warn him about my brothers but not about your delvings into his past.”

  Reed laughed. “Mine were superficial and delicate delvings.”

  Kate stopped walking for a moment and withdrew her arm. “Let’s go to a museum,” she said. “Let’s look at a few wonderful paintings and forget all this nastiness.”

  “Good idea. The Metropolitan?”

  “No. Too big, too spread out, too pullulating.”

  “Kate! What a word. Surely they don’t pullulate at the Met.”

  “It just means teeming,” she said. “Crowded. Like the mackerel crowded sea.”

  “What?”

  “Yeats. Not to worry. Let’s go to the Frick. It’s my favorite museum, bespeaking as it does an earlier time when elegance was possible due to the lack of taxes, the lack of regulation, and the exploitation of the working classes.”

  “In fact,” Reed said, “I think Frick did Carnegie’s dirty work. But I’m happy to enjoy the art and magnificent decor he has left behind.”

  “ ‘The evil men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.’ It seems to have been the other way around with Frick; his lovely museum is certainly good.” She put her arm back in his and they walked on.

  “Are there any pictures you particularly want to see?” Reed asked.

  “Yes,” she rather surprised him by saying. “I used to go there with my mother. There are two Holbein portraits that might be titled good and evil: Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell. It’s amazing to see how Holbein accomplished it. Then there are the Rembrandts. Actually, the self-portrait at the Met is magnificent and two years later than the one at the Frick, but one has to climb stairs and wander about to find it. And then there is The Polish Rider.”

  “Really Kate, you amaze me. Here we have been married all these years, and you never mentioned the Frick before, let alone suggested going there.”

  “It just seemed the right antidote to my Fansler brothers,” Kate said. “But you mustn’t mind if we just look at those four pictures. We can sweep through the rooms if you want to admire the furnishings, but might you agree not to loiter? I believe in being very object-oriented in museums.”

  “It’s so long since I’ve been there, I’m happy to follow you in every way,” Reed said.

  And indeed the luxuriant and tasteful decorations did much to counter the ambience of the Fansler office. Kate and Reed contemplated Kate’s four pictures; Reed agreed on the amazing subtlety by which Holbein had made clear his opinion of the two men without failing to produce an acceptable portrait of each. The self-portrait of Rembrandt struck Reed most forcibly.

  “Have you ever noticed,” he asked, “how few pictures there are of old people, and how most of them seem contrived to deny signs of aging? Rembrandt is different.”

  Kate looked at the picture for a long time. “Jay is old,” she said, “though I never think of him that way. He’s older than Rembrandt was when he painted this picture. I know, people live longer now, and in better health. Still, Jay is going along in his seventies. As Falstaff more or less said of someone else, he cannot help but be in his seventies.”

  “True,” Reed said. “I hadn’t really thought of his age. No doubt you’ll be just as upright and sprightly in your time. Genes you know.”

  “I shall never be sprightly,” Kate said, turning to go. But it did occur to her that her Fansler father had died younger than Jay would; Jay was flourishing.

  CHAPTER NINE

  But that thy brothers beat aside the point.

  For some days, nothing happened. Kate mentioned to Reed how odd it was that they should be devoting so much time to wondering about a man they had never heard of until some weeks ago; she hadn’t kept track, but it wasn’t that many weeks, was it? Now when they weren’t dreading whatever steps Laurence was taking, or hiring someone to take, they were hoping nothing violent had happened to Jay. Whatever kind of fugitive or adventurer he turned out to be, one hardly, as Reed pointed out to a puzzled Kate, wanted him snuffed out so soon after his dramatic appearance.

  “Snuffed out?” Kate asked.

  “Well, forced to disappear. Snu
ffed out of our presence. It’s very odd indeed; very odd.” So they kept repeating to one another, finding some consolation in this, particularly because, by some silent, never formulated pact, they had not mentioned him to anyone else. (Kate’s conversation with Leslie hardly counted; she was not “anyone else.”) Reed had no friends toward whom such intimacy was expected. Thus like Laurence, but for different reasons—so they hoped—they kept silent, and could only repeat the same apprehensions over and over to one another, at the same time debating why they should feel so apprehensive about a man they scarcely knew.

  And then Laurence was heard from. Abiding by the habits of the established male world he still viewed as basically unchanged, he called Reed, man to man, at Reed’s office.

  “Well,” Laurence barked over the telephone, “I was right. The man’s a criminal.”

  “Oh, yes?” Reed said, waiting for the rest of it.

  “He’s been in the Witness Protection Program. He left it, and no doubt has now been forced to disappear in fear for his life. Men who leave the Witness Protection Program are murdered more often than not.”

  “Perhaps,” Reed said. “But not everyone in the program is a criminal. Sometimes they are only in danger from others who are criminals.”

  “Usually they’ve been criminals themselves who have testified against their associates in return for no sentence and the Witness Protection Program. Everyone knows that.”