Three Times a Charm

by Jean Stone

  She looked around the room. It had changed since she’d first helped settle them in. It had things now; it had life. A grand piano sat by the window; bookcases lined one wall. A music stand was there, and a tall acoustic bass. It was a small apartment, but it was filled with things that were important in Jason’s life and would become important to Burch because he lived there too.

  “Well, if you won’t show me his room, we’ll have to talk about something else. My mother, for example.”

  He sat beside her on the sofa. He put his elbows on his knees and cupped his hands under his chin. “I haven’t seen you in weeks, and you want to talk about your deceased mother?” He probably thought this was a joke.

  She touched his arm. “It’s not as simple as that.” It felt good to touch him, to sense his flesh and blood, even though it lay beneath the fabric of a shirt she didn’t know, that she’d never laundered, that she’d never seen hanging on the back of the twig chair in the bedroom of the log cabin.

  Her longing, her loneliness, melded together; she did not feel like laughing now.

  Taking a slow breath, Sarah told him the story that Sutter Jones had told her, the story she’d told her friends on the train. Still, she kept Laura Carrington’s identity hidden; she didn’t know why. Perhaps she was trying to protect her father. Or the woman she didn’t even know. Perhaps Sarah had simply spent too many years keeping too much within. Let stillness be your friend, Glisi had instructed. Most times, it had worked.

  “Wow, Sarah,” Jason said when she was finished. “Are you sure it’s true?”

  He was voicing the same reaction she’d first had. It seemed so unbelievable, and yet…

  “I told you I knew I was a white Indian. Of course, by the time I knew it, no one was alive to corroborate the story—at least, no one I trusted for the truth.” She remembered when she’d told Jason, back when she first learned she was pregnant. “I’m only half Native American,” she’d said, as if it might have mattered to him, which, apparently, thankfully, it hadn’t. “I don’t care if you’re from Mars,” he had replied, and they’d hugged their naked bodies and lay together with their legs and arms entangled and their smiles becoming kisses and their hearts beating with the same rhythm, even back then.

  “What do you suppose she wants?” he asked suddenly.

  Sarah frowned. “What a horrid thing to ask.”

  “Not really. In these situations, don’t people usually want something? Money? Housing? An organ transplant?” He smiled, but she couldn’t tell if he was joking. He took hold of her hand.

  The sweet gesture took her by surprise. She’d become so accustomed to their independent, separate lives, their one-beat-short-of-total-commitment. He was a musician, after all, not a vocation prone to permanence or availability—emotional or otherwise—when your partner had a problem and needed to talk. It occurred to her now that for all their years and their happiness together, they’d never really become one.

  “I don’t know if I’m ready to meet her,” Sarah said. “I just wondered what you thought.”

  “I think you’re in New York and your mother is here, but before you go see her, you should find out some more facts.”

  She almost told him then who her mother was. But Jason turned to her first, lifted her heavy hair and piled it on her head, leaned down and kissed her neck. “I also think that Burch won’t be home from school for another hour,” he said.

  So instead of telling him about Laura Carrington, Sarah tipped her head back, settled into his kisses, and realized that everything else could wait, that everything would be fine, if only he’d stop calling this place Burch’s home.

  25

  Irene had been back four days—Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday—during which time Andrew had served as host to her select group of friends; fielded a few phone calls from the media, who vanished once Andrew convinced them there was no juicy story; and attended a few meetings with Irene and Barry Franklin, John’s attorney, regarding how to keep John’s business interests flourishing while he was on the lam. Each time Andrew hinted it might be time for Cassie and him to go home, Irene conjured another pretext to keep them in New York.

  “I’m so nervous about the businesses. I need you to help me understand.”

  Or, “Cassie’s presence simply calms me down. You’re so lucky, Andrew, that you have a child.”

  Or, the worst, “Next to John, Andrew, you’re the only one who ever understood me.”

  Not that he believed it. But the collective comments did their job of successful manipulation.

  By Wednesday night, however, he was determined to tell her they would stay for the remainder of the week and then leave on the weekend. He waited until he and Irene were alone, when Cassie was in the kitchen helping Elsa prepare dinner and Irene had made cocktails in John’s study.

  Andrew, however, passed on the martini and poured himself club soda. “Irene,” he said when she had settled on the sofa and he in the leather chair, “I’m so glad Cassie and I were able to come down and help you out. But you need to think about what else we can accomplish before the end of the week.”

  She plucked the olive from the gold pick that she’d balanced on the glass. Thankfully her mania had leveled off in the past few days. She was acting sensible again, less like a whimpering prima donna. “Is that your way of saying you’ll be abandoning me too?”

  So much for acting sensible.

  “Irene,” he said, “I’m not abandoning anything. I’ll help you when I can. But only from West Hope.”

  She seemed to think a minute. Then she said, “Andrew, must we talk about this now?”

  “Now or later. Not that there’s much to say. West Hope is where I live,” he said. “It’s where Cassie goes to school.”

  Irene emitted what sounded like a reluctant sigh. Then she stood up and walked over to John’s desk. She opened the center drawer and pulled out a piece of paper. “Andrew, dear,” she said, “you’ve helped me keep the media at bay, you’ve helped me entertain my friends, but we’ve barely begun the work. The real reason that you’re here.”

  Of course he didn’t understand.

  She crossed the room to him. She handed him the piece of paper. “John left this letter with his departure note. It outlines what he needs from you.”

  Andrew took the note but did not open it.

  “Read it,” she said, touching his chin with her long fingernails. “You’ll find he has appointed you to administer his businesses—you know, the magazine interests, the broadcasting group. He’s asked for you to do it until a buyer is found. It will no doubt take some time, several months, perhaps.”

  She went back to her position on the sofa. “Barry wanted me to tell you right away, but I thought it might be better to acclimate you first. Familiarize you with the businesses. Get you a little used to being back here in New York.”

  He didn’t say a word; he just sat there, trying to absorb what he was hearing.

  “It’s a big job, Andrew. But you’ll be compensated nicely. John is giving you your choice of TV or radio station for your trouble. Oh, yes, and managing interest in Buzz magazine.” Then she smiled and raised her glass again and added, “Your work will keep you very busy in the city. But you and Cassie will be comfortable right here in the penthouse. Don’t worry your sweet mind, I’ll see to everything.”

  They knew the address of the Bensons’ Park Avenue penthouse because that was where they’d sent the invoices for the wedding, including the last one that hadn’t as yet been paid. Jo convinced Lily to wait until Thursday to show up at the door, to give Irene more time to breathe, to give Andrew more time to help her get situated in her new life alone.

  In truth, Jo wanted to wait because she was so uncomfortable just “dropping in.”

  They spent Wednesday afternoon at Bergdorf’s and Calvin’s and Carolina Herrera’s, because Lily had phoned ahead for appointments. Though they saw many things and got many ideas, Lily sputtered because Sarah hadn’t joined the
m, because now she might be too caught up in this mother-thing to pay full attention to her duties. “The couple on the mountain and Julie and Helen are très simple, don’t you see?” Lily bemoaned. “But we haven’t begun to nail down the details for you-know-who!” She couldn’t say “Rhonda Blair,” because even on the streets of New York, Ms. Blair’s name was recognizable.

  After wearing out their feet and their energy too, Elaine suggested they go somewhere famous for dinner, like Sardi’s or Tavern on the Green, both of which Lily loved because they meant being seen. She said, “Yes, it will be grand for our business,” though Jo suspected it was more grand for Lily’s ego, which had already endured the small blow of having to take the train into the city.

  A nice dinner out might also help divert their conversation from Sarah and from speculation about what she might or might not do, and what might be her most effective approach.

  “If the woman is her mother, she must meet her,” Elaine, mother of three, proclaimed.

  “She’s been fine without her all these years,” countered Lily, whose parents had both been killed in a car accident when Lily was seventeen. “Why change that now?”

  Jo thought it should be totally up to Sarah, that none of them had any idea what it was like to be her, what it was like to have been raised on a reservation, how the Cherokee thought, what their beliefs were.

  They all agreed, however, on having dinner out.

  They ended up at Sardi’s because Lily said Reginald had often invested in Broadway shows and his caricature was on the wall somewhere, did the girls know that?

  They had their dinner and strolled through Times Square now, where Elaine had never been, where the lights glowed as if it were daytime and people crowded on the sidewalks as if it were rush hour. While they walked, Jo kept an eye out for Andrew, as if he’d suddenly appear amid the throng.

  Elaine linked arms with Jo on one side, Lily on the other. “Dinner was fabulous,” she said. “Sardi’s is a good example of the philosophy my father adhered to: that the key to perfect food service is in knowing when to serve and when to let the guests breathe on their own. I need to follow that for catering too.” For years Elaine’s father’s upscale restaurant—the upscale restaurant—had been where the tony people dined during Saratoga’s “season.” Drawing from his expertise (and his recipes!), Elaine hoped to turn the catering division of Second Chances into a much-sought-after business.

  “Your father is a wonderful man,” Lily interjected as she broke from the others, danced around a couple of young boys who were looking up instead of where they were going, then linked arms again. “After your mother died, I considered marrying him.”

  A taxi honked. Another echoed. Elaine dropped both her arms and her lower jaw as well.

  They stopped at a crosswalk at Broadway and West 45th Street.

  Lily shrugged. “Oh, don’t be such a prude, Lainey. I wouldn’t have done it without your approval.”

  Jo bit her lip and tried not to laugh out loud. The digitized icon of the little man on the lamppost changed from red to white. They crossed the street.

  “You’re joking, Lily,” Elaine said as she darted around an oncoming pedestrian with the adroitness of a New Yorker. “Tell me you’re joking.”

  Lily laughed. “Not at all. Your father is a good-looking man. And he is so kind. It was after my second husband went back to his mother, and before I met my dear Reginald. It’s not as if I’d have harmed him or anything.”

  They kept walking. Jo thought back to Elaine’s mother’s funeral. They all had gone, of course. Sarah had brought a bouquet of herbs tied with a lovely ribbon. “The word death does not appear in the language of the Cherokee,” she’d said. “When we are born we come into a body that we call a robe. When we depart this earth, we simply leave the robe behind.”

  She wondered how Sarah must feel now that she’d been told that her mother had not departed, had not left her robe behind. The woman had not died, yet Sarah had lost her.

  Loss of any kind did not feel good.

  John Benson had not died, yet Irene had lost him.

  Andrew had not died, yet he was not with Jo now.

  A sudden chill invaded the night air. Jo turned up her coat collar and wondered what Andrew was doing right now and how he’d react when they showed up, unexpectedly, at the penthouse tomorrow.

  “How does it feel to hang out with your dad, the celebrity?”

  They sat in Jason’s kitchen eating Chinese take-out—steamed vegetables, brown rice, and plump fried dumplings.

  “He’s not a celebrity, Mom,” Burch said between bites. “He’s only Dad.”

  Burch looked more like Sarah every day, with his dark hair and eyes, his high cheekbones that became more dominant as his face grew toward manhood, his lean, angular body that promised to be tall.

  Well, Jason was tall and lean too, she supposed. But lately she preferred to think of Burch as being more a part of her than him.

  She wondered how he’d feel if he knew he had a grandmother other than Jason’s mother, who’d become stodgy over the years, living in the damp, overtaxed home on the New England shoreline, taking solace in the fact that the once merely middle-class abode was now worth well more than a million. She wondered how Burch would feel if he knew his other grandmother still needed to go about in sunglasses and a head scarf, not that he’d have an inkling who Laura Carrington was.

  She looked at the tiny diamond-shaped birthmark on Burch’s cheek and felt a sudden need to touch it, to connect with her son and her mother and her past. Instead, she smiled and said, “He’s not ‘just Dad.’ He’s your dad. And he’s always been famous to us, right?”

  Burch groaned and Jason laughed and scooped more brown rice onto his plate. For a moment Sarah felt they were a family once again.

  “So tell me about your new friend Glen,” she said. “What do you do together?”

  With a boyish shrug, Burch said, “I don’t know. Stuff. Nothing. You know.”

  Sarah looked at Jason, then back to their son. She forced a smile. “No, I really don’t know, honey.”

  Jason maneuvered the chopsticks, stacking the brown rice into a pyramid with ridiculous precision, the way that always had annoyed Sarah, but she had never told him. He said, “Glen’s going to teach you how to skateboard. I said I’d buy the gear.”

  “Yeah,” Burch replied. “That’ll be cool.”

  Skateboarding was not a sport that was conducive to the winding roads and dirt trails through the woods that surrounded the log cabin. Burch had watched it on TV from time to time, but he’d never said it was something he might like to try.

  “It sounds like fun,” she said with a smile she hoped would seem sincere. She wished, however, that Burch were five or six again, when she’d been able to tell if he liked something or not just by the way his forehead wrinkled or the way he squared his young-boy shoulders.

  “I hope you don’t mind, Sarah,” Jason said, “but I promised Burch he could go to the studio tomorrow after school. It’s the only chance he has to sit in on a session. You’re welcome to come too.”

  Sarah never had enjoyed the dark, windowless confines of a recording studio, the thickly padded walls and ceilings that suffocated sounds of life outside. She supposed it represented another of those wedges in the floundering relationship with the man she loved.

  So she said, “I need to do some work with the girls tomorrow, but I suppose I could come by when we’re done.”

  “I’ll be there at three-thirty,” Burch said, his face more animated. She thought of the hours, days, years she’d spent wishing Jason was around to spend more time with Burch, wishing father and son could form the kind of bond that comes from shared experience, shared memories, creating a kind of inner harmony that can’t be recorded in a studio.

  “I’ll leave you directions,” Jason added. “Come by whenever you’re finished with your business. My session starts at nine, and I’ll be there all day.” Unlike most musicians, Jaso
n preferred to work during the day, when studio time was cheaper and the technicians were relatively alert.

  “Hey, maybe I’ll get a chance to play the drums, huh, Dad?” Burch might have his dad’s proclivity toward music, but Sarah had always liked to think it was the spirit of the Cherokee that led him to the drums. Now she could also wonder if Jason’s genes weren’t the only ones that provided Burch with the yearning to simply perform.

  She thought about the other part of Burch’s heritage, how it might direct his life, once he knew about it, about her. “I’ll be there by three-thirty, for sure,” she said, then leaned across the table to touch the birthmark on his cheek. “Brown rice,” she said, and smiled at the secret she now held.

  26

  It had seemed years, not weeks, since Sarah had seen Burch, since she’d slept next to Jason. At nine-fifteen she finally awoke, feeling weighted from the night, thinking she should instead be invigorated in spirit and in body after making love to the man she adored, even if she couldn’t bring herself to live with him here.

  She opened her eyes and listened to the quiet. Tonight she would tell him about Laura Carrington.

  But for now, it was quiet. Her “boys” were gone: Jason at the studio, Burch off to school. Later they would do the things that boys did, bonding, she remembered. She tried to push away that jab of jealousy that Burch apparently was having such a great time in New York, such a great time without his mother, whom he no longer seemed to need.

  “Argggh,” she vocalized, then rolled onto her back and looked around the room. The high white walls were stark except for two framed posters, an original from Woodstock ’69 that Sarah had bought him for Christmas three years ago, and a black-and-white one of Jason’s concert in Montreal back in July 1990, the time, the place, where they had met.