Three Times a Charm

by Jean Stone

  Sarah’s first instinct was to run back to the safety net of West Hope, to forget that she’d heard Melissa’s voice.

  She might have done that if it weren’t for Burch.

  What was Jason subjecting their son to? Had another woman taken over already? Had another woman—Melissa or Margie or Maxine, it didn’t matter—already assumed the position of taking Sarah’s place as Jason’s lover, as Burch’s mom?

  If Sarah were like Lily, she might march over to the studio, blast open the door, and demand answers. If she were like Jo, she might be able to appear stoic and unaffected, keeping her pain in perspective. If she were like Elaine, she would simply close the drapes and feel as if she deserved it.

  But Sarah was Sarah, so she sat down on the sofa, her hands slightly trembling, her heart slowly breaking, each injustice she’d endured in all of her years rising to meet her once again. It was the kind of pain she’d never dared to share: not with her friends, nor with, most of all, Jason. If they knew she was hurting she would have to let them in, into her world, into her shame.

  Her aching, after all, had little to do with Jason. Nor was it about Burch. It was about her.

  Half-breed, ha-ha. White Indian girl.

  She sank her teeth into her lower lip to stop it from quivering.

  When the phone rang nearly an hour later, Sarah was still sitting, hands folded, the red petal dress still bundled at her feet. Her eyes jerked toward the phone, though her head did not move. After three rings, voice mail kicked on. Her body braced itself.

  “Hey, Mom,” a voice, Burch’s, said. “Where the heck are you?”

  She bolted from the couch, grabbed the receiver. “Burch? Hi, honey, I was just about to come to the studio.” She didn’t say she was late because she’d been distracted by shopping, or lie and say she’d been tied up in traffic. She didn’t say she’d been sitting there sulking.

  “Wait for us there. The coolest thing happened. Dad got us tickets to see Wicked.”

  “Wicked what?” She pressed her fingers against the back of her neck. At some point in the last hour she’d developed a headache, a dull, I-hate-my-life kind of headache.

  “It’s only the coolest thing on Broadway,” Burch said, with almost giddy excitement that she hadn’t heard in a long time. “Nobody can get tickets for something like six months. But Dad got them for tonight. For four. He’s a genius, Mom.”

  She might have responded about his comment on genius, but she was trying to process that Jason had tickets for four. He must be including one of Burch’s new friends.

  “Is that boy going?” she asked. “Your new friend Glen?”

  Her son paused for a moment, then he nervous-laughed. “No, Mom, it’s not Glen. I’ve met this girl….”

  “You have a girlfriend?” So soon? she thought. So young? She thought about Andrew. And Cassie. And all that.

  “She’s beautiful, Mom,” Burch said over her thoughts. “She has big blue eyes, and long black hair just like you. Except she’s not a Cherokee. Her name is Melissa.”

  30

  Melissa was a quiet, shy girl with pale eyes and pale freckles who might be pretty one day but was now far from the “beautiful” that Burch had conveyed. She was, however, fourteen, older than Burch, and she dressed like a premature slut.

  “Can’t you do something to stop them?” Sarah whispered to Jason during intermission as they walked out to the lobby, leaving the two kids snuggled in their seats.

  He laughed. “Why would I do that? Our son is in love.”

  “He’s not in love, Jason. He’s mesmerized by her breasts. Burch is too young to be mesmerized by breasts.”

  It had been an awkward evening so far—well, awkward for Sarah, who didn’t keep her attention on the stage but on her son, who was rapidly maturing between the first and second acts in the Gershwin Theatre.

  “Say something,” Sarah said, leaning against a wall, trying to dodge the crowd.

  “What?” Jason asked, his smile as enchanting as the night they’d first met, his body as long and lean as hers, the same as when they’d met. “You’ll only accuse me of being a man.”

  She folded her arms. “It’s a conspiracy.”

  He stepped closer to her. He bundled her hair into his hands, then leaned down and murmured in her ear. “You are a good mother. You are a good woman too. You know enough to know he’s growing up, that’s all.”

  Sarah closed her eyes. “I thought Melissa was in love with you.”

  Jason laughed again. “What?”

  “Well, not that Melissa. I heard a phone message. She said, ‘Am I going to see you later?’ then added, ‘I love you.’ I thought it was a message for you.”

  His smile became a smirk. “Didn’t she sound a little young?”

  “Give me a break. I’m not used to women calling my son.”

  “Women?” Jason asked. “Oh, you are so very funny.” He scrunched her hair again, then rubbed the back of her aching neck. “Tell me, dear Sarah, were you jealous?”

  She could have said no, but it would not have been true. “Yes,” she replied. “I was very jealous. I sat on the sofa and felt very sad.” She didn’t tell him about Irene’s visit earlier that day to Lily’s, or Sarah’s subsequent reminder that we can never know another, that trust can often be misplaced. She didn’t tell him she was sad because she hated when life changed.

  He kissed her cheek, once, then twice.

  And suddenly, standing there in the airless, buzzing lobby of the George Gershwin Theatre, with hundreds of patrons jockeying all around them, Sarah asked, “Do you remember Laura Carrington?”

  Jason shrugged. “The actress? Sure.”

  Sarah touched his face. “Did you ever realize that Laura Carrington has a diamond-shaped birthmark on her left cheek?”

  With a small scowl, Jason stared at Sarah, then his gaze moved back toward the inside of the theater, where they’d left their son. “Burch has one too.”

  Sarah nodded. “I’ve read that birthmarks are commonly identical in a parent, a grandparent, some kind of relative.”

  Jason turned his full body toward Sarah. “What are you saying?”

  She bit her lower lip. “Sutter Jones told me Laura Carrington is my mother.” She had said it out loud now, she had made it real beyond the edges of her conscience, the borders of her soul.

  “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

  She assured him that no, she was not shitting him.

  “Jesus,” he said, and Sarah nodded in return. His eyes wandered around the crowd as if expecting something, someone to approach. “Did this guy ask for money?”

  Sarah blinked. “What?”

  “This guy, the lawyer. Did he ask you for money?”

  She laughed. Unlike her, Jason was streetwise. She’d kept her life so closed from the rest of the world that she never had to worry about con men and their scams. “No, he didn’t ask for money. What’s wrong? You don’t think I’m classy enough to be Laura Carrington’s daughter?” She tried to sound as if she was teasing, but a small part of her hoped for assurance that, yes, she was classy enough to be the famous woman’s child.

  Jason pulled his eyes back to her. “I don’t believe we’re having this conversation here.”

  Well, neither did she.

  “But do you believe this guy?”

  “I had my doubts. Until I thought about the birthmark.” She did not elaborate on how her parents met, what had happened then and now. She did not tell him about the education fund that Laura had established.

  And then the lights flicked on and off, and Sarah squeezed Jason’s hand and was glad to go back to her seat, where it was dark enough to mask the sorrow of her tears.

  Imagine her, Jo Lyons, being foolish enough to let down her guard after all that she’d been through with men.

  She’d retreated to the guest room after Irene left. She’d skipped dinner and had tried to ignore that Lily and Elaine tiptoed around the apartment long into the evening, as if the
slightest noise might shatter Jo.

  She was beyond shattering, she thought the next morning, as she sat by the window in the back of a taxi, with Lily next to her and Elaine next to Lily. She was beyond shattering because there had been far too much of that in her life. She would hold her head high, mourn in private, not complain in public. The way many women made it through many days, she supposed.

  This day, Friday, Jo would make it “through” by doing as Lily and Elaine instructed. They had scheduled appointments with caterers who were the “chichiest of the chic” (Lily’s term), hoping they might be able to steal some ideas, or at least adapt some. Lily had decided to pose as a bride, with Jo and Elaine acting as her attendants. They’d explain they were still in the decision-making process of the wedding plans, the whos, the whats, the wheres.

  They’d made four appointments, a plot of Lily’s no doubt to keep Jo occupied, to add a layer of Teflon merriment to soothe the exposed nerves.

  Tomorrow they would ride to the airport in the limo Lily had managed to rent for their return trip to West Hope. They would pick up Elaine’s father and his companion, Mrs. Tuttle, who were flying back from Miami, where they’d disembarked. Who wouldn’t have fun when enveloped by happy vacationers clad in flowered shirts and sandals and sporting island tans?

  Jo stared out at the traffic and high-rise buildings and the people-in-a-hurry. She thought about the cruise that she’d taken once. She’d negotiated a large amount of airtime on a Boston radio station on behalf of a client who was testing a new product. She hadn’t known that the station was running a promotion for ad agencies and public-relations firms, awarding Caribbean cruises based on airtime advertising dollars spent. Jo had qualified for two trips but had gone only once, and then only because her assistant said she needed to relax, that maybe she’d meet a man. She hadn’t accomplished either.

  She didn’t know if Andrew had ever gone on a cruise. Could he have gone with Irene?

  Clenching her fist, she pushed her knuckles against her teeth.

  Andrew.

  Irene.

  Had they really been lovers?

  They had known each other for years.

  Had their relationship soured?

  Had someone found out?

  Was that why he’d left New York City for West Hope?

  Had it cost him his career—or had he relinquished it for her?

  She closed her eyes and tried to force away the image of Andrew and Irene naked, kissing—oh, God—having sex, writhing and moaning and loving each other, his breath and his touch and his everything blending with Irene’s the way it had blended with hers.

  If she weren’t in the cab, she would have cried out then.

  Instead, Jo opened her eyes to the urban chaos outside the window, grateful she’d be home in thirty-six hours.

  “Right here is fine,” Lily directed the cab driver, and he steered over to the curb.

  Jo got out without speaking, stood on the sidewalk, looked at the storefront whose sign read, ROB BARRETT CATERING.

  Lily said with a giggle, “He’d better not think he’s going to Rob us,” and Elaine let out a laugh and Jo followed them in, because it was her job and she was a woman and was beyond shattering.

  31

  Foot-square slabs of ice, lit from the bottom, presenting chilled shrimp and cracked crab; summertime trays laden with thin, trimmed wheatgrass that served as a meadowlike bed for bright baby carrots and slices of sun-yellow squash; clear plastic trays embedded with tiny white lights, blanketed with a layer of aqua-colored sea glass, atop which sat delicate sushi selections.

  “Fabuloso,” Lily (who’d given her name as Louise Corning of Greenwich and Hamilton—Bermuda, of course) exclaimed. The too-black-haired, too-tattooed, black-leather-panted Rob Barrett had no idea that the hors d’oeuvre suggestions would end up in similar presentations on the menu of Second Chances.

  They sat in a Spartan lounge where everything had been decorated in either pewter or black, from the low cocktail table to the abstract art on the wall. The chairs were made of some new high-grade plastic that looked futuristic but was uncomfortable. Rob Barrett offered champagne, but Lily twittered and said good heavens, it was only ten A.M. They settled on tea with spiced orange slices.

  Jo wanted to ask the costs of the simple hors d’oeuvres, but Lily had warned her against talking money. “When you’re dealing with Rob Barrett, it simply isn’t done,” she’d said in the ride over in the cab. Of course, Lily would know.

  He asked what their thoughts were on Dover sole versus veal. “Tenderloins,” he added, “with a light cranberry and walnut sauce.”

  If he hadn’t said “cranberries,” Jo wouldn’t have been reminded of the berries Sarah arranged on the breakfast plates the morning after the Benson wedding, the morning after Jo and Andrew had finally made love. She sipped her tea, toyed with the orange slice.

  “Well, my mother is a vegetarian,” Lily said, perhaps referring to Sarah, perhaps meaning to give Elaine and Jo a reason to chuckle—as if they needed one beyond the entertainment of Rob Barrett, whose animated presence unwittingly was helping to lift Jo’s mood.

  “Mushroom phyllos!” Rob said. “But nothing like the phyllos you’re used to seeing. Let me see if we have some in the kitchen.” He pranced from the room.

  “This is going well,” Elaine whispered, but Lily just smiled. “But didn’t you say he did your second wedding, Lily? When he was with a different caterer, before he was on his own?”

  “I did. He did. But that was eons ago and my mother-in-law was the one who worked with him, not me.”

  It was hard to envision Lily in anyone’s backseat, which might have been part of why the marriage did not work.

  “Well, it doesn’t look as if he remembers you, Lily,” Elaine continued. “That doesn’t upset you?”

  Lily half-smiled. “Not at all,” she said, straightening the hem of her Nina Ricci skirt. “Everything is going according to plan.”

  Jo had no idea what she meant. Then Rob returned with a small tray covered with delicate layers of phyllo dough and three tiny hors d’oeuvres resting on top.

  “Try one,” he said with a confident grin.

  The room was hushed as Lily tasted. Her eyes fluttered to Rob, then she tasted again. “Hmm,” she said, turning to Jo, turning to Elaine. “You know, girls, this is reminiscent of something we just had at the Bensons’ affair.”

  Jo nearly gulped her tea.

  “Girls?” Lily asked. “What do you think?”

  Rob Barrett said nothing; he passed the tray to Jo, then Elaine.

  “Well,” Elaine said. “I don’t think the phyllos at the Benson wedding were nearly as clever.” She then turned to Jo and offered a wink, and suddenly Jo knew.

  There it was, she thought. Lily’s hidden purpose for this charade. She shifted on her chair and wondered what was coming next.

  “So,” Rob said smoothly, his voice lowering from its sales pitch to a curious grovel, “you were at the Benson wedding?”

  “Why, yes,” Lily replied. “You didn’t do that one, did you?”

  Rob set down the tray, cleared his throat. “Oh, my, no. It was New Year’s, after all. We’d been booked for two years.” He slipped his hands into the pockets of his leather pants. “We were asked, of course. But we had to decline.”

  And then Lily sighed sweetly and began shaking her head, and now Jo was certain, quite certain, that this whole scene had been planned by Lily, the ultimate scheming diva.

  “It’s such a shame about what happened,” Lily said quietly.

  “Oh?” Rob asked. “I heard the event was quite delicious.”

  “Oh, the wedding definitely was spectacular. But didn’t you hear? What happened in Rio? What John Benson did to poor Irene?”

  Jason insisted on going with Sarah. He suggested they call Sutter’s office first; she refused. She wasn’t sure that, once the moment arrived, she’d be able to enter, she’d be able to do this. At least this way S
utter wouldn’t know that she was coming; at least this way she could change her mind and not feel foolish.

  The cab let them off on the corner of Madison Avenue and East 67th. Sarah wanted to walk from there.

  She would have liked to hold Jason’s hand as they ambled past a few boutique shops, a few discreet doorways, luxury apartments, or office suites. She wondered how long it had been since she and Jason had held hands, since she’d felt his long fingers tangled through hers. She would have liked to feel that strength now but felt too awkward to ask.

  “Are you angry with her?” Jason asked, suddenly.

  Sarah blinked. “Angry?”

  “Well, haven’t you wondered what it would have been like to be raised by her—by Laura Carrington? Growing up in Hollywood would have been a whole lot different than life on the reservation. If it were me, I think I’d be pissed.”

  Jason was a wonderful man who felt honesty was important, though sometimes he didn’t understand tact. Or the Cherokee.

  “The Rule of Acceptance,” Sarah said. “To all things there is a time, a place, a purpose.”

  He laughed. “It’s always that easy for you, isn’t it? You retreat to your ancestors to explain everything.”

  It felt like a barb, a soft punch to her heart. Jason sounded as if Sarah thought life was blasé—hers, his, everyone’s. She stopped walking; he did too. “I had a wonderful, full life with my father and Glisi,” she told him. “Besides, who knows what I would have had with Laura Carrington? She might have been run out of Hollywood if she’d gone public about me. I might have been raised in a trailer outside of Yuma or some other remote place.” She was attempting to make a joke, attempting to shift the discomfort she’d felt at his observation.

  Jason merely shrugged.

  As they began walking again, Sarah realized that if this situation had been his, if Laura had been his mother, he, indeed, would have been pissed. She wondered if something was wrong with her that she didn’t feel that way too.