Sins of Omission

by Fern Michaels

  Mickey felt the next days pass with tremendous discomfort. The three of them were thrown together incessantly. Bebe, playing the forlorn only child without Daniel, accompanied them everywhere. Reuben became more and more sullen and then began snapping at everyone. Mickey tried keeping it all inside, but the situation was becoming impossible. She wouldn’t dream of taking school away from Daniel, but without him there to balance out the foursome, everything was tense, like sitting on a powder keg liable to explode at any moment. Something had to give…and soon.

  Bebe couldn’t help noticing that Reuben was watching her every step with more than his usual suspicion, and that Mickey looked and acted as if she were waiting for a bomb to go off. The more he pushed at her, the angrier she got. And when she was angry she plotted ways to get back at him. All she needed was an opportunity. Why disappoint them? She was scheduled to leave for Paris in another few days and then on to England. She’d leave them with something to chew on….

  Mickey was saying something, but not to her. Although they had just sat down to breakfast, something was going on between Mickey and Reuben: the air was charged with electricity. Bebe withdrew quietly, but her curiosity was piqued. Shamelessly she stood just outside the dining room door, listening.

  “What do you mean, you have to go to Dijon tomorrow?” Reuben asked angrily.

  “I don’t like it any better than you do, but I must. My bankers have graciously agreed to meet me halfway so I don’t have to make the trip all the way to Paris. I’ll only be gone overnight,” Mickey said in a conciliatory tone.

  “If you knew you had to do this, you should have planned to take Bebe. Or,” he continued coldly, “you should have said you’d go all the way to Paris, and taken her along. I can’t go with you because I have to see to the second racking of the lees into the barrels. You knew we were right in the middle of it. I should already be there, but since you’ve made these arrangements, what am I to do? You’re taking the car, and Bordeaux is not exactly on the way to Dijon.”

  “Chéri, I heard from the lawyers only this morning. Please try to understand.”

  “I don’t want you to make the trip by yourself. I care what happens to you, and you drive like a…wild woman!”

  “A wild woman, is it?” Mickey said, aghast. “You never complained before. Why now, all of a sudden?”

  Reuben admitted to himself that he didn’t know the answer to her question, or even if that was the issue. Was he upset because he felt this particular banker was going to try to talk her out of expanding Château Michelene? Would the banker refer to him as a gigolo? Without another word, he turned and stomped out of the house, slamming the door behind him.

  At the sound of the door rattling on its hinges, Mickey stormed up the steps, her face a mask of fury. He had no right: he had no goddamn right to act that way! After all, she was going to Dijon because of him. Reuben Tarz was just as selfish as Bebe Rosen.

  Mickey ran into her room, slamming the door behind her. She threw herself on the bed and let the tears flow. How could he behave like this after all she’d done? Selfish, miserable man. They were all alike. Why had she thought him different?

  Downstairs, Bebe walked from room to room, a smile on her face.

  Dinner that evening was a total disaster. Reuben and Mickey glared at each other across the table, neither of them touching their food. Bebe ate everything and took a second helping of meat and potatoes. After she had finished she excused herself, but neither Mickey nor Reuben so much as acknowledged her existence. She went to her room, propped herself in bed with a book, and kept her eyes on the door she’d left ajar. An hour later Mickey went to her own room and slammed the door. In the quiet Bebe heard the bolt shoot home. Thirty minutes later Reuben’s door closed quietly. Bebe strained to listen, and seconds later his bolt shot home. She smiled. They were playing the game no one won. She should know, she played it often enough.

  She sat up all night listening for the sound of a footstep. Finally she dozed off a little before dawn but was up instantly when she heard Mickey’s heels clicking on the wooden floor outside her room.

  Wearing the same clothes she’d worn the day before, Bebe left her room after a sketchy hair brushing and a quick dab at her face with a damp washcloth. She joined her aunt at breakfast and kept up the same cheerful commentary as the night before. She looked ghastly, Bebe thought, appraising Mickey’s appearance. Her eyes were puffy, and the circles under them were like smudges of carbon. Her mouth was set into grim tight lines; little wrinkles fanning out around them gave her a hard, barmaid look.

  Mickey tapped her fingers on the table impatiently, getting angrier by the moment. Reuben knew she wanted to leave by eight-thirty; his absence was inexcusable. She seethed inwardly and felt the urge to slap the chattering Bebe. But, she did her best to hold her temper in check. After all, none of this was Bebe’s doing—there was no use blaming her. Her lapel watch told her it was now twenty minutes to nine. Eh, bien—she wouldn’t give Reuben the satisfaction of waiting a moment longer. She swallowed the last of her coffee, grimacing as she tasted the bitter dregs.

  “Have a pleasant day, Bebe,” she smiled, touching the girl’s hair as she passed her chair. “I will see you tomorrow.”

  Mickey’s steps lagged as she walked to the barn. He still had time to come down and apologize. Five minutes later, when there was still no sign of him, she pressed the gas pedal to the floor and roared out of the barn and down the long driveway to the road. Chickens scattered and birds took sanctuary in the trees. “Go to the devil!” Mickey spat angrily. “And stay there!”

  Reuben stood by the window, a sullen look on his face, his pocket watch open on the time. He could go down now…he should go down now. He should apologize to Mickey before she left. It was all his fault, and he didn’t even know how it had happened. One minute they were talking, he was merely complaining, saying how he felt, something Mickey always encouraged him to do…and then…then they were like two dogs fighting it out in the center of a ring. There had been no winner. If anything, he felt like a loser. He was a cad. A man would have pocketed his pride and apologized.

  The sound of the Citroën hurling out of the barn made him draw back from the window. As the powerful car careened down the drive, he jerked open the window…but it was too late. He took the stairway running, but when he pushed through the front doors she was already gone, a cloud of dust in her wake.

  Reuben tortured himself, going over and over what he should have done. What if she didn’t come back? What if she told him to leave when she did come back? She could do that, he realized. She could do a lot of things….

  He paced like an angry bull, called himself every name in the book and then some: he was a low-down dirty louse, an insensitive clod. Never in all the time he’d been with her had she raised her voice in anger, until last night. That meant she was very, very angry at him.

  Something skittered around in his stomach and worked its way to his chest. He gave it a name: fear. He hadn’t been afraid when he’d crouched in the trenches or charged up the line. He’d been green and stupid, not believing in death, his or Daniel’s. Invincible, he’d decided when he set foot on French soil. But he didn’t feel invincible now: he felt vulnerable, the way Bebe had looked the day they’d returned to the château from Paris. He didn’t like the feeling, and he didn’t like the thought. Worse yet, he didn’t like the comparison to Bebe. At that moment he turned and saw her watching him from the window. Her smiling face drove him over the edge.

  Every problem that ever rode his broad shoulders, either real or imaginary, became Bebe’s fault. At that moment he began to plot ways to abuse her, to make her pay for what he was going through. His fury gained intensity as he found himself racing back up to his room. Now he was furious with himself, unreasonably so. Slamming the door behind him, he began to storm and stomp about the room. One long arm swept across his dresser; brush, comb, and hand mirror sailed in the air and crashed to the floor. He lashed out with his foo
t, scattering shards of silvered glass everywhere. Next he made for the bed and ripped at the bedclothes. His fist shot out, slamming into the headboard over his bed. Red-hot streaks of pain coursed through him. Again he kicked out, this time at the dresser—and howled his outrage as pain rushed up his leg into his groin. Until that moment he hadn’t been aware he was barefoot.

  His head began to pound as he watched himself destroying his aunt’s tenement apartment. He would get those little bastards of hers back for going through his meager belongings. He’d had enough of their snooping around in the one drawer he called his. He was sick of the crowded rooms and the stench of cabbage cooking on her stove. He picked up the boiling pot and smashed it against the wall, splattering the smelly mess across the tiny kitchen. He felt great, powerful.

  Reuben held his aching head between two clenched fists and broke into a cold sweat. What was he doing? Horrified, he stared at the path of destruction his uncontrolled anger had wrought. His thoughts came together, and he began to tremble. He saw himself standing outside the tenement where he had lived with his aunt, his belongings at his feet. Thrown out like garbage on the street. His fear was palpable—it touched him with angry hands, it screamed in his ears…. He sat down on the floor in what just a few minutes before had been his own private room in his own private paradise and looked around him. What now?

  Bebe sat in her room listening to Reuben’s rampage. Each sound he made echoed to her through the heavy walls.

  Mickey had walked out on him. Reuben Tarz was angry. A lover’s quarrel. Now the silly bet she’d made with Daniel was beginning to look like a sure thing. All it would take was a little planning…. She danced around the room, a smile on her face. “Reuben Tarz, you are almost mine, and you lose, Daniel….” She chanted the words over and over until she started to believe they were fact. “You, Bebe Rosen,” she said, addressing her image in the windowpane, “have a new role to play. This performance will be worthy of Clovis Ames.” She giggled with anticipation. “Mine, all mine.”

  What about her aunt? If she did succeed in her little plan, where would that leave Mickey? “Back in Montmartre, where she belongs,” she whispered. “If she isn’t woman enough to hold him, it’s not my problem.” That’s not fair, her conscience prodded. “It is so fair; she’s had him long enough. It’s my turn now. In a week’s time she’ll find someone else to lavish her affections on. Besides, she’s too old for Reuben. She can spend all her time now running her wine business. Maybe she’ll pickle herself in one of the vats.” Again her conscience prodded her. You’ll break her heart. She loves Reuben, you know that; you’ve seen what they have together. She could even die from her broken heart. Bebe’s eyes squinted into small hard beads. “Hogwash! What about my heart? Look, if Reuben is truly in love with her, nothing I do can entice him. All the plans, all the bets in the world, won’t make a difference. But if he doesn’t truly love her, he’ll fall into my trap. All is fair in love and war. If you are my conscience, you can shut up now. It’s too late for you to interfere, anyway.”

  Bebe was sitting in the dining room having her second cup of coffee when Reuben entered the room, limping badly, his right hand swathed in a pillowcase. She did her best to look concerned.

  “Let me get you some coffee…. Do you want anything to eat? You look mean enough to eat a bear. Oops, sorry. Would you care to tell me what happened, or is it a secret?”

  “No, I wouldn’t care to tell you anything!” he yelled. “And I’ll get my own coffee.” A muscle at the left side of his face was twitching.

  Bebe sat back down and cupped both hands around her coffee cup, watching out of the corner of her eye as he tried to pour coffee with his left hand. When the pot started to wobble, he set it down quickly and carried his cup to the table. He laced the coffee with sugar and thick cream, then stirred it and lifted the cup to his lips. When he burned his tongue on the hot liquid, he swore savagely.

  Bebe laughed. “I could have told you it was scalding hot, but you wouldn’t have believed me. You never listen to me,” she said in a wounded tone of voice. “I’m glad you burned your tongue. You deserved it. Too bad it wasn’t worse.”

  She had to be a goddamned mind reader. That’s exactly how he felt. He wondered how many bones he’d broken in his hand and in his foot: he deserved every one of them.

  “I’d offer to kiss your hand, but I think it’s more serious than you think. I noticed you were limping. I heard you upstairs, so I know you were kicking and knocking about. If you like, I’ll ride you to the village on the big bicycle. You really should see a doctor.”

  “I didn’t ask for your advice. I asked you a question and I’m sorry now that I did. I tripped. I wasn’t knocking things about,” he lied.

  Bebe shrugged. “Suit yourself. If it makes you feel better to lie, then lie, I don’t care. What I do know is if your hand starts to swell, you have broken bones. I saw enough of my brother’s to know. I think he broke every bone in his body at one time or another.”

  “Thanks for sharing that with me,” Reuben muttered.

  Bebe blinked. “You are an absolute, total bastard. What my aunt sees in you is beyond me. You’re like something that crawled out from under a rock.”

  “Didn’t you crawl out from the rock next to mine?” Reuben drawled.

  Bebe stared at him, unable to come up with a suitable response.

  “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue, little girl? If you’ll excuse me, I have things to do.”

  Bebe felt herself rise from her seat as though someone were pulling her on strings. Brazenly she walked to the other side of the table and leaned against it, touching her thigh to his hand as it rested on the arm of his chair. He pulled it away as if he had been burned.

  “Sure you do,” Bebe said casually, smiling. “I’m sure you have a list of things you think you should be doing so Aunt Mickey will feel she’s getting her money’s worth.” This time she was careful to avoid using the word gigolo, and she stood her ground when Reuben’s eyes darkened. He rose and then sat back down in his chair. The look on his face was unfathomable. She crept out of the dining room and hid behind the door to see what he would do next.

  In less than a minute Reuben pounded down the steps to the wine cellar. If nothing else, he could drink enough wine to dull the pain he was feeling and the rage and confusion of his reactions to Bebe.

  By noon Bebe was so frustrated and bored she ventured as far down as the landing on the cellar steps to see what Reuben was up to. That was her limit, because a little farther down the cellar became a dark, dim hole filled with wine racks and the smells of sweat, mold, and sour wine. She sat down and wrinkled her nose as she tried to adjust her eyes to the semidarkness. She knew there were rats down there and other things that crawled and slithered.

  It was quiet, too quiet. Was it possible Reuben had already come up the stairs? Scratchy noises, thin little sounds with barely audible squeaks, made her shiver. Vermin! She must be out of her mind to sit here like this. Then she heard the sound of a cork popping. Reuben—he must be drinking, she realized. What kind of drunk was he? She’d seen all kinds—happy drunks, mean ones, crazy drunks, and drunks that fell on their faces. For a moment she almost felt sorry for him, but the moment passed quickly. She turned and made her way back up the steps to her room. Reuben Tarz could drink himself into oblivion for all she cared. She hoped he fell asleep and the rats nibbled on his flesh.

  Her room was tidy, everything in its place prior to her departure. It was a nice room, comfortable, but not nearly as pretty and filled with frills as the one she’d had in Paris. She should return the books she’d borrowed from the library. She should put away her writing materials; all her letters to friends in California were finished and waiting to be posted. Her bed was made, something Mickey insisted each of them do. The only thing she had to look forward to in the long day was lunch, dinner, and maybe a solitary walk. Lord, how she missed Daniel and Jake! She was truly alone with nothing to do. “I can’t re
ad another book!” she cried aloud. “I don’t want to read another book!”

  A bath! Full of bubbles. Long and luxurious. Perhaps a glass of wine in the tub like they did in films. Clovis Ames always did that. A beautiful crystal glass full of sparkling champagne. It was Clovis’s trademark. The “Champagne Girl,” they called her. She wondered if people really believed Clovis was naked in those tubs. Clovis was her father’s biggest star, and it had been his idea to name her the Champagne Girl and put her in a bathtub full of bubbles in every film she made. Everyone, said the tabloids, wanted to catch a glimpse of Clovis’s huge breasts. The set would always be cleared before she made her exit to keep up the curiosity. Once, enjoying the special privileges of the owner’s daughter, she’d been allowed on the set during the filming of a bathtub scene. When Clovis stepped from the tub, bubbles clinging to her flesh-colored body suit, Bebe had gasped. She’d really thought the actress was naked under the bubbles.

  Clovis Ames was decadent and wicked, or so everyone thought. Bebe thought her the most glamorous, most beautiful woman in the world. Clovis had shown her how to make the most of her eyes with outrageous blue shadow and how to paint her cheeks so there appeared to be a hollow underneath. Shiny lip salve, she said, was a must. “Dress like you want every man to attack you, and they’ll stay away in droves but hunger for you…at a distance,” Clovis had advised. “For some reason men always want what they can’t have. It’s better to have men hunger and lust after you from a distance while you watch. This way you can take your time picking and choosing. It’s also better than being pawed and grappled with.” Bebe followed her advice right down to the letter. That’s why she was still a virgin while most of her friends were sleeping around or having unwanted babies.