Alice felt a flutter of panic. He sounded different than he had this morning. She believed he meant what he said. Where would that leave her? Out in the cold with a kid, that’s where.
“I never understood what it was you wanted from me, Mac,” she whined. “Tell me now. If I’m supposed to think about this while you’re away, I have to know what it is you think I did wrong,”
“I wanted you to be, a wife,” Mac said coolly. “Do you know that in our entire marriage, you never even made me a cup of coffee?”
Alice’s laugh was shrill. “Listen, Mac, you were the one who hired the cook. You said you didn’t want me to do anything but be here for you. That’s exactly what you said. And that’s what I did. I got used to this way of life to please you, and now you tell me you’re going to take it away from me when you get back? No you’re not. I’ll fight you. I’ve made a life for myself, and I’m going to keep it, and that’s all I have to say about it,” Alice snapped. “Is there anything else?”
“Only this.” Mac seethed. “If the baby is a girl, I want it named after my mother. If it’s a boy, I want it named after me, not my father.”
“Fine, I agree. Is there anything else?” Alice asked coldly.
“Good-bye, Alice.”
“Good-bye, Mac.”
Mac fumed all the way up the steps. The television set was already back on.
ALICE REACHED FOR the little notebook she had stuffed under the cushion when she heard Mac’s car in the driveway. Her skin positively itched and the tips of her fingers tingled. Her heart took on an extra beat at what she’d done between the hours of five and seven. She forced herself to close her eyes, take a deep breath, and count to ten. Her eyes snapped open on the count of ten. If anything, she was even more excited. She tried again; this time her eyes circled the room, trying to focus on something that would relax her.
This was her room. She’d decorated it herself in all the colors she loved, brilliant, flamboyant fabrics, eye-watering carpet, and glass and chrome furniture. The pictures were a mishmash of color and brush strokes by unknown artists in outrageous gilt frames from a bygone era. Because she didn’t like the idea of a wood-burning fireplace, she’d cajoled and whined until the elder Carlin permitted her to change it to gas. Now the flame was constant and her stark white walls didn’t have sooty smudge marks all over them.
She took another deep breath. She had work to do. She had decided it was time to look into numbers that equaled assets. If he went through with his threat of a divorce—and she didn’t believe for one minute that he would—then she’d need records of everything to give to her attorney.
As far as she knew, Mac hadn’t put her name on anything, so there were no joint assets. There was no ours, only his. But, Mac had said he was going to leave her power of attorney. All she had to do was weep and wail, and the judge would come across with what she wanted.
A delicious feeling filled her when she opened the little notebook. She’d had to write small to get everything down on the square little pages. Bank account numbers, balances, property deeds, exact locations, the cusip numbers on the stocks, the bond balances, the dates on the trust fund. She’d been startled when she saw the bank record, and was stunned to find out Mac was the recipient of two trust funds: one from his mother and one from an aunt. She’d actually had to close her eyes and put her head between her knees when she saw the amount of money the funds generated. And four full pages of assets. My God, she hadn’t known there was that much money in the world.
Damn, where was the power of attorney? She hadn’t seen it in the desk. She brightened momentarily when she remembered Mac had had lunch with his father. He’d probably given it to him. Mac was thorough. If he said he was going to do something, then he would do it.
The Princess phone was in her hand in a flash. Should she call the judge to confirm it? She would wait until tomorrow, she decided. She didn’t want the judge to think she was money-grubbing.
She stuffed the notebook under the sofa cushion. Tomorrow she would retrieve it and lock it away in the bottom drawer of her jewel box along with some of the heirloom jewelry the judge allowed her to keep in the house.
She was nervous now. Had she put everything back into the manila folder just the way she’d found it? Guilt made her uncurl her legs and rush to Mac’s study. The huge brown envelope was gone. She ran to the hall to see if it was on the table in the foyer. It wasn’t. Where in the hell was it? she wondered irritably. It must be in Mac’s room. She crept up the steps, careful to make no noise. She opened the door a crack, then waited until her eyes became accustomed to the moonlight. Mac’s bags were packed and standing by the door, as they had been earlier that day. There was no folder, no envelope on the wide triple dresser.
Alice watched her husband for a long moment. She felt a second rush of guilt. How vulnerable Mac looked in sleep. She had a sudden urge to run over to the bed and kiss his cheek, but squelched it.
She hated thinking about Mac; it made her feel disloyal. After all, he had been good to her. Why wasn’t she happy? Why couldn’t she be like Benny’s wife? Was she as self-centered and selfish as Mac said? Why couldn’t she give back a little? Mac wasn’t all that bad; in fact he was kind of nice as far as husbands went. If he were only more aggressive, more motivated, she might feel differently.
She wished she loved Mac. She liked him. But then, she didn’t know anyone who was in love with their husband.
When the phone rang at eleven o’clock, Alice was so startled, she almost fell off the sofa. She picked it up on the second ring.
“Hello,” she said in a froggy voice.
“Congratulations, my dear,” Marcus Carlin said.
“Thank you, Marcus,” she replied. “Is that why you’re calling so late? Mac is asleep.” She should ask him now about the power of attorney, she thought.
“I’ve been thinking all afternoon, Alice, and I’ve decided the south of France is not the place for you to be all alone. No, I want you to stay right here. I can’t imagine what Mac was thinking to allow you to go traipsing off to France. The boy is just too indulgent where you’re concerned.”
“But, Judge—”
“There will be no buts. I would be derelict in my duty to allow you to go. I know what’s best for you. It’s settled—you’ll stay right here. We don’t want to take any chances with the new Carlin heir, now do we?”
Alice’s eyes narrowed. She wanted to tell the old coot to go fuck himself. She really meant to say it aloud, but what came out of her mouth was, “As usual, you’re probably right.”
“I knew you’d see it my way. I know Mac will be relieved. What do you think about him going to Vietnam, Alice? He’ll come back a national hero.” He didn’t wait for her response, said, “Tomorrow will be trying for you. I’ll come by in the evening and have dinner with you. Seven-thirty. Have the cook prepare a leg of lamb. Give her the night off. We’ll have some sherry, I’ll read some Robert Browning, and you’ll forget about Mac for a little while.”
Alice swallowed past the lump in her throat. She knew what that meant.
“I’ll see you tomorrow then. Good night, Marcus.”
Alice crunched the pillow at her side into a ball. Bitter tears rolled down her cheeks. “Nobody gets it all,” she muttered.
IT WAS STILL dark outside when Mac walked down the steps and carried his bags out through the kitchen. He looked longingly at the coffeepot. There was no time. If he was lucky, Benny might have two cups ready when he stopped by to pick him up.
His guilt vanished when he pulled to the curb outside Benny’s split-level house in Alexandria. He grinned, seeing his friend walk out the door with two cups of coffee in his hands. Behind Benny, Carol waved at him. Jesus, some guys had all the luck.
In the car, Mac gulped at the coffee. “You don’t know how badly I need this.”
“Yeah, I do. Listen, you son of a bitch, you better come back all in one piece.”
“Hey, the old man gave me orders to come
back a hero. Let’s not fuck this up, Benny. We went through it all last night.”
“Yeah, but what about that old man of yours? What if he comes down on me about . . .” He patted the thick brown folder on the seat.
It was the power of attorney, and Phil Benedict was the name on it. Phil, Mac had decided, would take care of his fortune until he returned. It was his slap in the face or kick in the gut to his father and wife, his final act of defiance.
“There’s a sealed letter in there with my father’s name on it. All you do is hand it over if he so much as says a word. Don’t take any crap from Alice either. That’s another way of saying turn a deaf ear to all her demands. She gets a check the first of the month. If she decides to go to France, then you simply pay the bills.”
“You sure you want me to keep your car?”
“Hell, yes, let Carol drive it so she won’t have to drive you in in the morning. Everything’s in the glove compartment, including a letter that says I’m giving you permission to use the car. The insurance has been paid for the year. No problems there at all. You’ll be doing me a favor by driving it.”
Mac pulled to the curb in front of the airport. “You’re probably the best thing that ever happened to me, Benny. I don’t think there’s another person in the whole world I trust the way I trust you. Sadie, maybe, but that’s different. I’ll see you.”
“Yeah,” Benny said, clapping him on the back.
When Benny pulled away from the curb, he felt as if he had left part of his life behind. “He’s got it together now, this is the first step. Be happy for him, Benedict,” he muttered as he moved with the early morning traffic flow.
IT WAS EXACTLY eleven o’clock when Mac drove his rental car through the gates and down the long poplar-sided driveway to the white-pillared plantation house his mother had grown up in. He stopped the Ford and rolled down the window. It was unseasonably warm. A black-winged fly and a mosquito buzzed through the open window. His mother told him once there were wetlands behind the house that bred all kinds of things. Snakes, she’d said, a devilish light in her eyes, and rats bigger than tomcats. He remembered shivering at the thought. She hadn’t liked living here in the big house with the huge white columns, but she hadn’t told him why. The only thing he knew for certain was she’d loved her brother Harry and the cook, a Negress named Maddy. He’d met each of them only twice, but he remembered them as if he’d just met them yesterday. Maddy was dead now, and Harry was in his eighties.
In the morning sunlight and at this distance, the house looked magnificent, but he knew that it would be full of dry rot. He sat hunched over the wheel trying to see everything all at once. The low brick wall that was so perfect for laying on and staring at the stars was still there, listing slightly, but intact. To his right was another low brick wall, with an iron gate that led to the azalea garden. Film companies still came to shoot footage there, and in April brides paid handsomely to be married in the formal garden. His mother and father had been married there. He’d seen the pictures.
Every year, no matter what, his mother said, a fresh coat of paint was slapped on the mansion. Usually around the first of February, before the weather got too warm and sticky. Obviously, Mac thought, the painting had been done already, for the mansion was blinding to the eye.
The veranda was wide and full of lush green ferns. Maddy used to bring them out each morning and take them in in the afternoon. The ferns were old and never died off, his mother said. He wondered if the swing was the same one his mother sat on when she was young. How sad that he didn’t know this side of his family. He’d been forbidden to come here, and he couldn’t help but wonder why in his rebellious years he’d only tried once. He knew this house and grounds as well as he knew his own house in McLean. He remembered every single thing his mother had ever told him, and he’d studied the pictures in the family album.
Mac got out of the car. He knew if he walked to the left he would come to the wash house and the stable that had been converted to a six-car garage. If he walked to the right, he would see the smokehouse and caretaker’s cottage. Around the side of the house, in front of the kitchen door, would be an apron of cobblestones. He wondered if the wash lines were still strung between the angel oaks. The old slave quarters were down a little hill from the back of the house. They’d been maintained and refurbished because the plantation was a historical building.
Mac was heading toward his left when he stopped in his tracks at the sound of a shotgun blast. “That’s far enough,” a voice roared. “This would be a good time to announce yourself, young man.”
“Captain Malcolm Carlin, sir,” Mac shouted. “I’m Elsa’s son. Is that you, Uncle Harry?”
“I’m Harry. Come closer so I can have a look at you.” Mac obliged but stopped ten feet away. “Why are you here, young man?”
“I came to see you. I’m leaving for Vietnam tomorrow. I . . . wanted to say . . . hello and good-bye.”
“How old are you?” Harry demanded.
“Thirty-one, sir.”
“You’re too late, boy. The time to come here was when you became a man. You’re ten years too late. Now, get back in that car and head out to wherever it is you’re going. You’re more Carlin than Ashwood. An Ashwood would have been here the minute he came of age.”
There was nothing for Mac to say to that. He watched the shotgun come up level to his chest. The old man had the spookiest eyes he’d ever seen. At that moment, Mac swore his uncle could see into his soul. The shotgun crept up another inch or so.
“I’m sorry I didn’t find a way to do it. I did try once. I don’t know, maybe I didn’t want to hear you tell me what I’ve come now to hear.”
“What would that be?” the old man asked brusquely. His hand on the shotgun was steady. His left hand hitched up his pants.
“I want to know why my mother left me behind and didn’t keep in touch with me. My father said she wasn’t capable of caring for me because she had a mental disorder. Did she ever talk about me? She never even sent me a Christmas card,” Mac said in a stricken voice.
“You hold on to your britches, laddie. Your mother did nothing but talk about you. There were many presents, many cards and letters written every day. I know because I mailed them myself. But it’s up to your father to tell you why he did the things he did. I don’t want anything to do with him or you. If you had real Ashwood blood in you, you would have come to your mother.”
“For God’s sake, Uncle Harry, I was only a kid. I thought my mother didn’t want me. She just up and left. If she sent letters and presents, I never received them. I thought she blamed me.”
“You don’t fix blame on the one thing in the world you love,” Harry said tightly.
“That’s why I didn’t understand the trust fund. I knew I had one, but I didn’t know the extent of it until I turned twenty-one. I didn’t understand about the fund from Aunt Rita either.”
“Your mother fixed that too. You’re a rich man, Mr. Carlin, thanks to Ashwood ingenuity.” Harry lowered the shotgun. Suddenly he looked tired and ill. He waved his free arm about. “This will eventually go to you, the whole hundred acres. The whole ball of wax, as the young people say. Elsa made me promise. Easy promise to make, since there were no other heirs. Come back and see me when you finish up with the war. If I’m still alive, we’ll talk then. Good-bye, Mr. Carlin.”
Mac stood with his mouth hanging open. The meeting was over. He got back into the rental car and took a last, long look at his mother’s old home before he backed out of the long driveway. He felt as if he’d been slammed in the chest with a full round of buckshot.
He drove aimlessly, his eyes looking for landmarks that would lead him to the graveyard—his last stop.
It was well past noon when Mac drove through the monstrous gates of the Calvary Cemetery. He drove carefully along the narrow brick road lined with magnificent angel oaks dripping Spanish moss. If cemeteries could be called beautiful, this one was gorgeous, Mac thought crazily. His eye
s zeroed in on the caretaker’s cottage, which seemed an exact replica of a Hansel-and-Gretel fairy-tale house.
The door opened with a loud swoosh, and a man dressed in a white three-piece suit emerged. The fedora he wore was made of white felt with a scarlet and green band around the crown. Mac thought it early in the year to be wearing white, but he really didn’t know. Alice was the one with the fashion sense. He climbed out of the car and met the man halfway down the brick walk.
“Malcolm Carlin,” Mac said, extending his hand. “Can you tell me where the Ashwood plot is?” He felt embarrassed. It was a hell of a thing that he had to ask a total stranger where his mother’s grave was. And he had no one to blame but himself. He could have come here any number of times if he’d really wanted to.
“Hilary Carter,” the caretaker drawled. A cigar found its way to his mouth. Mac fired up a cigarette. They blew smoke in one another’s faces. He was a stranger, and the South didn’t take kindly to strangers. The suspicion and annoyance on Carter’s face angered Mac.
The caretaker hooked his thumbs into his vest pockets as he rocked back on his heels to get a better look at Mac. “I see Ashwood in you. That can only mean you’re Elsa’s son. You were just a sprout when we lowered her. I remember you.”
“I’m in a bit of a hurry, so if you’d just—”
The caretaker lifted a manicured hand, complete with clear nail polish, and pointed to his left. “Walk down around the curve and to the right of that angel oak, where the moss is dripping to the ground. It’s a prime plot, the best in all of Calvary. There’s three plots left: one for Harry, and I suppose one for you and one for your wife or child. It’s spelled out on the deed. Paid in full, if that’s of interest to you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Carter,” Mac said, stamping on his cigarette. He knew without having to look over his shoulder that Carter bent down and picked up the butt. This place was so tidy, it made his skin crawl.
For All Their Lives Page 5
