For All Their Lives

by Fern Michaels

  “Sometimes,” Alice had said, “she can play for hours just taking things out and putting them back. I think,” she’d gone on to say, “it’s the same principle as a child playing with the cardboard box instead of the toy.”

  Today, Mac decided, was a good time to vent his curiosity in regard to the purse Yody carried. “It looks heavy,” he said, handing Yody a ten-dollar bill. “If I’m not being too nosy, what do you carry in there?”

  Yody looked at Mac for a long moment. “Yes, señor, you are being nosy, but I do not mind. My things are in there. If I am not back in one hour, stir the sauce so it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pot.”

  Mac nodded. He popped a bottle of beer before he returned to his study and the piled-up mail he had to contend with. He spent the next hour going through everything, writing two letters—one to Sister Anna Marie, the second to Phil Pender.

  He fished a letter from the box, the last one he had to respond to. He’d received it at the office more than two weeks ago. He’d postponed answering it because it meant he would have to speak to Alice and get her views. It was personal and yet not personal. He looked at the return address on the crisp gray envelope. Tri State News, 440 Park Avenue South, New York, New York. The letter was from the executive producer of the Noonday News and addressed to Senator and Mrs. Malcolm Carlin. He’d heard about Steve Harper’s “Show-and-Tell” segment. In fact he’d caught it a time or two when he was in New York. He rather liked the show. At first, when he had read the letter, he’d been annoyed, but the annoyance turned to flattery when he realized Harper wasn’t interested in his senatorial politics, but in the foundation he’d set up for children with Down’s syndrome and his Vietnam Veterans Foundation. He wondered how the producer got wind of his plans to turn his mother’s old home into a summer camp for children like Jenny. His other camp, as he now thought of it, would also be in the South. It would be for vets with no place else to go, and staffed with doctors. It was a monstrous undertaking, but he was damn well going to do it. Today he was going to discuss the children’s summer camp with Alice. He thought she would be all for it, but the problem of who would operate the facility and see to the renovations was something he himself had no time for. He would be busy with his plans for the Vietnam vets. Alice, he knew, had very little free time. It was something he needed to explore very carefully before he made any concrete decisions.

  Mac read the letter again. Six minutes of airtime for the Down’s Syndrome Foundation, and a second segment for his Vietnam Foundation. Clips of him, Alice, and Jenny at home; one at the foundation; one with the children, whom the foundation helped; and one at his mother’s home. The last shot was to be of himself, Alice, and Jenny walking into the Senate gallery. Good copy.

  This was like manna from heaven. Thank God for people like Steve Harper. Jenny and the children would be well taken care of, thanks to Alice. Just the thought of what he could do for all the vets excited him. He felt alive and in control. He was goddamn well going to pull this off, and he didn’t care what it cost. He was tired of batting his head against the stone wall of the Senate, tired of wading through bullshit. If you want something done, do it yourself, was the motto to which he now subscribed.

  Mac was satisfied with himself these days. He’d rolled forward his project for the vets. Alice had beamed with pride when he had first told her about it. They now had something in common, she told him. They were each doing something worthwhile and worth caring about. “If I can help in any way, just ask,” she had offered. By God, she’d meant it too. Alice was . . . Alice . . . was okay.

  He had decided he would not get any more involved with his wife and her daughter than he already was. Still, the sound of their shrill, joyful laughter ate at him. He should be out there with them. He’d promised to take Jenny down to the stable and harness a docile pony, named Pee Wee, to the bright red and blue pony cart. Jenny liked the cart but was scared of the pony. Jenny’s explanation was that Pee Wee had too many feet. Perhaps they could do it after dinner. No, that wouldn’t work either, Jenny was afraid of the dark. She wasn’t his daughter, he told himself again. She was Alice’s daughter; let Alice work on the pony cart. Today he’d promised himself he was finally going to go through the box of his mother’s books that his uncle Harry had given him.

  He’d brought the cardboard box down this morning from his room. Before he made a final decision to turn his mother’s old home over to the foundation, he needed to tie up this last loose end from that old life.

  When he opened the box, it smelled old and musty inside. He sneezed. His hands, he noticed, trembled as he reached for the first book. There were five of them, and they weren’t merely books. They were diaries. They were all alike in size, with soft burgundy Moroccan leather covers embossed with the word DIARY in gold letters in the center of each book. Down at the bottom, in gold script, was his mother’s name. Patches of ugly charcoal mildew spotted them. He was almost afraid to open them, for fear the brittle pages would disintegrate at his touch. He wondered if he had a right to read them.

  The books seemed to be in order, commencing with the first, written when his mother was ten, in square, boxy letters. The second and third were written with a smoother hand, the fourth and last in beautiful flowing script. The pen had been fine, the writing slanted and tiny. He was going to need his reading glasses. As much as he didn’t want to do this, he felt he had to. He carried the box over to his easy chair and fixed his reading glasses on the end of his nose in preparation.

  The first two diaries made him chuckle. They dealt mostly with Maddy, the old Negress, and various animals on the plantation. He laughed aloud when he read one section that dealt with his mother sneaking out of bed to catch Saint Nick on Christmas Eve. “Just because Maddy has a belly like Saint Nick,” she wrote, “they must think me a fool not to recognize her dark face. I pretended not to notice. P.S. Dear Diary, Maddy told me on Christmas Day she wasn’t supposed to turn around because Daddy knew I was on the staircase. They all think they fooled me.” Mac rubbed at his throat to ease the lump he felt building.

  The third and fourth diaries dealt with wistful looks taken from under bonnets at young boys in church. Tea parties under the angel oaks, secrets among friends. “Today, Cassie told all of us in the azalea garden she let Billy Asher kiss her on the cheek. She said she’s never going to wash her face again. I’m jealous. All the girls are jealous. Cassie said she’s going to let Billy kiss her again and again, and maybe next year let him kiss her on the mouth. Ohhh, we’re all so jealous. I like Adam Ellis. He looks at me all the time. Tomorrow I’m going to wink at him.” Mac guffawed aloud. It was wonderful. When he closed the book, he realized his mother had been sixteen when she wrote those entries.

  The fifth, and last, diary was obviously presented on her birthday. It was different, Mac noticed. A whole year and a half had passed before it was written in for the first time. The diary started in July, when his mother was seventeen and a half. All of it was devoted to Adam Ellis. “He’s so good-looking,” she wrote. “He has a dashing smile, and he’s a wonderful dance partner. He kissed me. He really kissed me. He asked my father if he could court me. My father said yes, if Maddy chaperoned us. Maddy turned her head so he could kiss me under the big old angel oak in the back of the stable, but she tied my corset tight because, she said, no young buck was going to untie it if she could help it.”

  Further on he read: “I leave for Miss Adele’s school for young ladies. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to leave Adam. He says he will write. It’s only for a year, Maddy says. I cry all the time. Adam says he cries too.”

  There were no entries for the next year, until his mother’s return to her home from Miss Adele’s school for young ladies.

  Adam is seeing someone else. Maddy says he got too heartsick waiting for me. He’s coming for tea this afternoon to tell me he’s promised himself to someone else.

  “You bastard!” Mac exploded, feeling his mother’s pain. Mac continued to read, oft
en seeing blurred spots on the small pages of cramped writing. His mother’s tears. What else could it be?

  Mac continued to turn the pages, his eyes devouring the small, cramped writing. There was more to write now, more secrets, and the space allotted was too small. Words were written sideways in the margins, powerful, unbelievable words. So powerful and unbelievable Mac didn’t hear Yody come in, didn’t hear her hammer the butterfly and clown pictures to the wall next to him. He didn’t see the dogs get up, and didn’t hear Jenny’s and Alice’s laughter. Yody watched him out of the corner of her eye.

  The books were placed back in the box. The string tied. Only the last diary remained on the desk.

  His steps were jerky, lopsided, when he walked from the study, down the hall, out to the kitchen and then outside. Yody called to the dogs to stay inside. They sat on their haunches, panting after their master. She watched as Mac ran, not for the barn and Jeopardy, but out across the fields. In unison the dogs howled. The fine hair on the back of Yody’s neck prickled. After what seemed like a long time, she heard a sound she’d never heard before. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing the sound to stop.

  It did. Finally.

  Yody blew up the balloons and tied them to the backs of the chairs with butcher’s string, then she set the table. She fed the dogs leftover roast beef because everyone knew spaghetti wasn’t good for dogs. She filled their water dishes. She took the cherry cobbler out of the oven, and still the fine hairs on her neck were on end. She fixed the coffeepot and made a jelly sandwich with strawberry jelly, which she wrapped in wax paper for the little girl’s dessert. She watered the plants and then blew up the last three balloons, which she tied onto the door handle. “It looks as if we’re having a party,” she said to the dogs.

  She heard him before she saw him. She turned when the dogs did, her ears every bit as keen as theirs.

  “I’m hungry, Yody,” Mac said tightly. “It’s almost six, so I’ll wash up. I have to make a phone call. Call me the minute Alice and Jenny get here.” He smiled. Yody could feel her body go limp. The dogs laid down in the middle of the floor. Whatever the crisis was, it was over.

  Yody drained the water from the spaghetti.

  It was seven-thirty when Alice said good night. “We really enjoyed dinner, Mac. I know I did, and I never saw Jenny eat so much. She’s almost asleep on her feet. Perhaps we can return the favor one of these days. I’m glad you invited us. Whenever you want to do the interview with those people, just tell me. I’d like at least a day’s notice, if you can manage it.” She reached up and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Thanks, Mac. You made Jenny very happy tonight. She loves the balloons.”

  “I’ll walk you over to the house. How about a piggyback ride?” Mac stooped down while Alice helped Jenny climb onto his back. The long strings of balloons were fastened securely onto her wrist. He galloped like a horse across the lawn and up the hill to the main house, with Jenny astride him.

  “What you’re doing at the foundation is wonderful, Alice,” Mac said sincerely.

  “I couldn’t do it without your help, Mac. It’s you who should be proud. What you’re doing is wonderful. I’m very grateful, Mac, I just want you to know that. And again, if there’s anything I can do . . . if you need me for anything . . . just ask.”

  “I will. Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite,” he teased Jenny. The little girl laughed when he tweaked her cheek.

  He was alone.

  Again.

  Chapter 22

  THE FRONT DOOR was made from the finest mahogany, and the brass doorbell shined so that he could see his reflection. Fresh paint, white, of course, permeated the air around him. All about him azaleas bloomed. Bees buzzed in the warm spring air. He could tell by the sweet earthy smell that someone had mowed the acres of lawn recently. He could hear the swish of the lawn sprinklers behind him. He looked for a leaf, a twig, a speck of dirt on the old veranda but could find nothing. In the South, people rose early and did their chores before the heat took over.

  Mac rang the bell a second time. The wicker chairs were the same as those at his mother’s old home, only in better condition. The owners probably sipped lemonade and mint juleps out here. Maybe coffee. He wasn’t up on the ways of the South these days.

  He was a nice-looking man, Mac thought when the door opened to reveal a gentleman as tall as himself, dressed in snowy-white shirt and khaki trousers. Distinguished, Mac thought. Silver hair, plenty of it, brushed casually to the side. Handsome. His smile was warm and welcoming, his eyes bright and curious.

  “Mr. Ellis?” Mac asked.

  “Yes.”

  “My name’s Malcolm Carlin. I believe you’re my father.”

  The smile stretched from ear to ear. “They said they would never tell you. Come in, come in . . . son.”

  “They didn’t. My uncle Harry gave me my mother’s old diaries a long time ago. I’m sorry to say I didn’t read them till yesterday.”

  “Let’s go back in the kitchen. I hate sitting in this parlor. We can have some coffee or lemonade and talk man to man.”

  “Fine with me,” Mac said.

  He was a good host, setting out fine china and silver spoons along with linen napkins. The percolator was silver and electric. Mac could see his reflection in it. He raised his eyes to stare at his father, a stranger.

  “I always wondered about you. I heard you came back to the cemetery a while back. Met Harry in the post office and he told me. Harry more or less kept me informed. Not that he knew much. You see, Harry didn’t give his promise to keep everything a secret, the way your mother and I did. Harry simply wouldn’t do it. And your grandfather Ashwood couldn’t make him. Harry was the oldest boy and a real hellion. In the end the old gentleman backed down. I couldn’t marry your mother, son, even though I loved her as much as life. I was promised to another wonderful woman who did become my wife. Things are different here in the South, as you well know. Matilda’s father and my father struck up a bargain, and this plantation is the end result. Money changed hands, that kind of thing. That’s the way it was done back then. Your grandfather Ashwood didn’t think my family was good enough for the Ashwood bloodline. His loss, I might add,” the old man said sprightly.

  “If you were promised, then how did you manage to get my mother pregnant?” Mac snapped.

  “In the usual way. You’re being cheeky, so you deserve such an answer, young man,” Ellis said sharply.

  “That’s not what I meant and you know it,” Mac retaliated.

  “Humor me, son. Having you sit there across from me isn’t the most comfortable of situations for me. I loved her. She loved me. I had the freedom to go out in the evenings. Your mama would arrange with Maddy to go for a walk, and we’d meet. Maddy would go off for a little while and we’d be alone. Neither one of us knew anything about stopping babies—what’s referred to as birth control today. We took a chance and we lost. When your mama came to me and said she stopped perking, I was wild. I didn’t know what to do. Excuse me, stopped perking means she stopped menstruating. Southern term. Both of us knew your granddaddy would have strung me up from the nearest oak tree and kicked out the bench. It was your mama’s idea to go after the man who . . . Marcus Carlin, who was in town visiting. She set her cap for him, and when he fell for her, she went and told your granddaddy she was pregnant, but she wouldn’t tell him the father’s name. He was a staunch southern aristocrat with so much money he would have choked a dozen mules to see this northern Yankee’s father who had pissed in his poke. They struck up a deal, and as Marcus said later, many, many times, he had bought damaged merchandise. Your mama never loved him. She did it for me, so I wouldn’t get hung by my neck and so there wouldn’t be an Ashwood scandal.

  “Bet you never knew we kept in touch through Harry, did you?”

  “No, I never knew that. Did . . . Marcus Carlin know?”

  “I’m not sure. When he sent her back here, we thought for sure he knew. It was his way of tormenting us both. I ha
d a wife and family then, and she had no one. We saw each other in church, but that was it. I went to her funeral. We never got to talk about you face to face. Marcus got a whole lot of money for marrying your mama. Actually, his father got it. Same difference. Her dowry, they called it.”

  “I hated him. I still hate him. I’ll always hate him. When I came of age, you should have told me. I’m the one who told my mother about . . . his infidelity. I will never forget the look on her face,” Mac said miserably. Adam patted his hand reassuringly.

  “It’s no longer important, son. We should have done a lot of things, son, but we didn’t. That’s all water under the bridge now. Can’t make up the past to you, but the future is just around the corner. Your mama said you were going to turn out to be a fine man, and, by gad, she was right. I was real proud when you took your seat in the United States Senate. What would you think about coming here and working for us? We could use a bright young senator like yourself. I’m not without influence around here.” He grinned.

  Mac snorted. Where had he heard those words before?

  “Do you have children?” he asked curiously. If he did, that meant he would have half brothers and sisters.

  “Four girls. My wife died the same year Harry died. I live alone here. A woman comes in to clean and cook. My two oldest daughters live in Columbia, and another one lives in Summerville, and the fourth one lives up north in New York City. Got eleven grandchildren. Guess that makes you an uncle of sorts. I imagine this is all a bit overwhelming now that you’ve heard it. We gave our word, Malcolm. No true southerner ever goes back on his word. You wait here, one minute,” Ellis said, getting up from his seat at the table. “I have something I want to show you.”