I said, “Lowell’s is no longer the same company it was. Its structure has changed radically. You’re going into worldwide distribution imminently, from what Donald tells me, and next year you’re apparently going to do an IPO on Wall Street. You’ve pushed this dinky little old-fashioned company into the twenty-first century, yet you yourself are still lingering in the past, clinging to an antiquated idea started by the founder.”
“No I’m not!” she protested, her voice rising shrilly.
“Yes, you are. Please get it through your head once and for all. I don’t want your company when you die. Leave it to Donald, who would love to be involved with it. And he’s entitled, as your only son. He should be your heir. And he was always your favorite anyway. Forget about this tradition nonsense and act like the smart businesswoman you apparently are.”
“Is that why you don’t want Lowell’s?” she asked.
“I’m not following you,” I murmured, but I was. I just wanted to hear what she would have to say.
“I mean because you believe, mistakenly, that I mistreated you as a child?”
“No,” I replied, but I was telling a lie.
“The company is going to be worth millions,” she said suddenly, obviously believing this would influence my decision.
“Billions, more than likely, Mother. But I’m still not interested. Thanks, but no thanks.”
“Please, Val, reconsider.”
“I can’t.”
“You mean you won’t,” she snapped in her snooty voice.
“Look, I have a life of my own. I don’t want a life you’re trying to create for me, suddenly, out of the blue, after years of indifference and neglect.”
“You’re bearing a grudge . . . how ridiculous when there’s so much money involved.”
“I couldn’t care less about the money.”
“More fool you!”
I sighed. “If I said okay, I’ll take Lowell’s, leave it to me, what would it entail? Just out of curiosity, what would you expect of me now? What would you want me to do?”
I felt Donald tense, he was standing so close to me at the fireplace.
My mother sat up straighter in her chair and studied me for a moment.
I hated this close scrutiny of hers; almost frantically I wished I could escape, get out of her presence. I disliked her intensely, and I now regretted that I had come. I had done so because I wanted to help Donald, who wasn’t such a bad guy after all. I thought he was getting the short end of the stick.
My mother said carefully, in that well-modulated, upper-class voice of hers, “I would expect you to come home, Val, to live in New York. And of course I would want you to work at Lowell’s alongside me. I would train you, teach you the business, teach you everything I know. It would give me great pleasure, Val.”
“You’ve had two heart attacks, unexpected because you’ve always been so healthy, and you’re young. And so now you feel a bit . . . vulnerable, and it occurs to you that you need . . . a daughter. Is that what all this is about?”
“Don’t be ridiculous! I want you to come home because this is where you belong. With me. In the business.”
“This is certainly not where I belong,” I almost yelled. Taking a deep breath and clinging to my control, I added, “We’re not getting anywhere. If you won’t change your will, I must certainly go and see my lawyer, have some legal document drawn that protects Donald if something happens to me. After all, I’m a war photojournalist, I could easily be killed when I’m working. I will leave Lowell’s to him.”
Donald said, “Thanks, Val.”
Our mother was silent.
II
Florina came hurrying in with a large tea tray, which certainly curtailed the conversation for a moment or two. She placed it on the mahogany coffee table in front of the sofa and said to my mother, “Shall I pour, Mrs. Denning?”
“No, no, we can manage, Florina. Thank you.”
Florina hurried out.
“No tea for me,” I said. “I’m leaving.” I walked toward the door.
Donald called, “Wait for me, Val.”
“I’m in a hurry,” I responded, but I paused in the doorway and turned. “Good-bye, Mother. So long, Donald. I’ll see you around.”
“No, wait, Val. I’ll only be a second.” Donald went to our mother, pecked her on the cheek. “I’ll talk to you later, Mom.”
I was halfway across the entrance foyer, heading for the front door, when she said, “But I want to explain!”
“I don’t need an explanation. Not anymore,” I replied without turning around.
“Don’t you want to know why . . . I was never able to love you?” my mother asked.
This stopped me in my tracks. And of course her words were irresistible.
Very slowly, I walked back to the sitting room, stood in the doorway, leaning against the doorjamb. My eyes did not leave her face.
III
“Come in and sit down, Val. And I think you, Donald, should leave. This is private.”
“Donald stays,” I snapped.
“Yes, I’m staying,” my brother said, surprising me, since he’d never argued with her in the past, or defied her.
“I’ll stand if you don’t mind,” I said. “I’m sure this isn’t going to take long.”
Donald joined me by the fireplace. He stood close to me and reached out, took hold of my hand, as he had when we were small.
How often we had been brought to task for something or other in this very room. We had always stood in this exact spot and our mother had always seated herself in that antique French chair.
But today I was not afraid of her. And I was certain that Donald wasn’t either.
Together, showing our united front, we waited for her to speak.
“This really doesn’t have anything to do with Donald,” she said, addressing me directly. “I do think it would be better if we were alone, Val. This is very private.”
“No way Donald leaves. He stays.”
Donald said, “I sure do, Mom,” and squeezed my hand.
Margot Denning didn’t say anything for a very long while. She simply sat bolt upright in the chair, her posture superb, her head held high, remote, her regality intact.
Finally, she said, “It all began a long time ago, when I was very young, just a girl. . . .” Her voice wavered. She stopped and steadied herself, gripped the arms of the French chair.
If I hadn’t known better, I would have said she was suddenly emotional. But this wasn’t possible, she had ice water in her veins.
Because I so disliked her, I said, “A very short story indeed. Well, so long, I’m off.” I began to move toward the door.
“No, no, I was just . . . trying to formulate the words . . . to get things in order in my mind, Val. I was a girl, just seventeen, when I met a young man. His name was Vincent Landau and I fell in love with him, and he with me. Unfortunately, my mother did not approve of him, and his parents did not approve of me. We were from different worlds, you see. And I—”
“Why didn’t your mother approve?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me.
“Because he was Jewish.”
“And his parents disapproved because you were a gentile?”
“Yes, but it was more than that. The Landaus were extremely rich, they owned a private bank, and they were aiming high for Vincent. They thought he should marry someone of his own ilk, someone in society. I was a nobody as far as they were concerned.”
She paused again and Donald said, “So what happened, Mom?”
“Vincent was sent away to Europe, he was a few years older than me, and his father sent him to work in the Berlin branch of the family bank. Eventually—”
“I hope this isn’t going to take too long,” I interrupted. “Because I have an appointment, and I’m starting to run late. Can you cut to the chase?”
“Yes,” she answered tersely, and leaned back against the chair. “Two years later Vincent came back to New York and sought me out immediately. W
e began to see each other in secret, and not long after we had resumed our relationship I discovered I was pregnant. I was nineteen. I knew if I told my mother she would push me into having an abortion, and so I didn’t tell her I was pregnant until it was too late to do anything. Vincent was worried about his parents’ reaction, but at the same time he was pleased. He hoped that once they met me and knew I was having his child, they would relent, accept me, allow him to marry me.”
She paused, took a deep breath, and smoothed her hand over her hair.
I said, “But they didn’t.”
“That is correct. In fact, they were more furious with him than ever, and did everything to break us up.”
“Did they succeed?” Donald asked.
“Oh, yes, they did.”
“And you miscarried,” I said.
“No, I didn’t,” she answered with a small frown.
“The baby was born dead, then?” I asserted.
“No, the baby wasn’t born dead,” she replied. “She was a beautiful little girl. Perfect in every way. But my mother was beside herself, bitter about Vincent’s behavior, because she thought he should have defied his parents and married me. She didn’t know how to cope, and she was also angry and frustrated. Here was I, not quite twenty, and the mother of an illegitimate child.”
I began to feel cold inside and I became fearful. I didn’t want to hear any more, but I knew I couldn’t stop the flow of words from her mouth. As for me, I was frozen to the spot, unable to leave.
Donald was saying, “So what happened, what did you do?”
We stood there together, he and I, holding hands, united for a short while, protective of each other, and I sensed that Donald was as apprehensive as I was. I realized I didn’t want to hear the rest, because I knew I wasn’t going to like it.
She said, “I settled down to being a mother. Vincent came to see me all the time, he loved us both so much, he loved little Anjelica. She was such a beautiful baby. So perfect. His presence kept my mother calm for a while, and she began to believe we would ultimately marry, and then out of the blue Vincent was sent to the Paris branch of the Landau bank. Soon after he left New York, his engagement to the socialite Marguerite Shiff was announced in The New York Times. I called him up in Paris and he admitted he’d been forced into the engagement.
“My mother made me put Anjelica up for adoption, and I had to do as she said, I had no alternative. I never saw my baby again. It broke my heart. Vincent came back to New York, and we did meet a few times, but we knew it was an impossible situation, quite untenable. So we said our good-byes. He killed himself a week before his marriage. He drove to his family’s country estate, locked himself in the garage, turned on the ignition, and died of carbon monoxide poisoning.”
“So you never saw your baby again, Mother, and your lover killed himself. But what does all this have to do with me?” I asked. I was icy inside now, very fearful.
“Please let me finish.”
“All right,” I responded, looking across at her. I thought she seemed pale all of a sudden and her expression was stark, her mouth taut. It was apparent she was having difficulty with this.
“I met your father several years later, and we were married. He was very kind to me, good to me, but I could never love him. At least, not in the way he wanted to be loved, not with the same passion I had loved Vincent Landau.”
“And you couldn’t love me either, is that it?” I exclaimed in a cold and angry voice. “Is that what you’re leading up to?”
“I tried, Val, I really did try to love you. But whenever I looked at you, I thought of little Anjelica and my guilt overwhelmed me. I couldn’t bear to think of her being out there without me, living with another family, being brought up by another woman. Losing Anjelica and Vincent shattered me completely, my heart was broken and I knew it would always be broken. I lived in a kind of netherworld for years. I was like a zombie in some ways, I suppose. I thought of Anjelica every day. She was never far from my thoughts. When Donald was born it was different, because he was a boy.”
I was gaping at her, stunned, and so was Donald. Neither of us spoke.
“I’m sorry,” she said at last. “So sorry . . .”
“Sorry,” I screamed at her, losing it completely. “Is that all you can say after thirty-one years of torture? Sorry. Well, thanks a lot, Mother. Thanks for the indifference, the injustice, the neglect, and that monumental lack of love and caring. I had a miserable, tormented childhood because of you! Oh, how you made me suffer, and all because of your selfishness, and your ridiculous self-involvement.” I was shaking with rage, and it took all my self-control not to rush at her and strike her. “You talk about your broken heart, but what about mine? You broke my heart, Mother, you punished me because of your mistakes. My God, you’re monstrous, wicked! No, more than wicked, it goes beyond that . . . you are evil!”
IV
Margot Denning was gaping at me, as stunned and devastated as I was. Her face was white, stricken, but I did not care. I had no sympathy for her. How could I? She had ruined my childhood and almost ruined my life, and if it had not been for Annie Patterson, our nanny, and my Denning grandparents, God knows how I would have ended up. In a straitjacket, perhaps. Or, worse, a coffin.
To deny maternal love to your own child, an innocent child, was cruel, inhuman, and unconscionable, and that was what she had done to me. I felt the tears rising in my throat, pricking behind my eyes, but I pushed them back. I was damned if I was going to let her see me cry.
Drawing myself up, I said, “And somehow, now, because you need me, you think you can lure me back into your orbit, into your world. Well, tough luck, Margot. I’m not buying your brand of shit today. As for Lowell’s, if you don’t want Donald to have it, who is entitled, by the way, I suggest you give it to that daughter you gave away so long ago. Little Anjelica. If you can find her after all these years.”
V
Donald’s face was crumpled up, as if he were going to cry, and he reached for me protectively and said, “Val, please let me—”
“No, I don’t need help, I’m fine,” I cried, and shook free of him, stepped away, stepped to one side.
Margot Denning was frozen in place like a marble statue in the chair, her face as white as bleached bone, so stark looking, her cheekbones appeared more prominent than ever, as though they were protruding from her face. She cried, “Val, I—”
“Don’t say a word to me!” I screamed. “You’ve said and done enough these past thirty-one years.” I was shaking all over and my heart was hammering in my chest, I was so outraged. I knew I was in danger of doing something violent if I didn’t escape this room. “You are a reprehensible and destructive woman,” I shrieked at her. “And when I think of my painful childhood, of the cruelty you inflicted on me by refusing to love me, to acknowledge my existence, I have only this to say to you: I hope you rot in hell, Margot Denning.”
I stumbled out of the room blindly, my body racked by the terrible pain and anguish I’d bottled up for years.
Donald came rushing after me and got into the elevator with me. As we rode down together he endeavored to comfort me, to calm me, but without any success. I just couldn’t stop shaking and I felt nauseated.
Donald must have retrieved our coats when he ran out of the apartment, and he wrapped mine around me when we got out onto Park Avenue. As he shrugged into his, he hailed a cab and bundled me into it, gave the Beekman Place address.
Riding across town, edging through the rush-hour traffic, I clung to him, buried my face against his shoulder, praying this awful shaking and feeling of sickness would go away.
But it didn’t, and it took all my self-control not to throw up all over my brother. Donald kept trying to talk to me, to sympathize, to soothe me, but I just couldn’t speak, and I refused to cry, although hot tears were very near the surface.
Once we arrived at the apartment building in Beekman Place, Donald helped me out, paid the cabbie, and put an arm around me
as he maneuvered me across the lobby and into the elevator.
At the front door of the apartment I began to fumble in my bag for the keys, but I wasn’t doing too well, and Donald took the bag away from me, found my keys, and opened the front door.
Still helping me, both his arms around me, we went into the apartment together.
Jake must have heard us, and he came out of the study, exclaiming, “Hi, where’ve you been—” But the words died on his lips when he saw me half crumpled over, clinging to Donald as if my life depended on it.
“My God! Val, what’s wrong? Are you sick, darling?” he cried, rushing into the entrance foyer.
Letting go of Donald at last, I moved forward and stumbled into Jake’s arms, filling with relief as I did. He looked into my stricken face and cried again, “You’re as white as a sheet, what is it?”
I stared back at him, struck dumb, unable to utter a word.
Looking over my head, he asked my brother, “Donald, what the hell’s wrong? What happened to Val?”
“Let’s get her inside, let’s sit down,” Donald muttered, and at once Jake did as he asked, half leading, half carrying me into the study. I collapsed on the sofa and Jake sat down next to me after pulling off my coat and throwing it to one side. He wrapped his arms around me again.
“Come on, let’s have it, Donald! Why is Val in this terrible state?”
Donald sat down in the chair opposite and began to tell him.
And I began to weep, finally letting go now that I was safe with Jake.
VI
I wept all through Donald’s excruciating narrative, desperately holding on to Jake, clinging to him. As he listened to Donald, he stroked my hair, tightened his grip on me, but did not interrupt my brother with the questions. He simply listened and digested everything.
When Donald finished, Jake exclaimed in an angry voice, “I’ve never heard anything so disgusting, so despicable in my entire life. It’s monstrous, and your mother must be a monster. Or mentally ill.”
“A monster,” I mumbled through my tears.
Where You Belong Page 27