“Mrs. Ross?” Wow. He remembered my voice. “I was just finishing up paperwork.”
I heard what he didn’t say, or rather I saw: an empty house, echoing memories, a restless night. “I’m not calling,” I said, “because of what you said about Don wanting me to be involved. I don’t believe it.”
He said, “I’m sorry I upset you.”
I was moved by his willingness to back off. And I always melted when people expressed guilt, especially after I’d been trying to make them feel guilty. Besides, a man who could apologize, well, was a man I couldn’t hate too much. “What I called about,” I said, “is advice. A phone consultation. You can send me a bill.”
“No bill. We don’t have a professional relationship now. Let’s pretend we’re at a party, and you heard I’m a psychiatrist, and you ask me for advice.”
“I’m an accountant, and it happens to me too.”
“Then come April, I’ll call you about those tax shelters my last accountant got me into, just before they took him to jail.”
I realized I was lying there naked and wet, and if I splashed, he would know it. I concentrated on moving nothing but my mouth. “There’s a meeting about the will. Should I make Tommy go? He’s got plans already for that Wild World of Wrestling bout.”
“You know, that’s something I miss from having only daughters. I never get to go to pro wrestling matches.”
“You haven’t missed much, except mankind at its most primal. Should I make him go to the meeting instead?”
“I wouldn’t. Give him some rest. Children grieve in pieces, and they need time away from the pain. Tommy trusts you to do what’s best.”
I could do that. I could do what was best for Tommy, even though it meant sitting only a few feet from Wanda.
Or maybe I’d go to the meeting, grab the will out of Wanda’s hands, and scream, You bitch! This is mine! I was the one who did the books, and designed the office systems, and wrote the copy for the ads! I spent five years driving a used Ford Escort, a two-door! With a baby seat in back! I ate peanut butter for lunch for two years so he could buy nice office furniture! And that was before low-fat peanut butter! I gained ten pounds! I did that for Don! And all you did was spread your step-aerobicked legs!
“Then again,” he said, “maybe you should go to the wrestling match and let Tommy deal with the will.”
“How did you do that? Read my mind that way?”
“It had nothing to do with your mind. I just translated your tooth-grinding.”
Bitterly, I assured him, “Oh, I’ll be the perfect lady. But if she makes one squawk about anything Don left Tommy--”
AS IT TURNED OUT, I didn’t have to rip her bleached blonde tresses out after all. Don didn’t leave Tommy anything. Oh, the will mentioned him. I remember from some Hitchcock film that wills can’t just ignore minor children. And so Don mentioned Tommy: “My son Thomas having been amply provided for . . .”
I should back up. Set the scene. Attorney Al Morgan’s office. The Official Widow sitting by the window in a subdued but enticingly short black dress. Sun streaming in, glinting off her golden hair. Al shuffling the papers, gaze fastened on her bare knees.
I got a full-faced glare from the widow and hoped that meant a clean sweep for the family Don used to claim. But I was thinking of the Don that used to be. This Don wrote a will excluding not only his son but also his sister and the charities we supported.
Got ahead of myself there.
I’d never been to a will reading. I thought they happened only in movies. But Al was the dramatic type. And what could be more dramatic than a catfight between widows? It didn’t degenerate into that, if only because I was too stunned to follow through with my natural impulses. Once Al started reading, I blocked out all the legalese and listened for one name. “My son Thomas having been provided for in an earlier trust, I leave the remainder of my estate to my wife Wanda.”
This made both us widows straighten up. Wanda shot me a triumphant look before turning a sorrowful face on the attorney. “That’s my guy,” she murmured, but I wasn’t paying any attention to her anymore.
“I didn’t get that last bit. What was it he left for Tommy?”
Al squirmed in his fancy leather chair. “Since Thomas was provided for in the divorce settlement. The annuity . . . you remember.”
What I remembered was how Don worked to keep his present investment in Tommy as low as possible. “He’s just been paying on the annuity for a year. The cash value can’t be much.”
“It is funded by life insurance in the event of death. It provides for a generous sum.”
The trust fund wasn’t truly generous, just enough to help Tommy start out in life, and not enough to corrupt him. But Tommy was his son. “What about the baseball cap collection?”
They both looked at me as if I were speaking in tongues. Impatiently, I said, “When Don traveled on business, he’d go to a baseball game and buy a cap. Tommy loves that collection.”
Humiliatingly, Wanda dismissed me with a wave of her red-nailed hand. “He can have it.”
Al stood up and smiled. “Well, that’s settled. I’ll see to getting the collection transferred.” He was clearly uncomfortable. I wondered if, as he’d drawn up the will, he’d urged Don to leave something to Tommy and Don had refused.
I stayed rooted to my chair. “What about Tracy? And her children? Nothing for them?”
Don’s sister Tracy was hard working but always skirting the edge of financial danger. We helped her when we could, and I had assumed Don would help her children through college.
“He forgave the debt she owed to him.”
Oh, wow. Was that all Tracy, the sister who cared for him after his mother died, deserved? I didn’t know what was in his head. Oops. Forgot. His head was full of Wanda. I tried one more time, but really, who was I beseeching? Al couldn’t do anything. Don was gone. “That’s all? What about her children? His nephew and niece?”
“The lawyer said there was nothing,” Wanda snapped. She rose and went to the window to look out at the City Market below, as if all this bored her silly. She was a wealthy woman now. She shouldn’t have to waste her valuable time like this. And I could tell Al wanted me to leave. No doubt he and the widow had matters to discuss. But I couldn’t think coherently enough to find my way to the elevator.
“Can I see the will?”
Al looked offended, but I didn’t care. He handed me the sheaf of pages. At the bottom of each page were Don’s initials and the date. Last year. April 14. It was his wedding day. I’d seen him a few days before, at our final divorce hearing. He looked blissed out. Free to marry the step-aerobics instructor of his dreams. And he’d lost no time wedding Wanda and insuring her future.
I murmured, “It has that part about being of sound mind.”
“That’s standard. It goes in all wills.”
“Just as well.” I must have been recovering, if I could manage sarcasm. I turned to the last page and found Don’s signature as bold as ever. Not a quaver as he signed it all away. I dropped the papers on Al’s desk. “The estate will continue to pay child support?”
Al looked uncomfortable again. “Uh, well, in this state, the child support obligation ends with death. So . . . well, no. There won’t be any further child support payments.”
This I hadn’t imagined. Shouldn’t a rich man support his own child? And how could that be characterized as an ‘obligation’? “But—but the estate is liable for debts.”
“Child support isn’t a debt.”
“So there’s no more child support? Nothing?” My voice rose enough to distract Wanda from her daydream of Learjets; she glanced over once, then disdainfully away.
Al looked relieved. “The life insurance policy with Tommy as beneficiary. It won’t just fund the annuity. There will be plenty lef
t over. Your attorney insisted on that. You can draw on that for his support until he takes possession of the funds at age twenty-five.”
“Thanks.” I found my bag. Found the door. Found the elevator.
By the time I found my car, I’d figured it out. The annuity, the life insurance. I’d tell Tommy this was his inheritance. And the baseball caps. His dad had provided for him.
Was that a lie? I don’t know. Sometimes the truth isn’t true, do you know what I mean? I’m sure Don didn’t mean anything by leaving Tommy out of his will, nothing that reflected on their relationship. But Tommy wouldn’t see it that way. He’d think his dad didn’t love him. And that’s the lie, not my saying, “Hey, your dad wanted to make sure you’d be able to go to college and maybe even get a car, not a new one, of course, and only if you’re good.”
It wasn’t that Don didn’t love Tommy. I was there. I remember the years he’d coached Little League and never complained when Tommy’s June swoon lasted all season long. Even this last year, he’d never missed a visitation, though Tommy wasn’t always a pleasant houseguest, and Wanda wouldn’t be the most welcoming hostess. It’s just that Don lost the knack of it. Loving a kid takes practice, takes every day, the irritations and orders and bedtime rituals of living together. Tommy just stopped being Don’s default thought. You know how it is, if you’re a parent. The child is like the soundtrack of your mental movie, always in the background, always ready to worry you or amuse you. But after Don stopped living with us, he thought of Tommy most when it was time to pick him up every other weekend.
Second marriages are tricky things, or first divorces are. You end up divorcing the kid along with the mother, unless you’re up for a lot of hurt. And Don never was one to bear hurt, maybe because his mother died when he was seven. And hurts that would be a twinge for you or me, like criticism or getting stood up, made Don feel abandoned. So Tommy never let his dad know how hard it was, the every-other-weekend and occasional-hockey-games visitation, Wanda’s son who had taken Tommy’s place in his Dad’s house.
He’d learned that protectiveness from me. Poor kid. If he ends up with a hypersensitive girl who needs careful handling and constant encouragement, well, you can blame me.
As Don said proudly last year, “He’s really taken this life-change well, hasn’t he?”
Life-change. Right.
Anyway, Tommy didn’t have to know that his dad’s thoughts, when he thought of death, were taken up with how devastated Wanda would be and what expensive consolation she’d require. All he had to know was his dad had provided for him, one way or another.
I’D HAD THESE moments–when my father died, when Don was moving out–moments where reality seemed so unreal I’d get sick from the vertigo. I just want it to stop spinning. The only way to deal with it was to find some task to preoccupy my mind.
When I got home from the will-reading, I looked out at the back lawn, which sloped gently towards the river. It had been a dry spring, and my stripe of lawn was considerably sparser than Vince and Hal’s next door. At least the brown was brightened by the yellow weeds dancing in the breeze. Soon some helpful neighbor would arrive with a petition that I do my lawn duty before my dandelion spores infected other properties. So I set the lawn sprinkler up and turned it on, a manual task that involved enough complexity–getting done without getting wet–that my mind stopped spinning and started working. Then I went in and washed the mud off my hands, got a drink and a pad of paper, and went out to the screened side porch to make lists.
First I made a list of the things Tommy needed for the summer, and a list of things I needed to get at the grocery store. Then I started a list of Don’s personal items for Tommy: the baseball cap collection, the fishing rod, the bowling ball—
My pen faltered. Was I protecting Tommy’s interest, or striking a blow against Wanda? That was stupid. She was invulnerable. Nothing I did would make her guilty or ashamed.
Back in the house, the phone rang. Maybe it was Al, saying he had found a newer will leaving everything to Tommy. I bounded for the phone, grabbing it in mid-ring. “Hello?”
“This is Tracy. I just wanted to see how Tommy is.”
No new will. Shoot. “He’s okay. His friends took him out today.” When we’d been sisters-in-law, Tracy and I talked every week. But after the divorce, there didn’t seem much to say. “I appreciated you watching over Tommy at the funeral.”
“Oh, I wanted to help. He’s very dear to me and the kids. I hope we can still see him, and you too. We’ve missed you.”
That sent a spike into my heart. Divorce has so many casualties, and in-law friendships are among the first. “Maybe we can get together when everything has settled down.”
She assented, then said in a rush, “Did the will say anything about me and the kids?”
I drew in my breath. Apparently, Al hadn’t told her. “You should talk to Al Morgan about it. I don’t know all the details.”
“I don’t want to call if there’s no reason. It might be embarrassing.”
I guessed it was a compliment that it wasn’t so embarrassing to ask me. “I know that, well, any debt has been cancelled.” It sounded as inadequate now as it had in Al’s office.
“That’s–that’s good. Well.”
I could hear the tears in her voice. I couldn’t stand it. I’d been hoping that Don had left his sister and her children out of the will because he’d already arranged a trust for them, but if that were true, Tracy wouldn’t be calling me begging for information. I almost told her he’d also stiffed his own son, but I didn’t think that would be much consolation. Instead, in a bright, inane tone, I said, “So how are the kids doing? Isn’t Steve starting at IU in the fall?”
She drew a shaky breath, and then in a similar cheery way, she said, “Oh, he was admitted, but maybe it would be better if he stayed here and went to Concord State.”
In other words, now Tracy couldn’t afford both tuition and room and board. As she spoke of how convenient it would be to have Steve home another year, I mounted the stairs to my office and sat in front of my computer. I logged on while she enthused about how Steve would like hanging with his high school friends. I interrupted her. “I was going to call you about this. I don’t know if Don mentioned this.” I knew Don had never mentioned it, because it wasn’t true. Someday these little white lies would turn my soul dark, just as Sister Evarista predicted, but until then–“He set aside some money for Jenny and Steve. For college.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Why would I be kidding?” I had to be more convincing than this. “He was going to put together a trust a couple years ago, but just never got around to it. Things were pretty confusing.” There, that would do it. Tracy knew how crazy Don got after he met Wanda. “I did make him at least set up an account.” With my free hand, I called up my brokerage account program and scrolled down to do a quick calculation of the figures. “We stuck it into a t-bond fund. After the divorce, he left it under my control. I don’t know why.”
Tracy said tautly, “He could trust you to hand it over.”
“Well, this is a good time for that.” As I spoke, I highlighted a pharmaceutical stock that had risen about as far as it was likely to rise and dragged it into the sell column, then watched the screen as On-Trade accepted my stock and gave me electronic dollars in return. “It’s $20,000 after I take out enough for capital gains taxes. I should cash it out so you can invest it.”
“Wait.” She said slowly, “Look, Meggie, if it’s in your name–I mean, we can get by, you know? Steve doesn’t have to go to IU. He won’t mind living at home for a few years.”
I wasn’t the only one telling little white lies. “But—”
“No, listen. I know that you didn’t get a lot in the divorce.”
My face burned. I was ashamed. “How do you know that?”
“Don was
pleased with the settlement. And if he was pleased, I knew you didn’t make out very well. I’ve been there, remember?”
It was Tracy’s three-year-long divorce battle that made me decide to settle for something less than a generous settlement. “Tommy and I won’t suffer if we give your kids their money.”
I could feel the struggle in her, between pride and maternal protectiveness. “If only Jerott would get a job. He’s supposed to pay half the tuition.”
Jerott, her ex, had dissolved his dental practice with the express intent of avoiding paying child support. Now he lived in a trailer and sold bait, and Tracy gave up ever collecting the money he owed her. At least Don hadn’t been into cutting off his nose to spite his ex-wife. “Trace, that’s why Don put the money aside. I should use it the way he intended.”
If there’s an air-conditioned room in hell for those who lie to help others, I might as well make a reservation. But it worked. Tracy’s voice mingled shame and relief, “If that’s what Don wanted, well, maybe the will wasn’t the best place for a gift like this, given the circumstances.”
Neither of us had to speak it aloud–given Wanda’s hold on him and his money. I thought it best to move on. “You get Steve reserved at IU before all the dorm space is gone.”
She was crying when she hung up. I was too, for her but also for me, for having to give when it hurt. But the phone rang again, and I swallowed back the tears, and answered.
“Mrs. Ross?”
Dr. Warren. I knew his phone voice now. I went on the offensive. “Don’t call me Mrs. Ross, okay? It sounds strange. What with Mr. Ross not being my husband anymore.” Or not being at all anymore. “Considering you know all about my mother’s neurotic anxiety and how my honeymoon went and all that, it’s kind of formal.”
“That’s the point. If I keep it formal, you can feel there’s a distance, and you won’t be embarrassed that I know so many intimate details of your life.”
Until Death Page 4