Generous Death
Page 9
Sherry’s blue eyes—same light shade as our mother’s and mine—looked startled, as if I’d caught her off guard. Then the perfectly made-up eyelids with their exquisitely drawn lines and shadows closed down again to shutter her thoughts. Everything about her was exquisite and expensive, from the cloud of shimmering hair to the Gucci belt and shoes and the Hermes handbag. It was as if she thought that by maintaining a facade of irreproachable respectability and class, she could rise above the town’s memory of our mother as she had become in those last years before she was diagnosed and committed. Our lovely, sparkling mother had given up on everything including baths, deodorant, clean clothes, hairbrushes and toothpaste—and hope. Most of all, of course, she gave up on hope.
I’ve been told I’m no slouch myself when I really want to put myself together with clothes and makeup, but I was a slob compared to Sherry. She was as gorgeous as a trust fund, a well-to-do husband and the spur of shame could make her.
I came out of my reverie to hear Michael say that he, too, had been defeated by busy signals.
“I heard the news about Mrs. Hatch and wanted to make sure you knew,” he said tentatively, gently, as people do when they’re not sure if you know your dog is dead. “You do know, don’t you?”
“I was the one who found her.”
That got their attention, even Sherry’s. I avoided Michael’s sympathetic eyes and my sister’s cool ones and told my horrifying story to Ginger.
“Oh God,” she said at the end of it, “it’s tied to my father’s death, isn’t it? And the murder of Mr. Cohen?”
“Oh Swede, how awful for you,” Michael said and wrapped a warm and comforting arm around my shoulders.
“Quite the center of attention, weren’t you?” my sister said, arched eyebrow and all. “Aren’t you. Always.”
I leaned into Michael’s side and absorbed his affection into my wounded spirit while he and Ginger stood by looking awkward and uncomfortable. I wished I were six years old again and could stick out my tongue at my bratty little sister. I knew, however, that what I should do was ignore her because that was the best of all possible ways to aggravate her. It was attention she craved as an alcoholic craves drink; but like the fed-up-to-here family of an alcoholic, I knew I shouldn’t indulge her insatiable need. “Stop being her patsy,” a psychologist had advised me. “Don’t allow her to make you pay for the failings of your parents. Does she think it was easy on you? Stop being so sweet and patient with her—give her back some other own and see how she likes it. She has to learn to accept the natural consequences of her actions; and it is not natural for you to swallow your hurt and fury when she abuses you. She knows you don’t mean it, anyway, and that only makes her despise you more. Jenny, the past is not your fault. Your sister has to get on with her life as it exists today, without demanding payment from you for yesterday.”
He didn’t tell me I would enjoy giving it back to her, it was a shocking and humbling experience to learn that. We had both, my sister and I, a long way to go toward forgiving.
“Stuff it,” I said angrily, without a hint of wit or self-control or good nature. I even raised my voice. “I didn’t ask you to visit me, Sherry, but if you can’t control your snide tongue in front of my friends, I will ask you to leave. Make up your mind.”
I could feel Michael’s intake of breath; Ginger looked at me as if she really didn’t know me at all. As for my sister, she couldn’t have looked more shocked if I had hit her. She looked so surprised it was funny. So, true to the psychologist’s advice to let my natural feelings show, I laughed.
“I’m sorry, Ginger and Michael,” I said briskly and moved across the room to take a seat in my father’s armchair. “It’s no fun to witness family squabbles, I know. Are you leaving or staying, Sherry?”
Her blue-eyed glare was vivid with hate.
“Leaving. But not before I tell you why I came. Not before I have the pleasure of telling you the hospital called me today—because of the busy signal on your popular phone, I presume.”
I stiffened and prayed she wouldn’t indulge her considerable capacity for cruelty. My prayers went begging.
“Mother’s gone catatonic again,” she said as if she took it as a personal affront, which of course she did. Then she twisted the corkscrew further into my heart. “It happened last night after your visit with her. You don’t suppose there’s a connection, do you?”
I looked away from her, unable to cope with her venom and my pain at the same time. When she saw she wasn’t going to get a response—or maybe had already got the response she sought—she raised her perfect little chin in the air and marched elegantly out of the house. My only satisfaction lay in knowing how much she would later regret having shown her worst side to strangers. My God, we were hideous to each other; my God, how we needed each other and how sadly that need cried in vain.
“Jennifer, I’m so sorry.” Michael’s voice was as gentle as his eyes.
“I’ll come back later if that would be better.” Ginger spread her plump hands in a gesture of helpless embarrassment.
“No.” I stood and tried on a smile for size. It seemed to fit, if a little raggedly, so I kept it there. “Just let me make a quick phone call and then I hope you’ll both stay for supper. I’d be grateful for your company. Will you?”
They would.
I shut myself in the den and called the doctors. I got about as much response out of them as they were getting from my mother. “Wait,” they said. “Be patient. She’s come out of it before. She’ll come out of it again.”
But I didn’t believe them, not this time. My mother didn’t have a reason to come out of it this time, except possibly for the sake of life itself, and that held no rhyme or reason for her anymore. No reason at all.
Chapter 13
I paid the man from the garage when he came huffing and puffing to the front door.
“You ought to shovel your walk,” he said.
“You ought to shove off,” I said, but with a smile and a tip. One mustn’t alienate one’s service person. Or one will be, someday, stuck as a buck in the muck with nobody to bail out one’s ass.
He stuck the extra money in his wallet and nodded complacently as if it were only just. He didn’t say thank you.
“Better shovel this before you get sued,” he said in farewell.
I made a classic Italian gesture of disrespect behind his back.
I shut the door on the cold night and turned back into the house to organize the troops for dinner.
While Ginger poured the wine and Michael washed the lettuce, I alternated between the oven and the phone. Simon Church called to say that he, too, had received a summons to appear in New York the next day. He sounded aggrieved that the bequest of the Degas was being routed through The Foundation; I told him truthfully that I didn’t have the vaguest notion why.
“I hear you found Mrs. Hatch,” he said in his blunt way, but not unkindly. His big voice boomed out into the kitchen for everyone to hear. “Uh, Jenny my love, would you happen to know if she left anything for the Martha Paul? You know she always hinted she might give us a little something.”
“Simon, Simon …” I looked over at Ginger to find her shaking her head and smiling. She’d heard him, too.
“I know,” he said cheerfully. “I know I’m a crass bastard, but I learned a long time ago that if you don’t ask the question, you won’t get the answer. So did she?”
“She left some money to The Foundation for the purpose of providing care for adolescents,” I said, sounding rather like a will myself. “And she left some directly to the Welcome Home. So if you benefit at all, it will only be indirectly, Simon.” (Sometimes a large bequest enables us to increase our overall purchasing power, so that we can invest in something that pays better interest or dividends. When that happens, there’s a trickle-down effect that benefits all the charities we support—because whenever we earn more, we have more money to give away. As the old saying goes, it takes money to make money.
)
The sound of his large, disappointed sigh filled the kitchen. “Jenny, Jenny,” he complained, “Arnie promises the world and gives us zippitydoodah … Moshe Cohen didn’t give a rat’s ass about us compared to his precious theater, or the goddamn Golan Heights, for Pete’s sake!… and Florence Hatch drops hints like an outfielder drops flies, but she doesn’t leave us a pot to piss in! I’ll tell you, Jen, people are so irresponsible.”
It was almost comical. For Simon, the axis upon which the world revolved was the Martha Paul; nothing happened that he couldn’t connect in some way, for good or ill, to the museum.
“Just think about that Degas, Simon,” I said soothingly. “Just think about that lovely painting and how it’s going to be all yours.”
“All yours, you mean,” he said bitterly.
“Simon,” I said, suddenly beset by the trepidation born of experience, “you will be good tomorrow, won’t you?” He was a superb museum director in many ways, but a lousy diplomat. I always held my breath during his dealings with donors; they have to be handled with kid gloves and he didn’t have a pair to his name. I said nervously, “You won’t get mad and do something I’ll regret?”
He laughed, a shade wildly, I thought.
“Oh ye of little faith,” he said, “you can count on Simple Simon. I’ll be good as gold, Jenny love, I’ll be…”
“You’d better be,” I threatened, “or maybe The Foundation will find some other museum in which to hang that Degas.”
That blackmail sobered him up.
“I’ll see you at the airport, Jennifer,” he said, reproof in his voice. Simon could dish it out, hut he didn’t easily tolerate jokes about his sacred cow.
“Thanks for calling,” I said, all business, and hung up just in time for the phone to ring again.
“Jenny,” a male voice said. “It’s Geof… Bushfield.”
“I know which Geof you are, Geof.” I wondered if he could hear my smile. But then I stopped smiling. “Oh dear, I forgot you wanted to interview me today. I’m so beat. Can we do it tomorrow instead?”
“Well, we need your statement,” he said. “I’d suggest taking it first thing in the morning, but as it happens, I’m going to New York tomorrow.”
“Me too.”
“No kidding? That early bird commuter flight?”
“Yes, God help me, the one that cracks the dawn.”
“So am I,” he said. “Okay then, how’s this for a compromise? I’ll take your statement on the flight down.”
“There won’t be enough time, will there?”
He laughed. “Why? Do you have a lot to say? Okay, here’s a better idea. I’ll get what I can on the flight, then I’ll meet you later in the city and we’ll finish the job.”
“Sold.”
“Thanks, Jenny.” There was a pause. “Are you all right?”
“Pretty well,” I said. “Thank you. Uh, Geof, can you tell me what you’ve found out about Mrs. Hatch?”
“Sure,” he said calmly, “I don’t see why not. We found her car for one thing. It was still in the parking lot at the hotel where she went to that meeting. The guy on the switchboard at the hotel remembers getting a call for her, but he can’t remember if it was from a man or woman. At any rate, he had her paged out of her meeting and that’s the last anybody knows about her. Evidently she took the call on one of the house phones and then got her coat from, the rack outside the meeting room. She may have left the hotel with somebody, in another car, but nobody saw her, unfortunately.”
“Well, that hotel lobby’s a busy place,” I said. “I suppose there’s no reason anybody would notice one old lady leaving. But didn’t she go back to her meeting and tell them she was going?”
“No,” Geof said. “There were close to a hundred people there and she was only in the audience, so she could have just picked up her coat and left without anyone knowing.”
“So now you have to try to trace her movements from the time she took the telephone page to the time! …! …”
“Right,” he said quickly. “We’ve interviewed the girls and the staff at the Welcome Home, and their neighbors.”
“And?”
“And nada,” he said with an air of frankness. “On Sunday night, the staff at the home always take the girls out to a movie, so the grounds were conveniently empty for at least two hours. And the neighbors say there’s always so much activity at the house—people coming and going—that they’ve got so they don’t pay attention anymore.”
“Somebody must have known those facts,” I suggested. “The same person who knew Mrs. Hatch well enough to write that rhyme about her.”
“That’s what we think, too,” he agreed. “If you get any ideas on the subject, will you let me know?”
“Of course,” I said. “See you in the morning.”
After I hung up, I switched on the telephone answering machine. Whatever else anybody had to tell me could just darn well wait until tomorrow.
“Who was that?” Michael looked up from his work at the salad bowl. He’d created a crisp jumble of lettuce, radishes, sliced Jerusalem artichokes, cucumbers, red onions and Italian dressing. I pulled the rib eye steaks out of the broiler.
“A cop,” I said. I slit open the baked potatoes and slathered them with butter, sour cream and freshly snipped chives. “The one who’s in charge of investigating the murders.”
“Sounds as if you know him pretty well,” he said casually. I watched him carry the salad bowl to the table and I wondered what it was he had heard in my voice during the brief conversation. Ginger tactfully kept her head bent over the wine bottle as she poured the rest of it into an open-necked decanter to set on the table.
I said, “Oh well, you know. Murder breeds familiarity.”
“And familiarity,” he said, looking straight at me, “breeds contempt.”
Not tonight, Michael, I thought as I removed the pumpkin bread from the microwave. Please don’t start on me again, not tonight.
We were ready to eat at the round oak table in my mother’s dining room.
“L’chaim.” Ginger smiled and raised her crystal goblet of California burgundy. “To life.”
Too late, she realized that might not have been the best toast for that particular day. There was an awkward moment in which we all glanced at each other with dread in our eyes. Then the instant broke apart into rueful, understanding smiles.
“I’ll have to remove my foot from my mouth before I can eat,” she said. The corners of her mouth turned down in apology.
“Don’t worry about it,” Michael said and rewarded her with his kindest smile, the one that left my secretary limp and speechless. “The way things are going in this town, there’s hardly a subject, that isn’t uncomfortable to somebody.” He munched on a bite of salad before adding, “I mean, we can’t talk about business, because I’ll get depressed. We can’t talk about parents, or we’ll all cry. We can’t discuss money or wills. We can’t mention sisters or brothers or dying or sickness or health. So what’s left?”
“The weather?” I suggested between mouthfuls of potato.
“No!” Ginger said. “We’re sick of it!”
“Religion, politics?” I said.
“Nope,” Michael said. “Didn’t your mother always tell you—oh boy, see what I mean? I’m sorry, Swede.”
I was, too, because the reminder of my mother took my appetite away. I put my fork down and smiled—bravely, I thought—at him.
“S’okay.” I hoped the tears I felt were not visible.
Ginger saved me by asking me to pass the salt and pepper—and then the butter and the sour cream—and then the bowl of chive bits. Michael and I stared, fascinated, as she glopped her potato two inches high with fattening condiments.
“I haven’t had a decent meal in a week!” she said defensively. “My mother has stopped cooking entirely, which I must say is a blessing. And she and Franklin eat at the club every night. I don’t want to join them, God forbid, so I batch at home on
peanut butter and eggs.”
“Together?” Michael, whose tastes run to the gourmet, was horrified.
“No,” she laughed, “peanut butter one night, eggs the next. So this is Nirvana! I shall now proceed to make a pig of myself.”
We settled down to serious eating.
After dinner, we formed an assembly line by which the dishes got removed from the table, scraped and placed in the dishwasher. Then, still in a mood of comfortable, satisfied companionship, we carried big mugs of decaffeinated coffee into the den.
I made a fire while Michael and Ginger settled back into opposite ends of mother’s big comfy chintz couch. I sat on the rag rug on the floor in front of them and leaned against the green leather library chair. It was an odd mix of furniture, but it worked somehow.
“This is nice,” Ginger said softly.
They watched the flames. I stared at the random patterns in the rug and thought of the now-useless hands of my mother that had woven it almost thirty years ago.
“Well.” Ginger lifted her shoulders in a sigh that said she was ready to talk. “I’ll tell you why I came by this afternoon, but I hope it doesn’t ruin this lovely mood. I heard The Foundation is going to contest my father’s will.”
I gave her a direct look and a direct answer.
“Yes,” I said.
And then she surprised me.
“Well, I just want you to know that’s all right,” she said. “I told you I never wanted the money. Well, now that I’m within dreaming distance of it. I’m not so sure I was honest with myself about that. You know how it is, you get to thinking maybe you could do some good in the world. Pay for the money, so to speak. But I want you to know I understand your decision and I don’t hold it against you. I’d do the same thing if I were in your position. I know it’s nothing personal against me; it’s for The Foundation and the museum. You’re only doing your job.”
I winced at the phrase. Only doing my job: Damn the torpedoes and the consequences no matter who got hurt in the process? How badly would Ginger suffer if we won?