by Belva Plain
“Well, you’re in very good hands both ways,” he said heartily.
“You don’t do any real estate work?”
“No, that’s Fowler’s specialty. I’m one of the people who stand around the courthouse.”
Devlin laughed. “That’s what I like about you. No airs. As if I don’t know darn well you don’t stand around. Eddy says you’re an orator. Gift of gab, eh? I ought to go down and listen to you sometime. They tell me you like to fight for the underdog.”
“If he’s in the right, I certainly do.”
“That’s good. We need people with a heart. Need more of them in government, too.”
Robb nodded. “That’s true.”
An open folder lay on his desk. Devlin had interrupted him, but the fault was his own for having instructed his secretary to let Devlin interrupt him whenever he came. The man was touchy and was easily capable of taking his work elsewhere because of some imagined slight. Bringing him here in the first place had been a fine feather in Robb’s cap, a feather that Eddy called “no feather, but a big chief’s headdress.”
So whenever Devlin had an appointment with Will Fowler, Robb could expect an inconvenient, unannounced visit, too. Fortunately, it did not occur very often.
“How’s your missus?”
“She’s fine, thank you.”
If the man only knew how Ellen despised him! At the country club she tried to avoid him, but he always managed to find her. She was not only a beautiful woman, but she also had “class.” She stood out, and Devlin recognized that.
“My missus is down in Florida for the next few months, so our house is mostly closed up. No social life for a while. Not that I have a lot of time for it, anyway. I’m too busy flying around the country. You can’t believe what’s happening to real estate. Property values soaring. No end to it. It’s like scooping up gold by the pailful. Say, maybe you’d like to ride out on my plane sometime just for the heck of it and take a look. Bring Ellen, too. She’d enjoy the scenery, the change.”
“Thanks very much, but not right now. She has so much responsibility at home.”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve heard about your boy. Tough luck. We never had kids, but I can imagine.”
No you can’t, Robb thought, and waited most courteously for Devlin to leave.
The conversation having interrupted his deliberations over an exceedingly complex case, he sat back in his chair with his long legs on his desk, to relax and clear his mind. Ordinarily he rejoiced in the actual physical aura that had first surrounded him in the offices of this firm. It was as if they were a center that both radiated and attracted energy. Today, however, his mind was too filled to feel anything but swirling, internal currents.
There was, of course, the case; his client, a minor official of a small bank, was on trial for embezzlement. The man puzzled him. An earnest type, understandably nervous, he seemed to Robb not to be lying to his lawyer, but simply not to be confiding the entire truth, and worried because he was not doing it. It was as if he were engaged in some inner struggle over the need to say more and the fear of saying it. He is protecting somebody, Robb had been thinking, becoming more and more convinced the more he thought. There was somebody, maybe a group of somebodies more powerful than the accused, whom he was protecting. It was a not uncommon situation. And Robb had a sudden vision of a tidy, very modest bungalow, heavily mortgaged, a frightened wife waiting at end of day for the day’s news, and children to be cheerily, bravely protected from the news—the whole, sad business. It was the world. It was Grant’s or Jasper’s type of case.
He sighed. This had been a hard week, starting with Grant’s funeral. He had died in his office without immediate warning, without pain. Standing in the crowded church with Ellen, and especially Julie who had so loved her grandfather, he had examined his own feelings and arrived at a not very original conclusion: Every one of us is an enigma. There in the coffin, at rest under a mound of red carnations, lay a charitable, upright, scrupulously honest man whose rigid persona required perfection. Penn was not perfect. Therefore, the person who had with cunning brought Penn into an otherwise unblemished family must not be forgiven; yes, outwardly for the sake of decorum, he might be and had been, but in the heart, never.
Heredity or environment? You figure it out. But mercy upon Grant anyway, and pity for Ellen’s grief.
After a while, it was time to go home. In the parking lot he met Will Fowler, who when he saw Robb, inquired with a meaningful grin whether he had had the usual visit from Devlin.
“You may be sure I did,” said Robb, responding in kind. “Quite a character, isn’t he?”
“That’s for sure. But you have to admire his ambition. I’m damned if I know what you do with all that money, though. I wouldn’t know how to spend it if I had it.”
“Nor I,” Robb said.
A sense of assurance surged in his chest as he thought of the tidy sums he was now for the first time able to lay aside. The feeling was warm, a most comfortable feeling after these last few hours.
As if he were enjoying his release to the outdoors, Will apparently wanted to linger. It was a mild winter day under a melancholy, clouded sky, but the small wind was refreshing, and the two men stood for a while talking cheerfully about nothing in particular.
“Yes,” Will said, coming back to the opening topic, “yes, it’s astounding. He just gave me as a list of his holdings, office buildings bigger than this one, low-income housing, upscale housing, those malls you’ve heard about, and that’s not everything. He’s got at least one other law firm handling his stuff on the West Coast, and probably more than one for all I know. It’s like Aladdin’s lamp. When Devlin takes a dollar and rubs it, he turns it into ten.”
“But real estate—is it that safe?”
“It is generally if you buy top quality. Of course, that takes money to start with, which is sort of a catch-22, isn’t it?”
“I know. But what I meant was, is property safe in these times as things are now? I know almost nothing about it. All I own is the house we live in.”
You don’t even own that. It came from Ellen.
Will shrugged. “When it’s good, it’s very, very good. And right now, it is. It’s like the stock market.”
“But property—land—is tangible. It seems to me that’s a whole lot safer than stocks.”
“Maybe so. But in case you’ve got any thoughts, let me advise you not to get mixed up with Devlin.”
“I’ve no such thoughts, I assure you.”
“Well, it’s interesting to watch him. The human comedy, that’s what it is. I’m going home. Good night, Robb.”
“That’s a great little kid you’ve got there,” Eddy said.
“Not such a little kid anymore. In May she’ll be a teenager.”
Playing a set of tennis with him that morning, Julie had made Robb fight to win. Now he was watching her playing doubles with her peers. But he was also seeing her on her first two-wheeler, on her red tricycle, and learning to walk between her parents, stepping forth in her little white shoes.…
“I didn’t know you were going to be at the club today,” Eddy said, “or I’d have come up earlier and met you folks for lunch. I don’t see enough of you. Where’s Ellen?”
“Home with Penn. Mrs. Vernon’s in bed with a cold.”
“Does that mean he’s not doing too well?” Eddy was sympathetic. “I know you’ve brought him here a couple of times before.”
“It depends on his mood. Most of the time he’s agreeable but sometimes, as today, he can be in a bad one, and believe me, the older and stronger he grows the tougher it gets to handle these moods. It’s miserable for Ellen, although she’ll hardly ever admit it.”
“You married a good woman.”
“I know I did. I’ve been racking my brains. I want to buy her something important.”
“Jewelry. You can’t go wrong.”
“With her you would. She already has a few nice pieces of her mother’s, nothing worth a for
tune, but very nice. And she hardly ever wears them. The only real occasions we have are when the firm has an event, and there aren’t very many of those.”
“Get her a new car. A Mercedes two-seater so she can run around town in style.”
“I’m afraid Ellen doesn’t do much running around town, Eddy. But I want to give her something, only I don’t know what.”
“Is it her birthday?”
“No.”
“Money’s burning a hole in your pocket, that’s it. You’ve been saving, and now you’re feeling the itch to spend. It’s perfectly natural. You want to see something? Look at this.” From his breast pocket, Eddy withdrew a thick envelope, and out of that, a crisp document. “My share of the sale. I had a partnership share in that new condominium Devlin built out in Wayne County. Properties are big there now. He just sold the whole thing, and this is my share. Look.”
Robb looked and whistled.
“Almost doubled my money,” Eddy said. “Of course, it’s not quite that easy every time, but it’s easy enough if you know what you’re doing, and Dick Devlin does.” Searching Robb’s face, he added earnestly, “You should look into it. You really should.”
“I hate to risk what I’ve got. I’m not like you, a free soul. I have three other people to think of.”
“Listen to me. Don’t you think I realize that? Would I steer you wrong? Did I steer you wrong when I urged you to take up the Fowler offer? Did I?”
“No, you certainly didn’t. But I don’t know anything about this stuff. For instance, who goes into those deals with Devlin? And why would he want to include me? He surely can’t need the few dollars I could put in, a pittance for a man who counts in millions.”
“Here are your answers,” Eddy said promptly. “One. Who goes in? Big investors, big names most of them, chiefly politicians or business people who need politicians. Hand in glove, so to speak. But wait, don’t look so doubtful. There’s nothing shady involved. Nothing. Everything’s a matter of record in the country’s biggest banks. Next question: Why should he take you in? I have to give you the truth, don’t I? So, I can’t be modest. He’ll do it mostly for me. I’m his man Friday. And because he likes you, too.”
“Likes my wife,” Robb said.
“Okay, okay. He likes pretty women. You’ve seen Olivia, haven’t you?”
The two men laughed. Eddy slapped Robb on the knee. “Tell you what. I’m taking a quick tour of his projects while Dick goes to Florida for a week. It’ll be sometime this month. If you can take a few days off, you can come along. We go on his jet. Come on. What can you lose?”
“It’s not hard to get used to, is it?” remarked Eddy as the Mississippi curved beneath them and the jet started its descent toward the plains. “No travel agents, no tickets, no airport waiting room. Great, hey?”
Robb had to admit that it was “great.” And no one could fail to be impressed by what they had seen so far. In California, in an expensive suburb, they had visited a red-tiled Spanish mall, very discreet in its elegance. It was relatively small, the better to maintain discretion for the benefit of those who shopped in its boutiques and drank iced tea beside the fountains in the courtyards.
“We’re keeping this one,” Eddy had explained, “as long as it brings substantial income. When the neighborhood changes, or actually when we first see that it is about to change, we get out.”
Robb had wanted to know why it should change. Whether or not he ever should invest in property, and he was as yet far from certain whether he dared to, he was interested. It crossed his mind that Ellen liked to tease him about his curiosity. His “intellectual curiosity,” she had called it, that time he went to the kitchen to watch Mrs. Vernon and find out the difference between pate brise and ordinary piecrust.
“Why should this neighborhood change?” he asked.
“There’s been talk about extending the highway into a branch that will make this area more accessible from the city. Nothing’s come of it for years, and maybe never will, but if it does happen, of course the developers will follow, there’ll be lower-cost housing, which means lower scale malls, and traffic, and crowding. And the people who live in these houses now will sell them, and then this mall will be obsolete. When you come down to brass tacks, it all depends upon politics. Whether the highway goes through or not, I mean.”
The plane was now so low that you could see a car parked beside a house among green corn and yellow wheat, which was divided by a shoestring road.
“We’re early. I called ahead to have a car waiting,” Eddy said.
He was enjoying these amenities, Robb saw with some amusement. He’s a great big kid. But why not? The work was enjoyable, and you certainly couldn’t say it was unproductive. Dwellings, commerce, industry—all needed to be housed.
For half an hour, Robb stood watching the activity. Out of the bare, reddish earth strewn with trucks, fork-lifts, bulldozers, and cement mixers, rough shapes were emerging into an ultimate design. It was impressive.
“Well?” asked Eddy. “Well, what do you think?”
“It’s fascinating.”
“Of course it is. But I was talking about you.”
“I don’t like to touch my savings,” Robb said.
“You don’t have to. In your position, you’re certainly no credit risk. I can take you to the bank, introduce you, and in no time you’ll sign a note, get your money, buy your little piece of a partnership, and you’ll be in business.”
“It’s tempting, I admit.”
“Then be tempted.”
There was a long silence. They were on the plane and in the air before Robb spoke again.
“All right,” he said. “Make the arrangements for me.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
1989
It was nearing noon and Ellen was sitting on the side porch with Julie, both reading the Sunday newspaper, when Philip appeared.
“So you’ve favored us today,” Ellen said, and pretending to scold, “You haven’t passed this way in months.”
“In four weeks, to be exact. Don’t you know I rotate? Once to the pike and back, once to the river and back, once to the hills and back, and once here. I need a little variety for my five-mile Sunday stint. Where’s Robb?”
“He’s gone for the day. Actually, he left yesterday.”
“Gone to look at his real estate,” Julie said, “and broke his promise. We were going to play tennis.”
“I’m sorry I missed him. Where’s my friend Penn?”
“Inside, watching television. He’s learned to switch channels, and the stuff he watches is usually awful.” Ellen sighed. “And I can’t get him to budge.”
“He can be so nice when he wants to be,” Julie complained. “But he’s changing. He never used to want to be so stubborn and mean.”
Julie was losing some of her little girl sweetness, which was only to be expected for a teenager. Adolescence, when it is normal, Ellen thought, is difficult enough, but what would Penn’s be? It could, Philip had said when she had asked him, go either way. You just had to wait and see.
“ ‘Wanting’ has nothing to do with it, Julie,” Philip corrected her very gently. “Surely you know that.”
“Well, I guess I do, but it’s hard.”
No one denying it, there was an abrupt stillness broken only by the coo of mourning doves.
“Stay for lunch, will you?” asked Ellen.
“Thanks, I will.”
“It’s just sandwiches and Mrs. Vernon’s leftover pie from last night.”
“Since I’ve had Mrs. Vernon’s pies before, I wouldn’t use the word ‘just.’ ”
The doves cooed and the silence came back.
“You have a new car,” said Philip, observing the imported-two-seater in the driveway.
“My husband’s birthday present. My husband’s extravagance. I scolded him.”
“It’s beautiful, though.”
“Yes, isn’t it cool?” agreed Julie. “And you should see the other one. It
’s in the garage. It’s dark blue. Our family car, Daddy said. The little one is all Mom’s.”
Ellen was feeling uncomfortable. Two such cars, whose cost everyone knew, at one time! Indeed, she had scolded him. And all during lunch at which Julie, to no one’s objection, led the conversation and Penn, behaving, enjoyed his food, she was conscious of those two gleaming automobiles.
When lunch was over, Julie went to her best friend’s house and Penn returned to the television set.
“I can’t keep him away,” Ellen lamented again. “I know you always tell us, Philip, that he needs to be stimulated. We did have that nice young man here for a few hours every day this summer, and he seemed able to do something to keep Penn occupied. But now he’s back at college and I haven’t been able to find a replacement.”
“Leave Penn alone, Ellen. I know what I advise, but you don’t always have to dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’ because I say so.”
“We hang on to your every word, don’t you know that? And every day we pray for some miracle to happen.”
“Ellen, there isn’t going to be any miracle. The older Penn gets the closer we get to reality.”
“So you still say he’ll eventually have to be sent away?”
“For his own good as well as for yours. Come, Ellen, why spoil a fine sunny day going over something you already know?”
Because, she wanted to say, I carry around with me the picture of Penn grown into manhood, an unnatural, frightening stranger, and I want you to tell me that I’m wrong, that it isn’t going to be like that. But since you can’t say it, I will not ask the question again.
And as if Penn were not enough to think about, there was more …
Philip was watching her. “I wish you didn’t look so troubled. I wish I could help you.”
“I’m only being quiet, feeling this fine sunny day that you mentioned,” she answered lightly.
“You have a very expressive face. You’ll never keep secrets very well.”
She had not even begun to measure the force of the tension within her. She was not willing to humor herself by dwelling upon it, like some self-pitying hypochondriac looking for sympathy. Nor would she seek to ease it by confiding to anyone. Family affairs must be kept at home.