“Simon.”
“Yeah, Simon. I think of how I watched that poor jerk like, get your hands off, she’s mine, you know? Because I thought she was.” He shook his head. “I thought she was mine, you get it? It’s funny, maybe. I don’t know.” Gordon shoved his hands in his pockets, his body looking even smaller than normal, like a kid in his father’s coat.
Heidi put an arm on his back. “It’ll be okay, Gordon. Just give it time.”
“Anyway,” he said.
And he was gone.
Heidi took a deep breath. Time to rejoin the party. It would look suspicious if she just left like that, plus she was supposed to be supporting Biz. Peter would help her. With him at her side she could muster up charming and witty and marvelous. Then, before she knew it, it would all be over.
“Go back in there or he wins,” she mumbled to herself. She would not be a victim like Gordon. She would maintain control.
“There you are.”
Heidi spun around. Stepping out of the shadows, looking perfectly dapper in his gray wool suit and tangerine-colored bowtie, was Roland Gibbons.
“I’ve been looking for you, Heidi Whelan.”
Okay, she thought, gloves off.
“What do you want, Roland?” She hoped she sounded stronger than she felt.
“Oh, nothing much. I just wanted to thank you.”
“Thank me?”
“Yes. I understand that you are responsible, at least partially, for the positive change that has come over my daughter since the fall. She has blossomed under your, how shall we call it? Your guidance.”
He lay a hand on her shoulder. It wasn’t a particularly big hand, but it was powerful.
“I learned from the best,” said Heidi. She squirmed out of his grip.
“Isn’t it just a small, small world? I take it you and Doreen have become intimate friends. I think that’s so nice! For both of you.”
“Why don’t you cut the crap? What exactly are you trying to pull here, jerkoff?” Heidi hissed.
“Pull? Nothing.”
“I think you’re pressing your luck, okay? You’ve got Doreen. You don’t deserve her, but you got her. Our friendship has nothing to do with that.”
“Ah. Well. That’s what I came to talk to you about. You see, I don’t believe Doreen would feel so chummy about you if she knew certain facts about your, ahem, circumstances.”
“Oh yeah? Well, what would she think of you if she knew you were a perverted statutory rapist? Huh?”
“That old line? My dear, you really need some new material.”
“Don’t you my dear me, pedophile.”
“That’s enough!” Roland grabbed her by the arm. Hard. “Listen to me, you little shrew. I want you to stay away from her. Do you hear me? She is my daughter and I don’t want her socializing with the likes of you. I appreciate all you’ve done for her, I meant that seriously, but it’s over. I will keep your secret and you can graduate and be on your way in just a few months. All you have to do is keep your grubby Yonkers mitts off my kid.” He let her go and she rubbed her arm with a smile. She could not back down. She could not show fear.
“You’re disgusting. You know that? Maybe you should tell her, so she can see what kind of creep her father is.”
“What kind of creep is that? The kind who offers his wisdom to a lost little girl only to be paid back with lies and blackmail? I’m sorry, my dear, but it’s hard for me to see how you come out ahead in her estimation.”
“Stop calling me ‘my dear’!”
Roland pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m so tired of you. I don’t know why I ever bothered, why I thought to lend some of my knowledge to the daughter of a sanitation worker.” He ran his thumbs across the fingers of both hands, a look of disgust on his face, as if conversing with Heidi was equivalent to direct contact with garbage. “I would expect you to be grateful.”
“Grateful? For what? For getting me fired?”
“You know that was not me, that was my wife.”
“Ex-wife.”
“Yes, how adorably astute of you. My ex-wife.” The fury that had overtaken Roland a minute before vanished and he resumed the smug expression that Heidi remembered from their Hamptons days. “The poor imbecile misconstrued our friendship as a threat and she wanted you gone. I did not see the point of arguing. Happy wife, happy life. That sort of thing. You were beginning to bore me, anyway. So doting. So obedient. I thought you had more fire. More zip! You were so young, then. And quite pretty. Do you remember that little party I took you to? Oh, my sister was scandalized. It was marvelous.” He chuckled to himself. Heidi let her face flush. That party was the single most important event of her life. To him it was nothing more than a practical joke.
“So happy I could entertain you.”
“Yes,” he said with a wave of his hand. “But by the time Constantina arrived I felt rather done with you. Our little lessons had become tedious, and it seemed that everywhere I looked, there you were. With your eager little face and your ponytail. Have you got a light?” Roland plucked a cigar out of his coat. He snipped off the end with a small contraption. He felt around in his pockets. “Never mind, here it is.” He struck a match and turned his back to the wind to light his cigar.
“You make me sick, do you know that?”
“Oh please.” He waved the lit match and dropped it into the grass. “You think you can play holier-than-thou with me? Even if I could have stopped Constantina from having you fired, which is doubtful, what are we talking about here? A summer job? Nine dollars an hour? You’ve taken me for much more than that now. Haven’t you?” He stepped closer to Heidi, the light of the cigar reflected in the dark parts of his eyes. “You dare to pass judgment on me. When I find you standing in my own apartment, having connived my simple doorman with some lie about being my art dealer’s assistant. But still I am polite. I offer you a drink. I invite you to sit down. And then what do you do? You sit there in your little outfit and threaten me!”
The stink of the cigar got stronger as he approached. Heidi closed her eyes. She saw herself there, inside the glowing white penthouse on lower Fifth Avenue with the wraparound deck and the famous art collection, just as it was described in the real estate section of the New York Times. It only took three days of waiting on a bench outside his building, eating sandwiches her mother made for the new job she thought she had in a Midtown hotel. Three days of reading books from the list he had given her, watching the well-heeled tenants enter and exit his building, until she saw him, heard him give orders to his doorman, made her move.
Roland’s face was very close now. She could see the stubble on his cheek, the sprout of his eyebrow. “Statutory rape, you said. Second degree. Oh, you had it all figured out, didn’t you? I, who never laid a hand on you! Never did a thing that wasn’t decorous! I respected you, for some reason. I imagined remembering our time together with fondness. But not you. You had to turn it into something tawdry. Didn’t you?”
He thrust the cigar toward her and she jumped back with a gasp. He laughed. All he ever did was laugh at her. He did it then, in his apartment. After she got everything she wanted, got him to agree to pay her way through his alma mater, the illustrious Chandler Academy. Before she had a chance to feel satisfied at her victory, he laughed. Aloud. He laughed and laughed and laughed, the kind of convulsive hysterics that cannot be faked or stopped. He wiped the tears from his face and laughed more. Then he changed the rules. He said he would pull the strings, pay her way, but only because he admired her pluck.
“I did it all, didn’t I? I got you enrolled here, made sure your tuition was covered. I had but one requirement: that I never hear from you again. How hard could that have been? A small price to pay, I should think, for entrée into our closed world. But you could not do even that. The next thing I hear, you are dating my nephew, living with my niece. I let it go. S
he is nothing but a schoolgirl, I thought, let her have her little games. I didn’t care enough, you see, to stop you. But this, with Doreen, no, I’m afraid this all ends now. Tonight. Whatever story you’ve concocted in that backwoods brain of yours, this little drama with me is over. Right now. Otherwise—”
“What?”
With his elbow dug into his side and his cigar floating lazily between two fingers, he looked at Heidi—really looked at her, scanning her from the top down. She saw his opinion of her reflected in his face. He did not care. Three years of wondering, longing for his approval, making decisions based on what she thought he would want her to do, and at last Heidi understood that to Roland Winthrop Gibbons IV, she was beneath consideration. The way he disregarded painters and composers who did not matter to him. “I don’t rate him,” he would say, and he may as well have been talking about her. She was a nuisance, that was all. A stain on his handkerchief would move him more than she did.
How could a single person have so much power? To Roland Gibbons she would always be an irrelevant Irish girl from Yonkers. Heidi wished she could be anywhere else than here, with this man who did not think enough of her, after everything she’d done, to hate her. She should take her cue from him and stop caring. But she couldn’t! Why? Why?
Roland took a bored drag off his cigar. “I want you out of my life—and my daughter’s. I can make things very uncomfortable for you.”
“Daddy?” Doreen stood a few feet away in Biz’s red coat. “What are you guys doing out here?”
Roland leaned into Heidi’s ear. “Don’t test me, little girl,” he whispered before turning to his daughter. “Doreen! There you are, darling. I was just thanking your friend here for showing you the ropes here at the old Academy.”
“Oh.” Doreen looked from her father to her friend and back again. “Okay, cool, well, we are going. Do you want to say good-bye to Biz?”
“Of course, the young artiste!” said Roland.
“You coming, Heidi?”
“I uh, I’m—”
“Heidi’s not feeling well,” said Roland. “You should go home, Heidi. Take care of yourself.” With that, he escorted Doreen back into the gallery.
“Piece of shit!” Head in her hands, Heidi paced back and forth, working herself into a froth. “No, no, no!” This was not how it was going to go down. Roland did not get a say in the company Heidi kept. She could—and would!—be friends with whomever she wanted to be friends with. She wasn’t going to let him control her. If he thought she would just keep her mouth closed and do what she was told then he didn’t know who he was talking to.
But then, graduation was so close. Heidi could almost touch the freedom awaiting her at the end of the year. It was like that moment when Dorothy finally approaches Emerald City. Heidi could see the city wall. And her diploma from Chandler Academy was all she needed to get to the other side. Roland could take it away from her with a snap of his perfectly manicured fingers. He knew it and she knew it.
What had he said? She is my daughter and I don’t want her socializing with the likes of you. Had anyone ever made her feel so small and disgusting? But she could show him. She was no Yonkers nothing anymore. He would see she’d come into her own, that she’d become a person who mattered.
“Stop it!” she berated herself. “That’s enough!” For her own survival she had to drop it, to forget him and move on, to end the cycle of striving and disappointment that had dominated her life. She had to get out, be free. He was never going to approve of her. So stop caring, she told herself, for real this time. What did she need them for? Any of them? All of this was keeping her tied down. The key was to think about her future. If she let Roland win this tiny battle, she could still turn it into a grand life for herself—for her and Peter. Wasn’t that all that mattered? All she had to do was sever ties with Doreen. Cut it off and sail away. Never look back.
But how would Doreen react? Heidi had always assumed she was safe from Doreen’s wrath, that she held a special position in Doreen’s esteem that protected her. But now she wasn’t so sure. In fact, the more she thought about cutting Doreen out of her life, the more frightened she became of the repercussions. Doreen would not take kindly to any sort of rejection. And while Heidi had been busily falling in love and dreaming of college, Doreen had been mastering the art of ruthless retribution.
And there was more. Since Doreen came into her life, everything had changed for the better. When she thought about who she’d been before—how lonely and cynical she’d been! Everything was an angle, a way to get a leg up. It was exhausting. And all that changed when Doreen arrived. Was it really a coincidence that the Fall Dance, where Doreen had treated Simon so heartlessly and jump-started her rise through the ranks at Chandler, also represented a transformative moment for Heidi?
Since then, she had opened herself up to Peter, been a better friend to Biz. It was as if by enacting the worst part of Heidi’s own nature, Doreen left Heidi to thrive. What would happen if things changed back to how they were before? No. She wouldn’t have it. Doreen Gray was Heidi’s ticket to a better soul.
There would have to be a third option, a way to have it all.
Peter found Heidi standing there shivering, her brow furrowed in concentration. He carried her coat over his arm. “There you are, at last. Everyone is leaving. They’ve invited us to dinner. Shall we join?”
She needed more time. She was on the verge of something—a solution. But she couldn’t quite get it. “I don’t think so. Is that okay? I don’t feel up to it.”
“Hm. You look a little pale. You’re probably just cold. Come here.” He buttoned her into her coat and rubbed her arms. He hugged her close to him, and in his embrace Heidi began to find strength. He wanted her. This wonderful person wanted her, after everything he knew. But of course! How had she not thought of it before?
“Hang on. Peter, all that stuff I told you before, about where I come from and everything, it never bothered you, did it?”
“Heidi, how many times have I told you? If anything it only made me like you more.”
“Like me? Or love me?”
But he didn’t hear her. He was looking behind his shoulder to where the Gibbons-Browns were huddled together near the entrance of the gallery. “I told Gloria we would be right back. Doreen—I mean, everyone is waiting.” He turned back to Heidi. “Sorry, did you ask me something?”
“I want to talk to you, Peter,” Heidi said, her eyes shining. “I have something, something else. It’s the last thing, but it’s important. I need to come clean about something. To you and to Doreen.” If she told them everything, Roland would have nothing on her. She could live truthfully, as herself. It was the perfect solution. She flushed with the elegance of it.
“Can we do it later? It’s just, you know, they’re leaving. Can it wait? If you’re not feeling well, maybe you should rest. I’ll let them know.”
“Wait. What? You’re still going to go to dinner?”
“Do you mind?” Peter was already backing away toward the gallery. “I’m just really hungry. And I told them I would, so. Feel better, okay?” He blew her a kiss.
“What did you want to talk to me about?” she yelled after him. All at once she found herself alone.
It could wait. She would tell him tomorrow. She was very tired, after all. A night in by herself might do her a world of good, clear her head, give her time to figure out how she would tell the story. The important thing was that she had a plan. She would have her Oz. And she would expose Roland for the wizard that he was—just a sad, weak, old man behind a curtain.
Biz was not prone to skipping or leaping or sashaying, but that’s just what she did. She danced and twirled and ran across the quad. It was late—almost curfew. The gallery had closed and all the parents had gone to their hotels. She should really head back to her own dorm, but she couldn’t go, not yet. She wanted to see Doreen. Some
how, it wouldn’t feel real until she told Doreen all about it.
Eloise Peek had red hair, but red like a stop sign, a reflection of conscious choice rather than arbitrary genetic disposition. She had thick arty jewelry and small green glasses.
“My dear,” she said, “I want you to know that the last thing I ever expected when I came here was to find true talent, but I must say I am impressed. The way you use focus and color saturation, it’s really quite brilliant. This one, for example.” She waved her bracelets at a picture of Heidi sitting on the couch in their suite. “The way you blur the girl to nothing, just a flash of blondness, legs, lashes. She appears to be in the midst of saying something, some story or other, but since you’ve washed out everything but her eyes, all we see is this flash of burning blue in the center. It’s beautiful but also somewhat sad.”
“Lonely was what I was going for,” said Biz.
“Yes. There is something haunting about it.” The woman nodded. “And in the self-portraits.” She stepped over to a series of pictures of Biz taken from the shoulders up. Biz faced the camera without glasses, without any visible clothing. She had blurred out the background, but her skin possessed exaggerated clarity. The pictures were almost identical, except for tiny changes in her expression and the location of her gaze.
Eloise Peek’s face tightened as she viewed the series. Biz held her breath. The self-portraits were the result of her big moment of realization in the photo lab. They were a huge risk. She’d never exposed herself so honestly—especially not to total strangers. The gallerist stood silently in front of the pictures, her mouth twitching with concentration. Then, in a burst of sound, she spoke.
“Every pimple, freckle, birthmark, seems to rise off the surface of the body. It’s about adolescence for me, that liminal zone between one’s girlhood and womanhood. They are really extraordinary. And brave.”
Biz exhaled. “Thank you, Ms. Peek. They were a big breakthrough for me. In a lot of ways. I’d never put myself in front of the camera before, but it felt necessary for me to do it. As an artist and, honestly, as a person.”
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