Lorna Mott Comes Home

by Diane Johnson

  “The son of one of our friends—in trouble—wondering…” Fifteen. Gilda was soon to be sixteen, but not yet, so her age did not rule out some sort of statutory rape charge for Ian Aymes, as Ran often indulged his dream of initiating. But another problem: Gilda’s equanimity was such that he wasn’t sure of her role in the sexual episode—not sure enough to contemplate ruining some boy’s life when Gilda might well have cooperated or even initiated their congress. Still, the temptation tormented him; he wanted to turn Ian in.

  “We have people here who specialize in felony defense work,” said Casey helpfully. “Let me know if you want some names.” This was enraging, too, that the system had no compunctions about defending criminals who preyed on girls under sixteen, his own lawyers had no qualms about unquestioningly defending rapists if you could pay. Could Ursula Aymes pay an expensive law firm like Henson Bernstein Jaeger to defend her criminal son? He firmly quashed this line of thought. Ursula was okay and, he was sure, just as worried as he and Amy were.

  “I’ll get the transcript to you as soon as possible,” Casey said. “Don’t worry about this, your umbrella more than covers this, it’s only pain and suffering, she can’t show any physical injury. They’ll settle for sure.”

  “Sometimes latent injuries can show up years later,” Ran the doctor said. “I once had a patient…well…” He didn’t feel like recounting it. He remembered it too well.

  “Years later will be too late anyhow,” Casey said. Her expression was cheerful—he saw she meant, Too late for Miss Powers to collect, but he took her at first to mean, Too late for an old guy like you.

  Leaving Miss Schwartz, going down in the elevator to look for a cab, he allowed himself the pleasure of lapsing back into his daydream, since childhood, the rowboat dream, where he had always left enemies and irritating people to drown. He now included in his rowboat fantasy Cecily Powers, the woman who ran into his car. Cecily and Ian Aymes both foundering in the water, Gilda and Ran in the rowboat. The scene now went: Gilda and Ran can’t decide which one to save so opt to go get help for both, though they know that by the time they get back, it’ll be too late, both would have drowned. No, Gilda shouldn’t be in the rowboat. She isn’t vengeful, and she would try to save Ian. Only he, Ran, in the rowboat, was responsible for the decision to let them both drown.

  When the elevator doors opened to let him out on the ground floor, a small woman, vaguely familiar, stepped in and, seeing him, gasped and stopped. He was momentarily abashed to have such an effect, and nearly checked his fly. Looking again, he saw, but could hardly believe, that it was his ex-wife Lorna, Lorna whom he hadn’t seen for more than twenty years. Twenty years during which their rancor, while it had not subsided, had more or less been put out of mind.

  They stared for seconds before breaking into polite greetings. Automatically, Ran impeded the closing of the elevator doors and they both stepped into the lobby.

  “Lorna! I—uh—what brings you here?” he asked. “I had no idea you were…”

  “Well, yes, living here now.”

  “Well!” They both thought of the oddness of their children not telling him this. Or had Julie mentioned something…

  “You’re in touch with…?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well—you look very well. The years have been kind to you,” he said. In her mind she remembered seeing the teeniest beginning of white roots along the parting of her hair, she had noticed them this morning, and he, taller, would notice them of course.

  “You, too, Ran.” He was fitter looking than Armand, with a tennis player’s tan. They exchanged a sentence or two of banalities.

  “This business with Curt,” he said. “Have you got any news?”

  “I suppose we should compare notes,” Lorna said.

  “I, yes, do I have your email? We should have lunch,” Ran said.

  “Lornamottdumas1@gmail.com.”

  Shaken, they took their leave, planning to lunch.

  31

  How do we dismiss those movies that play in our minds in obsessive loops?

  Lorna found she was able to put this meeting out of her mind, it had no hold on her except that she afterward found herself in a kind of continuing conversation with Ran in her head, reproaching him for this and that—for not doing things he could have done to help the children—or confiding some of her concerns about them. He was the one other person on earth who must have a parent’s concern about these particular progeny. She and Ran could have satisfying chats, now that anger was officially gone. But they didn’t, though they did make the lunch date.

  She also had a bit of good luck that cheered her a lot; someone at the museum heard from Nancy Fludd that she was back in San Francisco. This museum person, a Mrs. Norma Coleman, in charge of publications, happened to have just ordered copies of Lorna’s recently published art lectures for the museum shop, hence was aware of Lorna’s name, was thrilled to hear she was in town, and got the idea of inviting her to fill a vacancy in the museum’s monthly lecture series. Though they were a modern museum, Mrs. Coleman explained, they did discuss subjects related to the roots of modern art; and Lorna’s presentation of Meissonier, one of the last academic painters of the pre-Impressionist period, would interest them enormously.

  Lorna responded with professional gravity and inner elation. It was to be the first week of September, giving her plenty of time to work up Meissonier a little more; in her excitement over the tapestries of Angers, she had let him begin to rust. Feeling lifted by the invitation, back on her horse, she finally called Phil Train and invited herself to lecture to his Altar Forum on the tapestries.

  “You did mention…,” she diffidently began. Train accepted with enthusiasm, and they arranged that her talk there would be in three weeks, end of July, just as people were leaving for the summer; she mustn’t expect an enormous audience. “But I know it’ll be well attended. The Book of Revelation is so little understood.”

  Buoyed even higher by his enthusiasm, Lorna invited him to drinks on the following Friday. She had no idea if there was a Mrs. Train, but he’d bring her no doubt, or he could just stop in on his way home from the cathedral, which was so nearby.

  “Small gathering—just a few friends,” she said, and gave him the address, thinking now she’d have to dredge up a few other guests. Pam Linden, of course, and the Fludds, and maybe those people she’d met at the Fludds’. And maybe Peggy would drive down from Ukiah to help. She was glad that events had bestirred her to this effort to come out of her shell.

  * * *

  —

  Working through the stages of grief over Curt’s letter, Donna had arrived at bargaining. She had got over her angry stupefaction at Curt’s not coming home, steadied by her natural inclination to believe the worst anyway, her knowing that good luck couldn’t last, and that this was some sort of retribution for her windfall from Amy. Now she saw a hope that Curt might rethink his plan for a new life if she told him about how they owned their house free and clear.

  Or maybe she wouldn’t tell him. Had he fallen for one of those impossibly small, titless bar girls you saw on Thai Airways commercials? Who walked on your back and gave massage with their sidewise vaginas? Whatever the explanation for his behavior, she now had a house worth some millions—she planned to discuss selling it with Ursula Aymes—and she would just as soon go back to Delaware anyhow, where she could get a job in finance and live on less. Curt was crazy and men were crazy, and the East Coast was a better place to raise kids anyhow.

  Or else she could take the reins of some of Curt’s unfinished business, along with Harvey Avon. Did she not have an MBA and plenty of smarts in the world of business, if anybody had ever cared? In many ways, this was the option she favored.

  She and Ursula sat in her still-somewhat-underfurnished living room, air fragrant with the wax that had been applied to the beams just before she and Cur
t had bought the house, a lavender scent reminding of Aix or Grasse. They had splurged on an antique Provençal chest of drawers and a love seat, both from France; otherwise they had only a card table and some folding chairs, but everything takes time. Donna had read a magazine on French style that said, “If you put even one piece of French furniture or fabric—say a toile de Jouy—in any room, even one loaded with other influences, the result is elegant and timeless.” She clung to this dictum.

  “We’ll bring in some furniture and plants,” Ursula assured her. “Some staging in the master bedroom is all we’d need, some sort of imposing bed. The kitchen alone will sell the house.

  “But with the market crashing, we’ll be lucky to get what you paid for it,” Ursula added, a little worried that she ought to buy it herself at a reduced price, if she could get financing. The market was bound to pick up. However: the Asian buyer was eager and not to be tossed lightly aside while Ursula sent out some feelers about loans in an increasingly chaotic loan market. Banks had begun to throw a few curves—something was happening there, but she didn’t yet know what. She finally decided she didn’t need the headache, what with the Ian situation and all.

  Donna was disappointed in the realities Ursula sketched out. She was good at math and saw that at the asking price, in the tanking market, after Ursula’s commission and paying Amy back, minus the taxes and Ursula’s fee—Ursula had agreed on 4 percent, less than her standard 6—she personally might just break even. Clearly selling was not a good idea, but she didn’t say to Ursula she’d changed her mind.

  “Curt will be devastated,” she said. This thought was not without satisfaction but led her to remember with a chill that Curt’s name was on all the house-related documents, and she wouldn’t be able to take any action about the house without him signing them, unless she got him declared dead or herself legally deserted. She longed to ask Ursula about this but dared not.

  “When do you expect him? I think we’ll sell quickly here, and there’ll be things for him to sign.”

  “I’m not sure. I may have his power of attorney,” Donna said. She had begun to think she needed to tell Amy about the letter from Curt, but she was by no means sure it was she, Donna, who was the object of Amy’s affection—it might be Curt Amy had wanted to help. By this light, she should conceal the letter and maintain that everything was fine. “Can we send documents to him?”

  “Of course. That petit canapé is lovely, Donna, did you buy that here?” said Ursula, speaking of the splendid French Provincial sofa in striped blue-and-white linen.

  “On Sacramento Street,” Donna said. “For French antiques, LA is amazing, too. Better yet, Texas or New Orleans, they have shiploads, I’ve heard.”

  Why do Americans aspire so to France? Ursula had always wondered. She had always found the French a grouchy, vainglorious bunch. She stayed a little longer, hoping to figure out why Donna thought of selling, and whether Curt Mott was in accord, but was no wiser when she left.

  * * *

  —

  Ursula had other things on her mind. She had the reputation of being an excellent, punctilious real-estate agent, very particular about the details, reliable and honest, qualities her rather fast, poule de luxe appearance belied, and she benefited from both images: successful businesswoman and expensive party girl. It was in her nature to be respectful of contracts and bottom lines, and she found herself wishing they—she and her son—had some kind of contractual connection to the unborn baby.

  She still thought of Ian as her dependent child rather than as an independent being who had knocked up a teenaged girl and was going to be a father. And the young mother would probably inherit a dot-com fortune! If they got married, Ian would be legally connected to this potential fortune, unless they had a prenup, which probably Amy Hawkins would insist on. What should Ursula do?

  Rationally, she knew perfectly well that there would likely not be a baby or any news of one, that all would be dealt with discreetly as if it had never happened, and that Gilda Mott would show up at her class at Saint Waltraud’s in September without having missed a day of school; but this didn’t seem right somehow, not only for the moral reasons the Very Reverend Philip Train had elaborated, but also because she, Ursula, would have to live with regret for such a wonderful opportunity missed; it would haunt her forever. What the opportunity was wasn’t clear, besides the adorable baby itself, but something to do with money, leisure, the Mott world, connections for Ian, jets—she hardly knew, she didn’t formulate it clearly. Also, didn’t Ian have some rights? Didn’t she herself as a grandparent have some rights? Such things had been adjudicated in courts, she was fairly sure, and grandparents had rights.

  She encouraged Ian—she insisted—that he see Gilda and Gilda’s parents, that he step up in some way. He knew he should and had proposed meeting Gilda somewhere or going over to her house. But Gilda hadn’t seemed very enthusiastic. He explained to his mother that whenever he suggested a meeting, she would always say she had homework or had to go somewhere with her parents.

  “I don’t know what to say to you, dear,” Ursula said. “I want to help, of course, but you have to think about your responsibility now. I’m not even sure I understand what you think about this.”

  Ian, far from knowing what he did think, shrugged. It all depended on what happened, what Gilda thought, what her parents thought, and no one had told him anything. One of his friends had remarked, “Once they get a kid, the guy can go back to the barn, he’s just the stud.”

  “I think she’d kind of like to have the baby,” Ian said to his mother.

  “She’s only a baby herself.”

  “Well, I know, but she does have some say in the matter.”

  “Of course, Ian, but so do you. That’s what I’m driving at here. If there’s going to be a baby, and I hope there will, you will have to have some part in it—in its life.”

  “It just seems kind of—theoretical,” he said. “At this point. It was only a few weeks ago.”

  “For instance, child support.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Education. Have you any idea what that will cost? I know Gilda’s parents have means, but you don’t want to entirely sign over your rights to this baby to them.”

  The blankness and misery of Ian’s expression suggested he was several paragraphs behind, still wondering about what he wanted to happen. Ursula would have suggested sending flowers or a present for Gilda, but nothing short of a pre-enrolled scholarship to some fancy nursery school or, eventually, Yale seemed quite equal to the grandeur of the baby’s expectations; and as the days went on, neither of them was sure what Gilda was going to do about—the problem of whether there would be a baby at all. For all they knew, the Motts had dealt with it already. Ursula found ignorance unendurable but didn’t feel she could call Amy again, and Ian found he could easily put the situation out of his mind.

  Gilda agreed at last to have lunch with Ian, but she begged Julie to join them. “I’ll just say I already had a date with you, could you join us? He doesn’t really want to talk to me anyhow, I expect his mom made him call me.”

  “Not necessarily. He may be very concerned,” Julie protested, certain that Ian was the best of young men, how could he not be, with his looks, not like the greasy handsome hero of old Errol Flynn movies but like someone playing Prince Valiant, or Prince Hal in Henry IV, Part I, or a football star in a film. She told herself it would be easier on Gilda, who didn’t know what she was going to say, if she, Julie, was there to make conversation. As they waited in the St. Francis Oak Room (“Have a nice lunch,” Carla, by now suspecting the situation, had instructed, handing over two hundred-dollar bills), it was Julie who had flutters of apprehension, Gilda not so much. Her mood of silent resignation was that of a child being made to do something distasteful. She’d insisted on wearing jeans.

  Ian appeared in chinos and a polo shirt and the blue b
lazer he’d worn to the gala. For the first few moments, Julie’s feeling, like the first time she saw him, was of speechless freeze-up, as if speaking to him was out of the question, as if he were an image on a movie screen.

  “You know my niece Julie?” Gilda said. Ian shook her hand, as at dancing class or when meeting a bank manager. The stricken Julie couldn’t help Gilda out of the awkward silence Gilda had feared, so the general speechlessness spread for a minute.

  “Do you live in San Francisco?” Ian asked Julie.

  “Out in the Avenues, but I go to Berkeley,” finding her tongue.

  “I went to Brown for two years, but I’m hoping to transfer to Stanford.” They discussed colleges, transferring, Julie’s hope to go to Greece for the fall semester. Gilda, who wouldn’t begin college for three more years, pretended to look interested, happy to discuss anything but the Situation.

  Eventually, with a little sigh of reluctance, Ian asked as required about how Gilda was feeling, and she replied she was feeling fine. In the daylight, her pallor struck him anew; she was like a swan. She might be gestating an ivory egg.

  “Everyone asks me every ten minutes,” she added.

  “Are you going to, you know, have an operation?” There was no point in beating around the bush.

  “I don’t know. I don’t really want to,” Gilda said. “But my father worries about diabetes, and, you know, school.”

  “I suppose so,” Ian agreed.

  “Her parents are being really nice,” Julie put in. “Grandpa Ran. Her father is my grandfather.”

  “Do you have an opinion?” Gilda asked Ian.

  He didn’t, really. His fantasies about the future made no sense out loud.