For My Daughters
Page 29
“I’m very tired,” she said. She wanted them to go away. At least she thought she did. There was something to be said for having people care. Unless they pushed too much. Yes, she wanted them to go away. At least, for a little while.
When no one spoke, she wondered if they’d done just that, but when she opened her eyes, she saw them both there, waiting.
She sighed. “What do you want from me?”
“We want you to come to a decision.”
“No,” Leah corrected, “you want to come to the decision you’ve already reached yourselves. But it doesn’t work that way. You don’t know what I want or need. You can’t possibly know whether Jesse is right for me.”
“He’s right for you,” Caroline said.
“How do you know?” Leah asked, desperate to be convinced.
“He looks only at you.”
“For God’s sake, Caroline, that’s no basis for judgment.”
“Sure, it is.”
“Maybe it’s an obsession. Like father, like son.”
“Leah,” Annette chided. “You know it’s not. He’s too normal. Too rational. Too…mainstream.”
Leah knew all those things, damn it. She slid lower in the sofa and closed her eyes.
“You can’t avoid it forever,” Caroline warned.
Her eyes snapped back open. “Why not? You have.”
Caroline shook her head. “No more.”
“You’ve decided?” Annette asked expectantly.
Caroline scrubbed at her no-nonsense hair in a sheepish gesture. “Yeah. I think we’ll do it. Nothing big, just a civil ceremony one afternoon.”
“No floor-length gown with a long train and a dozen attendants?” Annette teased, but Leah could see that she was pleased, and Leah was, too. Ben was a wonderful guy. He had loved Caroline for a long time.
“What about the firm?” Leah asked, recalling all too well an earlier discussion. “You said it wouldn’t work, being in the firm and being married to Ben.”
“It won’t”
“So, what are you going to do?”
Caroline thought for a minute. Then she pushed out of the sofa and went to the kitchen phone. Leah heard a dial tone, followed by eleven melodious beeps, then a ringing. The voice that came over the speakerphone had a tinny edge. “Graham Howard’s office.”
“This is Caroline St. Clair. Is Graham around?”
Caroline looked speculatively at Leah and Annette while she waited to be put through.
“What are you doing?” Leah asked.
Caroline pursed her lips.
“Caroline,” Annette cautioned.
Caroline folded her arms over her chest.
“Caroline!” Graham shouted. His testiness carried easily into the family room. “It’s about time you called back. I’ve been trying to reach you since yesterday. Didn’t you get my messages?”
“Didn’t you get mine?”
“Yes, and I am sorry about your mother, but we have an emergency here, big problems with the FenCorp conspiracy case. Pete Davis has been representing the corporation for months now, preparing for trial, but he got himself in something of a fix—”
“What kind of fix?”
“It’s nothing really—”
“What kind of fix?”
Graham sighed. “He was found in bed with the wrong woman. It really was nothing—”
“A woman other than his wife?”
“A two-bit call girl who just happened to be part of a ring that the government’s been watching. Pete was in the wrong place at the wrong time. There wouldn’t be any problem if the Sun-Times hadn’t listed names, but now that it has, FenCorp doesn’t want any part of the notoriety. They say it won’t help their case, and they’re right. So we want you to front for Peter. He’s done all the work. He’ll tell you what to do. You’re not sleeping with the mayor or anything, are you?”
Caroline had approached Leah and Annette. As he railed on about the evils of the Fourth Estate, she said, “This is a perfect example of what I’ve been dealing with. The man doesn’t care that Mother just died. He doesn’t care that I’m on vacation. He had absolutely no sympathy when one of his colleagues stole case from me. And he has the morals of a pig.”
“Are you there, Caroline?” Graham asked.
Caroline took her time returning to the phone. “I’m here.”
“Would you pick up? The reception isn’t very good. I’m hearing background voices. Better still, get on the first plane back here.”
“Sorry, Graham. This is my vacation.”
“You can vacation later in the summer.”
“I’m mourning my mother.”
“That’s understandable, even admirable.” The voice hardened. “But you also have a responsibility to the firm.”
“Like they have a responsibility to me?”
“The firm’s been good to you.”
“Baloney,” she said and let loose. “The firm’s made money on me from day one. I wasn’t a rookie fresh out of law school. No one had to train me. I was lateral appointee. I came with my own skills, my own contacts, my own reputation. You people got a good thing when you got me, but you blew it.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that you hired your token woman, then you tried to put her in her place. You made me wait longer than any of the others for a partnership. You scrutinized my time sheets more than you did any of the others. You criticized my work—don’t deny it, Graham. I’ve heard more than one reference to PMS.”
“Perhaps with good cause,” he barked. “Clearly something’s bothering you, but you aren’t expressing it well.”
“Let me be more blunt, then,” Caroline said, grinning at Leah and Annette. “I quit.”
There was a moment’s silence from the phone, then a patronizing, “You’re upset. It’s an emotional time. You’ve just suffered a loss.”
“Actually,” Caroline leaned against the counter and crossed her ankles, “I’m feeling quite good.”
“Look. Why don’t we talk later this afternoon.”
“No, Graham. We’ll talk next Monday when I get back in the office, and the only topic of discussion then will be which of my cases stay with you and which come with me. Goodbye.” She lifted the receiver, dropped it back on its hook, then turned and grinned even more broadly. “God, that felt good.”
Leah was amazed. “I can’t believe you did it.”
“Are you sure it’s what you want?” Annette asked.
Caroline gave a great sigh that suggested she had just released a heavy load. “Yes. It’s what I want. I’ve done the big law firm thing. I’ve made it. They’re just holding me back now.”
“Holding you back,” Leah echoed. “My God, what’s next?”
Caroline approached the sofa. “I’m not sure. My own firm, I guess. Yeah, that sounds right. My own firm, my own hours, my own people. My own rules for a change.”
Leah shot a glance at Annette. As far as she knew, Caroline had been living by her own rules for years.
Caroline intercepted the glance. “Funny, how you create an image for yourself. You even buy into it sometimes. I may have thought I was ruling myself, but I wasn’t. I was being ruled by a grand image of the tough lady lawyer who conquers the world. And I did it, in a manner of speaking. At a price.”
“Ben?” Annette asked.
“Ben. Mother. You. Me.”
Leah was stunned. This was tough, arrogant, authoritarian Caroline. “But you’re driven. You’ve always been driven. Can you suddenly change that?”
Caroline frowned toward the windows, then the floor. She wandered distractedly around the sofa and sat down. In a quieter voice, she said, “The drive seems dispersed. I can’t get a grasp on it.”
“Of course not,” Annette said. “Not with everything else that’s been going on around here.”
“But that’s it, I think,” Caroline mused. “Mother is dead. Maybe the drive went with her. Maybe it was only rebellion.”
“But the edge is off,” Caroline insisted. “Okay, so it’s in my nature to go after things whole hog, so even if I start my own firm, I’ll do it right, but I feel different now. I don’t have to show Mother up.” Her eyes grew moist. So did Leah’s. “But hey, she’d probably approve more of this than the other. She’d love the idea of my getting married. Now that I know about Will, I can almost imagine that she’d like the idea of my marrying Ben.”
And of my marrying Jesse, Leah thought. She would love that idea—approval, at last. But that didn’t mean it was the best thing for Leah, and it was her life, after all. She dropped her eyes to her lap.
“So,” Caroline announced, smugly patting Leah’s knee. “That leaves you.”
“Why don’t we just bask in your happiness for a while?” Leah asked.
“Because we want yours, too.”
“I’ll handle it.”
“We want to help,” Annette joined in. “With Mother gone, we’re all you’ve got.”
“Mother never helped,” Leah reminded her and seconds later felt the force of Caroline’s gaze.
“So we’ll do better than she did. Isn’t that what’s driven all of us?”
Oh, yes. But how to do better? Leah didn’t know whether Ginny should have given up everything and stayed with Will. She didn’t know whether Ginny would have been happier that way. None of them did. None of them could.
“What are you afraid of?” Caroline asked more gently.
She sighed. “Failure.”
“But if you love him—” Annette began.
Leah sent her a pleading look. “Love worked for you. It hasn’t always worked for me.”
“So if it doesn’t, it doesn’t, but at least you’ll have tried.”
“If it doesn’t work, I’ll be destroyed.”
“Because you love him so much.”
“Because I love him so weird. It’s different from anything I’ve ever felt. It scares me to death.”
“Because it’s all-consuming?”
“Because it’s unreal?”
“Because the hunger goes on and on,” Leah said. “The more it’s satisfied, the worse it gets. Where does it end? What am I supposed to do with it? I have a life. I can’t give it up.”
Annette made a short, desperate sound. “That’s what Mother said way back when.”
Caroline sat back. “It’s the all-or-nothing syndrome. It must run in the family. But does it have to, damn it? Do I have to be a lawyer to the exclusion of everything else? Do you have to be a wife and mother the same way, Annette? Does it have to be Washington or Maine, Leah? Why can’t it be a little of both?”
“Because a little isn’t good enough,” Leah cried.
“Okay. Why can’t it be a lot of both?”
“Because I can’t give a lot of both. I don’t have it in me.”
“Who says?”
“I know.”
“Have you ever tried?”
“How could I? I’ve never met anyone like Jesse before.”
He’s all you’ve ever wanted,” Annette said. “You can’t throw it away.”
Leah gave a high, slightly frantic laugh. “How do I keep it?”
“You’re afraid of failure.”
“That’s what I said,” she cried and with a burst of energy rose from the sofa.
“Leah!”
“Don’t leave.”
“I need air.” She could hear them following and quickened her step.
“You have to talk about it, Leah.”
“We want to help”
She spun around and held up a hand. When they stopped in their tracks, she said a quiet, “I need to think. Please?”
They remained still, in reluctant acquiescence.
“Thank you,” she whispered and went out the door. Eyes low, she crossed the deck, passed the pool, and made for the front of the house. She didn’t have a plan. Instinct led her on, through a world made surreal by a tepid mist.
She set off across the grass at a determined pace, her bare feet padding as rhythmically as the distant blare of the Houkabee horn.
I love him.
But I have a life in Washington. It’s well defined. I’m comfortable with it.
I could cook here. I could garden. I could knit Jesse sweaters.
I don’t know how to knit.
I could learn, but I might be lousy at it, and then Jesse would be disappointed.
I wouldn’t want to disappoint him. Disillusion him. Fail him.
But I love him.
She began to run. The pebbles on the drive slowed her, but only for a minute. As soon as she reached the grass, she was off again. She left the house behind, passed the shrubbery, the flowers, the heathers, the roses. She continued on down the bluff and came to a panting halt on the rocks.
A fog was in. She could’t see a thing, this outside world as opaque and impenetrable as the other, the one inside.
Dredging up last bits of strength, she broke off toward the woods. She found the path and followed it, maintaining a steady pace, if more gingerly, over pine needles and roots. When the woods finally opened to the meadow, she lurched to a halt. Gasping for air, thinking about nothing at all except that the wildflowers were more beautiful than ever in the mist, she took another staggering step, then another. Finally, awash in a sea of blue, white, and yellow, she fell to her knees and sat back on her heels. She put her hands to the ground and took great gulps of air.
Gradually the gulping eased and her heartbeat slowed, leaving her devoid of energy and dead tired. She shifted to the side, then, uncaring that everything was wet, continued on down until she lay on her back among the wildflowers. She closed her eyes. The world around her was filled with the musk of damp earth and weedy grass. She breathed it in, breathed it deeply, let it spin a containing web around those other warring thoughts. Then she slept.
Washington was hot and humid. She had to wait twenty minutes for a cab, standing in the heavy air in city clothes, a skirt that cinched her waist and shoes that threw her weight onto the balls of her feet. The cab wasn’t air-conditioned, and in deference to a presidential motorcade, traffic going over Arlington Memorial Bridge wasn’t going anywhere at all.
She arrived at her townhouse to find it stifling. In her absence, the air-conditioning had gone on the blink. She called the company that held her service contract, but the servicemen were all on the road. She was promised a call the next day.
Resigned, she found brief relief in a shower. But when she toweled off and tried to put makeup on, it melted as quickly as she worked. Her hair was just as uncooperative. It insisted on curling. She pulled it back, knotted and pinned it, but wisps escaped and coiled. She wet them and pushed them straight. They kinked back up. She gelled them. They stayed. For five minutes. Then curled.
Despairingly she looked at herself in the mirror. The chairperson of the Cancer Society gala couldn’t go anywhere looking this way.
So she put on dark glasses and a floppy straw hat, and took a cab to the hair shop, where it was blessedly cool. Her hairdresser blew her hair straight, then, without a word of warning, took scissors to the long, flowing front and gave her bangs before she knew what he was about.
She hated it on sight. Dismayed, she tried to soothe herself by having her makeup done, but the artist put red on her cheeks and yellow on her lids. Leah was horrified. She never put red on her cheeks. Maybe pale pink or bronze, but never anything as harsh as red. And as for the yellow, her hair was pale yellow. She needed contrast, preferably smoky lilac or gray. Yellow made her look jaundiced.
Still she said nothing. If she threw a tantrum, the whole world would know. Gossip spread like wildfire in a town as hungry for it as Washington was, and it could be fatal. People were bumped from the A-list for far less than a temper tantrum.
Not that she was on the A-list
. It was more like the A-minus list. Even the B-plus list. She had never been to the White House.
Feeling ugly, jaundiced, and socially second-rate, she closeted herself in the booth with the pay phone, deposited a quarter, and punched out Susie MacMillan’s number.
“MacMillan residence.”
“Mrs. MacMillan, please.”
“I’m sorry. Mrs. MacMillan isn’t here.”
“This is Leah St. Clair. I thought she was returning from vacation yesterday.”
“She did. But she and the ambassador were invited to spend the weekend on the Dunkirks’ yacht. They won’t be back until Monday.”
Leah deposited another quarter and punched out Jill Prince’s number. “Jill. It’s Leah. I just got back to town and am positively roasting in this heat. I thought I’d cool off over dinner at the Occidental. Want to meet me there?”
“Sorry, Leah, but I can’t. We have a crowd coming over. It was a last minute thing—I mean, what with our just getting back from Quebec and all. I’d ask you to join us, but the table’s already set with placecards, and the numbers are even. You know how it is.”
“Sure. Okay. Another time.”
Feeling single now, as well as ugly, jaundiced, and socially second-rate, she pushed in another quarter. This time she called Monica Savins. Monica was divorced. There wouldn’t be any even-number business.
“Hey, Monica, how are you?” she asked when Monica picked up.
“Leah? My God, Leah, you are the one person in the world that I absolutely have to talk to. I can’t believe you’re back in town. This is incredible timing. Totally fortuitous. You have to help me, Leah. I really messed up for tonight. I made a date with David—you know David, he’s at Justice—and then I got a call from Michael—you don’t know Michael, he’s with the administration—and he invited me to the White House. I mean, we’re talking an intimate little group—the president, the first lady, Michael and me—and a few others, but I can’t pass it up. It’s the White House. Only David’s expecting me to go with him to a dinner at the Bolivian Embassy, and if he has to go alone, he’ll be furious. You know him, Leah. Will you go?”
Leah knew him all right. She knew that he was overweight, that he talked about nothing but law, that he sweated too much, and that he smoked cigars.