The other eighth-graders quickly gathered around.
“Yeah, how come?” a girl named Maybelle Klotter demanded.
“Think you’re hot stuff, don’tcha?”
“Think you’re the bee’s knees, don’tcha?”
“Think you’re hell on wheels!”
“Fancy clothes!”
“Stuck-up snot!”
“Weirdo!”
“Pinko-Commie!”
“Whore’s daughter!”
“Who knocked up Annie Moron, smart-ass?”
“I bet she’s not even a girl,” she heard Dale Smith say. “I bet she’s a boy. I bet she’s got a boy’s pee-pee under them stuck-up dresses.”
“Let’s hog-pile her!”
Alex knew what this meant, and she tried to run, but Dale Smith was too big and too fast for her. She wore her reddish-brown hair in pigtails in those days, and Dale Smith grabbed her by the pigtails and threw her to the ground. The other children all threw themselves on top of her, while she struggled and screamed.
“Let’s find out if she’s a girl or not!” she heard Dale Smith say.
“Yeah!”
And she felt her skirts being pulled up by many hands, and her panties being pulled down around her knees.
“Aw, she’s a girl,” she heard Maybelle Klotter say disgustedly. “Let ’er go.”
She sometimes wondered what the outcome of this episode might have been if the eighth-grade boys had not been outnumbered by the girls.
That afternoon, when she arrived home bruised and disheveled, and her mother wanted to know what had happened to her, she simply said, “Some big kids picked on me.” After ascertaining that she was not seriously hurt, her mother simply shook her head and said, “Well, what can you expect from these farm people?” And returned to her typewriter.
Later, Alex walked across the field of cut corn to Annie Merritt’s house. As they inserted a fold of cotton cloth into the presser-foot of the sewing machine, they said nothing. Annie Merritt knew what had happened on the playground. The whole school knew, except, of course, the teachers. Annie Merritt knew that she had been the cause of it, and Alex could read that knowledge in Annie’s eyes. But there was no need to talk about it.
All at once, Annie put her work aside and reached into the drawer of her mother’s sewing table. She withdrew an eight-inch-long old-fashioned hatpin and handed it wordlessly to Alex.
Alex knew immediately what she meant. Annie’s eloquent eyes said everything. The boy who had got her pregnant was Dale Smith.
The next day she approached him on the playground, the long hatpin in her right hand.
“Get away from me!” he yelled.
“No.” She pressed the hatpin into his chest, just hard enough so that a spot of blood appeared on the front of his white T-shirt. “Don’t ever call my friend Annie Moron again,” she said.
“Don’t hurt me!” he sobbed. And then, “Help!” But his classmates kept their distance, their eyes downcast, their feet shuffling in the sandy soil, watching without watching, waiting.
She pricked him once more, and a second tiny spot of blood appeared. “Get down on your knees,” she said.
He flung himself to his knees, and tears were streaming down his cheeks. The hatpin was now poised in front of his left eye.
“Raise your right hand,” she said. He obeyed her, and she said, “Now repeat after me. ‘I swear to God—I swear to God that I will never call Annie Merritt Annie Moron again.’”
“I swear to God …” he repeated, and when he had finished she turned and walked away, leaving him kneeling and weeping on the sandy playground.
After that, she was not exactly popular, but then neither was Dale Smith.
A few weeks later, when Annie Merritt’s condition could no longer be concealed, the entire Merritt family simply left town, trailing their silver Airstream behind them. They never returned, their farm was sold, and the town adjusted to that situation, too, and Alex never saw her friend again.
But she kept the hatpin.
Always follow a single row. Every whispering row in a cornfield had to end and come out somewhere.
There were other lessons to be learned in Paradise. There was the terror she had seen in her mother’s eyes that muggy afternoon in 1955 when she had been hurried out of Mr. Standish’s store without her double chocolate chip ice-cream cone. That terror had appeared in the form of a tall, fair-haired man who suddenly stepped toward them with a concerned, questioning look in his blue eyes. For years afterward, she would periodically dream of this man—the quick step forward, the eyes wide and startled as though he had seen a ghost, the word Lois half-formed on his lips.
It was not until a number of years later that she learned that that man had been her real father, and that the man she had always called Father was not her father at all.
That was the real reason why her family had moved to Paradise from Kansas City. She knew then that her mother had always lied to her—lied to her ever since that day in Mr. Standish’s store when that fair-haired man had started to approach them, the man her mother had insisted wasn’t even there.
“Mr. Henry Coker would like you to call him,” Gregory said when she returned from her lunch with Rodney McCulloch.
“Good,” she said. “See if you can get him now.”
“I had a reasonably pleasant meeting with the Waxman, Holloway attorneys this morning,” he said when she got him on the phone. “I explained that we intend to stick to the letter of your Rothman contract, under which you are Mode’s editor-in-chief until December thirty-first, nineteen ninety-two, and which makes no mention of shared responsibilities with a co-editor. In fact, the contract specifically rules it out. Your contract states, ‘Alexandra Lane Rothman, and no other person, shall be et cetera, et cetera.’ I’m treating the whole thing as though it was an unfortunate misunderstanding on Herbert Rothman’s part, and I added that you and I both very much hoped it would not be necessary to institute breach of contract litigation over this matter. I think it’s best to proceed politely at this point, and not bring out our big guns until we feel we really need to.”
“I agree,” Alex said.
“They’re going to be back in touch with me, and I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything. Now, as to the other matters we discussed …”
“Yes.”
“I spoke with our financial department about your assets, and currently your equities, at today’s market—stocks and bonds—total about half a million dollars, give or take a couple of thousand. Nice little nest egg, I thought.”
“But not much by Rothman standards, is it?”
“No, but a nice little nest egg, in case you should be thinking about retiring.”
“Which I’m not,” she said.
“Of course not,” he said quickly. “But now there is the rather puzzling matter of the so-called Steven Rothman Trust. The people at Waxman, Holloway agree that such a trust exists. At least they have heard of it. But no one there has actually seen a copy of the trust instrument, so it’s hard to know what its provisions are. You see, it’s all because of the rather special way Ho Rothman ran his business. So much of his business was in his own head.”
“You think that’s where the trust is, too?”
“I just don’t know. I’m going to keep working on it. But I did learn who the two trustees are.”
“Oh? Who are they?”
“One is Ho Rothman himself. The other is Steven Rothman’s father, Herbert Rothman.”
“I see,” she said. “One is a man nobody can see anymore, and the other is—”
“—the man you may end up suing,” he said. “That does impose some difficulties, Alex.”
She said nothing.
“And lastly,” he said, “I’m afraid I have a bit of bad news for you.”
“There’s more?” she said.
“Your apartment at Grade Square. The apartment is owned by the Rothman Communications Company, Inc.”
“Wha
t? But I’ve been paying—”
“That was the arrangement entered into by your late husband and the company. The tenant would pay the maintenance. But the actual shares of the cooperative apartment are owned by Rothman Communications. No one ever made that clear to you?”
“No.”
“Most unfortunate,” he said.
“In other words, they could kick me out whenever they feel like it.”
“Well, technically, yes. But of course they wouldn’t, unless—”
“Unless they happened to feel like it,” she said.
“Well … yes,” he said.
Now she picked up her private line and called Aunt Lily. “Lily,” she said, “is there any way I could get to see Ho?”
“What? Oh, absolutely not, Alex. He can’t see anyone. Doctor’s orders. No visitors—no visitors at all. His blood pressure, you see.”
“He’s really that sick?”
“Oh, yes. And worse this week, it seems to me, than last. In fact”—and there was a little sob in her voice—“I’m terribly afraid we may be losing him, Alex. He just lies there, a vegetable, almost in a coma. But I know what you’re worried about, Alex, so just remember what I told you. Don’t resign. If Herbie thinks he’s going to have to fire you to get rid of you, he won’t be able to, because he won’t be able to afford that. Not at this point, anyway. And, in the meantime, I’m working on a little plan.…”
Alex replaced the receiver with a small sigh.
24
Vladimir enters from stage left, and sees Natasha cowering on the Récamier loveseat, clutching her rosary. Vladimir holds the letter.
“Vladimir: ‘What does this mean, Natasha?’
“Natasha (visibly shaken): ‘It means that Dmitri and I were lovers!’”
Alex’s mother was reading to her father from her play-in-progress, and their voices floated from the living room through Alex’s closed bedroom door.
“Vladimir: ‘I forgive you, Natasha. I shall always forgive you. My forgiveness shall be your retribution!’
“Natasha: ‘Nay! My retribution shall be that I shall always love the man I killed!’ (Coyly.) ‘Will you still present me to the dowager empress tomorrow?’
“Vladimir: ‘Ods bodkins, it shall be done, Natasha! You have my solemn word upon it!’
“He takes her in his arms, and she smiles mysteriously as the curtain slowly descends.”
After a moment, she heard her mother say, “Well, what do you think? I want to get Katharine Cornell for Natasha. This will be the vehicle that brings her out of retirement.”
“Hmm,” he said at last. “But—‘ods bodkins.’ That seems a funny expression for him to use.”
“Nonsense!” she said sharply. “That’s the way they talked in the Imperial court.”
“And are you sure that there really was a dowager empress at the time of Nicholas and Alexandra? It seems to me—”
“What difference does it make? I need the dowager empress because she’s the only one who knows the secret.”
“But if it’s supposed to be historical—”
“You know nothing about dramatic values, do you!”
He changed the subject. “Where’s our Alexandra?”
“How should I know? I’ve been working in my studio all afternoon.” Her mother had not even heard her come home an hour ago.
“Do you ever pay any attention to that child anymore?”
“She’s not a child. She’s sixteen, and can take care of herself.”
And they were quarreling again.
In the two years since Annie Merritt’s departure, a number of things had changed. For one thing, there was no longer a Singer sewing machine available. For another, the family’s financial picture appeared to have changed. Things were not going well, she gathered, at her father’s accounting firm in the city, and there was no longer any talk of sending her to a fine boarding school in the East, and Alex was now a sophomore at Clay County Regional High School. Her mother no longer tended her perennial borders, which now grew tall with weeds, though her father continued to clip and manicure, edge and cultivate his precious zoysia lawn. Her father complained about her mother’s housekeeping. “This place is a mess!” she would hear him roar. “Those dishes in the sink are from Thursday night’s supper! And I’m tired of going to sleep in an unmade bed.”
“I’ve been working on my play!” she cried. Everything, their entire future, now seemed to depend on the play. “The thing is, I’ve got to find an agent. It’s hopeless to try to get anything on Broadway without an agent—everybody knows that!”
“What about getting somebody to clean up this pigsty of a house?”
“You know we can’t afford a housekeeper! But when my play is produced—and if we can get Cornell—and it’s a hit—or what do you think about Helen Hayes? Or is she too short?”
“Look at this table. A week ago, I took the tip of my finger and wrote the date in the dust. Look—it’s still here! The date—in the dust!”
“And you,” she said sneeringly. “You wouldn’t lift one of your little fingers to help me—would you? Oh, no—that would be too much to ask. You and your damned lawn!”
“I pay the bills, don’t I? I put the food on the table, don’t I? I pay the bills for you and the girl.”
When they talked like this, she lost her name. She became simply “the girl.” When they argued like this, they seemed not to care whether Alex was in the house or not, or that the walls were thin and that their voices traveled. She pressed her fingers into her ears and tried to sleep against the sound of their angry voices. The next day he sarcastically brought home a carton full of housecleaning supplies. Cleaners. Bleaches. Polishes.
“Can I help you mow the grass, Daddy?”
“No … no. It has to be mowed in a certain way, in a certain pattern. It’s too difficult to teach.…”
Absently, she began to pull large clumps of ragweed from her mother’s abandoned perennial border.
“Did you notice that I dusted the living room and made the beds, Daddy?”
But he didn’t seem to hear her.
She heard her father say, “When I agreed to marry you, Lois, and when I agreed to take on the girl, I didn’t realize I was going to have to raise her myself—with no help from you!”
What did that mean—“agreed to raise the girl”?
“Why do you think I’m writing my play? To help you, to help her, to help all of us get out of this hellhole where you’ve made us live!”
“I made you live here? Moving out here was your idea, Lois—so he wouldn’t try to follow you, and try to—”
“I’m talking about my play!”
“To hell with your play! I’m talking about—”
“All I need is the last act—the scene in the Winter Palace.”
“I’m talking about that daughter of yours. Where does she go all day? You never—”
“She goes to school!”
“This is July, Lois. She’s been on her summer vacation since the end of May. Where’s she been all day? You pay no attention to her. You want her to grow up to be a slut like—”
“Like who, Jeffrey? Like who!”
“Never mind. What’s for supper?”
“Didn’t you bring home a pizza or something?”
“Dammit, Lois, today is Saturday. Don’t you even know what fucking day it is, much less the month? I don’t go to the office on Saturdays—remember? So where the hell would I pick up a fucking pizza, for Christ’s sake? Isn’t there anything in this fucking house to eat?”
“I could scramble some eggs, I guess. But we have to wait for Alex.”
“Fuck her! If she can’t get home in time for supper, fuck her!”
But I am home, she thought from her bedroom. You just haven’t noticed me.
Now she heard the sound of her mother weeping and, as she often did when Alex’s parents quarreled, Anna Karenina began to bark—sharp, anxious barks.
“Ah, don’t cry,�
� she heard her father pleading. “Please don’t cry, Lois. You know I can’t stand to see you cry. Please.… Where’s my pretty girl? Let me see my pretty girl, Lois. Please be my pretty girl again.”
“I want a divorce!”
Trapped in her bedroom, Alex knew that her parents mustn’t know she had overhead any of this. There was only one solution. She slid open her window, lifted herself across the sill, and dropped softly onto a patch of zoysia grass below. Then she ran around to the front of the house and up the steps to the front door, and burst in, calling cheerfully, “I’m home, everybody! I’m home!”
“The Lunts!” she heard her mother cry. “The Lunts live in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin. That would be enough of an address to reach them, wouldn’t it? Just Genesee Depot, Wisconsin? They’re so well known, I mean! The post office will know how to find them. What if I sent the script to them there? Then, if they like it, they could take it to their producer! What do you think of that? Or what if I took the script up there personally? Wisconsin’s not that far away, and I’m sure everybody in town knows their house, and I’m sure they’d like to meet the playwright who wrote the play. It would add a nice personal touch, don’t you think? That’s what I’ll do! I’ll drive up to Genesee Depot! What would you think of that? Then they could read it, we could discuss it scene by scene, and if they wanted any small dialogue changes, I’d be willing to—”
“Would you wash your hair first, before going calling on Mr. and Mrs. Lunt in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin? How long has it been since you’ve washed your hair? How long has it been since you’ve taken a bath? Look at the soles of your feet. The soles of your feet are black from walking around barefoot all day long. No wonder people call you a weirdo, no wonder they call you a Communist, walking around barefoot like a peasant—”
“I’m talking about getting my play produced!”
“Nobody’s going to produce your play,” she heard him say. “It’s a lousy play, Lois. Your play stinks. What did all those agents say?”
The Rothman Scandal Page 36