Misfortune

by Nancy Geary

  “Mom dressed me and Fanny in floor-length pink taffeta. I don’t know why she went to such an extravagance, given that Dad was marrying someone else, but even Clio had to admit she did an exquisite job,” Blair explained whenever the subject of Richard’s second marriage arose. “Mom painted white baskets and filled them with rose petals. We dropped the petals along the aisle.” At this point in the storytelling, Blair would smile as she remembered her role as a flower girl. “It was a fairy-tale wedding,” she said, describing the tented ceiling of white-and-gold fabric, the table arrangements of white lilacs and deep pink peonies, the tiered cake filled with marzipan cream. Jake had heard the story so many times, he almost felt he had been there.

  During the reception Richard had lifted Blair snug into his arms, twirled her about the dance floor, and whispered in her ear that there was nobody prettier than she. According to Blair, that day, spent in the glow of her father’s affection, had been one of the best of her childhood. She had no premonition of what was to come.

  “Do you think he loves her more than me?” Blair gazed absentmindedly at the opposite wall.

  Jake sighed. Blair’s chronic rearranging of relationships, her attempts to place love in a hierarchy, amazed him. He wanted to reassure her. “Your father loves you as his daughter. She is his wife.” He felt like a nursery school teacher.

  “She’s the second wife, though. That matters. I would never agree to be second.”

  He said nothing. Then, after a moment, he added, “Clio would want to do what would make your father happy.” He regretted that his words seemed to defend Clio, but they needed help.

  “Maybe. A half million would make no difference to her.”

  “Right.” Jake felt encouraged. “Remember, your father would do it. He has been generous before. He believes in us, in what we’re doing. Why wouldn’t she do the same?”

  Blair didn’t appear to be listening. She rubbed the back of her neck with her long fingers. “Did I ever tell you what she did to my kittens?” she asked as she massaged the base of her skull.

  “I don’t think so.” He tried to check the impatience in his voice.

  “I had this incredible cat. Seaweed. She was part tabby and part Persian with long orange hair. It was always a big deal whether or not I would be allowed to bring Seaweed when we went to visit Dad and Clio. I remember begging Dad, over and over, trying to explain that Seaweed was my best friend and I couldn’t leave her behind, but Clio was allergic, or so she claimed. She didn’t like pets of any kind and didn’t want them in the house. One fall…” Blair paused to think for a moment. “The November that I turned twelve, Seaweed got pregnant. The vet told us she would be due at the end of December. It was quite possible that she would have her babies when Fanny and I were supposed to be with Dad at Christmas. I couldn’t bear not to watch her have her kittens. Dad finally agreed that I could bring her, but I had to promise not to let Seaweed out of my room while she was pregnant and I had to make sure I moved her out to the garage before she delivered her kittens. All month I was getting ready for those kittens. I don’t ever remember looking so forward to anything. Fanny got excited, too. We would watch Seaweed’s belly move and imagine the tiny kittens inside. We built a whelping pen and, when we got to Southampton, set it up in a corner of the garage with towels around it. Two days after Christmas, Seaweed went into labor in the middle of the night and had her kittens under my bed. There wasn’t time to get her outside to the garage.”

  As he listened, Jake marveled at the intensity of Blair’s memory. She had the ability to conjure up the vivid details of a scene or a moment from nearly twenty years earlier. Today was no exception.

  “At first, I panicked. I knew Clio would be furious. But Seaweed was very clean and left barely a mark on the carpet, which was under the bed anyway. Besides, she had these four beautiful, tiny kittens. Their eyes were closed and they hardly moved, but they made this incredible mewing sound. Fanny and I stayed up all night just watching them. The next morning, I invited Clio to come and see. It was stupid. I think at the time it never occurred to me that she wouldn’t think they were adorable. But sure enough, she was livid. She told me I was irresponsible. That I had no respect for her home or her rules. She insisted that the kittens be moved out to the garage immediately. I just remember crying and crying because I had read in a book that you couldn’t touch newborn kittens. If they get a human scent on them, the mother rejects them. I tried to explain that to Clio, but she didn’t believe me. She said it was absurd, an old wives’ tale, whatever that meant. She said Seaweed would be a good mother and take care of her kittens even out in the garage. I begged her to let them be. They weren’t hurting anything under the bed. Fanny even offered to pay to get the carpet cleaned with her baby-sitting money. Clio wouldn’t listen. She sent the maid up to get them. Oh God, that woman was dreadful. Her name was Marion, and she had thick fingers and ankles and wore orthopedic shoes. I tried to block Marion from getting at the kittens, but she grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me away.” Blair rubbed her wrist, as if experiencing the pain all over again.

  “What about Fanny?” Jake asked.

  “She sat in a corner of our room perfectly still, like she was in shock and couldn’t move. She didn’t cry or anything. She had this blank expression on her face. Seaweed was hissing and obviously scared. Clio stood in the doorway telling Marion to hurry up. Marion just reached under the bed, shoved the kittens into the box, and marched out. Oh—” Blair gasped. “It was a nightmare.”

  “What happened?”

  “Fanny and I were punished and had to stay in our room. We weren’t allowed to go out to the garage. That night, Clio didn’t come downstairs for dinner. Dad said she wasn’t feeling well. He told us how disappointed he was in us for not respecting the conditions he had imposed on Seaweed’s visit. We had been selfish. We ignored Clio’s allergies. We needed to remember that we were not the only ones living in the house. That’s what he said. Typical. He always takes her side. But I had been right. The next morning, when I went to check on the kittens, they were dead. I guess Seaweed had abandoned them. They didn’t really have fur at a day old, and the garage was damp. They must have gotten cold. Plus, they weren’t fed. All it took was twenty-four hours because they were so young. I felt awful for the kittens and for Seaweed, too. Seaweed wasn’t a bad mother. That’s just what cats do if you touch their babies. It’s instinct. Clio killed them.” Blair’s voice cracked, and she covered her eyes with the backs of her hands. “I don’t know why I just thought of that now.”

  The two were silent. Jake rearranged the papers on his desk and wondered how to redirect Blair’s attention back to their financial problems.

  “And here’s the icing on the cake,” Blair said after a moment. “About three years later, Justin got a kitten, a little white one, that was allowed to be loose in the house.”

  So that was part of the story, the horrific memory, Jake realized. Justin, Blair’s half-brother and Clio and Richard’s only child, was allowed to do, and to have, what Richard’s two daughters could not. Jake got up from his seat and moved over to where Blair lay on her chaise longue. He took her hand and rubbed her palm.

  “So think of the money we need from Clio and Richard as restitution.”

  “For Seaweed’s kittens?” Blair smiled. “I’ll see.”

  Jake exhaled. Maybe he would survive this crisis after all.

  Friday, May 22

  Frances Pratt checked the gas gauge. The needle hovered near the red empty indicator, but the warning light hadn’t illuminated. Frances calculated that she had more than thirty miles remaining in the tank, enough to get to Southampton without stopping to refuel. She hated to be late, especially for her father, who had come to expect her six o’clock arrival each Friday night. “My reliable daughter,” he said, these words replacing a more traditional form of greeting.

  “You chose Friday nights as a way to perpetuate your solitary existence,” her sister, Blair, had criticized
her many months ago when her scheduled visits first began. “You could visit Dad anytime. It’s not like he has other plans.”

  “I don’t consider the time wasted.” Frances’s comment had ended the debate. Friday nights worked well for her. She ran little risk of seeing Clio, who had a massage therapist in at five o’clock and then could be relied on to go out, usually to a cocktail party. Frances had no intention of changing her routine.

  Frances pressed the accelerator lightly with her bare foot. Traffic was light along Route 25 West, the single-lane road between Orient Point and Riverhead. Her mind drifted away from static-filled talk on the National Public Radio station. She focused on the speeding landscape, barking Rottweilers tied to chain-link fences, wild daisies growing amid cars propped atop cinder blocks, whirligigs spinning in front yards. Gradually these familiar objects gave way to hedges and well-kept homes as she turned onto Route 24 and crossed from the north to the south fork of Long Island.

  The evening light had settled over the cedar-shingled roof of Treetops, Richard and Clio Pratt’s estate on Ox Pasture Road, so named for the well-placed, majestic oak and maple trees that shaded the plush lawn. The recently completed single-story addition, a rectangular structure with a vaulted roof and ramped entrance, made the house asymmetrical but more interesting architecturally. It accommodated Richard’s limitations well. Clio had done a good job, Frances thought. Except for the neat line where new shingles met the older ones of weathered gray, the flow of the magnificent structure had been maintained.

  Frances pulled her pickup truck around to the side normally reserved for service vehicles, landscapers, pool cleaners, garbage collectors, electricians, and now the constant stream of medical personnel and suppliers. She shut off the engine, adjusted her rearview mirror to catch her reflection, and frowned in disgust. She hadn’t had time for a shower that morning, and the usual sheen of her brown curls was dulled by dirt. She opened the glove compartment and sorted through papers and candy wrappers until she found a rubber band, which she used to pull her hair back. Then she pinched her cheeks, a poor substitute for makeup, but something that she learned from watching Gone With the Wind. She grabbed her knapsack and got out.

  “Hello, Frances.” Lily, one of two live-in nurses, issued a greeting as she opened the door. Pale but for dark circles under her vacant eyes, Lily looked sicker and weaker than the myriad patients for whom she had cared over the course of her professional life. Her voice remained cheery.

  “How’s Dad?” Over the past year of weekly visits, Frances realized how hard it was to predict her father’s frame of mind. Sometimes he seemed completely engaged, limited only by his physical disabilities. Other moments Frances wasn’t at all sure that he was even aware of his surroundings.

  “Pretty good today.” Lily smiled slightly, revealing her nicotine-yellowed teeth. On more than one occasion Frances had seen her cowered behind the trash bins, trying to sneak a cigarette on grounds that Clio had declared “smoke-free.”

  Frances forced a grin. She didn’t like conversations with people like Lily, with whom she shared nothing but the tragic connection of a disabled family member. Unlike her sister, who delved into the personal lives of all three of Richard Pratt’s nurses and who remembered to inquire about a date, an infirm relative, the outings on a day off, Frances had no interest in establishing more intimate connections with these caregiving strangers. Nonetheless, through her sister, Blair, Frances had learned that Lily had been a nurse for seventeen years, first at a trauma center in Brooklyn and then at a private psychiatric facility somewhere on Long Island. One of eight children, she had never married. She spent her hard-earned money on Club Med package tours to the Caribbean. Salt and pepper shakers marked “Welcome to Martinique,” a shot glass stenciled with flamingoes, several teddy bears with “Club Med” emblazoned on their bellies, and other cheap souvenirs covered every inch of the three windowsills in her bedroom, and a wall calendar counted down the days until her next vacation. Other than these paltry facts, Frances knew little about the person with primary responsibility for her father’s daily care.

  Frances looked past Lily into her father’s spacious living area. It had wide-pine floors washed in pale cream and few furnishings to block the movement of Richard’s wheelchair. A set of French doors at one end opened onto a deck, partially shaded by a green-striped awning, which overlooked the driveway and front lawn. Through an arched door to the right of the sitting area, Frances could see Richard Pratt’s “gym,” as Clio called it, complete with a heated lap pool and an odd assortment of machines, colored balls, mats, and small dumbbells for use in his rehabilitation. A ramp led down to his bedroom. Frances had never seen where her father slept in his new living arrangements, but she imagined it was similarly spacious and cheery.

  The living room was quiet.

  Richard Pratt sat by the window, a crimson blanket draped over his withered legs, a book resting on his lap. He stared out at the lawn. Hearing her footsteps on the floor, he looked up and issued his usual greeting.

  “I thought I might not be so reliable today,” Frances responded. “I almost ran out of gas.”

  “But you didn’t.” He smiled. “That’s what matters.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Better for your arrival.” His words came slowly, slightly slurred. “Today has been quiet. No physical therapy. I can relax.”

  “Rest up. You may be getting visitors. Remember, it’s a holiday.”

  “Ah, yes.” Richard’s lips parted in a crooked smile. Like the distortion of a circus funhouse mirror, his facial paralysis had turned his grin into a demented leer. Frances remembered a childhood story about Alexander, a crocodile, who tried to warn the mayor that the rising river would soon flood his town. The crocodile smiled in an effort to get attention from the people on the street. Instead they fled in horror, thinking that his toothy grimace was a precursor of their demise. Frances wondered how much of her father she misunderstood.

  “What are your plans?” Richard asked.

  “Plans?”

  “The weekend.”

  “I haven’t gotten that far. I was supposed to go to trial on Tuesday and thought I would be working, but the case got postponed.” She paused, trying to gauge whether her father wanted her to continue. He closed his eyes, but his head bobbed slightly, an indication that he was listening. She pulled a Windsor chair up next to him and sat down. “The defendant, who happens to be a lawyer himself, claims to have a new witness, some expert psychiatrist from California who will testify that he embezzled funds from his clients because he suffered from battered men’s syndrome.”

  “Hmm,” Richard mumbled.

  Frances thought for a minute. “What I can’t figure out is why the judge is willing to go along with it. You should see his wife, the frailest thing in the world, scared of her own shadow, following her husband around like she is attached to his butt by a rope.” Frances checked herself. Crude imagery might work with police, other assistant district attorneys, those engaged in the rough-and-tumble of solving life’s crimes, but she didn’t like it to spill over into the rest of her life. Fortunately her father didn’t seem to notice.

  “I actually like the idea that she is supposed to be the batterer. I expect the jury will find his theory as incredible as I do, if we ever get to trial. This is one of the oldest cases on the docket, but the judge gave him a month continuance anyway to prepare his expert.” Frances rolled her eyes. “Ugh. Why am I boring you with work details? I’m sorry.” She crossed her ankles and settled back in her chair.

  “You’re not boring me.”

  Frances looked at her father, watched as he extended his shaking arm toward her as if to hold her hand, then brought it back to rest on his lap. They hadn’t touched. Frances scanned the room for signs of Lily. They were alone.

  “And the man, that man who stole from the older couple?” Apparently Richard recalled details of her most recent trial, a two-week-long prosecution of William Howard
Avery III, who had stolen more than half a million dollars from a retired couple. The money had been virtually everything they had. She could not recall mentioning the Avery trial, but in her search for conversation to fill each visit, it must have come up. Her father’s memory surprised her.

  “The sentencing is not until July.”

  “Oh.”

  “Can I get you anything? Water? Tea?” Frances asked.

  “No. I’m fine.”

  “Do you want me to read to you? Didn’t we leave Inspector Dalgliesh on the brink of a major discovery?” She forced a smile. Many of her visits over the past months had been spent reading mysteries aloud to her father. They shared a passion for uncovering facts, for unraveling the intrigue and getting at the truth. Frances remembered the times, years ago, when her father read Agatha Christie novels aloud to her, changing his voice for each character, squeezing her arm as the suspense grew. Her father liked Hercule Poirot, the debonair Belgian with his twisted mustache, but she preferred Miss Marple, the detective who rode about on her antique bicycle. Miss Marple struck her as a cross between a crime-solving cleaning lady and a penny-candy store owner.

  Now, their roles reversed, Frances tried to read P. D. James with some of her father’s dramatic flair.

  “Not today. Tell me about…” Richard paused. Frances had learned to be patient as her father spoke, to let him finish each thick, deliberate word even if she knew midsentence what he would say. “Your sister. Any news on when she’ll arrive?”

  “I assume she and Jake are driving out tonight. I’m sure the traffic will be bad.”

  “The traffic on the Long Island Expressway is always bad.” He looked up. “Sometimes she calls from the car. She talks. I can’t hear anything. Cellular phones are full of static.”

  Frances nodded. She remembered the pocket telephone that her father had carried everywhere, even to the tennis court. “I’ll see Blair tomorrow. I’m having dinner with them. I’m sure she’ll come by on Sunday.”