Mourning Glory

by Warren Adler

  As both judge and jury listening to her own testimony, she could barely sustain the pain of her own awful revelation and the terrible deception she had perpetrated on this good man, knowing that her story had to be making Sam confirm his foolishness and sheer gullibility and increase his sense of violation and betrayal.

  Still she pressed on. She recounted the story of Millicent Farmer in all its appalling detail. "Ring around your finger, dummy," she cried, as if in punctuation.

  Then came her justification for the sale of Anne's clothes, which brought her to recount the long, dreary story of Jackie and her involvement with Darryl, the frightening Nazi skinhead, and the episode with the yellow Honda. She spared no detail, telling him about Jackie's flirtation with prostitution. She assumed it was Darryl who had provided him with the information that condemned her, but she did not refer to that. What did it matter how he discovered her deception?

  He remained unmoved, frozen. She had no idea if he was absorbing anything she was saying. To her, the important thing was that she was saying it, emptying herself, cutting through the tissue of lies.

  She spared no detail of her early life as well, growing up poor in Baltimore, living over the barbershop with her immigrant Italian parents, telling him about her paltry schooling, her foolish marriage, her husband's true background and her unhappy life with him. Of course he wasn't a lawyer in Washington, just a stupid dreamer with more ambition than brains, a bum with impossible dreams. Nor was he gay, another absurd premise that had jumped madly into her head.

  She admitted having little knowledge of politics, current events or culture. By his standard, she told him, she was ignorant and unschooled. Not that she was without ambition to learn. She believed she had the capacity to better herself. She knew she was not mentally inferior, but luck and opportunity to advance and grow simply had not come her way. There was shame in it, she admitted. To be ignorant and uninformed was not a virtue. She had only herself to blame.

  She hoped he was listening, but if he wasn't, she told herself, it didn't matter. It had to be said out loud. Had she left a single lie unexplained? She was determined to correct the record as accurately as possible. Throughout her confession Sam remained immobile.

  She corrected the chronology. She had lied about that as well. Lies, she tried to explain, take on a life of their own. Embark on such a path, you lose all context about yourself. It becomes less a lie, which is such a brutal term, than a fiction. She had created a fiction about herself and the people around her.

  "I wanted to make myself appear better in your eyes, Sam," she told him. "I wanted to lift myself into your world."

  Lift herself from where? From her level, it was easy to believe that people who had wealth were different, better in every way, smarter, cultured, educated, well-spoken, polished, socially practiced, mannerly, and, above all, more in control of their lives. She knew she could never match that. To compete, she had to recast herself, make herself over, copy others and lie like hell. As she spoke, it amazed her how deeply and honestly she was portraying herself, all portals open, down and dirty, the whole skinny.

  "You might not ever understand where I'm coming from or why I did this. Unfortunately, I know why. Having failed at every venture tried, marriage, parenting, job, life itself, I could gamble everything on one last desperate move. Do you understand that, Sam?"

  Still he did not reply. She watched his hands, frozen it seemed, around the picture of Anne, the unblemished Anne that lay exalted in his memory.

  Was this the moment? she asked herself. Anne's letters were in her purse. What would be the consequences to her now? So what if he would hate her forever? It seemed obvious to her that all hope of reclaiming their relationship was gone.

  Again her fingers moved to the clasp of her purse. She had nothing to lose now. At the very least he would learn that Grace wasn't the only fraud in his life, that his beloved sainted Anne betrayed him with far more evil intent for most of the years of his marriage. What could be worse than her disloyalty and unfaithfulness? Let him know that he had been an unloved husband, a victim of a cheating wife who had led a double life and betrayed him at every turn. Let him know that all the agony of his guilt feelings over the years had been based on a false premise.

  She had continued to cling to the notion that the revelation of Anne's infidelity would shock him into seeing that even the most revered of human beings were fallible, and that the most blatant acts of dishonesty and betrayal might not be what they seemed.

  If Grace was ever to act on this, it was now. She paused and observed him. He refused her even the most casual glance. She reached out for the clasp. He continued to look at Anne's picture. In his mind, Grace supposed, Anne was still safe to worship and revere. In death she could no longer betray him.

  Again her fingers stopped moving. No, she could not bring herself to do this. She had hurt him enough. Her gift to him would be this act of non-revelation. This would be her own special act of love, allowing him to preserve forever his illusion of Anne's fidelity and devotion.

  "How was I to know, Sam," she cried, suddenly, "that I was to get entangled emotionally?" She wanted to say "fall in love with you," but she couldn't utter the words, knowing that they would sound phony, hollow, self-serving. More than ever she was certain that she loved him, loved him completely, truly. She wanted, needed to reach out and embrace him. But her fear of rejection was too powerful for her to attempt such an act.

  "I know I don't deserve forgiveness. I betrayed you. I made myself out to be something I wasn't. I lied. I cheated you."

  From his reaction thus far she had no idea what he was thinking.

  "Don't you have anything to say, Sam?" she asked finally in frustration, waiting through a long silence, hoping for a reply. Finally he stirred and shook his head.

  "Please go, Grace," he whispered. "Don't put me through any more of this."

  She studied him for a moment. He didn't lift his eyes toward her. Finally she turned and started to the door of the balcony; then she turned again to face him.

  "All I really wanted, Sam," she whispered, "was protection for me and my daughter. My falling in love with you was an unexpected gift."

  The words had erupted beyond her will to stop them. He offered no reaction. It wasn't money. Not money alone that she sought, she told herself. Love and protection! That's what it was. Was that so much to ask?

  With effort, her legs unsteady, she began to move through the door that led to the bedroom. She stopped for a moment and glanced again toward Sam. He did not lift his head to meet her gaze. Instead he continued to look at the photograph of his late wife.

  Then she moved quickly through the patio door, her eyes glazed with tears. She could let them come now.

  But as she descended the stairs, she recognized a familiar and frightening sound. It held a strong imprint in her mind. Unmistakably, it was the ominous purr of Darryl's "hog."

  Confused by its proximity, especially since she believed that he had already accomplished his objective, had made good on his threat to destroy Grace's relationship with Sam, she abruptly stopped crying and ran down the stairs.

  The fog was lifting, although a brightening haze continued to inhibit visibility. Through it, she saw the vague outline of her own car, and beside it Darryl's bike. He was lifting his leg over the seat and removing his helmet. Behind him on the bike, on the so-called "bitch pad," also removing her helmet, was Jackie. Jackie! She couldn't believe what she saw, Jackie in matching biker's clothes and helmet.

  Grace was completely bewildered and, for the moment, paralyzed by the sight. She felt blind anger festering inside her as Darryl and Jackie approached, two swaggering apparitions bent on evil intent. In her mind they had become the devil's messengers, and she girded herself to resist them.

  Peripherally, she caught a glimpse of Sam standing and watching them from the balcony. The sound of the oncoming motorcycle so close to the house had apparently caught his attention.

  "Surpris
e, Mama," Darryl said, lumbering toward her in his biker's uniform, the leather jacket with its metal swastikas jingling as he walked, the tight jeans showing his arrogant genital bulge and his black high-heeled cowboy boots reminding her of the goose-stepping Nazis she had seen in old movies. Behind him, doing a kind of female imitation of the swagger, was Jackie, unsmiling and mean-faced, aping her mentor.

  "What the hell is happening here?" Grace shouted angrily, although the sight she was witnessing left no room for doubt.

  "You should never have threatened Darryl, Mom," Jackie said, acting the part of a tough broad, glancing toward Darryl for approval. "I got a clue for you, Mom: That car belongs to him. I saw his registration. He had every right to sell it to me. And we've come for the money. In cash."

  Grace studied her daughter. It was obvious to her that she had, whatever the fine points and legalities, lost the last vestige of parental control over Jackie. The issue of the car was hardly worth refuting. Even if Darryl did own the car, he was exploiting Jackie for money. If she was too stupid to see it, then so be it. At that moment she had no mental energy left for argument.

  "That's it, then?" Grace said, with an air of finality.

  "Figured we'd pick you up, and if we couldn't get your consent to come with us to the bank, we might get Sammy Jew boy up there to come up with the bread."

  Darryl looked up at Sam and waved. It was a familiar wave, complete with an uplifted finger.

  "Face it, Mom. I'm tired of the bullshit. I know you tried your best. But your best just won't hack it with me. I've moved in with Darryl."

  Grace sighed. She saw in her daughter's hard face no remorse, no contrition, no regrets. So be it, she thought again.

  "How does that grab you, Mama?" Darryl said, cupping his crotch as if to underline the statement. "You got visiting rights, though.

  "Guess we'll just have to have a nice little talk with old cut prick up there. I'm sure he'd love to know about how you got the dough, selling his poor dead bitch's threads. Maybe there's even more to tell about you he don't know. Maybe you got lots more to hide from the kike."

  Grace felt a strange sensation, an odd sense of vindication. She had assumed that Darryl had been the informer, which only proved how misguided assumptions were more the rule than the exception. It wasn't Darryl at all. Maybe Sam himself had her investigated. What did it matter now? she told herself. She looked up at Sam, shook her head, then turned to Darryl and Jackie and shrugged, showing her indifference to their threat.

  "Be my guest," Grace said, watching their faces as they exchanged confused glances. Then she turned and moved quickly toward her car. The ironic sense of victory passed quickly and she felt herself engulfed by a rising tide of explosive rage. She felt compelled to act, do something, anything.

  It was only when she drew nearer to her car and saw Darryl's bike parked beside it, his vaunted Evo, his miraculous hog with its pulled back buckhorns and bitch pad glistening in the moist and eerie light of the fog, that an idea of action struck her. In this light the bike looked like an evil, arrogant monster. Here was her epiphany. She had, at last, come face-to-face with her destiny. It was a compulsion beyond logic or reason, her appointment with the enemy. There could be no retreat. She must wrestle this evil force to the death.

  Mounting the monster, she forced herself to remember the mechanics of the "kicker." Jason had taught her that years ago. It came to her in a flash of memory, and she turned the ignition key and placed her foot on the kicker and jumped, hearing the telltale gasp. She jumped again, then again. Finally she hit it right and it burst into life.

  She heard Darryl's angry curses and Jackie's screams as the bike shot forward across the driveway onto the strip of shrubs that separated the property from the beach. Looking up as she sped past the house, she saw Sam's vague outline as he stood on the balcony. She couldn't see his face.

  As she sped into the fog, navigating by instinct parallel to the ocean, she sensed that she was taming the beast, controlling it at last. She felt free, unshackled, liberated, sailing effortlessly through time and space, hurtling to an ending.

  The wind and saltwater bit her face and soaked her hair as she revved up the accelerator, hoping that the greater speed would crush the monster and release her mind of its ghosts and terrors, unburden her heart, chase the demons that had conspired against her and, by some miracle, propel her to another less painful dimension.

  After a few minutes, she made a sharp U-turn and headed into the fog, sensing that she was moving again toward Sam's house. She peered into the brightening mist but saw only a white slate of nothingness. That, she assured herself, was where she needed to be, hurtling into the blankness of oblivion.

  Slowing, she stopped the bike, let it idle and listened to the pounding of the surf. In the distance she could see the enemy now. Jackie and Darryl, gripped by their fantasies of anger and greed. And Sam, dear Sam, unable or unwilling to distinguish between real truth and betrayal.

  They were all there now, flaying their arms. Vaguely, she heard their voices but could not make out what they were saying. Nor did it matter.

  In the end it all came down to misconceptions, distorted ideas, inaccurate perceptions, misinterpreted words, phony expectations, conflicting desires, competing game plans, bloated optimism, miscalculations, misunderstandings, inadequate explanations and the mysterious intrusions of luck and chance. People were maddeningly imperfect. Was the battle really worth it in the end?

  She revved up the bike, hearing the angry growl and cough of the engine, then headed forward, certain now that she was moving toward her nothingness, her real destiny.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Sam had listened to Grace's confession with every fiber of his being, his outer persona frozen into immobility while his insides, the core of himself, burned with the heat of his agony. Until then he had never understood the meaning of heartbreak. Now he discovered that it was even more painful than loss, more torturing than guilt.

  Her words, assaulting him in an endless stream, bit into his brain with laserlike power, illustrating how deadly words could be, how they could create false realities, manipulate the mind's images, foster illusions, induce empty hopes.

  Before her incredible outpouring, he had convinced himself of his own failed judgment. His antennae, which had once detected fraud and chicanery with remarkable accuracy, had simply shut down. His libido had pumped up his ego and blinded him to the ravages that age had wrought on his perception. That was the only credible explanation for his naive stupidity.

  But when she explained the machinations of her effort to insinuate herself into his life, he felt less and less to blame. It was, he decided, although he would not reveal to her any hint of admiration, a masterpiece of planning and dissimulation. As she had admitted, desperation makes one powerfully creative and cunning, especially when survival was at stake.

  He had deliberately steeled himself against any show of emotion, any engagement of her attention that might reveal a softening of resolve. She had suckered him once and he was determined not to be suckered again.

  But he did listen with rapt attention, fighting off any desire for forgiveness. He knew he was at war with himself. If anything, her words provided enlightenment as to the terrible price one paid for purveying lies. He had paid it in spades. Secrecy had forced him to overcompensate in his display of affection and generosity toward Anne. It had distorted his marriage, given him not a single day of peace of mind, of contentment, of openness.

  What hurt him most was that he had truly believed that with Grace he had found trust, that illusive ingredient that melted barriers between human beings that opened the way for total communication. Nothing would be hidden, not the darkest desires, not the deepest motives. No emotion was exempt. The criteria between them would be truth, truth in the absolute, truth in its purest form.

  Now this. He had been on the verge of a lifetime commitment to her in every way, a full partnership, a pledge to the end of his life, the en
d of time and consciousness. Love had come to him late, but with all its latent power intact. It had been the greatest thrill in his life. His body's reaction had only been the tip of the iceberg. Its depth defied all measurement.

  Indeed, the whole idea of his accumulated wealth and its preservation paled beside the power and glory of love. Beyond creature comforts and the little vanities, what more was needed to satisfy their future needs? Surplus seemed an absurdity at his stage in life. What he detested most was the greed of his children. They had not earned any of his fortune, yet they felt entitled to every dime.

  But this thing with Grace: He had really believed that their relationship was beyond money, that his wealth hadn't been a motivating factor for her. He had felt it in his bones. How could he have been so far off the mark? It was true, he supposed, that if she had revealed her real history, he might have rejected any idea of future commitment.

  She was below him in education and accomplishment and far, far lower on the economic ladder. Her perception of herself was accurate. She was, indeed, a luckless waif, a loser. She had no special social skills or connections to the protocol of his world. Her knowledge or interest in cultural pursuits, current events and politics were limited.

  But what had any of that to do with the chemistry of attraction, with the mystery of love, with the sincerity of her soul? What counted for more? Achievement or wisdom, however acquired? Where was the true measure of success? Who made the final judgments on the worth of a life lived?

  When she had said that she loved him, he felt his rage begin to dissipate, but he distrusted his own judgment. He wanted to respond. He wanted it, desperately, to be true. With all his being he wanted to join her in the cleansing process of her confession, to forgive, to believe in her sincerity. Still, he held back. Her lies, her dissembling, had been too formidable, too cunning. And he had let the moment pass. He would tough it out, get beyond it, be more wary of predators. The thought brought him back to his son, who had exploited his self-appointed role of guardian angel. He felt no filial gratitude in the revelation, none at all.