Guilt Trip

by Donna Huston Murray

  Marsha’s mouth had dropped open, and she abruptly shut it. Gavin’s eyes twinkled with amusement. Chantal merely stared.

  The one to watch was Frank. With a granite expression I’m sure served him well in the boardroom, he fixed his dark, narrowed eyes onto mine. They did not waver. I found it difficult not to flinch.

  After an uncomfortable five beats, Roitman stuffed his hands casually into his trouser pockets and strolled close enough to create a semblance of privacy. Chin lifted to a calculating height, he resumed peering into my eyes as if he hadn’t quite finished downloading my life history. Sweat had broken out all over me before the left corner of his mouth lifted into a wry smile.

  “Welcome aboard,” he said with a curt nod.

  Then he turned away.

  Chapter 8

  Frank Roitman acknowledged the obviousness of my being Mike Stoddard’s mistress with a knowing nod. Then he grasped my pretend lover’s elbow, swiveled him toward the door and called back over his shoulder, “Let’s go, everyone.”

  As he spoke, he watched me without any visible judgment, so I allowed myself to breathe.

  The group, including Mike, obediently queued up behind Daddy Frank, leaving me to bring up the rear pulling our two suitcases by their extended handles. Mine was a bit heavier than it should have been, and remembering why clenched my stomach as if I’d swallowed a pound of buckshot.

  The March afternoon had heated up to the pleasant neighborhood of sixty degrees, and the sky had collected some cumulus clouds shadowed with a soft blue. For a small private jet, flying through them might be bumpy, although what did I really know about small, private jets except what I could see waiting for us on the tarmac.

  “Welcome,” said the pilot as he relieved me of the suitcases. His handsome Hispanic face grinned at my expense then lowered as he lifted my bag into the belly of the sleek, white plane. “Shoes?” he guessed with a raised eyebrow.

  “Books,” I fibbed before I realized he was teasing.

  “Ought to get one of those e-readers,” he suggested. “Easier when you travel.”

  “Good thought,” I agreed as I escaped up the short stairs into the plane.

  New experience. Stepping into the cabin was like slipping into a kid glove. The predominant color was cream trimmed with the dark brown of freshly brewed coffee. Eight ergonomic seats faced forward with an aisle down the middle. Every other seat could be turned backwards in order to share a small table. The fragrances of new leather and actual coffee perfumed the air.

  The pilot had silently followed me in. “Something to eat or drink?” he inquired, gesturing toward the discreet kitchenette across the way. “It’s just me today.”

  Surprised, I blurted, “No co-pilot?”

  “Your host has his license,” the gentleman assured me with a wink in Frank’s direction.

  “Oh! Oh, good.” Then, figuring I couldn’t be much more of a rube if I tried, I admitted I was starved. “No lunch.” Or breakfast. Why I hadn’t bought a sandwich at the gas station instead of chewing gum I couldn’t guess, except that Mike had urged me to hurry.

  “Un momento.” The pilot hurried back down the short stairs and disappeared.

  Frank and Marsha had claimed seats across from each other in front, their son and daughter just behind. Mike, blinking as if he might be ready to cry, settled into the fourth and final row in the back.

  The pilot swiftly returned with long ham and provolone sandwiches garnished with avocado, lettuce and tomato.

  “I think I’m in love,” I told him, and he smiled so tolerantly I dared hope he forgave me for the extra weight in my suitcase.

  “Drinks right there.” He pointed to an almost invisible refrigerator then reminded us to, “Buckle up,” as he entered the cockpit. I only got a quick glimpse, but it resembled a compact home theater for two, except with enough electronics to launch a rocket.

  Take off was fast and smooth, the way I imagined a large bird might feel launching himself into the wind. Watching the late-winter patchwork slide by below reminded me of the aerial shot on my dresser of our family’s lost farm. And naturally, that brought forth the deep, silent ache of causing my brother’s disappointment, compounded now by the guilt of imposing myself on him and Karen. I hoped one day they would realize I was trying to thank them the only way I knew how.

  With sun-tinted clouds drifting by us, Mike and I devoured the sandwiches with appreciative umms and nods and sodas from the plane’s refrigerator.

  At one point I asked if he ever expected to talk again, but he just eyed me as if I were nuts. By the time I stowed our trash, he was sound asleep.

  Although I wanted to enjoy the flight, I’d closed the Pelican’s Perch the night before then hustled out of bed because I thought Karen was leaving Ron. I slept until the jet’s touchdown woke me.

  The pilot turning our luggage over to the two waiting porters caused me a small panic, but the trolleys remained in our distant sight. Instead I forced myself to observe the crowds entering the single-story thatched buildings that made up the Punta Cana airport.

  A few hundred tourists disembarking from large commercial planes got shunted together with us, every one of them carrying something—a large colorful tote bag, a straw hat, one of those ubiquitous black carry-ons. I saw Chantal cringe away from a teenager’s purple backpack as if it contained anthrax. Crowds tended to bring out prejudices and phobias, and clearly Chantal had a couple of both. Germs? The proximity of strangers? I couldn’t be sure.

  I ended up walking alongside Marsha, who chose to talk to me as if no one else within earshot spoke English. “The first time we came here,” she said, “the airport didn’t even have rest rooms.”

  “Wow,” I replied.

  “They had all this,” a sweep of her arm to indicate the zigzagged line we had just joined. “Just no rest rooms.”

  “The airport wasn’t done?”

  “No, it wasn’t. But we’re at sea level, don’t forget. Plumbing was a costly problem they hadn’t yet solved.”

  “I guess that means you’ve been coming here for a long time.”

  “No, not really.”

  Oh. Welcome to the third world.

  “Your young man,” Marsha cocked a chin in Mike’s direction. “You can keep him from doing anything drastic?”

  Mike was acting like a ticking bomb. If I’d been his host, I’d have asked the question, too.

  I answered, “That’s the plan.”

  “I certainly hope so,” she declared as she eased out of my conversational range.

  I dropped back to thread my hand through the crook of Mike’s arm.

  “You alright?” I inquired.

  “I’m fine.” He had been reading a text on his phone, which he deftly slipped into a belt holder underneath his jacket. Wise in such a tight crowd.

  “Try not to be so weird,” I suggested as I squeezed his sleeve.

  He showed me his confusion. “I thought that’s how you wanted me to act.”

  “Distraught is good. Suicidal is bad.” Mike did need to return to earth if we were to bring off our deception, but I probably should have used another word to deliver the message.

  He waved his head as the line inched forward. “I shouldn’t have let you come,” he decided. “I could have handled this myself.”

  “Too late now.”

  “I’ll say.”

  Somewhere beyond the booths that addressed the business of entering the Dominican Republic were three men playing island music. The beat of a bongo drum carried over the noisy hum and bustle of impatient tourists. Overhead wide fans twirled under the roof thatching, but they did little to dispel the body heat of the crowds. Behind us more arriving passengers had closed us in. Claustrophobia was a possibility, but I fought it off just as I’d had to during the cat scans I endured back when I was sick. A wave of gratitude that I was now considered to be “cured” washed over me. Not the first time today, and certainly not the last.

  In contrast to his
finicky daughter, Frank Roitman appeared to tolerate the cattle chutes of humanity with a patient, businesslike, expression. When he arrived at the first desk to pay the small fee required of each of us, he made good eye contact with the hardworking clerk. Then he did it again when his and Marsha’s passports were stamped. I admired him for that.

  Gavin and Chantal approached each desk together, but separately, if you know what I mean. Chantal never entirely shed her cloak of mourning. It pressed down on her head and caused her shoulders to slope. Even her stance seemed to have widened to accommodate the weight of her loss.

  In contrast, Gavin Roitman absorbed his surroundings without sharing anything of himself. I wanted to know why he was so different from his father. I wanted to point out that aloof was no way to go through life. Too bad I had to keep it all to myself. He was missing out on some good advice.

  Mike tipped the musicians a dollar as we passed by, so at least part of him was in the here and now.

  Then came the awkward moment when we were required to stand still to be photographed with two Dominican women in costume, a procedure that assumed everyone came here for fun, certainly not to scatter a loved-one’s ashes into the sea.

  We were told our photos could be purchased off a certain airport wall before we left the country.

  If there were one or two fewer people in our party on the way out, I wondered whether the photographer would notice.

  Chapter 9

  At the last minute Frank Roitman bypassed the door being held open for him and hefted his firmly packed two hundred pounds into the limousine’s shotgun seat. He loved his daughter, but being confined in close quarters with Chantal’s grief made his knee bounce and his palms sweat. Toby adored the beach. Beef stroganoff reminds me of Toby. Toby Toby Toby. What’ll I do without Toby? The sooner they sprinkled the misguided young man’s ashes offshore from that damn resort where they met the happier he, Frank Roitman, would be. A week of mourning and contemplation? A week away from the dying days of a rotten winter was more accurate—at no small expense, by the way.

  His wife prevailed. Of course she prevailed. Chantal needs this, Marsha claimed. You can afford the time just this once, she argued. It’ll be good for you—for all of us—just wait and see.

  Well, he would wait, and he would see.

  On one of his visual sweeps of the passing landscape, Frank happened to meet the limo driver’s eye. The man had a lived-in face dotted with skin tags. He wore a sweat-stained straw fedora with a faded purple band. Even when he whipped around one of the motorbikes or miniature cars so prevalent in the Dominican Republic, his weathered brown fingers tapped along with the soft plink plink of the radio music. All that contentment sparked an unfamiliar pang of envy, which Frank disguised by swiveling his head the other way.

  Lately nothing loosened the steel bands of tension constraining his ribs like the rings of a barrel. Marsha knew some things but not even close to everything. When he’d been mugged by the brother of the unfortunate young woman from that damned lawsuit, there had been no hope of hiding the resultant broken wrist from his wife. Unfortunately, her overreaction made sheltering her from everything he possibly could imperative. Luckily, one of the benefits derived from his early environment was the ability to replace whatever he needed to conceal with whatever he chose.

  With Marsha you never had to guess if she was faking. She was. Although maybe not faking so much as amplifying. Thirty-six years into their marriage and you’d think she was still a newlywed. The kids joked that the gaudy baubles he presented to her on every possible occasion were the only reason she still doted on him. He traveled too much, they pointed out. He was a workaholic, married to his job. All true. He also knew that his youthful good looks had gone the way of his hairline.

  He would never admit it, but he found his wife’s honesty about her jewelry fetish endearing. After long years of building a billion-dollar conglomerate, her transparency was a welcome antidote.

  Behind him the strained conversations between his family and his guests had devolved into staring out at the same billboards and unkempt jungle that Frank saw, only he saw all of it and he saw it first. If a sniper happened to be waiting on the flat roof of the upcoming motorcycle showroom, he liked to think he would be quick enough to duck, one of the silly, but maybe not-so-silly, thoughts that flashed in and out of his brain these days, and one that he made sure to hide.

  The road was much more complete than he remembered, the Dominican government finally having replaced the barely competent contractors they’d entrusted with the chore for far too long. Except for the gated and guarded resort complexes that had sprung up like so many sand castles, the countryside looked much the same. Lush green and bleak all at once, with single cows munching on vegetation behind fencing so recently live the posts had taken root and sprouted leaves.

  Traffic stalled for no discernible reason, and Frank found himself staring at a three-sided shack. In the shade of its corrugated roof, three dark-skinned men in slacks and loose, short-sleeved shirts malingered on two chrome stools and a red wooden chair sipping whatever the locals drank during the day. When one glanced toward the shiny black van and their eyes met, Frank felt as if he’d been caught with his zipper down. He was grateful when they began moving again.

  Next came a mostly yellow, patched-together house with a flea-bitten mongrel foraging for food. Across the way lay an abandoned construction project, stacks of cement blocks with no apparent purpose.

  Nothing and no one even remotely suggested a threat to the Chairman of the Board and CEO of Roitman Industries, which made perfect sense. Why bother following him all the way to the Caribbean when he could be ambushed entering a building that bore his name or in a house firmly attached to four hundred acres of real estate? Why indeed? Yet, once established, the habit of vigilance was hard to shake.

  Hoping it wouldn’t be noticed, Frank allowed himself the luxury of a deep, deep sigh. As he sipped from the plastic bottle of cold water provided by the limo company, he allowed his eyes to drift shut. It was the most unguarded moment he had permitted himself in days, if not weeks.

  Naturally, the van bounced over a pothole and shocked him back to reality. If a threat existed within the Dominican Republic, it would come from one of two strangers holding hands in the back of this vehicle. Mike Stoddard, the overgrown boy, so insecure that he resorted to ridiculous clothing to inspire affection. His brother’s suicide had hollowed him out, no question; but even though the case could be made, so far nothing indicated that he blamed Frank for that.

  The tall woman was another matter altogether. A beauty with hardships concealed behind those unusual, pale gray eyes. Muscular and voluptuous, she seemed to be indifferent to her own appearance, confident yet vulnerable. A contradiction, and therefore an enigma. He couldn’t fathom what she saw in Mike, and that alone bore watching. If they were a couple, the reason would emerge. If not, well, Frank would deal with her the way he dealt with any obstacle.

  In the meantime he indulged in a satisfied smile, a personal pat on the back for allowing this Lori Ruggles person to join them. More neighborhood wisdom—put potential enemies at ease in order to lure them close.

  “We are here, Mr. Roitman,” the driver announced.

  And they were. The van had just rounded a block of pastel buildings to reveal the placid blue water of a marina and a spectacular hundred-foot yacht. As the limo drew to a smooth stop, the sun shone across the borrowed vessel’s name, “The Constitution,” painted in gold. Far larger than an ordinary yacht, it had been moored at the water’s edge alongside a long walkway leading to a restaurant.

  “Damn,” Frank swore to himself as he admired the multi-million dollar trophy. He was going to owe a helluva lot of favors before this week was over.

  Chapter 10

  Mike and I followed the Roitmans onto the sleek yacht like orphans pretending to be royalty. I think I scanned its perfectly polished appointments discreetly, but inside I was gawping like a five-year-old
at the circus. Blond wood and chrome, pristine white paint, taupe cushions—the vessel was floating modern art, sparse and appropriate without visual or spatial waste.

  After wending our way down a set of open stairs, Frank briefly assessed the four staterooms then assigned them with a gracious wave of his hand. Later I would learn that another farther below accommodated the crew, a husband and wife duo who took care of everything, especially us.

  On either side of the platform bed Mike and I were about to share, smooth wooden cabinets conformed to the shape of the hull. Unpacking into mine took three minutes, but Mike dawdled through the chore as if he were reluctant to commit. When he finally finished, he flopped onto the bed like a snow-angel.

  “Tired?” I surmised. To pick up Karen he’d gotten up even earlier than me, and his in-flight nap had probably been too short to make up the difference.

  He glanced my way as if he’d forgotten I was there. Something was going on.

  “Mary’s been texting you, right?” Silent, easy to keep private. Checking messages in the middle of a live conversation wasn’t exactly polite though, unless…

  “Is she okay?” I asked with sudden concern.

  Mike rolled away from me. “I shouldn’t be here,” he complained into the pillow.

  “Whoa, there. You said Mary insisted. She even packed your bag.”

  He sat up and propped himself on arms as taut as barbed wire. “This is ridiculous. What difference does it make whether Toby killed himself or not? Nothing’s going to change. He’s gone. Gone! End of story.” He raised his wrists to his eyes.

  Something had brought on these second thoughts, but now wasn’t the time to ask. If he got any more worked up, I was afraid he might do something really crazy, like expose us to the Roitmans. When he settled down enough to listen, I would remind him once again how dangerous that could be—for both of us.