The Sins of the Mother

by Danielle Steel

  “At first, I felt terribly guilty for being involved with him, but we weren’t hurting anyone. We were careful, and respectful and discreet. He was wonderful to you. I just couldn’t find any reason to deprive myself of his love for me, just because it didn’t fit with the morality I’d grown up with. And he always said he’d marry me if he lived long enough to do so, and in the end, he didn’t. And no, it wasn’t the ideal thing. It would have been more respectable if we’d been married. But we loved each other just as much as if we had been. He was thirty years older than I was, and in some ways he was like a father to me, and a husband. He took better care of me than anyone ever had, and look what he did for me in the end. Was that so wrong? He stayed married until his wife died of influenza. He was kind to her till the end.”

  “Why didn’t you marry him when his wife died? I always wondered about that.” It was the first time her mother had ever opened up with her in just that way. Olivia had had to wait until she was seventy to ask her mother the questions she had wondered all her life. It had been a long time coming, and Maribelle was forthcoming with her now.

  “We were going to. But he wanted to wait until a year after his wife’s death. We even set the date. He had given me a ring, and we considered ourselves engaged, although we didn’t tell anyone, not even you. And then he died seven months after she did, so we never got married. But I loved him anyway.”

  Olivia sat looking pensive. Her mother had just solved a mystery for her. And then as she looked down at her mother’s hand, she saw the ring and realized what it was. It was a band with three small diamonds on it. Her mother had worn it for most of her life. Maribelle nodded when she saw Olivia looking at it, and she looked wistful thinking of the man who had given it to her.

  “Yes, that’s the ring. I never took it off again.”

  “I just figured you liked things the way they were when you didn’t marry him. I never had the guts to ask you.”

  “Of course I didn’t. It wasn’t respectable being the mistress of a married man in those days, and it isn’t now either. But sometimes you have no choice. If he’d had a viable marriage, it would have been an entirely different story, and I wouldn’t have done it. But he didn’t. His wife was certifiably insane. And it sounds like your friend has a similar situation. Would I have preferred to be married to Ansel? Of course. But I accepted the situation, just as you do. You’d probably rather be married too,” she said simply, but Olivia shook her head.

  “Actually, no, I wouldn’t. At least I don’t think so. I like it like this. I’d like it better if he weren’t married. But I had marriage with Joe. I’m not sure I need that again at my age.”

  “Well, I certainly don’t at mine,” Maribelle said, laughing, “although the oldest person to get married here was ninety-six. He married a youngster of eighty-two. I think he lived another three years, but I’ll bet they were happy years. And if they hadn’t gotten married, would they have been ‘immoral’? Was I? Technically, yes, and so are you. But technicalities are not real life. Life is about people, the decisions they make, and what they feel they have to do. As long as no one is getting hurt, the immorality is fine with me.” Her mother had just let her off the hook.

  “I feel the same way,” Olivia said with a rueful expression, “but my son doesn’t. He’s dealing in the absolute. The technical.”

  “Phillip has led a sheltered life. It’s time for him to grow up, and stop judging you. He’s been angry at you for too many years. He needs to try and understand what you were doing and why, and realize that you’re quietly involved with a married man who won’t leave his alcoholic wife. It would be a great deal more immoral if you dragged him away. For me the criterion is always if someone is getting hurt. We all have our moral compass, and we all make compromises, but that’s where the buck stops for me. Phillip needs to have more compassion. How does he know he wouldn’t do the same thing in your shoes? That’s the reality here. We all get angry at our parents. I think you were angry at me for a while because of Ansel, and now look, the dial turns, the years march on, Joe is gone, and you’ve found a man who makes you happy who happens to be married to an alcoholic. How different is that from what I did with Ansel?

  “Sooner or later we all do the same things our parents did, no matter how much we criticized them, because in the end we’re all human beings, and subject to the same frailties. We all make the same mistakes, or similar ones in the end. And what it teaches us is to be forgiving, and not so quick to judge. Every one of your children will wind up making some of your mistakes. It’s human nature. So who are they to judge you harshly? ‘There but for the grace of God go I’ is true in the end. Who’s to say that Phillip won’t do the same thing one day? It’s a long life. At sixty, you did something similar to what I did, when I was younger. And maybe one day Phillip will understand that you’re not immoral, you’re human, and so is he.” As she listened to her, Olivia felt a huge wave of relief wash over her. She had thought more or less the same things, but having Maribelle express it so succinctly, from the vantage point of another generation, made it even clearer for her.

  “Thank you, Mom,” she said, as she leaned over and kissed her. “I’m glad we talked about it.” She had answered the questions of a lifetime and clarified some important things. She had thought her mother didn’t care about marriage and was some kind of libertine, but as it turned out, they had been engaged and hoping to get married, and he had died before they could. She was as conventional as anyone else, just struggling to make morality and reality meet, which wasn’t always an easy task.

  “I’m glad you brought it up,” Maribelle said peacefully, fingering Ansel’s ring again. He had been a good man. And so had Olivia’s father, although they had been married for such a short time before he was killed in the war. Maribelle had been with Ansel Morris for many, many years. Just as Olivia had been with Peter now. Ten years was a long time. Maribelle repeated then what she had said earlier. “Phillip needs to grow up. Life has a way of making us do that, whether we want to or not. It did for both of us,” she said, smiling at her daughter. “And he needs to stop whining about your being gone when he was a boy. He was fine. And if you hadn’t built the business you did, he wouldn’t have the job he has now. You can’t have everything in life. And you were there for him, part of the time, and the rest of the time, he had me and Joe. Liz and John have understood that. Phillip will have to come to it in time.”

  “I wish Cass would get there too,” Olivia said wistfully. Her relationship with her youngest child was so badly damaged and such a loss.

  “She will. The biggest problem you two have is that she’s so much like you. She fights it all the time. She’s young. She’s a wonderful woman, just like you.”

  “I hardly know her anymore. At least she comes to see you.”

  “Whenever she can,” Maribelle said, smiling, and with that Olivia stood up. She had been there for a long time and didn’t want to wear her mother out, although that was hard to do. She was probably keeping her from playing cards.

  “Thank you, Mother,” Olivia said, and gave her a warm hug. It was heartfelt.

  “Just let Phillip simmer down and stew in his own juices. He’ll figure it out. And sooner or later, life will give him a swift kick in the pants and speed it along.”

  “I hope so. I hate seeing him with Amanda. She’s so cold.”

  “It’s what he wanted,” Maribelle reminded her. “Now he needs to figure out that he deserves better than that.”

  “I wonder if he ever will.”

  “Maybe so,” Maribelle said, and walked her out. The two women hugged again, and as Olivia drove away, she waved, and her mother smiled broadly. She looked like a woman who was at peace with herself, and now Olivia was too. She was smiling as she drove home.

  Chapter 14

  The night after Olivia visited her mother, she found herself thinking about Cass, more than ever. She was less concerned about Phillip now, and his reaction to her affair with Peter. An
d as her mother said, Phillip needed to grow up and develop some empathy and compassion.

  But Cass was heavily on her mind. And at seven o’clock she decided to send her an e-mail, telling her how much they had missed her on the boat. It was true, Olivia always did, and always wished she was there.

  The e-mail was only a few lines, just to tell her that she was thinking about her, missed her, had seen Maribelle that day and she was fine. She hit the send button, and didn’t expect a response. She was amazed when an answer came back a few minutes later, even though it was midnight in London. Cass said that she was coming to New York on business the following week, and was amenable to seeing her mother for lunch. They managed to do that once or twice a year. It was no substitute for a real relationship, but it allowed them to keep some kind of link to each other, which Cass had never dared sever entirely. Olivia was grateful for that.

  Olivia responded immediately that she would be happy to see her, whenever and wherever convenient.

  Cass suggested a restaurant in SoHo, and named the time and day, and her mother answered instantly. “I’ll be there. All my love, Mom.” It was the best they could do for now.

  The place Cass had suggested was a French brasserie with bistro food. It was trendy and popular and jammed when Olivia walked in, but she saw her daughter immediately, at a table in the rear, wearing a black leather jacket. She had a thin, angular face, she had porcelain skin and enormous green eyes, and she had long since darkened her already dark brown hair into nearly jet black with a navy blue sheen, and it was short and spiked with gel. She looked like one of the rock stars she represented. She was wearing a slash of bright red lipstick and she looked very modern and chic. She stood up as her mother approached the table. She was wearing a miniskirt and high heels, and there was no denying she was a beautiful girl. Several people turned to stare. As Olivia did in her world, Cass exuded self-confidence and power. She was one of the most successful music producers in the world, and highly respected in her field. She was cool as she met her mother’s gaze but allowed her to kiss her cheek.

  “Thank you for meeting me for lunch. You must be busy,” Olivia said, feeling her heart pound and wanting to put her arms around her youngest child, but she forced herself to be restrained. Cass was never affectionate with her.

  “You’re busy too,” Cass said respectfully. “Thank you for coming downtown. All my meetings are down here. I never get uptown anymore. I’m leaving for L.A. tomorrow. Danny’s starting a tour there, at the Rose Bowl. He’s going to Vegas after that.” She spoke about him as though he were any normal mate, despite the fact that he was twenty-four years old and one of the hottest rock stars in the business. Cass had made his career, and moved in with him five years before. Or actually, he had moved in with her. She had a house in Mayfair that Olivia had never seen. When they met in London, Cass suggested restaurants there too, instead of inviting her to the house. It was her way of keeping her mother at a distance. And Olivia had never met Danny Hell. From what she had seen of him in the press, he was a handsome boy, and they made a striking couple.

  “It must be hectic for you when he’s on tour. I can’t even imagine what organizing something like that is like.” And she did several a year, for other clients. As Olivia looked at her, she realized that Maribelle was right. They had both started mammoth businesses at a young age, and been extraordinarily successful, just in different fields. But few women could have done it. The only difference between them was that Cass wasn’t married and didn’t have children. At her age, Olivia had had three, and a husband, which had added even more responsibility to her shoulders.

  “It’s crazy, but I love it,” Cass said with a smile, referring to the tour, and then ordered an omelet of egg whites and several health food options on the menu. She had been a vegetarian for years. And she had an incredible figure. Olivia ordered a salad and was more interested in her daughter than food.

  Cass asked about her business then, and the boat trip. She didn’t ask about her siblings. She had distanced herself from them too, and always told her grandmother they were all her mother’s puppets, which Maribelle denied. Olivia mentioned Liz’s book to her, and Cass was pleased for her. She knew her older sister had been floundering for years. And she always thought that it was sad that John had given up his dreams of being an artist to work in their mother’s business. She had the least respect of all for Phillip, who she thought was pompous and a snob, and she hated Amanda. They had all been married when she left home. She hadn’t seen her nephew and nieces since then, and had no desire to. She always said she didn’t like children. They reminded her of her childhood, which wasn’t a pleasant memory for her.

  They talked mostly about external things at lunch, and politics. Cass still got money from the trust Olivia had set up for them, but she was financially entirely independent, and didn’t need her mother’s money. She had made her own. Liz was entirely dependent on her trust, and hadn’t been able to fully support herself yet at forty-four, which Cass thought was pathetic. And she considered the fact that the boys worked for their mother disgusting. She was critical of them all, which she shared liberally with her grandmother, not her mother. And they talked about Maribelle for a while, which was a safe subject.

  Their lunches were always stressful because so much was left unsaid, and her anger at her mother was always felt, even if unspoken. She didn’t need to say it anymore, she had said it often enough in the past, and nothing had changed. You couldn’t change the past.

  Olivia finally dared to ask a personal question just before the end of lunch. “Are you happy?” Cass hesitated before she answered, which worried her mother.

  “I think so. I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m a happy person. I have a lot of angst, which probably makes me good at what I do.” She was a perfectionist like her mother. “I never assume anything, or take anything for granted. I check it all out.”

  Olivia smiled when she said it. “So do I. I’m a fanatic for details.” It was one of the rare times they had talked about themselves and how they worked. Now that Cass ran a booming business, she had more in common with her mother, and they had more to say to each other.

  “I micromanage everything,” Cass confessed. “But there’s a lot of detail work to what I do.”

  Her admission made Olivia brave, and she ventured another question. Maybe it was time. “What’s Danny like?”

  “Crazy, young, incredibly talented, noisy, nuts, spoiled, beautiful.” She spoke of him like a child, as though he were her baby, not her man. Olivia suspected he was both. “He’s fun to be with, when he’s not having a tantrum or driving me nuts. It’s hard for rock stars to behave like real people. They’re expected to act out, so they do. He does. A lot.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you?” Olivia was fascinated by her life, it was so different from her own experience.

  “Sometimes. I manage. I give him shit when he gets too bad. He’s my alternative to having children.” She smiled. And Olivia sensed that she loved him from the way she looked when she talked about him. They had been together since he was nineteen and Cass was twenty-nine. Not having family around her, and being on her own, had made her more mature. It struck Olivia that she was more so than her brothers, who were much older.

  “You’re still happy not having kids?” Olivia asked sadly. She felt as though she had damaged her, and Phillip, irretrievably, for them to not want children. It seemed like a huge loss to her. Cass didn’t tell her mother that she’d had many abortions, and always would, if her birth control failed or she made a mistake.

  “Very.” They both knew why and didn’t go there. It was dangerous territory for them, a minefield. All of Cass’s old resentments were buried there, close to the surface.

  Olivia paid the check then, when she saw Cass look at her watch. They left the restaurant, and Cass thanked her for lunch.

  “Good luck with the tour,” Olivia said, and kissed her, and Cass looked at her hard for a moment, as though still tr
ying to figure out who she was. “Thank you for seeing me,” Olivia said sadly. Cass nodded, and then hurried away, as Olivia got into her car and was driven uptown. She felt as though she were hanging on to her youngest child by the thinnest of threads, but thank God it was holding and hadn’t broken yet.

  And when she got back to her office, Olivia called Alex. She’d been wanting to check on him. He was at home with friends, and his parents were out.

  “I miss you,” she said to him. “How’s it going?”

  “Okay. I have three more weeks before school starts.” His senior year in high school. He was looking forward to it, although stressed about his college applications. They had talked about it on the boat, and she had tried to reassure him, but the competition was fierce.

  “Let me know if you want to come into town and have dinner,” she suggested. He liked the idea but was too lazy to do it.

  “I will,” he said vaguely.

  It was harder to maintain the connection when they didn’t see each other every day, which was why being on the boat was so wonderful. For those days, she had been able to strengthen her bond with him.

  “What about telling your parents what we talked about, before you go back to school? It might make this year easier for you—one less thing to worry about.”

  “Or one more big thing when they go nuts.” He was still convinced they would.

  “I think you need to have more faith in them than that.”