Till the End of Tom

by Gillian Roberts

  “She doesn’t have anybody,” he said. “Don’t any of you get it? She’s all alone.”

  “Except for you.”

  “Yes.” He looked at me directly, quietly defiant.

  I nodded. “I’m not challenging your feelings toward Mrs. Severin.”

  “Yes you are. And so is that bitch, Koepple. You think she likes Ingrid? That she cares what happens to her? She just likes the people Ingrid knows, or knew, and the money she gets paid for doing next to nothing. Do you really think Ingrid has a social calendar that needs keeping anymore? Only things on her calendar are doctors’ appointments these days, and I’m the one who goes with her. Koepple isn’t even kind to her. She gets short-tempered with Ingrid. I’ve heard her chew her out, but she knows that Ingrid won’t remember it by the next time, and if she does, Penelope will say she’s making it up. Poor Ingrid knows she gets confused. She’d believe that bitch.”

  “Is this what you wanted to talk to me about?”

  “What else did you think? I had this grandma. She was the best. She was the world to me.” He shrugged. “I like old people. They know things, know about things. So as soon as I met Mrs. S. on the ship where I worked—”

  As a dancer, I reminded myself. A hired companion for vulnerable and financially solvent elderly women on cruises.

  “—we clicked. She made me laugh. She can be funny, you know. And she stood out from all the other women on that cruise. She was special in every way.”

  He looked at me as if daring me to contradict him. I wasn’t about to. “She knows about the world,” he said.

  I was surprised, both by the sophistication this implied, and by the idea that Ingrid Severin paid attention to the human condition, or foreign affairs, or cultural patterns.

  But that hadn’t been what he meant. “She has style,” he said. “She knows what’s good style and what’s . . . cheap, or flashy, or bad design. She knows when something’s quality or not.”

  Things. Stuff. She knew her objects which, to him, made her the final authority on aesthetics. I thought of the saying about the person who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing.

  “We aren’t . . . it’s not like . . . you can love somebody without—there can be a higher plane, or at least a different one.”

  “You’re talking about sex.”

  He nodded. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t love the person.”

  “She’s not always coherent,” I said. “Not always able to remember what’s going on. She’s got—”

  “Problems. And you know what? Lots of times, I take care of those problems. It’s what you do if you love somebody, not turn your back the way they do when the going gets hard. And that included Tomas. I’m the only one who’s kind to her. The only one, you get that?”

  I nodded again.

  “So I’m sick of being made fun of or worse. Why shouldn’t she be allowed to leave me something? She likes me, too. Who else deserves it more? The others, they’re like . . . like . . . they’re the ones circling around whatever they think they can get their hands on. Why come after me? Why listen to Koepple? Long ago, Ingrid promised her a bequest. I don’t know the details, but I heard them squabbling about it, and later, I asked Ingrid what was going on. It would be enough money so that Koepple wouldn’t have to worry about working anymore. Now, Koepple’s crazy afraid that Ingrid is going to take away the bequest when she changes her will.”

  “And might that happen?”

  “When a new will’s made, who knows? Certainly Ingrid’s hinted that. If you ask me, Koepple’s been living off Ingrid for years. But she didn’t need to lose the bequest. If she’d stop attacking me it wouldn’t be in danger.”

  “You mean it really is?”

  He looked surprised. “She didn’t say?”

  “Say what?”

  “That she’d been fired? Told to leave at the end of this month? I thought it was nice of Ingrid to give her time to look for something new. I wouldn’t have, because Koepple’s nothing but trouble. But she told her to take her time, get her things in order, and look around, and she said she’d write her a good recommendation, which sounds a whole lot like maybe Ingrid isn’t so hot about setting her up for the rest of her life anymore. Doesn’t it? Me, I’d have booted her out on the spot. She’s been coasting for too long already with nothing to do except spread rumors and badmouth people.”

  Fired. I knew this shouldn’t be my first consideration, but I admit I felt as if an elevator had just crashed in my insides, and what I thought about was our bill for services, stuck under the debris. Who was actually paying us, or was anybody going to do so? “Cornelius—”

  “Most people call me Neil.”

  “Neil, then. When was Ms. Koepple given her notice?”

  “What?”

  “Fired. How much time did Ingrid give her to look around?”

  “Last week. She pushed too hard. Told Ingrid I was cheating on her. That I was romantically involved with Georgeanne, the woman Tomas—”

  “I know who she is. She says she was engaged to Tomas.”

  He nodded. “That did it for Ingrid. She told Penelope that she was so unhappy about everything that she was making Ingrid unhappy, too, so for everybody’s benefit, Penelope had to leave. That was Friday.”

  Three days before Tomas Severin tumbled to his death. But of what possible gain could that have been to Penelope? It seemed, in fact, that she was the one person who’d have done anything to keep him alive and fighting any change in the will. Her real motives in hiring us, however, were now murky and suspect.

  “Ugly scene, all right,” Cornelius said. “And it proved she never even liked Ingrid. She’s a user, just like all of them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She got all hissy. I could understand. She’s losing her job, after all. But she said something that gave me the chills. She said that her job was her life and how could Ingrid turn her back on years and years of devoted service. I don’t know. I wasn’t there for those years, but since I’ve been there, I’ve barely seen her lift a finger for that woman.” He shook his head, upset again at what he’d perceived.

  “And that gave you the chills?” I prompted.

  “No. Not that. It’s what she said after that. She said, ‘and I know what’s your life. I know what you value more than anything. What if you lost that, Ingrid? Maybe you’d understand suffering a little more.’ ” He sat back in the booth and waited for a response.

  “What . . . what did she value more than anything?” I asked, although I’d already been told the answer by more than one person. “Was it you? Was she threatening you?”

  “Me? I was a good thing, but not the thing. There was always only one thing for Ingrid and everybody knew it. And that one thing was her son. Three days later, he was dead, and Ingrid knew what suffering was.”

  ALL THROUGH DINNER we talked about my encounter with Cornelius, about the ever-escalating pile of potential suspects. Nina Severin, who was still refusing to answer any calls, with the help of her brother Jay, had become the frontrunner, although Penelope Koepple was neck-and-neck. For me, that is. For Mackenzie, Zachary Wallenberg was the odds-on favorite.

  “If it was an act of rage, we shouldn’t forget Georgeanne—the woman scorned,” I said. “Especially if she really is in cahoots with Cornelius, and for the life of me, I can’t decide whether he’s for real or not.”

  We went over the timetable, and C.K. said he’d try to find out where things were with the investigation and would check Nina’s brother’s whereabouts. “Everything fits for him—the drug, the propensity for phone calls,” I said.

  “The school?”

  “He must have followed him, seized the opportunity.”

  By the time we were on our nightly pre-bed prowl, the entire subject went stale. “Too much,” I said. “No more Severin talk till tomorrow.” Mackenzie nodded.

  The prowl might sound more exotic and interesting than it was. It was not to be confused w
ith a promenade, or the nightly sociable strolls of Italy and the Latin countries. The prowl was our repeated though futile attempt to remember and organize everything for the next morning’s rapid exit. Kind of like Mom laying out your clean clothes for school next day, but we had to think of clothes plus teaching materials, papers marked or un-, textbooks for Mackenzie, notebooks, work-related notes—the whole shebang with a lunch or two tossed in.

  We never completely succeeded. Morning dawned and something we’d forgotten—clothes for the dry cleaner, a shopping list, a gift that was pathetically overdue—caused a last-minute flurry.

  But on we went, talking to each other, gathering, sorting, and doing our best. We had exhausted the back and forth of whether we should believe either Cornelius or Penelope, and had settled in some indeterminate “none of the above.” Time to switch topics. “You’re going to the funeral, aren’t you?” I asked while making my rounds. I was sorry they’d scheduled it for noon, when I couldn’t possibly be there.

  He put a hand up and shook his head. “Severin talk alert,” he said. “Forbidden topic.”

  “It’s preparation for tomorrow.”

  He shrugged. “I’m going,” he said. “Not that I know why. I’m sure it’s going to be enormous and formal, and I don’t expect that kind of family to be overly demonstrative. Certainly, nobody’s going to stand up and proclaim guilt or whatever happens in old dramas.”

  “Still, I wish I could go,” I said. “The situation itself interests me. Is it protocol for all the ex-wives to come? How about the estranged son? The soon-to-be-deposed wife?” I thought that was what Nina had been insisting on—her funeral rank and position—when I crossed paths with her at Ingrid Severin’s.

  “I can’t find my highlighter,” C.K. said. I am bemused and annoyed by the fact that like so many women, I waste lots of valuable brain space with a complete household inventory. I am almost always the finder of lost things, mundane objects such as highlighters, socks, tickets, and pens. I’m sure there’s an anthropological explanation for this—Mackenzie’s ancestors were trained to look for large things with big teeth. Mine were trained to hoard whatever they found, or to know where our stock was so as to grab it and run if the thing with big teeth entered the cave. It was as good a theory as any.

  I walked over to the little drawer near the phone which was, alas, where lived the blinking message light.

  It was so easy to ignore the little box on the wall that blinked in one pattern if there were no messages and in another when there were. I admit that if Sigmund were here, he’d be jumping and pointing and giving a Viennese lecture on avoidance, but on this issue, I dwell in a pre-Freudian world where sometimes forgetting is just plain forgetting.

  I tossed him the highlighter, and reluctantly lifted the receiver, pushed in our code, and listened. I tried not to be pessimistic. It was possible to receive messages that had nothing to do with impending nuptials. Other people did. Maybe this was my lucky day and somebody was trying to sell me aluminum siding.

  Instead, there was a message from Beth, with further details of the marvelous, but pricey, place she’d found. “But given that cancellation, or I guess it’s more like a no-show, they haven’t even been able to reach the woman, let alone gotten a confirmation from her, and who is going to rent it now if not you?” Then she once again made her point about my being the only person in the known universe to believe it was possible to set a wedding date three months in the future. “Do you have time tomorrow to go look at it with me because I need your go-ahead.”

  Now that Beth worked, she tended to forget that I did, too.

  The second message was from Sasha, who used to be a lot of fun, and unpredictable. Not anymore. “I’m going with the moss green,” she said, “so is that really okay with you? And your cousin Betsy called, she’s going to miss it because her sister in Cleveland is due any day now and she—”

  I hung up. I cared, but not that much. Not right now.

  “The Mafiosettes?” Mackenzie asked.

  “I’m sorry to have brought them upon you.”

  “My side’s contributing confusion, too, so it’s more or less mutual. What were the topics today?”

  “The usual. Color schemes, rental halls, and while I was still at school, my mother called—on the cell, which I told her was only for major life emergencies—anyway, hers was about invitations and calligraphers, and I promised her something, but I can’t remember what. I think I agreed to something, too.”

  “Why not simply pick an invite? Any one, or do you really care?”

  “Of course I don’t.” I shook my head for emphasis, then realized I was lying. “Yes, I do. I care. I don’t like any of them. They’re formulaic. Predictable. They’re not us, not special. And in so saying, I become like every other whiny, picky, stupid bride-to-be agonizing over the least significant part of what’s going on in her life. Remember how enthusiastic they were about our planning our own wedding?”

  “Imagine how awful it would be if they were planning it,” he said, and it broke the tension enough for us both to laugh. He is such a good man, he almost makes this wedding lunacy worthwhile.

  And in gratitude and for expediency’s sake, I decided to gift him with a decision that would please his third of the trio. “Your mother’s been lobbying about the joys of a handfasting ceremony.”

  He looked up at the ceiling, perhaps through it, for Divine Guidance. “Wiccan,” he finally said. “She wants us to have a Wiccan wedding. A witch’s wedding?”

  “It sounds more peculiar than it actually is. It’s really the original wedding, according to your mother.”

  “Far as I know, the original ceremony involved a club and dragging the pretty one by her mane into his cave. Is that what she has in mind? A reenactment?”

  “Not quite. She thinks it would be nice if we all—guests included—dressed as medieval country folk, but she’s willing to negotiate on that.”

  “There’s a break.” He packed a heavy text into his backpack.

  “You’d look smashing in tights.”

  He put down the backpack. “You’re serious?”

  “I’d think you’d like the part about our setting the term of the contract. Traditionally, you commit only for a year and a day, she told me. None of that ‘till death do us part’ business.” I thought of Tomas Severin’s many wives, particularly the enraged Nina. If they’d had a Wiccan handfasting, they could have parted amicably and easily. “Will you take this woman for three hundred and sixty-six days? How’s that sound to you?”

  “It sounds like she never gives up. She’s done a hard sell every time there’s a marriage on the horizon.”

  With eight kids and many foster-children, all grown and much married, I was sure Gabby Mackenzie was a pro at Wiccan weddings by now, and at least I’d be pleasing my future mother-in-law with a wedding that’d be anything but rubber-stamp generic. Maybe I could even get into the medieval thing. We could rent costumes and save choosing the gown, and dithering over color schemes. Pretty at Christmastime, with evergreens and tiny lights.

  “And medieval!” he said. “The Middle Ages—everybody’s favorite time period, right?”

  I immediately envisioned my wedding complete with hay bales, donkeys, and dirty children in raggedy clothing. Fleas, beggars, bare feet. No tiny lights, no electricity . . .

  “How much of it did your brothers and sisters do? Did they truly handfast? Tie the knot with the ties that bind the hands together? Did they have the Maypole? Costumes? How did it look?”

  He laughed and led me to the sofa and guided me onto it. Then he sat down next to me and took both my hands. “Miz Pepper,” he said, “nobody has ever had a Wiccan wedding. Only a Yankee like you would be wacky enough to agree to her suggestion. It’s sweet and lovable of you to try and please my family this way but for God’s sake, any God of your choosing, but definitely for my sake, and our sake—Just Say No. Okay?”

  I felt a rush of guilty relief, and a little disappoi
ntment, too, because there went the one plan I could use to make my mother and sister back off.

  “The truth is,” Mackenzie said, “my mother feels a quasireligious-feminist obligation to lobby for her special ceremony, but nobody wants it. Not even her. She likes the party part of weddings. She adores the toasts—and the dancin’. She loves the ceremony, the part where she gets to snuffle and blow her nose and murmur about what a cute baby the bride or groom had been and how time flies. She adores it when they play that old Wiccan favorite, ‘Sunrise, Sunset,’ and she gets to wallow in memories. She loves telling embarrassing stories about the child who’s marrying. She loves the flow of champagne. Lots of it. She has never shown the slightest regret or other negative reaction at having her Wiccan suggestions declined.”

  He came over and kissed me. “As for your mother, and your sister, and your girlfriend—and my mother—consider them an initiation test. I’m sure that’s why it’s so forbidding and complicated. If we survive this with good grace, then we’re a match.”

  “You are one in a million,” I said. “Better than I deserve.”

  “I like your attitude. That’s why I’m signing on for longer than a year and a day.”

  * * *

  Fourteen

  * * *

  * * *

  I’M not the kind of person to be duplicitous—except when absolutely necessary, of course. Never with a friend.

  Unless there is absolutely no other way.

  Which is why, when I was barely awake, still half-dressed but already mentally cluttered by the ever-expanding to-do list, I picked up the phone and called Sasha.

  We’ve been friends since ninth grade, when we bonded for eternity because teachers said she wasn’t the sort of girl I should befriend. There was nothing wrong with her except that she was not particularly interested in studying, but was precociously interested in boys and they in her, while I was still on the sidelines envying her bad girl reputation and wondering what all the ruckus was about. My approach to puberty was not a lovely thing to behold, and the real question was what on earth Sasha wanted with me. The chemistry of opposites attracting must hold for female friendships as well.