Trust Fund Babies

by Jean Stone

  “Sure,” Molly replied. “I can do anything.”

  Except cure her illness, Nikki thought.

  “I can’t find the son of a bitch,” Mary Beth snarled into the phone as if it were Nikki’s fault that Lester and their money had both disappeared.

  The morning had melted into afternoon. Looking out the window of the registration cottage, Nikki could see small, eager Molly, helping her father stain a dock, her little forehead crinkled in determined concentration. After trying all day, Nikki finally had reached Mary Beth.

  “Enough, Mary Beth. We need to call the police.”

  “It’s only a few weeks until the wedding. Surely we can wait that long.”

  “No.” Nikki did not know the details of Alice’s magical financial manipulation, but she knew that when it came to saving kids, every day counted.

  “You don’t understand, Nicole. I cannot—I will not—lose face among my friends.”

  All six hundred of them? Nikki so wanted to say, but knew better than to challenge Mary Beth when her social standing was at stake. She turned from the window. “When are you coming to the Vineyard?” she asked, hoping that, face to face, Mary Beth might be convinced of the importance of finding Lester before more time elapsed.

  “I don’t know. I’ll be in touch.”

  Her cousin hung up abruptly, as if she’d been interrupted. Nikki set the phone down and decided to call the police. Screw the media, the wedding guests, and the fact her cousin would lose her precious face.

  “I hate it when you sneak up on me,” Mary Beth said to her husband, as she picked up a brass paperweight in the library and examined it as if she’d never seen it.

  “Who was that on the phone?” he asked. “And what son of a bitch is it that you can’t find?”

  His tone was humorous, because, of course, he did not know. Good old charming yet utterly useless Eric. Perhaps a taste of reality might liven up his life.

  “I’ve run into a tiny situation,” she said, setting down the paperweight and crossing to the bookshelves.

  “A situation? Oh, dear,” he said, following close on her heels. “Did your manicurist leave town?”

  There were times when Eric’s shallow look at life was refreshing and fun. This was not one of those times. The fifteen thousand dollars a month—times two, no, times three because it now was next month (the month of the wedding, oh, God!)—for her mother’s care was important. More important than bubble wands (already on a credit card) or Eric’s trip to Brazil in search of old money. She figured there was some irony in that last point, but she was too upset to consider it.

  She kept her gaze fixed on the books, some rare, some otherwise. “Actually, it’s a bit of a cash flow problem. You won’t be going to Brazil.”

  She would not have been surprised if his cry had been audible. Mary Beth, after all, had never denied Eric money or status. It was part—a great part—of the success of their long-enduring marriage. He did not cry out, but he cleared his throat. “Excuse me?”

  “I need the money back,” she replied, then turned to see the stillness on his face. “I’m sorry,” she added.

  “I … I don’t know if it’s possible. Deposits have been made …”

  “I need to pay Harriman House, Eric. I need you to get the money back.” It would not cover one month, but might pacify Ms. Kendrick until after the wedding. Or until Lester showed up, whichever came first.

  She frowned at herself. How was it that someone with her kind of money could wind up so freaking cash-poor? And how had it happened so damn fast?

  “I don’t understand,” Eric said. “Where is your money?”

  At least he said “your” money, not “our” money, as he’d sometimes done in the past. Still, it was not pleasant watching him squirm. “There’s some sort of problem with the trust fund administrator.”

  “Markham?” Eric asked, because he’d made it a point to befriend Lester at the round of gallery openings. The man was, after all, critical to Eric’s fiscal health and well-being.

  Mary Beth nodded. “I didn’t receive my check this month. His assistant came by and said he’s left town. Gone. As is my trust fund.”

  There was an old song from her teenage private-school days, where the music stopped abruptly in the middle of the score, freezing everyone on the dance floor for a beat, maybe two, statues-in-waiting for the next move to be orchestrated. Mary Beth felt that way now. But when sound resumed, it was not musical, and neither she nor Eric was positioned for a dance.

  “Jesus, Mary Beth. Haven’t you called the damn cops?”

  “You sound like my cousin.”

  “Nikki knows?”

  “Her money’s gone, too.”

  He hesitated half a second, then he laughed. “This is a joke, right?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Call the cops.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because of the wedding, Eric. What would our friends think?”

  Unlike Nikki, Eric understood.

  There were few modern conveniences Gabrielle and Stefano had allowed at Castello di Bonelli. Thankfully, a telephone answering machine was one.

  “Hello, my darlings,” Gabrielle said from a phone booth at the Boston airport. She’d waited until she arrived on Saturday night, because she’d feared if she called sooner she would have chickened out. “It’s Mama. I hope your trip was wonderful, and now I’ve taken one of my own.” She closed her eyes and leaned against the silver wall of the booth. “Everything is fine, but I had to make a trip to America to see my family.”

  Even as she said the words, she pictured Stefano frowning. When they’d met, she’d told him her parents were both gone, that she only had distant relatives somewhere in the States. She had never told him that her father had found her twice, and that the second time he’d begged her to listen but she would not.

  Instead, she had told him to leave and never look for her again.

  With any luck now, Gabrielle would find only her cousins; with any luck her father lived elsewhere. Maybe he even was dead.

  She sensed someone standing beside her. She opened her eyes. A man waited for the phone. “I shall call soon,” she said in quick Italian. “But do not worry! I love you both so very much.” She’d added “ciao,” in a voice that sounded a bit too cheerful even to her tired ears.

  10

  Opening Day. It could have been the Mets and the Yankees or the Giants and the Jets for the lively ruckus at Camp4Kids.

  Nikki stood outside the long wooden building that housed the dining commons, supply room, and infirmary. She took a few deep breaths to temper the exhilarating mix of excitement and anxiety that was racing through her.

  It is true, she told herself. The camp is finally a reality. Of the forty-two kids signed up for the first two weeks, there had been three cancellations. One did not want to leave home; two had been hospitalized with complications. Nikki tried to stop the disquiet inside her that said “complications” meant a child was in pain. It was a grim reminder that this was not a summer fun program for the Boys and Girls Club or the “Y.” It also further justified her need to find Lester and get her money back.

  Yesterday, she’d gone to the police.

  She did not tell her friend, Sheriff Hugh Talbott, about the trust funds, only that a business associate was missing.

  It wasn’t that Hugh didn’t want to help. “But this guy is a New Yorker, Nikki. We need the NYPD.”

  So Nikki had held her breath while Hugh called New York. As she watched him dial the phone, she told herself over and over that this was the right thing to do. The fact that Connor hadn’t been home when she’d called, Nikki decided, had been an omen. Going to her ex-husband was simply not an option. She could not return to that world where she never belonged, no matter how much her mother had demanded otherwise.

  She stood on one foot, then the other, while Hugh spoke into the phone. He was discreetly vague. “A missing person … At
least two weeks …” He nodded and said “Uh-huh,” and “Yes,” and made a few other noncommittal remarks while Nikki speculated about whether this would sever her ties with Mary Beth and whether she’d soon need to find a place to live as well.

  Finally Hugh said “Thank you,” and hung up. “They’ll ask around. But if you really think something’s wrong, you should go into the city and file a report in person.”

  Which, of course, had not been possible yesterday, or that day, either, because Camp4Kids was opening and her place was there. She’d said a silent curse that Mary Beth was so self-centered, then vowed to somehow get into New York before another week passed.

  Across the campground now, Alice emerged from the registration cottage. With her hair tied back in a bright red bandanna and in her white T-shirt and jeans, she almost looked like a teenager. She scampered off the porch, waving at Nikki. “Crisis,” she called. “We have no bus driver.”

  Nikki took another deep breath and briefly wondered how many more unexpected crises were ahead of them.

  “He was fogged in last night at Woods Hole.” Alice’s words bubbled out in a rush as she reached Nikki. “He’s on standby.”

  There was no need to say more. Like many of the camp workers, their bus driver was a volunteer. Stuck off-island, he’d be lucky to get a slot for his vehicle by this afternoon. Their safeguard of Sunday-to-Sunday comings and goings had anticipated only the predictable chaos of tourists, not the surprises of Mother Nature.

  Most of the kids, however, would arrive this morning. And most had arranged to be picked up at the ferry by the driver who was now stuck on the mainland.

  “He can’t fly?” Nikki asked. When the traffic got crazy or the ferries were grounded, Cape Air often added extra flights for the twenty-minute vault from Hyannis.

  “That’s not the problem. The boats are running now, but there’s no room for his truck yet, and he needs it here for work tomorrow.”

  Vehicles and ferries. Too often their schedules did not coincide.

  Nikki nodded. “Can’t we find another driver?” Just then the rumble of a Harley-Davidson pulled into the lot. Nikki looked at Alice and smiled. She walked over to Sam Oliver.

  “Mr. Oliver,” she said, once he’d removed his helmet. “You’ve been such a big help to us already. But I have a question. Do you know how to drive a bus?”

  Sooner or later she was going to have to go to the goddamn Vineyard, face her cousin Nikki, and face the last-minute frenzy of the clock that was ticking much too quickly toward this godforsaken wedding.

  In the meantime, Mary Beth sat on the edge of her bed, a cache of jewelry spread across the ivory satin comforter, glittering up at her, mocking her for her thoughts.

  How much cash can I get for this stuff, and will it be enough to last through the wedding?

  She didn’t dare go to the Vineyard until she could afford to pay the florist and the tent people and the damn harpists who would not show up unless she met them and showed them exactly what and where everything would go and offered cash in hand, up front. Ungrateful islanders who didn’t trust summer residents, never mind that it was the summer folks’ money that enabled the rest of them to survive. Thank God she was bringing her own caterer over from the city.

  Providing, of course, she could raise the airfare for him and his entourage.

  “I’ve got your money.”

  Mary Beth blinked, then looked up at Eric, who stood in the doorway. At first she almost thought he meant that he’d found Lester, that overnight her husband had turned from a charming, boyish cad into her savior, her hero at long last. Silly her; she should have known better.

  “The check for Brazil,” he said, coming forward and dropping an envelope onto the pile of rocks on the bed. “You have no idea how uncomfortable it was.”

  She grabbed the envelope and looked inside, without mentioning that it might be a bit more uncomfortable to have her mother move back into the house.

  “A thousand was nonrefundable,” he said flatly.

  “I can see that,” she replied.

  He folded his arms and acted as if he did not notice the jewelry or wonder at its display. “What are you going to do, Mary Beth? About the trust fund? I need to reschedule Brazil. And I’d planned to book Maui for golf. I need to know when I can get back to my life.”

  Looking over the diamonds and sapphires and emeralds and pearls, Mary Beth was not surprised at Eric’s concern for himself. It was, she supposed, her fault. Though their vows had said “for richer or for poorer,” she’d known from day one that Eric could not withstand “poorer,” any more than he could withstand “sickness” over “health” which, in truth, was the real reason Dorothy had been shipped off to Harriman House, because that, too, had been uncomfortable for Eric. Mary Beth supposed that one day she might feel guilty about that, but right now, she was too tired.

  “I might, however, have a solution,” Eric said suddenly, his bright eyes brightening, the high cheekbones of his GQ looks looking higher and even more GQ. “Let’s convince the kids they should elope.”

  She closed her eyes and tried to pretend she’d not heard what she had heard. “What?”

  His hands grabbed her shoulders. “Mary Beth, think about it.” Her eyes flew open and she was staring into his face that had somehow moved within inches of her own. “We’ll save an absolute fortune,” he continued, “and it won’t be our fault! No one will know it wasn’t simply a whim of two kids who didn’t want all the fuss. They’ll still get their gifts, and …” He stopped for a moment, his eyelids flashing up and down as he wrestled to think of the next phase of his solution.

  “And you can go to Brazil after all,” Mary Beth said, filling in the blank space of air. “And Maui. And any-fucking-where you think you’d like to go.” She shook free from his grasp and stood up. “I can’t believe this, even of you, Eric. You are the father of one daughter, and you would like to screw her out of the most important day of her life.”

  “It’s only a wedding, Mary Beth. Chances are, they’ll divorce anyway. Everyone does these days.”

  She snapped around. “How dare you.”

  He sighed and stepped toward her. “Look, darling, I’m really sorry, but you must be realistic. You can stop wasting so much time on this damn wedding and start to look for Lester before his trail is cold. Maybe you can even get all of your money back. And no one who matters will ever have to know what really happened.”

  “And what about Shauna?”

  He laughed.

  He laughed, for God’s sake.

  “If I thought for one minute this wedding was for Shauna, I might feel different.” He spoke with a smile that did not hide his scorn. “But admit it, Mary Beth, it’s just another of your grand parties, albeit dressed up in white tulle.”

  The knot that had formed somewhere in her stomach around the time she’d first brought out her jewels now began to bend and twist and shape itself into a ball. “Get out of this room,” she hissed, “before I say something I cannot take back.”

  He stepped closer to her. She held up both her hands.

  “Mary Beth,” he said, “think about this. You’ll see it’s the only answer—”

  “Get out,” she repeated, closing her eyes again. “Just get the hell out of my face.”

  The old yellow school bus wasn’t full-sized, but it sat a couple of dozen people. It had been donated by Ben Niles, who had used it to transport schoolkids to his Menemsha museum. He’d expanded his programs, so he needed “bigger busses,” he’d said, “and a bigger tax write-off.” Nikki had lived on the Vineyard long enough to know that a tax write-off was hardly Ben’s incentive. He was simply one of the island good guys, without whom the camp would not have been possible.

  On the side of the bus, Nikki painted a huge Camp4Kids logo. Alice hadn’t thought it was a good idea.

  “Not all our neighbors will like it,” she’d warned.

  But Nikki said screw them if they didn’t like it, that most of
the protestors weren’t Vineyard natives but transplants from places like Boston and New York who seemed to want the island void of all things bad and ugly like reality and disease.

  She sat behind Sam Oliver now as he steered the cumbersome ark down the rutty, narrow driveway. She’d decided it was easier to accompany him on his maiden voyage to the ferry than to give him a map and decent directions. She also decided she was glad she’d kept the logo painted on the bus, a badge of her commitment, a symbol of her dream. But when they reached the queue of island taxis and tour busses at the docks, she wondered if Alice had been right.

  Standing on the pavement by the disembarkment ramp was a cluster of unhappy-looking people holding hand-painted signs.

  IF YOU’RE SICK, STAY HOME, one sign read. It was carried by a woman wearing a yuppie straw hat.

  Camp4Kids: FIND ANOTHER ISLAND. The sign held high by a middle-aged man depicted Nikki’s camp logo. She wondered if she could sue for copyright infringement as well as gross annoyance.

  There were other signs—six, seven, eight in all, enough to make the kids feel what she’d hoped to avoid: different, sick, and unwanted.

  Sam shut off the engine.

  “Stupid asses,” she muttered. “Damn the stupid asses.”

  Sam nodded but did not say a word.

  “I’m sorry, Sam,” she said. “I’m sorry you have to see this.”

  “Ignorance,” he said. “We live with it every day. It’s not bad enough we have to live with Molly’s AIDS, but we have to live with this crap, too.”

  “The kids will see them when they get off the ferry.”

  Sam opened the door. “No, they won’t.” He lumbered off the bus. Nikki followed quietly behind. He marched up to the sign bearers.

  “Good morning,” he said with a smile as broad and as fake as Nikki had ever seen. He reminded her of Mack when Mack so often intervened. “How you all doing this morning?”

  He wove a path between them as if he owned the pier, his eyes fixed on the ferries that chugged across Vineyard Sound, one coming, one going, a sight that was common any time, any day, once winter had passed.