Trust Fund Babies

by Jean Stone

  Damn Lester Markham for ruining what should have been the most fun time of her life.

  She picked up the phone and reminded herself that now she’d have to tip the phone-bearer as well as the shampoo girl and the blow-dry girl in addition to Richardo, the highlighting king.

  “Mary Beth Atkinson?” She recognized the voice but could not put it with a face. “This is Carla DiRoma. Remember me?”

  She quickly turned from the mirror, as if she could not even let her reflection know who was on the phone. Then she brightened. Carla DiRoma! Perhaps Lester had returned!

  “Carla!” she said, with much more animation than she had intended. “I hope you have good news.”

  The line was silent a moment and Mary Beth wondered if Carla was still there.

  “Well,” the thick Bronx accent finally replied, “I don’t know if you’d call it ‘news,’ but I have something that might help your search.”

  Search. The word meant that Carla had not found Lester, that the money was still gone. She turned back to the mirror and restored her Atkinson demeanor. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”

  The Bronx voice stammered. “Could … could I meet you somewhere? There are some things I could give you …”

  Mary Beth closed her eyes. “I don’t need anything from you, I assure you, Ms. DiRoma.”

  “But I have pictures. I didn’t think of it until after the police had left.…”

  Mary Beth sat sharply upright as if she’d just learned Tiffany’s was having a sale. “Police? What police?” Her eyes quickly flashed around to see if anyone had heard above the running water and blow-dryers. No one—not even Roxanne—appeared. She lowered her mouth to the phone. “What are you talking about?”

  Carla hesitated again, then said, “The police came to my home this morning. They asked about Lester. They said he’d been reported missing by someone on Martha’s Vineyard.”

  Mary Beth leapt from her chair. “What the fuck are you talking about?” She screamed this time; three faces popped around the wall and into her booth: Roxie’s, of course, and two shampoo girls.

  “I’ve kept clippings of Lester’s pictures … you know, from the newspapers and magazines … from charity balls and gallery openings over the years. You’re in some, too. What a coincidence, huh?”

  “Where are they?” she asked, wrestling her blood pressure, clenching her jaw, and trying to act as if her entire fucking world was not collapsing all around her right there at the fucking hair salon where everyone would know.

  “I have them. I told you. I forgot to give them to the police.”

  Mary Beth began ripping the foil packets off her newly highlighted hair. “Give me your address. I’ll be there right away.” She waved at a shampoo girl for a piece of paper and a pen. Carla gave her the address. Indeed, it was in the Bronx.

  She quickly disconnected the phone. “Somebody shampoo me and get me the hell out of here!”

  Two more girls appeared as if by David Copperfield, all eager and smiling because Mary Beth was known to give a good tip.

  “What’s going on?” Roxie’s voice called out as the back of Mary Beth’s head went under water.

  “Just some wedding stuff in need of fast attention.”

  “Does this mean lunch is off?”

  Mary Beth steadied her voice. “Sorry, darling, but first things must come first,” she said, all the while knowing that missing lunch with Roxanne was probably just as well, because she thought that today was her turn to buy, and what if her VISA was already maxed out?

  Gabrielle had slept through the night and most of the morning. She’d been so tired that she’d fallen fast asleep, despite being in the lighthouse, the building that was no longer an abandoned, padlocked shell, but a place Nikki had turned into a cozy home.

  Nikki had left a note. “Gone to the camp,” it read. “I’ll be back for lunch. Make yourself at home.”

  To Gabrielle, making herself at home on the Vineyard meant a walk along the shore, which is what she did now, treading carefully between sand and stone. She thought about the many picnics they’d once had on the beach and about the walks to Chappaquiddick when the tide was out and the sandbar was intact and they were safely able to avoid the rock jetty. Turning to look back at the wide apron of lawn that stretched up to the house, she could almost picture her mother and father in Adirondack chairs. She could almost feel as if she were on a blanket on the ground beside them, wishing that she were as old as Nikki and Mary Beth and had boyfriends and pretty clothes and someone her own age to talk to.

  It was so hard to believe that Nikki and Mary Beth barely spoke anymore. They had been so close once, hadn’t they? Or was that just another of Gabrielle’s fantasies, like the one that her mother had been so blissfully happy and in love with her father? Or that life had been magical before her mother died?

  There had even been a time when she’d imagined everyone had been wrong, that her mother was alive after all. Deceit was an art form Gabrielle had mastered early.

  She looked toward the horizon where the fishing boats pushed forward, guided by hardworking islanders, honest people. People whose lives were more simple than hers, people who would not use their skills to deceive their spouse and their child, who did not need to feel guilty for hoarding twenty-three million dollars while her cousin, Nikki, had used up her last dollar trying to help others, children, children like her Rosa, but who were very, very sick.

  She squinted against the sun. Oh, God, she realized. What had she done with her life?

  And how would things have been different if she’d been allowed to stay there?

  She would not have Rosa; she would not have Stefano.

  Shaking her head, she knew she would not stay long. Only long enough to learn what had happened to Lester and the trust funds, long enough to be certain she’d be safe back in Italy, that there would be no more surprise visitors who might expose her secrets and shatter her idyllic life.

  No, she would not stay long. Quickly Gabrielle turned up a path that zigzagged between the dunes. When she reached the lighthouse she realized she’d found her way back automatically, as if the memory of the path had remained in her girlhood mind. Memories were like that, she supposed. Even the ones she’d tried hard to forget.

  With a sad sigh, she opened the door and went inside. Nikki had returned: She stood in the kitchen, on the telephone.

  12

  I can’t believe you called the fucking cops!”

  Carla shuffled through the clippings and old photos of Lester Markham, trying to block out Mary Beth, who was standing right there in Carla’s kitchen screaming into the telephone at her cousin, Nikki, as if she were a truck driver and not an Atkinson.

  Carla was glad Theresa was not alive to witness this dreadful scene, or she’d be saying more Hail Marys than the Pope.

  She supposed it was all her fault. She’d been sitting at the table drinking coffee, trying to decide if she’d make new kitchen curtains. The past weeks had been difficult. Her son, Vincent, who was out west fighting fires, had called to say he loved California and he planned to stay. His brother, Donnie, then said that he’d like to join him, and Carla had exploded because she hadn’t worked her butt off to put him through junior college to get an associate’s degree as a graphic designer so he’d end up a fireman. The truth was, she wanted her sons safe, though she knew that was selfish.

  Anyway, her argument didn’t work; Donnie had persisted with rebuttal accusations that she wouldn’t let him grow up, which she denied, but what else could she do? Besides, with her mother gone, if both boys were out west, how could she be alone?

  She’d long since accepted that there’d be no other man who would come into her life. There had been three in all: Carlo Bonginni, the boy next door who’d felt her up when she was just sixteen; her rat-bastard ex-husband whose name she refused to acknowledge, even to herself; and Lester, the one she’d loved in secret, the one she’d loved the most.

  So she was sitt
ing drinking coffee and thinking about kitchen curtains because to think about her empty life hurt way too much, especially after the police had come by and asked about Lester in a mechanical way, like he’d never been a person but was merely a statistic, a missing person in a city where “missing” meant too many things and none of them good.

  She hadn’t thought of it then, but she thought of it later: her collection of pictures, her special box of photos just of him.

  Carla had begun saving them years ago, each time Lester’s face appeared in newsprint or in one of those glossy magazines. If he were standing beside some woman, sometimes she’d cut the woman’s face out and insert a picture of her own, pretending she was the one wearing the red satin ball gown, that she was Baroness von Friedberg from Switzerland or London’s Dame Esther Louden or whomever he’d escorted to the glorious event.

  She wouldn’t show Mary Beth those pictures, of course. But surely she could part with a few that might help the police in their search for Lester, as long as they were searching at black tie, photographed affairs.

  “I don’t know when I’m coming!” Mary Beth was still screaming like in the olden days when long distance phone lines were not much more than static. “Maybe tomorrow. There are only two weeks left until the wedding, in case you forgot.” She slammed down the receiver, huffed a small noise, then looked at Carla as if she’d forgotten who Carla was or that she’d been standing in Carla’s kitchen making such a ruckus.

  “Well?” she commanded Carla, as if Carla knew what that was supposed to mean. Then Mary Beth took a huge breath, closed her Atkinson eyes, and said in a more normal tone, “Well, what did the cops say?”

  Carla shook her head. “They said they had a call about a missing person. I told them I didn’t know where Lester went.”

  “What about the money? Did you tell them about the money?”

  “No. I figured that was your business, Mary Beth. I didn’t think it was mine.” She did not mention that she’d not wanted the police to think Lester was a criminal.

  The Atkinson eyes opened and Mary Beth sighed, and Carla figured that at least she’d done one thing right. “My cousin found a guy who’s a New York police detective who might do some investigating on the side. Will you come to the Vineyard with me tomorrow? He wants to question you.”

  “Martha’s Vineyard?” Good Lord, now she’d have been in Italy and on Martha’s Vineyard, too, where former President Bill Clinton went back when he was in office. “Well, yes, sure, I guess. How long will we be there?”

  Mary Beth slung a small purse around her shoulder. “I don’t know. A couple of days. I have to make some last-minute wedding arrangements while we’re there.” As an afterthought she added, “Bring the pictures of Lester. I don’t need to see them now. My driver will pick you up at two o’clock tomorrow.” She headed for the back door, then stopped and turned around. “While I think of it, you wouldn’t happen to know where I might sell some jewelry? Somewhere … discreet?”

  Carla shrugged. “My brother Marcus knows a guy with a pawnshop on the West Side.”

  “My things aren’t cheap.”

  “Neither is Marcus’s friend.” Carla scrawled the name of the pawnshop on the top sheet of the magnetic memo pad that was stuck on the refrigerator. She tore off the paper and gave it to Mary Beth, more concerned about what she’d wear to Martha’s Vineyard than about the fact that Mary Beth Atkinson wanted to sell the family jewels, and that she’d asked Carla for help.

  “God help us, she’ll be here tomorrow,” Nikki said to Gabrielle after she’d hung up from talking to Mary Beth. “She’s upset because I told the sheriff and he called New York, and the police went to Carla DiRoma with questions about Lester. Mary Beth is paranoid that her friends will find out.”

  “What did you tell her about a detective?”

  Nikki shrugged. “Sam Oliver—the one who drove the bus that brought you from the ferry—he’s the father of one of our campers. He’s also a police detective. New York City.”

  “Can he find Lester?”

  “I haven’t asked him yet.”

  “But you told Mary Beth …”

  “This wedding has her more on edge than usual. If she thinks we can find Lester without it being made public, maybe she’ll slow down and relax and not make us all crazy.”

  “So you think he’ll help.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “So you told Mary Beth just to help her feel better. And I was beginning to think you didn’t care about her at all.”

  “Of course I do,” Nikki said with a smile. “She’s like you, Gabrielle. She’s family.”

  Gabrielle nodded and poured a glass of iced tea.

  Then Nikki said Sam was supposed to leave today, so she’d better hurry back to camp and try and find him. She asked if Gabrielle wanted to go with her.

  Gabrielle said no, thanks, but did not know why.

  Nikki didn’t know how to ask Sam for help—he had done so much already.

  Back at Camp4Kids she found him playing third base.

  “The team is shorthanded,” he said with a laugh, so Nikki patiently waited until the inning was over. Then she convinced him to walk down to the pond.

  “Moonlighting,” she blurted out, because she decided she had nothing to lose. “Do you ever do it? Private things?”

  Sam picked up a stick and etched it through the sand. “No. Can’t afford to.”

  She tried not to be disappointed so quickly. “Couldn’t you make more money?”

  “Sure. But it’s not dependable.”

  “What if it were just one job … for me?” She did not know how much she should tell him. Though he seemed trustworthy, she still didn’t know him. In the back of her mind she imagined Mack would warn her to be cautious, if he knew the story, which he did not.

  Sam stopped and seem to consider her question. “I wouldn’t have time now, Nikki. I’m putting in all the overtime I can get.”

  “If you did a job for me, you wouldn’t need overtime.” Even while she said it, she wondered how she’d pay him.

  But Sam was shaking his head. “I finally finished my master’s degree, so I’m taking the captain’s exam in the fall. I don’t want to jeopardize my standing on the force.” He looked away from Nikki. “You know that all of Molly’s medical expenses aren’t covered by insurance.”

  Yes, Nikki knew. She also knew that without The Rose Foundation, Sam’s financial responsibility would be multiplied.

  They walked alongside the cattails and past the cove, where a pair of long-throated white swans drifted in peace.

  “Did you know that I fund The Rose Foundation with my trust fund?” she asked with a silent hope that Mack would approve of what she was revealing if he knew that the stakes were so high.

  Sam shook his head. “I know you’re an Atkinson,” he said with a laugh, “but I never thought about where the money came from. I guess I figured you raised it from other rich folks like you.”

  “No,” she replied. “It’s my money. Or rather, it was. Let’s sit down,” she added, motioning to an overturned canoe on the beach. Then she told him everything about Grandfather Atkinson, about Aunt Rose’s accident, and about Carla DiRoma’s appearance at Nikki’s door. And at Mary Beth’s door. And at Gabrielle’s, on the other side of the ocean. She did not tell him about Mack, or the further complications that might arise.

  Sam picked up a stick and drew a couple of lines in the sand. “And you don’t want to go to the police?”

  “I did,” Nikki replied. “Well, I asked Hugh Talbott. He’s the county sheriff and a good friend. He made a few phone calls, to no avail.”

  “Why not go into the city? Doesn’t Mary Beth live there?”

  “We tried. But I didn’t want to give details.” It was true, after all, that the world knew the Atkinsons, like they knew the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts. Nikki slid out of her sandals and let the warm summer sand sift through her toes. “We each have our reasons for not wanting
to go public, Sam. The bottom line is publicity. The media would love a story like this, wouldn’t they? The three Atkinson Enterprises heiresses forced into poverty at middle age?” She did not mention Shauna’s wedding, or the fact that Mary Beth would suffer social devastation if her six hundred friends learned of her financial demise.

  “It would be gossip for a few days,” she continued. “Front page on the tabloids. Then, God help us, someone would write a book. In the meantime, our lives would be turned upside down. And The Rose Foundation … well, we can weather the storm for a little while, but down the road …”

  “Yeah,” Sam replied. “I understand.”

  “We could keep Molly in camp all summer if you’d like. Or for as long as it would take you to find Lester.” Nikki’s eyes moved to the swans. She remembered last fall when she’d come to scout the abandoned campground, to see if she could make it work for the kids. The swans were there then, drifting through the reeds, moving with grace and dignity. Time had not seemed to alter their lives. She wondered if they’d had babies, and if those babies had lived through the unfair diseases that nature often wrought on her unsuspecting young.

  “I have some time coming,” Sam said, “some personal days. I planned to save them for …” He followed her gaze over toward the swans.

  For Molly, Nikki knew he was going to say, but he did not.

  “I guess this is even bigger than my little girl.”

  “We’ll pay you,” Nikki repeated, and she thought of her paintings, the portraits of the kids that needed to be finished. Maybe she could get more orders soon. And Gabrielle and her husband owned a vineyard in Italy, so they must have some money, and Mary Beth must have a way she could contribute.

  “I’ll need to start with that woman,” he said. “The one who worked for him.”

  “Carla DiRoma,” Nikki said. “I thought you might want to. She’ll be here tomorrow with Mary Beth.”