Trust Fund Babies

by Jean Stone

  Mary Beth commiserated as best she could, what with Bruce and Pete and Manuel navigating the hand-carved Georgian chest around her and Marta checking it off the list. She hung up and wondered if she should send bubble wands to the McGuires, as well as the Potters and the Chapmans, who had left messages earlier that they would not be attending after all. Six bubble wands in all—well, why not send them? They could not be returned, on account of the engraving.

  She was considering the possibility when the phone rang again. She smiled to herself that at least the Sotheby’s contingent would believe the Atkinsons were quite active, not on their way out.

  “Ms. Atkinson?” the new caller asked. “This is Melissa DeVane from Guinness and Sloan. Perhaps you’re familiar with us?”

  It took her a second to realize this was not another invited guest. “Yes, I’ve heard of you.”

  Melissa DeVane cleared her throat. “It’s come to my attention that you might want to sell your apartment.”

  Mary Beth did not reply, because she did not want to say “Go to hell, bitch” in front of Marta and her clan.

  “I have a client who is very interested,” Melissa DeVane added.

  Mary Beth turned away from the eyes of Ms. Hendersen. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but you’ve been misinformed.” She promised to let Ms. DeVane know if she changed her mind, then hung up with caution so no one would suspect that inside she might explode.

  As soon as Sotheby’s was finished, she’d go back to the Vineyard. At least there she could immerse herself in last-minute wedding minutia, and be up-to-date on any word of Lester.

  God. Every time she thought his name now her blood pressure escalated a dozen or more points.

  Struggling for a deep breath, or even for a small one, she decided, yes, she would get out of the city as fast as she could. She would drive, not risk being unable to get a flight. And if there were no car slot on the first available ferry, she’d sit in a bar in Woods Hole and wait until there was one. Anything was better than standing in the smoldering humidity, feeling like a woman who’d once had it all, feeling like it was her fault that her life had taken this hideous U-turn.

  “Bingo,” Sam said as he hung up the phone, and Carla laughed because she thought only the ladies at St. Michael’s said that, on Wednesdays at seven.

  “What’s bingo?”

  “American Airlines, Flight three twenty-six. It seems that our little friend Lester has taken a trip to Punta Cana. And he billed it to his credit card.” He leapt off the old chair in the cottage at the camp and said, “I’m going to Alice’s to pack a few things. Would you be a good kid and get me on the next flight out of Logan?”

  “To Punta Cana? Where is that?”

  “I have no idea. But if Lester could find it, I’m sure I can, too.”

  He raced out the door, and Carla chased after him, reminding him to bring the clippings of Lester, her treasured pictures.

  They drove right to the camp so Nikki could check with Alice and be sure things were all right. The conversation they’d had for the rest of the trip had been strained, limited to short takes of questions and answers on safe ground.

  “Your daughter, Dee, seems very smart.”

  “Yes. She takes after her father. She goes to Harvard.”

  Then later:

  “I hope Mary Beth’s trip proved to be successful.”

  “This wedding means more to her than it does to Shauna.”

  And, as they arrived at Camp4Kids:

  “Sam’s daughter is so sweet, and he is so nice.”

  That time, Nikki nodded. “We’re lucky to have them both.”

  As she parked the car, Gabrielle said softly, “Nikki, I’m sorry. I truly am sorry for upsetting you so much.”

  Nikki shrugged. “It’s not your fault, Gabrielle. It’s not your fault that you were sent away and you have not been privy to the family dynamics.” She got out of the car, but Gabrielle did not follow her. She had decided it was time to go home, back to Stefano. She had seen and done enough and had her fill of closure. The time had come to now go home and face the damage that her leaving might have caused.

  She would check on flight availabilities, just as soon as she went down to the pond in search of Molly so she could say good-bye.

  Instead of Molly, Gabrielle found someone else.

  She could not speak. Her knees grew weak; she leaned against a tree. He walked up from the pond, where he’d been tossing beach balls with the children.

  He came close to her and gently lifted a strand of hair that had fallen on her face.

  “Gabriella,” he said while his eyes roamed her eyes, her cheeks, her nose, her lips. He kissed her mouth.

  Her body trembled; tears came quickly.

  “Gabriella,” he said again.

  The trembling grew worse. He put his arms around her and held her while she cried. Then he guided her to the ground to a blanket of soft pine needles. He held her until her tears were gone.

  “I have missed you,” he said. “Why did you not come home?”

  Oh, God, she thought. How had he found her? How long had he been there? Had they told him of her lies?

  “I tried to call you. I only got the recording.”

  “I must have been on my way. I’ve been here for two days.”

  They did not speak a moment. Gabrielle watched the children at play, savored their laughter, and wondered if she’d ever been so innocent.

  “Rosa?” she asked.

  “She is fine.”

  “You did not bring her?”

  “No.”

  She curled the edges of the cotton belt she wore on her cropped pants. “Is she with Angelina?”

  He took her hand. “Yes. There was no one else to take her.”

  The ache inside her rose again. “There are so many things you do not know,” she said. “Enzio was right. You should not have married an American. You should not have married me.”

  “Because you are so rich?”

  The laughter of the children suddenly grew distant, as if she had crossed the time and space between life and death, the purgatory of self-truth. She raised her eyes and looked straight ahead, afraid to meet his gaze.

  “You know,” she said quietly. He knew about her heritage. He knew about her money. The money that, by rights, should have been not only hers but theirs.

  “I have known from the beginning.”

  She turned to him sharply. “What?”

  “I have always known, Gabriella. When we first met in Paris, when I knew I wanted you for my wife, I found out what I needed to know.”

  She did not move. Her aching turned to stone. “What?” she repeated.

  “I learned about your family. I learned about your wealth and about this place called Martha’s Vineyard. I don’t know why you would not confide in me, but it did not matter, then or now. I love you, Gabriella. Please come home with me.”

  She could not believe this. He had known all along? “This is a lie,” she said. “You are making it up.”

  He shook his head. “If you do not believe me, ask Enzio. He’s the one who found out the information. Because I asked him to.”

  “You asked him to investigate me?” She did not know if she were more hurt, enraged … or terrified about what might come next. To think that during all those hours of intimacy … to think that he had been checking up on her, deceiving her …

  “Gabriella,” he said, “please try to understand. My family carries the Bonelli name …”

  She stood and shook off his hand that had been clinging to her arm. “Your family carries nothing,” she stammered. “Your family is dead and gone, with nothing to show for it but some overworked land and a villa that’s falling down.” Even as she said the words she knew they were too harsh; she knew Stefano did not deserve this, but still she could not stop, as if her common sense was in fierce battle with her conscience.

  “Gabriella,” he whispered. “Please …”

  She walked to edge of the
pond. She felt a little dizzy. She squatted down and leaned against an old rowboat. “You must go, Stefano.” She spoke without looking at him, because she could not. “I must straighten things out here. Then I will return to Tuscany for Rosa. She and I will come back to America, where I will not live in such deceit.” She was surprised that her heart was not pounding, but was quiet and quite calm, a heart resolved to breaking, as it had been all along.

  “You will not take Rosa from me,” he answered sternly.

  She closed her eyes because she could not fight about this now. She was too weary, she was too full of anguish. “Go home, Stefano,” she said again. There would be plenty of time for fighting later, when he learned the rest of her betrayal, when she told him that Rosa was really not his daughter. When she told him Rosa had not been “premature,” but had been born on time.

  Unless he already knew that, too.

  21

  The day had never ended and the traffic had been deplorable. By the time Mary Beth arrived at Woods Hole, there was a standby line as long as the line at Radio City the week before Christmas. And it was the last boat out tonight.

  She had driven the Town Car because Eric had taken the Range Rover and because she couldn’t very well ask Charlie to drive her to the Vineyard. How would she explain why she was going alone? And what would she say about the contingent of new people who’d suddenly dropped into her life—Gabrielle, Carla, Sam? It was bad enough Jonathan the doorman had seen Sotheby’s at the apartment. Mary Beth couldn’t risk further action that might raise eyebrows.

  Still, she couldn’t believe she’d driven the Lincoln. She’d barely been able to maneuver it through the narrow streets from Falmouth to Woods Hole; if it had pontoons, she could have driven the damn thing across Vineyard Sound and not have had to worry about taking the damn ferry.

  Woods Hole, however, was the end of the earth, or at least the end of land as the Upper Cape knew it. Somehow Mary Beth managed to turn around at the docks and head back toward Falmouth to try to find a room on a Friday night.

  “Good luck,” she hissed to herself, and wondered if she’d simply been born this damn stupid or if she’d turned it into an art form over time, like while Eric was spending her money even faster than she was, or while she’d been making arrangements for Shauna’s wedding as if her daughter really were the princess Mary Beth had raised her to believe.

  No Vacancy.

  No Vacancy.

  No Vacancy.

  The signs were as predictable as the fog banks that rolled in on the fourth of July just in time to turn thousands of dollars of celebratory fireworks into a blurry, dull mess.

  Not for the first time, Mary Beth wondered why she hadn’t sold the estate years ago and summered somewhere more interesting like the Hamptons or even Nantucket, which lately had priced itself right out of tourists—but before Lester took off, who would have cared?

  Wait a minute, she thought, as another No Vacancy whizzed by. Did she have enough money to rent a room for the night? Was it true they didn’t all take American Express?

  She pulled into a parking lot and checked her cash. God, she couldn’t believe she had to check her cash. When was the last time she had done that? Had she ever? But now with her other credit cards maxed and her checking account holding God knew what little, Mary Beth was confused. Poor and confused.

  She counted once, then double-checked. Two hundred and thirty-one dollars.

  Was that enough for a room? Was it enough to take the car onto the ferry? She didn’t know! Christ, she didn’t know! She’d been there every summer for forty-two fucking years and she didn’t even know how much it cost to get there or how much it would cost if you could not.

  Drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, she looked into the parking lot. A convenience store sat there, all lit up as if to greet the passengers who couldn’t get on the goddamn boat. She got out of the car and slammed the door, then marched inside determined to find a place to sleep.

  “Good luck,” a woman with straight hair and crooked teeth said from behind the counter. She rang up four packs of Marlboros for another customer, this one a man in a torn T-shirt and jeans. He did not look like a tourist.

  “You don’t understand,” Mary Beth pleaded. “I got tied up in traffic. I need to get to the Vineyard tonight.”

  The woman shrugged as if she’d heard the same story a hundred times in the last hour alone.

  “Take the paper boat.” This came not from the clerk but from the customer with the bag of smokes.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The newspaper boat. It leaves around two in the morning. Can’t get your car on it, but they’ll probably take you.”

  In all her years on the island, she’d never heard of the newspaper boat. She must have been staring at the man because he added, “How’d you think the papers get there so early in the morning? How’d you think The Boston Globe and The New York Times make it in time for all o’ you rich folks to catch up on the news that you went to the island to forget?” Shaking his head, the man laughed and left the store.

  Mary Beth looked at the clerk, who shrugged again. “He’s right. There is a boat.”

  Without another word, Mary Beth left the store, convinced more than ever that she’d spent her life removed from the ordinary world. For the first time, she did not like that fact.

  It was not the smoothest crossing Mary Beth had ever had. The boat was small and rocked like a buoy on a stormy night. It smelled slightly of fish and more like wet rubber and the accommodations were best left unnoticed. Halfway across, Mary Beth pulled out her cell phone and called Nikki.

  “It is not my goddamn fault that it’s the middle of the night. But I couldn’t bring my car across and I need someone to get me.”

  She should have known better than to think her cousin would be delighted that she’d woken her up.

  “Well, get our goddamn private detective out of bed,” she damn well insisted. “Let him earn the money that we don’t have that we’re supposed to pay him.” She clicked off the phone, clutched the railing, and stared into the dark, starless night sky for the rest of the trip, not knowing if anyone would be there, waiting for her, if this goddamn boat ever reached the other goddamn side.

  No one was there.

  “No cabs at this hour,” one of the hired hands announced with a chuckle when they’d disembarked and no sign of life but the newspaper delivery truck waited on the pier.

  Mary Beth buttoned her short-sleeved cotton jacket and tried not to think of how hot it had been in the city this morning or that she was freezing to death now. She dug into her bag, searching for a pack of cigarettes that, like her driver, was not there.

  “Someone will pick me up,” she replied, not at all sure if that were true. She gave up looking for the cigarettes and slung her MCM bag over her shoulder. She strutted past the men who thump-thumped huge bundles of newspapers into the back of the truck, then she marched toward the dark terminal in her high-heeled slides, grateful to be back on land, but not pleased at the prospect of spending the rest of the damn night chatting nonsense with a deckhand. And not pleased to give them any ideas that she was a woman in distress.

  Mary Beth Atkinson, of course, did not know the meaning of the word.

  She sat on a bench by the terminal, crossed her legs, and wondered if she should call the lighthouse again. Swinging her foot and biting her lip, she tried not to focus on her predicament. What good would it do? Her cousins would be pissed off enough that she’d awakened them, as would Sam, who might not be a cop but an undercover reporter for the National Intruder, for all they really knew.

  “We can trust him,” Nikki had told her. “His daughter is at Camp4Kids. She’s only five. And she has AIDS.”

  Mary Beth shivered now not as much from the chill in the night as from the thought, the inconceivable thought, that a child was sick and a child might actually die. Her world only touched sick children through charities to which she gave generously in order to atten
d the balls. She did not recall that she’d ever seen a sick child, except when Shauna had had the measles and the mumps. But that was not real sickness; that was not close to being AIDS. She shook her head and wondered how Nikki had come to do this with her life. How. Or why. It seemed like such an odd thing to want to do.

  She rubbed her hands together and blew into her palms, realizing that she did not know Nikki much at all. Perhaps she never had. And now, Gabrielle was back, a damn countess, no less, appearing out of nowhere because her rightful claim had vanished.

  Because all their rightful claims had vanished.

  Well, Mary Beth thought, they might be in this mess together, but was it really possible for the three of them to see it through until the end … or at least until Shauna’s wedding was over and done with?

  The sound of a motor diverted her attention. She looked up as the newspaper truck lumbered from the docks. Then the boat’s motor resumed its chug. A few seconds later, the boat backed from the pier, headed for Nantucket or back to the mainland or wherever it was headed. All Mary Beth knew was that now she was alone on the dark pier in Vineyard Haven, where it was dead-night silent because even the gulls had the sense to be asleep, where the thick scent of low tide oozed from pilings and pier, and where she sat, all alone, by herself, cold as hell.

  Kicking off her shoes, she pulled her feet up on the bench. Then she hugged her knees and wondered if this was the first time in her life that she had truly been alone. No husband, no daughter, no mother she could talk to. No driver, no housekeeper, no sales clerk to direct, no best friend to talk to, no personal trainer to fuck. Just Mary Beth Atkinson. Without even a car.

  She lowered her head onto her knees. Just as she almost let herself cry, she heard the sound of a Volkswagen rolling into the lot.

  “What do you mean he’s not here? Did he quit already?”

  Nikki was too tired to bother to shake her head. “Carla gave him a lead and Sam is tracking it down. He thinks Lester might be hiding out in Punta Cana.”

  “Where?”

  Nikki sighed. “It’s in the Dominican Republic, not that it matters.”