Pot of gold : a novel

by Michael, Judith

  "Well, I said no; what else could I say? He would have hated me if he knew I'd told you, and after I said it once I had to keep saying it."

  Gina felt a chill. "Why did you have to keep saying it?"

  "I told you; he kept asking. The memos, the tests they didn't do, the tests he said they were going to do; all of it. It's so confusing, I don't even want to think about it. I'm not going to think about it. I'm going back to sleep; I'm so sleepy ..."

  "Just a minute." Gina put a hand on her arm. "Listen, this is important. He thinks you're the only person who knows about the memos?"

  "Yes, it's okay, he's not worried; he knows he can trust me." She drooped against Gina. "I'm going to sleep; I just wanted you to know. Everything's fine. Tell Mother I'll see her later, okay?"

  Gina put her arms around her and held her close. She seemed very precious, and very vulnerable. "Sweetheart, pay attention. I want you to stay close to home. All right? Promise me you will."

  "Why?" Emma murmured drowsily,

  "Well." Gina laid her cheek on Emma's head and held her tighter and tried to sound casual. "Christmas is a good time for you and your mother to be close. Okay?" She thought she felt Emma nod. "Yes? You'll stick around?"

  "Sure." Emma pushed herself to her feet. "I feel so heavy, like everything's dropping out of the bottom."

  "Come on, I'll help you." She kept her arm around Emma's waist as they made their way up the curving staircase and along the corridor to Emma's room. Gina helped her lie down and covered her with the quilt and stood over her as she fell instantly asleep. "Poor love," she murmured. "We'll have to figure out a way to rescue you." She bent and kissed her and closed her door before quietly going back downstairs.

  Claire was alone at the table, gazing at the fire, her hands curved around a cup of coffee. "They're gone?" Gina asked.

  Claire nodded. She looked up. "What's going on, Gina?"

  "Well." She sat down and poured a cup of coffee. "Emma's been doing a lot of drugs, Claire; she's drinking, too, but probably not—"

  "That's not true!" Claire looked at her angrily. "Emma's

  never used drugs; she and her friends never did, all through high school, and she wouldn't start now. I even asked her, a couple of times, and she told me she wasn't."

  "Well, she lied."

  "She doesn't lie! And she'd never lie to me! What's wrong with you, Gina.'' You've always said what a wonderful girl Emma

  IS—

  "She is. This has nothing to do with how wonderful she is. She's in trouble, Claire, and it's this guy she's going with, and if you'd looked at her really closely, you would have seen it."

  "Seen what.-^" Claire's anger was gone; she had sunk into her chair as if her energ^ had vanished, too. "I don't know what to look for."

  "The pupils of her eyes and the way she looks past every-thing a lot of the time; how much she sleeps; the way her moods swing back and forth."

  "I saw all that; I do look at her, you know. But I thought it was because of Brix, that she was worried about him and unhappv and ..."

  "All of the above. But mostly it's coke and booze."

  "You think,'' Claire said, fighting back. "You don't really know. It's not like Emma; she wouldn't change so much; I would have noticed. We're still close enough that I would have seen . . . And I know she never, ever, was even interested—"

  "Claire, she told me. It doesn't do any good to deny it."

  There was a silence. "How much is she doing.^" Claire asked at last, forcing out the words.

  "A fair bit, I'd guess. With him and alone."

  "She's not doing it alone!"

  "I'd guess she is. Maybe not the drinking, but I'll bet he's keeping her supplied with whatever it is they're doing; probably just coke."

  "But she's all right, isn't she.'^ It hasn't hurt her or made her ... I don't even know what it does."

  "She's okay, but I told her to stop doing it. I told her to hang around the house, to stay close to home, and if I were you, I'd make sure she does. She'll be better off, and it would give you two a chance to do some talking. There's another reason for—"

  "She doesn't talk to me," Claire said, her words filled with

  pain. "When we were Christmas shopping, there was only so much we could talk about and then she started to run away. She doesn't trust me anymore."

  "Trust has nothing to do with it. She can't stand the thought of disappointing you. She isn't proud of what she's doing—I don't think she's proud of anything lately except her modeling—but at least she knows that _>'6»^/'r(? proud of her, and she can't bear to lose that."

  "I'm always proud of her," Claire said in a low voice. "I always love her. She knows that. She must know that."

  "Sure she does. But she's scared, too, and she's not thinking straight."

  "Poor love," murmured Claire, echoing Gina's words. There was a silence. "I have to get her away from here," she said at last. "I've tried before, but she didn't want to leave and I didn't push hard enough. I'll have to find a way now; she's got to get away from Brix and even the modeling; she ought to have a chance to think about what she wants to do instead of plunging in."

  "There's another reason I think she ought to stay close to home," Gina said when Claire's words faded. "I don't know whether it's something to be worried about or not, but since Emma's involved, you ought to know about it." She told Claire about the memos Emma had seen, and the copies and the test reports she herself had found in the files in the testing department. "What I'm pretty sure of is, somebody's doctored the test results so everything looks fine, and they'll ship in March with trumpets playing and banners flying and have the jump on all their competitors. It's all timing, you know; whatever ingredient they're using, everyone else will have a variation of it, probably sooner than later. So a few months can make a huge difference in sales."

  "All this time, you didn't tell me any of this."

  "You were pretty tight with Quentin, you know, the boss, the president of the company. Emma didn't want you to know, and it didn't seem urgent, so I went along."

  "But it concerned Emma. I had a right to know."

  "Really.'' A right.'' Come on, Claire, we've known each other a long time, and I haven't seen you throwing your weight around with Emma, telling her about all your rights. What about if she'd

  gone to college? You wouldn't have the faintest idea what she was involved in, unless she decided to tell you, and I'll bet you'd think that was fine; you wouldn't expect her to tell you every detail of every day. It would probably drive you crazy if she did, because you'd be too far away to do anything about it. Anyway, you brought her up to make decisions on her own, didn't you.^"

  "What did she do about the memos.''"

  "She went to Brix and told him she was worried about him; she's got some screwy notion that he's being set up as the fall guy if something goes wrong. He told her they're delaying the release and setting up some new tests, that there was some kind of flaw in the first tests. Which I don't believe. But the point is, he kept asking Emma if she'd told anybody about the memos. She says he asked and asked."

  "She told you."

  "But he doesn't know that because she told him she hadn't told anybody. She was afraid he'd hate her if he knew she had. So she told him nobody knew about the memos but her. She says he had her repeat that, over and over, as if that was all he was worried about. As if—this is what I thought, anyway, when she told me about it—as if he was part of whatever was going on and was worried about his own ass." Their eyes met. "And I was thinking about that kid in college."

  "No," Claire whispered. "No, no, he wouldn't hurt her . . ." She shook her head. "His father . . . everyone knows about them . . . and besides . . . these are respectable people, Quentin and Brix, thev're not. . . they don't. . ." She jumped up. "Where is she.?"

  "In bed. Asleep. She was exhausted. Look, I don't know if they're respectable or not; you know Quentin better than I do. But whatever they are, they've got a lot at stake, and I wouldn't
want to predict what either of them would do if they felt threatened. I think you're right about getting her away from here, for a lot of reasons. But if she refuses to go to Europe or someplace else, why don't you send her to us for a while.? You know, the modeling is all she's got that makes her feel really good about herself right now; maybe it's not good to take that away from her. She could stay with us and nobody has to know it, and I could drive her to her photo sessions and bring her back. My first ex-

  perience as a chaperon. She's comfortable with us, Claire; she doesn't even have to worry about not disappointing us, the way she does with you. It would be a good escape."

  "Thank you; what a wonderful offer," Claire said. "It's probably the best thing she could do. I'll talk, to her. But I'll have to tell her you've told me all this."

  "Fine. She's so beaten down by now she'll probably be grateful. She's been wanting to talk to you all along, you know, but there was that business of worrying that you'd think she let you down, and then on top of that she didn't think you'd understand."

  "But she didn't give me a chance." There was a pause. "Remember when we talked about not talking to our mothers.'' It's awful, isn't it.'' I was always sure my mother wouldn't understand me, either."

  "Well, lots of times mothers don't. Lots of times people just don't understand each other. Do you think my mother would understand me and Roz.'' Fortunately she lives a long way off, and she'll never know, if I can help it; she'd think I was damned, in the biblical sense. And maybe you wouldn't have understood Emma. Would you have sympathized if she told you how good she felt when she used drugs.^"

  "No, but I hope I would have tried to understand."

  "But whether you understood or not, you'd tell her to stop using them."

  "Of course. You just told me that's what v*?^ told her."

  "It's different, coming from me. And my saying it isn't going to make it happen. She sees it as a criticism of Brix, you know, and she's not ready to accept that. She doesn't even want to hear any suggestion that she could still have a career as a model if she took a few years off to go to college, because she thinks that's a criticism of him, too."

  Claire stood beside the fire, looking down at the flames. "I shouldn't have paid so much attention to myself. I was so excited at having all that money—and then there was Quentin. and now Alex ... I didn't pay enough attention to her."

  "Hey," Gina said gently, "that is pure bullshit, if you'll forgive my elegant language. From my observations, mothers are always blaming themselves when they shouldn't. You've got a grown-up girl here, and she's a very nice girl because of the way

  you brought her up, and if she's got problems, it's because everybody has problems at one time or another, even people who are hovered over all the time. You have a right to a life, Claire; you gave Emma everything a mother could give a daughter, and the time came when it was right for you to break out of your cocoon and kick up your heels. And get into your own kinds of trouble."

  Claire gave a small laugh. "Thank you. I sort of believe that. But right now Emma needs somebody to hover, and that means I stay home tonight so we can talk. Excuse me a minute." She went to the desk and called Alex. Between your son and my daughter, she thought, we are having a verv^ chaste love affair. The phone rang a few times and then his answering machine clicked on. She debated briefly, then hung up without speaking. It was a message she wanted to give him personally.

  "You had a date.'^" Gina asked. "Alex.'*"

  "Yes."

  "Is that a good thing you two have going.''"

  Claire smiled. "Yes."

  "Oh, that is the smile of a happy woman. I'm glad; I am so glad. You know, I never was ecstatic about you and Quentin."

  "Neither was I. But it was a lot of fun for a while. Until I knew it was all wrong for me."

  "I hope the day comes when Emma can say that about Brix." Gina stood up and began stacking dishes. "Let's clean up; then I have to go. Would you believe I'm going to a Christmas party at Eiger Labs.'*"

  "Why.'' You don't work there anymore."

  "I was invited; everybody asked me to come back for it. It's kind of a going-away for me, too, I gather. Nice people work there, you know; I hope whatever's going on with PK-20 doesn't put any of them out of work."

  "I can't believe Quentin would endanger the future of the company; he's got so much at stake in it."

  "Well, that's the point: what he's got at stake. I think he's looking beyond it; CEO of an international company is what the rumors sav. And he's still young; who knows where he'll go from there.?"

  There is nothing but power; it makes everything else real. You can romanticize about love, or fantasize about money, but the core is power, and those who have it have the key to everything else.

  "I don't know his plans," Claire murmured. "I don't like the way he defines them."

  "Somehow that doesn't surprise me." They cleared the table and cleaned up the kitchen, talking quietly together, and then Gina left. "Call me," she said. "I want to hear about Emma. And the invitation is open, you know; she can come anytime." She looked back as she left, to see Claire standing in the doorway, a small figure framed by the gleaming house she had bought with such delight only a few months before. Only happy things should happen there, Gina thought, driving away, and as she turned onto the highway to Norwalk, she tried to think of what else she could do for Claire and Emma.

  For years they had been all the family she had, and even now, when she had found her place with Roz, she felt a little bit like a daughter who has moved away, but still had her family nearby. Sometimes she thought of what her life would have been without Claire and Emma, and it was a thought that froze her heart. She would have been so alone.

  What would I have done with all this love I have stored up in me.^ she wondered as she pulled into the Eiger Labs parking lot in the fading light of midafternoon. Years of love for Claire and Emma, and now so much for Roz. Walking into the building through the familiar side door, she felt blessed; no one could ask for a fuller life.

  She was surrounded by the staff of Eiger Labs as she came into the main lab. They had decorated it with a lighted Christmas tree and strings of cranberries and holly looped above the work-tables, and Gina found herself having a good time, having pleasantly nostalgic feelings. She made her way slowly from group to group, raising her voice when someone turned up the volume on the Christmas carols pouring from a tape player on one of the worktables.

  "Punch," said a chemist named Len Forsberg, seeing her put down an empty glass. He handed her a paper cup. "And it has one."

  Gina tasted it. "Yes, indeed; you might even call it a kick. How generous of our host. Is he here.'"'

  "No, but junior is. Over there, in the red tie and spiffy sports coat, looking oh-so-pleased with himself. Fhey had a terrific year.

  you know. We all got the end-of-year report yesterday, and everything is very rosy for Eiger Labs."

  "Except for PK-20." There was a chance, Gina thought, a very small chance, that Brix had told Emma the truth, and this was the way to find out. "How much is the delay in the release date going to hurt them.'"'

  "What delay.^" Len frowned at her.

  "You don't know about one.^ There was nothing in the end-of-year report.-^"

  He shook his head. "I don't, and there wasn't. Why would there be.^"

  So that was that, Gina thought. No new tests, no delay in the release date. "I heard, just the other day, that they were going to do a new series of tests. Something about not being satisfied with the ones they'd done."

  "Not satisfied.^ Christ, they were perfect. Who've you been talking to, Gina.^ Or is it the punch.^"

  "No, I heard it. You know how people talk."

  "Well, it sounds like somebody's dreaming. Or having a nightmare, is more like it. We're all geared up for March—they've even started training sessions for salespeople all over the country—and we're working on a second line to come out next year; different products, including a whole line for men."


  "You're sure of that."

  "Oh, come off it, Gina; you worked here; you know what we're doing. Everything in the whole place is focused on March; it's like D-day and Judgment Day all rolled into one. If it wasn't going to happen, it would have been through here like wildfire. But what the hell, let's ask junior. If anybody would know, he would."

  "No," Gina said hastily. She was gazing at Brix, laughing boisterously at something someone had said to him . . . oh-so-pleased with himself. "Maybe I had the wrong information. Tell me again what the schedule is."

  "Same as when you were here. Why would it change.^"

  "No reason, I guess. I guess I was pretty gullible." And so was Emma.

  "You better believe it. Don't believe anything you hear unless you hear it from me." Len laughed and wandered off, while

  others took his place, asking Gina about the farm, asking her if she would ever come back. She tried to look attentive, but she was watching Brix, and in a few minutes she saw Len in the group around him.

  Oh, God, what do I do now.'' she thought. I could tell Emma, but what good would that do.'' I should stay out of it at this end. But there's no reason why I should keep those memos a secret; I only promised Emma I'd give her a little time. And why should I, now.'' I don't care about Brix; I care about Emma.

  But if I go to the FDA, Brix will know the information came from Emma. I can't tell him I raided the testing lab one night. . . well, I guess I could, but he'd know I went there based on information from Emma. And I don't want him anywhere near Emma when he finds out the FDA has the memos. In fact, I don't want him anywhere near Emma if Len tells him I was asking about postponing the release date and scheduling new tests.

  She glanced again across the lab, but did not see Brix. She turned in place, looking closely at all the clusters of people, but he was not there. That's odd, she thought; the party has a while to go yet.

  "Excuse me," she said to someone who was winding up a joke about lab technicians. "I have to make a phone call."