Jenna Takes the Fall

by A. R. Taylor

  “He’s in the ICU. You can check there, Doctor.”

  Jenna flew down the steps, passing by a stunned orderly and a woman in a headscarf. The Intensive Care Unit was possessed of a fearful quiet, and Jenna slowed down instantly, trying to blend in. How to find him without blowing the fact that she shouldn’t be there at all? She straightened up, aping the studied confidence of the physician, even if she was unprepared to claim such status, but before she had to do too much posturing, Amon’s mother appeared around a corner bearing a pillow and a magazine.

  “Cate,” she cried and came up and hugged her. “I’m glad to see you.”

  “How is Amon? I’ve been so worried.”

  “He’s so sick, just very very groggy, but they don’t let him feel any more pain.”

  “Oh my god. Will he pull through?” She clasped onto Lori’s sleeve. “Will he live?”

  “Oh yes, don’t panic. This is normal. He had the kidney transplant yesterday. It’s good news, good news at last.” Lori pulled her down the hall, and Jenna followed her into a dimly lit room. It was early morning, but the blinds were closed and the room cool, only the machines creating a whir of white noise. Lori still held her hand, and the two approached the bed. The little boy seemed small and incredibly black against the white sheets, but he breathed on his own and was hooked up to only one IV. He opened his eyes when they approached, and Jenna sat down on the bed next to him. He smiled slightly.

  “I’m forty-seven,” he said in a low voice.

  Jenna touched his hand. “You don’t look that old to me.”

  “He has the kidney of a forty-seven year old woman, that’s what he means,” Lori said.

  “Then you’ll always be a good, grown-up boy,” Jenna sighed. Amon giggled but then grimaced in pain. “Now, now, don’t laugh at anything I say.” Again he smiled and turned away slightly like the flirtatious little thing he was.

  Lori and Jenna left the room together, the big woman’s arm around her shoulder. It had been a long time since anything that familial had happened to her, and she felt as if she might cry. “He got the kidney of a woman killed in a car crash. They told me all about it.”

  “Oh my goodness. That’s wonderful, it’s fantastic, I mean I’m sorry for the woman, but so glad for you. Do you want me to stay here a while?”

  “We’ll probably move to another room soon.”

  “I’ll go back to my studio. The painting I supposedly fixed is to be unveiled tomorrow. I’ll find you later.”

  Back in her workroom, Jenna stared at the Bélange, and from some recent research she had learned it would fetch at least a million dollars at auction, only theoretically though, because right now it was worthless. It hadn’t truly stabilized, and she decided to try some quick over-painting to get the images to look finished for the next afternoon’s public event. Starting at the nape of the girl’s neck, she picked out a pink and a light umber so sumptuous that the colors reminded her of the late Italian Renaissance. She dabbed the brush into the paint and then, with tiny strokes, quickly layered in lines of pigment. The neck softened and turned rosy as she worked and before long almost glowed in front of her. Jenna stood back, pausing to admire her work. She had done something Monsieur Legard would not have liked, altering the colors, but what else could she do? In any case the changes probably wouldn’t last.

  The odious lawyer called her to reiterate that no one wanted her at the hospital unveiling of the restored painting, no doubt a subdued affair in any case, but she would hear from Mrs. Hull. And then, as she worked away feverishly into the early evening, the Cavanaugh woman popped her head into the room and handed her a note without saying a word. Once again she held a heavy, ivory-colored envelope, on the front of which her name appeared in swooping black letters almost like calligraphy, similar to the note she had received in Italy. She looked up at the waiting woman, who said, “I know, from another era.”

  “Another time altogether.”

  She tore open the heavy envelope quickly. “We need to see each other. Come to the unveiling,” and it was signed “Sabine Hull.” The woman’s cell phone number was listed at the bottom of the single page. “I’m to attend the unveiling.” The curator just threw out her hands in resignation at the constant changes going on around this event and backed out of the room.

  Jenna sighed at this new, heavy commanding note, and almost felt relieved when she heard her cell phone ring. Inti’s voice crackled in her ear, “I’m sorry. Can I see you?”

  “It’s late, I can’t, just got a note about something important. I need to go back to my hotel and contemplate.”

  “Contemplate with me.” He promised to come to her.

  “No.”

  “I’m coming over to the Lowell anyway.”

  Jenna sank down in a velvet chair in the lobby, defeated, nevertheless hungry. She waited less than ten minutes, and when he appeared, she moved to kiss him on the cheek, an unexpected intimacy that Inti took well, if awkwardly. Still, they went out the heavy doors arm in arm, and the concierge smiled after them. At last, some little sign of normalcy in the life of this comely young woman.

  The nearby bistro Drago felt dark and fervently active on this Thursday night, and Jenna found herself activated out of her trance and into energy. She looked closely at Inti while he related several of his latest newspaper pieces, trying to hear above the din, responding in ways she had never done before. She saw him as a man of action and good cheer, mysteriously tranquil while she fretted over every little thing. That he knew the “real” story, or at least a good chunk of it, made him all the more attractive, and perversely, the more he talked of his journalistic exploits, the more excited, the less suspicious she got. His true interests remained regional, heavily New York, and so for him what she’d been through might seem like ancient history. The liquor, yes, more of it, the heat of the room, the festive atmosphere, it all loosened her tongue, and at last she said, “You really want to know everything, don’t you?”

  “You mean I don’t already?”

  “I’ve been keeping the secret for so long, I’m not sure I would actually know what to say.”

  But talk about it she did, starting with the moment she entered the Hull building, snuck upstairs, and placed herself under Vincent, not leaving out the fact of the very real affair with her boss. Unburdened by this relatively free talk, nevertheless she wanted to take it all back as she watched Inti’s face. Whatever curiosity he might have had about the titan fell away the closer he got to the revelations of her feelings, because he sensed real passion, maybe even something like love. “I shouldn’t have asked.” He gathered up the bill and paid it without looking at her.

  “But I’m so glad you did. Don’t you see, you could never endure not knowing anything. It’s like a bomb under the table.”

  “Or right on the top.”

  Outside, muffled up as they were, she took his arm and walked him some way down the street. “You did ask. . . .”

  “I did, but now I’m kind of horrified. The family and all, and my friends in the press chasing you around.”

  “It was a long time ago. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  Inti studied her a moment. “There’s a public lens out there, and it focuses for a moment on somebody or other, hot like a magnifying glass in the sun, and what that focus does is blow up, make gigantic, any faults or history of that person. It’s entirely distorting and ultimately false. Simple things that happened to you appear sinister, and everything you are or ever did is spun into a web that makes whatever story they want to tell seem true. It happens over and over again. What surprises me is that my cohorts didn’t follow you all the way to Europe. Like dogs, half of them are in heat, the other half chasing after their own ass end.” But then he looked down, ashamed at the amount of following he himself had done.

  “So you understand. Though I was found underneath him, I hadn’t actually had sex with him—not that night.” She felt herself go red and blank at what she did not say.


  “I can accept that,” Inti said, breaking through his own confusion. He pulled his thick wool scarf up around his neck and looked toward the street.

  “You know, I can walk to my hotel. It’s only a few blocks.”

  “I’ll walk with you, then go over to the West Side.”

  “No, just go on your own. I’m exhausted, and the air will clear my head.”

  “I’m coming with you!” They walked without saying anything at all and parted awkwardly at the Lowell’s front door, one reaching for the other, both just touching with a brief kiss.

  Once upstairs, seated on her sumptuous bed, Jenna started channel flipping. War, fire, flood, apple peeling devices, a nice-looking dress for $49.99, men in suits selling coins, a vampire sucking a little blood in his off-time, what a riot of images, none of them comforting. She found a resting point at a cooking show, noting the huge portions the chef touted. As for the formidable Mrs. Hull, she wouldn’t respond to the invitation until tomorrow. What would they do together, have coffee? The Upper East Side must be her stomping grounds, every little joint known to her, unless she just glided about in her chauffeur driven car and didn’t really see anything out of the darkened windows, ordering in food whenever the chef had his day off. If they went somewhere together, hounds with big imaginations could be anywhere, maybe even Rudolph Hayes himself, waving papers and subpoenas. Once her mind cleared, she realized he had to act in secret, with stealth, he had no other choice, so she was safe from him, at least for the moment.

  SEVEN

  That Friday Jenna dressed with particular care in a somber black suit with a small sprig of lily-of-the-valley entwined in a buttonhole, appropriate for the ceremony to unveil what was supposed to be the newly rehabilitated Bélange. Would Sabine Hull preside over the affair? Would there be press? Surely not. This was all happening in private, especially since sick children were present in the building. She looked around but saw only one man with a camera, and he stood next to Mrs. Cavanaugh, presumably doing publicity for the hospital. Jenna wondered what in god’s name the curator would say about the work, since it might look even wetter now, and she had no idea how long her quick fixes would hold. Worse yet, after this grotesque affair ended, what would Mrs. Hull do? Berate her no doubt for sleeping with her husband and then being so stupid as to be found in flagrante on the floor with him. How much of the truth did this woman know? The lie must continue, and the poor woman must hate her still, no way at all to placate her. Jenna so disliked being hated, a dreadful failing that had led her into misery trying to win over a number of disturbed people.

  Normally, she should have delighted at this display of her work as she had been in the past, both in Italy and in France, but now, as she entered the festively done-up library she felt giddy with fear, sweating in her clothes. To make matters worse, Amon sat in his wheelchair, his mother by his side, and they waved and cheered her on as she entered the room. Doctors and nurses stood by solemnly, and there, in among them, reigned Mrs. Hull, looking much the same as she had five years before, in a flowery dress with a short black jacket buttoned tight at the waist. It was the curator who announced the repair of the Bélange and introduced “Ms. Cate Myatt” to all assembled as the “master hand” to whom they owed the painting’s restored beauty.

  Jenna smiled and waved at everyone politely, afraid to look at the Hull woman, but at least no sniper trained an eye her way right at that moment. Up went the curtain, and behold, for all to see was Marc Bélange’s newly fixed Diver, shimmering in its sumptuous beauty. Jenna had a moment to see the work whole and new. Even in its damaged state, the victim of inherent vice, it had about it still the erotic charge she felt that first time seeing it in Water Mill.

  “It’s beautiful,” she heard Amon cry out, and everyone laughed, beginning to clap.

  Apparently Mrs. Hull shied away from public display because she was not introduced, though she was well known to the staff, who, at the end of the brief ceremony, effusively greeted her. Jenna awaited whatever was to come. Just as she bent down to speak to Amon, she felt a strong hand on her arm. The gamine, handsome Mrs. Hull said in a low voice, “Come with me.”

  In spite of her new look, her European mien, her dark hair, nevertheless Jenna feared that the assembled guests would see the two of them side by side and recognize the players in what had been a major drama in the city. She glanced around in anxiety and hurried out with her. No doubt the context was so different that this could not possibly be, and besides, would any woman have appeared in public with the scandalous young slut who had killed her husband in the act of love?

  They walked down the hall together, not speaking, until Sabine Hull pointed toward a door. “No one will bother us here.” Inside, an alternate reality prevailed, one that involved air hockey, a ping-pong table, video games, pinball machines, an adolescent’s paradise. Jenna didn’t know what to do, but Mrs. Hull sat down on the curved leather couch and pointed to a spot next to her. Having settled herself at a distance, Jenna finally got up the courage to look at her. The same sharp jaw line and soft hair, the same willowy frame, the fashionable clothes, older, but not by much. Did she have a lover, a boyfriend? Surely yes, Jenna hoped. “I’m glad we’re finally meeting,” Sabine Hull said at last, breaking through the dense, complicated air around them.

  “Oh, I am too,” Jenna interrupted, but then caught herself. “It’s been so long.” When she thought of how long, she couldn’t go on, because she’d been paid for all of it.

  “Too long. We should have talked when it first happened, but I had no idea what to say and was too shocked and horrified to get in touch with you.”

  A teenage boy with his leg in a cast popped his head in the door, and Mrs. Hull rang out in her finely tuned accent, “Come back later, young man.”

  They waited again in silence. “I’m so sorry about everything,” but Jenna really wanted to find out how much she knew.

  “It was a difficult situation. My husband was a complex man, brilliant, terrible, impossible to live with, but I loved him, and how he died came as a great shock.”

  “Yes, it would have been terrible, and my own part in it—”

  “I know about your part. It was obvious, no?”

  Was it? She had helped the man by helping his family, at least so she’d been told. “It looked bad. I was so ashamed. I still am.”

  “Miss McCann, you still are a Miss, right?” Jenna nodded her head. “You must give me credit for knowing what was going on. Initially it was not you under the body of my husband.”

  The ghost within these words crossed over them through the air. One absolute demand in her agreement had been not to reveal the truth to any living human being, because all family members could never know who had occupied that compromised position. Yet this woman claimed to know everything. Was she lying? Was she trying to get some admission out of her?

  “I’m under an obligation to say only certain things.”

  “I know. I created the document you signed.” Sabine Hull poked at her thick gold watch, frowned, and began to wind it.

  What had she just said? Jenna felt dizzy, but after steadying herself, she rose to pour the two of them coffee from the carafe in the corner. It looked particularly bitter and black; nevertheless, when she handed the cup to her, Mrs. Hull seemed grateful.

  “I was certainly aware that my husband had made love several times to Tasha.”

  Carefully Jenna sat down again on the couch. “I thought that was the whole reason I was there, to deflect you from knowing about her.”

  Mrs. Hull smiled wearily. “That is how the matter was meant to appear.”

  “You mean it wasn’t true?”

  “They had slept together that night, or he was in the act of doing so.” The self-contained woman struggled with her words. “But the reasons, the motives may not have been clear.”

  “Motives?”

  “I had asked her to do that.”

  Jenna momentarily forgot where she was. She looked aro
und at the gleaming toys and games that encircled them. “I don’t understand.”

  “I wanted Tasha to seduce my husband.” The woman before her sipped on the brutal coffee.

  “Why would you do that?”

  “We needed to protect ourselves from him. He suspected us, and it was driving him crazy. In fact he had had a nervous breakdown of sorts, at least insofar as someone that far gone could go any more nuts.”

  “Us?” Jenna felt like choking.

  “Tasha and myself. So she offered to engineer a seduction that would throw him off entirely. He would think she had an interest in him, rather than in me. You see, she and I had been involved, off and on, for over a year. Then he died in her arms. Sort of poetic, that, but she panicked.”

  “I was just there as the public face . . . someone to take the fall?”

  “Exactly. We needed no more press scrutiny—there had been some of that already, and it frightened both of us, especially because of the children. Vince would, I think, have tried to kill me if he’d known the truth, but once he was dead, there was still the family and the public.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “He had ways of killing that wouldn’t have involved guns, although he certainly had plenty of those. Something much more lethal: shame, disgrace, violent rejection, public humiliation. He would have thought of terrible acts, though I’ve often wondered how far he would have gone, given our girls. If he had known for sure that I was having an affair with a woman, I can’t even imagine the steps he would have taken, so we agreed that Tasha should seduce him. She did—not very difficult, it turned out. That threw him off the scent.”

  “I always thought it involved her race, wanting to hide that.”

  “Not only her race but much, much more. His wife was having an affair with a black lesbian—he of the great mind, great ego, great body, too, if truth be told, and wealth beyond all imagining. You served a useful purpose, to deflect and distract. And, of course we knew he was sleeping with you at the time.”