Grand Avenue

by Joy Fielding

  Or a lawyer, Chris thought, reaching the top of the stairs, gasping out loud. “A lawyer,” she repeated out loud, rolling the word around her tongue as she waddled into her bedroom and plopped down on the side of her bed, feeling as unwieldy, as stranded, as a beached whale. The baby inside her registered his displeasure with her thoughts by a sharp kick. “It’s okay, baby,” she tried to reassure him. “It’s okay.”

  But it wasn’t okay, Chris knew, catching sight of her reflection in the bedroom window, barely recognizing the lost soul looking back. Her eyes squinted toward the image, but the harder she looked, the faster she faded, until one quick turn of her head, and she’d disappeared altogether, lost in an errant streak of sunlight. What had happened to her? Chris wondered. Where had she gone?

  In the next second, her hand was on the telephone, and she was punching in a series of numbers, refusing to think about what she was doing, to question it, to stop it. “Vicki Latimer, please,” she said into the phone, surprised by the strength she heard in her voice.

  “I’m sorry. Mrs. Latimer is in a meeting.”

  “This is Chris Malarek, a friend of hers. It’s very important I speak to her as soon as possible.” Was it? Chris wondered. What exactly was she planning to say to Vicki? Was she planning on asking for her advice? For a loan? For the name of a good divorce lawyer? “I just need to know my options,” she said, not realizing she was speaking out loud.

  “I’ll let Mrs. Latimer know you called,” Vicki’s secretary said.

  Chris sat with the receiver pressed to her ear long after the secretary had hung up, the dial tone resonating against her brain, like the sound a heart monitor makes after the patient has died. She wasn’t sure how long she sat like that, shoulders slumped forward, swollen breasts balanced on her belly, the phone buried into her ear, her eyes staring blankly toward the window, the baby inside her surprisingly still. Nor was she sure at what precise moment she became aware that she wasn’t alone. Perhaps she caught a glimpse of Tony’s reflection in the glass of the window or heard the sound of his breathing from somewhere behind her back. Maybe there was a ripple, a stirring in the air that disrupted the room’s normal flow of oxygen. Maybe she’d smelled him, the way a doomed gazelle catches a fleeting whiff of the hungry tiger in the instant before he strikes. Or maybe she’d known all along he was there, Chris realized, a dull certainty settling into the pit of her stomach, the baby inside her shifting to accommodate the intruder.

  “Hang up the phone, Chris,” she heard Tony say, his voice the serrated edge of a blade.

  “Tony …” The word froze on Chris’s tongue.

  “Hang up the phone and turn around.”

  Chris felt the phone drop from her shoulder, bounce toward the floor. It dangled from its cord, like a man dropped from the gallows. She made no move to pick it up, to return it to the security of its carriage. Instead she watched it sway back and forth above the steel-blue broadloom, like the pendulum of an old grandfather clock, ticking off the moments of her sad, stupid existence.

  “Turn around,” Tony said again.

  Chris took a deep breath, lay a protective hand across her stomach, then slowly, reluctantly, did as she was told.

  “Looks like I decided not to go away after all.” Tony smiled. “What’s the matter, Chris? Aren’t you happy to see your husband?”

  Chris watched Tony’s smile twist into a sneer as his right hand swooped into the air, his fist flying toward her with mesmerizing speed. And then, suddenly, the world split apart in a flash of blinding light, and she saw nothing.

  Seven

  When did you say she called?”

  “Not more than two minutes ago. Right before you walked in.”

  “And she said it was important?”

  “Said she wanted to speak to you right away.”

  Vicki brought the arched slivers of her eyebrows together at the bridge of her nose, wondering if something had gone wrong during Barbara’s surgery. “Was she calling from the hospital?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “What exactly did she say?”

  “Just that she was a friend of yours and that it was very important she speak to you as soon as possible.”

  “She didn’t give any hint what it was about?”

  “Said something about reviewing her options,” the secretary said.

  What options? Vicki wondered, reaching across her cluttered desk for her phone and punching in Chris’s number, listening impatiently to the subsequent busy signal. What options could Chris have been talking about? She immediately redialed the number, received the same annoying signal, slammed down the receiver. Vicki took busy signals personally. They offended her in ways she recognized were completely irrational, having little to do with either logic or common sense. Still, she couldn’t help but feel that some intentional malice was directed at her by the person tying up the other end of the line. Busy signals slowed her down, got in her way, proclaimed she was just one of the crowd. Grab a number, get in line, wait your turn. Vicki sighed, glared at the phone. “Well, I guess she’s going over her options with someone else.” Vicki dismissed her irritation with a wave of her long fingers, her large diamond flashing through the air as she walked around her desk and sank into the high-backed, black leather chair. “Any other calls?”

  “Your husband, reminding you that dinner is at seven o’clock sharp in the restaurant of the Cincinnatian Hotel, and you should prepare yourself for at least an hour of speeches.”

  Vicki groaned. Another boring dinner honoring her husband. Not that he wasn’t deserving of the myriad hosannas that continually came his way, just that she was getting awfully tired of attending parties where she was the only person in the room not collecting social security.

  “And your daughter phoned twice. Apparently, she wasn’t feeling very well, and the school sent her home.” Vicki’s secretary nodded toward a huge stack of memos resting by the phone. “And those, of course. I told everyone you were in meetings on and off all day and it was unlikely you’d be able to return any calls until tomorrow.”

  “Thanks.”

  The young woman turned to go. “Oh, and some man called at least three times. He wouldn’t leave his name, but he didn’t sound happy.”

  Vicki frowned. She had a pretty good inkling who the unhappy caller might be. “If he calls again, tell him I’m out of the office for most of the week. And Michelle …”

  Michelle looked at Vicki expectantly, watery blue eyes lost beneath a limp fringe of thin brown hair.

  (“Just give me five minutes with that unfortunate girl,” Barbara once proclaimed.)

  “Keep trying this number for me.” Vicki quickly scribbled Chris’s phone number on a piece of paper and held it toward her secretary. “Let me know as soon as it’s free. Oh, and get me the number of University Hospital in Clifton.”

  “Will do.”

  Vicki watched her secretary slump out of the room. (“Walk proud,” she heard Barbara call after her. “Head high, shoulders back, stomach in.”) Again she wondered whether Chris’s call had anything to do with Barbara’s surgery. True, a laparoscopy was a relatively simple procedure, but a general anesthetic still carried all sorts of risks, and the courts were full of medical malpractice suits, several of which she’d instigated herself. But Chris hadn’t mentioned anything about Barbara, only something about reviewing her options, whatever that meant.

  “Okay, what to do first?” Vicki muttered, eyes flitting nervously around her desk, coral-colored lips twisting from side to side, as she rifled through the stack of pink memos. “Should call your daughter,” she said out loud, deciding to call her husband first, punching in his private number on her private line. “Talking to yourself again,” she said with a resigned laugh. Vicki regularly talked to herself. It helped her focus, added weight to her thoughts, significance to sometimes insignificant musings. Besides, she’d always liked the sound of her own voice.

  “Hey, darlin’,” her husband was saying sec
onds later. Jeremy Latimer had been born and raised in Ohio, but had spent almost a decade in Atlanta before resettling in Cincinnati, and a casual Southern attitude still clung to certain words and turns of phrase. Of course, he could turn the honey-dipped drawl on and off at will, Vicki recognized, just as he could that quasi-Southern charm he was becoming increasingly famous for.

  “Hey, darlin’, yourself. How you doin’?” Vicki effortlessly slid into the same lazy territory, a mythical land in which pesky nouns and verbs disappeared at will, and apostrophes often replaced the letter g.

  “Kickin’ along,” he told her.

  Vicki pictured him running a lazy hand through luxuriously thick gray hair. Thank God he hadn’t gone bald, like so many other men in their fifties. Or allowed his waistline to thicken with the excesses and inevitabilities of midlife. No, Jeremy Latimer had been blessed with a full head of hair and worked hard to maintain his naturally slim physique, eating wisely and exercising regularly. Vicki liked to take credit for that. Maybe having a wife almost a quarter of a century his junior had provided her husband with the motivation to maintain a healthy, youthful appearance. Or maybe the rich really were different.

  “Rosie called,” Jeremy said, referring to the nanny of their two young children. “Apparently, they sent Kirsten home from school with a bit of a fever.”

  “Yeah, Kirsten phoned here a couple of times. Poor baby. I’ll call her, see how she’s doing.”

  “Think you’ll have to stay home with her tonight?”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing Rosie can’t handle. Don’t you worry,” Vicki assured her husband. “I’ll be at that dinner tonight with bells on.”

  “Darlin’,” Jeremy said with a laugh before hanging up, “I love it when you wear those bells.”

  Vicki called home and was relieved to hear her daughter was sleeping comfortably. Now she wouldn’t have to waste precious time trying to make intelligent conversation with a seven-year-old. She glanced at the silver-framed photograph of her two children, Kirsten’s freckled arm draped protectively around the shoulder of her younger brother, both children smiling for the camera, although Josh’s smile was tight and tentative, while Kirsten’s grin stretched wildly from one ear to the other, her mouth open in a giant “Ahh” that threatened to swallow the photographer whole. Her two front teeth were missing. “Yeah? Want to make something of it?” the child’s eyes challenged merrily.

  What had she done with those teeth? Vicki wondered absently, remembering Barbara had given her a little silver tooth holder in which to keep them. She’d always meant to keep a scrapbook of her children’s development, but she’d never quite gotten around to it. Now it was too late. Baby teeth were gone forever, red-gold locks swept away, first words long forgotten. It wasn’t that she wasn’t a good mother, she assured herself. Just that she’d be a better mother when her children were older and more interesting. Vicki buzzed her secretary. “What’s happening with that number I gave you?”

  “Still busy. But I have the number for University Hospital you asked for.”

  “Thanks.” Vicki scribbled it down. “Keep trying Mrs. Malarek for me.”

  Vicki placed a quick call to the hospital, found out that Barbara was out of surgery and in the recovery room, ready to be released as soon as her husband, who was apparently running late, arrived. “She’s fine,” Vicki informed the empty office, returning the phone to its carriage, picking it up again, trying Chris’s number herself, getting that same annoying busy signal. Who the hell was Chris talking to for so long? She never talked to anyone for more than a couple of seconds. Tony always seemed to be standing over her, interrupting her, calling her away. She didn’t have time for normal conversation. She didn’t have time for her friends. She didn’t have time for anything anymore. But then, who needs time when you don’t have a life? And Chris had no life, for God’s sake. Was that why she’d been calling? Were those the kind of options she was talking about? Options for getting her life back?

  The phone rang. Vicki picked it up before her secretary could answer it. “Chris?” she asked, holding her breath.

  “Mrs. Latimer?” the male voice asked in return.

  Immediately, Vicki regrouped, refocused. “Who’s this?”

  “It’s Bill Pickering.”

  Vicki looked warily toward the closed door of her office, lowered her voice to a whisper. “Have you found anything?”

  “We might have something in Menorca.”

  “Menorca?”

  “It’s a small island off the coast of Spain.”

  “I know where Menorca is, Mr. Pickering,” Vicki said impatiently. “It’s my mother I’m trying to find. Is she there?” Again Vicki glanced toward the door. Could anyone be listening?

  “A woman matching all her particulars has been living there for the last six months under the name Estella Greenaway.”

  “Alone?”

  “No. She’s living with a man named Eduardo Valasquez, a local artist.”

  “Have you spoken to her?”

  “Not yet. We”

  A sudden commotion outside her office propelled Vicki to her feet. In the next instant, her office door flew open and a tall, muscular man with wild, angry eyes shot toward her desk. His right arm was extended and he was waving a crumpled piece of paper in his hand as if it were a gun. “What the fuck is this?” he screamed.

  “I’ll have to get back to you,” Vicki told Bill Pickering, calmly replacing the receiver, tucking short red hair behind her ears.

  “I’m sorry, Vicki,” her clearly flustered secretary said from the doorway. “I couldn’t stop him. Should I call security?”

  Vicki stared at the imposingly handsome man shaking with rage in front of her, his fist in the air, remnants of the college football hero he once was clinging to the square set of his jaw, the firm cast of his shoulders. “I don’t think that will be necessary. Do you, Paul?” she asked him.

  “What’s going on here, Vicki?” the man demanded.

  “Why don’t you sit down.” Vicki indicated the chair in front of her desk, as she sank back into her own, watching her short black wool skirt slide up her thigh, making a conscious decision not to pull it down. “Michelle, maybe you’d be good enough to get us some coffee.”

  “I don’t want any goddamn coffee.” The man slammed the letter in his hand onto Vicki’s desk, sending the other papers scattering, several of them wafting gently toward the floor. “I want to know what the hell you think you’re doing.”

  “Sit down, Paul,” Vicki instructed, her secretary lingering in the open doorway. “It’s okay,” she told the young woman, whose eyes seemed to be looking for a safe place to hide. “Mr. Moore is finished yelling. Aren’t you, Paul?”

  Paul Moore said nothing. Instead he kicked at the chair in front of Vicki’s desk until it spun around, then plopped down noisily into it, the leather cushion exhaling a loud whoosh upon contact. In that instant, he looked exactly like the young boy Vicki had sat beside in grades two through six at Western Elementary School, the same unruly blond hair hovering above restless green eyes, the same forbidding scowl distorting the otherwise pleasing lines of his full lips.

  “Two coffees,” Vicki told her secretary. “One black. One double cream, no sugar. I think that’s how Mr. Moore takes it. Am I right?”

  “Are you ever wrong?” Paul Moore asked in return.

  Vicki smiled, waited until her secretary was out of the room before continuing. “I take it you’re my mystery caller,” she stated, not at all surprised by his visit. She’d been expecting him for several days.

  “You want to tell me what the hell is going on?” Paul Moore demanded yet again, clearly as flustered by his own behavior as he was with the reason for his visit.

  “Obviously, your sister has informed you.”

  “Obviously my sister has informed me,” Paul Moore mimicked, squishing the handwritten letter in his hand into a round ball before hurling it across the room, where it bounced against the window, the
n dropped silently to the floor. “Obviously my sister has informed me; obviously my sister has informed me,” he repeated, like a record stuck in a groove, the phrase growing more ominous with each repetition. “How could you do this?”

  “Your sister has hired me to represent her.”

  “You’re suing my mother, for God’s sake!” He banged his fist on Vicki’s desk.

  “Paul, this kind of behavior isn’t going to do either of us any good. By all rights, you shouldn’t even be here. I’m sure your lawyer would advise you—”

  “Fuck my lawyer!”

  Vicki suppressed an untimely smile. I have, she thought, picturing the lanky, sandy-haired attorney who was representing Paul Moore’s family. A week-long interlude several years ago, a pleasant way to while away the time while her husband was in California on business. She bit down on her lower lip, pushed the lanky lawyer into the back recesses of her mind. “You can’t take this personally, Paul.”

  “Not take it personally?” Paul Moore was incredulous. “How else am I supposed to take it? You’re tearing my family apart, for God’s sake.”

  “It’s not my intention to hurt your family.”

  “What else do you think this lawsuit is going to accomplish?”

  “Your sister has hired me to represent her in challenging your father’s will. She feels she was deliberately and unfairly overlooked—”

  “I know what she feels!” Once again, Paul Moore was on his feet, his hands flailing angrily at the air. “The whole world knows how she feels! Why? Because she’s always telling everyone! Because my sister is a crackpot! Because she always has been! And you know that. Christ, Vicki, you’ve known her since you were four years old.”