How pragmatic those imaginary Roederers were, always fully tanked and prepared to cut out on a moment’s notice.
Tea fumed, practically erupting into lava flow. She had stolen millions and killed two men—one her own husband. But everything paled beside the fact that her adopted son had once again failed to keep his tank full. Teenagers can indeed be infuriating.
“When you’re living with me, you’d better be more conscious of your gas tank than Griffin was,” Loren told his son.
Jake beamed.
“It was a kind of dramatic learning experience,” Loren said to me. “Clichéd, I suppose. Don’t know what you have till you nearly lose it. That kind of thing. I’m not putting him in danger again. I’ll work it through with Betsy.”
“I’m glad,” I said. And I was.
*
And I still am. It was all—the part I believed for too long—a fairy tale. And in an oddly fitting way, it had a mostly happy ending.
Harvey Spiers is, of course, beyond happiness or sorrow. But since he believed he held the copyright on morality, I must assume he’s reaping his just and eternal rewards in whatever segment of eternity he earned. That makes some of us happy, if not Harvey.
His erstwhile stepson’s letters sent by e-mail via Mackenzie make it clear that life with his father is easier and saner than life here had been. Jake also writes that Griffin is thoroughly enjoying the life of an ordinary kid in an ordinary house with his extremely ordinary relatives.
My mother’s happy because she doesn’t know a few things. She’s gotten a glowing report on Good Citizen Mackenzie, and she doesn’t know there was no investigation. And she’s happy, even though she doesn’t know it, because I have decided to keep her secret about a time when she was desperately unhappy. What I’ve come to feel is that her history is her property, to share only when she so decides.
So I suppose I’ve made Detective Skippy happy, too.
Betsy, of course, is not happy, but since being unhappy apparently gives her pleasure, that’s not a sad outcome, either. She’s wearing makeup and bright colors nowadays, has found a new residence, and is reportedly dating a corporate executive of the shark variety who will surely provide her with sufficient misery to keep her motors going.
And Mother Vivien is free, no longer under suspicion of murder and now the sole ruler of the Moral Ecologists, so she got what she wanted—the right to be the boss of making everybody else unhappy.
As for me, I’m happily learning more about living with someone. I think we might get it all straightened out about the same time as the Arabs and Israelis do, but we’re having more fun than they are with the learning process.
Sometimes, I sit in the loft and think about Tea and Neddy. Not the shabby people they really were, but the myth it was their genius to create, that fabulously wealthy, fun-loving, globe-hopping, party-giving couple with the right values and a sense of noblesse oblige that royalty would envy. Who needed reality when such extravagant make-believe was available?
Now their house is empty, and its contents sold off. Neddy is dead and Tea’s in prison for the rest of her days. I don’t miss them at all—but I do, now and then, remember the art and the priceless books and her beaded dress and the merriment and the extravagant gestures that expanded the possible and were fun, even vicariously.
Of course they were pretenders, but they played their roles with such zest and bravado they became what they were miming. Neddy and Tea were the Roederers. Figments, yes. Wearers of extravagant masks and disguises. Fabrications. But also, as real as it gets, even if they never existed.
So now and then, as I curl deeply into my comfortable but unspectacular life, wearing my woolly socks, drinking tea, and marking yet another stack of compositions, I find myself daydreaming about Glamorgan and a great crystal chandelier and the invented couple who existed there for a while.
And I become full of wist. I miss them. I miss their gift of firing our imaginations. I miss their very real generosity. I miss those people who never were.
We nearly had a wonderful time. Wish they’d been here.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Copyright
The Bluest Blood
Dedication
Introduction
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
The Bluest Blood Page 24