Blessing in Disguise (14 page)

“What did your mother do about it?”

Nola shook her head, remembering. “Mama would get real quiet, and then Dad, he’d ...” She stopped herself, suddenly reluctant to go on.

But Grace, without saying a word, wouldn’t let go. She leaned in so close that Nola could feel Grace’s breath on her face, like a faint summer breeze. Her hazel eyes were bright as sunlight on water.

“Sometimes he’d hit her,” Nola finished in a flat voice.

Grace was silent for a moment, her expression grave. “I’m sorry,” she said at last. “It must have been awful for you.”

“Why should you care?” A bitterness rose in Nola’s throat like the aftertaste of sour, unripe fruit. “You don’t even
know
me.”

“No,” Grace acknowledged, “but I always wondered if you felt as bottled up as I did. After all, our parents never asked
us
if we minded going along with their glossed-over version of the truth.”

“So why
didn’t
you call me ten years ago?”

“I don’t know. Something always stopped me at the last minute. I was afraid you’d be like
them,
acting like it never happened.”

Nola felt the cold from the icy glass in her hand spread up through her arm, across her chest. “It happened,” she said, the words working loose like rusty nails from a door long ago hammered shut. “My dad ... he went off the deep end. Mama got scared and called your father. She was always going on about how Eugene Truscott could fix just about any kind of trouble there was. Oh, yeah, I know it was an accident, but the fact is, he
did
fix it. Lucky for Mama and me, unlucky for Dad. End of story.”

“Nothing that ends that badly is ever really over.” Grace spoke quietly, but Nola shuddered at the truth in her words.

Abruptly, she said, “Look, this is just between you and me. Beyond that, I really can’t help you.”

“Even now that the cat’s out of the bag, and your backing me up can only
salvage
my father’s reputation?” Grace pressed.

Nola felt as if she were tottering on some incredibly steep precipice, about to tumble into a bottomless void. “I ... can’t,” she repeated feebly.

“Why not? He was good to you, wasn’t he? I know that when your father died he looked after you and your mother. He put aside money for you to go to college.”

Nola found herself nodding. “Yes, he was good to us. He kept Mama on salary even after she got too sick to work.”

“Then think of this as a way of repaying him!”

“Please,” Nola begged. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

But Grace wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t let go. “Nola, there’s no one else. You’ve
got
to help.”

Nola felt her rigid control snap suddenly. “You’re used to getting your way, aren’t you? Grace Truscott, the great senator’s
privileged
daughter. Well, let me tell you—”

“Grace!” a deep voice interrupted from above.

Nola looked up into a pair of the greenest eyes she’d ever seen, in a face that was almost frighteningly handsome. She had a fleeting impression of curly dark-brown hair, a mouth full and sensuous, before she was able to focus on the man who stood over their table. Impossible for a male in New York City in the nineties to look like that and not be either married, gay, or terminally narcissistic. Even so, he was smiling at her with what appeared to be genuine interest.

“Ben Gold,” he introduced himself, putting out his hand. A good handshake, firm and dry without being too aggressive.

“Nola Emory,” she responded. The little smile playing at his lips and the way he was staring at her prompted her to ask, “Do I know you from somewhere?” The name
was
familiar.

“We haven’t actually met, but I’ve heard all about you.” Ben gave a disarming laugh, then, noting her puzzled expression, he added, “I work for my dad at Cadogan.”

“Your dad is ... ?” She raised an eyebrow.

“Jack Gold.” When Nola didn’t react, Ben turned to Grace with an amused look. “You haven’t told her you’re dating your publisher?”

Nola watched Grace give an awkward little shrug, and look down at the table.

Sidestepping that subject, Nola remarked lightly, “Must be interesting, having your father for a boss. I’ll bet it sometimes feels like you never left home.”

She saw Ben’s expression darken, then a split second later he was joking, “Except that, when I ask for a bigger allowance, we’re talking a lot more money.”

Nola found a corner of her mouth turning up. Then it came to her why his name had rung a bell—hadn’t that novel she’d finally managed to finish been dedicated to a Ben Gold?

“You’re Roger Young’s editor, aren’t you?” she asked.

He nodded, obviously pleased that she’d made the connection. “But I don’t mind saying I wish I was Grace’s editor as well. ... At the very least, I’d be having lunch right now with two beautiful women instead of one very pedantic old man.”

Nola broke the awkward stillness that fell over the table with a laugh that surprised her as much as it obviously did Grace. She wasn’t sure why she was laughing, whether it was from pleasure at this young man’s candidness, or from relief that he’d rescued her, for the moment at least, from Grace’s probing.

“I’m sorry you can’t join us,” Grace told him.

“Me, too, but duty calls. He’s an author of mine, a doctor I’m hoping will be the next Pritikin.” He switched his attaché case to his other hand. He was wearing a navy corduroy sport jacket and a knitted tie that looked almost studiedly casual, along with his brushed suede oxfords and the Oliver Peoples sunglasses pushed up into his dark curls. “He claims old age is cultural. That, under ideal circumstances, the human body is designed to last for a hundred and twenty years. I suppose that must mean, on Dr. Dorfmeyer’s scale, that the three of us have yet to hit puberty.”

Nola felt absurdly flattered by Ben’s including her in his “us,” and by the way he was looking at her—a second too long each time their eyes made contact. How long since she’d been so acutely aware of a man’s attention?

Not that she went out of her way to notice such things. Once burned, twice shy, she thought. What was it Marcus, red-eyed and furious, had said to her as he was packing up his things?
No one will ever love you the way I do.
And she remembered thinking.
Thank God. I couldn’t bear to be loved that way by anyone, ever again.
Since he’d moved out, she’d reveled in having their king-sized bed all to herself. It was only lately she had begun to feel as if she were sleeping on an ice floe.

Nola met Ben’s eyes as he turned to go, and felt her face grow warmer. As he disappeared around the arch into the next room, she found herself wondering if she would ever see him again.

“He seems like a nice guy,” she told Grace. The anger she’d felt just minutes earlier was gone. In its place, there was only a heavy tiredness.

“He is.” Grace sighed, and once again began tearing off little pieces of her napkin. “I’m just not sure I’m ready to be the stepmother of a thirty-year-old.”

“You’re engaged?”

“No.” Grace’s eyes slid away.

Nola could see she’d hit a nerve. Quickly she changed the subject.

“I saw your name in the paper the other day. Not in connection with any of this.” She spread her hands. “Something about a circus?”

“Oh, sure, that.” Grace, who appeared to be scattered like the pieces of her napkin, seemed to pull herself together. She smiled vaguely. “The Big Apple Circus. It’s a benefit for PEN. A bunch of authors making fools of ourselves in front of an audience. Should be a hoot, if I don’t fall flat on my face. I’m doing a trapeze act.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“There’s a net.” Grace shrugged. “Besides, in college I was on the gymnastics team. I was actually pretty good. The balance beam was my best event.”

“Well, good luck.” Nola heard the note of bitterness in her voice, and saw that it hadn’t escaped Grace, either.

“I’ll need it,” she said, and added with a sigh, “Oh, Nola, I’m still not getting through to you, am I? Has
anything
I’ve said made the slightest bit of difference?”

After an awkward silence, Nola answered softly, “I understand where you’re coming from. I just don’t feel like going along for the ride.”

Grace suddenly twisted around, fumbling for something in the large leather tote that was slung over the back of her chair. Pulling out a manuscript box, she thrust it at Nola. “Please,” she whispered with tears in her eyes, “read it. It won’t hurt you to at least
read
what I’ve written. You might change your mind.”

Nola stood abruptly. “My mind is made up.” But somehow she was taking the manuscript, grasping it with both hands as if it might somehow anchor her against the wave of vertigo engulfing her. “Excuse me, but I have to go. I’m sorry about lunch.”

Grace reached out and grasped Nola’s hand, pressing it between her child-sized palms a beat longer than a handshake. But she made no effort to stop her from leaving.

Nola, as she headed for the exit, stumbling a bit where the floor gave way to a slight incline, felt sick, as if she
had
eaten a huge lunch.

Had Grace sensed her holding back?

Had she guessed what it was that Nola couldn’t bring herself to tell: a truth more shocking than any Grace could imagine?

An hour later, Nola sat with her boss at the large table in the conference room, her drawings spread out before them. She could see the surprise on his thin, rather pointed face as he studied them. Even knowing she’d won both the Carnegie Prize and the coveted AIA award at Cooper Union could never have prepared him for this.

She
felt a little incredulous, actually. A design as assured as this, with such ingenuity—it was like that fairy tale about the shoemaker’s elves, a thing that seemed to have been magically drafted while she slept.

But Ken wasn’t jumping up and down. ... Damn, the man wasn’t even
smiling.

“It’s nothing like what I had in mind,” he said.

Her boss was blunt, and she admired that in him, even when it made her squirm. Right now, she was fighting to keep her butt nailed to the padded leather seat of her swivel chair. When he looked up at her, the puzzled expression in his close-set blue eyes, behind their tortoise-shell spectacles, was like sandpaper against her already raw nerves.

“If someone had left these on my desk, I never would have guessed they were yours,” he went on. “Not your style.”

Nola watched him shift his attention back to her drawings and stare intently at the vellum sheets, which seemed to her to float atop the highly polished rosewood conference table.

“Yeah, but do you
like
it?” Nola blurted. She had to know. Now. Before she snapped in two with the strain.

Ken looked up, as if surprised she’d have to ask. “I’d be crazy not to.”

“Then it’s yours.” She swallowed hard against the excitement she could feel pushing its way up her throat. “I mean, not just the firm’s. But you, personally.”

“Well, sure, but there’s no question you’d be getting a good deal of the credit. ...”

“What I’m trying to say, Ken,” she broke in, “is that I’d prefer my name not appear anywhere in connection with this design. If it
should
get selected—and I know that’s a big if—I’d work my tail off to get it finished. But I’d want to stay out of the spotlight.” She pulled out the frayed clipping from yesterday’s
Times
and extended it to him. “Maybe this will explain it.”

Ken scanned the bit of paper, then looked back up at Nola with a bewildered frown.

“Ned Emory was my father,” she told him. “My mother worked for Senator Truscott.”

Ken scrubbed his narrow face—which had always made her think of an alert greyhound’s—with a pale, hairless hand. “Okay, but I’m still not sure what you’re getting at.”

“Let’s just say that it would be better if I weren’t involved. It might look like favoritism. That, or just the opposite. Mrs. Truscott might not want any association with me. I’d probably remind her of something she’d rather not dwell on.”

Ken rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “You may have a point. I know a few of the people on that committee, and they sure as hell wouldn’t want to risk alienating Cordelia Truscott. Still ...” He spread his hands in an outer-borough shrug, still the cop’s son from Flushing. “I’ll be honest with you, Nola. I like you. I like your work. And
this”
—he tapped the presentation drawing—“is fucking brilliant.”

She allowed herself an instant to glow, and quickly asked, “But?”

“I’ll have to run it by the guys. See what they think.”

“When?”

“Hey, keep your shirt on. Tomorrow. I’ll let you know soon as I can.”

Nola fought back her impatience and said, “I guess I can wait that long.”

Most of her life, she’d been putting a lid on her emotions; she ought to be used to it by now.

When she returned to her work station, Nola’s gaze was drawn to the shelf above her drafting table, to the boxed manuscript crammed between rolls of blueprints. Slowly, she reached up and pulled it down, its weight seeming to drag at her arms.

So much to tell ...

She couldn’t shake the awful certainty that Grace was not going to let up, that she would keep hammering and hammering until she got all the answers she needed.

Forgetting the elevation for Chang that she’d promised to have finished by the end of the day, for a moment forgetting even her own design that right now was making its way down the hall to the executive offices, Nola opened the box and began to read.

... There’s a story Eugene Truscott liked to tell, about how he helped Lyndon Johnson cattle-prod Congress into passing the Civil Rights Act. He let the President in on a little trick that had worked for him in the years when he was running for re-election: One day a week, between the hours of nine and ten in the morning, his Elmhurst office door stood open to local party loyalists and businessmen who wanted their photo taken with Representative Truscott, then House Majority Whip. Of course, every Democrat worth a lick of salt wanted his handshake with the big guy recorded for posterity and for his own political enhancement ... and in this way, in the few minutes it took for the photographer to frame his shot, while the representative from Queens chatted amiably with his admirer, he gained more information and influence than he could have in days of stumping the campaign trail.

Johnson liked the idea, and wasted no time in instituting it. Every Monday, between the hours of nine and ten in the morning, the Oval Office stood open to members of the House and Senate who wanted their picture taken with the President. ...