Blessing in Disguise (51 page)

Cordelia raised her eyes. What she thought she saw in Nola’s was compassion, and it stunned her.

“What do you want from me?” Cordelia’s voice emerged as a croak.

“The same thing
you
want,” Nola told her. “For his library to get built the right way—the way he would have wanted.”

“If you and Grace have your way, it may
not
get built,” she snapped. “Remember Cape Kennedy being changed back to Cape Canaveral after that woman in Florida started saying those things about JFK? People were so outraged. With Gene, all this publicity ... Well, I don’t have to tell you. Using your design—it would be like adding insult to injury.”

Nola was quiet for a long moment; then she said, “What if no one knew ... that it was me, my design?”

“There would be no way of keeping it a secret, not if you’re with the firm.”

“And if I weren’t?”

“What are you suggesting?”

Nola at first didn’t know how to answer. Then she found herself saying, “I could take a leave of absence. For a few months, until the rest of your funding comes through.” She thought about Dani and Tasha, the money she’d saved for private school, and felt a wrench of misgiving that was almost a physical pain. She’d need to dip into that nest egg. But in the end, wouldn’t it be for them, too? It was their heritage she’d be making them proud of with this library. ...

“I can’t let you do that,” Cordelia was saying. “I won’t be responsible for your being out of a job.”

“Who’s asking you to be responsible? It was my idea.
I’ll
deal with the consequences. All I need from you is your promise that,
when
you get the funding, you’ll go with my design.”

She waited, not realizing she’d been holding her breath until Cordelia’s next words released the air from her lungs.

“You want promises? Well, I can’t give them to you.” Cordelia’s eyes flashed. “This ... this whole situation, it’s like some kind of ... ghastly nightmare. I don’t know you ... and I don’t
want
to know you.”

“You don’t have to,” Nola pressed. “Just know that, on this one thing, if nothing else, we’re on the same side. We both want this library.”

“You can’t imagine ...” Cordelia started to say.

“Yes, I can. It’s
you
who can’t begin to imagine what this means to me. All my life, I’ve been pretending to be someone I’m not ... but this library, it says whose daughter I really am. Even if the public doesn’t know,
I’ll
know.”

After a long pause, Cordelia said, “All right, then ... I’ll think about it.”

“Will you let me know before you go back to Blessing?” Nola fished in her handbag, and pressed her business card—on which she’d also printed her home number—into Cordelia’s hand.

“I’m leaving next week ... but I will let you know by then.” Cordelia slipped the card into her coat pocket and crossed her arms over her chest, one of her butter-soft suede gloves pulling back to reveal the slim gold watch on her wrist. Her voice lowering, becoming wistful almost, she added, “He
did
love me, you know.”

Whatever bitterness Nola had been harboring was, at this moment, eclipsed by her genuine sympathy for the woman beside her.

“I know,” Nola said.

When Sissy called—as she had done nearly every evening since Cordelia had arrived—Cordelia was in no mood to talk to her or anyone. Despite her long bath, the cold cloth pressed to her forehead, and three Extra-Strength Tylenols, her head felt as if Gene Kelly had been tap-dancing on it.

She’d barely said “hello” when Sissy’s voice broke with a great, burbly gasp.

“Mother, he’s gone. ... Beech ... he says he wants a d-divorce.” Between gulps and sniffles. Sissy managed to spit it out. “He’s muh-moved in with that ... that slut. I’ll just b-bet she’s slept with every man in B-Blessing. Oh, M-Mother ... it’s so
humiliating. ...
”

Cordelia had to restrain herself to keep from quietly hanging up. Sissy was like a five-year-old to whom it has yet to occur that other people have troubles, too. Before unloading all her miseries, would Sissy ever think to ask how
she
might be feeling?

“Not nearly as humiliating as spending the rest of your life married to a jackass.” Cordelia, tightening the belt on her terry robe, sank onto the sofa bed in Win’s den.

She pictured Beech and his blond girlfriend in the laundry room. ... Then she was seeing Gene and Margaret, making love, or just talking quietly in the evening, Margaret in her bathrobe pouring him a shot of the Old Turkey he liked a nip of before bedtime. She screwed her eyes shut for a moment, willing those images away.

There was a short silence on Sissy’s end, filled with long-distance buzzes and clicks—as if a swarm of gnats was whining in her ears. Then Sissy’s voice came through, a terrible wail that felt as if it might shatter Cordelia’s eardrum.

“Moooootthher! How can you say that? He’s the father of your grandchildren!”

“More’s the pity. You know perfectly well I never thought much of him. Why, the very first time you brought him home with you, I could see he would never amount to a hill of beans. And that loud mouth of his! If Beech Beecham is descended from Robert E. Lee, then I’m the Queen of England.”

“Are you calling Beech a liar?”

“Well, if he wasn’t lying to you all those times he was courting the clap over at Mulberry Acres, then I don’t know what you call it.”

“I just don’t
believe
what I’m hearing. Here I am, crying my eyes out, and you are acting like my husband’s leaving is the best thing that ever happened to me! Don’t you even care?” Sissy’s voice took on a mournfully aggrieved tone, and in a terrible flash of insight, one she did not want to have, Cordelia could see all this from Beech’s point of view—how Sissy’s whining must have worn him down, the way blowflies can drive a cow insane.

Cordelia heaved a deep sigh. “Now, Sissy, of course I care. ...”

“You don’t! You said yourself you never liked Beech! Why, I’ll bet you’ll go tell Grace, and the two of you will laugh your heads off!” She was off and running now, and when she got like this there was no stopping her.

“Sissy, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” Cordelia’s head felt like it was going to split in two.

“If I can’t expect a little sympathy from my own moth—”

“Stop it!” Cordelia snapped.
“Stop it this minute!”

A shocked silence filled her ear, and the static on the line seemed to swell like a vast swarm of insects. The African mask on the wall, with its strings of hemp hanging down like dirty hair, seemed to be scowling down at her, accusing her somehow. And yet she didn’t feel guilty. She felt ... good. She should have spoken her mind to Sissy years ago.

Then Sissy broke into a new torrent of weeping, and Cordelia was reminded of how much Sissy depended on her. What had always been for Cordelia an act of love now seemed a back-breaking burden.

“I only wanted your h-help,” she wailed. “Oh, Mother, I d-don’t know what to doooooo.”

Cordelia realized that, for the first time since she had given birth—on one of the hottest days in Manhattan’s recorded history—to a nine-and-a-half-pound baby she’d named Caroline after her mother’s mother, she no longer wanted the responsibility of looking after her younger daughter.

“Well, you’ll just have to figure it out for yourself,” she told Sissy, not unkindly. She hadn’t, after all, stopped loving her.

“You mean ...”

“That’s right. It’s time you made up your own mind about what you’re going to do.”

“But how will I ... ?”

“Oh you’ll survive, Sissy.
That
much you can count on.”

It’s living that takes work
—
like tending a garden,
Cordelia thought, seeing Gabe in her mind, kneeling in the flower bed by the gazebo, his battered khaki hat tilted over his brow, his bare hands working the earth, digging to form holes for the flowers he would plant there.

“Well, thank
you
—for nothing!”

Cordelia heard a click in her ear as Sissy hung up.

Immediately, Cordelia began to feel guilty. She’d been too harsh. Her meeting with Nola Emory had left her short-tempered. Maybe she ought to, if not take back what she’d said, then at least soften the blow. Yes, Sissy needed to stand on her own feet, but Cordelia would reassure her that her mother would always be there for her, love her, no matter what.

She picked up the phone, but before she could even start to dial, a man’s voice boomed out at her, startling her. Then came Chris’s, softer, more tentative.

“Uh, Jack, is my mom there?” Chris was talking over the bedroom extension. “I called home, but she didn’t answer. I thought she might be with you.”

“To be honest, Chris, I haven’t seen her in a couple of days.” Jack sounded tense and unhappy. “Anything I can help you with? Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, sure.” Chris sounded anything but okay. “You probably heard ... I’m going to be staying with my dad from now on.”

There was a brief, awkward pause; then Jack said, “No, I didn’t know. But I’m sure your mom will miss having you around. You know you mean everything to her.”

Suddenly Cordelia was seeing Jack in her mind, the zest with which he’d torn into his meal at the restaurant, like one of those old-fashioned locomotives into which coal had to be shoveled at an alarming rate as it raced along the tracks. Not conventionally handsome, but then, except for Win, she had always mistrusted men who were endowed with more than functionally good looks—the type who secretly admired their reflections while pretending to gaze at window displays. Jack Gold, in passing a store, would wonder how much it rented for, and to whom, and if there might be an opportunity in it for him somehow.

Yet, even during that tense dinner, she’d sensed his kindness, his generosity. She’d seen the tender solicitude he’d shown Grace, the way he’d smiled at her friend Lila, accepting her as if she’d been one of his publishing buddies. And now he was trying his best to smooth things over with Chris.

“I
know
my mom cares about me,” she heard Chris say. “I don’t need
you
to tell me.”

“Hey, don’t bite my head off—I only want what’s best for you.”

“Yeah, well, maybe the best thing’d be getting to live with
both
my parents.”

“Chris, that’s not going to happen.” Jack’s voice was even.

“What makes you so sure?” Chris’s voice rose, cracking on a high, girlish note. “I’ll bet you didn’t know my dad spent the night with my mom. What do you think of
that?”

Oh, Chris.
Cordelia had to bite her lip to keep from speaking up.

After a long silence. Jack finally spoke. “If it’s true, I think that’s something for your mother and me to discuss.” He sounded shaken to the core, but he was handling Chris extremely well. Cordelia’s admiration rose a notch.

“You don’t believe me?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Well, then, go ask her! Go ask Mom! There’s just one thing I wish all of you so-called grownups would do, and that’s leave me out of it! I’m sick of people acting like they want me around when it’s obvious they don’t give a shit.
All I want is to be left alone!”

Cordelia carefully lowered the receiver, then sat there, too stunned to move. She knew she had to do something. Those awful things the boy had said to Jack! Heavens, she’d have to warn Grace.

She could feel the cold bead of resentment she’d been nurturing against her older daughter start to melt.

Cordelia dressed quickly. Buckling a belt around the pale-gold sweater dress she’d worn this afternoon, she noticed it was the wrong color. But who cared? She wedged her feet into the first pair of shoes she came across in the closet.

Making her way down the hallway to her grandson’s bedroom, one hand on the wall to keep herself steady, she realized something was different.
It’s so quiet.

Usually Chris had his tape player going full-blast, that awful music that sounded like a bunch of rioting thugs on the street. But the odd noise coming from his room now was ... She couldn’t place it at first, then she realized. ...

Silence.

Cordelia knocked on his door. No answer. She knocked again, harder this time, each blow sending pain from her knuckles up into her head. Still no answer.

Finally, she opened the door and cautiously peered into the darkened room, with its jumble of unmade bed, discarded clothing, strewn computer discs. But no sign of Chris. And no dog, either.
He must have taken Cody for
a
walk.
He had to have slipped out just after he got off the phone. There was only the faint hum from the glowing screen of his computer. She drew closer, and saw that he’d typed something there ... and that it wasn’t, as she’d first thought, the start of a homework assignment.

Dear Dad,

I can’t live with you. I don’t blame you if you end up hating me for this. I just can’t take being in the middle. Don’t look for me. I’ll call you sometime just to let you know I’m okay.

Chris

P.S. Cody is with me. Don’t worry.

Everything that had been blurred now jumped out at Cordelia with vivid, knife-edged clarity. She hurried out into the living room, its white plush carpet spongy beneath her feet, seeming to slow her as she made her way over to the phone on the table next to the deep cordovan sofa.

A young boy all alone in this city—anything could happen to him.

She was halfway through Grace’s number when she thought better of it. She ought to call the police first. Then go over to Grace’s, tell her face to face, reassure her.

Even with her control slipping out from under her like a patch of icy sidewalk, Cordelia clung to the conviction that, yes, everything would turn out all right. Hadn’t she always made sure that things ran smoothly, that no one got hurt? And if lately her life seemed to have gone haywire, then she would just have to see that it got set back on course. For, if you couldn’t believe in yourself, in your power to do good, to solve problems, what else was there?

“It’s Chris. He ... It appears he’s run away.”