Saving Grace (11 page)

“I despise cancer,” Tamar said quietly. “I fight it every day. But I know I’m not immune to it.”

“The housing plan was never a factor, was it, Lily?” he said as his wife entered the room, bearing flowers.

“We never mentioned it,” Lily said. “Why would we?”

Jonathan, finding this answer less supportive than expected, raised his eyes to his wife’s face.

Tamar turned away. On a shelf, unostentatiously displayed, was a photo she had not noticed before. In it was a much younger version of Jonathan, shaggy-haired and bright-eyed, standing beside a man she recognized at once as Martin Luther King Jr. It wasn’t a posed photo, but a snapshot of the two men deep in conversation on a city corner. King’s right arm was slung round Jonathan’s shoulders; in the background was a blur of running men.

Lily slipped out of the room as quietly as she had entered it. Jonathan came over to Tamar, took the photo from her hand and studied it.

“This was Gracie’s,” he said. “For years it was her most prized possession. She kept it on her dresser.
 
She took it to Show and Tell. Then we had that ridiculous fight about the Martindale house, and two days later Lily rescued this picture from the trash.”

Jonathan’s story had crystallized everything Tamar sensed about her brother’s household. Despite its opulence, there’d been a deep dissonance in that family, a sadness at the core. It would be good for Gracie to come here, she thought. She’d known the desert to cure many a festering wound.

The sun dipped over the mountains, and at once the air turned chill. “Dinner time,” Micha said firmly. Tamar got up out of her chair and ran her hands through her graying hair. Her father took one of her arms and her son the other, and together they walked along the path to the dining hall.

7

JONATHAN, YOU HAVE TO DISTANCE yourself from Michael. He’s going to drag you down with him.”

“What is that, woman’s intuition?”

“Martha said so.”

Jonathan looked at his wife, who was cutting rose stems over the sink. He threw his briefcase onto the seat of a chair and hung his wet raincoat over its back. “Martha Kavin? When did you see her?”

“I went into town yesterday. We had lunch.”

“Since when are you two lunch buddies?”

“I invited her. To show we weren’t going to drop them just because they have trouble.”

“That was nice of you.”

She turned to look at him. “She told me to go to hell. Michael is going to turn on you.”

“Not in this lifetime.”

“Martha hates us. She blames all their troubles on us. She says you seduced Michael into whatever it is he’s supposed to have done. She implied that you’re corrupt and I’ve closed my eyes to it. She called me an ostrich.”

“Bitch. I never liked that woman.”

“Jonathan, is Michael going to be indicted?”

“Probably.”

“Can he hurt you?”

“He wouldn’t even if he could,” Jonathan said firmly, because if he couldn’t rely on that, he might as well pack it all in. Lucas Rayburn had turned on him. Barnaby was targeting him. Rumors were flying; even Spiegel was hedging his bets. Soon the leaks would begin. “Fleishman Under Investigation…” “Eastborough Democratic Leader Suspected...” And once it began, the ending was preordained.
 

“What is it?” Lily said. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”
 

“I’m not blind.”

Jonathan hesitated. He couldn’t tell her everything. Lily was that part of his life unsullied by politics. If he lost that, what would remain? It was, moreover, his duty to protect her. “It’s that bastard Gracie’s been seeing,” he said at last. “He’s been talking to people, asking questions.”

“What kind of questions?”

“The offensive kind,” he snapped.

Lily took the roses from the sink and began arranging them in a crystal vase. A thorn scratched her finger, and a drop of blood fell onto the counter. “Have you told Gracie?” she asked.

“No, and I don’t want you to.”

“Why not?”

“Wouldn’t help.”
 

“Why do you say that?”

“She wouldn’t stop seeing him.” It hurt him to say it.

“Of course she would,” Lily said, but she wasn’t sure either, and it showed in her voice.

“I guess I don’t want to find out.”

Lily carried the vase into the living room and set it on a side table. Jonathan followed, throwing himself into an armchair. She stood at the picture window overlooking the bay, and in the rain-streaked glass saw her husband sitting in a pool of light, leaning forward, hands on knees, watching her. In the reflection his face was blurred, mutable; for a moment she saw the face of her young lover of that first summer, when they lived together in the back of the van they called Rosinante, traveling through the south.

Nothing was forbidden then, nothing hidden. “What are you thinking?” one would ask, purposely picking the most incongruous time, and the rule was that the other had to tell everything, no matter how silly, irrelevant, or revealing, and not just the primary thought but all the tangled strands of miscellaneous notions, stray impressions, sensations, and feelings that made up the moment.

How unthinkable such a game was now. How dangerous.

Outside, the rain-bearing wind blew across the bay, lashing the sentinel cypresses, pressing against the window, groping for a crack, a crevice, any way in. Beyond the long, manicured lawn, the moored ketch rode the waves; rain-whipped, the tide was high tonight. The ketch’s mast rose and fell high above the dock, and its bumpers thudded against the piles, sounding like a distant drum.

Sudden darkness engulfed the boat. Even as Lily watched, a great tidal wave rose from the bay. Smashing over the bulkheads, it inundated the lawn, washed away her shallow garden, and loomed over the house. She covered her face and awaited the crash of shattering glass. But nothing happened; and when she peeked through her fingers, the wave was gone.

Her husband’s reflection wavered and aged. Framed by lamplight, he peered in on her as if the glass were between them.

“Lily,” he whispered, “I need to know: are you with me?”

“Where else would I be?” she said.

“You look so far away.”

“I’m frightened.” She leaned her forehead against the cool glass and waited for him to come up behind her and say: No need, my love.

“I’m going to confront Lucas,” Jonathan said from his armchair.

Many questions occurred to her, but the one she asked was, “Is that wise?”

* * *

Three days later, they faced off in the living room of the Highview house.

Lily said, “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“So you’ve said.”

“You used to take my advice.”

“You used to give advice worth taking,” Jonathan said.

“I used to have the information.”

“You used to want it.”

They were saying forbidden things, picking at the fabric of the marriage. Outside, a car door slammed. “Be careful,” Lily whispered.

The bell rang. Lily opened the door, said, “Hello, Lucas,” and held up her face to be kissed. Rayburn bussed her cheek, glancing past her at Jonathan.

He came forward, not smiling. “Glad you could make it. I wasn’t sure you would.”

“Neither was I,” Lucas said. They shook hands briefly—Lucas’s hand dwarfed Jonathan’s—and Lily led them into the living room.

“Lovely room,” Lucas said.

She stared at him. “You say that as if you’ve never seen it before.”
 

“He’s seeing it now through different eyes,” Jonathan said

Lily settled herself on a sofa. They had quarreled earlier about her sitting in. Jonathan said it would look as if he were hiding behind her skirts, but Lily for once was adamant. “This affects me as much as you and Lucas better know it.”

“Coffee?” Jonathan asked Lucas. “Or a drink?”

“Nothing, thanks.”

“Afraid it might be contaminated?”

“Poisoned,” Lucas said, and they all pretended to laugh.

Jonathan sat beside his wife, Lucas opposite in an armchair, stretching out his long legs. “So, buddy,” Jonathan said, “you want to tell me what’s going on?”

“If that’s why you asked me here, this is going to be a short visit.”

“You can’t say it to my face? You sent that woman with a subpoena to paw through my goddamn bank records—what did you think you’d find?”

Lily, who had not known about the subpoena, felt that she was falling, drifting slowly downward into the bottom of a deep, still well, a listening place. She did not look at her husband, nor he at her.

Lucas studied his hands. “You know I can’t discuss my office’s activities with you.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I thought maybe you had something to say to me.”

Jonathan snorted. “I know Buscaglio offered Michael a deal to implicate me. You’re coming after me, and you don’t have the basic decency to say to my face what you’re doing behind my back.”
 

“You talk about decency,” Lucas Rayburn said, with a flash of bitterness.

“You could have come to me. Anything you wanted to know, you could have asked. I’ve got nothing to hide. But this dirty business, this going behind my back, suborning friends and colleagues, that’s despicable, man. That’s beneath you, or so I thought.”

“I’ve got a job to do. Friendship doesn’t come into it.”

Lily found her voice at last. “It did before you had the job, when you needed Jonathan’s support to get it. For God’s sake, Lucas, you know what Jonathan has done for this city, what he did before we came here!”

“I do,” Lucas said in his deep, slow voice. “He’s done pretty well for himself, too.”

“How dare you!” Lily cried. You know us! I thought we were all on the same side.”

Lucas clasped his hands so tightly his dark knuckles gleamed. “I know what you were,” he said softly. “I haven’t forgotten a thing. That’s what makes it so sad.”

“So you will not listen to reason,” Jonathan said sadly. “You persist in trying to make something out of nothing.”

“No one can do that.”

“Except God,” Lily said, “and that’s who you’re playing.”

* * *

When he was gone, they stood for a while in the large living room without speaking. Finally Jonathan said, “You stuck up for me. Thank you.”

“What did you expect?”

“No less.”

“Why is Lucas doing this?”

“Because I’m Michael’s friend. Guilt by association.” They looked at each other. He expected her to drop her eyes and turn away or melt into him, but she just stood there.

“Jonathan,” she said, “what have you done?”

“Nothing I’m ashamed of. This is about Lucas’s ambition, nothing more or less.”

“He seemed so…sad.”

“Crocodile tears. He’d sell his soul to be mayor, but there’s heavy competition. You want maximum publicity, who do you go after? Not the bad guys—that’s too easy. No, you go after the biggest good guy you can find and pull
him
down. All the better if it’s a friend. Let everyone see how impartial you are.”

“How could you not tell me they subpoenaed
our bank records? Don’t you think it concerns me too?”

“No. It’s nothing to do with you, and I won’t let them drag you into it.”

She stared at him. His brow was beaded with sweat. “Are you frightened?”

“Not frightened; concerned. Despite your parting exchange with Lucas, it’s very easy to make something out of nothing—it’s called fabricating a case, and it happens every day.”

Lily’s headache was back. She sank into a chair. A woman was singing.
“Rock-a-bye baby in the treetop, ven the vind blows, the cradle vill rock...”

The voice faded away. Lily shivered. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” said Jonathan.
 

* * *

“What I can’t make out,” Barnaby murmured, “is how you got from there to here.” They were in his apartment because Gracie, testing her strength, had insisted that she would meet him there or nowhere. Barnaby would have fortified himself with a visit to Ronnie Neidelman, but they were still on the outs. Gracie sat on the edge of his bed, legs tucked beneath her. He clung to his armchair as if to a slippery rock in a tempest.

“What do you mean?” Gracie said.

“I remember you as your old man’s shadow, Jonathan’s little coat-bearer. What changed? What happened to the two of you?”

“What’s it to you?”

“I’m interested. I want to know what makes you tick.”

“You make me tick.” She aimed for sexy but couldn’t quite pull it off straight-faced.