Saving Grace (16 page)

The moment passed. Detaching his mother’s fist gently but firmly from his shirt sleeve, he went out the French doors into the garden.

Lily’s garden was deafening with color: brilliant yellows and flamboyant reds, hot pinks, lavenders and purples set off by the royal blue of the bay. “Lily!” he called, but there was no reply.

Jonathan checked the garage and found her car in its usual place. For a moment he wondered if she could have gone out to talk to the reporters waiting like vultures outside his gates; but that was the last thing she would do. He walked back into the garden. “Lily, where are you?”

Suddenly he noticed a trowel and a pair of garden shears lying with an air of abandonment beside a cluster of rosebushes. He walked over slowly, a hollow ache in the pit of his stomach.

Lily lay in the grass behind the shrubs. Her eyes were closed, her hands black with dirt. There were streaks of mud on her cheek and twigs in her hair. A bee hovered over her lips. She was as beautiful as Snow White.

Jonathan fell to his knees beside her, calling her name. Her eyelashes trembled, like those of a child pretending to be asleep. But she did not stir.

11

HOW MANY TIMES, HOW MANY thousands of times have I told you not to work outside without a hat? You never listen.”

“Sorry,” Lily mumbled.

“Leave her alone, Jonathan! What’s the matter with you? Go, wet this rag again.” As soon as he was gone, Clara leaned toward her daughter-in-law. “Tell me,
tochter.
What is it?”

“I’m fine. Really.”

“Sure you’re fine. Lying out in the dirt God knows how long, that’s fine.”

“Jonathan’s right. Too much sun.”

“Maybe it’s change of life?” Clara whispered. “I don’t suppose it could be...
 
?”

Lily laughed. “Oh, God, Mother, no.”

Jonathan came back in. Clara put her strong arm under Lily’s shoulders. “Here,
drink a little, I made some nice tea.” She looked at her son, who had tossed the washcloth to her and was now pacing the room, and her voice sharpened. “Did you call the doctor?”

“No!” Lily sat up on the sofa. “No need, it was just too much sun.”

Jonathan gave her a brisk nod. She’d scared the life out of him. He’d carried her senseless into the house, shouting for his mother. But moments later, after Lily woke from her faint, he had succumbed to a searing irritation with his wife. What a thing to do, what a stupid stunt to pull, at the very moment that he needed her most! What was she trying to prove, working out in that sun with no hat, fainting and scaring them all to death? He had returned home after the worst day of his life, and this was what greeted him: his daughter a traitor, his son AWOL, his mother hurling I-told-you-so’s, and now this. It was too bad, it was really too bad. He deserved better from his family.

“I have to make some calls,” Jonathan said. “When you’re feeling better, Lily, come see me in the study.”

The two women watched him out the door. They looked at each other.
 

“He’s not himself,” Clara said.
 

“Who is he, then?”

* * *

Jonathan sat at his captain’s desk of gleaming teak and brass, head in hands, revisiting his phone conversation with Solly Lebenthal. There was a time, long ago, when he had assumed that every phone he regularly used was tapped. Years of success, acceptance, and prosperity had eroded his caution; he’d been slow to see that if Lucas had gone so far as to subpoena his bank records, he might well have gone further still. He’d spoken foolishly to Solly. The wretched man had caught him off-guard, with his wild talk about going in together, cutting a deal with the U.S. attorney’s office. What deal, for Christ’s sake? What did they have to confess to? Was it a crime for a man to support his family?

Barnaby’s outrageous portrayal of Jonathan seemed possessed to have reached into his life and skewed it. Even Solly Lebenthal, who of all people should have known better, acted as if the reporter’s accusations were true, as if his lies and distortions weren’t perfectly obvious. A man can have overlapping spheres of public duty and private interest without being corrupt. It was only natural that most of his clients did business with the city, Jonathan’s expertise being the very reason they came to him. How can you have a crime with no victim? If his private interests meshed with his public interests, did that not serve to make him more zealous in pursuit of the public good?

He was choosy about his clients. He didn’t work with deadbeats. I he sponsored a company for a set-aside job and that company screwed up the job, they were never going to work for the city again, no matter how many retainers, consultancies, or campaign contributions they offered him. They had to do the job: that was an essential part of the deal, and Jonathan made sure they knew it.

That these companies had prospered was a tribute to his skill in picking winners, minority companies with the stuff to make it big. All they needed was a leg up; all they lacked was access to the white power grid. Jonathan supplied those needs—for a price, admittedly, but man cannot live by pro bono work alone.

So he told himself, and yet Jonathan was uncomfortably aware in a rarely consulted corner of his mind that others might characterize
 
his activities differently. To forestall misunderstandings, he needed urgently to sit down with the presidents of all six companies Barnaby had named in his piece, to find out what they’d told Barnaby and whom else they’d been talking to.

That morning he’d asked Maggie to arrange the meetings, but his normally indefatigable secretary had failed to reach even one of the six. Jonathan picked up his desk phone and dialed the direct line of Rencorp’s president.

His secretary answered.

“Hilary, it’s Jonathan Fleishman. Put him on, would you, dear?”

“Sorry, sir, he’s not in.”

“Where is he?”

“Out of town, sir.”

“Where? I need to reach him.”

“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t have that information.”

Sirring him to death. One after another, he dialed the other five companies. Each time he got the runaround. By the time he hung up on the last know-nothing secretary, Jonathan was livid.

There was a knock on the door. “Come in,” he barked, expecting his wife. But it was Paul who entered, shutting the door behind him.

“Finally,” growled Jonathan. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Driving around.” Paul sprawled into a chair, stretching out his. “Did you know there’s a bunch of reporters and a sheriff’s car outside the gate?”

“Of course I know. I sent for the cops to keep the reporters off the grounds. You didn’t speak with them?”

“Hell, no! Someone in this family knows how to keep his mouth shut. This is a fine mess Gracie’s gotten us into.”
 

“It’s not all her fault. That bastard had his sights on me all along. Gracie was just the icing on the cake for him.”

“Look, Dad, the stuff I said this morning…I’ve thought it through, and I want you to know I’ve got your back.”

“What did you say this morning?”

“Mom didn’t tell you?”

“Your mother’s not feeling well.”

Paul looked relieved. “I was just venting. This thing couldn’t have happened at a worse time. I had a date to play tennis with Jessica Dumont, who happens to be the only child of Jason Dumont of Dumont Industries? Two minutes after I read that thing, she called to cancel. She made some excuse, but I knew her father made her do it.”

With an effort, Jonathan brought his attention to bear on his son. “So her old man’s an ass. If you like the girl and she likes you, you’ll find some other place to meet.”

“She’s not the kind of girl. Besides, it’s the father I really wanted to meet. Fucking bastard Barnaby. I blame Gracie, too.”
 

“Who else?” said Jonathan, seeing which way the wind blew.
 

Paul reddened. “So she
did
talk to you. Don’t blame me for being upset. I mean, we’re your family, for Chrissake. You’re supposed to protect us from this crap.”

Jonathan said nothing, only looked, and Paul turned redder still.

“Anyway,” he went on, “as I’m driving around, I start realizing I’m not the only one hurt by this thing.”

“And this came as a revelation?” Jonathan said. “Trumpet blasts, voices from on high?”

Paul was and had ever been impervious to sarcasm. “That’s right. So I turned around and drove back to tell you: for what it’s worth, and to the extent I can do anything, I’m here for you, Dad.”

“Thank you, Paul, for what it’s worth and to that extent.”

“I figure we’re in it together.
 
I never asked where the money came from, did I? I just took what you gave; so that makes me like an accessory.”

“Like a what?”

“Isn’t that the right word?”

“Depends on what you mean. An accessory is someone who aids and abets a crime.”

“Well, maybe I didn’t do that exactly.”

“But I did?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Didn’t you?” Jonathan looked around vaguely. “Someone did.”

“Come on, Dad. Even I know a man is innocent until proven guilty.”

Jonathan pounded his desk. “Goddammit, I
am
innocent!”

“That’s the spirit, Dad.”
 

As Paul left, Lily came in and took his seat.

“Did you hear what your son said to me?” Jonathan demanded, holding the edge of his desk.

“I heard. You intimidate him.”

“He scares the hell out of me.”

“Have you seen Gracie yet?”

“Briefly,” he said coldly.

“I hope you weren’t too hard on her.”

“I should have thought your first concern would be for me. Gracie is not the injured party.”

“She’s injured, too. And you’re a lot tougher than she is.”

“What does that mean? I’m tough, so I don’t need my family’s support? I deserve better than this.”

“Yes, you’re right,” she said. “It was damned inconsiderate of me to faint in the garden.”

“Don’t start with me, Lily.”

“I’m as furious with Gracie as you are. She had no right to expose our private family business to that stranger; it was foolish and dangerous, but it wasn’t malicious. She didn’t know what that creature was up to. She cared about him, and he used her.”

“Of course she knew. I warned her.”

“But she didn’t believe you. She was in love with him. Darling, we’re so used to treating Gracie like an adult, we forget that emotionally she’s still a child. She trusted him because she loved him.”

“She’s not that stupid.”

“What did she tell you?”

“What difference does it make? Of course she claims she didn’t know what he was doing. What else would she say?”

Lily’s rigid posture relaxed a little. “You know Gracie never lies. She’s much too arrogant.”

“She knew, she didn’t know, what the hell’s the difference? She betrayed me. Do you realize how that Martindale story made me look?”

“Made
us
look. I was a party to that decision.”

“So you were. And did we ever discuss or even mention the effect of integration on our home’s value?”

“Of course not,” she said.

He nodded approvingly.

“We didn’t need to say it.” Lily felt as if someone else were speaking through her mouth, not quite a stranger, but someone she had known a very long time ago. The feeling was alarming and exhilarating, like riding a roller coaster. But Jonathan looked as if she’d stabbed him in the heart.

* * *

Lily rarely entered Gracie’s room. This was partly because Gracie never invited her, and partly because the room’s barrenness felt like a reproach, a declaration that they had nothing to give Gracie that Gracie wanted. In Martindale her bedroom had been charming and feminine, furnished by Lily in white French Provincial. But after her quarrel with Jonathan, the girl discarded the furniture together with all remnants and reminders of childhood, including photographs. All she kept were her books, locked diaries, and a minimum of clothing; and thereafter she maintained this Spartan order by never acquiring a new possession without discarding an old. Lily had never forgotten something that Jonathan’s sister Tamar had said, during her only visit. “Gracie lives like a refugee in her own home.”

She knocked on the door, waited a moment, and walked in. Gracie looked up angrily, slipping a letter under her pillow.
 

“Tell me that’s not from Barnaby,” Lily said.

“No! It’s from Tamar.”

There was no chair, so Lily lowered herself gracefully to the mattress on the floor. “Your aunt? What does she want?”

“She invited me to visit the kibbutz.”

What
chutzpah,
thought Lily, to write directly to Gracie instead of to us. Though she hardly knew her sister-in-law, it seemed to her typically high-handed, just the way Tamar would go about things. Lily suspected Tamar of intending to steal her daughter away, though she had no evidence, only the fear that it might be possible. She knew her own deficiencies as a mother. Lily loved her daughter dearly and understood her even better than Jonathan, who was too close to see Grace clearly. But love isn’t everything; it isn’t even enough. Lily had always felt that Gracie needed more from her, needed something Lily did not possess and could not even name.