The Darlings (37 page)

For everything that had passed between them, and for all that he had given her, Julianne finally could give Morty something in return. It felt good to her, good enough so that she never questioned it. It somehow evened the score. Whenever it was that they found Morty—and she was almost certain that they would, eventually—she wanted to be able to sleep that night, knowing that it hadn't been she who had turned him in. In the meantime, she would wonder how long he had been planning it.

Had he flown to France to see Sophie? His true love, the woman who would, at the end of the day, always be his wife? Had they planned it all together? Or had he simply disappeared, shedding the skin of his former life like a molting snake?

Julianne wanted to hate him but as was often the case, she couldn't stay mad at Morty for very long. Even Morty's selfish acts had a strange way of charming her. There was something about the way he executed things that was so brilliantly precise and so beguilingly adept that she couldn't help but admire him. She had never known anyone so clever. Morty did everything, she thought, better than anyone. Before long, she would smile quietly when his name was mentioned on the news.
He chose me,
she would think.
At least, for a time he did. And he's smarter than all of you.

When they found him, she would still be proud of him, for trying it at all. It had been, she thought, his best performance.

MONDAY, 7:06 A.M.

“T
he arraignment's been moved up to 10 a.m.,” Neil said when Merrill arrived. He gave her a swift hug, which had become their default greeting over the past forty-eight hours. “It's the first thing on the judge's docket.”

“Well, that's something.”

“Did you reach your mother?”

“No. I tried her cell on the way over here. I left a message with the room number for the arraignment in case she wants to join us, but I doubt she will.”

“What about Lily and Adrian?”

Merrill shrugged and shook her head. She went to fix herself some coffee. There was no milk, just Coffee-mate and sweeteners. The coffee itself came out cold from the dispenser; it probably hadn't been changed since the night before. It tasted bitter. Still, Merrill drank it in a few long draughts, and once it was gone, she poured herself a second cup. She couldn't remember the last time she had eaten, though she felt strangely devoid of hunger.

“I think it's just us,” she said. She tossed the Styrofoam cup in the trash.

Neil nodded. “It would look better if your mother was there.”

“There's nothing I can do about that.”

“I understand.” Neil turned to the associate who had been quietly arranging paperwork on the conference room table. “Is everything ready for her to sign?”

“Yes,” the associate said. Merrill realized he was probably close to her age, a year or two behind her out of law school, but he looked young to her, just a kid in a suit. “And the cars are downstairs to take you over whenever you're ready.”

“You'll have to sign these,” Neil said gently. Merrill couldn't tell whether he was genuinely empathetic or just knew how to get what he wanted in this type of situation. She had never really trusted Neil, but then, there was no one she trusted now. No one except for Paul.

“Are these for the bank check?” She asked the associate. He nodded and offered her a pen.

“They won't let us walk out of the building with a check for four million dollars without a few signatures.” Neil offered a small, almost apologetic smile. “We had the money moved to your account so that you can sign for it.”

“Can I speak to Dad when we get there? Alone?”

“After the arraignment. Once we post bail, he can go.”

“All right,” she said. “Then let's get this over with.”

For days, all Merrill had wanted was a few minutes alone with her father. There were so many questions she wanted to ask, so many answers that she would never believe but that she wanted to hear from him anyway. She wanted to look him in the eye and make him answer her questions. He owed her that.

During the arraignment, Merrill perched quietly on a bench on the far side of the room. She did her best to appear attentive, but the judge's words were drowned out by the frantic chatter in her head. She could sense people were watching her, so she kept her eyes forward, trained on the judge.
What did they expect from her?
She thought bitterly.
Tears? Anger? Haughtiness?

She wasn't sure how she was supposed to act, or even how she was supposed to feel. The truth was that she was having trouble connecting any of this to her family. Instead, it only brought to mind those role-playing exercises they used to do in law school, in classrooms that had been made to look like courtrooms. These exercises always felt so terribly contrived and unnatural, and nothing, Merrill had imagined at the time, like an actual proceeding. She half expected the judge and court officers to eventually break character, and she would see they were just law students. Instead, the judge droned on. It was just another Monday morning for him; he wanted that much to be clear. The court reporter typed away audibly. The neck of one of the court officers kept drooping like a wilted stem, as though he had been out late the night before. He looked as though he might fall asleep at any moment. Merrill scanned the room for a clock but couldn't find one. The minutes ticked by with unbearable slowness.

After bail had been set (at the staggering but previously agreed upon $4 million), the judge rose and Neil turned and nodded to her, signaling that it was over. Merrill got up and walked quickly out of the courthouse, her heart racing, eyes down, avoiding the gauntlet of judgmental stares. Ahead of her, she could see the crowd of reporters buzzing around her father and Neil like flies on meat. She waited until her father was in his town car and then she made a sprint for it.

When she opened the door, she brought with her a sudden flash of cameras and voices, and then
thunk
, the door was shut and then she was sitting beside her father in the cool stillness of the car. Outside the tinted window, she could hear muffled voices, calling her father's name. When Carter looked up at her, her mind went blank. The silence, but a second long, was suffocating. Her lips opened and closed a few times, but nothing came out; she was drowning faster than a caught fish.

“It meant the world to me to have you there.” Carter reached out and tried to hug her, but Merrill couldn't move. He let his hand settle on top of hers then, pressing her palm against the smooth leather seat.

Her hand lay flat, still beneath his. She looked straight ahead, past the driver's head and into oncoming traffic. A taxi honked and darted into their lane, narrowly avoiding a cyclist.

It was too hard to look at him. Everything about him appeared diminished. When Carter had entered the courtroom, her first thought was that he probably hadn't eaten. She wondered if they fed you in jail if you were there only for the night. And he had slept in his clothes, or spent the night in them, anyway. Up close, he was wrinkled, tired, in need of a shower. She hadn't expected it, his looking so terrible.

“Someone had to be,” she said lamely. She was hanging on to her composure by a single, slender thread.

“I know this hasn't been easy on anyone.”

“No, it hasn't.”

“How's Lily holding up?”

“I haven't spoken to her. Not since yesterday.” Every word felt painful.
This was all they would talk about from now on
, she thought. They could be talking about anything—a movie they had seen or how work was going—and underlying everything would be the subtext:

You betrayed us, Dad.

I know, I'm so sorry, will you ever forgive me?

Maybe, but I haven't yet . . .

Merrill began to swell with resentment, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. Carter was squeezing her hand so hard that the bones of her fingers ached. “I imagine you're all very angry with me,” he said.

Merrill withdrew her hand. “I don't know, Dad. I'm a lot of things right now. Mostly, I'm incredibly tired.”

“I know. I'm so sorry.”

She stared out the window as the tears began to slip down her cheeks. A light snow had begun to collect on the windshield and the driver flicked on the wipers. “Weren't you thinking of us at all? How this kind of thing would affect us?” she said, her lip trembling.

“Merrill, please look at me. I never stop thinking about you. Maybe you will understand this more when you have your own children. I've made mistakes, but I've only wanted to give you everything. I think I have. Haven't I?”

“I don't know, Dad.”

“I tried.”

“Was it Sol, Dad? Was it Sol who put Paul in the middle of the mess with David Levin? Just tell me it was and I'll believe you.” She looked him in the eye, but looked away as soon as she saw that he was crying. It always startled her to see him cry.

There was a long pause, so long that it was an answer unto itself. Then the light changed and the car stopped short, and Carter was jolted into answering. “I told him not to. I should've tried harder.”

“Did you know he was going to?”

“Paul's your husband, sweetheart. I swear to you, I wouldn't have let that happen to you. If I had known.”

“He's your family, too, Dad.” Her voice ran cold now, free of sympathy.

“Of course he is. Please, sweetheart, I swear to you; I would never allow anyone to harm Paul. Please, please trust me.”

There was something in his voice, something slippery and pathetic that she had never heard before and never, ever wanted to hear again.

“Just stop,” she said, disgusted.

“I know how it feels,” he said after a considered pause. “That moment when your father isn't a superhero anymore and you realize he's just a person. I remember that moment.”

“I don't expect you to be perfect.”

He shrugged. “You're perfect. To me you are. You always will be. When you're small, you think that about your parents. When you're old, you think that about your kids. You'll see.”

“I just expect you to be
honest
.” She enunciated the word as though he might be unfamiliar with it.

She reached for a handful of tissues from the box that the driver had placed for them in the back pocket of his seat and blew her nose. Her hands shook as she balled up the tissues tight in her fist. “Isn't that what you always told me to be? ‘
Just be honest, Merrill
. Be honest and work hard. Then everything will turn out for the best.'” Her voice had a mocking, venomous lilt. Anger had never come so easily to her before. It felt invigorating and empowering to speak this way; a good feeling, almost. “
Why
do you think I ended up in law school, for God's sake? Because I was stupid enough to believe you when you told me that's how you got ahead in life. And I so
desperately
wanted to please you. It makes me sick to think about it.”

The driver cleared his throat. “We're here, sir,” he said. Merrill realized they had been idling on the street in front of the Darlings' apartment building. She checked her watch.

She took a long, deep breath. “I have to get going,” she said, trying to sound calm.

“Please come up,” Carter said quietly. “Please. Your mother's home. I know she'd love to see you.”

Merrill swallowed. The idea of the apartment, of the living room, claus-trophobically thick with royal blue silks and chintz and patterned china bowls and dogs and tiny boxes clustered on the side tables, the striped walls hung with gilded mirrors, the barrel-vaulted ceiling and overstuffed couches, filled her with dread. The living room was a silent, hollow space, mostly unused except for formal occasions. The family gathered there to toast engagements and birthdays, school acceptances, job promotions. And of course, there were the parties. Merrill remembered the dresses (smocked Liberty prints in the spring; tartans at Christmastime) and patent-leather shoes that Ines would put them in when guests came over. They would get to stay up past their bedtime and Ines would shepherd them around to her friends, sometimes letting them hold trays of canapés; the guests would swoon over them,
behold the Little Darlings
! Lily always loved her parents' parties. Even then, she knew how to be a hostess. But Merrill would linger by the windows, looking out at the distant and glassed-in views of the trees in Central Park, wondering when it would all be over.

“All right,” she said reluctantly. “But only to see Mom. And only for a few minutes.”

As Merrill entered the building's lobby, the smell of pine marble polish, the click of her heels on the black-and-white patterned floors, the console table with its arrangement of freshly cut flowers brought on a wave of nostalgia. She inhaled sharply, forcing back her tears.

Tom, the doorman, was helping another man load suitcases into the elevator. When she saw Tom, she forced a smile. He had worked in the building for as long as Merrill could remember. She loved him the way she loved John and Carmela: not quite part of the family, but close. Throughout their childhood, Tom presided over the girls like a friendly uncle, putting them safely in cabs, casting stern glances at the boys who brought them home from dates and lingered beneath the building's brass-poled awning, hoping for a kiss. Even now, he would let Merrill up without calling first, as if the apartment would always be hers, too.

“Hi, Tom,” she called when he looked up at them. She tried her best to seem calm, as though it was any other day.

Tom paused. “Hello, Merrill.” He didn't come to greet her, but instead, finished with the suitcases. He offered Carter a quick nod. “Mr. Darling,” he said.

There was a stiffness to Tom's voice that made Merrill's stomach sink. Usually, he seemed happy to see her; sometimes he even gave her a hug. Now he held open the elevator door for them, glancing away as they passed. Merrill and Carter both whispered thank-you's. Carter offered the man with the suitcases a polite smile that was not returned.

The elevator ride felt interminably slow. Merrill and Carter stood directly in front of the other man, and she could feel his eyes on the back of her head. She stared in silence at the panel of numbers that lit up with each passing floor.

The other man got out on the sixth floor without a word. When the elevator doors shut, she thought,
Was this the way it was going to be from now on? Would they always be greeted with such coldness?
She looked over at her father, but his face was blank, and she wondered if he had even noticed.

The door to the apartment was ajar. They marched silently through the foyer to the living room, following the sound of voices. When Merrill opened the door, Lily and Adrian smiled up at her from the sofa. They both looked tired and grateful she was there.

“Angel,” Ines said after a beat, springing up from her chair. Ignoring Carter, she strode toward Merrill with arms extended.

“Mom.” Merrill's eyes closed as she pressed her cheek against Ines's neck. As her mother clung to her, Merrill looked over her shoulder, taking in the familiar sight of the living room. Framed photographs jumped out at her from every surface. There were the Christmas cards, professionally taken and mildly contrived. There were black-and-white portraits of the girls at their debutante balls, and a few press photos of Carter. And there were candids: snapshots on ski lifts and blowing out birthday candles and standing in the surf with plastic pails and shovels. The girls, in kneesocks and backpacks, holding hands in front of Spence's red front doors, their perfect unlined faces basking in the ignorant perfection of their youth. Ines liked the frames to be at the same angle from the table's edge and spaced equally from one another, like soldiers in a cavalry. If a visitor picked one up, Ines would dart over to them and politely confiscate it before they were able to leave fingerprints.