The Pursuit of Happiness (2001) (73 page)

Pause.

‘I want you to take the money, Dorothy.’

‘And if I did …?’

‘It’s the end of the matter. The money is yours.’

‘This …
gift
… will never,
never
give you any entitlement to Kate or Charlie …’

‘I expect nothing in return.’

‘You will get nothing in return. That’s the one string
I
will attach to this gift: I will accept it only if you agree that, as long as I’m alive, you will never make contact with my children. And one more thing: after today, I never want to see or hear from you ever again.’

Without hesitating, I said, ‘Fine.’

‘I have your word?’

‘You have my word.’

Silence. She reached into her handbag and pulled out a little notebook and a pen. She wrote a name and a number on a leaf of paper, then tore it out and handed it to me.

‘This is the phone number for my lawyer. You can talk to him about setting up the trust.’

‘I’ll get on to it tomorrow morning.’

Silence. Then she said, ‘You know what I think sometimes? How if he hadn’t run into you again that afternoon in Central Park … I remember that afternoon so clearly. We were out walking. He was tired. He wanted to go home. But it was such a beautiful day I insisted we stop by the gazebo next to the lake. Suddenly, there you were … and everything changed. All because I asked him to loiter for a bit by the lake.’

‘It’s the way things work, isn’t it? Chance, happenstance …’

‘And choice. Things might happen accidentally - like me getting pregnant, or you meeting an old lover and his family in the park. But then we make choices. That’s what we have to live with: not the accident, the
fluke
- but the choices we make in the wake of it. Because they really determine our destiny.’

She glanced at her watch. ‘I must go.’

She stood up. I did so too.

‘Goodbye then,’ I said.

‘Goodbye,’ she said.

Then she quickly touched my sleeve and said two words: ‘Thank you.’

I never saw her again. I never spoke with her again. I never came near her children. I honored the conditions she demanded. I kept my word.

Until she died.

‘U
NTIL SHE DIED
.’

The manuscript ended there. I held the last page in my hand, staring down at that final line. After a moment, I let it drop on to the hefty pile of pages scattered on the floor by the sofa. I sat back. I gazed blankly out the window, trying to think, not knowing what to think. Dawn’s early light was cleaving the dark sky. I glanced at my watch. Six fifteen. I had been reading all night.

Eventually, I forced myself to stand up. I walked into the bedroom. I stripped off my clothes. I stood under a shower for a very long time. I got dressed. I made coffee. While it percolated, I gathered up the manuscript pages and returned them to the box in which they came. I drank the coffee. I picked up my coat and the manuscript box. I left the apartment. The doorman hailed me a taxi. I told the driver I was heading to 42nd Street and First Avenue. As we cruised downtown, I turned on my cellphone and made a call. Meg answered, her ‘Hello’ accompanied by a bronchial wheeze.

‘I’m coming over,’ I said. ‘Now.’

‘What the hell time is it?’ she said.

‘Just after seven.’

‘Jesus Christ. Has something happened?’

‘Yes. I’ve been up all night. Reading.’

‘Reading what?’

‘I think you know.’

Silence. I broke it. ‘Just as I think you know where I was yesterday evening.’

‘Haven’t a clue,’ she said.

‘Liar.’

‘I’ve been called worse. Should I put on a flame-retardant dress before you get here?’

‘Yes,’ I said, and hung up.

She was actually dressed in a pair of men’s pajamas and an old bathrobe when I arrived. The requisite two cigarettes were already burning in an ashtray. The television was tuned to CNN, the volume far too loud. As always, there was a pile of books and periodicals by an armchair. The remnants of a recent supper - a half-eaten Chinese take-out - had yet to be cleared off the little table that doubled as a desk and dining area. The apartment was the same as I’d always known it all my life. It was just as Sara must have seen it - when she came here on the night of my father’s funeral in 1956.

‘I’m never talking to you again,’ I said, as I walked in and tossed the manuscript box on her sofa.

‘Glad to hear it,’ she said, clicking off the television. ‘Coffee or coffee?’

‘Coffee. And an explanation.’

‘For what?’ she asked, pouring me a cup from her old electric percolator.

‘Don’t go coy on me, Meg. It doesn’t suit you.’

‘And there I was, thinking that I might try “coy” for Christmas.’

‘Quite a book,’ I said, nodding towards the manuscript box. ‘I presume you’ve read it?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve read it.’

‘She didn’t hire you as her editor, did she?’

‘I read it as a friend.’

‘Oh yes, I forgot. You and Mystery Woman just happened to have been bosom buddies for the last four decades. And now I suppose you’re going to help her get her book published?’

‘She doesn’t want it published. She wrote it for herself.’

‘Then why did she want
me
to read it?’

‘It’s part of your life. You needed to know.’

‘I needed to know
now?
Right after my mother’s funeral?’

She just shrugged and said nothing. I said, ‘You should have told me, Meg. You should have told me
everything
years ago.’ ‘You’re right, I should have. But Dorothy was very insistent. Because she made it very clear that she wouldn’t touch the trust if either of you found out.’

‘She
should
never have touched the trust.’

‘If she hadn’t, you would never have had that fancy private school education of yours …’

‘Big deal.’

‘It
was
a big deal … and you know it. Because it took a lot of guts for Dorothy to do what she did. Jesus, imagine it: having to rely on money from your late husband’s lover to get your kids through school.’

‘But I thought Uncle Ray paid for our school and college.’

‘Ray never gave your mom a dime. He was the original WASP tightwad. No kids, a big white-shoe practice in Boston, an even bigger bank account. But when his sister and her husband were in dire straits - after Jack lost his job at Steele and Sherwood - Ray pleaded poverty. Even when Jack was dying at Mass General, that asshole didn’t once pay him a visit … even though the hospital was only a ten-minute walk from his Beacon Hill townhouse. Worse yet, he didn’t exactly spend a lot of time comforting his sister during that time. One lunch on the afternoon before Jack died, during which he told his sister that she should never have married “that Brooklyn mick”. Dorothy hardly spoke to him after that. Then again, I don’t think they ever really liked each other anyway. He always disapproved of
everything
to do with Dorothy. Especially when it came to my brother.’

‘But I was still told that Ray was my great benefactor.’

‘Your mom had to find some story to tell you about the money. God knows, it sickened her to accept Sara’s gift. And though she never said much about it, I know that it ate away at her. But she was the ultimate pragmatist. She couldn’t afford your education on what she made as a librarian. So she was going to swallow her pride - as she always did, the fool - and do what was best for the two of you.’

‘You mean, like keeping all this from me until my mid-forties?’

‘She was adamant that neither of you knew. Because I think she feared what you both might think. Anyway, a week before she died, I went to see her at New York Hospital. She knew she only had a couple more days. And she asked me: “Once I’m no longer around, are you going to tell her?” I said I’d stay schtum if that’s what she wanted. “It’s your call,” she told me. “But if you do decide she should know, let
her
tell Kate. It’s her story as much as mine.”’

‘But how did she know even where Sara was?’

‘From time to time, she’d ask me about her. She knew that Sara and I had become good pals, that we were in pretty regular contact. Just as she also knew that, through me, Sara was keeping tabs on you.’

‘Keeping tabs on me?
Judging by that photo gallery by her door, not to mention the album she sent me, she was doing a little more than that. With your help.’

‘You’re right. I gave her all the photographs. I supplied her with all the newspaper clippings. I kept her abreast of all that was happening to you. Because she wanted to know. Because she genuinely cared about you. And because I felt she deserved to follow your progress.’

‘Mom didn’t mind that?’

‘She didn’t say. But, about ten years after Jack’s death, she did make this passing comment about how “that woman has been very good about staying away from us”. A couple of years later - when you were in
Guys and Dolls
at school - Sara showed up at a performance. I was with your mom, and I know that Dorothy saw her. But she said nothing. Just as she said nothing when she showed up at your graduations from Brearley and Smith. Again, Dorothy knew she was there - but she also saw that Sara was playing by the rules. And I think, in her own curious way, she liked the fact that she was so interested in you, and how you were doing. Remember: by the time you graduated from Smith, your dad was dead for twenty years. And Dorothy realized that the trust had made all the difference when it came to raising you and Charlie. So, in her own unspoken way, she was grateful.’

‘But they never met again?’

‘Nope. It was a four-decade silence … and they only lived seven blocks from each other. But you know what your mom was like. A cupcake with a reinforced steel filling.’

‘Tell me about it. Negotiating with her was like taking on Jimmy Hoffa.’

‘There you go. But though she was a hard ass, she was also pretty damn ethical. That’s why she hinted to me that, if the story was going to be told to you, Sara would have to do it. Because it was her own unstated way of letting Sara know that she didn’t go to her grave angry at her. It was a gesture, a
mitzvah.
I think Dorothy’s final thought on the subject was: if I’m no longer here to worry about it, why not let her finally meet you.’

‘Then why didn’t you just come out and introduce us …’

‘Your hard-ass mom had the last word on that. “If that woman decides she does want to meet Kate, you must promise me that you’ll say nothing to Kate in advance. In fact, I want you to deny all knowledge of that woman. Let
her
figure out a way of getting in touch with Kate … and then see if Kate will listen to her.’”

I shook my head in stunned incredulity. It was a classic Mom move. Forgiveness … but with a little
get-the-message
sting as part of the overall absolution package. She always knew how to ram home a moral point - yet to mask it behind a lily-scented smokescreen of decorum and propriety. This was, without question, her final masterstroke. She understood me better than anyone. She knew -
damn her
- that I’d play the hard bitch and resist all attempts to meet up with some old lady I’d initially file under
dotty.
Just as she also knew that Sara was strong-willed enough to finally get her own way, and force a meeting. And then? Then I’d be in possession of the story - but only Sara’s
version
of events. Had Mom wanted to put across her point of view, she herself would have told me everything before she died. Or she would have left a long letter of explanation. Instead, for reasons I still couldn’t fathom, she chose silence … and the risk that I would only hear Sara’s side of the story. And this decision baffled me completely.

‘You still should have warned me that a bombshell was en route in my direction,’ I said.

‘A promise is a promise,’ Meg said. ‘Your mom made me swear on a stack of Gideons not to say a damn word to you. I knew you weren’t going to be a member of my fan club after Sara finally met you. But … what can I say? If there’s one worthwhile thing that Catholicism taught me, it was how to keep a secret.’

‘Are you sure Charlie never knew?’

‘Mr Self-Pity? Even as a kid, he was too absorbed in feeling sorry for himself to ever notice anything going on around him. And since he didn’t deign to see your mom for the last fifteen years … Nah, Charlie-boy was way in the dark about this. And always will be. Unless you tell him now.’

‘Why would I do that? Especially as it would just reinforce all of Charlie’s beliefs about his dysfunctional heritage. And when he learned that Daddy was a rat …’

She suddenly turned on me. ‘Never,
never
call him that again.’ Her voice was hard, angry.

‘Why the hell not?’ I said. ‘He only destroyed a couple of lives. And now - hey, presto! - back he comes to haunt mine.’

‘Well,
honey bun,
I am so desperately sorry to hear that your fragile psyche was undermined by the discovery that your father was one complicated guy …’

‘Complicated?
He did some terrible things.’

‘Yes he did. And God, how he paid for it. Just as Sara paid for her bad calls. You don’t get through life without paying big time for getting it wrong.’

‘Tell me about it. I’m the poster child for Getting It Wrong.’

‘No - you’re the poster child for self-flagellation. Which is so dumb.’

‘That’s me: Ms-Refuses-to-be-Happy. It’s a great Malone family tradition.’

‘What family isn’t screwy? What family doesn’t have some shit hidden in the attic? Big deal. But what saddens the hell out of me … what neither your mother nor I could ever work out … was why, over the past ten years, you always seemed so damn disappointed in everything. Especially yourself.’

‘Because I
am
disappointing.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘Why not? I’ve failed everybody: my mom, my son. Even that shit, my ex-husband. And me. I’ve really failed me.’

‘You are so wrong there,’ she said, trying to take my hand. I pulled it away.

‘No. I’m not.’

‘You know what I discovered some time ago? Everything in life is fundamentally catastrophic. But the thing is, most stories don’t end happily or tragically. They just
end.
And usually in something of a muddle. So as long as you know that it’s all a shambles with a definite terminus, well …’

‘Oh I get it. Try to be happy within the shambles?’

‘Hey, is happiness a federal offence?’

‘I don’t do happy.’

‘You used to, you know.’

‘Yeah, but that was before I started making mistakes …’

‘With guys, you mean?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Listen, I could write chapter and verse on every damn disappointment and sadness and failure I’ve suffered. So what? Terrible stuff happens to everyone. It’s the basic law of living. But so is one simple fact: you have no choice but to keep going. Am I happy? Not particularly. But I’m not unhappy either.’