Betrayals (9 page)

O
n a sweltering Labor Day weekend in 1973, Rebecca returned to Boston for the first time since moving off Beacon Hill ten years earlier. She came alone on an Amtrak train. Her mother didn’t approve of her choice of Boston University. “Why Boston?” she’d demanded. “You’ve been accepted at Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Stanford.
Why
Boston University?”

Because it was in Boston, and Rebecca had dreamed about going back since she was eight. She’d restore the Blackburn name to its lofty pre–Thomas Blackburn position of respectability. And she’d do it in Boston.

But she didn’t tell her mother that. She claimed she’d decided on B.U. because they had offered her the best financial aid package, which was true. Smart, fatherless and the eldest of six, Rebecca had had no trouble getting scholarships.

“You don’t have to take me,” she’d told her mother, and Jenny Blackburn made no pretense of her relief. She couldn’t go back to Boston. And Rebecca wasn’t going to make her feel she had to.

So, her stuffed duffel bag slung over one shoulder, Rebecca made her way from the train station to her dormitory, the only person on the subway not grumbling about the heat. She could have called her grandfather, she supposed, and prevailed upon him to meet her, but why bother? She hadn’t heard from him since she and her mother and brothers had left Boston; he hadn’t answered any of the flurry of letters she’d written to him in those first lonely months in Florida. The only reason she knew he was still alive was because her mother still got tense and nervous whenever his name was mentioned.

Her roommate was a tiny, cheerful eighteen-year-old from Westchester County named Sophia Loretta Mencini—Sofi. She owned twenty-eight belts and twelve pocketbooks. Rebecca, who had one of each, counted them. Sofi grimaced at Rebecca’s meager wardrobe and the tattered, unabridged dictionary she had lugged all the way from Florida and promptly labeled her new roommate an egghead. They became instant friends.

“But why all the crayons?” Sofi asked.

“They’re oil pastels. I hope to audit a few art courses, too.” She’d had a flair for art since she could remember, but didn’t consider it a practical choice for a career—or for erasing her grandfather’s damage to the Blackburn name.

“
Major
egghead,” Sofi said.

Rebecca laughed. “Just determined.”

On a drizzly afternoon in October Thomas Blackburn gave up on the notion that Rebecca would come to him and instead went to her. He tracked her down at the B.U. library, roomy and nicely laid out, a better facility than he’d expected. He considered the large windows with tempting views of the Charles River an unnecessary distraction,
however, and he loathed having to argue his way past the security desk. Did he look like someone who’d try to sneak books out tucked in his pants?

He found his granddaughter reshelving an enormous cart of books in the stacks and knew her at once, this little girl of his now grown-up. Thomas ached at the sight of her. At eighteen, she displayed the same unfortunate taste in fashion as her fellow students. She’d tied a red bandanna over her hair and knotted it at the nape of her neck; it was the sort of thing his wife used to wear when she cleaned the attic. Her jeans and bright gold sweater had so many holes they weren’t worth mending. At least, mercifully, she was clean, the strands of hair flowing down her back from under the bandanna shining, that fetching chestnut that marked her as a Blackburn. Although she wore no cosmetics, her skin, even smudged with library dust, was radiant, and her eyes sparkled. There was an arrogant straightness to her nose—a Blackburn touch—and an altogether stubborn set to her jaw that was pure O’Keefe. Even dressed in rags, Rebecca, in her grandfather’s opinion, would have looked regal, but he suspected telling her so would only have made her angry.

“A fine way to spend a Saturday afternoon,” he muttered. “Does this job of yours leave enough time for you to study?”

She turned, and in the flash of her eyes, he could tell she’d recognized him immediately, but she quickly hid her surprise and, he thought, her pleasure at seeing him. “We all have twenty-four hours in a day.”

“How true.” Thomas lifted a discarded volume from her cart. Aristotle. He hadn’t read the Greek philosophers in years. “I suppose this job of yours is a federally funded position for impoverished students?”

“Not necessarily impoverished. Work study helps students from middle-class families get by, as well. The less your family can afford, the larger your work-study grant.”

“Are you at the maximum?”

She gave him a tight smile. “Not quite.”

“Make work,” he said.

“It feels like real work to me. I’ve been at it since noon. Of course, if I had a rich and generous grandfather paying my bills…”

He laughed, a faint feeling of pride rising up in him. She was a tough, outspoken young woman. If she were going to stay in Boston, she’d have to be. He found himself resisting the urge to hug her, asking instead, “When do you finish?”

“Another forty minutes.”

“Good. I’ll meet you downstairs at the front desk.”

“For what?”

“We’ll go to dinner.” He winked at her, wishing it could be the same between them as it had before Stephen’s death, when they’d done everything together during his home leaves and had understood each other so well. But those days were over. He’d ended them himself. “I’ll take you to the Ritz.”

Rebecca laughed, and Thomas had to look away so she wouldn’t see his reaction. He could hear Emily in her laugh, could suddenly remember his wife as clearly as if he’d last seen her just that morning, instead of nearly forty years ago.

“You can’t afford the Ritz,” his granddaughter told him. “Even if you could, you wouldn’t spend the money. Besides, I can’t take the time to go into town.”

“Marshaling your twenty-four hours?”

“You bet.”

“Then we’ll go to one of the disreputable student establishments on Commonwealth Avenue. You choose.”

He walked off with the Aristotle tucked under one arm to read while waiting.

Rebecca chose the student union because she could use her dining card and they wouldn’t have to go out in the rain. The rain wouldn’t have bothered Thomas, but he understood about the meal card. His own dinner proved relatively inexpensive, and they found an unoccupied table in a corner. He was surprised by how comfortable he felt among the scores of young students and would have enjoyed striking up a dialogue at the crowded table behind them on the Vietnam conflict.

“How did you find out I was in Boston?” Rebecca asked.

“Your mother. Don’t look so surprised. As much as she despises me, she believes it her duty to write me intensely formal letters once or twice a year with pictures of you all and one or two lines on your current activities.”

“Do you ever write back?”

“It would only annoy her if I did.”

Rebecca pulled in her lips, but he knew what she was thinking. He said, “I still have every letter you wrote to me. And I answered them all. I just never mailed them.”

“Because of Mother?”

“Because of you. You were a child, Rebecca. You needed to make the adjustment to your new life, and I didn’t believe you could do it with me indulging your homesickness for Boston. Then when you stopped writing, I felt I didn’t want to intrude.”

She gave him a long, clear-eyed look. “Sounds like a rationalization to me.”

He shrugged. “Maybe it is. Tell me about school. How are your classes?”

She told him briefly, but he wasn’t satisfied with superficial answers. He wanted to know if her professors were
idiots, if her courses were rigorous enough, what texts were on her reading lists, whether she was required to write term papers and if there would be final exams. He had heard somewhere that young people were ignorant of geography and interrogated her on the whereabouts of Borneo, Calcutta, Rumania and Des Moines, Iowa.

“I hope,” he said ominously, “that none of your professors has given you the choice between doing a paper or a collage.”

Rebecca assured him none had. “You’re just worried because I’m not at Harvard.”

“Nonsense.”

She didn’t believe him. “Well,
I
think the quality of one’s education depends to a great degree on the individual. A dope going to Harvard will still come out a dope.”

Thomas sniffed. “That sounds like something someone who didn’t go to Harvard would say.”

“You’re such a snob, Grandfather.”

She tilted her paper cup of soda up to her mouth and got out the last of the ice, her eyes focusing on the man across from her. His tweed jacket was frayed and rumpled and his whitening hair needed a trim. Even if he’d had a million dollars in the bank, he’d probably have looked much the same. Thomas Blackburn had always hated to spend money. But there was something in his expression—just the hint of a shit-eating grin—that made her wonder if he wasn’t pulling her leg just a bit and not quite the snob he was making himself out to be.

“Why did you come to see me?”

“You’re my granddaughter,” he said. “Just because we haven’t seen or spoken to each other in ten years doesn’t mean I haven’t thought of you. I have, you know. Every day.”

She choked up. “Grandfather…”

“Come to supper on Sunday at the house. We’ll have sandwiches—bring your roommate if you wish. I’m correct in assuming you have no current gentleman friend of importance?”

Smiling through the tears in her eyes, she said, “You’re correct.”

“No room for romance in your twenty-four hours?”

“Not,” she shot back, “if I intend to maintain my four-oh average.”

By winter, Rebecca felt more comfortable in Boston and had gotten used to the idea that her grandfather had said all he was going to say on the subject of 1963—the deaths of Benjamin Reed, her father and Quang Tai, and his own retreat from public life. And what he’d said was nothing. She didn’t blame him for the tragedy; she just wanted to hear his side of what had happened. What did he mean when he’d accepted full responsibility for the incident? Was there any truth to the rumors he had associated with the Vietcong? She’d started to ask him a hundred times, but stopped herself every time. He’d only call her impertinent or presumptuous for asking. He knew it was on her mind and would tell her if he wanted to.

Even after a decade, her mother’s bitterness toward him was still palpable, and Rebecca wisely chose not to bring him up during her visit home during winter break. She didn’t mention she’d invited him to join her in Florida.

“Stephen and Mark and Jacob don’t remember you at all,” she’d told him, “and Taylor and Nate just barely. They’d love to see you. And the warm air would do you good. We could all go to Disney World.”

Thomas was adamant. “Your mother would slam the door in my face.”

Likely enough, she would have. Or done worse. Jenny Blackburn was still holding out hope that her daughter would transfer to another school. If nothing else, she figured the cold weather would lure Rebecca back to the south. Papa O’Keefe, a plump, red-faced, incredibly hardworking man, wasn’t so sanguine. “Not with that Yankee blood” was all he would say.

Winter didn’t drive Rebecca south. Continuing to maintain her high average and work at the library, she used snowstorms and subfreezing temperatures as an excuse to indulge her passion for art. It wasn’t painting and sculpture that seized her spirit, but graphic design. With design, she had a greater chance of having her work seen by and communicated to a large number of people. She found the process of design both challenging and enjoyable, as she took fine art’s conceptual way of thinking and applied it in practical uses. The blending of artistic elements, technical expertise, inspiration and business demands appealed to her.

It was her interest in graphic design that took her to the waterfront on a brisk April afternoon. Or so she insisted. A new building was going up and one of the top design studios in the country had been commissioned to do its graphic identity—enough reason for Rebecca to justify showing up at the press conference on site.

But the architect was Wesley Sloan and the builder was Winston & Reed, and when she cut her microeconomics class and headed out to the waterfront, Rebecca had a feeling she was walking into trouble.

She just didn’t know how much.

J
ared Sloan was twenty-four that spring as he hunched his shoulders against the stiff wind gusting off Boston Harbor. He’d forgotten how cold Boston could be, even in April. Just a year in San Francisco had eliminated his tolerance for extremes in temperature. His father, however, seemed oblivious to the biting wind. Jared joined him over at the Bobcats waiting to demolish the condemned building occupying the site of Wesley Sloan and Annette Winston Reed’s latest project.

“Lovely place to hold a press conference,” Jared said.

Wesley, a solid man of fifty and utterly consumed by his work, laughed as his iron-gray hair stood straight up in the churning wind. “Your Aunt Annette does have a flair for the dramatic, but this one could backfire on her if a reporter gets blown into the harbor and has to have his stomach pumped. She insists the wind’ll die down by three o’clock.”

“Or pay the price of her wrath?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s good of you to come, you know.”

As if he’d had a choice. Jared was an apprentice archi
tect with his father’s San Francisco firm and had contributed to the design of Winston & Reed’s new headquarters in only the most minor of ways. Wesley Sloan wasn’t a man who easily delegated authority, even to his son. But Jared had no illusions about why he was in Boston: his Aunt Annette was portraying her new project as a family affair, and he was family. She’d gone so far as to summon Quentin from Saigon, where he’d gone in October to work with the branch that had launched Winston & Reed at the beginning of American military involvement in Vietnam more than a decade ago. Naturally Quentin had come. He wasn’t one to defy his mother’s wishes and going to Saigon in the first place had about exhausted his courage. With the Paris Peace Accords, Winston & Reed was scaling back its Southeast Asian operation, and Annette had only just barely tolerated having her twenty-two-year-old son volunteer to help. Jared thought he understood. She’d lost her husband in Vietnam; she didn’t intend to lose her only child.

Jared wouldn’t have thought twice about defying his aunt, but he had his own reasons for wanting to accompany his father to Boston. His parents were seldom in the same city—his mother still lived on Beacon Hill—and he planned to take advantage. They’d agreed to have dinner with him while they were all in town. And then he’d hit them with his own plans to head off to the Far East. Starting June first, he would spend a year working as an architect in Saigon, under a foundation grant. He wasn’t ready to be tied down to a firm, nor did he consider his architectural education complete. Southeast Asia would provide him opportunities for learning that he couldn’t get in San Francisco or Boston. Wesley Sloan would see his only son’s departure from his firm as a betrayal. Maybe in a way it was. But it was something Jared had to do. His student defer
ments had kept him out of the war, and now he felt he needed to see the country where the lives of so many of his friends had been changed—and lost. Whenever he thought of the young men his own age, of his sensitive Uncle Benjamin, who always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and of Stephen Blackburn, good-humored and keenly intelligent, Jared knew he had to go.

“What the devil’s going on over there?” Wesley Sloan grumbled. “Who’s that lunatic?”

Jared followed his father’s gaze down the chain-link fence securing the demolition area, where the wind had kicked up dust and debris. A woman in a bright red sweatshirt and Red Sox cap on backward was perched rooster-like atop a fence post. She had a camera strapped around her neck and was snapping pictures.

“I’ll go see,” Jared volunteered.

Coming closer, he saw the messy chestnut braid trailing halfway down her back and her holey jeans and sneakers. Had to be one of Boston’s countless students. The woman jumped down from the fence post, landing lightly just inside the demolition area. She had a nice shape under her ratty clothes.

“I wouldn’t stand in there without a hard hat on if I were you,” he said.

She looked around at him, her eyes a lively shade of blue, her face angular and attractive and oddly familiar. “Of all people,” she said under her breath, then climbed as fast as a monkey back up the fence, paused on the post and hopped down beside him. Her Red Sox cap came off, and loose hairs blew in her face. “What’re you doing here?”

“I’m with the press conference,” he said formally, bothered by her face.
Did
he recognize her? “My name’s Jared Sloan. Look, this area’s posted and—”

“I know who you are.”

“Your face is familiar—”

She swept her cap up off the ground and grinned at him. “I would hope so.”

And suddenly Jared recognized her. He’d probably known, on a gut level, when he’d first spotted her. The face, the eyes, the brazenness—he had never forgotten them. But if there was anyone he didn’t expect to find in Boston, it was Rebecca Blackburn.

“R.J.,” he said.

She was already heading back out across Atlantic Avenue and failed to hear him.

The Winstons had arrived, and the press conference was about to begin. Jared was supposed to line up for the obligatory family photo; he could see his father looking around for him. Quentin, suntanned and wearing a conservative suit that made him look forty, caught his cousin’s eye and waved. Jared pretended not to see him. His Aunt Annette glanced at her watch. She was forty-five and, Jared suspected, relished being chairman of a thriving corporation, but she’d be the last to say so. Jared remembered her as more of a free spirit, not the unapproachable, gray-suited
grande dame
she was playing these days. He wondered if power did that to people. Or just widowhood and its responsibilities. For certain, she wouldn’t appreciate his cutting out on her.

He didn’t care. They could go on without him.

He ran after Rebecca.

She’d cut down a side street and was at a corner when he caught up with her, impatiently waiting to cross a narrow street clogged with traffic. “I remember,” Jared said, sidling up next to her, “when you couldn’t wait to be old enough to cross a street by yourself.”

She fastened her bright eyes on him. “Hello, Jared.”

He grinned. “Hello, R.J.”

“What jogged your memory?” she asked. “You haven’t seen me since I was eight.”

She was all of nineteen now. “You haven’t changed. Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

She didn’t even hesitate. “Sure. And I’ll buy an order of French fries. We’ll share.”

They found a Brigham’s and sat opposite each other in a booth with their coffee and fries, and the decade since Jared had held back his tears and watched the Blackburn moving truck trundle down West Cedar Street melted away. They talked about San Francisco and Florida and her five brothers and his two half-sisters. Jared said something that amused Rebecca, and in her laugh he heard the echo of the little kid he’d played with, bugged, tolerated and rescued so long ago, not in terms of years, but in how much their lives had changed since. Especially hers.

“How’s your Blackburn grandfather these days?” he asked.

She didn’t avert her eyes, but he could see she was tempted. “Fine.”

“It took courage for him to stay on Beacon Hill. What your mother did took a different kind of courage. Everyone thought Thomas would sell the house and retire to Maine or someplace. It can’t have been easy for him living around the corner from my aunt.”

Rebecca was squinting her so-blue eyes at him. “Thomas?”

Jared grinned. “He insisted on my calling him by his first name.”

“When?”

“A few years ago. I went to college here, and he had me
over every now and then for dinner with him and his boarders. Usually served some dish of the flaming-esophagus variety.”

“Sunday nights?”

“Generally, yeah. R.J., what’s wrong?”

She shrugged. “I guess I’m just jealous. I missed so many years with him—by his choice and my mother’s, maybe even a little of mine. You had him when I didn’t.”

“He’s only in his midsixties. He’ll probably outlive us all.” Jared winced at his insensitivity, considering her father’s untimely death. “I’m sorry….”

“No, don’t be. Wounds heal, Jared. I’m not angry with my grandfather for what happened to my father and your uncle. I wish I understood more about it, but—”

“But Thomas won’t tell you.”

“That’s right. And I can’t force him. It must be horrible, having to live with that guilt. No matter what happened, I don’t think Dad would’ve wanted that. Look, you’re missing your press conference.”

“No problem,” Jared said quickly, not wanting to leave. “By the way, what were you doing there? I won’t flatter myself you came because you knew I’d be around.”

She laughed. “No, I was taking pictures for a noncredit photography class I’m taking, but I really came because of the design studio your father hired. I was hoping to scarf up a press kit.”

“That can be arranged. You’re an art major?”

“Political science and history.”

“A true Blackburn.”

She shook her head. “I’m on the ‘wrong’ side of the Charles River.”

“I just thought of something,” he said suddenly, half-lying. In truth, he’d been toying with this idea since he’d realized R.J. wasn’t going to tell him to go to hell and be
done with him. “There’s a party of sorts tonight to celebrate today’s groundbreaking on the new building. I didn’t think to invite anyone. Would you care to go?”

Sitting back, Rebecca eyed him with that vaunted Blackburn incisiveness. “As your date, you mean?”

Jared coughed. “Well, yes.”

“If you’d told me you’d be asking me on a date when I was eight years old, I’d have…I don’t know, kicked you in the shins or something.” She peeled a snarled rubber band off the end of her braid and shook loose her hair, and Jared shifted on his bench, properly dazzled. She added, “I’d love to go. Is this thing a hotsy-totsy party?”

He laughed. “As hotsy-totsy as they come.”

“Then I’d better start tracking down a dress.”

She started out of the booth, but Jared put a hand on her wrist. “R.J.—I’m glad you don’t hate me.”

The smile she gave him was surprisingly gentle and filled with memories. “How could I?”

Rebecca didn’t own a party dress. A short denim skirt, yes. Jeans, sweatshirts, turtlenecks, sneakers and knee socks, yes. But no party dress. Sofi, however, had a solution, and it arrived an hour before Jared was to pick her up in the form of Alex, a theater arts major who, Sofi announced, would dress her. Before Rebecca could make a decent protest, Alex was at her closet.

He didn’t stay there long. “Your farm-girl look’s a no-go. It’s a wonder there’s not a pitchfork in there.”

“You didn’t dig back far enough,” Rebecca told him.

“Funny, funny.”

He tried Sofi’s closet. Rebecca warned him that nothing would fit her wildly different frame, but Alex was unde
terred. He hauled out hangers dripping with skirts, blouses and dresses—and rejected everything.

Sofi was insulted. “What’s wrong with my clothes? I bought half that stuff at Bloomingdale’s!”

“Too New York. We want Boston. Something elegant and understated. Something that says old money.”

Rebecca laughed. If it was one thing Blackburn money was, it was old. It was also scarce. She said, “Then all I need to do is head up to Beacon Hill and borrow some dumpy old dress stuffed up in my grandfather’s attic—”

Alex suddenly clapped his hands together. “Of course!”

“I will
not—
I was only kidding. Look, thanks, but I’ll figure something out.”

“Rebecca, hush, will you please? I don’t care about the frumpy clothes in your grandfather’s attic. I have our answer.”

Rebecca was dubious. “What?”

“Not what—who. Lenny.”

“Lenny?”

Alex would say no more. He grabbed Sofi and disappeared. When they weren’t back in twenty minutes, Rebecca was contemplating her denim skirt and her roommate’s silver sequined top, but then they burst in, with Lenny, a senior theater major. Lenny wasn’t short for Eleanor or Leonora, as Rebecca had anticipated, but for Leonard. He was five-ten, had a wiry runner’s body and wore a short ponytail. He, Sofi and Alex all carried an assortment of evening clothes.

“Lenny finds playing women’s roles both fun and instructive,” Sofi said, obviously quoting him. “He thinks his openness toward new experiences ultimately will help him become a better actor and director.”

Lenny made a clinical examination of Rebecca, in her ratty chenille robe and bare feet, and immediately dis
missed three of the dresses he’d brought along. Rebecca made a none-too-subtle remark about the time. Sighing, Lenny posted Alex outside the door. When Jared arrived, Alex would knock three times.

Finally, Lenny said, “The white.”

He withdrew his choice from the masses of dry cleaner bags, unwrapped it and held a white linen dress up to Rebecca. It had tiny white lace edging and a high collar. He said, “Perfect.”

“I’ll look like a virgin!”

“Of course you will.”

“But…”

“You
are
a virgin,” Sofi pointed out, quite unnecessarily, in Rebecca’s opinion.

Lenny was all business. “You don’t have shoes, I suppose?”

“Sneakers and L.L. Bean boots.”

“My God. Sofi?”

“I wear a size six. Rebecca wouldn’t fit in my shoes.”

“I’m a size ten,” Lenny said.

Rebecca couldn’t believe they were having this discussion, but surrendered. “Size eight.”

“Must be somebody around here who wears an eight,” Sofi said. “I think Edie might.”

“They must be white,” Lenny instructed, “and as delicate as possible.”

“Virginal,” Sofi added, with a wicked grin at her roommate, and shot out the door.

The decision made, Lenny called Alex in, and together they played valet for Rebecca as though she were the star in one of their student theater productions. By now she was getting too big a kick out of the whole thing to protest. They helped her off with her bathrobe, assuring her their
interest in her slip-clad body was purely professional, although Alex did make a point of telling her that Lenny might be gay, but he wasn’t.

“Don’t worry,” Lenny reassured her, amused, “if the cretin tries anything, I’ll punch him out.”