Carriage Trade (23 page)

Silas Tarkington rose a little slowly from behind his desk. His face was pale and his shoulders sagged, and he suddenly seemed a man of even slighter stature than he actually was. “Worthless,” he repeated. “What should I do now?” His voice was soft, imploring, almost childlike.

“For God's sake, just don't give him any more money. He made it perfectly clear that's all he wants from you. Don't send any more good money after bad. Look at all you've given him, Si. The finest education money could buy—Hotchkiss, Yale—and this is the way he rewards you.”

“But he's my son,” he said. “My own flesh—”

“Take him out of your will, Si. Lord knows you've threatened to do that often enough. Show him it wasn't just a threat. Show him you mean it. Put your money where your mouth is. God knows what would happen if he ever got his hands on any Tarkington's stock. He'd have this place down the tubes in five minutes. The little bastard doesn't deserve a plugged nickel. Cut him off without a penny.”

“It's hard, Tom. It's damned hard.”

“Of course it's hard. But it's time for you to play hardball now.”

“The things he said about my mother … my sister.”

“Your mother and your sister were well taken care of—you and I know that. You were dealing with greedy and ungrateful people, and you had to be tough. You're dealing with a greedy and ungrateful person now, and you've got to be tough again. Besides, you'd be doing him a favor. Let him learn that he can't go through life living on handouts from a rich father. Let him learn that if he's going to make a living he's going to have to do it by the sweat of his balls—the way you did. A kid who'd speak to his father the way he just did to you? Cut him out of your will. Show him who's boss.”

“You're right … you're right.”

“Listening to the things he was saying to you, it was all I could do to keep from walking in here and punching him in the face. After all you've done for him. For God's sake, Si, don't let this kid shit on you any longer. Be a man! Let him go. It's called tough love.”

“You're right. I'll call Jake Kohlberg in the morning.”

“Good man. Now you're talking like Si Tarkington. Now you're talking like the legendary Silas R. Tarkington, the merchant prince.”

“And doesn't he … doesn't he understand I couldn't have done any of it if I'd kept the old name?”

“Listen, that kid has never even
tried
to understand you!”

“You understand me, don't you, Tommy?”

“Damn right I do.”

“But still—where did I go wrong with him, Tommy?”

“You didn't. You're not to blame. You said it yourself—it's his mother's fault, it's Alice's fault. She's taught that kid to hate you since he was old enough to talk.”

“You're right … you're right.” Si Tarkington lowered his head, and his fingers riffling aimlessly through some papers on his desk, staring hard at the day-end sales figures as though they held the answer to some inscrutable riddle. He pressed his palms hard on the top of his desk and appeared to sway.

Tommy Bonham stepped forward. “Are you okay, Si?” he asked.

“Oh, yes.… But still … but still, I had such high hopes for him,” he said. “My only son, and he called me a dirty Jew. I feel … I feel like camels just shat on my father's grave. Blazer.… He was supposed … he was supposed to blaze across the sky like … a comet, like a shooting star. I wanted so much for him, Tommy … so much. Maybe I wanted too much. And now I have … no son.”

“Look, Si,” Tommy began gently, “you'll always have—”

He had been about to say “me” when he realized that the founder and C.E.O. of Tarkington's was weeping, that teardrops were falling across the page of sales figures, so Tommy Bonham left the rest of that sentence hanging in the air.

“You're doing the right thing,” he said instead.

“You're right … you're right.”

“His mother has poisoned his mind against you, Si. He'll never change.”

10

It is Wednesday, and Miranda has arrived to assist Pauline O'Malley clear out her father's desk, bookshelves, cabinets, and files. “Pauline needs help going through the things in your father's office,” Tommy Bonham told her. “Someone in the family should be there when she does this. Can you give her a hand?” Materials pertaining to the store's operations will, of course, stay where they are, but personal items—her mother's photograph in its silver frame, his silver calendar and water carafe, his collection of Baccarat
millefleur
paperweights, and so on—will be packed and shipped out to Flying Horse Farm. The shipping department has sent up cardboard cartons for the job, along with bags of Styrofoam peanuts for packing the more fragile things.

This is Pauline's first day back at work since Silas Tarkington's death. She has taken his death very badly. When Miranda first encountered her this morning, she looked terrible. Her eyes were red from weeping, her hair was a mess, her lipstick was smeared, and her desk was awash with piles of wadded-up Kleenex. Seeing Miranda, she rose from her chair and quite literally threw herself into Miranda's arms with a fresh burst of sobbing. “Oh, Miss Miranda,” she moaned, while Miranda patted her shoulder, “we've lost him … lost him … we'll never see him again, will we? Never in this world. Your poor mother. How is she taking it?”

“She's—bearing up,” Miranda said.

“Oh, the poor thing! She must be devastated, absolutely devastated. I should have written her a note, but I just couldn't bring myself. I still can't believe it. Our Mr. Si is gone … he's gone … he's gone!” Tears streamed down her pale cheeks.

“There, there,” Miranda said.

“Tell your mother I'm making a very special novena for her. This is my fourth day. I'm asking Our Lady to bring your mother peace.”

“She'll be very touched to hear it,” Miranda said.

Now Pauline has more or less managed to collect herself, though there are still occasional sighs and sniffles as they pack the boxes. From her father's bathroom, Miranda fetches a fresh box of Kleenex. She supposes that Pauline was secretly in love with her father—how else to justify such an excessive display of grief?—and she even wonders whether Pauline and her father had been lovers once upon a time. Was Pauline O'Malley ever pretty? It is hard to say at this point. Perhaps, but now she has developed the white papery skin and fine worry lines of secretarial spinsterhood. Why does a spinster's skin become like parchment? Miranda doesn't know, but it does.

“When we finish this, I'm going to have to clean my own desk out,” Pauline says, gently wrapping a paperweight in tissue paper and nestling it in a box of plastic peanuts.

“Whatever for?” Miranda asks her.

There is a little sob. “I can't stay on here. I can't stay on here now that Mr. Si is gone.”

“Oh, but we don't want to lose you, Pauline. Mr. Bonham's going to be running the store, at least for the time being. Couldn't you stay and help him out?”

“I could never work for Mr. Bonham!”

“Why not?”

“Never! There was only Mr. Si. He was the only one I could ever work for, ever. No one can ever take his place.” Another sob.

“But what will you live on, Pauline?”

She blows her nose noisily. “There's my pension fund account. Every Tarkington's employee with more than ten years' service has a pension fund account. And there's my Social Security. That will be more than enough.”

“If it's any comfort to you, Daddy left you some money in his will.”

Her eyes grow wide. “He
did
?” she gasps.

“Ten thousand dollars. I know that's not—”

“Ten thousand dollars!”
she cries. “Why, that's more money than I've ever had at one time in my entire life! What in the world will I ever do with that much money?” There is a fresh burst of sobbing. “Oh, what a wonderful man he was, your father, what a wonderful, generous man … I'll have to ask my brother-in-law to help invest it for me. He's a C.P.A.”

Miranda is beginning to lose patience with this woman and her teary heartbrokenness. Here, after all, is a woman who always seemed to Miranda so coolly efficient and unemotional that she verged on iciness; her father's death has reduced this virginal automaton to a blubbering mass of woe. Here is a woman who has spent thirty-four years working in a store where women spend ten thousand dollars for a single dress without giving it a thought, and Pauline is treating this sum as though she has been handed the output of King Solomon's mines. “Come, come, Pauline,” she says a little crossly. “Please try to pull yourself together.” After all, she thinks, I am the one who should feel bereaved. She finds herself wishing her father had left this woman nothing at all, though she knows these thoughts are unworthy.

All her comment produces, however, is another freshet of tears.

“Look here,” Miranda says. On impulse, she picks up the signed photograph of President and Mrs. Ford. “I want you to have this too.”

“Oh, no, Miss Miranda! Not that! That was his most prized possession! That's a signed photograph of a living United States President! Do you realize how valuable that is? That's
priceless
, Miss Miranda!”

“I hardly think so,” she says. “The Fords handed them out to everyone they met. But I'm going to make it even more valuable for you.”

She slides the photograph out of its frame and, beneath the inscription
(To Silas Tarkington, with grateful good wishes, from Gerald and Betty Ford)
, Miranda writes in her own hand,
Presented to Pauline O'Malley, devoted secretary to Silas Tarkington, with gratitude and affection by his daughter, Miranda
.

“There,” she says, handing it to her with a flourish. “That gives the photo a bit of a history, as the art dealers say. Now, no more tears, okay?”

“Oh, Miss Miranda, I shouldn't accept this.”

“But you will, right?”

Pauline reads the new inscription. “‘Devoted,'” she says. “Yes, that's right. I was devoted to him. I'd have laid down my life for him.”

“And this too,” Miranda says, and reaches for a paperweight that is particularly nice. “I want you to have this too, as a little personal remembrance. Look, it's even dated on the bottom: seventeen-eighty. Daddy was told that it once belonged to Catherine the Great of Russia.” She presses the paperweight into Pauline's hand.

“But what would I ever do with it?”

“Just place it somewhere where it will catch the light.”

Now there is yet another spell of weeping. “Oh, Miss Miranda. You've always been so kind to me. All your family. How can I ever thank you? My cup … my cup runneth over.” When she has managed to compose herself again, she says, through her Kleenex, “Now, what about these? What shall we do with these?” She points to a line of books bound identically in dark blue leather bindings. “These are his diaries.”

“Diaries? I didn't know he kept a diary.”

“Well, they're not diaries really. They're date books, where he recorded his personal appointments. There's one for each year. They go way back to when he opened the store.”

“Well, if they're personal, I think they should go to the farm.”

Miranda starts plucking the books from the shelf and stacking them in an empty carton. Then an idea strikes her. She picks up the most recent volume and turns to the date he died, Saturday, August 12. The page contains only a single notation:
D.S
.—
11 a.m
.

She feels her heart sink. D.S. Diana Smith. So Tommy was right. He was planning to meet Smitty on the day he died.

She turns the pages backward, and a letter in its envelope falls out. It is addressed to him in what seems amateurish typing, and the envelope is marked
Personal/Confidential
. Pauline is busy in another part of the room, so Miranda drops the letter quickly in her purse, to read later.

Then she remembers another date: June 1970. She runs her finger back along the books until she finds that year's volume and begins turning the pages for the month of June. There, scrawled across two dates—June 24 and 25—she finds the notation:
Boston, Ritz-Carlton, res. conf
. #384-86J.

She replaces the book in its proper sequence and continues packing the diaries in their carton.

Back in her own office, after she and Pauline have finished, Miranda cancels her luncheon date, pleading urgent family business. Instead of having lunch with an ad salesman from
The Times
, Miranda goes to the public library. She is not sure, exactly, what she is looking for, but she has found out that the library files copies of the
Boston Globe
on microfiche.

She takes her little spool of film to one of the projection machines and begins running through June 1970. When she gets to the twenty-fourth, she slows the film down and begins studying the newspaper page by page as it moves across her screen. She finds what she wants in the issue of June 25. It is not a big item.

MODEL, 19, PLUNGES TO DEATH AT RITZ-CARLTON

A sometime model and actress, whom Boston police have identified as Christine Wandrous, 19, of South Braintree, either jumped or was pushed from a window of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel yesterday evening. Her body struck the sidewalk on the Arlington Street side of the building, opposite the Public Garden.

Miss Wandrous, a spokesman for the hotel said, was not a registered guest at the time, and elevator operators could not recall transporting the young woman to an upper floor. Although there was no immediate sign of foul play, neither was any suicide note found. A thorough police search of all guest rooms immediately above the site of her fall revealed no guests who had any knowledge of, or acquaintance with, Miss Wandrous, who most recently worked as a part-time model for Filene's.