Carriage Trade (65 page)

“I have eyes in my head, darling. It's perfectly obvious that Peter Turner's besotted with you. What did you tell him?”

“I told him I'd think about it. I really like him very much.”

“So do I. He's quality goods, as your father used to say.”

They continue along the gravel path toward the Dell Garden, with the blue Persian following them.

“He told me something about you that I didn't know,” her mother says.

“What's that?”

“That you've been working on your M.B.A. at N.Y.U.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn't you tell me about that, Miranda?”

She hesitates. “I guess I was afraid you'd laugh at me,” she says. “I was afraid you'd think it was a silly thing for me to do.”

“Not at all! It just shows me how serious you are about preparing yourself to run the store. I think it's wonderful.”

Miranda says nothing.

“Let's go up and sit on the bridge and feed the fish,” Connie says. “I've brought a little bag of their food.” She removes a plastic bag of pellets from the pocket of her slacks, and the two women climb the steps of the moon-gate bridge and seat themselves on the pair of wooden benches at the top. Connie begins tossing pellets into the water, aiming her tosses carefully so the clusters of smaller fish will not be outmaneuvered by the larger ones. Up from the depths of the pond comes the big blue-and-yellow koi that Miranda remembers from years ago, when she sat right here with Blazer. The koi is much bigger now, easily three feet long, his whiskered mouth the size of a silver dollar.

“Here comes Bucephalus,” her mother says. “That's his name. Fish are lovely. So are cats. Husbands are even lovelier. I hope you're going to say yes to Peter.”

“Mother,” Miranda says quietly, “tell me how Daddy died.”

“I was sure you were going to ask me that question again,” she says, tossing a pellet, with perfect accuracy, into the gaping dollar-sized mouth. “There have been times, Miranda, when you and I haven't gotten along too well together, and I didn't think there was any reason why I should tell you. But lately—just these past few days—you and I seem to have become close, closer than we've ever been before. And so now I don't see any reason why I shouldn't tell you what happened. After all, I was there.”

“You were—there?”

“Oh, yes. You see, your father and I had been having a lot of serious talks those last few days before he died.” She tosses another pellet. “Talks like you and I've been having, talks about the future, the future of the store, and his and my future. There were troubles at the store he didn't like to talk about, but, more important, there were troubles with the marriage. The situation with Smitty was getting out of hand. She was very demanding—not that I blame her, because she was obviously very much in love with him, and when you're in love you do crazy, willful things.

“Si felt torn. He needed her at the store, but he'd grown tired of her as a lover. And of course I scolded, I nagged. I kept telling him that he had to take some sort of stand, that he had to make up his mind, that he was going to have to confront Smitty somehow or other and tell her how he felt. But in the meantime, he and I both agreed that we wanted to make a new start. After all, neither of us were getting any younger, and neither of us wanted a divorce. So we decided to go back to Bermuda, where we'd spent our honeymoon at the Princess Hotel. I even wrote your father a letter; I typed it myself. Your father used to complain that he could never read my handwriting.…

“I promised him not to be a boring, nagging old hag anymore. I told him I was going to be a whole new wife to him. I think I even signed it
the soon-to-be new Mrs. Silas Tarkington.”

“I know about that letter,” she says.

“Really? How?”

“That day I was helping Pauline clear out his office, I found it among his things. It reeked of Equipage, Smitty's perfume.”

“How interesting. Well, I didn't put it there. I used to come home from travels to find my bed linen reeking of Equipage, which I didn't put there either.”

“Anyway, go on.”

“The thing he had to do, I told him, was to confront Smitty. He had to take a firm stand with her. But that was one thing your father always had trouble doing with any of his women, taking a firm stand. He kept begging me to do it for him. Well, I'd done it for him before, when I was too young to know any better, with his first wife, and that had been a terrible mistake. I told him he was going to have to take a stand with her
himself
, if it was going to have any meaning to her. Then he asked me whether we couldn't confront her together—so we could show a united front, as he put it, though I knew he really wanted me to be there as a sort of second in his duel. I agreed, reluctantly. It was a compromise, I knew, and a little cowardly, but that was your father. He called Smitty and asked her to meet him that Saturday morning at the farm.

“She came here that morning?”

“I met her at the door. I think she was a little surprised to see me. I said, ‘Si's expecting you. He's down at the pool,' and we walked down together. I still think Si thought we women would have it out together, then and there, and he'd be spared this scene, and that was why he'd gone to the pool, hoping to avoid the confrontation by any possible means. But I didn't think he should be let off the hook that easily. I thought Smitty should hear his decision, whatever he had to say, straight from the horse's mouth. I was determined to keep my own trap shut. He was sitting by the pool, watching television, and Blackamoor was with him, and he looked horrified when he saw us walking toward him. For a moment, I thought he was going to jump up and run away. But he just turned off the TV set.

“Smitty spoke first. I stood a little distance away. She said, “Well, I suppose you've brought me here so I can hear you tell Connie that you're leaving her and that you want to marry me.'

“At first he said nothing, looking at me. Then he just shook his head.

“‘Then what the hell is this all about?' she said.

“‘I'm not ready to leave Connie,' he said. ‘And I'm not ready to marry you, Smitty.'

“‘What the hell does that mean—you're not ready?'

“‘Just what I said.'

“‘But you don't love her. You love me. Tell her so.'

“‘That's not really true, Smitty,' he said. ‘I do love Connie.'

“‘But you told me you didn't love Connie! You told me you loved me.'

“His eyes searched mine for some assistance, which I wasn't quite prepared to give him. ‘I do love Connie,' he said, ‘but I loved you too.'

“‘You loved me
too
?' she repeated. She glared at me. “What about some of the things you called her—Miss Sexual Refrigerator—all of that? You're just saying these things now because you're terrified of what she could do to you, aren't you?'

“‘Am I?' The question lacked conviction.

“‘Because she's blackmailing you. Because she knows how you've swept your mother under the rug, keeping her in a dreary little apartment on West End Avenue! She knows that dirty secret.'

“He was still looking anxiously at me. Tell her, Connie,' he said.

“‘Si's mother is in a nursing home in Florida and has been for almost ten years,' I said. ‘A very nice nursing home. The best Si and I could find.'

“She looked confused, disoriented. ‘But you told me you never loved Connie!' she said. ‘You told me you never loved her—ever.'

“‘Did I?'

“‘Of course you did. You know you did. Tell her you never loved her.'

“‘Never?'

“‘
Tell her!
'

“‘Don't push me this way, Smitty,' he said. ‘Don't crowd me. You know I don't like to be pushed or crowded. Don't force me to say things I don't really mean.'

“‘
When?
When did you ever love her, just once for a single minute?' He was looking at me so desperately now, begging me for some suggestion as to how to answer this question and end all this, as though I was the only one who could rescue him now. I had to help him.

“‘When?' he asked me.

“‘Perhaps it was in Positano,' I said quietly. ‘At the Hotel Sirenuse.'

“‘Yes, and the Villa Rufolo.'

“‘Where I sprained my ankle on the steps.'

“‘And I had to carry you—'

“‘Shut up, you bitch!' she screamed at me. ‘He loves
me
!'

“Then I heard him say in a strong voice, ‘I've always loved Connie. And I think I always will.'

“I was terribly pleased and proud of him, Miranda, when I heard him say those words—say them to her, in front of me. I suddenly couldn't think of any time in my life when anyone, your father or anyone else, had ever told me that he loved me in such a direct way. Certainly my father never told me he loved me. A great burden seemed to be lifted from my shoulders just then. All those troubled years”—she touches the corner of an eyelid with a fingertip and tosses a final pellet to the fish—“seemed to just drop away. I wanted to say, Thank you, darling, but I couldn't seem to find my voice. Smitty began calling me all sorts of names: a cold-blooded bitch, things like that. I've never seen anyone so angry. But Si just stood up and said, ‘That's all I have to say to you, Smitty. That's what I asked you here to tell you. Now I'm going to swim my laps,' and he turned on the television set and dove into the pool.

“She went running toward him, and it was like déjà vu. All at once I knew what she was going to do. I screamed ‘Stop!' and Blackamoor began to bark, and I heard her say, ‘If I can't have you, nobody will!' And she picked up the television set and threw it at him, as though she wanted to hit him over the head with it, but she missed—and the set flew into the water with him. And then—but perhaps this was only my imagination working—it seemed as though the whole surface of the pool was lighted with a land of blue flash. I saw Si's body flinch violently, then stiffen, and I knew it was all over.”

“Then what did you do, Mother?”

“There were several things I had to do, and I had to do them quickly. First I had to deal with Blackamoor. He knew your father was in some kind of terrible trouble, and he started to leap into the pool after him. I grabbed him by the collar. Blackie's a big, strong dog, and he gave me quite a struggle. But how would it have looked if both Si
and
his dog had been found dead in the pool? Somehow I got Blackie back into his kennel, and I locked him there. Then I pulled all the circuit-breakers in the pool area. When I got back to the pool she was still standing there, looking stunned at the horrible thing she had done. I said, ‘How did you get here?' ‘A rental car,' she said. ‘Did anyone see you come in?' She shook her head. ‘Then no one will see you go,' I said. ‘Get out of here. Get out of here as fast as you can. As far as I'm concerned, you were never here. Don't worry about me. I'll take care of everything.' She left then, without another word.”

“And the TV set?”

“I knew I had to get rid of that. I pulled it out of the water by its cord, but then I couldn't think of what to do with it.”

“What
did
you do with it?”

She points with her finger to the pond below, and the fish, seeing the shadow of this gesture, think they are about to be fed again and leap to the surface with open mouths. “I carried it out here and dropped it in the pond. It's down there somewhere, forty feet down. Then I remembered the Lucite case he'd had made for it, and I ran back to the pool house and got it, and dropped it in too, and watched it sink. It seemed to take forever to go down, and I knew I didn't have that much time. Blackie had set up such a howling I was afraid someone from the house would come out to see what the matter was. By then I was a mess. My slacks were sopping wet, and my shoes were covered with mud. I ran back to the pool house, and then I did a lot of crazy things. I took his wallet from his trousers pocket and that underwater chronometer you gave him. I thought, if there was any suspicion, I'd make it look as though there'd been a burglary. Those were quite unnecessary things to do, of course. Then I took off my dirty shoes, walked back to the house barefoot, and went upstairs, changed my clothes, rinsed off my shoes, and by then it was nearly noon. I rang for Milliken. I said, ‘Mr. Tarkington's at the pool. Run down and tell him that it's nearly lunchtime.' When he came back to tell me that he'd found what I knew he'd find, I called Harry Arnstein in New York.”

“Did you tell Dr. Arnstein what had happened?”

“No. I just said, ‘No scandal, Harry—please, no scandal.' He understood what I meant. He took over from there. He called Campbell's for the hearse, made arrangements for the cremation. All this took several hours. Then I called you.”

“Yes.…”

“At that point, I'd been running on energy I didn't even know I possessed. I thought, Now I'm going to collapse. But I didn't collapse. I just kept thinking of all the questions I might be asked, and of the answers I was going to have to give.”

“But—Smitty. Shouldn't she be—?”

Her mother makes a little moue. “Be brought to justice? What possible reason would there be for that? For revenge? That's not a particularly attractive motive, revenge. What good would it do? It wouldn't bring your father or my husband back to life. It would just drag Smitty's and your father's names through the mud. It's not as though Smitty's any threat to society. She's not going to kill anybody else. She's like that poor Mrs. Harris who shot the Scarsdale diet doctor; it was something she did in the terrible heat of passion. What possible use is it to society to have that poor woman spend the last years of her life in a prison in Westchester, just spending the taxpayers' money, when there are so many useful things she could be doing instead? Smitty can still have a useful life, and it seems to me she deserves to have one. Besides, Smitty knows what she did, and she's going to have to live with that knowledge until she dies. Don't you think that's punishment enough? I do.”