Carriage Trade (66 page)

“Yes,” Miranda says. “Yes, perhaps.”

“I'm not even sure she meant to kill him. Perhaps she just wanted to throw something at him, and the TV set was the closest thing at hand. Perhaps it didn't even occur to her that the set was plugged in. That's why I wanted her to come to the house the night after your father died. I wanted her to see firsthand how I was going to handle it. ‘You
deserve
to be here,' I told her. But in the weeks since it happened, I've been thinking. Tommy Bonham is a really evil man. He likes to pit people against each other and watch them squirm. He helped drive the final wedge between your father and Blazer. He was the one who first arranged to put your father and Smitty together, and that was what almost drove a final wedge between your father and me. He must have arranged for you to see my letter and think it was from Smitty.”

Pauline needs help going through the things in your father's office
, she remembers.
Someone in the family should be there when she does this. Can you give her a hand?
And there was the bottle of Equipage in Tommy's medicine cabinet. But Miranda says nothing.

“But then, carrying these thoughts one step further, I've been asking myself, Could Tommy, right from the beginning, from the moment he hired her, knowing the terribly violent temper Smitty had, have planned—or at least hoped—that Smitty would somehow be the instrument for your father's death?”

“Why would he have wanted that? So he could take over the store?”

“That, and out of jealousy. He was jealous of Smitty, and he was jealous of me. He was jealous of anyone who was closer to your father than he was. If your father's death looked like murder, I'd have been the prime suspect. The spouse nearly always is. Maybe Tommy was hoping to get rid of both your father and me. Or are these thoughts of mine too crazy, too farfetched?”

“Perhaps,” Miranda says thoughtfully. “But then again, perhaps not.”

“Tommy knew your father's mind so well. He knew every inch of it, inside and out, almost as well as I did. He knew all his faults and flaws, and he knew just when these faults and flaws were most likely to trip your father up. He knew all his Achilles' heels. He knew what a sad and disappointed man your father really was. It's a terrible thing, Miranda, for a man to be told—in the press and elsewhere—what a great success he is when in his heart of hearts he knows he is a failure, that his whole life has been a sham, a pretense.”

Miranda nods.

“But that's where I came in, of course. That's where I found my mission, my calling. To bolster his morale, to stroke his poor ego, to try to force-feed his self-esteem. I don't know if I really succeeded, but I tried. I tried to be his nurse, to give him tender, loving care. That probably sounds self-serving, but it isn't meant to. It probably means there's something wrong with me. Why do I seem to be attracted to weak men?”

The question hangs in the air, unanswered. The fish, having decided that there is no more food for them, have descended to the deep water. The two women sit there on the garden bench, in the warm Indian-summer sunlight. The cat dozes.

“Jake Kohlberg doesn't strike me as a weak man,” Miranda says at last.

“No. And we do have happier thoughts to think about, don't we?” her mother says. “Wedding plans: definitely for me, maybe for you. And for you—first things first—you're going to have a store to run.”

“Oh, Mother, I don't think so. Not now.”

“Now, Miranda. You know it's what you've always wanted.”

“I still do. But it's hopeless. Peter's gone over the books, and things are in even worse shape than we thought. The best thing we can do is have a close-out sale and put the building on the market.”

Her mother looks pensive. “I could help you,” she says.

“How? How could you help?”

“If it's only money, I could help.”

“How?”

She gestures around her. “I could sell this place,” she says.

“Oh, Mother—not sell the farm!”

“Why not? This place is a white elephant. It's an anachronism. People don't live like this anymore. Think of it—eighty-two acres of prime Long Island real estate, including half a mile of shoreline on the Sound. Developers have been after us for years to buy it. It's what everyone else has done. We're the last of the dinosaurs—as they said of your father.”

“And give up your beautiful Dell Garden? I wouldn't let you do that.”

She looks out at the garden. “When I first saw this hollow in the land, this was what I wanted. This garden and this pond. Where did I get the vision for it, I wonder? When I started designing it, I had no idea what I was doing. I just said, ‘Plant this tree here, plant that one there.' And it worked, didn't it? But it's finished now. It's done. I'm ready to move on to some other project. And these fish, too. They've bred well in this deep water. I had an ichthyologist here from Woods Hole the other day, and he tells me some of these hybrid specimens of koi are quite rare, worth thousands of dollars apiece as breeding stock.”

“You wouldn't sell the fish too!”

“Wouldn't you want them to have a nice home, Miranda, where they'd be fed and cared for and have a lovely sex life? You wouldn't want to trust them to some real estate developer!”

“You're not serious, Mother!”

“I am. Absolutely. And of course I'd sell my furniture as well. Your father's art collection may not be worth much, but most of the furniture I researched and collected myself, and some of the pieces are very nice indeed. I'm going to call Mr. Grenfell at Sotheby's and have him come and take a look at it.”

“But, Mother, where would you live?”

“I could live in the apartment over the store—that is, if you don't mind. Jake likes that idea. He doesn't want to keep his present apartment because it reminds him too much of his late wife. We'd promise not to interfere with anything you're doing. And I've already planned to sell the Lake Sunapee house. And I'd also sell the little apartment in Paris, which I have no need for at all now. And then there's the Palm Beach house, which I haven't set foot in for at least three years. And I haven't even thought about the china and the silver and the glassware and the furniture in all those places. And then there's my jewelry—”

“I will not let you sell your jewelry, Mother!”

“There are some pieces I just don't wear anymore. And let's not forget the racehorses we both own. The horse market is depressed right now, now that the Arabs have moved out of it, but there's a filly who's a granddaughter of Nashua, and two stallions are the sons of Flying Flame. I think that when you and I sell off some of this excess baggage we seem to have, we'll be able to reduce the store's debt considerably.”

Miranda bites her lip. “You'd really do all this for me, Mother?”

“Absolutely.”

“Peter's offered to help me,” she says.

“Peter has an M.B.A. from Harvard. He should be a nice help. And Jake will help you too. I don't know how fond you are of Jake, but to do what you're going to do you'll need the services of a good lawyer, and Jacob Kohlberg is one of the best. There's only one thing.”

“What's that?”

“Forgive me, but I tend to think of the two of you, you and Peter, as two children, trying to run this complicated store. I keep wishing there were someone—someone with a solid background in retailing—who could help advise you. These courses you're taking at N.Y.U.—is there someone there, an instructor perhaps, who could work with you, at least at the beginning?”

“As a matter of fact there is,” Miranda says. “His name is Mark Horowitz. Before he retired and went into teaching, he was the comptroller at Bonwit's for thirty years.”

“That's the sort of person I mean. Would he do it?”

“For me, I bet he would! He calls me his star pupil.”

“Good. Then ask him. You see how simple it is to find solutions once you put your mind to it?”

“Mother, I don't know what to say.”

“There's nothing you need to say.”

“I may fail, you know.”

“You won't fail. You're a Tarkington woman, and we Tarkington women are not put together with flour-and-water paste.”

She reaches out and touches her mother's hand, and her mother squeezes her hand in return. “I'll say this much,” Miranda says. “I love you, Mother.”

“I love you too. And don't forget I also loved your father, and your father is a part of you.” Connie Tarkington stands, and her hand rests lightly on her daughter's shoulder as she looks out across the pond. “I'm glad I had them dig this pond as deep as I did,” she says. “Creatures need depth to love and procreate. I sometimes think there is nothing but a deep pond between life and death, and the bridge is love. Love is the bridge between where we are today and wherever we'll find ourselves tomorrow. Between the night terrors and—” She shivers suddenly. “It's getting chilly, isn't it,” she says. “The days are getting shorter. Let's go inside. We both have so much to do. We'd better get started, if we're going to have the store in shape for the Christmas season. Come, Miranda. Come, Bicha. Come, kitty.”

Her eyes seem to come to rest on a line of evergreens just along the ridge, and she raises one hand in the attitude of a priest bestowing a blessing, and realizing her mother is saying goodbye to the Dell Garden, Miranda looks away.

34

“Well, hello, stranger!” he says cheerfully as she steps into his office the next morning. “We've missed you around here. How was your vacation?”

“Just fine,” she says. “Tommy, we need to talk.”

“Sure,” he says, and he rises, steps quickly past her, and closes the office door behind them. “Sit down, Miranda, and tell me what's on your mind. Have you given any more thought to that little proposal of mine?”

She remains standing. “That's not what I came to talk about, Tommy,” she says.

He frowns. “Something's bothering you, I can tell. The other night at my house. One minute you were so warm, so passionate. And the next minute you were cold as ice. What happened? And last week you stayed away from the store, as though you were trying to avoid me, and when you called on the phone it was only to discuss figures. Obviously, I've said or done something to upset or offend you, Miranda. Please tell me what it is.”

She looks him squarely in the eye and forces the words out. “We've decided to let you go, Tommy,” she says. “I'm sorry.”

“What do you mean, let me go?”

“We don't want you working at the store anymore.”

His eyes narrow slightly.
“We?
Who is we?”

“A majority of Tarkington's stockholders.”

“What majority? Where do you get your majority?”

“My mother, my grandmother, my Aunt Simma—and myself.”

“You—
women
?”

“I can get you executed proxies if you'd like. But that shouldn't be necessary, should it? I think you and I understand each other.”

“Your
grand
mother? But your grandmother is senile, for God's sake!”

“As a matter of fact, she's not. But that's neither here nor there. We still represent fifty-five percent of the voting shares of this company.”

“You mean you women are
firing
me? You can't do that!”

“Why not? I believe I just did,” she says.

“Who in God's name is going to run the store?”

“I am,” she says.

He laughs softly. “You can't run it without me.”

“Oh, yes, I can.”

“Now, Miranda, be sensible,” he says. “You know you don't have the experience to run an operation like this one. Oh, maybe some day you could, but not yet. The Christmas season is coming up. Do you know what that means? Of all times of the year to—”

“Our Christmas orders are all in. Merchandise is being shipped.”

“But you yourself admitted—just the other night, to me—that you had a lot to learn about retailing. And the only person who can teach you anything about this store is me.”

“I've learned a lot just in the past few days,” she says. “I'm a fast learner. Always have been. Smitty will help me, too.”

“Smitty? What's Smitty got to do with it?”

“Smitty's agreed to rejoin us.”

“Now wait a minute,” he says, running his fingers through his thick blond hair. “Just calm down a minute. Just settle down and try to talk sensibly, Miranda.”

“I am calm. Do I seem agitated?”

“Just a minute. Hear me out. Do I have a right to know why you—you
women
—have made this very unwise, financially dangerous decision? Can you tell me that?”

“For several reasons,” she says. “Funny business with the Retail Credit Corporation in Atlanta. Sales records that don't match up with shipping records. Discounts and rebates. Too much consignment selling. The disappearance of the employees' pension fund. These things have been going on too long.”

“I can explain all that,” he says.

“The only thing I'd like explained,” she says, “is what you managed to do with all the money you seem to have skimmed from us. You never struck me as a particularly high liver. Where did the money go? I wonder, is it in some numbered account in Switzerland? Is it in some bank in the Cayman Islands? But I don't ever expect to get to the bottom of that.”

“Now wait a minute,” he says. “Just wait a minute. You're making a very serious allegation there, Miranda. I can explain.”

“Then please do,” she says.

“To begin with, your father and I were very close. He was my closest friend. I loved him like a brother, Miranda. We were even closer than that. We were like—like one
soul
. He often told me that he could never have had the success he had without me. We were
that close,”
and he presses the two forefingers of his right hand together in demonstration. “Now your father was a great merchandising genius, as you know, a true retailing innovator in every sense of the word. But every genius has his shortcomings, and your father was no exception. I used to refer to your father's shortcomings as his little blind spots. He was a man with great merchandising ideas, but he was not a financial wizard. Covering his little blind spots was where I came in, and I handled nearly all the store's financial matters for him, increasingly so, over the years, as he placed more and more trust in me. But there were times when, in your father's enthusiasm for his ideas and innovations, he let himself get carried away, and he'd overextend himself, and that's when I'd have to step in to try to rescue him financially. And sometimes, in order to do that, I'd have to resort to certain fiscal practices which—to an outsider, at least—might seem a little bit … unorthodox. That was what happened with the pension fund, when Pauline caught us short by unexpectedly announcing her retirement. But I assure you that I have careful plans in the works right now—the details of which I can't go into yet—to have that fund fully restored by the end of the year. And I can promise you, Miranda, that every red cent of the money you see as missing was plowed back into helping your father run this store. If you'll let me go over the books again with you, I can show you exactly where and how. If it hadn't been for me, your father would have been a ruined man, and this store would have been bankrupt years ago. I did it because I loved and believed in this store. I did it because I loved and believed in your father. And I did it for your mother's sake, and of course for your sake too, because I loved you so. Do you believe me, Miranda?”