Her Father's House (32 page)

“I guess not. Any mail you've been getting would be in defense of a woman.”

“Well, perhaps this has been a lesson for me in keeping an open mind.”

“As you look ahead, what do you see for me, Ethel?”

“This can't have hurt today, especially that letter from Maria Gonzalez. How much it helped, how can I say? Anyway, you should know very well that's a question I don't dare guess at.”

“I do know it. But there's no harm trying.”

“Go on. Don't miss your plane. You'll be seeing me next time in court, but of course we'll be in touch half a dozen times before then. Try to enjoy the holidays, Jim.”

Chapter 31

M
elted snow lay in the gutters. Valentine candy was on sale, and spring clothes were in shop windows when Laura went back to the hotel and took out her diary.

This is the year that was. Maybe it would be better for me to wipe it out, forget that it ever happened. But maybe it would be better to set down what I know, rather than let time and selective memory take over, leaving for Dad's great-grandchildren little more than a legend.

I felt sometimes that I was watching a play. There on the bench sat the judge in his black robe, and below him stood my father.

“You have signed an agreement pleading guilty, Mr. Wolfe. Do you now again admit you are guilty of this charge?”

“I do,” Dad said.

“Are you saying this willingly? Do you understand what you're saying?”

“I do.”

“Has anyone in any way brought pressure on you to plead guilty?”

“No one,” Dad said.

“Explain to me why you committed this crime, please.”

You could feel the movement, like a wave or wind, as everyone craned to hear. And the center of it all, my father, replied. His voice was firm.

“I took the child away because she was being neglected. I wanted to give her a solid, normal home.”

On the other side of the courtroom sat Rebecca/
Lillian. It was the first time we had seen each other except for all those miserable interviews on television and in the newspapers. I was thinking that she looks just like her picture, and that I look a little like her, without any of the glamour. She was quietly dressed, a “portrait of a lady.” I was wondering what she thinks of me.

As for my feelings toward her, this woman who would, if she could, put my father into prison for thirty years, there was only fear and rage.

I must write down these bits and pieces of argument before they fly out of my mind.

“This father was generously given the freedom of his ex-wife's home. He was free to visit the child whenever and wherever he wanted to, but all he ever did was to pass her by in Central Park on a Sunday,” said the lawyer.

“This father was the one who took the sick child to the doctor when the mother, away on a ski trip, could not even be reached by telephone,” came the response.

“This child was seized from her home where she would have had every educational advantage and was hidden away on a farm in Georgia.”

“This child has grown up to study at one of the leading medical schools in the country.”

Bickering. Endless bickering. What do I really know, except that it's over at last?

FINISHED
, Laura wrote in large, black letters. Five years in prison, but sentence suspended unless the defendant should commit a crime. Hardly likely! That, and an enormous payment to Rebecca/Lillian for her charities.

A difficult case, the judge said.

Difficult? There are no words for it.

Gil says there must be a great deal more to the story than we'll ever find out, or the prosecutor would not have made such a weak case. And Richard says that it looks to him as if the prosecutor actually wanted Dad to go free.

Here are Rebecca/Lillian's remarks on the late-afternoon news. I took them down word for word.

“I did not pursue my aims as I could have done. I am much calmer now that I have seen my daughter. There is nothing anyone can give me to make up for my long agony, but at least I have seen that she has been well cared for. Putting her father in prison would undoubtedly be a terrible punishment for her, too, so that is another reason why I shall not appeal the judgment and fight on.”

For months, ever since I learned what she wanted to do to Dad, I hated her. But now that she is behaving this way, I really don't anymore. Clearly, Dad doesn't want me to hate her, either. I am also sure that there are things he doesn't tell me about her. Probably it's because when you've had a miserable marriage, there's no pleasure or point in talking about it. I am truly sorry that things turned out this way for them both, but at least it's all over now and we are at peace.

“Perhaps sometime in the future, Bettina will want to know me. I hope so,” she said.

I do not think I ever will.

We stayed on this extra day and a half after Mom and Rick went home because Dad wanted to give me a little history lesson. This is where we used to meet in the park on Sunday afternoons, he told me; this is the building where I lived when I first came to the city. And he told me that we're having our name changed legally, so I'll still be Laura Fuller. I had had the idea of going to that cemetery where Dad found the name, but everyone said that was absolutely crazy, and I see that they're right.

They all tell me I must now “move on.” Well, I am moving. I have a choice among three medical schools, north, south, and west, that will let me resume my interrupted studies. “Not east?” Gil asked, although by then he surely must have known better.

I am surprising myself by being able to write these words without tears. It's partly because I've shed so many recent ones all during the last awful year, but mostly it's because, without my being aware of its happening, the red-hot love between Gil and me has been cooling off. I know he felt bad about having talked too much, especially since my father completely forgave him. I know he's been embarrassed about his parents' dropping me with such a resounding, unmistakable thump. I guess they didn't want any part of the publicity.

We didn't have to do much explaining. We had, after all, been apart all winter when I was home. When we met over dinner back here in New York, we had not spent a night together in almost half a year, and neither one of us said a word about when we were going to do it again.

So we part tactfully, with no resentment, a little sadness, and on my part, much thanks for the way he saw everything through to Dad's deliverance at the end.

The trouble that drew me away from Gil has drawn me even closer to Richard. (When I am having serious thoughts, I call him
Richard.
Otherwise, he is
Rick.
) It's hard to believe that he has known about Dad and me for the last ten years. He must have known, and worried, that the truth was somehow bound someday to come out. And now that it has, he is almost a different person with me. He's more lighthearted, more at ease.

When I told this to Dad, he agreed. But then he gave me this advice.

“Don't rush into another love affair just yet. Go live your free life first. Go back to school with a free mind. You need that now, after all you've been through. It's what you really want, anyway.”

And that is the truth.

Chapter 32

I
'll be back by noon,” Jim told Laura on the last morning in the hotel. “We'll have a quick lunch and catch the plane home. It'll feel good to get there.”

All he had truly missed over the years were the collections of old books, where you could browse for a couple of hours and come out with as many treasures as you could afford or carry. That would be his first stop. The only other one would be the shop in whose window Kate had looked so longingly the day before yesterday at an emerald green leather handbag. But it was, she said, “ridiculously expensive,” not to mention that one had so little use for the color. He had to chuckle when he imagined her opening the package and exclaiming over it. Her cheeks would turn almost as bright as her hair. And then she would carry that bag wherever they traveled because now, Kate Fuller, he said to himself, we are going to travel wherever you want to go.

“A woman is coming along who will change your life,” Augustus Pratt had once told him long ago, and so it had happened.

It had not surprised Jim to see a few tears skimming under Pratt's eyelids when he had brought Kate and Laura to visit. It was a visit that never would have been paid save for certain horrendous recent events; otherwise, he would have lived out an uneventful life in Georgia. The whole of Pratt's firm had followed Jim's trial and ordeal, and this last visit had been full of more emotion than Jim could have expected. Indeed, the whole week had been full of more emotion than he would ever want to experience again.

He supposed he could be forgiven for the pride he had surely showed when he had stood before them all with his two lovely women beside him. It was as if Kate and Laura had been reborn since the court's decision, each of them restored to her best self.

“I'm going back to the day I met this man,” Pratt had said. “I wish we had a few days—we'd need that long—for me to tell you both about him. He was extraordinary.”

Kate nodded. “He still is, Mr. Pratt.”

“But we can come back, Mom! Now that Dad can travel again, we must!”

“Yes,” Pratt agreed, “you must.”

Well, we will, Jim reflected now, as he walked past that same office on his way to the bookstore. But he had no wish to return to that first life with all its challenges and its achievements. Too many things had changed, and he along with them.

You would think, he reflected as he walked with his packages under his arm, I was purposely reliving my past today. For here is the pocket park where we met, and two blocks farther on is the place where we had the pizzas and a couple of poodles tried to sniff at them. Farther east is the apartment where I lived, and a few steps farther north is the apartment where we lived together. . . . Oh Jim, forget it! Look the other way.

“Don't miss your plane,” Rick had warned. “They're preparing a welcome party for you. Dr. Scofield seems to have invited close to a hundred people, and they're all bringing food. Mom's supervising things to make sure you have all your special favorites. That's why she left New York a day ahead of you. You know how she is.”

Yes, he knew very well how she was. And he walked on, hastening.

Suddenly, as he crossed a street, he had the feeling that a man on the opposite sidewalk had recognized him.

“Long time no see,” said Cindy's boyfriend.

There was no mistaking the man, still after twenty years the same: the rippling, rumpled hair fell to the shabby shoulders; the sardonic, intelligent face was sullen.

“Yes, a long time,” Jim agreed, wondering whether the fellow knew about him and what he would say next.

“You've had your small troubles. Tough luck.”

Small? And why the ironic grin?

“Yes, tough. And how's everything with you?”

“Doing okay.”

“Working?” He had no idea why he asked, and he would have liked to move on. But the other man stood still, blocking the crowded sidewalk.

“From time to time. As the spirit moves me.”

The vocabulary and the accent were so incongruous with the speaker's appearance that, for some reason or other, Jim was moved to pity.

“Do you need money?” he asked.

“Not particularly. Of course, one can always use more. Right?”

When Jim took out a wallet thick with currency to pay the hotel bill, the man showed his own wallet, which was even thicker, and laughed.

“Thanks, but I don't really need it. She takes good care.”

“Takes care? Who does?”

“Why, Lillian. Takes care of everybody. Ask, and she'll give it. Always did.”

“I don't understand.”

“What's there to understand?”

“Why she takes care of you, or of ‘everybody.' ”

The man laughed again. It was disturbing to Jim that he was unable to remember his name. Then it occurred to him that probably he had never known it.

“Yeah, everybody. Rich men empty their pockets for her, she takes care of guys like me, and it trickles down and everybody's happy. I'm happy. You should know. You knew her long enough.”

Obviously he had not known her long enough to know all this. And he stood there, puzzled and troubled by some disconnected shreds of memory.

“Wasn't it you who told me when I met you long afterward that Cindy was Lillian's sister?”

“That's right.”

“What else have you not told me?”

“How can I answer that? I told you everything I wanted to tell you.”

“And you—aren't you—didn't you say you grew up across the street from them? You were some kind of distant cousin, I think?”

“If I said so. If we go back far enough are we not all cousins? Descendants of Adam and Eve?”

Again the mocking grin crossed the face that was suddenly and incredibly familiar, although he had never before spent so many moments paying any attention to it.

But now above the scruffy beard, he saw a pair of shining, clever eyes, light blue and wide with amusement.

And as if pierced by a knife blade, Jim was pierced with a shocking certainty. “My God!” he cried. “You're Lillian's brother! She's hidden you the way you both hid Cindy!”

“Well, if you say so, I am. I guess I must be.”

“But why? Why? I feel as if I'm standing inside a puzzle that's inside a riddle that's inside a—”

“An enigma. Keep your shirt on, man. It's human nature, that's what.”

“This secrecy! It doesn't make any sense.”

“Maybe not to you.”

The face! There was no mistaking it. It was her face above his beard! It was her expression, and her enjoyment of his bewilderment.

The two men stood there, the one thunderstruck and the other, quite without any mean intent, just simply amused.

“You're all worked up, so I won't keep you guessing, man. Yes, I'm her brother. You've got to remember that it takes all kinds. So good luck to you, better luck than last time. Well, I'll run along. Keep the faith.”

Jim watched him till he had gone around the corner and out of sight.
Her brother
. But why? It would have been so simple to find out before this. Why had he never done so? He could have insisted. But he had tried from time to time to find out what she was hiding and she had strongly resisted. And after all, when everything started to go downhill, he had no reason to pursue the problem. Besides, it would have done no good anyway. When a person builds a life around a lie and you manage to penetrate that lie against his will, there is nothing left except a terrible, bleeding wound.

Walking back to the hotel, Jim was filled with a troubling sadness. What horrors might possibly have lurked in the home of her childhood? What sordid evil, or what tragedy?

Heaven alone knew how much strength and courage it had cost her to rise above it, to learn her charming ways, how to eat that orange with such dainty fingers, how to speak with such grace, to dress with such elegance, to have studied and so loved art!

Who was it, or what was it, that had done such damage to her? Or was it only some careless conglomeration of the genes? You'll never know, he said to himself.

Yet she had realized everything she could have wanted, including a proud name. Even the scandal over possession of that painting had been settled amicably, as she and Storm had made it a gift to a museum. All of it, all of it, was a mystery.

And it seemed to Jim that perhaps the wisest way to look at life might be to expect the unlikely. For no one seeing Lillian would ever imagine what was hidden within her. Nor would anyone expect that Maria would write that astonishing letter; he must send her a note of warmest thanks and a fine photograph of Laura. And no man would expect to sit in a train next to an uninteresting woman who turned out to be the love of his life.

Judge not, he said to himself, and went into the lobby, where his daughter—and Lillian's daughter—was waiting for him.

   

Later that day, Rick met them at the airport and drove them home. The driveway was filled with so many cars that they had to park far down the road and walk the rest of the way. Behind their split-rail fence, two Guernseys and three horses were cropping new grass. The air was full of twitterings from the trees. And just past the curve appeared their house, low and white in a sea of green.

“What are you thinking of, Dad?” Laura asked.

“That I already smell barbecue and I'm starved.”

She was standing there with such gladness in her face!

“And you?” he asked.

“It's a funny thing. Looking down at the house from here, I can imagine it's alive. The windows are eyes, the front door smiles, and the wings are like open arms that are asking me to come in.”