I Regret Everything (5 page)

“How often did you see him?”

“The court mandated Wednesdays and alternate weekends and that's what he did . . . I shouldn't be telling you this.” And yet. It's these kinds of exchanges that are the currency of further intimacy and against my better judgment that is what I was after. “He and Tim had this exquisitely restored Queen Anne house on three acres in Bucks County and I'd spend those Saturdays and Sundays in the country with the two of them. All the physical affection he had denied my mother and me was heaped on Tim. They would hold hands, or my father would put his arm around Tim's waist when they walked in their garden. He hung on to Tim as if were he to let go the poor guy would blow away like pixie dust. He basically ignored me and when I was about sixteen the visits just fell off and I'd see him a couple of times a year.”

“What about now?”

“He's dead.”

Talk of death quiets the living and Spaulding didn't press on. She didn't ask how he died or where he was buried or if I missed him, just continued sketching in her notebook. I returned to my papers. We floated past Yankee Stadium, a pallid smudge on the gray horizon, and angled to the Cross County Parkway, then north on the Hutchinson River Parkway, a haze of sodden flora. Past the deserted Saxon Woods Golf Course the rain abated. For twenty minutes I concentrated on how exactly ownership of a London apartment my client co-owned with his wife could be shifted entirely to him until I sensed Spaulding's eyes on me. I looked over at her and saw that she was slanting her notebook in my direction. On the page was an exquisitely crafted pen and ink drawing of my profile, eyes down and intent on my client's travails.

“This is good.”

“I took drawing classes when I was a kid. You can give this to your girlfriend.”

“I don't have one.”

There was nothing meant by this, it was a simple statement, a fact. But for some reason it was followed by a slightly awkward silence.

“Well, then. Never mind.” With her phone she snapped a picture of the portrait. Then she asked for my phone number and programmed it into her device so she could send it to me.

“Hey, what should I call you? Mr. Best? Jeremy? Jinx Bell?”

“You can call me Mr. Best.”

Ordinarily, I didn't adhere to that kind of formality, but Spaulding was a perfectly designed temptation. “Mr. Best” was a border fence. She would stay on her side, I on mine.

“Really? We're going to be all BBC costume drama?”

“Indeed.”

“Does that mean you have to call me Miss Simonson?”

“Or Lady Presumptuous.”

“Oh, Mr. Best,” she said in a flawless British accent. “Your reserve is absurd!”

“Quite,” I replied, and back and forth we went in clipped cadence until the joke was exhausted.

A munificent sun illuminated the vast acreage of Dirk Trevelyan's property, its rolling lawns a vibrant green that seemed to glow in the storm's aftermath. It was the kind of vista that made one wonder if nature actually favored the rich. A stolid-looking middle-aged woman with cropped straw-colored hair and wearing a maid's uniform opened the door to the grand modernist steel and glass edifice. I introduced myself and she beckoned me inside. Spaulding was in the car with strict instructions to stay with Joseph.

The floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the patio and beyond that an ovoid swimming pool into which a five-foot artificial waterfall splashed from a raised Jacuzzi that appeared hewn from stone. Topiary in the shapes of animals and several large-scale abstract sculptures dotted the immense back lawn. Old-growth trees cast pools of soft shadow. The sleek room had a desk with two computer monitors, one of which displayed a financial news site, the other lists of securities, and the walls were hung with photographs of Trevelyan with two presidents, several prime ministers, the mayor of New York, a former pope, and the hockey player Wayne Gretzky who, like my client, was Canadian. Behind the chair in which I sat there was a small Picasso. Whether it was real or the handiwork of the second Mrs. Trevelyan was impossible to know without calling in an authentication expert.

Dirk Trevelyan was in his seventies and had taken every available opportunity to arrest nature's pitiless course. A facelift, whitened teeth, and a high-quality series of dyed hair transplants were the immediately noticeable renovations. Seated in his ergonomic desk chair, he regarded me with the concentration of a superannuated praying mantis. It was not difficult to imagine him springing forward and devouring my head.

Another maid, this one considerably more attractive, entered bearing two tall glasses of lemonade on a silver tray. When she departed, he said, “It's not that I don't want to take care of my second wife, but Marianne, my first wife, is the mother of my four children and I want to be more generous than I was in the will, you see.” Trevelyan's voice was a smooth purr. “The second Mrs. Trevelyan and I, we've only been married for five years and unfortunately, well, I rewrote the will when I was in a different frame of mind than I am today.” I nodded sympathetically. Dirk Trevelyan was not our only elderly—how he would blanch at
that
adjective—client whose mind was clouded with the erotic fog emitted by a younger second wife. “But I acted unwisely when I put several properties in the second Mrs. Trevelyan's name.”

All of this was going to be moot as soon as he learned of his current spouse's transgression so there was no point in letting him go on. “Excuse me, Mr. Trevelyan,” I said. “But there's something you need to be aware of before we go any further.” His startled expression let it be known that he was not a man accustomed to being cut off mid-monologue. His dark eyes held me like pincers.

“And that would be?” The aggravated tone confirmed what his look had suggested.

Setting the lemonade on a coaster, I leaned forward and launched into the story, keeping my voice as free of inflection as possible. Trevelyan listened with no expression, his head tipped slightly back as if the unpleasant facts were exerting centrifugal force. When I finished he didn't say anything at first. In the backyard a gardener was trimming a hedge. Several crows launched from a tree. I glanced at the alleged Picasso, a figure with contorted limbs playing a stringed instrument, and again wondered at its provenance. When I looked back at Trevelyan the muscles in his face were slack and his shoulders visibly sagged. The breath seemed to have gone out of him. He sat perfectly still. In a tone equal parts incredulous, angry, and mortified, he rumbled, “The Kandinsky is a forgery?”

“That's what your wife told Mr. Simonson.”

“And why did Simonson not come up here to inform me himself?”

“You would have to ask him.” Again, I waited. Outside the window two of the crows, black wings beating, battled over the corpse of a small rodent. A financial news reporter mutely blathered on one of the computer monitors. I took another sip of lemonade, and relished the coolness in my parched throat. Trevelyan pressed the tips of his fingers to his temples.

It was hard to know if my solicitous expression changed when I looked out the window and saw Spaulding on the lawn with Joseph's cap tipped rakishly on her head. Near a giant bush trimmed to the shape of a giraffe, she proceeded to execute a series of ballet steps. Although her movements reflected the hazy memories of a girl who wore a tutu as a child, she wove them into a coherent if slightly awkward dance that transported her across my field of vision. Step, step, leap, plié, relevé, leap, spin, plié, leap, stumble slightly . . . recover. It was hard not to smile. She came to rest, arms loose at her sides, facing the house. Spaulding must have seen me seated with Trevelyan because she executed a bow worthy of a ballerina who had just performed
Swan Lake
before springing upright and cantering off.

“Your masters sent you into the lion's den, didn't they?” Trevelyan looked at me then followed my eyes out the window. To my relief, Spaulding remained out of sight. Addressing the internal politics of the firm, or Ed Simonson's reluctance to undertake an unpleasant job, or what his daughter was doing capering around the back lawn would not make the task at hand easier. “You've caught me a little off guard here, Mr. Best. I'm not exactly sure what to say, much less do.”

I dutifully expressed my chagrin, then laid out the options and described the ramifications of each, periodically glancing out the window to see if Spaulding was going to perform an encore. This took about ten minutes, during which he asked no questions. By the time I finished and drained the remainder of the lemonade, Spaulding had still not reappeared.

Trevelyan rose from his chair and said he could use a little afternoon sun. He could have used a morphine drip.

I wondered whether his lack of generosity with wife number two reflected an underlying psychological condition. And was her betrayal its florid result? All of his treasure did not establish the simple loyalty of the one who was supposed to be closest to him. Ah, but was he not culpable, too? Was he not responsible for his own fate? Wealth and wisdom were different continents.

We strolled toward the back of the immense property. Trevelyan stared straight ahead. He hadn't uttered a word since we had left the house. I hoped Spaulding would not materialize like some wood nymph, necessitating introductions. After what seemed like several minutes had passed, he turned to me and said, “I want to divorce her.” This was not my territory, but if he wanted to talk about his marriage there was no point in stopping him. “And I suspect I can deduct the value of the painting from what I owe her in the prenup and that should make us about even.” Turning toward the house he announced, “I built that pile of tin for my second wife. It was designed by one of the leading architects of Europe, a protégé of Louis Kahn. The apple orchard wasn't here. I trucked the trees down from New Hampshire because I knew she enjoyed painting them. I had never collected sculpture before, only paintings. These sculptures? They're all for her. I'm thirty years older and I'll predecease her, but I thought if I could craft an environment where she would be surrounded by beautiful things she loved . . .” He trailed off and gazed toward a gap in the clouds through which a glorious angel slide indifferently poured. Nature does not favor the rich. They are as capable of misery as the rest of us.

“Have you ever been married?”

Whether it was the heat of the day, the tart taste of the lemonade that recalled childhood, or the long pauses between everything Trevelyan said, the simple question set my mind reeling. I had never had a relationship with a woman last longer than a baseball season. When the firm hosted a dinner, finding a suitable female companion for the evening was never a problem but when it came to sustained relationships, I was a disaster; a master of the unreturned phone call, the forgotten birthday, the middle-distance stare.

And meanwhile, where had Spaulding gone?

“I've managed to avoid it,” I said.

“What's the point of that? Marriage is grand!” A laugh escaped his lips, full-throated and brief, and he told me he was fortunate because at least he'd been in love. “Who cares what we leave behind? What matters is what happens while we're here. I used to be obsessed with the idea of legacy, but now? Do you know who Diogenes is?”

Although this seemed like a non sequitur, I nonetheless immediately declared my affiliation with the Sarah Lawrence classics department. I held up my left hand and showed off my class ring, an amethyst set in a gold band with my graduation year engraved on it.

“An abiding keepsake, Mr. Best. Lovely. This is why Dio­genes, a man who lived in a giant pot, was the most sublime of the Attic philosophers. When Alexander the Great asked him what gift he would like to receive . . .” Here, Trevelyan looked away, as if searching for something eternal beyond the topiary.

“Diogenes told him to just stop blocking the sun.”

“Thank you, Mr. Best. Yes! Mind you, he was living in a pot. I'm more of a romantic.”

“But you'd be fine in a pot with someone you loved and could trust.”

Trevelyan clapped me on the back as if I had passed a test. We discussed in further detail how the will would be reconfigured and he coolly instructed me to draw up the necessary amendments. The movement in my peripheral vision was only the murder of crows.

He told me he'd like the original Kandinsky back and I informed him the firm knew how to deal with these matters. A man with no return address would talk to the second Mrs. Trevelyan, glean the details of the transaction, and, if Trevelyan was willing, pay off his soon-to-be-ex-wife's debt in order to retrieve the painting. Yes, these guys exist and some of them work for top law firms. No one's arm gets broken but order is restored. His eyes sparked when he heard this. He'd write the check.

Saying goodbye in front of the house a few minutes later, he assured me that I had a dazzling future. “It was gutless of Simonson to send you to do his dirty work. You'd think the thousand-dollar-an-hour guy would have the balls to do it himself.”

There was nothing to be gained by agreeing so I offered what I hoped was an enigmatic expression. Was Spaulding going to perform a curtain call? I glanced nervously around waiting for her to spring from behind a shrub.

Trevelyan said that if there was ever a favor he could do,
any
kind of favor, I should not hesitate to ask.

“Take the jet to Bermuda for the weekend sort of thing.”

“I could never do that.”

“You're a gentleman, Mr. Best. Don't let it stop you. Be bold!”

Briefly I considered discussing the establishment of the Best Foundation but as it only existed in my mind's eye could not steel myself for The Ask. Being bold was a challenge for me. Trevelyan clapped me on the back again, wheeled, and strode back into his house, a man with things to do. As we drove off the property I asked Joseph if he had any idea where Spaulding was.