Red Clover (28 page)

Lee got up from his chair.

“Are you okay, Mother?”

“I’m okay,” she said when she was halfway to the stairs leading to the second floor bedrooms.

Lee was left alone to mull over all that he had just learned—his parent’s disingenuous marriage, his mother’s desperate need for emotional support, and Nelson’s clandestine relationship with JFK. It was a lot to contemplate, but of all the crucial details his mother had just revealed, the one that struck him most was the fact that he had been conceived the same day his father had met with a future president of the United States.

How different his life would have been, he thought, had he grown up in a household with his mother and Nelson as a father. He fanticized about what it would have been like to have two loving parents growing up, no siblings to rival, and a father he could talk to, look up to, and respect. He pictured his mother very different in the presence of Nelson. He pictured her much softer, warmer, with a comforting smile instead of the stilted one she typically wore. He imagined her being expressive, lighthearted, and fun. He envisioned her being a good listener and helping him grow into adulthood, encouraging him in areas that he found of interest, and supporting his efforts. He pictured her not afraid.

Lee walked into the front parlor and took a long hard look at it. Of all the rooms in the house, this one bothered him the most. All the rooms were opulent, but this one rivaled ones in the Palace of Versailles with its extraordinary coved ceiling, hand-painted silk wall covering, massive carved marble fireplace, antique grand piano with intricately inlaid tortoiseshell and mother of pearl, matching gold gilt settees, and twelve-foot tall ornately carved secretare. He walked to the middle of the room and stepped onto the Sickle-Leaf Persian throw rug he had never stepped on before, perhaps no one had ever stepped on before. Like everything else in the room, touching it made him feel especially uneasy.

Whenever he had been summoned to the front parlor during his childhood, he knew he was about to be told something important. It was like entering into a den of uncertainty—he never knew what to expect. His parents always sat in their matching Louis XV chairs during these discussions. And afterward, regardless if it had been good or bad news, he always felt the same sick feeling in his stomach. Lee cringed as a wave of queasiness came over him, and while these chairs looked far less intimidating than when he was a child, he realized the terrorizing affect they had on him had remained.

Lee went to the kitchen for a glass of water and then retreated to the dining room to wait for his mother. When she reemerged, she had a glass of sherry in her hand.

“How are you feeling, Mother? Can we pick up where we left off?”

“Yes. I asked Bryah to have dinner ready by seven. Let’s go in the front parlor. Would you like something to—”

“Mother, can we go somewhere else please?”

His mother shot him a bewildered look. “Of course, dear. How about the sunroom?”

The sunroom looked out on a half-acre of impeccably manicured lawn, sculpted hedges, and mature oak trees. Beyond the property was the edge of a high ridge overlooking Lake Michigan. The view gave Lee a reassuring sense of a world out there beyond the Winekoop family.

“Yes, that would be nice,” he responded.

“Before I pick up where I left off, are
you
all right? I am telling you things that, well, may be shocking to you, and...”

“I’m okay. I don’t think there’s anything you could say at this point that would be too much for me to handle. Please continue. What happened when you realized you were pregnant, presumably soon after that hotel encounter?”

“So, I knew it wasn’t Henry’s, and of course he would know it couldn’t have been his because...we weren't...well, we didn’t...”

“I get it, Mother. Go on.”

“I went into a real panic. It was out of the question to disgrace my family, and while you could get a legal abortion in some states, it wasn’t something I could ever do. So, in my mind, the only solution was...a secret adoption.”

“Mother.”

“Yes, Lee.”

“Thank you for not having an abortion.”

She reached over and touched his hand. “I know.” She wiped a lone tear from her cheek. “I didn’t start showing until I was almost six months’ pregnant, and that’s when I planned a trip to our New York apartment. Henry didn’t think anything of it since, as you know, I went there often without him. And by that time, we could be apart for long periods of time and think nothing of it. And Nelson and Bennett were at Camp Laurel for the summer, so…”

Lee knew Camp Laurel to be an exclusive summer camp in Maine his brothers had attended as children.

“But this time was different,” she explained.

“How so?”

“I learned later he suspected I was having an affair. So he showed up in New York, unannounced, thinking he would catch me there with someone. But what he found instead was a very pregnant wife.”

“I can’t even imagine what his reaction was.”

“It was bad, but in a peculiar way I felt he had come to rescue me.”

“Rescue you.”

“In a peculiar way.”

“You said you didn’t tell him whose baby it was right away.”

“At first, he didn’t seem interested in whose child it was—that it was someone else’s child was enough. But after a while, he demanded to know, and he had the right to know, so I told him.”

“Did he know him?”

“Yes. He had met Nelson and his wife several times at various events.”

“His wife?”

“Yes, Nelson was also married.”

His mother’s facial expression said it all, and for a few seconds, he thought she was going to faint. When the color returned to her face, he didn’t have the heart to explore Nelson’s family life any further.

“So tell me more about Henry’s reaction. How bad was it?”

“There was a lot of ranting and raving. It took him several hours to calm down, and when he did, he left the apartment. Didn’t say a word. He just left.”

“Making things even worse.”

“Yes. At least when he was ranting and raving, I knew where he was and what was going through his mind.”

“Did Uncle Nelson...Nelson...know you were pregnant?”

“Yes.”

“And that you planned to give me up for adoption?”

“He wasn’t in favor of that, not at first.”

“What did he want you to do?”

“He couldn’t come up with any other viable option, so eventually he went along with it. So Henry flew back to Chicago, and I stayed in New York until you were born. I had already made arrangements with the adoption agency, but as soon as I saw your face, well, I knew I couldn’t go through with it. I called Henry and asked him to come to New York so we could talk.”

“That had to be hard.”

“I knew what I was up against, but I was determined to do the right thing. I’m not sure where I got the courage to ask him to accept you as his own son.”

“He never did, you know.”

“I know.” She struggled to keep back the tears. “I’m sorry, Lee. I thought I was doing what was in your best interest.”

“I understand.”

No, I don’t.

“Henry didn’t show up until right after you were born, and when I was ready to be released, he said to me—I’ll never forget his words—he said, ‘I promised I would marry you for better or for worse, and I meant it.'“

“I think now that
I
need a break.”

“Dinner will be ready in an hour.”

Lee went to his old bedroom, kicked off his shoes, and lay down on his bed, face up, staring at the ceiling. If he concentrated real hard, he could make out a man’s face camouflaged in the obscure swirls of the textured ceiling paint. He had a kind face—engaging eyes and just a curl of a smile. He looked away, and when he looked back, he couldn’t find him again.

Bryah, the cook, made poached red snapper for dinner, one of Lee’s favorite dishes. He and his mother ate in silence—like always—but this time for a different reason.

Later, after dinner, the conversation resumed, once his mother had had a couple of glasses of sherry. Lee joined her in a glass this time.

“So how did you come up with my name?”

“I always liked that name. Actually, I wanted to give Bennett that name, but Henry didn’t like it.”

Good one, Mother. Add one more thing to exacerbate Henry’s contempt for me.

“And Oliver?”

“That’s Nelson’s middle name.”

“And
he
didn’t have a problem with that?”

“Who, Henry?”

“Yes.” Deciding what to call him was getting increasingly difficult.

“I never told him.”

“Never told him?”

“To this day, I don’t think he knows your middle name.”

“That’s incredible.”

“On many levels.”

“So we get home, and how do you explain me to everyone?”

“We told people, including your brothers, that while I was in New York, I discovered I was pregnant, and instead of making the trip back here, I stayed in New York to have the baby.”

“But at some point, everyone knows Nelson is my real father, everyone but me, of course. How did that happen?”

“When you were still a toddler, and the boys were in their early teens, Henry had one too many martinis one day and flew into one of his rages. By the time he was done yelling, everyone within a mile radius knew Nelson was your real father. It was so awful. I had to do quick damage control and tell your brothers and the help that Henry didn’t mean anything he had said, and none of it was ever to be repeated.”

Her words pulled at something inside his head. He closed his eyes, and an incident when he was very young flashed through his mind. He was hiding behind his mother’s favorite front parlor chair. His father was in the room doing a lot of yelling. He knew his mother was there, but he didn’t recollect her saying anything. He remembered his nanny grabbing him and taking him away.

“Lee?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, Mother. I’m okay.” He took a moment to compose himself. “So then everyone knew.”

“Yes, but in spite of the incident, I believed we could go back to being the way we were, and...”

“And continue with the lies instead of—”

“Yes. Continue with the lies.”

Feeling nauseous, Lee excused himself to use the bathroom. He leaned over the sink for a minute, and when nothing came up, he sat on the toilet lid, leaned back against the tank, and stared at the Cézanne nude his parents had purchased the last time they’d been vacationing in Europe. He didn’t like the painting—too many dull drab colors for his taste. He figured Cézanne had painted it early in his career during his so-called “dark” period. Lee closed his eyes, longing to be out of his “dark” period. He stopped tapping his fingers on the side of the toilet as soon as he realized he was doing it. He wanted so to break that habit.

Lee thought back to how his tapping ritual had changed over the years—always a __ that couldn’t be seen by others. His first recollection was when he was eight or nine. At that time, he tapped the index finger of his left hand on his left thumb. He later changed to his right hand. As a teen, he tapped a toe on the inside of his shoe.

He closed his eyes again and went through a series of mind-clearing and deep-breathing exercises he had learned from one of his doctors, until he felt like he was floating. Then he thought about how he wanted to feel and repeated that word over and over again until he felt relaxed. The word was “strong.”

Feeling more in control, Lee returned to the sunroom, anxious for more of his questions to get answered.

“When did everyone start calling Nelson Sambourg Uncle Nelson? How did that come about?”

“Nelson wanted to be in the picture from the onset, and what better way to do that than as a long-lost family member.”

“Really?”

“Yes. He felt responsible for you and worried that Henry, well, he…”

“Might not treat me like his other sons?”

“No, not that. Well, maybe it was that.”

“And he went along with it? Inventing an uncle?”

“If you’re referring to Henry, I didn’t give him much of a choice.”

“But Uncle Nelson rarely came over and never on holidays or birthdays or anything.”

“He did when you were small. You probably don’t remember it. But when Henry flew into that rage, well, Nelson’s visits had to stop.”

“You haven’t really told me much about him.” After the words escaped his lips, Lee realized he wasn’t actually sure he was ready to hear what the man was like. But he pressed on. “What did he do for a living? What were his outside interests?”

“Nelson had many interests—his father’s printing company and various real estate holdings. He had a significant amount of money tied up in the stock market that he managed himself. He was well-liked and respected and had a huge network of friends and acquaintances. He was involved in many things, but—”

“Is the printing company around here?'

“It’s in Indiana. He inherited it when his father died. That’s all I know.”

“You don’t know the name of it?”

“It may have been...Arietta. Or something like that. The name had a musical connotation, I remember. His father loved the symphony. So did he.”

“So you and he were involved in some of the same charities?”

“Several. He was a very generous man. His father had left him a huge estate, and his philosophy was what he didn’t earn himself, he should share.”

“That’s an interesting philosophy. What about his personal interests? What did he like to do for fun or relaxation?”

“I really don’t know. When it came to his personal life, his life at home, he didn’t share it with me, and quite frankly, I didn’t want to know. The small world we had together was all I needed.” She hung her head for a moment, and when she raised it back up, her expression was apologetic. “I’m not proud of any of this. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, Mother. I understand. Is there anything more?”

“I think I’ve told you everything.”

“I have questions.”

“Tomorrow then?”

“Yes, of course. When will he be home?”

“His plane gets in at six-thirty.”