Tea Cups & Tiger Claws (23 page)

“I love you, mom. I love you,” said
Sarah.

“Abbey. Abbey,” said Aunt Judith,
receiving no response except lifeless silence.

They continued their
wistful gaze for a moment longer, leaning forward, wanting to hold back the veil even though they knew it had already fallen. Sarah’s mom was dead. Slowly they turned to each other. They looked at the pain on each other’s faces, and saw, as if in a mirror, their own pain. They saw not only the great loss of a loved one, but the loss of one who had loved them so greatly. They both knew it. Sarah rose from the bedside chair and fell into her aunt’s arms.

Sarah
thought she knew what those strange last words had meant. It meant that her mom had worried about things right up to the bitter end. That made sense…but maybe it didn’t. Maybe her mom had been trying to tell her something important. When Sarah asked about it the next day, Aunt Judith waved her hand and said, “That didn’t mean anything, dear. Your mother loved to worry about things. Throw that together with the morphine, and everything else that had happened, and that’s what you get. It didn’t mean anything.” Sarah accepted this explanation mostly because she didn’t have the energy, or the mental wherewithal to do much of anything else. Besides, Mom
had
been a bit of a crank when it came to “storms”; she saw them everywhere.

Whether
Sarah’s mom had actually seen something, or not, if Sarah had made the smallest effort to scan the horizon, she would’ve seen for herself the ominous signs of a gathering storm. Those signs had a name. They were called Veronica Newfield.

Veronica had always brought out the doomsday in
Sarah’s mom. When Mom found out somewhat after the fact that Veronica had been smoking weed since the ninth grade, she took it to mean that her warnings had gone unheeded, and that she needed to redouble her evangelizing. Sarah, an innocent bystander, definitely felt the heat of hellfire and heard the gnashing of teeth, even if Aunt Judith didn’t. The whole thing meant next to nothing to Aunt Judith. As long as Veronica stayed out of the newspapers and didn’t openly sully the family name, she didn’t care what her daughter smoked. And when a strange rumor circulated that Dorthea Railer had been the one supplying Veronica with the weed, Aunt Judith laughed it off as totally preposterous. But even if it were true, according to her logic, it only proved that Veronica had the remarkable good sense to get her illegal drug from the safest possible source. It proved responsibility and maturity. And even though that particular rumor most definitely had to be false, it didn’t change the fact that Veronica had gone almost two years, since the little incident in Santa Marcela, without getting into even a speck of real trouble. That’s what Aunt Judith called impressive. Mom called it suspicious. Sarah sided with her aunt. Sometimes Veronica got stoned and acted weird but Sarah had seen her act a lot worse before she ever started getting stoned. If for no other reason than the fact that Veronica had been spending more and more time locked in her room, Sarah had to agree with her aunt: life with Veronica had been getting more tolerable as she got older.

That
’s the cousin Sarah left behind when she went away to college, somewhat troubled, but a cousin who went to high school and managed to get decent grades—even if the teachers did let her slide a great deal. When she could be forced out of her hot pants and hip huggers, she wore a size six dress and looked very presentable, even healthy. With a longish face and ears that liked to poke through limp, dishwater hair, she didn’t have the good looks of her mother, but she did have her father’s beautiful blue eyes, and conscientiously made the most out of everything else.

Now, f
our years later, only the thinnest shadow of this cousin remained. And Sarah, too preoccupied with the circumstances surrounding her mother, never noticed. She didn’t need to be a hero, or a saint, or a sage. She just needed to do what she’d always done: keep an eye on her cousin. She didn’t do it and that would become her biggest regret of all.

Even though they had started out in the same family and shared a common bond of parentage, Dorthea had never had any kind of relationship with Judith Newfield, at least not a civil one and definitely not one that made her privy to the goings on at Sunny Slope Manor. Likewise, Dorthea had grown up in the same small town as Bill Newfield and, at the time of his death, was the second largest property owner next to him, but that hadn’t gotten her any kind of access to the man or to the Castaneda Corporation, the Newfield empire that traced its wealth back to the Castaneda Spanish Land Grant of 1814. She moved in the wrong circles. Not even reliable second hand intelligence about the Newfields easily came her way. Abigail might’ve been a decent source of such information had it not been for an overdeveloped fear of committing the sin of gossip; she’d rarely talked about anything useful. And yet, despite this almost complete lack of affiliation, Dorthea Railer knew more about the Newfields, including Castaneda, than they knew themselves.

It’s important to know the enemy. That’s why she knew them. And that’s
why she knew that Veronica would call the phone number on the little purple card in the little purple gift bag, which she’d found in her car that day after school. On the card Dorthea had written, “I’ve never forgotten how, as just a little girl, you bravely came to my rescue. I do hope that you’ll give me a chance to repay your kindness. Please call. Love, Aunt Dorthea.”

Veronica’s life, even at
sixteen, the age when Dorthea reintroduced herself, looked like a giant yawn. She’d had the best of the best and it hadn’t done anything for her. She’d seen it all, or as much as she thought she cared to see, and that hadn’t done anything for her either. By the time Dorthea came along, Veronica had become very much the pouting, bored princess who’d found nothing new under the sun. Instead of fixing the problem by fixing her rotten personality, she turned to Dorthea and her little gift bags. She called the number on the card. She called the first time, as Dorthea knew she would, for the ease of it, and because she liked the excitement and kookiness of getting weed from a famously scary person like Dorthea Railer, and because going behind her mother’s back to “Aunt Dorthea,” her mother’s biggest enemy, made the whole thing just a little bit funny. After a while, when Dorthea started putting bindles of white powder into the bags, Veronica called because she had to.

After that first phone call, when
Veronica ventured back to the hotel, Dorthea had everything waiting for her, just as before. Horrick waited by the rear exit and looked as friendly as possible—given his circumstances. He took her up in the same private elevator. She made the same walk from the elevator, past the painting on the wall, past the castle guards, through the darkened foyer, and into the living room with the big window. Just as before, she found Dorthea in a rocking chair, dressed up like a harmless grandmother, watching Lawrence Welk on an old TV. Dorthea greeted her like a favorite relative and invited her to sit on the homey looking sofa that stood next to the rocking chair. For the next ten minutes they talked about school and friends and things happening at the manor. This little talk became a permanent part of their meetings. If Veronica didn’t feel like talking, Dorthea plowed ahead anyway. If the questions made Veronica mad, or suspicious, Dorthea threw in quaint stories about old time Prospect Park or the interesting pickled squash she’d come across or the benefits of a high fiber diet. Then she’d ask more questions. After that Veronica got the bag that she’d come for, and they parted company. Until the next time.

They met, they talked,
and Veronica got her bag. And sometimes she got more than that because over the years Dorthea made it her business to be as helpful to Veronica as possible, especially if it meant keeping her out of trouble, such as the time when Veronica smashed her car through a backyard fence down on Cypress Street; Dorthea made the problem go away without Veronica having to lift a finger.

Dorthea wanted power.
Veronica wanted a good time. Dorthea accepted her payout over time. Veronica wanted it immediately. Dorthea sacrificed beauty and style so that she might appear kindly and benign. Veronica suffered the boredom of weekly conversations with an old lady. After two years, Dorthea had all the power she needed and Veronica no longer knew what it meant to have a good time.

Sarah wanted to get lost. Lost from death, from life, from sadness. She wanted to wrap a blindfold around her brain, drop it off in the middle of nowhere, and let it wander around for a year or two. On the back of a horse you can sometimes get lost like that. Something about the rhythmic clop of their hooves, the swaying of their bodies, the tick-tock regularity of their swishing tails. Sometimes it starts before you even get on, with the grooming, as your eyes hypnotically track the moving plume of dust and the visible path made by each stroke of the brush across the hide. Then there’s the blessed mindlessness of routine: put on the saddle pad, put on the saddle, drape the stirrup over the saddle, reach under the horse for the cinch, tighten the cinch, adjust the stirrups, slip the bridle under the halter, attach the bridle, remove the halter, tighten the cinch again, mount the horse, ride off on the loneliest trail you can find. Sarah liked the barn for many reasons. After her mom died, she liked it because it helped her to get lost.

She still enjoyed
Mack’s company, though, even if it meant she couldn’t get lost every time she felt like it.

On
a crisp and clear Saturday morning in January 1972, about a month after her mom had died, Sarah found herself on thrush duty, along with Mack, because a few of the horses in the shady stalls had come down with a mild case of that fungus. Mack had the job of holding the hoof steady while Sarah brushed on a solution he’d made of povidone-iodine and sugar.

Mack
pulled the horse’s rear leg between his legs and picked out the hoof. And for some reason Sarah started daydreaming. Of all things, she thought about how she’d take it when Mack finally got a girlfriend. Probably not very well because just thinking about it made her sad. And that made her mad because of the selfishness of it. And why was she even thinking about these things anyway?

“
Sarah, she’s not going to stand on three legs all day.”

Roused from her daydream,
Sarah moved in with the little brush with the silver handle. “Sorry…I guess I was daydreaming.”

Two skinny g
eldings goofed around with each other just outside the stall where they worked. Among Sarah’s first rescues, twenty-four-year-old Sandy and twenty-five-year-old Buggs had since been granted a unique retirement plan: every morning they got turned loose and had the run of the stable for the rest of the day. With gray whiskers and withered frames, they played, dozed, and snuck into empty stalls to eat the food of horses that were out being worked. Just then they happened to be squared off, bobbing and twisting, each looking to score a quick nip—their usual horseplay. Then the sound of an approaching car distracted them.

Mack
let the mare have her leg back and stood up. “That guy’s going to fly right past the no parking sign,” he said.

Sandy and Buggs
stood at attention, ears pricked toward the car.

“You know who that looks like?” asked
Sarah.

“An idiot who can’t read?”

A red Porsche Carrera sped through the opened gate that separated the parking area from the stable and came to a sideways skidding stop twenty feet from the stall where Sarah and Mack stood. The old boys got scared and ran away as fast as their skinny legs could carry them. They threw in a few bucks and kicks for old times’ sake.

“It’s Grant.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

A tall, black haired young man with a partially unbuttoned baby blue collared shirt unfolded from the sports car and draped himself
over the opened car door like a farmhand on a fence rail.

“Howdy pardners!” he said
, with a brilliant smile.

He
looked as handsome as ever—and as full of himself.

“Grant! Did you see what you just did to those horses? You know you’re not supposed to park in here.” she said.

“I’m home baby! I had to do something special!” he said, with an even bigger smile. “Now come over here and show me how happy you are.”

She glanced self-consciously at
Mack and went out of the stall to give him a kiss.

“There. Now park your car where it belongs.”

“Here you go cowpoke.” He tossed his keys to Mack. “I bet you’ve never driven one of these before.”

“Grant! Park it yourself.”

“Nah, I don’t mind,” said Mack, as he set his gear outside the stall and closed the gate. “I’ll put it somewhere safe.”

Grant reached into the front pocket of his baby blue polyester slacks and came out with
some wadded cash. He held it out to Mack. “Now remember, it’s not a Pinto,” he said, as he winked at Sarah. Mack ignored his outstretched hand, got into the car, and drove away.

“That wasn’t nice, Grant. He’s not your valet.”

“Oh. I didn’t know things got so complicated down here on the farm,” he said with a sarcastic twang.

Sarah
didn’t laugh.

“Come on
baby. It’s just a joke. I’m hungry. You think that grumpy cook will make me something to eat?”

“I’m sure he will. Just leave it to me.”
She’d always had a hard time staying mad at Grant. They walked hand in hand up to the house.

Grand enjoyed an
early lunch, and Sarah admired his handsome profile. She remembered back a few years, to nineteen, their ages when they’d first started dating. Even then he’d had a manly face with a strong chin and a straight, aristocratic nose. In high school she’d dated boys with pubescent voices that sometimes slipped out of gear. Grant’s had been deep and locked in, like a movie star. A lot of boys back then still had pimples and peach fuzz. He’d had sporty sideburns and a debonair mustache. And while the other boys acted like clumsy ducklings with memorized pickup lines and smooth moves they’d seen at the movies, Grant swam comfortably with any swan that caught his eye. Even back then he’d not only acted like someone going somewhere, but someone who’d pretty much already arrived.

That didn’t explain his arrival at
the manor, though. He still had a semester left at Harvard. The original plan, made before her mom had gotten sick, had been for him to finish in time for a summer wedding. “Now what do you mean ‘you’re home’?” asked Sarah.

“I left school—didn’t even pack—and I’m not going back. Why should I?
All I’m doing is killing time, waiting for a diploma I don’t need. My trust fund starts in a few years and you’ve got your inheritance now. We’ll bump up the wedding a few months and try to get by for a few years. Maybe even eat TV dinners once in a while. How’s that sound for a plan?”

Bad. That’s how it sounded.
Moving an already neglected wedding up a few months didn’t sound good at all, especially to a person trying to get lost. Women in wedding dresses don’t get lost. They get escorted, handed over, and bound by solemn oath. They get surrounded by hundreds of witnesses who whisper into each other’s ears and titter over misspoken words. Women in wedding dresses get photographed, greeted, toasted, and kissed. Over and over again. They are not allowed to get lost. Sarah didn’t feel ready for a wedding dress.

“But
you’re so close to graduating,” she said, as the two strolled back toward the barn. “You might need it for a job. Have you thought any more about what you want to do?”

“
Yes. I’ve decided to spend countless hours just staring at you,” he said, as he put his arm around her. “And when you get tired of that I’ll go to the club and play tennis.”

“
I meant for a job.”

“
Oh. I’m sure one of Father’s connections will offer me something, or maybe I’ll think about it for a while.”

And right on cue
Sarah heard the stern warning of her mother’s voice:
he’s not a man if he doesn’t work.
Sometimes that voice annoyed her.

They
walked back to the stable, Grant’s arm lazily draped over her shoulders. Sarah covered her sadness with a put on happy face. When they rounded the bend below the pond and saw Grant’s red Porsche parked on top of the manure pile, her smile became real.

~~~

Another man had marriage on his mind that day. And fleeting thoughts of annulment too. Walter Tubbs, the attorney with a quick eye and an eager smile, had successfully lured a rich widow to the altar. For the longest time his professions of love for Mrs. Emily Barnes had elicited only frightening looking blushes and coy protests about their difference in age. To which he’d lied, repeatedly, saying that she by no means looked fourteen years older, and that it wouldn’t have mattered if she had. Of course by then he’d had a good look at her address book and had calculated the payoff; she had thirty-five or forty prominent names in that book, all of them personal friends from the hill, ready to welcome her new husband with open arms. And ready to open their wallets, no doubt, to the various business ventures he had in mind.

Only later
, after she’d accepted his proposal, did he learn that while she had prominent names in her address book, it didn’t mean they had her name in theirs, because they didn’t. It turned out that the book had belonged to her dead husband, a true Prospect Park blueblood, and the names had been entered before he’d foolishly acquired Emily from a beauty pageant in Atlantic City. After getting tangled feet during her tap dance, she didn’t come away with the sash and tiara but did manage to finagle a marriage to Horatio Barnes. The story had all the makings of a frolicking, romantic musical. It didn’t, however, have the makings for a happy life on the hill in Prospect Park. Beauty pageant queens and bad tap dancers weren’t readily accepted in that realm. After the ill-advised union, the newlyweds found themselves forever banished from all but the most undesirable of the hillside mansions.

Normally when one side takes something off the table, the other side
renegotiates, but how do you renegotiate phony professions of love? Either Tubbs took what remained—the eminence of the widow’s street address and a sizable bank account—or he walked away. Back to the calculator he went, where he tried to put a price tag on a forty-six year old man with robust appetites who sacrifices himself to a sixty year old faded beauty queen.

It never add
ed up, but he decided to marry Emily Barnes anyway. And he did it because of the lousy address book. It might’ve looked worthless, but who’s to say that, in the right hands, that little book might not start paying dividends after all. He, Walter Tubbs, had landed in Prospect Park with nothing. He’d built a successful, if not spectacular, practice. He’d boasted Dorthea Railer as a regular client (even though he’d still never met her personally and didn’t have her signature on so much as a scrap of paper). Even Judith Newfield had called upon him when she needed help with her daughter. He would marry the old lady, take the book from her wrinkled hands, and start massaging that blessed thing until the big money names started popping like corn in a kettle.

The wedding invitations went out,
a few low-level dipsticks responded, and that’s how Walter Tubbs found himself in a mostly empty Methodist church at the base of the hill on that late Saturday Afternoon in January 1972.