Whitethorn Woods (12 page)

   Malka was the only person I ever talked to about sex, and not very often. When you think of wars starting over sex, and murders being committed, and people breaking up families and getting publicly disgraced, it's really very hard to understand.

   Lida, I gather, has had plenty of sex so far in her young life. She told me a long time ago that she went to a women's clinic to take care of things. When I imagine myself saying that to my own mom, well, I almost feel faint. But times change.

   And who would have thought that I, Rivka Fine-Levy, would have my own specialist art tours agency and be highly thought of as the wife of the great Max Levy? Unlike so many women I knew, I never had a day's worry about Max being unfaithful to me, I just sort of knew. It was the way he was with women, not interested, not like Declan, who was always up for it, as even his own son recognized.

   Who would have thought that I would become someone who loved my mom instead of hated her, and that I would really enjoy going shopping with her? That I would love my own daughter more than life; that I would still remain such good friends with Malka, whom I had met plucking chickens all those years ago when she was going to convert to Judaism, marry Shimon and run a gladioli farm? The time when I was too timid to let that Algerian boy, Dov, get to first base.

   I did wish Lida had gone to Israel, but of course there was no point in mentioning it.

   She was proud of Israel, she explained, but she disapproved of something or other they were doing out there at the moment and she wouldn't lend support by visiting.

   Lida was like that, taking stands, concerned about issues, standing up and being counted.

   Very laudable, admirable, even. But it didn't always make for an easy life.

   Max was hardly ever there to discuss it with. If I tried he just kept repeating that he was astounded to have a daughter at all, which wasn't much of a help, and a bit repetitive.

   After nearly a quarter of a century you'd think he might be used to the fact by now.

   So this summer I planned a little trip for Malka and myself. We would go for a week to Florence and a week by the sea in Sicily to recover from all the sightseeing and the pounding around art galleries. It was so odd to think that our two children would also be on the Mediterranean, swimming in the same sea. But we knew we must make no plans to meet them, nothing claustrophobic that would make them resent us. We had been through enough of that in the old days when
our
mothers were bad, suffocating people. We knew all about the long rein and letting them be free. Don't let them know you miss them.

   I was so busy getting ready for the trip, I really didn't miss Lida. I can pack two suitcases very quickly and scientifically now. Another of my talks on the breakfast or ladies' lunch circuit is "intelligent packing." People just love it.

   I tell them about having a typed master list and adding items like a small flashlight, your own favorite pillowcase and a little wooden wedge to keep doors open—you wouldn't believe how useful that is.

   Anyway, out of a clear blue sky, when I was folding the dresses between sheets of tissue paper, this young man came to the house, he was thirty-ish. I wondered if he had come to see Lida. But no, he was looking for Max.

   Max was away, coming back tonight, I said. I was leaving for Europe the next day, we would be having a rare dinner at home together—I could give him a message. What name should I say?

   The man said I was to tell him that Alexander had come by, and that he was very sorry, he thought I was leaving for Florence today, not tomorrow. He knew I was going to Florence this week and yet I had never even heard of him. I felt alarmed somehow. He refused coffee, gave no details of what his business was with Max, then left very quickly.

   "Alexander came today," I said to Max that evening. "He thought I would already have left for Florence."

   Max looked at me levelly.

   "I'm so very sorry you had to find out this way," he said.

   I had no idea what I had found out. None at all, as Malka would say. I looked at him blankly.

   "About Alexander," he said.

   And then suddenly it was all clear. Everything made sense. The long absences, the discretion, the way I was worn on Max's arm for public occasions, the separate bedrooms.

   Malka asked me afterward if I behaved well, if I reacted as I would have liked.

   The answer is yes, I behaved perfectly, out of sheer shock. I sat wide awake in my bedroom all night piecing things together. Of course that was the explanation. Why had I been so blind? But it's not something you'd expect.

   Then I'm afraid I began to worry whether everyone else knew. Was I the only fool who didn't realize that my husband played for the other team? And as the clock ticked on and dawn came to the sky, I decided that it was
not
generally known, that I was
not
a laughingstock. And that helped. Perhaps it shouldn't have, but it did. At least I wasn't a public fool.

   I dressed carefully and did my face. My car was coming to pick me up at 10 a.m.

   Max looked terrible, white-faced and unkempt. He hadn't slept either. He looked at me like a puppy who knows he's going to be punished.

   "What will you do?" he asked fearfully.

   "I'll tell you my plans when I get back, Max." I was cool, polite and slightly distant.

   I left everything else, the weeping, the railing, the questioning, the rage, until I got to Florence, and to Malka.

   She knew at once. You can't fool Malka. She poured some dutyfree liquor and I told her everything, left nothing out. I can't remember anything that we did on that holiday that didn't involve both of us crying, deciding to kill Max, to sue him, to take him for everything that he had. We were going to "out" him, make him look ridiculous, or we were going to be noble and say it didn't matter.

   By the time we got to Sicily we were completely exhausted. We rented a car and drove around the island. We swam in the bright blue sea, we drank more wine than I had ever thought possible.

   "I'll have to go into detox when I get back to real life," I said, not really wanting to think about getting back.

   "Shouldn't you contact your office?" Malka suggested.

   Normally I'm on my cell phone and picking up e-mails everywhere. The office was, of course and irritatingly, surviving fine without me.

   There was an e-mail from Lida:

   "Dad says he doesn't know where you are in Italy, your office says you'll call in but you haven't, so it's not my fault. I tried to find you everywhere to tell you my plans have changed and I am going to Israel after all. I met Brendan in Rome. We always planned to meet there, we've been in touch with each other for the past two years and meet a lot. We didn't tell you and Malka because you'd fuss so much, and we wanted to be sure before we said anything. And now we are. Very sure.

   "And he asked if you would tell his mom, because apparently she is hopeless about technology and expects a pigeon to come carrying a letter. And there is to be none of this nonsense about culture and tradition and history and differences and all that kind of shit. You are to square it with Grandmother and Dad. You will, won't you? You've always been terrific about everything. Brendan says the same about his mom. Can you tell us where this stupid gladioli farm is and we'll go look for it and examine these guys who could have been our fathers if things had been different."

   Malka and I know the letter by heart. Well, you would too, wouldn't you? A letter that turned everything around and made sense of it all.

Mother was always saying to me, "Becca, you could do simply anything in this world if you had a proper plan." She would say this as we walked down Castle Street doing the shopping together or waited for the sheets and towels to dry at the Fresh as a Daisy Launderette or had coffee in the Jumping Bean.

   Mother did have lots of plans as life went on. Like when I was twenty-one and Father wouldn't hear of paying for a big party, Mother developed a plan. She went to the new hotel that had just opened in Rossmore and showed them our guest list with lots of very important people on it. She insisted to the manager that they should give her half-price because of all the introductions she was giving them over her daughter Becca's party. And she eked this bit of money out of Father and that bit. And there you were. A stunning twenty-first with just
everyone
there! Just because she had a plan.

   Dear Mother was so right about lots of things. Well, not always entirely right about Father, of course. But then, how could anyone have known what he was going to do? You'd need to have been some kind of mystic to have known. Father went off with Iris, this perfectly awful, common woman, when I was twenty-five and Mother was fast approaching fifty. The awful woman Iris wasn't even young. She was a woman who wore a cardigan and walked through the Whitethorn Woods with a mongrel dog. Mother said it wouldn't have been quite so bad if she had been a silly young girl with a huge bosom. But no, she was the same age as all of them. Humiliating.

   I foolishly suggested to Mother that she might go to St. Ann's Well, a lot of people got their wishes answered there. She was horrified at the very thought of it. Ludicrous place, pagan superstition, a place old maids and widows went. I wasn't even to mention it again.

   Mother said that if she had the energy, she would kill Iris.

   I begged her not to. "Please, Mother, don't kill Iris. You'll get caught, and arrested, and go to jail."

   "Not if I did it properly," Mother said.

   "But you wouldn't do it properly, Mother, and suppose for a moment that you did, imagine how terrible it would be if Father were to pine over this Iris. Think how terrible that would be."

   Grudgingly Mother agreed. "If I were younger and could make a proper plan, then I could easily have killed Iris," she said calmly. "But Becca, darling, I should have started much earlier and it would all have been fine. I think you are right and that I'd probably be wiser to leave it now."

   Mercifully she did.

   Father didn't really stay in touch. He wrote from time to time to say that Mother was bleeding him dry. Mother said that he and that terrifying Iris had taken every penny she was entitled to—all she had left was the falling-down house in Rossmore. She sighed and sighed, and said that to hire yet another lawyer on top of Myles Barry was like throwing good money after bad.

   "When you grow older, Becca, darling, I beg you to have a plan. Do nothing without a plan, and do it sooner rather than later."

   And it always seemed a very good idea, because everything Mother did later, having waited around, had gone belly-up, while all the things that had been done sooner had been fine. She must have been right about striking when the iron was hot.

   So I tried to have a plan about most things. I worked in Rossmore's new fashion boutique, which catered to rich clients, and I planned to get to know these people socially. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. I also made a friend of Kevin the van driver, who drove a taxicab on the side, and he often gave me lifts to places—which was nice because I was fairly broke and I wouldn't have had money for taxis.

   Kevin was nice. He had a terrible cough and he was a frightful hypochondriac, always thinking that a headache was meningitis, that sort of thing, but he was very fond of me and said that I could always ask him to come out and collect me on a wet night and he would. I never abused it but I did ask him from time to time.

   Mother was in bad form a lot but to be very honest I didn't get too involved with Mother and her problems because there was so much going on in my own life. You see, I'd just met Franklin and everything changed then.

   You know the way people find it impossible to describe some huge event in their life, like seeing a film star, or the Queen of England, or the Pope, or the president of the United States, or something earth-shaking? You can remember all kinds of unimportant details but not the thing itself.

   It's as if it was too big to take in.

   It was just like that when I met Franklin.

   I remember the dress I was wearing: a red silk dress with a halter neck that I had got at a thrift shop. I remember the perfume I wore: it was Obsession by Calvin Klein. I couldn't afford it myself but amazingly a customer had left it behind in the boutique.

   I can't remember why I went to that particular party. It was to launch a new restaurant in Rossmore. The town was so big now and so different to the way it was when Mother was young. New restaurants, hotels, art galleries opening all the time. I hadn't been invited or anything but I knew that if you turned up looking well dressed they always let you in. So about two or three times a month I would show up at a party and mingle a little. It got me out from under Mother's feet and you never knew who you might meet.

   Well, up to now I had only met a lot of frogs actually and was

beginning to despair of meeting a prince at any of these dos and then that night I met Franklin. It was exactly 7:43 p.m. on the huge pink neon-lit clock. I had been thinking I might go home at eight. I wouldn't call Kevin tonight, there was a bus stop outside the door, and just then Franklin said hallo.

   Blond, blue eyes, tousled hair, perfect teeth. He was startlingly good-looking. And so nice and easy. It began almost immediately between us. We discovered we had literally everything in common, just everything. We both loved Greece and Italy, we loved Thai food, and skiing, and reruns of old movies on television. We liked big dogs, and tap dancing, and long brunches on a Sunday.

   Mother had been going through a depressive stage at the time and she was very doubtful about my new romance.