A Purrfect Romance (16 page)

“Yes, indeed, Mr. Morley.”

Mulie blushed right up to her frizzed, faded hair. To hide her embarrassment, she went on quickly with her explanation.

“Now, over here,” she continued, “this here’s Afton’s line.” Her finger rested again on the box headed P
ATIENCE
L
LOYD
.

“This was Afton’s mother,” she said. “She was born in 1910 and she didn’t marry till she was thirty-eight. That’s when she married Theron Morley, Afton’s father, in 1948, but she and Theron didn’t have Afton until 1952, when she was forty-two. Forty-two years old, just like her mother was when she was born. Theron was eleven years older than Patience, so he was fifty-three when Afton was born. And Afton here was their only child.”

Again, Bridey found herself imagining the drama that lay hidden in the family tree’s seemingly inarticulate combinations of little boxes: a late marriage for Patience to a considerably older Theron, two aging parents bringing up a single child. Her lively mind was spinning out a variety of domestic scenarios to explain Afton’s defensively sour, domineering temperament.

Mulie’s finger moved back inexorably to Jason’s line.

“Now see, back here, over on Jason’s side, he and Martha Hansen had a bunch of kids of their own, but the only one of the whole bunch that survived was Jason’s adopted boy, Henry, who married Catherine Morton in 1910. They had two girls and it was the older one, Emily, born in 1911, who married Marshall Caswell in 1928, when she was seventeen.”

Here, Mulie’s finger moved down to the bottom row, to a single box that was larger than all the others and outlined thickly in black ink.

“And in 1929,” she said, with an air of triumph at having come to the end of the line, “they had their only child, a daughter. And that was Henrietta Lloyd Caswell, who married Neville Willey.”

All the eyes in the room fixed on that one large box, with Henrietta Willey’s name in it. The source of all this trouble. Bridey’s heart sank. It was all so irrefutable. The documents were apparently authentic. Mulie’s research was faultless. The conclusion was inevitable. Bridey Berrigan’s dreams were toast.

“So,” Mulie went on, her finger running back up the series of boxes and lines and then returning down on the other side, “if you trace it on back, through Jason’s line to Josiah and then back down through Patience, you can see that Afton was Henrietta’s first cousin twice removed, that we never even knew about till we saw that piece in the
Times-News
.”

She looked around the room with a self-satisfied expression that said plainly,
See! I told you so!
Then she returned to her chair and perched on its edge, proud to have delivered the results of her diligent genealogical research. From here on, the questions and answers would be handled by Mr. Chubb, and she could relax.

And Bridey felt her future cracking apart in little pieces, falling down around her feet in a little heap on the hearing-room floor. It was back to hot kitchens and hundred-pound sacks of potatoes. For sure.

Mack Brewster paced his office. He stared out of the window. He tried to concentrate on his correspondence and kept losing track of what was in front of him. Helen was still hunting through the archives, and Mack’s impatience was boiling up to his teeth. But it wasn’t the Willey file that was driving him nuts. That was just an excuse, and he knew it.

It was his father, staring down at him from the wall. And it was Bridey and everything she had said that night. And the two of them were crashing against each other, the slim little sprite of a girl taking on the formidable and indomitable Llewellyn Brewster. Mack’s head felt like a war was going on inside it. First he told himself she just didn’t understand. He told himself she was wrong. He told himself she was prejudiced by her own self-interest. But then a montage of images played through his brain, like a movie: Bridey on his terrace, with the breeze blowing through her hair and the sun filling the delicate curls with gold; Bridey jogging through the park, damp and glowing from the exercise, or sitting on a rock, licking a Popsicle like a little girl; Bridey curled up on the sofa, with the cats soft and quiet, close to her; Bridey stirring a pot of goulash, the aromatic vapors steaming up around her . . .

“Oh, the hell with this!” he said suddenly, furious with himself. “I’ve got to get out of here!”

He slammed out of his office and headed for the park. If he didn’t walk, he’d go crazy.

And at that very moment, Gilbert Forsgren was dictating the last remarks into the machine.

“Having heard the testimony of the parties and having received documents provided by the claimant together with all submissions by counsel, the court will review all the evidence and motions and will render its decision at a future date.”

He looked around, as though to be sure there were no further comments. Then he said with great finality, “This hearing is now closed.”

And he hit the stop button.

“S
top playing with your food,” Marge said. “You’re making me nervous.”

“Oh, Marge, I’m just too miserable to eat.”

They’d met for lunch at Gilligan’s Pub, famous for steaks so enormous, a single T-bone could feed a village in India for a month. Bridey had ordered only a salad, and even that seemed to her unappealing. She was hardly touching it, just pushing the arugula leaves and fresh basil around on her plate and making a little mound of tomato slices and mushroom bits in the center of the greens.

“You’re so lucky,” Marge said enviously. “When I feel rotten, I eat a carton of Häagen-Dazs.”

“You want to see luck, you go look at the Morleys. Can you believe those two? Now there’s real luck for you.” Bridey grimaced disdainfully. “It looks like Afton and Mulie are going to take over the whole estate.” She nibbled mournfully on a roll. “Mulie!” She spoke the name as though she’d bitten into an unripe persimmon. “Can you imagine anyone standing still for a name like that? I’d throw a frying pan at my husband if he tried to stick a label like that on me.”

“Tell me about it,” Marge said. Then she laughed. “No, I mean, really. Tell me about the hearing. How did it go? What happened?”

So Bridey described the events of the morning. “Mulie had done a ton of research and she had this big stack of documents all lined up like ducks in a row. I’m no expert, but it all looked pretty authentic to me. If everything checks out, they’re going to get it all. And there won’t be a thing the co-op board or Mack Brewster can do about it. And as for me, I’ll be out on my ear, along with the poor cats.”

“And to think,” Marge said, commiserating, “all of this might never have happened if Mack’s father hadn’t rejected Henrietta’s book.”

“Or at least,” Bridey added, “if he hadn’t done it in such a thoughtless, inconsiderate way. The whole dumb feud might never have started if Mr. Brewster had used just a little care, just a smidge of tact.”

“You know, Bridey,” Marge said thoughtfully, “I’ve been thinking about that manuscript. From what you described, it sounds like the kind of thing we’d have been interested in at
Lady Fair
. It would have made a wonderful serial for us. Do you have any idea what happened to it?”

“Not a clue. I assume Mrs. Willey was so discouraged by the whole experience, she just got rid of it. Probably burned it up in a fit of pique. Or rage, more like it.”

“But maybe not,” Marge said slowly. Her editor’s nose was twitching, and her imagination had been stirred by the idea of generations of creative domestic effort handed down from mother to daughter, embellished by world travel, a sophisticated palate and lots of money, eventually finding its expression in a glamorous setting. She was getting more interested every moment, and her enthusiasm gathered steam with each word. “I don’t think she’d have burned it up. I don’t think she’d have been able to get rid of it at all, not after she’d put so much love and work into it. If you ask me, I’d bet she hid it away somewhere, right there in the apartment. Just like she did her diary.”

“You think?” Bridey mulled over the idea and began to share Marge’s fantasy. “You might be right, Marge. And wouldn’t that be great? If we could find it?”

“Oh, I’d love it!” Marge was all animation now. She was waving her fingers in front of her face, fluttering her red nails like signal flags. “Why don’t we do it? Why don’t we hunt for it?”

“Well . . .”

“We could! I could come over tonight and we could have a treasure hunt, just you and me. We could order in pizzas and make popcorn. It would be like a slumber party!”

“Well . . .”

“Come on. It’ll be fun. I’ll bring a bottle of wine and we’ll ransack the whole place, top to bottom. Just what you need to cheer you up.”

“Well, I guess . . .”

“Good! That’s settled, then. Seven o’clock tonight.”

Meanwhile, in the park, Mack’s demons had followed right along with him and would not be shaken loose; they stayed at his side, stride for stride, nagging at him furiously as he tried to sort out his feelings.

Loyalty was a matter of honor with Mack Brewster, as much a part of him as his wavy hair and his dark eyes. Obeying its commands was as habitual as brushing his teeth. And he would sooner have put his hand in a fire than let an outsider criticize his father.

But dammit, no one needed to tell him how domineering and inconsiderate his father could be. Hadn’t he had to come up against that powerful personality day in and day out, every move he’d ever made? Hadn’t he had to practically go to the mat with the old man dozens of times? Didn’t he know better than anyone else how hard it was to have a father who always knew what was what? And—the hardest part of all—a father who was always right. Ever since he was a kid, he’d always been jumping back and forth between being proud of his father and being infuriated by him. The man had had a will of iron, and Mack had had to develop his own iron will to stand up to him.

Did she think it was easy, believing your dad was the best there was while always, at the same time, needing to shake loose of him?

“She.”

There it was, like a pebble in his shoe, making him crazy.

He kicked at a loose stone and snarled at it as it skittered off into the bushes.

She!

How had
she
happened? What was it about this one? There’d been girls before, plenty of girls, but none of them had ever taken up residence in his head. Or in his heart.

Without a word of warning.

Just sailed into his life, with her coffee cakes and her stews and her sun-filled, cinnamon-scented hair and her lithe, little-girl look, and all of a sudden the habits of a lifetime had been shaken up like a bag of marbles, making him question the rules he’d lived by, the rules he’d been brought up to obey.

Why couldn’t he brush it away, like a minor irritation not worthy of his attention? Somehow Bridey’s challenge had turned his iron will to oatmeal and here he was, thinking the unthinkable.

The thought glowed in his head like a tiny, persistent flame: maybe his father really had behaved stupidly.

And maybe a lightning bolt would strike him down, right there on a path in Central Park.

Or . . . or maybe he was going to have to go to the mat with the old man one more time.

He looked around as though hoping to find a helping hand, or maybe a guardian angel. Nearby, a girl sat on a rock, eating an ice cream on a stick. She didn’t even look like Bridey—her hair was dark, and she was short and a bit plump—but the sight of her triggered a memory. His heart twisted.

How did Bridey have the power to get inside him, change him, make him confront the veil he’d drawn over his father’s memory, pull it away and look behind it?

He parked himself on a bench, wishing she were sitting there, next to him.

A little boy on a tricycle rode past, going
vroom, vroom
like an engine, pumping his little legs hard. Not far behind, an elderly gentleman, carrying his jacket over his arm, followed along. Obviously the child’s grandfather.

That’s what his father had wanted—to have his grandchildren gathered around him, living close by, playing in the park.

You would have liked her, Dad. And you know what? She’d have been able to stand up to you. Not many girls could do that.

The girl on the rock finished her ice cream and turned her face up to the sun, trying to get a few minutes’ tanning time.

What makes Bridey so different?

Why couldn’t he get her out of his head? Why was her approval so important to him? Why did displeasing her hurt so much? Why did her trouble cause him so much pain? What was going on? What was making his heart feel like it was being squeezed?

He looked at his watch.

Maybe Helen has that file by now,
he thought. He got up from the bench and reluctantly, slowly, walked back to his office.

It wasn’t much of a file. It lay open on his desk, its few pages spread out in front of him.

Mack read through it again.

There was a cover sheet, identifying the manuscript Henrietta had submitted, and the editor’s note, dated April 29, 1980:

Scrawled across the bottom, in his father’s familiar broad hand, were the words
No. I’ll take care of it.
It was signed with the initials
LB
, slanted forcefully across the bottom corner of the paper.

And the infamous letter, a copy of which had also been stored in Helen’s file, was in Mack’s hands.

Mack read the letter several times. He could hear his father’s peremptory voice dictating it; just another piece of work in a busy day. Mack knew his father would have given it no more than a moment’s thought. Poor Henrietta!

Then a new idea slipped into the mix.

Actually, we might have made something of it. It might have been of interest as a memoir, or maybe a social-historical piece. Hmmm. Could have been worth at least a second look. It would be interesting to see that manuscript. It certainly has caused enough trouble. Wonder what happened to it.

He read the letter again. Maybe for the sixth time. He realized how dismissive it must have sounded to Henrietta. An experienced writer would be accustomed to curt rejection letters, but Henrietta wasn’t an experienced writer. No matter how many countries she’d lived in, no matter how many famous people she’d known, as a writer she was just a beginner, and probably as timid as any twenty-year-old sending out a first manuscript. What’s more, the world pampered people like Henrietta; it paid attention to their wishes and jumped to satisfy them. She’d have been totally unprepared—no, she’d have been really insulted—by being rejected so casually.

Would it have been so hard, Dad? Just a little consideration, just a moment to write a few more words? You knew the woman; you’d been a guest in her home. You could have made it a touch more personal, written something a little encouraging instead of just brushing her off with a canned rejection. Maybe you could even have knocked on her door, spoken to her personally.

But of course, that wouldn’t have been his father’s way. Sentimental indulgence, he’d have called it. No time for that in a busy, demanding world. Who knew that better than his son?

Mack drummed his pencil on the desktop.

Is that what Bridey will be facing when the time comes for her to try to get her book published? Is that what you would have done to her?

He drummed some more. Then he dropped the pencil and closed the file. He’d made a decision.

Dad, you and I are going to have a little talk.

“Helen,” he said into the intercom, “I’m leaving now. I have to take care of something. See you in the morning.” Then he remembered to add, “And thanks for getting that file for me.”

As he rode down in the elevator, he realized his heart was pounding.