Blessing in Disguise (41 page)

It was Ben who had gotten her to come here—though he probably didn’t know it. His devil’s-advocate advice, that first night, not to relinquish the letters had ironically made her consider doing just that. Odd, though, how last night he’d seemed so eager to take them off her hands. ...

But the important thing, she told herself, was that Mama’s letters would not be going to some sleazy tabloid, or to a hack producer out to make a tearjerking TV movie of the week. No. She’d be entrusting them to Grace Truscott ... her sister, yes, even though they hadn’t been raised under the same roof.

Nola was seized by a memory from when she was very small—of a big man with huge, gentle hands holding her on his lap and singing to her.
Oh, Susannah, oh don’t you cry for me
. ... There was his smell, sweet and faintly medicinal, which came from the whiskey in the cut-glass decanter Mama left out on the sideboard. “Where’s my green-eyed girl?” he would crow. And she would wriggle on his lap and raise her hand the way she did in school when the teacher asked a question she knew the answer to. Then, pretending not to see her, he’d look all around the room, craning his neck until cords of muscle stood raised, from his bony jaw to the knobs of his collarbone, like rivers along a relief map ... and until she was nearly bursting ... before finally allowing his gaze to fall on her. With a grin as swift and bright as the sun coming up over a mountain ridge, he’d say, “Hey, maybe you know her? She’s about so tall”—extending his palm, flat side down so it just skimmed the top of her head—“and her name is Nola.”

Nola Truscott
. She nearly spoke it aloud, her real name.

All hesitation now seemed to have left her. Nola felt certain, as she handed her precious cargo over to Grace, that she was doing the right thing. “Here,” she said. “These belong to you as much as to me.”

Grace was dimly aware of clasping the envelope to her chest, but all she could feel were the tears spilling down her cheeks.

“Oh, Nola. I don’t know what to ... Thank you.”

Grace, feeling as if she were in some strange dream, caught sight of the guy in the building directly across the street—she and Chris jokingly referred to him as the “Nineteenth Street Flasher”—who often walked around naked, or wearing only boxer shorts, as he was now. He was standing in full view, ironing. More than the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty,
this
to her was New York: strangers’ lives intersecting in curiously intimate ways ... as hers and Nola’s had that long-ago day when they’d both witnessed the accidental killing of Ned Emory. She’d never met the Flasher, or even bumped into him on the street, but she knew that he was fussy about his clothes, and that he worked out with weights, and that he didn’t have a wife or a girlfriend. Just as she now knew, in some deep part of her, that she and Nola, despite their shared blood rather than because of it, would be bound for life.

“It’s not a gift.” There was a slight edge to Nola’s voice. “I expect you to do what’s right. Make sure they aren’t exploited.”

“Don’t worry,” Grace told her.

“My mother ... After he died, she got very sick. She was sick for a long time.” Nola addressed a wrought-iron lamp on the table just beyond Grace’s shoulder, a faraway look on her arresting face.

Grace knew all this from her research, but nonetheless she found herself saying, “Tell me about it.”

“It was emphysema. At the time she was first diagnosed, I was only twelve and I didn’t even know what it meant. Couldn’t even spell it.” Nola gave a hollow, rueful laugh. “That’s when you know something’s
real
bad, when you can’t even spell it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“She lived long enough to see ... well, to know what Gene Truscott had become. A hero, a legend. There was that biography by the same man who wrote that book about Kennedy—his name slips my mind. And all the magazine articles and scholarly essays. She didn’t miss a single one. She’d be in her bed, barely able to keep her head up, but she read every single word. Sometimes, I’d see her screwing up her face, like she didn’t agree with the author. And other times, there’d be tears in her eyes ... as if she was reliving something that had happened exactly the way it was described. I only wish she’d had the opportunity to read
your
book—when it’s finished, when you’ve told the
real
story.”

Grace’s face burned where her tears had run down her cheeks. “But your promise to her ... ?” She couldn’t finish the rest.

Nola straightened, sat even taller. “I also promised always to remember what he and my mother meant to one another. And your book will do that. It won’t make him any less great ... just more human.”

Grace, she thought, couldn’t possibly comprehend the sacrifice she was making—the library she had designed that might not get built once these letters were made public. No way would Cordelia Truscott allow her husband’s bastard daughter to share in any part of his memorial.

Nola held back from telling Grace that. The letters—they were Mama’s. But the library belonged to her. And, besides, there was still a chance her design would be chosen—if Maguire remained close-mouthed about who was behind it. The fewer people who knew, the better ...

“I never thought of him that way.” Grace spoke in a soft voice. “As a man. To me, he was ... he seemed to fill up our home even when he wasn’t there.”

“Maybe all that worship was
why
he wasn’t there more often,” Nola said. “Even heroes need to climb down off their pedestal now and then.”

Grace lowered the envelope to her lap, sensing the truth in what Nola was saying. Could she learn to forgive him, the father she’d revered, who had lied to her—but who had been, as Nola pointed out, merely human?

And Mother, when Grace showed these letters to her, as she must, would her mother forgive
her?

“Who died?” Lila asked.

Grace could see only the top of her friend’s head sticking up above the enormous floral arrangement that only a moment before had been delivered to her door. Heavens, it
did
look as if it belonged at a funeral. She opened the tiny envelope nestled amid the baby’s breath, took out the card, and felt her heart sink.
So looking forward to this evening. Love, Mother.

“You’re looking at the corpse,” Grace groaned.

“Remind me to send a donation to the ASPCA in your memory,” Lila said, her expression perfectly deadpan. “Where do you want them?”

“On that low table ... over there by the sofa. It’ll make a great conversation piece. You can tell everyone I was rubbed out by the Mob.”

“My last boyfriend, Enrico—his uncle, I think, works for the Mob.”

“You never told me about him.”

“Sure I did, the guy at the dry cleaner’s. Gets the dog hair out of all my clothes. Finally, he asks me out. But then all he ever wants to do is hang out at my place and watch videos.” Lila snorted with laughter as she fingered a blossom. “I hate to say this, but your ma has even lousier taste in flowers than I do in men.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Grace found herself defending Mother. “You should see her garden—it’s absolute heaven. I’m sure this is just a case of her not knowing the florist.”

Grace was remembering the tulips in the spring, and Mother’s treasure trove of roses. And the green peaches Grace always picked before they were ripe, and that invariably gave her the runs. She saw the grand old parlors and breakfast room of her mother’s house, overflowing with bouquets of snapdragons and peonies and sweetpeas, roses from the cutting garden in back, bunches of fragrant thyme and basil and chamomile in Mason jars lining the kitchen sill.

Mother had nurtured and tended her memories the same way. Finding out about Margaret would be like a great frost coming along and killing them all.

Grace felt dread gathering inside her. How would she break it to Mother? Part of her wanted to keep the letters tucked away, just as Nola had done, but she realized that would be wrong. She had an obligation, not only to herself, as Eugene Truscott’s biographer, but to history as well. Maybe there was some way she could make Mother understand. ...

Grace realized, even while thinking it, how unlikely that was. Mother would be livid—not at Daddy, but at her.
She’ll accuse me of doing this to get back at her.

The last time she’d seen her mother, Grace remembered, was just after she and Win had separated, when she’d flown down to Blessing to pick up Chris after his annual visit with his grandmother. Also
(Admit it, why don’t you?)
hadn’t she been hoping to get some sympathy and moral support? She’d wanted Mother to see that the divorce was hurting her terribly ... but all Mother had done, for two whole days, was pick on her.
No matter how much she disapproved, would it have been so difficult for her to put her arms around me and just hug me?

“I don’t understand—you had everything,” Mother had said for the umpteenth time, as they stood at the airport security checkpoint like a pair of worn-out gladiators. She shook her head, watching Chris as he ambled through the gate. “You
have
everything a woman could want,” she corrected. “How could you just throw it away?”

“You’re right about one thing, anyway,” Grace had told her, feeling a hot flash of hurt at her mother’s indifference. “You don’t understand me. You never did. I’m not even sure what I’m doing here. The only thing I
am
sure of is that I won’t ever again make the mistake of expecting anything from you.”

Mother had stiffened, her eyes glittering under the brim of the hat she wore. “Then don’t,” she said, her voice soft but its meaning unmistakable.

Don’t visit. Don’t bother. I don’t want you.
Those were the words Grace heard, roaring in her inner ear as she passed through Security, deliberately not looking back. If she had, she would have seen her mother still standing there, her slim figure as erect and uncompromising as an accusing finger.

And now, two years later, would they be merely picking up where they’d left off? Or was it possible for them to start over? To put blame and resentment aside, and let a love older than memory guide them through this new and in some ways even rockier passage?

Grace felt her stomach do a slow cartwheel of anticipation.

Well, at least she’d have Lila and Jack, who would stick up for her if she needed them to. Watching Lila cock a penciled brow as she lowered the flowers onto the table, Grace felt a rush of affection for her kooky friend.

“Anyone who loves flowers can’t be all bad,” Lila commented.

“Mother?” Grace sighed. “In a million ways she’s
wonderful.”

“Hey, here I’ve been half-expecting Lady Macbeth to walk in through that door, and now I’m picturing Melanie Wilkes, who personally always made me want to puke.”

“No, she’s not like that, either,” Grace said, trying to come up with a way of describing her mother. “I mean, she doesn’t give a hoot for the local snobs, like my sister does. Still, everybody in Blessing looks up to her. I think they’re a little afraid of her, too. No one would dare snub her, even though they can’t abide her liberal views. She was
... is ...
brave and outspoken—she’s always been a big champion of people who aren’t getting a fair shake.”

“Sounds like someone I know,”

“She’s also incredibly stubborn and domineering,” Grace went on, “and when someone doesn’t dovetail with her version of reality, she’s not above twisting the truth to fit.”

“Uh-oh.”

Grace had told her all about Nola, so it wouldn’t have taken a great leap of imagination for Lila to see that trouble lay ahead. Mother would fight tooth and nail—just as she’d fought to raise the money for Daddy’s memorial library—to keep both her memories of him, and his reputation, untarnished.

Mother hadn’t even arrived, Grace realized, yet already she was jumping ahead of herself. Right now she had to concentrate on getting everything ready. Wine? She opened the refrigerator, and a bottle of Chardonnay glinted up at her from the bottom rack. Beside it lay a Saran Wrapped platter—the sushi assortment she’d had sent over from Meriken.

Now she wondered if sushi might be a bit over the top for a woman who sent her roast beef back to the kitchen if there was any pink showing.

Grace shut the refrigerator door and whirled about, nearly colliding with Lila, on her way into the kitchen to fill the empty ice bucket. “Be honest with me—what do you think my chances are?”

“As in, no one gets out of here alive?” Lila gave her a half-cocked smile, tipping her head.

She was wearing a pair of silk pantaloons the color of daffodils, and a hand-painted vest over a billowy blouse that looked as if it were made out of mosquito netting. A chunk of amethyst the size of a newborn’s fist hung from her neck on a black silk cord, and, in the dead of winter, the only thing between her feet and the uncarpeted floor was a pair of blue satin ballet slippers.

“Something like that,” Grace acknowledged.

She imagined Mother reading those letters ... the undeniable fact of Daddy’s infidelity right before her eyes, impossible to escape. How dreadful for her! Grace wanted, at that moment, to turn back the clock,
not
to know what she now knew, and thereby to save Mother from the devastating blow in store for her.

“Maybe, on some level, she already knows,” Lila conjectured.

“What’s worse—living with a lie ... or facing reality, no matter how bad?”

“That’s a tough question. I mean, like, have you ever wondered about the Son of Sam’s mother—what it would be like to be faced with the irrefutable evidence that your son was a serial killer? Would
you
believe it? Would you be able to admit it even to yourself?” Lila now was putting down the ice bucket and digging into a box of Wheat Thins on the counter.

“Lila ... we’re not talking about murder. My father
loved
this woman. They had a child together.”

“Even so ... it makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Would
any
of us really be better off facing up to every rotten truth about our lives?”

“What if I didn’t tell her ... if I gave the letters back to Nola,” Grace said, knowing even as she spoke the words that she could never do such a thing.