Carriage Trade (53 page)

“No, but—this is true, Miranda—men often don't feel comfortable marrying women who ‘do things.' Who have a busy career. That probably sounds like a terribly old-fashioned thing for me to say, but I was raised in an old-fashioned way, in an old-fashioned city. But I still think it's true. And I still think marriage is important, terribly important. Marriage and children. Human beings weren't meant to live alone. Companionship is so important, some kind of companionship.”

Miranda's eyes and her mother's eyes traveled simultaneously to the blue Persian cat that lay stretched across the coverlet. Her mother laughed her bell-like laugh and reached out and touched the cat's nose with a fingertip. “Yes, that is going to be one of Bicha's functions,” she said. “Companionship to this old lady in her old age.”

There were several things Miranda could have said to her mother at this point, and she chose her words carefully. “I think,” she said, “that what I hear you saying is that you don't have sufficient faith in my ability to head the store and be a good wife and mother at the same time.”

“It's a tall order for any woman.”

“It's funny. Aunt Simma and Granny Rose have faith in my ability. They've agreed to withhold their shares as long as they possibly can to help me fight the Continental takeover. Why can't you have the same faith in me?”

Her mother blinked. “Aunt Simma? Granny Rose? I haven't heard those names in years. I've never met either one of them. Your father didn't want me to. But you, I gather, have.”

Miranda nodded.

“Goodness, you really
do
want to do this, don't you!”

She nodded again.

“All I want is to see you happy, Miranda.”

“This is what would make me happy.”

“Then tell me exactly what you want me to do.”

“Together, Aunt Simma and Granny Rose control about fifteen percent of the company's stock. You and I each own about twenty percent. Employees own small amounts. If you and I and Simma and Granny Rose were to issue a statement that none of us is willing to sell this stock to anyone, under any circumstances, for any price, we'd represent a majority. Continental would withdraw its offer, and Tarkington's would be ours.”

“Yours, you mean. I'd want nothing to do with it.”

“Mine, then.” She leaned toward her mother and said with some urgency, “Mother, will you just let me try it for a year? Just one year, Mother, that's all I ask.
Please!
If I make a mess of it in one year's time, you'll be the first to know, and I'll concede that you were right, and we'll sell the store. But if I don't—if I succeed the way I want to, and I'm going to try, I'll try so hard—then will you give me another year? Can we do it that way, Mother, letting me take it year by year? All I'm asking for is a chance, a chance to fail and a chance to succeed. Is that too much to ask of you—a chance? It's what I want most in the world.”

Her mother hesitated. Then she said quietly, “And of course you're right. It would give us an opportunity to do something to help Smitty.”

“To be honest with you, Mother, I've always resented Smitty. But if you feel we owe her something, offering her her old job back would be better than offering her money. It would be a more human thing to do.”

Her mother's eyes grew thoughtful. “I do feel badly about Smitty,” she said. “Smitty's suffered a great deal through this … this little family situation of ours, which you and I both know about. She's still suffering, poor thing. I do feel we owe her something. I feel guilty, too. I suppose I could have done more to prevent what happened from happening. I could have worked harder to put an end to it, I suppose, but I didn't. Partly, it was the way I was brought up. It was a man's world, my father taught my sisters and me, and a wife's job was to do what her husband wanted, so I did what my husband wanted. But I suppose I could have talked to Smitty, and explained certain things to her about your father that she didn't understand. I could have prevented her from having such high expectations … such false dreams. Perhaps. But I didn't. Perhaps I could even have prevented—but never mind that. Was I just lazy? Or did I just know in my heart of hearts that it would end sometime?” Her mother's voice was growing drowsy. “She was deluded, and delusions can poison a woman's mind, and lead her to have … unrealistic expectations.… Is it all water over the dam … or under the bridge … or however the saying goes? Or …? Never let yourself become deluded, Miranda … keep your eyes open … be sure your eyes take in everything there is to see. Take your old gray-haired mother's advice.…” Her voice trailed off.

“Then will you help me save the store, Mother? Will you give me at least a year?”

“Let me see what Jake Kohlberg thinks.”

“For once, could you say yes or no without consulting Jake Kohlberg?”

Her mother yawned and covered the yawn with the back of her left hand. With her right hand, she reached out and stroked Bicha's thick slate-blue fur. “I haven't said no, and I haven't said yes, and I haven't said maybe,” she said. She closed her eyes. “It's good you're going to be here the whole weekend,” she said. “We'll talk some more tomorrow. Let me sleep on this one, darling. Let your old gray-haired mother sleep on this one.”

Miranda winced. “I wish you wouldn't keep talking about getting old,” she said a little crossly. “You're hardly dying on the vine, Mother.” Then she said, “Maybe I'll stay here a few days longer. I don't feel like going back to the store right away. Maybe I'll take a couple of days off next week. Would that be all right with you?”

But she realized her mother had fallen asleep—as asleep as she had apparently been throughout her father's and Smitty's long love affair, never guessing how serious it had been about to become. Suddenly she felt a stab of pity for her sleeping, beautiful, innocent mother.
Darling, did you really believe it all would end on its own?
She sat for a moment longer on the bed, then rose, kissed her mother lightly on her pale forehead, and turned off her mother's bedside lamp.

Her mother slept. Bicha the cat, another innocent, slept. The house, a keeper of guilty secrets, slept. Miranda tiptoed down the dark hall to her own room, a route she could have traveled blindfolded, and fell across her bed, face forward, as though sleep had felled her with a truncheon from behind.

In his cottage, farther down Heather Lane, Tommy Bonham lay beside Nino, not sleeping.

“She not eat my chicken adobo,” Nino said. “She not like.”

“No. It was just that she had other things on her mind.”

“You tried to make love with her.”

“You were listening?”

“I stay in the cellar, like you say. I hear your voices.”

He raised himself on one elbow. “You must have sneaked up the stairs then!”

Beside him in the darkness, Nino nodded. “You ask her to marry you.”

“I don't like you spying on me, Nino!”

“I not know marrying her was part of plan. You not ever tell me that, Tommy.”

“I've got to get control of her stock! Her stock!”

“But she not say yes.”

“She will, damn it! I just have to work on her some more.”

Nino's voice was far away. “So this is the way it ends for us, Tommy,” he said. “You and me are ended now.”

“Of course not! You and I would still be together. It's just that she'd be with us too!”

“You keep secrets from me, Tommy. You not tell me this part of plan.”

“My plan is for whatever works, damn it! I was going to tell you as soon as I'd found a plan that worked. Now go to sleep. I'm going to work things out. Leave everything to me.”

Nino lay silently beside him. Then he said, “No, I don't think plan is going to work, Tommy.”

“It is,” he said, and then, “She took my big file box.”

“I hear her do that.”

“It has all the store's important records in it.”

From beside him, in the darkness, there was a shrug.

“Do you think she'll be able to find anything in them, Nino?”

Another shrug. “Don't know. Don't know what is in your records, Tommy.”

“I'm sure she won't be able to find anything. She knows nothing about how I've run the store. She won't find anything she can possibly understand—will she?”

Still another shrug. “God knows these things, Tommy,” came the reply.

Now there was a long silence. “Nino?”

“Yes, Tommy.”

“Have you ever killed a person?”

“No, Tommy.”

“Neither have I. It would have to look like an accident, of course—like the other one.”

Nino said nothing for a moment or two. Then he said, “I am thinking, Tommy.”

“What are you thinking, Nino?”

“I am thinking we will never go to Paracale, you and I. It was only dreaming, you and I.”

And, beside him, staring up at the dark ceiling, Tommy Bonham now said nothing.

Part Three

DIANA'S DREAM

27

It is a rainy Saturday morning in October, and Peter Turner—freelance journalist, would-be biographer, one-day well-known name (according to Miranda's tarot reading)—is sitting in his apartment, high in one of the Gothic dormers of the Dakota, listening again to the tapes he has made thus far of those who have variously loved and hated Silas Rogers Tarkington. The chilly rain streaks his window-panes, which could do with a washing, in the squiggly patterns of a river delta. Inside the building, a collective belch and rattle of steam pipes indicates that the Dakota's radiators have just been turned on for the first time this winter and, from the street below, a quickening sound of traffic, auto horns, and doormen's whistles provides an annual alert to the coming holiday season. As he listens to his tapes, Peter Turner continues to make notes in the ring-bound steno pad on his lap.

In
The Times
this morning was the news that Continental Stores, Inc., has again extended the time period for its two-tiered takeover offer for Tarkington's. Originally, it was ten days. Then it was extended to thirty days. Now it has been extended again, to ninety days. This means that Continental is having difficulty acquiring the majority of shares it needs, though it now stands in an eighteen-percent-ownership position. And this means that Miranda is having some success dissuading shareholders from parting with their shares, though the battle is by no means over. Who said, “It ain't over till it's over?” Yogi Berra, Peter thinks. Someone like that.

It has been two months since Silas Tarkington's sudden death and Peter's involvement in this particular project, and this morning he is feeling frustrated on two separate fronts. One is personal. It is frustrating that Miranda Tarkington must spend so much of her time closeted in meetings with Tommy Bonham as they plot defenses against the takeover. Right now they are considering a “poison pill” defense—a stock split, for instance, or the floating of a new issue of Tarkington's stock to the public. Both tactics, of course, involve enormous risk and could end up ruining the company. His other frustration is professional. Peter has still had no success in his efforts to locate the elusive Mr. Moses Minskoff, who, Peter is increasingly certain, is pivotal to the Silas Tarkington story and who also may hold the key to what actually happened that tragic Saturday morning in August at Flying Horse Farm in Old Westbury.

No Moses Minskoff is listed in the Manhattan telephone directory, nor does it appear that he has ever been. When Peter telephoned Jacob Kohlberg to see if Kohlberg could help him locate Minskoff, the lawyer's tone became almost testy. “Look, Turner,” he said to him, “this is your project, not mine. It's you who's supposed to be the investigative reporter. So investigate! I want to have as little to do with that man as possible. Find out his phone number some other way, and leave me out of this.… No, I don't have an address for him.”

Despite Blazer's promise, Jake Kohlberg is turning out to be less than cooperative. Beyond the expected guarded and lawyerly platitudes (“Si Tarkington was a great man, and a great friend, and you may quote me”), Jake Kohlberg has offered very little, probably because he is acting in the interests of Consuelo Tarkington.

Her help so far has also been minimal.

“Tell me about Moses Minskoff,” he said to her that night when she had invited him, Miranda, and David Hockaday to dinner at the farm.

“Moses Minskoff? He was an early business associate of my late husband's. They had very little to do with each other in recent years, though the Minskoffs did show up—uninvited—at the farm the night Si died. Much to my surprise—and displeasure, I might add.”

“Displeasure?”

“He is an unattractive man. Miranda, tell Mr. Turner about the first time the Duchess of Windsor came into the store, how she made the Duke carry all her packages.” And the subject was changed and effectively closed.

The other members of the family, it seems, knew Moses Minskoff only slightly, if at all. Alice Tarkington had only a few brief conversations with him, just enough to be impressed by his garlic breath. Blazer and Miranda each met him only once, the night he and his wife appeared at the farm, though both children had heard his name mentioned often during their growing-up years. Miranda remembered a fat man wearing a yellow Ultrasuede vest and chewing an unlighted cigar, with a fiftyish peroxide-blond wife wearing platform wedgies with ankle straps. Silas Tarkington's mother and sister had also each had one meeting with Moses Minskoff, and that was more than thirty years ago.

Peter Turner does not even have a clear picture of what Moses Minskoff looks like. The prison records from Hillsdale list his date of birth (Nov. 27, 1913), his height (5'11”), and his weight (280 lbs.) but do not include a photograph. “Prisoner is mug-shot on admission,” Peter was told. “But if his picture was took, it's been lost at this point in time.” And even if such a photograph were found it would not tell much, since it would have been taken in 1948, and a man's appearance can change greatly in more than forty years.