Mourning Glory (37 page)

"I'd like to assume you know all this, Dad,"
Bruce said.

Sam couldn't find the will to reply. Instead, he reached
for his drink, spilling part of it because of his shaking hands. He put the
drink down without bringing it to his lips.

"Her daughter," Bruce went on, "Jackie, goes
to West Palm Beach High School. Not a very impressive student. Apparently she
has a boyfriend, a skinhead with a record. Minor stuff. Petty thievery, things
like that. She seems to be quite active sexually." Bruce looked up
suddenly. "I'd take that as hearsay. He's very thorough, but I think in
this case he might have gone too far. What I think he's trying to say is that
the kid is a bit on the wild side."

"I thought..." Sam began, then realized that he
was mounting a futile defense. He stopped himself. Above all, he didn't want
his son to see his naïveté, his vulnerability.

"And here's something that really confuses me,
Dad," Bruce said, frowning and studying his father's face. "She
apparently gave some of Mother's clothes to various charities ... but
then..."

Sam turned away, fearful of what was coming next. He felt
his stomach sour and nausea begin.

"...she brought the bulk of them within the past week
to a couple of secondhand consignment shops. Apparently got some advances
against future sales."

His disappointment was palpable now. He felt awful as he
assessed the extent of his gullibility. How could she? His memory groped
through the endless catalog of her lies, each one offering a painful stab into
his soul. He had no reason to believe that Bruce was manufacturing the
information.

He recalled her alluding to her successful father, the
lawyer husband, Johns Hopkins, her work for the senator in Washington, the
brilliant daughter who needed no help getting into Princeton, who wanted to be
a doctor, the luxury condo in West Palm, her financial independence, the
endless cacophony of lies, lies, lies. He felt brutalized, used, unclean.

Was this the same woman he had contemplated marrying? Was
this the woman who compared with Anne, the sainted Anne? She was a total fraud,
a whore, a monstrous, lying bitch. He remembered how she had come to him after
the funeral, proposing to spare him the pain of disposing of Anne's clothes.
How naive he had been not to have seen through her ploy. He felt his disgust
amplifying as he remembered her sexual acrobatics, the declaration of her love
and, above all else, the filthy lies. God, what a fool he had been, what a
monumental fool.

He got up from his chair and, without looking at Bruce,
walked to the bathroom. He felt nauseous and dizzy. Stooping over the toilet,
he lost the drink he had just imbibed. He looked at himself in the mirror. His
complexion was blotchy, his eyes bloodshot with anger, sweat rolling down his
cheeks.

"Asshole," he cried to his image in the mirror.
"Asshole."

Suddenly tears rolled out of his eyes, his nose reddened. How
could this have happened to him? He, who had amassed a fortune. He, who had
always been in control of his life. He, who prided himself on his judgment of
other people. Suddenly he felt the full burden of his years. Old!

Bruce was right. He had been vulnerable, an idiot. Worse, a
slave to his hardon, a naive, vanity-obsessed moron. How easily he had been
duped. God, how sincere she had seemed, how glib. Lying bitch, he cried to his
image in the mirror. How dare Anne leave him in this state, alone, a target for
a clever, fortune-hunting whore. He was a mark, a patsy, a sucker.

Bending over the sink, he washed his face and tried to
clear his eyes of any signs of tears.

"Are you all right, Dad?" Bruce said from behind
the bathroom door.

"Of course," he grunted. "Can't a man go to
the bathroom without being bothered?"

"Sorry, Dad."

He took a last glance in the mirror, feeling some semblance
of control return. All right, he had been taken. But, hell, there was no damage
done. Yet he had come this close. He lifted his fingers to the mirror to
illustrate the margin by which he was rescued. This much, he sighed.

In an attempt to rationalize his position, he characterized
the episode as just what the doctor ordered to rescue him from his grief, the
ministrations of a fuck-happy whore. And he certainly had fucked his brains
out. That was one way to chase grief. Fuck your brains out. Maybe he could rent
Grace out to other old widowers. Need a blow job to chase the blues? Got the
goods, the real thing. He laughed at his image in the mirror. It came out as a
cackle, but he felt secure enough to join Bruce again.

"Stomach's been acting up," he told his son. He
took his seat in the leather chair again.

"Now, where were we?" Bruce continued. Sam was
certain he was reveling in his newfound power. "This is obviously a woman
who lived in the margins. I don't know how she got in your good graces, but she
sure as hell did. I'm not saying that she might offer perfectly decent
companionship, but beware of anything more. I'd say that if anything she told
you didn't jibe with my investigator's facts, this seems like a classic case of
deliberate and cynical fortune hunting."

Sam forced a chuckle.

"Do you think I'm that naïve, Bruce? Did you get it
into your head that I was looking for a long-term relationship? The woman was
pleasant and no threat at all. Did you think I was going to give away the
store? Did you think your old man was an idiot?"

"She's been here every day and night for weeks, Dad.
You can't deny that."

"That private dick of yours sure was thorough."

"You want his opinion?"

"If I didn't, I'd get it anyhow."

"He thinks it was a setup. They were all in on it. He
saw the kid's boyfriend on his bike watching the house. He thinks she found a
way to pick up a few easy bucks on Mom's clothes. I'm not saying you didn't
give her permission, but I'm sure you never expected her to sell them. Anyway,
he thinks she was trying to get into your good graces, separate you from your
bucks, Dad. I'm sorry to say it that way. But that's what he thought."

"And you think I didn't know what was happening?"

"I didn't know what to think."

"I'll bet you thought your old dad had lost it, maybe
was going to put a ring on her finger, right?"

"It crossed my mind," Bruce said, smiling, as if
he was certain his father was letting him in on some joke. "I've had some
research done on the subject. A grieving man after a long and happy marriage
can get carried away. And it doesn't really matter how old he is."

"Well, I wasn't carried away." His courage was
ebbing again, his heart sinking.
Grace,
he cried within himself.
What
did you do to me?
"You wasted your money on that report. I know
everything that was in it. She was useful to me in certain ways. She made me
laugh, had a good gift of gab, and maybe in other ways as well. But, Bruce,
there was never any danger of her taking your mother's place. No way. Your
mother was everything to me. Everything."

Bruce watched his father's face, then put the paper back
into his jacket pocket.

"I'm relieved, Dad. I hope you now see why I was so
concerned."

"As a matter of fact, I was getting ready to ... you
know ... show her the door. What more is there for her to do around here? As
for the clothes, believe me, I couldn't care less if she made a few bucks on
them for her trouble. You saw your mother's closet. It would have been too
painful for me to go near it. She did her job well as far as I'm concerned. Now
that's over. Take a look yourself if you want to. The closet is bare."

"You had me really scared, Dad," Bruce said. It was
hard to tell whether he had bought his story. But then, Sam had lost all
confidence in his ability to read people. It galled him how easily he was taken
in, believing that he loved her, actually loved her. It was ludicrous. Loving
this woman who had betrayed him.

Sam got up and poured himself another drink, then brought
the bottle to where Bruce was sitting and poured him a slug.

"Cheers, son," Sam said as they clinked glasses.

After they had drunk Sam said, "You could have saved
yourself the trip. Told me what you had to say on the phone."

"I'm glad I came, Dad. It gives me a chance to discuss
again what I think we should be doing about the estate."

"Oh, I've been thinking about that, Bruce. I think you
have made some good points. I'm almost there. Just give me a little more time
and we can refashion things to your specifications."

"That's great news, Dad." Bruce said, holding up
his glass and shaking his head with obvious pleasure.

This was all a charade, Sam was thinking as he looked at
his son. The fact remained that his son had spied on him. Whatever the outcome,
that was a terrible thing for a son to do. It was true that he had the urge,
figuratively at least, to shoot the messenger. He had never been happier than
his times with Grace, and he hated his son for bringing him the news of her
treachery.

"Well," Sam said, slapping his thighs and
standing up, "I'm bushed. You can sleep in your old room. When are you
heading home?"

"First thing in the morning. I ordered a taxi for
seven. This was just a quick trip, Dad, a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing. As
soon as I got this report, I knew I had to come."

"Sure, son. In your place I'd do the same."

He looked at Bruce, studied him for a moment, realizing
suddenly that he held no love in his heart for him. Whatever obligatory love he
had once felt for him, and for Carol, too, was little more than nostalgia for
his own youth. Having progeny, he supposed, cheated death, kept the genes
alive, assured immortality. So what? he told himself. His son had set out to destroy
his father's hope and potential happiness, and he had. Sam didn't feel as if he
had been rescued from a fate worse than death.

On the contrary, he had been dealt a deathblow. He had no
wish to see his son again, ever.

After Bruce had left him, Sam walked out to the beach, then
to the water's edge. The surf rolled and pounded and slapped against the wet
sand. He took off his shoes and rolled up his pants. Above him stretched an
infinite canopy of stars, ahead the vast expanse of endless ocean.

He felt the terrible ache of abandonment, of total
aloneness, as if he were the last person left on earth. Surely the Grace whom
he adored, loved, longed for, was not the Grace of Bruce's report. The Grace he
had loved had been strictly in his imagination. Hers was a giant hoax.

He started to move deeper into the surf, to his calves, to
his knees, still feeling the earth under his feet; then, suddenly, a wave
lifted him and he felt weightless and strangely unburdened, detached from life,
as if he were entering a void.

He was aware enough to sense the temptation to end his
life. Death did not frighten him, nor did he feel any need to sum up his life,
which had, by his standard of truth, been disappointing—an incomplete marriage,
unloving, greedy children, the dubious glory of wealth, hardly an asset in his
present state. If there was a single positive note to all this it was that he
would leave his progeny in financial knots, all loopholes closed, forcing them
to be the full partners of a covetous Uncle Sam. Oh, there would be more than
enough left to sustain the most lavish consuming habits of his children, but
the pain of unsatisfied greed would be unbearable.

Perhaps it was the idea of that that lifted his spirits and
restored him to the living again. It was indicative of the way he saw himself
now. He was not a nice man. He was a fraud. An empty suit. He deserved the hand
that fate had dealt him. Above all, he hated himself.

He let himself float in on the incoming tide and lay,
beached like a whale, along the water's edge. He imagined himself laying there,
another of life's victims, an old man betrayed by the illusion that there was
still much ahead to enjoy. This thing with Grace was to be his last hurrah. In
the distance he had heard the applause of the gods. He had, for one brief,
shining moment, actually believed that he had defeated age, found that illusive
grail, a late and glorious love. It had turned out to be yet another of life's
mirages. At the water's edge he knelt and, in a wave of anger and self-pity, pounded
his fists into the wet sand.

Immediately upon entering Sam's house, Grace was assailed
by an odd feeling that somehow the environment had changed. Perhaps it was the
fog, she thought. It was thick over everything, like a gossamer veil. She heard
the pounding of the surf, but the ocean wasn't visible.

Sam, who usually met her at the front door, was not there.
Felicia, whose presence in the house was tangible, even if it was merely the
odor of her cooking, was nowhere around.

"Sam," she called. There was no answer, only an
odd echo. Perhaps the strangeness in the house was merely the effect of her own
resolution.

Today was the day, the moment she had chosen to put herself
finally and irrevocably in the hands of fate. She wondered if she was going
against the grain. Had she received a sign that this was the moment? She wasn't
sure. Certainly the evidence that both Jackie and the evil Darryl knew her
secret was an absolute sign that she had to go through with her confession.
Admittedly, their knowledge had forced her decision.

"Where are you, Sam?" she cried, walking to the
rear of the house. Even if he were outside, she would not be able to see him.
The fog blocked all vision. Seeing no sign of him, she walked up the stairs.

"Sam," she called again, coming into the bedroom.
It, too, was deserted, but as she was about to leave, she saw him sitting on
the balcony, barely visible in the mist.

"There you are," she said cheerily, coming closer
so that she could see his face, which was unshaven, an uncommon occurrence in
itself. She noted his dark mood instantly. He was dressed in slacks and a polo
shirt, not shorts and a T-shirt, his usual attire for their beach walk.

On his lap was the framed photograph of Anne that he kept
on the night table next to his bed. Despite the mist, he wore sunglasses, and
it was difficult to see where his eyes were focused. Observing him sapped her
courage. Perhaps she had better postpone her confession, she told herself.
Something was obviously bothering him.

"Is there something wrong, Sam?" Grace asked.

She waited a long time for him to respond.

"Everything," he muttered, turning his face
toward her. Although she could not see his eyes, his expression, his aura,
seemed to reflect anger and hostility, which startled her. Her instant reaction
was that Darryl had taken his revenge and told him the truth about her.

"Something concerning me?" she asked with alarm
and trepidation.

"All about you," he croaked, making it clear,
beyond a shadow of a doubt.

"You know then?" she asked. It was hardly a
necessary question.

"Yes," he hissed. "I know."

The game was up. His words and demeanor confirmed that
fact. The truth of her treachery was exposed. Any opportunity for an
explanation from her had been usurped. How he came by the information was
hardly relevant at this juncture. He knew.

Yet despite the sick feeling in her heart, she felt oddly
relieved. The burden of keeping obscene secrets, of dispensing lies and
mentally cross-indexing them, had finally been lifted.

"Well, then, you must think I'm a monster," she
sighed.

He nodded, confirming her speculation. There was no
ambivalence about his reaction. Even through the mist, his expression of utter
contempt and profound disgust were clearly visible.

"Oh, God, I'm so sorry, Sam. I know you won't believe
me now," she said. "But I was going to tell you today, the whole
awful story. I'm so ashamed."

"There's no need," Sam said, looking into the
cloud of invisibility that hid the pounding surf. "No matter how one
tries, the indefensible can't be defended. Bottom line: I was a gullible old
fool."

She understood his anguish and observed him for a long
moment before speaking. As if trying to ignore her presence, he did not turn
his face in her direction.

"I know how you must hate me, Sam. All I ask is that
you respect my need to explain. I can't hold it in any longer. I hadn't
expected to have to do it under these circumstances.... I..." She
swallowed hard, determined to find her voice.

"It's pointless."

He lifted the picture of Anne and studied it. Grace noted
that it was beaded with moisture. At that moment she was strongly tempted to
lash out, to reveal the ultimate secret that would explode the myth of Anne's
saintliness. Ironically, the evidence, the letters, were still in the bag that
hung from her shoulder.

"What goes around comes around," he sighed.
"I got my comeuppance. I would appreciate your leaving as soon as
possible."

She felt both the pain and the anger of his dismissal. Her
fingers reached for the clasp of her handbag. But they went no further. To
inflict such additional pain on someone she loved so deeply would only make her
detest herself even more.

"All right, Sam, I'll leave if you want me to, but
first I'd appreciate it if I could tell my side of it."

He shrugged, which she interpreted as a kind of grudging
consent. She paused, gathering her thoughts, forgetting how she had originally
planned to begin. Above all, she decided, she must find the discipline not to
show him tears. Not tears. In her state, tears would cheapen her motives, make
her an object to be pitied.

It's over,
she told herself.
What does it matter? Whatever I say,
she vowed,
will be the complete,
uncensored, unvarnished truth.
She owed him that.

"I was financially desperate and I set out to find a
rich man," Grace began, her voice wispy at first, growing stronger as she
continued. "I know the means I chose were cynical and beyond forgiveness.
But it did work. I found what I was looking for, a rich, grieving widower, and
I took full advantage of him. My objective was, pure and simple, marriage, and
all that went with it, to rescue me from the hole I had slid into."

"All that crap about not wanting anything," Sam
muttered. "Then selling Anne's clothes. It makes me want to puke."

"Who can blame you?" Grace said, groping for some
more palatable way to explain what she had done. Unfortunately the little
speeches she had concocted in her mind earlier seemed inadequate and bumbling.

"Why don't you just leave?"

"Sam, please. Let me unburden myself. Give me that. I know
we're finished. Just give me the courtesy..."

"Courtesy? Good God."

He appeared suddenly old, depleted. It was a condition she
knew she had caused, and it broke her heart. He shook his head and turned away
from her to peer toward the unseen ocean.

"Just let me explain, Sam," she said, turning to
face him.

He did not reply.

"All I ask is that you listen. I know it won't redeem
me in your eyes, but I need to say it. Grant me that."

He remained silent and immobile, shifting his glance now to
Anne's image in the photograph. Again she assumed his silence meant a kind of
consent, more like sufferance.

Grace hesitated for a moment, losing her train of thought.
She was sure she knew what was going through Sam's mind. The verdict had
already been handed down: guilty as charged. What she needed to do was explain
the extenuating circumstances.

"I don't know how much you know, Sam, so I guess I
have to start from the beginning." She took a deep breath and walked the
short distance to the edge of the balcony. Not seeing the ocean, she felt
constricted, imprisoned by the fog. Then she turned again and stood before him,
confronting the blankness of his dark lenses.

"I just got tired of the struggle, Sam," she
began. "I wish I could convey to you what it means to be desperate,
financially desperate, not in control of your own destiny, lonely, defeated,
totally down on your luck. It is a very horrible feeling. You feel useless,
left out, cast aside like garbage, always at the mercy of others. It kills your
spirit. It makes you crazy, willing to do anything to regain your dignity. You
feel deprived. You see others prospering, in good shape, not scratching around
just to survive." She paused and sucked in a deep breath. "You know
you're a loser. Everybody around you knows you're a loser. Here you are, a
single mother with a teenage daughter going bad, and you just feel powerless,
helpless, lost. Why me? you wonder. Why have I been left out? You're a loser,
so you have nothing more to lose. I know I'm whining, Sam, but for me life has
been one long self-pitying whine. It takes its toll, Sam, makes you do things
that never crossed your mind before. Anything to climb out of the hole."

She discovered that she could barely hear the sound of her
voice, only that continuing inner whine.

"So here it is, Sam. Warts and all."

She took him through her actions from the moment she was
fired by Mrs. Burns. Deliberately, she did not look at his face as she spoke.
She wanted nothing to inhibit the fidelity of her revelation. She wanted to
give him the whole truth. Nothing but.

She told him how she had haunted funeral parlors, looking
for the right target, preferably Jewish. Why Jewish? She tried to explain that
as well, citing Mrs. Burns's various dictums and distortions. She told him how
she had adopted the disgusting but apparently clever ploy of suggesting to the
bereaved widower that she dispose of the deceased's clothes. Could anything
have been more cruel, taking advantage of someone's vulnerability in his moment
of grief? Worst of all, she confessed that she had never known Anne, had never
heard of her, had made it all up from beginning to end.

As both judge and jury listening to her own testimony, she
could barely sustain the pain of her own awful revelation and the terrible
deception she had perpetrated on this good man, knowing that her story had to
be making Sam confirm his foolishness and sheer gullibility and increase his
sense of violation and betrayal.

Still she pressed on. She recounted the story of Millicent
Farmer in all its appalling detail. "Ring around your finger, dummy,"
she cried, as if in punctuation.

Then came her justification for the sale of Anne's clothes,
which brought her to recount the long, dreary story of Jackie and her
involvement with Darryl, the frightening Nazi skinhead, and the episode with
the yellow Honda. She spared no detail, telling him about Jackie's flirtation
with prostitution. She assumed it was Darryl who had provided him with the
information that condemned her, but she did not refer to that. What did it
matter how he discovered her deception?

He remained unmoved, frozen. She had no idea if he was
absorbing anything she was saying. To her, the important thing was that she was
saying it, emptying herself, cutting through the tissue of lies.

She spared no detail of her early life as well, growing up
poor in Baltimore, living over the barbershop with her immigrant Italian
parents, telling him about her paltry schooling, her foolish marriage, her
husband's true background and her unhappy life with him. Of course he wasn't a
lawyer in Washington, just a stupid dreamer with more ambition than brains, a
bum with impossible dreams. Nor was he gay, another absurd premise that had
jumped madly into her head.

She admitted having little knowledge of politics, current
events or culture. By his standard, she told him, she was ignorant and
unschooled. Not that she was without ambition to learn. She believed she had
the capacity to better herself. She knew she was not mentally inferior, but
luck and opportunity to advance and grow simply had not come her way. There was
shame in it, she admitted. To be ignorant and uninformed was not a virtue. She
had only herself to blame.

She hoped he was listening, but if he wasn't, she told
herself, it didn't matter. It had to be said out loud. Had she left a single
lie unexplained? She was determined to correct the record as accurately as
possible. Throughout her confession Sam remained immobile.

She corrected the chronology. She had lied about that as
well. Lies, she tried to explain, take on a life of their own. Embark on such a
path, you lose all context about yourself. It becomes less a lie, which is such
a brutal term, than a fiction. She had created a fiction about herself and the
people around her.

"I wanted to make myself appear better in your eyes,
Sam," she told him. "I wanted to lift myself into your world."

Lift herself from where? From her level, it was easy to
believe that people who had wealth were different, better in every way,
smarter, cultured, educated, well-spoken, polished, socially practiced,
mannerly, and, above all, more in control of their lives. She knew she could
never match that. To compete, she had to recast herself, make herself over,
copy others and lie like hell. As she spoke, it amazed her how deeply and honestly
she was portraying herself, all portals open, down and dirty, the whole skinny.

"You might not ever understand where I'm coming from
or why I did this. Unfortunately, I know why. Having failed at every venture
tried, marriage, parenting, job, life itself, I could gamble everything on one
last desperate move. Do you understand that, Sam?"

Still he did not reply. She watched his hands, frozen it
seemed, around the picture of Anne, the unblemished Anne that lay exalted in
his memory.

Was this the moment? she asked herself. Anne's letters were
in her purse. What would be the consequences to her now? So what if he would
hate her forever? It seemed obvious to her that all hope of reclaiming their
relationship was gone.

Again her fingers moved to the clasp of her purse. She had
nothing to lose now. At the very least he would learn that Grace wasn't the
only fraud in his life, that his beloved sainted Anne betrayed him with far
more evil intent for most of the years of his marriage. What could be worse
than her disloyalty and unfaithfulness? Let him know that he had been an
unloved husband, a victim of a cheating wife who had led a double life and
betrayed him at every turn. Let him know that all the agony of his guilt
feelings over the years had been based on a false premise.