Mourning Glory (38 page)

She had continued to cling to the notion that the
revelation of Anne's infidelity would shock him into seeing that even the most
revered of human beings were fallible, and that the most blatant acts of
dishonesty and betrayal might not be what they seemed.

If Grace was ever to act on this, it was now. She paused
and observed him. He refused her even the most casual glance. She reached out
for the clasp. He continued to look at Anne's picture. In his mind, Grace
supposed, Anne was still safe to worship and revere. In death she could no
longer betray him.

Again her fingers stopped moving. No, she could not bring
herself to do this. She had hurt him enough. Her gift to him would be this act
of non-revelation. This would be her own special act of love, allowing him to
preserve forever his illusion of Anne's fidelity and devotion.

"How was I to know, Sam," she cried, suddenly,
"that I was to get entangled emotionally?" She wanted to say
"fall in love with you," but she couldn't utter the words, knowing
that they would sound phony, hollow, self-serving. More than ever she was
certain that she loved him, loved him completely, truly. She wanted, needed to
reach out and embrace him. But her fear of rejection was too powerful for her
to attempt such an act.

"I know I don't deserve forgiveness. I betrayed you. I
made myself out to be something I wasn't. I lied. I cheated you."

From his reaction thus far she had no idea what he was
thinking.

"Don't you have anything to say, Sam?" she asked
finally in frustration, waiting through a long silence, hoping for a reply.
Finally he stirred and shook his head.

"Please go, Grace," he whispered. "Don't put
me through any more of this."

She studied him for a moment. He didn't lift his eyes
toward her. Finally she turned and started to the door of the balcony; then she
turned again to face him.

"All I really wanted, Sam," she whispered,
"was protection for me and my daughter. My falling in love with you was an
unexpected gift."

The words had erupted beyond her will to stop them. He
offered no reaction. It wasn't money. Not money alone that she sought, she told
herself. Love and protection! That's what it was. Was that so much to ask?

With effort, her legs unsteady, she began to move through
the door that led to the bedroom. She stopped for a moment and glanced again
toward Sam. He did not lift his head to meet her gaze. Instead he continued to
look at the photograph of his late wife.

Then she moved quickly through the patio door, her eyes
glazed with tears. She could let them come now.

But as she descended the stairs, she recognized a familiar
and frightening sound. It held a strong imprint in her mind. Unmistakably, it
was the ominous purr of Darryl's "hog."

Confused by its proximity, especially since she believed
that he had already accomplished his objective, had made good on his threat to
destroy Grace's relationship with Sam, she abruptly stopped crying and ran down
the stairs.

The fog was lifting, although a brightening haze continued
to inhibit visibility. Through it, she saw the vague outline of her own car,
and beside it Darryl's bike. He was lifting his leg over the seat and removing
his helmet. Behind him on the bike, on the so-called "bitch pad,"
also removing her helmet, was Jackie. Jackie! She couldn't believe what she
saw, Jackie in matching biker's clothes and helmet.

Grace was completely bewildered and, for the moment,
paralyzed by the sight. She felt blind anger festering inside her as Darryl and
Jackie approached, two swaggering apparitions bent on evil intent. In her mind
they had become the devil's messengers, and she girded herself to resist them.

Peripherally, she caught a glimpse of Sam standing and
watching them from the balcony. The sound of the oncoming motorcycle so close
to the house had apparently caught his attention.

"Surprise, Mama," Darryl said, lumbering toward
her in his biker's uniform, the leather jacket with its metal swastikas
jingling as he walked, the tight jeans showing his arrogant genital bulge and
his black high-heeled cowboy boots reminding her of the goose-stepping Nazis
she had seen in old movies. Behind him, doing a kind of female imitation of the
swagger, was Jackie, unsmiling and mean-faced, aping her mentor.

"What the hell is happening here?" Grace shouted
angrily, although the sight she was witnessing left no room for doubt.

"You should never have threatened Darryl, Mom,"
Jackie said, acting the part of a tough broad, glancing toward Darryl for
approval. "I got a clue for you, Mom: That car belongs to him. I saw his
registration. He had every right to sell it to me. And we've come for the
money. In cash."

Grace studied her daughter. It was obvious to her that she
had, whatever the fine points and legalities, lost the last vestige of parental
control over Jackie. The issue of the car was hardly worth refuting. Even if
Darryl did own the car, he was exploiting Jackie for money. If she was too
stupid to see it, then so be it. At that moment she had no mental energy left
for argument.

"That's it, then?" Grace said, with an air of finality.

"Figured we'd pick you up, and if we couldn't get your
consent to come with us to the bank, we might get Sammy Jew boy up there to
come up with the bread."

Darryl looked up at Sam and waved. It was a familiar wave,
complete with an uplifted finger.

"Face it, Mom. I'm tired of the bullshit. I know you
tried your best. But your best just won't hack it with me. I've moved in with
Darryl."

Grace sighed. She saw in her daughter's hard face no
remorse, no contrition, no regrets. So be it, she thought again.

"How does that grab you, Mama?" Darryl said,
cupping his crotch as if to underline the statement. "You got visiting
rights, though.

"Guess we'll just have to have a nice little talk with
old cut prick up there. I'm sure he'd love to know about how you got the dough,
selling his poor dead bitch's threads. Maybe there's even more to tell about
you he don't know. Maybe you got lots more to hide from the kike."

Grace felt a strange sensation, an odd sense of
vindication. She had assumed that Darryl had been the informer, which only
proved how misguided assumptions were more the rule than the exception. It
wasn't Darryl at all. Maybe Sam himself had her investigated. What did it
matter now? she told herself. She looked up at Sam, shook her head, then turned
to Darryl and Jackie and shrugged, showing her indifference to their threat.

"Be my guest," Grace said, watching their faces
as they exchanged confused glances. Then she turned and moved quickly toward
her car. The ironic sense of victory passed quickly and she felt herself
engulfed by a rising tide of explosive rage. She felt compelled to act, do
something, anything.

It was only when she drew nearer to her car and saw
Darryl's bike parked beside it, his vaunted Evo, his miraculous hog with its
pulled back buckhorns and bitch pad glistening in the moist and eerie light of
the fog, that an idea of action struck her. In this light the bike looked like
an evil, arrogant monster. Here was her epiphany. She had, at last, come
face-to-face with her destiny. It was a compulsion beyond logic or reason, her
appointment with the enemy. There could be no retreat. She must wrestle this
evil force to the death.

Mounting the monster, she forced herself to remember the
mechanics of the "kicker." Jason had taught her that years ago. It
came to her in a flash of memory, and she turned the ignition key and placed
her foot on the kicker and jumped, hearing the telltale gasp. She jumped again,
then again. Finally she hit it right and it burst into life.

She heard Darryl's angry curses and Jackie's screams as the
bike shot forward across the driveway onto the strip of shrubs that separated
the property from the beach. Looking up as she sped past the house, she saw
Sam's vague outline as he stood on the balcony. She couldn't see his face.

As she sped into the fog, navigating by instinct parallel
to the ocean, she sensed that she was taming the beast, controlling it at last.
She felt free, unshackled, liberated, sailing effortlessly through time and
space, hurtling to an ending.

The wind and saltwater bit her face and soaked her hair as
she revved up the accelerator, hoping that the greater speed would crush the
monster and release her mind of its ghosts and terrors, unburden her heart,
chase the demons that had conspired against her and, by some miracle, propel
her to another less painful dimension.

After a few minutes, she made a sharp U-turn and headed
into the fog, sensing that she was moving again toward Sam's house. She peered
into the brightening mist but saw only a white slate of nothingness. That, she
assured herself, was where she needed to be, hurtling into the blankness of
oblivion.

Slowing, she stopped the bike, let it idle and listened to
the pounding of the surf. In the distance she could see the enemy now. Jackie
and Darryl, gripped by their fantasies of anger and greed. And Sam, dear Sam,
unable or unwilling to distinguish between real truth and betrayal.

They were all there now, flaying their arms. Vaguely, she
heard their voices but could not make out what they were saying. Nor did it
matter.

In the end it all came down to misconceptions, distorted
ideas, inaccurate perceptions, misinterpreted words, phony expectations,
conflicting desires, competing game plans, bloated optimism, miscalculations,
misunderstandings, inadequate explanations and the mysterious intrusions of
luck and chance. People were maddeningly imperfect. Was the battle really worth
it in the end?

She revved up the bike, hearing the angry growl and cough
of the engine, then headed forward, certain now that she was moving toward her
nothingness, her real destiny.

Sam had listened to Grace's confession with every fiber of
his being, his outer persona frozen into immobility while his insides, the core
of himself, burned with the heat of his agony. Until then he had never
understood the meaning of heartbreak. Now he discovered that it was even more
painful than loss, more torturing than guilt.

Her words, assaulting him in an endless stream, bit into
his brain with laserlike power, illustrating how deadly words could be, how
they could create false realities, manipulate the mind's images, foster
illusions, induce empty hopes.

Before her incredible outpouring, he had convinced himself
of his own failed judgment. His antennae, which had once detected fraud and
chicanery with remarkable accuracy, had simply shut down. His libido had pumped
up his ego and blinded him to the ravages that age had wrought on his
perception. That was the only credible explanation for his naive stupidity.

But when she explained the machinations of her effort to
insinuate herself into his life, he felt less and less to blame. It was, he
decided, although he would not reveal to her any hint of admiration, a
masterpiece of planning and dissimulation. As she had admitted, desperation
makes one powerfully creative and cunning, especially when survival was at
stake.

He had deliberately steeled himself against any show of
emotion, any engagement of her attention that might reveal a softening of
resolve. She had suckered him once and he was determined not to be suckered
again.

But he did listen with rapt attention, fighting off any
desire for forgiveness. He knew he was at war with himself. If anything, her
words provided enlightenment as to the terrible price one paid for purveying
lies. He had paid it in spades. Secrecy had forced him to overcompensate in his
display of affection and generosity toward Anne. It had distorted his marriage,
given him not a single day of peace of mind, of contentment, of openness.

What hurt him most was that he had truly believed that with
Grace he had found trust, that illusive ingredient that melted barriers between
human beings that opened the way for total communication. Nothing would be
hidden, not the darkest desires, not the deepest motives. No emotion was
exempt. The criteria between them would be truth, truth in the absolute, truth
in its purest form.

Now this. He had been on the verge of a lifetime commitment
to her in every way, a full partnership, a pledge to the end of his life, the
end of time and consciousness. Love had come to him late, but with all its
latent power intact. It had been the greatest thrill in his life. His body's
reaction had only been the tip of the iceberg. Its depth defied all
measurement.

Indeed, the whole idea of his accumulated wealth and its
preservation paled beside the power and glory of love. Beyond creature comforts
and the little vanities, what more was needed to satisfy their future needs?
Surplus seemed an absurdity at his stage in life. What he detested most was the
greed of his children. They had not earned any of his fortune, yet they felt
entitled to every dime.

But this thing with Grace: He had really believed that
their relationship was beyond money, that his wealth hadn't been a motivating
factor for her. He had felt it in his bones. How could he have been so far off
the mark? It was true, he supposed, that if she had revealed her real history,
he might have rejected any idea of future commitment.

She was below him in education and accomplishment and far,
far lower on the economic ladder. Her perception of herself was accurate. She
was, indeed, a luckless waif, a loser. She had no special social skills or
connections to the protocol of his world. Her knowledge or interest in cultural
pursuits, current events and politics were limited.

But what had any of that to do with the chemistry of
attraction, with the mystery of love, with the sincerity of her soul? What
counted for more? Achievement or wisdom, however acquired? Where was the true
measure of success? Who made the final judgments on the worth of a life lived?

When she had said that she loved him, he felt his rage
begin to dissipate, but he distrusted his own judgment. He wanted to respond.
He wanted it, desperately, to be true. With all his being he wanted to join her
in the cleansing process of her confession, to forgive, to believe in her
sincerity. Still, he held back. Her lies, her dissembling, had been too
formidable, too cunning. And he had let the moment pass. He would tough it out,
get beyond it, be more wary of predators. The thought brought him back to his
son, who had exploited his self-appointed role of guardian angel. He felt no
filial gratitude in the revelation, none at all.

And then Grace had left him and he was bereft. He was
marooned now. All bridges burnt, surrounded by an infinite, impenetrable swamp.

In the split second of her leave-taking, he had seen the
bleakness of his own future and the long, hot desert of regrets he would walk
for the rest of his life. It was then, as he wavered on the razor's edge of
decision, that he had heard the grating sound of the motorcycle.

He stood up and peered over the railing. At an angle below
him, through the fine mist, he could see Grace talking with two strangers,
vaguely seen and oddly dressed. He had no idea who they were.

He stood up, peered through the fog, watched Grace move
toward her car, then disappear into the mist. He felt assailed by his own
reticence.
Go, bring her back,
his heart told him, while his mind
berated his judgment.
Go. Act.

Then, suddenly, he saw, as if the mist opened briefly just
to give him this clear snapshot, Grace mounted on the motorcycle, crouched on
the seat, her hair flowing in the wind. He saw the machine shoot through the
green edge of his property onto the beach.

The ominous sight panicked him.

"No," he shouted, flailing his arms, certain that
she was deliberately headed for her own destruction. Below him, he could hear a
man's voice shouting curses into the wind.

"Bitch," the voice cried, loudly, repetitively,
inciting Sam to anger. He heard the girl also scream a word. It sounded like
"Mom." Mom? A stab of fear shot through him.

He ran down the stairs and cut out the back door to the
beach, his heart pounding, banging against his chest. He saw nothing, but he
could hear the sound of the bike's motor, growing fainter as it headed farther
away.

Coming up behind him was a man in black leather. He saw
silver swastikas dangling on metal hooks. The man was shouting obscenely,
"That bitch stole my bike. I'm gonna kill that fucking bitch."

Beside the young man was a girl in a similar outfit, almost
a child.

"M-o-m," she was shouting into the dense mist.
"You come back."

"I'll kill that fucking bitch," the man in black
screamed again.

Beside him, the young man and the girl looked like ghosts,
floating into emptiness, their shouts muffled as if coming from a far distance.

"Where the fuck is she?" the man in the black
outfit screamed.

In the distance they heard the motor's growl, fading away.
Sam noted that the mist was rising, clearing from the ground up.

"She's up ahead," Sam said.

The man in the black outfit turned and saw him.

"You make her come back, you Jew son-of-a-bitch. She
stole my bike."

The phrases of hate stunned him. Suddenly his glance caught
that of the girl. Her face was ashen, and her expression showed the familiar
grimace of abject fear.

"Darryl, stop," the girl cried.

"I'm gonna slit her fuckin' throat," the man
shouted.

Frightened, Sam peered forward into the rising mist. In the
distance he could hear the motor's angry growl, growing louder now. Straining,
Sam could see the outline in the distance, a figure on a motorcycle, drawing
closer. Then, suddenly, there was no movement, only the persistent, rhythmic
growl of the motor, moving from loud and frenetic to soft and steady. She was
revving it up and down, taunting him.

"There she is. Crazy bitch," the young man
shouted, pointing.

She looked like a still photograph, its image slowly
emerging in a development bath.

Sam stood beside the young man and the girl, frozen figures
in stunned contemplation.

"You bring that bike back, bitch," the young man
shouted through cupped hands. Despite the makeshift sound tunnel, his voice
sounded reedy and hysterical.

"M-o-m," the girl whined.

The response was a revved-up motor, still alternating
between a soft purr and a hard, angry growl. He could detect only the sounds,
no movement.

"Bitch is playin' with us," the young man said,
turning to Sam. "Make her come, Jew boy."

Sam looked at the man, his anger rising. He shook his head
and turned away in disgust.

"Go on and call your cunt, Jew boy," the young
man prodded.

Sam remained silent, shaking his head, hoping the man would
note his disgust and contempt.

"You hear what I'm sayin'?"

"Hear?" Sam shot back. "I hear. You offend
my ears and I can smell the stink of you," he hissed, freezing the man out
of his perception, concentrating his gaze through the rising mist to Grace
perched on the motorcycle, watching them, revving the motor in teasing insult.

"She fucks up my bike, I'll waste her ass," the
young man cried across the distance between them. Above the din of the pounding
surf, his voice carried. Sitting on the motorcycle, Grace didn't respond except
to rev the motor into an angry, guttural squawk.

"I'll cut your fuckin' heart out."

Suddenly he pulled a knife from behind him and brandished
it in a menacing manner, slicing it through the air. The blade glistened,
catching brief sparks from the quickening sunlight emerging swiftly from the
mist.

Sam looked at the young man and spat into the sand.

"Stop being an idiot," he said.

"Want me to stick it in you, Jew boy?"

"What hole have you crawled out of?" Sam muttered
despite himself, refusing to show the man his fear.

"Darryl, stop," the girl whined.

"Your mama is dead meat," the young man shouted
at the girl, who winced; then, to her mother, "You trash that, I'll trash
you."

Again the answer was a revved-up motor.

"She's not afraid of you either," Sam chuckled,
admiring Grace's bravery. She was ridiculing him.

The young man moved suddenly, grabbing the girl by the
hair. He laid the blade of the knife flat across her throat. The girl screamed.
He pulled the girl's hair sharply upward, lifting her head, pressing the knife
harder against her neck.

"You better move, bitch. I'll cut her fuckin'
throat."

Grace's response was another loud, repetitive growl of the
motor.

"You better move it," the young man shouted,
"or this little pussy is dead meat."

"No need for that," Sam said calmly.

"Keep out of this, kike," the young man screamed,
pulling harder at the girl's hair. Her panicked scream cut through the air. As
if in counterpoint, like some weird concert, the motor responded with its
angry, rhythmic beat.

"She don't mean shit to me, bitch," the young man
shouted. "You don't bring that bike back, she's gone."

Suddenly there was nothing but silence. The mist was
quickly disappearing. Sam could see Grace's face, clearer now but impassive,
strangely calm. All four of them were frozen in a deadly tableau, like silent
figures in a desert. Even the ocean was unruffled, as if pausing between waves,
waiting for life to begin again.

In the silence Sam found his moment to act. He sprang
forward and, gathering his energy into his arm and fist, he smashed it into the
young's man's arm, a hard, glancing blow that stunned him momentarily, forcing
him to release his hold on the girl. She slipped like a stone into the sand.

Before the young man could recover his equilibrium, Sam hit
him again, a pounding blow directly into his face. The force of the blow threw him
backward like a fallen plank. The knife slipped out of his grip and fell into
the sand.

Stunned, the young man sat up, shook himself, then turned
and crawled wildly, like a spinning top, his hands groping into the sand in an
effort to recover the knife. Sam kicked sand in his eyes. Darryl screamed in
pain.

In the distance he could hear the motor growl angrily. The
calibration of the sound had changed. Suddenly the bike, like an oncoming
missile, was moving toward them with accelerating speed.

Reaching for the girl, who lay whimpering on the beach, Sam
pulled her away and threw his body over her, watching the bike come at full
speed toward the kneeling young man. By then he had found the knife, and he was
making an effort to rise and get out of the way of the bike, which was still
coming at him.

By a split second he managed to evade the oncoming vehicle.
There was no question of Grace's intent. She was deliberately coming at the
man, determined to hit him. She circled the bike, paused for a moment, then headed
back in the young man's direction. Sam watched her, mesmerized, struck by her
focus and determination.

As the bike moved forward again, the man danced away,
sidestepped, then, as the bike missed him by inches, jumped on the seat behind
her as she passed, gripping Grace with his thighs. Grace revved the motor, and
the bike shot forward. As it pulled away swiftly, heading like a speeding
bullet toward the ocean, he saw a glint of light as the man's arm went up, then
down again, then again.

Sam tried to shout, but panic prevented his voice from
coming.

Again the young man's arm shot up, then down again,
sunlight spangling on the blade in his hand. The bike continued to shoot ahead,
Grace still in control. It moved headlong into the ocean, now at full high tide,
roaring into the oncoming surf, cutting through the foam and slicing madly into
the waves, which swallowed it up with one greedy gulp.