The Collected Stories of Amanda Cross (9 page)

“He’s very handsome, even for an actor,” Kate said.

“He’s especially handsome for a lawyer, which is what he is,” Roxanna responded. “We were trying to allay my father’s suspicions. He knew we’d overheard him. So when he emerged that evening, we pretended innocence, on Desmond’s advice, and I introduced him to Dad as an actor. His looks, as you observed, made that easy.”

“I’ve lost count,” Kate said, “but I don’t think I’m doing too well. Shall we order dinner?”

“The details need cleaning up, but you certainly seem to be onto the main story line. Go on.”

“There isn’t much more. Somehow, later, needing to hide the stolen emerald, the Professor fed it to Jasper. Anyone who observed Jasper’s routine with Arrie would have thought of it, whether the motive was greed or detection. Was he going to kill the dog?”

“Of course. Or pay someone else to. Fortunately, I guessed what he was up to. I had caught him examining the stone. I demanded it and he wouldn’t give it to me. Sometime later, he came in to promise me he wouldn’t take it out of the house. There was something about the exact way he said this that made me suspicious. I pretended to calm down and then went to look for the stone; it wasn’t where it was supposed to be. My father went into calm assurances that he didn’t have it, and hadn’t hid it, urging me to search him. He was so smug about it all; that, and the sight of Jasper dancing around gave me the idea. He had fed it to the dog in a hunk of meat, intending to have the dog ‘get lost.’ When I figured this out we really had a knockdown fight. I couldn’t believe he’d really do that to Arrie.”

“Where was Arrie?”

“Locked in the bathroom, crying. She hated the fights.
She used to stuff her ears with toilet paper. He and I fought about a lot of things, though never as violently as this. In the end, I threatened him. You see, my mother had mentioned her ring when Arrie and I went to see her; she wanted Arrie to have it. Arrie said I should have it because I was beautiful. My mother hugged Arrie and said: ‘You take care of Roxanna; it’s far, far better not to be beautiful, believe me, my darling.’ ”

“And you got Desmond to leave with the dog under his arm. I gather Jasper had got to know him by now.”

“Jasper takes a long time to get to know people well enough to let them pick him up. He may be small, but he’s tough. That was me.”

“In drag?”

“Great fun. I got the idea from Sherlock Holmes. ‘My walking clothes,’ Irene Adler called them. Desmond borrowed the suit for me from someone my size. I can’t remember when I had more fun. The doorman didn’t raise an eyebrow.”

“So you took Jasper–where?”

“To Desmond’s, where I stay most of the time. I walked him, and never have I used a pooper-scooper more diligently. At first, we thought we’d keep him in, but poor Jasper is well trained. I tell you, retrieving that emerald from Jasper’s shit made me feel like someone in a Dickens novel,
Our Mutual Friend
for choice. I well remember your talking about that novel.”

“You said you’d get the emerald back if he behaved?”

“More than behaved. I had Desmond as a witness and advisor. I said Arrie and Jasper were to live with me, that he was to give my mother a divorce under fair terms: he could keep the apartment, he had to continue to support Arrie till she finished her education, my mother was to get
half his pension, and if he didn’t agree I was going to drag him into court accused of theft and abusive conduct.”

“And he bought it?”

“Not entirely. I had to give him the emerald, and a few other things besides. But I figured I didn’t need it, Arrie didn’t need it, it hadn’t done my mother much good, and it was worth her freedom and ours. I also told him I had a student lined up ready to bring charges of sexual harassment. I scared him. He even cooperated about Arrie’s retrieving Jasper. I was going to make him leave the dog at the playground, but I didn’t want him to take out his frustrations on the poor beast. So I did that too. Desmond came with me between two closings. Desmond’s been great.”

“He sounds rather unusual for a lawyer.”

“He is. He’s quitting. He says there’s no point spending your life suing about water damage and helping one firm take over another. I don’t know what he’s going to do.”

“You might suggest acting,” Kate said. “And being a waiter on the side.”

“He’s thinking of becoming a detective,” Roxanna said. “A private eye. Perhaps he could get in touch with you for pointers.”

Kate decided not to look for irony in this. “What next?” she asked.

“It’s Arrie’s vacation next week. We’re going down with Desmond to visit my mom. I think with some real encouragement, and the knowledge that the Professor is out of her life, she may actually make it. She never took up drinking, or prescription drugs either, till she met him. But she’s going to need a lot of help.”

“Speaking of ‘none of my business,’ ” Kate said, “may I ask an outrageous question? Just tell me to go to hell if you
don’t want to answer it. Is the Professor Arrie’s father, or was there someone else?”

“I’ll answer that question on one condition,” Roxanna said. “That you agree to do me an enormous favor, no questions asked. Is it a bargain?”

“I’ll have to think about it,” Kate said. “I don’t believe in blind promises.”

“And I don’t believe in gossip, not all of it. My mother did moon around with another guy. His main attraction was that he wasn’t lustful. My father is very lustful. He insisted on his rights; that’s how he thought of them, as rights. And he still wanted a son.”

“You’ve been angry at him a long time, haven’t you?” Kate said.

“I’m getting over it, with help. I don’t want Arrie to go through the same thing. Of course, I couldn’t have done it without Desmond, especially since the Professor had that sleazy lawyer on his side. Mr. Johnson: you met him too.”

Kate looked into her coffee cup. “All right,” she said. “It’s a bargain.”

Roxanna looked up questioningly.

“I’ll keep Jasper for Arrie while she’s gone. Reed will be overjoyed. That is, I’ll pretend we have him forever, and when he finds out it’s only a week or so, he’ll be overjoyed.”

“I think women are reprehensible,” Roxanna said. “Don’t you?” And they laughed together. Kate even found herself wishing Arrie and Jasper had been there.

G
reat Aunt Flavia was the only member of the older generation of Kate Fansler’s family to whom Kate would give the time of day. “Even a minute is too precious to waste on Fanslers,” she used to say. “Some people spend time with other people just because they’re family, but I spend time only with those who move me forward into experience, not backward into memory or resentment or weary tolerance.”

“You’ve got it down pat,” I said. “You must have rehearsed it. You better watch out or you’ll start sounding pompous.”

“ ‘Authoritative’ is the word you want. ‘Bossy’ if you insist, but not, I beg you, Leighton, ‘pompous.’ As you will realize before long,” Kate said, “when you decide to have nothing to do with your family, you have to have the reasons down pat; you have to live with them safely accepted by your unconscious. Otherwise, you’re more in family company than if you saw your family weekly. How did we get on that dreary subject?”

“It’s Great Aunt Flavia,” I said. Kate sometimes calls her Great Aunt Flavia because my cousin Leo and I do. Otherwise she just calls her Flavia, and with great affection. Great Aunt Flavia is, properly speaking, neither an aunt nor a Fansler except by marriage (his second) to one of Kate’s uncles. The Fanslers were, until Kate came along, unremittingly masculine. Kate has three much older brothers; Kate’s father had three brothers. One of these, left a widower, married the much younger Flavia–who, Kate conjectured, had tired of chastity and decided to try another mode. She had produced, at the latest possible moment, a son, and as her husband slipped into senility she embraced eccentricity or what the Fanslers called plain dottiness. Leo and I tended to find Great Aunt Flavia a bit much until Kate told us to see Lily Tomlin as a bag lady in touch with people from outer space. “Great Aunt Flavia to a T,” Kate said, “in spirit if not literal fact. She has too much money to be a bag lady, but I’m sure she comes as close as her income allows.” The Fanslers are very rich and very dull; Kate thought it to Great Aunt Flavia’s eternal credit that becoming, as a Fansler, the first had not entailed becoming, like a Fansler, the second.

“What’s happened to Great Aunt Flavia?” Kate asked.

“The family fears she intends to kill herself,” I said. “They thought you might rally round.” Kate’s family does not usually call upon her for assistance of any sort; doubtless they felt, in this case, that one prodigal could help another.

“How characteristic of them,” Kate said. “They have considered her nothing but a nuisance and a burden, but when she decides to take control of her life, they interfere because she isn’t playing by their rule book. Flavia is seventy-five if she’s a day; she ought to know whether she wants to live or not. Why in the world did she confide in them about her plans?”

“She didn’t. She made the mistake of consulting her lawyer about bequests and such. He sneaked to one of your brothers, or maybe a wife. Great Aunt Flavia is furious.”

“As well she might be. Can’t she just tell them to buzz off?”

“Of course. But Daddy, knowing I like you or, as he puts it, allow you undue influence over me, thought I might talk you into talking Great Aunt Flavia out of doing anything drastic. Between us, I don’t know if he’s worried about her or her money; most of it’s in trust for the son, of course, but Great Aunt Flavia has a good bit of her own, and under Fansler surveillance it has grown and ought not to be allowed to wander off unattended. To do them justice, they may even be feeling a pang of guilt: they’ve never really treated Great Aunt Flavia well. Anyway, it was thought that you would sneer at Daddy but listen to me. You have to give him credit for that much intelligence.”

“Are you suggesting that I call up Great Aunt Flavia and ask her intentions, counseling caution?”

“Something like that.”

“Well,” Kate said, “I may call her; I was about to anyway. But I don’t promise a thing. Not a thing. And you can tell that to your daddy.” Kate dislikes all her brothers, but my father most of all, since he is the youngest and should know better.

“
THANK YOU, DEAR
,” Flavia said. “You do know how to give one a proper tea unlaced with nostalgia. Do you think we might move on to something a bit more fortified?” Kate, grinning, offered her a Scotch and soda, taking one herself. They were used to toasting each other. “None better, damn few as good,” Great Aunt Flavia liked to say,
not just repeating herself, but admitting a tradition and an alliance.

“They’ve put you onto me, haven’t they?” Flavia, once fortified, asked.

“Yes,” Kate said. “But I refused. It did remind me, though, that I’d been missing you. One of the defects of liking the young is that one is always the oldest person in the room. You make a welcome change.”

“I know what you mean. And that’s especially hard for the likes of you and me who grew up used to being the youngest. Have you ever seen a movie called
It’s a Wonderful Life
–James Stewart at Christmas?”

“Not that I can remember,” Kate said. “Have you taken to watching old movies?”

“I’ve taken to watching television. Gives you an idea of what’s going on, what people believe in. I think it’s frightful, but I can’t keep myself from watching.”

Kate was delighted. Great Aunt Flavia had never even owned a television set. She, Kate, did not watch much television, but she hoped, at Flavia’s age, to become more open-minded. It was vital to acquire new habits in old age, boldly countering old prejudices, Kate said.

“In this movie,” Flavia explained, “James Stewart plays a man who decides to jump into the river. The reasons aren’t important, except that he considers his life a failure. He isn’t old enough for such a decision, of course, he has little children, but no one who doesn’t play a villain or a doctor can be old in movies. Things only happen to the young, even inappropriate things. One has to overlook it, in the name of sex. Anyway, he is rescued by an angel.”

“An angel?” Kate asked.

“Yes. He’s male and timid and not quite successful, and he sets out to prove to James Stewart how much poorer
everyone would be had he never lived. We learn that his wife without him would have become a spinster in glasses working in a library (a fate of hideous proportions, needless to say, despite the fact that she is played by a gorgeous actress who would have had no trouble joining a well-paying high-class bordello), that some druggist would have killed someone with the wrong prescription, that the bad man, Lionel Barrymore (who
is
allowed to be old), would have taken over the town–you get the picture.”

“It’s clear enough,” Kate said, “and sounds a very good reason not to watch television.”

“Well, it was originally a movie, but they show it every Christmas. I’ve studied it carefully, and have decided that it is garbage in at least three different ways, but what really struck home,
despite
the movie, was the simple truth that because you’ve mattered in life doesn’t mean you can go on mattering. James Stewart has friends who pay his bills, and little children, and a luscious spouse, but his past–anyone’s past–is hardly the point. It’s what you have now that makes you decide whether or not to jump into the river in winter, figuratively speaking.”