The Last to Know (11 page)

“I
said
, I should’ve gone to Long Island with my dad if you weren’t gonna be home tonight.”

“That’s ridiculous. You know you don’t go to Long Island on weeknights.” Paula tries to think of somebody else she can leave him with.

“I’m going to call Lianne,” she tells Mitch.

“I thought you can’t afford to pay her.”

“I can’t. But I’m desperate.” She opens a drawer and pulls out the local phone book, looking up the number of the high school girl down the street. Lianne has sat for Mitch once or twice, but only in a pinch. The first time Paula went to pay her, she nearly gasped when Lianne said she charged ten dollars an hour. Paula had figured the rate at half of that.

Lianne answers the phone on the first ring, sounding breathless.

“Hi, this is Paula Bailey down the street. How are you, Lianne?”

“Oh, hi. I was actually just running out the door. I have play practice.”

“Play practice?”
Damn, damn, damn.

“For the junior class play. We’re doing
Our Town
. I’m playing—”

“Can you skip it, Lianne? I’m desperate for a sitter for Mitch.”

“Tonight? I can’t. We only have practice every other night because we have to share the auditorium with the debate club and—”

“Okay,” Paula cuts her off. “Never mind. But listen, if you don’t have play practice tomorrow night, can you sit for Mitch then?”

“Sure. I really need the money.”

So do I,
Paula thinks. But if Lianne is free tomorrow night, she’ll use her. Which doesn’t solve the problem of what to do with Mitch tonight.

She hangs up. That’s it. She can’t come up with anyone else who can possibly watch Mitch, especially on such short notice. For a moment, she’s wistful about her father. Living with him wasn’t easy, especially toward the end, but at least he was a built-in babysitter.

Well, the press conference won’t last all night. What if . . .

Well, maybe she can leave Mitch home alone—

No.

Not at night. She can just imagine what would happen if anyone ever got wind of that. Especially Frank.

“Did you do your homework?” she asks Mitch abruptly.

“Not yet.”

“Is that the fraction worksheet?” she gestures at the sheet of paper he’s still holding.

He nods.

“Okay, pack that into your bookbag, along with the rest of your homework, and maybe a book to keep you occupied.”

“A book?”

He doesn’t read. She knows that.

“Okay, then a magazine. Or something. Just get some stuff ready to bring with you.”

“Where am I going?”

“You’re coming with me.”

“Where to?”

“To a police press conference. You can sit down someplace and wait for me.”

He groans. “I don’t want to go out, Mom. I’m tired.”

“You don’t have a choice, Mitch. It isn’t up to you. This is my job. Do you understand that? It’s what I have to do. Go get your things together.”

“But—”

“Go.”

He shuffles out of the kitchen.

Paula stubs out the cigarette, realizing she’s hungry. She can’t wait till later. Her stomach is growling.

She opens the refrigerator and looks for something to grab on the run. There’s nothing. Not even an apple. She really needs to get some groceries into the house . . . but when? And with what money?

She takes out a can of Diet Coke. Some dinner, she thinks as she opens it and takes a gulp.

“Hurry up, Mitch,” she calls in a warning voice, sensing that he’s parked himself in front of the TV once again.

“I should’ve gone to Long Island with my dad if you weren’t gonna be home tonight.”

His words echo in her mind, and she frowns. Why had that popped out? There’s something about the way he said it—almost as if . . .

No. He couldn’t have seen Frank today . . . could he?

Of course not.

But it almost sounded like he had.

You’re just being paranoid,
Paula tells herself.
Frank knows he’d better keep his distance unless he has a scheduled visit.

He saw Mitch on Sunday. Mitch isn’t supposed to go to his father’s again until Friday evening.

Although, with this Kendall thing happening, it would be convenient if Paula could ship Mitch out of here a day or two early. . . .

No way. The last thing she intends to do is send her son to his father’s just because she has to work overtime. That would give Frank ammunition for his custody case when the time comes.

She drains the can of soda in one long gulp and crumples it in her fist with a satisfying crunch.
There’s only one way he’s going to take my son away
, she tells herself vehemently,
and that’s over my dead body
.

“E
xcuse me . . . I have to go now,” Minerva announces in her thick Hispanic accent.

Margaret, seated at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, looks up to see the housekeeper standing in the doorway, Schuyler balanced on her hip.

The baby is wearing a fuzzy pink blanket sleeper and her hair looks damp, as though she’s just been bathed.

“I need to go,” Minerva says again, an expectant note in her voice.

Margaret nods, uncertain what the woman wants of her. Does she get paid by the day? Or does she need a ride home?

“You take her,” Minerva says then. She crosses to the table and holds out the baby.

“Oh! All right . . . Come to Auntie Margaret, Schuyler,” Margaret says awkwardly, reaching up.

The baby squirms and tries to pull away, clinging to Minerva’s neck.

“It’s all right,” Margaret tells her, in a high-pitched voice that sounds fake even to her own ears.

“I can’t find Mr. Owen.” Minerva tries to wrestle herself from the little girl’s grasp.

“He’s gone downtown. There’s going to be a press conference. His parents went with him.”

When Owen stuck his head into the kitchen a short time ago to tell Margaret he was leaving, she almost offered to go with him. Not that she wanted to be a part of something like that, facing the glare of the cameras and the swarming reporters and the probing, painful questions.

She briefly considered going anyway, just . . . to give Owen support. To be there for him.

But then his mother popped up behind him and led him away quickly, telling Margaret, “We’ll be back as soon as we can.”

And when they do come back, her mother will be here. Margaret is expecting the car service to show up from the airport at any moment now.

She considered drinking something stronger than coffee, perhaps a stiff single-malt scotch, to help brace herself for the impending arrival of Bess Wright-Douglas. But she’s never been a drinker, and now isn’t a good time to start. Besides, she doesn’t believe that any amount of alcohol can numb her sufficiently.

She takes Schuyler from Minerva. The baby is wailing pitifully, trying to escape Margaret’s lap.

“She doesn’t know me very well,” she tells the housekeeper above Schuyler’s anguished cries.

“She misses her mama.” Minerva crosses herself and adds, her voice choked, “God bring her home safely.”

Margaret averts her gaze, uncomfortable with the profound display of emotion—and religion. She doesn’t know what to say.

But the housekeeper is leaving, pulling her coat from a closet by the back entrance and putting it on. “She already had her bath,” she says in her accented English, gesturing toward the miserably sobbing Schuyler, whose arms are outstretched toward her.

“All right,” Margaret says over the baby’s wails.

“I can’t stay,” the woman says, although she seems to hesitate in front of the door, torn. “I have to catch my train back to the Bronx.”

“It’s all right,” Margaret tells her. “Go. She’ll be fine with me.”

Minerva lingers another moment, looking worried, as though she wants to say something but is afraid to. Margaret tries her best to manage Schuyler, who is desperately trying to free herself from Margaret’s grasp.

Finally, Minerva goes, promising to be back in the morning.

As the door closes behind her, Schuyler erupts in a shriek, attempting to hurl herself from Margaret’s arms.

“Shhhh.” Margaret pats Schuyler’s silky blond hair strongly scented with baby shampoo. “Don’t worry, little girl. You’re going to be okay. No matter what.”

Left alone in the huge house with the crying, squirming baby, Margaret rises from her chair, feeling anxious. She walks across the kitchen to a window that overlooks the large fenced back yard and peers out.

“Look, Schuyler, see? See outside?” she asks, though she can see nothing but blackness because of the glare on the glass. She wonders whether the crowd of media people is still congregated out front. Surely it must have thinned by now. Wouldn’t most of the reporters have gone to the press conference?

Schuyler continues to weep, holding herself stiffly in Margaret’s arms now as though in an effort to avoid contact.

Margaret fumbles, trying to cuddle her yet uncertain exactly how to do it.

“Don’t cry, Schuyler,” she murmurs. “Be happy, sweetie. Be happy. You’re going to be just fine.”

Isn’t that the truth. She thinks about the life ahead for her niece, certain of her destiny. She’ll grow up in the privileged Westchester world her mother had before her—and her aunt, too. But Schuyler, unlike Margaret, will fit in. She’ll be beautiful and confident, like Jane. She’ll grow up to marry a handsome, wealthy man who will adore her and take care of her, and she’ll have sweet, beautiful children. She’ll have it all.

Just like Jane.

Just like so many of the women Margaret sees every single day—perfect, all of them, with perfect lives, taking it all for granted . . .

Schuyler, oblivious to her gilded future, won’t stop screaming.

She pats her niece’s head again and looks around the kitchen for a way to distract her. Her gaze falls on the carriage still parked in the corner, and the pile of things she removed from it earlier and set on the counter.

She walks over and picks up the wooden puzzle. “Schuyler, this is Humpty Dumpty. See Humpty Dumpty? Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall; Humpty Dumpty had a great fall; all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.”

The baby doesn’t seem the least bit comforted by the nursery rhyme. But she does reach out a chubby little hand toward the puzzle, seizing one of the pieces in her fist.

“You want to play with that? Okay. You can hold it if you—”

The ringing of the doorbell reverberates through the silent house.

“Oh. That’s Mother.” Margaret’s voice is flat. She sighs and, balancing Schuyler on one hip the way she had seen Minerva do, heads toward the front hall.

She opens the door.

“Mother.”

“Oh, Margaret. Is there any word?” Bess Wright-Douglas asks, launching herself over the threshold.

She’s wearing a smart black suit and perfume, both Chanel, and a string of perfect pearls. But her face, usually impeccably made up, is unexpectedly haggard, her eyes swollen. She’s a blue-eyed blonde like Jane, although Margaret has suspected her of dying her hair in recent years, something Bess vehemently denied on the one occasion when Margaret dared bring up the subject. It was probably in response to some subtle dig her mother had directed at her, of course. After all, Margaret never goes on the offensive unless forced to.

“We haven’t heard anything yet—”

“I’m just beside myself,” her mother wails as the uniformed car service driver deposits her bags just inside the door, tips his hat, and walks off into the night. “And all those people out by the gate—”

“They’re still there?” Margaret looks out the open door. In the yellow glow of the streetlight, she can see shadowy figures still congregated beyond the fence.

“They’re vultures.” She embraces Margaret in a hug that is little more than perfunctory, then wipes tears from her eyes.

“Schuyler, oh, my poor, dear grandchild.” Sobbing, Bess holds out her arms toward the baby. “Come to Mere.”

Mere
. The French word for Mother. Bess announced, shortly after Schuyler’s birth, that it was what she would like to be called by her grandchildren. “ ‘Grandmother’ just sounds elderly,” she told Jane, who agreed, of course. Jane has always been willing to please Mother.

“Come to Mere, Schuyler,” Bess urges again.

Margaret half-expects her to cling to Margaret, the way she did to Minerva. But Schuyler, still sniffling and whimpering, goes to the grandmother she’s only seen a handful of times in her life.

“What is this?” Bess asks, as the baby settles into her arms, clutching her hand to her mouth. “What is she chewing on?”

“It’s a piece of one of her puzzles,” Margaret tells her.

“Where did she get it?” Bess seizes the baby’s tight fist and pries it open. “Surely you didn’t give it to her?”

Margaret falters. “She picked it up. I let her have it. It’s hers.”

“It can’t be. Look at the size of it.”

Margaret looks at the puzzle piece, and then, blankly, at her mother. Her heart is pounding and it’s all she can do not to flee. She can’t deal with this. She can’t. Not now.

“What was I thinking? Of course you wouldn’t know. You’ve never had children.” Her mother smiles faintly, as though her words are meant to exonerate Margaret, but Margaret hears the accusation in her tone.

You’ve never had children.

Never been married.

Never done most of the things that Jane has done, the things that have made their mother so proud.

“What wouldn’t I know, Mother?” Margaret manages to keep her voice even, watching her mother struggle to remove the puzzle piece from the baby’s clenched fingers despite Schuyler’s angry shouts of protest.

“You wouldn’t know that she can’t have a puzzle with pieces this size,” she says above the baby’s howls. “See? It’s much too small. A choking hazard. The puzzle belongs to an older child.”

“It was hers,” Margaret says succinctly. “It was with her things. Otherwise I wouldn’t have given it to her.” She raises her voice almost to a shout on the last part, partly in anger, and partly to be heard above Schuyler’s renewed screams over having been deprived of her prize.