The Stallion (1996) (32 page)

One was from Mrs. Marna Mead, Buffy’s mother, who wanted Amanda to call her as soon as possible. She was familiar with the paintings of Greg Hammersmith, admired them very much, she said, and had taken an interest in Buffy’s suggestion that she buy one of the paintings of John.

This call had come just as Cindy was rolling a condom onto Marcus. The voice coming through the recorder was brisk and businesslike; Mrs. Mead wanted to buy a painting of John Perino, and if all of them had been sold she’d commission the painting of another one. While they listened, Cindy leaned over and licked Marcus’s dark, wrinkled bag. She smiled when she looked up and finished rolling the rubber down his shaft.

“Are there any left for sale?” he asked.

“No.”

“Will he pose for another one?”

“No.”

“Is he sorry he posed?”

“No.”

Sex between Cindy and Marcus did not vary much. Both of them were imaginative, but neither had exhausted the possibilities of straightforward plunging—not with each other. For her, one of the satisfying elements of it was the warmth that accompanied the heat. Marcus was affectionate, not just ardent.

He had said he was sorry she was married and the mother of five children. Obviously he could not ask her to abandon her husband and her children. He said he would wait. If when all her children were adults she—

No, she had told him. It could never be. She confided in him that Angelo was the father of Betsy’s son John. She loved Angelo. She loved Marcus. Betsy loved Angelo. Angelo loved Betsy. It was a tangle.

She did not tell him, and he did not guess, that she loved Amanda, too—not as fervidly, and without a commitment, yet with enough intensity that she did not want to give it up. She and Amanda made love almost casually and not more often than once every other week, but they knew when they wanted each other; the feeling mysteriously came on them at the same time; and they found time and occasion to satisfy it.

Cindy was forty years old. She needed assurance that she had matured handsomely, and the best assurance would be another painting by Amanda. It was on the easel. She would pose for a while when Amanda came home. She knew she could depend on Amanda not to amend, not to flatter, but to portray her with the bleak honesty of a mug shot.

The unfinished painting showed her exactly as she was: a woman with a few shiny stretch marks on her full and rounded belly, with breasts a little softer and not quite as firm as they had been fifteen years ago, with a tush a little slacker than it had once been, but still a woman with much to be proud of, who had lost nothing that couldn’t be lost without regret. She had seen Buffy beside the pool and could not help but envy the girl’s sleek, taut flesh. Still, the only way to stay that way was to do nothing else, care for nothing else, and still lose the battle in the end.

Amanda would keep this painting. It would hang in her bedroom.

Usually, Marcus made love deliberately, not allowing himself to race ahead of her and finish too soon. In this as in much else about him, he governed himself rationally. Sometimes she wished he would break loose and pound away, heedless for once of whether or not she was going to be fully satisfied. No. Instead he slipped in and out at a measured pace. The sensations were delicious but never tumultuous.

Maybe he was trying to avoid rupturing the condom. This time he did rupture one. When he pulled out and sat back on his heels, there it was, like a collar around his diminishing
organ. His gray-pink glans gleamed with the ejaculate he had squirted into her.

She didn’t have a douche. They ran water in the bathtub, and she sat in it and rinsed herself out as thoroughly as she could, without confidence.

The bullet-headed Leonard Bragg sat at a table in the Red Fox Inn, with his female partner, Patricia Warner.

Len Bragg was a bulky man, broad shouldered, carrying a bit of paunch. He was bald. His brows loomed over his eyes, almost obscuring them. His gray suit fit him poorly; he had gained weight since he bought it.

Trish Warner was a tough-looking woman. Maybe there was nothing she could do about it, but she seemed to have made no attempt to soften her image. Her hair was blond and cut short. Her face was square, with a more prominent jaw than most women had. Her nose was a little less than straight, and she had a small white scar on her right cheek.

Loren came in and sat down at their table.

“I’ve got another doctor’s bill,” said Trish. “For eighteen hundred and seventy-five dollars.”

“I haven’t got it on me in cash,” said Loren. “I’ll get it to you.”

“He says he can take off the scar.” She touched the line on her cheek. “But the nose will never be right.”

“I still have headaches,” Len grunted.

“The worst part is, I’m scared,” said Trish. “They took a card off Len. They know who we are.”

“You didn’t warn us,” said Len grimly.

“Well, I said I’d pay for the plastic surgery to put your face back together,” Loren said to Trish. “And I have. I’m not sure I owed you, but I’m paying it.”

“What do you mean you don’t owe it?” asked Len darkly.

“You’re in a dangerous business. Are you going to tell me this is the first time you’ve been slugged?”

“All we were supposed to do was follow Perino and the broad. And get some pictures if we could. You didn’t tell me who Perino was.”

“Who’d you think he was?”

“You didn’t tell me who his grandfather was. That’s the point.”

Loren looked up at the waiter who was approaching the table. He ordered a double Scotch with a splash of soda. When the waiter was gone he said, “So you took some lumps. Who you mad at, me? You were doing a perfectly legal job: tailing somebody and trying to get some pictures. Perino had you beaten up.
Perino,
not me. All you’ve done about it for six months is groan about your hurts and whine about the injustice of it all. You want to
do
something about it?”

“Like what?” asked Trish. She ran her fingers down her nose. That had become a nervous tic with her. “What’d you like us to do, kill him?”

Loren raised his eyebrows. “For, say, half a million bucks?”

Len shook his head. “We’d never live to enjoy it.”

“You will if you’re smart. In the first place, you don’t do it in Detroit.”

“Smart…”

“Smart. Figure it out. Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give you ten thousand for expenses. Figure it out. I can fill you in on where he lives, where he stays when he travels, and all that. You come up with a plan.”

“And then?”

“You make your plan. But you don’t do a damn thing more until I tell you. I want it done sooner or later, but it’s got to be timed right. You’ve got almost as much reason to hate Angelo Perino as I’ve got. But don’t let that get in your way. You be cool and work out a plan. I’ll get some cash to you in a day or two—the eighteen hundred and seventy-five dollars for the doctor bill, too.”

Dr. John Perino died on August 6, 1988. He was eighty-two years old.

The telephone call came at two in the morning. Angelo was not at home, and Cindy answered. She spent the next four hours trying to reach Angelo and finally succeeded only with Keijo’s assistance. Angelo was with Tadashi Komatsu
at the country club outside Tokyo, where they were discussing the development of the electric automobile.

Angelo caught a Northwest flight to Detroit and arrived there after his shock had settled down to numbness. Cindy had brought John and Anna with her. The other three children remained at home with the au pair.

Angelo’s brother and his wife brought three of their children and five grandchildren from Florida. His elder sister came without a husband but with four children and four grandchildren. His younger sister came with her second husband and children from each marriage.

The widow, Jenny, received all these people and many others with reserved dignity, wiping her eyes occasionally with the handkerchief she clutched in her left hand, otherwise bearing up and listening intently to each condolence. She greeted most people in English, some in Italian.

The funeral, held at St. Jude’s, attracted more than five hundred mourners. Betsy flew in from London. Alicia Hardeman came from Greenwich. Loren and Roberta were there. The aged and fragile Jacob Weinstein arrived from Arizona on a private jet. A contingent of four Sicilians came all the way from Palermo: two old men and two middle-aged men dressed uniformly in black suits and shiny black silk neckties. They were greeted with respectful
abbracci
by a score of swarthy Italian-speaking men. The Governor of Michigan came, as did the mayor of Detroit. As many as fifty physicians and surgeons attended the funeral.

“You see,” Cindy whispered to John and Anna, “your grandfather was a great man.”

John nodded solemnly. Anna, brought to tears by the occasion, covered her face and wept.

A dozen television cameras stared at the church steps as the bell tolled and the casket was carried out by pallbearers. Four open vehicles carried the flowers. Sixty cars followed the hearse to the cemetery.

The house was not large enough for the reception following the burial service, so it was held in the garden of the Italian-American Club, the scene of many such sad receptions and also of many joyful wedding receptions.

Of the sons and daughters of Dr. John Perino, only Angelo remained fluent in Italian. He greeted the visitors
from Sicily on behalf of the family and thanked them for coming.

“Buongiorno, Signore Calabrese. Molte grazie, molte grazie. Questa è mia moglie, Cindy. Anche mio figlio e mia figlia, Giovanni ed Anna.”

Jenny was invited to go home with each of her sons and daughters. She insisted she would remain in the house where she and her beloved husband had lived for so many years. She had many friends in the old neighborhood and would not be alone.

Cindy and Betsy stood together, sipping red wine. Since Betsy knew that Cindy understood who was the father of her son John and had not made any great fuss about it, she felt drawn to Cindy.

“I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be a member of a big, loving, supportive family,” said Betsy.

“It could be smothering,” said Cindy. “Of course, they never smothered Angelo, but—”

“Who could smother Angelo?” asked Betsy.

“I guess I’ve started a big family,” said Cindy. “I hope they won’t smother each other.”

“Number One had two children,” said Betsy. “Number Two died thinking he’d had two, but Anne wasn’t his. My father only had one. He’s said some disparaging things about my having five. He’s said some disparaging things about your having five.”

Cindy smiled and shook her head. She hadn’t told Angelo and didn’t tell Betsy that she was carrying a sixth.

Cindy confided in Amanda.

“I’m not afraid of what Angelo will say,” she told her. “After all, he has a son who is not mine. Anyway, he can very well believe it’s his.”

“Until the child grows up and is prematurely bald,” said Amanda. “I’m not sure you could keep the secret. You won’t want to live with that. Anyway, how could you ever let it happen?”

“As soon as I was married, I wanted children. We had one the first year. Then I took the pill for a while, to put two years between John and Anna. I did the same thing with Morris and Valerie and then separated Mary from Valerie by four years. After Mary, I went on the pill again and took it for five years. Then my gynecologist told me it was time to quit taking it, at least for a while. So…”

Amanda was still working on her third painting of Cindy. Cindy stood on the platform. Amanda left her easel, came over and stepped up beside Cindy, and kissed her, first on the mouth, then on each nipple. She caressed her, then hugged her, before she returned to her work.

“Marcus wants to tell Angelo. He wants the baby.”

“He doesn’t have to raise it,” said Amanda.

“I don’t have much time. I have to make a decision.”

“Is it difficult for you?” Amanda asked. “I mean, if you decide to have an abortion, is that difficult for you?”

Cindy nodded. “When we were in Detroit for the funeral, Angelo’s mother asked me if the children had been baptized. I had to tell her no. She asked me to promise her they would be baptized. Of course, she wants them baptized Catholics. I can’t have that done. A priest won’t do it unless you commit yourself to raising the children as Catholics. I haven’t done anything about it yet. I was baptized in a Presbyterian church. Angelo was brought up as a Catholic. The point is, if I have an abortion, I’m not sure I can tell him. I think I know Angelo, but—”

“Let me ask you something, hon,” said Amanda. “He confided in you about the child he gave Betsy. Has he confided anything else? I mean, has he been with other women besides Betsy?”

Cindy shrugged. “Well, I never told
him
about Dietz, either, and certainly not about you and me. Or Marcus. I don’t know what he thinks. He’s realistic…”

“What do you guys call what you’ve got? An open marriage?”

Cindy smiled. “I’m a child of the sixties. I never became a yuppie. When I took Mary into preschool, I was the oldest mother there. Over tea and cookies one of the young mothers remarked that I probably wasn’t as serious as she was, since people of my generation didn’t share the same values as people of hers.”

manda laughed. “Values,” she said. “That word makes me nauseous.”

“Anyway, I have to decide.”

Amanda came to the model platform again and this time did not step up but leaned forward and kissed Cindy’s cleft.

“I can’t,” Cindy whispered. Suddenly she sobbed. “I just can’t have another child!”

Amanda stood with her arms around Cindy’s hips, nuzzling her belly. “I’ll help you, hon. I’ve had two abortions. There’s a clinic in New Haven. My doctor is a woman. She’ll take good care of you. I’ll drive you there and back.”

The following week, in a clinic in New Haven, the fetus was removed. The doctor advised Cindy not to take the pill anymore. She suggested a tubal ligation. The following week, when Angelo was in Detroit and on his way to Japan, Cindy returned to New Haven and had the operation.