Thorns of Truth (24 page)

God, let me out of here before I blow it.

Leo Rifkin was looking at her with respect as well—the kind you got for playing hardball with the big boys. She thought of her father, how strong he’d been, strong in ways the Leo Rifkins of the world couldn’t begin to imagine. Wise, too.
It’s
s
imple, Monkey,
he’d say, ruffling her hair and smiling down at her as if no one else in the world was more important.
The secret to success is in truly believing you’re as smart as the next person.

Monkey. His nickname for her since she was a baby. But now she seemed to have a monkey of her own, sitting squarely on her back, and she didn’t feel very smart. If she were, wouldn’t she have been able to figure out a way to quit drinking? To put a lid on things before she
did
become an alcoholic.

Oh God, Daddy.
Tears pressed behind her eyes. She had to look down quickly, pretending to scribble a note on her legal pad.

“What’s everyone so excited about?” Leo boomed with ersatz good cheer. “I blow off a little steam, and suddenly we’re in court? Listen, I’m a reasonable man, but I can only be pushed so far.”

Flora was dabbing at her eyes with a corner of her handkerchief rolled up so it wouldn’t smudge her mascara. “I’m sorry.” She sniffed. “I’m still not used to it. Season tickets to Carnegie Hall, how do you divide a thing like that? Tell me. Leo, how?”

“You alternate,” Mandy suggested, not unkindly. She didn’t add that some people—her stepmother, for instance—didn’t even have that option. The first season at the Met after Daddy died, the nights Rose couldn’t give away the extra ticket, she’d stayed home rather than face the empty seat next to hers.

Robert, flicking her a grateful look, quickly took up the rear, proposing, “As far as the Boca contents go, the reasonable thing, in my opinion, would be to have it independently appraised.”

After a moment’s reflection, Leo nodded.

Flora nodded, too, prompting Mandy to counter with, “Two appraisals. We go with the highest.” She looked sternly at Leo. “We’re not talking about profits from a garage sale here. Should my client wish to purchase a vacation home of her own, she’ll need to furnish it. And buying new, as we all know, isn’t cheap.”

“Remember that first apartment of ours, Flo? Grand Street and Essex,” Leo recalled with a low chuckle, shaking his head. “No hot water after nine p.m., except on Sundays.” Mandy could have sworn there were tears in his eyes.

“Five flights, and we had to lug everything up.” Flora’s mouth flickered in a smile, and Mandy saw that her coral lipstick had bled into tiny pleats around her lips. “And the landlord’s nine kids, the noise.
We
should have been so lucky. If we’d been blessed with children …” She dabbed at her eyes again, then, with a huge sigh, drew herself up straight. “Enough. When you remember what it counted for, Leo, all those years, have your lawyer call mine. Meanwhile, have a nice life.” She rose abruptly, snatching her Chanel bag from the table, its chain strap making a hissing sound against the polished wood.

Mandy glanced at Robert, who shrugged and looked over at his client.

Leo, palms flat against the table, made a show of pushing himself to his feet. Mopping his glistening pate with the handkerchief he fished from the pocket of his tailored fat-man trousers, he heaved a massive sigh, as if to establish who the
real
injured party was here.

Robert began gathering up papers, shoveling them into his briefcase.

Mandy nearly wept with relief.

At the door, Leo Rifkin extended his hand. She hesitated before taking it, praying he wouldn’t notice how clammy hers was. Not until she’d ushered the Rifkins out, and had returned for a few words in private with Robert, did she feel the invisible wing nut between her shoulders loosen a half-turn.

“Nice work,” he praised. “Looks like you may have saved us a couple more years of those two.” Privately, they’d dubbed the Rifkins the Dynamic Duo.

She cocked her head in a wry smile. “Since when do you object to billing in the six figures?”

“Since this divorce started cutting into my time with you,” he replied in a low, intimate voice. He brushed an invisible speck of lint from the lapel of her pink linen jacket, no doubt cognizant of their being on display to the secretaries, associates, paralegals scurrying down the corridor on the other side of the glass partition—all those in a hurry to catch a train, or get home for dinner … or a drink.

Looking up into his hazel eyes—eyes that shifted from green to amber, depending on the light, with lashes thick enough to inspire envy in a fashion model—Mandy felt wrenched.
Why isn’t he enough ?
Most women would have killed for a man like Robert. And here she was throwing away everything those amazing eyes seemed to promise.

“I miss you, too.” Only she kept her voice light, teasing almost.

“You could have fooled me. Last night, you acted like you couldn’t wait to get rid of me.” He was smiling, but she could see the question in his face.

She stiffened, and it took all her training to keep smiling. “You’re right … but it was in a good cause,” she hedged.

“And what might that be, counselor?”

“The proposal for Mrs. Rifkin—I wanted to go over it one more time before I hit the sack. Good thing, too, or this meeting would’ve dragged on even longer. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of the Rifkins to last
three
lifetimes.” She made a show of rolling her eyes.

Robert laughed knowingly, and the moment of tension evaporated.

Mandy seized the opportunity to glance at her watch. “Listen, Robert, I’ve got to run. I’m meeting a client downtown.”

“I’ll drop you off,” he said. “I have a car waiting outside.”

Guessing he was on his way back to his office, at Madison and Forty-fifth, she took a gamble, and said, “Thanks, but it’s on the West Side. I’ll catch a cab.”

He grabbed his briefcase and fell into step with her as she headed out the door. “We still on for Thursday?”

Thursday? Had they made a date? Mandy struggled to remember.

Robert must have seen the confusion in her face, because he sounded a little surprised at having to remind her. “The reception at the Carlyle, for Cynthia. Remember?”

“Of course,” she lied, feeling herself start to sweat. Cynthia Robbins, one of her oldest friends, had just made partner at Cravath, Swaine. How could she have forgotten?

You must have been drunk.

Mandy suddenly felt weighed down by the burden of her secret self. There was so
much
Robert didn’t know, and that she couldn’t explain. There was absolutely no logic to it, unless you understood that everything in her life flowed from a single, working premise: drinking came first.

God knew she
wanted
what Robert was offering. Everything her father and Rose had had—love, passion, marriage. A partnership of two professionals supporting one another emotionally as well as financially. Kids, too. She’d be thirty-four her next birthday.

If she could get a handle on this thing, maybe, just maybe, the life she’d imagined would come true. If she could find a way to not always
need
that next drink …

It was so close now, she could almost taste it. The sweet burn of the bourbon going down, melting into her veins, and loosening her joints. In her mind, she could hear the rattle of ice cubes, and felt warmed by the liquor’s amber glow.

Mandy had to clutch her briefcase to her chest in order to keep from flying past Robert, flying right out into the street. Luigi’s, two blocks away, beckoned like the Emerald City at the end of a Yellow Brick Road that wasn’t on any map.

On the crowded sidewalk, as he was heading for the curb where his chauffeured car was idling, Robert turned to Mandy, his handsome face open—and utterly clueless. “I’ll call you later. Will you be home?”

“Where else?” She rolled her eyes, hefting her briefcase to show how much work she had. A lie that wasn’t really a lie.

Robert didn’t have to know she had other plans for this evening as well. Plans that didn’t include him, or anyone.

“You never quit, do you?”

For a panicked moment, she imagined his remark had to do with her drinking. Then reason kicked in. Work. Of course. He was always kidding her about working too hard. And right now, it was just the opening she needed.

“Leave a message if I don’t pick up. I’ll probably have my machine on,” she told him, feeling sick inside, and hating herself more than ever.

But even as she kissed Robert goodbye, Mandy was already miles away, wondering which of the three liquor stores among which she alternated she should stop at tonight, after Luigi’s, on her way home.

The following morning, at seven-thirty, Mandy was at her desk with a large paper cup of Starbucks coffee growing cold at her elbow. Her secretary wouldn’t be in for at least another hour, but in addition to preparing a list of phone calls for Rhonda to make, she’d red-penciled a separation agreement for retyping, and dictated two letters.

She liked this time of the day best.
Carpe diem …
before the day seized
her.
Before the cacophony of phones and beeping intercoms, and the endless round of meetings began. Mostly, she liked the buffer zone it provided—time in which to try her hangover on for size.

Today’s hangover, she’d rate, oh, about 7.8 on her own private Richter scale. From the very first moment, when she’d opened her eyes and found herself on the sofa, still in her clothes from yesterday, she’d known it was going to be bad. She just hadn’t known
how
bad. A cold shower and half a gallon of coffee had made only a tiny dent in the concrete block encasing her head.

Vaguely, she recalled Luigi’s, a safe cocoon smelling of stale cigarettes and Chianti, where she was lulled by the clink of glasses and the warmth of the bourbon spreading through her. An hour or so later, on her way home, she’d stopped at Westside Discount Liquors. After that, things got a little fuzzy.…

“Mandy, hi, glad I caught you. Got a minute?”

Startled, she glanced up at her stepmother, poised in the doorway. Rose looked striking, as always, in a turquoise shantung suit and jewel-patterned scarf. Her curly black hair with its ribbon of white was swept up on top of her head, and dangling from her ears were her signature ruby earrings. Yet something was different about her, Mandy observed. Her face—it was more alive somehow. Rose’s eyes sparkled, and her high cheekbones seemed to glow.

Mandy thought:
She’s getting laid.

Something inside her buckled, like soft metal giving way. She felt a jolt of bruised anger. Daddy had only been gone a year, and Rose was jumping into bed with the first guy to come along. How much could she have loved Daddy? What could she be
thinking
?

Mandy immediately felt ashamed. Who was she to judge? It was about time Rose climbed down off the funeral pyre, she told herself. And this guy she was seeing seemed nice enough. Mandy remembered Eric Sandstrom from last Saturday’s party … vaguely. She’d been pretty out of it toward the end, but had a hazy recollection of Eric helping her downstairs, then hailing her a cab. Had she thanked him? Probably not. It was a miracle she’d managed to make it the rest of the way home on her own.

Never again,
Mandy resolved, her head throbbing in protest as she drew herself upright in her chair. She was going to cut back from now on. This time she meant it.

“I’m just finishing up,” she greeted Rose, beckoning her inside. “I always come in early to clear my desk before I get gobbled up by the day. What are
you
doing here this time of the morning?”

“I wanted to speak with you. Alone.” Rose wasn’t smiling, and when she stepped inside, she was careful to close the door behind her.

She knows,
Mandy thought, a red light flashing on in her head. Twice last week, Rose had called her at home, no particular reason, just to say hello. And yesterday, at the partners’ meeting, Rose had seemed to watch Mandy out of the comer of her eye.

Now the other shoe was about to drop.

Please, God, don’t let her say anything. I can’t take it right now. Not with this head.

Mandy, in a sudden fit of agitation, began scooping up papers, stuffing them into file folders. Even so, she could feel Rose’s dark eyes on her, and wriggled inside like a bug on a pin. Heat spread up her neck, into her cheeks.

“I have a conference call in fifteen minutes,” she lied smoothly. “But until then, I’m all yours. What’s up?”

Mandy watched her stepmother ease into the leather sling-chair opposite her desk and cast a quick glance around the office—like a detective scanning it for clues. An open wine bottle, a corkscrew, a dirty glass. Mandy nearly laughed out loud.
Do you really think I’m that stupid?

Her office, in fact, was almost excruciatingly tidy. The smallest of the partners’, it was also the most private, tucked away at the end of the corridor. Every night before she went home, and before the janitor arrived, she spent ten minutes or so straightening it herself. She couldn’t afford a cluttered desk, overflowing shelves, files in disarray. People might talk.

Even the decor was simple, minimalist. Plain walnut desk, beige sofa, a pair of Jasper Johns prints on the wall. No family photos, except a snapshot of her dad tucked in a comer of her desk blotter—Daddy at the beach in Cape May, a few weeks before he died.

“I won’t keep you,” Rose said, her tone softening. As if she, too, were remembering that weekend, the five of them—Drew and Jay had come, too—bicycling around town, stopping here and there to sample Cape May’s famous fudge, or simply to take in the ocean view. At an antique store, Daddy had insisted on buying Rose a weathervane she’d admired, a brass rooster gone green. She’d scoffed at the idea—where on earth would she put it? But he’d laughed, earning a sock on the arm by joking,
When I die, put it over my gravestone
—
that way you’ll always know which direction I’m headed.