Blackbird Fly (2 page)

McGuinness peered at them, his eyes magnified behind
his glasses. “Which one of you is Mrs. Strachie?”

“
That’s me, sir. Merle Bennett.
Strachie,” she added, though she didn’t use Harry’s name. “And this
is my sister, Stasia Bennett.”

McGuinness cleared his throat noisily and began in a
sonorous voice to outline her future. Stasia was taking notes,
thank god.
The house is mine.
Paid off thanks to mortgage
insurance. Harry only rented his apartment in the city so nothing
there but some junky furniture. Life insurance.
Good.
How
could she not know about life insurance? Do you get that in one
lump sum? Do you pay income tax on it? She would ask when he
finished.

Silence. The geezer sat back in his chair and folded
his hands.

“
But —?” Had she blacked out and
missed a section? Harry was an investment manager. He set up a
trust fund for Tristan, he had stock funds, pension plans, all
sorts of retirement plans.

She couldn’t speak.

Stasia could. “That’s it? Where's the pension fund?
And the trust fund for the boy?” Landon McGuinness III blinked at
her, mouth agape. Stasia leaned in and shouted: “Where is the boy’s
trust fund?!”

Troy Lester, standing at the old man's shoulder,
squirmed then tried to hide it with a smile. “The good news is that
Mr. Strachie set this up so it won’t have to go through probate.
You’ll have the proceeds of the insurance within thirty days and
the deeds will be changed quickly. The joint accounts stay the
same, of course— ”

Merle sat forward. “But he told me he set one up for
Tristan years ago. A trust account.”

“
Not at this law firm,” McGuinness
said, smacking his lips.

“
Could it be with someone else?”
Stasia asked. “At a bank?”

“
Harry did all his legal work here.
His father too. ”

Troy Lester cleared his throat. “The addendum,” he
muttered.

McGuinness blinked. “Oh, yes. A special addendum.” He
shuffled papers on his desk and batted off Lester’s help.

He found the paperwork and held it at arm's length.
“I bequeath to my wife, Merle, because of her love of old houses,
the property in Malcouziac, France, a house and real estate
surrounding.”

The sisters sat in stunned silence. Stasia looked at
her. “Do you know about this?” Merle felt float-y, disconnected
from the room. Her ears buzzed. Who were these people?
I’m
watching an old Perry Mason re-run. Harry will be alive at home
when I get there. We’ll squabble about dinner. We’ll listen to each
other snore
.

She pinched her arm. Nothing changed.

The old man was saying in his clear and not-very-aged
voice, “Harry inherited this house from his parents when they died.
You knew his mother was French?” Merle nodded, unable to speak. A
house in France?

“
It’s in the Dordogne,” Lester added
brightly. “Southwest France. A small town. Very picturesque, I
hear.”

“
A villa? Could it be worth
something?” Stasia asked.

“
No acreage, I understand. No
vineyard. Sorry.”

“
Is there a photo or map or
something?”

Troy Lester looked at the old man. “We’ll see what we
can find. Maybe Harry kept something in his own files. You could
check.”

He called in the secretary and asked for the file on
Harry’s father, Weston Strachie. They waited in awkward silence.
Merle worked over her cuticles. She didn’t feel like she would
float away anymore, now that she had both ankles wrapped around a
chair leg.
Be practical. He’s dead. This is what happens when
people die.
She was nothing if not practical. Life would go on.
Sometimes you just had to remind yourself. Merle felt the hard rock
in her chest press against her ribs, making it hard to breathe.

The secretary returned and handed a slim brown file
to Lester. He leafed through the papers before handing it to Merle.
“I don’t think we’ll need this anymore. There’s some old paperwork,
work Mr. McGuinness did for the elder Mr. Strachie years ago, as
well as the obituary. Your husband’s parents died together, in a
car accident in —” He glanced again inside — “1954.”

Harry was four. That was all Merle knew about his
parents. He never talked about them, probably didn’t even remember
them. She glanced at the faded newspaper clipping, then at the
letters behind them: a description of the property in French, and
correspondence about Harry’s father’s wine and spirits importing
business.

She thanked the lawyers. She felt a powerful need to
get on with things, to make lists, to organize. To silence the
what-what?!
in her head. At the café down the block she sat
with her hands wrapped around a coffee cup. Her mind began to put
things in columns. But Stasia looked furious, her color up. “I knew
it. I knew it. Where is his pension fund?”

“
He liked to play the
markets.”

“
You think he lost it all? No way.
He had something stashed away, he must have. Away from the
hawk-like eyes of Landon McGuinness the Turd.” They smiled. “You
need to go to his office. Maybe that’s where Tristan’s fund
is.”

Merle knew nothing about that part of Harry's life.
She’d never wanted to. It reminded her of corporate law, the open
greed, the phoniness, the back-stabbing partners. But obviously a
little more attention to the financial aspects of their lives would
have been, well, practical. Maybe she wasn’t as practical as she
thought.

“
Is Blackwood paid for?” Stasia
asked.

Tristan’s prep school. “The first half.” He would be
arriving on the bus in an hour. “He got in a fight at school.
They’re sending him home.”

“
Poor kid. Maybe he just needs some
time with you.” Stasia patted her hand. “Public school isn’t that
bad. And there’s Country Day. It’s college I’m worried about. The
good schools are ruinous.”

One of Stasia’s obsessions, getting her children into
A-list schools, the Ivies and near-Ivies, and paying for it.

“
Stace, did you know something was
going to be funny with the will?”

She sighed. “He was rich when you married him. Those
are the ones to watch.”

Harry had it all when they met, downtown loft, swank
corner office, Fortune 500 clients, summer lease in the Hamptons.
But that was 20 years ago, the boom years when he’d been doing
investment banking. A familiar guilt crept through her: all the
money she spent on the Connecticut house, the pool, landscaping,
windows, kitchen, carpet — anything to make the house warm and
welcoming. All a waste, a failure. And now he mocked her in his
will: ‘Because of her love of old houses.’ Had he thought she’d
done all that remodeling because she loved crumbling foundations
and roof rot?

Stasia took her hands. “You don’t deserve this.
He
didn’t. He was good man, an excellent father. You didn’t
do anything but love him, Merle.”

She felt her chest cave in. The words hit her hard:
Love him
. Love. What was it? The realization came in a
flash. She hadn’t loved Harry, not at the end. It was hard to
admit. Her reflection in the window as he must have seen her last —
haggard, gray, pale. Did he know? Did he care? She couldn’t
remember when it stopped, it had been dying for so long.
I
didn’t love him.
The realization filled her with something not
quite like sorrow: a feeling of shame, of neglect.

And yet
.
Now you are free
.

Merle shook her head to cancel the words. This was no
time for happy thoughts. She’d just buried her husband. Whether he
loved her, whether she loved him — it no longer mattered. He was
gone. She could get a new job if necessary. She had marketable
skills. She had the house, and the life insurance. Tristan would go
to college on that. Her life before he died, the busy-ness, the
calendar full of appointments, the new drapes, charity auctions,
even jogging, all now seemed like filler in a hollow life.
Her
life, one she didn’t even recognize.

Stasia put on a smile. “So what about this house in
France?”

A house in France: it only sounded romantic. “Thanks
for coming, Stace.”

Tristan’s bags lay in a heap in the hallway. A
television blared upstairs. Merle turned on lights in the dark
house, following the sound to his room. The door was open, which
might be construed as a good sign. Still, she knocked before
stepping inside.

His room still had its semblance of order from his
months at school except for the giant television he had dragged up
from the family room. Harry had forbidden TV in his room so this
was no doubt a message. It perched unsteadily on a tiny side table
from the living room. Cords criss-crossed the moss green carpet.
Last summer he had picked out a new bed and desk, along with the
beanbag chair in bright yellow faux suede where he sprawled now. He
didn’t look as cheerful as the egg-yolk chair, not with the black
eye.

“
I hope the other guy looks worse,”
Merle shouted, perching on his desk chair while a scantily-clad
blond gyrated on the screen. Music thumped through the
furniture.

A pale but strong boy whose face had hardened into a
man’s in the last year, his complexion was never bright. Thin, dark
whiskers sprouted at the point of his chin; his Gallic nose was so
like Harry’s. His brown hair was hanging in his eyes — he’d lied
about a haircut in March and no one cared when he returned for the
funeral. At fifteen he was six feet tall, four inches taller than
his father and five inches taller than Merle, a strapping lad as
his grandfather said. His legs stretched over the beanbag in
rumpled khakis and on his size-12 feet, old-school Adidas. His
right eye was purple and swollen shut.

“
Do you want to talk about it?” He
shot her a one-eyed glare. “Let’s eat first then.
Pizza?”

She made the call from the kitchen then turned on
more lights. The house lived in perpetual shadow, surrounded by
enormous oak trees and blue spruces, and protected by deep,
overhanging eaves. Square and solid with dark wood trim, it sat
back on a respectable suburban street that screamed ‘lawn freaks.’
Sixteen years ago, when she was pregnant, it reached out to her,
speaking the language of security, family, and roots with its
pre-war homeyness. But when winter came it was dark and depressing
with thick trees and small windows. She painted the rooms bright
colors but it didn’t help. She hated it before a year was out but
she never told Harry. He had been against Connecticut. He loved the
city, the restaurants, the theaters, the music. The suburbs were
sleepy, boring, bourgeois. But he sold the loft for her, downsized
to a walk-up apartment he laughingly called a
pied-a-terre
.
A few years ago he'd sold it and rented a small studio near his
office for nights he worked late.

How could she tell him this dreary house had been a
mistake? It was impossible. She bought high wattage light
bulbs.

She stepped onto the flagstone patio. April usually
filled her with hope, the promise of sunlight and warmth. Another
winter gone. The white dogwoods lit up corners of the yard, the
cherry tree on the edge of the patio dropped pink petals. The
petals were brown now, rotting in puddles. A chill rose up from low
end of the yard, bringing with it the heady sweetness of hyacinths.
In April she could forget about the mistakes she’d made, the
problems, the silence, the darkness. Except for this year. Tristan
had gone back to school three days after the funeral, yes, probably
too soon but what he wanted. How could she stop him?

She took a deep breath of moist evening air. If she
could focus on her financial needs, hers and Tristan’s, she could
see her way out of this mess. Grief — or guilt? — is a horrible
thing. She couldn’t define her emotions any more. Her mother said
grief was a ‘me feeling,’ feeling sorry for yourself. Harry is at
peace now, Bernadette said, not hurting or sad or missing you.
Helpful, Mom
.

Harry had taken a chance, something he felt he was
good at, and married her four months after the night in the bar.
They just clicked, that’s what everyone said—they just clicked.
What did that mean anyway? Click on/click off? It didn’t matter.
She kept saying it to herself:
It doesn’t matter.

So now she would gather all the information she
could, then make a plan. Grief — or fear — lodged in her chest like
a rock, making it hard to breathe. Information, planning, numbers
would lift the rock, and her life. She would attack this problem
like a case at work, as if she was homeless, living on the street.
She would find shelter and security. She would sort it out, get
things back on track. She was a big believer in the power of her
will. Plus she was practical, like all of the Bennett girls. Even
Elise, just finishing law school after a series of resort-area jobs
in Aspen and the Virgin Islands that their mother called “perfectly
understandable play time,” was practical. Law was something that
fed on that, nuts and bolts, rules and regs, law and order. No sad
romantic notions, just the facts. Well, she had no romantic
notions, sad or otherwise, not any more.

The pizza came, thick with cheese and pepperoni,
smelling of cardboard box. She took it up to Tristan’s room, with
paper plates, napkins, Pepsi. He set the box in his lap, let her
take a piece.

The peculiar loneliness of the only child sometimes
broke her heart. If Tristan had a sibling to share his grief, he
would be better off. If she had another child to focus on, he would
be better off. But because she couldn’t have any more children —
Tristan himself had been a surprise to her doctors — here they
were, a twosome locked in battle, fighting their way out of this
blackness together.