Blessing in Disguise (22 page)

“Ben, I don’t think this is something I want to dis—” He stopped, frozen by the look of contempt on his son’s handsome face. He sighed. “We haven’t actually talked about it, no. But that doesn’t mean I’m not considering it.”

Ben shrugged. “You’re both crazy, you know. I mean, hey, between you, you already have two marriages, and look how
they
turned out. About the
only
thing I can say in favor of you and Grace is that you probably won’t have kids. That way, you blow it again, nobody but the two of you suffers.”

“You’re taking a pretty grim view of all this,” Jack said coolly.

“Well, if the shoe fits ...”

Faced with his son’s impassive stare, Jack grew aware of the clattering of dishes, the faint staccato hissing of the deep-frier, the friendly back-and-forth shouting between their over-the-hill waitress and a bearded man at the register. Sounds that comforted, that said the world was still going about its business, that this new yawning gulf between Jack Gold and his son would not appreciably alter the universe.

Finally, Jack asked, “More coffee?”

Ben glanced at his watch, the antique Rolex Natalie had given him when he graduated from Yale. Pink gold, almost feminine-looking, but on Ben it struck a nice note of elegance.

“Can’t,” he said. “I’ve got a meeting with Bella Chandler in ten minutes. Oh, and about tonight ... I can’t make it,” Ben said. “Got a hot date.”

A wry note in Ben’s voice prompted Jack to ask, “Your mother?”

Ben nodded. “This fund-raiser she’s chairing for the museum. You know how out of it she feels if she doesn’t have an escort.”

No surprise Ben didn’t have a steady girlfriend, Jack thought. Not with Natalie wheedling him into squiring her everywhere. Probably one more reason the kid had it in for him. If he’d stayed married to her, Ben would be off the hook.

Jack thought about saying something—telling Ben he had to live his own life, not try to make amends to his mother for something that wasn’t his fault. But Ben would have to find that out on his own. Either he’d get fed up with Natalie’s demands or, better yet, fall in love.

“I’m sorry you can’t make the circus,” Jack told Ben.

“Yeah, me too.” Ben stared down at his hands, clenched on the table, before pushing his chair back and rising.

Are you?
Jack stood up, and lightly clapped Ben on the shoulder. Almost more than anything, he wanted, at this moment, for Ben to give him that extra inch his son had been withholding for so long.

But what could he say now that hadn’t already been said?

Jack couldn’t remember when he’d last been to a circus. Not since Ben and Hannah were kids, ages ago.

He still couldn’t get over it, seeing Erica Jong in a spangled bodysuit on the back of an elephant, with a smile on her that belonged to every kid who’d ever dreamed of running away to the circus. Before that, Stephen King with his magic act, sawing a woman in half. And Norman Mailer balancing on a two-by-four set across a barrel. It was better than trained bears and lions leaping through flaming hoops—and there had been some of that, too.

But now it was Grace’s turn up on the trapeze, and Jack felt something freeze inside him like the gears of a fun-house ride clanking to an abrupt halt. She looked so small up there, in a pink-and-black leotard, her hair pushed away from her face with a rhinestone-studded velvet headband. She stood alone and perfectly still, facing the trapeze artist on the platform opposite hers, awaiting his signal before she grabbed the bar suspended just over her head.

Applause swelled, and broke over him like distant surf. Jack was aware of it, but only dimly. All his focus was on the tiny figure poised at the top of the tall, fragile-looking steel rigging—the woman who would carry both his hopes and his fears with her when she leaped forward and flew out over the ring.

Suppose she fell? Who knew how strong those nets were?

Pride in her daring and beauty filled him. Where did she get it, this power she had to summon such emotion in him? How had he gotten so lucky? She could have anyone, and wanted
him,
Jack Gold. Gray hair, beginning of a bald spot in back, slight prostate problem, and all.

In the back of his mind, he could hear his elderly father’s querulous voice—like a warning, or a premonition—Pop pleading with his wife:
Rita, please ... not again tonight ... I need you.
And her cruelly lighthearted reply:
Oh, Moe, don’t be an old poop! Why should I stay home just because your nitpicky doctor says you can’t go out?

Jack shifted, suddenly uncomfortable in the narrow seat that reminded him of every seat in every theatre, lecture hall, airplane, restaurant, which had been designed for a race of men smaller than he. He looked around—not your usual circus-going crowd of kids and parents cramming their faces with popcorn and cotton candy. Furs draped over the backs of seats, diamonds glinting in the half-light, starched tuxedo shirt fronts like sheets of stiff paper scattered about. Faces he recognized—publishers, editors, agents he’d lunched with, well-heeled authors, book-club people. And what appeared to be the charity-ball crowd, a few faces he vaguely knew, mostly real-estate and Wall Street types, he surmised.

There was to be a reception afterwards, at Buffy McFarland’s, a chairwoman of PEN for the past six years, who was always inviting him, as well as countless others, to some gathering to raise money for an imprisoned author, or to listen to a reading by a Czechoslovakian poet. Tonight’s seat, along with Hannah’s unused ticket, had set him back a good five hundred dollars. But worth every penny, just for the glory of seeing Grace up there, like a character out of
Green Mansions,
graceful as Rima the bird girl.

He imagined her naked, no one here but the two of them—he on the platform across from her, reaching out his arms as she swooped to meet him—and felt himself grow hard. He smiled at himself. An aging publisher in a tuxedo that had fit him better five years ago, horny as a high-school sophomore checking out the cheerleaders at a football game.

Now came the slowly building crescendo of the drumroll, and Jack could feel his arms tensing as if to catch her. He watched Grace rise up on tiptoes, dainty and seemingly sure of herself, as she adjusted her grip on the trapeze bar. Then she gathered herself up and in one seamless movement was flying out over the ring, the lights above her catching the rhinestones on her headband in a burst of dazzling light. A collective gasp rose about him, and he saw people all around leaning forward in their seats. Then he realized he was one of them, the hard edge of his chair digging into his tailbone.

Don’t fall,
he prayed.
I love you.

Though he knew she was in no real danger, he was still too afraid to keep looking, and had to squeeze his eyes shut. When he opened them, she was upside down, flying backward, suspended by her ankles in her partner’s grip. Her arms spread wide as if she were embracing the whole world, a smile lighting up her whole face like a bank of kliegs.

He watched her alight on the opposite platform as smoothly as if she’d been doing this all her life. And then came another pass over the ring, and another—this time, with the swing at its highest arc, she twisted up so she was hanging from her knees. Applause, scattered at first, rose to a thunderous roar, accompanied by catcalls.

Jack felt his breath leave his lungs in a single, dizzying rush.

Clapping wildly, he rose to his feet—and was amused to see that he’d initiated a standing ovation.

When the lights came up, he lingered just inside the wooden barricade that enclosed the ring, waiting for Grace as the audience, chatting amiably among themselves, trickled off toward the exit. Briefly, he shmoozed with Grace’s agent. Hank Carroll, congratulating him on a three-book contract he’d recently negotiated with Cadogan on behalf of Janice Kittredge, his best-selling mystery novelist.

“Thanks, I just hope you guys have money left for a publicity budget after settling out of court with Mrs. Truscott,” Hank kidded, making Jack wish that Grace hadn’t confided in him, even if he
was
her agent.

“Let’s hope we can settle this
before
it goes to court,” Jack said.

“Have you actually met Grace’s mother?” The tall, reed-thin agent stretched his lips in a mirthless grin. “I had the pleasure myself, years ago, when Mrs. Truscott last visited New York. Remarkable woman ... but you don’t want to get in her way.”

Watching Hank drift off. Jack found himself mulling over their conversation. Without meaning to. Hank had put his finger on the problem—Grace was here ... and Cordelia Truscott was in Georgia. The key to their not being hamstrung by some bullshit injunction. Jack felt sure, lay in getting Grace to work things out with her mother. What if she were actually to invite her mother up for a visit?

After the circus, he’d suggest it to Grace, at least get her thinking about it. But he could almost hear her reaction:
Invite my mother for a visit? Are you crazy?

Maybe I am crazy,
he thought,
But it’s worth a shot, and it may be the best shot we’ve got.

Catching up with Grace as she wove her way through the departing crowd, in a trench coat belted about her impossibly tiny waist, he stepped forward to kiss her.

Standing so close, he could feel his own heart radiating back at him from her cool cheek. She smelled sweet, too, as if she’d just showered. Baby shampoo, and that coconut lotion that made him think of sunny beaches and piña coladas and making love under a lazy ceiling fan.

He wished they were there now, Anguilla, St. Bart, Eleuthera, some tropical hideaway, a continent away from Reinhold’s ultimatums ... from Chris and Ben and Hannah ... from their complicated pasts.

“You were terrific,” he told her. “As if you need me to tell you that. You got more of an ovation than all the rest of them put together.”

“Oh, that was the easy part.” She laughed. “The hard part was backstage, saying ‘cheese’ for all those photographers. I thought I’d never get out.” She glanced around her, a sly, sheepish look on her face, like a schoolgirl with a view toward cutting her next class. “Listen, Jack, would you mind if we skipped the reception? I’m beat. What I’d really like is some Chinese takeout, curled up in bed with you.”

“In that order?”

She drew in close to him. How perfectly they fit, her shoulder snug under his arm, the top of her head scooting in just under his chin. As she stood on tiptoe to kiss his ear, he felt a pang of sweet longing that was almost an ache.

“Depends how good you are with chopsticks. How about it, your place or mine? Chris is with his dad in the Hamptons, so you have me all to yourself.”

“Hannah ...” he started to say, and felt her stiffen slightly, “is spending the weekend with her friend Kath. That’s why she isn’t here. She sends her best.” Grace looked up at him, her forehead wrinkling with unasked questions, but said nothing.

Could they pull it off? he wondered. Would they manage to get through a whole evening without their kids’ somehow seeping into it? God, he hoped so. Right now, he would give almost anything for one night ... a single, uncomplicated night of Grace all to himself.

“Jack ... I don’t know how to tell you this ...” Grace sat cross-legged on his double bed in the messy, half-organized bedroom she had dubbed Neo-Divorce. She was rubbing her temples the way she did when she had a headache coming on.

Jack felt something thump inside his chest, like a bird flying smack into a windowpane.
She’s going to say she’s tired of waiting around for me to make up my mind. That she’s had enough.

For a moment, he considered telling her about his Christmas surprise; he’d been working on it for months now. But would she take it the wrong way? See it as a proposal he still wasn’t ready to make?

Dammit, why
couldn’t
he simply tell her what she wanted to hear? It wasn’t for lack of loving her, God knew. If anything, it was a case of
too much
—all the combined history they’d accumulated apart from one another.

“It’s about the book, Jack,” Grace told him. “I don’t know if I can go through with it. All of it, I mean. I spoke with Win again today, and he says he tried to talk her out of it but Mother was adamant. She wants an injunction to stop publication. He says he’s stalling her but he can’t put her off too much longer.”

In spite of himself, what Jack first felt was relief, enormous relief. It was her
book,
not
them,
that Grace wanted to talk about. But then, as the impact of what Grace was saying hit him, his mind shifted gears, became all business. If Grace left out the stuff about Ned Emory, it would still be a good read, a brilliant book in some ways, but not ... sensational. They’d be lucky to ship twenty-five thousand. Some respectful reviews, probably, but no media excitement, no best-seller lists, no guarantee of shoring up Cadogan’s profits for the year.

Which meant it might not be just Jerry Schiller whose ass was hung out to dry.

He felt the moo-shu he’d just eaten creeping back up his throat. God knows he’d seen the thing happen enough on television, and a million stories in the papers—top executives out of work, no one wanting them or needing them. He’d felt sorry for those guys, but never, not
once,
had it occurred to him that
he
might be one of those poor slobs.

Reinhold had been gunning for him ever since he’d arrived. And Jack couldn’t blame him. It was no secret that Jack had been opposed to Hauptman’s acquiring Cadogan. Besides, who wanted a third-in-command who was used to being the boss? He’d had his gripes with their former parent, Sitwell Corporation, but at least they’d pretty much let him run the show.

Reinhold, on the other hand, wasn’t stupid. Jack’s years of experience, his connections with authors, agents, Washington insiders, coupled with his intimate knowledge of the company’s veins, arteries, and internal organs—Reinhold needed those. Jack recalled the CEO’s arrival last spring, Reinhold installing a state-of-the-art software program that had thrown Accounts Receivable into a virtual melt-down. Then deciding to move their warehouse from New Jersey to a larger, high-tech installation in West Virginia. Jack had tried to stop him, but, months since they’d made the switch, fulfillment was still snarled, with retailers and wholesalers both yelling bloody murder from here to Oahu.