Blessing in Disguise (36 page)

The bedspread rustled as she turned onto her side to face him.

“Then make love to me again,” she said in a husky voice, running a cool long-fingered hand over his belly, raising a shiver of goosebumps in its wake. “If I’m going to be a fool ... I might as well be fooled twice.”

“I wanted to see your face when I told you,” Nola said to Grace. “So I’d know whether you put Ben up to it.” She gave a chopped little laugh that was more a grunt. “Right now, you look like you just swallowed something too hot.”

They were seated at a table in the dining room of the Gramercy Park Hotel, where Nola had asked Grace to meet her for breakfast. Since the day before yesterday, when Grace had come to see her, they hadn’t seen or spoken to each other. If Ben hadn’t provided her with an excuse, would she be here now?

Admit it,
Nola told herself,
weren’t you curious to see how she’s dealing with that bombshell you dropped on her?

What was making her even more keyed up was that the results of the design competition for the Truscott library were days from being announced. Nola believed Ben when he said he wasn’t after Mama’s letters—or why would he have urged her to hang on to them? But what if Grace had sent him to spy on her? And what if he should stumble onto the fact that it had been
her
design submitted under her firm’s aegis? It was a risk she couldn’t take.

Last night, after Ben left, with her mind going round in circles, she’d broken down and called Grace. It was after midnight, she’d realized too late, but fortunately Grace had been up.

Now, in the cold light of day, with Grace looking like she suddenly didn’t know what to do with the fork in her hand, Nola was all at once certain that Grace could not have pulled a trick like that.

“Ben?”
Grace said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“You told him about the letters, didn’t you?” Despite Grace’s apparent innocence, Nola couldn’t resist sticking it to her a little.

She waited, hoping she hadn’t been mistaken about Grace. But Grace, rather than becoming flustered, met her gaze head-on.

“I’m afraid so. But you don’t think ...”

“I don’t think anything. Yet. I’m just asking.”

Grace shook her head, and set her fork down. “I wish I could help you. The truth is, I don’t know Ben all that well. He’s not around much when I’m with his father.”

Nola toyed with her scrambled eggs, finding that she’d lost her appetite. What had she been expecting? A signed confession? It was obvious Grace was as much in the dark as she was. Not just about Ben—about a lot of things.

“The truth is,” she echoed with an edgy little laugh, “you don’t know me all that well, either.”

“I’m still trying to get used to the idea of you being my sister.”

“Kind of gets stuck going down, doesn’t it?”

Grace offered her a tentative smile. “It’s getting easier. I’ve had some time to think about it.”

“And?”

“Nola, I’d like us to be friends. I’m not sure what that would mean in our case. I’m not even sure it’s possible. But I’d at least like to try.”

Nola felt her throat threaten to close up, and she suddenly became absorbed in arranging the napkin on her lap. Even with her head down, she could feel those guileless eyes on her, feel them waiting for her answer.

She looked up. “I guess we’d have a long hoe to row.”

“No kidding.” Grace cracked a smile.

“Is this where we jump and fall into each other’s arms?” Nola quipped, feeling uncomfortably like she
was
becoming Grace’s friend. She sat back, folding her arms over her chest.

“Get real.” But Nola could see from the overbrightness of Grace’s eyes that she was on the verge of tears.

“Pass the salt,” Nola said.

If this were a movie, she thought, the camera would zoom in on the salt cellar, and show our fingers brushing as she passes it to me. Heavy on the symbolism.

But in the softly lit room with its crisp white tablecloths and air of faded elegance, had anyone been curious enough to glance over at their table, he would have seen only two well-dressed women smiling at one another as if sharing some joke. No one would have guessed they were sisters.

“I don’t know, Jack, it just doesn’t feel right some how.” Grace lowered her head and tucked her hands in her coat pockets as a chilly blast came tunneling down Eighth Street. “One minute I’m telling Ben about Nola being my sister, and the next minute he’s
dating
her.”

They were heading home from Theatre 80 on St. Marks Place, where they’d seen
The Lady Vanishes.
Grace adored Hitchcock, but her own life’s suspense had kept her from enjoying herself. Her thoughts kept turning to Nola and Ben.

Why hadn’t Ben said anything? Grace wondered. Why was he being so cagey?

“Does there have to be a reason?” Jack asked lightly. “She’s an attractive woman, and he’s interested—I don’t see what’s so strange about that.”

She suddenly felt annoyed with him ... for being so casual about all this, and for seeming so impervious to the cold wind that was chilling her through layers of mittens and stockings and boots.

“I’m not accusing Ben of anything,” she said. “I’m just saying it seems a bit coincidental, that’s all.”

“Haven’t you had enough Hitchcock for one evening?” Jack said with that certain laugh of his that she knew was meant to humor her. But then, seeing that she was serious, he added, “Okay, do you want to know what I think? Leaving Ben out of it for the moment, I think you’re still pretty conflicted about Nola. Your father, too.”

Jack was right, she thought. She still had not gotten over feeling angry at her father. No matter how many ways she looked at it, or how she tried to justify it, he had deceived them.

“I was just wondering,” she sighed, “what he got from Margaret that my mother wasn’t willing or capable of giving him.”

“Maybe she needed him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that. Your mother, from everything you’ve told me, is pretty self-sufficient. Maybe your father liked being needed.”

Grace turned this over in her mind. “You may be right,” she said slowly. She scooped her hair out of her face, but the wind only blew it back. “I’m not sure my mother ever needed anyone but herself.” She held up a hand. “Don’t get me wrong—in a lot of ways, that was admirable. I always knew I could count on my mother, that things would be taken care of, that she was in charge.” Not just in charge of big things—like helping Daddy campaign for re-election—but making sure that drapes got dry-cleaned, the garden fertilized, school vaccination forms sent in promptly, rubber taps put on heels of new shoes to keep them from wearing, and, each Christmas, that everyone from their elderly postman to the kid who delivered their newspaper received a loaf of Netta’s currant pound cake along with a crisply ironed ten-dollar bill. “Oh, Margaret was capable, too, I’m sure—around the office, that is. But, from what Nola says, she really
depended
on Daddy. She needed him in a way that my mother simply couldn’t have, even if she’d tried.”

Jack was silent for a beat or two; then he said, “Okay, but I doubt your mother will buy that theory. Have you decided how you’re going to handle this when she gets here?”

“I don’t know,” Grace said, feeling no less troubled now about all this than she had in the first hours of shock that had followed Nola’s revelation. “What I
do
know is that, if I tell my father’s story, it has to be the
whole
story.”

“And if Nola doesn’t change her mind about turning over those letters?” He didn’t have to remind her that Cordelia Truscott would sue the pants off Cadogan if they were to publish anything about her father and Margaret that couldn’t be substantiated.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” she said firmly. “Jack, we’re getting off the subject. ...”

“Oh?” He wrapped an arm about her shoulders.

“My mother has nothing to do with Ben being involved with Nola.” She felt annoyed at Jack, not just for reminding her that Mother would be here in exactly five days, but for treating her as he did Hannah when she was in one of her sulks. “And, please,
don’t
tell me I’m imagining things.”

Jack’s arm dropped back to his side. “All right, then, just what
do
you think is going on between Ben and Nola?” Despite the ear-splitting jungle beat of a ghetto blaster making its way down Eighth Street, she had nonetheless picked up a new coolness to his voice.

“Nola seemed ... Well, she didn’t go into it, but I could tell from the way she was acting that she’s more than just interested in him.”

Jack shrugged, pushing bare fingers through his wind-torn hair. “She wouldn’t be the first. I remember, when Ben was in high school, we had to install a second phone line to handle all the calls from girls.”

“Yes, okay, but why
her?
He could have his pick of any of a dozen women.” Passing a pizza parlor, Grace watched through the window as a swarthy-skinned man with flour dusting his arms to his elbows expertly tossed an oval of dough into the air. “Doesn’t it seem odd to you that he would have homed in on Nola? And the timing, too—it’s as if finding out she was my sister triggered this sudden interest of his. The only thing I can’t figure out is
why.
What would he have to gain from it?”

“Does everything have to be about
gaining
something?” Jack asked, and this time the edge to his voice was unmistakable. “Can’t a thing like that just
be?”

“You mean, the way it is with us?” The words popped out of her, laced with sarcasm.

Grace shivered, knowing she ought to drop the subject ... right now, before this discussion veered off onto more dangerous ground. The last time she’d pushed Jack too far—on their Christmas Eve walk through the snowy woods—she’d let it drop. She couldn’t,
wouldn’t,
do that now, even if Jack was content for them to just go rambling on as they were, living out of two apartments but never completely at home in either one.

“I thought we were talking about Ben.” He smiled and started to reach for her.

“We were. But not anymore.” She pulled away from him to swipe at her nose, which was running from the cold. “Oh, Jack, you just don’t
get
it, do you? Nothing stands still, especially not relationships. You’re either sinking or swimming, and right now it feels like we’re sinking.”

“Is it any better to rush into something you’re not ready for?”

Grace wanted to cry. How could someone so smart be so stubbornly obtuse? At the same time, she felt a dart of panic. Jack wasn’t trying to reassure her that it would all work out somehow. But this time, anger won out over anxiety. “I want to get married. Jack. I’m too old to be stuck in some kind of dating game that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.”

“Grace ...” he began.

“Yes, I know, Jack,” she sighed, “you’ve always been a hundred percent honest with me. But right now I’m asking you to take a chance. On me. On us. Can you do that? Or am I just wasting my time here?”

Jack stopped and spun on her, his face stamped with high color that wasn’t all from the cold, his eyes glittering in the puddled glow of a streetlamp. “Is that what this is to you ...
wasting time?”
She’d never seen him so angry, not at her.

Grace felt as if a cold iron bolt had been shot through her chest.

“Don’t twist my words around,” she told him, hugging herself to keep from trembling. “You know what I meant.”

“Grace, I’m not twisting anything around. It’s
you
who’re not appreciating what’s right in front of you.” Jack’s shoulders, in his heavy overcoat, seemed suddenly to shift downward a notch. “But let’s table this, okay? Now isn’t the time or the place.”

“When
will
it be the right time?” she asked in a breathless rush, hating herself for sounding desperate.

“I don’t know,” Jack told her, leaving her no better off, and certainly no wiser, than before.

The phone was ringing when Grace walked in, but she didn’t rush to answer it, even knowing that Chris wasn’t home. It probably had been ringing for a while, and if she hurried to pick it up, the person on the other end would surely, at that precise moment (as such callers invariably did), hang up. She wasn’t in the mood for any more cliff-hangers. Let whoever it was call back.

But even after she’d peeled off her coat, the phone was still ringing. She wondered if it was Chris, calling from downstairs to ask whether he could stay over at Scully’s. Walking briskly over to her desk in its cubbyhole of bookshelves, she picked up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Grace, hi, I was just about to give up on you,” Win’s smooth voice greeted her.

She felt herself grow acutely alert, every nerve tingling.

“I just walked in. Guess I forgot to leave my machine on.”

“Chris isn’t around?”

“He’s at the Scullys’. All wrapped up in some new computer game, no doubt. Did you want to speak with him?”

“No ... it’s you I wanted. I’ve been trying to reach you all week.”

“I know, I got your messages. Win, I’m sorry. ... I’ve been really busy lately.” The truth was, she
had
been avoiding him. This thing with Nola—she hadn’t felt ready to let Win in on what had happened. But now that Kappa Alpha voice of his, as ebullient as during their college days, made her think of old photos, a life that, though far from perfect, had taken on a gentler patina with time.

“Too busy to meet me for a drink?”

“Win, it’s awfully late. And I just got in. Is this about Mother?”

“Not exactly.”

In the background she could hear the pure sweet sound of Emmylou Harris, an album they’d played endlessly when they were married. She even fond herself anticipating where the record was scratched and Emmylou’s voice seemed to catch on a sob.

She sighed. “All right, then. But just a quick one.”

“Claire. Twenty minutes.” He hung up.

Fifteen minutes later, she was sitting at one of the small tables by the window at Claire, waiting for Win to show up, and wondering what she was doing here. It wasn’t as if he’d twisted her arm. She’d had enough experience with her ex-husband to know that if he’d had something up his sleeve he’d have invented a good excuse for seeing her.