Blessings (27 page)

mentary psychology. Laying her head back on the seat, she allowed the escape.

Traffic was light on this winter Sunday, and they reached the apartment sooner than expected. Jennie went upstairs to expedite the children’s going to bed. Jay took charge of Donnie, and Jennie, as usual, supervised the girls.

While they brushed their teeth she drew the curtains, pulled the blue-sprigged coverlets off the bed, hung up their country pants and jackets, and put out their school clothes for the morning, plaid kilts and red sweaters. Racks of clothing hung in the twin closets: down coats for weekdays, velvet-collared English coats for parties, yellow straw hats with daisies and ribbon streamers for the coming spring. On impulse she picked up a hat; the streamers dropped long, these innocent ribbons worn in places to which little girls went all dressed up—to the circus, maybe, or to visit relatives on holidays. And she wondered whether Jill had ever worn a hat with ribbons when she was eight years old.

Squeals of hilarity came now from the bathroom. Emily, who had recently discovered what she thought of as dirty jokes, was regaling her sister with them from the superiority of two more years. In another mood Jennie would have been amused by their mirth. But in this mood she could only question: Had Jill worn a bow in her hair when she was eight? Or six? And had she worn plaid kilts and told wicked jokes and stolen candy to hide under her pillow and been quick at checkers or Monopoly?

The ribbon was still in her hand when the girls came back to the bedroom. Sue looked surprised.

“I was admiring the hat,” Jennie explained.

And again guilt chilled her. It was as if even her thoughts had had no right to intrude on this place. And with only a part of her mind, she finished the bedtime ritual: the hair combing, the brief story, and the goodnight kisses.

She had just turned out the light and gone into the hall when Jay summoned her.

“Did you hear the telephone ring?”

“No, why?”

“Come in here.” She followed him into the living room. “Sit down and prepare for a shock.” Jay was pacing, excited and at the same time grim. “That was my father on the phone. You’re not going to believe this. George Cromwell’s dead.”

“My God!”

“His car turned over on the back road going home.”

Jennie shuddered. “Killed outright?”

“Yes, they’re positive. No pain, thank God.” Jay was still pacing up and down the room. “The police suspect foul play. He had not been speeding. He was hardly the type for it, anyway. There were car tracks only inches behind his, but unfortunately they can’t be identified. There were snow flurries, which started right after we left, Dad said, and everything’s blurred. The way it looks, he was deliberately cut off at an elbow bend and forced off the road. There’s an outcropping of rocks at that point, and he smashed into them.” Jay clenched his fists. “They killed him. Or caused his death. It’s the same thing.”

“Do you suppose he was followed from the diner or from the pay phone where he was talking to me?”

“I’m almost positive, Jennie.” Jay hesitated. “It’s so rotten, I hate to tell you, but whoever did it— They found his pockets turned inside out. But nothing was taken, and his wallet was intact.”

“So they were looking for a tape.”

“Yes, but of course he had none on him this time.”

“It’s—it’s unreal. Only a couple of hours ago I was talking to him.”

“My dad’s just broken up. George and he were friends for almost fifty years.”

“Old George … I’m so sorry we ever got him into this business! Such a good soul! An innocent. Never really grew up.”

“Honey, he wanted to be in it. And how could we have expected a thing like this?”

“Now I’m thinking about Martha. To walk into a dying woman with news like that! The world’s such a rotten place, sometimes I can’t stand it, Jay.”

He came over to sit next to her and put his arms around her.

“I don’t suppose,” he said, “it’ll ever be different. I almost have to believe that evil is inborn. Original sin, or something like that. To be so greedy that you kill. If they’re the ones who did it,” he added after a moment. “We can’t be sure.”

“That’s the lawyer in you speaking. The rest of you is sure, isn’t it? You sounded as if it were.”

“I guess it is. Yes. It is.”

There was for a little while nothing more to be said. The room was so still that Jennie could clearly hear the hurried ticking of Jay’s wristwatch. Suddenly her eyes filled with tears and her choked cry broke the hush. Jay’s arm tightened and his free hand grasped hers. She felt small, shrunken with shame because he was surely thinking how soft she was, how compassionate, to cry so for George. And she was crying for George, truly, but for so much more: for Jill; for herself; for lives that should, if only one were decent and kind, be lived so easily, so simply under the sun—and were not.

Presently Jay said, “First thing in the morning, I don’t have to tell you, Dad and you will have to get in touch with the DA and tell him what you know about the lunch. Unfortunately there’s hardly a clue, except that the man had big teeth. There are an awful lot of people with big teeth,” he finished wryly.

Jennie closed her eyes. “The mind doesn’t take it in. All this hatred because of a piece of land. I keep seeing the cattails around the pond. And wasn’t there an enormous weeping willow at the bottom of the hill, or do I imagine it?”

“No, it’s there. A very old one, which is unusual. They seldom get that old.”

“They want it all so badly, those people.”

“Many, many dollars, Jennie.”

Both fell so still again that the silence tingled in the room. This sheltered space—where long draperies spilled over onto Persian rugs and lamps held pearl-pink lights aloft on crystal arms—was a safe cocoon ten floors above Park Avenue, a million miles away from a lonely road where no one watched while a man crashed headlong into death.

Jay said gravely, “Keep your door locked.”

“Who doesn’t do that in New York?” she answered in a light tone to reassure him. Nevertheless, she understood his meaning.

“If they think you have the tape, it’s the same as if you actually had it.”

“They can’t very well run me off the road here in the city.”

“You’re right, but still I worry. You know me, I’m a worrier. I don’t like where you live. There’s no security. I’ll feel satisfied when you’re living behind these doors with me. And you won’t wear your ring when you go to court, will you? Or in your office?”

“Of course not.”

He could not know how uncomfortable, quite apart from any fear of being robbed of it, that ring made her feel. Over this past weekend, when naturally she had had to wear it, to stretch forth her hand so that it might be seen and admired, she had had such a queer feeling, as though she were wearing something that was not hers. She had not shown it to any of her friends but kept it hidden in a box of cereal on the kitchen shelf.

“Well,” Jay said, “I’ll call downstairs to the doorman and have them get a taxi for you.”

They parted somberly. The old man’s death had laid a heavy hand upon them.

F
or Jennie there were now two heavy hands, one on each shoulder bearing her down, but the weightier hand belonged to Jill. If only they could have made some agreement! For those few moments when they had had their arms around each other, she had been moved beyond words. This resilient, hard young body, this thick, sweet-smelling hair, had come from her, from Jennie Rakowsky. But the girl was hot-tempered and unreasonable, she thought again with sharp resentment. She at least could have tried, couldn’t she? She didn’t even listen or try to see that I must have some reason on my side.

She felt helpless. And there was so much else to be done this morning: neglected mail, telephone calls to clients. And, immediately urgent, a call to the district attorney.

“I’ve already talked to Mr. Wolfe,” Martin said. “Understandably, he was pretty upset, and I didn’t get much information from him. Anyway, you’re the last person who talked to Cromwell. What can you give me?”

“No leads, I’m afraid. George was practically incoherent. To tell the truth, I was pretty upset myself, too, and—”

“Of course. Just take your time. You’ll be surprised how much you’ll recall.”

So speaks the surgeon before the operation, with calm encouragement. Jennie took a deep breath as she tried to retrieve disjointed scraps of that fateful conversation.

“I do remember the name. Harry Corrin. Naturally he wasn’t John Jones. I suppose he isn’t really Harry Corrin, either. I think George said he was in his forties. He had huge yellow teeth. George noticed teeth.” Foolishly, hysterically, Jennie giggled. Then, recovering quickly, she went on. “It was an angry scene. Furious, George said. It seems that somebody saw me and Jay—Arthur Wolfe’s son, Jay—going to George’s house. So he, this Corrin, figured that George was double-crossing him, and he threatened to, I think, ‘bash his face in.’ And then George lost his head and told him he had something on tape, and he, Corrin, was in trouble.”

“Good Lord,” Martin said.

“It’s so, so awful! I’m sure he’s the man, aren’t you?”

“We’re never sure of anything until we’re sure. Incidentally, who’s got that tape? You?”

“No, no. It’s got to be in George’s house.”

“Okay, we’ll let it lie till after the funeral. It’s safe there, and we can’t bother the poor woman today.”

“When is the funeral?”

“Day after tomorrow.”

“What time, do you know?”

“Afternoon. But it’s private, in case you were planning to come up.”

“Of course I was.”

“Well, it’s strictly private because of Mrs. Cromwell’s illness. If the weather’s bad, she won’t even get to the cemetery.”

“Awful,” Jennie said again.

It was a relief, though, not having to go. Funerals always made one think too much, but this one would be harrowing. She could see it and smell it: sweet, musky flowers blowing on the heavy coffin; sleet whitening the turned earth next to the grave.

She came back to the present. “If I can help, Mr. Martin, you have my number.”

“Fine. I’ll keep you informed as we go along.”

When she had hung up, she sat for a few minutes, looked with unfocused eyes at nothing, and was acutely aware of feeling weak. At the same time she was seeing herself as her clients would be seeing her today, and the contrast was strange indeed. For them, Miss R. was the problem solver, capable and sharp-witted, the modern professional whose oxford-gray skirts stood for serious purpose, whose apricot silk shirt and silver earrings stood for womanly warmth, and whose large, paper-laden desk, textbooks, and computer were her impressive tools. All morning people came and went, bringing their questions, puzzles, complaints, and tears. All morning she listened, took notes, and gave answers, while in the back of her mind her own hard questions ran their rounds.

She thought about Jill’s weekend in Chicago with Peter. It was infuriating to think of them together. Where had he been when Jill was born? He had no right, no damn right to play the father now! “He wants to see me,” Jill had said so proudly. “He’s not like you.” It was absurd. No, worse, it was obscene.

Peter had had nothing to do with the girl, nothing at all beyond those few minutes of sexual delight on a spring evening in a garden, while she, Jennie, had grown a human being, fed her with her own blood, felt the birth pain and the pain of relinquishment. He hadn’t even asked about the baby then! And now he welcomed her. Now he claimed her!

Oh, but when Jill walked with him, wherever they had walked in Chicago, strangers must have seen, without pausing to think, that here was a father and his daughter! That height and that hair alone were unmistakable bonds. There was no sense trying to deny it. What a shock of recognition must he have felt at first sight of that splendid girl! And Jennie trembled with outrage and the unfairness of it.

Meanwhile, in the midst of this turmoil, and with another part of her mind, she was still thinking about yesterday’s tragedy. Jay would be keeping in touch with developments through his father. She looked at the desk clock. It was time for Jay’s call, which always came toward the end of the afternoon. So when the telephone rang, she picked it up without waiting for Dinah to answer first.

“Hello, Jennie? This is Peter.”

She almost dropped the receiver. She could have ripped it from the wall. Damn phone, I hate it! Like a snake, it whips out of the innocent grass as you stroll down the hill.

“Is that you, Jennie?” The voice lifted, youthful and jaunty.

“It’s Jennie, all right.”

“Of course you’re shocked to hear from me.”

“Not really. Jill said you threatened to call.”

“Oh! She couldn’t really have said ‘threatened,’ could she?” The question was touched ever so lightly with humor.

“To me it was a threat.”

Peter ignored that and went on. “She’s so lovely, Jennie.

Just so lovely. This weekend, the whole thing—I can’t believe it’s real.”

“It’s real enough.” She heard her own voice, its dry tone, the dismissal of it. Remarkably, a cold calm had settled over her.

Why am I even listening to this person? I ought to hang up. So damn mannerly I am.

“A lot of water’s gone over the dam.”

“Nineteen years. What do you expect?”

“Well, I certainly didn’t expect what’s happened.”

“Nor did I, I assure you.”

“You sound so angry, Jennie.”

“Should I be throbbing with joy?”

“There really could be some joy in all this, you know.”

“Hooray for you if you’ve found some.”

“I’d like to help you find some. That’s why I’ve come here.”

“Come where?”

“To New York. I flew in with Jill last night. She had to go back to her classes, but I’m rather a free agent, so I decided to take a little time off to see whether I can get you and Jill together.”

“You’ve turned out to be an altruist, haven’t you?”

“Jennie, hate me. Go on. You’ve every right. But don’t take it out on the girl. She’s so unhappy that you don’t want to know her.”