Material Girl (4 page)

At what point, exactly, the arguments had started, he could no longer remember, but it seemed that was all there was in those last few years together. According to Bonnie, he was never home, never interested in them, had left the raising of their daughters to her. She never understood that building an empire for those three girls took all his energy. Bonnie was right about one thing, however—both of them had left the girls flailing about, throwing wealth and more wealth at them as they tried to sort out the mess of their marriage. The result? In spite of all outward appearances to the contrary, they had managed to raise three daughters who each carried the burden of their parents' failure in their own way.

For Robin, it was, as Bonnie had so brilliantly pointed out, the need for his acceptance and approval. She flailed about until Aaron took her on at LTI. Except that he didn't really take her on. He didn't teach her the business like he should have, but gave her a posh position that had nothing to do with the running of company. She was a pretty woman, eye candy with a powerful name, and she made a great asset for entertaining his bigger accounts around the world. But in the last couple of years, as Robin had sought more influence and responsibility at LTI, he had found her business decisions to be lacking the maturity solid experience would have given her. She was, in a word, a management disaster.

Rebecca, on the other hand, had, for reasons Aaron would never understand, latched on to the first loser to pay her compliments. It was mind-boggling to him, for Rebecca was the most beautiful and refined of his daughters. She could have had any man with the mere crook of a finger, but she had chosen Bud Reynolds. Bud wasn't all bad—he was perhaps one of the best high school wide receivers Houston had ever seen, and came from a revered Texas family—but he was a sorry excuse for a man. When Aaron had left Bonnie, Rebecca had latched on to him and held tight, all the way to college, foregoing what had all the markings of a promising career in the arts to be the bastard's doormat. Now, Bonnie said, Rebecca drifted from one social event to the next, miserable in a marriage to a man who would fuck his neighbor's wife in the garage while she was inside, nursing their son.

And of course there was Rachel, sweet Rachel, the most hapless child a man might hope to bear. She was still in some nebulous graduate program at Brown University , the same graduate program in which she had been enrolled four years now. The subject of her study? Ancient British languages. He had to shake his head in wonder every time he thought of it. The one time he had asked her what she intended to do with her graduate degree in languages—ancient British languages at that, the poor girl had blinked and looking very bewildered had asked, “Do?” She seemed to have no direction, no ambition, other than to poke around musty old manuscripts.

Yet he continued to bankroll her.

It astounded him in an odd way, because the three of them had grown up in the lap of luxury, had never wanted for a damn thing. But each of them was as forlorn in their own private way as if he had abandoned them at birth. If the goddamned doctors were right, he had precious little time left to right that wrong.

That knowledge had created in him a desperate sense of urgency like he had never felt in his life. If there was one thing he had to do before he left this earth, it was to make them face the voids in their lives, make them understand

what was truly precious. Make them stand up to life, face it head-on.

Aaron could hear them downstairs now, a trail of nervous laughter floating up to him. He stood, pausing a moment to make sure nothing in him was going to object, his gaze falling to a picture of a younger Bonnie hanging on the wall of the bedroom study. It might be too late for them, but it wasn't too late for his girls.

Determined, Aaron grit his teeth and walked slowly out of the room to tell his daughters that he didn't have long to live.

When the ugly task was done, and the girls had retreated to their private mourning, Bonnie and Aaron sat in silence, both of them too numb to talk.

Telling his daughters he was dying was the hardest thing Aaron had ever had to do. Judging by Bonnie's drawn expression, it hadn't been any easier for her. The girls had each received the news in characteristic form—Rachel disbelieving, waiting for a punch line that would never come; Rebecca, unobtrusive, off to one side, softly crying; and Robin, defiant, angrily insisting that he seek another opinion, hire the best doctors—fight it, Dad!

If only they knew. If only he could impart to them how hard he fought the battle being waged within him, how he begged a God whom he had not addressed in years for his life, until one night when the enormity of his fate had descended upon him and he had, miraculously and calmly, accepted what he must. Not that he intended to go down without a fight, no sir, and in fact, he and Bonnie were looking into alternative treatments. But something was different now. His thoughts had turned from himself to those around him.

“I am worried about them,” he said.

Bonnie smiled sadly. “Me, too. Especially Robbie. She's so headstrong. I worry how she'll do… you know, after.”

Aaron paled.

"It's just that she is so angry, so full of frustration. And

I don't know how to help her, I have never really known how, because I'm just not… you."

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Just that—ever since she was a little girl, Robbie has wanted to be just like you. And then Rebecca and Rachel…” Bonnie sighed, looked away, to the dying fire.

Aaron could almost hear what she was thinking—how would she manage after he was gone? Frankly, he had wondered the same thing. Not that Bonnie wasn't a good mother, but there was so much those three women had to learn, so much from which they had been sheltered. Not one of them seemed to be in control of their own lives, but why should he expect them to be? After all, he had controlled it for them from the moment of their birth.

And over the course of the next two days, Aaron became increasingly convinced that he had to do something drastic, had to break the pattern of their dependence on him. They were spoiled, unrealistic about life in some ways, self-indulgent in their own ways, and at times, self-centered.

Robbie was definitely the ringleader of their little band, and Aaron couldn't help but think of the old adage, the blind leading the blind. When she wasn't glued to her cell phone, she was stomping about, insisting to Bonnie that she couldn't leave the office unattended for a few days, because they wouldn't know what to do. What she obviously did not realize was that her office, the little four-member team he had allowed her to set up in Houston , was, in the greater scheme of things, so inconsequential to LTI that it was almost laughable. Her operation was window dressing, nothing more. Evan Iverson ran the Texas operation in addition to the corporate company. Robbie hardly knew how the company operated, no t hank s to her father. It was something Evan had pointed out to him on more than one occasion, and something he had patently ignored… until now. Wasn't Robbie the logical one to carry on in his stead? Had he thought himself so damned invincible that he would never need a successor? Worse, what sort of disservice had he done his own daughter?

And there was Rebecca, so like her mother, who called

home every hour, or so it seemed, to check on her son, Grayson, and to see if Bud the Bastard had left a message for her. Of course he hadn't. Yet she continued to call, continued to hope for the affection of a man so far beneath her that it made Aaron cringe every time she picked up the phone.

And his baby, Rachel. She had gained ten pounds or more since he had last seen her, and he pictured her in some stuffy library room, a package of Oreos on her lap as she leafed through some ancient manuscript. Rachel had always been the dreamer, and while he loved that about her, the girl was her own worst enemy. Yet she was quick to point to her boyfriend when she felt challenged—another winner, Aaron thought disgustedly. Myron was a professor at Brown, who encouraged her study of ancient British literature with an absurd enthusiasm.

Aaron listened to his daughters over those two days, observed them, felt their attention returning to their own lives, away from his fleeting mortality. And the more he glimpsed their lives, devoid of any meaningful relationships, the less he could bear it. As sick and tired as he was, his patience had worn very thin. By the time dinner was served on Wednesday night, Aaron was feeling a sort of panic that only a dying man can feel. Something had to be done. The chicks needed to be pushed from their feathered nests and taught to fly, or be eaten by stronger predators.

His idea was drastic and perhaps cold, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

It was Wednesday evening when all hell broke loose, beginning when Robin came back from a late-afternoon run. She was standing in the entry, speaking through short breaths to Darren Fogerty on her cell phone when Dad made his way downstairs, taking the steps very carefully, as if his whole body hurt.

“I'll be straight with you, Robin,” Darren was saying. “I've got some other options on the table. Now you have guaranteed your transport times, but the rate is a little higher than I was hoping.”

Robin cringed; the rate she had quoted him for ground transport was cheaper than any contract LTI had. To go any lower would mean approval from Evan and Dad. “Let me check on a couple of things, will you?” She glanced up as Dad came to a halt directly in front of her.

“When? I really need to wrap this up.”

“Umm, by the end of the week for sure,” she said, and nodded hopefully at Dad for confirmation, but Dad responded by angrily mimicking a fork to the mouth to remind her that it was time for dinner.

Robin covered the mouthpiece of her cell phone. “Jeez, Dad, this isn't Luby's,” she whispered. “Can't we wait at least an hour or so?” Dad looked a little taken aback, blinked as she continued to Darren, “Count on Friday at the very latest. Can you wait 'til then?”

“Sure. Maybe I can take you out to dinner to celebrate.”

Robin smiled as if Darren were in the same room with her—she could feel this deal gelling very nicely. “I'd really like that, Darren. I'll give you a call tomorrow.”

With that, she flipped the little phone shut and looked at Dad. His eyes narrowed. “Who is Darren?”

Robin flushed, dropped her phone in her purse. “No one you know,” she said, and put her hands on her hips. “So, Dad, what is this dinner thing, anyway?”

His scowl deepened. “This dinner thing is to help me keep a shitload of medicine down. I'm sorry if that interferes with your dining schedule—”

Robin instantly threw a hand up. “Okay, I was just asking!” She brushed past him, bounding up the stairs to the shower.

“Sorry to be keeping you from your date,” he snapped.

God, what was the matter with him? “He's not a date, Dad!” she called as she disappeared into the corridor above. It was obvious Dad was miserable; Mom said the medicine was making him sick and moody—he was almost tearful at times, or too angry, or too stoic, and more than once she had caught him staring at her like he was seeing her for the first time.

And God forbid anything should come up about LTI, she thought as she grabbed some panties and a camisole and headed for the shower. Everything she said was wrong. Like when he asked her about the regional sales figures. She told him that they were improving over the last quarter, but that only seemed to agitate him. “They aren't improving.' They are abysmal! Don't you know anything?” And when she tried to explain, he had almost twisted off into an epileptic fit.

It wasn't just her, either. He was constantly on Rebecca about her calls home, dogged Rachel about her eating habits,

and generally seemed to despise everyone except Mom. Which, Robin thought, seemed especially bizarro, seeing as how they had been separated all these years.

The abysmal mood had not improved when Robin entered the dining room dressed in a white cotton T-shirt and faded Levi's. Rebecca caught her eye, and with her hand, made a slashing motion across her neck. Dad didn't see her; he was trying to drink the herbal cocktail Mom made for him every night. But when Rachel came in, she missed Rebecca's warning altogether.

“Is there something I can get you, Dad? Some medicine or something?”

He shook his head, swallowed the last of the stuff with a groan.

“Are you feeling all right?”

“Would everyone stop asking me if I am all right?” he bellowed. “Jesus Christ, I feel like I am surrounded by a bunch of Nurse Betties!”

Rebecca rolled her eyes and went through the swinging door to the kitchen; Rachel was close on her heels, head down. Dad didn't seem to notice; he was rubbing his eyes and looked to be in pain. Reluctantly, Robin took her seat. Fortunately, the door swung open again, and it was Mom, carrying a steaming dish of beef Stroganoff.

She set the dish down and looked at Dad. “I hear you are feeling a little out of sorts.”

“I have to eat at six,” he grumbled. “You know that.”

“Fifteen minutes one way or another is not going to make a great difference. I know you are not feeling well, Aaron, and I know you are worried about any number of things, but you might try and remember that this very is hard on everyone—not just you.”

“You'd never know it was hard on anyone around here but me,” he snapped.

“Oh please. The girls are walking on eggshells around you,” Mom countered, just as Rachel came through the swinging door, a bottle of wine in one hand, wineglasses in the other, and a pretzel clamped between her teeth.

“What's that, an appetizer?” Dad muttered.

Oh man. Robin immediately grabbed a glass and made an attempt to change the heavy atmosphere. “I love Stro-ganoff, Mom,” she said and turned a beaming smile to Aaron. “Remember that little restaurant on Fifty-third? They had the best Stroganoff!”

“I remember. And I remember how you would send everything back because it never met your exacting standards. I used to think it was funny.”

His expression clearly relayed the grouch no longer thought so. “I don't remember that,” Robin said, almost meaning it, as Rachel took her seat and a glum Rebecca slipped in the room and into a chair next to Robin.