Mourning Glory (34 page)

Jackie was right about one thing: Their lack of money was a
terrible disaster. It was humiliating. It ate away at their self-esteem and
dignity. It made them feel crippled, unfit, desperate. It corroded
self-respect. Even Grace's visits to the unemployment office, where she stood
in line with the other unfortunates, was a demoralizing act.

Thinking this, Grace faced the full scope of her
frustration. She felt shackled, imprisoned, unable to make a choice on her own.
Her only avenue of hope was Sam. Why didn't he act, declare his everlasting
fealty, get down on bended knee and beg her to marry him?

She recalled Mrs. Burns's words, echoing and reechoing.
Ring around the finger. Perhaps she should speak up, demand his consideration,
force him to declare himself. Would he back off, grow fearful, have second
thoughts? Of one thing she was dead certain: Sam was not a man for ultimatums.

"All right, Mom," Jackie said between sniffles,
obviously emotionally spent. "Don't worry about Mr. Barlow. I won't do
this ever again. I didn't want you to know. I didn't want to hurt you."

"You would be hurting yourself."

"It's over, Mom. I'm sorry. I promise. Never
again."

"What about dear little Darryl?"

"I don't know, Mom." Jackie shrugged. "I
just don't want him to hurt you."

"He won't," Grace said, taking a brave stand.

"He wants his money, Mom. That's the deal."

"Then we'll give it to him," Grace said, her mind
groping for some plan to raise immediate cash. This was, indeed, a crisis, and
it had certainly rearranged her priorities.

"But how, Mom? You said you haven't got any."

"Can I extract a promise from you, Jackie?"

"Of course you can, Mom."

"Please don't question me about anything. Not now.
I'll tell you what you have to know in due time. All I can say is that
something good is happening between me and the man you questioned me about
yesterday, something good for both of us. Financially rewarding, too."

"Really, Mom?"

"Really."

"Can you tell me anything about him, Mom? I'll bet
he's rich."

"You promised," Grace said, lifting her hand like
a traffic cop.

"Okay. But you won't keep it from me too long?"

"Trust me."

She reached for her pocketbook and took out her checkbook.
Her balance was just under two hundred dollars.

"How far behind are you?"

"Two hundred and fifty dollars."

She thought about postdating it, then rejected the idea.
Somehow she'd cover it. She wrote it out, then handed it to Jackie.

"This should give you some breathing room."

"Thanks, Mom."

"On second thought, mail it to him. I don't want you
to see him again. That's the deal."

Jackie studied the check.

"I promise, Mom."

It crossed Grace's mind that what she had been engineering
was not much different from what Jackie had been setting up. Like mother, like
daughter, she admonished herself. She was no less a hustler doing what she had
been doing. Who was she to judge Jackie's act of desperation?

Grace wondered if Jackie saw any of this in moral terms,
the right and wrong of it, the black and white of it. Or was it simply Grace's
discovery of that action that had made the idea unpalatable? At this juncture
she didn't take the fork in the road that led to denial. The sad fact of
Jackie's assent to the idea of prostituting herself was, to her mind, an act of
depravity, not merely stupidity.

What had Grace done to have allowed such moral neutrality
to be planted in her daughter's mind? This was, she decided, the essence of her
parental failure, and it was up to her, if it wasn't too late, to take whatever
corrective action was possible.

"You call this Mr. Barlow tomorrow and quit your job
instantly. I don't want you to ever go back there again. And if he makes a
stink, tell him how vulnerable he is."

"He won't ... but it was a good job, Mom."

"No more jobs, Jackie. You have one job, getting good
marks, getting into college. That's your job. Do we understand each
other?"

"But what will we do for money?"

"Leave that to me, okay?"

Jackie nodded.

"Yeah, sure, Mom."

"Trust me, darling."

"Sure, Mom."

"You don't believe me, do you?"

"I want to, Mom. I really do."

Grace held out her arms and Jackie, with some reluctance,
moved into them.

"Never go that far again, Jackie. Never. Never.
Never."

"I won't, Mom."

"And no more Darryl. I swear to you, you see him again
and I'm going to the police. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, Mom."

They held their embrace for a long time. Then Grace
disengaged and went into her bedroom. She fell on her bed and studied the
ceiling, groping in her mind for some answer that would rescue them and still
keep open her options with Sam.

It was obvious that her timetable wasn't Sam's. What she
needed was money, immediately. Sam could wait. Despite her so-called wiles, she
had not created in him any sense of urgency.

Weighing her options, she speculated that perhaps it was
time to make a clean breast of it, tell Sam the truth. Truth was his watchword,
wasn't it? Why not confront him with its starkness, the truth untarnished? Take
the risk. Throw herself on his mercy. The image suggested by that idea, her
kneeling before him like a supplicant, begging for understanding, while she
confessed her sins, was too distasteful to contemplate.

He would certainly be stunned by the blatant cynicism of
her action. Be brave, she urged herself. Let the chips fall where they may.
Tell it as it is. None of those clichés were helpful. They hadn't been helpful
to Anne either, Anne the wonderful, Anne the traitor, who got away with
cheating for twenty-five years.

She stopped pacing and threw herself on the bed again,
hoping that exhaustion would send her into oblivion. It did.

When she awoke she was surprised by what could only be
described as a major miracle. It was as if a computer had been silently
operating in her subconscious as she slept. It had weighed all available
options and spit out the one that best suited her condition. Convert Anne's
clothes into immediate cash!

Of course, it had been there all the time, and she had once
rejected the possibility on other grounds. But that had been a different time,
eons ago, when her priorities were different. Ironically, it was Jackie's
entrepreneurship that had pointed the way. Once she had worried about exposure,
but the earlier experience had not met with repercussions, and there was no
reason to believe that they would occur now.

As for the ethics of the action, which once had concerned
her, Grace rejected such a notion. In the game she was playing, ethics were a
foolish abstraction. Selling Anne's clothes was nothing more than another lie
in a more tangible incarnation. What did one more lie matter? She was still
able to maintain the purity of her promise to herself ... well, almost ... not
to take money or kind directly from Sam.

This condition, too, she knew, was less ethical than
tactical. Above all, he must never believe that her motivation was in any way
related to his money.

Jackie's act of desperation had changed everything. The
mother instinct was operating now, with all the fierceness and protective zeal
of a lioness with her cub. And she had been touched by Jackie's concern for
her, which seemed quite real. The fact was that Grace
was
afraid. There
was no telling what an evil man like Darryl might do.

She heard Jackie busy in the living room, putting up the
studio couch, which was always her last task before leaving the house in the
morning. She was, as she had been for the past few weeks, off to her morning
job at McDonald's.

"I want you to quit McDonald's today, too,
Jackie," Grace said as she moved into the living room.

"Are you sure, Mom?"

"Very sure."

Jackie studied her mother's face.

"You're going to get the best, Jackie. The best of
everything," Grace pressed. "Cross my heart."

She wanted to say "Trust me" again, but she held
off. It was getting to be too much of a cliché to be believable.

"You still won't tell me what's going on, Mom?"

"When it happens you'll be the first to know."

If and when, she had wanted to say, knowing the
if
would
plant a seed of doubt. This wasn't a morning for doubt.

Jackie smiled and shrugged. It was obvious that the implied
promise of financial gain had considerably buttressed Jackie's optimism. The
power of money, Grace thought, hating the reality of it.

When Jackie left the house Grace sprang into action. She
looked up all the secondhand clothing consignment shops in the phone book and
began her calls. Charity begins at home, she decided.

She arrived at Sam's house with a U-Haul connected to her
car. He came out to greet her. They kissed deeply, their embrace fervent.

"God, I couldn't wait until you got here," Sam
said.

"And I can't wait to be here."

After a few moments he noticed the U-Haul.

"I'm feeling very industrious today," Grace said.
"I've been neglecting my work."

He chuckled with amusement and shook his head, as if it had
become a matter of growing indifference to him. She would be killing two birds
with one stone: The money, of course, and what could be the biggest bonus of
all, getting rid of more reminders of his unfaithful, deceased wife.

"We have to be true to Anne's wishes," Grace
said, repressing any hint of sarcasm. "It was beginning to bother
me."

"Of course, darling," Sam said, taking her hand
and leading her into the house. They didn't allow the heat of passion to
interfere with their beach walk and swim, as it had yesterday, and soon they
were ambling along the shore, arms around each other's waists.

Today, Grace knew, would mark the first drastic change in
their usual routine. Her mind was filled with the logistics of what she had
planned. She calculated that with speed and efficiency it would take her at
least a week to empty Anne's closet. That was her goal.

She had talked with a number of the store owners, told them
the types of clothes that were to be consigned, mentioned the various famous
designers involved and, in an uncommon burst of business acumen, insisted on a
cash advance.

"Do you mind if Felicia helps me?" Grace asked,
still working on the practicalities of the chore.

"Of course not," he replied.

As usual Marilyn chased the sandpipers and ran along the
foamy edge of the surf. At intervals they stopped to kiss and embrace on the
deserted beach. She loved being close to him, loved the spontaneity of their
actions. She was also relieved that she had discovered a method that would take
the pressure off, give him time to resolve things in his mind and, hopefully,
meet her ultimate objective.

After their walk they had their swim and came back to the
house and made love.

"I really like the idea of your wishing to fulfill
this commitment to Anne," Sam told her when they were winding down.
Normally she loved this time, the talk, the conversational exchange. Sam, she
had discovered, was a very verbal man, introspective, with wide-ranging
interests.

She loved hearing about his early life, his affection for
his parents and his struggles to succeed. He would tell her about the world in
which he grew up, so different from her own. He seemed compelled to tell her
his story, not only the narrative of his marriage, which she endured stoically,
but his life before meeting Anne, which was much more exciting and far less
stressful on her. Unlike her own story, Grace knew it was an honest portrayal,
embellished more with sentiment than inaccuracy.

He had begun, too, to discuss national and world events,
his perspectives on these matters and his opinion about politics, government,
foreign affairs and economics.

Even though it pointed up her lack of knowledge on these
subjects, she listened carefully, treating his conversation as if it were an
educational experience. She marveled at Sam's knowledge and considered herself
extraordinarily fortunate to have won the affection and love of such an
intelligent man.

It surprised her, too, that she had absorbed enough to make
reasonably acceptable comments at appropriate moments, comments that probably
indicated to him that she knew more than she did. She was certain that such
discussions were a way of life in his marriage with Anne, and she tried to mask
her lack of knowledge, which troubled her. It was, after all, another form of
lying. Sometimes he would lead her into discussions that referred to events in
her own fictitious history.

"The fact is," he told her, "the country is
in a compensation phase, swinging now somewhat to the right of center, but not
quite like it was in your Washington days."

"Not quite," she replied, frightened by the
reference.

"It had to come. It's like a pendulum."

"Absolutely."

"I used to argue with Anne on this point. I never won,
of course. She was adamant. Very articulate, too. She believed in her heart
that anyone right of center was a hypocrite. She was really down on anything
that smacked of hypocrisy."

"Was she?" Grace said, thinking of the letters in
her possession.

"Vacillating politicians would drive her up the wall.
Anne had this thing about telling it like it is. She could be pretty damned
passionate in an argument."

Elsewhere, too, Grace thought, triggered by his mention of
passion, remembering Anne's lover's phrase, the "fire of passion."

Now when he referred to Anne she could barely contain her
anger and disgust. Why did he continue to extol his late wife's virtues?
She
was a fucking whore, Sam,
she wanted to say, to shout it out, blast it into
his mind.

"When she believed in something she refused to accept
anyone else's point of view. She considered it a kind of surrender, a
compromise of her integrity."

When Sam stressed this quality of integrity in his dead
wife he would grow reflective, suggesting that he was again beating himself up
because of is own infidelity. Grace tamped down her anger, forcing her silence.
The Anne myth was obviously too firmly established in Sam's mind to accept any
challenge from her.

Thankfully, he seemed less and less interested in
interrogating her about her past, as if, she hoped, he might have finally put
his mind to rest as to her suitability as a replacement for Anne.

Before she learned of Anne's betrayal, she had been able to
tolerate his endless paeans of praise for Anne's taste, integrity, poise and
intellect. Always after these outbursts she would counter in the only way she knew
Anne was beatable ... in the sack.

At those times, when she was consciously competing with the
"frigid" Anne, she would marvel at the intensity of her sexuality.
She would become the aggressor, the director, putting him through a series of
physical gyrations that would make a hooker blush.

Often, during these episodes, she would wonder if she had
carried things too far. But his expressions of gratification, sometimes loud
and vocal, as uninhibited and resonant as her own, put her mind at ease. In
this area their compatibility could not be challenged.

Because he respected the idea of fulfilling her so-called
commitment to Anne, he didn't object to her spending most of the afternoon
carrying out armfuls of Anne's clothes. She sent him off to his den to do his
business while she and Felicia took the clothes off the racks, sorted them and
laid them carefully in the U-Haul.

"You give all these to charity?" Felicia asked
her as they worked. Although Felicia was a woman of few words and normally kept
her personal thoughts to herself, Grace knew a broad hint when she heard one.
She did not take the bait.

"Yes, Felicia. This was the late Mrs. Goodwin's
wish."

"Fur coats for people on the Welfare?"

"The charity people know how best to help the poor.
They'll probably sell them and recycle the money for various good
purposes."

Grace could sense that the entire operation puzzled
Felicia. She was probably even more puzzled by the goings-on between her and
Sam. Thankfully, she posed no threat or interference. Grace timed it so that
she was able to make stops at the two secondhand clothing stores she had chosen
and still return in enough time for them to have their usual candlelight
dinner.

The proprietors of both stores were amazed at the treasure
trove she had provided, and Grace walked away with advances of a thousand
dollars from each store. Grace's deal with them called for an additional
commission coming, less the advance, if the clothing was sold.

She deposited the cash into her checking account. Both
proprietors agreed that it would not be difficult to find customers for such
high-quality clothing.

Neither of them questioned her as to where the clothing had
come from. Since all transactions were in cash, they didn't require any
confirmation of her real name. She told the proprietors that she would call or
visit periodically to check on the progress of the sales. To further cover
herself, she had gone through any pockets that might hold clues to the origin
of the clothing or additional details of Anne's secret life. She found nothing.

Grace admitted to herself that she didn't feel very good
about these transactions, nor did she believe that she was getting more than a
fraction of their value. Survival required compromise, she assured herself. But
the money was comforting and, surprisingly, ameliorated the effects of the
betrayal of her earlier principles. After all, no one was harmed by these
activities, and the benefits to herself and Jackie would be significant.

She was pleased to discover that Sam was no longer curious
about the various charities to which the clothes were consigned.

"Would you like to know where they went, Sam?"
she would ask.

"Darling, I'm sure they were put to good use."

"Yes, Sam. They were."