Galilee. Part 16

"I'll put in a good word for you," Rachel told him.

XIII.

There are occasions when the responsibilities of a storyteller and those of a simple witnesscontradict one another. For example: had I told you from the outset that the chief catalyst of Mitch and Rachel's separation was the loss of their child, I would have bled away what little suspense the previous chapters possessed. But I don't believe I misrepresented the facts. I began this portion of my account by telling you that there was no single calamitous event that began to undo the marriage, and I would still say that was the case. If the child had survived perhaps Rachel would have stayed with Mitch.e.l.l a while longer, but she would have left him sooner or later. The marriage was in trouble long before the pregnancy; the most the death of the child did was hasten its collapse.

As Rachel had requested Mitch.e.l.l took her up to the farmhouse in Caleb's Creek and stayed with her for almost ten days, going down to the city three or four times for meetings but returning in the evening to be with her. Though the Rylanders were there in his absence to attend to all Rachel's needs, Barbara told Mitch that Rachel had taken over most of her duties. It was true. The general homeliness of the house-its lack of expensive works of art, its modest scale-brought out the domestic side of Rachel's nature. She usurped the kitchen from Barbara and started to cook, remarking to Mitch one day that she hadn't so much as boiled a pot of water since they were married. She wasn't a particularly sophisticated cook, but she knew how to put a hearty meal together. There was a healing simplicity to the rituals of the kitchen: fresh vegetables from the garden, good wine from the cellar, the plates washed and neatly stacked when the meal was over.

After two weeks of this, Mitch asked her how she was doing, and she said: "I'll be fine on my own, if that's what you were wondering. Do you want to spend a few nights in the city?"

"I was just thinking about going until the weekend. I'll come back here on Friday night, and maybe if you're feeling better we can go home to New York on Sunday."

"Is somebody going to be using this house?"

"No," Mitch said. "n.o.body uses this place any more."

"So why can't I stay?"

"Well you can stay, baby. I just thought you'd be wanting to get back with some of your friends."

"I don't have any friends in New York."

"Rachel, don't be silly. You've got plenty of-" He saw the unhappiness in her eyes, and raised his hands in surrender. "All right. If you say you've got no friends, you've got no friends. I only thought if you were making progress, it would be good for everybody to see you again."

"Oh, now I get it. You want to show me around so the family doesn't start thinking I've lost my mind."

"That's not it at all. Why do you have to be so paranoid?"

"Because I know the way you think. All of you. Always watching out for the family reputation.Well, right now I don't care about the family reputation, okay? I don't want to see anybody. I don't want to talk to anybody. And I certainly don't want to go back to New York."

"Calm down, will you?" Mitch said. "I just wanted to find out where we stand. Now I know." He left the kitchen without another word, but he came back in again ten minutes later. His anger hadn't dissipated, but he was doing his best to conceal it. "I haven't come back here for another argument," he said, "I only want to point out that you can't stay here forever. This is not a life I want my wife to be living, puttering around like an old woman, cutting roses and peeling potatoes."

"I like peeling potatoes."

"You're being perverse."

"I'm being honest."

"Well, that's all I wanted to say. I'm going to be staying with Garrison for the next few days, so we can work through all this Bangkok business." She didn't have a clue what he was talking about; nor did she care to inquire. "So if you need me..."

"I know where to find you," she replied, though she'd realized several seconds before that she wouldn't be coming to look.

ii Where would she go? That was the question that vexed her for the next few days. Even a.s.suming she did what would once have been unthinkable, and actually left her husband, where would she go? She couldn't stay here at the farmhouse, though that would be blissful. It was Geary property.

She could take up residence in the apartment, of course-that was hers-but she'd never feel comfortable there; certainly not without completely remodeling the place in line with her own tastes, and that was too large a scale of undertaking. Perhaps she'd be better off selling it, even if it didn't make a particularly good price, and finding a smaller place to purchase: perhaps somewhere off the beaten track like Caleb's Creek.

She slept on the thought, though not well. She pa.s.sed the night in an uneasy state somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, and when she dreamed the dreams were of the room in which she was lying, only bleached of all color, like the photographs in George's study that had been left in the sun too long. There were people pa.s.sing through the room, a few of them glancing down at her, their faces impa.s.sive. She knew none of them, though she had the suspicion that she'd known them once, and forgotten their names.

The next day she called Margie, and invited her to visit.

"I really can't bear the country," Margie protested. "But if you're not going to be coming back here for a while...""I'm not."

"Then I'll come."

She arrived the next day, her limo packed with boxes of her favorite indulgences-smoked bluefish pate, the inevitable Beluga, Viennese coffee, a box of bitter chocolate florentines-plus, of course, a case of libations.

"This isn't the back of beyond," Rachel pointed out as she watched Samuel, Margie's driver, unload the supplies. "We have a very good market ten minutes' drive from here."

"I know, I know," Margie said, "but I like to come prepared." She pulled a bottle of single-malt Scotch out of one of the boxes. "Where's the ice?"

Margie had plenty of gossip. Loretta had become quite the harridan in the last few weeks, she reported. There'd been a very acrimonious exchange with Garrison a week ago, in which Loretta had inferred some misconduct in the way Garrison had disposed of several million dollars' worth of family holdings.

"I didn't think Loretta had any interest in the business side of things," Rachel said.

"Oh don't you believe it. She likes to pretend she's above it all. But she's watching her empire. In fact, the more I see her operate, the more I think she was always working behind the scenes. Even when George was alive. He did all the talking, but she was the one telling him what to say. And now she's seeing things she doesn't approve of, so she's showing her hand."

"So what happened with Garrison?"

"Oh it was a mess. He told her she didn't know what she was talking about, which was exactly the wrong thing to say. Apparently she went into the boardroom the next day and dismissed five of the board members on the spot."

"She can do that?"

"She did it," Margie replied. "Told them all to pack their bags and go. Then she gave an interview to The Wall Street Journal saying they were incompetent. They're all suing of course. I'm surprised Mitch.e.l.l didn't say anything about any of this."

"He doesn't talk about the business. He never has."

"This isn't business. This is civil war. Garrison was madder than I've seen him in a long time. It was all very satisfying." They exchanged smiles; co-conspirators in their pleasure at all this unrest. "The way he was talking," Margie went on, "I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't come up with some kind of ultimatum. You know: either she goes or I go."

"And who's going to make that decision?""I don't know," Margie laughed. "Especially now Lor-etta's put half the board out of a job. I suppose in the end it'll come down to whether Mitch.e.l.l sides with Garrison or his grandmother."

"It all seems so old-fashioned."

"Oh, it's positively feudal," Margie said. "But that's the way the old man set it up when he retired.

He kept all the power in the family."

"Does Cadmus have any kind of vote?"

"Oh sure. He still sends memos to Garrison, believe it or not."

"Do they make any sense?"

"I think it depends how much medication he's had that day. Last time I went to see him he was flying. Talking about something that happened fifty years ago. I don't think he even knew who I was. Then there's days when he's really sharp, according to Garrison." She grew a little pensive.

"I think it's pretty sad, personally. To be so old and not be able to let go of his little empire."

"Isn't that what keeps him alive?" Rachel said.

"Well it's pitiful," Margie said. "But it's the way they are. Control freaks."

"Including Loretta?"

"Especially Loretta. She's got nothing better to do."

"She's not too old to many again, once Cadmus dies."

"She'd be better off taking a lover," Margie said. She had a sly expression on her face. "It's a nice feeling."

"Are you telling me-?" The slyness became a smile. "You have a lover?"

"Doesn't everyone?" Margie laughed. "His name's Danny. I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him, but he's a wonderful distraction in the middle of a dreary afternoon."

"Does Garrison know about him?"

"Well we haven't had a nice chat about it, if that's what you mean, but he knows. I mean Garrison and I haven't slept together for six years, except for a rather wretched night after that d.a.m.ned birthday party for Cadmus, when both of us got a little mawkish. Otherwise he goes his way and I go mine. It's better that way."

"I see.""Are you shocked? Oh, please tell me you're shocked."

"No. I'm just thinking..."

"About?"

"Well... the reason I asked you to come here's because I'm going to leave Mitch.e.l.l." It took a lot to silence Margie, but this did the trick. "It's for the best," Rachel added.

"Does Mitch.e.l.l agree?"

"He doesn't know."

"Well when exactly were you intending to tell him, honey?"

"When I've got everything sorted out in my head."

"Are you sure you wouldn't be wiser doing what I've done? There's a lot of cute bartenders in New York."

"I don't want a bartender," Rachel said. "With the greatest respect to... what's his name?"

"Daniel." She grinned. "Actually it's Dan Dan the f.u.c.k f.u.c.k Man."

"With the greatest respect to the f.u.c.k f.u.c.k Man it's not what I'm looking for."

"Was Mitch.e.l.l any good in bed?"

"I don't have that much to compare him with."

"Put it this way: it wasn't a once-in-a-lifetime experience?"

"No."

"So you don't want a bartender. What do you want?"

"Good question," Rachel said.

She closed her eyes so as not to be distracted by the quizzical look on Margie's face. "I guess... I just want to feel more pa.s.sionate."

"About Mitch.e.l.l?"

"About... getting up in the morning." She opened her eyes again. Margie was perusing her, as though trying to decide something."What are you thinking?" Rachel asked her.

"Just that it's all very fine talking about pa.s.sion, honey. But if it ever came along-I'm talking about real pa.s.sion, not some soap-opera baloney-it'd change everything in your life. You do know that? Everything."

"I'm ready for that."

"So you've given up on Mitch.e.l.l completely?"

"Yes."

"He's not going to let you divorce him without a fight."

"Probably not. But I'm sure he doesn't want us all over the tabloids either. Neither do 1.1 just want to live my life as far away from the Gearys as I can get."

"What if you could have both?"

"I don't follow."

"What if you could have all the pa.s.sion you could take, and still keep your share of the Geary lifestyle? No divorce proceeding; no judge going through the dirty linen."

"I don't see how that's possible."

"The only way it's going to happen is if you promise to stay with Mitch.e.l.l. He's got his eye on a place in Congress, and he wants his private life to be as squeaky clean as possible. If you help him look like a saint, maybe he'll look the other way when you go have an adventure."

"You make it sound all very civilized."

"Why shouldn't it be?" Margie said. "Unless he decides to get jealous. Then... well, then you might have to talk some reason into him. But you're smart enough to do that."

"And where am I going to find this adventure?"

"We'll talk about that later," Margie said with a little smile. "Right now, you've got some deciding to do, honey. But let me remind you of something. I tried leaving. And I tried and I tried. And, believe me, it's a hard world out there." iii Perversely enough it was this last remark that finally convinced Rachel that she had to leave. So what if it was a hard world? She'd survived out there for the first twenty-four years of her life, without the Gearys. She could do so again.

When Margie finally rose, sometime after noon, and was downing her first b.l.o.o.d.y Mary of theday (complete with a stick of celery, for the roughage) Rachel explained that she'd thought everything over and decided to take a long drive, back to Ohio. It would give her time to think, she said; time to make up her mind about what she really wanted.

"Do you want Mitch.e.l.l to know where you've gone?" Margie asked her.

"Preferably not."

"Then I won't tell him," Margie said, very simply. "When are you planning to go?"

"I'm already packed. I just wanted to say goodbye to you."

"Oh Lord. You don't waste any time. Still, maybe it's for the best." Margie opened her arms.