Riggs Park Part 20

"Don't," Marilyn whispered.

"You know what? I think I'll take that time alone now. I think I'll go for a walk."

"Yes. But Barbara, call me later. Promise."

I hung up. After flinging the tape onto the coffee table, I stomped the pins and needles out of my sleeping legs, and ran down to the beach.

The glorious weather mocked me: warm breeze, blue sky. I took off my shoes and walked the length of Wrightsville Beach, more than three miles, all the way to the southern end. By the time I reached the bottom tip of the island, my head was clear. I turned and started back, the whoosh of rolling surf and the strain of exercise momentarily wiping my mind free of Jon's infidelity, Essie's dramatics, Marilyn's complicity. When another subject entirely popped into my head-the subject of Barry Levin-it seemed so unrelated that I didn't make the connection, until it was too late.

Even after Jon and I had become an official couple our freshman year in college, Barry and I had stayed friends. We could talk on the phone as easily as Marilyn and I did, and sometimes we'd go to movies that Jon didn't want to see, often with some of Barry's new friends from American University. It was after one of those films, while driving a boy named Neil home to the other side of town, that Barry had to stop to fix a flat tire on a winding road in Rock Creek Park. As he bent over the trunk trying to retrieve the jack, another car came around the bend and, before the sleepy driver thought to swerve away, rear-ended Barry's car. The impact shoved Barry into the open trunk and nearly severed both his legs. He bled to death in the ambulance on his way to the hospital, surrounded by medics, with Neil holding his shattered, bloodied body in his arms.

At the funeral, even Neil's inconsolable grief did not give Barry away. Anyone who'd lived through such a night with a friend would react like this. n.o.body suspected love between the two boys, and certainly not s.e.x. On the way home, Penny smoothed the lap of her black dress and said, "It's better Barry died this way. It would have been worse if he'd lived for people to find out. You should never tell anyone, Barbara. I won't, either. Some people, you have to protect them even after they're gone."

And except for confiding to Marilyn, I had heeded this advice. In a cruel, ironic way, Barry had been spared what to him would have been the supreme disgrace of revelation. Even now, when coming out of the closet was perfectly acceptable, I wouldn't have told. And as I paced the beach I'd hoped would offer me comfort, Penny's words seemed especially loaded: Some people, you have to protect them even after they're gone.

As now, it seemed, Essie was asking me to do for Penny.

Without realizing it, I had reached the other end of the beach again. The sun had disappeared into a cloud bank beyond the marsh; the air was chilly. I knew now what I would do. Tomorrow when Jon returned, I would take the tape to him. This was Jon's business, not mine. Let him deal with it. Let it be over. Anything was better than this.

I limped toward the house, so distracted that at first I didn't notice the car in my driveway-and then didn't register that it was a car I'd never seen before. Upstairs, the drapes I had drawn were open, and in the living room someone had turned on a light. What the h.e.l.l-?

A fair-haired woman appeared on the porch and waved to me.

"Mom!"

"Robin!" I took the steps two at a time. I hugged my daughter as if clinging to a life raft.

"Mom, are you all right? Aunt Marilyn said I needed to come-this wasn't optional. You won't believe how I got here. Uncle Steve rented a private jet. What's going on?"

I didn't mean to, but I laughed. "Marilyn arranged this? Steve rented you a plane?"

Robin flung an arm around my waist as we walked into the house. "They told me you weren't sick, but I didn't believe it."

"Heartsick is all."

She looked around. "Where's Jon? Is this about Jon?"

"As you film people well know," I said, "a picture is worth a thousand words." I put the tape back in the VCR.

Robin watched attentively, polite but puzzled. "I expected something more shocking," she said when it was over. "The woman looks a little like Jon. One of his relatives?"

"His daughter."

"He has a daughter?"

"I found this out a month ago. He had a baby with a woman who was my best friend except for Marilyn."

Her mouth actually dropped open.

"Maybe you better sit in a more comfortable chair," I said. I explained everything but the part about Murray Wishner, which I couldn't bring myself to repeat.

"You mean all these years and you didn't know?"

I shook my head.

"What are you going to do?"

"I feel like such a fool. Buying this house with him. Making it all so complicated. He's been staying in a motel. Giving me 'time to think.' Making me feel-Anyway, when the tape got here this morning, I guess that clinched it."

"Clinched it how?"

"Essie thinks I can just forgive everything. Just like that!" I snapped my fingers. "And Jon! He's been so nice about everything. Making all the right gestures. Being so understanding."

"Is it really that bad?"

"What am I supposed to do, Robin? Condone this-this pattern of deception? Just because he turns on the charm?"

"You know what you should do when something like this happens?" Robin said. "Get drunk. Then you'll feel better. I know."

"The only person I get drunk with is Marilyn. Now that I'm older, I don't even enjoy that. I have two drinks and suffer for it all the next day."

"Then at least let's go out to dinner. I'll treat."

We ate at The Oceanic, on the windowed second floor that overlooked Crystal Pier and the beach. For all my distress, I was famished. I'd eaten nothing since morning and had done more exercise than I usually did in a month. After growing tipsy from my first gla.s.s of wine, I switched from alcohol to bread as Robin sipped her second Cosmopolitan.

"So Vera's a sports reporter," Robin mused. "Seems kind of eerie, doesn't it? Like father, like daughter."

"When I was young we all wanted to be doctors and lawyers and professors. In your generation everyone wants to be in the entertainment business."

"Thanks, Mom."

"I didn't mean it as an insult."

"None taken." Robin reached across and squeezed my hand. "Let me tell you a happier story. Even if I weren't in Wilmington now, I'd be coming in a couple of weeks. I'm coming back for this independent feature a bunch of us have been developing for two years."

"Two years?"

"I didn't want to say anything because it was so iffy. Getting financing for something like this-Usually it just doesn't happen."

The arrival of our meal gave me time to tame my dueling emotions: pleasure at seeing Robin so happy, irritation that n.o.body ever told me anything until after the fact-not Jon, not Essie, not even my own daughter.

"We've even got a distribution deal," Robin said as she lobbed b.u.t.ter on a baked potato. "Distribution is so critical."

"And you sound like your old self again."

"Oh, I am." Robin winked. "If this thing goes, I'll be financially independent. Well, not exactly. But I'll be in a position to get money for other projects."

"Good. Put on your list of projects supporting your mother in her old age." I lifted a forkful of grouper to my mouth. I was amazed at my own appet.i.te.

All through dinner, Robin chattered about her movie-a coming-of-age story for the twenty-first century, she called it. She sounded so carefree that her divorce might never have happened. She even looked different. Her hair had been layered into a short, geometric cut-a shelf of hair above her ears, a triangle of sideburns. Robin's hair was too wiry to lie flat, so it puffed up all around her face, creating an unintentional and original effect that made Robin look exactly as she should.

After the waiter cleared our plates, we drank coffee spiked with Kahlua while she finished her story. I hadn't eaten so much at one time in a year. By the end of the meal, I felt calmer than I had in a month.

It was a lovely thing to have a grown daughter, especially if she was paying for your dinner. So what if she didn't tell you about her movie until it was about to go into production. It was a lovely thing simply to know your daughter existed; to know she was walking somewhere in the world.

Even Jon deserved such a thing.

This, I realized, was why Marilyn had not come to North Carolina to watch the tape with me. This was why Steve had rented a jet to bring my daughter to my doorstep.

"Mom?" Robin asked.

I made my eyes focus.

"You okay?"

"Just full." But I felt suddenly sober. This was what Marilyn had known and I had not: that whether we died before sixty or lived until ninety, at some point we belonged to the generations and not just ourselves. Penny was our history and our duty was to pa.s.s it on. If it would be kindness to sugarcoat the story a bit, we had to do that, too. Feeling as I did about Robin, how could I do anything else?

I'd read somewhere that when something was inevitable, you ought to embrace it. But no one said you had to do it gracefully. By the time I got Robin settled into the guest room, I was too tired to do anything but fall into bed and sleep like the aging, snoring, overfed dowager I was.

In the morning, I followed Robin to the airport to drop off her car, then took her to breakfast before her private jet whisked her back to her Pennsylvania film shoot.

"See you in a couple of weeks," she said. "I'll be here before you know it." The wind lifted a tuft of her short hair in a cheerful salute as she marched out to the tarmac, expectant and hopeful.

It was another beautiful morning, the landscape dominated today by the bright Chinese tallow trees, their small triangular leaves an autumnal patchwork of red and gold, purple and orange-a stunning display. And Robin's life, right now-who knew for how long-seemed filled with exactly such colorful breathlessness.

A small plane lifted into the clouds above me-Robin's jet, surely. Fly safe, I thought. And then, unbidden: Life will not be as you imagine, child. Enjoy this now.

Then my mood went from Technicolor to black-and-white. I drove straight home, called Jon's motel and left word for him to come by whenever he got in.

It was full night before he arrived. For half an hour I'd been standing on the chilly deck, watching a shifting path of moonlight arc across the sea. He ran up the stairs. "I didn't leave Charlotte till two," he panted. "What's up? Is something wrong?"

"It depends on how you define the word." I slid the tape into the VCR. "I was just going to drop this off to you," I said. "Call me a pushover, but I thought it would be too hard to be by yourself when you saw your daughter for the first time, all grown-up."

He stiffened but didn't say a word.

We watched the clip. "She's so much-herself," he said at last. "Herself and not me. I guess I didn't expect that."

"She looks like you a little. Sounds like you a lot. I couldn't get over it."

"She sounds pretty sane, doesn't she? Pretty together," he said. Try as I would to remain aloof, I couldn't help returning his grin at the idea that Vera's sanity would be uppermost in our minds.

"Why do you think Essie sent it? Why not just call and tell us where she was?" he asked.

"I don't know, Jon. From here on out, I don't think it concerns me."

He acted as if he hadn't heard. "I think it's because if there's going to be a meeting, she wants to orchestrate it herself. Old as sin and still wants to run everybody's life." He paused. "Maybe I should call her anyway. Thank her for the tape. Sort of-hasten things along."

"Call her in the morning," I said. "It's too late now."

He arrived the next day at six, but I was already awake. We drank coffee, flipped through the morning news shows, fidgeted until it seemed a decent hour to phone. When Taneka answered, she told Jon that Essie was sleeping.

"At 9:00 a.m.?"

"She gets up at the crack of dawn and takes a nap later," Taneka explained. "She's old. Old people need a lot of sleep."

Jon phoned again at noon. No one answered. "Maybe they went out to lunch."

"You mean, out to a restaurant? No chance," I said. "Essie can hardly walk."

"Maybe she had a doctor's appointment."

"Maybe she just doesn't want to talk to you any more than she wanted to talk to Marilyn. Maybe she wants all of us to be patient. She said she'd let Marilyn know as soon as she set up the meeting."

"And how long should that take?"

"Look, Jon, I don't know. I'm not sure it matters. After thirty-six years, what's another couple of days? But if you want me to call Marcellus, I will."

I thought he'd have the grace to say no. He didn't. And Marcellus, unlike Essie, was more than willing to talk.

"Essie don't want some man Vera never saw drop by one day and say he's her father. She wants it to happen by plan," he told me. "That's why I had my man edit the tape. Pretty good, wasn't it?"

"Very anonymous," I said.

"Essie wrote Vera. Said Vera's mother stayed with her when she was pregnant. Asked Vera to write back if she wanted to know more."

"And did she?"

"Yeah. They still writing."

"Just writing? Why not talking on the phone? Why not-?"

"Essie got to do it her own way," Marcellus said. "You know how she is. When she's got it all worked out, she'll get in touch."

The next day, Jon moved back into the house. We didn't discuss it, but both of us felt there was a momentous task ahead of us that made this all right. Tactfully, he put his clothes in the guest room. We avoided physical contact with the zeal of recent converts to celibacy. I was sure if I let him touch me, he'd be thinking not of me but of Penny, of her pale skin and fiery hair; of the supple body-not mine-with whom he had created a life. All the same, I felt every moment that we'd soon end up in each other's arms.

Three more days pa.s.sed. I spoke to Marilyn every day, but she seemed to have lost interest, or at least pa.s.sed on the responsibility for the meeting to me and Jon. She cut our conversations short. If I'd been paying more attention, I would have said she sounded weary, or even sick.

We spent most of our time in the house, trying to work but actually waiting, waiting, waiting for the critical call. If there were errands to run, only one of us went out. Our nerves were thoroughly jangled. "This is ludicrous," Jon finally said the third day after we'd cobbled together a lunch from the meager sc.r.a.ps left in the refrigerator. We decided to go out, as we used to do, to stock up on groceries.

Less than an hour later, we pulled back into the driveway, and Jon, three plastic bags in hand, bounded up the stairs to check the answering machine.

"You're supposed to call Marilyn's," he called down.

I hefted my own bags higher in my arms and took the stairs two at a time. "I talked to her just a couple of hours ago, so this must mean she's finally heard something about the party! She promised she'd call the minute she heard from Essie."

"It was Bernie on the tape. Not Marilyn. Maybe it's something else."

"Bernie?" Alarm rang in my ears, the food in my stomach coalesced into a lump. I had thought we would be driving to D.C. for a party. Bernie's calling couldn't be good news. But even then, as panic began to bubble in my blood, it didn't occur to me that we would be going for a funeral instead.