Carriage Trade (63 page)

“Yes.”

“He'd be perfect for—”

She glances at her mother. “You were going to say perfect for
me
, weren't you, Mother?” she says.

Her mother smiles. “But I didn't, did I? I stopped just in time. Anyway,” she says, changing the subject, “I'm glad you came back to the farm for a few more days. You've had the store's problems on your mind so much these past weeks. You deserve a little vacation. And I do enjoy your company, Miranda. Somehow, when your father was alive, there was never enough time—”

“For us to get to know each other.”

“Yes.”

She studies her mother's face across the table. “Tell me something, Mother,” she says. “That afternoon at Jake Kohlberg's office, when he read Daddy's will and when Blazer blew up and said all those terrible things, he referred to Smitty as Daddy's mistress, which of course she was. You know it, and I know it. But you didn't bat an eyelash. It's as though you accepted it. And now you talk of wanting to help Smitty in some way. I don't quite understand. If I'd been in your shoes, I'd have resented Smitty terribly. I'd be delighted to see Smitty fall by the wayside.”

She sighs. “I didn't accept it, exactly,” she says. “But I understood your father. There were always other women in his life. There were other women long before he met me, and I knew there would be afterward. There's been a lot written lately about people who are sexual addicts. More men are addicted to sex than women, and I think your father was one of them. He simply had to have other women. He craved them. He got high on them, the way an alcoholic gets high on alcohol. He got a thrill from them, from the danger of them. They were like a narcotic to him. He was addicted to them, the way I'm addicted to—these.” She reaches for another cigarette and lights it with a silver table lighter. “That's why he never criticized my smoking, though he disapproved of it. He knew he had his own, more dangerous addiction. When I married him, I knew I was going to have to live with that. It wasn't always easy, but I did. His first wife, Blazer's mother, couldn't live with it. Not all women can. But I knew I was going to have to. I knew it was useless to try to change him. He was never going to change. People don't change, Miranda. They just grow older, and a little tougher, if they're lucky. If all the psychiatrists in the world accepted this, they'd be out of business by this time tomorrow night. All of them. Remember you heard it here.”

“But Smitty was different. He was going to marry her.”

She shakes her head and fans the smoke away from her face with the long fingers of one hand. “No,” she says. “He was never going to marry her. Oh, he may have led her to believe he was. He often did that, particularly as he grew older, and younger women became—harder to find. He'd lead them on. That wasn't very nice of him, of course. But then your father was not a perfect lover, just as he was not a perfect husband.”

“I think you're wrong, Mother. I think he and Smitty had definite plans.”

“No, no. I knew him too well. You see, there were things I could do for your father that no other woman could do. These weren't things I knew I could do in the beginning. But I discovered I could do them, and he discovered I could do them too.”

“What sort of things?”

“For instance, of all the women that he—we can't say slept with, because he didn't sleep with them. But after each meeting, tryst, whatever you call it—Blazer would use the F-word, I suppose—he always came home to me. He never spent the night with any of them.”

“Why was that?”

“He suffered from—well, let me start from the beginning. When he was nine years old, his baby sister was born, his sister Simma, who was always sickly. In those days, there was always a
QUARANTINED
sign on the family's front door. He had no idea what the sign meant, but he looked the word up in the dictionary and read the words ‘disease,' ‘pestilence,' ‘plague,' ‘isolation,' ‘danger,' and ‘death' in the definition. He began to believe he lived in a house that had a terrible curse on it, and he also began to be taunted by other children in the neighborhood about his baby sister. They were saying that Si's father wasn't the baby's real father, because she didn't look like anyone else in the family. She had bright red hair. They were saying that the baby's real father was another man, a friend of the family, who also had red hair. Si told me once that the only time his mother ever struck him was when he came home from school one day from the third grade and said, ‘Are you a whore, Mama? Everybody says you're a whore.' He didn't even know what the word meant, but he'd looked it up. When she hit him, he took it to mean that what the other children said was true. After that, his relationship with his mother was never the same.

“That was when he began to have terrible nightmares and night sweats. He'd wake up in the night wringing wet. And yes, though this isn't very pleasant, he'd sometimes wet or soil his bed. He was too ashamed of these night terrors, as he called them, to ever let himself fall asleep at another woman's side. But I learned to cope with them. I could comfort him out of the terror, and I learned to deal with—the other matters. He trusted me with these secrets of his, which, as he grew older, became worse. Much worse, in fact. It wasn't easy, but I learned to cope. And it pleased me to think that I was the only woman he could trust to see him through his terrible nights, that I was the only woman he could lie down and try to sleep beside, that there were things I could do for him that no one else could do.”

“You really loved him, didn't you, Mother.”

“Oh, yes. There are so many things I could tell you about your father. I don't know why you and I have never talked like this before.”

“You never seemed to want to.”

“No, I suppose not. They seemed too private. But now it's as though he's finally released me, set me free to talk about these private things. And it's nice, isn't it? I've enjoyed this visit so, Miranda. It's nice to sit here in these quiet evenings on the farm, just you and I, and talk about love.”

“Yes, it is. Nice.”

“Yes. And now that I've told you that, I might as well tell you the rest. His doctor, Harry Arnstein, told me that these symptoms of his, the night terrors, might also be symptoms of tertiary syphilis—which is not transmittable at that stage, I hasten to assure you. But we don't know this for sure, because your father would never let Harry test his blood. So that's just a guess. But it was women, women, always women where your father was concerned.”

Miranda's gaze at her mother is long and steady. “And so I suppose the little old lady on West End Avenue was just another one of Daddy's girlfriends that he was paying off,” she says.

Consuelo Tarkington smiles faintly. “Oh, no,” she says, putting out her cigarette. “Quite the opposite, in fact. Your poor father. So many troubles. At least he's at peace now. No, she was a night maid at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston, where he was staying years ago.…”

“Housekeeping, sir!”

At first he had not heard her. He stood at the open window, with the sheer curtains blowing inward, staring down at the sidewalk on Arlington Street below. The doorman had just discovered the horror that lay there and was frantically blowing his whistle, running out into the street, waving his arms to summon help.

“Housekeeping!”

This time he heard her, and he stepped back from the window so fast that he cracked his head, hard, against the sash.

“Do you want turn-down service for your bed tonight, Mr. Tarkington?” she said.

“No, goddammit! Get the hell out of here!” he shouted.

“Sorry, sir.” She retreated hastily, pulling the door closed behind her, and he slammed the window shut.

He ran to the telephone. “Moe?” he said when he reached him. “There's been a terrible accident. A girl's dead,” and he told him what had happened. “But, damn it, Moe, the girl's things are all over the room—shoes, underwear, nightgown, pocketbook. There's gonna be police all over the place in a few minutes! What'm I gonna do with her
things
? They're gonna be searching rooms. Where'm I gonna hide her
things
? You gotta help me, Moe!”

“What floor're you on?”

“Seven.”

“Bonham's with you, right?”

“Right.”

“What floor's he on?”

“Four.”

“Which side of the building?”

“Other side. Newberry Street.”

“The hotel know you two are together?”

“No. I checked in yesterday. He checked in this afternoon.”

“Okay. Now listen carefully. The cops'll probably start at the top of the building and work down.” Already, from outside on the street, the sounds of police and ambulance sirens could be heard. “Call Bonham and get him up there as fast as you can with a suitcase. Throw all the girl's shit into the suitcase and have Bonham take it down to his room and hang it all up real neat in his closet. Tell him to use the elevator, not the stairs. If I know cops, the cops'll be using the stairs. Then straighten up your room the best you can. You dressed?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Turn on the TV set. And one other thing. Call Room Service and order a sandwich or some damned thing. By the time the cops get to your room, you'll be sitting there, watching TV and eating a sandwich. You got all that? Okay. Meanwhile, I'll do what I can from this end in terms of damage control. Now get moving!”

And so that was what happened, more or less. In fact, while the police were searching Si Tarkington's room, going through Si's closets and dresser drawers, his luggage, the medicine chest, looking under the bed and even stripping the bed itself, and while Si was politely asking what might be the object of this sudden search, this unexpected intrusion, and while the hotel's assistant manager stood anxiously by, apologizing to his guest for the necessity of all this, the Room Service waiter arrived with Si's chicken salad sandwich and glass of iced tea on a silver tray with a single, long-stemmed rose.

Later that evening, after the police had completed their search and relative peace and quiet had been restored to the Ritz-Carlton, Silas Tarkington's telephone rang. Assuming it to be Moe calling from New York, Si answered it.

“My name is Ernestine Kolowrat,” a woman's voice said. “You don't know me, but I am the night maid who came in to turn down your bed earlier this evening. Your window was open, and you were leaning out of it, looking down at the street. There were quite a few women's things lying around the room. I couldn't help but notice. I know who you are, Mr. Tarkington. And I think you and I ought to have a little talk, Mr. Tarkington, before I take what I know to the police.”

“What am I going to
do
, Tommy?” he moaned, his head in his hands. He had gone immediately down to Tommy's room, where he sat in Tommy's armchair while Tommy, in his pajama bottoms, sat on the unmade bed opposite him. “She's going to blackmail me!”

“Were you able to stall her a little, Si?”

“I told her I'd meet her in my room tomorrow morning at eleven and we'd talk about it.”

“Good,” he said. “Now let's think about this, Si. Let's think very hard. First of all, I've shipped my suitcase with the girl's things in it back to my apartment in New York. When I get home, I'll put everything in the incinerator, and there'll be no more evidence.”

“Thanks, Tommy,” he whispered. “But what about what this maid
saw
? She saw it all there!”

“I'm thinking,” he said. “What about Moe? Could Moe help us?”

“I don't want to get Moe involved in this any more than he already is! I know what Moe's solution would be!”

Tommy nodded. “I know what you mean,” he said.

“My God, I've already got one woman's blood on my hands! I don't want another!”

“You didn't push the girl—”

“But she was in my room!”

“You'd invited her in.”

He nodded.

“And you had sex with her.”

He nodded again.

“And on a number of previous occasions.”

“I didn't know how crazy she was!”

“Have you talked to Connie?”

“My God, no!”

“I think you should, Si. I really think you should. I think in a situation as serious as this one, you should bring Connie in on it. You need all the support you can get. You've got my support already, but I think you need your wife's support even more. I think we should all meet with this woman in the morning—you, Connie, and I—and perhaps when she sees you've got our united support—”

“I can't drag Connie into this, Tommy! I just can't!”

“I think you must, Si. I think if you make a clean breast of it, she'll stand behind you. If she finds out about it later, as she certainly may, she may not be so sympathetic.”

“How would she ever find out about it?”

“This maid, this Ernestine, could threaten to tell her. And she
could
tell her. You and Connie are in this together, Si.”

“Oh, God … oh, God.…”

“Remember Hillsdale, Si.”

“How did you know about Hillsdale?”

“Moe Minskoff—mentioned it. This could be much, much worse. Call Connie, Si. Have her get on the first shuttle to Logan in the morning.”

“When my phone rang at three
A
.
M
. that morning,” Connie says to Miranda, “I knew—at that hour—that it had to be bad news. He told me he was in trouble and needed me in Boston as soon as possible. So I got on the eight o'clock shuttle from La Guardia in the morning. When I arrived at the hotel, the two of them told me what the trouble was. We met with the maid, Ernestine Kolowrat, a woman from Poland, who struck me at first as very ignorant. ‘How much do you want?' I asked her.