Everything and More (58 page)

Once . . . once . . .

  
54
  

It was nearly midnight when Althea arrived home, yet her mother awaited her outside the open library doors. The hall’s overhead chandelier was not lit, and the blaze coming from the vast book-lined room cast an eerie elongated shadow of Mrs. Cunningham’s tall, fullbosomed, shapeless figure.

“What is it?” Althea burst out. “Is Daddy all right?”

“That’s what I must talk to you about,” said Mrs. Cunningham. “Come in here.”

Quelling her uneasiness, Althea obeyed.

Mrs. Cunningham glanced around the shadowed hall as if to ensure an absence of snoops before closing the doors after them. She crossed the length of the brilliantly lit library to the massive butternut fireplace. Her thick, soft arms clasped to her sides, she stood erect as if behind a lectern.

“While your father is ill, Althea, I will not have any scandal.” She spoke without raising her normally breathy voice, yet managed a forensic command.

“Scandal?”

“You are seeing that Gerry Horak person. Now he has a wife.”

Althea’s surprise was undetectable, but her thoughts bounced like a rubber ball. How does Mother know? Why should I feel ashamed? Gerry was banished from my life the first time in this library—is that why Mother’s brought me here? In this light Mother’s eyes are the flat, grainy gray of marble. Normally she never looks directly at me like this. Is her averted gaze the reason I’ve always feared her, even though on the surface she’s such a big, timid cow?

“A lot of men have wives, Mother,” Althea said.

“In New York and Europe you may conduct yourself as you choose, but here, under my roof, and at this time, you will behave decently.”

“Mother, this may come as a surprise, but sleeping with a man is no longer the crime of the century.”

“I am warning you.
No scandal.”

“Mother, let’s not fly off the handle about everyday occurrences. Your daughter, a thirtyish double divorcée, is dating a soon-to-be-single man. Big deal.”

“Your old friend Roy Wace was foul-mouthed and hysterical about it.”

To Althea’s distress was added a little shiver between her shoulder blades. Yet why the revelation that Roy was onto Gerry being in Beverly Hills should jar her, she did not know. After all, hadn’t she herself vigorously contrived that Roy find out? “Roy called you?”

“She wanted to speak to you. When she couldn’t, she asked for me. Unfortunately, Luther transferred the call to the sickroom. She was most obviously inebriated. The entire time, I was trembling that your father would hear. I pressed the instrument to my ear as tightly as possible. It took all my willpower to hide my distress. I can’t tell you the shock it was to find out Roy had married
him.
Of all the people in the world! And my heart sank when I heard you were seeing him again.”

“When did she call?”

“Around nine. She was absolutely deranged by drink. Shouting wild, lunatic threats. I remember her as an affectionate, well-mannered child. In a way, I pitied her. But, Althea, he’s turned her into the kind of person who makes trouble.”

“Trouble, trouble!” Althea was suddenly trembling. “What do you mean, trouble?”

“If your father had taken the call, think how awfully it would have set him back.”

“Always him! Always protecting him!” The old wounds, ripped open, bled profusely. Althea stalked over to the fireplace, thrusting her face close to her mother’s. “But what about me?” she asked in a whisper. “I was a child, ten years old at first. You knew all along what was going on, yet you let it continue. Why? Were you so afraid of losing him that you couldn’t dare risk mentioning it? Did you think he’d walk out on you if you tried to stop it? For God’s sake, you’re my mother! I know how a mother feels. How
could
you have let it go on?”

Mrs. Cunningham moved to the Georgian library ladder, which rested against the shelves to the left of the fireplace. “Sometimes I don’t understand you, Althea. You were the sweetest little girl, loving and good. Never sarcastic, never off on these wild tangents. You never ran around with unsuitable people—”

“I had no friends, but you never noticed.”

“And now you’ve picked up that coarse, common nobody—have you no respect for Charles?”

“You know damn well whose child Charles is!” Althea cried out.

Charles’s true paternity had never been voiced aloud. At the time of Althea’s marriage to Firelli, however, the Cunninghams’ ardent welcome to a groom of his advanced years had been tacit admission of the bride’s pregnancy.

Mrs. Cunningham paled. “Keep your voice down,” she hissed.

“You know how you screwed up my life!” Althea screamed. She had a peculiar sensation that the molded ceiling had risen higher and that the brass-fretted shelves loomed larger, as if she had dwindled to the size of a child.

Control, she importuned herself. Control is of the utmost importance.

Biting the inside of her cheek so she tasted the salt of blood, she moved from Mrs. Cunningham. “A shame that this mess happened, Mother, dear,” she said levelly. “I apologize for losing my temper. It’s been a trying time for all of us. I’ll see to it that there are no more telephone calls.”

For a moment Mrs. Cunningham’s eyes piercingly catechized Althea;
then her gaze slid away. Her expression returned to its usual anxious timidity. “You understand, then?”

“You have every right to be upset,” Althea said. “While Daddy’s recuperating, he needs complete peace of mind.”

“I knew you’d feel exactly as I do.” Mrs. Cunningham crossed the shadowy length of the library. “Good night, dear. See you in the morning.”

She left the doors open.

While her mother’s steps echoed heavily up the stairs, Althea poised immobile, then she began prowling the book-lined room.

I’m in for it, she thought.

Mother’s right. Roy certainly is ready to go off the deep end and make endless trouble. Then everybody will be talking. Strangers, my friends, everybody.

The weight of malicious tattle and curdling laughter would crush Althea Wimborne, a creation as carefully and exquisitely manufactured as one of the Fabergé Easter eggs that her Coyne grandmother had collected.

I must get away from this mess, she thought.

She had no subliminal or peripheral thoughts. She could dredge up no rancor against or sympathy for Roy, who obviously had been driven to the brink.

There’s no choice.

I can’t keep on with Gerry.

She halted by the piano, opening it, striking middle C. As the note sounded, she visualized Gerry’s broad face, the tension lines around his lips and eyes. He had once appeared to her redeemed from humanity’s psychological delirium by his art, but now she knew his weaknesses, the cardinal of which was loving her.

She loved him.

But what did it matter?

She could not brave a world bombarded with proof of her flaws and imperfections.

The grandfather clock gave a protracted bong, then another and another.

It was midnight. The witching hour.

She purposefully walked to the phone and dialed. When Gerry answered, she invited him to the Cunninghams’ Ojai ranch to go riding.

*   *   *

Stern mountains protect the wide, level floor of the Ojai valley, which aeons ago was the bottom of the sea, home to minute saltwater creatures and plants that, crushed by the weight of the ocean, became
rich oil deposits. Now wells pump the oil and incredibly fertile top-soil nourishes every type of crop and fruit tree. The broad swale is a peaceful and lovely place. When the producers of the original
Lost Horizon
needed a location for mythical Shangri-La, they came to Ojai. The Cunninghams had purchased the 265-acre ranch between the little town of Ojai and the foothills specifically for the few days a year during Charles’s visits that he and his grandfather—in Mrs. Cunningham’s terms—wanted to rough it.

Last night, when Althea had decided to cut off the affair, she had determined that the ranch was the place to do the deed. Gerry had never ridden and it was imperative that she see him at a disadvantage. There was no other way she could go through with it.

Mounted on her father’s spirited Arabian, wearing old tan jodhpurs and a gray sweatshirt, she led the way up the mountainside along the Cunninghams’ flinty, rocky private trail to a ridge called Brave’s Nose for its long, aquiline shape. It had been a wet season, so poppies painted the steep, sunlit slopes with liquid gold. Vivid blue lupine clumped everywhere while in the dusky shade of the live oaks maidenhair grew profusely. At their approach, quail rustled heavily from the chaparral.

Althea turned to look back at Gerry. Gripping onto his pommel, he squinted intently up at the cerulean sky in the direction of the gray, nose-shaped summit that gave the mountain its name. “What’s that? It’s too big to be an eagle.”

She raised a sheltering hand. “A condor,” she said. “You’re lucky to see one. They’re very rare.”

“So naturally they nest on land belonging to the rich bastards,” Gerry said, grinning. The sun had reddened the bridge of his nose and the skin above his high cheekbones.

Althea’s spirited Arabian stallion pawed as she reined him so she and Gerry could ride side by side. Gerry’s mount, a tall, mahogany-colored Tennessee walking horse, the most gentle of animals, edged sideways without any pressure from him.

“I think,” Althea said, “that you ought to go back to Roy.”

Gerry jumped as if hit with buckshot. His placid mount stumbled on the shale.

“What are you talking about?” he demanded.

“We’ve run the course, you and I.”

His eyes fixed on her, he growled, “The hell you say.” He reached for her upper arm, squeezing through the flesh to the bone.

Excitement burned inside Althea’s vagina, yet her resolve remained. “You’re her husband.”

“I’m leaving her and marrying you, remember?”

“She won’t let you go. Not that I blame her.” It surprised Althea how devoid she was of recrimination or resentful anger. This was how she had always longed to be in a crisis. Benignly uninvolved. Removed from the sweaty, hormonal heat. Presenting her side of the argument from an unendangered parapet where she could not be stabbed or bludgeoned into blurting out ineptitudes. “She’ll fight.”

“What are you, a mind reader?”

“None of this is anybody’s fault, Gerry, but she called yesterday evening when I was with you—”

Gerry interrupted, “She knows I’m out here in California?”

“That’s my fault,” said Althea, who usually bucked against admitting culpability. “I just didn’t realize she had such a drinking problem. When she talked to Mother, evidently she was loaded to the gills.”

Insects buzzed above the dry bushes.

Gerry sighed. “The poor kid.”

“Yes,” Althea agreed. “So you see, don’t you, that she’d turn a divorce into the sort of circus newspapers thrive on. People like me are always in the center ring. Gerry, I just couldn’t take it. I’m a very private person.”

“I know what you are!” Gerry’s hand had remained on her arm and he yanked her roughly toward him.

Her horse reared violently. She calmed the frightened animal, murmuring wordlessly, patting the straining neck. When the Arabian was stilled, she said, “For God’s sake, Gerry, one of us is going to get thrown.”

“Not you,” he said bitterly. “Never you.”

“And what about you? You try to play tough guy, but you aren’t. You’re going to feel responsible and guilty about Roy.”

“Worse than that,” he admitted. “But I learned the hard way that everything has a price tag.”

“It’s not only me. There’s my parents. Charles.”

“Are you telling me in this calm, rational voice that we’re through?” He reached out again.

She reined her horse apart from his. “Listen, any more caveman tactics and we’ll both be thrown.”

She turned back down the trail, trotting easily, gracefully. He followed, jouncing in the Western saddle yet somehow giving the impression of belonging on his large, broad-backed mount.

The Mexican groom took the horses, leading them to the commodious stables.

Gerry spraddled an awkward circle as if his thigh muscles hurt—as they probably did.