Mourning Glory
Authors: Warren Adler
Tags: #Suspense, #Literary, #South Atlantic, #Travel, #Contemporary, #General, #Romance, #Sagas, #Espionage, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #United States, #South
BOOKS BY WARREN ADLER
Banquet Before Dawn
Blood Ties
Cult
Death of a Washington Madame
Empty Treasures
Flanagan's Dolls
Funny Boys
Madeline's Miracles
Mourning Glory
Natural Enemies
Private Lies
Random Hearts
Residue
The Casanova Embrace
The Children of the Roses
The David Embrace
The Henderson Equation
The Housewife Blues
The War of the Roses
The Womanizer
Trans-Siberian Express
Twilight Child
Undertow
We Are Holding the President
Hostage
SHORT STORIES
Jackson Hole, Uneasy Eden
Never Too Late For Love
New York Echoes
New York Echoes 2
The Sunset Gang
MYSTERIES
American Sextet
American Quartet
Immaculate Deception
Senator Love
The Ties That Bind
The Witch of Watergate
Copyright ©
2001
by Warren Adler.
ISBN 978-1-59006-089-6
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced
in any form without permission. This novel is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, incidents are either the product
of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
Inquiries: WarrenAdler.com
STONEHOUSE PRESS
Contents
For Peter Lampack, with admiration, affection,and apologies
ONE
"But I can still see the wrinkles," the woman
said.
Grace studied the woman's face, the dry, aged-parchment
skin tight over the bone structure, pulled back taut like a slingshot. A broad
smile, she speculated, would detach it from the skull and shoot it like a
Halloween mask over the makeup counter. Grace bit her lip to keep herself from
grinning at the bizarre image.
She knew who the woman was by reputation, Mrs.
Milton-hyphen-something, a world-class champion shopper. Clerks fawned over her
as if she were the Queen of Sheba dispensing largesse to the peons. For a big
commission Grace, too, could fawn with the best of them, hating the process
but, like the rest of the salesclerks, eager to accept the rewards.
Having never before waited on Mrs. Milton-hyphen-something,
she saw the moment as pregnant with income possibilities. Besides, she needed
something to take the edge off what had started out to be a very unpromising
day.
"Perhaps a bit more of this," Grace said, dabbing
at the spidery corner of the woman's eyes with the brush. Even in the
flattering stage light of the makeup mirror, carefully wrought to wash away the
telltale clues of aging, the skin ruts could not be made to disappear.
A hard and hopeless case, Grace sighed to herself, knowing
it would be impossible to satisfy the woman's insistence on appearing, at least
in her own mind, wrinkle free. Makeup creates an illusion, she wanted to
explain, her standard lecture to women who came to her for either a new look or
lessons in the art of beauty enhancement through cosmetics.
For the younger women, the lesson was easier to impart.
Besides, with them, she used a more magnified and, therefore, more revealing
mirror, one that enlarged the pores. These younger ones who bellied up to her
counter all seemed to suffer from rampant insecurity, as if they didn't truly
believe in the essential beauty of youth and needed the paints and smears to
feel attractive.
Somehow it didn't jibe with the ideal of the modern woman
currently in vogue, the contemporary ideal, the confident, independent,
able-to-have-it-all female touted in the media. Oh, they were out there, all
right, like Mrs. Burns, who managed the store. Grace saw them everywhere,
admired their wonderful, cool arrogance, their
I-don't-need-a-man-to-make-me-whole-and-happy attitude. She granted hopefully
that such observations could be an illusion, a false positive, and that, in
reality, those cool numbers prancing about were just as insecure as she was.
Fat chance.
She knew in her heart exactly where she stood, one among
many still barely on the sunny side of forty, an anonymous grunt in the vast
army of female also-rans, the powerless majority, stuck in some weird limbo,
dismissed by their more successful sisters as congenital losers, who could not,
for whatever reasons, respond to the clarion of the gender's call to arms. The
truth of the matter was that most of those in the ranks of these defeated
battalions, like her, were unlucky, battered by inexplicable circumstances,
mismanagement or, perhaps, just too dumb to find the right doors to open.
Others were irrevocably stuck in yesterday's female mind-set, hopelessly
old-fashioned and totally unaware of the possibilities in the new world.
Ironically, for purposes of social comment, advertising
reach and political posturing, her group was statistically in demand. Not like
the single females in the fifty-to-seventy category, that army of the divorced
and widowed who had walked over the hill to oblivion, the cruelly cast-off,
doomed by chronology, aging flesh and diminishing opportunity to a kind of
loneliness and sexual limbo.
Her group was always cited as that demographic female baby
boomer segment with subcategories like working poor, single mother, marginally
educated and, above all, semiskilled. She was all of the above. Translated to
class, she figured herself to be lower middle, very lower and, therefore,
downwardly mobile, now in speedy descent. Jackie, her daughter, would
undoubtedly agree, although for her sake, Grace maintained a razor-thin facade
of hopefulness and optimism. By some miracle of genetics she still had her
looks and figure. Small comfort since, so far, it hadn't done her much good.
Considering her status, she took some satisfaction in the
irony of her occupation. Cosmetics, creating false illusions through facial
paint, was, inexplicably and thankfully, exempt from prohibition by the so-called
"new woman," a possibility hardly on the agenda of the woman who
stood before her.
Women like Mrs. Milton-hyphen-something, well north of
sixty with unlimited funds, weren't even pretending to buy the concept of
cosmetic beauty enhancement. They wanted camouflage. They were dependent more
on the plastic surgeon's knife than the chemist's dubious magic for their
attempts to defeat or, at the least, stalemate time's relentless destruction.
"I don't think you know your business," the woman
snapped, her head moving on her neck like a puppet's in a desperate attempt to
find the wrinkle-smoothing reflection. To make visibility more authentic and
truthful, the woman had put on her reading glasses and was squinting unhappily
into the mirror.
"I am a graduate cosmetician," Grace said in
defense of herself, citing her ninety-day course.
"Big deal," the woman huffed.
"And I've worked here in Palm Beach at Saks Fifth
Avenue for three years," Grace countered calmly, pasting her best
customer's smile on her lips, hoping to unload the crone's wagons. "I've
never had a complaint." She paused, realizing she wasn't making a dent in
the woman's unhappiness. "Sometimes cosmetics are designed to bring out a
woman's character and tell the story of life well lived."
The woman eyed her suspiciously over her half glasses.
"What does that mean?" she sneered, her lips
twisted as if she were having gas pains.
"I was merely commenting that your face shows
extraordinary character. There is great beauty in character. After all, you've
earned those wrinkles. Why try to hide them?"
"Are you crazy?" the woman said.
"None of these preparations are designed to hide the
real you."
"Jesus. Are you trying to say that it's attractive to
look like a wrinkled old fart? I don't have to come here for that, lady."
"You're misinterpreting my remark. I only
meant..."
"I know what you meant."
Just one more nail in the coffin, Grace sighed, listing in
her mind the day's toll so far, beginning with her morning battle with Jackie,
sixteen years of seething anger and perceived needs. It was growing worse each
day. Money for this. Money for that. It was a breakfast staple. Money! Damned
money and the shortage thereof. It was the bane of her existence.
Worse, in a life of irony this one had sharp spikes. She
had named her daughter after the late Jackie O, as if the name could be an
inspiration for taste, gentility, elegance and fine aspirations. Now it seemed
like an adolescent myth gone sour. Like her namesake, her Jackie was
acquisitive, indiscriminately so. Unfortunately her taste had a split
personality. She thirsted for the high end, yet seemed mesmerized by the low
end, the lowest end.
"Can I help it if I like beautiful clothes, Mom? You
promised that you would get me the Donna Karan when it got reduced."
The Donna Karan plaint was at the root of the latest
skirmish on the clothes front. Jackie had seen the outfit one day when she had
met Grace at Saks, where she often wandered through the designer clothes areas
while waiting for Grace to get off from work. The slacks outfit was priced far
out of line for their pocketbook, but Grace had promised that if it got to the
sale stage, she would definitely buy it for her with her employee discount,
which meant 40 percent off.
She had even begged the salesclerk in designer dresses to
downplay it so that it would hang around unsold and be a candidate for
reduction. It was on the verge, and Grace calculated that she could get it
within the week, which would be a great surprise and, perhaps, a peace offering
for Jackie.
This morning, in addition to the ritual of the clothes, it
was the never-ending litany of the car. "A car is a must, Mom, an absolute
must."
"I thought the Donna Karan was a must."
"That, too."
A "must" was condoms, Grace had countered,
reiterating her own litany, which included getting good enough marks to get
into Florida State, which was Jackie's only affordable option for college.
Another "must," in Grace's standard lecture, which she had delivered
that morning with almost hysterical passion, was realizing one's potential and
developing a sense of personal responsibility. This meant, in addition to safe
sex, avoiding drugs and booze, bad company and, above all, showing some respect
and appreciation for her hardworking efforts to give their lives, despite the
obstacles, a semblance of dignity.
Dignity, she had discovered, was a word being used by her
with increasing repetitiveness. It was for Grace the ultimate fallback
position, the last refuge of the working poor. It was not easy to be dignified
living on twenty-five thousand dollars a year before deductions.
"I'm going to be seventeen, Mom," Jackie had
reminded her, as if she were about to enter some mythological geographic
environment requiring special equipment to survive. "I'm not like the
other girls in school. I don't want to be a K mart person for the rest of my
life. I am a Saks Fifth Avenue person, not a clerk like you, a potential
customer. I am in my heart a Bendel person, a Bonwit, a Cartier and Tiffany
person, with a body that craves Valentinos, Versace, Ferragamo, St. Laurent, Givenchy, not Gap, Wal-Mart or K mart. I want expensive things. Not
bargain-basement shit. Is it a crime to love nice things? You should be proud
of my champagne tastes. You're the one who taught me that. Remember who I was
named after."
"Now you're blaming me," Grace said, troubled by
her daughter's awesome yearnings and eloquence beyond her years. More and more
she was feeling inadequate to Jackie's daily challenges. It was, after all,
Grace who had taken her on those window-shopping forays on Worth Avenue, who
had subscribed to the fashion magazines that cluttered the apartment.
"Champagne tastes are okay if you have a champagne
pocketbook. Which we don't."
"And never will," Jackie snorted.
"Never say never," Grace replied.
"I hate being without," Jackie told her, which
was yet another perpetual mantra that she was exposed to on a daily basis.
"We're not exactly without, Jackie," Grace
sighed.
"I know, Mom. I do appreciate your twenty-five-dollar
weekly allowance," Jackie said sarcastically.
"I'm happy you remembered its source."
"Daddy would if he could."
"Daddy's entire life has been based on wish
fulfillment, potential events that never happen."
After six years of divorce, Jason rarely surfaced, except
in periods of acute financial desperation. At times, Grace had obliged his
entreaties for her daughter's sake.
"Daddy is a dreamer. The world has to make a place for
people like him."
"Just as long as it's not with us," Grace shot
back with barbed sarcasm. Defending Jason, her ex-husband, was an arrow in
Jackie's quiver of annoyances. She had protested vehemently her mother's
dropping of the Lombardi name.
"Why would he want to be here with us? Come on, Mom.
We live in a dump. Nothing here but losers. And don't be so high-and-mighty
about my allowance. I couldn't get by if I didn't have that job in the
multiplex."
"I'm doing the best I can."
It was always Grace's last refuge.
"I know. That's what hurts the most, knowing that this
is the best you can do."
Weekends Jackie worked as a ticket cashier at the
multiplex. Grace had actually increased her allowance so that she could devote
more of her time to schoolwork. Financially it was still not enough, and Jackie
had to keep her job. Grace was absolutely paranoid about seeing her daughter
get into college and, so far, Jackie had barely managed to eke out a passing
average.
Grace's disintegrating relationship with her daughter, long
on a downhill slide, was now accelerating rapidly. Grace's best efforts, she
realized, would never be good enough, not for someone with Jackie's unrealistic
expectations. Had Grace planted these ideas in her daughter? Was it wrong to
point out the good things in life, to inspire a higher taste level than their
pocketbook could afford? Maybe so. Whatever the reason, Grace was losing
control over her daughter.
Jackie was too attractive, too sexually precocious, too
manipulative and financially ambitious to accept the present condition of her
life. Grace had no illusions about where it would lead. Jackie was an explosion
waiting to happen, and that morning's confrontation merely reiterated that
possibility.
Then, adding insult to the injury of the day, just as a
pouting Jackie left for school, Jason, Jackie's father, called from parts
unknown with his repetitive plea. "Help me out till I get on my feet,
Grace."
She had been particularly harsh. "The only way to get
on your feet is to nail them to the ground, Jay. You're a fuck-up. Never call
me again. Ever."
Angry, she had slammed the receiver into its cradle.
She had had fifteen years of good looks and empty promises
from this brainless mannequin who could conjure up more impossible dreams than
Don Quixote. Finally she had shown him the door, shouting, literally "and
take your windmills with you." In retrospect, she had come to enjoy that
line, which she had heard once in a movie.
Back home in "Ballimer," they were once the
golden couple. She, the cute and very popular Grace Sorentino, the barber's
daughter, with the jet-black hair, soft pink skin and Wedgwood blue eyes. The
movie star look. He, Jason Lombardi, a walking double for Robert Redford. Of
course, one didn't make a living being a walking double for Robert Redford, as
she was to find out later. And there was limited mileage in being a cute
knockout with a great figure. Someone had once said she had a walk that could
raise an erection on a dead man. She had taken that as an insult back then.
Now, at thirty-eight, she read it as a kind of compliment, although doubtful
that the description was still operative. Jason's call had brought back the
hated memory of her wasted years.