Saving Grace (13 page)

“The signs were masked but they were there. I know, because other people read them. I didn’t, despite having every opportunity. I’ve followed Fleishman’s career since my high-school days. The man was right up there with Rudd, Seale, Dellinger, Hayden, and Hoffman as the heroes of my youth. When our paths crossed in New York, I grabbed at the chance to meet him.

“We never became close personal friends. I didn’t visit him at home, sail with him, or eat at his table. I did, however, fuck his daughter.”

Barnaby didn’t intend to write that last sentence. It seemed to type itself. He deleted it quickly and went on.

“We were, however, political allies, and I think that for both of us that counted more. I watched with admiration as Fleishman backed his way into the municipal Democratic machine, a radical Trojan Horse decked out in moderate trappings. At my urging this paper endorsed him for Eastborough Democratic leader. After he won, I reported on his activities with satisfaction and a regrettable sense of hubris: Barnaby the Kingmaker.”

Barnaby the Kingmaker
: was that going too far? It was hard to judge. Once you let yourself get started, this kind of writing was hard to control. Barnaby was aiming for the sort of confession that would induce colleagues to slap him on the back and say, “Lighten up, man, you’re not omniscient,” not the sort that would make them think: “Hey, the guy really
is
a jerk.”

 
He deleted the phrase and went on.

“In retrospect it’s obvious, as these things usually are. I should have realized that no one could have devoted the time Fleishman did to his political job and still manage to make a private fortune, unless his public and private affairs overlapped. But even after my eyes were finally opened by the Kavin affair, the evidence of his corruption was hard to discover.

“To some extent this is because Fleishman’s been careful to cover his tracks. But the greatest impediment to my investigation has been the fact that his constituents don’t care. ‘The guy works hard for us,’ they say; ‘he’s entitled to look after his family, too.’ You hear it from Democrats and Republicans alike: ‘Jonathan Fleishman is the best thing that ever happened to Eastborough.’

“It’s a sad commentary on the state of politics in our city that, corruption notwithstanding, they may be right. Fleishman’s achievements were real, not imaginary. My disappointment and, yes, my anger at Fleishman are directly proportionate to the esteem in which I’d held him.

“This, then, is my confession. Because I liked Jonathan Fleishman, because I respected him and took pride in his success, because I expected great things of him—because, in short, I invested too much in the man—I allowed myself to be blindsided.

“Ultimately, there is no justification. It was my responsibility to look harder, to look deeper, to take those hard-won lessons on political hypocrisy and apply them to our friends as well as to our enemies. If Fleishman is about to take a big fall, I feel partially responsible for helping to erect the pedestal. That’s not a reporter’s job. A reporter’s job is to see things as they are, not as we would wish they were.

Mea culpa.
”

Maudlin self-pity, that last bit, Barnaby thought when he read it over, but he let it stand. It was all bullshit anyway. He’d confessed to every sin in the book except the one thing he felt slightly guilty about, and that was balling the Fleishman girl. Amazing Grace; Lord, what a sweet thing. Barnaby used to despise older men who dated young girls; now he saw the matter in a whole new light. Girls were different from women, body and soul. One saw so little innocence in his line of work. Gracie reminded Barnaby of something he’d lost so long ago he didn’t even remember what it was. Under any other circumstances he’d have gone on seeing her, and to hell with what people thought. Even now his main regret was that their affair had been so short.

Anyway, it was over and done with; no point worrying about it now. Opportunity had knocked and he’d opened the door. He was human. Barnaby had been in the news business too long to imagine that reporters were made of different stuff from the people they reported on.
 

Still, it nagged at him, eroding the pleasure he deserved to feel at exposing Fleishman. He kept imagining Gracie opening the
Probe,
reading his article, including the story she’d given him, and discovering she’d been used. He thought of calling to forewarn her, but he couldn’t envision the conversation going anywhere useful. What he really wanted to explain was that he had a higher responsibility, a calling, it was fair to say, beside which any claim she had on him was insignificant. It wasn’t as if he’d raped her, after all. She’d initiated the encounter. Besides, he’d done nothing to her that her old man hadn’t done to the city.

Her story about the Martindale house was not essential to his article. But it was true, he’d checked it out; and it effectively established Fleishman’s hypocrisy. When he made the decision to use it, Barnaby had considered the possibility that Grace might retaliate by exposing their relationship. Unlikely, he’d decided; no woman likes to admit she’s been used. She’d cover it up for her own sake. And if worst came to worst, it would be her word against his, and his carried weight.

If only he could be sure. It was hard to predict what Gracie might do. Barnaby hadn’t forgotten the time they played chess in Union Square Park. He was a good player, but he made the mistake of underestimating Grace. She won in twelve moves and they never played again.

* * *

Lily slept fitfully.

Her mother’s voice came to her day and night. It wasn’t that Lily imagined her mother alive. She knew full well that Greta was dead; but the knowledge made no difference.

Once she got over the initial shock, this haunting was not surprising, but rather seemed long delayed. Greta had died by her own hand, of her own free will. If she changed her mind, if she found she had something left to say, could not one act of will be reversed by another?

The suicide had been carefully planned. In Greta’s apartment they found books on pharmacology, the relevant sections underlined in red. Before taking the pills, she posted a letter to the local police precinct, so that they and not her daughter would find her. Pinned to her dress they found a note addressed to Lily.

“I am so tired,” it said, in Greta’s ornate Germanic script. “My strength is used up. I waited until you were settled. Now I can’t wait anymore. Forgive me, darling Lily. I love you. All that was mine, I leave to you.”

The words were no comfort and the legacy was tainted. Everything Greta had had was both more and less than Lily wanted. Solace came only now, two decades later, from the sound of her mother’s voice.
 

Lily told no one about Greta’s return. The matter was personal, and besides, she knew what others would advise, what she herself would have advised another.

She didn’t want to see a doctor. Nothing was wrong with her. If her mother’s voice was a symptom, it was of no disease Lily cared to have diagnosed. To her it seemed a blessing. Those nursery songs carried with them their original aura of warmth, security, enveloping love. Who would exorcise such a welcome visitation?

On the morning of the day Barnaby’s story would appear, Lily woke from an uneasy sleep to a sense of Greta’s presence. With her eyes shut, she could almost feel the warmth of Greta’s soft flannel nightgown and smell her scent, a blend of Ivory Snow and violet sachets.

She imagined herself a child again, walking down a street with her mother. Greta had a small compact that she carried in her hand whenever she went out. There was no powder in the compact; Greta didn’t wear makeup, not even lipstick. She used it for the mirror, which she consulted surreptitiously, angling it this way and that. Lily had never asked why, just as she never asked the meaning of Greta’s blue tattoo.

The memory faded, and with it the sense of Greta’s presence. Lily opened her eyes and turned toward Jonathan, but he wasn’t there. She remembered that it was midweek and he was staying in the Highview house, close to his office. She got out of bed, washed, and dressed. The house was silent; Clara, for once, was sleeping late. Lily put up a pot of coffee and discovered they were out of milk. She took her purse and walked outside. A light mist rose off the bay, and the air was salty. She stopped to clip a vine that had tangled itself around a rosebush; then she drove to the deli on Main Street.

It was early, no customers in the store. Old Henry Blue behind the counter blushed inexplicably when Lily came in. She took a half-gallon of milk from the refrigerator and placed it on the counter. Henry glanced involuntarily toward a stack of papers on the floor. Lily looked down. Nestled between
Newsday
and
the New York Times
was a stack of the
Probe
. Above the logo
,
a banner headline screamed up at her: “THE LONG FALL OF JONATHAN FLEISHMAN.”

She picked up a copy and skimmed the piece. Henry busied himself with his back to her, stacking packs of cigarettes. Lily couldn’t take it in. Phrases jumped out at her. Secret probe, indictments, racketeering, extortion, bribes—this wasn’t her Jonathan they were writing about, this was some other man. Influence peddling, Rencorp, Martindale…Lily stopped then, and read the section about Martindale slowly. Tears came to her eyes, and she leaned her forehead against a glass display case.

“Are you all right, Mrs. Fleishman?” Henry kept his eyes on the counter.

She nodded at the stack of
Probes
. “How many do you have?”
 

“About forty, ma’am.”

“Would you put them in my car, Henry?” She laid a hundred-dollar bill on the counter.

“What’s the point?” he said gently. “You can’t buy them all.”

She tried to lift the stack herself. Henry Blue sighed and came around to help.

* * *

Clara sorted through the morning mail. She recognized her daughter’s doctorish scrawl and started to open the envelope before noticing it was addressed to Grace. There was a second letter from Israel, this one to her. She hadn’t seen the writing in many years, but she knew immediately whose hand it was.

She didn’t open it at once. She returned to her room and placed the envelope on her dresser. She washed her face, combed her hair, took off her nightgown, and put on a brassiere and girdle and over them a dress, not a
shmatta
for the house but a real dress. She made her bed. Then, at last, Clara sank into her armchair and opened the letter.

“Dear Wife,” he had written, which incensed her at once. True, they had never divorced. But what kind of marriage was it when the husband and wife never met, never talked, never even wrote to each other?

And why suddenly now? she wondered, crumpling the letter in her hand. It couldn’t be good news. It came to her that in his old age, Jacob was getting lonely. Maybe he wanted to remarry. She imagined him asking for a divorce, and a rusty twinge of jealousy ran through her old bones. The feeling made no sense; how could you lose what you didn’t have? She smoothed out the letter and read on:

“Tamar wants Gracie should come visit us here. We all want to know her. Tamar wrote to the child but I’m writing to you. Don’t you stop her, Clara. It wouldn’t be right. She got family here, a grandfather, an aunt, a cousin she never met. She’s got a right to know us if she wants. Tamar says Gracie will make up her own mind, but she don’t know you like I know you. Once you set your mind, that’s it. If you decide to stop her, she don’t come. So please. What’s right is right.”

Clara snorted. The nerve of the man. First he stole her daughter. Now he wanted her granddaughter. Clara hadn’t minded Paul visiting Israel. She knew her grandson, and she knew the kibbutz. He was in no danger. Gracie was a different story. With that girl you never knew what would be, except trouble.

Besides, was it right she didn’t know her grandson? How many times did she ask Tamar to send Micha for a visit, and all she got were pictures. But such pictures. What a handsome boy, and smart, she knew from his letters.

“Over my dead body you’ll get Gracie,” she scolded, shaking Jacob’s letter as if it were his throat. “She’ll go to Mecca before she goes to Israel.”

A car drove fast up the driveway, scattering gravel. A door slammed. Lily’s staccato heels clicked up the path, across the deck, and into the kitchen. Clara went to meet her, waving Jacob’s letter. “Lily, I want to talk to you.”

Her daughter-in-law did not look at her. Her arms were full of newspapers and her face was smudged with print. Clara had never seen her so pale.

“Lily,
mammale,
what’s the matter?”

Lily dropped the stack on the table, took a large black trash bag from a drawer, and started stuffing the newspapers inside.

“What you doing? Lily, talk to me. At least look. What am I, a ghost?” Still Lily did not respond. Clara snatched a paper from the table and held it close to her eyes. Her lips moved. “Oy Gott.”

Paul strolled into the kitchen, dressed for tennis, carrying his racket. A handsome boy, tall, blond, clean-cut, and if he was overly conscious of his good looks, it was natural enough at his age. He walked past his mother and grandmother to the refrigerator and took out a carton of juice. He turned and his eyes fell on the
Probe’s
banner headline. He read it aloud and looked at his mother, who shook her head helplessly. Paul uncrumpled the paper and read the story standing, still holding the Tropicana.