The Sins of the Mother (21 page)

“Bad time?” Peter asked her, ready to leave if she was too busy, but she shook her head and sat back in her chair with a grin.

“No, I was just reading about the Stockholm suit. That can’t have been a lot of fun dragging that table up the stairs. I’m thinking of giving her the set of chairs to go with it. The memo said she didn’t buy them.”

“If you do, be sure you have them delivered, or she’ll up the ante on the suit,” he said, laughing. “I saw it too. I don’t think she’ll really sue us.” But there were others who had and would. Peter always advised her well. There had been a head injury case of a bookcase that fell on someone in an earthquake. They hadn’t bolted it to the wall, and it said to do so in the instructions that went with it, but Olivia paid the settlement anyway. They carried astronomical insurance to cover real claims, and when reasonable, they settled, in order to maintain goodwill. They weren’t trying to hurt anyone or take advantage of them, even when their customers were foolish.

“You look terrific,” Peter said as he gazed at her admiringly. She seemed healthy and tan and relaxed. He could see that the boat trip with her children had done her a world of good. Her vacations with them always did. And he looked well after his time in Maine too. He had come home a week early. He said he had a lot to do. And they both knew that a strike at their Spanish stores was coming and probably couldn’t be avoided. Local government had made the situation worse, and it would keep them busy if it happened. And there had been an arson fire in their warehouse in South Dakota. It was hard to keep on top of it all, but they both did. You had to have a clear head and think on your feet, and be able to make rapid, intelligent decisions to prevent any bad situations from getting worse.

“Thank you, Peter,” she said as he sat down across from her. “How was Maine?” His eyes were the same color as hers, and she saw them cloud over for a moment.

“The same as always. Emily and I don’t have a lot to say to each other. I left when the kids did. I enjoyed it, but I’m happy to be home. She’ll be up there for a few more weeks till Labor Day. What about you? No more travel plans for August?” He had been more expansive than he usually was about his marriage, but she knew it anyway. He had confided in her for many years. The marriage had died shortly after their children were born, when he discovered that his wife was an alcoholic. She had promised to get treatment for years and never did. Nothing had changed, and now they had the form of a marriage but not the spirit. He had gone to Al-Anon meetings for years, and finally gave up begging her to stop drinking. He had given up on the marriage then too. Olivia had met her, she was a nice woman, and intelligent, but she looked ravaged by her addiction, which still burned out of control like a forest fire. Peter no longer went out with her socially. At sixty-three, he was married, but he had been alone emotionally for years. He buried himself in his work, as Olivia did.

“I’m not going anywhere, unless we have a problem somewhere that I need to attend to or see for myself,” Olivia answered his question. “I have too much to do here. I don’t want to start traveling again until September.”

“That sounds reasonable.” Then he hesitated and looked at her as an expression of tenderness passed between them. “Dinner Saturday?” It was a shorthand they both understood. She nodded, and they smiled at each other.

“That sounds terrific. Bedford?” He nodded too. And then she got up and quietly came around her desk. It was after hours, her assistant had gone home, the building was quiet, and she was more relaxed than usual after her vacation. She was wearing a light summer dress, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her as she approached him and then gently bent to kiss him. “I missed you. I always do,” she said softly. She wanted him to know it, although she expected nothing from him in return. She never did. She understood his situation perfectly. He would stay where he was forever, with Emily, drinking herself to death quietly.

Peter stood up then and did something they never did in the office, but they were alone. He put his arms around her and kissed her. He sighed as he did. Holding her always felt so good. “I missed you terribly,” he admitted. They stood kissing in each other’s arms for a long moment, lost in the tenderness of it, and then they both heard a sound in the room.

Their lips parted and their heads turned, and they both saw him at the same time. It was Phillip standing in the doorway with a stack of papers in his arms, and a horrified expression. He looked like he’d been shot out of a cannon. Peter and Olivia moved apart discreetly—he gave Olivia a serious look and walked away. He said nothing to her, and as he passed Phillip in the doorway, he nodded at him.

“Sorry, Phillip,” was all he said, as Phillip strode toward his mother with a vengeance. Peter didn’t want to leave her with him, but he thought it best to do so. It was better for her to deal with her son alone.

“What was that moment of insanity I just witnessed?” her son asked her, as Olivia sat down quietly at her desk. In the instant it had happened, and they had been discovered, she had made a decision not to apologize to him. He was old enough to know the truth. She and Peter had been discreet lovers for ten years.

“It’s not insanity, Phillip. And it’s none of your business, any more than your personal life is mine. We’re both adults.”

“What, you’re having affairs with the employees now? What kind of bullshit is that? What if someone saw you?”

“We thought we were alone. And Peter is not an employee, he’s our general counsel. And what I do personally is no concern of yours. I’m sorry if it upset you, but I can assure you, we’re discreet.” She was shaking at his accusation, but she didn’t let it show. She had to take a position on the situation now, and she didn’t like what he had said. Not at all.

“
Discreet?
Are you crazy, or just immoral? He’s married, he’s ten years younger than you are, and if the press gets hold of this, you’ll look ridiculous. It will invalidate all our legal positions if people find out you’re sleeping with him. And he’s a married man, for chrissake! Is this what you did when you were gone all the time when we were kids? Is this what it was all about? Did Dad know? And all your bullshit about morality—what a joke! How dare you moralize to us, when you’re screwing around with married men, and maybe you always were.”

“Stop it!” Olivia said in a powerful tone as she stood up at her desk. She had an instant sense that Phillip was using this as a vehicle to air his grievances of the past. “I was faithful to your father every moment of our marriage, and he knew that. I was away so that I could build this business for all of us, and he knew that too. He wanted me to. He respected what I did, even if you don’t. And I respected him. Your father has been gone for fourteen years, Phillip. I’ve worked closely with Peter Williams for longer than that. He was kind to me when your father died, and has given us invaluable advice for all these years. It took me four years to get involved with him after your father died, if it’s any of your business, which it isn’t. He’s lonely, so am I, and he’s seven years younger than I am, not ten. His wife is an alcoholic, and he’s married to her in name only. And we’ve been discreet for ten years. No one ever found out about this but you. It’s not going to hurt our business, I won’t let it, and neither would he.

“And you’re right about one thing, it’s not a shining example of morality in the absolute. But we’re real people, with real lives, with grown children in their thirties and forties. I’m single, and he’s respectful of his wife. I don’t recommend this kind of situation, but it happens. I carry a huge responsibility here, on my shoulders alone, and if the kindness of Peter Williams helps me do that, then it’s a compromise I’ve decided to make. It took me a long time to make that decision, and I did. It’s not ideal, I’ll agree with you on that. But we’re human beings, and the ideal isn’t always possible. He’s never going to leave his wife, out of respect for her, and we’re not flagrant about this.

“I’m old, Phillip. I work hard, I always have. And if this gives us both some comfort in our later years, then so be it. You don’t get to decide what’s right for me or not. You can decide that for yourself. We all make compromises. You’ve decided it’s enough to be married to a woman who behaves like an iceberg and gives you precious little comfort, from what I can see. And I’ve had an affair for ten years with a married man. I was faithful to your father to his dying day and for years after. In all the ways that matter, I still am. I loved him when he was alive and I still do. And if this is what I choose to do, it is entirely up to me, not to you. The compromises you make in your life in order to make it work are your business. This is mine. It’s a compromise, but sometimes that’s a decision that one makes. I owe you no explanations, and I’m not going to discuss this further with you. Don’t try to cast aspersions on my behavior when I was married to your father—that won’t fly. And if you don’t like what I’m doing now, then I’m sorry. But that’s the end of it. The discussion stops right here.”

Her son was standing across the desk from her where Peter had been a moment before, and Phillip was shaking with rage. “I stand by what I said a few minutes ago. You’re a hypocrite. I don’t know if you were faithful to my father, I hope so for his sake. But you’re no saint, Mother. You’re the mistress of a married man. I don’t care if his wife is an alcoholic, that makes no difference. He’s married and you’re sleeping with him. He works for us. You’re sleeping with the help. So don’t lecture me.” He didn’t deny what she’d said about Amanda, but he was only thinking about Peter. And he was outraged that his mother was having an affair. Olivia couldn’t help wondering if it really made a difference to him that Peter was married—maybe he just couldn’t tolerate the idea of his mother sleeping with someone other than his father. He was very black and white in his ideas, and she always had been too, but the situation had changed over the years, and she and Peter loved each other, in a quiet way.

“I’m going to forget everything you just said. I’m not proud of what I’m doing, but I’m not ashamed of it either. It is what it is. Two people who need each other and have the weight of the world on their shoulders. We work hard, and derive a little comfort from each other. It keeps us going on the bad days, and there are a lot of those in this business, or any business. We’re not hurting anyone. I’m sorry if it upsets you, but we’re all grown-ups here, even you. You’re forty-six years old, and no, I wasn’t there every minute when you were growing up. I wish I had been, but I wasn’t. There were other things I thought I had to do, and your father thought so too. Maybe we were wrong. I’ll always regret what I missed. But that’s over, Phillip. We can’t get those years back. I can’t undo it, no matter how sorry I am if it hurt you. And I have a right to some comfort in my life, whether you like it or not.”

“You’re seventy years old, for chrissake. You’re an old woman. What are you doing screwing around at your age?”

“I’m not ‘screwing around,’ as you put it. I’m sorry you see it that way. And it’s absolutely none of your concern what I do, as long as I run this business correctly, and don’t embarrass you or myself publicly, and I’m not. The rest is up to me, Phillip. There’s no vote on this issue. This isn’t a board meeting, it’s my life, and you don’t get a voice in this one.”

He stared at her in unbridled fury, and without another word, he turned on his heel and left the room. He was seething at everything she had said to him.

She was shaking when she sat down at her desk again when he had left. This wasn’t the way she had wanted Phillip to discover her affair with Peter. She hadn’t wanted anyone to find out at all. But he had, and she had to live with it now. It didn’t change anything, and Phillip would have to get over it. It reminded her suddenly of her own feelings when she had realized that her mother was Ansel Morris’s mistress. She had hated it, it seemed so wrong to her. She had thought her mother was “a fallen woman.” But she was thirteen years old, not forty-six. She had discovered her mother’s affair just as Phillip had. She had seen them kissing one day, and her mother had then admitted it to her. She said she was lonely, and he was a kind man. But she had never married him, even at the end when he was widowed, despite their obvious love for each other.

Olivia had never believed in married people having affairs. She believed in marriage and fidelity, but so had Maribelle. She had been faithful to a married man she loved and who loved her. There had never been anyone else, even after Ansel died. And Olivia had been faithful to the only two men in her life. Joe for their entire marriage, and now Peter for ten years. It was not a spotless life, but it was a good one, and a reasonable one, given the circumstances. She didn’t love it, but she could justify it to herself, and had. She had never told anyone about Peter, and hadn’t intended to, although she often had thought about telling her mother. Somewhere in her heart she knew she owed her mother an apology for what she had thought of her at thirteen. She hadn’t understood then how Ansel had protected her mother and how much he cared about her. Maribelle had needed him, just as she needed Peter, even though he was married to someone else and always would be.

She wondered why her mother had never married Ansel, even after his wife died, but she had never dared to ask. He had died so soon after, within the year—maybe they didn’t have time. But whatever her reasons, they had been her own. Maribelle was a good woman, and an honorable one. And so was she, whatever Phillip thought now. She felt sorry for him with his limited thinking, and harsh judgments, the resentments he had carried for years. He was unable to accept or believe that people did their best, even if they weren’t perfect. And he had settled for a wife who Olivia believed didn’t love him, and was incapable of it. It was a sad life for him. And she preferred her own compromises to his, the love of a married man who was kind to her and whom she respected. They didn’t need marriage and they loved each other. Olivia wasn’t going to let Phillip spoil that for her with his black-and-white ideas about what was right and what wasn’t. She had a right to decide that for herself about something as personal as this.