24. Conversations with Strong Women
24
CONVERSATIONS WITH STRONG WOMEN
PRENTICE
We drove through the Furneau lands. Mal had known. He’d known the sunlit fields of waving grasses, the avenues of graceful trees, the forests that hid the hill that led us down, down, down to the water . . . this was just part of a legacy his father had denied him.
This was the slap in his face every time he looked around that had fueled the hatred that burned inside him until there was nothing but fury.
Mother drove me past Gerta’s house.
Over the causeway.
Onto the mainland and back up the hill.
If I sat very still, the emotion wouldn’t find me. If I held steady, kept replacing each inhale with an exhale, then I could keep it together.
My mother drove in silence. She didn’t plague me with a single question. But as we turned from one pretty country road into the next, she reached over from the wheel and took my hand.
Her silent support broke the dam inside me. I began to leak tears. The sound of my own wet sniff undid me even further.
“Tissues in the glove box.” That was all she said, and I was as grateful for her quiet calm as I was to be able to wipe my nose and blot my eyes. She pulled into our driveway and parked at the front door. “Don’t go to the garage,” she said. “Your childhood bedroom is ready.”
I nodded. I didn’t want to be a strong adult. I wanted to crawl back to the comfort of my family, to the safety of the bedroom overlooking the gardens.
“Go on up,” Mom said. “I’ll bring you some tea in a little while.”
I took her hand for a moment, and she kissed my cheek. I was okay going up the stairs. I was fine gently closing my bedroom door. I kept it together as I considered my childhood in the form of a single bed with roses on the spread. The entire room was fresh and clean and dusted, waiting for me to slip back into the camouflage of innocence. Of not knowing.
It wasn’t until I saw myself in the bathroom mirror that I shattered. It was the sight of my staring eyes—the blue that Mal had called sapphires—that made me break. Not a child any longer, but a woman grown. Old enough to know better. A fool.
I ended up sitting on the cold tile floor between the tub and sink, sobbing like a nut and going through an entire roll of toilet paper.
By the time the storm passed, my throat was painful and my eyes were hot. My head was swollen, and every muscle in my body was screaming from the tension.
I fought my way to my feet, turning away from the cruel judgment of the mirror, and made my cautious way to the bed. My soft, leaf-green blanket was folded neatly at the foot. I pulled it over my shoulder and dropped into an exhausted slumber.
When I woke, the trees outside the window were silhouetted against the colors of a sunset sky. My mother sat in the armchair, a pot of tea in a quilted cozy at her elbow.
“Mrs. Priss wants you to know she’s making you buckeyes. They should be done soon.” She poured me a cup of tea.
I sat up to take it, rubbing my hands over my eyes. “So everyone knows?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said simply. “News like that doesn’t stay silent.”
“No, of course not.” I sipped at the tea. Chamomile. Still hot. It soothed my throat.
“I’m sorry, Prentice.”
I looked up in astonishment. Mom was sitting in the growing darkness, so I snapped on my bedside light to see her better. “Why are you sorry?”
She lowered her eyes. “You told me about Johnston. For years, you told me he was bothering you. And I never believed it.”
“Mom, don’t.”
“Your father heard you. That’s why he let you transfer to Caumsett, isn’t it?”
I didn’t want to hurt her, but it was a day of truths. “Yes.”
“And Johnston was—oh, he was so dreadful today. I was—I was shocked, Prentice. He comes from such a good family. I had no idea.”
I sighed, attempting to come to grips with decades of Johnston’s abuse. “He’s very good at putting on a polite face. He’s good at—” I gestured hopelessly and came up with a lame explanation. “He’s good at parents. You know?”
“I’m sorry.” Her hand cupped her tea, perhaps drawing from its warmth. “He said you were his fiancée.” She looked at me, her question implied.
I shook my head. “Since we were kids, he got it into his head that I was supposed to marry him.”
“That was no doubt the idea of that horrible Gigi.” Mom pursed her lips, a tiny gesture that expressed her total contempt. My mother had pushed the concept too, but we were ignoring that. “But then why would he be so rude to you? He practically labeled you a whore in front of the entire town.”
I laughed ruefully. “That’s his way. He thinks he owns me, but I’m also his to torture. He’s been pretty hateful to me over the years.”
“And I never believed you.”
Astonished, I heard a sob come from her throat, and then her teacup hit the floor. She was on the bed, holding me close to her. Then we were both crying.
“I only ever wanted the best for you,” she cried. “And I left you all alone to deal with that little—that monster!”
I soothed her, and she soothed me, and we began a path to healing a never-acknowledged riff between us.
“I wasn’t really all alone,” I said when I sat back. I shook my head, swamped by the need to reinterpret my entire childhood.
“What do you mean?” Still as supple as a girl, my mother crossed her legs on the bed and faced me. “You weren’t alone?”
I grunted in confusion. “I didn’t just transfer to Caumsett to get away from Johnston. I went because I was following Mal.”
“Mal? Your drummer with the zebra shoes? I liked him. The man you told everyone you were in love with?”
Her confusion was understandable, so I backed her up, things becoming clearer to me, too, as I explained, “Mal was in my class at Shield Academy. I guess Jack Furneau was paying for his private-school education.”
“Jack Furneau!” My mother’s voice expressed her horror. “He impregnated his own housekeeper!”
“Estate manager,” I corrected.
“And she was just a girl herself—it’s completely unacceptable! And why? Because he needed a possible organ donor? Have you ever heard of anything so grotesque?”
“I think he was horrible to Mal too. I mean, he paid for Shield Academy, and I guess that’s why Mal could go to the Manhattan School of Music, but he must have been a very chilly bastard to his son. Mal hates him, and I guess I can see why.”
“The Manhattan School of Music. That’s why he could play that Chopin so beautifully.”
I nodded. “He’s really an extraordinary musician.” I used to be entitled to feel proud of that. Now I didn’t know how to feel.
“Go on about Shield Academy. He was in your class?”
I nodded. “From first grade. And Johnston was a year ahead of us. Every time Johnston tried to bully me, Mal stepped in. I thought he was protecting me.” I guess my face crumpled again because Mom went for the tissues. She sat beside me, and I made room for her so we could lean back on the headboard together. “I thought he was my hero. Turns out he just wanted a reason to confront his brother.”
“Mal knew he was Jack’s son?”
I nodded. “He told me today. He’s known since he was a child.”
“That poor boy.” Her empathy took me by surprise. I’d been so focused on how miserable I was that I hadn’t taken a moment to consider how Mal had felt all those years. “It’s obvious that Johnston didn’t know,” Mom said. “That much is clear from his reaction at the party today.”
I shrugged. “I guess that’s not so surprising. People really bend over backward for Johnston. No one would tell him something he didn’t want to hear. They’d be too afraid of Jack for that.”
“Oh dear.” Mom’s hands fell into her lap. “I have really misjudged Jack after all these years. Imagine him telling that housekeeper to keep her son away from you!”
“Estate manager,” I corrected again. “This sort of universal reverence—plus fear—of Jack is what made it so hard for anyone to believe me when I said Johnston was after me.” Mom took my hand, warm and strong. I was grateful for her support. “So as we got older, I guess Gerta’s strong frame won out over Gigi’s more delicate constitution. Gerta’s son got bigger than Gigi’s son. Mal began to be able to beat Johnston up.”
“Gigi,” Mom said, but her contempt had gotten lost in the story.
“Sometimes Johnston would get his buddies with him to gang up on Mal, but mostly, Mal won the fights. He got stronger and stronger. And as I approached puberty, Johnston’s attention got a little more . . . focused.”
Mom turned to me in concern. “Sweetheart, he didn’t—he never—did he?”
I patted our linked hands. “No. Never. The one time he came close, I kneed him in the balls and decided I needed to toughen up. Which I did.”
“Oh my lord.”
“I’m not so helpless, Mom.”
“I know you’re not. I just hate that you had to go through this alone.”
“Not alone. For whatever reason, as long as Mal was around, I was safe. But after Mal and Johnston had a particularly vicious battle, Mal was expelled from Shield Academy. That’s when I began to lose weight, remember?”
“I was so worried about you.”
I nodded. “And Dad let me go to Caumsett.”
“Because Mal was there.”
I nodded. “And because Johnston wasn’t. And I did really well there, didn’t I? I mean, I got into Dartmouth, just like the kids at Shield. And I learned to stand up for myself. To not need a champion. So that’s a happy ending, right?”
She traced our interlaced fingers. “I’m so proud of you, Prentice.”
“Thank you.”
She took a deep breath. “Now tell me what happened with Mal today.”
“Umph,” I said, shifting on the bed and trying to pull my hand from hers.
She wouldn’t let go. “Tell me?”
“It’s not complicated.” I closed my eyes. “I thought he loved me. He doesn’t. He was interested in hurting his brother, and that’s all. It’s all right. I’ll get over it.” I spoke bravely. If I said it often enough, I could force it to come true.
“Do you love him?” Mom asked. When I didn’t answer, she nudged me with her shoulder. “Because it sure looked like you were falling in love. And who can blame you? He’s very handsome.”
I chuckled sadly. “He is. Very. But it wasn’t meant to be.”
“Are you so sure?” Her tone was so gentle that I had to push back tears again.
“Pretty sure.”
She let go of my hand so she could hug me awkwardly from the side. “Give it some time,” she said. “That’s my advice. You might need to wait to get your kindred spirit. You’ll have dinner with us? Your father will be home soon, and I know Mrs. Priss wants to feed you. Do you want to sleep here tonight?”
“I’ll go home to my place, but thank you. And I’d love some dinner.”
“Take some time. You don’t have to go back to work tomorrow either.”
But she was wrong about that. When the next day came, I was awake and up and ready to get to work. I wanted to reclaim some normalcy.
Kimmy was in the office when I arrived, her eyes wide. “Can we talk about it?” she asked. “Or do you want me to pretend I wasn’t there?”
Her loving support buoyed me. I smiled. “We can talk about it. Pretty eventful day, huh?”
At least she didn’t have my mother’s preconceptions about the Furneau family. It wasn’t as hard for her to imagine that an immensely wealthy man would want bastard children on the off chance that he needed a kidney one day. But Kimmy, more than my mother, had watched my romance with Mal from up close. Our discussion focused more on him than on the Furneaus.
“He didn’t put together that truck concert because it would annoy his half brother,” she offered.
I shrugged. “He had to know all the kids would make videos. It worked out to be excellent publicity for Aftermath.”
She sat back and squinted her eyes at me in skepticism. “Do you really believe that? Could you be that coldly practical? The man did it for you.”
“Maybe.” That had been the first time I’d heard—anyone had heard—his song, “I Was Watching.” I thought he’d written it for me.
I’d thought so very, very wrong.
It was painful to feel like a chump. I couldn’t even blame him. He never said I was the inspiration. I’d just assumed. Like a vain, childish chump.
Kimmy had watched me as I went through this internal shamefest. She rested her head on her fist and regarded me so intently that I knew she had something to say.
“What is it?” I asked.
She scrunched up her face. “I don’t want to bother you.”
I sighed. “Bother me. I’d like to get things back to normal, please.”
“Well, this ain’t gonna do it.” She studied the ceiling for a bit and then shook her head and looked at me with resolve. “It’s about that money from the sailboat race.”
“The—” My voice died. I closed my eyes and shook my head. “The donation from Johnston.”
“Yeah. Possibly close to a quarter million dollars, but certainly one hundred and ten thousand dollars. Is there any chance we’re getting that money? Because the truck concert really lit a fire under our mission, and we could use the funding, you know?”
I sighed. “I know. And nothing from Johnston?”
Kimmy shook her head. “I don’t mean to bring up an uncomfortable subject, but he made it pretty clear at that party that he was giving the money because of you, not because of The Arts Council. So should I tell the board that we’re not getting that donation?”
“Uck.” Revulsion coursed through me, snakes over bare skin. “I don’t think I can ask him,” I realized.
“That’s all I wanted to know,” Kimmy said. “I’ll handle this. It’s my job, after all. I’ll send him a letter. We’ll make it very formal. Maybe get the board chair to sign a letter too. You know—thanking him for his generosity and asking when he thinks the deposit will be made.”
I chewed my lip, studying the pen caddie on her desk. “It’s not going to work.” I sighed. “But you can try.”
“You think there’s no chance?”
Fucking Johnston. How much longer would it be until he was truly out of my life? Perhaps if I called a Catholic priest, they’d do an exorcism.
That wouldn’t solve the problem of the money, though. The trust left to me by my darling grandmother paid me quarterly. I couldn’t pull together the full two hundred and twenty thousand dollars from the interest alone, but I could break into the principal or arrange to make installment payments over time until I fulfilled Johnston’s pledge. “I’ll get you the money,” I said wearily.
Her face cleared. “That guy, Charlie! He said he’d help. You’re going to ask him. Great idea!”
Fine. If she needed to believe it, that was okay with me. “Sure. Charlie. Let me make some calls.”
“You’re amazing, Prentice. We are so lucky you’re with us!”
“I’m lucky to be with you.” No matter what lies I was feeding her, that final emotion of gratitude was sincere. What else did I have to be excited about?