Chapter 5 #2
“I’m, uh, twenty-four,” I stammered. “I’ll be twenty-five in two months.”
“Oh?” Her voice was weak, but her tone carried a note of amusement.
“Well, I suppose you’ll be old enough then to witness a will and rent a car.
Brad,” she said, turning to the lawyer, who had sat down next to her on the sofa, “do we really need strangers for this? Couldn’t you do it, or your secretary? Or someone from the family?”
“No, Cecilia,” he chuckled. “I can’t draw up the will as your lawyer and witness it. And neither can my secretary, and besides, he’s not here. It’s best to have witnesses who would have no expectation of inheriting.”
“Gee, thanks,” Miss Trixie mumbled to her clacking needles. “It was only forty years, after all.”
Mrs. Rose ignored her. “Well, then, get that Tawny tart to do it. She should know not to expect anything from me, and she might as well know that, thanks to her, Wiley shouldn’t, either. She and Trixie can do it, and we don’t have to bother Junior here.”
“We have two people here now,” Brad said firmly, “and I don’t think bringing your feelings about Tawny into it would be especially useful. Can we proceed? All we need Mr. Popp and Miss Moon to do is to watch you sign, and then they sign to attest that they saw you do it. It’s not complicated.”
“Yes, well, that’s as may be,” she said, again regarding me sharply. “But maybe let’s not be strangers anymore, then, eh? Get to know each other first. What about you and your friend, the Black fella? You’re here together?”
“Yes, ma’am, that’s right,” I said, taken aback by her blunt description. “His name is Ricky Warner. We’re working together on an article for a travel magazine.”
“But you’re sleeping together, too, right?”
“Cecilia!” Brad flashed me an apologetic look. I blanched, wondering if Ricky and I were fake boyfriends to the public, too, or only with each other, but Mrs. Rose was unperturbed.
“What? I’m old. I’m allowed to stop pretending I have a filter at my age. You two are fancy boys, right? What word do you like these days? Gay? Queer? My daughter used to say that one was a bad word, but now she uses it, so who knows anymore.”
“I suppose you could use either of those words, as long as you say them with respect,” I said, as gently and with as much sympathy as I could muster for this grieving, if apparently bigoted, old woman.
“But yes, we have a personal relationship as well as a professional one.” I guess that decided that.
“Well, I don’t mind telling you I’ve never quite understood all that,” Mrs. Rose said. “But I’ll tell you why I asked. I don’t think you should sign something if you don’t know what’s in it, and that includes my will. Just don’t go blabbing about it to my family, you got that?”
“Certainly,” I nodded, wondering where this was going.
“See, my daughter, Elisabeth, she’s like you and your friend,” she continued.
“And I’m trying not to have a problem with it anymore.
I still don’t understand it, but I suppose I can admit I don’t see what’s so harmful in it, either.
Especially now that …” She choked a little on a rising sob, looking down to her lap and reaching one of her wiry hands to her attorney, who took it and patted it reassuringly.
She composed herself and returned her slightly bleary eyes to me.
“You see, my children, Richard and Elisabeth—and my husband’s brother’s son, Wiley, he was like a second son to me.
They were all so close. And when Elisabeth told me that she was …
that way … well, I didn’t understand, and we quarreled terribly, and then for years we didn’t speak to one another.
So I took Elisabeth out of my will, and put Wiley in as a secondary heir; if Richard went before me, Wiley would get everything.
But over the last couple of years, I’ve been thinking about it.
Against my expressly stated wishes, Wiley married that woman, that Tawny character.
And Elisabeth has been very patient and kind with this old woman who gave her nothing but grief for the last twenty-five years. And now my Richard is gone. …”
Her voice warbled as her tears rose again, but she continued, her words wavering unsteadily.
“I simply have to do right by my child. Elisabeth is my child. I did so much for Wiley, who isn’t even my own son, and he took from me when he wanted to and rejected me when he wanted to.
Elisabeth never asked anything from me but love and understanding, and she still loved me when I couldn’t give her those things. I was such a fool.”
Miss Trixie, her knitting still in one hand, had been digging in a large tote bag at her feet with the other, and now produced a large blue handkerchief, which she passed to Mrs. Rose. Mrs. Rose dabbed daintily at the corners of her eyes.
“Well,” she said, clearing her throat again. “Now you know what you’re signing. I’m making sure that Elisabeth is my sole heir. It’s a lot of money. What is it these days, Brad, over a hundred million?”
“It’s not quite a billion,” he said, “but it’s several hundred million now.”
“You see, my late husband’s family …” Mrs. Rose continued, unfazed by the vastness of her fortune.
“Well, Rose Beach is named after the Rose family, obviously. We were big in timber around this area back until the eighties. But I came from a more modest background, and I wanted my children to know how to take care of themselves, so once they were done with their educations, they were set loose. No trust funds or anything like that, though then Richard married Rachel with her big fat trust fund. And Wiley can keep fending for himself, too; he’s a grown man, and if he wants his independence with little Tawny, let them have it.
Tell me, are you close with your mother and father? ”
“With my mother, yes,” I replied. “My father passed away.”
“And she knows? She knows you’re sleeping with a—”
I nodded, again trying to summon compassion, and hoping to curtail her line of inquiry.
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “—With a Black man?”
I was running really low on compassion. “Yes, she knows,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Cecilia, I think we’ve harassed Mr. Popp enough,” Brad said. “Can we get on with the signing?”
“My first husband was Black,” Miss Trixie piped up from her knitting.
“Paul was your husband?” Mrs. Rose regarded her with a mixture of shock and curiosity. “I thought you were shacking up with him, that’s all. I never thought you’d marry him.”
“Cece, we were married before I even met you. I probably should have stayed married to him.” Miss Trixie finally looked up, only to stare dreamily into space in front of her, as if gazing into the past. Then she turned to me. “They’re such wonderful lovers, aren’t they?”
No wonder the marriage hadn’t lasted. I’d had enough.
“Ladies, this is all getting very offensive,” I said, indignation momentarily overcoming my usual dislike of confrontation.
I knew I’d feel terrible later, and they probably wouldn’t, and I hated that outcome for all of us, because it all seemed totally backward.
“If you want me to help you, let’s get on with it and stop making these generalizations and, and … comments, and …”
Brad jumped in smoothly as my nerve petered out.
“That’s a great idea. Cecilia, here’s a pen,” he said, pulling the small stack of documents on the coffee table toward her.
She harrumphed a little as she signed the final page of the will, and then Miss Trixie and I each signed in turn as her witnesses.
“Well, thank you, Junior,” Mrs. Rose said as I rose, extending her hand to me. “I am glad you have it easier with your mother than Elisabeth did with me. And enjoy your friend. He is a looker, isn’t he?”
Brad walked me to the door. “Sorry about all that, and I do appreciate your help,” he said, stepping halfway out into the hallway with me as I left.
“And please do keep what she told you in confidence. About the will, that is—you can talk to your therapist or something about the other stuff if you need to.” He laughed nervously at his attempted joke.
I didn’t know what to say, so I turned and headed toward the elevator to go find Ricky.