3. Mothers and Sons
3
MOTHERS AND SONS
MAL
“Mama? Wo bist du ?”
I could hear her scrambling to her feet. She was in her chair in the living room, looking out at the water view of sailboats on the Long Island Sound.
“Malcolm! My boy! Oh, it’s good to see you!” She engulfed me in warmth and the scent that meant safety to me: a mix of clean laundry, sunlight, and apple blossoms.
I hugged her back. Was she smaller, or was I getting bigger again? “How are you, Mama?”
She pulled back to look at me, her eyes laughing. “Well, I’m fine, of course!” There was barely any German accent left in her speech. She’d emigrated to the US when she was fifteen. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I would have cooked for you. That’s all right. I can still make us some lunch. Come on back.” She led me through the gothic maze of the house I’d grown up in. “Where are Archer and Ian? No Charlotte? I want to see that dog!”
I sighed. “I wanted to have a conversation, just you and me.”
She turned to examine me, one eyebrow up in suspicion. “Are you okay? Is something wrong?”
“I’m fine.”
She cocked her head at me but went back to throwing together enough lunch to sustain an army brigade. That was just her way, and her antiquated kitchen was the heart of our two-person family’s kingdom. This was where I’d done my homework. Where she’d let me lick the spoon. Where I’d written my application to the Manhattan School of Music while she cheered me on.
I sat at the kitchen table and studied her. She still looked good for forty-seven. Smaller than me but still strong. Every movement as familiar to me as my own hands. Honey-blonde hair without any gray that I could see. I always thought those Soviet portraits of the idealized peasant woman looked a bit like my mother. Strong, pretty, permanently looking to the future with hope.
Not that Mama agreed with me. She scoffed whenever I brought up the resemblance between her and the idealized Soviet woman. Germany and Russia , she would tell me, are not the same thing, no matter how limited your shortsighted American view of the world might be . Then she would scold me and tell me to study global geography more carefully.
I couldn’t love her any more than I already did.
“I’m heating up some soup, and yesterday was baking day up at the big house. Ormonde made a great black bread. I have a loaf here. When you drove up, did you see that I now have a new roof?”
It would take someone with a keener eye than mine to notice such a thing. The gatehouse to the Furneau estate sat at the end of a long causeway, just big enough for two lanes of traffic on the only road to a peninsula of land that jutted into the ocean. Like the main house on the bluff high up the hill, the gatehouse was a gothic monstrosity in stone. A strong seawall framed the oddly shaped courtyard, where my scruffy old van was now parked.
As for noticing a new roof, good luck. With odd corners and surprising wings, the gatehouse managed to eat up all of the tiny parcel of flat land at the foot of the bluff. Looming dormer windows helped to create a roofline that defied logic. The window in my childhood bedroom had framed a million-dollar view of the Long Island Sound and the fancy sailboats that raced back and forth on windy days. Of course, because we were servants, our view was from the ground level. The Furneau family, on the other hand, looked down on the entire world from afar in their mansion at the top of the bluff.
Mama kept up a steady, comforting stream of chatter as she set bowls of heavy, steaming soup before us. Potato-based—how Germanic of her. The bread was dense and sour and delicious and paired with butter that I knew, without being told, was from the model dairy on the Furneau estate.
“All right,” she said once we’d both spooned up a bit of peasant heaven. “Don’t keep me in suspense. What are you here for, Malcolm?”
“Mama.” I put my spoon down so I could rub my eyes with both hands. An entire lifetime of pretending not to see what was so painfully obvious was now coming to an end. After this, I would truly no longer be a child. I inhaled and held my breath for a moment. When I exhaled, it was time for the world to change.
“Gigi Furneau is divorcing Jack?”
She looked away, her features frozen into a small smile. “Yes. That’s right.”
She wasn’t going to help. I was going to have to pop this twenty-seven-year-old bubble all by myself. “Is he going to marry you?”
She stood abruptly and looked around blankly for something to rescue her. She settled on carefully spooning the remains of the soup into a storage container, her back firmly to me. “Why would he do that? Don’t be silly.”
I knew what that meant. He hadn’t proposed. “Mom—Mama. I know there was no dead boyfriend in Germany.” She started to protest, and I held my hand up. “I know Jack Furneau is my father. I know you’ve been his mistress since you were a girl. Mama, come on. Can’t we talk about it?”
She tried to launch an easy smile over her shoulder, but it didn’t fly. “Silly. I am certainly not his mistress. You are mistaken. I manage the Furneau estate, that’s all.”
“You’re an incredible manager. No one could do a better job. But I don’t just look like Johnston Furneau’s brother, do I? I am his brother. At least his half brother.” She was frozen, facing away from me at the kitchen counter. My heart broke for her—and for me. “Please, Mama. For once, tell me the truth.”
The sound she made as she tried to hide from me—a gasping little “ah” of misery—was too much for me to endure. I rose and had my mother in my embrace in a blink. Her fists gripped my shirt, and I rocked in a useless attempt to soothe her wounded soul.
“I’m not judging you, Mama. I don’t blame you. You did the best you could. You always do the best you can. But Mama, you deserve so much better than this.”
I felt the heat of her tears on my chest. In the heart of this horrible moment, knowing that I’d made my strong mother cry was perhaps the worst part.
“Malcolm,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Mama. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I need to talk about it. But he’s not doing right by you. He’s never done right by you.”
“No,” she said. She shook her head and pushed away from me. She blotted her eyes on a dish towel and then took my hand. “Sit. Sit down. You have to understand.”
“Good. Good, that’s all I want. Tell me.”
“I’m not his mistress. He hasn’t—he hasn’t been with me in so many years. But he paid for all your schooling. Shield Academy, and then the Conservatory . . . he paid for all of that. Your music lessons, your clothes, everything.”
“He’s my father. That was the bare minimum of what he should have paid for.”
“No, you mustn’t be angry.” Her tears had stopped, but I thought they weren’t far away. “Jack Furneau paid for my schooling too. My college degree. My MBA.”
“You went from maid to housekeeper to estate manager. He wasn’t supporting you, he was bringing an employee along. He paid for your MBA so he could turn over annoying parts of his life to someone else. And that degree? You earned it at night school so you never had to stop working for him. We sat at this table together and did our homework, remember? It’s not like he gave you time off to go to school full time.”
“You make him sound cruel. But there are wonderful perks to my job that you’re not considering. We live in this beautiful house.”
“We live in a house that he owns. He can sell it or kick you out, and you have no rights here. He’s put you in a house that floods with every storm. Where the Victorian furnace can’t keep up with winter. Where every room leaks when it rains.”
“Not anymore! A new roof, Mal!”
“That’s him protecting his own property, not him protecting you. And every day, you’re expected to use that staircase up the bluff. Two hundred stairs. Winter or summer, sunshine or rain, to get to the main house. If you lived off the property, he couldn’t summon you on a whim. And you’d be able to drive to the estate, not walk through a storm on the edge of a cliff.”
“Don’t be so dramatic. I have a car. I can drive myself. But I love the cliff walk. I take it because it’s beautiful. And I love this house.”
The worst thing was, she did love it. She had an overstuffed armchair in front of the view, and a working fireplace, and at least for a while, she’d had someone else’s husband. And that was apparently enough for her. But it shouldn’t have been enough. Not for her.
“Mama, I think over the years, you’ve told yourself a lot of lies to make this bearable.” Her exhale sounded like a gasp. “Okay, let me ask you—do you love him? Did you ever love him? Or did he use you like a servant?”
She looked up, the relief of anger blazing out of her wet eyes. “That’s none of your business.”
“I think it is my business.” If we were going to turn over these rocks, let’s get all the ugliness into the light at once. “I think you would like to love him, but he’s essentially unlovable.”
“Mal, honey. You just don’t know him.”
My own anger flared. “And why is that? Don’t you think I should know him? But I don’t. I know your boss a little. I know the shape of a man who stood in the doorway and listened to me practice on his oversized piano.”
“He’s very proud of you.” I raised a skeptical eyebrow at her, and she rushed to reassure me, “He is! He says you’re very talented!”
“Does he? Is he proud that I’m in the fastest-rising rock band in the nation at the moment? Does he talk that up when he goes to his various clubs? At his parties and gatherings and board meetings? Does he tell the other masters of the universe that his boy is a chip off the old block? No. He doesn’t. And you know it. He pretends I don’t exist. And he talks up Johnston, who is a sniveling, backbiting bully.”
“Oh, Mal. I’m so sorry.” She looked so tired that I lost track of my rage. I just wanted to protect her.
“Mama. He’s not going to marry you, is he?” I watched her. She watched her fingernails. “I don’t think you even want him to. It would suck to be that man’s wife, wouldn’t it?” She looked away. Couldn’t even face that truth, could she? “Well, I’m going to get you out.”
She looked up, startled. “You’re going to—to what?”
“I’m getting you out. The band is doing really well. Soon I’ll have enough to get you your own place. On a beach somewhere, if you want, or in the middle of the city, or on top of a mountain . . . I don’t care, whatever you want. I’m going to start a bank account in your name, and anything I make is going in there. When it’s enough, you’re going to quit this job and this house and that bastard. You’re going to be free of the whole mess.”
“I can’t. I can’t take that from you.”
I caught her hand in mine and kissed it. “Why not? You gave your entire life to take care of me. It’s my turn. So think about it. Once I save up the money, where do you want to go? Do you want to retire, or do you want to keep working? Almost three decades of experience managing a staff of sixteen? That’s the kind of experience that could land you a job wherever you want to go.”
“Seventeen,” she said with a faint smile. “Johnston wanted a boat master. Some very high-priced Australian. I’m handling the details for his work visa now.”
“Yuck. A boat master. Of course he did. Typical Johnston. And our daddy got him what he wanted, didn’t he? Any little whim fulfilled for Johnston. Well, we’ll be rid of both of them before too long.”
She cupped my cheek with her hand. “I’m glad you know now. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
I smiled. “I’ve known since I was a kid, Mama.”
“No!”
“Johnston’s nanny wasn’t too careful about who she gossiped with.”
“ Die Hünden ,” my mother cursed. “I wish you’d told me. I hate that you had to hold this knowledge in silence.”
I shook my head with a biter laugh. “It took me twenty-seven years and the imminent departure of Gigi Furneau to get up the courage. How was I supposed to hurt you like this when I was five?”
“Oh my darling.” I was too big to fit in her lap anymore, but I could kneel by her chair so she could hold me close. “I know you think it was all bad, Mal. But I got you from it. That made the whole thing worth it.”
My arms tightened around her convulsively, and a few hot tears might have slipped onto her shoulder. “What happened to you wasn’t fair,” I murmured. “And I hate that. I hate bullies.”
“Don’t hate your father,” she whispered.
“Too late.” It was a day for raw truths, and that was mine. Jack Furneau owned half of New York State and hobnobbed with the most powerful people on the planet, but he wasn’t good enough for my mother. He had earned my contempt.
And I was going to get her out.