Chapter 2 #2
“I’m not.”
Pam considered that for a minute. She was wary. “What kind of book?”
“A biography. I know him better than most. I’m in a perfect position to do it.”
“But you’re personally involved.”
“Not anymore.”
“So you say.” Pam paused. “I don’t know, Hillary.” Her words were slow, hesitant. “I’m not sure it’s such a good idea.”
Hillary studied Pam’s face and knew from its skeptical expression the direction of her thoughts. Writing a book on John meant writing a book on the St. George Company. It also meant, to some extent, writing a book on Pam, on Pam’s mother, Patricia, and on Cutter.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” Pam said quietly.
“I have to. It’s the only thing that can come out of this whole, horrendous experience. I have to in order to justify who I am.”
Pam thought about that. She looked uneasy. “John will be furious.”
“I know. But I have nothing to lose.”
“I do. I have a husband, a daughter, and a reputation. My mother doesn’t need the exposure. Neither does Cutter.”
“None of you will be hurt. None of you did anything wrong.”
“Still …” Pam began, only to be interrupted when a man appeared at their table. Looking up in surprise, she broke into a smile, at the same time extending a hand to be clasped and a cheek to be kissed.
“I saw you walk in and couldn’t resist saying hello,” the man said. “Damn but you look wonderful, Pamela. How have you been?”
“Just fine, Malcolm. It’s so good to see you. Please, let me introduce my friend Hillary Cox. Hillary, Malcolm McCray. I’ve sold some of my favorite pieces to Malcolm’s wife,” she told Hillary, then turned back to Malcolm. “How is Lorraine?”
“Having a great time in Vermont, now that the crowds of skiers have left. I’m heading up there myself on Friday. It’s the only place I can get any rest.”
Hillary could understand it. She knew the man’s name, if not his face.
A transplant from San Francisco, Malcolm McCray owned several of the newest and most posh hotels in New York.
He and his wife were also involved with the charity ball scene, if W was to be believed.
Hillary wasn’t surprised that Pam knew them; her circle had grown larger and more illustrious in the past few years.
Rising stars had a way of generating tails like that.
“Will you give her my best?” Pam asked.
“Of course.” Malcolm lowered his voice. “How about Brendan? Is he doing any better?”
Pam smiled sadly. “He has his ups and downs.”
“Next time he’s up, come see us. The country is a healing place.”
The sad smile remained. “Thanks. We appreciate the thought.”
With a final squeeze of her hand and a nod to Hillary, he left. Pam opened her menu, but Hillary could see that her thoughts were in Boston.
“How is he?”
“Brendan?” Closing the menu again, Pam wavered one hand. “The treatment can be worse than the disease. It’s hard not to get discouraged.”
“Are the doctors discouraged?”
“Who knows. We don’t always get straight answers from them.”
“Do you ask straight questions?”
“Of course not. Some things we don’t want to hear.”
“But you do keep smiling.”
“I have to. For Brendan’s sake, if nothing else.
And it’s not so bad. I’m busy with work.
It’s one escape. Ariana is another.” Her face brightened at the mention of her daughter.
“She is an angel. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without her.
She stands for so much—hope and love—all kinds of other things. She was—is—a gift.”
After only the briefest of pauses, Hillary asked, “Are you in touch with Cutter?”
Pam studied the delicate sterling scrollwork at the end of her butter knife.
“We talk. I haven’t seen him for a while, what with Brendan being sick.
But,” her voice fell, “I don’t know what I’d do if I were completely cut off from him.
” She took a fast breath. “This conversation is getting maudlin. Let’s order.
” She glanced at the waiter, who was quickly by her side.
But Hillary wasn’t about to let the subject drop. As soon as the waiter left, she set down her wineglass. “You have a greater axe to grind than I do, you know.”
“Against John?”
Hillary nodded. “Your life would be very different if it weren’t for him.”
After a moment’s thought, Pam propped her elbows on the arms of her chair and looked Hillary in the eye. “True. He’s not much better than scum, which is really pretty funny when you consider that he’s spent his life trying to prove what an aristocrat he is.”
“It’s time someone pointed that out,” Hillary said, thinking of her book.
Pam was thinking of it too, if her earnest tone was any indication. “But there are other ways. Less public, but more powerful ways. We’ll get him, Hillary. We’ll get him where it hurts.”
Hillary saw the purposeful set of her jaw. She had seen it before and never pursued it, but, with John’s defection, times had changed. “Is that wishful thinking on your Part?”
“Believe me. He’ll get his.”
“Inside the business?”
“Inside—outside—whatever. It’s coming, Hillary.”
“What is?”
“Justice. Sweet, sweet justice.”
Needing more than that, Hillary tried a teasing tone. “What’s going on, Pam? You’ve hinted at things before. I’ve seen that same look on your face, and it’s stronger each time I see it. You’re doing something, aren’t you? You and Cutter?”
“John’s the one who’s doing it.”
“That’s a platitude if I’ve ever heard one.” When Pam didn’t deny it, Hillary chided, “You wouldn’t have gone on 20/20. You wouldn’t have stood up to him in public.”
“Television was the wrong forum.”
“So what’s the right one?” Hillary thought her book was. Clearly, Pam disagreed.
“There’s a right one. Trust me. He’ll get his.”
“When?” After several seconds of silence, Hillary asked, “How?”
Pam sighed. “I can’t say more now. But think about it.
It stands to reason that when a man like John goes through life hurting the people closest to him, at some point they’ll strike back.
You want to strike now—as many of us have wanted to for years—but there are ways and there are ways.
Some are better than others. It may take time to do it right, but it will happen. So help me God, it will.”
Hillary wasn’t particularly reassured. She wanted to write her book. She didn’t want to wait around while Pam and Cutter and whoever else they were in cahoots with plotted revenge against John. She had her own instrument of revenge, and she wanted to use it now.
“Don’t worry,” Pam said, misinterpreting her expression. “It won’t be cheap. We’re not talking a public smear here.”
“A public smear mightn’t be so awful,” Hillary argued. “When a man goes public, he goes public. As of last Friday night, John is fair game. He wanted the good and took it, and now he has to risk the bad.”
“I doubt he sees it that way.”
“Probably not, the pompous ass.”
Pam gave a dry smile. “Now I know he’s in trouble. When you start calling him names, he’s up the creek.”
“That’s for sure,” Hillary said. “I know what I’ve felt these past few days. It has to be something like what you’ve spent years and years feeling.”
Pam gave a sage nod. “The anger. The sense of injustice. The need to lash back. I’ve felt all of those things. But you know that. You’ve seen me kicking and screaming, banging my head against the wall because of things John’s done.”
The image of ladylike Pam banging her head against the wall made Hillary smile.
“It’s been a while since the kicking and screaming.
I remember the first time I saw it, though.
You couldn’t have been more than eight. You were in Timiny Cove over school vacation.
John was having a go of it with your dad, and because of that, what was supposed to be a special time between you and Eugene was ruined. ”
Pam remembered well, if not the specific incident then dozens just like it.
“Those two were like oil and water. Ten minutes in the same room with each other and there was trouble. If I was eight, John would have been twenty-four, so he’d have already been involved in the company.
He thought he knew how to handle things, but his way was the antithesis of my dad’s.
He was arrogant even way back then. Twenty-four and wanting to run the ship. He was born arrogant.”
“So were you, I thought. You looked like a spoiled child throwing a temper tantrum.”
“Frustration. It was frustration.”
“You were furious that anything or anyone should upset your plans.”
“My relationship with Daddy was special,” Pam argued in indulgent self-defense.
“When school was in session, I was in Boston. He split his time between us and Maine, so I didn’t see him much.
But every vacation I went to Timiny Cove.
Mom stayed behind in Boston, so it was just Eugene and me.
He had John cover for him at the mines. It used to drive John nuts. ”
Hillary could understand that. “He didn’t like Timiny Cove any more than your mom did.”
“No. He wanted to be in the city. That’s where everything was happening, he said. Nothing happened in the sticks.”
Hillary reminisced with a chuckle. “The sticks.”
“You hated it there too. You used to ask me all kinds of questions about life in the city. Remember?”
“Uh-huh. It must have seemed bizarre. I was ten years older than you were. But I was starving for information. John gave me some, but never enough. He always held back a little to keep me curious. You told me everything you knew.”
“Which wasn’t an awful lot.”
“To me it was. Besides, I liked you.”
“Because I was John’s sister?”
“No. Well, yes, maybe at first, but I really did like you. You had a spark. You were fun. Happy.”
“Except when I was throwing temper tantrums,” Pam said with a droll look. Then the look grew pensive. “I loved the time I spent in Timiny Cove. The house was big and airy, the people friendly and interesting.”
“Interesting?”
“They were colorful.”
“Colorful.”
“They were, Hillary. How else would you describe Phoebe Hanks or Rufus Hackett or Dwayne Wardwell? God,” she sighed through a smile, “they were great. Phoebe with her crochet hook making those hideous slippers, one after another after another, Rufus with his chipmunk cheeks and his toothless grins and the jokes whose punchlines he always messed up, Dwayne looking so stern under his butch haircut—all of them with hearts of gold. Daddy and I used to play poker with Rufus and Dwayne. I remember it so clearly….”
And so it began. Hillary hadn’t asked for it, but it was easy to keep Pam going.
A question here, a disbelieving look there, a teasing prod drew forth Pam’s unique impressions of Timiny Cove.
She accepted Hillary’s curiosity about those impressions.
Likewise, the questions Hillary asked about Eugene St. George and, of course, John seemed perfectly natural.
As Hillary listened closely, her interviewer’s mind filing every detail, a distant part of her brain foresaw other lunches, other mornings, afternoons, or evenings spent with Pam or Patricia or Cutter.
She would tell them what she was doing, because they meant the world to her, and if they had qualms, she would soft-pedal one private chapter or another.
She would be compassionate, where they were concerned.
Where John was concerned, she would be merciless.