Lace II

  Suddenly, Pagan was able to accept that the life she had known was a thing of the past. It was gone forever. She was able to accept that her situation had changed, that she had to make her own way in the world. She realized that she was not alone in the world, that she had known good times and bad times before Christopher died, and she would do so again. Life would never be the same again, but she would make a different life. Life would go on, and so would she.

  Pagan could not stop crying. When Sophia returned home from school, she found her mother curled up on the bedroom carpet, still clutching Buster’s collar in her hand, and sobbing noisily.

  “Mummy, what is it? Why are you crying?” Sophia stroked Pagan’s head and wondered what to do, who to call.

  “I don’t know,” Pagan howled, “but I can’t s-s-s-s-s-stop.”

  Sophia sat down beside her and also started to bawl.

  At last, together, they were able to share their grief.

  10

  Late June 1979

  “THEY’LL JUST HAVE to wait for their money, my blood isn’t bankable.” Judy wearily shoved a pile of bills off her knees; they slid down the fox-fur spread of her brown velvet bed with a menacing little shoosh to Tom, who was seated on the end of the bed. “At least switching the printers paid off. We’ve saved a slice of this month’s budget.” Noisily, she blew her nose; her bout of summer flu just made everything that much worse.

  Tom shook his head. “I didn’t want to discuss it until you were back in the office, but the color reproduction of our July issue is way below standard.”

  “The printers swear that they’ll do a better job next month. Teething troublès, they said.”

  Again, Tom shook his head. “Next month is too late. Lady Mirabelle Cosmetics has withdrawn the new fall campaign because they say our color reproduction is no longer good enough.”

  Judy’s already pale face went white. “When did that happen?”

  “This afternoon. That’s why I had to talk to you. A lot of advertisers have been griping; we’ve already lost a few of the smaller ones, but Lady Mirabelle’s a body-blow.” Judy knew perfectly well that the Lady Mirabelle Christmas Gift campaign accounted for a big chunk of their revenue, from September to Christmas. “We can’t replace that money,” Tom emphasized.

  “Does anyone else know?” asked Judy.

  “No.”

  “Are you sure no one knows?” she persisted.

  “No.” Tom gave a short laugh. “Not even Tony knows about the Lady Mirabelle problem.”

  Judy flopped back wearily on her cream silk pillows. Tom looked at her and thought, it’s not like Judy to act so spoiled and sound so sorry for herself. And she hasn’t got that much to be sorry about. Just because you were born poor doesn’t mean that the world owes you a living at some later date. Parts of Judy’s life had been hard, but they’d nearly all been interesting, and she’d had some really lucky breaks on her way to the top. Maybe she’d become overambitious, maybe they both had. Tom knew that was Kate’s opinion. Trouble was, Judy wasn’t used to losing. And they were both under great strain. Tom said, “Judy, we took a gamble on the printing and we lost the gamble. But winners always take risks and sometimes they lose. Failing sometimes is a part of long-term winning. You can see their point, Judy. They aren’t going to spend millions developing plum colors, then run ads for them in a magazine that prints them light purple. Switching printers was a false economy.” Tom’s usually cheerful face was strained. “And there’s another thing that you may have forgotten. All our business loans are guaranteed against each other. The PR company is still doing fine, and so is the property company, but they guarantee the magazine, which, in turn guarantees our stock market investments…”

  “Losses, you mean!” snorted Judy.

  “…which means that we can’t liquidate one part of our business without the domino effect. They’ll all start crashing.”

  “Tom, this is like a nightmare. A crash is what I’ve always dreaded, and you’ve always told me my attitude was overcautious. You always said that we were borrowing in order not to miss business opportunities. Why, only nine months ago, you told me that we were worth two million dollars more this year. What about the Hoffmann-La Roche profits that you stuck in Swiss francs?”

  “That was before our copper futures problem.” Tom looked uncomfortable. Judy had always hated him playing the futures market.

  Judy said, “I wish we’d sorted out the VERVE! portfolio and separated the investment business from the rest of the company, as Kate suggested.”

  “We just never got around to it. I wish you’d never run that interview with Lili! Let’s both stop wishing and think positive!” He handed her the box of Kleenex. “Our financial situation is a house of cards; we’ve borrowed from Peter to pay Paul for months now and we can’t go on much longer.”

  “Sometimes,” Judy’s voice was flat, “I’d just like to take a plane and leave it all behind me.” She looked at the space on the wall where her treasured silk painting of a Manchu noble had hung until it had followed the jade collection to Sotheby’s a few weeks earlier. Despite the warmth of her apartment and the thick fur spread, Judy felt cold and bone-tired. Why hadn’t the VERVE! lawyers picked up the danger in that fatal interview with Lili? Why didn’t the First Amendment apply to magazines as it did to newspapers? How could one lousy paragraph of print have sabotaged her entire life’s achievement? If I could wipe out five minutes of my life, Judy thought, I’d choose the time it took for Lili to tell me about Senator Ruskington.

  Tom stood up, then picked up the heavy file box that contained their depositions for the hearing on the following day. “I want you to read your statement once again, before you sign it, Judy,” he said gently. “We’ve got to get this absolutely right.”

  Judy sighed, took the document from him and began to read it. “At least after we win this hearing, we’ll wring a few thousand in damages out of the Senator when we counter-sue for libel.”

  “Nobody wins a lawsuit, Judy, you know that, Even if we win, we’ll still be thousands of dollars in hock.”

  “Not ‘if’ Tom, ‘when,’ ” Judy stressed, with weary stubborness. She hadn’t achieved what she had by giving up easily. Tom said nothing and looked at his scuffed Gucci loafers. To change the subject, he asked, “Want to hear what’s happened to Kate?”

  “Of course.” Judy brightened, as Tom pulled from his pocket an airmail envelope covered with neat, small handwriting, with no loops or flourishes.

  “ ‘The hill tribe guerrillas are getting stronger,’ she says. They’ve raided banks, attacked the Bengali settlements and the army garrison and she thinks they’re secretly planning an assault on the oil companies. That will be Shell, I suppose. Her typewriter’s been stolen, but she hopes to buy a new one on the black market, and she says she’ll sleep with it chained to her wrist.”

  “You don’t seem very worried about her, Tom.”

  “You know Kate. She hates a dull life, so I go along with what makes her happy. Of course I’m worried about her.”

  “Hasn’t anyone got any good news to cheer me up?” Judy picked up a second legal document from the pile.

  “No news of Mark?”

  “I’ve already told you, that’s over. Mark and I were finished months ago.” She buried her head in her hands. “I can’t take it any more,” she whispered. “Why is it that the minute you’re off balance, the vultures close in, trying to bring you down? Mark’s in Nicaragua, and he’s in Nicaragua because he doesn’t care to be around unsuccessful, old me.”

  Tom silently offered her another tissue from the box on the rosewood table beside her bed. “Judy, I can’t imagine that anyone would leave you just because you’re vulnerable or depressed or not sixteen any more. You’re a complete woman, Judy, and an honest woman. I think you’re the most honest woman I’ve ever met, and any man could love you for that alone.”

  She shook her head and slowly wiped her reddened eyes. “All that Mark really lik
ed about me was the fact that I didn’t need him. As soon as I needed him, really needed him, he ran away in the most destructive possible way.” Again, the tears started trickling from the sides of her eyes. “The crisp executive in me was irresistible so long as she was giving her attention to Mark’s brilliant career and his home comforts. He was very pleased to live off my emotional strength when I had enough for two, but when I needed someone to take care of me for a change, he couldn’t take it.” Judy’s voice crackled with misery and she sobbed silently behind her hands.

  Tom said, “It’s normal to suffer when a relationship ends. You get a few kicks in your pride, your dignity gets a bit dented, it’s a diminishing experience for everybody,” he soothed. “But Judy, you’ve only got to compare the divorce rate and the marriage statistics to know that people can split or hitch up any time, at any age. You’re still attractive.…”

  “That’s great, Tom, just great—that makes me feel like Methuselah’s mother. ‘You’re still attractive’ means that when people look at me they can see the day coming when I won’t be attractive anymore. It means that time’s running out.” She blew her nose again. “This isn’t the way I want to end up, Tom, alone in bed with my work. This wasn’t the rosy vision I had in front of me when I first ran away from Rossville, to make my fortune.” She scraped her face with a tissue, leaving red weals on her cheeks.

  “Don’t be too hard on Mark,” Tom pleaded. “I don’t suppose either of us is the easiest person in the world to be with, when we’re under this sort of strain.”

  “That’s not it.” Judy pushed her fingers through her hair with a gesture of anguish. “I’m not easy to be with, because everybody’s got the wrong idea about me. Mark’s no different from any other man. To him, a woman in a top job is tough, self-possessed, independent—all the things he has to be to stay at the top of his profession. What he doesn’t understand is that, just because I am those things at work, it doesn’t follow that I want to be the same way at home. Like all you men, Mark thinks a successful career woman isn’t interested in kindness, or caring and sharing, and he thinks I don’t need it. But I do. I’m just as thirsty for love as any housewife running a couple of kids and a recipe club; the only difference is that I run a corporation.”

  “Finish these papers, Judy, and then I’ll take them all away,” Tom coaxed her. “Crying won’t get us out of the hole we’re in.”

  As Judy dried her tears and finished reading her statement, Tom turned on the TV in time to catch the late news. As he had anticipated, Senator Ruskington was interviewed with his loyal wife at his side. Her face was serious and indignant. The Senator answered the interviewer, “This is indeed a most unpleasant case, which is why my wife and I feel that it is my duty to the public to expose this situation for what it is.” Expertly, Ruskington turned to face the camera head-on. “An unpleasant attempt to sell an unpleasant magazine through salacious innuendo and un-Christian lies. Any money which comes to us through this lawsuit will be donated to a charity which will be chosen by my wife.” The Senator was glibly pious.

  “But you are claiming ten million dollars in damages,” the reporter reminded him.

  “Whatever the court sees fit to award us will all be given to charity,” the Senator confirmed. “My wife and I wish it to be known that there is not a shred of evidence to support the vile accusations printed in VERVE! magazine. We feel it is appropriate that the people who publish this dishonest magazine should see the rewards of their evildoing.”

  Judy shook her fist at the TV screen and gathered up the scattered papers on her bed. “I’m going to go through these once again, Tom,” she said.

  The woman TV reporter suggested, “Some people find it hard to understand why you are pushing this case against VERVE! magazine with so much vigor.”

  “Attagirl!” Judy cried, sitting up in bed. “I bet she reads VERVE!”

  On-screen, the Senator again turned to the camera. “My wife and I feel that until some person in our situation makes a stand, any so-called actress can draw attention to herself by linking her name with that of a prominent public citizen.” The Senator paused for breath. “I want everyone to know that our family is united in fighting this attempt to blacken our good name and to brand me as a fornicator and an adulterer.”

  “But Senator, isn’t this also an attempt on your part to obtain a great deal of money?” the reporter prodded him.

  “My personal reputation is worth more to me than any sum of money,” said the Senator. The interview ended and Tom switched off the TV.

  Tom left her apartment shortly after midnight, saying, “Take care of yourself, Judy.”

  That’s what I’ve been trying to do for the last thirty years, she thought.

  Judy remembered how depressed she’d felt in Switzerland, where she’d worked all day at the language laboratory and every evening and weekend as a waitress at the Chesa. She’d never learned to ski, she’d never gone to dances, and she’d never had pretty clothes like Maxine and Kate. She still remembered her sudden bitterness when the young Pagan had, without thinking twice, returned the diamond necklace that Prince Abdullah had tried to give her; that necklace would have paid for Judy’s entire year in Europe.

  Judy never permitted herself to remember what it felt like to be really poor, because she panicked when she recalled what it felt like to have only one pair of shoes and one repeatedly patched dress. But when she remembered her mother’s hopeless face and the strained, tense atmosphere in their home, for the two years during which her father was out of work, then Judy felt grim determination to succeed—at no matter what cost to herself.

  Tom told me to take care of myself, she thought bitterly, picking up her ebony bedside mirror and looking at her face, which reflected the tension of the past few months.

  Judy worked through the night on her deposition and finally finished it at six in the morning. She heard the maid’s key in the lock, and called, “Forget about breakfast, Francetta, and call me at eight o’clock. I’m off to Philadelphia again.” Then she drifted off to sleep.

  * * *

  “What time will you be home, Curtis?” Debra Halifax asked her husband.

  He walked to the sideboard and lifted the silver entrée dish for a second helping of scrambled eggs. “Usual time, I expect.” He wondered how it was possible to feel so worn and jaded at the beginning of a new day. “What are you planning to do today, Debra?”

  “I’m not planning to do anything.” Debra managed to make the statement sound like an accusation. At least, thought Curtis, she was eating again, although she did not seem to be gaining any weight. Doctor Joseph thought that her infertility had been linked to her anorexia.

  “Don’t forget what Doctor Joseph said. If you want to make a full recovery, you must start leading your own life and you begin by structuring your day. Why don’t you go shopping with Jane?”

  “You don’t get over a nervous breakdown by going shopping. That’s all I’ve ever done with my entire life. That’s the trouble!”

  “Now, Debra, Dr. Joseph explained that it wasn’t exactly a nervous…”

  “Oh, yes it was!”

  She’s almost proud of it, Curtis thought wearily; it’s her one achievement in life, the only thing she ever managed to do entirely on her own—have a nervous breakdown.

  “Doctor Joseph also said that what I needed was the love and support of my husband.”

  “I do love you, Debra, and I try to support you.” Curtis said once again.

  “Then why don’t you spend more time with me?” she demanded. “If you’re not at the bank, you’re at the Philadelphia Club or off playing golf or fishing with your friends.”

  “Now that’s not so. I spend a lot of time with you, Debra.”

  “Not alone.” Her voice was vinegar. “We give parties, and we go to parties; we meet the same people over and over.”

  “But they’re our friends,” Curtis protested.

  “Would you say we have friends, Curtis? I
wouldn’t. We have your business people and your political people and our families, but we don’t have any real friends, do we? And I never have a spare minute, but I lead an empty life.” Again, her accusatory tone flicked at her husband as Debra started her weekly moan. Curtis never knew what to say or what to do or what to suggest. “Look, I’ve got to leave, I’m late. Why not take Jane to a museum?”

  “You know very well that museums depress me. A museum wouldn’t solve my problem. Not now that I know what my problem is.” Debra’s voice trembled. “There’s someone else, isn’t there? You’re in love with someone else, aren’t you, Curtis? That woman I saw in your office. I know she lunched with you yesterday, I saw it in your appointment book. She’s always coming down to see you. You’re having an affair with the famous Judy Jordan, aren’t you, Curtis?”

  “No. I see her on business!” Curtis felt exhausted, as his wife’s persistent questions continued. Debra had started to stage jealous rages over his imagined infidelity almost immediately after they married. Doctor Joseph had explained Debra’s jealousy was the classic result of paranoid delusions. Curtis had bowed his head under the onslaught of accusation. After all, he had a reason to feel guilty, although he was pretty sure that Debra didn’t know about it.

  Gradually, Curtis recognized that Debra said little which was founded on reason, and then, slowly, he had come to realize that his wife was not entirely … well. Doctor Joseph used the phrase “borderline psychotic.” After twenty years of marriage, Curtis Halifax knew that his wife’s grasp on sanity was easily loosened; her family had always known of this and now the Halifax family knew of it. but the subject was never discussed. Debra was nervous, that was all.

  Now she said, “If Judy Jordan was only in your office to discuss business, then why was she crying?”

  “I don’t recall that she was crying.”