I.O.U

  He looked doubtful, but game to take my word for it. “If you say so. Maybe that’s it. Come on downstairs and tell me the rest of it, all right?”

  I cupped my hands around my coffee mug and complained to Geof, “Why wouldn’t she talk to me?”

  “Why do you think she wouldn’t?”

  I made a face at him. “You’ve been hanging around my friend Marsha too much. Now you’re throwing my questions back at me. Okay, I think she’s probably having her own tough time dealing with my mother’s death—maybe even having a delayed reaction like mine—and dealing with me is more than she can handle at this time.”

  “Sounds reasonable to me,” Geof said. “How does it sound to you?”

  I thought it over. “Not good enough. Still, I should apologize.”

  “How are you going to do it?”

  I noted his unspoken agreement that I should. “Well, I thought maybe I’d rent a truck and a loudspeaker and drive by her house shouting, Forgive me, Francie, I’m sorry!’”

  “Either that, or a billboard would be good.”

  “A note?”

  “Yeah,” he said, and reached for the coffee pot to refill my mug. “And maybe flowers, followed by an abjectly apologetic phone call. And speaking of flowers, I don’t have anything for you on the flowers that kook sent to your mother’s funeral, or on the message in the guest book. I’m sorry. You haven’t had any other strange communications, have you?”

  “Not in regard to my mother, although there’s a group calling itself Morality in Our Arts Committee that has sent the foundation little notes warning us we’re all going to burn in hell for sponsoring that show down at the New East Gallery. You ever heard of MOAC?”

  “MOAC? Sounds like a macaw. I’ll ask around.”

  “Geof?”

  “Yo?”

  “What would you think if I took a leave of absence?”

  “From the foundation?”

  “Well, not from you.”

  “Do it,” he said, instantly.

  I stared at him, suspicious of his quick reaction. “You don’t harbor a secret wish for a sweet little housewife, do you?”

  He didn’t laugh, but only put down his coffee, and laid his hands on top of mine. “I harbor a secret wish for you to be happy, that’s all. I want you to do what you want to do. Remember that time when I was fed up with police work and I was going to quit? You stuck by me then, didn’t you, and we weren’t even married yet. And if I had quit, you’d have been there, helping me to write my letter of resignation. So now it’s your turn, and mine.”

  I remembered. I also remembered how worried I had been about him —and about the effect of his mental state on us—at the time.

  “I love you,” I told him.

  He smirked. “Wise woman.”

  I crossed over to him, sat down on his lap and squeezed his face in my hands. “Take back that smirk, you smart alec.”

  “Make me.”

  I kissed the smirk away. “I would carry you upstairs,” I murmured, “only you’re bigger than I am. I am but a weak, fluttery little woman with hardly enough strength left in my poor emaciated body to screw your brains out.”

  “I’ll grab your hair,” he said, “and haul you up the stairs.”

  I put my hand to the back of my head, and winced. “God, can you imagine how that would hurt?” I sat up on his lap. “But listen, do you mind if I finish my coffee first?”

  “Nope.” Geof pushed me off his lap. Of such was marriage, as compared to courtship. “In fact, I wouldn’t mind finishing off that cheesecake you brought home from Sherry’s.” He leered at me. “To build up my stamina.” And that was the nice part about marriage—there wasn’t any hurry, because it felt as if we had all the time in the world to be together.

  I felt such a rush of affection for the man that I hurled myself back into his lap and his arms. On second thought, we agreed a few minutes later, the coffee and cheesecake could wait. As for getting up the stairs to the bedroom, we helped each other. This time, when I crawled under the covers, I had company.

  Geof was called back to work later that night on a homicide, which, for once, didn’t involve me or anybody I ever knew; what a relief. I felt lonely without him, and wandered back downstairs to our living room to read. I pulled from our bookshelves the only medical reference book, a thick, beige tome, ten years out of date, that I could also have used for building muscle tone. I hefted it over to Geof’s favorite chair, turned on the reading lamp and sat down with the book covering my lap.

  “Cysts… breast, ovarian, testicular.”

  No, definitely not the latter, and probably not breast, because why would that require a hysterectomy? Must have been ovarian, although Doc Farrell hadn’t specifically said so. Page 362. I stuck a finger there and then another finger in “Endometriosis, page 412.” And in “Fibroids, page 410.” I thought I knew what they were, those familiar-sounding disorders of the female reproductive system, but I quickly discovered that my laywoman’s knowledge didn’t begin to cover the subjects.

  “Surgical removal of cysts may be necessary if they are suspected of originating in a tumor…”

  “Endometriosis… produces cysts… menstrual discomfort…” (Discomfort, ha/ I thought. Must have been written by a man. Bet what he means is red hot aching pain.) “More prevalent in women who marry and conceive late in life… surgical removal of tissue or administration of steroids…”

  Or had Doc Farrell said “Endometritis?” instead of “Endometriosis?” The one came right after the other in my medical tome, and now I couldn’t remember which he had said. “Endometritis… bacterial infection causing inflammation of the lining of the uterus… lower back and abdominal pain.” (Jeez, if the writer comes right out and calls it pain, it must be unbearable!) “May require dilation and curettage (D and C).”

  Moving on alphabetically…

  “Fibroids are uterine tumors, usually benign… appearing more often in black women and childless women… abnormal bleeding is the most common symptom… hysterectomy rarely required except for large or multiple fibroids.”

  Doc Farrell must have performed the hysterectomy due to endometriosis and ovarian cysts, I decided, and maybe fibroids, because nobody’d ever mentioned Mom suffering the sort of acute pain that seemed to be indicated by endometritis. On the other hand, nobody’d ever mentioned her having a hysterectomy, either. It was funny, though, that I didn’t remember my mother ever complaining about difficult periods, which she should have had with endometriosis and cysts. But then maybe her generation was more circumspect about “female complaints” than mine was. Certainly, somebody in my family was embarrassed by the word hysterectomy, and it might have even been Mom, herself.

  Well, I thought as I shoved the book back into its place on the shelf, if I got those medical records from Marjorie Earnshaw, I’d find out for sure, although why I wanted to do so, I couldn’t precisely say. “But then,” I said aloud to the empty room, “if we always knew exactly why we did the things we do, we’d be so appalled by our own motives that we wouldn’t do half of them.”

  On which profundity, I went to bed, although once again I had trouble sleeping. Sadness, depression, restlessness, and unfocused anger came in separate waves through the long hours that Geof was gone, so that by the morning, I woke up feeling disoriented, like a traveler with jet lag. For a moment, as I rubbed my eyes, I could have sworn it was only the horrible night that was real, while the sunlight was but a dream.

  “These days,” I said, on the verge of tears already, and it was only seven o’clock in the morning, “have got to get better.”

  9

  THE MINUTE I STARTED GETTING DRESSED, THE DAY DID APPEAR to brighten. As I plucked my pantyhose into place around my knees, it occurred to me that if I took a leave of absence from my job this might be the last morning for a long time that I would have to dress up. That astonishing thought prompted me to walk over to my closet, throw open the door and stare at the contents within: s
uits, silk blouses, proper little business dresses with proper little jackets, low-heeled pumps (so I wouldn’t tower over short benefactors with big egos). And how would all of that look, I pondered, if it were shoved over to make room for sweat suits and sneakers? And what about my dresser drawers —with their bras and silky slips pushed aside for T-shirts and cotton socks?

  Not to have to wear pantyhose every day?

  Oh my. I sat on the edge of the bed, overcome with the sheer bliss of the idea. Later, in the bathroom as I brushed on eyeshadow and blusher, I thought: Hey, maybe I won’t have to do this every morning from now on. Maybe I’ll wear less makeup or even—oh my!—none at Could I go cold turkey on mascara?

  I was laughing to myself—at myself—as I walked downstairs to where my personal computer was set up on the dining room table. There, I composed a letter to my trustees, requesting a leave. I struggled over the phrase “one month,” because my fingers wanted to type “three months” or “six” or even “one year.” The rest of the letter came easily.

  In the wake of my mother’s death…

  I tried to be as frank and specific as possible….

  …I find myself wanting to answer lingering questions in my own mind in regard to her life, her illness, and her death. I also want to satisfy my curiosity about the reasons for and the consequences of the collapse of our family business. I do not believe I will be able to attend adequately to the foundation’s business until I have taken care of this pressing personal business.

  There was more, but of a less personal nature. I mentioned my uninterrupted years of service and (trying not to sound martyred) I counted the vacation days and holidays I had not taken. I thanked them profusely for their understanding and I begged their kind forebearance. I recommended highly Faye Basil’s ability to assume my responsibilities in my absence. I started to offer myself for “consultation” during my month off, but, at the last minute, left that out. Finally, I made five copies on our home copier and sealed those letters into envelopes for my trustees: Peter Falwell, Lucille Grant, Edwin Ottilini, Roy Lelad, and Jack Fenton. As I tucked them into a side pocket of my purse, a subversive idea sneaked into my mind: A month didn’t seem like a very long time.

  I was ready to go… and yet. Some cautionary voice within me said, “think about it,” at least for a couple of hours. I didn’t want to heed it, but, on the other hand, I had all day to do this task, and no other particular plan in mind.

  “Okay,” I capitulated to myself. “I’ll let it simmer.”

  To use the time, I took the sheaf of newspaper articles I had obtained from the library the day before and carried them with me into the kitchen to peruse while I worked up to my caffeine quota for the morning.

  Over the first cup of coffee, I saw that the first article to appear in The Port Frederick Times had been a two-paragraph announcement of what a Cain Clams company spokesman termed “cash-flow difficulties.” Ah yes. I smiled grimly to myself. The infamous, all-purpose excuse for anything—cash-flow difficulties. I would have expected big headlines, given the company’s importance to the city, but the story was positioned in the back pages by the want ads. The difficulties were blamed, by Vice President Cecil Greenstreet, on “poor clam crops, clam bed pollution, increased competition, and new and costly pollution control requirements.” What? I wondered, no mention of terrorist attacks in Lebanon?

  Now, Jenny, I chided myself, don’t be cynical.

  At least, not yet.

  Two weeks after that first article appeared, I learned in the business pages of The Port Frederick Times that Cain Clams had fired—“released” was the euphemism employed by the vice president—one-third of its employees “in an effort to solve our cash-flow problems.” Sitting in my kitchen, reading this sour mash, I thought: thereby creating unbelievable cash-flow problems in one-third of its employees’ homes and families.

  Why wasn’t this bigger news at the time? I wondered.

  Next, I learned from the newspaper, Cain filed for a voluntary Chapter II bankruptcy, which would, essentially, allow it to reorganize without having to pay its bills. Cecil Greenstreet, the VP, was quoted in that article as saying “they”—whoever that was—“are holding meetings on restructuring.” (Greenstreet, Greenstreet… where had I seen that name lately? Oh, right, in the guest book, he’d signed it at the funeral.) The paper concluded with the observation that small creditors were filing suits, and large creditors were trying to help restructure the debt load to keep Cain Clams afloat. And my question, as I poured myself fresh coffee, was: Do dead clams float?

  Cynicism, I decided, was a great defense against pain.

  “Greenstreet!” I said, in the manner of “eureka!” Of course! His had been one of the signatures sandwiching the anonymous words, “Forgive me.” That’s why his name nagged me every time I saw it mentioned in the paper. Damned nice of the man to have come to the funeral, I thought, considering that we’d probably done him out of a pretty good job.

  I picked up the articles again and read through the middle of the pile, learning in a series of brief business page announcements that the top executives of Cain Clams, including my father, had resigned, and were replaced by a court-appointed management firm. The first thing the new managers did was to halt all new construction at the plant. The second thing they did was to go looking for short-term loans to pay short-term bills.

  At that point, I came across the first—and evidently the only— Port Frederick Times editorial on the subject. In it, Samuel Hayes, Sr. (father of the current owner, publisher, and editor), basically opined as to how it was a bad day at Black Rock. I shuffled through the pile, looking for the other editorials I assumed would be there, but didn’t find any.

  This was very odd coverage, indeed. My father, I decided, must have had more influence, at least at the time, than I would have suspected. Otherwise, why such discreet reporting on such a major economic calamity?

  The paper next reported that the construction company slated to build Dad’s new addition had filed mechanic’s liens to get its bills paid, and then there was news of a foreclosure order by a U.S. judge, meaning that secured creditors could foreclose on their collateral to get their money back. The next thing I read was that Port Frederick Fisheries had bought all remaining assets, assumed all remaining liabilities, and planned to proceed with new construction to “modernize the century-old Cain canning facilities.”

  Port Frederick Fisheries. PFF.

  “It’s a Pretty Fine kettle of Fish you got us into this time, Ollie.” I sighed, thinking of my father.

  I pulled the phone over to call him.

  “Dad,” I said, “do you remember Cecil Greenstreet, who was a vice president of your company?”

  You’d think, of course, that naturally he’d remember, but you could never be sure with my dad. This time, however, I got lucky, although I had to ask the question several different ways, and follow many different conversational detours with him before I got my answer. “Well, of course, I remember him,” Dad told me at last, sounding insulted that I would even imply that he might not. “Greenstreet was a fine fellow; I hated to lose him.” He made it sound as if the man had quit a thriving concern, rather than jumped a sinking ship. “The last I heard he was with Downeast Marine, Inc., out of Boston, you know.”

  What I knew was that Downeast Marine was another canning company. I got their number from Boston “information,” and I called Mr. Greenstreet, whose secretary passed me over to him after a fairly lengthy wait on “hold.”

  “I’m Jimmy Cain’s daughter,” I told him, by way of introducing myself. It was always risky to start off on that particular foot, but I couldn’t see an alternative. “I’m calling to thank you for the lovely flowers you sent to my mother’s funeral. My father and the rest of the family and I appreciated them so much.”

  “It was the least I could do,” he said. “How is your father?”

  “The same,” I said, figuring he could interpret that as he chose. “I’m afra
id I have a favor to ask of you, Mr. Greenstreet.”

  “I would be honored,” the deep voice intoned.

  You would? I thought. How kind of you. But why in the world should you be?

  “I am taking a leave of absence from my job,” I said. That part was true; it was only the next part that was pure fabrication, or at least, I was pretty sure it was. “And I’m going back to school to get a doctorate in economics. I have decided to take as my initial research effort a study of our own family business. Would you agree to let me interview you about it?”

  “Interview me?” Greenstreet sounded taken aback. “About what?”

  “Well, frankly, about what happens when a family business fails. You were there, you saw it all, and I wasn’t around for any of it.”

  He cleared his throat. “Ms. Cain, while I respect your father enormously—”

  You do? I thought, incredulously. You really are a nice man, even if you do sound a shade oily.

  “—this is not a subject for which I feel a great deal of nostalgia. Still, if you need this for a school project…” (What did he think I was, sixteen?) “What sorts of questions will you ask me?”

  “Oh, like what were the factors leading up to the collapse, why did it happen, who were the principle players in it, how might it have been avoided, that sort of thing.”

  “Well, all right, I’ll certainly help you if I can.”

  Once he had committed himself, Greenstreet seemed to want to get it out of the way quickly, and asked me if I could meet him for a late lunch that very afternoon at his office near Boston Harbor. I checked my watch, saw that I would just have time to deliver my letters and make the drive, and said, “I’d love to, thank you.”

  Then I made one more phone call.

  “Port Frederick Times.”

  “Sam Hayes, please. Jenny Cain calling.”