Riverside Park Page 11

  “I’m so exhausted I don’t know if I’m coming or going anymore,” she said, covering her face with her arm.

  “You haven’t slept through the night since she came home.”

  “I’m just so scared, Sam. She feels like a stranger to me.” She let her arm fall back on the bed. “Althea feels it, too.”

  “Althea’s just upset because your heart’s broken, honey, and she can’t stand to watch. Not that I can.”

  She sighed. “I suppose.” She closed her eyes, felt around for his hand and found it. “We’ll get through this,” she whispered. Then her eyes opened to look up at him. “We will, Sam, won’t we?”

  “Of course we will.” He kissed her hand. “I’ll make something for dinner.” He got up.

  “Could you make sure that Samantha eats something?”

  “Obviously I can’t make Samantha do anything, but I will try,” he promised.

  Fifteen minutes later he knocked on the door of his daughter’s bedroom.

  “Come in,” she called.

  Sam balanced the tray in one hand to open the door. “Since we’re through yelling at you for the day,” he began, “your mother thought you might want something to eat.”

  Samantha was sitting on her bed with a book and a highlighter. Any fantasies he had maintained that Samantha might be in here crying her eyes out with guilt were utterly dispelled. She looked extremely comfortable and happy in her flannel nightgown and slippers.

  He put the tray down next to her on the bed. There were two slices of toasted seven-grain bread with peanut butter and sliced bananas on it. There was a tall glass of organic two-percent milk. There was also a quartered orange.

  “Did Mom sneak wheat germ in this?” she asked, pulling the tray closer and peering at the suspect peanut butter.

  “No,” Sam said. “But I did.” He walked around the bed and picked up her book. “Abnormal Psychiatry and the American Social Model,” he read. “Sounds like fun.”

  “It’s pretty interesting, actually. How our system fails the most disturbed people, who then drag down the whole system so it can’t function well for anyone else.”

  Sam was going to take a seat but the only chair was the old rocker and just now he couldn’t face it. He had spent too many hours in that chair, holding Samantha in his lap, reading her stories.

  She had been a beautiful child. She was still beautiful, with her square face, high cheekbones, aquiline nose and pouting mouth.

  He walked over to the window facing 90th Street and rested his arms on the windowsill. He heard Samantha bite into the toast.

  All he could think about was Samantha must have been pregnant last August when she had been working at a community health center. While she had been advising inner-city teenage girls of color about love, family and clean living. She also must have been pregnant when she was a bridesmaid in her cousin’s wedding. For weeks and months Samantha must have known she was pregnant and yet had said nothing, only to show up at Thanksgiving and let her condition announce itself.

  At first he had been furious with Rosanne for trying to run interference for Samantha. That quickly dissipated, though, because he had just been looking for somebody who was strong enough to endure his wrath. Rosanne had known Samantha her entire life. She had done the right thing. And she had run interference as much for the whole family’s sake as for Samantha’s.

  Rosanne had always warned him that Samantha got away with murder simply because she was the daughter he carried no guilt about. (“No, that’s not it,” he would say.)

  (“Yeah, okay,” Rosanne would say, “but you’re not drunk anymore, so maybe you could just be a little nicer to Althea. Who’s exactly like you. But we won’t even go there, Mr. W, will we?”)

  “Your mother’s afraid you might have already signed some sort of adoption agreement,” he began, watching the dog walkers head toward the park.

  “I haven’t.”

  Thank God for that. “Samantha, you haven’t taken any money from a couple or anything, have you?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Your mother was wondering how you could afford to pay that credit card bill.” He hazarded a peek over his shoulder. She was eating and didn’t look in the least upset.

  “I got a partial refund from school. I was going to tell you about it.” She lowered the glass of milk. “But you made me mad. And I know I was wrong to charge all those clothes but I don’t think I was completely sane when I did it, you know?” She was squinting at him. “My brain gets wicked weird sometimes.”

  “Hormones,” he said, going over to sit down in the rocker. “You’ve got tremendous changes going on in your body. Your mother had that, too. With both pregnancies.” He leaned forward, holding his hands in front of him. “We want to do what’s right, Samantha. For you and for the baby. We get upset because we love you so much—” His voice started to break, but he cleared it and pressed on. “I know you said you got counseling in Utica, but we’d still like you to see someone here.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, to start with, to make absolutely sure that you really do want to give this baby up—”

  “I don’t want it!” she said, voice rising. “I’ll give birth to it, find it a good home and then I’m going on with my life, Dad. There’s no way I’m keeping it.”

  He held his hands up slightly. “I understand. Don’t get upset.”

  “You guys keep looking at me like I murdered somebody. I got pregnant, big deal, and I keep telling you, I’ll take care of it.”

  “But it is a big deal,” he said softly.

  “I knew you’d want me to have an abortion, that’s why I didn’t tell you guys before.”

  “That’s not true, Samantha.”

  “Oh, yes, it is. This isn’t even really about the baby. It’s about Mom’s image in—” her head accompanied an imaginary dance step to the side “—the community, and what it will do when it gets out her teenage daughter is an unwed mother.”

  “With you walking in Riverside Park every day,” Sam said, “you think anybody’s not going to know you’re pregnant?”

  “Oh, so you want me to stay inside? You want me to pace in my room for the next two months?” She craned her neck forward. “Maybe you could send me to Africa, Dad. With any luck I’ll get murdered in the Sudan and Mom’s image problem will be solved. Then she can become a widely admired martyr and get even more awards.”

  She’s jealous. Sam was thunderstruck. Samantha was jealous of how many people admired her mother.

  “Enough nonsense,” he said, getting to his feet. His back was killing him. “And for your information, yes, I probably would have advised you to have an abortion. But not your mother. Your mother only wants to understand why you wanted to get pregnant.”

  “Is that what she thinks?” she said, pushing the tray away from her. “That I did it deliberately?”

  “She’s worried about you, Samantha, get it through your head. You are her baby and she would do just about anything in this world to protect you. She’s scared because she doesn’t understand how you got to this place, why you couldn’t come to her. Is that so hard to understand?”

  After a moment Samantha relented, letting her head sag. After another moment, she said, “I thought about telling her.”

  “Were you raped?” Sam quietly asked.

  She looked up at him in horror. “No.”

  “Because that’s the first thing that crossed my mind.”

  Was it his imagination or did she smile slightly?

  “Who’s the father, Samantha?”

  She shook her head.

  “He has a right to know.”

  “He knows. I told you, I got counseling, all of that’s been taken care of. So you can go tell Mom I didn’t sell the baby down the river. It’s a legit adoption agency.”

  “So you’ve talked to an agency?” He needed to get this straight.

  “Yes,” she said impatiently. “That’s where I got the counseling.”


  “But you didn’t sign anything.”

  “You can’t sign off until after the baby’s born. You’re allowed to change your mind.” She tossed her book to the floor and pulled herself toward the edge of the bed. “Anything else?”

  “What’s the father’s race?”

  She shook her head again. “It’s not happening, Dad. And if you don’t give it up I’m just going to leave.” She pushed herself up from the bed.

  “You will see the obstetrician, right? The one your mother made the appointment with?”

  “Yes.” She was looking around the room, he presumed for her robe, which was on the floor on the other side of the bed. Sam went over to pick it up. “Thanks,” she said when he helped her on with it.

  “And you won’t sign anything for anybody without letting me see it first, right?” he said.

  “Yes!” she said, exasperated. She turned around. “Are you through? American Idol’s on.”

  “Yeah. For now.” He gestured. “Go on. Tell Simon he’s an embarrassment to mankind.”

  He turned the bedside lamp off on his way out and went back to their bedroom. Harriet was sitting on the edge of the bed in the dark. “Well, she didn’t sell the kid,” he announced.

  “So I heard.”

  He sat down next to her, making the headboard thump against the wall. “You heard it all?”

  “I was right outside the door.” She leaned against him and Sam put his arm around her. “I couldn’t help myself.”

  He kissed the top of her head. “You’re a good mother.”

  “You were wrong, Sam,” she said after a moment. “I might well have told her to have an abortion. If it was early on.” Pause. “I never thought it was ever going to be an issue. Not with all the contraception available to her.”

  “You could be right,” Sam said glumly. “She might have done it on purpose. But why? What could she get out of it that she doesn’t have already—or could have if she asked us.”

  “He’s married,” Harriet said. “I can feel it in my bones.”

  “What?”

  Harriet sat up straight. “My guess is she wanted to tie herself to someone whether he liked it or not. Force him to make a choice.” She sighed as she got up. “I guess we know what his choice was. Sam.” She turned around. “You do know that we have to adopt this child ourselves, don’t you?”

  13

  Cassy Takes Emma to the Lawyer’s Office

  WHEN EMMA SAW the limousine waiting outside her building she was upset Cassy had gone to so much trouble.

  “Honestly, Emma, I didn’t,” Cassy said, walking slowly beside the older woman. Emma was holding Cassy’s arm with one hand and using her walking stick with the other. “The car is something the company gives me so I can get everything done I have to get done.” She gave Emma’s hand a pat. “Like see an old friend once in a while.”

  As they emerged on the street a huge gust of wind blew up from the park and Emma’s hand tightened on Cassy’s arm as she stopped moving, closing her eyes against the cold. Cassy nodded to the driver who then hurried over.

  There had been a great change in Emma Goldblum since Cassy had last seen her and she wondered how cognizant Rosanne was of what was happening.

  “The last time I was in a limousine,” Emma told the driver as he helped her in, “was for my husband’s funeral.” She allowed herself to fall the last few inches into the deeply padded seat. She smiled at Cassy. “The time before that was when I was married.”

  They rode along the West Side, chatting about the weather and whether it would snow in time for the holidays, when Emma suddenly said, “Rosanne has enough on her plate.”

  Cassy hesitated, wondering if this was the beginning or the end of a thought.

  Emma, who had her stick planted on the floor of the car, kept looking ahead. “I worry, Cassy, because she dislikes nursing. Very much. And yet she is forcing herself to continue in advanced study at school.”

  Okay. Now Cassy knew where they were. “She may just need more time to get used to it, Emma. She ran her own business for so many years, it can’t be easy to work for someone else.”

  The older woman was shaking her head, eyes still forward. “She doesn’t want Jason to be ashamed of her.”

  “But Jason was never—”

  “I know.” She took a breath. “She doesn’t want him to go to college and then be ashamed to bring his friends home.”

  “That’s not about Jason, Emma,” Cassy said. “That’s about how Rosanne feels about herself. As if the job makes the woman. If you ask me, anybody who can make a decent living working for themselves as a housekeeper is worthy of anyone’s admiration. It requires a heck of a lot more discipline than it does working for someone else who tells you every move you have to make, when and how, and never feels obligated to fully explain why.”

  Now Mrs. Goldblum was looking at her. Smiling. “Dear Cassy, I agree. That is why I wish you would talk to her. And perhaps assist her in finding another profession.” She chuckled,

  covered her mouth with a gloved hand and, speaking around it, confided, “She says she hates being around sick people all the time. Can you imagine? A nurse who dislikes people who are ill? She says simply the most ghastly things about the doctors. And the head nurse. Oh, how she goes on and on about that nurse!”

  The offices of Emma’s lawyer, Attorney Thatcher (as Mrs. Goldblum respectfully referred to him) were located on Fifth Avenue in midtown and were particularly difficult to reach by car. The Christmas season was peaking and midtown was jammed with visitors wanting to see the window displays and decorations. Fortunately Cassy had allowed time for the traffic and she used the time to point out sights to Emma because Cassy knew she rarely came downtown anymore.

  To a chaotic chorus of car horns the driver double-parked in front of the office building and helped Cassy get Mrs. Goldblum inside. It was positively freezing now, the urban canyon winds having grown strong.

  “Mrs. Goldblum,” Attorney Thatcher said at the door of his offices. Since no billing attorney Cassy ever knew spent time waiting for clients at the door she knew his affection was real. She supposed there was nothing like seeing a client whose whole life you had changed for the better, which had been the case some years before with Attorney Thatcher and Emma Goldblum. “We’re all ready for you.”

  Cassy had assumed she’d be going in with Emma but Attorney Thatcher asked the receptionist to please see that Cassy was made comfortable while she waited. Emma took his arm and slowly off they went.

  Well.

  For some reason this errand was reminding Cassy of taking Henry to the dentist when he was little, wanting to go in with him but the doctor saying it would be better if she didn’t.

  She wished she had brought some work up from the car and thought about calling the driver. Then she remembered the traffic outside and figured he had enough to contend with. She hung up her coat, told the receptionist, yes, a glass of water would be lovely, and chose a comfortable seat and a copy of Architectural Digest.

  Their penthouse had been in here. Cassy had frankly been appalled when she learned her new husband wanted to put their private home on public view, but it seemed to mean so much to Jackson she hadn’t said anything. Her old apartment, she had made sure, was off-limits, but she was quite sure no one would be interested in it since she had decorated it herself, something between “early attic” and “soft and easy.”

  They were very different about the public-private thing. Jack loved the limelight and Cassy had never enjoyed it, feeling acutely self-conscious, but for professional reasons she had forced herself to get used to it. When she married Jack she realized too late how fully he intended to put their private life on view, at least those angles that flattered them most. Sometimes she wondered how much the secrecy of a relationship with Alexandra had inspired her to seek it again, to have at least one corner of her life be privately hers.

  To see how little public criticism or fallout had resulted from Alexan
dra’s relationship with Georgiana Hamilton-Ayres had been difficult for Cassy. No one seemed to blame either one of them for having fallen in love with the other; they were both such attractive young people. At that point it had only horrified and embarrassed Cassy to think of what she had expected Alexandra to endure in order to be with her. The envy and loneliness and sometimes downright misery Alexandra’s new relationship caused her seemed to be appropriate punishment. Cassy wasn’t young like Georgiana; Lord knows she came with caravans of emotional baggage; and yet she had expected Alexandra to sacrifice a full-fledged personal life in order to sleep with her on occasion.

  Cassy was ashamed.

  She remembered being at a dinner party at Jessica Wright and Will Rafferty’s apartment one evening with Jack, Alexandra and Georgiana (the latter having been introduced to Alexandra by Jessica) and feeling absolutely horrible because Jackson, as was his habit in public, fawned over her as his beloved wife. It was horrible because Alexandra knew what their marriage was really like and because Alexandra was in love with the actress. Three women at that table were going to go to sleep that night in the arms of someone they valued above all others while Cassy would be alone. Jack had something else on for that weekend.

  So Cassy threw herself into things that gave her a sense of accomplishment. She and Jackson took Henry and Maria and Kevin and Kevin’s girlfriend on a safari in Africa; she got her mother resettled in an exclusive retirement community in Cedar Rapids; and she almost doubled the hours of DBS programming on the air.

  Still, her depression deepened. Jackson came to believe he was the cause of it and made an effort to spend more time with her. If he stopped wondering out loud at how much more aggressive she was in bed she might have settled into permanent acceptance of her marital situation. But Jackson did not stop wondering out loud and kept asking her if she was seeing someone else. She would tell him, no, Jack, obviously absence must make the heart grow fonder.