Cheyney Fox (46 page)

He stole yet another glance at Cheyney. Always a man with goals, he realized they were no longer just for success. Now they were about living and loving with the woman lying next to him. The woman and her son. They were now about marriage, commitment. The norm. Having fun and feeling great and being happy.

Family — a ready-made son who was miraculously already a part of his life. It suddenly dawned on Grant that he knew few facts about the son Cheyney loved and cherished beyond all else. Not even the boy’s name. His age. What the boy looked like. Grant was too good a newsman not to sense there was more than just evasion here. He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, curious.

He found the photograph. It was standing in a silver frame on the Queen Anne walnut desk in the sitting room of the master suite, where, after his shower, he chose to dress so as not to wake the still-sleeping Cheyney. He recognized himself in the boy at once. For a moment he thought it was a photograph of himself as a young boy that his mother kept by her bedside. Impossible. Then reality surfaced and he understood. It was Cheyney’s son. It was also the boy, Taggart Fox, whom he had become so fond of these last few years. Fox. How stupid he had been. It had never occurred to him that Taggart Fox was Cheyney’s son. A newsman’s mind was constantly irradiated with facts. Some connections just did not get made. Perhaps he had been meant not to make this link. Yet the boy had dropped enough hints. Grant had simply never picked them up. He walked toward the light of the large, many-paned window
that overlooked the ocean. He was certain of it. Taggart Fox was his and Cheyney’s son.

He felt her arms slip around his naked waist, her head rest upon his back, felt the warmth of her breath against his skin as she told him, “No photograph does Taggart justice. He is more special than even that excellent photograph of him. And that’s not just a mother’s pride in her child. You will see when you meet him.”

Grant turned around to face Cheyney. She took the photograph from him and looked at it. Grant retied the terry-cloth towel around his hips. Then she didn’t know that he had already met their son. He wondered when she would tell him he was the boy’s natural father. What the boy already knew. He actually hoped that Cheyney would say nothing for the moment. His feelings were too scrambled to deal with at the moment. He sensed that Cheyney’s were no less so. Time, they needed some time to face this momentous news. All three of them.

Cheyney now first saw fully the cruelty she had inflicted upon Grant by denying him the right to choose whether to be a father to Taggart. She had made the well-intentioned mistake of opting for the older Walbrook to act as her son’s protector. She had always promised herself and the boy that, when the time seemed right, she would show father and son to each other. She would let them choose whether to become friends. What was she to do about that now? Who could have guessed that Grant and Cheyney’s love for each other would conquer all. Certainly not Cheyney when she denied Grant his son. She kept silent.

Takashi saw Grant and Cheyney as they entered the gallery. There was about her that something extra special that he only saw in her in those fleeting moments when they were on the edge of oblivion during sex. She radiated that quality now. He felt one swift stab of pain for his loss, and then it was gone. But that was only carnal loss. He felt they would love each other from afar. It had been that way before when she had been married to Kurt Walbrook. It had been enough for him then — it would have to be enough for him now.

Cheyney introduced the two men to each other. Takashi sensed in her a concern for him. As soon as Grant had gone
from the gallery and they were alone, Takashi put her at ease. He first watched her try to bring herself to deliver the blow. But he stopped her with, “Don’t say anything. It’s obvious. I saw it the very moment you walked in with him.”

“Don’t do this to me, Takashi. All my life, men have done this to me. Closed down when they didn’t want to deal with their emotions, refused to talk and share their feelings with me. Please don’t do this with me. Don’t lock me out, seal my lips. I want you to understand that I had no idea. I had blocked Grant Madigan so completely out of my mind that he simply wasn’t there. If I had ever thought I loved him still, I would have told you long ago. I don’t want you to think I deceived you, because I didn’t; I know that, as God is my witness.”

“My dear Cheyney, the pair of you have deceived no one but yourselves. Believe me, I am happy for you. I know you’re in good hands. His reputation has preceded him. Be happy, Cheyney.”

“And you?”

“And me? The thing about love, we both of us know now, is that it lasts. You and I will always be all right. Maybe a trip around the world is in order for me. It’s standard practice in these situations. I’ll stay in touch. Tactfully, though.”

Cheyney wanted to ask him to stay, but she didn’t have the heart to. When he kissed her good-bye, she could not hold back her tears. He touched one with the tip of his tongue, and then he was gone. She sat there in her office and cried. So many endings, so many new beginnings. Everything was changing yet again, and so fast.

For Cheyney and Grant, during the daytime it was business as usual. At night they surrendered themselves to carnal bliss. They discovered afresh a rich and beautiful love for each other. The days passed and Cheyney wanted to tell Grant about Taggart, but she simply could not find a way. She kept putting it off.

They watched a preview of the program the day before it was to go out on the networks. Grant watched the woman he loved unreservedly now grow pale, although she remained calm. They were silent with each other for several minutes after the videotape was finished. He offered:

“You are the most exciting woman I have ever interviewed.
It’s a wonderful program. But I am prepared to withdraw it because I don’t think it will help you get the votes of confidence you need to become the first Secretary of Art for the United States.”

Cheyney surprised him when she said, “I had little idea, really, who I am, how much I have accomplished, how much I can still give the art world. Not till I saw our interview. I couldn’t possibly think of asking you to withdraw it. It will be such a pity if they lose me.”

The program was virtually an unqualified success. It afforded Cheyney, for the first time since the public controversy over her began, some positive appraisal in the media. The telephones at the gallery were jammed. Congratulations and offers. Directorships and trusteeships of museums, in the States and all over the world. Even one she had always coveted in Japan. Takashi rang through from Paris. They talked about it for an hour. Shortly after his call, Taggart called. He had seen a copy she had sent over by courier to the housemaster to cajole him into allowing her son to see it in private. They spoke about it in between tears of pride and joy from her son, who thought both she and Grant were wonderful. At one moment Cheyney thought she would tell him about Grant and herself. But the moment passed, and Taggart was off the line before she could find another. They were both still stuck with their secrets.

The response was so positive, Cheyney and Judd were sure it was going to come off for Cheyney. Grant was still uncertain. A tremendous blow. A picture of Cheyney on a slime-magazine cover. A photo taken straight off the TV screen. Grainy. In block letters it asked, I
S THIS WOMAN A MURDERESS BECAUSE SHE HAD AN ABORTION
? A publicized abortion was apparently meant to automatically disqualify her for public office.

They had lost, they knew that. Even if they had not yet heard from Washington. Archibald Head had done his worst. He was a man of his word. Yet still the positive letters and phone calls kept coming. Everyone marveled at Cheyney’s calm.

Grant could no longer bear not living with Cheyney. He kept his suite at the Plaza, but moved in with her. He refused to be separated from her in these last days of waiting. Grant gave Cheyney many opportunities to tell him about their son. But it was something she seemed unable to deal with. As for Grant,
though more than fond of the boy he had met first at a house party, Grant had never had in the past much time to devote to puzzling out the possible sources of a friendship the boy had always seemed keener to perpetuate than he was himself, and that made Grant almost certain that the boy knew him to be his real father.

While looking at yet another photograph of the boy one evening, Grant suddenly recalled the boy’s laughter. He knew the sound as that of his own adolescent gaiety reborn in the boy. Why had Cheyney kept this from him? Was that the proper question now? Or wasn’t the question rather: when would she tell him? And what did the boy himself know about his real parents’ relationship?

The hard-bitten Madigan was awed by the strangeness of what was happening. Every day he allowed himself to fall a little more in love with this boy he already knew and liked. He waited for Cheyney to say something. She said nothing, despite their new closeness and the inevitability of the school eventually depositing Taggart back in their new life with each other. The moments of hope that she might volunteer her secret passed. At night, their renewed sexual passion for each other obliterated other considerations.

When Cheyney awoke one morning, Madigan was gone. There was a note. “Stay brave. No worrying.” He would return within a few days to face with her the verdict of the federal investigations. He loved her. Their lives were now to be led together.

The complications were more with the school than with the boy, because, of course, Taggart had been preparing for this moment secretly for almost two years. It was so reminiscent of how his father Kurt had plotted and waited for Cheyney. But Grant Madigan was not to know that as he stood at the window in the headmaster’s office and looking across the quadrangle of tail-coated youths crisscrossing the patches of grass and gravel to disappear into the surrounding ivy-covered stone walls.

It had taken one cabinet minister, two ambassadors, and a call made by the headmaster to Takashi — who, as it happened, was Taggart’s guardian — Grant’s own international fame, and
his good standing with the school, for him to be accorded a meeting with the boy.

Only the thought of easing Cheyney’s obvious problem of how to tell Grant they had a son kept him from bolting from the room. Nervously he waited to confront the boy he had become so attached to. Had he unconsciously recognized himself in the boy? Had that been the attraction Grant felt toward the adolescent? He smiled to himself, thinking what good times he had had with Taggart and Taggart’s best friend Pug. Would he feel the same about the boy now that he knew they were father and son? And Taggart? How much did the boy really know? How must he feel about a father who was never there? Grant Madigan had never known, until now, such emotional turmoil. And he didn’t like it one bít.

“Hello, Mr. Madigan.”

Grant reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and withdrew a cigar. A cutter. The sound of the boy’s voice served to remind Grant of how clever, bright, and mature Taggart was. All anxiety, nerves, dissolved in an instant, and Grant Madigan turned away from the window to face his son.

The man and the boy were clearly pleased to see each other. Grant walked across the room and sat on the end of the headmaster’s desk. “How goes it, Taggart?” he asked, smiling at the boy. Then he gave all his attention to lighting his cigar.

“Great, Mr. Madigan. You’ve met my mom. I saw the tape of the interview. I thought it was a great interview, and I could tell you liked my mom.”

“Yes, Taggart. I sure do like your mom.”

“I mean she’s my mom, so I don’t think of her as this famous, glamorous, fascinating woman. Well, I didn’t until I saw that program. I don’t see how Mom can lose, Mr. Madigan. My mom’s going to be the first Secretary of Art of the United States. And, boy, does she deserve it.”

“Wait a minute, Taggart. I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Not everyone is as liberal-minded about fascinating women like Cheyney Fox as you and I are.”

“It’s going to happen, Mr. Madigan. She’s going to win. My mom is going to knock them dead in the art world, just as she did with Andy Warhol, her galleries, the museums she created. My mom’s a winner, Mr. Madigan, and she is not
going to lose this one. The job was created for her, and no one deserves it more than my mom. Except maybe my dad, if he was alive and an American and not an Austrian.”

“I’d like to think you’re right, boy.”

“My mom’s okay, isn’t she? The pressure isn’t getting to her, is it?”

“About the nomination? No, I don’t think so.”

“Then about what?”

The boy was quick, Grant would give him that. One of the things he liked most about Taggart. “How much do you know, Taggart? Level with me.”

The boy suddenly flushed pink in the face. And then, unusual for him, was tongue-tied. That told Grant what he wanted to know. Grant walked to the drinks tray on a table in a dark corner of the room and poured a glass of water for the boy and handed it to him. Taggart drank it down and placed the glass back on the silver tray. “Shall I pour you a whiskey, Mr. Madigan? You’ve got the cigar and this is a celebration, I hope?”

“How long have you known, Taggart?”

“Since I was a little boy. Six, maybe seven years old, something like that. I don’t remember. I seem to have known you were my father all my life, Mr. Madigan.”

“I’ve only known a few days. And that had to be a guess. Your mom hasn’t found a way to tell me yet.”

“You don’t think I was deceitful do you, Mr. Madigan? I mean not telling you that I knew you were my dad? I wanted to tell you, really wanted to tell you, but I was afraid to.”

“Afraid I’d run away?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I think it was more that I wanted you to love me, really like me, before I told you. In that way it would be sort of an extra bonus for us to be blood related. I sort of thought I should give you time to get used to the idea of having a guy like me around. It was a secret, Mr. Madigan. I wasn’t being deceitful to you or Mom. You see, Mom doesn’t know I’ve met you either. I don’t know why I kept us a secret. I don’t know, maybe it’s … I just wanted you to … I don’t know what it was, Mr. Madigan. I just wanted it to be the right moment when we all came together and knew each other. I didn’t want it to go wrong.”