Degree of Guilt (18 page)

‘By the way,’ Paget asked her, ‘will Steinhardt’s daughter talk to us?’

Terri nodded. ‘For a fee.’

‘A fee? What on earth for?’

‘A research fee, she says. She keeps her father’s papers.’

Paget shook his head in disgust. ‘I suppose she needs money,’ he said, ‘now that Mary’s spoiled the sequel,’ and then turned to Moore.

Moore shrugged.

‘Pay her,’ Paget said.

Carlo Carelli Paget gazed at his parents, two profiles in the candlelight.

They sat in the dining room, poised between salad and dessert, at the end of the long mahogany dining table where he and his father always sat. The chandelier was dim; two white candles in brass holders created a pool of light that made the Persian rug seem richer, the crystal brighter, the room closer and more intimate. At his father’s suggestion, Carlo sat at the head of the table, one parent to each side.

He watched them, trying to pretend that he was not doing so. The talk between them had been strained. His father, dressed in a white silk shirt and black wool slacks, was even more self-contained than usual. His mother seemed subdued, less electric than the woman he had seen on Sunday. She still looked beautiful, Carlo thought, but a little sad.

‘Do you always eat like this?’ Mary asked him. ‘By candlelight, I mean.’

Carlo nodded. ‘When it’s dark. I guess it’s kind of a tradition.’

‘How did that start?’

‘Dad?’ Carlo turned to Paget, wanting to bring him closer to the moment. ‘You remember these things.’

‘That’s because you were seven.’ Paget smiled. ‘Parents spend all this time building memories, and then they’re devastated to find out that what their children remember about being little is when they backed up the car without looking and ran over the cat.’

‘
Did
you run over the cat?’ Mary asked.

As his father turned to her, Carlo thought he seemed almost reluctant, as if forced from the familiar refuge of teasing him. ‘No, someone else did,’ Paget said. ‘But it was an awful day – the car was going quite fast, and Fluffy was, shall we say, unsuitable for viewing. I had to take care of it before Carlo got home, and then explain that Fluffy had gone straight to heaven without passing go. I felt like a murderer.’

Carlo flinched inwardly. Mary stared at his father; Carlo saw the careless phrase come back to him in a narrowing of the eyes. A moment’s signal seemed to pass between the two adults, a rearranging of their gaze in which his father apologized, Mary accepted. It put Carlo even more on edge; his father, whom he thought of as so graceful, did not seem himself.

‘What did Carlo say?’ Mary asked politely.

‘He asked me to describe heaven, and then a few days later we got Fluffy the second.’

Mary smiled. ‘That must have been hard for you.’

‘The part about heaven, or the cat?’

‘Heaven.’ Mary tilted her head. ‘Not anything you used to spend a lot of time on.’

‘That’s not fair. Believing as I do in the perfectibility of man, I simply assume that heaven can be realized here on earth, through the achievement of a balanced budget and a comprehensive program of national health insurance.’

Carlo was silent. To him, they seemed like two actors, speaking lines they neither felt nor cared about, but expert enough not to be awful. He wished that he could imagine them without this veneer: younger, maybe the age of his dad’s associate Terri, and in love with each other. But he could not understand them, or even explain to himself why it was so hard to think of Mary as his mother.

Lightly, she asked him, ‘What do
you
believe?’

She had no idea, of course – she couldn’t have. That was part of why this seemed so difficult; his parents must have talked so little about him that she had to learn about his life as if he were the son of a business acquaintance.

‘Nothing,’ Carlo said flatly. ‘I don’t believe in any of that stuff. I could never get how Jesus’ mother comes home, pregnant, tells this guy that God did it, and he buys that.’

Something flickered in his mother’s eye. Now it was
his
turn, Carlo thought; he hadn’t even sounded right to
himself
. But he couldn’t tell what had hurt her, or how to get out of it. All at once he wanted dinner to be over.

‘Well,’ his dad put in, ‘Joseph did get a son out of it all, if only on loan.’ His father turned to Mary, smiling a little. ‘My failures as a parent are worse than you imagine. Religion is one thing, but what’s truly disturbing is that Carlo doesn’t want to be a lawyer.’

‘Too many lawyer jokes?’ Mary asked him.

Carlo felt a touch of gratitude; even a return to banter was better than where he had just been. ‘My dad
is
a lawyer joke,’ he said. ‘Always working, and always on the phone. I call it “Lifestyles of the Rich and Compulsive.”’

‘Well,’ his father answered mildly, ‘your mother gave it up, so I suppose there’s precedent. And I expect she likes what she’s doing now far better.’

‘Do you?’ Carlo asked her.

She smiled. ‘Oh, yes.’

‘What is it you like? Being on television?’

Mary considered him. ‘It depends,’ she said finally, ‘on how you mean that. I’ve gotten to live lots of places – New York, Los Angeles, even Rome for a time. But what television really does is take you far beyond your own life. It’s like plugging into this enormous current: suddenly you can meet almost anyone you want, ask them almost any question you want, and they
want
you to, because they want to be part of the current. Television gives me a license to be part of things. And instead of just watching other people help me know what to think,
I
help other people do that.’

Mary’s voice was animated. Carlo saw his father looking at her; for once, the look was without facade or wariness, as if she had spoken some deep truth about herself.

‘Who did you like meeting most?’ Carlo asked.

Mary smiled. ‘Well, lots of them are at least
interesting;
I’ve known the last three Presidents, and interviewed people like Gorbachev and Mitterrand and Margaret Thatcher – whom I absolutely admired, by the way; she had her own program, and people reacted to
her
, not the other way around.’ She paused, remembering. ‘But the best was Anwar Sadat, and his death was a tragedy.’

‘Why him?’

‘Because he was an unquestionably great man – everyone who met him knew that, almost at once.’ She leaned forward, as if trying to help Carlo feel what she had felt. ‘He was so
himself
: visionary, but plainspoken and completely honest. He seemed to transcend time or place, which was why he was able to envision peace with Israel while everyone else stayed trapped in their own history. I could feel that even in how he treated
me.
A lot of Arab men have trouble talking to women, but Sadat talked to
me
directly, like an equal, as if I were the most important person in the room. He was like that with everyone.’

There was life in Mary’s face now. Carlo felt a kind of closeness; she did not know how to act like a mother, but she could talk to him as herself.

‘It’s hard to imagine,’ Carlo said. ‘Being you, having everybody know you.’

‘They don’t really
know
me. They have an
image
of me, or maybe they like my work – it’s nice when people come up and tell you that. Although,’ she added with a sardonic smile, ‘the last few days, I could have done without people knowing me at all. So it depends, I suppose.’

Carlo hesitated; she seemed objective enough that it might be safe to talk about it. ‘Aren’t people going to sympathize more,’ he asked, ‘because they like you?’

‘Some do. ABC’s getting lots of wires from people giving me support, and various women’s groups want me to speak out – less about
me
, really, than the whole issue.’ She paused. ‘Maybe it’ll help me get through this thing.’

Carlo felt his father retreat within his own thoughts. He wanted to reach out to her.

‘Are you doing okay?’ he asked her. ‘I really kept wishing I could see you.’

Her smile seemed genuine, even grateful. ‘I’m all right now,’ she said. ‘For the most part anyhow – I spend a lot of time thinking about it.’ Her voice became quieter. ‘It’s odd, Carlo. I’ve been so used to controlling things, and this thing just happened. It still doesn’t seem like a part of me. But it is, for the rest of my life.’

Carlo had the sudden sense of a lonely woman, speaking to him alone.

‘I’ll help you,’ he said. ‘Any way I can.’

From the corner of his eye, Carlo saw his father’s gaze, abstracted and unfathomable, directed at the candles. But his mother’s returning look was intent. ‘The best way you can help me,’ she said, ‘is to keep living your life. It’s how
I’ve
always been, and it’ll make me feel better if you can be that way now.’ She reached out, touching his wrist. ‘Your father and I are two very capable people.’

Her fingers felt warm, light. It was good, Carlo thought, to have his mother touch him.

‘Okay,’ he said finally. ‘But I’ll bug him about it.’

Her hand tightened around his wrist, as if feeling something she could not ask in words. ‘That much,’ she said softly, ‘would be nice.’

Watching them together was so strange, Paget thought. As strange as the moment he had first seen them: a woman he knew but did not know, her two-day-old son.

Mary lay in the hospital bed, pale and drained of energy. The baby, this stranger with matted black hair and an old man’s face, wrinkled its features and yawned without sound. The baby’s wristband read ‘Carelli.’

‘Does he ever make noise?’ Paget asked.

She nodded. ‘Short squalls, mostly. He doesn’t seem to be a complainer.’

‘Just as well considering.’ Paget hesitated. ‘Does he have a name?’

Mary nodded. ‘Carlo. At least that’s what’s on the birth certificate.’

‘Carlo Carelli?’ Paget looked at the baby. ‘A bit ethnic, don’t you think?’

‘It’s my grandfather’s name.’ Her voice was quiet. ‘The man I most remember loving.’

Paget gazed at her. ‘Whose name,’ he finally asked, ‘is on the birth certificate?’

Her answering gaze was cool and level. ‘Yours.’

Paget turned to the window. The room was cold and spare; it felt like prison. ‘I suppose,’ he said finally, ‘I should be grateful that you didn’t name him Frank. After your ex-husband.’

Mary did not smile. ‘No chance of that,’ she said, ‘Any more than there’ll be more husbands.’

Paget found his eyes drawn to the baby, stretching, hands making random fists. Funny, he thought; they don’t really do anything, and still you watch them. ‘Who will take care of him?’ he asked.

‘My parents. At least for a while.’

‘Your
parents
.’ Paget shook his head in wonderment. ‘You can’t stand them – with good reason, you once tried to persuade me.’

‘It’s only for now.’ Her voice turned bitter. ‘I may be a disgrace, but I’m one of theirs.’

‘That hardly seems best.’

‘Neither does day care. And he
is
my son.’

Paget’s voice was soft. ‘And mine, I’m given to understand.’

Mary stared at him. ‘Had it been up to you, Chris, Carlo wouldn’t have lived past gestation.’

Silent, Paget gazed at the baby, resting against Mary’s shoulder. Finally, he asked, ‘What will you do?’

‘I don’t know yet. Just not practice law.’

Paget put his hands in his pockets. ‘I’d like to help.’

She gave him a long look of appraisal. ‘I’m grateful for what you’ve done. Really. But I don’t need you anymore.’ She looked down at the baby’s head. ‘From time to time we can talk.’

‘I’d like to
see
him, Mary.’

She hesitated. ‘I’m in California now. But whenever I can.’

She watched his face a moment and then nodded. ‘All right.’

Paget could find nothing else to say. Wordless, he looked at the baby and then at Mary again.

Slowly, she held Carlo out to him.

Paget took him from her. Carlo’s hair was soft against his face; the baby’s skin smelled fresh and new. Paget had not known how this would feel.

‘Time to go back,’ a brisk voice interrupted.

It was a red-haired nurse behind him. She took Carlo from his arms. ‘You the dad?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ Paget said. ‘I’m the dad.’

Walking alone to the car, Paget realized that there were tears in his eyes. He did not know for whom.

‘Well,’ Mary said, ‘I think it went pretty well tonight. At least at the end.’

Paget turned from her, closing the glass doors to the library so that Carlo could not hear them.

‘Sit down,’ he said.

They sat facing each other, Mary on the couch, Paget in an armchair to the side, the spotlit palm tree filling the window behind them. Mary felt tense; the polite tone he had assumed for Carlo’s sake was gone.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

Paget did not answer. His expression was so devoid of sentiment that she recalled again that Christopher Paget was the man who had most frightened her since she had left her father’s home.

‘This is
me
,’ she said coldly. ‘Save the ice-blue stare for witnesses and unruly spaniels, where it works.’

His expression changed but slightly. ‘Are you going on
60 Minutes
?’ he asked.

The indirectness of the question unsettled her. ‘Yes,’ she finally said. ‘We should seize the moral high ground.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Paget said. ‘The moral high ground, our accustomed territory. Just be careful to remember when you’re lying.’

The insult was so casual that it was as though he had slapped her in slow motion; it took Mary a moment to realize that she was taut with anger and apprehension.

‘Spit it out, Chris, whatever it is. Or do you still enjoy pulling the wings off flies?’