Folly (14 page)

Rae had never said anything to Alan about his visceral reaction, since Don was too self-contained to notice and Tamara too busy eyeing her mother for signs of instability, and because Alan never gave the least indication of wishing to avoid his wife’s family. Over the years she had
come to accept it as a chemical quirk, the precise opposite of the equally inexplicable urge that had bonded her to Alan in the first place. It was, at any event, not a matter that came up more than once or twice a year, since having both men at any gathering was a rarity.

The conversation sounded like a badly written play, formal and of no interest to any of the parties. Rae assembled the salad, Alan stood with his hands clasped behind his back like a soldier, Don dropped into a chair with his second drink, answering their remarks and queries in monosyllables. Alan was beginning to flag when finally the girls burst in, Petra’s horse groomed and settled, its human caregivers more than ready for their own feed.

Bella had recently had it explained to her that she was actually Petra’s aunt, despite being three years the junior. The discovery delighted her, and as the two girls came in the kitchen door, trailing dogs and wisps of hay and the smell of horses, Petra was good-naturedly calling Bella “Auntie.” Then she spotted Rae standing at the stove, and in three giant steps of her riding boots the child’s arms were wrapped around her grandmother’s ribs. Except for the gray in Rae’s hair, the two could have been mother and daughter—the same coloring, same bones, and the child showing signs of adult height. Rae squeezed Petra back, exclaiming that the girl had grown another inch since summer. She had also, Rae saw when they stepped away from each other, the first intimations of maturity in her face, the loss of a layer of subcutaneous childhood as her bones had stretched up.

“You look beautiful,” she told Petra, whose face twisted in a scornful dismissal of her grandmother’s absurdity.

Bella giggled. “She stinks,” she declared loudly.

“She does a little,” Rae had to agree with her daughter. “But it’s a nice stink.”

“Go change your clothes before you come down for dinner, Pet,” Don told the young equestrian.

“Yes, Daddy,” Petra said, subdued for a moment by his unvoiced disapproval, and told Rae, “Mom says to go ahead and start. She’s just putting away the tack. Come on, Auntie Bella, let’s go wash our hands.”

Bella’s giggle trailed out of the kitchen.

Rae did not look at Don. She was afraid that if she did, she would grab him by his well-starched collar and shout in his face, “Everyone in this whole damned family has been raised by disapproving adults. For God’s sake don’t do it to your daughter, too!” She bit her upper lip to keep
the words in, knowing by bitter experience what the repercussions would be, that evening and in the weeks ahead. She would not be the one to set off a violent quarrel this time—and anyway, Don, the actual target, would contrive to slide away, leaving the field of battle to his willing wife.

But Rae’s heart ached for Petra’s winces, remembered all too well the blindly cruel remarks of authority: Grandfather supposing a B was only to be expected when Rae had been placed in a class of top students; that the son of a department store owner was probably the best Rae could hope for, considering her history; that …

To be fair, most of the time Petra got along considerably better with Don Collins than Rae had with William Newborn. She seemed to accept that Don was not to be relied on for much except an amiable and distracted good cheer—except when he was openly thwarted, cornered into a position of having either to give in or to attack. Then he could be vicious—not physically violent, not that Rae had seen, but capable of a clever and devastating revenge. One walked quietly around Don on the rare occasions when he was truly angry.

But Petra seemed to know this, for up to now the child’s need to push back had only been directed against her mother. Rae had raged against her father’s spinelessness in the face of William’s authority; Petra, on the other hand, patted her father on his well-groomed head and went her own way.

Petra was a different person from her grandmother, Rae reminded herself firmly. For which promise Rae rejoiced. She and Tamara both watched the child fearfully for any signs of inherited instability, and the mere fact that neither had glimpsed any reassured neither of them. Adolescence would be the test.

Rae had never asked Tamara why she had named her daughter Petra. She did not really have to: Conscious or not, the choice of Petra’s name was a bid for rocklike stability in the next generation, a plea that the house of Collins be built of sterner stuff than that of Newborn.

When the girls returned, glistening and smelling of soap, Rae put food on the table (the scrubbed-pine kitchen table, not the ghastly over-polished mahogany in the formal dining room). She served up and they began eating, with Petra’s excitement about the day and the ribbons she had won carrying them on, until the back door opened. Tamara walked in, and ice settled down on the gathering.

One glance, and Rae’s stomach clenched. What on earth had she done now, to provoke that expression on Tamara’s face? She had no
doubt she was the cause; even Don’s transgressions did not earn quite that same look.

Tamara passed through the kitchen wordlessly. When she came back, washed and changed, Petra shot her one sharp sideways glance and immediately asked if she and Bella could be excused, please, so she could finish the story she’d been telling Bella. Tamara nodded, and the girls cleared their plates and slipped away upstairs. Rae wished she could be allowed to go with them, but instead she moved the salad around to Tamara’s side and, because there was no point in avoiding it, she asked her daughter, “What’s wrong?”

The tightening of lips was so like Grandfather it was eerie, the old man’s ghost in that thirty-year-old woman. Utter disapproval, in a mere twitch.

“Bella tells me she was up on the shed roof with you today,” Tamara said finally, not looking up from the precise transferal of pasta to plate. Rae felt Alan’s eyes on her.

“Yes,” she said steadily. “She wanted to help. Why?”

“Is that the safest thing in the world?”

“Alan was behind her the whole time. She couldn’t have fallen, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Alan was with her.” Tamara was now concentrating on the sliced bread, choosing a piece with complete attention.

“We were both with her, Tamara. If there’d been a seven-point earthquake while we were up there, she still wouldn’t have fallen.”

“I question your judgment.”

So what else is new?
Rae thought, and if it had been simply a matter of Bella’s safety, she would have said it aloud and let Tamara explode in anger. But this was not really about Tamara’s half-sister.

“You’re talking about Petra, aren’t you? Her visit next month?”

“If she comes to visit you” (it was “if” now, Rae heard, although Petra’s stay had been settled for weeks) “I don’t want to be worrying the whole time.”

“Tamara, you’ll worry no matter what, but I promise you I won’t let Petra climb out on my roof.” It was an effort to push the reasonable phrases past the tightening throat muscles, but essential. Insane mothers were not allowed to lose their tempers like other women. Madness was a Pandora’s box: Its lid had to stay locked tight. Rae felt Alan stir, but he said nothing. Instead, it was Don who spoke up, dropping a small bombshell into their midst.

“Actually, Tam, I don’t know if we’re going to be able to afford your thing after all.” Typical of Don, to use the offhand term “thing” to refer to a much-sought-after, weeklong Colorado workshop in an arcane variety of horse breaking, a workshop that Tamara’s own income-generating summer classes were to be based upon. Tamara turned to gape at him, her fork suspended in mid-air. “I know you’ve sent in your deposit and all,” he went on, “but it looks like money’s going to be a little tight just now.”

Tamara’s “thing” was the very reason she had agreed to turn Petra over to her grandmother’s care, since it could not be expected that Don might cope with full-time parenting for seven whole days. Both women began to speak, but their first words were swallowed by the loud scrape of Alan’s chair and his industrious and noisy gathering of plates. His face remained expressionless.

Rae glanced at Tamara, saw the rage that she was trying to hide, and started again, trying not to sound desperate. “Tamara, I’ve been racking my brain for what to give you for Christmas. Let me give you the workshop, please. I know how you’ve been looking forward to it.”

Now it was Don’s turn to rise suddenly—not to help Alan, but to go back to the freezer and fill his glass, as if demonstrating how little interest he held in any decision. Tamara wavered. She was hungry to go, and had in fact arranged her spring and summer around the completion of the course; however, she was not only furious at Don, and unable to show it in front of her mother, but furthermore, accepting Rae’s money had always been Don’s business, not hers; never hers. Still, she badly wanted to go …

Rae tried to nudge her gently toward acceptance, without appearing too eager. “Call it a birthday present, too. I haven’t given you anything fun in a long time.”

It was the word “fun” that did it, Rae decided later. Fun was a commodity the hardworking Tamara found little time for. Tamara gave in, and thanked her with as much grace as she could muster. Don smiled into his glass, Alan slammed the dishes into the dishwasher, and Rae went out to the car for her checkbook.

Alan intercepted her outside the front door on her way back inside. Petra’s voice in monologue drifted down from her upstairs bedroom, where by the sound of it she was either telling Bella about the day’s events or, more likely, making up a story for her young auntie’s entertainment.

“You do know he manipulated you into doing that?” Alan demanded.

“Of course I do, sweetheart. It’s what Don always does. And if it makes him feel clever, who am I to argue?” To Don, the cleverness was as important as the money. They all knew that if they had flat out asked Rae for money, she would have given it. But doing so would have left a bad taste in both Tamara’s mouth and Don’s, for slightly different reasons. “Let it be,” Rae said. She kissed him on the cheek, and went back to take her seat at the kitchen table.

“How much is it?” she asked Tamara.

“Nine thousand.”

“Nine
—”

“And the thousand deposit,” Don contributed helpfully, studying the overhead lamp. Tamara opened her mouth to speak. “And airfare,” he added. Tamara’s mouth hung open for a moment longer, then closed.

At Don’s casual words Alan, back at the sink, made a noise that might have been a cough but which Rae knew for a snort. Good; he was able to see the humor in it.

She looked over at Don. “Fifteen thousand ought to do it, then?” she asked sweetly.

Again Tamara started to protest, but Don moved to squelch it. “That’d give her a little to buy books and some of their specialized equipment. Very nice of you, Rae.”

Rae had no doubt, from her daughter’s reaction, that the original sum Tamara had stated was all-inclusive, and she knew she should be outraged at Don’s blatant sticky fingers. Another time, she might be, but today she was merely amused at the transparency of his greed. The man had no shame. Of course, if Don were stingy with Petra and Tamara, she might have put her foot down, but she knew that his self-respect included keeping his wife and daughter in all the comfort anyone’s money could buy. There was nothing Rae could say that might make things better, so that was what she said: nothing. She merely wrote out a check for fifteen thousand dollars and slid it across the table to Tamara, taking care not to meet her daughter’s eyes lest contact bring forth a confession.

They left shortly after that, since Alan had a class the next morning. When Bella’s snores came from the back, Alan, at the wheel, said to Rae, “Are you all right, sweetheart?”

Tears had been trickling down her cheeks for the last couple of miles, and he knew that, although he had not looked away from the road ahead and she had neither sniffled nor wiped her eyes. He always knew.

“It’s just so sad, Tamara’s situation. Such a lot of games she puts herself through. It takes all her strength to stay convinced that she’s not her mother:
I
don’t need counseling;
my
marriage isn’t in trouble;
I
don’t have any problems with my daughter. She learned more than horsemanship from David’s mother—denial was that woman’s middle name. And I worry about Petra in a few years, when she starts to demand her independence. It won’t be long—she’s already getting that look on her face when her mother talks to her.”

“Petra seems a remarkably well-balanced child,” Alan protested mildly.

“So did I at that age,” Rae retorted.

After a moment, he intoned, “Said she, ominously.”

Rae had to laugh at that. She blew her nose and laid her hand on his thigh, where he covered it for a moment with his own before putting his back on the wheel. They traveled in amity through the night. Ten miles later, Alan spoke again.

“You have to wonder if this mighty effort of the white-coats in mapping the human genome will ever lead to any real understanding of the human being, beyond the mere mechanics. Where do characteristics come from, things like stubbornness and a disdain for convention?”

“Are you talking about Tamara and Don, or Rory?” Alan’s son, an enigma to his father: witty, intelligent, enormously energetic when it came to avoiding work, his charmer’s sparkle masking his utterly amoral nature. A born con-man, Alan had called Rory once in half-admiring sorrow, just after he’d told his only son that he was no longer welcome in their house. Bella was two, and Rae had caught Rory pocketing an antique silver rattle that had belonged to Rae’s grandmother Lacy, an object valuable both in money and in memories. Alan still saw him from time to time, but Rae hadn’t laid eyes on Rory since that afternoon.

“Both, I suppose. I mean, say the scientists do isolate the scrap of protein that makes a man a rogue. What happens if you eliminate it? No more rogues, but do we also find we’ve eliminated ruthlessness in mathematicians and inventors and artists as well?”