Kaleidoscope (27 page)

The youngest child had also virtually disappeared, but not without warning. Arthur had told him that David Abrams felt strongly about Patterson's not maintaining contact with the child, that they wanted her to have a new life, totally divorced from her past, and wanted to ensure that she did so. John even found himself wondering if that had been part of their reason for moving to California, to start a new life, where no one even knew that the child was adopted.

And after that, there was nothing. There was one clipping at the back of the file, the one Arthur had mentioned, but despite the similarity of name, like Arthur, John thought it was a long shot. It was the article from
The New York Times
, about a Hilary Walker's promotion at CBA Network, and it was highly unlikely that she was the same girl. Even Arthur didn't recognize her, and it was too sweet and easy to find her within easy reach, and successful. John had been in the business of finding people for long enough that he
knew a false hope when he saw one. He'd look into it of course, but he was sure she would turn out to be a different Hilary Walker.

And that was it. There was nothing else. He sat back in his chair, and thought about all three. How to find them, where to start. The wheels were already turning. And then with a sudden start, he glanced at his watch.

“Son of a bitch …” he muttered to himself. It was just after ten-thirty. He grabbed his jacket off the back of a chair, and hurried down the three flights of his brownstone. He had the top floor of a lovely house on East Sixty-ninth Street. And he was lucky enough to find a cab almost at once, but with posttheater traffic, he barely made it to the stage door in time to meet Sasha.

She came out at precisely eleven-ten, as he knew she would, looking tired, wearing jeans and sneakers and carrying her dance bag.

“How was it?” There was always the tension of someone having performed major surgery, not unlike Eloise's struggles with difficult denouements in the plot. But somehow this seemed more exciting.

“It was awful.”

He knew better than to believe her, and put a protective arm around her as he took her dance bag. “You expect too much of yourself, little one.” She was so tiny, it always made him feel protective of her, and in any case, he was that kind of person.

“No, it was terrible. My feet were killing me. It's going to rain tonight. I can always tell.” John had learned that dancers' feet were a constant source of agony, and a constant topic of conversation.

“I'll massage them when we get home.” He promised
as they climbed into a cab and headed back to East Sixty-ninth Street.

The apartment was peaceful and quiet when they arrived. There were only two other tenants in the building, one a doctor who never seemed to be there. He was younger than John, and when he wasn't on call, delivering babies at New York Hospital, he seemed to be staying with assorted women. And the other was a woman who worked for IBM and traveled eight to ten months of the year. So most of the time he was alone in the building. He had a view of the little garden outside, and the larger gardens of the town houses on Sixty-eighth Street. “Do you want a drink?” he inquired, poking his head out of his well-ordered kitchen.

“Just some tea, thanks.” She sat down on the couch with a sigh and stretched her arms and her back and her legs. She never cooked anything in his small kitchen. It never dawned on her to do things like that for him or herself. John always did them for her.

He emerged a few minutes later, bringing her tea in a glass, the way she liked it. It was a Russian tradition he had come to like, and he had bought special glass mugs just for that purpose. He had been equally expert at preparing Eloise's snacks while she was working. But in return, she had cooked him some wonderful dinners between books. She loved to bake, and had a real flair for French cuisine. Unlike Sasha, who thought being expected to make toast was an affront to her as an artist.

“Are you coming to the performance tomorrow?” she asked as she slowly pulled the pins from her hair, and it began to cascade in long blond sheets past her shoulders.

John looked at her with regret. He hated to remind her. He knew that whenever he did it would create a scene between them. It annoyed her when he went anywhere. She expected him to be always near. And the next afternoon he was flying to Boston.

“I'm going up to the Cape for the weekend, Sash. I said something about it a few weeks ago, but you may have forgotten. It's my mother's birthday. I tried to get out of it, but I really couldn't. It's her seventieth, and it's important.” Both of his brothers were going to be there, and their wives, and their children. It always made him feel inadequate somehow, going there without an entourage to show for his years of marriage and assorted romances. Everything they had was tangible and obvious, wives who had nice sapphires or diamonds as engagement rings and anniversary presents, kids who had skinned knees and missing teeth, and in the case of his oldest nephew, even a high school diploma. It was going to be a long weekend. But he knew it would be fun too. He was fond of his two brothers, one older, one younger. His sisters-in-law were a bit difficult, but the kids were great. And there was no way he could bring Sasha. Even at his age, his parents would have frowned on his bringing a woman with him for a family occasion. “I'll be home Sunday.”

“Don't bother.” She straightened her back and dropped both feet to the floor gracefully. “I have rehearsal Sunday afternoon. And I'm not interested in crumbs left over from your parents' table.” She looked so outraged that he could only laugh at her choice of words. Sometimes her English was outlandish.

“Is that what I am, Sash? A crumb?” It was more than obvious that she thought so.

“I don't understand what is so sacred about your
family. You've met my parents, my aunt, my grandmother. Are your parents so much better than mine? They would disapprove because I'm a dancer?” She sounded terribly Russian and looked extremely dramatic as she paced around the room, her hair flying and her hands shoved into the back pockets of her blue jeans, her tiny little body tense with emotion.

“They're very private, that's all.” And very Bostonian. A writer had been difficult enough. A ballerina would drive his mother totally crazy. She had a healthy respect for the arts, but preferably on a stage, not in her son's bedroom. “They don't understand relationships like ours.”

“Neither do I. Are we together or are we not?” She stood in front of him looking like an enchanting elf, but an elf who was extremely angry. She felt shut out by the family he never introduced her to, and without his ever saying so, she was aware of their disapproval.

“Of course we're together. But as far as they're concerned, you don't acknowledge those things until you're married, or at least engaged.” And she was the one who resisted that. She saw no need for a permanent statement.

“They think we're immoral?”

“Maybe. They prefer not to think about it. They don't want to have to confront this kind of thing, so they don't. And as their son, I have to respect that. They're pretty old, Sash. My mother is going to be seventy on Saturday, my father is seventy-nine. It's a little late to force them into acknowledging modern arrangements.”

“That's ridiculous.” She stormed across the room again, and then stood glaring at him from the kitchen doorway. “And if you were any kind of a man at all,
you would take me anyway, and force them to acknowledge my existence.”

“I'd rather invite them to see you dance the next time they're here. That would be a better introduction. Don't you think so?”

Sasha thought it over as she crossed the room again, only slightly mollified, and then she sat down on the couch and began to put on her sneakers. He knew it was a bad omen. She was always storming out at two in the morning and going back to her apartment.

“What are you doing?”

“I'm going home. Where I belong.” She looked at him malevolently and he sighed. He hated scenes, and she doted on them. They seemed to be part of her art form.

“Don't be silly.” He stretched out a hand and touched her shoulder. It felt like rock beneath his fingers, “We each have things in our lives we have to do on our own. You have your work and your ballet friends and your rehearsals. I have my own work, and a few other obligations.”

“I don't want to hear it. The truth is, Mr. Chapman” —she stood up and glared at him, swinging her dance bag over her shoulder—“that you're a snob, and you're afraid your parents won't think I'm good enough. And do you know what? I don't care. You can have your
Mayflower
and your Plymouth Rock and your Boston. I don't need to be in the social register, I will be in
Who's Who
one day. And if that's not good enough”—she made a gesture that said it all, and stalked to the door. And for once he didn't stop her. He knew that by Sunday she'd cool off, and he couldn't appease her by not going.

“I'm sorry you feel that way, Sash.” She slammed
the door in answer, and he sat down with a sigh. Sometimes she was so unbelievably childish. And so self-centered. He didn't let himself think about it often, but she hadn't once asked him about his new case. The only time she noticed his life was when, for whatever reason, it enraged her.

He turned off the lights in the living room, and went to bed without putting their glasses in the sink. The cleaning lady could do it in the morning. And as he lay in bed, he thought about her accusations … that he was a snob … and that his parents wouldn't approve of her. In some ways, she was right. His parents would not have been enchanted by Sasha Riva. They would have thought her too limited, and extremely difficult, inadequately educated and ill-informed, and yes, it would matter to them that she wasn't “social.” It wasn't something that mattered to him a great deal, but he knew that to them, it was important. Eloise had been something else. She and his mother had never really gotten along, and she thought his sisters-in-law unspeakably boring. But she was from an excellent family, and had graduated from Yale summa cum laude. You couldn't fault Eloise's breeding, or her education. And she was intelligent and amazingly witty, none of which had made her a good wife. Far from it. Not that Sasha showed much greater promise. He thought about calling Sasha after she got home, but he was too tired to hunt her down, wake her roommates up, and beg her forgiveness because he was going to Cape Cod to see his mother. Instead he burrowed into the pillow and fell asleep, and didn't wake up until the alarm rang the next morning.

He showered and shaved, made himself coffee and left for work, and he noticed when he read the newspaper
on the subway that Eloise had a new best seller. Good for her. It was all she had in life, and he knew how happy it made her. He envied her sometimes. He would have liked to be as fulfilled, as obsessed, as totally enthralled with what he did that it didn't matter what else happened in his life. He loved his work, but he wanted so much more than that. And so far, he hadn't found it. It was one of the reasons why he was excited about the Patterson case. There was something about it that excited him and he hadn't been this excited about his work in aeons. The first thing he wanted to do was find the oldest one, Hilary. There was something about her that haunted him. And God only knew what had happened to her after Arthur had abandoned her in Charlestown. He knew from her visit to Arthur's office in later years that she had wound up in Jacksonville, Florida. Somehow, but how or when or why, neither of them knew, and maybe it wasn't important. And what had happened to her afterward was a mystery too. She had never contacted Arthur again. She had simply disappeared. And then there was the clipping from
The New York Times
Arthur had given him of the woman named Hilary Walker at CBA Network. But was that even the same woman? He doubted it. It seemed extremely unlikely.

Chapter 16

John got to the office before nine o'clock. He had a lot to do before leaving early for the weekend, there was something he wanted to do before he left. He wanted to try calling the Hilary Walker in Arthur's clipping. It probably wasn't the woman he wanted but it was worth a shot. It was a lead, and he couldn't afford to ignore it. She might just be at CBA, right under their noses, working near the top at a major network.

He glanced at his watch. It was nine-fifteen, and he picked up the phone himself. He called information, and then dialed the number.

“Hilary Walker, please.” His mouth felt a little dry, and he was surprised. He didn't know why he was getting to care about the Patterson case so much.

A secretary answered, and he asked for her again.

“May I tell her who's calling?” a voice asked.

“John Chapman of Chapman Associates, she doesn't know me, and it's a matter of some urgency, if you'd be good enough to tell her that.”

“Just a moment please.” The girl at the other end gave away nothing. She had called Hilary oh the intercom, and she couldn't figure out who the hell John
Chapman was or why he was calling. She had a major production meeting to run at ten o'clock and she didn't have time to waste with crank callers.

“Ask him if I can call him back later,” she told the secretary and then countermanded her own orders. “Oh never mind, I'll talk to him myself.” She pushed the button with the flashing light, and her cool, deep voice came on the line. “Yes? This is Hilary Walker.” And for an odd moment, John was reminded of his mother's deep voice. She was the only other woman he knew with a voice as deep as that, but he got down to business with her quickly. Whether she was the right Hilary Walker or not, this one was a very busy woman.

“Thank you for taking my call, I appreciate it, and I'm going to be direct with you, in the interest of saving time. My name is John Chapman, I'm the head of Chapman Associates, I'm looking for a woman named Hilary Walker. Her father was Sam, her mother Solange, and she lived with a couple named Jack and Eileen Jones in Boston. Are you that woman?” It was fortunate that he could not see her face at the other end. She was chalk-white and shaking from head to foot as one hand clutched her desk, but her voice betrayed nothing.