Magdalene (37 page)

Mitch and his family bowed their heads, as
did I. From my periphery, I noticed Nigel do the same and elbow
Gordon to follow suit. After some hesitation, Helene did, too.
Paige had bowed her head without hesitation when Mitch did, then
nudged Olivia, who would take up her twin’s cause—or at least not
attempt to sabotage it—far more readily than she would
Clarissa’s.

Trevor prayed for a long, long time,
incorporating every possible thanks for home, hearth, and health,
asking for every possible blessing upon “Cassie’s family” and the
missionaries and the soldiers and the homeless and “on the food
we’re about to receive into our bodies that Cassie so lovingly
prepared,” asking that the Hollander family could be an example to
those who might need a light for their path—

—every phrase accompanied by Clarissa’s
sighs of impatience or sniggering or whispers to herself.

“We say these things in the name of Jesus
Christ, amen.”

Mitch and his daughters said “amen,” so
Paige did, but Clarissa stared at Trevor speculatively, and I
tensed. “How old are you?” she asked abruptly.

“Seventeen,” Trevor replied amiably, as if
he couldn’t see Clarissa’s talons.

“And you believe all that bullshit you just
said?”

He blinked. “Uh...”

“Oh, my God, you
do
!” she squealed
and began to laugh.

“
Please
don’t curse,” he pleaded. “Or
take the Lord’s name in vain. My dad’s pretty tolerant, but I
really
don’t like it.”

“So you don’t swear? Ever?” Clarissa asked,
dumbfounded.

“Oh, no,” Trevor answered with a naïve
sincerity even I almost bought. “It’s against God’s law.”

“Well,
fuck
,” she said. Trevor
flinched, looked away and down at the floor. That sent her and
Olivia into gales of laughter, but Olivia flinched with a
well-placed kick from Paige. “I bet you’re a virgin, too.”

“Of course!” he said, thoroughly affronted.
“I would
never
fornicate.”

“He’s very good,” Mitch drawled and I smiled
at him, my gratitude evident in my expression, I was sure.

Trevor threw everything he had into his
performance as wide-eyed virginal Mormon boy, clearly enjoying
himself once he’d confirmed Clarissa and Olivia had fallen for
every word. Paige knew something was off-kilter, but didn’t know
enough
not
to believe what Trevor said. I watched this in
silence, cringing in abject mortification. Mitch suppressed a
chuckle and squeezed my hand under the table.

Mitch’s girls watched, more curious than
offended. Nigel said nothing, but kept glancing at me to see if I
would step in as he wanted me to.

Helene did not seem amused, nor did she seem
inclined to stop her sister’s taunts, and for the first time I saw
her distance from me for what it was: confusion. She knew something
was wrong; she’d known since she was a child. She simply didn’t
know what to believe and she didn’t have enough information to
figure out the truths of the situation.

However, as I watched her watch Trevor play
Clarissa and Olivia like a concert pianist, once or twice I thought
I saw a hint of a smile.

“You really work in a steel mill?” Olivia
asked with a slight sneer.

“Yes, I do.”

“Why,” said Clarissa, her tone deliberately
flat to let Trevor know she thought he was an idiot for doing so.
“Don’t you have a trust fund?”

“No.”

Helene coughed into her hand, releasing
something that sounded like “bullshit.” Lisette and Geneviève
exchanged significant glances. Nigel sat back to watch, now
interested in where Trevor was going to take this. Gordon glanced
at me, uneasy, and all three of my other girls sat stunned.

“Do you want to work—in a
factory
—for
the rest of your life?” Clarissa asked, horrified.

“Why not?” Trevor asked innocently. “It’s a
good job. I get union wage,” he added proudly. “It’s enough to
support a couple of wives on, if not three.”

Their mouths dropped open. Geneviève and
Lisette had given up any semblance of detachment and had busied
themselves with dropping utensils and picking them back up again,
their shoulders quaking. Helene bit her lip and looked away. Mitch
had stuck his tongue in his cheek and wrapped his fingers through
mine. I didn’t know what to do, what to think.

He pointed to Clarissa with his fork.
“You’re pretty. I think I could be persuaded to give you the honor
of being my first wife.”

“What!”

Trevor’s face fell into hurt confusion. “You
don’t want to?”

“Absolutely not. That’s the most ridiculous
thing I ever heard.”

“Well, you’d have help once I got you a
sister-wife. Then there’d be two of you and you could share all the
housework and take turns mowing the yard, unless you want to get a
sheep or something. You’d have to take turns being pregnant, too. I
wouldn’t allow both of my wives to be pregnant at the same
time.”

Nigel grimaced. Gordon tensed. Helene
coughed again. And again. Mitch’s body trembled and I didn’t know
which one of them would burst first.

“You’re a
pig
,” Olivia whispered,
horrified.

Trevor looked at her blankly. “Pig? Me? Naw.
I love women. The more the better and I intend to sleep with all my
wives in the same bed every night. You know, like cowboys and their
three-dog nights.”

Geneviève lost it first, then Lisette. Nigel
snickered, and then the glares that Clarissa and Olivia leveled at
them made Helene start laughing, then Mitch. Paige looked around,
then began to smile. Gordon tried to chuckle.

Trevor kept his face perfectly straight,
perfectly serious.

I didn’t find much funny about it at
all.

Clarissa and Olivia looked around, confused,
then back at Trevor. “You know what they say about people who
assume,” he drawled, and sat back in his chair with a smirk. They
sucked in breaths and looked at each other, unable to decide
whether to be angry, embarrassed, or both and in what mixture.
“Now,” he continued. “You all can play Little Miss Junior League
somewhere else if you can’t act like civilized human beings. I
cannot believe someone as
awe
some as Cassie gave birth to
bitches like you.”

Both girls choked. Paige chortled.

“Trevor!” Mitch barked. “You apologize right
now.”

“No, Mr. Hollander, he’s right,” Helene
interrupted, sliding a glance at her sisters, who now seemed to
shrink with uncertainty. “You came here to embarrass Mom in front
of her soon-to-be new family and it got turned back on you. How’d
it feel?”

Clarissa glared at Helene. “They’re
Mor
mon,” she said, as if it were all that needed to be
said.

“Oh, I see. Your tolerance level doesn’t
extend to people of faith, right? Just to your special-interest
downtroddens.”

“They hate homosexuals.”

Trevor rolled his eyes and heaved a great
sigh while Lisette and Geneviève looked at each other, no longer
amused.

“Uh, Clarissa...” Gordon began uncertainly.
“Mitch and Nigel are friends, and everyone’s been very accepting of
us.”

“Yeah, right
now
.”

I gulped, and squeezed Mitch’s hand tighter
and tighter, while he let it play out.

“Girls,” I said quietly. “That’s enough.
Let’s start over, okay?”

“No, I want to talk about this,” Helene
said, “and I think Mr. Hollander probably agrees with me.”

Mitch inclined his head a bit and I knew at
that moment that the two of them were allies, that they understood
each other. I didn’t know how; perhaps I didn’t know Helene very
well at all—

—or perhaps she was tired of her solitary
task of trying to unravel the knot of deceit that had started
before she was born, and wanted to get to the end.

“Paige,” she said, “how do you feel about
Mom marrying Mr. Hollander?”

“She’s thrilled,” Clarissa sneered, glaring
at her youngest sister. “He went to one recital, clapped and
cheered, and now she’s all about the guy.”

“What do
you
do that he could clap
and cheer for?” Paige snapped back. She’d always had Clarissa’s
number.

Clarissa flushed, but Helene had moved on.
“Olivia? Problem with the Hollanders?”

She waved a hand toward Trevor. “He made fun
of us,” she grumbled.

“So? You started it. Here, in their own
home, even. Insulted his family and you were mean to Mom, whom he
obviously loves to bits.”

Oh. That stinging behind the bridge of my
nose started up again and my grip on Mitch’s hand tightened.

“Well, yeah,” she agreed. “He loves her, but
she’s not
his
mom.”

“Olivia,” Helene said, “did it occur to you
that since he
doesn’t
have a mother, he might be happy about
getting one?”

Trevor snorted. “And it wasn’t like
you
were snuggling up to her.
Somebody
had to.”

“Trevor,” Geneviève snapped. “Shut your
mouth. You had your fun.”

His mouth tightened, but he obeyed.

“But he’s got a point, Geneviève,” Helene
said, still looking at Olivia. “
He
won’t take her for
granted. Maybe it’s time you—
we
—learned how life would be
without Mom around all the time.”

Olivia flushed. I gulped.

“
Now
do you have an issue with
it?”

“No,” she lied, and turned to Paige for
comfort.

“Good. Clarissa?”

Clarissa cast a calculating glare at me,
then stared at Trevor. “Did you know,” she began slowly,
deliberately, and my body tingled as if bracing for the impact of a
speeding freight train. I knew what was coming, but it was time to
get it out in the open, in front of Mitch’s children.

“Don’t,” Helene said warningly, but Clarissa
didn’t give any indication she heard her.

“My mother,” she spat, “
fucked
people—men
and
women—for money for ten years.”

“And what did she do with that money?”
Trevor shot back, as if he had known exactly what she was going to
say. I looked helplessly at Mitch and he shrugged. My chest felt
like it had been kicked in; Trevor had known...all along. And he
still thought I was “awesome.”

And, just like her mother, Clarissa had no
comeback for an unexpected Hollander reaction. “Uh, I— I—” Her
nostrils flared. “What’s that got to do with anything? I just told
you she was a whore. Because she was
bored
.”

I looked to Lisette and Geneviève, but they
seemed more interested in watching Clarissa lose her cool.

“That’s true,” I said. “I did that, and
that’s why I did it.”

Mitch’s girls glanced at me as if I were
incidental to this process, then back at Clarissa. I looked at
Mitch again and he shook his head. No, they hadn’t known, but I
assumed that once their curiosity passed, I’d get hit with the
censure.

Trevor was still gritting his teeth at
Clarissa. Gordon stared blankly at something over my head, and
Nigel glared between the two of us.

“You know,” Trevor drawled. “I can think of
a lot less honorable ways to make money than by getting paid to
fuck
people.” Clarissa gaped. “You’re how old? Twenty-four?
Shouldn’t you have graduated two years ago? But you live with your
mommy
and sponge off her so you can stay a perpetual
student. I think that’s a kind of prostitution, don’t you? Only not
so honest.”

She sucked in a sharp breath.

“I work in a steel mill thirty hours a
week,” Trevor continued. “I get nasty dirty filthy. I drive a
shitty truck because that was what I could afford to buy to get me
to work and school and back. I have a bank account that’s almost
half the size of your trust fund and I earned every cent of it by
either working or investing. I live here, yeah, but I don’t ask my
dad for money because I don’t have to, and I haven’t even graduated
from high school yet. I can pay my way through any college in the
world I want to go to, but I won’t have to because I got
scholarships and none of them are athletic ones.”

Clarissa’s color dropped completely.

“I had a step up on the world, that’s true,
and I don’t have that many bills to pay, but you’ve got the same
ride, and you’re doing...what again? Oh, right, going to school on
somebody else’s dime and not working at all. You live in a
townhouse on the Upper East Side and have a car service. I bet you
don’t even know how to drive. Oh, what’s that? You say you go
skiing up in Vermont every weekend in the winter? Summers in The
Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard? So answer the question. Where did
that money go?”

Mitch squeezed my hand again. Trevor knew
that, too. How? I doubted Mitch would have told Trevor any of my
history, but Trevor had learned how to invest from the best and
either Sebastian had told him or Knox had shown him how to follow
the money.

“I don’t— I don’t know,” Clarissa whispered,
her gaze locked on Trevor as if he were a snake and he had
hypnotized her. Then she gathered herself and spat, “It didn’t go
to us, that’s for damn sure. Daddy pays for everything and he can’t
even live in his own house— The house she
stole
from him,
just like she stole his whole life.”

Gordon choked.

I sighed.

“Enough!” Nigel roared, slamming his hand
down on the table. The only person who didn’t jump was Mitch.
Clarissa gaped at him, as if she’d never seen him before and
indeed, she had never seen
this
Nigel Tracey. She only knew
charmingly arrogant Nigel Tracey, the stepfather who treated her
like an overenthusiastic puppy and made her like it. Nigel turned
to Gordon. “You take care of this,” he growled. My ex-husband
withered under his disapproval. “This is your fault. You fix it.
Fifteen years, Gord, and I’m
god
damn tired of cleaning up
the pieces of the mess you made of her life.”