Humming dissonantly, the man in the silver Mercedes reached past the soft grey leather armrest and put his hand on Carson’s thigh. She wanted to slap him, but forced herself to smile. Moments later, his fingers made their way up her skirt.
“Stockings,” he grinned and reached under the black lace garter belt her friends insisted, even on this sweltering August morning, would be just the right touch. From his excitement, which was immediately visible, it was obvious they were right. To calm herself, she tried think about that first playgroup and how the women she met that day would lead her, just eight short months later, to this moment.
Chapter 1
It was so cold and windy on the first morning the playgroup met that Carson called a taxi to take her three-year-old daughter the four short blocks to Katherine Phillips’ apartment on the corner of Astor and Banks. A painful blast of wind off Lake Michigan almost blew them back into the car. The Chicago Blizzard of 1979 that had begun over the weekend with the largest snowfall in the history of Chicago left the city paralyzed. Another front was on its way. Carson held Zoe tightly in her arms and pushed her way to the building. The doorman eyed her suspiciously and despite the cold and wind, took his time walking to the heavy plate-glass doors to let them into the lobby. He led them to a dark mahogany paneled elevator and closed the ornate brass gates.
As they passed each landing, one apartment on each floor, she realized this was one of those Gold Coast co-ops where even if potential buyers had millions to purchase one of the sprawling apartments, it wouldn’t be enough if they didn’t have the right background and social connections. Surely, the names on the mailboxes read like the Social Register of Chicago. Although Carson had not yet met her hostess, she already regretted she had come.
She barely knew Lauren Hutchinson, the woman who had invited her and Zoe to join a group of mothers and their three-year-olds for a once-a-week get-together. Lauren had a locker across from Carson’s at a downtown athletic club and they had developed the funny kind of relationship you have with someone you see naked on a regular basis but know nothing substantive about. They undressed and dressed side by side a few times a week for months before they even said hello to each other. There was something about Lauren that reminded Carson of Marilyn Monroe, something sad and vulnerable. She seemed awkward and oddly modest to Carson, particularly in that vast mirrored and marbled spa of a locker room. At any given time, there might be as many as 50 nearly naked women in that room staring at their own reflections. At the mirror at the end of their row of lockers, there were so many women peering over their shoulders at their derrieres, then spinning around for a frontal view, there were traffic jams. But Lauren never looked at herself, even from the corner of her eye. She ran from the shower shrouded in the club’s thick, cream-colored Egyptian cotton towels, her face and the skin she couldn’t cover flushed pink. And as quickly as possible, she slipped on her practical underwear, a white cotton bra and underpants, threw on her clothes, put a comb through her streaked blonde hair and dashed out the door.
The entrance hall of the Katherine Phillips’ apartment was larger than Carson’s living room. With its deep charcoal gray walls and dark green marble floors, the space felt cavernous and undefined except for the ornately carved moldings and three sets of French doors. Spotlights from the ceiling lit a quartet of towering black skeletal Giacometti sculptures in the center of the room, each nearly eight feet tall and arranged in a circle like marching guards. Behind them, a Jackson Pollock covered an entire wall. Carson felt as if she had just entered an art museum instead of the home of a couple she assumed to be about her age.
Katherine was not anything like the image Carson had conjured as they rode up the elevator. She had expected someone tall and stately, perhaps in jodhpurs and riding boots, just back from working out one of her champion Arabians at the stable in Old Town a few blocks to the west. Instead, a woman not quite five feet tall was at the door to greet them. She wore jeans and a plain men’s white tee shirt, no shoes or socks, and her black hair was pulled back in a braid that ended in the middle of her back. Her thick black lashes fringed dark eyes that turned up slightly in the corners and seemed to disappear when she smiled. She greeted Zoe first and then took Carson’s hand and held it firmly until Carson met her steady gaze.
Katherine led them to the family room. She had the graceful walk of a ballerina; her feet slightly turned out as if at any moment she might raise both of her gently curved arms above her head and leap into a grand jeté. The three toddlers, Zoe’s soon-to-be playmates, were climbing on a jungle gym large enough for a nursery school. Toys were scattered everywhere. Zoe surveyed the scene and held on tightly to her mother’s hand.
The two other women stood to greet them. Carson was surprised when Lauren hugged her. Her bulky, caramel-colored sweater smelled of cigarette smoke. That she smoked, had a little boy Zoe’s age, and lifted weights were about the only things Carson knew about Lauren. She got onto an elevator with Lauren on the way up to the gym one day. Lauren was lighting a cigarette and apologized, “I started when I was 11, didn’t stop till I got pregnant. I thought I was cured for life. But when I went into labor, the first thing I did was rummage through my drawers for a pack. I found one and when they took Louie to the nursery and brought me back to my room, I threw my coat over my hospital gown, went out on the fire escape and smoked most of the pack. I’ve smoked at least that much every day since.”
Lauren introduced her to Jessica Kingman, whom Carson recognized immediately from the full-page photograph she had seen of her and her husband in a recent issue on Chicago in Town and Country. Jessica‘s husband David was the heir apparent of Kingman Industries, one of the largest family-owned companies in America. Besides that not insignificant piece of information, and the fact that at first glance she was the most beautiful woman Carson had ever seen, that was all she knew about her.
“Have we met?” Jess said, looking at Carson curiously.
“No, I am sure we haven’t.”
“But I feel like I know you,” she smiled as she pushed up the sleeves of a luxuriously thick, white cable-knit cashmere sweater that matched tailored white wool slacks. A gold chain belt was slung over her narrow hips. Carson had come from a day at work that started at 5 a.m. and had raced home to swoop up Zoe just before the playgroup. In the tired navy suit she had tried to dress up with a scarf, she felt like someone who had been out all day in the rain collecting for the Salvation Army.
“Now I remember,” Jess said excitedly. “You’re on TV! Isn’t that right?” Carson nodded. “You do….” she hesitated, “the weather, right?”
“No, traffic,” Carson said forcing a smile. She tried not to reveal how embarrassed she was about the traffic slot. Before coming to Chicago, she was the midday anchor at the largest television station in Canton, Ohio. The traffic slot was an obvious step down from anchor, but she had been desperate to get out of Canton and back to work at a major market station. She had started in Chicago after journalism school at Northwestern and always hoped to return. The station manager had promised if things went well, and he said he assumed they would, he would quickly move her to the news desk. She had been in Chicago for almost a year and, so far, there was no sign that a move was going to happen.
“Well, that must be interesting,” Jess said with a grin Carson read as an insult. The grin remained as they sank into soft gray suede sofas next to a wall of leaded glass windows overlooking ocean-like Lake Michigan. Steam rose out of the silver carafe as Katherine poured coffee and offered chocolate chip cookies that smelled as if they had just come out of the oven. Someone’s perfume, jasmine a little too generously applied, wafted into the mix.
The view of Lake Michigan was dazzling. Huge boulders of ice floated on dark waves churned up by the northerlies that had made the city unbearable for over a month. Zoe, in the ripped pink princess costume she insisted on wearing refused to join the other children and sat on Carson’s lap clutching the ragged teddy bear she took everywhere she went. Her eyes followed the children as they played, but every time Carson urged her to join them she burrowed her head into her mother’s chest. The other children played happily, but not her little girl. Carson pushed Zoe’s tangled corn silk hair out of her eyes. She had refused to let her brush it before they left their house, a battle, Carson felt, not worth fighting. She whispered, “ Hey sweet pea, look at that jungle gym, why don’t we walk you over there so you can play. I’ll stay with you.”
“Not going, ”Zoe, who’d been speaking in grammatical sentences since she was a year and a half old, said angrily and pushed her face back into her mother’s chest. Surely, the other women thought she was a totally incompetent mother.
The sun peeked out from behind a thick cloud cover and suddenly the room brightened. Reflected off the water below, the winter light filtered through the beveled windowpanes and cast harsh rectangles on the three women. As far as Carson could see, all she had in common with the others was that they were about the same age and each had just one child. Jess looked like she might be older, but it was hard to tell. Her skin, though skillfully made up, was flawless. Her wavy red hair fell softly at her shoulders.
These are women with blessed lives, Carson thought watching them, not the kind of lives that I would want, but the kind most women of my generation can only dream of having. It was clear from the opulence of the setting, the way they spoke and dressed, even Katherine’s ‘I don’t care’ affect, that they had grown up in wealthy households like this one, had mothers who were always available and supportive, and fathers whose faces lit up when they saw their little girls at the end of the day. They had parents who gave them everything and loved them unconditionally. Now, no doubt, they had husbands who did the same.
Unlike the others, Carson had pretty much raised herself and now she was a single mom. But, she thought, I wouldn’t trade places with any woman in this room. I have no man in my life and that’s fine; no one outside my job to answer to but Zoe, who at three and a half takes every bit of energy I have left.
Yes, this was a difficult moment for her. She was beginning to fear that she had made a big mistake giving up the security of her job in Canton to make this move. One of the first female TV news anchors in the country, her job had prestige in the community and security. But she knew that if she didn’t leave, she’d be stuck in Canton for rest of her life. She was determined to get onto the news desk at Channel 7 and eventually become anchor. The traffic job was awful. She had to remind herself often that this was not her first unpleasant job. She had earned her own spending money from the time she was nine, and worked after school and on weekends through high school and college. When she was at Northwestern, she got up every day at 4 am to deliver the Chicago Tribune. A competitive swimmer in high school with an athletic scholarship that didn’t come close to covering the costs of a private university, she had both the self-discipline and the physical strength to take a job riding the back of a delivery truck. Everyday, rain, sleet or snow, she threw stacks of newspapers off the truck at news stands and delivery centers for three hours, then got off the truck, and worked out with the swim team before going to class. Every evening, she did dishes at a sorority house on campus in exchange for her meals. By comparison, the traffic job wasn’t so bad.
Carson assumed that, if not friends, the other three women were connected through the social circles of which they were obviously a part. She asked and was surprised when Katherine said that they had just met a few weeks before at a Latin School play party for junior kindergarten applicants and their parents.
“We sat together at the tea,” Katherine said,” and realized we live a few blocks from one another. Jess suggested we try to put together a playgroup and Lauren said she had a friend with a little girl the same age.”
Lauren interrupted. “Well actually,” she said, looking embarrassed, “I didn’t exactly say we were friends, but you had mentioned Zoe and that you were new to Chicago, so I thought you might want to join us.”
Carson was touched that Lauren thought of including her. She hadn’t met very many people since moving to the city, except for her colleagues at the station who really weren’t very collegial. She had grown up near the Standard Oil refinery not far from Chicago. She was in touch with a few of her high school friends, but they didn’t have much in common. She was the only girl in her graduating class to go to college. Almost every one else got married right out of school or before, or went to work at the refinery. She assumed that the other playgroup mothers, like all the women with children she had known in Canton, were stay at home moms. She asked.
“I am a lawyer.” Katherine said,” but I am only working part time now at the American Civil Liberties Union. I’d work every day if I didn’t feel guilty every time I walk out the door to go to the office.”
That was the first thing anyone had said that Carson could relate to; she too felt guilty about working and leaving Zoe home with a sitter every day, but Katherine, she thought, must feel even more conflicted. Carson really had to work. It was obvious that Katherine could do whatever she wanted.
“I’ve never had a real job in my life,” Lauren said. “I don’t know how to do anything that anyone would pay me for.” She was trying to joke, but it was obvious to Carson that she didn’t think it was funny. She wondered if it was that sense of worthlessness that accounted for the sadness she had observed in the short interactions she had with Lauren at the club.
Jess didn’t seem to notice and changed the subject. “Katherine, tell us about this incredible art collection.”
“None of it is ours,” Katherine said matter-of-factly. “Neither is this apartment. It all belongs to Alex’s parents. They convinced us to move here when we came back for Alex’s residency at Children’s. I was pregnant and they insisted, said they traveled so much that the apartment was empty ninety percent of the time. So Alex said, ‘Why don’t you sell it?’ His mom said, ‘No, if we sell it,’ and she waved her arms around the room, ‘what are we going to do with all this?’”
“I wouldn’t mind living with ‘all this’,’” Lauren said, ”or a mother-in law like yours.”
“I’m lucky,” Katherine said. “She’s great, couldn’t be nicer; so is Alex’s father. They bought themselves a smaller place a few blocks away and handed us the keys. Part of the deal is that ‘we have to,’ like it's a hardship, keep their housekeeper with us. They pay her salary and insurance. They say she worked for them for so many years; they owe her a job for as long as she wants to work. Anna lives with us, which I thought I wouldn’t like until Emily was born.” At that moment, little Emily, her bouncy black curls cut in a mop like Little Orphan Annie, ran over and snatched a cookie.
“No, Em,” Katherine said, knowing there wasn’t a chance that her high-spirited little girl, who they would soon learn was a clone of her doggedly determined mother, would obey. The other two children were at the plate seconds later, and the three ran giggling back to the toys. Again, Carson tried to get Zoe to join them, and again she refused.
Lauren asked Carson about working in TV. “It seems so glamorous.”
“Glamorous, it’s not. Every morning, a helicopter drops me down into a traffic disaster on one of the expressways. I shout into a microphone and fight to keep from getting blown over by the wind tunnel coming off the blades of the helicopter and the cars and trucks racing by. It’s worse now with the blizzard; cars are piled up in snow banks on every road. There’s only one lane of traffic on the expressways and everyone is so angry. It’s a nightmare.”
“It’s really that bad?” Lauren said.
“Really. It’s that bad.”
“So why do you do it?” Jess asked.
“You know, Jess,” Carson said, regretting the words as soon as they came out of her mouth, “some of us don’t have a choice.”
Jess looked a bit stung and the room went silent for a moment. Then Jess smiled as if what Carson had said hadn’t touched her. She scooted forward in her seat and reached for Zoe’s hand and stroked it with her long delicate fingers. Zoe looked up into Jess’s clear blue eyes. She must have looked like a fairy princess from one of her storybooks, her hair pulled back from a face as perfect as Carson had ever seen.
“Do you think your teddy bear would like a cookie, sweetheart?” Carson hadn’t noticed her Southern accent before or the smooth silkiness of her voice. Zoe whispered yes. Jess took a cookie from the tray and held it up to the bear’s mouth. It was hard for Carson to miss her ring, a pear-shaped diamond the size of an acorn.
“I think he likes it, don’t you think so, honey?” Zoe was mesmerized. Jess, they would all learn, had that effect on almost everyone. Zoe smiled up at her; it was the first time she had smiled all afternoon.
” Now, sweetheart, why don’t you take teddy over to play with Emily, Sophie and Louie? If he doesn’t like playing with them, you just bring him back and sit with me.” She gave Zoe’s hand a soft squeeze and the girl slid down and eased over to play with the other children. Jess winked at Carson, who felt even more humiliated when she looked down at her now badly wrinkled skirt covered with cookie crumbs and chocolate stains; she had an inch wide run down the front of her panty hose.
Then Jess asked Carson if she would be applying to Latin or Francis Parker, the city’s two elite private schools. The way she asked bothered Carson – as if no one worth knowing would consider sending her child to public school. The reality was that even if Zoe could get in to one of those schools, the tuition for kindergarten alone was as much as most Americans pay for four years of college.
She lied and said, “I haven’t made up my mind.” In truth, there was no way she could afford both private school and a nanny on her salary and she would need both. “Do you have to apply when they are so young?” she asked, knowing the answer.
Lauren said, “My husband says you have to apply when the children are three, that getting them into junior kindergarten at Parker or Latin is more important, even more difficult than getting into an Ivy League university.”
The private school discussion droned on. Jess didn’t seem to be listening either. Her eyes scanned the room, she got up, walked over to a bank of windows and stared out at the lake. When she came back, she sat on the edge of a chair across from the other three. Carson felt her study their faces. When there was a lull in the conversation, Jess leaned forward, her hands pressing down on her knees. “Would y’all,” the Southern accent that had been barely audible before thickened. “Would y’all consider doing something really different?” Over the next months, they would all learn to recognize that a sudden slip into her regional drawl was the best indication that she was nervous or unsure of herself.
“Sure,” Katherine said.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” Jess said, looking down at her hands. ”I just don’t want to talk about this kind of stuff — private schools, women’s boards, fashion, country clubs, none of it.” Her head tilted a bit to the side, as she watched the others for their reactions.
Of the three, Carson thought, the person who seemed least likely to want to avoid that kind of conversation was Jessica Kingman. Clearly, that was her world. Carson looked over at Lauren who had done most of the talking about private schools. Her face was flushed. Obviously, the insinuation that it had been small talk embarrassed her.
“I hope you don’t think this is crazy,” Jess continued, and again hesitated. “Oh, never mind.”
“No, please,” Katherine said warmly, “go ahead.”
“What if,” Jess said, “if we do this playgroup once a week, and I’d like to, when the kids are playing and we have time to talk, what if we try to stay away from the predictable small talk; you know, where our kids are going to go to school, or who we know, or what we do or did, or where we shop. Let’s not waste time with it.
Carson had no idea where Jess was going, but it didn’t matter. She had already decided she and Zoe were not going to be a part of this playgroup. She had no interest spending three hours with these women every week.
“What if we pick an interesting topic to discuss each time we meet? It could be politics, the arts, film, theater, anything that interests one us.”
“You mean like a discussion group,” Katherine said.
“Yes, exactly. We can take turns picking a topic, tell everyone so we can prepare.”
Oh right, Carson thought to herself, I’m going to have assigned reading for my three- year-old’s playgroup.
“Yes, that’s what I mean. What do you think?”
“Fine,” Lauren said, without much enthusiasm.
“Or it could just be a question, even a really personal question we could discuss together, just as long as it’s not predictable small talk. You know what I mean.”
“Personal,” Carson said, laughing to herself,” really?”
“Yes, really. Why not?”
“You know,” Carson said, with an amused grin, “asking questions is my profession. I’m likely to ask some pretty tough ones.”
“Well that’s ok. I like tough questions, even hard personal questions?” Jess said.
“Oh you think so?” Carson said. She was sure what she was about to say would wipe that plastic self-satisfied grin right off Jessica Kingman’s face.
” I mean really personal.”
“Sure, like what?” Jess asked brightly.
“What about something like this: describe in vivid detail the first time you had sex.”
No one responded. Lauren looked away, reached for a cinnamon roll and ripped it apart. She bit into the center, the part with the most cinnamon, sugar and frosting. It quickly disappeared.
What a fabulous idea,” Jess said, calling Carson’s bluff, her southern accent now as thick as quicksand. “The first time you had sex. That’s so funny.” She smiled,” It’s brilliant.”
Katherine had been trying not to laugh and finally did, “Why would anyone agree to do that?”
Jess said, “Because it would be fun, really fun. Hard personal questions, I like it. Let me think, Carson, what could I ask you?” Oh I know. Did you ever sleep with someone to get a job?” She smiled broadly, this time with no discomfort.
“I wouldn’t feel obliged to answer a question like that if I’d known you for twenty years,” Katherine said.
Lauren gestured across the room at the four little ones, “You know our kids are ten feet away. Are you seriously suggesting that we talk about this kind of stuff with the children within earshot?”
Jess glanced at them playing happily. “They can’t hear a word we’re saying and besides, if they could, they would have no idea what we’re talking about.”
Then Katherine began to laugh, a laugh so deep and hoarse, it was hard to believe it came from a woman, let alone a woman as diminutive as she. I know you two are kidding.”
“Of course, I’m kidding,” Carson said.
“Well, I’m not. Jess said,” What do we have to lose. If it feels uncomfortable after a few times, even one time, we’ll stop.”
Katherine said, “Frankly, I don’t know why anyone in her right mind be willing to expose herself to three perfect strangers? We’ve just met. I know the people who bag my groceries better than I know any of you.”
“Well, we would certainly get to know each other fast.” Jess laughed, but no one else did. Jess looked down at her reflection in the silver carafe, still beautiful even distorted by the curves.
“What if we table the hard personal question idea for a while,” Katherine said diplomatically. “Maybe when we get to know each other better. “I’d very much like to try to keep this playgroup going. It would be great for Emily and I bet your kids too. How about next week? Are Tuesdays OK for everyone?”
Jess and Lauren both said, “sure.” They looked at Carson for her response. She lied. “I’m working next Tuesday. My schedule changes from week to week. You should find someone else with more predictable hours.”
“Then we’ll meet another day,” Katherine said.
Jess said,” Maybe we can work around your schedule. I am absolutely flexible.”
“Me too,” Lauren said.
“I can juggle things if we are not on trial.” Katherine said,” I’d love you and Zoe to be in the group. The kids seem to be getting along well.”
Carson looked over at Zoe. She and Lauren’s wild towhead Louie were reaching above their heads to balance a few more blocks on the tall tower they had apparently built together. This is so good for her, Carson thought, but I have no interest in seeing these women again. Then there was a crash. The two kicked over their tower and the other children joined them in kicking the blocks around the floor, laughing uncontrollably.
Lauren said, “Children laughing, it doesn’t have to be one of your own, is the most infectious sound known to man.”
A few minutes later, the children in superhero capes, chased each other around the room. Zoe led the pack. Carson felt guilty; they were not coming back. She was the first to say it was time to go. Zoe threw herself on the floor, refusing to leave. Carson carried her out of the room screaming.
“When do you know your schedule for next week?” Jess asked at the door.
“Not till the Friday before. Really, you should find someone else.”
A woman not inclined to take no for an answer, Jess said, “I’ll call you Friday at noon.”
Chapter 2
The phone on Carson’s desk began ringing exactly at noon Friday. She let it ring and left for lunch. When she returned, a secretary handed her two pink message slips. Jessica Kingman wanted her to return her call. She didn’t. Jess called again as she was leaving to do her evening report.
“The only time we can make it,” Carson lied again, ”is between 1:00 and 3:00 next Friday — not a convenient time for anyone. You really need to find someone else.”
“It won’t be a problem for me. I’ll check with the others and get back to you.”
When Carson got back to the station, there was another message on her desk. “We’re on for next Friday at 1:00, Lauren’s, 1340 North State.”
It was still dark when Carson woke the day of the next playgroup. It was 3:15 a.m., the same time she woke abruptly almost every day, no matter how late she got to bed. Three fifteen was the time her father pushed the last drunks out of the tavern he ran across the street from the refinery until one night, when Carson was a college freshman, he collapsed carrying a case of Budweiser to the cooler and died. She knew it wasn’t a coincidence.
Her family lived upstairs from that tavern from the time she was Zoe’s age until her father died and her mother sold the tavern. In the stiflingly hot summers, the family slept with the windows wide open, thin top sheets thrown over their beds. At 3 a.m., Carson would hear her father slam the tavern door shut, hear his heavy footsteps as he dragged himself up the stairs. She and her younger brother, Mike, slept in the only bedroom, her parents in the living room on a hide-a-bed they never closed.
Most nights, her mother stayed down at the bar until closing. She talked to the regulars and nursed a long glass of icy vodka, filled to the brim. Carson always wished she stayed upstairs with them instead. It wasn’t until she was in high school when she heard her mother say that her dad had always been a player that she thought she understood. She wasn’t sure. By that time, her mother was always drunk, so it wasn’t worth asking for clarification. Some nights she shrieked insults at him as she stumbled up the stairs, “you fucking” whatever, her voice slurred as they moved toward their hollow door. Mostly all Carson would hear him say, sometimes pleading, was, “Steffi, please just be quiet,” at the worst, “Damn it, you’re going to wake the kids.” But Carson was awake, almost always. Even if they were quiet, she woke up when they climbed the stairs, lifted her head from her hard foam pillow and looked at the glowing green numbers on the clock she bought with money she earned babysitting the kids down the block. The first thing she ever bought for herself was a towel. She was 10. She remembered holding the bag close to her as she rode a bus home from the Sears store thinking, “This is just for me. I don’t have to share with anyone else in my dirty house.” She kept it folded in a drawer, hidden.
The icy wind whipped through the branches of the old elm in her courtyard, lashing against her windows, a last survivor of the disease that wiped out the thousands of elms that for decades canopied Chicago’s cozy neighborhood streets. The first thing that came to her mind was how she might bow out of going to playgroup that day, but with Zoe so excited about playing with the children, it seemed impossible. Zoe had asked her every morning if today was playgroup. She whined a little each time Carson said no and seemed to get over it. The day before, Carson told her, ”I’m sorry, honey, there won’t be any more playgroup. It’s over.” That was a mistake: Zoe had a tantrum that lasted for an hour. Carson couldn’t calm her down even after she sent her to her room. Instead, Zoe escalated the screaming level and threw her dolls and Legos against the door. Carson thought if people heard her wailing, they would think she was a child abuser.
She was losing the battle. In recent years, Carson prided herself on not letting people push her around. She hadn’t always been so good at that. Now, a three-year-old, 34 inches tall, 28 pounds with shoes on, was pushing her into doing something she absolutely did not want to do. She promised herself she would try to lighten up and tolerate a few hours with these women so far out of her zip code. She would give the playgroup another chance. They would go that day and they would see. That was all she was committed to, just one more time.
She played with the radio dial to see if something could lull herself back to sleep and heard the gravely voice of Studs Terkel, who had a daily interview show on the city’s classical music station. It was a rebroadcast of an interview he had done the day before with Governor Ronald Reagan, in town to fundraise for another run for the presidency. She assumed Terkel would not to be a fan of the movie star governor who wanted to be president. “Governor, you lost to Jerry Ford in ’76. What makes you think you can pull it off this time?” She turned up the volume. She would have loved to have a chance to interview Reagan. If she were still in her job in Canton, she would have. He was on his way to Ohio next and as anchor for Canton’s biggest TV station she’d be likely to have a face to face with him. The closest she could get to a candidate now would be if his limo passed her while she was standing at the edge of the expressway.
She tried to get back to sleep and finally gave up and went down to the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee. She anticipated the day ahead: get to the station at 5:30, the traffic copter will pick me up at 6:00; I’ll collect Zoe at 12:30, take her to playgroup, drop her back home, and get back to the station for the rush hour report. Hopefully, I can put her to bed tonight, but it’s unlikely. Another snowstorm was expected in the late afternoon and the mess on the expressways would likely stretch rush hour late into the night. She pictured the three other playgroup mothers she would see this afternoon; all of them sleeping soundly in the arms of adoring husbands, cared for and loved, as she knew they had surely been all their lives.
Carson was right about Katherine; she still slept soundly in her husband Alex’s arms, as she had from the first day they met. A 6:30, Alex, eased quietly out of their bed and dressed to go to the hospital. A slice of yellow light from his closet cut a beam through the darkness and lit Katherine’s face, her black hair falling in ringlets on her pillow. The light diffused on her bare shoulders and the soft folds of the sheet that molded to her body. Blankets and pillows were strewn about. He stood watching his wife sleep for a moment, wishing he could climb back into bed next to her warm body. He grabbed his white jacket and leaned over to kiss her goodbye. She didn’t move. “Like a baby,” he thought.
A block north of Katherine’s apartment on Astor, Jess Kingman was awake. She wiped the sweat off her face and pushed up the speed on her treadmill. She had already logged two miles. She picked up the remote and surfed back and forth until she landed on Channel 7 ABC-TV. She wanted to see Carson. “There she is, poor thing.”
“This is Carson Brown, ABC-TV news, reporting to you from the scene of an accident just north of the 91st Street exit on the Dan Ryan Expressway.”
The traffic copter roared in the background; her lips were blue from the cold.
“It must be so hard for her to be out there in this awful weather,” Jess thought. “She’s doing great. I wouldn’t want to do that job for all the money in the world.”
Lauren Hutchinson pretended to be asleep when she heard Doug’s footsteps coming up the stairs. He was just getting home. He kicked open the bedroom door. It crashed against the wall as he staggered into the room and switched on the lights. Lauren pulled her knees toward her chest, fearing what would come next. Doug rolled his overcoat into a ball and threw it at her. ”Get up, you lazy bitch.”
“Doug,” she pleaded. “Please, let me sleep.”
With a grin on his face, he unzipped his pants and stood above her head. “Get up. I want you to finish me off.”
The traffic on Lake Shore Drive, the east edge of the Gold Coast where Jess, Lauren and Katherine lived was moving slowly, narrowed to two lanes by a pileup of cars stuck in embankments of snow. Early morning commuters driving south to the Loop couldn’t resist the temptation to look away from the road to catch a glimpse of the winter sun on their left, a huge orange ball rising out of Lake Michigan. A layer of steam hung above the water. Through the silhouettes of honey locust trees planted along the shore, a lone runner dressed in black jogged surefooted down the icy pier and back toward the chess pavilion. A single gold leaf hung tenaciously to the immense poplar that in the summer shaded the strangers who sit face to face over the painted chessboards, deep in concentration. Under brown plastic garbage bags in the corner of the pavilion, a group of homeless men slept on a bench sheltered from the wind. Years before, the police stopped bothering to chase them off.
Alex walked out of the building still thinking of his wife in their warm bed. He felt a shock of icy sleet slap against his face and pulled his hood over his head as he raced toward Rush Street to grab coffee and a muffin before jumping into a taxi to Children’s Memorial where, barely a year out of his residency, he distinguished himself as one of the most gifted young cardiac surgeons in the country. Delivery trucks, their exhausts spewing fumes were double-parked along the streets, metal doors slid open and the drivers threw cases of fresh produce onto carts and rolled them through restaurant doors. From the kitchens, the smells of food prepping, chopped onions and garlic simmering in olive oil and butter, loaves of bread baking in the wood oven at Gene and Georgetti’s wafted into the street. There were already lines at Angelina’s, the city’s first Italian coffee bar and the only place in town, other than one of the mafia styled southern Italian restaurants, where you could get an espresso or cappuccino and a fresh croissant.
.
A few hours later, the pilot lowered the Channel 7 helicopter onto the roof of ABC-TV on the corner of State and Lake. When she got to her office, Carson phoned home. Her babysitter, Millie, answered, “Zoe says she don’t want to talk to you.” Carson felt a pit in her stomach. She wondered if on some level, Millie got a little pleasure out of moments like these. A friend who worked as a secretary at the station in Canton once confided that she fired the best babysitter she ever had because she thought her children were beginning to love the sitter more than they loved her. At the time, Carson thought her friend was foolish, but now she was starting to understand.
She was ashamed of herself for being jealous of Millie. At 5 a.m. every morning, Carson heard the key turn in the lock of her front door. In a heavy-hooded wool storm coat, her thick glasses fogged from the cold, Millie put down her shopping bag and lumbered into the kitchen to start the coffee. “I’m here, girl, made it to another day. Praise the Lord.”
Millie worked for the city most of her life until she retired three years earlier in 1976, coincidentally the same day that Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, the “Boss” of the country’s most powerful political machine, died of a heart attack alone in his doctor’s office a few blocks from City Hall. When Millie retired, her clout as a life-time patronage worker got her a small apartment in a prime senior high rise a few blocks away from Carson’s and a pension that would support her for the rest of her life. She never married or had children of her own and told Carson during their first interview, “The Lord was good to me in every other way, but he didn’t have no child in his plan. I always thought that maybe if I could put enough together to retire, I could take care of children.”
For Millie and Zoe, it was a love affair. She was willing to start work at any time and work as many hours and as late as needed. “You call me even in the middle night, honey, I never sleep anyway,” she said, when Carson told her that in the beginning, she hoped not forever, that she would have to begin at 5 a.m.
“It’s OK,” Millie said. “You’ll see when you’re my age it don’t matter; no one old sleeps.” In spite of her age, 74 on the Fourth of July, and the extra 50 pounds she told Carson she had given up trying to lose, she never tired of running around with Zoe. She could play with her for hours and always appear ready for more.
“Please tell her that we are going to playgroup today. I’ll pick her up right after lunch.”
Zoe was sitting at the door trying to button her coat when Carson got home.
She was so excited about playgroup that she had agreed to let Millie dress her in a red jumper, white sweater and tights, instead of one of her torn princess costumes. She even sat still long enough for Millie to comb her silky blonde hair into two neat braids and tie each with a bow.
“I have to change out my dirty clothes,” Carson told Zoe, pointing to the slush stains on the bottom of her coat and dress. Zoe followed her mother up the stairs and into Carson’s tiny, overstuffed closet.
“Let me pick something real pretty for you, Mommy,” Zoe said, pulling down a gauzy flower printed yellow summer dress. Wear this,” she said,” You’ll look like a princess. See, mommy.” She held the dress up to her shoulders to model the look.
Carson laughed. “It’s too cold, Sweetie, maybe another day.”
A bare light bulb lit the closet. Everything looked shabby and cheap to Carson. Along with a corporate membership to an athletic club “to get in shape,” the station had given her a budget for clothes she assumed they hoped didn’t “look so Canton.” She knew she wasn’t succeeding at either. She looked at herself in the plastic framed mirror she had hung on her closet door. Dumpy, she thought. I look like hell. She couldn’t remember a time she thought anything else about her looks. Whenever people told her otherwise, she thought they were lying.
Her father always said that she was the spitting image of her mother when she was young. “A real beauty, your mom was, and you are too, “ he said proudly, but she didn’t believe him. She was no beauty. She was too tall, her shoulders too broad, her legs too long, and her hair, a dull shade of brown, and absolutely straight. Then there was that stupid cleft in her chin. She did have her mother’s hazel eyes; that was lucky, but now they were made up for TV with black eyeliner turned up in the corners, thick pancake foundation and too much rouge. She wished she could scrub her face until it was shiny, but of course, she couldn’t. She would have to race back to the station after playgroup and be ready to go back on the air. She pushed her fingers through her stiffly sprayed back -combed hair, trying to make it look less like a helmet. Zoe sat on the edge of bed watching her patiently as she rummaged through her closet. She slipped into a pair of bright blue bell-bottom trousers with a matching sweater and thought I look like hell. She stripped off the slacks and left them in a bundle on the floor and tried on a bell-bottom pants suit. Not good either. She realized if she waited to find something she thought looked attractive, she would never leave the room. “Let’s go, honey,” she said to Zoe,” and they walked hand and hand down the stairs.
During the last hour the sky had opened. The snow had stopped and the violent winds that howled earlier had blown away the haze and dark cloud cover. The city looked different, even with the mountains of dirty snow that lined every block. It felt as if the world had gone from black and white to Technicolor. The streets were full for a Friday afternoon in January. People seemed elated to be outside and feel the sun on their faces after over a month of unrelenting gray. Strangers said hello, friendliness that to Carson seemed atypical in big city Chicago. It didn’t strike her that any of the friendly strangers recognized the pretty mother with her happy little girl, as the traffic reporter people had begun to watch religiously during the last snow filled months before venturing out into the cold.
Lauren’s house was five blocks away on State Parkway, one of six stately, four-story Victorian row houses Carson had admired. It took a long time for Lauren to answer the doorbell. For a moment, Carson was relieved, hoping that perhaps she had goofed and it was the wrong time or day or perhaps, it was too noisy in the house for Lauren to hear the bell, and they could just slip away. She could tell Zoe that no one was there and take her home. But Lauren came breathlessly to the door, apologizing for making them wait. They entered a four-story atrium on the ground level of the house.
“Look Mommy!” Zoe pointed up to a mobile four stories above. Primary-colored elliptical shapes revolved under an expanse of bright blue sky. Attached to a huge skylight, it looked like a Calder, but Carson didn’t ask, afraid to look foolish if she were wrong. There were four soaring stories of gleaming white space, balconies connected by suspended walkways, grey and white Carrera marble and glass everywhere. The voices of the others upstairs bounced through the open expanse. Lauren led them up a curved steel staircase to a balcony living room that seemed to be suspended.
“This is not a kid-friendly house,” Lauren said turning back to look at them. She couldn’t help but notice Carson clutching tightly to Zoe’s hand. “I’m really sorry. It was worse before we put on the Plexiglas shields on the staircase, but it’s still a problem.”
When they got to the top, Lauren opened the steel and chrome gate that had been crafted as a part of the childproofing. “You have to be absolutely sure that this latch is tightly locked,” she said firmly, though obviously uncomfortable to have to be so stern. She carefully latched the gate. Again, Carson and Zoe were the last to arrive. Katherine and Jess got up to say hello.
“I watched you on the news four times this week!” Jess said with what seemed to Carson, fake enthusiasm.
Thinking she was putting her on, Carson blurted, ”Oh come on, Jess, you did not.”
“I did.” Jess said, shaking back the red ringlets that had fallen onto her shoulders,
“You were great!”
Carson looked toward the gate and to Zoe, wishing they could leave, but Zoe had already joined the other children around a wooden table. Katherine’s daughter, Emily, dark, delicate and petite like her mother, handed a big wad of Playdough to Zoe. The children pounded away happily, pressing the pastel dough into molds. Cherubic Louie, his blonde Buster Brown bangs almost covering his big, blue eyes, looked as if he were telling a joke. When he finished, the others laughed at what must have been his punch line.
Jess didn’t give up. “It’s impressive, what you do, Carson. It’s got to be so difficult to stand out there in the freezing cold, the snow beating against your face. A few times it looked to me like the wind was going to blow you over, and you just kept it together and stayed perfectly poised. I know I couldn’t do it. I don’t understand why you think I’m putting you on about how good you are.”
“I don’t either,” Lauren said, looking confused.
Katherine’s face broke into a grin, “I watched you too,” she said, and again that big wonderful deep laugh of hers. “Can I have your autograph?”
Realizing she was making an ass out of herself, Carson laughed with the others.
“You have to believe me. It is the worst job.”
“It doesn’t appear that way to anyone but you,” Katherine said.
“So, what’s it all about?” Jess asked. “Why are you so self-deprecating?”
“I hope this isn’t one of your interesting personal questions?” Carson said.
“Sorry,” Jess answered. “I was just trying to understand.”
Katherine changed the subject. “Lauren, tell us about this house. It’s spectacular,” she said, looking up at the soaring space.
“You wouldn’t want to live it, especially with a child. The open staircases and balconies are a nightmare.” Lauren said, “But my husband loves every inch of it. He bought the house a few years before I met him and hired Trevor Kahn to design it. It was a beautiful Victorian with pretty moldings and marble fireplaces. It even had the old gas light fixtures wired with electricity. They ripped out every inch and did this.”
Katherine said. “I thought Trevor Kahn just designed skyscrapers.
“That’s right, “He just does huge buildings. He doesn’t do private residences,” Lauren said, “but, unfortunately, he did ours.”
“Is he a friend of your husband?”
“No, a business associate.”
“Is your husband a builder?” Carson asked.
“No, he’s in the steel business.”
“Oh, Hutchinson,” Jess said knowingly. “Heartland Steel, right?” Lauren nodded.
Carson looked at a photo of Lauren’s husband and their son Louie in a silver frame on a side table nearby. Blonde, a wide forehead and a square-set jaw, his expression a practiced smile, revealed nothing but good teeth.
“How did you meet him?” Carson asked, her turn to change the subject.
“He grew up in Lake Forest and I moved there to live with my grandparents after my mother died. I’d see him at the tennis court at the country club.”
“Do you play?” Jess asked.
“I used to, but I was terrible. Anyway, I had a crush on him. He had no idea I was alive. A few years after I graduated from Smith and moved back here, I ran into him at a party. That was it.”
“He finally noticed you?” Katherine grinned.
“I guess. Swept me off my feet. He was just finishing this house. The furniture was in and he was shopping for accessories. I guess I was one of them.” She laughed, but it was clear to Carson she wasn’t joking.
“I loved the house when I first saw it. My grandparents’ house was dark and stuffy, brimming with antiques, dreary 19th century paintings and heavy draperies that were always drawn. It felt like night 24 hours a day. With all the light streaming into these gigantic windows, everything dazzlingly bright white and cream, it felt like being on a beach.
“Would you mind showing us around?” Jess asked.
“You’re welcome to wander,” she said, pointing upstairs. “I’ll stay with the kids.”
The three climbed another floating staircase to the next level. Carson was taken with the master bedroom. The bed faced a wall of sliding glass doors leading to a roof garden planted with trees and shrubs, frozen flowers poked out through layers of snow. The bed was a mess. This is a room where lovers sleep. It’s so romantic, she thought, remembering her own bed. She had been sleeping alone for almost four years. In the morning, she had only one side of the bed to fix, the pillow and linens on the other half always tucked neatly in place. She thought, I would love to live in a house like this, to live this life.
“One more floor,” Jess called to them as she climbed the stairs to the next level.
Katherine said, “ No, we should go back downstairs now and join Lauren and the children.”
Jess called back. “Let’s just take a minute and see the rest.”
A narrow staircase led to the top floor, which must have originally been the servants’ quarters. As soon as they reached the landing, they could smell turpentine and oil paint. All the doors were closed. Jess had her hand on the knob of the first room when Carson tried to stop her. “I don’t think we should go in. The doors are probably closed for a reason.” But apparently for Jess, there were no doors she wasn’t willing to open. She walked right in. It was an artist’s studio. Stacks of paintings in various stages of completion lined the walls. Most of the canvases they could see were abstract with bold streaks of color.
”This one looks like it was done by another artist,” Katherine said curiously as she studied a large painting resting on two easels. ”It’s more like a 19th century English painting than one by whoever did the rest.”
It was an idyllic scene, almost to the point of cliché, but beautifully painted. Two little girls ran through a field of yellow wildflowers. The younger child had black curly hair, ivory skin, and violet eyes; her cheeks flushed pink. She seemed to float, a bouquet of recently picked flowers in her hand. Behind her was an older girl, lanky and blond, her hair and clothing oddly disheveled in contrast to the rest of the bucolic scene. She looked distressed, perhaps even deranged. The three women stood staring at the painting, no one wanting to comment on how both beautiful and disturbingly odd it was.
“Let’s look at the rest of these paintings Jess said, reaching for a stack that faced the wall.
“ No, let’s go downstairs, ”Carson insisted. “We can ask Lauren if she’ll show the rest to us later.” She had an uncomfortable feeling that they had invaded Lauren’s personal space, perhaps seen something they should not have seen.
When they got down to the living room, not one child looked up. Lauren had them engrossed in an art project, drawing on colored paper and cutting their drawings into shapes with small scissors. They were deep into their creative process.
“Lauren, your house is beautiful,” Jess said.
Lauren looked up at them, rolled her eyes and groaned.
“So you really hate it,” Katherine said.
“I do,” she said, getting up from the children’s table to join the others.
“So why don’t you move?” Katherine asked.
“Wait a second,” Jess interrupted. “Aren’t you the one who said you didn’t like the idea of asking hard personal questions? That was pretty confrontational.”
“I don’t mind hard personal questions,” Katherine said brightly, “but Lauren might.”
“You’re right, I don’t like them,” Lauren said, clearly relieved that Katherine had intervened.
“OK,” Jess said, “So if you don't mind, Katherine, why don’t we ask you one, or you Carson, it was your idea,” Jess said, obviously not letting go.
“I told you I was just kidding when I said what I did about hard personal questions,” Carson said, trying not to show it, but angry with herself for creating this monster.
Jess acted as if she didn’t hear her and said, “Carson, why don’t you tell us about the first time you sex?”
“If you think it is such a great idea, why don’t you do it yourself? “ Carson said.
“Me?”
“Yes, you,” Carson said, a twinkle in her eye. Jess laughed.
“I’m not kidding,” Carson said.
“Are you calling my bluff?”
“I didn’t think you were bluffing,” Carson said.
“Ok, I guess it’s only fair that I start,” She looked around the room and pointed to a of cozy bay window seat at the far end. “I think that is out of earshot of the children.”
The three followed Jess reluctantly, climbing up into a bay window that floated over the street. There were enough oversized pillows for each of them to settle comfortably. Lauren brought over some knitted throws and they covered themselves from the chill coming through the windows. She offered them cigarettes and when they refused asked if they minded and lit one for herself. Then there was an uncomfortable silence.
“This isn’t so easy,” Jess said, and laughed self-consciously.
Katherine grinned and said, “It was your idea.”
Jess took a deep breath and holding her coffee mug close to her face with both hands, leaned toward the others and said, her southern accent returning, “I don’t know where should I start. I've never talked about this with anyone.”
“It isn’t so comfortable for you either, is it?” Katherine said and winked at Carson.
“Why don’t you start with foreplay?” obviously enjoying Jess’s discomfort.
Carson was too, and said, “Isn’t that the best part?”
“Well in my case, it was long,” Jess said and smiled.
“What was long?” Katherine asked. A big laugh.
“The foreplay. It started when I was about 12 and then it went on for the next four years. He was the first great love of my life, Jim Bailey. Jimmy was from what my parents would call a fine Christian family. He was an honors student and a football player, and his father, like mine, was a doctor. He was serious and kind, and a year ahead of me in school. He asked me to marry him when I was 15 and I thought, of course, after college, I would.
“Now you have to remember that I grew up in the South and things were very different than they are here. His parents were members of our church and our country club, and I believe my parents loved Jimmy more than I did. One Sunday afternoon, my parents had taken my little brother to visit my grandparents at their summerhouse on Jekyll Island. I had a role in a ‘Bye Bye Birdie’ summer stock production and had to be at rehearsals, so for the first time in my life they went away for a few days and let me stay at home by myself. It was very hot and Jimmy and I were sitting on the side porch of our house on an old white wicker glider. It was swinging back and forth.
“Was it one of those big old ‘Gone with the Wind’ Southern houses?” Katherine asked.
“Yes, you could say that, but in Charleston. We had a long columned veranda and a thick hedge of magnolias surrounding the garden. Those magnolias were so dense the house was totally hidden from the street. Even though we lived in the historic part of the city with tourists wandering all the time, with those big hedges, no one could see us. So we were out there on that swing, no one home. I had my head in Jimmy’s lap and it was, as I said before,” she looked up at the others with a little uncertainty in her face, “it was very hot.” She stopped talking.
“So that day…?” Carson said, encouraging her to continue.
“So that day, it was so sticky, humid, like it was teasing to rain, but it didn't rain. The air was steam and our bodies were moist with perspiration. So we were rocking back and forth on that glider under the fan, and I had my head on Jimmy’s lap and I could feel him getting hard under my head. He was rubbing my shoulders and my arms and playing with the wetness of my skin.” She started to laugh, covered her mouth with her hand and looked away. “I can’t tell you about this.”
Katherine said, “Listen Jess, this is your idea, no one is forcing you.” Jess looked back at Katherine, who had an “I told you so” look on her face, then gathered her determination and continued. The others leaned close to her to listen because she spoke very quietly. The children who had been playing quietly at the other end of the room were now running around wildly.
She looked up at them for a moment then continued, “So he unbuttoned the top of my dress and reached his fingers under my bra and reached down and held my breast very gently in his hand and then he bent down to kiss me while he very slowly undid my bra and opened the top of my dress. So now my breasts were totally exposed.”
“And you were outside, right?” Katherine asked.
“Yes, we were outside on the porch, as I said before, and we could hear the birds and the cicadas and the voices of people walking by, and I was so turned on that I couldn’t stand it. So then he takes one finger, just one finger, and starts slowly circling my breasts, and I am wet, wet everywhere. So when he gets to my nipples, he goes around and around them so that they were hard.”
Lauren looked away, obviously uncomfortable, but Jess didn’t seem to notice. She continued, “I can't believe I remember every detail. It’s as if it happened yesterday and not 20 years ago. But I do. I guess no one ever forgets the first time.” She looked at Carson for some kind of acknowledgement. Carson nodded back, a wistful, though hard-to-read look on her face.
“Then he unbuttons the rest of my dress, my head is still on his lap, and as he does it, he pulls my dress apart so that I am lying there virtually naked. And he continues, slowly with just his fingertips touching my body, running his fingers down from my breasts, tracing the contours of my hips, carrying up the perspiration and bringing his hands up to my breasts again."
“How did he know how to do all this?” Lauren asked. “He was 17.”
Jess shrugged and looked over at the children, now back at the other end of the room, dropping cars down the circular ramp of a toy garage. She seemed to need to collect herself before continuing. “Well, then he began to glide his fingers inside my thighs, slowly the way he had been touching my breasts and then ... I can't believe I'm telling you this.”
“OK, then what happened?”
“He pulled my thighs up so that my knees were a little up in the air and he gently pulled my legs apart. Then he put his hand between my legs, took his fingers and slipped them inside my underpants. He does this very slowly, his fingers just at the edge of the elastic and he goes back and forth slowly coming closer and closer and he moves his finger inside and he does this for a very long time so that I am losing my mind.” She paused.
“Then he pulls down my underpants, not all the way off, but down near my knees and he continues. So there I am almost totally naked and nearly out of my mind, and he tells me that we’re going inside, very sweetly, but firmly, and I pull my dress together and he leads me by the hand through the living room and up the long winding staircase to my bedroom and that was it.”
“So how was it?” Carson asked. She too was uncomfortable, but riveted.
“Incredible, fantastic. I was madly in love with him and I thought he with me.
Every chance we had that summer, if my parents were gone, if his weren't home, we were in bed together. We made love on the beach, in the woods, in the back seat of his car, even once we snuck into the coatroom at the club during a dance, me in my white eyelet dress with a bow in the back, only a room away from our parents and all their friends.” She stopped talking and looked wistful. “So, you want to hear the end of the story?”
The three women nodded eagerly.
“He went to Vanderbilt in the fall; I had one year of high school left. We talked on the phone almost every night about how much we loved and missed each other and when he came for Thanksgiving he told me that he had a new girlfriend at school.”
“The dog!” the others said almost in unison.
“The dog?” Zoe bellowed excitedly from the other end of the room and ran toward them, followed by the other children. They were disappointed when they saw that the furry little creature they expected was nowhere in sight. Louie climbed up on Lauren’s lap and the others followed. Sophie pounced down on Jess’s lap. Jess threw her arms around her little girl and hugged her.
“Mommy, you’re sweaty,” Sophie said.
“I’m sweating like a pig,” Jess said, grabbing a tissue to wipe the perspiration off her now beet-red face. “I am so embarrassed. I can't believe I told you all that whole story,” she said laughing. “
“Neither can I,” Carson said shaking her head and, like Katherine and Lauren, smiling broadly.
“You don’t expect us to do the same?” Katherine asked.
“You bet your sweet ……,” she slapped her hand over her mouth, realizing the children were right there, and said, “I do.”
Chapter 3
“What are you smiling about?” the pilot asked Carson, a few hours later as the traffic-copter took off and flew southwest toward the Dan Ryan Expressway. It was 4:00 p.m. and traffic was already standing still.
“Was I smiling?” she asked.
“Yeah. There must be a new man in her life?”, Pete, the cameraman, shouted from the back seat over the roar of the blades.
It’s about time,” the pilot said, laughing.
“ Shut up! I’m about as far from having a new man in my life as you are from winning the Miss America contest.”
“ Well, if it’s not a man, Carson, I’d like to know what it is.” Pete said leaning forward in his seat.
She turned around and said, ”None of your business.” He would have loved to hear Jess’s story about the first time she had sex, told in such wildly vivid detail that afternoon. What a fucking amount of nerve that girl has, Carson thought. That was the last thing I imagined would come out of that proper society girl’s mouth. Carson could hardly keep from laughing out loud.
As they were leaving the playgroup, Jess had invited them all to a black tie benefit at the Field Museum of Natural History. “Bring a date or come alone,” Jess said to Carson. “It’ll be fun either way. David wants to invite a bachelor friend of his to be your dinner partner. I said I had to ask you first.”
“I’d rather come by myself, ” she answered apologetically. Meeting a man was the last thing she needed right now. Her life was complicated enough, but a fancy party sounded like fun. She hadn’t been to a black tie event since she won an Emmy for investigative reporting from the Lower Great Lakes Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences the year before she moved to Chicago. That Emmy, her third, was for uncovering a bribery scam in the County assessor’s office that had cost the taxpayers of Canton tens of millions of dollars. The assessor ended up in jail. It was just Canton, she thought, not a big city story, but she was proud of what she had done to uncover corruption that had gone on for over a decade. Now she lamented, all I do is report lane closings, a semi turned over on I-94, an accident on the Drive. What a mess I’ve made of my life.
Anyway, she needed a dress for the gala and though an expensive one wasn’t a possibility, she decided to try her luck at the upscale stores on North Michigan Avenue. Maybe she would find something great on sale. The city was still a mess with snow piled up so high, even downtown, that the streets were barely drivable. Buses and trains were running on skeleton schedules. The stores were empty and people were unable to get to work. Businesses were losing millions of dollars and people were angry. They blamed the mayor, Michael Bilandic, who had been appointed after the “Boss,” Mayor Richard J. Daley died. The mayoral primary was coming up in a few weeks and a feisty Jane Byrne, a city patronage worker Bilandic had fired from her post at City Hall a few months before, had challenged him and was running against him in the democratic primary. The chain-smoking, sharp-tongued little blonde with barely any leadership experience in city government was an unlikely candidate, but people were starting to believe that she had a good chance to defeat the mayor.
Bundled in a bulky coat over two sets of long underwear, warm wool pants, tall rubber boots and a thick ski sweater, Carson’s walked to Saks Fifth Avenue on Saturday morning. Although she was the only customer in the evening gown department on that painfully cold winter day, the sales staff ignored her. When she finally approached a saleswoman, she looked Carson over from head to toe and said, “Madam, perhaps you’re in the wrong store. This is Saks Fifth Avenue.”
‘Excuse me,” Carson said, as haughtily as she could, “ I don’t understand what you’re talking about.” She knew exactly what the women meant. Still, she pointed to a spectacular red silk strapless gown on a manikin and said, “I’ll try on that one in a size 9. “ The saleswoman stamped away, came back with the dress, and coldly led her in a dressing room. She never returned.
The dress fit like a glove. Carson looked at herself in the three-way mirror surprised to see that a beautiful dress could really turn a Cinderella into a princess. It makes me look like I have curves and tiny waist, she thought never being able to acknowledge that truly, she had both. The dress was by Oleg Cassini, a French born designer who had designed the dress Jacqueline Kennedy’s wore to her husband’s inaugural ball, as well as most of the wardrobe she wore when she was first lady. As a teenager, Carson had volunteered for John Kennedy when he ran for president in 1960. She canvassed door to door in the blue-collar neighborhood where she grew up to try to convince steel workers who rarely went to the polls to register to vote. She was thrilled when he won and heartsick when he was assassinated. Like millions of Americans, she never got over it. For years, she kept a photo of the president and the first lady at the inaugural on her bedroom wall, Jackie in a white Oleg Cassini gown. Wouldn’t it be amazing to own an Oleg Cassini herself? As much as she wished she could buy it, a fairy godmother did not appear in the dressing room with a Saks credit card. She left the store and found something sapphire blue and sparkly at Marshall Fields.
After the traffic report the night of the party, she changed her clothes at the station and took a taxi to the museum. Fortunately, she spotted Jess and David, who lingered near the entrance waiting for her to arrive. A circle of people surrounded them. David was not at all the man that Carson imagined. She had seen a picture of him in Town and Country and another in Fortune. She knew he’d be tall and handsome, but she didn’t expect him to be so warm and friendly, with absolutely none of the edge of superiority she had expected.
“You’re stunning,” he said, smiling warmly. “Jess didn’t tell me how beautiful you are.”
“I didn’t know that she was,” Jess teased, as if she too were amazed. “I promise you, beauty is the least impressive thing about this woman.” David raised his eyebrows and smiled. He offered each of the women an arm and they serpentined their way toward their table in the main hall of the museum.
Carson found something unnerving about the immensity of the room, a massive rotunda inspired by the monumental temples of Greece and Rome with ornately carved ionic columns and arches. At its center, they passed by an enormous pair of preserved black African elephants posed in a fight. Women in stunning gowns and jewelry and men in black tie elegantly milled around their tables set with twinkling candles in tall crystal candelabras. There were bowls of antique roses so large they looked surreal. A twenty piece orchestra began to play and couples made their way to the dance floor. The music, hundreds of conversations, and the clattering of the dinner service amplified off every surface.
Elevating his voice so she could hear him above the roar, David said “Jess says there is no man in your life right now. That won’t last for long in this town.”
“It’s going to have to,” Carson said. “I don’t have time to be distracted.”
David said, “That kind of distraction could be good for you.” He leaned over to Jess and stage whispered, “Let’s have a dinner party in Carson’s honor and invite our most eligible friends. She can pick the one she likes.” Jess rolled her eyes.
When they got to their table, Katherine’s husband, Alex, was the first to pop out of his seat to greet them. He hugged Carson and Jess as if they were long-lost friends. Carson thought, a man with a smile like that could warm the hearts of the dead. In a tuxedo that didn’t quite fit, his tie tilted slightly to the right, a round friendly face with the warmest smile, Carson fell for him instantly and hoped she would sit at his side. Instead, her place card was next to Lauren’s husband, Doug, who stood up to introduced himself and pulled out her chair. David’s father sat on her right. He apologized when she asked him a question, saying that the music was so loud he couldn’t hear her, or for that matter anything anyone said at the table. He and David’s mother spent most of the night on the dance floor. So it was Doug for the evening. He was cool and stiffly formal and seemed not very interested in her.
Lucky Lauren was seated between Alex and David. In spite of the noise level of the room, the three of them, also meeting for the first time, laughed their way through dinner. Carson guessed that Alex was the joke teller, but she was wrong, Lauren told her later. David had a photographic memory and rattled off jokes like a standup comedian; Johnny Carson was his favorite. Alex was funny too, but with a sense of humor of a different kind. Katherine described it: “His silliness, those quick, clever quips are his way of balancing the seriousness of long days filled with the heartache of critically ill children whose lives he is committed to but can not always save.”
Doug’s conversation was laced with references to his elite education at Exeter and Yale, to his private clubs and names of people she assumed he thought would impress her. She would learn that some people dropped that kind of information as a kind of code to be sure that others knew who they were. Before long, he stopped talking to her. After a few minutes of silence, he excused himself and took Lauren, elegant in a flowing, pink satin gown, her hair in a classic French twist, to dance. Carson watched them. He held her close and as he steered her around the floor, his eyes like a surveillance weapon, scanned the room for people he might know or want to meet. It was as if he was using Lauren as camouflage. He danced toward a tall, dark-haired woman and her partner. She smiled at him and their eyes locked for longer than it seemed to Carson they should.
Later when Jess, Lauren, Katherine and Carson excused themselves to go to the powder room, David teased about their mass exit. ”We won’t see you again for an hour.“ He was right. As the four wove their way through the tables, they saw the mayor and his wife working the room. The election was a few weeks off.
“There’s that poor dull-eyed Mayor Bilandic,” Jess said.
“Boy, you are bitchy tonight,” Katherine said, laughing.
“I think there’s a good chance he’ll lose the primary,” Carson said.
The mayor, his beautiful blonde socialite wife, Heather, on his arm, greeted and shook every hand they could reach. Heather had married the South Side alderman shortly after he was appointed mayor. Jess and David had been invited to the wedding, but they didn’t go. After the honeymoon, Heather moved from her elegant apartment on the Gold Coast to live in Bilandic’s mother’s little house on the South Side of the city so he could stay in his working class voting district, not coincidentally, the district where Mayor Daley had lived all his life. Heather worked in cultural affairs, helping to create music festivals on the city’s lakefront. Many saw her as Chicago’s version of Jackie O, bringing a Gold Coast kind of cache to City Hall. It wasn’t quite enough. Bilandic’s lackluster reign at City Hall was characterized by political infighting and strikes. Even the Lyric Opera orchestra threatened a walkout. He could have survived all that, but his inability to organize the city’s patronage workers to clear the snow was threatening to bring him down.
As the four made their way through the room, so many people stopped Jess to say hello that it took quite a while to get to the other side. Watching people clamor for Jess, Carson wondered why she was so eager to develop friendships with the three playgroup mothers. Everyone in town seemed to know her or at least want to know her. Jess introduced her three new friends to everyone. Most people they met said they recognized Carson. Oddly, the terrible weather had increased her popularity on the news. More viewers were tuning in to find out about the traffic before venturing out onto the highways. The news director had secretly ramped up her popularity by arranging incidents to get a few laughs while she earnestly reported the scene. A snowplow spraying her with sleet that she told her friends about the week before had been one of those incidents she unknowingly endured. The ratings of the Channel 7 morning and five o’clock news had gone up substantially during the last month and Carson’s unintentionally amusing reports were in no small part responsible for that increase.
Inching their way back through the crowded dance floor, Carson saw the beautiful Oleg Cassini red dress on a painfully thin, uptight-looking woman on the arm of a man old enough to be her father. Before she could better scrutinize the dress, Mayor Bilandic walked up to the couple, obscuring Carson’s view. He hugged the woman in the red dress and kissed her on both cheeks, then turned to her tall silver-haired companion and shook his hand enthusiastically. When they got back to their table, 10 minutes later, Carson noticed that the mayor, the woman in the red dress and the man were still huddled together deep in conversation. She watched them from across the room, the mayor’s hand resting on the man’s shoulder. Carson had no idea who he was, but it was clear that he was someone the mayor wanted on his side.
Chapter 4
Carson soon began seeing the playgroup mothers a few times a week, with Zoe and without. Sunday night pizza at the Phillips’ became a group ritual. Alex picked up Due’s on on his way home from afternoon rounds, and they gathered around his parents’ mammoth glass dining room table under the Jackson Pollack.
“Irresistible,” Alex said, and with surgical precision cut into a slice and savored his first bite. “The fresh chunky tomato sauce, the homemade sausage, thick, gooey mozzarella on this astoundingly crisp, buttery cornmeal crust!” He kissed his fingertips like a French gourmand.
“I wish you’d talk about me with that much lust,” Katherine said.
“ I do,” he said, grabbing her arm and pretending to take a bite.
They dined on paper plates, sometimes with a gratuitous salad no one ever touched. David Kingman never missed the Sunday night ritual, but Lauren’s husband, Doug, rarely joined them. Lauren made excuses, but Carson suspected he just didn’t want to come. She was sure Doug was not more than the pretentious bore he appeared to be the night of the benefit. She wondered what Lauren saw in him. She knew it wasn’t his money. Lauren had her own, inherited from her mother and grandparents.
”If I didn’t have my own money,” Lauren confided in Carson as they ran the track at the club, ”I’d get a job. I wouldn’t feel safe, even if I am married to someone who has a lot of it.” After that, she slowed her pace and turned to Carson, “I’m not sure I feel safe anyway.”
Carson asked what she meant by ‘safe,’ but Lauren pretended not to hear and quickly changed the subject. From time to time Lauren would open a door, and abruptly slam it shut. Carson didn’t push. Lauren was fragile for reasons she couldn’t put her finger on, and she was careful to respect her parameters.
One thing Lauren had no problem talking about was her obsession with her weight. She had a life long pattern of gaining and losing. ”I can put on 20 pounds in a few weeks, then spend a year trying to take them off.” Lauren had embraced the running craze that had hit the country, doing at least an hour or two every day. She also took up body- building with a trainer in the weight room. In a club with a few thousand members, she was the only woman lifting weights. Carson suspected building physical strength was her way of dealing with the fragility she always sensed about her. Lauren tried to get her to join her, but she declined.
“It would be one more thing in my life to guilty about.” Dating was another. David Kingman teased her about her celibacy. “This is not healthy, Carson,” he said. “You need a man in your life.”
“If you knew anything about the men I’ve had in my life, you wouldn’t say that. It’s healthier for me to be alone, at least for the time being. “
“OK, you tell me when you’re ready. When you are, I have the perfect man.”
“And who is that?” Jess asked looking amused.
“You’ll find out,” he said with a wink. “Until then, I don’t mind having a beautiful women on each arm.” He didn’t. Carson was often the fifth on evenings out with her new friends. With Doug’s schedule so “unpredictable,” Lauren usually declined, but Carson enjoyed the other two couples and they her. Alex got home late, but they still managed to go out a few nights a week after the children were asleep. Millie was happy to spend the night, especially now that it was so cold.
Before she left to meet the others, Carson always put Zoe to bed. They had elaborate rituals, the bath, two books, “not one,” a few songs, and cuddling together in Zoe’s narrow bed to tell each other the best thing that had happened that day.
As tired as she was when she got home, Carson bounced back when she left to meet her new friends. She loved getting to know the nightlife of her new city with them. There was so much going on, music, theater, jazz and blues. They followed the great blues singers playing in the clubs in Old Town and Rush Street, just a few blocks away and on the south side. They saw Buddy Guy, Aretha Franklin, Barry White, Etta James, Coco Taylor, and Mavis Staples. Wearing miniskirts and thigh-high go-go boots, bellbottoms and platforms, they went dancing at Faces and Maxim’s. Unlike the dancing they did when they were in college, didn’t require a partner and for the five friends, sometimes six when they could drag Lauren out, it was fun, sometimes hilarious to dance together.
Carson’s work wasn’t getting any better. She was starting to suspect that she had overestimated her ability. Maybe she wasn’t good enough to be successful at a big city station. But making these new friends who were so much fun and who poured so much affection on her little girl made her life in Chicago much happier. The playgroups rotated from house to house every week and the grownups
The first time the playgroup was at Carson’s house, she was self-conscious about the contrast between the small artist studio duplex she rented just west of the Gold Coast and the palatial homes of the others. But she quickly realized that that too was ridiculous. No one but she seemed to notice. Lauren and her son Louie were the first to arrive.
“This is my dream house, “ Lauren bubbled uncharacteristically as she walked around what Carson called her not- so- great great room, with it’s two story exposed brick walls and classic artist’s skylight filling the room with sunlight. A staircase led up to two postage -stamp- sized bedrooms off a narrow balcony on the second floor. “I’d trade houses with you in a heartbeat,” Lauren said. Carson knew she meant it.
The artist studios were part of Carl Sandburg Village, a development built just west of the Gold Coast where the other playgroup families lived. The developers had pushed out a densely populated neighborhood of minorities and working poor to create wall of high rises and townhouses that would act as a buffer zone between the Gold Cast and the slums. The artist studios had been added to the site plan to help constitute the low income-housing component the developers — friends of the mayor — needed to qualify for low-interest-rate urban renewal financing. By the time Carson moved to Chicago in 1978, the last of the artists had already been priced out of Sandburg. The rents had escalated to way beyond what any of the original painters, potters and sculptors could possibly afford, and just as the developers and their Daley machine friends in City Hall had planned.
Playgroup was at Carcon’s on the sunny but still bone-chilling February morning of the primary election that would give Chicago its first and only woman mayor. Carson had phoned the others to let them know that they were going to be making Valentine cookies, even though it was almost two weeks past Valentine’s Day. “That’s what Zoe wants to do,” she told the others, “so that’s what we’re going to do. I hope you don’t mind.“ She warned them it would be messy. “Dress accordingly.”
Chicago voters came out to the polls in record numbers that day, excited to try to bring down the nation’s most long-standing political machine by electing Jane
Byrne, the gutsy little woman challenger who waged a brilliant campaign to dump the acting mayor because he couldn’t get the city out from under the snow after the blizzard.
Jess and Sophie were the last to arrive that morning. “I’m sorry we’re so late.” Jess said when Lauren let them in the door. “There was a huge line to vote, everybody’s out. It looks like Jane Byrne’s going to win.” In the short moments the door was open, cold air pushed its way clear across the room. In a hooded white mink coat with white fox trim encircling her face, Jess looked like a redheaded version of Mrs. Zgivago.
Zoe, her hands and clothing sticky with sugary red frosting, ran to hug Jess. “We’re making cookies! Hurry up!“ Carson, at the table helping the children, jumped out of her chair to stop Zoe, but she was too late. Zoe threw her arms around Jess as she always did, leaving red frosting all over the luxurious mink. After the initial shock of those little red handprints, instead of getting angry, Jess laughed so hard she couldn’t stop. Carson was horrified.
“Stop apologizing,” Jess said. “It’s totally my fault. How stupid of me!”
“It would be hard to argue with you,“ Katherine teased, as she grabbed a wet rag to try to clean off the prints. Her efforts only transformed the red handprints into a field of pink fur.
“I’m so sorry, Jess,” Carson kept repeating as she tried to sponge off the frosting.
“Please stop. It’s just a thing.” Jess said. “No one was hurt. The children are fine; we’re all fine. People matter, not things. Just forget it. So what if I have a new pink mink coat.”
“Probably, if you wear it this way,” Katherine said, ”everyone who sees you is going to try to find one.”
“Not likely,” Jess said as she took off her coat. Under it, she wore her usual: a creamy, pastel cashmere sweater, matching slacks and a few pieces of expensive jewelry.
“Are you kidding me?” Katherine said surveying her outfit. ”Carson told us this would be a messy morning.”
“I didn’t have anything else to wear. What do you want me to do, go to the Army surplus store and buy myself fatigues?”
“It wouldn’t be such a bad idea,” Lauren, the only one of the four not laughing, said. Carson offered Jess something more appropriate to wear.
“I’m fine.”
“At least put on an apron?”
“What’s an apron?”
Carson threw her an old work shirt. Squeezed around the round oak, claw-footed table that had been Carson’s grandmother’s, the women helped the children spread frosting on the heart-shaped sugar cookies Carson had baked late the night before.
“Sorry about the hearts,” Carson said. “I know Valentine’s Day is over for the rest of you, but it hasn’t started for me yet.“
“Maybe if you would let us set you up with someone, it would.” Jess said. “David keeps asking me.”
Carson interrupted her. “When do I have time to date?” she said as she walked to the kitchen counter to mix a batch of blue frosting. She looked back at the excited children and their mothers laughing and talking at her table. They looked beautiful; the whole scene was beautiful. With sunlight pouring in through the glass skylights, the children with their cheeks flushed pink from the cold were the children of the Renoir paintings in the French Impressionist collection at the Art Institute, just a little over a mile from where they sat. For the first time she appreciated why artists wanted their studios to catch the northern light.
It didn’t take long that morning for the little ones to get so speeded up on sugar they were out of control. When Carson put down the fresh bowl of blue frosting, Louie pushed his chubby his little hand in the bowl, scooped out a glob, and smeared it all over his face. The children thought it was the funniest thing they had ever seen.
“Time for a new activity,” Carson said, grabbing a washcloth. “You can go upstairs and play with toys as soon as we get you cleaned up.” Their first group tantrum followed.
Fortunately, their mothers kept a united front and it only lasted a few minutes. Once clean, they ran up to Zoe’s room. Not more than five minutes later, Carson heard them jumping on the beds and squealing with laughter. All but Katherine ran up to help Millie quiet the children down. Katherine was so focused on cookie decorating, she didn’t stop when the others left. When they came down stairs, Jess signaled the others to be quiet and watch Katherine in a cookie-frosting trance.
When she looked up and saw them grinning down at the perfect rainbows she had painted on her cookies, she was embarrassed. “I’m sorry I didn’t come and help. I didn’t want to stop. I’ve never made cookies in my life.”
“That’s not possible,” Lauren said.
“Never, not once?” Jess asked.
“Not even with your mom?” Carson said.
“She wasn’t a cookie-making kind of mom.”
“I don’t know what that means?” Carson said, surprised by Katherine’s uncharacteristic uneasiness as she pushed away the plate.
“My mother wasn’t ever around long enough to do anything like making cookies. Let’s just say she was a never-at-home kind of mom.“ She quickly changed the subject, as she always did when anyone brought up her parents. No one would believe the story anyway. It was hard for her, even after two decades of trying to put it together, to believe it herself.
She had never told anyone about them and she wouldn’t today. She thought until she was 13 that her father died in the battle of Okinawa three months before she was born. He and her mother had been high school sweethearts and married right after graduation. He was drafted a few years later. After her father died, there was no way for her mother to support the two of them in their small town in upstate New York, so she took the insurance money she received, got on a Greyhound and took her six-month-old baby to live in Manhattan. Her mother worked long and unpredictable hours and she was gone most evenings. The reality was that Katherine pretty much raised herself, with a series of mostly unreliable baby sitters. Fortunately, she was a good student and loved to read. The doormen in their building, just a few doors off Central Park, kept an eye on the tiny girl who walked to and from school by herself every day.
The only time Katherine could be sure she would see her mother was Sunday. They never missed church at St Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, sometimes taking a taxi across town, but more often walking down the winding paths of Central Park until they reached the east side, then strolled along Fifth Avenue to the church. When they were out together, Katherine was aware that people admired her mother. She was a beautiful woman, elegantly dressed and graceful. She could tell from the way the people looked at her. Men especially seemed to watch her, sometimes from the corner of their eyes; perhaps, she wondered, as she got older, trying to hide their interest from the women at their sides.
After church one Sunday, the summer before Katherine was about to begin high school, her mother told her they needed to have an important talk. The windows in their apartment were wide open but there was no cross breeze, only a fan humming in the window that pushed hot air around the room. Her mother took off the jacket of her smart navy linen suit and draped it neatly over a chair. The two sat across from one another at a small mahogany drop-leaf table near the window with the fan. Her mother’s crossed her long legs gracefully at the ankles and poured two tall glasses of Lipton iced tea. Katherine would never be able to drink iced tea again.
“Mary Katherine, it’s time for me to tell you about something I’ve never told you before. I am telling you now because I don’t want the same kind of thing that happened to me to happen to you.”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” Katherine said.
“Of course, you don’t, dear, just listen.” She told Katherine what she called, “the whole story. “
”Your father was not the man I told you was your father. I did not marry my high school sweetheart. The truth is I never have been married.”
Katherine’s first reaction was that she didn’t want to know anymore. She looked away, feeling tears well in her eyes.
Her mother continued, ”I never wanted to have children. In fact, from the time I was a little girl, I wanted to be a nun.”
“A nun!” Katherine laughed.
“This isn’t funny, Mary Katherine,” she said sternly. “When I was 18, I entered the convent of the Daughters of Mercy in Batavia. My parents were so pleased that I wanted to spend my life as a servant of God. It didn’t work out that way. Two years later, I found myself pregnant.”
“My father?”
“Yes, your father, but not the father I told you was your father.”
Katherine’s first reaction was rage. “Then who was it?”
“He was a very nice and intelligent man,” she said uncomfortably. “His name was Father Henry Olinger, a priest, dear.” She rearranged herself in her hard chair and said in a hushed tone, “Your father became the bishop of the Archdiocese. He was a beloved and respected clergyman and also coincidentally,” she took a deep breath and looked away, ”a close personal friend of my father.”
Katherine tried to say something, but she stumbled on the words.
“You can understand why he didn’t want to have a child.” She didn’t wait for Katherine to respond and continued. “When I told him I was pregnant, he got out of his arm chair and started pacing around the room. We were in his study, a beautiful dark-wood-paneled room lined with books, and he said, ‘Vickie dear,‘ He’s the only one who ever called me Vickie. ‘We can get rid of it. I know someone in Syracuse, a doctor who can do it safely. You told me that you never wanted to have children.’” As she spoke, her mother pulled herself up straighter in her chair.
“‘No,’ I said to him, ‘I will have nothing to do with that.’” She sighed deeply and stared into Katherine’s eyes. “I hope this doesn’t upset you, dear.”
“Yeah, right.” she said sarcastically. “Where is he now?” she finally choked out.
“Who?”
“My father.”
“Oh, he’s dead,” she said as if it were insignificant. “He’s been dead for years. He left us some money,” she smiled uncomfortably. “That’s how I’ll be able to pay your tuition at Dalton. You didn’t think I earned enough doing secretarial work to afford to send you there.”
“Actually, I did.”
“Well, that would be impossible. I have enough money put away to pay your tuition for college and graduate school, medical school or law school if you want. There’s only one thing I require. Don’t get pregnant before you’re done with your education. Don’t even start.”
“Start what?”
“You know, fooling around.”
She looked at her mother angrily.
“Why are you looking at me like that? You know what I am talking about.”
“I do.”
“Don’t ever let me find out you’re doing it. Don’t you let anyone touch you until you are married.”
“That’s disgusting, Mom, that you’d even think I would do something like that.”
“You never know what you would do Katherine, until you are confronted with it and I want you to be prepared.”
“What else don’t I know about you, Mom?”
“That’s it.”
But it wasn’t. Father Olinger did leave Sara’s mother a little money, but it was barely enough to cover the cost of books and school uniforms let alone, tuition, room and board. But Olinger had given her something else she considered to be her most valuable asset. He trained her for what would become her second calling, one that she mastered so expertly that it would provide her with more than enough income to care for her child and herself for the rest of her life. Olinger was a man of exotic sexual tastes. The skills she developed satisfying those cravings would provide her with a source of power and money that would more than support the comfortable lifestyle she wanted and from her perspective deserved. Most evenings, after Sara was in bed, a sitter came to stay. Her mother dressed elegantly and went off to entertain one, sometimes in more lucrative sessions a few, of her extensive network of gentleman friends. Well aware that in the future, what she had to offer her clients would diminish in value, she knew it was important for her to manage her money extremely well. To do so, she leaned heavily on the advice of one of her best clients, a socially prominent and highly regarded Wall Street investor, who would remain her financial advisor and her special friend for the rest of her life.
Her mother’s story, even just the part she had shared with her, left Sara reeling. The fact that her mother had lied to her about something so important didn’t come as a big surprise. Some children, particularly those fortunately, or in another way of looking at it, unfortunately talented, know instinctively when they cannot trust their parents. They try desperately to do so, but on the deepest level, they know they cannot. How they survive varies from child to child. Katherine had good survival mechanisms, maybe inherited from her Jesuit father, although her mother also proved that she was quite capable of getting along in the world. As Katherine entered high school that September, it was with a strong sense that there was absolutely no one in the world she could fully trust. She would make sure that she would be able to rely solely on herself. She pushed herself hard in school and graduated at the top of her class. After college, she got her law degree at Yale, one of a small number of women in her class, and went on to a clerk for Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. She turned down offers from a few of the country’s top law firms to work on behalf of women and children who unlike herself, could not take care of themselves.
That her mother never wanted to have children and only had her because she felt morally compelled to do so, was the least of Katherine’s surprises. It explained her coldness and how little time she spent with her as a child. When Katherine looked back on it, it seemed to her, that her mother treated her more like a pet than a child. She was fed, given toys and training, played with from time to time, sent to school with a ribbon in her hair, then put back into her cage. It took her years to give up the father she had always imagined, the handsome captain of the football team and honor student, a brave soldier who died fighting for his country. That he had never existed was a painful blow, but even harder, was putting in his place the man who wanted to abort her. It took many years for her put a true picture of who her parents really were solidly in her mind, but once she did, she never let go of the bitterness that she felt. Unlike the pain that some people process and eventually get over, Katherine never let go of the anger. It was perhaps the source of the edge of cynicism and distrust that was always there behind her smile. Her angel-like husband Alex, who she didn’t meet him until she was 23 was the first person in her life she knew instinctively she could absolutely trust.
Of course, when Katherine got to high school, she ignored her mother’s most compelling wish. The opportunities for exploring the forbidden were abundant for a teenager in New York, particularly one whose mother was rarely at home.
“To call me promiscuous in high school would be an understatement,” she told the other three when it was her turn to share the first time she had sex. “My first time was with a nerdy boy in my class at Dalton. I was pretty nerdy myself. We were both in the honors program and he wasn’t much taller than I am and a whole lot fatter. We went to his apartment after school one Friday. His parents were out of the country and we drank most of a bottle of Seagram’s 7 mixed with 7-Up and maraschino cherries, and ate a big bag of rippled potato chips and a carton of French onion dip. It was his idea for us to go to his room and take off our clothes and get under the covers. He had an elaborate tropical fish tank set-up on the dresser next to his bed. We started making out and the next thing I knew he was trying to get his little pecker inside me.“ The other three roared. “All I remember is that somehow he managed it and afterward I got out of bed and threw up in the fish tank.”
Chapter 5
The longer the traffic stint dragged on, the angrier Carson got with herself for giving up Canton. The station manager finally admitted it was Stu Williams, the news director, holding her back. She made up her mind she would confront Stu and set up an appointment the following week. But as she reported the morning rush hour traffic the next day, a garbage truck veered toward her, spraying bone chilling filthy icy slush all over her. Soaked and shivering, when she got back to the station, she stormed into Stu’s smoke filled office.
“Enough of this Stu, I was promised a job doing news and I want it now. I’m leaving if you don’t give it me?”
“It’s about time,” he said not even looking up from the page he was reading. “I wondered how long it would take you to walk in here to tell me you were going to quit if we didn’t move you over to news. What took you so long?”
“You’ve got to be kidding,“ she said angrily.
“I’m not. I would have given you the job months ago if you were smart enough to ask me for it.”
“What?” she yelled. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“If you didn’t have the balls to come into my office to ask me, why would I hand it to you? How the hell was I supposed to believe you can get the kind of stories I want if you can’t even confront a sweetie-pie like me and ask for a job? You can write, I know that, but can but can you go out a get the story? Honestly, I really don’t know,” he said lighting a cigarette with the butt of the one he had
been smoking.”
“Of course I can.”
“ You can start Monday, but you’re on probation.”
“What do you mean probation? I was an anchor and you know, Stu, I’m a hell of a reporter.”
“That was in Canton, Carson. This is not Canton, it’s Chicago and you’ve got to prove you can do Chicago stories. You have to be aggressive enough to succeed here.”
“I am aggressive, Stu,” she said angrily.
“Sure, Canton girl,” he said with a grin. He took the last drag of the cigarette hanging from his mouth and lit another. “In the meantime, we’ve trained someone to stand in for you in the traffic slot, that Kelly girl. You know who she is.”
“What do you mean stand in for me?”
“I told you. You have to prove yourself. If you don’t, I’m holding traffic for you, and you’re lucky that I will. If you can’t cut it, back to comedy.”
“What do you mean comedy?”
“You’re pretty funny.” he said, pretending that he was trying to suppress a laugh.
“I’m not funny.”
“Oh yes, you are. You’ve been cracking me up every day.”
“What are you talking about?”
From the look on his face, she knew he didn’t want to say. “Tell me, Stu. What do you mean funny?”
He cocked his head and grinned at her, but didn’t answer.
“Come on, tell me. You can’t just drop that and not tell me what you are talking about.”
“OK,” he said, “ That garbage truck that sprayed ice all over you today?” He looked at her for a reaction. “I thought I’d fall on the floor.”
“You arranged that?” She was furious.
He roared.
“You asshole. “
“Oh and one more thing, the new girl’s mucho prettier than you are,” he said, cracking up again.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Oh, give me a break,” he said rolling his eyes.
Carson got up to leave, trying not to laugh or, worse, to show him that in spite of how angry she was, not only at Stu, but at herself for putting up with the last ten months, she was thrilled. She stood up to leave and shook his hand. When he walked her to the door, he extended his arm in her direction. If she hadn’t jumped, he would have slapped her behind. This was a part of the job she was not going to accept, not this time.
That evening, Zoe fast asleep, she met the playgroup moms to celebrate.
“I should never drink these,” Carson said, as the waiter poured her a third margarita. ”Why does tequila make me so goofy?”
“It’s not a bad thing,” Jess said, raising her glass for yet another toast. Jess had managed to get them an impossible-to-get-especially-at-the-last-minute table at the hottest new restaurant in town. They pushed their way to the front of a line that went around the corner, even on a cold winter night. It was no surprise that they got celebrity treatment. Everyone in town seemed to know the beautiful Jessica Kingman.
Paintings by Mexican artists, the owner’s collection, naively rendered in bold primary colors covered the bright yellow, stucco walls. Every detail of the restaurant, from the rustic wooden furniture, terracotta floors, colorful ceramic dishes, and hand-blown colored glassware, was brilliantly designed to transport the diners to an illusion that they were in Mexico. The food was spectacular, the margaritas, authentic and strong.
“You have so many friends!” Lauren said, amazed by the number of people on their way to their tables who stopped to say hello to Jess.
“Not true. None of these people are my friends.”
“Well, they obviously want to be,” Katherine said.
“A mariachi band came over to sing. Jess thanked them, handed the leader a five-dollar bill and pointed to a young couple at a table across the room, ”Please serenade them with love songs. Don’t tell them we told you,” she said. “He’s going to ask her to marry him tonight.”
“How do you know that?” Katherine asked when the musicians left.
“I made it up. I wanted to get rid of them. Why should we be forced to stop talking and pretend to enjoy their singing until they finally decide they’re ready to go.”
“You are bad,” Lauren said.
“No, bad is taking time doing anything you don’t want to do just to be nice, especially to strangers.”
Katherine caught Carson staring into her glass at the reflection of the fan rotating above their heads on the ice cubes in her glass. “Earth to Carson” she said.
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m just having such a good time,” Carson said, her voice slurred. “I feel as if the four of us have been friends all our lives. How did this happen? It’s just a couple of months and it’s like we’ve known each other forever.”
”I feel the same way,” Katherine said. She too was amazed at how close she felt to the other three. “I’m not sure what is that attracts grownup women to each other. What is the magnet in women’s friendships, which have none of the magic pheromones that come in to play when sex and mating are part of the picture?”
“I don’t know” Jess said. “I just know it’s something good.” They had become friends quickly, without knowing much about where they had come from and how they had lived their lives before they met. Each of them felt, in her own way and for her own reasons that she had always been a loner, but now they were forming a tight circle that embraced not only the four of them but their husbands and children. There were lots of blank spots, but they didn’t seem to matter, their comfort and sense of mutual trust was building at rocket speed.
Bob Stone, the restaurants quickly becoming famous chef/owner, came over to their table with a sumptuous platter of sopas, quesadillas and tamales. His mutton chop sideburns, almost reached his jaw He only recently opened the restaurant, and critics were already calling him the most masterful Mexican chef in America — and he wasn’t even Mexican. Jess got up to hug him.
He handed the tray to the waiter. “It’s something for you from the Yucatan. Be careful, some of it is a little spicy.” Jess introduced him to the others, she called, “her dearest friends in the world.”
“I understand this is a celebration,” he grinned, his smile even more inviting than the delicious food streaming out of his kitchen.
“It’s Carson’s night,” Jess said.
“Oh I know you,” he said sweetly. His Southern accent sounded as if he could have grown up on Jess’s block, “I see you on...”
Carson interrupted, grinning, “I’m that stupid woman who stands in the middle of traffic getting slush sprayed in her face.”
“No, I’ve never seen that happen,” he laughed. “You’re wonderful. My wife won’t leave our house until she sees your report in the morning.”
After dinner, they took a taxi to Lauren’s and wound their way up toward the roof deck. They were so giddy from all the tequila, it was hard to navigate and stay quiet so they wouldn’t wake Louie and the housekeeper. Doug was out of town.
It took all four of them, weak from giggling to pull the heavy hexagon shaped cover off the cedar-lined hot tub on the roof. When they got it open, a big cloud of steam escaped into the freezing air. They peeled off their clothes and climbed up into the bubbling tub.
Lauren apologized as she modestly undressed with her back to the others and pulled on a suit. “Sorry,” she said, “I’m just modest.” Nobody cared. Once they got into the bubbling hot water, they forgot the cold and the possible voyeurs in the surrounding high rises. Lauren poured snifters of Courvoisier she had lugged up from the kitchen four floors below.
Carson groaned, “I’ll die if I drink this.”
Lauren ignored her and when they had their glasses, she made the first toast. “To
Carson’s move to news; next year a Pulitzer!” They clinked glasses and savored the warmth of the cognac. Carson felt the heat make its way down her throat, her body felt wonderfully hot, but her cheeks were icy from the frosty air. From the roof, they could see the city’s most impressive skyscrapers, the Palmolive beam circled the city and the Wrigley Building gleamed sparkling white.
“What a view!” Carson said. “This is glorious!”
“Glorious? Are you crazy,” Katherine said, “Lighting buildings like that is totally irresponsible. They waste millions of dollars’ worth of energy every year.” Carson knew she was right, but she tuned her out anyway, lowering her cognac so that the lip of her glass peeked just above the waterline.
“Do you have any idea how many hungry children we could feed in this city on what it costs to light those buildings? It’s got to be thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of children."
“Do we really have hundreds of thousands of hungry children in Chicago?” Jess asked facetiously. She stood up and leaned over the hot tub to reach for the bottle for another round of cognac. Steam came off her naked body blotched red from the heat. Her hair hung down in wet ringlets over her shoulders. She topped off their snifters and lowered herself back into the water, a goofy grin still on her face. She respected Katherine’s commitment to making the world a better place, but please God, she thought, not now. She was afraid she was going to laugh.
"Of course we do,” Katherine said, “We have more desperately poor children in this city, more child abuse, more infant mortality, more hunger and drugs in neighborhoods that are within a mile of here than almost anywhere in the Western world.”
“You’re right, sweetie,” Lauren said gently, “but could we please not talk about it tonight? We’re celebrating.”
Tuned out, Carson immersed herself to above her chin, and then floated the back of her head just under the water. The conversation was muffled by the hum of the motor and the bubbling water. She looked up at the sky. Only one star was bright enough to compete with the city lights. She stopped herself as she started to make a wish, reminding herself that she was not inclined to believe in magical thinking.
Katherine dunked under the water and came up smiling. “OK, It’s over, sorry to be such a bore. Let’s talk about something that’s fun. How about sex? We haven't talked about sex for months and you two…” she pointed to Lauren and Carson. “Neither of you has taken your turn to tell us about your first time.”
“That’s right,” Jess piped in, grinning. “You’ve been holding out on us. Lauren, it's your turn.”
Lauren looked away. “My story’s too boring.”
“I don't believe you,” Carson said.
“Besides,” Lauren said, looking accusingly at Carson. “It’s your turn. You’re older, you have to go first.”
"I’m not older. I just look older."
”It's my hot tub,” Lauren said grinning, “I get to make the rules. It’s your turn tonight.”
Carson winced. She had hoped to avoid telling her tale. She even considered making something up to keep from sharing what really happened. But she knew she was a terrible liar and wouldn’t be able to pull it off. Besides, in a few short months, she had managed to make three real friends — perhaps the best friends she ever had, and though she knew she was unpracticed in friendship, she believed real friends always told the truth.
Katherine said, “I'll help you get started. Was it your high school boyfriend?”
“No.”
“Then your college boyfriend?”
“No.”
“Then after college?”
“No.”
“Come on, Carson,” Katherine said. “Don’t force us to interrogate you. I was explicit about my wild sexual adventure with the nerdiest boy on the Upper East Side. Now it’s your turn. If you don’t want to talk about it, you’ll be in trouble with the rest of us.”
Carson suddenly felt sober, certain that once they heard her story, whatever respect they had for her would vanish. The tongue-loosening effect of the alcohol she had consumed that evening seemed to disappear and leave her sober and anxious, but she began. “It was the first semester of my junior year at Northwestern.”
“You weren’t still a virgin?” Jess said.
“I was.”
“Not possible.” Jess said,” What year was that? 1963? No one was a virgin in 1963.”
“Well, I was. I didn’t date at all in college and not much in high school.”
“Kind of like right now,” Katherine said, laughing.
Carson ignored her. “My scholarship only covered part of my tuition at Northwestern and none of my other expenses, so I was working all the time. A few semesters I had three jobs, but mostly two. I always wanted to be a broadcast journalist and….”
“We know.” Katherine interrupted. “You told us. You walked around your father’s tavern with a wooden spoon pretending it was a microphone. Adorable, but tell us about the sex.”
“Just listen. I’ll get there.”
“I was willing to work my way through Northwestern instead of going to a state school because it’s one of the top two or three journalism schools in the country. But I knew as soon as I got there, I had made a mistake. Everyone was so much smarter than me. They came from good schools, private schools. Their parents were doctors, lawyers, and businessmen, and there were a lot of New Yorkers…. They were the scariest of all.
“Oh come on,” Sara said, laughing.
“Anyway, all I did when I was in school was work and study.”
“Katherine prodded her again, with a long “Aaaaaaand?”
“I know you think I’m stalling, but I want you to understand how it happened like it did. Do you mind?”
“Of course not,” Jess said, pretending to yawn. “Please wake me up when you get to it.”
Lauren turned off the jets of the Jacuzzi and the sudden stillness stunned them. They sat for a moment in the hot water listening to the quiet, the lights of the city surrounding them.
“Mark Hastings was an adjunct professor. Once a year, he taught a semester-long seminar for broadcast journalism majors. Do you know who he is?”
“The anchor on the NBC national evening news,” Jess said.
“Right. At that time he was the news anchor at Channel 7. He had gone to Medill and was a big supporter of the school. He taught seminar once a year for broadcast majors and his class was the highlight of the curriculum. Under his direction, the class produced an evening news show and broadcast it twice a week on the campus television network. We rotated through all the jobs — news director, cameraman, reporter, editor, and anchor. Mark was a great teacher and I had an enormous crush on him, enormous. Everyone did.”
“I think he is the sexiest man on TV,” Jess said.
“He is even more handsome in the flesh, muscular and tall, about six-four with a very powerful presence,” Carson said quietly and uncomfortably.
“How old was he then?” Lauren asked.
“About 45. He was elegant and articulate. He still is.”
Katherine interrupted. “Enough, Carson. Just tell us what happened?"
“I had fantasies about him all the time. I dreamt about him. One night, late in the semester, he asked me to stay to talk with him after class. And that's when it happened.”
“You're kidding!” Katherine yelled, “Mark Hastings….”
“Jesus, Katherine, why don't you announce it the whole city!” Lauren said.
“I’m sorry,” Katherine said. “Go ahead.”
“He waited until everyone left. It was late. Our class was always the last to leave the building. The maintenance man walked by and said he was going home, that the doors would lock automatically when we left. He asked Mark if he minded if he turned off some of the lights.
“‘Not at all,” Mark said. All the lights went out in the studio except for the few spots that lit the stage. Mark leaned in front of the anchor desk. He looked relaxed and so handsome, his arms crossed, his right leg crossed over his left, and he said, ‘Carson, if you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to you about how you might strengthen your writing.’
“‘I wish I were better,’ I said.
“‘No, not at all, I think you are an excellent writer.’ He made a few suggestions on how I could strengthen my style. Then he told me that he thought I had a lot of potential.
“‘In fact,’ he said. ‘I think you are the only person in the class who has a real future in broadcasting. I’d like to help you, Carson. Believe me. I am quite serious about this.’
“I was stunned. There I was face to face with a man I admired and respected more than anyone in the world. I didn't even think that he had noticed me and now he was telling that he thought I was talented, the most talented person in my class! By the way, it was first time in my life anyone ever told me anything even close to that and, on top of all that, he wanted to help me. I couldn’t believe it. My dreams for my career in broadcast journalism had seemed so dim as I struggled to compete in my classes at Northwestern. Maybe they would come true.
“Then he said, ‘Come here, Carson.’
“I stepped closer to him. He was leaning back on the front of the news desk. ‘In addition to being talented and bright,’ he said, ‘you are a very beautiful young woman. I want you to know that I am very moved by you.’ I didn't know what to say. He looked at me kind of surprised and said, ‘You don't believe me, do you?’ I was speechless.”
“’Carson,’ he said and he looked straight into my eyes, ‘I want you to touch me. You'll see what you do to me.’ I didn't know what he meant. I just stood there speechless. Then he took my hand in his and placed it over the front of his pants. He was bulging and hard. I was paralyzed.”
“So what did you do?”
“I just stood there numb.”
“With your hand on his penis?”
“Right.”
“And then what happened?”
“He unzipped his pants with his other hand and put my hand inside. I had never seen a penis in my life, let alone touched one. He pulled me to him and kissed me, a very long romantic open-mouth kiss. You can imagine what that felt like.”
“I think I can.” Lauren said. “In fact, I think I feel the same way just listening to you.”
“As we kissed, he put his hands under my skirt, moving them up the backs of my thighs. I was numb. Then he lifted me on to him, pulling my legs apart and around his body.”
“He was standing?”
“You expect me to remember every detail?”
“You better believe I do because you do.” Jess said.
“And you were dressed and straddling him?” Jess said. “Oh, my God, So then?”
“He moved me up and down rubbing his penis between my legs. While he was doing that, he kept kissing me.”
“Then what?” Katherine said.
“He turned around and lowered me on to the news desk.” Carson paused, suddenly feeling too embarrassed to go on.
“Go ahead, finish,” Jess urged her.
“He undressed me, staring at me, as if he were examining every inch of my body, both with his hands and with his eyes. I didn’t say a word. I don't think I could have. I was frozen. When I was totally naked, he spread my legs apart, pulled his penis out and penetrated me.”
“He was dressed and you were totally naked?”
“Yes.”
“Right there on the table?”
“Yes”
“And did you?”
“Yes. I think within 30 seconds. I was so aroused.”
“Then what happened?”
“I’m not sure you want to hear all of this.”
“Yes, we do.”
“He asked me if I liked it. He was still erect inside of me. I couldn't really speak. Then he said, ‘Now I want you to do something for me.’ He pulled out of me, lifted me off the desk, then pushed me down to the ground. ‘Kneel down in front of me and put me in your mouth,’ he said.”
“And you did?” Katherine asked.
“Yes, I did.”
“Had you ever done that before?”
“Of course not, never!”
“Oh my God!” Jess bellowed. “And he came in your mouth?”
“Yes.”
They were all quiet for a moment.
“Quite a story, Carson,” Jess said. No one said anything else for a bit.
“Was he married then?” Katherine asked. “He is now.”
“Yes, and had one child. Now he has three.”
“So it was a one-night stand?”
Lauren read Carson’s silence accurately and looked at her with concern.
“More than that,” Carson said, beginning to feel relief from telling a story she had never told. “And it was a very sick relationship.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Katherine asked.
“Are you sure you want to hear it?”
“Yeah, of course, but can you turn on the bubbler again, it’s getting a little cold.”
Carson spoke softly, her voice resonating with grief and regret. The others leaned closer to hear her, each of them struck, after a night of celebration, by the sadness on Carson’s face.
“I’m ashamed of myself for being so stupid. I was like a slave, literally. At first it was just once a week. We met after class. In the beginning we’d talk for a while before, but soon we just had sex, more often than not right in the classroom on desk or on the floor. A few times we went to a hotel a few blocks from campus. I signed out of my dorm for the night. He always left before midnight and I sneaked out early in the morning to go to my job. Sometimes, he just drove me down to a parking lot at the lake and we would do it in his car.”
“And you thought you were you in love with him?”
“Of course.”
“And did he say he loved you?”
“Sort of.”
“My last two years of college were far from normal. I met Mark wherever and whenever he wanted me. For him, I know now, it was only for sex. For me it was love; that’s what I thought love was. Truly, I worshipped him. Of course, I never told anyone about what was going on. Guys asked me out, but I didn’t go, not on one date from the time I started seeing Mark. I had no interest in boys. Why would I?
“Having a secret like that isolated me from everyone. There was no one I could tell about Mark, so not only did I not date, I didn’t get close to anyone, men or women. I worked hard and ended up graduating at the top of my class. But the center of my life was Mark. I just waited to serve him.
“The summer before my senior year, Mark helped me get an internship at Channel 7. Being downtown every day made it easy for him. He would lock the door in his office in the middle of day and tell me what he wanted me to do and I would do it. I did anything he asked. The next spring when I was about to graduate, I interviewed with Stu for a job at the station. He seemed unimpressed, but he hired me, pretty much as a gopher. I was pleased because I was the only one in my class to get a job at a major market station. I thought perhaps with my grades, and recommendations and what they saw during my interviews that they thought I had potential to be a good reporter.”
“Of course,” Lauren said sympathetically.
“Until Mark told me that I wouldn’t have gotten the job if he hadn’t strong-armed them into hiring me.”
And you believed him?” Lauren asked.
“Yes.”
“Surely, you still don’t,” Katherine said.
“I don’t know. I'll never know.”
“How long did it go on between you and Mark?” Jess asked.
“Longer than I want to tell you. It was years. I was promoted to a job doing research and then writing. I was happy at the station and felt like I would be able to get promoted to reporter if things continued to go as they were. I didn’t make any real friends at the station. I pretty much kept to myself and did my work. I didn’t want anyone to find out about Mark. He was the center of my life and too big a secret; I was afraid if I got close to other people somehow they would find out.
“I thought I was important to him, and I felt honored by his attention, as strange as that may sound to you. But I was just someone for him to have sex with. I didn't know enough to know that what was going on between us was sick. I didn’t want to know. Sometimes, he was pretty sadistic. I don't want to talk about it.”
“Then what happened?” Katherine asked.
“Mark came to me one day and said, ‘we have to get you out of Chicago. Don’t worry, I have a job for you in Canton, Ohio.’
“I said I don’t want to go to Canton, and he said, ‘You’re going, and if you don’t, I will see to it that you never get a job in television for as long as you live.’”
“How did you react?"
“I argued with him. I didn’t get it. I told him that I never wanted to see him again.
“‘How dare you!’ he said. ‘What makes you think that’s your decision?’
“I did end up in Canton. It was a better job in some ways. I started as a reporter. I am ashamed to say that I continued to see Mark whenever I could. I tried to date, but who could compare with him.
“And is it still going on?” Katherine asked cautiously.
“No. When he was named anchor for the national news and moved his family to New York, he disappeared from my life. He phoned, told me it was over and that he never wanted me to try to contact him again.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.” She snapped her fingers under the water, sending ripples out into the tub. “I was miserable. I should have realized I was better off without him, but instead I felt abandoned. I watched him on the news and literally sobbed in front of the TV every night. I was so stupid, pitiful. I kept calling him, but he never returned my calls. After a while I got myself together and tried to meet people my age. I wanted to love someone, to get married someday, but being with Mark had spoiled me. He was the most brilliant person I had ever known. His world was … the world. Suddenly I found myself in Ohio sports bars with boys who had nothing to talk about but football. They seemed like kids at a fraternity party, so light, so superficial. I didn't get their jokes, what was so funny that they found to laugh about all the time? I tried, I went out with a few, but it was awful. No one measured up to Mark. He was all I wanted. I would have jumped on a plane and met him anywhere in the world in a heartbeat if he had given me a chance.”
“Did you ever see him again?” Jess asked.
“No. I did get the phone number of his apartment in Manhattan. Once I called him in the middle of the night and he picked up the phone. When he heard my voice, he said, ‘I don’t know who you are and how you got my number, but don’t you ever call me again.’ I finally stopped.”
“He was a beast,” Lauren said.
“Yes, but I was addicted to him.”
“You can get addicted, even to people who are bad for you,” Lauren said.
“I guess I was.”
“And also,” Lauren said, “You get addicted to feeling bad. It begins to feel like your norm.” She turned on the jets again to bring up the heat.
Then you know, I met was Zoe’s father. Keith is older too, quite attractive with a kind of a Ralph Lauren, weekend-in-the-country style, blonde like Zoe, lean and muscular, with sparkling blue eyes. His grandfather founded an electrical company a hundred years ago. They’re the biggest of the movers and shakers in Canton, granted it’s a place where there are not very many big movers and shakers. Keith is the CEO.”
“Zoe’s got those bright blue eyes too,” Lauren said. Carson nodded. It was quite late. The lights of the Wrigley building went off; then a few more skyscrapers went black for the night. Although they would all get up early with their children and Carson even earlier, no one had any intention of going home.
“He called me at the station the morning after we met and invited me to his club for dinner. I asked him about the woman he had been with the night before; she had mentioned that they lived together. He said, ‘No, not really,’ whatever that meant. I accepted anyway. I shouldn’t have. I don’t know if he even remembered their names. He wined and dined me, that is, as much as you can wine and dine someone in Canton, and whisked me off to his family house in Palm Beach on the weekends. He told me that he had been married three times and had children from each of those marriages. He said they were all great kids, but as I got to know him, it was clear he barely saw them. He proposed in Paris five months after we met. I was 31 and I guess I felt like it was time to get married. I knew I wasn’t in love him the way I was with Mark, but I knew I would never love anyone the way I loved Mark. When I was pregnant with Zoe, I found out that he was having an affair with our next-door neighbor. Everyone in town seemed to know about it, but me. He fell over apologizing, promising me it was over and he would never cheat on me again, but of course, I didn’t believe him. I filed for divorce a few days later.”
“Did you go after him for child support?” Katherine asked.
“I wouldn’t take a nickel from him for anything in the world.”
Chapter 6
Stu watched Carson from the corner of his eye when she walked into the news staff meeting Monday morning. She was the first to arrive. He could see that she was nervous, much more so than she had been when he interviewed her for a summer internship when she was at Northwestern. She had bounced into his office with a wide confident smile, dressed like Jackie Kennedy, a simple navy dress and matching jacket, her hair like the first lady’s, backcombed into a bob and carefully sprayed in place. “OK, you’ve got five minutes,” he had said to her as he did to all of them,” Why should I give you this internship?”
He could see that she had written and carefully rehearsed every word she said, but unlike her get up, she wasn’t stiff or awkward. She waited to have his eye and wouldn’t let it go until she was finished. She impressed him and he decided to hire her before she got half way through. She was a natural. He didn’t tell her that then and he still hadn’t.
He had never seen an intern work as hard as Carson. Not unlike the other interns, she started with grunt work, errands like running down the block for cigarettes and coffee at Dunkin Donuts, fact checking. Although she passed Stu several times a day, he hardly spoke to her, but he watched her. No matter how much work his staff threw at her, they told him she kept coming back for more. By the end of the summer, she had pushed her way onto the copy desk. He had planned to hire her when she graduated, but he didn’t have a chance. The head of the station called him to his office and told him, “you have to to hire her.”
When he objected, “Mike, you know I’m the one who makes hiring decisions for my staff,” he was told he had no choice. It didn’t take him long to figure out, that the pretty Northwestern grad was yet another perk that arrogant son of a bitch Mark Hastings got in his compensation package. The hell with her, he thought. I don’t give a shit if she was the best reporter on the planet, I can’t trust her if she was under Mark Hastings’ thumb. Mark was an enemy. Among other things, he had tried to get Stu fired in order to bring in an old friend of his from NBC to take over his job as news director. Stu barely survived. In spite of his misgivings, a few months after she came to work at the station, he promoted Carson to field reporter, and she was, not surprisingly, excellent.
When the station exiled Carson to Canton, Stu knew Mark was the one responsible. He was angry about it. It didn’t make sense to him when the station manager told him the network was sending her down-market to Canton. Clearly, Hastings must have had something to do with it. He was surprised that Carson wanted to come back to Chicago last year. She had done well in Canton; was promoted to anchor and had the respect of everyone he talked to. How could he say no when she was willing to take the traffic stint in order to get back? But he did.
The station manager strong- armed him again. “Come on Stu. She’s terrific. I want her back here. Stu agreed to the hire her with the caveat that he was the one who would decide if and when she got assigned to news. He didn’t want any of that ‘working mother shit’ either. He had hired a handful of women reporters, but none had children. He wanted to keep it that way. He expected Carson to hate the traffic stint and fail. She didn’t. No matter what he did to discourage or humiliate her, she stuck it out. He had watched her carefully during the last months. She had passed through it with grace and patience. Now he would test her one more time. If she could make it through what he had in mind for her, she would have his loyalty for life.
Stu watched her fidget, chuckling to himself, I’ll be sure that by the end of this day, she’ll be even more anxious. I’m not going to make it easy for her and I bet I can get some of those laughs we got from her traffic reports when I put her on crime. She’ll probably lose her cookies when sees the state of some of those victims.
By the time the meeting began, the newsroom was cloudy with smoke. Not only did Stu chain-smoke; so did most of the reporters. He lit another Lucky Strike.
“You’re going to be dead before you turn fifty,” Jerry David, a reporter who, like Stu, had been at the station since the early 1950s quipped.
“You’ll be the first to celebrate.” Stu blew smoke into Jerry’s face, looked around the room and said, “Where is everyone?”
Stu’s secretary, a long menthol Virginia Slim hanging out of her mouth, coughed out, “Hernandez and Peterson both called in with stomach flu.” Betty was way past retirement age and had been at the station since the old radio days. Her hair was dyed jet black, backcombed and sprayed into a huge beehive. She glared at Carson as if she were a weed invading her garden.
“Fuck,” Stu snapped back. “ We have six people out. I suppose they told you they’re vomiting their guts out, running to the can.”
“You’re so eloquent,” one of the reporters said disgusted.
“I don't have to be eloquent, you do. None of you better get sick. I am not kidding. I’ll need some of you to take double shifts until this flu thing is over. Jerry, Carson, Bill, you three — double shifts until the others are back.” Carson hoped he didn’t see her wince.
“Here are are stories for the six o'clock news.” He rattled them off, assigning reporters, giving a spattering of information on each. “Jerry, you go to the mayor’s office. There is a press conference on a proposal for an extension to the Kennedy Expressway. Bill, they’ve shut down the Ravenswood Line.” Someone else was sent to a plant explosion in Melrose Park. The room was noisy with conversations, even as Stu conducted the meeting. Betty answered a call and handed the phone to Stu. The din got louder as he listened to the caller. Carson watched him break into an amused smile as he slammed down the phone.
“Carson,” he said not looking at her, but around the room making eye contact with the other reporters and still grinning, “Did you all welcome Carson today?” He didn’t wait for anyone to answer. “She’s going to love what we have for her,” he said as if she weren’t there.
“This just came in.” He looked at Carson and said. “A Miss Carla Murphy was just found dead in her apartment at the Carlyle, 10, 15 minutes ago. I got the call from a friend in the building.” He looked like he was trying to keep from laughing and said, “She’s got a banana shoved down her throat. Miss Murphy was a high-priced hooker, turned tricks right there in the Carlyle and my friend says she’s got a Rolodex with some of the biggest names in the city. Some live right there in the building. Carson, get the doorman to talk to you. Go there right now and you’ll be the first to arrive. Maybe you can get a look at that Rolodex.”
“Ben,” he startled a cameraman who appeared to be dozing, “You’re going to work with her. Make sure she doesn’t screw it up.”
“One more thing Carson,” he said, “Call me when you’re done. I’ll have something else for you.”
Carson didn’t say a word, just nodded and walked out of the room with Ben and his soundman. The Carlyle was five minutes from the station. She tried to muster enough charm to get the doorman to talk to her. She read his nametag and said, “I’m really sorry, Mr. Smith,” I’m sure you knew Miss Murphy. You must feel terrible.” He looked away stone-faced and wouldn’t say a word, but did agree to let her go up to the apartment. When they got to the 30th floor, an officer stopped them. “No cameras,” he said gruffly, signaling them to stop. He reluctantly let Carson in, but sent Ben and the sound guy down to the lobby.
“I know you,” the officer, suddenly friendly, said. “You’re the traffic lady, right?” He started to laugh. “You are so funny.” Not once in her life had anyone ever called her funny before. It was the second time that week. He led Carson toward the bedroom and looked back at her, apparently sizing her up.
“Are you sure you want to see this?” he said. “The woman is a mess, beaten to death. She must have pulled some mean trick.”
“What do you think happened?” she asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine. You sure you want to see this?”
Carson assured him that she would be fine, but what she saw from the doorway was far worse than anything she could have imagined. She was certain that she was going to throw up and tried to keep herself from doing it by practicing natural childbirth breathing she trained to do for Zoe’s birth. She could feel her stomach in her throat.
She asked the officer, “Is there a reason you leave her like that?”
“Oh, you mean with the banana? I’m not allowed touch the victim. We have to wait for forensics. It’s evidence,” he said knowingly. “It’s a Mob thing, for sure, like a signature. We have to leave everything just as we find it.”
He started to explain forensic policy, but before he could finish, Carson fainted. When she woke up, she didn’t remember what happened, only coming to as he and another officer helped her into a chair. “Please don’t tell them I fainted,” she pleaded, still half-conscious. He seemed to understand and told her not to worry, but insisted that she leave.
“No,” she said panicking. “Can I please stay just a little longer? Just ask you a few questions. Who was she and what do you know about her?”
“Sorry, lady, you have to go,” he said sounding irritated. As he walked her to the elevator, he treated her like an annoying child; worse, she thought, like an amateur. Surprisingly, as the elevator door closed, he smiled, winked and gave her a thumbs-up.
She had failed this one. She was the only reporter to get into the building and she blew it anyway. Feeling like a fool, she stood apologetically in front of the Carlyle to record the segment, pale as a ghost, behind her, the grand white marble staircase. The camera rolled. “This is Carson Brown reporting from 1100 Lake Shore Drive.”
She phoned Stu from a booth down the block to tell him what happened. He said nothing, silence being the worst possible punishment. He gave her another assignment. “You better not mess up this one,” he said. “There was a murder in River Forest.” He gave her the name and address and ordered, “Get an interview with the wife. Don’t come back without it.”
Ben took Lower Wacker Drive, a dark, eerie, dirty underground road that wove its way under Chicago’s downtown. It felt like they were taking a secret passage, dark except for a few stop signs and sparse runs of green florescent lights overhead. They exited onto the Eisenhower Expressway, passing the construction site of the new Chicago campus of the University of Illinois, then past Cook County Hospital where the poor wait for hours, sometimes days, to be seen by students and interns in training at the medical schools in what had recently been named the Medical District. They passed the slums of the West Side, where deserted mansions on once elegant winding boulevards were now rat-infested rooming houses, some of the city’s worst slums. They left the city and entered the western suburbs, Oak Park first with its landmark Frank Lloyd Wright houses and churches, then farther west to River Forest, both suburbs with rolling lawns and big expensive houses, many of them owned by Chicago’s most elite mobsters. Ben made a joke about the “elegant old families of River Forest.” Carson nodded and grinned to make him think that she understood his joke. She had no idea what he meant, not a clue.
Ben asked Carson, “What’s the name of the guy who was shot?“
“Sandy Cohen.” He shook his head and said, “Ahhh,” knowingly. Too afraid to show her ignorance to ask him what that “ahhh” meant, she just nodded. When they arrived, there were several news crews and reporters already there, standing in a group in front of a sprawling stone and brick Prairie-style house with sandstone eaves and a wide screened-in porch. A pale blue, boat-like Cadillac, the driver’s door wide open, as if someone drove up and ran into the house in a panic, was parked on a diagonal in the driveway. As they arrived, paramedics carried out the covered body of a small child, about the size of Carson’s little girl. The sight filled her with horror. Someone walked up behind her and tapped her on the shoulder, “Carson Brown, I’m surprised to see you here. I thought you were…”
“No, not anymore,” she interrupted and smiled back at a man she recognized as a reporter from NBC. She was surprised he knew who she was.
“I’m Bill Stein.”
“Of course,” she said. “I know who you are — Channel 5, right? So nice to meet you.”
“They won’t let us in,” he said.
“Who was he?” she asked.
“Sandy Cohen. You know who he is.”
“Actually no, I don’t,” she admitted, thinking it was safer for her to reveal her ignorance to the competition than to the members of her own team.
“He’s Mob, married to the daughter of the head of the Marcoso family, one of the most powerful families in town. His father-in law is Macko Marcoso; he was the right hand man to Al Capone.”
“No kidding, Al Capone!” she said excitedly, realizing immediately how naïve she must have sounded. He didn’t seem to notice, smiled warmly and told her more.
“Macko’s 90, never comes out of his house, which is just a few minutes from here, runs the family franchises from his bedroom.”
“I didn’t realize this Mafia stuff was still going on,” she said.
“The Mafia never left Chicago, Carson. They’re part of the city. They have their businesses, big business. They support the mayor and their aldermen and go to church on Sundays Their kids go to college, come back, get married and work in the family businesses. They’re all over the place. For the last decade we haven’t heard much about them, but lately there seems to be some kind of war going on. I’m not sure why.”
“I guess I’ve missed it.”
“It’s no surprise,” he said. Even Mafia watchers are unlikely to know what was going on between Mob families. It was not like the old days in Chicago, when they were gunning each other down in the streets. The families keep a low profile but they keep doing what they’ve always done.”
What he knew and didn’t tell her, was that it the recent outbreak of Mob violence was about who would control the distribution of heroin in the Chicago. In recent years, the only heroin coming into the city was brown heroin controlled by “the Mexicans.” Now there was an influx of white heroin coming from Asia into the through the New York Mob. The money would be gigantic and the families were battling to get control.
“Carson, I think you’ve spent too much time out on the highway,” Bill said smiling.
“I had no idea!” she said, knowing it was obvious to him already.
Then he told her something she should have known. “This is the third Mafia killing this month. We haven’t seen this kind of stuff in years.”
She had many more questions she wished she could get the answers to and hoped it would not be a mistake to ask him more. “Can I ask you another question,” she said. “How can you tell when it’s a Mafia killing?”
“Sometimes, like today, just by who the victim is. If Sandy Cohen is murdered, you know for sure it's a Mafia murder because it’s public knowledge that he is in the Mob. I am not saying they will ever find out who did it, even though the police probably know exactly which family is responsible.”
“How?”
The families have signatures and of course always use a lot of bullets. If it is a turf issue, which it usually is, the family that’s responsible wants it to be known that they are the ones who knocked the guy off. They leave their signature. Every gang has a different one.”
“The Marcoso family?” she asked.
“Fire and explosives. They’ll kill the guy and blow up his house with dynamite or just go there in the middle of the night and blow up the house with the guy and his whole family in it. The D’Angeles, they’ll shove something down the dead guy’s throat, a baseball bat, an umbrella, crazy stuff. The crazy thing is that no one ever seems to go to jail for a Mafia killing. No one even get’s arrested.”
“Why not?”
“This is Chicago.” Carson was not sure that meant, but during the next months she would learn. There would be a run of Mob-style violence reminiscent of what had gone on in the city decades earlier and Carson would be assigned to cover the bloodiest of them.
She was about to ask Bill another question when an officer, a tall redheaded man wearing an old fashioned fedora and a beige raincoat, just like a detective in a old gangster movie, came out of the house and gestured that the waiting press could come in.
“The area around the victim is taped off, “he said,” No cameras.” Reporters from all the stations and papers had arrived. As they filed into the house, the officer with the fedora addressed only Carson. “Don’t touch anything,” he said to her accusingly, “Do you hear me?”
As she walked down the hall, Carson paused at a door cracked open enough to see two officers questioning a thin frightened-looking woman about her age who sat on a plastic-slip-covered gold brocade sofa in the corner of a library, hugging her legs up close to her body. There were no books on the shelves that lined the walls. Carson was pretty sure the woman, clearly in shock, was Sandy Cohen’s wife and the mother of the child she had just seen carried away. As the woman answered questions, she pulled at the mass of blonde hair that circled her painfully distraught face. The woman looked up at her for a moment and it felt to Carson like they somehow made a connection. She wondered how she could get to her. A police officer told her to move on. Sandy Cohen’s body was still on the floor in a pool of blood. A bloody teddy bear was not far from the body.
The spokesman from the sheriff’s office ushered the press outside. Carson tried to ask a question during the information session, but she couldn’t speak loudly enough to get the attention of the sheriff. Before they got on the highway on the way back to the city, they stopped and phoned Stu. Again, silence. She felt defeated and depressed. It was almost 10:00 when she got home that night. Zoe had been asleep for hours. Her first day in her new job was 13 hours, from the time she left her house until she got home. Millie had dinner waiting for her.
“Millie, bless your heart. I just don’t have the strength or the appetite to eat.”
She fell into bed and was asleep before Millie shut the door to go home and didn’t wake up until Zoe came into her bed with a nightmare at 3 a.m. Carson let her sleep nestled close to her, something she had promised herself she would never do. She didn’t wake up until Millie walked in the door the next morning at six.
She dressed quietly and woke Zoe to say goodbye. When she did, Zoe started to cry, not faking as she was capable of doing, but with real tears rolling down her cheeks and big miserable sobs, a sound that haunted Carson through the 15-hour day that followed.
Chapter 7
As they left the station the next morning, Ben gave Carson a pep talk. She wanted to believe him, but she didn’t. “Ben, I blew it yesterday and you know it.”
“Those were tough situations,” he said. “I’m not sure why Stu assigned you those two stories on your first day. He knew they would be impossible.”
Carson was grateful that Ben Anderson was assigned to work with her. He seemed to be such a nice and down-to-earth guy, and not a lot of people at the station fit that description. It didn’t occur to either of them that Stu was setting her up. It wasn’t that Stu wanted her to fail; he didn’t. But he wanted her to prove herself and while she was at it, maybe amuse himself watching her struggle. If he could manage to do it in good taste, maybe her discomfort would amuse the viewers as well.
Five minutes into their drive to a crime scene on the North Side, she already felt her heart racing. They got off Lake Shore Drive on Sheridan Road, a corridor of Miami style high-rises, some with their own beaches and drove a few blocks west into a densely populated neighborhood of monotonous boxy brick six-flats. The buildings had no front yards, just narrow unplanted parkways, now covered with dirty snow and dog droppings. An officer stood outside the building, its entrance smack against the sidewalk. He told Carson that the victim was a single mother with two young children. When she asked if they could go up, again she got a warning: “She’s just the way we found her.”
The door to an apartment on the second floor landing was open. Carson felt a shock run through her when she saw the woman sprawled naked on the couch, her hands tied together with jute rope. Stab wounds covered her body, blood splattered on the walls and the carpet. Carson tried to not look away. She hoped she could avoid buckling under with horror of it. Again, she focused on her breath, keeping it slow and steady.
“Who do you think did this?” she asked the officer.
He too kept his eyes on the victim. “No way to know for sure yet, but got to be the same guy who got another girl last week in Albany Park, the kids asleep in the next room. Whoever he was, he’s an animal. He must have stabbed her at least 40 times.” Carson looked at the woman’s punctured breasts, trying not vomit. She let out a long sigh and caught herself feeling as if she was about to faint again. Ben grabbed her arm.
“I’m fine,” she said in the toughest voice she could muster. “Don’t worry about me.” She turned away from the woman and focused on the police officer.
“Her kids woke up this morning and found their mother like this,” he said, still staring down at the body. “It’s a God damned shame.” He too, was horrified by the sight.
“Where are the children?” Carson asked.
“With a neighbor,” he pointed upstairs. She didn’t ask for his permission, but in a few minutes walked out of the apartment and up a flight to the third floor, leaving Ben behind. She knocked on the door on the right, a good guess. A heavyset woman who looked like she was in her 50s answered the door. Carson introduced herself and was surprised when she invited her in. She was understandably disheveled, still in a bloodstained terry cloth robe. She told Carson that the two small children in the apartment were the victim’s. The oldest, a seven-year-old girl, curled up on an armchair near an ice-frosted window watching a cartoon. Hiding behind a ragged blanket, she sucked her thumb. Carson said hello to the child, but she only looked up, her expression foggy and dazed. She turned back and continued to stare trance-like at the shaky images moving across the small old TV. Her little sister slept on a white chenille bedspread on the woman’s bed in the next room. The radiators hissed; the air in the apartment was hot and dry.
“May I ask you a few questions?”
She invited Carson to sit down at her kitchen table. After a few minutes, Carson asked if it would be OK to have the cameraman come up to tape an interview. She said yes and Carson went over to the window and called down to Ben who stood outside having a smoke with the officer. As they talked across her kitchen table, Ben and his assistant, more quietly than what seemed humanly possible, filmed the interview.
“Betty has been living here for four years. She’s a nice girl and became a friend, moved in with her husband and he disappeared a year and a half ago. He was a gambler. I don’t know where he went. She worked as a waitress at the diner a block away on Broadway. She’s been like a daughter to me. A wonderful mother, so committed to giving her kids a good life.” She started to sob.
Carson put up her hand to indicate to Ben to stop filming. He did, but not until he turned the camera to Carson and got a shot of the tears that ran down her cheeks. The woman took a cigarette from a pack on the table and offered one to Carson. They smoked silently until the woman steadied herself to begin again. As the interview continued, Carson heard other reporters and crews arriving downstairs. The woman asked to stop again, got up from the table and put a blanket over the seven-year-old who had fallen asleep in her chair. When she returned, Carson asked her if she would describe exactly what happened.
“At about 7 a.m., I heard the children screaming in the hall. By the time I got my robe on, Lisa, this one,” she pointed to the seven-year-old, “was banging on my door shrieking. ‘What happened?’ I kept asking her. She couldn’t talk, she just kept shrieking and pulling on my robe. We ran downstairs to their apartment and when I walked inside, there she was, blood everywhere. The little one had climbed on top of her. She was covered with blood and screaming, ‘Mommy, Mommy!’ trying to get her to wake up. I tried to lift the baby off, but she was holding on to her mother so tight, I could hardly move her. Who would do a thing like this?” she said, looking straight into the camera, meeting Ben’s gaze, somehow still a sympathetic presence behind the lens. “She was a wonderful woman, their mother.” Ben panned the apartment and pointed his camera at the dazed little girl and the toddler sleeping in the next room.
When they got back to the station and showed Stu what they had, he couldn’t have been more pleased. Looking over the shoulder of the editor as she cut the story for the evening news, he patted Carson on the back. “Great, Carson, I knew you ...” He looked down at the monitor. “Wait,” he said and put his hand on the editor’s shoulder. “Flash back here to Carson when she’s got the tears running down her face.”
A few days later, she talked to her friends about that interview. “It was a watershed moment for me. I was thrilled that I got the story while all the other news crews were turned away. At the same time, I felt like a monster for manipulating that poor woman to do that interview at what was surely the most horrific moment of her life. I feel ashamed of myself even more for exposing those poor innocent children to millions of viewers who couldn’t care less about what happens to them.”
“You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself,” Lauren said.
“Yes I should. I was too naïve. Being a reporter for a small station was entirely different. We felt like public servants in a way. It’s not the same here; it’s all about money. I am finally coming to understand that in order to be a successful reporter in a major market station like Chicago, I have to desensitize myself to the pain people are going through and become skillful at doing whatever it takes to win their trust so I can ghoulishly manipulate them to expose their heartaches with the sole purpose of getting viewers to stay tuned to our station. Get the viewer numbers up so they can sell more advertising. It’s ugly.”
Every day for the next months, Stu assigned Carson to whatever brutally violent crime story came in, one nightmare tale after the next, from early morning, sometimes until late in the night. Yes, it did become easier as the weeks went on. She got used to unimaginable violence and death. She went home every night exhausted, physically and emotionally drained.
The same serial killer who murdered the young mother that day murdered two more mothers. He took the life of each in precisely the same way he took the first. Stu assigned Carson to cover both. Those didn’t get easier. Seeing those women, their children so damaged and alone in the world, filled her with horror. Every night, she dreamt about what she had seen, and even more frightening, seeing Zoe as one of those children.
What seemed to be a revival of the old days of the Chicago Mafia-style killings continued to escalate. No, there wasn’t an incident every day. But if there was one, Carson was on the scene. Why Stu was putting her through this, she had no idea. Before she began working in the news, she had never been seen a dead body. When her father died and she was asked if she wanted to see him, she said no. She wanted to remember him alive. She felt the same way when her mother died a few years later. In the last three months, she had seen over 40 people who had been violently murdered.
She was working harder than she ever worked in her life. During those three months, she was rarely at home when Zoe was awake. When she got home, she sat on Zoe’s bed just watching her sleep. Listening to the slow steady rhythm of her breathing, she covered her little face with soft kisses.
Every morning, she left for the station at 7:30 and some nights, she worked till nine or 10. Millie offered to move into her townhouse until things slowed down. She said, “I don’t want you to worry about getting home, and it’s no problem for me to stay here,” she said. “ In fact, I like staying here.” Millie slept on the hide-a-bed in the living room. Having her there around the clock was an enormous relief. With the move to news, Carson’s compensation increased, which she shared with Millie by raising her salary substantially.
“It’s nice of you, honey,” Millie said when Carson gave her the first increased check, “but you don’t have to do that. I have all the money I need.”
Zoe saw one of the playgroup children almost every day, and Millie took Carson’s place at playgroups. In spite of the difficulty of her schedule and work, Carson felt that brighter stars shined on her. Zoe was doing OK. She was in close touch with her three new friends. They phoned her at the office or left a message on her answering machine at home, sometimes just saying a supportive, “Just thinking of you. Don’t worry if you don’t have time to call me back.” or “Let me know if there is anything I can do.”
Weekends were easier. Sometimes Carson worked Saturday mornings but always had the whole day off Sunday. Carson played with Zoe from the time she woke up in the morning until she put her to bed at night except for the part of the weekend they spent with the other playgroup families. They were her support system, her biggest fans. They all watched her on the news, but only when the children were not in the same room. No one wanted the children to be exposed to the kind of stories Carson was covering.
The murderer of the four single mothers was finally caught as he tried to kill a fifth. The woman was a schoolteacher who lived in Old Town, about eight blocks from Carson and Zoe’s house. She was asleep when the murderer jimmied open a window on her back porch. She woke up as he was coming into her bedroom and pulled a gun from under her headboard and shot him four times. “I didn’t kill him, but I wish I had,” she told Carson, who was the only reporter she allowed to interview her. The fact that he was caught didn’t make Carson feel any better. She suspected that there were thousands of other sick people in the world like him in the world capable of the same violence. She began feeling increasingly more vulnerable, not only about her own child and those of her friends but about women and children everywhere.
“I would be dead if I didn’t have a gun and didn’t know how to shoot,” the woman told Carson. You should have one. No woman should be without a way to defend herself and her children.” Carson had never considered it, but she thought maybe she would get herself one.
One night when Carson was about to go home, Stu called her. She was straightening her desk, exhausted and anxious to go home and see Zoe after a week of barely seeing her for more than a few minutes. “I’m just walking out the door. Can it wait?”
“No,” he said flatly, “you can’t leave.”
“You’re going out to Clarendon Hills to cover a story that is going to shock the entire country. You won’t believe this one!” he said excitedly, expecting her to be excited too. This is big. I am making you the lead reporter on a story about a serial murderer that is going to be the hottest piece of news on every station in the country. This suburban businessman was just arrested. So far they’ve found the body parts of about 20 men, some of them teenagers. A guy he had trapped there and tortured for days got away and got to the police. The guy had promised him a job; and he went to the guys house with him for an interview. So this maniac drugged him and tied him up told him the whole story of what did to guys who wouldn’t do what he wanted, he tortured them, cut them up and put them in his freezer. The kid somehow got away, ran out of the house stark naked. They found a dozen heads in a freezer in his garage. I want you to go over there right now.”
“No!” she shouted, “There’s no way I’m going to do that.”
“Of course you are,” he said, still not looking up at her.
“I am not covering this story.” She slammed the papers he handed her down on his desk.
“Yes, you are.”
“Not a chance.”
“Come on, you’re tough. Look what you’ve seen during the last few months; you could be a war correspondent. What’s wrong with this one? This will be great for you. For sure, you’ll be on every ABC station in the country. Millions of people are going to see you. “
She knew he was right. This would be a chance for enormous exposure. Even Mark would see her. But she was so tired, so used up, so sick of it. “I don’t care, Stu. I am not doing it.”
“You’re letting me down,” he shouted.
“Go fuck yourself, Stu.” She walked out and slammed the door.
“Get back here,” he yelled and chased her down the hall.
“It’s over,” she yelled back. Her face burned. She was in the elevator when he caught up with her. He tried to get in, but she pushed him back. The door closed in his face.
Chapter 8
When Carson walked into her office, her phone was ringing. “Carson?” She assumed it was Stu and said, “I don’t want to talk to you, Stu!” and slammed down the phone. It rang again.
“This isn’t Stu, it’s David, David Kingman. Are you ok?”
“Oh David, I’m so sorry.”
“Who’s Stu? ”
“My boss, the news director. I should say he was my boss.”
“You’ve talked about him. He sounds like a real jerk. Do you want to talk or is this a bad time? I can call you back. It’s after five.”
“No, its OK.”
“What happened?”
“He wanted me to be the lead reporter on a story about a serial murderer they just arrested in Clarendon Hills. They’re digging up body parts in the guy’s yard and he wants me to go out there right now.”
David groaned. “I’m sorry. I just heard about it on the radio.”
“I can’t do it. I don’t understand why he insists I be the one to do these stories, but I can’t anymore. I’m done.”
“You really quit?”
“I told him to go fuck himself. I really said that.”
“I guess you’re right. It sounds like you just gave notice.”
“It looks that way. What’s up?”
“I’m calling to invite you to a girls’ weekend, a birthday surprise for Jess. She’s having a big one, as you know, and nothing would make her happier than a getaway with the three of you.”
“That would be great but I’m sorry, I can’t go away. But please tell me where?”
“Guatemala,” he said.
“Guatemala! Are you kidding?”
“We have a place there, with my closest friend. It’s a long story I’ll tell you about it another time. Do you think Millie can stay with Zoe while you’re gone? I am happy to take care of that for you.”
‘I wouldn’t let you do that and besides I can’t go.”
“Well, it sounds like it might be a lot easier for you right now than it would have been about an hour ago.” They laughed though they both knew her new situation wasn’t really funny.
“
“You could go this weekend. That would work for Katherine and Lauren. You’ll have four days with Zoe and by the time they are over, you’ll be dying to go away. I’ve care of everything. Just pack clothes for the tropics. If you ride, take your boots. We probably have everything else you need.”
“This is crazy, David. You two do so much for me. How can I ever reciprocate?”
“Invite us over for dinner,” he said. “Make that pasta I love. Anyway, it’s you who have been so good to us. Your friendship with Jess has made a huge difference in our lives. It’s been wonderful for me to have her happy again."
If Jess hadn’t shared her struggles with depression, she wouldn’t have had a clue about what David meant by ‘happy again.’ To the rest of the world, Jess Kingman looked like the consummate golden girl. Beautiful, delightfully upbeat and charming, one would think she lived a life of seamless perfection. Jess told them about it one night as they sat around the fire in the Kingmans cozy library.
“I majored in theater at Duke and did pretty well. I had lead roles in several campus plays and I did summer stock. My professors encouraged me to go to New York and get as many auditions as I could when I graduated. They seemed to believe I had a good chance of succeeding.”
New York was not as enthusiastic about the redheaded Southern beauty as her professors had guessed. She told her friends, “During the four years I lived in New York I only landed one minor role in an off -Broadway play, and that play closed after two weeks. I went on hundreds of auditions and had what felt like thousands of rejections. I did OK getting modeling jobs, but I didn’t like modeling. Having your worth based on your how you look is totally degrading. You feel like a piece of meat. But the money was great, good enough to keep me living pretty well in New York. I met David about four years after I arrived. He was working on Wall Street at Goldman Sachs. In those days, he worked 80 hours a week. I was crazy about him.
“As time went on, I went to fewer auditions and had less hope that I would make it as an actress. David was very encouraging.” She laughed. “He still tells me that I am a great talent. Of course, he’s delusional. David can put the most positive spin on everything. If I had the talent, I would have had at least a little success. I had none. Sometimes, even now, David will thank me for giving up my acting career to come to Chicago to marry him. That, of course, is totally bogus. I had no acting career to give up.
“Anyway, he had always planned to move back to join his family business and although I promised myself that I wouldn't give up acting until I was successful, when he proposed, I was ready for a new life.
“I’d expected we’d have a big wedding in Charleston. I knew my parents would adore him, since everyone I knew did. “We flew down to Charleston to surprise my parents. Unfortunately, they were the ones who surprised us. When we told them we were getting married, they didn’t say a thing; just stared at us glumly without saying a word. Then my mother burst out crying.
“I didn't get it, but David knew immediately. My father had asked me when I first mentioned that I was dating a man from Chicago named David Kingman if David was from the hotel/real estate development Kingman family.
“I said, 'Yes, how do you know about them?’ He said ‘Fortune. They‘re Jews, you know, very rich Jews, but Jews.’
“I dropped it and didn't think much about it. I talked to my mother once a week while I was living in New York. Every once in a while she would ask me if I was still seeing that Jewish boy from Chicago and that was it. I just thought it was funny, kind of provincial, and harmless. I could have never imagined that they were capable of what would follow.
“The first thing my father said was, ‘ Jessica, we were sure that you would get over this and find someone more appropriate.’ He turned to David. ‘This is not about you, David. We are sure you are a fine young man, but not for our daughter. Under no circumstances will we give you our blessing.’
“Then he looked at me. ‘And Jessica, if you go through with this, we will have nothing to do with you or with your children.’ I felt like I was going to faint.
“’It's just something we feel very strongly about, dear,’ my mother said, not looking at me, but rather at my father who nodded his head in agreement.
“I was crying so hard, I was hardly able to speak. I couldn't believe what was happening. My father sat stiffly in his wing chair next to the fireplace, sipping his bourbon. There was no emotion on his face. ‘You will forget each other, Jessica, or you will forget us.’
“You could have picked me up off the floor. David was wonderful; he was calm and patient. He put his arm around me and we walked out to the garden. He tried to convince me that we could work things out with my parents that they would eventually soften. But he didn't know my parents. I guess I didn’t either. They had been tough on me while I was growing up, but as hard as they were, I never imagined that they were capable of something like this. I always felt that they adored me. They always and made me feel like everything I did was wonderful. We talked for a while and when we returned to the living room, my father was still in his chair. He had obviously poured himself another drink. My mother looked up at me and said, ‘Well dear, I hope that you have taken what we have said to heart.’
“I held on to David's hand. I was still crying and I am sure my words were barely audible: ‘I love you both and I am grateful for everything you have ever done for me. I pray that you are not really serious about this and that you will change your mind, but I am going to marry David no matter what you say. He is a wonderful man and I know that some day you will grow to love him as much as I do.’
“My father answered coldly, ‘Not a chance.’
“We left the house, and they haven't spoken to me since. When we went back to New York, we decided to get married immediately and move back to Chicago. David and his family wanted to give me my big dream wedding, but I declined. I couldn't imagine a wedding without my father walking me down the isle. That's when my depression started. I couldn’t afford to remain angry with my parents, so I turned that anger on myself.
“We had a small wedding. I only wanted David's family and close friends, no one from my last life. I sent my parents an invitation and they sent it back in the mail unopened. I phoned a few times and my mother hung up as soon as she heard my voice. I shouldn’t have called. Anyway, David and I had a long romantic honeymoon in France and moved to an apartment in the John Hancock Building on the 80th floor. That's when I started sinking. I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. Sometimes David came home to find me in my nightgown, having never showered or dressed.
“David was convinced that getting me back to work would be the solution.
I knew he was right. He arranged to have Victor Skrebneski do my portrait for my actor’s composite. It was overkill to get one of the top photographers in the country, but David said, ‘Why would you go to anyone but the best.’ That’s David, but I knew it was a waste.
“Still, I was determined to pull myself together and get myself out there. There is a lot of great theater in Chicago, a lot of small exciting companies. A group of actors who went to high school together founded a company called Steppenwolf in a church in the suburbs. We went to see a lot of their plays, really talented actors doing wonderful plays. I couldn’t get up enough courage to audition, not even in that little church. I was too anxious. I couldn't face the rejections. Between my parents and a few hundred casting directors in New York, I had all the rejections I needed for a lifetime.
“So I spent most of my days alone in our apartment, looking down from the 80th floor at the lake, the tiny cars and people moving through the streets below. I didn’t want to go anywhere. We did go out with David’s school friends occasionally. He had all these people he went to school with from kindergarten through 12th grade. They’re like siblings, but I didn’t feel like one of them. They were nice to me, yes, but I couldn’t get close to anyone then. Finally, I asked my doctor if she could recommend a therapist. She seemed surprised that I wanted one. I guess I fooled her too. She gave me several names. Of course, I chose the only woman on her list. That was a trip.” She started to laugh. It didn't seem like a funny point in the story.
“I went to see her in a building filled with psychiatrists on Michigan Avenue, not far from our apartment. Dr. Sokol was her name, Diane Sokol. She was about 55 maybe 60, reminded me of Anne Bancroft, not playing Mrs. Robinson but playing a middle-aged, overweight graying psychiatrist from New York. I sat on her couch and she sat in a chair in front of the window. She was backlit by the light pouring through the venetian blinds so I couldn’t see her face, only her silhouette. She asked me a few questions and I began to pour my heart out to her. She was very quiet, but I had never been to a therapist before and I thought that must be normal. I kept talking, telling her about what had happened with my parents, the whole New York thing, how unhappy I was. All of a sudden, I thought I heard her snoring. I knew I must be wrong. I stopped talking. The room was silent except for the hissing of the radiator and her steady snore.”
“What did you do?” Katherine asked her.
“I woke her up, ‘Dr. Sokol, Dr. Sokol.’ I had to say her name several times to wake her and when I did, she was startled.
“’You fell asleep!’
“‘Yes, I did,’ she said calmly, as if it was perfectly appropriate. She didn’t say anything for an uncomfortable moment and then she asked, ‘Do you want to know why I fell asleep?’
“‘Are you serious?’ I shouted back. ‘Of course, I want to know why.’
“‘You are so depressed, I had to go to sleep to escape your depression.’”
“You made this up,” Lauren said laughing. “It’s impossible.”
“No, that’s exactly what happened.”
“I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry, but luckily, I didn’t do either. I got angry, livid, something I can count the times in my life I’d done before that moment. I guess I was raised to think that getting angry was bad. I slammed out of her office. I couldn’t even stand still long enough to wait for the elevator. I ran down 10 flights of stairs and out into the street. On the way out of the building, I kicked over a planter of mums in the lobby. I walked south down Michigan Avenue and then east on Monroe toward the lake. I must have been walking eight-minute miles. Surely I looked like a maniac. I walked through Grant Park, which of course was empty in February. It was so God-awful cold. I crossed the Outer Drive and walked into the harbor. The wind was howling and there wasn’t a soul in sight. I was so enraged I was about to explode. I didn’t even feel the cold. The waves crashed up on to the concrete pier. I walked as close to the edge as I could get, close to the power of the lake kicking up, to those icy waves. I felt like I could have walked like that forever; but then a huge wave kicked up over the pier and almost pushed me over. I was soaked with that icy water, but I kept going until I got to that point where the shore curves east out into the water. I stopped, stood there shivering, my teeth literally chattering. I could see the whole skyline, the center of the city stretched out in front of me, the smoke and steam pouring out of the tops of the buildings. Those long painted piers where the big yachts moor during the boating season were floated boat-less in the water. I stood there frozen, shaking with rage, and then I saw myself as if I were watching myself in a movie. The next thing I knew I was being taken into a police car. The officers took me to the police station on State and 14th, like a criminal, and they called David. Riding in the back of the police car was perhaps the luckiest thing that could have happened to me. “
“And then?” Lauren asked.
Jess sighed, exhausted. “Can we save ‘the rest’ for another time?” Of course, they agreed.
“I just want to tell you one more thing. It is probably the best part of the story. When Dr. Sokol sent me a bill for one hour of psychotherapy, I paid it.”
Jess still hadn’t told them the rest. She was clear that her struggles with depression weren’t entirely over, but it was hard to tell when she was feeling low. She was able to use her extraordinary acting ability to hide it. Over time, Carson learned to recognize when she did.
Chapter 9
When the limo pulled into the Kingman’s driveway, David ran down the stairs to greet them. “She’ll be down in a second,” he stage-whispered, as excitedly as a little boy playing a prank. “She thinks we’re going to a meeting in indiana.” He ran up the stairs and back into the house. Jess came out a few minutes later. She turned around at the door and called back to him impatiently.
“David, where are you? You kept rushing me, saying I was going to make us late and now you’ve disappeared. I don’t know why I have to go to this stupid meeting in the first place.” She slammed the door and walked down to the car.
When the driver opened the back door, she was so shocked to see her three friends she almost fell backwards, “What are doing here?”, she asked smiling ear to ear. David followed quietly behind her, a packed suitcase for Jess in his hand.
“What’s going on?”
“You’re going on a birthday weekend with your friends!”
“Are you kidding?”
“You’d better hurry; you’ve got a plane to catch.”
The limo whisked them to Meigs Field, a private single-runway airport jutting out into Lake Michigan, just south of the Loop. They drove right on to the landing strip and boarded the Kingman Company jet, identifiable only by a small crown above the wing on the starboard side of the plane. They sank into butter-soft caramel-colored leather seats, buckled in and took off moments later toward South America. A steward served Champagne and coffee followed by Eggs Benedict with perfectly poached eggs over smoky Canadian bacon, topped creamy lemony hollandaise, The Champagne flowed, as did fresh orange juice Katherine said, “The orange juice tastes like the oranges were just picked. I couldn’t have produced that breakfast in Julia Child’s kitchen, unless of course, Julia was there,”
They landed in Guatemala City and boarded a helicopter. The pilot took a circuitous route and flew them over the ancient Mayan city of Tikal, as the sun began setting over the breathtaking pyramids. The sight of the center of that ancient city that had been one of the most powerful kingdoms of the Mayans, a highly evolved civilization that existed from 600 BC to the 10th century and was now extinct, was mindboggling. Lush forests spattered with the ruins of houses surrounded the exquisite center, the soaring pyramids that were palaces and temples and public arena. How fragile, Carson wondered, was the city, the world they lived in today? They turned and flew north passing over what seemed like endless jungle, spotted with small villages and beautiful clear turquoise lakes.
When they began to lower over foothills in the shadow of a nearby mountain range, the sky turned purple and the mountains bathed in golden light. As they lowered to the ground, it seemed as if the powerful force created by the helicopter’s whirling propellers would pull the tall, glossy, dark rubber trees right out of the ground.
Waiting for them on the landing strip surrounded by groves of towering date trees was a tall, handsome, muscular man with jet-black hair. He wore a soft white open-collared shirt, dark jeans and black leather riding boots. Jess got off first and jumped into his arms. He hugged Jess tightly and they kissed and hugged like a long-separated brother and sister. Her eyes filled with tears, but she was beaming. With their arms around one another, she introduced her three friends. “This is Armando Melendez, David’s best friend. I’m secretly in love with him.” She winked. “You will be too by the time we leave.” Although his skin was deeply tanned, he blushed. She introduced each of them, and when he turned to Carson, he seemed startled. Looking deeply into her eyes he said warmly, “Welcome to Casa Jaguar Negro,” not breaking his gaze. When she reached to shake his hand, he cupped it in both of his. She already knew that Jess was right.
Armando helped them up into an open top Land Rover, Jess in the front and the others in the back.
“What was that?” Katherine asked Carson as they got into the back of an open-top Land Rover.
“What was what?” Carson asked.
“The way he held onto your hand and looked into your eyes,” she said grinning.
“He did not,” Carson snapped back.
“Right,” Lauren said sarcastically, as she slid in next to Katherine on the bench seat across from Carson.
Katherine leaned forward and stage-whispered, “It was like he recognized you from another lifetime,”
“Absolutely!” Lauren agreed.
“You’re imaging it,” Carson said, but she knew what they were referring to.
“No, we’re not and you know it.” Lauren grinned.
Carson shook her head, acknowledging that it had been more than a hello and said, “Just what I need, another womanizer.”
“How do you know he’s a womanizer?” Lauren asked.
“Believe me, I can see them coming.”
“You don’t know anything about him.”
“I can tell. Just take a good look at him.”
“I did,” Katherine teased back. “He’s movie star gorgeous,”
“Not my type. He’s formulaic for trouble.”
“You could use a little of that kind of trouble in your life,” Lauren said, getting an easy laugh from Katherine.
“Stop it!” Carson said, although she was laughing, too.
“What are you laughing about back there?” Jess said arching around to see.
Armando jumped into the truck and started the engine. He stretched his arm across the back of Jess’ seat, turned to the others and said, “Let me apologize in advance for how uncomfortable this ride is going to be. I am sorry. Our roads are quite bad.” His voice was deep, his accent soft and charming. “Hold on tight,” he said. He caught Carson’s eye and smiled at her. Yes, he is very handsome, she thought, but he probably has a wife and six children. Both Lauren and Katherine caught his smile and gave Carson a thumbs up.
Embarrassed, Carson buried her head in her hands. “You are acting like high school girls.”
The ride from the clearing in the valley where the helicopter landed, down the steep mountain road toward the center of the plantation was like riding in a bumper car at an amusement park. The truck rolled from side to side, jerking as the wheels hit deep pot holes and shimmied over boulders, bouncing the seat-beltless riders in back up into the air. They held on to the sidebars for dear life, laughing every time they hit another bump. The fields of bushy coffee plants, some covered with clusters of soft white flowers, others with bright green and red berries, went on forever. He slowed down when they got to fields being harvested by what appeared to be an army of indigenous workers. He told them that a whole village of the Mayans who live up in the mountains above the plantation had just arrived for the harvest. Entire families, children as young as six and their parents and grandparents worked together. They were beautiful people, golden brown skinned with exquisite angular faces, thick glossy black hair, and dark eyes lined with extraordinarily thick lashes, probably an evolutionary change designed to protect them from the intensity of the mountain sun. The women walked gracefully; most were quite beautiful, with high cheekbones and full lips. A few wore what looked like a deep rose- colored natural dye on their mouths, but most, no makeup at all. Their skirts and blouses were made of intricately patterned hand-woven fabrics in bold primary colors in a stunning variety of geometric designs. The bodices embroidered with flowers and birds. Many of the women braided their hair and pinned the braids into a crown on the top of their heads. Others wrapped their heads in brightly colored fabric or folded a piece of fabric into a flat shape they mysteriously attached to their heads to shield their faces from the blazing sun. They worked in clusters, talking and laughing as they picked, their hands always moving. Men wielding machetes hacked away at the growth under the coffee plants. The men wore tee shirts and dark trousers. Most of the workers picked, taking the ripe beans from the bushy plants and dropping them into brightly colored bags slung over their shoulders or fabric-lined twig baskets.
“I bet these people get paid pennies,” Katherine whispered to Carson and Lauren.
“They don’t look unhappy to me,” Lauren said.
“They don’t know enough to be unhappy,” Katherine said.
When the Rover passed groups of workers, they called out to Armando and he called back to them, mostly by name. He seemed to know all of them, smiling and greeting people warmly. A woman who looked at least 90 flashed him a toothless smile and blew him a kiss. He stopped the truck for a moment, bowed his head to her and blew one back. They both laughed, as did the surrounding workers who called out to him in their native Mayan tongue, a language with a 5,000-year history. Armando said he had struggled to speak it since he was as a child. A few of the women carried babies tied to their backs. The babies slept or looked around contentedly as their mothers worked their way down the rows of plants. One young woman sat on a bag of coffee at the edge of the field, breastfeeding her baby. She studied the four playgroup women with curiosity, smiled and waved as they passed. Her little boy, a child the same age as the playgroup children rested his head on his mother’s lap and stared at the four friends curiously.
Armando drove for a few more minutes and stopped at a cluster of brightly painted yellow workers’ houses. Groups of barefooted children played unsupervised on the wide dirt paths. They seemed sublimely happy and engaged without having any of the toys and games American parents believe their children can’t survive without, the population explosions of plastic people, their farms, airplanes, space shuttles and school houses that clutter even the humblest American home. A few adults stared out at the visitors from behind blue-shuttered windows and doorways. Carson noticed that each house had a window box, also painted blue and filled with dirt. Only one had anything planted in it, a lonely pink geranium with all but a few petals gone. A group of women clustered around a small truck converted to a store where they picked through a sparse selection fruits and vegetables. There wasn’t much to buy, but what produce there was looked fresh and appealing. There were bright red tomatoes, greens, fruits and eggs, all grown close to the plantation. Dried up, not so appealing meat and sausages hung from hooks on the truck. Across from the store was a small school building that Armando said was for the children whose parents worked at the plantation year-round. Lauren asked about the other children. Armando shrugged his shoulders and said apologetically, “Sadly, they are not here long enough to do anything about that.” A little farther up the road, there was a white clapboard church decorated with a frieze of the Madonna and child; in front of it, a cone-shaped vase of dead flowers rested on a wrought iron stand.
A group of mechanics stood outside the building on a break, joking in inconceivably rapid Spanish, as they drank cans of American soft drinks. One of them called out to Armando, who stopped the truck. The man said something that made all the men including Armando roar.
“What did they say?” Jess asked him.
“You don’t want to know,” he said, still laughing.
“Of course we do,” she said. “Tell us exactly.”
“They asked how an ugly pendejo like me convinced four beautiful senoritas to get into a car with me.”
“What’s a pendejo?” Lauren asked.
He laughed. “That I am not going to tell you.”
A little further along, a worker waved Armando to stop. He excused himself and walked over to talk to a cluster of employees; there seemed to be some kind of dispute. Carson watched him as he listened to each of the men tell their side of the story in rocket-speed Spanish. He listened carefully, shaking his head to show he understood each of the men. Then he too, in indecipherably fast Spanish, responded; Carson guessed he suggested a resolution. Both men responded, addressing Armando and not one another. Armando scratched his head, in a way that indicated he was having trouble making a decision, then he said something else to the men and they both shook their heads in agreement. They all shook hands and walked away.
In the meantime, a few yards in front of the truck, two men finished loading the last bags of coffee onto a transport truck and slammed the doors shut. Apologizing more than he needed to, Armando jumped back into the Land Rover and drove up a road to the main house.
Separated, from the rest of the complex by a grove of trees, the house was a sprawling two story white colonial, a large veranda circling it. A blanket of fragrant white jasmine and blazing magenta bougainvillea hid the elaborate wrought-iron railings. Terraces, also black wrought iron, hung off the second story. French doors, some open, led to each of the balconies, which also had been planted with cascading flowers in deep pinks, blues and purples. When they reached the house, Carson began to feel a bit lightheaded; she thought maybe from so much Champagne and the long hours of travel. When she climbed down from the truck, she was shaky. Armando, who had been watching her, ran over and grabbed her. Embarrassed, she thanked him and told him she was perfectly all right.
“Let me just be sure,” he said holding on to her and looking at her with concern. She smelled the soap he used during his shower right before they had arrived; his black, wavy hair was still wet.
“Really I’m fine.”
“Just let me walk you up to the house,” he said. ”You looked like you were going to faint.”
“I’ve never fainted before,” she said, remembering when she passed out while covering that first murder three months before. What a terrible feeling that had been, to lose consciousness and self-control, if for only a minute, and then to wake up unclear of what had happened and why. She wouldn’t let that happen to her again.
An elegant-looking, grandmotherly Guatemalan woman in a crisply ironed white dress embroidered with roses, her hair pulled back into a bun at the nape of her neck, came to greet them. Jess wrapped her arms around the woman Carson assumed to be Armando’s mother. Evidently she was not; Armando introduced her simply as Maria. A few servants appeared and took the bags up to their rooms, as Armando led them to a wide outdoor room at the end of the veranda. There were large potted palms, pots of pink ginger and birds of paradise. They served the friends what Carson thought was the equivalent of Guatemalan high tea, spread elegantly on the lace cloth covering the table was a French press pot of the dark roasted coffee grown on the plantation, trays of fresh pastries and a beautifully arranged tray of sliced mango, pineapple, papaya, strawberries, oranges, berries, and some fruits they had never seen, tea and freshly made juices, all evidently from fruits grown on the plantation.
Maria fussed over Carson, bringing her to a place under a ceiling fan in a far corner of the sprawling veranda so she could rest. She insisted Carson sit quietly and asked a servant to bring an icy glass of tea and a plate of food. Maria’s English was halting, but it appeared that she understood everything Carson said. She told Carson that she had known Armando since the day he was born.
“And David,” she laughed and looked over at Jess who was chatting excitedly with the others. “I’ve known him since he was a little boy.” As Maria spoke about Armando, she watched him across the veranda. Carson looked up at him for a moment. He must have felt her gaze. Again their eyes met and she quickly looked away. Maria didn’t miss it.
“His mother died when he was five, breast cancer,” she said. “He was a lovely little boy, lovely. I became his nanny when his mother got sick. Before that she wouldn’t let anyone take care of him but herself. Truly, her life was completely devoted to him and, of course, to his father.”
“And his father? Is he alive?”
“No, he is gone too. He too was completely devoted to Armando. They had tried for years before he was born to have a baby, but she lost every one, five, maybe six miscarriages. And she never got pregnant again. So he was, as you can imagine, a most precious child. After Armando’s mother died, his father devoted himself to his son and the business. He never remarried.”
Carson began to ask Maria another question about Armando and his parents, but she caught herself.
“Please, Maria, tell me about yourself. Do you have a family?”
“Yes, I am married and I have three daughters, now eight grandchildren, the youngest just two years old.”
“And your work?”
“I am here a few days a week now. I have my husband and my grandchildren. Of course, Armando is like my son. I would do anything he asked me to do. After his mother died, I ran the household. I guess I still do, but now it is not so much work. The others,” she waved to a few servants, who were stationed around the room. “They do an excellent job. Armando asked me to stay at the house while you visit and make sure that everything is perfect for Senora Jessica and your, how do you say it, senoritas’ weekend.”
Carson could feel Armando watching her from across the room, although he was deep in a conversation with the others. She tried not to listen, instead to concentrate on what Maria was saying, but she was acutely aware of him. She heard him excuse himself. He walked over to where she and Maria sat and asked Carson if she felt better. She felt awkward and was sure he knew it. In a few minutes, Armando excused himself and said he was leaving and would stay at the reserve so they could have the house to themselves.
“That’s silly,” Jess said. “You sleep in your own bed.”
“No, it’s what David and I planned. If there is anything you need, please call me. You have the number, Jess, and if for some reason I don’t answer, have Maria send someone to get me.”
He looked at Carson in a curious way, as if he wanted to ask her something; then seemed to catch himself. He smiled and looked away. Everyone else, including Maria noticed.
Jess objected to his leaving, but clearly he had no intention of staying.
“OK, you can go,” she pretended to pout, “but you will have dinner with us tomorrow night.”
“Are you sure, Jess?”
“Absolutely,” she looked over at the others. “You want him to come, too?”
Before anyone could answer, Jess said, “Absolutely.”
“Thank you. It will be my pleasure.”
“And maybe” Jess continued. “You’ll take whoever wants to go to the reserve.”
“Of course, just tell me when.” And in a moment, he was gone.
As soon as he drove away and Maria left the room, Katherine said, “OK, Jess, what’s the story with Armando?”
“You want to know if he’s married right,” Jess laughed. “No. He’s not married.”
“He’s divorced, right? “Lauren said.
“Never been married, doesn’t even have a girlfriend.”
“That you know of,” Carson said.
“No, I am sure not.”
“There has to be someone,” Lauren said. “He is too attractive to be alone.”
“Really, I am sure of it. There was someone, years ago, but something happened to her.”
“How sad,” Carson said, “the image of how beautiful he was when he smiled still lingering.
Jess told them how they had met. “Armando came to Francis Parker as an exchange student. David’s family was the host family and the two became instant best buddies. You know, David was kind of a nerdy kid.”
“Hard to believe,” Carson said, thinking of tall, handsome, poised David Kingman.
“He was clumsy and small, awkward. That’s what he says and his school friends will tell you exactly the same thing, a consummate nerd. Until he was 17, he was just a little less than five feet tall. It wasn’t until his senior year that he started to fill out and shoot up to the height he is now. So he was kind of a self-conscious kid, didn’t fit in, a loner. Armando came and it was a great for both of them, really, and their friendship is beautiful. I mean especially for guys, I’d say they truly love each other, talk to each other at least a few times a week, have been best friends since they met. The summer after the semester Armando spent in Chicago, David flew back to Guatemala with him and stayed with Armando and his father for two months. Their families ended up becoming close friends, almost like family. Armando and his dad vacationed with David’s family and the two fathers had similar philanthropic interests. They planned to form a foundation together. The Jaguar preserve was their idea. They just never got to do it.
“Armando went to school in the states; like David, he was a business major. They both went for their MBAs, David at Wharton and Armando at Harvard. Since they were teenagers, the two of them brainstormed about what kind of business they would go into together some day. It would be something totally different from their family business interests, which obviously were as different from each other as they could possibly be. But that dream ended during Armando’s first year at Harvard. One day he was called out of a class and told that his father had just collapsed in a field. He had a massive heart attack. Armando rushed back here, but by the time he got to the airport in Guatemala City, his father was dead. As you could imagine, it was impossible to get him from here to a hospital good enough to save his life. He died a few hours after he collapsed. He was only 53. Armando never returned to graduate school. He took over the business. Within six years, he doubled the size of the operation. Ten years later, he is now the largest coffee grower in Guatemala.”
“That’s impressive,” Katherine said.
“He’s a very impressive man,” Jess said, “and one of the sweetest and most lovely men I have ever known.”
“So he has to have been married at some point?” Lauren asked.
“You don’t believe me.” Jess said, “He never married and he doesn’t have a woman in his life.”
“That doesn't make sense, “Lauren said.
“He must be gay?” Katherine said.
“Oh come on, absolutely not!”
“He must have someone. He’s lovely.” Lauren said.
“David and I are on him about that. He says he hasn’t had time.” Jess said. ”We believe him. He works around the clock, between the coffee business and the jaguar reserve. Anyway, why are you so both interested?”
“We’re thinking about a friend of ours,” Katherine said, looking over at Carson, who hadn’t said a word.
“Evidently, so is he,” Jess said. “He couldn’t keep his eyes off of you, Carson.”
“Cut it out, you’re imagining that.”
“Honestly, he couldn’t. I wouldn’t have even thought about you two as a match, too complicated. I don’t know about David, that might have something to do with the reason he sent us here,” she laughed. “But for sure, there was something going on between the two of you. I have never seen that with him, I mean ever. And by the way, “she paused and looked into Carson’s eyes, “not you either. You have to admit….”
“It would be impossible for me to lie to the three of you, but do me a favor,” she said, “and give it up. The last thing I need to do now is fall for a handsome stranger in Guatemala and the last thing he needs is me.”
“He’d be lucky to get you,” Lauren said. “The only bad thing would be that we’d have a hard time letting you leave us.”
“Forget it, Cupid. I’m not interested.”
A few minutes later, Maria came back and took them to their rooms. They made a plan to shower and rest and then meet on the veranda a few hours later to have drink before dinner. Carson took off her clothes and fell onto the bed. She was sound asleep in seconds. When she heard Jess at the door trying to wake her for dinner, it was already dark. Her body refused to budge.
“I just want to sleep,” she groaned.
“Of course, just rest. Sleep as late as you can in the morning. I brought you a night gown.” She laid it on the bed. “David asked Maria to get these for all of us. You’ll love it. Sleep well, dear one.”
She was back out in moments. A little later she heard someone softly open the door and move quietly around her room. It was Maria. She pretended to be asleep. Maria lowered a silver domed tray with a light dinner for Carson on to a small table near a comfy-looking chair. She looked down at the lovely young woman sound asleep, knowing she must be exhausted, then opened the French doors leading to the balcony. The room filled with soothing evening tropical air. “Dulces sueños,” she whispered and slipped away as quickly and as quietly as she had come. When Carson woke again her room was filled with light. It can’t be morning, she thought. It wasn’t; a full moon rose in the sky and silvery light flooded into the room. She took a long, hot shower and slipped into the gown Jess had left. It was the finest linen cotton she had ever touched, exquisitely hand embroidered with a vine of delicate pale blue forget- me-knots. She had never seen anything quite like it. She walked out onto the balcony. The mountains and fields were bathed in shimmering light. Armando was walking up the path toward the house. He stopped and stood watching her as she looked up at the moon. She was surrounded by flowers, the soft wind blowing in her hair, her gown nearly transparent in the silver light.
Chapter 10
A nightmare, Zoe on a roller coaster careening out of control, woke her. It was impossible to get back to sleep. She tried to drug herself with a not-so-interesting novel she brought along, but couldn’t concentrate and finally decided to get out of bed. “Maybe I can get in a run before everyone else wakes up,” she thought, hoping it would help her clear her mind. When she walked out the front door, the sky was just beginning to brighten. The safest thing to do, she thought, was to backtrack in the direction of where they had come from the day before, if possible ending up at the clearing where the helicopter landed. She bent over and tightened her shoes on the front step, took a deep breath of that clear mountain air and began to run. The air was intoxicatingly sweet, the smell of jasmine in bloom, fruit trees, the flowering coffee plants, and the rich volcanic soil. It had been so cold in Chicago; everyone spent the winter moving from one sealed space of stale recycled air to the next. Here the air was so clean and clear. It felt like she was on another planet.
Carson hadn’t run much recently. When she could, it was on the crowded quarter mile indoor track at the East Bank Club, the noise level deafening, too many runners for the space, echoing footsteps slamming down on the rubber track, and conversations shouted as runners strained to keep up with one another. All those sounds were magnified as they bounced off the plate glass windows that surround that suffocating space. That morning, all she could hear were the birds. There must have been hundreds of them calling to one another at the start of this exquisite day. As the sun rose over the mountains, the sky turned bright pink and pale violet, with vibrant streaks of red, a few delicate clouds floating above.
She passed the stables. They were quiet, as were the processing buildings, not a soul in sight.
As she ran uphill toward the fields, she felt as if her lungs had twice their capacity. The sharp incline didn’t faze her as she pushed up her speed. It seemed almost effortless. She thought, “I have never felt so light on my feet.” She ran past the houses of the workers. The only sounds, other than her own footsteps on the soft dirt road and the cacophony of birds beginning their day, were the dogs. A few barked and ran toward her, but quickly turned away. She heard a baby crying and imagined as the crying stopped, his mother lifting the child from his crib and nursing him in her arms. When she got close to the clearing where the helicopter had landed, she remembered the way Armando looked standing there as they landed. She warned herself to be careful about him. Then the most vivid memories of being with him last night came back to her, how it felt when he made love to her and how wonderful it was to sleep in his arms. Then, she caught herself, the realization so startling. She had not been alone with Armando at all and the vivid memories of the night in his arms had been a dream.
When she got back to the house, Armando was walking down the front steps, a cup of coffee in his hand. She wondered if that feeling of her heart racing was because she had been running so fast or if it was seeing his face light up as she ran toward him.
“Maravilloso! You had a good run?”
She nodded and answered breathlessly, ‘’Fantastic!”
“It’s so good that you got out early before it gets too hot.”
“It was beautiful, truly the best run of my life.” Her entire body was wet with perspiration, her shorts and tank top soaked. But he looked at her admiringly, a full smile on his face. She could feel herself react to that look; the feeling spread out to every part of her body. She was at a loss for words. She finally asked awkwardly, “What do you do to this air?”
“It’s not what we do to it, it’s what we don’t do to it. We have absolutely no pollution here, especially after the rains, which seemed to have come to an end when you arrived.” Maybe she just imagined it, but it looked to her that when he said that, he blushed.
“Let me get you some cold water and, perhaps, some coffee?” She followed him to the kitchen, a room large enough to cook for a hundred guests. He poured cold water from an icy pitcher, then walked over to the stove and turned on the burner under a water kettle. She pointed to an almost full French press pot of coffee on the counter. Obviously, it was the coffee he was drinking.
“That coffee will be fine for me.”
“Absolutely not. We grow the finest coffee in the world on this plantation, and I want you to enjoy it at its best.” Once again she felt an intense feeling of attraction. “This is bad,” she thought. She had not been so acutely aware of a man, or her own body, in years. It made her nervous. She was relieved when Jess, in her nightgown and a robe, came into the room and broke the moment. “I see you both are up,” she said coyly.
“I wish she hadn’t said that,” Carson thought of her friend’s teasing.
Armando didn’t catch it. “Did you sleep well, my dear Jessica?” he said and kissed her on the cheek. She was like his sister, perhaps today a naughty little sister, even though he didn’t seem to notice.
“Slept like a baby,” she smiled.
In a moment Maria and another helper came into the kitchen to start breakfast. Armando finished his coffee and excused himself to go to work.
He said: “This is supposed to be a girls’ weekend. No men. I am happy to stay at the reserve.”
“Not a chance. You sleep in your own bed. We’ll see you at seven, eight at the latest.”
When he left, Jess started again. “So what’s going on?”
“Nothing. I told you, nothing is going on and nothing will be.”
“Why don’t you just relax and...”
“Stop it,” Carson interrupted. “You know why. Just drop it.”
She said, “OK, I’ll wipe it from my mind.” And as the day went on, clearly she did,
but Carson could not. Those dreams of making love to Armando kept coming back to her. She caught herself fantasizing about him, thinking about what it would be like to spend her life with him here in this beautiful place, to spend every night in his arms.
When he walked into the house that evening, Carson thought, “Now I am the one who is blushing.” She could feel his eyes on her. It felt to her as if he could read every fantasy that had gone through her head that day. He excused himself to dress for dinner, and when he returned, showered and fresh, he looked even more appealing to her than he had before. He led the friends to the dining room and formally pulled out each of their chairs. He looked elegantly handsome at the head of the long, burled mahogany table. The only light in the room came from tall candelabras, six candles on each, a pair on the table and two more pairs on matching, heavily carved black walnut buffets on opposite ends of the room. There was something transformative about the candlelight, the way it lit their faces, the glow on the dark, still-life paintings that covering the walls. It felt to Carson like the setting for an evening perhaps a hundred years before, with the hand-painted Bavarian china and delicately cut crystal, hand embroidered linen.
“Oh my, this silver,” Lauren said picking up a knife. “These knives must weigh half a pound each.”
“Not quite,” Armando laughed. “The silver was my mother’s, the china too. I don’t use it very often. Most nights, I am dining alone.”
Although Maria had already filled Carson in, she asked him about his parents, interested in how he would describe them. She was moved by his answer, the deep admiration and gratitude he expressed. He seemed to have none of the cynicism and bitterness most people she knew harbored toward their parents. She thought about how she might have described her own mother and father if someone had asked, and felt ashamed to admit how much bitterness she felt. She promised herself that she would work on resolving those feelings, to come to grips with the fact that they did as well as they could possibly do.
Armando had vivid memories of his mother even though she died when he was a little boy. “My father remained in love with her,” he said, “with his memories of her, until his death.”
Carson wondered if Armando’s early loss made him fearful of loving. Perhaps it was the reason that, at 41, he had never married. She was, as most women, suspicious of men who reached his age and were still single. But she could understand very well why someone might be afraid to fall in love. She too had her own reasons for never wanting to love again. She hadn’t been in a relationship since she was divorced, not even a short one. It occurred to her that perhaps she had never experienced real love. The relationship she had with Mark, if you could call it a relationship at all, she thought, wasn’t love, although through all those years she thought it was. And her short marriage to Zoe’s father, that wasn’t love either. How, she wondered, have I made it to my age and never had a mature love affair with a man? The conversation at the table switched to the jaguar preserve,
but she sat there not listening, thinking instead about the man at the head of the table. Maybe she could let her guard down.
Katherine noticed that she looked like she was off in another world.
She said, “Carson, it looks like you’re dreaming.”
Embarrassed, Carson apologized, “Maybe I’ve had too much wine.”
“You can never drink too much wine in Guatemala,” Armando said as he stood up to fill their classes. As he poured, he asked them if they wanted to go to the reserve in the morning. “I can’t promise you that you’ll see a jaguar, but your chances there are better than almost anywhere else in the world. If we go, we have to be there at dawn, just as the sun is rising. It’s the best time to see them.
Jaguars are not nocturnal, but they see better in the dark than any other animal in the world. They are most active at dawn and dusk, but dawn is the best time at the reserve.” All four expressed excitement about going the next morning and made a plan to leave right before sunrise.
So just a few hours after that last glass of wine, Carson sat dressed in shorts and hiking boots on the front steps of the hacienda. When Armando pulled up in his Jeep, it was still dark. “I’ll go get the others,” she said, and ran up the stairs.
“Go without me,” Jess groaned not opening her eyes and pushing her face back into her pillow. “I can’t. I’m just too tired.”
Then Katherine, “Sorry, Carson, I’m dead. Please apologize to Armando.”
She was sure Lauren would come. She was more excited about the possibility of seeing a jaguar than any of them. When Carson knocked on her door, she didn’t answer. She knocked again and let herself in. Lauren slept so soundly that when Carson gently shook her shoulder to wake her, she didn’t budge.
“I’m afraid it is just me,” Carson said apologetically, when she slipped into the seat next to Armando. He had showered and shaved and looked as refreshed and bright as if he had had a full night’s sleep. She had hardly slept, in part because she was afraid she wouldn’t get up on time and in part because, on some level, she realized she had been trying to avoid more dreams like the ones she had the night before.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “ I can take them another time.” There was an awkward silence as they drove out of the plantation. Carson, usually good at filling those, found herself feeling oddly shy. She watched him through the corner of her eye. Yes, Lauren is right, she thought, he is unusually beautiful without seeming in any way aware of that beauty. Something else that struck her was his calm, a reassuring presence that she was sure anyone, man, woman or child, would find comforting. He held on tightly to the wheel with both hands as he steered the Rover over the rocky roads. A light breeze blew through the windows. In moments the terrain became even rougher and although they wore seatbelts, Carson was thrown from side to side. Armando reached toward her to steady her and continued to hold on to her arm. “I am sorry about this,” he said apologetically. “This is the only way I can get you there.” He kept his hand there as they continued. Again, she felt hyper-aware of his touch, as if it were – and clearly, she knew it was not – the most sexual touch.
Suddenly the Rover veered so sharply to the left, Carson felt as if it might roll over. She fell onto his lap. They started laughing and didn’t stop as the ride went on as if they were on some kind of a roller coaster. They laughed like children as they bumped along. It was impossible to talk. Finally they reached a paved road. Knocked out of her shyness, she asked him about the reserve.
“It was a dream of my father to do something to protect the jaguars. They have been endangered for decades. He tried to get hunting them outlawed, but with no success. Tragically, they are a favorite of hunters who feel they have some kind of privilege that justifies killing these beautiful animals. Jaguars used to roam freely throughout Guatemala, the Yucatan and Belize. Now they are sparse. A few years after my father died, I was able to create a foundation in his memory and begin to buy land to set up a reserve. David asked if he could join me in the project and soon after, his father did too. We have 100 square miles now. We hope to acquire more land and we have just finished building a research center. We still need to hire a few more people.”
He led Carson into the jungle down a dark canopied path; she followed a few steps behind, walking as quietly as possible, almost on tiptoe. As she followed him deeper and deeper into the jungle, the paths became narrower and overgrown. Suddenly, there was terrifying screeching, a sound from a horror movie. Terrified Carson jumped a few feet and grabbed Armando.
“It’s OK,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulders. He hugged her like a parent with a frightened child.
“They’re just monkeys, howlers. Their cry is terrifying if you don’t know what it is.” They walked further down a narrow overgrown path. Armando stopped suddenly and signaled Carson not to move or talk.
She heard stirring in the bush; her heart began to race. For the first time it struck her that she had never asked him if they came face to face with a jaguar, what would keep it from attacking them. As they stood, she felt intensely aware of him, of his breath, the small movements of his body. It was as if all her senses were on overdrive. He signaled that they should move on. Soon after he stopped her again and pointed straight ahead.
There he was. A black jaguar stood directly in their path, not more than 30 feet ahead. His luminescent green eyes focused right on them, searing. It was the most magnificent sight she had ever seen, magnificent and at the same time utterly terrifying. They stood frozen, hardly breathing, as they watched the beast. Carson knew that jaguar could crush the skull of an 800-pound ox and carry it whole to his den. What, she wondered, could he do to the two of us?
In a few minutes, the jaguar nodded his head as if to acknowledge their meeting and walked back into the bush. Armando threw his arms around her and hugged her. “Wasn’t that incredible!” he said, his stage whisper filled with excitement.
All Carson could do was repeat what he said, “Yes, incredible!”
As they drove back to the plantation, he told Carson about how lucky they had been. “The chances of seeing a jaguar, even in the reserve are about a thousand to one. I still keep looking. I have been to the reserve hundreds of times. We were very lucky.”
Still exhilarated, he rambled on about the importance of the jaguar in Mayan culture. “The jaguar is the god of the underworld,” he said. “The Mayans believe it has the ability to see into the future, to see deep into the human heart.”
As he said it, she wished that she could see into Armando’s heart; she felt afraid that he could easily see into hers. She could feel herself falling for him in a way she had never fallen for a man. Zoe flashed into her mind. Except for her nightmare the night before, she hadn’t thought about her for a moment since they arrived yesterday. Normally, not a half-hour would go by when she didn’t think of her little girl, wondering what she was doing at that moment or perhaps just having an image of her sweet face flash before her eyes. I cannot afford to fall for this man, she warned herself. I need to resist, to stay focused on making a life for my little girl and me. If it means resolving the mess I am in at ABC or not, my first priority has to be making a realistic plan for a secure future us. The last thing I need right now is an impossible romantic fantasy that has no way of becoming a practical reality.
As they turned on to the road leading back the plantation, the sun came up over the mountains. Armando pulled over to the side of the road so they could watch the sunrise. They sat silent, the only sound, a fly buzzing around the car. He turned toward her and without saying a word, kissed her. One kiss, not a passionate kiss, but a kiss so soft, she could feel the tingling of her lips as he pulled back and looked into her eyes. It was a kiss she knew she would remember for as long as she lived.
They drove the rest of the way in silence. When he pulled up in front of the house, he told her, (it seemed to her sadly) that he would be away until some time the next day. He told her that he hoped he could take her and the others if they wished to join them to see the volcanoes before they left. Her heart was still racing as she walked up the stairs. It must have been obvious. When Katherine, who was stretched out on a hammock on the veranda, looked up at her from the book she was reading, she asked, “OK, traffic girl, what are you grinning about now?”
Fortunately, Jess and Lauren were having massages in the garden. Jess would be unmerciful. Carson went up to her room so she could be alone to process what had just happened. She showered and sat on her balcony until Maria knocked to tell her it was time for her to go to the garden for her massage.
A lovely Mayan woman led her to a massage table set up on a patio surrounded by orange trees in bloom. Once Carson was settled onto the table and covered with a silky linen sheet, the woman chanted a prayer Carson would learn later paid homage to the spirits in the mountains, the waters, the wind, and the air. After the massage, she chanted again and placed rose petals on Carson’s forehead and shoulders and hands. Although Carson understood nothing of what the woman said, she found the ceremony as soothing as the massage itself. When she got off the table, she could hardly walk, she felt so relaxed and well cared for. The massage therapist took her arm and walked her back to the veranda of the house where Katherine, Jess and Lauren, also still in their robes, relaxed on comfy chaises.
They were grinning when they saw her. She realized that there was no possibility of hiding what she felt from her three friends. Without saying a word, she knew that they all sensed exactly what was going on.
Pleased to see a blissful look on Carson’s face, Lauren said, “OK, just tells us,”
“There’s nothing to tell,” Carson said.
“Oh come on,” Katherine said. “That is obviously not true.”
“Really, nothing,” Carson said, having a hard time suppressing what she suspected was a goofy grin.
“Sure nothing!” Katherine said laughing.
“I just want to ask you one thing.” Carson said, ”Did you three fake being too tired to wake up this morning?” No one answered.
“You did!” she scolded. “That’s terrible.”
“We really didn’t,” Jess said. “Honestly, we did not plan set you up to be alone with him. But admit it, you are definitely smitten.”
“I can’t lie, I am. But it’s going to stop. I am not going to get involved with him.”
“You are already!” Katherine said.
“Did you sleep with him?” Jess asked.
“I did not!”
“But you will.”
“I will not. I can’t. He lives all the way across the world.”
Jess said, “Guatemala is not across the world. Chicago’s in the same time zone.”
“Guatemala is like the moon.” Carson said. “Come on. Look around you.”
“It’s not that far,” Lauren said.
“The last thing I can afford to do is fall in love with a man who lives in the mountains of Guatemala. I have to get my act together. I’m not sure if I’ll even have a job when I get back.”
“So all the better,” Jess said.
“No, you are wrong. Maybe I will have a man in my life some day, but I am not going to get involved with anyone until my position is totally secure. That would be the worst thing I could do.”
“I get it,” Katherine said. “You’re right. It would make you too vulnerable, too dependent, but come on, you can’t walk away from this man.”
“Yes I can. I need to put and end to it before it starts,” she said trying to sound convincing, although she felt heartsick thinking of the possibility of not ever seeing him again.
“But he really is the loveliest man,” Jess said.
“I know,” Carson said wistfully, “but it’s not meant to be.”
After lunch, the four rode horses through the plantation, and up farther into the mountains. Jess, unlike the others was an excellent horsewoman and knew the mountains well. The horses chosen for them were gentle and obedient. Jess assured them it would be an easy ride. After their initial nervousness, it was. The vistas were unimaginably beautiful. The rolling foothills were covered with dense tropical vegetation; orchids and bromeliads bloomed magically off trees draped with mossy vines. The air was thick with perfume of fruit trees, wild flowers and coffee plants in bloom.
Carson couldn’t, as hard as she tried, wipe Armando from her mind. “If we fell in love, could I drop everything to be near him in this strange and foreign, even if incredibly beautiful, place? I must be out of my mind to think of it. I don’t know him at all. Maybe he’s not what he appears to be, who knows?” She tried to joggle her mind onto a more rational track; focus on what she faced when they returned home: What she would do if the job at the station were over, what her terms would be if she were offered the choice to stay? But she kept slipping back into the fantasies about Armando as she rocked gently as they rode farther up into the mountains. Was he really as wonderful as he appeared to be? She had been wrong before, but the two men she had believed she was in love with before weren’t in the same universe as Armando. He seemed to her a gentle prince. Again, she stopped herself. “This is crazy. I think I imagined the sadness on his face when he said goodbye. He hasn’t married before. There must be a reason; there must be something wrong with him that I can’t see, that even Jess can’t see.”
The air began to cool as the sun began to drop behind the mountains and Jess signaled them to stop. In the far distance they could see the volcanoes, one now active with a burning red rim; a ribbon of smoke reached up into the sky.
When they got to the plantation with its roads wide enough for trucks to pass, they rode side by side and talked for the first time in hours.
“The days have gone too fast, “ Katherine said expressing what they all felt. “I’m not ready to go.” A helicopter would come the next day after lunch and take them back to their plane.
“I understand why this is your favorite place in the world,” Lauren said.
Jess smiled back. “I’m blissed out here. I always am.”
They passed the workers along the way who were ending their day in the fields. Surprisingly they didn’t look the least bit tired as they carried heavy colorful bags stuffed with coffee beans over their shoulders to waiting flat bed trucks that would take the coffee to be processed. From out of nowhere, a dozen children ran toward the four friends.
“These have to be the most beautiful children in the world,” Lauren said. They got down from their horses to talk to the children and somehow, though the children only spoke the Mayan of their village high in the mountains, they were able to communicate and joke, their dark eyes dancing with excitement. They were fascinated with Jess’s red hair, long and now wildly curly in the moist tropical air. They wanted to touch it. She squatted down to let them and they laughed as they ran their fingers through it. Like their mothers, the girls wore brightly colored hand-woven dresses, their black, glossy hair shining and braided. The boys wore dusty black trousers and tee shirts and, though perfectly polite, had mischievousness written all over their faces.
This was their last day. The helicopter would pick them up after lunch tomorrow. The day passed too quickly and ended with another lovely dinner in the candle-lit dining room that night. Carson had no interest in the food she just pushed around her plate. She kept imagining Armando in the empty chair at the head of the table. How could she miss someone so much she had only known for a few hours?
The friends talked until they couldn’t keep their eyes open. Still no one wanted to go to bed. When they finally went to their rooms, Carson went out to the balcony and watched the moon. She tossed and turned in bed before she finally fell asleep. At about 3 a.m., she was up thinking about whether it made sense for her to go to the volcanoes with Armando the next day. She decided it would be best not to be alone with him again. Perhaps the others would join them. That wouldn’t be so dangerous. She felt hungry. Being around Armando had made her lose her normally healthy appetite and she hadn't eaten much all day. She went downstairs to the kitchen to see if she could find a snack. It was dark in the house, just a few lights in the hall. She went to the kitchen and felt around for the light switches. She couldn’t find them. There was enough light from a window over the sink to feel her way to the refrigerator. Fortunately it had a light. She didn’t hear Armando come up behind her.
“Carson,” he said softly, not wanting to scare her, but he did.
“You’re not supposed to be back.”
“I couldn’t stay away,” he said. “Let me get you something to eat.”
Suddenly she wasn’t hungry. She turned around, and in seconds was in his arms. Determined to say “absolutely not” in a matter of minutes, she was in his bed.
During the hours that followed, until long after the sun rose over the mountains and they heard the sounds of their friends talking and moving about the house, they made love in a way Carson could never have imagined possible for her, not for anyone. It was as if they had known each other for thousands of years, knew every crevice of their bodies where pleasure could be found. She realized that she had never made love before. Yes, she had had sex, but never until this night had she experienced anything like this. It was the way he looked at her, as if she were the most beautiful woman in the world, the way she felt when they kissed, what he did to her body, and what she felt totally natural doing to his. There was something between them she felt she had no way of understanding. Only that this was what it must feel like to find what others called the “great love of my life.” She knew that tomorrow she would say goodbye to him and that it was likely she would never see him again. But even so, she knew she would treasure this night they spent together forever.
They did not get to the volcano that morning. The phone rang next to Armando’s bed. It was David. There was bad weather on its way to Guatemala and they would have to leave immediately to avoid it. The helicopter was on its way. In less than an hour they would be in the sky flying back to Guatemala City where they would be met by the Kingman jet.
Carson watched Armando get smaller as the helicopter ascended into the sky. He stood there long after it disappeared into the clouds. The sky had began to darken. ‘Why did I let them go?’ he asked himself. ‘What if the storm hits before they reach Guatemala City? They could crash into the side of a mountain. Stupid me, I could have kept them here at least until the storm ended. Now, God knows what will happen.’
If anything did, he knew he would never forgive himself. He walked toward the fields, with a mounting sense of fear. The rain began to fall and in moments, he was soaked.
“Why didn’t you ever marry, Armando?” Carson had asked him in the middle of the night.
“I was waiting for someone to come back. “
“Why did she go away?” she said sleepily.
Let me save that for tomorrow, mi Corazon. ” He pulled her closer. Now she too was gone.
The storm escalated, with thunder and lightning. The rain forced the white blossoms of the next to be harvested plants to cascade to the ground and branches heavy with red beans to droop into the mud. Armando kept walking, weaving his way through the fields, the rain beating against his face.
The woman he had waited for was Marieka, one of the disappeared. She had been a fighter in the people’s army, and was one of tens of thousands of indigenous Mayan and Ladino activists who were murdered during the Guatemalan Civil War. That war was still not over, far from it. The women had been the most brutalized of the victims. They were raped and beaten by government soldiers. Their bodies were dismembered, often before they were dead and displayed in public squares as a warning. Thousands of rebels were buried alive; others put in plastic bags and dropped into the ocean.
“You will never come back to me,” Marieka had said to him when he went to college in the US. He promised that he would and that he would be faithful. He was. When she wrote during his junior year to tell him she was going to join the rebel soldiers, he flew home and begged her not to go. She didn’t listen and she never returned. He did everything in his power to find her. And when he couldn’t, he still believed she was alive and would come back. It was just three years ago, that parts of her body were found in a mass grave and identified.
Jess sat next to her friend in the noisy chopper. She could see tears rolling down Carson’s cheeks, and although she typically would be the first to ask, there were no questions as they flew back to Chicago. Carson stayed trance-like the rest of the way home and no one interrupted what they imagined was for their dear friend a painfully confusing mix of sadness and joy.
Tomorrow Carson would meet with the news director. On some level, Jess thought, she would be better off if he told her she no longer had a job. Love was worth giving up all your dreams for, she posited; but in a second, she realized she was wrong. We can’t hang our futures on a star we can’t control. Still, how could Carson walk away from him; theirs was clearly a love match. She would never have been able to walk away from David, no matter what else was offered.
Katherine was anxious to return to Alex and Emily. She had time to think over the last few days, particularly on that long ride up the mountain. She and Alex needed to talk; a second child would have to wait. She had walked away from her dream to help create a legal program for women and children like the one she had worked at in DC. There was nothing like it in Chicago. She would give notice to the ACLU and begin to work on trying to create a shelter for abused women and children. When she got back, she would start.
Lauren was thinking of Louie, her precious little boy. He would leap into her arms as soon as she walked into the room. But Doug, that was another story. She needed to get out of this marriage. She had her inheritance to support herself and Louie and she would be fine. She and Doug had talked about divorce before. He threatened that if she left, he would fight her tooth and nail.
“Don’t you dare try, Lauren!” he had shouted. ”If you do, after I get through with you, you will never see Louie again.”
As they descended into Chicago, the sun was setting over the city and the sky all around them was blazing red.
Chapter 11
Stu jumped out of his chair to apologize when Carson walked his office the next morning, his hand outstretched, “You know, admitting I am wrong is something that doesn’t come easily to me, but I was wrong. I pushed you too hard. I hope you’ll stay?” After giving her a substantial raise, he hedged on his apology. “You have to admit, that would have been a great story. Huge exposure for you.”
“Too much. I don’t want to be a crime reporter.”
“It’s part of your job.”
“Yeah, but not all of it.”
“Covering those stories toughened you up, especially the Mafia stuff. It doesn’t get much worse than seeing someone with a body part shoved down his throat.”
“A little of that wouldn’t have been so bad, but not a regular diet. Don’t you think you got carried away?” He laughed and lit a cigarette.
“Years from now, you’ll thank me. I wasn’t kidding when I said you could be a war correspondent.” He laughed again — as always, the best audience for his jokes. “You’ve seen a lot of bad shit, Carson. Now you can handle it. You were impressive, “ and then with his goofy grin again, he said, “Well mostly.” Carson gave him a dirty look.
“Just kidding. You did great and I’m not the only one who thinks so. Your viewer surveys were tops, maybe because you always look like you were about to upchuck when you are covering something bloody. People relate to that, I guess. On camera, you are like a regular person, reacting to the violence, rather than just acting like it doesn’t touch you. The viewers like you and so does the rest of the staff. I got a lot of flak when you walked out. And by the way, you were not the only who was angry about the crap I was dishing out to you.”
“I didn't complain, Stu, never, not once and you dumped an avalanche of gruesome stuff on me, and to make it worse, all those double shifts.”
“That I couldn’t help,” he grinned sheepishly. “Well, not entirely.”
Maybe she was just imagining that he was ashamed of himself, but quickly realized he wasn’t when he said, “I know you’ve got a kid, Carson, but the kid excuse doesn’t cut it. I needed to know you were committed before I gave you the spot we had in mind for you.”
“And now you know? What is it?”
“You’re still going to cover some crime. Everyone does, but your assignments will be more balanced. I promise. We want you to do features and more in-depth reporting.”
Although she intended to play hard to get, her face lit up with those words. He smiled and said, “I knew you were going to like that.”
“To start,” he said, knowing that he was about to hand her a prize, “we have been brainstorming a once-a-week feature called, ‘Who Runs Chicago.’ It’s yours, in-depth profiles of the people who wield the most power in this town, leaders in business, government, the arts and philanthropy. Larry Stevens will be your producer.”
It was hard for Carson to not leap out of her chair and hug him. She tried to look cool and not bubble about how delighted she was. The tables had turned but she would still have to be vigilant and never let him put her under his thumb again.
She called Jess when she got back to her desk. Jess said, “Armando and David were on the phone for an hour last night. He’s head over heels. He was terrified that something might happen to you on the way home.”
“I don’t know what I am going to do with this.”
“Just enjoy it. Don’t judge it until you have to and you don’t now.”
At dinner at the Kingmans the next night, David popped a bottle of Dom Perpignan to celebrate. They were all there with their children except for Lauren and Doug. Lauren had phoned to say Doug was late and they would be there soon.
“I am amazed that you made it so long without telling Stu to go to hell,” David said to Carson.
“I guess I was determined.”
“I had no idea there was so much violent crime in this city until we started watching you on the evening news, and I’ve lived in Chicago all my life. Maybe the station is just reporting more of it now.”
“They are, violent crime is up, a turf war going on with the Mob. There is so much more important investigative work to be done, but the viewers love the violence. When we cover it, our ratings go up.
Lauren arrived with Louie almost an hour late looking upset. This was not the first time the group waited dinner on Doug’s behalf. She apologized, “He called a few minutes ago and said he has a business emergency.”
No one stated the obvious. More often than not, Doug didn’t join them. Clearly, it was embarrassing for Lauren, and although they kept as principle a commitment to be as open and honest as possible with one another, no one pushed Lauren on Doug. She never said a negative word about him, so neither did they. Carson admired her restraint. It was not that Lauren sang Doug’s praises, but she never hinted what they all believed: her life with him was miserable. Yes, he had charm and good looks, the self assurance that came with growing up in an old moneyed family and getting an elite education, but he was cold and unfriendly, and they suspected a difficult and unloving partner for their friend.
Carson waited for the adults to sit down for dinner before she told them about the “Who Runs Chicago” assignment. “It sounds like fun,” David said, pouring everyone another glass of wine. “Did they tell you who you’d interview?
“They haven’t and I don’t have a clue. My guess, for sure, is not as good as yours, You grew up here among the city’s ‘rich and powerful.’ “Who would you guess?”
David started to rattle off names. John Sweringen, CEO of Standard Oil, Bob Aboud, chairman First National Bank “Marshall Field, of course, that lawyer Don Reuben, Harry Weese. Alex named a few, the head of the Art Institute, the new contemporary art museum, a few people in the media.
“There’s Bill Peterson from Reliable Life,” David said. “ He’s just became the chair of the Illinois Committee to elect Ronald Reagan.”
“And there's Victor Blair.” David said. “No one’s as successful in the real estate business than Blair.”
“I’ve never met him, but he gives away a lot of money,” Jess said. “We’re always getting invitations to benefits honoring him as the charity’s man of the year.”
“He is a son of a bitch,” Lauren, who had been quiet all night, said with palpable loathing. Everyone turned to her. Lauren never said a negative thing about anyone, let alone calling someone a son of a bitch. It seemed to come out of her like an uncontrolled reflex.
“Lauren, I’m so sorry.” David said. “I forgot he was married to your mother.”
“Yes, he was, “she said, “for seven years before they divorced. I hate his guts.”
David quickly changed the subject. Lauren continued to be quiet and left shortly thereafter. The children had all fallen asleep watching a movie and she wrapped Louie in a blanket and carried him home. David volunteered to walk her, but she refused.
Carson phoned Lauren the next morning to ask if she was OK. She seemed to have returned to her gentle, sunny self. She was on her way out for a bike ride in the park with Louie. But the intensity of her reaction stayed with Carson. So much so, that when she was told that her first subject in the series would be Victor Blair, she felt afraid.
The Blair Building is a stunning black granite, glass and steel tower that dwarfs the other buildings in the Chicago Loop. The Blair Organization’s vice president for public affairs met her in the lobby and took her to a private elevator that went directly to the chairman’s office on the top floor.
Blair rose from behind his commanding Madagascar ebony desk and walked the considerable distance to the door of his immense office to greet her. Appearing more like an aging, but still extraordinarily handsome movie star than the demon she expected, he smiled warmly and shook her hand. “I have looked forward so much to meeting you. Please sit down and tell me what you’d like me to do."
He was dressed in a soft gray European-style, double-breasted suit, she guessed Armani. Everything he wore: his tie, his cufflinks, his socks, his shoes were perfectly matched as if the designer himself had dressed him.
He led Carson to a group of Barcelona chairs, camel tufted leather and chrome design classics, wide and deep, perfectly suited for a man, but not for women. As she slipped back into the deep chair, her skirt rode up her thighs. His quick, hard stare met her eye. He looked away.
“Please tell me about yourself, Mr. Blair.”
“Where should I start?”
“Anywhere.”
He told her that he was born in Lithuania and came to the United States when he was 16. He bought his first apartment building, a slum property, for back taxes in 1950. “I remodeled it with my own hands. I went to junkyards to find sinks, toilets, doors and windows. I did all the carpentry, plumbing, electrical, everything by myself.”
He continued to buy slum properties and rehabilitate them first with his own hands and then with crews of immigrant workers who, as he had been, were willing to work for far below Chicago’s notoriously high union scale. He was successful, early. “I had a lot of dreams and a lot of confidence. I told myself, someday you'll own this city.”
“And now, you do.”
“Not quite,” he laughed. “Come over I'll show you.”
He led her to the west windows and looked down on the financial district. His office was kidney-shaped. The floor to ceiling glass windows had spectacular panoramic views of the city. It was a clear day with only a few white fluffy clouds in the bright blue sky.
“Which ones are yours?” she asked him.
She already knew the answer to that question and a great deal more about him from the hours she had spent reading the station’s files. Victor Blair controlled hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of real estate in Chicago and proud of his humble beginnings; he had won the respect, indeed admiration, of the Chicago business community. He sat on several boards and belonged to the city’s most exclusive clubs, the Saddle and Cycle, the Racquet Club, Onwensia. And in spite of the fact that he hadn't finished high school, he donned his tuxedo and dined with the Harvard Yale types once a month at the Chicago Economics Club. He was a full-fledged member of the old boys’ network.
But there were some dark spots. In the sixties, after a series of exposés in the Tribune, the Legal Aid Bureau filed a class action suit against him for flagrant building and code violations. It alleged, among other charges, that he was responsible for the death of a baby who froze to death in an apartment building in which he ordered the janitor to turn off the heat because the tenants were late in paying their rent. The suit alleged that heat shutoffs were a regular policy of his. Descriptions of the conditions in the slum buildings he owned on the South and Near West Side of Chicago made Carson’s hair stand on end. There were rat infestations, peeling poisonous lead paint, and dangerously inadequate plumbing and heating. Another of his tactics was surprise eviction. Tenants who were late on their rent or living in buildings he wanted vacated quickly could come home and find all of their belongings out on the sidewalk or their doors bolted shut.
Mike Royko hammered away at him in his column, but nothing happened. He said and he obviously he was right, Blair could never be convicted of any of his purported wrong-doings. “Every building court judge in the city is on his payroll.
Blair pointed to the Riverfront property he had just won the rights to develop.
“That’s my baby over there,” he said, leaning too close for comfort. “Now look that way.” He pointed to Magnificent Mile, North Michigan Avenue, two solid walls of high-rise commercial and residential buildings, with the Water Tower at its jewel. It was well know that the Mag Mile was his vision but that didn’t keep him from saying, “The idea was mine. I pushed hard to make it happen. But it was a natural, don't you think?”
“I don't know very much about real estate, Mr. Blair.”
“Please call me Victor. I would be glad to teach you.” From the way he said it, it was clear that the offer was for a little more than real estate education. She didn’t find it as off-putting as she might. There was something she found very seductive about him and even though he was old enough to be her father.
She asked, “Do you mind if we sit down for a few more minutes? I know you are very busy.”
“Please. I’ll never be too busy for you. When I like someone, I have all the time in the world.”
She asked him about his family. Of course, she knew the answer to that one too. He had been married three times, each time to women progressively younger than the last. Each of his wives had young children when he married them, all girls. Of course, Carson was most interested in Lauren's mother, wife number one. Lauren’s mother was a young widow when she married Blair. She had grown up in Lake Forest on the north shore of Chicago and had married her high school sweetheart, Lauren’s father, while they were still in college. When he graduated, he was sent to Vietnam. They were stationed on an air force base in Honolulu where Lauren and her little sister, Ellen, were born. Her father was killed during the Tet Offensive, his plane shot down over Saigon. Lauren's mother returned to Chicago and, a few years later, she married Blair, who was 15 years her senior. After seven years of marriage, they were divorced. He stayed single for a few years after the divorce, and then married again, this time for six years. After that, he was single for a five years. During that period, the society pages were filled with photos of Blair with considerably younger, all, of course, quite beautiful. He married his current wife four years ago. She had two young daughters from a previous marriage, coincidentally about the same ages Lauren and her sister were when Blair married their mother.
“Do you have children?” she asked.
“No, I have not been lucky enough to have children of my own, but I have step-children I love dearly. Would you like to see a picture?”
“Please.”
He walked over to his credenza and brought over a portrait of his family. His wife was an elegant-looking blonde, as were her two little girls
“What a lovely family!”
“Yes, is there anything more adorable than a little girl?”
“I don't think so. I have one of my own. She’s three.”
“But you're no longer married?” he asked.
“No,” she said and changed the subject. “We were thinking of opening with you walking down Michigan Avenue. And the interview, perhaps, if you felt comfortable, would be in your home.”
“Yes, I like that idea and I think that the girls would enjoy being on television too, if that's OK with you. Do you prefer our apartment at Drake Towers or our house in Lake Forest?”
“I think the apartment would be better, if you don't mind.”
“My wife would like it better if we did it in town. She never goes out to the house in Lake Forest, says she hates it there. Perhaps you know the house. The Armor family built the estate, at the turn of the century. They were in the meatpacking business. It’s called Swan’s Landing.”
“Are there swans? I’ve never seen swans in this part of the country.”
”In the center of the property, there is a lovely pond, quite large. It had been a natural resting place for migrating swans, probably for centuries. Now they are there year-round. It’s a crime that my wife can’t enjoy it. We have tennis courts, a pool and stables. Sadly, most of the time it's empty. I go with my little girls, but the rest of the time the place is hungry for visitors. I’d like to take you there? Perhaps one day you could bring your little girl.”
She thanked him, thinking “not on your life” and also wondered, besides the obvious fact that he had a weakness for women, what was the reason Lauren so passionately disliked this charming man.
“Someday, I will. You’ll like it. But now, let’s make arrangements for the interview.” He called in his assistant and arrangements were made to shoot on the following Monday.
Carson’s dilemma was whether or not to tell Lauren about her meeting with her former stepfather or just to pretend it wasn't happening. She knew telling her would open an already open wound, but she couldn’t not tell her. Lauren would find out.
Carson called her on Saturday morning and asked her to meet at Goudy Park, the gated playground at the corner of Goethe and Astor where they took their children to play.
“I’ll stop on the way and get us some coffee,” Carson said. Louie was already in the sandbox when they arrived. Goudy Park was a playground like none other in Chicago. Although a public park, to compare it to other playgrounds in Chicago would be like comparing a new Rolls Royce to a beat-up old Ford. The children climbed the marvelously engineered play equipment. Cushioned rubber surfaces covered the ground below. Zoe and Louie were quickly at the top of to one of the elaborate, tubular climbing structures. The other children in the park that morning, were accompanied by women in uniforms, or if not dressed as domestics, clearly not the children’s’ mothers.
“Your stepfather is one of my interview subjects for that series we talked about.” Lauren turned away and watched Louie. “I met with him the other day.”
“So how did you like the old man?”
“He wasn't what I expected. From what you said the other night, I thought he would be a beast, but he seems pretty charming.”
“I was in a bad mood. I’m sorry I reacted that way. I was out of line. When are you doing the interview?”
“Monday. Do you have any tips for me?”
“Not a clue. I haven't seen him in 12 years.”
“Are you curious about him?”
“Not really. When will they air the segment?”
“Sunday night.”
The shoot with Blair went extremely well. On camera, he was glowing, elegant and articulate. It was easy for Carson to work with him because he was a natural in front of the camera. They started in front of Blair Corporate Headquarters, drove to Water Tower where she interviewed him as they walked down Michigan Avenue, the street he called “his street.” He talked about developing the Magnificent Mile, his love for Chicago, and his commitment to its growth. A presidential candidate would be lucky to be as poised and articulate on camera as he. They drove to his apartment in the Drake Towers to complete the interview. She hadn’t remembered until the moment his wife greeted them at the door, that she had seen him before. It was at the Field Museum Benefit. He was the man talking to the mayor for so long, and she, the woman in the red Oleg Cassini gown. She seemed as enthusiastic to see him as she might have been if he were returning from a month’s journey. While the crew set up lights for the interview, Carson met his wife's daughters. Sasha, the youngest, was about six, with huge black eyes and a head of blonde ringlets. Daryl was nine with those same gigantic eyes and long thick braids. Carson complimented his wife. They were adorable. Little Sasha was so excited about the television cameras in the house that could hardly sit still. She asked Carson if she would to her room to see her new doll.
“Could the doll be on TV?” she asked.
“I don't see why not.” She took Carson’s hand, and took her down a long corridor to the family quarters.
“That's Daryl’s room. It's bigger than mine. Daryl's bedroom looked like the room of a princess. Her bed, in the center of the room, had a pink moiré silk valance suspended from the ceiling; lace curtains surrounded a headboard painted with cherubs and flowers. The room was filled with dolls, the most fantastic collection of dolls Carson had ever seen.
Sasha’s room was similar, only pale yellow. But unlike her older sister, she only had one doll. She handed it to Carson.
“Don’t you think she's beautiful? She's a present from Uncle Victor. I love her.”
When the crew was finished setting up in the living room, they asked Blair to sit in a chair next to the fireplace. He called his stepdaughters.
“Sasha, Daryl. Come sit on Uncle Victor's lap.”
Daryl answered angrily, “I don't want to.”
“Then you won't, dear, “ he said calmly. Come on, Sasha darling. Your friends from school will all see you on TV.”
He lifted Sasha up onto his lap. “This is the most wonderful little girl in the world,” he said and he kissed her tenderly. And you are wonderful too, Daryl,” he said to his older stepdaughter who sat by herself at the other end of the room, appearing to be having a bad day. Carson could see he was irritated with her. She didn’t blame him.
“It's a difficult age,” he said apologetically. “She’ll outgrow it.”
The whole scene seemed idyllic to Carson, who found herself feeling a bit envious. She had wished that she might some day meet a man who would love Zoe the way this man seemed to love his stepdaughters. He was obviously completely enchanted with them. Perhaps Armando would be that man. It was too soon to think about it, although he had phoned her almost every night since she got back to Chicago and he never failed to ask her about Zoe. Suddenly, they were sharing their lives, only sharing them over the phone, but still, they were becoming increasingly close as the weeks went by. Neither could leave their work for a time together right now, but they promised they would make it happen soon.
When the interview with Blair was over, he insisted that the crew stay for lunch. “We’ve all been expecting you to stay, and our cook has prepared a special luncheon in your honor, “Victor’s said,” We’ll all be so disappointed if you don't join us. You do have to eat.”
Carson didn’t want to stay, but he pressed her and, in fact, this was the last location of the day. So the crew had lunch with the Blair family served by two people Blair said had worked for him for the last 20 years. It was a feast, four courses, each exquisitely prepared and presented.
Blair was kind and complimentary, both to his own staff and the crew. That impressed Carson. She was always more interested in the way people treated their help than in how they treated their guests. He seemed an extraordinarily charming and charismatic man. She was most impressed with his relationship with his stepchildren. He was unusually loving and attentive. Sasha was all over him, crawling up on his lap during lunch, her arm around his neck. Her mother told her to get down, but Blair insisted that she stay. The older child remained sullen and quiet. She didn't speak more than a word or two during the entire stay, nor did she seem to touch the food on her plate.
During lunch, Blair asked if Carson had a photograph of Zoe. Coincidentally, Lauren, who was constantly photographing their four little ones, had just given Carson a wonderful picture of Zoe wearing one of her princess getups, this one a short turquoise nightgown, almost the same color as her eyes. She had managed to put at least a dozen colored plastic barrettes in her hair, which was so blonde it looked white.
She said, “This photo makes me laugh every time I look at it,” and she couldn’t help laughing when she showed it to him.
“Why are you laughing?” Blair asked, then put on his reading glasses and looked closer,” Well, perhaps I see,” he said, laughing too,” She is adorable.”
“Girls, look at Carson's daughter. Isn't she cute?” They looked at Zoe’s picture with not much interest. Carson reached for it. “Just a minute,” he said. He held it far away so he could see it better and looked at it for what seemed like an inordinately long time. He smiled. “She’s charming, Carson. You're very lucky.”
Playgroup was at Lauren’s house the next day. Carson held on tightly to Zoe’s hand as they climbed the graceful, but for Carson, always frighteningly dangerous curved marble and steel staircase to the floating balcony-like living room 15 feet above. Even though a barrier of sturdy clear Plexiglas surrounded the perimeter of both the room and staircase, every time she took Zoe to Lauren’s, she felt afraid that one of the children would somehow climb over the edge and get hurt. When she mentioned her fear to Lauren’s husband, Doug, he said: “You sound like my wife. You’re both paranoid. With the Plexiglas surround and the other safety features I put in, the house is as safe as a suburban bungalow.”
When Carson got to the top of the stairs, Lauren carefully unlatched and re-latched the gate. As soon as the children were settled, Katherine brought up the Chicago series. “Congratulations on moving from the bad guys to the good guys. I enjoyed the first interview. Did you see it?” Everyone but Lauren had.
“It was Blair,” Carson said cautiously. “Do you mind if we talk about it?”
“Of course not, go ahead.”
Jess turned to Lauren, and in her typically blunt way, asked, “Why do you hate him so much?”
“I just got carried away the other night. I’m sorry.”
“How old were you when they divorced?” Katherine asked her.
“I was 13 and my sister was 11.”
“You have a sister?” Jess and Katherine said almost in unison. Carson had been surprised when she read in Blair’s bio that his first wife had two daughters. While she assumed that the four new friends couldn’t possibly know everything about each other, she did think that they knew the basics.
“She’s been in a psychiatric hospital since she was nine.”
“That's horrible.” Jessica gasped. “Where?”
“Marionjoy Manor in Wheaton.”
“Do you ever see her?”
“Every week.”
“How bad is she?” Katherine asked sympathetically.
“Very. She’s catatonic, has been for 20 years. She sits in a room just staring straight ahead. The doctors say that she has no idea I’m there, but I don't believe it. I hold her hand and talk to her. Sometimes I feel like she responds, just a little. I think she knows it’s me.”
Jess asked Lauren about her mother and father and Lauren told them the story that Carson already knew, although she hadn't told her she did. She talked about her parents and what she knew about their life before her father died.
“So your mother moved back to Chicago and she married Victor Blair....”
“Three years later. I was five and Ellen was three.”
“He must have been crazy about you,” Jess said. “He looks like he loves little girls.”
Lauren didn't respond. She looked down at her hands. Carson had never noticed it before that her fingernails were chewed away.
“What did you think of him?” Jess asked Carson.
“I hadn’t planned to like him, but I did. He’s a very impressive man, very powerful and at the same time kind. I think he’s a bit of a womanizer.”
“How would you know?” Katherine said laughing.
“My guess is you’d find it to be pretty obvious, but he is charming despite it.”
“Having his little girl on his lap was a very nice touch. Was that your idea?” Katherine asked.
“No, it was his. I had nothing to do with it. He insisted. I was really taken by how cute he was with the girls. He loves those children. That’s what I liked the most about him, how crazy he is about them.” Carson looked at Lauren. She was chewing her nails, staring anxiously at the children who were playing at the other end of the room. It occurred to her that Lauren was upset, but she went on. She should have stopped.
“He’s so sweet with them,” Carson continued. “He calls them over for a kiss or to sit in his lap. It's very cute. The older one was mad about something, so she didn't go near him. But the little one, they were inseparable. He says he tries to spend as much time as he can with the girls. He told me that he has a large estate in Lake Forest the girls love. Their mother doesn't like it, so he makes special time there with the girls. He says they are at an age where they squabble so he takes them one at a time. There is a beautiful pool and a lake on the grounds, gorgeous gardens...”
Carson looked at Lauren. She was perspiring, her face was flushed red. She looked as if she was about to jump out of her skin. Whatever caused her to feel the way she did toward her stepfather wasn’t clear, but Carson realized how insensitive she had been to babble on so thoughtlessly. Not sure that anyone else noticed, she changed the subject as quickly as she could, but it was too late. Lauren was undone and didn't seem to recover. She was jumpy, even yelled at Louie, something they had never seen her do. She seemed relieved when it was time for them to all go home. Jessica and Katherine left with the three girls. Zoe left with home with Katherine to spend the afternoon with Emily.
Carson lingered, hoping she could apologize to Lauren for being so insensitive.
“I’m sorry about the conversation about your stepfather,” she said as soon as the others had left. “I should have realized it might make you feel uncomfortable.”
“Don’t worry about it. I shouldn’t be so emotional. I’m just not feeling well. I think I need to lie down for a while.” They walked to the stairs. “Louie, you stay here. I’m going to walk Carson down. I'll be right back.”
The two women stood and talked at the door. “I just have so many bad memories about that time in my life.” At that moment, Louie cried out to her. “I’m coming Mommy!” The gate was wide open. Louie went careening down the curving two-story staircase, his head repeatedly hitting the marble stairs after he was knocked unconscious with the first blow, his little body rolling lifelessly to the landing.
Chapter 12
Lauren never stopped screaming from the minute Louie head cracked against that first marble stair until the ambulance pulled into the circular driveway of Children’s Memorial Hospital. “I’ve killed my baby. I killed him,” she screamed.
“Can you please try to calm her down?” one of the paramedics asked Carson who squeezed next to Lauren in the ambulance. They could hear Louie’s steady heartbeat amplified by a monitor they quickly attached, but he was unconscious, his skin ashen, almost gray. An oxygen mask covered his tiny face. The paramedics hooked more monitoring equipment to him as the ambulance tore north past Lincoln Park to the hospital
“Lauren, honey, please,” Carson pleaded. “You didn’t kill him. He’s going to be OK. Please try to calm down.”
Two nurses and a doctor ran out to meet the ambulance. Carson and Lauren followed as the paramedics raced Louie on the stretcher to the emergency room. They were taking his vitals and yelling information to each other as they ran along the side of the stretcher. At one point Louie’s little arm fell lifeless off the side of the stretcher. Carson could feel Lauren flinch as if someone had kicked her in the stomach.
“Mrs. Hutchinson, do you have a doctor here at Children’s?”
“Dr. Rice,” she said.
“And, please,” I said. “Page Dr. Phillips, Alex Phillips.”
“Is he also the child’s doctor?”
“No.” Carson said, “He's a close friend.”
They pulled a curtain around the examining area where Louie was taken. There were at least 10 doctors and nurses around the table, all moving with urgency and rehearsed precision. More were coming, bringing equipment on carts. A nurse took Lauren's hands, and said very gently, “Mrs. Hutchinson, it would better if you would sit out in the waiting room. I promise, we will take the best care possible of your son.”
Carson led Lauren out into the waiting room. All the life had been drained out of her. Carson too felt like she was floating in space. The image of Louie careening down those stairs kept flashing in front of her eyes. She shared Lauren’s terror as if he were her own child. She shared the guilt for not noticing that they had left the gate open and for not being able to move fast enough to save him. Would he live? If he did, how much damage had been done to his brain, to his spinal cord? What would be left of the bright, forever-in-motion little boy? Would they ever hear that throaty, sweet laugh again, watch him run to catch a ball? Would he able to learn to read, to walk again, to speak?
Alex got off the elevator and raced into the waiting room. He didn't see them.
“Alex, we’re here,” Carson called to him. He put his arms around Lauren and she disintegrated into tears.
“He'll be OK, Lauren. Just try to hold on.” He held her close to him and she sobbed into his chest. “I’m going to see what’s going on. Carson, can you stay?”
“I wouldn’t leave her for anything in the world.”
As he walked away, Carson lost control and couldn't hold back her tears. “I’m sorry, Lauren you don't need me to do this. I’m so sorry.”
“Please Carson, I am just so grateful that you are here with me.” They stood sobbing, their arms around each other. After a few moments, Jessica and Katherine arrived. Lauren’s housekeeper had phoned.
“He's going to be OK,” Carson said, lying to them as she was to herself. She explained what had happened, but had no answers to their questions about his condition. They stopped asking and the four found a corner to sit together in the crowded waiting room. Jess and Carson sat on either side of Lauren, holding her hands; Katherine sat at her feet. “He'll be OK. I know he’ll be OK,” they kept repeating like a prayer.
Children, with runny noses and hacking coughs played around them in the toy-filled waiting room. The television’s unceasing babble lulled waiting parents and children, their eyes fixed to the screen. Some slumpted over, sleeping in their chairs. Others held sick children in their arms, worried, powerless. The sun poured in through the large picture windows. After a while, they were too numb to speak. It seemed like hours later when Alex came out of the emergency room and walked toward them. They leaped up to hear what they hoped would be good news. He tried to smile, but his face revealed the truth they did not want to hear.
“His vitals are stable, his heart, his lungs. We’ve x-rayed every inch of his body. There are some broken bones, the tibia of his left leg and his right shoulder, his skull is fractured, but there is no injury to his spine or his neck.”
“Has he woken?” Lauren asked anxiously.
“No, not yet.” You could tell that he was trying to think of something upbeat to say, but he couldn't seem to find the words.
“Is he going to be OK? Please, just tell me the truth, Alex,” her voice was filled with terror.
He looked directly into her eyes, and said very gently, “I wish I could tell you, Lauren. But there is no way of knowing at this point. Bill Seymour is with him. He’s one of the best pediatric neurologists in the world. We’re doing everything we can. I know how terrible this is for you and I want to be able to tell you that he’s going to be fine, but we just don’t know yet. We just have to be patient.”
The four followed Alex into the brightly lit emergency room. There were large murals of clowns and animals, and in spite of the fact that most of the children being cared for in this facility were gravely ill, there was a cheerful, almost festive atmosphere. Carson appreciated living so close to Children's Memorial, one of the best children’s hospitals in the world, but had hoped she would never have to see the inside. He led them past dozens of children being treated in curtained-off beds to the small room where Louie lay motionless, the lights dimmed. He was wired to several beeping machines. The only one Carson recognized was an intravenous line. His face was badly bruised, but some of the color had come back. They were supplementing his breathing with oxygen. His leg had already been set in a cast and a restraining device held his head and neck in place. His hands were in restraints to keep him from pulling at the tubing if he woke. Two young nurses were attaching small suction devises to his forehead when they entered.
Lauren started to cry hysterically when she saw him. He looked so helpless. A physician poured over a printout of the EEG, looked up at the four terrified-looking women, not knowing which was the mother of his patient. Alex said, “Dr. Seymour, this is Lauren Hutchinson, Louie's mother. This is my wife, Katherine, and our friends Carson Brown and Jessica Kingman.”
Dr. Seymour’s explanation of Louie’s condition was not any more satisfying than what Alex had told them.
“You must know more.” Lauren said. “Please tell me what’s going on.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Hutchinson, it’s all we can tell you. We are going to move him up to the intensive care unit in a few minutes. Dr. Phillips has requested a private room. We’ll just have to watch him and wait.”
Lauren turned to her friends. “You ought to go home. Really I’m fine and you’ve…”
Jess interrupted her. “There’s no way you’re going to kick us out of here.”
“We're not leaving,” Katherine said.
“But you all need to see your kids.”
“Alex is going home to have dinner with Emily and once he gets her into bed, he’s coming back,” Katherine said.
Carson told her that she had phoned Jess’s house and Zoe was spending the night She asked to talk to Zoe, who said she didn’t have time to talk to her because she was too busy playing. “So forget about getting rid of us,” Carson said. “We’re not leaving you until Doug gets here.”
When Doug did not arrive, Carson called his office. His secretary said she would track him down. She didn’t tell her how serious Louie’s condition was, just that he had suffered a bad fall and that they were in the emergency room at Children’s. She phoned his office a few more times, and each time his secretary said she had given him the message.
At about seven, transport took Louie to a private room in intensive care. The nurses gently lifted him into a hospital bed and reattached the monitoring equipment that registered information on the screens in his room and on the monitor at the nurse’s station. They pulled up the safety bars on his bed and latched them into place.
“Oh God,” Lauren began sobbing again. “He might never come out of this.”
In fact, there was no way to tell how much damage had been done. There was some reassurance in the unnerving but constant beeping, the replication of his heartbeat on the heart monitor, the signal when medication passed through the intravenous feeding tube, the sound of his hollow breathing amplified by the supplemental breathing device. Lauren stood in the doorway, her hand squeezing her jaw, watching. Katherine stood close behind her, as if she might fall. It was an hour before the nurses finished settling him in to the room. Doug was still not there.
Carson phoned their house. The Hutchinson’s’ housekeeper answered. “Alice, have you heard from Mr. Hutchinson?”
“Nothing. Is the baby alright?” she asked fearfully.
“We’re not sure. I’ll phone you if we have any news. Can you see if you can find out where Mr. Hutchinson is?”
“I’m sorry. I have no idea how to find him. Sometimes,” she hesitated, “he just goes away.” Her voice trailed off.
The nurse turned down the overhead lights in the room. There was a recliner chair for Lauren and they brought in three more chairs for the others. Lauren couldn’t sit. She paced back and forth. Jess suggested they walk down the corridor, but she said she couldn’t leave the room.
When Alex returned, he gave Lauren a supportive hug and kissed Katherine. He listened to Louie’s heart and then touched his cheek. He examined him lightly and stood for a minute looking down at him. Carson wondered if he was silently saying a prayer. He turned around quickly and studied the notations made during the last hour in Louie’s chart.
“Nothing’s changed,” he said. “At least, we have no bad news. Have you eaten anything?”
“Not really,” Katherine said. “Just coffee.”
“Dr. Seymour’s taking care of Louie, but I’m the doctor for the four of you. You have to eat, especially you, Lauren. You need your strength.”
“I'll go down and get something from the cafeteria,” Jess offered.
Alex put his hand on Lauren’s shoulder. “Come on, Lauren, I’m taking you for a little walk, just for a minute. I want to talk to you.”
“I can't leave the room, Alex. I really can't.”
“Just a short walk. Katherine and Carson will stay in the room with Louie.”
They walked the long corridor, Alex’s arm around her shoulder. From his hand gestures, it appeared he was explaining something technical to her. She looked up at him and then nodded her head to say she understood. He put his arm around her again as they continued to walk.
“What a wonderful man he is, Katherine,” Carson said.
“He’s a very good friend.”
“And I am sure, a good doctor,” Carson said.
“It’s friends she needs now, she needs us all now,” Katherine said.
“Where the hell is Doug?” she whispered, though Lauren and Alex were still quite far down the corridor.
“I don’t know. I called his office three times. His secretary said she gave him the message. I called Alice and she said that he hasn’t come home. Do you think something is wrong with him, too?”
“I think something’s always been wrong with him,” she said angrily.
When they returned to the room, Lauren sat down for the first time as close to the bed as she could get. Doctors came and went. Every few minutes, Lauren stood and touched Louie’s face, “Mommy’s here, sweetheart. Please wake up, just for a minute.” She stroked his face and ran her fingers down his arm, softly touching his little hands that lay so lifelessly at his sides. She took his hand in hers. “Wake up, darling,” she begged him, tears running down her cheeks.
Visiting hours ended, but they didn't move from their chairs. A while later, a nurse came in and said it might be a good idea for them to leave and get some sleep. They didn't expect anything to change that night. No one budged.
“I’m not leaving my child,” Lauren jumped at her.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Hutchinson. Of course you’ll stay. This chair will recline so you can sleep, but perhaps your friends can go home.”
“We’re her family,” Carson said. The words came out without thinking about them, but that’s what they were. They were her sisters and were not going to leave her.
The phone in the room rang at about 11. Lauren picked it up. It was Doug.
“It’s not good, Doug.” Through her sobbing she tried to describe what happened. “No, they don't know. No, I'm sorry. No, they don't know. I’m sorry, Doug. No. Yes I did. No, I am careful. Please Doug.”
Although the others were sitting several feet away, they could hear him shouting. She dropped the phone and fell to the ground, her sobs loud and mournful. Jess ran to her and wrapped her arms around her. She held her, rocking her in her arms like a baby.
Carson picked up the receiver, which was dangling off the wall. “Hello Doug. It's Carson.”
“What the fuck did that stupid bitch do to my son?” he yelled so loud she had to move the receiver away from her ear. “What the hell did that fucking idiot do?”
“She didn’t do anything, Doug. It was an accident.”
He yelled, “She’s not fit to be a mother!”
“Doug, calm down. It isn't anyone’s fault.” Her hands were shaking. She wanted to scream back, to say, “Where are you, you asshole? It’s your fault for making her try to raise a child in that dangerous monument to your fucking steel fortune,” but she controlled herself and asked calmly, “Doug, when are you coming?”
“I’ll be there tomorrow.”
"Tomorrow? Where are you?" she said incredulously.
“None of your fucking business, Carson,” he said and slammed down the phone.
It was a very long night. No one slept, not even for a minute. By morning nothing had changed. There were more tests, more doctors. Louie just lay there, his eyes closed, without the slightest movement of a finger, an eyelid. It was terrifying. Lauren became increasingly more fragile. She sat listless in her chair, her eyes fixed on her child. They took turns talking to him, hoping that he could hear. Carson had to go to work; her schedule that week filled with interviews that could not be rescheduled. She had called in to cancel the day before, but there was no way she could do it again today. Today they would tape another interview for the “Who Runs Chicago” series, a man named William Peterson, the Chairman of Reliable Life Insurance. Jess and Katherine would stay.
She hugged them all when she left, promising to be back later. “I love you Lauren,” she said and realized as the words came out of her mouth, how much she did. She loved them all.
Carson phoned the hospital every hour throughout the day. There was no change. She stopped at home to spend some time with Zoe before going back that night.
There was a message from Armando on her answering machine. David had called him to tell him about Louie’s accident.
“I wish I could be there,” he said. “Perhaps there is some way I can help you and your friend.” Indeed, she wished that there were something he could do. Of course there wasn’t. Even more, she longed to see him. He offered to come but having him in Chicago right now would be impossible. Carson could barely make enough time to see Zoe, let alone the man who she would now admit had swept her off her feet.
Millie was settled on the couch when Carson left. She brought along clothes to spend the night. The next day, Millie moved in permanently. “You need to be with your friend right now and it’s easy for me to stay here. “ It was never in Carson’s plan, but Millie’s decision was a godsend, especially during the roller-coaster months that would follow.
When Carson got back to the hospital, Doug was pacing back and forth outside the room. He apologized as soon as he saw her. “Carson, forgive me, I was so upset last night. I didn't mean to talk to you that way.”
“I understand, Doug. How is he?”
“No change. You were there when it happened?”
“Yes. Where's Lauren?” She didn't want to discuss it with him. He pointed to the room.
When Carson entered, Lauren got out of her chair very slowly. Her eyes were swollen and red. Carson put her arms around her. Her body felt as limp and lifeless as her comatose son. Katherine and Jess were both there.
We’re taking turns talking to him. I think he hears us,” Jess said. There was no indication that there was any response. He looked exactly as he did when Carson left that morning.
His cheeks were warm when Carson touched them, but his skin was pale, almost waxy. They had removed the oxygen and he was breathing on his own. Someone had parted his blonde hair and combed it to the side. The tracks left by the comb were still in his hair.
“Louie, sweet baby,” Jess said. “Louie it’s me, Jess. Sophie says I should tell you to come over to our house. She wants to play with you, Louie. She wants to go to the zoo with you and Zoe and Em and see the baby elephant.”
“Any news?” Carson asked Lauren. Jess kept talking to Louie.
“Nothing.”
“What do they say?”
“He may wake up at any moment and be perfect. Or he may never wake up again.” She looked at Carson with horror. “I can't believe this is happening. They can't tell how much damage has been done, Carson. They still can’t tell me anything.”
Alex walked in. “Why don't they know anything, Alex? I just don't get it.” Lauren said.
“The brain, Lauren, it’s a mystery, the most mysterious part of the human body. We just don't understand it yet. We are light-years ahead in our understanding of virtually every other organ. But for the brain, the technology just isn't there, for diagnosis, even for totally understanding its functions, how it heals, why it heals. There is just no way of assessing what damage is done. It’s possible that everything is going to be fine. We have to pray for that. They are doing everything they can. We just have to wait and watch.”
Lauren had the strength and presence to say, “Alex, I can't believe you are here again. Don't you have any other patients?”
He looked down at Louie “This guy is my most important patient.”
“You haven’t gone home,” Carson said to Lauren. She was still wearing the clothes she had on yesterday. “Why don't you go home and rest? I’m going to spend the night. Millie’s moved in.”
Doug, who had been smoking in the family-waiting lounge, came back into the room. He did not acknowledge the others or even look at Louie.
“Alex, may I talk to you for a few minutes?” he asked. Doug looked awful. No matter what was going on with him, they knew he loved his child.
Doug and Alex walked down the long hall together. When they finished, Doug came back into the room and walked over to the foot of his son’s bed, standing silently for a few moments before. He did not acknowledge Lauren, but turned to the others and said: “It's silly for me to stay. You’re all here.”
Lauren looked at him like a worried mother. “Get some rest, Doug,” she said.
“I’ll see you in the morning.” He nodded not looking at her. There was no goodbye kiss, not even a comforting pat on the back. He grabbed his briefcase and stomped out of the room.
None of them had slept. When the lights went off on the floor, the four friends fell asleep in their chairs. Through the night, they heard the nurses and doctors come and go. At one point, Alex came in with a resident and brought bedrolls from the resident's lounge. The four slept on the floor. When Carson woke up at about five, Lauren was sitting in a chair next to Doug’s bed. The guardrail was down and she rested her head at his side.
“Anything?” Carson asked.
“Nothing.” Tears rolled down her face.
“You didn't sleep at all?” Carson asked.
“Just for a minute.”
“You can’t go on without sleep.”
“Neither can you, Carson. I can't believe that you are all still here.”
The three never did leave her. They kept a vigil. During the next two weeks, at least one of them was always at her side. Doug was in and out, but pretty much on his normal work schedule. They picked up clothing and meals, whatever she needed.
Alex came frequently throughout the day and night to check on Louie, each time talking to the silent little boy. “Louie, it’s me, your buddy Alex. I’ve got a message for you from Emily,” or something like that.
Jess’s husband, David, came often too. Both men included Zoe in the extra time they were spending with their daughters to make up for the time Jess and Katherine spent with Lauren. Louie remained the same, absolutely still except for his slow, steady breathing.
They were there together every day. They watching him, praying for the tiniest movement, some kind of sign that he would be OK and they talked. Some of their conversations lasted a few minutes, some hours. They tried to avoid painful topics; but it was hard to do. As the days went on, the chances of a full recovery seemed slim. They tried to be upbeat, to keep their hopes up, but they were all depressed and afraid.
One night Jess came into to the hospital room grinning. She had stopped at Carson’s house on her way over to drop off Sophie for an overnight with Zoe and Millie. She had a small gift box from Tiffany’s in her hand.
“You're in trouble, Carson,” she said.
Carson had no idea what she was talking about.
“What is going on? Your baby-sitter said that someone has been calling and sending flowers. This came from him. Is it Armando? Your house looks like a florist’s shop.”
“No.”
“Then who?
“Just forget about it, Jess,” Carson said irritably.
“I’m not going to forget about it.”
Katherine echoed Jess's teasing, both of them hoping for something happy to talk about.
It wasn't a happy subject. Lauren's stepfather, Victor Blair, had been sending flowers since a few days after the show aired, the first bouquet arriving, ironically, the day that Louie fell. The last thing she wanted to talk to Lauren about was Victor Blair.
“Just open it.” Jess handed Carson the box.
“I'm not going to,” Carson said angrily.
“Come on,” Jess said. “Who is it?”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Just drop it, Jess. This is someone I want to get rid of, someone who has been bothering me.”
“Well it looks like he won't take no for an answer,” Jess said.
The first bouquet seemed like a nice gesture. It was accompanied by a polite thank-you note. Carson didn’t think about it. She was so involved with Louie’s accident, trying to make arrangements for Zoe so she could be with Lauren as much as possible. A day later another bouquet arrived. The note read, “You should always be surrounded by beauty.” It was harmless, but annoying. She didn't want to have anything to do with Blair and thought if she ignored him, he would go away. The flowers kept coming. Carson told Millie that if another came, she should send it back.
Lauren smiled at Carson. “OK, just tell us. We shouldn't have any secrets from one another.”
Talking about this to Lauren was the last thing Carson wanted to do. She was certain that it was something that she had said about Blair that led to Louie’s tragic accident. Something she had said had upset Lauren so much that she forgot to close the gate.
“It's that damned Victor Blair. I really didn't want to talk about it with you, Lauren. He keeps sending me flowers. I thought if I ignored him, he would stop.”
Lauren looked horrified; Jess didn’t notice.
“It looks like he is trying a new tack.” Jess said.” He wasn’t winning you over with the flowers and jewelry. Now he’s trying to win Zoe over with toys.”
“Toys for Zoe?” Carson was furious. “What do you mean, toys to Zoe?”
“She already opened the present. Millie told me a huge box came today, a whole zoo of stuffed animals from FAO Schwartz.”
“Keep him away from Zoe. Keep him away from her!” Lauren shouted. “Stay away from him, Carson!” Her pitch was escalating. “Promise me you’ll stay away from him. Keep Zoe away from him. Whatever you do, don’t let him touch her. Don’t let him touch her,” she said urgently. “Promise me, Carson. Promise me, you won’t let him near her.” She began to sob, deep horrible sobs.
“I have no intention of ever letting Zoe near Blair. I have no intention of ever seeing him again myself. Lauren, please stop crying. I won’t let him near her.”
“He’ll hurt her, Carson, Keep her away from him, “ she became hysterical. Of course, she hadn’t slept a more than a few hours for almost two weeks. They couldn’t calm her down. Now her crying was escalated to wailing. If they couldn’t calm her soon, they would need someone to come in and medicate her.
“Don’t let him. Don’t let him near her.” She was writhing as if in pain. It was frightening for them to see her so out of control.
“I hurt everyone. I hurt my baby.”
“You don't hurt anyone. It was an accident. You’re just exhausted,” Jess said.
“It’s my fault. I hurt everyone I love.”
Katherine held her. She seemed to fall apart in her arms.
Then they heard it. Louie's little, throaty voice, thick with sleep: “Mommy? Please, Mommy, don't cry.”
Chapter 13
To say that life went back to normal after that moment couldn’t be further from the truth. What the women had no way of knowing was that nothing would ever be normal again. Louie did not leap out of bed ready to play. His road back to health was long and difficult; it would take months until a full assessment could be made. At first, Lauren was the only person Louie recognized. His speech was halting and slurred. While Carson, Katherine and Jess went back to their routines, visiting the hospital only during visiting hours, instead of using it as their residence, the tension they felt never lifted. Their fears for Louie exacerbated the new anxiety they all felt about the safety of their own children. Since the accident, their little ones seemed so much more vulnerable and fragile. They kept their eyes glued to their little girls as they played, cautiously watching strangers who came near. They held their breath when one of the children climbed the big slide or the jungle gym and held on to their little hands even more tightly as they crossed the streets. The memory of Louie’s lifeless body careening down that staircase repeated over and over in Carson’s mind and woke her in the night. More often than not, in those dreams, it was Zoe who was falling; and always in the dream, Carson was frozen, unable to move and save her.
A few days after Louie was released from the hospital, they had their first playgroup since his fall. It was touching to see how excited the little girls were to see their playmate and how surprisingly sensitive they were to his, hopefully, only temporary limitations. They approached him cautiously, and even as he grew stronger, they continued to be gentle and more nurturing to the boy who had been the most rambunctious member of their group. Soon, he started being Louie again.
Every time Louie mastered something they had all taken for granted before seemed like a reason for the four friends to celebrate. One afternoon, Jess proposed a dinner out to celebrate Louie’s splendid recovery. Lauren had not left his side since the fall.
“It’s been a long time,” Katherine said. “What do you think, Lauren?”
“I’m not ready to leave him,” she replied glumly as she observed the children play. “I’ll celebrate when I know he is really OK.”
“Well,” Jess said, “then how about just dinner, the four of us, anywhere but in a hospital room.”
“We’ll bring dinner to your house.” Carson said. ” I’ll pick up something great. Is Doug home?”
“No, he’s still out of town.”
“Where this time?” Jess asked.
“I have no idea.”
None of them said anything, but they all shared the same reaction, how could she put up with him?
“It’s actually easier when he is gone.” Lauren said. “He is still so angry at me for the accident.”
“He’s such an asshole,” Katherine said. She had been biting her lip, but she couldn’t hold back.
“No, Katherine, he’s right. It was my fault.”
“It was not your fault, Lauren. That house is an accident waiting to happen. You’ve been trying to get him to move out of there from the moment you conceived Louie.”
It was obvious that Doug was a topic Lauren didn’t want to discuss, but Katherine wouldn’t let it go. “At some point you will deal with it. You can’t keep pretending he’s a husband; he’s not.”
“You don’t have to deal with it right now,” Carson interrupted. “Just start taking better care of yourself and having some fun.”
When they got to Lauren’s roof that night, the sun was setting over the city. The thick, gassy pollution from the heavy industry on the southwest side hung in the air and intensified Chicago’s stunning summer sunset. The sky was streaked bright orange and flaming red. A jet flew on a landing path toward O’Hare, a soft plume of white trailing behind. This time they brought bathing suits. It had been unbearably hot all week, with the heat index reaching 101 that day. Mercifully, the city began to cool as the sun set. As they submerged into the tub, Katherine said, “OK everyone, we can all takes whining. Lauren, you go first. You’re the winner of this month’s right-to-feel-sorry-for-yourself contest.”
“It's hard to complain when you put it that way,” she said. “Louie and I have been the focus of the last six weeks of all of your lives. Let’s talk about the three of you tonight. Louie and I will be fine.”
“OK then,” Katherine said. “It’s my turn. I don't know what’s wrong with me. I feel like there’s an enemy lurking around every corner.” She pulled herself up on the rim of the tub. The hot, bubbling water made the sweltering night air feel cool by comparison.
“It's not just you,” Carson said.
“Seems like we’re all feeling the same way,” Katherine said. I don’t even know what’s bothering me. I just feel like something is wrong.”
Anyone looking down from the surrounding high-rises at the four lovely young women in that idyllic flower-filled roof garden would never be able guess they had anything to complain about. But how would they know? Even up close, the people we think we know best have secret dreams and horrors we would never imagine.
“If no one else wants to start, I will,” Jess said. “I made another attempt to contact my parents.”
“What made you do that?” Katherine asked, looking surprised.
“I don't know, probably the accident. A sense that in a heartbeat, something could happen to them to one of them and I’d never see them again; or that just maybe they’ve changed their minds and want to see their granddaughter. I still send pictures every month. They don’t come back, so they must have them. I imagine my mother running out to the mailbox, hiding the envelope with my handwriting, and opening it alone in a room with a closed door, kissing Sophie’s little face.”
“What happened when you called?” Laura asked.
"My mother answered the phone. I could tell that she wanted to talk to me, but she was quiet. I guess my father was in the room. I talked to her for a few minutes. I just kept babbling. I was so excited that she stayed on the line. My father grabbed the phone and said, ‘Jessica, is that you?’
“I said, ‘Yes, Daddy, it's me. How are you?’
“’It’s none of your business,’ he said. ‘I meant it when I told you that we don't want anything to do with you and your Jew-boy husband. Don’t you call us again.’ Then he slammed down the phone.”
“I hate your parents,” Carson said.
“I wish I did. That would make it so much easier, but I am just so hurt.
“You should stop being hurt,” Katherine said, “and get angry. You have to learn to get angry. If you don't, you are going to make yourself sick again. You’ll turn all that anger on yourself, just like you did when you went into that depression. Learn to be nasty, instead of being so sickeningly sweet all the time? You’re beginning to sound like a marshmallow-mouthed Southerner.”
“She’s right, Carson said, “Just try it.”
Jess took a deep breath and said, “I hate my father.”
“Good,” Katherine said, “Now nastier.”
“I’d like to kick him in the face,” and uncomfortably,” throw him down the stairs. I wish ...You know, this doesn’t really work for me. I’ll try, but right now I’d like to change the subject.” They were silent for a moment and Jess asked Carson, “Whatever happened with Victor Blair? Did you ever get him off your back?”
Carson looked at Lauren nervously. “It’s OK,” Lauren said. “I’d like to know what happened, too. Didn't you say that he had sent you flowers or something like that?” It appeared that was all she remembered of that conversation in the hospital just before Louie woke up.
“He's still harassing me. I asked him to please stop, but he keeps sending flowers and gifts. He’s called several times.” Carson watched Lauren’s face for signs that she should stop. She looked confused, as if she had no memory of what had been said before.
“Why don't you just tell him to fuck off?” Katherine asked.
“I’ve tried to, but I couldn’t use your words, exactly.”
“Why not?”
"It turns out that after his interview aired, Blair bought three million dollars of the station’s air time to advertise his Riverfront development. He wrote to tell me about it. I wrote him back a short, polite note saying how pleased and asking him to please stop contacting me.”
“And?”
“He didn't. They keep coming, flowers and gifts, phone calls. I had a meeting with Stu to ask him about how I could handle the situation, especially the gifts for Zoe.”
“Gifts for Zoe?” Lauren said alarmed. “Has he given Zoe gifts?”
Carson didn’t answer. Lauren obviously had blocked everything that had been said that night in the hospital.
She tried to not answer. Lauren didn’t buy it. “Carson, tell me what happened.”
Carson shook her head. “Just forget it. It was nothing.”
“No,” Lauren insisted. “You need to tell me what happened.”
Carson was afraid of a replay.
“I can tell that you’re upset,” Lauren said. “Just tell me.”
Carson’s eyes darted from Jess to Katherine. She wondered if they had the same thoughts she did. It was a judgment call: If she told her the truth, she could open the wound all over again. But as she looked into Lauren’s eyes, she knew she had no choice. She told her the truth and repeated what she had told them all the night at the hospital. She repeated everything, the flowers, the notes, and the gifts, the toys for Zoe. Lauren didn’t take her eyes off of Carson as she spoke. She kept nodding her head but didn’t say a word.
“I asked my boss how I could get rid of him without making a problem for the station. He told me, ‘It's not just the station that would have problem if you try to get rid of him, it will be bad for you. Why me? I asked him. He said, Blair is a friend of Ted Ahern, the head of ABC-TV Chicago, and Ahern is looking at your contract right now. If I were you, I would just play it cool for a while.’”
Katherine was outraged. “Does that mean he expects you to put up with that jackass?”
“That’s what it means.”
“You can’t do that, Carson. You don’t have to put up with this kind of shit,” Katherine said. “Get rid of him. If they won’t let you, we’ll sue the station.”
The sky was darkening the red fading to streaks of purple in deep smokey blue.
“I can't. I can’t afford to lose my job.”
"They can’t fire you for that, Carson,” Katherine said. “There are laws that protect women from jerks like him.”
“You can’t protect anyone from Victor Blair,” Lauren said.
“What are you talking about, Lauren?” Katherine said.
“He's unstoppable. He has too much power.”
“Tell me what you mean by that,” Katherine said.
“Maybe we should drop this,” Carson interrupted.
“We shouldn’t drop it,” Katherine snapped back.
“What is he doing now?” Lauren asked calmly.
“He keeps calling me and sending gifts. I told him as nicely as I could that I don't go out with married men, but he seems to pretend he can't hear that. I feel like I’m trapped. I’d like to kill this guy and I can’t even be rude to him. He says: ‘I just want to be your friend. All I want is for you to spend a day in the country with me.’ That sounds pretty innocent. It’s not like he’s suggesting anything romantic, nothing like that. He says, ‘All I am asking you for is to come spend a few hours with me and bring your little girl with you.’”
“Don’t let Zoe near him,” Lauren said, her voice quivering.
“I don’t intend to.”
“He’s a dangerous man.”
“That’s what you were saying at the hospital the night that Louie came out of the coma. You may not remember, Lauren.”
“I don’t,” she said, uncomfortably. “What did I say?”
Carson was nervous about answering, but she did. “You just kept repeating, ‘Keep Zoe away from Blair. He'll hurt her.’ You made me promise that I wouldn't let him near her.”
“Oh God!” Lauren gasped.
Carson said: “I don’t understand Lauren. Please tell us why you feel the way you do about him?”
They all knew they were reaching into dangerous territory and Jess interrupted Carson and said: “Lauren, you don’t have to revisit this now. You’ve been through enough. You don’t have to talk about it.”
“You’re wrong. It's important for me to tell you, that I tell you everything. I haven’t talked about any of this with anyone in the world, only my sister’s doctors.” She stopped talking, cupped water in her hands and splashed it over her head.
“What doctors?” Jess asked.
“My sister’s psychiatrists.”
And then she told them her story. She spoke with no emotion, her voice steady and calm. “When I was six years old, Uncle Victor, that’s what I called him, took me to Swan’s Landing, his estate in Lake Forest he told you about, Carson. I loved Uncle Victor. No one had ever been as nice to me as he was. He invited me to have a special day alone with him and of course, I said yes. He said it would be a wonderful day, just the two of us. He had the best car, a big vintage Mercedes convertible, black with deep and wide camel leather seats and interiors. I believe he still has it. I’ve seen it parked in the driveway of his building.
“We drove north on Lake Shore Drive from our apartment along the lakefront, past the city. It was spring and the lake was turquoise blue. That was my favorite color. On the way we sang songs. He taught me show tunes from ‘Oklahoma’ and ‘My Fair Lady,’ and songs from plays that were on Broadway long before any of us were born. He let me sit in the front seat right next to him. I could never sit there when my mother was with us. It was her seat. ‘Today,’ he said, ‘my little flower, it’s our day. You sit next to me up here. We will do anything you want.’
“We drove north along the lake, past the city into Evanston, and he stopped the car at a shop he said had the best ice cream in the entire world. I had two scoops, strawberry and chocolate. I was a very happy child.
“We sat on a bench outside of the ice cream parlor. He held my hand and I held the cone in the other. When the ice cream dripped, he used his soft linen handkerchief to wipe my face. Some fell on my dress and my leg. He wiped it gently away. My mother would have been angry, but he was always so kind. ‘Don't worry,’ he said, ‘ice cream washes away. If not I'll buy you a new dress. When you are with Uncle Victor, don't worry about getting dirty. When you are with me, you can do anything and have anything you want.’
“We drove north along the lake past Northwestern University, and that big white Baha’i Temple that looks like the Taj Mahal, and past the big beautiful houses on the shore. Then we turned left toward Lake Forest. It’s strange how I remember it so vividly. It was the most beautiful day. The windows were open and we sang all the way. The wind blew my skirt up around my shoulders and we both laughed. Uncle Victor put his soft hand on my thigh. I remember how big and warm it felt. We drove and sang until we reached his estate. ‘Ah, look where we are, little one, Swan’s Landing.’ There was a man at the gate. ‘Hello Mr. Blair, good to see you, and is this your little girl?’
“‘Yes, this is little Lauren.’ Uncle Victor was nice to everyone. It seemed to me that he was the nicest man in the world.
“He opened the gate and we drove down the long, winding road to the main house. The house looks like Chambord, the chateau in the Loire Valley. To me then, it was the magic castle, a place where the king and queen and princesses lived. It was spring. I remember the flowers, forsythia, rosy magnolias, daffodils and tulips in bloom. When we parked, he got out and walked around the car to open the door to help me out.
“He bowed. ‘Princess Lauren, I believe.’
“‘Right as usual, King Victor.’ It was a game we played.
“I loved the house. We had been there many times, of course, but always with my mother and sister. This was the first time we went alone. Uncle Victor took my hand and said, ‘A walk, your highness,’ and hand in hand we strolled down the long path to the garden house next to the pond, the pond where the swans come every spring. They were there. We sat on the stone bench and watched the swans. The babies swam behind their beautiful mothers.
“He kissed me on my mouth. My mother didn’t like that; she didn't believe in kissing children on the mouth, but Victor did it all the time. After a while, he took me into the garden house. There was a big old wicker rocking chair next to a picture window overlooking the pond. He asked me to come sit on his lap. I nuzzled back into his arms and laid my head of his chest and he rocked me back and forth in the chair. I loved the way he smelled, his cologne mixed with the musty smell of cigarettes. Does he still smoke, Carson?”
She nodded yes.
“I felt safe and cared for. He touched me very softly, running his hand slowly up and down my legs. He asked me if I wanted him to take off my shoes and socks.
He took them off and massaged my feet. It felt very good. Then he reached his hand under my dress. It was loose, probably one of those smocked Polly Flinders dresses I seemed to be wearing in all the pictures that were taken of me when I was that age. His hand was large, probably almost the size of my back. He massaged me gently. He massaged me all over my body. I liked the way it felt.
“Then he put his hand into my panties, softly touching my bottom, then slipping his finger into the crack. It was strange, but it didn't feel bad. He rubbed me there. I don't know for how long.”
“But you remember the feeling of it?” Katherine asked.
“Yes and it didn't really feel bad. He took off my dress and my panties, very gently really, like a father getting a child ready for bed. I know it is normal for children to forget these experiences, but I remember every second. I remember it like it was yesterday.”
No one spoke. It seemed like all of the sounds of the city had silenced, the traffic, the voices of the people on the streets below, everything. All they heard was Lauren’s story. They clung to every word.
“We sat that way for a long time. He held me and with his fingers explored every part of my body, inside and out. Then he dressed me.
“He said, ‘Would you like to come here again my little princess?’ Of course I agreed.
“Then he gave me a doll, a big doll with blue eyes, her eyelids closed when I laid her down. She was dressed in a white net gown with a beaded veil. She was most beautiful doll I had ever seen.
“That was the beginning of it. Victor took me to the garden house every week. I have read and have been told by Ellen’s doctors that most children blot out these memories. I never have. I remember it all exactly. Not every time, not every incident, but I remember what his hands felt like, what it felt like when he pushed his penis inside me when I was eight. I remember that first time. It hurt and I cried, but he was so pleased and grateful.
“Sometimes my mother and sister came to the estate for the weekends, but the time in the garden house was just Uncle Victor and me. As time went on, he did more and more to me. I remember once he asked me to stand naked on the table. It was a round white wicker table with a glass top. ‘Open your legs for Uncle Victor,’ he said, and he put his tongue inside my vagina and licked me until I was wet.
“‘I will never hurt you,’ he said, but I didn’t know what he meant. I didn’t know he was hurting me. I didn't know how much damage he had already done. By the time I was nine, he had entered every orifice of my body, performed every kind of act it was possible to perform on someone so small. But always, it was with words of love and ceremony and gifts. It was our secret, he told me. I must never tell anyone or they wouldn’t let us come here, especially not my mother. He would say, ‘She would be very jealous if she knew I loved you more than her.’
Lauren’s friends broke down, weeping in the still water like little girls who had been left alone in the night.
“Let’s get out of this tub,” They wrapped themselves in oversized towels and settled into four chairs around a small table. They faced each other, drained.
She continued: “Each time I would go with him, he would give me a doll to take home to our apartment. By the time I was 10 years old, I had hundreds of dolls, the most beautiful dolls that money could buy. I have no idea where he got them. My mother had shelves built. They circled my room. Every time I entered that room the dolls would stare at me with those dead, blank eyes. But I was proud of them; my friends envied me.
“As the years went on I started to hate the dolls. I began destroying them, smashing their heads, ripping out their hair and cutting up their dresses. I was punished for being so destructive, but I never stopped. I started behaving badly in school, not doing my work, being caustic with teachers and other children. The school recommended that I see a child psychiatrist. He was a very kind and gentle man, but I refused to speak to him and soon I stopped going. My behavior got worse; I was always distracted, unable to concentrate, maybe I still am. I am not sure my mother even noticed.
“When I was about 11, I began to realize that I didn't have to do what he was forcing me to do. I began to refuse to go to with him. He was furious with me, but he couldn't force me. I told him that I would tell my mother if he did. He threatened to beat me, but somehow I knew he wouldn't. I don’t know how I got the courage to fight him.”
“Someone should beat his brains out,” Carson said. “You were a baby, Lauren. I'm sick; you weren't much older than our children. I just can't imagine it.”
Katherine still had tears rolling down her cheeks. “How did you ever survive? How did you ever grow up to be the wonderful person you've become?”
“I'm not a wonderful person, Katherine. I’m a terrible person. It gets worse, the story gets worse.”
“How could it? Could anything be worse than what had already had happened to you?”
“Yes,” she said gravely. “Victor stopped talking to me after that. I was no longer his ‘beautiful flower.’ I thought now that everything was going to be all right, but then one day when the school bus dropped me off in front of our building, l saw his big, black Mercedes parked in the driveway. When the doorman opened the door, Victor came out of the building. My little sister, Ellen, she was about seven then, was walking next to him, her hand in his. He looked over at me with a gloating expression, opened the door on my mother’s side of the car and helped Ellen climb up into the seat. I just stood there and watched them as he buckled her seat belt, got into the car and drove away. She looked back at me, with that sweet, innocent little face of hers and waved goodbye. I could see that she was excited with the anticipation of a special day with Uncle Victor, like the ones she thought I had before she was too young to come along.”
Then Lauren broke down. “I didn't stop him. I didn't save her. Everything that happened to her was my fault.”
“Lauren, what could you have done? You were a child,” Jess said.
“Yes I could have done something. I could have saved her, told my mother. I could have done something.” Her body shaking, they were afraid to let her to go on, but she did. “The first doll he gave her had a white dress. She was a bride doll. It sat on her dresser by itself for a long time. It was several weeks until there was a second one, but then there was the second, then another and another.”
“And how long did that go on?” Jess asked.
Her expression was that of a frightened child. As she spoke, she pulled her legs close to her body, curled herself into a ball, her arms wrapped tightly around her legs. “It went on for a few years. I pretended it wasn’t happening, that he wasn’t doing all the horrible things to my baby sister that he had done to me, but I knew he was. I pretended he wasn’t taking her to that house and undressing her and making her put his penis in her mouth, that he wasn't pushing himself into her, that he wasn’t hurting her. But I knew what was going on. I knew and I let him do it. Because on some level, I must have known that if he had her, he would leave me alone.
“Then she got sick. She started refusing to go to school, but they forced her. After a while, my mother couldn’t even get her out of bed in the morning. She would cry, never saying what was wrong. She hid under the covers in a fetal position, sobbing in her bed, moaning like something was hurting her. My mother would sit at the side of the bed begging her to get up, to stop crying. And then she stopped. She stopped crying. But she stopped talking as well. Finally, my mother took her to the same doctor she had taken me to see.”
“The child psychiatrist you had refused to talk to?”
“Yes. But she never talked to him. She never talked to anyone. She has not said a word, not a word since.
“They put her in Marionjoy. She has been in that hospital for the last twenty five years.”
“And your mother stayed with Blair?” Jess asked.
“No. A few years later they were divorced. Then the year that I went to college, my mother killed herself. She drove her car into the front gate of Swan’s Landing. She was going ninety miles an hour.”
“So she knew?” Katherine asked.
“Yes, I believe so. I think she always knew.”
No one could speak.
Then it flashed into Carson’s head, “Sasha and Daryl! Oh my God!”
“What are you talking about, Carson?” Jess said.
“Sasha and Daryl, they're Blair's stepdaughters.”
“Oh no,” Katherine said, as they all were, horror-stricken. “The little one was holding that doll during the interview.”
Carson felt as if she were going vomit, “He’s doing it to them! I’m sure of it. He is abusing those little girls.”
“Of course, he is,” Lauren said.
“He's a rotten son of bitch,” Katherine said.
Wrapped tightly in her towel, Lauren began to rock. Her chair scraped rhythmically against the floor of the deck. Carson was afraid she would topple over.
“What are we going to do? We have to do something,” Jess said.
“There's nothing we can do,” Lauren said. “No one can stop him.”
“That can’t be possible,” Jess said.
“It’s true. There is no way to touch him. He’s too powerful,” Katherine said. “I’ve been there before.”
“There has to be something,” Jess said. “We’ll tell his wife.”
“Are you kidding?” Lauren said. “She won’t believe you.”
Carson thought about Blair's beautifully dressed robot-like wife, how admiring she appeared to be of her husband, how oblivious, “She’s right, Jess. That’s not going to work.”
“Why not? I don't get it,” Jess said. “When she finds out about Lauren and her sister, the dolls, for Christ's sake, it’s the same story repeating itself all over again. Those are her daughters; she won't let it happen to them.”
“The hell she won't,” Lauren said. “She already has.”
Chapter 14
A dream about her father woke Carson, and with the dream, the realization she never appreciated how good he had been to her. He was the one who encouraged her to believe in her dreams, the good ones. She was six when he started letting her do her daily news show for the regulars who dropped into his tavern after their shift at the mill. He cut a cardboard box to look like a TV set and put it on the bar, and helped her up to do her ‘evening broadcast.’ She felt grief she hadn’t experienced fully before, a longing to apologize to him for being such an ungrateful brat. Sadly, it was too late.
She couldn’t get Lauren’s painfully vivid description of what Victor Blair did to her, or what he was now doing to his stepdaughters out of her mind. Surely he was doing the same things to that precious little girl that he did to Lauren and her sister. He had to be stopped. If he came near her child she would kill him.
She wished she could stay home with Zoe that day. She needed desperately to reassure herself that her little girl was safe, that nothing could harm her. Yes, she trusted Millie explicitly. No one cold take better care of a child. She was aware that her own anxiety was the problem, not Millie. Perhaps her assignments would be on the lighter side and she could get home early enough to take Zoe to the beach.
No such luck. The day was the last thing she needed, two mob incidents, one worse than the next. They started at an explosion at the city’s largest commercial laundry. When she arrived, a dozen bodies had already been pulled out of the building. There would be more. She asked the fire chief, already at the scene, if arson was suspected. He said no.
“Could it be mob-related?” she asked. He didn’t answer. She tried to push him. That was what he would expect a journalist to do. Not the case in the Windy City. He didn’t answer her question, just shrugged and walked away.
At the next location, she felt the gentle touch on her shoulder of Bill Stein, the reporter at NBC who had been so kind to her on the first day she covered Chicago style crime. They saw each other almost daily when she was going through what Stu called her probation period, the trial by fire, and they had become friends. Still, like Stu, he enjoyed watching her reaction to the gruesome state of the victims.
“Do you want me to get you a little closer to the corpse, sweetheart?” he whispered as if he were Jimmy Cagney with a cigar hanging out of his mouth. “It’s family.
“How do you know?” she said, no longer afraid to ask.
“Time for another lesson. Look carefully,” he pointed to the victim, a blonde man about 50, dressed in plaid Madras shorts and and am alligator shirt. who had been shot down in his driveway. Bullet holes oozed in his head and the middle of the back. His clubs were scattered a few feet away.
“I am looking, but I don’t get why you think it’s mob.”
“Look at his hand, come on, look at that ring,” he said, pretending to be impatient. On his pinky finger, a ruby ring that looked to be it was at least three karats. Carson nodded but still hadn’t put it together.
“His wallet has over $1,000 in cash. That’s how you know it's a gang hit. They didn’t take anything, didn’t want anything, just his life.”
“Why so much mob violence right now?” she asked.
“White heroin’s coming from Southeast Asia. There hasn’t been any the city since the early 70’s, just brown. The Mob wasn’t interested. It’s controlled by the Mexicans. The white’s coming in through New York, and the Chicago families are at war to control it.”
There was a second shooting. The girlfriend of Jimmy the Bomber Palermo had her face had been blown off. The scion of the stolen auto parts fencing empire in Chicago, Palermo was told that she shared some of his secrets with a competing gang leader. Gang hits were often like that, symbolic in nature. If someone was two-faced, as evidently was the case with Palermo’s girl friend, they would shoot her face off. If the person were an informer, they would slit his throat.
By the time, Carson got home, she was ready to explode. Zoe ran to the door and hugged her and pulled her into the living room, “Mommy, you got a present and I got one too! Open it now, please!”
“She’s been so excited I don’t know what to do with her,” Millie said, smiling.
“Look at my present, Mommy. Isn’t she the most beautiful doll in the world.”
“Where did this come from?” Carson’s yelled at Millie, her eyes darting with anger.
“Someone came in a silver Mercedes. He asked for you.”
“And you let him in the house?” Carson shouted.
“No,” she answered nervously. “We just stood at the door.”
“Why did you open the door for a stranger? This is the city, not rural Mississippi. I told you to be careful!” She saw that Millie was holding back tears, but she couldn’t control herself.
“I’m sorry. He looked familiar and he acted like he knew Zoe. I thought maybe he was a relative of yours, a friend, even a grandparent. He talked to her about the baby elephant at the zoo and she seemed to know him, but when he left she said she didn’t know who he was.”
“What did he look like?” She knew it was Blair.
“He had gray hair, combed straight back. He looked nice, not like anyone to be afraid of.”
“If he ever comes to the door again, don’t answer it! Don’t open the door to anyone you don’t know!”
“He had presents for you and Zoe and I thought he must be OK. I’m so sorry,” she said, near tears.
“Don’t make assumptions,” Carson said. “Don't you ever make assumptions when you are taking care of my child.”
Millie began to cry; in her mind, Zoe was her child too. Zoe began to cry. She clutched the doll tightly in her arms. It was elaborately dressed like the ones in Blair’s stepdaughters’ rooms. Carson grabbed the doll from her, ran outside, opened the lid of the garbage bin, flies swarming everywhere, and threw it in. Zoe was hysterical. Carson knew she should have controlled herself, but she couldn't.
“Don't you ever take gifts from strangers,” Carson yelled at Zoe. She had never allowed herself to lose it in front of her before. She had a long fuse, but she was at the end of it.
When she got control of herself, it took a long time for her to calm Millie and Zoe. Millie was furious and Carson knew it was with good reason. She apologized over and over and tried to calm Zoe with a promise that she would take her to the toy store on Saturday and buy her anything she wanted. “Just promise me you will never take a gift from a stranger again.” Millie remained frosty, even as they walked to Old Town for supper. The streets were crowded with tourists drawn to the charming restaurants, folk and jazz clubs, the fashionable shops and flea market mall filled with head shops, cheap jewelry and clothes from India. She took them to the most festive place on the street, the Pickle Barrel, with baskets of peanuts on the tables, shells all over the floor, and guitar-strumming folk singers. It was their favorite restaurant and a distraction. Carson couldn’t eat. She drank two gin and tonics, but didn’t feel either. By the time the ice cream came, Millie and Zoe seemed to have forgotten Carson’s outburst.
Zoe fell asleep on the way home. After Carson got her into her bed, she went downstairs to get herself another drink. She saw the box Blair left for her still on the table in the living room, she took it upstairs to her room, and shut the door. Inside was a large, white leather-bound photo album; on the cover, engraved in gold was the name Zoe Kirsten Brown. ‘How did he know that? How did he know her middle name?’ Her heart racing, she opened the book.
There was a hand-written note on his cream-colored, embossed personal stationery. “I thought you might enjoy these photographs I’ve taken of your adorable little girl. She’s almost as beautiful as her mother. Give me a call. “
Carson could hardly turn the pages; her hands were shaking so badly. There were at least 50 photographs: Zoe at the playground, Zoe at the zoo, Zoe at the beach. They were taken from every angle and appeared to have been shot, even if with a long lens, from close range.
Carson called Katherine. “He’s stalking her, Katherine. He’s stalking my little girl.”
“Carson, I can’t understand what you’re saying. Wait just a second. I’m talking to Lauren on the other line.”
“Do a conference call. I need to talk to both of you!”
Lauren’s voice was thin through the connection. “Carson, can you hear me? We’re both on. What happened?”
“It’s Blair. He’s after Zoe.”
“What are you talking about?” Katherine asked.
She tried to explain but was so upset she was babbling.
“I don’t understand,” Katherine said. “Calm down. Just slow down and try to explain.”
Lauren interrupted, “I’m coming over.”
“We'll both be there in a second,” Katherine said.
“No, there’s no privacy here. Millie will hear everything we say.”
“Then come here,” Lauren said. “Doug’s still out of town.”
Carson raced past the lighthearted tourists and people gaily strolling on that balmy summer evening toward the upscale bars and restaurants on Rush Street, just a block south of Lauren’s row house. As she walked among them, she felt as if she were in a different universe, out of her body, in a place where danger was everywhere. Her three friends were waiting for her on Lauren’s front steps.
“He’s stalking Zoe,” she said, dropping the album onto Lauren’s lap.
“These pictures aren’t just from one day,” Lauren said, her voice quivering as they thumbed through the pages.
“He must have been following her around for a week, maybe longer,” Carson said.
“We’ve got to stop that son of a bitch,” Katherine said.
“Why is he doing this?” Jess said.
“He’s after her, Jess. Don’t you get it?” Carson said angrily.
“Of course I do. Try to calm down, sweetie.” She reached for Carson’s hand and Carson pulled it away.
“How the hell do you expect me to calm down?”
“I guess I don’t. But he won’t get anywhere near her, “Jess said. “We won’t let him.”
“How do we do that? Hire an armed guard to be with her 24 hours a day?”
Carson paced as the others studied the photos. There were several of Zoe playing with the other two little girls, but in most she was alone.
“This is horrible. Look at this one,” Katherine said pointing to a photograph of Zoe playing at the top of the jungle gym. Shot from below, her skirt was blown up above her shoulders. “It looks like he was right under her.” In another shot, Zoe was bent over, putting a cup of sand on the top of a sand castle at the beach. One side of her bathing suit had slipped up into her bottom. Taken by anyone else, these would be innocent pictures of an adorable little girl, but through Blair’s lens, it was child pornography. Lauren closed the book. Her face was drained of color.
“We’ll get him arrested,” Jess said.
“And how do think we’re going to do that,” Lauren said as if she were talking to a child.
“Of course we can,” Jess said. “He can't get away with this.”
"What am I going to do, Jess?” Carson snapped back. “Go to the police with a photo album? He didn’t touch Zoe. I can't prove a thing.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Jess said. “It’s not the pictures. It’s what he’s doing to his stepdaughters, what he did to Lauren and her sister. I’ll go see his wife. I’ll talk to her. She will go crazy. No woman would allow a man to have sex with her own child.”.
“Really?” Lauren said angrily,” You don’t believe that luxury, furs, diamonds and unlimited charge accounts might make a certain kind of woman blind to what happens to her child? “
Carson’s eyes met Katherine’s. They both had the same thought: Lauren was talking about her own mother. At the deepest level, it was clear that Lauren believed that her mother had know all along what Blair was doing to her.”
“There’s got to be a way to get Blair to prison,” Jess said.
“That’s not going to happen,” Lauren said. “He’s been getting away with it for decades, and he’s going keep doing it as long as he wants. When he’s through with these two, there will be more.
“That’s why he’s following Zoe around.” Carson said. “He wants her next.”
“Of course. You’re perfect for him,” Lauren said. You’d look good on his arm and you’re busy with your work. He probably thinks that would give him plenty of time to get his hands on Zoe.”
“I want to kill him,” Carson said.
“I do too,” said Lauren.
“That’s the only way to stop him.” Carson said,” I’m going to do it myself.”
“Come on Carson,” Katherine said. “You’re not going to kill anyone.”
“It’s the only way and you know that. I have seen enough people get away with murder in this town, maybe I can too.”
“You can’t,” Katherine said.
“Then how am I going to stop him?”
We’re going to do it together, “Jess said. “I still don’t agree that we can’t get enough evidence to have him arrested.”
“Even if we had the evidence and we don’t,” Katherine said, “there would be no chance of getting Victor Blair arrested, let alone convicted. He’s too powerful.
He’d bring in a whole army of lawyers. And it’s not just because he’s rich. Pedophiles, especially the ones who prey on their own family rarely get convicted. It’s too hard to prove abuse. Even the ones that make it to trial get off. They go home and do it again, maybe not to the same child, but they don’t stop.”
Jess said, “We can hire the best criminal lawyers in the country to help us. I can pay for them, anyone you want. Lauren will testify.”
“Stop it Jess. It’s not going to work,” Lauren said. “It will be my testimony, they’d call it recovered memory, me against Victor Blair.”
“Besides that, the statute of limitations ran out years ago,” Katherine said.
“I still don’t get it,” Jess said.
.
“What is there not to get?” Katherine said, “When I worked in the women’s law clinic in DC, what happened to the women who tried to stop sexual abusers was far worse in most cases than the abuse. It’s like that. Women brave enough to try to press charges, expose their deepest and darkest horror stories accomplish nothing. More often than not, in the process, they end up in bigger danger than before.”
“How?” Jess asked. “What could be worse than living with a man who abuses you or worse, your child?”
“How about this,” Katherine said impatiently. “A woman I represented had been beaten senseless by her boyfriend. We had photographs, testimony from her relatives and friends. We encouraged her to file charges. It never went to trial; he didn’t even get arrested. It turned out that the boyfriend was from a wealthy, old Boston family. He didn’t even get a mark on his record. Somehow even the police report disappeared. I ran into her a few months later. Her nose was broken and eyes were black and blue. He wouldn’t leave her alone. She pointed to her face and said, ‘Thanks Katherine. This would have never happened to me if I hadn’t listened to you.’ That was Boston. Chicago is worse. Men accused of sexual abuse, they get off. With someone like Victor Blair, there’s not a chance in hell.”
“And believe me,” Lauren said. “ If anyone tries to go after him, he’ll destroy her life. You can’t imagine what he did to my mother. Don’t mess with him. There’s nothing we can do to stop him, except protect our own children. “
“No,” Carson said, “I have to do something to stop him. People like Blair get away with what they do because people like us let them. He’s violating little girls, who knows how many. Every time he gets his hands on one of them, I am as guilty as he is, as guilty as their mothers, if I know and I don’t do anything to stop him.”
They talked for a few more hours but didn’t make any headway. When Carson got home, she couldn’t sleep. The power had gone out on 48 city blocks, hers one of them. It was easily 105 degrees in her bedroom, or at least it felt that way to Carson, although Millie and Zoe were sleeping soundly in the next room.
She pulled off her nightgown; it was sopping wet. With the windows wide open, the house was invaded by the city; it was like sleeping in the middle of traffic. People from Cabrini Green, the high-rise housing project just west of Carson’s town house, were baked out of their unlivably small, unventilated apartments and walked east like lemmings to North Avenue Beach, just a few blocks away from her house, hoping for relief. She heard their conversations, rattling shopping carts filled with children, blankets and beer. Music blasted from boom boxes. All night she heard them coming, mothers yelling at their children, babies crying.
At about one, another crowd started to fill the streets, singles on their way to or from the bars on Rush Street. They were laughing and shouting at each other as if it were the middle of the day. Carson finally dozed off, but at about two in the morning, she heard a man’s voice below her window: “Suck my cock, you bitch.”
“Fuck off,” the woman yelled back.
“Don't you pull that kind of shit on me.” Then she heard her scream. She jumped out of bed and ran to the window, ready to come to her rescue. He was shoving her into the street. Carson’s adrenaline rushed. She threw on her clothes, ran down the stairs and out into the street. When she got to her gate they were walking together drunkenly, arm in arm. He pulled up the back of her dress and squeezed her behind.
Carson went back to bed. At three, there was still traffic on the street. A bus went by and the exhaust fumes wafted up into her window. She was nauseated and depressed. Finally, she fell asleep. At 4:30 a.m. the phone rang. It was Lauren.
“Carson, are you up?”
“Yes,” she lied.
“I want to apologize for being so negative last night. I am sorry; I just don’t believe that there is anything we can do to stop him.”
“I don’t agree.”
“You heard what Katherine said too. It’s true. You can’t touch him. ”
“I am not a person who believes she’s powerless, Lauren, no matter what the circumstances. I am going to stop him.”
“I’m sorry Carson. There is no way to do that.”
“Watch me.”
Chapter 15
Zoe slumped over her scrambled eggs. “Can I go to work with you today, Mommy?” she asked sleepily the next morning. Carson had woken her for breakfast so they could have time together before she went to work, knowing she did it more for herself than for her little girl.
“I wish you could,” Carson said, touching her cheek
“Can I watch you on TV?
“Tomorrow,” she said. Another “Who Runs Chicago” profile would be aired. She could let Zoe watch that, although she knew it wouldn’t hold her attention for more than 30 seconds. It upset her that some days the only way Zoe could see her was on TV, and now even that wasn’t possible. The station’s decision to pump up the crime coverage made the news too frightening, even for adults.
Her interview to be aired the next day was with Bill Peterson, the CEO of Reliable Life Insurance, which coincidentally was the lead funding partner of Blair’s Riverfront project. Carson found it impossible to bring out anything likeable or interesting about Bill Peterson. He was pretentious and arrogant, his icy blue eyes never meeting hers or the camera. Like Blair, Peterson spoke excitedly about what a windfall Blair’s Riverfront Center would be for the city with its floating casinos, convention center, restaurants, and hotels. She wished she could find a way to ask him about Victor Blair, but it didn’t seem relevant.
She asked him about the casinos, “I thought gambling was illegal in Chicago.”
He told her, “That’s true, but the casinos will be built on a boat floating on the Chicago River, so officially they will not be on city land.” That was Chicago-style logic, the kind of conceptual maneuvering that made “The City that Works” work. Off camera, she asked him about the controversy over bringing gambling into the city.
“It’s foolish, “he said. “Any possible downside is far outweighed out by the enormous influx of tourism and jobs this project will bring to the city.”
“What about the Mob?” she asked.
He roared. “The Mob? Carson; there’s no Mob in Chicago. It’s 1979, for God’s sake. That’s all been over for decades. Believe me, if there were a Mob, and let me assure you there is no Mob here, they certainly haven’t expressed any interest in our project. If there were anything questionable about the Riverfront Center, Reliable Life would be nowhere near it. We insure thousands of lives. It’s the money of our policyholders we invest and we always have their interests foremost in our minds.”
Of course, she didn’t argue. She knew that the Mob was very much alive in Chicago. But like most Chicagoans, she hadn’t a glimmer of how alive it was or how much power and influence it’s members wielded in the city’s government and mainstream businesses.
Zoe pushed her eggs to side of her plate and turned over her toast to lick the jam off the bottom. “How about a little bread with your jam?” Carson said.
“Don’t like it.” She licked off the last it and slipped down from her chair. “I’m done.” Carson knew she should stop her, but she decided not to- when you’re a working mother you have to choose your battles.
“Wait a second,” Carson said, reaching for Zoe so she could wash the jam off her face and hands before she ran off to play.
“I’m busy, Mom. I’ve got to get to work.”
Some day she knew she’d pay for all the times she wasn’t stricter, more consistent, and for the times when she said yes, when she meant no, because she felt guilty for not staying home to take care of her the way she felt her mother should have taken care of her. She wished she could somehow be home more and be a better mother. Nothing was more important to her.
Katherine shared the guilt, but she too, though she didn’t need to, wanted to work.
“Even we do everything ‘right’,” Katherine said,” whatever that means, they’ll complain about us when they grow up. We might as well put away money every week to pay for their therapy and stop worrying so much.”
Carson’s day was a tough one: a heat exposure death in one of the many dilapidated apartment buildings in Uptown. It was not just one death, but two. An elderly woman and her seven-month-old grandson died in her sweltering apartment. Apparently, they had been dead for several days when neighbors called to say a terrible smell was coming from the apartment. The reality of what had happened in those small rooms horrified Carson. Coupled with the unbearable heat, it took all her resolve not to pass out. She agonized about why the woman hadn’t gone for help? Where was the baby’s mother? How could something like this happen with neighbors just down the hall? Under her lightweight suit, Carson was soaking wet. As they filmed the segment in the hallway a few feet from the apartment Carson tried to hold back tears. She spoke gravely into the camera. When it was over, her producer patted her on her back and said excitedly. “You were great, Carson, those tears especially…. a great touch.” It was as if her arm had a life of its own. She spun around and slapped his face. Shocked and embarrassed at what she had done, she apologized profusely. He shook his head and told her not to worry, but it was clear he was angry. The red welt she left on his cheek would stay visible for the rest of the day.
Earlier that day, Jess met Katherine at the playground where Blair had photographed Zoe. While the children played, Jess hoped to talk Katherine into what she believed to be true: if they could hire the right team of experts they could nail Blair. He’d be arrested and go to trial, then spend the rest of his life in a prison. They just needed to identify the most country’s most experienced and talented lawyers, detectives, and consultants, whoever could get it done. Surely someone could.
“We’ve got to get him locked up before Carson’s the one who gets locked up,” Jess said. “How much money is enough to get him?”
“It’s not about money,” Katherine said,” I keep telling you that. “We don’t have a case. I don’t mean to be nasty, but there are some things you can’t get just because you’re rich. “
“You’re saying there is absolutely nothing we can do?”
“That’s what I’m saying.” Katherine couldn’t believe that Jess wouldn’t give up. For someone who had become so depressed not that many years ago that she almost took her own life, her optimistic belief that she could figure out a way to get Victor Blair seemed especially delusional.
Jess said, “Do me a favor, indulge me for few minutes. Just tell me if you were a prosecutor, what you’d need to get him convicted. I know we don’t have the evidence but if we did, what would it be? What would you need to build a convincing enough case to get him? How many victims would have to testify? How many witnesses? What kind of professional experts?”
Katherine outlined the kind of credible witnesses and evidence they’d have to find. As she spoke she punctuated each item with a pessimistic “and we can’t get that,” or ‘she won’t testify,’ or ‘we don’t have physical evidence’ or ‘we don’t have pictures or video’, or ‘we don’t have psychiatrists who have seen the children.’
Finally, Katherine said, “You have to give it up on trying to stop Victor Blair through the legal system. It won’t happen. I want him in prison as much as you do, but we are going to have to find another way.” They watched the children play for another hour. Suddenly Jess’s face lit up, “Oh my God, I have a fantastic idea. I’m not sure exactly how we will pull all this off.”
By the end of that day they did.
Chapter 16
When Carson got home, the shutters were closed and the electricity back on. It was dark and quiet on the first floor and finally cool. She called up to Zoe assuming she and Millie were playing upstairs. When there was no answer, she panicked; something was wrong. Blair came and took her! She ran up the stairs, her heart racing, and then remembered the plan was for Zoe and Millie to stay at the Kingmans’ until she called. She phoned Jess, who sounded like a happy, suburban housewife.
“They’re in the pool having the time of their lives,” she said. Jess and David had one of the only single-family homes in Chicago with what felt like - although it wasn’t - an Olympic-sized pool. “David's teaching the girls to swim. I’ll never be able to get them out of the pool.”
The thought of David in the water with the two little girls, the danger that he might just focus on Sophie and let Zoe get away and drown terrified her, but she knew she would insult them if she said so.
“Why don’t you come over for dinner?” Jess asked.
“I can't, Jess. I feel like I’m going to jump through the ceiling. I wish there were something I could do besides drink to calm myself down.”
“Maybe a run?” Jess suggested.
“I’m too tired,” she said, peeling off her wet clothes and letting them drop to the floor.
“Just relax for a while. Let Zoe and Millie stay. You take a long bath. We’ll walk them home after dinner. Katherine and I spent the afternoon together and we have idea. If it’s ok with you, we’ll meet over at Lauren’s tonight.”
“What about Doug?” Carson asked.
“Doug’s away, who knows where this time? Please, Carson, will you do me a favor. If Blair calls you, try not to talk to him, but if you do end up talking to him, be nice, really nice to him. Get off as quickly as possible, but be apologetic, even encouraging.”
“Why?” Carson said. “That’s nuts. Why should I be nice to him?”
“Just do it. “
Carson fell onto the couch, her skin still wet and clammy, stuck to the leather upholstery. She punched play on her answering machine. There were messages from Lauren and Katherine about getting together that night, punctuated by several hang-ups. A message from Jess was interrupted by a phone call. She let the machine pick it up. It was Blair asking if she had received the package he had sent. She looked around the room to see if another arrived. Fortunately, there was nothing. If there had been, she would have smashed it against the wall.
They met at Lauren’s when their children were asleep. Lauren’s housekeeper was out for the evening and the house was stone quiet except for the constant hum of the air conditioning.
Jess said, “I didn’t believe Katherine last night when she said there was no way of getting Blair through the legal system. It just didn’t make sense to me, but we met today and she finally convinced me. And we are not going to murder him.” She looked Carson straight in the eye. “I don’t care how many murders you’ve covered this year. Even if you knew how kill someone, you wouldn’t do it.”
Katherine said, “If by some miracle we got Blair charged, and I don’t know any way that could happen, but if somehow we did, we’d never get him convicted, not in this city, and probably not anywhere in the United States. It’s not just because he’s Victor Blair, but because we can’t get enough concrete evidence to get a guilty verdict. We’d probably never even get into a courtroom. We don’t have one credible witness, not one piece of physical evidence, not one victim who can testify.
I asked Katherine to indulge me,” Jess said,” and outline a fool proof case of what a prosecutor would need to guarantee if somehow Blair were tried, he would be absolutely be convicted. “
“Why, if there is no way that could happen? “Lauren asked.
“Because Jess came up with an idea” Katherine said,” I think will work. We will convince Blair that we have all the evidence we need to expose him as a pedophile. We will make him believe we are about to publicly charge him with sexually abusing his stepdaughters from all three of his marriages. We’ll convince him we have enough than evidence to get him convicted and sent to federal prison for the rest of his life. We both think that if we do that, we can scare him to taking his own life.
“I don’t get it,” Carson said.
Think of it like producing a play with a one-man audience. We’ll get Blair somewhere and confront him. We’ll show him what we have: taped testimony that will sound absolutely authentic, testimony about what he did to you, Lauren, in your voice, from his other grownup stepdaughters in theirs, and from Ellen...”
“Ellen hasn’t said a word in 25 years,” Lauren snapped.
“We know that Lauren, but Blair doesn’t.”
“How are we going to do that?” Lauren asked.
“We’re going to do it together, “Jess said. We’ll write Ellen’s testimony. You know what he did to her. We’ll script it; you and I will write the scripts for all the girls he’s abused. We’ll produce tape recordings, maybe video too. We haven’t figured it all that out yet.”
Katherine said. “We can fake testimony from someone on the staff at his estate, saying she stood outside the window of the garden house and watched Blair have sex with Daryl. It’s totally believable that someone could have. We can even tape fake testimony from a psychologist at Sasha and Daryl’s school.”
“Then what?” Carson asked.
Katherine said: “You’ll have to get him somewhere alone so we can all confront him. That means you need to keep leading him on. I’m sorry, there’s no other way. That’s why Jess asked you to be nice to him, to keep him interested.”
Lauren said, “Maybe we can contact his other stepdaughters.”
Jess said, “I don’t think you understand. We don’t need his other stepdaughters. We don’t need anyone. You know what he did to them, the same thing he did to you. We can fake their testimony; I’ll do their voices. I have a lot of voices you’ve never heard, a dozen, maybe more. Maybe we can all record tapes. I’ll buy professional recording equipment, a mike and tape recorder, a video camera if we decide, whatever we need. “
“Once he hears a few of the tape recordings,” Katherine said,” we think he’ll believe us. We’ll tell him we have hours of testimony and evidence. I don’t think we will have to play it all. A few tapes, if they are absolutely believable should be enough.”
Jess said. “We’ll tell him we have pictures and videos too of him having sex with Sasha and little Daryl. Of course, we don’t, we just have to appear so confident and certain that he will believe us. The audiotapes, the way I imagine doing them, will scare the shit out of him. He’ll be terrified.”
“Why wouldn’t he call our bluff?” Carson asked. “Why wouldn’t he think we would go to the police if we had all that.”
“We’ll tell him why,” Katherine said, “It’s not to protect him, but to protect the little girls and the women he has abused from more pain and suffering. Why should they be publically humiliated the way they would be if he went to trial? It could devastate them, more than they’ve been devastated already by what he’s done to them. They are entitled to privacy. He is entitled to nothing. We’ll have a lethal dose of barbiturates for him to easily. And he will get off with an easy, painless death.”
“He’s not going to buy it,” Carson said.
“I think he will.” Jess said. “You seduce him, get him alone somewhere and we show up and present the evidence and a simple proposition: He will take the sleeping pills we have with us and die quietly comfortably in his bed and we will destroy every piece of evidence we have. No one, none of the girls, now women, he forced to have sex with him, the little girls he is abusing now, or his wife will be hurt, any more than he has hurt them already. He will be remembered and admired as a highly respected business leader and philanthropist. But if he refuses to take the pills, we will expose him as a pedophile and criminal, and destroy his life as he has destroyed the lives of so many other lives. Everything we have is ready to go to police and to the media. He will be exposed as a pervert and criminal and spend the rest of his life in prison.”
Carson let out a huge sigh. “You really believe we could make this work.”
Katherine said, “We have a lot to do. We need to try to find the names of anyone he may have abused as a child and dig up whatever other skeletons there might be in his closets. I mean everything incriminating we can find, things he did that were illegal or immoral, even if it was 30 years ago. That means Carson, whatever you can find in the files at the station. Jess said she can get into David’s data base. She’ll try to use it to research Blair’s projects; perhaps there is something there. A man like Blair doesn’t just behave immorally in just one arena. There must more. We need whatever incriminating thing we can find to convince him that we have the information and power to ruin his life.”
Jess said, “I am sorry, Carson, but you are going to have to lead Blair on, keep him turned on to you.”
“How would I do that? I’ve been asking him to stop calling me. He knows that I’m trying to get rid of him.”
“But he hasn’t, has he?” Katherine asked.
“It doesn’t appear that he is a man who gives up easily,” Jess said. “You have to call him and thank him for the doll and the photos.”
“I can’t do that.”
Katherine laughed,” You say you think can murder him, but not lie to him?”
“Ok, I get it. Of course I can.”
Chapter 17
The streets were still dark and empty when the four met for a run the next morning, acknowledging one another with not much more than a nod. They ran down the concrete steps to the tunnel leading to the beach. When they came up the stairs, the sun, a giant orange ball, rose out of the water, casting a shaft of shimmering light from the horizon to the edge of the sand. Behind them, a full moon was fading but still present in the sky. They ran past the chess pavilion, which stood empty waiting for the men who spent their days there slowly moving chess pieces across the black and white squares. On either side of the pavilion, towering concrete statues of king and queen chess pieces stared lifelessly out across the water to the skyline of Hammond, which only on clear mornings like was this visible from the Chicago shore. The friends ran silently side-by-side along the wide concrete rocks that line the beaches. A cool breeze came off the water. Their feet fell into a rhythm, left, right, left, right, their steps synchronized. The silence, at first comforting became unnerving.
“Hello," Carson said. “Anyone there?"
“We’re all here,” Lauren said quietly.
“Anyone wish she weren’t?” Carson asked.
“Not me,” Jess said breathlessly. “How about you, Katherine?”
“I’m OK, but let's run back to the pier.” She turned around as she spoke, signaling the others to follow.
The women ran north, then right onto a long narrow pier that stretches out into the lake. In spite of its obvious allure, the pier is always deserted except for a few short weeks in the summer when it’s lined with smelt fisherman, their twinkling lanterns reaching out into the black. They sat down on the graffiti-splattered concrete in a small circle close to the end. Katherine began gravely, “Are you all really serious about this?”
“Of course!” Carson said.
“Don’t shout at me, Carson.”
“I wasn’t shouting,” she shouted back.
“It’s a little early to be losing it,” Katherine said, sweat pouring off her body.
“I'm not losing it, Katherine,” Carson said.
“I think you are.”
“Come on, you two. We’re all out of our comfort zone,” Jess said. She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and handed it to Katherine.
Lauren said: “Listen, maybe you should all forget about Blair. I appreciate that you want to do this for me, but...”
“Lauren,” Carson said, her voice shaking. “I’m not doing this for you. He’s stalking my little girl. It’s not you this time. It’s Zoe and those two little girls he’s abusing right now. You all say he’ll never get his hands on Zoe, but it doesn’t feel that way to me.”
Lauren apologized. “You’re right. We have to stop him and I’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen.”
“And you, Katherine?” Carson asked. “Be totally honest with yourself and with us.”
“I can’t lie to you. I’m terrified.” Katherine said, “but I don’t think we have any choice.
Carson said: “I know this sounds strange, but it’s easier for me to imagine myself pulling a gun out of my purse and shooting him than pulling off an extended seduction. Even the thought of being in the same room makes me nauseous. How am I going to convince him I want him to make love to me, be somewhere alone with him take off my clothes, and let him come inside me. I hate him.”
“Try not to think about the sex right now, if you can,” Katherine said.” I hope we can figure out a way it won’t have to go that far. Right now, you just need to keep him interested in you and string him along until we finish everything we have to do. Start by calling and thanking him for the photographs and the doll.”
“I can’t do that. The doll horrifies me. Seeing Zoe with that doll in her arms is what pushed me over the top.”
“Me too,” Lauren said. “That doll and following her around with a camera. He wants to get his hands on her. It makes me want to vomit.”
“I still wish I could pick up a phone and tell someone to kill him like the Mafia guys do do,” Carson said, staring across the water at the skyline. She could see Blair’s apartment, the penthouse of the building next door to the Drake Hotel.
Jess said, “I’ll call my party planner and see if he has a hit man in his Rolodex. “
“Jess, you’re not funny,” Katherine said.
For Carson, the jokes, albeit stupid, were a relief. “You’re wrong,” Carson said, “she is funny.”
Jess said with a forced laugh,” We’re going to have to figure out a way to start laughing again or we’ll never get through this.”
“One more joke and I’m out of here,” Katherine said.
As the conversation went on, Carson’s anxiety intensified. How would she get him in place where he couldn’t just shove her across the room? Katherine must have been reading her mind.” We have to figure out a safe place where Carson can go with him, a place we can be waiting, where she will not be in danger, so we can open the door, do what we have to do and safely get away.”
“Maybe the Ritz,” Jess said. ‘Don’t laugh. Its not a bad idea. They’re used to having guests who demand discretion at the Ritz. There are a lot of afternoon trysts there. I could make arrangements no one could trace to us.”
“How do you know about that?” Katherine said.
“Don’t ask me that question.”
“We’ll figure it out. “Jess said,”
“There’s too much to figure out,” Carson said.
Jess said. “We can do it. We just have to stay calm. We’ll script it like play, a court room drama so believable, so devastating that it will convince him that we have enough evidence to convict him and send him to a federal prison for the rest of his life. We’re going to present our case so professionally, so convincingly that he’ll believe he has no choice but to kill himself. It has to be great and totally believable. We’ll record that testimony so that it’s bone chilling convincing. He’s going to realize when he hears those women telling what he did to them that there isn’t a chance in hell that he’s going to be able to hide his pedophilia. When we tell him we are willing to destroy all the evidence to save the girls and women he has violated further humiliation and pain if he commits suicide, he’s going to have to take us up on our offer.”
“You make it sound possible,” Carson said.
“You just get him into that hotel room or wherever we decide to do it. We’ll be there in an adjoining room. It will work, I know it.” Jess said.
“But what if it doesn’t?” Lauren said. “What if we can’t scare him into taking the pills? What if he turns it all around and we are the ones in danger?”
“We would have to shoot him,” Carson said. “That’s all there is to it.”
“We won’t have to. Our plan will work.” Jess says.” Besides, you can’t use a gun at the Ritz Carlton.”
“We are not going to use a gun anywhere! “Katherine said. “We’re not going to kill him. He’s going to kill himself.”
“But if he refuses, Lauren said,” then what? And if not? How do we do it, I mean the part about ending his life, if we can’t scare him into taking his own? The truth is murder is not something any of us has a lot of experience with. If we can’t shoot him, what do we do if he gets violent? Do we bludgeon him to death, cut him into small enough pieces, so we can chop up his remains in our Cuisinarts and can get him down our disposal systems?”
Somehow Lauren going on that way, making a joke about the obviously overwhelming complications made Carson feel a little calmer.
Jess said, taking a deep breath and sighing painfully. “There is a lot to figure out, but there are four of us and we are fairly bright people.”
“If we work together, collaborate, maybe we really will come up with a foolproof plan,” Katherine said. ” We’ll figure out some way so that we can do it and not get caught.”
“The perfect crime, right?” Carson said with a wry grin.
“Right.”
“That's what Leopold and Loeb thought,” Katherine said, and she smiled for the first time that morning.
“Yes,” Jess said. “They did get caught, but you have to remember, they were men.”
At that point, Lauren seemed to have left the conversation. She stared out at the water, then nodded her head yes, as if answering a question.
Carson watched her with concern and said, “Yes, what Lauren?”
Startled, as if she had been woken from a dream, she said, “He wants to take you to Swan’s Landing, right?”
“Yes,” Carson said. ”He asked me to spend a day with him there. He mentioned it a few times.”
“Then that’s the place,” Lauren said. “The garden house, where he took me, where he must still take little girls.”
“OK, but then what happens when I get him there? We go to Swan’s Landing, then what?” There was an uncomfortably long silence. Then Carson said: “I keep playing out scenarios in my head. But when I follow each to its logical conclusion, think through all the steps, not one of them seems doable.”
Lauren interrupted. Her voice was almost a whisper. As she spoke, she continued to look away from the others, staring into space as they had seen her do whenever she described horrific memories of what Victor Blair had done to her. She spoke so softly it was hard to hear what she was saying. They leaned closer.
“Unless his tastes have changed and it’s impossible to say.” She paused. It felt as if she wouldn’t finish. Then seeming deep in a memory she did not want to revisit, she said, “He likes to be tied up.” She turned and looked back out at the water. A sailboat motored out into the lake, its sails unfurled waiting for the wind.
Jess slipped backward off the ledge. “Are you serious?” she said. ”He made you tie him up?”
“Yes,” Lauren said with no apparent emotion. “Sometimes he tied me up and sometimes he told me to tie him up.”
Lauren continued to look away like a guilty child who was confessing she had done something wrong. Maybe it was something she learned to enjoy, the way she learned she could be loved. Carson didn’t want to push her, but she needed to know more. “Was that something you did often?” she asked cautiously, feeling guilty that she was forcing Lauren to bring up more bitter memories, but she had no choice.
“Yes, It was. I don’t know if we can assume that he is still into it, but he liked it then,” Lauren said. I guess there is really is no way to find out if he still does.”
“Maybe there is,” Carson said. They all knew how that would occur.
As she looked at the three, she was reminded of the feeling she experienced one night at Jess’s early in their friendship, as if these three were more genuinely more concerned about her than anyone had been in her lifetime.
“This is a mistake,” Lauren blurted. She looked frightened, panicky. “We can’t ask Carson to do this. He’ll hurt her,” she said, shaking her head, her eyes tearing. “There has to be another way. I can't trust that he won't hurt you.”
“Lauren’s right,” Jess said. “It’s outrageous for you to be bait. I wish we could hire someone. There are professional killers. I have money; I have a lot of money. We can hire someone."
Katherine said. “We are not going to hire a killer. You have to understand this. There is no way for us to get Blair and not get caught unless we do it ourselves. It’s too risky to trust anyone else.” A northeasterly wind, seemingly out of nowhere, started to kick up the water, a cloud eclipsed the sun.
Lauren said. “If we can get him to Swan’s landing when no one is there, if he still likes to be tied up, it will work. I believe he would rather die than be exposed as a pedophile. He’s gotten away with it for God knows how long, ruined so many lives.”
“We still need to be prepared to force the barbiturates down his throat,” Katherine said. “You know how they dilute pills for children?” Katherine said. “We can do that, smash up sleeping pills, dilute them and put the solution in a syringe. ”The three of us can hold him down if we have to, but no matter what, it has to look like suicide.“
“But why would Blair kill himself? Won’t everyone wonder that and suspect it’s a murder?” Lauren said.
“Maybe somebody is after him,” Carson said. “Maybe even the Mafia.”
“Now it’s you whose been watching too many movies,” Katherine said.
“You’re wrong,” Carson said. “I think we might be on the right track.”
“Why would the Mafia be after Victor Blair?” Lauren asked.
“For a lot of reasons,” Carson answered. “There were a few near scandals I read about when I was researching his story, accusations that he uses questionable financing sources for his projects, worse than that, too. I just skimmed over that stuff. It certainly wasn’t what I was looking for — anything bad to say about him. There’s a huge file on him at the station. I've got to get back and re-read it all.”
“Can you get back into those files without anyone knowing about it?” Katherine asked.
“Sure.”
“I might be able to come up with something too in David’s new database,” Jess said.
“But it isn’t going to list the Mafia as a money source,” Lauren said, not understanding how that information would be useful.
“No, but maybe it will lead us to something. Maybe he’s in trouble on a big project, maybe there is a deal, a big deal falling apart. I don't know what. Maybe we could even start a rumor, I don’t know.”
“It’s worth trying.”
“This technology is new, computers, you know. The database is on the computer, hooked up to a what they call a mainframe somewhere. David’s computer is not completely up in operation yet,” Jess said. ”There are still tech guys working on it in David’s office. They’re from Reliable, a new technology subsidiary of theirs. They developed software, a database for their business and now they’re doing the same for other industries, starting with real estate. David will help me get into it.”
“Don't let him help you too much,” Katherine said,”especially when you start looking for information on Blair. When you do the search on Blair, David can’t be with you.”
“I know Katherine. I only look dumb. I’m not.”
“I’m sorry.”
Lauren, looking uncomfortable, said, “But what do I do to help? There must be something.”
“I have an idea,” Jess said. “Get a brochure from the Hemlock Society sent to Blair. You know who they are?”
“No.”
“It’s an organization that supplies people with information on how to commit suicide. We’ll make it look like Blair requested the information; like he is planning to suicide. When you call the Hemlock Society, you can say you’re Vic Blair. I’ll give you their number and you can ask them to send their package of information to his home address. They may ask for a telephone number, but I doubt it. When you call, they will be very discreet. They won’t ask you anything but your name and address.”
“Why don't you stop at my house on the way home? There are a few other organizations that help people who are considering suicide; one group works with that Dr. Kevorkian in Detroit. I’ll give you my list, you should phone all them, and get them to send Blair their packets,” Jess said with as much emotion as if she were talking about a recipe. “
“Sure,” Lauren said, shaking her head thoughtfully as if she were registering something she would have never imagined about her glamorous friend.
“I don’t think I could look at it myself,” Jess said brightly,”but it's a good thing I didn't throw it all out.”
They sat quietly for a few minutes. The cloud cover passed. They could feel the heat on their bodies. They left the pier and ran toward home, lapsing into silence again. The sound of their footsteps hitting the concrete pavement seemed louder than the early morning traffic on Lake Shore Drive just a few yards to their right. As they ran, they kept increasing their pace. They were panting with the strain. The paths that had been empty when they got to the lake at sunrise began filling with the morning contingent of runners. Unlike the four of them who had left their houses when it was still dark, most of their near North Side neighbors, no matter how liberal they claimed to be, were too wary to enter the park until the ragged homeless magically disappeared with the morning light. They continued to run side-by-side filling almost the entire width of the path as if no one else were there. Other runners were forced to swerve off their course to avoid them. There were no complaints, however. The strength and force of their anger must have somehow communicated that they were entitled to command the space.
Chapter 18
When Lauren left, Jess turned the pressure valve on the shower as high as it would go. The nozzles that lined the marble stall shot hard jets of water that hit her body from every angle. The sensation distracted her, if only for a minute, from the anxiety that she felt. Now that she was alone, she was fully in touch with the panic she was trying to hide from her friends. She poured shampoo into her hand and played with the red, viscous fluid as it dripped through her fingers. She rubbed what was left of it slowly into her hair and then stood for a long time with her eyes closed, letting the hot jets of water beat at her body. The fear that she might let down her friends was more disturbing to her than her fear of the danger. She tried to calm herself, but she couldn't. She grabbed a bar of soap and tried to lather her body. The water would not allow suds to form. She turned off the shower. “It’s murder,” she thought, rubbing soap into a loofah sponge and scrubbing her legs and hips. If we coax him into killing himself or we kill him, what’s the difference? It’s murder. Either way, the only way I’m going to be able to get through it is to convince myself that this is theater, not real. We are producing a play about four women who have no other way to stop a pedophile except to kill him. We’ll be actors, performers, and on the day of the performance, we’ll get into our costumes, play our roles and go home.”
She turned the shower on again, this time with the pressure not so hard. “The only difference will be, that when we kill him, he really will be dead. I don’t have to think of it that way. I’ll just pretend that he is actor, too. When she got out of the shower, there were red blotches all over her body. While she was drying off, she dialed her husband’s number,
“Hi honey, I am sorry I missed you this morning.”
“A long run. I left at 8 and you weren’t back yet. You must have gotten all the way to Evanston.” She lied and said they had. She asked if he would be at the office she wanted to come down and do some work.
“I’m sorry. I’ll be away at a meeting all day.”
She was relieved. “If you are not going to be there, do you mind if I come down and play with your new computer for a while?. I’m really curious to see how it works and maybe look at that database thing you told me about.”
“That’s nice,” he said, surprised. ”I’m glad you are interested in it.”
“Maybe we can get a computer at home?” she said.
“Of course, someday everyone will have a computer in their home. I don’t see why we can’t try to get one as soon as they’re available. I’m surprised you’re want one.”
It was hard to lie to David. For years, he was the only real friend she had. It was not that she told him everything, she didn’t; they were lovers, not soul mates. In fact, she believed that David didn’t want to know everything; that was not something that husbands wanted. Sure, he wanted to know about the good stuff, but not the bad. He liked to think of her as a totally contented, beautiful princess. If she was unhappy, he felt it was a reflection on himself. When she struggled through that deep depression, she tried to keep it from him. After a while, it became impossible. She never told him how close she had come to taking her life. During that dark period, she knew he felt her unhappiness was his failure, not hers. On some level, she knew that David was fearful that she would slip again; it would kill him if she got sick. She would not ever let that happen again.
Hopefully, she would find something today that was fishy about Blair’s real estate dealings. It was a long shot, at the least. Like most people, she had no idea how to operate a computer. She might not even be able to figure out how to turn it on, let alone how to find Blair. And once she found him, given her limited knowledge of sophisticated real estate financing, it would be hard for her to interpret the data, but she was determined to try.
“You’ll need help. I can’t even operate the system myself. I‘ll get one of our guys to work with you. Just come in and tell my assistant to bring Tom in to help you. I’ll tell him to be available to you all day.”
When she hung up, that feeling of anxiety returned. This time for a different reason: In all of time she had known her husband, she had never lied to him. This was the second time that day.
_
In spite of its vast holdings, the offices of Kingman Investment Corporation were tucked quietly into two floors of a turn-of-the-century building in Chicago’s financial district. David’s grandfather and namesake was the founder of Kingman Investments. He had come to America from Prague in 1902. Unlike most Jews of his generation who fled Europe to escape religious oppression, David’s grandfather had come to escape the expectations of his family. His father and all of the men in his family for several generations back had been rabbis who had spent their lives in what was considered by Jews to be the noblest of all occupations: studying the Torah. But David’s father knew from the time he was a small child that he wanted to make money and lots of it. So he came to America by himself when he was 15. He ended up in Chicago, because he became close to a family he met on the boat. They were also penniless, but they did have a cousin in Chicago. They took David with them.
After a few months of sleeping on the kitchen floor of the cousin’s tiny apartment, he talked himself into a job as a cowboy. He became perhaps the only Jew tending cattle in the bustling stockyards on Chicago’s South Side. Fifteen years later he made his first fortune in the meat-packing business, selling his company for three million dollars. And during the next decades, he and eventually, his only child, David’s father, parlayed that money into one of the largest family-owned companies in the country. Kingman Investment Corporation was a principal stockholder of several major American corporations. In spite of their enormous wealth, the family kept a very quiet profile, intentionally so, even in their philanthropy. They donated tens of millions annually, but there were no buildings or programs named in honor of their family; there were no plaques or public testaments to their generosity.
Jess got to the office late in the afternoon. Fortunately, David’s secretary was out. She pulled the door of his office shut and sat behind her husband’s desk. Unlike her own looking like-a-cyclone hit office, everything was in perfect order. The surface of his desk was clear except for a few files stacked neatly, likely ordered with the most urgent work on top. It amused her to see his pens and freshly sharpened pencils lined up perfectly parallel to one another. David’s closets at home looked the same; everything was neatly folded and put in place, every item ordered impeccably.
When they came home at the end of a night, she would throw off her clothes, dropping them wherever she was standing and jump into bed. She loved to watch him, her head on the pillow, covers pulled up to her chin, as he carefully put his clothes away, folding his sweater slowly, the right sleeve first and then the left and putting it in exactly its proper place on the shelf, no matter how late it was or how tired he might be.
She ran her fingers across his opened calendar. Each hour was accounted for in his thin black script. She smiled wondering how anyone as warm, sensitive and fun-loving as her husband could be so anal compulsive. Several photographs of Jess and Sophie, one of David and Armando from high school, and one of his parents lined his credenza. She read the inscription on a black and white portrait of her he had commissioned a year or so after they were married: “To David, the great love of my life, without you, there would be no life.” She felt a tinge of embarrassment thinking of all the people who might have read that inscription. They could not have possibly known what she meant, how desperately close to taking her life she had been when she wrote that. But even if they hadn’t a clue, she wished she had not written it.
She poured herself a cup of coffee and read the instructions David had left for her: When you turn on the computer, you will have to wait a few minutes while it boots. You will be prompted to enter a password — click twice — enter our anniversary, and then a list of programs will come up on the screen. MoneyNet is the program you are looking for. Move the cursor to the name MoneyNet and press Enter and that program will come on.
David was so impressed with MoneyNet that he had spent a whole evening describing it to her the week before. “Jess, with this new system we will eventually be able to look at virtually every significant major real estate transaction anywhere in the country. It’s incredible. You have no idea how much time it will save us once it is fully operating.”
When an awkward animation of the MoneyNet logo finally came to an end, a grid with a list of options appeared. Jess looked down at David’s directions. “Choose menu.” The menu was an alphabetical listing of what appeared to be every kind of business. She highlighted real estate and another list of options came on the screen. She chose developers Listed by “Location,” and then “Chicago.” The developers were listed in alphabetical order. She scrolled through them. When she found Victor Blair and Associates, she highlighted his name and a list of his projects appeared. There must have been 40 or more. She pulled up the first file. It took her an hour to read through it. When she was halfway through, she realized she hadn't even a clue what all the columns of numbers meant. Her heart started pounding nervously. “Who am I kidding? I don't know what I’m doing.” Then another voice in her head told her to keep looking. I need to keep going, keep working. I’ll find something. She highlighted the next file, read through it. Nothing. It looked the same as the last one.
It was almost five when she phoned Katherine. “I've been here for hours looking at the data on Blair’s projects, and I can't find a thing.” She took a deep breath; she was afraid she was going to cry. “Frankly, I don’t really know what I’m looking for.”
“I don't either, Jess,” Katherine said.
“What did I think? The Mafia would be listed as an investor? I'm brilliant, Katherine, I'm just brilliant.”
“Don't be so hard on yourself. You still might find something.”
“But I don't see how. It just describes the projects, square footage, occupancy, builder, architect, taxes, who the investors are, what the debt on the building is, if there are liens, all that stuff.”
“Are there liens?”
“No.”
“Can you tell if there is substantial debt or low occupancy on any of the projects?”
“It doesn't look that way to me.”
“How many have you looked at so far?”
“Eighteen.”
“And nothing jumped out at you?”
“Nothing.”
“Where does he get his money?”
“It looks like an insurance company. Reliable Life is his major money source.”
“Wait, didn’t Carson interview the president of Reliable Life for the Chicago leaders thing she did?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Did you look at the project Blair’s doing now? What's it called? River something?”
“Riverfront. No. I haven't gotten there yet.”
“Why don't you look it up? I'll stay on the phone.”
As she pulled up the file, a buzzer sounded in an office a few blocks away, the offices of Reliable Life. Michael Miller, the information technologist in charge of the MoneyNet program walked over to monitor number five. The words Kingman Investment Corporation flashed in green block letters on the screen. It was one of twenty monitors arranged in a double row on a curved counsel in a long, darkened room. Miller sat down in front of the blinking monitor and punched something into the keyboard. The Riverfront Project file came up on his screen.
“OK, Jess,” Katherine said. “Read some of it to me."”
Jess read quickly, sort of skimming out loud. She knew that there was no need to speak slowly for Katherine to understand. She envied Katherine’s mind, so smart and razor sharp. Katherine could stay clear-headed, even under the most stressful circumstances. She wished that she could do the same.
“Jess, go to the financing.”
“OK.”
“What does it say?”
“The same as all of them. It's just a list of investors.”
“Is that all you can get?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve never used a computer.”
“Are there words at the top of the screen?”
“Yes.”
“Read them to me.”
She did. Katherine was silent for a moment. “OK. Go to the top of the screen and highlight the word percentages.”
Jess did as she asked. The list disappeared and a pie chart appeared on the screen. Each of the investors had a piece of the pie. Reliable Life had the biggest piece, about 60 percent.
“It’s pretty, Katherine, but it doesn’t mean a thing to me. At least I’m getting a break from staring at all the columns of numbers.”
“Let’s go to another project.” Katherine wished that she could get her hands on that computer. Perhaps, she could come up with something.
As Jess brought more information on the screen, it was mirrored on Miller’s monitor. He followed for a while and then picked up the phone to call his boss. “Mr. Guzman, this is Michael Miller, please come down to Room 400. There is something I think you need to see.”
Jess continued to punch in numbers. Each time she punched a command into her computer, what was on her monitor appeared on his. Without taking his eyes off the screen, he pressed a printer button and a high-speed printer spewed out rolls of the printed projections she had ordered. With his eyes still fixed on the Riverfront data moving across his screen, he reached over to another keyboard. Letters began to appear on another monitor.
Subscriber: David Kingman
Length of Session: 5 hours 35 minutes
Files retrieved: 666
Company: Victor Blair and Associates.
He hit a switch a few feet away and a blurred image appeared on a monitor just to his left. He reached to another set of controls and with his gaze bouncing back from one monitor to the next, he put his forefinger on a roll ball and slowly adjusted the ball. The image on the screen sharpened. He watched it from the corner of his eye, expecting to see the image of the Prince, the nickname he and his associates coined for David Kingman. They had installed a hidden camera in David’s office so they could watch him. Instead, when the focus came clear, he was startled to see a beautiful, redheaded woman.
She cradled a telephone on her shoulder. For a moment, he thought he had accidently tuned into a local television station, but he knew he couldn't have made that kind of mistake. The woman on the phone was obviously talking to someone about the Riverfront Project. He wished that he could hear what she was saying. She did another projection, this one speculating a rate of return if Kingman Industries put in fifty million. Although he was an information technology specialist, not a member of the financial staff, it was clear that this kind of speculation from a major financial investment firm on Reliable Life’s most important project was serious business.
He heard a buzzer ring and he unlocked to door for his boss, Dean Guzman, grandson of the founder of Reliable Life. A math and science wiz, Dean received both his undergraduate degree and PhD from MIT in computer science, a brand new field he believed would change the way of the world. He first went to work in computer architecture at IBM after he graduated before coming back to Chicago to join the family business. When Guzman walked over to the monitor, he immediately recognized the woman. “That’s Jessica Kingman,” he said, “wife of the Prince.”
Jess was still talking to Katherine. “Thanks for trying to help me, but I’m afraid that this has been a total waste of time. I still don’t see anything here we can use against Blair.”
Miller handed Dean Guzman the rolls of printouts. It was clear from what he saw that Kingman Industries was exploring the possibility of becoming a major investor in the Riverfront Project. What he could not have known was that Jessica Kingman didn’t have a clue about what any of the projections and data she had retrieved and appeared to study meant. It was all a mess of indistinguishable numbers to her. All she was trying to do was find something that would point to some wrongdoing on the part of Victor Blair. Ironically, she had no way of knowing she was looking straight at what she was looking for: every dollar that Reliable Life had invested in the projects of Victor Blair and every dollar they planned to invest in the Riverfront project was Mafia money.
Reliable Life had been the brilliant money-laundering scheme of Dean Guzman’s grandfather some 40 years ago. Antonio Guzman founded Reliable Life as a vehicle for investing and creating growth for the hundreds of millions of dollars of income from Mafia interests, among the most lucrative at the moment being the new influx of cocaine from the Golden Triangle.
Their biggest investment right now was Blair’s Riverfront Project. It would be a home run for them, a billion-dollar venture, not even taking into account the potential income, from the Family’s gambling, prostitution, construction, labor, and liquor interests.
Jess hung up the phone but continued to pull up files. She went to Chicago corporations and double clicked on Reliable Life. It was founded in the 40’s. It insured 50,000 lives and sold annuities. There were a few names she recognized on the board of directors. She realized there wasn't anything there that would help her. She felt angry with herself for being so naive.
Guzman watched her face. He could see the tension. Her eyes were still glued to the screen. Now she was alone in the office. The last person to go had turned off the lights. Because the floor was wired on the same bank, she sat in the dark. She was too weary to get up to switch on another light. The light coming off the screen cast a green glow on her face. She leaned forward. Her shoulders drooped as she slumped forward in her chair. She pulled up the Riverfront files again. What if Kingman Industries took over as lead investor? Her eyes scanned the columns. They didn’t mean a thing to her; then she pulled up a pie chart; typed in Kingman Industries, 60 percent. She picked up the phone and dialed Maeda to say she would be leaving for home in a few minutes.
"Do you have a minute?” Maeda said. “Sophie wants to talk to you."
Guzman saw Jess’s face light up, as it always did when she heard her daughter’s voice. He was frustrated. The microscopic video camera that had been hidden in Kingman's office had no microphone. Sound transmission had to be ruled out; it was too easy to detect. It was a flaw in his system. “I need to hear what she is saying,”he said angrily. “Why does she have that shit-eating grin on her face?”
As Jess talked to her daughter, she punched in more numbers. The projections danced across the screen and the printer in his office spewed out page after page.
“I have a surprise for you when you get home, Mommy,” Sophie said.
“Tell me, I can't wait.”
“I can't tell you, Mommy, but I will sing you a song.”
“Wonderful!” As she listened to her daughter sing, the smile never left her face. Her muscles started to relax. She leaned back in her chair. Guzman watched her face, and as she listened, the numbers flashed across his screen. He phoned his father. “We have a problem, a big problem here. It looks like the Kingmans are getting involved with Blair on Riverfront. We have to find out what they’re up to.”
When Jess went down the elevator and walked out into the street to flag a taxi to go home, someone was already following her.
A few minutes later, Mario Guzman, who ran the operations of the Guzman family and its associates as the real man at the helm of Reliable Life, stormed into the office of William Peterson and slammed the door. He threw the printouts of the Kingman projections onto Peterson’s desk. “Do you know anything about this?” Peterson, the president and public chief operating officer of Reliable Life, sat calmly. He was partially dressed for the monthly dinner meeting of the Economics Club that night. He had changed into his tuxedo, his tie still untied, his jacket carefully laid over a chair. His friend Michael Blumenthal, the Secretary of the Treasury, a classmate of his at Princeton, would be the guest speaker tonight and make the introductory remarks.
“Blair’s screwing us! He’s making a deal with Kingman. Will you look at this?”
Peterson glanced down at the stack of printouts. He looked up at Guzman, who was pacing back and forth in front of his desk. “I don’t see any possibility of Blair, what did you say, ‘screwing us over.’ What are you talking about Mario?”
“These are projections from Kingman Industries. It appears that they are getting ready to make a major investment in the Riverfront Project.” He grabbed the printout from Peterson’s hand. “Look at these projections.” He pulled out the pie chart showing Kingman Industries owning 60 percent. “From what it looks like, they are considering pushing us out of the whole deal.”
Peterson scanned the page, and then turned to the projection at the top of the pile. “Blair wouldn’t dare do that to us, Mario. He knows what he’s got at stake. We’ve financed every major project he has ever done. Furthermore, he knows what we can do to him if he pulls something like this.”
“You are so fucking dumb, Bill. Right now, before all this gets finalized, Blair can do whatever the fuck he wants. We ought to blow his fucking head off.”
Peterson looked amused as he listened to his partner fly off the handle, just as he had hundreds of times before.
"Who do you think you are, Mario, Al Capone?”
“As a matter of fact, maybe I do.”
The partnership of Peterson and the Guzman family had been a successful venture. No one knew the terms of that partnership. In fact, Peterson only owned one percent of the stock; the rest belonged to Guzman and his associates. But that one percent allowed Peterson to live the life of a very wealthy man. He was a perfect front man for one of the most sophisticated financial organizations in the country.
The first time Guzman met Peterson, he knew exactly how he could use him. Peterson was in his first year of law school when he applied for a part time position at Reliable Life. He needed a way to support his wife and children until he finished school and took the bar. He had married his high school sweetheart while still at Princeton. She gave birth to their first child seven months later and to twins the following year. The son of two school high school teachers, Peterson had taken out big loans to go to Princeton and the University of Chicago Law School. He worked nights and weekends.
Guzman recognized the hunger in this bright, ambitious, well-spoken young man from Connecticut and put him to work in legal affairs where he became expert in insurance law, drafting documents and structuring life insurance policies. Peterson didn’t know until years later that the insurance policies and investments listed as assets of the corporation served only as foils for the true operation of Reliable Life. When Peterson graduated from law school, Guzman made him an offer he could not refuse. Even a top law firm wouldn’t come anywhere close to the salary and benefits Reliable offered. He moved quickly to the executive floor, which was just as artificial as the company’s insurance policies.
Mario Guzman, no one else, ran Reliable Life. He ran it, trusting only his associates in the modest offices on the second floor, far away from the stunning executive suites up on 12. The laundering operation was managed seamlessly from the quiet den below. Reliable Life had a sales force working under Peterson. It insured a number of people, but 90 percent of the named policyholders were bogus. The structure, Mario’s father’s brainchild, facilitated the movement of tens of millions of dollars, quietly in and out of investments like Blair’s projects without anyone ever blinking an eye.
When Mario offered Bill Peterson the chance to be president and CEO, he was fairly certain that Peterson had no idea about what was really going on. It was at that moment that Guzman shared part of the story with the man who would, if he accepted the position, be the face of Reliable Life. Guzman once again made Peterson an offer he could not refuse. He looked Bill Peterson straight in the eye and said, “You can turn down this offer if you choose, but if you decide not to accept the position of president and CEO, your wife and children will be dead within an hour’s time.
Chapter 19
By the time Lauren left Jess’s that morning, the temperature gauge outside her kitchen had reached 96 degrees. It was only 8:40 a.m. When she walked into her own house, she was hit with a blast of refrigerated air. She shivered. Doug had set the thermostat at 64. “We must be using enough electricity to cool the homes of a dozen families,” she muttered to herself as she turned up the temperature on the thermostat and ran up the back staircase to the second floor. She looked in on Louie. He was still sound asleep.
When she walked into her bedroom, Doug was sitting on the edge of their bed in his tennis whites, tying his shoes. He looked up at her, not at her face, but at her lower body.
“Boy, you have put on a lot of weight. Have you looked at your thighs lately, Lauren?”
“Please Doug, don't start. Can't we be nice to each other?”
"Yeah, why don't you bend over and let me butt-fuck you.”
“Please leave me alone, Doug.”
“What’s wrong, Lauren, don’t you like me anymore?”
She walked into the bathroom to get away from him. He opened the door. “Come on, Lauren, get your clothes off of that fat body of yours.” He grabbed her arm and shoulder, squeezing hard and shaking her.
“Let go of me, Doug, please.”
He grabbed her hair and used it to pull her down to the floor and pressed his hand on her shoulder to push her toward him. “You won't let me butt-fuck you, suck my cock.”
“Please Doug, stop it.”
He laughed, the sadistic laugh she had heard too many times before. When he finally let go of her shoulders, red welts the shapes of his fingers remained. He left the bathroom still laughing.
“Before you take your shower, go wake Louie and get him ready to go to the club.”
She locked the door, pretending not to hear him and turned on the shower. When she got out, she heard Doug talking to Louie.
“Now when you have your tennis lesson today, I want you to do everything the pro tells you to do,” he said tying Louie’s new white tennis shoes. Lauren was sure Louie hadn’t a clue about what Doug was talking about, but she did know her little boy was very excited about spending a whole day with his father. It was the first time since he was born.
Doug had signed him up for private tennis lessons at the Saddle and Cycle, one of several private clubs in Chicago and Palm Beach to which they belonged. When Doug told Lauren about the lessons, she had argued that it was ridiculous to try to teach a three-year-old to play tennis. Doug, who was not a particularly good tennis player or athlete of any sort, was adamant about lessons.
“He’ll goddamned well take lessons, as often and as early as I want him to. He’s going to be playing a lot of sports in his life, Lauren, particularly tennis, and he damned well better be good. I don’t care if you don’t agree with me. He’s my son.”
Doug was slipping a white cable-knit tennis sweater over Louie’s head when Lauren walked into the room. They were now dressed exactly alike, white polo shirts, Ralph Lauren tennis sweaters, white shorts, socks and tennis shoes.
“It's supposed to go up to over 100 degrees again today. Don’t you think he might be a little overdressed?”
Doug ignored her. “Say goodbye to your mother, Louie. Lauren, we'll be home late. We’re driving out and meeting my mother at her club for dinner.” Obviously, she wasn't invited to join them. Whether they were rejecting her or she them would be hard to say.
Doug and Louie gone, Lauren sent the maid home. “I can make the beds myself in this sterile tomb. Fuck him if he doesn’t like it.” With no one in the house, she walked to the kitchen in her bra and jeans. There was no sound, only the striking absence of it, a grave-like stillness. She pulled her chef’s knife from the block. Standing at the counter, she sharpened the blade with skill perfected from years of practice. She brought the knife up to the window over the sink to check the edge. It was razor sharp, the edge was almost invisible. An avocado vine she had nursed from a pit, hung lifeless off the edge of an empty, brown, stained jar. She put down the knife, unzipped her pants and let them fall to the ground. Her stomach was a hatch-work of scars, long cuts in even rows, the same number up and down, a railroad track she had carved one precise cut at a time. She stared out the window past the light well to the brown brick wall of the building next door and picked up the knife.
Lauren made the call to the Hemlock Society first. The woman who answered the phone sounded very old, ancient in fact. She imagined the woman alone in a big empty, dusty office in an old office building somewhere, a creaky elevator with a black iron gate, the elevator operator even older. There was no background noise, only a thin echo on the phone. As Jess had said, she didn’t ask any questions, except for her address.
“Vic Blair” Lauren said.
“Is that Victoria?”
“No, my name is Vic. If you don’t mind, just address it V. Blair.”
“And your address?”
“189 E. Lake Shore Drive, Apartment 2001, Chicago, 60610.”
She hung up quickly and made the rest of the calls. The next was to the Center for Death With Dignity in Portland, Oregon. A friendly man with a singsong, western accent answered the phone. “Glad you called. What can we do to help?”
“I’d like some literature.”
“Sure, anything we can do to help.” He sounded peculiar, peculiar but nice. They all were nice. There were eleven organizations on Jess’ list. Lauren called them all. She wondered who these people answering the phone were, these gentle angels of death. Were they volunteers or paid staff? Perhaps they were people who came down to the office once a week to relieve their own guilt for the way they had once encouraged or perhaps discouraged someone to take or not take his or her life.
She thought of Jess, her beautiful friend who not that many years ago, alone in her elegant apartment in the Hancock, the breathtaking views of the city below, made these very same calls for herself. She wished that she had known her then, that they had been friends. Perhaps there would have been something she could have done to save Jess from the loneliness and despair she must have suffered. Then she wondered why she had never considered suicide for herself, after all she had been through.
Just as she finished her calls, Carson phoned.
“Lauren, I just talked to Blair. My heart is beating so fast I feel like I am going to have a heart attack.”
“What happened?”
“Just what you said. I didn't have to say a thing. I thanked him for the photos of
Zoe and the gifts.”
“That must have been hard for you.”
“After that, he did most of the talking. He asked to see me. I said yes, that I would like to see him, but could we go somewhere where no one would know us? So he said just what you said he would, ‘Come to Swan's Landing. It will be perfect. No one is there, my dear.’ He kept calling me ‘my dear.’ It was sickening. He said,
‘We can go mid-week, if that makes you feel more comfortable. It is completely empty Tuesday through Thursday. The rest of the time there is staff, gardening and cleaning.’”
“What did you say?”
“I said no. Sounds lovely, but it won’t be possible for me to get away for so long this next week. I’m not ready, Lauren. I know we have to move fast. I want to, but I can't handle it yet. I don’t want to be totally alone with him yet.”
“It's OK. What did you tell him?"
“I said I didn't have time for more than a drink this week. He said, ‘It won't be very easy to find a place in this city where no one knows you, Carson.’ What a jerk. I said that wasn’t true, you are way more visible than I am. So he said, ‘If you think that’s true and I’m relaxed about being seen with you and I am a married man, why does it have to be so private?’”
“So what did you say?”
“I said I have a serious boyfriend who is the jealous type.”
“You really said that?”
“Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”
“It sounds kind of phony.”
“Why don’t you try talking to that jagoff?”
“I’m sorry. Go ahead, then what happened?”
“I’m going to meet him.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow. He's in New York today. I asked him to meet me at a not very popular restaurant in Greek Town. We once covered a murder there. It’s really dark. I can’t imagine anyone either of us know would ever go there.”
“I’m sorry you have to do this, Carson.”
“Stop apologizing, Lauren. I’m going to be fine.”
“You don’t sound fine. You sound like a nervous wreck.”
“I am scared to death, but when my life is over, I’ll probably look back on this as the most important thing I ever did.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
When she hung up, Lauren began to read through the brochures on suicide Jess had gathered six years before. They were gently written. A few looked like they had been run off on a mimeograph machine and assembled by gray-haired volunteers sitting silently around a fake wood, laminated table, collating, folding and stapling. She imagined one of them carrying a neat pile over to a storeroom shelf, ready to be sent out to the next desperate caller.
She read through the one from the Hemlock Society. It reminded her of a pamphlet her mother had given her when she turned 12 called “You’re a Young Lady Now,” explaining menstruation and how to use Kotex, step by step. The Hemlock Society brochure had questions and answers in the back and a step-by-step procedure on how one might take her life. Perhaps they could incorporate some of it into their plan.
Lauren couldn’t imagine anyone believing that Victor Blair would commit suicide. Killing Victor still seemed impossible to her. He was too large, too powerful. It would take a full arsenal, a hundred men to hold him down. She had worked so hard to keep Victor out of her mind for last 20 years. Now he was everywhere, hovering in the next room, waiting to get her again.
She went to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and pulled out the pasta left over from last night’s dinner. Doug had been expected home, but he didn't make it, so there was plenty left over. She put the bowl back into the refrigerator and phoned Jess and Katherine. Neither was home. The house was quiet except for the constant hum of the air conditioning. Doug and Louie wouldn’t be back until tonight. Memories of Victor kept coming back to her. She tried to push them out of her mind. “Don't think about him, just try to do your job,” she said to herself.
She went back into the kitchen again to look for something else to eat. She pulled open a bag of chocolate chips and ate a handful. She wanted something more satisfying. She opened a jar of peanut butter, poured in the semi-sweet chips and ate the mixture straight from the jar, staring mindlessly across the to the blank windows across the way. Now a glass of milk. Something salty, potato chips, then some ice cream. She finished a carton of vanilla when she stopped herself. “I have to get out of here.” She ran down the stairs, grabbed her purse and walked out into the street.
The blast of hot air that hit her as soon as she opened the door felt good, much better than her refrigerated house. Her car was parked on the street a few doors down. She stripped off the heavy sweater she had worn to stay warm inside the house and got into the convertible her mother had given her when she went to college. It felt like an oven inside. She pulled down the top, drove up State and straight west on Division toward the Kennedy Expressway. As she drove through the housing projects she realized how crazy it was for her to be there. There had been several shootings in Cabrini-Green during the last two weeks, and yesterday, two 11-year-olds hung a five-year-old out of a 14th-floor window of an abandoned apartment. They told the boy’s 10-year-old brother, who watched them powerlessly, that they would drop him if he didn't go to the store and steal some candy for them. When the brother refused, they let go of the five-year-old’s feet and watched him drop 14 stories to his death on the concrete below.
She could feel the tension; almost see the heat coming off the buildings. There were people everywhere. It was too hot to stay inside. She tried to speed up so she wouldn’t have to stop for the light. It turned red. The car in front of her stopped or she would have gone through. She prayed that she would live until it turned green. She felt people staring down at her from the black-screened exterior corridors that lined the buildings. “Hey you blonde motherfuck, why don't you come up here, you fucking bitch.” When the light changed, she floored the gas petal. That didn't do much in an 18-year-old Volkswagen. The car sputtered forward. She shifted into second and drove as fast she could toward the expressway.
Once she got on the Kennedy, she let out a long sigh of relief. But the Kennedy wasn’t much better. No one would let her pass out of the right lane. She was stuck between two huge semis, the one in front belching fumes over the windshield into her face. Every time she tried to move to the left, the driver of the car she was trying to pass sped up so she couldn't get in front of him. A mosquito bit her neck. She slapped it but missed. Next, it went for her face. When she hit it, blood splattered over her cheek. She looked at herself in the rearview mirror. The wind had blown her hair into a tangled nest, sweat dripped down her face, and now there were the remains of the dead mosquito and the blood of whomever else he had visited before landing in her car. She grabbed some tissue and wiped off her cheek. She took more and wiped her forehead and neck. No matter how many times she wiped her face, the tissues were gray with soot.
When she got past the interchange where the expressway splits, one half of the traffic going out toward the airport, the other out to the North Shore, the road opened. She popped in a Rolling Stones tape. The music carried her north through the city, past the industrial parks through working-class neighborhoods of the Northwest Side. Postage-stamp backyards with chain link fences faced the highway. A whole neighborhood of kids was jumping in and out of an above-ground pool. Two women sat in aluminum folding chairs, watching them from the porch, each with a cigarette and a tall glass in her hand. She passed row upon row of almost identical brick bungalows, followed by aluminum-sided houses with pointed roofs, mother-in-law apartments on the first floor. Every few minutes farther from the center, the neighborhoods would change. Now there were pillbox-sized ranch houses built in the sixties surrounded by green lawns with large patches of grass burnt yellow by the heat. Giant thirsty elms trees hung in canopies, the leaves parched and fading over the streets.
The car was driving itself. She let it take her north to Lake Forest, as she had been taken so many hundreds of times since the first time with Uncle Victor. During the last weeks, time had magically compressed. Before the night she told Carson, Jess, and Katherine about what had happened, her memories of Swan’s Landing had been pushed back so far in her mind that she could barely recall what had happened. Now she couldn't get any of it out of her mind. As she got off the highway, she heard his voice, his soft low voice reassuring her that everything would be just perfect, just perfect if she would always be his good little girl. She drove west on Route 60. There were no more fast-food franchises or gas stations, just houses that were hidden from the street by tall fences and trees. A few of the old estates had been divided. There were new developments with names like Chambord and Canterbury Glenn. Immense chateau-like houses that looked like they should each be surrounded by several acres of land were squeezed together on tiny treeless lots.
She stopped at a light. A blue Mercedes station wagon pulled next to her, the driver, a woman about her age hauling a car full of blonde children. The children were buckled into their seats and sitting absolutely still. She turned off her music. All she could hear was the hum of the Mercedes motor, the children silent in the cool air sealed tightly inside.
She turned north. Now she began to pass the gated estates that she had watched from her window when she was a little girl. She knew they would pass six entrances until Uncle Victor would slow the car and take the black opener from the windshield and press the button that would open the gates of Swan’s Landing. That same feeling, the feeling that mounted each time they passed another driveway returned. She had forgotten about that feeling, but there it was again, in her stomach, between her legs. She pulled up to the gate and turned off the motor, her heart racing. She was not sure how long she sat there before she remembered.
Chapter 20
At noon the next day, Victor Blair entered the members’ dining room of the University Club with its soaring Gothic arches and stained-glass windows marked with the seals of the Ivy League, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia and Brown. Bill Peterson had phoned asking for a meeting about something urgent. Blair was irritated; he wasn’t fond of Peterson. Peterson was a phony, his own invention. Blair knew who ran Reliable Life and it wasn’t this self important old money want-to- be.
The maître d’ greeted him warmly,” Welcome, Mr. Blair. Let me take you to Mr. Peterson’s table. He’s waiting for you.”
He led Blair across the elegant Cathedral Hall to the east end of the room under a bank of two-story, mullioned, stained-glass windows.
The University Club was founded by a group of Harvard, Princeton and Yale men as a private club at the end of the nineteenth century. Ostensibly, the only membership requirement was a college degree – though it was clear that it could hardly be all – so it remained the only club in town where Victor Blair could not technically become a member. Peterson rose to shake Blair’s hand. “Let’s order quickly,” he said. Peterson wanted to make it clear he would not waste time on social niceties.
As soon as the waiter took their order, he said, “We’ve heard a rumor that you are negotiating financing with the Kingmans. I can’t imagine there is any truth to that.”
“I am not sure where you heard that, “Blair said, buttering a piece of bread. “I would not refuse to meet with them if they asked, but they have not.”
“They may be planning to,” Peterson said.
“We’ll see.”
“We’ll see what, Victor?” Peterson said irritably.
“This is a monumental project, Bill,” he said firmly. “We’ll need all the money we can get.”
“We don’t want Kingman money in this deal.”
“You don’t control that, Bill.”
“Do you know who you’re talking to?”
“Of course I do. But you don’t run my business.”
“I’m not alone,” Peterson said.
“Don’t try to scare me, Peterson.”
“Why would I do that?” He grinned, and dipped his spoon into his consommé.
Bill Peterson went straight to Mario Guzman’s offices on the second floor of the Reliable Life building when he returned from lunch. The offices on two were locked, but he had a key. Guzman had a few people in his office when Peterson came to his door. He sent them away.
“I just had lunch with Blair,” Peterson said.
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. He wouldn’t say a thing, but you’re right. Of course, he’s negotiating with Kingman. He’s not a very good liar. His story is that they haven’t contacted him — bullshit. There isn’t a chance that he’s telling the truth. Everybody wants a piece of this deal and why wouldn’t Kingman?”
“What did you say to him?” Guzman asked.
“I told him we don’t want Kingman in this. He said, ‘No one tells me how to run my business.’”
“Like hell,” Guzman said, “like hell.” Guzman threw the photographs of the four playgroup women on his desk.
Peterson picked up a photo of Carson. She was struggling to catch up with the other three, “That’s the one from Channel 7 who interviewed me.”
“I know god-dammed well who that is, Peterson. She interviewed Blair too. I don’t give a shit about these women. It’s our business partner we have to do something about.”
A few hours later Blair took a taxi to south Halsted Street to meet Carson for a drink. She was waiting in the dark bar at the front of the restaurant. Her legs felt as if they might collapse under her as she stood to greet him. Jess had chosen a red sheath dress with a revealing neckline she had covered with a jacket until she arrived at the restaurant.
“You should always wear red,” he said, taking both her hands in his and stretching out her arms so he could take a good look at her. It took everything she had not to pull up her knee and jam it between his legs.
After pushing in her chair, he put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed them softly. She wondered how she could keep this up. It was painful already. He pulled his chair close to hers. Odd place, he thought, looking around at the darkened room. This paranoia of hers is odd, but perhaps it’s a good thing. Certainly, no one will see us here.
There was only a bartender on duty at 3:30 on a Wednesday afternoon, a predictable lull-time in the business day of a neighborhood restaurant.
“Tell me about this boyfriend of yours,” he said.
“I’ve been seeing him for about year.”
“Obviously, he hasn’t totally won your heart.” He grinned and reached for her hand.
“How do you know?” she said as suggestively as she could.
“You’re here,” he grinned. “I would like to steal you away from him.”
“I think it’s a little too soon for you to know that, Victor,“ she said, trying to get into her role. ”You hardly know me.”
“I’d like to know you,” he said. “I’d like to know you very well.”
She forced a broad smile, hoping he didn’t notice how phoney it was.
“Carson, I have told you everything about me. Now tell me all about yourself.”
He ordered a second Tanqueray martini. It took only a few moments for her to move the focus of the conversation back on him. He was obviously his favorite subject. After the waiter served the second martini, Blair reached under the table and put his hand on her thigh, where it remained like a mosquito humming in her ear until 4:30 when she looked at her watch and said, “I’m afraid I need to get back to the station.”
“When will I see you again?” he asked.
“Soon, but it’s a busy time for me. I’m embarrassed to say that to you. I’m sure you are far busier and your work is so much more important.”
“I understand. Our situations are quite different. I don’t have a boss. There’s nobody who can tell me what to do.”
“Maybe next week.”
“Yes. Let’s go to Swan’s Landing,” he said. “It’s a beautiful time to go there. Bring your suit so we can swim and relax. We’ll have a marvelous time.”
“I don’t know. I would love to, truly I would, but I don’t think I can get away for more than a few hours.”
“I’ll make it worth it for you,” he said raising his eyebrows in a way he must have thought seductive.
“Let me check with the news director.”
He kissed her hand. “I promise you, you won’t regret it.”
When they left the bar, he said, “I’ll drop you off at the station.”
“We better not leave together. Forgive me for being so nervous about being seen with you. I’ll take a cab.”
“Isn’t that foolish,” he said. “I have a car waiting. My driver will drop you off and he is very discreet.”
“I can’t,” she apologized. “For one, I am breaking station policy just having a drink with you and....”
“The man you are seeing? He wants you all to himself. Is that something you want too?
I’d better try to start now, she said to herself and looked into his eyes with as much warmth as she could manage, “I thought that’s what I wanted.
Chapter 21
As the four ran south toward downtown the next morning, the dark blue sedan followed slowly behind. It speeded up as they crossed to Michigan Avenue and ran breathlessly, eyes focused forward, past the empty stares of the strangely realistic mannequins dressed for fall in white wool mini-skirts that barely covered the tops of their thighs in the windows of Stanley Korshak. When they reached the Water Towers, they turned around quickly and ran north, then disappeared under the viaduct to the tunnel that crosses under Lake Shore Drive to the beach. A man wearing a black tee shirt and shorts jumped out of the dark sedan and ran down the stairs behind them unnoticed. The camera with a telephoto lens slung over his shoulder made it difficult for him to keep up.
“How was it yesterday?” Katherine asked.
“Terrible. He’s repulsive. Every time he touched me, I kept thinking of where his hands have been, the horrible things he does to those children. I felt like there were snakes slithering all over my body,“ Carson said. She stopped to catch her breath. “Can we stop and talk for a few minutes? “
They gathered under a lone tree at the side of the wide concrete path, it’s leaves parched yellow from weeks of record-breaking heat and no rain. Sweat poured off their bodies, their running clothes soaked. “How am I going to have sex with him? “Carson asked, “How will I even make him think I want to?”
“I don’t know,” Lauren said, Hopefully, you won’t have to. Can’t we find a way that she doesn’t have to?”
“There is no way,“ Carson said. ”We all know that. I just don’t know how I can do it.”
Jess said,”Have you ever done any acting?”
“Never.”
“You’re going to have to learn how,” Jess said. “I wish I could do it for you,” Jess said.
“Thanks. You know you can’t.”
Jess said, “Try to approach your time with him as if you are acting, try to pretend that you are an actress playing a role. I’m not saying it will be easy, but I think it would help you make it work.”
“I don’t see how,” Carson said impatiently..
Katherine said,” Believe Jess, you can’t just rely on doing what comes naturally.”
“You’re right, but I am a terrible actress. I can’t lie about anything with a straight face.”
“Come on Carson, you taught yourself to look like a pro on camera even when you were fighting down whoopsing out everything in your stomach. Don’t underestimate yourself,” Katherine said.
“I know, but this is different.”
“The acting thing makes sense and….” Katherine said, but stopped midsentence.
Something popped into her head. They could see it on her face.
“What is it?” Lauren said.
“Boy you guys know me, don’t you?” Katherine said.
“I guess we do,” Lauren said.
“What if instead of acting like yourself, you played the role of a hooker?”
“I don’t get it,” Lauren said.
“I do,” Jess said. “It’s brilliant.”
“OK, I see where you’re going,” Carson said, “but I have no idea how I would do that.”
“You will,” Jess said. “We can even script you.”
“I don’t mean just a hooker.” Katherine said,” That would be too cheap, too hard for you to get into. What if you play a very expensive call girl? You know, one of those women who get a thousand dollars a night. I know someone who did that in the late fifties.”
“You’re kidding?” Carson said. “Who?”
“I can’t tell you that!” Katherine said, picturing her babysitter Diane Parker, now a senior partner at Elliot and Porter, one of Washington D.C.’s most powerful law firms. Diane babysat for Katherine when she was a student at NYU and stayed in close touch with her over the years. Diane was like her big sister to her, her inspiration for becoming a lawyer. During Katherine’s second year of law school, Diane helped her get a summer associate position at her firm. She lived with her family in their Georgetown row house that summer.
One night after work, the two went out for drinks and got roaring drunk. Diane spilled the whole story of how she paid her entire way through Columbia Law as a high priced call girl — tuition, books, room and board, the bar prep course, everything. “She hadn’t intended to tell me. It was a slip … a big one. She consumed a boatload of vodka.”
“How did she become a call girl? That’s wild, “Carson said
“She told me that when she was in law school, she complained to someone she knew about the huge student loans she was racking up, the woman, she wouldn’t tell me who, suggested she consider entertaining gentlemen a few nights a week instead of babysitting for $3 an hour. Three dollars was the minimum wage then. The woman told her she could make at least $500 a night, sometimes up to $1,000.” Diane never told Katherine that the woman who got her into prostitution was Katherine’s mother.
“At first,” Diane said laughing,” I didn’t know what in Sam’s Hill that woman was talking about, but then she was more explicit. She told me exactly what work what would entail, how I would get my jobs, how to protect myself, all of it. You can’t you tell anyone in the world I did this, honey, and don’t you dare follow my example. You just let your mother keep paying for your law school, no matter what kind of a bitch you think she is. Just take her money. ”
“How did she manage to have sex with strangers?” Carson asked.
“She told me, being able to have sex with strangers is all a matter of mind control. I think I remember it exactly how she put it. She’s from Mississippi, has an accent so thick it makes Jess sound like Walter Cronkite. This is what she said, but imagine it with a drawl, ‘I think of my body the same way I think of my eyes and my hands. They are mine, tools that I have been given that are mine and not anyone else’s to control. My sex is a tool like any other part of me. I take good care my tools, but I don’t attach any morality to any of my body parts. My vagina is not any more sacred than my eyes, my nose, or my hands. If I need to use my hands to dig in the dirt, to clean a toilet, to wash a filthy floor, they get dirty. I wash them. Simple as that.”
“Oh my!” Carson sighed.
“Do you get it?” Katherine asked
“I do,” Carson said.
“I wish you could talk to her,” Katherine said, “but I can’t make that happen.”
“Interesting, isn’t it,” Carson said, ”that someone like her could train herself to be seductive and good in bed with a man she might dislike intensely and actually make him think she wants him?”
“I don’t know how unusual it is,” Jess said. “It’s not just call girls who are acting when they are in bed. My bet is,” she smiled knowingly,” that every night somewhere in the world there are at least a million married women who do similar performances for their husbands in the privacy of their bedrooms, and those women don’t even get paid.” It was the first time they had all laughed together in a month.
Lauren pulled her hair away from her face, tied it up into a sweaty knot, and told them. “I’ve got something to tell you. After I finished making the calls yesterday, I drove out to Swan’s Landing.”
“What made you do that?” Katherine asked, surprised as they all were.
“I don’t know. I just did it. I got into the car and the next thing I knew I was parked at the front gate.”
“Did it look like anyone was there?”
“It was hard to tell. There’s a long road in front of the property. You have to drive a considerable distance before you get to the main house. But I didn’t see anyone. The gates were locked.”
“So what did you do?”
“I just sat there at the front gate.” Carson wondered if they all were thinking what she was. That was the spot where Lauren’s mother took her life.
“I just sat there for I don’t know for how long. Then I remembered that when I was eight, right after my birthday, Victor had an entrance installed in the back of the property. When we drove in through that entrance we could go directly to the garden house without anyone in the main house knowing we were there.
He called it our secret entrance. He’d say, ‘Now we can go to our little house whenever we want to and no one will know. When we have our special days together, even the servants won’t see us.’”
As Katherine listened to Lauren recount more of her excruciating tale, she realized she felt a strange combination of fascination and repulsion.
“My mother, sister and I stayed at Swan’s Landing during the summers, Victor was only there for part of the week. When he came out, he made me go to the garden house with him. Sometimes he would tell my mother that he was taking me horseback riding or to the club. We would say goodbye to her and my sister, drive out the front gate and then circle the property and go right back in through the secret gate. The garden house is quite far away from the main house. He had a keypad opener installed at that entrance. The code programmed into the keypad was my birthdate. Every time we drove up to that gate, he would open the window, lift me onto his lap, and let me punch in the numbers. We’d drive to the garden house and when he was through with me, we would leave through that back gate and drive around to the front again.”
As Lauren described what Blair had done to her, Carson pictured him with Zoe, not with Lauren. She couldn’t wipe out the image of him touching her little girl. She knew she would have to kill him before he ever got the chance.
“I don't know how I got the courage to do it,” Lauren said, ”but I drove around to that back entrance. The road’s still unpaved.”
“What else is on that road?” Katherine asked.
“Just the back of another estate, big blue spruce trees and pines on either side. It’s woods, dense like a forest. I drove up to the entrance and punched my birthday into the keypad. There is a big iron gate...”
“And it opened?” Katherine asked.
“Slid right open.”
Katherine looked puzzled. “Why hasn’t he changed it?”
“I don't know,” Lauren said. ”Why would he have to? I’m sure he didn't think I’d ever want to get inside that place.”
“So did you drive in?”
“No, I was too scared, afraid he’d be there.”
“But he was with Carson,” Jess said.
“I know, but what if he wasn’t?
Chapter 22
Once Carson opened the door, Blair pushed harder to force his way in. She tried to avoid him, returning his phone calls when she thought he might be at away, but when they finally spoke he said, “ I can’t stop thinking about you. We need to spend time together. Let’s go somewhere for a few days, “Paris or Greece. I can charter a sailboat on the Aegean. “
She laughed, trying to treat his sweep her- off- her- feet invitations as charming.
“It sounds wonderful, but I am too busy at work. I can’t go away right now, and I can’t leave my daughter.”
“I’ll call the head of the station. He’s a good friend of mine and tell him you need a vacation. He’d do anything for me.” She knew Ahern would, especially now that he was one of the station’s biggest advertisers.
“Please don’t. I can’t do anything this week but meet for drinks.
“So come to Swans Landing for a day.” He said, “How hard would a day in the country be?”
“Really, Victor, I don’t have a full day. I’ve got seven deadlines.”
“Your work ethic is charming, Carson,” he said. “But really, you don’t have to work. “
“Can we meet for drinks tomorrow? It’s all I can do.”
OK,” he said reluctantly, “Meet me at the Club on 95 at 4:00.”
“It’s July, it will be teaming with tourists.”
“I promise, it will just you and me.”
When the elevator took her to the top of the Hancock, Chicago’s iconic landmark skyscraper crisscrossed in black steel, she was escorted to his table in the sprawling dimly lit room with floor to ceiling windows and 360-degree views of the city. Every other table was empty. He had reserved the entire room.
As much as she tried to calm herself, when he rose to greet her, she was shaking. When the waiter brought drinks, Blair told him that they be were to be left alone. He pulled her toward him and kissed her softly on the lips. She tried to appear as if she enjoyed his kiss, but was sure he knew she was faking. She suspected that he was as well. When it was time to go, he tried to convince her to spend the rest of the evening in a suite he had reserved at the Ritz Carlton. They would have a romantic dinner in their room and she could be home before midnight. She declined, her heart racing when she said goodbye. Surely, he wouldn’t put up with this much longer.
She would have two more dates with him during the next two weeks. He kept pushing for a day alone. Finally he said, “Let me be frank with you, Carson, You’re lovely, but I don’t have time for this. I’m losing my patience.”
.
There was still so much for the four of them to do before the day at Swan’s Landing. Jess’s office turned her office on the third floor of her house into their center of operations. Jess and Lauren scripted testimony from five witnesses. They had created a perfect prosecution, everything Katherine had outlined that in a real trial would guarantee to send Victor Blair to prison for the rest of his life.
In that room they would create five audio tapes: four of girls, now women, testifying how Blair had forced them to have sex with him when they were children; and one tape from a woman they would tell him was the school psychologist at Latin, the school his stepdaughters Daryl and Sasha attended.
The first testimony they completed was Lauren’s sister Ellen. It took several takes to get it right. Although they had a professional tape recorder and microphone, they had no editing equipment and even if they did, they would have no idea how to use it. If Jess, who did all of the voices, made one mistake, they had to start recording all over again. They were surprised when they completed the first, Ellen’s testimony, how real it sounded.
“When I was five, I was jealous of my sister. I thought my stepfather…”
The voice of an interviewer interrupted. It was Jess, convincingly playing a man with a distinctively Midwestern accent.
”Sorry to interrupt, would you mind giving us the name of your stepfather?”
She continued haltingly,” I thought that my stepfather … Victor Blair, loved my sister more than he loved me. He took her away alone, just the two of them together and he bought her beautiful dolls. She had a whole room full of them. I wanted those dolls and I wanted Uncle Victor to love me as much as he loved her. I didn’t know how lucky I was it was that it was Lauren he was taking for those days alone and not me, that is until he started taking me instead.”
Her faked testimony went on in vivid detail to describe what Victor Blair had done to her and how devastating it had been. Producing equally convincing testimonies for the other girls he abused was more complicated than the first. It was hard not being repetitive and it forced them to press Lauren to flesh out her memories in excruciating detail.
The last tape was the psychologist at the school Blair’s stepdaughters Daryl and Sasha attended.
“He’d be dead if this were played in courtroom,” Katherine said when they listened.
Here is what the psychologist said:
“Paula’s teacher had been concerned about Paula and asked me to do an evaluation. Paula is a bright little girl, who consistently scores high on standardized testing, but she had become increasingly more distracted and unable to focus in the classroom. Her mother told her teachers she was just going through a stage. They let it go for a while, but her behavior took a turn for the worse. She became increasingly more withdrawn and belligerent. She got into fights with other girls and became increasingly more isolated. After the evaluation, I met with her mother and suggested that Paula see a psychotherapist. She said no, but gave me permission to continue to see her. I have been meeting with Paula a few times a week for the last two years. A few months ago, Paula told me what her stepfather had been doing to her, and said she felt better now because he was leaving her alone, and now doing what he did to her to her little sister instead.”
When all the details for the day at Swan’s Landing were locked in place, Carson phoned Victor and asked if the following Wednesday would work.
“I did have a plan for the day, but of course, I’ll change it,” he said.
“Are you sure no one else will be there?” she asked
“Not a soul, I promise.”
Carson phoned Katherine at her office to tell her, “It will be next Wednesday.”
“Good, I’m ready. I want that son of a bitch to die.”
“You’re starting to sound like me. What happened?”
“Don’t Lauren this, OK?”
“Sure, what?”
“We were at my in-laws for dinner last night. They live in the building next door to Blair. As we were leaving, I saw him drive up and give the car to the doorman. He helped little Sasha out of the car. She was carrying a doll.”
Chapter 23
The night before Carson’s would drive to Swan’s Landing with Victor Blair, the four friends sat at Lauren’s kitchen table going over the plan one more time. Every detail had been precisely drawn. As in a director’s notebook, the day was scripted, step by step, word for word, with all action, gestures costumes, timing and tools spelled out.
Fortunately, Louie and Doug were at the sprawling Hutchinson cottage in South Hampton. Lauren was not invited and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.
“We should put the costumes on,” Jess said, ”wear them while we’re here and while we get everything stowed in the car. We need to make sure we feel natural wearing them, so tomorrow we don’t freak out — the masks especially.”
“OK,” Lauren said, unzipping the bag hanging from an upper cabinet pull. You’re still eating; I’ll go put on mine.” A few minutes later, she walked back into the kitchen dressed like a little girl.
Katherine said, “That costume still gives me the creeps even after I’ve seen you in it 20 times.”
Lauren was dressed like a little girl in a short pink dress with puffed sleeves and a white lace-trimmed collar, with matching panties. On her face, she wore a mask she crafted from a photograph of herself taken when she was the age Blair began abusing her. She copied photographs of her sister Ellen’s face at seven for the mask Jess would wear, and a photograph of Blair’s youngest stepdaughter Sasha for Katherine, the child he was abusing right now. Jess had taken the photo when Carson interviewed Blair on TV. The masks with the frozen faces of those violated children were disturbingly haunting, even for the four friends who had seen them many times before. Jess and Katherine’s dresses were like Laurens, little girl frocks, ruffled and pastel.
The four sat at the table reviewing what would happen, minute by minute, the next day. Before they went home to try to sleep, every item on their list of tools and props was laid out on the table, checked off the list, packed into black duffel bags and stowed in the back of the oversized Jeep Jess had rented a few days before in Racine, Wisconsin, forty minutes north of the Blair estate.
As they drove out of the city the next morning, the traffic moved at a snail’s pace. Katherine drove and Jess, in the front seat, read through the script yet one more time. Lauren was silent in the back, her hands sliding back and forth scratching ruts into the brown velour upholstery. Jess turned around to ask her a question. She didn’t answer, just stared forward; her now bulky upper arm muscles rippling as she nervously pressed her clenched fist into her hand.
About fifteen minutes later, Lauren said, “I'm freezing, can you turn down the air? It’s ice cold back here.”
“Sure. It's good to hear your voice,” Katherine said. “I thought you had gone to sleep on us.”
“I haven't slept in a month. Why would I start sleeping now?”
They got off the highway and drove into Lake Forest and to the back entrance of Swan’s Landing. When they got to the gate, Katherine rolled down the window, letting in a blast of hot, dry air. She punched in Lauren’s birthday. The gate didn’t open.
“It's 3-12-46,” Lauren said, her voice quivering. She sounded like she was about to cry when she asked Jess to try again. Jess and Katherine, terrified that Lauren was starting to crack, passed worried glances to one another. Jess punched in the numbers again and the gate slid open.
Katherine turned and asked, “Are you OK, honey?”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m fine,” she whispered.
They drove up the winding gravel road through the dense woods at the back of the property. When they got to the fallen tree limb, Katherine stopped the Jeep. She and Jess jumped out and moved the heavy limb to the side of the road next to the wire fence. Back in the Jeep again, they continued through the pine grove on the unpaved winding road leading to the back house.
After they reached the stables, Katherine stopped and backed the car into a gravel driveway, so they could make a speedy exit when it was clear that Blair was dead. When they got out of the car, the sound of their car doors opening and closing seemed to echo throughout the property. Katherine opened the back of the Jeep and reached in to get the duffels. They slipped on the gloves they each pulled from their pockets and walked single file toward the back entrance of the garden house, Katherine first, Lauren in the middle, and Jess at the rear. In the silence of the woods, the sound of their footsteps crunching the fallen leaves and twigs, even their breathing seemed loud and dangerous. When the house was in view, Katherine put her arm out to stop the others. They stood for a moment watching the swans move seemingly motionless through the dark water. There were a few water lilies in bloom. Wide clusters of pink lotus blossoms reaching up to the sun on their soft green ruffled leaves, the light danced off the water. Mercifully, a cloud eclipsed the sun.
“The temperature must have dropped thirty degrees in the last second,” Katherine said.
Suddenly Lauren’s legs collapsed. Jess and Katherine grabbed her and helped her to the ground. She seemed as if she was about to pass out.
“I’m OK, I’m OK,” she said. Katherine gave her a drink from the bottle of water she had in her bag. After a minute, Lauren pushed herself to her feet.
“Sit down, Laur,” Katherine ordered.
“Really, I’m all right.”
“No you’re not.”
“I am.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.” But to Katherine and Jess, she looked as if in a trance, tiny beads of perspiration on her forehead and upper lip.
“We can stay here until you feel better,” Jess offered. “We have plenty of time.”
Katherine shot Jess a disapproving look. In fact, there really wasn’t much time. Carson would be on her way now with Blair and there was a lot to do. Before they could do anything, she needed Jess to get the back door open. Jess had promised that she could do it easily. Hopefully, it would still be the way they left it, ajar. When they passed the shed, Jess opened the door and threw in one of the two bags. “It stinks in there.”
“We’ll do what we have to do,” Katherine said harshly, sorry she sounded so severe. Jess bolted up the front stairs of the garden house. The door was locked. Blair, both Jess and Katherine knew, had been there with Sasha since the last time they were there. Jess pulled out a few tools and credit cards and started to work on breaking in, beginning with her credit card, the technique she knew best. She slipped it through the crack in the door, easing it up under the lock. Katherine and Lauren stood close behind watching over her shoulder.
“Damn.” She pulled the out card, then tried again. It didn’t work. Just then, the sun came out from behind the cloud with a blast of heat. They were burning up.
Jess turned around angrily and said, “Jesus Christ, can't you two move back a little. I can't do this with you breathing down my neck!” They backed away. Lauren sat down on the bottom step and dropped her head in her hands, and Katherine walked around to the side of the house to see if there is another way in. She found a window that was partly open. When she got back, Jess, now with tears running down her cheeks, still hadn’t been able to open the door.
“There’s an open window,” Katherine said calmly. “I think I can get in, if I can get the screen off. Is it possible for the two of you to lift me?”
Lauren’s head popped up as if she had woken from a dream. “I’ve been lifting weights for the last three years,” she said. “Of course we can lift you.”
“So can I,” Jess said wiping the tears with her forearm.
“The window is about 10 feet off the ground,” Katherine cautioned them.
As she followed Katherine around the house, Lauren said, “You’ve lost so much weight since we started this, I could probably lift you myself.” As she spoke, she pulled her shoulders up close to her neck, then rolled them in a full circle to loosen the tension in her shoulders. She took a deep breath and knelt down to hoist Katherine up as if it were something she had done a hundred times before. Until that moment, Jess and Katherine had been terrified that Lauren was about to lose it, even though she had assured them over and over again that she was as capable as any of them. She had told them, “If anyone is entitled to have her hand in this, it’s me.”
Even though Katherine weighed barely 90 pounds, they were shaking with the strain of holding her above their shoulders. “Damn it. It won't budge.” Katherine winced.
They put her down. “Try to pry it off with this thing.” Jess said, pulling a large screwdriver out of her bag.” Then the two of them lifted her again.
“OK, I got it.” The screen fell to the ground.
“Can we put you down for a second?” Jess asked, trying to catch her breath. They lowered her, and then in a minute lifted her again. Katherine grabbed on to the window ledge and hoisted herself up and through the small opening.
The weight training, running and exercise they all had done during the last months, which they thought they had done for other reasons, would pay off handsomely today. They were stronger than any of them had ever been in their lives. Katherine wondered if perhaps on some unconscious level, they had known that some day they would need the strength, both physical and emotional, they would all have to call upon that day.
When Katherine slipped through the small opening of the window, she looked around the house. She had landed in what must be the living room. It was dark and musty, paneled with stained knotty pine, a rope rug on the floor. The smell of stale cigarette ashes in a glass ashtray on a low brass coffee table permeated the air.
Then she saw it, the rocking chair Lauren had described to them. It was the chair where Blair held Lauren and rocked her the first few times he brought her to this horrible place. It was in that chair where he slowly removed her party dress, her patent leather shoes and underpants, where he touched every part of her innocent child body, where he violated her. She shuddered.
She knew she had to fight feeling disoriented and uncontrollably angry, to not buckle under and lose it. She felt she was the most solid of the three. She took a deep breath and walked from the living room through a door leading to a small kitchen in the back and opened the door to let Jess and Lauren inside. “Hurry up.
We've got a lot to do,” she said. She was afraid to look into Lauren’s eyes. As Lauren walked from the porch to the living room, her blank stare was replaced by a look of terror. She walked up to the rocking chair and ran her hand along the back. With a light push, it began to rock, the sound of the base hitting the hardwood-planked floor, slap, slap. Once again, Katherine watched Lauren take a deep breath and pull herself straight. She shrugged her shoulders and seemed to grow a few inches taller, and her expression changed to an almost hypnotic state of calm.
“Let’s get started,” Katherine said, taking charge. “It’s 10:30, Carson is less than an hour away.”
Katherine walked into the bedroom and saw the big white iron bed where Lauren had told them Blair molested her. She opened the drawer of the nightstand. The contents made her gag. Jess came into the bedroom and crawled under the bed and attached a small radio transmitter. She placed another under a table in the living room, while Katherine nailed the fake surveillance camera, its lens pointed in the direction of the bed, to a window frame, and draped it with the curtain. Katherine opened every drawer and cabinet door, looking for a possible hidden video camera or tape recorder. She found nothing. Most of the drawers and cabinets were empty. She opened the first cabinet of a wall of cabinets and shelves on either side of a stone fireplace in the living room and quickly slammed it shut. She opened another, and again slammed the door.
“What’s wrong?” Jess asked seeing Katherine’s horrified expression.
“I’ll tell you later,” she whispered. “Just don’t let Lauren near these cabinets.”
When Lauren came into the room, she walked straight to the cabinet Katherine had just slammed shut and looked inside. It was filled with dolls, beautiful dolls, perhaps a dozen still secured with plastic bads into their pastel packages, their faces staring blankly from behind the cellophane wrapping. She closed the door and asked flatly, “Is there anything else I can do to help?”
Katherine shook her head and smiled. “I think we’re done.”
Chapter 24
Traffic had stopped. There was accident ahead. Blair rambled on about the car.
“Carson,”, he said, “Mercedes engineered this beauty especially for me,” “It’s the only one like it in the world.” He slid another cassette into the stereo. “The sound is so rich and clear, it’s as if the orchestra is right here in the car. It’s Corelli.”
As if, she thinks, I couldn’t possibly know.
She wondered how he couldn’t see right through her? He must. Everything she said sounded rehearsed, wooden. He’s so slick, this man, she thought, repulsive, but razor sharp. His clothes even on this, the hottest day of the year, are without a wrinkle or unintentional crease. She is sure he didn’t even sweat. This is what he wears for a relaxed day in the country – a flawlessly ironed shirt, silk trousers, and an alligator belt, Gucci loafers that match. A navy blazer with shiny brass buttons lies neatly across the back seat, his silver hair combed back away from his face and sprayed perfectly in place. He was deadly handsome when he was young. She had seen pictures. Women, even young women, might think he still is. To Carson, he was hideous, a giant gray rat, barely disguised by his elegant manners and clothes.
She tried to keep herself calm, but she couldn’t. What if something happened to her friends, to one of the children, and they weren’t there? What if she couldn’t get him to that house? What if he wouldn’t let her tie him up? Lauren was so sure she could do it. What if she was wrong?
The traffic picked up. Making up for lost time, he pressed his foot hard on the accelerator. “Let’s see what this baby can do.” Humming dissonantly, he reached past the leather armrest and put his hand on her thigh. She wanted to slap him, but forced a smile.
“Feel the leather. It’s like kid gloves. I’ll order one of these for you if you’d like. Just give me the word and tell me what color you want.” He turned to her and smiled and the car veered dangerously to the left.
She grabbed the wheel to steady it. “Victor, don’t even joke about that. I don’t want you to buy me anything.”
“Why not?” he said. “It would be my pleasure.”
“I’m not interested in your money, Victor.” She had memorized the lines Jess wrote for her and spent many long nights coaching her to deliver. “There is something else I want from you, Victor, and it’s not anything money can buy,” also scripted. She reached over to put her hand on the inside of his thigh. She smiled up at him adoringly in the way Jess had shown her. “I have never felt anything quite like this in my life,” she said. “It’s like I’m in heat.”
She heard her voice, how forced and wooden she must sound. It reminded her of the girls in the porno films Jess insisted they watch on the VCR in her exercise room. Jess said watching the films would help her to view the day as her “performance.” Apparently, Victor didn’t hear the false note. He seemed moved and smiled at her warmly.
She closed her thighs tightly on his hand and continued to recite the lines Jess had written for her, “I felt it the first minute I saw you. It’s that power you have. I didn’t want to feel it, Victor. I still don’t, but every minute I am in your presence, it’s there. The way you’ve looked at me, even that first day we met. It was like you were slowly undressing me, one piece of clothing at a time. I’ve wanted you to do that to me ever since.”
He moved his hand up her thigh, almost to Carson’s black lace panties, then stopped and took her hand and placed it on the mound of his already hard penis. She let it rest there as they drove, forcing herself to caress him from time to time. He seemed happy and comfortable and it felt as if their plan was working, at least for now.
He took her hand. “Oh no, you’re freezing, dear. I’m so sorry. Let me turn down the air conditioning.” His hand was warm and fleshy, his skin soft like a woman’s. His nails had been freshly manicured, the cuticles trimmed, a coat of clear polish. Carson was shaking; but it wasn’t from the cold. She tried calm down, take control of herself. In her head, she reached for Jess’s reassuring voice, a voice she had listened intently to for the last 10 days in preparation for this moment.
“Think of yourself an actress, Carson,” she’d said. “Just repeat the lines you memorized. Imagine you’re a prostitute. Don’t try to play a woman in love. Play a woman who sells herself to men. Stay in control the way Katherine’s friend says to stay in control, as if you are playing a role in a movie in which you seduce a man you hate. Know that it’s just an act. Separate yourself. You can pull it off.”
She knew what she had to do:
1. Get him to the garden house and into bed as quickly as possible.
2. Get him excited and keep him that way.
3. Tie him to the posts of the bed.
4. When you say, “Now that I’ve got you tied up, the fun begins,” We’ll hear you from the shed and come into the room.
5.You scream when you see us. Pretend to defend him, and we’ll do the rest.
So far, she was ahead of the plan. What panicked her most was getting him to allow her to tie him up. She had watched the dominatrix porno film Katherine had found at the Pleasure Chest. It was hard for her not to laugh thinking of herself dressed that way, giving orders, but she was determined to do it. If she couldn’t and didn’t signal the others to come into the room, they would leave. She would have to have sex with him and they would be forced to find another way.
Carson felt a shock of fear when Blair slowed down in front of the big iron gates of Swan’s Landing. The bronze swans were grotesquely oversized, their wings spread so strangely they looked ominous. The gates slid open noiselessly.
“And there’s no one here today?” she asked him as they drove under an arch of huge elms over a winding road.
“I promised you, Carson, and I keep my promises. There is not a soul on the property.”
It felt like it took an eternity until they reached the main house. It was so large and grand it took her breath away. “It’s is beautiful, Victor, you’re right.”
He stopped the car and reached over and pulled Carson toward him. His kiss was long and wet; he shoved his tongue into her mouth. It took everything she had not to gag. He turned off the engine.
“No, don’t, Victor. We need to go somewhere else on the property.”
“There is nowhere else.”
“I’m not going into that house,” she said, struggling to sound firm, but not off-putting.
“What do you mean you’re not going in?” he said, amused.
“I can’t make love to you in your wife’s house.”
“That’s ridiculous. This is not my wife’s house; it’s my house.”
“Please, we’ll come back here another time. I can’t go in there now.”
“That’s crazy, Carson.” Her heart was racing. She knew what she was supposed to say now, but she thought it couldn’t possibly work.
“I want you now, Victor. I want to make love to you now and it can’t be in there.”
He shook his head and protested. Carson put her fingers on his lips asking him to please listen. She kissed him as passionately as she could and said, “Please, Victor give me what I want. I promise you won’t be sorry.”
“But there is nowhere else on the property.”
“There must be. You must have a guest house or, maybe, a servants’ house you don’t use?”
“Really Carson, this is stupid. No.”
“There isn’t another bed on this property?”
“The garden house, but you don’t want to go there.”
“Yes, I do. I promise you. I do. I want to go there now. Please don’t make me wait.”
He held the leather-upholstered steering wheel tightly with both hands as they drove silently toward the garden house. He was irritated; that was clear. It was what she feared would happen. She knew she could screw up, but she didn’t even imagine it could be this bad, that she might make him angry. Clearly, she had. She wished it were Jess in the car with him instead. Jess could pull this off, she could charm him as she did everyone else in the universe, but she couldn’t. She was no seductress, not an actress or a beauty.
She took a deep breath and tried to get her composure. “Victor, you have to forgive me. I have been nervous about today for weeks. I want our first time to be perfect.”
“But you insist on going to the servants’ house. It doesn’t make sense to me.”
Then she realized he had given her an unexpected opportunity she could use. It wasn’t in her script; she would have to improvise.
“It’s about control, Victor. I feel totally overwhelmed when I’m with you, overwhelmed and out of control. I don’t like the feeling of being out of control.” Blair did not respond. He still looked irritated.
“You have this sexual power I find totally overwhelming,” Carson said. “ You must know that you have me wrapped around your little finger.” That made him smile.
“And it’s terrifying. I don’t want to be wrapped around your little finger.”
“What is it you want, Carson?” He started to look mildly amused.
“Will you play with me?” Carson said.
“Any game you want.” He smiled.
“Just pretend that I’m the one who is in control today.”
He winked. “Whatever you want,” he said, evidently starting to get the drift of what she was implying. “But what do you mean?” he said.
“You’ll see. Just indulge me.”
He smiled. “Of course. Please explain?” he said, apparently titillated.
“Let me show you. If you don’t like it, we’ll never do it again. If you do like it, you’re the man I’ve been looking for all my life.”
She waited for Victor to walk around the car and open the door, and when he did, she held out her hand to him and smiled as seductively as she could. She was starting to feel more in control although she knew she looked like a porn actress in a B-grade movie. As she got out of the car, she spread her legs just enough for him to get a look. He smiled appreciatively, took her in his arms and kissed her, his hands grabbing her buttocks and pulled her toward him. She tried to respond similarly, pressing her hips into his. The erection he had demonstrated during the drive out did not appear to be there. He took her arm and led her up the stairs of the little house.
“I told you, it’s a mess, not a place for you.”
The house was silent, like a tomb. It dawned on her that there was a good possibility that Jess, Lauren and Katherine might not be there. “
Blair said, “I have Château Laffite Rothschild and Beluga two minutes away and I can’t even offer you a glass of water here. Let me take you back to the house.”
“I don’t want caviar. I want you.”
Jess grinned when she heard Carson deliver that line. But the sound in the shed went out and for a few minutes they heard nothing. They exchanged worried glances. It was impossible to know what was happening. Hopefully, she was OK. Then they heard Victor, “What did you say about me undressing you?”
Carson laughed, “You undress me. I want you to,” she said, “and then it’s my turn to be in control. OK?”
“Sure if that’s really what you want.”
“It is.”
“Do I get one request first?” he said slyly.
“Only one, and if you ask for more I’ll be forced to spank you.”
“Spank me?” he laughed. “Oh, you are a naughty girl.”
“What’s your request?” she said managing a seductive smile.
“I want you to do a striptease for me,” he said. “Take your clothes off slowly, one piece at a time.”
“Anything you want,” she said boldly. She began to slowly unbutton her blouse, her eyes locked in his. She let the blouse slip off her shoulders and drop to the floor.
“Come here,” he said.
“I will, Victor, but remember this is the last request you get, the last order I’m taking from you today. Do you understand?”
He nodded.
“After that, you do whatever I tell you to do. Understand?“
He said yes, as he pressed his face into her breasts, his hands moving down her body. He unzipped her skirt and it fell to the ground. Wearing the black lace panties, garter belt and bra Jess bought at a sleazy sex shop, Carson felt like a caricature of a whore.
“Take off your bra,” Victor ordered.
“Don’t you tell me what to do, Victor,” she smiled and said sternly. “ It’s my turn to tell you what to do. You promised I can give all the orders today.” He laughed and so did she. “This is fun, isn’t it?” Carson said.
Blair’s voice was scratchy over the speaker in the shed. They couldn’t make out his answer. Then they heard Carson, “Lie down on the bed and put your hands above your head.” They heard the sound of the springs on the iron bed creek as he lay down.
“I’m going to tie you up,” she said, slipping into a Southern accent that made her sound as if she were imitating Jess.
He laughed, “What are you going to tie me up with?”
“I have rope in my purse,” she said, pulling a coil of heavy black silk rope from her bag.
“Rope!” he said, sounding delighted.
“Fun, huh?” she said. “I need to put some gloves on so I don’t get rope burns from tying you up.”
He laughed again. She walked to the foot of the bed and slowly and thoughtfully like a stripper working in reverse, pulled on a pair of long black gloves. His eyes followed every move as she climbed up onto the bed. She squatted over him and tied his hands tightly together and secured them to the iron headboard with a tight square knot. He seemed very turned on.
“I don’t want you to get rope burns either,” she said,” so I brought along this soft silky padding to protect your wrists.” He smiled gratefully. “Now I’m going to do your feet. “Spread your legs apart.” He did exactly what he was told. The erection he had lost earlier reappeared.
“I see you like this game,” she said.
They couldn’t make out his response, only the sound of movement on the bed. Then they heard Carson say, “Now that I’ve got you tied up, the fun begins.” They heard her loud and clear.
Carson climbed down from the bed. She looked at Blair’s penis guarded only by straggly, thin, grey pubic hair and wrapped her gloved hand around the shaft. She smiled at him and gently but firmly, moved her hand up and down.
As he slipped into ecstasy, Lauren left the shed followed by Katherine and Jess. The three, now masked and dressed like little girls, walked swiftly and silently to the house and entered the room. He had no idea they were there until he heard Lauren’s voice.
“I’ll take that, bitch!” Lauren said as she pushed Carson aside as planned. It appeared that Carson was just as shocked at their arrival as Blair was. Lauren grabbed Blair’s penis in her gloved hand, then yanked it as hard as she could. He cried out in pain. When they had rehearsed this moment, Carson hadn’t been able to manage to look as shocked and scream the way Jess directed, but at that moment of heightened terror, she screamed and backed away.
“Uncle Victor, how nice to see you again, and here where we spent so many hours together,” Lauren said calmly from behind the mask.
He shouted, “Who are you?”
“You remember me, Uncle Victor. “Lauren said from behind the face of the little girl he had repeatedly abused in that room 25 years before. “I’m Lauren, Mary’s oldest girl. You brought me here for the first time when I was seven.”
“I did no such thing,” he shouted.
From behind the smiling mask of Lauren’s little sister, Jess said, “Oh, you didn’t!” She laughed sadistically.
“Leave him alone!” Carson said angrily, reaching for the ropes to untie Blair’s hands.
“Get away from him or we’ll tie you up too,” Katherine shouted, moving toward Carson, a gun in her hand. Carson backed ff and quickly put on her clothes.
“Of course you remember my baby sister, Ellen,” Lauren said yanking him again.
With her free hand she pointed to Jess. “I bet you thought she was still in the psychiatric hospital where you stowed her away.”
“I didn’t stow anyone anywhere,” he shouted.
“You will never touch another little girl again,” Jess said.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he shouted back at her.
“You forced me to have sex with you until I almost died, ” Jess, the voice behind the mask of the smiling little girl said angrily.
“I didn’t do anything to you.”
“Oh right, Victor,” Jess said. “You know God-damned well what you did to me. And you are not the only one who knows.”
“Who do you think you’re talking to?” he shouted, trying to pull himself up. “You are going to be sorry girls, when I get through with you.”
“No Victor, it’s you who’ll be sorry,” Katherine said. “We have testimony and enough evidence to send you to federal prison for the rest of your life, not just for what you did to Lauren and Ellen, but for what you are doing to your stepdaughters right now.”
“I’m not doing anything to my stepdaughters!” he shouted.
“Tell me about it Victor,” Katherine said, and she pulled back the curtain where they had mounted the fake surveillance camera. “You were here with little Sasha last week.”
Katherine took the camera off its mount. “Would you like to see what you did to her? It’s all in this camera. We already have videos of what you did with the little girls several times before. What do you have to say for yourself?”
“I’ll say that you’re a bunch of fucking liars. Who the hell are you?”
“Oh you don’t know who I am!” Lauren shouted into to his face, her voice trembling with rage. Suddenly she pulled a chef’s knife out of the bag slung over her shoulder. “Well here’s a little reminder, Uncle Victor.” She made a quick slash on the side of his penis. He screamed as blood gushed onto her clothing.
“You’re not going to forget me again.”
The others looked at one another with horror. Yes, Lauren was going to scare him with a knife if needed, but not cut him. Using the knife was never in their plan. There was to be no blood, no guns, no violence. Everything would be clean, neat, controlled, and ladylike. They would show him the camera and play the audiotapes. He would have two choices: take the sleeping pills and be remembered as a brilliant business leader and philanthropist, or refuse and they would turn the tapes and videos over to the police and he would spend the rest of his life in prison.
Jess put her arm around Lauren’s shoulder and tried to pull her away from the bed, but she stiffened and pushed her away. Victor moaned, his face contorted with pain.
“Oh, Uncle Victor, did that hurt? I’m so sorry. It should be a clean cut. “ Lauren flashed the bloody knife in his face.
“I’ve spent a few decades sharpening this for you.” Then with one quick gesture, Lauren cut off her stepfather’s penis. As he lay screaming, the others stood powerless in shock.
“What are we going to do now?” Jess cried. Just then, they heard the sound of a car coming from the front of the property.
“Blair said no one would be here!” Jess said.
“Why was I stupid enough to believe him?” Carson said. ”We have to get out of here.”
“We can’t leave him this way,” Katherine said, her voice trembling with terror. “He is still alive. We can’t go until we know he’s dead.” She pulled the knife out of Lauren’s hand and tried to thrust it into Blair’s chest. When the knife got close to his body, she winced and turned away. She lifted the knife again. Carson wrapped both her hands around Katherine’s and together, their faces pained, they forced the knife into his chest. It seemed that in an instant, all the life went out of his body.
“Jesus Christ let’s get out of here!” Carson cried, pulling off her gloves and throwing them into the duffle. They heard a car door opening. There was no time to grab anything. They ran out the back door. In moments they were at the van, stripping down to the running clothes they wore under the costumes. They threw everything into a duffle and jumped into the car. Katherine gunned the motor and raced down the road. The gate opened as they approached and in moments they were northbound on the interstate.
The vehicle they had heard coming toward the garden house was a van from Moose Anton’s Landscaping and Nursery in Dundee, a suburb not far from Lake Forest. The driver pulled the van off to the side of the road and parked it in a shady clearing not far from the garden house. He and two other gardeners opened the back of the van and lowered a ramp and wheeled out a cart of annuals, to refresh the flowerbeds surrounding the pond and garden house.
They worked quietly without speaking to one another. After they unloaded flats of annuals, they hauled out eight large bags of topsoil and mulch. There were several more bags left inside the van. It took two men to lift each bag. They carried them silently and carefully placed them at the foundation of the garden house. One more bag was placed not far from Blair’s silver Mercedes gleaming almost blindingly in the sun.
The gardeners lingered for a moment before they returned to their van and drove back toward the main gate of the estate. When the gates closed behind them, they drove a few blocks west and parked on the side of the road. They waited silently until they heard a deafening blast of dynamite. The ground shook beneath them. They drove to a phone booth at a 7-Eleven a few blocks away. The driver got out and dialed the private line of William Peterson, the CEO of Reliable Life. He was at his desk and picked up his phone.
“It’s done,” the gardener said.
Chapter 25
In the hundreds of hours the four friends had spent together, there had rarely been more than five minutes of silence. As they drove toward the place they would destroy the evidence before returning the rental car, no one spoke. Katherine turned off the interstate at Route 50 and drove east toward Lake Michigan. Two miles before they would reach the lake, she turned onto the long winding road to Shawnee State Park. The parking lot outside the gate for overflow cars was empty. The park ranger stopped them at the gate. Katherine shuddered at the sight of a man in uniform.
“Are you camping?” he asked.
“No, just going for a picnic and a run,” Katherine said.
He stared suspiciously at the four women. They didn’t look like the locals who frequented the park on a weekday, particularly one as uncomfortably hot as this one. “Just go in,” he said, but he didn’t open the gate. “Turn left if you want the picnic area near the water.”
“Can we make a fire?” Katherine asked, though she knew the answer. Fires were allowed at Shawnee State. “We want to roast some hot dogs.”
“Pretty hot for a fire today,” he said, curiously eyeing the two strangely edgy-looking women in the back seat.
“Not for us,” Katherine said brightly.
Lauren let out a long sigh as the gate opened and they drove into the park. Fortunately, there were only two cars in the sprawling lot and one yellow school bus. The children were nowhere in sight. They drove to the picnic area and parked. Lauren slung the duffel filled with bloody clothing over her shoulder; Jess took the white Styrofoam cooler and they walked to the most private of the picnic sites. The rusty iron drum they had dragged over when they scouted the park a few day before was still just where they left it. Jess pulled a fire starter from the cooler, while the others gathered dry twigs. She lit the paper wrapper of the starter and threw it into the drum. Katherine added crumpled newspaper.
The fire started quickly. Lauren untied the duffel, pulled out the bag with the chef’s knife and threw the knife onto the ground. She dumped the bloody clothing and bag into the fire and the heat intensified. Jess picked up the knife with a paper towel and cleaned it with spray kitchen cleaner and paper towels, which she threw into the fire. She put the knife into the cooler next to a block of cheese, a loaf of bread, a pack of hot dogs and some apples.
They stood mesmerized by the fire. In a few minutes nothing was left but the grommets of the duffel. As they stowed the cooler in the van, they heard the laughter and chatter of a group of children walking toward the picnic area for lunch.
“Let’s go for a run,” Katherine said as she locked the Jeep. She led the way through the winding trails of the forest preserve. Under broad poplars, pine, spruce, hawthorn and oaks, they were shielded from the unmerciful sun. They ran in a single file at a pace that would have been unimaginable to them less than a year ago when they met, virtual strangers at that first playgroup at Katherine’s apartment. The sweat poured off their lean bodies, their hair, their skimpy lightweight mesh and polyester running clothes, sopping wet. They didn’t speak as they ran, each of them trying to digest what had happened in the hours that had just past. Would they be caught and what then?
That morning as she’d walked to Lauren’s house, Katherine remembered, there was a buff-colored mound on the sidewalk. When she got close enough she saw that it was a sparrow, lying on its side, dead. She jumped and looked away to escape the feeling of horror at seeing that dead little creature. Strange, when she looked back at Blair as they were leaving, she had felt nothing, no discomfort, no regret, just fear of what might happen to the four of them. “How could that be possible?” She wondered if there was something wrong with her. Yes, she felt afraid, but only that they would get caught. That was all.
“I shouldn’t have done it,” Lauren anguished, “but I couldn’t control myself.” With that knife in her hand, she couldn’t stop herself. She was ready to do exactly what they’d planned, say what she was supposed to say, just scare him. She didn’t regret what she did; he deserved it. In fact, she wished she could have done it years ago. Her horror lay in what she’d done to her friends. Surely they would have gotten away with everything as planned if she hadn’t lost control. She didn’t care if she got caught, but what about them? They did this for her and now she’d destroyed their lives.
Jess, too, was filled with regret, but for entirely different reasons. She wished she had grabbed that knife with them. It was wrong for her to stand there paralyzed, not taking equal responsibility for what had to be done. She was sure they were disgusted with her; she was disgusted with herself. Somehow, she didn’t feel afraid that they would be caught. Somehow, she was certain they wouldn’t be. She repeated that assurance over and over again in her head.
Carson couldn’t shake the terror she felt, the horror of what they had done. She was terrified of what would happen next, of what would happen to Zoe. She knew that she would be caught. Someone had to have seen her go out there with him. She was certain the police were looking for her already. She tried to calm herself, but it was impossible. She felt as if she were outside her body, like her legs were moving faster than they ever had before without being a part of her body. She was running to escape, but she knew that she would never escape. Perhaps the others would, but she knew that was not possible for her.
When the four women reached a clearing, they found themselves back where they started their run. The children were gone now, and they ran straight to the water, took off their running shoes and socks and dove in. The water was warm, the small lake heated by the unrelenting heat of this summer, but it was cool compared to the air.
Carson pulled off her shorts and tank top, hooked them onto her arms and began to swim toward the other side of the lake. The others did the same, all swimming just below the surface of the water. They reached the other side and swam back, meeting in a circle near the shore. They stood up, the water to their shoulders, and talked for the first time since they left Swan’s Landing.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Katherine said. “But I do know that what we did was right.”
“I’m so sorry,” Lauren said, sobbing.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Katherine said.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Carson said. “If I were you I would have done exactly the same thing.”
“I was the one who did the wrong thing,” Jess said. “I should have taken that knife in my hands too.”
Carson tried to look calm. It was hard for her even to speak. “We just have to get through this, whatever that means.”
Though no one was in sight, the four friends didn’t want to risk being caught walking around the park naked. They swam out a little further and slipped on their shorts and tanks before walking out of the water into the sun.
“These will dry in no time,” Jess said, combing her fingers through her hair. They squeezed as much water out of their clothes and hair as possible and stretched out on the picnic benches so that their clothes would dry in the sun.
From the park, they drove to the place where they had left Jess’s car after they picked up the Jeep at the rental agency. They transferred everything into the trunk, and Lauren followed the as they drove to the Hertz car rental office. After they returned the Jeep, the four women headed home through heavy construction on the interstate.
The ride back to the center of Chicago felt like forever. No one spoke. Lauren fell asleep and slumped onto Jess’s shoulder. Jess reached over and rubbed her head as if she were a child. When they pulled into Jess’s driveway, it was almost 6:00. The children, except for Louie, who was away with his father, were there, as was Alex. When the four women walked into the house, Maeda and Millie were in the kitchen finishing dinner preparations. Maeda said: “They’re down in the pool. David and Alex are teaching the children to swim.”
“Sorry we are so late.” Jess said when they got downstairs. There’s construction on I-94 and traffic was moving at a snail’s pace.”
“How was your day?” David shouted. “Did you get your car?”
“All fixed,” Jess said. “Funny, I had to pay the mechanic with cash.”
“But did you have a good time? Like I have to ask the four of you; you always have a blast.”
“It was great. We went for a run, took a swim, had lunch.”
“Everybody out of the pool. Time to have dinner,” Jess shouted.
“No we’re not getting out!” the children shouted in unison.
“Give us a little more time, honey. Maybe another half an hour,” David asked, not having a clue that the last thing Jess or her friends wanted at this moment was to deal with their children.
“Sure honey,” Jess said gratefully.
“Do you mind if we go upstairs and turn on the news?” Carson asked.
“Oh yeah, you should,” David said. “Lauren, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but I think I know how you’ll feel about the news.” He gestured for her to come closer so the children wouldn’t hear. “Your stepfather is dead.”
Lauren shook her head. They walked upstairs quietly to the family room where they turned on the TV. Jess went to the bar and poured four hefty gin and tonics and they eased down on an oversized couch facing the TV.
Bill Kurtis and Walter Jacobson, the co-anchors of the ABC evening news bantered about the heat. Then, Kurtis, looking grimly into the camera said, “Sadly, we have to report a giant loss for Chicago today. One of our most beloved and respected business leaders, Victor Blair, was murdered at his Lake Forest estate. A real estate magnate, Blair was a major force behind the development of One Magnificent Mile, and most recently the lead partner in the projected billion-dollar Riverfront Center. Jerry Taft is at the scene of the murder.”
“It appears that Blair was brutally murdered before assailants dynamited a small gardener’s house at his Lake Forest estate. There is almost nothing left of the structure. At first, the police were not certain the deceased was Blair, but his identity was later confirmed with dental records.” The camera panned to what remained of the house, virtually burnt to the ground. “Neighbors heard the blast at about 11:30 this morning. The police are searching for any clues that might point to what might have motivated this gangland-style murder of one of Chicago’s most powerful and admired businessmen.
“William Peterson, the president of Reliable Life Insurance, a business partner with Blair in the Riverfront Center project and one of his closest friends, was interviewed at his office this afternoon.”
“Mr. Peterson, the nature of the murder points to the possibility that the crime syndicate was involved.”
“I can’t imagine that. Victor Blair was one of the most honorable men I have ever known. I don’t think he had an enemy in the world.”
The screen went back to Kurtis. “Mr. Blair will be remembered not only as one of Chicago’s most brilliant businessmen, but also as a beloved philanthropist whose generosity benefited scores of Chicago charities. Just a few months ago, Channel 7 featured Victor Blair in our series on Chicago’s most powerful leaders. Here in an interview with our own Carson Brown…”
“Mr. Blair, I understand that along with scores of other philanthropic interests you have had a lifelong commitment to philanthropy benefiting children, both here in the Chicago area and all over the world.”
“Yes, that’s true, Carson. Nothing could be more important to me and to my wife.” The camera flashed to his smiling wife seated at his side.
“It appears you are also a devoted father.” His beautiful stepdaughter was sitting on his lap and beamed up at him. He hugged her to his chest and planted a kiss on her forehead.
“Well, of course,” he said with a smile, and looked straight into the camera. “Could anything be more adorable than a little girl?”
“Stockings,” he grinned and reached under the black lace garter belt her friends insisted, even on this sweltering August morning, would be just the right touch. From his excitement, which was immediately visible, it was obvious they were right. To calm herself, she tried think about that first playgroup and how the women she met that day would lead her, just eight short months later, to this moment.
Chapter 1
It was so cold and windy on the first morning the playgroup met that Carson called a taxi to take her three-year-old daughter the four short blocks to Katherine Phillips’ apartment on the corner of Astor and Banks. A painful blast of wind off Lake Michigan almost blew them back into the car. The Chicago Blizzard of 1979 that had begun over the weekend with the largest snowfall in the history of Chicago left the city paralyzed. Another front was on its way. Carson held Zoe tightly in her arms and pushed her way to the building. The doorman eyed her suspiciously and despite the cold and wind, took his time walking to the heavy plate-glass doors to let them into the lobby. He led them to a dark mahogany paneled elevator and closed the ornate brass gates.
As they passed each landing, one apartment on each floor, she realized this was one of those Gold Coast co-ops where even if potential buyers had millions to purchase one of the sprawling apartments, it wouldn’t be enough if they didn’t have the right background and social connections. Surely, the names on the mailboxes read like the Social Register of Chicago. Although Carson had not yet met her hostess, she already regretted she had come.
She barely knew Lauren Hutchinson, the woman who had invited her and Zoe to join a group of mothers and their three-year-olds for a once-a-week get-together. Lauren had a locker across from Carson’s at a downtown athletic club and they had developed the funny kind of relationship you have with someone you see naked on a regular basis but know nothing substantive about. They undressed and dressed side by side a few times a week for months before they even said hello to each other. There was something about Lauren that reminded Carson of Marilyn Monroe, something sad and vulnerable. She seemed awkward and oddly modest to Carson, particularly in that vast mirrored and marbled spa of a locker room. At any given time, there might be as many as 50 nearly naked women in that room staring at their own reflections. At the mirror at the end of their row of lockers, there were so many women peering over their shoulders at their derrieres, then spinning around for a frontal view, there were traffic jams. But Lauren never looked at herself, even from the corner of her eye. She ran from the shower shrouded in the club’s thick, cream-colored Egyptian cotton towels, her face and the skin she couldn’t cover flushed pink. And as quickly as possible, she slipped on her practical underwear, a white cotton bra and underpants, threw on her clothes, put a comb through her streaked blonde hair and dashed out the door.
The entrance hall of the Katherine Phillips’ apartment was larger than Carson’s living room. With its deep charcoal gray walls and dark green marble floors, the space felt cavernous and undefined except for the ornately carved moldings and three sets of French doors. Spotlights from the ceiling lit a quartet of towering black skeletal Giacometti sculptures in the center of the room, each nearly eight feet tall and arranged in a circle like marching guards. Behind them, a Jackson Pollock covered an entire wall. Carson felt as if she had just entered an art museum instead of the home of a couple she assumed to be about her age.
Katherine was not anything like the image Carson had conjured as they rode up the elevator. She had expected someone tall and stately, perhaps in jodhpurs and riding boots, just back from working out one of her champion Arabians at the stable in Old Town a few blocks to the west. Instead, a woman not quite five feet tall was at the door to greet them. She wore jeans and a plain men’s white tee shirt, no shoes or socks, and her black hair was pulled back in a braid that ended in the middle of her back. Her thick black lashes fringed dark eyes that turned up slightly in the corners and seemed to disappear when she smiled. She greeted Zoe first and then took Carson’s hand and held it firmly until Carson met her steady gaze.
Katherine led them to the family room. She had the graceful walk of a ballerina; her feet slightly turned out as if at any moment she might raise both of her gently curved arms above her head and leap into a grand jeté. The three toddlers, Zoe’s soon-to-be playmates, were climbing on a jungle gym large enough for a nursery school. Toys were scattered everywhere. Zoe surveyed the scene and held on tightly to her mother’s hand.
The two other women stood to greet them. Carson was surprised when Lauren hugged her. Her bulky, caramel-colored sweater smelled of cigarette smoke. That she smoked, had a little boy Zoe’s age, and lifted weights were about the only things Carson knew about Lauren. She got onto an elevator with Lauren on the way up to the gym one day. Lauren was lighting a cigarette and apologized, “I started when I was 11, didn’t stop till I got pregnant. I thought I was cured for life. But when I went into labor, the first thing I did was rummage through my drawers for a pack. I found one and when they took Louie to the nursery and brought me back to my room, I threw my coat over my hospital gown, went out on the fire escape and smoked most of the pack. I’ve smoked at least that much every day since.”
Lauren introduced her to Jessica Kingman, whom Carson recognized immediately from the full-page photograph she had seen of her and her husband in a recent issue on Chicago in Town and Country. Jessica‘s husband David was the heir apparent of Kingman Industries, one of the largest family-owned companies in America. Besides that not insignificant piece of information, and the fact that at first glance she was the most beautiful woman Carson had ever seen, that was all she knew about her.
“Have we met?” Jess said, looking at Carson curiously.
“No, I am sure we haven’t.”
“But I feel like I know you,” she smiled as she pushed up the sleeves of a luxuriously thick, white cable-knit cashmere sweater that matched tailored white wool slacks. A gold chain belt was slung over her narrow hips. Carson had come from a day at work that started at 5 a.m. and had raced home to swoop up Zoe just before the playgroup. In the tired navy suit she had tried to dress up with a scarf, she felt like someone who had been out all day in the rain collecting for the Salvation Army.
“Now I remember,” Jess said excitedly. “You’re on TV! Isn’t that right?” Carson nodded. “You do….” she hesitated, “the weather, right?”
“No, traffic,” Carson said forcing a smile. She tried not to reveal how embarrassed she was about the traffic slot. Before coming to Chicago, she was the midday anchor at the largest television station in Canton, Ohio. The traffic slot was an obvious step down from anchor, but she had been desperate to get out of Canton and back to work at a major market station. She had started in Chicago after journalism school at Northwestern and always hoped to return. The station manager had promised if things went well, and he said he assumed they would, he would quickly move her to the news desk. She had been in Chicago for almost a year and, so far, there was no sign that a move was going to happen.
“Well, that must be interesting,” Jess said with a grin Carson read as an insult. The grin remained as they sank into soft gray suede sofas next to a wall of leaded glass windows overlooking ocean-like Lake Michigan. Steam rose out of the silver carafe as Katherine poured coffee and offered chocolate chip cookies that smelled as if they had just come out of the oven. Someone’s perfume, jasmine a little too generously applied, wafted into the mix.
The view of Lake Michigan was dazzling. Huge boulders of ice floated on dark waves churned up by the northerlies that had made the city unbearable for over a month. Zoe, in the ripped pink princess costume she insisted on wearing refused to join the other children and sat on Carson’s lap clutching the ragged teddy bear she took everywhere she went. Her eyes followed the children as they played, but every time Carson urged her to join them she burrowed her head into her mother’s chest. The other children played happily, but not her little girl. Carson pushed Zoe’s tangled corn silk hair out of her eyes. She had refused to let her brush it before they left their house, a battle, Carson felt, not worth fighting. She whispered, “ Hey sweet pea, look at that jungle gym, why don’t we walk you over there so you can play. I’ll stay with you.”
“Not going, ”Zoe, who’d been speaking in grammatical sentences since she was a year and a half old, said angrily and pushed her face back into her mother’s chest. Surely, the other women thought she was a totally incompetent mother.
The sun peeked out from behind a thick cloud cover and suddenly the room brightened. Reflected off the water below, the winter light filtered through the beveled windowpanes and cast harsh rectangles on the three women. As far as Carson could see, all she had in common with the others was that they were about the same age and each had just one child. Jess looked like she might be older, but it was hard to tell. Her skin, though skillfully made up, was flawless. Her wavy red hair fell softly at her shoulders.
These are women with blessed lives, Carson thought watching them, not the kind of lives that I would want, but the kind most women of my generation can only dream of having. It was clear from the opulence of the setting, the way they spoke and dressed, even Katherine’s ‘I don’t care’ affect, that they had grown up in wealthy households like this one, had mothers who were always available and supportive, and fathers whose faces lit up when they saw their little girls at the end of the day. They had parents who gave them everything and loved them unconditionally. Now, no doubt, they had husbands who did the same.
Unlike the others, Carson had pretty much raised herself and now she was a single mom. But, she thought, I wouldn’t trade places with any woman in this room. I have no man in my life and that’s fine; no one outside my job to answer to but Zoe, who at three and a half takes every bit of energy I have left.
Yes, this was a difficult moment for her. She was beginning to fear that she had made a big mistake giving up the security of her job in Canton to make this move. One of the first female TV news anchors in the country, her job had prestige in the community and security. But she knew that if she didn’t leave, she’d be stuck in Canton for rest of her life. She was determined to get onto the news desk at Channel 7 and eventually become anchor. The traffic job was awful. She had to remind herself often that this was not her first unpleasant job. She had earned her own spending money from the time she was nine, and worked after school and on weekends through high school and college. When she was at Northwestern, she got up every day at 4 am to deliver the Chicago Tribune. A competitive swimmer in high school with an athletic scholarship that didn’t come close to covering the costs of a private university, she had both the self-discipline and the physical strength to take a job riding the back of a delivery truck. Everyday, rain, sleet or snow, she threw stacks of newspapers off the truck at news stands and delivery centers for three hours, then got off the truck, and worked out with the swim team before going to class. Every evening, she did dishes at a sorority house on campus in exchange for her meals. By comparison, the traffic job wasn’t so bad.
Carson assumed that, if not friends, the other three women were connected through the social circles of which they were obviously a part. She asked and was surprised when Katherine said that they had just met a few weeks before at a Latin School play party for junior kindergarten applicants and their parents.
“We sat together at the tea,” Katherine said,” and realized we live a few blocks from one another. Jess suggested we try to put together a playgroup and Lauren said she had a friend with a little girl the same age.”
Lauren interrupted. “Well actually,” she said, looking embarrassed, “I didn’t exactly say we were friends, but you had mentioned Zoe and that you were new to Chicago, so I thought you might want to join us.”
Carson was touched that Lauren thought of including her. She hadn’t met very many people since moving to the city, except for her colleagues at the station who really weren’t very collegial. She had grown up near the Standard Oil refinery not far from Chicago. She was in touch with a few of her high school friends, but they didn’t have much in common. She was the only girl in her graduating class to go to college. Almost every one else got married right out of school or before, or went to work at the refinery. She assumed that the other playgroup mothers, like all the women with children she had known in Canton, were stay at home moms. She asked.
“I am a lawyer.” Katherine said,” but I am only working part time now at the American Civil Liberties Union. I’d work every day if I didn’t feel guilty every time I walk out the door to go to the office.”
That was the first thing anyone had said that Carson could relate to; she too felt guilty about working and leaving Zoe home with a sitter every day, but Katherine, she thought, must feel even more conflicted. Carson really had to work. It was obvious that Katherine could do whatever she wanted.
“I’ve never had a real job in my life,” Lauren said. “I don’t know how to do anything that anyone would pay me for.” She was trying to joke, but it was obvious to Carson that she didn’t think it was funny. She wondered if it was that sense of worthlessness that accounted for the sadness she had observed in the short interactions she had with Lauren at the club.
Jess didn’t seem to notice and changed the subject. “Katherine, tell us about this incredible art collection.”
“None of it is ours,” Katherine said matter-of-factly. “Neither is this apartment. It all belongs to Alex’s parents. They convinced us to move here when we came back for Alex’s residency at Children’s. I was pregnant and they insisted, said they traveled so much that the apartment was empty ninety percent of the time. So Alex said, ‘Why don’t you sell it?’ His mom said, ‘No, if we sell it,’ and she waved her arms around the room, ‘what are we going to do with all this?’”
“I wouldn’t mind living with ‘all this’,’” Lauren said, ”or a mother-in law like yours.”
“I’m lucky,” Katherine said. “She’s great, couldn’t be nicer; so is Alex’s father. They bought themselves a smaller place a few blocks away and handed us the keys. Part of the deal is that ‘we have to,’ like it's a hardship, keep their housekeeper with us. They pay her salary and insurance. They say she worked for them for so many years; they owe her a job for as long as she wants to work. Anna lives with us, which I thought I wouldn’t like until Emily was born.” At that moment, little Emily, her bouncy black curls cut in a mop like Little Orphan Annie, ran over and snatched a cookie.
“No, Em,” Katherine said, knowing there wasn’t a chance that her high-spirited little girl, who they would soon learn was a clone of her doggedly determined mother, would obey. The other two children were at the plate seconds later, and the three ran giggling back to the toys. Again, Carson tried to get Zoe to join them, and again she refused.
Lauren asked Carson about working in TV. “It seems so glamorous.”
“Glamorous, it’s not. Every morning, a helicopter drops me down into a traffic disaster on one of the expressways. I shout into a microphone and fight to keep from getting blown over by the wind tunnel coming off the blades of the helicopter and the cars and trucks racing by. It’s worse now with the blizzard; cars are piled up in snow banks on every road. There’s only one lane of traffic on the expressways and everyone is so angry. It’s a nightmare.”
“It’s really that bad?” Lauren said.
“Really. It’s that bad.”
“So why do you do it?” Jess asked.
“You know, Jess,” Carson said, regretting the words as soon as they came out of her mouth, “some of us don’t have a choice.”
Jess looked a bit stung and the room went silent for a moment. Then Jess smiled as if what Carson had said hadn’t touched her. She scooted forward in her seat and reached for Zoe’s hand and stroked it with her long delicate fingers. Zoe looked up into Jess’s clear blue eyes. She must have looked like a fairy princess from one of her storybooks, her hair pulled back from a face as perfect as Carson had ever seen.
“Do you think your teddy bear would like a cookie, sweetheart?” Carson hadn’t noticed her Southern accent before or the smooth silkiness of her voice. Zoe whispered yes. Jess took a cookie from the tray and held it up to the bear’s mouth. It was hard for Carson to miss her ring, a pear-shaped diamond the size of an acorn.
“I think he likes it, don’t you think so, honey?” Zoe was mesmerized. Jess, they would all learn, had that effect on almost everyone. Zoe smiled up at her; it was the first time she had smiled all afternoon.
” Now, sweetheart, why don’t you take teddy over to play with Emily, Sophie and Louie? If he doesn’t like playing with them, you just bring him back and sit with me.” She gave Zoe’s hand a soft squeeze and the girl slid down and eased over to play with the other children. Jess winked at Carson, who felt even more humiliated when she looked down at her now badly wrinkled skirt covered with cookie crumbs and chocolate stains; she had an inch wide run down the front of her panty hose.
Then Jess asked Carson if she would be applying to Latin or Francis Parker, the city’s two elite private schools. The way she asked bothered Carson – as if no one worth knowing would consider sending her child to public school. The reality was that even if Zoe could get in to one of those schools, the tuition for kindergarten alone was as much as most Americans pay for four years of college.
She lied and said, “I haven’t made up my mind.” In truth, there was no way she could afford both private school and a nanny on her salary and she would need both. “Do you have to apply when they are so young?” she asked, knowing the answer.
Lauren said, “My husband says you have to apply when the children are three, that getting them into junior kindergarten at Parker or Latin is more important, even more difficult than getting into an Ivy League university.”
The private school discussion droned on. Jess didn’t seem to be listening either. Her eyes scanned the room, she got up, walked over to a bank of windows and stared out at the lake. When she came back, she sat on the edge of a chair across from the other three. Carson felt her study their faces. When there was a lull in the conversation, Jess leaned forward, her hands pressing down on her knees. “Would y’all,” the Southern accent that had been barely audible before thickened. “Would y’all consider doing something really different?” Over the next months, they would all learn to recognize that a sudden slip into her regional drawl was the best indication that she was nervous or unsure of herself.
“Sure,” Katherine said.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” Jess said, looking down at her hands. ”I just don’t want to talk about this kind of stuff — private schools, women’s boards, fashion, country clubs, none of it.” Her head tilted a bit to the side, as she watched the others for their reactions.
Of the three, Carson thought, the person who seemed least likely to want to avoid that kind of conversation was Jessica Kingman. Clearly, that was her world. Carson looked over at Lauren who had done most of the talking about private schools. Her face was flushed. Obviously, the insinuation that it had been small talk embarrassed her.
“I hope you don’t think this is crazy,” Jess continued, and again hesitated. “Oh, never mind.”
“No, please,” Katherine said warmly, “go ahead.”
“What if,” Jess said, “if we do this playgroup once a week, and I’d like to, when the kids are playing and we have time to talk, what if we try to stay away from the predictable small talk; you know, where our kids are going to go to school, or who we know, or what we do or did, or where we shop. Let’s not waste time with it.
Carson had no idea where Jess was going, but it didn’t matter. She had already decided she and Zoe were not going to be a part of this playgroup. She had no interest spending three hours with these women every week.
“What if we pick an interesting topic to discuss each time we meet? It could be politics, the arts, film, theater, anything that interests one us.”
“You mean like a discussion group,” Katherine said.
“Yes, exactly. We can take turns picking a topic, tell everyone so we can prepare.”
Oh right, Carson thought to herself, I’m going to have assigned reading for my three- year-old’s playgroup.
“Yes, that’s what I mean. What do you think?”
“Fine,” Lauren said, without much enthusiasm.
“Or it could just be a question, even a really personal question we could discuss together, just as long as it’s not predictable small talk. You know what I mean.”
“Personal,” Carson said, laughing to herself,” really?”
“Yes, really. Why not?”
“You know,” Carson said, with an amused grin, “asking questions is my profession. I’m likely to ask some pretty tough ones.”
“Well that’s ok. I like tough questions, even hard personal questions?” Jess said.
“Oh you think so?” Carson said. She was sure what she was about to say would wipe that plastic self-satisfied grin right off Jessica Kingman’s face.
” I mean really personal.”
“Sure, like what?” Jess asked brightly.
“What about something like this: describe in vivid detail the first time you had sex.”
No one responded. Lauren looked away, reached for a cinnamon roll and ripped it apart. She bit into the center, the part with the most cinnamon, sugar and frosting. It quickly disappeared.
What a fabulous idea,” Jess said, calling Carson’s bluff, her southern accent now as thick as quicksand. “The first time you had sex. That’s so funny.” She smiled,” It’s brilliant.”
Katherine had been trying not to laugh and finally did, “Why would anyone agree to do that?”
Jess said, “Because it would be fun, really fun. Hard personal questions, I like it. Let me think, Carson, what could I ask you?” Oh I know. Did you ever sleep with someone to get a job?” She smiled broadly, this time with no discomfort.
“I wouldn’t feel obliged to answer a question like that if I’d known you for twenty years,” Katherine said.
Lauren gestured across the room at the four little ones, “You know our kids are ten feet away. Are you seriously suggesting that we talk about this kind of stuff with the children within earshot?”
Jess glanced at them playing happily. “They can’t hear a word we’re saying and besides, if they could, they would have no idea what we’re talking about.”
Then Katherine began to laugh, a laugh so deep and hoarse, it was hard to believe it came from a woman, let alone a woman as diminutive as she. I know you two are kidding.”
“Of course, I’m kidding,” Carson said.
“Well, I’m not. Jess said,” What do we have to lose. If it feels uncomfortable after a few times, even one time, we’ll stop.”
Katherine said, “Frankly, I don’t know why anyone in her right mind be willing to expose herself to three perfect strangers? We’ve just met. I know the people who bag my groceries better than I know any of you.”
“Well, we would certainly get to know each other fast.” Jess laughed, but no one else did. Jess looked down at her reflection in the silver carafe, still beautiful even distorted by the curves.
“What if we table the hard personal question idea for a while,” Katherine said diplomatically. “Maybe when we get to know each other better. “I’d very much like to try to keep this playgroup going. It would be great for Emily and I bet your kids too. How about next week? Are Tuesdays OK for everyone?”
Jess and Lauren both said, “sure.” They looked at Carson for her response. She lied. “I’m working next Tuesday. My schedule changes from week to week. You should find someone else with more predictable hours.”
“Then we’ll meet another day,” Katherine said.
Jess said,” Maybe we can work around your schedule. I am absolutely flexible.”
“Me too,” Lauren said.
“I can juggle things if we are not on trial.” Katherine said,” I’d love you and Zoe to be in the group. The kids seem to be getting along well.”
Carson looked over at Zoe. She and Lauren’s wild towhead Louie were reaching above their heads to balance a few more blocks on the tall tower they had apparently built together. This is so good for her, Carson thought, but I have no interest in seeing these women again. Then there was a crash. The two kicked over their tower and the other children joined them in kicking the blocks around the floor, laughing uncontrollably.
Lauren said, “Children laughing, it doesn’t have to be one of your own, is the most infectious sound known to man.”
A few minutes later, the children in superhero capes, chased each other around the room. Zoe led the pack. Carson felt guilty; they were not coming back. She was the first to say it was time to go. Zoe threw herself on the floor, refusing to leave. Carson carried her out of the room screaming.
“When do you know your schedule for next week?” Jess asked at the door.
“Not till the Friday before. Really, you should find someone else.”
A woman not inclined to take no for an answer, Jess said, “I’ll call you Friday at noon.”
Chapter 2
The phone on Carson’s desk began ringing exactly at noon Friday. She let it ring and left for lunch. When she returned, a secretary handed her two pink message slips. Jessica Kingman wanted her to return her call. She didn’t. Jess called again as she was leaving to do her evening report.
“The only time we can make it,” Carson lied again, ”is between 1:00 and 3:00 next Friday — not a convenient time for anyone. You really need to find someone else.”
“It won’t be a problem for me. I’ll check with the others and get back to you.”
When Carson got back to the station, there was another message on her desk. “We’re on for next Friday at 1:00, Lauren’s, 1340 North State.”
It was still dark when Carson woke the day of the next playgroup. It was 3:15 a.m., the same time she woke abruptly almost every day, no matter how late she got to bed. Three fifteen was the time her father pushed the last drunks out of the tavern he ran across the street from the refinery until one night, when Carson was a college freshman, he collapsed carrying a case of Budweiser to the cooler and died. She knew it wasn’t a coincidence.
Her family lived upstairs from that tavern from the time she was Zoe’s age until her father died and her mother sold the tavern. In the stiflingly hot summers, the family slept with the windows wide open, thin top sheets thrown over their beds. At 3 a.m., Carson would hear her father slam the tavern door shut, hear his heavy footsteps as he dragged himself up the stairs. She and her younger brother, Mike, slept in the only bedroom, her parents in the living room on a hide-a-bed they never closed.
Most nights, her mother stayed down at the bar until closing. She talked to the regulars and nursed a long glass of icy vodka, filled to the brim. Carson always wished she stayed upstairs with them instead. It wasn’t until she was in high school when she heard her mother say that her dad had always been a player that she thought she understood. She wasn’t sure. By that time, her mother was always drunk, so it wasn’t worth asking for clarification. Some nights she shrieked insults at him as she stumbled up the stairs, “you fucking” whatever, her voice slurred as they moved toward their hollow door. Mostly all Carson would hear him say, sometimes pleading, was, “Steffi, please just be quiet,” at the worst, “Damn it, you’re going to wake the kids.” But Carson was awake, almost always. Even if they were quiet, she woke up when they climbed the stairs, lifted her head from her hard foam pillow and looked at the glowing green numbers on the clock she bought with money she earned babysitting the kids down the block. The first thing she ever bought for herself was a towel. She was 10. She remembered holding the bag close to her as she rode a bus home from the Sears store thinking, “This is just for me. I don’t have to share with anyone else in my dirty house.” She kept it folded in a drawer, hidden.
The icy wind whipped through the branches of the old elm in her courtyard, lashing against her windows, a last survivor of the disease that wiped out the thousands of elms that for decades canopied Chicago’s cozy neighborhood streets. The first thing that came to her mind was how she might bow out of going to playgroup that day, but with Zoe so excited about playing with the children, it seemed impossible. Zoe had asked her every morning if today was playgroup. She whined a little each time Carson said no and seemed to get over it. The day before, Carson told her, ”I’m sorry, honey, there won’t be any more playgroup. It’s over.” That was a mistake: Zoe had a tantrum that lasted for an hour. Carson couldn’t calm her down even after she sent her to her room. Instead, Zoe escalated the screaming level and threw her dolls and Legos against the door. Carson thought if people heard her wailing, they would think she was a child abuser.
She was losing the battle. In recent years, Carson prided herself on not letting people push her around. She hadn’t always been so good at that. Now, a three-year-old, 34 inches tall, 28 pounds with shoes on, was pushing her into doing something she absolutely did not want to do. She promised herself she would try to lighten up and tolerate a few hours with these women so far out of her zip code. She would give the playgroup another chance. They would go that day and they would see. That was all she was committed to, just one more time.
She played with the radio dial to see if something could lull herself back to sleep and heard the gravely voice of Studs Terkel, who had a daily interview show on the city’s classical music station. It was a rebroadcast of an interview he had done the day before with Governor Ronald Reagan, in town to fundraise for another run for the presidency. She assumed Terkel would not to be a fan of the movie star governor who wanted to be president. “Governor, you lost to Jerry Ford in ’76. What makes you think you can pull it off this time?” She turned up the volume. She would have loved to have a chance to interview Reagan. If she were still in her job in Canton, she would have. He was on his way to Ohio next and as anchor for Canton’s biggest TV station she’d be likely to have a face to face with him. The closest she could get to a candidate now would be if his limo passed her while she was standing at the edge of the expressway.
She tried to get back to sleep and finally gave up and went down to the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee. She anticipated the day ahead: get to the station at 5:30, the traffic copter will pick me up at 6:00; I’ll collect Zoe at 12:30, take her to playgroup, drop her back home, and get back to the station for the rush hour report. Hopefully, I can put her to bed tonight, but it’s unlikely. Another snowstorm was expected in the late afternoon and the mess on the expressways would likely stretch rush hour late into the night. She pictured the three other playgroup mothers she would see this afternoon; all of them sleeping soundly in the arms of adoring husbands, cared for and loved, as she knew they had surely been all their lives.
Carson was right about Katherine; she still slept soundly in her husband Alex’s arms, as she had from the first day they met. A 6:30, Alex, eased quietly out of their bed and dressed to go to the hospital. A slice of yellow light from his closet cut a beam through the darkness and lit Katherine’s face, her black hair falling in ringlets on her pillow. The light diffused on her bare shoulders and the soft folds of the sheet that molded to her body. Blankets and pillows were strewn about. He stood watching his wife sleep for a moment, wishing he could climb back into bed next to her warm body. He grabbed his white jacket and leaned over to kiss her goodbye. She didn’t move. “Like a baby,” he thought.
A block north of Katherine’s apartment on Astor, Jess Kingman was awake. She wiped the sweat off her face and pushed up the speed on her treadmill. She had already logged two miles. She picked up the remote and surfed back and forth until she landed on Channel 7 ABC-TV. She wanted to see Carson. “There she is, poor thing.”
“This is Carson Brown, ABC-TV news, reporting to you from the scene of an accident just north of the 91st Street exit on the Dan Ryan Expressway.”
The traffic copter roared in the background; her lips were blue from the cold.
“It must be so hard for her to be out there in this awful weather,” Jess thought. “She’s doing great. I wouldn’t want to do that job for all the money in the world.”
Lauren Hutchinson pretended to be asleep when she heard Doug’s footsteps coming up the stairs. He was just getting home. He kicked open the bedroom door. It crashed against the wall as he staggered into the room and switched on the lights. Lauren pulled her knees toward her chest, fearing what would come next. Doug rolled his overcoat into a ball and threw it at her. ”Get up, you lazy bitch.”
“Doug,” she pleaded. “Please, let me sleep.”
With a grin on his face, he unzipped his pants and stood above her head. “Get up. I want you to finish me off.”
The traffic on Lake Shore Drive, the east edge of the Gold Coast where Jess, Lauren and Katherine lived was moving slowly, narrowed to two lanes by a pileup of cars stuck in embankments of snow. Early morning commuters driving south to the Loop couldn’t resist the temptation to look away from the road to catch a glimpse of the winter sun on their left, a huge orange ball rising out of Lake Michigan. A layer of steam hung above the water. Through the silhouettes of honey locust trees planted along the shore, a lone runner dressed in black jogged surefooted down the icy pier and back toward the chess pavilion. A single gold leaf hung tenaciously to the immense poplar that in the summer shaded the strangers who sit face to face over the painted chessboards, deep in concentration. Under brown plastic garbage bags in the corner of the pavilion, a group of homeless men slept on a bench sheltered from the wind. Years before, the police stopped bothering to chase them off.
Alex walked out of the building still thinking of his wife in their warm bed. He felt a shock of icy sleet slap against his face and pulled his hood over his head as he raced toward Rush Street to grab coffee and a muffin before jumping into a taxi to Children’s Memorial where, barely a year out of his residency, he distinguished himself as one of the most gifted young cardiac surgeons in the country. Delivery trucks, their exhausts spewing fumes were double-parked along the streets, metal doors slid open and the drivers threw cases of fresh produce onto carts and rolled them through restaurant doors. From the kitchens, the smells of food prepping, chopped onions and garlic simmering in olive oil and butter, loaves of bread baking in the wood oven at Gene and Georgetti’s wafted into the street. There were already lines at Angelina’s, the city’s first Italian coffee bar and the only place in town, other than one of the mafia styled southern Italian restaurants, where you could get an espresso or cappuccino and a fresh croissant.
.
A few hours later, the pilot lowered the Channel 7 helicopter onto the roof of ABC-TV on the corner of State and Lake. When she got to her office, Carson phoned home. Her babysitter, Millie, answered, “Zoe says she don’t want to talk to you.” Carson felt a pit in her stomach. She wondered if on some level, Millie got a little pleasure out of moments like these. A friend who worked as a secretary at the station in Canton once confided that she fired the best babysitter she ever had because she thought her children were beginning to love the sitter more than they loved her. At the time, Carson thought her friend was foolish, but now she was starting to understand.
She was ashamed of herself for being jealous of Millie. At 5 a.m. every morning, Carson heard the key turn in the lock of her front door. In a heavy-hooded wool storm coat, her thick glasses fogged from the cold, Millie put down her shopping bag and lumbered into the kitchen to start the coffee. “I’m here, girl, made it to another day. Praise the Lord.”
Millie worked for the city most of her life until she retired three years earlier in 1976, coincidentally the same day that Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, the “Boss” of the country’s most powerful political machine, died of a heart attack alone in his doctor’s office a few blocks from City Hall. When Millie retired, her clout as a life-time patronage worker got her a small apartment in a prime senior high rise a few blocks away from Carson’s and a pension that would support her for the rest of her life. She never married or had children of her own and told Carson during their first interview, “The Lord was good to me in every other way, but he didn’t have no child in his plan. I always thought that maybe if I could put enough together to retire, I could take care of children.”
For Millie and Zoe, it was a love affair. She was willing to start work at any time and work as many hours and as late as needed. “You call me even in the middle night, honey, I never sleep anyway,” she said, when Carson told her that in the beginning, she hoped not forever, that she would have to begin at 5 a.m.
“It’s OK,” Millie said. “You’ll see when you’re my age it don’t matter; no one old sleeps.” In spite of her age, 74 on the Fourth of July, and the extra 50 pounds she told Carson she had given up trying to lose, she never tired of running around with Zoe. She could play with her for hours and always appear ready for more.
“Please tell her that we are going to playgroup today. I’ll pick her up right after lunch.”
Zoe was sitting at the door trying to button her coat when Carson got home.
She was so excited about playgroup that she had agreed to let Millie dress her in a red jumper, white sweater and tights, instead of one of her torn princess costumes. She even sat still long enough for Millie to comb her silky blonde hair into two neat braids and tie each with a bow.
“I have to change out my dirty clothes,” Carson told Zoe, pointing to the slush stains on the bottom of her coat and dress. Zoe followed her mother up the stairs and into Carson’s tiny, overstuffed closet.
“Let me pick something real pretty for you, Mommy,” Zoe said, pulling down a gauzy flower printed yellow summer dress. Wear this,” she said,” You’ll look like a princess. See, mommy.” She held the dress up to her shoulders to model the look.
Carson laughed. “It’s too cold, Sweetie, maybe another day.”
A bare light bulb lit the closet. Everything looked shabby and cheap to Carson. Along with a corporate membership to an athletic club “to get in shape,” the station had given her a budget for clothes she assumed they hoped didn’t “look so Canton.” She knew she wasn’t succeeding at either. She looked at herself in the plastic framed mirror she had hung on her closet door. Dumpy, she thought. I look like hell. She couldn’t remember a time she thought anything else about her looks. Whenever people told her otherwise, she thought they were lying.
Her father always said that she was the spitting image of her mother when she was young. “A real beauty, your mom was, and you are too, “ he said proudly, but she didn’t believe him. She was no beauty. She was too tall, her shoulders too broad, her legs too long, and her hair, a dull shade of brown, and absolutely straight. Then there was that stupid cleft in her chin. She did have her mother’s hazel eyes; that was lucky, but now they were made up for TV with black eyeliner turned up in the corners, thick pancake foundation and too much rouge. She wished she could scrub her face until it was shiny, but of course, she couldn’t. She would have to race back to the station after playgroup and be ready to go back on the air. She pushed her fingers through her stiffly sprayed back -combed hair, trying to make it look less like a helmet. Zoe sat on the edge of bed watching her patiently as she rummaged through her closet. She slipped into a pair of bright blue bell-bottom trousers with a matching sweater and thought I look like hell. She stripped off the slacks and left them in a bundle on the floor and tried on a bell-bottom pants suit. Not good either. She realized if she waited to find something she thought looked attractive, she would never leave the room. “Let’s go, honey,” she said to Zoe,” and they walked hand and hand down the stairs.
During the last hour the sky had opened. The snow had stopped and the violent winds that howled earlier had blown away the haze and dark cloud cover. The city looked different, even with the mountains of dirty snow that lined every block. It felt as if the world had gone from black and white to Technicolor. The streets were full for a Friday afternoon in January. People seemed elated to be outside and feel the sun on their faces after over a month of unrelenting gray. Strangers said hello, friendliness that to Carson seemed atypical in big city Chicago. It didn’t strike her that any of the friendly strangers recognized the pretty mother with her happy little girl, as the traffic reporter people had begun to watch religiously during the last snow filled months before venturing out into the cold.
Lauren’s house was five blocks away on State Parkway, one of six stately, four-story Victorian row houses Carson had admired. It took a long time for Lauren to answer the doorbell. For a moment, Carson was relieved, hoping that perhaps she had goofed and it was the wrong time or day or perhaps, it was too noisy in the house for Lauren to hear the bell, and they could just slip away. She could tell Zoe that no one was there and take her home. But Lauren came breathlessly to the door, apologizing for making them wait. They entered a four-story atrium on the ground level of the house.
“Look Mommy!” Zoe pointed up to a mobile four stories above. Primary-colored elliptical shapes revolved under an expanse of bright blue sky. Attached to a huge skylight, it looked like a Calder, but Carson didn’t ask, afraid to look foolish if she were wrong. There were four soaring stories of gleaming white space, balconies connected by suspended walkways, grey and white Carrera marble and glass everywhere. The voices of the others upstairs bounced through the open expanse. Lauren led them up a curved steel staircase to a balcony living room that seemed to be suspended.
“This is not a kid-friendly house,” Lauren said turning back to look at them. She couldn’t help but notice Carson clutching tightly to Zoe’s hand. “I’m really sorry. It was worse before we put on the Plexiglas shields on the staircase, but it’s still a problem.”
When they got to the top, Lauren opened the steel and chrome gate that had been crafted as a part of the childproofing. “You have to be absolutely sure that this latch is tightly locked,” she said firmly, though obviously uncomfortable to have to be so stern. She carefully latched the gate. Again, Carson and Zoe were the last to arrive. Katherine and Jess got up to say hello.
“I watched you on the news four times this week!” Jess said with what seemed to Carson, fake enthusiasm.
Thinking she was putting her on, Carson blurted, ”Oh come on, Jess, you did not.”
“I did.” Jess said, shaking back the red ringlets that had fallen onto her shoulders,
“You were great!”
Carson looked toward the gate and to Zoe, wishing they could leave, but Zoe had already joined the other children around a wooden table. Katherine’s daughter, Emily, dark, delicate and petite like her mother, handed a big wad of Playdough to Zoe. The children pounded away happily, pressing the pastel dough into molds. Cherubic Louie, his blonde Buster Brown bangs almost covering his big, blue eyes, looked as if he were telling a joke. When he finished, the others laughed at what must have been his punch line.
Jess didn’t give up. “It’s impressive, what you do, Carson. It’s got to be so difficult to stand out there in the freezing cold, the snow beating against your face. A few times it looked to me like the wind was going to blow you over, and you just kept it together and stayed perfectly poised. I know I couldn’t do it. I don’t understand why you think I’m putting you on about how good you are.”
“I don’t either,” Lauren said, looking confused.
Katherine’s face broke into a grin, “I watched you too,” she said, and again that big wonderful deep laugh of hers. “Can I have your autograph?”
Realizing she was making an ass out of herself, Carson laughed with the others.
“You have to believe me. It is the worst job.”
“It doesn’t appear that way to anyone but you,” Katherine said.
“So, what’s it all about?” Jess asked. “Why are you so self-deprecating?”
“I hope this isn’t one of your interesting personal questions?” Carson said.
“Sorry,” Jess answered. “I was just trying to understand.”
Katherine changed the subject. “Lauren, tell us about this house. It’s spectacular,” she said, looking up at the soaring space.
“You wouldn’t want to live it, especially with a child. The open staircases and balconies are a nightmare.” Lauren said, “But my husband loves every inch of it. He bought the house a few years before I met him and hired Trevor Kahn to design it. It was a beautiful Victorian with pretty moldings and marble fireplaces. It even had the old gas light fixtures wired with electricity. They ripped out every inch and did this.”
Katherine said. “I thought Trevor Kahn just designed skyscrapers.
“That’s right, “He just does huge buildings. He doesn’t do private residences,” Lauren said, “but, unfortunately, he did ours.”
“Is he a friend of your husband?”
“No, a business associate.”
“Is your husband a builder?” Carson asked.
“No, he’s in the steel business.”
“Oh, Hutchinson,” Jess said knowingly. “Heartland Steel, right?” Lauren nodded.
Carson looked at a photo of Lauren’s husband and their son Louie in a silver frame on a side table nearby. Blonde, a wide forehead and a square-set jaw, his expression a practiced smile, revealed nothing but good teeth.
“How did you meet him?” Carson asked, her turn to change the subject.
“He grew up in Lake Forest and I moved there to live with my grandparents after my mother died. I’d see him at the tennis court at the country club.”
“Do you play?” Jess asked.
“I used to, but I was terrible. Anyway, I had a crush on him. He had no idea I was alive. A few years after I graduated from Smith and moved back here, I ran into him at a party. That was it.”
“He finally noticed you?” Katherine grinned.
“I guess. Swept me off my feet. He was just finishing this house. The furniture was in and he was shopping for accessories. I guess I was one of them.” She laughed, but it was clear to Carson she wasn’t joking.
“I loved the house when I first saw it. My grandparents’ house was dark and stuffy, brimming with antiques, dreary 19th century paintings and heavy draperies that were always drawn. It felt like night 24 hours a day. With all the light streaming into these gigantic windows, everything dazzlingly bright white and cream, it felt like being on a beach.
“Would you mind showing us around?” Jess asked.
“You’re welcome to wander,” she said, pointing upstairs. “I’ll stay with the kids.”
The three climbed another floating staircase to the next level. Carson was taken with the master bedroom. The bed faced a wall of sliding glass doors leading to a roof garden planted with trees and shrubs, frozen flowers poked out through layers of snow. The bed was a mess. This is a room where lovers sleep. It’s so romantic, she thought, remembering her own bed. She had been sleeping alone for almost four years. In the morning, she had only one side of the bed to fix, the pillow and linens on the other half always tucked neatly in place. She thought, I would love to live in a house like this, to live this life.
“One more floor,” Jess called to them as she climbed the stairs to the next level.
Katherine said, “ No, we should go back downstairs now and join Lauren and the children.”
Jess called back. “Let’s just take a minute and see the rest.”
A narrow staircase led to the top floor, which must have originally been the servants’ quarters. As soon as they reached the landing, they could smell turpentine and oil paint. All the doors were closed. Jess had her hand on the knob of the first room when Carson tried to stop her. “I don’t think we should go in. The doors are probably closed for a reason.” But apparently for Jess, there were no doors she wasn’t willing to open. She walked right in. It was an artist’s studio. Stacks of paintings in various stages of completion lined the walls. Most of the canvases they could see were abstract with bold streaks of color.
”This one looks like it was done by another artist,” Katherine said curiously as she studied a large painting resting on two easels. ”It’s more like a 19th century English painting than one by whoever did the rest.”
It was an idyllic scene, almost to the point of cliché, but beautifully painted. Two little girls ran through a field of yellow wildflowers. The younger child had black curly hair, ivory skin, and violet eyes; her cheeks flushed pink. She seemed to float, a bouquet of recently picked flowers in her hand. Behind her was an older girl, lanky and blond, her hair and clothing oddly disheveled in contrast to the rest of the bucolic scene. She looked distressed, perhaps even deranged. The three women stood staring at the painting, no one wanting to comment on how both beautiful and disturbingly odd it was.
“Let’s look at the rest of these paintings Jess said, reaching for a stack that faced the wall.
“ No, let’s go downstairs, ”Carson insisted. “We can ask Lauren if she’ll show the rest to us later.” She had an uncomfortable feeling that they had invaded Lauren’s personal space, perhaps seen something they should not have seen.
When they got down to the living room, not one child looked up. Lauren had them engrossed in an art project, drawing on colored paper and cutting their drawings into shapes with small scissors. They were deep into their creative process.
“Lauren, your house is beautiful,” Jess said.
Lauren looked up at them, rolled her eyes and groaned.
“So you really hate it,” Katherine said.
“I do,” she said, getting up from the children’s table to join the others.
“So why don’t you move?” Katherine asked.
“Wait a second,” Jess interrupted. “Aren’t you the one who said you didn’t like the idea of asking hard personal questions? That was pretty confrontational.”
“I don’t mind hard personal questions,” Katherine said brightly, “but Lauren might.”
“You’re right, I don’t like them,” Lauren said, clearly relieved that Katherine had intervened.
“OK,” Jess said, “So if you don't mind, Katherine, why don’t we ask you one, or you Carson, it was your idea,” Jess said, obviously not letting go.
“I told you I was just kidding when I said what I did about hard personal questions,” Carson said, trying not to show it, but angry with herself for creating this monster.
Jess acted as if she didn’t hear her and said, “Carson, why don’t you tell us about the first time you sex?”
“If you think it is such a great idea, why don’t you do it yourself? “ Carson said.
“Me?”
“Yes, you,” Carson said, a twinkle in her eye. Jess laughed.
“I’m not kidding,” Carson said.
“Are you calling my bluff?”
“I didn’t think you were bluffing,” Carson said.
“Ok, I guess it’s only fair that I start,” She looked around the room and pointed to a of cozy bay window seat at the far end. “I think that is out of earshot of the children.”
The three followed Jess reluctantly, climbing up into a bay window that floated over the street. There were enough oversized pillows for each of them to settle comfortably. Lauren brought over some knitted throws and they covered themselves from the chill coming through the windows. She offered them cigarettes and when they refused asked if they minded and lit one for herself. Then there was an uncomfortable silence.
“This isn’t so easy,” Jess said, and laughed self-consciously.
Katherine grinned and said, “It was your idea.”
Jess took a deep breath and holding her coffee mug close to her face with both hands, leaned toward the others and said, her southern accent returning, “I don’t know where should I start. I've never talked about this with anyone.”
“It isn’t so comfortable for you either, is it?” Katherine said and winked at Carson.
“Why don’t you start with foreplay?” obviously enjoying Jess’s discomfort.
Carson was too, and said, “Isn’t that the best part?”
“Well in my case, it was long,” Jess said and smiled.
“What was long?” Katherine asked. A big laugh.
“The foreplay. It started when I was about 12 and then it went on for the next four years. He was the first great love of my life, Jim Bailey. Jimmy was from what my parents would call a fine Christian family. He was an honors student and a football player, and his father, like mine, was a doctor. He was serious and kind, and a year ahead of me in school. He asked me to marry him when I was 15 and I thought, of course, after college, I would.
“Now you have to remember that I grew up in the South and things were very different than they are here. His parents were members of our church and our country club, and I believe my parents loved Jimmy more than I did. One Sunday afternoon, my parents had taken my little brother to visit my grandparents at their summerhouse on Jekyll Island. I had a role in a ‘Bye Bye Birdie’ summer stock production and had to be at rehearsals, so for the first time in my life they went away for a few days and let me stay at home by myself. It was very hot and Jimmy and I were sitting on the side porch of our house on an old white wicker glider. It was swinging back and forth.
“Was it one of those big old ‘Gone with the Wind’ Southern houses?” Katherine asked.
“Yes, you could say that, but in Charleston. We had a long columned veranda and a thick hedge of magnolias surrounding the garden. Those magnolias were so dense the house was totally hidden from the street. Even though we lived in the historic part of the city with tourists wandering all the time, with those big hedges, no one could see us. So we were out there on that swing, no one home. I had my head in Jimmy’s lap and it was, as I said before,” she looked up at the others with a little uncertainty in her face, “it was very hot.” She stopped talking.
“So that day…?” Carson said, encouraging her to continue.
“So that day, it was so sticky, humid, like it was teasing to rain, but it didn't rain. The air was steam and our bodies were moist with perspiration. So we were rocking back and forth on that glider under the fan, and I had my head on Jimmy’s lap and I could feel him getting hard under my head. He was rubbing my shoulders and my arms and playing with the wetness of my skin.” She started to laugh, covered her mouth with her hand and looked away. “I can’t tell you about this.”
Katherine said, “Listen Jess, this is your idea, no one is forcing you.” Jess looked back at Katherine, who had an “I told you so” look on her face, then gathered her determination and continued. The others leaned close to her to listen because she spoke very quietly. The children who had been playing quietly at the other end of the room were now running around wildly.
She looked up at them for a moment then continued, “So he unbuttoned the top of my dress and reached his fingers under my bra and reached down and held my breast very gently in his hand and then he bent down to kiss me while he very slowly undid my bra and opened the top of my dress. So now my breasts were totally exposed.”
“And you were outside, right?” Katherine asked.
“Yes, we were outside on the porch, as I said before, and we could hear the birds and the cicadas and the voices of people walking by, and I was so turned on that I couldn’t stand it. So then he takes one finger, just one finger, and starts slowly circling my breasts, and I am wet, wet everywhere. So when he gets to my nipples, he goes around and around them so that they were hard.”
Lauren looked away, obviously uncomfortable, but Jess didn’t seem to notice. She continued, “I can't believe I remember every detail. It’s as if it happened yesterday and not 20 years ago. But I do. I guess no one ever forgets the first time.” She looked at Carson for some kind of acknowledgement. Carson nodded back, a wistful, though hard-to-read look on her face.
“Then he unbuttons the rest of my dress, my head is still on his lap, and as he does it, he pulls my dress apart so that I am lying there virtually naked. And he continues, slowly with just his fingertips touching my body, running his fingers down from my breasts, tracing the contours of my hips, carrying up the perspiration and bringing his hands up to my breasts again."
“How did he know how to do all this?” Lauren asked. “He was 17.”
Jess shrugged and looked over at the children, now back at the other end of the room, dropping cars down the circular ramp of a toy garage. She seemed to need to collect herself before continuing. “Well, then he began to glide his fingers inside my thighs, slowly the way he had been touching my breasts and then ... I can't believe I'm telling you this.”
“OK, then what happened?”
“He pulled my thighs up so that my knees were a little up in the air and he gently pulled my legs apart. Then he put his hand between my legs, took his fingers and slipped them inside my underpants. He does this very slowly, his fingers just at the edge of the elastic and he goes back and forth slowly coming closer and closer and he moves his finger inside and he does this for a very long time so that I am losing my mind.” She paused.
“Then he pulls down my underpants, not all the way off, but down near my knees and he continues. So there I am almost totally naked and nearly out of my mind, and he tells me that we’re going inside, very sweetly, but firmly, and I pull my dress together and he leads me by the hand through the living room and up the long winding staircase to my bedroom and that was it.”
“So how was it?” Carson asked. She too was uncomfortable, but riveted.
“Incredible, fantastic. I was madly in love with him and I thought he with me.
Every chance we had that summer, if my parents were gone, if his weren't home, we were in bed together. We made love on the beach, in the woods, in the back seat of his car, even once we snuck into the coatroom at the club during a dance, me in my white eyelet dress with a bow in the back, only a room away from our parents and all their friends.” She stopped talking and looked wistful. “So, you want to hear the end of the story?”
The three women nodded eagerly.
“He went to Vanderbilt in the fall; I had one year of high school left. We talked on the phone almost every night about how much we loved and missed each other and when he came for Thanksgiving he told me that he had a new girlfriend at school.”
“The dog!” the others said almost in unison.
“The dog?” Zoe bellowed excitedly from the other end of the room and ran toward them, followed by the other children. They were disappointed when they saw that the furry little creature they expected was nowhere in sight. Louie climbed up on Lauren’s lap and the others followed. Sophie pounced down on Jess’s lap. Jess threw her arms around her little girl and hugged her.
“Mommy, you’re sweaty,” Sophie said.
“I’m sweating like a pig,” Jess said, grabbing a tissue to wipe the perspiration off her now beet-red face. “I am so embarrassed. I can't believe I told you all that whole story,” she said laughing. “
“Neither can I,” Carson said shaking her head and, like Katherine and Lauren, smiling broadly.
“You don’t expect us to do the same?” Katherine asked.
“You bet your sweet ……,” she slapped her hand over her mouth, realizing the children were right there, and said, “I do.”
Chapter 3
“What are you smiling about?” the pilot asked Carson, a few hours later as the traffic-copter took off and flew southwest toward the Dan Ryan Expressway. It was 4:00 p.m. and traffic was already standing still.
“Was I smiling?” she asked.
“Yeah. There must be a new man in her life?”, Pete, the cameraman, shouted from the back seat over the roar of the blades.
It’s about time,” the pilot said, laughing.
“ Shut up! I’m about as far from having a new man in my life as you are from winning the Miss America contest.”
“ Well, if it’s not a man, Carson, I’d like to know what it is.” Pete said leaning forward in his seat.
She turned around and said, ”None of your business.” He would have loved to hear Jess’s story about the first time she had sex, told in such wildly vivid detail that afternoon. What a fucking amount of nerve that girl has, Carson thought. That was the last thing I imagined would come out of that proper society girl’s mouth. Carson could hardly keep from laughing out loud.
As they were leaving the playgroup, Jess had invited them all to a black tie benefit at the Field Museum of Natural History. “Bring a date or come alone,” Jess said to Carson. “It’ll be fun either way. David wants to invite a bachelor friend of his to be your dinner partner. I said I had to ask you first.”
“I’d rather come by myself, ” she answered apologetically. Meeting a man was the last thing she needed right now. Her life was complicated enough, but a fancy party sounded like fun. She hadn’t been to a black tie event since she won an Emmy for investigative reporting from the Lower Great Lakes Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences the year before she moved to Chicago. That Emmy, her third, was for uncovering a bribery scam in the County assessor’s office that had cost the taxpayers of Canton tens of millions of dollars. The assessor ended up in jail. It was just Canton, she thought, not a big city story, but she was proud of what she had done to uncover corruption that had gone on for over a decade. Now she lamented, all I do is report lane closings, a semi turned over on I-94, an accident on the Drive. What a mess I’ve made of my life.
Anyway, she needed a dress for the gala and though an expensive one wasn’t a possibility, she decided to try her luck at the upscale stores on North Michigan Avenue. Maybe she would find something great on sale. The city was still a mess with snow piled up so high, even downtown, that the streets were barely drivable. Buses and trains were running on skeleton schedules. The stores were empty and people were unable to get to work. Businesses were losing millions of dollars and people were angry. They blamed the mayor, Michael Bilandic, who had been appointed after the “Boss,” Mayor Richard J. Daley died. The mayoral primary was coming up in a few weeks and a feisty Jane Byrne, a city patronage worker Bilandic had fired from her post at City Hall a few months before, had challenged him and was running against him in the democratic primary. The chain-smoking, sharp-tongued little blonde with barely any leadership experience in city government was an unlikely candidate, but people were starting to believe that she had a good chance to defeat the mayor.
Bundled in a bulky coat over two sets of long underwear, warm wool pants, tall rubber boots and a thick ski sweater, Carson’s walked to Saks Fifth Avenue on Saturday morning. Although she was the only customer in the evening gown department on that painfully cold winter day, the sales staff ignored her. When she finally approached a saleswoman, she looked Carson over from head to toe and said, “Madam, perhaps you’re in the wrong store. This is Saks Fifth Avenue.”
‘Excuse me,” Carson said, as haughtily as she could, “ I don’t understand what you’re talking about.” She knew exactly what the women meant. Still, she pointed to a spectacular red silk strapless gown on a manikin and said, “I’ll try on that one in a size 9. “ The saleswoman stamped away, came back with the dress, and coldly led her in a dressing room. She never returned.
The dress fit like a glove. Carson looked at herself in the three-way mirror surprised to see that a beautiful dress could really turn a Cinderella into a princess. It makes me look like I have curves and tiny waist, she thought never being able to acknowledge that truly, she had both. The dress was by Oleg Cassini, a French born designer who had designed the dress Jacqueline Kennedy’s wore to her husband’s inaugural ball, as well as most of the wardrobe she wore when she was first lady. As a teenager, Carson had volunteered for John Kennedy when he ran for president in 1960. She canvassed door to door in the blue-collar neighborhood where she grew up to try to convince steel workers who rarely went to the polls to register to vote. She was thrilled when he won and heartsick when he was assassinated. Like millions of Americans, she never got over it. For years, she kept a photo of the president and the first lady at the inaugural on her bedroom wall, Jackie in a white Oleg Cassini gown. Wouldn’t it be amazing to own an Oleg Cassini herself? As much as she wished she could buy it, a fairy godmother did not appear in the dressing room with a Saks credit card. She left the store and found something sapphire blue and sparkly at Marshall Fields.
After the traffic report the night of the party, she changed her clothes at the station and took a taxi to the museum. Fortunately, she spotted Jess and David, who lingered near the entrance waiting for her to arrive. A circle of people surrounded them. David was not at all the man that Carson imagined. She had seen a picture of him in Town and Country and another in Fortune. She knew he’d be tall and handsome, but she didn’t expect him to be so warm and friendly, with absolutely none of the edge of superiority she had expected.
“You’re stunning,” he said, smiling warmly. “Jess didn’t tell me how beautiful you are.”
“I didn’t know that she was,” Jess teased, as if she too were amazed. “I promise you, beauty is the least impressive thing about this woman.” David raised his eyebrows and smiled. He offered each of the women an arm and they serpentined their way toward their table in the main hall of the museum.
Carson found something unnerving about the immensity of the room, a massive rotunda inspired by the monumental temples of Greece and Rome with ornately carved ionic columns and arches. At its center, they passed by an enormous pair of preserved black African elephants posed in a fight. Women in stunning gowns and jewelry and men in black tie elegantly milled around their tables set with twinkling candles in tall crystal candelabras. There were bowls of antique roses so large they looked surreal. A twenty piece orchestra began to play and couples made their way to the dance floor. The music, hundreds of conversations, and the clattering of the dinner service amplified off every surface.
Elevating his voice so she could hear him above the roar, David said “Jess says there is no man in your life right now. That won’t last for long in this town.”
“It’s going to have to,” Carson said. “I don’t have time to be distracted.”
David said, “That kind of distraction could be good for you.” He leaned over to Jess and stage whispered, “Let’s have a dinner party in Carson’s honor and invite our most eligible friends. She can pick the one she likes.” Jess rolled her eyes.
When they got to their table, Katherine’s husband, Alex, was the first to pop out of his seat to greet them. He hugged Carson and Jess as if they were long-lost friends. Carson thought, a man with a smile like that could warm the hearts of the dead. In a tuxedo that didn’t quite fit, his tie tilted slightly to the right, a round friendly face with the warmest smile, Carson fell for him instantly and hoped she would sit at his side. Instead, her place card was next to Lauren’s husband, Doug, who stood up to introduced himself and pulled out her chair. David’s father sat on her right. He apologized when she asked him a question, saying that the music was so loud he couldn’t hear her, or for that matter anything anyone said at the table. He and David’s mother spent most of the night on the dance floor. So it was Doug for the evening. He was cool and stiffly formal and seemed not very interested in her.
Lucky Lauren was seated between Alex and David. In spite of the noise level of the room, the three of them, also meeting for the first time, laughed their way through dinner. Carson guessed that Alex was the joke teller, but she was wrong, Lauren told her later. David had a photographic memory and rattled off jokes like a standup comedian; Johnny Carson was his favorite. Alex was funny too, but with a sense of humor of a different kind. Katherine described it: “His silliness, those quick, clever quips are his way of balancing the seriousness of long days filled with the heartache of critically ill children whose lives he is committed to but can not always save.”
Doug’s conversation was laced with references to his elite education at Exeter and Yale, to his private clubs and names of people she assumed he thought would impress her. She would learn that some people dropped that kind of information as a kind of code to be sure that others knew who they were. Before long, he stopped talking to her. After a few minutes of silence, he excused himself and took Lauren, elegant in a flowing, pink satin gown, her hair in a classic French twist, to dance. Carson watched them. He held her close and as he steered her around the floor, his eyes like a surveillance weapon, scanned the room for people he might know or want to meet. It was as if he was using Lauren as camouflage. He danced toward a tall, dark-haired woman and her partner. She smiled at him and their eyes locked for longer than it seemed to Carson they should.
Later when Jess, Lauren, Katherine and Carson excused themselves to go to the powder room, David teased about their mass exit. ”We won’t see you again for an hour.“ He was right. As the four wove their way through the tables, they saw the mayor and his wife working the room. The election was a few weeks off.
“There’s that poor dull-eyed Mayor Bilandic,” Jess said.
“Boy, you are bitchy tonight,” Katherine said, laughing.
“I think there’s a good chance he’ll lose the primary,” Carson said.
The mayor, his beautiful blonde socialite wife, Heather, on his arm, greeted and shook every hand they could reach. Heather had married the South Side alderman shortly after he was appointed mayor. Jess and David had been invited to the wedding, but they didn’t go. After the honeymoon, Heather moved from her elegant apartment on the Gold Coast to live in Bilandic’s mother’s little house on the South Side of the city so he could stay in his working class voting district, not coincidentally, the district where Mayor Daley had lived all his life. Heather worked in cultural affairs, helping to create music festivals on the city’s lakefront. Many saw her as Chicago’s version of Jackie O, bringing a Gold Coast kind of cache to City Hall. It wasn’t quite enough. Bilandic’s lackluster reign at City Hall was characterized by political infighting and strikes. Even the Lyric Opera orchestra threatened a walkout. He could have survived all that, but his inability to organize the city’s patronage workers to clear the snow was threatening to bring him down.
As the four made their way through the room, so many people stopped Jess to say hello that it took quite a while to get to the other side. Watching people clamor for Jess, Carson wondered why she was so eager to develop friendships with the three playgroup mothers. Everyone in town seemed to know her or at least want to know her. Jess introduced her three new friends to everyone. Most people they met said they recognized Carson. Oddly, the terrible weather had increased her popularity on the news. More viewers were tuning in to find out about the traffic before venturing out onto the highways. The news director had secretly ramped up her popularity by arranging incidents to get a few laughs while she earnestly reported the scene. A snowplow spraying her with sleet that she told her friends about the week before had been one of those incidents she unknowingly endured. The ratings of the Channel 7 morning and five o’clock news had gone up substantially during the last month and Carson’s unintentionally amusing reports were in no small part responsible for that increase.
Inching their way back through the crowded dance floor, Carson saw the beautiful Oleg Cassini red dress on a painfully thin, uptight-looking woman on the arm of a man old enough to be her father. Before she could better scrutinize the dress, Mayor Bilandic walked up to the couple, obscuring Carson’s view. He hugged the woman in the red dress and kissed her on both cheeks, then turned to her tall silver-haired companion and shook his hand enthusiastically. When they got back to their table, 10 minutes later, Carson noticed that the mayor, the woman in the red dress and the man were still huddled together deep in conversation. She watched them from across the room, the mayor’s hand resting on the man’s shoulder. Carson had no idea who he was, but it was clear that he was someone the mayor wanted on his side.
Chapter 4
Carson soon began seeing the playgroup mothers a few times a week, with Zoe and without. Sunday night pizza at the Phillips’ became a group ritual. Alex picked up Due’s on on his way home from afternoon rounds, and they gathered around his parents’ mammoth glass dining room table under the Jackson Pollack.
“Irresistible,” Alex said, and with surgical precision cut into a slice and savored his first bite. “The fresh chunky tomato sauce, the homemade sausage, thick, gooey mozzarella on this astoundingly crisp, buttery cornmeal crust!” He kissed his fingertips like a French gourmand.
“I wish you’d talk about me with that much lust,” Katherine said.
“ I do,” he said, grabbing her arm and pretending to take a bite.
They dined on paper plates, sometimes with a gratuitous salad no one ever touched. David Kingman never missed the Sunday night ritual, but Lauren’s husband, Doug, rarely joined them. Lauren made excuses, but Carson suspected he just didn’t want to come. She was sure Doug was not more than the pretentious bore he appeared to be the night of the benefit. She wondered what Lauren saw in him. She knew it wasn’t his money. Lauren had her own, inherited from her mother and grandparents.
”If I didn’t have my own money,” Lauren confided in Carson as they ran the track at the club, ”I’d get a job. I wouldn’t feel safe, even if I am married to someone who has a lot of it.” After that, she slowed her pace and turned to Carson, “I’m not sure I feel safe anyway.”
Carson asked what she meant by ‘safe,’ but Lauren pretended not to hear and quickly changed the subject. From time to time Lauren would open a door, and abruptly slam it shut. Carson didn’t push. Lauren was fragile for reasons she couldn’t put her finger on, and she was careful to respect her parameters.
One thing Lauren had no problem talking about was her obsession with her weight. She had a life long pattern of gaining and losing. ”I can put on 20 pounds in a few weeks, then spend a year trying to take them off.” Lauren had embraced the running craze that had hit the country, doing at least an hour or two every day. She also took up body- building with a trainer in the weight room. In a club with a few thousand members, she was the only woman lifting weights. Carson suspected building physical strength was her way of dealing with the fragility she always sensed about her. Lauren tried to get her to join her, but she declined.
“It would be one more thing in my life to guilty about.” Dating was another. David Kingman teased her about her celibacy. “This is not healthy, Carson,” he said. “You need a man in your life.”
“If you knew anything about the men I’ve had in my life, you wouldn’t say that. It’s healthier for me to be alone, at least for the time being. “
“OK, you tell me when you’re ready. When you are, I have the perfect man.”
“And who is that?” Jess asked looking amused.
“You’ll find out,” he said with a wink. “Until then, I don’t mind having a beautiful women on each arm.” He didn’t. Carson was often the fifth on evenings out with her new friends. With Doug’s schedule so “unpredictable,” Lauren usually declined, but Carson enjoyed the other two couples and they her. Alex got home late, but they still managed to go out a few nights a week after the children were asleep. Millie was happy to spend the night, especially now that it was so cold.
Before she left to meet the others, Carson always put Zoe to bed. They had elaborate rituals, the bath, two books, “not one,” a few songs, and cuddling together in Zoe’s narrow bed to tell each other the best thing that had happened that day.
As tired as she was when she got home, Carson bounced back when she left to meet her new friends. She loved getting to know the nightlife of her new city with them. There was so much going on, music, theater, jazz and blues. They followed the great blues singers playing in the clubs in Old Town and Rush Street, just a few blocks away and on the south side. They saw Buddy Guy, Aretha Franklin, Barry White, Etta James, Coco Taylor, and Mavis Staples. Wearing miniskirts and thigh-high go-go boots, bellbottoms and platforms, they went dancing at Faces and Maxim’s. Unlike the dancing they did when they were in college, didn’t require a partner and for the five friends, sometimes six when they could drag Lauren out, it was fun, sometimes hilarious to dance together.
Carson’s work wasn’t getting any better. She was starting to suspect that she had overestimated her ability. Maybe she wasn’t good enough to be successful at a big city station. But making these new friends who were so much fun and who poured so much affection on her little girl made her life in Chicago much happier. The playgroups rotated from house to house every week and the grownups
The first time the playgroup was at Carson’s house, she was self-conscious about the contrast between the small artist studio duplex she rented just west of the Gold Coast and the palatial homes of the others. But she quickly realized that that too was ridiculous. No one but she seemed to notice. Lauren and her son Louie were the first to arrive.
“This is my dream house, “ Lauren bubbled uncharacteristically as she walked around what Carson called her not- so- great great room, with it’s two story exposed brick walls and classic artist’s skylight filling the room with sunlight. A staircase led up to two postage -stamp- sized bedrooms off a narrow balcony on the second floor. “I’d trade houses with you in a heartbeat,” Lauren said. Carson knew she meant it.
The artist studios were part of Carl Sandburg Village, a development built just west of the Gold Coast where the other playgroup families lived. The developers had pushed out a densely populated neighborhood of minorities and working poor to create wall of high rises and townhouses that would act as a buffer zone between the Gold Cast and the slums. The artist studios had been added to the site plan to help constitute the low income-housing component the developers — friends of the mayor — needed to qualify for low-interest-rate urban renewal financing. By the time Carson moved to Chicago in 1978, the last of the artists had already been priced out of Sandburg. The rents had escalated to way beyond what any of the original painters, potters and sculptors could possibly afford, and just as the developers and their Daley machine friends in City Hall had planned.
Playgroup was at Carcon’s on the sunny but still bone-chilling February morning of the primary election that would give Chicago its first and only woman mayor. Carson had phoned the others to let them know that they were going to be making Valentine cookies, even though it was almost two weeks past Valentine’s Day. “That’s what Zoe wants to do,” she told the others, “so that’s what we’re going to do. I hope you don’t mind.“ She warned them it would be messy. “Dress accordingly.”
Chicago voters came out to the polls in record numbers that day, excited to try to bring down the nation’s most long-standing political machine by electing Jane
Byrne, the gutsy little woman challenger who waged a brilliant campaign to dump the acting mayor because he couldn’t get the city out from under the snow after the blizzard.
Jess and Sophie were the last to arrive that morning. “I’m sorry we’re so late.” Jess said when Lauren let them in the door. “There was a huge line to vote, everybody’s out. It looks like Jane Byrne’s going to win.” In the short moments the door was open, cold air pushed its way clear across the room. In a hooded white mink coat with white fox trim encircling her face, Jess looked like a redheaded version of Mrs. Zgivago.
Zoe, her hands and clothing sticky with sugary red frosting, ran to hug Jess. “We’re making cookies! Hurry up!“ Carson, at the table helping the children, jumped out of her chair to stop Zoe, but she was too late. Zoe threw her arms around Jess as she always did, leaving red frosting all over the luxurious mink. After the initial shock of those little red handprints, instead of getting angry, Jess laughed so hard she couldn’t stop. Carson was horrified.
“Stop apologizing,” Jess said. “It’s totally my fault. How stupid of me!”
“It would be hard to argue with you,“ Katherine teased, as she grabbed a wet rag to try to clean off the prints. Her efforts only transformed the red handprints into a field of pink fur.
“I’m so sorry, Jess,” Carson kept repeating as she tried to sponge off the frosting.
“Please stop. It’s just a thing.” Jess said. “No one was hurt. The children are fine; we’re all fine. People matter, not things. Just forget it. So what if I have a new pink mink coat.”
“Probably, if you wear it this way,” Katherine said, ”everyone who sees you is going to try to find one.”
“Not likely,” Jess said as she took off her coat. Under it, she wore her usual: a creamy, pastel cashmere sweater, matching slacks and a few pieces of expensive jewelry.
“Are you kidding me?” Katherine said surveying her outfit. ”Carson told us this would be a messy morning.”
“I didn’t have anything else to wear. What do you want me to do, go to the Army surplus store and buy myself fatigues?”
“It wouldn’t be such a bad idea,” Lauren, the only one of the four not laughing, said. Carson offered Jess something more appropriate to wear.
“I’m fine.”
“At least put on an apron?”
“What’s an apron?”
Carson threw her an old work shirt. Squeezed around the round oak, claw-footed table that had been Carson’s grandmother’s, the women helped the children spread frosting on the heart-shaped sugar cookies Carson had baked late the night before.
“Sorry about the hearts,” Carson said. “I know Valentine’s Day is over for the rest of you, but it hasn’t started for me yet.“
“Maybe if you would let us set you up with someone, it would.” Jess said. “David keeps asking me.”
Carson interrupted her. “When do I have time to date?” she said as she walked to the kitchen counter to mix a batch of blue frosting. She looked back at the excited children and their mothers laughing and talking at her table. They looked beautiful; the whole scene was beautiful. With sunlight pouring in through the glass skylights, the children with their cheeks flushed pink from the cold were the children of the Renoir paintings in the French Impressionist collection at the Art Institute, just a little over a mile from where they sat. For the first time she appreciated why artists wanted their studios to catch the northern light.
It didn’t take long that morning for the little ones to get so speeded up on sugar they were out of control. When Carson put down the fresh bowl of blue frosting, Louie pushed his chubby his little hand in the bowl, scooped out a glob, and smeared it all over his face. The children thought it was the funniest thing they had ever seen.
“Time for a new activity,” Carson said, grabbing a washcloth. “You can go upstairs and play with toys as soon as we get you cleaned up.” Their first group tantrum followed.
Fortunately, their mothers kept a united front and it only lasted a few minutes. Once clean, they ran up to Zoe’s room. Not more than five minutes later, Carson heard them jumping on the beds and squealing with laughter. All but Katherine ran up to help Millie quiet the children down. Katherine was so focused on cookie decorating, she didn’t stop when the others left. When they came down stairs, Jess signaled the others to be quiet and watch Katherine in a cookie-frosting trance.
When she looked up and saw them grinning down at the perfect rainbows she had painted on her cookies, she was embarrassed. “I’m sorry I didn’t come and help. I didn’t want to stop. I’ve never made cookies in my life.”
“That’s not possible,” Lauren said.
“Never, not once?” Jess asked.
“Not even with your mom?” Carson said.
“She wasn’t a cookie-making kind of mom.”
“I don’t know what that means?” Carson said, surprised by Katherine’s uncharacteristic uneasiness as she pushed away the plate.
“My mother wasn’t ever around long enough to do anything like making cookies. Let’s just say she was a never-at-home kind of mom.“ She quickly changed the subject, as she always did when anyone brought up her parents. No one would believe the story anyway. It was hard for her, even after two decades of trying to put it together, to believe it herself.
She had never told anyone about them and she wouldn’t today. She thought until she was 13 that her father died in the battle of Okinawa three months before she was born. He and her mother had been high school sweethearts and married right after graduation. He was drafted a few years later. After her father died, there was no way for her mother to support the two of them in their small town in upstate New York, so she took the insurance money she received, got on a Greyhound and took her six-month-old baby to live in Manhattan. Her mother worked long and unpredictable hours and she was gone most evenings. The reality was that Katherine pretty much raised herself, with a series of mostly unreliable baby sitters. Fortunately, she was a good student and loved to read. The doormen in their building, just a few doors off Central Park, kept an eye on the tiny girl who walked to and from school by herself every day.
The only time Katherine could be sure she would see her mother was Sunday. They never missed church at St Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, sometimes taking a taxi across town, but more often walking down the winding paths of Central Park until they reached the east side, then strolled along Fifth Avenue to the church. When they were out together, Katherine was aware that people admired her mother. She was a beautiful woman, elegantly dressed and graceful. She could tell from the way the people looked at her. Men especially seemed to watch her, sometimes from the corner of their eyes; perhaps, she wondered, as she got older, trying to hide their interest from the women at their sides.
After church one Sunday, the summer before Katherine was about to begin high school, her mother told her they needed to have an important talk. The windows in their apartment were wide open but there was no cross breeze, only a fan humming in the window that pushed hot air around the room. Her mother took off the jacket of her smart navy linen suit and draped it neatly over a chair. The two sat across from one another at a small mahogany drop-leaf table near the window with the fan. Her mother’s crossed her long legs gracefully at the ankles and poured two tall glasses of Lipton iced tea. Katherine would never be able to drink iced tea again.
“Mary Katherine, it’s time for me to tell you about something I’ve never told you before. I am telling you now because I don’t want the same kind of thing that happened to me to happen to you.”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” Katherine said.
“Of course, you don’t, dear, just listen.” She told Katherine what she called, “the whole story. “
”Your father was not the man I told you was your father. I did not marry my high school sweetheart. The truth is I never have been married.”
Katherine’s first reaction was that she didn’t want to know anymore. She looked away, feeling tears well in her eyes.
Her mother continued, ”I never wanted to have children. In fact, from the time I was a little girl, I wanted to be a nun.”
“A nun!” Katherine laughed.
“This isn’t funny, Mary Katherine,” she said sternly. “When I was 18, I entered the convent of the Daughters of Mercy in Batavia. My parents were so pleased that I wanted to spend my life as a servant of God. It didn’t work out that way. Two years later, I found myself pregnant.”
“My father?”
“Yes, your father, but not the father I told you was your father.”
Katherine’s first reaction was rage. “Then who was it?”
“He was a very nice and intelligent man,” she said uncomfortably. “His name was Father Henry Olinger, a priest, dear.” She rearranged herself in her hard chair and said in a hushed tone, “Your father became the bishop of the Archdiocese. He was a beloved and respected clergyman and also coincidentally,” she took a deep breath and looked away, ”a close personal friend of my father.”
Katherine tried to say something, but she stumbled on the words.
“You can understand why he didn’t want to have a child.” She didn’t wait for Katherine to respond and continued. “When I told him I was pregnant, he got out of his arm chair and started pacing around the room. We were in his study, a beautiful dark-wood-paneled room lined with books, and he said, ‘Vickie dear,‘ He’s the only one who ever called me Vickie. ‘We can get rid of it. I know someone in Syracuse, a doctor who can do it safely. You told me that you never wanted to have children.’” As she spoke, her mother pulled herself up straighter in her chair.
“‘No,’ I said to him, ‘I will have nothing to do with that.’” She sighed deeply and stared into Katherine’s eyes. “I hope this doesn’t upset you, dear.”
“Yeah, right.” she said sarcastically. “Where is he now?” she finally choked out.
“Who?”
“My father.”
“Oh, he’s dead,” she said as if it were insignificant. “He’s been dead for years. He left us some money,” she smiled uncomfortably. “That’s how I’ll be able to pay your tuition at Dalton. You didn’t think I earned enough doing secretarial work to afford to send you there.”
“Actually, I did.”
“Well, that would be impossible. I have enough money put away to pay your tuition for college and graduate school, medical school or law school if you want. There’s only one thing I require. Don’t get pregnant before you’re done with your education. Don’t even start.”
“Start what?”
“You know, fooling around.”
She looked at her mother angrily.
“Why are you looking at me like that? You know what I am talking about.”
“I do.”
“Don’t ever let me find out you’re doing it. Don’t you let anyone touch you until you are married.”
“That’s disgusting, Mom, that you’d even think I would do something like that.”
“You never know what you would do Katherine, until you are confronted with it and I want you to be prepared.”
“What else don’t I know about you, Mom?”
“That’s it.”
But it wasn’t. Father Olinger did leave Sara’s mother a little money, but it was barely enough to cover the cost of books and school uniforms let alone, tuition, room and board. But Olinger had given her something else she considered to be her most valuable asset. He trained her for what would become her second calling, one that she mastered so expertly that it would provide her with more than enough income to care for her child and herself for the rest of her life. Olinger was a man of exotic sexual tastes. The skills she developed satisfying those cravings would provide her with a source of power and money that would more than support the comfortable lifestyle she wanted and from her perspective deserved. Most evenings, after Sara was in bed, a sitter came to stay. Her mother dressed elegantly and went off to entertain one, sometimes in more lucrative sessions a few, of her extensive network of gentleman friends. Well aware that in the future, what she had to offer her clients would diminish in value, she knew it was important for her to manage her money extremely well. To do so, she leaned heavily on the advice of one of her best clients, a socially prominent and highly regarded Wall Street investor, who would remain her financial advisor and her special friend for the rest of her life.
Her mother’s story, even just the part she had shared with her, left Sara reeling. The fact that her mother had lied to her about something so important didn’t come as a big surprise. Some children, particularly those fortunately, or in another way of looking at it, unfortunately talented, know instinctively when they cannot trust their parents. They try desperately to do so, but on the deepest level, they know they cannot. How they survive varies from child to child. Katherine had good survival mechanisms, maybe inherited from her Jesuit father, although her mother also proved that she was quite capable of getting along in the world. As Katherine entered high school that September, it was with a strong sense that there was absolutely no one in the world she could fully trust. She would make sure that she would be able to rely solely on herself. She pushed herself hard in school and graduated at the top of her class. After college, she got her law degree at Yale, one of a small number of women in her class, and went on to a clerk for Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. She turned down offers from a few of the country’s top law firms to work on behalf of women and children who unlike herself, could not take care of themselves.
That her mother never wanted to have children and only had her because she felt morally compelled to do so, was the least of Katherine’s surprises. It explained her coldness and how little time she spent with her as a child. When Katherine looked back on it, it seemed to her, that her mother treated her more like a pet than a child. She was fed, given toys and training, played with from time to time, sent to school with a ribbon in her hair, then put back into her cage. It took her years to give up the father she had always imagined, the handsome captain of the football team and honor student, a brave soldier who died fighting for his country. That he had never existed was a painful blow, but even harder, was putting in his place the man who wanted to abort her. It took many years for her put a true picture of who her parents really were solidly in her mind, but once she did, she never let go of the bitterness that she felt. Unlike the pain that some people process and eventually get over, Katherine never let go of the anger. It was perhaps the source of the edge of cynicism and distrust that was always there behind her smile. Her angel-like husband Alex, who she didn’t meet him until she was 23 was the first person in her life she knew instinctively she could absolutely trust.
Of course, when Katherine got to high school, she ignored her mother’s most compelling wish. The opportunities for exploring the forbidden were abundant for a teenager in New York, particularly one whose mother was rarely at home.
“To call me promiscuous in high school would be an understatement,” she told the other three when it was her turn to share the first time she had sex. “My first time was with a nerdy boy in my class at Dalton. I was pretty nerdy myself. We were both in the honors program and he wasn’t much taller than I am and a whole lot fatter. We went to his apartment after school one Friday. His parents were out of the country and we drank most of a bottle of Seagram’s 7 mixed with 7-Up and maraschino cherries, and ate a big bag of rippled potato chips and a carton of French onion dip. It was his idea for us to go to his room and take off our clothes and get under the covers. He had an elaborate tropical fish tank set-up on the dresser next to his bed. We started making out and the next thing I knew he was trying to get his little pecker inside me.“ The other three roared. “All I remember is that somehow he managed it and afterward I got out of bed and threw up in the fish tank.”
Chapter 5
The longer the traffic stint dragged on, the angrier Carson got with herself for giving up Canton. The station manager finally admitted it was Stu Williams, the news director, holding her back. She made up her mind she would confront Stu and set up an appointment the following week. But as she reported the morning rush hour traffic the next day, a garbage truck veered toward her, spraying bone chilling filthy icy slush all over her. Soaked and shivering, when she got back to the station, she stormed into Stu’s smoke filled office.
“Enough of this Stu, I was promised a job doing news and I want it now. I’m leaving if you don’t give it me?”
“It’s about time,” he said not even looking up from the page he was reading. “I wondered how long it would take you to walk in here to tell me you were going to quit if we didn’t move you over to news. What took you so long?”
“You’ve got to be kidding,“ she said angrily.
“I’m not. I would have given you the job months ago if you were smart enough to ask me for it.”
“What?” she yelled. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“If you didn’t have the balls to come into my office to ask me, why would I hand it to you? How the hell was I supposed to believe you can get the kind of stories I want if you can’t even confront a sweetie-pie like me and ask for a job? You can write, I know that, but can but can you go out a get the story? Honestly, I really don’t know,” he said lighting a cigarette with the butt of the one he had
been smoking.”
“Of course I can.”
“ You can start Monday, but you’re on probation.”
“What do you mean probation? I was an anchor and you know, Stu, I’m a hell of a reporter.”
“That was in Canton, Carson. This is not Canton, it’s Chicago and you’ve got to prove you can do Chicago stories. You have to be aggressive enough to succeed here.”
“I am aggressive, Stu,” she said angrily.
“Sure, Canton girl,” he said with a grin. He took the last drag of the cigarette hanging from his mouth and lit another. “In the meantime, we’ve trained someone to stand in for you in the traffic slot, that Kelly girl. You know who she is.”
“What do you mean stand in for me?”
“I told you. You have to prove yourself. If you don’t, I’m holding traffic for you, and you’re lucky that I will. If you can’t cut it, back to comedy.”
“What do you mean comedy?”
“You’re pretty funny.” he said, pretending that he was trying to suppress a laugh.
“I’m not funny.”
“Oh yes, you are. You’ve been cracking me up every day.”
“What are you talking about?”
From the look on his face, she knew he didn’t want to say. “Tell me, Stu. What do you mean funny?”
He cocked his head and grinned at her, but didn’t answer.
“Come on, tell me. You can’t just drop that and not tell me what you are talking about.”
“OK,” he said, “ That garbage truck that sprayed ice all over you today?” He looked at her for a reaction. “I thought I’d fall on the floor.”
“You arranged that?” She was furious.
He roared.
“You asshole. “
“Oh and one more thing, the new girl’s mucho prettier than you are,” he said, cracking up again.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Oh, give me a break,” he said rolling his eyes.
Carson got up to leave, trying not to laugh or, worse, to show him that in spite of how angry she was, not only at Stu, but at herself for putting up with the last ten months, she was thrilled. She stood up to leave and shook his hand. When he walked her to the door, he extended his arm in her direction. If she hadn’t jumped, he would have slapped her behind. This was a part of the job she was not going to accept, not this time.
That evening, Zoe fast asleep, she met the playgroup moms to celebrate.
“I should never drink these,” Carson said, as the waiter poured her a third margarita. ”Why does tequila make me so goofy?”
“It’s not a bad thing,” Jess said, raising her glass for yet another toast. Jess had managed to get them an impossible-to-get-especially-at-the-last-minute table at the hottest new restaurant in town. They pushed their way to the front of a line that went around the corner, even on a cold winter night. It was no surprise that they got celebrity treatment. Everyone in town seemed to know the beautiful Jessica Kingman.
Paintings by Mexican artists, the owner’s collection, naively rendered in bold primary colors covered the bright yellow, stucco walls. Every detail of the restaurant, from the rustic wooden furniture, terracotta floors, colorful ceramic dishes, and hand-blown colored glassware, was brilliantly designed to transport the diners to an illusion that they were in Mexico. The food was spectacular, the margaritas, authentic and strong.
“You have so many friends!” Lauren said, amazed by the number of people on their way to their tables who stopped to say hello to Jess.
“Not true. None of these people are my friends.”
“Well, they obviously want to be,” Katherine said.
“A mariachi band came over to sing. Jess thanked them, handed the leader a five-dollar bill and pointed to a young couple at a table across the room, ”Please serenade them with love songs. Don’t tell them we told you,” she said. “He’s going to ask her to marry him tonight.”
“How do you know that?” Katherine asked when the musicians left.
“I made it up. I wanted to get rid of them. Why should we be forced to stop talking and pretend to enjoy their singing until they finally decide they’re ready to go.”
“You are bad,” Lauren said.
“No, bad is taking time doing anything you don’t want to do just to be nice, especially to strangers.”
Katherine caught Carson staring into her glass at the reflection of the fan rotating above their heads on the ice cubes in her glass. “Earth to Carson” she said.
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m just having such a good time,” Carson said, her voice slurred. “I feel as if the four of us have been friends all our lives. How did this happen? It’s just a couple of months and it’s like we’ve known each other forever.”
”I feel the same way,” Katherine said. She too was amazed at how close she felt to the other three. “I’m not sure what is that attracts grownup women to each other. What is the magnet in women’s friendships, which have none of the magic pheromones that come in to play when sex and mating are part of the picture?”
“I don’t know” Jess said. “I just know it’s something good.” They had become friends quickly, without knowing much about where they had come from and how they had lived their lives before they met. Each of them felt, in her own way and for her own reasons that she had always been a loner, but now they were forming a tight circle that embraced not only the four of them but their husbands and children. There were lots of blank spots, but they didn’t seem to matter, their comfort and sense of mutual trust was building at rocket speed.
Bob Stone, the restaurants quickly becoming famous chef/owner, came over to their table with a sumptuous platter of sopas, quesadillas and tamales. His mutton chop sideburns, almost reached his jaw He only recently opened the restaurant, and critics were already calling him the most masterful Mexican chef in America — and he wasn’t even Mexican. Jess got up to hug him.
He handed the tray to the waiter. “It’s something for you from the Yucatan. Be careful, some of it is a little spicy.” Jess introduced him to the others, she called, “her dearest friends in the world.”
“I understand this is a celebration,” he grinned, his smile even more inviting than the delicious food streaming out of his kitchen.
“It’s Carson’s night,” Jess said.
“Oh I know you,” he said sweetly. His Southern accent sounded as if he could have grown up on Jess’s block, “I see you on...”
Carson interrupted, grinning, “I’m that stupid woman who stands in the middle of traffic getting slush sprayed in her face.”
“No, I’ve never seen that happen,” he laughed. “You’re wonderful. My wife won’t leave our house until she sees your report in the morning.”
After dinner, they took a taxi to Lauren’s and wound their way up toward the roof deck. They were so giddy from all the tequila, it was hard to navigate and stay quiet so they wouldn’t wake Louie and the housekeeper. Doug was out of town.
It took all four of them, weak from giggling to pull the heavy hexagon shaped cover off the cedar-lined hot tub on the roof. When they got it open, a big cloud of steam escaped into the freezing air. They peeled off their clothes and climbed up into the bubbling tub.
Lauren apologized as she modestly undressed with her back to the others and pulled on a suit. “Sorry,” she said, “I’m just modest.” Nobody cared. Once they got into the bubbling hot water, they forgot the cold and the possible voyeurs in the surrounding high rises. Lauren poured snifters of Courvoisier she had lugged up from the kitchen four floors below.
Carson groaned, “I’ll die if I drink this.”
Lauren ignored her and when they had their glasses, she made the first toast. “To
Carson’s move to news; next year a Pulitzer!” They clinked glasses and savored the warmth of the cognac. Carson felt the heat make its way down her throat, her body felt wonderfully hot, but her cheeks were icy from the frosty air. From the roof, they could see the city’s most impressive skyscrapers, the Palmolive beam circled the city and the Wrigley Building gleamed sparkling white.
“What a view!” Carson said. “This is glorious!”
“Glorious? Are you crazy,” Katherine said, “Lighting buildings like that is totally irresponsible. They waste millions of dollars’ worth of energy every year.” Carson knew she was right, but she tuned her out anyway, lowering her cognac so that the lip of her glass peeked just above the waterline.
“Do you have any idea how many hungry children we could feed in this city on what it costs to light those buildings? It’s got to be thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of children."
“Do we really have hundreds of thousands of hungry children in Chicago?” Jess asked facetiously. She stood up and leaned over the hot tub to reach for the bottle for another round of cognac. Steam came off her naked body blotched red from the heat. Her hair hung down in wet ringlets over her shoulders. She topped off their snifters and lowered herself back into the water, a goofy grin still on her face. She respected Katherine’s commitment to making the world a better place, but please God, she thought, not now. She was afraid she was going to laugh.
"Of course we do,” Katherine said, “We have more desperately poor children in this city, more child abuse, more infant mortality, more hunger and drugs in neighborhoods that are within a mile of here than almost anywhere in the Western world.”
“You’re right, sweetie,” Lauren said gently, “but could we please not talk about it tonight? We’re celebrating.”
Tuned out, Carson immersed herself to above her chin, and then floated the back of her head just under the water. The conversation was muffled by the hum of the motor and the bubbling water. She looked up at the sky. Only one star was bright enough to compete with the city lights. She stopped herself as she started to make a wish, reminding herself that she was not inclined to believe in magical thinking.
Katherine dunked under the water and came up smiling. “OK, It’s over, sorry to be such a bore. Let’s talk about something that’s fun. How about sex? We haven't talked about sex for months and you two…” she pointed to Lauren and Carson. “Neither of you has taken your turn to tell us about your first time.”
“That’s right,” Jess piped in, grinning. “You’ve been holding out on us. Lauren, it's your turn.”
Lauren looked away. “My story’s too boring.”
“I don't believe you,” Carson said.
“Besides,” Lauren said, looking accusingly at Carson. “It’s your turn. You’re older, you have to go first.”
"I’m not older. I just look older."
”It's my hot tub,” Lauren said grinning, “I get to make the rules. It’s your turn tonight.”
Carson winced. She had hoped to avoid telling her tale. She even considered making something up to keep from sharing what really happened. But she knew she was a terrible liar and wouldn’t be able to pull it off. Besides, in a few short months, she had managed to make three real friends — perhaps the best friends she ever had, and though she knew she was unpracticed in friendship, she believed real friends always told the truth.
Katherine said, “I'll help you get started. Was it your high school boyfriend?”
“No.”
“Then your college boyfriend?”
“No.”
“Then after college?”
“No.”
“Come on, Carson,” Katherine said. “Don’t force us to interrogate you. I was explicit about my wild sexual adventure with the nerdiest boy on the Upper East Side. Now it’s your turn. If you don’t want to talk about it, you’ll be in trouble with the rest of us.”
Carson suddenly felt sober, certain that once they heard her story, whatever respect they had for her would vanish. The tongue-loosening effect of the alcohol she had consumed that evening seemed to disappear and leave her sober and anxious, but she began. “It was the first semester of my junior year at Northwestern.”
“You weren’t still a virgin?” Jess said.
“I was.”
“Not possible.” Jess said,” What year was that? 1963? No one was a virgin in 1963.”
“Well, I was. I didn’t date at all in college and not much in high school.”
“Kind of like right now,” Katherine said, laughing.
Carson ignored her. “My scholarship only covered part of my tuition at Northwestern and none of my other expenses, so I was working all the time. A few semesters I had three jobs, but mostly two. I always wanted to be a broadcast journalist and….”
“We know.” Katherine interrupted. “You told us. You walked around your father’s tavern with a wooden spoon pretending it was a microphone. Adorable, but tell us about the sex.”
“Just listen. I’ll get there.”
“I was willing to work my way through Northwestern instead of going to a state school because it’s one of the top two or three journalism schools in the country. But I knew as soon as I got there, I had made a mistake. Everyone was so much smarter than me. They came from good schools, private schools. Their parents were doctors, lawyers, and businessmen, and there were a lot of New Yorkers…. They were the scariest of all.
“Oh come on,” Sara said, laughing.
“Anyway, all I did when I was in school was work and study.”
“Katherine prodded her again, with a long “Aaaaaaand?”
“I know you think I’m stalling, but I want you to understand how it happened like it did. Do you mind?”
“Of course not,” Jess said, pretending to yawn. “Please wake me up when you get to it.”
Lauren turned off the jets of the Jacuzzi and the sudden stillness stunned them. They sat for a moment in the hot water listening to the quiet, the lights of the city surrounding them.
“Mark Hastings was an adjunct professor. Once a year, he taught a semester-long seminar for broadcast journalism majors. Do you know who he is?”
“The anchor on the NBC national evening news,” Jess said.
“Right. At that time he was the news anchor at Channel 7. He had gone to Medill and was a big supporter of the school. He taught seminar once a year for broadcast majors and his class was the highlight of the curriculum. Under his direction, the class produced an evening news show and broadcast it twice a week on the campus television network. We rotated through all the jobs — news director, cameraman, reporter, editor, and anchor. Mark was a great teacher and I had an enormous crush on him, enormous. Everyone did.”
“I think he is the sexiest man on TV,” Jess said.
“He is even more handsome in the flesh, muscular and tall, about six-four with a very powerful presence,” Carson said quietly and uncomfortably.
“How old was he then?” Lauren asked.
“About 45. He was elegant and articulate. He still is.”
Katherine interrupted. “Enough, Carson. Just tell us what happened?"
“I had fantasies about him all the time. I dreamt about him. One night, late in the semester, he asked me to stay to talk with him after class. And that's when it happened.”
“You're kidding!” Katherine yelled, “Mark Hastings….”
“Jesus, Katherine, why don't you announce it the whole city!” Lauren said.
“I’m sorry,” Katherine said. “Go ahead.”
“He waited until everyone left. It was late. Our class was always the last to leave the building. The maintenance man walked by and said he was going home, that the doors would lock automatically when we left. He asked Mark if he minded if he turned off some of the lights.
“‘Not at all,” Mark said. All the lights went out in the studio except for the few spots that lit the stage. Mark leaned in front of the anchor desk. He looked relaxed and so handsome, his arms crossed, his right leg crossed over his left, and he said, ‘Carson, if you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to you about how you might strengthen your writing.’
“‘I wish I were better,’ I said.
“‘No, not at all, I think you are an excellent writer.’ He made a few suggestions on how I could strengthen my style. Then he told me that he thought I had a lot of potential.
“‘In fact,’ he said. ‘I think you are the only person in the class who has a real future in broadcasting. I’d like to help you, Carson. Believe me. I am quite serious about this.’
“I was stunned. There I was face to face with a man I admired and respected more than anyone in the world. I didn't even think that he had noticed me and now he was telling that he thought I was talented, the most talented person in my class! By the way, it was first time in my life anyone ever told me anything even close to that and, on top of all that, he wanted to help me. I couldn’t believe it. My dreams for my career in broadcast journalism had seemed so dim as I struggled to compete in my classes at Northwestern. Maybe they would come true.
“Then he said, ‘Come here, Carson.’
“I stepped closer to him. He was leaning back on the front of the news desk. ‘In addition to being talented and bright,’ he said, ‘you are a very beautiful young woman. I want you to know that I am very moved by you.’ I didn't know what to say. He looked at me kind of surprised and said, ‘You don't believe me, do you?’ I was speechless.”
“’Carson,’ he said and he looked straight into my eyes, ‘I want you to touch me. You'll see what you do to me.’ I didn't know what he meant. I just stood there speechless. Then he took my hand in his and placed it over the front of his pants. He was bulging and hard. I was paralyzed.”
“So what did you do?”
“I just stood there numb.”
“With your hand on his penis?”
“Right.”
“And then what happened?”
“He unzipped his pants with his other hand and put my hand inside. I had never seen a penis in my life, let alone touched one. He pulled me to him and kissed me, a very long romantic open-mouth kiss. You can imagine what that felt like.”
“I think I can.” Lauren said. “In fact, I think I feel the same way just listening to you.”
“As we kissed, he put his hands under my skirt, moving them up the backs of my thighs. I was numb. Then he lifted me on to him, pulling my legs apart and around his body.”
“He was standing?”
“You expect me to remember every detail?”
“You better believe I do because you do.” Jess said.
“And you were dressed and straddling him?” Jess said. “Oh, my God, So then?”
“He moved me up and down rubbing his penis between my legs. While he was doing that, he kept kissing me.”
“Then what?” Katherine said.
“He turned around and lowered me on to the news desk.” Carson paused, suddenly feeling too embarrassed to go on.
“Go ahead, finish,” Jess urged her.
“He undressed me, staring at me, as if he were examining every inch of my body, both with his hands and with his eyes. I didn’t say a word. I don't think I could have. I was frozen. When I was totally naked, he spread my legs apart, pulled his penis out and penetrated me.”
“He was dressed and you were totally naked?”
“Yes.”
“Right there on the table?”
“Yes”
“And did you?”
“Yes. I think within 30 seconds. I was so aroused.”
“Then what happened?”
“I’m not sure you want to hear all of this.”
“Yes, we do.”
“He asked me if I liked it. He was still erect inside of me. I couldn't really speak. Then he said, ‘Now I want you to do something for me.’ He pulled out of me, lifted me off the desk, then pushed me down to the ground. ‘Kneel down in front of me and put me in your mouth,’ he said.”
“And you did?” Katherine asked.
“Yes, I did.”
“Had you ever done that before?”
“Of course not, never!”
“Oh my God!” Jess bellowed. “And he came in your mouth?”
“Yes.”
They were all quiet for a moment.
“Quite a story, Carson,” Jess said. No one said anything else for a bit.
“Was he married then?” Katherine asked. “He is now.”
“Yes, and had one child. Now he has three.”
“So it was a one-night stand?”
Lauren read Carson’s silence accurately and looked at her with concern.
“More than that,” Carson said, beginning to feel relief from telling a story she had never told. “And it was a very sick relationship.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Katherine asked.
“Are you sure you want to hear it?”
“Yeah, of course, but can you turn on the bubbler again, it’s getting a little cold.”
Carson spoke softly, her voice resonating with grief and regret. The others leaned closer to hear her, each of them struck, after a night of celebration, by the sadness on Carson’s face.
“I’m ashamed of myself for being so stupid. I was like a slave, literally. At first it was just once a week. We met after class. In the beginning we’d talk for a while before, but soon we just had sex, more often than not right in the classroom on desk or on the floor. A few times we went to a hotel a few blocks from campus. I signed out of my dorm for the night. He always left before midnight and I sneaked out early in the morning to go to my job. Sometimes, he just drove me down to a parking lot at the lake and we would do it in his car.”
“And you thought you were you in love with him?”
“Of course.”
“And did he say he loved you?”
“Sort of.”
“My last two years of college were far from normal. I met Mark wherever and whenever he wanted me. For him, I know now, it was only for sex. For me it was love; that’s what I thought love was. Truly, I worshipped him. Of course, I never told anyone about what was going on. Guys asked me out, but I didn’t go, not on one date from the time I started seeing Mark. I had no interest in boys. Why would I?
“Having a secret like that isolated me from everyone. There was no one I could tell about Mark, so not only did I not date, I didn’t get close to anyone, men or women. I worked hard and ended up graduating at the top of my class. But the center of my life was Mark. I just waited to serve him.
“The summer before my senior year, Mark helped me get an internship at Channel 7. Being downtown every day made it easy for him. He would lock the door in his office in the middle of day and tell me what he wanted me to do and I would do it. I did anything he asked. The next spring when I was about to graduate, I interviewed with Stu for a job at the station. He seemed unimpressed, but he hired me, pretty much as a gopher. I was pleased because I was the only one in my class to get a job at a major market station. I thought perhaps with my grades, and recommendations and what they saw during my interviews that they thought I had potential to be a good reporter.”
“Of course,” Lauren said sympathetically.
“Until Mark told me that I wouldn’t have gotten the job if he hadn’t strong-armed them into hiring me.”
And you believed him?” Lauren asked.
“Yes.”
“Surely, you still don’t,” Katherine said.
“I don’t know. I'll never know.”
“How long did it go on between you and Mark?” Jess asked.
“Longer than I want to tell you. It was years. I was promoted to a job doing research and then writing. I was happy at the station and felt like I would be able to get promoted to reporter if things continued to go as they were. I didn’t make any real friends at the station. I pretty much kept to myself and did my work. I didn’t want anyone to find out about Mark. He was the center of my life and too big a secret; I was afraid if I got close to other people somehow they would find out.
“I thought I was important to him, and I felt honored by his attention, as strange as that may sound to you. But I was just someone for him to have sex with. I didn't know enough to know that what was going on between us was sick. I didn’t want to know. Sometimes, he was pretty sadistic. I don't want to talk about it.”
“Then what happened?” Katherine asked.
“Mark came to me one day and said, ‘we have to get you out of Chicago. Don’t worry, I have a job for you in Canton, Ohio.’
“I said I don’t want to go to Canton, and he said, ‘You’re going, and if you don’t, I will see to it that you never get a job in television for as long as you live.’”
“How did you react?"
“I argued with him. I didn’t get it. I told him that I never wanted to see him again.
“‘How dare you!’ he said. ‘What makes you think that’s your decision?’
“I did end up in Canton. It was a better job in some ways. I started as a reporter. I am ashamed to say that I continued to see Mark whenever I could. I tried to date, but who could compare with him.
“And is it still going on?” Katherine asked cautiously.
“No. When he was named anchor for the national news and moved his family to New York, he disappeared from my life. He phoned, told me it was over and that he never wanted me to try to contact him again.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.” She snapped her fingers under the water, sending ripples out into the tub. “I was miserable. I should have realized I was better off without him, but instead I felt abandoned. I watched him on the news and literally sobbed in front of the TV every night. I was so stupid, pitiful. I kept calling him, but he never returned my calls. After a while I got myself together and tried to meet people my age. I wanted to love someone, to get married someday, but being with Mark had spoiled me. He was the most brilliant person I had ever known. His world was … the world. Suddenly I found myself in Ohio sports bars with boys who had nothing to talk about but football. They seemed like kids at a fraternity party, so light, so superficial. I didn't get their jokes, what was so funny that they found to laugh about all the time? I tried, I went out with a few, but it was awful. No one measured up to Mark. He was all I wanted. I would have jumped on a plane and met him anywhere in the world in a heartbeat if he had given me a chance.”
“Did you ever see him again?” Jess asked.
“No. I did get the phone number of his apartment in Manhattan. Once I called him in the middle of the night and he picked up the phone. When he heard my voice, he said, ‘I don’t know who you are and how you got my number, but don’t you ever call me again.’ I finally stopped.”
“He was a beast,” Lauren said.
“Yes, but I was addicted to him.”
“You can get addicted, even to people who are bad for you,” Lauren said.
“I guess I was.”
“And also,” Lauren said, “You get addicted to feeling bad. It begins to feel like your norm.” She turned on the jets again to bring up the heat.
Then you know, I met was Zoe’s father. Keith is older too, quite attractive with a kind of a Ralph Lauren, weekend-in-the-country style, blonde like Zoe, lean and muscular, with sparkling blue eyes. His grandfather founded an electrical company a hundred years ago. They’re the biggest of the movers and shakers in Canton, granted it’s a place where there are not very many big movers and shakers. Keith is the CEO.”
“Zoe’s got those bright blue eyes too,” Lauren said. Carson nodded. It was quite late. The lights of the Wrigley building went off; then a few more skyscrapers went black for the night. Although they would all get up early with their children and Carson even earlier, no one had any intention of going home.
“He called me at the station the morning after we met and invited me to his club for dinner. I asked him about the woman he had been with the night before; she had mentioned that they lived together. He said, ‘No, not really,’ whatever that meant. I accepted anyway. I shouldn’t have. I don’t know if he even remembered their names. He wined and dined me, that is, as much as you can wine and dine someone in Canton, and whisked me off to his family house in Palm Beach on the weekends. He told me that he had been married three times and had children from each of those marriages. He said they were all great kids, but as I got to know him, it was clear he barely saw them. He proposed in Paris five months after we met. I was 31 and I guess I felt like it was time to get married. I knew I wasn’t in love him the way I was with Mark, but I knew I would never love anyone the way I loved Mark. When I was pregnant with Zoe, I found out that he was having an affair with our next-door neighbor. Everyone in town seemed to know about it, but me. He fell over apologizing, promising me it was over and he would never cheat on me again, but of course, I didn’t believe him. I filed for divorce a few days later.”
“Did you go after him for child support?” Katherine asked.
“I wouldn’t take a nickel from him for anything in the world.”
Chapter 6
Stu watched Carson from the corner of his eye when she walked into the news staff meeting Monday morning. She was the first to arrive. He could see that she was nervous, much more so than she had been when he interviewed her for a summer internship when she was at Northwestern. She had bounced into his office with a wide confident smile, dressed like Jackie Kennedy, a simple navy dress and matching jacket, her hair like the first lady’s, backcombed into a bob and carefully sprayed in place. “OK, you’ve got five minutes,” he had said to her as he did to all of them,” Why should I give you this internship?”
He could see that she had written and carefully rehearsed every word she said, but unlike her get up, she wasn’t stiff or awkward. She waited to have his eye and wouldn’t let it go until she was finished. She impressed him and he decided to hire her before she got half way through. She was a natural. He didn’t tell her that then and he still hadn’t.
He had never seen an intern work as hard as Carson. Not unlike the other interns, she started with grunt work, errands like running down the block for cigarettes and coffee at Dunkin Donuts, fact checking. Although she passed Stu several times a day, he hardly spoke to her, but he watched her. No matter how much work his staff threw at her, they told him she kept coming back for more. By the end of the summer, she had pushed her way onto the copy desk. He had planned to hire her when she graduated, but he didn’t have a chance. The head of the station called him to his office and told him, “you have to to hire her.”
When he objected, “Mike, you know I’m the one who makes hiring decisions for my staff,” he was told he had no choice. It didn’t take him long to figure out, that the pretty Northwestern grad was yet another perk that arrogant son of a bitch Mark Hastings got in his compensation package. The hell with her, he thought. I don’t give a shit if she was the best reporter on the planet, I can’t trust her if she was under Mark Hastings’ thumb. Mark was an enemy. Among other things, he had tried to get Stu fired in order to bring in an old friend of his from NBC to take over his job as news director. Stu barely survived. In spite of his misgivings, a few months after she came to work at the station, he promoted Carson to field reporter, and she was, not surprisingly, excellent.
When the station exiled Carson to Canton, Stu knew Mark was the one responsible. He was angry about it. It didn’t make sense to him when the station manager told him the network was sending her down-market to Canton. Clearly, Hastings must have had something to do with it. He was surprised that Carson wanted to come back to Chicago last year. She had done well in Canton; was promoted to anchor and had the respect of everyone he talked to. How could he say no when she was willing to take the traffic stint in order to get back? But he did.
The station manager strong- armed him again. “Come on Stu. She’s terrific. I want her back here. Stu agreed to the hire her with the caveat that he was the one who would decide if and when she got assigned to news. He didn’t want any of that ‘working mother shit’ either. He had hired a handful of women reporters, but none had children. He wanted to keep it that way. He expected Carson to hate the traffic stint and fail. She didn’t. No matter what he did to discourage or humiliate her, she stuck it out. He had watched her carefully during the last months. She had passed through it with grace and patience. Now he would test her one more time. If she could make it through what he had in mind for her, she would have his loyalty for life.
Stu watched her fidget, chuckling to himself, I’ll be sure that by the end of this day, she’ll be even more anxious. I’m not going to make it easy for her and I bet I can get some of those laughs we got from her traffic reports when I put her on crime. She’ll probably lose her cookies when sees the state of some of those victims.
By the time the meeting began, the newsroom was cloudy with smoke. Not only did Stu chain-smoke; so did most of the reporters. He lit another Lucky Strike.
“You’re going to be dead before you turn fifty,” Jerry David, a reporter who, like Stu, had been at the station since the early 1950s quipped.
“You’ll be the first to celebrate.” Stu blew smoke into Jerry’s face, looked around the room and said, “Where is everyone?”
Stu’s secretary, a long menthol Virginia Slim hanging out of her mouth, coughed out, “Hernandez and Peterson both called in with stomach flu.” Betty was way past retirement age and had been at the station since the old radio days. Her hair was dyed jet black, backcombed and sprayed into a huge beehive. She glared at Carson as if she were a weed invading her garden.
“Fuck,” Stu snapped back. “ We have six people out. I suppose they told you they’re vomiting their guts out, running to the can.”
“You’re so eloquent,” one of the reporters said disgusted.
“I don't have to be eloquent, you do. None of you better get sick. I am not kidding. I’ll need some of you to take double shifts until this flu thing is over. Jerry, Carson, Bill, you three — double shifts until the others are back.” Carson hoped he didn’t see her wince.
“Here are are stories for the six o'clock news.” He rattled them off, assigning reporters, giving a spattering of information on each. “Jerry, you go to the mayor’s office. There is a press conference on a proposal for an extension to the Kennedy Expressway. Bill, they’ve shut down the Ravenswood Line.” Someone else was sent to a plant explosion in Melrose Park. The room was noisy with conversations, even as Stu conducted the meeting. Betty answered a call and handed the phone to Stu. The din got louder as he listened to the caller. Carson watched him break into an amused smile as he slammed down the phone.
“Carson,” he said not looking at her, but around the room making eye contact with the other reporters and still grinning, “Did you all welcome Carson today?” He didn’t wait for anyone to answer. “She’s going to love what we have for her,” he said as if she weren’t there.
“This just came in.” He looked at Carson and said. “A Miss Carla Murphy was just found dead in her apartment at the Carlyle, 10, 15 minutes ago. I got the call from a friend in the building.” He looked like he was trying to keep from laughing and said, “She’s got a banana shoved down her throat. Miss Murphy was a high-priced hooker, turned tricks right there in the Carlyle and my friend says she’s got a Rolodex with some of the biggest names in the city. Some live right there in the building. Carson, get the doorman to talk to you. Go there right now and you’ll be the first to arrive. Maybe you can get a look at that Rolodex.”
“Ben,” he startled a cameraman who appeared to be dozing, “You’re going to work with her. Make sure she doesn’t screw it up.”
“One more thing Carson,” he said, “Call me when you’re done. I’ll have something else for you.”
Carson didn’t say a word, just nodded and walked out of the room with Ben and his soundman. The Carlyle was five minutes from the station. She tried to muster enough charm to get the doorman to talk to her. She read his nametag and said, “I’m really sorry, Mr. Smith,” I’m sure you knew Miss Murphy. You must feel terrible.” He looked away stone-faced and wouldn’t say a word, but did agree to let her go up to the apartment. When they got to the 30th floor, an officer stopped them. “No cameras,” he said gruffly, signaling them to stop. He reluctantly let Carson in, but sent Ben and the sound guy down to the lobby.
“I know you,” the officer, suddenly friendly, said. “You’re the traffic lady, right?” He started to laugh. “You are so funny.” Not once in her life had anyone ever called her funny before. It was the second time that week. He led Carson toward the bedroom and looked back at her, apparently sizing her up.
“Are you sure you want to see this?” he said. “The woman is a mess, beaten to death. She must have pulled some mean trick.”
“What do you think happened?” she asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine. You sure you want to see this?”
Carson assured him that she would be fine, but what she saw from the doorway was far worse than anything she could have imagined. She was certain that she was going to throw up and tried to keep herself from doing it by practicing natural childbirth breathing she trained to do for Zoe’s birth. She could feel her stomach in her throat.
She asked the officer, “Is there a reason you leave her like that?”
“Oh, you mean with the banana? I’m not allowed touch the victim. We have to wait for forensics. It’s evidence,” he said knowingly. “It’s a Mob thing, for sure, like a signature. We have to leave everything just as we find it.”
He started to explain forensic policy, but before he could finish, Carson fainted. When she woke up, she didn’t remember what happened, only coming to as he and another officer helped her into a chair. “Please don’t tell them I fainted,” she pleaded, still half-conscious. He seemed to understand and told her not to worry, but insisted that she leave.
“No,” she said panicking. “Can I please stay just a little longer? Just ask you a few questions. Who was she and what do you know about her?”
“Sorry, lady, you have to go,” he said sounding irritated. As he walked her to the elevator, he treated her like an annoying child; worse, she thought, like an amateur. Surprisingly, as the elevator door closed, he smiled, winked and gave her a thumbs-up.
She had failed this one. She was the only reporter to get into the building and she blew it anyway. Feeling like a fool, she stood apologetically in front of the Carlyle to record the segment, pale as a ghost, behind her, the grand white marble staircase. The camera rolled. “This is Carson Brown reporting from 1100 Lake Shore Drive.”
She phoned Stu from a booth down the block to tell him what happened. He said nothing, silence being the worst possible punishment. He gave her another assignment. “You better not mess up this one,” he said. “There was a murder in River Forest.” He gave her the name and address and ordered, “Get an interview with the wife. Don’t come back without it.”
Ben took Lower Wacker Drive, a dark, eerie, dirty underground road that wove its way under Chicago’s downtown. It felt like they were taking a secret passage, dark except for a few stop signs and sparse runs of green florescent lights overhead. They exited onto the Eisenhower Expressway, passing the construction site of the new Chicago campus of the University of Illinois, then past Cook County Hospital where the poor wait for hours, sometimes days, to be seen by students and interns in training at the medical schools in what had recently been named the Medical District. They passed the slums of the West Side, where deserted mansions on once elegant winding boulevards were now rat-infested rooming houses, some of the city’s worst slums. They left the city and entered the western suburbs, Oak Park first with its landmark Frank Lloyd Wright houses and churches, then farther west to River Forest, both suburbs with rolling lawns and big expensive houses, many of them owned by Chicago’s most elite mobsters. Ben made a joke about the “elegant old families of River Forest.” Carson nodded and grinned to make him think that she understood his joke. She had no idea what he meant, not a clue.
Ben asked Carson, “What’s the name of the guy who was shot?“
“Sandy Cohen.” He shook his head and said, “Ahhh,” knowingly. Too afraid to show her ignorance to ask him what that “ahhh” meant, she just nodded. When they arrived, there were several news crews and reporters already there, standing in a group in front of a sprawling stone and brick Prairie-style house with sandstone eaves and a wide screened-in porch. A pale blue, boat-like Cadillac, the driver’s door wide open, as if someone drove up and ran into the house in a panic, was parked on a diagonal in the driveway. As they arrived, paramedics carried out the covered body of a small child, about the size of Carson’s little girl. The sight filled her with horror. Someone walked up behind her and tapped her on the shoulder, “Carson Brown, I’m surprised to see you here. I thought you were…”
“No, not anymore,” she interrupted and smiled back at a man she recognized as a reporter from NBC. She was surprised he knew who she was.
“I’m Bill Stein.”
“Of course,” she said. “I know who you are — Channel 5, right? So nice to meet you.”
“They won’t let us in,” he said.
“Who was he?” she asked.
“Sandy Cohen. You know who he is.”
“Actually no, I don’t,” she admitted, thinking it was safer for her to reveal her ignorance to the competition than to the members of her own team.
“He’s Mob, married to the daughter of the head of the Marcoso family, one of the most powerful families in town. His father-in law is Macko Marcoso; he was the right hand man to Al Capone.”
“No kidding, Al Capone!” she said excitedly, realizing immediately how naïve she must have sounded. He didn’t seem to notice, smiled warmly and told her more.
“Macko’s 90, never comes out of his house, which is just a few minutes from here, runs the family franchises from his bedroom.”
“I didn’t realize this Mafia stuff was still going on,” she said.
“The Mafia never left Chicago, Carson. They’re part of the city. They have their businesses, big business. They support the mayor and their aldermen and go to church on Sundays Their kids go to college, come back, get married and work in the family businesses. They’re all over the place. For the last decade we haven’t heard much about them, but lately there seems to be some kind of war going on. I’m not sure why.”
“I guess I’ve missed it.”
“It’s no surprise,” he said. Even Mafia watchers are unlikely to know what was going on between Mob families. It was not like the old days in Chicago, when they were gunning each other down in the streets. The families keep a low profile but they keep doing what they’ve always done.”
What he knew and didn’t tell her, was that it the recent outbreak of Mob violence was about who would control the distribution of heroin in the Chicago. In recent years, the only heroin coming into the city was brown heroin controlled by “the Mexicans.” Now there was an influx of white heroin coming from Asia into the through the New York Mob. The money would be gigantic and the families were battling to get control.
“Carson, I think you’ve spent too much time out on the highway,” Bill said smiling.
“I had no idea!” she said, knowing it was obvious to him already.
Then he told her something she should have known. “This is the third Mafia killing this month. We haven’t seen this kind of stuff in years.”
She had many more questions she wished she could get the answers to and hoped it would not be a mistake to ask him more. “Can I ask you another question,” she said. “How can you tell when it’s a Mafia killing?”
“Sometimes, like today, just by who the victim is. If Sandy Cohen is murdered, you know for sure it's a Mafia murder because it’s public knowledge that he is in the Mob. I am not saying they will ever find out who did it, even though the police probably know exactly which family is responsible.”
“How?”
The families have signatures and of course always use a lot of bullets. If it is a turf issue, which it usually is, the family that’s responsible wants it to be known that they are the ones who knocked the guy off. They leave their signature. Every gang has a different one.”
“The Marcoso family?” she asked.
“Fire and explosives. They’ll kill the guy and blow up his house with dynamite or just go there in the middle of the night and blow up the house with the guy and his whole family in it. The D’Angeles, they’ll shove something down the dead guy’s throat, a baseball bat, an umbrella, crazy stuff. The crazy thing is that no one ever seems to go to jail for a Mafia killing. No one even get’s arrested.”
“Why not?”
“This is Chicago.” Carson was not sure that meant, but during the next months she would learn. There would be a run of Mob-style violence reminiscent of what had gone on in the city decades earlier and Carson would be assigned to cover the bloodiest of them.
She was about to ask Bill another question when an officer, a tall redheaded man wearing an old fashioned fedora and a beige raincoat, just like a detective in a old gangster movie, came out of the house and gestured that the waiting press could come in.
“The area around the victim is taped off, “he said,” No cameras.” Reporters from all the stations and papers had arrived. As they filed into the house, the officer with the fedora addressed only Carson. “Don’t touch anything,” he said to her accusingly, “Do you hear me?”
As she walked down the hall, Carson paused at a door cracked open enough to see two officers questioning a thin frightened-looking woman about her age who sat on a plastic-slip-covered gold brocade sofa in the corner of a library, hugging her legs up close to her body. There were no books on the shelves that lined the walls. Carson was pretty sure the woman, clearly in shock, was Sandy Cohen’s wife and the mother of the child she had just seen carried away. As the woman answered questions, she pulled at the mass of blonde hair that circled her painfully distraught face. The woman looked up at her for a moment and it felt to Carson like they somehow made a connection. She wondered how she could get to her. A police officer told her to move on. Sandy Cohen’s body was still on the floor in a pool of blood. A bloody teddy bear was not far from the body.
The spokesman from the sheriff’s office ushered the press outside. Carson tried to ask a question during the information session, but she couldn’t speak loudly enough to get the attention of the sheriff. Before they got on the highway on the way back to the city, they stopped and phoned Stu. Again, silence. She felt defeated and depressed. It was almost 10:00 when she got home that night. Zoe had been asleep for hours. Her first day in her new job was 13 hours, from the time she left her house until she got home. Millie had dinner waiting for her.
“Millie, bless your heart. I just don’t have the strength or the appetite to eat.”
She fell into bed and was asleep before Millie shut the door to go home and didn’t wake up until Zoe came into her bed with a nightmare at 3 a.m. Carson let her sleep nestled close to her, something she had promised herself she would never do. She didn’t wake up until Millie walked in the door the next morning at six.
She dressed quietly and woke Zoe to say goodbye. When she did, Zoe started to cry, not faking as she was capable of doing, but with real tears rolling down her cheeks and big miserable sobs, a sound that haunted Carson through the 15-hour day that followed.
Chapter 7
As they left the station the next morning, Ben gave Carson a pep talk. She wanted to believe him, but she didn’t. “Ben, I blew it yesterday and you know it.”
“Those were tough situations,” he said. “I’m not sure why Stu assigned you those two stories on your first day. He knew they would be impossible.”
Carson was grateful that Ben Anderson was assigned to work with her. He seemed to be such a nice and down-to-earth guy, and not a lot of people at the station fit that description. It didn’t occur to either of them that Stu was setting her up. It wasn’t that Stu wanted her to fail; he didn’t. But he wanted her to prove herself and while she was at it, maybe amuse himself watching her struggle. If he could manage to do it in good taste, maybe her discomfort would amuse the viewers as well.
Five minutes into their drive to a crime scene on the North Side, she already felt her heart racing. They got off Lake Shore Drive on Sheridan Road, a corridor of Miami style high-rises, some with their own beaches and drove a few blocks west into a densely populated neighborhood of monotonous boxy brick six-flats. The buildings had no front yards, just narrow unplanted parkways, now covered with dirty snow and dog droppings. An officer stood outside the building, its entrance smack against the sidewalk. He told Carson that the victim was a single mother with two young children. When she asked if they could go up, again she got a warning: “She’s just the way we found her.”
The door to an apartment on the second floor landing was open. Carson felt a shock run through her when she saw the woman sprawled naked on the couch, her hands tied together with jute rope. Stab wounds covered her body, blood splattered on the walls and the carpet. Carson tried to not look away. She hoped she could avoid buckling under with horror of it. Again, she focused on her breath, keeping it slow and steady.
“Who do you think did this?” she asked the officer.
He too kept his eyes on the victim. “No way to know for sure yet, but got to be the same guy who got another girl last week in Albany Park, the kids asleep in the next room. Whoever he was, he’s an animal. He must have stabbed her at least 40 times.” Carson looked at the woman’s punctured breasts, trying not vomit. She let out a long sigh and caught herself feeling as if she was about to faint again. Ben grabbed her arm.
“I’m fine,” she said in the toughest voice she could muster. “Don’t worry about me.” She turned away from the woman and focused on the police officer.
“Her kids woke up this morning and found their mother like this,” he said, still staring down at the body. “It’s a God damned shame.” He too, was horrified by the sight.
“Where are the children?” Carson asked.
“With a neighbor,” he pointed upstairs. She didn’t ask for his permission, but in a few minutes walked out of the apartment and up a flight to the third floor, leaving Ben behind. She knocked on the door on the right, a good guess. A heavyset woman who looked like she was in her 50s answered the door. Carson introduced herself and was surprised when she invited her in. She was understandably disheveled, still in a bloodstained terry cloth robe. She told Carson that the two small children in the apartment were the victim’s. The oldest, a seven-year-old girl, curled up on an armchair near an ice-frosted window watching a cartoon. Hiding behind a ragged blanket, she sucked her thumb. Carson said hello to the child, but she only looked up, her expression foggy and dazed. She turned back and continued to stare trance-like at the shaky images moving across the small old TV. Her little sister slept on a white chenille bedspread on the woman’s bed in the next room. The radiators hissed; the air in the apartment was hot and dry.
“May I ask you a few questions?”
She invited Carson to sit down at her kitchen table. After a few minutes, Carson asked if it would be OK to have the cameraman come up to tape an interview. She said yes and Carson went over to the window and called down to Ben who stood outside having a smoke with the officer. As they talked across her kitchen table, Ben and his assistant, more quietly than what seemed humanly possible, filmed the interview.
“Betty has been living here for four years. She’s a nice girl and became a friend, moved in with her husband and he disappeared a year and a half ago. He was a gambler. I don’t know where he went. She worked as a waitress at the diner a block away on Broadway. She’s been like a daughter to me. A wonderful mother, so committed to giving her kids a good life.” She started to sob.
Carson put up her hand to indicate to Ben to stop filming. He did, but not until he turned the camera to Carson and got a shot of the tears that ran down her cheeks. The woman took a cigarette from a pack on the table and offered one to Carson. They smoked silently until the woman steadied herself to begin again. As the interview continued, Carson heard other reporters and crews arriving downstairs. The woman asked to stop again, got up from the table and put a blanket over the seven-year-old who had fallen asleep in her chair. When she returned, Carson asked her if she would describe exactly what happened.
“At about 7 a.m., I heard the children screaming in the hall. By the time I got my robe on, Lisa, this one,” she pointed to the seven-year-old, “was banging on my door shrieking. ‘What happened?’ I kept asking her. She couldn’t talk, she just kept shrieking and pulling on my robe. We ran downstairs to their apartment and when I walked inside, there she was, blood everywhere. The little one had climbed on top of her. She was covered with blood and screaming, ‘Mommy, Mommy!’ trying to get her to wake up. I tried to lift the baby off, but she was holding on to her mother so tight, I could hardly move her. Who would do a thing like this?” she said, looking straight into the camera, meeting Ben’s gaze, somehow still a sympathetic presence behind the lens. “She was a wonderful woman, their mother.” Ben panned the apartment and pointed his camera at the dazed little girl and the toddler sleeping in the next room.
When they got back to the station and showed Stu what they had, he couldn’t have been more pleased. Looking over the shoulder of the editor as she cut the story for the evening news, he patted Carson on the back. “Great, Carson, I knew you ...” He looked down at the monitor. “Wait,” he said and put his hand on the editor’s shoulder. “Flash back here to Carson when she’s got the tears running down her face.”
A few days later, she talked to her friends about that interview. “It was a watershed moment for me. I was thrilled that I got the story while all the other news crews were turned away. At the same time, I felt like a monster for manipulating that poor woman to do that interview at what was surely the most horrific moment of her life. I feel ashamed of myself even more for exposing those poor innocent children to millions of viewers who couldn’t care less about what happens to them.”
“You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself,” Lauren said.
“Yes I should. I was too naïve. Being a reporter for a small station was entirely different. We felt like public servants in a way. It’s not the same here; it’s all about money. I am finally coming to understand that in order to be a successful reporter in a major market station like Chicago, I have to desensitize myself to the pain people are going through and become skillful at doing whatever it takes to win their trust so I can ghoulishly manipulate them to expose their heartaches with the sole purpose of getting viewers to stay tuned to our station. Get the viewer numbers up so they can sell more advertising. It’s ugly.”
Every day for the next months, Stu assigned Carson to whatever brutally violent crime story came in, one nightmare tale after the next, from early morning, sometimes until late in the night. Yes, it did become easier as the weeks went on. She got used to unimaginable violence and death. She went home every night exhausted, physically and emotionally drained.
The same serial killer who murdered the young mother that day murdered two more mothers. He took the life of each in precisely the same way he took the first. Stu assigned Carson to cover both. Those didn’t get easier. Seeing those women, their children so damaged and alone in the world, filled her with horror. Every night, she dreamt about what she had seen, and even more frightening, seeing Zoe as one of those children.
What seemed to be a revival of the old days of the Chicago Mafia-style killings continued to escalate. No, there wasn’t an incident every day. But if there was one, Carson was on the scene. Why Stu was putting her through this, she had no idea. Before she began working in the news, she had never been seen a dead body. When her father died and she was asked if she wanted to see him, she said no. She wanted to remember him alive. She felt the same way when her mother died a few years later. In the last three months, she had seen over 40 people who had been violently murdered.
She was working harder than she ever worked in her life. During those three months, she was rarely at home when Zoe was awake. When she got home, she sat on Zoe’s bed just watching her sleep. Listening to the slow steady rhythm of her breathing, she covered her little face with soft kisses.
Every morning, she left for the station at 7:30 and some nights, she worked till nine or 10. Millie offered to move into her townhouse until things slowed down. She said, “I don’t want you to worry about getting home, and it’s no problem for me to stay here,” she said. “ In fact, I like staying here.” Millie slept on the hide-a-bed in the living room. Having her there around the clock was an enormous relief. With the move to news, Carson’s compensation increased, which she shared with Millie by raising her salary substantially.
“It’s nice of you, honey,” Millie said when Carson gave her the first increased check, “but you don’t have to do that. I have all the money I need.”
Zoe saw one of the playgroup children almost every day, and Millie took Carson’s place at playgroups. In spite of the difficulty of her schedule and work, Carson felt that brighter stars shined on her. Zoe was doing OK. She was in close touch with her three new friends. They phoned her at the office or left a message on her answering machine at home, sometimes just saying a supportive, “Just thinking of you. Don’t worry if you don’t have time to call me back.” or “Let me know if there is anything I can do.”
Weekends were easier. Sometimes Carson worked Saturday mornings but always had the whole day off Sunday. Carson played with Zoe from the time she woke up in the morning until she put her to bed at night except for the part of the weekend they spent with the other playgroup families. They were her support system, her biggest fans. They all watched her on the news, but only when the children were not in the same room. No one wanted the children to be exposed to the kind of stories Carson was covering.
The murderer of the four single mothers was finally caught as he tried to kill a fifth. The woman was a schoolteacher who lived in Old Town, about eight blocks from Carson and Zoe’s house. She was asleep when the murderer jimmied open a window on her back porch. She woke up as he was coming into her bedroom and pulled a gun from under her headboard and shot him four times. “I didn’t kill him, but I wish I had,” she told Carson, who was the only reporter she allowed to interview her. The fact that he was caught didn’t make Carson feel any better. She suspected that there were thousands of other sick people in the world like him in the world capable of the same violence. She began feeling increasingly more vulnerable, not only about her own child and those of her friends but about women and children everywhere.
“I would be dead if I didn’t have a gun and didn’t know how to shoot,” the woman told Carson. You should have one. No woman should be without a way to defend herself and her children.” Carson had never considered it, but she thought maybe she would get herself one.
One night when Carson was about to go home, Stu called her. She was straightening her desk, exhausted and anxious to go home and see Zoe after a week of barely seeing her for more than a few minutes. “I’m just walking out the door. Can it wait?”
“No,” he said flatly, “you can’t leave.”
“You’re going out to Clarendon Hills to cover a story that is going to shock the entire country. You won’t believe this one!” he said excitedly, expecting her to be excited too. This is big. I am making you the lead reporter on a story about a serial murderer that is going to be the hottest piece of news on every station in the country. This suburban businessman was just arrested. So far they’ve found the body parts of about 20 men, some of them teenagers. A guy he had trapped there and tortured for days got away and got to the police. The guy had promised him a job; and he went to the guys house with him for an interview. So this maniac drugged him and tied him up told him the whole story of what did to guys who wouldn’t do what he wanted, he tortured them, cut them up and put them in his freezer. The kid somehow got away, ran out of the house stark naked. They found a dozen heads in a freezer in his garage. I want you to go over there right now.”
“No!” she shouted, “There’s no way I’m going to do that.”
“Of course you are,” he said, still not looking up at her.
“I am not covering this story.” She slammed the papers he handed her down on his desk.
“Yes, you are.”
“Not a chance.”
“Come on, you’re tough. Look what you’ve seen during the last few months; you could be a war correspondent. What’s wrong with this one? This will be great for you. For sure, you’ll be on every ABC station in the country. Millions of people are going to see you. “
She knew he was right. This would be a chance for enormous exposure. Even Mark would see her. But she was so tired, so used up, so sick of it. “I don’t care, Stu. I am not doing it.”
“You’re letting me down,” he shouted.
“Go fuck yourself, Stu.” She walked out and slammed the door.
“Get back here,” he yelled and chased her down the hall.
“It’s over,” she yelled back. Her face burned. She was in the elevator when he caught up with her. He tried to get in, but she pushed him back. The door closed in his face.
Chapter 8
When Carson walked into her office, her phone was ringing. “Carson?” She assumed it was Stu and said, “I don’t want to talk to you, Stu!” and slammed down the phone. It rang again.
“This isn’t Stu, it’s David, David Kingman. Are you ok?”
“Oh David, I’m so sorry.”
“Who’s Stu? ”
“My boss, the news director. I should say he was my boss.”
“You’ve talked about him. He sounds like a real jerk. Do you want to talk or is this a bad time? I can call you back. It’s after five.”
“No, its OK.”
“What happened?”
“He wanted me to be the lead reporter on a story about a serial murderer they just arrested in Clarendon Hills. They’re digging up body parts in the guy’s yard and he wants me to go out there right now.”
David groaned. “I’m sorry. I just heard about it on the radio.”
“I can’t do it. I don’t understand why he insists I be the one to do these stories, but I can’t anymore. I’m done.”
“You really quit?”
“I told him to go fuck himself. I really said that.”
“I guess you’re right. It sounds like you just gave notice.”
“It looks that way. What’s up?”
“I’m calling to invite you to a girls’ weekend, a birthday surprise for Jess. She’s having a big one, as you know, and nothing would make her happier than a getaway with the three of you.”
“That would be great but I’m sorry, I can’t go away. But please tell me where?”
“Guatemala,” he said.
“Guatemala! Are you kidding?”
“We have a place there, with my closest friend. It’s a long story I’ll tell you about it another time. Do you think Millie can stay with Zoe while you’re gone? I am happy to take care of that for you.”
‘I wouldn’t let you do that and besides I can’t go.”
“Well, it sounds like it might be a lot easier for you right now than it would have been about an hour ago.” They laughed though they both knew her new situation wasn’t really funny.
“
“You could go this weekend. That would work for Katherine and Lauren. You’ll have four days with Zoe and by the time they are over, you’ll be dying to go away. I’ve care of everything. Just pack clothes for the tropics. If you ride, take your boots. We probably have everything else you need.”
“This is crazy, David. You two do so much for me. How can I ever reciprocate?”
“Invite us over for dinner,” he said. “Make that pasta I love. Anyway, it’s you who have been so good to us. Your friendship with Jess has made a huge difference in our lives. It’s been wonderful for me to have her happy again."
If Jess hadn’t shared her struggles with depression, she wouldn’t have had a clue about what David meant by ‘happy again.’ To the rest of the world, Jess Kingman looked like the consummate golden girl. Beautiful, delightfully upbeat and charming, one would think she lived a life of seamless perfection. Jess told them about it one night as they sat around the fire in the Kingmans cozy library.
“I majored in theater at Duke and did pretty well. I had lead roles in several campus plays and I did summer stock. My professors encouraged me to go to New York and get as many auditions as I could when I graduated. They seemed to believe I had a good chance of succeeding.”
New York was not as enthusiastic about the redheaded Southern beauty as her professors had guessed. She told her friends, “During the four years I lived in New York I only landed one minor role in an off -Broadway play, and that play closed after two weeks. I went on hundreds of auditions and had what felt like thousands of rejections. I did OK getting modeling jobs, but I didn’t like modeling. Having your worth based on your how you look is totally degrading. You feel like a piece of meat. But the money was great, good enough to keep me living pretty well in New York. I met David about four years after I arrived. He was working on Wall Street at Goldman Sachs. In those days, he worked 80 hours a week. I was crazy about him.
“As time went on, I went to fewer auditions and had less hope that I would make it as an actress. David was very encouraging.” She laughed. “He still tells me that I am a great talent. Of course, he’s delusional. David can put the most positive spin on everything. If I had the talent, I would have had at least a little success. I had none. Sometimes, even now, David will thank me for giving up my acting career to come to Chicago to marry him. That, of course, is totally bogus. I had no acting career to give up.
“Anyway, he had always planned to move back to join his family business and although I promised myself that I wouldn't give up acting until I was successful, when he proposed, I was ready for a new life.
“I’d expected we’d have a big wedding in Charleston. I knew my parents would adore him, since everyone I knew did. “We flew down to Charleston to surprise my parents. Unfortunately, they were the ones who surprised us. When we told them we were getting married, they didn’t say a thing; just stared at us glumly without saying a word. Then my mother burst out crying.
“I didn't get it, but David knew immediately. My father had asked me when I first mentioned that I was dating a man from Chicago named David Kingman if David was from the hotel/real estate development Kingman family.
“I said, 'Yes, how do you know about them?’ He said ‘Fortune. They‘re Jews, you know, very rich Jews, but Jews.’
“I dropped it and didn't think much about it. I talked to my mother once a week while I was living in New York. Every once in a while she would ask me if I was still seeing that Jewish boy from Chicago and that was it. I just thought it was funny, kind of provincial, and harmless. I could have never imagined that they were capable of what would follow.
“The first thing my father said was, ‘ Jessica, we were sure that you would get over this and find someone more appropriate.’ He turned to David. ‘This is not about you, David. We are sure you are a fine young man, but not for our daughter. Under no circumstances will we give you our blessing.’
“Then he looked at me. ‘And Jessica, if you go through with this, we will have nothing to do with you or with your children.’ I felt like I was going to faint.
“’It's just something we feel very strongly about, dear,’ my mother said, not looking at me, but rather at my father who nodded his head in agreement.
“I was crying so hard, I was hardly able to speak. I couldn't believe what was happening. My father sat stiffly in his wing chair next to the fireplace, sipping his bourbon. There was no emotion on his face. ‘You will forget each other, Jessica, or you will forget us.’
“You could have picked me up off the floor. David was wonderful; he was calm and patient. He put his arm around me and we walked out to the garden. He tried to convince me that we could work things out with my parents that they would eventually soften. But he didn't know my parents. I guess I didn’t either. They had been tough on me while I was growing up, but as hard as they were, I never imagined that they were capable of something like this. I always felt that they adored me. They always and made me feel like everything I did was wonderful. We talked for a while and when we returned to the living room, my father was still in his chair. He had obviously poured himself another drink. My mother looked up at me and said, ‘Well dear, I hope that you have taken what we have said to heart.’
“I held on to David's hand. I was still crying and I am sure my words were barely audible: ‘I love you both and I am grateful for everything you have ever done for me. I pray that you are not really serious about this and that you will change your mind, but I am going to marry David no matter what you say. He is a wonderful man and I know that some day you will grow to love him as much as I do.’
“My father answered coldly, ‘Not a chance.’
“We left the house, and they haven't spoken to me since. When we went back to New York, we decided to get married immediately and move back to Chicago. David and his family wanted to give me my big dream wedding, but I declined. I couldn't imagine a wedding without my father walking me down the isle. That's when my depression started. I couldn’t afford to remain angry with my parents, so I turned that anger on myself.
“We had a small wedding. I only wanted David's family and close friends, no one from my last life. I sent my parents an invitation and they sent it back in the mail unopened. I phoned a few times and my mother hung up as soon as she heard my voice. I shouldn’t have called. Anyway, David and I had a long romantic honeymoon in France and moved to an apartment in the John Hancock Building on the 80th floor. That's when I started sinking. I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. Sometimes David came home to find me in my nightgown, having never showered or dressed.
“David was convinced that getting me back to work would be the solution.
I knew he was right. He arranged to have Victor Skrebneski do my portrait for my actor’s composite. It was overkill to get one of the top photographers in the country, but David said, ‘Why would you go to anyone but the best.’ That’s David, but I knew it was a waste.
“Still, I was determined to pull myself together and get myself out there. There is a lot of great theater in Chicago, a lot of small exciting companies. A group of actors who went to high school together founded a company called Steppenwolf in a church in the suburbs. We went to see a lot of their plays, really talented actors doing wonderful plays. I couldn’t get up enough courage to audition, not even in that little church. I was too anxious. I couldn't face the rejections. Between my parents and a few hundred casting directors in New York, I had all the rejections I needed for a lifetime.
“So I spent most of my days alone in our apartment, looking down from the 80th floor at the lake, the tiny cars and people moving through the streets below. I didn’t want to go anywhere. We did go out with David’s school friends occasionally. He had all these people he went to school with from kindergarten through 12th grade. They’re like siblings, but I didn’t feel like one of them. They were nice to me, yes, but I couldn’t get close to anyone then. Finally, I asked my doctor if she could recommend a therapist. She seemed surprised that I wanted one. I guess I fooled her too. She gave me several names. Of course, I chose the only woman on her list. That was a trip.” She started to laugh. It didn't seem like a funny point in the story.
“I went to see her in a building filled with psychiatrists on Michigan Avenue, not far from our apartment. Dr. Sokol was her name, Diane Sokol. She was about 55 maybe 60, reminded me of Anne Bancroft, not playing Mrs. Robinson but playing a middle-aged, overweight graying psychiatrist from New York. I sat on her couch and she sat in a chair in front of the window. She was backlit by the light pouring through the venetian blinds so I couldn’t see her face, only her silhouette. She asked me a few questions and I began to pour my heart out to her. She was very quiet, but I had never been to a therapist before and I thought that must be normal. I kept talking, telling her about what had happened with my parents, the whole New York thing, how unhappy I was. All of a sudden, I thought I heard her snoring. I knew I must be wrong. I stopped talking. The room was silent except for the hissing of the radiator and her steady snore.”
“What did you do?” Katherine asked her.
“I woke her up, ‘Dr. Sokol, Dr. Sokol.’ I had to say her name several times to wake her and when I did, she was startled.
“’You fell asleep!’
“‘Yes, I did,’ she said calmly, as if it was perfectly appropriate. She didn’t say anything for an uncomfortable moment and then she asked, ‘Do you want to know why I fell asleep?’
“‘Are you serious?’ I shouted back. ‘Of course, I want to know why.’
“‘You are so depressed, I had to go to sleep to escape your depression.’”
“You made this up,” Lauren said laughing. “It’s impossible.”
“No, that’s exactly what happened.”
“I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry, but luckily, I didn’t do either. I got angry, livid, something I can count the times in my life I’d done before that moment. I guess I was raised to think that getting angry was bad. I slammed out of her office. I couldn’t even stand still long enough to wait for the elevator. I ran down 10 flights of stairs and out into the street. On the way out of the building, I kicked over a planter of mums in the lobby. I walked south down Michigan Avenue and then east on Monroe toward the lake. I must have been walking eight-minute miles. Surely I looked like a maniac. I walked through Grant Park, which of course was empty in February. It was so God-awful cold. I crossed the Outer Drive and walked into the harbor. The wind was howling and there wasn’t a soul in sight. I was so enraged I was about to explode. I didn’t even feel the cold. The waves crashed up on to the concrete pier. I walked as close to the edge as I could get, close to the power of the lake kicking up, to those icy waves. I felt like I could have walked like that forever; but then a huge wave kicked up over the pier and almost pushed me over. I was soaked with that icy water, but I kept going until I got to that point where the shore curves east out into the water. I stopped, stood there shivering, my teeth literally chattering. I could see the whole skyline, the center of the city stretched out in front of me, the smoke and steam pouring out of the tops of the buildings. Those long painted piers where the big yachts moor during the boating season were floated boat-less in the water. I stood there frozen, shaking with rage, and then I saw myself as if I were watching myself in a movie. The next thing I knew I was being taken into a police car. The officers took me to the police station on State and 14th, like a criminal, and they called David. Riding in the back of the police car was perhaps the luckiest thing that could have happened to me. “
“And then?” Lauren asked.
Jess sighed, exhausted. “Can we save ‘the rest’ for another time?” Of course, they agreed.
“I just want to tell you one more thing. It is probably the best part of the story. When Dr. Sokol sent me a bill for one hour of psychotherapy, I paid it.”
Jess still hadn’t told them the rest. She was clear that her struggles with depression weren’t entirely over, but it was hard to tell when she was feeling low. She was able to use her extraordinary acting ability to hide it. Over time, Carson learned to recognize when she did.
Chapter 9
When the limo pulled into the Kingman’s driveway, David ran down the stairs to greet them. “She’ll be down in a second,” he stage-whispered, as excitedly as a little boy playing a prank. “She thinks we’re going to a meeting in indiana.” He ran up the stairs and back into the house. Jess came out a few minutes later. She turned around at the door and called back to him impatiently.
“David, where are you? You kept rushing me, saying I was going to make us late and now you’ve disappeared. I don’t know why I have to go to this stupid meeting in the first place.” She slammed the door and walked down to the car.
When the driver opened the back door, she was so shocked to see her three friends she almost fell backwards, “What are doing here?”, she asked smiling ear to ear. David followed quietly behind her, a packed suitcase for Jess in his hand.
“What’s going on?”
“You’re going on a birthday weekend with your friends!”
“Are you kidding?”
“You’d better hurry; you’ve got a plane to catch.”
The limo whisked them to Meigs Field, a private single-runway airport jutting out into Lake Michigan, just south of the Loop. They drove right on to the landing strip and boarded the Kingman Company jet, identifiable only by a small crown above the wing on the starboard side of the plane. They sank into butter-soft caramel-colored leather seats, buckled in and took off moments later toward South America. A steward served Champagne and coffee followed by Eggs Benedict with perfectly poached eggs over smoky Canadian bacon, topped creamy lemony hollandaise, The Champagne flowed, as did fresh orange juice Katherine said, “The orange juice tastes like the oranges were just picked. I couldn’t have produced that breakfast in Julia Child’s kitchen, unless of course, Julia was there,”
They landed in Guatemala City and boarded a helicopter. The pilot took a circuitous route and flew them over the ancient Mayan city of Tikal, as the sun began setting over the breathtaking pyramids. The sight of the center of that ancient city that had been one of the most powerful kingdoms of the Mayans, a highly evolved civilization that existed from 600 BC to the 10th century and was now extinct, was mindboggling. Lush forests spattered with the ruins of houses surrounded the exquisite center, the soaring pyramids that were palaces and temples and public arena. How fragile, Carson wondered, was the city, the world they lived in today? They turned and flew north passing over what seemed like endless jungle, spotted with small villages and beautiful clear turquoise lakes.
When they began to lower over foothills in the shadow of a nearby mountain range, the sky turned purple and the mountains bathed in golden light. As they lowered to the ground, it seemed as if the powerful force created by the helicopter’s whirling propellers would pull the tall, glossy, dark rubber trees right out of the ground.
Waiting for them on the landing strip surrounded by groves of towering date trees was a tall, handsome, muscular man with jet-black hair. He wore a soft white open-collared shirt, dark jeans and black leather riding boots. Jess got off first and jumped into his arms. He hugged Jess tightly and they kissed and hugged like a long-separated brother and sister. Her eyes filled with tears, but she was beaming. With their arms around one another, she introduced her three friends. “This is Armando Melendez, David’s best friend. I’m secretly in love with him.” She winked. “You will be too by the time we leave.” Although his skin was deeply tanned, he blushed. She introduced each of them, and when he turned to Carson, he seemed startled. Looking deeply into her eyes he said warmly, “Welcome to Casa Jaguar Negro,” not breaking his gaze. When she reached to shake his hand, he cupped it in both of his. She already knew that Jess was right.
Armando helped them up into an open top Land Rover, Jess in the front and the others in the back.
“What was that?” Katherine asked Carson as they got into the back of an open-top Land Rover.
“What was what?” Carson asked.
“The way he held onto your hand and looked into your eyes,” she said grinning.
“He did not,” Carson snapped back.
“Right,” Lauren said sarcastically, as she slid in next to Katherine on the bench seat across from Carson.
Katherine leaned forward and stage-whispered, “It was like he recognized you from another lifetime,”
“Absolutely!” Lauren agreed.
“You’re imaging it,” Carson said, but she knew what they were referring to.
“No, we’re not and you know it.” Lauren grinned.
Carson shook her head, acknowledging that it had been more than a hello and said, “Just what I need, another womanizer.”
“How do you know he’s a womanizer?” Lauren asked.
“Believe me, I can see them coming.”
“You don’t know anything about him.”
“I can tell. Just take a good look at him.”
“I did,” Katherine teased back. “He’s movie star gorgeous,”
“Not my type. He’s formulaic for trouble.”
“You could use a little of that kind of trouble in your life,” Lauren said, getting an easy laugh from Katherine.
“Stop it!” Carson said, although she was laughing, too.
“What are you laughing about back there?” Jess said arching around to see.
Armando jumped into the truck and started the engine. He stretched his arm across the back of Jess’ seat, turned to the others and said, “Let me apologize in advance for how uncomfortable this ride is going to be. I am sorry. Our roads are quite bad.” His voice was deep, his accent soft and charming. “Hold on tight,” he said. He caught Carson’s eye and smiled at her. Yes, he is very handsome, she thought, but he probably has a wife and six children. Both Lauren and Katherine caught his smile and gave Carson a thumbs up.
Embarrassed, Carson buried her head in her hands. “You are acting like high school girls.”
The ride from the clearing in the valley where the helicopter landed, down the steep mountain road toward the center of the plantation was like riding in a bumper car at an amusement park. The truck rolled from side to side, jerking as the wheels hit deep pot holes and shimmied over boulders, bouncing the seat-beltless riders in back up into the air. They held on to the sidebars for dear life, laughing every time they hit another bump. The fields of bushy coffee plants, some covered with clusters of soft white flowers, others with bright green and red berries, went on forever. He slowed down when they got to fields being harvested by what appeared to be an army of indigenous workers. He told them that a whole village of the Mayans who live up in the mountains above the plantation had just arrived for the harvest. Entire families, children as young as six and their parents and grandparents worked together. They were beautiful people, golden brown skinned with exquisite angular faces, thick glossy black hair, and dark eyes lined with extraordinarily thick lashes, probably an evolutionary change designed to protect them from the intensity of the mountain sun. The women walked gracefully; most were quite beautiful, with high cheekbones and full lips. A few wore what looked like a deep rose- colored natural dye on their mouths, but most, no makeup at all. Their skirts and blouses were made of intricately patterned hand-woven fabrics in bold primary colors in a stunning variety of geometric designs. The bodices embroidered with flowers and birds. Many of the women braided their hair and pinned the braids into a crown on the top of their heads. Others wrapped their heads in brightly colored fabric or folded a piece of fabric into a flat shape they mysteriously attached to their heads to shield their faces from the blazing sun. They worked in clusters, talking and laughing as they picked, their hands always moving. Men wielding machetes hacked away at the growth under the coffee plants. The men wore tee shirts and dark trousers. Most of the workers picked, taking the ripe beans from the bushy plants and dropping them into brightly colored bags slung over their shoulders or fabric-lined twig baskets.
“I bet these people get paid pennies,” Katherine whispered to Carson and Lauren.
“They don’t look unhappy to me,” Lauren said.
“They don’t know enough to be unhappy,” Katherine said.
When the Rover passed groups of workers, they called out to Armando and he called back to them, mostly by name. He seemed to know all of them, smiling and greeting people warmly. A woman who looked at least 90 flashed him a toothless smile and blew him a kiss. He stopped the truck for a moment, bowed his head to her and blew one back. They both laughed, as did the surrounding workers who called out to him in their native Mayan tongue, a language with a 5,000-year history. Armando said he had struggled to speak it since he was as a child. A few of the women carried babies tied to their backs. The babies slept or looked around contentedly as their mothers worked their way down the rows of plants. One young woman sat on a bag of coffee at the edge of the field, breastfeeding her baby. She studied the four playgroup women with curiosity, smiled and waved as they passed. Her little boy, a child the same age as the playgroup children rested his head on his mother’s lap and stared at the four friends curiously.
Armando drove for a few more minutes and stopped at a cluster of brightly painted yellow workers’ houses. Groups of barefooted children played unsupervised on the wide dirt paths. They seemed sublimely happy and engaged without having any of the toys and games American parents believe their children can’t survive without, the population explosions of plastic people, their farms, airplanes, space shuttles and school houses that clutter even the humblest American home. A few adults stared out at the visitors from behind blue-shuttered windows and doorways. Carson noticed that each house had a window box, also painted blue and filled with dirt. Only one had anything planted in it, a lonely pink geranium with all but a few petals gone. A group of women clustered around a small truck converted to a store where they picked through a sparse selection fruits and vegetables. There wasn’t much to buy, but what produce there was looked fresh and appealing. There were bright red tomatoes, greens, fruits and eggs, all grown close to the plantation. Dried up, not so appealing meat and sausages hung from hooks on the truck. Across from the store was a small school building that Armando said was for the children whose parents worked at the plantation year-round. Lauren asked about the other children. Armando shrugged his shoulders and said apologetically, “Sadly, they are not here long enough to do anything about that.” A little farther up the road, there was a white clapboard church decorated with a frieze of the Madonna and child; in front of it, a cone-shaped vase of dead flowers rested on a wrought iron stand.
A group of mechanics stood outside the building on a break, joking in inconceivably rapid Spanish, as they drank cans of American soft drinks. One of them called out to Armando, who stopped the truck. The man said something that made all the men including Armando roar.
“What did they say?” Jess asked him.
“You don’t want to know,” he said, still laughing.
“Of course we do,” she said. “Tell us exactly.”
“They asked how an ugly pendejo like me convinced four beautiful senoritas to get into a car with me.”
“What’s a pendejo?” Lauren asked.
He laughed. “That I am not going to tell you.”
A little further along, a worker waved Armando to stop. He excused himself and walked over to talk to a cluster of employees; there seemed to be some kind of dispute. Carson watched him as he listened to each of the men tell their side of the story in rocket-speed Spanish. He listened carefully, shaking his head to show he understood each of the men. Then he too, in indecipherably fast Spanish, responded; Carson guessed he suggested a resolution. Both men responded, addressing Armando and not one another. Armando scratched his head, in a way that indicated he was having trouble making a decision, then he said something else to the men and they both shook their heads in agreement. They all shook hands and walked away.
In the meantime, a few yards in front of the truck, two men finished loading the last bags of coffee onto a transport truck and slammed the doors shut. Apologizing more than he needed to, Armando jumped back into the Land Rover and drove up a road to the main house.
Separated, from the rest of the complex by a grove of trees, the house was a sprawling two story white colonial, a large veranda circling it. A blanket of fragrant white jasmine and blazing magenta bougainvillea hid the elaborate wrought-iron railings. Terraces, also black wrought iron, hung off the second story. French doors, some open, led to each of the balconies, which also had been planted with cascading flowers in deep pinks, blues and purples. When they reached the house, Carson began to feel a bit lightheaded; she thought maybe from so much Champagne and the long hours of travel. When she climbed down from the truck, she was shaky. Armando, who had been watching her, ran over and grabbed her. Embarrassed, she thanked him and told him she was perfectly all right.
“Let me just be sure,” he said holding on to her and looking at her with concern. She smelled the soap he used during his shower right before they had arrived; his black, wavy hair was still wet.
“Really I’m fine.”
“Just let me walk you up to the house,” he said. ”You looked like you were going to faint.”
“I’ve never fainted before,” she said, remembering when she passed out while covering that first murder three months before. What a terrible feeling that had been, to lose consciousness and self-control, if for only a minute, and then to wake up unclear of what had happened and why. She wouldn’t let that happen to her again.
An elegant-looking, grandmotherly Guatemalan woman in a crisply ironed white dress embroidered with roses, her hair pulled back into a bun at the nape of her neck, came to greet them. Jess wrapped her arms around the woman Carson assumed to be Armando’s mother. Evidently she was not; Armando introduced her simply as Maria. A few servants appeared and took the bags up to their rooms, as Armando led them to a wide outdoor room at the end of the veranda. There were large potted palms, pots of pink ginger and birds of paradise. They served the friends what Carson thought was the equivalent of Guatemalan high tea, spread elegantly on the lace cloth covering the table was a French press pot of the dark roasted coffee grown on the plantation, trays of fresh pastries and a beautifully arranged tray of sliced mango, pineapple, papaya, strawberries, oranges, berries, and some fruits they had never seen, tea and freshly made juices, all evidently from fruits grown on the plantation.
Maria fussed over Carson, bringing her to a place under a ceiling fan in a far corner of the sprawling veranda so she could rest. She insisted Carson sit quietly and asked a servant to bring an icy glass of tea and a plate of food. Maria’s English was halting, but it appeared that she understood everything Carson said. She told Carson that she had known Armando since the day he was born.
“And David,” she laughed and looked over at Jess who was chatting excitedly with the others. “I’ve known him since he was a little boy.” As Maria spoke about Armando, she watched him across the veranda. Carson looked up at him for a moment. He must have felt her gaze. Again their eyes met and she quickly looked away. Maria didn’t miss it.
“His mother died when he was five, breast cancer,” she said. “He was a lovely little boy, lovely. I became his nanny when his mother got sick. Before that she wouldn’t let anyone take care of him but herself. Truly, her life was completely devoted to him and, of course, to his father.”
“And his father? Is he alive?”
“No, he is gone too. He too was completely devoted to Armando. They had tried for years before he was born to have a baby, but she lost every one, five, maybe six miscarriages. And she never got pregnant again. So he was, as you can imagine, a most precious child. After Armando’s mother died, his father devoted himself to his son and the business. He never remarried.”
Carson began to ask Maria another question about Armando and his parents, but she caught herself.
“Please, Maria, tell me about yourself. Do you have a family?”
“Yes, I am married and I have three daughters, now eight grandchildren, the youngest just two years old.”
“And your work?”
“I am here a few days a week now. I have my husband and my grandchildren. Of course, Armando is like my son. I would do anything he asked me to do. After his mother died, I ran the household. I guess I still do, but now it is not so much work. The others,” she waved to a few servants, who were stationed around the room. “They do an excellent job. Armando asked me to stay at the house while you visit and make sure that everything is perfect for Senora Jessica and your, how do you say it, senoritas’ weekend.”
Carson could feel Armando watching her from across the room, although he was deep in a conversation with the others. She tried not to listen, instead to concentrate on what Maria was saying, but she was acutely aware of him. She heard him excuse himself. He walked over to where she and Maria sat and asked Carson if she felt better. She felt awkward and was sure he knew it. In a few minutes, Armando excused himself and said he was leaving and would stay at the reserve so they could have the house to themselves.
“That’s silly,” Jess said. “You sleep in your own bed.”
“No, it’s what David and I planned. If there is anything you need, please call me. You have the number, Jess, and if for some reason I don’t answer, have Maria send someone to get me.”
He looked at Carson in a curious way, as if he wanted to ask her something; then seemed to catch himself. He smiled and looked away. Everyone else, including Maria noticed.
Jess objected to his leaving, but clearly he had no intention of staying.
“OK, you can go,” she pretended to pout, “but you will have dinner with us tomorrow night.”
“Are you sure, Jess?”
“Absolutely,” she looked over at the others. “You want him to come, too?”
Before anyone could answer, Jess said, “Absolutely.”
“Thank you. It will be my pleasure.”
“And maybe” Jess continued. “You’ll take whoever wants to go to the reserve.”
“Of course, just tell me when.” And in a moment, he was gone.
As soon as he drove away and Maria left the room, Katherine said, “OK, Jess, what’s the story with Armando?”
“You want to know if he’s married right,” Jess laughed. “No. He’s not married.”
“He’s divorced, right? “Lauren said.
“Never been married, doesn’t even have a girlfriend.”
“That you know of,” Carson said.
“No, I am sure not.”
“There has to be someone,” Lauren said. “He is too attractive to be alone.”
“Really, I am sure of it. There was someone, years ago, but something happened to her.”
“How sad,” Carson said, “the image of how beautiful he was when he smiled still lingering.
Jess told them how they had met. “Armando came to Francis Parker as an exchange student. David’s family was the host family and the two became instant best buddies. You know, David was kind of a nerdy kid.”
“Hard to believe,” Carson said, thinking of tall, handsome, poised David Kingman.
“He was clumsy and small, awkward. That’s what he says and his school friends will tell you exactly the same thing, a consummate nerd. Until he was 17, he was just a little less than five feet tall. It wasn’t until his senior year that he started to fill out and shoot up to the height he is now. So he was kind of a self-conscious kid, didn’t fit in, a loner. Armando came and it was a great for both of them, really, and their friendship is beautiful. I mean especially for guys, I’d say they truly love each other, talk to each other at least a few times a week, have been best friends since they met. The summer after the semester Armando spent in Chicago, David flew back to Guatemala with him and stayed with Armando and his father for two months. Their families ended up becoming close friends, almost like family. Armando and his dad vacationed with David’s family and the two fathers had similar philanthropic interests. They planned to form a foundation together. The Jaguar preserve was their idea. They just never got to do it.
“Armando went to school in the states; like David, he was a business major. They both went for their MBAs, David at Wharton and Armando at Harvard. Since they were teenagers, the two of them brainstormed about what kind of business they would go into together some day. It would be something totally different from their family business interests, which obviously were as different from each other as they could possibly be. But that dream ended during Armando’s first year at Harvard. One day he was called out of a class and told that his father had just collapsed in a field. He had a massive heart attack. Armando rushed back here, but by the time he got to the airport in Guatemala City, his father was dead. As you could imagine, it was impossible to get him from here to a hospital good enough to save his life. He died a few hours after he collapsed. He was only 53. Armando never returned to graduate school. He took over the business. Within six years, he doubled the size of the operation. Ten years later, he is now the largest coffee grower in Guatemala.”
“That’s impressive,” Katherine said.
“He’s a very impressive man,” Jess said, “and one of the sweetest and most lovely men I have ever known.”
“So he has to have been married at some point?” Lauren asked.
“You don’t believe me.” Jess said, “He never married and he doesn’t have a woman in his life.”
“That doesn't make sense, “Lauren said.
“He must be gay?” Katherine said.
“Oh come on, absolutely not!”
“He must have someone. He’s lovely.” Lauren said.
“David and I are on him about that. He says he hasn’t had time.” Jess said. ”We believe him. He works around the clock, between the coffee business and the jaguar reserve. Anyway, why are you so both interested?”
“We’re thinking about a friend of ours,” Katherine said, looking over at Carson, who hadn’t said a word.
“Evidently, so is he,” Jess said. “He couldn’t keep his eyes off of you, Carson.”
“Cut it out, you’re imagining that.”
“Honestly, he couldn’t. I wouldn’t have even thought about you two as a match, too complicated. I don’t know about David, that might have something to do with the reason he sent us here,” she laughed. “But for sure, there was something going on between the two of you. I have never seen that with him, I mean ever. And by the way, “she paused and looked into Carson’s eyes, “not you either. You have to admit….”
“It would be impossible for me to lie to the three of you, but do me a favor,” she said, “and give it up. The last thing I need to do now is fall for a handsome stranger in Guatemala and the last thing he needs is me.”
“He’d be lucky to get you,” Lauren said. “The only bad thing would be that we’d have a hard time letting you leave us.”
“Forget it, Cupid. I’m not interested.”
A few minutes later, Maria came back and took them to their rooms. They made a plan to shower and rest and then meet on the veranda a few hours later to have drink before dinner. Carson took off her clothes and fell onto the bed. She was sound asleep in seconds. When she heard Jess at the door trying to wake her for dinner, it was already dark. Her body refused to budge.
“I just want to sleep,” she groaned.
“Of course, just rest. Sleep as late as you can in the morning. I brought you a night gown.” She laid it on the bed. “David asked Maria to get these for all of us. You’ll love it. Sleep well, dear one.”
She was back out in moments. A little later she heard someone softly open the door and move quietly around her room. It was Maria. She pretended to be asleep. Maria lowered a silver domed tray with a light dinner for Carson on to a small table near a comfy-looking chair. She looked down at the lovely young woman sound asleep, knowing she must be exhausted, then opened the French doors leading to the balcony. The room filled with soothing evening tropical air. “Dulces sueños,” she whispered and slipped away as quickly and as quietly as she had come. When Carson woke again her room was filled with light. It can’t be morning, she thought. It wasn’t; a full moon rose in the sky and silvery light flooded into the room. She took a long, hot shower and slipped into the gown Jess had left. It was the finest linen cotton she had ever touched, exquisitely hand embroidered with a vine of delicate pale blue forget- me-knots. She had never seen anything quite like it. She walked out onto the balcony. The mountains and fields were bathed in shimmering light. Armando was walking up the path toward the house. He stopped and stood watching her as she looked up at the moon. She was surrounded by flowers, the soft wind blowing in her hair, her gown nearly transparent in the silver light.
Chapter 10
A nightmare, Zoe on a roller coaster careening out of control, woke her. It was impossible to get back to sleep. She tried to drug herself with a not-so-interesting novel she brought along, but couldn’t concentrate and finally decided to get out of bed. “Maybe I can get in a run before everyone else wakes up,” she thought, hoping it would help her clear her mind. When she walked out the front door, the sky was just beginning to brighten. The safest thing to do, she thought, was to backtrack in the direction of where they had come from the day before, if possible ending up at the clearing where the helicopter landed. She bent over and tightened her shoes on the front step, took a deep breath of that clear mountain air and began to run. The air was intoxicatingly sweet, the smell of jasmine in bloom, fruit trees, the flowering coffee plants, and the rich volcanic soil. It had been so cold in Chicago; everyone spent the winter moving from one sealed space of stale recycled air to the next. Here the air was so clean and clear. It felt like she was on another planet.
Carson hadn’t run much recently. When she could, it was on the crowded quarter mile indoor track at the East Bank Club, the noise level deafening, too many runners for the space, echoing footsteps slamming down on the rubber track, and conversations shouted as runners strained to keep up with one another. All those sounds were magnified as they bounced off the plate glass windows that surround that suffocating space. That morning, all she could hear were the birds. There must have been hundreds of them calling to one another at the start of this exquisite day. As the sun rose over the mountains, the sky turned bright pink and pale violet, with vibrant streaks of red, a few delicate clouds floating above.
She passed the stables. They were quiet, as were the processing buildings, not a soul in sight.
As she ran uphill toward the fields, she felt as if her lungs had twice their capacity. The sharp incline didn’t faze her as she pushed up her speed. It seemed almost effortless. She thought, “I have never felt so light on my feet.” She ran past the houses of the workers. The only sounds, other than her own footsteps on the soft dirt road and the cacophony of birds beginning their day, were the dogs. A few barked and ran toward her, but quickly turned away. She heard a baby crying and imagined as the crying stopped, his mother lifting the child from his crib and nursing him in her arms. When she got close to the clearing where the helicopter had landed, she remembered the way Armando looked standing there as they landed. She warned herself to be careful about him. Then the most vivid memories of being with him last night came back to her, how it felt when he made love to her and how wonderful it was to sleep in his arms. Then, she caught herself, the realization so startling. She had not been alone with Armando at all and the vivid memories of the night in his arms had been a dream.
When she got back to the house, Armando was walking down the front steps, a cup of coffee in his hand. She wondered if that feeling of her heart racing was because she had been running so fast or if it was seeing his face light up as she ran toward him.
“Maravilloso! You had a good run?”
She nodded and answered breathlessly, ‘’Fantastic!”
“It’s so good that you got out early before it gets too hot.”
“It was beautiful, truly the best run of my life.” Her entire body was wet with perspiration, her shorts and tank top soaked. But he looked at her admiringly, a full smile on his face. She could feel herself react to that look; the feeling spread out to every part of her body. She was at a loss for words. She finally asked awkwardly, “What do you do to this air?”
“It’s not what we do to it, it’s what we don’t do to it. We have absolutely no pollution here, especially after the rains, which seemed to have come to an end when you arrived.” Maybe she just imagined it, but it looked to her that when he said that, he blushed.
“Let me get you some cold water and, perhaps, some coffee?” She followed him to the kitchen, a room large enough to cook for a hundred guests. He poured cold water from an icy pitcher, then walked over to the stove and turned on the burner under a water kettle. She pointed to an almost full French press pot of coffee on the counter. Obviously, it was the coffee he was drinking.
“That coffee will be fine for me.”
“Absolutely not. We grow the finest coffee in the world on this plantation, and I want you to enjoy it at its best.” Once again she felt an intense feeling of attraction. “This is bad,” she thought. She had not been so acutely aware of a man, or her own body, in years. It made her nervous. She was relieved when Jess, in her nightgown and a robe, came into the room and broke the moment. “I see you both are up,” she said coyly.
“I wish she hadn’t said that,” Carson thought of her friend’s teasing.
Armando didn’t catch it. “Did you sleep well, my dear Jessica?” he said and kissed her on the cheek. She was like his sister, perhaps today a naughty little sister, even though he didn’t seem to notice.
“Slept like a baby,” she smiled.
In a moment Maria and another helper came into the kitchen to start breakfast. Armando finished his coffee and excused himself to go to work.
He said: “This is supposed to be a girls’ weekend. No men. I am happy to stay at the reserve.”
“Not a chance. You sleep in your own bed. We’ll see you at seven, eight at the latest.”
When he left, Jess started again. “So what’s going on?”
“Nothing. I told you, nothing is going on and nothing will be.”
“Why don’t you just relax and...”
“Stop it,” Carson interrupted. “You know why. Just drop it.”
She said, “OK, I’ll wipe it from my mind.” And as the day went on, clearly she did,
but Carson could not. Those dreams of making love to Armando kept coming back to her. She caught herself fantasizing about him, thinking about what it would be like to spend her life with him here in this beautiful place, to spend every night in his arms.
When he walked into the house that evening, Carson thought, “Now I am the one who is blushing.” She could feel his eyes on her. It felt to her as if he could read every fantasy that had gone through her head that day. He excused himself to dress for dinner, and when he returned, showered and fresh, he looked even more appealing to her than he had before. He led the friends to the dining room and formally pulled out each of their chairs. He looked elegantly handsome at the head of the long, burled mahogany table. The only light in the room came from tall candelabras, six candles on each, a pair on the table and two more pairs on matching, heavily carved black walnut buffets on opposite ends of the room. There was something transformative about the candlelight, the way it lit their faces, the glow on the dark, still-life paintings that covering the walls. It felt to Carson like the setting for an evening perhaps a hundred years before, with the hand-painted Bavarian china and delicately cut crystal, hand embroidered linen.
“Oh my, this silver,” Lauren said picking up a knife. “These knives must weigh half a pound each.”
“Not quite,” Armando laughed. “The silver was my mother’s, the china too. I don’t use it very often. Most nights, I am dining alone.”
Although Maria had already filled Carson in, she asked him about his parents, interested in how he would describe them. She was moved by his answer, the deep admiration and gratitude he expressed. He seemed to have none of the cynicism and bitterness most people she knew harbored toward their parents. She thought about how she might have described her own mother and father if someone had asked, and felt ashamed to admit how much bitterness she felt. She promised herself that she would work on resolving those feelings, to come to grips with the fact that they did as well as they could possibly do.
Armando had vivid memories of his mother even though she died when he was a little boy. “My father remained in love with her,” he said, “with his memories of her, until his death.”
Carson wondered if Armando’s early loss made him fearful of loving. Perhaps it was the reason that, at 41, he had never married. She was, as most women, suspicious of men who reached his age and were still single. But she could understand very well why someone might be afraid to fall in love. She too had her own reasons for never wanting to love again. She hadn’t been in a relationship since she was divorced, not even a short one. It occurred to her that perhaps she had never experienced real love. The relationship she had with Mark, if you could call it a relationship at all, she thought, wasn’t love, although through all those years she thought it was. And her short marriage to Zoe’s father, that wasn’t love either. How, she wondered, have I made it to my age and never had a mature love affair with a man? The conversation at the table switched to the jaguar preserve,
but she sat there not listening, thinking instead about the man at the head of the table. Maybe she could let her guard down.
Katherine noticed that she looked like she was off in another world.
She said, “Carson, it looks like you’re dreaming.”
Embarrassed, Carson apologized, “Maybe I’ve had too much wine.”
“You can never drink too much wine in Guatemala,” Armando said as he stood up to fill their classes. As he poured, he asked them if they wanted to go to the reserve in the morning. “I can’t promise you that you’ll see a jaguar, but your chances there are better than almost anywhere else in the world. If we go, we have to be there at dawn, just as the sun is rising. It’s the best time to see them.
Jaguars are not nocturnal, but they see better in the dark than any other animal in the world. They are most active at dawn and dusk, but dawn is the best time at the reserve.” All four expressed excitement about going the next morning and made a plan to leave right before sunrise.
So just a few hours after that last glass of wine, Carson sat dressed in shorts and hiking boots on the front steps of the hacienda. When Armando pulled up in his Jeep, it was still dark. “I’ll go get the others,” she said, and ran up the stairs.
“Go without me,” Jess groaned not opening her eyes and pushing her face back into her pillow. “I can’t. I’m just too tired.”
Then Katherine, “Sorry, Carson, I’m dead. Please apologize to Armando.”
She was sure Lauren would come. She was more excited about the possibility of seeing a jaguar than any of them. When Carson knocked on her door, she didn’t answer. She knocked again and let herself in. Lauren slept so soundly that when Carson gently shook her shoulder to wake her, she didn’t budge.
“I’m afraid it is just me,” Carson said apologetically, when she slipped into the seat next to Armando. He had showered and shaved and looked as refreshed and bright as if he had had a full night’s sleep. She had hardly slept, in part because she was afraid she wouldn’t get up on time and in part because, on some level, she realized she had been trying to avoid more dreams like the ones she had the night before.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “ I can take them another time.” There was an awkward silence as they drove out of the plantation. Carson, usually good at filling those, found herself feeling oddly shy. She watched him through the corner of her eye. Yes, Lauren is right, she thought, he is unusually beautiful without seeming in any way aware of that beauty. Something else that struck her was his calm, a reassuring presence that she was sure anyone, man, woman or child, would find comforting. He held on tightly to the wheel with both hands as he steered the Rover over the rocky roads. A light breeze blew through the windows. In moments the terrain became even rougher and although they wore seatbelts, Carson was thrown from side to side. Armando reached toward her to steady her and continued to hold on to her arm. “I am sorry about this,” he said apologetically. “This is the only way I can get you there.” He kept his hand there as they continued. Again, she felt hyper-aware of his touch, as if it were – and clearly, she knew it was not – the most sexual touch.
Suddenly the Rover veered so sharply to the left, Carson felt as if it might roll over. She fell onto his lap. They started laughing and didn’t stop as the ride went on as if they were on some kind of a roller coaster. They laughed like children as they bumped along. It was impossible to talk. Finally they reached a paved road. Knocked out of her shyness, she asked him about the reserve.
“It was a dream of my father to do something to protect the jaguars. They have been endangered for decades. He tried to get hunting them outlawed, but with no success. Tragically, they are a favorite of hunters who feel they have some kind of privilege that justifies killing these beautiful animals. Jaguars used to roam freely throughout Guatemala, the Yucatan and Belize. Now they are sparse. A few years after my father died, I was able to create a foundation in his memory and begin to buy land to set up a reserve. David asked if he could join me in the project and soon after, his father did too. We have 100 square miles now. We hope to acquire more land and we have just finished building a research center. We still need to hire a few more people.”
He led Carson into the jungle down a dark canopied path; she followed a few steps behind, walking as quietly as possible, almost on tiptoe. As she followed him deeper and deeper into the jungle, the paths became narrower and overgrown. Suddenly, there was terrifying screeching, a sound from a horror movie. Terrified Carson jumped a few feet and grabbed Armando.
“It’s OK,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulders. He hugged her like a parent with a frightened child.
“They’re just monkeys, howlers. Their cry is terrifying if you don’t know what it is.” They walked further down a narrow overgrown path. Armando stopped suddenly and signaled Carson not to move or talk.
She heard stirring in the bush; her heart began to race. For the first time it struck her that she had never asked him if they came face to face with a jaguar, what would keep it from attacking them. As they stood, she felt intensely aware of him, of his breath, the small movements of his body. It was as if all her senses were on overdrive. He signaled that they should move on. Soon after he stopped her again and pointed straight ahead.
There he was. A black jaguar stood directly in their path, not more than 30 feet ahead. His luminescent green eyes focused right on them, searing. It was the most magnificent sight she had ever seen, magnificent and at the same time utterly terrifying. They stood frozen, hardly breathing, as they watched the beast. Carson knew that jaguar could crush the skull of an 800-pound ox and carry it whole to his den. What, she wondered, could he do to the two of us?
In a few minutes, the jaguar nodded his head as if to acknowledge their meeting and walked back into the bush. Armando threw his arms around her and hugged her. “Wasn’t that incredible!” he said, his stage whisper filled with excitement.
All Carson could do was repeat what he said, “Yes, incredible!”
As they drove back to the plantation, he told Carson about how lucky they had been. “The chances of seeing a jaguar, even in the reserve are about a thousand to one. I still keep looking. I have been to the reserve hundreds of times. We were very lucky.”
Still exhilarated, he rambled on about the importance of the jaguar in Mayan culture. “The jaguar is the god of the underworld,” he said. “The Mayans believe it has the ability to see into the future, to see deep into the human heart.”
As he said it, she wished that she could see into Armando’s heart; she felt afraid that he could easily see into hers. She could feel herself falling for him in a way she had never fallen for a man. Zoe flashed into her mind. Except for her nightmare the night before, she hadn’t thought about her for a moment since they arrived yesterday. Normally, not a half-hour would go by when she didn’t think of her little girl, wondering what she was doing at that moment or perhaps just having an image of her sweet face flash before her eyes. I cannot afford to fall for this man, she warned herself. I need to resist, to stay focused on making a life for my little girl and me. If it means resolving the mess I am in at ABC or not, my first priority has to be making a realistic plan for a secure future us. The last thing I need right now is an impossible romantic fantasy that has no way of becoming a practical reality.
As they turned on to the road leading back the plantation, the sun came up over the mountains. Armando pulled over to the side of the road so they could watch the sunrise. They sat silent, the only sound, a fly buzzing around the car. He turned toward her and without saying a word, kissed her. One kiss, not a passionate kiss, but a kiss so soft, she could feel the tingling of her lips as he pulled back and looked into her eyes. It was a kiss she knew she would remember for as long as she lived.
They drove the rest of the way in silence. When he pulled up in front of the house, he told her, (it seemed to her sadly) that he would be away until some time the next day. He told her that he hoped he could take her and the others if they wished to join them to see the volcanoes before they left. Her heart was still racing as she walked up the stairs. It must have been obvious. When Katherine, who was stretched out on a hammock on the veranda, looked up at her from the book she was reading, she asked, “OK, traffic girl, what are you grinning about now?”
Fortunately, Jess and Lauren were having massages in the garden. Jess would be unmerciful. Carson went up to her room so she could be alone to process what had just happened. She showered and sat on her balcony until Maria knocked to tell her it was time for her to go to the garden for her massage.
A lovely Mayan woman led her to a massage table set up on a patio surrounded by orange trees in bloom. Once Carson was settled onto the table and covered with a silky linen sheet, the woman chanted a prayer Carson would learn later paid homage to the spirits in the mountains, the waters, the wind, and the air. After the massage, she chanted again and placed rose petals on Carson’s forehead and shoulders and hands. Although Carson understood nothing of what the woman said, she found the ceremony as soothing as the massage itself. When she got off the table, she could hardly walk, she felt so relaxed and well cared for. The massage therapist took her arm and walked her back to the veranda of the house where Katherine, Jess and Lauren, also still in their robes, relaxed on comfy chaises.
They were grinning when they saw her. She realized that there was no possibility of hiding what she felt from her three friends. Without saying a word, she knew that they all sensed exactly what was going on.
Pleased to see a blissful look on Carson’s face, Lauren said, “OK, just tells us,”
“There’s nothing to tell,” Carson said.
“Oh come on,” Katherine said. “That is obviously not true.”
“Really, nothing,” Carson said, having a hard time suppressing what she suspected was a goofy grin.
“Sure nothing!” Katherine said laughing.
“I just want to ask you one thing.” Carson said, ”Did you three fake being too tired to wake up this morning?” No one answered.
“You did!” she scolded. “That’s terrible.”
“We really didn’t,” Jess said. “Honestly, we did not plan set you up to be alone with him. But admit it, you are definitely smitten.”
“I can’t lie, I am. But it’s going to stop. I am not going to get involved with him.”
“You are already!” Katherine said.
“Did you sleep with him?” Jess asked.
“I did not!”
“But you will.”
“I will not. I can’t. He lives all the way across the world.”
Jess said, “Guatemala is not across the world. Chicago’s in the same time zone.”
“Guatemala is like the moon.” Carson said. “Come on. Look around you.”
“It’s not that far,” Lauren said.
“The last thing I can afford to do is fall in love with a man who lives in the mountains of Guatemala. I have to get my act together. I’m not sure if I’ll even have a job when I get back.”
“So all the better,” Jess said.
“No, you are wrong. Maybe I will have a man in my life some day, but I am not going to get involved with anyone until my position is totally secure. That would be the worst thing I could do.”
“I get it,” Katherine said. “You’re right. It would make you too vulnerable, too dependent, but come on, you can’t walk away from this man.”
“Yes I can. I need to put and end to it before it starts,” she said trying to sound convincing, although she felt heartsick thinking of the possibility of not ever seeing him again.
“But he really is the loveliest man,” Jess said.
“I know,” Carson said wistfully, “but it’s not meant to be.”
After lunch, the four rode horses through the plantation, and up farther into the mountains. Jess, unlike the others was an excellent horsewoman and knew the mountains well. The horses chosen for them were gentle and obedient. Jess assured them it would be an easy ride. After their initial nervousness, it was. The vistas were unimaginably beautiful. The rolling foothills were covered with dense tropical vegetation; orchids and bromeliads bloomed magically off trees draped with mossy vines. The air was thick with perfume of fruit trees, wild flowers and coffee plants in bloom.
Carson couldn’t, as hard as she tried, wipe Armando from her mind. “If we fell in love, could I drop everything to be near him in this strange and foreign, even if incredibly beautiful, place? I must be out of my mind to think of it. I don’t know him at all. Maybe he’s not what he appears to be, who knows?” She tried to joggle her mind onto a more rational track; focus on what she faced when they returned home: What she would do if the job at the station were over, what her terms would be if she were offered the choice to stay? But she kept slipping back into the fantasies about Armando as she rocked gently as they rode farther up into the mountains. Was he really as wonderful as he appeared to be? She had been wrong before, but the two men she had believed she was in love with before weren’t in the same universe as Armando. He seemed to her a gentle prince. Again, she stopped herself. “This is crazy. I think I imagined the sadness on his face when he said goodbye. He hasn’t married before. There must be a reason; there must be something wrong with him that I can’t see, that even Jess can’t see.”
The air began to cool as the sun began to drop behind the mountains and Jess signaled them to stop. In the far distance they could see the volcanoes, one now active with a burning red rim; a ribbon of smoke reached up into the sky.
When they got to the plantation with its roads wide enough for trucks to pass, they rode side by side and talked for the first time in hours.
“The days have gone too fast, “ Katherine said expressing what they all felt. “I’m not ready to go.” A helicopter would come the next day after lunch and take them back to their plane.
“I understand why this is your favorite place in the world,” Lauren said.
Jess smiled back. “I’m blissed out here. I always am.”
They passed the workers along the way who were ending their day in the fields. Surprisingly they didn’t look the least bit tired as they carried heavy colorful bags stuffed with coffee beans over their shoulders to waiting flat bed trucks that would take the coffee to be processed. From out of nowhere, a dozen children ran toward the four friends.
“These have to be the most beautiful children in the world,” Lauren said. They got down from their horses to talk to the children and somehow, though the children only spoke the Mayan of their village high in the mountains, they were able to communicate and joke, their dark eyes dancing with excitement. They were fascinated with Jess’s red hair, long and now wildly curly in the moist tropical air. They wanted to touch it. She squatted down to let them and they laughed as they ran their fingers through it. Like their mothers, the girls wore brightly colored hand-woven dresses, their black, glossy hair shining and braided. The boys wore dusty black trousers and tee shirts and, though perfectly polite, had mischievousness written all over their faces.
This was their last day. The helicopter would pick them up after lunch tomorrow. The day passed too quickly and ended with another lovely dinner in the candle-lit dining room that night. Carson had no interest in the food she just pushed around her plate. She kept imagining Armando in the empty chair at the head of the table. How could she miss someone so much she had only known for a few hours?
The friends talked until they couldn’t keep their eyes open. Still no one wanted to go to bed. When they finally went to their rooms, Carson went out to the balcony and watched the moon. She tossed and turned in bed before she finally fell asleep. At about 3 a.m., she was up thinking about whether it made sense for her to go to the volcanoes with Armando the next day. She decided it would be best not to be alone with him again. Perhaps the others would join them. That wouldn’t be so dangerous. She felt hungry. Being around Armando had made her lose her normally healthy appetite and she hadn't eaten much all day. She went downstairs to the kitchen to see if she could find a snack. It was dark in the house, just a few lights in the hall. She went to the kitchen and felt around for the light switches. She couldn’t find them. There was enough light from a window over the sink to feel her way to the refrigerator. Fortunately it had a light. She didn’t hear Armando come up behind her.
“Carson,” he said softly, not wanting to scare her, but he did.
“You’re not supposed to be back.”
“I couldn’t stay away,” he said. “Let me get you something to eat.”
Suddenly she wasn’t hungry. She turned around, and in seconds was in his arms. Determined to say “absolutely not” in a matter of minutes, she was in his bed.
During the hours that followed, until long after the sun rose over the mountains and they heard the sounds of their friends talking and moving about the house, they made love in a way Carson could never have imagined possible for her, not for anyone. It was as if they had known each other for thousands of years, knew every crevice of their bodies where pleasure could be found. She realized that she had never made love before. Yes, she had had sex, but never until this night had she experienced anything like this. It was the way he looked at her, as if she were the most beautiful woman in the world, the way she felt when they kissed, what he did to her body, and what she felt totally natural doing to his. There was something between them she felt she had no way of understanding. Only that this was what it must feel like to find what others called the “great love of my life.” She knew that tomorrow she would say goodbye to him and that it was likely she would never see him again. But even so, she knew she would treasure this night they spent together forever.
They did not get to the volcano that morning. The phone rang next to Armando’s bed. It was David. There was bad weather on its way to Guatemala and they would have to leave immediately to avoid it. The helicopter was on its way. In less than an hour they would be in the sky flying back to Guatemala City where they would be met by the Kingman jet.
Carson watched Armando get smaller as the helicopter ascended into the sky. He stood there long after it disappeared into the clouds. The sky had began to darken. ‘Why did I let them go?’ he asked himself. ‘What if the storm hits before they reach Guatemala City? They could crash into the side of a mountain. Stupid me, I could have kept them here at least until the storm ended. Now, God knows what will happen.’
If anything did, he knew he would never forgive himself. He walked toward the fields, with a mounting sense of fear. The rain began to fall and in moments, he was soaked.
“Why didn’t you ever marry, Armando?” Carson had asked him in the middle of the night.
“I was waiting for someone to come back. “
“Why did she go away?” she said sleepily.
Let me save that for tomorrow, mi Corazon. ” He pulled her closer. Now she too was gone.
The storm escalated, with thunder and lightning. The rain forced the white blossoms of the next to be harvested plants to cascade to the ground and branches heavy with red beans to droop into the mud. Armando kept walking, weaving his way through the fields, the rain beating against his face.
The woman he had waited for was Marieka, one of the disappeared. She had been a fighter in the people’s army, and was one of tens of thousands of indigenous Mayan and Ladino activists who were murdered during the Guatemalan Civil War. That war was still not over, far from it. The women had been the most brutalized of the victims. They were raped and beaten by government soldiers. Their bodies were dismembered, often before they were dead and displayed in public squares as a warning. Thousands of rebels were buried alive; others put in plastic bags and dropped into the ocean.
“You will never come back to me,” Marieka had said to him when he went to college in the US. He promised that he would and that he would be faithful. He was. When she wrote during his junior year to tell him she was going to join the rebel soldiers, he flew home and begged her not to go. She didn’t listen and she never returned. He did everything in his power to find her. And when he couldn’t, he still believed she was alive and would come back. It was just three years ago, that parts of her body were found in a mass grave and identified.
Jess sat next to her friend in the noisy chopper. She could see tears rolling down Carson’s cheeks, and although she typically would be the first to ask, there were no questions as they flew back to Chicago. Carson stayed trance-like the rest of the way home and no one interrupted what they imagined was for their dear friend a painfully confusing mix of sadness and joy.
Tomorrow Carson would meet with the news director. On some level, Jess thought, she would be better off if he told her she no longer had a job. Love was worth giving up all your dreams for, she posited; but in a second, she realized she was wrong. We can’t hang our futures on a star we can’t control. Still, how could Carson walk away from him; theirs was clearly a love match. She would never have been able to walk away from David, no matter what else was offered.
Katherine was anxious to return to Alex and Emily. She had time to think over the last few days, particularly on that long ride up the mountain. She and Alex needed to talk; a second child would have to wait. She had walked away from her dream to help create a legal program for women and children like the one she had worked at in DC. There was nothing like it in Chicago. She would give notice to the ACLU and begin to work on trying to create a shelter for abused women and children. When she got back, she would start.
Lauren was thinking of Louie, her precious little boy. He would leap into her arms as soon as she walked into the room. But Doug, that was another story. She needed to get out of this marriage. She had her inheritance to support herself and Louie and she would be fine. She and Doug had talked about divorce before. He threatened that if she left, he would fight her tooth and nail.
“Don’t you dare try, Lauren!” he had shouted. ”If you do, after I get through with you, you will never see Louie again.”
As they descended into Chicago, the sun was setting over the city and the sky all around them was blazing red.
Chapter 11
Stu jumped out of his chair to apologize when Carson walked his office the next morning, his hand outstretched, “You know, admitting I am wrong is something that doesn’t come easily to me, but I was wrong. I pushed you too hard. I hope you’ll stay?” After giving her a substantial raise, he hedged on his apology. “You have to admit, that would have been a great story. Huge exposure for you.”
“Too much. I don’t want to be a crime reporter.”
“It’s part of your job.”
“Yeah, but not all of it.”
“Covering those stories toughened you up, especially the Mafia stuff. It doesn’t get much worse than seeing someone with a body part shoved down his throat.”
“A little of that wouldn’t have been so bad, but not a regular diet. Don’t you think you got carried away?” He laughed and lit a cigarette.
“Years from now, you’ll thank me. I wasn’t kidding when I said you could be a war correspondent.” He laughed again — as always, the best audience for his jokes. “You’ve seen a lot of bad shit, Carson. Now you can handle it. You were impressive, “ and then with his goofy grin again, he said, “Well mostly.” Carson gave him a dirty look.
“Just kidding. You did great and I’m not the only one who thinks so. Your viewer surveys were tops, maybe because you always look like you were about to upchuck when you are covering something bloody. People relate to that, I guess. On camera, you are like a regular person, reacting to the violence, rather than just acting like it doesn’t touch you. The viewers like you and so does the rest of the staff. I got a lot of flak when you walked out. And by the way, you were not the only who was angry about the crap I was dishing out to you.”
“I didn't complain, Stu, never, not once and you dumped an avalanche of gruesome stuff on me, and to make it worse, all those double shifts.”
“That I couldn’t help,” he grinned sheepishly. “Well, not entirely.”
Maybe she was just imagining that he was ashamed of himself, but quickly realized he wasn’t when he said, “I know you’ve got a kid, Carson, but the kid excuse doesn’t cut it. I needed to know you were committed before I gave you the spot we had in mind for you.”
“And now you know? What is it?”
“You’re still going to cover some crime. Everyone does, but your assignments will be more balanced. I promise. We want you to do features and more in-depth reporting.”
Although she intended to play hard to get, her face lit up with those words. He smiled and said, “I knew you were going to like that.”
“To start,” he said, knowing that he was about to hand her a prize, “we have been brainstorming a once-a-week feature called, ‘Who Runs Chicago.’ It’s yours, in-depth profiles of the people who wield the most power in this town, leaders in business, government, the arts and philanthropy. Larry Stevens will be your producer.”
It was hard for Carson to not leap out of her chair and hug him. She tried to look cool and not bubble about how delighted she was. The tables had turned but she would still have to be vigilant and never let him put her under his thumb again.
She called Jess when she got back to her desk. Jess said, “Armando and David were on the phone for an hour last night. He’s head over heels. He was terrified that something might happen to you on the way home.”
“I don’t know what I am going to do with this.”
“Just enjoy it. Don’t judge it until you have to and you don’t now.”
At dinner at the Kingmans the next night, David popped a bottle of Dom Perpignan to celebrate. They were all there with their children except for Lauren and Doug. Lauren had phoned to say Doug was late and they would be there soon.
“I am amazed that you made it so long without telling Stu to go to hell,” David said to Carson.
“I guess I was determined.”
“I had no idea there was so much violent crime in this city until we started watching you on the evening news, and I’ve lived in Chicago all my life. Maybe the station is just reporting more of it now.”
“They are, violent crime is up, a turf war going on with the Mob. There is so much more important investigative work to be done, but the viewers love the violence. When we cover it, our ratings go up.
Lauren arrived with Louie almost an hour late looking upset. This was not the first time the group waited dinner on Doug’s behalf. She apologized, “He called a few minutes ago and said he has a business emergency.”
No one stated the obvious. More often than not, Doug didn’t join them. Clearly, it was embarrassing for Lauren, and although they kept as principle a commitment to be as open and honest as possible with one another, no one pushed Lauren on Doug. She never said a negative word about him, so neither did they. Carson admired her restraint. It was not that Lauren sang Doug’s praises, but she never hinted what they all believed: her life with him was miserable. Yes, he had charm and good looks, the self assurance that came with growing up in an old moneyed family and getting an elite education, but he was cold and unfriendly, and they suspected a difficult and unloving partner for their friend.
Carson waited for the adults to sit down for dinner before she told them about the “Who Runs Chicago” assignment. “It sounds like fun,” David said, pouring everyone another glass of wine. “Did they tell you who you’d interview?
“They haven’t and I don’t have a clue. My guess, for sure, is not as good as yours, You grew up here among the city’s ‘rich and powerful.’ “Who would you guess?”
David started to rattle off names. John Sweringen, CEO of Standard Oil, Bob Aboud, chairman First National Bank “Marshall Field, of course, that lawyer Don Reuben, Harry Weese. Alex named a few, the head of the Art Institute, the new contemporary art museum, a few people in the media.
“There’s Bill Peterson from Reliable Life,” David said. “ He’s just became the chair of the Illinois Committee to elect Ronald Reagan.”
“And there's Victor Blair.” David said. “No one’s as successful in the real estate business than Blair.”
“I’ve never met him, but he gives away a lot of money,” Jess said. “We’re always getting invitations to benefits honoring him as the charity’s man of the year.”
“He is a son of a bitch,” Lauren, who had been quiet all night, said with palpable loathing. Everyone turned to her. Lauren never said a negative thing about anyone, let alone calling someone a son of a bitch. It seemed to come out of her like an uncontrolled reflex.
“Lauren, I’m so sorry.” David said. “I forgot he was married to your mother.”
“Yes, he was, “she said, “for seven years before they divorced. I hate his guts.”
David quickly changed the subject. Lauren continued to be quiet and left shortly thereafter. The children had all fallen asleep watching a movie and she wrapped Louie in a blanket and carried him home. David volunteered to walk her, but she refused.
Carson phoned Lauren the next morning to ask if she was OK. She seemed to have returned to her gentle, sunny self. She was on her way out for a bike ride in the park with Louie. But the intensity of her reaction stayed with Carson. So much so, that when she was told that her first subject in the series would be Victor Blair, she felt afraid.
The Blair Building is a stunning black granite, glass and steel tower that dwarfs the other buildings in the Chicago Loop. The Blair Organization’s vice president for public affairs met her in the lobby and took her to a private elevator that went directly to the chairman’s office on the top floor.
Blair rose from behind his commanding Madagascar ebony desk and walked the considerable distance to the door of his immense office to greet her. Appearing more like an aging, but still extraordinarily handsome movie star than the demon she expected, he smiled warmly and shook her hand. “I have looked forward so much to meeting you. Please sit down and tell me what you’d like me to do."
He was dressed in a soft gray European-style, double-breasted suit, she guessed Armani. Everything he wore: his tie, his cufflinks, his socks, his shoes were perfectly matched as if the designer himself had dressed him.
He led Carson to a group of Barcelona chairs, camel tufted leather and chrome design classics, wide and deep, perfectly suited for a man, but not for women. As she slipped back into the deep chair, her skirt rode up her thighs. His quick, hard stare met her eye. He looked away.
“Please tell me about yourself, Mr. Blair.”
“Where should I start?”
“Anywhere.”
He told her that he was born in Lithuania and came to the United States when he was 16. He bought his first apartment building, a slum property, for back taxes in 1950. “I remodeled it with my own hands. I went to junkyards to find sinks, toilets, doors and windows. I did all the carpentry, plumbing, electrical, everything by myself.”
He continued to buy slum properties and rehabilitate them first with his own hands and then with crews of immigrant workers who, as he had been, were willing to work for far below Chicago’s notoriously high union scale. He was successful, early. “I had a lot of dreams and a lot of confidence. I told myself, someday you'll own this city.”
“And now, you do.”
“Not quite,” he laughed. “Come over I'll show you.”
He led her to the west windows and looked down on the financial district. His office was kidney-shaped. The floor to ceiling glass windows had spectacular panoramic views of the city. It was a clear day with only a few white fluffy clouds in the bright blue sky.
“Which ones are yours?” she asked him.
She already knew the answer to that question and a great deal more about him from the hours she had spent reading the station’s files. Victor Blair controlled hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of real estate in Chicago and proud of his humble beginnings; he had won the respect, indeed admiration, of the Chicago business community. He sat on several boards and belonged to the city’s most exclusive clubs, the Saddle and Cycle, the Racquet Club, Onwensia. And in spite of the fact that he hadn't finished high school, he donned his tuxedo and dined with the Harvard Yale types once a month at the Chicago Economics Club. He was a full-fledged member of the old boys’ network.
But there were some dark spots. In the sixties, after a series of exposés in the Tribune, the Legal Aid Bureau filed a class action suit against him for flagrant building and code violations. It alleged, among other charges, that he was responsible for the death of a baby who froze to death in an apartment building in which he ordered the janitor to turn off the heat because the tenants were late in paying their rent. The suit alleged that heat shutoffs were a regular policy of his. Descriptions of the conditions in the slum buildings he owned on the South and Near West Side of Chicago made Carson’s hair stand on end. There were rat infestations, peeling poisonous lead paint, and dangerously inadequate plumbing and heating. Another of his tactics was surprise eviction. Tenants who were late on their rent or living in buildings he wanted vacated quickly could come home and find all of their belongings out on the sidewalk or their doors bolted shut.
Mike Royko hammered away at him in his column, but nothing happened. He said and he obviously he was right, Blair could never be convicted of any of his purported wrong-doings. “Every building court judge in the city is on his payroll.
Blair pointed to the Riverfront property he had just won the rights to develop.
“That’s my baby over there,” he said, leaning too close for comfort. “Now look that way.” He pointed to Magnificent Mile, North Michigan Avenue, two solid walls of high-rise commercial and residential buildings, with the Water Tower at its jewel. It was well know that the Mag Mile was his vision but that didn’t keep him from saying, “The idea was mine. I pushed hard to make it happen. But it was a natural, don't you think?”
“I don't know very much about real estate, Mr. Blair.”
“Please call me Victor. I would be glad to teach you.” From the way he said it, it was clear that the offer was for a little more than real estate education. She didn’t find it as off-putting as she might. There was something she found very seductive about him and even though he was old enough to be her father.
She asked, “Do you mind if we sit down for a few more minutes? I know you are very busy.”
“Please. I’ll never be too busy for you. When I like someone, I have all the time in the world.”
She asked him about his family. Of course, she knew the answer to that one too. He had been married three times, each time to women progressively younger than the last. Each of his wives had young children when he married them, all girls. Of course, Carson was most interested in Lauren's mother, wife number one. Lauren’s mother was a young widow when she married Blair. She had grown up in Lake Forest on the north shore of Chicago and had married her high school sweetheart, Lauren’s father, while they were still in college. When he graduated, he was sent to Vietnam. They were stationed on an air force base in Honolulu where Lauren and her little sister, Ellen, were born. Her father was killed during the Tet Offensive, his plane shot down over Saigon. Lauren's mother returned to Chicago and, a few years later, she married Blair, who was 15 years her senior. After seven years of marriage, they were divorced. He stayed single for a few years after the divorce, and then married again, this time for six years. After that, he was single for a five years. During that period, the society pages were filled with photos of Blair with considerably younger, all, of course, quite beautiful. He married his current wife four years ago. She had two young daughters from a previous marriage, coincidentally about the same ages Lauren and her sister were when Blair married their mother.
“Do you have children?” she asked.
“No, I have not been lucky enough to have children of my own, but I have step-children I love dearly. Would you like to see a picture?”
“Please.”
He walked over to his credenza and brought over a portrait of his family. His wife was an elegant-looking blonde, as were her two little girls
“What a lovely family!”
“Yes, is there anything more adorable than a little girl?”
“I don't think so. I have one of my own. She’s three.”
“But you're no longer married?” he asked.
“No,” she said and changed the subject. “We were thinking of opening with you walking down Michigan Avenue. And the interview, perhaps, if you felt comfortable, would be in your home.”
“Yes, I like that idea and I think that the girls would enjoy being on television too, if that's OK with you. Do you prefer our apartment at Drake Towers or our house in Lake Forest?”
“I think the apartment would be better, if you don't mind.”
“My wife would like it better if we did it in town. She never goes out to the house in Lake Forest, says she hates it there. Perhaps you know the house. The Armor family built the estate, at the turn of the century. They were in the meatpacking business. It’s called Swan’s Landing.”
“Are there swans? I’ve never seen swans in this part of the country.”
”In the center of the property, there is a lovely pond, quite large. It had been a natural resting place for migrating swans, probably for centuries. Now they are there year-round. It’s a crime that my wife can’t enjoy it. We have tennis courts, a pool and stables. Sadly, most of the time it's empty. I go with my little girls, but the rest of the time the place is hungry for visitors. I’d like to take you there? Perhaps one day you could bring your little girl.”
She thanked him, thinking “not on your life” and also wondered, besides the obvious fact that he had a weakness for women, what was the reason Lauren so passionately disliked this charming man.
“Someday, I will. You’ll like it. But now, let’s make arrangements for the interview.” He called in his assistant and arrangements were made to shoot on the following Monday.
Carson’s dilemma was whether or not to tell Lauren about her meeting with her former stepfather or just to pretend it wasn't happening. She knew telling her would open an already open wound, but she couldn’t not tell her. Lauren would find out.
Carson called her on Saturday morning and asked her to meet at Goudy Park, the gated playground at the corner of Goethe and Astor where they took their children to play.
“I’ll stop on the way and get us some coffee,” Carson said. Louie was already in the sandbox when they arrived. Goudy Park was a playground like none other in Chicago. Although a public park, to compare it to other playgrounds in Chicago would be like comparing a new Rolls Royce to a beat-up old Ford. The children climbed the marvelously engineered play equipment. Cushioned rubber surfaces covered the ground below. Zoe and Louie were quickly at the top of to one of the elaborate, tubular climbing structures. The other children in the park that morning, were accompanied by women in uniforms, or if not dressed as domestics, clearly not the children’s’ mothers.
“Your stepfather is one of my interview subjects for that series we talked about.” Lauren turned away and watched Louie. “I met with him the other day.”
“So how did you like the old man?”
“He wasn't what I expected. From what you said the other night, I thought he would be a beast, but he seems pretty charming.”
“I was in a bad mood. I’m sorry I reacted that way. I was out of line. When are you doing the interview?”
“Monday. Do you have any tips for me?”
“Not a clue. I haven't seen him in 12 years.”
“Are you curious about him?”
“Not really. When will they air the segment?”
“Sunday night.”
The shoot with Blair went extremely well. On camera, he was glowing, elegant and articulate. It was easy for Carson to work with him because he was a natural in front of the camera. They started in front of Blair Corporate Headquarters, drove to Water Tower where she interviewed him as they walked down Michigan Avenue, the street he called “his street.” He talked about developing the Magnificent Mile, his love for Chicago, and his commitment to its growth. A presidential candidate would be lucky to be as poised and articulate on camera as he. They drove to his apartment in the Drake Towers to complete the interview. She hadn’t remembered until the moment his wife greeted them at the door, that she had seen him before. It was at the Field Museum Benefit. He was the man talking to the mayor for so long, and she, the woman in the red Oleg Cassini gown. She seemed as enthusiastic to see him as she might have been if he were returning from a month’s journey. While the crew set up lights for the interview, Carson met his wife's daughters. Sasha, the youngest, was about six, with huge black eyes and a head of blonde ringlets. Daryl was nine with those same gigantic eyes and long thick braids. Carson complimented his wife. They were adorable. Little Sasha was so excited about the television cameras in the house that could hardly sit still. She asked Carson if she would to her room to see her new doll.
“Could the doll be on TV?” she asked.
“I don't see why not.” She took Carson’s hand, and took her down a long corridor to the family quarters.
“That's Daryl’s room. It's bigger than mine. Daryl's bedroom looked like the room of a princess. Her bed, in the center of the room, had a pink moiré silk valance suspended from the ceiling; lace curtains surrounded a headboard painted with cherubs and flowers. The room was filled with dolls, the most fantastic collection of dolls Carson had ever seen.
Sasha’s room was similar, only pale yellow. But unlike her older sister, she only had one doll. She handed it to Carson.
“Don’t you think she's beautiful? She's a present from Uncle Victor. I love her.”
When the crew was finished setting up in the living room, they asked Blair to sit in a chair next to the fireplace. He called his stepdaughters.
“Sasha, Daryl. Come sit on Uncle Victor's lap.”
Daryl answered angrily, “I don't want to.”
“Then you won't, dear, “ he said calmly. Come on, Sasha darling. Your friends from school will all see you on TV.”
He lifted Sasha up onto his lap. “This is the most wonderful little girl in the world,” he said and he kissed her tenderly. And you are wonderful too, Daryl,” he said to his older stepdaughter who sat by herself at the other end of the room, appearing to be having a bad day. Carson could see he was irritated with her. She didn’t blame him.
“It's a difficult age,” he said apologetically. “She’ll outgrow it.”
The whole scene seemed idyllic to Carson, who found herself feeling a bit envious. She had wished that she might some day meet a man who would love Zoe the way this man seemed to love his stepdaughters. He was obviously completely enchanted with them. Perhaps Armando would be that man. It was too soon to think about it, although he had phoned her almost every night since she got back to Chicago and he never failed to ask her about Zoe. Suddenly, they were sharing their lives, only sharing them over the phone, but still, they were becoming increasingly close as the weeks went by. Neither could leave their work for a time together right now, but they promised they would make it happen soon.
When the interview with Blair was over, he insisted that the crew stay for lunch. “We’ve all been expecting you to stay, and our cook has prepared a special luncheon in your honor, “Victor’s said,” We’ll all be so disappointed if you don't join us. You do have to eat.”
Carson didn’t want to stay, but he pressed her and, in fact, this was the last location of the day. So the crew had lunch with the Blair family served by two people Blair said had worked for him for the last 20 years. It was a feast, four courses, each exquisitely prepared and presented.
Blair was kind and complimentary, both to his own staff and the crew. That impressed Carson. She was always more interested in the way people treated their help than in how they treated their guests. He seemed an extraordinarily charming and charismatic man. She was most impressed with his relationship with his stepchildren. He was unusually loving and attentive. Sasha was all over him, crawling up on his lap during lunch, her arm around his neck. Her mother told her to get down, but Blair insisted that she stay. The older child remained sullen and quiet. She didn't speak more than a word or two during the entire stay, nor did she seem to touch the food on her plate.
During lunch, Blair asked if Carson had a photograph of Zoe. Coincidentally, Lauren, who was constantly photographing their four little ones, had just given Carson a wonderful picture of Zoe wearing one of her princess getups, this one a short turquoise nightgown, almost the same color as her eyes. She had managed to put at least a dozen colored plastic barrettes in her hair, which was so blonde it looked white.
She said, “This photo makes me laugh every time I look at it,” and she couldn’t help laughing when she showed it to him.
“Why are you laughing?” Blair asked, then put on his reading glasses and looked closer,” Well, perhaps I see,” he said, laughing too,” She is adorable.”
“Girls, look at Carson's daughter. Isn't she cute?” They looked at Zoe’s picture with not much interest. Carson reached for it. “Just a minute,” he said. He held it far away so he could see it better and looked at it for what seemed like an inordinately long time. He smiled. “She’s charming, Carson. You're very lucky.”
Playgroup was at Lauren’s house the next day. Carson held on tightly to Zoe’s hand as they climbed the graceful, but for Carson, always frighteningly dangerous curved marble and steel staircase to the floating balcony-like living room 15 feet above. Even though a barrier of sturdy clear Plexiglas surrounded the perimeter of both the room and staircase, every time she took Zoe to Lauren’s, she felt afraid that one of the children would somehow climb over the edge and get hurt. When she mentioned her fear to Lauren’s husband, Doug, he said: “You sound like my wife. You’re both paranoid. With the Plexiglas surround and the other safety features I put in, the house is as safe as a suburban bungalow.”
When Carson got to the top of the stairs, Lauren carefully unlatched and re-latched the gate. As soon as the children were settled, Katherine brought up the Chicago series. “Congratulations on moving from the bad guys to the good guys. I enjoyed the first interview. Did you see it?” Everyone but Lauren had.
“It was Blair,” Carson said cautiously. “Do you mind if we talk about it?”
“Of course not, go ahead.”
Jess turned to Lauren, and in her typically blunt way, asked, “Why do you hate him so much?”
“I just got carried away the other night. I’m sorry.”
“How old were you when they divorced?” Katherine asked her.
“I was 13 and my sister was 11.”
“You have a sister?” Jess and Katherine said almost in unison. Carson had been surprised when she read in Blair’s bio that his first wife had two daughters. While she assumed that the four new friends couldn’t possibly know everything about each other, she did think that they knew the basics.
“She’s been in a psychiatric hospital since she was nine.”
“That's horrible.” Jessica gasped. “Where?”
“Marionjoy Manor in Wheaton.”
“Do you ever see her?”
“Every week.”
“How bad is she?” Katherine asked sympathetically.
“Very. She’s catatonic, has been for 20 years. She sits in a room just staring straight ahead. The doctors say that she has no idea I’m there, but I don't believe it. I hold her hand and talk to her. Sometimes I feel like she responds, just a little. I think she knows it’s me.”
Jess asked Lauren about her mother and father and Lauren told them the story that Carson already knew, although she hadn't told her she did. She talked about her parents and what she knew about their life before her father died.
“So your mother moved back to Chicago and she married Victor Blair....”
“Three years later. I was five and Ellen was three.”
“He must have been crazy about you,” Jess said. “He looks like he loves little girls.”
Lauren didn't respond. She looked down at her hands. Carson had never noticed it before that her fingernails were chewed away.
“What did you think of him?” Jess asked Carson.
“I hadn’t planned to like him, but I did. He’s a very impressive man, very powerful and at the same time kind. I think he’s a bit of a womanizer.”
“How would you know?” Katherine said laughing.
“My guess is you’d find it to be pretty obvious, but he is charming despite it.”
“Having his little girl on his lap was a very nice touch. Was that your idea?” Katherine asked.
“No, it was his. I had nothing to do with it. He insisted. I was really taken by how cute he was with the girls. He loves those children. That’s what I liked the most about him, how crazy he is about them.” Carson looked at Lauren. She was chewing her nails, staring anxiously at the children who were playing at the other end of the room. It occurred to her that Lauren was upset, but she went on. She should have stopped.
“He’s so sweet with them,” Carson continued. “He calls them over for a kiss or to sit in his lap. It's very cute. The older one was mad about something, so she didn't go near him. But the little one, they were inseparable. He says he tries to spend as much time as he can with the girls. He told me that he has a large estate in Lake Forest the girls love. Their mother doesn't like it, so he makes special time there with the girls. He says they are at an age where they squabble so he takes them one at a time. There is a beautiful pool and a lake on the grounds, gorgeous gardens...”
Carson looked at Lauren. She was perspiring, her face was flushed red. She looked as if she was about to jump out of her skin. Whatever caused her to feel the way she did toward her stepfather wasn’t clear, but Carson realized how insensitive she had been to babble on so thoughtlessly. Not sure that anyone else noticed, she changed the subject as quickly as she could, but it was too late. Lauren was undone and didn't seem to recover. She was jumpy, even yelled at Louie, something they had never seen her do. She seemed relieved when it was time for them to all go home. Jessica and Katherine left with the three girls. Zoe left with home with Katherine to spend the afternoon with Emily.
Carson lingered, hoping she could apologize to Lauren for being so insensitive.
“I’m sorry about the conversation about your stepfather,” she said as soon as the others had left. “I should have realized it might make you feel uncomfortable.”
“Don’t worry about it. I shouldn’t be so emotional. I’m just not feeling well. I think I need to lie down for a while.” They walked to the stairs. “Louie, you stay here. I’m going to walk Carson down. I'll be right back.”
The two women stood and talked at the door. “I just have so many bad memories about that time in my life.” At that moment, Louie cried out to her. “I’m coming Mommy!” The gate was wide open. Louie went careening down the curving two-story staircase, his head repeatedly hitting the marble stairs after he was knocked unconscious with the first blow, his little body rolling lifelessly to the landing.
Chapter 12
Lauren never stopped screaming from the minute Louie head cracked against that first marble stair until the ambulance pulled into the circular driveway of Children’s Memorial Hospital. “I’ve killed my baby. I killed him,” she screamed.
“Can you please try to calm her down?” one of the paramedics asked Carson who squeezed next to Lauren in the ambulance. They could hear Louie’s steady heartbeat amplified by a monitor they quickly attached, but he was unconscious, his skin ashen, almost gray. An oxygen mask covered his tiny face. The paramedics hooked more monitoring equipment to him as the ambulance tore north past Lincoln Park to the hospital
“Lauren, honey, please,” Carson pleaded. “You didn’t kill him. He’s going to be OK. Please try to calm down.”
Two nurses and a doctor ran out to meet the ambulance. Carson and Lauren followed as the paramedics raced Louie on the stretcher to the emergency room. They were taking his vitals and yelling information to each other as they ran along the side of the stretcher. At one point Louie’s little arm fell lifeless off the side of the stretcher. Carson could feel Lauren flinch as if someone had kicked her in the stomach.
“Mrs. Hutchinson, do you have a doctor here at Children’s?”
“Dr. Rice,” she said.
“And, please,” I said. “Page Dr. Phillips, Alex Phillips.”
“Is he also the child’s doctor?”
“No.” Carson said, “He's a close friend.”
They pulled a curtain around the examining area where Louie was taken. There were at least 10 doctors and nurses around the table, all moving with urgency and rehearsed precision. More were coming, bringing equipment on carts. A nurse took Lauren's hands, and said very gently, “Mrs. Hutchinson, it would better if you would sit out in the waiting room. I promise, we will take the best care possible of your son.”
Carson led Lauren out into the waiting room. All the life had been drained out of her. Carson too felt like she was floating in space. The image of Louie careening down those stairs kept flashing in front of her eyes. She shared Lauren’s terror as if he were her own child. She shared the guilt for not noticing that they had left the gate open and for not being able to move fast enough to save him. Would he live? If he did, how much damage had been done to his brain, to his spinal cord? What would be left of the bright, forever-in-motion little boy? Would they ever hear that throaty, sweet laugh again, watch him run to catch a ball? Would he able to learn to read, to walk again, to speak?
Alex got off the elevator and raced into the waiting room. He didn't see them.
“Alex, we’re here,” Carson called to him. He put his arms around Lauren and she disintegrated into tears.
“He'll be OK, Lauren. Just try to hold on.” He held her close to him and she sobbed into his chest. “I’m going to see what’s going on. Carson, can you stay?”
“I wouldn’t leave her for anything in the world.”
As he walked away, Carson lost control and couldn't hold back her tears. “I’m sorry, Lauren you don't need me to do this. I’m so sorry.”
“Please Carson, I am just so grateful that you are here with me.” They stood sobbing, their arms around each other. After a few moments, Jessica and Katherine arrived. Lauren’s housekeeper had phoned.
“He's going to be OK,” Carson said, lying to them as she was to herself. She explained what had happened, but had no answers to their questions about his condition. They stopped asking and the four found a corner to sit together in the crowded waiting room. Jess and Carson sat on either side of Lauren, holding her hands; Katherine sat at her feet. “He'll be OK. I know he’ll be OK,” they kept repeating like a prayer.
Children, with runny noses and hacking coughs played around them in the toy-filled waiting room. The television’s unceasing babble lulled waiting parents and children, their eyes fixed to the screen. Some slumpted over, sleeping in their chairs. Others held sick children in their arms, worried, powerless. The sun poured in through the large picture windows. After a while, they were too numb to speak. It seemed like hours later when Alex came out of the emergency room and walked toward them. They leaped up to hear what they hoped would be good news. He tried to smile, but his face revealed the truth they did not want to hear.
“His vitals are stable, his heart, his lungs. We’ve x-rayed every inch of his body. There are some broken bones, the tibia of his left leg and his right shoulder, his skull is fractured, but there is no injury to his spine or his neck.”
“Has he woken?” Lauren asked anxiously.
“No, not yet.” You could tell that he was trying to think of something upbeat to say, but he couldn't seem to find the words.
“Is he going to be OK? Please, just tell me the truth, Alex,” her voice was filled with terror.
He looked directly into her eyes, and said very gently, “I wish I could tell you, Lauren. But there is no way of knowing at this point. Bill Seymour is with him. He’s one of the best pediatric neurologists in the world. We’re doing everything we can. I know how terrible this is for you and I want to be able to tell you that he’s going to be fine, but we just don’t know yet. We just have to be patient.”
The four followed Alex into the brightly lit emergency room. There were large murals of clowns and animals, and in spite of the fact that most of the children being cared for in this facility were gravely ill, there was a cheerful, almost festive atmosphere. Carson appreciated living so close to Children's Memorial, one of the best children’s hospitals in the world, but had hoped she would never have to see the inside. He led them past dozens of children being treated in curtained-off beds to the small room where Louie lay motionless, the lights dimmed. He was wired to several beeping machines. The only one Carson recognized was an intravenous line. His face was badly bruised, but some of the color had come back. They were supplementing his breathing with oxygen. His leg had already been set in a cast and a restraining device held his head and neck in place. His hands were in restraints to keep him from pulling at the tubing if he woke. Two young nurses were attaching small suction devises to his forehead when they entered.
Lauren started to cry hysterically when she saw him. He looked so helpless. A physician poured over a printout of the EEG, looked up at the four terrified-looking women, not knowing which was the mother of his patient. Alex said, “Dr. Seymour, this is Lauren Hutchinson, Louie's mother. This is my wife, Katherine, and our friends Carson Brown and Jessica Kingman.”
Dr. Seymour’s explanation of Louie’s condition was not any more satisfying than what Alex had told them.
“You must know more.” Lauren said. “Please tell me what’s going on.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Hutchinson, it’s all we can tell you. We are going to move him up to the intensive care unit in a few minutes. Dr. Phillips has requested a private room. We’ll just have to watch him and wait.”
Lauren turned to her friends. “You ought to go home. Really I’m fine and you’ve…”
Jess interrupted her. “There’s no way you’re going to kick us out of here.”
“We're not leaving,” Katherine said.
“But you all need to see your kids.”
“Alex is going home to have dinner with Emily and once he gets her into bed, he’s coming back,” Katherine said.
Carson told her that she had phoned Jess’s house and Zoe was spending the night She asked to talk to Zoe, who said she didn’t have time to talk to her because she was too busy playing. “So forget about getting rid of us,” Carson said. “We’re not leaving you until Doug gets here.”
When Doug did not arrive, Carson called his office. His secretary said she would track him down. She didn’t tell her how serious Louie’s condition was, just that he had suffered a bad fall and that they were in the emergency room at Children’s. She phoned his office a few more times, and each time his secretary said she had given him the message.
At about seven, transport took Louie to a private room in intensive care. The nurses gently lifted him into a hospital bed and reattached the monitoring equipment that registered information on the screens in his room and on the monitor at the nurse’s station. They pulled up the safety bars on his bed and latched them into place.
“Oh God,” Lauren began sobbing again. “He might never come out of this.”
In fact, there was no way to tell how much damage had been done. There was some reassurance in the unnerving but constant beeping, the replication of his heartbeat on the heart monitor, the signal when medication passed through the intravenous feeding tube, the sound of his hollow breathing amplified by the supplemental breathing device. Lauren stood in the doorway, her hand squeezing her jaw, watching. Katherine stood close behind her, as if she might fall. It was an hour before the nurses finished settling him in to the room. Doug was still not there.
Carson phoned their house. The Hutchinson’s’ housekeeper answered. “Alice, have you heard from Mr. Hutchinson?”
“Nothing. Is the baby alright?” she asked fearfully.
“We’re not sure. I’ll phone you if we have any news. Can you see if you can find out where Mr. Hutchinson is?”
“I’m sorry. I have no idea how to find him. Sometimes,” she hesitated, “he just goes away.” Her voice trailed off.
The nurse turned down the overhead lights in the room. There was a recliner chair for Lauren and they brought in three more chairs for the others. Lauren couldn’t sit. She paced back and forth. Jess suggested they walk down the corridor, but she said she couldn’t leave the room.
When Alex returned, he gave Lauren a supportive hug and kissed Katherine. He listened to Louie’s heart and then touched his cheek. He examined him lightly and stood for a minute looking down at him. Carson wondered if he was silently saying a prayer. He turned around quickly and studied the notations made during the last hour in Louie’s chart.
“Nothing’s changed,” he said. “At least, we have no bad news. Have you eaten anything?”
“Not really,” Katherine said. “Just coffee.”
“Dr. Seymour’s taking care of Louie, but I’m the doctor for the four of you. You have to eat, especially you, Lauren. You need your strength.”
“I'll go down and get something from the cafeteria,” Jess offered.
Alex put his hand on Lauren’s shoulder. “Come on, Lauren, I’m taking you for a little walk, just for a minute. I want to talk to you.”
“I can't leave the room, Alex. I really can't.”
“Just a short walk. Katherine and Carson will stay in the room with Louie.”
They walked the long corridor, Alex’s arm around her shoulder. From his hand gestures, it appeared he was explaining something technical to her. She looked up at him and then nodded her head to say she understood. He put his arm around her again as they continued to walk.
“What a wonderful man he is, Katherine,” Carson said.
“He’s a very good friend.”
“And I am sure, a good doctor,” Carson said.
“It’s friends she needs now, she needs us all now,” Katherine said.
“Where the hell is Doug?” she whispered, though Lauren and Alex were still quite far down the corridor.
“I don’t know. I called his office three times. His secretary said she gave him the message. I called Alice and she said that he hasn’t come home. Do you think something is wrong with him, too?”
“I think something’s always been wrong with him,” she said angrily.
When they returned to the room, Lauren sat down for the first time as close to the bed as she could get. Doctors came and went. Every few minutes, Lauren stood and touched Louie’s face, “Mommy’s here, sweetheart. Please wake up, just for a minute.” She stroked his face and ran her fingers down his arm, softly touching his little hands that lay so lifelessly at his sides. She took his hand in hers. “Wake up, darling,” she begged him, tears running down her cheeks.
Visiting hours ended, but they didn't move from their chairs. A while later, a nurse came in and said it might be a good idea for them to leave and get some sleep. They didn't expect anything to change that night. No one budged.
“I’m not leaving my child,” Lauren jumped at her.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Hutchinson. Of course you’ll stay. This chair will recline so you can sleep, but perhaps your friends can go home.”
“We’re her family,” Carson said. The words came out without thinking about them, but that’s what they were. They were her sisters and were not going to leave her.
The phone in the room rang at about 11. Lauren picked it up. It was Doug.
“It’s not good, Doug.” Through her sobbing she tried to describe what happened. “No, they don't know. No, I'm sorry. No, they don't know. I’m sorry, Doug. No. Yes I did. No, I am careful. Please Doug.”
Although the others were sitting several feet away, they could hear him shouting. She dropped the phone and fell to the ground, her sobs loud and mournful. Jess ran to her and wrapped her arms around her. She held her, rocking her in her arms like a baby.
Carson picked up the receiver, which was dangling off the wall. “Hello Doug. It's Carson.”
“What the fuck did that stupid bitch do to my son?” he yelled so loud she had to move the receiver away from her ear. “What the hell did that fucking idiot do?”
“She didn’t do anything, Doug. It was an accident.”
He yelled, “She’s not fit to be a mother!”
“Doug, calm down. It isn't anyone’s fault.” Her hands were shaking. She wanted to scream back, to say, “Where are you, you asshole? It’s your fault for making her try to raise a child in that dangerous monument to your fucking steel fortune,” but she controlled herself and asked calmly, “Doug, when are you coming?”
“I’ll be there tomorrow.”
"Tomorrow? Where are you?" she said incredulously.
“None of your fucking business, Carson,” he said and slammed down the phone.
It was a very long night. No one slept, not even for a minute. By morning nothing had changed. There were more tests, more doctors. Louie just lay there, his eyes closed, without the slightest movement of a finger, an eyelid. It was terrifying. Lauren became increasingly more fragile. She sat listless in her chair, her eyes fixed on her child. They took turns talking to him, hoping that he could hear. Carson had to go to work; her schedule that week filled with interviews that could not be rescheduled. She had called in to cancel the day before, but there was no way she could do it again today. Today they would tape another interview for the “Who Runs Chicago” series, a man named William Peterson, the Chairman of Reliable Life Insurance. Jess and Katherine would stay.
She hugged them all when she left, promising to be back later. “I love you Lauren,” she said and realized as the words came out of her mouth, how much she did. She loved them all.
Carson phoned the hospital every hour throughout the day. There was no change. She stopped at home to spend some time with Zoe before going back that night.
There was a message from Armando on her answering machine. David had called him to tell him about Louie’s accident.
“I wish I could be there,” he said. “Perhaps there is some way I can help you and your friend.” Indeed, she wished that there were something he could do. Of course there wasn’t. Even more, she longed to see him. He offered to come but having him in Chicago right now would be impossible. Carson could barely make enough time to see Zoe, let alone the man who she would now admit had swept her off her feet.
Millie was settled on the couch when Carson left. She brought along clothes to spend the night. The next day, Millie moved in permanently. “You need to be with your friend right now and it’s easy for me to stay here. “ It was never in Carson’s plan, but Millie’s decision was a godsend, especially during the roller-coaster months that would follow.
When Carson got back to the hospital, Doug was pacing back and forth outside the room. He apologized as soon as he saw her. “Carson, forgive me, I was so upset last night. I didn't mean to talk to you that way.”
“I understand, Doug. How is he?”
“No change. You were there when it happened?”
“Yes. Where's Lauren?” She didn't want to discuss it with him. He pointed to the room.
When Carson entered, Lauren got out of her chair very slowly. Her eyes were swollen and red. Carson put her arms around her. Her body felt as limp and lifeless as her comatose son. Katherine and Jess were both there.
We’re taking turns talking to him. I think he hears us,” Jess said. There was no indication that there was any response. He looked exactly as he did when Carson left that morning.
His cheeks were warm when Carson touched them, but his skin was pale, almost waxy. They had removed the oxygen and he was breathing on his own. Someone had parted his blonde hair and combed it to the side. The tracks left by the comb were still in his hair.
“Louie, sweet baby,” Jess said. “Louie it’s me, Jess. Sophie says I should tell you to come over to our house. She wants to play with you, Louie. She wants to go to the zoo with you and Zoe and Em and see the baby elephant.”
“Any news?” Carson asked Lauren. Jess kept talking to Louie.
“Nothing.”
“What do they say?”
“He may wake up at any moment and be perfect. Or he may never wake up again.” She looked at Carson with horror. “I can't believe this is happening. They can't tell how much damage has been done, Carson. They still can’t tell me anything.”
Alex walked in. “Why don't they know anything, Alex? I just don't get it.” Lauren said.
“The brain, Lauren, it’s a mystery, the most mysterious part of the human body. We just don't understand it yet. We are light-years ahead in our understanding of virtually every other organ. But for the brain, the technology just isn't there, for diagnosis, even for totally understanding its functions, how it heals, why it heals. There is just no way of assessing what damage is done. It’s possible that everything is going to be fine. We have to pray for that. They are doing everything they can. We just have to wait and watch.”
Lauren had the strength and presence to say, “Alex, I can't believe you are here again. Don't you have any other patients?”
He looked down at Louie “This guy is my most important patient.”
“You haven’t gone home,” Carson said to Lauren. She was still wearing the clothes she had on yesterday. “Why don't you go home and rest? I’m going to spend the night. Millie’s moved in.”
Doug, who had been smoking in the family-waiting lounge, came back into the room. He did not acknowledge the others or even look at Louie.
“Alex, may I talk to you for a few minutes?” he asked. Doug looked awful. No matter what was going on with him, they knew he loved his child.
Doug and Alex walked down the long hall together. When they finished, Doug came back into the room and walked over to the foot of his son’s bed, standing silently for a few moments before. He did not acknowledge Lauren, but turned to the others and said: “It's silly for me to stay. You’re all here.”
Lauren looked at him like a worried mother. “Get some rest, Doug,” she said.
“I’ll see you in the morning.” He nodded not looking at her. There was no goodbye kiss, not even a comforting pat on the back. He grabbed his briefcase and stomped out of the room.
None of them had slept. When the lights went off on the floor, the four friends fell asleep in their chairs. Through the night, they heard the nurses and doctors come and go. At one point, Alex came in with a resident and brought bedrolls from the resident's lounge. The four slept on the floor. When Carson woke up at about five, Lauren was sitting in a chair next to Doug’s bed. The guardrail was down and she rested her head at his side.
“Anything?” Carson asked.
“Nothing.” Tears rolled down her face.
“You didn't sleep at all?” Carson asked.
“Just for a minute.”
“You can’t go on without sleep.”
“Neither can you, Carson. I can't believe that you are all still here.”
The three never did leave her. They kept a vigil. During the next two weeks, at least one of them was always at her side. Doug was in and out, but pretty much on his normal work schedule. They picked up clothing and meals, whatever she needed.
Alex came frequently throughout the day and night to check on Louie, each time talking to the silent little boy. “Louie, it’s me, your buddy Alex. I’ve got a message for you from Emily,” or something like that.
Jess’s husband, David, came often too. Both men included Zoe in the extra time they were spending with their daughters to make up for the time Jess and Katherine spent with Lauren. Louie remained the same, absolutely still except for his slow, steady breathing.
They were there together every day. They watching him, praying for the tiniest movement, some kind of sign that he would be OK and they talked. Some of their conversations lasted a few minutes, some hours. They tried to avoid painful topics; but it was hard to do. As the days went on, the chances of a full recovery seemed slim. They tried to be upbeat, to keep their hopes up, but they were all depressed and afraid.
One night Jess came into to the hospital room grinning. She had stopped at Carson’s house on her way over to drop off Sophie for an overnight with Zoe and Millie. She had a small gift box from Tiffany’s in her hand.
“You're in trouble, Carson,” she said.
Carson had no idea what she was talking about.
“What is going on? Your baby-sitter said that someone has been calling and sending flowers. This came from him. Is it Armando? Your house looks like a florist’s shop.”
“No.”
“Then who?
“Just forget about it, Jess,” Carson said irritably.
“I’m not going to forget about it.”
Katherine echoed Jess's teasing, both of them hoping for something happy to talk about.
It wasn't a happy subject. Lauren's stepfather, Victor Blair, had been sending flowers since a few days after the show aired, the first bouquet arriving, ironically, the day that Louie fell. The last thing she wanted to talk to Lauren about was Victor Blair.
“Just open it.” Jess handed Carson the box.
“I'm not going to,” Carson said angrily.
“Come on,” Jess said. “Who is it?”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Just drop it, Jess. This is someone I want to get rid of, someone who has been bothering me.”
“Well it looks like he won't take no for an answer,” Jess said.
The first bouquet seemed like a nice gesture. It was accompanied by a polite thank-you note. Carson didn’t think about it. She was so involved with Louie’s accident, trying to make arrangements for Zoe so she could be with Lauren as much as possible. A day later another bouquet arrived. The note read, “You should always be surrounded by beauty.” It was harmless, but annoying. She didn't want to have anything to do with Blair and thought if she ignored him, he would go away. The flowers kept coming. Carson told Millie that if another came, she should send it back.
Lauren smiled at Carson. “OK, just tell us. We shouldn't have any secrets from one another.”
Talking about this to Lauren was the last thing Carson wanted to do. She was certain that it was something that she had said about Blair that led to Louie’s tragic accident. Something she had said had upset Lauren so much that she forgot to close the gate.
“It's that damned Victor Blair. I really didn't want to talk about it with you, Lauren. He keeps sending me flowers. I thought if I ignored him, he would stop.”
Lauren looked horrified; Jess didn’t notice.
“It looks like he is trying a new tack.” Jess said.” He wasn’t winning you over with the flowers and jewelry. Now he’s trying to win Zoe over with toys.”
“Toys for Zoe?” Carson was furious. “What do you mean, toys to Zoe?”
“She already opened the present. Millie told me a huge box came today, a whole zoo of stuffed animals from FAO Schwartz.”
“Keep him away from Zoe. Keep him away from her!” Lauren shouted. “Stay away from him, Carson!” Her pitch was escalating. “Promise me you’ll stay away from him. Keep Zoe away from him. Whatever you do, don’t let him touch her. Don’t let him touch her,” she said urgently. “Promise me, Carson. Promise me, you won’t let him near her.” She began to sob, deep horrible sobs.
“I have no intention of ever letting Zoe near Blair. I have no intention of ever seeing him again myself. Lauren, please stop crying. I won’t let him near her.”
“He’ll hurt her, Carson, Keep her away from him, “ she became hysterical. Of course, she hadn’t slept a more than a few hours for almost two weeks. They couldn’t calm her down. Now her crying was escalated to wailing. If they couldn’t calm her soon, they would need someone to come in and medicate her.
“Don’t let him. Don’t let him near her.” She was writhing as if in pain. It was frightening for them to see her so out of control.
“I hurt everyone. I hurt my baby.”
“You don't hurt anyone. It was an accident. You’re just exhausted,” Jess said.
“It’s my fault. I hurt everyone I love.”
Katherine held her. She seemed to fall apart in her arms.
Then they heard it. Louie's little, throaty voice, thick with sleep: “Mommy? Please, Mommy, don't cry.”
Chapter 13
To say that life went back to normal after that moment couldn’t be further from the truth. What the women had no way of knowing was that nothing would ever be normal again. Louie did not leap out of bed ready to play. His road back to health was long and difficult; it would take months until a full assessment could be made. At first, Lauren was the only person Louie recognized. His speech was halting and slurred. While Carson, Katherine and Jess went back to their routines, visiting the hospital only during visiting hours, instead of using it as their residence, the tension they felt never lifted. Their fears for Louie exacerbated the new anxiety they all felt about the safety of their own children. Since the accident, their little ones seemed so much more vulnerable and fragile. They kept their eyes glued to their little girls as they played, cautiously watching strangers who came near. They held their breath when one of the children climbed the big slide or the jungle gym and held on to their little hands even more tightly as they crossed the streets. The memory of Louie’s lifeless body careening down that staircase repeated over and over in Carson’s mind and woke her in the night. More often than not, in those dreams, it was Zoe who was falling; and always in the dream, Carson was frozen, unable to move and save her.
A few days after Louie was released from the hospital, they had their first playgroup since his fall. It was touching to see how excited the little girls were to see their playmate and how surprisingly sensitive they were to his, hopefully, only temporary limitations. They approached him cautiously, and even as he grew stronger, they continued to be gentle and more nurturing to the boy who had been the most rambunctious member of their group. Soon, he started being Louie again.
Every time Louie mastered something they had all taken for granted before seemed like a reason for the four friends to celebrate. One afternoon, Jess proposed a dinner out to celebrate Louie’s splendid recovery. Lauren had not left his side since the fall.
“It’s been a long time,” Katherine said. “What do you think, Lauren?”
“I’m not ready to leave him,” she replied glumly as she observed the children play. “I’ll celebrate when I know he is really OK.”
“Well,” Jess said, “then how about just dinner, the four of us, anywhere but in a hospital room.”
“We’ll bring dinner to your house.” Carson said. ” I’ll pick up something great. Is Doug home?”
“No, he’s still out of town.”
“Where this time?” Jess asked.
“I have no idea.”
None of them said anything, but they all shared the same reaction, how could she put up with him?
“It’s actually easier when he is gone.” Lauren said. “He is still so angry at me for the accident.”
“He’s such an asshole,” Katherine said. She had been biting her lip, but she couldn’t hold back.
“No, Katherine, he’s right. It was my fault.”
“It was not your fault, Lauren. That house is an accident waiting to happen. You’ve been trying to get him to move out of there from the moment you conceived Louie.”
It was obvious that Doug was a topic Lauren didn’t want to discuss, but Katherine wouldn’t let it go. “At some point you will deal with it. You can’t keep pretending he’s a husband; he’s not.”
“You don’t have to deal with it right now,” Carson interrupted. “Just start taking better care of yourself and having some fun.”
When they got to Lauren’s roof that night, the sun was setting over the city. The thick, gassy pollution from the heavy industry on the southwest side hung in the air and intensified Chicago’s stunning summer sunset. The sky was streaked bright orange and flaming red. A jet flew on a landing path toward O’Hare, a soft plume of white trailing behind. This time they brought bathing suits. It had been unbearably hot all week, with the heat index reaching 101 that day. Mercifully, the city began to cool as the sun set. As they submerged into the tub, Katherine said, “OK everyone, we can all takes whining. Lauren, you go first. You’re the winner of this month’s right-to-feel-sorry-for-yourself contest.”
“It's hard to complain when you put it that way,” she said. “Louie and I have been the focus of the last six weeks of all of your lives. Let’s talk about the three of you tonight. Louie and I will be fine.”
“OK then,” Katherine said. “It’s my turn. I don't know what’s wrong with me. I feel like there’s an enemy lurking around every corner.” She pulled herself up on the rim of the tub. The hot, bubbling water made the sweltering night air feel cool by comparison.
“It's not just you,” Carson said.
“Seems like we’re all feeling the same way,” Katherine said. I don’t even know what’s bothering me. I just feel like something is wrong.”
Anyone looking down from the surrounding high-rises at the four lovely young women in that idyllic flower-filled roof garden would never be able guess they had anything to complain about. But how would they know? Even up close, the people we think we know best have secret dreams and horrors we would never imagine.
“If no one else wants to start, I will,” Jess said. “I made another attempt to contact my parents.”
“What made you do that?” Katherine asked, looking surprised.
“I don't know, probably the accident. A sense that in a heartbeat, something could happen to them to one of them and I’d never see them again; or that just maybe they’ve changed their minds and want to see their granddaughter. I still send pictures every month. They don’t come back, so they must have them. I imagine my mother running out to the mailbox, hiding the envelope with my handwriting, and opening it alone in a room with a closed door, kissing Sophie’s little face.”
“What happened when you called?” Laura asked.
"My mother answered the phone. I could tell that she wanted to talk to me, but she was quiet. I guess my father was in the room. I talked to her for a few minutes. I just kept babbling. I was so excited that she stayed on the line. My father grabbed the phone and said, ‘Jessica, is that you?’
“I said, ‘Yes, Daddy, it's me. How are you?’
“’It’s none of your business,’ he said. ‘I meant it when I told you that we don't want anything to do with you and your Jew-boy husband. Don’t you call us again.’ Then he slammed down the phone.”
“I hate your parents,” Carson said.
“I wish I did. That would make it so much easier, but I am just so hurt.
“You should stop being hurt,” Katherine said, “and get angry. You have to learn to get angry. If you don't, you are going to make yourself sick again. You’ll turn all that anger on yourself, just like you did when you went into that depression. Learn to be nasty, instead of being so sickeningly sweet all the time? You’re beginning to sound like a marshmallow-mouthed Southerner.”
“She’s right, Carson said, “Just try it.”
Jess took a deep breath and said, “I hate my father.”
“Good,” Katherine said, “Now nastier.”
“I’d like to kick him in the face,” and uncomfortably,” throw him down the stairs. I wish ...You know, this doesn’t really work for me. I’ll try, but right now I’d like to change the subject.” They were silent for a moment and Jess asked Carson, “Whatever happened with Victor Blair? Did you ever get him off your back?”
Carson looked at Lauren nervously. “It’s OK,” Lauren said. “I’d like to know what happened, too. Didn't you say that he had sent you flowers or something like that?” It appeared that was all she remembered of that conversation in the hospital just before Louie woke up.
“He's still harassing me. I asked him to please stop, but he keeps sending flowers and gifts. He’s called several times.” Carson watched Lauren’s face for signs that she should stop. She looked confused, as if she had no memory of what had been said before.
“Why don't you just tell him to fuck off?” Katherine asked.
“I’ve tried to, but I couldn’t use your words, exactly.”
“Why not?”
"It turns out that after his interview aired, Blair bought three million dollars of the station’s air time to advertise his Riverfront development. He wrote to tell me about it. I wrote him back a short, polite note saying how pleased and asking him to please stop contacting me.”
“And?”
“He didn't. They keep coming, flowers and gifts, phone calls. I had a meeting with Stu to ask him about how I could handle the situation, especially the gifts for Zoe.”
“Gifts for Zoe?” Lauren said alarmed. “Has he given Zoe gifts?”
Carson didn’t answer. Lauren obviously had blocked everything that had been said that night in the hospital.
She tried to not answer. Lauren didn’t buy it. “Carson, tell me what happened.”
Carson shook her head. “Just forget it. It was nothing.”
“No,” Lauren insisted. “You need to tell me what happened.”
Carson was afraid of a replay.
“I can tell that you’re upset,” Lauren said. “Just tell me.”
Carson’s eyes darted from Jess to Katherine. She wondered if they had the same thoughts she did. It was a judgment call: If she told her the truth, she could open the wound all over again. But as she looked into Lauren’s eyes, she knew she had no choice. She told her the truth and repeated what she had told them all the night at the hospital. She repeated everything, the flowers, the notes, and the gifts, the toys for Zoe. Lauren didn’t take her eyes off of Carson as she spoke. She kept nodding her head but didn’t say a word.
“I asked my boss how I could get rid of him without making a problem for the station. He told me, ‘It's not just the station that would have problem if you try to get rid of him, it will be bad for you. Why me? I asked him. He said, Blair is a friend of Ted Ahern, the head of ABC-TV Chicago, and Ahern is looking at your contract right now. If I were you, I would just play it cool for a while.’”
Katherine was outraged. “Does that mean he expects you to put up with that jackass?”
“That’s what it means.”
“You can’t do that, Carson. You don’t have to put up with this kind of shit,” Katherine said. “Get rid of him. If they won’t let you, we’ll sue the station.”
The sky was darkening the red fading to streaks of purple in deep smokey blue.
“I can't. I can’t afford to lose my job.”
"They can’t fire you for that, Carson,” Katherine said. “There are laws that protect women from jerks like him.”
“You can’t protect anyone from Victor Blair,” Lauren said.
“What are you talking about, Lauren?” Katherine said.
“He's unstoppable. He has too much power.”
“Tell me what you mean by that,” Katherine said.
“Maybe we should drop this,” Carson interrupted.
“We shouldn’t drop it,” Katherine snapped back.
“What is he doing now?” Lauren asked calmly.
“He keeps calling me and sending gifts. I told him as nicely as I could that I don't go out with married men, but he seems to pretend he can't hear that. I feel like I’m trapped. I’d like to kill this guy and I can’t even be rude to him. He says: ‘I just want to be your friend. All I want is for you to spend a day in the country with me.’ That sounds pretty innocent. It’s not like he’s suggesting anything romantic, nothing like that. He says, ‘All I am asking you for is to come spend a few hours with me and bring your little girl with you.’”
“Don’t let Zoe near him,” Lauren said, her voice quivering.
“I don’t intend to.”
“He’s a dangerous man.”
“That’s what you were saying at the hospital the night that Louie came out of the coma. You may not remember, Lauren.”
“I don’t,” she said, uncomfortably. “What did I say?”
Carson was nervous about answering, but she did. “You just kept repeating, ‘Keep Zoe away from Blair. He'll hurt her.’ You made me promise that I wouldn't let him near her.”
“Oh God!” Lauren gasped.
Carson said: “I don’t understand Lauren. Please tell us why you feel the way you do about him?”
They all knew they were reaching into dangerous territory and Jess interrupted Carson and said: “Lauren, you don’t have to revisit this now. You’ve been through enough. You don’t have to talk about it.”
“You’re wrong. It's important for me to tell you, that I tell you everything. I haven’t talked about any of this with anyone in the world, only my sister’s doctors.” She stopped talking, cupped water in her hands and splashed it over her head.
“What doctors?” Jess asked.
“My sister’s psychiatrists.”
And then she told them her story. She spoke with no emotion, her voice steady and calm. “When I was six years old, Uncle Victor, that’s what I called him, took me to Swan’s Landing, his estate in Lake Forest he told you about, Carson. I loved Uncle Victor. No one had ever been as nice to me as he was. He invited me to have a special day alone with him and of course, I said yes. He said it would be a wonderful day, just the two of us. He had the best car, a big vintage Mercedes convertible, black with deep and wide camel leather seats and interiors. I believe he still has it. I’ve seen it parked in the driveway of his building.
“We drove north on Lake Shore Drive from our apartment along the lakefront, past the city. It was spring and the lake was turquoise blue. That was my favorite color. On the way we sang songs. He taught me show tunes from ‘Oklahoma’ and ‘My Fair Lady,’ and songs from plays that were on Broadway long before any of us were born. He let me sit in the front seat right next to him. I could never sit there when my mother was with us. It was her seat. ‘Today,’ he said, ‘my little flower, it’s our day. You sit next to me up here. We will do anything you want.’
“We drove north along the lake, past the city into Evanston, and he stopped the car at a shop he said had the best ice cream in the entire world. I had two scoops, strawberry and chocolate. I was a very happy child.
“We sat on a bench outside of the ice cream parlor. He held my hand and I held the cone in the other. When the ice cream dripped, he used his soft linen handkerchief to wipe my face. Some fell on my dress and my leg. He wiped it gently away. My mother would have been angry, but he was always so kind. ‘Don't worry,’ he said, ‘ice cream washes away. If not I'll buy you a new dress. When you are with Uncle Victor, don't worry about getting dirty. When you are with me, you can do anything and have anything you want.’
“We drove north along the lake past Northwestern University, and that big white Baha’i Temple that looks like the Taj Mahal, and past the big beautiful houses on the shore. Then we turned left toward Lake Forest. It’s strange how I remember it so vividly. It was the most beautiful day. The windows were open and we sang all the way. The wind blew my skirt up around my shoulders and we both laughed. Uncle Victor put his soft hand on my thigh. I remember how big and warm it felt. We drove and sang until we reached his estate. ‘Ah, look where we are, little one, Swan’s Landing.’ There was a man at the gate. ‘Hello Mr. Blair, good to see you, and is this your little girl?’
“‘Yes, this is little Lauren.’ Uncle Victor was nice to everyone. It seemed to me that he was the nicest man in the world.
“He opened the gate and we drove down the long, winding road to the main house. The house looks like Chambord, the chateau in the Loire Valley. To me then, it was the magic castle, a place where the king and queen and princesses lived. It was spring. I remember the flowers, forsythia, rosy magnolias, daffodils and tulips in bloom. When we parked, he got out and walked around the car to open the door to help me out.
“He bowed. ‘Princess Lauren, I believe.’
“‘Right as usual, King Victor.’ It was a game we played.
“I loved the house. We had been there many times, of course, but always with my mother and sister. This was the first time we went alone. Uncle Victor took my hand and said, ‘A walk, your highness,’ and hand in hand we strolled down the long path to the garden house next to the pond, the pond where the swans come every spring. They were there. We sat on the stone bench and watched the swans. The babies swam behind their beautiful mothers.
“He kissed me on my mouth. My mother didn’t like that; she didn't believe in kissing children on the mouth, but Victor did it all the time. After a while, he took me into the garden house. There was a big old wicker rocking chair next to a picture window overlooking the pond. He asked me to come sit on his lap. I nuzzled back into his arms and laid my head of his chest and he rocked me back and forth in the chair. I loved the way he smelled, his cologne mixed with the musty smell of cigarettes. Does he still smoke, Carson?”
She nodded yes.
“I felt safe and cared for. He touched me very softly, running his hand slowly up and down my legs. He asked me if I wanted him to take off my shoes and socks.
He took them off and massaged my feet. It felt very good. Then he reached his hand under my dress. It was loose, probably one of those smocked Polly Flinders dresses I seemed to be wearing in all the pictures that were taken of me when I was that age. His hand was large, probably almost the size of my back. He massaged me gently. He massaged me all over my body. I liked the way it felt.
“Then he put his hand into my panties, softly touching my bottom, then slipping his finger into the crack. It was strange, but it didn't feel bad. He rubbed me there. I don't know for how long.”
“But you remember the feeling of it?” Katherine asked.
“Yes and it didn't really feel bad. He took off my dress and my panties, very gently really, like a father getting a child ready for bed. I know it is normal for children to forget these experiences, but I remember every second. I remember it like it was yesterday.”
No one spoke. It seemed like all of the sounds of the city had silenced, the traffic, the voices of the people on the streets below, everything. All they heard was Lauren’s story. They clung to every word.
“We sat that way for a long time. He held me and with his fingers explored every part of my body, inside and out. Then he dressed me.
“He said, ‘Would you like to come here again my little princess?’ Of course I agreed.
“Then he gave me a doll, a big doll with blue eyes, her eyelids closed when I laid her down. She was dressed in a white net gown with a beaded veil. She was most beautiful doll I had ever seen.
“That was the beginning of it. Victor took me to the garden house every week. I have read and have been told by Ellen’s doctors that most children blot out these memories. I never have. I remember it all exactly. Not every time, not every incident, but I remember what his hands felt like, what it felt like when he pushed his penis inside me when I was eight. I remember that first time. It hurt and I cried, but he was so pleased and grateful.
“Sometimes my mother and sister came to the estate for the weekends, but the time in the garden house was just Uncle Victor and me. As time went on, he did more and more to me. I remember once he asked me to stand naked on the table. It was a round white wicker table with a glass top. ‘Open your legs for Uncle Victor,’ he said, and he put his tongue inside my vagina and licked me until I was wet.
“‘I will never hurt you,’ he said, but I didn’t know what he meant. I didn’t know he was hurting me. I didn't know how much damage he had already done. By the time I was nine, he had entered every orifice of my body, performed every kind of act it was possible to perform on someone so small. But always, it was with words of love and ceremony and gifts. It was our secret, he told me. I must never tell anyone or they wouldn’t let us come here, especially not my mother. He would say, ‘She would be very jealous if she knew I loved you more than her.’
Lauren’s friends broke down, weeping in the still water like little girls who had been left alone in the night.
“Let’s get out of this tub,” They wrapped themselves in oversized towels and settled into four chairs around a small table. They faced each other, drained.
She continued: “Each time I would go with him, he would give me a doll to take home to our apartment. By the time I was 10 years old, I had hundreds of dolls, the most beautiful dolls that money could buy. I have no idea where he got them. My mother had shelves built. They circled my room. Every time I entered that room the dolls would stare at me with those dead, blank eyes. But I was proud of them; my friends envied me.
“As the years went on I started to hate the dolls. I began destroying them, smashing their heads, ripping out their hair and cutting up their dresses. I was punished for being so destructive, but I never stopped. I started behaving badly in school, not doing my work, being caustic with teachers and other children. The school recommended that I see a child psychiatrist. He was a very kind and gentle man, but I refused to speak to him and soon I stopped going. My behavior got worse; I was always distracted, unable to concentrate, maybe I still am. I am not sure my mother even noticed.
“When I was about 11, I began to realize that I didn't have to do what he was forcing me to do. I began to refuse to go to with him. He was furious with me, but he couldn't force me. I told him that I would tell my mother if he did. He threatened to beat me, but somehow I knew he wouldn't. I don’t know how I got the courage to fight him.”
“Someone should beat his brains out,” Carson said. “You were a baby, Lauren. I'm sick; you weren't much older than our children. I just can't imagine it.”
Katherine still had tears rolling down her cheeks. “How did you ever survive? How did you ever grow up to be the wonderful person you've become?”
“I'm not a wonderful person, Katherine. I’m a terrible person. It gets worse, the story gets worse.”
“How could it? Could anything be worse than what had already had happened to you?”
“Yes,” she said gravely. “Victor stopped talking to me after that. I was no longer his ‘beautiful flower.’ I thought now that everything was going to be all right, but then one day when the school bus dropped me off in front of our building, l saw his big, black Mercedes parked in the driveway. When the doorman opened the door, Victor came out of the building. My little sister, Ellen, she was about seven then, was walking next to him, her hand in his. He looked over at me with a gloating expression, opened the door on my mother’s side of the car and helped Ellen climb up into the seat. I just stood there and watched them as he buckled her seat belt, got into the car and drove away. She looked back at me, with that sweet, innocent little face of hers and waved goodbye. I could see that she was excited with the anticipation of a special day with Uncle Victor, like the ones she thought I had before she was too young to come along.”
Then Lauren broke down. “I didn't stop him. I didn't save her. Everything that happened to her was my fault.”
“Lauren, what could you have done? You were a child,” Jess said.
“Yes I could have done something. I could have saved her, told my mother. I could have done something.” Her body shaking, they were afraid to let her to go on, but she did. “The first doll he gave her had a white dress. She was a bride doll. It sat on her dresser by itself for a long time. It was several weeks until there was a second one, but then there was the second, then another and another.”
“And how long did that go on?” Jess asked.
Her expression was that of a frightened child. As she spoke, she pulled her legs close to her body, curled herself into a ball, her arms wrapped tightly around her legs. “It went on for a few years. I pretended it wasn’t happening, that he wasn’t doing all the horrible things to my baby sister that he had done to me, but I knew he was. I pretended he wasn’t taking her to that house and undressing her and making her put his penis in her mouth, that he wasn't pushing himself into her, that he wasn’t hurting her. But I knew what was going on. I knew and I let him do it. Because on some level, I must have known that if he had her, he would leave me alone.
“Then she got sick. She started refusing to go to school, but they forced her. After a while, my mother couldn’t even get her out of bed in the morning. She would cry, never saying what was wrong. She hid under the covers in a fetal position, sobbing in her bed, moaning like something was hurting her. My mother would sit at the side of the bed begging her to get up, to stop crying. And then she stopped. She stopped crying. But she stopped talking as well. Finally, my mother took her to the same doctor she had taken me to see.”
“The child psychiatrist you had refused to talk to?”
“Yes. But she never talked to him. She never talked to anyone. She has not said a word, not a word since.
“They put her in Marionjoy. She has been in that hospital for the last twenty five years.”
“And your mother stayed with Blair?” Jess asked.
“No. A few years later they were divorced. Then the year that I went to college, my mother killed herself. She drove her car into the front gate of Swan’s Landing. She was going ninety miles an hour.”
“So she knew?” Katherine asked.
“Yes, I believe so. I think she always knew.”
No one could speak.
Then it flashed into Carson’s head, “Sasha and Daryl! Oh my God!”
“What are you talking about, Carson?” Jess said.
“Sasha and Daryl, they're Blair's stepdaughters.”
“Oh no,” Katherine said, as they all were, horror-stricken. “The little one was holding that doll during the interview.”
Carson felt as if she were going vomit, “He’s doing it to them! I’m sure of it. He is abusing those little girls.”
“Of course, he is,” Lauren said.
“He's a rotten son of bitch,” Katherine said.
Wrapped tightly in her towel, Lauren began to rock. Her chair scraped rhythmically against the floor of the deck. Carson was afraid she would topple over.
“What are we going to do? We have to do something,” Jess said.
“There's nothing we can do,” Lauren said. “No one can stop him.”
“That can’t be possible,” Jess said.
“It’s true. There is no way to touch him. He’s too powerful,” Katherine said. “I’ve been there before.”
“There has to be something,” Jess said. “We’ll tell his wife.”
“Are you kidding?” Lauren said. “She won’t believe you.”
Carson thought about Blair's beautifully dressed robot-like wife, how admiring she appeared to be of her husband, how oblivious, “She’s right, Jess. That’s not going to work.”
“Why not? I don't get it,” Jess said. “When she finds out about Lauren and her sister, the dolls, for Christ's sake, it’s the same story repeating itself all over again. Those are her daughters; she won't let it happen to them.”
“The hell she won't,” Lauren said. “She already has.”
Chapter 14
A dream about her father woke Carson, and with the dream, the realization she never appreciated how good he had been to her. He was the one who encouraged her to believe in her dreams, the good ones. She was six when he started letting her do her daily news show for the regulars who dropped into his tavern after their shift at the mill. He cut a cardboard box to look like a TV set and put it on the bar, and helped her up to do her ‘evening broadcast.’ She felt grief she hadn’t experienced fully before, a longing to apologize to him for being such an ungrateful brat. Sadly, it was too late.
She couldn’t get Lauren’s painfully vivid description of what Victor Blair did to her, or what he was now doing to his stepdaughters out of her mind. Surely he was doing the same things to that precious little girl that he did to Lauren and her sister. He had to be stopped. If he came near her child she would kill him.
She wished she could stay home with Zoe that day. She needed desperately to reassure herself that her little girl was safe, that nothing could harm her. Yes, she trusted Millie explicitly. No one cold take better care of a child. She was aware that her own anxiety was the problem, not Millie. Perhaps her assignments would be on the lighter side and she could get home early enough to take Zoe to the beach.
No such luck. The day was the last thing she needed, two mob incidents, one worse than the next. They started at an explosion at the city’s largest commercial laundry. When she arrived, a dozen bodies had already been pulled out of the building. There would be more. She asked the fire chief, already at the scene, if arson was suspected. He said no.
“Could it be mob-related?” she asked. He didn’t answer. She tried to push him. That was what he would expect a journalist to do. Not the case in the Windy City. He didn’t answer her question, just shrugged and walked away.
At the next location, she felt the gentle touch on her shoulder of Bill Stein, the reporter at NBC who had been so kind to her on the first day she covered Chicago style crime. They saw each other almost daily when she was going through what Stu called her probation period, the trial by fire, and they had become friends. Still, like Stu, he enjoyed watching her reaction to the gruesome state of the victims.
“Do you want me to get you a little closer to the corpse, sweetheart?” he whispered as if he were Jimmy Cagney with a cigar hanging out of his mouth. “It’s family.
“How do you know?” she said, no longer afraid to ask.
“Time for another lesson. Look carefully,” he pointed to the victim, a blonde man about 50, dressed in plaid Madras shorts and and am alligator shirt. who had been shot down in his driveway. Bullet holes oozed in his head and the middle of the back. His clubs were scattered a few feet away.
“I am looking, but I don’t get why you think it’s mob.”
“Look at his hand, come on, look at that ring,” he said, pretending to be impatient. On his pinky finger, a ruby ring that looked to be it was at least three karats. Carson nodded but still hadn’t put it together.
“His wallet has over $1,000 in cash. That’s how you know it's a gang hit. They didn’t take anything, didn’t want anything, just his life.”
“Why so much mob violence right now?” she asked.
“White heroin’s coming from Southeast Asia. There hasn’t been any the city since the early 70’s, just brown. The Mob wasn’t interested. It’s controlled by the Mexicans. The white’s coming in through New York, and the Chicago families are at war to control it.”
There was a second shooting. The girlfriend of Jimmy the Bomber Palermo had her face had been blown off. The scion of the stolen auto parts fencing empire in Chicago, Palermo was told that she shared some of his secrets with a competing gang leader. Gang hits were often like that, symbolic in nature. If someone was two-faced, as evidently was the case with Palermo’s girl friend, they would shoot her face off. If the person were an informer, they would slit his throat.
By the time, Carson got home, she was ready to explode. Zoe ran to the door and hugged her and pulled her into the living room, “Mommy, you got a present and I got one too! Open it now, please!”
“She’s been so excited I don’t know what to do with her,” Millie said, smiling.
“Look at my present, Mommy. Isn’t she the most beautiful doll in the world.”
“Where did this come from?” Carson’s yelled at Millie, her eyes darting with anger.
“Someone came in a silver Mercedes. He asked for you.”
“And you let him in the house?” Carson shouted.
“No,” she answered nervously. “We just stood at the door.”
“Why did you open the door for a stranger? This is the city, not rural Mississippi. I told you to be careful!” She saw that Millie was holding back tears, but she couldn’t control herself.
“I’m sorry. He looked familiar and he acted like he knew Zoe. I thought maybe he was a relative of yours, a friend, even a grandparent. He talked to her about the baby elephant at the zoo and she seemed to know him, but when he left she said she didn’t know who he was.”
“What did he look like?” She knew it was Blair.
“He had gray hair, combed straight back. He looked nice, not like anyone to be afraid of.”
“If he ever comes to the door again, don’t answer it! Don’t open the door to anyone you don’t know!”
“He had presents for you and Zoe and I thought he must be OK. I’m so sorry,” she said, near tears.
“Don’t make assumptions,” Carson said. “Don't you ever make assumptions when you are taking care of my child.”
Millie began to cry; in her mind, Zoe was her child too. Zoe began to cry. She clutched the doll tightly in her arms. It was elaborately dressed like the ones in Blair’s stepdaughters’ rooms. Carson grabbed the doll from her, ran outside, opened the lid of the garbage bin, flies swarming everywhere, and threw it in. Zoe was hysterical. Carson knew she should have controlled herself, but she couldn't.
“Don't you ever take gifts from strangers,” Carson yelled at Zoe. She had never allowed herself to lose it in front of her before. She had a long fuse, but she was at the end of it.
When she got control of herself, it took a long time for her to calm Millie and Zoe. Millie was furious and Carson knew it was with good reason. She apologized over and over and tried to calm Zoe with a promise that she would take her to the toy store on Saturday and buy her anything she wanted. “Just promise me you will never take a gift from a stranger again.” Millie remained frosty, even as they walked to Old Town for supper. The streets were crowded with tourists drawn to the charming restaurants, folk and jazz clubs, the fashionable shops and flea market mall filled with head shops, cheap jewelry and clothes from India. She took them to the most festive place on the street, the Pickle Barrel, with baskets of peanuts on the tables, shells all over the floor, and guitar-strumming folk singers. It was their favorite restaurant and a distraction. Carson couldn’t eat. She drank two gin and tonics, but didn’t feel either. By the time the ice cream came, Millie and Zoe seemed to have forgotten Carson’s outburst.
Zoe fell asleep on the way home. After Carson got her into her bed, she went downstairs to get herself another drink. She saw the box Blair left for her still on the table in the living room, she took it upstairs to her room, and shut the door. Inside was a large, white leather-bound photo album; on the cover, engraved in gold was the name Zoe Kirsten Brown. ‘How did he know that? How did he know her middle name?’ Her heart racing, she opened the book.
There was a hand-written note on his cream-colored, embossed personal stationery. “I thought you might enjoy these photographs I’ve taken of your adorable little girl. She’s almost as beautiful as her mother. Give me a call. “
Carson could hardly turn the pages; her hands were shaking so badly. There were at least 50 photographs: Zoe at the playground, Zoe at the zoo, Zoe at the beach. They were taken from every angle and appeared to have been shot, even if with a long lens, from close range.
Carson called Katherine. “He’s stalking her, Katherine. He’s stalking my little girl.”
“Carson, I can’t understand what you’re saying. Wait just a second. I’m talking to Lauren on the other line.”
“Do a conference call. I need to talk to both of you!”
Lauren’s voice was thin through the connection. “Carson, can you hear me? We’re both on. What happened?”
“It’s Blair. He’s after Zoe.”
“What are you talking about?” Katherine asked.
She tried to explain but was so upset she was babbling.
“I don’t understand,” Katherine said. “Calm down. Just slow down and try to explain.”
Lauren interrupted, “I’m coming over.”
“We'll both be there in a second,” Katherine said.
“No, there’s no privacy here. Millie will hear everything we say.”
“Then come here,” Lauren said. “Doug’s still out of town.”
Carson raced past the lighthearted tourists and people gaily strolling on that balmy summer evening toward the upscale bars and restaurants on Rush Street, just a block south of Lauren’s row house. As she walked among them, she felt as if she were in a different universe, out of her body, in a place where danger was everywhere. Her three friends were waiting for her on Lauren’s front steps.
“He’s stalking Zoe,” she said, dropping the album onto Lauren’s lap.
“These pictures aren’t just from one day,” Lauren said, her voice quivering as they thumbed through the pages.
“He must have been following her around for a week, maybe longer,” Carson said.
“We’ve got to stop that son of a bitch,” Katherine said.
“Why is he doing this?” Jess said.
“He’s after her, Jess. Don’t you get it?” Carson said angrily.
“Of course I do. Try to calm down, sweetie.” She reached for Carson’s hand and Carson pulled it away.
“How the hell do you expect me to calm down?”
“I guess I don’t. But he won’t get anywhere near her, “Jess said. “We won’t let him.”
“How do we do that? Hire an armed guard to be with her 24 hours a day?”
Carson paced as the others studied the photos. There were several of Zoe playing with the other two little girls, but in most she was alone.
“This is horrible. Look at this one,” Katherine said pointing to a photograph of Zoe playing at the top of the jungle gym. Shot from below, her skirt was blown up above her shoulders. “It looks like he was right under her.” In another shot, Zoe was bent over, putting a cup of sand on the top of a sand castle at the beach. One side of her bathing suit had slipped up into her bottom. Taken by anyone else, these would be innocent pictures of an adorable little girl, but through Blair’s lens, it was child pornography. Lauren closed the book. Her face was drained of color.
“We’ll get him arrested,” Jess said.
“And how do think we’re going to do that,” Lauren said as if she were talking to a child.
“Of course we can,” Jess said. “He can't get away with this.”
"What am I going to do, Jess?” Carson snapped back. “Go to the police with a photo album? He didn’t touch Zoe. I can't prove a thing.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Jess said. “It’s not the pictures. It’s what he’s doing to his stepdaughters, what he did to Lauren and her sister. I’ll go see his wife. I’ll talk to her. She will go crazy. No woman would allow a man to have sex with her own child.”.
“Really?” Lauren said angrily,” You don’t believe that luxury, furs, diamonds and unlimited charge accounts might make a certain kind of woman blind to what happens to her child? “
Carson’s eyes met Katherine’s. They both had the same thought: Lauren was talking about her own mother. At the deepest level, it was clear that Lauren believed that her mother had know all along what Blair was doing to her.”
“There’s got to be a way to get Blair to prison,” Jess said.
“That’s not going to happen,” Lauren said. “He’s been getting away with it for decades, and he’s going keep doing it as long as he wants. When he’s through with these two, there will be more.
“That’s why he’s following Zoe around.” Carson said. “He wants her next.”
“Of course. You’re perfect for him,” Lauren said. You’d look good on his arm and you’re busy with your work. He probably thinks that would give him plenty of time to get his hands on Zoe.”
“I want to kill him,” Carson said.
“I do too,” said Lauren.
“That’s the only way to stop him.” Carson said,” I’m going to do it myself.”
“Come on Carson,” Katherine said. “You’re not going to kill anyone.”
“It’s the only way and you know that. I have seen enough people get away with murder in this town, maybe I can too.”
“You can’t,” Katherine said.
“Then how am I going to stop him?”
We’re going to do it together, “Jess said. “I still don’t agree that we can’t get enough evidence to have him arrested.”
“Even if we had the evidence and we don’t,” Katherine said, “there would be no chance of getting Victor Blair arrested, let alone convicted. He’s too powerful.
He’d bring in a whole army of lawyers. And it’s not just because he’s rich. Pedophiles, especially the ones who prey on their own family rarely get convicted. It’s too hard to prove abuse. Even the ones that make it to trial get off. They go home and do it again, maybe not to the same child, but they don’t stop.”
Jess said, “We can hire the best criminal lawyers in the country to help us. I can pay for them, anyone you want. Lauren will testify.”
“Stop it Jess. It’s not going to work,” Lauren said. “It will be my testimony, they’d call it recovered memory, me against Victor Blair.”
“Besides that, the statute of limitations ran out years ago,” Katherine said.
“I still don’t get it,” Jess said.
.
“What is there not to get?” Katherine said, “When I worked in the women’s law clinic in DC, what happened to the women who tried to stop sexual abusers was far worse in most cases than the abuse. It’s like that. Women brave enough to try to press charges, expose their deepest and darkest horror stories accomplish nothing. More often than not, in the process, they end up in bigger danger than before.”
“How?” Jess asked. “What could be worse than living with a man who abuses you or worse, your child?”
“How about this,” Katherine said impatiently. “A woman I represented had been beaten senseless by her boyfriend. We had photographs, testimony from her relatives and friends. We encouraged her to file charges. It never went to trial; he didn’t even get arrested. It turned out that the boyfriend was from a wealthy, old Boston family. He didn’t even get a mark on his record. Somehow even the police report disappeared. I ran into her a few months later. Her nose was broken and eyes were black and blue. He wouldn’t leave her alone. She pointed to her face and said, ‘Thanks Katherine. This would have never happened to me if I hadn’t listened to you.’ That was Boston. Chicago is worse. Men accused of sexual abuse, they get off. With someone like Victor Blair, there’s not a chance in hell.”
“And believe me,” Lauren said. “ If anyone tries to go after him, he’ll destroy her life. You can’t imagine what he did to my mother. Don’t mess with him. There’s nothing we can do to stop him, except protect our own children. “
“No,” Carson said, “I have to do something to stop him. People like Blair get away with what they do because people like us let them. He’s violating little girls, who knows how many. Every time he gets his hands on one of them, I am as guilty as he is, as guilty as their mothers, if I know and I don’t do anything to stop him.”
They talked for a few more hours but didn’t make any headway. When Carson got home, she couldn’t sleep. The power had gone out on 48 city blocks, hers one of them. It was easily 105 degrees in her bedroom, or at least it felt that way to Carson, although Millie and Zoe were sleeping soundly in the next room.
She pulled off her nightgown; it was sopping wet. With the windows wide open, the house was invaded by the city; it was like sleeping in the middle of traffic. People from Cabrini Green, the high-rise housing project just west of Carson’s town house, were baked out of their unlivably small, unventilated apartments and walked east like lemmings to North Avenue Beach, just a few blocks away from her house, hoping for relief. She heard their conversations, rattling shopping carts filled with children, blankets and beer. Music blasted from boom boxes. All night she heard them coming, mothers yelling at their children, babies crying.
At about one, another crowd started to fill the streets, singles on their way to or from the bars on Rush Street. They were laughing and shouting at each other as if it were the middle of the day. Carson finally dozed off, but at about two in the morning, she heard a man’s voice below her window: “Suck my cock, you bitch.”
“Fuck off,” the woman yelled back.
“Don't you pull that kind of shit on me.” Then she heard her scream. She jumped out of bed and ran to the window, ready to come to her rescue. He was shoving her into the street. Carson’s adrenaline rushed. She threw on her clothes, ran down the stairs and out into the street. When she got to her gate they were walking together drunkenly, arm in arm. He pulled up the back of her dress and squeezed her behind.
Carson went back to bed. At three, there was still traffic on the street. A bus went by and the exhaust fumes wafted up into her window. She was nauseated and depressed. Finally, she fell asleep. At 4:30 a.m. the phone rang. It was Lauren.
“Carson, are you up?”
“Yes,” she lied.
“I want to apologize for being so negative last night. I am sorry; I just don’t believe that there is anything we can do to stop him.”
“I don’t agree.”
“You heard what Katherine said too. It’s true. You can’t touch him. ”
“I am not a person who believes she’s powerless, Lauren, no matter what the circumstances. I am going to stop him.”
“I’m sorry Carson. There is no way to do that.”
“Watch me.”
Chapter 15
Zoe slumped over her scrambled eggs. “Can I go to work with you today, Mommy?” she asked sleepily the next morning. Carson had woken her for breakfast so they could have time together before she went to work, knowing she did it more for herself than for her little girl.
“I wish you could,” Carson said, touching her cheek
“Can I watch you on TV?
“Tomorrow,” she said. Another “Who Runs Chicago” profile would be aired. She could let Zoe watch that, although she knew it wouldn’t hold her attention for more than 30 seconds. It upset her that some days the only way Zoe could see her was on TV, and now even that wasn’t possible. The station’s decision to pump up the crime coverage made the news too frightening, even for adults.
Her interview to be aired the next day was with Bill Peterson, the CEO of Reliable Life Insurance, which coincidentally was the lead funding partner of Blair’s Riverfront project. Carson found it impossible to bring out anything likeable or interesting about Bill Peterson. He was pretentious and arrogant, his icy blue eyes never meeting hers or the camera. Like Blair, Peterson spoke excitedly about what a windfall Blair’s Riverfront Center would be for the city with its floating casinos, convention center, restaurants, and hotels. She wished she could find a way to ask him about Victor Blair, but it didn’t seem relevant.
She asked him about the casinos, “I thought gambling was illegal in Chicago.”
He told her, “That’s true, but the casinos will be built on a boat floating on the Chicago River, so officially they will not be on city land.” That was Chicago-style logic, the kind of conceptual maneuvering that made “The City that Works” work. Off camera, she asked him about the controversy over bringing gambling into the city.
“It’s foolish, “he said. “Any possible downside is far outweighed out by the enormous influx of tourism and jobs this project will bring to the city.”
“What about the Mob?” she asked.
He roared. “The Mob? Carson; there’s no Mob in Chicago. It’s 1979, for God’s sake. That’s all been over for decades. Believe me, if there were a Mob, and let me assure you there is no Mob here, they certainly haven’t expressed any interest in our project. If there were anything questionable about the Riverfront Center, Reliable Life would be nowhere near it. We insure thousands of lives. It’s the money of our policyholders we invest and we always have their interests foremost in our minds.”
Of course, she didn’t argue. She knew that the Mob was very much alive in Chicago. But like most Chicagoans, she hadn’t a glimmer of how alive it was or how much power and influence it’s members wielded in the city’s government and mainstream businesses.
Zoe pushed her eggs to side of her plate and turned over her toast to lick the jam off the bottom. “How about a little bread with your jam?” Carson said.
“Don’t like it.” She licked off the last it and slipped down from her chair. “I’m done.” Carson knew she should stop her, but she decided not to- when you’re a working mother you have to choose your battles.
“Wait a second,” Carson said, reaching for Zoe so she could wash the jam off her face and hands before she ran off to play.
“I’m busy, Mom. I’ve got to get to work.”
Some day she knew she’d pay for all the times she wasn’t stricter, more consistent, and for the times when she said yes, when she meant no, because she felt guilty for not staying home to take care of her the way she felt her mother should have taken care of her. She wished she could somehow be home more and be a better mother. Nothing was more important to her.
Katherine shared the guilt, but she too, though she didn’t need to, wanted to work.
“Even we do everything ‘right’,” Katherine said,” whatever that means, they’ll complain about us when they grow up. We might as well put away money every week to pay for their therapy and stop worrying so much.”
Carson’s day was a tough one: a heat exposure death in one of the many dilapidated apartment buildings in Uptown. It was not just one death, but two. An elderly woman and her seven-month-old grandson died in her sweltering apartment. Apparently, they had been dead for several days when neighbors called to say a terrible smell was coming from the apartment. The reality of what had happened in those small rooms horrified Carson. Coupled with the unbearable heat, it took all her resolve not to pass out. She agonized about why the woman hadn’t gone for help? Where was the baby’s mother? How could something like this happen with neighbors just down the hall? Under her lightweight suit, Carson was soaking wet. As they filmed the segment in the hallway a few feet from the apartment Carson tried to hold back tears. She spoke gravely into the camera. When it was over, her producer patted her on her back and said excitedly. “You were great, Carson, those tears especially…. a great touch.” It was as if her arm had a life of its own. She spun around and slapped his face. Shocked and embarrassed at what she had done, she apologized profusely. He shook his head and told her not to worry, but it was clear he was angry. The red welt she left on his cheek would stay visible for the rest of the day.
Earlier that day, Jess met Katherine at the playground where Blair had photographed Zoe. While the children played, Jess hoped to talk Katherine into what she believed to be true: if they could hire the right team of experts they could nail Blair. He’d be arrested and go to trial, then spend the rest of his life in a prison. They just needed to identify the most country’s most experienced and talented lawyers, detectives, and consultants, whoever could get it done. Surely someone could.
“We’ve got to get him locked up before Carson’s the one who gets locked up,” Jess said. “How much money is enough to get him?”
“It’s not about money,” Katherine said,” I keep telling you that. “We don’t have a case. I don’t mean to be nasty, but there are some things you can’t get just because you’re rich. “
“You’re saying there is absolutely nothing we can do?”
“That’s what I’m saying.” Katherine couldn’t believe that Jess wouldn’t give up. For someone who had become so depressed not that many years ago that she almost took her own life, her optimistic belief that she could figure out a way to get Victor Blair seemed especially delusional.
Jess said, “Do me a favor, indulge me for few minutes. Just tell me if you were a prosecutor, what you’d need to get him convicted. I know we don’t have the evidence but if we did, what would it be? What would you need to build a convincing enough case to get him? How many victims would have to testify? How many witnesses? What kind of professional experts?”
Katherine outlined the kind of credible witnesses and evidence they’d have to find. As she spoke she punctuated each item with a pessimistic “and we can’t get that,” or ‘she won’t testify,’ or ‘we don’t have physical evidence’ or ‘we don’t have pictures or video’, or ‘we don’t have psychiatrists who have seen the children.’
Finally, Katherine said, “You have to give it up on trying to stop Victor Blair through the legal system. It won’t happen. I want him in prison as much as you do, but we are going to have to find another way.” They watched the children play for another hour. Suddenly Jess’s face lit up, “Oh my God, I have a fantastic idea. I’m not sure exactly how we will pull all this off.”
By the end of that day they did.
Chapter 16
When Carson got home, the shutters were closed and the electricity back on. It was dark and quiet on the first floor and finally cool. She called up to Zoe assuming she and Millie were playing upstairs. When there was no answer, she panicked; something was wrong. Blair came and took her! She ran up the stairs, her heart racing, and then remembered the plan was for Zoe and Millie to stay at the Kingmans’ until she called. She phoned Jess, who sounded like a happy, suburban housewife.
“They’re in the pool having the time of their lives,” she said. Jess and David had one of the only single-family homes in Chicago with what felt like - although it wasn’t - an Olympic-sized pool. “David's teaching the girls to swim. I’ll never be able to get them out of the pool.”
The thought of David in the water with the two little girls, the danger that he might just focus on Sophie and let Zoe get away and drown terrified her, but she knew she would insult them if she said so.
“Why don’t you come over for dinner?” Jess asked.
“I can't, Jess. I feel like I’m going to jump through the ceiling. I wish there were something I could do besides drink to calm myself down.”
“Maybe a run?” Jess suggested.
“I’m too tired,” she said, peeling off her wet clothes and letting them drop to the floor.
“Just relax for a while. Let Zoe and Millie stay. You take a long bath. We’ll walk them home after dinner. Katherine and I spent the afternoon together and we have idea. If it’s ok with you, we’ll meet over at Lauren’s tonight.”
“What about Doug?” Carson asked.
“Doug’s away, who knows where this time? Please, Carson, will you do me a favor. If Blair calls you, try not to talk to him, but if you do end up talking to him, be nice, really nice to him. Get off as quickly as possible, but be apologetic, even encouraging.”
“Why?” Carson said. “That’s nuts. Why should I be nice to him?”
“Just do it. “
Carson fell onto the couch, her skin still wet and clammy, stuck to the leather upholstery. She punched play on her answering machine. There were messages from Lauren and Katherine about getting together that night, punctuated by several hang-ups. A message from Jess was interrupted by a phone call. She let the machine pick it up. It was Blair asking if she had received the package he had sent. She looked around the room to see if another arrived. Fortunately, there was nothing. If there had been, she would have smashed it against the wall.
They met at Lauren’s when their children were asleep. Lauren’s housekeeper was out for the evening and the house was stone quiet except for the constant hum of the air conditioning.
Jess said, “I didn’t believe Katherine last night when she said there was no way of getting Blair through the legal system. It just didn’t make sense to me, but we met today and she finally convinced me. And we are not going to murder him.” She looked Carson straight in the eye. “I don’t care how many murders you’ve covered this year. Even if you knew how kill someone, you wouldn’t do it.”
Katherine said, “If by some miracle we got Blair charged, and I don’t know any way that could happen, but if somehow we did, we’d never get him convicted, not in this city, and probably not anywhere in the United States. It’s not just because he’s Victor Blair, but because we can’t get enough concrete evidence to get a guilty verdict. We’d probably never even get into a courtroom. We don’t have one credible witness, not one piece of physical evidence, not one victim who can testify.
I asked Katherine to indulge me,” Jess said,” and outline a fool proof case of what a prosecutor would need to guarantee if somehow Blair were tried, he would be absolutely be convicted. “
“Why, if there is no way that could happen? “Lauren asked.
“Because Jess came up with an idea” Katherine said,” I think will work. We will convince Blair that we have all the evidence we need to expose him as a pedophile. We will make him believe we are about to publicly charge him with sexually abusing his stepdaughters from all three of his marriages. We’ll convince him we have enough than evidence to get him convicted and sent to federal prison for the rest of his life. We both think that if we do that, we can scare him to taking his own life.
“I don’t get it,” Carson said.
Think of it like producing a play with a one-man audience. We’ll get Blair somewhere and confront him. We’ll show him what we have: taped testimony that will sound absolutely authentic, testimony about what he did to you, Lauren, in your voice, from his other grownup stepdaughters in theirs, and from Ellen...”
“Ellen hasn’t said a word in 25 years,” Lauren snapped.
“We know that Lauren, but Blair doesn’t.”
“How are we going to do that?” Lauren asked.
“We’re going to do it together, “Jess said. We’ll write Ellen’s testimony. You know what he did to her. We’ll script it; you and I will write the scripts for all the girls he’s abused. We’ll produce tape recordings, maybe video too. We haven’t figured it all that out yet.”
Katherine said. “We can fake testimony from someone on the staff at his estate, saying she stood outside the window of the garden house and watched Blair have sex with Daryl. It’s totally believable that someone could have. We can even tape fake testimony from a psychologist at Sasha and Daryl’s school.”
“Then what?” Carson asked.
Katherine said: “You’ll have to get him somewhere alone so we can all confront him. That means you need to keep leading him on. I’m sorry, there’s no other way. That’s why Jess asked you to be nice to him, to keep him interested.”
Lauren said, “Maybe we can contact his other stepdaughters.”
Jess said, “I don’t think you understand. We don’t need his other stepdaughters. We don’t need anyone. You know what he did to them, the same thing he did to you. We can fake their testimony; I’ll do their voices. I have a lot of voices you’ve never heard, a dozen, maybe more. Maybe we can all record tapes. I’ll buy professional recording equipment, a mike and tape recorder, a video camera if we decide, whatever we need. “
“Once he hears a few of the tape recordings,” Katherine said,” we think he’ll believe us. We’ll tell him we have hours of testimony and evidence. I don’t think we will have to play it all. A few tapes, if they are absolutely believable should be enough.”
Jess said. “We’ll tell him we have pictures and videos too of him having sex with Sasha and little Daryl. Of course, we don’t, we just have to appear so confident and certain that he will believe us. The audiotapes, the way I imagine doing them, will scare the shit out of him. He’ll be terrified.”
“Why wouldn’t he call our bluff?” Carson asked. “Why wouldn’t he think we would go to the police if we had all that.”
“We’ll tell him why,” Katherine said, “It’s not to protect him, but to protect the little girls and the women he has abused from more pain and suffering. Why should they be publically humiliated the way they would be if he went to trial? It could devastate them, more than they’ve been devastated already by what he’s done to them. They are entitled to privacy. He is entitled to nothing. We’ll have a lethal dose of barbiturates for him to easily. And he will get off with an easy, painless death.”
“He’s not going to buy it,” Carson said.
“I think he will.” Jess said. “You seduce him, get him alone somewhere and we show up and present the evidence and a simple proposition: He will take the sleeping pills we have with us and die quietly comfortably in his bed and we will destroy every piece of evidence we have. No one, none of the girls, now women, he forced to have sex with him, the little girls he is abusing now, or his wife will be hurt, any more than he has hurt them already. He will be remembered and admired as a highly respected business leader and philanthropist. But if he refuses to take the pills, we will expose him as a pedophile and criminal, and destroy his life as he has destroyed the lives of so many other lives. Everything we have is ready to go to police and to the media. He will be exposed as a pervert and criminal and spend the rest of his life in prison.”
Carson let out a huge sigh. “You really believe we could make this work.”
Katherine said, “We have a lot to do. We need to try to find the names of anyone he may have abused as a child and dig up whatever other skeletons there might be in his closets. I mean everything incriminating we can find, things he did that were illegal or immoral, even if it was 30 years ago. That means Carson, whatever you can find in the files at the station. Jess said she can get into David’s data base. She’ll try to use it to research Blair’s projects; perhaps there is something there. A man like Blair doesn’t just behave immorally in just one arena. There must more. We need whatever incriminating thing we can find to convince him that we have the information and power to ruin his life.”
Jess said, “I am sorry, Carson, but you are going to have to lead Blair on, keep him turned on to you.”
“How would I do that? I’ve been asking him to stop calling me. He knows that I’m trying to get rid of him.”
“But he hasn’t, has he?” Katherine asked.
“It doesn’t appear that he is a man who gives up easily,” Jess said. “You have to call him and thank him for the doll and the photos.”
“I can’t do that.”
Katherine laughed,” You say you think can murder him, but not lie to him?”
“Ok, I get it. Of course I can.”
Chapter 17
The streets were still dark and empty when the four met for a run the next morning, acknowledging one another with not much more than a nod. They ran down the concrete steps to the tunnel leading to the beach. When they came up the stairs, the sun, a giant orange ball, rose out of the water, casting a shaft of shimmering light from the horizon to the edge of the sand. Behind them, a full moon was fading but still present in the sky. They ran past the chess pavilion, which stood empty waiting for the men who spent their days there slowly moving chess pieces across the black and white squares. On either side of the pavilion, towering concrete statues of king and queen chess pieces stared lifelessly out across the water to the skyline of Hammond, which only on clear mornings like was this visible from the Chicago shore. The friends ran silently side-by-side along the wide concrete rocks that line the beaches. A cool breeze came off the water. Their feet fell into a rhythm, left, right, left, right, their steps synchronized. The silence, at first comforting became unnerving.
“Hello," Carson said. “Anyone there?"
“We’re all here,” Lauren said quietly.
“Anyone wish she weren’t?” Carson asked.
“Not me,” Jess said breathlessly. “How about you, Katherine?”
“I’m OK, but let's run back to the pier.” She turned around as she spoke, signaling the others to follow.
The women ran north, then right onto a long narrow pier that stretches out into the lake. In spite of its obvious allure, the pier is always deserted except for a few short weeks in the summer when it’s lined with smelt fisherman, their twinkling lanterns reaching out into the black. They sat down on the graffiti-splattered concrete in a small circle close to the end. Katherine began gravely, “Are you all really serious about this?”
“Of course!” Carson said.
“Don’t shout at me, Carson.”
“I wasn’t shouting,” she shouted back.
“It’s a little early to be losing it,” Katherine said, sweat pouring off her body.
“I'm not losing it, Katherine,” Carson said.
“I think you are.”
“Come on, you two. We’re all out of our comfort zone,” Jess said. She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and handed it to Katherine.
Lauren said: “Listen, maybe you should all forget about Blair. I appreciate that you want to do this for me, but...”
“Lauren,” Carson said, her voice shaking. “I’m not doing this for you. He’s stalking my little girl. It’s not you this time. It’s Zoe and those two little girls he’s abusing right now. You all say he’ll never get his hands on Zoe, but it doesn’t feel that way to me.”
Lauren apologized. “You’re right. We have to stop him and I’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen.”
“And you, Katherine?” Carson asked. “Be totally honest with yourself and with us.”
“I can’t lie to you. I’m terrified.” Katherine said, “but I don’t think we have any choice.
Carson said: “I know this sounds strange, but it’s easier for me to imagine myself pulling a gun out of my purse and shooting him than pulling off an extended seduction. Even the thought of being in the same room makes me nauseous. How am I going to convince him I want him to make love to me, be somewhere alone with him take off my clothes, and let him come inside me. I hate him.”
“Try not to think about the sex right now, if you can,” Katherine said.” I hope we can figure out a way it won’t have to go that far. Right now, you just need to keep him interested in you and string him along until we finish everything we have to do. Start by calling and thanking him for the photographs and the doll.”
“I can’t do that. The doll horrifies me. Seeing Zoe with that doll in her arms is what pushed me over the top.”
“Me too,” Lauren said. “That doll and following her around with a camera. He wants to get his hands on her. It makes me want to vomit.”
“I still wish I could pick up a phone and tell someone to kill him like the Mafia guys do do,” Carson said, staring across the water at the skyline. She could see Blair’s apartment, the penthouse of the building next door to the Drake Hotel.
Jess said, “I’ll call my party planner and see if he has a hit man in his Rolodex. “
“Jess, you’re not funny,” Katherine said.
For Carson, the jokes, albeit stupid, were a relief. “You’re wrong,” Carson said, “she is funny.”
Jess said with a forced laugh,” We’re going to have to figure out a way to start laughing again or we’ll never get through this.”
“One more joke and I’m out of here,” Katherine said.
As the conversation went on, Carson’s anxiety intensified. How would she get him in place where he couldn’t just shove her across the room? Katherine must have been reading her mind.” We have to figure out a safe place where Carson can go with him, a place we can be waiting, where she will not be in danger, so we can open the door, do what we have to do and safely get away.”
“Maybe the Ritz,” Jess said. ‘Don’t laugh. Its not a bad idea. They’re used to having guests who demand discretion at the Ritz. There are a lot of afternoon trysts there. I could make arrangements no one could trace to us.”
“How do you know about that?” Katherine said.
“Don’t ask me that question.”
“We’ll figure it out. “Jess said,”
“There’s too much to figure out,” Carson said.
Jess said. “We can do it. We just have to stay calm. We’ll script it like play, a court room drama so believable, so devastating that it will convince him that we have enough evidence to convict him and send him to a federal prison for the rest of his life. We’re going to present our case so professionally, so convincingly that he’ll believe he has no choice but to kill himself. It has to be great and totally believable. We’ll record that testimony so that it’s bone chilling convincing. He’s going to realize when he hears those women telling what he did to them that there isn’t a chance in hell that he’s going to be able to hide his pedophilia. When we tell him we are willing to destroy all the evidence to save the girls and women he has violated further humiliation and pain if he commits suicide, he’s going to have to take us up on our offer.”
“You make it sound possible,” Carson said.
“You just get him into that hotel room or wherever we decide to do it. We’ll be there in an adjoining room. It will work, I know it.” Jess said.
“But what if it doesn’t?” Lauren said. “What if we can’t scare him into taking the pills? What if he turns it all around and we are the ones in danger?”
“We would have to shoot him,” Carson said. “That’s all there is to it.”
“We won’t have to. Our plan will work.” Jess says.” Besides, you can’t use a gun at the Ritz Carlton.”
“We are not going to use a gun anywhere! “Katherine said. “We’re not going to kill him. He’s going to kill himself.”
“But if he refuses, Lauren said,” then what? And if not? How do we do it, I mean the part about ending his life, if we can’t scare him into taking his own? The truth is murder is not something any of us has a lot of experience with. If we can’t shoot him, what do we do if he gets violent? Do we bludgeon him to death, cut him into small enough pieces, so we can chop up his remains in our Cuisinarts and can get him down our disposal systems?”
Somehow Lauren going on that way, making a joke about the obviously overwhelming complications made Carson feel a little calmer.
Jess said, taking a deep breath and sighing painfully. “There is a lot to figure out, but there are four of us and we are fairly bright people.”
“If we work together, collaborate, maybe we really will come up with a foolproof plan,” Katherine said. ” We’ll figure out some way so that we can do it and not get caught.”
“The perfect crime, right?” Carson said with a wry grin.
“Right.”
“That's what Leopold and Loeb thought,” Katherine said, and she smiled for the first time that morning.
“Yes,” Jess said. “They did get caught, but you have to remember, they were men.”
At that point, Lauren seemed to have left the conversation. She stared out at the water, then nodded her head yes, as if answering a question.
Carson watched her with concern and said, “Yes, what Lauren?”
Startled, as if she had been woken from a dream, she said, “He wants to take you to Swan’s Landing, right?”
“Yes,” Carson said. ”He asked me to spend a day with him there. He mentioned it a few times.”
“Then that’s the place,” Lauren said. “The garden house, where he took me, where he must still take little girls.”
“OK, but then what happens when I get him there? We go to Swan’s Landing, then what?” There was an uncomfortably long silence. Then Carson said: “I keep playing out scenarios in my head. But when I follow each to its logical conclusion, think through all the steps, not one of them seems doable.”
Lauren interrupted. Her voice was almost a whisper. As she spoke, she continued to look away from the others, staring into space as they had seen her do whenever she described horrific memories of what Victor Blair had done to her. She spoke so softly it was hard to hear what she was saying. They leaned closer.
“Unless his tastes have changed and it’s impossible to say.” She paused. It felt as if she wouldn’t finish. Then seeming deep in a memory she did not want to revisit, she said, “He likes to be tied up.” She turned and looked back out at the water. A sailboat motored out into the lake, its sails unfurled waiting for the wind.
Jess slipped backward off the ledge. “Are you serious?” she said. ”He made you tie him up?”
“Yes,” Lauren said with no apparent emotion. “Sometimes he tied me up and sometimes he told me to tie him up.”
Lauren continued to look away like a guilty child who was confessing she had done something wrong. Maybe it was something she learned to enjoy, the way she learned she could be loved. Carson didn’t want to push her, but she needed to know more. “Was that something you did often?” she asked cautiously, feeling guilty that she was forcing Lauren to bring up more bitter memories, but she had no choice.
“Yes, It was. I don’t know if we can assume that he is still into it, but he liked it then,” Lauren said. I guess there is really is no way to find out if he still does.”
“Maybe there is,” Carson said. They all knew how that would occur.
As she looked at the three, she was reminded of the feeling she experienced one night at Jess’s early in their friendship, as if these three were more genuinely more concerned about her than anyone had been in her lifetime.
“This is a mistake,” Lauren blurted. She looked frightened, panicky. “We can’t ask Carson to do this. He’ll hurt her,” she said, shaking her head, her eyes tearing. “There has to be another way. I can't trust that he won't hurt you.”
“Lauren’s right,” Jess said. “It’s outrageous for you to be bait. I wish we could hire someone. There are professional killers. I have money; I have a lot of money. We can hire someone."
Katherine said. “We are not going to hire a killer. You have to understand this. There is no way for us to get Blair and not get caught unless we do it ourselves. It’s too risky to trust anyone else.” A northeasterly wind, seemingly out of nowhere, started to kick up the water, a cloud eclipsed the sun.
Lauren said. “If we can get him to Swan’s landing when no one is there, if he still likes to be tied up, it will work. I believe he would rather die than be exposed as a pedophile. He’s gotten away with it for God knows how long, ruined so many lives.”
“We still need to be prepared to force the barbiturates down his throat,” Katherine said. “You know how they dilute pills for children?” Katherine said. “We can do that, smash up sleeping pills, dilute them and put the solution in a syringe. ”The three of us can hold him down if we have to, but no matter what, it has to look like suicide.“
“But why would Blair kill himself? Won’t everyone wonder that and suspect it’s a murder?” Lauren said.
“Maybe somebody is after him,” Carson said. “Maybe even the Mafia.”
“Now it’s you whose been watching too many movies,” Katherine said.
“You’re wrong,” Carson said. “I think we might be on the right track.”
“Why would the Mafia be after Victor Blair?” Lauren asked.
“For a lot of reasons,” Carson answered. “There were a few near scandals I read about when I was researching his story, accusations that he uses questionable financing sources for his projects, worse than that, too. I just skimmed over that stuff. It certainly wasn’t what I was looking for — anything bad to say about him. There’s a huge file on him at the station. I've got to get back and re-read it all.”
“Can you get back into those files without anyone knowing about it?” Katherine asked.
“Sure.”
“I might be able to come up with something too in David’s new database,” Jess said.
“But it isn’t going to list the Mafia as a money source,” Lauren said, not understanding how that information would be useful.
“No, but maybe it will lead us to something. Maybe he’s in trouble on a big project, maybe there is a deal, a big deal falling apart. I don't know what. Maybe we could even start a rumor, I don’t know.”
“It’s worth trying.”
“This technology is new, computers, you know. The database is on the computer, hooked up to a what they call a mainframe somewhere. David’s computer is not completely up in operation yet,” Jess said. ”There are still tech guys working on it in David’s office. They’re from Reliable, a new technology subsidiary of theirs. They developed software, a database for their business and now they’re doing the same for other industries, starting with real estate. David will help me get into it.”
“Don't let him help you too much,” Katherine said,”especially when you start looking for information on Blair. When you do the search on Blair, David can’t be with you.”
“I know Katherine. I only look dumb. I’m not.”
“I’m sorry.”
Lauren, looking uncomfortable, said, “But what do I do to help? There must be something.”
“I have an idea,” Jess said. “Get a brochure from the Hemlock Society sent to Blair. You know who they are?”
“No.”
“It’s an organization that supplies people with information on how to commit suicide. We’ll make it look like Blair requested the information; like he is planning to suicide. When you call the Hemlock Society, you can say you’re Vic Blair. I’ll give you their number and you can ask them to send their package of information to his home address. They may ask for a telephone number, but I doubt it. When you call, they will be very discreet. They won’t ask you anything but your name and address.”
“Why don't you stop at my house on the way home? There are a few other organizations that help people who are considering suicide; one group works with that Dr. Kevorkian in Detroit. I’ll give you my list, you should phone all them, and get them to send Blair their packets,” Jess said with as much emotion as if she were talking about a recipe. “
“Sure,” Lauren said, shaking her head thoughtfully as if she were registering something she would have never imagined about her glamorous friend.
“I don’t think I could look at it myself,” Jess said brightly,”but it's a good thing I didn't throw it all out.”
They sat quietly for a few minutes. The cloud cover passed. They could feel the heat on their bodies. They left the pier and ran toward home, lapsing into silence again. The sound of their footsteps hitting the concrete pavement seemed louder than the early morning traffic on Lake Shore Drive just a few yards to their right. As they ran, they kept increasing their pace. They were panting with the strain. The paths that had been empty when they got to the lake at sunrise began filling with the morning contingent of runners. Unlike the four of them who had left their houses when it was still dark, most of their near North Side neighbors, no matter how liberal they claimed to be, were too wary to enter the park until the ragged homeless magically disappeared with the morning light. They continued to run side-by-side filling almost the entire width of the path as if no one else were there. Other runners were forced to swerve off their course to avoid them. There were no complaints, however. The strength and force of their anger must have somehow communicated that they were entitled to command the space.
Chapter 18
When Lauren left, Jess turned the pressure valve on the shower as high as it would go. The nozzles that lined the marble stall shot hard jets of water that hit her body from every angle. The sensation distracted her, if only for a minute, from the anxiety that she felt. Now that she was alone, she was fully in touch with the panic she was trying to hide from her friends. She poured shampoo into her hand and played with the red, viscous fluid as it dripped through her fingers. She rubbed what was left of it slowly into her hair and then stood for a long time with her eyes closed, letting the hot jets of water beat at her body. The fear that she might let down her friends was more disturbing to her than her fear of the danger. She tried to calm herself, but she couldn't. She grabbed a bar of soap and tried to lather her body. The water would not allow suds to form. She turned off the shower. “It’s murder,” she thought, rubbing soap into a loofah sponge and scrubbing her legs and hips. If we coax him into killing himself or we kill him, what’s the difference? It’s murder. Either way, the only way I’m going to be able to get through it is to convince myself that this is theater, not real. We are producing a play about four women who have no other way to stop a pedophile except to kill him. We’ll be actors, performers, and on the day of the performance, we’ll get into our costumes, play our roles and go home.”
She turned the shower on again, this time with the pressure not so hard. “The only difference will be, that when we kill him, he really will be dead. I don’t have to think of it that way. I’ll just pretend that he is actor, too. When she got out of the shower, there were red blotches all over her body. While she was drying off, she dialed her husband’s number,
“Hi honey, I am sorry I missed you this morning.”
“A long run. I left at 8 and you weren’t back yet. You must have gotten all the way to Evanston.” She lied and said they had. She asked if he would be at the office she wanted to come down and do some work.
“I’m sorry. I’ll be away at a meeting all day.”
She was relieved. “If you are not going to be there, do you mind if I come down and play with your new computer for a while?. I’m really curious to see how it works and maybe look at that database thing you told me about.”
“That’s nice,” he said, surprised. ”I’m glad you are interested in it.”
“Maybe we can get a computer at home?” she said.
“Of course, someday everyone will have a computer in their home. I don’t see why we can’t try to get one as soon as they’re available. I’m surprised you’re want one.”
It was hard to lie to David. For years, he was the only real friend she had. It was not that she told him everything, she didn’t; they were lovers, not soul mates. In fact, she believed that David didn’t want to know everything; that was not something that husbands wanted. Sure, he wanted to know about the good stuff, but not the bad. He liked to think of her as a totally contented, beautiful princess. If she was unhappy, he felt it was a reflection on himself. When she struggled through that deep depression, she tried to keep it from him. After a while, it became impossible. She never told him how close she had come to taking her life. During that dark period, she knew he felt her unhappiness was his failure, not hers. On some level, she knew that David was fearful that she would slip again; it would kill him if she got sick. She would not ever let that happen again.
Hopefully, she would find something today that was fishy about Blair’s real estate dealings. It was a long shot, at the least. Like most people, she had no idea how to operate a computer. She might not even be able to figure out how to turn it on, let alone how to find Blair. And once she found him, given her limited knowledge of sophisticated real estate financing, it would be hard for her to interpret the data, but she was determined to try.
“You’ll need help. I can’t even operate the system myself. I‘ll get one of our guys to work with you. Just come in and tell my assistant to bring Tom in to help you. I’ll tell him to be available to you all day.”
When she hung up, that feeling of anxiety returned. This time for a different reason: In all of time she had known her husband, she had never lied to him. This was the second time that day.
_
In spite of its vast holdings, the offices of Kingman Investment Corporation were tucked quietly into two floors of a turn-of-the-century building in Chicago’s financial district. David’s grandfather and namesake was the founder of Kingman Investments. He had come to America from Prague in 1902. Unlike most Jews of his generation who fled Europe to escape religious oppression, David’s grandfather had come to escape the expectations of his family. His father and all of the men in his family for several generations back had been rabbis who had spent their lives in what was considered by Jews to be the noblest of all occupations: studying the Torah. But David’s father knew from the time he was a small child that he wanted to make money and lots of it. So he came to America by himself when he was 15. He ended up in Chicago, because he became close to a family he met on the boat. They were also penniless, but they did have a cousin in Chicago. They took David with them.
After a few months of sleeping on the kitchen floor of the cousin’s tiny apartment, he talked himself into a job as a cowboy. He became perhaps the only Jew tending cattle in the bustling stockyards on Chicago’s South Side. Fifteen years later he made his first fortune in the meat-packing business, selling his company for three million dollars. And during the next decades, he and eventually, his only child, David’s father, parlayed that money into one of the largest family-owned companies in the country. Kingman Investment Corporation was a principal stockholder of several major American corporations. In spite of their enormous wealth, the family kept a very quiet profile, intentionally so, even in their philanthropy. They donated tens of millions annually, but there were no buildings or programs named in honor of their family; there were no plaques or public testaments to their generosity.
Jess got to the office late in the afternoon. Fortunately, David’s secretary was out. She pulled the door of his office shut and sat behind her husband’s desk. Unlike her own looking like-a-cyclone hit office, everything was in perfect order. The surface of his desk was clear except for a few files stacked neatly, likely ordered with the most urgent work on top. It amused her to see his pens and freshly sharpened pencils lined up perfectly parallel to one another. David’s closets at home looked the same; everything was neatly folded and put in place, every item ordered impeccably.
When they came home at the end of a night, she would throw off her clothes, dropping them wherever she was standing and jump into bed. She loved to watch him, her head on the pillow, covers pulled up to her chin, as he carefully put his clothes away, folding his sweater slowly, the right sleeve first and then the left and putting it in exactly its proper place on the shelf, no matter how late it was or how tired he might be.
She ran her fingers across his opened calendar. Each hour was accounted for in his thin black script. She smiled wondering how anyone as warm, sensitive and fun-loving as her husband could be so anal compulsive. Several photographs of Jess and Sophie, one of David and Armando from high school, and one of his parents lined his credenza. She read the inscription on a black and white portrait of her he had commissioned a year or so after they were married: “To David, the great love of my life, without you, there would be no life.” She felt a tinge of embarrassment thinking of all the people who might have read that inscription. They could not have possibly known what she meant, how desperately close to taking her life she had been when she wrote that. But even if they hadn’t a clue, she wished she had not written it.
She poured herself a cup of coffee and read the instructions David had left for her: When you turn on the computer, you will have to wait a few minutes while it boots. You will be prompted to enter a password — click twice — enter our anniversary, and then a list of programs will come up on the screen. MoneyNet is the program you are looking for. Move the cursor to the name MoneyNet and press Enter and that program will come on.
David was so impressed with MoneyNet that he had spent a whole evening describing it to her the week before. “Jess, with this new system we will eventually be able to look at virtually every significant major real estate transaction anywhere in the country. It’s incredible. You have no idea how much time it will save us once it is fully operating.”
When an awkward animation of the MoneyNet logo finally came to an end, a grid with a list of options appeared. Jess looked down at David’s directions. “Choose menu.” The menu was an alphabetical listing of what appeared to be every kind of business. She highlighted real estate and another list of options came on the screen. She chose developers Listed by “Location,” and then “Chicago.” The developers were listed in alphabetical order. She scrolled through them. When she found Victor Blair and Associates, she highlighted his name and a list of his projects appeared. There must have been 40 or more. She pulled up the first file. It took her an hour to read through it. When she was halfway through, she realized she hadn't even a clue what all the columns of numbers meant. Her heart started pounding nervously. “Who am I kidding? I don't know what I’m doing.” Then another voice in her head told her to keep looking. I need to keep going, keep working. I’ll find something. She highlighted the next file, read through it. Nothing. It looked the same as the last one.
It was almost five when she phoned Katherine. “I've been here for hours looking at the data on Blair’s projects, and I can't find a thing.” She took a deep breath; she was afraid she was going to cry. “Frankly, I don’t really know what I’m looking for.”
“I don't either, Jess,” Katherine said.
“What did I think? The Mafia would be listed as an investor? I'm brilliant, Katherine, I'm just brilliant.”
“Don't be so hard on yourself. You still might find something.”
“But I don't see how. It just describes the projects, square footage, occupancy, builder, architect, taxes, who the investors are, what the debt on the building is, if there are liens, all that stuff.”
“Are there liens?”
“No.”
“Can you tell if there is substantial debt or low occupancy on any of the projects?”
“It doesn't look that way to me.”
“How many have you looked at so far?”
“Eighteen.”
“And nothing jumped out at you?”
“Nothing.”
“Where does he get his money?”
“It looks like an insurance company. Reliable Life is his major money source.”
“Wait, didn’t Carson interview the president of Reliable Life for the Chicago leaders thing she did?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Did you look at the project Blair’s doing now? What's it called? River something?”
“Riverfront. No. I haven't gotten there yet.”
“Why don't you look it up? I'll stay on the phone.”
As she pulled up the file, a buzzer sounded in an office a few blocks away, the offices of Reliable Life. Michael Miller, the information technologist in charge of the MoneyNet program walked over to monitor number five. The words Kingman Investment Corporation flashed in green block letters on the screen. It was one of twenty monitors arranged in a double row on a curved counsel in a long, darkened room. Miller sat down in front of the blinking monitor and punched something into the keyboard. The Riverfront Project file came up on his screen.
“OK, Jess,” Katherine said. “Read some of it to me."”
Jess read quickly, sort of skimming out loud. She knew that there was no need to speak slowly for Katherine to understand. She envied Katherine’s mind, so smart and razor sharp. Katherine could stay clear-headed, even under the most stressful circumstances. She wished that she could do the same.
“Jess, go to the financing.”
“OK.”
“What does it say?”
“The same as all of them. It's just a list of investors.”
“Is that all you can get?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve never used a computer.”
“Are there words at the top of the screen?”
“Yes.”
“Read them to me.”
She did. Katherine was silent for a moment. “OK. Go to the top of the screen and highlight the word percentages.”
Jess did as she asked. The list disappeared and a pie chart appeared on the screen. Each of the investors had a piece of the pie. Reliable Life had the biggest piece, about 60 percent.
“It’s pretty, Katherine, but it doesn’t mean a thing to me. At least I’m getting a break from staring at all the columns of numbers.”
“Let’s go to another project.” Katherine wished that she could get her hands on that computer. Perhaps, she could come up with something.
As Jess brought more information on the screen, it was mirrored on Miller’s monitor. He followed for a while and then picked up the phone to call his boss. “Mr. Guzman, this is Michael Miller, please come down to Room 400. There is something I think you need to see.”
Jess continued to punch in numbers. Each time she punched a command into her computer, what was on her monitor appeared on his. Without taking his eyes off the screen, he pressed a printer button and a high-speed printer spewed out rolls of the printed projections she had ordered. With his eyes still fixed on the Riverfront data moving across his screen, he reached over to another keyboard. Letters began to appear on another monitor.
Subscriber: David Kingman
Length of Session: 5 hours 35 minutes
Files retrieved: 666
Company: Victor Blair and Associates.
He hit a switch a few feet away and a blurred image appeared on a monitor just to his left. He reached to another set of controls and with his gaze bouncing back from one monitor to the next, he put his forefinger on a roll ball and slowly adjusted the ball. The image on the screen sharpened. He watched it from the corner of his eye, expecting to see the image of the Prince, the nickname he and his associates coined for David Kingman. They had installed a hidden camera in David’s office so they could watch him. Instead, when the focus came clear, he was startled to see a beautiful, redheaded woman.
She cradled a telephone on her shoulder. For a moment, he thought he had accidently tuned into a local television station, but he knew he couldn't have made that kind of mistake. The woman on the phone was obviously talking to someone about the Riverfront Project. He wished that he could hear what she was saying. She did another projection, this one speculating a rate of return if Kingman Industries put in fifty million. Although he was an information technology specialist, not a member of the financial staff, it was clear that this kind of speculation from a major financial investment firm on Reliable Life’s most important project was serious business.
He heard a buzzer ring and he unlocked to door for his boss, Dean Guzman, grandson of the founder of Reliable Life. A math and science wiz, Dean received both his undergraduate degree and PhD from MIT in computer science, a brand new field he believed would change the way of the world. He first went to work in computer architecture at IBM after he graduated before coming back to Chicago to join the family business. When Guzman walked over to the monitor, he immediately recognized the woman. “That’s Jessica Kingman,” he said, “wife of the Prince.”
Jess was still talking to Katherine. “Thanks for trying to help me, but I’m afraid that this has been a total waste of time. I still don’t see anything here we can use against Blair.”
Miller handed Dean Guzman the rolls of printouts. It was clear from what he saw that Kingman Industries was exploring the possibility of becoming a major investor in the Riverfront Project. What he could not have known was that Jessica Kingman didn’t have a clue about what any of the projections and data she had retrieved and appeared to study meant. It was all a mess of indistinguishable numbers to her. All she was trying to do was find something that would point to some wrongdoing on the part of Victor Blair. Ironically, she had no way of knowing she was looking straight at what she was looking for: every dollar that Reliable Life had invested in the projects of Victor Blair and every dollar they planned to invest in the Riverfront project was Mafia money.
Reliable Life had been the brilliant money-laundering scheme of Dean Guzman’s grandfather some 40 years ago. Antonio Guzman founded Reliable Life as a vehicle for investing and creating growth for the hundreds of millions of dollars of income from Mafia interests, among the most lucrative at the moment being the new influx of cocaine from the Golden Triangle.
Their biggest investment right now was Blair’s Riverfront Project. It would be a home run for them, a billion-dollar venture, not even taking into account the potential income, from the Family’s gambling, prostitution, construction, labor, and liquor interests.
Jess hung up the phone but continued to pull up files. She went to Chicago corporations and double clicked on Reliable Life. It was founded in the 40’s. It insured 50,000 lives and sold annuities. There were a few names she recognized on the board of directors. She realized there wasn't anything there that would help her. She felt angry with herself for being so naive.
Guzman watched her face. He could see the tension. Her eyes were still glued to the screen. Now she was alone in the office. The last person to go had turned off the lights. Because the floor was wired on the same bank, she sat in the dark. She was too weary to get up to switch on another light. The light coming off the screen cast a green glow on her face. She leaned forward. Her shoulders drooped as she slumped forward in her chair. She pulled up the Riverfront files again. What if Kingman Industries took over as lead investor? Her eyes scanned the columns. They didn’t mean a thing to her; then she pulled up a pie chart; typed in Kingman Industries, 60 percent. She picked up the phone and dialed Maeda to say she would be leaving for home in a few minutes.
"Do you have a minute?” Maeda said. “Sophie wants to talk to you."
Guzman saw Jess’s face light up, as it always did when she heard her daughter’s voice. He was frustrated. The microscopic video camera that had been hidden in Kingman's office had no microphone. Sound transmission had to be ruled out; it was too easy to detect. It was a flaw in his system. “I need to hear what she is saying,”he said angrily. “Why does she have that shit-eating grin on her face?”
As Jess talked to her daughter, she punched in more numbers. The projections danced across the screen and the printer in his office spewed out page after page.
“I have a surprise for you when you get home, Mommy,” Sophie said.
“Tell me, I can't wait.”
“I can't tell you, Mommy, but I will sing you a song.”
“Wonderful!” As she listened to her daughter sing, the smile never left her face. Her muscles started to relax. She leaned back in her chair. Guzman watched her face, and as she listened, the numbers flashed across his screen. He phoned his father. “We have a problem, a big problem here. It looks like the Kingmans are getting involved with Blair on Riverfront. We have to find out what they’re up to.”
When Jess went down the elevator and walked out into the street to flag a taxi to go home, someone was already following her.
A few minutes later, Mario Guzman, who ran the operations of the Guzman family and its associates as the real man at the helm of Reliable Life, stormed into the office of William Peterson and slammed the door. He threw the printouts of the Kingman projections onto Peterson’s desk. “Do you know anything about this?” Peterson, the president and public chief operating officer of Reliable Life, sat calmly. He was partially dressed for the monthly dinner meeting of the Economics Club that night. He had changed into his tuxedo, his tie still untied, his jacket carefully laid over a chair. His friend Michael Blumenthal, the Secretary of the Treasury, a classmate of his at Princeton, would be the guest speaker tonight and make the introductory remarks.
“Blair’s screwing us! He’s making a deal with Kingman. Will you look at this?”
Peterson glanced down at the stack of printouts. He looked up at Guzman, who was pacing back and forth in front of his desk. “I don’t see any possibility of Blair, what did you say, ‘screwing us over.’ What are you talking about Mario?”
“These are projections from Kingman Industries. It appears that they are getting ready to make a major investment in the Riverfront Project.” He grabbed the printout from Peterson’s hand. “Look at these projections.” He pulled out the pie chart showing Kingman Industries owning 60 percent. “From what it looks like, they are considering pushing us out of the whole deal.”
Peterson scanned the page, and then turned to the projection at the top of the pile. “Blair wouldn’t dare do that to us, Mario. He knows what he’s got at stake. We’ve financed every major project he has ever done. Furthermore, he knows what we can do to him if he pulls something like this.”
“You are so fucking dumb, Bill. Right now, before all this gets finalized, Blair can do whatever the fuck he wants. We ought to blow his fucking head off.”
Peterson looked amused as he listened to his partner fly off the handle, just as he had hundreds of times before.
"Who do you think you are, Mario, Al Capone?”
“As a matter of fact, maybe I do.”
The partnership of Peterson and the Guzman family had been a successful venture. No one knew the terms of that partnership. In fact, Peterson only owned one percent of the stock; the rest belonged to Guzman and his associates. But that one percent allowed Peterson to live the life of a very wealthy man. He was a perfect front man for one of the most sophisticated financial organizations in the country.
The first time Guzman met Peterson, he knew exactly how he could use him. Peterson was in his first year of law school when he applied for a part time position at Reliable Life. He needed a way to support his wife and children until he finished school and took the bar. He had married his high school sweetheart while still at Princeton. She gave birth to their first child seven months later and to twins the following year. The son of two school high school teachers, Peterson had taken out big loans to go to Princeton and the University of Chicago Law School. He worked nights and weekends.
Guzman recognized the hunger in this bright, ambitious, well-spoken young man from Connecticut and put him to work in legal affairs where he became expert in insurance law, drafting documents and structuring life insurance policies. Peterson didn’t know until years later that the insurance policies and investments listed as assets of the corporation served only as foils for the true operation of Reliable Life. When Peterson graduated from law school, Guzman made him an offer he could not refuse. Even a top law firm wouldn’t come anywhere close to the salary and benefits Reliable offered. He moved quickly to the executive floor, which was just as artificial as the company’s insurance policies.
Mario Guzman, no one else, ran Reliable Life. He ran it, trusting only his associates in the modest offices on the second floor, far away from the stunning executive suites up on 12. The laundering operation was managed seamlessly from the quiet den below. Reliable Life had a sales force working under Peterson. It insured a number of people, but 90 percent of the named policyholders were bogus. The structure, Mario’s father’s brainchild, facilitated the movement of tens of millions of dollars, quietly in and out of investments like Blair’s projects without anyone ever blinking an eye.
When Mario offered Bill Peterson the chance to be president and CEO, he was fairly certain that Peterson had no idea about what was really going on. It was at that moment that Guzman shared part of the story with the man who would, if he accepted the position, be the face of Reliable Life. Guzman once again made Peterson an offer he could not refuse. He looked Bill Peterson straight in the eye and said, “You can turn down this offer if you choose, but if you decide not to accept the position of president and CEO, your wife and children will be dead within an hour’s time.
Chapter 19
By the time Lauren left Jess’s that morning, the temperature gauge outside her kitchen had reached 96 degrees. It was only 8:40 a.m. When she walked into her own house, she was hit with a blast of refrigerated air. She shivered. Doug had set the thermostat at 64. “We must be using enough electricity to cool the homes of a dozen families,” she muttered to herself as she turned up the temperature on the thermostat and ran up the back staircase to the second floor. She looked in on Louie. He was still sound asleep.
When she walked into her bedroom, Doug was sitting on the edge of their bed in his tennis whites, tying his shoes. He looked up at her, not at her face, but at her lower body.
“Boy, you have put on a lot of weight. Have you looked at your thighs lately, Lauren?”
“Please Doug, don't start. Can't we be nice to each other?”
"Yeah, why don't you bend over and let me butt-fuck you.”
“Please leave me alone, Doug.”
“What’s wrong, Lauren, don’t you like me anymore?”
She walked into the bathroom to get away from him. He opened the door. “Come on, Lauren, get your clothes off of that fat body of yours.” He grabbed her arm and shoulder, squeezing hard and shaking her.
“Let go of me, Doug, please.”
He grabbed her hair and used it to pull her down to the floor and pressed his hand on her shoulder to push her toward him. “You won't let me butt-fuck you, suck my cock.”
“Please Doug, stop it.”
He laughed, the sadistic laugh she had heard too many times before. When he finally let go of her shoulders, red welts the shapes of his fingers remained. He left the bathroom still laughing.
“Before you take your shower, go wake Louie and get him ready to go to the club.”
She locked the door, pretending not to hear him and turned on the shower. When she got out, she heard Doug talking to Louie.
“Now when you have your tennis lesson today, I want you to do everything the pro tells you to do,” he said tying Louie’s new white tennis shoes. Lauren was sure Louie hadn’t a clue about what Doug was talking about, but she did know her little boy was very excited about spending a whole day with his father. It was the first time since he was born.
Doug had signed him up for private tennis lessons at the Saddle and Cycle, one of several private clubs in Chicago and Palm Beach to which they belonged. When Doug told Lauren about the lessons, she had argued that it was ridiculous to try to teach a three-year-old to play tennis. Doug, who was not a particularly good tennis player or athlete of any sort, was adamant about lessons.
“He’ll goddamned well take lessons, as often and as early as I want him to. He’s going to be playing a lot of sports in his life, Lauren, particularly tennis, and he damned well better be good. I don’t care if you don’t agree with me. He’s my son.”
Doug was slipping a white cable-knit tennis sweater over Louie’s head when Lauren walked into the room. They were now dressed exactly alike, white polo shirts, Ralph Lauren tennis sweaters, white shorts, socks and tennis shoes.
“It's supposed to go up to over 100 degrees again today. Don’t you think he might be a little overdressed?”
Doug ignored her. “Say goodbye to your mother, Louie. Lauren, we'll be home late. We’re driving out and meeting my mother at her club for dinner.” Obviously, she wasn't invited to join them. Whether they were rejecting her or she them would be hard to say.
Doug and Louie gone, Lauren sent the maid home. “I can make the beds myself in this sterile tomb. Fuck him if he doesn’t like it.” With no one in the house, she walked to the kitchen in her bra and jeans. There was no sound, only the striking absence of it, a grave-like stillness. She pulled her chef’s knife from the block. Standing at the counter, she sharpened the blade with skill perfected from years of practice. She brought the knife up to the window over the sink to check the edge. It was razor sharp, the edge was almost invisible. An avocado vine she had nursed from a pit, hung lifeless off the edge of an empty, brown, stained jar. She put down the knife, unzipped her pants and let them fall to the ground. Her stomach was a hatch-work of scars, long cuts in even rows, the same number up and down, a railroad track she had carved one precise cut at a time. She stared out the window past the light well to the brown brick wall of the building next door and picked up the knife.
Lauren made the call to the Hemlock Society first. The woman who answered the phone sounded very old, ancient in fact. She imagined the woman alone in a big empty, dusty office in an old office building somewhere, a creaky elevator with a black iron gate, the elevator operator even older. There was no background noise, only a thin echo on the phone. As Jess had said, she didn’t ask any questions, except for her address.
“Vic Blair” Lauren said.
“Is that Victoria?”
“No, my name is Vic. If you don’t mind, just address it V. Blair.”
“And your address?”
“189 E. Lake Shore Drive, Apartment 2001, Chicago, 60610.”
She hung up quickly and made the rest of the calls. The next was to the Center for Death With Dignity in Portland, Oregon. A friendly man with a singsong, western accent answered the phone. “Glad you called. What can we do to help?”
“I’d like some literature.”
“Sure, anything we can do to help.” He sounded peculiar, peculiar but nice. They all were nice. There were eleven organizations on Jess’ list. Lauren called them all. She wondered who these people answering the phone were, these gentle angels of death. Were they volunteers or paid staff? Perhaps they were people who came down to the office once a week to relieve their own guilt for the way they had once encouraged or perhaps discouraged someone to take or not take his or her life.
She thought of Jess, her beautiful friend who not that many years ago, alone in her elegant apartment in the Hancock, the breathtaking views of the city below, made these very same calls for herself. She wished that she had known her then, that they had been friends. Perhaps there would have been something she could have done to save Jess from the loneliness and despair she must have suffered. Then she wondered why she had never considered suicide for herself, after all she had been through.
Just as she finished her calls, Carson phoned.
“Lauren, I just talked to Blair. My heart is beating so fast I feel like I am going to have a heart attack.”
“What happened?”
“Just what you said. I didn't have to say a thing. I thanked him for the photos of
Zoe and the gifts.”
“That must have been hard for you.”
“After that, he did most of the talking. He asked to see me. I said yes, that I would like to see him, but could we go somewhere where no one would know us? So he said just what you said he would, ‘Come to Swan's Landing. It will be perfect. No one is there, my dear.’ He kept calling me ‘my dear.’ It was sickening. He said,
‘We can go mid-week, if that makes you feel more comfortable. It is completely empty Tuesday through Thursday. The rest of the time there is staff, gardening and cleaning.’”
“What did you say?”
“I said no. Sounds lovely, but it won’t be possible for me to get away for so long this next week. I’m not ready, Lauren. I know we have to move fast. I want to, but I can't handle it yet. I don’t want to be totally alone with him yet.”
“It's OK. What did you tell him?"
“I said I didn't have time for more than a drink this week. He said, ‘It won't be very easy to find a place in this city where no one knows you, Carson.’ What a jerk. I said that wasn’t true, you are way more visible than I am. So he said, ‘If you think that’s true and I’m relaxed about being seen with you and I am a married man, why does it have to be so private?’”
“So what did you say?”
“I said I have a serious boyfriend who is the jealous type.”
“You really said that?”
“Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”
“It sounds kind of phony.”
“Why don’t you try talking to that jagoff?”
“I’m sorry. Go ahead, then what happened?”
“I’m going to meet him.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow. He's in New York today. I asked him to meet me at a not very popular restaurant in Greek Town. We once covered a murder there. It’s really dark. I can’t imagine anyone either of us know would ever go there.”
“I’m sorry you have to do this, Carson.”
“Stop apologizing, Lauren. I’m going to be fine.”
“You don’t sound fine. You sound like a nervous wreck.”
“I am scared to death, but when my life is over, I’ll probably look back on this as the most important thing I ever did.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
When she hung up, Lauren began to read through the brochures on suicide Jess had gathered six years before. They were gently written. A few looked like they had been run off on a mimeograph machine and assembled by gray-haired volunteers sitting silently around a fake wood, laminated table, collating, folding and stapling. She imagined one of them carrying a neat pile over to a storeroom shelf, ready to be sent out to the next desperate caller.
She read through the one from the Hemlock Society. It reminded her of a pamphlet her mother had given her when she turned 12 called “You’re a Young Lady Now,” explaining menstruation and how to use Kotex, step by step. The Hemlock Society brochure had questions and answers in the back and a step-by-step procedure on how one might take her life. Perhaps they could incorporate some of it into their plan.
Lauren couldn’t imagine anyone believing that Victor Blair would commit suicide. Killing Victor still seemed impossible to her. He was too large, too powerful. It would take a full arsenal, a hundred men to hold him down. She had worked so hard to keep Victor out of her mind for last 20 years. Now he was everywhere, hovering in the next room, waiting to get her again.
She went to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and pulled out the pasta left over from last night’s dinner. Doug had been expected home, but he didn't make it, so there was plenty left over. She put the bowl back into the refrigerator and phoned Jess and Katherine. Neither was home. The house was quiet except for the constant hum of the air conditioning. Doug and Louie wouldn’t be back until tonight. Memories of Victor kept coming back to her. She tried to push them out of her mind. “Don't think about him, just try to do your job,” she said to herself.
She went back into the kitchen again to look for something else to eat. She pulled open a bag of chocolate chips and ate a handful. She wanted something more satisfying. She opened a jar of peanut butter, poured in the semi-sweet chips and ate the mixture straight from the jar, staring mindlessly across the to the blank windows across the way. Now a glass of milk. Something salty, potato chips, then some ice cream. She finished a carton of vanilla when she stopped herself. “I have to get out of here.” She ran down the stairs, grabbed her purse and walked out into the street.
The blast of hot air that hit her as soon as she opened the door felt good, much better than her refrigerated house. Her car was parked on the street a few doors down. She stripped off the heavy sweater she had worn to stay warm inside the house and got into the convertible her mother had given her when she went to college. It felt like an oven inside. She pulled down the top, drove up State and straight west on Division toward the Kennedy Expressway. As she drove through the housing projects she realized how crazy it was for her to be there. There had been several shootings in Cabrini-Green during the last two weeks, and yesterday, two 11-year-olds hung a five-year-old out of a 14th-floor window of an abandoned apartment. They told the boy’s 10-year-old brother, who watched them powerlessly, that they would drop him if he didn't go to the store and steal some candy for them. When the brother refused, they let go of the five-year-old’s feet and watched him drop 14 stories to his death on the concrete below.
She could feel the tension; almost see the heat coming off the buildings. There were people everywhere. It was too hot to stay inside. She tried to speed up so she wouldn’t have to stop for the light. It turned red. The car in front of her stopped or she would have gone through. She prayed that she would live until it turned green. She felt people staring down at her from the black-screened exterior corridors that lined the buildings. “Hey you blonde motherfuck, why don't you come up here, you fucking bitch.” When the light changed, she floored the gas petal. That didn't do much in an 18-year-old Volkswagen. The car sputtered forward. She shifted into second and drove as fast she could toward the expressway.
Once she got on the Kennedy, she let out a long sigh of relief. But the Kennedy wasn’t much better. No one would let her pass out of the right lane. She was stuck between two huge semis, the one in front belching fumes over the windshield into her face. Every time she tried to move to the left, the driver of the car she was trying to pass sped up so she couldn't get in front of him. A mosquito bit her neck. She slapped it but missed. Next, it went for her face. When she hit it, blood splattered over her cheek. She looked at herself in the rearview mirror. The wind had blown her hair into a tangled nest, sweat dripped down her face, and now there were the remains of the dead mosquito and the blood of whomever else he had visited before landing in her car. She grabbed some tissue and wiped off her cheek. She took more and wiped her forehead and neck. No matter how many times she wiped her face, the tissues were gray with soot.
When she got past the interchange where the expressway splits, one half of the traffic going out toward the airport, the other out to the North Shore, the road opened. She popped in a Rolling Stones tape. The music carried her north through the city, past the industrial parks through working-class neighborhoods of the Northwest Side. Postage-stamp backyards with chain link fences faced the highway. A whole neighborhood of kids was jumping in and out of an above-ground pool. Two women sat in aluminum folding chairs, watching them from the porch, each with a cigarette and a tall glass in her hand. She passed row upon row of almost identical brick bungalows, followed by aluminum-sided houses with pointed roofs, mother-in-law apartments on the first floor. Every few minutes farther from the center, the neighborhoods would change. Now there were pillbox-sized ranch houses built in the sixties surrounded by green lawns with large patches of grass burnt yellow by the heat. Giant thirsty elms trees hung in canopies, the leaves parched and fading over the streets.
The car was driving itself. She let it take her north to Lake Forest, as she had been taken so many hundreds of times since the first time with Uncle Victor. During the last weeks, time had magically compressed. Before the night she told Carson, Jess, and Katherine about what had happened, her memories of Swan’s Landing had been pushed back so far in her mind that she could barely recall what had happened. Now she couldn't get any of it out of her mind. As she got off the highway, she heard his voice, his soft low voice reassuring her that everything would be just perfect, just perfect if she would always be his good little girl. She drove west on Route 60. There were no more fast-food franchises or gas stations, just houses that were hidden from the street by tall fences and trees. A few of the old estates had been divided. There were new developments with names like Chambord and Canterbury Glenn. Immense chateau-like houses that looked like they should each be surrounded by several acres of land were squeezed together on tiny treeless lots.
She stopped at a light. A blue Mercedes station wagon pulled next to her, the driver, a woman about her age hauling a car full of blonde children. The children were buckled into their seats and sitting absolutely still. She turned off her music. All she could hear was the hum of the Mercedes motor, the children silent in the cool air sealed tightly inside.
She turned north. Now she began to pass the gated estates that she had watched from her window when she was a little girl. She knew they would pass six entrances until Uncle Victor would slow the car and take the black opener from the windshield and press the button that would open the gates of Swan’s Landing. That same feeling, the feeling that mounted each time they passed another driveway returned. She had forgotten about that feeling, but there it was again, in her stomach, between her legs. She pulled up to the gate and turned off the motor, her heart racing. She was not sure how long she sat there before she remembered.
Chapter 20
At noon the next day, Victor Blair entered the members’ dining room of the University Club with its soaring Gothic arches and stained-glass windows marked with the seals of the Ivy League, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia and Brown. Bill Peterson had phoned asking for a meeting about something urgent. Blair was irritated; he wasn’t fond of Peterson. Peterson was a phony, his own invention. Blair knew who ran Reliable Life and it wasn’t this self important old money want-to- be.
The maître d’ greeted him warmly,” Welcome, Mr. Blair. Let me take you to Mr. Peterson’s table. He’s waiting for you.”
He led Blair across the elegant Cathedral Hall to the east end of the room under a bank of two-story, mullioned, stained-glass windows.
The University Club was founded by a group of Harvard, Princeton and Yale men as a private club at the end of the nineteenth century. Ostensibly, the only membership requirement was a college degree – though it was clear that it could hardly be all – so it remained the only club in town where Victor Blair could not technically become a member. Peterson rose to shake Blair’s hand. “Let’s order quickly,” he said. Peterson wanted to make it clear he would not waste time on social niceties.
As soon as the waiter took their order, he said, “We’ve heard a rumor that you are negotiating financing with the Kingmans. I can’t imagine there is any truth to that.”
“I am not sure where you heard that, “Blair said, buttering a piece of bread. “I would not refuse to meet with them if they asked, but they have not.”
“They may be planning to,” Peterson said.
“We’ll see.”
“We’ll see what, Victor?” Peterson said irritably.
“This is a monumental project, Bill,” he said firmly. “We’ll need all the money we can get.”
“We don’t want Kingman money in this deal.”
“You don’t control that, Bill.”
“Do you know who you’re talking to?”
“Of course I do. But you don’t run my business.”
“I’m not alone,” Peterson said.
“Don’t try to scare me, Peterson.”
“Why would I do that?” He grinned, and dipped his spoon into his consommé.
Bill Peterson went straight to Mario Guzman’s offices on the second floor of the Reliable Life building when he returned from lunch. The offices on two were locked, but he had a key. Guzman had a few people in his office when Peterson came to his door. He sent them away.
“I just had lunch with Blair,” Peterson said.
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. He wouldn’t say a thing, but you’re right. Of course, he’s negotiating with Kingman. He’s not a very good liar. His story is that they haven’t contacted him — bullshit. There isn’t a chance that he’s telling the truth. Everybody wants a piece of this deal and why wouldn’t Kingman?”
“What did you say to him?” Guzman asked.
“I told him we don’t want Kingman in this. He said, ‘No one tells me how to run my business.’”
“Like hell,” Guzman said, “like hell.” Guzman threw the photographs of the four playgroup women on his desk.
Peterson picked up a photo of Carson. She was struggling to catch up with the other three, “That’s the one from Channel 7 who interviewed me.”
“I know god-dammed well who that is, Peterson. She interviewed Blair too. I don’t give a shit about these women. It’s our business partner we have to do something about.”
A few hours later Blair took a taxi to south Halsted Street to meet Carson for a drink. She was waiting in the dark bar at the front of the restaurant. Her legs felt as if they might collapse under her as she stood to greet him. Jess had chosen a red sheath dress with a revealing neckline she had covered with a jacket until she arrived at the restaurant.
“You should always wear red,” he said, taking both her hands in his and stretching out her arms so he could take a good look at her. It took everything she had not to pull up her knee and jam it between his legs.
After pushing in her chair, he put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed them softly. She wondered how she could keep this up. It was painful already. He pulled his chair close to hers. Odd place, he thought, looking around at the darkened room. This paranoia of hers is odd, but perhaps it’s a good thing. Certainly, no one will see us here.
There was only a bartender on duty at 3:30 on a Wednesday afternoon, a predictable lull-time in the business day of a neighborhood restaurant.
“Tell me about this boyfriend of yours,” he said.
“I’ve been seeing him for about year.”
“Obviously, he hasn’t totally won your heart.” He grinned and reached for her hand.
“How do you know?” she said as suggestively as she could.
“You’re here,” he grinned. “I would like to steal you away from him.”
“I think it’s a little too soon for you to know that, Victor,“ she said, trying to get into her role. ”You hardly know me.”
“I’d like to know you,” he said. “I’d like to know you very well.”
She forced a broad smile, hoping he didn’t notice how phoney it was.
“Carson, I have told you everything about me. Now tell me all about yourself.”
He ordered a second Tanqueray martini. It took only a few moments for her to move the focus of the conversation back on him. He was obviously his favorite subject. After the waiter served the second martini, Blair reached under the table and put his hand on her thigh, where it remained like a mosquito humming in her ear until 4:30 when she looked at her watch and said, “I’m afraid I need to get back to the station.”
“When will I see you again?” he asked.
“Soon, but it’s a busy time for me. I’m embarrassed to say that to you. I’m sure you are far busier and your work is so much more important.”
“I understand. Our situations are quite different. I don’t have a boss. There’s nobody who can tell me what to do.”
“Maybe next week.”
“Yes. Let’s go to Swan’s Landing,” he said. “It’s a beautiful time to go there. Bring your suit so we can swim and relax. We’ll have a marvelous time.”
“I don’t know. I would love to, truly I would, but I don’t think I can get away for more than a few hours.”
“I’ll make it worth it for you,” he said raising his eyebrows in a way he must have thought seductive.
“Let me check with the news director.”
He kissed her hand. “I promise you, you won’t regret it.”
When they left the bar, he said, “I’ll drop you off at the station.”
“We better not leave together. Forgive me for being so nervous about being seen with you. I’ll take a cab.”
“Isn’t that foolish,” he said. “I have a car waiting. My driver will drop you off and he is very discreet.”
“I can’t,” she apologized. “For one, I am breaking station policy just having a drink with you and....”
“The man you are seeing? He wants you all to himself. Is that something you want too?
I’d better try to start now, she said to herself and looked into his eyes with as much warmth as she could manage, “I thought that’s what I wanted.
Chapter 21
As the four ran south toward downtown the next morning, the dark blue sedan followed slowly behind. It speeded up as they crossed to Michigan Avenue and ran breathlessly, eyes focused forward, past the empty stares of the strangely realistic mannequins dressed for fall in white wool mini-skirts that barely covered the tops of their thighs in the windows of Stanley Korshak. When they reached the Water Towers, they turned around quickly and ran north, then disappeared under the viaduct to the tunnel that crosses under Lake Shore Drive to the beach. A man wearing a black tee shirt and shorts jumped out of the dark sedan and ran down the stairs behind them unnoticed. The camera with a telephoto lens slung over his shoulder made it difficult for him to keep up.
“How was it yesterday?” Katherine asked.
“Terrible. He’s repulsive. Every time he touched me, I kept thinking of where his hands have been, the horrible things he does to those children. I felt like there were snakes slithering all over my body,“ Carson said. She stopped to catch her breath. “Can we stop and talk for a few minutes? “
They gathered under a lone tree at the side of the wide concrete path, it’s leaves parched yellow from weeks of record-breaking heat and no rain. Sweat poured off their bodies, their running clothes soaked. “How am I going to have sex with him? “Carson asked, “How will I even make him think I want to?”
“I don’t know,” Lauren said, Hopefully, you won’t have to. Can’t we find a way that she doesn’t have to?”
“There is no way,“ Carson said. ”We all know that. I just don’t know how I can do it.”
Jess said,”Have you ever done any acting?”
“Never.”
“You’re going to have to learn how,” Jess said. “I wish I could do it for you,” Jess said.
“Thanks. You know you can’t.”
Jess said, “Try to approach your time with him as if you are acting, try to pretend that you are an actress playing a role. I’m not saying it will be easy, but I think it would help you make it work.”
“I don’t see how,” Carson said impatiently..
Katherine said,” Believe Jess, you can’t just rely on doing what comes naturally.”
“You’re right, but I am a terrible actress. I can’t lie about anything with a straight face.”
“Come on Carson, you taught yourself to look like a pro on camera even when you were fighting down whoopsing out everything in your stomach. Don’t underestimate yourself,” Katherine said.
“I know, but this is different.”
“The acting thing makes sense and….” Katherine said, but stopped midsentence.
Something popped into her head. They could see it on her face.
“What is it?” Lauren said.
“Boy you guys know me, don’t you?” Katherine said.
“I guess we do,” Lauren said.
“What if instead of acting like yourself, you played the role of a hooker?”
“I don’t get it,” Lauren said.
“I do,” Jess said. “It’s brilliant.”
“OK, I see where you’re going,” Carson said, “but I have no idea how I would do that.”
“You will,” Jess said. “We can even script you.”
“I don’t mean just a hooker.” Katherine said,” That would be too cheap, too hard for you to get into. What if you play a very expensive call girl? You know, one of those women who get a thousand dollars a night. I know someone who did that in the late fifties.”
“You’re kidding?” Carson said. “Who?”
“I can’t tell you that!” Katherine said, picturing her babysitter Diane Parker, now a senior partner at Elliot and Porter, one of Washington D.C.’s most powerful law firms. Diane babysat for Katherine when she was a student at NYU and stayed in close touch with her over the years. Diane was like her big sister to her, her inspiration for becoming a lawyer. During Katherine’s second year of law school, Diane helped her get a summer associate position at her firm. She lived with her family in their Georgetown row house that summer.
One night after work, the two went out for drinks and got roaring drunk. Diane spilled the whole story of how she paid her entire way through Columbia Law as a high priced call girl — tuition, books, room and board, the bar prep course, everything. “She hadn’t intended to tell me. It was a slip … a big one. She consumed a boatload of vodka.”
“How did she become a call girl? That’s wild, “Carson said
“She told me that when she was in law school, she complained to someone she knew about the huge student loans she was racking up, the woman, she wouldn’t tell me who, suggested she consider entertaining gentlemen a few nights a week instead of babysitting for $3 an hour. Three dollars was the minimum wage then. The woman told her she could make at least $500 a night, sometimes up to $1,000.” Diane never told Katherine that the woman who got her into prostitution was Katherine’s mother.
“At first,” Diane said laughing,” I didn’t know what in Sam’s Hill that woman was talking about, but then she was more explicit. She told me exactly what work what would entail, how I would get my jobs, how to protect myself, all of it. You can’t you tell anyone in the world I did this, honey, and don’t you dare follow my example. You just let your mother keep paying for your law school, no matter what kind of a bitch you think she is. Just take her money. ”
“How did she manage to have sex with strangers?” Carson asked.
“She told me, being able to have sex with strangers is all a matter of mind control. I think I remember it exactly how she put it. She’s from Mississippi, has an accent so thick it makes Jess sound like Walter Cronkite. This is what she said, but imagine it with a drawl, ‘I think of my body the same way I think of my eyes and my hands. They are mine, tools that I have been given that are mine and not anyone else’s to control. My sex is a tool like any other part of me. I take good care my tools, but I don’t attach any morality to any of my body parts. My vagina is not any more sacred than my eyes, my nose, or my hands. If I need to use my hands to dig in the dirt, to clean a toilet, to wash a filthy floor, they get dirty. I wash them. Simple as that.”
“Oh my!” Carson sighed.
“Do you get it?” Katherine asked
“I do,” Carson said.
“I wish you could talk to her,” Katherine said, “but I can’t make that happen.”
“Interesting, isn’t it,” Carson said, ”that someone like her could train herself to be seductive and good in bed with a man she might dislike intensely and actually make him think she wants him?”
“I don’t know how unusual it is,” Jess said. “It’s not just call girls who are acting when they are in bed. My bet is,” she smiled knowingly,” that every night somewhere in the world there are at least a million married women who do similar performances for their husbands in the privacy of their bedrooms, and those women don’t even get paid.” It was the first time they had all laughed together in a month.
Lauren pulled her hair away from her face, tied it up into a sweaty knot, and told them. “I’ve got something to tell you. After I finished making the calls yesterday, I drove out to Swan’s Landing.”
“What made you do that?” Katherine asked, surprised as they all were.
“I don’t know. I just did it. I got into the car and the next thing I knew I was parked at the front gate.”
“Did it look like anyone was there?”
“It was hard to tell. There’s a long road in front of the property. You have to drive a considerable distance before you get to the main house. But I didn’t see anyone. The gates were locked.”
“So what did you do?”
“I just sat there at the front gate.” Carson wondered if they all were thinking what she was. That was the spot where Lauren’s mother took her life.
“I just sat there for I don’t know for how long. Then I remembered that when I was eight, right after my birthday, Victor had an entrance installed in the back of the property. When we drove in through that entrance we could go directly to the garden house without anyone in the main house knowing we were there.
He called it our secret entrance. He’d say, ‘Now we can go to our little house whenever we want to and no one will know. When we have our special days together, even the servants won’t see us.’”
As Katherine listened to Lauren recount more of her excruciating tale, she realized she felt a strange combination of fascination and repulsion.
“My mother, sister and I stayed at Swan’s Landing during the summers, Victor was only there for part of the week. When he came out, he made me go to the garden house with him. Sometimes he would tell my mother that he was taking me horseback riding or to the club. We would say goodbye to her and my sister, drive out the front gate and then circle the property and go right back in through the secret gate. The garden house is quite far away from the main house. He had a keypad opener installed at that entrance. The code programmed into the keypad was my birthdate. Every time we drove up to that gate, he would open the window, lift me onto his lap, and let me punch in the numbers. We’d drive to the garden house and when he was through with me, we would leave through that back gate and drive around to the front again.”
As Lauren described what Blair had done to her, Carson pictured him with Zoe, not with Lauren. She couldn’t wipe out the image of him touching her little girl. She knew she would have to kill him before he ever got the chance.
“I don't know how I got the courage to do it,” Lauren said, ”but I drove around to that back entrance. The road’s still unpaved.”
“What else is on that road?” Katherine asked.
“Just the back of another estate, big blue spruce trees and pines on either side. It’s woods, dense like a forest. I drove up to the entrance and punched my birthday into the keypad. There is a big iron gate...”
“And it opened?” Katherine asked.
“Slid right open.”
Katherine looked puzzled. “Why hasn’t he changed it?”
“I don't know,” Lauren said. ”Why would he have to? I’m sure he didn't think I’d ever want to get inside that place.”
“So did you drive in?”
“No, I was too scared, afraid he’d be there.”
“But he was with Carson,” Jess said.
“I know, but what if he wasn’t?
Chapter 22
Once Carson opened the door, Blair pushed harder to force his way in. She tried to avoid him, returning his phone calls when she thought he might be at away, but when they finally spoke he said, “ I can’t stop thinking about you. We need to spend time together. Let’s go somewhere for a few days, “Paris or Greece. I can charter a sailboat on the Aegean. “
She laughed, trying to treat his sweep her- off- her- feet invitations as charming.
“It sounds wonderful, but I am too busy at work. I can’t go away right now, and I can’t leave my daughter.”
“I’ll call the head of the station. He’s a good friend of mine and tell him you need a vacation. He’d do anything for me.” She knew Ahern would, especially now that he was one of the station’s biggest advertisers.
“Please don’t. I can’t do anything this week but meet for drinks.
“So come to Swans Landing for a day.” He said, “How hard would a day in the country be?”
“Really, Victor, I don’t have a full day. I’ve got seven deadlines.”
“Your work ethic is charming, Carson,” he said. “But really, you don’t have to work. “
“Can we meet for drinks tomorrow? It’s all I can do.”
OK,” he said reluctantly, “Meet me at the Club on 95 at 4:00.”
“It’s July, it will be teaming with tourists.”
“I promise, it will just you and me.”
When the elevator took her to the top of the Hancock, Chicago’s iconic landmark skyscraper crisscrossed in black steel, she was escorted to his table in the sprawling dimly lit room with floor to ceiling windows and 360-degree views of the city. Every other table was empty. He had reserved the entire room.
As much as she tried to calm herself, when he rose to greet her, she was shaking. When the waiter brought drinks, Blair told him that they be were to be left alone. He pulled her toward him and kissed her softly on the lips. She tried to appear as if she enjoyed his kiss, but was sure he knew she was faking. She suspected that he was as well. When it was time to go, he tried to convince her to spend the rest of the evening in a suite he had reserved at the Ritz Carlton. They would have a romantic dinner in their room and she could be home before midnight. She declined, her heart racing when she said goodbye. Surely, he wouldn’t put up with this much longer.
She would have two more dates with him during the next two weeks. He kept pushing for a day alone. Finally he said, “Let me be frank with you, Carson, You’re lovely, but I don’t have time for this. I’m losing my patience.”
.
There was still so much for the four of them to do before the day at Swan’s Landing. Jess’s office turned her office on the third floor of her house into their center of operations. Jess and Lauren scripted testimony from five witnesses. They had created a perfect prosecution, everything Katherine had outlined that in a real trial would guarantee to send Victor Blair to prison for the rest of his life.
In that room they would create five audio tapes: four of girls, now women, testifying how Blair had forced them to have sex with him when they were children; and one tape from a woman they would tell him was the school psychologist at Latin, the school his stepdaughters Daryl and Sasha attended.
The first testimony they completed was Lauren’s sister Ellen. It took several takes to get it right. Although they had a professional tape recorder and microphone, they had no editing equipment and even if they did, they would have no idea how to use it. If Jess, who did all of the voices, made one mistake, they had to start recording all over again. They were surprised when they completed the first, Ellen’s testimony, how real it sounded.
“When I was five, I was jealous of my sister. I thought my stepfather…”
The voice of an interviewer interrupted. It was Jess, convincingly playing a man with a distinctively Midwestern accent.
”Sorry to interrupt, would you mind giving us the name of your stepfather?”
She continued haltingly,” I thought that my stepfather … Victor Blair, loved my sister more than he loved me. He took her away alone, just the two of them together and he bought her beautiful dolls. She had a whole room full of them. I wanted those dolls and I wanted Uncle Victor to love me as much as he loved her. I didn’t know how lucky I was it was that it was Lauren he was taking for those days alone and not me, that is until he started taking me instead.”
Her faked testimony went on in vivid detail to describe what Victor Blair had done to her and how devastating it had been. Producing equally convincing testimonies for the other girls he abused was more complicated than the first. It was hard not being repetitive and it forced them to press Lauren to flesh out her memories in excruciating detail.
The last tape was the psychologist at the school Blair’s stepdaughters Daryl and Sasha attended.
“He’d be dead if this were played in courtroom,” Katherine said when they listened.
Here is what the psychologist said:
“Paula’s teacher had been concerned about Paula and asked me to do an evaluation. Paula is a bright little girl, who consistently scores high on standardized testing, but she had become increasingly more distracted and unable to focus in the classroom. Her mother told her teachers she was just going through a stage. They let it go for a while, but her behavior took a turn for the worse. She became increasingly more withdrawn and belligerent. She got into fights with other girls and became increasingly more isolated. After the evaluation, I met with her mother and suggested that Paula see a psychotherapist. She said no, but gave me permission to continue to see her. I have been meeting with Paula a few times a week for the last two years. A few months ago, Paula told me what her stepfather had been doing to her, and said she felt better now because he was leaving her alone, and now doing what he did to her to her little sister instead.”
When all the details for the day at Swan’s Landing were locked in place, Carson phoned Victor and asked if the following Wednesday would work.
“I did have a plan for the day, but of course, I’ll change it,” he said.
“Are you sure no one else will be there?” she asked
“Not a soul, I promise.”
Carson phoned Katherine at her office to tell her, “It will be next Wednesday.”
“Good, I’m ready. I want that son of a bitch to die.”
“You’re starting to sound like me. What happened?”
“Don’t Lauren this, OK?”
“Sure, what?”
“We were at my in-laws for dinner last night. They live in the building next door to Blair. As we were leaving, I saw him drive up and give the car to the doorman. He helped little Sasha out of the car. She was carrying a doll.”
Chapter 23
The night before Carson’s would drive to Swan’s Landing with Victor Blair, the four friends sat at Lauren’s kitchen table going over the plan one more time. Every detail had been precisely drawn. As in a director’s notebook, the day was scripted, step by step, word for word, with all action, gestures costumes, timing and tools spelled out.
Fortunately, Louie and Doug were at the sprawling Hutchinson cottage in South Hampton. Lauren was not invited and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.
“We should put the costumes on,” Jess said, ”wear them while we’re here and while we get everything stowed in the car. We need to make sure we feel natural wearing them, so tomorrow we don’t freak out — the masks especially.”
“OK,” Lauren said, unzipping the bag hanging from an upper cabinet pull. You’re still eating; I’ll go put on mine.” A few minutes later, she walked back into the kitchen dressed like a little girl.
Katherine said, “That costume still gives me the creeps even after I’ve seen you in it 20 times.”
Lauren was dressed like a little girl in a short pink dress with puffed sleeves and a white lace-trimmed collar, with matching panties. On her face, she wore a mask she crafted from a photograph of herself taken when she was the age Blair began abusing her. She copied photographs of her sister Ellen’s face at seven for the mask Jess would wear, and a photograph of Blair’s youngest stepdaughter Sasha for Katherine, the child he was abusing right now. Jess had taken the photo when Carson interviewed Blair on TV. The masks with the frozen faces of those violated children were disturbingly haunting, even for the four friends who had seen them many times before. Jess and Katherine’s dresses were like Laurens, little girl frocks, ruffled and pastel.
The four sat at the table reviewing what would happen, minute by minute, the next day. Before they went home to try to sleep, every item on their list of tools and props was laid out on the table, checked off the list, packed into black duffel bags and stowed in the back of the oversized Jeep Jess had rented a few days before in Racine, Wisconsin, forty minutes north of the Blair estate.
As they drove out of the city the next morning, the traffic moved at a snail’s pace. Katherine drove and Jess, in the front seat, read through the script yet one more time. Lauren was silent in the back, her hands sliding back and forth scratching ruts into the brown velour upholstery. Jess turned around to ask her a question. She didn’t answer, just stared forward; her now bulky upper arm muscles rippling as she nervously pressed her clenched fist into her hand.
About fifteen minutes later, Lauren said, “I'm freezing, can you turn down the air? It’s ice cold back here.”
“Sure. It's good to hear your voice,” Katherine said. “I thought you had gone to sleep on us.”
“I haven't slept in a month. Why would I start sleeping now?”
They got off the highway and drove into Lake Forest and to the back entrance of Swan’s Landing. When they got to the gate, Katherine rolled down the window, letting in a blast of hot, dry air. She punched in Lauren’s birthday. The gate didn’t open.
“It's 3-12-46,” Lauren said, her voice quivering. She sounded like she was about to cry when she asked Jess to try again. Jess and Katherine, terrified that Lauren was starting to crack, passed worried glances to one another. Jess punched in the numbers again and the gate slid open.
Katherine turned and asked, “Are you OK, honey?”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m fine,” she whispered.
They drove up the winding gravel road through the dense woods at the back of the property. When they got to the fallen tree limb, Katherine stopped the Jeep. She and Jess jumped out and moved the heavy limb to the side of the road next to the wire fence. Back in the Jeep again, they continued through the pine grove on the unpaved winding road leading to the back house.
After they reached the stables, Katherine stopped and backed the car into a gravel driveway, so they could make a speedy exit when it was clear that Blair was dead. When they got out of the car, the sound of their car doors opening and closing seemed to echo throughout the property. Katherine opened the back of the Jeep and reached in to get the duffels. They slipped on the gloves they each pulled from their pockets and walked single file toward the back entrance of the garden house, Katherine first, Lauren in the middle, and Jess at the rear. In the silence of the woods, the sound of their footsteps crunching the fallen leaves and twigs, even their breathing seemed loud and dangerous. When the house was in view, Katherine put her arm out to stop the others. They stood for a moment watching the swans move seemingly motionless through the dark water. There were a few water lilies in bloom. Wide clusters of pink lotus blossoms reaching up to the sun on their soft green ruffled leaves, the light danced off the water. Mercifully, a cloud eclipsed the sun.
“The temperature must have dropped thirty degrees in the last second,” Katherine said.
Suddenly Lauren’s legs collapsed. Jess and Katherine grabbed her and helped her to the ground. She seemed as if she was about to pass out.
“I’m OK, I’m OK,” she said. Katherine gave her a drink from the bottle of water she had in her bag. After a minute, Lauren pushed herself to her feet.
“Sit down, Laur,” Katherine ordered.
“Really, I’m all right.”
“No you’re not.”
“I am.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.” But to Katherine and Jess, she looked as if in a trance, tiny beads of perspiration on her forehead and upper lip.
“We can stay here until you feel better,” Jess offered. “We have plenty of time.”
Katherine shot Jess a disapproving look. In fact, there really wasn’t much time. Carson would be on her way now with Blair and there was a lot to do. Before they could do anything, she needed Jess to get the back door open. Jess had promised that she could do it easily. Hopefully, it would still be the way they left it, ajar. When they passed the shed, Jess opened the door and threw in one of the two bags. “It stinks in there.”
“We’ll do what we have to do,” Katherine said harshly, sorry she sounded so severe. Jess bolted up the front stairs of the garden house. The door was locked. Blair, both Jess and Katherine knew, had been there with Sasha since the last time they were there. Jess pulled out a few tools and credit cards and started to work on breaking in, beginning with her credit card, the technique she knew best. She slipped it through the crack in the door, easing it up under the lock. Katherine and Lauren stood close behind watching over her shoulder.
“Damn.” She pulled the out card, then tried again. It didn’t work. Just then, the sun came out from behind the cloud with a blast of heat. They were burning up.
Jess turned around angrily and said, “Jesus Christ, can't you two move back a little. I can't do this with you breathing down my neck!” They backed away. Lauren sat down on the bottom step and dropped her head in her hands, and Katherine walked around to the side of the house to see if there is another way in. She found a window that was partly open. When she got back, Jess, now with tears running down her cheeks, still hadn’t been able to open the door.
“There’s an open window,” Katherine said calmly. “I think I can get in, if I can get the screen off. Is it possible for the two of you to lift me?”
Lauren’s head popped up as if she had woken from a dream. “I’ve been lifting weights for the last three years,” she said. “Of course we can lift you.”
“So can I,” Jess said wiping the tears with her forearm.
“The window is about 10 feet off the ground,” Katherine cautioned them.
As she followed Katherine around the house, Lauren said, “You’ve lost so much weight since we started this, I could probably lift you myself.” As she spoke, she pulled her shoulders up close to her neck, then rolled them in a full circle to loosen the tension in her shoulders. She took a deep breath and knelt down to hoist Katherine up as if it were something she had done a hundred times before. Until that moment, Jess and Katherine had been terrified that Lauren was about to lose it, even though she had assured them over and over again that she was as capable as any of them. She had told them, “If anyone is entitled to have her hand in this, it’s me.”
Even though Katherine weighed barely 90 pounds, they were shaking with the strain of holding her above their shoulders. “Damn it. It won't budge.” Katherine winced.
They put her down. “Try to pry it off with this thing.” Jess said, pulling a large screwdriver out of her bag.” Then the two of them lifted her again.
“OK, I got it.” The screen fell to the ground.
“Can we put you down for a second?” Jess asked, trying to catch her breath. They lowered her, and then in a minute lifted her again. Katherine grabbed on to the window ledge and hoisted herself up and through the small opening.
The weight training, running and exercise they all had done during the last months, which they thought they had done for other reasons, would pay off handsomely today. They were stronger than any of them had ever been in their lives. Katherine wondered if perhaps on some unconscious level, they had known that some day they would need the strength, both physical and emotional, they would all have to call upon that day.
When Katherine slipped through the small opening of the window, she looked around the house. She had landed in what must be the living room. It was dark and musty, paneled with stained knotty pine, a rope rug on the floor. The smell of stale cigarette ashes in a glass ashtray on a low brass coffee table permeated the air.
Then she saw it, the rocking chair Lauren had described to them. It was the chair where Blair held Lauren and rocked her the first few times he brought her to this horrible place. It was in that chair where he slowly removed her party dress, her patent leather shoes and underpants, where he touched every part of her innocent child body, where he violated her. She shuddered.
She knew she had to fight feeling disoriented and uncontrollably angry, to not buckle under and lose it. She felt she was the most solid of the three. She took a deep breath and walked from the living room through a door leading to a small kitchen in the back and opened the door to let Jess and Lauren inside. “Hurry up.
We've got a lot to do,” she said. She was afraid to look into Lauren’s eyes. As Lauren walked from the porch to the living room, her blank stare was replaced by a look of terror. She walked up to the rocking chair and ran her hand along the back. With a light push, it began to rock, the sound of the base hitting the hardwood-planked floor, slap, slap. Once again, Katherine watched Lauren take a deep breath and pull herself straight. She shrugged her shoulders and seemed to grow a few inches taller, and her expression changed to an almost hypnotic state of calm.
“Let’s get started,” Katherine said, taking charge. “It’s 10:30, Carson is less than an hour away.”
Katherine walked into the bedroom and saw the big white iron bed where Lauren had told them Blair molested her. She opened the drawer of the nightstand. The contents made her gag. Jess came into the bedroom and crawled under the bed and attached a small radio transmitter. She placed another under a table in the living room, while Katherine nailed the fake surveillance camera, its lens pointed in the direction of the bed, to a window frame, and draped it with the curtain. Katherine opened every drawer and cabinet door, looking for a possible hidden video camera or tape recorder. She found nothing. Most of the drawers and cabinets were empty. She opened the first cabinet of a wall of cabinets and shelves on either side of a stone fireplace in the living room and quickly slammed it shut. She opened another, and again slammed the door.
“What’s wrong?” Jess asked seeing Katherine’s horrified expression.
“I’ll tell you later,” she whispered. “Just don’t let Lauren near these cabinets.”
When Lauren came into the room, she walked straight to the cabinet Katherine had just slammed shut and looked inside. It was filled with dolls, beautiful dolls, perhaps a dozen still secured with plastic bads into their pastel packages, their faces staring blankly from behind the cellophane wrapping. She closed the door and asked flatly, “Is there anything else I can do to help?”
Katherine shook her head and smiled. “I think we’re done.”
Chapter 24
Traffic had stopped. There was accident ahead. Blair rambled on about the car.
“Carson,”, he said, “Mercedes engineered this beauty especially for me,” “It’s the only one like it in the world.” He slid another cassette into the stereo. “The sound is so rich and clear, it’s as if the orchestra is right here in the car. It’s Corelli.”
As if, she thinks, I couldn’t possibly know.
She wondered how he couldn’t see right through her? He must. Everything she said sounded rehearsed, wooden. He’s so slick, this man, she thought, repulsive, but razor sharp. His clothes even on this, the hottest day of the year, are without a wrinkle or unintentional crease. She is sure he didn’t even sweat. This is what he wears for a relaxed day in the country – a flawlessly ironed shirt, silk trousers, and an alligator belt, Gucci loafers that match. A navy blazer with shiny brass buttons lies neatly across the back seat, his silver hair combed back away from his face and sprayed perfectly in place. He was deadly handsome when he was young. She had seen pictures. Women, even young women, might think he still is. To Carson, he was hideous, a giant gray rat, barely disguised by his elegant manners and clothes.
She tried to keep herself calm, but she couldn’t. What if something happened to her friends, to one of the children, and they weren’t there? What if she couldn’t get him to that house? What if he wouldn’t let her tie him up? Lauren was so sure she could do it. What if she was wrong?
The traffic picked up. Making up for lost time, he pressed his foot hard on the accelerator. “Let’s see what this baby can do.” Humming dissonantly, he reached past the leather armrest and put his hand on her thigh. She wanted to slap him, but forced a smile.
“Feel the leather. It’s like kid gloves. I’ll order one of these for you if you’d like. Just give me the word and tell me what color you want.” He turned to her and smiled and the car veered dangerously to the left.
She grabbed the wheel to steady it. “Victor, don’t even joke about that. I don’t want you to buy me anything.”
“Why not?” he said. “It would be my pleasure.”
“I’m not interested in your money, Victor.” She had memorized the lines Jess wrote for her and spent many long nights coaching her to deliver. “There is something else I want from you, Victor, and it’s not anything money can buy,” also scripted. She reached over to put her hand on the inside of his thigh. She smiled up at him adoringly in the way Jess had shown her. “I have never felt anything quite like this in my life,” she said. “It’s like I’m in heat.”
She heard her voice, how forced and wooden she must sound. It reminded her of the girls in the porno films Jess insisted they watch on the VCR in her exercise room. Jess said watching the films would help her to view the day as her “performance.” Apparently, Victor didn’t hear the false note. He seemed moved and smiled at her warmly.
She closed her thighs tightly on his hand and continued to recite the lines Jess had written for her, “I felt it the first minute I saw you. It’s that power you have. I didn’t want to feel it, Victor. I still don’t, but every minute I am in your presence, it’s there. The way you’ve looked at me, even that first day we met. It was like you were slowly undressing me, one piece of clothing at a time. I’ve wanted you to do that to me ever since.”
He moved his hand up her thigh, almost to Carson’s black lace panties, then stopped and took her hand and placed it on the mound of his already hard penis. She let it rest there as they drove, forcing herself to caress him from time to time. He seemed happy and comfortable and it felt as if their plan was working, at least for now.
He took her hand. “Oh no, you’re freezing, dear. I’m so sorry. Let me turn down the air conditioning.” His hand was warm and fleshy, his skin soft like a woman’s. His nails had been freshly manicured, the cuticles trimmed, a coat of clear polish. Carson was shaking; but it wasn’t from the cold. She tried calm down, take control of herself. In her head, she reached for Jess’s reassuring voice, a voice she had listened intently to for the last 10 days in preparation for this moment.
“Think of yourself an actress, Carson,” she’d said. “Just repeat the lines you memorized. Imagine you’re a prostitute. Don’t try to play a woman in love. Play a woman who sells herself to men. Stay in control the way Katherine’s friend says to stay in control, as if you are playing a role in a movie in which you seduce a man you hate. Know that it’s just an act. Separate yourself. You can pull it off.”
She knew what she had to do:
1. Get him to the garden house and into bed as quickly as possible.
2. Get him excited and keep him that way.
3. Tie him to the posts of the bed.
4. When you say, “Now that I’ve got you tied up, the fun begins,” We’ll hear you from the shed and come into the room.
5.You scream when you see us. Pretend to defend him, and we’ll do the rest.
So far, she was ahead of the plan. What panicked her most was getting him to allow her to tie him up. She had watched the dominatrix porno film Katherine had found at the Pleasure Chest. It was hard for her not to laugh thinking of herself dressed that way, giving orders, but she was determined to do it. If she couldn’t and didn’t signal the others to come into the room, they would leave. She would have to have sex with him and they would be forced to find another way.
Carson felt a shock of fear when Blair slowed down in front of the big iron gates of Swan’s Landing. The bronze swans were grotesquely oversized, their wings spread so strangely they looked ominous. The gates slid open noiselessly.
“And there’s no one here today?” she asked him as they drove under an arch of huge elms over a winding road.
“I promised you, Carson, and I keep my promises. There is not a soul on the property.”
It felt like it took an eternity until they reached the main house. It was so large and grand it took her breath away. “It’s is beautiful, Victor, you’re right.”
He stopped the car and reached over and pulled Carson toward him. His kiss was long and wet; he shoved his tongue into her mouth. It took everything she had not to gag. He turned off the engine.
“No, don’t, Victor. We need to go somewhere else on the property.”
“There is nowhere else.”
“I’m not going into that house,” she said, struggling to sound firm, but not off-putting.
“What do you mean you’re not going in?” he said, amused.
“I can’t make love to you in your wife’s house.”
“That’s ridiculous. This is not my wife’s house; it’s my house.”
“Please, we’ll come back here another time. I can’t go in there now.”
“That’s crazy, Carson.” Her heart was racing. She knew what she was supposed to say now, but she thought it couldn’t possibly work.
“I want you now, Victor. I want to make love to you now and it can’t be in there.”
He shook his head and protested. Carson put her fingers on his lips asking him to please listen. She kissed him as passionately as she could and said, “Please, Victor give me what I want. I promise you won’t be sorry.”
“But there is nowhere else on the property.”
“There must be. You must have a guest house or, maybe, a servants’ house you don’t use?”
“Really Carson, this is stupid. No.”
“There isn’t another bed on this property?”
“The garden house, but you don’t want to go there.”
“Yes, I do. I promise you. I do. I want to go there now. Please don’t make me wait.”
He held the leather-upholstered steering wheel tightly with both hands as they drove silently toward the garden house. He was irritated; that was clear. It was what she feared would happen. She knew she could screw up, but she didn’t even imagine it could be this bad, that she might make him angry. Clearly, she had. She wished it were Jess in the car with him instead. Jess could pull this off, she could charm him as she did everyone else in the universe, but she couldn’t. She was no seductress, not an actress or a beauty.
She took a deep breath and tried to get her composure. “Victor, you have to forgive me. I have been nervous about today for weeks. I want our first time to be perfect.”
“But you insist on going to the servants’ house. It doesn’t make sense to me.”
Then she realized he had given her an unexpected opportunity she could use. It wasn’t in her script; she would have to improvise.
“It’s about control, Victor. I feel totally overwhelmed when I’m with you, overwhelmed and out of control. I don’t like the feeling of being out of control.” Blair did not respond. He still looked irritated.
“You have this sexual power I find totally overwhelming,” Carson said. “ You must know that you have me wrapped around your little finger.” That made him smile.
“And it’s terrifying. I don’t want to be wrapped around your little finger.”
“What is it you want, Carson?” He started to look mildly amused.
“Will you play with me?” Carson said.
“Any game you want.” He smiled.
“Just pretend that I’m the one who is in control today.”
He winked. “Whatever you want,” he said, evidently starting to get the drift of what she was implying. “But what do you mean?” he said.
“You’ll see. Just indulge me.”
He smiled. “Of course. Please explain?” he said, apparently titillated.
“Let me show you. If you don’t like it, we’ll never do it again. If you do like it, you’re the man I’ve been looking for all my life.”
She waited for Victor to walk around the car and open the door, and when he did, she held out her hand to him and smiled as seductively as she could. She was starting to feel more in control although she knew she looked like a porn actress in a B-grade movie. As she got out of the car, she spread her legs just enough for him to get a look. He smiled appreciatively, took her in his arms and kissed her, his hands grabbing her buttocks and pulled her toward him. She tried to respond similarly, pressing her hips into his. The erection he had demonstrated during the drive out did not appear to be there. He took her arm and led her up the stairs of the little house.
“I told you, it’s a mess, not a place for you.”
The house was silent, like a tomb. It dawned on her that there was a good possibility that Jess, Lauren and Katherine might not be there. “
Blair said, “I have Château Laffite Rothschild and Beluga two minutes away and I can’t even offer you a glass of water here. Let me take you back to the house.”
“I don’t want caviar. I want you.”
Jess grinned when she heard Carson deliver that line. But the sound in the shed went out and for a few minutes they heard nothing. They exchanged worried glances. It was impossible to know what was happening. Hopefully, she was OK. Then they heard Victor, “What did you say about me undressing you?”
Carson laughed, “You undress me. I want you to,” she said, “and then it’s my turn to be in control. OK?”
“Sure if that’s really what you want.”
“It is.”
“Do I get one request first?” he said slyly.
“Only one, and if you ask for more I’ll be forced to spank you.”
“Spank me?” he laughed. “Oh, you are a naughty girl.”
“What’s your request?” she said managing a seductive smile.
“I want you to do a striptease for me,” he said. “Take your clothes off slowly, one piece at a time.”
“Anything you want,” she said boldly. She began to slowly unbutton her blouse, her eyes locked in his. She let the blouse slip off her shoulders and drop to the floor.
“Come here,” he said.
“I will, Victor, but remember this is the last request you get, the last order I’m taking from you today. Do you understand?”
He nodded.
“After that, you do whatever I tell you to do. Understand?“
He said yes, as he pressed his face into her breasts, his hands moving down her body. He unzipped her skirt and it fell to the ground. Wearing the black lace panties, garter belt and bra Jess bought at a sleazy sex shop, Carson felt like a caricature of a whore.
“Take off your bra,” Victor ordered.
“Don’t you tell me what to do, Victor,” she smiled and said sternly. “ It’s my turn to tell you what to do. You promised I can give all the orders today.” He laughed and so did she. “This is fun, isn’t it?” Carson said.
Blair’s voice was scratchy over the speaker in the shed. They couldn’t make out his answer. Then they heard Carson, “Lie down on the bed and put your hands above your head.” They heard the sound of the springs on the iron bed creek as he lay down.
“I’m going to tie you up,” she said, slipping into a Southern accent that made her sound as if she were imitating Jess.
He laughed, “What are you going to tie me up with?”
“I have rope in my purse,” she said, pulling a coil of heavy black silk rope from her bag.
“Rope!” he said, sounding delighted.
“Fun, huh?” she said. “I need to put some gloves on so I don’t get rope burns from tying you up.”
He laughed again. She walked to the foot of the bed and slowly and thoughtfully like a stripper working in reverse, pulled on a pair of long black gloves. His eyes followed every move as she climbed up onto the bed. She squatted over him and tied his hands tightly together and secured them to the iron headboard with a tight square knot. He seemed very turned on.
“I don’t want you to get rope burns either,” she said,” so I brought along this soft silky padding to protect your wrists.” He smiled gratefully. “Now I’m going to do your feet. “Spread your legs apart.” He did exactly what he was told. The erection he had lost earlier reappeared.
“I see you like this game,” she said.
They couldn’t make out his response, only the sound of movement on the bed. Then they heard Carson say, “Now that I’ve got you tied up, the fun begins.” They heard her loud and clear.
Carson climbed down from the bed. She looked at Blair’s penis guarded only by straggly, thin, grey pubic hair and wrapped her gloved hand around the shaft. She smiled at him and gently but firmly, moved her hand up and down.
As he slipped into ecstasy, Lauren left the shed followed by Katherine and Jess. The three, now masked and dressed like little girls, walked swiftly and silently to the house and entered the room. He had no idea they were there until he heard Lauren’s voice.
“I’ll take that, bitch!” Lauren said as she pushed Carson aside as planned. It appeared that Carson was just as shocked at their arrival as Blair was. Lauren grabbed Blair’s penis in her gloved hand, then yanked it as hard as she could. He cried out in pain. When they had rehearsed this moment, Carson hadn’t been able to manage to look as shocked and scream the way Jess directed, but at that moment of heightened terror, she screamed and backed away.
“Uncle Victor, how nice to see you again, and here where we spent so many hours together,” Lauren said calmly from behind the mask.
He shouted, “Who are you?”
“You remember me, Uncle Victor. “Lauren said from behind the face of the little girl he had repeatedly abused in that room 25 years before. “I’m Lauren, Mary’s oldest girl. You brought me here for the first time when I was seven.”
“I did no such thing,” he shouted.
From behind the smiling mask of Lauren’s little sister, Jess said, “Oh, you didn’t!” She laughed sadistically.
“Leave him alone!” Carson said angrily, reaching for the ropes to untie Blair’s hands.
“Get away from him or we’ll tie you up too,” Katherine shouted, moving toward Carson, a gun in her hand. Carson backed ff and quickly put on her clothes.
“Of course you remember my baby sister, Ellen,” Lauren said yanking him again.
With her free hand she pointed to Jess. “I bet you thought she was still in the psychiatric hospital where you stowed her away.”
“I didn’t stow anyone anywhere,” he shouted.
“You will never touch another little girl again,” Jess said.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he shouted back at her.
“You forced me to have sex with you until I almost died, ” Jess, the voice behind the mask of the smiling little girl said angrily.
“I didn’t do anything to you.”
“Oh right, Victor,” Jess said. “You know God-damned well what you did to me. And you are not the only one who knows.”
“Who do you think you’re talking to?” he shouted, trying to pull himself up. “You are going to be sorry girls, when I get through with you.”
“No Victor, it’s you who’ll be sorry,” Katherine said. “We have testimony and enough evidence to send you to federal prison for the rest of your life, not just for what you did to Lauren and Ellen, but for what you are doing to your stepdaughters right now.”
“I’m not doing anything to my stepdaughters!” he shouted.
“Tell me about it Victor,” Katherine said, and she pulled back the curtain where they had mounted the fake surveillance camera. “You were here with little Sasha last week.”
Katherine took the camera off its mount. “Would you like to see what you did to her? It’s all in this camera. We already have videos of what you did with the little girls several times before. What do you have to say for yourself?”
“I’ll say that you’re a bunch of fucking liars. Who the hell are you?”
“Oh you don’t know who I am!” Lauren shouted into to his face, her voice trembling with rage. Suddenly she pulled a chef’s knife out of the bag slung over her shoulder. “Well here’s a little reminder, Uncle Victor.” She made a quick slash on the side of his penis. He screamed as blood gushed onto her clothing.
“You’re not going to forget me again.”
The others looked at one another with horror. Yes, Lauren was going to scare him with a knife if needed, but not cut him. Using the knife was never in their plan. There was to be no blood, no guns, no violence. Everything would be clean, neat, controlled, and ladylike. They would show him the camera and play the audiotapes. He would have two choices: take the sleeping pills and be remembered as a brilliant business leader and philanthropist, or refuse and they would turn the tapes and videos over to the police and he would spend the rest of his life in prison.
Jess put her arm around Lauren’s shoulder and tried to pull her away from the bed, but she stiffened and pushed her away. Victor moaned, his face contorted with pain.
“Oh, Uncle Victor, did that hurt? I’m so sorry. It should be a clean cut. “ Lauren flashed the bloody knife in his face.
“I’ve spent a few decades sharpening this for you.” Then with one quick gesture, Lauren cut off her stepfather’s penis. As he lay screaming, the others stood powerless in shock.
“What are we going to do now?” Jess cried. Just then, they heard the sound of a car coming from the front of the property.
“Blair said no one would be here!” Jess said.
“Why was I stupid enough to believe him?” Carson said. ”We have to get out of here.”
“We can’t leave him this way,” Katherine said, her voice trembling with terror. “He is still alive. We can’t go until we know he’s dead.” She pulled the knife out of Lauren’s hand and tried to thrust it into Blair’s chest. When the knife got close to his body, she winced and turned away. She lifted the knife again. Carson wrapped both her hands around Katherine’s and together, their faces pained, they forced the knife into his chest. It seemed that in an instant, all the life went out of his body.
“Jesus Christ let’s get out of here!” Carson cried, pulling off her gloves and throwing them into the duffle. They heard a car door opening. There was no time to grab anything. They ran out the back door. In moments they were at the van, stripping down to the running clothes they wore under the costumes. They threw everything into a duffle and jumped into the car. Katherine gunned the motor and raced down the road. The gate opened as they approached and in moments they were northbound on the interstate.
The vehicle they had heard coming toward the garden house was a van from Moose Anton’s Landscaping and Nursery in Dundee, a suburb not far from Lake Forest. The driver pulled the van off to the side of the road and parked it in a shady clearing not far from the garden house. He and two other gardeners opened the back of the van and lowered a ramp and wheeled out a cart of annuals, to refresh the flowerbeds surrounding the pond and garden house.
They worked quietly without speaking to one another. After they unloaded flats of annuals, they hauled out eight large bags of topsoil and mulch. There were several more bags left inside the van. It took two men to lift each bag. They carried them silently and carefully placed them at the foundation of the garden house. One more bag was placed not far from Blair’s silver Mercedes gleaming almost blindingly in the sun.
The gardeners lingered for a moment before they returned to their van and drove back toward the main gate of the estate. When the gates closed behind them, they drove a few blocks west and parked on the side of the road. They waited silently until they heard a deafening blast of dynamite. The ground shook beneath them. They drove to a phone booth at a 7-Eleven a few blocks away. The driver got out and dialed the private line of William Peterson, the CEO of Reliable Life. He was at his desk and picked up his phone.
“It’s done,” the gardener said.
Chapter 25
In the hundreds of hours the four friends had spent together, there had rarely been more than five minutes of silence. As they drove toward the place they would destroy the evidence before returning the rental car, no one spoke. Katherine turned off the interstate at Route 50 and drove east toward Lake Michigan. Two miles before they would reach the lake, she turned onto the long winding road to Shawnee State Park. The parking lot outside the gate for overflow cars was empty. The park ranger stopped them at the gate. Katherine shuddered at the sight of a man in uniform.
“Are you camping?” he asked.
“No, just going for a picnic and a run,” Katherine said.
He stared suspiciously at the four women. They didn’t look like the locals who frequented the park on a weekday, particularly one as uncomfortably hot as this one. “Just go in,” he said, but he didn’t open the gate. “Turn left if you want the picnic area near the water.”
“Can we make a fire?” Katherine asked, though she knew the answer. Fires were allowed at Shawnee State. “We want to roast some hot dogs.”
“Pretty hot for a fire today,” he said, curiously eyeing the two strangely edgy-looking women in the back seat.
“Not for us,” Katherine said brightly.
Lauren let out a long sigh as the gate opened and they drove into the park. Fortunately, there were only two cars in the sprawling lot and one yellow school bus. The children were nowhere in sight. They drove to the picnic area and parked. Lauren slung the duffel filled with bloody clothing over her shoulder; Jess took the white Styrofoam cooler and they walked to the most private of the picnic sites. The rusty iron drum they had dragged over when they scouted the park a few day before was still just where they left it. Jess pulled a fire starter from the cooler, while the others gathered dry twigs. She lit the paper wrapper of the starter and threw it into the drum. Katherine added crumpled newspaper.
The fire started quickly. Lauren untied the duffel, pulled out the bag with the chef’s knife and threw the knife onto the ground. She dumped the bloody clothing and bag into the fire and the heat intensified. Jess picked up the knife with a paper towel and cleaned it with spray kitchen cleaner and paper towels, which she threw into the fire. She put the knife into the cooler next to a block of cheese, a loaf of bread, a pack of hot dogs and some apples.
They stood mesmerized by the fire. In a few minutes nothing was left but the grommets of the duffel. As they stowed the cooler in the van, they heard the laughter and chatter of a group of children walking toward the picnic area for lunch.
“Let’s go for a run,” Katherine said as she locked the Jeep. She led the way through the winding trails of the forest preserve. Under broad poplars, pine, spruce, hawthorn and oaks, they were shielded from the unmerciful sun. They ran in a single file at a pace that would have been unimaginable to them less than a year ago when they met, virtual strangers at that first playgroup at Katherine’s apartment. The sweat poured off their lean bodies, their hair, their skimpy lightweight mesh and polyester running clothes, sopping wet. They didn’t speak as they ran, each of them trying to digest what had happened in the hours that had just past. Would they be caught and what then?
That morning as she’d walked to Lauren’s house, Katherine remembered, there was a buff-colored mound on the sidewalk. When she got close enough she saw that it was a sparrow, lying on its side, dead. She jumped and looked away to escape the feeling of horror at seeing that dead little creature. Strange, when she looked back at Blair as they were leaving, she had felt nothing, no discomfort, no regret, just fear of what might happen to the four of them. “How could that be possible?” She wondered if there was something wrong with her. Yes, she felt afraid, but only that they would get caught. That was all.
“I shouldn’t have done it,” Lauren anguished, “but I couldn’t control myself.” With that knife in her hand, she couldn’t stop herself. She was ready to do exactly what they’d planned, say what she was supposed to say, just scare him. She didn’t regret what she did; he deserved it. In fact, she wished she could have done it years ago. Her horror lay in what she’d done to her friends. Surely they would have gotten away with everything as planned if she hadn’t lost control. She didn’t care if she got caught, but what about them? They did this for her and now she’d destroyed their lives.
Jess, too, was filled with regret, but for entirely different reasons. She wished she had grabbed that knife with them. It was wrong for her to stand there paralyzed, not taking equal responsibility for what had to be done. She was sure they were disgusted with her; she was disgusted with herself. Somehow, she didn’t feel afraid that they would be caught. Somehow, she was certain they wouldn’t be. She repeated that assurance over and over again in her head.
Carson couldn’t shake the terror she felt, the horror of what they had done. She was terrified of what would happen next, of what would happen to Zoe. She knew that she would be caught. Someone had to have seen her go out there with him. She was certain the police were looking for her already. She tried to calm herself, but it was impossible. She felt as if she were outside her body, like her legs were moving faster than they ever had before without being a part of her body. She was running to escape, but she knew that she would never escape. Perhaps the others would, but she knew that was not possible for her.
When the four women reached a clearing, they found themselves back where they started their run. The children were gone now, and they ran straight to the water, took off their running shoes and socks and dove in. The water was warm, the small lake heated by the unrelenting heat of this summer, but it was cool compared to the air.
Carson pulled off her shorts and tank top, hooked them onto her arms and began to swim toward the other side of the lake. The others did the same, all swimming just below the surface of the water. They reached the other side and swam back, meeting in a circle near the shore. They stood up, the water to their shoulders, and talked for the first time since they left Swan’s Landing.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Katherine said. “But I do know that what we did was right.”
“I’m so sorry,” Lauren said, sobbing.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Katherine said.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Carson said. “If I were you I would have done exactly the same thing.”
“I was the one who did the wrong thing,” Jess said. “I should have taken that knife in my hands too.”
Carson tried to look calm. It was hard for her even to speak. “We just have to get through this, whatever that means.”
Though no one was in sight, the four friends didn’t want to risk being caught walking around the park naked. They swam out a little further and slipped on their shorts and tanks before walking out of the water into the sun.
“These will dry in no time,” Jess said, combing her fingers through her hair. They squeezed as much water out of their clothes and hair as possible and stretched out on the picnic benches so that their clothes would dry in the sun.
From the park, they drove to the place where they had left Jess’s car after they picked up the Jeep at the rental agency. They transferred everything into the trunk, and Lauren followed the as they drove to the Hertz car rental office. After they returned the Jeep, the four women headed home through heavy construction on the interstate.
The ride back to the center of Chicago felt like forever. No one spoke. Lauren fell asleep and slumped onto Jess’s shoulder. Jess reached over and rubbed her head as if she were a child. When they pulled into Jess’s driveway, it was almost 6:00. The children, except for Louie, who was away with his father, were there, as was Alex. When the four women walked into the house, Maeda and Millie were in the kitchen finishing dinner preparations. Maeda said: “They’re down in the pool. David and Alex are teaching the children to swim.”
“Sorry we are so late.” Jess said when they got downstairs. There’s construction on I-94 and traffic was moving at a snail’s pace.”
“How was your day?” David shouted. “Did you get your car?”
“All fixed,” Jess said. “Funny, I had to pay the mechanic with cash.”
“But did you have a good time? Like I have to ask the four of you; you always have a blast.”
“It was great. We went for a run, took a swim, had lunch.”
“Everybody out of the pool. Time to have dinner,” Jess shouted.
“No we’re not getting out!” the children shouted in unison.
“Give us a little more time, honey. Maybe another half an hour,” David asked, not having a clue that the last thing Jess or her friends wanted at this moment was to deal with their children.
“Sure honey,” Jess said gratefully.
“Do you mind if we go upstairs and turn on the news?” Carson asked.
“Oh yeah, you should,” David said. “Lauren, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but I think I know how you’ll feel about the news.” He gestured for her to come closer so the children wouldn’t hear. “Your stepfather is dead.”
Lauren shook her head. They walked upstairs quietly to the family room where they turned on the TV. Jess went to the bar and poured four hefty gin and tonics and they eased down on an oversized couch facing the TV.
Bill Kurtis and Walter Jacobson, the co-anchors of the ABC evening news bantered about the heat. Then, Kurtis, looking grimly into the camera said, “Sadly, we have to report a giant loss for Chicago today. One of our most beloved and respected business leaders, Victor Blair, was murdered at his Lake Forest estate. A real estate magnate, Blair was a major force behind the development of One Magnificent Mile, and most recently the lead partner in the projected billion-dollar Riverfront Center. Jerry Taft is at the scene of the murder.”
“It appears that Blair was brutally murdered before assailants dynamited a small gardener’s house at his Lake Forest estate. There is almost nothing left of the structure. At first, the police were not certain the deceased was Blair, but his identity was later confirmed with dental records.” The camera panned to what remained of the house, virtually burnt to the ground. “Neighbors heard the blast at about 11:30 this morning. The police are searching for any clues that might point to what might have motivated this gangland-style murder of one of Chicago’s most powerful and admired businessmen.
“William Peterson, the president of Reliable Life Insurance, a business partner with Blair in the Riverfront Center project and one of his closest friends, was interviewed at his office this afternoon.”
“Mr. Peterson, the nature of the murder points to the possibility that the crime syndicate was involved.”
“I can’t imagine that. Victor Blair was one of the most honorable men I have ever known. I don’t think he had an enemy in the world.”
The screen went back to Kurtis. “Mr. Blair will be remembered not only as one of Chicago’s most brilliant businessmen, but also as a beloved philanthropist whose generosity benefited scores of Chicago charities. Just a few months ago, Channel 7 featured Victor Blair in our series on Chicago’s most powerful leaders. Here in an interview with our own Carson Brown…”
“Mr. Blair, I understand that along with scores of other philanthropic interests you have had a lifelong commitment to philanthropy benefiting children, both here in the Chicago area and all over the world.”
“Yes, that’s true, Carson. Nothing could be more important to me and to my wife.” The camera flashed to his smiling wife seated at his side.
“It appears you are also a devoted father.” His beautiful stepdaughter was sitting on his lap and beamed up at him. He hugged her to his chest and planted a kiss on her forehead.
“Well, of course,” he said with a smile, and looked straight into the camera. “Could anything be more adorable than a little girl?”