Hardscrabble Road (6 page)

The city of Philadelphia should move them, Ellen thought, sitting back. The city should send them to shelters, or arrest them
for vagrancy. She didn’t trust people who chose to live like that. Sherman Markey was a homeless person, after all, and he
was responsible for Drew taking drugs and being in all the trouble he was in. Drew would never have taken drugs if he’d been
left to himself. He wasn’t a drug kind of person. It was the homeless people who took drugs.

The apartment was just up ahead, not a block and a half away. There were no homeless people here. The doormen chased them
away. They sometimes got into trouble for doing it—apparently, you weren’t supposed to be able to make citizens get off the
public sidewalks, even if they were dirty and smelled and might be dangerous to the people who lived in the neighborhood—but
they did it anyway, and most of the time nobody complained. She just wanted to get home and take a couple of Advil to keep
her jaw from aching. This was the fourth root canal she’d had in as many weeks.

The driver pulled up to the curb and Ellen waited patiently for him to come around and open her door. This was important.
Drew had drilled it into her over and over again. This wasn’t a cab. This was his personal car
and his personal driver. That made it her personal car and her personal driver. It wasn’t her job to behave as if the driver
were doing her any favors. She was also supposed to remember not to call him a “chauffeur.”

The driver came and opened the door. She got out into the wind and flinched. It was really very, very cold. You would think
that a night like this would make those people living on the street realize they had to change their lives and learn to be
better. People called her stupid, but even she wasn’t so stupid that she couldn’t have picked up on a point like that one.

She said good evening to the doorman and went in through the big glass doors into the lobby, and then she stopped. There was
a woman in the lobby, sitting in one of the big leather armchairs with her coat thrown off to the back of her, reading something
Ellen thought at first might be a monthly magazine called First Things—and if that had been the case, the woman would have
been Martha Iles, Drew’s chief assistant. Ellen truly hated Martha Iles, in spite of the fact that she knew Drew would never
be attracted to her, never in a million years. Actually, no man anywhere would ever be attracted to Martha. She was a frump,
a pudgy little woman who wore skirts just long enough to make her legs look thicker. She was also a right royal bitch—which
was a word, like “chauffeur,” that Ellen was supposed to remember never to say.

The woman in the chair wasn’t reading First Things, but Vanity Fair, which was kept on the coffee table in the lobby to give
visitors something to do while the people they were waiting for were taking too long to come down and get them. She was too
tall and too thin to be Martha, too, and her hair had been colored recently, where Martha’s had never been colored at all.
Ellen relaxed a little. It was Danielle Underwood, Drew’s media assistant, the one he had hired to prove that he wasn’t some
kind of anti-woman sexist Neanderthal.

Of course, as far as Ellen was concerned, women really should spend their time in kitchens, but that was just her opinion.
It was just because she thought children were more important than money, even if she couldn’t have any right now, because
it would make things too complicated.

Danielle had seen her come in and put the magazine back on the coffee table. She stood up and got her coat by its collar.

“Ellen,” she said. “It’s good to see you.”

Ellen did not think it was all that good to see Danielle, but she couldn’t say that kind of thing. The ideal was to be always
gracious and polite and absolutely vacuous, so that nobody could tell what you were thinking.

“Danielle,” she said. “Has something happened? Isn’t it late for you to be out?”

“I’ve been talking to the lawyers. To Neil Savage. I thought I’d come over and tell you what was going on.”

“I don’t really understand what’s going on,” Ellen said. “There’s no use explaining it to me. Drew will be back in about a
month. You should tell it all to him, then. He handles that kind of thing.”

“Yes,” Danielle said. “Well.” She looked at the doorman.

There was going to be no way to avoid having this woman up to the apartment. It drove Ellen crazy.

“Why don’t you come up to the apartment?” Ellen asked Danielle. Then she headed for the elevators, biting the insides of her
cheeks so that she wouldn’t scream. Her jaw hurt. She’d just had a root canal. She wanted to take painkillers and go to bed
and watch Titanic on DVD.

The apartment took up half the top floor of this building. It could only be reached if you had a special key to put into the
board next to the floor buttons. Ellen keyed them in and waited for the elevator doors to open up on the penthouse lobby.

She went across the lobby and opened the apartment with another key. Drew was always talking about getting full-time staff,
including a maid to open up for them when they came home, but Ellen thought it would make things seem too cramped even in
a large apartment. They could wait for the full-time staff for when they bought a place out on the Main Line.

Danielle walked through the foyer and threw her coat on the back of the couch. Ellen followed her, trying to look helpful
and upbeat.

“Can I get you anything? Coffee? I can’t offer you a drink, because we threw all that out just before Drew went into rehab.
Not that Drew’s an alcoholic, you understand, but it’s supposed to be bad for somebody who’s getting over a problem with pills.
I don’t understand why it’s legal to sell pills like that if they’re addictive. I mean, isn’t that why drugs are illegal?
Because they’re addictive?”

“I don’t know,” Danielle said. “I’ve never thought about it. I don’t need coffee, Ellen, thank you. I just wanted to tell
you what the lawyers said.”

“It’s not going to do any good telling me what the lawyers said. I’m not going to understand it, because I don’t know the
background. Drew can take care of it when he gets home.”

“Right,” Danielle said. “Look, Ellen, you’ve got to try to understand that Drew may not be able to handle things when he gets
home. Even assuming the course of treatment in rehab is one hundred percent successful—”

“—Why shouldn’t it be one hundred percent successful? Drew doesn’t want to be addicted to anything. It’s just a matter of
strength of character. Drew has a lot of strength of character. The problem with most people who
take drugs is that they don’t care. They don’t want to get up out of their little cocoons and get some work done.”

“Right,” Danielle said again. “The thing is, even assuming success, Drew’s going to have a lot of legal problems to deal with.
You’ve got to get used to the fact that he might have to spend some time in jail.”

Ellen blinked. “Nonsense,” she said. “Why should he spend any time in jail? He hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“He was caught in possession of dozens of pills that he had no right to have.”

“But they were legal pills,” Ellen said. “They were pills doctors gave him.”

“The doctors only gave him the pills because he lied to them and said no other doctors were giving him the same pills. Which
is against the law. And then there are the pills the doctors didn’t give him, that he got on the black market—”

“From that man Sherman Markey. I know. I saw him on the news the other night. I don’t understand why he isn’t in jail.”

“He’s out on bail.”

“He shouldn’t be out on bail, though, should he? He should be in jail.”

“Ellen, at the moment, Drew is out on bail.”

“They’ve got those people being Sherman Markey’s lawyers. The Justice Project. They’re Communists, did you know that? Drew
told me. During the Cold War, they actively worked for the destruction of the United States and the victory of her enemies.
That’s just how Drew put it. Aren’t people given the death penalty for treason?”

Danielle ran her tongue slowly over her upper lip, and all of a sudden Ellen didn’t want to be in the same room with her anymore.
For all she knew, Danielle could be a lesbian. So many people were, these days.

“I’m going to make coffee,” she said. “And I’m going to take some Advil. I just had a root canal.”

“I’m sorry, Ellen. I didn’t mean to barge in on you at a bad moment.”

“Advil is all right, isn’t it? It’s not illegal? I won’t go to jail for having a whole bottle of Advil in the medicine cabinet,
a big one, with two hundred fifty pills?”

“No, of course you won’t. Ellen, listen, it’s about the property on Hardscrabble Road that Drew deeded to the Our Lady of
Mount Carmel Monastery. The nuns want to sell it.”

“Well, it’s their property now, isn’t it? That’s what Drew said. They can sell it if they want to.”

“Ordinarily yes, of course, they could. But now, you see, there’s a problem, because the lawyers at the Justice Project have
gone to court and gotten an injunction to stop the sale until Mr. Markey’s suit against Drew can be settled—”

“I can’t believe that man is suing Drew. I can’t believe it. It’s the money, you know. He thinks Drew is rich. He ought to
be in jail.”

“Yes, well, the thing is, the reason why the judge agreed to stop the sale— hold it up, temporarily, really—anyway, the reason
is that the judge thinks there’s a chance that the entire transaction, giving the property to the convent, the sale, that
the entire thing is a setup. That Drew has somebody pretending to be a buyer who isn’t a real buyer. And that the sale will
look all right on paper, but no money will actually change hands, so Drew will end up owning the property but at the same
time the paperwork will look like he doesn’t and therefore it won’t be taken away from him if he’s ordered to pay Sherman
Markey any money.”

“You’re being ridiculous. You sound like a mystery story.”

“It’s not at all ridiculous, Ellen. People do it all the time. They shield money from taxes, from lawsuits, from spouses they’re
divorcing.”

“Drew isn’t divorcing me.”

“No, of course he’s not. I just mean that people do that kind of maneuver very often if they’re afraid a court is going to
attach their assets. And this is just the kind of case where a court could attach Drew’s assets. Sherman Markey may win his
lawsuit. There’s no telling. And Drew could have—”

“—He’s in rehab,” Ellen said triumphantly. “He couldn’t have. He isn’t allowed to talk to anybody. He isn’t even allowed to
talk to me.”

“I know. I don’t think anybody thinks he’s trying to run this from rehab. Drew isn’t that stupid. It’s possible he set it
up before he went in, with somebody he could trust.”

“Who?”

Danielle coughed. “Well, not to put too fine a point on it, you.”

“Me?”

“You’re his wife, Ellen. You can’t even be required to testify against him in court.”

“And I’m supposed to be doing what, trying to buy this property Drew just gave away? Except I wouldn’t be really buying it,
because I wouldn’t be using money?”

“Ellen, please. The Abbess of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is Drew’s sister. She—”

“She could be in on it, too? A nun?”

“You’ve got to understand that the Catholic Church doesn’t have a great reputation for honesty in this country at the moment.”

“I’m getting my Advil,” Ellen said. “This is ridiculous. You’re making it all up. Drew gave some property to a convent. He
was giving to charity, for God’s sake.”

“He didn’t give to charity until after Sherman Markey filed his suit.”

“And it’s no use thinking he and that awful woman have some kind of scheme going together. They can barely stand to be in
the same room with each other. She’s a liberal, you know, politically. She hates everything Drew stands for. She hates me.”

“I didn’t know nuns had politics,” Danielle said. “Never mind, Ellen, I’m sorry I bothered you. I know it’s ridiculous, under
the circumstances, knowing the people involved. But I did think you needed to know what people are thinking, and what they’re
going to go on thinking. This isn’t going to go away, not even when Drew gets out of rehab. You’re both going to have to deal
with it.”

“I don’t have to deal with anything. Drew deals with it.” “Yes,” Danielle said. “Right. Okay, Ellen, I’m going to go and let
you take your Advil and get some rest. I’m sorry I bothered you. It’s just that we thought, and the lawyers thought, we thought
it was important you understood what’s going on.”

“I understand what’s going on,” Ellen said. “It’s that Sherman Markey. He got caught and now he’s trying to put it all off
on Drew. He should learn to take responsibility for himself and live like a decent person.”

“Yes,” Danielle said. “Well.”

She was all packed up and ready to go. Ellen didn’t move to follow her into the foyer and out the door. She didn’t care how
gracious and polite she was supposed to be. Her jaw hurt, and she wanted nothing more than to claw the skin off Danielle Underwood’s
face—or Sherman Markey’s, if she could find him anywhere close.

There was something she hadn’t gotten again, something she was being stupid about. She could see it in the way Danielle was
looking at her, but she’d be damned if she’d come out and ask about what it was.

That was the kind of mistake she used to make in high school, and she was never going to make it again.

M
arla Hildebrande cared nothing
about politics. She cared nothing about religion, either, beyond the sort of vague fuzzy-happy feeling that there probably
had to be a God out there somewhere, watching out for her. It only made sense. If people asked her whether she prayed, she
said yes, because she sent up heartfelt wishes for deliverance several times a day. It was the kind of thing anybody would
do if they had to work with the kind of people she had to work with. If people asked her what she thought of the president
of the United States or gun control or gay marriage or tax cuts, she tended to mumble a lot and look bright but mentally disabled.
She only
rarely knew what they were talking about anyway, and President George W. Bush had been in office for two years before she
realized he was in office at all. When people said “President Bush” to her, she thought they were talking about the first
one, whom she rather liked, because he reminded her of a boy she had dated her freshman year in college. She was shocked to
find out that gay people were demanding the right to marry. Why would they want to, when marriage was mostly a hellhole for
the heterosexual people who already had the right to do it? The one issue that sounded vaguely interesting to her was tax
cuts, because cuts seemed to imply that she would pay fewer taxes and take home more money, although she wasn’t sure of that.
Political people got her confused, and they were angry all the time. Religious people weren’t angry all the time, but they
were angry a lot, and too many of them seemed to go to jail for tax fraud. She couldn’t understand why any of it mattered
anyway. It was only people talking, and the more they talked, the less sense they made. She was not registered to vote, which
probably didn’t matter either. She would never remember to go to the polling place and do it.