Lace II (28 page)

Pagan could not stop crying. When Sophia returned home from school, she found her mother curled up on the bedroom carpet, still clutching Buster’s collar in her hand, and sobbing noisily.

“Mummy, what is it? Why are you crying?” Sophia stroked Pagan’s head and wondered what to do, who to call.

“I don’t know,” Pagan howled, “but I can’t s-s-s-s-s-stop.”

Sophia sat down beside her and also started to bawl.

At last, together, they were able to share their grief.

Late June 1979

“T
HEY’LL JUST HAVE
to wait for their money, my blood isn’t bankable.” Judy wearily shoved a pile of bills off her knees; they slid down the fox-fur spread of her brown velvet bed with a menacing little shoosh to Tom, who was seated on the end of the bed. “At least switching the printers paid off. We’ve saved a slice of this month’s budget.” Noisily, she blew her nose; her bout of summer flu just made everything that much worse.

Tom shook his head. “I didn’t want to discuss it until you were back in the office, but the color reproduction of our July issue is way below standard.”

“The printers swear that they’ll do a better job next month. Teething troublès, they said.”

Again, Tom shook his head. “Next month is too late. Lady Mirabelle Cosmetics has withdrawn the new fall campaign because they say our color reproduction is no longer good enough.”

Judy’s already pale face went white. “When did that happen?”

“This afternoon. That’s why I had to talk to you. A lot of advertisers have been griping; we’ve already lost a few of the
smaller ones, but Lady Mirabelle’s a body-blow.” Judy knew perfectly well that the Lady Mirabelle Christmas Gift campaign accounted for a big chunk of their revenue, from September to Christmas. “We can’t replace that money,” Tom emphasized.

“Does anyone else know?” asked Judy.

“No.”

“Are you sure no one knows?” she persisted.

“No.” Tom gave a short laugh. “Not even Tony knows about the Lady Mirabelle problem.”

Judy flopped back wearily on her cream silk pillows. Tom looked at her and thought, it’s not like Judy to act so spoiled and sound so sorry for herself. And she hasn’t got that much to be sorry about. Just because you were born poor doesn’t mean that the world owes you a living at some later date. Parts of Judy’s life had been hard, but they’d nearly all been interesting, and she’d had some really lucky breaks on her way to the top. Maybe she’d become overambitious, maybe they both had. Tom knew that was Kate’s opinion. Trouble was, Judy wasn’t used to losing. And they were both under great strain. Tom said, “Judy, we took a gamble on the printing and we lost the gamble. But winners always take risks and sometimes they lose. Failing sometimes is a part of long-term winning. You can see their point, Judy. They aren’t going to spend millions developing plum colors, then run ads for them in a magazine that prints them light purple. Switching printers was a false economy.” Tom’s usually cheerful face was strained. “And there’s another thing that you may have forgotten. All our business loans are guaranteed against each other. The PR company is still doing fine, and so is the property company, but they guarantee the magazine, which, in turn guarantees our stock market investments…”

“Losses, you mean!” snorted Judy.

“…which means that we can’t liquidate one part of our business without the domino effect. They’ll all start crashing.”

“Tom, this is like a nightmare. A crash is what I’ve always dreaded, and you’ve always told me my attitude was overcautious. You always said that we were borrowing in order not to miss business opportunities. Why, only nine months ago, you
told me that we were worth two million dollars
more
this year. What about the Hoffmann-La Roche profits that you stuck in Swiss francs?”

“That was before our copper futures problem.” Tom looked uncomfortable. Judy had always hated him playing the futures market.

Judy said, “I wish we’d sorted out the
VERVE!
portfolio and separated the investment business from the rest of the company, as Kate suggested.”

“We just never got around to it. I wish you’d never run that interview with Lili! Let’s both stop wishing and think positive!” He handed her the box of Kleenex. “Our financial situation is a house of cards; we’ve borrowed from Peter to pay Paul for months now and we can’t go on much longer.”

“Sometimes,” Judy’s voice was flat, “I’d just like to take a plane and leave it all behind me.” She looked at the space on the wall where her treasured silk painting of a Manchu noble had hung until it had followed the jade collection to Sotheby’s a few weeks earlier. Despite the warmth of her apartment and the thick fur spread, Judy felt cold and bone-tired. Why hadn’t the
VERVE!
lawyers picked up the danger in that fatal interview with Lili? Why didn’t the First Amendment apply to magazines as it did to newspapers? How could one lousy paragraph of print have sabotaged her entire life’s achievement? If I could wipe out five minutes of my life, Judy thought, I’d choose the time it took for Lili to tell me about Senator Ruskington.

Tom stood up, then picked up the heavy file box that contained their depositions for the hearing on the following day. “I want you to read your statement once again, before you sign it, Judy,” he said gently. “We’ve got to get this absolutely right.”

Judy sighed, took the document from him and began to read it. “At least after we win this hearing, we’ll wring a few thousand in damages out of the Senator when we counter-sue for libel.”

“Nobody wins a lawsuit, Judy, you know that, Even if we win, we’ll still be thousands of dollars in hock.”

“Not ‘if’ Tom, ‘when,’ ” Judy stressed, with weary stubborness. She hadn’t achieved what she had by giving up
easily. Tom said nothing and looked at his scuffed Gucci loafers. To change the subject, he asked, “Want to hear what’s happened to Kate?”

“Of course.” Judy brightened, as Tom pulled from his pocket an airmail envelope covered with neat, small handwriting, with no loops or flourishes.

“ ‘The hill tribe guerrillas are getting stronger,’ she says. They’ve raided banks, attacked the Bengali settlements and the army garrison and she thinks they’re secretly planning an assault on the oil companies. That will be Shell, I suppose. Her typewriter’s been stolen, but she hopes to buy a new one on the black market, and she says she’ll sleep with it chained to her wrist.”

“You don’t seem very worried about her, Tom.”

“You know Kate. She hates a dull life, so I go along with what makes her happy. Of course I’m worried about her.”

“Hasn’t anyone got any good news to cheer me up?” Judy picked up a second legal document from the pile.

“No news of Mark?”

“I’ve already told you, that’s over. Mark and I were finished months ago.” She buried her head in her hands. “I can’t take it any more,” she whispered. “Why is it that the minute you’re off balance, the vultures close in, trying to bring you down? Mark’s in Nicaragua, and he’s in Nicaragua because he doesn’t care to be around unsuccessful, old me.”

Tom silently offered her another tissue from the box on the rosewood table beside her bed. “Judy, I can’t imagine that anyone would leave you just because you’re vulnerable or depressed or not sixteen any more. You’re a complete woman, Judy, and an honest woman. I think you’re the most honest woman I’ve ever met, and any man could love you for that alone.”

She shook her head and slowly wiped her reddened eyes. “All that Mark really liked about me was the fact that I
didn’t
need him. As soon as I needed him,
really
needed him, he ran away in the most destructive possible way.” Again, the tears started trickling from the sides of her eyes. “The crisp executive in me was irresistible so long as she was giving her attention to Mark’s brilliant career and his home comforts. He was very pleased to live off my emotional strength when I
had enough for two, but when I needed someone to take care of
me
for a change, he couldn’t take it.” Judy’s voice crackled with misery and she sobbed silently behind her hands.

Tom said, “It’s normal to suffer when a relationship ends. You get a few kicks in your pride, your dignity gets a bit dented, it’s a diminishing experience for everybody,” he soothed. “But Judy, you’ve only got to compare the divorce rate and the marriage statistics to know that people can split or hitch up any time, at any age. You’re still attractive.…”

“That’s great, Tom, just great—that makes me feel like Methuselah’s mother. ‘You’re still attractive’ means that when people look at me they can see the day coming when I won’t be attractive anymore. It means that time’s running out.” She blew her nose again. “This isn’t the way I want to end up, Tom, alone in bed with my work. This wasn’t the rosy vision I had in front of me when I first ran away from Rossville, to make my fortune.” She scraped her face with a tissue, leaving red weals on her cheeks.

“Don’t be too hard on Mark,” Tom pleaded. “I don’t suppose either of us is the easiest person in the world to be with, when we’re under this sort of strain.”

“That’s not it.” Judy pushed her fingers through her hair with a gesture of anguish. “I’m not easy to be with, because everybody’s got the wrong idea about me. Mark’s no different from any other man. To him, a woman in a top job is tough, self-possessed, independent—all the things he has to be to stay at the top of his profession. What he doesn’t understand is that, just because I am those things at work, it doesn’t follow that I want to be the same way at home. Like all you men, Mark thinks a successful career woman isn’t interested in kindness, or caring and sharing, and he thinks I don’t need it. But I
do
. I’m just as thirsty for love as any housewife running a couple of kids and a recipe club; the only difference is that I run a corporation.”

“Finish these papers, Judy, and then I’ll take them all away,” Tom coaxed her. “Crying won’t get us out of the hole we’re in.”

As Judy dried her tears and finished reading her statement, Tom turned on the TV in time to catch the late news. As he had anticipated, Senator Ruskington was interviewed with his loyal wife at his side. Her face was serious and indignant. The
Senator answered the interviewer, “This is indeed a most unpleasant case, which is why my wife and I feel that it is my duty to the public to expose this situation for what it is.” Expertly, Ruskington turned to face the camera head-on. “An unpleasant attempt to sell an unpleasant magazine through salacious innuendo and un-Christian lies. Any money which comes to us through this lawsuit will be donated to a charity which will be chosen by my wife.” The Senator was glibly pious.

“But you are claiming ten million dollars in damages,” the reporter reminded him.

“Whatever the court sees fit to award us will all be given to charity,” the Senator confirmed. “My wife and I wish it to be known that there is not a shred of evidence to support the vile accusations printed in
VERVE!
magazine. We feel it is appropriate that the people who publish this dishonest magazine should see the rewards of their evildoing.”

Judy shook her fist at the TV screen and gathered up the scattered papers on her bed. “I’m going to go through these once again, Tom,” she said.

The woman TV reporter suggested, “Some people find it hard to understand why you are pushing this case against
VERVE!
magazine with so much vigor.”

“Attagirl!” Judy cried, sitting up in bed. “I bet she reads
VERVE!”

On-screen, the Senator again turned to the camera. “My wife and I feel that until some person in our situation makes a stand, any so-called actress can draw attention to herself by linking her name with that of a prominent public citizen.” The Senator paused for breath. “I want everyone to know that our family is united in fighting this attempt to blacken our good name and to brand me as a fornicator and an adulterer.”

“But Senator, isn’t this also an attempt on your part to obtain a great deal of money?” the reporter prodded him.

“My personal reputation is worth more to me than any sum of money,” said the Senator. The interview ended and Tom switched off the TV.

Tom left her apartment shortly after midnight, saying, “Take care of yourself, Judy.”

That’s what I’ve been trying to do for the last thirty years, she thought.

Judy remembered how depressed she’d felt in Switzerland, where she’d worked all day at the language laboratory and every evening and weekend as a waitress at the Chesa. She’d never learned to ski, she’d never gone to dances, and she’d never had pretty clothes like Maxine and Kate. She still remembered her sudden bitterness when the young Pagan had, without thinking twice, returned the diamond necklace that Prince Abdullah had tried to give her; that necklace would have paid for Judy’s entire year in Europe.

Judy never permitted herself to remember what it felt like to be really poor, because she panicked when she recalled what it felt like to have only one pair of shoes and one repeatedly patched dress. But when she remembered her mother’s hopeless face and the strained, tense atmosphere in their home, for the two years during which her father was out of work, then Judy felt grim determination to succeed—at no matter what cost to herself.