Sleeping Beauty (24 page)

Charles jumped up and grabbed Vince's arm as he started for the boy. “Leave him alone, for God's sake, he's just a kid.”

“A lot of them are kids. They have to be taught a lesson.”

“You got lots of ten dollars!” the boy cried. “You wouldn't of even missed it!”

“Fucking little son of a bitch—” Vince pulled free of Charles and reached out a long arm to grab the boy.

“Leave him alone!”
Charles shoved Vince aside and stood between him and the boy. “We're in enough trouble already; I think you've killed the other one.”

Vince looked down at the boy on the path. He nudged him with his foot and the boy groaned. “It takes more than that to kill these punks,” he said. “All right, let's go; his friend can take care of him. Fucking little bastards. They were ready to jump you, you know. Why the hell did you go for your wallet?”

“It wouldn't have been worth getting killed. Even if it was the whole wallet.”

“Why were you so sure you'd be killed?” Vince was walking rapidly, his stride as long and confident as before. It was as if nothing had happened. They left the C&O path and were on K Street again, less than a block from his apartment.

Charles caught up to him. He was shaking, but it was not because of the two boys. It was because of Vince.
Why were you so sure you'd be killed?
There had been contempt in that question, and Charles could not bear Vince's contempt. But
why
had
he been so sure? Why had it never occurred to him to attack? The kid was half his height, a third his weight, and probably terrified. Why hadn't Charles Chatham, righteous citizen, knowledgeable city dweller, and world traveler, smashed his fist into the kid's face, knocked him to kingdom come, the way his younger and shorter brother had?

He didn't know. He never knew why Vince always came across as the man of action and he himself as the timid follower. All his life he had been unable to break away from Vince's spell. And the most devastating evidence of that had come twenty-four years earlier, when he had wavered between his own daughter and Vince, and by his silence, had chosen Vince.

And he still did not know whether he had been right. He still could not believe that Vince would touch Anne. That would have meant there was evil within his brother that Charles could not fathom and had never seen. If he had, he would have leaped to his daughter's defense when she gave evidence that evil was in their midst. I would have, he told himself. Of course I would.

Vince walked around the circular fountain at the entrance to his building and waited for Charles. “I'll be in my study; I have some calls to make,” he said as they rode the elevator to the twelfth floor. “Committee hearing at ten tomorrow morning, if you want to come.”

“I'll let you know,” Charles said. He nodded to the butler who opened the door. “I may go back tomorrow; I probably ought to stick close to the office for a while.”

“Whatever you want. You can come and go; you know that. Help yourself to a drink. I'll see you at breakfast, unless you decide to take an early flight.”

“Good night,” Charles said. He poured a large whiskey and took it to the guest suite at the end of the hall. He pulled out his suitcase. For the first time, he was anxious to get away. It wasn't so much Vince that he wanted to escape; it was his own dependence. I'm sixty-seven, Charles thought—he seemed to think about his age more when he was with Vince than at any other time—what the hell is wrong with
me? He knew he cut a ridiculous figure: a graying, sophisticated businessman who could not break away from the magnetism of his younger brother.

But I can't even break away from the success of my father, he added silently.

He sat on the edge of the bed. He would have to go to Tamarack and tell Ethan what was happening with Chatham Development. Too much was at stake. He had thought he might tell him a few months earlier, when Leo had asked him to come for the Fourth of July. Instead, he had gone to Maine with Vince. I'll tell him, he decided. Whatever happens, he has to know. Maybe we can pull it off, together. He won't mind if I ask for his help one more time.

There was a knock on the door and Vince walked in. “Leo called. Ethan's had a stroke; he's asking for you. You'd better book a flight.”

Charles reached for the telephone. “How bad is he?”

“I don't know. They're flying him to Denver and Gail's with him in the plane. You might call me when you find out.”

“You're not going?”

“I can't miss the hearing in the morning. I'll come later if you think I should.”

They looked at each other. “He's ninety,” Charles said. “We always knew he had to die.”

“After a while it seemed he never would,” Vince said neutrally, and left the room as Charles made his reservation for the earliest flight to Denver.

*   *   *

Ethan heard them come into his room, but he did not bother opening his eyes. He knew why they were gathering around his bed: his family had come to see him die. Well, that was fine; that was what they should do. He didn't really want to be alone right now because he was feeling a little frightened about what was coming. He thought it would be like sinking into sleep, and he certainly didn't mind that; he'd been tired most of the time since his stroke, whenever that was. It seemed a very long time ago. It had been in the fall, he remembered that, and Charles had flown from
Washington, where he'd been visiting Vince. They'd all expected him to die then, but he'd come through fine. Well, not so fine. He couldn't make people understand him, even though he knew exactly what he wanted to say; and he couldn't go anywhere, couldn't walk around Tamarack on a warm morning and sit in the café with a croissant and coffee that he wasn't hungry for. Lately he'd been thinking he ought to let go, just fall asleep and let everything go. But then he'd remember that he wouldn't wake up, ever, and he'd think, not yet, not for a while yet; I'm not ready to go that far.

He wanted to see Gail's children grow up; they were so bright and full of new ways of looking at the world, and they loved him. He wanted to help Charles; he didn't think there would ever be a time when Charles would not need help. He wanted to wait for Anne; he knew she would come back someday, maybe tomorrow, or even this evening, in time for dinner, and he had to be here to greet her. He wanted to watch over Tamarack, to try to head off its worst excesses as it continued to grow. He wanted to walk in the mountains and breathe the scent of pine trees after a rain, and the perfume of wild roses that were so fragile each one lived only a day, and the moist earth with succulent mushrooms growing at the bases of the spruce and Douglas fir.

But he knew none of that would happen. He was too tired, too old and too tired, and it was time to give up, to let go of the avid grasp he had had on life for ninety-one years.

“ . . . sell. I told you: we have no choice.”

It was Charles' voice, low and urgent. Ethan could just make out the words. Sell what? he wondered. Maybe his house in Lake Forest; God knows why he kept it all these years. His wife dead, Gail here, Anne gone; no new wife to sweeten the dead air in those big formal rooms. Crazy that he kept it all these years. So now he's going to sell it. Probably get a good price; the market was good in the whole Chicago area.

“You can't.” That was Leo. What did Leo care whether or not Charles sold his Lake Forest house? “It would kill Ethan.”

“He won't know.”

“He'd know. Anyway, it's mortgaged to the hilt; you wouldn't get enough to make it worth losing Tamarack.”

Tamarack?
Ethan opened his eyes. “Rack,” he said. His voice was thready. “Rack and ruin.” He struggled and his mouth worked.
“Corner,”
he burst out.

“Oh, look what you've done,” Gail cried. Ethan's eyes moved to see her. She was a good girl: pretty, helpful, kind. A kind young woman. She would miss him; they were good friends. “He knows, and he's upset. Leave him alone; leave Tamarack alone. It would be the worst thing in the world to sell it.” She looked at Charles, her eyes pleading. “You can't do it.”

“I'm doing what I have to do,” Charles said flatly. “William and I have the votes—”

“Not ready to sell,” William rumbled.

Charles exploded. “Damn it, you're in trouble, too!”

“Please!” Nina cried. “Don't shout!” She was watching Ethan, who had closed his eyes again. “Maybe he'll go back to sleep.”

“It doesn't matter,” Charles said. “If he did hear us, he understood; he knows how business works better than all the rest of us put together. He'd be with me on selling Tamarack.”

“Bullshit,” said Leo. “He'd hold on to Tamarack till he died. What did you mean, William is in trouble, too?”

“We're all in trouble.” Charles paced up and down one side of the room. “The company, Tamarack, all of us. Christ, you know what's happening around here; if we don't get out pretty soon, we won't
have
anything to sell.”

Leo shook his head. “Tamarack isn't in trouble; we're doing fine here. If you mean the EPA, we can handle that. They won't find any problems. My God, those mine dumps have been here for almost a hundred years; if there's still some lead leaching out of them, we'll take care of it. Whatever it is, it isn't as bad as they're saying in Washington. The only mystery is why they picked us to test when there are old mines all over Colorado. But we'll be okay; I'm not worried about it.”

“Well, I am,” Charles said angrily. “How many times do I have to say it? This family is in trouble; and I'm selling everything I can to cover our losses on Deerstream—”

“That was a doomed project,” William said.

Charles swung on him. “You helped put it together.”

“I told you to wait for the highway.”

“The money was allocated! It was a sure thing!”

“Then where is it?” asked Marian. “There's an awful lot of corn out there, and no concrete.”

“It doesn't matter anymore,” Charles said. “Vince said the money got reallocated in conference as part of another bill before he could catch it. I suppose it happens all the time.”

“I'll write a letter to the editor of the
Times,”
said William. “You can't trust a government that changes its mind in midstream.”

“Just what we need: one of your letters,” Charles said sarcastically. “Look, I need the money from Tamarack! Aren't any of you listening? We're going to sell it; it's the only thing left to do!”

“But Charles, dear,” said Nina, “are you sure you have the votes?”

“For God's sake, we don't need votes. This isn't the Senate or the House; it's a family.”

“But you're the one who mentioned William's shares.”

Ethan stopped listening. He felt a deep sadness that his family was quarreling while he was dying, but he didn't know how to stop them; he couldn't make the right words come out. There was nothing more that he could do. And they'd manage; they'd figure things out. They wouldn't sell The Tamarack Company; Leo and Gail would never allow it. Everything would work out fine, and his legacy would live on. Buildings, towns, factories: they would endure. The solid structure of Chatham Development: that would endure. And Tamarack. He'd brought it back to life and it, too, would endure.

When he was a young boy, he'd made a cardboard house with so many stories it reached to the ceiling. The ceiling was the only thing that stopped it. And when he grew up, he
had no ceiling to stop him: his office towers and apartments and hotels reached to the sky, and his towns touched the horizon. What great dreams he'd had, and such a long, long reach.

But not long enough to reach Anne. He had betrayed her. Oh, why did he have to remember that? It came sharply, opening a wound, and he was too tired to deal with it. It's too hard, he thought. Too terrible to think about Vince and Anne.

The words were like snakes. He tried to ignore them. Too tired, he insisted; much too tired. But the snakes grew longer and fatter and he could not step over them or run past them. He faced them. Vince and Anne. In bed, naked bodies together, faces close, skin touching. Him inside her. Vince and Anne.
No!
Ethan screamed silently.

Oh, God, he thought, and groaned. Dear God, I was jealous. And so I forced her to leave.

I didn't want her myself, he thought; not that way. I never thought of that. But I wanted her to be young and innocent and stay that way forever. I wanted her to turn to me for companionship and laughter and love. She wouldn't need other men, at least not for years and years; she was so young and I could give her everything she needed. That was what I wanted: that she look to me as if I was her god.

He groaned again. There it was again: thinking of himself as a god. And as his punishment, he had lost Anne.

But Anne was the one who suffered most, he thought. I wonder if she has ever forgiven me. I hope she understands that what I did came from my own weakness; it had nothing to do with her. She was always lovely and truthful and good. Please forgive me, Anne. I didn't understand what was happening. I swear to you, I didn't understand. Please forgive me, Anne. This is the last time I can ask you. Find peace, dearest Anne. And joy. And love.

His family's voices were growing fainter, as if they were moving away from him. No, he realized; he was moving away from them, leaving them behind. Suddenly, everything was absolutely silent. This isn't so bad, Ethan thought. No pain or struggle; just this soft fading away. It's like falling
asleep in the sunshine. Warm, content, melting into the earth. I like that; it's such a good place to be. I reached so high, but this is better now: to settle down, to sink deep and deeper into the earth.

Yes. So deep. So good. A part of the earth.