fingers to her eyelids, which were creased with a violet shadow making the lids look more bruised than anything else. “I don’t want to have this conversation again.” She opened her eyes and looked around the table, surprised, as always, when face-to-face with her children.
Francie knew she wouldn’t win any prizes for motherhood—she’d never aspired to any—but she hadn’t been this horrible, had she? What had Leonard wrought with the money he thought would just be a small dividend later in their lives? How had they raised children who were so impractical and yet still so entitled? Maybe it was her fault. She’d wondered that often enough, what mother hadn’t? She’d been twenty-five and married less than a year when Leo was born, and Jack and Bea had followed so quickly. She’d been overwhelmed to the point of being listless. And just when she felt she was coming back to her old self, gaining control of the situation—Leo was six, Jack four, Bea months away from three—everyone finally sleeping—and surprise! Melody. She was bereft when she found herself pregnant with Melody and for many years after, counting down the hours of the days until she could have a drink to dampen her anxiety. These days, she supposed, she’d be diagnosed with postnatal something and given a pill and maybe it would be different. Harold—solid, confident, reassuring Harold—had rescued her.
Maybe the fault was with her marriage to Leonard; their relationship had been fraught, disconnected (except for the sex, she still thought about having sex with Leonard, his unlikely voracious exuberance, her ability to be yielding and attentive in bed in a way she wasn’t anywhere else; if only they’d been a little more careful about family planning), and probably their parenting had suffered as a result, but had they really been different from anyone of their generation? She didn’t think so.
“Mom?” Francie was jolted back into the conference room by Melody’s voice, away from the pleasant memory of Leonard and the unlikely places they would couple when the children were little and everywhere and wanting her constantly. The laundry room with its locked door had been a favorite, the whirring and thumping of the washer and dryer giving them a certain auditory privacy. She still had a Pavlovian type of arousal when she smelled Clorox.
And here they were—her children. Three of them, anyway. Jack, who had emerged from the womb aloof and self-contained. He was always trying to sell Francie some inferior kind of antique for her house, something from his shop that was overvalued and overpriced. She didn’t know if he was dumb or if he just thought she was.
Beatrice had seemed like the easiest of the four, but then she wrote those stories. Francie was proud when the first one was published, ready to buy dozens of copies and show them to her friends—until she read the story with a character who was meant to be her, a mother described as “distant and casually cruel.” She’d never mentioned the story to Bea, but she still remembered bits—a woman who “viewed the world through a prism of bottomless desire; her sole fluency, disappointment.” Luckily, her friends didn’t read those kinds of magazines anyway; they read Town & Country, they read Ladies Home Journal. Bea’d always had her secrets, always. Francie wondered what was going on in that bowed head now as her hands flew with needles and yarn.
And Melody. Maybe she would slip Melody some cash, enough for some Botox or a facial or something to brighten her pallor. She was the youngest and somehow the most faded, as if the Plumb DNA had thinned with each conception, strong and robust with Leo and each child after being—a little less. She couldn’t claim to be close to Leo, but he was the least needy and, therefore, the one she thought of with the most fondness.
She’d helped Leo because Harold had insisted she take care of the situation as swiftly as possible. He didn’t want any of his multiple business partners, already skittish in the current financial environment, to associate him with a publicly humiliating and possibly financially gutting lawsuit. George’s connections, the family’s long-standing reputation locally, and a fat check got the job done. But she’d also taken pleasure in her magnanimous gesture. She’d felt, for a change, capable and maternal. She liked being able to wipe the slate for Leo and offer him a second chance. She believed in second chances, sometimes more than first chances, which were wasted on youth and indiscretion. Her second marriage was the one she deserved even if it was a little staid, a little lacking in drama and the physical connection she had with Leonard. But Harold was good to her; she was taken care of; her “bottomless desires” satisfied.
And still she had to contend with this execution squad of her own children, complete with Madame Defarge at the head of the conference table. Who was casually cruel now? This was how it had always been: Nothing she did was good enough; what she did for one disappointed another. She couldn’t win. When would it end? She searched their faces again, looking for some sign, some small indicator that they’d come from her and Leonard. Aside from physical traits, the easiest mark to hit, she could see nothing. Nothing. All she could think was, I don’t recognize a single one of you.
“Mom?” Melody said again.
“This is a conversation you need to have with Leo,” Francie finally said. “I’m sure he will be able to repay you as soon as he’s settled with Victoria. I understand he’s selling nearly everything—the apartment, the artwork. Isn’t that right, George?”
George cleared his throat, made a little steeple with his fingers, and squinted as if a bright ray of sun had suddenly appeared in the windowless conference room. “He is, but I have to tell you that most of it is going to Victoria.”
“What do you mean by most of it?” Melody said.
“I mean, pretty much all of it. There will be some left, enough to tide him over for a bit, help him get settled until he finds a job.” George paused, knowing he was delivering more bad news. “As you can imagine, Victoria could have made things quite difficult and this was how it shook out.”
“What about Leo’s insurance?” Melody said. “Shouldn’t he have some kind of liability coverage?”
“Yes, well, that was another unexpected complication. It seems Leo had lapsed payment on quite a few bills, including insurance.”
Jack massaged his temples as if tending to a migraine. “So let me recap. Essentially, all Leo’s assets are going to paying off Victoria to get rid of her, keep her quiet, whatever, and all of our money is going to the waitress because of Leo’s mess.”
George shrugged. “I would phrase it in a more nuanced fashion, but essentially? Yes.”
“Matilda Rodriguez,” Bea said.
Jack and Melody looked at Bea, confused. “Her name,” Bea said, impatient. “You could at least use the waitress’s name.”
“Are you humming?” Jack said, turning to Melody.
“What?” Melody startled. She was humming. It was a nervous habit, something she did when she was worried or anxious. She was trying not to think about the accident. “Sorry,” she said to the room.
“You don’t have to apologize for humming,” Bea said. “For God’s sake.”
“It’s that song from Cats,” Jack said. “I want to scream.”
“Before we wind up,” Francie said, cutting off the all-too-familiar bickering, “I’d like to acknowledge all George’s work. I won’t get into the specifics, but suffice it to say that getting Leo to rehab, negotiating the settlement, doing what needed to be done—at the local level—to take care of this, keep it out of the paper, was a superb effort and we’ve been remiss in not thanking him yet for his truly excellent effort, the speed and the efficiency and so on and so forth.” She nodded at George, like a monarch recognizing a loyal subject.
“We were lucky,” George said, avoiding looking at Bea, whose hands had stilled. “Things broke our way. And your mother is right. This could have been much, much worse. I file this one under ‘best-case scenarios.’”
“I guess we have a slightly different filing system,” Melody said.
“This is in all our best interests.” Francie stood