A Knife to Remember (6 page)

Pretty, chestnut-haired Angela had unobtrusively taken a seat at the far end of the table and was keeping a low profile. Apparently she and Jake had sorted out whatever they'd been arguing about earlier in the day, or had at least decided to ignore each other.

Jake Elder had wolfed down his lunch and appeared to be listening to Cavagnari drone on. He looked quite interested and calm, except for his right hand. Jane guessed he was an ex-smoker, having a hard time passing up the after-meal cigarette, because his hand kept fidgeting wildly, as if it had a life of its own. It reminded her of
Dr. Strangelove.

Mike, well-mannered as he was, was looking at Cavagnari intently, pretending great interest. But Jane knew the look on her son's face. She'd seen it often enough. Fake fascination, and behind it he was thinking about baseball or girls or how to talk her out of the use of the station wagon for the weekend. She was enormously relieved.

“. . and by the time the fire trucks, they arrived, the fire was out!" Cavagnari finished up his story with a flourish. Jane and the rest took this to be meant as a humorous ending and she joined the polite tittering. The only one who made no pretense was Olive, whose face was set in a grim, angry mask, although what there had been in the story to offend her, Jane couldn't guess.

“This is great! Just great!" the producers' nerd said. "I've been taping you!"

“What!" Cavagnari and Jake objected in unison.

Only George Abington went on eating, bending forward at the neck slightly and confirming Jane's guess that his underwear prevented him from bending at the waist.

The young man came forward from where he'd been lurking. He had a camcorder. "Well, we'll need all the promotional clips we can get and I told "Entertainment Tonight" that I'd get some casual shots before their crew gets here. That was a great story, sir, and people will love seeing you tell it."

“I did not authorize this taping!" Cavagnari shouted. "I will not have it on my set!"

“But, Roberto, people like seeing the cast out of character," Lynette said softly. "I think it's a good idea.”

Jane looked at the beautiful star and guessed that she alone had noticed the faint whir of the camcorder and had been eating so daintily because she realized that it was being filmed.

“No, no! I authorize filming!" Cavagnari shouted. "Nobody else!"

“I'm sorry, sir," the young man said. "But that's not quite right. The producers authorize—”

Cavagnari stood up, green poncho swirling, flung his chair aside, and lunged for the camera, wrenching it from the startled young man's grasp. Cavagnari pushed a button and popped the tape out. "The producers? The secret, chickenshit, afraid-to-showtheir-faces producers? This is what I think of your producers!”

His accent had been pure Bronx for a moment. He strode to the trash container by the craft service table and dropped the tape into it with a flourish.

Then he thought better of that. Accent back on track, he said, "Ah-hah! I see your look! You think when my back is turned, you will come back and remove it!" He fished the tape back out and looked around for a means by which to destroy it on the spot.

“I'll throw it away if you like," Jane said. "Who are you!" Cavagnari demanded.

“This is my yard. I live in this house," Jane replied sweetly. "I'll put it in the trash inside."
Maybe,
she thought to herself. Or maybe she'd just keep it as a nice little souvenir of having had lunch with a bunch of famous people. She noticed that Mike was smiling at her, making her wonder if her son could read her mind as well as she read his.

Cavagnari lobbed the tape at her, which she managed to catch before it hit her. Jane felt her face reddening with anger and embarrassment. This man needed to go back to preschool and learn manners from the ground up. She slipped the tape into the kangaroo pouch on the front of her sweatshirt.

The producers' representative was muttering fiercely to himself and studying his recently assaulted camcorder for damage.

“If I see you use that again, I'll smash it to bits," Cavagnari said to him.

A tense silence fell over the group. Only Lynette Harwell seemed immune. She was still eating; slowly, delicately, relentlessly finishing everything on her plate. Perhaps this was why Olive Longabach insisted on serving her, Jane speculated. Knowing Lynette's appetite
and
her need to stay slim, Olive probably chose precisely the number of calories Lynette could afford to eat.

Jane was still seething with anger at Cavagnari's rudeness, but she had come out of the scene with the tape and was feeling an odd hostessy urge to make conversation. After all, they were all eating
in
her backyard, even if she hadn't invited them. "I understand you're originally from Chicago, Miss Harwell," she said.

“Oh, hundreds and hundreds of years ago," Lynette said with a coy laugh, which was presumably meant to cue somebody to say that it couldn't have been so long ago.

Nobody did.

“From this part of town?" Mike asked.

Cavagnari fell to eating his lunch, having ignored it while telling his endless story. Jake was studying a script with notes in the margins. George was making conversation with two people at the far end of the table who Jane hadn't even noticed were there until now.

“No, we lived much closer in," Lynette said. "I was in my last year of high school and didn't know a soul. It was very lonely for me." This with an attractive little
moue
of sadness. "But I kept myself very busy. I did some modeling and community theater. And I studied privately with a very great old actress who had retired to the area and took only a select few students who she knew had great potential. Isn't that right, Olive?”

Olive, still on guard behind Lynette, merely nodded.

Lynette smiled at Olive. "Poor darling Olive would find me up fearfully late at night, going over and over my lines. Making sure I had it perfectly right. And she'd have to absolutely force me to sleep.”

Olive finally softened. "You always did work too hard."

“But it was worth it, wasn't it, darling Olive.”

To whom?
Jane wondered. To Lynette surely, but to Olive? All that Olive had gotten out of it was a hard life on film sets and locations. Sleeping in strange hotels, having no life of her own, waiting hand and foot on a spoiled, aging seductress?

“Mom," Mike said suddenly. "I wonder if maybe I ought to take a few acting lessons. Just to see if—"

“Oh, my dear! You must! You might be terribly, terribly talented," Lynette gushed, putting her hand over his. "You certainly have the looks for screen work. In fact, you remind me of a great love of my life! I met him just before I left Chicago. He was such a handsome man and I adored him, but he was married. Such a tragedy! I always thought he should have thrown away his dreary little wife and his dreary little job and joined the great pageant of the acting profession. I was always saying to him, `Steve, you're wasted here—' "

“Steve?" Mike repeated.

Jane's heart was in her throat as she leaped up. "I think somebody's calling you to the set, Miss Harwell."

“Steve who?" Mike asked, his voice husky. "The only person I look like is my dad.”

Jane was already around the table, pulling on Mike's arm. "Honey, I need your help inside with some—"

“Steve Jeffry was his name. My, he was a good-looking man, and so romantic," Lynette went on, oblivious to Jane's attempts to shut her up.

Mike had stood, but he shook off Jane's hand and looked down at Lynette. "Are you saying you had an… an
affair
with Steve Jeffry?”

Lynette looked up, finally realizing something was wrong. "Yes. Why do you ask?”

Mike looked at Jane and said very quietly, "Because he was my father.”

He turned and strode toward the house, pausing only to give a vicious kick to the barbecue grill.

“Oh, dear… perhaps I shouldn't have said…" Lynette was saying as Jane ran after Mike.

Mike was already in his room, slamming things around when Jane caught up with him. At her knock, he came out and barged past her, red-eyed and white-faced with anger.

“You knew!" he shouted, galloping down the stairs.

“No, Mike. I didn't know.”

He stopped at the bottom and looked back up at her. "Yes, you did! You were trying to stop her. You knew what was coming!"

“I didn't
know. I suspected.
But not until it was too late."

“You knew! And you let me make an ass of myself, following her around, doing her errands, thinking she was—"

“Mike! What are you saying? I wouldn't do a thing like that to you."

“I'm going out!"

“Mike, I'm sorry…”

But she was talking to herself. The front door had slammed so hard she feared for the hinges.

She went to her bedroom and sat down on the bed. Of course Mike was furious at his father'sbetrayal. She'd felt the same way when she discovered that Steve Jeffry had been a philanderer. She'd felt anger, grief, humiliation, and a lot of other ugly emotions that didn't even have names. And she'd worked hard at hiding it from the children, knowing they would be devastated. Since Steve wasn't around to take the brunt of Mike's anger, it had come down on her. It wasn't reasonable, but it was understandable.

Jane felt chilled through and vaguely "dirty." She was still shaking and trembling and decided maybe a hot shower might help her calm down. As she headed for the bathroom, the videotape, which she'd stuffed into the front of her sweatshirt, fell out and hit the floor. She looked down at it with distaste. She'd meant to keep it as a memento of a remarkable luncheon, but she knew she could never watch it without remembering what had followed the taping. She kicked it under the bed. She didn't even want to touch it now. When she felt better, she'd pull it back out and destroy it.

There was a furtive tap on the door of the bedroom an hour later. Jane had stood under the hot shower until the water had started to run cold and her skin looked like a sunburned raisin. Then she'd dried her hair and put on fresh jeans and a clean white blouse. At least she was cleaner, if not exactly calmer.

She opened the door.

Mike slouched in. "I'm sorry, Mom. I acted like an asshole."

“It's okay. You're entitled."

“No, I'm not. It must have been just as awful for you as it was for me. I just wasn't thinking." Jane hugged him long and hard.

When he finally let go of her, he said, "What did you mean about suspecting that was what she was going to say?”

Jane sat down on the edge of the bed and patted the spot beside her. "Sit down, Mike. I didn't want any of you children to ever know this, but I think I've got to tell you now. That night when your father was killed in the car wreck — he wasn't going on a business trip like I told everybody. He was leaving me — leaving us. For another woman."

“Jesus, Mom! You knew that? And you never told us?"

“Why should I have? Look at how angry and hurt you are about it now. I never wanted you kids to feel as awful as I did. I didn't know until today that there had been others, although I'd figured that there probably had been."

“Oh, God! What a jerk! And I thought he was a neat guy! I mean, he was my
dad!"

“
He
was
a neat guy, Mike. In a great many ways. I just wanted you to remember all the good stuff and not know about the bad. What good does it do you, knowing? None. It's just a truth that you'll eventually get used to. Believe me, as horrible as you feel this minute, it will fade. You won't stay mad forever. I know you can't imagine that right now, but—"

“I dunno. You've stayed pretty mad yourself."

“Why do you say that?"

“Well, I mean — the mess you made of the kitchen—"

“Kitchen?" Jane shook her head. "I don't know what you're talking about.”

Mike stared at her for a long moment. "You, uh — you didn't kick things around the kitchen after I left?”

Jane stood suddenly. "I didn't go back downstairs," she said very quietly. "What are you talking about?”

She ran down the steps with Mike close behind her. The kitchen was a wreck. Cabinet doors were flung open, drawers were pulled out and gaping. Silverware was strewn around the floor; several broken dishes were in shards. And somebody had upended the wastebasket, which had been in dire need of emptying, in the middle of the room and scattered the trash — gum wrappers, the contents of an ashtray, the husks of the corn on the cob from last night, discarded rice mix packages, everything was everywhere! Max or Meow had walked through some spilled flour and tracked it into the living room.

“You didn't do this?" Mike asked.

“Are you crazy? I'm the one who cleans the kitchen! Would I do this to it?”

Mike reached for the phone. "Mom, go stand outside in the driveway. I'm calling the police. Somebody's been in the house and might still be here someplace.”

Jane started to tell him he must go outside and she would remain behind to do the calling, but recognized immediately that Mike needed to be in charge right now and was obviously more capable than she at the moment. It hadn't even crossed her mind that the maniac who did this might still be close by.

She waited for Mike in the driveway for what seemed like hours, but was only a minute or two, then the two of them went and sat together on the curb until two patrol cars arrived. Jane was first furious, then frightened, then furious again. It was going to take her forever to clean up the mess — and longer still to get over the sheer "violation" of it.

“There's a prowler in your house, ma'am?" the first officer to emerge from his car asked.

“We don't know," Mike answered.

Both officers went inside, hands on their holsters.