The Sins of the Mother

Chapter 21


Phillip’s lawyer had very sensibly advised him that Taylor could spend nights with him, but it was smarter if she didn’t actually move in. With the benefits of no-fault divorce, Amanda couldn’t sue him for adultery, but there was no point annoying her unduly. Sooner or later she was going to find out about Taylor, and it was easy to guess that her fury over it, and jealousy, were going to cost him. The fact that he was moving on with his life so quickly, and that Taylor was sixteen years younger than Amanda, was bound to cause some pretty severe waves. So Taylor kept her room at the apartment in the Village, but she spent almost every night with him.

He found a furnished apartment on upper Park Avenue, which was sunny and pleasant, and by mid-October he had moved most of his clothes from his house to the apartment. As he had suspected she would, Amanda wanted him to give her the New York house in the divorce, and she also wanted the house in the Hamptons. Her lawyer said he could keep the boat. Their pre-nup said she could have neither since he had bought both homes, and their lawyers were battling it out. He didn’t go to her induction, but sent her flowers and a note. He had no battle with her personally, he just wanted out. Despite the more modest but reasonable terms of their pre-nup, she wanted a million dollars for each of the nineteen years they’d been married. Phillip wasn’t surprised, and Olivia was livid. She told her mother that the woman’s greed was beyond measure.

As always, Maribelle was very supportive of her grandson when he came to visit. She told him she was sorry about the divorce, and asked him about the new woman in his life. He had told all of them about her, but none of them had met her yet. Phillip wanted to let the dust settle. All they knew was that she taught school, was very young, and they had been together for two months. It had been a whirlwind romance, which they all realized had toppled his chilly marriage to Amanda. They could hardly wait to meet her. Their passionate love affair was astoundingly unlike him. In two short months, he seemed to have mellowed, and was being much nicer to their mother. Liz and Olivia had talked about it a lot. John and Sarah were less interested, they were still trying to adjust to Alex’s announcement. And Maribelle had told Cass about Phillip when she called from the tour with Danny. They were in Dallas.

Phillip was at the Southampton house with Taylor, by prearrangement with Amanda, when he finally told her about his mother. The small house was filled with beautiful contemporary furniture and expensive art. Taylor didn’t recognize all the artists, but the overall impression was one of exquisite taste and valuable objects. It was a peaceful place, and they spent a quiet weekend there, walking on the beach, and cooking together. It was a beautiful Indian summer weekend.

“Do you think you’d have gotten divorced anyway, if we hadn’t met?” she asked him. She felt guilty at times for how quickly his house of cards had come down, and although he didn’t complain about it, she sensed that they were battling hard over real estate and money.

“Maybe,” he said honestly, “probably. I was too lazy, and maybe too scared to deal with what I wasn’t getting. I got used to the way things were. I think everyone else saw what I didn’t, or didn’t want to, how cold she was, and how greedy. She’s not a happy woman and she’s very ambitious. I thought her coolness was a challenge and at first I liked it, but we’d drifted apart more than I knew. She’s driven by her ambitions, socially, professionally, and financially. And the stunt she pulled about my job would have done us in anyway. She’d gotten very insulting about it for the last few years. Once she went after the federal judgeship, she wanted me to be more ambitious too.”

“What’s wrong with your job?” Taylor asked with a look of surprise, lying on the beach next to him, and looking at the expression in his eyes. There was a deep hurt there that he never explained and that she sensed was about him and not the divorce. They were still getting to know each other, although he felt as though she’d been part of his life forever, but there were things he had not yet shared, and she always felt them. She didn’t want to pry, but he peeled off his layers and revealed himself like an onion. She had told him all the things that mattered most to her and that she cared about, along with her old griefs and sorrows, like the loss of her parents, but she was younger and less complicated, and despite her parents’ death, she had already understood that her home life had been happier than his. He talked a great deal about his memories of his grandmother and father, but very little about his mother, and she knew that his parents hadn’t been divorced.

“Amanda thought my job wasn’t important enough,” he explained as they lay on the sand. His eyes were gentle, and he looked happy, more so than he had in years, possibly in his entire life. He had a profound, peaceful sense that all the decisions he had made recently were right. It was wonderful to feel that way. “She wanted me to be CEO, so she could say she was married to a CEO.” He had mentioned it before, but Taylor didn’t know just how far she had gone to try and force his hand. He hadn’t wanted to share all the details, and tried to keep his battles with Amanda separate from her. It seemed cleaner to him that way.

“CFO sounds great to me,” Taylor said generously, and it was obvious that he had done well if he had a house in the city, the one they were staying in in the Hamptons, and a boat. She hadn’t lacked for anything with him. She was in love with him, not what he had. And he was young enough to make back whatever he lost, if that was what he wanted. She didn’t really care. She was used to living on a great deal less and was happy as she was. “Besides, you can’t just walk into your boss’s office and say, ‘Hello, I want to be CEO.’ You have to get there over time. That sounds pretty crazy and not very reasonable to me.” Phillip smiled as she said it.

“In theory, that’s true. I had kind of a leg up, though, and Amanda wanted me to use it. I didn’t. She was furious about that.”

“What kind of leg up?” Taylor asked casually, she couldn’t imagine what it was. And then he laughed.

“My mother is my boss. I work for her.” It was the first time he had admitted it to her, but he couldn’t put it off any longer. She had to know.

“You do?” Taylor looked surprised. She was a bright girl, but she had no experience with the lofty circles he had access to, or the kind of money. “She works for The Factory too?” she asked innocently, and he kissed her.

“No, she owns it. She started it, out of a hardware store my grandmother inherited. My mother started working there when she was twelve, and turned it into what it is now, with stores around the world.” He almost sounded proud when he said it, but not quite.

“She did? That’s fantastic!” Taylor said with a look of amazement. “She must be an amazing woman.”

“So I’m told,” he said quietly, and then conceded, “She is, but I was upset as a kid that she was always away working. You don’t build an empire like that overnight.”

“I’ll bet you don’t. So your brother works for her too?” She knew they worked together. He nodded. “Does the whole family work at The Factory?” She was curious about it now. It sounded intriguing, and so did his mother. She had to be an unusual woman with an incredible amount of vision and drive. Taylor was impressed, which only made Phillip mildly uncomfortable. He wasn’t afraid she was after the money, but he wasn’t looking for allies for his mother, or fans, he wanted his own. He always had, even if it meant condemning her.

“No, just my brother and me,” Phillip answered her question. “He’s head of creative and design. He designs all the furniture you like so much, like your bookcase, and figures out all the new trends with my mother. I told you about my sister Cass in London. And my other sister, Liz, has been trying to be a writer all her life. She just sold some kind of fantasy book a few weeks ago. My grandmother got out of the business early and left running it to my mother. She took care of us, and my father was the CFO, like me. He was an accountant and he helped my mother manage the business end of it. I basically have his job now, although he was a lot smarter and more creative than I am. I just keep the boat steady, but everything is already all set up. That’s what Amanda was upset about, she wanted me to have a bigger job. I guess I’m like my father. He was always the behind-the-scenes man, and he liked it. My mother was the star.

“She does a good job. She just turned seventy, and I don’t think she’ll ever retire. I hope she doesn’t. I’m not sure I could run the business. It’s a mammoth undertaking now, and it’s entirely family owned and run. My mom will never sell it, and she shouldn’t. But I guess she’s got the genes to be around for a long time. My grandmother is ninety-five and going strong.” He looked pleased as he said it, and his voice softened even when he talked about his mother. In some ways, he was proud of her, and it was all new to Taylor. “Amanda wrote her an ultimatum, demanding that she step down. She accused me of not having the balls to confront her, so she did it herself. It wouldn’t have gotten her anywhere, but that’s pretty much why the house of cards came down. That, and meeting you, of course. It all happened at the same time. And to tell you the truth, I like my job. I dread the day I’ll be in charge. It scares the hell out of me. What if I screw everything up? I don’t have her creative genius or her vision. I’m a numbers man, like my father. A pencil pusher, as Amanda said.” With no balls, he added silently.

“I’m sure you’ll be great at whatever you do,” she said confidently. “You don’t have to worry about it yet. But wow, that’s quite a story about your mom, and even your dad. It sounds like they did it together, even if she was the front man. You have to have the numbers guys to back up the creative, like you and your brother.” It was a lot to wrap her mind around.

He nodded again. “She’s been grooming us to run it since we were kids. She wants to get the grandchildren into it one day. I think two of them might do it. My sister Liz’s daughter Sophie, she’s going to work there when she gets her master’s from MIT this winter. And my brother’s kid, Alex, but he’s still in high school, so who knows. He just knocked his parents on their asses by announcing that he’s gay. My mom was fine with it; my brother, who’s thirty years younger than she is and supposed to be so free thinking, with his college professor wife, nearly had a stroke.”

“It sounds like you’re related to some very interesting people,” she said with admiration, and then asked him an important question. “Are you still mad at your mother for not being around more when you were a kid, even though you know now what it takes to run the business?”

“She was never around,” he said for emphasis, and then corrected himself. “Well, she was, but not enough. My sister Cass never forgave her for being in the Philippines ordering furniture when my dad died of a heart attack. It took us a day to find her and two days for her to get back.”

“She must have felt pretty bad about that herself,” Taylor said sensibly, with a degree of sensitivity and intuition. “Does she feel guilty about you guys as kids?”

“I think she does now. But it’s a little late. You don’t get the years back. She makes a lot of effort now to be there for us as adults, and she’s good with the grandchildren, better than she was when we were kids. She’s older, and she has more time, although she still travels constantly. She has lots of energy. She just turned seventy in July. That was the trip I took on the boat.” He had told her about it when they met, in a more modest version than going into detail about the Lady Luck. “We do a trip with her every year, on her birthday. This was a big one, the birthday and the trip.”

“At least she makes that effort,” she said quietly. “Do you all get along?”

“Pretty much. Except my sister Cass, who never comes. I haven’t seen her in years. She pretty much divorced herself from all of us, except Granibelle, whom she visits, and she sees my mother a couple of times a year for lunch. I don’t think any of them ever really liked Amanda, although they were polite to her, and she hated them. She just came on the trip because she knew she had to. Our summer trips are a command performance. My mother would go through the roof if we didn’t show up,” or be very hurt, he thought and didn’t say it. Taylor got the picture. They were a strong family, and she could guess easily that their mother was a powerful woman, a force to be reckoned with. He made her sound even tougher than she was. And Taylor couldn’t help wondering if Olivia Grayson was power hungry like Amanda, or actually human. The fact that she’d had four kids and loved her husband was an interesting detail. It sounded like they’d had a solid marriage, and the business kept them all together, in one way or another.

“So why didn’t you tell me about all this before?” Taylor asked him quietly.

“I don’t like to show off,” he said honestly.

“Were you afraid I’d be after the money?”

“No,” he said quickly, too quickly, and then tempered it a little. “Yes … maybe … I don’t know. It’s a lot to hit someone with right away. It’s a very, very big business. We have more than a hundred stores worldwide, factories, production outlets, hundreds of thousands of employees. You add it all up, and it’s pretty impressive. I wanted you to see me, and not The Factory or my mother.”

“That makes sense,” she said pensively. “It must be fun to have all that money,” she said, looking childlike for a minute, and he laughed.

“I guess it is. None of us goes wild with it, although Amanda would have liked to. We live better than the others. John and Sarah live in a little house in Princeton, he drives a six-year-old car, and they love their lifestyle. And Liz lives in an old farmhouse that’s going to come down around her ears one of these days. She never gets around to fixing it up and probably never will. And I don’t know how Cass lives, but she’s made her own money, kind of like my mother. She’s a big success in the music business. She lives with some rock star called Danny Devil or something.” He was not part of Phillip’s world, and Taylor laughed out loud when he said it.

“Danny Hell? Are you kidding? He’s the biggest rock star on the planet.”

“Yeah, if you’re under twenty maybe. Apparently my sister discovered him. She’s good at what she does. I read an article about her last year. I think she has my mother’s head for business, although that’s a pretty crazy world. So this guy Danny is a big deal?” he asked her, with renewed curiosity about his sister. He hardly ever thought of her now. She was no longer on the screen of his life and hadn’t been for a decade, and she wanted it that way.

“The biggest. He’ll be as big as Mick Jagger one day. He’s still just starting out. He’s only been around since I was in college and that’s not very long ago.”

“Don’t remind me,” he said, looking sheepish and then worried. “And you don’t mind being with an old guy like me?” It was never lost on him that he was old enough to be her father. They were eighteen years apart, but she didn’t seem to mind.

“You’re not an old guy, and I love you. You’re young too, Phillip.” He was only in his mid-forties—she just happened to be a lot younger, but she never thought about the age difference when they were together. And he seemed younger every day as he got used to her and relaxed. She gave him a whole new perspective on life. She was the polar opposite of Amanda.

“Taylor, I want to marry you when this is all over, but it may take a while,” he warned her. The financial arrangements with Amanda were going to take time to work out. He had told Taylor that before, and for the moment, the situation was getting worse. It would be a while before it got better, and she settled for something more reasonable than what she was asking for now. She was threatening to try and overturn their pre-nup, which he knew was an empty threat, she was a lawyer, but she was greedy in the extreme, and this was her big chance.

“I’m not in any hurry. I’m not going anywhere,” she said gently, and then she kissed him. “I’m glad you didn’t tell me about all this stuff before. I never want you to think I’m here because of that. I don’t care if we live in a rat hole somewhere. I just want to be with you.” He knew that without a question of a doubt, he wasn’t worried.

“I know that. So do I. I want to have babies with you,” he said softly. It was the second time he had said it to her, and he meant it. “I never wanted kids before, because I was so unhappy as a child. I didn’t want to make someone else unhappy, and I guess I didn’t see it, but Amanda is like my mother, the bad side of her, the busy business side. I think my mom actually liked having kids and she loved us. Amanda is all about her work and her ambitions, and I don’t think she’d be capable of loving a child.” Taylor would be the perfect mother to his children, she was just the right woman for him. Destiny had given him a great gift the day he met her, and another chance. “How many kids would you want, by the way?” He had never thought to ask her, but it was obvious that she would want children. She was that kind of girl, and she loved kids, or she wouldn’t be an elementary school teacher.

“I’ve always wanted four,” she said, looking dreamy for a minute. And with him, they could afford them. She had always thought that in real life she’d have to settle for one or two. Phillip looked startled.

“Could we start with one, and see how it goes?” he said, looking strangled, and she laughed at him and kissed him again.

“They usually come one at a time.”

“Not always. And I’m getting a late start.”

“We’ll make up for lost time. Maybe two sets of twins would do it,” she teased him.

“I think I’m going to faint,” he said, and pretended to collapse on the sand. It was utterly amazing to him that a little over two months before he had been living with Amanda, and now he was here with this remarkable young girl, talking about having four children, and planning their future as though it were the most natural thing in the world. “It’s amazing how life changes, isn’t it?” he said to her seriously. “One minute you think you know exactly what you’re doing and where you’re going, and the next you’re ass over teakettle, and everything has turned around. It’s kind of nice, if you don’t mind the bumps.” He was happier than he’d ever been in his life.

“My brother said strange things happen in New York,” she said, laughing, “and he was right.” She had told her family about Phillip by then. She had explained that he had a good job, was a wonderful man, was forty-six years old and getting a divorce. They were nervous about his age but willing to give him a chance if he was good to her. And they had no idea about his relationship to The Factory because she had known nothing about it, and now that she knew, she didn’t want to tell them yet. She wanted them to be impressed by him, not by what he had, and the magnitude of that would be hard for them to ignore.

They walked down the beach together on Sunday, hand in hand. He said he wanted to take her somewhere for a vacation, maybe the Caribbean that winter for Christmas, and he wanted to introduce her to his grandmother before anyone else. She was the essence of the family for him, and what he loved most about it. He described her to Taylor as this adorable sparkling little old lady who loved to play cards. She had taught him to play poker and liar’s dice. And Taylor said she was dying to meet her. He suggested they go out to Long Island to visit the following weekend. They had nothing but time ahead of them now, and wonderful plans.

They had just walked back into the house on Sunday afternoon, and were talking about packing to go back to New York, when his cell phone rang. It was his mother, and she sounded strange to him. Distant, frozen, shocked. He knew something terrible had happened the minute he heard her voice.

“What’s wrong?” he said, and sat down as Taylor watched his face. She knew what those calls were like. She still remembered what her sister’s face had looked like when they got the call that their parents had been killed. Without knowing it, she held her breath, and so did he. He listened for a long time, and she saw tears spring into his eyes and roll down his cheeks. She went to rub his shoulders, and laid her face against his back, so he would feel her love for him, and her support.

The conversation with his mother was brief. All Taylor heard him say was that he would go back to the city immediately, and he’d come right out to Bedford as soon as he could, and then he hung up. He turned to look at Taylor then, and he was crying openly. His voice caught on a sob.

“My grandmother,” he explained in two words. “She was playing cards this afternoon, and she went to take a nap. They came to check on her two hours later, and she was gone. She died in her sleep. You’re never going to meet her now,” he said, sounding like a brokenhearted child, and for now he was. She was the grandmother he had adored all his life and she had adored him. Taylor put her arms around him making gentle sounds as she cried too, and Phillip sobbed in her arms. He sounded like his heart was torn in half, and for now it was. Granibelle was gone.