The Sins of the Mother

Chapter 9


They all looked a little shaggy when they met at the breakfast table at noon the next day. Olivia looked surprisingly fresh, but said she could hardly walk. Phillip was wearing dark glasses and asked for a glass of Fernet Branca, which was what he had used for hangovers in his youth.

“I think I may have a brain tumor,” he said, and everyone laughed. Amanda was extremely quiet. She had been on deck alone since nine A.M.

“It sounds like you all had a good time,” she said primly. But it had been her choice not to go.

“Grandma danced her ass off,” Alex volunteered, and everybody laughed again.

“I had a very, very good time,” Olivia confirmed, “except for the blisters on my feet.”

“I think I agreed to spend the weekend with some Italian guy from Milan,” Liz said with a dazed look. She had brought a bottle of aspirin to the table, and they all passed it around. They were a sorry group, but none of them regretted it for a minute. The headaches they had that morning had been worth it. “I think if I go swimming today, I’ll drown,” Liz said, wondering how many glasses of champagne she had had the night before. She had lost count. Carole, Alex, and Sophie had had fun too, and they had drunk less than the adults.

In the end, they decided to take the boat out and have lunch at anchor. They took turns having massages, and by three o’clock they all started to feel better, and went swimming after that. They took it easy and laughed a lot about the night before, what they remembered of it. Even Olivia admitted that she had had far too much champagne, and she called and told Maribelle all about it, as they went back to port in the late afternoon.

Maribelle surprised her when she said that Cass had come to see her the day before. She was in New York with one of her clients, and had gone to visit her grandmother. Hearing about it made Olivia wish she was there, but she knew Cass would never join them. But it was a relief to know that she was happy and well.

“You never know,” Maribelle said, when Olivia said she wished Cass would come on the boat. She didn’t have three children, she had four. Cassie was her lost child, the one that had slipped through her fingers and she couldn’t recapture. It always felt like a terrible loss to her, even if they saw each other once in a while. But there was so much damage and distance between them now, it seemed beyond repair. “Things happen. People change. Life has a way of working things out,” Maribelle said philosophically with the vantage point of age. But it didn’t seem likely to Olivia. Her mother laughed when she told her about the night before.

“You sound like a bunch of shameless drunks,” she said as Olivia described the scene to her. The only thing more shocking than how much they drank had been the bill. But she had been anesthetized enough not to care.

“We certainly were last night, but it was fun. Your great-grandchildren had me dancing all night.” Olivia only wished that she had done more of that when she was young, but she had hardly ever had the time. Sometimes it was easier doing things like that when you were old.

The others all talked to Maribelle for a few minutes, and told her they missed her, and they promised to call her again in a few days.

They ate on board that night, and after dinner they left the port and headed back toward Corsica. They were going to sail through the night, and Liz dreaded going through the Strait of Bonifacio again, but the weather reports were good, and the captain said he was expecting a smooth crossing. And then as though out of nowhere, halfway to Corsica, a mistral wind came up. It was sudden and strong, the sea grew frighteningly choppy, and the boat shuddered and rode the deep swells. The kids had been in the movie theater and the adults had gone to their cabins. Liz was the first to knock on her mother’s door as the boat groaned under their feet.

“Are we sinking?” She looked panicked.

“No.” Olivia smiled reassuringly, but there was no denying the pitching and tossing was unpleasant, and the boat slammed hard with a frightening sound each time they fell into a deep trough after a swell. “I guess it’s just an unexpected windstorm,” her mother reassured her, but it had unnerved her a little too, although she didn’t get seasick. Liz was green.

“Should I put my life jacket on?” Liz asked with wide eyes.

“I don’t think so,” Olivia said calmly as Phillip walked into her cabin, looking concerned.

“Amanda’s feeling pretty sick. Do you think we should go back?” They were in the middle of open water halfway from Sardinia to Corsica, and that didn’t sound like a solution to Olivia, but there was no denying it was getting worse. The heavy boat was rolling like crazy.

“I’ll go talk to the captain,” Olivia said, trying not to look worried. Sarah and John appeared, and then all the kids found their way to Olivia’s suite as well. Crew members were walking through the halls, taking fragile objects off tables, and putting anything that might break on the floor. They looked busy, but not worried, which was reassuring.

“Shit, we’re sinking,” Liz said, as she grabbed her mother’s arm.

“We are?” Carole and Sophie looked at each other, and Carole started to cry.

“We’re not sinking, and if this were an emergency, the captain would have told us,” Olivia said above their voices as the boat continued to head into the troughs, hit hard, and shudder. “I’ll talk to the captain,” Olivia said firmly, and the entire group followed her to the wheelhouse, where the captain was watching the radar screens and adjusting several dials. He looked up apologetically as they entered.

“I’m sorry. It’s a mistral. I thought we would avoid it, but it came up earlier than expected.” The winds were fifty knots, and the boat was at the mercy of them now.

“Are we in danger?” Liz managed to croak out.

“Not at all. We’ll be in the shelter of land in two hours, and then it will be much better, although we will have strong winds for the next two days, but better seas.”

“Like this?” Sarah asked with a worried look, standing next to John.

“No, it will be calmer than this. It is just particularly bad here in the strait.”

“Should we go back to Porto Cervo?” Phillip inquired, thinking of Amanda sheet white and sick in their cabin.

“It would be the same. It will take us two hours to go back, or longer. We’ll be better off if we just move ahead. In two hours, you’ll feel better,” he assured them, and a few minutes later, Olivia led her troops to a sitting area on the same deck as her suite. The purser and two stewardesses offered them food and drink and all declined, and a few minutes later Liz disappeared and returned with her life jacket on.

“Just in case,” she said, and the others laughed, but it was no fun being on the stormy seas. The kids looked nervous and John and Sarah were worried. Only Phillip and Olivia seemed calm.

They sat together in the salon for two hours, and it was three hours before they benefited from the shelter of the Corsican coast. The sea was still rough but the winds died down a little, and finally they all went to their cabins to get some rest. The boat was pitching and rolling, but less. Liz asked her mother if she could sleep in her cabin, and she lay on Olivia’s bed, holding her hand, with her life jacket on.

It was morning before the winds calmed enough for the boat to stop rolling as violently. It had been quite a night! Those who could sleep woke up feeling better in Corsica the next day. The winds were strong, but the boat was much steadier than it had been the night before. They had set aside a day for swimming and fishing off Corsica, before night cruising again back to France, where they planned to spend the rest of the trip. They had been on board for a week by then and covered a lot of ground. They decided not to swim in the still turbulent sea. They spent a quiet day on board, and sailed away from Corsica that night. The others went to their cabins, tired from the night before, Alex and Carole went to watch a movie, and Sophie stayed on deck with her grandmother to chat. There was something Olivia had been wanting to talk to her about, and this seemed like a good time.

“How would you like to come and work for me after you get your master’s degree? We’ve talked about it before, but I wanted to let you know that I’m serious about it. I think you would be a wonderful addition. And after a year or two, maybe you’d like to run one of the stores abroad.” Sophie’s eyes lit up as soon as Olivia mentioned it. It had been her dream for years. She wanted to work for her grandmother, and become the third generation to enter the business. And she loved the idea of running one of the stores on her own. It was her grandmother’s way of teaching her the business from the ground up.

“How soon can I start?”

“The day you graduate,” which was only six months away. “I wanted to make you an offer, before you took a job with someone else,” Olivia said with a smile.

“This is what I’ve always wanted to do, Grandma.” She could hardly wait. “And I think Carole is going to move to L.A. when we go home. She wants to work for her dad and his wife. She’s been talking about it for a long time.”

“I know she has. I think it might be good for her. I think she needs to get that out of her system. She’s been dreaming about being with him for a long time, although that might be hard for your mom.”

“She already told her, and Mom’s okay with it. I think she’d been kind of drifting in New York, and the art scene is hard to get into. I think L.A. might be the right thing for her, although I’m going to miss her,” Sophie said wistfully.

“So am I,” Olivia said, but she was excited about Sophie coming to work for her. The next generation had finally arrived. And maybe one day Alex would join them too. Olivia had high hopes for him as well. And Sophie was a star. Once she honed her skills and learned the business, Olivia sensed she would go far. She had a terrific head for business, and she’d been interested in The Factory since she was a child, just as Olivia had when she worked at the original hardware store when she was twelve. She thought it was the most exciting place on earth, and she still did. And she knew Sophie thought so too.

They talked about Olivia’s plans for her, and Sophie’s dreams late into the night, and when she went to bed, Olivia felt she had taken an important step. It was time to open their doors, welcome the new generation, and bring the young people along.

The next morning when they got up, they were in St. Jean Cap Ferrat, on the coast of France. It was one of the most elite locations on the French Riviera. Olivia had rented a house there one summer, an enormous villa. And Amanda seemed to come alive at breakfast, as they sat at anchor, looking at the expensive houses and talking about the people who owned them. Amanda had a decided interest in people with colossal fortunes. It was as though she thought everyone else was a waste of time. And when Alex heard about Olivia’s offer to Sophie, he was instantly jealous of his cousin and said so over breakfast. Sarah looked extremely displeased. She wanted Alex to work for a foundation, or be a political activist of some kind. She didn’t like the idea of him working for The Factory, and usually whenever Olivia spoke to him about it for the future, she tried to make sure his mother wasn’t around. He had told his grandmother that as soon as he finished college, he wanted to come and work for her. Olivia loved that idea. But for now Sophie would be coming to work for her at the end of the year. And Liz was pleased. She knew it was right for Sophie and had always been her dream. And now at last it was coming true. Alex still had to finish school, and go to college, so it was too soon to include him in their plans. Sarah was relieved.

Olivia let Sophie sit in on their morning meeting with John and Phillip, and Sophie had some surprisingly good ideas to contribute. Her uncles were impressed too. It was a good meeting for her to be part of that day—for once there were no problems, and they had gotten particularly good news about the sales figures from a new line John had just introduced. Sophie could hardly wait to join the team.

After the meeting broke up, they took the boat to Cap d’Antibes at lunchtime and anchored it outside the Hotel du Cap. It was one of the many extraordinary places Olivia had been with Joe. They had spent a fabulous weekend there, at the part of the hotel called the Eden Roc. The food was exquisite, the room had been fabulous, and they had spent their days in a private cabana, where lunch was served. It had been one of the most romantic places she had ever been with Joe. And she had made a reservation to take the family there for lunch.

They went to the hotel’s dock by tender, and had lunch at the restaurant near the pool. They sat on a balcony, looking out over the Mediterranean, and ate delicious food. Her grandchildren saw a number of young people their own age, and they all wished they could have stayed there, but they were having a good time on the boat. The Lady Luck was an impressive sight, as she lay anchored just beyond the hotel, and everyone wondered who was on it. There were a number of Americans at the hotel, as always, and many Germans, and assorted well-known French aristocrats. It was just the kind of place Amanda loved. She said to Phillip at lunch that they should come back sometime and spend a week there. Phillip had never thought of it. He was happy staying at their small house in the Hamptons, or on the sailboat he kept at the yacht club nearby. He didn’t need to impress anyone by coming to the Hotel du Cap in the South of France, but he knew it was something his wife would love.

And after lunch and a walk around the grounds, they went back to the dock and took the tender back to the boat. It was beginning to seem like home to all of them, and they swam and lay on the sundeck, before cruising slowly back toward St. Jean Cap Ferrat, where they were planning to anchor for the night. Amanda had remembered that they had friends staying there. She called them and was very anxious to go ashore and have dinner with them that night. They had invited Liz to join them. And John and Sarah had said they wanted to spend a quiet night on board. Olivia was planning to spend the evening with the kids. They wanted to organize a dance party. And John and Sarah went to their cabin right after dinner.

Olivia loved having the young people to herself. They danced for a while, to the CDs they’d brought with them. The four of them played Monopoly afterward, and once the girls went to bed, she and Alex sat on the deck alone. She had had the feeling for days that he had something on his mind, but she had no idea what it was. And he fell silent for a while once they were on their own.

“Alex, can I help you with anything?” Olivia decided to break the ice. She was wondering if he was upset about her offer to Sophie, but Alex understood he was still too young. He had five years of school to get through before he could come to work for her.

“I don’t know, Grandma,” he said quietly, looking her in the eye. He was a very forthright kid, but she sensed that something was troubling him, and he hesitated before he spoke. “Sometimes things are more complicated than they seem.”

“That’s certainly true,” she said, smiling at him. “If you’ve figured that out, you’re way ahead of the game.”

“If I tell you a secret, do you swear you won’t tell?”

“Yes, I do.” The only reason she would have broken the promise was if he was doing something dangerous to himself, but she didn’t say that to him. “It sounds like you have something on your mind.”

“Maybe,” he said cautiously. “I don’t want Mom and Dad to know.” It didn’t sound good to her.

“Why not?”

“I don’t think they could handle it.” She was flattered that he seemed to think maybe she could. But she had seen more of life than Sarah and John. They were thirty years younger than she was and lived an insulated life. Olivia had experienced more in her life and seen more of the world.

“Well, why don’t you try me then?” She wanted to help him, and he clearly wanted to speak to someone. But she wasn’t prepared for what he had to say.

“Grandma, I’m gay.” Olivia stopped for a minute, looked at him, and nodded. She was surprised, but she didn’t want him to think she disapproved. She didn’t, although she realized that it was certainly going to complicate his life to some degree. It already was if he felt he couldn’t tell his parents. And she wasn’t sure why he felt they couldn’t handle it. He didn’t seem to have much faith in them.

“Are you sure?” she asked calmly. “What makes you think so?” He smiled at her innocence, as though he had said he had measles, and she wanted to know what the symptoms were to make sure he was right.

“I’m attracted to other boys, not to girls.”

“Well, that certainly clears it up, doesn’t it?” she said with a sheepish grin, realizing that she must have sounded foolish to him. “How long have you known?”

“About four years, since I was thirteen.” He sounded absolutely certain. “I used to wonder about it. And I wasn’t really sure, until this year. There’s a boy in my school that I really like. And I’ve never been attracted to a girl. I just want to be friends with them.” He was simplifying it for her, and she didn’t ask him how far it had gone with the boy he liked in his school. She thought it would have been indelicate of her.

“Have you told anyone else?” she asked him quietly.

“No. Only you.”

“And why do you think your parents couldn’t handle it? Your mom is a college professor. She deals with kids all the time.”

“That’s not the same. They have very old-fashioned ideas. They ask me about girlfriends all the time. My mom just thinks I’m young and I like sports more than girls.” It reminded her of how blind we can be to things happening close to us, even in our own homes. Sarah and John apparently had no idea who their son really was. They loved him, but they expected him to be just like them. She suspected that it was a fatal error many parents made—they failed to see who their children were. She had her own regrets about Cass, and given their strained relationship, it seemed ironic to Olivia that her grandson had chosen to talk to her and had so much faith in her. He had more faith in her than she did in herself.

“What can I do to help you? Do you want me to talk to them?”

“No. I just wanted someone to know who I really am.” It was a reasonable thing to want, and it touched her that he had chosen to risk exposing himself to her. “Are you shocked?”

“No, I’m not,” she said honestly as she sat back in her chair. “I’m a little bit sad for you, because I think that’s a hard road sometimes. Not everyone will accept you. And maybe you won’t have kids. That would be sad too. Or you could adopt them, or use a surrogate to have a baby, or a friend. Nothing about it is insurmountable, just maybe a little bit more complicated.” All of that was racing through her mind, but right now his problems were much simpler. He had parents who had no idea who he was or how he felt. He was a lonely boy. “I think you should tell them and give them a chance,” she said fairly, and Alex shook his head.

“I think they’d go nuts. Especially my dad. Mom would get over it—like you said, she has gay students. I don’t think Dad could accept it. Maybe he wouldn’t even talk to me anymore, or kick me out.” There was fear in his eyes. He had heard horror stories before, about other gay boys and their parents’ reactions, especially their fathers. He had remembered them all, and it influenced him now.

“You’re forgetting one important thing,” his grandmother reminded him. “They love you. That changes everything. You’re their only child.”

“That makes it even worse,” Alex said with a look of despair. “If they had another son, a straight one, it wouldn’t be so bad. All their dreams, about who I’m supposed to be, are resting on me.” She couldn’t deny what he said.

“What if we told them together?” She was trying to be helpful, but it was obvious he wasn’t ready to share the truth with them, only with her.

“Maybe one day, Grandma. Not now. I just wanted you to know.” She sensed that it was the secret he’d been hiding, and had almost shared with her a few days before. She was relieved that he had told her after all.

“I’m very honored that you trusted me, Alex,” she said solemnly. “I promise I won’t tell anyone. But I think you should one of these days. Maybe they’ll figure it out on their own.”

“I don’t think so. They have denial. They haven’t even figured out that I’m not interested in girls. At seventeen, all my friends are. Let’s face it, sports are no substitute for sex,” he said, and laughed, which answered her earlier question about the boy he liked.

“I hope you’re being careful about AIDS,” she said sternly. It was a serious issue for him now, if he was sexually active, and it sounded like he was.

“Obviously,” he said with a lofty look. “I’m gay, I’m not dumb.”

“Sorry,” she said, and smiled. She felt as though she had grown up that night. It turned out that her grandson was more sophisticated than she was about the ways of the world. “I just want you to know that I’m here if you need me. You can talk to me anytime. All you have to do is pick up the phone.” He actually did that often, and texted her from time to time. “Call me if you need me, Alex. I mean that. And if you ever want me to talk to them, I will. Your aunt Liz might be able to help with your dad. He always listens to her.” She had used that conduit to him herself, from time to time. It always worked with John. His big sister had an influence on him that no one else did, except his wife.

“Thank you, Grandma,” Alex said, and put his arms around her. He looked relieved, and like a kid again. Sharing that with her had taken a huge load off his mind. And telling her had been one of the defining moments of his life. She hadn’t screamed, she hadn’t fainted. She still loved him. He had been trying to check out her reaction, and all was well in his world. And then he thought of something that also mattered to him. “Would you still let me work for you one day?” He was worried.

“Of course.” This time she looked shocked. “What difference would it make?”

“You wouldn’t be embarrassed to have a gay grandson in the business?”

“Of course not. I’m proud of you, whatever you are. And by the time you graduate, I’ll be prouder yet.” He seemed satisfied with her answer, and a few minutes later, they hugged and went to bed.

She lay in bed thinking about him, and all he had said. He had given her an enormous compliment by confiding in her. It was probably more than any of her own children would have done. It proved to her again how important their relationship was. And all she had to do now was figure out how to help him tell his parents. Sooner or later they had to know. And she hoped that when he told them, they would rise to the occasion. She couldn’t imagine anything less of her son John. She was sure that Alex was selling them short. But only time would tell if he was right. And all she could hope was that he was wrong in his fears about them, and his parents would be loving and supportive. She would be severely disappointed in them if not. She wished she could tell her own mother about it, but she had promised. And she always kept her promises. She had taken a vow of silence, and his secret was safe with her.