Carla Neggers - Betrayals

Rebecca laughed, and Thomas had to look away so she wouldn’t see his reaction. He could hear Emily in her laugh, could suddenly remember his wife as clearly as if he’d last seen her just that morning, instead of nearly forty years ago.

“You can’t afford the Ritz,” his granddaughter told him. “Even if you could, you wouldn’t spend the money. Besides, I can’t take the time to go into town.”

“Marshaling your twenty-four hours?”

“You bet.”

“Then we’ll go to one of the disreputable student establishments on Commonwealth Avenue. You choose.”

He walked off with the Aristotle tucked under one arm to read while waiting.

Rebecca chose the student union because she could use her dining card and they wouldn’t have to go out in the rain. The rain wouldn’t have bothered Thomas, but he understood about the meal card. His own dinner proved relatively inexpensive, and they found an unoccupied table in a corner. He was surprised by how comfortable he felt among the scores of young students and would have enjoyed striking up a dialogue at the crowded table behind them on the Vietnam conflict.

“How did you find out I was in Boston?” Rebecca asked.

“Your mother. Don’t look so surprised. As much as she despises me, she believes it her duty to write me intensely formal letters once or twice a year with pictures of you all and one or two lines on your current activities.”

“Do you ever write back?”

“It would only annoy her if I did.”

Rebecca pulled in her lips, but he knew what she was thinking. He said, “I still have every letter you wrote to me. And I answered them all. I just never mailed them.”

“Because of Mother?”

“Because of you. You were a child, Rebecca. You needed to make the adjustment to your new life, and I didn’t believe you could do it with me indulging your homesickness for Boston. Then when you stopped writing, I felt I didn’t want to intrude.”

She gave him a long, clear-eyed look. “Sounds like a rationalization to me.”

He shrugged. “Maybe it is. Tell me about school. How are your classes?”

She told him briefly, but he wasn’t satisfied with superficial answers. He wanted to know if her professors were idiots, if her courses were rigorous enough, what texts were on her reading lists, whether she was required to write term papers and if there would be final exams. He had heard somewhere that young people were ignorant of geography and interrogated her on the whereabouts of Borneo, Calcutta, Rumania and Des Moines, Iowa.

“I hope,” he said ominously, “that none of your professors has given you the choice between doing a paper or a collage.”

Rebecca assured him none had. “You’re just worried because I’m not at Harvard.”

“Nonsense.”

She didn’t believe him. “Well, I think the quality of one’s education depends to a great degree on the individual. A dope going to Harvard will still come out a dope.”

Thomas sniffed. “That sounds like something someone who didn’t go to Harvard would say.”

“You’re such a snob, Grandfather.”

She tilted her paper cup of soda up to her mouth and got out the last of the ice, her eyes focusing on the man across from her. His tweed jacket was frayed and rumpled and his whitening hair needed a trim. Even if he’d had a million dollars in the bank, he’d probably have looked much the same. Thomas Blackburn had always hated to spend money. But there was something in his expression-just the hint of a shit-eating grin-that made her wonder if he wasn’t pulling her leg just a bit and not quite the snob he was making himself out to be.

“Why did you come to see me?”

“You’re my granddaughter,” he said. “Just because we haven’t seen or spoken to each other in ten years doesn’t mean I haven’t thought of you. I have, you know. Every day.”

She choked up. “Grandfather…”

“Come to supper on Sunday at the house. We’ll have sandwiches-bring your roommate if you wish. I’m correct in assuming you have no current gentleman friend of importance?”

Smiling through the tears in her eyes, she said, “You’re correct.”

“No room for romance in your twenty-four hours?”

“Not,” she shot back, “if I intend to maintain my four-oh average.”

By winter, Rebecca felt more comfortable in Boston and had gotten used to the idea that her grandfather had said all he was going to say on the subject of 1963-the deaths of Benjamin Reed, her father and Quang Tai, and his own retreat from public life. And what he’d said was nothing. She didn’t blame him for the tragedy; she just wanted to hear his side of what had happened. What did he mean when he’d accepted full responsibility for the incident? Was there any truth to the rumors he had associated with the Vietcong? She’d started to ask him a hundred times, but stopped herself every time. He’d only call her impertinent or presumptuous for asking. He knew it was on her mind and would tell her if he wanted to.

Even after a decade, her mother’s bitterness toward him was still palpable, and Rebecca wisely chose not to bring him up during her visit home during winter break. She didn’t mention she’d invited him to join her in Florida.

“Stephen and Mark and Jacob don’t remember you at all,” she’d told him, “and Taylor and Nate just barely. They’d love to see you. And the warm air would do you good. We could all go to Disney World.”

Thomas was adamant. “Your mother would slam the door in my face.”

Likely enough, she would have. Or done worse. Jenny Blackburn was still holding out hope that her daughter would transfer to another school. If nothing else, she figured the cold weather would lure Rebecca back to the south. Papa O’Keefe, a plump, red-faced, incredibly hardworking man, wasn’t so sanguine. “Not with that Yankee blood” was all he would say.

Winter didn’t drive Rebecca south. Continuing to maintain her high average and work at the library, she used snowstorms and subfreezing temperatures as an excuse to indulge her passion for art. It wasn’t painting and sculpture that seized her spirit, but graphic design. With design, she had a greater chance of having her work seen by and communicated to a large number of people. She found the process of design both challenging and enjoyable, as she took fine art’s conceptual way of thinking and applied it in practical uses. The blending of artistic elements, technical expertise, inspiration and business demands appealed to her.

It was her interest in graphic design that took her to the waterfront on a brisk April afternoon. Or so she insisted. A new building was going up and one of the top design studios in the country had been commissioned to do its graphic identity-enough reason for Rebecca to justify showing up at the press conference on site.

But the architect was Wesley Sloan and the builder was Winston & Reed, and when she cut her microeconomics class and headed out to the waterfront, Rebecca had a feeling she was walking into trouble.

She just didn’t know how much.

Jared Sloan was twenty-four that spring as he hunched his shoulders against the stiff wind gusting off Boston Harbor. He’d forgotten how cold Boston could be, even in April. Just a year in San Francisco had eliminated his tolerance for extremes in temperature. His father, however, seemed oblivious to the biting wind. Jared joined him over at the Bobcats waiting to demolish the condemned building occupying the site of Wesley Sloan and Annette Winston Reed’s latest project.

“Lovely place to hold a press conference,” Jared said.

Wesley, a solid man of fifty and utterly consumed by his work, laughed as his iron-gray hair stood straight up in the churning wind. “Your Aunt Annette does have a flair for the dramatic, but this one could backfire on her if a reporter gets blown into the harbor and has to have his stomach pumped. She insists the wind’ll die down by three o’clock.”