Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

“Stop wondering, Harry. I’m just what this creaking combination needs. I’ve lost only two cases in the past two years. That’s right, I’m pretty damn good. And I’ve got some ideas about how we should decorate the new office, too.”

“He’s not a lawyer,” Benson said dryly. “He’s an interior decorator.”

“No, I like his ideas,” Summers, the fourth partner, said tentatively. He was blond and strapping, a man of forty-two who sweated a great deal. He offered his opinion, and then shrugged.

“Thanks, Len,” Matthew said. “I don’t think the new place should look like this one.”

“What’s the matter with this one?” Stang asked.

“It’s dusty, it’s dingy, it looks dirty and creaking and old.”

“My wife decorated this office,” Stang said.

“And it may have been great in nineteen-twenty, but time marches on.”

“Now he’s a news commentator,” Benson said.

“How do you think we should decorate?” Stang had asked, leaning forward.

That had been a long time ago.

The name on the door was Bridges, Benson, Summers and Stang. Amanda smiled and twisted the knob.

The reception room started just inside the door with ten feet of gray carpeting flowing back spaciously from the entrance to two low modern couches, which shared a marble coffee table and a double-bullet wall fixture. A single abstract painting hung on the wall opposite the couches. Beyond the couches, there was more carpeting, which stretched to the reception desk and the girl behind it. Beyond that, and hidden from the reception room, were the filing cabinets, the four separate private offices of the firm’s partners, and a conference room. The firm’s law library was shelved on glass-enclosed bookcases hanging free on the wall above the filing cabinets. The scheme throughout was clean, almost austere. If it denied a dusty, tradition-filled interpretation of the law, it created instead an atmosphere that was dynamic and businesslike, and not without a subtle beauty of its own. The girl behind the reception desk seemed to echo the aesthetics of the office. She looked up when Amanda entered, smiled, and said, “Hello, Mrs. Bridges.”

Her smile was a carefully calculated instrument of greeting, a warm welcome which flashed suddenly on a face that could have belonged to a teen-age model. Annie Ford, at twenty-seven, looked more like seventeen, with tiny bones and compact breasts, her long black hair worn in a page-boy, her brown eyes sparkling with a curious combination of naïveté and worldliness. The top of her desk was covered with legal forms, but it looked scrupulously ordered nonetheless, as if she had already straightened it for the evening before putting the cover back on her typewriter and heading home.

“Hello, Annie,” Amanda said. “Mr. Bridges is expecting me.”

“I’ll tell him you’re here.” Annie picked up the receiver, pressed a button in the phone’s base, and smiled again at Amanda.

“Is he busy?” Amanda asked.

“He has someone with him,” Annie answered, “but I don’t think he’ll be very... hello? Mr. Bridges, your wife is here. Yes, sir, I will.” She replaced the phone, smiled again at Amanda, and said, “Would you mind waiting, please, Mrs. Bridges? He’ll be about ten minutes.”

“Thank you,” Amanda said. She walked toward the nearest couch, sat, and picked up a copy of Life . She began thumbing through it uneasily. She always felt a little strange in Matthew’s office, the unwanted visitor who somehow managed to upset a carefully rehearsed business routine. The telephone rang. Annie Ford lifted the receiver.

“Bridges, Benson, Summers and Stang,” she said, “good afternoon.” She listened and then said, “Oh, hello, Mr. Cohen. Just a moment, I’ll see.” She pressed a stud in the base of the telephone, waited. “Mr. Stang, it’s Arthur Cohen, on six.” She replaced the phone in its cradle, smiled briefly at Amanda, and walked to one of the filing cabinets.

Watching her, Amanda felt a sudden envy.

She knew the envy was foolish. Annie Ford was twenty-seven years old, a bachelor girl who lived in a furnished apartment on Seventy-second Street, who earned eighty dollars a week as a receptionist, who probably dreamed of a husband, and a family, and a home in the country, who probably wished for all the things Amanda already had.

But Annie got up each morning and dressed to go someplace.

Annie came into the heart of the most exciting city in the world, and she talked to people on the telephone about matters slightly more important than a United Parcel pickup. She personally greeted people who were concerned with more than a few chalk marks on a new garage door. Annie Ford was part of a successful law office, and she knew what she was supposed to do there, and she did it efficiently and quietly, and she no doubt derived a great deal of pleasure from the knowledge that she was doing it well.

She did not have to wake up each morning and wonder how she would occupy her time for the rest of the day. She did not have to sit through inane luncheons, or serve on meaningless half-witted committees, or shuttle children around the countryside, or doubt the worth of a musical composition that seemed less and less important each day. No! More important! More important to me than anything else in my life!

Now, Amanda.

Now, Amanda dear.

She sat quite still and watched Annie as she filed her legal forms, watched the quick movement of her fingers, the studied concentration on her face.

Oh my God, Amanda thought, I wish I didn’t have a mind.

I wish I weren’t a woman in this day and age, part of the giant female convalescent ward, we sit around doing water colors or dabbling in oils or baking ceramic ash trays or weaving baskets or arranging flowers, busy, busy with our hands, doing anything, anything to stop us from realizing we are really useless human beings. Doing anything, and doing nothing.

The only thing I ever created in my life was my son Bobby, she thought.

The telephone on Annie’s desk buzzed. She looked up from the filing cabinet, smiled, walked quickly to the desk, and picked up the receiver.

“Yes?” she said. “Oh, yes, just a moment.” She turned to Amanda. “Mrs. Bridges? Would you mind taking the phone, please?”

Amanda put the receiver to her ear. “Hello?”

“Amanda, this is Matthew. Honey, this is going to take a little longer than I expected. Do you think we could meet at the restaurant? Can you keep yourself busy for a little while?”

“I suppose so,” Amanda said.

“I’m sorry, but...”

“I understand,” Amanda said. “What time? Where?”

“Let’s see, it’s almost five now. Can we make it six-thirty?”

“The stores close at six,” Amanda said absent-mindedly.

“What?”

“Nothing. I’ll meet you at six-thirty. Tell me where.”

The bookshop was on Sixth Avenue, in the Forties, a tiny shop set between a locksmith and a hamburger joint. She wandered into it because it seemed to invite browsing, and because she had more than an hour to kill before meeting Matthew at the restaurant. The shop was long and narrow, its walls lined with bookcases and dusty volumes, its center aisle cluttered with open stalls of remainders. She wished it were not October and cold. A shop like this cried out for a rainy day in April. She could remember cuddling up in the armchair before the fireplace in the Minnesota house, could remember reading Parnassus on Wheels and The Haunted Bookshop , and later Where the Blue Begins , which portrayed dogs as humans and which raised some serious questions about God. She had felt sacrilegious just reading the book. When she’d read one of the passages aloud to her father and then asked him if she should continue with the book, he had nodded in rare wisdom and said, “I really don’t think it can hurt you to hear another fellow’s viewpoint, Amanda.” She’d read only two more chapters, and then closed the book of her own accord.