William Kennedy - Roscoe

“Remind me, did I lose you? Lately?”

“You’re always in my life.”

“How’s your condition?”

“Perfectly dreadful and getting worse. A communiqué from my sister.”

She handed Roscoe a fold of papers that lay on a table beside her: a writ of habeas corpus from State Supreme Court, through the law firm of Voss, Gorman, and Kiley. Roscoe read: “People ex Relator Pamela Morgan Yusupov, plaintiff, against Veronica Morgan Fitzgibbon, defendant. We command you that you have the body of Gilbert David Rivera Yusupov, by you imprisoned and detained, as it is said, together with time and cause of such imprisonment and detention. before Supreme Court at a Special Term in the County Court House in Albany,” etc. And from Pamela’s petition: “. your petitioner, as mother of Gilbert David Rivera Yusupov, an infant of the age of twelve years, makes application on behalf of said infant for a writ of habeas corpus. Petitioner further shows she is the mother of said infant, having given birth to him on July 12, 1933, that his father is the late Danilo Yusupov. ”

“Is this the first she admitted she’s Gilby’s mother?”

“As far as I know. She called Elisha months ago and said she wanted Gilby back. He told her that was absurd; nobody was taking Gilby. He thought it was a desperation scheme to get money and that we wouldn’t hear any more.”

“He never mentioned this to me. Was she his enemy closing in?”

“Perhaps she was. Will you handle the case, Roscoe?”

“Me? I’m rusty on trial work, Vee.” He slapped the legal papers with the back of his hand. “She’s got Marcus Gorman, best criminal lawyer in town. They were made for each other.”

“Will you please take the case?”

“What does Gilby know about this?”

“He doesn’t even know Pamela’s his mother.”

“Oh boy. Who knows?”

“You, me, and Elisha. It was always our best-kept secret. Now everybody will know. Will you, will you take the case?”

“Get a solid trial lawyer, Vee. Get Frank Noonan.”

“Gilby loves you and I don’t care how rusty you are. You’re smarter than twenty lawyers.”

“If I was smart I’d have taken the case already.”

Veronica leaned forward, her face inches from Roscoe.

“You took it when I handed you the papers. You play dumb when you think it’s the smart thing to do.”

“Are you trying to make me feel dumber than I am?”

“No, but see how smart you are to think so?”

Veronica, Pamela, and their late brother, Lawrence, were children of Julia Sullivan, a poor Irish Catholic girl from Arbor Hill, and David Morgan, son and heir of a German immigrant peddler who built a fortune making scouring powder.

Pamela Marion Morgan, the second child of Julia and David, gave birth in 1933 to a son in a lying-in clinic in the elite Condado section of San Juan, Puerto Rico, near the beachfront house she won in a divorce settlement from her second husband, a Puerto Rican sugar baron. She lived the last five months of her pregnancy there with Esmerelda Rivera, a Puerto Rican cook and maid of temperate personality who, by the end of the fifth month, had been transformed into a quivering but well-paid wreck by the rages of Doña Pamela. Obsessively secret about her pregnancy, Pamela went out rarely, and wore a black wig when she did. She received few visitors, among them her wealthy fiancé, Danilo Yusupov, an exiled Russian prince who, like Pamela, was thrice-wed; both he and she famous for being married splashily and often. Pamela’s festive blond hair and Yusupov’s mustache were recurring images in New York society pages.

Veronica, Elisha, and Roscoe also visited Pamela, the first time to have her sign the agreement Roscoe had drawn up, and to arrange its filing with San Juan’s birth registry. It legitimized Veronica and Elisha’s custody of this child of anonymous mother, without Pamela’s yielding her right to repossess the child. Veronica went to Puerto Rico a second time, with Roscoe but without Elisha, whose duties as Lieutenant Governor kept him in Albany, to register the child’s birth and bring him home. The boy was given the first name of Gilbert for John Gilbert, the silent-film star with whom Pamela claimed to have exchanged passions after he broke up with Garbo; middle name of David, in memory of his grandfather; and fraudulent surname of Rivera, expropriated from Pamela’s maid.

When Pamela told Veronica she was having the child—“I don’t want it but won’t abort it, do you want to raise it?”—Veronica read this as Pamela’s sympathy for Veronica’s loss of her five-year-old daughter, Rosemary, in 1928, and for Veronica’s ongoing inability to conceive another child. Then, in the beach house after the birth, Veronica watched Pamela, propped in bed on pillows, eyes exhausted, her dark-yellow hair a bag of strings, her face flushed and blotched, throwing peeled hard-boiled eggs at the overweight poodle she saw by appointment. The poodle caught the eggs on the fly or chased them like tennis balls and swallowed them without a chew. Pamela smiled with her bee-stung lips, painted for her visitors, and said with great verve to Veronica and Roscoe, “Thank God, thank God I’m no longer a mother,” and threw the poodle another egg. Veronica, ecstatic with the infant in her arms, understood then that motherhood would be a splotch on Pamela’s social canvas and, should the splotch become an out-of-wedlock scandal, her marriage to the royal Yusupov would not happen. Also, Prince Yusupov, with two children from other marriages, had only contempt for this bastard son, and wanted no more children. Veronica clutched Gilby closer as she realized this. Then she and Roscoe spirited him out of Pamela’s life and onto Elisha’s private plane back to Albany.

“First they take my beautiful daughter, then my husband, now they want my son,” Veronica said to Roscoe at poolside.

“The law may say he’s Pamela’s son.”

“She gave him up. We have it in writing.”

“It wasn’t a legal adoption, Vee. All you have in writing is permission to raise Gilby. She could always change her mind. Mothers have clout.”

“After twelve years? I’m his only mother.”

“That’s what the court hearing will be about.”

“No, the hearing will be about money, what Pamela’s always about. The Prince just died and Pamela wants custody as the widowed mother so she can claim support for the child Yusupov fathered.”

“Did Elisha know this?”

“He thought she’d sue us if she got frantic. Gilby also has a trust fund with a hundred thousand in it, and Elisha made it Pamela-proof. But if she gets wind of it she’ll try to tap into that too.”

“Does she ever see Gilby?”

“She sent him a train set last Christmas. ‘From your loving Aunt Pammy.’ He outgrew trains three years ago.”

“Do you see her?”

“Not in years. You know how close we were as children, but when boys came along I was the enemy. She bedded every man she fancied. She was always after Elisha.”

“Did she nail him?”

“Don’t you know?”

“Me?” said Roscoe. “How would I know?”

“Even if you knew you’d never say,” Veronica said. “This is so unbelievably awful. Elisha not dead two weeks and she tries to steal my boy.”

“She thinks you’re vulnerable.”

“God, Roscoe, I can’t abide any more of this.” Veronica took off her hat, tossed her hair, and smiled. “So. So. How are you and Trish-trash doing?”

“I thought I got rid of her, but she came flying back like a boomerang.”

“She seemed very civilized at the wake.”

“A polite pause between psychotic eruptions.”

“Why do you bother with her?”

“Do I have to explain that?”