A Perfect Wife and Mother Read online

  A Perfect Wife and Mother

  Peter Israel

  MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

  For my daughter

  10 September

  “Jesus Christ, I’ve been locked up with them in that suite—what time is it? almost nine!—eleven fucking hours—and we’re not through.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “I’m in the hotel lobby, where else? It’s my suite and I’m at a fucking pay phone in the lobby! I had to get the hell out of there. They smoke those heavy Limey cigarettes, you get cancer just walking in the door.”

  “Where do we stand?”

  “I’m sweating like a pig. Can you imagine? I’m standing in an air-conditioned hotel lobby and I’m sweating like a fucking pig.”

  “Where do we stand?”

  “I’m coming to that. The good news is they want us real bad. Wall Street presence, they gotta have it, don’t ask me why. They say they’re not letting me leave here tonight without a deal. It took eleven goddamn hours, but now there’s an offer on the table.”

  “How much?”

  “You sitting down?”

  “Yes, I’m sitting down.”

  “It’s rich.”

  “What are the numbers?”

  “A meager twelve times earnings, averaged from 1981 through this fiscal … Well? For Christ’s sake, friend, that’s nine figures! For each of us! You and I can buy fucking Switzerland!”

  “Payable in dollars?”

  “No, escudos. For Christ’s sake, of course it’s dollars! Eighty percent at the closing, twenty holdback.”

  “How long a holdback?”

  “Ten for a year, ten for two.”

  “Arguable. But I’m not understanding something. We’d have taken a ten multiple. How did they come up with twelve?”

  “Because I never gave them our number.”

  “But their attorney had it, didn’t he?”

  “The bigger the deal, the more he stands to make on it.”

  “I see.”

  “Is that all you have to say, for Christ’s sake? With the payday we’ve been waiting for? Why you bought in in the first place?”

  “No, that’s not all I have to say. As far as I’m concerned, I’m ready to approve a letter of intent immediately.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s the bad news.”

  “What bad news?”

  “No letter of intent. They don’t want it. Counsel says there’ll be nothing in writing till after they’ve finished their due diligence, and then we’ll go straight to contract.”

  “I thought he was on our side.”

  “He is, but they’re his clients and that’s how they want to do business.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re bugs on secrecy.”

  “So are we.”

  “Yeah, but they don’t want anybody else jumping in and starting a bidding war. They say that’s why they’re ready to commit to a premium now.”

  “In other words, offering twelve when they knew we’d take ten?”

  “Maybe.”

  “With nothing in writing, what are they committing?”

  “Their word.”

  “Their word?”

  “Hey, I’m tired, why don’t you go sit in the room with the bastards? You listen to all that phony stuttering and stammering for eleven goddamn hours, and they act like we’re still the fucking colonies.”

  “How do you feel about no letter of intent? You’re the chairman of the board.”

  “Okay, more or less. Reasonably okay. They’re a big outfit, and they don’t want to be embarrassed. Plus they’re ready to move fast.”

  “How fast is fast?”

  “A month, maybe two.”

  “So there’s a window of two months in which they could change their minds?”

  “Yeah. But what are they going to find that’d make them change their minds?”

  “You’re better placed to answer that than I am.”

  “Come on, don’t give me that shit. We both know where the bodies are buried. But the numbers are the numbers. Everything I’ve given them so far is substantiated in the numbers.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Damn right I’m sure.”

  “What about personnel?”

  “What about personnel?”

  “They’re going to want to talk to some of your people.”

  “Yeah. In confidence and under my control. They also want me to clean house before they take over. Let me be the bad guy. They’ll knock any extraordinary expenses incurred off the income statement … Hey, I gotta get back up there. Well, partner, what’s your pleasure, do we have a deal?”

  “No.”

  “WHA-A-T? You’re kidding, aren’t you? With nine figures on the table? Who else is gonna offer us a twelve multiple of shit in today’s market? And you’re ready to walk away?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Oh? I must be hard of hearing, what did you say?”

  “If they don’t want a letter of intent, tell them you want a good-faith payment into an escrow account.”

  “A good-faith payment?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How much of a good-faith payment?”

  “I leave that to you. Enough so that they’ll feel it if they walk away.”

  “But God Almighty, this isn’t the rag trade, this is the fucking British Empire! Question of pride, they’ll never stand still for it.”

  “Yes they will. If they’re as serious as you say, they certainly will.”

  “Yeah, and who’s been haggling with them all day long? Now we’re gonna be up the whole night!”

  “Talk to their attorney about it, he’ll understand.”

  “You talk to him about it.”

  “You know that’s impossible.”

  “I don’t believe it. I don’t fucking believe it. You own twenty-nine percent of the company, and you stand to make a fortune, and now you’re nitpicking! You’re actually nitpicking!”

  “I’m sorry, you and I have agreed to agree, and I—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I can’t act without you, do you think I’ve forgotten? For Christ’s sake. Look, I gotta get back up there, as far as they know it’s all my call. How serious are you on this?”

  “I’m very serious.”

  “To the point of a deal-breaker?”

  “Yes. But I’m counting on your powers of persuasion.”

  “Jesus Christ Almighty.”

  Part One

  Georgia Levy Coffey

  21 September

  I can’t resist calling Larry at work.

  “Guess what, darling? I’ve found her! I mean, I’ve actually found her!”

  “Found who?”

  “The baby-sitter! She just walked out the door. I felt like chaining her to the pillars. She’s starting eight-thirty, Monday morning.”

  “Great,” says Lawrence Elgin Coffey, with all the affect of a leftover noodle.

  Okay, he’s always hated me calling him at the office, and once upon a time, I could even understand it, sort of—when he was still a salesman, elbow to elbow, the way he described it, in the “Aquarium” on the fortieth floor, with everybody on the horn and the computers crunching numbers. But now?

  “Her name’s Harriet,” I go on. “Harriet Major. She’s almost twenty-two, from the Midwest—Minnesota—a dropout from the university. Apparently there was some kind of love affair that went wrong. But now she wants to go back to school, and she has to earn the money.”

  “If she’s from Minnesota, what’s she doing in New Jersey?”

  “Her stepfather. Her stepfather lives in East Springdale.”

  “Oh? Who’s her stepfather?”

  “How should I kn
ow? I’ve got the name written down, but what difference does that make?”

  “Did Justie meet her?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “Well, you know our son. He was his usual timid self, hardly said a word. But he’ll be fine. The minute she left, he started nagging me about when she was coming back to play with him.”

  “How much you paying her?”

  I’ve been waiting for him to ask this. What else do married couples have to argue about?

  “Ten,” I say without hesitation.

  “Ten dollars an hour?”

  “That’s right.”

  At last, affect. He whistles into the phone, and I don’t have to be there to see him twiddling his hair with his fingers.

  “Christ Almighty, Georgie!” he bitches. “That’s over four hundred a week, over twenty grand a year! Hey, is the job still open?”

  “Get off my case, Coffey,” I retort. “I’ve been dying on the vine out here, you know that. And I’m almost seven months pregnant, what do you want from me?” I force myself to soften my voice. “Oh God,” I say, “you don’t know what a weight’s been taken off. No pun intended, darling. But I feel as though I can breathe for the first time in months.”

  Call it manipulation, but it also happens to be true. It’s been the summer of the Great Dearth, when the baby-sitter became an endangered species. I advertised in the St. George Times for sixteen consecutive weeks, and all I got were Creole-speaking grandmas from the Islands, whose idea of child care, I know from watching, is to kaffeeklatsch on park benches while our children strangle each other in the sandbox.

  Not for me. I’ve heard too many horror stories. Instead, faute de mieux, and stuck, and in my second trimester of pregnancy, I became, at thirty-two, a full-time suburban mommy.

  It’s been a long, an excruciating summer.

  “Are you telling me we can’t afford it?” I ask Larry over the phone.

  “Of course we can afford it! That’s not the point.”

  “Then indulge me. You know what I’ve been going through. Or, if you can’t indulge me, at least indulge your son.”

  “Oh shit, Georgie,” he groans, but that’s the sum and total of it, for now.

  Noogies.

  Besides, he hasn’t met Harriet Major. I have.

  In fact, I all but hired her over the phone. I think I knew it the minute I heard her voice. For God’s sake, she can speak the English language! She is also direct, self-assured. We chatted on the phone—that is, I chatted, chattered—nerves, I guess—and then, that same magical morning, she was standing on the threshold to my living room, poised, her mouth half-open.

  “I think it’s the most beautiful room I’ve ever seen,” she said. “It’s … perfect.”

  And it is, or almost.

  And so is Harriet Major.

  We talked. She sat on my curlicued Victorian couch, a total stranger, hands in her lap, her straight blond hair dappled by sunlight, the strong features of her face in shadow. We even talked about restoring wood, of all things. (She asked.) The couch on which she sat was my first serious piece. I’d bought it for ninety dollars, a relic at a St. George estate sale, figuring that if I wrecked it, it was only ninety dollars. I learned to strip with a toothbrush, with a Q-tip where the toothbrush won’t fit, with a matchstick for the tiniest crevices. When I was finished, the reupholstery, in striped silk, cost me eight hundred dollars—Larry thought I was nuts—but I’ve since been offered four thousand for the piece. Then I started on the room itself that, when we moved in, had been stained a dark and morbid mahogany like the rest of the house. I wanted the original natural oak. I got it too, removing the decorative molding around the fireplace rosette by rosette, gluing them back when I was done staining and oiling, and I’d just begun on the central staircase when I discovered I was pregnant with Justin.

  End of project. I called in the professionals for the rest of the house.

  “God, what a marvelous talent,” Harriet said. “Bringing things back to life like that.”

  “It’s not a talent,” I corrected. “Just hard work and time. Mountains of time.”

  “Would you ever be willing to teach me?”

  “I’d be glad to one day, but not while I’m pregnant.”

  “No, of course not. But I’d have thought—”

  “It’s the fumes,” I explained. “Zip Strip, absolutely lethal stuff. Even normally you have to do it with the windows wide open and fans blowing. God knows what it would do to a tummy baby.”

  The words came out without my thinking, and I burst out laughing. I explained. Justin, at three and a half, and with my bulge finally visible, has discovered tummy babies, also egg babies, and that he himself was a tummy baby. He can’t get over it, not only that he was my tummy baby, but that I was once his grandma’s, that his grandma had been his great-grandma’s, and …

  “It blows his mind,” I said, thinking: What am I babbling about, to this stunning young creature who, to judge, is a long way away from the grandeur and misery of motherhood? “Probably the first thing he’ll ask you,” I said to her, “is if you were one too.”

  “Well, I was,” she answered gravely, “except that my mother is dead now.”

  “Oh God, I’m sorry. I—”

  “No, no, it’s nothing,” smoothing her hair away from her eyes. “I was just wondering what he knows, or doesn’t know, about death. People dying. Some parents have very particular ideas.”

  I don’t, but I appreciated her sensitivity. Strangely, though, my passing praise—or what I meant as praise—seemed to disconcert her. She tossed her head briefly, as though in denial, and quickly changed the subject.

  It was hard not to gape. She is simply ravishing. She’s about my height, but something—perhaps it was the strong sculptured features, the erect posture—gave the impression of stature. Gray-blue eyes, prominent cheekbones, upturned lips, strong chin, the whole framed in straight and glinting blond, shoulder-length. (Time was—at Dalton, Barnard—I’d have killed for hair like that!) Long fingers, well-tended nails. No makeup that I could detect. Watching her move that morning, I could only think, with a groan, of the trainer I’m going to have to have in again, once the baby comes.

  At her age, maybe her face still lacks a certain character. That’s what my mother would say. But then there are the eyes, the look. That steady, long-lashed, gray-blue gaze.

  She seemed totally oblivious to it.

  Women like that—beautiful women who pretend not to notice it—have often irritated me.

  “I think you’d better tell me,” I said finally. “What’s a lovely and well-spoken young woman of twenty-one doing applying for a baby-sitting job?”

  It seemed to unnerve her a little. She simply stared at me for a moment, until I realized that she wasn’t focusing on me but on something behind me. Then she averted her eyes, gazed down at her hands.

  “I’ve been through a pretty rough time recently,” she said, looking back at me. “I guess I’m not used to talking about it.”

  “Well,” I said, “you don’t have to. I didn’t mean—”

  “No. I don’t mind. You’ve every right to know.”

  It turned out that the first real love of her life—some campus romance, I gathered—had ended last spring when the young man in question took up with someone else. Johnny was his name—Johnny One-Note, she said with a wry smile, explaining that he was a buff of old pop tunes. Apparently she’d taken the loss hard.

  “I guess I pretty much went under, Mrs. Coffey,” she said. “I didn’t take my exams. I couldn’t talk to people, much less bring myself to go outside. Most of my time I spent calling him in my mind, but I never once picked up the phone. I don’t remember even eating anything other than candy bars. And all the time, I hated myself—I knew I had to get out of there and regroup—but I could hardly get out of bed. Feeling too sorry for myself, I guess. And ashamed! Can you imagine that, Mrs. Coffey? He was the one who left me, but I was the one
who felt ashamed?”

  I nodded, smiling in sympathy. It had been a long time—a very long time, it seemed—since I’d felt that kind of oh-so-emotional hopelessness. I burbled something to the effect that her Johnny One-Note would scarcely be the last man in her life. “I think, though,” I added, “that if we’re going to end up working together, you ought to start calling me Georgia.”

  She thanked me for that. She seemed vastly relieved, now that she’d gotten the story out.

  “Anyway, it’s over,” she said. “It really is. I got myself out here, to my stepfather’s, and now, finally,” with a half, sort of sly, smile, “I’m regrouping. I mean, in addition to needing the money, I want to get back into the world, do something, be useful to somebody.”

  “How far did you get in school?” I asked.

  “Oh, I would have—was supposed to have—finished my junior year.”

  “With just one year to go?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, it’d be nice to help you get back there, wouldn’t it?”

  “I’d like that very much.”

  “And are you okay here? With your stepfather, I mean?”

  “Oh yes, that’s fine. I can stay as long as I want. Most of the time, I’m free to come and go. Luckily I have my own car.”

  “What does your stepfather do?”

  “He has his own business, in New York. You can call him if you want to. I put him on the list—Robert A. Smith?—not as a reference really, but just to have someone local. The rest, I’m afraid, are all in Minnesota.”

  I glanced down at the list she’d given me, handwritten in a neat and girlish script. Names, phone numbers, dates of employment.

  We passed easily to the details of the job. I told her about Group, the little toddlers’ school Justin goes to two mornings a week. Then I said, “You really should tell me, Harriet. How much do you need to earn?”

  “I think you should pay me whatever you think is fair,” she replied.

  Two things, in fact, crossed my mind. One was that I’d found the answer to my troubles and that there was no way I was going to let anyone else steal her, least of all because of a few dollars. The going rate, in St. George, is six dollars an hour, seven tops. And the second thing—this is what I said, aloud—was that the person to whom I entrusted my most valued possession, it seemed to me, ought to make at least as much as the person who cleans my house.