“Seven-!”
“Thousand. Yes.”
Seven thousand dollars. Enough to buy a brand new car, pay for tuition and books, and still have enough left over for a down payment on a house.
If I had been able to work my minimum-wage job full-time instead of part-time, and taken home every cent of the dollar sixty-five I made each hour, it would have taken me more than two years to earn seven thousand dollars.
I caught myself going down the envy road and put the brakes on. I said something that really went against my natural state of being curious. “It’s none of our business.”
“That’s how I acted,” Eldon said. “She turned beet red and hurried to gather the money. I didn’t touch any of it, of course. I just helped her pick up her lipstick and compact and other little things that had fallen out of the purse.” He paused and a sly look came over his face. “That reminds me. What’s that colorful plastic tube you girls all carry, around yay long?” He held his hands a few inches apart.
“A double-barreled tampon holder, as well you know. You forgot you told me you have sisters, Eldon.”
He laughed. “Okay. But no joke, there were seven packets of one hundred dollar bills. I asked her if she was sure she had all of them while I raised the top on the car again. As flustered as she was, I was afraid if she had forgotten one of them, it would blow out of the car once we pulled out into traffic. That’s when she told me that all seven thousand was there.”
“And?”
“Long story short, she tells me that Langworthy is her father.”
I didn’t bother to hide my shock.
“She’s illegitimate,” he said, enjoying my reaction.
“Eldon, you are such a little shit! I’ll bet she asked you to keep it confidential.”
“Of course she did! Can you blame me for wanting to talk to someone about it?”
“If someone asks you to keep a confidence, you keep it.”
He shrugged. “I’m human. Besides, I thought you might already know.”
“Why?”
“You were the one who introduced us.”
“That is such a lie. You saw a pretty girl and made a beeline for the table. For the record, yesterday at lunch was the first time I’d met her.” I paused. “I’ve never liked that phrase, ‘illegitimate child.’ Children aren’t to blame for what their parents do.”
Eldon considered this for a moment, then said, “Never thought of it that way. So-I guess he doesn’t openly acknowledge her, but he was happy she was moving back here. Tough for her really, even with the money. Like he’s ashamed of her.”
“He’s got to be seventy years old, right? That generation-his reputation in the community-he’s probably more ashamed of himself than of her. At least he’s helping her out.”
“Yeah. You suppose he’s going to leave all his bread to her?”
“Eldon, listen to me. You’ve broken her confidence by telling me. Fine, you’re human. Do not tell anyone else. Not anyone. It’s unkind to her and unkind to him. You’ll only embarrass her. Besides, do you want every creep who wants to marry money going after her?”
He stood. “No way I want to increase the competition.”
It belatedly occurred to me, as he walked off whistling, that he was probably one of those creeps.
Competition or no competition, it didn’t take long to see that Eldon hadn’t been able to keep his big yap shut. Donna had shown a strong preference for Mark’s company, so maybe Eldon decided to blab by way of sour grapes.
Before the week was over, there was always a crowd of men around her, and any number of women ready to pick up the leftovers. It wasn’t just the guys who were broke who spent time with her. Families of the wealthy began to invite her to their parties, willing to overlook the sins of the father if the father was going to make her his heir.
As for the father in question, no one was too surprised to learn that the day after Donna’s visit to his home, Homer Langworthy left town, reputedly for a long voyage on a cruise ship. Or an African safari. Or a European tour. The stories varied, but the bottom line was the same: Homer was unavailable to confirm or deny rumors.
She ate at the best restaurants, sat in the best seats at any concert or play, and was offered extravagant gifts that she very properly refused, a fact which only substantiated, in some minds, that she was an heiress.
She received no fewer than three offers of marriage within her first three weeks on campus. She graciously declined. Until Mark Kesterson asked.
I was sitting in the offices of the campus newspaper after everyone else had gone home, chewing on a pencil, when an ex-pirate who was dear to me walked in.
The pirate tale was one of the many explanations Jack Corrigan, retired star reporter for the Las Piernas News Express, now journalism professor extraordinaire, offered to anyone bold or rude enough to ask him how he lost his eye. I never heard the same story twice whenever I was around to hear him respond to the inquisitive. I never asked him; I figured he’d tell me if he wanted me to know.
He cocked his head, sat down near me, and lit up a cigarette.
“Now, what has Ms. Kelly staying here late, I wonder?”
“Well, we both know you’re trying to sneak in extra cigarettes before you go home.”
“Not sneak, exactly. Just trying to be supportive of Helen. She quit ten years ago, but I don’t like to tempt her to go back to it. Nice evasion, by the way.”
His wife, Helen Corrigan, another veteran reporter, only slightly edged out her husband as my favorite professor. Neither one of them went easy on their students. I loved them for it.
But just then, I wasn’t sure I wanted to participate in the Donna Vynes rumor mill. Still…
He waited. I wasn’t the first person to break under that patient silence of his. I would have loved to learn how he managed to keep a question mark in the air over such long stretches of quiet.
“It’s like this,” I said, and told him the story of Donna Vynes.
He raised his brows a couple of times, but didn’t interrupt the telling. By the time I had finished, he was on his second cigarette.
“I’ve spent some time with Donna,” I said, “and she seems like a sweet person. None of it is really my business, and they seem to be in love, so I should probably adhere to Lydia’s Ax Murderer Rule.”
“Ax murderers have rules?”
“No, Lydia has some good rules. The Ax Murderer Rule is this: if your friend is in love with someone, and that someone is an ax murderer, and you have photographs to prove it, you can try to gently talk your friend out of staying in the relationship. But only if all three conditions are met.”
He laughed. “Smart Lydia.”
“It’s nice in theory, but Mark and I have been friends since high school, and I don’t want to see him hurt.”
“Why should this relationship hurt him?”
“Something about all of this-just doesn’t seem right. Eldon is a gossip and I wouldn’t trust him to keep a secret, but he’s not in the habit of making up whoppers. All the same, I think the whole ‘tripped as she got into the car’ business was a little hokey.”
“What else?”
“Married at sixteen, veteran’s widow? Farm girl whose mother died not long ago, and she dresses better than Alicia? I don’t know. But you can’t be suspicious of people based on their clothing.”
“Sure you can. You probably should not judge someone’s character by what they wear, but that’s not what I hear you saying. Your instincts are telling you something’s not right. So you think over things that don’t fit well with whatever message a person is trying to send to you and others-those things that seem incongruous can be clothing, the way a person carries himself, how they talk, and so on. That doesn’t mean whatever hypothesis you’ve dreamed up about him or her is right, or that they’ve done something wrong-just that you need to figure out what’s really going on.”