"So you read this stuff?"
Margie arched a well-plucked eyebrow. "And you don't?"
"Well…"
"Honey, we all love to learn about who fucked who. As long as we're not the who. Just hold on. You're going to get a shitload of this thrown at you. Then they'll move on to the next lucky contestant."
Margie, God bless her, hadn't offered her reassurances a moment too soon. The very next week brought the first gleanings from Dansky. Nothing particularly hurtful; just a willfully depressing portrait of life in Rachel's hometown, plus a few pictures of her mother's house, looking sadly bedraggled: the grass on the lawn dead, the paint on the front door peeling. There was also a brief summary of how Hank Pallenberg had lived and died in Dansky. Its very brevity was a kind of cruelty, Rachel thought. Her father deserved better than this. There was much worse to come. Still sniffing after some hint of scandal, a reporter from one of the tabloids tracked down a woman who'd trained with Rachel as a dental technician. Giving her name only as "Brandy," because she claimed not to want the attention of the press, the woman offered a portrait of Rachel that was beyond unflattering.
"She was always out to catch herself a rich man," Brandy claimed. "She used to cut pictures out of newspapers-pictures of rich men she thought she had a hope of getting, you know-but rich, always real rich, and then she pinned them all up on the wall of her bedroom and used to stare at them every night before she went to sleep." And had Mitchell Geary been one of Rachel Pallenberg's hit-list of eligible millionaires, the reporter had asked Brandy. "Oh sure," the girl had replied, claiming she'd got a sick feeling when she'd heard the news about how
Rachel's plan had worked. "I'm a Christian girl, born and raised, and I always thought there was something weird about what Rachel was doing with those pictures up there. Like it was voodoo or something."
All idiotic invention, of course, but it was still a potent mixture of elements. The headline, accompanied by a picture of Rachel at a recent fund-raiser, her eyes flecked with red from the photographer's flash, read: "Shocking Sex-Magic Secrets of Geary Bride!" The issue was sold out in a day.
Rachel did her best with all this, but it was hard-even accepting that she'd been a consumer of this nonsense herself, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Now it was her face people were staring at as they waited at the supermarket checkout, her life they were half-believing these lies about. All the detachment she was able to muster didn't spare her the hurt of that.
"What are you doing even looking at that shit?" Mitchell asked her when she raised the subject over dinner that night. The establishment was Luther's, an intimate restaurant round the corner from Mitchell's apartment on Park Avenue.
"They could be saying anything," Rachel said. She was close to tears. "Not just about me. About my mother or my sister or you."
"We've got lawyers watching them all the time. If Cecil felt they were going too far-"
"Too far? What's too far?"
"Something worth fighting over," Mitchell said. He reached over and took hold of her hand.
"It's not worth crying about, baby," he said softly. "They're just stupid people who don't have anything better to do than try and tear other people down. The thing is: they can't do it. Not to us. Not to the Gearys. We're
stronger than that."
"I know…" Rachel said, wiping her nose. "I want to be strong, but-"
"I don't want to hear but, baby," he said, his tone still tender despite the toughness of the sentiment. "You've got to be strong, because people are looking at you. You're a princess."
"I don't feel much like a princess right now."
He looked disappointed. He pushed the plate of kidneys away, and put his hand to his face. "Then I'm not doing my job," he said. She stared at him, puzzled. "It's my job to make you feel like a princess. My princess. What can I do?" He looked up at her, with a kind of sweet desperation on his face. "Tell me: what can I do?"
"Just love me," she said.
"I do. Honey, I do."
"I know you do."
"And I hate it that those sleazeballs are giving you grief, but they can't touch you, honey. Not really. They can spit and they shout but they can't touch you." He squeezed her hand. "That's my job," he said. "Nobody gets to touch you but me."
She felt a subtle tremor in her body, as though his hands had reached out and stroked her between her legs. He knew what he'd done too. He passed his tongue, oh-so-lightly, over his lower lip, wetting it.
"You want to know a secret?" he said, leaning closer to her.
"Yes, please."
"They're all afraid of us."
"Who?"
"Everybody," he said, his eyes fixed on hers. "We're not like them, and they know it. We're Gearys. They're not. We've got power. They haven't. That makes them afraid. So you have to let them give vent once in a while. If they didn't do that they'd go crazy." Rachel nodded; it made sense to her. A few months ago, it wouldn't have done, but now it did.
"I won't let it bother me any more," she said. "And if it does bother me I'll shut up about it."
"You're quite a gal, you know that?" he said. "That's what Cadmus said about you after his birthday party."
"He barely spoke to me."
"He's got eyes. 'She's quite a gal,' he said. 'She's got the right stuff to be a Geary.' He's right. You do. And you know what? Once you're a member of this family, nothing can hurt you. Nothing. You're untouchable. I swear, on my life. That's how it works when you're a Geary. And that's what you're going to be in nine weeks. A Geary. Forever and always."
Marietta just came in, and read what I've been writing. She was in one of her willful moods, and I should have known better, but when she asked me if she could read a little of what I'd been writing, I passed a few pages over to her. She went out onto the veranda, lit up one of my cigars, and read. I pretended to get on with my work, as though her opinion on what I'd done was inconsequential to me, but my gaze kept sliding her way, trying to interpret the expression on her face. Occasionally, she looked amused, but not for very long. Most of the time she just scanned the lines (too fast, I thought, to really be savoring the prose) her expression impassive. The longer this went on the more infuriated I became, and I was of half a mind to get up, go out onto the veranda. At last, with a little sigh, she got up and came back in, proffering the pages.
"You write long sentences," she remarked.
"That's all you can say?"
She fished a book of matches out of her pocket, and striking one, began to rekindle her cigar. "What do you want me to say?" she shrugged. "It's a bit gossipy, isn't it?" She was now studying the book of matches. "And I think it's going to be hard to follow. All those names. All those Gearys. You don't have to go that far back, do you? I mean, who cares?"
"It's all context."
"I wonder whose number this is?" she said, still studying the book. "It's a Raleigh number. Who the hell do I know in Raleigh?"
"If you can't be a little more generous, a little more constructive…"
She looked up, and seemed to see my misery. "Oh, Eddie," she said, with a sudden smile. "Don't look so forlorn. I think it's wonderful."
"No you don't."
"I swear. I do. It's just that weddings, you know," her lip curled slightly. "They're not my favorite thing."
"You went," I reminded her.
"Are you going to write about that?"
"Absolutely."
She patted my cheek. "You see, that'll liven things up a bit. How are your legs by the way?"