“Pretty tough to prove that was the way he was cheated.”
“You people should track down all her old boyfriends, and you can tell just by looking at her that there are plenty of them and they weren’t very carefully selected either. Did you know she knew Daddy was dying when she married him? What kind of a person would be so eager to marry a dying man who was pretty well-off? Ask yourself that.”
“I guess she didn’t get a very warm welcome from the family when he brought her back here from Florida.”
“You can say we made it very clear to her how we felt.” She shook her head, slowly. “And to think that Roger and I used to think what a shame it would be if Stanyard’s husband died and Daddy made an honest woman of her. But we would certainly have settled for Stanyard a dozen times over rather than darling Gloria.”
“Stanyard?”
“Chief OR nurse of neurosurgery at Methodist Hospital where Daddy did most of his operations. Her husband was hurt about the same time Mommy passed away. It was a fishing accident and they resuscitated him, but he’d been out too long and because of no oxygen going to the brain, there was a lot of damage. I guess he’s sort of half in a coma. He’s in an institution near Elgin. He sort of wanders around, I understand, and he can say a few words, and he seems glad to see her in a vague way. They had a little boy and he drowned when the boat was swamped. Stanyard has some kind of a thing about getting an annulment or a divorce. She was at the funeral. I hadn’t seen her in years and years. I don’t know when she and Daddy started having a thing. Probably not a very long time after Mommy died. I’m not censuring them, you understand. Two lonely people with the same interests. She’s still fairly attractive-as nurse types go. And they did make a big effort to be discreet, at least. But the summer I was twelve, one evening after dark she drove him home because his car was being fixed, and I looked through the hedge and saw them kissing. You know how kids are. It made me feel quite ill and wretched and confused. I told Roger and he said to keep my mouth shut. He said he’d known it for a year at least. I guess it really must have shaken her up when he married that Doyle person. Poor thing. When he had to go off on trips to do special operations he’d arrange to have Stanyard go along as her nurse. She was-is-very good, I guess. I mean nobody would question his wanting her right there for tricky operations. But I guess it was… quite a handy arrangement for them.”
I said nothing. She realized how patronizing she had sounded. She colored slightly. “I’m not really a prude, Mr. McGee. When it’s your own father… somehow it’s more tawdry. You expect more. Mommy was such an absolute angel. I guess I should realize that Daddy was a man, with a man’s… requirements. But it seems like such an insult to my mother’s memory, the affair with Stanyard and then marrying the Doyle person. I guess that because a man is famous in his field, it doesn’t mean he can’t be foolish and gullible about women. Of course, I didn’t exactly make one of the world’s best marriages.”
“Better luck next time.”
Her smile was cold. “No need for a next time, thank you.”
At that moment the red door swung open and a young man came hurrying in, saying, “Really, it’s too much! Darling, that wretched Kirstarian is absolutely intent on ruining the entire exhibition, and I just…”
He stopped and stared at me, eyebrows arching in surprise. “Well, excuse me! I didn’t know anyone was…”
“Mark,” she said wearily, “you’ve promised and promised not to come charging in here. If you ever do it again, I’m going to make you give me that downstairs key back.”
“I was just terribly excited, Heidi. This is really a crisis! Wait until you hear! But shouldn’t you introduce us?”
“Mr.Travis McGee. Mark Avanyan. Mark and I run a little gallery on East Scott Street.”
“The Tempo East,” he said. He wore a shaggy green turtleneck and skinny jeans in an almost white denim. He had the build of a good welterweight in peak condition. His hair was a half-inch length of dense black pelt that began about an inch and a half above his dark heavy brows. He smiled approvingly at me. “It’s so marvelous to see somebody who looks really outdoors.” He sat on a bright blue hassock and tucked his sneakers under him and scowled and said, “Kirstarian is absolutely adamant, darling. He brought in a new piece and he says it goes in the show or there won’t be any show. And I can’t endure it. It is absolutely ghastly.”
He turned to me and explained, “Kirstarian calls his latest work Stappenings. For static happenings. He makes these marvelous life-size wire armatures of people and objects and wraps them with muslin and then sprays them with some sort of hardener. They have tremendous presence, they really do. And I have been working myself into exhaustion since dawn, practically, making the most effective arrangements, and then he comes in with his… impossible thing.”
“What is it, dear?” she asked.
“It’s two large dogs-uh-copulating like mad. They are sort of vaguely dogs, you know. Kirstarian just stands there, saying it is one of the statements he wishes to make in this show, and he is not going to let anyone censor his work. And there are those fat white terrible beasts, and it is the only thing people are going to look at, and it seems like some sort of terrible vulgar joke he’s trying to play on us. Actually, he hates me. I’m just becoming aware of it. Heidi, darling, we’re not ready to show something like that. I mean you could say that Chicago isn’t ready. And the preview is tomorrow. And we’ve publicized it. Darling, you have to do something.”
“He’s your friend, dear.”
“Not any longer, believe me.”
“Run along, Mark, dear. Run on back and tell him to wait and I’ll be by in a little while to take a look.”
As he started to leave he looked into the studio at the new painting on the easel. “Heidi!” he cried. “It’s stunning. And I believe it’s transitional. Your work is getting so strong!”
After saying he hoped we’d meet again, he went hurrying off.
“Poor Mark,” she said. “Everything is always a crisis. But he does work very hard. Had we finished?”
“There’s a couple of questions. I’d like to get a look at those problem dogs. If you want to change, I could ask the questions on the way.”
She changed to a gray flannel suit worn over a pale green sweater, and agreed it would be pleasant to walk the four blocks or so to the Tempo East Gallery. I did not have to shorten my normal stride very much to stay in step with her. I said, “Did you have any idea the bulk of the estate had been liquidated before the bank told you?”
“I had no idea! Roger and I knew he’d changed his will and was cutting us each from a half to a quarter. Roger even had his attorney look into it, but there was nothing we could do. I suppose we could have guessed the woman might be capable of some sort of trickery.”
“How was your relationship with your father the last year of his life?”
“Unfortunate. The Doyle person poisoned his mind against his own children. We saw him a few times, of course. He seemed pleasant but… remote. Not terribly interested in what we were doing. Oh, he was a lot of help to me with the wedding, and later with the divorce from Gadge. Actually Jeanie-Roger’s wife-seemed to get along with him better than we did. She’d stop with the kids. Daddy enjoyed seeing his grandchildren.”
“Gloria Geis claims that all she gets from the estate is the insurance policy that brings her in less than five thousand a year.”
“A lovely smokescreen. That’s what I think.”
“Maybe that nurse blackmailed your father.”
“Stanyard? Janice Stanyard? Nonsense!”
“Actually, since you couldn’t have touched the principal, your inheritance would have been just the seventy-five hundred a year, right?”