Rana’s footsteps faltered. “My mother?”
Ruby nodded, an unspoken question in her eyes. Ana Ramsey had no mother that she knew about.
Rana trudged up the stairs. She and her mother had conveyed messages to each other through Morey for the last six months. They hadn’t spoken personally since Rana had walked out and thwarted Susan’s plans for her daughter’s marriage.
Why was Susan calling now? Rana wondered. Was she angry that Rana hadn’t accepted the contract? Was she calling just to say hello? Was she calling to say, “I love you”?
Rana ridiculed herself for holding on to that hope. Nonetheless her hands were shaking and her voice trembled as she picked up the extension in her apartment and said,
“Mother? Hello. How are you?”
“Morey is dead. I think the least you could do is return to New York for his funeral.”
Six
Morey is dead. Morey is dead.
It was now almost thirty-six hours since Rana had first heard those words from her mother’s lips, and she still couldn’t believe them. After standing at the grave site and seeing his casket, the very idea still seemed too incredible to accept.
So much had happened since her mother had broken the news of Morey’s death that it seemed as though the afternoon in the greenhouse with Trent had occurred in another lifetime. Both spiritual and physical fatigue settled on her as she reviewed the events subsequent to that phone call.
She had flung clothes haphazardly into a suitcase. Racing downstairs, she had asked Ruby if she could borrow her car. Ruby suggested that Trent could drive her to the airport, but Rana objected so strongly that Ruby gave her no further argument, even honoring her request that he not be called from the greenhouse to say good-bye. Rana told her friend that she would be away for an indefinite period of time. She didn’t specify where she was going.
When the landlady expressed concern for Rana’s obvious distress, the only explanation forthcoming was, “I’ll tell you when I get back.”
At Houston ’s Intercontinental Airport she had to watch two planes to New York take off without her before a standby seat on a third aircraft became available.
Once in New York, she took a cab to her apartment, where her mother was still living. They met face-to-face for the first time in six months. Susan was overtly hostile despite Rana’s need to be consoled.
“You look ridiculous, Rana. I hope you don’t expect me to claim you as mine, dressed like that.”
“What about Morey, Mother?”
“He’s dead.” She held a gold Cartier lighter to the end of a cigarette, inhaled dramatically, and then blew a cloud of smoke over her head.
Rana, exhausted from the ordeal of getting to Houston from Galveston, waiting at the airport for hours, the long flight, not to mention her mental anguish, collapsed on the sofa and closed her eyes. It was now two o’clock in the morning in New York. Her spirit was trampled and her nerves were frayed, she had just lost her dearest friend and staunchest ally, and her mother’s first comment had been about the way she looked. At that moment she hated Susan Ramsey.
“You told me that much on the telephone, Mother. What do you want me to do, beg you for the details?” She opened her eyes and confronted the woman she had never been able to please no matter how hard she had tried. “All right, I’m begging. What happened?” Her frustration finally got the best of her, and tears formed in her eyes.
Susan, with an almost smug expression, sat down on the far end of the long sofa. Despite the hour, she was immaculately groomed. Her satin robe was unwrinkled. “He died at home. One of his neighbors discovered the body late in the morning, when Morey didn’t show up for a brunch date they had.”
Morey lived alone; he and his wife had been divorced for years before Rana met him. He’d never gotten over the breakup of his marriage, but he could never give up gambling, either, which had been the crux of his marital problems.
“Was it a heart attack? A stroke?” Morey had been overweight, had high blood pressure, and smoked too much.
“Not exactly,” Susan said coolly, scornfully. “Drugs were involved.”
“Drugs!” Rana exclaimed, aghast. “I don’t believe it.”
“ Not Street drugs. Pills. Liquor. There was evidence in his apartment that he’d been drinking.”
Rana’s body seemed slowly to collapse, to fold in on itself like a house of cards. It couldn’t be. She would never believe it. Suicide? No! “Was it an accident?” she asked hoarsely.
Susan ground out her cigarette in a crystal ashtray on the marble coffee table. “I think the police are ruling it an accidental death.”
“But you think it was a suicide, don’t you?”
“All I know is that when I last spoke with him, he was extremely upset over your turning down that marvelous contract. He was as shocked as I am that you would rather live like this,” she said scathingly, waving her hand toward Rana as though she were filthy, “than like a princess. Morey was in financial trouble thanks to you.”
Rana covered her face with her hands, but Susan persisted. “He had to move from those plush offices he had leased. When you so selfishly deserted both him and me, he went back to representing second-rate models and has-beens.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?” Rana groaned, asking the question of herself as much as of her mother.
Susan was all too happy to answer. “What good would it have done? If you had cared for anyone as much as you did yourself, you wouldn’t have left in the first place. Why should you care what happened to some penny-ante agent- whom I wanted to discard years ago-if you don’t care about your own mother?”
She lit another cigarette. Rana knew Susan wasn’t finished yet, so she remained silent. It would serve no purpose to argue.
“I sacrificed everything to put you where you were, but you gave it all up without so much as a thank-you. You threw away a chance to marry one of the richest men in America. Does it matter to you that I can barely pay the bills on this place? No.”
Susan could have found a more modest apartment that would still have been considered luxurious. She could have found herself a job. As Rana knew firsthand, her mother was certainly a capable manager. She was extremely attractive. Why didn’t she find herself a well-to-do husband to henpeck? But Rana was too tired and upset to engage in a verbal battle with her mother by making any of those suggestions.
She pulled herself to her feet, weariness evident in every move. “I’m going to bed, Mother. When is the funeral?”
“Tomorrow at two. I’ve hired a limousine to pick us up. You’ll find your retainer on the bedside table. Put it in. Your teeth are deplorable.”
“You go in the limousine. I’ll take a cab. Since I don’t intend to wear that damned retainer another night of my life, and my teeth are deplorable, I’m sure you’ll prefer riding in the limousine alone, rather than being seen with me.”
At the funeral, Rana stood apart from the other mourners, hidden behind a pair of dark sunglasses and a black hat, which she had purchased at Macy’s that morning. No one recognized her. No one looked at her. No one spoke to her as she stood weeping at the edge of the small crowd that dispersed as soon as the final prayer was said. Each one of its number seemed thankful that he had done his social duty and was now free to escape the heavy, muggy heat of the New Jersey cemetery and find relief in an air- conditioned car.
Rana lingered, even after Susan swept past her without a nod. Why, Morey, why? she asked the carnation-blanketed casket. Why hadn’t he told her he was in financial trouble? Had he taken his own life?