It was written in a cutesy female hand, with round circles above the i’s and little loops all over the place. Definitely not her ex-husband’s scrawl. He’d probably called the shop, gave them the address, told them what to put on the card, then came by later and paid for it. Or better yet, sent his latest girlfriend around with the money. Yes, that would be more Richard’s style.
Gia bottled the anger that had come to a full boil within her. Her ex-husband, controller of one third of the huge Westphalen fortune, had plenty of time to flit all over the world and send his aunt expensive chocolates from London, but not a penny to spare for child support, let alone the moment it would have taken to send his own daughter a birthday card back in April.
You sure can pick ’em, Gia.
She bent and picked up the wrapper. “The Divine Obsession.” At least she knew what city Richard was living in. And probably not too far from this shop—he was never one to go out of his way for anyone, especially his aunts. They had never thought much of him and had never been reticent about letting him know it. Which raised the question: Why the candy? What was behind this thoughtful little gift out of the blue?
“Imagine!” Nellie was saying. “A gift from Richard! How lovely! Who’d have ever thought—”
They were both suddenly aware of a third person in the room with them. Gia glanced up and saw Vicky standing in the hallway in her white jersey with her bony legs sticking out of her yellow shorts and her feet squeezed sockless into her sneakers, watching them with wide blue eyes.
“Is that a present from my daddy?”
“Why, yes, love,” Nellie said.
“Did he send one for me?”
Gia felt her heart break at those words. Poor Vicky…
Nellie glanced at Gia, her face distraught, then turned back to Vicky.
“Not yet, Victoria, but I’m sure one will be coming soon. Meanwhile, he said we should all share these chocolates until—” Nellie’s hand darted to her mouth, realizing what she had just said.
“Oh, no,” Vicky said. “My daddy would never send me chocolates. He knows I can’t have any.”
With her back straight and her chin high, she turned and walked quickly down the hall toward the backyard.
Nellie’s face seemed to crumble as she turned toward Gia. “I forgot she’s allergic. I’ll go get her—”
“Let me,” Gia said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “We’ve been over this ground before and it looks like we’ll have to go over it again.”
She left Nellie standing there in the foyer, looking older than her years, unaware of the box of chocolates clutched so tightly in her spotted hands. Gia didn’t know who to feel sorrier for: Vicky or Nellie.
2
Vicky hadn’t wanted to cry in front of Aunt Nellie, who always said what a big girl she was. Mommy said it was all right to cry, but Vicky never saw Mommy cry. Well, hardly ever.
Vicky wanted to cry right now. It didn’t matter if this was one of the all right times or not, it was going to come out anyway. It was like a big balloon inside her chest, getting bigger and bigger until she either cried or exploded. She held it in until she reached the playhouse. There was one door, two windows with new curtains, and room enough inside for her to spin around with her arms spread out all the way and not touch the walls. She picked up her Ms. Jelliroll doll and hugged it to her chest. Then it began.
The sobs came first, like big hiccups, then the tears. She didn’t have a sleeve, so she tried to wipe them away with her arm but succeeded only in making her face and her arm wet and smeary.
Daddy doesn’t care. It made her feel sick way down in the bottom of her stomach to think that, but she knew it was true. She didn’t know why it should bother her so much. She couldn’t much remember what he looked like. Mommy threw away all his pictures a long time ago and as time went by it became harder and harder to see his face in her mind. He hadn’t been around at all in two years and Vicky didn’t remember seeing much of him even before that. So why should it hurt to say that Daddy didn’t care? Mommy was the only one who really mattered, who really cared, who was always there.
Mommy cared. And so did Jack. But now Jack didn’t come around anymore either. Except for yesterday. Thinking about Jack made her stop crying. When he had lifted her up and hugged her yesterday she’d felt so good inside. Warm. And safe. For the short while he had been in the house yesterday she hadn’t felt afraid. Vicky didn’t know what there was to be scared of, but lately she felt afraid all the time. Especially at night.
She heard the door open behind her and knew it was Mommy. That was okay. She had stopped crying now. She was all right now. But when she turned and saw that sad, pitying look on Mommy’s face, it all came out again and she burst into tears. Mommy squeezed into the little rocker and sat her on her knee and held her tight until the sobs went away. This time for good.
3
“Why doesn’t Daddy love us anymore?”
The question startled Gia. Vicky had asked her countless times why Daddy didn’t live with them anymore. But this was the first time she had mentioned love.
Answer a question with another question: “Why do you say that?”
But Vicky was not to be sidetracked.
“He doesn’t love us, does he, Mommy.” It was not a question.
No. He doesn’t. I don’t think he ever did.
That was the truth. Richard had never been a father. As far as he was concerned, Vicky had been an accident, a terrible inconvenience to him. He had never shown affection to her, had never been a presence in their home when they had lived together. He might as well have phoned in his paternal duties.
Gia sighed and hugged Vicky tighter. What an awful time that had been… the worst years of her life. Gia had been brought up a strict Catholic, and although the days had become one long siege of Gia and Vicky alone against the world, and the nights—those nights when her husband bothered to come home—had been Richard and Gia against each other, she had never considered divorce. Not until the night when Richard, in a particularly vicious mood, had told her why he’d married her. She was as good as anyone else for rutting when he was randy, he had said, but the real reason was taxes. Immediately after the death of his father, Richard had gone to work transferring his assets out of Britain and into either American or international holdings, all the while looking for an American to marry. He’d found such an American in Gia, fresh in from the Midwest looking to sell her commercial art talents to Madison Avenue. The urbane Richard Westphalen, with his refined British manners and accent, had swept her off her feet. They were married; he became an American citizen. There were other ways he could have acquired citizenship, but they were lengthy and this was more in keeping with his character. The taxes on the earnings of his portion of the Westphalen fortune would from then on be taxed at a maximum of seventy percent—which would drop to fifty percent starting in October 1981—rather than the British government’s ninety-plus percent. After that, he quickly lost interest in her.
“We might have had some fun for a while, but you had to go and become a mother.”
Those words seared themselves onto her brain. She started divorce proceedings the following day, ignoring her lawyer’s increasingly strident pleas for a whopping property settlement.
Perhaps she should have listened. She often would wonder about that later. But at the time all she wanted was out. She wanted nothing that came from his precious family fortune. She allowed her lawyer to ask for child support only because she knew she would need it until she revived her art career.