So she wandered the halls of her father"s house that night saying prayers for the souls of dead animals and unloved little girls, while she counted the hours until she could run away from this place where she"d known so much unhappiness.
Peg Kowalski, who had been Bert"s housekeeper for the last eight years, had left a single light burning in the large family room that stretched across the back of the house. Phoebe walked over to the windows that looked out on the grounds and tried to find the old maple that had been her favorite hiding place when she was a child.
Generally she tried to avoid thinking about her childhood, but tonight, as she stared into the darkness, that time didn"t seem so long ago. She could feel herself being pulled back into the past, to that old maple tree and the dreaded sound of a bully"s voice... .
"There you are, Flea Belly. Come on down. I"ve got a present for you."
Phoebe"s stomach did a flip-flop at the loud intrusion of her cousin Reed"s voice. She looked down to see him standing beneath the tree that was her haven during those few times when she was at home. She was supposed to leave for summer camp the next morning, and she had so far managed to avoid being caught alone with him, but today she had let down her guard. Instead of staying in the kitchen with the cook or helping Addie clean the bath-rooms, she had escaped to the solitude of the woods.
"1 don"t want any present," she said.
"You"d better come down here. If you don"t, you"ll be sorry."
Reed didn"t make idle threats, and she"d learned long ago that she had few defenses against him. Her father got mad at her if she complained that Reed teased her or hit her. Bert said she was spineless and that he wasn"t going to fight her battles for her. But at twelve, Reed was two years older than she was and lots stronger, and she couldn"t imagine fighting him.
She didn"t understand why Reed hated her so much. She might be rich while he was poor, but his mother hadn"t died when he was four like hers had, and he didn"t get sent away to school. Reed and her Aunt Ruth, who was her father"s sister, had lived in a brick apartment building two miles from the estate ever since Reed"s father had run off. Bert paid the rent and gave Aunt Ruth money, even though he didn"t like her that much. But he loved Reed because Reed was a boy, and he was good at sports, especially football.
She knew Reed would climb up after her if she defied him, and she decided she"d feel safer facing him on solid ground. With a sinking sense of dread, she began descending the maple tree, her plump thighs making an ugly swishing sound as they rubbed together. She hoped he wasn"t looking up her shorts. He was always trying to see her there, or touch her, or say nasty things about her bottom, not all of which she understood. She dropped awkwardly to the ground, breathing hard because the descent had been difficult.
Reed wasn"t unusually tall for a twelve-year-old, but he was stocky, with short, strong legs, broad shoulders, and a thick chest. His arms and legs were perpetually covered with scabs and bruises from sports activities, bike accidents, and fights. Bert loved to inspect Reed"s injuries. He said Reed was "all boy."
She, however, was lumpish and shy, more interested in books than in sports. Bert called her Lard a.s.s and said that all those A"s she made in school wouldn"t get her anywhere in life if she couldn"t manage to stand up straight and look people in the eye. Reed wasn"t smart in school, but that didn"t make any difference to Bert because Reed was the star of his junior high football team.
Her cousin was dressed in a torn orange T-shirt, cutoffs, and battered sneakers, exactly the kind of rumpled play clothes she would have liked to wear, except her father"s housekeeper wouldn"t let her. Mrs. Mertz bought all Phoebe"s clothing in an expensive children"s store, and today she had laid out a pair of white shorts that emphasized Phoebe"s round stomach and a sleeveless cotton top that had a big strawberry on the front and cut her under the arms.
"Don"t ever say I"ve never done anything nice for you, Flea Belly." Reed held up a piece of heavy white paper just a little larger than a paperback book cover "Guess what I"ve got?"
"I don"t know." Phoebe spoke cautiously, determined to avoid whatever land mines Reed was laying for her.
"I"ve got a picture of your mom."
Phoebe"s heart skipped a beat. "I don"t believe you."
He turned the paper over, and she saw that it was, indeed, a photograph, although he flashed it too quickly for her to absorb anything more than the vague impression of a beautiful woman"s face.
"I found it stuck in the back of Mom"s junk drawer," he said taking an impatient swipe at the thick, dark bangs hanging in jags to his eyebrows.
Her legs felt weak, and she knew she had never wanted anything in her life as much as she wanted that photograph. "How do you know it"s her?"
"I asked my mom." He cupped it in his hand so Phoebe couldn"t see it and looked at it. "It"s a real good picture, Flea Belly."
Phoebe"s heart was pounding so hard she was afraid he would see it. She wanted to s.n.a.t.c.h the photograph from his hand but she kept still because she knew from painful experience that he would simply hold it out of her reach if she tried.
She only had one picture of her mother, and it had been taken from so far away that Phoebe couldn"t see her face. Her father never said anything much about her except that she was a dumb blonde who"d looked great in a G-string, and it was too G.o.dd.a.m.n bad Phoebe hadn"t inherited her body instead of his brains. Phoebe"s ex-stepmother, Cooki, whom her father had divorced last year after she"d had another miscarriage, said that Phoebe"s mom probably wasn"t as bad as Bert made out, but that Bert was a hard man to live with. Phoebe had loved Cooki. She had painted Phoebe"s toenails Pink Parfait and read her exciting stories about real life out of True Confessions True Confessions magazine. magazine.
"What"ll you give me for it," Reed said.
She knew she couldn"t let Reed see how precious the photograph was or he would do something awful to keep her from having it. "I already have lots of pictures of her," she lied, "so why should I give you anything?"
He held it up in front of him. "All right. I"ll just tear it up."
"No!" She leapt forward, the protest slipping through her lips before she could stop it.
His dark eyes narrowed in sly triumph, and she felt as if the sharp jaws of a steel trap had just closed around her.
"How much do you want it?"
She had begun to tremble. "Just give it to me."
"Pull down your pants and I will."
"No!"
"Then I"m going to tear it up." He clasped the top between his fingers as if he were getting ready to tear it.
"Don"t!" Her voice was shaking. She bit the inside of her cheek, but she couldn"t stop her eyes from filling with tears. "You don"t want it, Reed. Please give it to me."
"I already told you what you have to do, Lard a.s.s."
"No. I"ll tell my dad."
"And I"ll tell him you"re a stuck-up little liar. Which one of us do you think he"ll believe?"
Both of them knew the answer to that question. Bert always took Reed"s side.
A tear dripped off her jaw onto her cotton top, making an amoeba-shaped smear on the leaf of the strawberry. "Please."
"Pull down your pants, or I"ll tear it up."
"No!"
He made a small tear at the top, and she couldn"t hold back a sob of distress.
"Pull "em down!"
"Please, don"t! Please!"
"Are you going to do it, crybaby?" He lengthened the tear.
"Yes! Stop! Stop and I"ll do it."
He lowered the photograph. Through her tears she saw that he had made a jagged rip through the top inch.
His eyes slithered down over her and settled on the point where her legs came together, that mysterious place where a few strands of golden hair had begun to grow. "Hurry up before somebody comes."
An awful vomit taste rose in her throat. She worked the b.u.t.ton at the side of her shorts. Tears stung her eyes as she struggled with the zipper.
"Don"t make me do this," she whispered. The words had a wavery sound, as if her throat were full of water. "Please. Just give me the picture."
"I told you to hurry." He wasn"t even looking at her face, just staring at the place between her legs.
The bad taste in her mouth got worse as she slowly worked her shorts down over her tummy and thighs and then let them fall. They circled her ankles in a crooked figure eight. She was cold with shame as she stood in front of him in her blue cotton underpants with tiny yellow roses all over them.
"Give it to me now," she begged.
"Pull down your panties first."
She tried not to think about it. She tried just to take her panties down so she could have the picture of her mother, but her hands wouldn"t move. She stood in front of him with tears running down her cheeks and her shorts snagged around her chubby ankles and she knew she couldn"t let him see her there.
"I can"t," she whispered.
"Do it!" His small eyes darkened with fury.
Sobbing, she shook her head.
With an ugly twist to his mouth, he ripped the precious photograph in half then in half again before letting the pieces float to the ground. He ground them beneath the sole of his sneaker and ran toward the house.
Tripping on her shorts, she stumbled blindly toward the ruined photograph. As she fell to her knees, she saw a set of widely s.p.a.ced eyes tilted up at the ends just like her own. She gave a little shuddering gasp and told herself it would be all right. She would smooth everything out and tape it all back together again.
Her hands shook as she arranged the four crumpled pieces in their proper order, the top corners first and then the bottom ones. Only after the photograph was rea.s.sembled did she see Reed"s final act of malice. A thick, black mustache had been inked in just above her mother"s soft upper lip.
That had been twenty-three years ago, but Phoebe could still feel an ache in her chest as she stood at the window staring out over the grounds. All the material luxuries of her childhood had never been able to compensate for growing up under the shadow of Reed"s cruel bullying and her father"s scorn.
Something brushed against her leg, and she looked down to see Pooh gazing up at her with adoring eyes. She knelt to pick her up, then gathered her close and carried her over to the sofa, where she sat and stroked her soft white coat. The grandfather clock ticked in the corner. When she was eighteen, that clock had stood in her father"s study. She buried her pink-lacquered fingernails in Pooh"s topknot and remembered that awful August night when her world had come to an end.
Her stepmother Lara had taken two-month-old Molly to visit her mother in Cleveland. Phoebe, eighteen at the time, was home packing for her freshman year at Mount Holyoke. Normally she wouldn"t have been invited to the Northwest Illinois State football team party, but Bert was hosting it at the house so she had been included. At that time Bert hadn"t yet bought the Stars" franchise, and Northwest football had been his obsession. Reed played on the team, and Bert"s generous contributions to the athletic fund had made him a highly influential alumnus.
She had spent the day both antic.i.p.ating and dreading that night"s party. Although much of her baby fat had melted away, she was still self-conscious about her figure and wore baggy, shapeless clothing to conceal her full b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her experiences with Reed and her father had left her leery of men, but at the same time, she couldn"t help but daydream that one of the popular jocks would notice her.
She had spent the early hours of the party standing on the fringes trying to look inconspicuous. When Craig Jenkins, who was Reed"s best friend, had walked over to ask her to dance, she had barely been able to nod. Dark-haired and handsome, Craig was Northeast"s star player and not even in her wildest dreams had she imagined that he would notice her, much less put his arm around her shoulders after the music ended. She had begun to relax. They danced again. She flirted a little bit, laughed at his jokes.
And then it had all turned sour. He"d had too much to drink and tried to feel her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Even when she"d told him to stop, he hadn"t listened. He"d grown more aggressive, and she"d run outside in the middle of a thunderstorm to hide in the small metal shed near the pool.
That was where Craig had found her and where, in the thick, hot blackness, he had raped her.
Afterward, she"d made the mistake so many rape victims make. Dazed and bleeding, she had dragged herself to the bathroom, where she"d thrown up and then scrubbed away the signs of his violation in a tub of scalding-hot water.
An hour later, sobbing and barely coherent, she"d cornered Bert in his study, where he"d gone to fetch one of his Cuban cigars. She still remembered his disbelief as he"d run his fingers through his steel gray crew cut and studied her. She stood before him in the baggy gray sweat suit she"d climbed into when she got out of the tub, and she had never felt more vulnerable.
"You want me to believe a boy like Craig Jenkins was so hard up for a woman that he had to rape you?"
"It"s true," she whispered, barely able to squeeze the words through her constricted throat.
Cigar smoke had coiled like a soiled ribbon around his head. He drew his s.h.a.ggy salt-and-pepper eyebrows together. "This is another one of your pathetic attempts to get my sympathy, isn"t it? Do you really believe I"m going to ruin that boy"s football career just because you want some attention."
"It"s not like that! He raped me!"
Bert had made a sound of disgust and stuck his head out the door to send someone after Craig, who had arrived minutes later accompanied by Reed. Phoebe had begged her father to send Reed away, but he hadn"t done it, and her cousin stood at the side of the room sipping from a bottle of beer and listening as she haltingly repeated her story.
Craig had hotly denied Phoebe"s accusations, speaking so convincingly that she would have believed him herself if she hadn"t known differently. Even without looking at her father, she realized that she had lost, and when he ordered her not ever to repeat the story again, some part of her had died.
She"d run away the next day, trying to flee from what had become her shame. Her college checking account contained enough money for her to get to Paris, the place where she"d met Arturo Flores, and her life had been changed forever.
Her father"s flunkies had visited her several times during her years with Arturo to deliver Bert"s threats and order her home. She had been disinherited when the first of the nude portraits had gone on display.
She rested her head against the back of the couch and drew Pooh closer. Bert had finally bent her to his will. If she didn"t do as he had dictated, she wouldn"t receive the one hundred thousand dollars, money that would let her open a small art gallery of her own.
You"re my only failure, Phoebe. My only G.o.dd.a.m.n failure.
Right then, she set her jaw in a stubborn line. Her father, his one hundred thousand dollars, and the Chicago Stars could go to h.e.l.l. Just because Bert had set up the game didn"t mean she had to play. She"d find another way to raise the money to open her gallery. She decided to take Viktor up on his offer to spend some time at his vacation cottage near Montauk. There, next to the ocean, she would finally put the ghosts of her past to rest.
3.
"There"s no other way to look at it, Ice," Tully Archer said, speaking to Dan Calebow out of the side of his mouth as if they were Allied spies meeting in the Grunewald to exchange military secrets. "Whether you like it or not, the blond chicky"s in the driver"s seat."
"Bert must have had his brains in his a.s.s." Dan scowled at the waiter, who was approaching with another tray of champagne, and the man quickly backed off. Dan hated champagne. Not just the sissy taste, but the way those silly gla.s.ses felt in his big battle-scarred hands. Even more than the champagne, he hated the idea of that blond bimbo with the drop-dead body owning his football team.
The two coaches were standing in the s.p.a.cious observation deck of the Sears Tower, which had been closed to the public for that evening"s United Negro College Fund benefit. The floor-to-ceiling sweep of windows reflected banks of flowers grouped around trellis arches, while a woodwind quintet from the Chicago Symphony played Debussy. Members of all the area sports teams were mingling with local media figures, politicians, and several movie stars who were in town. Dan hated any occasion that required a tuxedo, but when it was for a good cause, he forced himself to go along with it.
Beginning with his years as the starting quarterback for the University of Alabama"s Crimson Tide, Calebow"s exploits both on and off the field had become the stuff of legends. As a pro, he had been a bloodthirsty, h.e.l.l-raising, in-your-face barbarian. He was a working man"s quarterback, not a glamour boy, and even the meanest defensive lineman failed to intimidate him, because in any confrontation Dan Calebow a.s.sumed he was either stronger than the other guy or smarter. Either way, he planned to come out the winner.
Off the field he was just as aggressive. At various times he had gotten himself arrested for disturbing the peace, destruction of personal property, and, in the early days of his career, possession of a controlled substance.
Age and maturity had made him wiser about some things but not about others, and he found himself studying the newest congresswoman from Illinois as she stood in a cl.u.s.ter of formally dressed people behind Tully. She wore one of those black evening gowns that looked plain but probably cost more than a new set of Pings. Her light brown hair was pulled to the nape of her neck with a flat velvet bow. She was beautiful and sophisticated. She was also attracting a considerable amount of attention, and he didn"t fail to note that he was one of the few people at the gathering she hadn"t sought out. Instead, a flashy brunette in a tight silver dress came up to him. Turning her back to Tully, she regarded Dan through eyelashes so thick with mascara he was surprised she could still bat them.
"You look lonely over here, Coach." She licked her lips. "I saw you play against the Cowboys right before you retired. You were a wild man that day."
"I"m just about a wild man every day, honey."
"That"s what I hear." He felt her hand sliding into the pocket of his jacket and knew she was leaving her phone number. He tried to remember if he"d unloaded his pockets from the last time he"d worn this tux. With a moist smile that promised him everything, she moved away.
Tully was so accustomed to having his conversations with Dan broken into by predatory females that he went on as if there had been no interruption. "The whole thing galls me. How could Bert have let something like this happen?"
What Phoebe Somerville was doing to his football team outraged Dan so much he didn"t want to think about it when there was nothing around for him to hit. He distracted himself by looking for the beautiful congresswoman and spotted her speaking with one of Chicago"s aldermen. Her aristocratic features were composed, her gestures constrained and elegant. She was a cla.s.s act from head to toe, not the sort of woman he could imagine with flour on her nose or a baby in her arms. He turned away. At this point in his life, a flour-dusted, cookie-bakin", baby-makin" woman was exactly what he was looking for.
After more years of raising h.e.l.l than he wanted to count and a marriage that had been a big mistake, Dan Calebow was in a serious settlin"-down mood. At the age of thirty-seven, he yearned for kids, a whole houseful of them, and a woman who was more interested in changing diapers than taking over Chrysler.
He was on the brink of turning over a new leaf. No more career women, no more glamour p.u.s.s.es, no more s.e.x bombs. He had his eyes out for a down-home woman, the kind who"d enjoy having a toddler mess up her hair, a woman whose idea of high fashion was a pair of blue jeans and one of his old sweatshirts, an ordinary kind of woman who didn"t turn heads and make men crazy. And once he"d committed himself, his roaming days would be over. He hadn"t cheated on his first wife, and he wasn"t going to cheat on his last one.
Next to him, Tully Archer was still gnawing over the subject of Phoebe Somerville. "You know I don"t like to speak ill of anybody, especially the fairer s.e.x, but that blond chicky called me "sugarplum." d.a.m.n, Ice. That"s just not the sort of person should be owning a football team."
"You got that right."