“This is Dr. Flora Vogelsang.”
Oh dear, Lucia thought. “Yes, Doctor?”
“I’m sorry to interrupt your dinner, but I’ve had a sad and very distressing call from Cordelia. Although I don’t approve of capitulating to her manipulations, in this case I feel she needs help.”
Cordelia stumbled through the doorway at the rear of the restaurant.
A black-tie gala was in full swing.
Cordelia kept one hand extended in front of her, as though searching for a wall. Her disheveled hair cascaded over her eyes and she was walking a very slow, very deliberate zigzag.
When Babe turned and saw her daughter, her hand—holding a champagne glass—froze.
Cordelia’s hip struck a table. The little candelabra with delicate rose-printed lampshades almost toppled, and Cordelia fell face-forward.
“Excuse me,” Babe apologized to Henry Kissinger.
Cordelia broke loose from the waiter who had helped her up. She dashed through the bar and stumbled down three marble steps.
Babe had to elbow her way. “Excuse me—excuse me.”
Cordelia came to a dead end, a wall of plum Lalique glass. She dropped onto a sofa and sat trembling, arms locked around her knees.
Babe came into the little room. “Cordelia,” she said.
Cordelia looked up. Her face twisted.
“What is it?” Babe sat beside her. She saw tears in her daughter’s eyes. She hugged Cordelia to her. “Tell me.”
Cordelia dropped her head into her hand. “Forgive me.”
“Forgive you what, darling? There’s nothing to forgive.”
“There is. There is.”
Lucia came into the restaurant.
A man in a butler’s cutaway asked for her invitation. She waved him aside, saying it was quite all right, she wouldn’t be needing one.
She took three steps toward the crowd. Festivities appeared to have accelerated to a full tilt. Peering, she saw her daughter and granddaughter.
She came into the room without a sound and settled into a seat. “So here we all are. The three sisters.” She asked Cordelia, “Are you all right, my dear? I was worried.”
Cordelia rose shakily from the sofa. “Yes, Grandmère, I’m fine. I’m going to go home.”
“Yes, do go home. Rest. Take a taxi.” Lucia opened her purse and handed her granddaughter two fifty-dollar bills.
“Thanks, Grandmère. G’night.”
Cordelia kissed Lucia and threw a glance back at her mother.
Babe started after her.
“Don’t go yet,” Lucia said. “We have to talk.”
“Mama, I—”
Lucia stared without comment at Babe’s strapless pink satin Lanvin. “Sit!”
Babe froze in her tracks. Obedience consumed her. “Mama, please. I can’t let Cordelia run off like that.”
“Cordelia is precisely the reason I am here.” Lucia regarded Babe steadily for a moment. “I’ve just spoken to her psychiatrist and she’s very near clinical depression.”
Babe sank onto the sofa. “I didn’t know Cordelia had a psychiatrist.”
“I’m sure there are many things about your daughter you’ve never bothered to know.”
Babe struggled to control herself. “Never bothered to know? You never told me!”
“And why should I have played go-between? It was your job to be close to your daughter, to share her trust and confidence. Under normal circumstances the relationship is built up over time. It’s called love.”
“What are you saying?” Babe stared at the judgment blazing in her mother’s eyes. She felt a rush of injustice. “Because I was sick, because I wasn’t there, I didn’t love my daughter? I refuse to be made guilty for something that was in no way my fault!”
“Who’s discussing fault? Who’s discussing guilt?”
“You are! You’re heaping it on me! You’re sitting there in your first tier box, reveling in this drama!”
“I’m hardly reveling. I’m deeply concerned when I see someone I love suffering the way that child is suffering.”
Babe stared at this woman, her mother, and a wound so deeply buried in her, so silted over that it was almost mute, came gradually to the surface, taking on words. “Do you really love Cordelia? Or is loving her just another way of not loving me?”
“Not loving you! I cared for you for seven interminable years! I kept you alive when half the specialists in the country were saying, ‘Pull the plug, let her die.’ How many mothers would have done that?”
“A million! What no mother would have done is hold back information affecting my daughter’s health and happiness!”
“How could we have told you? You’d let too much go wrong for too long. There were limits to the strain we could put you under.”
“That excuse seems to cover your every deception. You kept me in the hospital when there was no need for it. You lied about how I got there. And it was always to save me from strain. Well, give me your strain and spare me your saving!”
“Someone had to defend you.”
“From what?”
“The consequences of the life you led before your illness.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the life I’ve led.”
“Your exalted opinion of yourself is obviously not shared by the person who tried to murder you.”
Babe felt amazement wash the colors from her face. “You think I deserved an attempt on my life?”
“You lived in such a way as to make misfortune inevitable. You ignored your husband, and he turned against you. You ignored your daughter, and she developed severe emotional problems.”
“Her problems are my doing?”
“Your lack of doing.”
Tears stung Babe’s eyes, tears she hadn’t even known were pooling there, ready to betray her. “All right. Maybe I didn’t do enough. I’m sorry.”
“As if that was any help.”
“Mama, I’m not the person I was then.”
“How so?”
“I’ve changed. There are experiences in life that change a person.”
Lucia sighed. “Beatrice, you have a habit that truly tests my patience. It’s when you turn righteous and saccharine like that. You spout a blend of Sigmund Freud and Norman Vincent Peale that is quite your own. They were both fine men in their day, but this is almost the end of the century, even if you have managed to sleep through most of the decade. In my opinion your seven-year nap has in no way transformed you. You are the person you always were. As is Cordelia. She’s had to be in arduous psychotherapy for many, many years. They call her a borderline personality. It’s a technical term. She’s struggling against terrific emotional odds and you have never helped. You are not helping now, and quite frankly I don’t believe you ever will be able to help.”
“How do you expect me to help something I’m not even told about?”
“What do you need to be told! If a car breaks down you don’t wait to be taught the principles of internal combustion. You see the trouble and you take the car to a good garage and you get it repaired.”
“Cordelia is not a car. She’s my daughter.”
“And she is my granddaughter. And I want you to give your father and me custody.”
A wave of rage swept over Babe, tightening her throat. “I can’t believe you said that.”
“Do speak in a normal voice,” Lucia said.
Determination came to Babe like an electric bolt. She rose and walked to the door.
Lucia reached out and with one braceleted arm blocked Babe’s way. “We haven’t finished.”
“But we have finished, Mama. The answer is no, never.” Babe thrust her mother’s arm away.
There was a phone in the coatcheck room. Babe lifted the receiver and punched out the digits of Cordelia’s number. She waited while the call clicked through.
She could hear Cordelia’s phone buzzing. She counted seven rings. The machine answered.
“Cordelia,” she said, “if you’re there please pick up.”
No one picked up. She broke the connection and dialed Vince Cardozo’s direct line.
His voice answered. “Cardozo.”
“Vince—it’s not a police matter, but—”
“You’re not talking to the police, you’re talking to me. Tell me about it.”