“Are you allowed to?” Lucia said, coming into the room.
“Ginger ale, Mama.”
“Let me help.”
“Too late.”
The ginger ale fizzed up over the edge of the glass. Babe sopped up the overflow with two swipes of a cocktail napkin. She saw that the napkin had a monogram embossed on it, Babe Vanderwalk’s curling B and V surrounding Scottie Devens’s large D.
An immaculately uniformed gray-haired maid came in to pass a tray of hot hors d’oeuvres.
“Beatrice,” Lucia said, “this is Mrs. Wheelock.”
The maid gave a thin smile, her eyes opaque and unreadable.
Babe took a chicken liver wrapped in bacon and speared with a toothpick. “Thank you, Mrs. Wheelock. How do you do.”
Bill Frothingham opened his briefcase and took out two documents. “How’s your right hand, Babe? You remember how to sign things?”
Bill handed Babe the documents and she saw that they were two copies of a divorce petition, signed by Scott Devens as petitioner and by Hadley Vanderwalk exercising power of attorney for Beatrice Vanderwalk Devens.
“The divorce was granted on the assumption that you wouldn’t regain consciousness,” Bill Frothingham explained. “But since you have—”
“And thank God you have,” Lucia said, folding herself into a tapestry chair of leafy green.
“Since you have, thank God,” Bill Frothingham said, “your signature would be a good idea.”
For a moment Babe’s mind darted ahead, skimming possibilities. “But since I am conscious, and haven’t signed, are Scottie and I divorced?”
Bill Frothingham’s heavy eyebrows creased. “Certainly you are. The state granted the decree.”
“But is it valid if I don’t sign?”
“You have to be reasonable, dear heart,” Lucia said.
“Being reasonable seems to be a way of letting other people make decisions I should be making myself.”
Bill Frothingham was somber. He placed his hands together, interlacing his fingers stiffly. “It was Scottie who petitioned for divorce. Your signature is a formality. All it means is that you acknowledge you were informed.”
“I don’t think that’s all it means.” Babe stared coolly at the lawyer. “Scottie petitioned for this divorce thinking I would never regain consciousness. Doesn’t the whole thing have to be reviewed? Surely the law gives Scottie a chance to reconsider?”
“Scottie doesn’t deserve a chance to reconsider,” Lucia said. “And he certainly isn’t getting one.”
“What about me? What if I want to be married to my husband?”
Looks were exchanged.
“You’re being perverse, Beatrice. You know perfectly well what Scottie tried to do to you.”
“No I do not. All I know is what you claim he tried to do, and he’d be in jail if the court had agreed with you.”
“I see we’re in for a painful conversation.” Lucia sat on the edge of the chair, bristling with resolve. “Your husband,” she said, “your dear charming Scottie, confessed to the court that on the night of the celebration, after you passed out—”
“I did not pass out,” Babe said.
Lucia went at her own unhurried pace, like a clock during a tempest. “I beg your pardon, dear heart, but four men had to help you to the car. There were witnesses aplenty. Scottie brought you home and while you were unconscious, he injected you with insulin. Enough cc’s, the experts said, to kill a normal person. Well, either the experts aren’t particularly expert or you’re not especially normal.”
“Thank God,” said Hadley.
“Since you didn’t die,” Lucia continued, “Scottie couldn’t very well be tried for your murder. So your papa and I did the next best thing. We had him indicted for attempted murder.”
Babe sat stiffly forward in her wheelchair. “You had him indicted?”
“We gave the state every possible encouragement,” Hadley said.
Babe considered the implications of this. “You mean you hired lawyers and detectives to help the prosecution?”
“To help you,” Lucia said. “You’re our only child. What if we had lost you?”
“But I’m not a child and the only people who’ve lost anything through all your helpfulness are Scottie and me.”
“Child, child,” Lucia said in a voice Babe remembered from long ago, the voice that was at once soothing and subtly undermining.
“Scottie was charged and convicted,” Hadley said.
“Then why isn’t he in prison?” Babe shot back.
“He appealed on a technicality,” Bill Frothingham said. “The court allowed him to plead guilty to a reduced charge of reckless endangerment.”
“It would have been negligent homicide had you died,” Lucia said.
Babe’s voice rose a little. “What was the technicality?”
“Evidence was improperly introduced in the first trial,” Bill Frothingham said. “It was disallowed in the second.”
“They couldn’t very well convict without the evidence.” Lucia’s tone made it clear she considered this unjust.
“What evidence?” Babe demanded, angry at her mounting sense that she was not being told the whole truth.
More looks were exchanged. The room seemed awash in shadows and denial.
“The syringe,” Hadley said.
“Scottie did it for money,” Lucia said. “He wanted your fortune and he wanted to live with that horrid Doria Forbes-Steinman woman.”
“I can see by Babe’s face she doesn’t believe a word of this,” Hadley said. “It’s all coming at you too quickly, isn’t it, kid.”
Lucia sat there cool, unmoved. “If she doesn’t believe us perhaps she’ll believe The New York Times.”
Lucia went into the other room and returned with an armload of newspapers. She placed them in Babe’s lap.
Slowly, Babe read an article in one of the seven-year-old late city editions. It soberly set out the details of Scott Devens’s arraignment for attempted murder.
“How handsome he is,” Babe said, “even in this terrible photograph.”
“I never liked Scottie,” Lucia said. “I never pretended to. Your papa never liked Scottie. The only people who liked him were your café society friends, and that was only because he played Gershwin so divinely on the piano. Playing Gershwin is hardly a reason to marry a man you know nothing about.”
“It wasn’t just those people who liked him,” Babe said. “I liked him too.”
“Naturally you liked him,” Lucia said, impatient now.
“And Papa liked him too.”
“He did play a good game of golf,” Hadley said.
“Your papa does not like Scottie now,” Lucia said. “No one likes him except Doria Forbes-Steinman, and she’s a fool.”
“Maybe not such a fool,” Babe said.
“Not such a fool as you, perhaps.”
Babe skimmed news reports of Scottie’s denials, his appeal, his second hearing before Judge Francis Davenport, and his subsequent confession to reckless endangerment.
“Frank Davenport heard the appeal?” Babe said. “How was that possible? Didn’t they know he’s a friend of yours?”
“He’s not a friend anymore,” Lucia said. “Two months, can you imagine? A man tries to murder another human being and after two months they let him out of prison. You’d have thought, after all we’d done for him, Francis Davenport could have arranged a little bit more for us. But Francis said the law’s the law, foolish and unjust as it is. I say Francis Davenport is Francis Davenport, foolish and unjust as he is. You really can’t count on friends anymore: you can’t count on anything except family. Thank God we’ve still got family.”
“It’s unbelievable,” Babe said. “Frank Davenport should have been barred from trying the case.”
“Babe, please just read this.” Bill Frothingham handed her another document.
Babe studied the yellowed Xerox. It was Scott Devens’s signed confession that he did recklessly, willfully, and knowingly endanger the life of Beatrice Vanderwalk Devens by not calling for assistance when I knew she was in proximate danger of death.