Chapter Fifteen
We made too many wrong mistakes.
— Yogi Berra
“Damn it!” Keely looked at the plate, now in three pieces, as it lay on the kitchen floor. Yesterday a glass, this morning the lid of the sugar bowl, and now one of the dinner plates. She was a menace. She shouldn’t be allowed near breakable objects.
“Well, that’s three, dear,” Aunt Sadie said commiseratingly as she sat at the kitchen table, dunking dry wheat toast in hot tea as Keely picked up the pieces and dumped them in the trash can under the sink. “Bad luck always comes in threes, so you’re done now. Unless you go to four, in which case you’ll go to five, and to six.” She frowned. “Maybe you’d better sit down, not touch anything else?”
“Maybe I should,” Keely agreed, using her foot to kick the dishwasher door shut. She grabbed a can of soda from the refrigerator, not trusting herself to use a glass, and sat down across from Sadie. “It’s just so nerve-racking, Aunt Sadie. Will she show up today? When will she show up? Will she check to see if Candy’s hamper is too full, or make me recite her schedule... or just take Candy away from us because she knows”—she leaned forward, whispering the rest, as if someone might overhear—“we’re lying to her?”
“We’re talking about Edith Peters, aren’t we?” Aunt Sadie asked, nodding her head. “Edith, and your sham engagement to my nephew, the idiot.”
Keely sat back in her chair, looked at Sadie owlishly. “The idiot? Two Eyes is the idiot, Aunt Sadie, remember?”
The older woman shrugged. “Yes, well, that’s a given. We’ve always known about Joey. But I must say, I never thought I’d see the day when Jack began to exhibit signs of idiocy.”
“By taking in Candy?”
“No, dear,” Aunt Sadie said, reaching over to pat Keely’s hand. “By not telling you he loves you and stopping off in Las Vegas or somewhere for a quickie wedding before you two ever came back here from Arizona. Of course, with the two of you coming home on separate planes, I imagine that might have been difficult. And you never said—what happened out there in Arizona? Oh, I know it was all Jack’s fault, it always is the man’s fault, but exactly what did happen?”
“Too much,” Keely said, avoiding Sadie’s eyes. After all, the woman had seen the hickey. She’d probably already drawn her own conclusions. “And you’re wrong about the rest of it. Jack doesn’t love me. He loves Candy, and he should. I drive him nuts. Just ask him; he’ll tell you. I’m bossy, I’m too neat, and I’m spending all his money.”
Sadie held a piece of toast suspended over her teacup. “My dear girl, you couldn’t possibly spend all his money. He had a six-million-dollar signing bonus, straight out of college, and the contract he signed five years ago was positively obscene, made his first signing bonus look like pocket change. He has his condo in New York, this house, drives a nice car, but that’s about it. He has always lived within his allowance. Mort and I take care of everything else.”
Keely’s eyes widened. The woman who loved pink—elephants, pumpkins, wallpaper, you name it—had control of Jack’s money? The woman who wore outlandish clothing, liked to pal around with Petra Polinski, had pretty much gotten the role of “dotty old aunt” down to a science? She handled Jack’s money? “What? You? You and Mort? You’re kidding. Please tell me you’re kidding.”
Sadie patted at her silver curls and lifted her chin—both her chins. “Jack didn’t tell you? Oh, yes, I’m in charge, with Mort pretty much under my thumb, bless him. I handle Jack’s money, and Timothy’s, too. Always have. Jack didn’t tell you that I put in thirty years as a trust officer at one of the local banks? Not that we have very many local banks anymore. My goodness, in the last ten years I worked there, I believe we were bought out three times. I took to just answering the phone with my name and department, because I couldn’t remember who I worked for anymore. Anyway, I wasn’t always the free spirit I’m enjoying being now. Goodness, no. I wore navy suits and white blouses and sensible shoes and rose to vice president before I looked around, saw my life passing me by, and retired and bought my little convertible. It took a while, sixty-five years as a matter of fact,” she said, grinning, “but I finally let the crazy Trehan out, and I’ve never been happier. You probably don’t know this, but life without a girdle is a marvelous thing.”
Keely had begun shaking her head slowly halfway through Sadie’s monologue and finally said, “I don’t believe it. Oh, oh—not that I don’t think you’re competent, Aunt Sadie,” she added quickly, because she really hadn’t thought the woman was all that competent. “But Jack has already told me that Mort handles his money.”
“Mort handles the acquisition of money, and quite well,” Aunt Sadie corrected. I handle the distribution. Stocks, bonds, some lovely property. This land, this house? I bought the land for Jack four years ago—this plot, and another five hundred acres. Paid mere pennies per acre, and then this area became the place to be.”
She smiled, shook her head. “You wouldn’t believe the money his neighbors were willing to plunk down for three-acre lots these past couple of years. That doughnut shop down at the corner, at the end of the lane? Jack’s land. The entire strip mall—Jack’s. Now Timothy, he’s more into businesses he can play with, like the bowling alley, the golf course, the—oh, you get the idea, don’t you, dear? Right now I’m negotiating to put the two of them into a multifranchise car dealership.”
Keely swallowed, tried to collect herself “You handle their money,” she repeated yet again. “Why couldn’t he tell me that? He let me think, let me believe... oh! There are times I could just murder that man!”
“Yes,” Aunt Sadie agreed, dunking another piece of toast. “It’s why I never married. I would have killed the poor guy, probably within a week, even if he looked like Tom Cruise. Well, maybe not if he looked like him. I’m not a fool.”
Keely smiled wanly. “Well, I am. I feel like such an idiot,” she said, turning the soda can around in her hands. She looked at Aunt Sadie. “Why does Jack go out of his way to act as if he doesn’t have a serious brain cell in his head? He let me think he doesn’t even know how much money he has.”
Aunt Sadie dabbed at some tea she’d dribbled onto her chin. “Well, dear, I don’t think he does know. Not to the penny, probably not to the nearest half-million, when you consider that his investments are so diverse, and I only give him reports twice a year. But it’s not to worry. Jack’s undergraduate degree was in business, you know, with a minor in communications. Magna cum laude. He just likes his dear old aunt to feel useful.”
Keely dropped her elbow onto the table and propped her chin in her hand. “I could just choke him. Magna cum laude? Jack the jock—magna cum laude?”
“Summa cum laude for Timothy,” Aunt Sadie said, visibly preening. “And Timothy can act dumber than spit when he wants to. We’re a strange family.”
Keely was intrigued. Angry, but intrigued. Confused, but intrigued. “And Joey and Cecily? Do they just act dumb, too?”
Aunt Sadie had been sipping tea and choked, had to cough into her napkin. “Joey and Cecily? God bless them, no. There was potential there, and we had some hopes for Cecily until she ran away at fifteen, with some felon and his motorcycle, quit school at sixteen, and had to be detoxed. Grand theft auto at seventeen. Prescription drugs later that same year. I think her brains are permanently scrambled, poor thing.”
She shook her head. “And Joey? Well, you’ve seen Joey. As a child, he thought he was that cartoon character—Speed Racer, I believe—which was cute. He’d spend hours running in circles around the dining room table, holding a paper dinner plate in front of him, pretending it was a steering wheel. Then he was Luke Skywalker—that one lasted for quite a while and wasn’t quite so cute. Now he’s a mobster, or at least dresses the part. I blame Flo, rest her soul. She gave them everything on a platter—clothes, cars, money—and asked nothing in return. And, sadly, that’s just what she got.”
“Jack’s adamant that Cecily can’t hav
e Candy,” Keely said. “I imagine Jimmy—the lawyer—will bring up her run-ins with the law?”
“I don’t know, Keely. Cecily was a juvenile, remember, so perhaps those records are sealed. She’s cleaned up her act, as much as Cecily can, and is into health food and gurus right now, won’t even eat red meat, let alone snort anything. I’m just hoping she’ll realize on her own that she can’t be a fit mother. I only wish my sister had figured out that she wasn’t, either. I think that’s why I never had children, worried that, as Flo’s twin, I might be the same failure she was. No marriages, no children. And I probably would have been a bad mother, too. Flo saw nothing but Guido, and I saw nothing but the bank. At least I lived long enough to realize my mistake while I still had time to experience a little of the rest of the world.”
Keely reached out, squeezed Aunt Sadie’s hand. “Jack adores you, you know,” she said, blinking back tears. “And so do I.”
Sadie covered Keely’s hand with her own. “Thank you, dear. Now, I hope you’ve learned something.”
Keely looked at her quizzically.
“Grab at life, Keely. Grab at it with both hands. Don’t limit yourself to one dream, one possibility. Jack had one dream, had it for a long time. Now he’s finding other dreams. But what about you? Are you still hanging on to the same dream? Do you still think that only that one dream will make you happy?”
Keely sat back in her chair. “Going back to Manhattan, opening another shop,” she said, sighing. “Is that what you mean, Aunt Sadie?”
“Jack believes that’s all you want in life—other than driving him crazy, that is,” Aunt Sadie said with a small smile.
“He offered to finance my shop if I go along with the pretend engagement until he gets custody,” Keely said quietly.
“Yes, I can imagine he did. And I can imagine that it killed him to say that. But he took a second shot at his dream before he realized that there was more to life than baseball. He turned down that offer from the Japanese team because he finally realized that. Now you’ve been offered a second chance at your career. Jack offered it to you. You have figured out that he’s done that, done it very much on purpose, whether he’s even aware of what he’s doing. So, what are you going to do about it, Keely?
“I don’t know,” Keely answered honestly. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, that’s also obvious,” Aunt Sadie said, picking up her plate and cup and carrying them over to the sink. “And in the meantime, with all that’s going on around here, I think I’ll take over loading the dishwasher, all right? You might want to go find Jack, maybe even talk to him.”
“But I’ve stripped all the beds and haven’t gotten clean sheets on them yet,” Keely protested, a now familiar panic setting in again. “The cleaning service isn’t due for another two days, and I’ve got the vacuum cleaner sitting in the living room. Candy’s diaper pail is almost overflowing. Joey spilled orange juice all over the floor earlier and it’s still sticky, has to be washed. What if Ms. Peters shows up?”
“I’ll hand her a mop,” Aunt Sadie said, shrugging. “Edith wants to see how you are as a family, not whether or not you pass some sort of white glove test. Jack’s in the pool, Keely. Get your suit on and join him. Talk to him, honestly. Get to know each other better. Solve at least one of your problems.”
Keely looked toward the backyard and the pool, then at the few dirty dishes still stacked on the countertop. Then she smiled, felt this warm, wonderful sort of swelling in her chest. She went over to the older woman, kissed her cheek. “You were wrong, Aunt Sadie,” she told her. “You would have made one hell of a great mother.”