Chapter One
He needed me.
Whenever anyone — usually a reporter — asked me how I
coped with a man like Jimmie, I smiled and said nothing.
I'd learned that whatever I said would be misquoted, so I
simply kept quiet. Once, I made the mistake of telling the
truth to a female reporter. She'd looked so young and so
in need herself that for a moment I let my guard down. I
said, "He needs me." That's all. Just those three words.
Who would have thought that a second of unguarded honesty
could cause so much turmoil? The girl — she had certainly
not attained the maturity of womanhood — parlayed my small
sentence into international turmoil.
I was right in thinking she herself was needy. Oh, yes,
very needy. She needed a story, so she fabricated one.
Never mind that she had nothing on which to base her
fable.
I must say that she was good at research. She couldn't
have slept during the two weeks between my remark and the
publication of her story. She consulted psychiatrists,
self-help gurus, and clergy. She interviewed hordes of
rampant feminists. Every famous woman who had ever hinted
that she hated men was interviewed and quoted.
In the end Jimmie and I were portrayed as one sick couple.
He was the domineering tyrant in public, but a whimpering
child at home. And I was shown to be a cross between steel
and an ever-flowing breast.
When the article came out and caused a sensation, I wanted
to hide from the world. I wanted to retreat to the most
remote of Jimmie's twelve houses and never leave. But
Jimmie was afraid of nothing — which was the true secret
of his success — and he met the questions, the derisive
laughter, and worse, the pseudo-therapists who felt it was
our "duty" to expose every private thought and feeling to
the world, head-on.
Jimmie just put his arm around me, smiled into the
cameras, and laughed in answer to all of their questions.
Whatever they asked, he had a joke for a reply.
"Is it true, Mr. Manville, that your wife is the power
behind the throne?" The reporter asking this was smiling
at me in a nasty way. Jimmie was six foot two and built
like the bull some people said he was, and I am five foot
two and round. I've never looked like the power behind
anyone.
"She makes all the decisions. I'm just her front man,"
Jimmie said, his smile showing his famous teeth. But those
of us who knew him saw the coldness in his eyes. Jimmie
didn't like any disparagement of what he considered
his. "I couldn't have done it without her," he said in
that teasing way of his. Few people knew him well enough
to know whether or not he was joking.
Three weeks later, by chance, I saw the cameraman who'd
been with the reporter that day. He was a favorite of mine
because he didn't delight in sending his editor the
pictures of me that showed off my double chin at its most
unflattering angle. "What happened to your friend who was
so interested in my marriage?" I asked, trying to sound
friendly. "Fired," the photographer said. "I beg your
pardon?" He was pushing new batteries into his camera and
didn't look up. "Fired," he said again, then looked up,
not at me, but at Jimmie.
Wisely, the photographer said no more. And just as wisely,
I didn't ask any more questions.
Jimmie and I had an unwritten, unspoken law: I didn't
interfere in whatever Jimmie was doing.
"Like a Mafia wife," my sister said to me about a year
after Jimmie and I were married.
"Jimmie doesn't murder people," I replied in anger.
That night I told Jimmie of the exchange with my sister,
and for a moment his eyes glittered in a way that, back
then, I hadn't yet learned to be wary of.
A month later, my sister's husband received a fabulous job
offer: double his salary; free housing; free cars. A full-
time nanny for their daughter, three maids, and a country
club membership were included. It was a job they couldn't
refuse. It was in Morocco.
After Jimmie's plane crashed and left me a widow at thirty-
two, all the media around the world wrote of only one
thing: that Jimmie had willed me "nothing." None of his
billions — two or twenty of them, I never could remember
how many — none of it was left to me.
"Are we broke or rich today?" I'd often ask him, because
his net worth fluctuated from day to day, depending on
what Jimmie was trying at the moment.
"Today we're broke," he'd say, and he would laugh in the
same way as when he'd tell me he'd made so many millions
that day.
The money never mattered to Jimmie. No one understood
that. To him, it was just a by-product of the game. "It's
like all those peels you throw away after you've made
jam," he'd say. "Only in this case the world values the
peel and not the jam." "Poor world," I said, then Jimmie
laughed hard and carried me upstairs, where he made sweet
love to me.
It's my opinion that Jimmie knew he wasn't going to live
to be an old man. "I've got to do what I can as fast as I
can. You with me, Frecks?" he'd ask.
"Always," I'd answer, and I meant it. "Always."
But I didn't follow him to the grave. I was left behind,
just as Jimmie said I would be.
"I'll take care of you, Frecks," he said more than once.
When he talked of such things, he always called me by the
name he'd given me the first time we met: Frecks for the
freckles across my nose.
When he said, "I'll take care of you," I didn't give the
words much thought. Jimmie had always "taken care" of me.
Whatever I wanted, he gave me long before I knew I wanted
it. Jimmie said, "I know you better than you know
yourself."
And he did. But then, to be fair, I never had time to get
to know much about myself. Following Jimmie all over the
world didn't leave a person much time to sit and
contemplate.
Jimmie knew me, and he did take care of me. Not in the way
the world thought was right, but in the way he knew I
needed. He didn't leave me a rich widow with half the
world's bachelors clamoring to profess love for me. No, he
left the money and all twelve of the expensive houses to
the only two people in the world he truly hated: his older
sister and brother.
To me, Jimmie left a run-down, overgrown farm in the
backwoods of Virginia, a place I didn't even know he
owned, and a note. It said:
Find out the truth about what happened, will you, Frecks?
Do it for me. And remember that I love you. Wherever you
are, whatever you do, remember that I love you.
J.
When I saw the farmhouse, I burst into tears. What had
enabled me to survive the past six weeks was the image of
that farmhouse. I'd imagined something charming, made of
logs, with a stone chimney at one end. I'd imagined a deep
porch with hand-hewn rocking chairs on it, and a lawn in
front, with pink roses spilling petals in the breeze.
I'd envisioned acres of gently rolling land covered with
fruit trees and raspberry bushes — all of them pruned and
healthy and dripping ripe fruit.
But what I saw was 1960s hideous. It was a two-story house
covered in some sort of green siding — the kind that never
changes over the years. Storms, sun, snow, time, none of
it had any effect on that kind of siding. It had been a
pale, sickly green when it was installed, and now, many
years later, it was the same color.
There were vines growing up one side of the house, but not
the kind of vines that make a place look quaint and cozy.
These were vines that looked as though they were going to
engulf the house, eat it raw, digest it, then regurgitate
it in the same ghastly green.
"It can be fixed," Phillip said softly from beside me.
In the weeks since Jimmie's death, "hell" could not begin
to describe what I had been through.
It was Phillip who woke me in the middle of the night when
Jimmie's plane went down. I must say that I was shocked to
see him. As Jimmie's wife, I was sacrosanct. The men he
surrounded himself with knew what would happen if they
made any advances toward me. I don't mean just sexually,
but in any other way. No man or woman in Jimmie's employ
ever asked me to intercede for him or her with my husband.
If he had been fired, he knew that to approach me and ask
that I try to "reason" with Jimmie would likely earn him
something far worse than a mere dismissal.
So when I awoke to Jimmie's top lawyer's hand on my
shoulder, telling me that I had to get up, I immediately
knew what had happened. Only if Jimmie were dead would
anyone dare enter my bedroom and think that he'd live to
see the dawn.
"How?" I asked, immediately wide awake and trying to be
mature. Inside, I was shaking. Of course it couldn't be
true, I told myself. Jimmie was too big, too alive, to
be...to be...I couldn't form the word in my mind.
"You have to get dressed now," Phillip was saying. "We
have to keep this secret for as long as we can."
"Is Jimmie hurt?" I asked, my voice full of hope. Maybe he
was in a hospital bed and calling for me. But even as I
thought it, I knew it wasn't true. Jimmie knew how I
worried about him. "I'd rather have my foot cut off than
have to deal with your fretting," he'd said more than
once. He hated my nagging about his smoking, about his
drinking, about his days without sleep.
"No," Phillip said, his voice cold and hard. His eyes
looked into mine. "James is not alive."
I wanted to collapse. I wanted to dive back under the warm
bedcovers and go back to sleep. And when I awoke again, I
wanted Jimmie to be there, slipping his big hand under my
nightgown and making those little growling sounds that
made me giggle.
"You don't have time for grief right now," Phillip
said. "We have to go shopping."
That brought me out of my shock. "Are you mad?" I asked
him. "It's four o'clock in the morning."
"I've arranged for a store to open. Now get dressed!" he
ordered. "We have no time to lose."
His tone didn't scare me in the least. I sat down on the
bed, my big nightgown billowing out around me, and I
pulled my braid out from under me. Jimmie liked for me to
wear old-fashioned clothes, and he liked for my hair to be
long. After sixteen years of marriage, I could sit on my
braid. "I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what's
going on."
"I don't have time now — " Phillip began, but then he
stopped, took a deep breath, and looked at me. "I could be
disbarred for this, but I made out James's will, and I
know what's coming to you. I can hold off the vultures for
a few days but no more. Until the will is read, you're
still James's wife."
"I will always be Jimmie's wife," I said proudly, holding
all my chins aloft in the bravest stance I could muster.
Jimmie! my heart was crying. Not Jimmie. Anyone on earth
could die, but not Jimmie.
"Lillian," Phillip said softly, his eyes full of
pity, "there was only one man like James Manville ever
made on this earth. He played by his own rules and no one
else's."
I waited for him to tell me something that I didn't
already know. What was he leading up to?
Phillip ran his hand over his eyes and glanced at the
clock on the bed. "By the law of ethics, I can't tell you —
" he began, then he let out his breath and sat down
heavily on the bed beside me. If I'd needed any further
proof that Jimmie was no longer alive, that would have
been it. If there was a chance that Jimmie would walk
through the door and see another man sitting on the bed
beside his wife, Phillip would never have dared such a
familiarity.
"Who can understand what James did or why? I worked with
him for over twenty years, but I never knew him. Lillian,
he — " Phillip had to take a few breaths, then he picked
up my hand and held it in his. "He left you nothing. He
willed everything to his brother and sister."
I couldn't understand what he meant. "But he hates them,"
I said, pulling my hand from his grasp. Atlanta and Ray
were Jimmie's only living relatives, and Jimmie despised
them. He took care of them financially, always bailing one
or the other of them out of some mess, but he detested
them. No, worse, he had contempt for them. One time Jimmie
was looking at me strangely, and I asked what was going on
in his mind. "They'll eat you alive," he said. "That
sounds interesting," I replied, smiling at him. But Jimmie
didn't smile back. "When I die, Atlanta and Ray will go
after you with everything they have. And they'll find
lawyers to work on a contingency basis."
I didn't like what had become Jimmie's frequent references
to his demise. "Contingent upon what?" I asked, still
smiling. "How much money they get when they sue you to
hell and back," Jimmie said, frowning. I didn't want to
hear any more, so I waved my hand in dismissal and
said, "Phillip will take care of them." "Phillip is no
match for greed of that scale." I had no reply for that,
because I agreed with him. No matter how much Jimmie gave
Atlanta and Ray, they wanted more. One time when Jimmie
was called away unexpectedly, I found Atlanta in my
closet, counting my shoes. She wasn't the least
embarrassed when I found her there. She looked up at me
and said, "You have three more pairs than I do." The look
on her face frightened me so much that I turned and ran
from my own bedroom.
"What do you mean that he's left it all to them? All
what?" I asked Phillip. I wanted to think about anything
other than what my life was going to be like without
Jimmie.
"I mean that James willed all his stocks, his houses, real
estate around the world, the airlines, all of it to your
brother and sister-in-law."
Since I hated each and every one of the houses that Jimmie
had purchased, I couldn't comprehend what was so bad about
this. "Too much glass and steel for my taste," I said,
giving Phillip a bit of a smile.
Phillip glared at me. "Lillian, this is serious, and James
is no longer here to protect you — and I don't have the
power to do anything. I don't know why he did it, Lord
knows I tried to talk him out of it, but he said that he
was giving you what you needed. That's all I could get out
of him."
Phillip stood up, then took a moment to regain his calm.
Jimmie said that what he liked about Phillip was that
nothing on earth could upset him. But this had.
I tried to get the picture of my future out of my head,
tried to stop thinking about a life without Jimmie's
laughter and his big shoulders to protect me, and looked
up at Phillip expectantly. "Are you saying that I'm
destitute?" I tried not to smile. The jewelry that Jimmie
had given me over the years was worth millions.
Phillip took a deep breath. "More or less. He's left you a
farm in Virginia."
"There, then, that's something," I said, then I took the
humor out of my voice and waited for him to continue.
"It was a breach of ethics, but after I wrote the will for
him, I sent someone down to Virginia to look at the place.
It's...not much. It's — " He turned away for a moment, and
I thought I heard him mutter, "Bastard," but I didn't want
to hear that, so I ignored him. When he turned back to me,
his face was businesslike. He looked at his watch, a watch
that I knew Jimmie had given him; it cost over twenty
thousand dollars. I owned a smaller version of it.
"Did you do anything to him?" Phillip asked
softly. "Another man maybe?"
I couldn't stop my little snort of derision, and my answer
was just to look at Phillip. Women in harems weren't kept
under tighter lock and key than James Manville's wife.
"All right," Phillip said, "I've had months to try to
figure this out, and I haven't come close, so I'm going to
give up. When James's will is read, all hell is going to
break loose. Atlanta and Ray are going to get it all, and
what you get is a farmhouse in Virginia and fifty grand — -
a pittance." He narrowed his eyes at me. "But the one
thing I can do is see that you receive as much as you and
I can buy between now and the moment that James's death is
announced to the public."
It was hearing those words, "James's death," that almost
did me in.
"No, you don't," Phillip said as he grabbed my arm and
pulled me upright. "You don't have time for grief or self-
pity right now. You have to get dressed. The store manager
is waiting."
At five-thirty on that cold spring morning, I was pushed
inside a huge department store and told that I was to buy
what I needed for a farmhouse in Virginia. Phillip said
the man he sent couldn't see inside the house, so I didn't
even know how many bedrooms it had. The sleepy store
manager who'd been roused from bed to open the store for
James Manville's wife dutifully followed Phillip and me
about and noted down what I pointed at.
It all seemed so unreal. I couldn't believe any of it was
happening, and a part of me, the still-in-shock part,
couldn't wait to tell Jimmie this story. How he'd laugh at
it! I'd exaggerate every moment of it, and the more he'd
laugh, the more flamboyant my story would become. "So
there I was, half asleep, being asked which couch I wanted
to buy," I'd say. " 'Couch?' the little man asked,
yawning. 'What's a couch?' "
But there was not going to be any storytelling with
Jimmie, for I was never going to see Jimmie alive again.
I did as I was told, though, and I chose furniture,
cookware, linens, and even appliances for a house that I
had never seen. But it all seemed so ridiculous. Jimmie
had houses full of furniture, most of it custom-made, and
there were great, enormous kitchens full of every
imaginable piece of cooking gear.
At seven, when Phillip was driving me back to the house,
he reached into the back of his car and picked up a
brochure. "I bought you a car," he said, handing me a
glossy photo of a four-wheel-drive Toyota.
I was beginning to wake up, and I was beginning to feel
pain. Everything seemed so odd; my world was turning
upside down. Why was Phillip driving a car himself? He
usually used one of Jimmie's cars and a driver.
"You can't take the jewelry," Phillip was saying. "Each
piece has been itemized and insured. You may take your
clothing, but even at that I think that Atlanta may give
you some problems. She's your size."
"My size," I whispered. "Take my clothes."
"You can fight it all, of course," Phillip was
saying. "But something's wrong. About six months ago,
Atlanta hinted that she knew some big secret about you."
Phillip looked at me out of the corner of his eye. I knew
he was again asking me if there were other men in my life.
But when? I wondered. Jimmie didn't like to be alone, not
even for a second, and he made sure I was never
alone. " 'Fraid the bogeyman will get me," he said,
kissing my nose, when I asked him why he avoided solitude
so diligently. Jimmie rarely — no, Jimmie never gave
straight answers to personal questions. He lived in the
here and now; he lived in the world around him, not inside
his head. He wasn't one for pondering why people were the
way they were; he accepted them, and liked them or didn't.
"I was a virgin when I met him," I said softly to
Phillip, "and there's only been Jimmie." But I looked away
when I said it, for I knew that there was a secret between
Jimmie and me. Only I knew it, though. Atlanta couldn't
know — could she?
But she did.
By eight, my comfortable, safe world as I knew it had
collapsed. I don't know how Atlanta heard about Jimmie's
plane going down so soon after it happened, but she had.
And in the time between when Atlanta was told and the
press heard of Jimmie's death, she had accomplished more
than in all the other forty-eight years of her life
combined.
When Phillip and I returned from our crazy shopping
expedition, we were greeted at the front door of what I'd
thought of as my house by men carrying guns, and I was
also told I wasn't allowed to enter. I was told that, as
Jimmie's only surviving relatives, Atlanta and Ray now
owned everything.
When Phillip and I got back into the car, he was shaking
his head in wonder. "How did they find out about the will?
How did she know James left it all to them? Look,
Lillian," he said, and I noted that up until Jimmie's
death, he'd always called me Mrs. Manville, "I don't know
how she found out, but I'll find the culprit who told
and...and..." Obviously, he couldn't think of anything
horrible enough to do to someone on his staff who'd leaked
the contents of Jimmie's will. "We'll fight this. You're
his wife, and you have been for many years. You and I
will — "
"I was seventeen when I married him," I said quietly. "And
I didn't have my mother's permission."
"Oh, my God," Phillip said, then he opened his mouth to
begin what I assumed was going to be a lecture on my
irresponsibility. But he closed it again, and rightfully
so. What good would it do to lecture me now that Jimmie
was gone?
The next weeks were horrible beyond anything I'd ever
imagined. Atlanta was on TV just hours after Jimmie's
death, telling the press that she was going to fight "that
woman" who had so enslaved her beloved brother for all
those years. "I'm going to see that she gets everything
she deserves."
It didn't matter to Atlanta that Jimmie's will stated I
was to get nothing. Not even the farmhouse was mentioned
in the will. No, Atlanta was out to avenge all the things
she imagined I'd done to her over the years. She didn't
just want money; she wanted me humiliated.
Yes, of course she'd found out that my marriage to Jimmie
hadn't been legal. It couldn't have been difficult. My
sister knew. She and her husband had divorced because she
couldn't bear to stay in Morocco, but her husband wouldn't
give up all that cash and luxury. My sister blamed me for
her divorce. Maybe she called Atlanta and volunteered the
information that I wasn't legally married to Jimmie.
However she found out, Atlanta waved my birth certificate
before the press, then showed them the photocopy of my
marriage certificate. I was only seventeen when we'd
married, but I'd lied and said that I was eighteen, and
therefore legally in charge of my own fate.
No longer did I have Jimmie to protect me from the press.
Now every reporter who'd been mistreated by him — i.e.,
all of them — dug through his archives and pulled out the
most unflattering photos of me he could find, then slapped
them across every communications media there was. I
couldn't look at TV, a magazine, or a computer screen that
didn't feature all my chins and the nose I'd inherited
from my father. I'd told Jimmie about a thousand times
that I wanted to have my overlarge
nose "fixed." "Removed!" is what I said, but Jimmie always
told me that he loved me as I was, and, eventually, the
right hook of my nose didn't seem to matter.
When I heard what was being said about me, my ugly nose
was the least of my concerns. How can I describe what it
felt like to see four respected journalists — three men
and a woman — sitting around a table, discussing whether
or not I had "trapped" James Manville into marrying me? As
though a man like Jimmie could be trapped by anyone! And
by a seventeen-year-old girl whose only claim to fame was
a handful of blue ribbons won at the state fair? Not
likely.
Lawyers talked about whether or not I was legally entitled
to any of Jimmie's money.
But when the will was finally read and it was seen that
Jimmie had given it all to his brother and sister, I was
suddenly the Jezebel of America. Everyone seemed to
believe that I had somehow ensnared dear little Jimmie
(the youthful Salome was the comparison used most often)
but that he had found out about it and had used his will
to give me "what I deserved."
Phillip did his best to keep me away from the press, but
it wasn't easy. I wanted to get on a plane and go away, to
hide from everything — but that was no longer an option.
My days of jumping on a plane and going anywhere in the
world I wanted were over.
For six weeks after Jimmie's death, while the courts dealt
with his will and the press hashed and rehashed everything
they heard, I stayed locked inside Phillip's sprawling
house. The only time I left during those horrible weeks
was when I went to Jimmie's funeral, and then I was so
shrouded in black draperies that I may as well not have
been there. And I most certainly wasn't going to give the
press or Atlanta and Ray the satisfaction of seeing me
weep.
When I got to the church, I was told that I couldn't
enter, but Phillip had anticipated such an event, and
seemingly out of nowhere, half a dozen men the size of
sumo wrestlers appeared and surrounded me.
That's how I entered Jimmie's funeral: walking in the
midst of six enormous men, my face and body covered with
black cloth.
It was all right, though, because by that time I had
realized that Jimmie was actually never coming back, and
nothing anyone did mattered much. And, too, I kept
imagining that farmhouse he'd left me. One time Jimmie had
asked me to describe where I'd like to live, and I'd
talked of a cozy little house with a deep porch, tall
trees around it, and a lake nearby. "I'll see what I can
do," he'd said, smiling at me with twinkling eyes. But the
next house he'd bought was a castle on an island off the
coast of Scotland, and the thing was so cold that even in
August my teeth were chattering.
After the will was probated, I made no move to leave
Phillip's house. With the press still hovering outside and
with Jimmie gone, it didn't seem to matter where I was or
what I did. I took long showers, and I sat at the table
with Phillip and his family — his wife, Carol, and their
two young daughters — but I don't remember eating
anything.
It was Phillip who told me that it was time for me to
leave.
"I can't go out there," I said in fear, glancing toward
the curtains that I kept drawn night and day. "They're
waiting for me."
Phillip took my hand in his and rubbed his palm against my
skin. For all that I no longer had a husband, I still felt
married. I snatched my hand away and frowned at him.
But Phillip smiled. "Carol and I have been talking, and we
think you should...well, that you should disappear."
"Ah, yes," I said, "suttee. The wife climbs onto the
funeral pyre and follows her husband into the afterlife."
From the look on Phillip's face, he didn't appreciate my
black sense of humor. Jimmie had. Jimmie used to say that
the more depressed I was, the funnier I was. If that was
so, I should have gone onstage the day of his funeral.
"Lillian," Phillip said, but when he reached toward my
hand again, I withdrew it. "Have you looked at yourself
lately?"
"I — " I began, intending to make a sarcastic remark, but
then I glanced into the mirror over the big dresser across
from the bed in the guest room in Phillip's house. I had,
of course, noticed that I'd lost some weight. Not eating
for weeks on end will do that. But I hadn't noticed how
much I'd lost. My chins were gone. I had cheekbones.
I looked back at Phillip. "Amazing, isn't it? All those
diet programs that Jimmie paid for for me, and all he had
to do was die and bingo! I'm finally slim."
Phillip frowned again. "Lillian, I've waited until now to
talk to you. I've tried to give you some time to come to
terms with James's death and his will."
He started on another lecture about my stupidity in not
telling either him or Jimmie that I'd been seventeen when
we married. "He would have given you a huge wedding. He
would have loved doing that for you," Phillip had said the
day after he found out. "It would have been so much better
than the elopement you had the first time."
But I'd heard that lecture before and didn't want to hear
it again, so I cut him off. "You want me to disappear?"
"Actually, it was Carol's idea. She said that as things
stand now, the rest of your life is going to be one long
press interview. People are going to hound you forever to
tell them about your life with Jimmie. Unless — "
"Unless what?" I asked.
Phillip's thin face lit up, and for a moment I saw
the "little fox" that Jimmie had always said the man
was. "Do you remember when I told you that I'd tried to
talk James out of writing his will as he did?" He didn't
wait for me to answer. "I did persuade him not to put the
farmhouse in the will. I said that if he was so afraid of
what his sister would do, then she'd probably try to take
the farm too. At that time I hadn't seen the place, and I
thought it was — "
"Was what?" I asked.
"Valuable," he said softly, looking down at the floor for
a moment, then back up at me. "Look, Lillian, I know the
farmhouse isn't much, but it must have meant something to
James, or he wouldn't have kept it all these years."
"Why did he buy it in the first place?"
"That's just it, he didn't buy it. I think he's always
owned it."
"People have to buy things," I said, confused. "People
just don't give real estate away, at least not while
they're alive." It was then that understanding began to
hit me. "You mean you think that Jimmie might have
inherited this farm?"
For the first time, I felt some interest spark inside me.
All three of them, Atlanta, Ray, and Jimmie, were
maddeningly secretive about their childhood. When
questioned, Ray evaded and changed the subject. Atlanta
and Jimmie out-and-out lied. They would say they were born
in South Dakota one day, and in Louisiana the next. I knew
for a fact that Jimmie had given me four different names
for his mother. I'd even secretly read all six of the
biographies that had been written about him, but the
authors had had no better luck than I had in finding out
anything about the first sixteen years of James Manville's
life.
"I don't know for sure," Phillip said, "but I do know that
James didn't buy the place since I've known him."
At that statement, all I could do was blink. Jimmie and
Phillip had been together from the beginning.
"When I said that Atlanta and Ray might try to take the
farm away from you, all I can tell you is that James
turned white, as though he were afraid of something."
"Jimmie afraid?" I said, unable to grasp that concept.
"He said, 'You're right, Phil, so I'm going to give the
place to you, then when the time comes, I want you to sign
it over to Lil. And I want you to give her this from
me.' "
That was when Phillip handed me the note written by
Jimmie. It was in a sealed envelope, so Phillip hadn't
read it. He'd kept it and the deed to the farm in Virginia
in his home safe, awaiting the day when he'd turn them
both over to me.
After I read the note, I folded it and put it back into
the envelope. I didn't cry; I'd cried so much over the
last six weeks that I didn't seem to have any more liquid
inside me. I reached for the deed to the farm, but Phillip
pulled it back.
"If I make this out to Lillian Manville, then register the
property transfer, within twenty-four hours, you'll have
reporters — and lawyers — on your doorstep. But — " he
said, drawing out what he wanted to say as though I were a
child he was enticing to be good.
I didn't take the bait, but just stared at him.
"All right," he said at last. "What Carol and I thought
was that maybe you should change your identity. You've
lost so much weight that you don't look like James
Manville's fat little wife anymore."
That remark made me narrow my eyes at him. I did not want
to hear what he and the rest of Jimmie's staff had
sniggered behind his back. I guess I'd not spent all those
years near Jimmie for nothing, because I could see Phillip
beginning to wither under my gaze.
"All right," he said again, then let out his pent-up
breath. "It's up to you, but I've already done a lot of
the work, such as get you new documents of identification.
I needed to use James's connections while they still
remembered him. Sorry to be so blunt, but people forget
fast. Now, it's up to you to accept it."
He handed me a passport, and I opened it. There was no
photo inside, but there was a name. "Bailey James," I read
aloud, then looked up at Phillip.
"It was Carol's idea. She took your maiden name and
James's first name and — You don't like it."
The problem was that I did like the idea. A new name;
maybe a new life.
"Carol thought that with your weight loss, and if you got
your hair cut and lightened, and if you...Well, if you..."
I looked at him. What was he having such a hard time
saying? But then I saw that he had his eyes fixed on my
nose. I'd gone down headfirst on a playground slide in the
first grade and had managed to knock my nose permanently
to the right. "No wonder," sixth-grade Johnnie Miller had
said as I stood there gushing blood. "Her nose is so big
that it hit the ground half an hour before she did." I
still remember the teacher holding me and oozing sympathy
even as she tried hard not to laugh, even as she made
Johnnie apologize for his remark.
"You want me to get a nose job," I said flatly.
Phillip gave a curt nod.
Turning, I looked at myself in the mirror. If Jimmie had
left me his billions, I could have made a prison with high
fences and locked myself away from all the gigolos and
hangers-on that orbit around money. I didn't have the
billions, but I did have the notoriety. I knew that,
eventually, in ten years or so, Jimmie would fade in
people's memories and I'd be left alone, but during those
ten years...
I looked back at Phillip. "It's my guess that you have a
surgeon all set up."
"Tonight." He looked at his watch, the twenty-thousand-
dollar one that Jimmie had given him; Atlanta was now
wearing mine. "If you're ready, that is."
I took a deep breath. "As ready as I can be, I guess," I
said, then stood up.
That was two weeks ago. My nose had healed enough that I
knew it was time to step outside Phillip and Carol's big
house. It wasn't Lillian Manville who was to greet the
world, but someone I didn't even recognize in the mirror,
someone named Bailey James.
During the time I was recovering from surgery, I'd come to
know Carol somewhat better. In the past she'd attended the
parties that Jimmie liked to give, but he had always
warned me that it was better not to get too chummy with
employees, so I was courteous, but there were no secrets
shared between us. I didn't share secrets with anyone
other than Jimmie.
The surgery had been done in the doctor's office, and a
few hours later I was driven back to Carol and Phillip's
house. The first night a nurse stayed with me, but the
second night I was alone when Carol tapped on my door.
When I answered, she tiptoed in and sat on the edge of the
bed. "Are you angry?" she asked.
"No, the doctor did a fine job. Nothing to be angry
about," I answered, pretending that I didn't know what she
was talking about.
She didn't fall for it; she stared hard at me.
"You mean, am I angry that I spent sixteen years giving my
entire life to a man, only to be cut out of his will?"
Carol smiled at my sarcasm. "Men are slime," she said,
then we smiled together, and when I touched my sore nose
in pain, we laughed. It was my first genuine feeling of
humor since I'd last talked to Jimmie.
"So what are you going to wear?" Carol asked, folding her
legs and sitting on the corner of the bed. She was about
ten years older than me, and I'd be willing to bet that
she was no stranger to the surgeon's knife. She was blonde
and pretty, and extremely well cared for. I knew what that
meant because I, too, used to spend a lot of my time
looking after myself. I may have been plump, but I was a
well-coiffed, well-tended plump.
"Wear where?" I asked, and felt my heart jump a bit.
Please, I silently prayed, someone tell me that I wasn't
going to have to go again to some courtroom and hear
Atlanta and Ray accuse me of "controlling" Jimmie.
"On your new body," Carol said. "You can't keep on wearing
my sweats, you know."
"Oh," I said. "Sorry. I guess I haven't thought much about
clothes lately. I — " Damnation, but tears were coming to
my eyes. I wanted to be the brave little soldier and
believe that, whatever Jimmie had done had been done out
of love. But when I was confronted with issues such as the
fact that the only clothing I now owned was what I'd put
on the night Jimmie died, and the black shroud that
Phillip had given me, I didn't feel very brave.
Carol reached out to touch my hand, but then she pulled
back and moved off the bed. "I'll be back in just a
minute," she said as she left the room. In seconds she
returned with a foot-high stack of what looked like
catalogs. She'd taken so little time to get them, I knew
she must have had them piled outside.
She spread them across the bottom of the bed, and I looked
at them in wonder. "What are these?"
"Phillip owes me five bucks!" she said in triumph. "I bet
him you'd never seen a catalog. In nor — uh, most
households, catalogs come through the mail at the rate of
about six a day."
I knew she'd been about to say "in normal households," but
she'd stopped herself. In Jimmie's houses, a servant
brought me my few pieces of mail on a silver dish.
I picked up one of the catalogs. Norm Thompson. Inside
were the kind of clothes that appeared in my closet now
and then, especially in the two island houses. Jimmie had
someone he called a "shopper" who made sure that we had
whatever clothes we needed in every house.
Carol picked up a catalog and flipped through it. The
cover read "Coldwater Creek." "You know, I used to feel
sorry for you. You always looked so alone and lost. I told
Phillip that — " Breaking off, she bent down toward the
catalog.
"You told him what?"
"That you were like a lightbulb, and you were only on when
James was around."
I didn't like what she'd said. Not one bit. It made me
sound so...so nothing, as though I weren't a person at
all. "So what did you have in mind with these?" I asked,
making my voice sound as cool as possible.
She understood my tone. "It's my opinion that we owe you
for the wedding gift that you gave Phillip and me, so I
thought we might order you some new clothes and whatever
else you might need in your new life. We'll charge it all
to Phillip; he can afford it." She lowered her
voice. "He's going to be one of the attorneys for Atlanta
and Ray."
At that my mouth dropped open, then I winced because my
new, smaller nose hurt at the movement. I wanted to
scream, "The traitor!" but I didn't. "Remind me. What did
Jimmie and I give you for your wedding?"
"This house," Carol said.
For a moment I couldn't speak, and I had to look away so
she wouldn't see my eyes. He gave a house to his attorney,
a man he thought was his friend, but now that so-called
friend was going to work for the enemy. I picked up a
catalog. "Do you have one of these things for jewelry? I
need a new watch."
Carol smiled at me; I smiled back; a friendship was
formed.