Hot Streak

CHAPTER 20

W hile Carey was cruising high above the cumulous clouds obscuring the green midwest landscape below, Molly was having a heated telephone conversation with Bart.

“I'd like to come over to see Carrie,” he said in that demanding tone that always grated on her nerves.

“I told you to give me some warning on these visits.”

“That's why I'm calling first.”

“That's not what I had in mind,” Molly replied sardonically. “A day or two, not minutes.”

“Come off it, Molly. If you're not busy and Carrie's not busy, why be pedantic?”

Molly thought of her daughter and sighed resignedly. “She rode her bike to the corner store and won't be back for half an hour or so. I suppose you could come over then.”

“Great, I've missed her.”

“You haven't seen her in six months, Bart,” Molly said dryly.

“Well, I missed her today.”

“In that case, I suppose we mustn't be obstructive,” she said with elaborate sweetness.

“That would be sensible.”

Bart's visit wasn't prompted by paternal affection, but rather by a hellish curiosity. At the club that afternoon, after his racketball game, he'd run across Jason Evans and heard a fascinating bit of information. “Molly's picked up a damn rich friend,” Jason had archly declared.

When Bart had asked who, he'd shrugged.

“Beats me. Some corporation… no names. All very discreet. Two hundred thousand dollars discreet. Your ex-wife is now totally out of debt.”

“Very interesting,” Bart had said.

“I thought you'd like to know,” Jason had replied, a locker-room leer on his face.

Bart deliberately arrived before Carrie returned, intent on discovering the wealthy new “friend” who'd entered Molly's life. With that kind of money it wasn't an anonymous donor. His visit was fueled by nothing more than rabid curiosity-not necessarily malice. He'd always been the type to go through people's desk drawers and medicine cabinets. Insatiably nosy.

After a long, busy day, Molly had changed into a cotton caftan and was lounging on the couch, a glass of wine in her hand when Bart arrived. Out of an inherent politeness rather than any desire for is company, she offered him a drink while he waited for Carrie to come home.

Bart immediately launched into his probing catechism.

The evening sunset heightened the streaked gold of Carey's hair as he pushed open the wooden garden door at the entrance to Molly's home. Walking into a small, colorful English-style garden incongruously growing against an eight-story factory building, he strolled up the serpentine brick path to a carved front door. Near a lush, wandering wisteria which looked as though it had been framing the doorway for at least a century, a young girl was settling her bicycle into its wrought-iron stand. In a few steps he was close enough to say, “Hi, is your mother home?”

Her long pale hair swirled across her shoulders as she turned. A small, straight-nosed face with wispy brows and lacy lashes framing enormous dark eyes lifted from her task. The faintly slanted eyes, like an eastern princess from long ago, studied him.

A dozen searing questions streaked unanswered through his mind as he gazed at the young features so shatteringly familiar, like a miniature mirror-image softened by childhood and femininity. And for a moment, his heart stood still.

“You must be Carey,” the young girl said, looking up into Carey's startled face. “We both have the same name. Though Mom said the spelling's different for boys and girls.”

His composure restored, Carey managed a smile. “Just a couple of letters different, I guess. Here, let me take your package,” he offered. He willed himself to stay calm, but his hands tightened convulsively on the box when she handed it to him.

“Don't squeeze it,” Carrie warned. “The ice cream bars get mushy by the time I bike back. I better carry them,” she added decisively, noting how his large fingers were making indentations in the cardboard box. She took the package and said, “I thought you weren't coming till Thursday. You're cute,” she abruptly stated, then twirled and pulled open the door.

Before he could reply, she was through the door. “Come on up,” she sang out. “Mom's in the living room.” And she raced up the stairs.

He stood there for a moment contemplating numerous other possibilities that would reasonably explain the staggering likeness, other than the one burning in his brain.

And failed utterly.

He wanted to cry, but a dangerous fury related to deception, lies, and impossible hurt, damped the impulse.

He took the stairs two at a time.

With a minimum of courtesy, Molly had been dodging Bart's questions. “Look,” she finally said exasperatedly, “if this is going to be twenty questions, why don't I excuse myself and you can wait here alone until Carrie returns.” Rising from the Chinese silk couch, she started across the room.

Quickly setting his wineglass down, Bart reached out an arresting hand. “Hey,” he objected, his fingers tight on her wrist, “sit down, relax. No need to get huffy.”

“No need! Jesus, Bart, how would you like it if I started at the top of a list of questions and ran through them; all, by the way, directed toward your amorous partners.”

“Okay, okay, sit down. I'll stop. Just curious, that's all. I saw Jason today and-”

“What about Jason?” she coolly inquired, tensing with a bitterness she'd thought long gone. “So help me, Bart, if you're sticking your nose into my business again, I swear-”

“Temper, temper.” He pulled again on her wrist. “If you're nice and tell me a few things, I'll tell you what Jason said.”

“Go to hell.”

“You never did know how to argue reasonably, Molly.” He was smug from the sleek blackness of his hair to the white leather of his court shoes. His neatness annoyed her. He was dressed casually, having come over directly from the club, but he managed to look as though his sweats were pressed. And there wasn't a mark on his white sneakers. She didn't know why his fastidiousness provoked her, but it was probably because he'd complained about her messiness. If she'd only had sense enough to live with Bart before she'd married him, it wouldn't have taken more than a week to know how incompatible they were-parents or no parents, wedding or not. There's nothing like the cap-on-the-toothpaste argument to open one's eyes to marital discord.

He had always been tremendous fun to date, the life of the party, entertaining, and funny. It wasn't until they were married that she'd realized there was another personality beneath that stage facade. A person who was always right. A person who thought of himself first, last, and always; a man whose ambition was a consuming passion. Men like Bart wanted wives and a child (one was enough to complete the image of “family”; no sense in going overboard) as accoutrements to his life. It completed the picture. A successful man needed a family. Single men past a certain age were slightly suspect, not normal somehow.

So she and Carrie were the required actors in the scene: house, wife, child. Wave to Daddy when he leaves for work. Give him a kiss and a straight scotch when he comes home after a hard day at the office. Fade out…

Bart was also a nag. And that finally had driven her over the edge. The house wasn't clean enough or the yard was mowed clockwise instead of counterclockwise. “Don't bitch at me,” Molly would say. “Bitch at the maid or the yardman.”

“Do I have to take care of everything?” he'd scream.

“If you want to complain about their work, you'll have to do it yourself,” she'd reply.

Or Carrie's bike was in the driveway and he had to drive around it.

Or the pool man had the unmitigated gall to miss three leaves floating in the pool.

Important things like that upset the symmetry of Bart Cooper's existence.

And if Molly had a penny for every time Bart had said, “Why can't you hang up your wet towels; it only takes a second,” she would have been a millionairess. She didn't like to pick up her bath towels; she liked to toss them on the floor; she liked to walk on them. She picked them up later, but later wasn't good enough for Bart. Neatness was his religion. God help him. He was doing extremely well though, come to think of it. Was it possible God was a neatnik, too? Maybe she was on the wrong side of a philosophical issue and hadn't realized the direction of her life was being manipulated by a vengeful deity whose all-seeing eyes noticed dust bunnies under the bed.

But none of the differences had mattered when she found herself pregnant so soon after their marriage. And the arguments had never stopped. Just like now.

Dislike for his petty nastinesses came flooding back, and she stood rigid in his grasp, her eyes scathing. “Let me go.”

“Soon,” Bart grated, angry now, apparently thwarted in his quest. “Sit.” He jerked her down so she fell awkwardly across his lap.

As Molly was struggling in his grip, a familiar voice with a coldly reined-in courtesy said, “Pardon me. I'll come back at a more convenient time.” Carey was wearing a linen jacket with stylish slacks and a shirt with intricate pleats down the front. The pale colors contrasted with his dark tan and hard masculine features. He didn't move, not a muscle, except his eyes, which took in the two wineglasses side-by-side on the glass coffee table, and the two figures entwined on the couch.

“Carey!” Molly cried, terrified at the diamond-hard coldness in his eyes.

But he was walking out of the room already, and only narrowly missed colliding into Carrie who was running in from the kitchen. Steadying her with his hands, he bent over and briefly whispered to her. Then, straightening, he strode down the hall. Molly heard his light tread running down the stairs. Then the slam of the door.

“Damn you, Bart. Look what you did now,” she exclaimed, untangling herself from his grasp.

“Who the hell was that?” he rebuked. “I like the twin names. Enlightening.” And the gray eyes he turned on Molly were flinty hard.

“Carrie, go to your room. Daddy and I want to talk,” Molly hastily interposed before anything more was said. After Carrie left she turned on Bart, her expression indignant. “Now do you have something to say?”

“I don't know who the mysterious blond stranger was,” he sneered, “but looking at the remarkable resemblance to your daughter, I'd say, he's someone a helluva lot closer to you than I ever was.”

“You're insane,” Molly snapped.

“Hardly, and not blind, either,” he curtly retorted. But then his voice changed into a taunting sweetness. “Here the little wife I thought so prim and sexually unawakened has a skeleton in her very own closet. My congratulations. You carried off the demure facade winningly all those years. And the offended wife at divorce time. I wish I'd known Mr. Blond Fashion Model before you took half the equity in the house. By the way, child support payments stop as of this minute.”

“Bart, you don't know what you're talking about. Carrie's your daughter.”

“So I always assumed-until her twin just walked into this room.”

“She was born nine and a half months after we were married.”

“So?”

“I was true to you all our married life,” she protested, her temper rising.

“Commendable, I'm sure,” Bart said, the sarcasm in his voice denigrating. “Although under the circumstances, hardly believable. Come off it, Molly. I don't care. I don't care about anything you do or did.”

“That at least is the truth,” Molly replied, her eyes smoldering with resentment. “Why don't you leave now? I'm not up to any more of your pleasant company.” And she stood, waiting for him to go.

“Who is he?” Bart asked, leisurely unfolding himself from the sofa.

“Do me a favor. Get the hell out of here.”

“Is he rich?”

“I don't know.”

“He looks rich,” Bart said mildly. “That haircut cost at least a hundred dollars.”

“He cuts his own hair,” she answered, her control dangerously near to breaking.

“He looks vaguely familiar. Carey who?”

“It was wonderful, as usual, Bart. Stay away longer next time,” Molly said, pushing his unresisting body toward the hallway.

“I'm glad you found a rich one again, Molly. You're going to need someone rich to bail your business out from time to time. Women weren't meant to be business men.”

If looks could kill, Bart would have been a puddle on the hall floor. Undeterred, he turned his sleepy eyes on her and smiled, “Ciao.”

“Right, ciao, Bart, and sayonara and write if you get work, preferably in the nether regions of the Amazon.” Keeping a tight rein on the hysteria cresting when she thought of Carey's basilisk expression, Molly pressed her temple against the doorjamb after Bart left and slowly counted to fifty. Carey wouldn't walk away without an explanation, would he? Good God, would he? But his chill eyes haunted her; she knew him so little. And what she did know had been transfigured into this world-class luminary. However, she'd have to deal with all the confusion and doubt later. Carrie needed some kind of explanation now.

Seated on the bed in her daughter's room, she explained that both Daddy and Carey had left, but-and at this point, she crossed her fingers unobtrusively to negate the fib-they'd be back.

“I know,” Carrie agreed. “Daddy always comes over on my birthday, and that's only a few days away. And Carey whispered he'd come back to see me. Did you and Daddy have another fight?” The question was posed casually, as if she had asked whether her mother thought it would rain soon.

“Well, sort of.”

“You two should learn to communicate better.”

“Thank you, Dr. Freud.”

“Then I wouldn't have to suffer loads of childhood anxieties. I read Judy Blume and know every childhood anxiety in the whole world.”

“In that case,” Molly said with a fond smile for her precocious daughter who absorbed life like a sponge and treated it as mundanely, “I'll try to ‘communicate' better with your father and save myself thousands of dollars in therapy for you.”

“You gotta learn, Mom. Just smile and nod your head with Daddy. That's what he likes best. He never really listens, anyway. That Carey guy sure looked mad,” she went on in the same breath as though the two thoughts weren't mutually exclusive. “Doesn't he like you sitting on Daddy's lap?” Her innocent dark eyes opened wide in inquiry.

“You tell me. You seem to have the world figured out,” Molly teased, her mood lightened by her daughter's prosaic outlook on humanity.

“Well, Tammy says her mother's new boyfriend is really jealous of Tammy's dad. They had a big fight one night when Tammy's dad came over to the house to fix the filter system on the pool. Are men possessive, Mom? Tammy says they sure are.”

Molly laughed. “I don't know, honey. Some men are; some women are, too. It's not a gender-based feeling. Come on, you'd better get ready for bed. Only two more days of school before vacation, and you have tests both days.”