Palomino

30

Crane, Harper, and Laub won a Clio again that year for another of Sam's commercials, and by year's end, she had brought in two more major accounts. Her mother's premonitions of doom had not come to pass. Instead she was working harder than ever, managing her apartment with ease, seeing a few friends, and having occasional Saturday-afternoon movie dates with now seven-year-old Alex; On the whole Sam was happy with her life. She was glad she had lived-glad she had survived. Still, she wasn't entirely sure where it was all going. Harvey was still the creative director and still threatening to retire, but Sam never believed him until the first of November, when he called her into his office and pointed absentmindedly to a chair.

“Sit down, Sam.”

“Thank you, Harvey, I am.” She grinned at him with amusement and he looked momentarily flustered and then laughed.

“Don't make me nervous, dammit, Sam, I have something to tell you… no, ask you…”

“You want to propose after all these years?” It was a standing joke between them. He had been happily married for the last thirty-two years.

“No, dammit, I'm not kidding around today. Sam”-he stared at her almost fiercely-“I'm going to do it. I'm going to retire on the first of the year.”

“When did that hit you, Harvey? This morning?” She was still smiling. She never took his retirement threats seriously anymore, and she was perfectly happy with her job the way it was. Her salary had escalated satisfactorily over the years, and CHL had given her so much in terms of kindness and understanding during her various problems and illness that she felt an unseverable loyalty to them anyway. She didn't need Harvey's job. “Why don't you just relax and take a nice vacation with Maggie this Christmas, someplace warm, like the Caribbean. And then come back like a big kid, roll up your sleeves, and get back to work.”

“I don't want to.” He suddenly sounded like a belligerent child. “You know what, Sam? I'm fifty-nine years old, and all of a sudden I wonder what I'm doing. Who gives a damn about commercials? Who remembers anything we do by next year? And I'm missing the last of my best years with Maggie, sitting at this desk, working my ass off. I don't want to do that anymore. I want to go home, Sam, before it's too late. Before I miss my chance, before she gets sick, or I do, or one of us dies. I never thought that way before, but I'll be sixty years old next Tuesday and I just figured, screw it. I'm going to retire now, and you can't talk me out of it, because I won't let you. So what I called you in here to ask you was, do you want my job, Sam, because if you do, you can have it. In fact my asking you is only a formality, because whether you want it or not, it's yours.”

She sat there, awed, for a moment, not sure what she should say. “Harvey, that was quite a speech.”

“I meant every bit of it.”

“Well, in a funny way I think you're right.” She had spent months thinking about Bill King and Aunt Caro, and she wondered if they had enjoyed every moment they could, right until the end. They had been so busy hiding what they were doing for so many years that they had missed a lot of times together that they might otherwise have shared. To Sam, it seemed like a hell of a waste of energy they could have better spent together, but it was all in the past now. What concerned her more was Caro, who had been in such awful shape in the eight months since he had died. She had been in what Sam considered a deep depression for several months, and she wanted to go out and see her, but the one thing she hadn't tackled yet was traveling. She was comfortable on home turf now and knew she could manage, but leaving home to go any great distance still scared her. She hadn't been to Atlanta either, and knew she probably never would. But a visit to Aunt Caro would have been different. She just hadn't taken matters in hand and gotten organized to go. She was thinking vaguely about Christmas, but that wasn't sure. She had funny feelings about going back there at Christmastime and facing all her memories of Tate.

“Well, Sam, do you want to be C.D.?” It was a direct question that required a direct answer, and Sam looked at him with a small hesitant smile.

“You know, the funny thing is that I don't know. I like working for you, Harvey, and I used to think that being creative director was the end of the rainbow. But the truth is, in the last year or two my life has changed so much, so have my values, and I'm not sure I want everything that goes with it: the sleepless nights, the headaches, the ulcers, especially now. The other thing I'm concerned with is that the C.D. should really travel, and I'm just not comfortable doing that yet. I don't feel safe about it, that's why I haven't flown out to see my friend in California. I don't know, Harvey, maybe I'm not the right person anymore for the job. What about Charlie?”

“He's the art director, Sam. You know yourself how unusual it is for an art director to become C.D. It's a separate issue.”

“Maybe. But he could do it and he'd be good.”

“So would you. Will you think about it?”

“Of course I will. You're really serious though this time, aren't you?” She was as surprised by his decision as by her own hesitation to accept. But she wasn't sure anymore if that was what she wanted, and however well she was managing life from her wheelchair, she just wasn't sure if she had enough mobility for the job. “How soon do you want to know?”

“In a couple of weeks.” She nodded and they chatted for a few moments before she left his office, and when she did, she had every intention of giving Harvey an answer at the end of two weeks time. But ten days later, life threw her a curveball, and she felt as though the sky had fallen in on her. She had felt like that fairly often in the last two years.

She sat in her office with the letter she had just gotten from Caroline's lawyer, and with tears running slowly down her face, she wheeled across the hall to Charlie's office and stopped in the doorway with a look of shock on her face.

“Something wrong?” He stopped what he was doing and came instantly toward her. It was a stupid question. She was white-faced and she nodded and continued into the room, holding out the letter, which he took and read, and then he stared at her with the same look of amazement on his face. “Did you know?”

She was crying softly now as she shook her head and then answered. “I never even thought of it… but I guess there's no one else.” And then suddenly she flung out her arms to him, and he held her. “Oh, Charlie, she's gone. What am I going to do?”

“It's all right, Sam. It's all right.” But he was as stunned as Samantha. Caroline Lord had died the previous weekend. For an instant Sam was hurt that no one had called her-where was Josh, why hadn't he let her know? But the moment passed. They were drifters, it wouldn't have occurred to them to call her in New York.

In accordance with Caroline's will, the ranch had been left to Sam. She had died in her sleep, without pain or problem. And Charlie suspected, as Sam did, that she just willed it to happen. She hadn't wanted to live without Bill King.

Samantha wheeled slowly away from Charlie then and went to stare out the window. “Why would she leave me the ranch, Charlie? What the hell am I going to do with it? I can't do anything with it now.” Her voice trailed off as she thought of the happy times she had spent there, with her friend Barbara, with Caroline and Bill, and with Tate. She thought of the secret cabin, of Black Beauty, of Josh, and the tears only flowed more swiftly down her face.

“What do you mean you can't do anything with it?” Charlie's voice questioned her, as did his eyes when she turned to face him again.

“Because however much I may not like to admit it, however much I may try to pretend I'm normal with my job and my friends and my living alone and my taking cabs, the fact is, Charlie, as my dear mother says, I'm a cripple. What the hell would I do with a ranch? Watch them ride the horses? A ranch is for healthy people, Charlie.”

“You're as healthy as you allow yourself to be. The horse has four legs, Sam. You don't need any. Let him do the walking. It has a lot more style than your chair.”

“You're not funny.” She sounded angry as she said it, and she spun around and left the room.

But five minutes later he had followed her to her office, and he wanted to discuss it, no matter how angry she got, how loud she screamed.

“Leave me alone, dammit! A woman I loved a great deal just died and you want to bug me about how I should go out there and ride horses. Leave me alone!” She screamed the words at him but it didn't convince him.

“No, as a matter of fact I won't. Because I think the truth is that although it's damn sad that she died, she just gave you the gift of a lifetime, not because of what the place must be worth, but because that is a dream you could live with for the rest of your life, Sam. I've watched you here since you came back, and you're as good at it as you always were, but the truth of it is, I don't think you care anymore. I don't think you want to be here. I think that ever since you fell in love with that cowboy and worked on the ranch, all you want is that, Sam. You don't want to be here. And now your friend has given it to you, all of it, lock, stock, and barrel, and suddenly you want to play cripple. Well, guess what, I think you're a coward, and I don't think you should be allowed to play that game.”

“And how do you plan to stop me from ‘playing cripple,’ as you put it?”

“Kick some sense into you, if I have to. Take you out there, rub your nose in it, remind you how much you love it all. Personally I think you're crazy and anything west of Poughkeepsie might as well be East Africa to me, but you, you're nuts about all that stuff. Christ, on that shoot last year, your eyes sparkled like light bulbs every time you saw a horse or a cow or talked to a foreman. It drove me nuts and you loved it, and now you're going to give all that away? What about doing something with it? What about bringing to life one of your dreams? You've talked so often to little Alex about that special riding class you'd read about once. The last time he came up here to pick you up for lunch, he told me you had said he could go riding one day, and maybe you'd take him-what about turning her ranch into a place for people like you and Alex, what about doing something like that?” Sam stared at her friend in amazement as the tears stopped rolling down her cheeks.

“But I couldn't do that, Charlie… how would I start it, how could I? I don't know anything about all that.”

“You could learn. You know about horses. You know something about being in a wheelchair. You'll have plenty of people to help you run the ranch, all you have to do is coordinate it, like a giant commercial, and hell, you're good at that.”

“Charlie, you're crazy.”

“Maybe.” He looked at her with a grin. “But tell the truth, Sam, wouldn't you enjoy being a little crazy too?”

“Maybe,” she answered honestly. She was still staring at him with a look of amazement. “What do I do now?”

“Why don't you go out there and look around again, Sam. Hell, you own it.”

“Now?”

“Whenever you have time.”

“By myself?”

“If you want.”

“I don't know.” She turned away again and sat staring into space, thinking of the ranch and Aunt Caro. It would be so painful to see it again without her this time. It would be filled with memories of people she had cared about who were no longer there. “I don't want to go out there alone, Charlie. I don't think I could handle it.”

“Then take someone with you.” He sounded matter-of-fact.

“Who do you suggest?” She looked at him skeptically. “My mother?”

“God forbid. Hell, I don't know, Sam, take Mellie.”

“What about the kids?”

“Take all of us, then. Or never mind ‘taking us,’ we'll take ourselves. The kids would love it, so would we, and I'll tell you what I think once we get there.”

“Are you serious, Charlie?”

“Totally. I think this will be the most important decision you've ever made, and I'd hate to see you screw it up.”

“So would I.” She looked at him somberly and suddenly thought about something. “What about Thanksgiving?”

“What about it?”

“It's in three weeks, what if we all go out then?”

He thought for a minute and then grinned at her. “You've got a deal. I'll call Mellie.”

“Think she'll want to go?”

“Hell yes. And if she doesn't”-he grinned-“I'll go alone.” But Mellie offered no objection when he called her, and neither did the boys when they told them, and they didn't tell anyone else. They just quietly made reservations for a four-day trip over Thanksgiving. Samantha didn't even tell Harvey. She was afraid to upset him, and she still hadn't given him an answer about the job.