Part 28 (1/2)
”Why would I when you and he have already established such a rapport.”
”You don't have to have s.e.x with him, Tina, come on,” Alison interjected with a note of pleading. ”Just have dinner with him, that's all, and remind him that we're really good people and we want to do what's best for the building and the apartment, we want it to be safe and have it go into the right hands. That's really what we want, and they don't have to worry about that.”
”Great, that's great, I'm sure that will make a big impression on old Vince,” I said, not really caring about any of this, I found the whole scenario so depressing. ”My sisters are pimping me out,” I muttered. ”That's great. My sisters are pimping me out.”
”Please stop saying that, it's just not true,” said Alison.
”You know, Mom would not want this,” I said. ”You know that.”
”She doesn't get a vote,” Lucy said.
”What do you think?” I said to Alison. ”You think Mom would want me to do this? Just go have s.e.x with this guy because Lucy thinks maybe that'll help?”
”It's because of what she wanted. You don't know, Tina, Mom wanted-”
”Alison-” Lucy began.
”No, we have to tell her. If we don't tell her, how will she know?”
”Know what?” I asked.
They stared at each other. Lucy was clearly both furious and calculating, while Alison pleaded with her sad, puppylike eyes. Lucy looked up at the ceiling, like Pontius Pilate about to dip his b.l.o.o.d.y hands into a plate of water in the picture my mother had on the wall of the living room when we were kids.
”Well, now you have to tell me,” I pointed out.
”Fine,” said Lucy. ”Alison, be my guest.”
”Mom called me,” Alison whispered. And then stopped.
”Mom called you? When, like last week? From the grave?” I knew it was mean, but I had had it with both of them by that point.
”Before. Before the grave. But just before.”
”Alison, stop beating around the bus.h.!.+”
”I'm not, I'm telling you! She called me. She was feeling sick. And she was worried. She felt like she couldn't stay here, that she was living in someone else's home. But Bill had left it to her, he wanted her to have it, and she wanted to stay here and be close to him, but she was worried that something might happen to her and she wanted to make a will. She wanted to make sure, make sure that his sons would get their home back.”
This revelation landed with some authority.
”When was this?”
”It was just a few days. Before she died. Like three, even,” Alison admitted.
”And-”
”Yes. She wanted to make a will, but she didn't make a will. We weren't sure, we thought maybe she called that lawyer-”
”Mr. Long?”
”Yes, him, we thought maybe she had called him and told him?”
”But we've seen his deposition, and it wasn't there,” Lucy narrated. ”They asked him specifically, did she ever make statements to the effect that she felt the property was deeded to her improperly. He said no.”
”So we think she never said it to him. We think she only said it to me, then didn't do it.”
”And you didn't tell anybody. You didn't tell the lawyers or the Drinans. Or me.”
”No, she didn't,” Lucy said. She went to the refrigerator and with one icy motion opened the freezer door and grabbed the vodka bottle, then pulled the cork out with her teeth. I felt like I was in Russia suddenly. ”She didn't tell anybody at first because she didn't know what Mom meant,” she continued. ”And then when Mom died, we started getting these phone calls about a house-”
”They said 'apartment,'” Alison added. ”But Mom had called it a house. That's why I was confused. She said it was a house.”
”So you didn't tell anybody.”
”I told Daniel and Lucy. But they, they said not to tell anybody else. Because if Mom really had wanted to leave it to someone else, she'd had plenty of time to do it. Or she could have called her lawyer. She could have done that anytime. So maybe she was drunk or something. When she called me. And if she was drunk, then she maybe didn't really mean what she said, and if I told people it would just confuse things.”
”It doesn't sound too confusing to me,” I said. ”You tell somebody-like, Mr. Long, say-that she wanted the Drinans to have the apartment? That kind of statement would make things significantly less confusing. You tell them that and all the turmoil goes away, Alison.”
”Yes, people suspected your unpredictable conscience might choose to see things that way,” Lucy said, downing a straight shot of vodka from one of my few clean gla.s.ses. ”Which is why people felt that the right thing to do, to protect you and your interests, was to keep it to ourselves.”
”What's that supposed to mean?”
”It means sometimes you get on a high horse and sometimes you get on quite a different horse, and no one knows which you're going to choose on any given day.”
”That's not what I do.”
”Tina. Your immediate reaction to this story is to run off and tell the lawyers? This is what Mom wanted, so that's what we should do, 'it's not confusing,' 'it makes all the problems go away.' But it doesn't. It's hearsay. Alison can't remember exactly what Mom said. And you weren't on the phone call, you weren't even on the call list, so you don't know what Mom may or may not have wanted. So you can't testify to what Alison just told you anyway. But if Mom called anyone else?” She shrugged and poured herself another vodka.
”Can I have some of that?” I asked.
”Of course,” she said, finding the second clean gla.s.s and pouring the shot, which I tossed back. It tasted good.
”You mean one of the Drinans,” I said. ”You think she called one of them and said that she wanted to do the right thing and leave them the apartment.”
”Whether or not she did, that would be hearsay too. Unless somebody has it in writing, none of it is admissible.”
”Which is why-what? Which is why the co-op board is the bigger problem today?”
”They're all problems,” Lucy said. ”But today the co-op board is the big one, yes.” She poured me another vodka, rather more than I needed. I knew she was trying to get me drunk so I'd go along with her crazy plot, but I almost appreciated the gesture. ”Listen, Tina,” she said. ”The Drinans are not going to win this. The one piece of evidence they need-that Mom intended to leave the apartment to them-doesn't exist! So if the co-op board takes some crazy position against us, it won't do anybody any good. It will just complicate things. You'll be doing everyone a favor if you can straighten this out.”
”Lucy says Vince is really nice,” Alison said sadly. ”She thinks he wants to help us.”
”Oh, for crying out loud,” I said. ”I was going to make a dinner.”
”You can do it tomorrow,” Lucy told me. ”Maybe you could wear that black dress you wore to the press conference at Sotheby's. You really look terrific in that.”
27.