Page 100 of Road Trip
Therese found herself at a loss for words. Esme Rossington was so prickly, so standoffish, yet she’d just shared a moment of vulnerability that had probably been fifty years in the making.
“I’m so sorry,” she said softly, reaching out to touch the older woman’s hand. “That must have been devastating.”
Esme stared down at her hand, her expression blank, then slowly withdrew it to her lap. “I’d never been sure I wantedchildren. My own mother was the least maternal creature you’d ever meet, and I suspected that I’d turned out to be the same. Later, I felt relieved.”
She turned her gaze to Therese, sitting in her kitchen, dressed in faded denim and her prized black Pussy Riot concert tee and her red high-top Chuck Taylors. “What about you, then? Do you have children?”
CHAPTER 43
“No,” Therese said quietly. “No children. I’m an actress, you see, and I’ve been sort of a vagabond for years now, which is no way to raise a family.”
Esme nodded and sliced a piece of cheese and pressed it to a cracker. She handed it over to Therese, who took a bite. She looked up to see Esme studying her.
“You’re a somewhat attractive girl,” Esme said. “No handsome gentlemen pursuing you for marriage?”
Somewhat attractive?Therese almost choked on her cracker. The woman was a master at underhanded compliments. But something about this exchange with Esme, who’d been a stranger until just this week, seemed to unblock something inside her.
“There was a man. His name was Bean. We met in New York. I was in an off-off-off-Broadway production ofBarefoot in the Park. Bean was the stage manager. I’d always had a policy against dating actors and coworkers, but that one time, I let my guard down. He was funny and kind. I’d been sharing a walk-up studio apartment in Brooklyn with three other girls, but we had a falling-out and I needed a place to land. Bean had a rent-controlled apartment in the Village, and his roommate had just moved out, so he invited me to move in with him.”
“Bean? Odd name for a grown-up,” Esme commented.
“Childhood nickname that stuck. And actually, I never did know his real name.”
Therese wished she had something to drink. Not the sickly sweet Orangina her hostess favored. Maybe a shot of whiskey, or even better, tequila. But there’d been no sign of other liquor in the cabinet where she’d found the gin.
She plowed ahead with her story. “We were careless, and I got pregnant. I’d just gotten a callback for a part in a new cable series. I would be playing a Vegas cocktail waitress, wearing a skimpy low-cut top and short skirt. How could I pull that off if I was pregnant? My breasts swelled two cup sizes almost overnight. More importantly, I had no money. No insurance. America’s not like it is over here. There’s no NIH.”
Therese helped herself to another cracker and bit back tears at the memory of her predicament.
“Bean, he was an okay guy, but he had his own issues. He was a gambling addict. I mean, he’d gamble on anything. Horses, pro football, Formula One racing, you name it. He told me once that he’d even bet on the winner of the Pillsbury Bake-Off. Definitely not father material.
“So… I called my mom. I lied, told her I had to have emergency surgery to remove an ovarian cyst. Mary Helen was a pretty strict Catholic, but she sent me the money, almost six thousand dollars, without question. I’m pretty sure she guessed what was really going on. I went to Planned Parenthood, and that afternoon, my dilemma was solved.”
Esme didn’t look shocked. “We’re not so different, you and I.”
“Maybe,” Therese said. “Afterward, the miscarriage, did you feel guilty?”
“No,” Esme said without hesitation. “I felt relieved. And you?”
“I think about it every time I see someone holding a new baby. And I feel guilty. I’d like to have kids, someday, when I have a partner I can depend on and a more stable life.”
“How stupid,” Esme said impatiently. “Children are a nuisance.They’re noisy. And sticky, and selfish. I count myself lucky not to be bothered with them.”
And just like that, Therese thought ruefully, their tender bonding moment had evaporated.
She glanced at the kitchen window. The sun was getting lower, the afternoon fleeting. She needed to get this conversation back on track.
“Tell me what happened after the robbery. The other night you said the fourth man, the lookout, was killed when he got in a shoot-out with the police. Was that your Mick?”
“He was nevermyMick,” Esme said coolly. “But yes, that was him.”
“All the rest of your father’s art collection was recovered. Except for the portrait. What happened there?”
“All of the paintings were supposed to end up at the mountain house where Starr and Dwyer were hiding. But they didn’t all fit in the trunk of the getaway car. When they got back to the cottage, Starr put the portrait in the trunk of the car Mick was driving, for safekeeping. He’d driven back to Dublin that night, I forget why, it’s so long ago. And then we got the word that Dwyer’s wife had informed on them, and they’d been captured by the Gardai. Mick panicked. He gave me the portrait and told me to hide it, then he went out and stole another car and got himself killed.”
Therese was stunned at the casual way Esme described her lover’s demise, but also at the revelation of the portrait’s fate.
“You’ve had the portrait? All this time?”
