Eye of the Storm Read online

  Grant smiled.

  "Another good attorney will make that quite clear and then, if there is. and I fear there is, some reason to believe that Mrs. Hudson was under great emotional and psychological strain at the time, things might suddenly have a different appearance, especially to objective third parties.

  "Now look at the facts. Rain. You weren't living here with her all that long before you went off to London. Before you left. Mrs. Hudson had great difficulty keeping domestic help. They either couldn't tolerate her or she wouldn't tolerate them."

  "There was nothing mentally wrong with her," I insisted. "Jake will swear about her too."

  Victoria blew a laugh out of her stiff, thin lips.

  "Jake! The chauffeur? Another expert on the witness stand," she said.

  I almost shouted it out then, almost cried. "That man you belittle as nothing but a chauffeur is your father!" But I remembered Jake's caution to use it only as a last resort.

  Grant glared at her with a look of reprimand anyway, and she shook her head and looked away.

  "Be that as it may. Rain, you're obviously a very bright young lady," he went on. "You can see where this might all go. In the end the family will have suffered. Your life will be put on hold and you might very well end up with much less than you should or could if you agree to sit down with me and be reasonable.

  "There's no reason why we all can't be very friendly about it and look after each other's interests now," he continued. "I'm sure that was what Mrs. Hudson wanted, right?"

  My mother looked up quickly to see how I was reacting. Was I anything like her? she wondered. I'm sure. Would I welcome Grant's soft, concerned and reasonable tone of voice? Would I look for a way to avoid conflict and unpleasantness? How could my reactions be any different from hers, always choosing the easiest solution no matter what cost it was to your own self- respect?

  I glanced at Victoria, smiling to myself as I recalled the way she had spoken about my mother to Grandmother Hudson.

  "Megan is afraid she'll get a wrinkle if she has one mature thought," she had said.

  Victoria had only to look at my face to see that was not my biggest fear.

  "I believe," I said slowly. "that my grandmother did what she wanted and expected that her children would respect that."

  Grant stared at me a moment. I could see the frustration start at the corners of his eyes in the form of tiny wrinkles moving like thin cracks down a glass pane.

  "When I spoke with you last. I mentioned a figure around a half-million dollars. Lawyers are going to be very expensive, for both of us. I think if you walked away from this difficult mess with a million dollars, you'd have a wonderful chance to build a successful life for yourself." he said quickly. "Especially if it's invested intelligently for you. I could help with that."

  Victoria looked like she had swallowed a peach pit and it was stuck in her throat. That's how red her face became. My mother looked surprised. I imagined that Grant had decided on his own to raise the offer from a half a million to a million dollars.

  "It's a lot of money." my mother said, almost in a whisper.

  "It's not the money I care about so much," I said.

  "Then what is it? Why would you want to remain here and be involved in such an ugly, legal battle?" Grant practically demanded.

  "It's what Grandmother Hudson wanted." I said, I knew it was something I was repeating until it was almost a mantra, a chant to help me let through the tension, but it was what I truly believed,

  "You can't believe she wanted everyone snipping at everyone else. right? You can't believe she wanted her family name dragged through the mud and splattered on the front pages for everyone to see? You can't believe that she worked and her husband worked all their lives for that sort of thing, can you? If you really cared for her and if you're really concerned about her legacy. you wouldn't let that sort of thing happen."

  "Neither would any of you," I fired back.

  Now. Grant's face took on some crimson. He sat back and let the hot air in his lungs slip out his slightly open lips.

  "Would anyone like anything cold to drink?" I offered with a smile.

  Victoria looked satisfied when she turned to Grant this time.

  She looked like what she had predicted would happen had come true and she liked being right. Grant shook his head. Then he turned to my mother, which was obviously their predetermined signal for her to start.

  "Don't you want to return to your studies in London?" she asked me.

  "I'm thinking I will, yes. I'd like to get to know my father better, too."

  "Well, how will you do all that if you're bogged down here in a legal swamp?" she asked. "You don't want any of that. Rain. You shouldn't have that in your life now. Go sit in the office with Grant and work out a compromise so we can put all this to rest and go back to being a family."

  "A family? What kind of a family? You haven't even told your children who I really am. They looked at me at the funeral, wondering why I was crying more than they were!" I practically shouted.

  "We're going to take care of that problem." she promised.

  "Hmmm," Victoria muttered.

  I knew she was thinking that this whole thing is a problem that shouldn't have begun.

  "Good. You do that. Mother," I said. I stood up. "Mr. Sanger told me to tell you that if you have any questions about the will, you should refer them to him. I was just about to make some coffee before you all showed up. Would anyone else like some coffee?" I asked.

  The three of them stared at me.

  "Don't do this. Rain." my mother pleaded. "Your mama wouldn't have wanted this for you."

  I felt the fire in my heart reach into my face, especially my eyes.

  "You met my mama. Mother." I said slowly, each word stinging sharply as a dart. "You saw what she was like. Do you think she was a woman who ran from a battle?"

  I turned before she could respond. and I walked out, feeling as if Grandmother Hudson's eves had been an me the whole time. I could almost see her smiling.

  Almost immediately. Victoria began her complaining. I lingered in the hallway, listening.

  "So much for how you were going to convince her. Megan. Your being here didn't add a thing to help us. None of this would be happening if it wasn't for what you did," she happily reminded her. "You've put Grant in a very difficult position. Now, what will we do. Grant?" she followed, her voice suddenly becoming the voice of a more desperate, feminine woman turning to her man for strength,

  "We'll have to go see Marty Braunstein. I was hoping it would be for other reasons."

  "Don't worry about it. Grant." Victoria assured him. "In time she will see how ridiculous it is for her to be a majority owner of the estate. She's young and she won't want to be bothered by all this

  responsibility. Believe me, after a while, she will compromise. You don't have to risk your reputation,'" she told him. "Let me handle this. She wants to be involved in our affairs. All right. I'll involve her."

  "That's a determined young woman," he said. "If there wasn't so much at stake. I could let myself admire her."

  He groaned and stood up. I could hear my mother sniffle. "Too late for tears," Victoria spit at her.

  I continued to the kitchen and started making the coffee. I heard the front door open and close and thought they had all just walked out, but a moment later, my mother appeared in the kitchen doorway.

  She smiled and gazed around.

  "It's so hard to come here and not see my mother." she said. Her dark eyes skipped nervously about the kitchen, "Even now, I expect her to appear, maybe come in through the French doors, wearing one of those ridiculous garden hats."

  "I miss her," I said.

  My mother nodded. "I know you do."

  Our eyes met. How I wished we could love each other like a mother and a daughter should.

  "Why are you letting Victoria tell you what to do?" I asked her.

  "Victoria has always been the practical one, the sensible one. R
ain. Maybe that was because she had a different upbringing, a different kind of education. My father didn't send her to boarding school for the rich, nor did he have her sent to a girls' finishing school. She went to business college and learned about stocks and bonds and options and such stuff. whereas I was taught polite rules of social etiquette, things to prepare me for high society. Maybe that was why I was so rebellious in college. I wasn't taught anything practical. I was designed to marry someone like Grant and always have a husband to take care of me and make these sort of decisions.

  "Please think more about all this, honey. We really could be something of a family you know." Her teary eyes were beseeching, her soft smile trying to assure me that a pot of gold waited at the end of this soon-to-be rainbow.

  I sighed. for I would so much like to be the eternal optimist. but I didn't believe in the magic of rainbows, especially the ones she promised.

  "You shouldn't have brought me here. Mother, Grandmother Hudson was one of the few people in my life who loved me and whom I loved. Love means honoring and respecting someone. too. She taught me that. I won't take her wishes and plans for me and tear it all up just to satisfy your sister. She never loved Grandmother Hudson as much as I did in the short time I was able to know her."

  Unwilling to deny that, my mother nodded.

  "I didn't need to see what she had done with her will to know how much she loved you. Rain."

  "Then you should understand," I said. I turned away but she walked over to me.

  "You're a good girl, Rain. I truly wish only good things for you.

  I want you to be happy and put all this behind you. Be sensible. You'd be better off away from all of us anyway," she said sadly.

  She hugged me quickly and then started out, stopping in the doorway.

  "Call me if you need me." she said.

  I watched her walk down the hallway and out the door.

  "That call was made a long time ago, Mother," I muttered after she had left.

  "And you never answered."

  3

  Riding the Wind

  .

  The telephone rang so early the next morning. I

  thought it was ringing in my dreams. Whoever was calling didn't give up. Finally, my eyelids unglued and I realized I wasn't imagining it. As I reached over for the phone. I looked at the clock and saw it was only five-thirty.

  "Hello." I said, my voice so groggy and deep. I thought someone else had said it for me.

  "Rain?" I heard. "Is that you?"

  I scrubbed my cheek with my palm and pulled myself up in the bed.

  "Roy?"

  "I'm sorry I'm calling you so early there, but it's the only chance I'll have, maybe for days," he said, "How are you?"'

  "Five minutes. Arnold," I heard someone growl behind him.

  "Roy, where are you?"

  "I'm here. in Germany, of course. What's happening now? Are you going right back to England? Did you talk to your real mother? Does everyone know about you? I mean, who you really are and all?" He was rattling his questions off quickly, hoping to stuff a lot of information into those measly five minutes. I thought.

  Of course, for most of our lives. Roy and I had believed we were brother and sister. Anyone who really cared to take the time and interest could have looked at him, at me and at Beneatha and challenge that. I guess. My features were so different from Roy and Bentatha's, but for us the thought that Mama Arnold could have had me with a different man was just about as far-fetched as believing we had aliens from Mars or someplace living next door. And there was no way a poor black family would adopt another child. Ken, who never really wanted to be a father in the first place, often complained and said. The devil gives us children to drive us to drink.' Roy told him he didn't need any devil for that. He knew how to drive himself better than any devil could.

  Ken and Roy fought a lot, and until Roy grew taller and stronger. Ken battered him around often. Toward the end of our lives in Washington. Roy began to stand up to him and then there were some really nasty fights, which nearly shattered Mama's fragile heart. Roy's love for her was about all that kept him in check-- and his love for me.

  Once Roy found out I wasn't his blood sister, he confessed his romantic love for me, but it was impossible for me to think of him as anything but my brother. I told him so many times. Up until the moment the truth about me was revealed, he was my big brother, my protector. I knew and Beneatha knew he favored me over her. but I tried to make light of all that and made excuses for him whenever I could. After Beneatha's violent death at the hands of gang members. Mama Arnold wanted to get both of us out of the projects more than anything. She encouraged Roy to enlist in the army and she left to live with her aunt, never telling Roy or me just how sick she really was.

  Apart from each other for some time afterward. Roy and I met again when he came to visit me in London. For a while, lost and confused myself. I seriously considered that we could become man and wife. I let him make love to me almost as a way of testing the waters, but it still didn't feel right. I knew I was breaking his heart. but I couldn't get myself to change. Perhaps what fate had done to us was cruel, yet I also thought what we might do to each other could be worse.

  "No, not everyone, not yet," I said. "My mother's husband knows, of course, but the community here doesn't know it all and my half brother and half sister still don't know."

  "Why not?"

  "I don't know. Roy. It's up to my mother and her husband to tell them."

  "They're still ashamed of you. Rain. That's why," he said.

  "Probably."

  "Who's taking care of you? Is your mother doing that at least?"

  "No," I said. "but remember I told you Grandmother Hudson put me in her will?"

  "Yeah. sure. How much did she leave you?"

  "A lot, Roy."

  "A lot? How much?"

  "It's in the millions. Roy," I said.

  "Huh? Dollars?"

  "Yes," I said laughing, "I own a majority share of the property, a portfolio and fifty percent of the business."

  "Wow."

  "But the family isn't happy about it and they're talking about taking me and the will to court. They want me to compromise and take a million dollars.'" "They do? What are you going to do?" "Fight," I said.

  "Fight? Maybe you ought to just take the money and run. Rain. Why force yourself on a family that doesn't want you?" he asked.

  It was a good question, of course. What did I want out of all this finally? Maybe what I wanted was to see the day when they had to accept me just so that day I could turn my back on them. Pride was rearing up like a magnificent horse.

  "Okay. Arnold, hang up," I heard that person growl again.

  "Where are you. Roy? Why is someone telling you to hang up? Roy?"

  "I'm all right," he said.

  "You did get in trouble for coming to see me in London, didn't you? You better tell me the truth. Roy Arnold," I ordered.

  "All right. I did, but it doesn't mean nothing," he said.

  "Are you in the clink?'

  He laughed.

  "Something like that. Don't worry about it. IT put in my time and then I'll be coming home. I'll be coming back for you. Rain. I promise," he said.

  "Roy..."

  "That's it, hang up," I heard. "Now."

  "Bye for now. Rain." he said quickly and the

  phone went dead in my hands. Thousands of miles away. Roy was being locked up in the stockade, a price he had been willing to pay just to spend another twenty-four hours with me. How I wished he didn't love me that much.

  I dropped my head back to the pillow, but it was almost impossible to fall back to sleep. What was I going to do with my life now? How long would this controversy last? Was Roy right? Should I just pack up and return to England immediately? How I wished I had someone close to advise me, someone more than just an attorney who based everything on black-andwhite pages and legal codes. I didn't even have a close girlfriend.

  Loneliness was
like rust, eating away inside you, weakening your resolve. I just wanted to pull the blanket up and over my head and close myself off from the day and what it might bring. Then I remembered how much Grandmother Hudson hated people who languished in self-pity and how angry.she once got when I dared to pity her. I also recalled my stepfather whining about his life and how my mama hated it.

  "Self-pity is just a fancy way of avoiding responsibility," Grandmother Hudson used to say. "Replace it with good old fashioned raw anger and defiance and you'll get further in your life," she advised.

  "I hear you Grandmother," I muttered under the blanket. Some people are so influential, their voices echo in your head years and years after they've gone Grandmother Hudson was certainly one of them.

  I threw the blanket back and rose to shower, dress and make myself some breakfast. While I sat there sipping coffee, I decided to write my real father a letter and see if he would write back and give me some advice.

  Dear Daddy.,

  As you know I returned to Virginia to attend Grandmother Hudson's funeral. I told my mother I had met you and she was very interested in how you reacted. I also told her about your wonderful family.

  She, my stepfather, and Aunt Victoria are very upset about the amount Grandmother Hudson has left me in her will. They want me to compromise and take less or they, mostly Victoria, I think, will take me and the will to court to challenge everything,

  I don't believe Grandmother Hudson would want me to compromise. Maybe I'm just being stubborn about it and in the end,I'll regret it, but for now, I have said no. My attorney, Grandmother Hudson's attorney, doesn't think I have to compromise either, but I know that sometimes lawyers drag things into courts to make more money for themselves. At least, Grant, my mother's husband, who is a lawyer too, is saying that. He thinks the legal fees will be so big, we'd be better off compromising.

  Anyway, all this could delay my return to London. What do you think about it? Do you think I should just take what they want to give me and run, leave them and this place forever and ever?