Uncle Hale

Theron

His uncle came to Providence on Tuesday, in a car the color of cream, with a bunch of lilies on the seat beside him and a box of pastries from the one bakery in Newport that still baked by hand.

Theron watched him arrive from the window of his office, nine floors up, on the corner of Wickenden and Wharf, and thought, as he had thought a hundred times in thirty-six years: he is the most beautiful man I have ever seen get out of a car.

It was a matter of timing. Hale Wexcombe did not climb out of vehicles. He emerged. He waited for the driver to open the door, and then he paused, one polished shoe on the pavement, to take in the sky and the harbor and the passing faces, as if they had been put there for his approval. He was fifty-eight and looked forty-five. He was tall and lean and tanned, with a head of thick silver hair swept back from a high, fine forehead, and a camel overcoat that had been cut for him alone. He wore it open. He carried a cane he did not need, with a silver knob, and a pale yellow scarf in a style that only a man entirely at ease could wear.

He glanced up, once, at the ninth floor.

Theron stepped back from the glass.

He knew I was watching, he thought. He always knows.

…

"My dear boy."

The door opened without a knock. His uncle came into the office with both hands extended and the lilies held before him like a banner, and a smile of such open, delighted, radiant warmth that for a moment Theron, who had braced for a battle, felt the old unwilling pull. It was the pull of a child at a window, waiting for the lights of a car in the drive.

"Uncle Hale."

"Look at you. You're thin."

"I am the same weight as at Christmas."

"You are thin in the face. You are not eating. Is he eating, Marjorie?"

"Mr. Wexcombe works through lunch, sir," said Marjorie from the door, with the stony demeanor of a woman who has served three generations of Wexcombes and wishes to be thanked by none.

"I thought so. Shocking." Hale deposited the lilies in her arms. "Put those in water, my dear. And bring us tea. And a plate for the pastries. They are from Alden's, they are still warm, and they will not survive the conversation."

"Yes, sir."

"And Marjorie."

"Sir?"

"Close the door. Thank you."

It clicked.

They were alone. Hale surveyed the office with the benevolent air of a landlord. It was a plain room, by the standard of the family. A broad desk of oak. A table with a model of a tugboat. A wall of glass, and behind the glass the long gray curve of the harbor, and the chimney stacks of the old power plant, and the gantry cranes of the Port of Providence like a procession of giraffes. On the far wall, where in his father's day there had hung an oil painting of the Marguerite I, there now hung a photograph in a simple black frame. It showed a boy of sixteen in a sailing jacket, squinting into a hard bright sun, with a rope in his hand and his mouth open in a shout of laughter.

Hale's eyes rested on it.

"He was a beautiful boy," he said softly.

"Yes."

"I think of him every day."

"I know you do."

"It is a thing one never gets over." Hale crossed to the photograph. He did not touch it. He stood with his hands clasped on the silver knob of his cane and his handsome head bowed. The light from the window lay across his shoulders. "I was in Geneva when I heard. At the opera. A page came to the box. I knew before he spoke. I thought: it is Kit."

"You told me."

"I told you at the funeral. But I find that I wish to say it again." He turned. His blue eyes, which were Theron's father's, and Kit's, and Theron's own, were wet. "I have not been well, since. I have not been myself. If I have been harsh with you, my boy, in these months, if there has been an edge in my voice at the board, I wish you to know that it was grief, and nothing else."

It was a perfect speech.

It was delivered in a perfect voice, to a perfect silence. And Theron stood behind his desk with his hands at his sides, and felt in his chest the exact, familiar, hateful mixture of tenderness and nausea which had been the weather of his whole childhood.

He means it, he thought. That is what no one understands. He means every word. He grieves. He loved Kit. And at the same moment he is a man with a knife in his pocket.

The two are not in contradiction. They never were.

"Sit down, Uncle," he said.

"Thank you, dear."

The old man lowered himself into the visitor's chair. He crossed one leg over the other, tilted the cane against his knee, and arranged on his face the look of a man who has come to discuss the weather.

"Now," he said. "Let us talk about the child."

…

It was so smoothly done that for an instant Theron did not take it in.

He had sat down. He had folded his hands. He had assumed his customary mask of attentive, courteous reserve, and was in the act of reaching for the carafe when the sentence fell on him. He stopped with his hand on the glass. A bead of water ran down the neck of the carafe and onto his cuff.

"I beg your pardon?"

"The child, Theron. Your brother's son."

"There is no—"

"Don't." Hale lifted one finger. His tone was still gentle, almost tender. "Please. We're family. It's an insult to both of us. I have known since the twenty-first of December, when the will was entered in the probate registry. I have known the sex since the third of February. I know the mother's name, and where she works, and the street she lives on. I know she is twenty-five weeks, and that her due date falls on or about the eighth of June, and that she has been, in the main, in excellent health."

The room was very quiet.

Outside the window, a tug blew a long low note. A gull screamed. Somewhere on the floor below a telephone rang, once, twice, and was answered.

Theron laid his hand flat on the desk.

"Who told you?"

"Does it matter?"

"Yes."

"I should rather not say. It would only embarrass the person." Hale smiled, with great charm. "But I will say that it was not through any impropriety. I did not break into a medical file. I did not bribe a nurse. One simply has friends, dear boy, in a small state. One hears things at dinner."

Wade Pruitt, thought Theron. Whom I paid forty thousand dollars. Who sold the information to both sides.

Or another.

"You have had me watched," he said.

"I have had the situation watched. It is entirely different."

"A man in a gray sedan has been parked on Ives Street for five weeks."

"Has he? I'm sure it's a coincidence."

"He was photographing the windows."

"My dear Theron." Hale spread his hands. "If I were watching, I should hardly be so clumsy as to park in front. I should be a great deal more discreet." He took a pastry from the plate Marjorie had set down, and bit it, and chewed with relish. "These are quite excellent. You must try one."

Theron did not move.

"What do you want?" he said.

"What do I want? Nothing at all. I came to see my nephew. I came to talk." Hale licked a crumb from his thumb. "I'm an old man, Theron. I'm tired. I have buried a brother and a nephew in the space of eighteen months. I have a quarrel with nobody. I merely wish, before I die, to see the family secure."

"Secure."

"Secure. Provided for. Protected." Hale dusted his fingers on a napkin. "Which brings me to the child."

…

"I am going to be frank," said Hale.

"I would prefer it."

"Kit was a sweet boy. He was a dear, dear boy. And he was twenty-four. I say this with the greatest affection. At twenty-four, one is full of ideas. One has read a book. One has been crossed in love, or has seen a sad film, and one rushes to a lawyer's office and dictates an Article."

"Article Four."

"Yes."

"You have read it."

"I have it by heart." Hale's smile did not alter. "It says that twenty-eight percent of the voting stock of Wexcombe Marine, a block that your father spent forty years consolidating, a block on which the entire control of this family's business depends, shall pass to any child of Christopher Calder Wexcombe, however conceived, however born. It says that the stock shall be held in trust, with full voting rights, until the child reaches the age of twenty-five. And it says that the child's guardian, a guardian, mind you, a woman we do not know, a girl from Fall River, I'm sure a perfectly nice person, shall exercise those votes."

"I am aware of what it says."

"Are you also aware of what it means?"

"I believe I am."

"Then you will see my difficulty." Hale leaned forward. His voice dropped, grew confiding. "Twenty-eight percent, my boy. You hold thirty-one. I hold twenty-two. The remainder is spread among cousins and the pension fund. Twenty-eight in the hands of a stranger is a kingmaker. It is a hostile tender offer waiting to happen. It is a hundred-and-forty-year-old shipyard, a thousand jobs, a legacy of the sea, handed to a— forgive me. To a claims adjuster."

"Miss Rourke is an extraordinary woman."

"I'm sure she is."

"She is also the child's mother."

"She is a person, Theron. A kind, hardworking, ordinary person, who has never once been exposed to the pressures of a boardroom. She does not know what a proxy fight is. She has no concept of what it is to hold a block of stock against the ambitions of men like Halvorsen, or Pettigrew, or the banks. She will be devoured." He said it with infinite sorrow. "I have seen it. I saw what became of your Aunt Isobel. I saw what became of Marjorie's husband, who inherited a boatyard in Warren and thought he could manage it."

"You speak as though the child were already a corporation."

"A twenty-eight percent stake is a corporation, my boy. In all but name."

Theron said nothing.

The tea came. Marjorie set it down with a neat rattle, glanced from one face to the other, and departed. Hale poured. He added a lump of sugar, stirred it, and sipped, and watched his nephew over the rim of the cup with eyes as blue and clear and innocent as a summer sea.

"So," he said. "I have a proposal."

…

"It is very simple," said Hale. "It requires only a little goodwill, and a signature."

"I am listening."

"Kessler has filed a petition. You will have heard of it."

"Ansel told me."

"It requests that the court appoint a guardian ad litem to represent the child's interests. A neutral. An independent. Someone with no interest but the welfare of the minor." Hale set down his cup. "It further requests that the shares be held in escrow, by a professional trustee, until such time as the child comes of age."

"Naming the Hale Wexcombe Family Trust."

"A suggestion. Only a suggestion. I should be perfectly happy with any competent institution."

"You would be perfectly happy with your own."

"I have a very competent trust."

"You have a trust with one trustee and no oversight."

"I have a trust with a great deal of oversight. I have a Providence bank, and a Boston firm, and—" Hale smiled. "My dear, you are not listening. I am not asking you to oppose anything. I am asking you to do nothing. To consent. To sign a stipulation that you do not contest the petition. That the matter may proceed on the thirtieth, before Judge Marchetti, in an orderly way, with the full agreement of the family. No quarrel. No scandal. No public hearing. And the child will be protected, and the mother will be left in peace."

"And the mother's name?"

"Never to be mentioned."

"And Miss Rourke's consent?"

There was a pause.

It was a very small one. It lasted perhaps half a second. But Theron had spent a lifetime watching his uncle's face, and he saw it: the way the blue eyes stilled. The way the smile held, and held, and for the length of one heartbeat contained nothing at all.

"I think," said Hale gently, "that the less she is troubled with, the better."

"You do not intend to ask her."

"I intend to spare her."

"By depriving her of the opportunity to refuse."

"By depriving her of a burden she is not equipped to bear." Hale's voice was warm and patient. "Theron. I'm not a monster. I have no wish to separate a mother from her child. I should be the first to see that the boy is raised in her house. I should send Christmas gifts. I should visit, if she liked. I should adore to be an uncle." He spread his hands. "But the votes are not an infant's toy. They are a trust, and a heavy one, and in the end they must be exercised by someone who understands what they are. Surely you see that. You, of all people."

"I?"

"You did not want the chair." Hale's gaze was kind. "I remember. You were twenty-six, and Gerard was dying, and you stood in his study with your hands behind your back and said, 'I do not wish to do this.' You said it very quietly. And I said, 'No one does. That is how we know it must be done.'"

Theron felt the room tilt.

"You have never forgiven yourself," said Hale, "for taking it. I have watched you. Every morning at nine you put on that suit and you come in here and you sit in your father's chair and you hate it. You are so good at it, my boy. You are so terribly, terribly good. And it is killing you."

"Uncle—"

"I am offering you a way out."

The words fell softly into the quiet.

"A way," Hale continued, "that does not require you to fail. Merely to share. Let the child's block be held, safely, in a family trust, in the hands of an old man who has spent forty years learning to steer the ship. Let her have the income, which would be considerable. Let her live in peace. And you, my dear nephew, may do what you have always wanted to do."

"Which is?"

"Be a man," said Hale, "and not a chairman."

A long silence.

Theron sat with his hands folded on the desk. He found, with a kind of distant interest, that he was not trembling. His left hand lay on the blotter, long and pale and perfectly still. It did not shake.

So, he thought. That is what it feels like.

To be exactly as angry as one is afraid.

"I shall consider it," he said.

"Of course."

"I shall consult counsel."

"By all means."

"And Miss Rourke."

"Ah." Hale's smile deepened. "Yes. Miss Rourke. On the Sunday, I understand."

…

For perhaps three seconds Theron did not breathe.

He kept his face as it was. He kept his hands where they were. But beneath the desk, out of sight, the nails of his left hand dug into his palm with such force that he felt the skin give.

"I beg your pardon?"

"The fourteenth," said Hale. "I believe you have set yourself a date. You have told yourself you shall speak to her on the fourteenth. After her appointment, I think. When she is calm. When she is rested." He picked up a pastry. "It is a very sensible plan. I applaud it. I would only observe that it is eight days away. And that the process server will come on the sixteenth."

"Who told you the date?"

"Dear boy."

"Who?"

"I really cannot say," said Hale. "I'm told that she mentioned it to her mother. In the car. And her mother, I gather, is a woman who likes to share." He took a bite, and chewed, and added with gentle regret: "The man she lives with, I fear, is a good deal less discreet."

Ray.

The name arrived in Theron's mind like a coin dropped in a well.

Ray Dufresne. In the front seat of the Bentley, in a Fall River Fire Department cap. Speaking not a word.

Listening.

"He is a wretched sort of fellow," said Hale with great mildness. "A bit of a gambler. A bit of a drinker. A man who has been carried, all his life, on the generosity of women. One feels for him. And in a family like that, you see, there is always a strain of... need." He sighed. "I confess I thought it rather sad."

"You are paying him."

"I am doing nothing of the kind."

"You are paying him to inform on his own girlfriend's daughter."

"My dear Theron, I have never paid that man a penny. I have merely made it clear that I should be very grateful for news. And that a friend in need is a friend indeed." Hale wiped his fingers. "He was in the garden on Saturday, I believe. At your mother's party. He was on the telephone."

"To you."

"To a person who was passing by."

Theron rose.

He did not know he had done it. He stood behind the oak desk with his hands flat on the blotter, in the pale light, and felt the whole weight of the room tilt toward him. He was six foot two. His uncle sat in the visitor's chair, graceful, smiling, one leg crossed over the other, with his cane against his knee, and looked up at him as one looks up at a favorite child who is about to throw a tantrum.

"You were at Ledge Point," said Theron.

"I was in the vicinity."

"You were on my mother's lawn. At a baby shower. In the rain. In the presence of the woman you are attempting to dispossess."

"I was passing."

"You were spying."

"Dear boy." Hale held up both hands. "I did not exchange a word with her. I did not so much as approach the house. I stood beneath a yew, with an umbrella, and I observed a family gathering from a distance. It is not a crime to look at a lawn."

"What did you see?"

A pause.

"I saw," said Hale, and for the first time something real came into his face, a flash of something raw and old and entirely sincere, "a table full of women laughing. Your mother among them. Laughing, for the first time since the funeral. With her head thrown back. With her hand on that girl's arm."

Theron said nothing.

"I have not seen Constance laugh in nineteen months," said Hale. "And I thought: that is what it would cost me. To take it from her. To stand in a courtroom and say, in my best voice, that this girl is unfit." He looked down at his hands. "I am not made of stone, Theron."

"No."

"I would rather it were done quietly."

"I am sure you would."

"So sign." Hale lifted his eyes. They were wet again, and clear, and unwavering. "Sign the stipulation. Let us end it. For your mother's sake, and the boy's, and your own. I shall make it as painless as I can. I give you my word."

There was a long silence.

Then Theron said, very quietly:

"Did you alter the certificate?"

…

It was a stab in the dark.

He had not known he was going to say it. It rose in him from somewhere deep, from the cold place where he did sums, and came out before he could weigh it. Three days ago he'd stood in a boardroom and heard Kessler murmur, in his dry high voice, that it would be prudent to press Narragansett to close before the adjuster completed her review. Two weeks ago he'd had a call from Hartford, from a sandy-haired young man with an apologetic stammer, who had said, in a rush, Mr. Wexcombe, I'm not supposed to say this, but you may want to look at who has been touching your submission.

He had not looked.

He had been too busy not telling a woman something.

"The certificate?" said Hale.

"The Ocean State certificate. For the fire suppression system on the Marguerite. The one submitted to Narragansett Mutual in support of the owner's claim, and of our own maintenance records." Theron kept his eyes on his uncle's face. "It has been brought to my attention that the date was altered. From August to September. After the loss."

"My dear boy, I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about."

"I think you do."

"I assure you—"

"The attestation of our maintenance records was assembled in the week after the funeral. By the service department. Under the vice-chairman." The words came slowly, each one laid down like a plank. "On the twelfth of November, in the library at Ledge Point, you brought me a folder. I had been awake for thirty hours. I had a black tie round my neck. You said, 'Only the insurers, dear boy. A formality. Sign where the flags are.' And I signed."

"As chief executive."

"As chief executive. Under oath. Attesting that every enclosed document was true." Theron's voice did not rise. "I did not read it. I have not forgiven myself for that either."

"Theron—"

"You did not merely alter a date, Uncle. You had me attest to it."

Hale did not answer.

"The system lapsed on the twenty-sixth of October," said Theron. "Four days before the fire. Someone in the service department discovered it in the first week of November. We held the service contract on that vessel. If the lapse stood, the owner in Palm Beach would sue this company for eleven million eight hundred thousand dollars, for a duty that was ours and a lapse that was ours. And the bank's covenant falls due in April, and the Halvorsen drydock has already consumed our reserves. We should have been forced to the market for a partner. And the partner would have been Halvorsen. Who has been courting you since October." He felt it assembling in his mind with a cold crystalline click, like a ship's lock. "So you moved a nine over an eight. And you put my signature underneath. And you kept the folder."

"This is fantasy."

"Is it?"

"It is an insult."

"It is arithmetic."

For the first time in his life, Theron saw his uncle's smile falter.

It did not vanish. It flickered, like a candle in a draft. For an instant the handsome, sun-browned face was perfectly empty. Beneath the geniality, beneath the warmth, he saw something flat and cold and old: not rage, not guilt, but a kind of weary, unsurprised appraisal, as of a man watching a clock hand reach a number he'd long ago calculated.

"You are your father's son," said Hale softly.

"I have been told."

"He too could never leave a ledger alone."

"Did you do it?"

"I think," said Hale, rising, and drawing his scarf about his throat, "that you should be exceedingly careful what you say, in future, about a family member. In a room. With a telephone." He took up his cane. "I have been very patient. I have been very kind. I came here in good faith. And you have answered me with an accusation which, were it repeated, could cost you the confidence of the board." He paused, and added, quite tenderly: "You signed it, dear boy. Under oath. A jury might call that carelessness. A regulator might call it something with a longer name. I should hate to see you learn the word."

"I do not intend to repeat it."

"Good."

"I intend to prove it."

"Prove what? There is nothing to prove." Hale went to the door. His hand, in its tan kidskin glove, rested on the knob. He turned. His face was composed again, gracious, benign. "I will give you until the sixteenth. That is a courtesy. You may tell her, or not. You may consult your counsel, or not. You may sign, or not. But in eight days, my dear Theron, a man in a raincoat will arrive at a door in Providence. And on that day, you will have only two choices."

"Which are?"

"To have told her," said Hale, "or to be the man who didn't."

He smiled.

"I should hate to think which she would find harder to forgive."

He went out. The door closed softly. The lilies, in their vase on Marjorie's desk, nodded in the draft.

…

Theron stood where he was.

He stood for a very long time. The tea steamed gently on the tray. The pastries, as predicted, had not survived. A tug sounded on the harbor, a long, low, mournful note, and the sun slid out from behind a cloud and struck the black frame on the wall, so that for a moment the boy's laughing face blazed white.

Eight days.

He sat down.

He sat in his father's chair, in the pale light, and put his head in his hands.

He thought of his uncle's voice. To have told her, or to be the man who didn't. He thought of the lawn, and the umbrella, and the table of women laughing. He thought of Ray Dufresne, a bad-tempered, sentimental, frightened man with a gambling debt and a cap that said FALL RIVER FIRE DEPT, who had sat in the front seat of a Bentley for an hour and a half and listened to a woman say Sunday.

It was Dess who said it, he thought. To her mother. In confidence.

Because I told her the date.

Because I said it, in her kitchen, to Joelle, and she heard me, and she trusted me enough to tell the one person in the world she thought she could.

The desk lamp hummed.

He knows the date, he thought. He knows the hour. He will arrive three days after. He has arranged the whole thing so that I can do nothing at all but what I had already promised to do.

It is a very elegant trap.

It is the trap of a man who has understood that the surest way to ruin someone is to wait for him to keep his word.

He lifted his head.

On the desk, beside the carafe, lay his phone. He turned it over. There was a message on the screen, delivered at 11:52, in the blunt, unpunctuated, maddening manner of a woman who texted as she spoke.

Dess: Lunch. Tidewater. 1pm. I'm bringing chowder. Don't say you can't. I will bring it to the OFFICE and give it to Marjorie.

Dess: Also I have a question that isn't a question. Tell you later.

Dess: Also I love you. Don't make it weird.

He read it.

He read it a second time.

Then he laid the phone down on the blotter, very gently, and covered his face with both hands, and for a space of perhaps a minute he sat quite still, and the only sound in the room was the small dry ticking of the brass clock on the shelf.

I love you. Don't make it weird.

Eight days.

He drew a breath, and lowered his hands.

And, because he was Theron Wexcombe, and had never in his life failed to rise from a chair, he stood, and straightened his tie, and took his coat from the stand.

"Marjorie," he said, opening the door.

"Sir?"

"Cancel my two o'clock. And my three. And get me Mr. Pryor on the telephone." He paused. "And Marjorie."

"Yes, sir?"

"Whatever is left of those pastries." His voice was steady. "Wrap them. Miss Rourke is fond of the lemon."