Son of Rosemary Read online

  A knock at the outer door stopped her heart. “Room service!” restarted it—she had ordered platters of shrimp and cheese. A white-haired waiter wheeled a table alongside the doorway, his face almost as red as his gilt-buttoned, I ANDY-buttoned jacket. “In the living room, ma’am?” he asked.

  “Yes, please,” she said, and followed after him and his dozen-domed table. “I only ordered shrimp and cheese.”

  “Compliments of the management, ma’am. Shall I open the bar?”

  “Please,” she said.

  She turned the mammoth TV on while the waiter sprang table wings and rearranged domed dishes, silverware, napkins. The news was into sports already; she turned the thing off. “Isn’t there a bill I can sign for the tip?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am, most certainly not.” He unfolded teak screens from a small mirrored bar. “I’d be honored, however...”

  She signed a cocktail napkin for him.

  She stood looking down through parted draperies at white and red lanes of car lights far below, lanes reaching up Park Avenue’s separate sides and coming together blocks and blocks away. What would she say after the hugs and kisses? How would she frame the questions she had to ask? And more importantly, how could she be sure of the truth of Andy’s answers?

  It was fine calling him her angel, it was how she felt and it was good for his self-esteem. She had done it often, and often he had been angelic. But he was her half-devil too; she shouldn’t let herself forget it, especially not tonight.

  He had lied to her before, believably, and more than once. Just a few months ago—make that almost twenty-eight years ago—he had broken a small piece off Minnie and Roman’s marble mantel, and totally convinced the three of them not only that he—a knock at the door.

  She turned, starting toward the foyer, but “Room service!” came in, another red-jacketed waiter, shouldering a wine cooler and glasses on a tray. “Champagne, compliments of the management.”

  Stopping, sighing, she said, “Thanks, that’s great. Would you put it on the bar please?” She returned to the window.

  Five-and-a-half-year-old Andy had totally convinced all three of them not only—“Do I at least get a hug before I open it?”

  She spun.

  He stood by the bar beaming at her—Andy!— Jesus-handsome, combing his hair back with both hands, his bearded face flushed, his eyes shining. “I didn’t want to attract attention,” he said, coming toward her in his gilt-buttoned, I ANDY-buttoned red jacket, springing one side of his black bow tie, undoing his shirt collar, opening his arms.

  After the hugs and kisses, the sighs and caresses and tears and tissues, he wrapped the champagne in a napkin, uncaged the cork and popped it—all with the panache of a union member.

  Giggling, she said, “Where did you get all this stuff?”

  “Downstairs in the bar,” he said, laughing with her. “I swore a waiter to secrecy. You have no idea how glad everyone is to help me!” He tipped the wrapped bottle, pouring foam into her crystal tulip. Filled it to the brim . . .

  Filled his own . . .

  They gazed at each other over the glasses, he taller than she, as the foam fizzed down into pale gold wine. He shook his head. “Words can’t say it,” he said to her. Eyes locked, they clinked glasses, sipped.

  “Contacts?” she asked him.

  “Old-fashioned black magic,” he said.

  “They’re beautiful,” she said. “It’s a real improvement.”

  Chuckling, he leaned and kissed her cheek. “And here I thought you were honest,” he said. “Let’s sit down, Mom. There’s a lot I have to explain to you.”

  “God’s Children,” Andy said, “was meant to be a trap, a death trap, a way to wipe out all human life. He was finally going to win. Instant Armageddon.” His eyes blazed—so intensely she could almost see his tiger eyes again. “Now,” he said, “when I learn about this, that he let them do it to you and never gave me a CLUE about it—!” He drew in a long, deep breath. “Now, more than ever, I’m glad I fucked him! Excuse the language but that’s what I did, Mom. I screwed up his Master Plan, thirty-three years in the making.”

  They sat close together, facing each other, clasping hands, on a dark cloud of sofa, each with a leg tucked under.

  “It was why he came up when he did,” he told her. “Covens are always ‘summoning’ him—real witches, fakes, fakes who think they’re real, the whole range. He laughs. But he needed a child here who would be the right age by the year 2000. So when the Bramford coven called in ’65, with you on the altar, he answered.” She looked away. “I’m sorry,” he said, bending, kissing her hands. “That was really brilliant of me. I’m sorry. It must have been an awful experience.”

  She drew breath. Looked at him. Said, “Go on. How was the plan supposed to work?” She watched him as he took a sip of champagne.

  “Well,” he said, licking his lips, setting the glass back on the coffee table, “first of all, there would be a charismatic leader, a great communicator.” He smiled at her. “With normal-looking human eyes. He would be the age Jesus was during his ministry; he might even brush up the resemblance a little.” Lifting his bearded chin, he brushed fingers beneath it. “Enough to lure the Christians,” he said, smiling, “not enough to scare the Muslims and Buddhists and Jews. Being who he was, he’d have the connections and funds to launch the best and biggest media campaign in world history.” He stopped smiling. Looked away. Drew a troubled breath.

  She watched him.

  He looked back at her. “When it peaked,” he said, “when everyone on Earth trusted him except a handful of PA’s—paranoid atheists—he would betray them. The best and biggest betrayal in world history. Biochemicals. You don’t want to know.”

  She winced; biochemicals sounded deadly, whatever they were.

  He leaned closer to her, squeezing her hands. “That’s what I was bred for, Mother,” he said. “By him and by the coven. But when the strong members died—Minnie and Roman and Abe—I began to ask questions. I was in my teens then. A lot of the rites and rituals were laughable, and a lot were—repulsive. I like humans, most of them, no matter who created them; I’m half one, aren’t I? Half you? More then half, look at me!”

  She nodded, biting her lip.

  “So I rebelled,” he said. “Your half of me got stronger than his. Those few years we did have together”—he shook his head, his eyes wet—“I tried so hard to keep the memory, the warmth and sweetness, the goodness of you...” He knuckled an eye, trying to smile at her.

  Caressing his cheek, she said, “Ah my Andy...”

  They leaned to each other, pecked lips.

  She backhanded her cheek, smiling at him, blinking.

  He shifted, loosed gilt buttons at his waist. “So as I said,” he said, “I rebelled. He has no control over me while I’m here—more proof that my human side is stronger—so I decided to make GC into what he meant it only to look like, something good for humanity. Andy’s message is simple and true and it doesn’t turn anyone off except the PA’s, and you know what, Mom? It works. The temperature’s gone down a few degrees. Everybody’s a little less short-tempered. Teachers and students, bosses and employees, husbands and wives, friends, countries—all going a little easier on each other. In a way, it’s a tribute to you, Mom. Not in a way, that’s what it is: a tribute to everything you gave me in those first few years.”

  She studied him. Said, “How does...”

  “He feel?” He sighed, smiled. “How can I convey it? Picture a conservative father whose son joined the Peace Corps, then multiply it by ten.”

  She smiled at him, and said, “You know how to press a liberal’s buttons.”

  “I’m a great communicator,” he said, smiling back at her. “He’s furious. We’re on the outs. But while I’m here he can’t do anything to stop me. If he could, he would have by now.” He glanced at his watch, multidialed, black and gold. “I have to go,” he said, getting up.

  “So soon?” she said, getti
ng up too, brushing his hand from her elbow.

  “I’ve got visiting dignitaries,” he said.

  “You didn’t eat anything! There’s all this food!”

  He reached into his jacket, chuckling. “Mother,” he said, “from tomorrow on, you’re not going to be able to get me out of your hair.” Putting a card on the coffee table, he said, “The written number always reaches me, in minutes.” He put his arm around her; they started toward the door. “There’s a first-rate hotel in the lower floors of the building I’m in. We’ll move you over there tomorrow morning. I’m in the penthouse—the fifty-second story, overlooking the park. You can’t imagine the view. GCNY has three floors, the eighth, ninth, and tenth.” In the foyer, he buttoned his shirt collar. “Do you think you’ll be up to a press conference tomorrow afternoon? It would help if I knew now.”

  “Sure I will,” she said, fastening the clip of his bow tie for him. “It’ll be fun.” His bearded chin high, he said, “I need the tray and the cooler. Otherwise I’m going to be spotted.”

  She held the door open a few inches with her slippered foot, watching him go to the bar; smiled at him as he returned. She said, “What a great Thanksgiving it’s going to be!”

  “Oh shit, I forgot,” he said. “I’m committed. I have to go to Mike Van Buren’s. Will you be my date? Please?” He stood before her, the tray at his shoulder. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “Half the Republican right wing is going to be there. I slept over at the White House Saturday night and it’s important I stay even-handed, with the primaries beginning.”

  “Well, it’s not exactly my crowd,” she said, buttoning his jacket for him, “but of course, my darling.”

  “They’re going to flip over you,” he said, smiling at her.

  She stepped closer, looking up into his eyes. “Andy,” she asked him, holding on to one of his gilt buttons, “have you been totally honest with me?”

  His hazel eyes—which were nice, now that she was getting used to them—gazed earnestly, unswervingly into hers. “I swear I have, Mom,” he said. “I know I lied when I was little. And I do now—plenty. But never again to you, Mom. Never. I owe you too much, I love you too much. Believe me.”

  Caressing his cheek, she said, “I do, my—baby.”

  “Oh please,” he said.

  They pecked, and she watched him go out with the cooler on his shoulder.

  She closed the door, frowning.

  5

  Andy’s Mom is at the Waldorf and you can bet Andy’s there too—he jetted in from Arizona last night, it was on the news.

  And there’s going to be a press conference at GCNY headquarters at three this afternoon. That’s at Columbus Circle.

  Residents of the tristate area added together the available information, factored in a large sunny H extending over the entire region plus a four-day holiday starting tomorrow, and got into their cars, buses, Amtraks, LIRR’s, B trains, D trains, rollerblades and strollers, and out of their midtown offices. By eleven o’clock, people of all sizes and descriptions packed every square foot of sidewalk on the logical route between point A and point B— nine blocks north on Park Avenue, and five blocks west, three of them double-length, on East Fifty-ninth Street and Central Park South.

  Members of the NYPD, already burdened with preparations for the Thanksgiving Day parade, might well have been expected to show a degree of surliness as they braced themselves against creaking barriers—but smiles and good spirits prevailed. Wasn’t this all for Andy? And Andy’s Mom, for chrissake?

  In the foyer of the suite, Andy and Rosemary hugged each other, he in a GC zipper jacket, jeans, and sneakers, she in a designer suit, her I ANDY button, and heels. He presented the group he had brought with him—his press coordinator Diane, his buddy and driver Joe, a secretary, Judy, who would get those 429 messages transferred to GC’s computer and prioritized, and Muhammed and Kevin, already in the bedroom assembling corrugated cartons for her clothes. They had driven over in an unmarked van, through the park at Sixty-fifth Street and down Second Avenue, to avoid the crowds. “Have you seen what’s going on out there?” Diane asked.

  “I can’t believe it!” Rosemary said. “It’s like when the Pope was here, and President Kennedy!”

  Diane nodded. Her feathered hair was gray, her eyes violet; she was late-sixtyish. A gold GC logo hung on the bosom of her dark queen-size dress. “All those patient people,” she said in a diva’s deep contralto, “waiting and praying for a glimpse of the mother of your son! From what I saw last night, I knew you wouldn’t want to fly past them in a limousine with tinted windows; you’re a gracious, warm-hearted woman. So I took it upon myself”—she clapped a hand to her bosom, sending velveteen shock waves—“Andy had nothing to do with it, it was my idea, but he’s agreeable if you are...”

  Reclining side by side on patched fake-leather upholstery, their hands—his right, her left—meshed between them, they clip-clopped up Park Avenue in a horse-drawn open carriage, waving and smiling and nodding at the barrier-bound crowds clapping on both sides, at the homemade I ANDY and I ANDY’S MOM signs, at the hands waving from office-building windows.

  A rolling police car led the way; security men walked alongside, another sat high in front with the top-hatted driver. Every block or so, Andy hugged Rosemary and kissed her cheek; the crowd cheered. He leaned to speak in her ear—“Makes you feel like an idiot after a while, doesn’t it?”—and the crowd cheered louder.

  News choppers whanged away at the sky. When the slow procession below took its westward turn at Fifty-ninth Street—police car, horse-and-carriage, police car— Park Avenue’s left lanes were cobbled with cars all the way up through the Sixties and Seventies.

  They had to wait a few minutes at Fifth Avenue till cameras stopped rolling in front of the floodlit Plaza Hotel. He said in her ear, “Movies, commercials, fashion shoots, you can’t get anywhere in this town.” The crowd cheered.

  They clip-clopped along Central Park South, waving, smiling, nodding at even bigger crowds, more signs—I ANDY, I ROSEMARY—spreading into the park, climbing the trees.

  Ahead, where the park ended, a glittering tower of golden glass rammed high in the blue sky.

  Shaking her head, Rosemary turned to Andy. “I’m dreaming,” she said, and kissed his cheek and hugged him. The crowd roared.

  Pointing ahead over the slim microphone, she said, “You.”

  “Thank you. Which name do you want to be called by—Reilly, Woodhouse, or Castevet?”

  She said, “Well . . . everyone seems to go right to first names now—I don’t know if that’s Andy’s influence or if it would have happened anyway”—a small laugh surprised her—“so just Rosemary will be fine,” she said. “Legally, I’m Rosemary Eileen Reilly. Actually I guess the name I like best is the one I saw today on some of the signs, Andy’s Mom.”

  Laughter, and a spatter of clapping, a sizzle of cameras. Diane, among the standees, clapped fortissimo, smiling and nodding.

  The Tower had been an office building in an earlier incarnation, a motion-picture company’s headquarters; its high ceilings had enabled GCNY’s architect to design its auditorium, on the ninth floor, in the form of a semicircular amphitheater—Andy’s concept. Five steep steps, carpeted in forest green like every square inch of the place, held sixty or so people; another twenty stood at the sides. On the half-moon stage, Andy and Rosemary sat at a table draped with sky blue and hung with a gilded GC logo. A trio of black video cameras clung to ceiling rods, turning beaked heads this way and that, pausing, turning. Muhammed and Kevin roamed with fishpole mikes.

  Rosemary, smiling as the clapping petered out, pointed to her left and said, “You. No, you. Yes.”

  “Rosemary, how do you feel about having missed out on Andy’s whole growing up?”

  “Awful,” she said. “That’s definitely the worst part of the experience. But I’m glad”—she smiled at Andy, squeezed his hand—“that he managed so well without me.”

  He leaned clos
e. “I didn’t,” he said. “I didn’t, and Mom didn’t miss the whole thing. I told her last night— or early this morning, I should say—that she was with me during the most important years, one to six. She’s the one who set my feet in the path I’m following today.” He kissed her cheek.

  Clapping. Cameras. “Rosemary!” “Rosemary!”

  She pointed. “You.”

  “Rosemary, so far no one’s been able to locate Andy’s real father or find any information about him since the summer of 1966. Can you explain why that is?”

  “No, I can’t,” she said. “Guy went out to California then, and we divorced and lost touch.”

  “Would you tell us more about him?”

  She stayed silent. Cleared her throat. Said, “He was a very good actor, as I said last night. He was in three Broadway plays, Luther, Nobody Loves an Albatross, and Gunpoint. We had our differences, obviously, but he was, or is—a fine person, very—thoughtful, unselfish—”

  “There are still areas,” Andy said, his hand on her arm, “where Mom’s memory hasn’t fully returned. Please, could we have a different question? John?”

  She wanted to speak to him alone, but when they got to her seventh-floor suite, the living room was occupied by a dozen men and women, the inner circle of GCNY. A waiter offered hors d’oeuvres, a bartender poured wine. Diane presented William-the-legal-director and Sandy-the-publications-director, and before Rosemary had even gotten on a last-name basis with them, still on her first Gibson, Andy was touching her shoulder with a sorry-gotta-go-now look in those really beautiful hazel eyes. He apologized to William and Sandy, drawing her aside.

  “I’m sorry, Mom, I have to go now,” he said. “Some public-health officials from Louisiana are coming to see me, it was set up last week and I’m not sure what it’s about or how long it’s going to take. If you need anything or want to see a show tonight, ask Diane, or Judy or Joe. Van Buren’s farm is in Pennsylvania; we’ll be driving, leaving at noon.” He tipped his tawny head toward the window. “Joe’ll call for you.” He kissed her cheek and left.