I've Got You Under My Skin

13

It had been a long trip from Cleveland to Westchester Airport. A heavy rainstorm had caused their plane to sit on the tarmac for two hours, and even though they were flying on a small private jet, there was little space to move around. This made it very difficult for Rod’s back. At one point, she suggested they just forget the whole thing.

“Alie, this is your chance to get the degree you always wanted. Between Powell and the production company, you’ll net three hundred thousand dollars. It will pay for medical school and all the other expenses, but every cent counts. You know how desperately you have always wanted to be a doctor and then go into medical research,” Rod had said in refusal.

Even if I can commute to school, I will have to be studying all the time. Where does that leave Rod? Or if I have to go away to school, does he leave his job at the pharmacy and come with me but then have nothing to do? she wondered. But if that happens, then the pharmacy loses both him and me, and we have to hire two new people. I don’t know how that’s going to work.

It was three o’clock by her wristwatch when they landed in Westchester. By then Rod’s expression was sufficient proof of the pain he was in. After he hobbled on crutches from the cabin to his waiting wheelchair, Alison bent over him and whispered, “Thank you for making this trip.”

He managed a smile as he looked up at her.

Mercifully the driver, a ruddy-faced man of about fifty with the build of an ex-boxer, was waiting for them in the terminal. He introduced himself to them. “I’m Josh Damiano, Mr. Powell’s chauffeur. He wanted to be sure you had a comfortable ride from the airport to your hotel.”

“How kind of Mr. Powell.” Alison hoped that the contempt she felt did not show. Now that they were back in New York, a kaleidoscope of memories was flooding her mind. Neither one of them had been in New York in fifteen years. That was when the doctors had told Rod there would be no more operations.

By then their money was gone and Rod’s family was taking out loans to support them, but Alison had managed to take the necessary courses at night for a year and get her license as a pharmacist. They had gratefully seized the opportunity to go to Cleveland and work in his cousin’s pharmacy.

I loved New York, she thought, but I was happy to get away from it. I always thought that the minute people saw me, they wondered whether I’d killed Betsy Bonner Powell. In Cleveland, for the most part, we have lived quietly.

“There are benches near the doors,” Damiano said. “Let me get you settled comfortably and go for the car. I’ll try not to be too long.”

They watched as he collected the luggage from the pilots. He was back for them within five minutes. “The car’s right outside,” he said as he helped Rod with his wheelchair.

A shiny black Bentley was waiting at the curb.

When Damiano helped Rod out of the wheelchair and into the backseat, Alison felt her heart wrench.

He’s in so much pain, she thought, but he never complains, and he never talks about the football career he would have had…

The big car began to move. “The traffic’s light,” Damiano told them. “We should be at the hotel in about twenty minutes.”

They had chosen to stay at the Crowne Plaza in White Plains. The town was near enough to Salem Ridge, but far enough away from the hotels where the other three childhood friends who were on the program were staying. Laurie Moran made sure of that.

“You two okay?” Damiano asked them solicitously.

“I’m very comfortable,” Alison assured him as Rod murmured his assent.

But then Rod leaned over and whispered, “Alie, I was thinking, when you’re on camera, not a word about sleepwalking and possibly being in Betsy’s room that night.”

“Oh, Rod I never would,” Alison said, horrified.

“And don’t volunteer that you’re hoping to go to med school unless they ask. It will remind everyone how disappointed you were when you didn’t get the scholarship to medical school, and how furious you were that Robert Powell got the dean to throw it to Vivian Fields.”

The mention of her heartbreak the day of her graduation from college was enough to make Alison’s face contort with pain and rage. “Betsy Powell was trying to get into the Women’s Club with the top-of-the-line socialites, and Vivian Fields’s mother was the president of it. And of course Powell had leverage-he’d just donated a dormitory to the college! The Fieldses could have afforded to pay Vivian’s tuition one hundred times over. Even the dean looked embarrassed when he called out her name. And then he muttered something about Vivian’s academic brilliance. Right! She dropped out in her second year. I could have scratched Betsy’s eyes out!”

“Which is why if they ask you what you’ll do with the money, just say that we’re planning to take a round-the-world ocean cruise,” Rod counseled.

Glancing into the rearview mirror, Josh Damiano observed Rod whispering something to his wife and watched her shocked reaction and how upset she instantly became. He could not hear what they were saying, but he smiled inwardly.

It doesn’t matter whether I can hear them, he thought. The recorder picks up everything that’s said in this car.