Miles apart, p.2
Miles Apart, page 2
“Her real friends were home in Italy,” he replied. “I still don’t understand why she wanted to be buried back here.”
Margaret had a feeling she did and wondered if deep inside he might, too, and was not willing to admit it.
“She grew very nostalgic toward the end,” Margaret said. “Maybe it was having me around. Getting to speak English regularly again probably put her in mind of a different time and place.” With a self-deprecating snort, she added, “Or maybe it was my Southern drawl.”
“There was nothing wrong with her Italian,” Johnny commented.
Margaret had to smile. “No, there wasn’t. When we were growing up I would never have imagined her even making an attempt to learn a foreign language, much less speaking one well. We had to take two years of French in high school, and she was terrible at it.”
Johnny emitted a soft chuckle. “It never got any better. On the few occasions when she attempted to speak French with our guests, it would have been embarrassing if she hadn’t been so willing to joke about it.”
Another change in Lillah. Margaret had no recollection of her being able to laugh at herself.
“Dad spoke excellent French,” Johnny went on. “He could never understand how Mom could learn one language and not another.”
They turned onto a secondary road, passed a few scattered clapboard homes huddled meekly under towering maple and oak trees. Most of the houses had been there when Margaret and Lillah were growing up and hadn’t changed much. A few were newer, bigger, but were still not the kind that left a lasting impression.
“That’s where your mom grew up.” Margaret pointed to a shake-shingle house that appeared to need a fresh coat of paint as much today as it had thirty years ago. “I lived down the road a ways, but our place is gone now.”
“Doesn’t look like much,” he said.
She shook her head. “It wasn’t.” She could see an addition at the rear of the bungalow. “Just four rooms back then.”
“What were they like?” he asked. “My mother’s parents?”
“You don’t remember them at all?”
He shook his head. “Never saw them once we went to Italy, and I don’t recall much before that.”
Like your father or how much he loved you.
“Ordinary people, really. Your grandfather worked in a hardware store. Never missed a day’s work, as far as I know.”
“And my grandmother?” Johnny asked.
“I guess you’d call Ida Mae a country woman. She didn’t get involved outside the home very much, except for church and her quilting circle. She did wonderful needlework. Died of cancer a year or two after Lillah went to Italy. Your grandfather was killed in a traffic accident a few years later.”
Lillah hadn’t come home from Italy for either funeral, Margaret reflected but didn’t say anything.
They arrived at a small whitewashed country church, set back on a lush green lawn. It had been outside Greensboro city limits when Margaret and Lillah were growing up. Now it was incorporated and surrounded by an upscale housing development.
The hearse was already parked on the narrow asphalt road behind the building at the edge of the cemetery, the casket suspended over an open grave a short distance away.
A cluster of people was standing around talking among themselves. They turned almost as one when the limo came to a halt at the end of the footpath leading to the burial site. The chauffeur opened the vehicle’s back door. Johnny stepped out first, offered his hand to Amber, then her mother.
Nervously, Margaret studied the waiting mourners and recognized familiar faces. She couldn’t be sure if she was relieved or disappointed to find Jack Dolman wasn’t among them.
The next ten minutes were taken up with introductions and greetings. For Margaret it felt good to be among friends she hadn’t seen in over a year. They hugged her and kissed her cheek. The women patted Amber’s hands and told her how beautiful she was.
The person of real interest, of course, was Johnny. The men, all of them older, were guarded, not quite sure what to make of this tall, handsome gentleman who was now as much a stranger in the land of his birth as any of them would have been in the heart of Rome or Florence. The women were captivated by the way he held their hands when they were introduced and by the slightly foreign lilt of his speech that echoed more of Britain than North Carolina. Dora Sue Luckett, who’d gone to school with Margaret and Lillah, gazed up at him like a lovesick adolescent and said, “You have your father’s beautiful blue eyes.”
Margaret cringed. From the many photographs of Antonio Rendisi she’d seen scattered around the villa, she knew he had brown eyes. Fortunately just then, the minister chose to make his appearance. He was wearing a flowing cream-colored vestment and a long purple stole trimmed in gold. Not more than forty, he couldn’t possibly have known Lillah or her son. He’d almost reached them when Margaret heard a car door slam. She looked toward the curb and felt a sudden weakness in her knees.
Jack Dolman, wearing a dark blue pin-striped suit, white shirt and plain navy-blue tie, was approaching the assembled crowd.
Margaret studied his somber face. She’d seen his image in newspapers and magazines over the years, and occasionally on TV, but this was the first time she’d seen him in the flesh in almost three decades.
Remarkably the years didn’t seem to have changed him. He was still tall, of course, and lean. His features had hardened a bit with age but not in an unpleasant way. He was more mature now than he had been back then, but she could still glimpse the handsome teenager. What was missing was the twinkle in his eyes.
Because she had been so focused on Jack, she hadn’t witnessed the transformation in Johnny, but a murmur, a shuffling of feet, made her turn her head.
His suntanned face had darkened, the beautiful blue eyes Dora Sue had commented on had hardened and narrowed. He stepped forward.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded, his voice deep, clipped, challenging.
“I came to pay my respects,” Jack said, after a slight pause, without matching the other man’s confrontational attitude.
“You have no right to be here. I want you to leave. Now.”
JACK STUDIED the young man standing before him. The pictures he’d seen of him in magazines hadn’t done him justice. They captured his good looks well enough but not the fire, not the virility that emanated from him. The flood of pride Jack felt took him by surprise.
“She was my wife, son.”
“You have no right to call me that. I’m not your son, and she ceased being your wife a long time ago. I asked you to leave. You’re not welcome here.”
Jack had been waiting twenty-five years for this moment, when he could once again gaze into the face of his son, the boy he had cradled in his arms. He beheld the man now and felt deep sadness for all the intervening years since last they had been together. So much time lost, so many dreams and opportunities unrealized, never to be retrieved. Gone forever.
Why? What had he done to be so punished, except make love with the wrong woman?
Jack continued to study his son, then walked past him to the graveside and placed the red rose he’d been holding in his right hand on the lid of the casket. He spread his palm on the polished wood for a second, then turned to leave. But before he did he faced his boy. “I am your father. I have always been your father, and I always will be.”
Johnny’s jaw tightened. He glowered, lips tight, hands clenched.
Jack swallowed the lump that had suddenly formed in his throat. The pride he’d felt tasted like ashes in his mouth now for having failed to be a father to his son. Their reunion shouldn’t be like this, but he was powerless to change it—just as he had been impotent to alter the course of events twenty-five years ago.
He surveyed the crowd in the background, recognized Margaret—sweet Megs—nodded, turned on his heel and retraced his steps.
CHAPTER THREE
“JACK, WAIT.”
Margaret’s familiar voice. Even after all these years it conjured up a warm feeling. He was tempted to keep going.
He stopped, paused and turned just as she caught up with him.
“Jack, I’m sorry.” She stood in front of him, concern etching the corners of her light-brown hazel eyes. He could see she wanted to say more, but for the moment they just stood there, taking each other in.
He should say something, but he didn’t know what. It was nice seeing her, but this was no time for silly platitudes, even if the sentiment was true.
“He doesn’t understand,” Margaret finally said.
“He’s not alone.” Jack had anticipated reserve, uneasiness, maybe even hostility after so many years, but not the kind of venom he’d just encountered. “You better get back. They’re waiting for you.”
The group behind her was staring at them in silence. Johnny’s arms were folded, his dark features a stone mask of rage.
“I shouldn’t have come.”
“You have every right to be here,” she said.
“Go on back.” He started to turn away.
“Tomorrow,” she blurted out, almost breathless. “Can we get together tomorrow? I…I was with her at the end, Jack. There’s a lot we have to talk about, a lot of catching up to do.”
“Why?” He didn’t mean it to sound like a challenge, as though the invitation was onerous.
“Please, Jack.” A pause. “How about we meet at the Arboretum at three.”
He caught himself smiling. He hadn’t been to the Arboretum in years. He and Margaret used to stroll there when they were going together back in another life.
“You sure?”
She nodded.
He took a deep breath. “I’m not convinced it’s a good idea, but okay. At three.”
He turned away again and this time continued on to his car. He glanced over the roof of his maroon Mustang as he was getting in and saw Margaret being received with confused expressions on the faces of the mourners. She didn’t look back.
THE SERVICE was predictable, appropriate for the occasion and, Margaret reflected, should have elicited tears, but it hadn’t, maybe because her thoughts hadn’t been on the woman in the casket but on Lillah’s ex-husband.
As for Johnny, any tears he might have shed had all been in private. He’d been stoic, too, at the elaborate religious service in the centuries-old church on the outskirts of Florence. Only the servants who had attended the ancient ritual had displayed any emotion.
“That son of a bitch had no right showing up here today. What did he come for? To gloat?” Johnny was sitting between the two women in the back of the limousine. Margaret could feel the negative vibes radiating off him. “Did you know he was coming?”
Margaret shook her head. “No.”
Yet she’d been hoping he would show up. He looked good. In spite of the hurt expression in his eyes. Jack looked good.
“So you didn’t arrange it?”
She felt her hands get clammy and unexpected tears begin to well. On the way here Johnny had thanked her for her help. Now he was attacking her as if she were the enemy.
“No, I didn’t arrange it.” She turned away from him and stared out the window as they drove by the dilapidated house his mother had grown up in.
“He probably saw the notice in the paper like everybody else,” Amber contributed. “You heard what he said. He came to pay his respects. He is, after all, your daddy.”
Johnny glared at her. “Don’t ever call him that. He may be my father in the biological sense, but that’s all. My name is Rendisi, not Dolman.”
“Well, excuse me,” Amber snapped back. “You don’t have to take my head off.”
“I’m sorry his appearance upset you,” Margaret muttered a minute later, still facing the window. “He’s really not a bad man.”
“You don’t know anything about it,” Johnny insisted, “so let’s drop it, shall we?”
She was tempted to tell him she probably knew more about it than he did, but there was no point in antagonizing him.
“Fine,” she said, and resumed her silence.
LATER THAT AFTERNOON Vaughn Steiner, two-time NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Champion and now owner of Steiner Racing, watched the shiny black Lamborghini pull into his driveway and the driver extricate himself from it. Rendisi was tall, square-shouldered, dark-haired and impressively built. He’d called unexpectedly two hours earlier requesting an appointment at Steiner’s earliest convenience. For anyone else, the team owner would have put the meeting off until the next day, maybe later, but the sense of urgency the European Grand Prix driver had quietly conveyed, combined with Steiner’s own curiosity, was enough to prompt him to rearrange his schedule.
“Thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice,” Rendisi said, as he approached the opened front door and accepted his host’s outstretched hand.
Steiner led him into the sun-filled living room. They were alone in the house. His wife, Gabby, was out shopping for baby clothes with her mother and wouldn’t be home for hours, his seven-year-old daughter Stephanie was in school, and the housekeeper had left at noon.
“First, let me express my condolences on the loss of your mother,” Steiner said. “I read about it in the paper. I had no idea she was American, much less from here.”
“Thank you,” Rendisi replied but didn’t comment further.
Steiner motioned him to the couch. “May I get you something to drink? Coffee? Iced tea? Something stronger perhaps.”
At his guest’s polite refusal, Steiner took an easy chair on the other side of the coffee table. The two men sat facing each other.
“I must admit I was surprised to receive your call, Mr. Rendisi. What can I do for you?”
Rendisi planted his feet squarely on the floor, placed one elbow on the armrest of the sofa and propped the other on the cushion beside him. “I want to race in the NEXTEL Cup Series, Mr. Steiner, and I’d like to do so as a member of your team.”
Steiner raised an eyebrow and studied him. It was an interesting idea. The question that came immediately to mind, though, was why. “You’re a Formula 1 World champion. Why NASCAR?”
His dark-haired visitor tilted his head to the side but maintained firm eye contact, the hint of a smile on his lips. “The challenge.”
Steiner grinned. He suspected there was more to it than that. Crossover between the two forms of auto racing wasn’t unheard of, but it was rare.
“You’re bored with Grand Prix racing?” he asked.
There was a momentary flicker in Rendisi’s blue eyes before he chuckled. “Not at all, but I’ve become fascinated with NASCAR, especially the NEXTEL Series.”
Steiner was tempted to press for more information. If the man was really searching for variety, why not explore the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, or drag racing, for that matter. But he let the matter rest for the time being. The other man’s motives probably weren’t germane. The pertinent question was whether he could be successful at it.
“About the only things the two types of racing have in common,” Steiner noted, “is that the cars have four rubber tires.” Though the tires themselves were very different. Even the steering wheels weren’t the same. In NASCAR they were utilitarian and detachable. In Formula 1 they served as high-tech control panels. “The tracks don’t resemble each other—” primarily oval versus roads courses “—and the rules have very little in common.”
“Exactly. That’s what I find so appealing. Stock car and open-wheel racing are miles apart.”
“I would have thought if you wanted to conquer the American scene, you’d go for Indy.”
The other man shrugged dismissively. “I don’t think Indy racing would be much of a challenge.”
Steiner threw back his head and laughed. “I promise not to tell them you said that.”
Rendisi remained serious. “I want a greater challenge, Mr. Steiner, something that’ll fully test my skills.”
“You think you can master this alien environment?”
Rendisi nodded. “I’m hoping you’ll afford me the opportunity to find out.”
Steiner continued to study him. He didn’t doubt the truth of what he was hearing, he just didn’t believe he was hearing it all. He had himself entertained notions of driving in Grand Prix a long time ago, but he’d never considered giving up NASCAR to do it. Racing was in his blood, and NASCAR was his blood type. Rendisi, it would seem, was less parochial.
“There are a lot of NASCAR teams,” he said. “I’m certainly flattered that you’ve come to me, but I have to ask again. Why? Why Steiner Racing?”
“I’ve studied you, Mr. Steiner. I know you were a driver, that you won the Cup twice. You’re intimately familiar with NASCAR from the inside out, not just from an owner’s perspective. I admire that. I’m also aware that you’re willing to take chances on people. Last year you had the only female driver in the NEXTEL Series, a rookie. She didn’t just place or do well. She won the Cup. I don’t believe that was an accident or simply a matter of good fortune.”
Calculated flattery? Perhaps. Rendisi struck Steiner as a man who was good with words.
“If you examine my record,” Rendisi went on, “you’ll learn I’m a strong competitor, too. I drive to win, not just to go fast. My decision to come into NASCAR isn’t a whim, Mr. Steiner. I want to win. I want to win very badly, and I think you can help me achieve that goal. Will you?”
Steiner sat back and considered the proposition carefully. With the Rendisi name and reputation, finding a sponsor shouldn’t be difficult. Whether he did well or poorly, Steiner would be credited with being willing to take a chance.
“I like a challenge, too, Mr. Rendisi, so let’s see if you’re cut out for stock car racing.”
He rose to his feet. His guest did the same.
“Come to Charlotte next Monday.” He furnished specific directions on how to get to the track there and who to ask for. “We’ll be test-driving a car we just finished rebuilding. Let’s see what you’ve got. If you don’t get dizzy going around in circles,” he added lightheartedly, “and you’re still interested in pursuing the NASCAR NEXTEL challenge, we’ll go from there.”
