The Last Don - Mario Puzo [37]
Nalene said scornfully, “You veto them?”
“That’s right,” Pippi said. He smiled down at her. “That’s exactly right.”
“You can visit them all you want,” Nalene said. “But they both have to live with me.”
At that he turned his back and said quietly, “Do what you want.”
Nalene said, “Wait.” Pippi turned to her. She saw on his face something so terrible in its soulless ferocity that she murmured, “If one of them wants to go with you, then OK.”
Pippi suddenly became exuberant, as if the problem were resolved. “That’s great,” he said. “Your kid can visit me in Vegas and my kid can visit you in Sacramento. That’s perfect. Let’s settle it tonight.”
Nalene made a last effort. “Forty is not old,” she said. “You can start another family.”
Pippi shook his head. “Never,” he said. “You’re the only woman who ever had the Indian sign on me. I married late and I know I’ll never marry again. You’re lucky I’m smart enough to know I can’t keep you, and I’m smart enough to know I can’t start over again.”
“That’s true,” Nalene said. “You can’t make me love you again.”
“But I could kill you,” Pippi said. He was smiling at her. As if it were a joke.
She looked into his eyes and believed him. She realized this was the source of his power, that when he made a threat people believed him. She summoned her last reserve of courage.
“Remember,” she said, “if they both want to stay with me, you have to let them go.”
“They love their father,” Pippi said. “One of them will stay here with their old man.”
That evening after dinner, the house iced with air conditioning, the desert heat outside too strong, the situation was explained to Cross, eleven years old, and Claudia, ten. Neither seemed surprised. Cross, as handsome as his mother was beautiful, already had the inner steeliness of his father, and his wariness. He was also completely without fear. He spoke up instantly. “I’m staying with Mom,” he said.
Claudia was frightened by the choice. With a small child’s cunning, she said, “I’m staying with Cross.”
Pippi was surprised. Cross was closer to him than to Nalene. Cross was the one who came hunting with him, Cross liked to play cards with him, to golf and box. Cross had no interest in his mother’s obsession with books and music. It was Cross who came down to the Collection Agency to keep him company when he had to catch up on paperwork on Saturday. In fact he had been sure that Cross would be the one he would get to keep. It was Cross he was hoping for.
He was tickled by Claudia’s cunning answer. The kid was smart. But Claudia looked too much like himself, he didn’t want to look at an ugly mug so much like his every day. And it was logical that Claudia go with her mother. Claudia loved the same things Nalene did. What the hell would he do with Claudia?
Pippi studied his two children. He was proud of them. They knew their mother was the weaker of the two parents, and they were sticking up for her. And he noticed that Nalene, with her theatrical instinct, had prepared cleverly for the occasion. She was dressed severely in black trousers and a black pullover, her golden hair was bound severely with a thin black headband, her face framed into a narrow, heartbreaking white oval. He was conscious of his own brutal appearance as it must appear to small children.
He turned on his charm. “All I’m asking is for one of you to keep me company,” he said. “You can see each other as much as you want. Right, Nalene? You kids don’t want me living here in Vegas all alone.”
The two children looked at him sternly. He turned to Nalene. “You have to help,” he said. “You have to choose.” And then he thought angrily, Why do I give a shit?
Nalene said, “You promised that if they both wanted to go with me, they could.”
“Let’s talk this out,” Pippi said. His feelings were not hurt—he knew his children loved him, but they loved their mother more. He found that natural. It did not mean they had made the right choice.
Nalene said scornfully, “There’s nothing to talk about. You promised.”