The Mulberry Tree

“Lillian,” Phillip said softly, his eyes full of pity, “there was only one man like James Manville ever made on this earth. He played by his own rules and no one else’

s.”

I waited for him to tell me something that I didn’t already know. What was he leading up to?

Phillip ran his hand over his eyes and glanced at the clock by the bed. “By the law of ethics, I can’t tell you—” he began, then he let out his breath and sat down heavily on the bed beside me. If I’d needed any further proof that Jimmie was no longer alive, that would have been it. If there was a chance that Jimmie would walk through the door and see another man sitting on the bed beside his wife, Phillip would never have dared such a familiarity.

“Who can understand what James did or why? I worked with him for over twenty years, but I never knew him. Lillian, he—” Phillip had to take a few breaths, then he picked up my hand and held it in his. “He left you nothing. He willed everything to his brother and sister.”

I couldn’t understand what he meant. “But he hates them,” I said, pulling my hand from his grasp. Atlanta and Ray were Jimmie’s only living relatives, and Jimmie despised them. He took care of them financially, always bailing one or the other of them out of some mess, but he detested them. No, worse, he had contempt for them. One time Jimmie was looking at me strangely, and I asked what was going on in his mind. “They’ll eat you alive,” he said. “That sounds interesting,” I replied, smiling at him. But Jimmie didn’t smile back. “When I die, Atlanta and Ray will go after you with everything they have. And they’ll find lawyers to work on a contingency basis.”

I didn’t like what had become Jimmie’s frequent references to his demise. “Contingent upon what?” I asked, still smiling. “How much money they get when they sue you to hell and back,” Jimmie said, frowning. I didn’t want to hear any more, so I waved my hand in dismissal and said, “Phillip will take care of them.” “Phillip is no match for greed on that scale.” I had no reply for that, because I agreed with him. No matter how much Jimmie gave Atlanta and Ray, they wanted more. One time when Jimmie was called away unexpectedly, I found Atlanta in my closet, counting my shoes. She wasn’t the least embarrassed when I found her there. She looked up at me and said, “You have three more pairs than I do.” The look on her face frightened me so much that I turned and ran from my own bedroom.

“What do you mean that he’s left it all to them? All what?” I asked Phillip. I wanted to think about anything other than what my life was going to be like without Jimmie.

“I mean that James willed all his stocks, his houses, real estate around the world, the airlines, all of it to your brother and sister-in-law.”

Since I hated each and every one of the houses that Jimmie had purchased, I couldn’t comprehend what was so bad about this. “Too much glass and steel for my taste,” I said, giving Phillip a bit of a smile.

Phillip glared at me. “Lillian, this is serious, and James is no longer here to protect you—and I don’t have the power to do anything. I don’t know why he did it, Lord knows I tried to talk him out of it, but he said that he was giving you what you needed. That’s all I could get out of him.”

Phillip stood up, then took a moment to regain his calm. Jimmie said that what he liked about Phillip was that nothing on earth could upset him. But this had.

I tried to get the picture of my future out of my head, tried to stop thinking about a life without Jimmie’s laughter and his big shoulders to protect me, and looked up at Phillip expectantly. “Are you saying that I’m destitute?” I tried not to smile. The jewelry that Jimmie had given me over the years was worth millions.

Phillip took a deep breath. “More or less. He’s left you a farm in Virginia.”

“There, then, that’s something,” I said, then I took the humor out of my voice and waited for him to continue.

“It was a breach of ethics, but after I wrote the will for him, I sent someone down to Virginia to look at the place. It’s . . . not much. It’s—” He turned away for a moment, and I thought I heard him mutter, “Bastard,” but I didn’t want to hear that, so I ignored him. When he turned back to me, his face was businesslike. He looked at his watch, a watch that I knew Jimmie had given him; it cost over twenty thousand dollars. I owned a smaller version of it.

“Did you do anything to him?” Phillip asked softly. “Another man maybe?”

I couldn’t stop my little snort of derision, and my answer was just to look at Phillip. Women in harems weren’t kept under tighter lock and key than James Manville’s wife.

“All right,” Phillip said, “I’ve had months to try to figure this out, and I haven’t come close, so I’m going to give up. When James’s will is read, all hell is going to break loose. Atlanta and Ray are going to get it all, and what you get is a farmhouse in Virginia and fifty grand—a pittance.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “But the one thing I can do is see that you receive as much as you and I can buy between now and the moment that James’s death is announced to the public.”

It was hearing those words, “James’s death,” that almost did me in.

“No, you don’t,” Phillip said as he grabbed my arm and pulled me upright. “You don’t have time for grief or self-pity right now. You have to get dressed. The store manager is waiting.”

At five-thirty on that cold spring morning, I was pushed inside a huge department store and told that I was to buy what I needed for a farmhouse in Virginia. Phillip said the man he sent couldn’t see inside the house, so I didn’t even know how many bedrooms it had. The sleepy store manager who’d been roused from bed to open the store for James Manville’s wife dutifully followed Phillip and me about and noted down what I pointed at.

It all seemed so unreal. I couldn’t believe any of it was happening, and a part of me, the still-in-shock part, couldn’t wait to tell Jimmie this story. How he’d laugh at it! I’d exaggerate every moment of it, and the more he’d laugh, the more flamboyant my story would become. “So there I was, half asleep, being asked which couch I wanted to buy,” I’d say. “ ‘Couch?’ the little man asked, yawning. ‘What’s a couch?’ ”

But there was not going to be any storytelling with Jimmie, for I was never going to see Jimmie alive again.

I did as I was told, though, and I chose furniture, cookware, linens, and even appliances for a house that I had never seen. But it all seemed so ridiculous. Jimmie had houses full of furniture, most of it custom-made, and there were great, enormous kitchens full of every imaginable piece of cooking gear.

At seven, when Phillip was driving me back to the house, he reached into the back of his car and picked up a brochure. “I bought you a car,” he said, handing me a glossy photo of a four-wheel-drive Toyota.

I was beginning to wake up, and I was beginning to feel pain. Everything seemed so odd; my world was turning upside down. Why was Phillip driving a car himself? He usually used one of Jimmie’s cars and a driver.

“You can’t take the jewelry,” Phillip was saying. “Each piece has been itemized and insured. You may take your clothing, but even at that I think that Atlanta may give you some problems. She’s your size.”

“My size,” I whispered. “Take my clothes.”

“You can fight it all, of course,” Phillip was saying. “But something’s wrong. About six months ago, Atlanta hinted that she knew some big secret about you.”