The Mentor Read Free Page A

apartment, in spite of the squeeze it has put them in. She loves the space, the light, the views. In the past year their dinner parties have become coveted invitations, in no small part because people want to see what Anne Turner has done in her
own
home.
    Anne listens. Beyond the door—the door that leads to Charles’s domain, the chaotic domain of Charles Davis—she hears nothing. She never does, although that never stops her from listening.
    The kitchen phone rings.
    “Yes.”
    “Good morning, darling.”
    Anne runs her fingers through her hair—this is the last person she wants to talk to today.
    “Hello, Mother.”
    “You didn’t answer my E-mail.”
    “I’ve been swamped. Where are you?”
    “Palm Beach. Did you forget? Tory Clarke’s wedding is this weekend. You were invited.”
    “I’d rather book a root canal than go to Tory Clarke’s wedding.She’s as narrow-minded and right wing as the rest of her family.”
    Damn! Ten seconds into the call and she’s already regressed from successful thirty-six-year-old to hostile teenager. Her earliest memory is of her mother dragging her to riding lessons, telling her she was going to win a gold medal in the Olympics. Then there were the French lessons, the dancing class, the B-minus in math that cost her the class trip to Catalina.
    “Is everything all right, Anne?”
    Anne can imagine Frances—who’s on her second face-lift and third husband—flushed from her morning workout, perched on the edge of a chaise in the guest suite of some friend’s mansion, sipping tea off the tray the maid delivered, looking out at the ocean, and patting on $100-an-ounce under-eye cream.
    “I sent Tory a present. Give her my best. How are you and Dwight?” Anne’s current stepfather is a real estate developer who rode the southern California population boom straight to the Forbes 400. Her real father, an aeronautical engineer whom Anne adored, died of cancer when she was eight years old. His death bewildered and terrified her and left her with a haunting fear that the worst always happens, a fear she denies, even to herself.
    “We’re wonderful, although Palm Beach is awfully humid. Why does anyone live on the East Coast? Listen, darling, I just wanted to check in and see how Charles’s new book is doing. We’re all breathless with anticipation.”
    Frances Allen has never really approved of Charles, and Anne is sure she’d like nothing better than for the new book to fail. She groomed her daughter to marry a titan of industry, someone with serious money, places in Bel Air and Pebble Beach, private planes and entree into the highest levels of government. Not some novelist who’s part of the condescending East Coast cultural elite.
    “The book is doing well,” Anne says.
    “Have any reviews come out?”
    “No,” Anne lies.
    “Then how do you know it’s doing well?”
    Anne takes a deep breath.
    “I’ve got a big day, Mom.”
    “I don’t doubt it.”
    “Give my best to Dwight.”
    “Listen, darling, we’re going to be in New York next month. Or at least
I
am. You know how your stepfather feels about that city. I’ll be at the Plaza Athénée.”
    “Let me know the dates. Good-bye, Mother.”
    Anne hangs up and immediately scoops out the rest of the papaya. The call was par for the course—not one question about
Home
, about how Anne is doing. Frances is a raging narcissist who sees her own life in color and everyone else’s in black-and-white. She hates her daughter for being younger and prettier than she is, for forging a career that eclipses Frances, for—Stop it! Anne has no time for those old tapes. Not today. Not ever.
    Suddenly the door to Charles’s office flies open. Anne gasps.
    “Jesus, Charles, you scared me.”
    Charles storms through the kitchen. Anne puts down the papaya and counts to fifteen. Then she heads toward the back of the apartment. In spite of everything, she’s excited by Charles—what woman wouldn’t be?
    She stands in