FIFTEEN.

I ILLIAN PHELAN'S DREAMS of a cozy Christmas dinner, were shattered when Troy Junior arrived late and drunk and in the midst of a nasty fight with Biff. They came in separate cars, each driving new Porsches of different colors. The shouting spread as Rex, who'd also had a few drinks, chastised his older brother for ruining their mother's Christmas. The house was full. Lillian's four children-Troy Junior, Rex, Libbigail, and Mary Ross-were there, as well as all eleven grandchildren, along with an assortment of their friends, most of whom had not been specifically invited by Lillian.

The Phelan grandchildren, like their parents, had attracted new pals and confidants since Troy's passing.

Until Troy Junior's arrival, it had been a delightful celebration of Christmas. Never had so many fabulous gifts been exchanged. The Phelan heirs bought for each other and for Lillian without regard to cost-designer clothing, jewelry, electronic gadgets, even art. For a few hours, the money brought out the best in them. Their generosity knew no bounds.

In only two days the will would be read.

Libbigail's husband, Spike, the ex-biker she'd met in rehab, attempted to intervene in the rift between Troy Junior and Rex, and in the process got himself cursed by Troy Junior, who reminded him that he was a “fat hippie whose brain had been fried by LSD.” This offended Libbigail, who called Biff a slut. Lillian ran to her bedroom and locked the door. The grandchildren and their entourages drifted to the basement, where someone had stashed a cooler of beer.

Mary Ross, arguably the most reasonable and certainly the least volatile of the four, convinced her brothers and Libbigail to stop yelling and find separate corners between rounds. They drifted off into little groups; some in the den, some in the living room. An uneasy ceasefire settled in.

The lawyers hadn't helped matters. They now worked in teams as they represented what they claimed to be the best interests of each Phelan heir. And they also spent hours conniving and figuring ways to get a larger piece of the pie. Four very distinct little armies of lawyers-six if you counted Geena's and Ramble's-all working feverishly. The more time the Phelan heirs spent with their lawyers, the more they distrusted each other.

After an hour of peace, Lillian emerged and surveyed the truce. Saying nothing, she went to the kitchen and finished preparing dinner. A buffet now made sense. They could eat in shifts, come in groups and fill their plates and retire to the safety of their corners.

And so the first Phelan family enjoyed a quiet Christmas dinner after all. Troy Junior ate ham and sweet potatoes by himself at the bar near the rear patio. Biff ate with Lillian in the kitchen. Rex and his wife Amber, the stripper, enjoyed turkey in the bedroom with a football game on. Libbigail, Mary Ross, and their husbands ate on TV trays in the den.

And the grandchildren and their groupies took frozen pizza to the basement, where the beer was flowing.

THE SECOND FAMILY had no Christmas at all, at least not together. Janie had never been fond of the holiday, and so she fled the country, to Klosters in Switzerland, where the pretty people from Europe gathered to be seen and ski. She took with her a bodybuilder named Lance, who at twenty-eight was half her age, but happy to be along for the ride.

Her daughter Geena was forced to spend Christmas with in-laws in Connecticut, normally a bleak and gloomy prospect, but things had changed dramatically. For Geena's husband, Cody, it was a triumphant return to the family's aging country estate near Waterbury.

The Strong family once had a fortune built in shipping, but after centuries of mismanagement and inbreeding the money had practically dried up. The name and the pedigree still guaranteed acceptance to the right schools and the proper clubs, and a Strong wedding still received a lengthy announcement. But the trough was only so wide and long, and too many generations had been eating from it.

They were an arrogant bunch, proud of their name and accent and bloodlines, and on the surface unconcerned about the dwindling family money. They had careers in New York and Boston. They spent what they earned because the family fortune had always been their safety net.

The last Strong with any vision had evidently seen the end and established trusts for education, thick trusts written by squads of lawyers, impenetrable trusts clad with iron and able to withstand the desperate assaults from future Strongs. The assaults came; the trusts held firm, and any young Strong was still guaranteed a fine education. Cody boarded at Tart, was an average student at Dartmouth, then received an MBA from Columbia.

His marriage to Geena Phelan had not been well received by the family, primarily because it was her second. The fact that her estranged father was worth, at the time of the wedding, six billion dollars helped ease her entry into the clan. But she would always be looked down on because she was a divorcee and poorly educated at non-Ivy League schools, and also because Cody was a bit odd.

But they were all there to greet her on Christmas Day. She had never seen so many smiles from people she detested; so many stiff little hugs and awkward pecks on the cheeks and pats on the shoulder. She hated them even more for their phoniness.

A couple of drinks, and Cody began talking. The men grouped around him in the den and it wasn't long before someone asked, “How much?”

He frowned as if the money was already a burden. “Probably half a billion,” he said, the perfect delivery of a line he'd rehearsed in front of his bathroom mirror.

Some of the men gasped. Others grimaced because they knew Cody, and they were all Strongs, and they knew they would never see a dime of it. They all quietly seethed with envy. Word filtered out from the group and before long the women scattered around the house were whispering about the half a billion. Cody's mother, a prim and shriveled little woman whose wrinkles cracked when she smiled, was appalled by the obscenity of the fortune. “It's new money,” she said to a daughter. New money earned by a scandalous old goat with three wives and a string of bad children, not a one of whom had attended an Ivy League school.

New or old, the money was much envied by the younger women. They could see the jets and beach houses and fabulous family gatherings on distant islands, and trust funds for nieces and nephews, and perhaps even outright gifts of cash.

The money thawed the Strongs, thawed them to a warmness they had never shown to an outsider, thawed them to the point of melting. It taught them openness and love, and made for a warm, cozy Christmas.

Late in the afternoon, as the family gathered around the table for the traditional dinner, it began to snow. What a perfect Christmas, all the Strongs said. Geena hated them more than ever.

RAMBLE SPENT the holiday with his lawyer, at six hundred dollars an hour, though the billing would be hidden as only lawyers can hide such things.

Tira likewise had left the country with a young gigolo. She was on a beach somewhere, topless and probably bottomless too, and completely unconcerned with what her fourteen-year-old son might be doing.

The lawyer, Yancy, was single, twice divorced, and had twin eleven-year-old sons from his second marriage.

The boys were exceptionally bright for their age; Ramble was painfully slow for his, so they had a great time playing video games in the bedroom while Yancy watched football alone.

His client was set to receive the obligatory five million dollars on his twenty-first birthday, and given the client's level of maturity and direction at home, the money wouldn't even last as long as it had for the other Phelan offspring. But Yancy wasn't concerned with a meager five million; hell, he'd make that much in fees off Ramble's cut from the will.

Yancy had other worries. Tira had hired a new law firm, an aggressive one near the Capitol, one with all the right connections. She was only an ex-wife, not an offspring, and her portion would be much smaller than anything Ramble received. The new lawyers of course realized this. They were pressuring Tira to ditch Yancy and steer young Ramble into their corner. Fortunately, the mother didn't care much for the child, and Yancy was doing a splendid job of manipulating child away from mother.

The laughter of the boys was music to his ears.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 547