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Sonja and Titus Hatch a Plan, of Sorts: Chapter 16 of "Lady Slipper Farm and the Summer People," a Serial Novel of Martha's Vineyard by Holly Nadler

Editor's note:

New to Lady Slipper Farm? You can start the novel here:

Chapters Three through 15 are being reposted to the new MV Patch in coming days: Look for them here.

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Sonja and Titus Hatch a Plan, of Sorts: Chapter 16 of "Lady Slipper Farm and the Summer People," a Serial Novel of Martha's Vineyard by Holly Nadler

In this chapter

Sonja Dash: In her 80s, blind, sharp-tongued, is a famous abstract expressionist artist (“whatever 'abstract expressionist means!'” she once snapped in a New Yorker profile).

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Titus Lytton: Also in his 80s, a Booker Prize author, has promised his obsessively social wife, Priscilla that he’ll hide the inconvenient fact that he’s dying so they can “enjoy” a last grand summer of hosting parties on their oceanfront Chilmark estate. 

Titus has been hauled out of his saltwater grotto where he was slowly settling into a purplish prune state. Now, he rests in a secluded downstairs bedroom, shades drawn, where Sonja has demanded a private audience with him.

Titus opened his eyes. He was aware of Sonja peering down at him from the chair she’d dragged close to his bed.

“Can you see me?” he asked in a croaking voice. “You look like you’ve been sent by the Devil to evaluate me as Hell material. Will there be a hazing period, like you’d encounter in a good fraternity?”

“Oh, you’re Hell material all right!” she snorted. “And I don’t need to see you. I can smell you!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re drenched with greasy ocean stink from that pool of yours, plus you’re still splashing on the after-shave that used to make me gag.”

“No after-shave for me, babe. You’re having an olfactory hallucination.”

“Priscilla doesn’t slap your cheeks with the latest gunk from Ralph Lauren?”

Titus was starting to recover a faint rosy glow in his hollow cheeks. He recalled how much this crazy old bat had always stimulated him.

“We know you despise Priscilla, so let’s move on to other topics. Specifically that matter of life and death brought to my doorway.”

She reached into her trousers pocket. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“When have you ever asked anyone’s permission? You still think you’re in the Paris of the 1950s where smoking and knocking back whiskies and eating that constipation-relieving hot cereal at La Coupole was de rigeur.”

“You knew about that cereal?” she asked with a grin, blowing a stream of smoke in the patient’s face.

“I read about it in Hemingway’s Moveable Feast. Do you know how much you’ll disturb the hospice workers if they see you blowing first-hand smoke at me?”

She pointed with the fingers holding the cigarette. “So, Titus, you’re dying, eh?”

He laughed and wagged his head. “You continue to delight me, Sonja! Remind me why we split up?” 

“Because your head was turned by that fatuous, slap-happy socialite who’s got the i.q. of a flesh-eating zombie.”

“Oh, her,” he said with a sigh. “Did I let you down terribly, Sonja?”

She glowered, exhaling smoke. She said nothing, but her inchoate eyes continued to stare – seemingly seeing – into his own blurry blue eyes, both exposed now as his damp hair hung back from his gaunt face.

He said gently, “I . . . I know. I hurt you, Sonja.”

She ground her cigarette out on the bottom of her tan loafer, then shoved the butt in the pocket of her beige linen pants.

She said matter-of-factly, “You broke my heart.”

They both gazed downward. Titus groaned. “I’ve made so many mistakes. Tragic mistakes.”

“Yes, Titus, you had the misfortune to be born human. Tragic mistakes are what humans make along the way. Don’t believe for a minute that you have any sort of a leg up on the rest of us in that department.”

He gazed at the ceiling. “Ah, but I can now see the larger pictures, all the mistakes in one basket. I’m just another one in a heritage of rich losers! I’m someone who could have used his abundant resources to do real good, and who never even tried, or even knew there was trying to be done!”

Sonja brought out a fresh Camel. Blind as she was, it was the work of a moment to fire her gold lighter under the next cigarette in her ongoing chain.

“So what are you saying, Titus? You’re feeling remorse that you forgot to fund a shelter for unwed hippopotami in the Bristol zoo?”

Titus could always talk to Sonja as he could to no other person: She had served as his lover, sister, best friend, shrink.

“I should have taken that ultimate step: Tithed ninety percent of my income to good causes. I could have lived, modestly but happily, on the remaining ten percent.”

She cocked her head, considering this. Perhaps this was why Titus could always confide in her. She lost her habitual sarcasm with him. Her own considerable intellect matched his, and she had always been willing to pursue his line of reasoning, no matter how far-fetched or fantastical.

“And now it’s too late?” she said. “Any change in your will —?”

He nodded, gratified by her leap onto his same page. “It would be contested up and down all seven continents by Priscilla.”

“As I recall, you’ve already settled trust funds on your kids and grandkids? So they’re content, other than the fact that they may be bummed out by your dying?”

He smiled weakly. “There’s nothing like trust funds to enable your kith and kin to be authentic with you.”

“But Priscilla will expect to inherit everything? What can I do to help? I’m asking you this, Titus, with quid pro quo in mind. I’ve come to ask a favor.”

“Oh? Pray tell, what favor?”

“No, first, Titus, let’s figure out a way we can expedite this other matter.”

“Which other matter?”

“The matter of  jerking all those millions upon millions of pounds out from under Priscilla’s pricelessly-shod feet!”

“Oh that. Well, I don’t wish to impoverish her, although . . . she has plenty of wherewithal of her own.”

“Of course she does! Your new goal is to fund a nonprofit to feed all the children of Uganda before you die. Without antagonizing the delightful Priscilla. What was the name of that ghastly show of hers? Shockingly Good Taste in the Home And Garden? What were you thinking, Titus? You would have been better off with one of those Desperate Housewives.”

“Sonja, I could flat-line at any moment! What’s our plan?”

The wrinkled old artist laughed without her usual bitterness. “What’s the one thing Priscilla wants above everything else?”

“Well, that’s easy. If the bloody Honors Office approves me for knighthood, my darling wife wants that sword grazing my shoulder so she can be widowed as Lady – L-a-d-y Lady Priscilla Lytton.”

“Exactamundo, as Fonzi used to say. I learned that from one of my maids. Now, Titus, we’ll extract a promise from Priscilla that, in return for the knighthood, should your brittle old bones hold out for that, she’ll sign off on that iconic ninety percent of your holdings. Plus you can throw in this stupid McMansion and your London townhouse.”

“And we’ve got a villa in San Rafaelo and a castle in – “

“Oh, Titus, you’re disgusting!”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! I AM disgusting, and now on my deathbed I’d like to become slightly less so.” He paused. “It it’s a small castle. Outside of Sarajevo. Bombed to smithereens in that stupid war.”

“They’re all stupid. Okay, here’s what need.” 

“I’m all ears.”

“I’ll need more than your ears on this one.” 

“Holy Superannuated Passion, Sonja! You’re not looking for a roll in the hay?”

“Hardly,” she barked out through a smoke-cough. “Titus, cast your mind back to some forty years ago in Switzerland when I had that hysterectomy.”

 “Yes,” he said sadly. “That was one mistake I didn’t make. I helped you through it.”

“You did indeed,” she affirmed. “You were there at the hospital. You brought me books and flowers and take-in food from the best Geneva restaurants.” 

“So what is it, Sonja? Do you need more books and – “

“Shut up, Titus, and hear me out! My surgeon, buddy of an old boyfriend – well, Max Ernst, if you must know – this doctor brought in a colleague who was in the midst of a ground-breaking new experiment with freezing ova.”

“You can’t possibly be saying -- ?”

 “Yes, I can possibly. No one had ever heard of it in America. During the operation, with my prior consent, these doctors removed my forty-three year-old eggs, and froze them cryogenically, just like Walt Disney’s head.” 

“And these Sonja Dash ova are where? Not in the same freezer with Walt?”

“Never mind where. They’re safe and they might still be viable. Think, Titus! Think what a child of ours would be like! A guaranteed genius!”

“So you need from me, what precisely?”

“Oh, don’t be a fool! I’d need a donation.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t make me slap you! You would receive a glass jar, a racy magazine, and a room with plenty of privacy. Maybe even this one.”

Titus threw back his head and laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“If they ever made a movie about this, they’d call it ‘Dead Man Wanking.'”

Now Sonja laughed too. They laughed together for a good minute. Then, spent, happy, Titus said:

“We’d need to find the perfect host-mother.”

It was then that beautiful, angelic Mandy knocked softly and poked her head in the door.

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