by Vanda Writer
“Look up ahead,” Max said. “It’s like a museum. Some of the graves have the most the incredible marble sculptures on top. Too grand for Schuyler.”
“But it doesn’t look Catholic. I haven’t seen one crucifix or Madonna sculpture.”
“I doubt you will. It’s kind of a nondenominational cemetery, so mostly protestants are buried here.”
“But Schuyler’s Catholic.”
“I heard the priest was a buddy of Schuyler’s wife, or maybe her paramour.”
“What?”
“Well, they were separated, but you better still keep that to yourself. Not good for the priest. He did the service for her as a favor. I gather Schuyler wasn’t a very good Catholic.”
“He wasn’t a very good anything.”
“He was good enough for the priest to pull off that elaborate high mass, but evidently not good enough to convince the powers that be to let him be buried in consecrated grounds. Personally, I think it’s better here. I wouldn’t mind being buried here.”
Max followed the other cars around a curve and pulled onto the side of the road near a grassy hill. He got out and ran around the car with an open umbrella for me. He opened my door and held the umbrella over my head while he got soaked crossing us both to the other side of the road. When I tried to share the umbrella with him, he insisted he needed to remain a gentleman for the sake of his dignity. So, he continued to keep the rain off me. Didn’t really seem fair. We walked over to the small crowd that had gathered under a tarp mounted on poles and held in place with ropes and stakes pounded into the ground. The crowd was much smaller than the one at the church. The coffin had been placed in a partially dug hole with loose dirt surrounding it. It was nice-looking dirt. Clean, if you could ever call dirt clean, with a rich darkness to it. Loose and fluffy. I had an urge to run my hands through it. I resisted.
We walked under the tarp and took seats on the folding chairs that had been placed around the coffin. Juliana and Richard sat in the row opposite us, their heads bowed. Martin Van Ville, Harry Fielding, and Ron Stein, our stage manager, also sat on the opposite side.
The priest, his hands folded over a Bible, approached the coffin. “We are gathered here today to mourn the passing of the beloved husband of Martha Wine Schuyler.” If she thought he was so damn “beloved,” why had they been separated for four years? Why was she having an affair with a priest? But that was a rumor. Maybe she wasn’t. "And the father of Daniel Schuyler, Jr. Before proceeding, Martha, young Daniel and a good friend of the senior Daniel desire to speak.”
Schuyler had friends?
Martha Wine Schuyler was sitting on the end of my row next to the young man I suspected was her son. She stood and approached the coffin. She was a rather large woman, not fat, but big-shouldered and bosomed. She looked much sturdier than the willowy Schuyler and older, more like his mother. She wore a flower-print dress with a large purple hat. Flowery material at a funeral and a purple hat? That must be a hint of how she truly felt. She cleared her throat and intertwined her lacy handkerchief through her stubby fingers. “My husband, Daniel, was a good man,” she began. “A good and decent man. Kind to all he met. A philanthropist even when he had little of his own to give. Struck down too soon.”
Too soon? Was she expecting it, but at some later date? It felt strange to be at the funeral of someone who had so obviously been murdered. But everyone seemed to be ignoring that little detail. She wiped away her tears with her handkerchief. Was she telling the truth? How could he have been so wonderful to her and so horrible to us? She was lying. She had to lie so people wouldn’t wonder why she'd married such a creep, or why she’d put together this beautiful funeral. Or if she really was dating a priest? No woman would date a priest. That’s ridiculous. Still, she had to make him look good or she'd seem like a fool. But — they were separated, so why did she have to say anything? Why did she have to lie? Was she involved with his murder?
“By the large number of people who came to the church today and you special people who have come to the grave,” she continued, “it is apparent that Daniel shall be sorely missed by many. God works in mysterious ways, and he has seen fit to take Daniel from the beloved womb of his family and friends. Daniel now lives among the angels.”
An angel? What pictures had she been going to? This was more like a canned speech from a minister who didn’t know him. Rain beat rhythmically against the canvas over our heads.
Dan Schuyler, Jr.—tall, thin, about twenty-one—stood as his mother sat down. Dan Sr. must have been older than he looked or else he got married and had Dan Jr. as a teenager. Dan Jr. looked freakishly like the man, Dan Sr. Only he was even lankier and seemed unstable on his feet. As he scrambled to take his place near the coffin, my eyes wandered over toward the lake not far from us. Scattered around it were individual mausoleums, looking like beach houses with a good view of the water. Only the occupants of these houses were dead. What difference could a good view possibly make under those circumstances?
When Dan Jr. spoke, I nearly jumped out of my skin, his voice sounded so much like his father’s. It was like listening to a ghost. I grabbed Max’s hand as the young man extolled his father’s virtues. “The best dad a guy could have.” He told a story about how he’d been afraid to ride his bike without training wheels when he was small, and his father had gently helped him to confront his fear. My stomach turned into one knotted ball as I pictured Schuyler bending over his child, kissing his head. Later there had been money problems in the family. Schuyler couldn’t afford to send his son to an Ivy League college like the rest of the fathers in the boy’s class. The last of his savings had gone to help Dan Sr.’s father, Tony, the Broadway producer, who was dying of cancer.
What? Tony was the producer Shirl knew. She said Tony went broke paying out money to keep Dan out of trouble, not the other way around. She said Tony died penniless, every cent gone trying to find Dan Sr., who had disappeared before Tony died. Shirl wouldn’t have lied or made something up. Could she have gotten the story wrong? No. Look how he treated Juliana and me in Paris. Look how he acted in that makeshift office when I went to see him in Pegalle. That was the real Schuyler.
The boy started to cry when he told us how sad he was that his father wouldn’t be at his graduation from City College next year. He’d be graduating with honors. Did I do this to that family? God, was it me?
The boy’s tears wracked his thin body, almost knocking him over. The priest gripped the boy by the elbow and guided him back to his seat like a blind man.
“The eulogy will be delivered today,” the priest said, “by Harold Fielding, who worked very closely with Dan. Harry?”
“It’s hard to explain what Dan meant to me,” Harry began, adjusting the tie that went with his blue suit. “We didn’t see eye-to-eye on everything, but still he was a friend. One time I was flat broke. I hate to admit that, but I’d been drinking quite a lot and so . . . my career wasn’t going so hot. I showed up in Dan’s office one day, sober, but on the edge, and he gave me a job. That’s why I’m standing here today. That job meant everything. It was a chance to rebuild my career. The career I have today. Now, I have a loving wife and a child . . .”
Harry took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbed his eyes before continuing. “I will never forget him.” He sat down.
The last to speak was the priest. He read from notes he’d prepared. It sounded like he’d never met Schuyler. He spoke about Schuyler’s early troubles with the law and how he had completely turned his life around, so that up until the moment of his death he had been an upright citizen.
Upright citizen? What was the matter with everybody?
The priest led us in prayer for Schuyler’s soul. Everything inside me beat to an uneven rhythm. I couldn’t stop thinking that maybe Max had done this for me? Or for Jule? Or maybe it had been Mr. Wilferini, so he could take our clubs? Was I responsible for all this pain? I wanted to run right out of my own head.
As we stepped away
from the coffin, men with umbrellas covered our heads and walked us to the cars.
“Uh, Max, that service,” I said as I walked. “They made Schuyler out to be some kind of saint. You didn’t . . .?”
“Al, please.”
Chapter Eighteen
“So this is where you come with Richard?” I put down my suitcase in the main room of the largest cabin I’d ever seen. “And others. You’ve brought others here too. Haven’t you?”
“Let’s not talk about others today. Okay?” She took off her apron. “This time is only for us.” She wore a pair of black slacks and a pink-and-white striped cotton top with a pearl choker around her neck. “There are seven bedrooms in this place. We could sleep in a different one every hour if we wanted.”
My eyes roamed over the wood-beamed ceiling that soared above us. There was a large dining table near the back wall of the room in front of the picture window. In the center of the room, there was a large sectional couch with end tables and lamps and such. A fireplace with partially burned logs sat not too far from the dining table.
“What’s all that stuff by the stairs?” I asked. I walked over and pulled on the heavy canvas cover that seemed to be designed for hiding something.
Juliana removed my hand from the canvas and kissed it. “That’s for later.”
Across from the stairs was a small, upright piano.
“Tonight,” I started, “could we sleep in one of the bedrooms you’ve never slept in with anyone?”
“Uh, well . . .”
“You mean there isn’t even one? You’ve done it with someone in every single room? All seven of them?”
“Take it easy. I was only thinking. I know just the one. It’ll be perfect for us. You go out and swim in the lake or walk around the grounds while I get it ready.” She came close to me and pressed my cheeks between her thumb and forefinger. “You get the most precious pained look on you sometimes. I can’t say I understand it, but—” She kissed my lips. “Now go. Give me time to get our room ready for tonight.”
Our room. She said our room. The words rang through the huge evergreens above
me. My God, they were big. I ran and skipped — yes, skipped. I hadn’t skipped since I was seven. I skipped over the grass and it was green, oh, so green, all the way down to the wooden dock that stuck out into the lake. The whole way I repeated, “Our room, our room.” Juliana and I had a room together. Both in one place. My heart was exploding. I breathed in the air. This weekend would be the best one in our whole lives. I walked onto the dock and listened to the water slosh against the posts that held the thing up. I took off my shoes and breathed; how lovely to be breathing, just breathing. No one was watching me, except of course, Juliana. I hoped. We were free. Free of Schuyler and . . . My heart slid down into my belly. I sat on the dock, my feet dangling over the side. Schuyler. Had I…? No, not today. I wouldn’t let that man ruin today. I laid back on the dock, squinting into the sun, and drifted off into a pleasant sleep.
“Hey, you want to go for a swim?” Juliana said. I opened my eyes and saw her face staring down on me, like a sun. I sat up to see her better. She was wearing a knitted, white, loose-fitting cover-up over her bathing suit. “Go put your suit on and meet me down by the lake over there.” She pointed in the direction she was heading. “We can take the row boat out.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding,” she yelled back as she hurried down the slope to the boat that was beached there.
Juliana rowed the boat into the center of the lake. We were surrounded by mountains and tall evergreens, and I put Schuyler away and allowed my heart to soar. She rowed us into the center of the lake and pulled in the oars. She stood up, pulled her cover-up over her head, and threw it near my sneakered foot. She wore a white bathing suit with no skirt; it hugged her hips and breasts. I’d never seen her in a bathing suit before, but it was a beautiful sight. She stretched and got ready to dive over the side, while I lay back in my white terry cloth shirt and navy blue pedal pushers.
“Shall we?” she said. I pulled off my top, which covered my light blue bathing suit.
Before I could get my pedal pushers down my legs, Juliana, standing near the edge of the boat, pulled her suit down to her ankles.
“Jule! What are you doing?”
She stepped out of the suit. “Exactly what it looks like I’m doing. I’m going skinny dipping.” She dove in and buoyed up to the surface. She pushed her wet hair off her forehead with both hands. “Your turn,” she said. She looked like a little boy with her hair slicked back like that, except, of course, for her lovely breasts floating near the top of the water. I could see her body gently moving in the soft current of the glass-clear lake. “Come on. Take your suit off.”
“Are you out of your mind? What if someone sees us?”
“Who? The trees? They won’t tell. Get that suit off.”
I stepped out of my pedal pushers, folded them, and placed them on top of my terry cloth shirt. “This is as far as I go. I wasn’t raised to go around doing things like that.”
She laughed. “No matter what happens, you’ll always be the little country girl. Come on,
Country Girl, time to show what you’ve got. Take it off. Take it all off.”
“You’ve already seen it.” I dove in and came up next to her.
“Nice dive,” she said, putting her arms around me. “How’d you learn?”
We held onto each other, treading water together. “In the summer when I was small, my father would take me to the ocean where there were lots of rocks, and we’d practice diving there.”
“Lots of rocks? This wasn’t so you’d knock yourself out, was it?”
“Of course not. The rocks weren’t in the water. They were around it.”
“Well, with your family, it’s hard to know what the intention was.”
“It was to teach me to dive. The crazy one was my mother. Not my father. Don’t spoil my nice memory.”
“Oh, honey.” She hugged me. “I’m sorry.”
“My mother would sit on the shore and watch. She wasn’t always crazy.”
“I know. I made a bad joke. I’m glad you have a nice memory. This is nice too.
Being in the water with you and . . .” She pulled the straps of my bathing suit off my shoulders and down my arms.
“No!” I squealed, seeing the plan in her eyes; I swam away from her. She grabbed hold of my suit at the legs and pulled just as I took off. I swam right out of my suit. “Oh God, no.” I slapped my arms over my chest.
She laughed and threw my bathing suit into the boat. “Now what are you going to do,
Country Girl? If you go after it, all those trees are going to see you, and I hear the mountains are terrible gossips.”
“Come on, Juliana, I feel so—well, so naked.”
“Really? I can’t imagine why?”
“Get it for me.”
“Let me see you swim first.”
“Then you’ll get it?”
“I might.”
“You are such a tease.” I let go of my vice grip around my chest and swam freestyle away from her. She came up beside me. “Nice smooth strokes.”
“I swim even better with clothes on.”
“I doubt that.” She turned onto her back. “Hey! You trees ever seen a rounder, firmer rear end than this one?”
We laughed and put our arms around each other and she touched my breasts. “Get a load of these sweet, little—”
“Yeah, little.”
“Shut up. They’re lovely.” She kissed each one of my breasts. Then her fingers glided down the center of my body to between my legs.
“No Juliana, we can’t . . . we can’t . . .” She kept going and was turning me into her helpless jellyfish that might drown, but I didn’t want her to stop—when . . . she did.
“No! Please.” I looked at her face. “Oh, no, come on, Jule, you can’t start that and then just—”
She backstroked toward the boat.
&nbs
p; I swam after her. “Dammit, Jule!”
“Tonight, dear heart. Tonight.”
We changed into short shorts and tops and dragged chaise lounges from the storage shed; we set them up on the front patio, so we could see the lake. We sat side by side, flipping through movie magazines. We had a pile of them sitting between us. It seemed like such a girly thing to do, and Juliana and I had never done girly things together. She looked lovely with her bare legs pushed into a triangle supporting the magazine.
“What do you think of this story in Modern Screen?” I asked.
“You mean the one about Rock Hudson being miserably lonely with his wife in Hollywood while he’s in Rome shooting a picture?”
“Yeah. Isn’t he . . .?”
“As a three-dollar bill, but only our people know it. They stick those silly articles in periodically to keep the public off the scent. I’m sure ol’ Rock is making a few Italian boys very happy.”
“Don’t Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher make an adorable couple?” I asked.
“Uh huh,” Jule agreed.
“You can tell how in love they are by just looking at these pictures of them at home. I bet they stay together forever.”
“Oh, Louella Parsons has a bit about that young kid, Sal Mineo, in here,” Jule said. “He was terrific in Rebel Without a Cause. Louella likes him too. I hate when she tears up the kids. Bad for their confidence. That whole movie had good young actors. It’s a shame that new kid James Dean won’t be able to have his career. Such a talent. A real loss.”
“Yeah. There were a lot of tears for him at the Haven when we got the news. Louella covered Grace Kelly’s wedding in here. When you were little did you ever dream of marrying a prince?”