“You haven’t become anything. You are what you have always been: the most amazing creature to ever have crossed my path.”
“You say beautiful things, Sylvia,” he says, bowing his head as if in shame.
“Forget what I said that night in the courtyard. I had no right to ask you that. It was none of my business.”
“But it is your business. At that moment everything changed. Something inside me just snapped.”
“I don’t care about anything you have done in the past, none of that matters. You don’t have to tell me anything else. I only care about this moment. I only care what happens from here on.” I’m consumed with panic, at the thought of losing him again. I wish I could travel back in time to that night of the black tie dinner and rewrite events.
“There comes a time when you can’t run away from things anymore.”
“But you never were running away. You were running toward something, toward your own life and dreams. What is wrong with that? Nothing!” I am adamant. “Maybe you could help your family more by staying here in the city, and finding more acting work. There’ so much money to be made here, more than anywhere else.”
He shakes his head. “It I stayed here, I’d be doing it for me, not for them. I’ve made some serious cash from the television series and commercials and print work. If I stay here, who knows when the next job will come along? I could end up pissing it all away waiting for the next big break, but if I go now, I have a shot at really doing something for my family.”
“But there must be a way that you can do both.”
He watches me with a childlike faith, as if hoping I can figure out how he may do both.
“Remember when you told me you heard that song “Danny Boy”, how you felt something push you hard from behind to help you escape from Randolph? My brother’s name was Danny. I can’t help but feel there’s some kind of connection there. The day I was going to leave for New York for the first time, I got cold feet and almost changed my mind. My mom and sisters went all soft on me, like, ‘oh, you don’t have to go if you don’t want to, stay and we’ll cook up some breakfast for you, don’t go off to the big city.’ But my brother got behind me and gave me a shove, a good hard shove forward, and he said, ‘Go!’ He helped me escape. Maybe he was there with you, that day, maybe he gave you a shove and helped you escape.” Evan’s expression is the chaos of anguish.
“Take me with you,” I say ardently.
“What, banish you to some broken down old ranch in the middle of nowhere? That’s what I did to my brother, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to do that to you. This is where you should be. This city is where all the best and the brightest come.”
“Which is why you belong here.”
“My time has passed. I’ve gone as far as my limited talents can take me.”
We’re sitting on a wooden bench. In his hand Evan holds mine, pressing it to his mouth, running his lips over my knuckles, deep in thought.
“I don’t believe that for one moment. And neither do you. You’re the incarnation of confidence.”
“I’ve failed. When you fail, you have to face it and go in a different direction.”
“Failed? You couldn’t fail if you tried. You would fail at failing,” I ramble.
Evan laughs. It’s such a relief to see Evan laugh again.
“You’ve gone as far as your limited talents can take you? That’s not even the way you construct your sentences. That is something the Wicked Wanda must have said to you.”
He smiles and rises from the bench, bracing his arms behind him on the terrace railing, and, leaning back, he looks up to the sapphire blue night sky as if for oxygen. “If I go home and rebuild the ranch, I’ve got a shot at making it the way it was once, or maybe I can make it even better. Build it up so that my little sisters have some kind of future.”
“Maybe they’ll get scholarships themselves, and make their own futures.”
“That would be great,” he says, with a disbelieving sigh.
“But then you’re living your father’s life, not your own.”
“Maybe so,” he says, but he is not swayed.
“I want to come with you.”
“Haley, after a few weeks of watching me shovel shit in the scorching sun, believe me, your fascination with me will wear off fast. I’m not that person anymore, the guy on the big screen, the face on the billboards.”
I fervently explain that I never wanted him to be that person, that half the reason I held back from him was because I was afraid that a Hollywood life would take him away from me, to a place that I couldn’t follow, to a world I could never fit into. I tell him my reasons for dashing out of the costume party that night with Sinclair. “I told Sinclair that everything would be so much easier if you were a plumber in Canarsie.”
He laughs. “Well, you might just get your wish.”
He pulls me to him and holds me there, pressed against him, although the Madeline Goddard collar does not invite closeness. He releases me and looks into my eyes, and then gently kisses the stitches above my eyebrow.
“There’s always something keeping us apart, isn’t there?” he says, patting down the collar, amused, as if it was the latest culprit.
“Yes, mainly ourselves.”
“I’ll be inside in just a minute.” He motions toward the dining room, but he doesn’t take his eyes off me. The night sky seems to be moving, as if it were composed of blue smoke.
“Hey,” he calls, gently. Turning away, I glance back at him. “Just you wait,” he says, with the lopsided smile.
But he never does come inside. He slips away into the night.
~~~~~
“We’ll discuss this in the car.” Sinclair shepherds us all into the street, where the gutters of rain spray over our shoes as Mr. Palmer screeches his car to a halt at Sinclair’s berserk beckoning.
“She must go after him, and give him a night that he’ll never forget,” Sinclair declares with the authority of a Count addressing his subjects. We pack like sardines into a four-door Ford Fairmont. The Joseph politely details the quickest route for Mr. Palmer, whom he refers to as, “my good man.”
“But it’s always who a man doesn’t sleep with that he remembers forever!” Careen hugs her shawl sewn with seed pearls about her.
“That is true,” The Joseph concurs. When Sinclair’s shaggy eyebrows shoot upward, TJ backpedals with, “Not in my case, but I’ve heard that from other men.”
“We’re not aiming for memories!” Sinclair scolds. “Our goal is a cancelled plane ticket to Texas, people!”
It occurs to me that we’re all lustrous as we await the light change at the intersection. Prisms of raindrops have settled over us, making Careen’s seed pearls shine. Joseph’s stiff hair sparkles as if held immobile with an invisible hairnet. Sinclair’s satin lapels gleam.
“Perhaps he’s right,” Careen credits Sinclair. “You must go in there and ignite a fire that cannot be put out, not even by distance.” She whispers into my ear some provocative sexual advice, which comes off sounding classy with her British accent.
My eyes grow wide at the image of she and Mr. Palmer engaged in such an act, but she simply shrugs as if it were old hat. Suddenly we are on Evan’s street. Either Joseph is a genius at shortcuts through the city, or we’ve jetted through a wormhole in Gotham’s space-time continuum.
“What’s the state of your underwear?” Sinclair drills me.
“What?” I’m indignant, as we spill onto the street. The amber light of Evan’s parlor is like spilt honey on the wet pavement. “Satin, like you ordered me to wear.”
“Madeleine Goddard would’ve worn silk. Black?”
“Yes!” I hiss, exasperated.
“Legs shaved?” He rummages in my velvet bag, nabs a bottle of Anais Anais perfume and yelping, “heads up!” begins to spray crazily as if exterminating wasps. “Walk into the scent!” he orders.
Everyone has piled out of the car, except Mr. Palmer who is double-park
ed.
“Look away, mates!” Sinclair croaks, as he reaches for my manufactured cleavage, seizing the pads from the pockets he’d sewn into the dress. “We don’t want any lawsuits for false advertising.” He stuffs the pads down his trousers.
I adjust my newly deflated décolletage.
“You must do your best to obliterate all memory of Wanda’s big bazoombas,” Careen commands, with a wink of warning that I heed her earlier wanton advice.
“Torpedo tits ain’t everything,” Sinclair assures.
“Personally, they do nothing at all for me,” Joseph interjects, which gets a laugh. “Perhaps Evan is a leg man.”
“I don’t believe there is such a thing. I think that’s something men say to be polite,” I say wearily, touching up my lip-gloss in a hand mirror that Sinclair eagerly holds for me.
“Mr. Palmer, do leg men exist, or are they just an urban myth?” the 32A Careen demands, her elaborate coiffure in profile looking like the leaning tower of Pisa.
When Mr. Palmer takes the fifth, TJ pats his shoulder. “Good man.”
“This better work, or I’m joining a convent.” I take a deep breath.
“Ah, Sisters of the Divine Chic,” Sinclair quips. “I believe they are cloistered on Christopher Street.”
He fluffs up the Madeleine Goddard collar, then, on second thought, flattens it with spastic flicking gestures like someone picking lint. “We’re good to go,” he surmises. “No words tonight, my little wordsmith.” He herds the others, like bespangled sheep, back into the Fairmont, then urges me through the spires of Evan’s wrought iron gateway.
“I hope you’ve got your hair well fastened on.” With a seeming lump in his throat, he quotes the White Knight.
“Only in the usual way,” I banter back Alice’s reply, the words snagging on my own jagged emotions.
“You’ve only a few yards to go…and then you’ll be a Queen,” the White Knight whispers. With an embellished bow, as if to forecast my royal future, he ducks through the rain and darkness into his own courtly carriage.
~ 20 ~
Aubergine Castle, Scotland, 1995
When Sinclair inherited Aubergine Castle in the small fishing village overlooking the Irish Sea, it had a serious case of dry rot, and a myriad of problems due to neglect.
As we walk the grounds, Sinclair offers me an encapsulated history of the castle in typical Sinclair fashion: it was built in the late 1870s by a celebrated architect, for some Lord of some Shire, then purchased after the first World War by some Earl of some Cape, who expanded and enlarged it, and then in some tangled web of marriage among cousins, it wound up in the hands of Sinclair’s grandmother, a first Countess or other, was passed along the family lines, and due to lack of funds gradually fell into disrepair, “until as luck would have it, TJ’s big fat checkbook set everything back on course,” he says glibly, in reference to the massive renovations the two have embarked upon in the last six years.
“TJ can fill in the blanks, I’m sure, if I’ve left anything out; he has a penchant for peerage.” Sinclair gazes at the lavender fields under powdery blue skies. The sheep are fuzzy dots in the distant green. It would be just like Sinclair to find his royal bloodlines a bore.
“TJ didn’t mind sinking his money into it?” I ask, taking in the vista of gardens that are every color of the rainbow.
“Are you kidding? TJ is a man who had everything, except one thing—pedigree. His father was a plumber, not that plumbers lack nobility, but in TJ’s mind they do. He couldn’t be happier than to live out his days in a castle, fancying himself Lord Of All He Surveys.”
Sinclair has provided me with a yellow raincoat, red hat, and blue wellies, as he refers to my waterproof boots, a modern day Paddington Bear he declares, as we tramp about the soggy perimeter of his four hundred acres of woodlands and gardens.
Sinclair had not revealed his lineage to TJ, not until the death of the Countess Wellington. “You may not have noticed, but TJ can be a bit pompous,” he ventures.
“I never noticed,” I say, with my best poker face.
“I suppose I sensed when we first met that he was a bit of a social climber. I feared that if he knew of my lineage, it would sway his decision to be with me. He knew I came from some privileged background, but I left it vague. We all want to be loved for who we are, not where we come from, after all.”
The Countess Wellington suffered a second stroke forty-eight hours after my visit with little Felix, leaving behind an unfinished letter to her son, which read, “My dear Sinclair, I was thoroughly astonished and quite unprepared for such an extraordinary visit. The boy is delightful beyond all measure, a charmer to be sure. I sense great intellect there and depth of feeling, although, perhaps, some professional tutelage would remedy his reticence to express himself.” Sinclair and I have exhausted all analysis of this letter over the years, so much so that I’ve committed every word of it to memory. Sinclair could not for the life of him figure out what his mother could possibly have meant by Joseph’s reticence to express himself, since it takes all of Sinclair’s fortitude to not go raving mad listening to Joseph expound on every subject under the sun.
The letter lay unfinished, beside Joseph’s Rolex watch on the night table, where little Felix had left it, after TJ absentmindedly gave it over to him at Coopers Café that long ago afternoon. The Countess suffered her second stroke that evening, lapsing into unconsciousness and passing on six days later, while TJ and I kept the vigil with Sinclair, sleeping sitting upright in hospital chairs, and taking shifts to bring food and coffee to the stricken Sinclair.
Sinclair, in a moss green mackintosh and matching wellies, points out the resting place of Hermione, TJ’s beloved Japanese Chin, who lived to a ripe old age of fifteen years. It’s marked with an elaborate marble stone, hand-carved in calligraphy, with an over-the-top inscription in Latin that is vintage TJ. A feisty Shetland Sheepdog named Velvet heels behind us. I give the dog a good scratching behind his ears; he responds with vigorous tail wagging. “After a considerable grieving period, and some exhausting conversations, I managed to convince TJ to get a sheepdog rather than another Chin. I was knocked for six when he finally agreed. When I informed him that no respectable Scotsman would be seen hiking the highlands with some little dog that looks to be no more than a glorified squirrel, he acquiesced. Appearances matter a great deal to TJ.”
Sinclair relates all of this with barely concealed affection, for he and TJ have settled into a blissful domesticity these past six years in their stone fortress.
“TJ refers to it as a luxury hotel, but, of course, it’s just a glorified B & B. It’s wee as castles go,” Sinclair says, with a glance at the looming tower and turrets. Sinclair and TJ have begun taking guests this spring, the first among them being mom and myself. Joseph has taken such a shine to my mother that he’s been squiring her everywhere around the countryside, as together they pick out fabrics and furniture and other finishing details for Aubergine.
“Aubergine is many things, but small is not one of them,” I say, shielding my eyes from the sun to take in its grandeur.
Sinclair wets his fingers and declares a south wind blowing. “My poor Paddington, we must get you back before the wind unsettles your chi.” He turns back toward the massive maze of pink azaleas. I pull from my coat pocket something to remedy the wind because the red floppy hat is not cutting it. At the sight of them, Sinclair’s eyes light up.
“Alexander the Great’s furry ear muffs!” he marvels. “If that doesn’t bring the memories flooding back,” and then warily, “is he still married?”
“Yes, so I hear.”
“I’ve still not given up hope,” Sinclair, the romantic, says, as we come into a courtyard enclosed by battalions of evergreens that act as a wall against the wind. “I should have taken you up and delivered you to Texas myself.” His voice trails off with the melancholy of regret.
When my father was diagnosed, that summer of 1989, there was no question ever of who it
would be, Dylan or I, who would move home to be there for my parents.
Dylan had made the sacrifice once, when my parents relocated from the city out to the suburbs so that I might attend the exclusive private school for the gifted, and he’d painfully left behind friends that he still to this day makes great efforts to keep in touch with.
“I couldn’t have done that to Dylan. His entire life he played second fiddle to what was best for his gifted sister. I could not have let him give up that tour of Germany.”
“Did the two of you ever discuss it beforehand?”
“No. It was my time. It was my turn. Dylan knew it, too. He looked relieved when I said that it would be me who would move home. I had my chances, more than I could ever hope for. It was Dylan’s time to soar.”
“And soar he did,” Sinclair says, setting up a game of croquet, now that the sun is pouring from behind the clouds. “Are you up for a game?” he asks. “I feel so much freer out here in the open air, than within those cavernous walls.” He offers a mischievous sigh.
“Absolutely. No pelicans for mallets?” I jest, in reference to the croquet game in Alice’s Adventures Underground.
Dylan went on his two-month tour of Germany with the band, calling home every chance he could. They played small venues, some of them downright dives. They scaled the German countryside in a heatless bus, sleeping sitting up some nights, but they garnered enough attention and were received with such fanfare that they were signed to an independent record label. Dylan’s first album went double platinum and Dylan was launched.
“I suppose that psychic was right all along,” Sinclair muses. “TJ is surrounded by sheep, and Dylan found his revolution.”
Dylan was there, that November when the Berlin Wall fell. He partook of the celebrations. He took photographs. He sent my father home a piece of the Wall packaged carefully in bubble wrap. He mailed us letters written in such illuminating detail of the events (and with an eloquence that was astonishing for Dylan). With minor editing, and with his permission, I submitted his letters to the New York Post, where they were published as “Letters from My Brother in Berlin.”
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