The Douglas Kennedy Collection #1

by Douglas Kennedy

  Hope this helps.

  Good luck.

  Kate

  I left Kinko’s and spent the next hour or so drifting around my neighborhood. I shopped for groceries at D’Agostino’s, arranging to have the order delivered to my apartment later that afternoon. I walked around Gap Kids, and ended up buying Ethan a new denim jacket. I headed two blocks west and killed half an hour browsing in the Madison Avenue Bookshop. Then, realizing that I hadn’t eaten a thing since yesterday afternoon, I stopped at Soup Burg on Madison and 73rd Street, and ordered a double bacon-cheeseburger with fries. I felt immense high-caloric guilt as I gobbled it down. But it was still wonderful. As I nursed a cup of coffee afterward, my cell phone rang.

  “Is that you, Kate?”

  Oh God, no. That woman again.

  “Who is this?” I asked, even though I knew the answer to that question.

  “It’s Sara Smythe.”

  “How did you get this number, Miss Smythe?”

  “I called the Bell Atlantic cell-phone directory.”

  “You needed to speak with me that urgently?”

  “Well, I just received your letter, Kate. And . . .”

  I cut her off. “I’m surprised to hear you calling me by my first name, as I don’t seem to remember ever meeting you, Ms. Smythe . . .”

  “Oh, but we did. Years ago, when you were just a little . . .”

  “Maybe we did meet, but it didn’t lodge in my memory.”

  “Well, when we get together, I’ll be able to . . .”

  I cut her off again. “Ms. Smythe, you did read my letter, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, of course. That’s why I’m calling you.”

  “Didn’t I make it clear that we are not going to be getting together?”

  “Don’t say that, Kate.”

  “And will you please stop calling me Kate?”

  “If I could just explain . . .”

  “No. I want to hear no explanations. I just want you to stop bothering me.”

  “All I’m asking is . . .”

  “And I suppose that was you who made all those message-less phone calls to my apartment yesterday . . .”

  “Please hear me out . . .”

  “And what’s this about being an old friend of my parents? My brother, Charlie, said he never knew you when he was young . . .”

  “Charlie?” she said, sounding animated. “You’re finally talking to Charlie again?”

  I was suddenly very nervous. “How did you know I hadn’t been speaking to him?”

  “Everything will come clear if we could just meet . . .”

  “No.”

  “Please be reasonable, Kate . . .”

  “That’s it. This conversation’s closed. And don’t bother calling back. Because I won’t speak with you.”

  With that, I hit the disconnect button.

  All right, I overreacted. But . . . the intrusiveness of the woman. And how the hell did she know about the breach with Charlie?

  I left the restaurant, still fuming. I decided to squander the rest of the afternoon in a movie. I walked east and wasted two hours at the Loew’s 72nd Street watching some cheesy action film, in which intergalactic terrorists hijacked an American space shuttle, and killed all the crew—bar some beefcake astronaut who naturally foiled the baddies and single-handedly brought the damaged shuttle back to earth, landing it on top of Mount Rushmore. Ten minutes into this stupidity, I asked myself why on earth I ended up walking into this movie. I knew the answer to that question: because everything’s out of sync today.

  When I got back to the apartment, it was nearly six o’clock. Constantine the doorman was thankfully off. Teddy, the nice night guy, was on duty.

  “Package for you, Miss Malone,” he said, handing me a large bulky manila envelope.

  “When did this arrive?” I asked.

  “Around half an hour ago. It was delivered by hand.”

  I silently groaned.

  “A little old lady in a taxi?” I asked.

  “How’d you guess?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  I thanked Teddy and went upstairs. I took off my coat. I sat down at the dining table. I opened the envelope. Reaching inside, I pulled out a card. The same grayish blue stationery. Oh God, here we go again . . .

  346 West 77th Street

  Apt. 2B

  New York, New York 10024

  (212) 555-0745

  Dear Kate,

  I really think you should call me, don’t you?

  Sara

  I reached back into the envelope. I withdrew a large rectangular book. On closer inspection, it turned out to be a photo album. I opened the cover and found myself staring at a set of black-and-white baby photos, carefully displayed behind transparent sheeting. The photos were pure fifties—as the newborn infant was shown asleep in one of those huge old-fashioned strollers that were popular back then. I turned the page. Here, the infant was being held in the arms of her dad—a real 1950s dad, with a herringbone suit, a rep tie, a crew cut, big white teeth. The sort of dad who, just eight years earlier, was probably dodging enemy fire in some German town.

  Like my dad.

  I stared back at the photos. I suddenly felt ill.

  That was my dad.

  And that was me in his arms.

  I turned the page. There were pictures of me at the age of two, three, five. There were pictures of me at my first day of school. There were pictures of me as a Brownie. There were pictures of me as a Girl Scout. There were pictures of me with Charlie in front of Rockefeller Center, circa 1963. Wasn’t that the afternoon when Meg and Mom brought us to the Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall?

  I began to turn the pages with manic rapidity. Me in a school play at Brearley. Me at summer camp in Maine. Me at my first dance. Me on Todd’s Point Beach in Connecticut, during summer vacation. Me with Meg at my high school graduation.

  It was an entire photographic history of my life—including pictures of me in college, at my wedding, and with Ethan, right after he was born. The remaining pages of the album were taken up with newspaper clippings. Clippings of stories I wrote for the Smith College newspaper. Clippings from the same newspaper, showing me in a college play (Murder in the Cathedral). Clippings of my assorted print ad campaigns. There was the New York Times announcement of my wedding to Matt. And the New York Times announcement of Ethan’s birth . . .

  I continued flicking wildly through the album. By the time I reached the penultimate page, my head was reeling. I flipped over the final page. And there was . . .

  No, this was unbelievable.

  There was a clipping from the Allen-Stevenson newspaper, showing Ethan in gym clothes, running a relay race at the school gymkhana last spring.

  I slammed the album shut. I shoved it under my arm. I grabbed my coat. I raced out the door, raced straight into an elevator, raced through the downstairs lobby, raced into the backseat of a cab. I told the driver, “West Seventy-seventh Street.”

  FOUR

  SHE LIVED IN a brownstone. I paid off the cab and went charging up the front steps, taking them two at a time. Her name was on the bottom bell. I held it down for a good ten seconds. Then her voice came over the intercom.

  “Yes?” she said hesitantly.

  “It’s Kate Malone. Open up.”

  There was a brief pause, then she buzzed me in.

  Her apartment was on the first floor. She was standing in the doorway, awaiting me. She was dressed in gray flannel pants and a gray crew-neck sweater that accented her long, delicate neck. Her gray hair was perfectly coiffed in a tight bun. Up close, her skin appeared even more translucent and smooth—with only a few crow’s feet hinting at her true age. Her posture was perfect, emphasizing her elegant stature, her total poise. As always, her eyes were sharply focused—and alive with pleasure at seeing me . . . something I found instantly unsettling.

  “How dare you,” I said, brandishing the photo album.

  “Good afternoon, Kat
e,” she said, her voice controlled and untroubled by my outburst. “I’m glad you came.”

  “Who the hell are you? And what the hell is this?” I said, again holding up the photo album as if it was the smoking gun in a murder trial.

  “Why don’t you come inside?”

  “I don’t want to come inside,” I said, now sounding very loud. She remained calm.

  “We really can’t talk here,” she said. “Please . . .”

  She motioned for me to cross the threshold. After a moment’s nervous hesitation I said, “Don’t think I’m going to stay long . . .”

  “Fine,” she said.

  I followed her inside. We entered a small foyer. On one wall was a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf, heaving with hardcover volumes. There was a closet next to the shelf. She opened it, asking, “Can I take your coat?”

  I handed it to her. As she hung it up, I turned around, and suddenly felt as if the wind had been knocked out of me. Because there—on the opposite side of the foyer—were a half-dozen framed photos of myself and of my father. There was that picture of my dad in his Army uniform. There was an enlargement of that photo of Dad cradling me when I was a newborn baby. There was a picture of me at college, and holding Ethan when he was just a year old. There were two black-and-white photos showing Dad in a variety of poses with a younger Sara Smythe. The first was an “at home” shot: Dad with his arms around her, standing near a Christmas tree. The remaining shot was of the happy couple in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. From the age of the photos and the style of clothes they were wearing, I guessed they were taken in the early 1950s. I spun around and stared at Sara Smythe, wide-eyed.

  “I don’t understand . . . ,” I said.

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “You’ve got some explaining to do,” I said, suddenly angry.

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “I do”

  She touched my elbow, leading me into the living room.

  “Come sit down. Coffee? Tea? Something stronger?”

  “Stronger,” I said.

  “Red wine? Bourbon? Harvey’s Bristol Cream? That’s about it, I’m afraid.”

  “Bourbon.”

  “On the rocks? With water?”

  “Neat.”

  She allowed herself a little smile. “Just like your dad,” she said.

  She motioned for me to sit in an oversized armchair. It was upholstered in a dark tan linen fabric. The same fabric covered a large sofa. There was a Swedish modern coffee table, on top of which were neat stacks of art books and high-end periodicals (the New Yorker, Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly, New York Review of Books). The living room was small, but immaculate. Bleached wood floors, white walls, more shelves filled with books, a substantial collection of classical CDs, a large window with southerly exposure, overlooking a small back patio. Directly off this room was an alcove which had been cleverly fitted out as a small home office, with a stripped pine table on which sat a computer, a fax machine, and a pile of papers. Opposite this alcove was a bedroom with a queen-size bed (bleached headboard, a quilted old Americana bedspread), and a Shaker-style dresser. Like everything else in the apartment, the bedroom exuded style and subdued good taste. You could tell immediately that Sara Smythe was refusing to embrace the muted dilapidation of senior citizenship—and live out the final part of her life in an apartment that was, stylistically speaking, two decades out of date, and reeking of shabby gentility. Her home hinted at a quiet, but ferocious sense of pride.

  Sara emerged from the kitchen, carrying a tray. On it was a bottle of Hiram Walker bourbon, a bottle of Bristol Cream, a sherry glass, a whiskey glass. She set it down on the coffee table, then poured us each a drink.

  “Hiram Walker was your father’s favorite bourbon,” she said. “Personally I could never stand the stuff. Scotch was my drink—until I turned seventy, and my body decided otherwise. Now I have to make do with something dull and feminine like sherry. Cheers.”

  She raised her sherry glass. I didn’t respond to her toast. I simply threw back my whiskey in one gulp. It burned my throat, but eased some of the serious distress I was feeling. Another small smile crossed Sara Smythe’s lips.

  “Your dad used to drink that way—when he was feeling tense.”

  “Like father, like daughter,” I said, pointing to the bottle.

  “Please help yourself,” she said. I poured myself another slug of bourbon, but this time restricted myself to a small sip. Sara Smythe settled herself into the sofa, then touched the top of my hand.

  “I do want to apologize for the extreme methods I used to get you over here. I know I must have seemed like an old nuisance, but . . .”

  I quickly withdrew my hand.

  “I just want to know one thing, Ms. Smythe . . .”

  “Sara, please.”

  “No. No first names. We are not friends. We are not even acquaintances . . .”

  “Kate, I’ve known you all your life.”

  “How? How have you known me? And why the hell did you start bothering me after my mom died?”

  I tossed the photo album on to the coffee table, and opened it to the back page.

  “I’d also like to know how you got this?” I said, pointing to the clipping of Ethan in the Allen-Stevenson school newspaper.

  “I have a subscription to the school’s newspaper.”

  “You what?”

  “Just like I had a subscription to the Smith College paper when you were there.”

  “You’re insane . . .”

  “Can I explain . . .”

  “Why should we be of interest to you? I mean, if your photo album is anything to go by, this hasn’t been a recent fixation. You’ve been tracking us for years. And what’s with all the old pictures of my dad?”

  She looked at me straight on. And said, “Your father was the love of my life.”

  PART Two

  * * *

  Sara

  FIVE

  WHAT’S MY FIRST memory of him? A glance. A sudden over-the-shoulder glance across a packed, smoky room. He was leaning against a wall, a glass of something in one hand, a cigarette between his teeth. He later told me that he felt out of place in that room, and was looking across it in search of the fellow who had dragged him there. As his eyes scanned the guests, they suddenly happened upon me. I met his gaze. Only for a second. Or maybe two. He looked at me. I looked at him. He smiled. I smiled back. He turned away, still seeking out his friend. And that was it. Just a simple glance.

  Fifty-five years on, I can still replay that moment—nanosecond by nanosecond. I can see his eyes—light blue, clear, a little weary. His sandy hair, buzz-cut down to short-back-and-sides. His narrow face with sharply etched cheekbones. The dark khaki Army uniform which seemed to hang so perfectly off his lanky frame. The way he looked so young (well, he was only in his early twenties at the time). So innocent. So quietly preoccupied. So handsome. So damn Irish.

  A glance is such a momentary, fleeting thing, isn’t it? As human gestures go, it means nothing. It’s perishable. That’s what still amazes me—the way your life can be fundamentally altered by something so ephemeral, so transitory. Every day, we lock eyes with people—on the subway or the bus, in the supermarket, crossing the street. It’s such a simple impulse, looking at others. You notice someone walking toward you, your eyes meet for an instant, you pass each other by. End of story. So why . . . why? . . . should that one glance have mattered? No reason. None at all. Except that it did. And it changed everything. Irrevocably. Though, of course, neither of us knew that at the time.

  Because, after all, it was just a glance.

  We were at a party. It was the night before Thanksgiving. The year was 1945. Roosevelt had died in April. The German High Command had surrendered in May. Truman dropped the bomb on Hiroshima in August. Eight days later, the Japanese capitulated. Quite a year. If you were young and American—and hadn’t lost anybody you loved in the war—you couldn’t help but feel the heady pleasures of victory.
/>   So here we all were—twenty of us, in a cramped third-floor walk-up apartment on Sullivan Street—celebrating the first Thanksgiving of peace by drinking too much and dancing too raucously. The average age in the room was around twenty-eight . . . which made me the kid of the group at twenty-three (though the fellow in the Army uniform looked even younger). And the big talk in the room was of that romantic notion called the Limitless Future. Because winning the war also meant that we’d finally defeated that economic enemy called The Depression. The Peace Dividend was coming. Good times were ahead. We thought we had a divine right to good times. We were Americans, after all. This was our century.

  Even my brother, Eric, believed in the realm of American possibility . . . and he was what our father called “a Red.” I always told Father that he was judging his son far too harshly—because Eric was really more of an old fashioned Progressive. Being Eric, he was also a complete romantic—someone who idolized Eugene Debs, subscribed to The Nation when he was sixteen, and dreamed about being the next Clifford Odets. That’s right—Eric was a playwright. After he graduated from Columbia in ’37, he found work as an assistant stage manager with Orson Welles’s Mercury Theatre, and had a couple of plays produced by assorted Federal Theater Workshops around New York. This was the time when Roosevelt’s New Deal actually subsidized nonprofit drama in America—so there was plenty of employment opportunities for “theater workers” (as Eric liked to call himself), not to mention lots of small theater companies willing to take a chance on young dramatists like my brother. None of the plays he had performed ever hit the big time. But he wasn’t ever aiming for Broadway. He always said that his work was “geared for the needs and the aspirations of the working man” (like I said, he really was a romantic). And I’ll be honest with you—as much as I loved, adored, my older brother, his three-hour epic drama about a 1902 union dispute on the Erie-Lakawana Railroad wasn’t exactly a toe tapper.