Twilight Whispers

by Barbara Delinsky

  “Long-suffering females,” Peter sighed magnanimously. “What would we ever do without them?”

  Katia, who was feeling badly enough for Laura without Peter’s quips, spoke up thoughtfully. “It’s interesting, though. Laura is like Lenore, you’re like Gil. Nick takes after Jack—”

  “And Jordan takes the best from both of his parents,” Emily piped up with a grin.

  “Or the worst,” Katia added, but she was grinning too.

  “So where does that leave Emily?” Peter asked. “Or Mark and Deborah, for that matter? Or you, Katia. Who do you take after?”

  Katia hadn’t been prepared for that one, and while she struggled to answer, Jordan came to her rescue. “Katia has her mother’s heart. The rest has come through osmosis. You don’t expect that she’d spend so many years of her life with us and not be bitten by the bug?”

  Peter was far from satisfied with Jordan’s explanation. “What about Henry? What has she got of his?”

  Katia thought she heard a subtle challenge in his words, and it made her heart beat faster. What did she have in her of her late father, Henry?

  “He liked to cook,” Emily offered. “Katia’s always taking one gourmet cooking class or another.”

  “Have you ever sampled her cooking?”

  “I have,” Jordan cut in, shooting Katia a mischievous grin. “She used to call me when she needed a guinea pig.”

  “I did not,” Katia protested in the same playful spirit, which, if forced, was only for her to know. “I called you when I was so desperate to see your face that I’d have done anything—including slave over a hot stove for the better part of my Sunday preparing French haute cuisine—to get you over. And did I ever disappoint you? Did you ever get heartburn? Indigestion? Ptomaine poisoning?”

  “Nope. You’re a great cook. I’d come to your place for dinner anytime. It sure beats the crap I stick in my microwave.”

  “Don’t give me that,” Katia countered, her eyes narrowing. “You eat at the best restaurants four to five days out of the week, and when you’re not eating out—”

  “He’s got some other woman cooking for him,” Anne finished. “You’re a bastard, Jordan. Do you know that? You use women like the cave men did. They’re good for two things, food and sex.”

  “That’s not true,” Jordan argued more innocently than he had a right to given his track record. “I respect women. Didn’t I say not more than twenty minutes ago that I respected you? I have witnesses, so don’t try to deny it.”

  “You live by a double standard,” was Anne’s tart reply.

  “Don’t we all?” Emily asked. “There are those people we use and those we love.”

  Jordan was frowning. “But the groups aren’t mutually exclusive. Isn’t that what love is about? That you can use someone and have them use you back, but the using is productive and rewarding for both?”

  “Do you mean to tell me,” Anne mocked, “that you’ve been in love with each of the women who’ve wandered in and out of your life?”

  “Of course not. But what they’ve given, I’ve returned.”

  “That’s right,” Anne concluded smugly. “Food and sex.”

  Jordan was about to protest when Emily shot forward in her seat. Eyes widened, she glanced at her watch. “Speaking of sex, I’ve got to run.” She gathered up her towel and the suntan lotion she hadn’t used. “If you’ll excuse me.…” And she was off.

  “Is she insatiable, or what?” Peter directed his question at Emily’s fleeing form. “I know what really happened to Jared. She wore him out. I hope Andrew has more stamina.”

  “It’s her soap opera,” Anne informed him. “She wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  Jordan broke into an irreverent grin. “Now, who does she get that from? Do you think that Lenore’s been watching the soaps in her bedroom all these years?”

  “Shh,” Katia chided.

  Laura sighed loudly into her glass. “No. Mother just sulks.” She drained the last of her drink, then eyed Peter’s rising form over the rim. “Where are you off to?”

  “Phone call time,” he called over his shoulder as he crossed the patio and headed for the house.

  “He has to call the office,” Sally explained quietly. “And I should relieve Mark M. with the children.” Over the years, the families had come to refer to Anne’s husband, Mark Mitchell, as Mark M., to help differentiate him from Mark Whyte. The fact that there was no longer any need to do so was something everyone determinedly ignored.

  Katia, too, stood. She would have liked to have been left alone with Jordan, but she sensed that Laura wasn’t up to budging from her seat for awhile, and Anne had stretched back in the sun. “I think I’ll wander around. I’ll catch you all later.”

  * * *

  The rest of the day passed quietly, as did the ones that followed. Introspection seemed the most common pastime among those in self-exile on the island. There was some play, some laughter, but it was always short-lived.

  Katia, while deeply feeling the tragedy, was that half step removed from it to be able to watch the others closely. As she expected, Lenore spent most of her time in her room, while Gil was either brooding over papers or on the phone. It wasn’t that Gil didn’t feel the loss of his daughter and son-in-law, Katia knew, because she saw the haunted look that settled over him from time to time. But work was, and always had been, a panacea for Gil. Katia accepted that, just as, she assumed, Lenore had years before.

  Natalie, though having her teary moments, coped with death largely by focusing on the living. She was the one to see that the grandchildren were kept busy when their parents had little inclination to do so. To Katia’s surprise, it was Jack who showed the ravages of grief more openly than the other three of the senior generation. He was prone to sudden mood swings, angry at anything and everything one minute, quiet and thoughtful the next. He, too, spent long hours on the phone, for the most part lambasting one or another of his subordinates in Boston. When he wasn’t venting his fury on those hapless victims, he was brooding by himself on the beach. Often, at the dinner table or in the living room at night, he would tune out the conversation, only to suddenly look up with eyes filled with anger—or tears—when a question was directed his way.

  Katia spent her own time relaxing, working up a tan by the pool, talking for hours with Emily and Anne. Laura, though present, more often than not with a drink in her hand, rarely joined the discussion. Peter was usually on the phone.

  To Katia’s delight, Jordan frequently sought her out. He conned her into swimming laps with him, though she always tired before he did. He spirited her off on the sailboat, though she wound up clinging for life to the gunwale when the boat heeled at a perilous angle. He took her for long walks along the island paths, talking softly of many things, save the one she truly wanted to discuss.

  She sensed that he did need her. He seemed calmer, more at peace when he was with her, though she wondered if that was simply wishful thinking on her part. It occurred to her that she was a masochist, because she treasured his company regardless of what they did, even though it tore her apart to go off alone at day’s end.

  He had had one chance when she was nineteen, but he had firmly rejected it. He had had further opportunity after she graduated from college, when they were both in the city, free of other commitments. But he had never taken it. He never suggested that he wanted more from her than friendship, and she had far too much pride to push him. So she dated others and eventually took up with Sean. But four years of a live-in relationship had taught her that one man couldn’t stand in for another. When Sean had wanted marriage, she had balked and finally faced the truth.

  Now, once more, she was free. But the time was wrong for Jordan and her. The circumstances were wrong. She found herself wondering whether they would ever be right. But that thought upset her, so she simply pushed it aside, something she had become quite adept at doing. Rather than speculate about her hopes and dreams for the future, as thoughts of mortali
ty would lead her to do, she spent much of her time thinking of the past.

  During one of those periods of reminiscence, while Katia was meandering through the common living area of the house, she inevitably found herself entering the den. It was a large room that had always seemed to her to be warmed by the many family photographs and sketches—mostly Gil’s—that covered the walls.

  The room wasn’t empty. The sight of Natalie and Lenore sitting on the rich leather sofa, their laps covered with albums and piles of loose photographs stopped her short on the threshold.

  “Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you’d be here.”

  While Lenore’s eyes remained glued to the pictures in her hands, Natalie looked up and smiled broadly. “Katia! You have to see these. It’s been so long since we’ve taken them out, and they’re absolutely hilarious.”

  Katia hesitated. Lenore didn’t look as though she was in the throes of hilarity, and the last thing Katia wanted was to cause her distress. But Natalie was insistent, gesturing her into the room.

  “Come on. Look.” She held out one snapshot and, short of rudeness, Katia had no choice but to approach.

  Taking the picture from the older woman’s hand, she studied it and broke into an immediate smile. “That is precious. Laura and Em—look at her curls—and Mark and Jordan.”

  “And you. You couldn’t have been more than five at the time.”

  “God, that was a long time ago,” Katia mused, still smiling. “And my hair was so long, or maybe I was just so short.” Unable to help herself, she bent down to see some of the other pictures in Natalie’s hand. They had been taken at various times, all good times, fun times. “Oops,” she corrected herself, “there I am crying.” Then she laughed aloud. “I actually remember that. It was Peter’s birthday party. We were all eating ice cream cones, but the ice cream fell out of mine and landed on my Mary Janes. I was too young to be embarrassed. Just heartbroken.”

  Natalie pointed to the open album in her lap. “And look at these. They were taken after Nick started college, when he was in his ‘serious photographer’ stage. The way he posed everyone—you all look like you’re ready to scream.”

  “He used to take forever. And then when we thought he was all set he’d find that the film wasn’t wound right, or the flash didn’t work, or he couldn’t snap the shutter because the lock was on, and by the time he’d fixed whatever it was someone had moved, so he had to lower the camera and start all over again.” She studied the photograph. “We look so … formal. Frustrated, but formal. Old-fashioned.”

  “Old-fashioned isn’t necessarily frustrated and formal,” Lenore murmured, speaking for the first time since Katia had entered the room. There was a wistfulness to her voice as she straightened a forefinger on one of the pictures in the album before her. “This was taken in the early thirties. Look.”

  Moving behind the sofa, Katia peered over Lenore’s shoulder at a faded photo of Jack and Gil, shoulder to shoulder, beaming at the camera.

  “The country was in the middle of the Depression,” Lenore went on admiringly, “but those two were irrepressible. That was taken at Amherst. Look at the baggy pants and the hats.”

  “And the flasks,” Natalie noted dryly. “Prohibition meant nothing to them.”

  “But you didn’t know them then, did you?” Katia asked.

  It was Lenore who answered. “No. It was another ten years before we came into the picture.” She turned another page and pointed. “We couldn’t have been more than fifteen when this was taken. Look, Nat. Do you remember?”

  Chapter 4

  Lenore Crane was a princess, or so she thought during the first decade of her life. She lived with her younger sister and their parents in a spacious brick home in Boston’s Back Bay, a short distance from the bank where her father, Samuel, held the prestigious position of president, and she wanted for nothing.

  A beautiful child, she had long, silky blonde hair, a small nose, delicately rounded face and the palest of blue eyes. Her dresses were of the softest velvet, hand picked by her mother at Best’s. Her shoes were of the finest patent leather, replaced at the first sign of wear. The dolls she played with were from England, and the cups in which she served them tea were miniature versions of the elegant Royal Worcester her mother used when she entertained, which was often.

  She was taken to movies at the luxurious Metropolitan Theatre, to parties at the country club, all in the elegant Pierce-Arrow that her father proudly drove. Her piano teacher came to the house once a week, as did a private ballet instructor. She was taught early on how to use the phonograph and had a larger record collection to choose from than anyone else she knew, and if she didn’t want to listen to the phonograph, she could turn on the radio, which was the newest and the best, paid for in full at the time of purchase rather than on the installment plan that had become so popular among those of a lesser station.

  Never in her life did she dream that anything could shatter such a lovely existence. If her mother’s greatest excitement was in frequenting such chic specialty shops as Slattery’s and Madame Driscoll’s, Lenore only knew that she had the most beautiful, best dressed mother around. If her father’s greatest excitement was in defying Prohibition by slipping into the Mayfair after the bank closed each afternoon, Lenore only knew that he’d have a chocolate bunny or some other tempting sweet for her sister, Lydia, and her when he returned.

  Unfortunately, imbibing bootlegged liquor wasn’t Samuel Crane’s only excitement in life. There was a side that he kept to himself, a side that was in stark contrast to the conservative image he upheld at the bank.

  Samuel Crane played the stock market, played it with a daring that awed his broker, who soon learned to follow the man’s tips rather than offer his own. Samuel would have been fine had he limited himself to investing his own money, but he didn’t. He used every cent of his salary to maintain the style of living he found to his liking, so when he needed additional money he embezzled it from the bank.

  On October 30, 1929, the day after the stock market crashed, Samuel Crane was found hanging from a noose in the attic of his home. Lenore was just shy of ten at the time, but that day brought about changes in her life that profoundly affected every aspect of her being.

  With the sudden death of her husband, Greta Crane was stunned. She barely had time to grieve before humiliation set in, and that was quickly followed by horror when she discovered the extent of the debts bequeathed her—debts that could be repaid only by the sale of everything she had held dear.

  The heartrending ordeal was akin, in Greta’s mind, to the draining of her own life’s blood, and had she not had children to care for she might well have joined her husband in oblivion. For Lenore and Lydia’s sakes she pushed on, leaving the Back Bay and moving with the two girls to the upper half of a modest two-family house in Watertown, which she rented for less each month than the amount she’d previously spent on clothes in as many weeks. Gone were the maid, the cook, the Pierce-Arrow and the country club, replaced by an existence that, while stark physically, was even more devastating emotionally.

  Disillusionment was a mild word to describe Greta’s feelings. She was furious at her husband, at the bank, at the stock market, at Herbert Hoover. She wallowed in shame, living in a purgatory of her husband’s making.

  Without a source of income, much less the skills to secure one, she took a night job tending a blind woman in nearby Belmont. On the one hand it suited her, for she could steal away to earn her living in the dark, leaving the eyes of the world none the wiser. On the other hand it meant that her small daughters were alone at night and that she, herself, caught what sleep she could during the hours they were in school.

  Taking the cue from her mother, Lenore quickly realized the shadow of disgrace under which they lived. She kept her eyes lowered when she went to school, avoided making friends and hurried her younger sister home as soon as class was dismissed to find what little sanctuary she could in the confines of their small apartment.r />
  There was no piano to play, no ballet to practice. Cloistered in the tiny room she shared with Lydia, Lenore took to dreaming. At times she would pretend that her father had been called away on secret business but would one day return to restore his family to its rightful place in society. At times she imagined that she was simply living a nightmare and would awaken once more in the Back Bay, on fine linens beneath eiderdown. At times she would dream of the future, imagining herself swept off her feet by a knight in shining armor who would rescue her from shame and shower her with wealth.

  Greta fed this particular dream with the bitterness that had become a mainstay of her personality. “You’ll do better than I did,” she sternly instructed her daughters on so many occasions that Lenore learned the speech by heart. “You’ll marry men who are careful, men who earn handsome livings without having to resort to gambling. Your father was sick that way, and it is because of him that we have to live as we do. But we’ll show them; we’ll show them all. You’re good girls and beautiful girls. Some day you’ll be back on top.”

  It was easier said than done. Where once Greta would have anticipated her daughters’ grand debuts without a worry in the world, now such lavish affairs were out of the question. Not only didn’t she have the money, but she was totally alienated from the society of which she’d once been a part, and she refused to mingle any more than necessary with the people of her new and demeaning station.

  So she saved every spare penny in an empty oatmeal box on the back of the pantry shelf, intent on providing whatever she could for her daughters when the time came for them to work their way upward once more. She frowned on any unnecessary expense and pushed Lenore into errand running and babysitting jobs as soon as Lydia was old enough to be left alone.

  There were times when Lenore wished her mother worked days, for then Greta wouldn’t be around to scrutinize every step she took. It became particularly difficult for Lenore when she entered adolescence, when her body made changes that Greta continually editorialized upon.