by John Saul
“Humphries,” Andrea corrected, and spelled it out for him.
“And the guy your friend married. What’s his name?”
“Fleming. Anthony Fleming.”
Nate Rosenberg added the second name to the note he’d made of the spelling of the doctor’s name, then returned to his own cubicle, and a moment later was sitting at the keyboard of his computer, tapping rapidly.
As she tried to concentrate on some case other than Rebecca Mayhew’s, Andrea wondered if her drumming on her desktop with her fingers was as annoying as the rapid tap of Nate Rosenberg’s keyboard tapping. Deciding it probably was, she also decided to break herself of the habit. But a moment later, as she began pondering what to do about a two-year-old boy with a mother who claimed he was ‘incorrigible,’ her fingers once again began to drum.
“So here’s the deal,” Nathan Rosenberg told her that night as they sat across from each other in a little restaurant on Amsterdam. “Theodore Humphries is a doctor, but he’s not an M.D. He’s an osteopath and a homeopath, which makes him less than popular at most of the hospitals I know of.”
“But he’s licensed to practice medicine?”
“Absolutely,” Rosenberg replied. “In fact, I just might go to him myself. Our family doctor was an osteopath when I was a kid, and if she wasn’t so far out on Long Island, I’d still go to her.”
“But he’s not a medical doctor,” Andrea pressed.
Rosenberg shrugged. “Depends on your definition. The M.D.s used to hate the D.O.s. In California, they once tried to put them out of business entirely. But just because the A.M.A. doesn’t like them doesn’t make them bad doctors. It’s just a different philosophy of medicine. And as for homeopathy, there are a whole lot of people who believe in it, and even more that don’t.”
“Which means?”
“Which means that medicine is just like everything else—you figure out what works for you, and go with it. In this country, we like the medical model of germs and drugs. Other places like acupuncture, or herbalism, or all kinds of other models.”
Andrea gazed at him. “So it doesn’t bother you that the Albions aren’t using a real doctor for Rebecca?”
“Weren’t you listening? He is a real doctor. Just not an M.D.”
“What about Anthony Fleming?” Andrea asked, knowing Nate Rosenberg well enough to know that arguing over the validity of Dr. Humphries’ credentials would get nowhere.
“Not much. He has an investment firm down on West Fifty-third. That’s about it.”
“What about his former wife?” Andrea countered. “Where is she?”
Nate frowned. “What former wife? I didn’t find anything about a former wife.”
Andrea’s eyes rolled. “What did you do, look him up in the yellow pages? I know there was a wife—Caroline told me. And a couple of kids, I think.”
Nate Rosenberg spread his hands helplessly. “All I can tell you is what I found—according to his credit records, he’s golden. Only carries a couple of credit cards, and pays them off every month. No debt.”
“Not even on the place in The Rockwell?”
“Not that I could find. And no mention of a wife or kids.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Andrea said.
“What if he didn’t marry the woman? What if they just lived together?” He chuckled at the look of disappointment on Andrea’s face. “Jesus, Andrea, I think you would have been happier if I’d told you your best friend married a mass murderer.”
Andrea laughed ruefully. “Am I that bad?”
“Not bad at all,” Nate replied. “But I have to say, in this case I think you’re looking for trouble where there isn’t any.”
“Maybe I am,” Andrea sighed. But even as she spoke the words, she knew she didn’t believe them.
CHAPTER 11
There was a soft rap at the door, which then opened just far enough for Rebecca to see Alicia Albion’s eye peek in.
“It’s all right, Aunt Alicia. I’m up.”
Pushed by Alicia’s shoulder, the door opened wider and Alicia backed in, carrying a tray with both hands. Even from her chair by the window, Rebecca could smell the aroma of a fresh cinnamon bun, and as Alicia turned around, she could see steam curling from the spout of the silver teapot that Alicia always used—and that Rebecca was always afraid she’d drop. So far she hadn’t, but anyone could tell just by looking at it that it must be very valuable.
“It’s just an old teapot,” Alicia had assured her the first time she’d brought it in and Rebecca had refused to touch it. “If it’s survived this long, I suspect you won’t hurt it even if you drop it. It was made to be used, not just to be admired.”
So Rebecca had gingerly picked it up, clutching its handle so tightly her knuckles turned white, and using her other hand to hold the top on, the way she’d seen Alicia do.
“Miss Delamond made the cinnamon roll,” Alicia said as she set the tray on the table next to Rebecca’s chair. “Doesn’t it look yummy?”
“Is she still here?” Rebecca asked, eyeing the cinnamon roll uncertainly. Even though Miss Delamond’s cinnamon rolls always smelled wonderful, there was a funny—almost bitter—taste to them that always made Rebecca feel slightly nauseous. Still, it was better to feel a little sick than to hurt Miss Delamond’s feelings, so she took a bite of the steaming bun.
Alicia shook her head. “Her sister’s not feeling very well this morning. But she says if you like this, there are lots more where it came from.” Alicia settled onto the straightbacked chair on the other side of the table, poured Rebecca a cup of tea, then eyed her critically. “I do believe you’re looking better this morning,” she pronounced. “Did you take the remedy Dr. Humphries left for you?”
Rebecca nodded. “I feel a lot better. I’ll bet by tomorrow I feel good enough to go to the park.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice.” Alicia glanced out the window. Across the street, the summer foliage was starting to look slightly faded and droopy under the late August heat, and the people in the park seemed to be moving in slow motion. Rebecca’s room was still comfortably cool though, and as Alicia picked up the worn copy of Anne of Green Gables that she and Rebecca had been reading during the last two weeks, she was almost glad that Rebecca wasn’t feeling quite good enough to go outside yet. “So where were we?” she asked, opening the book. “Ah, here we are. Chapter thirty-seven: The Reaper Whose Name Is Death. ‘Matthew, Matthew, what is the matter? Matthew, are you sick?’ ” But before she could read any more, Rebecca interrupted her.
“Don’t,” the little girl said. “I don’t like this chapter.”
Alicia frowned. “But you don’t even know what happens yet.”
“Matthew dies,” Rebecca replied. “I read it last night, after I went to bed. It made me sad—I kept thinking that Matthew was Uncle Max, and I started crying.”
Alicia set the book aside. “But it’s only a story, Rebecca.”
“I know. But it’s so awful that people have to die. If you or Uncle Max—” Her voice faltered, and her eyes glistened with tears.
“Now don’t you worry,” Alicia assured her. “We’re not going to die. Not Uncle Max, or me, or anyone else who cares about you.” She picked up the book again. “I’ll tell you what—we’ll just go right on to the next chapter. All right?”
But suddenly Rebecca wasn’t paying attention at all. Instead she was out of her chair and at the window, struggling to pull it up. “They’re here!” she said, fumbling at the latch. “Aunt Alicia, they’re here!”
“Who?” Alicia asked, dropping the book back on the table and rising to her feet.
“Laurie! Laurie and Ryan! They’re back!” Finally getting the window unlatched, she pulled it up and leaned out. “Laurie!” she called. “Laurie! Up here!”
“Rebecca, be careful!” Alicia cried, grabbing the girl around the waist and pulling her back inside.
“Can I go down and see Laurie?” she pleaded. “Please?”
Ali
cia hesitated only a second. “Of course you can,” she said. “But don’t stay too long—they’ll want to get settled.”
Tony Fleming was just unlocking the door to the duplex on the fifth floor when Rebecca Mayhew came flying down the stairs. “Laurie! You’re back! How was it? What was Mustique like? You have to tell me everything! Oh, I can’t even imagine being somewhere like that.”
“What about the rest of us?” Tony asked. “Don’t we even get a hello?”
Rebecca flushed with embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Mr. Fleming—I didn’t mean to be rude. Hello, Mrs. Fleming. Hi, Ryan.” But even before anyone could reply, she’d turned back to Laurie. “Can I see your room?”
Laurie hesitated. It was only the third time she’d ever been in her stepfather’s huge apartment, and the first since the wedding, when they’d all spent the night at the Plaza, then flown down to the Caribbean Sea the next morning, to the house Tony had rented for them on a little island named Mustique. The house, a yellow Victorian cottage with white gingerbread trim and one whole wall open to the sea, had its own saltwater swimming pool, a private beach, a cook, a maid, and a gardener. For two whole weeks, all they had done was lie around the pool, snorkel off the beach, or go to one of the other beaches to play in the surf. Her head was still swimming with images of the palm trees and bougainvillea that covered the little island and now that she was back in the city where everything should have been familiar, everything was as different as it had been on Mustique. Instead of going back to the apartment on 76th Street, they had come straight to Central Park West.
“Aren’t we going home?” Ryan had asked when the limousine that picked them up at the airport had turned on 71st instead of going on up to 77th.
“We’re going to our new home,” her mother had explained. “Don’t you remember? That’s why we packed up everything before the wedding. We had everything moved while we were gone. Someone else lives in our old apartment now.”
As the limo pulled to a stop in front of The Rockwell and Ryan peered nervously out the window at its dark façade, Laurie had hardly been able to keep from laughing out loud, so clear was it that he was remembering all the stories she and her friends had told him over the years. “Scared to go in?” she’d taunted him. “Afraid the troll might get you?”
That got her a glare from her mother, but Tony had just laughed. “I always thought Rodney was strange. Now I know why.”
But even though she’d teased Ryan about the stories, the truth was that she, too, was feeling more nervous about moving into her stepfather’s apartment than she was willing to admit, and now that she was standing outside the door to her new home, she also realized that she didn’t even know where her room was.
As if reading her mind, Tony tilted his head toward the wide staircase in the apartment’s foyer that led to the second floor. “Upstairs, then all the way down the hall. The door on the right.”
Laurie, grinning at Rebecca, turned to her mother. “Is it all right?”
“Of course it’s all right,” Caroline replied. “But take your suitcase, okay?”
With both of them hanging onto Laurie’s suitcase, the two girls started up the stairs, and when they got to the enormous landing—big enough to hold a sofa and two easy chairs—Rebecca gazed around at the floor-to-ceiling bookcases and the wheeled oak ladder, attached to a brass rail at the top, that could be slid along the wall to allow easy access to even the highest of the bookshelves. “This place is huge,” she whispered. “It’s at least twice as big as Aunt Alicia and Uncle Max’s.”
They moved down the long, wide hallway and finally came to the last door on the right. As Laurie pushed it open, Rebecca squealed with excitement. “It’s right underneath my room. We can pass stuff back and forth in a basket on a rope!”
But Laurie barely even heard her, for she was staring at the room in utter disbelief. It was huge—nearly twenty feet square, with a ceiling that was at least three times as high as Laurie was tall. A brass-and-crystal chandelier hung over the center of the room, and a four-poster bed—heavily hung with velvet curtains—stood against one of the walls. When she punched the old-fashioned button to turn the chandelier on, barely enough light emerged from its bulbs to cut the gloom in the immense chamber, and what little light there was seemed to get soaked up by the dark flocked wallpaper that had once covered the walls, but was now curling at the seams to expose mildewy-looking plaster beneath.
When Laurie reached out and touched the curled wallpaper, it cracked beneath her finger, and a little bit of the plaster crumbled away.
Other than the bed, the furniture in the room was from the old apartment. Her dresser, that had looked so large in her room at home, now crouched against the far wall, looking small and forlorn, almost as if it was embarrassed to be in such a huge room.
Her desk and chair were there, too, looking just as lonely as the dresser.
When she opened the closet all her clothes were there, but instead of filling the huge space, they barely occupied a quarter of it. And her shoes filled only one of the six tiers of compartments that were built into one end of the wardrobe.
Though all of her things were there, and the room was far bigger than anything she’d ever dreamed of, Laurie Evans felt like crying.
CHAPTER 12
It was late that afternoon, and as she closed the door behind what she hoped would be the last drop-in guest of the day, Caroline felt as if she’d been at hard labor the last two weeks instead of lounging on a Caribbean Island. And tomorrow and the weekend would be even worse, with school starting on Monday, which was why she’d insisted on coming home today instead of staying on Mustique until Sunday. “I need Friday and the weekend, and that’s that,” she told Tony, who’d been almost as bad as the kids in begging for the extra time on the island. “So we go home Thursday, and I don’t want to hear any more complaining from any of you.” But from the moment they’d arrived, when Rebecca Mayhew had come down the stairs before they’d even opened the front door, the stream of visitors had never let up—it was as if a magnet were drawing people to their door. After Rebecca came Alicia and Max Albion, apologizing profusely for Rebecca’s invasion, but bringing a huge tureen from which a decidedly peculiar smell was emanating.
“It’s only chicken soup,” Alicia said apologetically. “And I know it’s so warm today that you won’t even want it, but it’s my specialty and I just couldn’t resist making it for you. If you don’t want it, just throw it away—I’m sure that’s what everyone else does.”
“Nobody throws it away, and you know it,” Max assured his wife as Caroline took the tureen. “Alicia’s chicken soup is famous. And I brought something for the boy.”
Ryan, who hadn’t followed his sister and Rebecca up to the second floor of the apartment, edged closer to his mother, slipping his hand into Caroline’s as he gazed suspiciously at the plastic bag with a Sports Authority logo that Max Albion was offering him.
“It’s all right,” Caroline said, gently disengaging Ryan’s hand from her own.
Ryan reluctantly moved just close enough to Max Albion to take the bag, and when he opened it he did it almost as if he expected a snake to rise from its depths. But when he saw what was in the bag, the suspicion in his face suddenly turned to disbelief. “Wow,” he breathed, pulling the baseball mitt from the bag and slipping it onto his hand. “Awesome!” Then he was holding it up so his mother could see it. “Look! It’s the one I wanted!”
But Caroline had recognized the Wilson mitt as quickly as Ryan—the last time she’d seen it was the day before the wedding, when Ryan had dragged her into the Sports Authority on 57th for at least the dozenth time that summer, explaining once more why he absolutely couldn’t live without the mitt. Its hundred and fifty dollar price tag had been enough to explain to Caroline why he absolutely could not have it, though the commission on Irene Delamond’s remodel had been enough so that she had been at least tempted. Now she looked uncertainly at Max Albion. “You shouldn’t have. It’
s too much.”
Albion shook his head, his florid jowls shaking slightly. “Nonsense,” he insisted. “A boy should have a mitt, and it shouldn’t be just any old mitt.” His attention shifted to Ryan. “Well, what do you say?” he asked. “Will it do?”
Ryan, already slamming his right fist into the mitt to start working on a pocket, looked up. “It’s great! I’ve been asking Mom for it all summer, but she said it cost too much!”
“And it did,” Caroline insisted. “It’s very nice of you, Mr. Albion, but I’m not sure Ryan can accept it.”
“Don’t be silly,” Max Albion boomed. “Of course he can accept it. Besides, it’s too late to take it back now—he’s already damaged it.” Obviously horrified at the idea that he might have done something to the mitt, Ryan looked up just in time to see his benefactor winking at him. “Isn’t that right, Ryan? Once you’ve started breaking in a glove to your hand, no one else can use it, can they?”
Ryan nodded solemnly even though he was perfectly aware that it would take him months to get the mitt properly broken in.
Caroline, recognizing defeat, gave in as gracefully as the mother of an eleven-year-old can. “Aren’t you going to thank Mr. Albion?”
“Thank you, Mr.—”
“Uncle Max,” Max Albion cut in. “Call me Uncle Max. And maybe we can break that mitt in right next weekend.” He turned back to Caroline. “You have no idea how good it feels to have a boy in the building. Things get too quiet with nothing but girls. Not healthy for us men,” he added, tipping his head toward Tony.
The rest of the day was a steady stream of neighbors, every one of them bearing something—a basket of scones, a plate of cinnamon rolls, a plate of homemade fudge that was smoother than anything Caroline had ever seen in a store, until by dinnertime it seemed like every surface in the huge kitchen was covered with plates, casserole dishes, and baskets. Even Virginia Estherbrook had shown up, bearing a spectacular arrangement of flowers, mostly tulips and daffodils, every one of them out of season. “For the springtime of your marriage, if not of the year,” she announced as she set the vase—a crystal object in the form of two nestled doves that Caroline had admired for years in the Lalique shop over on Madison—on a Victorian table in the entry hall, where it couldn’t possibly be missed by anyone coming into the apartment. “In another life, I must have been a florist,” she announced as she made an adjustment to the display that was so minute Caroline was almost certain it was more stage business than anything else. She stepped back, admired her work, then uttered a sigh that suddenly dissolved into a hacking cough.