Showdown at the Traces
There were those who said, in the summer of 1987, that had Sanford Trace been able, he would have, metaphorically if not literally, dug a moat and taken up the drawbridge. For months, the Traces had not been seen at any of the usual festivities or any of their regular dinner parties. For their Fourth of July celebration—practically a local institution—the guest list included only ten. Barely a party at all, by the standards of Tuxedo Park.
Robert and Crea had not seen the Traces since February and were as curious as anyone else. Gwen was spending the day with a friend—no other children had been invited, and she would certainly have been bored. The first thing Robert and Crea noticed as they approached the property was that two security guards stood at the entrance, asking for identification. In a gated community, where most of the guests were locals, this felt like overkill.
No waiters moved stealthily around the backyard—with so few guests, Tracey’s cook and housekeeper were handling things along with the housekeeper’s granddaughter. Robert and Crea walked toward Mark Pascal, who stood with his wife, Biscuit, on the back lawn, which looked strangely empty—there were no children, no sack races or jugglers, just endless green.
“What did you think of the thugs by the door?” Pascal asked Robert.
“Have there ever been crashers at this party?”
“I’m not sure this is about keeping people out,” Pascal whispered. Biscuit excused herself to go sit down; she felt very tired these days—the Pascals were expecting, though not for some months—and Crea went with Biscuit to keep her company.
“I’m glad we have a minute alone,” Mark said. “I’ve been hearing things about you.”
“Can you be a little more specific?”
“Are you screwing that gorgeous shoe-shine girl?”
“That’s specific,” Robert said. “No, I’m not. Why?”
“Oh, just something I heard.”
“Well, if it’s a rumor, then do me a favor and quash it because it’s not true.”
“Lucky you if you were.” He paused. “Tell me, after Crea had the baby, how long was it until you, you know?”
“You just asked me if I was screwing the shoe-shine girl, but you can’t come out and ask me how long it was before my wife and I could have sex after Gwen was born.”
“Well, that’s different. It’s marital, and Crea is such an old friend.”
Robert wasn’t going to touch that one. “You’ll both be so tired at first, you won’t think about much but sleeping,” he said, “but that first year is thrilling.”
“Well, we wanted this,” Mark said wistfully.
“You’re just nervous, that’s all.”
“I better go find my wife,” he said, “see if I can get her anything.”
Robert stood alone for a moment and then decided to join Mark and the women on the patio. Crea and Biscuit sat just beyond the striped canopy, in the sun. Biscuit was a little heavier than Crea, though she was not showing much, and her hair was blonder. But as he drew closer, he could suddenly see what Claudia Trace had meant that time when she said that the two women resembled each other. Maybe it was the angle he was standing at, or maybe he’d never really looked at them together. The similarity certainly ended with the physical. Had Mark married a sort of Crea stand-in, with a decent-enough pedigree but none of the sophistication of the original? Robert hoped, for Mark’s sake, that the choice was unconscious. The couple did not seem unhappy. Just then Mark fetched a club soda from the housekeeper, then returned and handed it to Biscuit, kissing her on the forehead. Perhaps Mark Pascal had finally, after decades of practice, mastered the art of settling. And then Robert, too, joined his wife.
Very soon they were joined by Robert’s father-in-law and Trenton Pascal, and soon all the guests were clustered together on the back patio, including the Gordons and the Trumbles, Tracey’s elderly neighbors who’d been friends of Tracey’s parents. The housekeeper’s granddaughter circulated, taking orders for drinks, and Robert was about to flag her down when Jack Alexander moved toward him, took him by the arm, and asked for a moment of his time. Without waiting for a response, he led Robert back in the direction he’d just come from, until the two were standing by themselves in the vast backyard. Considering there were so few guests, everyone seemed crazy for privacy—or, at least, privacy when talking to Robert. This was not a good sign.
“What time did you get in last night?” Jack asked.
“Flat tire,” Robert mumbled, “on the Thruway.”
“Perhaps start out a little earlier next time.”
“Sorry if I woke you.”
“You were expected by ten. Have you seen those phones for the car?”
Robert heard his name and turned to see Tracey striding quickly toward them. The three talked briefly about some new neighbors who were attempting a house renovation that few in the Park approved of. Robert mentioned Gwen’s recent request for a Saint Bernard. Jack grew bored—he had come to chastise, not to chat, and having done that, he excused himself to return to his contemporaries.
Robert followed Tracey toward the garden on the side of the house. The tomato plants had capsized, overcome by the weight of their ripening fruit. The cucumbers were so ripe as to be rotting. “I really must get someone to deal with this,” Tracey said. “There just hasn’t been time.” Tracey had aged in the months since Robert had last seen him. His ruddy face was noticeably lined; tiny veins dotted his nose, and his blond hair had grayed into a muddy, indistinguishable shade.
“Where’s Claudia?”
“Inside, in bed,” Tracey said, “but she’ll be down eventually.” He paused to pick up a tomato that had tumbled into their path. “I didn’t invite your brother, because I can’t have Claudia seeing him anymore.”
“You don’t have to explain anything to me,” Robert said. They were at the front of the house now, looking out on the long, empty driveway. The two security guards lounged in their chairs in the distance.
“I don’t blame Barry, really. I invited him here, encouraged the relationship. I knew what was going on—was relieved, actually. He made her laugh. He got her out of the house. She seemed happier, more energetic. I figured I had my indulgences and she could have hers, certainly. It made me feel better knowing that she had a few.”
“There was no affair, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Robert said. “Not in the technical sense, at least.” Barry would have found a way to brag to his brother if there had been.
“Sex? I’d be delighted with something as easy as sex. This is about coke and pills.”
“So what are you doing, exactly?”
“Taking matters into my own hands for once. She’s going to get clean if I have to sit here and stare at her all summer. Nothing comes in and nothing goes out without my knowing. No guests unless I’m absolutely certain that I can trust them. Hence the security guards.”
“I don’t know if that’s the right approach.”
“I’m not going to send her off to one of those places, if that’s what you mean. Have her sit in a group with what’s-his-name from the Allman Brothers. That’s not for Claudia.”
Robert didn’t think it was Claudia’s discomfort that Tracey worried about.
“Took me close to a month to get rid of her stash. She hid it everywhere. And then if we had workers coming into the house —well, I’ve even replaced some of the staff.”
“Is it helping?”
“Some days she’s maddening. She whines and begs. It sickens me, to be honest. But I have to bear up. You might do me a favor —go up and see her. She’s not talking to anyone in general, but she always liked you.” Tracey lit a cigarette; he’d taken up smoking again after a long sabbatical. The two men walked back toward the house.
“If you think it will help, sure,” Robert replied. “But I don’t see how you can make her a prisoner in her own home.”
“What do you know about it?” Tracey asked. “If you’d spent more time with her, she m
ight not have been so drawn to Barry and —”
“Me?” Robert said. “I can barely keep my own marriage together, let alone stand in as proxy for yours. I don’t know what’s gone on between you and Claudia, or what exactly you expected from this marriage, but leave me the hell out of it!”
Robert walked around the front of the house, wandering the overgrown grounds as he tried to calm down. Tracey’s topsy-turvy mess of a life made no sense, but then, did his own? Last night, he’d said good-bye to Sally in front of the building. This was their rule now: he didn’t go so much as inside the lobby. They embraced in the dark, away from the prying eyes of the doorman and the glare of the streetlights and foot traffic on Broadway. Holding her in his arms, he’d kissed her for a few exquisite seconds until she pried herself from his grasp and went inside, leaving him frustrated as a fourteen-year-old. Then he’d rushed home to East Seventy-third, changed clothes, and driven himself up to Tuxedo, doing eighty on the freeway, arriving at past midnight. The house was still, and he was long overdue. He’d taken off his shoes and crept down the hall to their bedroom, removed his clothes silently, and slipped into bed. Crea lay beside him, breathing the heavy breath of sleep. He reached for her in the dark and she responded, half conscious. He pushed her nightgown up around her waist and mauled her in the darkness, her muscled legs strong as steel around him, their two deprived bodies taut with hunger. They did not take long. To stifle herself, she put her mouth to his shoulder, smothering her scream with his flesh, her hot breath and anger, her disappointment and desire, mixed together in that silenced sound, which turned into a bite so fierce that he now had a welt the size of a baseball on his upper arm.
He fucked his wife—there could be no other word for what they’d been doing lately, angrily, and in the middle of the night —the two of them barely able to make civil conversation in the light of day; and he made a companion of his mistress, all the while imagining in torturous Technicolor the day she would finally peel off her clothes and give herself to him. How long could all this go on?
Tired of wandering, Robert finally went inside. The drapes were open in the living room, showing off the silk rugs and Renaissance revival chairs and daybed. The room, with its Victorian flourishes, looked just as it might have a hundred years earlier, and it struck him that Tracey and Claudia were oddly old-fashioned people in their tastes, social circles, disinterest in careers (who besides Tracey was still a “gentleman” in the technical sense of the word?), and even their view of the bonds and social proprieties of marriage. But perhaps all people with significant inherited wealth were refugees from another age, and perhaps they had to be—the real work, the dynamic striving, had been done before they ever appeared. Only Jack Alexander refused to be stuck in the past. He didn’t start out with their money or have their point of view. In a way, with his tastes in art and his see-through house, he rubbed their faces in it. Robert felt a flicker of admiration for his father-in-law whom he had, over the years, come to loathe.
The upstairs rooms appeared to be closed, but outside one door sat a tray of untouched eggs and toast, left like the aftermath of a bad room service breakfast at a hotel. He went to the door and knocked. Hearing no response, he announced himself loudly and was told to enter.
“I couldn’t sleep for days,” she mumbled, “and now all I want to do is sleep.” She sat up in bed and turned on the light. “Is Barry here?”
“No.”
“Sit down,” she said, patting the space next to her. He pulled up a chair instead. “He didn’t send anything for me?”
Robert shook his head. “I wouldn’t give it to you if he did.”
She picked up a pack of cigarettes off the nightstand. “Everyone’s abandoned me,” she said, “including you.”
“No, we haven’t.” Her hands were shaky, and he took the lighter and lit the cigarette for her.
“He’s locked me away so he can do as he pleases and not have to look at me.” She put her hand out to him. “Couldn’t you just call Barry? I’ve tried him a million times, but if he called back, no one would tell me. Maybe invite him up to your house? Or, you could go into town for me; there’s that boy who sells autographed baseballs —”
“You want to kill yourself? Because there are faster ways.”
“Yes, it’s a regular mausoleum around here. Tracey is our funeral director. And who will bury him? You, I suppose.”
“There’s nothing wrong with Tracey.”
Claudia smiled, and the skin stretched tightly across her drawn face, in a look that was nothing short of ghoulish. She told him to close the door on his way out.
FIREWORKS WENT OFF THAT YEAR, but Robert would not remember them. Jack left early with Trenton Pascal and Biscuit; Mark stayed behind to see the fireworks. The few remaining guests huddled together in a tight group on the patio. The two elderly couples wore earplugs in preparation for the noise. Crea sat by Robert, eating the last few bites of a slice of ice cream cake. Mark sat on her other side, talking privately to her about a charitable endeavor. Next to Mark, Tracey dozed on a folding chair like an overworked babysitter. In the distance, a band played “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” Robert missed his daughter—what was the point of all this ritual without children to make it bearable?
Then Tracey’s elderly housekeeper, Famke, appeared and shook Tracey awake. Softly, and then louder, so he’d hear over the music, she told him that Mrs. Trace had disappeared.
She’d gone up to bring Mrs. Trace a tray and found the door ajar, the bed empty. Tracey was upright immediately, and he sprinted into the house. The guests stared at each other, puzzled. When he returned, the sky was filled with color, the fireworks now in full swing. He shook his head and frowned. She was indeed gone. The old people were already making their excuses. Robert told Crea to go home; Gwen would be back soon. He and Mark would help Tracey look, along with the useless, now-chastened, security guards.
“She probably hitched,” Robert said. “Plenty of traffic. This will be like looking for a needle in a haystack. You need to call the authorities, get some help.”
“No police! Now hurry up and do as I say.”
Mark emerged from the house with flashlights. Robert felt angry, had been angry all day, not at Tracey but at the whole situation. If Tracey for once admitted a problem, exposing it to the light of day, there’d be no need for this. If Robert had never invited Barry; if Tracey had never married. If and if and if. Lie on top of lie, and his own lies the cherry on the iced cake.
They took Tracey’s car, but Robert drove because he didn’t think Tracey was steady enough. Each of the security guards took separate cars. Mark drove with the housekeeper, who knew the area and insisted on doing her part. They covered Sterling Forest and the area just outside the Park. They all searched the outside roads for hours, first fighting holiday traffic, then putting on the high beams and squinting into the darkness of empty back roads, up and down the hills of Orange County, and then, in what had to be a long shot, they tried the major arteries, the highways, until finally even Tracey had to admit the futility of the exercise. At midnight they drove back to the house, hoping someone had had success.
No one had. The security guards looked exhausted. Mark Pascal paced impatiently. Tracey called the hospitals, but Robert, who should have done so hours earlier, called his brother. Barry had just come home from a night out with some brokers to find Claudia sitting in the lobby of his building in nothing but sneakers and men’s pajamas. She didn’t want him to drive her back to Tuxedo. She was now sitting on his living room couch, sipping a brandy.
“Don’t give her anything else,” Robert told his brother. “No, on second thought, give her something to sleep. We’ll come for her.”
They drove into the city and got Claudia. She lay curled up asleep in the backseat like a child. “It’s just going to start all over again if you don’t do something about this,” Robert said, his voice tired and accusatory as they pulled into the long driveway.
“I know,�
� Tracey said. “No need for that tone, Vishniak. I know.”
* * *
BY THE TIME THE housekeeper dropped Robert at Jack’s, it was past 3:00 a.m. He stripped off his clothes, ready, so ready, for sleep. But as he pulled back the covers and got into bed, Crea turned over and put on the reading light, wanting to know what had happened.
“We had to drive into the city to get her at Barry’s. It’s been a very long night.”
“I’ve been lying here for a long time, Robert, trying to get past the feeling that if it had been me running away like that, you’d never have been so Johnny-on-the-spot.”
“That’s silly,” Robert said. He was so very tired. “You wouldn’t have disappeared like that, Crea; you don’t do those things. That’s not who you are, thank God.”
“Yes, I’m rock solid. Everyone says that. Need to organize your carpool? Find a good price on a Biedermeier secretary? Get your father to the right cardiologist? Call Crea. But no one organizes search parties and drives half the night to rescue the utterly competent, do they? Only the weak and pathetic get grand gestures.”
“You’re talking craziness.”
“You take me for granted.”
“Perhaps I do,” he said, cringing, and then taking her hand. “Can I get some sleep and we’ll talk about this in the morning?”
She pulled her hand away. “You had an affair with her, didn’t you?”
“With Claudia?” Robert sighed. “No, I did not.”
“You two are always off together at parties in some private tête-à-tête.”
“Talking. She’s troubled.”
“Oh, yes, everyone should have such trouble! A woman with money, looks, and brains, if she has any left, and everyone tripping over themselves to be at her service. Claudia is so depressed. Claudia doesn’t eat enough. Claudia never got over Charlie. That was twenty years ago, but you all moon around her and take her temperature. How men love helpless women.”
“I swear to you, Crea, that I did not have an affair with Claudia Trace.”
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