by Sally Koslow
While I tally how much this required service continues to cost, Chip Sharkey swivels his chair to retrieve a folder, which he opens and places carefully on his desk, then reaches for a fountain pen. He leads me through a checklist. How many bedrooms? four; kitchen? renovated six years ago, soapstone counters, white wood cabinets, Sub-Zero fridge, Viking stove; bathrooms? three and a half; security system? of course . . . ; and on and on.
Chip lifts his key. “So, two cars or one?”
No way is Daniel going to abandon the Jag. “We’ll follow,” he answers. We wander out and I take my seat. Before we can gossip—What man that old has hair as yellow as Tweety?—Daniel says, “You don’t have to go through with this, George,” concern creasing his forehead. “We can go home and forget we were here.”
I reach over and pat his hand. “You’re more worried about me than I am,” I lie. “Let’s at least see what kind of price Chip Sharkey”—I try not to snicker when I say the name—“comes up with after he cases the place.”
We drive past the sites of out-of-season farm stands and follow along the back roads where next summer another round of inebriated celebrities and teenagers will most assuredly collide with trees. I think that unless Chip suggests that I give away my house for a bargain-basement price, I need to finish this chapter of my autobiography. As soon as I unlock the back door of the house, however, I feel that E*A*S*Y is a password my life no longer accepts. This place is so damn Ben. Hanging on pegs are his faded baseball caps with logos from every resort where he’s ever parasailed or golfed. Against the wall are a row of size-eleven men’s sneakers. On the kitchen counter is an empty bowl. I see it filled with ripe peaches and Ben grabbing the most succulent one, as he took everything and anything he wanted.
Chip follows me, with Daniel behind, as I open appliance and pantry doors, grateful for the absence of mice, and then lead the men into the open room furnished with overstuffed parchment-pale couches that circle a tall fieldstone fireplace. (“Why are there only three?” Luey wanted to know when they arrived, as if my choice in seating was intended to exclude her.) There are back-to-back hearths, the flip side facing a dining room furnished with a rough, round table and ten mismatched wooden chairs acquired at auctions and flea markets. Each has been lacquered a different color, the only touch that’s strictly my own.
Chip sizes up the nothing-special view while I stare at the birch logs in the fireplace. I move closer. These are the remains of the logs I kept in place all summer but never burned, the East Hampton equivalent of plastic slipcovers. Now, charred like five babies in an apocalypse, they are the calling card of someone who wasn’t me.
I was cold. Now I am colder. I have to remind myself to smile when Chip praises the putty-white of the walls, the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the rugs walked to silkiness.
“Would you sell it furnished?” he asks.
“Why not?” I answer, as I pass a mirror and instead of my own reflection, see Ben. I would like to gauge out his eyes, but I find myself leading two men upstairs. We enter Luey’s bedroom, then Nicola’s, one electric green, the other carnation pink. A guest bedroom, two bathrooms. Nothing is garish or amiss.
Chip nods. “And where’s the master?” he asks.
The master is in hell. And then another channel of my bifurcated inner workings wakes up to hush me, saying, Georgia, you have no proof that Ben did anything wrong—his loss of money might be an idiot blunder he was trying like hell to reverse.
“The master bedroom?” the broker repeats.
Daniel senses that I am out to sea. “C’mon, buddy,” he says, guiding Chip down the hall. “You’re going to love it.”
I did, once. A stark four-poster faces the window with its lulling, watery vista. Four pillows lean against the headboard, and a pale gray mohair blanket awaits over a thick comforter. It is folded precisely, but its form is not my folding, which I have taught my weekly summer housecleaner to duplicate. I stare at the mohair throw and see an origami of deception.
Chip is opening closet doors and pacing off square footage. “Aren’t I lucky?” he asks. “Each of my feet is exactly twelve inches long!”
Anxiety snakes from my gut to my gullet. I expect it to stick out its tongue. We wander here and there, to the small attic with camp trunks, to the basement where lawn furniture waits out winter, to the patio with its empty stone planters, to the laundry room, and to the garage. Chip scribbles while I tell myself that everything can be explained; any chicanery is purely in my imagination. Maybe Nicola or Luey made a secret trip out here. Or the cleaning woman’s sister and her boyfriend might have had a fling. Burnt birch logs and an oddly folded mohair throw—neither are evidence on which to build even a screenplay, much less a legal argument. Yet it’s as if I can smell Ben, though when I breathe I inhale only the cold, the damp, and the loneliness of a summer house in winter.
“That about does it,” Chip says. “Very marketable. Though of course we’d need to stage the place”—remove family pictures—“except for one of a dog—people like dogs in the country” and paint the girls’ bedrooms Decorator White. I zone out as he continues, ending with, “An orchid delivered every Friday.”
Daniel takes over, because evidently it’s polite to answer a question. “I’m sure Georgia will think about the staging, won’t you?” I can tell from his face that mine has all the intelligence of a grapefruit. “Thank you very much. This is good to know.”
“I’ll get back to you later with a suggested listing price,” Chip Sharkey says. “I need to check the comps. Traffic may be slow in the winter, but it should pick up by March. Buyers want to make a deal by late spring and settle in before the summer.”
Settle. Imagine. A gracious impersonator of the Widow Waltz thanks Chip Sharkey for his time and trouble. We’ll be in touch. We’ll talk. We’ll see. He leaves and it is only Daniel and me, standing across from each other with a kitchen island between us.
“What do you think?” he asks.
My urge to discuss Chip’s grooming habits has vanished. “He seems thoroughly competent.”
“About selling?”
Without hesitation, I reply, “No problem there. Get rid of the place.”
“I don’t want you to rush and regret this. I’m sure I can find some friends who’d rent for a season, maybe even long term.”
“Daniel,” I say, skipping over kindness. “I’ve got to do it. Nothing will ever make me feel Ben’s not going to race through that door, throw down his tennis racket, and go for a Corona.”
He narrows his eyelids slightly, sending a message that asks, You think you’re fooling me?, zips his jacket higher, and says, “In that case, I refuse to return to the city without a lobster roll.”
“Sorry, Danny, out of season.”
“Ah, then other sustenance will have to do. Lunch, George?”
Twenty minutes later we’re watching seagulls strut outside the window and listening to the Atlantic slap against the shore. A fire is blazing in the seaside bar where we’re tucked into a booth, letting chowder steam warm our faces. Daniel tells a story about an artist he’s signed; twenty-seven years old, a prodigy. Which reminds me. “What does Stephan say about Cola?” It’s been one full week since Nicola reported for duty, leaving every morning promptly at eight-fifteen. I have been impressed.
“He insisted she lose the vampire nail varnish.”
“She’s not acting loopy?”
“Actually, ‘smart’ and ‘efficient’ were in his lexicon. She convinced a nervous bridegroom to go with the square instead of the cushion cut. Said it was her favorite.”
Who knew? “This is a relief.” My brother isn’t ready to terminate Nicola’s employment with some withering remark that will cost me thousands in therapy I can’t afford. “I’ve been worried and she’s telling me nothing. Acting almost like Luey.”
Naturally, then, Daniel asks, “How is my
favorite malcontent?”
I let it sail. “Pregnant.”
He gulps and coughs up soup. “Little Luey? Mother of God!”
“No, just pregnant.”
“Is she going to . . . you know . . . do something about it?”
My face twitches into the kind of half-smile you see on a stroke victim.
“I don’t know.”
12.
My heart is calling me back to the bat cave. After lunch I tried to persuade Daniel to take me to a supermarket and then return me to the house.
“George,” he said, “I know you’re climbing the worry wall, but how much can you accomplish alone, without a car? Wait a week—I’ll come out here and we’ll do it together, with cocktail breaks. The girls should—”
I growled, “I shouldn’t be inflicting myself on anyone just now,” now having commenced two hours ago.
“I don’t want you to throw out your back excavating closets. If I have to endure one more friend’s play-by-play about physical therapy . . .”
I lean forward to stroke Daniel’s cleanly shaven chin. “Daniel obviously needs younger friends. I give you my word—I’ll behave like a matron properly respectful of her joints and tendons.”
I have. Getting out of bed today, my third morning here, I quickly assessed the damage from the previous evening’s banshee storm—branches littered the yard. I stood straight and made the bed, folding the mohair throw a la Georgia, with thorough disgust and lapidary precision, brushed my teeth, ran a brush through my unwashed hair, and got down to business.
I had already tackled each bedroom. The evidence stands by the front door, as piles of clothing await their next stop down the food chain: the chichi village consignment store, an Internet auction, or the local dump. Thus far, I have found nothing more incriminating than a Costco-sized condom assortment in Luey’s room. Where was this stash when she got pregnant? There has been a sensation close to satisfaction in my mindless sorting and deciding, as if by putting my house in order I am doing the same for my head. This illusion winks at me while I stay the course.
Today I will attack the kitchen, which I intend to clean as thoroughly as did my mother’s rabbinic grandfather who before every Passover rooted out offending crumbs with the help of a feather and a candle. It is astonishing and disgraceful how much food a family of four can stockpile. Friday and Saturday I boiled up half-filled boxes of spinach lasagna and a member of the penne family the color of a bruise, creating sauces from sardines, anchovies, fennel seeds, tomato paste, and smoked oysters that would have made my great-grandfather curse and gag. Tonight I will move on to quinoa, and for tomorrow I have my eye on some kernels that resemble shriveled caviar, a delicacy that thanks to my reduced circumstances, I no longer need to pretend to like. When I return to the city, I plan to find my mother-of-pearl caviar spoons and learn how to sell them on eBay. Will this switch from buyer to seller feel oddly unnatural, like trying to write with my left hand instead of the right?
I begin to evaluate the cereal, stopping to consider whether Ben’s devotion to steel-cut oatmeal puts his death in the same subset of irony as a vegetarian being gobbled by a wolf, when I hear someone pull into the driveway. I carefully straighten my knees, walk to the back door, and peer through the window. A dark green, mud-spattered van is discharging what appears to be a tall, thin teenager wearing work boots and, on this overcast Monday, sunglasses, with a hank of blondish hair peeking out from a cap that says, ADAM AND EVE.
The very expensive gardening service—I’ve seen those triple-digit bills—has arrived, although not in the form of the squat Ecuadorians with which I am familiar. This must be the out-of-season brigade. Adam, I suppose, deposits a cache of tools on the edge of the driveway and walks toward the outdoor shower, then the shed, bending to gather branches blown down in the storm.
What would it be like to have a brisk job in fresh air? To dress every day in gently worn overalls and wear nothing more on my face than sunscreen and Chapstick, my shorn hair squashed under a hat, to become a twenty-first-century Emily Dickinson, raising flowers instead of children, allowing weather to dictate my life.
I surrender to the romance of the notion until I remind myself that I loathe Emily Dickinson; I am more of an Edna St. Vincent Millay “My candle burns at both ends” sort of gal. My Emily Dickinson animus is not simply because I cannot weed unless under expert supervision. I’m strictly an indoor gardener, a fact confirmed when I ordered two hundred bulbs from a mail-order catalog and planted every last one upside down, providing fast food for rodents. The following spring a grand total of seventeen tulips rose from the earth to give me the finger. Everything Emily represents—her meshugas with the white dresses, her fanatical virginity, and yes, her deranged midnight gardening—appeals to me only slightly more than, say, pro-wrestling. If Emily had been my freshman roommate, I would have demanded a single. Becoming even an elegant landscape architect would be, for me, too earthy and exhausting. I sigh and am ready to return to my cupboards when the visiting gardener stops before he enters the sheds, turns toward the house, squints, and waves.
I wave back but he is no longer in sight and I return to toss opened packages of flaccid potato chips into an industrial-sized black plastic bag. On the radio, an announcer is giving top-of-the-hour news, delivered with the calm, peculiar cadence exclusive to NPR, as if there is a subtext about a bombing in Syria that I should get.
I progress to canned goods, looking for dents and leaks that, given my recent track record, I am positive will breed botulism—baked beans; pineapple, sliced and crushed; garbanzos; beets; yams in sweet, heavy syrup; and enough pumpkin to bake a pie for every Pilgrim. When I’m back here with a car, I’ll make a hefty donation to a food pantry, I am thinking, as I hear a soft knock. I get up from my crouch, go to the back door.
The gardener is here but he is not Adam. She is Eve, aggressively wholesome and most definitely cold, with a small, pointy nose that is slightly runny, and rough lips. She’s also no teenager, but not much older—Nicola’s age, at the most.
“Mrs. Silver?” she asks.
It never was, officially. I have been steadfast to Waltz.
“Yes?” I’ve spoken to both daughters and Daniel every day and to Wally Nothing-to-report-I’m-so-sorry-Georgia Fleigelman on Friday. Nevertheless, my voice sounds as if it’s been greased with an unguent, and before I continue I clear my throat. In those seconds the face comes into focus. This Eve looks familiar. I might know her from valet parking at a party or standing behind a cash register ringing up insect repellant at the drugstore. She belongs to the tribe that makes the Hamptons hum and who I assume, if I think about it—which I haven’t, until now—must despise my kind, the second-home crowd. Now that I’m staring at her, I realized I have misjudged this girl, who is actually far more attractive than most of the summer people with their three-thousand-dollar watches and spray tans. Despite her lanky frame and slender limbs our gardener is blessed with what Ben referred to as a rack. Unlike most of the women at the beach similarly endowed, I am going to guess her set is God given.
“Excuse me,” she says. I realize that I must be gawking. Expecting condolences, I prepare my stock response, gratitude encased in stoicism. Yes, a heart attack. You’re right, way too young. Hanging on, thanks for asking. The girls? It’s tough. But what the gardener says is, “Pardon my asking, but could I please use your phone? My battery is dead.”
“Certainly,” I say. “The phone’s over on the counter.” I return to my task at hand while I eavesdrop.
“I’m finished here. . . . Okay, I’ll wait til he wakes up then. . . . See ya in a bit.” She replaces the phone in its cradle, thanks me, and heads toward the back door, pulling a tissue from her pocket to blow into it with a thoroughly unladylike blast.
“Can I offer you some tea?” I find myself asking. If my life was measured by tea bags, I have discovered that I would still be weal
thy. Organic cranberry green, lemon chamomile, Earl Grey, et cetera.
“Thanks. I have to wait awhile for my mom to pick me up. This is nice of you, Mrs. Silver.”
“It’s Waltz, Georgia Waltz,” I offer.
“I’m Clem,” she says. “Clementine DeAngelo.” She surveys the scrambled objects around the room. “Doing some cleaning?”
“Major purge. I’m putting the house on the market.”
“Really?” I think I catch chagrin. “Why? It’s such a beautiful property, and the perennials are going to be great this year. We just put in those rhododendrons and forsythia a few springs ago. This year they’ll come into their own.”
I never cease to be amazed at how every human being views the world through her personal lens, and how even the shy among us are prepared to chat up their angle. The historian observes a moment in time—how New York at the dawn of the twenty-first century is not so unlike Vienna in 1890, let’s say. The writer keeps an eye out for material, the psychiatrist, problems. Daniel looks at life as if it were a painting he might buy—is the composition balanced and original? Stephan evaluates in carats and profits. This Clementine looks at my life and apparently sees beyond scrawny privets, stunted shrubs, and a broken trellis to picture ruby red phlox, blue clematis climbing the wall, and herbs that I, proud hausfrau, will hang to dry.
Or maybe she just doesn’t want to lose a customer. “The house is too big for me,” I half lie as I sit opposite her at the table. “And, well, you probably heard about my husband.”
“Ben?”
I’m “Mrs. Silver.” He’s “Ben”? Clementine DeAngelo hooks me with a steady look as I hear a loud, angry noise. To my ears it’s like a gunshot, and I startle like Sadie roused from a dream.
“I think your water is boiling,” she says evenly.
“Right!” I get up awkwardly and have to grab the counter not to trip.