The flight attendant wished them a good flight as they both accepted a glass of champagne. There was nothing particular to celebrate. But they had survived Hurricane Ophelia. For now, that was enough.
Chapter 9
The day after Charles left for London, Jim organized a brunch for his houseguests in the apartment on Central Park West. It was a rainy Sunday and a perfect day to stay in. They met in the library of his elegant apartment at noon, with several copies of the Sunday Times, and The Wall Street Journal, and he was working on the Times crossword puzzle when they walked in, and set it down with a smile when he saw Grace.
“Sorry, it’s a terrible affliction. The damn thing tortures me all week. I wake up in the middle of the night, trying to figure out the ones I missed.”
“So do I,” she said, laughing. “There’s always a trick to it. It’s a special mindset, like learning Chinese. I tried to do that when I was young, to impress Mr. Pei when I worked for him. I finally gave up, but I still wrestle with the Times crossword puzzle myself, with only slightly better results.”
“I know just what you mean,” he said, reaching for the paper again, “like this one. ‘Nineteenth-century Napoleonic architect influential in Paris.’ ”
“That’s easy,” she said immediately. “Haussmann.” He looked up at her, vastly impressed. “Does it fit?”
He counted the boxes. “Perfectly. Maybe we should do this together.” He showed her the ones he was missing, and she got two of them right off the bat. They were congratulating each other when Bob and Ellen walked into the room at the same time a few minutes later.
“What’s all the noise about?” Bob asked innocently. He could hear them laughing and celebrating down the hall, and Ellen was amused.
“I’ve found a partner in crime for the crossword puzzle,” Grace answered, smiling broadly. “The damn thing drives me crazy, but I can’t stay away from it.”
“I don’t go near it,” Bob said, picking up a copy of The Wall Street Journal. “I have some sort of learning disability about puzzles. I can’t do them to save my life. I gave up years ago. My wife and I used to fight about it. She was usually right, I screwed the whole thing up and drove her nuts because I did it in ink.” Jim looked sheepish as he said it, and admitted that he did too, and as a result, the whole thing was a mess by Sunday night, as he crossed things out and wrote over it all day. Grace was having fun as she studied his empty spaces again and came up with another one. They were a good team. And she appeared surprisingly rested and relaxed despite the shock and horrors of the last week. Ellen had lined up the movers and spoken to the insurance adjusters several times. She was planning to clear the apartment for her in the next few days. Having been through it before, they knew what to do and had moved very quickly.
“And now I have the unpleasant task of finding a temporary apartment,” Grace said with a sigh. “I might have to look uptown. Downtown is in total chaos, half the buildings are shut down and will be for a long time, and all the people who want to take advantage of the hurricane victims will raise the rent on short-term furnished apartments sky high. I went through all that last time. I might just expand the search to uptown too. It’ll be easier than fighting the wars downtown.”
“You can always stay here, for as long as you like,” Jim said generously, but she didn’t want to impose. She knew Bob was planning to stay there for several months if necessary, but the two men were close friends. And Grace liked having her own space and not being beholden to someone she barely knew, however gracious or good company he was.
“Thank you,” Grace said, smiling at him. “I don’t want to be a burden. Houseguests get tiresome very quickly. And Blanche likes having her own apartment,” she said, patting the dog, as he laughed.
“Well, she’s welcome to stay, and so are you.” He was impressed by how calm Grace seemed, despite all she’d been through. She’d been in close communication with her office, and was upset about missing a week of work. She was planning to go back as soon as she and Ellen got the apartment squared away. Ellen had been in regular contact with her office in London too, since they moved to Jim’s apartment and her cell phone worked again, and she still needed to look around the vintage shops and antique stores for her clients, although many of them had been closed all week due to the hurricane. Even if they were in unaffected areas north of Forty-second Street, employees were trapped in the suburbs, or flooded out of their homes, and the bridges to Manhattan had only opened a few days before. But no one could get into the city with fewer than three people in a car. Carpools were mandatory to try and reduce the number of vehicles coming into the city, in an attempt to diminish the fierce traffic downtown in areas that were already severely damaged and hard to get through.
Jim picked up the Book Review then, and handed it to Bob with a smile. They both knew what was in it, since they always got the best-seller list in advance, on Wednesdays for the Sunday ten days later. Bob’s new book was number one that week, and he smiled as he looked at it and handed it back to Jim, who passed it to Grace. His publisher had taken out a full-page ad for the book, and Bob looked attractive in the picture from the back of the book, in a tweed jacket and open shirt. It was a reminder of just how famous and successful Bob was, although he made no fuss about it.
“I’ll pick one up this week,” Grace promised, as Bob told her not to, saying he would give her and Ellen free copies if they liked.
“I never press my books on people,” he said modestly. “It still embarrasses me after all these years.”
“Don’t give us any—we’ll buy them,” Grace insisted, as Ellen looked at the best-seller list and smiled at him too.
“Well done,” she congratulated him, although no one was surprised. And she could see from the ad that it was his forty-fifth book and a best-seller on the Times list. He was number one on the Wall Street Journal and USA Today lists too, and on the eBook list as well.
“I never get blasé about it. I always feel lucky that people still read my books,” Bob said honestly.
“You and Agatha Christie,” Grace said generously. “You’ll go down in literary history.” He wrote very clever mysteries, always with a surprise ending and a psychological twist. Grace had loved them for years. And unlike Agatha Christie, whose books were shorter and lighter, his were long, solid novels that kept the reader mesmerized and intrigued for four hundred pages. There was real merit to their success, and his. “We should be celebrating today,” Grace said as she smiled at him again. “Or is that the reason for our brunch?”
“No, but perhaps it should have been,” Jim said, smiling at his friend and favorite author. “I just thought you all needed a bit of civilized relaxation after a hard week.” They were called into the dining room by his maid then, where they discovered a sumptuous buffet, and she told them that they could have crepes, homemade waffles, and omelets too.
“This is why I can’t stay here for very long,” Grace said with a sigh as they sat down. “You’re much too good to us, and I would be the size of this table in no time.” Jim laughed at what she said. She missed her yoga class and needed it desperately for stress, but there had been no time in the chaotic aftermath of the flood, and the yoga studio she went to in Tribeca had been flooded as well, and was closed. She had checked as soon as they got to Jim’s, but their phone didn’t answer, and she’d driven by on the way back uptown one night. The person cleaning up the mess inside said they would have to move. She’d have to find a new yoga studio too, or contact her favorite teacher once all their phones worked again. For now, communication was mostly impossible with anyone downtown. And she had no time for yoga, or anything else, anyway. She had to clear her apartment, put things in storage, the damaged pieces had already gone to the restorer, and above all she had to find a place to stay until her home was habitable again, probably not for many months.
The conversation over brunch was easy and intelligent. Bob talked about his children in California, Ellen about life in London, and
Jim and Grace had a lively exchange on a variety of subjects. Bob and Jim talked politics, and then the women joined in. Jim was five years younger than Grace, but he made her feel like a woman for the first time in a long time, which seemed strange to her. He was a very attractive, successful, erudite man, and she was sure he had a bevy of women in his life. Why wouldn’t he? And he had been widowed for fifteen years, so he was accustomed to being on his own, and undoubtedly had many opportunities for companionship—he didn’t need her. Which was how she saw it, and thought she was surely too old to catch his interest. She had put that behind her years before, when relationships just began to seem complicated and too much work, and she felt past the point of wanting to put up with someone else’s neuroses, baggage, and quirks. She had enough with her own, and preferred to focus on her career, which was still booming, time-consuming, and rewarding, more so than dating could have been. But for the first time in ages, someone was sparking her interest. She felt almost foolish about it, and had no intention of flirting with Jim and appearing idiotic. She did her best to treat him as an intelligent man, an intellectual sparring partner, and a potential friend. But he appealed to her more than she wanted to admit, and he seemed to be interested in her too, as more than just a houseguest. But she didn’t want to open that door again, to relationships and romance. In her view, it was too late.
Ellen had noticed it, and said something when they went to their bedrooms. Ellen had some work to do and emails to answer from her office, and Grace wanted to read memos from hers. They had a busy week ahead. The lazy Sunday afternoon was a welcome break.
“He likes you, Mom,” Ellen said pointedly, smiling at her.
“I like him too. And don’t give me that look,” she scolded her. “I’m much older than he is.” She tried to squash the notion before anything started, in Ellen’s mind, or her own. She sounded like she was trying to convince herself.
“No, you’re not. Maybe a few years, but no more than that. You’re great together, and you’re having fun with him. And he’s very impressed with you.”
“That’s all very nice,” Grace said dismissively. “But I’m too old for all that. I don’t need the headache of getting involved with someone. It’s too distracting. And I’m sure he’s not interested in me that way.”
“He’d be good company for you,” Ellen insisted, “at least for dinner sometime. See what happens.”
“Nothing is going to happen,” Grace said firmly. “And I’m sure he has younger women in his life. He’s a very attractive man.”
“Maybe not,” Ellen said about other women. “And even if he does, you’re pretty remarkable, Mom. He’d be lucky to have you.”
“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” she said tartly. “But I’m not up for grabs, thank you very much,” Grace said through pursed lips. “Don’t even think about it.” Ellen went to her own room then and called George. She thought he’d be back from his weekend away by then, but he didn’t answer, and the call went to voicemail. She tried him again before dinner, which was late for him, and got voicemail again. She’d only been gone for nine days, but it seemed like a year. She felt strangely disconnected from him, and their calls had been unpleasant since the hurricane, as though he was annoyed with her about something but didn’t want to talk about it. She had an uneasy feeling, and decided to answer her emails instead of calling again. She’d be home soon enough, and everything would go back to normal then, she was sure. She hadn’t decided yet if she was going to tell him about her visit to the doctor in New York. It was another nail in the coffin of her hopes to have a child, and she didn’t know if she wanted to spell it out to him quite that clearly, in case he wanted to give it one more try, or was willing to. Maybe they’d get lucky if they tried one last time. Stranger things had happened to others once they gave up. It was a little bit like gambling in Vegas—she hoped to win the jackpot every time, convinced herself she might, and came away broke. The roller coaster of their reproductive life. She wasn’t sure whether to give up completely as they’d been told, or pray for a miracle and talk him into one more round of IVF, knowing that it was a long shot. And what if they never won the baby lottery? What if it really was all over? What would their life be like, and their marriage, without children forever? She still couldn’t imagine never having children, although they had managed ten years of marriage without them so far, but they had always been sure they would have them one day. Now that hope was disappearing, or had already disappeared. She didn’t say anything about the doctor’s visit to her mother, who thought she should have given up and made her peace with it years before. She had a child—she couldn’t understand what it was like to accept the fact that you would never have any. People complained about their children, but they wouldn’t have given up the experience for anything in the world, and Ellen wasn’t ready to either. She didn’t know how to give up the dream—it had been part of her, and a driving force within her for too long.
Jim and Bob went out to dinner with a literary group that night, and Ellen and Grace were happy to stay home. They had much to do to prepare for the week ahead. Ellen made to do lists, and Grace sent a memo to her office by email, for a presentation that had to be delayed because of the storm. And there had been several calls from people whose houses had been severely damaged, mostly in Connecticut and New Jersey. It was going to be a busy year ahead. For an architect, hurricanes were good for business. And bad for everything else.
On Monday morning, two handymen from Grace’s building helped them put the last of the debris in the Dumpster. “Debris” that had once been the handsome furniture Ellen had ordered for her in Italy, and delicate items that had been smashed to bits. Everything they dumped was soaked beyond recognition and smelled of sewage. It was a relief to get it out of the apartment. And the movers came to pack all her breakables, china, crystal, objects that had survived. All her lamps had to be rewired and sent to an electrician, after being soaked where they were plugged in. They were working by the light of large battery-operated lamps that the building had bought for her, since there was no electricity in the building and wouldn’t be for a long time.
And by the end of the day, the movers had loaded boxes, crates, and most of the upstairs furniture onto the truck. And the insurance adjuster had shown up to take pictures and a video. Bob came across the hall to check on their progress and was impressed.
“You two are pros,” he said admiringly. Grace no longer looked like she was in shock or about to keel over, as she had at the shelter or when she first saw the apartment, and Ellen was keeping the workers on track. Grace was full of energy, and had already taken photographs and notes about what she was possibly going to change in the apartment.
“You’re really coming back?” Bob asked her, still surprised by that.
“I love this apartment,” she said simply.
“What if it happens again? It could,” he said practically. Knowing that had made the decision not to return easier for him. He preferred to give up an apartment he loved than to go through it again. He didn’t know how Grace could face the thought.
“It won’t,” she said decisively, but she had said that this time too, and Ellen disagreed with her and hadn’t given up yet. “Twice was a fluke. Three times just isn’t possible.”
“Never trust Mother Nature,” Bob said seriously. “She’ll trick you every time. I’m going to look at two apartments in Jim’s building tomorrow. I like it there, and as much as I love Tribeca, I’m ready to move uptown.”
“I used to live uptown—I like it so much better here. It’s so staid and boring uptown.”
“I’m ready for boredom,” he said, glancing at the damage around them. There were watermarks and drying remnants of sewage on the walls. He couldn’t face it again, and his apartment looked as bad as hers, if not worse, since it hadn’t been as polished as hers to begin with. Most of his furniture had to be thrown out and wasn’t worth saving. “I’m going to take a hit when I sell the apartment, but it’s wor
th it. I don’t want to be around to pay for the building repairs too.” And they would have to. Ellen had pointed that out to Grace, but she insisted she didn’t care. She was a stubborn woman.
The movers were almost finished in Grace’s apartment by the end of the day, and the place was nearly empty. And without the wet furniture they’d thrown away, it didn’t smell as bad and wasn’t as awful. The weather had warmed up that day, which made the stench of sewage in the streets worse, and they had all seen rats in the street, escaping from flooded buildings.
The next day, the movers emptied her closets and put her dry clothes in storage, until she found a temporary apartment. The insurance adjuster had already sent boxes of her clothes to a special dry cleaner to see if they could be saved. They had to throw almost all her shoes away. But her insurance company had promised to cover her losses. She was one of the rare hurricane victims who was well insured, but she paid high premiums for it, which most people couldn’t afford and didn’t want to. It was paying off now, just as it had five years before. But however good her coverage, and their willingness to pay, there were so many things that couldn’t be replaced. Fortunately, she had kept all her photo albums of Ellen’s childhood and wedding, and her own history and her parents’, upstairs, and they hadn’t been damaged. Others hadn’t been as lucky and had lost all the sentimental and material things they owned. There were thousands of stories of heartbreak and loss in the papers and on the news, and heart-wrenching photographs of people crying. And those who had died in the hurricane were being buried that week. Ben had been one of the first.
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