A card said, “Here’s your favorite chanteuse. I bet you never heard her sing this way. Miss you! Love, C.”
It was a CD called Barbara Streisand, Classical.
Scotti had never heard it.
She finished a Bordeaux she’d had with dinner the night before and listened to Streisand sing lieder by Schumann and Hugo Wolf, in the original German.
While Scotti sat listening, she flipped through Lord Jim, and came upon an underlined passage.
It is when we try to grapple with another man’s intimate needs that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun.
Two gifts at the end of the day that made Christmas joyful.
FIFTEEN
He had first met Lara ten years ago, on the evening of the day Lasher Communications acquired Keystone. She had sat beside him in Guild Hall, at a revival of South Pacific performed by an amateur theatrical group called the Hampton Players.
He was with Jack and Delia Burlingame, and Lara was with the drama critic for the East Hampton Star, who was scribbling notes for her review.
One could imagine that Lara leaned in to Len to give the critic room for her note-taking, and one could also imagine that Len leaned into Lara because Jack had had several bourbons with dinner and smelled like a brewery. Or maybe no one in the audience even noticed that the only bodies touching in Row F, center aisle, were Len’s and Lara’s, glued together for three acts, moving against each other almost imperceptibly, like heartbeats, as the performers sang “Some Enchanted Evening” and “This Nearly Was Mine.”
Len had noticed her the moment she arrived. Her coal black hair worn in a sleek chignon, her ivory skin with the light blue eyes, the regal look she had. Her parents had told her she was a young version of The Duchess of Windsor, so she bought every book about Wallis Simpson, copied her style, and by her late twenties had acquired this serene exterior, a collection of pugs, real and Meissen, and told Len that night she was nicknamed “Duchess.” Len was just forty.
Right away Len thought, She’s my reward for pulling off the Keystone deal. He was like a kid when he worked his ass off to get something, sometimes buying himself a new toy: the Bentley Azure convertible one year; Le Reve a few years later; the apartment at 825 Fifth, on and on . . . and then a reward beyond his biggest dreams: this woman.
Jack and Delia left for a smoke during the first intermission. The drama critic headed up the aisle, too.
Lara stayed beside Len.
“How do you like it?” she asked.
“I like you more. What’s your name again?”
She told him, adding, “And you’re Mr. Lasher. The woman with me says you’re a real wheeler-dealer.”
“Len,” he said, smiling, his eyes fixed on hers. “Start by calling me Len.”
“What are we starting, Len?” She laughed softly because she knew.
They had a date by the time the actors took their bows.
From then on, everything fell into place, other companies fell in his path like dominoes, and he and Lara fell for each other, basking in the kind of dream marriage his dirt-poor parents had which made them rich in cold-water Low'er East Side railroad flats.
Deanie was born. Len got luckier and luckier (he never thought of it any other way) and he wallowed in it, and rejoiced, until their revels ended with a doctor telling him to brace himself, the news wasn’t good.
A month before Christmas he had made his last deal, a merger that would knock the socks off the communications industry. Lara and Deanie would be set for life, and so would Deanie’s kids.
Now he was a bag of bones, a baby being washed on Christmas morning after he’d dumped in his Pampers. He was so destroyed he only wanted out, so dehumanized that it had taken Delroy to remind him that he should wait until after Deanie’s birthday, January thirteenth . . . that if he didn’t allow a space of time after the holidays and her birthday before he sipped the lethal drink, his loved ones would dread those winter celebrations even more.
Right after Len researched ALS on the Internet, he vowed that he would spare his family all that he could. Fortunately (and cruelly, too) the disease never affected the mind. The mind became a prisoner of the inert body until the breath was choked from it.
Before anything like that happened, Len bought the land at Green River. Lara knew nothing about it. He had thought of taking Jack Burlingame into his confidence, but Jack had only recently buried Delia there. Jack had gone through hell nursing his wife in the last stages of ovarian cancer. He could not even bear to visit the grave, which Len had chosen for him because Jack was so distraught . . .no, Len would face the end by himself. He liked to say that he cleaned his own guns.
When his illness progressed, it pained and inconvenienced everyone, adding to his own suffering as he watched Lara, Deanie, and everyone at Le Reve adjust not just to the extra work but to the sight and sound of him. Even the practical nurse, Mrs. Metcalf, showed the strain, so that Len had Delroy take over and Mrs. Metcalf only came a few hours a day.
All the while Len was planning: the inns where out-of-towners would stay, the limos that would accommodate them while they were in East Hampton, even the printing of the acknowledgment cards for those sending condolences to Lara. The poem “Invictus” was engraved on the reverse side.
Lara would have very little to do.
With Delroy’s help, Len was accomplishing the final touches, before Delroy put the pulverized Valium and Nembutal into the milk shake.
It would wait until the twentieth of January.
Delroy would not be implicated in any way. Len knew the medical examiner. He had seen to it that his death would be attributed to ALS, no mention of suicide.
Once Len was dead, Delroy would give Lara the envelope with all the instructions inside.
The half acre would be for all of them: Lara, her mother, Deanie, and the grandchildren. A family plot.
Len had even thought of ordering twin headstones, one with his dates on them, the other with Lara’s birth year and a dash . . . the year of her death left blank. There were several such headstones at Green River.
But then Len had thought better of the idea. Lara was too young to remain a widow. He wanted her to marry again, and to at least have the option of being buried where she chose, with whatever new name she’d have marking her grave.
His last gift to Deanie would be a trip the whole school would take, shordy after his burial. Lara would decide on the destination, depending on world affairs. Perhaps one of the islands. It would be good for Lara, too, to have time alone, to mourn and collect herself.
The one satisfaction Len Lasher felt in the dwindling days of his life was that everything about his death would proceed like clockwork, as anything and everything always had once he set something into motion.
SIXTEEN
When he was a kid, “Needles Couch” used to carry a key in his pocket that didn’t belong to any lock. He called it his car key. He used it to scratch up the doors of fancy cars in the Reutershan parking lot, a bit beyond Wald-baum’s, where he’d bagged groceries after Aunt Sade’s fatal automobile accident.
He used to hate rich people like the Lashers. He never dreamed that one day he’d be living as part of the family, in a house with the ocean just beyond the tennis court.
While he washed Len Lasher’s wasted body early that Christmas morning, he tried to remember all the good times he’d had at Le Reve. The holidays he’d celebrated with them, the picnics and sleigh rides they’d taken him on, the trips into New York City where he’d stayed in their whole-tloor apartment down from the zoo on Fifth Avenue, the plays he’d seen with them, the restaurant they’d taken him to. He’d been part of everything they did for the last two years of the three he’d been at Le Reve.
The first year he’d stayed in the hall by the door, running things with the computer there, like a sentry at his post. But after the disease began taking its toll on Mr. Lasher,
Delroy was needed wherever Lasher was, more and more in the upstairs.
That was when they arranged for him to live nearby, in the small, furnished farmhouse they bought for him.
He never spent much time there, but he moved his own things in: Sade’s prize collection of Toulouse-Lautrec posters, and Sade’s snapshots of him, the very first photos ever taken of Delroy, since cameras were taboo in the Amish community. There was a sampler his frail mother had made before her heart failed when Dehoy was five, and an autograph book with his sister Eelan’s imaginative drawing of their house on fire, signed “Love from Eelan Davenport.”
After he began the care of Mr. Lasher he was told that he was “family.” He remembered the exact moment it was said to him, last summer on Mr. Lasher’s fiftieth birthday. He was helping Mrs. Lasher open champagne in the kitchen.
“You’ll have some, too, Delroy,” she said, but when he put a glass out for himself she shook her head and said, “No, in with us. You’re family, Del.” Eelan had called him “Delly” and Sade, “Roy.” The “Del” had touched him and reminded him that once he had been cherished. It had helped him forget that he was Needles Couch to some, and Mrs. Danvers to jealous household help. Mrs. Lasher might just as well have called him “dearest” or “darling,” the gratuitous “Del” meant so much to him.
Before Mr. Lasher was reduced to bones and flab, waste running out of every orifice, he had invited Delroy into the library one morning and told him to close the door and sit down. He was matter-of-fact about his plans for suicide, saying, “You’re a practical man, Delroy. The instructions I’m giving you now are between you and me. I’m counting on your objectivity and the responsible nature that you’ve demonstrated. Your loyalty, too. I’m counting on your loyalty, Delroy. Think of this the way you think of any assignment. If you see any flaws, point them out.”
He’d been thankful when Delroy had reminded him of Deanie’s birthday. Part of Delroy’s duties before that was to keep track of important family days: to be sure there was enough help, available limos, all those details.
Mr. Lasher had said, “This illness keeps me so focused on myself I forget everyone else. Thanks, Delroy, for reminding me Deanie’s birthday is coming soon. We can put off my plans temporarily, but not for long. My throat will close up eventually. I have to be able to swallow, even when the pills are diluted. The mixture can’t be too thick.”
He’d gone downhill rapidly after that conversation.
Now, as Delroy dried him and carried him to bed, covering him, Delroy no longer felt that lump in his throat, as though he might be unable to hold back tears. Everything was suddenly changed.
Delroy would do what he was expected to do in the days that followed, but it would no longer make him so sad, make his stomach knot.
He had even begun to think of this man as though he were a father to him. That was the ironic part. For Len Lasher had proved to be not much different than his own father had been, disappointing him in the end with his harshness.
Harrell Davenport had never seemed to his youngest son as strict as other fathers in the Amish community, though the Ordnung was the rule in all homes. No bicycles, telephone, electricity; no zipper clothing, no bright colors.
Harrell Davenport was an affectionate man who loved to throw his arms around his six sons and sing with them. He’d single out Delroy sometimes to sing with, in English. Hymns were sung in German, of course. English was too worldly. But Delroy’s German was poor, and his father indulged him. He was simpatico, too, with Eelan. “There’s a littie chunk gone from her mind,” he’d say, “but her heart makes up for what her head lacks.”
Delroy could forgive and perhaps even understand the fact that his father abided by the excommunication and the subsequent shunning of Delroy. Delroy himself had confessed to the elders that he had always supported Eelan’s whims, whether it was a doll with a face she wanted (dolls with faces were forbidden!), ice cream from the Dairyrich truck, or sneaking across the highway to the mall. Delroy had accepted blame for it all. But when Deacon Blyer had snarled that the devil had sent Delroy to ruin their poor, angelic Eelan, Delroy had run across the room to his father, crying out, “Tell him I’m from you and no devil!” His father had shaken his head sadly and told the deacon that Delroy had had a disobedient nature from the beginning. Eelan could not help herself in the face of it.
Before Delroy was sent off to Sade’s, his father would not touch him, would not smile nor let Delroy speak of Eelan, not once, not even when they were alone. He was silent, like all the rest, until the very end. And then, what he had to say was enough for Delroy to know that he acknowledged what was happening could be unfair, but he could not ever forgive Delroy. “Are you to blame because my precious girl is gone?” were Harrell Davenport’s last words to Delroy, and they were spoken in English.
There was Christmas music playing softly through the house speakers. But it was different now that Delroy knew he was not part of that house, or that family. He never had been. He just hadn’t known it until late last night, when he had not been able to keep from going to the drawer in the upstairs study, opening it, and taking out the will.
He had found his name at the very end, after the names of the cook of ten years, and the maids of six and seven.
All who had worked at Le Reve for five years or more had received five thousand dollars.
Delroy had been closer to Len Lasher than any of them. None of them had ever sat at the table with the family, gone into New York with them, or been included in their activities. None of them had been needed as Delroy had been: heard Mr. Lasher’s confidences, carried out his most personal wishes, for God’s sake wiped his ass—none of them were anything more to him than backstairs servants.
Although Delroy was the same size Len Lasher had once been, all of his clothes were bequeathed to the Ladies’ Village Improvement Society’s thrift shop. The small farmhouse Delroy had been living in was not mentioned, nor had the deed ever been in his name.
$50,000 to the Animal Rescue Fund.
$50,000 to The Retreat.
$25,000 to the Trails Preservation Society.
The list went on and on.
The least amount of money, $1,000, was for Delroy Davenport.
“Delroy?” Mrs. Lasher stood in the doorway of the bedroom. “You said you had to go into the village for something this morning. You may take the Jeep and pick up some things for me, please.” She handed him a slip of paper with her list.
He had almost forgotten his eleven o’clock date at the library.
She said, “Did you receive your Christmas envelope, Del?”
“Yes, I did, ma’am.”
All of the help had received a book of passes for the local United Artists theater.
“The guests are coming at one, so be back a bit before then. Enjoy yourself, Del.”
Delroy did not thank her. Thank her for what? Thank her for deciding that was all he was worth? He knew she was the authority when it came to the help. She was the one who decided what they were paid, when they could take their vacations, and now their value to Le Reve in dollars and cents. Lara Lasher had always been what was politely called “frugal.” Sometimes Len Lasher teased her about it, but that never changed her mind. How could he have left it up to her to decide what he would inherit?
Delroy marched past her, down the hall, with the Bill King sculpture of the begging man, a Connie Fox abstract above it. An ominous landscape by the environmental artist Janet Culbertson. Marilyn Church Claire Romano. Margy Kerr.
Chrissy Schlesinger, Jane Martin, Sheila Isham, Carol Crassen, Ann Sager. Local artists. Mr. Lasher liked to support them.
He was fond of saying, “Support your own! Cheer for the ones you know and care about!”
Delroy felt like weeping.
SEVENTEEN
Scotti could smell coffee on his breath, see his red nose hairs.
Delroy Davenport was one of those people who stood too close when he talked to you. Take two s
teps back from him and he took two steps forward.
“The letter’s for you,” he said as they stood by the front desk in the library, the closed sign on the window of the door.
“No,” she said, pushing away the book he held. Edith’s Diary with an envelope protruding from it.
“Please read it,” he said. “I wrote it while the Christmas program was going on. But I didn’t want to give it to someone else to hand to you. It could have gotten lost. And I couldn’t find you anywhere.”
Reluctantly, she took the envelope. It was used. It had le reve stamped in gold in the upper left-hand corner. “Delroy Davenport” was written across the front, crossed out, “Scotti House” printed under it.
“I didn’t have any stationery with me,” he said. “I wrote it quickly so it’s not thought out. But I mean what I wrote.”
She started to stick it in her coat pocket, then felt his large fingers on her sleeve.
“Please read it now,” he said.
“I’m in a hurry.”
“It’s not long.”
With a sigh of exasperation she took the paper out of the envelope. There was a note to him at the top.
“Please remember to pick up my package at Promised Land on Newtown Lane. Lara Lasher.”
That had been crossed out with a pencil.
Underneath, in neat block printing, was his message.
Scotti House,
I don’t care about things like that, although you may think I do because I was surprised. Who wouldn’t be? But I don’t think I deserve how you acted just now, as though you never layed eyes on me.
Tou could have ended up in jail that night for driving drunk.
I don’t want anything from you, but it seems to me you could use a friend.
Tours,
Delroy Davenport
She looked up at him and said, “All right. Thank you. Now we must go. The library is closed.”
“I would be a good friend, too.”
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