RIVERSIDE DRIVE
A NOVEL BY
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Connecticut ● New York ● Colorado
Table of Contents
COVER
TITLE PAGE & PREFACE
Copyright Notices
About the Author
Novels by Laura Van Wormer
Dedication
Acknowledgement
PART ONE
1 - THE COCHRANS HAVE A PARTY
2 - THE STEWARTS
3 - TEA AT AMANDA MILLER’S
4 - THE WYATTS
5 - MRS. GOLDBLUM AT HOME
6 - THE KRANDELL ARMS HOTEL
7 - ALEXANDRA WARING IS A HIT
8 - HOWARD AT WORK
9 - IN WHICH AMANDA AND
HOWARD BECOME ACQUAINTED
AND MELISSA HAS HER WAY
10 - WHAT MRS. GOLDBLUM’S
PRIDE WROUGHT
11 - THE DILEMMA OF
SAMUEL J. WYATT CONTINUES
12 - NEWS AT THE COCHRAN’S
13 - THE BLOCK PARTY
14 - SAINT LUKE’S HOSPITAL
15 - CASSY SAYS SHE THINKS
SHE KNOWS WHAT ALEXANDRA
IS GOING TO SAY
16 - AMANDA AND HOWARD
AND MISSY THE CAT
17 - HARRIET AND SAM
PART II
18 - THE MEMORIAL SERVICE
19 - THE RECEPTION
20 - AFTER THE RECEPTION
PART 1: HOWARD
21 - AFTER THE RECEPTION
PART 2: AMANDA
22 - HOW LONELINESS WAS
AFFECTING CASSY COCHRAN
23 - IN WHICH MRS. GOLDBLUM
IS DETERMINED TO LEARN
ABOUT HER AFFAIRS
24 - ROSANNE IS PETITIONED
25 - SAM ASKS FOR HELP
26 - AMANDA ACKNOWLEDGES
HOW SHE FEELS
27 - HOW HOWARD WAS FARING
28 - SAM IS ASKED
TO MAKE A CALL
29 - HOWARD IS FACED WITH
THE HORRORS AT WORK
30 - THE UNDOING
OF CASSY COCHRAN
PART III
31 - SAM FACES THE MUSIC
32 - THE NEIGHBORS STAND
UP TO BE COUNTED
33 - HOWARD MAKES
A PRESENTATION AT
THE EDITORIAL MEETING
34 - HENRY SAYS THERE IS
SOMETHING DIFFERENT
ABOUT HIS MOTHER
35 - A CONVENTION IS HELD
IN THE ROOM OF
MRS. EMMA GOLDBLUM
36 - DADDY COLLINS CALLS
HOWARD A FIDDLE-FADDLER
AND A NEW ENTERPRISE IS BEGUN
37 - CASSY’S SATURDAY NIGHT
38 - THE HEARING
39 - AMANDA HAS A VISITOR
VISITOR AT THE
EMILY DICKINSON SCHOOL
40 - SAM’S AFTERNOON
41 - SUNDAY
PART I: BREAKFAST AT AMANDA’S
42 - SUNDAY
PART II: CASSY COMES BACK
FROM MINNESOTA
43 - THE HOMECOMING
44 - CONCLUSION
Copyright Notices
LAURA VAN WORMER
RIVERSIDE DRIVE
Copyright © 1988, 2012 by Laura Van Wormer
Int’l ISBN: 978-1-62071-020-3
ISBN: 1-62071-020-X
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic means is forbidden unless written permission has been received from the publisher
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
Cover illustration by Paul Bacon
Cover typography by David Gatti
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Van Wormer, Laura, 1955
Riverside Drive.
I. Title.
PS3572.A42285R58 1988 813’.54 87-36413
For information address:
Author & Company, LLC
P.O. Box 291
Cheshire, CT 06410-9998
This eBook was designed by iLN™
and manufactured in the United States of America.
About the Author
Laura Van Wormer has been a force in fiction since the publication of Riverside Drive in 1988. A best-selling author of fourteen novels, her engrossing plots, memorable characters and insider knowledge of the media professions have won praise from the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Good Housekeeping, and People Magazine. Today she is Publisher of Author & Company, dividing her time between Connecticut and New York.
Novels by
LAURA VAN WORMER
Benedict Canyon / Jury Duty / Just for the Summer
The Alexandra Chronicles:
Riverside Drive / West End / Any Given Moment / Talk
Exposé* / The Last Lover* / Trouble Becomes Her*
The Bad Witness* / The Kill Fee* / Mr. Murder*
Riverside Park
*A Sally Harrington Mystery
To learn more about Laura Van Wormer and
all of her books please visit:
http://lauravanwormer.com
Dedication
In Memory of My Mother
Margaret Garner Van Wormer
My Father
Benjamin Francis Van Wormer
And My Mother Who Raised Me
Marjorie Law Ault Van Wormer
Acknowledgement
I would still be talking rather than writing had it not been for two extraordinary individuals named Loretta Barrett and Ann Douglas. Their wisdom, generosity and powers of reassurance are awe-inspiring. Their spirit is too. I can only wonder at my good fortune for having met them in this life and say, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for all you have taught me.
PART ONE
1
THE COCHRANS HAVE A PARTY
Cassy Cochran was upset.
Michael, her husband, had gone to pick up ice four hours ago and hadn’t been seen since; Henry, her son, was back from Shea Stadium but wasn’t; and Rosanne, the cleaning woman, was currently threatening the new bartender in the kitchen with deportation proceedings if he didn’t see her way of doing things.
Not a terrific beginning for a party that Cassy absolutely did not want to have.
“Hey, Mrs. C?”
It was Rosanne, standing in the doorway to the living room.
Cassy turned.
“If Mr. C comes back, he’s gonna be pretty upset about how this guy’s settin’ up the bar. Could you—” She frowned suddenly and leaned her head back into the kitchen. “What?” she said. “Well, it’s about time.” Rosanne swung back around the doorway, waving her hand. “Never mind, Mrs. C, Mr. Moscow here suddenly understands English.”
Cassy smiled, shaking her head slightly, and then surveyed the living room. It was a very large, very airy room that, in truth, almost anything would look marvelous in. And Cassy’s taste for antiques (or “early attic,” as Michael described her preference) was especially fitting, seeing as every floorboard in the apartment creaked. But then, the apartment was really much more like a house, a big old country farmhouse, only with high ceilings. And windows. The three largest rooms—the living room, the master bedroom and Henry’s room—all had huge windows facing out on the Hudson River.
The windows had been washed this week. Before, shrouded in a misty gray, the view from the twelfth floor had been eerily reminiscent of
London on what Henry called a Sherlock Holmes kind of day. But no, this was New York; and the winter’s soot had all been washed away and the late afternoon April sun, setting across the river in New Jersey, was, at this moment, flooding the living room with gentle light.
For a woman from the Midwest, the view from the Cochrans’ apartment never failed to slightly astonish Cassy. This was New York City? That steely, horrid, ugly place that her mother had warned her about? No, no... Mother had been wrong. Hmmm. Mother had been right about many things, but no, not about New York. Not here. Not the place the Cochrans had made their home.
Sometimes the view made Cassy long to cry. The feeling—whatever it was—would start deep in her chest, slowly rise to her throat and then catch there, hurting her, Cassy unable to bring it up or to press it back down from where it had come. She was feeling that now, holding onto the sash of the middle window, looking out, her forehead resting against the glass.
The Cochrans lived at 162 Riverside Drive, on the north corner of 88th Street. Looking down from the window, Cassy’s eyes crossed over the Drive to the promenade that marked the edge of Riverside Park. The promenade was arbored by maple, oak and elm trees, underneath which, across from the Cochrans’, were a line of cannons from the Revolutionary War, still aimed out toward unseen enemy ships. To the right, up a block, was the gigantic stone terrace around the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, a circular, pillared tower patterned after the monument of Lysicrates in Athens. But this part of Riverside Drive was built on a major bluff, and it was beneath it that lay the heart of the park’s glory.
Acre upon acre of the park was coming alive under the touch of spring, the trees bursting with new leaves, the dogwoods and magnolias flowering their most precious best. From here, too, Cassy could look down and see the community garden; in a month it would be one long sea of flowers, flowing down through a valley of green.
Traveling down the slope of the park, Cassy’s eyes, out of habit, skipped over the West Side Highway and down to the walkway by the river’s edge. It was green there, too. And then, down there, the Hudson River. Lord, she was beautiful.
It was the river that always played with Cassy’s heart. There were days when Cassy looked out and thought to herself, How does she know? She would be as dark and gray and cold as Cassy felt inside. But then there were those days when the river was as blue and as dazzling as Cassy’s own eyes were. Oh, how awful it was on those days when Cassy’s heart was cold and dark, and the river was so beautiful. Like now.
How does she do it? Cassy wondered. The river had all of these crazy New Yorkers on one side of her, and all of these crazy New Jerseyites on the other, forever throwing rocks and trash at her, dumping things in her, and, sometimes, even throwing themselves into her in an effort to get this thing called life over with. And yet... her tides continued to ebb and flow, and the winds continued to blow across her, and her rhythms of regeneration went on, pulling, pulling downward, her glorious expanse gracing the urban landscape, pulling, pulling downward, spending herself, finally, totally, into the relentless mouth of New York Harbor.
Cassy sighed.
“You okay?”
Cassy pressed the bridge of her nose for a moment and then turned around. “I’m fine,” she said. And then she smiled at Rosanne. And then she laughed.
“What?” Rosanne said.
“Well,” Cassy began, pausing, touching at her earring.
Rosanne’s eyes narrowed slightly.
Cassy glanced at her watch and then back to Rosanne. Back to the “Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame” bandanna that was slipping down over Rosanne’s eyes. Back to Rosanne’s blue denim shirt, whose shirt tail was hanging down to her knees. Back to her jeans, whose hem lay in folds around the top of her Adidases. Back to thin little Rosanne, all five feet of her, standing there, just waiting for Cassy to say it.
Cassy moved forward toward her. “It’s time for you to change,” she said, smiling.
Rosanne looked to the ceiling. “Here we go,” she said. “Ya know, Mrs. C,” she continued, as Cassy took her by the elbow and steered her toward the kitchen, “you never said nothin’ about me havin’ to play dress-up.”
They were in the kitchen now, and Cassy stopped, looking back at Rosanne. She smiled, yanked the bandanna down over Rosanne’s eyes and turned to the bartender. “Have everything you need, Ivor?”
“Yes, Madame Coch-ah-ren,” he replied, bowing slightly.
“Good,” she said, pulling Rosanne along through the kitchen to the back hall.
Rosanne scooped up her bag from the counter along the way. “And I never said I was a caterer,” Rosanne reminded her.
“Right,” Cassy said.
“So I don’t know why you get so picky about what I wear—it’s not as if you like any of these guys.”
They were in the master bedroom now, and Cassy headed toward her closet. “I think you’re going to like it,” she said, opening the doors.
“If you tell me, I’d bring one of the ones you already got me.”
“Well, I was in Macy’s and there it was, just hanging there, calling, ‘Rosanne, Rosanne, I was made for Rosanne.’”
Rosanne sighed, pulled off her bandanna and shook out her hair. Cassy turned around, holding a pretty blue and black print dress. “Hair,” she said, “good Lord, Rosanne, you have hair.”
“Come on, Mrs. C,” Rosanne said, turning away.
Cassy walked over and laid the dress out on the bed. She looked at Rosanne a moment and then smiled, gently. “Tell me the truth—do you really hate doing this?”
Rosanne shrugged and proceeded to pull some things out of her bag: a slip, some panty hose and a pair of shoes.
The doorbell rang.
“Uh-oh,” Cassy said, looking at her watch, “somebody’s here already. No, let Ivor get it, Rosanne. You go ahead and get changed.”
Rosanne shrugged again and started undoing the buttons of her shirt while Cassy walked back to stand in front of the closet door mirror. She scanned it. A few wisps of blond hair were already falling out of the clip. But her eyes were still blue. Her nose was still perfect. Her mouth still had lipstick. Body was still tall and slim. Bracelets, check. Earrings, check.
Cassy was still beautiful. Cassy was still forty-one. She would not stand closer to the mirror than she was; she would not care to see the reminders of her age showing around her eyes, mouth and neck.
“Don’t know how good Moscow’s gonna be at greetin’ guests,” Rosanne said.
“Hmmm,” Cassy said, raising her chin slightly, still looking at herself in the mirror.
“And you don’t want to scare him right off the bat,” Rosanne continued.
Cassy laughed.
“They said he was the last bartender they’d send us,” she reminded her.
“Oh, Lord, that’s right.” Cassy closed the closet door and sailed out of the bedroom, down the hall and through the kitchen to the front hall, where she found Ivor standing in front of the open door. “Who is it, Ivor?” When he gave her a vacant look, she stepped forward to peer around his shoulder. “Oh, Amos. Hi.”
“Hi,” Amos Franklin said. Both Ivor’s and Cassy’s eyes were fixed on the stuffed head of an unidentifiable animal that was snarling on top of Amos’ head.
“It’s okay, Ivor,” Cassy said, patting the arm with which Ivor was blocking the door.
Ivor did not seem convinced.
“He’s a guest,” Cassy told him. “We’re supposed to let him in.” Ivor’s eyes shifted to her. She nodded, smiling encouragement. He took one more look out the door, frowned, and slipped behind Cassy to return to the kitchen. “Sorry about that,” Cassy said, waving Amos in. “I have no idea what I’ve done to earn his protection.
“Any man would want to protect you,” Amos whispered.
Here we go, Cassy thought. Amos was forever whispering little things like that—that is, when his wife wasn’t around. “Nice hat,” she said, snarling fangs sweeping in past her eyes.
<
br /> “Michael gave it to me for my birthday,” Amos said. He reached up, groped around, and patted the animal on the nose. “I don’t think it’s real, though.”
Cassy led Amos into the living room, explaining that Michael was out getting some ice.
“Good,” Amos said, sitting on the couch and patting the seat next to him,” it will give me a chance to talk to you.”
Cassy sat down in one of the chairs.
“You’re beautiful”
“What?”
“You’re beautiful,” Amos repeated.
“Ivor!” Cassy called out. He was there like a shot. “Ivor,” Cassy directed, “ask Mr. Franklin what he would like to drink.”
Ivor stared at him.
“Scotch on the rocks,” Amos said.
Ivor moved over to Cassy. Bowing, “Madame?”
“A Perrier with lime, please. Thank you, Ivor.”
Ivor took one more look at Amos and departed.
“So, Amos, tell me how you are.”
Amos was not good. As the head writer for Michael’s news room at WWKK, he never made a secret of his keen dislike for Michael Cochran. After a mini-lecture on the abuse and misuse of Amos Franklin at work, he would invariably end up with a pitch for Cassy to hire him at her station, WST. Cassy’s mind wandered, and as Amos progressed with his story about how “a certain egomaniac who will go unnamed” took credit for a job done by “a certain unsung hero who will go unnamed”, Cassy—not for the first time—thought about Michael’s parties.
Once a month Cassy’s husband wanted to have a party. Cassy had never, ever wanted any of these parties, but it wasn’t because she was antisocial.
It was because Michael had this thing about only inviting people who seemed to despise him. And too, they—these people who despised Michael—were all professionally dependent on him. And so, whether it was Amos, or a technical director, or a character generator operator, they all came to Michael’s parties and drank with him and laughed with him and despised him. If Cassy made the mistake of trying to talk Michael out of one of these parties he would go ahead and invite the people anyway and then spring it on her the morning of the day it was being held. This was not the case this Sunday evening, however; this party had been announced Friday night. (“Cocktails.” “For how many?” “Ten, fifty maybe.”)
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