Misfortune

by Nancy Geary

  Just then Miles heard the click of Clio’s heels on the polished floor and voices gushing forth in friendly greetings.

  He smiled to himself as he rose from his desk. He may have missed his opportunity this evening, but she couldn’t avoid him forever.

  Friday, June 5

  As Aurelia stood at her kitchen sink rinsing the last of her dishes, she saw the navy blue Range Rover pull into her driveway from Halsey Neck Lane. She opened the window, pressed her face closer to the screen, and called out, “Who’s there?” There was no reply. The glare of the late afternoon sun on the windshield made it impossible to see inside. She wiped her hands on her apron and walked out onto the porch. The engine turned off.

  Aurelia approached the car slowly until she recognized Henry Lewis seated in the driver’s seat. “Henry, Henry, why, what an unexpected surprise.”

  He said nothing and continued to stare blankly straight ahead.

  “Are you all right? Henry?…Henry, what’s wrong?” Aurelia grew increasingly alarmed as each of her questions went unanswered. “Can I get you some water?” She reached through the open window and touched his cheek lightly. He felt flushed, but nothing out of the ordinary for a warm June day.

  After several moments he turned his head slowly to look at her. “May I come in?” he asked.

  “Why, of course. Please.” Aurelia stepped back, giving him room to get out of his car. In silence they entered the house. She offered him a chair at the kitchen table and placed a tall glass of lemonade in front of him. Then she sat down opposite.

  Henry took a sip of his drink. She looked at his full lips glistening with wet lemonade, his strong square jaw, his smooth brown skin. Even his bloodshot eyes did not detract from the majesty of his face.

  “Driving over here just now…,” he began. His voice was dull, the words flat. “I wondered to myself about our relationship. Are we friends? The thought never would have occurred to me until the last several weeks, you know, defining what you are to whom. I guess I was naive. I thought friends were friends, colleagues were colleagues, patients were patients. That pretty much would have covered everybody I know.” Aurelia was silent, not understanding but not wanting to interrupt. “In any event, I need to talk to you. Maybe it’s inappropriate. Maybe I’m overstepping my boundaries, but I couldn’t think of anyone else. You can tell me if you want me to leave.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Aurelia said, realizing that she hadn’t the faintest idea what Henry Lewis was doing in her kitchen, seemingly disoriented but also fixed on something. She settled in her chair and rested her interlaced fingers on the edge of the wide-pine table. “What is it that you want to talk about?” she prompted.

  “Are you a member of the Fair Lawn Country Club?”

  A chuckle emanated from her throat before she could stop it, but the look of seriousness on Henry’s face stifled the louder laughter bubbling inside her. She looked at her hands as she spoke. “I was. A long time ago. When I was married to Richard. When he and I divorced, I resigned. That had to be in ’66, maybe early ’67.”

  “Why’d you resign?”

  “Actually, Richard urged me not to because of the girls, tennis clinic, that sort of thing, but it was his world, not mine. I had no particular interest.”

  “Did you know that Clio Pratt is on the Membership Committee of Fair Lawn?”

  “I didn’t, although it doesn’t surprise me. Richard was on it himself at some point. He’s always cared terribly about that place. He urged me constantly to get involved. He must have done the same with Clio. Unlike me, apparently she does what he asks.”

  Aurelia fingered the pleats in her faded flowered skirt. Richard had wanted her to do many things differently. Her lack of involvement with the ladies’ activities at the Fair Lawn Country Club was only one of his disappointments.

  Aurelia wished she had some sense of where this conversation was headed, what Henry wanted from her, but his face was difficult to read. His gaze seemed far away. She had known Henry Lewis for nearly a decade, since he’d been the chief surgical resident at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, but she realized that she knew very little about him. When they met she’d been his patient, referred to him for consultation on her cardiac arrhythmia. Although her problem had been minor, a mitral valve prolapse that was treated with certain dietary restrictions and antibiotics before she had any dental work, she and Henry remained in contact. With a common interest in art, they spent several Saturdays together at shows—Magritte at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Calder at the Museum of Modern Art, most recently a Mark Rothko exhibit at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., a full day’s excursion including the round-trip train ride.

  The odd part about their friendship, Aurelia now thought as she looked at Henry sitting across her kitchen table, was that in the time they spent together, there’d been no personal discussion. On occasion he mentioned his wife, Louise, or his daughters, but only in passing. He rarely spoke of work. Art, their shared passion, was the focus, and Henry grew increasingly animated in conversation about the detail in a background, the texture of a canvas, the innovation of a mobile, art, art, and more art, execution, style, and history. Despite the intensity of their experiences in front of paintings, their relationship was hardly intimate.

  “Clio Pratt threatened to blackball me and Louise when the Membership Committee was about to vote on our application. From what I understand, she pretty much single-handedly kept us from joining.”

  “If you ask me, Henry, that’s a blessing. That club is pernicious. You don’t want to be a part of it.”

  “Don’t tell me what I want,” Henry blurted out, rising from his chair.

  Aurelia’s astonishment must have shown on her face, because Henry immediately took a step back, then turned away from her and walked over to the window above the sink. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to take my temper out on you,” he said quietly. He turned on the faucet and watched the clear water run out. “I’m just so sick and tired of people, white people, telling me what I do and don’t want for my family. If I want my family to play tennis on the grass courts of Fair Lawn, for my girls to play bingo on Wednesday nights and win gift certificates to Lily White’s or some other toy store, then that’s what I want. Why is that so hard for everyone to accept?”

  Aurelia didn’t respond. She studied the well-dressed, attractive man standing in her kitchen. This was only the second time that Henry Lewis had ever been inside her house. Henry’s other visit had been on a Saturday about a year after they’d first met. He’d been out in Southampton with Louise, staying with Louise’s parents to make the final arrangements for their upcoming nuptials, and had asked to see her artwork. His request had surprised and flattered her. She had quickly assembled a small display arranged on easels throughout her garden. His enthusiasm that day had been infectious, a mixture of careful commentary, praise, and curiosity. The next day he’d gone to the small, out-of-the-way gallery in Manhattan that showed her work and bought several of her landscape paintings to donate to the cardiac care unit at Columbia Presbyterian. Her gallery’s director had been thrilled. Aurelia appreciated his generosity. It couldn’t have come at a better time.

  Aurelia still felt indebted to Henry.

  “I should start at the beginning, I suppose,” Henry said, lowering his voice. “If that’s okay?”

  Aurelia nodded.

  “I just don’t know where else to turn. Louise is adamant that we not involve her parents.”

  “It’s fine. Go ahead,” Aurelia said, trying to sound soothing.

  “Fair Lawn, historically, has been a big part of Louise’s life out here. As I’m sure you know, her family’s been involved with that place for generations, and Louise became a junior member when she turned twenty-five without thinking about it.”

  “Yes, I know. She and my daughter Blair were friends as children. I think they played in the twelve and under tennis tournament together.”

  Henry didn’t appear
to hear her. “Obviously, though, when the time came for us to apply, we questioned whether it was what we really wanted. We knew we would be the only interracial couple, and I’d be the only African American member. But Louise’s friends, the people we saw socially when we came out here, were members, and we decided that it would be nice for the girls. I had some simplistic notion that my race wouldn’t matter, that I was the right kind of person, a doctor. I had money. I actually didn’t see it as that big a deal. I viewed it as a nice resource to have for Louise, for the girls. God, I’m such an idiot.” He held onto his head with both hands and pulled at his hair.

  “When did this happen?” Aurelia asked, referring to the actions of the Membership Committee. She couldn’t bring herself to say “blackball” out loud.

  “The membership process took all winter, interviews, introductions, parties. Louise’s parents were terrific. Made sure we met all the right people. Even gave us a dinner that Clio Pratt had the gall to attend. Makes me sick to think about it. I can see her now, working the crowd with that saccharine sweetness of hers. ‘Ooohhh, it’s wonderful to see you,’ ” he said in falsetto imitation. Then his voice dropped. “She never gave us an inkling that she had a problem, a problem with me.”

  “How do you know she did?”

  “I know. I’ve heard. Trust me on this one. She threatened to blackball me, us, if the Membership Committee forced a vote on our application.”

  “I’m sorry.” Aurelia could think of no other words to say. Henry was quiet. Hesitantly she added, “What can I do?”

  Henry’s large brown eyes stared at her. “I can’t describe how this feels, the idea that someone would want to keep my family, my girls, out because of something we have no control over. We’re a good family. We’re decent people. This shouldn’t have happened to my girls.”

  Aurelia felt tears coming, and she pushed down hard on her eyelids with the fingers of her right hand.

  “You’ve known Clio a long time. I thought maybe you could help me to understand.”

  “Clio’s been married to my ex-husband for a long time. I don’t know her,” Aurelia said matter-of-factly, although her voice quivered. While it was true that she and Clio rarely crossed paths, through the lives of her two daughters Aurelia had seen how Clio operated, a tornado wreaking havoc on the newly planted seeds, the shingled roof, the swing set in its path. But Henry wanted to know why Clio did what she did. He wanted an answer, some neat, rational response that would take away the pain he was so obviously experiencing from Clio’s decision to exclude him. That Aurelia could not provide.

  Henry’s face filled with the same imploring look that Aurelia had seen too many times before on the tearstained faces of her daughters, Frances and Blair, also vulnerable, also begging for explanations. Each time the girls returned home from weekends or vacations with their father, they asked why they were treated the way they were. Why did they have to share a room when Justin, their half-brother, had his own and there were six other largely unused bedrooms in the house? Why did the cook make French toast for Justin’s breakfast and nothing for them? Why were they not permitted to have friends over to the house? Why, even as teenagers, were they prohibited from using the swimming pool without Clio’s express permission? Why were they excluded from dinner unless they had informed Clio by noon that they would be home that evening? Why had Clio refused to let Blair get married in their home? Some trivial, some profound, the girls’ questions boiled down to why Clio was the way she was.

  Aurelia had no answers. As children, Frances and Blair simply assumed that they had done something wrong, that they were somehow deserving of the disparate treatment they received, even as they struggled to determine what it was they had done. They offered to help around the house, didn’t they? They kept their rooms neat. They did as they were told. They were quiet. They hadn’t damaged anything. Aurelia had tried, over and over, to convince them that they were not at fault. What she couldn’t bear to explain was that Frances and Blair, two well-behaved, studious, adorable girls, were hers, the product of Richard’s first marriage. This simple fact, though totally beyond their control, was enough to condemn them in Clio’s eyes.

  “You know, I’ve asked myself over and over again, did I do the wrong thing? Should I have subjected my family to this process, this scrutiny, this judgment? Should I have subjected myself ?” Henry paused for a moment and bit at his lower lip. “I think I fooled myself. In Manhattan, in my profession, I’m treated with respect. People turn to me, they rely on me, to help them. I save lives. But out here, none of that seems to matter. It’s not good enough to be educated. It’s not even enough to be rich. Everybody is. Even though the people in this community have every benefit and privilege imaginable, they still find an excuse to hate. I must have been crazy to think attitudes could change.”

  “If it’s any consolation, I believe that Clio Pratt is threatened by a lot of things that you and I might not understand.” Two little girls who love their father, Aurelia stopped herself from adding. “She’s created a life surrounded by barriers, deliberately insulated from those who are different. Most of the people out here have done the same thing. That, Henry, is what you don’t understand about Southampton. People are rich. People are powerful. They’ve found a place where other rich, powerful people just like them want to come to play.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  The question surprised Aurelia. She paused, thought for a moment, and tried to answer as honestly as she could. “For purely selfish reasons. The landscape I love to paint. The home that I have been in now for nearly fifteen years, since Blair went off to college, a home that I created only for myself, just exactly how I wanted it. For the reminder of happy times with my girls, even with Richard. Southampton is where I’ve stored my memories. I guess you could say that Southampton is the only future I can envision, and as far as I can recall, it’s the happiest part of my past.”

  They were silent. Henry pulled on his lower lip. Aurelia watched him. She had not meant to talk about herself, and her disclosures made her feel funny.

  “That’s what I wanted it to be for me, for my family.” Henry’s tone was bitter. “We’re entitled to enjoy this place as much as the next person.”

  “What does Louise think?”

  “She says she’s mostly upset for me.”

  “And you’re upset for her.”

  “Louise is incredibly strong, stronger than I am in many ways. I just hate myself for putting her through this. She deserves better.”

  “You both do.”

  “Clio should be in my place. She wouldn’t have gotten half as far as I have. And yet she’s the one to sit in judgment.”

  “Should you try to talk to her?” Aurelia knew this was a futile suggestion.

  “What good would that do? A conversation can’t change in-grained attitudes. Besides, she’d probably deny it was her doing.” Henry laughed. “I should kill her, is what I should do. She deserves nothing less than to be removed from this planet.” He paused for a moment, then smiled, a flash of brilliant white teeth. “You must be thinking I’m crazy. Crazy to have tried to belong, and crazier now to be surprised that I don’t, or can’t.”

  Aurelia forced a smile. “No more crazy than the rest of us.”

  Saturday, July 4

  Frances Pratt kneeled in the fertilized earth, pulling small weeds and stray grasses from the rose bed in front of her and aerating the topsoil with her three-pronged claw. She sprinkled handfuls of Rose-Tone plant food around each bud eye of her seven Grand Finale rosebushes. Working from the ground up, her dirt-covered fingers removed the few yellowed leaves from the thorny stalks. The dead heads of formerly creamy white blossoms she cut off at an angle, just above the closest cluster of five leaves facing away from the center of the plant. These gardening tricks, developed over the years through much trial and error, served her well. Her roses were bushier and healthier than ever.

  Frances sat back on her heels, rubbed the small of
her back, and pushed her hair off her face. Felonious and Miss Demeanor, her canine companions, lay on the grass nearby, half sleeping, half watching her labor. She surveyed her work. After she finished with the roses, the bed of delphinium, cosmos, and foxglove needed weeding. Then she would turn her attention to her sunflower patch, this year’s experiment. Some kind of bug was eating the thick, fibrous stalks. While Frances could solve most of her gardening problems on her own, these insects had baffled her. She needed to get advice from Sam Guff, her neighbor and the best gardener she knew.

  Frances heard the telephone ring inside the house. The dogs pricked their ears but didn’t move from where they lay in the sun. Frances counted the rings, realizing after four that she hadn’t turned on the answering machine. Eventually the caller would hang up and try another time if it was important. She didn’t feel like talking to anyone. Summer Saturdays were for gardening, and the Fourth of July holiday was no exception. Frances bent over and resumed her work.

  The ringing persisted. The caller was someone who knew her well enough to know that she rarely answered the telephone, either her sister, Blair, her mother, or retired Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Robert Burke, now employed like her by the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office. The only other possibility was Sam, but he rarely bothered to call. He could walk across the street if he had something to say to her.

  Leaving her claw, trowel, and rake where they lay, Frances got up and went inside.

  “Hello?”

  “Why didn’t you pick up? Goddamn you, Fanny.” Frances recognized Blair’s voice, although the pitch was higher than normal and her words were slightly muffled, as if she had been crying.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Clio. Oh, my God, you’re not going to believe it.” Frances heard sobs mixed with wheezing breaths at the other end of the line.