Misfortune

by Nancy Geary

  Stunned, Frances glared at her sister.

  “Just think about it.” Blair flipped her wrist in Frances’s direction. “It makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it, Dad?”

  “I don’t know that Dad wants his privacy invaded by me and two dogs,” Frances said, trying to dismiss her sister’s idea. Richard Pratt didn’t respond.

  “Well, I think it would benefit both of you.”

  The thought of Sam flashed in Frances’s mind. She had no interest in giving up her own home and her life in Orient Point to move in with her father. She stood up, feeling suddenly more awkward than usual.

  “Where are you going?” Blair sounded irritated.

  “You’ll have to excuse me, Dad,” Frances said, ignoring her sister. “There’s something I have to do. It’s important.” She left quickly to avoid any further questions.

  Frances drove through town, down South Main Street, and headed toward Gin Lane. More than ten years had passed since she had seen Louise Lewis. She remembered her as tall and thin, with bony knees that knocked together and a thick French braid that slapped against her back as she ran. Louise had spent a considerable amount of time at the Pratt household visiting Blair. They had built a clubhouse in one corner of the attic with an old carpet remnant, two twin mattresses, and a badly damaged Chinese screen to separate themselves from the rest of the clutter-filled space. They’d paid dues; that Frances remembered because Blair constantly reported on the sums in their treasury. Boys and Frances, as the older sister, were strictly excluded from the club, but the giggles and gossip of Blair and Louise often floated down the stairs to where Frances perched, listening.

  When had Louise married? Frances had heard nothing about her engagement or wedding. Blair, Frances’s most reliable source of gossip and goings-on, had never said a word.

  Louise opened the front door before Frances could knock. Hanging on either leg were two daughters, their molasses skin prominent against her white linen skirt. Each girl was dressed in a flowered sundress, ankle socks with ruffles, and red leather sandals. Frances’s eyes wandered past Louise, up the staircase curving around to her right. A kilim runner partially covered the painted wood stairs. Nine oversize drawings of blackbirds ran along the wall. The decor seemed unusual for Southampton, where floral prints with coordinated stripes and oil paintings of golf courses seemed to fill every home. This interior felt exotic.

  Louise motioned for Frances to come inside.

  Frances followed Louise through an elegant living room with spectacular views of the Atlantic Ocean through a pair of doors to a deck off the side. Henry Lewis sat in an Adirondack chair, reading. A tray with plastic tumblers and a pitcher of iced tea rested on a table beside him. As Louise approached, he put down his copy of the New England Journal of Medicine, stood up, and shook Frances’s hand.

  “You’re with the Suffolk DA?” Henry asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Malcolm’s office. It’s a good one,” Henry said, seemingly to Louise. The two girls extricated themselves from their mother and retreated to a corner of the deck, where several Malibu Barbies with platinum hair, suntanned plastic flesh, and neon orange bikinis lay amid an array of pink plastic accessories, a Barbie dune buggy, and several miniature beach chairs.

  “Barbie’s changed quite a bit since my day, I see,” Frances said awkwardly.

  Louise ignored her comment. “I heard you were in New York City.”

  “I was after law school.”

  “When did you leave?” Louise asked.

  “I moved out to Orient Point in ’92.”

  “Why?”

  “I’d had enough, I guess.” Frances paused. “I needed a change.” She wasn’t about to disclose the real reason. Again the image of Pietro’s elegant form flashed in her mind, along with the sensation of his earlier embrace. He had been kind to attend the memorial service; Blair was right.

  “What’s it like here year-round?” Louise asked.

  “Orient Point, the north fork, is different from the Hamptons. It’s less a summer community. Beautiful landscape. A pretty slow pace.” She smiled. Louise didn’t return the gesture.

  “I can’t pretend that I am unhappy about Clio’s death,” said Henry, interrupting the social preliminaries.

  “Henry, please.” Louise looked frightened.

  “It amazes me that we’re going into the twenty-first century with people just as close-minded about race as they’ve always been. People will trust me to open their hearts up, to hold their lives in my hands, literally, but they don’t want me to play on their tennis courts.”

  Frances was silent, not knowing what comment might be appropriate under the circumstances.

  “My stupidity. I just wanted my kids to have the same experiences that Louise had loved as a child, including the Fair Lawn Country Club, but your father is a formidable opponent. I guess I’ll have to build my own court.” Henry laughed, breaking the tension.

  Frances relaxed her shoulders, realizing as she did how tense they were.

  “What is it you wanted to talk to us about?” Louise asked, handing her a filled glass of iced tea. The liquid smelled of lemon and sugar.

  “I’m interested in what happened at the Membership Committee meeting on your application. I was wondering if you knew anything.”

  “We weren’t privy to the details. You should talk to the committee members. Those that are around, anyway,” Henry replied.

  “Can you tell me anything?”

  Henry and Louise glanced at each other, as if silently deciding who would speak. Henry began. “When Louise turned twenty-five and could no longer use the club on her parents’ membership, she joined as a junior. For the first several years of our marriage, it never occurred to us to join as a family. On the rare occasions when we were out here, I used the club as her guest. Exorbitant initiation fees were something we wanted to avoid. Then last year we bought this house. Our older daughter had started playing tennis indoors in the city and really loved it. The younger one’s just about ready to take it up, too. Louise planned to spend most of the summer out here with them, so membership made sense. We indicated our intent to apply at the end of last summer, sometime shortly after Labor Day. At that point, I became what’s called a provisional member based on the overwhelming presumption that the family of a junior member will be accepted. As I understood it, my provisional membership was a formality. But in our case, the expected didn’t happen.”

  “Why not?”

  “The party line? Something about crowds and parking. But the truth? I’m black.” Henry snorted in disgust. “You probably noticed that. As I understand it, Clio, exercising your father’s proxy vote, threatened to blackball me. The few supporters I had managed to work an abstention so that I could try to join again, which I won’t.”

  “How can you be sure race was the dispositive factor?” Frances asked. While she didn’t mean to suggest there was any valid reason to exclude the Lewises, she wondered if a heightened, though understandable, sensitivity had made Henry jump to conclusions.

  “I don’t know how much you know about membership, but Louise and I have every possible credential, including that her parents and grandparents have been influential members. The only thing that separates us is race, mine and our children’s,” Henry added, glancing at Madeleine and Eliza. The two girls were absorbed in their dolls and seemed oblivious of the conversation.

  “Did you know Clio well?”

  “I met her a couple of times at most. She’s been to our house. She and your father were at our wedding, but so were five hundred or more Southamptonites.”

  “It was a rather large wedding,” Louise said as if to explain her husband’s sarcasm. “My parents are quite close to your father, and to Clio, too. Dad thinks the world of your father.”

  “Even after what happened with you?” Frances asked.

  “I haven’t had the heart to tell Dad that Clio was responsible for our not getting in. I think he assumes that she was a supporter, a
nd that someone else caused the holdup. In any event, it doesn’t matter now.” Frances wondered about Louise’s reference. As if reading her mind, she continued, “That is, since we have no interest in joining Fair Lawn after all. In all honesty, I’m not sure what got into us. It’s not the life we want our girls to grow up in.”

  “It was a mistake,” Henry agreed. “We assumed we lived in a different world.”

  “Were you at Fair Lawn last Saturday?” Frances asked.

  “Yes. Actually, I played tennis with your mother,” Louise offered.

  Frances feigned surprise.

  “I’ve known Aurelia for a long time,” Henry explained. “Louise played tennis earlier in the summer with her. Then, when we saw her several days ago at a Guild Hall opening, she suggested a re-match.”

  “I’ve had a very hard time returning to the club given the circumstances. My only two visits have been to play with your mother,” Louise said somewhat apologetically. “I agreed to play the second time because, well…” She paused. “My parents had been asking me why I never came to the club. They know how much I love tennis. I didn’t want them to think there was anything wrong. It’s hard enough for us. They didn’t need to suffer, too.”

  So she had compromised her principles to keep up appearances, Frances thought. “After your tennis game, did you stay to watch the tournament?”

  “Yes. Although it hadn’t been my plan. You see, Henry had the girls with him, but then he got paged by his office. There was some problem with a patient.”

  “That’s right,” Henry agreed. “I thought I had to get back to New York right away. I had no choice but to bring the girls to the club to try to find Louise. When I got there, I saw Beth, Louise’s mother, up on the porch. She offered to watch the girls until Louise was finished.”

  “My game ended at ten, maybe a little after. As I was leaving, I saw Mum, Madeleine, and Eliza. Mum explained Henry’s change of plans.”

  “So how long were you there?” Frances asked, turning to Henry.

  “Believe me, if I could have avoided the place, I would have. I stayed only long enough to drop the girls off and tell Beth what I was doing so Louise would know. That was it.”

  A clatter distracted Frances. Louise had dropped her glass. Ice cubes flew across the deck. “How stupid,” Louise mumbled as she knelt and blotted the liquid with a handful of paper napkins. She got up, wiped off her skirt, and took her seat. Frances noticed that her hand was trembling.

  “Did you see Clio?” Frances asked.

  Neither Henry nor Louise responded. Frances repeated the question. “Yes,” Louise replied.

  “I saw her briefly as well,” Henry added.

  “How was that?”

  “As unpleasant as you might expect,” Louise said. “I tried to be civil, but quite frankly, it was difficult.”

  “Do you remember any of the conversation with Clio that morning?”

  “She and I didn’t have a conversation,” Louise corrected. “She and my mother were talking about some fund-raising event, an auction, I think it was, to benefit YOUTHCORE. They’re both involved with that organization. I wasn’t paying too much attention.”

  “And you?” Frances directed her question to Henry.

  “As I’ve already told you, I just dropped my kids off. I didn’t even see right away that Clio was at the table with Beth. I didn’t speak to her. I had no interest in pretending we were friendly. I left.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “I went home briefly to collect a few things I needed. Then I called the hospital to see how my patient was doing, and to tell them I was on my way. The cardiac resident told me he’d gotten everything stabilized. He didn’t think I needed to come. That’s the life of a doctor, I guess. One moment, it’s an emergency. The next, everything’s fine.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Well, I certainly wasn’t going back to Fair Lawn. I went into town. I tried to go to Silver’s to get a paper and a couple of cigars, but it was closed for the holiday. I went home.”

  “Did you see anyone you knew?”

  “What are you getting at?” Henry asked loudly.

  “You didn’t run into anyone in town?”

  “No. And there was nobody here, either, because my family was at Fair Lawn.”

  So Henry had been near Clio shortly before her death. Frances shook her head slightly, wanting to dislodge Meaty’s theory from her mind. “And Clio was already at the table when you arrived?” She turned to Louise.

  “Yes.” Louise glanced at her husband, then continued. “Aurelia and I came up on the porch after our match. I don’t know how much detail you care to hear, but what I remember is that my parents were there with Madeleine, Eliza, and Clio. I never saw my husband. When Aurelia saw Clio, she excused herself. My mother explained why Henry had brought the girls. After I had been at the table briefly, my family wanted drinks. I offered to go to the bar. It was packed. I didn’t feel like waiting, so I left the order with the bartender and asked him to send a waitress out to the porch to deliver them. Aurelia found me in the bar to tell me she was leaving. I returned to my daughters. A short while later, Clio got up from the table, and that’s the last I saw of her. The rest you know.”

  “When did you know Clio died?”

  “Oh. We heard a scream. It was really loud, chilling. I grabbed the girls. My father, and several other people, hurried inside the clubhouse. It was chaotic.”

  “Did you see anyone coming out of the clubhouse?”

  “I can’t tell you. The club was packed with people anyway, and after the scream, people were moving in all directions. I do remember seeing your sister, Blair. She was yelling that Clio was dead. I felt so sorry for her. She was trembling and shaking. Then she just collapsed in a heap on the floor.”

  “What did you do?”

  “To be perfectly honest, I didn’t do anything. I couldn’t figure out what was happening for several minutes. I just stayed with the girls. They were scared by all the commotion. The police arrived pretty fast. I left as soon as I could and haven’t been back since.”

  “Did you talk to the police?”

  “An officer was taking names and telephone numbers from everyone. I gave ours. But that was all. I wanted to get out of there.”

  “Has anyone spoken to you about all of this since then?”

  “Yes. A Detective, Detective Kelly, called. He said he was following up with everyone who was there that day. I told him what I knew, what I’ve told you. That’s all.”

  “Thank you. Thank you both.” Frances nodded to Henry. “I appreciate your time. Please don’t get up. I can let myself out.”

  Back in the enclosed cabin of her pickup, Frances sat for a moment, rolling her head in circles to loosen the muscles in her neck. She rubbed her eyes. She wanted Dr. Lewis to have an ironclad alibi to instantly dismiss Meaty’s suspicions. Instead he was at the exact location where Clio had been killed less than an hour before she died. Worse still, he was a cardiologist. He more than anyone would understand how lethal a combination of phenelzine and Dexedrine would be.

  Frances couldn’t bear to return to her father’s house despite her promise to do so. There didn’t seem to be any point with Blair there trying to rearrange everyone’s lives. Nothing she said or did would take away the horrible emptiness her father had to be experiencing. She was too poor an actress to pretend she understood his grief.

  As she drove toward Halsey Neck Lane, the image of Blair at the door of her father’s house with Penny Adler filled her mind. Petite and well groomed, Blair looked as though she had stepped from the pages of Vogue in a slate blue cropped jacket and short pencil-pleated skirt. Was her sister as self-assured as she appeared? Underneath her confident air, what was really going on? What had Jake been doing over the Fourth of July? Let’s just say we haven’t seen eye to eye on how to deal with our solvency problems. She remembered Blair’s words. How frantic had they been about their gallery’s expansion?


  No. Frances shrugged. The very thought was absurd.

  As she pulled into her mother’s driveway, she could see her mother in paint-splattered overalls and a large straw hat, standing at an easel on the grass. Frances honked.

  “I thought I’d impose on you for some dinner,” she said.

  “Isn’t it your bingo night?”

  “I’m not up for the drive home just yet.”

  Aurelia put down her brush and came over to her daughter. She gave her a hug, squeezing her tightly. Then she kissed Frances’s forehead. “Come on in. I’ll see what I can concoct.”

  Frances sat at her mother’s kitchen table while Aurelia scrubbed her fingernails with a stiff brush. “This paint never comes off. I’ve almost given up being clean,” she said with a smile.

  “You looked good at Clio’s memorial service,” Frances remarked. “I was surprised to see you there.”

  “I didn’t go to honor Clio, don’t misunderstand the gesture, but Richard was my husband, and he’s your father. I went because of that. As for my outfit, well, if you’re going to the funeral of your ex-husband’s wife, you sure as hell better look good.” Aurelia threw her a smile, wiped her hands, then opened the refrigerator to look inside. “Ah, we’re in luck. There’s actually something to eat.” She pulled out lettuce, tomatoes, beets, and a wedge of parmesan cheese wrapped in a damp towel. “I want you to just sit and relax. It’s been quite a day.”

  Frances sipped a glass of Chianti as she watched Aurelia prepare dinner.

  “How do you know Henry and Louise Lewis?” Frances asked.

  Aurelia paused in midpeel of a beet. “Let’s see. I met Henry years ago. He purchased several of my paintings from the Durham Gallery, one of my first shows. The place doesn’t exist anymore, but it used to be downtown, just off Greene Street in the Village. He said my landscapes were so inspirational that he was buying them for the cardiac ward at his hospital, as a donation. I was surprised he had the money, but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Anyway, since then he’s followed my work. We speak from time to time. I was thrilled when he met Louise. Of course, we’ve all known her and her parents for years. A small world. They seem very happy together. Last summer, they invited me to their housewarming party when they bought the place on Gin Lane. Clio was there, too, I remember. It was only a few months after your father’s stroke. I’ve been there several times since.”