“I don’t know, Tuttie,” I smiled, “pretty soon you’ll be coming to work with crystals around your neck, wearing Birkenstocks.”
She looked at me blankly, and I described the kind of sandal I meant.
“Oh,” she said, seriously, “those do look kinda comfy.”
“Why the sudden craving for vegetables?” I asked.
She looked still more serious, uncharacteristically so. Tuttie without her one-liners was unfamiliar, like waking up unexpectedly in a strange bedroom and not knowing where you are.
“Darling, I eat tuna salad sandwiches every day because they’re cheap,” she sighed. “For breakfast, I allow myself one piece of toast, and on the weekends an egg. For dinner, I make a big pot of soup and eat that all week, too. I got it down to a science, how to eat all week on twelve-fifty.” She took a big bite of avocado sandwich and chewed slowly, thoughtfully. “You’re nice enough to take me out, I want something different, something I wouldn’t ever fix at home in a million years.”
I felt suddenly stupid and self-centered for not putting two and two together. I thought she just liked tuna sandwiches. I almost said, I wish I had known, I’d have insisted on a nicer place, someplace with a lot of seafood and sun-dried tomatoes. But that would have sounded like charity. Instead, I watched her eat every last bite of her dinner with real appreciation, and I knew that a raise was long overdue.
“Tuttie,” I asked, “do you by any chance remember who bought that onyx pin?”
She looked confused and knitted her eyebrows, furiously trying to remember on her own. Then, she pulled out one of her spiral notebooks and flipped through the pages.
“I didn’t write down the name,” she sighed, but then her face brightened. “But she paid by check! I remember that! It’s not written down here, but I’m sure. Why?”
“Just curious,” I said.
“If it’s who I think it was, she was an old woman, a little tottery. Older than me, even,” she chuckled. “Yes, I remember when she held out her hand for the pin, I noticed how wrinkled it was. She had a younger woman with her, maybe a daughter.” She looked worried. “Didn’t you want to sell it?”
“Of course I did,” I lied. “I was really just curious.”
I paid the bill, then drove Tuttie back to her apartment. It was around ten o’clock, and I offered to escort her upstairs but she declined.
“Dinner was swell,” she smiled through the open car window. I waited till she was safely inside. Then I drove right back to the store, and got out the deposit envelope, which I kept locked in a drawer overnight till I could get to the bank in the morning. Tuttie had closed out while I finished rearranging the furniture.
There were only a few checks, and the one I wanted but never expected to find was right on top. Clearer than anything, in bold block letters, it said “Elinor Devere” across the top.
17
I can’t say why I did what I did next. It was as if again my car had a mind of its own, or I had forgotten some very important part of my recent past. Because before I knew it, I had fought the downtown traffic and found myself sitting in the car, right outside of Catherine’s apartment, looking up at the third-story front window, where the lights were on in full force. Catherine liked to keep all the lights in the apartment on at once.
When I was sitting there, of course, looking up like that, I realized what a mistake it was. I had been so anxious to tell someone about Elinor, someone who knew the story—and that meant Catherine—that I had raced there without remembering we were separated, that Catherine might even be dating someone else. That was the thought that got me out of the car, to the door, to the intercom, where I pressed the buzzer marked “Synge” with three short beeps.
Through the static came the familiar voice. “Yes?”
“Catherine, it’s Susan.”
There was a long pause, then she buzzed to let me through the security door. I took the steps to the third floor two at a time.
Before the separation, I had my own key. If I forgot it, Catherine would wait at the door when I buzzed to welcome me with a kiss. I could see her at the turn to the last half-flight of steps.
Tonight she was waiting at the door with a stern look on her face, which erased the smile from mine.
“Susan,” she said, “you should have called.”
I stopped just short of the last step, my legs poised at two different levels. I could have, if necessary, pivoted 180 degrees and headed back down as quickly as I came.
But I stood my ground.
“You’re busy,” I said. “I know it’s late.”
“Yes, I’m busy,” she said, guarding the doorway. “You should have called.”
“You have company,” I said, my heartbeats pounding in my chest.
There was a delicate, smooth intake of breath that meant she was impatient with me and tired of the conversation.
“No,” she said, to my surprise, “that’s not it.”
I took the last few steps and stood in front of her, my head lowered apologetically. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I just had something great to tell you.”
She moved her hands to the door, getting a firmer grip. She sighed again. “You really should’ve called. Those are the rules. We’re separated. We don’t drop in unannounced anymore. That’s why we gave back each other’s keys.”
“But you drop in on friends of yours,” I argued, knowing I was going to lose. “You know, like Georgia and Gail.”
“That’s different,” she frowned. “Tell me, if I had someone here now, how would you feel?”
I didn’t have to think about it very long. “I’d want to kill her,” I said, then added quickly, “figuratively speaking.”
“Figuratively speaking,” she repeated, smiling a little. “Anyway, it’s just respectful to call first. And safer,” she grinned.
“Now that I’m here,” I said, “and you don’t have company, may I come in?”
The smile flickered and faded. “Let’s go out,” she said. “I’m a little hungry, and there’s a place that’s still open.”
“You don’t trust me?” I said with concern, as she let me in the door for just a minute while she went to get her wallet.
“It isn’t that,” she insisted. “I said I’m hungry.”
What I glimpsed of the apartment looked different, in just a few weeks time. There were some new prints and a brightly colored throw cover on the old sofa. The living room looked livelier, happier. I didn’t say that though.
“You have some new things,” is what I said.
She was back with her wallet already. “Yeah, I realized how little I was here when we were together and how dark I’d let it become. It’s weird how you let things slide when you’re in a couple. I’d really like some new furniture, get away from this Salvation Army decor.”
“It looks nice,” I said sadly, following her back out the door. She hadn’t let me into the bedroom. That, I figured, had really changed, maybe had her new lover’s clothes strewn across the floor, a picture of the two of them on the dresser in a romantic embrace. I had to ask.
“And the bedroom? Did you change that, too?” But she was already locking the apartment door behind us.
“What?” She looked more deadpan than puzzled. “Oh, no. No, that’s just the same.”
She started down the stairs, and I followed.
• • •
We went to a place I’d never been to before. Catherine ordered a pork bun and I had some tea because I wasn’t hungry but I felt obliged to order something. My elation at finding a check with Elinor’s name on it had collapsed sometime during the incident at Catherine’s apartment. In fact, I had forgotten why I had come to see her at all, till we faced each other solemnly across the table and Catherine asked.
“Oh, yes,” I answered, “I have something great to tell you.” All of a sudden, seeing her look up at me expectantly, I realized she might not regard the news as great. She saw my obsession with Lucy Weir and her friends as th
e reason for our separation. I remembered this in an instant, though when I had driven downtown to tell her, I only thought how thrilled as a historian she would be.
“Maybe you won’t think it’s so great,” I backed down.
“Try me,” she said through a mouthful of bun.
“Elinor Devere is still alive,” I said hurriedly. “You know, one of the women in the scrapbook.”
She stopped eating and reached across the table for my hand, in a movement she could not have thought about in advance. Once there, her hand, resting on mine, squeezing it slightly, trembled a little, hesitated, and drew back.
“Susan, that’s wonderful,” she smiled. “I’m happy for you.”
I unraveled the story of the onyx pin for her, right to the part where I’d jumped into my car and headed down to her apartment. She nodded and forgot she was annoyed with me.
“What made you go look for the check?” she asked, resuming her eating.
I hesitated, knowing this brought me even further into the murky waters of spirits, ghosts and intuition. How strange would this whole incident seem to her? How strange did it seem to me?
“I had a feeling,” I said, “I can’t describe it. Like I knew the pin being bought had some meaning. Like it wasn’t just bought by someone casually off the street.”
“Wow,” Catherine said, thinking that over a moment. “This whole thing is really bizarre. First Beatrice, then Elinor finding your shop. It’s hard for me to believe.” She finished eating, and reached over to squeeze my hand again. Our ankles grazed under the table. As they did, I was suddenly and uncontrollably wet between the legs.
“It’s just great,” she continued. “If she’ll talk to you, and I don’t see why she wouldn’t, you can get the whole story. Or one end of it anyway. You won’t be so . . . haunted.” I inched toward the table, afraid of what came next, the end of our visit, the goodbye at the door of her building. But as we walked back there, bringing each other up to date on our lives in the past weeks, we kept bumping into each other, brushing sleeves and arms, in a way that made the tiny hairs on my arm stand straight up in excitement. By the time we reached the door, we were almost fully leaning into each other in the familiar way of lovers, or the flirtatious way of people who are about to become lovers. At the door, she invited me in, even though it was late and we both had to work the next morning. I went up with her, prepared for rejection and disappointment. But as we entered the apartment, she took my arms firmly and pulled me up against her, so the nipples of our breasts met in welcome. I spent the night, even though nothing made sense and my whole life seemed to consist of a series of accidents and coincidences and unplanned encounters. I spent the night, even though I had no idea what it would be like for us in the morning.
• • •
In the morning, Catherine had to go to school, and I had to open the store. I woke up at daybreak on my side facing Catherine, to find her staring at me strangely, like she’d brought someone home from a bar and she didn’t know exactly who it was. But we hadn’t been drinking at all the night before, and she knew all too well who I was—that was probably why she looked so scared.
“What’s wrong?” I said. “How long have you been lying there like that?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” she said. She sat up and brushed her hair back in way that made me want to see it again on the pillow, fanned out in a soft web. She must have decided instantly to be honest, because she turned back to me with the same look I’d woken up to. “I just wonder what all this means.”
It was rhetorical, something she knew I had no better answer for than she did.
She had to crawl over me to the ladder of the loftbed, and just as she was straddling me, I reached for her waist and held her there firmly. Instead of saying “Susan, I have to get up” or “No, not now,” she stayed there, sitting on me, her hair falling forward onto my chest. I sat up a little, and took one of her nipples into my mouth. I nibbled at it expertly, just the way she liked, and she moaned softly and threw her hair back so I could glimpse her face. On it were the pain and pleasure that had always gone hand in hand in our relationship. She rubbed back and forth on my stomach until she came, with an enormous cry of relief that must have resounded in several neighboring apartments.
As was her style, she recovered from orgasm almost immediately, not like some lovers who collapse in a heap. Within minutes, she was lying snugly next to me, her hand between my legs, her long, firm fingers pushing into me with her characteristic deftness and skill. I took a long time to come. My mind was racing over all the possibilities of this encounter, what it actually did mean. I didn’t relax, didn’t let go till she slid down and finished the job with her tongue. I came in a blur of images, thoughts wiped from my mind like chalk by an eraser that leaves a swirl of white behind. Afterwards, we showered separately, left separately, after a tentative but passionate kiss at the front door. I drove uptown in the morning haze, and by the time I got to my apartment, I was wondering if it all had been a dream.
18
In my hurry to meet Elinor Devere, I actually considered showing up on her doorstep uninvited. But she had to be at least ninety years old, a ghost from another era, and I decided I should write her a note first. If she didn’t respond, I would have to seriously reconsider my strategy.
I planned it all very carefully. I had a print made of one of the photographs in the scrapbook, showing the four of them together in Montauk on a windy bluff. Then I bought some very elegant stationery, the nicest I ever had. In fact, now that I think about it, I’m not sure I ever had stationery before then. I was prone to using the backs of flyers from lesbian events and legal pads I stole from various offices I worked in. The fanciest I’d ever used was the letterhead of Out of Time, that had a cute, folksy logo that hadn’t suited Margielove and now didn’t suit me. It was a pen drawing of an hourglass resting on a quilt with some other antiques surrounding it. Margielove had obtained it from a five-dollar clip-art book of uncopyrighted designs. The obvious reason they were uncopyrighted was that no one would want to claim such an ugly design.
I couldn’t use that to write to Elinor. I had an elegant, creamy linen weave stationery printed with my name and home address. It made me look like someone important, someone people would want to meet, which was the whole idea, since I wanted Elinor to either write back or pick up the phone and call me.
I did several drafts of the letter before committing it to expensive stationery. For the final version, I used the fountain pen I found in Lucy’s box, which I refilled and broke in again. It wrote smoothly, like the words were flowing spontaneously out of my fingers to the pen to the paper. “Dear Elinor Devere,” it began. (I debated the salutation a long time; I refused to use “Miss,” on principle, but surely a ninety-one-year-old woman wouldn’t call herself “Ms.” Or would she?)
Some time ago I had the good fortune to purchase a scrapbook and photo album containing pictures of yourself, Sarah Stern, Lucy Weir, and Harriet Timberlake. I was so taken by the beauty of the photographs and the warmth in your faces that I have since done some research into the lives of Lucy and Harriet. In a way, I feel haunted by them and must know more. When I saw that you had bought Lucy’s onyx pin from my shop, I was thrilled to discover that one of The Gang was still alive, and could, I hope, relate for me what that time and these fascinating people were like.
I included my phone numbers and what I hoped was a sincere plea for her to contact me. Then I enclosed the print and mailed the letter.
The next few days were torture. I was anxious for Elinor to call, and after a week, was convinced that she wouldn’t. I had completely abandoned my examination of the contents of Lucy’s box, pinning all my hopes on Elinor. Finally, when I couldn’t stand the tension any longer, the telephone rang.
• • •
Elinor Devere had a companion, someone to answer the phone, read the mail, pay the bills, and fix her meals. If Elinor was capable of going to an antiques shop to buy a pin, she was p
robably capable of doing all those things herself, too. But at that age, who would want to? If I lived as long and hadn’t squandered all my money, I hoped to do the same thing.
“This is Emily Fleck, Elinor Devere’s secretary,” she informed me when she called. She had a crisp British accent and a manner that was cool and off-putting.
“We received your note, but I must tell you that Miss Devere is ninety-one years old. She doesn’t give interviews.”
“But this is very important,” I said. “I’m—I’m writing a book about Lucy Weir, and I need to know everything. Miss Devere’s recollections of that time would be so valuable.”
There was a long pause. “She’s very fit, you know, for ninety-one, but she still tires easily,” she said, less haughtily than before. “I really must protect her from over-extending herself.”
I requested a series of short sessions, maybe fifteen minutes at most. “I’m sure she’ll want to meet me. After all, I have a number of items belonging to Lucy that she might like to see, including some photographs of her and Sarah Stern.”
Sarah Stern’s name seemed to be the magic word. Fleck made an appointment for me for the following Sunday, at four o’clock. “Her best time, tea time,” she explained. “But I’ll have to be there also. Just as protection. And at four-fifteen, I’ll be escorting you to the door.”
Finally, I asked, “Tell me something, if you can. How in the world did you find my shop? How did you know where to find that pin?”
After an uncomfortable silence, Fleck sounded embarrassed by her lack of an answer. “You should ask Miss Devere,” she replied, hesitantly. “It was her idea.” I opened my mouth to respond, but there was a click on the other end of the line.
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