“Girl, I don’t mean to be a Jewish mother,” Des said, greatly relieved to hear her friend’s sleepy voice, “but you don’t call, you don’t write, nothing.”
“Everything is fine, tattela,” Bella assured her, yawning. “The house is fine, I’m fine. Although I must tell you that I am not alone in this bed.”
“Shut up! Who’s…?”
“All five cats are under these covers with me.”
“Oh, I see,” Des said, smiling.
“I find this very intimate, also lumpy. And, feh, I have someone’s tail in my face. Spinderella, move over, will you? Where are you, Desiree?”
“Stranded up at the castle. The way things look, I may never get out of here. When did you lose power?”
“About nine o’clock. And, believe me, we were very, very lucky. A big oak came down right next door and flattened George’s sun porch. But don’t worry about a thing. I can make a fire, and I’ve got enough brisket to feed the entire block. We’re okay here.”
“Bella, that’s the best news I’ve heard in a while. And I sure can use it.”
“Desiree, I don’t like what I’m hearing from you. Are you okay?”
“Aside from the fact that our hostess died in the night, I’m just dandy.”
“Who, Norma? What happened?”
“Heart attack.”
“My God, that’s awful. I’m so sorry.” Bella paused, clearing her throat. “From your tone of voice, I was thinking it might be something else.”
“Like what?”
“Like that other matter we discussed, regarding a certain Semitic gentleman who shall remain nameless. Mitch Berger is who I’m talking about.”
“Yeah, I kind of caught that.”
“Nu? How are you two?”
“Okay, I guess. Maybe you were right. Maybe this stuff’s all in my own mind.”
“And what does that tell you about yourself?”
“That I’m a whack job, totally demented.” Which she totally wasn’t. There was still something heavy going on with him. She’d felt it the second he’d made with his Great Big Fat Nothing Gulp in bed last night. Just as she’d felt her own sheer desperation when they’d made love together, her hunger for him so insatiable that she’d nearly bounced the big guy off the ceiling. “But, hey, we already knew that about me,” she put in dryly, hearing the creak of a floorboard out in the hallway.
Teddy Ackerman stood there in the doorway in his topcoat, looking pale, teary-eyed and utterly grief-stricken.
“I have to go now, Bella. I’ll see you as soon as I can. Take care of yourself.”
“You, too, tattela.”
“How can I help you, Teddy?” she asked him as she rang off.
“Sorry, I didn’t realize anyone was still in here,” Teddy snuffled, swiping at his eyes. “I just wanted to say good-bye to Norma.”
“Come right on in.”
He sat on the edge of the chair by the bed and reached for Norma ‘s cold dead hand, gripping it. Outside, Des could still hear the whine of Jase’s chain saw.
“You two knew each other a long time, didn’t you?” she said, studying him.
“Forty years,” Teddy said quietly, gazing at Norma. “That’s how long I’ve loved her. I’ve always loved her. You see, I’m…” He hesitated, glancing up at Des uncertainly. “I’m the one who met her first, not Big Paul… I’d dropped out of City College. Was bumming my way around Europe, playing the piano for my keep. Not a care in the world.” The words were starting to tumble out now. Teddy needed to talk, to tell someone. “Ada and Luther were living in London in those days. That’s where I first met Norma. She was home visiting them for the summer. She’d just finished her second year at Barnard. A buddy of mine back in New York told me to look her up because she’d grown up in London, knew the place. She was… She was the kindest girl I’d ever met. Not the prettiest. There were always prettier girls. But none sweeter. We spent that summer together in London. When she headed back to school in New York come fall, I followed her. Took classes again myself. Thought about getting my degree, making a life with her. I was going to marry this girl, Des. I even invited her to lunch one day to meet my big brother, the crusading young ACLU lawyer.” Teddy paused, swallowing. “The girls always took to Paul. He had those broad shoulders and that curly black hair. I’ll never forget when she walked into that restaurant and saw him for the first time. And he saw her. They couldn’t take their eyes off each other, Des. From that moment on, I knew she wasn’t going to be my girl any longer. She was going to be Paul’s. Two weeks after she graduated, she became his wife.”
Des found herself studying Norma, trying to see her as Teddy obviously still saw her—not as a jowly, gray-haired older woman but as a lively, smooth-cheeked young girl. She couldn’t see it. Hadn’t been there, hadn’t known her. “Did you ever tell Paul how you felt?”
Teddy heaved a sigh of regret. “No, I bowed out very graciously—told him she and I were just good friends and the coast was clear. There was no point in doing otherwise. You can’t stand in the way of such things. Besides, Paul made a better husband than I ever could have. No one ever knew how I really felt. Aside from Norma, that is,” he said, gazing at her lovingly. “She always knew. I’ve never married. Never even had a steady girl. My mother needed taking care of. At least that’s always been my excuse. The real reason was Norma. We had a bond. We were soul mates. No other woman could ever come close to her in my eyes. The two of us…” Teddy’s mouth tightened. “I wouldn’t want this to get back to Les, but she and I had been in touch a lot lately.”
Des kept her face a blank. “I see…”
“We talked on the phone almost every day. Sent each other e-mails. And she came into the city whenever she got a day to herself. We’d spend a few stolen, glorious hours together. She’d listen to me play. I always played “More Than You Know” for her. She loved that song. It was our song. I made a tape of myself playing it and gave it to her so she could listen to it here. She told me she listened to it often.”
“Teddy, how was her state of mind lately?”
“Not good,” he said. “She was unhappy with her marriage. Les had lost interest in her. She put it all on herself, of course. Felt she was no longer desirable, as if such a thing could be possible.”
“Is Les seeing someone else?”
“Apparently. But don’t ask me who the other woman is, because Norma wouldn’t tell me. She wasn’t the type to gossip. Took no pleasure in it. She was too busy looking out for others. She never looked out for herself. That’s the truly tragic part of all of this, Des. You see, last night it was finally, at long last, going to happen.”
“What was, Teddy?”
“We’d never made love together. Beyond a few furtive kisses in taxicabs, we’d never done anything about how we felt. Too damned proper. But we’d talked it through and agreed that she was going to come to my room last night, once Les had fallen asleep.”
Des wondered if Ada knew about this. Wondered if this was what the shrewd old bird wanted to talk to her about.
“She assured me Les would never notice. Once he’s out, he’s out. She told me she often got up in the night without disturbing him. Norma was not a sound sleeper. The responsibility of running this place weighed on her, I think. She often made herself a cup of hot cocoa in the night and sat up in the taproom, reading John O’Hara. Her favorite novel of his was Ten North Frederick. She must have read it twenty times.” Teddy cast a sidelong glance at the book on Norma’s nightstand. It was a rather worn hardcover, missing its dust jacket. “I gave her that copy of it last year. It’s not the least bit valuable, but I’d like it back if you don’t mind. For personal reasons.”
Des studied him. He seemed anxious about this. Exceedingly so. “I’d rather not disturb anything just yet.”
“Of course. As you wish.” Teddy looked back at Norma and said, “I sat up all night waiting for her. I waited and I waited. It was supposed to happen, Des. The one thing Tve yearned f
or my entire adult life. Norma in my arms. Norma mine, all mine. Only, it never did. She never came to my door. I… I was crushed. Disappointed beyond belief. You can’t even imagine.”
Des looked at this thin, pale man in his topcoat, thinking she felt sorrier for him than she’d felt for anyone in a long time. “What did you think when she didn’t show?”
“That she’d changed her mind about me,” he said morosely. “The only other possibility I could think of was that Les hadn’t fallen into his usual deep slumber, what with this storm and all. Maybe he was up and down, feeding the fireplaces. As it turns out, I was wrong on both counts.”
“Did you know she had heart trouble?”
“I did,” he replied. “Although it was my own feeling that there was nothing physically wrong with her.”
“Les said her doctor wanted to operate.”
“Doctors always want to operate. That doesn’t mean they’re right. It’s simply all they know. I know better. I know that Norma loved me. I know that she died of a broken heart. I will go to my own grave knowing that.”
Outside, the chain saw ceased. Male voices hollered to each other briefly, then it fell silent in the dead woman’s room. Eerily so.
“Teddy, may I ask you something that’s none of my business?”
He looked up at her curiously. “What is it?”
“If you were so in love with Norma, then why did you let Les move in on her after Paul died? Why didn’t you marry her yourself?”
“That’s a fair question,” he admitted. “The simple answer is that she’d already gotten married again—to Astrid’s Castle. And I could never fit in up here. I’m a no-good bum of a piano player. I drink too much, gamble away every penny I make. I could never be an innkeeper, coping day and night with other people’s problems, always keeping a smile on my face. No, Les was the right man for her. And they were right for each other, or at least they were for a time. He’s just a guy who can’t stay married to the same woman for long. Norma was his third wife.”
“Does he have children?”
“I believe so, with his second wife. She lives outside of the city somewhere. Nyack, maybe.” Teddy stared down at the love of his life, his eyes filling with tears. “But the honest answer to your question is that you’re absolutely right—I should have made my move after Paul passed. Grabbed on to this woman and never let her go. But I couldn’t. I… I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what, Teddy?”
“That it would turn out badly. That I couldn’t cut it. I lacked the courage, Des. And that’s my single greatest regret. Because we all die in the end. Everybody dies. It’s the one sure bet we’ve got going. And if you haven’t gone after what you want, who you want, if you haven’t really, really tried…” Teddy trailed off, his chest rising and falling. “Then you’ve never really lived at all.”
CHAPTER 7
“OKAY, THAT MAKES IT official,” Spence Sibley announced, shoving his cell phone back in the pocket of his persimmon-colored Patagonia ski jacket. “This weekend’s gala tribute is now one hundred percent toast. They were fine with the highways and airports being shut down, no heat, no hot water. That stuff never fazes studio people. They just figure they can throw enough money at a problem and it’s solved. But when I told them that there’d been a death in Ada’s family, that was pretty much a deal breaker.”
“Awfully darned inconvenient for the family, too,” Mitch said, breath snorting out of his nostrils as he worked away at a sycamore branch with the heavy-duty pruning saw.
Both of the majestic old sycamores had pitched right over onto their sides, giant root balls and all, leaving craters in the ground big enough to lose a pair of United Parcel Service vans in. Their massive trunks were doing a handsome job of blocking the only way in or out of the castle. A nearby sugar maple had crashed down onto the roof of Choo-Choo Cholly’s depot, crunching its snow-capped roof as if it were made of papier-mâché and shaving cream. Farther down the drive, dozens of smaller trees had come down, taking the power lines with them. Once Connecticut Light and Power gave the go-ahead, Jase felt he could horse many of these trees off to the side with the plow blade on his big Dodge Ram 4×4. For now, the three lumberjacks were not going anywhere near them.
“Mitch, I don’t mean to sound like an insensitive prick,” Spence said, his voice raised over the varoom of Jase’s chain saw. “It’s just that I’ve been working eighteen hours a day on this for weeks and weeks—twisting people’s arms, pleading with them. And now they’re not coming. Not Oliver, not Quentin, not anybody.”
“Will Panorama reschedule?” Mitch asked as he sawed, sawed, sawed. The blade had wicked jagged teeth that cut right through the pale speckled bark and deep into the wood.
“Oh, who gives a damn,” Spence replied, snapping off a two-inch-thick, ten-foot-long branch with Jase’s ratcheted tree loppers. They had razor-sharp jaws, and he was working them with intense fury. The young, clean-featured marketing executive was no more Mr. Upbeat Guy. He was Mr. Pissed-off Guy. “It’s not like I’ll be around to see it. I’ll be frozen solid by the time breakfast is served. They’ll find my cold stiff body right here, stuck to the pavement.”
Spence wasn’t exaggerating by much. It was absolutely frigid out there. The arctic wind gusts cut through every layer of clothing Mitch had on. He’d wrapped his scarf around his head and face so that only his eyes and nostrils were exposed to the elements, and they stung like crazy. His eyes wouldn’t stop tearing up. His nose kept running—and then freezing. Under his earflaps, his ears ached. His arm and shoulder muscles cried out in pain. His feet were numb. And the solid ice underfoot was incredibly slippery, even though Jase had laid down a heavy coat of sand and rock salt.
They’d quickly developed a routine. Mitch and Spence stripped away as many small limbs as they could with the pruning saw and loppers while Jase tackled the bigger limbs with his chain saw. Which suited Mitch just fine. He felt roughly the same way around chain saws as he did around loaded handguns. Much of this had to do with the fact that he sat through The Texas Chainsaw Massacre seven times in one weekend back when he was in the fifth grade.
Jase had thrown himself into the job with a manic form of abandon. He was obviously very upset about Norma’s death, yet when Mitch tried to engage him in conversation about it, Jase had purposely moved away from him, not wishing to share his heartfelt grief. Hard work was Jase’s way of dealing. He seemed tireless. Also impervious to the bitter cold. He did have on a pair of buckskin work gloves, but no coat. Merely that same heavy wool shirt he’d worn last night.
Mitch’s gloves were suitable for outdoor work. Not so Spence’s kid-leather dress gloves. Before they’d gotten started, Jase had led them across the courtyard to his cottage, where he’d fetched Spence a pair of work gloves. It was a low-ceilinged little cottage, smelling of mold and the kerosene space heaters that Jase and Jory had used in the night. Spence had seemed fascinated by the place. His eyes flicked eagerly around the cramped, dingy parlor as if he were taking in the sights of a preserved dwelling at Colonial Williamsburg.
“Well, at least you got your promotion,” Mitch reminded him as he kept on sawing, the icy air knifing in and out of his lungs.
“You’re right. I got my damned promotion.”
“You don’t sound so happy about it.”
“Right again.”
Jase halted his chain-sawing and barked out, “Okay, hold up a sec!” He jumped in his truck and used his plow blade to shove aside the heavy sycamore logs they’d produced. Then he backed up and got out, staring down the frozen, tree-strewn drive with an alarmed expression on his bearded face. “Man, it’ll take the crews forever to get here. And the more it blows, the slower it goes.”
The wind did seem to be picking up new strength, Mitch observed. It was positively roaring its way through the trees that were still standing, making them creak and groan most ominously under the weight of their ice coatings.
“We’ll be okay, Jase,” Mitch said con
fidently, even though he himself was quite unnerved to be standing out there under so many trees. He also couldn’t help noticing that the bright blue sky was starting to give way to dark storm clouds.
“I could hike my way down to the front gate,” Jase volunteered. “It’s only, like, three miles. I could make it.”
“And do what?” Spence asked him. “Where the hell would you go?
“He’s right, Jase,” Mitch agreed. “It’s another eight miles to town from there, and no one’s out on the road. Besides, it’s going to start snowing again.”
“I just, Norma wouldn’t…” Jase broke off, fumbling helplessly for the words. “Norma wouldn’t like this. How everything looks, I mean.”
The young caretaker seemed genuinely distraught. Mostly, it was his grief over Norma, Mitch felt. Partly, it was that Astrid’s Castle was his baby. Seeing all of this damage to its grounds was upsetting to him. Mitch understood the feeling. He felt the same way about Big Sister.
“We’re going to be fine, Jase,” he said, patting him on the shoulder. “We’ll get through this.”
Jase shook himself now, much like a wet dog, and said, “Enough jawing. Let’s get some work done.” And with that he clomped on over to the other sycamore and began attacking it with his chain saw.
“Actually, I’ve been seriously rethinking my move out to L.A.,” Spence told Mitch as they returned to their own labors. “The promotion, the whole thing.”
“Is that right—how come?”
“The young lady who I’m presently involved with has roots here in the East, and she doesn’t want to relocate out there. Not right now, anyway. It’s… kind of complicated.”
“Life can be,” Mitch said, working the pruning saw back and forth.
“It didn’t used to be. Not for me. I’ve never let any woman get in the way of my career. They’re strictly around for recreational humpage, nothing more. But now that it’s turned into something more—Mitch, I’m not even sure I know how to describe how much different this all is.”
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