Not Our Kind

by Kitty Zeldis

  “It might work out,” Irina mused. “You could become an editor. That’s a good job.”

  “That’s what I think,” Eleanor said. “My boss says I have a real flair for the work.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” Irina said. “You were always with your nose in a book. Now you’re getting paid for it.” She sounded proud.

  “It’s a different kind of reading though.”

  “Different?”

  “Reading was always like letting a wave wash over me. But when I read for work, it’s a more active process. I’m on the alert. Or even on the prowl—like a mountain lion, stalking my prey.”

  “So the job is good. The apartment is good. Now, what about a young man?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t pretend with me. You’ll be twenty-six soon enough. You don’t want to wait too long.”

  “To get married? Have children?”

  “Exactly,” said Irina, setting her cup carefully back in its saucer. “By the time I was your age, I was already a mother. I want to be a grandmother too.”

  “I’ll try not to disappoint you.” Eleanor began to clear the plates.

  “You didn’t answer my question. About a young man.”

  Eleanor was hesitant to tell her mother about Tom. I can’t explain him to her, she thought. But this was followed by a more surprising thought: Why not? Her mother had accepted so much about her new life; who was to say she couldn’t accept this?

  Irina was quiet as Eleanor spoke and remained quiet for several seconds after she was through. Finally she said, “Not Jewish. More than ten years older than you are. That’s why you had to have this apartment. So you could see him. Sleep with him. Now it all makes sense.”

  “That wasn’t the reason I wanted to move out—”

  “Do you love him?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Will he marry you?”

  “He asked me. But I’m not sure I want to marry him.”

  Irina stared at her. “Why not?”

  “Because he and I come from such different worlds. I’m not sure I’d ever fit in his. Or even want to.”

  “Then why are you carrying on with him?”

  “I wouldn’t call it carrying on—”

  “Then what would you call it? Don’t you want to start a family?”

  “I thought I did,” Eleanor said. “But now I don’t know.”

  “Well, you need to make up your mind. And in the meantime I just hope you’re being . . . careful.”

  “Of course I’m being careful,” Eleanor said testily. Did her mother think she was an idiot?

  “I meant with your heart, tochter,” said Irina gently.

  When it was time for her to leave, Irina hugged Eleanor for longer than usual before releasing her. “So do I get to meet him?” she asked.

  “Do you want to?”

  “Well, if he’s important to you, yes. I can’t say it won’t be hard for me. But what you said when you told me you were moving out? You were right. Papa and I did send you to that fancy school. You met different kinds of people, were exposed to different ideas and values. So I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you’ve absorbed some of them.”

  “Surprised is not the same as unhappy. Are you unhappy?”

  Irina seemed to consider it. “I’ve been unhappy before,” she said finally. “It’s not fatal.”

  Monday was a hectic day at the office. Adriana was out with the flu, the author whose manuscript was already two weeks overdue called to say that it still wasn’t ready, and there was a delay with a shipment of the linen stock used for many of the covers. Eleanor barely had time to go to the ladies’ room, much less out to get lunch. And there was certainly no time to think about Tom.

  On the way home, she stopped to buy eggs, coffee, cream, and butter and allowed herself to imagine she was married to Tom and doing the marketing for the two of them. From the breakfasts they had shared, she knew he took his coffee very light with three sugars, that he liked his eggs any way but poached, and that he thought the meal wasn’t complete without bacon, sausage, or ham. Although her family had not kept kosher, Eleanor never bought and rarely ate pork; she had never developed a taste for it. But that was the least of it. How would she feel being married to a man for whom every day was Saturday, who spent over an hour with the newspaper every morning, who could pick up and travel on a whim?

  It was past six when she reached her building, arms laden with packages, as well as a bunch of red tulips—an indulgence, but the vivid color had called out to her. Eleanor set her bundles down, fished for her key, and went upstairs. When everything was put away, she heated up a slice of meat loaf that she had left over from the weekend and while she ate, she read a manuscript she’d brought home from the office. Every now and then she glanced over at the tulips.

  A loud buzz interrupted her reading. Maybe it was Tom. But somehow she didn’t really think so; he would have phoned first. More likely it was someone ringing the wrong apartment. But the buzzer kept ringing and finally she went down the stairs to see who it might be. To her utter surprise, Margaux was standing there, looking wild-eyed and distraught.

  “What’s the matter? Are you all right?” Eleanor ushered her in and then glanced at the narrow stairwell, which was going to be hard to navigate with the walking stick.

  Following her gaze, Margaux said, “Don’t worry, I can make it up. I’ll just go slowly.”

  Eleanor went first and when they were upstairs and in her apartment asked, “How did you find me?”

  “I called directory assistance.”

  “And your mother—does she know you’re here?”

  “No, I snuck out.”

  “She’s not going to like that.”

  “I don’t care!” And then she pressed her face to her hands and began to weep.

  “Margaux, what’s wrong?”

  “Don’t you know?” Margaux lifted her tear-glazed face.

  “Know what?”

  “Daddy—my father . . . he’s dead. Dead!”

  “What are you talking about?” Eleanor’s first thought was that the girl might be delusional; she had been overwrought when she got here.

  “Just what I said. He went sailing by himself. His boat capsized and he drowned. Mother said he was drunk.”

  “She told you that?”

  “No. But I overheard her on the telephone. She drove up to school to tell me and brought me back down here. The funeral is tomorrow—it’s at the Church of Heavenly Rest.”

  “I can’t believe it.” Eleanor sat back in her chair. Wynn Bellamy had drowned. She knew he drank heavily. But the idea that his drinking could result in his death was somehow incomprehensible to her. He’d seemed too powerful, too protected by his wealth and his status for such a thing to have happened. But when he telephoned her in the middle of the night, he hadn’t sounded powerful at all. He’d sounded panicked at the thought that she would expose him to his beloved daughter. Because she was beloved by him; Eleanor had to concede that.

  “I couldn’t either. Mother is acting so strangely, too. She’s barely cried at all.” Margaux gave her a probing look. “I know he wasn’t nice to you, Eleanor. So maybe you’re not sorry about what happened. But even with his faults, I loved him. And he loved me.” She began to cry again.

  “Of course he did,” Eleanor said. And he hadn’t wanted to lose his daughter’s love. If Eleanor had been kinder during that last conversation, if she hadn’t made that threat, would he be alive now? The thought was highly upsetting. She despised the man—she couldn’t pretend otherwise. But to feel implicated, in any way at all, in his death, was terrible. Margaux continued to cry and eventually allowed herself to be led to the sink to wash her face.

  “Are you hungry?” Eleanor asked.

  Margaux nodded.

  The meat loaf was gone, so Eleanor set out an apple, a banana, and the remaining lace cookies from Sunday and poured a glass of milk. As Margaux devoured the food, Elean
or noticed a new, angular grace to her cheekbones and a clarity to the line of her jaw. She looked more like Patricia than ever.

  “Thank you,” Margaux said. “I feel better. Or a little better anyway.”

  “I should call your mother,” Eleanor said. “She must be worried.”

  “No!” Margaux sounded desperate. “Not yet.”

  Eleanor relented, and Margaux began to talk about her father, one memory unspooling and leading to others: Wynn taking her to the zoo in Central Park, and ice skating in Rockefeller Center. There had been a father-daughter dance at her school, visits to his office where he let her sit at his desk, and of course, sailing. “Last summer I was nervous about getting back on the boat. But Daddy encouraged me. We had the most wonderful day. There was just enough wind and the sky was so blue. The water too. I was so happy it didn’t even matter that I was a cripple.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t use that word about yourself,” Eleanor said.

  “I don’t know why it bothers you. It’s just what I am.”

  “Not to me,” Eleanor said. “Never to me.”

  “To my father though. He couldn’t get used to what had happened to me. I know he always compared now and then. I think it did something to him.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh yes. Before I got sick, he was much nicer—to everyone. I think he would have been nicer to you too.”

  “Perhaps.” But what Eleanor didn’t say was that had Margaux not contracted polio, they never would have become close—or even met—at all.

  “Would you come tomorrow? To the funeral?”

  “Why, I don’t think, I mean—” Why would she attend Wynn Bellamy’s funeral? To spit on his grave? The grave she may have helped him into?

  Margaux studied her. “You hated him that much?”

  “It’s not hatred,” she said carefully. “It’s more like—”

  The telephone rang so she was spared having to answer.

  “Eleanor, it’s Tom. I’m with Patricia and something terrible has happened. Wynn drowned in a boating accident and Margaux’s disappeared and—”

  “I know about the accident,” said Eleanor.

  “But how—”

  “Margaux told me. She’s here now. Tell Patricia she’s safe.”

  “With you!” He turned away from the receiver and she heard him speaking rapidly to Patricia. Then he said, “Can you put Margaux on?” Eleanor handed the phone over.

  “I’m sorry, Mother. I didn’t mean to scare you.” She paused. “Yes, I’ll stay right here. I’ll wait for Uncle Tom, I promise.” She handed the receiver back to Eleanor.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Tom said.

  “Is Patricia all right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Eleanor hung up. Margaux’s question was still unanswered. “The funeral . . . ,” she said. “Your mother wouldn’t want me there.”

  “Why not? She likes you.”

  Eleanor said nothing.

  “Doesn’t she?”

  “Yes,” Eleanor said. “But I’ve been asking to see you. And every time she says no.” There, it was out.

  “I’ve asked her if I could see you too,” Margaux said. “Over and over. Maybe it will be different now.”

  She didn’t have to say, because my father’s not here anymore, because that was something they both understood.

  Eleanor switched on the radio while they waited for Tom to arrive, and sometime later, when the buzzer rang, Eleanor got up to let him in. He hugged Margaux and then Eleanor. The last time she’d seen him was the night she’d turned down his proposal. That seemed so long ago though. Right now, he looked shaken by Wynn’s death. “What was he thinking, going out alone like that? He should have known better,” Tom said.

  “He wasn’t thinking,” Margaux said. “He and Mother had quarreled, and he was still angry.”

  Tom looked at Eleanor but said nothing. Clearly Margaux had been attuned to the ebb and flow of her parents’ marriage.

  After they had left, Eleanor crushed the empty cookie box, wiped the table, and did the few dishes in the sink. She knew the church, on East Ninetieth Street, where the funeral was being held. It was right across from Central Park and within walking distance both from the Bellamy apartment and the hat shop. She’d passed it many times though she had never once gone in.

  For Margaux’s sake, she wanted to attend. She could sit way in the back, call no attention to herself. But she was uncertain about Patricia’s reaction. Or her own. She couldn’t mourn him, and so didn’t belong with those who could. If what Margaux said was true, he’d brought his death upon himself. It seemed fitting—a thought that made her feel ashamed. His was a sad, ignominious end, alone in the water, no one to hear him thrashing or extend a hand. Even in fantasy, she had not wished that on him. No, she’d wanted to see him exposed and humiliated—as she had been.

  The question shadowed her as she tried to return to the manuscript, gave up, and readied herself for bed. And it was with her as she lay alone in the dark, waiting for sleep. The more she thought about it, the more importance it gained, so that it seemed whatever decision she made would mark a crossroads, a point at which she would turn in one direction or another. She’d always felt this conflict with the Bellamys, right from the start, her attraction for them tempered by her misgivings. She hadn’t even wanted to take the job as Margaux’s tutor. But Margaux herself had tugged at something in her, and she’d yielded, overcoming her own resistance. And as Eleanor finally surrendered to sleep, she realized that the pull of the Bellamys—and this meant Tom too—was once more going to draw her in.

  Twenty-Nine

  Head bowed, Patricia sat in the first pew of the church listening to Reverend Everett Sprinchorn eulogize her dead husband. She had been coming to this church since she was a child, and it had hosted several significant events in her life: her marriage, the funerals of her parents, Margaux’s christening. She remembered sitting here as a little girl, transfixed by the large, looming cross on the altar screen, the sober image of the risen Christ. Today, the area in front of the screen was filled with pots of the white lilies she’d ordered, and the sun that streamed through the oversize stained-glass windows created vivid spots of color on the marble floor.

  Reverend Sprinchorn had a sonorous voice, and Patricia was soothed by its sound as he extolled Wynn’s virtues—devoted husband and father, his support of various charities, his life as an attorney. The image he painted with his words had nothing to do with the man Patricia had shared a life with in recent years, or the pale and bloated body she’d been asked to identify at the morgue in Greenwich.

  “Yes, that’s my husband,” she said as the sheet was pulled up. She was already turning away. She’d spent the rest of the day arranging to have the body sent to New York; she then drove up to Oakwood to tell her daughter.

  After the reverend had finished, a few other people spoke—John Talbot, a cousin, a colleague from the law firm, the Yale friend Wynn had reconnected with at Audrey’s wedding last year. The final speaker was Margaux, who’d insisted that she be given a turn. Patricia watched as her daughter used her stick to ascend the two wooden stairs to the pulpit, taking the hand the reverend extended. She was wearing all black for the first time, and the add-a-pearl necklace Wynn had started when she was born.

  “Wynn Bellamy was different things to different people,” she began. “But I was his only daughter and so I knew him in a way no one else did.” She looked drawn but she did not cry. “He was a good father and he used to say that I was the best part of him. So maybe there’s a part of him that will live on in me. I hope so. I’ll miss him for the rest of my life.”

  There was a murmur from the crowd as Margaux carefully descended the stairs and walked over to join her mother in the pew.

  “You did that beautifully.” Patricia covered Margaux’s hand with her own.

  But Margaux withdrew her hand. “Don’t pretend you care, Mother.” Every word was like a tack pr
essing into Patricia’s skin. “I know you and Daddy argued about something and that’s why he went off on the boat alone. You’re probably not even sorry about what happened to him.”

  Patricia stared straight ahead, unable to meet her daughter’s eyes. How could Margaux say that? From the altar, the painted Christ stared down as if he concurred with Margaux’s assessment. Music was playing now, though Patricia was not familiar with it. She’d asked the reverend to select something he thought was appropriate. The pallbearers lifted the casket and took it down the aisle to the hearse waiting outside. Patricia stood up, ready to walk down that same aisle and stand near the doors, so that the mourners could offer their condolences as they filed out of the church. Margaux and Tom were supposed to accompany her. “Are you coming?” she said.

  “Of course.” Tom stood too, and took her by the elbow.

  “I meant Margaux,” said Patricia.

  Margaux looked up at her and waited for several long and excruciating seconds. Finally she used her stick to hoist herself up. “I’m coming,” she said. “But I’m doing it for Daddy. Not for you.”

  The three of them moved slowly, accompanied by different music this time. Something from Brahms, Patricia thought, and suitably lugubrious. Margaux was wrong. She did care, but not in the way her daughter thought. She grieved over the young Wynn with whom she’d fallen in love, and their early, happy days. And she grieved at how suddenly and randomly all their lives—her dead husband’s, her own—could be undone.

  They reached the end of the aisle and Patricia turned to face the people who had begun to walk in her direction. They clasped her hands or embraced her, and in muted voices offered their consoling words. She thanked them, returned the pressure of hands or the embrace. Then repeated it with the next person. This went on for a while; Wynn’s funeral was well attended and most of their friends were there, even Audrey and Harold.

  When everyone had gone, Tom and Margaux would get into the car that was waiting outside, and follow the hearse to the cemetery in Queens. She was ready for all the talking to be over and was looking forward to a reprieve on the ride. But there was still one more person waiting to speak to her. It was Henryka. “How did you even know?” Patricia asked.