by Dianne Day
“Oh, well then …” she said, still vague, still more than half asleep.
I interrupted: “I’m coming over to spend the rest of the night on Michael’s couch. If you don’t mind, give me about five minutes, then go to the front door. I’ll knock three times—then you let me in.”
She agreed. I used my five minutes to call Wish and explain everything. He said he would come right down to the office and bring the police with him. He would handle it, he promised; and knowing my aversion to his former colleagues in blue, he said he would manage it in such a way that I would not even have to talk to them if I didn’t want to. Of course I assured him that I did not want to!
It rather quickly developed that I wanted only to escape back into sleep. So, obviously, did Frances, who was yawning and rubbing her eyes as she let me in.
Shakespeare, I reflected as I curled up beneath the afghan on Michael’s couch, had said something about sleep knitting up the raveled sleeve of care. Macbeth, was it? Regardless of the play, it did seem to me a good idea, as at the moment I felt considerably raveled. With the gun behind the cushions and my walking stick to hand, I managed to go off into the Land of Nod, where I hoped the Hand of Morpheus would reassemble me.
———
At ten o’clock the next morning we held a conference around the kitchen table: Wish, Edna, Frances, and I.
Looking rather grim, Wish said, “It would take a master locksmith to open that particular type of deadbolt lock without leaving a trace. This is someone highly skilled we’re up against, very clever, and I’m inclined to think—begging your pardon, Fremont—that his slashing the mattress and pillows may just have been the work of a professional burglar venting his frustrations when he found you had nothing worth stealing.”
“And what do the police think?” I asked, stiffening my backbone. It was a little insulting, though a better solution to the problem of the intruder than any I had thought of. “They think the same. With some encouragement from me, of course,” Wish said.
“Then why, I ask you,” Edna chimed in with a note of incredulity in her voice, “didn’t the bur-gu-ler, when he saw how it was an office here, go straight to the other side of the house where there’s nize stuff, an-tee-kees and all? And why didn’t he open up desk drawers down here looking for money? He could’ve took the typewriter, too, that’s worth a lot.”
“She has a point,” I said.
Frances stifled a yawn politely with the back of her hand. She looked pale and strained, an appearance which was not helped by the fact that my plain skirt and blouse appeared, on her, excessively severe. Especially as the blouse did not quite meet over her ample breasts, and so she had taken my old black shawl and crossed it, like a fichu, over the offending appendages, then anchored the shawl’s ends beneath a belt that emphasized a slender waist upon that otherwise curving body.
I did not think there was much point to asking her, other than to keep her alert, but I asked anyway: “Frances, last night on your way here, did you ever at any point suspect that you were being followed?”
She frowned, not in perplexity but in displeasure at the question. “No, in fact I am quite sure I wasn’t. I didn’t exactly go walking right out on the sidewalk, Fremont. I slouched from house to house, keeping to cover as much as I could—along fences, behind bushes and things of that nature. And of course I was continually looking around, checking, because I didn’t want anyone to see me. I’m telling you, nobody followed me!”
“As far as you know,” I said evenly, bowing my head as if to acquiesce, though my words themselves implied otherwise.
Two deep rose spots bloomed suddenly on her cheeks. “You want me to take the blame for what happened to your mattress and your pillows, is that it? You want me to replace them? Well, by all means let us go to the City of Paris”—she leapt up from the table—“without further delay. If we get there soon enough perhaps Jeremy will not yet have removed my name from the account and I will be able to buy not only mattress and pillows but also clothing for myself. The bill can be his final remembrance of me!” Her chin came up defiantly—quivering, to be sure, but defiant all the same.
“I meant nothing of the kind, no offense was intended,” I said, my voice gently insistent. But I did not try to tug her back down into her seat. A weird sort of energy had started to build in the kitchen. It flashed through my mind that this could be what Frances felt at automatic-writing time. I felt as if some spirit were hovering nearby, uninvited but not necessarily unwanted.
Indeed, the feeling was so strong upon me that I almost reached across the table for the writing tablet that Edna had brought to the meeting, as was her habit, in case one of us decided that notes should be made. I stayed my hand, though, watching Frances from the corner of my eye, for she was nothing if not skittish. But the moment passed, the feeling subsided, and so did the high color in my friend’s cheeks. Edna, as alert as always—a keen woman our Edna—flashed me a questioning glance, to which I gave a barely perceptible shake of my head. Wish cleared his throat, scratched at his ear in an overly casual way, and said, “Well. Where were we?”
At that, Frances sat down again and normality appeared restored.
“I think Frances had an excellent idea,” I said with enthusiasm. “She and I will go to the City of Paris to shop for some things we must have, and if she can put them on her husband’s account, well, why not? Edna, if you would be so good as to call the St. Francis Hotel and inquire as to exactly when my father is expected, I should be most grateful. His name is Leonard Pembroke Jones. And Wish, as much as I’ve benefited from your help the past few days, you really must talk to your mother about the client who came in when we were both out yesterday. Now, what have I forgotten?”
“Do you have any idea when Michael is coming back?” Wish asked. He alone, of us four around the table, was still dissatisfied about something. I could tell by the expression on his face.
Normally I would have taken time to deal with his dissatisfaction, to draw him out if need be as to its source and possible solution. But nothing seemed normal now, and I was possessed—one might even say consumed—with a sense of time running out. Therefore I gave him the short yet truthful reply: “I don’t know. He never said.” Then, with an artificial smile on my lips, I cast a rapid glance around the table and rose. “Now, if there’s nothing else, we should get on with our day.”
———
The ferry bearing the passengers from the cross-country train trip, which ended at the Southern Pacific station in Oakland, crossed the Bay in late afternoon. My father arrived at his hotel approximately on time, that is to say at 5:45 P.M.; the hotel desk notified me at his request; and I presented myself at the door to his room on the third floor at seven-fifteen. I knocked. While waiting for the door to be answered, I reflected that if I had not gotten turned around in the corridors, this would be a corner suite overlooking Union Square.
I had butterflies in my stomach. A thousand of them.
The door opened inward.
“Father?”
He opened his arms, tried to smile, and his eyes glinted with a sudden sheen of tears withheld. With the smile I knew him—for otherwise my father was much changed. “My dear Caroline,” he said.
I rushed into his arms.
Since my adolescence my father has not been much taller than I, and this was so still; yet he had always been a substantial man, not only in a business sense but physically. Broad-shouldered and equally broad of chest, with thick arms and legs, and a tendency, as he aged, to a paunch. Now as his arms closed around me I could feel his bones beneath the skin, even through his clothes. It was beyond shocking.
“Oh, Father,” I said, my voice muffled as I buried my head, like a child, against his shoulder. I could not look full on him again until I had better control of myself. I trembled uncontrollably.
“There, there, child,” he said, not awkwardly but warmly. He patted my back, my arm, and finally my head. “I see you still don’t like hats,”
he commented, with some of the old verve in his voice.
I shook my head, which had the effect of rubbing my face against his shoulder, which in turn had the effect of wetting the fine but slightly prickly wool of his suit coat. I was crying, most unexpectedly, and had no more ability to stop the tears from falling than I’d had of controlling the earlier tremors. Those, at least, had stopped.
Father stepped back from the doorway, his arms still around me, and somehow—perhaps with the nudge of a toe, I didn’t raise my head to look—closed the door behind us. I heard it click shut. “My little girl,” he said, a bit thickly. “Come now, Fremont—if I may call you Fremont? That is what others call you now, isn’t it?”
“Um-hm,” I sniveled, nodding this time, smearing more tears but up and down.
“Let me look at you. It’s been a long time.” He took my shoulders in his hands then, and with more strength than I would have thought his newly frail frame could muster, moved me back at arms’ length.
I sniffed, tossed my head, lifted my chin … and finally managed a smile. “I expect I’ve changed quite a bit,” I acknowledged.
“Yes, you have,” Father agreed, his eyes twinkling. Then in the blink of an eye, his face grew grave. He said, “But then, so have I.”
———
In Father’s hotel room we talked and drank some excellent dry sherry until the encroaching fog had absorbed the last pale rays of daylight, and Union Square, though it was just directly across Powell Street (Father did indeed have a corner room), had disappeared from view. For the most part I answered his questions, and did so truthfully. I did not like to ask him questions myself, because the ones I most wanted answered would be considered rude, even from so outspoken a daughter as I. For example: How are you really getting along with Augusta? Has she made many changes in our house? If I were to come home for a visit tomorrow, would there be any little touches of my mother left at all? And most importantly: Father, have you been ill, that your face and form can have altered so much in only three years? And if so, are you still?
When I had satisfied the minimum of Father’s curiosity, we went down to the sumptuous dining room on the mezzanine, which overlooks the lobby with its tall marble columns, some replaced and some repaired since the earthquake. A string trio was playing quietly near one end of the balcony. Father had requested a table against the wall, far back in the room, as he is somewhat afraid of heights. A fault he does not admit to, of course; my mother told me long ago.
“This is quite elegant,” I remarked, after the waiter had taken our order.
“You have not been here before?” Father raised one white eyebrow. His eyes nestled now in folds of crinkly skin, the whites of them faded, without luster; yet the green of his irises was bright as my own. Those eyes sparkled with an intelligence undimmed by whatever beset him physically.
“No, I haven’t,” I replied. “Before the earthquake I had been only to the Fairmont, and since the earthquake I haven’t been able to afford to dine in a hotel like this.”
“Oh?” Up went the eyebrow again. Now that I was getting used to his appearance, I saw that the thinness was in its own way rather becoming. Leonard Pembroke Jones had broad but prominent cheekbones I never remembered seeing before. His mouth, though—that had not changed. And why had I not realized until this very moment how much Michael’s mouth resembled my father’s?
Even as I thought of Michael my father said, “I would have thought your, hum, partner might have brought you on occasion to a place like this.”
“My partner,” I repeated dully.
The waiter arrived with bowls of soup, the first course, a crab bisque that smelled delicious. The string trio was playing something haunting, with a plaintive, moaning cello line. This was a moment I had both feared and anticipated with great excitement—for there was a part of me that wanted to tell my father everything. A part of me that craved his approval, and had once been so certain of his love that never would I have dreamed of holding anything back. But that part of me had either died or gone into hiding when he married Augusta.
Behind the waiter came the sommelier, with the silver apparatus for dealing with the long-necked wine bottle around his own long neck. This was done to Father’s approval, and as it all took awhile, I had time to frame my answer.
“You mean, of course, Michael Kossoff. My business partner.”
“Yes indeed. And is he not somewhat of a benefactor also? An older man, you said in one of your letters?”
The soup was delicious, even in such strained circumstances. “In the sense that it is Michael’s money that has set us up in business, then yes, you could say he is my benefactor. But not in the sense that the business would function as well without me—in fact, it might not function at all.” (This was true: I was the inspiration behind J&K. If inspiration could be the right word. Michael had told me many times that he hoped our business would enable me to use my God-given talents and at the same time keep me out of trouble. Of course, Father did not have to know any of that.)
I interrupted myself to say, “Father, please eat your soup before it gets cold. It’s really very good.”
Father obligingly dragged his spoon through the creamy pinkish liquid, sniffed, smiled slightly, and sampled it. I could never in my whole life recall his approaching food with such delicacy. He had always enjoyed his meals so much that, if anything, he’d leapt into them with a gusto that bordered on bad manners. Now he raised the spoon to his mouth, paused, and looked me in the eye.
“Caroline—Fremont—you have never told me the nature of the J&K Agency’s business.”
“We are an investigatory agency. We do confidential inquiries. Into whatever our clients want and need.” I met Father’s steady gaze, my green eyes and his locked. Father and daughter.
“You do not use that infernal machine, the typewriter, in your business? I thought you did. I thought you had thrown away all that education I invested in for you, as if you were a boy …”
“Not quite,” I said grimly. This was an old, touchy subject for us.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I mean, Wellesley was a good school, but I did not get the same education I would have had at Harvard or Yale. But I did not throw my education away, Father. What I learned will remain forever in my head, in my brain, to inform and transform everything I say or do. Once one is educated, that education becomes a part of who one is. As mine is a part of me. Whether I sit at a typewriter or not.”
“Nevertheless”—Father had become interested in his soup, and paused to indulge that interest—“if you are no longer tied to the typewriter, I am glad. And I’m grateful to this Michael Kossoff. You have a high opinion of the man, do you not?”
I blushed. I could not help myself. The flush began on my chest, where I felt it as a great, spreading warmth proceeding outward from my heart, and traveled then up into my neck and into my cheeks until I felt on fire. I did manage to find my voice, but had to swallow hard before I could make it work reliably: “I do indeed have a high opinion of him. He has worked for government agencies and knows what he’s doing. In addition he’s a very learned man. His library alone reveals the liveliness of his mind.”
I realized I was about to say too much and stopped myself.
Father smiled. His face and his voice softened. “Ah, daughter, who could resist you when you look like that? I have just one question: When do I get to meet this man?”
24
———
Not Quite Happy Birthday
Ifelt my eyes go wide, then reached for the wine, which was white, cool, crisp, and very faintly sweet on my tongue. I savored it even as I wondered what my father thought he knew, and how he could know that, what should I say, and last but far from least, what must he think of me?
At last I said, “Michael is out of town on business, Father. I do not believe he will return until after you’ve left again for Boston. You did say you could be here only a couple of days.”
�
��That, lamentably, is true.” He hung his head and briefly looked forlorn indeed. I wanted immensely to comfort him, and yet I did not know how. It was precisely the same aching feeling I’d had long ago, after Mother died, and I wanted so much to bring her back not only for myself (although I was sorrowing, too) but for him … because she was always the only one who could reach him when he was at his most solemn, his most bereft. With her gone, there was—there had been—no one.…
And so, because there was no one, and I could not do it alone, I merely waited.
In time he raised his head.
“Caroline—Fremont—daughter, I must be honest enough with you to tell you that I’ve come across the country against my wife’s wishes.”
All my muscles stiffened at the word “wife” on my father’s lips, as it applied now to one who was, in my extremely biased opinion, unworthy of the title. “That must be difficult for you,” I said.
Father nodded. Rather miserably, I thought. And in the lengthy pause that followed, the waiter came and replaced soup with a salad, which my father moved to the side with a request that the entree be brought: “Expeditiously as possible,” Father said. The waiter, an ancient man with yellowed white hair, merely stood there. “Quickly!” Father translated, with a wave of his hand for emphasis, and the waiter nodded, this time speeding away.
When he’d gone I said quietly, “You seem to me to have been ill, perhaps for some time. Is this true? And if it is, why didn’t you, or even Augusta, tell me?”
“I didn’t like to worry you. And I thought I would recover, in time—especially with Augusta to nurture me. She’s good at things like that, you’ll find out, I’m sure.”
I was much less sure, but forbore to say so. Instead I said, “You are fully recovered now, I take it?”