Time After Time

by Stockenberg, Antoinette

  "That's crazy! It's charming! Well ... thanks, Liz. Really."

  Liz thought Victoria would put it on then and there, but instead she slipped it into her handbag. She feels as f she's stolen it from me, poor thing. To reassure her, Liz said, "This box is worth a pretty penny, I think. More than the garnet pin, by far."

  Victoria lavished endless praise on the box, holding it and turning it this way and that. Finally, she said, "But why do you suppose it's shaped like a sarcophagus? Something to do with end-of-the-century morbidity?"

  "That's not the shape at all!" Liz said, too sharply.

  "Sure it is. Look: the left side is wider than the right."

  "That doesn't make it coffin-shaped! It makes it asymmetrical, that's all." Liz wanted to change the subject. "Are these all the letters? I thought there were more."

  "There are; this is all I could carry from the attic in my arms." Victoria fished out one letter from a pile on the table and handed it to Liz. "Here's the most recent one I've found so far. It's dated 1935."

  "Four years after the house was built," Liz said automatically.

  "Yes. Your land used to be part of the East Gate estate— actually, it was a little service road to East Gate. But it was sold off to a Portuguese builder who tried to keep busy during the Depression building houses on spec. Probably that's when the East Gate people put up the barbed wire. Anyway, Victoria St. Onge bought the house new from the builder. She was around eighty by then, so she — I? — must have been a feisty old broad," Victoria said irrepressibly. "She paid sixteen hundred dollars for this house — and she complained bitterly about it."

  "Gee. That doesn't sound like you at all; everyone knows you go through money like water," said Liz, falling in with her friend's fantasy.

  "Don't be smart. Anyway, read the last sentence of the letter. It's very distressing. Very ... I don't know."

  Liz flipped the letter over and read the wobbly handwriting: Stupid and wrong, it said, and now it's too late.

  "Huh. Well, this doesn't say much. She could be talking about anything, from picking the wrong wallpaper to the current president. What does the rest of the letter say?" Liz went back to the letter's greeting. "Who's Mercy?"

  "Her sister."

  "Hmm." The short letter was a rambling, disjointed mess, bits and pieces about different people, all of it rather pointless and certainly mundane.

  "Almost all the letters are to Mercy," Victoria explained. "The sisters were almost weirdly close. I get the impression that Mercy was some kind of healer."

  "Wonderful," said Liz dryly. "This gets better and better."

  Victoria got up from her rush-seated chair and stared out the window. But she wasn't seeing Susy, lying in the grass with the cat on her stomach; and she wasn't seeing the cool green oasis surrounding East Gate. Liz was sure of it.

  "Know what else?" Victoria murmured. "Victoria St. Onge was — if you laugh, I promise I'll leave — a spiritualist."

  Liz confined herself to a skeptical pursing of the lips. "Gawd."

  Victoria turned around. Her normally serene, almost spacey expression had been replaced by a burning, focused intensity that Liz had never seen before.

  "That's what she was, Liz Coppersmith," she said. "And like it or not, that's what we've got. At least it explains some of my psychic skills."

  "Oh, come on. You're intuitive, I'll grant you. But psychic?"

  "Liz — do you remember what you told me over cappuccino that last night of our grief-management class, when we declared ourselves graduated? That no matter what strange road my amnesia took me down, you'd walk down it with me?"

  Liz remembered the moment very well. She'd been thinking of her own husband then: of how after the baby was born, he had abandoned them both and taken off for California, just when she needed him most. She was going down for what felt like the third time when her mother talked her into joining the grief group. Within weeks, Victoria had quietly stepped into the breach left by Keith.

  The gratitude that Liz felt for her that night over cappuccino was profound. Victoria had become an everyday part of her life. She'd supported Liz's decision to start up Parties Plus; lent her money, advice, and time; baby-sat Susy almost as much as Liz's parents had. She'd become the sister Liz never had.

  "Yes. I remember," Liz said to Victoria, more humbly than before.

  "Well, this is the road I'm going down," said Victoria quietly. "And I'm a little scared."

  "Okay," said Liz with a reassuring smile and a nervous shrug. "I'll get my walking shoes."

  Chapter 4

  "Watchit watchit! You're bending his ear!"

  "For pity's sake," Victoria said, frazzled, "he's got another one. There'd still be plenty of cake for everybody. Why are you being like this, Liz?"

  "Because everything has got to be perfect." Liz slid one hand toward the middle of the huge cardboard tray that held the flour-and-sugar version of Mr. Mouse himself, and with her other hand she slid back the side panel of her minivan. "Easy, easy! Keep it level! Oh, this damned fog; it's going to wreck the frosting."

  "I know this is your Bellevue Avenue debut, but come on. You're out of control, Liz."

  "Okay, in he goes. Eee-zee-e ... good. Don't tell me about control," Liz snapped, once the cake was secure on the floor of the van. She took the clipboard from the front seat and ran one last check over her list of party preparations. "I haven't been obsessing over some moldy letters for the last week."

  "You said you wanted to do the party prep yourself on this one!" Victoria said, taken aback. "You said if I babysat Susy while I worked on the letters, it would work out well for both of us!"

  Liz hardly heard her. "Trays. . . flowers.. . puppets... favors.. . programs.. . shit. Where'd I put the candles?" She looked up wildly.

  "They're in your carryall. If you'd let me take the letters to my house in the first place, I'd probably be through them all by now."

  "No! The letters stay here."

  "Why?"

  "I don't know why. Right now I don't care why. We've got one hour before guests start arriving. I knew I should've taken the cake over earlier. Why I thought I had to make a grand entrance with it ...."

  In an obvious attempt to end the bickering, Victoria suddenly laughed and said, "The cake deserves a grand entrance, that's why. Look at it: it's spectacular!"

  Indeed it was. Mickey's head — with its huge glossy ears, bug-eyed grin, and bright yellow bow tie — was a thing of beauty, if not exactly a joy forever. It had far exceeded Liz's expectations. Susy liked it so much that Liz had to promise to make her one for her own birthday in September.

  "You're right," Liz said, taking a deep breath. "Everything's going to be fine."

  They got in the van and began a reverse spiral of three quick left turns to get to East Gate. The top part of the hill was very steep; Liz began fretting that the cake would slide. "I don't know why I didn't just hand the thing over the barbed wire to Netta," she said petulantly. "This driving around every time is ridiculous. What I need is a gate in the fence between my house and East Gate."

  "What you need is Prozac," said Victoria, staring at her friend. "Why are you being this way?"

  Liz eased into her last left turn as if she were ferrying a load of TNT. "You weren't there when he called me stupid," she muttered.

  "He didn't call you stupid. He said your question was stupid. And it was, especially considering the circumstances. For gosh sakes, the cake is of Mickey Mouse — so chocolate and white. Obviously. No, there's more to this than that." In her serenely blunt way Victoria said, "Liz Coppersmith — do you have the hots for this guy?"

  "Hots! I don't expect to have hots until menopause. Are you crazy? Who has time to have hots?"

  "Okay, okay. Just curious. Personally, I was quite smitten when he dropped in on us in the Great Room yesterday. He's one heck of a hunk."

  "Yeah. Until he opens his mouth. Why can't he be more gracious about this party? 'No thumbtacks in the woodwork, please.' God. I'
d hate to be a kid on Christmas Eve over there. He probably makes them lay their stockings flat on the floor."

  "You're overreacting. He's the heir apparent. Naturally he wants to pass on the family homestead in good shape."

  "To whom, may I ask? The man's a bachelor, and with that personality, likely to remain one."

  "Don't kid yourself, madame. I've checked around. He's dated every new — not to mention recycled — debutante in town, and every one of them thinks she has the inside track. He must be doing something right."

  "Really?" The news was not only surprising to Liz, it was disappointing; she wanted to believe, somehow, that the curmudgeon despised all women equally.

  She pulled the minivan onto the graveled drive of the shingled mansion. Victoria, impressed all over again, said, "Quite a nice little cottage."

  Liz laughed sardonically. "I have a nice little cottage. He has a nice little Cottage. Capital 'C'."

  "At least it's not chopped up into condos like half the other mansions in town."

  Netta, dressed in festive attire — brown with mauve trim — was scurrying out to them with a childishly eager look on her face. "The cake at last?" she asked, thoroughly caught up in the party spirit. She peeked into the van, oohed and ahed, and said, "Let me run get the trolley for it."

  While they waited for Netta to come back, Victoria said, "What about this Caroline business? Doesn't this long-lost-cousin bit sound fishy to you? Would someone like the Eastman clan really lose a cousin? They seem like the type that keep track of their stuff."

  "Hmm. Well, that's the official version, anyway," said Liz, but she was thinking, I shouldn't have worn teal; I clash with the mouse. "The puppets!" she cried. "I forgot the puppets!"

  "In the bag with the candles, dope," said Victoria, swinging the carryall over Liz's shoulder. "I'll take in the cake with Netta. You clear a path ahead of us."

  "Yes. All right." Liz spun on her heel and plunged through the massive double-doored entrance as if she were charging into an unexplored rain forest.

  She was all too aware that she was being absurd, but she considered the birthday party a watershed event in her career. She'd committed virtually every cent of the agreed-on cost to an eager new caterer in town, while she herself worked basically for free. From the hours of her labor to the flour in the cake, Jack Eastman wasn't paying for any of it. Liz had accepted that fact and was treating it as an advertising expense. But it made her want, that much more, to blow the man's socks off.

  She passed the elder Eastman in the entry hall and they exchanged greetings. Cornelius was clearly in a relaxed and expansive mood today. He said genially, "You look very nice today, Ms. Coppersmith. And so does everything you've done. I'm quite impressed. As for Caroline, she's absolutely thrilled."

  "I'm so glad to hear it," Liz said.

  It was just what she needed to hear. Feeling suddenly calmer and more confident, she went into the Great Room, which looked, well, great. Liz had confined the decorating scheme to Mickey's colors — red, white, black, and yellow — and had made big cutouts of Mickey, Minnie, and all their friends, which she'd located around the room with sticky tape. She'd stripped her yard and Victoria's of every red, white, and yellow peony they had and placed huge bunches of them in big black vases that Netta had produced from somewhere.

  The effect was childlike and elegant at the same time, guaranteed to please even the most discriminating client.

  Liz's client was in the room right now, as a matter of fact —probably scanning for thumbtack holes. He was standing next to the massive fireplace with its elaborately carved overmantel, one arm leaning on the mantel edge. He wore the classic Newport uniform: khakis, white shirt, lemon-yellow print tie, and blue blazer. If there were anyone alive who looked more like the lord of a manor than Jack Eastman, Liz hadn't met him yet.

  They said hello, and Liz, hard pressed to keep the triumph out of her voice, asked him directly how he liked what she'd done.

  He smiled — wryly, it seemed to her — and said, "1 have to admit, you've managed very well."

  Only because I took out an equity loan, you skinflint, thought Liz. But she merely smiled back and said, "It was just the right theme for your budget."

  He laughed out loud at the quip, and Liz turned pink with pleasure. Damn, he had a nice laugh. It thrilled her to wring one out of him; she'd never made a rich man laugh before.

  "What's all that business over there, with the folding chairs?" he asked, pointing to her little hand-painted puppet theater.

  Li reached into her carryall and pulled out a mop-haired puppet. "I have a little Punch and Judy routine — without the punching, of course. Sometimes small children can get overexcited at these things. I've found that a puppet show calms them down and makes them easier to pack up for shipping home at the end of the party."

  "Excellent idea," he said, with the first real enthusiasm she'd seen since she met him.

  "I'll try to get them out of your hair as quickly as possible," she said dryly.

  He got defensive. "I like kids," he said as Liz walked over to the theater and tucked her puppets out of sight. "If they're well managed."

  Liz tried to bite back a retort. No use. She turned to him and cocked her head. "They're not Fortune 500 companies, you know. They can't be made structured and efficient. That's not what being a kid is all about." She was thinking of Susy, a dream of a child who nonetheless had a will of her own.

  "That's ridiculous," Eastman said testily. "When I was a boy, children were seen but not heard." He sauntered over to her, hands in his pockets, a cool and appraising look in his eyes. "And I was a boy, believe it or not, in the second half of this century."

  "Well, I'm afraid time has passed you by, Mr. Eastman," she said. "Nowadays children are encouraged to express themselves. What's the point of keeping everything bottled up inside? God knows kids are under enough pressure. You have to be willing to allow them to let off some steam once in a while."

  "Fine. Just so long as they don't let it off here. But that, of course, is why I've hired you."

  He glanced outside at the thick wet fog pressing against the triple-hung windows of the Great Room. "It's a shame this couldn't have been an outdoor affair," he said in a gloomy voice. "Kids belong outdoors."

  Liz laughed softly. He was arrogant, intolerant, and very, very obviously a bachelor. "You do understand," she said, "that the kids aren't actually goats, don't you?"

  His full lips settled themselves in a neatly compressed line. "I wouldn't push it, Ms. Coppersmith," he said at last.

  But she did push it. "I'm sorry," she said, though clearly she was not. "But after this last week, I couldn't be sure. After all, you have no goats or children of your own," she added blandly. Ah, well, she thought. There goes my career on Bellevue Avenue.

  His reaction was surprisingly mild. "Just because I don't have kids doesn't mean I won't have any," he said simply. And then came the unexpected blow to her stomach. "I'm no different from you or anybody else."

  Liz sucked in her breath the way she always did when she was blindsided that way. She never knew where it would happen — talking to someone in the supermarket, the library, the playground. Always the presumption was the same: that sooner or later she would have more children.

  I can't have any more, you intrusive busybody! That's what she always wanted to shout. But the words would never come, and she'd always had to settle for saying exactly what she told him now.

  "I have a daughter I absolutely adore."

  Which was none of his business either.

  "Ah. I didn't realize you were ma—"

  "Divorced," she said tersely.

  Liz was spared the rest of his speech when Cornelius Eastman rolled a trolley bearing her masterpiece into the room, followed close behind by Netta and Victoria.

  "Jack, you have got to see this cake," his father said with a big grin. "Where's Caroline?"

  "I think she's outside with Snowball," said Netta. "Someone should look at t
hat dog," the housekeeper said to no one in particular. "Caroline says he's not feeling well."

  "She probably gave him her ice-cream bar," Cornelius said with a friendly wink at Liz. "She's the sweetest little kid."

  Jack snorted, then stalked out of the room while Liz decided that he was the worst father-material she'd ever seen.

  ****

  The guests began trickling in at three. Despite a bleary sun that had finally dragged itself out to do halfhearted battle with an equally listless fog, the weather was chill and damp, and the youngsters were kept indoors. Besides a couple of very bored teenagers, there were half a dozen children between the ages of four and six, which was a pretty good turnout considering that none of them had ever met Caroline or her little brother Bradley before.

  It struck Liz that the adult guests were unusually curious about Caroline and not overly involved with their own offspring. She had plenty of opportunity to study everyone's reactions, since she was constantly in the thick of things, acting as both game host and drill sergeant to the energetic, romping, screaming kids.

  It was Caroline who romped and screamed the most. Liz was amazed by the child's relentless energy. Hyperkinetic, she decided, and wondered whether there was any way she could tactfully suggest that someone have Caroline see a pediatrician. But who was in charge? Caroline Stonebridge's mother, Netta had hinted, was being treated somewhere for substance abuse. So where was the father?

  "Is Caroline always so ... exuberant?" Liz asked Netta after pulling Caroline off a smaller, shyer child who was whimpering for help. The children had just finished making their own little party hats, but Caroline had taken a fancy to the smaller girl's pretty pink version and had unceremoniously yanked it off her head.

  Netta sighed and said, "I suppose we have to make allowances. Caroline told me she's never had a birthday party before."

  "Ah!" That explained why Caroline didn't understand that the Mickey and Minnie party favors were supposed to be for her guests and not part of her permanent collection.