Desperate to have the mad genius at his disposal under any terms, Sir Edward had immediately countered by offering Damon a position as a consultant with a generous monthly retainer. At that point, Damon had looked over at me and asked if I would be willing to write up his appraisals and handle the finances of such an arrangement.
Thus was born our little company, St. Claire & Marks, official consultants and appraisers to Christie’s. A long list of prestigious dealers, insurance companies and private collectors had quickly followed suit, all in time becoming loyal clients.
In the six years that we had been in business together, I had never once asked Damon to write an appraisal or even to make regular appearances at our small midtown office.
But now I had no choice.
Because of my growing inability to deal with Bobby’s disappearance, I absolutely had to get away from New York for a while. Perhaps a very long while.
And though I knew Damon loved me like a sister, I was not at all certain how my free-spirited partner was going to react to my urgent request that he take over the daily running of the business while I was gone.
I should have known better than to worry.
“Of course you need to get away, Susan. Isn’t that exactly what I told you ages ago?” Damon fumed in the soft Louisiana drawl that ten years in deepest Manhattan had failed to appreciably alter. He spent a few more minutes lecturing me like a naughty child, mostly for having wasted $150 an hour to have “some god-awful pill-pushing headshrinker” give me the same advice that he had so wisely dispensed for free.
Then, with tears running down his shiny ebony cheeks and splashing onto the floppy collar of his striped magenta shirtfront, he enfolded me in his arms and assured me he could run the company single-handed for however long I needed to be away.
“Just you go off and heal yourself, girl,” he whispered throatily. “That’s the only thing that’s important now.”
Of course, I had suggested to him that he might want to think about what he was getting himself into before committing. And I reminded him of his professed need for absolute freedom and of the difficulty he had always had in putting his thoughts on paper.
At that Damon’s round Buddha features had contorted into a sly, puckish grin. “Sue, honey,” he laughed, “it’s not that I can’t do all of that boring bullshit that you’re so wonderful at organizing and keeping track of, it’s just that I won’t. Not without a very good reason.”
Then he stood up on his tiptoes and softly kissed my cheek. “And you are the very best reason I can think of,” he sniffed. “Now, get out of here before I come to my senses and change my mind.”
Chapter 3
At home came one final daunting task: packing up Bobby’s things. I’d left everything just as it had been the morning he kissed me good-bye and then vanished. The dream that he would come sauntering through the door and back into my life was fading along with my sanity.
His clothes and shoes went into boxes for the Goodwill and so did most of his sports equipment. I stacked the boxes near the front door and returned to the living room for the part that would be the hardest. It was these smaller, more personal things that brought on my tears. Holding his battered flight jacket to my face caused yet another rush of memories. How many times had my cheek crushed the butter-soft leather when he held me in his strong arms? I laid it gently in the box as the tears continued.
The dust-covered ski trophy had been a particular source of pride for Bobby and was a warm memory of our first romantic trip together. “Romantic? Are you nuts? You were alone most of the time,” my rational mind—I call her Miss Practical—chided me.
My romantic side, often at odds with Miss Practical, dredged up the memory of that Saturday when a storm had kept the skiers off the slopes—Bobby and I had spent the entire day in front of the fire making wonderful, languid love.
Miss Practical snapped me out of my reverie with a reminder that it had been the only trip we took together, not the first. She was right: like so many of Bobby’s big plans, none of the vacations we had meticulously planned had ever materialized. I tossed the trophy into the box.
This was the box I had intended to keep, mementoes of my life with him, our life together. But it really was just more of his stuff. None of it represented us. I finally decided that it should go with the others and set it atop the stack to be disposed of by Damon as he saw fit. A gesture I greatly appreciated since Damon and Bobby had, in reality, hated each other.
It always saddened me that the two most important men in my life could barely tolerate being in the same room together.
From the beginning Damon had insisted that “there was something not right about Bobby.” He said he was smarmy and insincere. Damon had even gone so far as to claim that he’d seen something evil in Bobby’s eyes. Bobby had convinced me that Damon was simply jealous of the time I spent away from him.
That seemingly logical explanation didn’t stop Bobby from defaming my eccentric business partner and friend for the way he looked and acted. Bobby even said Damon had an arrogance that made him nothing more than an up-pity N—I was shocked at Bobby’s use of the “N” word and he apologized profusely with multiple mea culpas, convincing me, as he so easily could, that it had been a simple slip of the tongue and he was heartily ashamed.
But the truth of it all was that the only time Bobby and I really fought was over Damon. And while I was angry at both of them for making things so uncomfortable I dealt with it the only way I could. Never discussing home with Damon even when there had been times when I could have used the ear of a good friend; for there were times I wondered if Bobby really loved me. At home I no longer discussed work, no matter how exciting a particular estate or single piece that we had been called on to appraise.
Occasionally my resentment and frustration of the enforced silence would get the better of me. A snide remark from Damon or an inflammatory comment by Bobby would send me out into the night. I would walk the city streets alone. Angry that it was necessary to be away from them.
Shutting out the memories I stood in the entryway after depositing the small box with the others and just stared at the door. No, he would never come through that door again. Bobby was gone and I didn’t need to walk on eggshells anymore.
I went to bed tired from the effort and emotions.
The next morning I threw some favorite research books, a battered case of drawing materials from my art school days, an overnight bag and some casual clothes into the back of my blue Volvo. Thus prepared for travel, and without a backward glance, I abandoned the city and the lonely loft apartment with its overflowing trove of bittersweet memories.
Where do you go when there’s nowhere else to go? When you don’t want to see anyone to whom you might have to explain why you may suddenly burst into tears at odd moments. When you wish to be alone with the tattered remains of your once happy life.
I couldn’t think of anywhere better suited to those particular needs than Freedman’s Cove, Rhode Island.
Tucked into a tiny indentation along the rocky Atlantic coastline north of Newport, the village of Freedman’s Cove is known locally for its succulent lobsters, a postcard-pretty waterfront and the scores of extravagantly overdone Victorian summer houses that line the surrounding shore.
The Freedman’s Cove Victorians, as they are often referred to in New England travel brochures, were built in the late 1800s, a time when America’s super-rich were sparing no expense in attempting to outdo one another with their palatial retreats along the beaches of Newport, a few miles to the south.
When it comes to money and fashion some things never change. And, as is still the case today, wherever the truly rich congregate, the near-rich and the wannabe rich are sure to be close at hand.
So, around 1885, when Rhode Island became the fashionable place for the very rich to summer, plenty of well-off families with slightly lesser means than the Whitneys and the Vanderbilts were more than happy to build mini-mansions of their own,
just up the strand from their financial and social betters. And so, during the hot months of the year the wives and children of prosperous Eastern bankers, factory owners and investors fled the teeming and unhealthful cities for the pleasant seaside community of Freedman’s Cove. There, attended by a favorite family servant or two, they resided from June until September, bathing, sailing, picnicking and calling upon one another in idyllic Victorian splendor.
Their industrious menfolk, meanwhile, remained hard at work in the steamy, malodorous canyons of Boston, New York and Philadelphia, commuting up by rail on weekends to join their pampered dependents by the sea.
More than a century later the pattern of summer living in Freedman’s Cove has changed only slightly. Entire families of prosperous city folk still escape the heat and humidity by flocking to that pleasant northern shore. But now they generally arrive together—Mom, Dad and the kids renting one of the charming old Victorians with a seaside view for a week or so at a time, then returning as a unit to their modern air-conditioned homes and condos in the cities.
And, nowadays, thanks to easy highway access and ample facilities for dining and lodging, Freedman’s Cove also plays host to a new breed of short-term visitors. These are the day-trippers, in town for an afternoon. Or the lovers who come for long, romantic weekends.
However you wish to classify them, from the first of June until Labor Day, hordes of sunburned tourists wander Harbor Street, licking triple-scoop ice-cream cones served up at the magnificent marble counter in Brewster’s Ice Cream Parlour & Confectionary or squinting through the wavy mullioned windows of The Ancient Mariner Nautical Emporium. They all stop in at Cora’s Olde Tyme Fudge Shoppe and pause to finger the Taiwanese Hummel figurines at Shelly’s Victorian Gifts. And most wander down to the old commercial pier to see the lobster boats, or rent bicycles to ride along the shaded streets of brightly painted Victorians on their way out to the historic lighthouse on Maidenstone Island.
Or sometimes they simply drive in to dine at Krabb’s Seafood House on the wharf.
But no matter how the tourists have changed over the course of the past hundred years, one aspect of Freedman’s Cove remains completely unaltered by time: when summer ends the city people still go home again, leaving the village to face the coming storms of winter on its own.
The day after Labor Day the sounds of clattering hammers echo along the deserted streets, as the tourist shops and B&Bs along Commodore Milton Lane are snugly shuttered and battened down. And when the work is finally done and the beach floats and umbrellas have all been folded and stored for another season, the few hundred full-time residents of Freedman’s Cove settle in to enjoy the brief peace of autumn and brace themselves for another harsh New England winter.
By mid-October, chilly breezes are already sweeping south from the Canadian Maritimes. Bulky Fisherman’s Sweaters have replaced T-shirts as the favored garment for outdoor wear. The long lines of strangers clogging the checkout counters in the Food Mart with their baskets of beer, suntan lotion and picnic supplies are merely a fading memory. And there are once again plenty of parking spaces out in front of Krabb’s, the only restaurant in town that remains open year-round.
Within another week or so the last of the sailboats down at Maury’s Marina have been hauled out and had their bottoms scraped and painted for next year. The magnificent old maples in the square are already beginning to shed their colorful autumn foliage. And before the month has fully gone, Freedman’s Cove, Rhode Island, has once more become an excellent place to be alone with your thoughts.
My decision to flee Manhattan for this strange little summer tourist destination was hardly accidental. But neither was it based on any particular research or some Manhattan travel agent’s slick brochures of quaint New England retreats.
Freedman’s Cove was simply the easiest choice. A nobrainer, if you will. Because my great-aunt Ellen had lived most of her long life in one of the town’s famed old Victorians. And though it is a place that Bobby once visited with me, the two of us had remained there for only part of one very brief and unhappy weekend.
Chapter 4
Our trip to Freedman’s Cove three years ago was supposed to have been a glad occasion. Ellen was my father’s aunt, making her my great-aunt but for a small child Great-Aunt Ellen had been a mouthful so for the rest of my life she was simply Aunt Ellen, my favorite relative. I spent every summer of my childhood in her big yellow and green Victorian by the sea. So the old place held many happy memories for me, memories that I had wanted to share with Bobby.
But on that spring weekend when we drove up to see her, Aunt Ellen, who was well into her eighties at the time, made no effort whatsoever to disguise her instant dislike for my dashing young pilot.
Bobby and I had arrived late on a Friday night. And the old lady’s cranky hostility had been evident from the moment we stepped through the front door. To his everlasting credit, Bobby had handled the unexpectedly awkward situation with grace and understanding—which is far more than I can say for my own behavior that weekend.
But even now I can’t help smiling as I recall the gallant wink he gave me as Aunt Ellen, all of five feet tall in her tiny bare feet, her long white hair coiled in a giant, untidy braid atop her head, abruptly announced that she had prepared a nice cot for him out on the sunporch at the rear of the house.
Naturally, I was mortified…and angry.
For though the crafty old girl knew damn well that Bobby and I had been living together for more than six months, and had never once voiced a word of disapproval in her frequent letters to me, that night she’d seemed hell-bent on preserving the illusion of my chastity by pointedly consigning Bobby and me to sleeping quarters at the farthest possible distance from one another.
I hadn’t known what to say.
During the whole of the long drive up from New York I had been describing to him in exquisite detail my sweet old auntie and her wonderful house. And I had been especially enthusiastic about the splendid bedroom high up in the turret facing the sea, the room that had always been mine.
From the lovely Italian marble washstand with its painted china bowl and pitcher to the delicate lace curtains that on soft summer nights fluttered like the wings of butterflies in breezes from the bay, I had not left out a single detail of that marvelous room with its breathtaking view of rocky Maidenstone Island, the picturesque Maidenstone Lighthouse and the Atlantic beyond.
Thoughtlessly, I now freely admit, I had assumed that Bobby and I would be sleeping together in that lovely chamber where, by the flickering glow of a tiny blue art glass fairy lamp, I had woven a thousand girlish dreams.
And though I was completely at fault for having failed to take into account Aunt Ellen’s Victorian-era sensibilities regarding the matter of cohabitation by unmarried lovers, my embarrassment at her rude and tactless behavior that Friday night had prompted my usually restrained temper to flare.
Fortunately, Bobby had seen the warning glint of fire in my eyes. Before I could open my mouth to complain, he’d yawned theatrically and told Aunt Ellen he was positively desperate for a little shut-eye after the long, long drive from Manhattan, embroidering his huge lie—because he had actually spent the previous hour in the car describing in lurid detail all the wicked and depraved things he was going to do to me the moment he got me alone—by assuring her how much he loved sleeping out in the fresh air.
Great-Aunt Ellen had simply grunted suspiciously and led my poor, deprived lover away through the kitchen to his lumpy cot on the sunporch.
I’m sure she would have had a heart attack on the spot if she’d known what happened after she limped upstairs to her lonely spinster’s bed that night. For, less than an hour later, when I was sure from the buzz saw drone of the snoring from her room that she was fast asleep, I crept down from my virginal chamber and went to Bobby on the sunporch.
At the foot of the deep backyard there is a little curve of sandy beach hidden from view by a thick screen of wild rose and oleander. Ta
king my smiling lover by the hand, I had boldly led him to the water’s edge. And there under the stars, on the very spot where once I had built elaborate fairy castles in the sand, we peeled off our clothes and made love until dawn. Then, giggling like the naughty children that Aunt Ellen obviously knew we were, we had crept back to the house and our separate beds.
Needless to say, the planned weekend in Freedman’s Cove turned out to be more than a little awkward for all of us. As a result, Bobby had spent virtually no time at all in the house. We had a late breakfast on Saturday. And as soon as it was over he had volunteered to take a long hike across the stone causeway to the lighthouse on Maidenstone Island, so that Aunt Ellen and I could “visit.”
So, after we silently cleared away the breakfast things, the old lady and I had sipped herbal tea dispensed from the solid coin silver Shreve & Co. tea service in her claustrophobic front parlor, with its funereal wine-colored draperies, heavy claw-foot furniture and drooping rubber plants.
As was always required on such occasions at Aunt Ellen’s, I dutifully pretended to be interested while examining her faded albums of long-dead ancestors by the feeble glow of a prized Tiffany lamp, and listened for the hundredth time to her rambling recitations of who had married whom, who their children and grandchildren were, how they were related and what had become of them all.
Then, after a while, something unusual had happened. Aunt Ellen had casually uncovered a photograph of a pretty, dark-haired young woman in a high-collared turn-of-the-century gown. My anger momentarily forgotten, I had immediately picked up the photo, remarking on the loveliness of the girl and asking who in the world she was. For hers was a face that I could not remember having ever before seen in the familiar ancestral gallery.
The old woman had scowled and her teacup trembled slightly in her frail hand. “Now, that one up and went off to New York years before I was born. Around about 1910 or thereabouts,” she had muttered darkly. Then her thin, creaky voice dropped to a mere whisper, forcing me to lean forward to hear.
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