Finally, finally, the last metallic plinks ended and I was left alone with my throbbing finger and the bitter smell of dried carnations resurrecting the past.
* * *
The trip from our house in Bar Harbor, Maine, to Long Island wasn’t a long one, but I’d been tense the whole way. I was still a little breathless when the airport taxi drove me to Allen House. My trip had been uneventful but harried because I was unused to travel and especially to traveling alone. The long driveway, surprisingly pitted and overgrown by hanging trees, jarred my stiffly-held back. The cab driver cursed several branches that screeched along the dented yellow sides of his sedan. It felt like a rainforest expedition to a lost city, even more so when the drive opened up into a semicircle sweep that brought us to the sprawling house itself.
Allen House was old-money big. Turn of the century railroad and banking billions to be exact, and pretty much a testament to why something much smaller in a subdivision and built from simpler materials might be more practical for future generations.
The slate roof looked green and patchy. The stone walls looked like a hundred years of Gold Coast wind and rain had worn them down to thin mints. And the square footage made me wince at the thought of energy costs. The driver was more impressed.
“Fuck me,” he cursed in awe. “It’s like something out of The Great Gatsby.”
Yes. It was an Art Deco masterpiece. It must have been amazing, say, in 1920 when flappers might have tagged it “the cat’s meow.”
Even now I was impressed. My mother had left all this like a Vanderbilt running away with a John Smith, and I was back. In the middle of the driveway’s circle, in front of the house, was a fountain that easily could have graced a Parisian square. And though it was dry and cracked and no longer flowing with water, I was suddenly, fiercely glad that I’d packed my mother’s designer luggage, and my pitiful broken jewelry box of dried carnations was hidden out of sight. My mother and father had managed to do well for themselves. They had been involved in finance. The details of which, with my dancer’s heart, I’d never been interested to hear even if there had been the slightest chance that they might confide in me.
I wondered if their success had made up for the loss of love.
The cab driver swung the car around to the entrance and stopped with a flare of gravel. I was thrown back against the seat because he’d been quick to put on the brakes as he continued to ooh and aah over a house that seemed an archeological find.
I gathered myself quickly and popped open the door before the distracted driver could do it for me. He’d already run around to open the trunk and retrieve my bags, mumbling about bootleg champagne and royalty.
I was left to meet the person who would have been the queen in the driver’s imaginary scenario.
“Hello, Angelica. You’ll have to forgive me if I stare. The resemblance is…striking.”
The meaning of her words didn’t penetrate. Briefly, only briefly, I wondered which aunt or cousin had been born with wide gray eyes and unruly midnight hair, because my mother had been naturally blonde, my father’s hair an unremarkable brown.
But then I was given over completely to my first impressions of my grandmother. Victoria Allen would have been tall if she’d been standing. I could see the height not only in her legs as they rested against her wheelchair under a plush cashmere shawl, but also in her straight, proud torso not even slightly bowed by age or infirmity. On her chest, a geometric locket designed with interlocking squares and inlaid with pearls was pinned directly over her heart, but it was her only adornment. She wore no other jewelry. She didn’t need it. Her silvery hair was piled high on her head and her makeup was simple and impeccable. Her eyes were watery with age, but they were still very like my own. On her, the gray matched her hair and the result was fetching. She was beautiful, but she was also surprisingly stiff in her expression, as if her face would shatter if she smiled. In only a few seconds, I acknowledged that the chair signified nothing. My grandmother was a strong, unbending woman, with or without the ability to walk.
“So, you’ve come,” she continued.
It wasn’t a welcome. She sounded almost shocked, as if she’d expected her invitation to be ignored.
“Yes, I’m here,” I replied. Inane. Stating the obvious when I had no idea what else to say.
My curiosity was drawn from my grandmother to the house behind her and that’s when I saw the suited figure on the looming terrace above us. His arms were crossed; his expression too far away to gauge, but I sensed disapproval at the reunion scene below him. I was tired from my flight and worn-out from weeks of grief. Maybe that’s why his tall, silent stance made me inwardly cringe.
Had I expected to be met with warmth and carnations?
Maybe.
Maybe I had.
Maybe I’d come looking for something I’d never managed to find even when my parents had been alive. Familial warmth. I’d seen it demonstrated by friends and acquaintances, but I’d never managed to generate the same feeling in my own stiff and cool home.
The loss of my parents had been even harder on me because I’d had to give up on that dream of closeness.
“Come inside and wash up. Dinner will be at six,” Victoria said.
I couldn’t believe it when her wheelchair whirred away, her back as straight as her front.
The man above us watched a few moments more as my grandmother wheeled away without a backward glance and as I dug for my wallet so I could pay the driver.
I turned back to the man above me when the driver drove away, shielding my eyes from the sudden glare of a setting sun. My attention was received with not so much as a nod from a face darkened in shadow as the sunbeams streamed from behind him. I could see that the cut of his suit was fine and fit the snug modern style of a younger man. His hair blew in the breeze and I could tell that it was brown and longer than the power suit would have indicated it should be.
But that was all.
His expression was completely hidden by distance and darkness.
When he turned away, I was left outside Allen House with hand-me-down designer bags at my feet.
However, I was well used to fending for myself.
I gathered up my things and headed for the imposing front door. I faced two oversized slabs of carved cherry with black wrought iron fittings and inlaid beveled glass. But I hadn’t come all this way to be turned back by fine architecture. Besides, all the metal was pockmarked with spots of rust.
I prepared to dump my bags and wrestle with the door’s double knobs when one door opened with a moan of its hinges.
“You’re here, then. Let’s get you upstairs. I’m the housekeeper. You can call me Bethany.” A tiny middle-aged woman squeezed through the doorway and grabbed too many of my bags. The numbness that had claimed me since the authorities had brought word of my parents’ death was tingling around the edges like a limb gone to sleep but struggling to wake. We’d had a cleaning service come in once a week for a mad dash of housekeeping that was almost Olympic in its intensity when I was younger, but for years I’d taken care of the cleaning myself. I had no idea how to act with a servant who was carrying my luggage.
I shrugged out of my coat and looped it through the handle of my shoulder bag. I also tried not to gawk at the entryway ceiling that opened up to a cathedral rotunda extending all the way to the top of the house where a crystal chandelier hung in dull glory. Even though it could use a good cleaning, it was impressive, surrounded by a dome of stained glass. I quickly followed Bethany up a large staircase with