The Gate House Read online

  Elizabeth said, “I love this time of day.”

  “Me, too.”

  We stayed silent awhile, appreciating the dawn of a beautiful summer day.

  Finally, she asked me, “Can I tell you a secret?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well . . . you might think this is silly . . . and I’m almost embarrassed . . . but when I was about . . . maybe sixteen, I developed a major crush on you.”

  I smiled. “Did you?”

  She laughed, then continued, “Even though you were married . . . I thought about you sometimes when I was in college, and whenever I came home and saw you . . . but then I grew up and got over it.”

  “That’s good.” I added, “I had no idea.”

  “Of course you didn’t. I never flirted, did I?”

  I thought about that, and replied “No, you didn’t.”

  “I was a good girl.”

  “Still are.”

  “Well . . . let’s not go there.”

  I smiled.

  Elizabeth continued, “And then, when all that happened with Susan and Frank Bellarosa, I couldn’t believe what I’d heard from Mom when you moved in here . . . then, after Susan shot him . . . I wanted to call you or come by. Actually, I dropped in to see Mom a few times, but you weren’t here . . . and then Mom said that you were leaving.”

  I didn’t know quite what to say, but I replied, “That’s very nice. I could have used someone to talk to.”

  “I know. Mom said you were . . . withdrawn. But I was married, and I wasn’t sure in my own mind if I was concerned as a friend, or . . . something else.”

  “I understand.” I added, “I’m very flattered.”

  “Are you? Well, you’re too modest, John. I think you left here because the women were all over you as soon as you were separated, and you fled for your life.”

  “This is true.”

  She smiled, then went on, “And here’s the rest of my secret—when I heard that you were about to begin a sail around the world, I wished that you would take me with you.”

  I looked at her and our eyes met. I said, not altogether insincerely, “I wish I’d known.”

  “That’s very nice of you to say.”

  “Well, I’m not just saying it.”

  “I know. Anyway, it was just a silly fantasy. I had a husband and two children. Even if you’d asked, I would have had to say no. Because of the children.” She added, “Not to mention Mom. I think she was on to me, and not happy.”

  I thought about all of that and about how the course of our lives can change so quickly if something is said, or not said. We feel one thing, and we say another, because that’s how we’re brought up. We have our dreams and our fantasies, though we rarely act on them. We all are, I think, more frightened than hopeful, and more self-sacrificing—the children, the spouse, the job, the community—than selfish. And that, I suppose, is good in the larger sense of maintaining a civilized society. I mean, if everyone acted like Susan Sutter, we’d all be shooting our lovers or our spouses, or both, or just running off to find love, happiness, and a life without responsibilities.

  In some odd way, as angry as I was at Susan for her behavior, I almost envied her for her passion, her ability to break with her rigid upbringing and with her stifling social class. Or she was just nuts.

  And while she was breaking the rules, she’d also broken the law. Murder. She’d gotten a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card on that, but Mr. Anthony Bellarosa was holding a past-due bill that he might decide to collect.

  Elizabeth asked me, “What are you thinking about?”

  “About not following the rules. And taking chances. And using more heart and less brain.”

  She nodded and said, somewhat astutely, “Susan did that. And so did Tom. I never did, but you did when you sailed around the world.”

  “Well, I was put in that enviable position of having nothing left to lose. The only wrong move I could have made was to stay here and go to marriage counseling.”

  She smiled, and again with some insight pointed out, “You should try to figure out how your marriage got to that point. And you should make sure you don’t go there again. Assuming you remarry.”

  The word “marry,” and all its derivations and synonyms, upsets my stomach, so I changed the subject and asked, “Can I get you more coffee?”

  “No, thanks. But let me make you breakfast.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “I insist. Compensation for last night.”

  I didn’t know if she meant compensation for not buying me dinner or for not having sex. I said, “Well, there’s not much in the refrigerator.”

  “I saw that. But we can split that English muffin, and there’s crab-apple jelly, club soda, and two beers left.”

  “How did that English muffin get in there?”

  She stood and said, “I see you didn’t plan on me staying the night.”

  “No . . .” Actually, I did plan on it, but I didn’t plan for it. I said, “We can go to a coffee shop.”

  “No. Just relax. I’ll be right back.”

  “Thanks.” So I sat there, thinking about our post-non-coital conversation, which was not much different than if we’d done it.

  Bottom line on this was that I really liked Elizabeth, and I’d really wanted to sleep with her, but now I was glad I didn’t, and I’d make sure it didn’t happen and we could be just friends.

  Maybe I should try that again. I’d have sex with her in a heartbeat. Why is this so complicated?

  She reappeared with the coffee pot, refilled my cup, and said, “Breakfast will be served shortly, Mr. Sutter.”

  “Thank you, Elizabeth. I like my muffins well done and my crab-apple jelly on the side.”

  “Very good, sir.” She bent over, tousled my hair, kissed my lips, then went inside.

  I could feel Little John waking up and stretching. Maybe I needed a cold shower.

  I sipped my coffee and tried to think about things other than sex, or Elizabeth’s perfect body, or my T-shirt riding up to her smooth, creamy white inner thighs, and her breasts nearly popping out of that bath towel last night, and how they almost fell out of my bathrobe when she bent over just now. Instead, I thought about . . . well, sex was all I could think about.

  Elizabeth returned with a tray on which was the toasted English muffin split in two, an open jar of the jelly, a bottle of my Hildon sparkling water, the coffee pot, and the leftover cheese, crackers, and vegetables from last night. She set the tray on the table and said, “Breakfast is served.”

  “Thank you. Will you join me?”

  “Oh, sir, that is not permitted. But if you insist.” She sat and poured water into two glasses, saying, “Your breakfast beer is being chilled, sir.”

  “Thank you.” I mean, this was a little funny, but hanging over the humor was the not-so-distant past when the Allards waited on the Stanhopes. I was rarely included in this arrangement, but there were a few times, years ago, when I dined with the Stanhopes in the great house, and Ethel, George, and a few of the other remaining servants would cook and serve a formal dinner to the Stanhope clan and their stuffed-shirt guests. In fact, I remembered now at least one occasion when Elizabeth, home from boarding school or college, cleared the table. I wondered if Lord William the Cheap paid her. Anyway, yes, Elizabeth was being funny, and this was a parody, but it made me a little uncomfortable.

  Elizabeth spooned some jelly on my muffin and said, “We make this here on the estate.”

  I didn’t come back with anything witty.

  She placed some cheese on my plate and said, “This has been aged on the coffee table for twelve hours.”

  I smiled.

  So we had breakfast, made some small talk about her clothing boutiques, and about the changes that had taken place on the Gold Coast in the last decade. She commented on that subject, “It’s more subtle than dramatic. And not as bad as it could be. The nouveaux riches seem happy enough with their five acres and their semi-custom
-built tract mansions.” She smiled and said, “Some of the women even dress well.”

  I smiled in return.

  She continued, “Well, listen to me—the daughter of estate workers. But, you know . . . I was brought up around the gentry, and I had a very good education, and I feel like part of the old, vanished world.”

  “You are.”

  “Yes, but I’m from the other part of that world, and now I’m a shopkeeper.”

  “Shop owner.”

  “Thank you, sir. In fact, three successful shops. And I did marry well. I mean, socially. Next time, I’ll marry for love.”

  “Don’t do anything silly.”

  She smiled, then said, “Well, at least my children are Corbets, and they’ve been well educated.”

  I said to her, “You know, I lived in England for seven years, and I saw the best and worst of the old class system. In the end, what matters is character.”

  “That, Mr. Sutter, sounds like bullshit.”

  I smiled. “Well, it is. But it sounds good.”

  “And easy for you to say.”

  “I wasn’t born rich,” I said.

  “But you were born into two illustrious old families. Whitmans and Sutters. All or most of whom were college educated, and none of whom were gatekeepers, shopkeepers, or servants.”

  That was true, but as far as I knew, none of them had been filthy rich like the Stanhopes. Great Uncle Walt was famous, but poetry didn’t pay that well.

  As for the Sutters, they’d come over on the ship after the Mayflower, and they’d been missing the boat ever since, at least in regard to money.

  Regarding the Stanhopes, Susan’s great-great-grandfather, Cyrus, had made the family fortune in coal mines and built Stanhope Hall at the turn of the last century. The Whitmans and Sutters, however, would consider the Stanhopes to be ostentatious, mercenary, and perhaps not very intellectual. And as my mother liked to point out, the Stanhopes were totally devoid of social conscience.

  Balzac said, “Behind every great fortune is a crime.” But in the case of the Stanhopes, what was behind their fortune was dumb luck. And they’d kept most of it through greed, stinginess, and tax loopholes. And on that subject, although I did a lot of free legal work for cheap Willie, I never did tax work for him, or I’d probably be in jail now.

  Nevertheless, in Elizabeth’s eyes, we were all lumped together, and we’d all been highborn and blessed by fate and fortune.

  To try to set the record straight, I informed her, “I happen to know that my distant ancestors were farmers and fishermen, and one of them, Elijah Sutter, was hanged for horse stealing.”

  “I won’t tell.”

  I further informed her, “By the way, I’m broke.”

  She said, “Well, it’s been nice knowing you.”

  I smiled, then suggested, “Can we change the subject?”

  “Good idea. But let me just say, John, that I think you’d still be happy here if you stayed.”

  “I can be happy anywhere where there’s a country club, a polo field, a yacht club, and two-hundred-acre zoning.”

  She smiled and observed, “You can take the boy out of the Gold Coast, but you can’t take the Gold Coast out of the boy.”

  “Well said.” I tried a piece of Gouda. “Tastes better this morning.”

  She said to me, “Tell me about your sail around the world.”

  “There’s a lot to tell.”

  “Did you have a woman in every port?”

  “No. Only in Western Europe, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and French Polynesia.”

  “Very funny. Well, tell me another time.”

  “How about you?”

  “Me? Well . . . I’ve been dating for the last two years.” She added, “Nothing serious, and I’m not seeing anyone at the moment.”

  Dating. Seeing. Women, I’ve discovered, have more euphemisms for fucking than Eskimos have words for snow. And they rarely use a masculine noun or pronoun when describing their love life. I’m dating someone, I’m seeing someone, I’ve met someone, I’m involved with someone, I’m serious about someone, I’m not serious about the person I’m seeing, and I date other people, and on and on. Whereas a guy will just ask another guy, “You fuckin’ anybody?”

  Elizabeth interrupted my mental riff and asked, “Are we supposed to have this conversation before or after sex?”

  “Before is good. So there aren’t any misunderstandings.” I added, “I’m . . . seeing someone in London.”

  She didn’t say anything for a while, then asked, “Is it serious?”

  Serious to me usually describes a medical condition, like a brain tumor, but I think I know what serious means in this context, so I answered, honestly, “She thinks so. I do not.”

  “All right.”

  So we left it there.

  To be truthful, this breakfast conversation was not going as well as I thought it would, and just as I was starting to have second thoughts about Elizabeth, she displayed the astuteness that I’d noticed before and said, “By now, you are subtracting points. First, I raise the class issue, and you think I’ve inherited the Red gene from my mother, then I pry into your love life, and we haven’t even had sex, and . . . what else?”

  “Breakfast sucks.”

  “That’s your fault, not mine.”

  “True. Look—”

  “Do you know how to shop for food?”

  “Of course I do. I’ve provisioned my ship from native food stalls all over the world.”

  “What did you do in London?”

  “In London, I called Curry in a Hurry. Or ate out.”

  “I’ll do some food shopping for you.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “That would be nice.” She stayed silent awhile, then said to me, “I think Susan wants you back.”

  I didn’t reply.

  Elizabeth pushed on. “I think she wanted me to tell you that. So, I’m telling you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Would you like my opinion on that?”

  “No. I have my own opinion.”

  “All right.” She stood and said, “I’m going home, then to church, then to visit Mom. Church is at eleven, if you’d like to meet me there. Or you can meet me at Fair Haven. And if you’re not busy this afternoon, I’ll buy you brunch.”

  I stood and said, “I’d like to spend the day with you, but . . . I don’t want to run into Susan at church, or at Fair Haven.”

  “I understand.”

  As for the brunch invitation, I surprised myself by saying, “I have a Sunday dinner date at four.” I thought I owed Elizabeth an explanation and I said, “The same business guy I had dinner with last week, and his family.”

  “All right . . . I hope it works out.”

  “Can I meet you at about seven?”

  “Call me.”

  “I will.” I smiled and asked, “Can I help you get dressed?”

  She smiled in return and said, “You didn’t even help me get undressed.” She said, “I want you to stay right here and not tempt me now. I’ll let myself out.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I am.” We embraced and kissed, and one thing led to another, and somehow her robe got undone, and we were about two seconds from doing it on the table, but she backed off, took a breath, and said, “Later. Tonight.”

  “Okay . . . tonight.”

  She tied her robe, turned and walked toward the door, then looked back at me and said, “You need to resolve things with Susan, sooner rather than later.”

  “I know that.”

  She went through the screen door, and I stood there, wanting to follow, but knowing I shouldn’t.

  I poured another cup of coffee and took a walk through Ethel’s garden, which was overgrown with weeds that were choking out the vegetables. Why don’t vegetables choke out weeds?

  Anyway, I did some mental weeding. First, I liked Elizabeth Allard. Second, I had to take charge of events before they took charge of me. And that mea
nt seeing Susan—not tomorrow, or the next day, but this morning. Then the visit to the Bellarosa house would have some purpose, and some resolution.

  And then, tonight, I could sleep with Elizabeth—or sleep alone, but very soundly for the first time in two weeks.

  PART II

  Down the passage which we did not take

  Towards the door we never opened

  Into the rose garden.

  — T. S. Eliot “Burnt Norton,” from Four Quartets

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Avintage radio sat atop the refrigerator, and Patti Page was singing “Old Cape Cod,” which reminded me of a few sails I’d made there with my family. The station was playing a medley of American geography–inspired songs, and the next one was “Moonlight in Vermont.” I was sure that Ethel hadn’t moved that dial in two decades.

  Time had stood still here in this gatehouse as the changing world encroached on the walls of Stanhope Hall. In fact, life within the walls had changed, too, and time was about to catch up to this place, and to the people who lived here, past and present.

  It was not yet 9:00 A.M., and I’d already showered and changed into tan trousers and my last clean button-down shirt. A Savile Row custom-made blue blazer hung over the back of the kitchen chair. I was dressed to call on Susan, or I was all dressed up with no place to go until dinner with the Mafia at four.

  But maybe before I phoned Susan, I should first make my Sunday call to Carolyn and Edward. Carolyn, however, slept late on Sunday, and it was 6:00 A.M. in Los Angeles, so maybe I should call my mother, but I usually have a stiff drink in my hand when I speak to Harriet, and it was a bit early for that.

  At quarter past nine, Ray Charles was singing “Georgia,” and I was still standing in the kitchen with a cup of coffee in my hand.

  It was odd, I thought, that I could tell a Mafia don to basically go fuck himself, but I couldn’t get up the courage to make the phone call to Susan.

  The last mournful notes of “Georgia” died away, and the mellow-voiced DJ said, “That was beautiful. You’re listening to WLIG, broadcasting to the land of the free and the home of the brave.”