The Gate House Page 6

  On the subject of calling people, Ethel’s pink 1970s princess phone was my only form of communication, and I used it sparingly, mostly to call Samantha, Edward, and Carolyn, and my sister Emily in Texas, whom I loved very much, and my mother who . . . well, she’s my mother. As for incoming calls, a few of Ethel’s elderly friends had called, and I told them the bad news of Ethel being in hospice. At that age, this news is neither shocking nor particularly upsetting. One elderly lady had actually called from the same hospice house, and she was delighted to hear that her friend was right upstairs, perched on the same slippery slope.

  Ethel had no Caller ID, so each time the phone rang, I had to wonder if it was hospice, Mr. Nasim, Susan, or Samantha telling me she was at JFK. Ethel did have an answering machine, but it didn’t seem to work, so I never knew if I’d missed any calls when I was out.

  The idiotic cuckoo clock in the kitchen chimed four, and I took that as a signal to stretch and walk outside through the back kitchen door for some air.

  The sky was still overcast, and I could smell rain. I stood on the slate patio and surveyed this corner of the old estate.

  Amir Nasim had gardeners who cared for the diminished grounds, including the trees and grass around the gatehouse. Along the estate wall, the three crabapple trees had been pruned, but there would be no crabapple jelly from Ethel this year, or ever.

  Beyond the patio was a small kitchen garden, and Ethel had done her spring planting of vegetables before she became ill. The garden was overgrown now with weeds and wildflowers.

  And in the center of the neglected garden was a hand-painted wooden sign that was so old and faded that you couldn’t read it any longer. But when it was a fresh, new sign, some sixty years ago, it had read victory garden.

  I needed to remember to give that to Ethel’s daughter, Elizabeth.

  I could hear the wall phone ringing in the kitchen. I really hate incoming calls; it’s rarely someone offering me sex, money, or a free vacation. And when it is, there are always strings attached.

  It continued to ring, and without an answering machine, it kept ringing, as though someone knew I was home. Susan?

  Finally, it stopped.

  I took a last look around, turned, and went inside to get ready to see an old woman who was going to her final reward, and a young man who, if he wasn’t careful, was going to follow in his father’s footsteps to an early grave.

  CHAPTER SIX

  At 5:00 p.m., I drove through the magnificent wrought-iron gates of my grand estate and headed south on Grace Lane in my Lamborghini. Reality check: not my estate, and not a Lamborghini.

  Grace Lane—named not for a woman, or for the spiritual state in which the residents believed they lived, but for the Grace family of ocean liner fame—was, and may still be, a private road, which means the residents own it and are supposed to maintain it. The last time I was here, my neighbors were trying to unload this expense on various local governments, who didn’t seem anxious to bail out the rich sons of bitches of Grace Lane, some of whom were no longer so rich, but who nonetheless remained sons of bitches. The issue seems to have been resolved in my absence because Grace Lane was now well paved.

  I continued south toward the village of Locust Valley, where I needed to stop to buy something for Ethel. One should never arrive empty-handed when paying a visit, of course, but I never know what to bring except for wine, and that wouldn’t be appropriate for this occasion; likewise, flowers might seem premature.

  Ethel enjoyed reading, so I could stop at the bookstore, but I shouldn’t buy anything too long, like War and Peace. She also liked fruit, but I shouldn’t buy green bananas. All right, I’m not being very nice, but when faced with the hovering presence of the Grim Reaper, a little humor (even bad humor) helps the living and the dying to deal with it. Right? So maybe she’d get a kick out of a gift certificate to Weight Watchers.

  “Dear Ms. Post, I need to visit an elderly lady in hospice, whose time left on earth could be measured with a stopwatch. Why should I bother to bring her anything? (Signed) COLI. P.S. I don’t like her.”

  “Dear COLI, Good manners don’t stop at death’s door. An appropriate gift would be a box of chocolates; if she can’t eat them, her visitors can. If she dies before you get there, leave the chocolates and your calling card with the receptionist. It’s the thought that counts. (Signed) Emily Post. P.S. Try to make amends if she’s conscious.”

  I turned onto Skunks Misery Road, and within a few minutes found myself again in the village of Locust Valley. I hate shopping for anything, including cards and trivial gifts, so my mood darkened as I cruised Forest Avenue and Birch Hill Road, looking for some place that sold chocolates. I saw at least a dozen white SUVs that could have been Susan’s, and it occurred to me that she was good at this sort of thing, so if I ran into her—figuratively, not literally—I’d ask her for some advice. The last gift advice I’d gotten from her—at Carolyn’s graduation from Harvard Law—was that the T-shirt I’d bought for Carolyn in London, which, in Shakespeare’s words, said, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,” was not a good law school graduation gift. She may have been right.

  Anyway, I gave up on the chocolates, parked, and went into a florist shop.

  A nice-looking young lady behind the counter asked how she could help me, and I replied without preamble, “I need something for an elderly lady who’s in hospice and doesn’t have much time left.” I glanced at my watch to emphasize that point.

  “I see . . . so—”

  “I am not particularly fond of her.”

  “All right . . . then—”

  “I mean, cactus would be appropriate, but she’ll have other visitors, so I need something that looks nice. It doesn’t have to last long.”

  “I understand. So perhaps—”

  “It can’t look like a funeral arrangement. Right?”

  “Right. You don’t want to . . . Why don’t we avoid flowers and do a nice living plant?”

  “How about hemlock?”

  “No, I was thinking of that small Norfolk pine over there.” She explained, “Evergreens are the symbol of eternal life.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, like, well, a Christmas tree.”

  “Christmas trees turn brown.”

  “That’s because they’re cut.” She informed me, “We deliver a lot of living evergreens to hospice.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. They smell good. And the family can take them home as a memento afterwards.”

  “After what?”

  “After . . . the . . . person . . .” She changed the subject and asked, “Which hospice is the lady residing at?”

  “Fair Haven.”

  “We can deliver that for you.”

  “Actually, I’m on my way there now and that’s too big to carry, so . . .” I looked around, and in the corner of the shop was a shelf lined with stuffed animals, including a few Teddy bears, which are big around here because the man who inspired the bear, Teddy Roosevelt, lived in nearby Oyster Bay. I took the best-looking Teddy bear from the shelf, put it on the counter, and said, “I’ll take this.”

  “That’s very nice.” She put a pink ribbon around the bear’s neck and stuck a sprig of lavender in the ribbon.

  I paid in cash, and the young lady said to me, “She’ll like that. Good luck.”

  Back in the car, I headed west toward the hospice house in Glen Cove. I glanced at the fluffy bear sitting beside me, and suddenly I felt a rush of emotion pass over me. It hit me that Ethel Allard was dying, and that so many of the people I once knew were dead, and in an instant I remembered all of them and saw their faces from long ago, smiling, usually in some social setting or holiday occasion, a drink close by, like in the photos I’d just seen.

  Where, I wondered, had the years gone? And why hadn’t I appreciated those moments when my world was safe, familiar, and intact?

  Well, you can’t go back, and even if I could, I’m not sure if I could have o
r would have changed anything that led to the end of my life as I knew it, or the end of Frank Bellarosa’s life as he knew it.

  Frank Bellarosa, on a cold winter day a decade ago, was driving from Brooklyn and heading to a restaurant in Glen Cove with some business associates for a meeting. They got off the Long Island Expressway, became lost, and somehow wound up on Grace Lane.

  They spotted the abandoned estate called Alhambra, and, as Frank told me later, the Lombardy poplars that lined the driveway, and the red-tiled stucco villa, reminded him of his Italian roots. He made inquiries, and bought the estate. Then he moved in. Then I met him. Then Susan and I accepted his invitation to come by for coffee. Then a lot of things happened, ending with my wife murdering her new neighbor and lover.

  And now, ten years later, the original cast of this tragedy—-including the dead and the dying—has reassembled for the last and final act.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I headed west on Duck Pond Road, passing Friends Academy, a prep school founded by the local Quakers. Susan had gone to Friends, driven to class, she told me, in a big Lincoln by George Allard, who, as one of the last of the Stanhope servants, wore many hats, including a chauffeur cap.

  The Gold Coast of the 1950s and early ’60s, as I recalled, was in a state of transition between the old, pre-war world of Social Register families with dwindling fortunes, and the social upheavals that would sweep away most of what remained of the old order.

  Many of these changes were for the better. George, for instance, ceased being a servant and became an employee. That didn’t improve his driving, I’m sure, but it did give him weekends off.

  As for Ethel the Red, as I secretly called her because she was a socialist, she never considered herself a servant (especially after she slept with Augustus Stanhope), and she’s lived long enough to see many of her idealistic dreams realized.

  A sign informed me that I had entered the Incorporated City of Glen Cove, which is actually a medium-sized town of about twenty thousand people—or more, if you count the newly arrived immigrants who did not bother with the citizenship requirements.

  Glen Cove is located on Hempstead Harbor and the Long Island Sound, and like many north shore Long Island communities, it was founded by English settlers in the 1600s, including my distant ancestors, who, when they arrived, did not bother asking the local Matinecock Indians for citizenship applications or work visa permits.

  Anyway, the white skins and the red skins lived in relative peace and harmony for a century, mostly as a result of the Indians dying from European diseases. The British occupied Long Island for much of the Revolution, and many of the local inhabitants remained loyal to the Crown, including, I confess, the Sutters, who still have this conser-vative streak in them—except for my late father, who was a liberal Democrat and who used to get into political arguments at Republican-dominated family gatherings. My crazy mother, Harriet, is also a progressive, and she and Ethel were always allies against the majority of unenlightened, repressive male pigs who once dominated the society of the Gold Coast.

  But even that had been changing, and when I left here ten years ago, if you had a friend or neighbor who was a Democrat, you could talk about it openly without worrying about real estate values plummeting.

  On the subject of war and politics, I was half listening to a conservative radio talk show, and I turned up the volume to listen to a caller saying, “We need to nuke them before they nuke us.”

  The host, trying to sound a bit rational, replied, “Okay, but who do we nuke?”

  The caller answered, “All of them. Nuke Baghdad first so we don’t have to send our boys there to get killed.”

  “Okay, but maybe we should just nuke the Al Qaeda training camps first. They’ll all get the message.”

  “Yeah. Nuke the camps, too.”

  The host cut away for a commercial break that was preceded by the rousing patriotic music of John Philip Sousa, a former Long Island resident who seemed to be making a comeback.

  There had been an amazing transformation in the political and social culture since 9/11, and it was sort of jarring if you hadn’t been here to see it developing. Virtually every house had an American flag flying, including the shops and houses here in Glen Cove, not usually a bastion of conservatism. And nearly every vehicle had a flag on its antenna, or a decal on a window, or bumper stickers that said things like “9/11—Never Forget,” or “Bin Laden—You Can Run, But You Can’t Hide,” and so forth. Also, nearly everyone I’d seen in Locust Valley wore an American flag pin. Thinking about this, I had the distinct feeling that people had been checking out my car for signs that I was a loyal American.

  Anyway, back to the last century, when Glen Cove became home to a large immigrant Italian population, who found work building and maintaining the grand mansions and estate grounds. This manual labor for the rich eventually morphed over the generations into successful Italian-American-owned construction companies, landscaping enterprises, and related endeavors.

  This was a great American success story, but unfortunately, a side effect of the large Italian population of Glen Cove is the existence of a small but persistent group of gentlemen whose business is not landscaping. Thus it was that Mr. Frank Bellarosa from Brooklyn was on his way to Glen Cove, Long Island, a decade ago to meet some business associates at an Italian restaurant. Ironically, today, with GPS, he and his driver—was it Anthony, now known as Tony?—would not have gotten lost and wound up on Grace Lane, and Fate would have been sidetracked by satellite technology. Go figure.

  I headed north on Dosoris Lane, a seventeenth-century road that led toward the Sound, and on which some Sutters had lived in centuries past.

  I’ve never had occasion to visit the Fair Haven Hospice House, but the nice lady on the phone had given me good directions, and assured me that Mrs. Allard could have visitors—though she also cautioned that this situation could change by the time I arrived.

  Dosoris Lane passed through what had once been eight great estates, all belonging to the Pratt family, and built by Mr. Charles Pratt of Standard Oil for himself and seven of his eight children. Why number eight didn’t get an estate is a mystery to me, but I’m sure Charles Pratt had his reasons, just as William Peckerhead of Hilton Head had his reasons for deeding the Stanhope guest cottage and ten acres to Susan, as sole owner. Susan, of course, could have changed the deed, but that would have angered William, and we don’t want to get Daddy angry.

  On the subject of real estate, I always wondered what William Stanhope thought about Ethel Allard’s life tenancy in the gatehouse. I never knew if William was aware that his father, Augustus, had been popping the chambermaid, or whatever Ethel’s position was at the time. But he must have known if Susan, who told me the story, knew. And yet William never shared that family secret with me. Probably he was embarrassed—not by the sexual indiscretion of his father, but by the fact that the little servant girl got a good real estate deal from a Stanhope. As I said, Tab A does not go into Slot B—follow directions.

  I passed one of the former Pratt estates, Killenworth, which was used as a weekend retreat for the Russian Mission to the United Nations. When the bad old Commies were around, there were KGB-type guards with guns and mean dogs at the iron gates. Now it looked peaceful and unguarded.

  The ultimate rite of passage for boys—and even girls—when I was a kid growing up in Locust Valley, was to “cross the border” into the Soviet estate and play a dangerous game of hide-and-seek with the Russian guards and their dogs. The secret, incidentally, was raw ground beef—the dogs loved it.

  We were more crazy than brave, I think, and we all had a story about some kid who had disappeared forever behind the Iron Curtain. I don’t think any of those stories were true, and most kids who vanished from the neighborhood were later discovered to have moved away with their families on a corporate transfer or gone to boarding school.

  The Russian guards, I’m sure, thought we were incredibly daring, resourceful, and courageous, and
I’m certain this was reported back to Moscow and led directly to the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the end of the Cold War. Like most Cold War heroes, however, I and my idiot friends remain anonymous and unsung. Maybe someday the world will know what we did here, but until then, the Glen Cove Police will continue to carry us on their incident reports as unknown trespassers, vandals, and juvenile delinquents. That’s okay. We know.

  Up the road was the J. P. Morgan estate and the F. W. Woolworth estate, now both abandoned and partly developed, and as per directions, I turned left onto a private lane, which passed through some woods. Up ahead, I saw a big old white stone mansion with a slate roof. A sign directed me to visitor parking.

  I pulled into the nearly empty lot, retrieved the Teddy bear, and got out of the car.

  The sky had cleared and wispy white clouds scudded north toward the Sound, and big gulls glided low on the horizon. After three years at sea, I’d developed a sense for the weather and nature, and I felt that the Sound must be close by. In fact, I could smell a whiff of salt air, which made me nostalgic for the open ocean.

  I walked toward the mansion, thinking, “Not a bad place to spend your last days on earth, Ethel, before the pearly gates swing open to welcome you to the Big Estate in the Sky. Rent-free for eternity and you don’t have to sleep with the boss.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I entered the white building, which I could see had once been a private home. It’s a good thing when these old estate houses can be recycled for another use, like a school, or museum, or, in this case, a nursing home and hospice house. That’s better than the wrecker’s ball and another upscale subdivision to house what seemed like an endless supply of Wall Street whiz kids whose mortgage credit rating somehow exceeded their IQs.

  A nice lady at the desk greeted me, and in reply to my inquiry, she informed me that Ethel Allard was “doing as well as can be expected,” which was probably as good as it got here. The only other likely responses were “not well, no visitors” and “passed away.” I didn’t think that “in the gym” was one of the likely status reports at Fair Haven.