Uncle William came to meet me at the airport. On the phone from London, I’d tried to convince him that taking a cab was fine. But he’d insisted and it was good to have him there, hands clasped in front and feet a shoulder’s width apart. I knew I looked awful and felt somewhat safe as a result. I told Uncle William that I intended to buy a house in Vermont, some place with a barn—a vision had articulated itself on the plane trip—to run as an antiques business.
He said, “I’m glad you’re thinking of your future.”
This terrified me, of course, because I’d expected an argument. A panic set in as we left the terminal and got in the car. Now my beautiful farmhouse and converted barn seemed bleak and lonely. I imagined myself blundering from one structure to the other, mad and disheveled, with a relentless Brontëan wind as my only companion. Why would I want to grow old there?
“Of course, it’s just for a few years,” I said.
We were quiet for some time, and when the driver coughed it seemed very loud.
I said, “You would have liked Olivia. She had a good sense of humor.”
Uncle William said, “I wish I had met her.”
And we rode silently into the city.
Uncle William went with me to buy the car. I, of course, wanted something sporty, but he didn’t think that was appropriate. Wasn’t I going to Vermont? At this point it was December, already brutally cold and windy, dry, but I could imagine snow. The racing green Jaguar I had been dreaming of would do me little good in Vermont. We looked at a couple of things. I realized, with some surprise, that I really didn’t care what I drove. I kept having a sense of déjà vu and finally attributed it to the time Uncle William and I had gone shopping as I headed off to prep school. He’d been keen on buying the right shirts and shoes, and of course knew exactly what they were, and I hadn’t cared then either. At the Oldsmobile dealership, it was he who argued with the salesman. I overheard him say, “I really don’t want him driving anything that makes him look like he’s in the Mafia.”
Which, actually, sounded rather appealing.
“So the car is not for you?” asked the salesman.
“No,” said Uncle William. “It’s for him.”
The salesman glanced at me surreptitiously.
“What do you think, Rupert?” asked Uncle William.
I looked at him and shrugged.
Finally, we decided on a navy blue tanker that looked like it would do well in the snow. I liked the radio, and Uncle William liked the velvety seats. I thought I should pay for it because it was my car, but Uncle William wanted to treat me. We argued back and forth. The salesman stood very still, waiting for us to be done. Finally, Uncle William insisted that he would get the car because I needed to save my money to buy myself the house.
Uncle William had driven as a young man. He had a photograph of himself in a convertible. He said the car was yellow, but the picture was black-and-white. He had not driven since. I now had a British driver’s license and had never driven a car on the right side of the road. I think it was Uncle William’s faith and ignorance—that unmatchable pairing—that fueled my ability to get out of the dealership, which was far west on 48th Street. I took a deep breath and pulled into traffic. In a way, I was glad for all the cars because I had a desire to drive on the left side of the road, and all the traffic made that fairly impossible. And then I just wanted to stop as soon as I could, but Uncle William thought we should see what the car could do. Uncle William didn’t seem to understand just how challenging this was. I was a very poor driver. He was enjoying himself, drumming on the dashboard. When he thought I should slow down he tapped the air with his fingers, his hand relaxed and open—a conductor’s gesture for calming the woodwinds. When he thought I should increase my speed, he pushed his fist forward. We drove for an hour, got lost on Long Island, asked many people for directions, and reached home after dark.
Christmas came and went. I managed to avoid the parties because of my recent loss. Nathan called, and we went for lunch. We talked a lot about Olivia, and it felt good and bad at the same time. Then we talked about Amanda. She had sold another piece of Jack’s sculpture. Nathan wanted me to pull strings to find out how much it had fetched, because it was rumored to be a lot.
“Who’s she sleeping with?” I asked.
“You’re not really interested, are you?”
“Interested in Amanda, no. Interested in who she’s sleeping with, very.”
“Why?”
“He has good taste in jewelry.”
Nathan didn’t want to tell me because he’d heard it from Amanda, who had asked him to be quiet about it.
“That’s complete bullshit,” I said. “You knew before she confided in you, didn’t you?”
“I’d heard something,” said Nathan.
“Then it’s not a matter of confidence. It’s preexisting knowledge.”
“This is not a legal matter,” said Nathan. He was refolding his napkin and smiling at me with his eyes.
“Your not passing on the information is complete hypocrisy.”
“Yes,” said Nathan. “And what’s wrong with that?” He’d let someone else tell me. “Rupert, do you know what the opposite of hypocrisy is?”
“No,” said Nathan. “It’s anarchy.”
I found my farmhouse three miles outside of Brattleboro. The house was a great brick building on a bald hill. There was one tree beside the house, an oak, which when the weather warmed up would be black with crows. In the fall the oak would drop acorns on the roof. I wanted to put a swing there, but who would swing there? It was just me, after all.
The barn had needed some shoring up but was nice and dry. I ordered a number of pallets and replaced some of the planking in the loft. The farmer next door had used it for a while and one cow, a sweet brown thing with eyes like a dog, would show up every now and then, forgetting it was no longer home. We would eye each other shyly, suspiciously; after all, who really belonged?
News circulated that I was interested in buying old things, and people began to bring them in. I ventured farther north to some junk stores, found a good furniture restorer, went to estate sales, and began to build inventory. I had a vague notion of hooking up with someone in New York, someone who could place the quality pieces. The obvious choice for this was Hester, but I didn’t want to work with her. I also didn’t want to work with one of her competitors, because she’d hear about it. I felt constantly presented with creative ways to complete her destruction, but I didn’t follow through. Instead, I did nothing. I found an exceptional Hepplewhite dresser with all the original brass and locks and sent it to Uncle William as a present.
One morning I came in from the barn to find the phone ringing. It was Nathan.
“I’m passing through Brattleboro on my way to a friend’s cabin. If you have time, I’d love to stop by and see how you’re doing.”
“I have time,” I said.
I was inordinately thrilled by Nathan’s impending visit. I went into town to see if I could find some cheese that wasn’t cheddar and a good bottle of wine. I found both. I got some logs from the woodshed and made a nice pile by the fireplace in the kitchen.
I hurried across the windblown hill, what I referred to in my head as the “the steppes,” to the barn. The smell in there was of dust and oldness. I had gained quite a collection of crystal and silver, shaving mirrors, and family Bibles. There were all sorts of prints and a few nice French hutches and English sideboards. I had tried to maintain some order, but this was not easy. The figurines were crowding the china cabinets. I loathed figurines—all those cloying shepherds and small-footed ladies—but I had a hard time saying no to people. Frankly, if you showed up at my house with something to sell, I was probably going to buy it.
I rooted around through a couple of bins, through the cluttered shelves. I was looking for candlesticks. I had a number of them. For some reason, candlesticks survived, and I thought a mess of them, crystal and silver, in the front windows might be festive. I found a good pair of sterling sabbath candlesticks, which I’d purchased from a woman a month earlier. I’d been careful to hang on to these because I was nursing a hope that she might want them back.
One cold Saturday morning I had answered the door to find the woman standing there, pulling her coat around her. She had her two children in tow, a boy and a girl. There was an elegance about her that didn’t match her clothes or her vehicle, a battered pickup with Jersey plates.
“Can I help you?” I asked. I’d just made coffee but hadn’t yet had a chance to drink any.
“Someone at the gas station said you bought antiques.”
“Yes, I do.” I invited them in and gave her a cup of coffee and the children some doughnuts, which were stale, but they wolfed them down. Although I wasn’t usually that friendly, living on my bald hill in my empty house had made anything at the door possibly entertaining. “Tell me what you have.”
The woman eyed me nervously. “Do you know about Bonaparte?”
“Napoleon?” I ventured.
“Joseph, the king of Spain?”
“That’s the one.” She smiled nervously. “I have a couple of things that have come to me, and I’d like to sell them.”
“We’ll take a look, when you’re done with your coffee. I’m in no hurry.” Her children had sat down on the floor next to the kitchen fireplace, a large old-fashioned one big enough for me to stand in. They were drawing in the soot on the brick. The little girl had loopy yellow hair and fat cheeks. The boy, older, looked much like his mother. He had a precocious weariness about him, and I had a feeling that somewhere in New Jersey his father was waking up and wondering where they’d gone. “Have you had a long drive today?” I asked.
“Yes,” said the woman.
“Do you have relatives in the area?”
“Yes,” she said. She drank down her coffee and set the cup almost silently on the table. “Thank you for the coffee. Do you want to see the pieces?”
I said I did. She called to the children, but they looked warm and happy so I told her to let them stay. Out of earshot, I told the boy that there was milk and cheese and some cold chicken in the refrigerator; if he and his sister were hungry they could help themselves.
It was a freezing cold day, in the teens, with a wind. The woman had a tarp over the things in the back of the truck, which had been packed in a hurry. There were dolls flung in there, along with clothing. On the top was a garment bag printed with an old Saks logo, probably from the forties. The zipper had come open a little, and I could make out black fur, probably a mink, inside. Somewhere someone had come down in the world, married down, I thought. Married for love, maybe her mother.
She caught me looking and said, “Do the contents of my truck interest you?”
And I said, “Isn’t that why you’re here?”
She had a dresser that took up half the truck, and it was this she wanted to unload. I helped her into the truck bed. She had the dresser protected by a sheet and she revealed it with a certain amount of ceremony.
“This dresser belonged to Joseph Bonaparte,” she said.
I knew all about Joseph Bonaparte.
In 1816, Napoleon’s brother Joseph, once king of Naples, once king of Spain, finding himself without a kingdom and banned from living in France, made the unusual choice of relocating to New Jersey. He created an estate called Point Breeze just over the river from Pennsylvania and began calling himself the Count de Survilliers. The house he built was enormous and he filled it with stuff, including works by Titian, Velázquez, Rubens, Rembrandt, and da Vinci. I’d read somewhere that he had a mirror hanging over his bed and that the walls in his bedchamber were covered with paintings of nude ladies and famous conquest scenes along the lines of The Rape of Europa. The paintings were all auctioned off in 1847, along with the other stuff—the tables and chairs, bookcases, dressers, and candlesticks, the fine china and sterling flatware.
The Count de Survilliers had owned many things, but if one third of the Joseph Bonaparte antiques were actually genuine, there would have been enough objects to clutter fifty Point Breezes. And that’s only counting the pieces people had tried to sell me.
And here is the woman standing in her truck, and she’s shaking because the wind is blowing hard. Some miracle of strength is holding her together and she has just unveiled the dresser. The sheet is whipping in the wind and tears are streaking out the sides of her eyes, and it might just be the cold but it probably isn’t.
“Are you sure you want to sell it?” I asked.
She inhaled and thought for a moment and then said, “Well, sir, are you in the habit of doing only what you want?”
Even from where I was standing, feet solidly on the ground, I knew the dresser was American. True, there had been quite a few fine cabinetmakers in Philadelphia, possibly influenced by the trendsetting count’s presence in the area, who made wonderful furniture. I thought of Charles Honoré Lannuier and Michael Bouvier. But I knew this woman was under the impression that the dresser was European, part of the Bonaparte hoard, and this certainly would have helped its value. I hopped up on the back of the truck. It was a nice dresser, but it didn’t set my heart pounding. I opened the drawer and, just as I had suspected, the secondary wood was white pine. This was no European piece and frankly even New Jersey seemed too far south for its provenience. I dated the piece somewhere in the 1880s. Our friend Joseph Bonaparte had left for Europe, never to return, in 1839.
I bought the dresser and the candlesticks, which were worth more than I paid—German 1880s, sterling—but I had lost a lot of money on the first transaction and needed something to remind myself that I was a businessman. I was transfixed by the little boy. He was pinched and thin, and the way he wrapped his sister up in her scarf and carefully put on her mittens, feeling for her thumb, the way he shook my hand and thanked me for the food, affected me. As they were walking off to the car, I had a fleeting desire to try my charm on the mother, just to have the children stay. But she was a destroyed woman and I let her go, back to her parents or wherever it was she was seeking refuge. The little boy gave me a quick wave as they pulled off, I suppose to assure me that everything was going to be all right. I hoped it would be, but as they drove off, I felt a terrible renewed loneliness.
Nathan showed up around four in the afternoon. He was three hours late and the snow was beginning to collect in drifts. I had already called the police to see if they’d run into him in the course of investigating the day’s accidents, but no one matched his description and I wasn’t sure what he was driving. The car belonged to his friend, and delivering it was apparently the occasion for Nathan’s visit. Finally, I saw lights at the foot of the hill. I ran out with a flashlight, and sure enough there was Nathan.
“Rupert, hello,” he said. He was just out of the car and was adjusting the cuffs of his gloves. He looked at me with concern. “Is it all right if I leave it here?”
There was an uninterrupted sea of nothing upon which the blue car sat. “A little to the left would have been better,” I said, and Nathan knew I was joking.
For dinner, I was warming up some beef stew that had been left for me, and there were potatoes roasting in the fireplace. Nathan held his glass of wine. He was drinking very slowly, although he had assured me that the wine was good. I wondered if it was too sweet. The best wine I’d seen for sale had been this white, a Gewürztraminer, and a French claret that I was saving for dinner. I caught Nathan eyeing me in a concerned way. He seemed rather disturbed by my transformation.
“What are you wearing?” he said.
“It’s a sweater,” I said.
“Looks more like a colossal tea cosy. Did someone make that for you?”
“Yes,” I said. The sweater was somewhat remarkable, all coarse cables and knots. It weighed about seven pounds.
“The Bavarian milkmaid?” Nathan inquired.
“You’ve been talking to Clive,” I said. “Her father owns the dairy next door. And where did this Bavarian bullshit come into play? Are we in Bavaria?”
Nathan waved me off. “Don’t be so defensive,” he said.
“She passes the time,” I said. “She stops me from thinking.”
“Then it’s not serious?”
“Of course not,” I said, and added, “I might starve to death without her. That’s kind of serious.” And Nathan smiled, although with limited sympathy.
Later, he said, “We all miss Olivia, Rupert. We don’t all live in Vermont.”
Nathan’s room was across the hall from mine and had its own fireplace. I’d stacked up enough wood to last through the night. With the wind fairly shrieking around the house and the crackle of wood, it was all quite romantic and appealed to Nathan’s finely honed aesthetic sense. I gave him an extra pair of wool socks, just in case his feet got cold. The Bavarian milkmaid had tidied the room up that afternoon and put a wreath of bittersweet over the head of the bed. She had also rescued and laundered some lace doilies that apparently I had purchased along with a rolltop desk, and these were strategically placed on wood surfaces around the room. I didn’t know how to decorate in Vermont. I thought all the lace would look cloying, but it more underscored the severity of country life, and I rather liked it. As I drifted off I was happy that Nathan was there, across the hall, where he should be.
The temperature warmed up the next day and by noon the roads were open. I was disappointed because I’d hoped that Nathan would have to stay another night.
“I really have to go, Rupert. I’m expected.”
“You could call,” I said.
“He doesn’t have a phone.”
“Must be a very important friend to have you driving through a snowstorm.”
Nathan smiled and nodded. “Yes, Rupert, a very important friend.”
He got into his car. I was wearing the sweater again, I think in defiance, because I—unfairly, no doubt—felt Nathan was abandoning me.
He started the engine and backed the car around, then shouted out the window, “I almost forgot. Neftali is visiting in a month. She wants to see you.”
A few days after Nathan’s visit, I was surprised by the appearance of the Bavarian milkmaid’s father on my doorstep. It was a Saturday morning and I was still in my pajama pants, with the sweater because the house was cold.
“Good morning, Mr. Wetzel,” I said.
“Rupert,” He sniffed. His cheeks were chapped and he seemed upset. “I’m looking for Veronica.”
“Maybe she’s out with the cows,” I said.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw his daughter scuttle out of sight behind the barn. She must have gone out the back door. “Coffee?” I offered.
“No, thank you.” He looked me in the eye. “What kind of man are you, Rupert Brigg?”
I had an idea, but it was too early to face this.
“I want to like you. In a way, you’ve helped people out. You’ve bought their junk, and don’t argue with me, Veronica’s told me. It’s not always art and antiques. But what’s Veronica ever done to you?”
I stayed quiet.
“How many times have you been married?”
I knew that one. “Twice.”
“And how old are you?”
I knew that too. “Thirty-one.”
“Veronica’s nineteen.”
I might have shuddered, although I was aware of her age.
“She’s going to make someone a good wife. You’re not that man and she doesn’t know it.”
After Wetzel left, I poured myself a drink and lay down on the couch. The phone rang later. I knew it was Veronica, because it rang at one of the times of Wetzel’s regular cow-related activities. But I didn’t answer it. I was under the impression that I should leave Vermont. I felt like a poison on the landscape, but the thought of returning to New York scared me. The thought of moving anywhere—motion itself—seemed impossible.
I had been happy in Scotland with Olivia and I believed that I had made her life better, helped her out, kept her final months more like living and less like rehearsal for whatever was to follow. But I’d been carrying around a lot of guilt ever since she died and hadn’t been able to talk about it with anyone. Because it was a horrible truth and I felt somehow responsible. Olivia, in the end, had killed herself. Her final moments hadn’t been a benevolent fog of last-life confusion but rather an anxiety of figuring out how to administer a lethal dose of morphine. The doctors had questioned me about it, but I hadn’t known what she’d been thinking. And wasn’t it selfish to think it was all about me anyway? She’d lived in pain for two years. The chances of her leaving the hospital with anyone but the undertaker were very slim. She’d been enjoying a few of life’s pleasures but was losing that ability. Why wouldn’t she kill herself?
Vermont was a complete failure. I felt as if the last four months had been some sort of out-of body experience, a story that someone was telling me over drinks, definitely not my life. What I had wanted was to fall apart in an amazing way, like Hester—all bones and gloom and scratchy suits—whose grieving I admired. I’d wanted to destroy myself so all would be forgiven and I could live a quiet life with some dignity. But no. Here I was, fucking the juicy Veronica from next door, who cooked for me and did my laundry, giggled in bed, and only occasionally smelled like cheese. I remembered Olivia sitting in her favorite chair, her nose wrinkled, the paper collapsing in front of her, disbelief—I must have said something stupid, but I can’t remember what it was. I thought of my little son waiting for me, waiting—red sweater, ball, runny nose, smile—and I began to crave pain. The thought of that kind of obvious physical grieving made sense, seemed almost capable of comfort. I knew why, in the Bible, grief-stricken people flogged themselves and tore their clothes and shaved their heads, but I also knew that I would do none of these things. Vermont had not healed me but had laid me bare. And here I was left with myself, which amplified my own presence to a disheartening degree.
Later, when the bottle was done and I came to in the dark house, I could hear Veronica tapping on the windows, calling “Rupert, Rupert,” in a projected whisper, but I just pulled the couch cushion over my head and prayed that she would go home.
I spent the next few days cataloging the various things I’d accumulated in the barn, doing the things I had avoided, liking checking all the hallmarks on the figurines to see if they were worth anything. There was a truly ghastly ceramic lion the size of a terrier, tongue sticking out, in good condition. The lion was a Sheffield, 1860s, some coronation piece. I decided to send it to Hester. She liked the big pieces. I put a card inside that said, I’m sorry. Then I took that card out and wrote another, Because you collect these, which also seemed stupid. I thought of Greetings from Vermont, but that seemed to encourage optimism, although I doubted she had any left. Something about greetings had always sounded sexual to me. Finally, on my good stationery, I wrote her a letter saying that I had been finding pieces of good quality and, although I had acted badly, perhaps she would not mind entering into some sort of business arrangement. At least now, if she rebuffed me, I could approach someone else with the items.
I drove up past Manchester to attend an estate sale and bought a couple of good paintings that I would take with me next time I went to New York. These had a few condition issues—some flaking and, on one, a sooty grime that had to be cigar smoke—but I felt that once cleaned up the paintings would fetch a good price. I bought an armoire, French, and a wooden plate that was unassuming but, if it was really a frontier piece, would be valuable. I made arrangements to have the armoire delivered and left. On the drive home I thought it might be fun to have Neftali and Nathan visit me. After all, there was room. And if I was inviting them, I might try Clive. Maybe Nikos had some available time. And if I was doing all that, I really should call Amanda, because I didn’t have a good reason to exclude her. I pictured some sort of memorial for Olivia and a woman from the village hired to cook.
After some difficulty, I placed a call to Clive in London. I’d only spoken to him once, when I first moved to Vermont. Clive had written a few times but, as predicted, I hadn’t answered the letters. One was fourteen pages long and seemed to have been written when Clive was very drunk. The last eight or so pages were all about someone named Barry, a titled Irishman—were there titled Irishmen?—who had broken his heart or something else, but I couldn’t make it out and after trying a few times wasn’t sure I wanted to. The phone rang, a vague yoo-hooing into another dimension, but no one picked up. I tried again. This time a woman answered, which was disconcerting. I was inordinately pleased that she spoke English, in London, but I still had trouble understanding.
“He’s gone back,” she said. She said this several times before I got it, and then, to her delight, I rang off.
I went back to Clive’s last letter. After all the Barry-centric drunken scrawl, there were a couple of lines in Clive’s easy handwriting: I’m transferring to the American office. I hate London. Hate it. I hope you’ve cheered up. Clear your couch.
But I’d heard nothing from him. I suppose a couch in Vermont just wasn’t that appealing.
I tried Nathan next, but there was no answer. I wasn’t sure if I really wanted Amanda there, but with her social life she’d probably have other plans anyway. I found her number tucked into the pages of my address book. She had scrawled it on the back of a ferry ticket while we were still on Aspros, and I hadn’t entered the number because I wasn’t sure how long I’d need it. I made the call. The phone rang a couple of times, and then a man answered.
“Hello?”
It was Clive.
“Clive,” I said.
“Rupert!”
“How long have you been back?”
“Just a few days. How did you know I was here?”
“I didn’t.”
“You were calling Amanda?” Clive was surprised. “Why?”
We talked for an hour. Amanda’s apartment was in Chelsea in a dilapidated building that she and Jack had lived in together, which they had sublet while in Hydra. She was looking to move. She had draped sheets over many of Jack’s sculptures, and this Clive attributed to grief. Amanda had been drinking a lot and Clive, in a whisper even though he was alone, predicted that at this rate she would not age well. “And she doesn’t seem that happy. Maybe it’s the guy she’s dating.”
“Who is it?”
“It’s kind of hush-hush. He’s engaged to someone else.”
“You know what?” I said. “I really don’t care.”
“But you know him, from college.”
“I do?”
“His name is Kiplinger, Kiplinger Sand.”
Later that week, at around 4 A.M., the phone rang. I had lost people, so I never let the phone ring at night. Although Uncle William was in good health, I still worried about his heart, that fantastic Brigg ticker, which unfortunately had a history of blowing up without warning. But it wasn’t anything connected to Uncle William.
“Rupert,” said the voice, “I am waking you up. But you have also woken me up a few times, yes?”
It was Nikos. “My God,” I said. “How are you?”
“I have been late to tell you that I am sorry because of Olivia,” he said. His English had stiffened up over the last few months.
“Don’t feel bad, Nikos,” I said. “She’s still dead.”
“Yes,” said Nikos. We were quiet for a moment. “I have to tell you that I am getting married.”
“Really? Really? Well, congratulations,” I said. “That’s amazing.”
“Why is it amazing? You know I have a fiancée.”
We talked for a while about Kostas, Neftali’s visit, the date of the wedding, and Amanda, whom he hadn’t forgotten. I asked him if he’d given Tomas any kind of help, and that’s where the rot about Amanda was evident. “There are words for him in Greek,” said Nikos, laughing softly, “and I’m sure in English, but I don’t know them.”
I had an idea. “Nikos, why don’t I come for a last hurrah, before you get married? We can travel a bit. Do a few islands.”
There was silence, and I was worried I’d offended him.
“I’m not trying to avoid your wedding. I just thought—”
“Shut up, Rupert,” he said. He’d been planning in his head. “That will be fantastic.”
I wanted Nikos to join us in Vermont, but a visit was out of the question. He was hard at work. Nikos was quite an adult over the phone. He was calling from the office, and when he interrupted our conversation to yell at someone who had clearly angered him, he sounded exactly like Kostas.
“End of May,” said Nikos. “We go for a week, then you can be in Athens for a week, meet my fiancée, see your friend Steve Kelly.”
We hung up. I gazed out the window, where the first gray light of morning was coldly projected across the fields. No one stirred there, nothing, but then I saw a fox, trotting at a quick pace. He stopped, turned, and I think he might have looked straight at me. He continued on with a great sense of purpose, but I doubted he knew where he was going.
Nathan called me at about 9 A.M. to say that he and Neftali were going to hit the road, which meant, if they stopped for lunch, they would arrive sometime in the late afternoon. Clive was riding with Amanda, and who knew when they would show up? The woman from the village arrived at around ten and began cleaning. There were four bedrooms upstairs, and I wasn’t quite sure who should stay where. Two rooms had double beds, and two rooms had twins. I had the woman make up all the beds and was in the process of raiding the barn for some large serving dishes when I saw Veronica walking purposefully up the hill.
We hadn’t spoken since her father’s visit, but she had made her presence known. Once, in the middle of the night, I’d woken up to hear a car revving and guttering on my lawn and some drunken laughter. I’d looked out the window to see Veronica and some towheaded thug standing at a distance. The thug had his arm around her and they were drinking from a bottle. I felt a bit responsible. I had a sneaking suspicion that before her involvement with me, Veronica might not have been cruising around with drunken thugs, that my “liberating” of Veronica might have left her with no sense of right and wrong. Not that I believed in right and wrong. But seeing Veronica there, sticky-faced in her poorly fitting pencil skirt, I felt that having removed her bourgeois prudishness, I should have at least left her with a sense of the advantageous and the appalling, a knowledge of bella figura. The boy she was with was wearing a leather jacket, poorly fitting, that was probably purchased at a pawnshop. I was just about to return to bed when he turned his back and dropped his pants, his white buttocks glowing in the moonlight.
After this episode, there was a cow-time ringing of the phone, but I now felt completely vindicated. Veronica owed me an apology. If I didn’t let her deliver it, she would continue to owe it, and that seemed advantageous.
But here she was walking up the hill and, even though I wanted to run into the barn and lock the door, I knew I was going to have to speak to her.
“Hello, Veronica,” I said, when she was closer. “Does your father know you’re here?”
“I may not be as old as you,” she said, “but I sure as hell don’t have to listen to him anymore.”
We stared at each other. “I have to get some things out of the barn,” I said.
She followed me in. Veronica usually talked and talked, but now she had adopted an almost predatory silence. I found a platter and flipped it over to see if it was worth anything. Veronica’s eyes narrowed and she threw up her chin.
“I saw you watching us the other night,” she said.
“I had to look,” I said. “I thought someone might be lynching me. Your boyfriend is quite a free spirit.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” she said. “He’s really young. I like my men older.” She came over and wrapped her arms around me, pinning my arms to my sides. I was holding a platter, heavy and valuable provided I didn’t drop it. I looked down at Veronica’s yellow hair. Her head came up to my breastbone. “Come on, Rupert. It’s not like we haven’t done it before.”
I was not prepared for this. Something in her voice frightened me.
“What we had was good,” I said. “Now it’s over.”
She let go of me and stepped back. “Why?” she asked. She pondered this and then smiled. “Is it for my own good?” Her voice was childish and thick with accent, which had the surprising effect of making her sound witty.
“Maybe.”
“Or maybe it’s for your own good, because who knows what my redneck father is capable of?”
“It just doesn’t seem like a good idea anymore,” I said.
“You liked me when I didn’t know anything,” she said.
“That’s not true,” I said.
For a moment I thought she might cry.
“You’re a beautiful girl, Veronica,” I said. “You’re going to make someone a wonderful wife.”
Veronica was by the doors. She held my gaze in a way she never had and said, “Who wants to be someone’s wife?”
Nathan and Neftali arrived at five. We went for a walk, avoiding the neighboring dairy, even though Neftali wanted to see it. I showed them my barn. Nathan volunteered to take my new canvases back to New York and drop them off at the restorers, and I was carrying them up the hill when Amanda and Clive arrived. It was about 60 degrees, but they were riding in a convertible with the top down. The car was baby blue, very flashy, and I knew it had to be Kiplinger’s. There was a lot of ooing and ahing about my house, about how thin I had become—I only knew how to cook steak, so I’d been living on steak and cheese—about how wonderful it was to get together. Neftali started to cry about Olivia at one point, and everyone joined in, and then I decided that we needed to start drinking vigorously as soon as possible.
We had roast lamb for dinner, plain but very fresh. I wondered if the lamb had come from close by, then thought about lambs, then forced the thought from my mind. I was supposed to drive the woman back to the village after she did the dinner dishes, but I was too drunk so Nathan took her. I was thinking clearly, but I couldn’t walk straight; it was all the red wine. There was a piano in the living room and Clive, to my surprise, started playing it. We sang some show tunes, but Clive didn’t know that many. He did, however, know every Christmas carol, religious and secular, so we sang our way through those. The fire was merry in the grate and the wine would not run out. After the Christmas carols, we sang “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” and “Jerusalem.” I was the only one who knew all the words to “Jerusalem.” I finished loudly, and punctuated this by draining my glass and slamming it on the piano. The others were respectfully awed.
Later that evening, I found myself holding Amanda’s hand.
Nathan asked, “Are you still seeing the Bavarian milkmaid?”
And I told him that I wasn’t.
Amanda was wearing knee-high boots and a short skirt. I found myself studying her legs and then pulling to consciousness. I looked over at Clive, thinking he would be passing some sort of judgment, but he had a drunken, sloppy look to him. I also realized that Nathan and Neftali were no longer there. Amanda and Clive were gossiping about some New York person I didn’t know, and she was laughing with those big clean teeth. I had decided that I had to sleep with her because I had to sleep with someone and she was the obvious choice. The wine must have lost its hold a little. It was now 2 A.M. and I had been drinking steadily since six, but it was possible that I had forgotten to keep drinking or had lost the energy to refill my glass. I was going to get more wine, but those words from Macbeth flashed across my mind, “It provokes the desire but weakens the performance,” so I remained in my seat. Clive saw my hand on Amanda’s thigh and wisely chose to go to bed.
Later, when Amanda was straddled across me, leaning on my wrists, with her breasts hanging near my face, I asked her, “Why are you with Kiplinger?”
And she said, “Because you won’t have me.”
A part of me wanted to believe her, but I knew it was bullshit.
The light woke me up first, flaring and flashing on the far wall. My eyes were barely open when I heard Neftali screaming in Greek. I threw Amanda’s arm off and got out of bed. I had just pulled my shorts up when Neftali ran into the room in her bathrobe.
“Rupert!” she said. “Your barn!”
I ran downstairs in my underwear, wrapped in a blanket. I got my boots on in the hall and slammed the door open. The sky was heated and glowing. Flames quivered and flared out of the roof, and the hot breath of the barn’s burning warmed the night. There was a tense creaking, an agony of wood, and then a loud crash as the roof collapsed. On the hill, a few neighbors had gathered to watch, to listen to the groaning timbers and shattering glass, occasionally a splintered explosion as something blew. I held my breath. Neftali came beside me and squeezed my arm.
“Quite a spectacle, isn’t it?” I said.
“Oh, Rupert, all your beautiful things.”
My barn, courtesy of Veronica, was going up in flames.
Of course, I never pressed charges. A man from the insurance company came to call. I’d only gotten around to insuring some things—not all—in the weeks before the fire, and I suppose this looked suspicious. I asked Uncle William to call one of the higher-ups in the insurance company. I thought he might know someone, and he did. Then the police found a gas can, but they must have known it wasn’t mine. I wasn’t sure what to do with the house. As I packed up my things, I wondered if I’d ever live in it again. The house already had a deserted feel.
I stood by the window taking a last look around my bedroom. There were no real memories here, and the view of the stark horizon depressed me. I wondered why I’d ever found it comforting. The curtains had been taken off the windows by the cleaning woman, to be stored until a tenant could be found. And that was why I saw the earrings—Amanda’s—that she had left on the windowsill a week earlier. They were large emerald-cut solitaire diamonds. They made an extravagant present, one I immediately attributed to Kiplinger. I wondered if Amanda remembered where she’d left them and she must have, but she was probably waiting for me to straighten it out.
I suppose I could have met up with Amanda in New York and returned the earrings over dinner. That would have been polite, but then I remembered—with a measure of relief—that she was still seeing Kiplinger. Our having dinner was not exactly proper. Mailing the earrings would be not only easy but discreet. I looked through my address book, found the ferry ticket with Amanda’s number, and dialed. The phone rang a couple of times. I flipped the ticket over and began reading it. I would not have done this, but I wanted to read the Greek letters as practice for my impending visit to Nikos. This ticket was from Piraeus—I could see that much—but the destination was not Aspros but rather Hydra. The date was the fourth of August. There was something significant about it; maybe it was a birthday. What was the fourth of August? And then I remembered. I hung up the phone.
The fourth of August was the day Jack had been murdered.