CHAPTER 6

“HOW WOULD YOU LIKE your eggs, Ceseli? Sunnyside up, like your father?”

“That would be perfect, thank you.”

“Hilina, you’ve heard that?”

“Yes, sir. It’ll be a minute.”

“So, my dear, tell me how you’re managing since Hamilton’s passing?”

“Some days are okay. It’s been four months. Sometimes I feel like sobbing. There are moments when I feel deserted. It was so sudden. There are so many things I’d like to have asked him and now I never can.”

“What were the questions, Ceseli? Maybe I can help you find the answers.”

“Well, I was wondering how my parents met. He told me a bit of that a long, long time ago, but I’ve forgotten most of it.”

“Oh I remember that very well. He and I met Alex at the same time. We were juniors at Yale and had been invited to a debutante ball in New York City. The dance was given by the New York Junior League. There were twenty-three lovely young eighteen year olds walking to the center stage and curtseying before they walked down the stairs to the dance floor. They all wore floor-length white satin gowns, white kid gloves to the elbow and held a long ostrich plume dyed green. We had a long wait before we met Alex because the presentations were alphabetical. Alex was very pretty of course, but there was something in her smile that was captivating. I remember that Hamilton was smitten from the moment he laid his eyes on her. He cut in during a waltz and introduced himself.”

Warren Rutherford paused as Hilina put the eggs and toast in front of Ceseli. “Afterwards, I asked him what he’d said and he smiled and repeated to me what he had said to her. ‘Miss Alex, my name is Hamilton Larson. Please remember that name, Miss Alex Sheraton, because I hope it is going to be yours.’”

Ceseli listened as she used a spoon to open the yolk of her eggs.

“She told him he was going to have a long wait because she planned to be a doctor. He told her he thought it would be worth the wait. After he finished the dance, Hamilton came back to me. ‘Warren, I’m going to woo that young lady,’ he said, never taking his eyes from her. And I told him “Hamilton, it looks like she has already wooed you.’ Oh, did he laugh when I said that. ‘Yes, she has,’ he told me. And then he said that while I could dance with her, she was absolutely off limits. He made me promise that.” Warren chuckled. “Over the next seven years, we all spent time together, especially after she introduced me to Marnie, who was one of her best friends. So that’s how they met. More questions?”

“And they got married right after she graduated from medical school?”

“The first Saturday, actually. There was a big party at the Metropolitan Club in New York with dancing, champagne, and the whole thing. Marnie and I had already been married for several years. Four I think, and my Abigail was the perfect flower girl. I’ve never seen two people so much in love, Ceseli; they were devoted to each other. That’s why he never remarried. No one could live up to her. Except maybe you, my dear. Do you remember coming out to our house on Long Island?”

“Oh, yes.” For a minute, Ceseli was back there on the beach building sand castles on the dunes of Long Island Sound.

“What is that, Daddy?”

“It’s where the king and queen live.” Hamilton said as he built a castle almost as tall as his five year old daughter. “And this is a moat,” he said as he dug out a trench so the ocean water could rush into the moat.

“What is a moat?”

“Castles have a moat to protect them from people who might want to hurt them.”

“Why would they want to hurt them, Daddy?”

“Maybe because they want something the other person has. Like a doll.”

“But if someone wanted my doll, I’d give it to them.”

“What if they wanted your heart, sugar?”

“They can’t have that, Daddy. You already have it.”

“Remember what I’m saying, dear. Don’t build a moat around your heart.”

I wonder if that’s exactly what I have done, she thought, and why her father’s death had left her feeling so empty.

“I was just remembering the sand castles.”

“And when you were older, the tennis games. You were quite the little champion.”

Ceseli took the napkin and dabbed at her eyes. “Thanks, Uncle Warren. Excuse me, Warren. This makes me feel a lot better.”

Warren Rutherford looked at her affectionately before continuing. “You will see a great deal of poverty in the next couple of weeks, Ceseli, but that shouldn’t be anything new to you. Hamilton wrote that his mother had been organizing a soup kitchen for those living in the Hooverville in Central Park.”

“She’s been wonderful. I learned to ride my bike on the Great Lawn. Now it’s a shantytown. I help Nana when I’m in the city, but for the past three years I’ve been in Philly. Not to say that life there is any better these days.”

“No, I’m sure it’s not. Just smaller. Enough of this. Now we’re going to move you along. You’re going to meet the emperor,” Warren smiled. “I hope you like him.”