It isn’t easy to find someone to rent a house as big as ours, a situation made more difficult by my father’s refusal to have the rental formally put on the market. He wanted to be discreet. To Littleton’s credit, he was able to find a tenant even with these limitations.
We were seeing a lot more of Littleton lately. He had shown up several Sundays in a row and he always brought Dolores with him. In between Sundays, Miranda and Dolores went shopping together, even though most of Miranda’s credit cards had been shredded in a depressing ceremony at the dining room table. Priscilla had been in charge of cutting up the credit cards. She sent Miranda to get her pocketbook and my unsuspecting sister retrieved it with alacrity, as if Priscilla were about to replace Miranda’s current Prada bag with a new one from Gucci. When Miranda returned, Priscilla asked her to drop her credit cards onto the table. Priscilla took out long scissors with an orange handle.
“These are very good scissors,” Priscilla said. “They cut right through plastic.”
When Miranda realized what was about to happen, she tried to rescue some of the cards, but Priscilla held her lips tightly together and shook her head. In the end many cards were victims of the massacre: Brooks Brothers, Talbots, Victoria’s Secret, Louis, three MasterCards, two Visas, Bloomingdale’s, Saks, and Neiman Marcus. They littered the table like hard-edged confetti. Miranda was gray. She went up to bed and stayed there for three days.
Finally, in an effort to distract her, Dolores dragged Miranda out to a nightclub where they could look for eligible men, but Miranda preferred the parties of people she knew and she usually attended them alone or with Teddy.
We were drinking coffee in the sitting room three weeks after the initial announcement when Littleton said that he’d found potential tenants.
I had been distracting myself from our change in circumstance by spending the last three weeks absorbed in a less-than-fruitful search for Jack Reilly. Jack Reilly was such a common name, especially in the Boston area, and I was having no luck. I put Tad on the job, too, but neither of us could come up with anything. We didn’t even know if Jack was his real name. It could be John. There were plenty of Johns who called themselves Jack.
I couldn’t picture myself driving up to Vermont on the off chance of finding Jack Reilly. It seemed like a ridiculous thing to do, and though I knew I should give up on “Boston Tech” and Jack Reilly’s potential as a protégé—and who knew what else—he was stuck like gum to my shoe.
Littleton rested his coffee on one knee. The cup looked precarious there. Unlike Priscilla, Littleton did not look comfortable with fine china. I wanted to grab the cup and place it on the tea table where it belonged, but I could hardly lunge at Littleton, so I remained where I was. I had retreated to my usual seat by the window. It seemed clear to me now that whatever happened would do so without any input from me.
Astrid came in with more coffee. She placed it on the low inlaid table in front of me and I smiled up at her. She smiled back and disappeared into the kitchen. I checked the grandfather clock. She should be leaving soon for her afternoon off.
“I hope whoever takes this house has a touch of class,” Miranda said.
“I imagine that whoever can afford this house has, at least, a touch of good sense,” I said.
Everyone looked at me. It was like watching a painting move. Littleton with his coffee cup balanced on his knee, Teddy in the Windsor chair, Priscilla beside him, Miranda lounging on an Empire-style couch, and Dolores on the ottoman nearby.
“Coffee?” I asked. This was the perfect opportunity to rescue Littleton’s cup and saucer. I picked it up with a smile, poured coffee into it, and placed it on the table beside him.
“I’m off coffee this week,” Miranda said. I turned from her and poured for the rest of the party.
“I’ve made some discreet inquiries,” Littleton said, “and I have found a producer.”
“A what?” Teddy asked. He laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. Priscilla looked up.
“A Hollywood producer. Movies, you know. A man and his wife. She grew up in the Boston area and now she wants to come back. I don’t know for how long, but they’re looking for a furnished place.”
“Our furniture?” Miranda asked.
“It would really cost too much to store and insure it, though I’m sure the Museum of Fine Arts would be happy to take a few pieces on loan. There’s that Thomas Seymour breakfront.”
“I didn’t know you knew about furniture, Littleton,” Priscilla said.
“It’s important to know a little bit about everything,” he said. He looked flattered, but I didn’t think Priscilla meant to flatter him. He picked up his cup from the table, took a sip, and placed it again on his leg. I could barely stand it.
“Hollywood people,” Teddy said. “It’s a sure way for obscure people to gain undue distinction. Would I have heard of these people?”
“Joseph Goldman. One of his most famous movies was based on his brother-in-law’s book, Duet for One.”
“I saw that movie,” Teddy said. “It wasn’t bad. I never read the book. Who wrote it?” If my family could have gotten away with it, they might have remained illiterate.
Priscilla, however, was not so inclined. She had read Duet for One and she knew that it was written by Max Wellman. She looked over at me.
I twisted the edge of my cotton jersey until it was wrapped around my finger.
“Max Wellman,” I said.
“What? Name sounds familiar,” Teddy said. “Don’t I know the name for some other reason?”
Priscilla looked over at him. “He was the one,” she said, and slid her eyes toward me.
“The one?” Teddy asked.
“You know. The one,” Pris said with tight lips.
“Oh, that boy,” Teddy said.
I wondered how much he really remembered. He looked over at Dolores and must have decided that it would be indiscreet to say more.
“I hope this producer is not a little balding man with a cigar—-someone who will stink up the drapes and the furniture,” Miranda said.
“I don’t think he smokes,” Littleton said. “And they don’t have children and you know how children can wreak havoc on furniture. This is really a lucky break. They seem like fine, quiet people.”
“That’s a new one,” Dolores said. “Fine, quiet people from Hollywood.”
Littleton shot her a look so incendiary I was afraid she might spontaneously combust and scorch the sofa.
“I’m sure they’ll show great appreciation for this house.” Dolores tried to save herself.
I doubted she knew as much about “Hollywood people” as she claimed.
“Goldman. That’s Jewish, isn’t it?” Teddy asked.
“I believe so,” Littleton said.
“Well, you can’t have everything.”
My father didn’t have any Jewish friends. You’d think that in this day and age or even fifteen years ago, it wouldn’t have mattered—the fact that I was Protestant and Max was Jewish—but it had.
When Max’s nana heard about us, she sent him a nasty letter from her condominium in Boca Raton. She didn’t want him to run off with a shiksa.
“What’s a shiksa?” I asked Max.
“A girl who isn’t Jewish.”
“Oh,” I said. I was surprised there was even a special word for it. It had never occurred to me that anyone could be prejudiced against me. After all, I was a descendant of the Founding Fathers.
“And what about you?” I asked.
“Me, what?” Max sat on the sofa with his legs crossed and lifted a beer to his lips.
“Do you care that I’m not Jewish?”
“Lots of women convert.” He said this as easily as he might have said “Lots of women register at Bloomingdale’s.”
“You never asked me if I would,” I said. The whole issue was premature, anyway. We weren’t talking about marriage, were we? He had asked me to go to California with him, not to marry him.
It was at this moment that the hot-air balloon in which two new lovers travel hit the ground. It landed gently, not with a thud or a crash, but it landed all the same. Reality was growing through the floorboards like ragweed. Max put his beer bottle down on the wooden table beside him. I slipped a coaster under it. The house was rented. It wasn’t our table and the people who owned it wouldn’t want to find rings when they came back. It wasn’t that Max was careless; it was just that he was more casual than I was, but then I couldn’t blame him for that. Almost everyone was more casual than I was.
“How about the rest of your family?” I asked.
“They think we should think about it.”
“Maybe we should.”
“I don’t want to wait,” he said. He pulled me toward him and nuzzled my neck.
I didn’t want to wait either, but Priscilla managed to convince me that if I ran off with Max, I would ruin both my life and his. I should not impede the progress of a man who could be one of the best writers of a generation. Now, I looked across at Priscilla, who was still knitting.
Miranda said, “You have to admit that glamour emanates from the West.”
“I have to admit nothing of the sort,” Priscilla said. “Removing the smallest line from your face before it even gains the respectability of a wrinkle is hardly a move forward in civilization.”
“Don’t knock it, Priscilla, until you’ve tried it.” Teddy smiled.
I hadn’t known his vanity extended that far.
“There are more important things than glamour,” Pris said.
“Like good taste and good breeding,” said Teddy.
“And good values,” I said from my place in the corner.
“Did you say something, Jane?” Teddy asked.
“Please. We all know what Miss Holier-Than-Thou thinks,” Miranda said.
Priscilla stopped knitting, and I thought, for a moment, that she might stab Miranda in the thigh with a needle.
I excused myself and went into the kitchen.
“You hear that?” I asked Astrid.
“She’s a bitch. She’s always been a bitch. And your father. He should stand up for you, but no.”
I shook my head. “What are you going to do, Astrid? They think you’ll go to Florida with them.”
“Are you going, Jane?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Don’t go. This is your chance to start your own life.” She wiped her hands on her apron and sat across from me at the kitchen island.
“I’m not going,” she said. “I have plans.” She stood up and walked to the window. “This is a lovely house,” she said.
“I know.”
“Still, it’s only a house. I moved to a different country for a better life. You can move from this house.”
“It doesn’t look like I have a choice.”
“Sometimes that’s the best way,” she said.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“My brother’s coming from Brazil and we’re going to open a restaurant.”
I could see her in her own restaurant, with her music playing, coming to the front to greet the patrons, still in her apron and with a wooden spoon holding up her hair. It was the right setting for her. I had to find the right setting for me. Unfortunately, I had always thought that this was it.
I entered the living room just in time to hear Miranda say, “Okay, then. I guess it’s all set. We’re off to Palm Beach.”
I had to say one thing for Miranda. She might be snippy and she might be rude, but she was suffering this calamity with a good deal more equanimity than I was. The idea of living in an apartment in Palm Beach with Teddy and Miranda was about as appealing to me as a luxury trip to war-torn Afghanistan.
“And I think Dolores should come with us,” Miranda said.
“Oh, Miranda, that’s too nice of you. I just couldn’t impose.”
“Of course you could.”
Dolores looked up at her father and he smiled back at her in a distracted way. Priscilla stopped knitting and stared at Dolores, then looked at me.
“Daddy, Dolores has to come,” Miranda said.
“Certainly, if she wants to.” He gave Dolores a benign smile, but the smile Dolores turned on him was anything but benign. Her smile was both ingratiating and insinuating. It was obvious that, despite her Hollywood experience, Dolores was a better actress than anyone gave her credit for.