The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.
Walt Whitman
Preface to Leaves of Grass
I first met Frank Bellarosa on a sunny Saturday in April at Hicks' Nursery, an establishment that has catered to the local gentry for over a hundred years. We were both wheeling red wagons filled with plants, fertilizers, and such toward our cars across the gravel parking field. He called out to me, "Mr Sutter? John Sutter, right?"
I regarded the man approaching, dressed in baggy work pants and a blue sweatshirt. At first, I thought it was a nurseryman, but then as he drew closer, I recognized his face from newspapers and television. Frank Bellarosa is not the sort of celebrity you would like to meet by chance, or in any other way, for that matter. He is a uniquely American celebrity, a gangster actually. A man like Bellarosa would be on the run in some parts of the world, and in the presidential palace in others, but here in America he exists in that place that is aptly called the underworld. He is an unindicted and unconvicted felon as well as a citizen and a taxpayer. He is what federal prosecutors mean when they tell parolees not to 'consort with known criminals'. So, as this notorious underworld character approached, I could not for the life of me guess how he knew me or what he wanted or why he was extending his hand toward me. Nevertheless, I did take his hand and said, "Yes, I'm John Sutter." "My name's Frank Bellarosa. I'm your new neighbour." What? I think my face remained impassive, but I may have twitched. "Oh," I said, "that's…" Pretty awful.
"Yeah. Good to meet you."
So my new neighbour and I chatted a minute or two and noted each other's purchases. He had tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, and basil. I had impatiens and marigolds. Mr Bellarosa suggested that I should plant something I could eat. I told him I ate marigolds and my wife ate impatiens. He found that funny. In parting, we shook hands without any definite plans to see each other again, and I got into my Ford Bronco.
It was the most mundane of circumstances, but as I started my engine, I experienced an uncustomary flash into the future, and I did not like what I saw.
I left the nursery and headed home.
Perhaps it would be instructive to understand the neighbourhood into which Mr Frank Bellarosa had chosen to move himself and his family. It is quite simply the best neighbourhood in America, making Beverly Hills or Shaker Heights, for instance, seem like tract housing.
It is not a neighbourhood in the urban or suburban sense, but a collection of colonial-era villages and grand estates on New York 's Long Island. The area is locally known as the North Shore and known nationally and internationally as the Gold Coast, though even realtors would not say that aloud. It is an area of old money, old families, old social graces, and old ideas about who should be allowed to vote, not to mention who should be allowed to own land. The Gold Coast is not a pastoral Jeffersonian democracy. The nouveau riches, who need new housing and who comprehend what this place is all about, are understandably cowed when in the presence of a great mansion that has come on the market as a result of unfortunate financial difficulties. They may back off and buy something on the South Shore where they can feel better about themselves, or if they decide to buy a piece of the Gold Coast, they do so with great trepidation, knowing they are going to be miserable and that they had better not try to borrow a cup of Johnnie Walker Black from the people in the next mansion.
But a man like Frank Bellarosa, I thought, would be ignorant of the celestial beings and great social icebergs who would surround him, completely unknowing of the hallowed ground on which he was treading.
Or, if Frank Bellarosa was aware, perhaps he didn't care, which was far more interesting. He struck me, in the few minutes we spoke, as a man with a primitive sort of elan, somewhat like a conquering soldier from an inferior civilization who has quartered himself in the great villa of a vanquished nobleman.
Bellarosa had, as he indicated, purchased the estate next to mine. My place is called Stanhope Hall; his place is called Alhambra. The big houses around here have names, not numbers, but in a spirit of cooperation with the United States Post Office, my full address does include a street, Grace Lane, and an incorporated village, Lattingtown. I have a zip code that I, like many of my neighbours, rarely use, employing instead the old designation of Long Island, so my address goes like this: Stanhope Hall, Grace Lane, Lattingtown, Long Island, New York. I get my mail.
My wife, Susan, and I don't actually live in Stanhope Hall, which is a massive fifty-room beaux-arts heap of Vermont granite, for which the heating bills alone would wipe me out by February. We live in the guesthouse, a more modest fifteen-room structure built at the turn of the century in the style of an English manor house. This guesthouse along with ten acres of Stanhope's total two hundred acres were deeded to my wife as a wedding present from her parents. However, our mail actually goes to the gatehouse, a more modest six-room affair of stone, occupied by George and Ethel Allard.
The Allards are what are called family retainers, which means they used to work, but don't do much anymore. George was the former estate manager here, employed by my wife's father, William, and her grandfather, Augustus. My wife is a Stanhope. The great fifty-room hall is abandoned now, and George is sort of caretaker for the whole two-hundred-acre estate. He and Ethel live in the gatehouse for free, having displaced the gatekeeper and his wife, who were let go back in the fifties. George does what he can with limited family funds. His work ethic remains strong, though his old body does not. Susan and I find we are helping the Allards more than they help us, a situation that is not uncommon around here. George and Ethel concentrate mostly on the gate area, keeping the hedges trimmed, the wrought-iron gate painted, clipping the ivy on the estate walls and the gatehouse, and replanting the flower beds in the spring. The rest of the estate is in God's hands until further notice.
I turned off Grace Lane and pulled up the gravel drive to the gates, which are usually left open for our convenience, as this is our only access to Grace Lane and the wide world around us.
George ambled over, wiping his hands on his green work pants. He opened my door before I could and said, "Good morning, sir."
George is from the old school, a remnant of that small class of professional servants that flourished so briefly in our great democracy. I can be a snob on occasion, but George's obsequiousness sometimes makes me uneasy. My wife, who really was to the manner born, thinks nothing of it and makes nothing of it. I opened the back of the Bronco and said, "Give me a hand?" "Certainly, sir, certainly. Here, you let me do that." He took the flats of marigolds and impatiens and laid them on the grass beside the gravel drive. He said, They look real good this year, Mr Sutter. You got some nice stuff. I'll get these planted 'round the gate pillars there, then I'll help you with your place."
"I can do that. How is Mrs Allard this morning?"
"She's very well, Mr Sutter, and it's nice of you to ask." My conversations with George are always somewhat stilted, except when George has a few drinks in him.
George was born on the Stanhope estate some seventy years ago and has childhood memories of the Roaring Twenties, the Great Crash, and the waning of the Golden Era throughout the 1930s. There were still parties, debutante balls, regattas, and polo matches after the Crash of '29, but as George once said to me in a maudlin moment, "The heart was gone from everybody. They lost confidence in themselves, and the war finished off the good times."
I know all that from history books and through a sort of osmosis that one experiences by living here. But George has more detailed and personal information on the history of the Gold Coast, and when he's had a few, he'll tell you stories about the great families: who used to screw whom, who shot whom in a jealous rage, and who shot themselves in despair. There was, and to some extent still is, a servants' network here, where that sort of information is the price of admission to servants' get-togethers in the kitchens of the remaining great houses, in the gatehouses, and in the local working man's pubs. It's sort of an American Upstairs Downstairs around here, and God only knows what they say about Susan and me.
But if discretion is not one of George's virtues, loyalty is, and in fact I once overheard him tell a tree pruner that the Sutters were good people to work for. In fact, he doesn't work for me, but for Susan's parents, William and Charlotte Stanhope, who are retired in Hilton Head and are trying to unload Stanhope Hall before it pulls them under. But that's another story.
Ethel Allard is also another story. Though always correct and pleasant, there is a seething class anger there, right below the surface. I have no doubt that if someone raised the red flag, Ethel Allard would arm herself with a cobblestone from the walkway and make her way toward my house. Ethel's father, from what I gather, was a successful shopkeeper of some sort in the village who was ruined by bad investment advice from his rich customers and further ruined by the failure of those customers to pay him what they owed him for goods delivered. They didn't pay him because they, too, had been financially ruined. This was in 1929, of course, and nothing has been the same around here since. It was as though, I suppose, the rich had broken faith with the lower classes by going broke and killing themselves with alcohol, bullets, and leaps from windows, or simply disappearing, leaving their houses, their debts, and their honour behind. It's hard to feel sorry for the rich, I know, and I can see Ethel's point of view.
But here it is, some sixty years after the Great Crash, and maybe it's time to examine some of the wreckage.
If this place doesn't sound quite like America, I assure you it is; only the externals and the landscape are a bit different.
George was talking. "So, like I was saying the other day, Mr Sutter, some kids got into the Hall a few nights ago and had themselves a party -" "Was there much damage?"
"Not too much. Lots of liquor bottles, and I found a bunch of those… things – " "Condoms."
He nodded. "So, I cleaned it all up and replaced the plywood on the window they got in. But I'd like to get some sheet metal."
"Order it. Charge it to my account at the lumberyard."
"Yes, sir. Now that spring is here-"
"Yes, I know." The hormones are bubbling and the local bunnies are in high heat. I used to get into abandoned mansions myself, to be truthful. A little wine, some candles, a transistor radio tuned to WABC, and maybe even a fire in the fireplace, though that was a giveaway. There's nothing quite like love among the ruins. I find it interesting that condoms are back in fashion. "Any sign of drugs?"
"No, sir. Just liquor. You sure you don't want me to call the police?" "No." The local police seem very interested in the problems of the gentry, but I find it awkward standing around a deserted fifty-room mansion with cops who are trying to look sympathetic. Anyway, there was no damage done. I got into my Bronco and drove through the gates, the tyres crunching over the thinning gravel. It will take five hundred cubic yards of crushed bluestone at sixty dollars a yard to get barely an inch of new topping on the winter-ravaged drive. I made a mental note to write my father-in-law with the good news. My house, the guesthouse, is about two hundred yards up the main drive and fifty yards from it, via a single-lane spur also in need of gravel. The house itself is in good repair, its imported Cotswold stone, slate roof, and copper-sheathed sash and drainpipes virtually maintenance free and nearly as good as aluminium siding and vinyl plastic windows.
We have ivy on the walls, which will be in need of cutting as its new pale-green tendrils begin to creep, and there is a rose garden out back that completes the image that you are in England.
Susan's car, a racing-green Jaguar XJ- 6, a gift from her parents, was sitting in the turnaround. Another merrie-olde-England prop. People around here tend to be Anglophiles; it comes with the territory.
I went inside the house and called, "Lady Stanhope!" Susan answered from the rose garden, and I went out the back doors. I found her sitting in a cast-iron garden chair. Only women, I think, can sit in those things. "Good morning, my lady. May I ravage you?"
She was drinking tea, the mug steaming in the cool April air. Yellow crocuses and lilies had sprouted in the beds among the bare rose bushes, and a bluebird sat on the sundial. A very cheering sight, except that I could tell that Susan was in one of her quiet moods.
I asked, "Were you out riding?"
"Yes, that's why I'm wearing my riding clothes and I smell of horse, Sherlock." I sat on the iron table in front of her. "You'll never guess who I met at Hicks' Nursery."
"No, I never will."
I regarded my wife a moment. She is a strikingly beautiful woman, if I may be uxorious for a moment. She has flaming-red hair, a sure sign of insanity according to my aunt Cornelia, and catlike green eyes that are so arresting that people stare. Her skin is lightly freckled, and she has pouty lips that make men immediately think of a particular sex act. Her body is as lithe and taut as any man could ask for in a forty-year-old wife who has borne two children. The secret to her health and happiness, she will tell you, is horseback riding, summer, fall, winter, and spring, rain, snow, or shine. I am madly in love with this woman, though there are times, like now, when she is moody and distant. Aunt Cornelia warned me about that, too. I said, "I met our new neighbour."
"Oh? The HRH Trucking Company?"
"No, no." Like many of the great estates, Alhambra had passed to a corporation, according to county records. The sale was made in February for cash, and the deed recorded for public view a week later. The realtor claimed he didn't know the principals involved, but through a combination of research and rumours by the old guard, the field was narrowed down to Iranians, Koreans, Japanese, South American pharmaceutical dealers, or Mafia. That about covered the range of possible nightmares. And in fact, all of the above had recently acquired houses and property on the Gold Coast. Who else has that kind of money these days? The defences were crumbling, the republic was on the auction block. I said, "Do you know the name Frank Bellarosa?"
Susan thought a moment. "I don't think so."
"Mafia."
"Really? That's our new neighbour?" That's what he said." "Did he say he was Mafia?"
"Of course not. I know him from the newspapers, TV. I can't believe you never heard of him. Frank "the Bishop" Bellarosa."
"Is he a bishop?"
"No, Susan, that's his Mafia nickname. They all have nicknames."
"Is that a fact?"
She sipped her tea and looked distantly into the garden. Susan, not unlike many of the residents in this Garden of Eden, excludes much of the outside world. She reads Trollope and Agatha Christie, never listens to radio, and uses the television only to play videotapes of old movies. She obtains her weather reports from a recorded phone message. Local events are learned through the good-news weekly newspaper and from a few upscale magazines that serve the affluent Gold Coast communities. Regarding hard news, she has adopted Thoreau's philosophy: If you read about one train wreck, you've read about them all. I asked, "Does this news upset you?"
She shrugged, then asked me, "Are you upset?"
As an attorney, I don't like people turning questions back to me, so I gave a flippant reply. "No. In fact, Grace Lane will now be well protected by the FBI, joined by county detectives on stakeouts."
She seemed to be processing that information, then said, "This man… what's his name…?"
"Bellarosa."
"Yes, well, I'll talk to him about the horse trails and rights of way over his land."
"Good idea. Set him straight."
"I will."
I recalled a silly, though appropriate, joke for the occasion and told it to Susan. "Christopher Columbus steps ashore in the New World – this is a joke – and he calls out to a group of native Americans, "Buenos dias!" or maybe "Buon giorno!" and one of the Indians turns to his wife and says, 'There goes the neighbourhood.'"
Susan smiled politely.
I stood and walked out the rear garden gate, leaving Susan to her tea, her mood, and her potential problem with explaining equestrian rights of way to a Mafia don.
One of the local traditions here says that if you're crossing an estate on foot, you're trespassing; if you're on horseback, you're gentry. I didn't know if Mr Frank Bellarosa was aware of that as yet, or if he was, if he was going to honour the tradition. Nevertheless, later that Saturday afternoon, I crossed over onto his land through a line of white pine that separated our properties. I was mounted on Yankee, my wife's second horse, a six-year-old gelding of mixed breeding. Yankee has a good temperament, unlike Zanzibar, Susan's high-strung Arab stallion. Yankee can be ridden hard and put away wet without dying of pneumonia, whereas Zanzibar seems to be under perpetual veterinary care for mysterious and expensive ailments. Thus the reason for Yankee's existence, just as my Ford Bronco fills in when Susan's Jag is in the shop every other week. But I suppose there's a price to pay for high performance.
Coming out of the pines, an open field lay ahead, a former horse pasture now overgrown with brush and various species of saplings that aspire to be a forest again if left alone.
I was certain that Bellarosa, like most of his kind, was not as concerned with his privacy as with his personal safety, and I half expected to be confronted by swarthy, slick-haired gunmen in black suits and pointy shoes. I continued across the field toward a grove of cherry trees. It was just turning dusk, the weather was balmy, and there was a scent of fresh earth around me. The only sounds were Yankee's hoofs on the soft turf and birds trilling their twilight songs from the distant trees. All in all, a perfect late afternoon in early spring.
I took Yankee into the cherry grove. The gnarled and uncared-for old trees were newly leafed and just budded with pink blossoms.
In a clearing in the grove was a sunken mosaic reflecting pool, filled with dead leaves. Around the pool were toppled classical fluted columns and broken lintels. At the far end of the pool was a moss-covered statue of Neptune, his upraised hand minus his trident, so that he seemed to be halfway through a roundhouse punch. At Neptune's feet were four stone fish, whose gaping mouths once spouted water. This was one of the classical gardens of Alhambra, built as a mock Roman ruin, now ironically a real ruin.
The main house of Alhambra is not itself a classical structure, but a Spanish-style mansion of stucco walls, stone archways, wrought-iron balconies, and red-tiled roofs. The four pillars that hold up the arched portico were actually taken from the ruins of Carthage in the 1920s when it was fashionable and possible to loot ancient archaeological sites.
I don't know what I would do if I had that much money myself, but I like to think I would show some restraint. But then restraint is a condition of our era with its dwindling supply of nearly everything vital to life. Restraint was not what the Roaring Twenties was about. One can be a product only of one's own era, not anyone else's.
I rode across the garden ruins, then up a small rise. About a quarter-mile to the east, sitting in shadow, was Alhambra. A solitary light shone from a second-floor balcony window that I knew to be the location of the library. Alhambra's library, like many rooms in the greatest of the estate houses, had originally existed in Europe. The original owners and builders of Alhambra, a Mr and Mrs Julius Dillworth, on a tour of Europe in the 1920s, took a fancy to the hand-carved oak library of their host, an old English peer whose name and title escape me. The Dillworths made an uninvited but spectacular offer for the entire library, and the tweedy old gentleman, probably short of cash as a result of the same World War that had enriched the Dillworths, accepted the offer. I watched the library window for a minute or so, then reined Yankee around and rode down the slope, back toward the garden.
I saw now a white horse nibbling on new spring grass between two toppled columns. Astride the horse was the familiar figure of a woman dressed in tight jeans and a black turtleneck sweater. She turned to me as I approached, then faced away. It was my wife, Susan, but I could tell from her look that she was not herself. What I mean is, she likes to playact. So, to be cooperative, I called out, "Who are you?"
She turned back to me and responded in an icy voice, "Who are you?" Actually, I wasn't sure yet, but I improvised. "I own this land," I said. "Are you lost or trespassing?"
"Neither. And I doubt anyone dressed as you are, with so wretched a horse, could own this land."
"Don't be insolent. Are you alone?"
"I was until you came by," she retorted.
I pulled in Yankee side by side with the white Arabian. "What is your name?"
"Daphne. What is your name?"
I still couldn't think of a name for me, so I said, "You should know whose land you are on. Get down from your horse."
"Why should I?"
"Because I said so. And if you don't, I'll pull you down and take my switch to you. Dismount!" She hesitated, then dismounted."
"Tether him."
She tethered her horse to a cherry limb and stood facing me.
"Take off your clothes."
She shook her head. "I won't."
"You will," I snapped. "Quickly."
She stood motionless a moment, then pulled off her turtleneck, exposing two firm breasts. She stood with the sweater in her hand and looked up at me. "Do I have to do this?"
"Yes."
She dropped the sweater, then pulled off her boots and socks. Finally, she slid her jeans and panties off and threw them in the grass.
I sidled my horse closer and looked down at her standing naked in the fading sunlight. "Not so arrogant now, are you, Daphne?"
"No, sir."
This is Susan's idea of keeping marital sex interesting, though to be honest, I'm not complaining about acting out Susan's sexual fantasies. Sometimes these dramas are scripted and directed (by Susan); sometimes, as with this encounter, they are improv. The locales change with the seasons; in the winter we do it in the stable or, to relive our youth, in front of a fireplace in a deserted mansion.
This was our first alfresco encounter of the new spring season, and there is something about a woman standing naked in a field or forest that appeals to the most primal instincts of both sexes, while at the same time flouting modern conventions regarding where love should be made. Trust me on this; you get used to the occasional ant or bumblebee.
Susan asked, "What are you going to do to me?"
"Whatever I wish." I looked at Susan standing motionless, her long red hair blowing in strands across her face, waiting patiently for a command. She has no acting background, but if she had, she would be a method actress; there was not a hint in her face or bearing that she was my wife, and that this was a game. For all purposes, she was a naked, defenceless woman who was about to be raped by a strange man on horseback. In fact, her knees were shaking, and she seemed honestly frightened.
"Please, sir, do what you will with me, but do it quickly." I'm not good at the impromptu games, and I'd rather she scripted it so I know who I'm supposed to be or at least what historical epoch we're in. Sometimes I'm a Roman or a barbarian, a knight or an aristocrat, and she's a slave, a peasant, or a haughty noblewoman who gets her comeuppance. I brought Yankee right up to Susan and reached out and held her upraised chin in my hand. "Are you embarrassed?"
"Yes, sir."
I should mention that Susan often takes the dominant role, and I'm the one who plays the part of a naked slave at auction or a prisoner who is stripped and given a few lashes, or whatever. Lest you think we are utterly depraved, I want you to know we are both registered Republicans and members of the Episcopal Church, and attend regularly except during the boating season. Anyway, on this occasion, I had the feeling we were in the seventeenth century or thereabouts, thus the "Don't be insolent" line and all the rest of the silly dialogue. I tried to think of another great line and finally said, "Are you Daphne, wife of the traitor Sir John Worthington?"
"I am, sir. And if you are indeed Lord Hardwick, I've come to ask you to intercede on my husband's behalf with His Majesty, the King." I was indeed hardwick at that moment and wished I'd worn looser trousers. "I am every inch Hardwick," I replied, and saw a real smile flit across her face. Susan dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around my boot. "Oh, please, my lord, you must present my petition to King Charles."
History is not my strong point, but I can usually wing it. History wasn't the point anyway. I said, "And what favour will you do me in return if I do this for you?"
"I will do anything you wish."
That was the point. And in truth, the playacting usually got me jump-started before Susan, and I wanted to get on with the last scene. "Stand," I commanded. She stood and I grabbed her wrist as I took my foot from the stirrup. "Put your right foot in the stirrup."
She put her bare foot in the stirrup, and I pulled her up facing me, both of us tight in the English saddle, with her arms around me and her bare breasts tight against my chest. I gave Yankee a tap, and he began to walk. I said, "Take it out."
She unzipped my fly and took it out, holding it in her warm hands. I said, "Put it in."
She sobbed and said, "I do this only to save my husband's life. He is the only man I have ever known."
A few clever replies ran through my mind, but the hormones were in complete control of my intellect now, and I snapped, "Put it in!" She rose up and came down on it, letting out an exclamation of surprise. "Hold on." I kicked Yankee, and he began to trot. Susan held me tighter and locked her strong legs over mine. She buried her face in my neck, and as the horse bounced along, she moaned. This was not acting. I was now completely caught up in the heat of the moment. I'm only a fair horseman, and what little skill I have was not equal to this. Yankee trotted at a nice pace through the cherry grove, then out into the pasture. The air was heavy with the smell of horse, the trodden earth, our bodies, and Susan's musky odour rising between us.
God, what a ride, Susan breathing hard on my neck, crying out, me panting, and the wetness oozing between us.
Susan climaxed first and cried out so loudly she flushed a pheasant from a bush. I climaxed a second later and involuntarily jerked on the reins, causing Yankee to nearly tumble.
The horse settled down and began to graze, as if nothing had happened. Susan and I clung to each other, trying to catch our breath. I finally managed to say, "Whew… what a ride…" Susan smiled. "I'm sorry I trespassed on your land, sir." "I lied. It's not my land."
"That's all right. I don't have a husband in trouble with the King, either." We both laughed. She asked, "What were you doing here?" "Same as you. Just riding."
"Did you visit our new neighbour?"
"No," I replied. "But I saw a light in his window."
"I'm going to speak to him."
"Perhaps you'd better put your clothes on first."
"I may have better luck as I am. Was he good-looking?"
"Not bad, in a Mediterranean sort of way."
"Good."
I reined Yankee around. "I'll take you back to Zanzibar and your clothes."
She sat upright. "No, I'll get off here and walk."
"I'd rather you didn't."
"It's all right. Hold my hand."
She dismounted and walked off. I called after her, "You have no time to talk with Bellarosa. We'll be late for the Eltons again."
She waved her arm to show she'd heard me. I watched my wife walking naked through the pasture until she entered the shadows of the cherry grove, then I turned Yankee and headed for home.
After a minute or so, I was able to get Lord Hardwick back in his pants.
I do make love to my wife, Susan Stanhope Sutter, in our bed, and we enjoy it. Yet, I believe that marriages entirely grounded in reality are bound to fail, just as individuals who cannot escape into flights of fancy are bound to crack up. I'm aware that a couple who acts out sexual fantasies must be careful not to step over into the dark side of the psyche. Susan and I have come to the brink a few times but always drew back.
I crossed from Bellarosa's land through the white pines to Stanhope. I didn't much like leaving Susan with darkness coming and with a few hundred yards' walk in the nude back to her horse, but when she says she's all right, she means go away.
Well, I thought, the flowers were bought and planted, the main house resecured, we had chicken Dijon and asparagus delivered from Culinary Delights for lunch, I was able to get into the village to do some errands, and I had my afternoon ride, and got laid at the same time. All in all, an interesting, productive, and fulfilling Saturday. I like Saturdays.
The Lord rested on the seventh day, which has been interpreted to mean that His sixth-day creations should do the same.
George and Ethel Allard take the Sabbath seriously, as do most working-class people from that generation who remember six-day workweeks of ten-hour days. I, on the other hand, have to take care of the Lord's English ivy creeping over my windowpanes.
I don't actually do any business on Sunday, but I do think about what has to be done on Monday morning as I do my Sunday chores.
Susan and I had cut ivy until about ten in the morning, then got cleaned up and dressed for church.
Susan drove the Jag, and we stopped at the gatehouse to pick up George and Ethel, who were waiting at their front door, George in his good brown suit, Ethel in a shapeless flower-print dress that unfortunately seems to be making a comeback with women who want to look like 1940s wallpaper. The Allards have a car, William Stanhope's old Lincoln that he left here when he and Charlotte Stanhope moved to Hilton Head, South Carolina, in '79. George sometimes doubled as the Stanhopes' chauffeur and is still a good driver despite his advancing years. But as there is now only one service at St Mark's, it would seem snooty for us not to offer to drive, and perhaps awkward for us to ask him to drive us. Maybe I'm being too sensitive, but I have to walk a thin line between playing lord of the manor and being George and Ethel's assistant grounds keeper. We all have so many hang-ups from the old days. Anyway, George isn't the problem; Ethel the Red is.
The Allards climbed in, and we all agreed it was another beautiful day. Susan swung south onto Grace Lane and floored it. Many of the roads around here were originally horse-and-buggy paths, and they are still narrow, twist and turn a bit, are lined with beautiful trees, and are dangerous. A speeding car is never more than a second away from disaster.
Grace Lane, which is about a mile long, has remained a private road. This means there is no legal speed limit, but there is a practical speed limit. Susan thinks it is seventy, I think it's about forty. The residents along Grace Lane, mostly estate owners, are responsible for the upkeep of the road. Most of the other private roads of the Gold Coast have sensibly been deeded to the county, the local village, the State of New York, or to any other political entity that promises to keep them drained and paved at about a hundred thousand dollars a mile. But a few of the residents along Grace Lane, specifically those who are rich, proud, and stubborn (they go together), have blocked attempts to unload this Via Dolorosa on the unsuspecting taxpayers.
Susan got up to her speed limit, and I could almost feel the blacktop fragmenting like peanut brittle.
High speeds seem to keep older people quiet, and the Allards didn't say much from the back, which was all right with me. George won't discuss work on Sundays, and we had exhausted other subjects years ago. On the way back, we sometimes talk about the sermon. Ethel likes the Reverend James Runnings because, like so many of my Episcopal brethren, the man is far to the left of Karl Marx.
Each Sunday we are made to feel guilty about our relative wealth and asked to share some of the filthy stuff with about two billion less fortunate people. Ethel especially enjoys the sermons on social justice, equality, and so forth. And we all sit there, the old-line blue bloods, along with a few new black and Spanish Episcopalians, and the remaining working-class Anglos, listening to the Reverend Mr Runnings give us his view of America and the world, and there is no question-and-answer period afterward.
In my father's and grandfather's day, of course, this same church was slightly to the right of the Republican Party, and the priests would direct their sermons more toward the servants and the working men and women in the pews, talking about obedience, hard work, and responsibilities, instead of about revolution, the unemployed, and civil rights. My parents, Joseph and Harriet, who were liberal for their day and social class, would gripe about the message from the pulpit. I don't think God meant for church services to be so aggravating. The problem with a church, any church, I think, is that unlike a country club, anyone can join. The result of this open-door policy is that for one hour a week, all the social classes must humble themselves before God and do it under the same roof in full view of one another. I'm not suggesting private churches or first-class pews up front like they used to have, and I don't think dimming the lights would help much. But I know that, years ago, it was understood that one sort of people went to the early service, and the other sort of people to the later one.
Having said this, I feel I should say something in extenuation of what could be construed as elitist and antidemocratic thoughts: First, I don't feel superior to anyone, and second, I believe fervently that we are all created free and equal. But what I also feel is socially dislocated, unsure of my place in the vast changing democracy outside these immediate environs, and uncertain how to live a useful and fulfilling life among the crumbling ruins around me. The Reverend Mr Hunnings thinks he has the answers. The only thing I know for certain is that he doesn't.
Susan slowed down as she approached the village of Locust Valley. The village is a rather nice place, neat and prosperous, with a small Long Island Railroad station in the middle of town, from which I take my train into New York. Locust Valley was gentrified and boutiquefied long before anyone even knew the words, though there is a new wave of trendy, useless shops coming in. St Mark's is on the northern edge of the village. It is a small Gothic structure of brownstone with good stained-glass windows imported from England. It was built in 1896 with the winnings of a poker game playfully confiscated by six millionaires' wives. They all went to heaven.
Susan found a parking space by hemming in a Rolls-Royce, and we all hurried toward the church as the bells tolled.
On the way back, Ethel said, "I think Reverend Hunnings was right and we should all take in at least one homeless person for Easter week." Susan hit the gas and took a banked curve at sixty miles per hour, causing the Allards to sway left and quieting Ethel.
George, ever the loyal servant, said, "I think Father Hunnings should practise what he preaches. He's got nobody but him and his wife in that big rectory of theirs."
George knows a hypocrite when he hears one.
I said, "Mrs Allard, you have my permission to take a homeless person into your house for Easter week."
I waited for the garrote to encircle my neck and the sound of cackling as it drew tight, but instead she replied, "Perhaps I'll write to Mr Stanhope and ask his permission."
Touche. In one short sentence she reminded me that I didn't own the place, and since Susan's father has the social conscience of a Nazi stormtrooper, Ethel got herself off the hook. Score one for Ethel.
Susan crested a hill at seventy and nearly ran up the rear end of a neat little TR-3 – 1964, I think. She swerved into the opposing lane, then swung back in front of the Triumph in time to avoid an oncoming Porsche. Susan, I believe, has hit upon a Pavlovian experiment in which she introduces the possibility of sudden death whenever anyone in the car says anything that doesn't relate to the weather or horses.
I said, "Not too much spring rain this year."
George added, "But the ground's still wet from that March snow."
Susan slowed down.
I drive to church about half the time, then there's the three-month boating season when we skip it altogether, so going to church is dangerous only about twenty times a year.
Actually, I notice that when Susan drives to and from church I feel closer to God than I do inside the church.
You might well ask why we go at all or why we don't change churches. I'll tell you, we go to St Mark's because we've always gone to St Mark's; we were both baptized there and married there. We go because our parents went and our children, Carolyn and Edward, go there when they are home on school holidays. I go to St Mark's for the same reasons I still go to Francis Pond to fish twenty years after the last fish was caught there. I go to carry out a tradition, I go from habit, and from nostalgia. I go to the pond and to the church because I believe there is still something there, though I haven't seen a fish or felt the presence of the Holy Spirit in twenty years.
Susan pulled into the drive, went through the open gates, and stopped to let the Allards out at the gatehouse. They bid us good day and went inside to their Sunday roast and newspapers.
Susan continued on up the drive. She said to me, "I don't understand why he didn't come to the door."
"Who?"
"Frank Bellarosa. I told you, I rode right up to the house and called up toward the lighted window. Then I pulled the bell chain at the servant's entrance." "Were you naked?"
"Of course not."
"Well, then he had no interest in making small talk with a fully dressed, snooty woman on a horse. He's Italian."
Susan smiled. "The house is so huge," she said, "he probably couldn't hear me."
"Didn't you go around to the front?"
"No, there was construction stuff all over the place, holes in the ground, and nothing was lit."
"What sort of construction stuff?"
"Cement mixers, scaffolding, that sort of thing. Looks like he's having a lot of work done."
"Good."
Susan pulled up to our house. "I want to get this thing straight with him about the horse trails. Do you want to come along?"
"Not particularly. And I don't think it's good manners to approach a new neighbour with a problem until you've first paid a social call." "That's true. We should follow custom and convention, then he will, too." I wasn't sure about that, but one never knows. Sometimes a neighbourhood, like a culture or civilization, is strong enough to absorb and acculturate any number of newcomers. But I don't know if that's true around here any longer. The outward forms and appearances look the same – like the Iranians and Koreans I see in the village wearing blue blazers, tan slacks, and Top-Siders – but the substance has been altered. Sometimes I have this grotesque mental image of five hundred Orientals, Arabs, and Asian Indians dressed in tweeds and plaids applauding politely at the autumn polo matches. I don't mean to sound racist, but I am curious as to why wealthy foreigners want to buy our houses, wear our clothes, and emulate our manners. I suppose I should be flattered, and I suppose I am. I mean, I never had a desire to sit in a tent and eat camel meat with my fingers.
"John? Are you listening?"
"No."
"Do you want to go with me and pay a social call on Frank Bellarosa?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Let him come to us."
"But you just said -"
"I don't care what I just said. I'm not going over there, and neither are you."
"Says who?"
"Says Lord Hardwick." I got out of the car and walked toward the house. Susan shut off the car engine and followed. We entered the house, and there was that pregnant silence in the air, the silence between a husband and wife who have just had words, and it is unlike any other silence except perhaps the awful stillness you hear between the flash of an atomic bomb and the blast. Five, four, three, two, one. Susan said, "All right. We'll wait. Would you like a drink?"
"Yes, I would."
Susan walked into the dining room and got a bottle of brandy from the sideboard. She moved into the butler's pantry, and I followed. Susan took two glasses from the cupboard and poured brandy into each. "Neat?"
"A little water."
She turned on the faucet, splashed too much water in the brandy, and handed me the glass. We touched glasses and drank there in the pantry, then moved into the kitchen. She asked, "Is there a Mrs Bellarosa?"
"I don't know."
"Well, was Mr Bellarosa wearing a wedding ring?"
"I don't notice things like that."
"You do when it's an attractive woman."
"Nonsense." But true. If a woman is attractive and I'm in one of my frisky moods, I don't care if she's single, engaged, married, pregnant, divorced, or on her honeymoon. Maybe that's because I never go past the flirting stage. Physically, I'm very loyal. Susan, on the other hand, is not a flirt, and you have to keep an eye on women like that.
She sat at the big round table in our English country-style kitchen.
I opened the refrigerator.
She said, "We're having dinner with the Remsens at the club."
"What time?"
"Three."
"I'll have an apple."
"I fed them to the horses."
"I'll have some oats." I found a bowl of New Zealand cherries and closed the refrigerator door. I ate the cherries standing, spitting the pits into the sink, and drank the brandy. Fresh cherries with brandy are good. Neither of us spoke for a while, and the regulator clock on the wall was tick-tocking. Finally, I said, "Look, Susan, if this guy was an Iranian rug merchant or a Korean importer or whatever, I would be a good neighbour. And if anyone around here didn't like that, the hell with them. But Mr Frank Bellarosa is a gangster and, according to the papers, the top Mafia boss in New York. I am an attorney, not to mention a respected member of this community. Bellarosa's phones are tapped, and his house is watched. I must be very careful of any relationship with that man."
Susan replied, "I understand your position, Mr Sutter. Some people even consider the Stanhopes as respected members of the community." "Don't be sarcastic, Susan. I'm speaking as an attorney, not as a snob. I make about half my living from the people around here, and I have a reputation for honesty and integrity. I want you to promise me you won't go over there to call on him or his wife, if he has one."
"All right, but remember what Tolkien said."
"What did Tolkien say?"
"Tolkien said, 'It doesn't do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations if you live near him.'"
Indeed it does not do at all, which was why I was trying to factor in Mr Frank Bellarosa.
Dinner at The Creek club with the Remsens, Lester and Judy, began well enough. The conversation was mostly about important social issues (a new resident whose property bordered our club had brought suit over the skeet shooting, which he claimed was terrorizing his children and dog), about important world issues (the PGA was going to be held in Southampton again this May), and about pressing ecological issues, to wit: The remaining land of the old Guthrie estate, some one hundred acres, had gone to the developers, who wanted a variance to put up twenty houses in the two-million-dollar price range. "Outrageous," proclaimed Lester Remsen, who like myself is no millionaire, but who does own a very nice converted carriage house and ten acres of the former Guthrie estate. "Outrageous and ecologically unsound," Lester added.
The Guthrie estate was once a three-hundred-acre tract of terraced splendour, and the main house was called Meudon, an eighty-room replica of the Meudon Palace outside Paris. The Guthrie family tore down the palace in the 1950s rather than pay taxes on it as developed property.
Some of the locals considered the tearing down of Meudon Palace a sacrilege, while others considered it poetic justice, because the original Guthrie, William D., an aide to the Rockefeller clan, had purchased and torn down the village of Lattingtown – sixty homes and shops – in 1905. Apparently the structures interfered with his building plans. Thus, Lattingtown has no village centre, which is why we go to neighbouring Locust Valley for shopping, church, and all that. But as I said earlier, that was a time when American money was buying pieces of Europe or trying to replicate it here, and the little village of Lattingtown, a tiny hamlet of a hundred or so souls, could no more resist an offer of triple market value than could the English aristocrat who sold his library to adorn Alhambra.
And perhaps what is happening now is further justice, or irony if you will, as land speculators, foreigners, and gangsters buy up the ruins and the near ruins from a partially bankrupt and heavily taxed American aristocracy. I never came from that kind of money, and so my feelings are somewhat ambivalent. I'm blue blood enough to be nostalgic about the past, without having the guilt that people like Susan have about coming from a family whose money was once used like a bulldozer, flattening everything and everybody who got in its way. Lester Remsen continued, "The builders are promising to save most of the specimen trees and dedicate ten acres of park if we'll offer our expertise for free. Maybe you could meet with these people and tag the trees." I nodded. I'm sort of the local tree guy around here. Actually, there are a group of us, who belong to the Long Island Horticultural Society. All of a sudden I'm in demand as local residents have discovered that raising the ecological banner can hold off the builders. Ironically, that's one of the reasons that Stanhope's two hundred acres can't be sold, which is good for me but not for my father-in-law. That's a messy situation, and I'm caught right in the middle of it. More about that later. I said to Lester, "I'll get the volunteers out, and we'll tag the rare trees with their names and so forth. How long before they break ground?"
"About three weeks."
"I'll do what I can."
It never ceases to amaze me that no matter how many million-dollar houses are built, there is an inexhaustible supply of buyers. Who are these people? And where do they get their money?
Lester Remsen and I discussed the skeet-shooting problem. According to yesterday's Long Island Newsday, a judge issued a temporary restraining order stopping the shoot, notwithstanding the fact that the shooting has been going on for more than half a century before the plaintiff bought his house or was even born. But I can see the other point of view. There is population pressure on the land, and there are noise and safety considerations to be taken into account. No one hunts deer or pheasant around here anymore, and the Meadowbrook Hunt Club, in its last days, had to plan a trickier route each year, lest the horses and hounds wind up charging through new suburban backyards or a shopping mall. Talk about terrorizing new residents.
I know that we are fighting a rearguard action here to protect a way of life that should have ended twenty or thirty years ago. I understand this, and I'm not bitter. I'm just amazed that we've gotten away with it this long. In that respect I say God bless America, land of evolution and not revolution. Susan said, "Can't you put silencers on the shotguns?"
"Silencers are illegal," I informed her.
"Why?"
"So gangsters can't get ahold of them," I explained, "and murder people quietly."
"Oh, I bet I know where you could get hold of a silencer." She smiled mischievously.
Lester Remsen looked at her.
"Anyway," I continued, "half the fun is the noise."
Lester Remsen agreed and asked Susan where in the world she could get a silencer.
Susan glanced at me and saw this was not the time to bring up the subject. She said, "Just joking."
The club dining room was full for Sunday dinner. The clubs around here, you should understand, are the fortresses in the fight against the Visigoths and Huns who are sweeping over the land and camping out around the great estates in cedar and glass tents that go up in less time than it takes to polish the marble floors of Stanhope Hall. All right, that was a bit snooty, but one does get tired of seeing these stark, skylighted contemporaries reproducing themselves like viruses everywhere one looks.
As for the clubs, there are many types: country clubs, yachting clubs, riding clubs, and so forth. I have two clubs: The Creek, a country club, which is where we were having dinner with the Remsens, and The Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club, whose first commodore was William K. Vanderbilt. I keep my boat, a thirty-six-foot Morgan, anchored at the yacht club.
The Creek is what the media like to call "very exclusive,", which sounds redundant, and a "private preserve of the rich," which sounds judgemental. It isn't true anyway. Rich counts around here, no doubt about it. But it doesn't count for everything the way it does with the new rich. To fully understand what is sometimes called the Eastern Establishment is to understand that you can be poor and even be a Democrat and be accepted in a place like The Creek if you have the right family background, the right school, and know the right people. Remsen and I, as I said, are not rich, but we breezed through the membership committee interview right out of college, which is usually the best time to apply, before you screw up your life or wind up working in the garment industry. In truth, one's accent helps, too. I have what I guess you'd call an East Coast preppie accent, being a product of St Thomas Aquinas on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, St Paul's in New Hampshire, and Yale. That's a good accent to have. But there is a more predominant accent around here, which is known (nationally as I've discovered) as Locust Valley Lockjaw. This condition usually afflicts women, but men often display strong symptoms. With Locust Valley Lockjaw, one has the ability to speak in complete and mostly understandable sentences – including words with lots of broad vowels – and to do so without opening one's mouth, sort of like a ventriloquist. It's quite a trick, and Susan can do it really well when she's with her bitchy friends. I mean, you can be having a drink on the club patio, for instance, and watch four of them sitting around a nearby table, and it looks as if they're silently sneering at one another, but then you hear words, whole sentences. I never get over it. The Creek itself, named after Frost Creek, which runs through the north end of the property on the Long Island Sound, was originally an estate. There are about a dozen other country and golf clubs around here, but only one other that counts, and that is Piping Rock. Piping Rock is considered more exclusive than The Creek, and I suppose it is, as its membership list more closely matches the Social Register than does The Creek's. But they don't have skeet shooting. Though maybe we don't either. Susan, incidentally, is listed in the Social Register as are her parents, who still officially maintain a residence at Stanhope Hall. In my opinion, the Register is a dangerous document to have floating around in case there is a revolution. I wouldn't want Ethel Allard to have a copy of it. I have a John Deere cap that I plan to wear if the mob ever breaks through the gates of Stanhope Hall. I'll stand in front of my house and call out, "We got th's here place already! Main house is up the drive!" But Ethel would give me away.
Susan looked up from her raspberries and asked Lester, "Do you know anything about anyone moving into Alhambra?"
"No," Lester replied, "I was going to ask you. I hear there have been trucks and equipment going in and out of there for over a month." Judy Remsen interjected, "No one has seen a moving van yet, but Edna DePauw says she sees furniture delivery trucks going in about once a week. Do you think anyone has moved in yet?"
Susan glanced at me, then said to the Remsens, "John ran into the new owner yesterday at Hicks'."
Lester looked at me expectantly.
I put down my coffee cup. "A man named Frank Bellarosa." There was a moment of silence, then Judy said contemplatively, "That name sounds familiar…" She turned to Lester, who was looking at me to see if I was joking. Lester finally asked, "The Frank Bellarosa?"
"Yes."
Lester didn't respond for a while, probably waiting for his stomach to unknot, then cleared his throat and asked, "Did you speak to him?" "Yes. Nice chap, actually."
"Well, he may have been with you, but -"
Judy finally connected the name. "The gangster! The Mafia boss!"
A few heads at other tables turned towards us.
"Yes," I replied.
"Here? I mean, next door to you?"
"Yes."
Lester asked, "How do you feel about that?"
I thought a moment and made a truthful reply. "I'd rather have one gangster next door than fifty nouveau-riche stockbrokers with their screaming kids, lawn mowers, and smoking barbecues." Which, when I said it aloud, made sense. Only I wish I hadn't said it aloud. No telling how it would be misinterpreted or misquoted as it made the rounds.
Lester Remsen looked at me, then went back to his apple pie. Judy spoke to Susan without opening her mouth. "Would you pass the cream?" Susan replied without so much as a throat flutter – I think the sound came out of her nose – "Of course, dear."
I caught Susan's eye, and she winked at me, which made me feel better. I didn't feel sorry for what I'd said, but I wished I had remembered that Lester is a stockbroker.
The problems were beginning.