The more time he spent with Deirdre, the more he thought about Emmelina Godine. In the anxious, self-centered, hormonally enervating years that followed his brief time as her “backstage boy,” Nick had almost forgotten about her. Recently, he had looked her up on the Internet and dropped a few heartbeats when he discovered that she had only just died: of a septic infection while traveling with her husband in Nepal. According to the Guardian obit, she had retired from the stage two years after Nick met her, to marry a Scotsman who invested in coffee plantations. She was survived by a son, James—one year older than Nick—whom she had lost in a custody battle with his father, a married film director with whom she’d had a scandalous affair.
On their third interminable day of waiting cliffside beneath a portable awning, clothing and makeup as stifling as divers’ neoprene suits in the heat, Nick asked Deirdre if she had ever met Emmelina Godine.
Deirdre groaned, and for an instant Nick thought she must have felt some actual sudden pain: stung by a bee or, God forbid, bitten by a snake. “Oh, Em,” she said. “Poor star-crossed Em. Was her life ever grist for the mill.”
“What do you mean?” asked Nick.
“I met her when she was just clear of that disastrous fling with Gus Whitehall. What a schmuck. Nothing but a backwoods greaseball under all that Armani. Whitehall? More like white trash. So there she was, single, with a two-year-old, and the subject of pure…venom in the tabloids. I mean venom. All that tiresome home-wrecker crap. We were in a forgettable movie about New York in the Roaring Twenties. And was I ever roaring back then. I probably didn’t have much real sympathy for her—how little I knew of what the future held for me!—but I liked her. Or I felt sorry for her. Not sure I was nice enough then to honestly like anybody….After that, she went back to London, hoping to make life as a mother work with a return to the stage. Desdemona, Titania, Electra; dusty classics at the Old Vic. But wherever she went, the harpies nipped at her heels. Along with Whitehall’s goon squad of lawyers.”
He asked Deirdre if that was why Emmelina had left acting, married a rich expat, fled the country.
Deirdre smirked at him, carving fissures in her makeup. “Now what do you think, bear cub? Or hell, what do I know? Maybe she found true love. There comes a point when you’ll trade anything for that. But what makes you think of her? You’d have been too young to see her act. And she never made a decent film. None that I know of, at least.”
“But I knew her. A little.” He felt a tug of remorse as he told Deirdre about his odd apprenticeship. “I was so thoughtless. I let the acquaintance slip away.”
“You were a little boy,” Deirdre said tartly. “What do little boys know? That’s one of the reasons she chose you. You would never judge her; wouldn’t even know what to judge her for. And you were a passing consolation. I hate to think about that boy of hers, how he was probably turned against her. Who knows what became of him? Barbaric, those tug-of-wars.” She paused. “Hm. Tugs-of-war? What do you think?”
And as they made their way back to the set, summoned for yet another take (the sun having achieved the precise altitude and angle of radiance desired by the cinematographer), Nick remembered how, when she had spotted him in the back of the theater that very first day, Ms. Godine had briefly mistaken him for somebody else, quite logically for another boy just about his age and stature.
Eight
THURSDAY
The house feels both too large and too small—and too dark. Its comforts have begun to chafe, a rough-knit sweater worn against skin. The trees block the circulating air as much as they shade the roof.
The heat and humidity are abruptly oppressive, August in early June. The picket fence at the front of the property has broken out in verdant acne, a mossy flocking that even bleach will not remove. Tommy called the painter they’ve used in the past, but his number is obsolete. If Morty were still around, he might joke that it’s an omen. Did she depend on Morty for humor? Is she wilting for want of laughter?
Once, she would have moved her laptop to the screened porch, found minor relief in its deep breezy shade. But she avoids the porch now because it looks directly onto the slate terrace where Morty fell to his death, where she waited, with his body, for help. She hasn’t even bothered to dust the pollen from the tables and chairs, never mind put out the cushions.
After too much vacillation, she made up the sofa bed in the den. Ordinarily, she would give him the guest room on the attic level—a slant-ceilinged loft with old quilts and hooked rugs (and the only air conditioner in the house)—but “ordinarily” does not apply. Tommy dislikes the idea of the actor sleeping above her. Why? It makes no sense; so little does.
I am going a little mad, she thinks. What would the actor say? A wee bit daft? A tad round the bend? His voice has seeped its way into her consciousness, from which it wafts up like the teasing scent of an expensive perfume. (She is dogged in particular by the courteous lilt of his request “May I possibly trouble you to show me the drawings of Ivo?” To which she had had to reply that, no, alas, they were temporarily on loan to a museum in the city.)
She shouldn’t be preoccupied with Nicholas Greene—he’s just a convenient, even ludicrous distraction—but she rationalizes that once his visit is past, she can bear down on the too many tasks she’s avoiding: that “temporary loan,” to name just one. For the past two nights, she’s awakened in what Morty called the netherland of night, sweaty despite her window fan, startled by dreams involving actors whose movies she doesn’t even know all that well….During intermission at a play in New York, she searches for the rest room. She goes up one staircase, but no. She hurries back down and enters a dim hallway. It leads her to a door that opens onto a stone terrace in broad daylight. Waiting for her there is Woody Harrelson. He wants to show her a beautiful tattoo on his forearm: it looks like a pirate map, a guide to finding buried treasure. Woody asks her, tenderly, if she has any children. She wonders if he is going to ask her to have children with him. In the dream, she’s not too old to consider it.
Last night it was Ben Stiller—not at all the comic, bug-eyed Ben Stiller but a sorrowful version, haunted, soft-spoken. He was in the kitchen while she was making dinner for Morty. He told Tommy that she didn’t need to give him any food, but he needed her to help him learn his lines. He was playing Hamlet. Maybe he wasn’t up for it after all.
She woke with a fiercely protective feeling toward Ben, as if his career depended on Tommy.
She got out of bed and went to the bathroom, drank a glass of water, and stared for a few minutes out the window, just to stitch herself back into the real world. The outer night was still, trees motionless around the stern silhouette of Morty’s studio. Yet when she returned to sleep, she was once again in the kitchen, and Morty was sitting down to dinner. She asked him if he had seen Ben Stiller on his way in. He told her that wasn’t possible. Hadn’t she read in the paper that Stiller was undergoing pancreatic surgery? In fact, he might have already died. They must check the obituaries the following day.
Again she awoke, and she had to fight the compulsion to go downstairs, turn on her computer, and search for breaking news about Ben Stiller.
In the heavy air of a morning that foretells a blazing afternoon, these absurdist dreams hover, like the musk of an animal that passed the house before dawn.
Lethargy, she thinks. “Whatever you do, do not let me turn lethargic,” Morty told her after Soren died. “Mourning is like quicksand.”
Well, now she knows.
It is beyond time to answer certain calls. Too late, she also realizes that it was a mistake to put off the “private” memorial at the Metropolitan Museum, allowing the public ceremony in the park to upstage it in the press. Not that she cares about Morty getting publicity—what does publicity matter anymore?—but the Times covered the Central Park gathering on Sunday. Tommy was a coward not to go, and had she gone, perhaps the reporter would have spoken to her—instead of Meredith Galarza.
From all the balloons, picn
ic baskets and conspicuous gaiety, you’d never know it’s a funeral you’ve come to attend, nor does the whimsical setting—Central Park’s Alice in Wonderland statue—lend itself readily to mourning. The sky, however, seems clued in on the gravity of the occasion: to the west, dense pewter-colored clouds loom above the San Remo’s imperial towers, and distant baritone grumblings hint at an incoming storm.
Mort Lear, regarded by many parents, scholars and artists the world over as the greatest twentieth-century author-illustrator of children’s books, died less than two weeks ago, and it is his legacy that easily four hundred people have gathered to celebrate, the joy his words and pictures have given to millions of children in dozens of languages. “Mort’s spirit was totally unique, I mean totally,” says Katelyn Biggs, the owner of Tumnus and Friends, a children’s bookstore in the West Village.
Ms. Biggs is holding a copy of the immortal picture book “Colorquake,” from which she will read to open the ceremony. Even the most celebrated authors of children’s books can stroll the city incognito, so it’s only thanks to Ms. Biggs that a reporter can discern who’s who among those milling about sculptor José de Creeft’s beloved landmark.
Tommy skims the cataloging of Mort’s fellow authors who showed up—a few of them anything but friends, probably there to gloat. This part, the obligatory gauntlet of so-sorries and what-a-losses, she is definitely glad she did not have to endure. There will be plenty of suspect condolences at the official event.
Also in attendance is a clear exception to the rule of authorial anonymity: Stuart Scheinman, better known as the iconoclastic Shine. Mr. Scheinman would be the first to say he cultivates a high-volume rebel persona, his body a Maori-like canvas for ornamentation of his own design. Here, too, is Meredith Galarza, chief curator of the Contemporary Book Museum, whose planned relocation and expansion are rumored to hinge on a major bequest from Mort Lear. “We’re in negotiations with his estate,” she comments.
Mr. Scheinman approaches Ms. Galarza and greets her with a high five. The two of them look up, simultaneously, when thunder sounds. “Mort, you can be sure of it,” says Mr. Scheinman. “Checking in with us from that honking big story hour up in the sky.” A fully tattooed arm shoots upward in salute….
What hogwash. If Morty was commenting from the heavens, it would have been in vehement protest of Stuart’s presence. Whose idea was that? Then again, why shouldn’t Katelyn want to sell a few books? What no one knows is that, twice, Morty gave her large infusions of cash when Tumnus was on life support.
Franklin called yesterday to tell Tommy that he’s received an “inquiry” from a lawyer representing the museum. Tommy has found nothing in any of Morty’s correspondence with Meredith to indicate that he made contractual commitments.
“Even quasi-contractual could land us in court,” says Franklin. He isn’t sure yet what the museum’s lawyer has to say, but Franklin wants to send an assistant over to the studio to go through Morty’s file cabinets as well as the computer files.
The one thing she did accomplish was writing Dani a note. She matched his caution, thanking him for being in touch, telling him how beautiful the baby is, saying how much she looks forward to meeting him but how tied up she is in carrying out Lear’s complicated wishes (which she was careful not to specify), attending to the details of turning a life into a legacy. She did not mention their falling-out or, on the other hand, suggest a reunion.
All that, too, is hogwash. This past week, Tommy has felt as if she is proving herself, over and over again, to be an emotional coward—to her mind, the worst kind of coward there is.
Is she somehow afraid of Dani, of the bitterness he seemed to exude the last time she saw him? She still does not understand why he withheld so much from her. Would it have been different if he had come right out and told her about the failure of the bike shop? Did he think she’d just issue a bossy-big-sister I told you so? He might have asked her to make him a loan to prop up the business—though she wonders if she would have had enough money. (Now she has more than enough. Way more than enough. Honking way more than enough, as that blowhard Shine would say.)
Or maybe, when Dani came out for a weekend last fall, that’s what he had in mind, asking for her help. But he never got up the nerve. Instead, he picked fights with her. It started within an hour of his arrival, in the kitchen, as Tommy made dinner for the three of them—though at first his minor taunting was almost pleasant. The little digs he took at her proficiency were part of a role, Fraternal Thorn in the Side, one he seemed to adopt reflexively to mask the awkwardness of two very different siblings reuniting after months apart.
“Remember when I moved in with you?” He was spinning lettuce while Tommy grated ginger. “You couldn’t make instant oatmeal back then.”
“I wasn’t that bad,” Tommy said. “By then I was cooking for Morty. I had a few tricks up my sleeve.”
“By now you must have a few thousand. Like, how many years have you been his kitchen wench?”
“I like cooking,” she said.
“Are you going to tell me it’s ‘therapeutic’?”
“You know what? Yes. It is. When I’m alone in the kitchen.” On the stress, she turned and gave Dani a teasing look.
He poured the lettuce from the spinner into a china bowl.
“Do you know how to make dressing?” Tommy asked him.
“Maybe the one thing Mom managed to teach us both.” He went to the refrigerator, the cupboard, found his ingredients without speaking. And then, after he’d set them on the counter, he said, “Jane’s pregnant.”
Tommy set down the grater and turned toward her brother. “Oh God. Oh Dani.” Even news of an engagement would have been a momentous surprise.
“You sound like I just told you Jane died.”
“No! It’s wonderful!” She hugged him, although she felt his physical resistance. When she stepped back, she wondered at the look on his face. “It is, isn’t it?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” He leaned against the counter, arms crossed, knees locked.
“Dani, don’t do the petulant thing, not now. I just somehow thought—”
“That we’d get married first?”
“Well, I suppose if Mom and Dad were alive—”
“Not like you’re in a very conventional situation yourself, Toms.”
“Dani, I’m thrilled for you. I love Jane. She’ll be a terrific mother.”
“She will.” He sighed. “But you don’t even really know her, Tommy. You never come into the city these days, not since we dealt with Dad’s stuff. We’ve seen you like, what, twice in the past year?”
“More than that.” Why was he being so hostile? “And Dani, the train runs both ways. You know you can visit here whenever you like. Why didn’t you bring her this weekend?”
“I told you. She’s putting in extra hours tomorrow. We need to squirrel away as much money as we possibly can. And just so you know, we’re planning on making it legal. City hall, roses from the deli. Betrothal on a budget. Things aren’t as…The point is, we’re trying to be adults. Or I am. She already is one.”
“She shouldn’t exhaust herself, though. I mean, not now.”
“Jane’s not made of porcelain, Tommy. Pregnancy’s hardly an illness.”
The conversation went on in this prickly way, Tommy bewildered to find herself on the defensive, until Morty arrived in the kitchen. Morty was in a good mood, his cheer the antidote they needed. Over dinner, he told Dani about a recent appearance he’d made on a children’s television show. “They made me sing and dance. Specifically, the polka. I made the mistake of watching it afterward. I look like Burl Ives. Christ. I am officially old.”
“That you’d even think of Burl Ives makes you old,” said Tommy.
She and Dani laughed, remembering the Burl Ives records their father had played for them as small children. “And Pete Seeger.” In a flash, Tommy pictured the turntable their father had given them one Christmas, its case of red plastic textured t
o look like alligator hide.
“And Woody Guthrie.” Dani held his soup spoon to his mouth, as if it were a mike, and sang a twangy verse of “This Land Is Your Land.”
“I used to thank God Dad never played the banjo,” he said after less than a verse earned him jeers.
“You were lucky. Not much music in my childhood.” Morty sounded wistful.
“Careful what you wish for,” said Dani, at which he and Tommy fell into a competitive hilarity, trying to call up the lyrics of their father’s silliest songs.
So by the time they went to bed, Tommy felt as if they’d made it over the rocky start of their fitting together again—not that she could fool herself into thinking they had ever been close.
In the morning, she woke to find that Dani was already up, in the studio with Morty. She let them be. She also decided that she would take Dani out to dinner at the bistro in the village center. Morty could fend for himself.
After lunch, Tommy went outside. It was time to put the garden to bed for the winter. She would do the final pruning, cut back the long-stemmed perennials. Next weekend, Morty would compost the beds and blanket them in salt hay. Dani volunteered to help, but Tommy liked performing this ritual herself.
“Why don’t you go inside and build a fire? Call Jane. Or just have a rest,” suggested Tommy. “Not long and you won’t have much time for that.”