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.”
Touché. 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 storm trooper, 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 red 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 servants’ 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 neighbor 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 neighborhood, 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 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 neighbor. 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.
Five
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 splendor, 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 center, which is why we go to neighboring 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 as 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 judgmental. 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 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, i
s 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 this 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 toward 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.