A Season in Purgatory (21 page)

“What do you hear from Constant?” asked Mr. Fanning.

“I just had a letter from Mrs. Bradley,” replied Harrison, and he began to fill Mr Fanning in on the news of Maureen’s wedding, not wanting it to appear that the Bradley friendship was severed.

“Yes, I was there,” said Mr. Fanning. “When the cardinal said, ‘I now pronounce you man and wife,’ there were cheers and whoops and yells and stamping of feet from all the brothers and sisters. I’d never heard anything like it in
church before. It was more like a political convention than a Mass.”

“It’s the family way. They do those things,” said Harrison.

While in a taxicab in Rome, he pulled up in front of the Grand Hotel during a torrential rainstorm. Standing there, desperate for a cab, waving frantically, were the newlyweds Maureen and Freddy Tierney. Maureen, holding an umbrella, was dressed in black to the ground, her hair covered by a black lace mantilla. Harrison did not need to be told they were on their way to the Vatican for an audience with the Pope. For an instant his eyes connected with Freddy’s before he told his driver that he had meant the Hassler Hotel, not the Grand, and the cab drove on.

“I could have sworn I just saw that friend of Constant’s who never says a word,” said Freddy. “What’s his name?”

“Harrison. Harrison Burns. Ungrateful little creep. Ma said he didn’t even send us a wedding present, after all my family did for him,” replied Maureen. “We’re going to be late, Freddy. I told you to hire a car and driver. Oh, no, you said. There’s always plenty of cabs. Ha ha ha. My shoes are soaked. Look, there’s someone getting out of a cab. Run, Freddy.”

When the summer ended, he was preparing to return to begin Yale. He dreaded his reunion with Constant. The secret they shared had driven a wedge between them. Then, mercifully, came the call from Detective Stein to tell him that the slayers of his parents had been arrested. It was not sleuthing that had solved the case. Two youths had been caught in a holdup at a 7-Eleven store, and the story of the Burns murders in Ansonia had come out.

“When will you be coming back?” asked Detective Stein.

“I wasn’t planning to come back,” replied Harrison.
The sentence came out of his mouth, unbidden. No such thought had crossed his mind until that moment.

“Oh?” Stein was surprised.

“I am taking courses at the Uffizi.”

“I heard from your aunt Gert that you were going to Yale in September.”

“No. There has been a change of plans.”

“How long will you stay over there?”

“Until after the trial.”

“That could be the better part of a year.”

“That’s how long I am going to stay.”

“Don’t you want to see these guys?”

“No.”

“Your aunt Gert worries about you.”

“Tell her I’m fine.”

Like everyone else, Harrison Burns had read of the social and business triumphs of the family that had mesmerized him for so long, but he never discussed them. Their name rarely passed his lips. Claire, his wife, had an aversion to the family, too. He had been married to her for over a year before he discovered, quite by chance, that she had been one of the ten bridesmaids in Maureen Bradley’s wedding. She was reading aloud to him at breakfast the obituary in the
Times
of Cora Mandell, the famous decorator.

“ ‘She was legendary for her taste and for a client list that over the years featured such names as Phipps, Vanderbilt, Guest, Rockefeller, Niarchos, Onassis, and Bradley,’ ” read Claire. “ ‘It was at the wedding of Maureen Bradley in 1973 that she took her terrible fall from the top of a ladder while pinning a French toile lining to the tent, breaking both her legs.’ ”

Claire put down the paper.

“Is that the end of the obituary?” asked Harrison.

“No, there’s more,” said Claire. “I remember that, when old Cora Mandell fell off the ladder. It was the night before the wedding. I was a bridesmaid in that wedding.”

“You were?” asked Harrison. There was astonishment in his voice. “You were a bridesmaid in Maureen Bradley’s wedding?”

“Yes.”

“You never told me that.”

“It didn’t occur to me to tell you. It was not a major event of my life. Besides, I never mention the Bradleys.”

“Why?”

“A bad memory.”

“What? Tell me.”

“The old man, Gerald, wandered the halls on the night before the wedding and came into my room and got into bed with me. Put his hands all over me. It was revolting. Practically raped me. Thank God he came before he got it in me. I threatened to scream if he didn’t get out. He was terrified of Grace hearing me and left. I stayed through the wedding itself, not to cause a ruckus. There he was in the cathedral with his silver rosary beads and his eyes closed while the papal blessing was being read by their in-house cardinal. I wanted to puke at the hypocrisy.”

Harrison nodded.

“I snuck out before the reception. I left my bridesmaid’s dress in a wastebasket in the room where I slept. Seven hundred bucks it cost. Quite a lot for a bridesmaid’s dress. Especially back then. It was very pretty. I could have worn it again as an evening dress, but I didn’t want to. I’ve never seen Maureen again. Not even a Christmas card. But the old man sent me a mink coat. Hush money, I suppose.”

“From Revillon Frères?”

“How in the world did you know that, Harrison?”

“Did you keep it?” he asked.

“Of course I kept it, but I never wrote a thank-you note.”

“How did you even know Maureen?”

“I met her in Florida one winter. I was really a friend of the guy she married,” said Claire. “Freddy Tierney.”

“Did you send her an announcement when you married me?” Harrison asked.

“No. I wasn’t the first friend of the Bradley sisters that their father tried to poke. I always thought the girls knew and closed their eyes to it. Why?”

“I knew them, too.”

“You never told me that, Harrison,” said Claire. “But there’s so much about you you don’t talk about.”

“That’s what you get for taking up with a younger man,” said Harrison.

“Yes. A glum, somber younger man. Where did you know the Bradleys?”

“I knew Constant at Milford. I sometimes went to Scarborough Hill for weekends.”

“Do you keep in touch?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Schoolboy friendship. No more. Outgrew it, I suppose. I went to Europe after graduation and never saw him again.”

“He’s so good-looking. I’ll say that for him. In the family they all said he was going to be president one day. Maybe he will. Who knows? I remember all the bridesmaids were mad about him. They all wanted to dance with him. He was a wonderful dancer. And he gave the funniest toast the night before at the bridal dinner at that club they belong to.”

“The Country Club. Capital
T
on the
The
. They made a big deal out of that,” said Harrison.

“Yes. But there was something odd about him. The local people avoided him, the Scarborough Hill people. At the
club, there was a bartender, I can’t remember his name. Corky, something like that. He told me about a murder that had taken place there some months before. A girl who was new to the city. And Constant had been dancing with her on the night of the murder. Did you know about that?”

“No. Listen, what time is it? I can’t be late.”

“Yes, yes, run off, Harrison. You always seem to be running off when there is the slightest thing to discuss that might help us to get to know each other better. Imagine that we are only now discovering that we both know the Bradleys, and know them rather well. What does that say about us?”

Harrison laughed. “Listen, you married an orphan. I don’t have a past story. Only Aunt Gert. And she’s in St. Mary’s Home, and gaga.”

They had been married for over a year. She had come along with an editor from his publishing house to the launch party of his first book, an indictment of the Wall Street financier Elias Renthal, who was serving six years in Danbury for his part in an insider trading scandal.

“I’m so glad you nailed Renthal,” said Claire, when she was introduced. “Awful what those awful men are doing.”

She was tall, grave, intelligent looking, and, finally, pretty. “But I must say I felt sorry for poor Mrs. Renthal,” she added. “She seemed quite decent.”

“I liked her, although she wouldn’t be interviewed,” replied Harrison. Someone else was waiting to speak to him, but Claire was in no hurry to move on.

“I saw on your book jacket you went to Brown,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I went to Brown, too.”

“Really?”

“Ahead of you by several years.”

A photographer hired by the publisher asked them to turn and face him, and took their picture. “Be talking,” he instructed them. He thought they were together. The next night they dined together. And the next he stayed overnight with her. At Christmas he went to Philadelphia with her to visit her family. In February she told him she was pregnant. In April they were married by a judge in New York City. In July the twins were born.

“You think of the names,” Claire said.

“I like Timothy,” Harrison replied.

“Yes, that’s quite nice. What about the other? Ralph?”

“Oh, no, not Ralph. Robert? Rory? Charles? Why not Charles? One of my favorite characters in fiction was called Charles.”

“Charles Ryder, I bet,” said Claire.

“That’s right.” He smiled at her.

“All right. Timothy and Charles. Timmy and Charlie. We’ll have to face the nicknames eventually. Still okay? I think they’re quite nice names. Tell me something, Harrison? Would you have married me if I hadn’t been pregnant?”

“What a ridiculous question.”

“What a nonanswer.”

One night, when they were in bed, sleeping, the telephone rang. Claire, groping in the dark, picked it up.

“Hello? Hello?”

“I would like to speak to Harrison Burns please,” said the voice on the other end.

Claire reached for the light switch and turned on the bedside lamp. It was two-fifteen in the morning.

“Could you call Mr. Burns back in the morning please,” she said. “It’s very late, and my husband is asleep.”

“No, I must speak to him now,” said the voice.

“Who is this speaking?”

“You won’t know me.”

“Then I can’t wake up my husband.”

“Your husband will know me.”

“May I have your name?”

“Diego Suarez. He might remember me as Fruity.”

Claire Burns had never heard of Diego Suarez, or Fruity Suarez, but there were many people in her husband’s life whom she didn’t know. “Fruity Suarez?” she repeated, incredulously.

Harrison, lying next to her, had been listening with his eyes closed, trying not to wake up, knowing that awakening would mean that he would not get back to sleep, but when he heard Claire repeat the name
Fruity Suarez
, his body jerked into full awareness.

“I’ll take it,” he said. “No, put him on hold, and I’ll take it in the other room. I don’t want to disturb you.”

“No, Harrison, take it here. I’m already awake. Who is he?”

“Someone from school.”

“Can’t he call you in the morning? It’s absurd for anyone to call at this hour.”

He took the telephone from her without replying. “Hello?” Claire was struck by the hesitation in his voice.

“Hello, Harry,” said Fruity.

“My word, what a surprise. It’s been years,” said Harrison.

“Seventeen. On March sixth, the anniversary of the day I was kicked out of Milford for conduct unbecoming, it will be eighteen.”

“What can I do for you?”

“You’ve done well. I read you. I watch you.”

“Surely this is not a fan’s call.”

“No, no it’s not, Harry.” There was a long pause.

“Are you calling from New York?”

“No.”

“Where then?”

“Chicago. Did I ever tell you about a cousin of mine on my mother’s side called Maud Firth?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“A charming young woman. A little wild, maybe, but charming.”

“Yes?”

“This evening an unfortunate situation occurred in a hotel room in Chicago, and Maud’s head was split open, requiring seventeen stitches.”

“I don’t see what this has to do with me, Fruity.”

“It was Constant Bradley who caused Cousin Maud’s head to require seventeen stitches.”

“Dear God.”

“They met at a polo match in Lake Forest. There was drinking. They went to a hotel room. There was a misunderstanding. Maud tried to leave. Constant knocked her down, and she hit her head.”

Harrison, breathing heavily, did not reply.

“Are you there?” asked Fruity.

“Yes.”

“Maud was afraid to tell her parents, so she came to me, her disreputable cousin, the family disgrace, who would be shocked at nothing, who just happened to be visiting the city.”

“I still don’t know what this has to do with me,” said Harrison.

“I felt this was information that you should have. There was that murky business in Scarborough Hill all those years ago. What was her name? Winifred Utley?”

Harrison, aghast, did not reply.

“Are you surprised I know that? Country club gossip travels from club to club, you know, especially when it involves
a handsome, rich polo player with political ambitions. I was merely wondering if there was a pattern of behavior being established here. You are, after all, on the side of law and order in everything you write. It is what people say about you.”

“Is that all, Fruity?”

“No. I always knew he had a mean streak beneath all that charm and billion-dollar smile. I was the one he pissed on at Milford. I do mean pissed on, literally. Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any idea how that made me feel?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, I kept up a brave front. I’ve kept up a brave front all my life. I laughed with the rest of you. But I saw the look on his face. I saw those sapphire blue eyes turn mean.”

“I’m sorry about your cousin.”

When he hung up the telephone, he turned and looked at Claire. She looked back at him, questioningly. He picked up her hand and held it. “Claire,” he said.

“What is it, Harrison?”

“I wonder if you would do me an enormous favor.”