A Season in Purgatory (31 page)

She smiled at him in the mirror, pleased by his look. “What are you thinking?”

“I want to kiss you there.”

“Where?”

“Your neck. Your throat.”

“This is nice, Harrison. I like your leisurely pace. Cheever was always so quick.”

“Where did the flowers come from?” he asked.

“Me. It’s so monklike here. Only basics. I wanted to dress it up a bit,” said Kitt.

“There’s a photograph of the twins.”

“But not in a frame. Just thumbtacked.”

“There’s books.”

“Yes, lots of books, but no bookcase.”

“I guess it’s only temporary, until I know where my life’s going.”

“I’m not complaining, you know. I’m getting rather fond of the monk look. We’ve always lived in decorated rooms, where the fringe on the pillows matches the color of the walls. Ma likes her rooms decorated.”

“I remember.”

“I love you, Harrison.”

“Don’t.”

“Oh, yes, let me. If I get hurt, I get hurt. So what?”

“Oh, Kitt.”

“The lunch went well, I hear,” said Kitt.

“That’s what you heard?” asked Harrison, surprised.

“That’s what Pa said. Didn’t it?”

“Inconclusive, I felt. Your father is not one to take no for an answer, and I said no.”

“He said you really hate Jerry.”

“That part of the account is accurate.”

“Pa said to tell you he’ll send the helicopter to fly you to Southampton over the weekend. You’ve never seen that house. It’s divine. Everyone will be there, the whole family. Like a reunion.”

Harrison groaned inaudibly.

“You could try to show a little enthusiasm, Harrison. A lot of people would die happy to get there.”

“What’s your life like out there?” asked Harrison.

“We’re popular with movie stars, and politicians, and English lords and ladies when they want a free place to stay during their American visit, but the nice people never seem to like us wherever we move, no matter how big our houses are or how available we make our tennis courts to them,” said Kitt.

“I would have thought that would have passed by now,” said Harrison.

“Oh, no,” replied Kitt. “I don’t know why, but we’ve never really been accepted anywhere. It upsets Ma, you know. She’d love to be on all those committees and boards, not just the Catholic ones. Pa always says we’re enough unto ourselves, the family, but that’s only a front. They mind. They really do. But they’d never say it. You will go, Harrison? Please?”

“Will you be in the helicopter with me?”

“No. I don’t want Ma to suspect anything. I’ll drive out with her and some of Maureen’s kids. There’s something else, Harrison.”

“And that is?”

“There must be no you-know-what under Ma’s roof. Not even looks across the room.”

“I wasn’t planning on exposing myself,” he said.

She laughed. “You can expose yourself now, if you want. I’ll even help with the zipper.”

“A call came in while I was here waiting for you,” said Kitt.

“Did you answer it?” asked Harrison.

“Of course not. But I listened to the machine. Someone called Eloise Brazen. She called to tell you that Rupert du
Pithon died this morning. She went in to show the apartment to a rock and roll man from Hollywood, and Rupert was dead in bed.”

“Ah, poor Rupert,” said Harrison.

“I met Rupie a few times. In Southampton. In Beverly Hills. Wherever there was a party, there he was, talking about
placement
. Silly man.”

“Perhaps. I liked him. I wrote his obituary for him. He’s the guy who got me in to see Esme Bland.”

“I ran into a relation of yours last week,” said Harrison.

“Let me guess. Fatty Malloy.”

“No.”

“Then it must have been Sis Malloy.”

“No.”

“I don’t think we have any other relatives. It must have been an impostor. Who?”

“Rosleen Bradley.”

“Rosleen Bradley? I don’t know a Rosleen Bradley.”

“Yes, you do. She was a maid in your mother’s house in Scarborough Hill.”

“Oh,
Rosleen
. Who opened the doors, who passed the peas, as Mother used to say. Oh, yes, who married Desmond for ten minutes, didn’t she? I’d almost forgotten about Rosleen. She wasn’t with us long, you know. Don’t tell me she calls herself Bradley, for God’s sake? The nerve! Miss Whatever-her-name-is, Ma always called her. Even Bridey thought she was impertinent, and Bridey was related to her. Cardinal had the marriage annulled immediately.”

“She lives in Arizona.”

“That doesn’t make her a relation, Harrison. I just said the marriage was annulled. She’s nothing to us.”

“She has a son by Desmond. That makes him your nephew.”

“You can’t be serious!”

“He’s twenty. Rosleen calls him Desi.”

“Desi? You mean, like Desi Arnaz?” she asked.

“He was the valedictorian of his class in the local high school. He’s a freshman at Arizona State. He’s going to be a journalist.”

“I don’t believe it. Probably a trick to get money. People know who we are. They know there is money. They think of our money as a bottomless pit,” said Kitt. “All these people living off the fat of the land on our money.”

“I would hardly call it the fat of the land,” said Harrison. “Rosleen is a dental technician. She gets a couple of thousand a month from Sims Lord. That’s all. She got the job to support the boy.”

“I don’t believe it,” she said again.

“I saw him. He’s Des’s kid, all right. Same dimpled chin. All those big white Bradley teeth. A head that will never go bald. Believe me, this is a Bradley.”

“I don’t think it would be a good idea to bring that up this weekend,” said Kitt.

“I hadn’t planned to.”

The Bradley house in Southampton, palatial and Florentine in design, had been built in the 1920s by a railroad baron whose wastrel and impoverished descendants were forced to sell it for a pittance in the 1950s to a girls’ school that subsequently went out of business in the 1980s. There had been talk of pulling it down. It was not a practical house by the standards of the day. The halls were as large as rooms and the corridors as wide as galleries. There were fourteen bedrooms, a ballroom, a garage for twelve cars, a guesthouse, a gardener’s cottage, and three small houses on the property. The tall windows on the first floor looked out on a formal garden of clipped boxwood hedges, all-white flowers, and weather-beaten statues of the baroque period.

It was here that Gerald Bradley moved his family each year from spring through fall. Sally Steers, who took over as president of Cora Mandell’s decorating firm after Cora’s death, had been called in to put the Bradley house in order. Peach and green were the colors decided upon for the downstairs reception rooms. “Not green green, more celadon green. Keep it bright. Keep it airy,” dictated Sally, as she marched through the house, notepad and gold pencil in hand, talking very fast. “There’s plenty of room for dancing
in the front hall, if it’s dancing you want. Turn the ballroom into a projection room. You can run pictures and everyone will want to come. I’ll have some marvelous sofas made up, ten feet long, rows of them, covered in, oh, I’ll find you something wonderful, maybe in coral. And sisal on the floor. Divine, don’t you think? Now here, on the loggia, do all your entertaining. It will be marvelous for lunches, marvelous for dinners. Six, twelve, or thirty-six, it won’t matter. There’s a bamboo auction coming up at Christie’s. I’ve seen the catalog. Heavenly. I’ll find you some wonderful things there. And lots and lots of wicker, and some wonderful wrought-iron tables on all the terraces. Billowy curtains, very sheer, on all the windows, will blow in the breeze when the French doors are open. It’ll be divine, formal but very informal, if you know what I mean. Perfect for summer.” Grace agreed to everything. Sally Steers, at almost sixty, had become formidable, taking on all the mannerisms of the late great Cora.

The single greatest decorating problem for Sally Steers was to find a location for the large color photograph of His Holiness the Pope that used to hang over the fireplace in the library of the house in Scarborough Hill. Grace insisted on a prominent place. “He came to tea with us, you know,” said Grace. She never tired of repeating the story. “He held Kitt on his lap.” But Sally didn’t want to hear the story again. “You can’t, can’t,
can’t
hang it in the loggia. Please, Grace. Not the drawing room, either,” moaned Sally. But Grace was adamant. Finally, reluctantly, the front hall was decided upon by Sally. It was hung over a console table that held a large platter of dark glasses.

As always with the Bradleys, there were difficulties with the clubs. As always, Gerald’s business dealings were badly looked upon by certain members of the old guard. The one club he could get in, the new one, he didn’t want to be in,
not wanting to be grouped together in people’s minds with the sort of members they took. Rather than risk the embarrassment and gossip of being blackballed, Gerald was advised by his lawyer, Sims Lord, who belonged to all the clubs, except the new one, to withdraw his application.

“No, no, it has nothing to do with your Catholicism,” said Sims, patiently. “You’re acting as if the world of ethnic limits in which you grew up is still in place, Gerald. It isn’t. Oh, I don’t mean it doesn’t exist. I mean it’s moved on to other persuasions than yours that are now scratching at the doors. Where you went wrong is that you’ve apparently had some bad business dealings with Webster Pryde, and Webster is vehement in his dislike of you, and Webster’s father and grandfather, all Prydes, were members of the club before Webster, so whatever Webster doesn’t want, the club doesn’t want either.”

Gerald knew when not to press. “What about golf then?” he asked.

“Guest arrangements can be made. I’ll take care of that,” said Sims.

“It’s important that the boys play golf. And Kitt and Maureen, too,” said Gerald.

“It will take a certain amount of planning each weekend, Gerald, but it can be worked out. You’ll be guests of this member one week and guests of that member another, and so on and so on. You’ll have to leave that up to me to handle in my own way. Here are the names of a few people you should start asking to your movie screenings. They all hate to wait in line outside the theater in the village.

The helicopter landed at the East Hampton airport. Harrison carried his canvas tote and hanger bag into the terminal and looked about. Constant was not there to meet
him. Nor was Charlie, the Bradleys’ chauffeur. Then a man approached him.

“Harrison, is that you? The old man sent me to meet you. I don’t know if you’ll remember me or not. I’m Johnny Fuselli.”

“Oh, hello, yes, I remember. Where’s Charlie? Kitt said Charlie would pick me up,” said Harrison.

“Charlie’s getting old. The old man gives him two days a week off now. If you want to know the truth, he gets nervous with Charlie driving in this Friday-afternoon traffic. The old man says all the wrong sort of people are coming out to the Hamptons these days, and the roads are blocked solid from Friday to Sunday nights. Day-trippers, he calls them. And then there’s these condo people. You got bags?”

“Just these. I’ll carry them. I always thought rich people’s helicopters landed on the lawns of their estates,” said Harrison.

“Neighbors complained. The Prydes. They kept calling the police. Grace complained, too. She said it ruined her hydrangeas. Pulled ’em right up by the roots. Old Gerald didn’t give a shit about the neighbors, but he stopped doing it for Grace’s sake. They’ve been married almost fifty years now, Gerald and Grace.”

“Yes, they’re an example,” said Harrison.

“They’re all getting old in that house. Bridey’s pushing seventy and still cooking three big ones a day. Now she’s got all these grandkids to feed, too. And she always remembers how every single one of them likes their eggs. And Maureen’s got some real brats, let me tell you. I probably shouldn’t have said that.”

“I’m not a talker,” said Harrison. They got into a Mercedes station wagon. “Nice car.”

“Charlie keeps the cars great. He polishes, he tunes up, he gasses, he checks the air in the tires,” said Johnny. “It’s
about a half hour’s drive to Southampton. Depending on the traffic.”

Harrison nodded. “Are you still such a swimmer?”

Fuselli grinned and turned to Harrison. “Hey, how’d you remember that?”

“I used to watch you through the field glasses that summer in Watch Hill. It seemed like you were swimming forever.”

“I can’t get over that, that you remember, famous guy like you.”

“I like to swim,” said Harrison.

“Yeah? I hear you write books now.”

“Yes.”

“What do you write about?”

“Criminals. Criminals who get away with things, mostly.”

Johnny looked at Harrison. They drove on in silence for a mile.

“Yeah, I still swim,” he said, finally. “Good for the gut. Chicks like a flat stomach. Have you noticed that?”

“Such a fact has recently been pointed out to me. By a woman in Arizona called Maxine Lonergan.”

“Maxine Lonergan! Now, there’s a name from the past,” said Johnny. On his face appeared a benign smile, the sort of smile that materializes on a man’s face when he hears the name of a woman with whom he once engaged in a pleasurable dalliance and from whom he has long parted, without rancor. “Where the hell did you meet Maxine Lonergan?”

“She lives on a ranch outside Nogales. A couple of thousand acres. Raises Santa Gertrudis cattle. She’s done all right for herself,” said Harrison.

“My God. Maxine Lonergan.” Johnny nodded his head at the memory. “I wonder whose balls she’s licking these days. Let me tell you something, Harry. Maxine Lonergan
was one of the all-time-great cocksuckers. On a scale of one to ten, she was about a thirty-six.”

“I think she would be touched that you remember her so fondly,” said Harrison.

“Maxine Lonergan, my God,” he said. “Just between us, strictly off the record, as you guys say, I fixed up Gerald with Maxine one time in Atlantic City. Old Gerald likes his nooky, you know, and he had a taste for fellatio. You know what that means, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Oh, of course you do, you being a writer and all. You’d be surprised how many guys don’t know.”