Crestmont (33 page)
“Did you pursue George after that?”
“No, I left. I really wanted to put it behind me and start over, but it gnaws at me sometimes.” Her left thumbnail dug grooves into her right palm.
“What you did was to remove the temptation from both of you so that they could have their happiness together. Am I correct, Grace?”
“I suppose.”
“That was an act of grace. You set out on your own so they could have their family—your parents, Lily, George, this baby.”
“But Lily had my address here. Why didn’t my parents try to find me?”
“Grace, I don’t understand why your parents would throw a wonderful woman like you away, but maybe they consider you a rebel and can’t accept that. There is something in the Bible that says we should live life that really is life. Are you happy with your life here?”
“Yes.”
“Then let go of your guilt. Don’t go back home, and for heaven’s sake, don’t go singing on the road for people who don’t know you. Sing if you want, but stay here with the people who love you.” Mrs. Cunningham proudly stacked each knitted strip on her lap.
Gracie wiped her eyes. Searching in the knitting basket for the huge needle she said, “Would you like me to sew those strips together now?”
Camden
,
New Jersey
1917
“Got you som
Sloan pushed a small box across the bar while PT refilled syrup bottles. “I remember you walking in here all scrawny when you were seventeen.”
PT nodded, opened the box, and pulled out an expensive pocket watch. He thanked Sloan and asked how the tournament had gone.
“I got the most strikes out of three games, plus the silver cup in
Atlantic City
.” Sloan smacked his palm on the bar in triumph.
“Then you should be the one getting the watch.”
“Nope. Couldn’t have concentrated on knocking down all those pins unless I knew you were back here holding down the fort.”
That evening, people clapped and cheered as balls cracked on the lanes, but PT made his own rhythm, improvising on a peppy Irving Berlin tune. Pipe smoke blurred his vision when he started another variation. “Great rhythmic sense, but your technique’s lousy.” A short, pudgy man with smeary reading glasses clacked his pipe between his back teeth and sat down next to him on the piano bench.
“Try this.” He brushed
PT’s
hands off the piano and played a bit of Beethoven. Annoyed, PT easily played it back.
“And this…” PT reluctantly relinquished the bench and slouched over the piano as the man’s dry, scaly hands sounded out a Russian piece with heavy dense chords in the middle of the piano, repeated in the bass. The man rose, gesturing toward the keyboard.
Marveling at what PT again reproduced he said, “What an ear. Like Hofmann.” Anchoring his thumb on
PT’s
first knuckle, he measured the finger span with his rough, reddened middle finger.
“Have you heard
Jozef
Hofmann, the Polish-American pianist?” PT shook his head blankly.
“He could play anything after hearing it once, but your hands are huge compared to his.” PT pulled his fingers away from the man’s grip.
While he cleaned his glasses on the lining of his open suit jacket, Thaddeus P. Fassbinder introduced himself as a professor of piano from
Temple
University
, gave a stern lecture about playing by ear, and arranged a lesson in his
Philadelphia
studio. “Up in the northern part of the city near Girard, that boarding school for orphans. The lesson would be gratis, of course. I just want to see what you can do under pressure.”
Intrigued, PT agreed to play for the teacher after work on Friday night. “I’ll set you up with some shoes so you can get to your bowling, Professor Fassbinder.”
“Don’t tell me you entertained the notion that I came in here to bowl. I was merely taking in some air and your playing lured me into this ludicrous facility of folly.” He pulled his business card out of the worn suit pocket, handed it to PT and shuffled out.
Three months. Crossing the Delaware River on ferries, sloshing through snow drifts, slush and ice on the streets of
Camden
and
Philadelphia
, back and forth between
Temple
University
and Sloan’s bowling alley. Professor Thaddeus P. Fassbinder guiding him through scales, finger exercises by some Austrian pianist named Czerny, compositions by Brahms, Bach and Mozart. Leaving each lesson smelling of pipe smoke with the sound of the professor’s pinched voice in his head saying this is what you were meant to do. Seeing the inside of a great concert hall for the first time when he went with Fassbinder to hear the great
Jozef
Hofmann at the
Academy
of
Music
. Staring at the music in front of him for hours, trying to master the technique. Sloan scratching his head with concern, asking PT if he was getting enough sleep. Listening to Fassbinder’s exhortations—any fool can improvise. You need the basics, you’re so musical, but your reading stinks. Fassbinder correcting
PT’s
finger position with his own eczema-covered hands. Fassbinder pushing him to forget the bowling alley and get a high school equivalency diploma at
Temple
’s night division. Fassbinder complaining—what a waste, you could play Liszt with those hands. Twenty years old. Practice, practice, practice. You’re way behind already.
Enough. PT up and decided he couldn’t take it anymore one Sunday while he sat in his apartment paging through the newspaper. He didn’t have the heart to leave Sloan, but Fassbinder had him in a vise, so he answered an ad for a blowing alley attendant at some swanky summer place up in the northern Allegheny’s. Hell, at least the guy’s name was only one syllable: Woods.
Eagles Mere,
Pennsylvania
1927
Leaving the comforting smell of bean and ham soup, Gracie
stood in the cold, pulling her navy wool coat tight around her. The newspaper boy had managed to get there, but not another soul had ventured out. Snow drifts covered the walk the boys from the Presbyterian Church had cleared just two hours ago. This was the fourth heavy snow in three weeks. Invigorated by the clean air, she wondered what Isaiah would have said about her idea to add onion to the soup. Onions, she had read, were good for colds, and she wanted Mrs. Cunningham’s to go away quickly. The wind died down and she heard an unfamiliar creaking sound. She moved over to the other side of the porch and listened. The noise was coming from above her head.
Mrs. Cunningham was napping on the sofa so Gracie tiptoed up the stairs, careful to skip the one that squeaked. Her bedroom was unusually dark because the snow had piled up against the bottom pane of her window. She went back down to the pantry and returned with the push broom. When she opened her bedroom window, the wet snow settled down into a crusty frozen wall. She pushed hard against it with the broom, but nothing happened. Turning the broom end around, she poked holes in the snow with the end. The wall collapsed a bit. She worked like this for a while until she was able to push the snow away from the window. Sweating from the effort, she unbuttoned her coat and let it drop to the floor.
Worried that the weight of the snow was putting a strain on the porch roof, she kept working until she could push some off onto the ground. Random thoughts came as she worked. How much she missed Dorothy. Eleanor’s leaf scrapbook. Wishing she could get over her fear of the water. How unappetizing the creamed hard-boiled eggs on toast she had made Monday looked until she put the paprika and parsley on the top.
PT’s
Christmas card apologizing for not saying goodbye and how angry she was for caring. Feeling cozy under the covers as she read Robert Frost poems in her tiny bedroom at night. Mrs. Cunningham talking about trading loss for happiness.
Before she knew it, she was kneeling on the porch roof on a path she had cleared. She climbed back down into her room and grabbed a blanket so her knees wouldn’t freeze. She worried about her added weight on the roof. Kneeling on the blanket, she worked until she pushed some snow over the edge onto the ground.
“Whoa, there, girl. Just stay put. I’ll get my roof rake,” Mr.
Glaubner
from the Eagles Mere Inn next door shouted to her. He had on fishing boots and a fur-stuffed leather hat with ear flaps. Gracie kept pushing while she waited.
“I saw you up there on the roof from my kitchen window. Go back inside. I’ll pull it down from out here,” he said, hoisting the rake up from the side of the house.
Gracie went back down and kicked snow drifts aside so she could watch from the front walk. Big hunks of wet snow thudded on the ground as Mr.
Glaubner
pulled with the rake. “Seems like every year we get a
doozy
like this. It was February last year, as I recall.” He stopped working, huffing hard. “Smart girl. The weight on that flat roof. Who knows how long it would have held.”
She asked him to come in for some soup, but he said his wife needed help cleaning out the cellar. “Just being neighborly,” he said, grinning, and headed back to his inn.
****
The second week in January, Peg and Zeke showed up at the front door. Raving about the bracing cold, they begged Gracie to go tobogganing with them. Zeke and his brothers had cut ice from the lake for a week and then used their horses to haul the ice blocks up
Lake Street
. Twelve other men from town worked with them, grooving and fitting the blocks, to make a solid ice slide down the steep hill.
“The ice has to be a at least foot thick and we cleared so much snow the toboggan might even make it all the way over to the far side of the lake. Skaters beware!” Zeke said, urging Gracie to get her coat.
A nasty purple egg with a line of dried blood bulged out of his cap. “How’d you get that gash on your forehead?” Gracie asked, lifting up his hat. “Let me put something on it.”
“Aw, one of our Clydesdales kicked me. It’s nothing.” Pulling down his cap, he checked his reflection in the hall mirror. “It’d better heal up before my pretty Mae comes in March.”
“
Yakkety
-yak, Zeke,” Peg said. “I’ve heard about her visit three times already. Let’s get to the snowball fight. Remember, whoever wins gets the first seat on the toboggan.”
“Oh, you kids go have fun.” Mrs. Cunningham, who had evidently been standing there listening, held onto the mahogany arch that separated the parlor from the reception hall.
“Thanks, Mrs. Cunningham. My mother said she’ll be down later this week for a visit.” Peg was out the door before the woman could reply.
“Are you sure you don’t mind? I have a pork loin in the oven, but it should be fine until I get back.” Gracie wound the long green scarf her elderly companion had knitted for a Christmas present around her neck.
“I won’t mind if you wear your red knitted hat that covers your ears, Madeleine. You know, the one I made for your seventeenth birthday.”
Peg and Zeke hooted and threw snowballs on the front lawn while Gracie stood there, dumbstruck.
“Listen to your mother, Madeleine. The cold will make you ill if you don’t bundle up.”
Not wanting to add to Mrs. Cunningham’s confusion, Gracie merely patted her coat and said, “The hat’s right here in my pocket.”
“That’s a good girl. Now go play. Your friends are waiting.” Gracie hurried out into the snow.
Peg and Zeke were too busy with their fun to notice the pained expression on Gracie’s face. Zeke bragged about how well he and his brothers had rolled the roads, while they all walked over packed snow toward the toboggan slide. The screams and laughter of those already enjoying a ride ameliorated the cold. Peg and Zeke ran ahead, impatient to get on the next toboggan.
Mr. Rose huddled over a card table set up on the side of the slide near the warm up shed. He sipped from his thermos cup and scratched a name off his clipboard. “What’d you say?” he asked, pulling an earmuff away from his left ear when Gracie approached. “Signing up for a ride, Miss Antes? Fastest ice slide in the country, right here in Eagles Mere.” Stamping her feet to stay warm, Gracie waited her turn.
“Hey,
blondie
, wouldn’t a nice hot restaurant meal taste good after this?” Otto asked, appearing out of nowhere. “Geez, Gracie, we had it good that first summer you were here. Let’s give it another go.” When he moved in for a kiss, Gracie turned aside and fell into a snow drift. Otto twirled his moustache mischievously before deciding to help her up.
When Gracie scanned the crowd for rescue, Peg and Zeke were already on the next toboggan with Shadow perched between them, eagerly awaiting their slide onto the lake. Gracie made excuses that she had to cook dinner for someone. She hurried back home trying to understand what had happened with Mrs. Cunningham.
****
Mrs. Cunningham’s cough worsened three weeks after Gracie’s aborted toboggan ride. She lay listlessly in bed, complaining that her ears were blocked. Gracie’s suggestion to move her bed to the dining room so she could look out at the snow prompted a caustic response.
“It’s my bedroom and I’ll keep it where I want. Maybe you are just tired of running up and down stairs to wait on me, Madeleine.”
Dr. Webber was on his way to deliver a baby when Gracie telephoned, but said to keep Mrs. Cunningham warm in bed and give her fluids until he could get there. Mrs. Sturdy sounded alarmed over the telephone and promised to be over right after church. By the end of Sunday service she had all the church women organized to send food.