Dead at Breakfast (5 page)

“How adorable, it's just like the old days at the Polo Lounge!” Glory said. “Where did they get the phones?”

“Flea markets,” said Lisa.

“People's cells don't work here, so,” said Cherry, and left them. Lisa picked up the phone, looking as if she doubted such instruments still conveyed human speech.

“Hello?”

On the other side of the continent, her son Jeremy was a mess of resentment and relief. “Finally! Mom! I've been trying to call you for a day! Where
are
you?”

“We're in a wrinkle in time,” she said. “It's kind of adorable. Nothing invented since 1980 works here. Why, what's up?”

“Jenny's dead,” yelled Jeremy.

“Jenny's what?” she said stupidly, her eyes suddenly wide and stunned. “She's
dead
?” Glory and Alex went stiff and said “What?” at the same time.

“She's dead, it's in the papers, they keep calling me and I didn't know what to say. Where
are
you?”

“But . . . ! Was there an accident?”

“She hung herself in her cell. She was arrested again.”

“I know that part. Are you sure?”

“Well of course I'm
sure,
Mom, that's why I've been calling you!”

Alex grabbed the phone from his wife.

“Who is this, Sophie?”

“Jeremy. Dad, Jenny's dead. I don't know what to do!” and he started to cry.

“Hang up, I'll call you back from my room.” He slammed the phone down, heaved himself out of his chair, and left the lounge moving more swiftly than Maggie would have thought he could.

The women stared after him. Then Lisa jumped up and followed, walking as quickly as she could in her high-heeled sandals. Glory looked as if her brain had frozen and she was waiting for it to reboot. Then she too got up abruptly and hurried after her sister, holding her hand over her mouth.

Bonnie McCue hurried across the room and dropped into the chair beside Hope.

“Did you hear that?” she asked. “She's dead! Artemis!” She looked as if she might cry.

Hope looked up from her hand. “Wait, who are we talking about?”

“The pop star, Artemis. She killed herself last night.”

Hope put her cards down and looked at Bonnie. “How really
terrible,” she said. “I read the
Boston Herald
this morning, in the library. She had just been arrested.”

“That was yesterday's paper. The papers don't get to the village until afternoon. Mr. Rexroth drives down for them every evening.”

“Who is Mr. Rexroth?”

“The old guy with the drooly dog? You've seen him. They're out on the porch most of the day because Lisa's poodle is driving his dog crazy.”

“The seersucker guy, the minister?”

“He wears the backward collar but he's been retired for years. Or maybe
retired.
” She made air quotes with her fingers. “He may be just a little bit cracked. He's been writing the same sermon since Hurricane Irene.”

“How do you
know
all this?” Hope asked, frankly fascinated.

“I got visiting with the girl who was cleaning my room this morning. I love a Chatty Cathy. Mr. Rexroth came here a few summers ago and sort of never left. He goes to Florida for a couple of months in the winters, but otherwise he lives here. He does errands for Mr. Gurrell for a break in his rent.”

Just then, as if to illustrate the lecture, Mr. Rexroth strolled in from the front veranda with a bundle of newspapers under his arm. Eyes followed him hungrily as he crossed the lounge to the library. Then in ones and twos, people rose to follow him, like ants converging on a ribbon of syrup.

The Antippas group did not appear for dinner, and everyone agreed that they must be going, or gone, back to California. The papers said the family was “in seclusion,” which was sort of true. Jeremy, Sophie, and Ada, Jenny's half-siblings, had been mobbed by paparazzi and had stopped going outside. The entertainment press were now making a great rhubarb about a funeral, clamoring for
an extravaganza, and running placeholder stories about Michael Jackson's death and even about the national grief convulsion at the demise of Rudolph Valentino.

Mr. Rexroth was looking piously pleased during dinner, which he ate alone with his own copy of the
New York Post
. The terrible yapper was leaving and he could resume his quiet pattern of writing in his room in the morning, and strolling with Clarence after lunch by the lake.

Earl took his meals in the kitchen, sometimes early with the kitchen staff, sometimes after the dinner rush. Usually Sarah would make a plate for him and keep it in the warming oven, but tonight she had forgotten and was not in the kitchen herself. Oliver, the sous-chef, said she had a migraine and had gone to bed. Mrs. Weaver assembled dinner for Earl and sat with him while he ate.

“I had about all I could take,” Earl said to her. “That dog upset Walter. It upset everybody. Oughtn't to have pets if you can't teach 'em.”

“No, that's right, Earl.”

“Sorry what happened to their girl. But I won't be sorry to see the back of them.”

“I don't think you're alone there. Would you like more chicken?”

“Is there pie?”

“Yep, I saved some.”

“I don't think I'm alone either.”

She took his dinner plate away and served him a slice of pie.

W
hen Lisa and
Glory were girls,
Lisa was the effortlessly pretty one. Glory was the fat competitive one. Their mother had been a beauty, and a model. Like most people, Mrs. Poole valued most what particularly distinguished
her
in the world. She took her daughters to have their legs and armpits waxed when they were barely into puberty, convinced (incorrectly as it happens) that if they never shaved, eventually they wouldn't have to. Waxing hurt, but it was fun to have a spa day with their glamorous mother once a month. They'd all have their faces cleansed and hydrated, their feet pumiced and massaged, and their toenails painted while they ate watercress with minuscule scoops of chicken salad served to them on trays with pink linens. Mrs. Poole also made sure that her daughters were, like her, accomplished equestriennes. Riding clothes were so becoming to a woman. Theirs was a sunny, sporty childhood, uncomplicated except that being a twin is never uncomplicated.

Gloria was her father's girl. One summer when Lisa was confined to a darkened bedroom, not allowed to read or watch TV or think, basically, as she recovered from a severe concussion suffered in a horse show accident, Mr. Poole took Glory on a trip all the way to Vancouver on the TransCanada Rail Express train, just the two of them. They played backgammon for hours as the scenery
streamed by, and ate fancy meals in the dining car. She had her own roomette. They saw the Rockies and Beautiful Lake Louise and Vancouver Island. Then they flew down to L.A. for a couple of days, because her father had some business there. What the business was Glory never knew, but they had dinner every night with a woman named Marie Elise whom her father seemed to know extremely well. Marie Elise was chic, funny, and apparently rich in her own right; Mr. Poole reported with something like awe that she was on the boards of several major corporations. Glory learned that everyone in Los Angeles was thin and beautiful and drove exciting cars. The last night they were in town Warren Beatty, a movie star whom their mother had a fantastic crush on, joined their table for dessert; Marie Elise was his financial adviser.

When Glory got home from that trip, she knew what world she wanted to conquer. By the time she was twenty, she was slimmer than Lisa, had had two years of acting classes, and knew all about her best camera angles. A man who had briefly loved her once described her to a casting director as being like a smart animal. Glory assumed he meant she was talented, instinctive, and valuable, like a racehorse, and rather liked it, though the casting director never called.

Wednesday morning, when the mists were hanging low on the hilltops and Maggie joined the morning hikers, there was Glory, in becoming velvety sweats, doing her own set of stretches while she waited for the hike to start. It took all Maggie's restraint to keep from staring at her as Bonnie led the rest of the group in a warm-up routine. After Martin Maynard took off on his run, and Bonnie led the hikers toward the mountain at a brisk clip, Nina Maynard and Maggie fell in with Glory.

“I'm so sorry about Artemis,” Maggie said.

“It's really sad,” said Nina. “So much talent.”

Glory was very fit and it was going to be a strain to keep up with her and still be able to talk.

“You know, it's probably a blessing,” Glory said. “She was a mess, that girl. Trouble as long as I've known her.”

Maggie and Nina looked at each other, but Glory had her chin up, and her gaze was on the hills, from whence her help might or might not cometh.

“Have you been able to learn any more . . . I mean, do they know why she did it?”

“Was there a note, you mean? It seems not. But the girl
was
an addict. I think she just saw no way out. There wasn't ever going to be a good way for it to end.”

“Addicted to what?”

“She never
met
a drug she didn't like. The first time she got drunk, she was like eleven. Found a bottle of some disgusting melon-flavored booze someone had given my sister and drank the whole thing. The nanny found her passed out in her bed covered with vomit.”

Nina said, “Wasn't she on that Disney show when she was eleven?”

“Exactly,” said Glory. “She had everything a child could want. I mean, what other children
dream
of. Every comfort. Beautiful parents, adorable brother and sisters. And she was famous. She was earning a fortune before she was a teen.”

“Sounds like a lot, for a child,” said Maggie.

“Exactly,” said Glory, missing her point. “She had it all. But you can imagine what it was like for my sister, trying to raise her own children, with Miss Eleven Going on Thirty living down the hall. There wasn't any way to control her. Her manager gave her anything she wanted. Before she could drive, she'd just call a limo. She kept running away from home. What teenager wouldn't, if she could afford anything in the world? The Disney people kept as much of it
quiet as they could, but after she aged out of their deal and started making her own records, it was Katie Bar the Door.” That was what people had been saying for years in Hollywood about Artemis. Katie Bar the Door.

“Why would anyone do that to a child?”

“Who, the manager? He wanted her working. If she didn't get what she wanted she might get difficult, so he kept her happy. He killed her, really.”

There was a silence but for the thud of their shoes on the mountain path, and somewhere an excited blue jay complaining.

“This must have been awful for your sister.”

“You have no idea. She was trying to raise her own children with some values, you know? We weren't brought up like that. Our parents were strict. We couldn't date until we were sixteen. Got grounded for swearing or bad grades. Dad had money, I guess, but we didn't know that growing up, there were lots of people in our school richer than us. And the worst thing was, Lisa's kids seemed to idolize Jenny. Lisa had visions of them all following her footsteps. I blame the manager, I really do. He should be arrested.”

“Her father must be terribly upset.”

Glory strode silently for some time before answering. “He probably is. But he hides it. She's been such a nightmare, and of course, he has three other children to worry about.”

They paced onward. The sun was fully up now and the mists were dissipating. Dew sparkled underfoot like scattered crystals, and spiderwebs were etched out in the grasses, and then suddenly, when the sun rose above a certain angle, they disappeared.

Nina asked, “Is her bio mother in the picture? I noticed she's never mentioned.”

“She is
long
gone. She just disappeared when Jenny was hardly out of diapers. Never called, never wrote. I'm not even sure what her name was. That was probably the primal wound, if you know what
I mean. That was probably the thing that Jenny was never going to get over. My sister tried, she really did, but . . .”

Nina said, “Didn't anyone try to find her, ever? I mean these days . . . Facebook and Google . . .”

“No idea. As far as I know, Jenny wanted nothing to do with her. That was one of the reasons she took a stage name. ‘I'm Artemis, I'm Greek, I'm my father's daughter.' She didn't want some awful woman showing up saying ‘Mummy's here, where's the money?'”

They had reached the peak of the hill, where Bonnie was waiting. They paused to breathe and drink from their PCB-free water bottles as the others huffed up the last grade and joined them. The view, a sea of evergreens punctuated with hardwoods in their glowing fall gowns, was a rich reward for the effort. Far below them was a farm with a big red barn surrounded by fallow fields, rows of dry yellow corn shocks, and pumpkin patches.

Little Cherry in her gray hoodie, bringing up the rear, told Bonnie she and Mrs. Kleinkramer had seen a snake on the path, sunning itself.

“There are no poisonous snakes in Maine,” Bonnie said. “In case you worried.”

“That's interesting,” said Margaux Kleinkramer.

“I know,” said Cherry, looking as if she hadn't enjoyed the experience much anyway.

They started down the back side of the hill, falling into the same groups in which they had climbed.

“I'm so glad I got to see that,” said Nina.

“Me too,” said Glory. “You miss that in California. Fall colors.”

“What time are you all leaving?”

Glory looked confused. Then she sorted it out and said, “Oh we're not leaving. Until the end of the cooking class anyway. It's a perfect place for us to be, really. Who's going to come bother us, the
Bangor Daily News
?”

The morning class was all about soufflés. Savory ones, coffee ones, fruit ones, chocolate ones, of course, and crème anglaise to go with.

Maggie was working with Lisa and Albie Clark, who couldn't get the hang of separating the egg yolks from the whites. He poured the yolks back and forth between the broken halves of the shell, which Sarah had made look so easy, but he kept piercing the yolk and leaking yellow droplets into the bowl of transparent egg slime.

“The whites won't whip if you do that,” said Lisa impatiently, and Albie snapped, “I know!” Putting these two together on this of all mornings might not have been Sarah's best idea, Maggie thought. Meanwhile Lisa was on a talking jag.

“My husband's had no sleep at all. We've been on the phone, getting our lawyers to try to stop this circus. Her goddamn manager is going to milk it for every dime. Death is a great career move, that's his take. He's busy arranging a tribute concert in I don't know, the goddamn Hollywood Bowl or something. It's disgusting. Meanwhile the children have gone all sentimental, Oh poor Jenny, and they want a
funeral,
with the body there. I'd go, I mean she is their sister, not that she ever did anything in her life except disappoint them. But Alex says absolutely not. It's a sin, what she did. Life is all we have. He grew up very poor, you wouldn't think it but I mean
dirt
poor. In Greece. He lived in like, a hovel. It's hard for him, to see how much these kids have. He says he gave Jenny everything and she treated it all like garbage. Him, me, the children, herself, garbage. That's what he says. I guess he's broken up but he isn't showing it, and you know what? I admire him. So we're not going back. Not for some funeral circus, anyway. The children can do what they want. I remember when the twins had their Sweet Sixteen, it was out in Southampton. We had a tent, and some famous band, the Black Eyed Peas, have you heard of them? And all their boarding school friends came out for the weekend, it was the party of the summer, I mean it, and at midnight on the best night of their
lives my girls were in tears because
Jenny
wasn't coming. They told all their friends she would be there. Jenny was in
New York
that weekend. It wasn't like she was in Outer Oshkosh. It was always like that. Their birthdays, Christmas—she sent expensive presents. Tickets to her shows, backstage passes. But she was never there when it counted, when it wasn't about her. I think that time her excuse was some guy had broken up with her. Please.”

Albie said, “The music from that party went on until three in the morning.”

Lisa looked at him. “Oh did you read about it? There was a lot of ink. My husband is very generous to the Suffolk County police, he says it always pays, and he gave them a really nice present the day of the party.”

“I know,” said Albie. “I called them.”

Lisa looked blank.

“You called the police?”

“At one in the morning, yes.”

“Why?”

“I live two lanes over from you.”

There was a long silence. Finally Lisa said, “Oh.”

Maggie found that Oliver, Sarah's assistant, was with them. He said “Does anyone need any help here?”

“He does,” said Lisa, and pointed to the egg whites with splats of yolk in them. Maggie resumed shaving chocolate into a mound of fatty brown shards.

Oliver set Albie's bowl aside and said, “This will make a delicious egg-white omelet. Let's start over. Go wash your hands.” When Albie came back, he showed him how to separate the eggs by cradling the yolks in his cupped hands and letting the whites slip through his fingers.

“So I assume you gave Jenny a Sweet Sixteen party too,” Albie said to Lisa as he cracked his third egg sharply on the bowl's edge.

Lisa whirled to stare at him. Then said, “You know what? I just lost a child, so fuck you. Just fuck you.” She threw down her dish towel and marched out of the kitchen.

Hope had nipped out to the herb garden to gather some thyme to scent her cheese soufflé when Lisa emerged from the side veranda, weeping. Her husband was sitting on his Adirondack chair in the sun, smoking a cigar and looking out over the lake. Hope couldn't help but overhear the angry sobbing. Nor could she help being more than a little curious.

“We have to go home” was Lisa's main theme. Her husband, impassive, took out his handkerchief and handed it to her to mop her streaming eyes and nose. “I don't want to talk to that prick ever again. And that's how everyone will be, they're all going to say it was our fault. That asshole practically said no one loved her.”

“I'm not sure I even liked her, after she got to twelve,” said her husband.

“You can't say things like that! They're going to be like, ‘what kind of Sweet Sixteen did little Jenny get,' for the rest of our lives!”

“So what?” asked Alex.

“So what?! So what?! What is the matter with you?”

He stood up swiftly and suddenly, so that they were almost nose to nose.

“There is nothing the matter with me,” he roared. “I know who I am, and where I stand, and how I got here, and that's all there is. What's the matter with
you,
that you care so much what other people say? Are you so empty?”

“The goddamn queen of England cared, when people were like ‘She's so cold, she doesn't care Diana died, she probably had her killed,'” yelled Lisa.