Everything to Gain (3 page)

Even though my mother barely spoke to my father the entire time he was in Manhattan, she at least behaved in a civilized manner when they were together in public. But, not unnaturally, he departed as soon as it was decent to do so, once the reception at the Pierre was drawing to a close. My father, an archaeologist, seems to prefer the past to the present, so he had rushed back to his current dig.

He had fled my mother permanently when I was eighteen. I had gone off to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and my new life at Radcliffe College, and it was as though there was no longer a good reason for him to stay in the relationship, which had become extremely difficult for him to sustain. That they have never divorced I've always found odd; it is something of a mystery to me, given the circumstances.

We left the wedding reception together, my father and I and my bridegroom, and rode out to Kennedy Airport in one of the grand stretch limousines my mother had hired. Just before we headed in different directions to catch our planes to different parts of the world, he had hugged me tightly, and as we said our good-byes, he had whispered against my hair, "I'm glad you did it your way, Mal, had the kind of wedding
you
wanted, not the big, splashy bash your mother would have preferred. You're a maverick like me. But then, that's not half bad, is it? Always be yourself, Mal, always be true to yourself."

It had pleased me that he'd said that, about being a maverick like he was. We had been very close since my childhood, an emotional fact that I suspect has been a constant irritant to my mother. I don't believe she understood my father, not ever in their entire life together. Sometimes I've wondered why they married in the first place; they are such opposites, have come from worlds that are completely different. My father is from an intellectual family of academics and writers, my mother from a family of affluent real estate developers of some social standing, and they have never shared the same interests.

Yet something must have attracted Edward Jordan to Jessica Sloane and vice versa, and they must have been in love, or thought they were, for marry they did in 1953. They brought me into the world in May of 1955, and they stayed together until 1973, struggling through twenty years of bickering and quarreling, punctuated by stony silences that lasted for months on end. And there were long absences on the part of my father, who was always off to the Middle East or South America, seeking the remains of ancient civilizations lost in the mists of antiquity.

My father aside, my mother has never understood me, either. She is not remotely conscious of what I'm about, what makes me tick. But then, my mother, charming and sweet though she can be, has not been blessed with very much insight into people.

I love my mother, and I know she loves me. But for years now, ever since I was a teenager, I've found her rather trying to be with. Unquestionably, there is a certain shallowness to her, and this is something which dismays me. She is forever concerned with her social standing, her social life, and her appearance. Not much else interests her, really. Her days revolve around her dressmaker, hair and manicure appointments, and the luncheons, dinners, and cocktail parties to which she has been invited.

To me it seems such an empty, meaningless life for any woman to lead, especially in this day and age. I am more like my father, inasmuch as I am somewhat introspective and serious-minded; I'm concerned, just as he is, about this planet we inhabit and all that is happening on it and to it.

In many ways, the man I married greatly resembles my father in character. Like Daddy, Andrew cares, and he is honorable, strong, straightforward, and dependable.
True-blue
is the way I categorize them both.

Andrew is my first love, my only love. There will never be anyone else for me. We will be with each other for the rest of our lives, he and I. This is the one great constant in my life, one which sustains me. Our children will grow up, leave us to strike out on their own as adults, have families of their own one day. But Andrew and I will go on into our twilight years together, and this knowledge comforts me.

Suddenly, I felt the warmth of the sun on my face as its rays came filtering through the branches of the big apple tree, and I pushed myself up from the wrought-iron seat where I sat. Realizing that it was time for the day to begin, I walked back to the house.

It was Friday, the first of July, and I had no time to waste today. I had planned a special weekend for Andrew, Jamie, and Lissa, and my mother-in-law, who was visiting us from England, as she did every year. Monday, the Fourth of July, was to be our big summer celebration.

CHAPTER TWO

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As I approached the house, I could not help thinking how beautiful it looked this morning, gleaming white in the bright sunlight, set against a backdrop of mixed green foliage under a sky of periwinkle blue.

Andrew and I had fallen in love with Indian Meadows the minute we set eyes on it, although it wasn't called Indian Meadows then. It didn't have a name at all.

Once we had bought it, the first thing I did was to christen it with a bottle of good French champagne, much to Andrew's amusement. Jamie and Lissa, on the other hand, were baffled by my actions, not understanding at all until I explained about ships and how
they
were christened in exactly the same way. "And so why not a house," I had said, and they had laughed gleefully, tickled by the whole idea of it. So much so that they had wanted their own bottle of Veuve Clicquot to break against the drainpipe as I had done, but Andrew put a stop to that immediately. "One bottle of good champagne going down the drain is enough for one day," he quipped, laughing hilariously at his own joke. I'd rolled my eyes to the ceiling but couldn't resist flashing a smile at him as I appeased the twins, promising them some cooking wine with which to do their own house christening the following day.

As for the name, I culled it from local lore, which had it that centuries ago Indians had lived in the meadows below the hill upon which our house was built. And frequently, when I am standing on the ridge looking down at the meadows, I half close my eyes and, squinting against the light, I can picture Pequot squaws, their braves, and their children sitting outside their wigwams, with horses tethered nearby and pots cooking over open fires. I can almost smell the pungent wood smoke, hear their voices and laughter, the neighing of the horses, the beat of their drums.

Highly imaginative of me, perhaps, but it is a potent image and one which continues to persist. Also, it pleases me greatly to think that I and my family live on land favored centuries ago by Native Americans, who no doubt appreciated its astonishing beauty then as we do today.

We found the house quite by accident. No, that's not exactly true, when I look back. The house found us. That is what I believe, anyway, and I don't suppose I will ever change my mind. It reached out to us like a living thing, and when for the first time we stepped over the threshold into that lovely, low-ceilinged entrance hall, I knew at once that it would be ours. It was as though it had been waiting for us to make it whole, waiting for us to make it happy again. And this we have done. Everyone who visits us is struck by the feeling of tranquility and happiness here, the warm and welcoming atmosphere that pervades throughout, and which envelopes everyone the moment they come through the front door.

But in June of 1986 I had no idea that we would finally find the house of our dreams, or any house, for that matter. We had looked for such a long time for a weekend retreat in the country, and without success. And so we had almost given up hope of ever finding a suitable place to escape to from New York. The houses we had viewed in various parts of Connecticut had been either too small and pokey, or too large, too grand, and far too expensive. Or so threadbare it would have cost a fortune to make them habitable.

That particular weekend, Andrew and I were staying with friends in Sharon, an area we did not know very well. We had taken Jamie and Lissa to Mudge Pond, the town beach, for a picnic lunch on the grassy bank that ran in front of the narrow strip of sand and vast body of calm, silver-streaked water beyond.

Later, as we set out to return to Sharon, we inadvertently took a wrong turn and, completely lost, drove endlessly around the hills above the pond. As we circled the countryside, trying to get back to the main highway, we unexpectedly found ourselves at a dead end in front of a house.

By mistake, we had gone up a wide, winding driveway, believing it to be a side road which would lead us back, we hoped, to Route 41. Startled, Andrew brought the car to a standstill. Intrigued by the house, we stared at it and then at each other, exchanging knowing looks. And in unison we exclaimed about its charm, which was evident despite the sorry signs of neglect and disuse which surrounded it.

Made of white clapboard, it had graceful, fluid lines and was rather picturesque, rambling along the way it did on top of the hill, set in front of a copse of dark green pines and very old, gnarled maples with great spreading branches. It was one of those classic colonial houses for which Connecticut is renowned, and it had a feeling of such mellowness about it that it truly captured our attention.

"What a shame nobody cares enough about this lovely old place to look after it properly, to give it a fresh coat of paint," Andrew murmured, and opening the door, he got out of the car. Instructing Jenny, our English au pair, to stay inside with the children, I quickly followed my husband.

In a way I cannot explain, certainly not in any rational sense, the house seemed to beckon us, pull us toward it, and we found ourselves hurrying over to the front door, noticing the peeling paint and tarnished brass knocker as we did. Andrew banged the latter, whilst I peeked in through one of the grimy windows.

Murky though the light was inside, I managed to make out pieces of furniture draped in dust cloths and walls covered with faded, rose-patterned wallpaper. There were no signs of life, and naturally no one answered Andrew's insistent knocking. "It looks totally deserted, Mal, as if it hasn't been lived in for years," he said, and after a moment, he wondered out loud, "Could it be for sale, do you think?"

As he put his arm around my shoulders and walked me back to the car, I found myself saying, "I hope it is," and I still remember the way my heart had missed a beat at the thought that it may very well be on the market.

A few seconds later, driving away down the winding road, I suddenly spotted the broken wooden sign, old and weather-worn and fallen over in the long grass. When I pointed it out to Andrew, he brought the car to a standstill instantly. I opened the door, leaped out, and sprinted across to the grass verge to look at it.

Even before I reached the dilapidated sign, I knew, deep within myself, that it would say that the house was for sale. And I was right.

During the next few hours we managed to find our way back to Sharon, hunted out the real estate broker's office, talked to her at length, then followed her out of town to return to the old white house on the hill, almost too excited to speak to each other, hardly daring to hope that the house would be right for us.

"It doesn't have a name," Kathy Sands, the real estate broker, remarked as she fitted the key into the lock and opened the front door. "It's always been known as the Vane place. Well, for about seventy years, anyway."

We all trooped inside.

Jamie and Lissa were carefully shepherded by Jenny; I carried Trixy, our little Bichon Frise, listening to Kathy's commentary as we followed her along the gallerylike entrance, which, Andrew pointed out, was somewhat Elizabethan in style. "Reminds me of Tudor interior architecture," he explained, glancing around admiringly. "In fact, it's rather like the gallery at Parham," he added, shooting a look at me. "You remember Parham, don't you, Mal? That lovely old Tudor house in Sussex?"

I nodded in response, smiling at the remembrance of the wonderful two-week holiday we had had in England the year before. It had been like a second honeymoon for us. After a week with Diana in Yorkshire we had left the twins with her and gone off alone together for a few days.

Kathy Sands was a local woman born and bred and a font of information about everything, including the previous owners—over the last couple of centuries at that. According to her, only three families had owned the house from the time it had been built in 1790 to the present. These were the Dodds, the Hobsons, and the Vanes. Old Mrs. Vane, who was formerly a Hobson, had been born in the house and had continued to live there after her marriage to Samuel Vane. Eighty-eight, widowed, and growing rather frail, she had finally had to give up her independence and go to live with her daughter in Sharon. And so she had put the house, which had been her home for an entire lifetime, on the market two years earlier.

"Why hasn't it been sold? Is there something wrong with it?" I asked worriedly, giving the broker one of those sharp, penetrating looks I had learned so perfectly from my mother years before.

"No, there's nothing wrong with it," Kathy Sands replied. "Nothing at all. It's just a bit off the beaten track, too far from Manhattan for most people who are looking for a weekend place. And it is rather big."

It did not take Andrew and me long to understand why the real estate broker had said the house was big. In actuality it was huge. And yet it had a compactness about it, was not as sprawling and spread out as it appeared to be from the outside. Although it did have more rooms than we really needed, it was a tidy house, to my way of thinking, and there was a natural flow to the layout. Downstairs the rooms opened off the long gallery, upstairs from a central landing. Because its core was very old, it had a genuine quaintness to it, with floors that dipped, ceilings that sloped, beams that were lopsided. Some of the windows had panes made of antique blown glass dating back to the previous century, and there were ten fireplaces, eight of which were in working order, Kathy told us that afternoon.