Her Name Is Rose (14 page)

And, for Iris Bowen, he played.

Later, after the final encore, after the sparrow had flown, but still in the high of performance, still in that particular mindscape that jazz brings, out of the seeming chaos of chords and rhythms to a place of harmony where things fit together and the world seems to make better sense—or at least it did for Hector—he went back and found Grace sitting in the kitchen. It was after midnight.

“Hello, Your Grace.” He bowed exuberantly and looked around expectantly.

“Hector. Hector. Hector. That was wonderful.” She jumped up and hugged him. “So wonderful, right? I'm so proud. I'm sitting here thinking about how Bob would have loved it, too. Yes?”

“Yeah, Grace. Thanks. I'm flying high.”

“Something to drink?”

“No. No. I'm buzzing.”

They stood silently for a few moments; Hector judging whether he could mention Mrs. Bowen.

“Mrs Bowen—” Grace started to say.

“I was just about to ask if—”

“Iris loved it, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh, yes.” She looked at him and knew. Something was different.

“Great.” That's all he had. Just the one word. He turned to go, but Grace wanted more.

“I'm so glad you left me
two
tickets. You must meet her.”

“I'd like to meet her.” He didn't exactly blurt it. But he nearly did. Then it was confirmed for Grace, too: something
was
going on.

“Maybe in the morning, then, although … she's not … what can I say…? I think she's been upset by something today. She didn't say. When I told her there was a second ticket for the evening's concert she wasn't going to take it. But I knew she needed something. And Hector, I can be persuasive.”

From the pocket of his shirt Hector took the envelope and handed it to Grace. He'd kept it all night like it was a talisman. “She dropped this in the Mapparium.” He looked down as if to shield his face from Grace's. “I was there, but she didn't see me. She ran off before I could help her get it back. But I got someone to fish it out.”

“I see.” Grace took the envelope, turned it over. “Just an envelope.” Then she read the addressee, then the sender. “Adoption Board?” She paused. “Well, I wonder what that means.” She tapped the fingers of her left hand on the table. Her nails made a
tat tat tat.
“That's odd,” she said then. “Hector, this is quite odd.” She looked to the right, absorbed in a memory, then said, “Hilary Barrett. I know this name. Don't I?”

“Really?”

A memory began to play on Grace's face. Lines of wrinkles bunched across her brow. Her mouth tightened. But then it faded.

“And 99 St. Botolph?” Hector asked.

“Well. I just can't say. It wasn't always a restaurant. That much I can tell you.” She fell silent again and after a moment she stamped her foot. “Oh, I can't remember.”

“Okay. No worries. I'm going to bed.”

Grace Hale didn't move. She stood there trying to think, then shook her head. “Sorry. Sometimes I think I remember everybody.”

 

Eight

In a blue Lucky Express Town Car, Rowan Blake was sped away from New York City into Westchester, into the landscape of his childhood. An hour north he looked out the window when the suburbs eased into a forest of maple and birch, oak and pine, and yielded to lakes and black reservoirs. Granite stone glinted. Now, in nearly mid-June, an occasional dogwood still illumined the wood. How stunning their white-leafed petals, how strong and vibrant against the gathering dusk. Westchester always did this to him, made him sentimental. He'd lived on Long Island Sound ever since he'd started a small landscape architecture firm in the city, twenty years ago, but whenever he returned to Westchester there was always the sense of a flowing return, of coming back into a newly awakened memory.

Sometimes it hurt.

As the car edged into northern Westchester closer to Heritage Hills, Rowan tried to shake off his disquiet. He'd been entertaining clients in the newly opened Standard Grill and their brunch extended to late afternoon. Mimosas gave way to martinis. He'd closed the deal on a large project in Sag Harbor, but by the time he'd finally looked at his phone there were five missed calls from his mother and one stinker of a text from his brother telling him to answer his goddamn phone. It was urgent.

He didn't feel sober enough to maneuver from the lower West Side up to Grand Central—just the
thought
of a taxi was making him nauseous. It was the second Thursday in June, the traffic would be hell. Plus, he'd miss the 4:57 and couldn't wait another half hour longer. Considering the windfall of the Sag project, he'd sprung for a car and driver. The Standard hotel, where he had been brought in as a consultant when designs for the High Line were being finalized, had helped him arrange it. He remembers now how his grandfather Burdy had encouraged him to “go for it” and, although his own submission wasn't accepted, he'd facilitated some important design changes and now remained a special guest. The park, built along the railway line above the streets of the West Side, thrilled him. It was one of the things he loved most about New York City. He and Burdy had joined the Friends of the High Line and volunteered for spring and autumn cleanup.

Rowan Blake was forty-four years old. If you saw him being driven up I-684 you might think power and privilege, and to an extent it was true. But behind the tinted glass of the town car the handsome man was sitting alone. He had no wife, no partner, and few friends. Not exactly one of the Masters of the Universe, he was a successful “producer” with his own firm and half a dozen employees. Because of his grandfather, he knew a lot about a lot of different things and could converse on many subjects, from good opening bids in bridge to why Jack Nicklaus was perhaps the greatest golfer of all time. He had read
The Fountainhead
and Joyce's
Portrait of an Artist
and was a weekly recipient of
The New Yorker.
But in the last few months these last lay unopened on his coffee table and the one by his bedside, the one with Obama dressed as Washington, was four months old and had wrinkled waves from when a glass of Hennessy had toppled. He was a man on the edge.

Winding up through the hills, past the golf course and clubhouse, Rowan's heart sank. When the driver pulled into Greenview Drive he saw his mother pacing outside her two-bedroom condo holding the portable house phone. It was unlike her to be so visible. He wondered if all the neighbors knew before he had about Burdy. There she stood, loafered feet, bare, tanned legs showing beneath a flared print skirt. She was the kind of woman who wore a short string of pearls with everything, even when she played golf, always a badge of elegance about her.

“Mother…” Rowan's voice broke as he exited the car. Louise Blake ran and with a perfumed embrace slumped her petite frame against him, her face warm on his chest,

“Mother…” It was all he could say, his voice thickened by the afternoon of alcohol. He held her while the driver pulled the car around the small cul-de-sac of condos burrowed against the hill and drove quietly away.

“He was playing golf this morning. Just fell. That was it. Gone. Like that. On the seventeenth.”

Rowan knew Burdy wouldn't have wanted it any other way, but he didn't say so. His gut twisted. He wished he'd been there. Somehow. Had one last putt or something, with his grandfather.

As if she'd heard his thoughts, Louise pulled back. “Honey, it's all right. You couldn't have known. It was too sudden.”

“I know, but I missed our golf date last week. I had to cancel. I had something on. And … and…”

She looked up into his tearing eyes, brown, like his father's, and saw how tired he was. Rowan led his mother though the front door, his arm cupped around her, and into the immaculate white kitchen, its hanging ferns curtaining the window.

“I tried to reach you.” She looked at her son the way some mothers do, as if his was a story only she could read. “Was your phone off? Did you get my messages? I had to begin the arrangements. Kings' have already taken the body—”

“Please, Mother…”

She sat at the table with a look he knew well. “I worried when I couldn't reach you.” She forced a pause. “That's all.”

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry you had to do that on your own.” They sat in silence for a few minutes. Rowan's hands lay crossed on the table. He closed his eyes and dropped his head. He was still in his work suit, a dark blue fine wool, his white shirt opened at the neck. The tie stuffed in his pocket. His mother reached for a pack of cigarettes, fished one out, and snapped into flame a silver lighter.

She hadn't taken three draws when she stood and said, “Coffee.” She crossed the kitchen to the sink and ran the water. While she did, Rowan left the room.

*   *   *

Pierce Blake, Rowan's older brother, an entertainment lawyer, was on his way from Los Angeles. Louise had sent a car to the airport for him. After a failed marriage he, too, was a bachelor now.

Louise planned to make her boys dinner (filet mignon, baked potato, and a citrus salad with Bibb lettuce), “like in the old days,” she told Rowan when he returned to the kitchen. It had been Burdy's favorite, too. He'd washed his face, his dark hair, smartly cut, was combed, and he'd taken off his jacket. His sleeves were folded midway up his forearms. A large mug of black coffee waited for him on the table.

“There, that might help. I've made a pot.”

Rowan ignored the pointed tone in her voice, but picked up the coffee. “Mother, what can I do?”

“Nothing now … dear. I've a list of people we need to call. Let's wait for Pierce.” Her back was to him.

“Sorry. For earlier, I mean. My phone was on silent. I was entertaining clients—”

“Yes. I know. When I spoke with your intern”—she paused but didn't turn around—“he said you weren't there.” Louise said it like she was leaving a door open for him, even though she knew he wouldn't walk through it. She knew her son by heart. She was certain he was on his way to becoming an alcoholic, if he wasn't one already. She'd seen something like this coming for months. She'd seen it in her own mother and sisters and knew the signs well. She stopped fixing the salad and began to thump one small-fisted hand on the counter, muffled but insistent, as if to squash her rising grief into a pulpy mash and dispose of it in the garbage disposal.

Rowan said nothing. He took the coffee, came toward her, but stopped midway, then walked out. Everything about him was tired. He opened the patio screen door and was soon on the edge of the golf course. He stood on the trimmed rough of the 16th and wished himself back into an earlier time when his life seemed full of promises and innocence.

“It's all about balance, Ro,” his grandfather said. “Relax your grip, son. Swing easy. And mind the rough.” It was a spring afternoon. He was twelve years old. Burdy was wearing his gold ochre sweater and linen golf trousers, his silver hair soft like silky milkweed threads, explaining the rules of putting, angles, and imaginary lines and how to read the green. “If you get your putting right, you're halfway there. Putting is the foundation of building your game. The trick is to focus on the line of the putt. Visualize it moving across the green. View the hole from different aspects, Rowan. You've got to
feel
the move of the green.”

He stood in behind Rowan. “That's it, Ro. Line your foot up to the ball. Keep the club square to the line. Now, let your shoulders hang loose. Hands level with the ball. How does that feel?”

“Okay. I guess?”

“Good boy.” Burdy laughed and stepped away. “You're a natural. Remember, a perfect putting stroke resembles a pendulum.”

Rowan had stopped and turned around to look at his grandfather, puzzled.

“No. Keep your eyes on the ball. Remember, like a pendulum. Keep your putter on the line, square with the target.”

Burdy had a special marker, an old Irish coin—a nickel three pence picturing a hare and a harp. That was also his lucky piece. “Here, let me show you.” He picked up Rowan's ball and put down the coin, dropped his own ball beside it. He stepped up and with his feet in place, he shifted easily back and forth, looked from the hole to his ball, his grip as light as a feather. He pulled back and through, stroking the back of the ball. Soft like a puff, the ball poofed along the imaginary line, following the lay of the land before dropping,
plonk,
into the hole.

“It's all about balance, Ro.”

It's all about balance, Ro.
But Burdy was dead and balance was the last thing Rowan Blake had in his life.

*   *   *

Half an hour later, another car pulled into 316 Greenview Drive. A man in his late forties got out and paid the driver. He was tall and straight, had a long but handsome nose, full lips, and brown eyes that resembled his brother's. He carried a bouquet of peonies and a leather suit bag. Louise, seeing him from the kitchen, rushed out to meet him.

“Honey! Pierce … dear. You're here.” As she'd done earlier with Rowan, she now clasped onto her eldest son, more like a child than a mother.

“It's all right. It's all right, Mother.” He held her close and patted her back. Both sons were a foot taller than Louise. “It was Burdy's time. He'd a great life.”

“I know,” she said. “I know. But … it was so … so sudden. I wasn't ready.” As she partly spoke, partly wept, Rowan appeared at the door and came toward them. “I'm so glad you're here,” she whispered to Pierce.

Over the top of her head, Pierce's deep voice called, “Rowan! Hey! How are you, brother?”

Louise released her hold and moved aside. The brothers hugged briefly but warmly. Like Rowan, Pierce was wearing a white shirt. It was how the Blake men always dressed. Crisp white shirts. They were the kind of men you'd look at if they passed you in the street—perfectly groomed and full of the quiet self-assurance tall men often have. “It's just us now against the world, hey?” Pierce said gently and they stood a moment. All three looked in different directions to the hundreds of trees that sheltered them, not touching but close enough so the space between them was as intimate as a whisper.