In Memoriam (7 page)

“A new baby has a power to bring people together like nothing else. Come and sit down,” Gladys said. She led Lisa to the den so she could put her feet up. “Don’t you worry about a thing. I ordered groceries yesterday, and there are plenty of snacks to serve your guests.”

“I’m not worried about snacks. My mother never eats here. But I don’t want you to feel like my servant, either.”

“That won’t happen, Lisa. I’m a social misfit. You’ve seen my tiny house. We never entertain. This is exciting for me. I’m actually looking forward to seeing everyone, especially Sandra’s baby.”

Lisa thought back to the first time she met Gladys. Gladys wasn’t thrilled with her, yet the two of them would become as close as mother and daughter. “I love you, Mum,” Lisa said.

Gladys smiled. “I love you, too.”

They were interrupted as Dan walked in with a little baby seat that would substitute as an adequate bed when Marcus was downstairs.

“Well, there’s no need to worry about my family coming over today. I told them you needed to rest,” he said. Looking around, he placed the chair close to where Lisa was sitting. “I thought this might be a good thing to have in here.”

“Perfect,” Lisa said. “By the way, speaking of needing to rest, my mother and the others are headed our way. When one bad penny leaves, another shows up, or something like that.”

Dan laughed and looked at his watch. “How do you feel about me abandoning you ten minutes after you get home from the hospital?” he asked. “I can run to the office and get some work done while your visitors are here.”

“That’s fine,” Lisa said. “It’s for the best.”

He bent down and kissed her cheek, kissing Megan, too. Going to Gladys, he moved the blanket away from the baby’s face and kissed Marcus and Gladys too. Everyone started to laugh.

“Okay, my family has been kissed good-bye,” he said. “Call me when your guests leave.”

Gladys put the baby down in his bed. “Do you want something to eat?”

Lisa put her head back on the chair. Megan was sitting next to her mother like a big girl. “I think right now I just want to sleep,” she said. “As long as Marcus is sleeping, I might as well.” Megan curled up against Lisa, her little body warm. “Leave her, okay?”

Gladys arranged the baby monitor so she could hear when Marcus cried. She reached for an afghan, covering Lisa and Megan with it, and tiptoed out of the room. She closed the door behind her. If Pam and her entourage arrived soon, they could just wait.

Gladys went into the kitchen to prepare a snack tray for Lisa’s guests. Her phone buzzed; it was Big Ed.

“So, do I have a wife somewhere in New York?”

“If you want one you do,” she answered. “I guess it depends on how patient you are.”

“Are you ever coming home?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “Lisa seems to need me here.”

“Oh,” Ed replied. He wasn’t prepared to miss Gladys so much. “Well, am I welcome? The new husband might not want the old husband’s father hanging around.”

“Ed, of course you are! Lisa has said that all along, and Dan is delightful. Just get in the car and come.”

“Okay, if you’re sure. I’ll pack a bag and see you in a couple of hours,” Ed said.

After they said good-bye, Gladys got back to work. Lisa’s kitchen was a joy to be in, huge compared to her little hole in the wall in New Jersey. Everything was new and shiny. At Lisa’s urging, Gladys made herself at home, taking over as many of the kitchen tasks as Lisa was willing to part with, which meant all of them. Catching a glimpse of her face in the polished chrome of the toaster, Gladys did a double take. After months of sadness and grief, something had clicked and she was smiling.

Chapter 7

Greenwich Village, once an enclave of bohemianism, the arts, and radical left-wing politics, was now home to fashionable, wealthy, more conservative residents, thanks to astronomical property values leading to rising rents. Natalie Borg didn’t fit the mold of the new occupants, having lived in the same apartment her parents purchased in 1950. Although the shops were different and NYU had taken over more and more of Washington Square, nothing changed for her. Nothing except she now had a male roommate. Ted Dale had moved in with her when his husband committed suicide.

“It’s just proof of what I said all along about Ashton,” Ted said to Natalie shortly after they’d discovered his body. “He was so selfish; he didn’t care what this would do to me.”

Although Natalie felt compassion for Ashton, she understood where Ted was coming from as he worked out his anger. “He was mentally ill, Ted. You can’t take your own life and not be sick.”

Ted had tried to reach Ashton for two days, finally bracing himself for the possibility that he was dead.

Ted took a cab uptown on the afternoon of the second day of silence. The doorman William tipped his hat.

“Mr. Dale,” he said.

“Have you seen Mr. Ashton today?”

“No, sir. Not since he came home from his trip.”

Ashton never stayed in for longer than a few hours, let alone two days. Ted scratched his neck, thinking.

“Do you know if Mr. Clark is home, William?” Ted asked. Mr. Clark, a retired detective, was a kind gentleman who’d come by their apartment from time to time for a glass of cognac.

“I’ll buzz him,” William said, reaching for the phone. He keyed in a number, and Ted could hear the detective’s voice come through the line.

“Mr. Clark said to come up.”

Ted thanked him and went to the elevator. Not sure what to say, he decided to be honest and not have a rehearsed narrative. It was too easy to be accused of a crime regardless of your innocence. Ted watched
Law and Order
. Mr. Clark’s apartment was on the opposite end of the hall from Ashton’s, and when Ted stepped off the elevator, he was waiting in the doorway.

“Hello, come in, come in,” he said, his hand sweeping the way.

“Thanks for seeing me,” Ted said. “I actually have a favor to ask.” He decided not to beat around the bush. His anxiety was beginning to show, voice shaking, face pale.

Mike Clark shut the door. “Of course, what can I do for you?”

“Ashton and I separated a week ago, and I’ve been unable to reach him since yesterday. I was hoping I could impose upon you to go into the apartment, just in case. A friend has informed me that she felt he might be depressed enough to harm himself.”

“Oh, I see,” Mr. Clark said. “Yes, of course I’ll go in.” He put a pair of sneakers on and opened the door again, letting Ted go through first. They didn’t speak as they walked down the hall side by side.

Ted saw the worn carpet and faded wallpaper. “I never noticed how badly this place needs updating.”

“The board has been after the developer for two months now,” he replied.

They reached Ashton and Ted’s door, and Ted reached into his pocket to get his keys out. He put the key in the door, and his hands were shaking so badly he had to pause to get himself in control.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” he said. It was obvious, since he was asking a cop to come with him.

Mr. Clark put his hand on Ted’s shoulder. “Stay out here,” he said. He went in and got as far as the kitchen. He looked back down the hall at Ted standing in the open door and pointed into the kitchen. “He’s in here.”

Ted stayed outside of the apartment, not sure if he meant Ashton was standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes or laying on the floor in a pool of blood.

He disappeared back through the opening in the hallway, and Ted waited. He came out seconds later. “He’s dead,” he said, frowning.

Not moving from the doorway while Mr. Clark pulled out his cell and made a call, Ted had a quick walk down memory lane and remembered the first time he saw Ashton walking up to his aunt Dale’s apartment. It was Thanksgiving Day, and Ashton had ordered dinner delivered from Balducci’s so they could eat together. But Dale had died in the night, and Ted was coming to sort through her belongings before unwelcome family members arrived to scavenge. He had to tell Ashton the news about Aunt Dale and remembered how devastating it was to do so. A year later, Ashton let it slip that Dale was one of his last links to Jack. Unbeknownst to Ted, Dale, his seventy-something old maiden aunt, had been having a torrid affair of thirty or more years duration with the loathsome Jack Smith. Ted was appalled. If it was true, Dale was most certainly HIV positive. It appeared that everyone who’d come into contact with Jack was.

Ashton was unlike any of the men he’d dated. He was the same age as Ted and successful in his own right. The attraction was immediate. Ashton immediately set out to remake Ted, and he allowed it. None of the things he wanted to change were important anyway. Ashton brought order and a healthier diet to his life, but other than that, he was really rather benign. Ashton’s death was having the same effect on Ted as living with him had. It was annoying and inconvenient. His timing sucked, the selfishness of it grating on his nerves, like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Mr. Clark walked up to him, concerned. “Are you all right, buddy? Maybe you better sit down.”

Ted did as he suggested and sat on the floor with help, and once his ass made contact with the dirty carpet, he allowed himself to pass out cold.

~ ~ ~

Natalie and Deborah were staying at the cabin upstate that summer, and although Ted hated to do it, once he pulled himself together, he had to call them back to the city. Ashton managed to ruin everyone’s summer with his shenanigans. Deborah was waiting tables in town at the Summertime Café, and Natalie was sitting on the porch, drinking pink lemonade with vodka, reading a mystery when the call came.

“I’ve got bad news,” Ted said.

A hollow quality to his voice grabbed Natalie’s attention, and she put her book down on the coffee table as she sat up straight. “Is it Ashton?” She’d also tried contacting him since he left the city two days ago.

“Yes,” Ted whispered. “He did it himself, of course. It wasn’t going to be enough that he’d torture me through a divorce.” Detailing what had happened in the last hours to Natalie, the reality of dealing with all of Ashton’s real estate staging paraphernalia hit him. “Now I have to figure out what to do with four warehouses full of furniture and props.”

“Oh God, I forgot about that. I’m so sorry, Ted. We’ll get on the next bus home.”

“Okay, thank you. Or rent a car and charge it to me.”

After he hung up, Natalie looked at her watch and picked up her book again. She wasn’t rushing home for Ashton.

Natalie supported Ted as he suffered through the funeral, making small talk with Ashton’s parents, who’d arrived from Florida, and later seeing to their needs. They asked to stay at the apartment, and although it seemed like an inconvenience at first, later Ted was glad. It gave him the opportunity to start sorting through Ashton’s belongings with his mother to guide him. Ted’s own parents didn’t come up; he gave them the option of not attending if it would be too much for his father, who was past eighty and frail. As long as he had Deborah and Natalie with him, he decided he’d get through it.

When it came to culling his personal belongings down to a bare minimum, Ashton was self-regulating. There wasn’t much to go through. Ted was afraid he’d come across something embarrassing as he and his mother picked through the boxes stashed in the spare bedroom closet. Then they started sorting the dining room. Hidden under boxes of china and linens, Ted discovered Ashton’s ephemera: mementos of every function he’d attended with Jack. There were matchbook favors from weddings, greeting cards addressed to them both, and photos of him and Jack over the years: dressed in diapers for a New Year’s Eve Party back in ’82, and in tuxes at Jack and Pam’s wedding. It made Ted sick. In a drunken confessional, Ashton admitted that he’d had sex with Jack right after the wedding while Pam waited for him to leave for their Hawaiian honeymoon.

“Do you want these, Mrs. Hageman?” Ted asked, disgusted Ashton had saved all of it.

She turned the photos over in her hands, looking from one to another. “I don’t know if I do or not. I knew Jack as a young boy,” she said. “Ashton was his only confidant throughout school. He said no one else knew the truth about what was going on in that house.”

Ted had heard about it, but often wondered if they weren’t stories a drunk had fabricated. She looked up at Ted. June Hageman was still beautiful, her eyes clear and face relatively unlined. And she was as sharp as a tack.

“I knew, but I didn’t do anything about it. My boy told me what was happening to his friend, yet I averted my eyes. It was too depraved for me to even consider; I’d have been too embarrassed to call the police and repeat what Ashton told me. No one would’ve believed it anyway. Harold Smith had a reputation in town. My own husband was afraid of him.”

“There’s nothing you can do about it now anyway,” Ted said. “Everyone’s dead.”

“Bernice Smith isn’t,” she replied sharply. “Ashton told me she’s still formidable. And Jack’s wife. She should surely know what the life of her husband had been as a child.”

“I think she knows,” Ted said softly. “You don’t have to worry about her. Evidently, Jack’s past was catching up with him right before he died. Ashton himself confronted her several times.”

“Oh, how awful. To go to his mother is one thing, but to see the wife? That must have been brutal.”

“I think it was,” Ted replied. “Ashton died jealous of Pam Smith.”

June Hageman turned from the box of junk she was sorting. “Ashton wasn’t jealous of her,” she said, her nose in the air. “He wanted to
be
her. There’s a huge difference.”

Ted wasn’t convinced that Ashton’s jealousy was really longing to imitate her. But he was too tired to argue. And it hurt him, realizing there was a large chunk of the man’s personality he was not in touch with. Ashton had an audience of sorts with Pam after Jack died. It was a paradox, and whether he was to be believed regarding what they said to each other was another matter.

“What am I going to do with all of this stuff?”

The two of them gazed at the piles of ephemera. Its value lie only in the memories attached to it.