Riverside Park (31 page)

CASSY HEARD THE
key in the door and got up from the couch where she had been dozing. She was in Alexandra's apartment at The Roehampton, on Central Park West, and it was nearly one-thirty in the morning. She had not been sure if Alexandra would make it back to New York tonight. She'd been in Alaska working on a story for
DBS Magazine
on the Arctic Reserve.

“You made it,” Cassy said, walking into the foyer.

“I had to,” Alexandra said, putting her bags down. “I wanted to find out why you were here.” As she straightened up her eyes moved appreciatively over the silk negligee Cassy wore. She smiled. “Hi.” They kissed. “So what's going on?” Alexandra said.

“We don't need to talk about it tonight,” Cassy said, watching her hang up her coat.

Alexandra gave her a doubtful look and pushed the large suitcase with her foot next to the door. The housekeeper would
go through it, wash or clean whatever clothes Alexandra had used, and then repack so it would be ready at a moment's notice for her next trip. “The mystery deepens,” Alexandra mused, heading across the living room to enter the master bedroom.

“Are you hungry?”

“Not at all. On the layover in Chicago we had a steak.” Alexandra opened a closet door and slipped her shoes off. “So what's going on?” she asked again, glancing over.

She didn't know where to begin. “Why don't you get ready for bed. You look tired.”

Alexandra frowned slightly, unbuttoning her blouse and taking it off. She slipped off her skirt and pulled off her stockings, the last with impatience, and tossed all the garments into the hamper. She left the bedroom in her underwear and reappeared holding two large glasses of water. She gave one to Cassy, put the other on her bedside table and went into the bathroom. Keeping the door ajar she talked about her trip while Cassy turned the bed down. The she slipped off her negligee, put it on the foot of the bed, and slid under the sheets. When Alexandra emerged she was wearing a white silk nightie. “Bed never looked so good. I don't think I've slept more than three hours since I left.” She climbed into bed and drank some of her water. Then she reached to turn off the bedside lamp.

One of the loveliest aspects of Alexandra's bedroom was how the gentle glow of city lights shone up through the window panes. Although the original steel casement windows had been replaced with energy efficient ones, the replicas still cast an alluring pattern across the ceiling.

“Come here,” Alexandra said, pulling Cassy over to lie in her arms. She took the clip out of Cassy's hair and combed it
out with her fingers. “So what is this all about? Why are you here?”

For some reason Cassy felt like her news would be anticlimactic. She settled in closer, feeling Alexandra's collarbone against her cheek. “I told Jackson I wanted a divorce. And I left him.”

At first there was no reaction. And then Alexandra sat up, nearly throwing Cassy off. “You did what?”

“I've got my things in the East End apartment.” Cassy could only see the outline of Alexandra's head because the window was behind it. After several moments she added, “You're making me nervous, Alexandra. You're not saying anything.”

“Because I can't believe it. After all this time.”

“I know.”

“It's going to take awhile for this to sink in.” Alexandra shifted slightly. “Are you scared?”

“No.”

“I think I might be,” Alexandra admitted.

Cassy sat up, propping herself with her arms. “Every day I stay in that marriage another little part of me dies. And that's the part I have finally come to realize is the best part of me.”

“I don't know if that's true.”

“I know,” Cassy told her. “It's the part of me that loves and trusts. And it's the part of me I want to focus on you.”

“My God,” Alexandra said softly. “I just can't believe it.” Then she climbed out of bed. “Hang on.” Cassy saw her shadow glide across the bedroom and a few seconds later the hall light came on. Alexandra was gone for at least ten minutes. “I couldn't find the stupid combination,” she said when she returned. “Shield your eyes because I need to turn on the light.”

Cassy covered her eyes as the bedside lamp came on and Alexandra crawled back onto the bed. She pressed a small box into Cassy's hand. “I had it fitted for your right hand, for obvious reasons.”

Cassy blinked, looking down at the box.

“It's been in my safe for months. To be honest I wasn't sure if I'd ever get up the nerve to give it to you.”

Cassy opened the box. There was a large blue sapphire anchored between two diamonds, set in platinum. It was stunning. Not showy but eye-catching, not overstated and yet they were clearly excellent stones.

“The sapphire was my grandmother's,” Alexandra explained. “The one who raised me on the farm. My grandfather gave it to her but she never wore it because she was terrified of losing it. So, she kept it in a safe-deposit box at the bank. She said I might need it someday for seed money if there was crop failure. She grew up in the Depression.” Alexandra reached to take it out of the box. “I chose the diamonds.” She slid it onto Cassy's right hand. Alexandra brought the hand up to her lips to kiss it once. “It's perfect.”

“It is,” Cassy managed to say, her eyes blurring with tears. She tried to blink them back.

“I know you've had just about every diamond ring a woman can possibly own—” Alexandra began.

“Shh,” Cassy said, putting a finger against Alexandra's mouth. After a moment she lowered her hand. “I will never treasure anything more than I will always treasure this.” She smiled. “Because you had faith in us, didn't you? And in me. That someday I would do it.”

Alexandra nodded. “Yes, I did.”

Cassy took Alexandra's face to hold in her hands. “I love you, Alexandra Waring. And I always will.”

THE STEWARTS'TREK
through their trail of long and twisting finances took some time. Amanda took care to keep any unpleasant observations to herself because Howard was doing a fine job of beating himself up. When their accountant arrived, Amanda could see that her husband wanted to crawl into a hole, he felt so ashamed about their predicament. But as uncomfortable as the process was, the Stewarts laid it all out, the personal and the professional, every single outstanding bill, every single expense and every single asset.

Their situation turned out to be both better and worse than they had thought. The better part was that all taxes were current (“I'm a screwup, not a crook,” Howard snarled at the accountant), all the insurance was paid up and the agency's retirement accounts were pristine. The worst part was coming to realize that instead of the “around twelve thousand” Howard thought they spent each month as a family, the actual amount turned out to be more like twenty.

“That can't be right,” Howard said at the same time Amanda gasped, “That isn't possible!”

Oh, but it was.

“The numbers don't lie,” their accountant said. “Add your expenses up yourself.”

And so once they stumbled through their horror to see where the money was going, gradually a plan of action began to materialize. What expenses would stay, what would go. First, there was no question, the Woodbury house had to be sold. If they were lucky and found the right buyer, they might still get out of it relatively unscathed. The cars would be sold. The horses would be offered to Daffodil Hill to use for lessons in exchange for board until Amanda made up her mind what she wanted to do. Madame Moliere was leaving and Amanda would look for day care for Grace so she could finish her book.

The monthly check from Amanda's trust was established as the new baseline of the family's income. Everything in the household had to come out of that. And everything Howard made was going to go toward paying off whatever debts they had. If they absolutely had to, they would take out a line of credit against the apartment, but Amanda was very much against this. And, in the end, Howard came to agree.

“So here is the situation,” Amanda told the children one night after dinner. “Daddy and I miss each other so much we want to live together all the time.”

“We miss Daddy, too,” Emily said.

“Well, that's what we wanted to talk to you about. Daddy and I want to live here, on Riverside Drive, all the time. Which would mean you will be attending a different school in the fall. A school here in New York.”

The kids looked at each other, baffled. “What about soccer?”

“You'll play soccer here.”

“But what are we going to do in the summer?” Teddy asked. “We don't have a pool here.”

“You'll go to day camp, and then we'll go to the country, all of us, for a vacation.”

“What country?” Teddy wanted to know.

“Maybe Maine or Nova Scotia, somewhere on the ocean.”

“But what about our friends?” Emily asked, her lower lip starting to tremble. “What about Sweets and Maja?”

While Howard felt like hanging himself Amanda explained that the horses were going to stay with Jessica and they would visit them. Emily started to cry and buried her face in Amanda's lap.

“So we're going to be city slickers again?” Teddy asked his father.

“Yes, sir,” Howard said.

“We'll all be together,” Amanda said, stroking Emily's hair, “every day and every night. Ashette, too.”

“Where are we going to keep the canoe, Dad?” Teddy asked.

“Oh, we'll find a place.

“I'm not sure I can take this,” Howard said later, holding his wife in bed. “I can't believe what I've done.”

“What
we've
done is save our marriage,” she said. “If this hadn't happened who knows where you and I would be.”

For a while Emily could not be consoled. She told her friends, her pony and her teachers in Woodbury that all was about to be lost forever and
ever
. (“Who does she remind you of, Amanda?” Amanda's mother had laughed.) But while Emily bemoaned her losses, Amanda was celebrating the soon to be lifted burdens of the gardener, the housekeeper, the pool man, the handyman, the oil man and all those other people who ratcheted up the costs of country living.

And while Amanda dreaded some of the hoops they were going to have to jump through to sort out their finances, she welcomed the new sense of partnership with Howard.

“Don't you feel, it, Howard?” she would ask. “How much closer we are now?”

Howard did feel it when he was at home with Amanda, but at the office he was still filled with guilt. He had to help find three assistants new jobs (or he'd have to pay their unemployment). Gretchen was floored. “What the hell?” she said to him. “I'm supposed to do the work of how many people now?”

“We're reassigning clients to the new agent,” he told her, “so there will be less of a workload.”

“Then maybe I need to reassign myself to another job somewhere else,” Gretchen warned him.

“A girl's gotta do what she's gotta do,” Howard told her, trying to sound casual but feeling miserable.

“Business is that bad?” another literary agent asked Howard, while calling for a reference for one of the assisstants.

“It's not bad,” Howard explained, “the setup's just not cost-effective anymore.”

“We always wondered how you were managing it,” the agent said. “So now I guess we know that you weren't.”

When Howard told Amanda that the agent was hiring the assistant she was elated. “Well, don't be too elated,” he said glumly, “because I found another bunch of bills I forgot to put on the list.”

Amanda made him sit down immediately and go over those bills and how they fit into their financial plan. “Don't you find it at all strange how much you seem to like this finance stuff?” he asked.

“No,” Amanda said, “because unlike writing, finance has res
olution. There's a finite beginning and end and specific values in between. As a writer you get tired of calling something finished only because you can't bear to look at it anymore.”

“I'm not sure if our finances make me feel more sick or more despondent,” Howard said.

“Come, come, darling,” she said, sliding into his lap and putting her arms around his neck. “Admit it. It feels good for us to be a team on this. On everything.” She smiled. “Doesn't it?” The last she asked more softly.

“I thank God every day for you, Amanda. I do.” He kissed her and she kissed him back.

After so many months of feeling so self-consciously unsexual around each other, it was strange how normal it seemed to feel acute desire for one another again. Amanda was kissing Howard's neck and then whispering things in his ear that made him grin and flex his muscles. “Bills turn you on, huh?” he murmured, looking upward as he felt her mouth on his ear.

They kissed as he fumbled under her sweater to unhook her bra, allowing her breasts to fall into his hands. She made a sound he had almost forgotten as he touched her a certain way, and he found his lower body already straining upward, wanting to find her.

God it was great. They locked the door, pulled each other's clothes off and simply went down onto the oriental rug, knocking bills off the desk in the process, which only made them laugh. Then when Howard found his way inside of her, Amanda threw some of the bills on the floor up in the air like confetti, then groaned deeply, wrapping her legs around him. If anyone had told Howard even a month ago that he and Amanda would be gasping with passion with credit card bills sticking to their bodies he would not have believed it.

But he believed it now as he felt Amanda, finally sated, relax beneath him. Howard allowed himself that final shudder of pleasure and knew, in that moment, that he and Amanda could do anything.