The Price of Inheritance (10 page)

“I hate how well you know me.”

“No, you don't. That's part of the reason you love me.”

I let the word
love
sit there between us and didn't reply.

“You need a break, Carolyn. That's obvious, maybe not to your mother or the Dalbys, but to me.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“So take one.”

When I hung up the phone with Alex, I regretted not asking him to come over. I wanted two big, strong arms around my waist. I wanted him in bed with me. I knew that seeing him naked and moving on top of me was not the way to solve all my problems. It might cause me to scream the words
Jesus
and
Christ
while digging my nails into his back, but that wasn't a long-term solution. So instead of calling him back I turned on my computer and logged on to the real estate section on Craigslist. I listed my apartment as a monthlong sublet. I wrote what I paid a month and then subtracted seven hundred dollars from it. I wanted to leave quickly. Alex was right, and even David was right in a way. I needed a change.

There was just one person I wanted to call before I started figuring out exactly what that change was.

Nicole was already crying when she picked up the phone. I apologized over and over again as she cried, and she told me to stop apologizing while I cried.

“I need to get out of this city, Nicole,” I said after she told me about how Christie's was handling the Tumlinson estate. She'd been completely taken off it and Louise and Erik were dealing with everything. She wasn't allowed to contact Elizabeth or Nina at all. Or me. Especially not me.

“Leave New York? I think that's a good idea.”

“Do you?”

“I actually do. Sometimes this city can suffocate you. Go to the Hamptons. Go to Block Island.”

“It's January.”

“Right. Go skiing. Go meditate in an igloo. Find yourself at Canyon Ranch. Just do something to begin anew.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Do you think, in a few . . . years. Do you think I could work at another auction house again? Not Christie's but maybe Sotheby's or Phillips?”

She hesitated before saying, “I do. But I think, like you said, it could take years rather than months.”

“So if you were me . . .”

“I think if I were you, I'd become a dealer. Work for yourself. Do what you love. Make some money. Christie's and Sotheby's may be off the table for . . . well . . . a decade, but you're not dead in the art world. You have clients who trust you. You're very smart. Branch out on your own.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe? What else are you going to do?”

“I'm going to go to Newport,” I said suddenly. “I'm going home.”

CHAPTER 6

I
t was exactly three days before Valentine's Day when I drove a rented car from the Providence train station to Newport. The man at Hertz asked if I wanted to upgrade my vehicle from tin can to slightly larger tin can; I said I was tempted to downgrade it to the bus. I'd subletted a small apartment in Newport close to the tennis club but not close to the water for twelve hundred dollars a month—a third of what I paid in New York—and packed two suitcases full of winter clothes and my laptop. Despite two phone calls to Houston, I still hadn't spoken to Elizabeth about what had happened and Nina hadn't called me. I promised myself not to harass anyone having to do with the Tumlinson estate so I could have four weeks of peace. In a month, my tear ducts would be functioning properly and I'd head back to New York, maybe still a pariah, but one with self-control.

Before I drove to my rented apartment, I went to the Dalbys' house. Jane and her husband were staying there while her parents spent the winter traveling. I'd had no communication with her since I texted her to let her know I was alive, but Jane wouldn't be mad because of my silence; she would just be worried. I turned my car down to the southern coastline of Aquidneck Island toward Bellevue Avenue. There are roads and there are roads, but there are few pieces of pavement in America quite like Bellevue Avenue. If you're a tourist in Newport, you go there. And if you're the original old money in Newport, you live there.

The Dalbys—not just old money, but among the founders of Gilded Age Newport—had lived on Bellevue Avenue since 1875, when the family had built the A. H. Oxmoore house, better known as Morning Star. It was named for the École des Beaux-Arts–trained architect who designed it, then renamed by the Dalby matriarch. Once it was up, the Dalbys never left. Jane was the fifth generation of Dalby to summer in the house, but Jane and her husband now made it a base along with a $10 million house in Boston while her semiretired parents traveled between Newport, New York, Boston, and the other nicest corners of planet earth. The house I grew up in was on the other side of the expansive green lawn on the east side of the Dalbys' house. My family had lived there, thanks to my grandmother's very close friendship to Jane and Brittan Dalby's grandmother, and the two matriarchs had decided that we were all going to grow up together in one big garden. I looked up at the French neoclassical exterior and already felt lighter. All I wanted to do was spend time inside 6460 Bellevue, where I had lived the happiest days of my life. The street, also home to the Marble House and the Elms, carved its way through town, north to south on Aquidneck Island, but as soon as it hit fabled Rough Point, the smell of money turned west onto Ocean Avenue. On Ocean, part of the famous drive, the Atlantic held the huge houses in on the south side, and on the north side were Almy Pond, Lily Pond, and Goose Neck Cove. Holding court on the winding road, built by and for generations of old money, was the very private Bailey's Beach, where the prosperous and thin scions of the town's oldest families sipped cocktails before noon, glided through the salty air, and checked up on the goings-on of each other's tribes.

I turned toward the water in the tiny red Ford hatchback I had rented, entered the gate code, drove down the long driveway, past the fountain that worked through the winter, and parked outside the sprawling house. It had every Gilded Age comfort one could ask for, including twenty-seven bedrooms. The Dalbys had later added a lawn tennis court, an indoor swimming pool, manicured gardens fashioned after Chatsworth (inspiration for Pemberley in
Pride and Prejudice
)
,
and a maze of hedges, and had expanded the rows and rows of big bay windows that the sun always seemed to hit just right. In the summer, they were left wide-open and you could call someone's name and they would put their head out and look at you in the yard. I used to run from my little house toward the Dalbys', screaming, “Jane! Brittan!” and wait for their heads to peer out the windows, thick brown hair flying in the wind, their laughter bouncing off the 140-year-old walls. In winter, the windows were closed to the freezing air, but the curtains were always pulled open as if to prove to the world that wealth and privilege didn't always mean one was standoffish, not that the world saw very much of the house other than what they could photograph through the gates. For those scurrying on Newport's famed Cliff Walk, the back of the house was visible, which was why most of the life that was lived outside was lived in front.

The Dalbys may have inhabited a $20 million summerhouse, one of the most expensive single-family homes in New England, but Jane didn't treat it like a family estate. That afternoon, just like every other, I knew their front door would be unlocked. I walked up the path, pulling a wool hat tight onto my head, turned the heavy brass doorknob, and shouted, “Hello?” into the foyer.

A few seconds later, I heard a musical “Hello?” respond.

It wasn't Jane's voice, or her mother's; it was the Dalbys' housekeeper, Florentine's, which was warmer and a little older sounding than I remembered.

“Carolyn! What a surprise!” She walked up to me and hugged me, just like she had on my visits for the last twenty-nine years.

“Are you on vacation? Do you take vacation? Jane said the other day that you haven't gone on a vacation in seven years. Is that true? You shouldn't do that because your bones will start to cry. And who wants that?”

“My bones will start to cry?” I asked as she put her arms around me. Florentine and I were the same height, so hugging her meant the warmest, most welcoming hug imaginable. Not like hugging a Dalby, where your head went directly into their muscular shoulders.

“Oh yes. You should be very careful.”

She hugged me again and brushed my hair behind my ears. Florentine had been brushing the hair of the Dalby girls and their friends since I could remember. She was a fixture in their house and would always remain so.

“But you're here now, and on vacation!” she exclaimed. “Good for you.”

She thought I was on vacation. Seven years without a real vacation—just Christmas with my parents in Boston for thirty-six hours, year after year—and here was Florentine celebrating the fact that I had some mirth flowing through my body. My instinct was to start wailing and explain to her that I was a failure, but instead I just said, “Nope. It's not vacation. I was fired. No more job. It's a long story but I was and, well, I guess that's just what happened. Now I'm here because I need a break. I rented a little apartment on Memorial but I just wanted to see if anyone was home here before I drove over.”

“On Memorial? Why aren't you staying here? You know Jane will be very mad at you.”

“I know,” I said, looking through the house toward the beautiful water lapping to the east of us. “But I can't live off the Dalbys my entire life, Florentine.”

“You don't live off anyone, and neither did your parents. Hardworking people. You all work too hard.”

“So do you,” I said, giving her a kiss on the cheek and holding her hand in mine. It was soft and wrinkled from years of looking after a family that liked being looked after.

“Carolyn, poor baby,” she said smoothing my hair. “Who was stupid enough to fire a nice, smart girl like you?”

“Well, I guess a nice, smart girl very much like me fired me.”

Florentine took my left hand in hers, too, so that we were facing each other like we were about to start doing the minuet. It was just then that Jane showed up behind her and screamed.

“Carolyn! What are you doing here!” she said, putting her hands on her mouth and looking at me all wrapped up for a blizzard.

“This is the best surprise ever. You scared me!”

Jane looked perfect, just like always. No matter what age she turned, or what she was wearing, Jane looked breezy, beautiful, and very rich. It wasn't because she was dripping in money; it was just the light around her, her carefree attitude, like she knew that at the end of every day, everything would be all right because she had the millions from past generations shrouding her in safety. Jane had a law degree from Yale and ran the very large Dalby family foundation. She worked from whatever home she felt like, but had a huge office in Boston waiting for her when she wanted to put in the hours. For now, she was happy to dole out Dalby money from Newport while her sister, Brittan, helped make more of it in New York working on the finance side of her father's company. She came to the door barefoot—Grace Kelly with dark hair and triceps muscles. She gave me a hug, put her head on mine, and didn't let me go right away. When she did, she declared, “You look like hell. Really, terrible. What have you been doing?”

“Not that much. Getting fired, crying, drinking, wallowing in self-pity, fighting with my mother.”

Jane pouted and opened the door wider. Her hands were tan even in winter with a burgundy manicure and a diamond engagement ring that was eight carats and had belonged to her grandmother. I heard the clink of three thin gold bangles, which she always wore on her right wrist, even when she was swimming.

“Yeah, your mother told me that. She said you've been abrasive and that you only drink vodka and tap water and that we should all be very concerned.”

“Oh yeah? That's nice. She's so concerned she's called me not once since she threw me out to the wolves in New York.”

Jane didn't say anything else about my mother. We had been having the same conversation for decades. My mother didn't show up, or didn't call. She forgot to do this or that. But she was always very worried, very concerned.

“How long are you back for?” Jane asked after chiding me for not staying with her.

“A month. Just a month.”

“Then it will be a wonderful month,” she replied, leaning her tall body against the door frame, too.

I turned down Jane's multiple invitations to come inside, to stay for dinner, to stay for a month, a year, however long I wanted, and headed away from the mansions and the water to move into the apartment I had paid for, sight unseen.

It was a second floor walk-up in a town house fifteen blocks from the ocean. It was musty. The windows were dirty, so dirty that you could barely tell it had begun to snow outside. The couch was heavy velvet and the color of split pea soup and the dining room table was oak and looked like it had doubled as a butcher block for the last five decades. None of the chairs at the table matched and the plates in the cabinets were plastic. There was nothing antique, nothing charming, but I didn't care. I liked that it didn't feel like me, or my life. This was a stranger's apartment. Plus, I couldn't afford anything else if I didn't want to squander my savings. Who knew how long I would be unemployed. I threw my bags in the bedroom, peeked around for lung-destroying black mold or termites, and fell onto the couch, which immediately made me cough. I took a Zyrtec and listened to the booming silence around me. I was definitely no longer in New York. I was in New England, in February, and I had absolutely nothing to do.

When I was in high school, and for the part of the summers in college, when I wasn't interning at Christie's I used to work for $8.25 an hour in an antique store in Newport called William Miller Antiques. It was a very small but quaint store that sold “architectural antiques, furniture, clocks, silver, nautical pieces, jewelry, militaria, textiles, lighting and general ephemera.” I had loved working there. I remember thinking that what we were selling was exquisite and that was mostly because William Miller found almost everything that had once belonged to someone dead and gone very important. Even if he would only pay me the same $8.25 that I made in high school, I was going to ask William if he would let me work with him for a month. I needed something to do and if someone was going to help me remember why I loved antiques and collecting in the first place, it was him.

On Tuesday, after a weekend of wandering around my hometown, I gave William the same shock I'd given Jane. I knocked on the door of his little store an hour before it officially opened at 10
A.M
. and William came straight to the door. He had turned sixty last year but still had a brown beard without a glint of gray, as well groomed as a topiary. He always wore suits, even when lounging on weekends, and told me that his secret wish was for blue jeans to be declared illegal and that bowler hats would come back in fashion with a vengeance. “Think of it, Carolyn, bowler hats. Would anything be more splendid than that?” he'd always say after a few glasses of wine. I had nodded enthusiastically and agreed, though I could think of a few thousand things that might be even nicer than looking like Magritte-obsessed Surrealists. William was convinced that if the world looked nice, it would help wrinkle out the peskier problems, like rape, murder, and disease.

“Carolyn. I'm very happy to see you,” he said, shaking my hand after he had opened the door. William didn't hug people; I had even seen him shake his own wife's hand. He was, as always, wearing a suit that looked tailor-made for him, right down to his socks. If he could have worn a morning coat to do his books without being labeled an eccentric, he would have.

“What brings you back to Newport in February?” he asked as he opened the door for me. He pointed to two William and Mary–style chairs in the middle of the gallery.

“Really?” I asked before I sat down. They were definitely from the late seventeenth or early eighteenth centuries.

“Sure,” he replied. “We've got to make sure they work before we sell them. If yours breaks, let me know.”

I laughed and sat down with a firm thud. “Feels just fine to me.” I rubbed my hands down the thick ash-wood arms and closed my eyes. “I love William and Mary furniture. It feels like the beginning of America.”

“Yes!” said William enthusiastically. “What a great way to put it. The beginning of America. It really does. And it is. It was made by the hands of the earliest Americans. Men who weren't even born here, but came here looking for a better life. That's exactly what these are.” He smiled his appreciation for our shared love and he asked me again why I was in Newport in the dead of winter. “Were you hungry for frostbite?” he asked, gesturing for my coat.