Greenwich (7 page)

“That's nonsense. I was born gawky and I remained that way.”

“I feel too good to argue, and just to see you smile is enough. You want to tell me about your rotten day?”

“If you want to hear about it?”

“Yes, I do.”

She cleared the table as she spoke, the sink, stove, and refrigerator lined up at one end of what was dining room and kitchen. The rest of the room contained a futon and a couple of chairs.

“I'll wash the dishes,” David offered.

Running the hot water over the dishes, she said, “Later.” She dried her hands and sprawled out on the futon. “God, I'm tired, Davey. After this summer, it's your last year, isn't it?”

“Last year. And I'll make it home every weekend.”

“You're obsessed.”

“Sure I am.” He sprawled out on one of the two easy chairs, kicked off his shoes. “Obsessed, stricken, or whatever—I'm in love with you. Tell me about today.”

“It's grisly.”

“Well, that's what you do, grisly.”

“Do you know what a coronary-artery bypass graft is?”

“Sort of.”

“Well, it's a rather desperate way of dealing with a heart that is giving out for want of oxygen-carrying blood. This time the patient was Dr. Seth Ferguson.”

David nodded. “I hope it went well.”

“No, it didn't go well. It's a complex operation. The surgeon begins by removing sections of the large leg veins, and they're set aside to be used for the grafting. It takes hours, but I'll make it short. An incision is made through the breastbone, and the chest is opened, exposing the heart. Then the heart must be stopped and its temperature reduced while you switch the circulation to a heart-lung machine. I won't go into all the details, except to tell you that the leg veins are used to replace the blocked arteries, sutured, and then the heart is warmed and given a gentle electric shock to start it again. Then the chest is closed. It's a team thing and everything must be done with great precision. Harvey Loring was the surgeon, and usually he's good, but this time he botched it and excessive bleeding started—and—and I don't know. Dr. Ferguson's in intensive care now.”

“Is he going to make it?”

Nellie hesitated for a long moment before she answered, “I don't know. I spent an hour with his daughter before I met you. She's very close to him. Good God, I didn't know what to tell her. If I said her father was going to make it, I'd be lying and making it worse. I don't think he's going to make it. Damn Loring! I could have done it better myself—no, I have no right to say that.”

“You like Loring, don't you?”

“No, damn it! He is likable. Everyone likes him. I don't want you to repeat this, please?”

David nodded, wondering how he would have felt had it been his father lying in intensive care, and what he would feel about a man who was responsible—yet with a part of his mind thinking that at least this was the end of Nellie and Loring as a competitive couple; and then disliking both the thought and himself as the thinker.

“Let's go to bed, Davey,” Nellie said. “I want to put my arms around you and cry a little. I don't want to spend my life as a scrub nurse.”

“Sure.”

In bed, his arms around her, David said, “Is that real—not wanting to go on with being a scrub nurse?”

“When I feel the way I do now, it's real.”

“Then what would you want to do?”

“Get married and have kids.”

“Right on. I'm with you.”

“David,” she said woefully, “I'm three years older than you and you're at Harvard and I'm here in Greenwich, and you have a job now at Bilko's Boatyard, scraping boats for six dollars an hour, and sooner or later you'll fall in love with some pretty girl at Radcliffe or Wellesley—”

“Not likely.”

“Oh, shut up and hold me.”

Ten

T
he last of the Castle dinner guests had arrived when Richard Bush Castle was called to the phone. Castle was in the living room with his guests, and Joseph, Abel Hunt's son, was fixing drinks and passing a tray of hors d'oeuvres when Donna, the upstairs maid, informed Castle that there was a call for him in the study.

“Did he give you a name?” Castle whispered.

“No, sir. He asked for Bush.”

Castle excused himself. “Only for a moment,” he apologized.

Not everyone called him Bush; it was the name he had chosen for special situations—a term he loved—and for a select group of people. He explained to some, if they inquired, that it was an old family name, not connected to the family of the onetime president, but to the old Bush-Holly House. Since there was no easily available lineage of the Bush family that had once occupied the Bush House, and since the Bush political family made no claim to a relationship with the Bush House, Castle had, so to speak, picked the name for himself unchallenged. However, Sally always called him Richard, and when she spoke of him in the third person, it was often Mr. Richard Castle or Mr. Richard. She had seen a film once where “mister” was used as a prefix by the household help and wife, and the usage had fascinated her.

The Castle household had three telephone lines, one for their son, Dickie, one for the home, and one for Mr. Castle, whose personal telephone was a tieline connected to his New York office. His home office had once been a changing room for his swimming pool, but he had rebuilt it and equipped it with his computer, printer, fax, desk, and chairs. And another extension connected to a phone in the main house, in his study.

When he picked up the phone and said, “Hello—Castle here,” a voice replied, “Bush, this is Larry.”

Castle had to reorient himself, and he was silent for a moment or two. He recognized the name and he recognized the voice, but it was different.

“Castle!” the voice said. “Larry.”

“Yes, Congressman.”

“Call me Larry.”

“I just feel damn derelict, Larry. I should have called you long ago, I've been derelict.” Castle was pleased with the choice of the word.

“Bush,” Larry said, more gently and intimately, “you've been reading the
New York Times
?”

“Yes,” Castle admitted. In his mind, Larry was coming increasingly into focus. “Yes, I have. I must say it worried me.”

“Not one damn thing to worry about, Bush, not one blessed thing. But we have to talk.”

“Yes. Yes, I guess we should. You're not worried?”

“Not a bit,” Larry said cheerfully.

“Thank God for that. Where and when?”

“I'm in New York at the Waldorf. How about tomorrow morning, early—let's say eight
A.M.
—you're awake by then?”

“I'm awake, but getting into New York at that hour—”

“I'll come up to your place.”

“Drive up here?” Castle hesitated.

“I'm no stranger to your home. Give me the address again and I'll find the place. You're in what they call the Back Country, aren't you?”

“That's right.”

“Bush,” Larry said mollifyingly, “I wouldn't put you through this bother, but I have to catch the shuttle at noon tomorrow. That squeezes me for time. I'll spend a half hour with you, and we'll put this together. It's important.”

“Hey, come on, Larry. I know how important it is. As a matter of fact, I'm pleased you called, and I hope that after we talk, I can stop worrying. We have a long driveway, so I'll be at the road gate, waiting for you. Just remember that you take the Hutchinson River Parkway into the Merritt. You get off at North Street and turn left where the service road meets Lake Avenue. We're about a mile north of there.”

Then Castle gave Larry the address and the off-road directions and returned to his guests. Evidently, his absence had cast no pall over the party. Muffy Platt, who had filled in for the seat of Harold Sellig's wife, was the only one who appeared bored, but her face lit up when Castle reentered the room. Mary Greene sat with Sister Pat Brody and Sally, and the monsignor was listening to a discussion between Greene and Sellig. When Castle joined them, Sally rose and announced that she had to see about dinner. It was about seven forty-five then, and Sally knew that dinner at eight was proper.

Abel Hunt considered Sally Castle to be one of the prettiest women he had ever seen, on the screen or off. As a well-educated, intelligent, race-conscious Afro-American, he knew quite well that it was his duty to denigrate the beauty of a white woman, but the innocence of Sally Castle broke through his most cherished vows. He rejected his son's notion that Sally was stupid, explaining to Joseph that in the society they both inhabited, innocence and a high degree of intelligence do not exist easily in the same individual. This evening, when Sally entered the kitchen, he greeted her with a broad smile and said, “We are ready to go. Just sit them down at the table. Cooking is an art, Mrs. Castle, and this is state of the art.”

“I know. I can't fry eggs properly, so I know it better than most people.”

“Someday, I will come here—no charge—and spend a day teaching you. Absolutely.”

“That would be divine.”

“And I gave instructions to Josie and Donna about the service. They will not screw up.”

“Thank you, Mr. Hunt,” Sally said, taking two bills from her bodice. “This is my own gift—something extra—a hundred for you and fifty for your son.”

“Very generous of you.”

“You can leave whenever you're through. As long as the girls understand the menu.”

“They'll hear from me if they don't.”

The two women, standing at the other side of the kitchen, giggled. Abel's son entered with a tray of glasses as Sally stood up on her toes and kissed Abel's cheek. After Sally left the kitchen, Joseph said to his father, “It's your age and beauty, so I won't mention it to Mom.”

“You miss the point entirely,” Abel replied. “That's a good woman, a very fine and innocent woman. I don't care why she married Castle or what she done before she married him, but that's a good, generous woman. Time you learned the difference between men and women. There are good women but mighty few good men.”

“Right on!” Donna exclaimed. They were both of them, Josie and Donna, in awe of Abel.

“That's enough,” Abel said firmly. “They're sitting down. The first course and then the wine. So get your little asses in there.”

Sally had spent at least an hour over the seating. She had place cards of china, small pieces that you could write a name on in ink and then simply rub it off, and the lady in the shop on Greenwich Avenue where she purchased them had assured her that they were in the best of taste. She sat at one end of the table, her husband at the other, and put Sister Pat on her right. Richard would be happy to have Muffy on his right. She knew that Castle liked to play a touching game under the table, especially with Muffy Platt, and she felt that as an understanding and grateful wife, she should overlook this. Actually, it did not bother her too much. Muffy was older and not aging well after a face-lift; and for all of his wandering, she felt that Richard would never leave her. Men were a continuing mystery to her, and thus she accepted them however they were.

Actually, the dinner party was becoming a great success, and Sally glowed. Let Richard play his game with Muffy. The old witch got little enough from her own husband, and the result would be a more amorous Richard Castle that night when they went to bed. The food was not entirely to Sally's taste—she would take off at times to stuff herself at McDonald's—but she had gotten used to odd sauces and exotic flavors; and as for the guests, they were in food's seventh heaven.

Sally herself was straining her ears, as was Sister Pat Brody, to follow a discussion between Monsignor Donovan and Harold Sellig, with an occasional intervention from Mary Greene and her husband, Herbert.

“As I understand your point of view,” the monsignor was saying, “you're making a case for social guilt. In other words, it's not only the nuns and lay workers and Jesuits and Archbishop Romero who were murdered in El Salvador, presumably by assassination squads that we trained, but you include President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King—” He paused.

“And others,” Sellig said. “Luminaries, of course. They provide the substance for the media. But those who die in war, of starvation, of the casual killing—”

“But that's too broad a brush,” Herb Greene protested.
“Assassination
is a word of precise meaning.”

“Yes, for you, Professor. You're a linguist. But in social practice, or in a literary sense, if you will, words expand and take on a broader meaning. Take two of the adjectives commonly used by the kids today;
awesome
and
cool.
Each has lost its technical meaning. Take
awesome.
My son's eighteen, going into his first year at Columbia next fall. I tell him that I've been writing the past four hours, he responds that it's positively awesome.”

Sally noticed that Castle had stopped whispering to Muffy Platt and was now listening.

The monsignor was savoring his food and looking with interest at Harold Sellig, whom he had not met before.

“Would you agree, Monsignor?” Mary Greene asked. “I read Daniel Berrigan. I mean, I'm not asking whether you agree with Father Berrigan, but I think that is his point of view.”

The monsignor glanced at Sellig, raising an inquiring brow.

“I never read Berrigan,” Sellig said. “That's a cross I bear, an odd thing for a Jew to say, the books I should have read but never had the time to and never will, I suppose.”

Smiling, the monsignor nodded. “Not so odd, Mr. Sellig. You'd be surprised to hear how many Jews I know who carry crosses—invisible ones, of course, but still very heavy.”

Castle entered the conversation for the first time. “Where,” he asked, “did you get your ideas about assassination, Harold?”