Authors: Nelson DeMille
Where, I wondered, had the years gone? And why hadn’t I appreciated those moments when my world was safe, familiar, and intact?
Well, you can’t go back, and even if I could, I’m not sure if I could have or would have changed anything that led to the end of my life as I knew it, or the end of Frank Bellarosa’s life as he knew it.
Frank Bellarosa, on a cold winter day a decade ago, was driving from Brooklyn and heading to a restaurant in Glen Cove with some business associates for a meeting. They got off the Long Island Expressway, became lost, and somehow wound up on Grace Lane.
They spotted the abandoned estate called Alhambra, and, as Frank told me later, the Lombardy poplars that lined the driveway, and the red-tiled stucco villa, reminded him of his Italian roots. He made inquiries, and bought the estate. Then he moved in. Then I met him. Then Susan and I accepted his invitation to come by for coffee. Then a lot of things happened, ending with my wife murdering her new neighbor and lover.
And now, ten years later, the original cast of this tragedy—-including the dead and the dying—has reassembled for the last and final act.
I
headed west on Duck Pond Road, passing Friends Academy, a prep school founded by the local Quakers. Susan had gone to Friends, driven to class, she told me, in a big Lincoln by George Allard, who, as one of the last of the Stanhope servants, wore many hats, including a chauffeur cap.
The Gold Coast of the 1950s and early ’60s, as I recalled, was in a state of transition between the old, pre-war world of Social Register families with dwindling fortunes, and the social upheavals that would sweep away most of what remained of the old order.
Many of these changes were for the better. George, for instance, ceased being a servant and became an employee. That didn’t improve his driving, I’m sure, but it did give him weekends off.
As for Ethel the Red, as I secretly called her because she was a socialist, she never considered herself a servant (especially after she slept with Augustus Stanhope), and she’s lived long enough to see many of her idealistic dreams realized.
A sign informed me that I had entered the Incorporated City of Glen Cove, which is actually a medium-sized town of about twenty thousand people—or more, if you count the newly arrived immigrants who did not bother with the citizenship requirements.
Glen Cove is located on Hempstead Harbor and the Long Island Sound, and like many north shore Long Island communities, it was founded by English settlers in the 1600s, including my distant ancestors, who, when they arrived, did not bother asking the local Matinecock Indians for citizenship applications or work visa permits.
Anyway, the white skins and the red skins lived in relative peace and harmony for a century, mostly as a result of the Indians dying from European diseases. The British occupied Long Island for much of the Revolution, and many of the local inhabitants remained loyal to the Crown, including, I confess, the Sutters, who still have this conser-vative streak in them—except for my late father, who was a liberal Democrat and who used to get into political arguments at Republican-dominated family gatherings. My crazy mother, Harriet, is also a progressive, and she and Ethel were always allies against the majority of unenlightened, repressive male pigs who once dominated the society of the Gold Coast.
But even that had been changing, and when I left here ten years ago, if you had a friend or neighbor who was a Democrat, you could talk about it openly without worrying about real estate values plummeting.
On the subject of war and politics, I was half listening to a conservative radio talk show, and I turned up the volume to listen to a caller saying, “We need to nuke them before they nuke us.”
The host, trying to sound a bit rational, replied, “Okay, but
who
do we nuke?”
The caller answered, “All of them. Nuke Baghdad first so we don’t have to send our boys there to get killed.”
“Okay, but maybe we should just nuke the Al Qaeda training camps first. They’ll all get the message.”
“Yeah. Nuke the camps, too.”
The host cut away for a commercial break that was preceded by the rousing patriotic music of John Philip Sousa, a former Long Island resident who seemed to be making a comeback.
There had been an amazing transformation in the political and social culture since 9/11, and it was sort of jarring if you hadn’t been here to see it developing. Virtually every house had an American flag flying, including the shops and houses here in Glen Cove, not usually a bastion of conservatism. And nearly every vehicle had a flag on its antenna, or a decal on a window, or bumper stickers that said things like “9/11—Never Forget,” or “Bin Laden—You Can Run, But You Can’t Hide,” and so forth. Also, nearly everyone I’d seen in Locust Valley wore an American flag pin. Thinking about this, I had the distinct feeling that people had been checking out my car for signs that I was a loyal American.
Anyway, back to the last century, when Glen Cove became home to a large immigrant Italian population, who found work building and maintaining the grand mansions and estate grounds. This manual labor for the rich eventually morphed over the generations into successful Italian-American-owned construction companies, landscaping enterprises, and related endeavors.
This was a great American success story, but unfortunately, a side effect of the large Italian population of Glen Cove is the existence of a small but persistent group of gentlemen whose business is not landscaping. Thus it was that Mr. Frank Bellarosa from Brooklyn was on his way to Glen Cove, Long Island, a decade ago to meet some business associates at an Italian restaurant. Ironically, today, with GPS, he and his driver—was it Anthony, now known as Tony?—would not have gotten lost and wound up on Grace Lane, and Fate would have been sidetracked by satellite technology. Go figure.
I headed north on Dosoris Lane, a seventeenth-century road that led toward the Sound, and on which some Sutters had lived in centuries past.
I’ve never had occasion to visit the Fair Haven Hospice House, but the nice lady on the phone had given me good directions, and assured me that Mrs. Allard could have visitors—though she also cautioned that this situation could change by the time I arrived.
Dosoris Lane passed through what had once been eight great estates, all belonging to the Pratt family, and built by Mr. Charles Pratt of Standard Oil for himself and seven of his eight children. Why number eight didn’t get an estate is a mystery to me, but I’m sure Charles Pratt had his reasons, just as William Peckerhead of Hilton Head had his reasons for deeding the Stanhope guest cottage and ten acres to Susan, as sole owner. Susan, of course, could have changed the deed, but that would have angered William, and we don’t want to get Daddy angry.
On the subject of real estate, I always wondered what William Stanhope thought about Ethel Allard’s life tenancy in the gatehouse. I never knew if William was aware that his father, Augustus, had been popping the chambermaid, or whatever Ethel’s position was at the time. But he must have known if Susan, who told me the story, knew. And yet William never shared that family secret with me. Probably he was embarrassed—not by the sexual indiscretion of his father, but by the fact that the little servant girl got a good real estate deal from a Stanhope. As I said, Tab A does
not
go into Slot B—follow directions.
I passed one of the former Pratt estates, Killenworth, which was used as a weekend retreat for the Russian Mission to the United Nations. When the bad old Commies were around, there were KGB-type guards with guns and mean dogs at the iron gates. Now it looked peaceful and unguarded.
The ultimate rite of passage for boys—and even girls—when I was a kid growing up in Locust Valley, was to “cross the border” into the Soviet estate and play a dangerous game of hide-and-seek with the Russian guards and their dogs. The secret, incidentally, was raw ground beef—the dogs loved it.
We were more crazy than brave, I think, and we all had a story about some kid who had disappeared forever behind the Iron Curtain. I don’t think any of those stories were true, and most kids who vanished from the neighborhood were later discovered to have moved away with their families on a corporate transfer or gone to boarding school.
The Russian guards, I’m sure, thought we were incredibly daring, resourceful, and courageous, and I’m certain this was reported back to Moscow and led directly to the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the end of the Cold War. Like most Cold War heroes, however, I and my idiot friends remain anonymous and unsung. Maybe someday the world will know what we did here, but until then, the Glen Cove Police will continue to carry us on their incident reports as unknown trespassers, vandals, and juvenile delinquents. That’s okay.
We
know.
Up the road was the J. P. Morgan estate and the F. W. Woolworth estate, now both abandoned and partly developed, and as per directions, I turned left onto a private lane, which passed through some woods. Up ahead, I saw a big old white stone mansion with a slate roof. A sign directed me to visitor parking.
I pulled into the nearly empty lot, retrieved the Teddy bear, and got out of the car.
The sky had cleared and wispy white clouds scudded north toward the Sound, and big gulls glided low on the horizon. After three years at sea, I’d developed a sense for the weather and nature, and I felt that the Sound must be close by. In fact, I could smell a whiff of salt air, which made me nostalgic for the open ocean.
I walked toward the mansion, thinking, “Not a bad place to spend your last days on earth, Ethel, before the pearly gates swing open to welcome you to the Big Estate in the Sky. Rent-free for eternity and you don’t have to sleep with the boss.”
I
entered the white building, which I could see had once been a private home. It’s a good thing when these old estate houses can be recycled for another use, like a school, or museum, or, in this case, a nursing home and hospice house. That’s better than the wrecker’s ball and another upscale subdivision to house what seemed like an endless supply of Wall Street whiz kids whose mortgage credit rating somehow exceeded their IQs.
A nice lady at the desk greeted me, and in reply to my inquiry, she informed me that Ethel Allard was “doing as well as can be expected,” which was probably as good as it got here. The only other likely responses were “not well, no visitors” and “passed away.” I didn’t think that “in the gym” was one of the likely status reports at Fair Haven.
The lady directed me to a small elevator in the lobby. “Second floor, room six.”
I was alone in the elevator, which took a long time to ascend one flight, during which I listened to a piped-in minute of Vivaldi’s
Four Seasons
—“Summer,” if you’re interested. I imagined the doors opening to a celestial landscape of white clouds and blue skies with pearly gates in the distance. I really needed a drink.
The doors, in fact, opened to a floral wallpapered corridor, in which stood a Lady in White. She greeted me by name, and introduced herself as Mrs. Knight, then said, “Call me Diane.”
“Hello, Diane.”
“Follow me, please.”
I followed her down the long corridor. Mrs. Knight seemed like one of those health care professionals who was both stern and gentle, a result, no doubt, of having to deal with every conceivable human emotion in the House of the Dying.
She said to me as we walked, “Mrs. Allard is medicated for pain, so you may not find her as alert as you remember her.”
“I understand.”
“She is, however, lucid now, and all her mental faculties are intact.”
“Good.”
“Her pain is tolerable and manageable.”
“That’s good.” I had the feeling I was supposed to be asking questions to elicit these statements, so I asked, “How are her spirits?”
“Remarkably good.”
“Many visitors?”
“A few. Including your mother and your wife.”
“My ex-wife.” I inquired, “They’re not here now, are they?”
“No.” She glanced at my gift and said, “She’s going to love that Teddy bear.”
Mrs. Knight stopped at a door and said to me, “I’ll go inside and tell her you’re here.” She added, “It’s very good of you to come all the way from London to see her.”
“Yes, well . . . she’s a wonderful lady.”
“Indeed, she is.”
I wondered if there was another Ethel Allard here.
Mrs. Knight was about to open the door, but I asked, “How long . . . ? I mean—”
“Oh, I’d say about half an hour at most.”
“Half an hour?”
“Yes, then she gets tired.”
“Oh. No, I meant—”
“I’ll stick my head in every ten minutes.”
“Right. What I meant . . . I’ll be in town for only a few more weeks, and I wondered if I’d have the opportunity to see her again.” Mrs. Knight was either not following me, or didn’t want to address the subject, so I asked bluntly, “How long does she have left to live?”
“Oh . . . well, we never speculate on that, but I’d say the end is near.”
“How near? Two weeks?”
“Maybe longer.” She informed me, “Ethel is a fighter.”
“Three?”
“Mr. Sutter. I can’t—”
“Right. I had an aunt once who—”
“You have no idea what I’ve seen here. Death is the great mystery of life, and so much depends on attitude and prayer.”
“Right. I believe that. I’ve been praying for her.” I need her house.
Mrs. Knight looked at me and delivered what I guessed was a well-rehearsed piece of wisdom, saying, “It’s natural for us to want to hold on to our loved ones as long as possible. But that’s selfish. Ethel has made peace with her condition, and she’s ready to let go.”
That sounded like one week, and I might need two more weeks in the gatehouse. I’d been encouraged by Mrs. Knight’s assertion that Ethel was a fighter, which seemed now to contradict this report that Ethel was ready to let go. Rather than ask for a clarification, I tried a new tack and said, “I’m also her attorney—in addition to being her friend—and there is some paperwork to be drawn up and signed, so perhaps I should speak to her doctor about her . . . remaining time.”