Monday, Easter Monday, it rained as predicted, and the winds were indeed from the northeast, blowing in over Cape Cod and across the Sound, a bit of leftover winter.
I had risen at dawn and discovered that Susan had slept elsewhere, probably in a guest room. I showered and threw on jeans and a sweater, then headed into Locust Valley where I had breakfast at a coffee shop.
I lingered over my coffee and read the
New York Post
for the first time in ten years. An interesting paper, sort of like beef jerky for the mind.
I ordered a coffee to go, left the coffee shop, and drove the few blocks in the rain to my office. I went upstairs to my private office, which had once been the second-floor sitting room, and I built a fire in the fireplace. I sat in my leather wingback chair, put my bare feet up on the fender, and read a copy of
Long Island Monthly
as I sipped coffee from the paper cup. There was an article in the magazine about getting your East End house ready for Memorial Day, the official start of summer fun and sun. This, of course, reminded me that I had a place to go if I went into self-imposed exile or was declared persona non grata in Stanhope land.
My summer house in East Hampton is a cedar-shingled true colonial, built in 1769, surrounded by wisteria and fruit trees. I own that house with Susan—it is mine, hers, and the bank’s.
My ancestors on my father’s side were original settlers on the eastern end of this island, arriving from England in the 1660s when this New World was indeed very new. I actually have in my possession an original land grant given to one Elias Sutter by Charles II in 1663. That land encompassed about a third of Southampton Township, now one of the most exclusive beach communities on the East Coast, and if the Sutters still owned it, we’d all be billionaires.
That far eastern strip of this island, jutting out into the Atlantic, is a strikingly beautiful landscape, geographically different from the Gold Coast, but in some ways bound to it by family connections, money, and social similarities. More important, it is far less populated out there, and the nature nuts are in control. You can hardly put up a mailbox without filing an environmental impact statement.
This ancient connection to the eastern tip of Long Island has always interested me as an abstract footnote to my own life, but until now it has had little impact on my thinking. Lately, however, I’ve been wondering if the time has come to live in Sutter land rather than Stanhope land.
I tried to picture myself a country lawyer, my stocking feet on the desk in some storefront office, pulling in maybe thirty thousand a year and joining the rush down to the docks when the bluefish were running.
I wonder if Susan would live out there year-round. She would have to board her horses, but the riding there is spectacular, the public trails running through the Shinnecock Hills, right down to the Atlantic Ocean and along the white sand beach. Maybe that’s what we needed to get ourselves together.
I sometimes like to come to the office on a day off and catch up on things, but I’ve never before used the office as a refuge from domestic problems. I put the magazine down, closed my eyes, and listened to the crackling fire and the wind and rain. Absolutely delightful.
I heard the front door open. I had left it unlocked in case any of the more enthusiastic troops wanted to put in a few hours or, like myself, just get away from home. I heard the door shut, then heard footsteps in the foyer. We have a dozen people working here: six secretaries, two paralegals, two junior partners, and two new law clerks, both young women who will take the bar exam this summer. One of the budding new attorneys is Karen Talmadge, who will go far because she is bright, articulate, and energetic. She is also beautiful, but I mention that only in passing.
I hoped that the footsteps I’d heard were Karen’s because there were a few interesting legal concepts I wanted to discuss with her. But in the next instant, I realized that it didn’t matter if it was her, my wife, my homely secretary, sexy Terri, or my little nieces and nephews with axes and chain saws. I just wanted to be alone. No sex or violence.
I listened and realized that the footsteps were slow and heavy, unlike a woman’s tread. Perhaps it was the mailman or a deliveryman or even a client who didn’t know I had made Easter Monday a new holiday. Whoever was down there was walking around, going from room to room, looking for someone or something.
I thought I should go down and investigate, but then I heard the bottom step squeak, and a voice called out, “Mr. Sutter?”
I put the coffee down and stood.
“Mr. Sutter?”
I hesitated, then replied, “I’m up here.’’ The heavy footsteps ascended the stairs, and I said, “Second door to your left.”
Frank Bellarosa, wearing a shapeless raincoat and a gray felt hat, came through the door into my office. “Ah,’’ he said, “there you are. I saw your Jeep outside.”
“Bronco.”
“Yeah. Do you have a few minutes? I got some things I want to talk to you about.”
“We’re closed today,’’ I informed him. “It’s Easter Monday.”
“Yeah? Hey, you got a fire. Mind if I sit?”
I sure did, but I motioned to the wooden rocker facing my chair across the hearth, and Mr. Bellarosa took off his wet hat and coat and hung them on the clothes tree near the door. He sat. “You religious?’’ he asked.
“No, Episcopalian.”
“Yeah? You take this day off?”
“Sometimes. Business is slow.’’ I picked up the poker and happened to glance at Bellarosa, whose eyes, I saw, were not on me or the fire, but on the heavy, blunt object in my hand. The man had very primitive instincts, I thought. I poked the logs in the fire, then with no abrupt movements, put the poker back. I had the urge to ask Bellarosa if this was a stickup, but I didn’t want to strain our new relationship with bad humor. I said instead, “Do
you
have the day off?”
He smiled. “Yeah.”
I sat in my chair opposite him. “What sort of business are you in?”
“That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about.’’ He crossed his legs and tried rocking a few times as if he’d never sat in a rocker before. He said, “My grandmother had one of these. Used to rock, rock, rock, all day. She walked with two canes, you know, before they had those walker things, and sometimes if you were trying to get past her to get into the kitchen, she’d swat you with one of the canes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I never asked her.”
“I see.’’ I regarded Mr. Bellarosa a moment. He was wearing basically the same outfit as on Saturday, but the colors were sort of reversed; the blazer was gray and the slacks were navy blue, the shoes were now black, and the turtleneck was white. More interestingly, I could see his shoulder holster.
He looked at me and asked, “You ever have trouble with trespassers?”
I cleared my throat. “Once in a while. Nothing serious. Why?”
“Well, there was a guy on my property yesterday morning. Scared the hell out of my wife. My . . . gardeners ran him off.”
“People sometimes like to walk on the estates. You get the vandalism at night with the kids.”
“This was no kid. White guy, about fifty. Looked like a derelict.”
“Really? Did he actually do anything to frighten your wife?”
“Yeah. He growled at her.”
“My goodness. Did you call the police?”
“Nah. My gardeners chased him with the dogs. But he went onto your place. I woulda called you, but you’re unlisted.”
“Thank you. I’ll keep an eye out.”
“Good. Now my wife wants to move back to Brooklyn. Maybe you can tell her this is a safe place.”
“I’ll call her.”
“Or stop by.”
“Perhaps.’’ I sat in the wing chair and stared at the crackling fire.
Fifty
? She must be half blind. I hope so.
The wind had picked up, and the rain was splashing against the windowpanes. We sat in silence awhile, while one of us contemplated the purpose of this visit. Finally, Mr. Bellarosa asked, “Hey, you ever get those vegetables in the ground?”
“Not yet. But I did eat the radicchio.”
“Yeah? You like it?”
“Very much. I hope you gave me some to plant.”
“Oh, sure. It’s marked. You got radicchio, you got basil, you got green peppers, and you got eggplant.”
“Do I have olives?”
He laughed. “No. Olives grow on a tree. The trees are hundreds of years old. You can’t grow them here. You like olives?”
“For my martini.”
“Yeah? I’m growing figs, though. I bought five green and five purple. But you got to cover the trees in the winter here. You wrap them with tar paper and stuff leaves around them so they don’t freeze.”
“Really? Is gardening your hobby?”
“Hobby? I don’t have hobbies. Whatever I do, I do for real.”
I was sure of that. I finished my coffee and threw the paper cup in the fire. “So—”
“Hey,’’ said Frank Bellarosa, “you missed a good time yesterday. Lots of good people, plenty to eat and drink.”
“I’m sorry we couldn’t be there. How was the lamb’s head?”
He laughed again. “The old people eat that. You got to have things like that for them or they think you’re getting too American.’’ He thought a moment, then added, “You know, when I was a kid, I wouldn’t eat squid or octopus or any of that real greaseball stuff. Now I eat most of it.”
“But not lamb’s head.”
“No. I can’t do that. Jeez, they pluck the eyes out and cut the tongue off and eat the nose and cheeks and brains.’’ He chuckled. “I just ate the lamb chops. What do you people have for Easter?”
“Headless spring lamb, with mint jelly.”
“Yeah, but you know something? In this country, I see the kids getting more interested in the old ways. I see it with my nieces and nephews and my own kids. At first they don’t want to be Italian, then they get more Italian when they get older. You see it with the Irish, the Polacks, the Jews. You notice that?”
I hadn’t noticed that Edward or Carolyn were dancing round the maypole or eating kippered herrings, but I had noticed that some ethnic groups were doing the roots thing. I don’t entirely disapprove as long as there are no human sacrifices involved.
“I mean,’’ Bellarosa continued, “people are looking for something. Because maybe American culture doesn’t have some things that people need.”
I looked at Frank Bellarosa with new interest. I never thought he would be a complete idiot, but neither did I think that I would hear words such as “American culture’’ from him. I asked, “You have children?”
“Sure. Three boys, God bless ’em, they’re healthy and smart. The oldest guy, Frankie, is married and lives in Jersey. Tommy is in college. Cornell. He’s studying hotel management. I got a place in Atlantic City for him to run. Tony is at boarding school. He goes to La Salle, where I went. All my kids went there. You know the place?”
“Yes, I do.’’ La Salle Military Academy is a Catholic boarding school for boys, out in Oakdale on the south shore of Long Island. I have Catholic friends who have or had sons there, and I attended a fund-raiser there once. Its campus is on the Great South Bay and was once an estate, one of the few on the Atlantic side of this island, and belonged, I believe, to an heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune. “A very fine school,’’ I said.
Bellarosa smiled, proudly, I thought. “Yeah. They made me learn there. No bullshit there. You ever read Machiavelli?
The Prince
?”
“Yes, I did.”
“I can quote whole pages of it.”
And
, I thought,
you can probably write the sequel to it.
I had heard rumors, and now it was confirmed, that boys with certain types of family connections, such as Mr. Bellarosa’s, were alumni of this school. On a somewhat higher level, there were a number of leaders from certain Latin American countries who were La Salle graduates, including General Samoza, formerly of Nicaragua. This same school had also produced men who had made their marks in politics, law, the military, and the Catholic clergy. An interesting school, I thought, sort of the Catholic version of the Eastern Establishment Wasp prep school. Sort of. I asked, “Didn’t White House Chief of Staff John Sununu go there?”
“Yeah. I knew the guy. Class of ’57. I was ’58. Knew Peter O’Malley, too. You know him?”
“Dodgers’ president?”
“Yeah. What a place that was. They break your balls there, the good Christian Brothers. But maybe not so much anymore. The whole fucking country got soft. But they broke my balls back then.”
“I’m sure it did you some good,’’ I said. “Perhaps you’ll be rich and famous someday.”
He went along with the joke and replied, “Yeah. Maybe if I didn’t go there, I would’ve wound up in jail.’’ He laughed.
I smiled. Certain things about Frank Bellarosa were making sense now, including his nearly intelligent accent, and, I guess, his nickname, the Bishop. A Catholic military school had always struck me as a contradiction in terms, but I suppose on one level there was no contradiction. “So,’’ I asked, “were you a soldier?”