A Purrfect Romance (17 page)

T
he living room was almost dark, but by some trick of reflected light the setting sun sent a single golden shaft through the partially drawn living room drapes, casting it across Henrietta’s portrait and imparting a mysterious glow to her face.

Bridey stopped in her tracks. She put her hand on Marge’s arm.

“What do you think, Marge? Is the old girl,” she pointed to the picture, “is she okay with us prowling around through her things, looking for that manuscript?”

Marge paused only briefly. She tilted her head to one side and gave the painting a quick, appraising glance.

“I’d say it’s the very thing she’s been waiting for,” Marge said matter-of-factly. “Like you were heaven-sent, Bridey: the exactly right person to dig that old manuscript of hers out of the mothballs, or wherever it is she stashed it.”

Marge wasn’t interested in spending one more minute obsessing about ethical or mystical questions. She was already halfway into the next room. This promised to be the best adventure she’d had in ages and she was eager to get started. “Come on,” she called back impatiently. “I know it’s here somewhere. My editorial nose can smell a manuscript at twenty paces.”

Bridey took one last look up at the picture. The shaft of light gave a spooky shine to the portrait’s eyes, but it was impossible to tell if it was a spark of encouragement or a gleam of warning. Were she and Marge about to find hidden treasure, buried somewhere in the enormous apartment? Or were they more like reckless children, poking around and exploring where they had no business going, violating Henrietta’s privacy?

But, like the little girl who’d been told not to put beans up her nose, she found the challenge irresistible.

“Whatever you do,” she called, hurrying to join Marge, who was already in Neville’s bedroom, “don’t make a mess.”

“Of course not,” Marge said. “I’ll be totally careful.” She was already pulling the pillows forward and feeling behind them, probing under the mattress. “I’ll just start in here and go through this room first. You do Henrietta’s bedroom.” She replaced the pillows and smoothed down the satin shams. “We’ll fan out toward each other. Start at the ceiling of each room and work our way down to the floor. Be methodical. Tops of closets, backs of drawers, under beds and chairs, behind the books. It’ll be a thick packet, right? You said about four hundred pages?”

“But maybe she divided it into chapters and scattered them around.”

“Whatever. I’ll know it when I see it, even if it’s chopped up in parts, like a chicken.” Marge stepped out of her loafers, pulled over a boudoir chair and climbed onto it to reach the top of a Georgian highboy. She felt around in the dust but found nothing. She brushed off her fingertips on her jeans.

“Go on,” she said. “Shoo. Start in Henrietta’s bedroom, then go to her dressing room. There must be a ton of hiding places in there.”

Bridey hesitated, standing in the doorway that connected the two bedrooms, still reluctant to get started. That spooky feeling was shivering up the back of her neck; she knew she was asking for trouble.

“I don’t know, Marge,” she said uneasily. “This is going to take forever. There are the guest rooms, the maid’s room, the laundry room. Eighteen rooms, for God’s sake.”

“Right. But there’ll only be seventeen left to go when I finish in here, and only sixteen after you do Henrietta’s bedroom, and you’re not going to find it anywhere if you don’t get moving.” Even as she spoke, Marge climbed down from the chair and pushed it back into its place near the draperied window. She felt beneath the cushion and then ran a smoothing hand over it.

“I know,” Bridey said, still standing in the doorway. “I know. I’m stalling. This is so scary!”

Marge turned to her, hands on her hips. “Now you just listen to me, Bridey Berrigan. Old Mrs. Willey wanted her book to be found. I just know it. I can feel it. I work with writers all the time. I know how they think. So stop spinning your wheels and start hunting.”

“All right. All right! I’m going.”

And Bridey went.

“But just so you know,” she called back over her shoulder, “I don’t feel good about this!”

Bridey explored every possible space, every drawer, every cushion, every fold of fabric in Henrietta’s bedroom, from cornices down to the dust ruffle. She slid under the bed, reaching with an exploring hand to all four corners, and even looked out the window, as though the elusive manuscript might somehow be suspended out there, twelve floors above the sidewalk.

But there was nothing.

In the dressing room, she opened every hatbox, felt through every garment bag and shoe holder, ran her hands inside the stored fur coats and dug through the stacked-up containers of winter clothing.

Still nothing.

Meanwhile, Marge finished up in Neville’s bedroom and moved on, first to his bathroom, where she combed through every shelf and drawer, even moving his matched hairbrushes, his old-fashioned straight razor and his jar of shaving soap, as though, small though they were, they might be hiding something, and then to his dressing room, where she pulled out shoe boxes and dug through piles of sweaters, shirts and ties.

Still there was nothing.

Silk and Satin ran back and forth between Bridey and Marge, as though urging them on, supervising their efforts, mewing excitedly, being pains in the neck.

An hour passed, and the two women were by then barefoot, disheveled and totally frustrated. Marge had broken a fingernail and Bridey had bruised her knuckles pulling a storage box off a shelf. They agreed they needed a break and went into the kitchen, where Bridey poured out a couple of Cokes and broke open a bag of chips. The cats prowled around their feet impatiently, rubbing their heads against the girls’ ankles.

“This is making me nervous,” Bridey said, plopping onto the chair at her desk. “It’s like there are ghosts all around and we’re digging in their graves. I can practically hear them wailing at us.”

“I know,” Marge said. “Isn’t it exciting?” She was perched on the countertop, scattering potato-chip crumbs about as she waved her hands and wiggled her bare toes. “I feel like Nancy Drew. And I bet when that manuscript turns up, it’s going to be right here in this kitchen. I can feel it, like when you play Hot and Cold. As soon as we came in here, I could hear those ghosts going ‘Warmer, warmer . . .’ ”

“It can’t be in here,” Bridey said. “I work in this room all the time. I’d have come across it by now.”

“Well, then, in the sewing room. That was Henrietta’s sanctuary. That’s where she hid her diary. I’ll bet that’s it.”

“But no,” Bridey said, “it should be in the library. That’s where a manuscript belongs.”

“Well, I can’t stand this goofing off,” Marge said, hopping down from the counter and brushing crumbs off her fingers. “Let’s get back to the search. Onward and upward!”

“Okay, excelsior it is,” Bridey said, forcing enthusiasm. “If I don’t die of the stress first.”

Two more hours passed, and the manuscript still hadn’t turned up, not in the kitchen, not in the sewing room, not even in the library. Marge had already worked her way through the living room and the foyer and gotten well into dismantling the family room, and Bridey had reached the linen closet near the laundry room and was just replacing the towels on their shelves when she heard a shriek from her friend.

“Bridey! Come quick! Omigod, Bridey! Omigod! Come here!”

Bridey dropped everything and ran down the hall to the family room, where Marge was sitting on the floor, a big storage box between her legs and a mass of papers, mementoes and assorted oddments strewn about her randomly. Her face was wild and her hair was a mess. She was waving a pack of papers in the air, looking as though she’d discovered gold.

“This is it! I’ve got it! I found it! Oh, I don’t believe it! I was right! It’s here! Oh, Bridey, I was right!” Marge’s cheeks were red with excitement. “She didn’t burn it! It was right here, tucked away in a cabinet, behind this stack of old photos. Just waiting for us to come along and unearth it. Oh, I’m so excited! This is so totally awesome!”

An electric chill ran up Bridey’s arms, and the hair at the back of her neck was crackling sharply. She dropped down on the floor next to Marge.

“Let me see it!” She grabbed the thick sheaf of papers out of Marge’s hands.

It was true. There, on the cover page, was typed out:

Bridey was actually holding in her hands the very manuscript that had precipitated so much fuss. About 400 typewritten pages, a little crackly and yellow after all these years, but clearly Henrietta’s cookbook/memoir. A faded pink ribbon was tied around the packet, and a note, handwritten in Henrietta Willey’s characteristically flamboyant strokes, had been slipped under the small bow.

There are none to follow me,
the note said.
This was my baby, the only one I ever had, and it died aborning.

The papers trembled in Bridey’s shaking hands.

“Oh, how awful! All that work, all that hope, all those dreams, all shot down by a single thoughtless rejection. The disappointment must have been unbearable. I feel so sorry for her.”

Then Bridey stared thoughtfully at the title page. “Still, if it had been mine, I would never have given up on it so easily. I’d have fought for my work.”

“I know,” Marge said, grabbing the manuscript back from her. “But it doesn’t surprise me all that much. I’ve known authors so devastated by a first rejection, they turned all their disappointment into a rage against their own work. Even pitched their manuscripts into the nearest fire.”

“Well, thank God Henrietta didn’t go that far.” Bridey tugged at the manuscript, finally getting it back from Marge, who gave it up reluctantly. “But Marge, think what she did. Instead of fighting back, Henrietta turned all her humiliation and anger against Mr. Brewster and his family. What a stupid waste. As though Harmon and Brewster was the only publishing house in town. So foolish.”

Bridey undid the ribbon, casting it aside impatiently. She leafed through several pages, skimming quickly, pausing occasionally here and there to read a paragraph closely. To her surprise, she found that the reminiscences were charming, the flamboyance of Henrietta’s natural style carrying the sparkle of real life, the recipes reflecting genuine sophistication and culinary experience. Though the writing was obviously that of an amateur, there was interesting material in Henrietta’s manuscript, material that deserved an audience.

She felt like shaking the old woman for giving up her baby so easily, for retreating into a stubborn rage, for preferring to nurse her unquenchable resentment instead of fighting back, trying again.

She looked up from the manuscript and into the living room, where no light at all remained, where Henrietta’s portrait had disappeared into the darkness.

Inevitably, she remembered Mack’s oh-so-casual support of his father’s judgment.

I’d have done the same thing
, he’d said.

Would he really? she wondered. Would he really have been so abrupt, so thoughtless, so inconsiderate of an old woman’s dream?

For hours Mack had been tramping up and down the streets of Manhattan. He didn’t return to his apartment until almost ten o’clock, but by then he’d made some decisions.

He set all the lights in the living room blazing, stripped off his jacket and tossed it onto the sofa, loosened his tie and opened the top button of his shirt. He dropped into a deep armchair and, with his jaw set grimly, put the photo of his father onto the coffee table, where he could face it directly. He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and leaned forward with his arms resting on his knees. The image in the picture peered back at him from its silver frame, and the two men, so alike in feature and expression, seemed squared off for serious battle. Mack breathed deeply a couple of times. Now he was ready to take on his father.

“Okay, Dad,” he said firmly, “you and I are going to have a little talk.”

He raked his hands through his hair, messing up the thick waves. This wasn’t going to be easy.

“When you died, I figured we’d had our last fight. But now it looks like we’re going to have to go one more round. You were always one tough old son of a bitch, Dad, and you never made room for anyone else’s feelings or opinions. But maybe, where you are now, you’re a little bit better able to hear me. So here’s what I have to say.

“I always respected you. You know I did. And you know that I live by the rules you taught me. You taught me to value honor and loyalty. You taught me to be strong and sure of myself, to work hard, to take command. To be a leader of men. You taught me to treat our work, the work of book publishing, with respect and affection, to understand its great significance, but also to be tough and efficient in running the business. And to never forget the bottom line.”

Here, Mack passed his hand across his mouth and jaw. He paused, needing a moment to choose his words.

“Okay. I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say that those are good rules, and no one ever went wrong living by them. And I agree, Dad, up to a point. Like I said, I accepted your rules and I live by them. But I’ve discovered something else. I’ve discovered that strength can turn into cruelty.

“Now, I know you were never consciously or deliberately cruel. That would have been the grossest violation of the code you lived by. But take for example this matter of Henrietta Willey. Remember, Dad? She gave you a manuscript to read many years ago, and you rejected it. That was okay, that was your call; Harmon doesn’t publish cookbooks, no problem with that. But Dad, I’ve read over the correspondence in the file, and jeez, you really did drop the ball on that one. Your rejection letter was totally without consideration. The old lady had put a ton of love and work into that book, and she was your neighbor and you’d been a guest in her home. Okay, maybe she expected special attention, but that was the code she’d lived by. You knew that about her. Don’t you think you could have given her feelings just a tad more consideration? Couldn’t you have acknowledged all that effort instead of dismissing it out of hand? You knew perfectly well she expected at least a sympathetic reading. Would that have been so hard? Would it have cost you so much to have said a kind word?