September Song (10 page)

I
HAVE BEEN
in some of the finest homes in New England, upstate New York. In them? I have been all through them, top to bottom, basement to attic. While others play golf or go fishing on their weekends I go house-hunting.

For the class of estates I get shown you do not just walk into the agent's office from off the street. Meg—my wife—says, “Pinnacle Realty? I have a call for you from Mr. Joseph Preston. He will be right with you. Mr. Preston, sir, your party is on the line. The green button.”

She hands me the phone.

I say, “Next weekend? No, afraid not. I must be in Bermuda for a conference then. The following weekend? Let me just check my calendar. Yes. That will be fine. Miss St. Johnsbury, will you set up the appointment, please?”

“What sort of property are you interested in, Mr. Preston?”

“Quiet.”

“Period or modern?”

“As long as it's quiet.”

My favorite seasons for house-hunting are when the apple trees are in blossom and when the leaves change color. Whoever has not seen New England in the fall has missed one of life's beauties. And when the orchards flower in the Hudson Valley it is Christmas in May.

On our weekends we put up at cozy country inns. We choose them by consulting our well-worn copy of Wilfred Milford's
Cozy Country Inns
. The ones we choose are those not listed by Wilfred.

I sign the register.

The innkeeper says, “Oh, Mr. Milford! It's an honor to have you with us!” Then rather ruefully, “We are not in your book, you know.”

I say, “I am doing research for a new edition. There will be changes. There will be some new names. And some of the old ones will be dropped.”

You are given the best room in the house. The chef knocks himself out for you. You want yours medium rare? You get it medium rare. You can just picture the fellow out in the kitchen hovering over that hot grill like a bird on the nest.

We sometimes used to return to the same inn for a second stay while being shown around by a different realtor in the area. The way the restaurant critics in the
New York Times
do. You're sampling further before deciding how many stars to award. Then you really get the red carpet treatment.

We don't do that anymore. Not after the time the innkeeper said that since our first visit a fellow impersonating me had been there. He was given the bum's rush. That might have happened the other way round. Nowadays we don't push our luck.

It is important in house-hunting to make the right impression. It is a matter of both your air and your appearance. I drive a Toyota, carry a Bic pen, wear a Timex. Obviously I could drive a Maserati, sport a Mont Blanc, lift my gold cufflink to reveal a Patek Philippe, only I've got more refined taste as well as better sense. Who wants to get ripped off, be kidnapped and held for several millions in ransom? As for my air: would I be wasting my weekend looking at seven-figure offerings unless I could afford one?

Not only do you tour beautiful homes, there is no better way to see the countryside than with a real estate agent. They know every road and in chauffeuring you from one place to the next they choose the most attractive. You are spared the sight of car graveyards, landfills, trailer camps. Unfortunately, even the choicest areas do have such eyesores. You show your appreciation by remarking how unspoiled it is hereabouts. You are assured that with the recently adopted zoning regulations it will remain so.

Just as appealing as fine architecture and beautiful landscape in house-hunting is the human interest. It is a sad fact, but true that most houses come on the market through the breakup of the family, and of course no families break up more than those of the rich and the famous. You meet the most interesting people, the most newsworthy. You don't have to buy the scandal sheet at the checkout counter; you can shake the hand of the best-selling author caught with his pants down, his fifth marriage on the skids, forced to sell to pay that alimony. When the owners are people you never heard of because they have lived since the
Mayflower
dropped anchor in well-heeled privacy the agent opens their skeleton cupboard for you to peek into. He or she wants you to know that the reason for selling is not that something is wrong with the house but rather that something is wrong with the family. You get the lowdown. Insanity. Hushed-up embezzlement. Bankruptcy. The extinction of an old clan, the surviving representatives seated in the drawing room like the last pair of passenger pigeons while you inspect the manor.

On your drive to the next offering after the palace whose owner recently received a life sentence the agent says, “Poor dear Mrs. Delaney! All alone in that big house, except for the servants. It is several years since one of her doctors asked how she was and she said she was happy now to have settled all her children in nursing homes. Say nothing to her about buying the place. It's been in the family since the Creation. They trace their line to Adam and Eve. It's the great-grandchildren who have put it on the market. Pretend that she knows you. She won't know that she doesn't. She'll invite us to tea. Just don't bring up the subject of the Boer War. She's quite bitter about that.”

On your typical weekend in the country you are shown maybe six houses. You don't just breeze through twenty rooms, guest cottage, stables, kennels, pool, four-car garage, the caretaker's apartment over it. You're in no hurry. You're enjoying your private guided tour. Seeing how the other half lives. Except in your bracket the fraction is a great deal smaller than half. You show your seriousness by turning on faucets to test the pressure. You ask about local taxes. Heating costs. Train service. The availability of domestic help. To the agent you're the perfect prospect. You like everything you're shown, and you're not easily pleased. But the retirement home you're looking for will be your first, and you want to make sure it's your last.

At the end of your weekend in the country the agent says, “If you're interested in any of the properties you've been shown, all have been inspected, appraised, approved, and we will be glad to help negotiate the mortgage with our local bank at quite attractive rates.”

I say, “I have never in my life bought anything on credit. You won't find me in Dun and Bradstreet.”

There is no bill to pay when we check out of the inn.

We get away in time to beat the traffic down to the city.

Monday morning bright and early it's back to sorting mail.

September Song

W
HO HAS NEVER DAYDREAMED
that the phone will ring and the caller be an old lover?

Virginia Tyler was now seventy-six, and that fantasy, foolish to start with, had become embarrassing. Yet though it was twenty years since she had heard from John Warner, sometimes, sitting by the fire at night and studying the flames, it returned to her. She would have to shake her silly old head to clear it of its nonsense.

And then it happened! As she would say in her letter to the children announcing her intention to divorce their father and remarry, her heart leapt. She had thought it had withered and died, and been half glad it had—unruly thing! She did not know until then that it had lain dormant, like those seeds from the tombs of the pharaohs that, when planted, blossom and bear.

Toby was in the next room, doing his daily crossword puzzle.

“Is it for me?” he called.

Outwardly calm, she said, “No, it's for me.” Inwardly, both ecstatic and furious, she said, “It's for
me! Me!”
His smug assumption that every call was for him!

Into the receiver she said, “Hold on. I'll check it out upstairs.”

The phone had to be left off the hook so as not to break the connection. But she had no fear that Toby might listen in on the conversation. He was incurious about her private affairs. As far as he was concerned, she had no private affairs, no life of her own apart from his. And he was right: she didn't have, though she had once had, and a wild one it was.

It is said that as we die our lives pass in review before our eyes. It was as she was brought back to life that Virginia Tyler's did.

Listening to that voice on the phone, she was lifted into the clouds. She saw herself in flight, alone, at the controls of her plane.

To join her lover she had taken flying lessons. Her friends all thought she had gone out of her mind. At her age! Then already a grandmother!

“This grandmother has sprouted wings! I'm as free as a bird!” she said as she touched down on her solo flight.

Toby, who had a fear of flying, was proud of her. He gave a party in her honor to celebrate the event. Actually, though she pooh-poohed it in others, she too was afraid of flying. Her fear was a part of her excitement, and a source of pride. For her love's sake she risked life and limb. Winging her way to him, earth-free, added zest to the affair, and youth and glamour to her image of herself. Outward bound, leaving home, she was a homing pigeon. Her path was so direct the plane might have been set on automatic pilot, guided by the needle of her heart.

John too was a licensed pilot. It was he who first interested her in flying. They were winged; they were mating birds. They nested in many far-away places. She did not share Toby's interest in cathedrals, art museums, yet though she resented his pleasure in traveling by himself, his lone European pilgrimages gave her the opportunity to be with John. He would tell his wife that he was off to a conference in Cleveland, Birmingham, Trenton. She would wonder why they always chose such dreary places, and decide to stay at home. The lovers would alight for a week on Nantucket, in New York City. Registering at a hotel as husband and wife, answering to the name “Mrs. Warner,” never lost its thrill for her.

Planes were for rent at the local airport. Her visits to Boston to see her mother became more frequent. Toby was pleased that she and her mother now got along so much better than always before. She said that now that her mother was old she felt she must make up to her for the bad feeling between them over the years. Her mother said, “I'm just your excuse to fly that fool airplane. At your age!”

On her forty-eighth birthday Toby gave her a Piper Cub. That brought her a twinge of remorse.

“Now that you own your own plane you're flying not more but less—hardly at all,” he said. “Don't you like it? Did I buy the wrong kind?”

“Oh, I'll get back to it in time,” she said.

She wondered at his lack of suspicion, and his misplaced trust in her shamed her. It also rather irritated her. Was it that she was too old, too long settled, too domesticated to be suspected of any wrongdoing? She was so conscious of her guilty happiness she felt it must show in telltale ways of which she herself was unaware. She had read
Madame Bovary
and remembered Emma's saying to herself in awe, “I am an adulteress!” She felt transfigured, hardly knew herself. This alteration in her
must
show, if not to Toby then to others. She half-hoped it did! Her dread of disclosure had to contend with a wild wish to have the whole world know. They took her for a middle-aged matron, conventional, unadventurous, yoked to a dull, inattentive husband. They should only know! As for Toby, he took her for granted. Wouldn't it give him a shaking up if she were to tell him!

They never considered getting divorced and marrying each other. As she could see, his deception troubled John, but the guilt he felt was as much toward his son for what he was doing to his mother as toward her. Bruce adored his mother. At twenty-three he showed no inclination toward any other woman. It was doubtful that he would ever marry. He adored his father, too. Adored him as the consort of his queen. Marcia was a fiercely proud woman—perhaps even proud of enduring a marriage that went against her grain. To be divorced would humiliate her.

She too balked at the step. Toby was a one-woman man and without her would be helpless in a hundred little ways. She pitied him—another reason for not loving him—but while it often grated her, she took a certain satisfaction in his dependence upon her. She was fond of Toby, in her way. Some of his habits irritated her: his reading at meals, his smoking in the car, etc., but she was fond of him—or so she kept telling herself. She did not love him, but she shrank from hurting him—or from the guilt she would feel if she did. She told herself that given the choice between her deceiving him and her leaving him, he would choose to have her stay. She had her children, too, whom she hesitated to shock, whose censure she dreaded. And she feared her mother, a Boston puritan, one of a long line, with strict views on sex, marriage, duty, self-denial. A formidable woman. Once when somebody said to her offhandedly, “Well, nobody's perfect,” she took it as a personal affront. Drawing herself up stiffly, she said, without a trace of self-irony, “
I
am. If I weren't I'd change.”

And both were daunted by the prospect of such upheaval, the loss of disapproving friends, the sheer undertaking of creating a new life in a new place. Bad though they might be, old habits were hard to break, and fresh frontiers, while beckoning, were also scary when you reached a certain age. It made you feel old, cowardly and lazy to admit it, but it was easier to rock along with things as they were.

Still, despite all these deterrents, she would have made the break if he had urged it. But, as when they danced, he led, she followed.

“If only both of
them
would find others,” he said, which would not only have freed them but salved their consciences. “But Marcia doesn't like men. Except Bruce.”

“And Toby has got me,” she said. “Old Faithful. Or so he thinks.”

To receive letters from each other in secret both rented boxes in post offices where they were unknown. Yet it all ended when Marcia found one of her letters to him. She was almost ready to excuse his carelessness. He had been unable to destroy it! Any one of her letters to him was a giveaway. They were not the gushings of a girl with a crush on, say, a professor. They were her pillow talk, the uninhibited outpourings of a long-somnolent woman to the Prince Charming who had awakened her with his kiss. Asbestos sheets rather than writing paper would have better suited their contents.