Embers (86 page)

She added,
"
I just meant, with kids around
,
you
'
re always celebrating something or other
—
baptisms, bar mitzvahs, birthdays, graduations, weddings. The kids could end up being my ticket to
Bellevue Avenue
. Besides,
"
Liz said with a musing smile,
"
it
'
d be fun to do something for those two. They looked
so
sweet.
"

****

Netta Simmons was on her hands and knees picking up pieces of a broken soup bowl when a plate of steamed vegetables went flying over her head, smashed up against the eighteenth-century inlaid sideboard, and came dribbling down the polished wood not far from where she knelt.

That
'
s it,
the housekeeper decided, tossing the soup bowl pieces into a plastic pan.
I quit. After thirty
-
eight years, to have to put up with
this?

Leaning on one knee for support, Netta got to her feet with a painful
"
oof
"
and turned to face her tormentor.

"Caroline Stonebridg
e
—
"
Netta began, her lips trembling in her jowly cheeks.

"
Caroline, sweetheart, that wasn
'
t called for,
"
said Cornelius Eastman from the head of the table.
"
You could have hurt Netta. Now, come
—
be a good girl and say you
'
re sorry.
"

The five-year-old blonde with the Shirley Temple curls turned her steel-blue gaze on Netta and said,
"
I
'
m
sorry.
"
Under her breath she muttered,
"
That I
missed.
"

Instinctively the housekeeper turned to Cornelius Eastman
'
s son: handsome dark-haired Jack, him that she had practically raised from scratch, him that would
'
ve cut off his hand before he
'
d ever raise it to her in anger
—
with or without a plate in it.

Jack Eastman stood up and threw his napkin on the table in disgust.
"
This is impossible, Dad!
"
he said angrily.
"
Send the brat to bed without supper
—
God knows she has no use for it.
"

"
Now, Jack
—
"
his father began unhappily.
"I
know it
'
s not easy for you. You couldn
'
t have had this
—
situation
—
in mind when you took over East Gate. But what can we do? Caroline is a fact in my life, whether
—
"

"
I don
'
t
like
broccoli,
"
said little blond Caroline.
"
And Netta knows it.
"

Netta saw Jack clench his jaw, a good sign. She folded her arms across her chest and waited with a kind of grim hope: maybe the son would overrule the father and lock the little monster in the carriage house for a year or two.

But no. In a controlled voice Jack said to Caroline,
"
When and
if
we can bribe a new nanny to take care of you, you can go back to eating all the junk you want. Until then, you will eat whatever Netta prepares for the rest of us. If you
ever
throw one morsel of food again, you will eat in the kitchen, in a high chair, like your little brother. Now. Either finish your supper or go to your room.
"

Caroline stuck out her lower lip and said,
"
You wouldn
'
t talk to me like that if my mommy was here. When is she coming back? I want her here.
"
The child began a wailing refrain of
"
I want my mom-mee
...
mom
-
mee
...
mom-mee
...,"
kicking her chair leg for emphasis.

Netta
sighed;
the girl
'
s lament was a routine event by now. Caroline
'
s mommy was a thirty-year-old woman named Stacey Stonebridge who
'
d rocked the Eastman household when she showed up seven weeks earlier with a boy in her arms and a girl at her side. The girl, she
'
d announced blithely, belonged to the elder Eastman.

No one much doubted the truth of Stacey
'
s story; that was the sad thing. It hardly paid to bother with blood tests
and DNA analysis. Stacey was pretty, leggy, and young, but most of all, blond
—
which is how Cornelius Eastman liked them a few years ago. Now that he was in his seventies, he seemed to have gone back to raven-haired beauties. But a few years ago? Oh, yes. Blondes couldn
'
t miss.

Mrs.
Eastman had taken one look at Stacey, packed up her bags, and removed herself to
Capri
for the remainder of the summer. This time, Netta knew, the hurt went deep. It was possible that tall, blond Stacey was the last straw. Time would tell.

Caroline
'
s wailing continued. Cornelius Eastman rubbed his silver temples with manicured fingers and said fretfully,
"
Now, Caroline, we
'
ve been through all that. Please don
'
t pound. Your mother is at the clinic. You want her to get well, don
'
t you?
"

Stacey? Not a chance. She
'
s much too fond of her pills and her bottle. She
'
s not ready to get well.
Netta knew it, Jack knew it, and so did the elder Eastman.

Caroline pushed her plate away with a morose look. She was getting ready for the next phase of her tant
rum: self-
pity.

Cornelius turned to his son and said,
"
Where
'
s the damned breeder, anyway? Didn
'
t you say he
'
d be here at six?
"

Jack glanced at his watch.
"
That
'
s what he said. Well, have fun. I can
'
t wait any longer. I
'
m off to the shipyard
—
"

Caroline began to sniffle.
"
I just didn
'
t want broccoli, because it
'
s my
birthday.
I shouldn
'
t have to eat broccoli if I
'
m being five years
old.
"
Tears began rolling freely.
"
And I
don't
even have a
cake.
"
She turned to the senior Eastman with big, glazed blue eyes.
"
Dada? Do I?
"

Oooh, she
'
s good,
thought Netta. That Dada-thing that she
'
d come up with: it always made Mr. Eastman melt visibly.

He was doing it now.
"
Of
course
we have a cake for you, darling,
"
the old man said, his face creasing into a hundred lines of happiness.
"
Would we forget you on your birthday?
"

"
She knows we have a cake,
"
Netta snapped.
"
She
'
s already dug a trench through the frosting.
"

"
Forget it, Netta,
"
said Jack tiredly.
"
It
'
s not worth it.
"
They were inte
rru
pted by the ring of the doorbell. Caroline stopped sniffling at once. Cornelius Eastman grinned broadly. Jack shook his head with wary resignation. And in the adjacent new kitchen, installed expressly so that Netta wouldn
'
t have to fuss with the dumbwaiter and the old basement cook-area anymore, Caroline
'
s little brother Bradley let out a welcoming shriek.

The puppy was here.

Cornelius Eastman himself went to get the door, with Caroline right behind him. Jack got up to leave.

"
Jack Eastman, where do you think you
'
re going?
"
said Netta.

The next sound they heard was a high and relentless
arf
-
arf-arf-
arf!

"
Oh, lord,
"
murmured Netta,
"
your father really has gone and done it.
"

A white ball of fluff came cannonballing through the dining room, hardly stopping long enough to pause and sniff Netta
'
s skirt, then Jack
'
s trousers, before racing to the nearest table leg, lifting its leg, and peeing.

Caroline, who was in hot pursuit, stopped short with a scandalized look.
"
He
'
s a
boy
puppy! I thought I was getting a
girl
puppy!
"
She dropped to all fours and began crawling under the table after the dog.

Arf
arf
ar
f!
Arf
arf
arf!

"
I
'
m sorry, honey, that
'
s all they had,
"
said her amused and silver-haired father, lifting the damask tablecloth.

Arf
arf
arf!

Netta thought that Cornelius Eastman didn
'
t look sorry as much as glad to be done with the week-long hunt for a female Maltese. And nobody seemed sorry about the wet stain on the Oriental rug.

"
But I had a
girl
'
s
name all picked out,
"
Caroline lamented as she lurched in vain after the bouncing white mop.

At that point Netta had to dash into the kitchen to fetch Bradley, who
'
d cleared his own tray of food with one sweep of his arm and was screaming incoherently. It was his way of saying,
"
I
'
ve finished dinner, thank you so much, and now I think perhaps I
'
d like to join the others.
"

Arf
arf
arf!
Arf
arf
ar
f
arf!

The elder Eastman was chuckling at Caroline
'
s distress over the puppy
'
s gender.
"
What name did you have in mind, sweetheart?
"

"
Snowball,
"
said Caroline in a pout.

Bradley, on the loose now, went charging after the puppy and succeeded in coming away with two clumps of long white hair, which clung like angora mittens to his still-sticky hands.

Arf
.
Arf
ar
f
.
Arf
arf
arf
arf
arf
arf
arf
!

Jack, a bachelor who had never in his
life
been surrounded by this kind of chaos, said in a loud voice,
"
Will somebody
please
get that animal under control?
"

Netta wasn
'
t sure which animal he meant. She grabbed the one closest to her
—
Bradley
—
and began cleaning his hands with a wet washcloth as the boy squirmed and screamed to be let down.