Midnight Voices (4 page)

But while his grief may not have been evident in his clothes, certainly Irene could see a heaviness in his step, a seeming tiredness in his whole being. But it had been months now since the loss of Lenore, and even though she knew some of the neighbors might not approve, to Irene the proper thing was obvious. Anthony Fleming was a man, and if there was one thing Irene had come to understand over the long decades of her life, it was that men could not do without women. The reverse, of course, was not true at all; most women—and Irene certainly counted herself among them—could do very well without a man. Not that she had anything against them, per se. It was simply that it had been her experience that for the most part, men simply weren’t worth the effort. They expected a great deal of support, both physical and emotional, and seemed to think that a few moments a week of sexual gratification should suffice to keep a woman happy. Irene knew that not to be true, and had long ago decided that affairs were one thing; as long as a man performed to her standards, and pleased her more than he did not, then a relationship could be perfectly comfortable. But marriage was another story entirely. From her observations—and she had had ample opportunity to observe—women nearly always got the short end of the marital stick. They made a home, did the cooking (or at least hired the chef, then tried to keep him from stealing more than his fair share), organized the social life, and did their best to remain attractive long after the man’s hair had fallen out while his stomach had grown. But men seemed utterly unable to do without the attentions of a good woman, and Anthony Fleming seemed to be no exception. So, since Irene had neither the interest nor the intention of filling the void in her neighbor’s life herself, the least she could do was set about finding someone who could.

As if sensing her eyes on him, Anthony looked up, spotted her, and waved.

Then, as he stepped through the front door of the Rockwell, she left the window, went to the phone, and dialed the number of the doorman’s booth. “Tell Mr. Fleming not to go up,” she instructed. “I shall be down in a few moments.”

She looked in on her sister, who was still asleep, then put on a light poplin coat in her favorite shade of purple. Picking a walking stick from the umbrella stand by the front door, she left her apartment, not bothering even to lock the door, let alone bolt it. In all the considerable number of years she’d lived in the Rockwell, she’d never had reason to lock her door, and saw no reason to begin now. The elevator, sent up from the lobby by Rodney, clanked to a stop just as she arrived at its gate, and she slid the accordion gate open, stepped inside, re-closed the gate, and reached for the button that would send her to the lobby. But then she suddenly changed her mind, and went up four floors instead. She left the door of the cage open, and walked down the hall to Max and Alicia Albion’s door. Alicia answered almost instantly, and the worry in her eyes was enough to tell Irene what she’d come to find out. “Rebecca’s no better?” she asked. Rebecca Mayhew was the foster child Max and Alicia had taken in four years ago, a tiny waif of a child who had looked far less than her eight years. “It’s just that she’s never been fed properly,” Alicia had assured Irene when the older woman had asked if there was something wrong with the child. Irene hadn’t quite believed her, since Alicia’s response to any problem invariably involved food. But in Rebecca’s case, it appeared Alicia was right, for as time went by, the girl had managed to grow and fill out, without ballooning the way Alicia and Max had. But over the last few weeks the child had begun looking tired, and not only Irene, but some of the other neighbors started to worry about her. “I was hoping maybe she’d be feeling good enough to go to the park with me.”

Alicia shook her head. “Dr. Humphries is coming—that’s who I thought you were. Maybe another day?”

“Of course,” Irene assured her. “Give Rebecca my love, and tell her I might just bake up something special for her tomorrow.” Returning to the elevator, she pressed the button for the lobby. As the elevator rattled toward the ground floor through the shaft created by the staircase that wound all the way to the top of the eight-story building, Irene balefully eyed the panel of buttons that had several years ago displaced Willie from his job operating the elevator. Since her neighbors had voted to make the elevator self-service, she’d never quite felt safe. In the pre-button days, she’d always known that if anything went wrong, Willie would take care of it. But what would she do now? Call down to Rodney, who would come up the stairs, chat with her, but have no idea what to do? Well, perhaps it wouldn’t happen.

More likely, she decided darkly, it would. Then, as the elevator rattled safely to a stop and released her from its cage, she put the thought out of her mind. “You’re taking me for a walk,” she announced to Anthony Fleming, who was looking at her with a bemused expression that told her he probably wouldn’t argue with her. “It’s a beautiful day, and it would be a shame to waste it.”

“And suppose I had other plans?” Fleming asked, putting on a severe expression that Irene saw through in an instant.

“Then you would cancel them,” she announced. “How much older than you do you think I am?”

Fleming shrugged noncommittally. “A few years.”

“A few decades, you mean,” Irene shot back tartly. “At least that’s how I feel today. And since that’s how I feel, I’m going to demand the privilege of age, and let you take me for a stroll through the park. We shall observe nature in its full bloom, and the vigor of youth. Perhaps it will make me feel better.”

Anthony Fleming shrugged helplessly at Rodney, who was grinning from his kiosk, and held the front door open for Irene. “Where are we going? Or are we just wandering?”

“Children,” Irene said, turning south. “Whenever I start feeling this old, I always like to watch children.”

“Maybe you should have had some of your own,” Fleming observed.

“Wanting to watch children is one thing. Wanting to have them is entirely another.” She sighed heavily. “And if my child got sick, I don’t know how I’d handle it.”

“You’d handle it like everyone else does,” Anthony assured her. “You’d get through it.”

“But it must be so hard.”

There was a long silence, but then Anthony Fleming nodded in assent. “It is,” he agreed. “It’s very hard indeed.”

Caroline and Laurie were still a couple of hundred yards from the playground when a voice called out from behind them. “Laurie? Laurie! Wait up!”

Turning, Caroline saw Amber Blaisdell hurrying toward them. A blonde girl whose even-featured face was framed in the same pageboy haircut her mother wore, Amber was clad in Bermuda shorts and a white blouse with a sweater tied over her shoulders—exactly the same preppy uniform that half the girls at Laurie’s former school habitually wore when they weren’t wearing the school uniform itself.

“Hey, Amber,” Laurie said as the other girl caught up with them.

“A bunch of us are going to the Russian Tea Room for lunch! Want to go?”

Caroline saw a flash of anticipation cross Laurie’s face, but it faded almost as quickly as it came. “I—I don’t think so,” she said. “I think I’m gonna hang with my mom.”

“Oh, come on!” Amber urged. “It’ll be fun.” Her voice took on a slight edge. “Since you changed schools, we hardly ever see you anymore.”

A look of uncertainty passed over Laurie’s features. “It’s not that.”

“What is it?” Amber pressed. “You never want to do anything anymore.” She glanced at the small group of girls who were watching the interaction between herself and Laurie. “Some of the kids are starting to talk.”

Laurie’s eyes flicked toward the group of her former classmates. “Talk about what?”

Amber hesitated, as if not sure she should repeat what her friends were saying, but then decided to face it head on. “It just seems like you don’t want to be our friend anymore, that’s all.”

“I want to be,” Laurie began. “I just—”

But before she could finish, someone called out to Amber. “Are you coming? We’re going to be late.”

Amber looked at Laurie one last time. “Come on,” she urged. “Come with us.”

But still Laurie shook her head, and a second later Amber had disappeared into the gaggle of her friends. Caroline was almost certain she saw Laurie’s chin tremble slightly as she watched the girls who had been her best friends only a few short months ago now go off without her, and she slipped a comforting arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she said as they set off once more toward the baseball diamond, where Ryan had already plunged into the milling group of boys who were just starting to choose up sides for their softball game. “Maybe we can find a way for you to go back to the Academy next year.”

“No,” Laurie replied a little too quickly, with a note in her voice that warned Caroline not to push it. But a moment later as they found an empty bench close enough to the baseball diamond to offer a good view but far enough away not to embarrass Ryan, she suddenly spoke again. “It’s just—I don’t know—even if we could afford for us to go back to the Academy, I couldn’t do the things we used to do.”

Caroline looked squarely at her daughter, and, in contrast to Ryan a few minutes earlier, Laurie seemed suddenly to have matured beyond her years. “You really don’t mind not going to the Academy?”

Laurie shrugged. “I don’t know. I liked it okay when I was there. But it cost a lot, and since Dad . . .” Her voice trailed off, but she didn’t need to finish the thought. Private school was the first thing that had gone after Brad had died, and it had been one of the hardest things for Caroline to accept. Indeed, right up until the spring semester fees were due, she’d kept struggling to find the money to keep Laurie and Ryan in the school that she and Brad had worked so hard first to get them in to, then to pay for. But they’d both agreed it was worth it, since at the Elliott Academy they were not only getting a good education, but were safe as well.

But the money simply hadn’t been there, and both she and the kids had had to face it. But now, after the interchange she’d just witnessed between Laurie and Amber Blaisdell, and the longing she’d seen in Laurie’s eyes as she watched her old friends go off without her, she wondered just how much the change in schools might really be damaging her children. Certainly the academic standards at the Elliott Academy were higher than in the public school, and it seemed like every week she read more and more reports of beatings and thievery and drug dealings by kids in public schools who were only a year or two older than Laurie.

Should she have tried harder to find the money to pay their tuition at the Academy? But even as the question formed in her mind, she knew the answer: If there wasn’t enough money to pay the rent, there sure wasn’t enough to cover the costs of private school.

I can’t do it,
she thought.
I just can’t cope with it all!
But even as the words formed in her mind, she heard Brad’s voice whispering inside her head. “You
can
do it. You’ll find a way. You have to.”

“And I will,” she said, not realizing she’d spoken out loud until her daughter looked at her curiously.

“You’ll what?” Laurie asked.

Once again, Caroline slipped her arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “I’ll figure it out,” she said.

“Figure what out?”

Caroline gave Laurie a quick squeeze. “Life,” she said. “That’s all. Just life.” Then she settled back to watch Ryan play softball, and for at least a little while her problems faded away into the warmth and brilliance of the perfect spring morning.

Irene Delamond and Anthony Fleming walked four blocks down to 66th Street, crossed Central Park West, and started into the park. The walking stick held lightly in her right hand, Irene tucked her left through Fleming’s arm, and glanced up at him. “You’re missing Lenore terribly, aren’t you?” She felt him stiffen, and gave his arm a reassuring squeeze. “We all miss her, Anthony. But because she’s gone doesn’t mean your life is over.”

There was a long silence as Anthony seemed to turn the statement over in his mind, but at last he nodded, and when he spoke, Irene could hear the uncertainty in his voice. “I suppose you’re right. But it’s only been six months.”

“Time is always relative, Anthony,” Irene observed as she turned down a path leading to the playground. “For the terminally ill, six months are a lifetime, and not a very long one. To a three-year-old waiting for Christmas, it’s an eternity so distant it’s not even worth thinking about.” She sighed. “To me it seems like a blink of an eye.”

“And for me?” Anthony asked, looking down at Irene.

Finally she saw a hint of a smile—the smile that was one of his best features—and just the faintest glimmer of a twinkle in his eyes, which managed to be the exact blue of turquoise while showing nothing of the stone’s hardness. “Well, I suppose that’s for you to decide, isn’t it?”

Now his smile broadened. “Unless you or some of your busybody friends decide otherwise.”

She swatted him playfully. “Is that any way to talk about your neighbors?”

“I thought the big city was supposed to be anonymous,” he observed darkly.

“It is. Except in The Rockwell, and I suppose in The Dakota, too.” She uttered the name of the building just up the street from their own with ill-concealed contempt.

“What’s wrong with The Dakota? Except for us, it’s the only interesting building on the West Side.”

“Actors,” Irene spat. “It’s filled with them. Loud parties, and all those perverted people. Can you imagine?”

“As I recall we have an actress in The Rockwell, too.”

“That’s different,” his companion sniffed.

“Really?” Anthony countered. “How so?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Virginia Estherbrook is one of us!” Her fingers tightened on Anthony Fleming’s arm once more, but this time there was nothing reassuring in the gesture. “And don’t think you can simply change the subject on me.” She guided him toward one of the baseball diamonds, where a group of shouting children were gathered around a man wearing the striped shirt of an umpire. “Let’s watch for a while,” she said as the group broke up into two teams. While one of the teams fanned out into the field and the other huddled together to establish a batting order, Anthony Fleming watched in amusement as Irene surveyed the benches behind the backstop, silently trying to anticipate which one she would choose. Men, a lot of whom seemed to know each other, occupied most of the benches and Anthony assumed that for the most part they were divorced, spending the weekend with the children they never saw during the week. Irene, just as he suspected she would, ignored the benches occupied by men, and headed instead toward one that was occupied by a woman who appeared to be a few years younger than he, and a girl who looked as if she was just shy of her teens.