Mourning Glory (13 page)

Was this simply a testament to his cleverness, or his
hypocrisy? Remorse was eating at him and, at the moment, he was defenseless
against it.

If he had paid for this secret life in any tangible way it
had been through the repetitive dream of Anne's infidelity with a young
stranger whose face was impossible to recall when he was awake, although the
dream remained vivid. In the dream Anne insulted and reviled him as she made love
to the stranger. It was an odd and sometimes horrific dream, perhaps a
subconscious transference of guilt. It came frequently when she was alive but,
so far, had been dormant since her death, although he did expect its return. He
wondered if it would be as terrible and nightmarish as it was when she was
alive.

As he sat on the terrace, hoping that his mind would empty
itself of his thoughts, he heard the door chimes. Carmen would answer it, ask
the caller to wait, then come upstairs to tell him who it was. If it was
something about the house, he had instructed Carmen to handle it by herself.
Invariably he told her to send the caller away.

After awhile he heard her heavy tread on the stairs, and a
moment later she was on the terrace.

"Woman say she come about madame's clothes," she
said.

"Clothes?"

It took him a few moments to absorb the information.

"Say to tell you her name was Grace Tino-something.
You know a Grace?"

"Grace. Grace," he repeated, trying to retrieve
the vague memory. "Tell her to call next week. No, next month. Maybe
never. Send her away."

Carmen turned and started moving to the door. Then he
remembered.

"That Grace! About the clothes. She's going to dispose
of madame's clothes."

He mulled it over quickly. Perhaps eliminating Anne's
clothes would hasten him through this debilitating grief. He had told the
children to take what they wanted. He assumed that they had. He remembered what
the woman had said about Anne promising the clothes to the charity. The needy
in designer clothes? He chuckled at the idea. Anne, too, would have had a good
laugh over that one. Why not? Without the labels, they were simply clothes.
Wasn't it the labels that gave them cachet and made them expensive? God, would
he be open to argument over that one.

Once he had been in that business. It was all smoke and
mirrors. All public relations bullshit. The designers had become franchises,
products of the celebrity mill selling everything from perfume to T-shirts.
Next would come toilet paper, designer toilet paper for tender, pampered
assholes, or was it already out there?

The clothes were contracted out to sweatshops in
Third-World countries where wages were a fraction of what they were in the
countries where the finished goods were bought. But when the magic labels were
sewed in, abracadabra, the price went through the roof. Celebrity consumers, he
thought bitterly. Someday there might be a market for death masks,
fingerprints, maybe even the bodily wastes of the worshipped ones. Or the body
parts. He was getting morbid and was thankful for Carmen's interruption.

"What should I say, mister?" She always called
him mister. He often wondered whether she could pronounce his name. She had
waited patiently for his decision.

"Tell her to come on up."

"Me make some coffee?"

He shook his head. He merely wanted to show her where the
clothes were hung. He wasn't interested in conversation, especially with
someone he could barely remember.

"What was her name again, Carmen?"

"Grace."

"Right. Grace. Send her up."

Carmen shrugged and went out of the room.

He got up from the chair and went into his bedroom,
glancing at himself in the mirror. He looked awful. His hair was awry,
dirty-looking, and he had a three-day growth of beard. So what? he shrugged.

There was a knock on his bedroom door.

"It's open," he called.

He recognized her instantly and gave her a very cursory
inspection. Black-haired, well-groomed. He registered the observation casually.

"You said I should wait a few days before I
called."

"Did I?"

"I tried to telephone a number of times. All I got was
a message. I didn't leave any. At first I thought you had gone away. Then I
decided to stop by today."

He sensed that her eyes were studying him. He knew he was
in a sorry state. As a reflex, he pulled his robe tight around his chest.

"Very resourceful, Grace," Sam said. Did he
detect a note of sarcasm in his tone? He hadn't meant it that way. He led the
way to the closet and slid open one of the doors.

"Help yourself."

"I'll inventory everything," Grace said,
"and give you a receipt."

"It's all right. You needn't bother."

"No bother. I believe you get an income-tax
deduction."

"How thoughtful," he muttered. "But please
don't. It would be just one more complication."

She hesitated, continuing to study him.

"Pretty messy, aren't I?"

"Considering what you've been through ... and I did
barge in here."

She had good bones, he noticed. The lowering late-afternoon
sun caught the glint of hazel eyes, or were they green?

"I'm going to make sure that her clothes go to the
right charities. That was a condition of her promise."

"Was it?"

"She lived for helping others," Grace said. She
stood through a long silence but made no move to begin work on the clothes.

"I know," he said.

"How are you managing?" Grace asked.

"Can't you see?"

"From here, not very well."

She put her hands on her hips. She was wearing a silk
blouse and a single strand of pearls around her neck. Her skirt was dark and
tight-fitting, short, slightly above her knees. It occurred to him, more as a
reflex than an observation, that she was reasonably attractive, pleasant.

"You'll find lots of designer clothes. Anne was always
impeccable in her taste. But I doubt if the homeless will have occasion to wear
her gowns."

The woman hesitated a moment. A nerve began to palpitate in
her cheek and she looked uncomfortable. She turned away for a moment, then
looked at him again.

"Perhaps we'll find a way of converting the gowns to
cash and use the money for other things."

"I'll say this," Sam said, "you people sure
are dedicated. Anne was like that. Very dedicated."

He walked toward the door to the terrace. When he got
there, he turned and looked at her again. It felt odd seeing this strange woman
in his bedroom. Except for Carmen there had not been a strange woman in his
bedroom since Anne died, not alone with him as she was now. He was suddenly
reminded of his grief and shook his head.

"She ... she, ah ... died here," he said.
Providing this information seemed inexplicable. "Three weeks she lay here.
I had nurses around the clock. She told me she didn't want to die in the
hospital. I agreed and took her home. I think being here actually extended her
life." He shrugged and chuckled dryly. "A week maybe. But there were
no life supports. Neither of us wanted that."

"Nor would I," Grace said. "At that point, I'd
want nature to take its course."

"Anyway, we had a good life together. What more can
you ask?"

Sam turned and looked out of the window at the sea.
Listening for a moment, he could hear its rhythm, the splash of the curling
waves against the sand. He started to open the door to the terrace. In one
sense, he thought suddenly, it had been a life of compromise, a negotiated
life, but satisfactory in every way. She had been his anchor, his underpinning,
his home base. The unfaithful part of him belonged to another life, another
compartment, another plane, perhaps even another person.

"I guess you were luckier than most," Grace said.
When he turned, he noted that she had changed her position in the room. She
seemed to be standing in a puddle of light, glowing slightly orange from the
lowering sun, which came obliquely through a side window.

"You say that as if you've had a bad experience with
marriage."

When the woman had arrived in his bedroom, he didn't want
to talk. Suddenly he felt himself becoming inexplicably loquacious. It
surprised him. Maybe it was the situation of having this strange woman in his
bedroom. He felt no desire, no interest. This would not be the place. Not here,
where Anne had died. Even in his secret life he had avoided such proximity. Indeed,
the entire state of Florida was verboten.

"I'm divorced," the woman said. "Not very
pleasant, I can tell you."

"So you're not sorry."

"No way."

"Does he give you alimony?"

It seemed, even from him, an oddly inappropriate question,
and he detested himself for asking it. Always money, he thought. He was
immersed in money, drowning in the idea of money.

The woman hesitated, and he noted that she turned briefly,
as if to avoid his glance. He saw her in profile now, face and body, noting
that she had a fine womanly figure. Again, he shunted the thought away. Was he
so conditioned by his secret life that he could not control a knee-jerk
reaction? He felt foolish and disgusted. Worse, guilty. Not here, he admonished
himself. But the woman insisted on answering.

"I get more than enough to keep my daughter and
myself," Grace said. "We don't live lavishly, but we live very, very
well." She seemed to have added the last remark as a necessary qualifier,
offering him her indifference to his wealth.

"Good. Then he's doing the right thing by you."

She smiled and nodded.

"Here I am babbling and you have work to do."

He moved across the room and passed by her, close enough to
smell the aroma of her perfume. Was the scent familiar? He wasn't sure. When he
got to the closet, he flicked a switch and the light came on.

"I couldn't bear to give you the grand tour of my late
wife's closet, but it goes well back." He shook his head and sighed.
"In order to get it big enough we had to build a room below it. We call it
a sun room. Actually it's redundant. It was only built to support the closet.
You will note, too, a double moving rack. There is a switch to operate it just
to the right of the door. Tell you the truth, I've never really been inside it,
except at the beginning, before it was stocked with her clothes. I've always
considered it Anne's private place."

"I understand," Grace said. "I wouldn't want
someone else poking around in my closet, especially a husband."

"She loved clothes. It was her grand passion."

"Yes," the woman said. "It was apparent to
everyone who knew her. She was always magnificently dressed."

"Did you ever see her wear the same outfit twice? She
had personal shoppers in New York, Paris and Milan who sent her clothes. She
was always sending stuff back and forth."

He moved away from the closet and went back to the terrace
door and again prepared to open it. Then he turned once again.

"I'd like to know how you're going to cart this stuff
out of here. You'll need a truck."

"I haven't got a truck. I guess I'll have to do it in
stages. Do you mind? It might be inconvenient."

"Inconvenient?" He paused. "I don't think
so. Actually, I suppose I should get off my ass and start moving around. I've
been holed up here for more than a week."

He rubbed his chin. "I've got the whiskers to prove
it."

"I guess it's not easy to get yourself going again....
I mean ... you know what I mean. Your life has been so radically ...
changed."

"Very much so," he said, shrugging. "I never
had to think about what came next down here. Anne took care of everything. I
don't know which end is up. She programmed me. She was my scheduler. Now, hell,
I'm way off schedule. Nights melt into days. I haven't even read the papers or
watched television. Everything seems totally irrelevant." He felt some dike
breaking inside of him. "Shall I tell you something? I wished it was me
who went first. She would be able to handle things better than I can. I think
basically that women are more organized. At least she was." He paused,
studied her, then asked, "Are you organized?"

"I try to be."

"You look organized," Sam said. "I had a
secretary who was very organized. But a few years ago I gave all that up. I
didn't want anyone organizing my business life except me. I use a computer now
to keep track.... "He chuckled wryly. "I haven't kept track for a few
weeks. For all I know, all my investments have gone down the drain. Fact is, I
don't really care."

"I suppose it's all part of the grieving
process," Grace said.

"Have you ever lost anyone ... Grace ... what is your
last name?"

"Sorentino."

"Sorentino? Italian?"

"Italian descent. From Baltimore. Both parents died
recently."

"Mine are gone as well. Hell, nobody lives forever, do
they? They're buried in West Palm Beach, just across the inland waterway. Kind
of a very ... well ... unfancy cemetery. Not that it matters. You saw where
Anne is buried. That's the fancy place. I thought she'd be more comfortable
there." He shook his head. "This grieving thing makes you crazy. You
don't accept the idea that they're dead and gone forever. Not right away. To
tell you the truth, my folks still seem alive to me as well. I think of them a
great deal. Did you know, Grace, that as you grow older you think more about
your parents than when you were younger? At least that's the way it is with me.
I keep remembering my early life, sometimes with such emotion that I actually
tear up over the terrible loss of it. I guess I'm getting old."

"You don't look old," Grace said.

"Sixty-four. I'm eligible for early Social Security
and I can get senior-citizen airline coupons, both of which, as you can see, I
don't need. But I do like the idea of it. Not to mention the movies, where I
get in at a discount. That doesn't bother me as much. Most of the films they're
making today are hardly worth paying for ... at least from the perspective of
an old fart like me. Anne used to be too embarrassed to get me the discount
ticket. She just missed being a senior citizen. She would have been sixty-two
in July."