The Carlton Club (29 page)

“Ms? Who said that? Why are you laughing?”

“James said that. You have him completely terrorized. And Charlie, he’s on our side. He’s a good guy. And I’m laughing because you really can look ominous.”

“Effective.”

“Effective and efficient,” Eric agreed, extending his hands to her, urging her to come to him.

“James is so serious. He answers my questions so carefully, so cautiously,” Charlie said, shaking her head, refusing to walk toward Eric until he stopped mocking her.

“I think it’s nice that someone who works for me takes spending millions and millions of my dollars seriously. I like a little caution,” Eric said, slightly sternly. He gave Charlie almost free reign in negotiations like the ones today. Charlie was shrewd, but she wasn’t afraid to spend money. The money she spent always returned many times over. Charlie had uncanny instincts. Eric added, “You and James need to meet. Face to face. On the beach.”

“I picture a boring, unattractive egghead.”

“I think that’s the same picture he has of you.”

“Are you trying to set us up?”

“No! He’s not your type. Not that I have any idea what your type is. Anyway he’s involved with someone.”

“I thought you were my type,” Charlie said softly. It was a statement deep with meaning that spanned almost twenty years and a gamut of emotion and passion and pain. A statement that they both knew wasn’t entirely true. Or entirely false.

“Parts of me are your type,” Eric said, moving toward her.

Charlie stood up. In two quick motions, she removed the pins from her tightly knotted hair. The silky, blond strands fell down her back and into her face. Her brown eyes softened and beckoned.

“I know,” she whispered as his lips met hers. “Those are the parts that I like the best.”

“
Ms
. Charlotte D. Winter,” Eric murmured as he gently kissed her long lovely neck.

PART THREE

“Charlotte D. Winter,” Mary repeated firmly to the nurse on that snowy November morning in Philadelphia. Her daughter was five hours old.

“Named after you, then?”

“Yes.”

“What does the ‘D’ stand for, ma’am?”

“Nothing.”

The nurse arched an eyebrow but entered the mother’s name and the baby’s name as Charlotte D. Winter.

“Father’s name?” she asked.

“Max D. Winter,” Mary said softly, hoping that the nurse wouldn’t recognize that name, wouldn’t accuse her, accurately, of making up all three names.

The nurse didn’t blink. The only thing that mattered was the horrible war that had killed so many people, so many fathers who would never see their infant daughters, was all but over. Nothing else mattered. Something tugged at the back of her mind. Maybe it was just the hope that Max D. Winter would return from Europe, or wherever he was, to see his daughter Charlotte.

Mary knew that her baby’s father would never see his tiny daughter. He would never even know of her existence. There was no Max D. Winter.

Only John, with no last name, a private in the Army that she had met on Valentine’s Day nine months before.

John had visited the North Philadelphia Library, Mary’s library, on that day. It was one of the few libraries in the city that remained open during the war. It remained open because of Mary, because Mary refused to close the door on her books and because Mary was willing to work for almost no money. Mary’s best friends, her only friends, were the characters in the books. She knew them so well. She lived their lives and their loves. Mary wasn’t greedy. She wanted to share her friends with others.

So in spite of the war and because of Mary, the library remained open. It was a refuge for Mary and people like her, providing an escape to other worlds and to happier times.

Mary was sitting at her desk when John walked in. He wore an Army uniform with a single chevron on the jacket sleeve. Mary smiled at him, conveying a message of sympathy and an offer of help. He looked so young, so bewildered and trapped, like they all were, in an inexplicable horror of hatred and murder.

He had come to her library to find an escape, a little peace, if only for a moment.

“May I help you?” Mary asked.

John shrugged. “I don’t know. I had a few hours. Sail tomorrow for Europe. I was just walking around, and I saw the library. I used to like to read a lot.”

“What do you like to read?”

“Anything,” he said. Then he added hesitantly, “Except war stories.”

“What’s your favorite?”

“I don’t know. When I was a kid, I used to read
The Wizard of Oz
. I read it a few times,” he said, his voice distant, as if remembering those happy trouble-free days. Or, was he simply thinking about the land over the rainbow?

“Have you read the other Oz books?
The Scarecrow of Oz? Return to Oz?”

“No ma’am.”

Mary found
The Scarecrow of Oz
for him. John settled into a chair in the far corner of the library. He didn’t move, except for the eager turning of pages, for four hours. By then it was dark and already an hour past closing time.

“John,” Mary said gently, startling him out of the Emerald City and back to Philadelphia, the cold dark library and the war.

“Yes?” he asked, focusing slowly, reluctantly.

“I have to close the library now.”

“Oh. OK,” he said, handing the precious volume to her.

“John, I can lend it to you if you want,” Mary said, as she had said to so many young soldiers over the past four years, knowing she would never see the books again. Most of the books she gave away were from her own collection. They were her closest friends. But Mary was willing to share.

“Really? I will return it. I promise,” John said as they all did.

Mary smiled. She didn’t make them promise. She didn’t want their minds cluttered with guilt. She wanted every part of the book to bring them happiness. She knew that some of the young soldiers would never return. It mattered so little in contrast to that whether or not they returned her books.

John asked her to have dinner with him. They ate in a small diner near the library. Afterward John walked Mary to her house on Elm Street.

“Would you like some coffee?” Mary asked as they stood on the porch of her house.

“Coffee? Yes, ma’am!”

Mary served coffee and fruitcake.

“What’s your favorite book, ma’am? Mary?”

“
Rebecca
,” Mary said without hesitation.

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“It was published just before the war in Europe. The author is Daphne du Maurier.”

“It’s a love story, isn’t it?” John asked, the gentleness of his voice surprising them both.

“A love story. And a mystery.”

“Do you have a copy here?”

“No. I took my copy to the library. I lent it out and haven’t gotten it back yet,” Mary said, remembering that she had given it, over a year ago, to a young woman whose husband had just been killed in the South Pacific. Mary had given it to the woman because, to Mary,
Rebecca
was a story of hope. Mary didn’t expect to get it back. It didn’t matter. Mary knew that book, like all her books, by heart. She didn’t need to read the words. She knew the words and the characters and the scenes. “I haven’t been able to find another copy. After the war I will try again.”

“Tell me the story,” John said.

Mary told him about Rebecca, and about Max de Winter, and the woman Max married after Rebecca’s death, a shy unassuming woman capable of great love and deep passion. A woman without a first name, the second Mrs. de Winter, was a woman like Mary. Mary had given her a name: Charlotte. Charlotte de Winter. Mary had named her after Charlotte Brontё.

As Mary talked, her eyes softened with love, and she became Charlotte de Winter while John became Max, the intense, secretive, powerful husband. Max, the wonderful romantic lover.

That snowy Valentine’s night in February, Max made love to his precious bride Charlotte. John—Max—held Mary in his strong young arms until dawn. Then he left. He never knew that she had been a virgin. Or that they had conceived a child. Or that Mary was forty-two years old, exactly twice his age.

John knew only that Mary was a wonderful woman. He would never forget her, and he would return her book to her.

Eight months later, a month before Charlotte was born, Mary received a package at the library. It had been postmarked in London two months before. It contained
The Scarecrow of Oz
and a beautiful copy of
Rebecca
with an inscription that read: To Charlotte, All my love, Max.

Two weeks later, Mary received a letter postmarked a month before in London.

Dear Mary,

I hope that the books arrived. I found the copy of Rebecca in a bookshop in London that had been closed during the war but reopened a month after VE Day. I read it before sending it to you. I think Charlotte is a perfect name for the second Mrs. de Winter. You are very like her, and she is a wonderful person.

I have met a girl here and we will be married next spring. I enjoy England and look forward to making my home here.

Maybe someday I may even find a Manderley.

Love,

John

By the time Charlotte was one month old, Mary realized that she wouldn’t have the courage to tell her daughter the truth. Mary didn’t even know John’s last name. Neither the letter nor the package had a return address. The war was over. Morality was rapidly returning. There were lots of fatherless children, but their parents had been married. Those children could hold their heads high.

Charlotte couldn’t. Not if the truth were known.

No one had noticed Mary’s pregnancy because no one noticed Mary. She had no friends, at least not flesh and blood ones. She hid her pregnancy under smocks, and convinced the city to hire an assistant librarian who managed the library for the eight weeks of Mary’s mysterious absence.

When Mary returned to work, carrying the infant with her, she told the few people who asked that the child was her niece and had been orphaned when Mary’s sister and brother-in-law had been killed in an automobile accident two weeks after the child’s birth.

By the time Charlotte was old enough to need an explanation about why she had an “Auntie Mary” instead of a mommy and daddy, Mary had modified the story so that it conformed more closely to Rebecca.

Her parents, Mary told Charlotte, were killed in a sailing accident when Charlotte was one year old. Shortly after that, true to the fate of Manderley their beautiful home mysteriously burned down. That was why Mary had no pictures of Charlotte’s parents. All she had was the copy of
Rebecca
that Max had given to Charlotte shortly before the birth of their daughter.

It was a book, Mary knew, that Charlotte should never read.

Charlotte accepted the story dispassionately and without a sense of loss. She had never known her parents. Her interest was curiosity not emotion, and Charlotte loved her Auntie Mary very much.

Mary devoted herself to her precious golden-haired daughter. Eagerly, lovingly, Mary introduced the little girl to her friends, the wonderful books that were her world. Charlotte loved the stories because she loved sitting on Mary’s lap and watching Mary’s huge brown eyes—Charlotte’s eyes—twinkle and soften and glisten as she read.

As Charlotte grew older, she had a need for real friends, not imagined ones. She made friends at school. Charlotte preferred spending time with them to rushing home to hear about Jane Eyre or Amy, Meg, Beth and Jo or Scarlett O’Hara. Charlotte grew impatient with Mary’s imaginary world and imaginary friends.

But she didn’t grow impatient with Mary. She loved her. She worried about her friendless frail aunt, the lonely, aging woman who, as the years passed, seemed to retreat even farther into a world of make-believe.

Three days after Charlotte’s sixteenth birthday, Mary knocked on Charlotte’s bedroom door.

“Charlotte?”

“Yes, Aunt Mary? Come in.”

Mary sat on her daughter’s bed wringing her hands.

“Charlotte, my dearest, I am not well. I’m fifty-nine years old. I’m not going to live forever,” Mary said slowly, hesitantly, not telling Charlotte the complete truth:
I am going to die. Soon
.

“Fifty-nine is
young
! Maybe you shouldn’t work so hard,” Charlotte said, rushing to her side, putting her strong healthy arms around Mary’s boney shoulders.

“Nevertheless, you and I must decide what will happen to you if I die before you turn eighteen. While you are still a minor.”

“But you won’t!”

“You and I have no relatives,” Mary continued. “Your parents were both only children. I really have no friends who could take care of you.”

I have friends, Charlotte thought. Parents of my school friends could take care of me.

“I couldn’t bear the thought of you going to a foster home. So,” Mary said firmly, her eyes seeing something far away, a far away make-believe friend, “I have created an aunt for you. I have told my attorneys that she exists, that she is my sister and that she lives with us now. She will take care of you if anything happens to me. She is a kind, lovely woman.”

“Aunt Mary, ” Charlotte began then stopped. Her aunt was out of touch with reality. Charlotte knew it. She had learned it in little bits over the years. The only reality for Mary was her love for Charlotte. Even now this fantasy aunt was invented to save Charlotte from what could happen to an orphaned, under-aged child.

So she has invented someone, a kind, lovely woman to live with me, Charlotte thought, watching Mary’s loving eyes. But there is no lovely woman, no kind aunt. There is no one. If anything did happen to Aunt Mary, I would really be all alone; but she doesn’t know it, Charlotte thought sadly, and I can’t tell her. She wouldn’t understand.

“What is her name?” Charlotte asked gently.

“She is your Aunt Louise. Louise M. Alcott,” Mary announced proudly.

So out of touch, Charlotte thought, tears filling her own eyes.

Two months later, Mary died in her sleep. Charlotte found her in the morning and held her small cold body for a long time before calling the police.

“Yes, Aunt Louise is living with me,” Charlotte assured the appropriate authorities a week later. “She is a kind, lovely woman just like Aunt Mary. She’d be happy to meet with you. Of course Aunt Mary’s attorneys know her very well.”

Everyone accepted the fact of Louise Alcott’s existence. Everyone assumed that someone had met her. Certainly someone must have witnessed the signatures granting Louise Alcott power of attorney until Charlotte’s eighteenth birthday. Surely someone had witnessed the signing of the guardianship papers, but of course no one had. The legal documents had all been signed by Charlotte, in a script quite distinct from her own unfrilly style, and had been returned to the attorneys by Mary.

Charlotte had signed the papers and discussed the logistics of creating Aunt Louise simply to humor Mary. Over the years, Mary had involved Charlotte, a knowing, willing, loving accomplice, in other delusions. They had all passed without harm. This death delusion was morbid but, Charlotte decided, just as unreal even though Mary pursued it in a greater detail than any of the others.