The Cottage (5 page)

He was packing the kitchen, and his frying pans, when the building manager rang the bell and walked in. He shouted out a greeting so Jimmy would know he was there. He didn't like to intrude, but he had to show the place. It was a tiny apartment in Venice Beach. They had loved living there. Maggie liked to roller blade down the streets, everyone did there. And they loved the beach.

Jimmy had given notice the week before, and was moving at the end of the month. He didn't know where. Just not there. Anywhere but there.

The building manager was showing the apartment to a young couple who said they were getting married. They were both wearing jeans and sweatshirts and sandals, and to Jimmy they seemed innocent and young. They were in their early twenties, had just graduated from college and had come from the Midwest. They were in love with LA and they thought the apartment was great. They thought Venice was the best. The building manager introduced them to Jimmy, and he nodded and shook hands, and went back to his packing, and left them to look at the apartment on their own. It was small, and in good order. There was a small living room, and a tiny bedroom, barely bigger than the bed, a bathroom you had to stand on each other's shoulders to use together, and the kitchen where he was packing. It had worked for them, they hadn't needed more space than that, and Maggie had
always insisted on paying her half of the rent and couldn't afford more. She was stubborn about things like that. They had split all their expenses in half since the day they met, even after they were married.

“I'm not going to be a kept woman, Jimmy O'Connor!” she had said, imitating her parents' brogue, as her flame-colored hair danced around her face. He wanted to have babies with her just so he could have a house full of kids with red hair. They'd been talking about getting pregnant for the past six months, but Maggie also wanted to adopt. She wanted to give kids a better life than they might have had otherwise.

“How about six and six?” Jimmy teased. “Six of ours, six adopted. Which ones do you want to support?” She had conceded that she might be willing to let him support the kids, some of them at least. She couldn't afford to have as many as they wanted. But they had often talked about five or six.

“Gas stove?” the prospective tenant asked with a smile. She was a pretty girl, and Jimmy nodded, without saying more. “I love to cook.” He could have told her he did too, but he didn't want to engage in conversation with them. He just nodded and kept on packing, and five minutes later they left. The building manager called out thank you and Jimmy heard him close the door, and then muffled voices in the hall. He wondered if they were going to take the apartment. It didn't really matter. Someone would. It was a nice place, the building was clean, and they had a good view. Maggie had insisted on a view, although it had stretched her budget, but there was no point living in
Venice if you didn't have a view, she had said with the brogue again. She played with the brogue a lot. She had grown up with it, and it was familiar to her, and always amused him. Sometimes they went out for pizza and she spent the entire dinner pretending to be Irish, and everyone was fooled. She had taught herself Gaelic too. And French. And wanted to learn Chinese, so she could work with immigrant children in the Chinese neighborhoods. She wanted to be able to talk to the kids.

“He's not very friendly,” one of the new tenants whispered. They had conferred in the bathroom and decided to take the place. They could afford it, and they loved the view, even if the rooms were small.

“He's a good guy,” the building manager said protectively. He had always liked them both. “He's had a tough time,” he said cautiously, not sure if he should tell them, but they'd hear it anyway from someone else. Everyone in the building loved the O'Connors, and he was sorry to see Jimmy go, but he understood. He would have done the same thing.

The new tenants had wondered if he was being evicted or asked to leave, he had looked so unhappy and almost hostile as he packed up his stuff.

“He had a beautiful young wife, a terrific girl. Thirty-two years old, with bright red hair, smart as a whip.”

“Did they break up?” the woman asked innocently, feeling slightly more sympathetic. Jimmy had looked almost fierce to her as he shoved his skillets into a cardboard box.

“She died. A month ago. Terrible thing. A brain tumor.
She started having headaches a few months ago, she said they were migraines. Three months ago they put her in the hospital for tests, brain scans, I guess. MRIs, CAT scans, whatever they do. She had a lot of tests. They found a brain tumor, they tried to operate but it was too big, and it had spread all over the place. She was dead in two months. I thought it was going to kill him too. I've never seen two people more in love. They never stopped laughing and talking and kidding around. He just gave me notice last week. He says he can't stay, it makes him too sad. I feel so bad for him, he's such a good man.” The building manager had tears in his eyes.

“How awful!” the woman said, feeling tears sting her eyes too. It was a terrible story, and she had noticed photographs of the two of them all around the apartment. They looked happy and in love in the pictures. “What a terrible shock for him.”

“She was very brave. Right up until the last week, they went on walks, he cooked dinner for her, he carried her down to the beach one day because she loved it so much. It'll be a long time before he gets over it, if he ever does. He'll never find another girl like her.” The building manager, who was both known and beloved for his gruffness, wiped a tear from his eye, and the young couple followed him downstairs. But the story haunted them for the rest of the day. And late that afternoon, the building manager slipped a note under Jimmy's door to tell him the young couple had taken the apartment. He was off the hook in three weeks.

Jimmy sat staring at the note. It was what he had
wanted, and what he knew he had to do, but he had nowhere to go. He no longer cared where he lived. It didn't matter to him. He could have slept in a sleeping bag on the street. Maybe that was how people became homeless. Maybe they no longer cared where they lived, or if. He had thought of killing himself when she died, just walking into the ocean without a murmur or a sound. It would have been an enormous relief. He had sat on the beach for hours the day after she died, and thought about it. And then, as though he could hear her, he could imagine her telling him how furious she would be, and what a wimp he was. He could even hear the brogue. It was nightfall when he went back to the apartment, and sat for hours crying and wailing on the couch.

Their families had come out from Boston that night, and the rosary and funeral had eaten up the next two days. He had refused to bury her in Boston. She had told him she wanted to stay in California with him, so he buried her there. And after they all went home, he was alone again. Her parents and brothers and sisters had been devastated over their loss. But no one was as distraught as he, no one knew how much he had lost, or what she meant to him. Maggie had become his whole life, and he knew with absolute certainty that he would never love another woman as he had her, or perhaps at all. He couldn't conceive of another woman in his life. What a travesty that would be. And who could possibly be like her? All that fire and passion and genius and joy and courage. She was the bravest human he had ever known. She hadn't even been afraid to die, she just accepted it as her fate. It was he
who had cried and begged God to change his mind, he who had been terrified, who couldn't imagine living on without her. Unthinkable, unbearable, intolerable. And now here he was. She had been gone for a month. Weeks. Days. Hours. And all he had to do now was crawl through the rest of his life.

He had gone back to work the week after she died, and everyone treated him like broken glass. He was back at work full-time with the kids, but there was no joy in his life now, no spirit, no life. He just had to find a way to keep putting one foot in front of the other for the rest of his life, to keep breathing, to keep waking up every morning, with absolutely no reason why.

Part of him wanted to stay in the apartment forever, and another part of him couldn't bear waking up there without her one more time. He knew he had to get out. He didn't care where. Just out. He had seen the name of a realtor in an ad, and called them. All the agents were out. He left his name and number, and went back to packing. But when he got to her half of the closet, he felt as though Mike Tyson had reached out and punched him in the chest. It took his breath away. The sheer reality of it was so powerful it sucked the air out of his lungs and the blood out of his heart. He just stood there for a long moment. He could smell her perfume, and feel her presence beside him as though she were standing in the room next to him.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do now?” he said out loud as tears sprang to his eyes, and he held on to the door frame. It was as though a supernatural force had almost knocked him down. The power of her loss was so great he could hardly stand up.

“Keep going, Jimmy,” he heard the voice in his head. “You can't quit now.” He could still hear the brogue.

“Why the hell not?” But she hadn't. She had never given up. She had fought right till the end. She had worn lipstick and washed her hair the day she died, and wore the blouse he loved best. She had never given up. “I don't want to keep going!” he shouted at the voice he could hear, the face he would never see again.

“Get off your bloomin' arse!” he could hear as plain as day, and suddenly he laughed through his tears as he stood there staring at her clothes.

“Okay, Maggie… okay…” he said, as one by one he took down her dresses and folded them carefully into a box as though she'd come back for them someday.

Liz came back to
The Cottage on Sunday, to meet with the realtor, the day after Coop had agreed to rent the gatehouse and the guest wing. She wanted to move ahead as soon as possible, before he changed his mind. The income they would generate would make a big difference for him. And she wanted to do everything she could for him before she left.

She had agreed to meet the realtor at eleven, and when they both reached The Cottage, Coop was out. He had taken Pamela, the twenty-two-year-old model, to brunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and had promised to take her shopping on Rodeo Drive the next day.

She was absolutely gorgeous, but she had nothing to wear. And spoiling women was one of the things Coop did best. He loved shopping for them. Abe was going to have a coronary when he saw the bill. But Coop never worried about that. Coop had promised to take her to Theodore and Valentino and Dior and Ferre, and wherever else she fancied, and to Fred Segal after that. It was going to be a fifty-thousand-dollar shopping spree for sure, or more. Particularly if they stopped off at Van Cleef or Cartier, if anything caught
his eye in the windows. And it would never occur to Pamela to tell him that his generosity was excessive. For a twenty-two-year-old girl from Oklahoma, this was a dream come true, and so was Coop.

“I'm amazed that Mr. Winslow is willing to have tenants on the property, particularly in a wing of the main house,” the real estate agent mentioned to Liz, as she let her into the guest wing. She was fishing for some piece of gossip she could share with future tenants, which didn't please Liz. But it was also inevitable, and a necessary evil if they were going to rent. They were at the mercy of how people interpreted it. And those interpretations were never kind about major movie stars, or celebrities of any sort. It was part of the deal.

“The guest wing has a separate entrance of course, so they'll never run into Coop. And you know, he travels so much, I don't think he'll know they're there. Having tenants is protection for him, if people realize that there are people living on the property full-time. Otherwise, there could be break-ins or all kinds of problems. This is really a security bonus for him.” It was an angle the realtor hadn't thought of, but it did make sense. Although she was suspicious that there was more to it than that. Cooper Winslow hadn't had a lead in a major movie in years. She couldn't remember the last one she'd seen, although he was certainly still a big star, and caused a huge stir wherever he went. He was one of the great Hollywood legends of all time, which was going to help her rent the two facilities he was leasing, and get a stiff price for them as well. This was high, high prestige, and the estate was the only
one like it in the country, if not the world. With a handsome movie star in residence, at least some of the time. Maybe if the tenants were lucky, they would catch a glimpse of him on the tennis court or at the pool. She was going to put that in the brochure.

The door to the guest wing creaked open, and Liz wished she had sent a crew in to dust and clean before they'd gone in. But there hadn't been time, and she wanted to move fast. But generally speaking, it looked fine. It was a beautiful wing of the house. It had the same high ceilings the rest of the house had, and elegant French windows leading out to the grounds. There was a lovely stone terrace framed with hedges, and antique marble benches and tables Coop had bought in Italy years before. The living room was full of handsome French antiques. There was a small study next to it, which could serve as an office, and up a short flight of stairs an enormous master bedroom all done in pale blue satin with mirrored Art Deco furniture he had picked up in France.

There was an enormous white marble bathroom next to the master bedroom, and a dressing room with more closets than most people needed, although they wouldn't have been enough for Coop. And on the other side of the living room, there were two small, but adequate bedrooms, decorated in bright English floral chintz and antiques. And there was a wonderful country kitchen with a big dining table in it, which the realtor said reminded her of Provence. There was no dining room, but Liz pointed out that they didn't really need it, since the living room was so large, a table could be set up there, or the tenants could eat in
the kitchen, which was cozy and fun and informal. There was a massive old French stove, a ceramic fireplace in the corner of the room, and beautiful antique painted tiles on the walls. All in all it made a perfect apartment for someone, on the grounds of the most beautiful estate in Bel Air, and they had full access to the tennis courts and the pool.