A caterer looked in on them to say, “We’ll be leaving in a few minutes, when we’ve finished cleaning up the kitchen.”
“Thank you,” Echo said. Peter didn’t look up or say a word until he’d read the last page of the contract.
Wind rattled one of the stained-glass casement windows in the garden room. Peter poured more brandy for himself, half a snifter’s worth, as if it were cherry Coke. He drank all of it, got up and paced while Echo read by firelight, pushing her reading glasses up the bridge of her nose with a forefinger when they slipped.
When she had put the twelve pages in order, Peter fell back into the upholstered chair opposite Echo.
They looked at each other. The fire crackled and sparked.
“I can’t go up there to see you? You can’t come home, unless it’s an emergency? He doesn’t want to paint you, he wants to own you!”
They heard the caterer’s van drive away. The limo chauffeur had enjoyed his meal in a small apartment above the garage.
“I understand his reasons,” Echo said. “He doesn’t want me to be distracted.”
“Is that what I am? A distraction?”
“Peter, you don’t have a creative mind, so I really don’t expect you to get it.” Echo frowned; she knew when she sounded condescending. “It’s only for a year. I can do this. Then we’re set.” She looked around the garden room, a possessive light in her eyes. “My Lord, this place, I’ve never even dreamed of— I want Mom to see it! Then, if she approves—”
“What about my approval?” Peter said with a glower, drinking again.
Echo got up and stretched. She shuddered. In spite of the fire it was a little chilly in the room. He watched the rise and fall of her breasts with blurred yearning.
“I want that too.”
“And you want this house.”
“Are you going to sulk the rest of the evening?”
“Who’s sulking?”
She took the glass from his hand, sat down in his lap and cradled her head on a wide shoulder, closing her eyes.
“With real estate in the sky, best we could hope for is a small house in, you know, Yonkers or Port Chester. This is Bedford.”
Peter cupped the back of her head with his hand.
“He’s got you wanting, instead of thinking. He’s damn good at it. And that’s how he gets what he wants.”
Echo slipped a hand over his heart. “So angry.” She trembled. “I’m cold, Peter. Warm me up.”
“Isn’t what we’ve always planned good enough any more?”
“Oh, Peter. I love you and I’m going to marry you, and nothing will ever change that.”
“Maybe we should get started home.”
“But what if this is home, Peter? Our home.” She slid off his lap, tugged nonchalantly at him with one hand. “C’mon. You haven’t seen everything yet.”
“What did I miss?” he said reluctantly.
“Bedroom. And there’s a fireplace too.”
She dealt soothingly with his resistance, his fears that he wasn’t equal to the emotional cost that remained to be exacted for their prize. He wasn’t steady on his feet. The brandy he had drunk was hitting him hard.
“Just think about it,” Echo said, leading him. “How it could be. Imagine that a year has gone by—so fast—,” Echo kissed him and opened the bedroom door. Inside there was a gas log fire on a corner hearth.
“And here we are.” She framed his his face lovingly with her hands. “What do you want to do now?” she said, looking solemnly into his eyes.
Peter swallowed the words he couldn’t speak, glancing at the four-poster bed that dominated the room.
“I know what I want you to do,” she said.
“Echo—”
She tugged him into the room and closed the door with her foot.
“It’s all right,” she said as he wavered. “Such a perfect place to spend our first night together. I want you to appreciate just how much I love you.”
She left him and went to a corner of the room by the hearth where she undressed quickly, a quick-change artist, down to the skin, slipping then beneath covers, to his fuming eyes a comely shadow.
“Peter?”
He touched his belt buckle, dropped his hands. He felt at the point of tears; ardor and longing were compromised by too much drink. His heartbeat was fueled by inchoate anger.
“Peter? What’s wrong?”
He took a step toward her, stumbled, fell against a chair with a lyre back. Heavy, but he lifted it easily and slammed it against the wall. His unexpected rage had her cowering, his insulted hubris a raw wound she was too inexperienced to deal with. She hugged herself in shock and pain.
Peter opened the bedroom door.
“I’ll wait in the fuckin’ limo. You—you stay here if you want! Stay all night. Do whatever the hell you think you’ve got to do to make yourself happy, and just never mind what it’ll do to us!”
Six
The first day of fall, and it was a good day for riding in convertibles: unclouded blue sky, temperatures on the East Coast in the sixties. The car John Ransome drove uptown and parked opposite Echo’s building was a Mercedes two-seater. Not a lot of room for luggage, but she’d packed frugally, only the clothes she would need for wintering on a small island off the coast of Maine. And her paintbox.
He didn’t get out of the car right away; cell phone call. Echo lingered an extra few moments at her bedroom windows hoping to see Peter’s car. They’d talked briefly at about one A.M., and he’d sounded okay, almost casual about her upcoming forced absence from his life. Holidays included. He was trying a little too hard not to show a lack of faith in her. Neither of them mentioned John Ransome. As if he didn’t exist, and she was leaving to study painting in Paris for a year.
Echo picked up her duffels from the bed and carried them out to the front hall. She left the door ajar and went into the front room where Julia was reading to Rosemay from the National Enquirer. Julia was a devotee of celebrity gossip.
Commenting on an actress who had been photographed trying to slip out of a California clinic after a makeover, Julia said, “Sure and she’s at an age where she needs to give up plastic surgery and place her bets with a good taxidermist.”
Rosemay smiled, her eyes on her daughter. Rosemay’s lips trembled perceptibly; her skin was china-white, mimicking the tone of the bones within. Echo felt a strong pulse of fear; how frail her mother had become in just three months.
“Mom, I’m leaving my cell phone with you. It doesn’t work on the island, John says. But there’s a dish for Internet, no problem with e-mail.”
“That’s a blessing.”
“Peter comin’ to see you off?” Julia asked.
Echo glanced at her watch. “He wasn’t sure. They were working a triple homicide last night.”
“Do we have time for tea?” Rosemay asked, turning slowly away from her computer and looking up at Echo through her green eyeshade.
“John’s here already, mom.”
Then Echo, to her surprise and chagrin, just lost it, letting loose a flood of tears, sinking to her knees beside her mother, laying her head in Rosemay’s lap as she had when she was a child. Rosemay stroked her with an unsteady hand, smiling.
Behind them John Ransome appeared in the hallway. Rosemay saw his reflection on a window pane.
She turned her head slowly to acknowledge him. Julia, oblivious, was turning the pages of her gossip weekly.
The expression in Rosemay’s eyes was more of a challenge than a welcome to Ransome. Her hands came together protectively over Echo. Then she prayerfully bowed her head.
Peter double-parked in the street and was running up the stairs of Echo’s building when he met Julia coming down with her Save the Trees shopping bag.
“They’re a half hour gone, Peter. I was just on my way to do the marketing.”
Peter shook his head angrily. “I only got off a half hour ago! Why couldn’t she wait for me, what was the big rush?”
“Would you mind sittin’ with Rosemay while I’m out? Because it’s goin’ down hard for her, Peter.”
He found Rosemay in the kitchen, a mug of cold tea between her hands. He put the kettle on again, fetched a mug for himself and sat down wearily with Rosemay. He took one of her hands in his.
“A year. A year until she’s home again. Peter, I only let her do this because I was afraid—”
“It’s okay. I’ll be comin’ around myself, two, three times a week, see how you are,”
“—not afraid for myself,” Rosemay said, finishing her thought. “Afraid of what my illness could do to you and Echo.”
They looked at each other wordlessly until the kettle on the stove began whistling.