Finding Mrs. Ford

by Deborah Goodrich Royce

  Again, Susan smiles. “Excuse me for a moment.” And she goes with the dogs on her heels.

  In the kitchen, Susan allows her brightness to ebb. She sits to place her call, hovering her hand over the cradled receiver like a psychic reading vibrations. Helen, Susan’s long-time Filipina housekeeper, stops what she is doing to watch her.

  “You okay, Mrs. Ford?” she asks. “Do you need something?”

  “What? Yes, of course. I’m just making a call here. I’m fine.” Susan picks up the receiver to dial.

  * * *

  She returns to her morning visitors, leaving the dogs in the kitchen. In the dining room, she halts her step. Through one of Jack’s interior windows, she has a neatly framed view of the men in the living room. Unaware of her presence, Provenzano and DelVecchio sit waiting. Provenzano fiddles with his phone, checking messages or sending texts. DelVecchio takes a moment to brush some dog hair from his pants legs, then picks at little strays which he flicks to the Heriz rug. They don’t speak to each other.

  “Quiet in here.” Susan enters the room. “Was there anything else regarding Mr….?”

  “Fakhouri,” answers DelVecchio. “Chaldean name. You’re from Detroit, right?” He does not wait for an answer. “Lots of Chaldeans in Detroit. Interesting group. In the news quite a bit this summer, over in Iraq. Forced out of Mosul by ISIS. Because they’re Christians. Catholics. That’s what I find interesting. Not Orthodox, but Catholic. I’m Catholic, too, but I thought everyone in the East was Orthodox. That’s before I got into this line of work.”

  “Glad to see our government agents are so well informed.”

  “Oh yes, Mrs. Ford, we’re informed. We study up on current events. We find it pertinent to our line of work.”

  “We’ll be in touch, Mrs. Ford,” says Provenzano—the tall one, ever polite—as he awkwardly rises. “We look forward to seeing you again, very soon.”

  DelVecchio gets up as well. “You have an interest in Roman history. I understand that. Me, I like Seneca.”

  “Forced to commit suicide by Nero, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Ford, he was. Nero didn’t trust him. Thought Seneca was conspiring to kill him. Didn’t go well for Seneca, though, that suicide. Slit his veins, swallowed poison, lots of steps that didn’t quite do it. Like when the Russians tried to kill Rasputin. Shot, strangled, poisoned, thrown in the River Neva. Turns out he had water in his lungs, so he was alive through the whole ordeal. Didn’t die ’til he hit the river.”

  “Come on.” Provenzano puts an end to his partner’s intellectual stunts. “Time to go.”

  “What an interesting subject,” Susan says. “You must be fun at a dinner party—so much trivia at your disposal.”

  DelVecchio adds a coda. “We see patterns in our field. There’s nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes.”

  Susan looks him straight in the eye. “I’ll try to remember that.”

  She turns and proceeds toward the front door, through the beautiful and gleaming room, past the paintings, the antiques, over the Oriental rug and the huge hearth of the fireplace. She walks under the imposing figurehead, high on the wall, whose expression has not changed in two hundred years and is not about to do so now, despite the antics of the humans below her.

  Susan continues up three short steps into the entry hall and back down three more to the front door, up and down in the many-leveled house that Jack built. She resolutely grabs the handle, gives it one hard turn, and pulls.

  “Goodbye, then,” she says crisply.

  “Goodbye, Mrs. Ford,” says DelVecchio. He adds a courtly flourish. “Until we meet again.”

  Provenzano nods and utters a clipped, “Ma’am.”

  Then—at last—they are out.

  Susan closes the door softly. She exercises restraint. She has been practicing self-control for thirty-five years and is not about to relinquish it now, when all evidence tells her she needs it most. She stands at the mullioned glass panel to the left of the door, from which she has a view of the driveway. She watches the men walk slowly to their car.

  They pause and turn back. From where they are standing, Susan knows, they have a full view of the panorama. Gull Cottage to the right, her neighbor’s house, Neowam, on the left, the sweep of lawn rising in a gentle mound before dropping down to the seawall of large, weather-rounded stones. Then the sea beyond, calm, just as it was when Susan left the house to take her walk this morning, barely a whitecap breaking the surface. In the middle distance, the sailboats motoring out from right to left, out of the harbor on their way to the Atlantic, beyond the lighthouse. Far away, the big ships, the containers, crossing the horizon—carrying Africa, China, South America—past the cottages of Watch Hill, past Susan and the men from the FBI. To the left, the lighthouse, standing, light revolving, day and night, from red to white, from white to red. No sound on this fogless day.

  The men can’t help but look, like children at a puppet show, at the boats traversing the stage on horizontal tracks, before they turn and continue to their car. Doors slam, one after the other. Slam, slam, in quick succession. Provenzano is behind the wheel, on the far side of the car, just out of Susan’s sightline. DelVecchio is the passenger. He turns his head once more in the direction of the house. He catches Susan’s eyes. Too late to move away, she stands and looks back at him.

  He smiles at her, a bigger, toothier smile than Susan has previously seen him reveal, as he makes a little saluting motion with two fingers to his forehead. Seeing no alternative, Susan returns the smile, lifts her left hand, taps two fingers to her own forehead, mirroring his salute. The game is afoot, they signal. The car backs up, turns around, and crunches out to the road, under the picturesque porte-cochère.

  Susan pivots, leans against the glass and deflates. Slowly, she slides all the way down to the floor. She rakes her trembling fingers through her hair, dislodging her ponytail. She leans her head forward to her knees and continues the repetitive motion. Cal and Plin bolt from the kitchen and join her there, scrambling for her lap.

  8

  Susan remains on the floor until her shaking subsides. Consciously, she makes the mental gearshift from panic mode to action mode. She has allowed herself a little collapse, but enough, she determines, is enough. Resolved, she re-ties her ponytail, picks herself up and strides into the kitchen, where she finds Helen at the sink.

  “I’m going to New York. I’ll stay the night but I’m leaving the dogs here.” Susan stoops to pat both dogs who have, naturally, trailed her into the room.

  “Oh, but it’s Thursday! Mr. Jack will be here soon! Picnic night!” Susan knows that Helen loves helping her get ready every Thursday for the multi-family cookout at the beach club.

  “Yes. No. He knows. Well, I’ll tell him. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “Do you need a ride to the station?”

  “No.” She hesitates. “No. I prefer to drive.”

  “Do you want me to pack for you?”

  “I’ll wear what I have there.” Susan returns to the front hall to find her purse sitting on the round table, next to her signature bowl of white hydrangeas. Her bag is orange crocodile, Nancy Gonzalez, chic and summery fun. Fun was what she’d had in mind when she’d bought the bag at Bergdorf—a long way from Winkleman’s.

  She sets her hands on it and pauses, running a mental checklist. She takes her cell phone from her pocket and puts it into the purse, changes her mind, then puts it back in her pocket. She pulls out her wallet and gives a quick check inside for cash and cards. She rummages for her sunglasses and finds them, as usual, atop her head.

  “I’m leaving!” she calls, then remembers her laptop upstairs. Best not to leave such a thing behind. She takes two steps at a time as she bolts to her room to grab it and trots downstairs in a flash. She steps out the front door, closing it carefully behind her so that she doesn’t clip Calpurnia or Pliny, both of whom try to follow her.

  Susan gets into her car, a brand new Mini Cooper Countryman, the four-do
or model, in jungle green. Fun was what she was thinking, again, when she had bought this car. Who did she think she was kidding to act like she had ever been entitled to fun?

  She places her purse on the passenger seat and hooks her phone into its jack. Before she backs up, looking over her shoulder to avoid the stone walls nearest the house, she punches in a number on her speed dial list.

  “Ford Properties,” the voice coming through the car speakers cheerily answers. One good thing today—they have trained their receptionists well. Susan’s pet peeve is the protracted phone greeting, forcing the caller to wait while the receptionist prattles off an interminable series of unctuous phrases—Good morning! Ford Properties! This is Samantha! How may I direct your call!—all ending in exclamation points.

  But not at Ford Properties. A simple, cheery, “Ford Properties,” conveys it all by tone alone.

  “Hi Samantha, this is Susan calling Jack.”

  “Good morning, Mrs. Ford. You’ve had a number of calls since we spoke earlier this morning. Would you like me to run messages with you now?”

  “No. Thank you, Samantha. I’ll call back later.”

  “Certainly, Mrs. Ford. Just one moment, please, while I get Mr. Ford.”

  She waits.

  “Hi, Mom.” Despite the fact that they are roughly the same age, Jack Ford Jr. and Susan Ford, his stepmother, have addressed each other this way ever since Susan married his father. “What’s up? Samantha said you tried to reach me earlier?”

  “Hi, Son. I’ve decided to drive down to New York. I’d love to catch you up in person. I could meet you at Harry’s for a drink. I’ll buy.”

  “Of course, you’ll buy. You’re the mother.”

  “You always make me laugh, Jack.”

  “That’s why I’m the family mascot.”

  “Five-thirty?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You okay? You sound a little off.”

  “Of course, I’m okay. I’m always okay.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  Susan presses the button on the steering wheel to click off the phone. The soft tones of BBC reporter James Robbins can be heard on her satellite radio.

  “They’re climbing higher and higher into the barren Sinjar Mountains of Northern Iraq. These Yazidis are some of the thousands, from an ancient religious minority, fleeing for their lives from the militant fighters from the self-proclaimed Islamic State, seizing more and more of Iraq. This woman says, ‘We and our children ran away to save our lives and left everything behind….’”

  She fiddles with the volume.

  “…Iraqi Christians, too, are fleeing other areas being overrun by the Islamist fighters. The largest Christian town is Qaraqosh. It is now reported virtually empty. The entire population of around fifty thousand have fled.”

  Susan reaches down again to channel surf. The Goldberg Variations arrest her, and she settles in for the drive, desperate for the sedative of Bach.

  9

  Thursday, August 7, 2014

  New York

  The city is hot and deserted. Heat radiates in waves off the tarmac, distorting light and color and heightening Susan’s sense that reality is slipping away from her. She feels her tires stick to the road when she sits too long at a light. Despite the blasting AC, her clothes are glued to her body.

  Coming down the east side, she makes it across the snarl of Second Avenue subway construction and decides to take Park Avenue. If she hits the lights right, she can sail without stopping. Today, there are few cars and, mercifully, no school buses, this being August. All it takes is one taxi, however, halting in the middle of the road to pick up a passenger to mess with Susan’s algorithm.

  She makes it a point never to come to New York in the summer if it can be avoided. She limits her visits to two or three trips, concentrating her errands and appointments. When she needs to, she comes down on a Tuesday, after morning traffic, and heads back up on Thursday, to arrive in time for the cookout.

  Damn. The cookout. She was supposed to sit with the Grants and the Thatchers. She’d forgotten to call Cecilia before leaving Watch Hill and she had committed to bringing the meat, which would leave a gaping hole in the menu. She now realizes that was what Helen had been doing in the kitchen, seasoning the marinade for lamb chops.

  Should she call Cecilia and risk an explanation? Better to call Helen at Gull Cottage and have her bring the lamb over to Cecilia’s house. Susan can talk to Cecilia another day, once this mess is sorted out. She doesn’t even want to put the idea into Cecilia’s head that something untoward is happening in Susan’s life. She won’t give her the satisfaction—the chance to remind them both that Cecilia Thatcher is Watch Hill, while Susan only married it.

  A red light finally stops her progress down Park. Susan glances at the street sign and notices that she is at 69th. Her heart tugs sharply and her eyes can’t help turning to the left. There, right next to her, is the large Delano & Aldrich edifice of the Union Club. Its white limestone is brilliant in the August sun.

  She remembers a different day, a day with no sunshine.

  Her wedding day.

  The snow fell that day the way that it falls in New York—casting a hush over the city and causing all traffic to vanish. Susan and Jack were married at St. Vincent Ferrer, a pretty Catholic church, on Lexington and 65th. For something as important as her wedding, Susan wanted to marry in the church of her Michigan childhood. Jack, an Episcopalian, had graciously obliged her. He signed away their future children, the children they never would have, to be raised in the Catholic faith.

  Susan had entered the church that day and paused for an instant at the back. Jack Jr., her best friend, stood next to her. It was he who would give her away. Funny notion, that—to give a person away. But the sweetness of the gesture still warms her. He was her friend and he was with her and she would lean on him, just a little, as they made their way down the aisle.

  But first, she had allowed herself a moment to take it all in. Candles filled the sanctuary, small circles of amber light dispersing in the cavernous spaces, never reaching the stone walls or stained-glass windows. Evergreens trailed the pews and great bowers of them flanked the altar. Friends were there, sitting toward the front. Smiling, they rotated in the pews to look at her.

  Jack Sr., her intended, stood close to the altar, waiting for her there—a lean man with pale blue eyes in a dark blue suit. She had to squint to see him. He, too, smiled in her direction.

  Jack Jr. gave her arm a reassuring squeeze and smiled at her, as well. Bigger than his father, with eyes more gray than blue, he, too, wore a blue suit. Together, they stepped forward, the son delivering the bride to the father.

  Afterwards, their little party walked to the Union Club for dinner, over from Lexington and up a silent and snowy Park Avenue, in the middle of the street. Susan, in her long white dress, a heavy coat and snow boots—Jack, in his crisp blue suit without a coat. That was Jack. He always wore a blue suit and he never wore a coat. He said he was unaffected by weather.

  Why did people lay so much blame on the weather, anyway? On that day, so long ago, dark in the blowing snow, Susan’s life had seemed to be all beginnings. Here, on a brilliant summer day, her life could be falling apart.

  The weather didn’t have a damn thing to do with it.

  “Welcome back, Mrs. Ford.” George, the doorman at the Sherry-Netherland, snaps her out of her daydream as he opens her car door. “Would you like us to park the car?”

  “Yes, please, George. I’ll stay the night.”

  “Any luggage that you’d like us to bring up for you?”

  “No luggage.”

  Susan pushes her way through the revolving door of the Sherry and crosses the ornate lobby. Built in 1927, exactly when the Vanderbilt mansion across the street was being demolished, the Sherry-Netherland had absorbed salvage from that grand house. It was far too opulent for Jack’s tastes, yet it was he who had chosen this hotel/apartment combin
ation for its proximity to his office—it allowed him to pop home on a whim for a quick half hour nap.

  A nap would be just the thing for Susan right about now. She still has four hours in front of her before she meets Jack Jr. Though sleep, she concedes, will be elusive.

  “Hi, Kathy,” Susan calls out to the pretty receptionist.

  “Mrs. Ford! Good afternoon,” Kathy answers cheerily. “What a surprise to see you here!”

  “Yes,” Susan agrees. “I’m more surprised than you are.”

  10

  The Fords’ apartment in New York is a striking contrast to their house in Watch Hill. Darkly paneled—its fabrics run to deep, jewel tones in velvets and Fortuny. Collections of rare books, Old Masters, and Boucher drawings, Delftware, and silver objects grace the walls and surfaces. Recessed windows look out on the park, not too far above the tree line. Like Watch Hill, it evokes an earlier time, though it feels more European than American.

  Susan dumps her things on the hall table and goes directly to her bedroom closet. In it, she finds a medium-sized safe, not even as big as a dorm refrigerator, and quickly taps in a code. She removes a stack of jewelry boxes and sets it on the floor. Next, she pulls out a pile of papers and realizes she’s missing her glasses.

  Up off the floor she climbs and goes back down the hall to the entry, where she rummages around in her purse. Her eyeglass case turns out to be empty.

  Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, Susan frowns at her disheveled appearance. As if in agreement, both her sunglasses and her normal glasses wink back at her from atop her head. Feeling increasingly vertiginous, she yanks them off—ripping out a few hairs in the process—tosses one pair in her handbag and shoves the other one on her face.

  She turns to go back to the safe.

  Sitting cross-legged, Susan picks up the pile of papers, methodically setting each one aside once she has examined it thoroughly. In the middle of the stack, she finds a small white envelope—old, stained, and tattered—that she turns over in her hands. Front to back and back to front, she rotates it. Its paper feels dry on her summer swollen fingers. Cool and a little dusty. A disintegrating thing. Like herself, she would have to acknowledge.