“We will be,” Morgan assured him.
“What a strange man,” Maud said after Mr. Fuller had gone. “Isn’t he? Do you think he’ll be effective?”
“Yes, to both questions,” Morgan said. He didn’t add that a part of his confidence in Mr. Fuller lay in the fact that Mr. Fuller hadn’t touched on the subject of money, which fact meant to Morgan that Mr. Fuller had found out he didn’t have to (not at least as a first inhibiting consideration); that, factored into Mr. Fuller’s avowed liking for “scope,” was his foreknowledge of Morgan’s economic plenty.
Nearly a month went by without a sign from Mr. Fuller other than a one-sentence note whose every written word looked like a spider’s web: “I’m investigating two properties I believe might interest you. F. Rodney Fuller.” After a further lapse of ten days, just when they were about to wash their hands of him, Mr. Fuller telephoned: “I’d like to show you the two places I wrote you about. Yes, next Saturday is fine. I’ll come by in my car at ten sharp. I’ll honk. You follow me in your car. Wear overshoes, please.”
The first property had much to recommend it. The house was a rambling Colonial affair set high on a hill amidst five acres of lawn and garden plots and a well-trimmed mature grove of trees. No pond or creek, but from a terrace that flanked the west side of the house, a splendid view of a wide, meandering stretch of the Chagrin River. The house appealed so much that they went through it twice, talking of its many possibilities, pleased by its “glad feel.” And they lingered a second time on the terrace, gazing at the ambling river, Mr. Fuller at their side, pulling at his goat’s beard, his left eye wandering over the landscape like a free-ranging farm chicken. Finally, he prodded them with: “The other place I want you to see is a mile or so from here.”
The tree-lined lane of entry to the second property was marked, eldritch-like, by a pair of Doric columns, each topped by a griffin. (“What’s a griffin?” Julia asked that evening when he and Maud were telling her and Caroline about this place. This dream. Morgan answered: “A beast of myth. A fabulous beast with a lion’s body and the head and spread wings of an eagle. You’ll see,” the sound of his voice intense, like Julia’s gaze.) At the curved point in the lane where the house sprang into sight, Maud’s—“Oh, Morgan!”—filled the car. There it was, risen before them, not though in any way lordly or vainglorious—only fine in scale, the decorum of its formal facade regulated by the aesthetic symmetries of evenly spaced tall, tall ground-floor windows that implied of generously sized, well-proportioned, high-ceilinged rooms capable of echoing their inhabiter’s moods and endeavors and whims and pleasures. Life, as it would be lived…. Morgan spoke aloud the name that defined its architecture: “Palladian,” he said: “Palladian.” It rolled on his tongue like a mantra. And then it struck him that, by hearsay, he knew about this place, existent behind its griffined gates: that, in fact, it was something of a regional topic, with qualities of docile legend about it. “I think it’s the Ottingen place,” he said. And Maud, reminded, said: “Of course!” a bit awed: Ernest Ottingen’s name was one that reverberated in Cleveland’s history. They remembered reading of his death a couple of months ago; there had been pictures of him in the newspapers, and long commemorative paragraphs detailing his career as an inventor and civil engineer.
In the turnaround in front of the house, Morgan parked his car next to Mr. Fuller’s. “Yes,” Mr. Fuller confirmed: “Ernest Ottingen’s home.” Mr. Fuller was filled with information about “Mr. O.”—as he continued to refer to Ernest Ottingen. Age, at time of death, ninety-six; a longtime widower; a house-bound invalid for well over a decade; no descendants.
“Who took care of him?” Morgan wanted to know.
“A general factotum named Arthur Eames, with Mr. O. for years,” Mr. Fuller answered. “And an elderly couple, very devoted to Mr. O., who acted as cook and gardener. They’re all retired now, handsomely provided for by the terms of Mr. O.’s will.”
“Who’s handling the estate?” was Morgan’s next question.
To which Mr. Fuller brightened: “I don’t know who the lawyer is, but I can tell you that Mr. Eames is the named executor of Mr. O.’s will, along with the Cleveland Trust Company. I went to see Mr. Eames. He’s living now outside Elyria. I’d say he’s in his eighties, but bright as a diamond. A Victorian gentleman. He was dressed in a black twill suit and a shirt with a celluloid collar!” Mr. Fuller’s right eye settled itself on Morgan’s face: “I had a strong hunch you and Mrs. Shurtliff would be fetched by this property, and as I’ve heard there’s a considerable list of interested buyers, I thought a visit to Mr. Eames, on your behalf, was appropriate.” Before Morgan could rise to this gambit, Mr. Fuller hastened on: “There are twenty acres. It’s why I suggested you wear overshoes. You’ll want to stroll around the grounds a bit before we go inside, and these January thaws—well, they do cause mud.” As they set off on their walk, Mr. Fuller gestured over the lawn: “Mr. Eames told me there used to be peacocks.”
It was inevitable. A wide, racing brook spilled into a large pond glassed over now by a thin glaze of ice. A tennis court! (En tout cas, Maud knew.) A stand of laburnum trees. Willows that shaded a terrace in an instantly imagined summer. And that tree? “A weeping silver lime,” Mr. Fuller informed: “Rare in this part of the world.” A dog cemetery, its location on the rise of a nearby hill; six markers—the earliest date 1910, the most recent 1944—Lear, Ripsy, Solo, Duffy, Daisy, Star…. And beyond the extent of the civilized grounds, a surround of meadow and deep woods to wander through for years to come.
With practical eyes they explored the ancillary buildings at the back of the house: a large garage, converted from a one-time stable; an immense south-facing greenhouse (“It could be modified, or better still, replaced by a small one,” Morgan said); a tool-shed; an old hennery that shared a common wall with a long-unused stone cowshed (“They ought to come down,” Morgan said, but Maud defended the cowshed: “Fixed up a bit, it would make a wonderful getaway place for Caroline and Julia.”)
“Shall we see inside the house now?” Mr. Fuller asked.
Ah. From the centrality of an exuberant, two-storied entrance hall, the ground-floor rooms winged out, large and fine, each with a fireplace: living room; dining room; an immense, immensely handsome library with the intimate surprise of an inglenook chimney corner; a sitting room for Maud, completely her own. And—“fundamental”—the kitchen, bright and airy: “It’ll have to be redesigned, thoroughly modernized,” Maud said of it, “but oh my, the space!” And down the hallway, off the kitchen, two private, pretty rooms and bath: “For Tessa.” Upstairs, via the sweep of a curved staircase: two grand rooms, “for Caroline, for Julia,” connected by a large bathroom; across the broad, pillared hall, two guest rooms: and last, arrived at by an arched, gallery-like corridor, a glorious corner chamber, theirs—remote—with an easterly view over the lawn to the framing woods, and from the windows that faced north, a view across garden plots to the pond that on clear, calm nights would mirror, as on a patch of sea, stars and the moon. In this room, Morgan lingered alone, persuaded by its beauty that it was an indicator of the luck of his life.
Mr. Fuller reminded him: “The attic must be seen.” And was: huge: a perfect play-arena for the twins and their friends on rainy days and bad stretches of winter weather.
Next, down three flights of an easily negotiated back staircase, to the basement. “Mr. Eames recommends the installation of a new furnace,” Mr. Fuller remarked. (To his mounting mental list of new kitchen, the updating of bathrooms, general redecoration, perhaps a small greenhouse, Morgan added “New furnace.”) Mr. Fuller praised the basement: “Dry as a bone,” he said, “not a hint of damp. Storage space to burn, and—” he gestured: “That door…I’ll give you the pleasure of opening it, Mr. Shurtliff.” He handed Morgan a long-shanked iron key. To the right of the door was a light switch which he flicked on, somewhat dramatically, just as Morgan turned the key in its lock. The door swung inward to a deep, head-high, cool
, redolent cave paneled round with beehive niches for vineyard bottles to rest in. “Lord,” Morgan breathed: “What a dream of a wine-cellar.” Maud, at his side, said, “Pip will go out of his mind when he sees it.”
Back upstairs, they sat on a window bench in the library, Maud, Morgan, Mr. Fuller, in that order, and for the first time Morgan broached the subject of money. “What’s the asking price, Mr. Fuller?” The figure, firmly stated, was steep, though not, Morgan thought, unreasonable: the virtues of the house and the extent of land that came with it warranted the sum. “Is it negotiable?”
“I wouldn’t think by much,” Mr. Fuller answered. “I understand that under the terms of Mr. O.’s will, the proceeds of the sale are to go to Mr. O.’s alma mater.”
Ah: decedent loyalty to the campus of youth. “Which is?” Morgan asked.
“Western Reserve University.”
Where (possibly) the young Ernest Ottingen, leaning against the trunk of an academic elm, had sketched in a notebook the brainstorm of a first invention (first of many), first patent to follow; and now, these many years later (Morgan’s thoughts ran on), the profits from the sale of this house, by testament, to return to the institution that had trained and honed the agilities of his mind: the circle, fidelity’s own.
“Morgan?”
He turned to Maud. Shall we? he silently asked her. Shall we pursue this?
Written in her eyes was an answer that read like the denouement of a racy novel plotted of Sex and Acquisition, for, ciphered in her look, linked inextricably to the buying of this house, was the marital bed. What a glide! He kept gazing at her, into the theater of her eyes, watching as she lowered the curtain on the intimacies of that initial scene, and in an instant raised it again to a stage filled with the presences of everyone she loved, and crowded with props symbolic of everything she believed in, and, over all, hovering in a sort of fanning way was, Time: circa the rest of their lives.
Mr. Fuller coughed.
Morgan turned to him. “Our children must see it,” he said. “Tomorrow’s Sunday. They won’t be in school. I know it’s asking a lot, but—”
“I could meet you here at three,” Mr. Fuller said.
“We’ll be here on the dot.” Morgan smiled his appreciation. Then: “We’ve a friend, an architect. Desmond Cleary.”
“I’ve heard the name.”
“I’d like him to vet the house top to bottom. And I want my father to see it.”
“I’ll make myself available any time that suits them, Mr. Shurtliff. It ought to be as soon as possible. As I mentioned, there are other buyers, very interested.”
“I understand. I’ll call them the minute we get home. I’ll tell you tomorrow the day and hour I fix with them.”
They all stood up. Maud said: “You’re being very good to us, Mr. Fuller.”
Mr. Fuller’s daft left eye shot off, somewhere out of sight, but his sane right eye stayed steady on Maud’s face. “My father was a tailor, Mrs. Shurtliff. He used to say that nothing satisfied him more than fitting a suit on a man. I get the same satisfaction from matching up houses to people. Do remind your children to wear overshoes when they come tomorrow.” On which disjointed speech, in its way touching, they said good-bye.
The next day Maud took a photograph of Caroline and Julia standing in front of the house. In relation to its tall facade, they were insignificant in height. So Maud told them to raise their hands way up high over their heads. They did, and stretched so, they stood still. Until that moment, they had not been catchable by the camera, racing so fast around and about the outside of the house and exploring it inside, yelling to each other from room to room, peaking around corners, infatuated: who would see what next, first…In the picture, taken in the winter sunlight, their eyes shine like silver coins.
On Monday, Desmond Cleary spent the morning in the house. Ansel Shurtliff saw it in the afternoon. Des Cleary’s verdict: “It’s a rare gem, Morgan. A real opportunity. And it’s structurally sound as a dollar. Not a compromise in it.” Ansel Shurtliff’s cry—“Don’t hesitate. Grab it!” rang clear as a bell.
Not to go into details: but there was a hitch that delayed the closing by some three months. At issue, the property’s south boundary line, the disputant the owner of the abutting land. The matter didn’t turn litigious, nor did it put the sale at threat, but a new survey had to be made and approved and certified and duly filed, ETC. ETC., all of which took time. So it wasn’t until late April that the legal formalities were completed and the house and land, once and for all, theirs. Champagne! Then the renovations began. That list: new kitchen, all bathrooms updated, new furnace, redecorating, ETC. ETC.; hours spent with architect and contractor; weeks and weeks of labor by workmen—the progress sometimes snail slow, sometimes fast, sometimes arrested because of tardy deliveries of ordered goods; but the long job now virtually finished: December 8th—a mere three weeks away—was the day they were scheduled to move from their old house into what they had come to think of as their “final” home.
“It isn’t given to many people to inhabit heaven before they die.” That was what Mrs. Leigh had said the last time she went out to the house with him and Maud to see how the renovations were coming along. About a month ago. In the fling of the two-storied entrance hall, descending the staircase, she had stopped mid-way down it and gazed around, smiling, Maud beside her on the same stair, halted, and himself two treads above them. “It isn’t given to many people to inhabit heaven before they die.” So he had the memory of Maud throwing her arms around Mrs. Leigh and of hearing her say, “Oh Mother, what a beautiful thought,” her eyes skimmed over in that sheer way they could with tears, and Mrs. Leigh holding Maud in the clasp of an embrace so tight it looked as if she meant it to last forever.
…Morgan drove on, not fast; it was raining harder now. The new Buick’s windshield wipers moved back and forth, active and sweeping, but the rain not erasable. That recent day, that moment there on the stairs, Maud fastened in her mother’s embrace. No hint that Mrs. Leigh would soon undo it. No forecast of farewell.
His memory made another sudden backward leap: a long one: to 1943, midpoint of the war, to one particular evening of the many he spent in a Miami bar with Sidney Aranov and Lawrence Cuyler. The word “someday” had entered their conversation, meaning some future time when the war would come to an end, a time which, in fulfillment, seemed to them then already ancient. “Someday.” No matter how often the word was uttered (and it was uttered very often), its user never followed it up with—“if I survive the war.” But the unspoken phrase was always there, hand-in-glove, suffixed to the word.
On the night of this particular memory, Lawrence had been holding forth about what his life was going to be like after the war. How perfect, with Pamela, it was going to be. He had had a lot to drink. So had Sidney. So had Morgan. “Someday. Blue skies. Years of blue skies,” Lawrence concluded.
“Goethe,” Sidney mumbled.
“What? Speak up, professor, I’m sitting in the back row.”
“Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,” Sidney obliged, assuming the prescribed role, leaning on the barroom table as on a lectern: “German poet and philosopher. Trained as a lawyer. Dates 1749–1832. Allow me.” He put his right hand in his uniform pocket and brought out a pen and a blank sheet of paper. He screened the paper with his left hand as he printed some words on it. When he was finished, he looked up at Lawrence and Morgan and said: “Goethe. A literal translation,” then handed the paper to them.
WANTED: A DOG THAT NEITHER BARKS NOR BITES, EATS BROKEN GLASS, AND SHITS DIAMONDS.
They nearly gagged, laughing.
Sidney reclaimed the paper, turned it over, wrote another message on its clean side and again handed the paper to Lawrence and Morgan.
WANTED, AT WAR’S END, BY SIDNEY ARANOV: A F—ING ORDINARY DOG.
“That’ll be the canine for me,” he said. “Metaphorically speaking—an ordinary life; a couple of nice kids; some good lawyering; the chance to grow old w
ith Linda.”
Odd, the way things had worked out.
Now, Lawrence and Sidney were both living in New York, both professionally thriving, Lawrence in an old-name law firm (housed in a Wall Street building within easy walking distance of Morgan’s New York office), corporate law his specialty; Sidney, a litagator in a young, up-and-coming firm with political connections. At such times as Morgan was in New York, the three of them, their schedules permitting, would hook up for lunch or a late-afternoon drink, coming together in the easy way of their old Miami days. If for some reason they couldn’t meet as a trio, Morgan would see Sidney or Lawrence: in whatever combination, the friendships flourished.
(It should be noted that Sidney’s professional success was such that he could now afford to have his shirts made to order, which meant no more or less than that they contained enough cloth to adequately accommodate the large span of his vat-like torso. But the very plenitude of cloth produced a new sartorial problem, for, now, when he was intellectually or emotionally excited, the action of his heart (always at such times observable) seemed not to beat but instead to blow in puffy gusts that stirred the shirt’s fabric in a way suggestive of an untrimmed jib-sail luffing in a light August breeze…a sight to see.)
“I dream of becoming a father,” Sidney had said in 1943. He and Linda had a son now, David, born a year ago. Morgan had met Linda soon after the war ended, and just as he had somehow been certain he would, had instantly liked her. Subsequently, Maud met her (and Sidney too, of course), and now the four of them were friends. On Maud’s occasional trips to New York, they would join ranks, usually for dinner: French, Chinese, Italian, or Indonesian food. They ate geography. Sometimes they went to a concert together or to the theater. (One memorable night, at a midtown cabaret, they heard Mabel Mercer sing. “From This Moment On.” “Thank You for the Flowers.” “Sunday in Savannah.” “By Myself.”…No one like her, before or since.) But however or wherever they spent the earlier part of the evening, they invariably ended it in the living room of the Aranov’s third-floor brownstone apartment, on Seventy-fifth Street, between Lexington and Third avenues. Sidney would pay the baby-sitter and see her out the door, and Linda would bring David from his crib and plant him in Sidney’s lap, and Sidney, holding his son and with Linda sitting beside him, would always, literally always, turn to Morgan and remind him of “that Goethe evening back in Miami”—employing the memory as a gauge of his and Morgan’s post-war marital and paternal happiness—
Matters of Chance Page 25
