It had been years since I’d seen anyone from my old life in the Village. For the Colonel’s sake, I’d led a circumspect existence. There was not a whiff of scandal to taint his memory. To all the world Helen and I seemed to be a couple, and we were, in every way but one. We lived like millionaires, she and I, and though technically we were the Colonel’s employees, I knew he thought of us as family. We’d made a contented threesome, Helen and the Colonel and me. How would it throw the two of us off balance to lose the third leg of our stool? I wondered.
It was a question that was swiftly answered. I’d drifted into sleep, for how long I had no idea, when the telephone woke me. It was time, George said. I rushed upstairs, my shoelaces untied, my jacket forgotten, to be part of the small circle around his bed when Colonel Jacob Ruppert died.
Chapter 41
Why me? That was the question shuttling back and forth across my brain. Why did Jake give more to me than to his own family? A week after his death, I came home from the reading of his will too stunned to know what to feel or think. My mother was waiting in the doorway of our apartment. At the sight of my shocked face, she asked, “What is it, Helen? Didn’t he leave you anything?”
I hugged her tight, bracing her for the astonishing news. “No, Mom, that’s not it at all. He left me the most of anyone, more than his own relatives.”
It seemed as if my mother had been holding her breath my whole life, the way she let the howl fly from her throat. I practically carried her to the couch, she was so hysterical. “You see,” she kept saying. “You see, Helen? Hasn’t it all been worth it? Didn’t I tell you it was your chance?”
“Calm down, Mom. Don’t act like you predicted twenty years ago Jake would make me an heiress.” Saying the word out loud started me shaking. Heiress. Three hundred thousand dollars, the lawyer had said. Why, the interest alone was as much as Albert’s entire inheritance, and I’d collect it every year for as long as I lived. It was enough to run the estate, if I wanted to keep Eagle’s Rest. And that wasn’t even all of it. I dropped down next to my sobbing mother, my own heart palpitating as the enormity of it sank in. Along with Jake’s two nieces, I was owner of the New York Yankees. Besides Effa Manley, we’d be the only women owners in all of professional baseball. Then there were the rest of Jake’s holdings: the realty company, the office buildings, the brewery. For decades he’d lived large on the profits of his empire. My share was sure to outshine any success I could have achieved on my own.
My mother was calming down, but her hysteria proved infectious. Now I was the one sobbing and shrieking, my heart beating so fast I felt faint. “Put your head down, Helen. I’ll go make us some hot milk and whiskey.”
I did as she said, resting my head on the arm of the couch while she went into the kitchen. I recalled a lung exercise someone once taught me and used it to settle myself down. I was almost calm by the time Albert knocked on the door.
At least, we assumed it was Albert. That’s why my mother pulled the door open without bothering about the chain. With a clamor of shouts and stomping feet, a dozen reporters barged right into our hallway, brushing past her until they reached me in the living room. I stood up, speechless, when I was blinded by the flash of a camera bulb. They commenced to shouting at me the same questions I’d been asking myself for the last hour. Why? Why you, miss? Why did Colonel Ruppert leave you a fortune?
“Get the hell out of my way.” Clarence’s commanding voice shut them up. He pushed through the commotion until he reached my side. “Are you all right, Helen?” When I nodded, he turned to face the reporters with his arms outspread. Summoning all the fearlessness he’d learned in the trenches of France, he forced the dozen men back on their heels and shut the door behind them. My mother was left with two empty mugs hanging from her hands, the spilled milk and whiskey a puddle at her feet. She looked at the two of us. “I guess I’ll make three mugs this time.”
Clarence led me back to the couch. My knees were bouncing so fast he actually held them down. “Tell me, Helen, is it true what they’re saying, that you’re a millionaire now?”
“I don’t know about that, but I did inherit a fortune.” I winced at the word. Fortune. Why should I have so much of it while Clarence had so little? It was tragic how the collapse of the stock market had brought such misery to his family. Over time, Bernice’s investments had grown until they were nearly enough to purchase the apartment building she’d been dreaming of, a modest walk-up on 121st Street. Smart as she was, though, Bernice hadn’t been immune to the frenzy of speculation that had every housewife and stenographer placing her savings in the hands of a stockbroker promising instant wealth. When the market collapsed, the brokerage called in her margin, and her investments evaporated. All those years Bernice had left James at home with his grandmother, or with me, so she could work and save for their future seemed suddenly a disastrous waste. Clarence had reassured her they were better off than most, he with a steady job and their family with a decent place to live despite the Depression that followed in the wake of the collapse. But Bernice blamed herself, the guilt of it weighing her down until she couldn’t lift her head high enough to see the oncoming streetcar that ran her over. Her death wasn’t counted among the Wall Street suicides that made the news, but her life was lost to the Crash just the same.
Jake, on the other hand, sailed through untouched. He’d learned his lesson speculating on the Florida land boom, he often said, advising anyone who would listen to steer clear of the market. Most of his wealth came from bottles of beer and baseball games, both of which only got more popular as Prohibition ended and the Depression dragged on. His good judgement left all the more for me to inherit.
For all her ambitions, Bernice had left Clarence flat broke and a widower, to boot, but for James’s sake he’d set aside his grief and set about raising his son. Jimmy was fifteen now and smarter, Clarence claimed, than his two parents combined. If things kept on according to plan, he’d be graduating high school early and starting college next fall—though how Clarence would pay for it was a mystery to me. The solution popped immediately into my mind: I’d sponsor James’s education. I was just opening my mouth to say so when my mother came running in from the kitchen, screaming. We jumped up to see what had frightened her. An enterprising reporter had clambered up the icy fire escape and was tapping at the kitchen window.
“Just give me a quote for the paper,” he shouted through the frosty glass. “Give me a quote and I’ll get the rest of them to leave you alone.”
Clarence picked up a frying pan to threaten the man, but I grabbed his arm. “Just open the window. Let’s get this over with.”
“Are you sure, Helen? I’ll call the police if you don’t want me to handle it myself.”
“I need them to go away.” I turned to the window and shouted, “Will you really leave me in peace if I give you a quote?”
The reporter crossed his heart, then plucked his pencil from behind his ear and held it poised over his pad. I nodded at Clarence and he pushed up the window.
“Just tell me why, Miss Winthrope, why did the Colonel leave you such a fortune?” He leaned so far over the sill he nearly fell into the kitchen. He was asking the right question, I thought, but I didn’t have the answer. “When did you first meet the Colonel?”
“I met him when I was just a girl.” I looked back at my mother, who was hovering in the kitchen doorway. She encouraged me with a nod. “My late father was his mechanic.”
“His mechanic? Here, in Manhattan? When was this?” The reporter’s pencil was flying across the page of his notepad.
“Just say they were friends and leave it at that,” my mother interrupted. “That’s enough about your father, Helen, don’t you think?”
“How did you and the Colonel spend your time? What sorts of things did you do together?”
“I used to go to the Polo Grounds with him sometimes, and I was there for the opening of Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. For a while he owned the theater I managed, and
he brought me to the kennel club shows at Madison Square Garden, back when his dogs were competing.”
“Weren’t you with the Colonel when the ship he funded for Admiral Byrd set sail for Antarctica?”
I nodded, recalling that day. Jake had fantasized about accompanying the expedition, but his health was in decline and his doctor wouldn’t allow it. He’d settled for supplying it instead. The dock at Bayonne was so hectic with stevedores, the deck of the ship so overrun with sled dogs, I became worried about him being jostled. A cameraman caught the two of us together just as I took his arm. Nobody knew who I was then. The picture ran in the paper without spelling out my name.
“And I heard you spent a lot of time at his Hudson River estate.” He struggled to turn the page of his notepad with a gloved thumb. “Eagle’s Rest. He left it to you, isn’t that right? Did you two go up there alone?”
Clarence lifted the frying pan again, ready to thrash him for being fresh, but I answered him plainly. “No, of course not. Mr. Kramer was always with us, and many others, too.”
“So what was he to you, then, miss?”
“A friend.” The reporter’s skepticism lifted his eyebrows. “It’s true. He never even took me dancing. He was—” I searched for the right word to describe my relationship with Jake. “He was like a father to me.”
“That’s enough now.” My mother stepped forward and took my arm. “You got what you came for, now get out of here before Clarence throws you out.”
The reporter looked down the icy fire escape. “Can’t I at least come through and take the elevator?”
“We’re done here.” Clarence shut the window and watched as the reporter began his precarious descent. When he was certain he wouldn’t be climbing back up, Clarence said he better get back down to the lobby. In the doorway he turned to me. “Listen, Helen, I think you should get out of town for a while. Once this gets printed in the paper, every long-lost relative you never heard of will come crawling out of the woodwork with a sob story, asking for a share of your prize.”
“I suppose you’re right, but first you have to promise me something.”
“Anything you need, Helen.”
I spit into my hand and held it out. He looked skeptically at my palm, shiny with saliva. “What am I agreeing to, exactly?”
“You have to promise first, Clarence.”
He spit into his hand, too, and we shook, the two of us eleven years old again. “Okay, tell me.”
“You have to promise you’ll let me pay for Jimmy’s college. Please.”
He hesitated. I hoped he could see this was friendship, not charity. I wouldn’t let go of his hand until he agreed, which he did, for Bernice’s sake, he said, and James’s, too. “Thank you, Helen. You couldn’t love that boy more if he were your own son, and don’t I know it.” The green flecks in his eyes were magnified by the shimmer of water gathering in them. “Lock this door now, and don’t open it without the chain on.”
I did as he told me. Looking down at my palm, I saw it was still wet from our mixed spit. I was about to wipe it off on my blouse, then stopped. Glancing quickly down the hallway to make sure my mother wasn’t looking, I lifted my palm to my mouth and licked.
Chapter 42
The Colonel’s will had only been read a couple of hours ago but already there was a scrum of reporters in front of Helen’s apartment building, shouting and shoving and stabbing their pencils in the air. Through the glass door I saw Clarence in the lobby, his soldier’s shoulders squared as he struggled to keep them out. I put my head down and pushed my way through their jabbing elbows, hoping not to be recognized. It didn’t work.
“Look, boys! It’s Albert Kramer, Colonel Ruppert’s secretary.” The throng closed on me, their questions a cascade of words crashing in my ears. Why did he leave her a fortune? What was she to him? I shouldn’t have been surprised at their eagerness. The Colonel’s fame as owner of the Yankees made his bequest a headline story. His wealth was rumored to be one hundred million dollars, much of it safely invested in real estate, making him one of the few millionaires who hadn’t been wiped out in the Crash. I knew a proper accounting would shave that sum considerably, not to mention the taxes, but even so, Helen would be a rich woman for the rest of her life. It was a change in station as sudden as a fairy tale. No wonder the reporters were clamoring for a scoop. I imagined the front pages of tomorrow’s papers were all being reset, new type put in place to announce the news of Helen’s inheritance. But no matter how many questions they asked, or how many articles they wrote, I swore to myself the one story the press would never get was the real reason the Colonel made Helen his heiress.
When her bequest had been announced at the lawyer’s office, I’d thought it would be so glaringly obvious that everyone would guess the Colonel’s motivation. But no one put it together, the way he placed Jerry Winthrope’s children on a par with his own relatives—Rex and his nephews given jobs, Helen and his nieces inheritances. More than that, though, was the cash gift that advanced Helen ahead of his own flesh and blood. To me, who knew the Colonel’s secrets, it was conclusive evidence of his devotion to Helen’s father, the dear friend who’d died in his arms, the man he once had loved. I imagined if Felix and I had reunited, I’d have come to feel the same way about his son, Aaron. It was as close as we could come, men like us, to being fathers ourselves.
I told the reporters I had nothing to say, but that short sentence was like tossing chum to sharks. My hat was knocked off in the frenzy. Clarence reached out to pull me from their grasping hands, dead-bolting the door to keep them from following me into the lobby. My heart was hammering as he handed me my hat.
“Have they gotten to her?”
He nodded regretfully. “I was in the basement when the first ones came by. They barged right into her apartment before I could get up there to help. They had a photographer with them, too. He got a picture before I hustled them out. One of them climbed up the fire escape. He promised they’d go away if she gave him an interview, but you see for yourself that was bogus.”
I looked back at the chaotic scene outside. The reporters’ mouths gaped all the wider as the glass door muffled their voices. “I better get upstairs.” I shook Clarence’s hand, fortifying myself with his strength. “Call the police if you have to.”
At Helen’s apartment I steadied my breath, knowing it wouldn’t help for me to arrive agitated. Her mother peeked around the chain before opening the door. “Thank goodness it’s you. She’s terribly upset.” She called over her shoulder. “Helen, Albert’s here.”
I was still shrugging off my coat when Helen threw her arms around my neck and collapsed against me like a drunken dance partner. I maneuvered her into the living room and onto the sofa. “I shouldn’t have let you come home by yourself.” I looked past Helen to include Teresa in my apology. “It was a mistake for me to stay behind.”
Helen nodded tearfully, but her mother said, “You had that business to finish at the lawyer’s office.” She sat down and asked me about the outcome of my meeting with Ruppert’s relatives.
“The nieces have filed letters of no contest. No one in the family wants to see this dragged into probate court. Helen won’t have any opposition.”
She sighed with relief and patted Helen’s hand. “You see? No one resents your inheritance.”
Helen rested her head on her mother’s lap. “What am I going to do with it all, Mom?”
She smoothed back Helen’s hair. “Good, I hope.”
“I told Clarence I’d pay for Jimmy’s college.” She looked at me, a tentative smile on her face. “That would be a good start, wouldn’t it, Albert?”
“I’m sure the Colonel would have liked that.”
“But I still can’t figure it out, Albert. Why did he leave so much to me?”
I was tempted to tell her, but how could I help Helen understand the place she occupied in the Colonel’s heart without staining the memory of her father, a memory she and her mother both held in suc
h reverence? I wondered if Teresa Winthrope had ever suspected; Felix told me his own wife had no idea. I supposed she thought the Colonel had left her daughter a fortune out of the simple goodness of his heart.
Helen lifted her head from her mother’s lap. “I think I’ll go lie down for a while.” She put her hand on my arm as she passed my chair. “Albert, you’ll stay, won’t you?”
“Of course I will, Helen.” I clasped her hand in mine. “As long as you need me.”
“We’ll keep each other company while you rest,” her mother said. “We’ve been drinking hot milk and whiskey. Come on, Albert, I’ll make you one.”
We sat at the kitchen table. Her hair had gone white these past few years, but even in her sixties it was easy to see how beautiful Teresa Winthrope once had been. “I didn’t think she’d be this upset, Albert. An inheritance should be good news, shouldn’t it?”
“Helen’s overwhelmed is all. It’s a lot for her to take in.”
“But you’ll help her. I can’t tell you how often I’ve thanked God for you. Jake was worried I might not approve, when he told me what you were, but it just made you all the more perfect as far as I was concerned. Can you imagine if she’d married?” Teresa shook her head. “You know how Jake was. He believed a married woman was her husband’s responsibility. He would have left her something, I’m sure, same as he did you, but nothing like this. She wouldn’t have had so much time to devote to him, either, if she’d had a husband. That was thanks to you, too, Albert. How could she have met someone else when the two of you spent so much time together? And you brought her to his attention. Once he got to know her, I knew he’d see how special she was.” Her words caught in her throat. “Helen always was her father’s pride and joy.”
My head spun from the rush of Teresa’s words. I figured Helen must have explained to her mother about me at some point, but no, it was the Colonel who’d told Teresa I was a pansy. Yet she didn’t mind, quite the opposite. I wondered if it was possible she knew the whole truth. “The Colonel was very fond of your husband,” I said, testing the waters.
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