Agnes
Page 9
The early days of their relationship were filled not with a passion that burned bright and faded over time, but rather with one that constantly smoldered, exploding only in narrow corridors of time when their daughter was asleep or otherwise engaged. Sandy found that her schedule as a parent and the limitations it imposed on her love life caused her to appreciate her partner even more. Angie wasn’t a strain but rather the cement that solidified their union.
Never a sports fan, Diane was happy to surrender her seat for Knicks and Mets games to Angie. For the outdoor sports, though—skiing, hiking, boating—they became a threesome. Angie traveled the world with them, filling in all the pages on her junior passport before it expired.
Work and casual sexual liaisons had consumed the days and nights of Sandy’s twenties. When her family came together, nearly overnight, her heart and, subsequently, her priorities had changed. She worked her tail off, still, but now for a reason. She wanted the best for Angie, whether it was the Strawberry Shortcake dollhouse or a Schwinn tricycle. And she dreamed that one day, when she had made enough money and had enough of Wall Street, she and Diane would watch sunsets from their porch swing and grow old together.
She’d made the fortune. She’d left the job. She just didn’t have the girl whose love and friendship would give her life meaning. She liked Pat, she really did, but she supposed one reason she was sitting alone in her apartment and feeling a bit sad was because of the time she’d spent with her over the Memorial Day weekend. It was exhausting. A few hours with the woman completely drained her battery. Sandy did enjoy her company, but the price was high. Maybe that would change as they grew more comfortable together. She hoped so.
Hoping to fight the melancholy that threatened to ruin the eleven hours remaining in the day, she picked up the phone and speed-dialed Angie. She’d left the Poconos, where she could play thirty-six holes of golf and tinker in her garden, to spend time with Leo and Angie. Mostly, though, Leo had brought her back to her winter home in the late spring.
Angie had given birth to her son at Halloween the year before, and right now he behaved more like a puppy than a plant. He was beginning to crawl and loved exploring, and was fascinated by everything in his world, which he investigated first by tasting. He loved the Baby Einstein videos, a plastic bee that vibrated and buzzed, and his grandmother.
“I’m back,” she announced when Angie answered. “How about a stroll?”
“Leo’s hungry for French fries. Do you want to have lunch?”
“Of course. How can a grandmother refuse such a request?”
When she arrived at Angie’s apartment a few blocks away, she and Leo were awaiting her arrival. Bouncing on his mother’s knee, watching the traffic pass from his perch on the steps, he grinned when he saw his grandmother, a sign of recognition or gas, Sandy wasn’t sure which. Pulling him from his mother’s arms, she showered him with kisses. Angie had been three years old when she came to live with her and Diane (the same age she had been when she moved in with her grandparents) so Sandy had missed the wonders of a newborn.
She had tried to be an unobtrusive grandmother, not wanting to crowd Angie and her husband Tom, but her daughter and son-in-law’s constant invitations to visit and babysit had quickly dispelled any fears she might have had.
The resultant time she had spent with Leo had forged a marvelous bond between them, and his presence in their lives strengthened the ties between mother and daughter as well. These walks were a near-daily occurrence, and they met for lunch a few times a week. After enjoying a maternity leave that now stretched to eight months, Angie was looking forward to returning to her job teaching high-school students in September. Even so, she often said she would miss these afternoons with her mother. Leo, however, would be blessed to have Sandy as his sitter.
They walked in silence for a little while, enjoying the day and Leo’s cooing, until his added weight caught up with her and the pain in her knees told her it was time to put him into the empty stroller his mother had been pushing. He easily made the transition. “I’m old,” Sandy complained, rolling the tension out of her shoulders. Carrying the added weight of the baby did a number on her knees, as well, but she didn’t mention that to Angie.
“If you take after the Parkers, you’re just a babe,” Angie observed.
Sandy laughed. “I’ve actually been thinking about that over the past few weeks. Isn’t it inevitable to ponder your own demise when you’re watching someone you love die before your eyes? I don’t think I want to live as long as Nellie and Arthur.”
“Why? They were happy, and very independent, right until the end.”
“Yes, but they had each other. It would have been a different story for the surviving sibling if one of them had died twenty years ago.”
Angie stopped and grabbed her arm. “Mama, you’re going to meet someone again. Someone who makes you as happy as Mommy did.”
Startled, Sandy was momentarily speechless. How had she let that slip out? She’d never wanted to burden Angie about her loneliness, and letting her know that little bit of truth was likely to give her cause to worry. She waved her hands, dismissing Angie’s statement. “That’s sweet of you to say, honey. But I’m not thinking about that. I…” She looked at Angie, who was studying her through eyes filled with love, and decided the truth might be best after all. “Ah, who am I kidding? Right now I miss your mom. With Nellie gone, I feel sort of lonely.”
The constant worry about Nellie, especially since Arthur’s death, had driven Sandy to the Poconos even more often to check on her aging grandmother. When she wasn’t with her, they shared twice-daily phone calls. These past months had been filled with caring for Nellie, and now that she was gone, Sandy felt a grief beyond the loss of a loved one. She’d lost her purpose as well.
“And Pat doesn’t fill that void?”
There was no big void, she wanted to explain. A dozen little voids existed instead. The companionship void. The theater void. The sexual void. The golf void. The “reading the Times together” void. She had the privilege of many wonderful friends, some she’d known for years, like the ladies she golfed with in the Poconos, and some who had come into her life relatively recently, like Pat. She never lacked for conversation or, especially in New York, ways to pass the time. Yet it was difficult to transition between friends with their various personalities and ideas, and she found it tiring. A performer at the theater, rushing between scenes or numbers for a quick change before reappearing on stage as a new persona—that’s how it seemed she’d been living her life since Diane had died. The problem, it seemed, wasn’t that she didn’t have enough friends to pass the time. She had too many. Too many people to talk to and do things with, and no one with whom she could be silent and still.
“Maybe you should find someone in the Poconos,” Angie suggested. “I think you enjoy your time there more than here. Or you can have someone in both places!”
“A girl in every port, eh?” Sandy chuckled. Although she wouldn’t share the information with her daughter, that was actually how she’d lived her life during the swinging ’70s. The Village had been a wild place in the days before HIV taught them that casual sex could be deadly. “What would you and Leo do without me?” she asked, poking a tickling finger at Leo’s belly, feigning interest in him while waiting for Angie to respond.
“We’d miss you like crazy, Mom. But we’d be happy for you. You’re too young to give up your life and play granny.”
The image of an old woman in a rocking chair came to mind, and as much as she wanted to help Angie with her son, as much as she loved him, Sandy somehow sensed that the role of babysitter wouldn’t fulfill her needs. She didn’t know what she wanted, or what she needed, though, and she didn’t want to talk about it until she had a stronger grasp of her own feelings. Changing the subject, Sandy said, “I think I’ve taken care of just about everything for Nellie.”
“Is the headstone engraved?”
“I spoke with the man at the monument compan
y. He should be doing it soon, and he’ll call me when he’s finished so I can go inspect it before issuing payment.”
The gravestone that wasn’t at Riverview was something else that had been weighing on Sandy, adding an additional element to her bag of mixed emotions. Why hadn’t the Bennetts given Jeannie a marker? The question had been weighing on her and really pissing her off! Since sharing her secret about Jeannie for the first time with Angie, they hadn’t spoken her name again, but Sandy felt comfortable enough to voice her concerns.
“Is it possible for you to buy one, Mom? I mean, is there a law that says it has to be the family who puts a stone on a grave?”
Sandy stopped and faced Angie. What a great idea! Smiling, she contemplated the possibility. She was planning a trip back to Riverview to see Nellie’s gravestone, so why not make some inquiries while she was there? It didn’t seem possible she could do this without Jeannie’s sister Jane’s permission, but why would Jane mind? She’d check at the cemetery office for a contact number for Jane and reach out to her. The worst that could happen would be for Jane to deny Sandy’s request. Maybe, though, she’d allow Sandy to do this for Jeannie.
“You are brilliant! What a great idea.”
Angie smiled in response and Sandy could actually feel a weight lifting from her shoulders as the plan formed in her head. She would get Jeannie a gravestone. It was something she deserved, and it would make Sandy feel good to do it. It was so nice to have a purpose.
Chapter Nine
A Gravestone
A pathologically early riser, Sandy had been up and began the hour-long trip from her mountain home to the Wyoming Valley before most of the continent was awake. This habit had served her well on Wall Street, where she could analyze the foreign markets’ operating hours ahead of the New York Stock Exchange. She often thought it good to be up early no matter what sort of worm you were hoping to catch.
The monument company had called informing her that the engraving on her grandmother’s gravestone had been completed. She had driven back to Pennsylvania the day before in time to play in the ladies’ golf league she enjoyed, and had spent a quiet evening at home. No alarm was necessary to wake her, but as she slipped into the morning sunlight from her cabin a family of chirping birds who had nested in the trees surrounding her house greeted her. She had watched the forecast on the news, but even if she hadn’t she’d have known this would be a magnificent day. The sun had just risen and was busy burning the dew from her grass and flowers, and the sky was clear as far as she could see.
Her golf round yesterday had the benefit of perfect, early June Pocono weather—a high in the mid-seventies. When spring turned into summer, she wouldn’t relish an afternoon round of golf. Temperatures in the high eighties and nineties were the rule in July and August, and the morning sun would find her teeing off on the first hole, watching the track of her ball on the dew-covered fairways.
She anticipated finishing her business in the Wyoming Valley early enough on this day to play eighteen holes before the sun set again. Pat would be visiting her later in the afternoon and spending a few free days in the Poconos. Sandy was anxious to see how she’d feel this time with Pat. Perhaps some of her angst was the aftermath of a funeral. Perhaps she just needed more time.
En route to the cemetery, her stomach grumbling, Sandy decided to journey back in time and have breakfast at one of the favorite places of her youth, Austie’s Drive-In. She and her grandfather had often shared breakfast there on those days when he chose to stop in and visit Parker Lumber, which was just north on the San Souci Highway.
The diner had expanded but was still quaint, its décor fifties chic. The food was still fantastic, just as she remembered, perfect eggs over light, fried potatoes, and thick, crispy bacon. When she cooked for herself, she tried to keep the menu healthy. But when she went out to restaurants, she kept no regard for her coronary arteries and ordered whatever she wanted. As she sat alone savoring the wonderful diner food, she pondered the fate of the Parker Companies.
The trust set up years earlier protected all the land and mineral rights from sale. A diversified stock portfolio that boasted original blue chips had funded it, but since the flood there had been changes, and now there was essentially no growth to the portfolio other than dividend earnings. Business interests developed over the years by her grandfather’s father were kept in common out of mutual agreement, but none of the owners was obligated to hold on to their share of the Parker companies. Her grandmother had sold her interest a few years after the flood. The geographical distance between her new home in the Poconos and her husband’s old family companies was too great for her to manage. His brother had been happy to buy Nellie’s share, and due to old and deep tensions between them, Sandy had never really had contact with her uncle or cousins since the flood.
When she’d started college, Sandy began to very closely follow the management of the trust fund. What she found didn’t please her. The company that her family hired was incompetent, charged high fees, and wasn’t achieving the results it should have. When she started at her first job, she hired an attorney and successfully fought to change management, bringing that business in house. The result was higher earnings but more animosity between the branches of the Parker family tree.
When she had once asked her grandfather why they had to take time from their day to visit the lumberyard and the excavating company, the quarry and brickyard, he’d smiled and patted her hand. “My brother is all for himself, Sandy. He thinks because I went to medical school and he went to business school, the family businesses should be all his. So I check everything he tells me twice, and then I have my accountant check it three times.”
Sandy remembered her grandfather’s words when her uncle Dale showed up at Arthur’s house a month after Agnes. Sandy sat at the kitchen table with him and her grandmother. “Nellie,” he said, patting her hand, “I’ve come to do you a favor. I’m going to buy you out of the businesses so you don’t have to worry about this stuff anymore. And I’ll buy all of your rental properties, too.”
Regarding him thoughtfully, Nellie stared for a moment, then pulled her hand from beneath his and patted his. “I would imagine the thousands of homeless people in the valley would be happy to rent my properties, even pay premium prices for them, Dale. But they’re already rented, and I have no intention of chasing my tenants from their homes, now or ever. And why would I want to sell my share of a demolition company that’s working round the clock on flood cleanup, making hundreds of thousands of dollars? Or sell the companies that will furnish the raw materials for rebuilding?”
Ashen, Dale leaned back, his eyes slanted as he stared down a woman who was clearly his match. “I would pay you a fair dollar,” he insisted.
“And how would you arrive at that sum?”
“I’d use earnings for the past years, of course.”
She laughed. “This year’s earnings will be ten times that, thanks to Agnes.”
He drove away, angry and humiliated, and they’d never seen him since. When Nellie did decide to sell, a few years later, her attorney handled all the transactions. By that time, the Agnes boom and profits had died down and she had vastly increased her fortune. Time had healed some wounds as well, and she was then psychologically ready to walk away. She sold all of the businesses to Dale, but the rentals she offered to her old handyman, Bill Burns.
Many of the homes and apartments were aging and beginning to show the signs. They needed the attention of someone close by, not an absentee landlord. With nearly twenty rental units—thirty had been lost to Agnes—it was a rare day without a call from a tenant complaining about something or another. Since the beginning, Mr. Burns—and later his sons—were the ones to take care of those problems. He had done financially well in the post-Agnes demolition and reconstruction, and when Nellie offered him the properties he hadn’t hesitated to buy. He could afford them, and they were a sound investment for someone with the skills to manage and maintain them.
A young man at the service desk, no more than a boy really, greeted her with a smile. The resemblance to her grandfather was startling. Like most Parkers he was tall, with fair skin, blue eyes, and blond hair. His was cut rather short. His massive chest and shoulder muscles stretched the fabric of his T-shirt. A big smile lit up his face when he greeted her.
Glancing at the nametag on his shirt, Sandy grinned. Danny. Since arriving in this country from England two hundred years earlier, Daniel Parker had spawned about a dozen generations of Dannys. Her grandfather’s brother Daniel had died of the flu, and from that point Dale’s descendants adopted the name. A miserable brat of a boy named Daniel was just a year or two older than Sandy, and she guessed this was his son or grandson.
Offering her hand, she introduced herself. His young face brightened as she explained their blood connection, and when she revealed the reason for her visit he offered condolences for her grandmother. This Danny was actually the son of the cousin she’d played with as a child. That one had either changed dramatically to have raised such a charming young man, or he’d married exceptionally well.