certainly, Malachi, you can ask me anything.” “Well,” I started, “You’re such a kind and loving personality, why would you have married two men like Richard and Alessandro?” The smile on her face turned sour. She glared at me and threw her fork down on her plate. “WELL, you let me know when you can control your feelings Malachi! You just let me know!” That was the first time she had ever raised her voice to me. I just stared at her in complete shock. Marta and Catherine kept their eyes down and pretended to continue eating their meal. “I am sorry, Madam, I did mean that as a compliment to you.”
Madam dropped her face into her hands and shook her head. “I’m so sorry, Malachi… I did not mean to be so short with you, I’m sorry.” She reached out and touched my shoulder and I pulled away. “It’s alright, Madam, perhaps it was none of my business.”
1995 was an exciting year for me. Madam kept talking about a costumer that had been buying wine from the estate for over twenty years. “How silly is that?” I heard her laugh into the telephone. “Who in their right mind wants to come and stare at a bunch of grape vines?” She wrote something in the book that sat on her desk. “Alright, what’s his name again?” Then I heard her repeat the name. “Zander Caulfield, okay, tomorrow at nine o’clock.” Could it be?!? I thought to myself, could it possibly be Zander Caulfield, the writer? Could it be?!? Not being interested in the world of literature, I knew it would probably be a waste of time asking Madam, so the next morning I waited by the window with clinched fists. Just like a teenage girl, waiting for her crush to talk by.
Sure enough, at nine o’clock exactly, a white limousine pulled up to the front steps. The driver went around to the back of the car and took out a wheelchair. He then proceeded to help a somewhat delicate-looking man with gray hair and a beard out of the car door. My heart jumped. It was Zander Caulfield! I was so excited, I had read his novels since I was a teenager, and I loved them all, especially London Park and Fountains of Gold. He was British, like myself, and an extremely talented writer. The driver frowned as Mr. Caulfield stepped out of the car, and waved the wheelchair away, choosing to walk with a cane instead. The driver took his arm and helped him around to the back of the house, the tall steps being too much for him to climb. Madam greeted them at the back doors. My nose pressed up against the window, as I watched the three of them slowly walk to the vineyard, with Mr. Caulfield stopping to take occasional rests on the benches every now and then.
Please let her being him in the house, I prayed, just once so I can meet him. I did indeed meet Zander Caulfield that day, and I can honestly say that a kinder man has never lived. He was polite, soft-spoken, with the demeanor as gentle as a mouse. He held out his hand and asked me my name. “Malachi,” I responded, barely getting the word out. No other guest had ever asked me my name before. He shook my hand and smiled at me. He had gotten a little winded and worn under the hot sun, so Madam invited him in for a glass of iced tea. “Excuse my prodding, Mr. Caulfield,” Madam said. “Please, call me Zander, and you too, Malachi, you call me Zander also.” “Very well, Zander, why would someone, with all due respect, want to come and stare at grape vines?” He grinned and shook his head.
“You must forgive my secretary, I know she must have baffled you with confusion on the phone, but that’s just her way, you see, I am ill, I have cancer, and the doctor’s don’t really know how much time I have, nor do I, do I am using every day to enjoy and learn something new about this mystical plane of existence we call earth. And I just wanted to see where this wonderful wine that I have been enjoying for so many years, was conceived and born.” This man was poetic, even in everyday speech. I could tell by Madam’s eyes that she had seen something very special in this person’s soul, we all did. Zander Caulfield joined Madam for dinner that night, and many thereafter. He was widowed, with three grown children, two sons and one daughter, all of them older than Madam. He always went out of his way to speak to me, or compliment me in some way. The three of us usually shared dinner with them, except Sunday when the two of them ate dinner together in the dining hall. I could never bring myself to eat a meal in there after I had to watch Van Zant’s coffin lie in state for more than a week, but Zander had no idea.
Once he passed me in the hallway, as the skeleton key to my library fell out of my pocket. ‘What’s the key to Lad?” he playfully asked. “Here, I’ll show you,” I said. He was amazed, almost as amazed as I was the first time I set foot in there. “What a marvelous room,” he said, looking up at the tall, dusty shelves. “There better be some of mine buried up there,” he kidded, while nudging my arm. I had took he and Madam for being friends, but apparently it had become much more than that, because she broke her second vow to never wed again and married Zander. He had become quite weak by this time, so they had a justice of the peace marry them in the same garden that she married Alessandro in, and still went out every night to pick roses for the crypts.
Even though Zander was confined to a wheelchair by this time, and must have been in a great deal of pain, he never let it show, just as with everything else he did, he faced death with the same dignity as he did in life. After two horrible husbands, Madam had finally found herself a gentleman. I had to wonder why though, why with all the pain she went through with losing Richard and Alessandro, would she knowingly marry someone who would for certain bring her the same heartache all over again. But that’s the kind of person she was, if she loved you, the circumstances to your love did not matter. And she loved Zander, she loved him with all her heart. Even when he was at his sickest, you could hear so much laughter coming from her bedroom that it was almost impossible not to laugh right along with them. I grew to love Zander, almost like a father, almost as much as she did, I think. Once, I even worked up the courage to show him some of my writing, something I had never shared with anyone before. He told me that I was a wonderful writer, and that I should have never let my talent go unappreciated. He even offered to help me get published, if I ever changed my mind.
When Zander passed away, I lost one of the dearest friends I had ever known. I cried as much as Madam did, or even more perhaps. At his request, there were no services. And he was also entombed in the mausoleum, next to Richard Van Zant and Alessandro Giancomo. Now every night, she had three husbands to visit. We carried on with our routine, never missing a night, a red rose for Richard, two yellow for Alessandro, and one white for Zander. After Zander’s passing, she began spending more and more time inside the mausoleum, often times by herself, and I would have to go out in the pitch black of night, looking for her. Sometimes I could smell her perfume lingering through the cool air, and after I had made it through the maze, I would always find her on that same bench, with a bottle of wine and four glasses sitting next to her.
She had chosen the inscription for Zander’s crypt herself: “Each day to me seems a thousand years,” Petrarch. I would have been honored to choose one for him, but for some reason, she insisted. She vowed for a third time to never marry again. And she didn’t. “I have no reason to,” she would say, “I had three wonderful husbands in my lifetime, my collection is completed.” Five years had passed since Zander’s death. Madam’s existence had remained pretty much the same as it was before they met. She lived quietly, and still the only visitor that ever came to see her was Dr. Harrington. She didn’t seem comfortable with any of us as she once was anymore. It was like she was always looking over her shoulder to see if we were staring at her… or maybe, perhaps, she was just waiting for the next bad thing to happen. One day, her uncle came for his weekly visit. I prepared them brunch on the balcony, and afterwards they went out for a walk, just as they always did. Since there was nothing to do, I decided to go up to my library and have some afternoon reading and maybe a cigar.
As I walked up the red-carpeted stairs, I noticed the door to Madam’s bedroom wasn’t locked. For the first time in almost thirty years, it was not locked. Although it had been a strict rule since day one that none of us enter, temptation got the best of me. It’s human-male nat
ure… tell a boy not to look, and he’s going to do his damnedest to look. Catherine and Marta were downstairs in the laundry room, and Madam and her uncle were far into the vineyard by now. I’ll just take a quick peek, I thought to myself, that’s it. Just to see what was so special about her bedroom that she never wanted any of us to gaze upon. I felt a sense of confused, but naughty pleasure, much like the excitement I’d felt when I was twelve, and had my first peek of nude women in Playboy magazine.
I opened the door and it was completely dark inside. After much feeling along the wall, I found the light switch. It was beautiful, there actually was an enormous white canopy bed, and there was a painting of Alexander Cabanel’s Birth of Venus on the wall. There was also a marble fireplace and a large sparkling chandelier above the bed, just like the one downstairs. The room was colossal, and in one corner, way in the back of the room was a huge curtain-like swathe of shiny blue velvet. I peered behind me, just to be sure that I was still alone. I had left the door open a bit, so if anyone came
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