A Season in Purgatory

by Dominick Dunne

  “I don’t know that I really am.”

  “But you are. It is what you write about, Rupie says. And I know why secrets interest you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are carrying a secret yourself. Am I right? Do, please, be honest with me. Or there is no point in all this. Am I right? Are you?”

  Harrison stared at the woman. “Yes,” he answered finally.

  “There, you see? That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  “No.”

  “It was about my father’s death, was it not, that you wanted me to talk?” she asked.

  “Well, yes, but primarily the death of Dwane Lonergan,” said Harrison.

  “Oh, Dwane Lonergan,” she repeated, shuddering at the mention of his name. She crossed her arms in front of her, as if she were cold. “They are, how shall I put it, intertwined, in a way.”

  She rose from her seat and walked over to the window. Outside, it was snowing. She watched the snow for a while and then turned her chair toward the window and sat down again, this time with her back to Harrison. “Do you have your tape recorder on?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Good, I’m only going to say this once.”

  Slowly, she began to talk.

  “It is a terrible thing to see your father dead, especially if you loved him the way I loved my father. It is a worse thing to see your father dead, naked, with an open jar of Vaseline on the bedside table and broken amyl nitrite ampoules all over the bed. Do you know what amyl nitrite ampoules are?”

  “For the heart, I believe,” answered Harrison.

  “Yes, but for sexual pleasure, too, apparently,” she said. “They transport you to mindlessness, so that there are no limits to one’s, uh, activities, or so Mr. Dwane Lonergan informed me at a later time, shortly before I shot him, in fact.”

  She paused before she continued. “I didn’t know what to do. I dreaded the thought of scandal. So I called Rupert du Pithon. I couldn’t think of anyone else who might even begin to understand the sordid circumstance, and he had been a friend of my father’s, sort of. I asked him what to do. He said, ‘Wipe the Vaseline off his penis.’ I said, ‘I can’t do that.’ He said, ‘You must. It’s a giveaway. Someone at the funeral home is bound to notice, and those people report everything to the police or the papers. Just do it. Don’t look.’ It’s the sort of thing I never would have thought of on my own. I suppose Rupie, the old gossip, told you all this.”

  “He didn’t, no,” said Harrison.

  “Really? That speaks well for him, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is the most unpleasant task to have to wipe Vaseline off your father’s penis and out of your father’s rectum, so the doctor and the undertaker will not know that the distinguished Esmond Bland, who dined frequently at the White House, died in bed with a five-hundred-dollar male prostitute who robbed him in death of his cuff links, wallet, cash, credit cards, and Rolex watch before he disappeared into the night, leaving the corpse behind, unattended. Does that answer your question, Mr. Burns?”

  Harrison, stunned, nodded his head, and she, faced away from him, did not see his nod but continued, assuming his response.

  “In many ways my father’s death was a blessing. Not the manner of his death, but the act of dying. He was becoming indiscreet in his behavior. He dined in public with Dwane Lonergan, at places like Clarence’s, where he was bound to run into people he knew. My father was in his seventies. Mr. Lonergan was at most twenty-five or -six or -seven, with a ring in his ear and a ponytail, and wore leather jackets and T-shirts. There was no way he could be passed off for a grandson. It was apparent just looking at him what he was. Trash. Lil Altemus saw them together at Clarence’s. She said they arrived on Mr. Lonergan’s motorcycle and were wearing helmets. I didn’t know which way to look, I was so embarrassed when she told me. Forgive me for digressing.

  “I changed the stained sheets—they were disgusting—with his body still in the bed, because I could not move him. My father was a big man, six feet three, a hundred and eighty-six pounds, in peak physical condition for a man his age. I put pajamas on him. Did you ever try to dress a dead person, Mr. Burns? It is very difficult. Then I aired out the room. The combined scents of amyl nitrite and sperm are very telling and most unpleasant. Then I called Dr. Parker. Silas Parker. Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital. Dr. Parker has been our family doctor for years and years. I can only assume he knew the family secrets, but I did not ask him. He signed the death certificate. Heart attack, he said. And, of course, it was, in a way. Father was wonderfully insured, and I was the beneficiary, and the insurance company paid off immediately. But I am getting ahead of my story.

  “I have always been unstable, Mr. Burns. In and out of the Cranston Institute for years. Surely Rupie told you that? You don’t have to answer. Years ago, when I was very young, back in the fifties, I was madly in love with a young man on Long Island called Billy Grenville. He was four or five years older than I. I went to Green Vale with one of his sisters, Felicity. Oh, how I loved him. I literally ached with love. I always thought we would marry. His sisters thought so. His mother, Alice Grenville, thought so. Even Billy thought so. But he met a chorus girl and married her instead. She was pretty, common, of course, frightfully common, but pretty. Billy’s sisters hated her. Wrong side of the tracks, they all said. Married him for his money, they all said. I was devastated, completely devastated. I don’t think anything ever hurt me so much, but I hid my hurt, of course. After all, it was a small community there on Long Island in those days. We all knew each other. We all saw each other. We all played tennis together. We all played golf together. We all belonged to Piping Rock. I even pretended to like Ann. That was her name. Several years into the marriage, it started going bad. She was no good, a tramp, really. She began sleeping around. Secretly, Billy started seeing me again. I was ecstatic. He said he wanted to divorce her. He asked me to marry him after the divorce. Then his wife shot and killed him. She pretended she thought Billy was a prowler, but she knew what she was doing. Prowlers aren’t nude. Billy was. You must have read about that. They’ve written a book about it. They even made a miniseries about it. The thing is, they cut me out. They didn’t use my character. That in a nutshell is the story of my life. Being cut out. It is why, at the age of sixty-six, I remain a maiden lady who has had a lifelong fixation on her father. After Billy’s death, I had my first major breakdown. There had been a few little ones before. That’s when I came here to the Cranston Institute the first time. But back to my father. Back to Dwane Lonergan. That is what interests you, I know.

  “My father had quite an extraordinary funeral, almost royal in the trappings, French horns playing, that sort of thing. Glorious music. A chorus of fifty choirboys in red cassocks and starched white surplices. Oh, how marvelous they looked. So young. So scrubbed. I’m sure you read about it. Perhaps you were even there. Everyone else was. The world came. There weren’t enough seats at St. Thomas’s on Fifth Avenue for all the people, and that’s a very large church. They had to pipe the eulogies to the crowds outside. The vice president was there in the front pew, across the aisle from me, representing President and Mrs. Reagan, and all sorts of dignitaries—the governor, the mayor, et cetera, et cetera, plus friends from everywhere and, of course, the curious, who came to look at the famous. We needed a person of noble stature to speak, and Dr. Kissinger agreed. His eulogy was magnificent. My father was on the board of the Met, so Jessye Norman sang. She was too glorious for words. Such a voice. The Episcopal bishop officiated. For a half hour, even I, who knew everything, who knew how false it all was, who knew the casket was empty, was caught up in the pageantry.

  “Then the most extraordinary thing happened. Jessye Norman was singing Gounod’s ‘Ave Maria,’ and the five-hundred-dollar male prostitute entered my pew and sat beside me. I can’t think how he got past the ushers, most of whom I knew. He had a little ring in his ear. I hate that look, don’t you? And a little ponytail. I hate
that look, too. He began talking to me. He was extremely angry. He had been through my father’s wallet, the wallet he stole, and discovered among his papers that my father was HIV positive. You do know what that means, don’t you? He said that my father had not told him he was HIV positive and that his life was at risk. He said he would walk up on the altar and announce it from the pulpit if I did not agree then and there to pay him ten million dollars. He was talking loudly enough so the pallbearers and the people in the pews behind were staring. If you could have seen the look on his face. He was excited by the prospect of stepping up on that beautiful altar, amidst all those beautiful lilies so skillfully arranged by Robert Isabell, to address all those famous people. My heart almost stopped. I looked at him, aghast. He was breathing heavily. His looks were, curiously, sexual. I must confess to you, in an aside, that he was beautiful at that moment, simply beautiful, in a cheap way, of course. He began to rise, and I grabbed his hand and pulled him down. Of course, I agreed to pay him what he asked. The service went on. He did not move from my pew. I was his hostage.

  “There was no burial. You see, knowing what I knew, I had had my father cremated immediately after his death, three days before his funeral, so there could be no autopsy. You see, I knew that he was HIV positive, and I didn’t want there to be any problem about the insurance. After the funeral, there was a reception at the Butterfield Club, twelve blocks up Fifth Avenue. I stood at the top of those beautiful stairs and shook hands with hundreds and hundreds of people, who told me over and over and over again what a wonderful man my father was. Then I was driven back to Long Island. I gave the butler and the cook and the chauffeur the night off. They said, all of them, ‘Oh, no, Miss Esme, we’ll stay with you tonight,’ and I said, ‘No, no, I’m fine. Really I am.’ Later, after dark, as arranged in the front pew during Jessye Norman’s ‘Ave Maria,’ I met Mr. Lonergan. He came to my house. I didn’t have ten million dollars to pay him, then or ever. Even if I had, I wouldn’t have paid him. You can’t pay those people. It never ends. He said to me, ‘I’ve been fucking your father since I was seventeen.’ Imagine saying such a thing to me. He said to me, and I quote, exactly, as I have never forgotten the look on his face or the tone of his voice, ‘I have yet to meet the person, male or female, I couldn’t get it up for if the price was right.’ I have never been one to engage in cheap talk, but I think he was trying to come on to me, to continue his role of sexual service in the family. You know the rest of the story. Everyone does. I shot him dead.”

  “Right between the eyes, I heard,” said Harrison.

  “Well, actually, I’ve always been a good shot. I was skeet-shooting champion at Piping Rock for six years,” she said. “I had no fear about what would happen to me. I knew what they would say. ‘She’s been in and out of institutions all her life. She’s mad as a hatter.’ And they did. That’s exactly what they said. And here I am, back in the institution. For life. But, of course, that is one of the many advantages of money. I feel lucky to be here and not in that ghastly place in Bedford Hills with poor Mrs. Harris. I went to Madeira, but years before Mrs. Harris became headmistress. Well, now I’ve told you the secret I was carrying with me to the grave. Do you have any questions?”

  “I am stunned,” said Harrison. “Why have you told me all this?”

  “Why not? What difference does it make now?”

  “What can I do for you in return?”

  “There’s a mother in Arizona. Perhaps with your sleuthing abilities, you could track her down.”

  “Whose mother?”

  “Dwane Lonergan’s. She claimed his body and took it back.”

  “What would you do if I did locate her?”

  “Leave her some money, I suppose. You see, I have cancer. I’ve lost both breasts. It’s metastasized. That means spread all through me. As one of the doctors said about me during the last operation, from behind his blue mask, thinking I was out, which I wasn’t, ‘She’s riddled.’ Yes, I am. I’m riddled. This is a wig I’m wearing. I bet you didn’t know it, did you? Kenneth cut it for me, shaped it for me. Didn’t he do a marvelous job? No one can tell. I have three of them. What I’m trying to tell you is, I haven’t long to live. It will be a nice ending to your story, won’t it? I suppose my father’s the villain of the piece, isn’t he? Poor Daddy. And now, if you’ve finished with me, Mr. Burns, I think I’d better go and rest. I really feel quite exhausted. All these revelations tire one. What is it about you that makes people talk? You don’t say much. You didn’t ask me many questions. Perhaps it’s because you look a bit like a defrocked priest. Good-bye, Mr. Burns.”

  “Good-bye, Miss Bland.”

  At the door, she stopped and turned back to him. “About your secret. Tell it, whatever it is. Don’t keep it inside. It eats away at you in there, just as if it were cancer. You have no idea how lighthearted I feel all of a sudden. Merry Christmas, Mr. Burns.”

  That evening Harrison sat in the crowded bar of the Bee and Thistle Inn, reading over notes he had made from his afternoon with Esme Bland. Christmas lights lent a festive atmosphere to the room. From the next table, he heard a conversation between a man and woman.

  “Look out the window. It’s turned into a blizzard,” said the woman.

  “I’ve been watching,” said the man.

  “Pretty girl, there.”

  “Which one?”

  “In the black Chanel suit.”

  “Who is she?”

  “That’s Gerald Bradley’s youngest daughter.”

  “How do you know that’s who it is?”

  “I’ve seen her picture in the papers.”

  Harrison turned and looked. Had it not been for his neighbors at the next table, he might have walked past her, but it was Kitt, unmistakably Kitt, grown up, adult, elegantly dressed, and alone. He did not leap from his seat and rush over to her. Instead, he sat in his place and watched her for several minutes, adjusting his memory of the lively teenage girl he had last seen on the day he graduated from Milford with this fashionable woman so deep in some private reverie. In the intervening years, he had thought of her often, always with affection, and even wondered how she would turn out. It struck him that she had grown to look more like Constant.

  She stared out the window at the snow piling up against the windowpane, unaware that she was being talked about at one table and stared at from another. Her foot, shod in a slingback shoe, tapped time to the beat of music coming from a trio playing in the lobby. On the table in front of her were a glass of wine, a pile of society and fashion magazines, and a quilted black bag with a gold chain. She was waiting for no one.

  He rose and walked to her table. Standing behind her, he said, “It was at the Milford graduation in 1973, and you yelled out, ‘Yay, Harrison,’ and everyone laughed, and I got a much bigger round of applause than I ever would have gotten if you hadn’t done that.”

  She turned. A look of total surprise lit up her face. “I don’t believe this,” she said.

  “Hello, Kitt.”

  “Hello, Harrison.” She emitted a little shriek of pleasure.

  “I’m not sure I would have recognized you.”

  “I would have recognized you,” she said. “Am I glad to see you after all these years! I was just experiencing such a melancholy feeling, watching the snowstorm all alone. Kisses on both cheeks are in order. And a hug. Sit down. Sit down. I want to know everything. I guess everyone calls you Harrison now, not Harry, isn’t that right? I read that somewhere about you.”

  “I answer to both. I must say, Kitt, you’re looking very smart. There were no indications in your braces-on-the-teeth youth that you were going to turn out so well,” said Harrison.

  “We’ve followed in Ma’s footsteps, if you can believe it, after teasing her about her clothes all those years. We’re dressed by the couture, Maureen and Mary Pat and me. Of course, we did all live in Paris for three years when Pa was the ambassador, and Mary Pat lives there now since she married Philippe.”

  “An
d you live where?” asked Harrison.

  “About,” she replied. “Here, there.”

  “What happened to the house in Scarborough Hill?”

  “Still there. Sis Malloy lives there. She’s the keeper of the Bradley flame, a sort of spinster Mrs. Danvers, keeping everything up until the family returns, which they never will.”

  “How is Sis Malloy?”

  “Same as ever. On the day of Mary Pat’s wedding to the count, when she was all done up in her white satin and rose-point lace, looking too divine for words, Sis said, ‘Don’t ever forget your grandfather was a butcher.’ ”

  Harrison laughed. “That’s Sis, all right.”

  “The thing is, about Sis, she’s right. We have all forgotten, and we shouldn’t.”

  A woman approached their table. “Excuse me,” she said. Harrison and Kitt turned to look at her.

  “Is it you? Is it really you, Mr. Burns? I thought it was you. Look what I’m reading. One of your books. It’s only the paperback, I’m afraid, not the hardback, but I’d be so appreciative if you’d sign it,” said the woman. She looked at Kitt. “Please forgive me for interrupting, but it just seemed too strange. Maine, the snow, the inn, the book, and there he is.”

  “Yes, of course, I’d be delighted to sign,” said Harrison.

  “I know I’m being a nuisance.”

  “Not at all. Tell me your name.” All the time he was thinking that he wanted to get back to his conversation with Kitt.

  “Liza Lake.”

  “Is that L-I-Z-A or L-I-S-A?”

  “Actually, it’s L-E-E-Z-A.”

  “I’m glad I asked. I wouldn’t have arrived at that. There you are.” He handed her back her book.

  “Thank you. I’m so glad Max Goesler is behind bars,” she said, in parting. “It’s where he belongs.”

  “You were charm itself,” said Kitt, when she was gone. “Does that happen to you often?”

  “No.”

  “It must make you feel good, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.”