A Season in Purgatory

by Dominick Dunne

  “You could try to show a little enthusiasm, Harrison. A lot of people would die happy to get there.”

  “What’s your life like out there?” asked Harrison.

  “We’re popular with movie stars, and politicians, and English lords and ladies when they want a free place to stay during their American visit, but the nice people never seem to like us wherever we move, no matter how big our houses are or how available we make our tennis courts to them,” said Kitt.

  “I would have thought that would have passed by now,” said Harrison.

  “Oh, no,” replied Kitt. “I don’t know why, but we’ve never really been accepted anywhere. It upsets Ma, you know. She’d love to be on all those committees and boards, not just the Catholic ones. Pa always says we’re enough unto ourselves, the family, but that’s only a front. They mind. They really do. But they’d never say it. You will go, Harrison? Please?”

  “Will you be in the helicopter with me?”

  “No. I don’t want Ma to suspect anything. I’ll drive out with her and some of Maureen’s kids. There’s something else, Harrison.”

  “And that is?”

  “There must be no you-know-what under Ma’s roof. Not even looks across the room.”

  “I wasn’t planning on exposing myself,” he said.

  She laughed. “You can expose yourself now, if you want. I’ll even help with the zipper.”

  “A call came in while I was here waiting for you,” said Kitt.

  “Did you answer it?” asked Harrison.

  “Of course not. But I listened to the machine. Someone called Eloise Brazen. She called to tell you that Rupert du Pithon died this morning. She went in to show the apartment to a rock and roll man from Hollywood, and Rupert was dead in bed.”

  “Ah, poor Rupert,” said Harrison.

  “I met Rupie a few times. In Southampton. In Beverly Hills. Wherever there was a party, there he was, talking about placement. Silly man.”

  “Perhaps. I liked him. I wrote his obituary for him. He’s the guy who got me in to see Esme Bland.”

  “I ran into a relation of yours last week,” said Harrison.

  “Let me guess. Fatty Malloy.”

  “No.”

  “Then it must have been Sis Malloy.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t think we have any other relatives. It must have been an impostor. Who?”

  “Rosleen Bradley.”

  “Rosleen Bradley? I don’t know a Rosleen Bradley.”

  “Yes, you do. She was a maid in your mother’s house in Scarborough Hill.”

  “Oh, Rosleen. Who opened the doors, who passed the peas, as Mother used to say. Oh, yes, who married Desmond for ten minutes, didn’t she? I’d almost forgotten about Rosleen. She wasn’t with us long, you know. Don’t tell me she calls herself Bradley, for God’s sake? The nerve! Miss Whatever-her-name-is, Ma always called her. Even Bridey thought she was impertinent, and Bridey was related to her. Cardinal had the marriage annulled immediately.”

  “She lives in Arizona.”

  “That doesn’t make her a relation, Harrison. I just said the marriage was annulled. She’s nothing to us.”

  “She has a son by Desmond. That makes him your nephew.”

  “You can’t be serious!”

  “He’s twenty. Rosleen calls him Desi.”

  “Desi? You mean, like Desi Arnaz?” she asked.

  “He was the valedictorian of his class in the local high school. He’s a freshman at Arizona State. He’s going to be a journalist.”

  “I don’t believe it. Probably a trick to get money. People know who we are. They know there is money. They think of our money as a bottomless pit,” said Kitt. “All these people living off the fat of the land on our money.”

  “I would hardly call it the fat of the land,” said Harrison. “Rosleen is a dental technician. She gets a couple of thousand a month from Sims Lord. That’s all. She got the job to support the boy.”

  “I don’t believe it,” she said again.

  “I saw him. He’s Des’s kid, all right. Same dimpled chin. All those big white Bradley teeth. A head that will never go bald. Believe me, this is a Bradley.”

  “I don’t think it would be a good idea to bring that up this weekend,” said Kitt.

  “I hadn’t planned to.”

  11

  The Bradley house in Southampton, palatial and Florentine in design, had been built in the 1920s by a railroad baron whose wastrel and impoverished descendants were forced to sell it for a pittance in the 1950s to a girls’ school that subsequently went out of business in the 1980s. There had been talk of pulling it down. It was not a practical house by the standards of the day. The halls were as large as rooms and the corridors as wide as galleries. There were fourteen bedrooms, a ballroom, a garage for twelve cars, a guesthouse, a gardener’s cottage, and three small houses on the property. The tall windows on the first floor looked out on a formal garden of clipped boxwood hedges, all-white flowers, and weather-beaten statues of the baroque period.

  It was here that Gerald Bradley moved his family each year from spring through fall. Sally Steers, who took over as president of Cora Mandell’s decorating firm after Cora’s death, had been called in to put the Bradley house in order. Peach and green were the colors decided upon for the downstairs reception rooms. “Not green green, more celadon green. Keep it bright. Keep it airy,” dictated Sally, as she marched through the house, notepad and gold pencil in hand, talking very fast. “There’s plenty of room for dancing in the front hall, if it’s dancing you want. Turn the ballroom into a projection room. You can run pictures and everyone will want to come. I’ll have some marvelous sofas made up, ten feet long, rows of them, covered in, oh, I’ll find you something wonderful, maybe in coral. And sisal on the floor. Divine, don’t you think? Now here, on the loggia, do all your entertaining. It will be marvelous for lunches, marvelous for dinners. Six, twelve, or thirty-six, it won’t matter. There’s a bamboo auction coming up at Christie’s. I’ve seen the catalog. Heavenly. I’ll find you some wonderful things there. And lots and lots of wicker, and some wonderful wrought-iron tables on all the terraces. Billowy curtains, very sheer, on all the windows, will blow in the breeze when the French doors are open. It’ll be divine, formal but very informal, if you know what I mean. Perfect for summer.” Grace agreed to everything. Sally Steers, at almost sixty, had become formidable, taking on all the mannerisms of the late great Cora.

  The single greatest decorating problem for Sally Steers was to find a location for the large color photograph of His Holiness the Pope that used to hang over the fireplace in the library of the house in Scarborough Hill. Grace insisted on a prominent place. “He came to tea with us, you know,” said Grace. She never tired of repeating the story. “He held Kitt on his lap.” But Sally didn’t want to hear the story again. “You can’t, can’t, can’t hang it in the loggia. Please, Grace. Not the drawing room, either,” moaned Sally. But Grace was adamant. Finally, reluctantly, the front hall was decided upon by Sally. It was hung over a console table that held a large platter of dark glasses.

  As always with the Bradleys, there were difficulties with the clubs. As always, Gerald’s business dealings were badly looked upon by certain members of the old guard. The one club he could get in, the new one, he didn’t want to be in, not wanting to be grouped together in people’s minds with the sort of members they took. Rather than risk the embarrassment and gossip of being blackballed, Gerald was advised by his lawyer, Sims Lord, who belonged to all the clubs, except the new one, to withdraw his application.

  “No, no, it has nothing to do with your Catholicism,” said Sims, patiently. “You’re acting as if the world of ethnic limits in which you grew up is still in place, Gerald. It isn’t. Oh, I don’t mean it doesn’t exist. I mean it’s moved on to other persuasions than yours that are now scratching at the doors. Where you went wrong is that you’ve apparently had some bad business dealings with Webster Pryde, and Webster is ve
hement in his dislike of you, and Webster’s father and grandfather, all Prydes, were members of the club before Webster, so whatever Webster doesn’t want, the club doesn’t want either.”

  Gerald knew when not to press. “What about golf then?” he asked.

  “Guest arrangements can be made. I’ll take care of that,” said Sims.

  “It’s important that the boys play golf. And Kitt and Maureen, too,” said Gerald.

  “It will take a certain amount of planning each weekend, Gerald, but it can be worked out. You’ll be guests of this member one week and guests of that member another, and so on and so on. You’ll have to leave that up to me to handle in my own way. Here are the names of a few people you should start asking to your movie screenings. They all hate to wait in line outside the theater in the village.

  The helicopter landed at the East Hampton airport. Harrison carried his canvas tote and hanger bag into the terminal and looked about. Constant was not there to meet him. Nor was Charlie, the Bradleys’ chauffeur. Then a man approached him.

  “Harrison, is that you? The old man sent me to meet you. I don’t know if you’ll remember me or not. I’m Johnny Fuselli.”

  “Oh, hello, yes, I remember. Where’s Charlie? Kitt said Charlie would pick me up,” said Harrison.

  “Charlie’s getting old. The old man gives him two days a week off now. If you want to know the truth, he gets nervous with Charlie driving in this Friday-afternoon traffic. The old man says all the wrong sort of people are coming out to the Hamptons these days, and the roads are blocked solid from Friday to Sunday nights. Day-trippers, he calls them. And then there’s these condo people. You got bags?”

  “Just these. I’ll carry them. I always thought rich people’s helicopters landed on the lawns of their estates,” said Harrison.

  “Neighbors complained. The Prydes. They kept calling the police. Grace complained, too. She said it ruined her hydrangeas. Pulled ’em right up by the roots. Old Gerald didn’t give a shit about the neighbors, but he stopped doing it for Grace’s sake. They’ve been married almost fifty years now, Gerald and Grace.”

  “Yes, they’re an example,” said Harrison.

  “They’re all getting old in that house. Bridey’s pushing seventy and still cooking three big ones a day. Now she’s got all these grandkids to feed, too. And she always remembers how every single one of them likes their eggs. And Maureen’s got some real brats, let me tell you. I probably shouldn’t have said that.”

  “I’m not a talker,” said Harrison. They got into a Mercedes station wagon. “Nice car.”

  “Charlie keeps the cars great. He polishes, he tunes up, he gasses, he checks the air in the tires,” said Johnny. “It’s about a half hour’s drive to Southampton. Depending on the traffic.”

  Harrison nodded. “Are you still such a swimmer?”

  Fuselli grinned and turned to Harrison. “Hey, how’d you remember that?”

  “I used to watch you through the field glasses that summer in Watch Hill. It seemed like you were swimming forever.”

  “I can’t get over that, that you remember, famous guy like you.”

  “I like to swim,” said Harrison.

  “Yeah? I hear you write books now.”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you write about?”

  “Criminals. Criminals who get away with things, mostly.”

  Johnny looked at Harrison. They drove on in silence for a mile.

  “Yeah, I still swim,” he said, finally. “Good for the gut. Chicks like a flat stomach. Have you noticed that?”

  “Such a fact has recently been pointed out to me. By a woman in Arizona called Maxine Lonergan.”

  “Maxine Lonergan! Now, there’s a name from the past,” said Johnny. On his face appeared a benign smile, the sort of smile that materializes on a man’s face when he hears the name of a woman with whom he once engaged in a pleasurable dalliance and from whom he has long parted, without rancor. “Where the hell did you meet Maxine Lonergan?”

  “She lives on a ranch outside Nogales. A couple of thousand acres. Raises Santa Gertrudis cattle. She’s done all right for herself,” said Harrison.

  “My God. Maxine Lonergan.” Johnny nodded his head at the memory. “I wonder whose balls she’s licking these days. Let me tell you something, Harry. Maxine Lonergan was one of the all-time-great cocksuckers. On a scale of one to ten, she was about a thirty-six.”

  “I think she would be touched that you remember her so fondly,” said Harrison.

  “Maxine Lonergan, my God,” he said. “Just between us, strictly off the record, as you guys say, I fixed up Gerald with Maxine one time in Atlantic City. Old Gerald likes his nooky, you know, and he had a taste for fellatio. You know what that means, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Oh, of course you do, you being a writer and all. You’d be surprised how many guys don’t know.”

  “Really.”

  “Well, Gerald thought he died and went to heaven after an hour with Maxine. He sent her a mink coat from some French place in New York City, I forget the name. He used to say to me, ‘Hey, Johnny, get me that Maxine girl,’ but by then she was with the big man, and if you knew what was good for you, you didn’t fuck around with Sal Cabrini’s girl. Right?”

  “Apparently.”

  “If memory serves, the son was a fagola,” said Johnny. “Right?”

  “Memory serves.”

  “I never once took a leak at Maxine’s house that the kid didn’t follow me into the john, stand at the next urinal, and sneak a peek at my equipment.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “AIDS?”

  “No, a gunshot between the eyes.”

  “No shit!”

  “I’m waiting for you to say he died like a man,” said Harrison.

  “Right. That’s right. You know, Harry, it’s nice having a real conversation with you like this. I’ve been with this family for, lemme see, almost twenty years now, and Grace has never spoken to me, not once. You’re not like what I thought you’d be. I remember you when you and Constant were in that fancy boarding school, and then you turn out to be this big success. You never can tell, can you?”

  “That’s right, Johnny. You never can tell.”

  If Constant Bradley and Harrison Burns no longer saw each other, they continued over the years to remain aware of each other. Constant missed his friend. In his own way, he grieved for him; there had been no contact between the two for sixteen years. In the intervening time, Constant had become the focus of much attention. Except for a minor incident or two, his years at Yale had been everything and more than his father could ever have hoped. He was one of those undergraduates whom people talked about. His nickname on campus was Magnifico. When girls came to New Haven for football weekends, they always said to their dates, “Point out Constant Bradley to me.” On weekends he spent less and less time in Scarborough Hill, preferring to visit friends in New York and Long Island. “All doors are open to him,” Gerald bragged proudly. His name and photograph appeared frequently in newspapers. During summers, he spent part of each vacation working in Washington in the office of his brother Sandro, who had gone from the House of Representatives to become a senator. Constant loved the Hill, as he called it. After his six-week stint with Sandro, he took off for a trip to Europe each year, a combination of playtime on the Riviera, where he mingled in the set that surrounded the princesses of Monaco, and more serious weeks studying the coming collapse of the communist regimes in the Balkans, as arranged for him by representatives of his father’s various business activities. After graduation, he received a great deal of notoriety as a polo player, a pastime he abandoned, on the advice of his family, when, at the age of twenty-six, he ran for and won a seat in the House of Representatives. His marriage to Charlotte Stafford, from an old Baltimore family, was held at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Baltimore with a reception following at the Stafford farm in Glyndon, Maryland. Class. That’s what everyone said abo
ut Charlotte Stafford. She had class.

  Through a peculiar twist of fate, Constant’s wedding to Charlotte and Harrison’s wedding to Claire Rafferty took place on the same day, although in different states, a fact noticed by no one at the time except Harrison. The society wedding of Constant and Charlotte received a papal blessing and a great deal of publicity, while the Philadelphia wedding of Harrison and Claire was a small and private affair, unreported in the press.

  All was not always well in the Constant Bradley marriage. There were breakups from time to time, and expensive reconciliations. Gerald, who saw in Charlotte the perfect qualities for a political wife for his favorite son, came to the rescue over and over.

  “What happened? What’s gone off?” he would ask Constant.

  “We’ve just gotten sick of each other, I suppose,” Constant would say.

  “That’s not a good enough reason.”

  “When you can’t get it up anymore, it’s time to move on, Pa.”

  “Grow up, kid. Grow up. You need Charlotte. And don’t you ever forget it.”

  When Harrison entered the marble-floored hallway of the Bradley house in Southampton, he expected to be greeted by Constant, but it was a young Irish maid in a pink afternoon uniform and white apron who opened the door and took his bag. He looked around at the elegance of the hall and of the rooms opening off it. Only the large color photograph of the Pope looked familiar to him.

  “The family’s all out playin’ golf,” she said. She spoke with a lilt in her voice. “They’ll be back sometime after four. Bridey particularly wanted to say hello to you. Do you want to go into the kitchen before I take you up to your room?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Harrison. “Which way?”

  “There, through the dinin’ room. It’s her rest time between lunch and dinner, but she’s waitin’ there for you.”

  “Bridey,” said Harrison, when he entered the kitchen. She was sitting on a comfortable chair in a small alcove off the kitchen, reading. “No, no, don’t stand up. I’ll come over there. You look wonderful, Bridey.”