I’ll never forget that first meeting with Charlotte. It was an interview, really, with me bringing my portfolio with me. I’d been in Swann’s before—their flagship store in Manhattan might not be as iconic as Macy’s on Thirty-Fourth Street, but it was pretty famous. I loved shopping there. When I was young, I’d dreamed of leaving the Midwest for New York as a career woman, and shopping at Swann’s, like the heroine of countless movies from the fifties.
There was just something about getting off the subway that day and walking the couple of blocks into Swann’s that made me feel—and I knew how silly this seemed—like an adult. Riding the elevator up past the shopping floors to the executive suites, in my black pantsuit, my portfolio under my arm, imagining I was Doris Day in Pillow Talk on my way to meet a prospective client—now it seemed silly and immature. Waiting in the outer office while Charlotte’s secretary pounded away at her keyboard and answered the phones while I waited, looking around at the heavy dark wooden paneling, the worn carpet, the heavy oil paintings of former Swanns who’d run the company, I felt my nerves starting to jangle and butterflies fluttering in my stomach. This was a big job, and it was a big deal that Hollis was letting me handle it. If I landed this job, I might even wind up with my own private office instead of a cubicle in the big workroom.
The big wooden door opened behind the secretary’s desk and out came Charlotte Swann. I’d done my research on her, of course—anyone doing a pitch without doing research didn’t have a chance of getting the job. Charlotte Swann was already legendary in the business world. Her parents had died when she was young, and the company had been run for the family until she graduated from Penn with an MBA from Wharton School of Business. She’d then spent a year studying the business, learning how the company was run, traveling the world and visiting every store in the chain, sizing them up for herself, and getting to know the team. Then she took over as CEO of Swann’s, and under her direction, Swann’s not only never had a downturn no matter what happened with the economy and survived the onslaught of online shopping and other changes in the market, but grew. Anytime she was forced to close a store, she took care of the employees or found them other jobs within the company—Swann’s employees were made to feel by management like they mattered and were important, and thus were incredibly loyal to the company. She got rid of lines that weren’t selling and brought in brands that would sell. She took Swann’s public—at least partly public—in order to get some capital to launch some new initiatives as well as to make the company more sound financially. I’d researched the big house out on Long Island the Swanns called home, looked up pictures of the house’s interior, looked at the stores themselves.
I’d seen pictures of Charlotte, usually with other people at business gatherings or charity events, but she was much more attractive in person. Photographs couldn’t capture her vitality and so never did her justice. She’d never been linked romantically to anyone in the press—I’d found out about Lindsay later—and she was in her midthirties, so she was either a lesbian or really good at keeping her private life private.
She led me into her office after a handshake and a friendly greeting. “Thank you for coming to meet with me,” she said after I declined her offer of something to drink. “As you can see, the office hasn’t been redecorated since the Coolidge administration.” Her office was very masculine in style, with dark heavy furniture, an enormous desk, and heavy brocade curtains. “You can still smell the cigarette smoke, can’t you?” She sat down behind her desk. “I’ve wanted to have all the offices redecorated since I took over the company, but this is the first chance I’ve had. What do you have for me?”
I spread out my portfolio on her desk, which was pristine. “Are you looking for something more modern?” I asked.
I was only supposed to be there for half an hour, but I wound up talking to Charlotte and brainstorming ideas with her for a good two hours. I couldn’t believe so much time had passed when her secretary buzzed her to let her know her four o’clock appointment was there.
It goes without saying that I got the job.
It was one of the easiest jobs I’ve ever had. Charlotte was the best client—she asked the right questions, didn’t get in the way, and unlike so many other clients, she didn’t want anything cheap or any corners cut. Sometimes when I was there, working, I’d catch her watching me, and other times I would catch myself stealing glances at her. I’d never met another woman like her, and I was attracted to her, much as I hated to admit it. One of Hollis’s strictest rules was no fraternization with clients, and much as I liked Charlotte Swann, much as I was attracted to her, much as I dreamed about her when I was at home at night in my bed unable to sleep, I would never cross that line with a client, no matter how badly I wanted to.
“So, that’s everything,” I said on the last day. The paint was dry, the wallpaper up, the new carpet laid. I’d already taken hundreds of photographs of the job—it was definitely going into my portfolio. Everything gleamed, the mix of modern with the classic old styles merging synchronously to create a whole new look for the offices. I put the final tabulation of the outstanding bill down on her desk and slid it across to her.
She pursed her lips, slid her glasses on, and went over every line of the bill. Finally, she set it down and whistled. “You did an excellent job, Ariel. You did exactly what I wanted, what I was looking for. Are you a mind reader?”
I’d smiled back at her. “No, but anticipating a client’s needs and wants is something every good designer should be able to do.”
She pulled an enormous checkbook out of one of her desk drawers and wrote out a check for the full amount, made a notation on the stub, and tore it out, pushing it across the desk to me. “And so this concludes our business?”
I put the check into my purse and smiled back at her. “Yes, it does.”
“So in that case Hollis wouldn’t be offended if you were to join me for dinner this evening.”
“Hollis,” I replied with a big smile, “has no say in this whatsoever.”
And here we were, almost three years later, sitting around the kitchen table at Sea Oats drinking white wine and dancing around the elephant in the room.
“Hollis should just go ahead and make you a full partner right now,” Charlotte was saying as she refilled her glass. She was going to have a really thick head in the morning.
“Should you be having so much wine on a work night?” I teased. “As for full partner, I agree with you, but Hollis does things her own way. And I’m fine with it. I’m making good money, and as you noted, my reputation is growing.”
“She’ll need to make you a partner to keep you from going out on your own.” She hesitated. “Do you think if you’d not given up your career, things might have worked out differently between us?”
I blinked a few times. She’d said it so casually. Her face was always unreadable, but I wished I could have gotten some sense of where she was going with this before I answered. “Maybe,” I replied slowly. “Who’s to say? Maybe things would have been different if we’d gotten married a week later, or a day sooner, or…that’s just how things go.” I felt myself getting emotional, and I was damned if that was going to happen in front of her. I finished my glass and got up. “I think it’s past time for me to go to bed.”
“I’m sorry,” she said softly when I reached the door to the back stairs.
“Don’t be,” I said, not turning around.
“Can we talk more tomorrow, before you leave?” She was behind me, her hands on my shoulders. “I’ve been so tied up, worried about the company—I always put the company first, I’m sorry, but we just need to sit down together and talk. I’m not going into the city tomorrow, so maybe…maybe we could take a walk along the beach the way we used to, before you go?”
I nodded, and pushed through the door and headed up the stairs, blinking back tears. Every Saturday morning when I’d lived here we’d gone for a long walk along the beach after breakfast. Even when I felt like we�
��d grown so far apart nothing could bring us back together, those walks had been so wonderful, meant so much to me, always gave me the hope we’d be able to work anything, everything, out.
Don’t get your hopes up, don’t get your hopes up, I repeated to myself as I tried to hold the tears back as I climbed the stairs. It’s over, you knew that before you came back here, of course she still has feelings for you…but she doesn’t love you anymore.
Despite my best efforts I was crying by the time I got back to my room, making sure to lock the door behind me. I stared at the mirror and let myself go, giving in to the tears I’d never allowed myself to cry before about the failure of my marriage, about the death of our love for each other. I don’t know how long I was in the bathroom, but finally I was cried out, drained and exhausted and ready for bed. I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and changed into my jersey. I slipped under the covers, staring at the ceiling as the wind whipped around the house.
It wasn’t a surprise that I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned, tried keeping my eyes closed, wondering if I was in fact asleep and just dreaming I was awake, opening my eyes to check—and of course, finding out that I was wide awake. The luminous digital numbers on the alarm clock on the nightstand changed slowly from 12:30 to 12:37 to 12:42.
But my mind couldn’t stop remembering better times with Charlotte. Like the night she proposed, how she’d held me that first time I came here, and how thrilled she was that there were swans on the pond, excitedly telling me what a good omen that was, that it showed that we were meant to be.
So much for that sign, right? Just went to show how you couldn’t put stock in things like that.
It was kind of inevitable that I would be bombarded with memories while I lay there trying to sleep. I figured it was kind of like how they say your life flashes before your eyes just before you die, only it was my marriage flashing before my eyes before it died. The honeymoon in Italy, the gondola ride in Venice, the trip through the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Coliseum in Rome. I’d always dreamed of going to Italy, and this had been the perfect trip—
I heard a noise out in the hallway.
I sat up in the bed, immediately aware, reaching for something I could use as a weapon if needed. I strained to hear, but there was nothing else.
I had just about decided it had been just my imagination when I heard the noise again.
I picked up my phone. I didn’t turn on my nightstand light—if someone was actually out there I didn’t want them to know I knew they were there. I crept over to my door. I unlocked it and eased it open as slowly as I could, hoping that the hinges didn’t squeak or give me away. The hallway lights were still on, and I heard it again, only this time it was coming from around the corner of the hallway, close to where Dustin’s room was.
Maybe it was just the guard Char had said would be patrolling the house.
My heart was pounding.
I took a deep breath and crept down the hallway, my bare feet making no noise on the carpet. When I reached the corner, I peeked around it.
The door to the staircase to the attic was open, and the light was on.
Obviously, I should have gone and gotten someone, like maybe the guard, but it didn’t occur to me at the time. All I thought was, Why is that door open, nobody should be up in the attic at this hour, and like an idiot, I walked over and looked up the staircase. The lights were on, and I heard another noise up there where no one should be.
Like the stupid heroine in every horror movie ever, I started climbing the stairs slowly. “Hello?” I called out. “Who’s up there? The guard’s on his way.”
I added that last bit so I wouldn’t feel quite as stupid.
There was no answer, but I kept going.
All I was missing were the damned high heels.
I was about halfway up the stairs when a blast of wind came tearing down the stairs and the door at the bottom blew shut.
I knew what that meant.
Someone had gone out onto the roof.
“Go get help,” I muttered to myself but oh, no, like an idiot I kept going up the stairs. When I reached the top, the attic lights were also on. The wind felt damp, like it was going to rain again, but that door—I had to see who’d gone out onto the roof. “Hello?” I called again as I walked across the attic.
I paused at the door to the widow’s walk. It was dark out there, and I’d never been a fan of heights. I’d only been up to the roof once. The widow’s walk was flat and had a wrought-iron railing, about three feet high. The rest of the roof was slanted and it was a long way to the ground.
Charlotte had brought me up here once, to show me what a great view of the grounds and the sea there was from the widow’s walk. The view had indeed been terrific, but I hadn’t been comfortable out there.
“Hello?” I called again, stepping through the doorway and out onto the dark widow’s walk.
I didn’t see who it was but I heard them coming at me, and before I could turn or say anything I was lifted in the air and shoved over the railing.
I hit the slanted side of the roof with a thud and I screamed.
I heard running footsteps and the slamming of the attic door as I started sliding down the shingles.
My heart was thudding.
So this is it. I am going to die.
My skin was being torn and shredded by the weather-worn tiles as I slid. I scrabbled with my hands, desperately trying to grab a hold of something, anything that would keep me from going over the side.
My feet hit the gutter and it gave beneath me, and I went over the side.
Chapter Eleven
I’ve always been afraid of heights.
My earliest childhood memory was of me being taken on a Ferris wheel ride at the county fair or an amusement park when I was very small. I was absolutely terrified the entire time, so terrified that I couldn’t cry or scream or anything because I was certain if I did anything at all the gondola would tip or flip and send me plunging to my death. After that I had a recurring nightmare. In it, I was bouncing on a trampoline like we did in my gym classes at school, doing seat drops and barrel rolls and flips, but in my dream I just kept sailing up in the air, getting higher and higher until I was bouncing so high that the trampoline looked like a postage stamp far below me and I knew I’d bounced too high and then I hung there for just a moment, weightless, knowing I’d gone too high and would die when I got back down, my weight crashing through the trampoline netting and all of my bones shattering against the gymnasium floor. I always woke up just as I started falling back to the trampoline surface, panting and sweating and my heart thumping in my ears. It always took a long time for me to go back to sleep after the nightmare. I avoided roller coasters, never looked down the sides of buildings from windows, hated driving in the mountains.
A trip to the observation deck of the Sears Tower when I was a kid gave me nightmares for weeks afterward.
I refused to go to the observation deck of the Empire State Building, or up inside the Statue of Liberty. One time on a work trip to Washington I’d gotten vertigo going down the massive escalator to the Dupont Circle Metro stop.
So as my worst nightmare became real and I went over the edge of the roof, my life didn’t flash before my eyes, nor did everything seem to be happening in slow motion or any of the other clichés.
It happened so fast.
One moment I was scrabbling, tearing the skin on my hands and fingers while trying to get a grip on something, anything, to keep me from going over the edge of the roof—and then there was nothing beneath me but air. My legs were over the edge, nothing beneath them, and I am going to die was all that flashed through my mind as my legs swung out before the rest of my body went over the side.
It didn’t seem like I hung there for that brief moment like they always do in movies and cartoons, either. No, one moment I was on the roof and the next I was falling through the air. It happened so fast I didn’t even have time to scream.
In the next se
cond I landed, hard, on one of the balcony roofs on the second floor, falling maybe thirteen feet in total. All the air was knocked out of me when I hit the roof and there was a definite cracking sound. I lay there, trying to get my breath back, in shock, still not comprehending what happened to me, staring up at a cloud-covered dark sky, my heart pounding in absolute terror as my mind finally started functioning again.
Oh my God someone just threw me off the roof someone just tried to kill me oh my God how lucky I was to fall onto a balcony a few feet in either direction and I would be dead oh my God oh my God oh my God.
I managed somehow to finally catch my breath, but started hyperventilating almost immediately, and there was a roaring in my ears and it seemed like all the edges of my vision were going dark and my sight was narrowed down to a thin tunnel and I was shaking my whole body was shaking and shivering and trembling and through it all I could feel pain, somewhere something was hurting but I still couldn’t make any sound, I tried to catch my breath again to stop hyperventilating but I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to do to stop it and then I heard another crack and this time realized it was beneath me.
It was the roof. It wasn’t going to hold.
A Lamentation of Swans Page 16
