“He did anyway.”
“Yes, but years later. Listen, Faith, not everyone has your tolerance for the grotesque. Holt Griffin was the most proper, careful, upright man. He just would never have allowed it to happen.”
While Harry fanned himself with the catalogue, I reflected on what he’d said.
“Tell me more about Holt Griffin.”
“I will if you get me out of here. I’m famished and claustrophobic,” Harry said irritably.
“We’ll go to lunch.”
“It’s about time,” he sniffed.
I took Harry to lunch in a small outdoor cafe near the museum. It was a pleasant day and we sat outside, watching the passersby. The service was slow, which annoyed Harry at first, but he mellowed after the waiter brought him a carafe of wine. We ordered and settled in.
“All right,” I said. “Holt Griffin.”
Harry rested his elbows on the table, his hands folded in a prayer position which he frequently broke in order to sip from his glass of white wine.
“Courtly—that’s the adjective that comes to mind. A courtly man. I saw him several times, but only met him once. He was quite shy, very unassuming. Elegant-looking, tall, fine-featured, aristocratic. Beautifully dressed in that English tailored way. Understated but perfect. You know the type. And slightly effeminate.” He hesitated.
“Go on,” I said.
“I was just thinking about that for a moment. I don’t think he was actively gay, although, as I think I told you, the rumor was that Frances weaned him away from that proclivity and that’s why he depended on her so much. . . . Anyway, the most striking thing about him was this sense of distance he projected. I felt it when I met him. I only met him once, as I said, and very briefly, but I had the feeling I wasn’t really speaking with the man in front of me. There was an incredible air of detachment about him. And yet he was perfectly friendly, nice, mannerly. But he never let you get close. Know what I mean?”
I nodded. Harry finished his first glass of wine and poured himself another from the carafe. He offered me some, but I declined.
“You know I never drink during the day. It makes me too sleepy.”
Harry nodded and continued on:
“He was fanatically private. You think Frances Griffin is private? Holt made Frances look like a rock star. He was pathologically private. He was of the old school that believed a person’s name should only appear three times in the newspaper: when they’re born, when they marry, and when they die.”
“I thought he was in the foreign service. He must have been written up in the papers constantly.”
“Not true. You’re supposed to stay out of the papers when you’re in the foreign service. But, even if he did get in them, that would have been in the service of his country. I’m speaking of his private life. Unlike everyone today, Holt Griffin actually loathed publicity.”
“So you think he might have covered up for his daughter’s murderer just to avoid publicity?” I said with revulsion.
“I don’t know it for a fact. But let’s just say it’s not impossible.”
“Well, here’s my theory,” I began, “I think they covered everything up, but I’m not so sure it was simply to avoid the publicity. I think there was something else going on.”
“What, for instance?”
“For instance, I don’t know. But whatever it was, I do know that Mrs. Griffin feels very, very guilty about it, and that she’s trying to turn me into a kind of surrogate daughter so that maybe she can confess it or make it up to Cassandra in some weird way.”
“What makes you say that, Faith?”
“It’s just an instinct.”
“And what if she were trying to make you a surrogate daughter? Would that be so terrible?” Harry said.
“It’s a bit bizarre, don’t you think?”
“Not really. She’s a rich old woman, alone in life. She’s had a terrible tragedy. You’re young, around her daughter’s age, or the age her daughter would have been. When you think about it, it’s only natural she might want to attach herself to you in some fashion.”
“It’s creepy,” I replied.
“Creepy—what a word!”
“She’s got cancer. I think she’s dying,” I said.
Harry furrowed his brow and leaned in, hunching his shoulders.
“No,” he protested. “Can’t be.”
“Why not? She told me herself. God, I’d love to solve this murder.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I feel like this girl’s sort of a kindred spirit in a way. I can’t quite explain it to you. And I’m curious. Just plain old curious. There are too many inconsistencies. I’m sure somebody knows the truth.”
Feeling a little uneasy, I broke my rule and poured myself a glass of wine. I drank it down and poured another. Harry looked at me with an amused expression on his face.
“I thought we didn’t drink during the day,” he said.
“We do today,” I snapped. “She gave me Cassandra’s debutante dress, and I tried it on.”
“Did it fit?”
“Almost perfectly. It was eerie. You know, we kind of look alike, Cassandra and I. Did you ever see a picture of her?”
“Hmm,” he nodded.
“I wonder what she was like. I have a feeling we might have had quite a lot in common.”
“In what way?”
“Oh, with men, of course. I’m sure Roberto Madi was a variant on the John Noland theme. In fact, I picture Madi as John Noland . . . Speaking of which, guess who called me out of the blue and who I’m having dinner with next week?”
“Oh, don’t tell me—” Harry said warily.
“Yes.”
“Out of the blue?” He looked skeptical.
“Well, I did go for a little visit into the old neighborhood and he happened to see me from his window.”
Harry rolled his eyes heavenward. He knew my history with John backward and forward. In fact, when we’d first met years ago, John was practically the only thing I ever talked about.
“Nostalgie de la merde, eh?” he said.
“I know, I know. But I’m curious, I really am. Especially now that I’ve become intrigued with this Cassandra Griffin thing. It’s brought back all sorts of memories.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought you’d had your fill of masochism.”
“Oh Harry, it’s just dinner, for heaven’s sake.”
“Nothing is ‘just dinner’—even dinner,” he said. “Why don’t you simply go out, buy yourself a hair shirt, and eliminate the middleman?”
“Am I that bad?”
“No, he’s that bad. Think back, Faith, dear. Have you forgotten all that mean man put you through? All you put yourself through? You used to call me up at all hours of the night in floods of tears. I even had to come and stay with you once or twice you were so hysterical, if I remember correctly.”
I sighed, suddenly sinking down into the mud of unpleasant memories.
“It’s true,” I reflected. “He was a cold and difficult man. And, you know, I was so crazy about him that if he’d been an ax murderer, I’d probably be dead—just like Cassandra.”
“You keep coming back to her,” Harry said in a singsong voice.
“I know, I know. I’m haunted by her.”
“I think it would be very interesting for you to actually try and solve her murder. You obviously do feel a real kinship with her.”
“I feel a kinship with anyone who has been put through the wringer by a man. Sometimes I wonder how I survived all the shit I did.”
“Then, for God’s sake, why are you having dinner with John Noland? Dredging up the pain? What’s the point? You’re better off applying your talents to something more constructive.”
“I know,” I
said, feeling despondent.
“Play the game with Mr. Noland in your head, where you’ve always played it. Leave the actual field to someone else.”
My salad arrived, along with Harry’s cold roast chicken. Harry approached the meal with his usual gusto. I, on the other hand, had very little appetite. I picked at the soggy lettuce leaves and made a design with the diced ham.
“Christ, Harry, I don’t know, I just don’t know . . .” I shook my head. “I’m thirty-nine years old and I just don’t know about anything anymore. I used to be so sure of things. Do you think that’s what life is? A gradual unraveling of all belief?”
“There are periods of unraveling and periods of knitting everything up again,” he said, taking a big bite of food.
“What period are you in?”
“Oh, I suppose I’m knitting myself up a few beliefs for the impending journey, sort of like a warm sweater to take on an endless voyage.” He rinsed his mouthful down with some wine.
“Do you think about death a lot, Harry?”
Blotting his mouth with a napkin, he replied quite matter-of-factly.
“A lot more than I used to. Why? Do you?”
“I suppose . . .” I said absently.
“Well, when you get to be my age all the unimportant things suddenly seem vital, and vice versa. I now find myself looking forward to a good meal with the same zeal I used to reserve for business and love. I can remember when acquiring a wonderful piece of furniture or a new lover was the high point of my life. Now, a good roast chicken is.”
He raised his fork in the air waving a piece of chicken on the end of it like a flag.
“I’ve come to realize one spends most of one’s life eating, sleeping, and missing the point!” he announced, popping the forkful into his mouth.
“Do you think people get the point at the end?”
“They either do or they don’t. Most don’t, I suspect. Very few people want to think about things, don’t you find? It’s easier to just get on with it.”
“Are you getting on with it, Harry? Or are you thinking about things?”
“Thinking . . . I think. But what I really hate is to see you wasting your time on this John Noland character, Faith, I really do.”
“Oh, well, you know—anything for a little excitement,” I sighed.
“There’s one in every life, I suppose.”
“One what?” I asked.
“Near miss.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, you know,” Harry said, taking a deep reflective breath, “the person you look back on and think, if only things had worked out with them, life might have turned out all right. The one that got away, so to speak. The object of one’s fantasy life. Prince Charming manqué.”
“John Noland wasn’t the one that got away. He was more like the one I got away from,” I said.
“Then who’s the one that got away?”
“There isn’t anyone. How about you?”
“Rodney,” Harry said quickly.
I knew Harry was referring to an ex-lover he introduced me to years ago who was a police detective. Most of Harry’s “companions,” as he called them, were culled from the good, solid, butch ranks of the working class—policemen, firefighters, construction workers. He seemed to prefer their virile and, for the most part, nonverbal company.
“Oh, I remember—the famous Rodney. Rodney, the married detective from Queens with the little genius son.”
“God, I loathed that child,” Harry said.
“What ever happened to good old Rodney?”
“I have no idea,” he replied wistfully. “He was lovely though. I was rather upset when he went back to that dreary wife of his. By the way, he’s from Brooklyn, not Queens.”
In that moment, I realized how sad, in many ways, Harry’s life had been on the romantic front: a series of brief encounters, of secret liaisons, of background wives and families, of infidelity and abandonment. To me, Harry was like an old woman who should have been spending her later years with a devoted husband, reflecting on a lifetime of shared experiences. He was even beginning to look rather old-womanish lately. Increasingly, he reminded me of some of Rembrandt’s portraits of old people where age transcends gender and it’s difficult to tell whether the sitter is a man or a woman. Age had withered nearly all of Harry’s masculine characteristics. The soft, feminine side of him was bleeding through his face like a pentimento.
“Why don’t you call him up?” I suggested.
“And say what? Hello, it’s me. I’ve been alone here yearning for you for eight years. How are you?”
“You could just call up to see how he’s doing. John called me after twelve years.”
“Well, maybe John’s more secure than I am,” Harry said. “And anyway, it doesn’t work the same way when the person is married and he left you. You have to be more subtle.”
“So be subtle,” I urged him. “Think of an excuse.”
“Oddly enough, you’ve given me an excuse.”
“What’s that?” I said cautiously.
“May I propose something to you?”
“Of course.”
“Let me help you play detective.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“You say you have a genuine interest in who killed Cassandra Griffin. You suspect it’s Roberto Madi. Let’s find Roberto Madi and talk to him.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Listen, Faith, you’re not the only one who’s bored. I could use a little excitement in my life too.”
“How’s this going to bring you excitement, Harry?”
“Well, for one thing, it will give me an excuse to call up my old flame, Rodney.”
I looked at Harry in utter disbelief.
“I’ll call him up on the pretext of wanting him to track down Roberto Madi,” he went on. “What about that for an idea?!”
“God, Harry, you are serious.”
“Damn right I am.”
Farfetched as it was, I had to admit the notion intrigued me.
“Do you really think he could find him?”
“Unless he’s dead.”
“Who? Rodney or Madi?” I said half-teasing.
“Listen, if anyone can find Roberto Madi, Rodney Matusak can,” Harry stated with assurance. “That’s exactly the sort of work he used to do.”
“And what if he did find him?”
“We’d go and talk to him.”
“You don’t seriously think he’d tell us anything, do you?” I said.
“Who knows? It’s worth a shot, isn’t it?”
“I think it’s worth a shot if it’s a way for you to get in touch with Rodney again without seeming too obvious. Although I can’t imagine this doesn’t look obvious—it’s so nuts!”
Harry reached out and took my hand.
“You’ll understand one day, my dear,” he said, smiling.
They say as one gets older, one’s insides turn out, and one becomes, so to speak, the personification of the inner being. Harry’s insides, lately revealing themselves at an alarming speed, were, I observed, far softer and more gentle than that studied and cynical exterior of his ever let on. Like myself, he was all alone, without any family that I knew of, and with only a few close friends. The difference in our ages and our health made his situation seem more poignant than my own. Sometimes I got the feeling I was the only person in the world he could rely on. I always tried to make him feel indispensable to me, so that his need for me would not seem to outweigh mine for him.
“Okay, call him up!” I cried. “And if he actually finds Madi—you can knock me over with a feather.”
Harry was elated.
“He’s going to be awfully surprised to hear from me after all these years. I can’t wait! We were so different, of course.
Miles apart on anything intellectual or social. But I felt strangely at peace when I was with him. As though I’d found my other half.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Dangerous game,” Harry said.
“What?”
“Oh—passion.”
“Yes, indeed, passion’s the real killer in life.”
“Or the lack of it,” Harry lamented.
We finished our meal trying to speak about other things, but the conversation became tainted with a certain gloom. After lunch, just as we were walking out of the restaurant, Harry suddenly became short of breath and leaned against a wall, holding his neck with both hands. His round face grew very red and his eyes seemed to inflate in their sockets like tiny balloons. Prying his hands away from his neck, I quickly loosened his tie and undid the top buttons of his shirt while a deft waiter slid a chair under him. He sank down onto it gasping for air.
After a few moments, his breathing grew normal again. The color drained from his face, while tiny beads of perspiration sprouted up on his forehead. His eyes were still bulging slightly. He looked horrendous.
“We’re getting you to a doctor immediately.” I told the waiter to please call an ambulance.
“No, no!” Harry protested. “I’m fine.”
“You look ghastly and you’re coming with me to a doctor this instant.”
“If I could just have a glass of water,” he pleaded.
Harry slowly sipped the water brought to him by the obliging waiter. Afterward he seemed refreshed.
“Just take me home.”
“No. You’re going to the emergency room.” I was adamant.
“This happens every once in a while. It’s nothing.”
“Harry, please—”
“Faith, dear, it’s my life.”
He looked so fragile and so frightened I didn’t dare argue with him.
“You’re sure?”
“Sure,” he said firmly, forcing a wan smile. “Take me home, will you?”
“You won’t have yourself checked at least?”
“No doctors.”
“Even though it might be something serious?”
“I hope it is.”
“Harry, please don’t say that, please—” I begged him.
“I do. I hope it is. Now just drop me home, like a good girl.”
A Trick of the Eye Page 10
