I am alone.
An era had come to an end. I knew that as surely as though I’d seen a great towering door swing shut across the harbor as the SS De Grasse vanished from sight.
margery
Lord, my head hurts. . . .
But . . . there’s one good thing about it. It’s helped me make up my mind.
I’ve decided that when Pamela wakes I’ll send her home— ever so gently—instead of asking her to stay for supper as I usually do. I’ll give her the roast I was going to cook tonight, and a few potatoes. I’ll tell her I think Lorenzo was very much looking forward to a nice home-cooked supper tonight with his mother.
I suppose I should look for some aspirin.
part five
???
The Letter: January 11, 1977
428 Lafayette Street
New York City
......................................
January 8, 1977
My Dear Pamela,
I suppose you will cringe at that salutation, but that is still how I think of you, despite everything. You were a dear little thing, all that time ago. Do you still wear your hair all coiled around your ears? Are they silver coils now?
I am writing to you because I am coming to New York at the end of next week. A friend of mine, Edward Tawner, died quite recently. I hadn’t seen him since I left the city, but we’ve corresponded over the years. He was a lonely fellow, I think, a quite minor but devoted poet, always writing me to celebrate when he got published in the odd poetry journal. Poetry was, obviously, our mutual topic of interest, and it seems he’s left me his book collection. There’s some wonderful stuff, first editions, Whitman and Pound and Sandburg (this one is signed!).
I’m sorry to give you so little warning, but of course I couldn’t have foreseen this turn of events, and Edward’s brother Mason has let me know that he is putting up the apartment for sale immediately and would like to clear out his brother’s things as quickly as possible. Mason is seven years older than Edward and in poor shape himself, so I agreed to help him pack things up and ship the books to Oregon. After all, besides the brother, I appear to be the main beneficiary.
My hope is that I can see you. I would like to talk to you. Could we have a cup of coffee, at least? We can talk about anything you like, but of course I am thinking of Lorenzo. Time, I’m afraid, is running out and it would be nice to round things out, finally.
I have your telephone number and I’ll call you when I get into town.
I do hope you are well, Pamela. Please do say you will see me.
Yours,
Robert
Pamela sinks back into the chair. Reads the letter again.
She takes the measure of his words. Two long paragraphs on this Edward person and his book collection. A brief paragraph mentioning Lorenzo. An aside, really.
She could almost laugh, it’s so typical.
And this: It would be nice to round things out.
Round things out? Round things out? What does this mean exactly—after forty-six years let’s just fix things up, shall we?
Well, it doesn’t appear that he’s dying, at any rate.
She could almost laugh.
Still, he is coming to New York, she can’t alter that. The end of next week. She has to think. Today is . . . Tuesday. January 11. That means he will be here around the 20th or so. Or . . . no, he wrote this on the 8th. A Saturday. Perhaps he means he will be here at the end of this week. Why couldn’t he have been specific? Just written a date?
Silly question. It’s all pure Robert, this vagueness.
He never has liked to be pinned down.
???
September 1, 1944
9 Livingston Place, Stuyvesant Square
New York City
(Late Afternoon)
margery
One more cup of tea. The Darjeeling this time. And another biscuit. A bit of strength before Pamela emerges.
She’s bound to any minute now, I should think.
Perhaps she’ll surprise me. Come out all rested, her old self. Cheerful.
What I wouldn’t give. . . .
Well, fingers crossed. Pamela’s perfectly capable of coming up with big surprises. Some quite a bit bigger than others, ones with large consequences. I’m thinking of Robert, of course.
Robert . . . that whole affair . . . now that was surprising all the way around. If I’d ever guessed what was really going on with Robert, I would have at least tried to make her see her foolishness. Not that I didn’t understand the attraction. He was very appealing, with those moony eyes and lovely long, wavy hair. He had his own sort of style—I suppose he fancied he dressed himself as a poet should, and he may have missed the mark there, but the point was he did look good in his clothes. Natural—a true bohemian. You couldn’t help but be attracted to him. And that naive charm of his. . . . No, Robert didn’t worry me. Not at first, at least. It was the headlong way Pamela threw herself into the affair.
But it wasn’t love with Robert. I don’t know what it was, really. Francesco and I were glad at first that she’d found someone, a distraction, a man who brought her out of her shell. Anyone, we thought, to help her get beyond Diccon. And besides, the truth is when she met Robert she was sailing so high we couldn’t have reached her if we’d tried.
In those days, Pamela had time for two things: painting and Robert. There was no time for us. She went all silent and mysterious. We never knew a thing. Not even the day Francesco stepped out of his bookshop to get his midmorning espresso at Café Reggio and caught sight of Pamela trotting down Eighth Street towards Sixth Avenue. In a white dress. Francesco was so astounded by the vision that he forgot his coffee and came straight to tell me.
“What was she doing running down the street dressed like that? Yes, I’m sure it was Pamela. For God’s sake, Margery, I know my own daughter—and anyway, who could miss those braids around her ears!”
We came up with a few theories, none very satisfactory. Going to meet Robert for a romantic boat ride in Central Park? Perhaps she was modeling for a friend? Her clothing was certainly a mystery. I was sure that Pamela didn’t own a white dress.
We could never have guessed the truth, that Francesco had just seen his daughter hurrying off to her wedding.
pamela
I see it now, the irony. Diccon leaving, everything disintegrating.
It was the end of October 1929—barely two months after Diccon had stood on the deck of his ship watching the great financial institutions of lower Manhattan fade from sight. Everything slid downhill all at once. The stock market tumbled, then collapsed utterly. All of America was reeling. No one could understand what was happening. Poverty spread like the plague. Our own family fortunes, never grand, steadily diminished. We held on, but things were uncertain, shaky. Royalties from Mam’s books trickled in; sales at Daddy’s bookstore were almost nonexistent. Cecco took a job in the men’s department at Saks Fifth Avenue. My illustrating commissions began to disappear.