“Oh man,” I said beneath my breath. My hands were shaking so much I could hardly open it. “Please, god, please…”
The inside of the envelope was lined with marbled paper, blue and violet and green. The edges of the heavy rag stationery were gilt, as was a tiny monogram stamped at the top of the page.
LdR
I drew it to my face, breathing in Pelican ink and the sharp medicinal tang of eucalyptus, and began to read.
November 12, 1975
Storm King, New York
Dear Ms. Cassidy,
Angelica gave me your address; I hope that you will not find it presumptuous of me to write to you.
My daughter spoke very warmly of her time with you at the Divine. I have just learned of the unfortunate events that have befallen your little circle of friends, and also of your own academic situation. As an alumnus and trustee of the University, I feel that I may be able to be of some help to you in making your future plans, and so have taken the liberty of enclosing a round-trip plane ticket for you to come visit me at our home here in Storm King. Alas! my daughter will not be able to join us, but it is at her urging that I am writing to you, and I know that she very much would like for you to come.
If there is any scheduling problem, please let me know. Otherwise, I will arrange for a car to meet you at the airport and deliver you here on this Friday evening.
Wrapped in a second sheet of the same heavy smooth paper were two airplane tickets.
I went; of course I went. I was afraid not to, but even more afraid of what I might do or what I might become if I stayed at the Divine, drinking and hiding in the Shrine and slowly going insane. It felt strange, to be flying into Westchester without my parents’ knowledge. At the airport I was seized by the absurd terror that they would be there, that somehow they had found out about everything and had come to collect me and bring me in disgrace back home. But there was hardly anyone at the airport at all, besides a few weary wives come to collect their weary husbands, and a young man in a cable-knit sweater and salmon-colored golf pants, holding a sign that said SWEENEY CASSIDY.
“That’s me,” I said. He took my bag and I followed him to the waiting car, a navy blue Oldsmobile with MERCURY SKYLINE LIVERY stenciled on the side. I was a little disappointed but mostly relieved it wasn’t a limousine.
“Do you work for Mr. di Rienzi?” I asked after we had left the parking lot.
“Nope. He just hired me for tonight, and to take you back in the morning. Mind if I listen to the news?”
I shook my head. He clicked on the radio, and that was all the conversation we had. We drove north on the interstate. After an hour we pulled off Route 684 and crossed the Bear Mountain Bridge. Forty-five minutes later we arrived at Storm King.
I was expecting something grand, after the plane tickets and mysterious letter and the liveried car, something along the lines of the Orphic Lodge.
Instead, the di Rienzis’ house was at the end of a cul-de-sac in a small woodsy development, high up on the Palisades overlooking the Hudson. STORM KING ESTATES, said a wrought-iron sign, but there was nothing quite so dramatic as an estate anywhere in sight. The other houses were pleasantly suburban, set amidst plenty of trees now bare and stark against the backdrop of browning lawns and neatly raked piles of leaves. The di Rienzis’ house stood apart from all of these, on a small rise planted with huge old rhododendrons and mountain laurels and a slender, pampered-looking Japanese maple. Behind the trees and shrubs rose a sprawling Queen Anne Victorian, a real dowager dating to the turn of the century, with grey weathered shingles and a wide porch sweeping around it on all sides. It was certainly the oldest house on the street, and it commanded a marvelous view of the river and Storm King Mountain and even the George Washington Bridge, glittering like a string of glass beads in the distance. But it was a surprisingly comforting-looking house, nothing grand or intimidating about it at all, until Angelica’s father appeared at the door.
“You must be Sweeney.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, shaking his hand. It was the first time I had ever called anyone sir in my life. “You are—it was very, very kind of you to send me the tickets to come here.”
He smiled. “Well, I am very, very happy that you came. Please, come inside.”
I was shocked to see how old he was. Older than my parents, older even than my grandparents. Had Angelica ever mentioned that to me? But there was nothing frail about him—he was over six feet tall, big-boned and broad-shouldered, with an exaggerated, almost military, bearing, and his hand, while bony and blue-veined, was so strong my fingers cracked in his grasp. I protested when he bent to take my knapsack, but he ignored me and went inside, waving offhandedly to the Oldsmobile as it drove off.
“Did you have a pleasant flight? I wasn’t certain if you would have time to eat, so I have dinner ready for you.” I followed him down the hallway, too nervous to say anything but Yes sir over and over, like a new recruit. “At any rate airplane food is appalling, isn’t it? Let’s take this upstairs to your room, so that you can wash up if you’d like.”
He had a beautiful sonorous voice, with just the slightest Mediterranean warmth to it, and such extravagantly pronounced diction that he sounded like an exotic bird that has been trained to speak. I followed him upstairs, and then down a long hallway, where a number of photographs of Angelica hung in expensive, heavy frames. Angelica as an infant, innocent and self-contained as an egg; Angelica in a white dress for First Communion; Angelica graduating from elementary school, high school; Angelica at summer camp. Camp! I could as easily imagine her at camp as distributing alms to the poor in Calcutta; but there she was, tanned and squinting into the sun in her khaki shorts and white short-sleeved shirt with WENAHKEE OWLS embroidered on it. Between the photos were doors, all of them shut tight. I tried to guess which hid Angelica’s room.
“This is the guest room, here—you don’t have your own bath but it’s only a few steps down the hall. And there’s plenty of hot water.”
My room was large and cozy, the walls papered with a pattern of ivy squills and the floor covered with bright rag rugs. There was a large canopied spindle bed piled high with a feather comforter in a green duvet, and a small night table, where a vase of chrysanthemums and marigolds dropped petals onto a stack of magazines. On the wall hung a watercolor of gold hills and blue water and feluccas sailing in the distance.
“It’s wonderful,” I said. “This is so kind, Mr. di Rienzi—”
“Not at all, not at all.” He waved me away, setting my knapsack on the floor. “Now you’ll probably want to freshen up. When you’re comfortable, come downstairs. We’ll have dinner on the porch—I think it’s still warm enough for that, don’t you?”
On the porch it was barely warm enough, but Mr. di Rienzi got me one of Angelica’s cable-knit sweaters and draped it over my shoulders. It smelled so strongly of her perfume that I felt dizzy; but it helped keep off the lingering chill.
The veranda overlooked a long wooded hillside that sloped down to the Hudson. Over the white wooden railings I could glimpse the tops of trees, a few still brushed with scarlet and brown, and the river itself, dark and shimmering faintly beneath the stars. On the far shore glowed the lights of Beacon and, a few miles north, Poughkeepsie. Two symmetrical rows of red lights showed where a barge was being towed toward the locks upstate.