Riverside Drive - Laura Wormer Van

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list so they’ll forget what it was supposed to have been.”)

      Sigh.

      It was all coming apart now for Howard. In the old days, he really had wanted to work toward becoming publisher of Gardiner & Grayson, to be on the “cutting edge” of the publishing frontier, and he had wanted to do it with the colleagues he had grown up with. The ones who had called him Prince Charming and then had rewarded him with camaraderie when he started being an editor. The people who had listened to his ideas and to his problems, and who had shared their ideas and their problems with him. The people who—over the course of ten-hour days, five days a week for eleven years—had become his family. But now, now…

      “Then leave, Howard,” Melissa screamed, “find another job and leave!”

      But Melissa didn’t understand and Howard didn’t think he could explain it to her. What would he say? “Melissa, you don’t seem to understand. My colleagues at Gardiner & Grayson have been filling the void of our marriage for years. If I leave them, then I have no one.”

      No. Howard could not tell Melissa that.

      “Amanda,” Rosanne was saying to Howard, “you know, Tuesdays.”

      “And she’s writing a book?”

      “Is she? It’s in boxes all over the apartment.”

      Howard chuckled to himself, picking up a book from the window sill in his study.

      “But like she’s really smart, Howie,” Rosanne said. But then she paused, debating a minute, and then admitted, “Well, sometimes she does get kinda loony—sort of like Esmeralda on ‘Bewitched’ or somethin’.”

      Howard handed Rosanne the book. “Here. I haven’t even read it yet. A friend just sent it to me.”

      Rosanne took it from him and looked at the cover. “Mickey Mantle! Oh, man, this is great, Howie. Frank’s gonna love this too.” She slid the jacket off and handed it back to him. “Better keep that to keep it lookin’ nice. Wow,” she sighed, smiling, putting the book in her bag.

      Howard grinned, touching at his glasses. “So what’s Tuesday’s book about, do you know?”

      “Oh, it’s about that queen—you know, the one that everybody says screwed horses.”

      “Catherine the Great?”

      “Yeah—”

      “She didn’t, Rosanne.”

      “Well, that’s a relief,” Rosanne declared, hefting her bag onto her shoulder, “’cause Amanda kinda thinks she is Catherine the Great. The way she talks—sometimes I don’t know what the heck she’s sayin’. I mean, like she’s never mad or nothin’—she’s always ‘vexed’ or some numbnuts thing.”

      Howard laughed.

      “You’d love the way she talks,” Rosanne added, pointing a finger at him. “So, anyway,” she continued, backing out of the room, “the way I figure it, you’re just the guy to help her.”

      “Help her?” Howard said.

      3

      Tea at Amanda Miller’s

      “Darling heart,” Mrs. Goldblum said, “all women go a bit mad in their thirties. That’s why it’s so terribly important to marry well.”

      The younger woman blinked.

      “You see, dear,” Mrs. Goldblum continued, “in her twenties, every girl believes she knows what she wants out of life, and she settles into the life she is convinced will bring it to her. And no one can tell her differently.” She smiled into her teacup and took a discreet sip. “And then the thirties arrive and she suddenly realizes the world can say no to her, and she becomes convinced she has made all the wrong choices…and,” Mrs. Goldblum sighed, “she realizes that, instead of knowing everything, she knows very little.” Mrs. Goldblum smiled. “It is not an easy time.”

      The younger woman nodded, thinking.

      Mrs. Goldblum took a delicate bite from the small pepper jelly and cream cheese sandwich on her plate. The women were sitting across from each other at a round table in front of the largest of the living-room windows. The four corners of a white linen tablecloth hung nearly to the floor; the silver tea service sparkled in the afternoon sunlight; across the room a fire was burning in the fireplace, the brass fender set gleaming in the contrast of lights.

      Both women wore black, but it was not in melancholy. Instead, it was fitting. The room in which they sat had furniture from an earlier century—dark, massive, gleaming products of English workmanship, settees and chairs covered in deep burgundy velvet. There was an enormous oriental rug, and the fringed edges highlighted the dark wood floors that were exposed around it. Old paintings of every size adorned the walls; the high ceiling was an intricate work of white panels and carved plaster. And there was clutter in the room. On every surface—table tops, shelves, even along the enormous mahogany mantel—there were bits and pieces of brass and hand-colored glass, and there were antique frames with pressed flowers and porcelain vases with dried flowers, and little leather Shakespeares and ivory elephants and all kinds of other small distractions.

      The older woman sat perfectly erect. The black dress—whose era was anyone’s guess—though faded slightly, still draped from her shoulders in flattering folds. A small gold brooch rested on the left of her chest; a gold charm bracelet on one wrist occasionally made small tinkling sounds. Her breath was gentle and slow; her hands moved gracefully, unobtrusively, often finding rest in each other’s company on her lap. Her hair was pure white, the complexion beneath pale and sweet, and her face conveyed enduring strength of some seventy-seven years.

      Her glasses were the only thing out of place. The lenses being thick, they distorted the woman’s languid brown eyes into something almost comical. But they weren’t comical. They were searching the face of her companion, looking for clues as to the younger woman’s thoughts.

      “I never liked him, you know,” Mrs. Goldblum said.

      The younger woman laughed. “You certainly deceived me there.”

      “Of course I had to be polite. You seemed so keen on the young man, I vowed I would come to like him in time. I never did, however.”

      The younger woman shook her head, looking down to her lap. Mrs. Goldblum reached across the table to cover her hand with her own. “Drink your tea, dear. You’ll feel better.”

      The young lady raised her head. Her eyes, usually bright, were rather tired. A smile was pressed into use and her face changed considerably. It was a fascinating, striking face. But it was not beautiful. Every feature, though brilliantly conceived on an independent basis, was in contrast to the next. The large, hazel eyes competed with the strong, perfectly chiseled nose (that decidedly linked her to the portraits on the walls). The high cheekbones did not know the wide, full mouth, and the olive of her complexion was at odds with the light brown of her hair. And her hair, long and straight, parted in the middle and spilling down over her shoulders, certainly did not know what to make of the black dress and pearls. And the contrasts did not end there. Her ample breasts made no sense of her thinness; her hands, whose fingers were long but large, hinted at a line of heritage that once knew the fields—or service under the people from whom her nose had come.

      Mrs. Goldblum watched Amanda Miller take her suggestion regarding the tea. She smiled, nodding slightly. “Better now?”

      “Yes, thank you,” Amanda said. She cleared her throat. “I must apologize—I’m not quite myself today.”

      On that note, Rosanne came in, wafting her arms in the air as though she were a loon in descent toward water. She came to a rest at Mrs. Goldblum’s side—with Mrs. Goldblum none the wiser as to how she had traveled there—and pulled down on the crisp black uniform dress she was wearing. Every Tuesday, Rosanne cleaned Amanda Miller’s apartment until early afternoon and then

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