dinette set.
The life before me was more interesting than my own. I went back to the pile on the desk. Ticket stubs. A book by Goethe, Divan of East and West , which I’d heard was pretty hot stuff. It was from her, in it she’d written, “To mein Liebe, From N.” To my love. She may have been a genius, 72 / SUSAN ISAACS
but N could have used a couple of German lessons; if she was going to use “love” like that, it should have been Für meine ein-zige Liebe or maybe mein Geliebter . John would know that, but what could he say? My darling, “mein Liebe” is stinko German.
Your usage definitely isn’t anything to write home about. But he couldn’t say anything to Nan anymore. So he kept the book, the letters—all of it—because it was the closest he could get to her. In the late afternoons, when he said, No calls, Miss Voss, he was probably sitting there fingering the ticket stubs or rereading the Goethe.
There was a concert program from Carnegie Hall. The orches-tra must have been rotten, because all over the page that told about Bach’s B Minor Mass there were scribbles. “Putrid!” “The tempo!” and “Will it ever end?” in Nan’s handwriting. “I love you” in his. There were a couple of clippings from the society page: their engagement and wedding announcements. I got a few new pieces of information: a list of bridesmaids with expensive names—“The Misses Floria Wyatt, Honore Delafield, Dorothea and Alice Brinton, Eleanor Randel and Victoria Courtney.” I thought: I bet me and Honore Delafield could be great buddies. Hi, Honore. Linda, sweetie! Hi! I found out Nan’s real name was Anne and that the late Mrs. Edward Leland’s maiden name was Caroline Bell and that she was President Theodore Roosevelt’s cousin. I learned that John was the son of the late Mr. and Mrs. Charles Berringer of Port Washington, New York.
I was so taken up with these new Berringers, wondering who they were and when they’d died, that I didn’t notice the picture until my elbow rested on something slick. It was a small, glossy snapshot of Nan and John. They were lying together on a hammock, their arms and legs so tangled up they looked like one person. She wore shorts and a pullover. He wore cotton slacks.
No shirt. Nan’s head rested on his shoulder and her hand, with its wedding ring, seemed to have been caught by the camera as it caressed his bare chest. They weren’t talking profundity in that hammock. What they had was what I would have died for.
SHINING THROUGH / 73
God, was John beautiful! Nothing I’d imagined being under his suit was as good as what was in that little picture. His body was so perfect it almost didn’t seem real. It looked as sleek and as hard as the modern furniture Nan loved. No wonder she hadn’t been able to keep her hand to herself.
I took a deep breath. I put everything back into the envelope.
Well, I thought, and let out a high half laugh, that was a good night’s work.
Then I turned off the lamp, sat in the black room and started to cry.
5
T he sun sparkled, and the surface of the dark water of Sheepshead Bay glittered as if someone had tossed in a handful of diamonds. Gladys Slade, wearing a middy blouse that would have looked great on a kid in third-grade assembly, stood with her hand shielding her eyes. But she did it so dramatically she could have been Admiral of the Fleet, saluting all the ships at sea. “Mr. Leland used to have a summer house right on the water.
In Connecticut.” She spoke a little too loud, as if to be heard over the crash of the waves, except there weren’t any waves—only the relaxed slapping of water against the wooden piles of the pier. “He sold it when Nan went off to boarding school, right before the Crash. I hear he made a pret-ty penny.”
Gladys could take any subject—water, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex , pickled watermelon rinds—and tie it up to the law firm.
I sighed. My best friend. But to tell the truth,
The life before me was more interesting than my own. I went back to the pile on the desk. Ticket stubs. A book by Goethe, Divan of East and West , which I’d heard was pretty hot stuff. It was from her, in it she’d written, “To mein Liebe, From N.” To my love. She may have been a genius, 72 / SUSAN ISAACS
but N could have used a couple of German lessons; if she was going to use “love” like that, it should have been Für meine ein-zige Liebe or maybe mein Geliebter . John would know that, but what could he say? My darling, “mein Liebe” is stinko German.
Your usage definitely isn’t anything to write home about. But he couldn’t say anything to Nan anymore. So he kept the book, the letters—all of it—because it was the closest he could get to her. In the late afternoons, when he said, No calls, Miss Voss, he was probably sitting there fingering the ticket stubs or rereading the Goethe.
There was a concert program from Carnegie Hall. The orches-tra must have been rotten, because all over the page that told about Bach’s B Minor Mass there were scribbles. “Putrid!” “The tempo!” and “Will it ever end?” in Nan’s handwriting. “I love you” in his. There were a couple of clippings from the society page: their engagement and wedding announcements. I got a few new pieces of information: a list of bridesmaids with expensive names—“The Misses Floria Wyatt, Honore Delafield, Dorothea and Alice Brinton, Eleanor Randel and Victoria Courtney.” I thought: I bet me and Honore Delafield could be great buddies. Hi, Honore. Linda, sweetie! Hi! I found out Nan’s real name was Anne and that the late Mrs. Edward Leland’s maiden name was Caroline Bell and that she was President Theodore Roosevelt’s cousin. I learned that John was the son of the late Mr. and Mrs. Charles Berringer of Port Washington, New York.
I was so taken up with these new Berringers, wondering who they were and when they’d died, that I didn’t notice the picture until my elbow rested on something slick. It was a small, glossy snapshot of Nan and John. They were lying together on a hammock, their arms and legs so tangled up they looked like one person. She wore shorts and a pullover. He wore cotton slacks.
No shirt. Nan’s head rested on his shoulder and her hand, with its wedding ring, seemed to have been caught by the camera as it caressed his bare chest. They weren’t talking profundity in that hammock. What they had was what I would have died for.
SHINING THROUGH / 73
God, was John beautiful! Nothing I’d imagined being under his suit was as good as what was in that little picture. His body was so perfect it almost didn’t seem real. It looked as sleek and as hard as the modern furniture Nan loved. No wonder she hadn’t been able to keep her hand to herself.
I took a deep breath. I put everything back into the envelope.
Well, I thought, and let out a high half laugh, that was a good night’s work.
Then I turned off the lamp, sat in the black room and started to cry.
5
T he sun sparkled, and the surface of the dark water of Sheepshead Bay glittered as if someone had tossed in a handful of diamonds. Gladys Slade, wearing a middy blouse that would have looked great on a kid in third-grade assembly, stood with her hand shielding her eyes. But she did it so dramatically she could have been Admiral of the Fleet, saluting all the ships at sea. “Mr. Leland used to have a summer house right on the water.
In Connecticut.” She spoke a little too loud, as if to be heard over the crash of the waves, except there weren’t any waves—only the relaxed slapping of water against the wooden piles of the pier. “He sold it when Nan went off to boarding school, right before the Crash. I hear he made a pret-ty penny.”
Gladys could take any subject—water, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex , pickled watermelon rinds—and tie it up to the law firm.
I sighed. My best friend. But to tell the truth,
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