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Chapter 18: Cousin Alberto

            Angelina gracefully assumed the management of the household. She started in the kitchen.  Once we were addicted to her antipasto and lasagna, she began to refit the kitchen with new appliances.  She moved on to the living room, tossing out the dark, dreary curtains.  She sent the couches out to be recovered.  Debo was given carte blanche to redecorate her bedroom.  The apartment began to lose its air of stagnation. Nothing Angelina did, however, could rid the rooms of Father’s cigar smoke. 

             One day she asked me if I would prefer to be living in my own place.  I almost wept with relief and gratitude.  It was as if the door to a dark jail cell was unlocked, and the light poured in.  So began a new phase of my life.  Angelina helped me find a small studio in the East Village.  I was in my second year of graduate school at Columbia, getting my master’s degree in English.  Walking into my little studio was like stepping into Heaven for me.  It was not quiet; New York City is never quiet; but it was a peaceful and happy place, and my very own.

            Once Angelina had put the household in order, she began accompanying Father to the office.  At this time, Cousin Alberto oversaw all the shipping.  Though in his mid-thirties, Cousin Alberto was as yet unmarried.  He was considered a most eligible bachelor, whose photograph appeared occasionally in New York magazine.  Our paths rarely crossed once I’d moved out, but Angelina saw more and more of Cousin Alberto as she began to learn the administration of Salerno Enterprises.  In her open friendly way, Angelina asked intelligent questions and came up with thoughtful comments and solutions.  Things began to run more smoothly.  The office staff adored her. 

            One day I happened to stop in to say hello.  Angelina had her own desk; she was talking on the telephone, but she waved to me and put up a finger to let me know she’d be only a minute.  I found Father in his office.

            “Father, the whole office seems to be better.  Even Mrs. Romano smiled at me, and she’s never done that before.  Is this all Angelina’s doing?”

            “Sure it is,” he said.  “The woman has an MBA.”  He tapped his temple and winked. “Your father is not a stupid.”

            It was Angelina who first noticed the discrepancies in the accounts.  After the whole mess came to light, and Cousin Alberto was in prison, we who were left realized that Angelina had suspected Cousin Alberto all along.    When I asked her what tipped her off, she laughed and tapped her temple just like Father.

             “Alberto was living far too well, even for the generous salary your father paid him.”

            Looking back now, I’d like to say that I sensed something dishonest in Cousin Alberto, revealed in a sly expression, or an edginess of manner, but it would not be true.   Cousin Alberto was twenty years old when he came to New York to work with Father.  To my seven-year-old eyes, my uncle was a tall man with gold necklaces, a white teeth smile, a big laugh, and lots of dark curly hair, even on his chest.  He treated us children as if we were household pets.  He greeted us, patted us on the head, and then ignored us.  For me, he was only another member of my parents’ social circle, just a more frequent visitor because he was family.

            The social sections of the newspapers showed Cousin Alberto in nightclubs with celebrities, or escorting a famous model to the opening of a Broadway show.  He always looked the same, smiling his wide, confident smile, waving agreeably to his audience.  He truly believed he was untouchable, too smart to get caught.  He didn’t reckon with Angelina.  She was smarter, and in her way, more devious than Cousin Alberto.

            Later, I asked Angelina to tell me about Cousin Alberto’s arrest. 

            “Two policemen came to the office early one morning.  Alberto was lounging at his desk, you know how he does.”  She leaned back in her chair, exuding arrogance, just like Alberto.  I had to laugh.  “He was smoking a cigar and talking on the telephone, loud, in Italian.  One of the cops stepped up and said, “Alberto Salerno?  I have a warrant for your arrest.”  Just like in the movies.  You should have seen Alberto’s face.  His eyebrows lifted up like this.  He was really surprised.  He said, “What did I do?  This is a mistake.”

            “You are Alberto Giovanni Salerno?” the other cop said.   Then he read Alberto his Miranda rights.  When the first cop pulled out handcuffs, Alberto went a little pale.  “Are these necessary?” he said.  “Put out your hands,” the cop said.  Before he got into the elevator, Alberto yelled at Norma his secretary to call his lawyer.  And then he was gone.  In jail.  And good riddance.”  Angelina clapped her hands as if she were brushing away dirt.

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Chapter 16:  Mr. Braithewaite’s Story

            The dream begins the same way as the first in which Teresa is the little girl with the butterscotch pony, only the scene has expanded like a panoramic shot in a movie.  Now, in the curious way of dreams, Teresa is both the little girl in the dream and the observer.  The father is the same lean, blue-eyed man with the loving smile.  He presents her with the pony, only this time he says, “Here you are my darling little bird, my Maggie-pie.  A pony of your very own.” 

            “Oh, Da, she’s lovely,” the girl says, patting the horse’s nose.

            He lifts her up onto the pony’s back and leads her around the grassy yard.  She feels a surge of pure joy from her toes in the stirrups to the dark curls on her head.  Beyond the pasture, Teresa the observer can see a low farmhouse.  Out of the door comes an older man with a shock of gray hair.  He runs toward them across the grass.  As he gets closer, Teresa, who is also Maggie on the pony, can see the man’s face is anguished.  He runs toward them, waving his arms and shouting, “George!  George!” 

            When he is close enough to be heard, the older man calls, “Eliza’s in a bad way!  Her time’s come and she’s bleeding something fierce!  I sent Harry for the doctor!  You’d better hurry!”

            For the girl on the pony, the day’s happiness drains away as if a plug were pulled from the sunlit sky and dark clouds rushed in.  There is a surge of shadows and the scene folds and then reopens at a graveside under a rainy sky.  Three mourners in dark, worn clothing cluster in the mud around the grave where two simple coffins, large and small, become shiny and slick in the rain.  Teresa, as the little Maggie, holds the older man’s hand.  She feels him trembling with sobs.  Her chest is so heavy with loss that she can barely breathe.

             Teresa awakens with tears on her face.  She feels sadder than she has in years, not since the death of her little boy, so many years ago.  The digital clock by the bedside glows 2:48 in red numbers.  Teresa turns on the light.  She wipes her eyes with a tissue and blows her nose. 

            “Whew, this is some painful way to get information, Margaret.” 

            She lies in the bed with moonlight striping the covers, and lets herself remember Marco, her baby boy.  She rarely opens that box of memory, but here in the predawn in a house not her own, she spends time with him, his tiny, perfect fingers, his twisted little legs and feet. 

            “Oh, Marco,” Teresa sighs.  There is something so terrible about tiny white coffins covered in flowers.

            Morning finally comes in shafts of bright sunlight and ecstatic birdsong.  Teresa lies in bed, letting the light glow through her eyelids.  She wishes she were like those birds, able to greet each new day with such a fury of joy.  She fingers the necklace she has worn for almost forty years.  It is a flat, cream-colored spiral, set in beveled gold.  Angelina gave it to Teresa when Marco was born, explaining that the spiral was actually the door of a sea snail.  One could find these delicate spirals in the beach sand of the Costa del Sol, but it took a sharp eye and much searching.  In her travels, Teresa has found a few of these herself, but none as lovely as the one she wears. 

            In less than a quarter of an hour, Teresa is dressed and stepping through the wrought-iron garden gate.  Mr. Braithewaite is there as she’d hoped.  Today he is deadheading a patch of primroses.  The battered brown felt hat is crushed down on his head.  He has his pipe clamped between his teeth; it seems to have gone out.

            “Good morning,” Teresa calls out.  “Do you have a moment to chat?”

            He waves her over without turning around.  “Can’t get up until these are done or I’ll never get down again.  The damp weather aggravates my joints.”

            “Yes, it can do that.  I can help, if you like.”  Teresa squats down beside him, mentally congratulating herself on the decades of yoga that allow her to be limber still.  She begins to nip off the brown, spent flowers, tossing them into the frayed basket.

            “What can you tell me about the Braithewaites who lived here in 1790?” she asks.

            “Let’s see,” Mr. Braithewaite pauses and squints up at the sky as if the answer might be scrolled in the passing clouds.  “John Braithewaite worked the farm with his father, who tried raising dairy cows.  But the land couldn’t support a large dairy operation, so, after John’s father died, he supplemented the farm with wrecking.  They smuggled out the brandy, you know, and tea, keeping whatever else they could use, and selling the rest.”  There is a long pause while Mr. Braithewaite relights his pipe.  “At some point, John joined up with the wreckers who put out false lights.”  Another pause while he puffs and shifts to the left.   Teresa feels disappointed.  This is the same story she heard from Miss Micklewhite.  She was hoping for more details from a member of the family. 

            Mr. Braithewaite continues, “His son, George, was Margaret’s father.  I suppose you’ve heard about Margaret from Miss Micklewhite.  George had been a partner in the farming and the wrecking, but he balked at joining the false lighters.  Said it was one thing to pick up cargo from foundered ships, another to be the cause of the wreck.  He packed up his family: his wife Mary, Margaret, and their infant son, and moved to Somerset.”

            “But I heard that Margaret’s mother died in childbirth,” Teresa says, surprised.  “And I thought her mother’s name was Eliza.”

            Mr. Braithewaite turns abruptly to squint at Teresa, almost scowling.  “Who told you that?”

            “Uh, I–I don’t remember,” Teresa stammers.  “Someone who was a guest here, perhaps.”  Why would two such conflicting versions exist? she wonders. 

            Mr. Braithewaite says, “I don’t know anything about that.  The family moved away, that’s the story handed down to my forebears.  And now, Ms. Salerno, you’ll excuse me.  I’m due to meet with my solicitor at ten.” He creaks slowly to standing.

            Teresa stands up as well, brushing soil from her jeans.  “About how old would Margaret have been when her family left Devonshire?” 

            “Hmmm…around ten years old, I should think.  Ta.”  He moves off down the path, leaving Teresa with more questions than before the conversation began.

*

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Chapter 15:  Angelina

            Teresa pushes back from the desk and peers out the window.  It is still raining; drops trickle down the panes in silver streaks.  Running her fingers through her salt and pepper bob, Teresa remembers that day, the day Angelina came into their lives.  Of course, Teresa was furious at first.  Mother was dead less than a year.  It soon became obvious that Angelina was no new acquaintance of Father’s.  The newlyweds were far too comfortable with each other, and their conversation overflowed with references to mutual friends and experiences that seemed to span years in Italy.  Teresa wanted to hate Angelina, wanted to pounce on innumerable faults and reprehensible qualities, but she could find none.  Angelina was just like her name, a little angel.  What she saw in Father was a mystery. 

            Angelina enchanted the twins within a week of her arrival.  Both Debo and Dolly were at home until school started.  Angelina asked them to show her New York.  Each evening the trio came bursting into the apartment in high spirits, shouting phrases in Italian. 

            A rueful smile is on Teresa’s lips as she recalls her own hostile behavior.  She maintained loyalty to Mother for a month or two, but Angelina won her over in the end.  She was, Teresa thinks, the most patient, generous, and loving person any of us children had ever known.  She was lighthearted, funny, and fun.  Angelina even smoothed out some of Father’s hard edges.

            Rubbing her eyes with her fingertips, Teresa realizes that she’s been at the computer for hours.  The battery needs charging.  She opens the desk drawer to get out the charger.  It isn’t there, so Teresa goes downstairs to see if she left it in her carrying case.  While she is in the living room, she opens the front door.  Clouds are high, backlit by the full moon.  There are puddles on the paths, but the rain has almost stopped.  Everything smells fresh and earthy and fragrant.  She breathes in deeply several times, decides to leave the door open for some clean air. 

            Upstairs again, Teresa sees that the mug that held her tea is lying on its side.  The cold tea has trickled into the open desk drawer soaking some of her tourist pamphlets.  She picks up the dripping papers and drops them into the trashcan.  Underneath the papers, the thin wood of the bottom of the drawer is wet and beginning to warp.  Teresa gets a bunch of paper towels from the kitchen.  She blots up as much of the wetness as she can and leaves the drawer open to dry. 

            “If you knocked over the tea, Margaret, I can tell you I don’t appreciate it.  You could have damaged my computer, not to mention this antique desk,” Teresa says into the room’s shadows.  “I told you I’d do the writing, but you have to do your part and get me some information, too.”  She goes back to the kitchen with the mug and a handful of wet paper towels.  “I’m glad there’s no one here to witness me talking to a dead woman,” Teresa mutters.

            She tosses out the towels and rinses the mug in the sink.  “Well, it’s not the first time I’ve conversed with a ghost,” Teresa says.

            She remembers when Father’s spirit appeared to her after he died.  It was always preceded by the scent of cigar smoke.  To this day, cigar smoke makes Teresa snap into a state of alertness and anxiety, even though Father’s ghost hasn’t been around for decades.

            Teresa stands for a few minutes in the open doorway, taking in the moonlit path and the scents of the wet earth and foliage.  She thinks she can hear the sea.  She closes the door and then checks the electric meter and appliances.  It has become her habit since the first night’s misadventures.  In the bedroom, Teresa opens the window halfway before sliding into bed.  In the early morning, she has another dream.

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Chapter 14: Mother’s Legacy

            Cousin Alberto must have told Mother that I had seen them at the subway entrance.  Her presence in the family rooms suddenly became scarce.  If Father was home for dinner, she ate with us, and afterward, she sat with him in the living room while he smoked a cigar.  Otherwise, she was in her workroom, at the salon, or out playing bridge.  The workroom was ill-named since Mother no longer worked for Salerno Imports.  Mostly she sat on the chaise longue, smoked one cigarette after another, and read magazines.  Or she talked on the telephone.  I could hear her voice droning on in her flat New Jersey squawk even from my bedroom down the hall.

            In front of the twins, who were just turning thirteen, our parents behaved as they always had.  The business was the main topic of their conversations.  Politics and world events came up too from time to time.  The atmosphere in the apartment was thick and heavy, a viscous sad syrup that clung to us all.  How desperately I wanted to move out!  Any number of college girlfriends had asked me to share a flat with them.  Even though I was twenty-one, I stayed at home for the twins’ sake.  They were in their own teenage world, relying mostly on each other for support and solace.  Since Father was locked in his depression, and Mother was avoiding all of us, I felt I was the only one left to mind the house and make sure the girls had some supervision. 

            I divided my time among classes, study, and the twins.  On weekends I took them out to a show or a film, or shopping.  They liked to do girl things, like get a manicure and pedicure.  They also liked roller-skating, probably because there were boys doing it, so we’d go to the park, have lunch at the cafe.  I loved Dolly and Debo because they were my sisters, but I didn’t like them very much in those years.  They appeared to have inherited our mother’s rather vacuous approach to life.  A new pair of jeans and lunch at a fancy restaurant seemed to satisfy them.  Our conversations bordered on inane, no matter how hard I tried to guide them into deeper introspection.  For a while I thought they were hiding their profound private thoughts.  Then I gave up and accepted that they were genuinely shallow.  Sad to say, their futures looked to me like a mirror of our mother’s life: a white-collar job, marriage for money, and adultery for excitement.  For a few months, Dolly thought she wanted to be a nun.  But when she and Debo turned fifteen and were allowed to date the most acceptable boys of those who had been sniffing around, Dolly easily gave up her aspirations for the religious life.

            When I was twenty-two, my mother fell ill.  By the time she saw a doctor, the lung cancer was well advanced.  The odd thing was that our routines hardly altered.  Mother went out less, but she continued to smoke and read magazines on the chaise longue in her workroom.  The twins went to school and went on dates.  Father hunkered down in the living room with his ever-present Cubana cigar.  Then the chaise longue morphed into a hospital bed.  Hospice workers tiptoed in and out, and then, one day, Mother was gone.

            Did I miss my mother?  Not really.  I did not mourn for the guilty adulteress who sneaked out of the apartment and avoided making eye-contact with me.   I was angry with her for her immorality, and for the way she abdicated responsibility for her children.  On reflection, and believe me, I did a lot of hard thinking in the days after her funeral, I recognized two things she did for which I knew I would be eternally grateful.  Until I was ten or eleven, she made sure I read all the books on our summer reading lists provided by the school librarian.  In this way, she fostered my learning and my love of literature.  She would call one of the big bookstores in the City and ask the clerks in the music department, “What is popular?  What are kids listening to?”  She did the same with books.  Then she would send me to the store and I’d come home with an armful of greatness.  That is how I knew the score of the musical Hair, and Bob Dylan’s Times They Are A-Changin’ long before any of my peers had heard of either one.

            The other gift I received from Mother was the skill of money management.  When I was nine, I got an allowance of six dollars a week.  She insisted that I use two dollars for spending money, two dollars for school supplies, and two dollars for savings.  As I got older, my allowance increased, but the proportions remained the same.  Mother monitored my spending mercilessly.  The result was that, by the time I graduated from college, I had a tidy sum in savings, and a deeply ingrained habit of good money management.  I’ve never had a problem supporting myself, even though my income has fluctuated, especially now, since I retired from the publishing business in order to write full time.

            A few weeks after Mother died, Father came out of his sad fog.  He began going to the offices of Salerno Enterprises every morning.  He donated a huge amount of money to build a new wing for cancer treatment at the hospital.  His picture began to appear in the paper again: King Olive attending charity events and opening nights.  “The recently bereaved C.E.O. of Salerno Enterprises, Anthony Salerno, aka King Olive, attended the opening of the exhibition at MOMA…”

            Debo surprised us all by demanding to be sent to NYMA, the New York Military Academy in the Hudson Valley.    Apparently, she had clear memories of visiting Junior there.  A little bewildered by her passion, Father agreed to let her go.  Debo had never expressed any interest in Junior or the military; her only concerns had always been clothes and boys and gossip.  Suddenly she was sixteen, looking serious and crisp in her uniform when we visited her on Parents’ Day.

            At first, Dolly was lost without her twin sister.  She drifted around the apartment after school, watched endless hours of television.  All through the school year she languished in sorrow and lethargy.  When June came, I cornered Father in the living room and demanded that he do something about Dolly.  For once, Father listened.  He got her a job at his office, as a secretarial assistant.  Dolly liked it, and she was so adept that by the end of the summer, her supervisor was seriously training her.

            During that summer, Father and Cousin Alberto went to Italy for three weeks.  In late August, when New York City was a sweltering mass of exhaust fumes and short-tempered people, Father came home with a new wife.

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Chapter 13: Killerton House

            Later that afternoon, as she drives away from Killerton House, Teresa accuses herself of being jaded.  In her travels she has toured many of these old elegant homes that were turned into museums because the owners couldn’t afford the upkeep.  Killerton House was much like the others she has seen, except for the vintage clothing display.  For this exhibit it was worth the tricky drive in the rain.  The mizzle did eventually turn into a steady downpour.  Visibility is limited, so Teresa creeps along the slick roads at fifty kilometers per hour.  She reviews the outfits she saw that came from Margaret’s time.

            A woman in Margaret’s society would not have worn the fancy silk evening clothes on display.  Working women wore simple linen and woolen dresses with a cap or bonnet, an apron, and a shawl for warmth.  The colors were muted, but may have been brighter when they were new.  Hair was worn in loose curls.  Men wore knee breeches, boots, and loose blouse-like shirts for work.  Seeing the clothing of Margaret’s time, and the utensils and furniture the people used, brought the period into focus.

            Killerton House itself is grand indeed.  The grounds are lush with flowering shrubs, climbing vines, and long vistas across emerald lawns.  There is even a bear hut, an odd little cottage with a thatched roof and a barred bay window.  Though the Manor House is not imposing, Teresa prefers its human-sized earthiness.

            Teresa realizes that she is already planning the project, Margaret’s story.  It is typical of her process.  When she is in the middle of writing a piece and can see the end clearly, Teresa begins to mull over the next one.  She considers the research she will have to do.  She must look up the historic events that frame the time period.  She’ll need to find out about the lives of farmers in Devonshire, and, of course, the doings of the smugglers and wreckers. 

Tomorrow, Teresa thinks, I’ll make an appointment to talk to Miss MIcklewhite.  And maybe I’ll rise early enough tomorrow morning to hear what Mr. Braithewaite knows.

 Teresa’s plans occupy her until she is back again at her desk in front of the laptop.  She is wearing a dry sweatsuit; her wet clothes are hanging on the shower curtain rod in the bathroom.  A fresh cup of Earl Grey and some biscuits wait on a small tray.  After answering the five emails, one from her editor, and the rest from her sister, Debo, Teresa opens her writing file.