The House on Olive Street Page 3

  She began flipping through her Blackberry, calling Gabby’s last agent first. Then the last editor with whom Gabby had worked. And then it began to snowball. Odd that Sable hadn’t foreseen this; Gabby was both well-known and well liked in publishing. Although she’d never reached bestseller status, her works were respected, her reviews had been good and she was highly regarded as a bright, talented professional. Gabby’s reputation in New York was sterling. In her twenty years and twenty titles—five nonfiction and fifteen novels—Gabby had worked with some of the industry leaders. On each call she made, Sable was given the names of two more people to be notified, many of them publishers and presidents. As the California clock ticked on and business in New York wound to a close, she was given home phone numbers or extensions to bypass the publishers’ switchboards. Naturally, everyone wanted updated information—the cause of her death, the date and place of the funeral, et cetera, something Virginia could follow up later.

  It was five o’clock when she found she couldn’t go on. Her mouth was dry and her insides were cramped. She hadn’t eaten anything all day and hadn’t paused in her telephoning even long enough to get herself a cold drink. Of course, Dorothy wouldn’t trudge up the stairs to ask if there was anything she needed. Sable dragged herself wearily away from the desk and down the stairs to the kitchen—the spotless kitchen. She browsed through the refrigerator; it was stuffed with the groceries for the brunch, including the champagne.

  She hit the intercom button and waited for Dorothy’s dry response from the cottage. “Yes?”

  “Do you suppose you could make me something to eat? I’m quite done in from notifying people of my best friend’s death.”

  “Yes.” Not “Yes, dear,” or “Yes, ma’am” or even “Yes, you bitch.”

  “I’m going to take a shower. I’ll eat in the kitchen. In thirty minutes.”

  It was precisely a half hour later that Sable descended again. She wore satin lounging pajamas and silk slippers, chic even when in mourning. She entered the kitchen to find that Dorothy was already gone, her chore finished for the time being. There on the table, perfectly appointed for one, was a brunch. The woman had prepared the goddamned brunch food. If it wasn’t bad enough that this was to be her dead friend’s meal, how about the fact that this food—cream, eggs, cheese, sausage, mushrooms, melon and strawberries—had been sitting in the trunk of the car for two or three hours? Was she trying to kill Sable, or merely wound her emotionally?

  Sable felt an ache in her throat but would not cry. Ever since the last time she had really cried, when crying had almost killed her, she’d vowed that she would never cry that hard again. Never. It was too dangerous. Too futile.

  She left the brunch on the table and heated up a can of chicken noodle soup. She poured it into a bowl, leaving the can conspicuously on the counter for Dorothy to find and ponder. She grabbed the box of saltines, a diet soda, and took her dinner on a tray to her suite. Goddamn her, goddamn her, why does she hate me so? she asked herself as she trudged back up the stairs. I’ve been good to her. Kind. Patient. What do I have to do? What right has she to hate me so?

  Her legal name was Sable Tennet, because she’d had it changed in court, but that was not the name she was born with. Only Elly and Gabby knew that, and now Gabby was gone. Elly would never tell. Sable had threatened her once and Elly said, “Why would I tell anyone? Secrets don’t intrigue me.”

  Sable had met Gabby and Eleanor long ago, way before it had ever occurred to Sable to write her way out of her misery. Way before Sable bottomed out and ran away from everyone and everything. The only two people who knew her before and after were Elly and Gabby. Sable lived in constant fear of someone finding out who she really was and where she really came from, before she worked her way up.

  Worked her way up indeed. She’d gone from a poor girl with a GED and one accidental year of college—where she’d met Gabby and Eleanor—to a world-famous novelist. She wrote fast—stories with emotional sting and happy endings. Women in trouble could identify with lonely heroines who were desperate, the odds being they would never get the job/money/recognition/man. She was a fixture on the New York Times list; she was now worth millions. Her books were printed in more languages than she knew existed. She had rich friends, knew celebrities and socialites. She dined with famous actors, sports stars, publishers and producers. She had taken meetings on yachts, rested with friends in Nice between books and flown to Monte Carlo for dinner. She was much more than a writer. She was a star.

  And alone. The golden ones she partied with were not her friends, they were business acquaintances. They helped her reputation and appearance. With Gabby gone, so was the one person who had loved her unconditionally, had never been jealous of her success—nor fooled by it either. Gabby, the nurturer and admirer and true soul mate, had known the facts of all that Sable had endured to get what she’d gotten. Gabby had respected her even though she was pretty sure she didn’t deserve it. That was something she would never have again. No one, not even Elly, knew the extent of what Sable had lost today. Everyone else had people, it seemed. Barbara Ann had her husband and children, Beth had her husband and large, extended family, and Elly had her friends and colleagues from the college.

  So on the evening of Gabby’s death, Sable sat in her bedroom suite alone. She indulged in two vodkas, exactly, to take the edge off her internal pain. Fearing alcohol, she only partook with the greatest of care. She would not need the drinks if she could only cry, and loosen the coils of grief inside her. But it wouldn’t come. Never again.

  She would have liked to talk to Eleanor, but couldn’t bear to hear the older woman handle this in her flat, direct manner. It would be even worse if Sable found Eleanor crumbling; Sable might fall into the deep ravine of pain as well, and perhaps this time not claw her way back up. It was better, she thought, to imagine Eleanor coping than to know the truth.

  She sipped her vodkas and thought about her life before and during her relationship with Gabby. She eventually slept from 4:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. She was in her kitchen for breakfast—showered, short blond hair perfectly styled, makeup tasteful, decked in tan slacks of light wool and crisply starched white blouse—at 7:00 a.m. She had examined her reflection and knew she did not even look tired. Dorothy had appointed the kitchen table for one. A plate and cereal bowl stood ready and Dorothy was busy at the sink, not looking at her, not saying anything, awaiting further instructions.

  “It’s a damn good thing I didn’t see Gabby’s brunch on my plate again this morning, Dorothy, or I’d have chewed your ass good,” she said, the very first time she’d ever taken that tone with the grumpy housekeeper.

  Dorothy stiffened as though she’d been knocked against the sink.

  “I think fixing me the brunch that was to be prepared for my best friend’s birthday was damned insensitive of you, Dorothy. You might want to think about my feelings once in a while. There’s more to this job than dusting and vacuuming, you know. I am a human being.”

  All this was said without looking at her. Sable spoke while staring at her empty bowl. She was not a retiring person by any means and had reamed a few asses in New York in her day, but there was something about the housekeeper that held her at bay, that she wanted to beat, or win over. There was a reason why she put up with Dorothy, though it displeased her, though she wouldn’t indulge another human with so much patience.

  Finally, softly, “Would you like me to throw away the brunch food?” Dorothy asked.

  “Yes. Or take it for you and Art. Just be sensitive for once. I’m tired of your nasty attitude. And bring me the cornflakes, please.”

  It made Sable feel much better to have been firm. Elated, in fact. She abandoned plans of firing them. She’d coach Dorothy, teach her common courtesy. Wipe that goddamn scowl off her face.

  Dorothy was very, very much like Sable’s mother had been. A soured, bitter victim who thought only of herself and how abused she was by everyone around her. Dorothy even looked a little like S
able’s mother. Sable would recognize the likeness even better if Dorothy were lying on the sofa, blitzed, moaning about how badly men treated her or how unfair her boss had been or what a bad lot in life she’d gotten with a kid to raise alone. Poor me, poor me, poor me, while she did nothing to make her life better or love and nurture her child. Or her grandchild. But with Dorothy, her grim countenance present in her constant industry, Sable could only tell how alike they were in their unhappy eyes, their meanly set mouths, their silent, mistreated air. Sable put up with this in Dorothy because in a way, if she could change Dorothy, cure her, get her to show some love and compassion, it would be like succeeding with her mother.

  She ate her breakfast in silence and when she finished and stood from the table, she looked at Dorothy. Dorothy did not turn from her chore of pulling the brunch food out of the refrigerator until Sable cleared her throat. Sable threw back her shoulders and lifted her chin. She’d try the next lesson with eye contact. “From now on, Dorothy, I would like you to speak to me as if you can abide my presence. You’ll say good morning. You’ll say good night. We’ll start with those two things and see how you handle them. And you’ll say them pleasantly, kindly, as though you actually give a shit whether I live or die.”

  They stared at each other for a long moment.

  “Starting now, Dorothy,” Sable said.

  “Goo…Good morning, ma’am.”

  “You can call me Sable, you know.”

  “Good morning, Sable,” she said.

  There, Sable thought. We’re making progress.

  THREE

  Barbara Ann’s pulsing brood did the best they could with her delicate condition of grief. They restrained their voices to some degree, erupting now and then out of pure habit. Mike and the boys knew Gabby, but they weren’t exactly close, so the loss was not theirs by any means. It was hers and hers alone. And none of the other women would ever know how much she had lost. Maybe loss wasn’t the right word. Ended was closer. They would never know all that had ended today.

  She cried through the afternoon and then at four o’clock, like an automaton, she zapped a roast and then threw it in the oven to finish cooking, boiled potatoes and carrots, heated buns and tore up lettuce, all through the narrow slits of her swollen eyes. Barbara Ann had the survival skills of a mother of four wild boys; she could do everything fast and many things at once. She could condense the cooking of a four-hour meal into forty minutes, and while the microwave purred, she collected a pile of dirty clothes. On her way to the laundry room, she wiped the hair and spit out of a bathroom sink with a T-shirt. On her way from the laundry room back to the kitchen, she picked up seven pairs of shoes and tossed them into their respective cages, then caught the potatoes before they boiled over.

  Once everyone was informed as to the reason for her pain and tears, all she had to do was lift her chin with that injured air and purse her lips tightly together, and the din would subside.

  For example, when Joe came home from basketball practice, about the time everyone else was going for their second helpings—

  “Jesus Christ, get outta here with those feet, buttface.”

  “Bite me! This is my house, too!”

  “Not when you smell like bad cheese, it ain’t!”

  “Matt!” in a desperate whisper. “Mom!”

  And then, warning taken, in a much smaller voice, “Sorry. His feet smell like goat shit. Jesus.”

  While Sable sipped her vodkas in her sterile environs and cautiously took herself back through the hard days before she was rich and famous, Barbara Ann Vaughan took a cup of coffee outside to the patio of her two-story home in search of peace. She had to kick aside a pile of wet towels to pull out a chair from the patio table. It wasn’t yet pool season; they couldn’t be there from last year! Car washing, perhaps. Used her good beach towels to dry off a greasy, tar-spattered car. She removed jeans and a T-shirt from the chair so she could sit. She pushed aside the mess from a partially constructed, radio-operated model airplane so she could put her coffee down. The craftsman, Bobby she thought, had probably lost interest by now; she’d been complaining about it for two weeks.

  From the house she could hear her little darlings, the smallest of whom was six feet and a hundred and ninety pounds, and her loving spouse.

  “Way to go, dickhead. I was gonna eat that!”

  “It wasn’t that great anyway.”

  “You wanna shut the fuck up, I’m on the phone here.”

  “Hey! Watch your mouth! I don’t want to be hearing that shit outta you! Got that?”

  “Got it.”

  Eat what? Barbara wondered. She’d just thrown a slaughtered cow at them. She rubbed the bridge of her nose, an odd habit she’d acquired somewhere, and felt the tears begin to trickle from her eyes again. She particularly loved it when her husband, Mike, disciplined the boys with statements like, “I don’t want to hear that swearing shit outta you, asshole.” There was a time, long ago, when his failure to see the irony in such a statement seemed precious in its simple, straightforward way.

  Gabby, Gabby, Gabby, how could you leave me to this! I’ll disappear into a blot of grease and never be seen again! I’ll fall down the toilet in the middle of the night!

  The sliding door opened and Joe and Bobby, seventeen and nineteen, spilled outside with their fight, a dish towel-snapping tussle. She splashed over some of the hot coffee and groaned. She glared at them meanly. They didn’t see her right away, hidden as she was in the deepening dusk, alone on the patio. When they stopped long enough to take notice of her, they suddenly relaxed their weapons.

  “Sorry, Mom.”

  “Yeah, sorry, Mom.”

  This was not the life she had envisioned when, twenty-three years ago, Mike Vaughan begged her to marry him and send him off to Seoul, Korea, as a fulfilled helicopter mechanic. “Marry me, Barbara Ann, and I’ll come home, I swear to God, in one whole piece, and give you a shitload of kids.” She had been twenty—barely. A naive, only child who had not done anything for herself since birth. So naive it never crossed her mind that there was no war in Korea in which Mike might be injured or killed, but Vietnam was fresh in her mind and she didn’t take the time to differentiate between military bases and their functions. She married him to keep him safe. She had worked in a Realtor’s office, answering phones, until he returned. Ten months after Mike came home, Matt was born. Then Bobby, then Joe, then Billy.

  “As long as you make them comfortable, they’ll stay,” Eleanor said of her sons.

  “Don’t fight it, Barb. Just use your book money to get a small, tidy apartment nearby to write in,” Sable advised. “And stop indulging them in everything. Force them to make their own lives. At least two of them are over eighteen.” Sable—the voice of parenting experience.

  “I would do anything to have four sons,” said Beth, who’d been trying to get pregnant for years.

  “You can change your life in many ways, Barbara Ann,” Gabby said, “but people are permanent. And you have blessings in Mike and that half a baseball team of yours.”

  But people aren’t permanent, are they, Gabby? she thought, tears running over.

  Barbara Ann loved Gabby deeply and her feeling of loss was incredible, but the emotion that was pouring down her cheeks was combined with something else. My God, I could die before I’ve done what I want to do! Gabby was only fifty, healthy as an ox! I could die before I make any real money on a book, before I succeed at this, before I’m known at all, before even one of these louts gets a life of his own! Before I ever live in a house where a single toilet seat is down!

  Barbara Ann was so disappointed in her life. Not that she didn’t love her family. She must, she put up with a lot from them. Mike, though older and a little thicker around the middle, was still a handsome and lusty man. He could still get to her, easily seduce her, make her feel like a girl again, even with some of his inept flattery like “Honey, you’re just pretty as shit.” And the boys, each one of them damn good-looking, were ju
st like their dad—rugged, masculine, athletic. Men’s men. Romance-novel men. Rough, loud and big. God, were they big. They took up so much space; the smallest shoe she ever tripped over was an eleven.

  It seemed to Barbara Ann that her life kept expanding without getting much better. The boys grew into men and required more space; they were in need of an awesome amount of fuel; their possessions became larger and more complex. She and Mike bought a five-bedroom house to accommodate them, but they kept adding on to it, in search of places to put people and things. They doubled the size of the family room. At least the result included an expanded master bedroom upstairs, a sitting room and dormer in which Barbara Ann could work and store her writing business. They built a detached garage—the original two-port garage barely kept the rain off their bicycles and athletic gear. Now they were a six-car family. Her driveway and the street in front of their house looked like a used-car lot. The boys had inherited their father’s flair for mechanics, so every vehicle but hers was in a constant state of repair or improvement. They put in a pool and laid a slab of concrete for a basketball hoop. There was a lawn mower motor that Mike had been meaning to repair all winter sitting in her bedroom, for God’s sake. Every dime of her book money went to household improvements to make it seem as though they weren’t stuffed into this large house.

  Her income had grown without her work going better, without her feeling more successful. She had entered the business on a wild lark nine years ago. A friend of hers had taken up writing category romances and miraculously sold a book. Barbara Ann followed, quite literally. She joined a writers’ group, attended several seminars and conferences, read dozens, if not hundreds, of romances, set up a typewriter in the bedroom and took on the challenge. Within two years she sold her first book. She sold a second before the first was out. Her income in three years’ time was seven thousand. In four years it was twelve thousand. In five years it was twenty-two and in six years it was forty-six. Now, soon to release her twenty-sixth novel, her income this year would be in the neighborhood of sixty-eight thousand.