The Gate House

“Yes. They smell good. And the family can take them home as a memento afterwards.”

“After what?”

“After… the… person…” She changed the subject and asked, “Which hospice is the lady residing at?”

“Fair Haven.”

“We can deliver that for you.”

“Actually, I’m on my way there now and that’s too big to carry, so…” I looked around, and in the corner of the shop was a shelf lined with stuffed animals, including a few Teddy bears, which are big around here because the man who inspired the bear, Teddy Roosevelt, lived in nearby Oyster Bay. I took the best-looking Teddy bear from the shelf, put it on the counter, and said, “I’ll take this.”

“That’s very nice.” She put a pink ribbon around the bear’s neck and stuck a sprig of lavender in the ribbon.

I paid in cash, and the young lady said to me, “She’ll like that. Good luck.”

Back in the car, I headed west toward the hospice house in Glen Cove. I glanced at the fluffy bear sitting beside me, and suddenly I felt a rush of emotion pass over me. It hit me that Ethel Allard was dying, and that so many of the people I once knew were dead, and in an instant I remembered all of them and saw their faces from long ago, smiling, usually in some social setting or holiday occasion, a drink close by, like in the photos I’d just seen.

Where, I wondered, had the years gone? And why hadn’t I appreciated those moments when my world was safe, familiar, and intact?

Well, you can’t go back, and even if I could, I’m not sure if I could have or would have changed anything that led to the end of my life as I knew it, or the end of Frank Bellarosa’s life as he knew it.

Frank Bellarosa, on a cold winter day a decade ago, was driving from Brooklyn and heading to a restaurant in Glen Cove with some business associates for a meeting. They got off the Long Island Expressway, became lost, and somehow wound up on Grace Lane.

They spotted the abandoned estate called Alhambra, and, as Frank told me later, the Lombardy poplars that lined the driveway, and the red-tiled stucco villa, reminded him of his Italian roots. He made inquiries, and bought the estate. Then he moved in. Then I met him. Then Susan and I accepted his invitation to come by for coffee. Then a lot of things happened, ending with my wife murdering her new neighbor and lover.

And now, ten years later, the original cast of this tragedy – -including the dead and the dying – has reassembled for the last and final act.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I headed west on Duck Pond Road, passing Friends Academy, a prep school founded by the local Quakers. Susan had gone to Friends, driven to class, she told me, in a big Lincoln by George Allard, who, as one of the last of the Stanhope servants, wore many hats, including a chauffeur cap.

The Gold Coast of the 1950s and early ’60s, as I recalled, was in a state of transition between the old, pre-war world of Social Register families with dwindling fortunes, and the social upheavals that would sweep away most of what remained of the old order.

Many of these changes were for the better. George, for instance, ceased being a servant and became an employee. That didn’t improve his driving, I’m sure, but it did give him weekends off.

As for Ethel the Red, as I secretly called her because she was a socialist, she never considered herself a servant (especially after she slept with Augustus Stanhope), and she’s lived long enough to see many of her idealistic dreams realized.

A sign informed me that I had entered the Incorporated City of Glen Cove, which is actually a medium-sized town of about twenty thousand people – or more, if you count the newly arrived immigrants who did not bother with the citizenship requirements.

Glen Cove is located on Hempstead Harbor and the Long Island Sound, and like many north shore Long Island communities, it was founded by English settlers in the 1600s, including my distant ancestors, who, when they arrived, did not bother asking the local Matinecock Indians for citizenship applications or work visa permits.

Anyway, the white skins and the red skins lived in relative peace and harmony for a century, mostly as a result of the Indians dying from European diseases. The British occupied Long Island for much of the Revolution, and many of the local inhabitants remained loyal to the Crown, including, I confess, the Sutters, who still have this conser-vative streak in them – except for my late father, who was a liberal Democrat and who used to get into political arguments at Republican-dominated family gatherings. My crazy mother, Harriet, is also a progressive, and she and Ethel were always allies against the majority of unenlightened, repressive male pigs who once dominated the society of the Gold Coast.

But even that had been changing, and when I left here ten years ago, if you had a friend or neighbor who was a Democrat, you could talk about it openly without worrying about real estate values plummeting.

On the subject of war and politics, I was half listening to a conservative radio talk show, and I turned up the volume to listen to a caller saying, “We need to nuke them before they nuke us.”

The host, trying to sound a bit rational, replied, “Okay, but who do we nuke?”

The caller answered, “All of them. Nuke Baghdad first so we don’t have to send our boys there to get killed.”

“Okay, but maybe we should just nuke the Al Qaeda training camps first. They’ll all get the message.”

“Yeah. Nuke the camps, too.”

The host cut away for a commercial break that was preceded by the rousing patriotic music of John Philip Sousa, a former Long Island resident who seemed to be making a comeback.

There had been an amazing transformation in the political and social culture since 9/11, and it was sort of jarring if you hadn’t been here to see it developing. Virtually every house had an American flag flying, including the shops and houses here in Glen Cove, not usually a bastion of conservatism. And nearly every vehicle had a flag on its ante

Anyway, back to the last century, when Glen Cove became home to a large immigrant Italian population, who found work building and maintaining the grand mansions and estate grounds. This manual labor for the rich eventually morphed over the generations into successful Italian-American-owned construction companies, landscaping enterprises, and related endeavors.

This was a great American success story, but unfortunately, a side effect of the large Italian population of Glen Cove is the existence of a small but persistent group of gentlemen whose business is not landscaping. Thus it was that Mr. Frank Bellarosa from Brooklyn was on his way to Glen Cove, Long Island, a decade ago to meet some business associates at an Italian restaurant. Ironically, today, with GPS, he and his driver – was it Anthony, now known as Tony? – would not have gotten lost and wound up on Grace Lane, and Fate would have been sidetracked by satellite technology. Go figure.

I headed north on Dosoris Lane, a seventeenth-century road that led toward the Sound, and on which some Sutters had lived in centuries past.

I’ve never had occasion to visit the Fair Haven Hospice House, but the nice lady on the phone had given me good directions, and assured me that Mrs. Allard could have visitors – though she also cautioned that this situation could change by the time I arrived.

Dosoris Lane passed through what had once been eight great estates, all belonging to the Pratt family, and built by Mr. Charles Pratt of Standard Oil for himself and seven of his eight children. Why number eight didn’t get an estate is a mystery to me, but I’m sure Charles Pratt had his reasons, just as William Peckerhead of Hilton Head had his reasons for deeding the Stanhope guest cottage and ten acres to Susan, as sole owner. Susan, of course, could have changed the deed, but that would have angered William, and we don’t want to get Daddy angry.