Cradle (18 page)

Nick bent down on his knees to pick up the scattered contents of the folder. He looked
at the portrait carefully, his heart skipping a few beats as he remembered how beautiful
she had been. He started to sort the typed pages together. At the top of one of the
pages was written, in all capital letters, ‘MONIQUE’, and then underneath it, ‘by
Nicholas C. Williams’. He started to read.

‘The wonder of life lies in its unpredictability. Each of our lives is irrevocably
changed by the things we cannot possibly forecast. We walk out of the door every morning
to go to work or to class or even to the grocery store, and ninety-nine times out
of a hundred we return without anything having happened that we will remember even
a month in the future. On those days our lives are swept up in the banality of living,
in the basic humdrum cadence of everyday existence. It is the other day, the magic
day, for which we live.

‘On this magic day our character becomes defined, our growth is accelerated, our emotional
transitions are made. Sometimes, maybe once in a lifetime, there will be a string
of these magic days, one after another, so full of life and change and challenge that
we are completely transformed by the experience and our souls become suffused with
a boundless joy. During that time we are often overcome by the simple and incredible
miracle of just being alive. This is the story of one such magic period.

‘It was spring break in Fort Lauderdale. Our swimming season had just finished at
Harvard and my uncle, as a present for my twenty-first birthday, offered to let me
use his condominium in Florida for a couple of weeks so I could unwind from the twin
rigours of studying and swimming practice….’

Nick had not looked at these pages for almost ten years. As he read the first few
paragraphs he remembered, vividly, the ecstasy in which they were written.
It was two nights before the party. She was at some social function that night, would
be too late, would come by first thing in the morning. I couldn’t sleep. It was the
first night in a week I had been away from her
. He stopped for a moment, old emotions twisting around inside him, making him feel
dizzy and slightly nauseous. He read the first paragraph again.
It was also before the pain. Before the incredible goddamn pain
.

For almost thirty minutes music had been playing on the radio. Nick had heard it,
he knew it was there, but he could not have identified any of the songs. It had been
background music. Now, just at the moment when his memories of Monique were the most
poignant, the Miami ‘classic rock-and-roll station’, WMIM, played Cyndi Lauper’s haunting
1984 hit ‘Time After Time’. The music seemed to increase markedly in amplitude. Nick
had to sit down and grab a breath. Until the song, he had been able to deal with his
memories of Monique. But somehow that song, the one he had played on the cassette
player in his car almost every night as he had made the drive from Fort Lauderdale
to Palm Beach to see her, carried with it all the youthful love, joy, fear, and anger
that had marked the entire affair. Nick was overwhelmed. As he sat on the couch and
listened to the song, hot tears welled up in his eyes and then ran softly down his
cheeks.

‘…Lying in my bed, I hear the clock tick, and think of you… Caught up in circles,
confusion is nothing new… Flashback, warm nights, almost left behind… Suitcases of
memories… Time after Time.’

‘You say, go slow, I fall behind…. The second hand unwinds….’ Brenda leaned over and
turned the volume down on the cassette player. ‘It’s me, Mr. Stubbs, honest. Brenda
Goldfine. Don’t you recognize me?’ She was shouting at an old man in a blue uniform
who was sitting on a stool in a small circular tower in the middle of the road. ‘And
that’s Teresa Silver in the back. She’s not feeling too well. Come on, open the gate
and let us through.’

The security guard climbed down from his stool and slowly walked out in front of Nick’s
old Pontiac. He wrote the licence number down on a note pad and then came around to
Brenda’s window. ‘All right this time, Brenda, but this is not according to the rules.
All visitors coming into Windsor Cove after ten o’clock at night must be cleared
ahead
of time.’

At length the guard raised the gate and Nick moved his car forward again. ‘The guy’s
really a pain in the ass,’ Brenda said to Nick, chewing gum as she talked. ‘Christ,
you’d think he owned one of the places or something.’ Nick had heard about Windsor
Cove. Or rather had read about it. Once when he was over at his uncle’s home in Potomac,
Maryland, there had been a copy of
Town and Country
magazine on the table and he had read about the ‘gracious life of Windsor Cove’.
Now, as he drove past the estates in the most prestigious section of Palm Beach, he
was awed by the personal wealth displayed.

‘Over there. That’s Teresa’s house.’ Brenda pointed at a colonial house set back about
a hundred yards from the road. Nick drove into the long semicircular driveway and
eventually stopped in front of a path leading to the front of the house. It was an
imposing place. Two full floors, six white columns over twenty feet high, an opulent
door whose top half was an arched, stained glass window of a white heron in flight
against a blue sky filled with fleecy clouds.

Brenda looked in the back of the car, where her friend was still unconscious. ‘Look,
I’d better handle this. I’ll go up and talk to Mrs. Silver and explain what happened
and everything. Otherwise you could be in deep shit. Sometimes she jumps to conclusions.’

By the time Brenda reached the front door to ring the bell, it had already opened.
An attractive woman in a red silk blouse and a pair of chic black slacks was waiting.
Nick guessed that she had probably been called by the security guard. He couldn’t
tell much about the conversation, but he could see that Teresa’s mother was asking
questions. After a couple of minutes, Brenda and the woman came back to the car. ‘You
didn’t tell me she was
still
passed out,’ Nick heard a surprisingly husky voice say. There was also some kind
of accent, European perhaps. ‘You know, Brenda, this is absolutely the last time she
can go anywhere with you. You just can’t control her. I’m not even sure that you try.’
The voice was angry but not strident.

Nick opened his door and climbed out of the car. ‘This is the guy I was telling you
about, Mrs. Silver,’ Brenda said. ‘Without him Teresa might still be lying on the
beach.’

Mrs. Silver extended her hand. Nick took it, feeling a little awkward. He didn’t know
how to shake hands with a woman. ‘I understand that I’m in your debt, young man,’
Mrs. Silver said graciously. ‘Brenda tells me that you rescued Teresa from all sorts
of horrors.’ The light from the street lamps played about her sculptured face. Her
hand was soft, sensual. Nick smelled just a trace of perfume, something exotic. Her
eyes were fixed on his, unwavering, inquisitive.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Nick said clumsily. ‘I mean, well, she had had too much to drink and
I thought the crowd of teenagers she was with were a little bit out of control.’ He
stopped. She was still watching him, measuring him. He was becoming agitated and didn’t
understand why. ‘Somebody had to help her and I just happened to be there….’ He trailed
off weakly.

Mrs. Silver thanked him again and turned to Brenda. ‘Your mother’s expecting you,
dear. We’ll stay out front until you get home. Flash your lights to let us know you’re
there.’ Brenda looked happy to be dismissed. She scampered off into the night in the
direction of the nearest house, about a hundred yards away.

There was a momentary pause as they watched the sixteen-year-old disappear. Nick found
himself stealing furtive looks at Mrs. Silver’s profile. An inchoate awareness of
what he was feeling made him more nervous.
Jesus, she’s beautiful. And young. How could she be the girl’s mother?
He was wrestling with a jumble of thoughts as he saw the lights flicker in the distance.

‘Good,’ she said, turning to Nick with a smile, ‘Brenda’s home. Now we can worry about
Teresa.’ She stopped for a moment and laughed. ‘Oh, I almost forgot. We haven’t been
formally introduced. I’m Teresa’s mother, Monica Silver.’

‘I’m Nick Williams,’ he said in response. Her dark eyes were fixed on him again. In
the reflected light the expression in her eyes seemed to vary. One moment she was
a pixie, then a seductress, then a very proper Palm Beach society woman. Or was Nick
imagining it? He couldn’t return her gaze any more. He felt his cheeks flush as he
averted his eyes.

‘I had to carry her from the beach to the parking lot,’ Nick said abruptly, as he
went around to the back door of his car and opened it. The teenager had been leaning
against the door and nearly fell out. She didn’t stir. He picked Teresa up and threw
her over his shoulder. ‘So it’s no problem for me to carry her for you now. I’m used
to it.’

They walked quietly down the path toward the house, Monica Silver leading by a few
steps. Nick watched her walk in front of him. She moved effortlessly, like a dancer,
with almost perfect posture. Her dark hair was wrapped up at the back in a chignon.
It must be very long
, he thought to himself with delight, imagining her hair flowing down her beautiful
back.

It was a warm and humid Palm Beach evening. Nick was sweating by the time they reached
the entrance. ‘Could you do me one more favour, Nick?’ Mrs Silver asked. ‘Could you
carry her up to her room? My husband’s not here and the help has all gone to bed.
And I seriously doubt if she’s going to get herself together well enough to climb
the stairs, even with my help, in the near future.’

Nick followed Mrs. Silver’s instructions and carried Teresa through the atrium, into
the living room, up the entry steps on to the platform, up the left flight to the
first floor, and then into her bedroom. It was huge. In her room Teresa had a king-size
four-poster bed, a giant television, an entire cabinet of movies for the VCR, and
a sound system that would have been a credit to any rock-and-roll band. Bruce Springsteen
posters and photos were all over the room. Nick laid Teresa gently on her bed. She
murmured ‘Thank you,’ indicating to him that at least she was semiconscious. Her mother
bent over her and gave her a kiss.

Nick left the two of them alone and went back down the stairs into the living room.
He could not believe that somebody really could live in a house like this. Why, the
living room alone was bigger than the house in Falls Church where he grew up. He wandered
around the room after he came down the stairs. There were original paintings on the
walls, crystal glass chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, and art objects and bric-a-brac
both on the tables and in every nook and cranny. It was all too much for him. He was
overwhelmed.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and involuntarily recoiled. Monica Silver chided him,
‘Goodness, you’re jumpy. It’s only me.’ He turned around to look at her. Was he imagining
it or had she somehow combed her hair and put on fresh makeup in the few seconds they
had been separated? For the first time he saw her in the full light. She was the most
beautiful woman he had ever seen. His breath was taken away and he felt giddy. Outside
he had not been able to see her skin clearly. Now he found himself staring at her
bare arms, following the elegant contours of her neck. Her skin had the smoothness
of ivory. It called to him to touch it.
Watch yourself, Williams
, he heard a voice inside him say,
or you are going to be outrageous
. He tried to calm himself.

But it was useless. He could not take his eyes off her. She was saying something.
She had asked him a question. He had not even heard it, so dumbfounded was he by what
was happening, by where he was. She was leading him somewhere in the house. His imagination
was running wild. She took him into a small room with a table and told him to sit
down.

‘It’s the least I can do,’ she was saying, ‘to repay you for what you did for Teresa.
I know you must be hungry. And we still have some great food left over from the party
tonight.’

Nick was in a breakfast nook just off the kitchen. To his left a door led to the patio
and then outside, into the back yard. The lights around the huge swimming pool were
still on. He could see manicured gardens with roses in bloom, chaise longues, colourful
umbrellas, white iron tables with twisted, lacy legs—he could not believe that it
was all real. He felt transported to another world, a world that existed only in books
and movies.

Monica Silver laid out some food on the table. Smoked salmon, onions, capers, cream
cheese, two different kinds of bread, plus a dish of some other kind of fish that
Nick did not recognize. ‘That’s marinated herring,’ she said with a smile, noticing
Nick’s quizzical expression. She handed him a wine glass. He took it and unconsciously
looked her straight in the eyes. He was transfixed. He felt weak and powerless, as
if he were being drawn into her deep brown, bewitching eyes, into her world of richness
and luxury and beauty. His knees were weak, his heart was racing, he could feel his
fingers tingling.

She poured some white wine in his glass and then in her own. ‘This is a brilliant
Burgundy, Clos des Mouches,’ she said, touching her glass to his with a light tinkle.
‘Let’s make a toast.’

She was radiant. He was enthralled. ‘To happiness,’ she said.

They talked for over three hours. Nick learned that Monica Silver had grown up in
France, that her father had been a small, struggling fur merchant in Paris, and that
she had met her husband, Aaron (the biggest of the big Montreal furriers), while helping
her father at the shop. She had been seventeen at the time of the whirlwind courtship.
Mr. Silver had proposed just seven days after they had met and she had accepted immediately
even though her husband-to-be was twenty years older. She moved to Montreal and married
him before she was eighteen. Teresa was born nine months later.