Tender Death (2 page)
Authors: Annette Meyers
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Women's Fiction, #Contemporary Women, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Crime, #Financial, #Contemporary Fiction, #Crime Fiction
I
T WAS BITTERLY
cold. Wetzon pulled the collar of her black alpaca coat up high around her neck and wrapped the leopard-patterned scarf tighter. The big lavender beret slipped down her forehead, almost covering her eyes. She pushed it up and inhaled a deep dancer’s breath from the diaphragm and expelled the air through her mouth, making a stream of white winter smoke.
It always reminded her of a short story she had read in high school, of the explorers in the North Pole whose breaths came out shaped in the words they were saying. There was something to be said for the joy of silence, she thought, imagining what it would be like if everything everyone said formed words in the air without sound.
“Beautiful,” she puffed out loud, and was slightly taken aback by the sound of her own voice. “Wetzon, you are losing it,” she scolded herself, squaring her shoulders and marching across Second Avenue. She intended to walk over to Madison and take the bus uptown. A good brisk walk was balm for the soul.
You keep telling yourself that
, she thought. Four and a half soul-fulfilling long blocks, maybe almost half a mile and a decent amount of calories.
The wind whipped up Third Avenue, where all the new, splendidly austere buildings had been placed well back on the sidewalks, creating fierce wind tunnels. Dear tacky Lexington Avenue, with its old, low office buildings and disreputable-looking brownstones, was a welcome respite from the slicing wind. A fierce gust almost lifted her off her feet as she crossed Park Avenue, which, like Third, was all plazas.
She turned uptown on Madison toward the bus stop on Fiftieth Street. A husky, bearded man stood there, wearing a duffel coat and a brown fur hat with earflaps, holding up a shabby cardboard sign that said
I’m hungry
in one hand and a paper cup in the other. He was expending a lot of energy pitching himself to the freezing passersby, who ignored him. Unthinking, Wetzon made eye contact with him and mentally kicked herself. You just didn’t do that with the crazies in New York, if you were smart.
“Please,” the young man said, stepping forward with his cup outstretched, “give me money for food.” He made it into a dramatic performance, complete with charm and pathos.
Now if he could put all that energy to work at a job
... or maybe he had been a stockbroker who’d lost his license for unauthorized trading. She smiled at the thought.
“Pretty please,” he said with a lilt as she passed him.
He spoke well—too well to be begging on street corners.
“With sugar on it,” he said, wheedling, shaking the few coins in his cup. There was something a little too calculated about him.
Get a job, you freeloader
; she thought, and kept walking.
“Rich bitch!” he screamed after her. “Rich bitch, rich bitch!” As if he could read her mind.
Damn
, she thought, embarrassed, as heads turned to look at her. It was like that short story again. She thought something, and it could be heard out loud.
When she had been a Broadway dancer, she had once worked with a director who had accused her of editorializing. “It’s written all over your face,” Morton Hornberg had screamed at her. During rehearsals she had stood at the side of the stage after her number, watching him direct a scene with the principal actors. Hornberg was fascinating to watch. The director had a romantic vision and a certain eccentricity, and the combination was either beautiful and sensitive or atrocious. His problem was that he didn’t know the difference. Wetzon did, and others did too, but everyone was afraid to tell him.
His attack had embarrassed her, humiliated her. She stopped coming in early and hanging around afterward, just attending to her own rehearsals. A few days later, Hornberg had sent her flowers and asked her to come and sit with him when she wasn’t rehearsing her numbers. Remembering, she smiled. It had been years ago, and these days Morty was a star director. She wondered who was sitting with him now.
Oh, you’re bad, Wetzon
, she thought, shaking her head.
She got on a number 4 bus and took one of the empty seats in the back. It was twelve-fifteen.
She sat quietly for a few minutes, letting her mind drift, then pulled her half-read
New York Times
from her carryall, unfolded it, and skimmed rapidly through the news articles. On the “Obituaries” page she saw a small notice that Jimmy Bronson, a stage manager she had known from the old days, had died of a heart attack in California. Age, sixty-four. He had left the theater years earlier and opened a successful home maintenance business for the owners of weekend and summer houses in the Hamptons. The article said he was about to take out a touring company of
Fiddler on the Roof.
Well, the very thought of doing that would have been enough to kill him. It was sad. She wondered what had made him decide to try to go back. Maybe he was feeling old and alone and wanted to try to recapture the camaraderie of— God, why was she having such morbid thoughts?
As she was shoving the paper back into her bag, she caught a glimpse of another obituary just above Jimmy’s. The lead said:
Maxwell Mitosky, 78,
Retired Economist
The name caught her eye. Mitosky ... Mitosky. An odd name, but she was certain she had seen or heard it before. She closed her eyes and heard, “Mr. Mitosky, sir, the cashier is ready for you now.”
She opened her eyes. Weeks ago. The man at Bradley, Elsworth ... the one who’d had the awful nosebleed ... the one who was wearing makeup.
She pulled the newspaper from her bag and read the obituary. Mitosky had been born in London, graduated from Oxford, more degrees from the London School of Economics. Retired professor . .. New York University. Had been living in New York for the last thirty years at 601 East Seventy-second Street. No survivors.
It couldn’t be the same man because this man—if he had any accent at all— No, there was no way he could have collected a thick Russian accent. How exceedingly strange.
She returned the paper to her carryall and leaned back in her seat, remembering how the Russian Maxwell Mitosky had raced from the building like no seventy-eight-year-old man and dumped his cane in a trash basket.
W
HEN THEY MET
, Hazel Osborn had been doing volunteer work at the Museum of American Folk Art. Wetzon was still a dancer then, supplementing her income by making pillows out of scraps of old fabrics and quilt pieces for the museum shop. One day when Wetzon stopped by to drop off a new batch, Hazel was covering the shop. They had started talking, and they had never stopped. Hazel was like a surrogate mother who understood, loved, and accepted you as you were, without any of the usual mother-daughter psychological interplay.
“I’m a professional volunteer,” she had characterized herself. She spent one day a week at the museum shop, three mornings as an assistant teacher in a Spanish Harlem elementary school, and one day with an organization that brought children and music together.
She was a retired social worker, a Ph.D. who had specialized in child psychology and who had studied in Chicago with Dr. Bruno Bettelheim. “My mentor,” she called him reverently. She had come to New York to teach at Columbia and had spent the years before her retirement with one of the big settlement houses, working with underprivileged children.
Shortly before their meeting at the Museum of American Folk Art, Hazel had been slowed down briefly by a mastectomy, but it hadn’t stopped her for long. She was nearing seventy now, and Wetzon loved her spirit and commitment. And her curiosity.
“It keeps me young,” Hazel maintained. “And so does Woody Allen. And so do you,” she had said the last time Wetzon had seen her. “Always have young friends, Leslie. They keep you from taking yourself too seriously.”
Wetzon got off the bus at Seventy-seventh Street and crossed over to Sant Ambroeus. She and Hazel both loved the cafe even though it was ridiculously expensive. It was an indulgence but everything was so exquisite, it made them feel special.
She sped up when she saw Hazel’s silhouette in her old seal coat through the fogged windows of the cafe. Wetzon squinted—surely there was something ... odd. She pushed open the door, and Hazel turned. Involuntarily, Wetzon gasped. Hazel’s face was ghostly white and pinched beneath the burgundy felt hat with its racy feather. Seeing Wetzon, she smiled a shadow of her old smile and edged forward. Then Wetzon saw the cane.
“Hey, what’s this?” Wetzon stooped to hug Hazel, who suddenly seemed so fragile, even small. An old woman. How could someone change so much in such a short time? Silently, Wetzon chastised herself for not staying in closer touch. “I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” she said, keeping her arm around Hazel’s narrow shoulders.
“No, just got here a minute ago, and this,” she said, waving a gloved hand casually toward the cane, “this is just a touch of arthritis. You look wonderful, as usual, Leslie dear, and I am ravenous.”
She walked with strained steps, leaning heavily on the cane. Wetzon followed, brooding. Surely Hazel had never said anything about arthritis in all the time they had known each other.
They ordered the cheese risotto and tremezzini: prosciutto, mozzarella, and tomato sandwiches on little Italian breads, and shared everything. Wetzon sipped the hot Italian-roast coffee and set the cup down. “All right, let’s hear it. What’s going on?”
“Nothing, nothing at all,” Hazel said, “except I’ve made such progress with little Emilio. He’s starting to read by himself now. But tell me what’s happening with you. You lead a much more exciting life. Catch me up.” Her eyes said,
I’ll tell you when I’m ready, and not a minute sooner.
“You are the most stubborn—”
“Don’t say old lady because—”
“Okay, you win. Your way.” Wetzon broke off a piece of the crisp breadstick and buttered it. “I’m starved, too. This weather—”
“How’s Carlos?” Hazel interrupted, just as their food arrived. She loved Wetzon’s best friend Carlos. The last time Wetzon had seen Hazel, they’d had dinner in Carlos’s loft in the West Village. He had made a bouillabaisse and a wonderful Mississippi mud cake, and they had polished off three bottles of wine. Carlos had regaled them with the current theater gossip, Wetzon had told her latest broker stories, and Hazel had retold the Peepsie stories, which made no sense whatever, but were so funny that the three of them had collapsed in giggles, helpless with laughter.
“He’s been busy on the new musical. We talk on the phone, but I haven’t seen him in a couple of weeks.”
They ate in uncharacteristic silence and ordered chocolate soufflés for dessert.
“I’m worried about Peepsie Cunningham, Leslie,” Hazel said abruptly, without preamble.
As a girl, Hazel had gotten it into her head that she would come East from Cleveland to go to college, and at the age of sixteen she had been accepted by Connecticut College for Women. The Peepsies were the girls she had roomed with, six of them, counting her. How they had gotten to be Peepsies was a confusing story, and Hazel laughed so much in the telling, she was never able to finish it. Hazel, to the other Peepsies, was Peepsie Osborn. Anyway, at the last telling, there were four Peepsies left: Peepsie Cunningham, a wealthy widow who lived on upper Fifth Avenue; Peepsie Webber, who lived with her husband in a retirement community in Hartford; Peepsie Kennedy, who still ran her own public relations firm in D.C.; and Peepsie Osborn, our Hazel, who kept everyone informed about everyone else.
“Why?” Wetzon asked, a forkful of soufflé in her mouth, basking in the joy of the chocolate. She much preferred dark chocolate for the look of it was half of the taste, and there was something strange about what tasted like rich, dark bittersweet chocolate but was off-white and speckled like the shell of a bird’s egg.
The espresso machine gave a wild asthmatic screech. A girl and a young man in a military school uniform took the table next to them and started bickering with an undertone of nastiness.
“She’s gotten so vague,” Hazel said. Her clear blue eyes were sharp with concern. “She doesn’t remember where she put things. She didn’t even know who I was when I was there yesterday. Well, not quite. She was very frightened. I think she knew me, but she didn’t know me. Oh dear.” She patted the burgundy hat nervously. “I’m afraid I’m not making any sense.”
“Does she have Alzheimer’s?” Wetzon asked gently.
“Yes, I think so, but it seems to be getting so much worse.” Hazel’s fingers tapped the table restlessly. “They never had children, you know. She has a niece, a nice girl ... I haven’t seen her in years ... living in Europe somewhere ... married a diplomat, I think. It’s been years ...” Hazel was upset and distracted. It was so unlike her.
“Is Peepsie Cunningham living by herself?”
“Yes—no—not really. There’s a woman, a decent sort, I think, who comes in every day, bathes her, dresses her, cooks her meals. You know.” She put her fork down and wiped her lips with the linen napkin. “We used to go out for lunch and a movie ... with our senior citizen discount cards. We really liked that. I remember when we saw
Tootsie.
We had so much fun.” She broke off. The espresso machine took a long deep breath and whoozed out a hoarse shriek. “We had to stop doing that. She would forget where we were. Once she wouldn’t let the waiter take her empty plate away. She made an awful scene.” Tears filled Hazel’s eyes, and she fumbled in her bag for a handkerchief.
“Oh, Hazel, I’m so sorry,” Wetzon said. If you have young friends, Hazel always said, you never have to see them wither and die. She shivered.
“Leslie, do me a favor, please.” Hazel paused and for a fleeting moment an expression of guilt crossed her face. She began creasing the napkin between her fingers. “Never mind. I hate to involve anyone ...”
“No, please, Hazel,” Wetzon said, “ask me. How can I help? I want to help. I’m your friend.”
Hazel studied her and breathed a soft sigh. “All right. Could you come over to Peepsie’s with me now? It’s a little hard for me—” She gestured at the cane leaning against the wall behind her chair.
They divided up the bill and, bundled against the cold, came out on the sidewalk into the arctic wind.
Wetzon peered up at the dark-edged, angry clouds scudding across the sky and sniffed. “It’s going to snow, I’ll bet.”
“Please don’t say that, Leslie.”
Hazel seemed so worried, so sad. Where had her spunky young friend Hazel gone? Right now, Wetzon slowed her pace to match Hazel’s awkward gait, the shuffle of an elderly woman.
“What’s Peepsie Cunningham’s address?” Wetzon asked brightly, locking her arm through Hazel’s free one.