The Necklace Page 8

  A quick look passed between May and Ethan, a silent understanding that cut Ambrose deep. Ethan had won. Though looking at his brother’s curled claw of a hand, Ambrose was thwarted from feeling outrage.

  “Sister.” It was out before Ambrose realized his attempt at levity was awkward. The room silenced to watch them.

  May gave a little laugh. Her hand came forward, but dropped just as quickly as she fidgeted with a gold bangle etched with vines. Even she realized they couldn’t shake hands.

  Ambrose stepped to her then, and she was in his arms for the briefest moment. Scent of soap and violets—or perhaps he imagined the violets. She embraced him gently, carefully, so that no part of her actually touched him except her forearms and her cheek, just barely brushing his whiskers. It was a second, an instant, a brief memory of her scent mixed with pond water bringing him back to the days before he’d left, and then it was over.

  “Congratulations,” he said, his head swimming. The room collectively held its breath.

  “Thanks, Am,” she said quietly, looking at his face, but not his eyes.

  Ambrose turned toward the room. “Everyone’s been so busy while I’ve been gone.”

  The party silenced at this.

  “Especially me, auditioning for my role as the human Roman candle,” Ethan said, stepping forward.

  Ambrose thought he saw May wince. The rest of the room laughed rather too loudly and then, with a communal exhale, the party moved on. He saw his uncle tidily brush his hands together before reaching for a glass of Mrs. Gilder’s ginger cordial.

  If Ethan had changed, and May more subtly, too, the change in Loulou when she stepped forward was both alarming and delightful. She’d shot up to nearly his height and she’d chopped her hair, too, which dismayed him. He imagined she’d done it in emulation of May. Her eyebrows were plucked into twin thin arches, making her look older and her eyes look more wide set than he’d ever noticed before.

  “Big brother’s back,” she said as she hugged him.

  “Clearly I’m needed,” Ambrose said directly to Dicky as they shook hands around her back.

  “You made it in one piece.” Dicky’s wide, panicked smile belied his nerves.

  Seeing them side-by-side, Ambrose felt their connection, could practically see it shimmering. And for once in his life Dicky was silent. He wouldn’t look Ambrose in the eye, and stepped back, trying to beat a quick silent retreat, when Aunt Clara put a hand on his arm, keeping him at her side. She had a nose for discord and a force of will that ordered the world to her ideas of propriety. She fancied herself a diplomat, but was viewed more like a policeman. She was also a world traveler, having flown into Persia via biplane. She would want tidbits of Ambrose’s trip, exotic tastes she might savor. And she’d do it while keeping an eye on “young Richard.”

  “Mr. Rockhill wrote to me that you met with him in Tokyo.”

  Ambrose felt the barb in the statement. He hadn’t written his aunt once during his trip. He’d assumed his letters to his father would be passed around the extended family. She seemed not to want to scold him tonight, though, and for that he was grateful. He felt an odd sort of sympathy emanating from his usually dour aunt. She shared all her brother Israel’s views on Prohibition and the youth of the day, but she differed with him on women participating in civic life. With the new right to vote, she’d even mentioned getting involved with politics herself, which her brother found unspeakable. That she had only obliquely chastised Ambrose’s lack of communication was an unusual mercy.

  “You would have enjoyed Tokyo,” he told her. “Temples in every corner of the city, blossoms every which way.”

  “I do so enjoy nature.” She was swathed in silk and velvet, acres of it, and nodded at him with a look in her eye usually reserved for the very young or very old.

  Sweat dampened Ambrose’s collar. He realized he stank. His beard started to itch. He needed a bath. He wanted a drink. He needed something to do besides stand here under scrutiny, and then he thought of the crates he’d shipped home.

  “Let me show you what I brought back for Ethan. I think you’ll especially enjoy it,” he said to his aunt.

  “What’s that?” Ethan asked reflexively at the sound of his name.

  “Let me give you your present,” Ambrose called loudly over to him, noting May was watching. Giving his brother a gift in public seemed like a good idea, as if Ambrose might adjust the balance of whatever scale weighed above all their heads.

  His father called the chauffeur, and Ambrose helped the man bring the largest of the crates into the front hall from the icehouse, where they’d been kept in cool storage.

  The whole party followed them out into the hall.

  Ambrose called for a crowbar, and after much pulling and prying and huffing, the lid was detached and lifted. Inside, securely packed in straw, lay the severed, stuffed, and preserved head of a blackbuck antelope.

  “A beauty!” Ethan said, leaning over and attempting to heft the trophy into the room with one hand, trailing a mountain of sawdust and wrappings onto the floor. Ambrose had to catch the heaviest part of the mount and help his brother carefully lower it to the floor. Admirers pressed forward, wanting to touch the taxidermied beast.

  “A perfect specimen,” his aunt Clara exclaimed. “No doubt the natural history museum will be envious.”

  “They must already have one,” Ambrose said.

  “But not nearly so fine,” said Ethan. “Look at these horns!”

  “It’s macabre,” May said quietly.

  “You cannot deny the beauty of this animal,” Ethan said, flourishing his good hand in display.

  “Dead animal,” she said.

  “Yet no less majestic for it.” Ethan turned toward his brother. “It’s going to look splendid out at the farm. Probably in the front hall.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Ambrose said.

  May smiled at him, a bit sickly, he thought. Ambrose couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for her. She looked so dejected that he decided to give her the necklace right then. Really, what could it possibly matter now?

  “I knew this wouldn’t be your sort of thing, May,” Ambrose said, nodding toward the antelope. He lowered his voice, trying to be confidential, but somehow the room had silenced and everyone listened. He snaked his hand into his pocket. “I brought you something else.”

  He brought the necklace out like a totem and offered it to her.

  He could tell she didn’t want to take it from him, didn’t want to touch it, and he proffered it more emphatically against the back of her closed fingertips until she really had no choice but to open her hand.

  “It’s a traditional wedding gift in India. The groom’s family gives the bride jewels. Instead of a dowry,” he said.

  Somewhere in the background his father muttered, “Heathens.”

  This seemed to jolt May back to her good manners, as reflexive as breathing. The litany of dull platitudes—“Thank you” and “Isn’t it beautiful?” and “I really like it”—all landed hollow on Ambrose’s ears. All except for the “You shouldn’t have”—that one sounded like truth.

  “I’ll help you,” Loulou said, tying the ribbons around May’s neck.

  “Ambrose, you have an eye,” his aunt Clara said with satisfaction. “I wouldn’t think it would flatter May, but look at her.”

  Everyone in the room turned to admire May in the heavy collar with the bright azure stone surrounded by its rainbow of gems. Instead of dwarfing her, the immense size of it suited her, a queen with a proper-sized jewel. The gold set off red tints in her hair; the deep blue enhanced her pale skin.

  “It’s heavy,” she said. “Like a yoke.”

  Ethan crossed the room and lifted the piece like a doorknocker before letting it fall back on May’s chest with a soft thump. “Certainly portable,” he said, turning to his brother. “Makes it as easy as possible for the wife to get away. I wonder if that’s wise.” He turned to his brother. “Thank you.”


  The words hit Ambrose like a slap. Ethan thanking Ambrose for a present for his wife was the most natural thing in the world. The claim Ethan had on May was both shockingly real and completely casual.

  Mrs. Gilder came in then, calling them all to dinner. Loulou quickly detached herself from Dicky and made for Ambrose, as if to save him. But before she got to him and because they were standing next to each other, and because it would be unnatural not to, Ambrose offered his arm to lead May in.

  “Where’s it from?” she asked, privately, hand touching her chest.

  “India. I told you.”

  She turned to look at him then, no need for the question between them.

  “Jaipur,” he said more quietly as he pulled out her chair and helped her into her seat. She gripped his arm, giving him the lightest squeeze. That slight pressure reassured him. The past would soon be covered over by a number of new memories they’d make as family, as brother- and sister-in-law. Their past was a silly youthful interlude, quickly forgotten and never to be mentioned in what would be a long kinship. Without looking at her, he felt that. He sensed she knew it, too.

  THE GUN RACKS

  Nell hears the hubbub from the top-floor landing. Halted at the door under the blackbuck, her father is shaking hands with the old O’Brennan in pearls while a small crowd forms around them.

  “Quite decent of you,” the woman is saying.

  She can hear her father apologizing for not attending the memorial service, can hear him explaining about flight times and time zones, but she notes that he’s scanning the room out of the corner of his eye. When he sees her, he makes no pretense of heading right for her.

  Living in Italy agrees with him. He moved there right after her mother died, and he’s never come back. Nell visits him annually. Dressed in a sharp suit with a sumptuous Charvet tie, his deep tan speaks to the afternoons he spends playing mixed doubles on the courts at the American Club.

  “You’re looking quite groovy,” Baldwin says, coming up to him now. Compared to the sea of baggy khakis and clodhopper shoes in the room, her father’s snappy lace-ups look like something from another planet. And Nell knows that his clothes are only one of the many things that have grated the Quincys about her dad. Being younger than her mother, he’d been made out to be an opportunist, some kind of gigolo—an efficient double insult to both Nell’s mother and to him, despite his independent money, his degree in classical civilization from Yale.

  Her father ignores Baldwin, stepping back to take her in with a paternal CAT scan. He’s frowning, and she knows he’s about to comment on the lint-covered, shapeless sack dress she’s wearing. He’s always liked glamour. But instead he eyes the necklace.

  “New?”

  Before she can answer, Baldwin, who Nell didn’t realize was still hovering, butts in. “Mother left her that.” He stands between them, refusing to move off, blatantly attempting to control this interchange. Nell’s unaccustomed to this much of Baldwin’s focus. She notes that he’s deduced exactly what the necklace is, despite claiming to have never seen it before.

  “Did she now?” her father says.

  Nell fumbles with the cords. How can her dad make her feel like she’s twelve years old again? “What else did she leave you?” he asks.

  “A bottom-line guy, concerned with the nitty-gritty,” Baldwin booms to the room. He’s always thought her father was grabby, lack of evidence being no obstacle to opinion. “Not like old Nell, here. You can rely on Nell.” She wonders how much Baldwin’s had to drink, or if this is just his usual bonhomie, goosed by unaccustomed strong emotion. She figures he’s excused either way at his own mother’s wake.

  Her father’s eyes narrow. “First a drink, I think,” he says.

  “Wet the old whistle after all that travel.” Baldwin follows him off to the flower room, pattering in his ear. Even from across the room, Nell can see her father stiffen when Baldwin puts a hand on his back, pushing her dad along like he’s under house arrest. The crowd parts for them, some giving her father nods, most pretending they don’t see him.

  “He’s always been like that, hasn’t he?” Pansy says, materializing at Nell’s elbow. “I thought for sure he was a movie star when I was little. I remember being so surprised when I found out you guys lived in Oregon and not Hollywood.”

  “Clearly it skipped a generation.” Nell waves down.

  “Yes, well, glamour sometimes does that,” Pansy says in a breezy way that hides the knife inside.

  Her dad returns with a hug for Pansy, whom he’s fond of, she of the stature and presence. And so Nell’s a bit surprised when, with only the merest effort at polite conversation, her father puts a hand on her arm, right above the elbow, and says, “Come with me.”

  He leads Nell into a small office off the front hall, lined floor to ceiling with gun racks. The guns have all been auctioned off, and now the racks hold fishing rods, umbrellas, and tripods for cameras. Everything from the racks to the Palladian fretwork is lacquered in an ancient dull green, the ceiling stained gray from cigars long since smoked.

  “You’re here,” Nell says when he closes the door.

  Her father crosses the faded Turkish carpet, a squat glass in his hand, which he puts on the windowsill while he forces the sash up, flaking a good amount of ancient green paint in the process. Her father isn’t afraid to adjust things, adjust Quincy things, to his liking. Then he flaps his suit jacket out behind him and sits down on the window ledge like some exotic bird.

  “I thought you weren’t coming,” she says.

  He takes a sip of his drink and grimaces. “I forgot how vile this is.”

  “Used to a nice Barolo?”

  “Not this,” he says, lifting the glass, but setting it down a good three feet to his side. “This.” He gestures around the room and then rummages in the inside pocket of his jacket.

  “Don’t start,” Nell says. Her father’s view of the Quincys is familiar and frankly unsurprising; the dislike is mutual. But something about being named executor, the days she’s spent here, the necklace around her neck . . . she doesn’t want to be the outsider, not today.

  “Who’s starting?” He pulls out a pack of thin cigarettes and a silver lighter engraved with his twisting monogram.

  “You’re smoking?” Nell says, horrified, though the irony is not lost on her. She’d love one right now. But even without him here, there’s no way she’d light up inside the house.

  Her father, though, doesn’t have these compunctions as he lights his cigarette, adding to the gray haze on the ceiling. “She made me stop when we got married. We both did. And we agreed we could start again when we turned seventy-five. Young enough to still enjoy it and old enough not to care. I’m just starting a little early.” She notes his pack is an Italian brand. “It killed her.”

  “Yeah, cancer. So how can you do that to her memory?”

  “Not this,” he says, flourishing the smoke in front of his face. “This.” He makes a generous arm sweep. “These people. Their secrets and expectations. Killed her just as sure as this”—he puts the smoke between them, at eye-level—“will kill me.” He slides over, as if he’s rethought rejecting his drink, and picks up the glass again. “God, I can’t wait to see her again.”

  “See her again?” Nell asks. Already her father’s penchant for drama and flair is grating on her.

  “I have returned to the Church,” he says after a sip. “You really have no choice in Rome. It’s incredibly soothing. But I meant at night. I only rarely see her in my dreams anymore.”

  A return to the church of his childhood is unsurprising, thinks Nell, given her father’s love of stage and pomp, art and history. That enjoyment was a source of connection between her parents, Nell knew. No one could fail to notice that her father unabashedly loved beautiful things and pleasure, a stance in the world that was more fraught for her mother. The puritanical streak was inherited both through genes and example. But her dad enjoyed the finer things. He was often her mother’s guide
and sometimes her proxy.

  “Soothing and incredibly bigoted. Gay marriage, pedophile priests, women denied priesthood . . .”

  He picks tobacco off his lip and then says, “Don’t lecture me, Cornelia. I am still your father.” As if he has to remind her of their roles, since somehow he has become the brooding smoker and mystic, and she the uptight defender of Quincys and equality.

  “Wouldn’t smoking be like a slow suicide sort of thing? Aren’t there rules against that?” Nell asks.

  “I miss her all the time,” he says, ashing out the window into a viburnum, and Nell feels a pang. She misses her mother, too. Though it’s been over a decade now, she no longer feels a breathtaking pain, but a constant aching companion. And it’s sad to think of her father alone, though she suspects he has female company. He has referenced “a friend” once or twice in the past, which has her picturing some well-preserved, older, Anna Magnani type. Nell can admit there might be women who would find him attractive. He’s still lean from all that tennis, and he has a good amount of his salt-and-pepper hair left. Though to her he is just her father, an old man who has recently taken up smoking and religion.

  “Don’t judge me,” he says. “It makes me feel like you’re one of them.”

  “I didn’t say a thing,” Nell defends.

  “But I can feel you censoring yourself.” She wonders just how Italian he has become. “And you’re not one of them. You never were. Neither was she, thank God.”

  Seeing that he’s feeling wistful and defiant, a promising combination, Nell thinks this might be a good time to move her cause forward.

  “You know, I’ve been wondering . . .” But she’s having a hard time finding a place to start. “I’ve been curious . . .” But this has so often felt like a punishing guessing game. If she poses the correct query, locks will click open, doors will swing wide, truths will be revealed. If she can’t find the right question combination, all remains sealed. “Well, you never asked” is the common response when she’s managed to finally unearth a secret.