Twelve Rooms with a View. Theresa Rebeck

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СКАЧАТЬ friend to know that he’s got a beer back there. His thumb was hooked into the top to make sure the fizz didn’t go.

      They didn’t know I was there listening, so they just kept talking. “God rest her soul, I miss her every day,” said the lady.

      “I do too,” he told her, quiet.

      “It would have just killed her to see this, just killed her! Oh my God when they were selling the furniture, all I could think was this would have just killed Sophie, the way Bill is just letting everything go.”

      “Actually she hated most of that stuff,” Drinan noted.

      “So many beautiful pieces. Worth a fortune! And then the paintings, I thought I would just cry when the paintings—”

      “She didn’t like them either.” He sounded like on every line he wanted to take a hit off that beer bottle, but she wasn’t giving him an opening.

      “Your inheritance, it was all your inheritance, gone, that’s what she wouldn’t have liked. Your father should be ashamed of himself.”

      “Yeah, well, he never was.”

      “God rest his soul you got that right. And he never asked me. If I wanted them? I thought at least ask, I would have been happy to step in, and keep them in the building. I would have done that for your mother, God rest her soul. I told him! But you couldn’t talk to him. Well, you know that.”

      “Yes.” He shifted on his feet and for about fifteen seconds I got a better look at the woman, who had a very good face, underneath that big head of messy hair. I was sort of not liking her much until I saw her face, then I wasn’t so sure, because she seemed sort of sensible, even though she was saying slightly dotty things and clearly was just cranky that she couldn’t get her hands on those paintings and all that furniture. She also had on some kind of silk robe, sage green with a burnt orange stripe; the bit I could see hanging off her shoulder suggested it might be spectacularly beautiful if I could get a better look at it. Drinan shifted again, and I lost the sightline.

      “Well, thank you for your thoughts, Mrs Westmoreland,” he started. His hand, holding the beer, was getting a little slippery, plus I could see from the way his shoulders were scrunching together that he was getting pretty desperate for that drink. Before he could take a step backwards and turn to take a fast hit off it she touched him on the sleeve again, and held him there. Ai yi yi, I thought, this is getting interesting.

      “But these people, who are these people?” she asked, all concerned. “Coming and going, acting like they own the place. Frank says that one of them has moved in. I’m horrified.” I went back to not liking her. What on earth was she complaining about, she was “horrified” about me living in an apartment I had every legal right to live in? She was just some Upper West Side snob who had the hots for a dude half her age, that’s what I decided, on the basis of admittedly hardly any information at all.

      “It’s something to do with Dad’s will.” He shrugged. “He left everything to Olivia.”

      “You’re kidding!”

      “Look, it’s fine, it’s going to be fine.” You could hear that he was already kicking himself for letting go that much. And it did seem, in fact, to be a terrific and instant mistake.

      “He left everything to Olivia? He barely knew her!”

      “They were married two years,” he corrected her.

      “Did you know he was doing that? Did you agree to it?”

      “He didn’t actually ask us to agree,” Pete said. His voice was starting to get real uptight. “He told us. Doug tried to talk him out of it. But Dad wanted to do something for Olivia.”

      “That’s ridiculous.”

      “Yeah, well, he was worried she wouldn’t have anything if he died. That’s what he said.”

      “She didn’t deserve anything!”

      “Well, that’s what he felt, anyway. He, you know, he knew he was dying and he wanted her to have some security after he was gone.”

      “Surely you could have put a stop to this.”

      “We had a big fight about it. Doug was, you know he pretty much felt what you were saying. Dad got real mad about it. It wasn’t…we didn’t really talk much after that.”

      This was so much more information than I’d ever had about Bill I was momentarily thrilled. I was once again delighted to find how successful snooping at doors could be. I was also happy to have a shred of good feeling for Bill since he did the right thing by Mom in the face of opposition. He was instantly transformed, in my imagination, from a selfish drunk into an eccentric recluse who had lousy kids.

      “But Olivia is dead now. And these other people, what rights do they have?”

      “I don’t know. Honestly, I just don’t know.” Pete trailed off, clearly wanting to get out of this hideous conversation. But she was a sharp one. And she was as completely fascinated as I was by what he had told her already.

      “He didn’t even know them, he refused to meet them!” she told him. “He was afraid of just this scenario, that complete strangers would come after his property, that’s why he told her they were never to set foot in the building!”

      “She told you that?”

      “She did! I asked her one night. She had just come back in from having dinner with the rest of them, apparently. It was so rare that you ever saw either one of them leave the apartment, so when I saw her in the lobby I said, ’This is a treat! You and Bill don’t go out much, do you?’ and she said, ’I was having dinner with my daughters,’ and we rode up in the elevator together, and I said, ’Are we going to meet your daughters?’ and she said, ’Oh no, Bill prefers to keep me all to himself!’ And I said, ’Well, that hardly seems fair. You must miss them a lot.’ And she said she did, very much, and that she had tried to speak to him about it but he was very worried, these were her own words, he was worried that other people were after his property, and he had to protect it. Those were her exact words. And then I saw him one day, not long after that—I actually saw him, putting trash in the bin, which he never did—and I said, ’Why, Bill! There you are!’ He looked terrible, I don’t need to tell you that, he was sick for a long long time and I know he refused to see a doctor—”

      “Yeah, but you said you talked to him?”

      “I did. I took the opportunity. I said, ’Bill, Olivia tells me you’ve never even met her daughters. Aren’t you curious to even meet them? She’s your wife!’ I was reluctant to say anything to him at all, I couldn’t believe he brought another woman into your mother’s apartment. It was the Livingston mansion apartment, it is an historic property! He should have let it go, is my opinion, when your mother died. He should have sold it to someone who might take care of it, someone in the building who would appreciate it. He never appreciated it. She was the one.”

      “But he said something? About these daughters?”

      “He said, yes, he said they were trash. He said, ’Those daughters are trash and I’m not meeting them.’ That’s what he called them. Trash. And he wouldn’t meet them. All they wanted was his money.” At which point old Bill went back to being an alcoholic asshole, in my СКАЧАТЬ