Ellen Crosby: The Viognier Vendetta

“Oh, God, Lucie, that’s the last thing I’d ever do. You’re stronger than anyone I know.” She placed her hand on my arm. “I mean it.”

I turned toward the stairs and wondered what this reunion was all about.

“It’s been years since I visited this place,” I said. “Let’s go.”

“Sure.” She withdrew her hand. “After you.”

Halfway up she said, “I guess ‘how’ve you been?’ is kind of a stupid question.”

I looked up at the enormous contemplative statue of Lincoln, which had gradually come into view.

“Why’d you wait so long to get in touch? Twelve years since you graduated, Big.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just that I had a lot of things to work out about myself and my life after everything with Connor …”

I waited, but she didn’t finish the sentence.

“You ever see him again?”

“Nope. I heard he left teaching altogether. Moved to Wyoming and bought a ranch. His wife’s teaching at Georgetown now.” She added, “Ex-wife.”

I nodded. Somehow I knew there would be more if I waited. There was. She seemed to be struggling with her emotions.

“You never asked me about Connor, never said a word about what happened. Never judged me. I don’t know if you realized how much that meant to me, Lucie. Everyone else said I ruined his marriage, broke up his beautiful family.”

“I had no right to judge you.” We reached the main chamber, clogged with tourists visiting for the cherry blossoms. “I had no idea what the circumstances were.”

“The circumstances were so frickin’ complicated,” she said with heat. “I never told anyone the truth. Everyone was so concerned about Connor: his life, his career, his wife and kids. No one gave a damn about me.”

After all these years she still carried that much anger and bitterness in her heart? Somehow I thought she would have moved on, put it behind her.

She took a deep breath, steadying herself. “Whew, sorry. I still get worked up about it.”

“It’s okay.”

Her smile twisted. “Could you hold these flowers while I get my postcards? Then we can go.”

“Get them where?”

“Gift shop.”

She hooked a thumb at a nearly invisible doorway tucked into an interior wall facing the Mall. I took the roses as she disappeared through the door like Alice down the rabbit hole.

The translucent marble ceiling with its bronzed crossbeams and a few dim spotlights gave the light inside the cavernous memorial a viscous timeworn patina. Laughter and the chatter of tourists and visitors reverberated off the walls, an unintelligible din of white noise. I went and stood in front of Lincoln, reading the words carved above his head.

IN THIS TEMPLE

AS IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE

FOR WHOM HE SAVED THE UNION

THE MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

IS ENSHRINED FOREVER

Somber faced with one fist clenched and hair slightly disheveled, Lincoln stared into the distance as though he’d just come back from a walk and needed to put his thoughts in order. A group of teenagers wearing red sweatshirts stenciled with the logo of their Kansas high school band swarmed around me, shrill and excited. I moved away and shifted Rebecca’s roses in my arms. The card, attached with ribbon-covered florist’s wire, poked me. I turned it over and read the message.

For Richard Boyle IV: Never find fault with the absent.

How funny. Hadn’t she just asked me to do the same for her? I wondered who Richard Boyle IV was and whether I was going to meet him.

“Okay, all set.”

She reappeared holding an identical set of postcards of the memorial at night, glowing like a lit jewel.

“Did you know the Lincoln Memorial was modeled after the Temple of Zeus at Olympia?” she asked.

“Does it say that on the back of those postcards?”

She grinned. “Nope. I learned it from the Asher Collection. Tommy hired a curator from the historical society to put together a display in the lobby of our building in Manhattan. Usually featuring his latest treasure—a map or painting or some architectural drawing. That collection is his pride and joy. I’m going to miss seeing it now that it will be in D.C.” She shrugged. “Though it’s probably the end of the lectures and quizzes.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, he’d bring some scholar by the office to discuss history or cartography or something to do with whatever he’d just acquired. Gave him a chance to prove he could hold his own with the experts in front of his employees.” She rolled her eyes. “Especially when he gave his little quizzes afterward to see who’d been paying attention.”

“He tested you on this stuff?”

She nodded.

“I read what a control freak he is. And about his ego,” I said. “How do you put up with it?”

Rebecca pursed her lips. “Tommy is … complex. He’s used to getting what he wants, so it can come off as arrogance. He can also be incredibly charming … you have no idea. I guess you have to know him to understand him, why he does what he does.”

“It doesn’t bother you?”

“Like I said, he’s complex.”

“Including treating his employees like a bunch of schoolkids.”

“That’s different. He’s appalled at how little Americans know about their own history and that there are people who think ‘When was the War of 1812 fought?’ is a trick question.”

“I think you’re exaggerating.”

“Okay, how much do you know about it?”

“I minored in European history, remember? It was a trade war between the Americans and the British. They were impressing our sailors and we were mad that they still controlled Canada, plus they helped arm the Indians against us in the West.”

“Oh, all right, so you’re the exception to the rule. Most people don’t have a clue what it was about,” she said. “Or that the British burned Washington nearly to the ground. That’s what got Tommy interested in putting together the collection to begin with—he was fascinated by the plans and backroom politics that went on to rebuild the city after the fire. He just kept expanding and acquiring items until he owned almost everything out there that the Library of Congress didn’t already have.”

“Kind of an unusual avocation for someone who’s British.”

Rebecca gave me an odd look. “Tommy’s not British anymore. He’s a U.S. citizen. To be honest, I think he did it more to get even. For years it’s bugged him that an American rebuilt Shakespeare’s old Globe theater in London. He thought it should have been a hundred-percent British project.”

“So it’s payback?”

“I guess you could say that. I want you to meet him. The gala tonight is going to be a mob scene, but I’ve put you on the guest list for the opening of the collection next week at the library. There’s a dinner afterward in one of the private rooms that are never open to the public. Only about a hundred people are invited. You’ll get to know him then. Promise me you’ll go.”

“I can’t remember if we have something going on at the vineyard—”

“This is important. Promise me.”

Why was she pushing so hard?

“Okay, okay. I promise.”

“Good.” She shoved the postcards in her oversized Coach handbag. “Next stop the Wall. You mind?”

The Wall. That explained the flowers. I gave them back to her. She meant the Vietnam Veterans Memorial just across the plaza, hidden by a scrim of shrubbery.

Vietnam belonged to our parents’ generation. Maybe Rebecca was paying tribute to a family friend, someone her mother, who’d grown up in Saigon during the war, or her father, who’d fought there, had known.

“No,” I said. “I don’t mind at all.”

Gusts of wind rippled the blue gray Reflecting Pool, distorting the mirrored image of the Washington Monument and rustling the bare branches of the elms that lined the paths like sentries. As we made our way down the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the Capitol dome, which had been obscured by the Washington Monument, now appeared toy-sized on the horizon. We crossed the open plaza. The traffic on Constitution Avenue sounded muffled, the noise deadened by the seventy black granite tablets that formed a gentle V along the downsloping path.