Sheila Connolly: Fundraising The Dead

The cool and bracing October night air cleared my head. It was only a few minutes to Charles’s house off Rittenhouse Square, and by day I would have walked, but it was late and I was wearing heels… so I treated myself to a taxi. It pulled up in front of the brick-fronted townhouse, and I dragged myself out. I lingered briefly on the pavement, looking up at the building’s façade, before ringing the bell. Even in the dark, Charles’s place was exquisite: early nineteenth-century glass in the multipaned windows, original door frames and window sashes, all meticulously maintained, gleaming with fresh paint. The street was quiet, lined with similar elegantly appointed houses. It more than suited Charles, who had outstanding taste in all areas, as far as I could determine. Including women, I reminded myself. Charles had been married once upon a time, and he and his wife had produced a brace of smart, quiet children, now in their teens, who lived in another state but visited at wide intervals to dutifully troop around the significant sights of the city. Their mother had agreed to an extremely amicable divorce, and having family money, had made few demands on Charles since their split. He reciprocated by diligently remembering the children’s birthdays, travelling to attend the major milestones in their lives, and generally ceding all responsibility to his amenable ex. Everyone seemed very happy with the situation, including me.

I’d been married once myself, a million years ago-a college sweetheart, and we did the big wedding thing and lived happily ever after for about three years, at which point we decided we really didn’t have anything in common. When he was offered a good job in California, I think we both sighed with relief for the excuse to split up. He still sends Christmas cards, and I see him when I’m on the West Coast, which is almost never.

After the divorce, I decided that I needed some stability in my life, so I bought myself a charming (that is, tiny) converted carriage house that sat behind one of the grand old estates west from the city on the Main Line in Bryn Mawr, where the power players of Philadelphia had moved when commuting by train was still new and exciting. I like to think of those upper-crust types having been delivered to the Victorian train stations-which somehow cling to precarious life-in carriages driven by their chauffeurs, or later in motor cars, greeting each other on the platform as they went off for another day of dabbling in banking and lunching at the club.

But back to my carriage house: the grand house in front has long since been broken up into smaller units, and at the moment I think it houses a group of psychiatrists-the tenants seem to change every few years-but my little place is completely separate. When I bought it, it was barely livable: two rooms upstairs, two down, with minimal plumbing, antiquated wiring, and no insulation. The kitchen was nothing but a jumble of secondhand appliances shoved behind a screen in one corner. In the ten-plus years since I bought it, I’ve added a real kitchen, upgraded the plumbing, heating, and wiring, and filled it with funky, homey semi-antiques, the sort of stuff found at upscale yard sales in Bryn Mawr. Which is exactly where most of them came from, since after paying for the mortgage, and the second mortgage to cover the improvements, I didn’t have a whole lot left over. Small nonprofits don’t pay very well. But the little house was mine, and I loved it. And I loved being able to walk to the train station, since I took the train into the city most days (when I didn’t have a special event or other engagement to keep me in Center City), and I loved being able to leave the city behind at the end of the day and come home to the cool, leafy green suburbs, to the elegance of a bygone day (if you closed one eye and squinted).

Which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy spending time at Charles’s house. It was everything that mine was not: elegant, tasteful, clean (thanks to a series of cleaning personnel who came and went invisibly). He kept his immaculate black and white kitchen (dark granite counters, glossy white tile, halogen lights tucked out of sight so that the light seemed to emanate from the walls and ceiling) well stocked with delightful and expensive goodies, and there always seemed to be a bottle of champagne lurking at the back of the stainless-steel refrigerator. Sometimes it was hard to believe that a real person lived there, since it looked almost like a movie set-what some California director thought an upper-crust Philadelphia row house should look like. No matter: it was like playing dress-up for me anyway, only I was putting on a fancy house rather than fancy clothes.

I rang the bell, and Charles opened the door promptly. He had been home long enough to divest himself of his jacket, vest, and tie, and his still-crisp white shirt was open at the neck, which for him was the height of casual. He stood courteously aside to let me come in, but as I passed by him, he lifted my hair off my neck and kissed my nape. I shivered, and not from the cold. He moved on to the kitchen, and I followed.

“ Champagne?” He had already pulled a bottle out of the refrigerator and was peeling away the gold foil, twisting off the wire cage that held the cork. “I thought that went very well. Several of the board members said that they were going to write us nice checks-in fact, several did, and I had them left on your desk.” He mentioned that one new local CEO whom we had been courting for some time, who had come as the guest of a board member, had hinted at six figures, as long as we put his name on something. “Actually, I think it’s his wife who’s pushing him-thinks he needs a bit of class, now that he’s established here. I’m sure we can accommodate him.” He poured two glasses of champagne and handed me a flute threaded with lacy trails of minuscule bubbles-only the best French champagne, of course.

“No problem. Let me know what he’s interested in, and I can work up a proposal. This tastes wonderful,” I said, sipping the wine, savoring the delicate tingle on my tongue. “God, I’m tired-it’s been a long week, and it’s going to be an early morning tomorrow with the staff meeting at eight.” I wandered toward Charles’s living room, then slipped off my party shoes and wiggled my toes happily, sinking them into the lush carpet.

“Not too tired, I hope,” he countered. On anyone else, the look Charles gave me could best be described as a leer. On him, it looked like aristocratic passion. Intense, brooding, lascivious-what was it about Charles that made me want to multiply my syllables?

“Not hardly, sir,” I responded flirtatiously. “Shall we go up?” Charles was already leading the way up the narrow but highly polished walnut staircase.

“Would you like to use the bathroom first?” he asked.

“You, sir, are a gentleman.” In his bedroom, I stripped down to my slip and made my way to the pseudo-Victorian bathroom. To an inexperienced eye, it would have looked exactly like an 1880 bathroom, which was the intent; to someone like me, who had put in many hours refinishing my own period bathroom, searching for replacements, stripping, sanding, and so on, it was clear that everything was a modern reproduction. But the ensemble drew on the best of the old and the new, and it worked. I washed my face and decided I could wait until morning for a shower. “Charles, where’s my nightgown?” I usually left one-an absurdly expensive Victoria ’s Secret silk number that I devoutly hoped made me look slinky-hanging on the hook in the bathroom, where, tonight, it was not.

“Hmm? Perhaps Maria moved it.” Maria was the latest of his cleaning women, who all seemed to be called Maria. “Check in the drawers in the guest-room chest.” I padded down the short hall, barefoot, and found the nightgown neatly folded in the third drawer I checked, along with my toothbrush. Apparently this new Maria had issues with unmarried ladies spending the night.