Mary Clark: Moonlight Becomes You

Aware suddenly that others were openly listening, Nuala slid her arm around Maggie’s waist and announced, “This is my child! I didn’t give birth to her, of course, but that’s totally unimportant.”

Maggie realized that Nuala was also blinking back tears.

Anxious both to talk and to escape the crush of the crowded restaurant, they slipped out together. Maggie could not find Liam to say good-bye but was fairly sure she would not be missed.

• • •

Arm in arm, Maggie and Nuala walked up Park Avenue through the deepening September twilight, turned west at Fifty-sixth Street and settled in at Il Tinello. Over Chianti and delicate strips of fried zucchini, they caught up on each other’s lives.

For Maggie, it was simple. “Boarding school; I was shipped there after you left. Then Carnegie-Mellon, and finally a master’s in visual arts from NYU. I’m making a good living now as a photographer.”

“That’s wonderful. I always thought it would be either that or sculpting.”

Maggie smiled. “You’ve got a good memory. I love to sculpt, but I do it only as a hobby. Being a photographer is a lot more practical, and in all honesty I guess I’m pretty good. I’ve got some excellent clients. Now what about you, Nuala?”

“No. Let’s finish with you,” the older woman interrupted. “You live in New York. You’ve got a job you like. You’ve stuck to developing what is a natural talent. You’re just as pretty as I knew you’d be. You were thirty-two your last birthday. What about a love interest or significant other or whatever you young people call it these days?”

Maggie felt the familiar wrench as she said flatly, “I was married for three years. His name was Paul, and he graduated from the Air Force Academy. He had just been selected for the NASA program when he was killed on a training flight. That was five years ago. It’s a shock I guess I may never get over. Anyway, it’s still hard to talk about him.”

“Oh, Maggie.”

There was a world of understanding in Nuala’s voice. Maggie remembered that her stepmother had been a widow when she married her father.

Shaking her head, Nuala murmured, “Why do things like that have to happen?” Then her tone brightened. “Shall we order?”

Over dinner they caught up on twenty-two years. After the divorce from Maggie’s father, Nuala had moved to New York, then visited Newport, where she met Timothy Moore-someone she actually had dated when she was still a teenager-and married him. “My third and last husband,” she said, “and absolutely wonderful. Tim died last year, and do I ever miss him! He wasn’t one of the wealthy Moores, but I have a sweet house in a wonderful section of Newport, and an adequate income, and of course I’m still dabbling at painting. So I’m all right.”

But Maggie saw a brief flicker of uncertainty cross Nuala’s face and realized in that moment that without the brisk, cheerful expression, Nuala looked every day of her age.

“Really all right, Nuala?” she asked quietly. “You seem… worried.”

“Oh, yes, I’m fine. It’s just… Well, you see, I turned seventy-five last month. Years ago, someone told me that when you get into your sixties, you start to say good-bye to your friends, or they say good-bye to you, but that when you hit your seventies, it happens all the time. Believe me, it’s true. I’ve lost a number of good friends lately, and each loss hurts a little more than the last. It’s getting to be a bit lonely in Newport, but there’s a wonderful residence-I hate t he word nursing home-and I’m thinking of going to live there soon. The kind of apartment I want there has just become available.”

Then, as the waiter poured espresso, she said urgently, “Maggie, come visit me, please. It’s only a three-hour drive from New York.”

“I’d love to,” Maggie responded.

“You mean it?”

“Absolutely. Now that I’ve found you, I’m not going to let you get away again. Besides, it’s always been in the back of my mind to go to Newport. I understand it’s a photographer’s paradise. As a matter of fact-”

She was about to tell Nuala that as of next week she had cleared her calendar to allow time to take a much-needed vacation when she heard someone say, “I thought I’d find you here.”

Startled, Maggie looked up. Standing over them were Liam and his cousin Earl Bateman. “You ran out on me,” Liam said reprovingly.

Earl bent down to kiss Nuala. “You’re in hot water for spiriting away his date. How do you two know each other?”

“It’s a long story.” Nuala smiled. “Earl lives in Newport, too,” she explained to Maggie. “He teaches anthropology at Hutchinson College in Providence.”

I was right about the scholarly look, Maggie thought.

Liam pulled a chair from a nearby table and sat down. “You’ve got to let us have an after-dinner drink with you.” He smiled at Earl. “And don’t worry about Earl. He’s strange, but he’s harmless. His branch of the family has been in the funeral business for more than a hundred years. They bury people. He digs them up! He’s a ghoul. He even makes money talking about it.”

Maggie raised her eyebrows as the others laughed.

“I lecture on funeral customs through the ages,” Earl Bateman explained with a slight smile. “Some may find it macabre, but I love it.”

He strode briskly along the Cliff Walk, his hair blown by the stiff ocean breeze that had sprung up during the late afternoon. The sun had been wonderfully warm at the height of the day, but now its slanting rays were ineffectual against the cool wind. It seemed to him that the shift in the air reflected the changing quality of his own mood.

Till now he had been successful in his plan of action, but with Nuala’s dinner party only two hours away, a premonition was coming over him. Nuala had become suspicious and would confide in her stepdaughter. Everything could start to unravel.

The tourists had not yet abandoned Newport. In fact there was an abundance of them, postseason day-trippers, anxious to stalk the mansions managed by the Preservation Society, to gape at the relics of a bygone age before most of them were closed until next spring.

Deep in thought he paused as he came to The Breakers, that most marvelously ostentatious jewel, that American palace, that breathtaking example of what money, and imagination, and driv ing ambition could achieve. Built in the early 1890s for Cornelius Vanderbilt II and his wife, Alice, it was enjoyed only briefly by Vanderbilt himself. Paralyzed by a stroke in 1895, he died in 1899.

Lingering for a moment longer in front of The Breakers, he smiled. It was Vanderbilt’s story that had given him the idea.

But now he had to act quickly. Picking up his pace, he passed Salve Regina University, formerly known as Ochre Court, a hundred-room extravagance that stood splendid against the skyline, its limestone walls and mansard roof beautifully preserved. Five minutes later he came upon it, Latham Manor, the magnificent edifice that had been a worthy, more tasteful competitor to the vulgarity of The Breakers. Originally the proud property of the eccentric Latham family, it had fallen into disrepair in the lifetime of the last Latham. Rescued from ruin and restored to reflect much of its earlier grandeur, it was now the residence of wealthy retirees, living out their last years in opulence.

He stopped, feasting his eyes on Latham Manor’s majestic white marble exterior. He reached into the deep pocket of his windbreaker and pulled out a cellular phone. He dialed quickly, then smiled slightly as the voice he had hoped to hear answered. It meant one thing less he had to worry about later.