Читать книгу The Prizefighter and the Playwright - Jay R. Tunney - Страница 8

Preamble

The heiress, once a great beauty, was now 100 years old. She moved in slow but deliberate steps toward the straight-backed chair set up in front of the windows. The chair was facing out, so that from her second-floor bedroom, she could see across the treetops and down onto the rolling lawn which sloped away from the house to the rock garden she had planted so many years ago. With help, she sat down and reached toward the back of the chair for a sweater, which was handed to her. Her hair, once a glowing chestnut, was gray and pressed against her head under a hair net. Her hearing was still sharp, but her eyes were watery and clouded.

Somehow, she managed to see the distant trees she had presided over for three quarters of a century, trees that Daniel Chichester, the farmer who had built the house in 1735, may have planted himself. She had always loved trees, as if they were family. She had learned that from her mother. She could tell you about the tall tulip tree near the garden, the dogwood trees that spilled their white petals around the pond, the great oak, the sycamore, the elms and the old hickory so near the house she said it seemed to whisper to her in the wind. She was blessed with hundreds of trees, and when she needed more after Gene died, she started a Christmas tree farm in one of the meadows. That was in 1978, and some of the blue spruce and cedar had grown so large, they could never grace the inside of a home for the holidays.

“Love, love, love,” she used to say when she left voice messages. And then, “Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye.”

“Mr. Shaw used to do it,” she said, her mouth curling upward with pleasure at the memory of it. “He used to have a little wave, and he always said ‘Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye,’ and I kind of picked it up. It sounded so sincere, you know. Like a little song. I loved it.”

She smiled and looked over at the dozens of photographs on the bureau next to the bed, pictures of her four children and their children, pictures of a wedding, the schooner Endymion in full sail, and an old black-and-white image of a young Gene holding a rosary. Her eyes came to rest on a photograph from the 1920s that showed two men standing together deep in conversation as late-afternoon shadows fell languidly across their path.

“Let’s talk about Brioni,” she said. “It was a beautiful time. I’m the only one left, you know. I’m the only one who can remember.”

It was her favorite story, and she wanted to start at the beginning.