Penelope's Suitors

Chapter 07

Chapter 7

Spring, 2006

It rained during the night and into the early morning. Ted swiveled in his desk chair to watch the pedestrians still carrying their now-furled umbrellas. He remembered the billowing olive-colored ponchos that hung in the back of the Hall. Why don’t we wear ponchos, he thought. They would do such a better job of keeping us dry in our good office clothes. Perhaps they were just too geeky to make it in New York, so only school crossing guards seemed to wear them. Maybe he’d go to one of those army-navy stores in lower Manhattan and buy an old drab-green poncho, and start a new fashion.

He turned away from the window to focus on the task at hand, how to get to Zelnick construction in New Jersey using MapQuest. He was lost in a maze of Jersey state roads, when the phone rang.

"Ted Jellinek? This is Denise Reddy-Stein. You called me yesterday. I never thought we'd ever speak again." She was a little breathless.

"You remembered me?"

"Of course! How could I forget that summer—and how it ended."

"Well, that's actually why I'm calling—"

"I figured. I saw Maxwell Tolford's obituary and then your message. I put them together." Her tone was bright, and she still hadn't caught her breath.

"I’d like to ask you a few questions. I've been asked to write a biography of Maxwell Tolford, as a favor to Penelope Tolford—"

"Ohh, Penelope. I do remember her. How is she?"

"Fine. Can we meet? I'd like to check any recollections you may have about that night."

"Sure. How about today? I'm leaving in a little while, Chloe and I—Chloe is my daughter—go to a Mommy & Me class, and since the sun has come out we'll go to the park afterward. You know the playground on Fifth and 84th? We'll be by the swings around 11:30."

"How will I recognize you?" He could almost hear the pout over the phone.

"You knew me 20 years ago. I haven't changed that much. Anyway, look for a mother with a little girl whining for her pretzel goldfish."



Ted walked west to the park, to one of those "Adventure-style" playgrounds that went up in the 1970s, concrete and brick pyramids with broad slides, all set in a field of sand. The playground was full of mommies and nannies, and a fleet of expensive Swedish strollers and carriages crowded the park benches. It might be harder than expected to pick out Denise and Chloe among all the other chic mommies with their chic children.

He found the swings at the far end of the playground. He tried picking out Denise, looking for the well-heeled New York woman he had known only as an bizarrely dressed teen. He wandered behind the swings, so he could see the faces of the mommies as they pushed their children from the front. The last swing—it must be her, a short, slightly built woman wearing a suede jacket. She had short black hair—she might have gone to the same hairdresser as Ariadne. The last time he saw her she was all in black, with long lank hair and far too much make-up for a 16-year-old-girl.

He walked around the swings. "Denise?" She turned and smiled. She looked a lot better, with color in her cheeks and clear brown eyes.

"Ted! I knew you would find me." In the swing sat a cheerful toddler, sporting a red beret. "You haven't changed much, either. Shorter hair—" she looked down "—and maybe an extra pound or two." Ted laughed.

"And you washed your face!"

"Oh God, I must've looked like hell back then. I hope there are no photos still kicking around. Anyway, Chloe could stay amused in this swing all day. Ask away!" She gave Chloe an extra-hard push and the little girl squealed in delight.

"I have to admit, I don't remember you terribly well," said Ted.

She raised an eyebrow at him. "But I remembered you!"

"But I was one of a small group of employees. You were one of several score of teenaged girls that seemed to hit the resort that week. Although I admit you did stand out. I remember you showed up in August, with your parents. And you pulled your chair into the shade on the beach to maintain your healthy pallor."

"Was I that bad? I remember hanging out in front of the Hall listening to William play." And it came back to Ted, girls crowding for a piece of shade near William. His proto-groupies. "And of course, times we met privately…" Now it was Ted's turn to raise an eyebrow. "Well, I was his girlfriend!"

"I didn't realize you were that close."

"I was sixteen and he was my first great love," she said with hardly a trace of embarrassment. "He invited me up to that little cabin where the three of you lived. Cleaned it up for me, played the guitar. Just for me." She stopped pushing Chloe, lost in her own world. The girl shrieked, bringing her back. Denise rummaged in her tote bag and found a bag of pretzel goldfish. She gave a few to Chloe and resumed pushing.

"How great a love?"

"Now you're trying to delicately ask me if we had sex. Why should I tell you?" She gave a poor imitation of being offended.

"I'm looking for people who knew William better than I did. I lived with him all summer, but never knew him well. He wasn't someone it was easy to get to know. And I was preoccupied myself."

"Oh yes, you were going with that rather tall girl, the one built like a centerfold."

"That was the other guy, Vic, who was going with her. I was going with going with the lifeguard."

"Oh yes, Mary-Beth."

"Mary-Lou. But getting back to William…"

"You know, he was very independent. He'd disappear in the evening, after work, and I'd never know where he'd be, on the beach, in the backroom of the Hall after it had been closed up. Maybe he was shy—he seemed glad to see me when I found him. We had some very sweet evenings together."

"Do you remember that last night?" She gave him a sad smile.

"What do you think?"

"Tell me about it. There was a fire that night."

"Yes. William was playing, and I was sitting next to him. Weren't you there too?"

"I got called away."

"Oh. Well, it began to drizzle. And someone said we should open the Hall and move the party indoors. William began to get worked up about that guitar of his, and I handed him my sweatshirt to dry it. Anyway, he said he wanted to go up to the cabin to take care of it properly. So we went up to the cabin together—"

"We?"

"Yes, both of us. We went to the cabin, and he played for me again. He said he was tired of the big group, so he played and I listened. He was so good with James Taylor, sounded just like him. It was lovely."

"How late did you stay?"

"Oh gosh. I can't remember after all this time. But it must've been late. I was thinking my parents would start to freak, so we said goodnight and I started to head toward my cabin. I couldn't sleep, so I sat on our porch for a while. And I saw William walking along the path toward the far end of the resort."

"You didn't call out to him?"

"It was late…and like I said, he was independent. He didn't like clinging. I could tell he wanted to be alone. I was hoping to see him coming back, but just a few minutes later I saw Matthew, that hunky mechanic, heading in the same direction. That was it really. I got tired and read a magazine in bed. Until the noise, until the police showed up…" Ted watched her idly push Chloe, on autopilot.

"I suppose you were the last one to see him alive," he said. "I know that sounds dramatic, but it's true. Did the sheriff point that out to you?"

"Oh, I never spoke to the police. When everything got going my folks got up. I wanted to go out and see but Dad said to stay in, he'd go out and see. Well, he came back and said some young man had had an accident and died. And I asked who." She stopped, forgetting completely about Chloe, and sat on the bench at the end of the bank of swings. Ted stepped in and began pushing Chloe himself. As long as she kept moving, she didn't seem to mind who propelled her. The bench was close enough for Ted to continue to talk to Denise.

"I cried and cried. I think I was hysterical. Mom asked if it was that tall young man I was hanging around. Then Dad said, that's it, we're leaving. We were supposed to leave in a day or two anyway, but Dad packed us up. On our way out we left a check under the office door and found a motel in Fort Bramwell. I cried all night. I cried all week. They finally got me a shrink." She looked up. "Chloe must like you. She usually only lets me or Sheldon push her. Sheldon's my husband."

"I have a little nephew. Didn't the sheriff call you back home?"

"No, actually. I heard they were annoyed we had left, they wanted to speak to everyone. But then apparently they found it was an accident. And that was the end of that. Oh God, it's been a while. You know, on our first anniversary, Sheldon took me to an old musical. Oh, what was it called, it was about a Scottish town that only exists for one day every century, then everyone goes to sleep for another 100 years—"

"Brigadoon."

"Right. Brigadoon." She looked him right in the eye. "When I saw it, I thought, that's what that summer was like. It was so real there, but after I left it didn't seem as if it had happened. And I thought, it was like that Scottish town, and now everyone there had gone to sleep, and it wouldn't come back again until long after I was gone." She looked at her watch. "Chloe and I really ought to go. We have shopping to do." She pulled a sleepy looking Chloe off the swing. "We're going to make chicken and couscous and asparagus, Daddy's favorite." Chloe let Denise put her in the stroller, and then she closed her eyes. Denise released the brake on the stroller.

"Did you know I married a CPA?"

"Hmm?" The connection completely eluded him.

"I mean, Sheldon, my husband. He's a CPA. He wears a jacket and tie every day. I mean, my first love was a musician." She looked at him right in eye again, willing him so hard to understand. "It's just funny, that's all. Listen, it was great seeing you again. I hoped I helped."

"Enormously."

"Then take care, Ted." She wheeled Chloe toward the exit, but stopped after half a dozen steps, and turned.

"We did, you know." Ted was confused—were they still talking about Sheldon, the CPA? "I mean what you asked earlier about William, and I wouldn't tell you. We did. Under a bright moon, in that little cabin you guys shared." She was out of the playground in a moment. Ted followed her out a few minutes later, walking more slowly, but instead of heading back toward 5th Avenue he began walking through the park.

Ted didn't look up and consider where he was until he hit the boat pond, where children sailed their boats on warm weekends. It was quiet and empty now. He sat on a bench and thought for a long time, until the sun disappeared behind the buildings on Central Park West.



Summer, 1986

The county seat capped the southern end of the lake, 10 miles to the south of Twelve Pines Resort along the twisty Route 18. The little villages where most of the county residents lived were nestled among the woods, but Fort Bramwell was the one place that had been allowed to run riot. Motels with bright neon signs lined the shore, and Amherst Street, the town’s multi-laned main avenue, provided a home to pizzerias and burger joints, purveyors of fudge, ice cream, and cotton candy, miniature golf courses, arcades, and souvenir shops with the largest collection of amusing tee shirts east of the Rockies. The sidewalks overflowed with tourists.

“You girls live near here?” asked Ted.

“Sort of,” said Mary-Lou. “We passed my turnoff about 5 miles back. The township is huge. It runs almost all the way to the resort.”

“And I’m up in the hills,” said Laurie. “In the real Boonies.”

Mary-Lou turned off Amherst Street and a block away they found themselves on a street of old Victorian houses under huge trees, dark and quiet and nothing like the gaudy town around the corner.

They found a place to park.

“Okay folks, this is the corner of Maple and Ordell,” said Mary-Lou. “Don’t forget that—Maple and Ordell. If we get separated we meet here. I’m leaving here at 11:00 sharp. If you’re late, you walk.” Vic and Ted gave her mock salutes.

“The best arcade is right down here,” said Vic. “Ten Skee-Ball lanes.” He and Laurie walked hand-in-hand down to Amherst Street. Ariadne was flanked by Matthew on one side and the two guests on the other, who seemed very excited to be away from the resort and their parents.

“Matthew is going to win me a bear,” said Ariadne.

“I’ll try,” he said. “It’s been a while.”

Ted paired off with Mary-Lou down to Amherst. William had been quiet in the car, looking out the window during the short drive. By default, he walked next to Ted.

“I’ve never been here,” he said.

“It’s a good occasional relief from lake and trees,” said Ted.

“It’s a ghost town in the winter,” said Mary-Lou. “Everything is shut up, except for a few of the larger motels. They stay open for salesmen, people passing through.”

“Do they have pinball here? I was pretty good in high school.”

“A whole wall of pinball. And you can win tickets.” William looked confused. “When you do well at a game, the machine prints tickets. The better you do, the more tickets you win. And then you can trade your tickets in for a prize—anything from a keychain to a giant stuffed animal. You see, you spend $25 to play games and win enough tickets for a $5 prize. The guy who owns this place is a capitalist genius. He’s my hero.”

“What an interesting way of looking at it,” said Mary-Lou.

Walking into the Fun Tyme Arcade, there were faced with corridors of blinking buzzing machines and children and teens hitting flippers at silver balls, shooting criminals with automatic weapons, and driving race cars. The right side wall sported a bank of Skee-Ball alleys: short bowling alleys that for a quarter dispensed nine wooden balls you could roll into a series of increasingly narrow holes at the end. The smaller the target, the high the score. At the bottom, paper tickets curled out of a slot with each point scored.

The crowd dispersed to their particular addictions. William set himself up at a pinball, his shock of hair waving as he worked the machine. Ariadne was attempting some sort of Wild West shootout that involved a rifle, and Matthew was helping her aim—it made sense, most of the local boys hunted in season. The guests were trying their hand at Skee-Ball, next to Vic, who was proving himself a fair hand as Laurie cheered him on. The tickets piled at his feet.

“I have some undead to kill,” said Ted. His favorite game was “Zombie Death.” With a sawed-off pump-action shotgun you shot at zombies, who exploded in gore all over the screen. Click-bang, click-bang…

“I’m trying some pinballs,” said Mary-Lou. “Lotsa luck.” Ted fed in some more quarters—more shooting. After a while, his fingers started to cramp. He flexed them and looked around. Laurie had started playing next to Vic, and was quickly amassing her own tickets. Matthew had taken over the shooting himself, and judging from the screams from the machine, was having a lot of success.

Ariadne and the two guests were communally attempting to figure out a racing game that involved quick shifting, and the crash sounds from the machine became so loud and frequent that it started to attract attention, to their embarrassment. One of the teenaged assistant managers came over to help them.

Ted felt a hand on his arm. “I have to get away from this noise for a bit—I’ll be back,” said Mary-Lou.

“Me too,” he said suddenly. “Can we go for a walk together?”