The Golden Willow Read online

  I had found it hard throwing them away. I hesitated over each one before putting it in the garbage bag. They seemed to have a rightful place with us and to still belong in our life. But I consoled myself, thinking that our old life was over and we were beginning a new one.

  I think Ruby was feeling the same way I was. She too had glanced behind her as we drove off and had seen that mountainous pile of black bags. Her hand reached out and touched mine on the wheel, and I took it in mine and pressed it.

  As we were driving away, I was still looking through the rearview mirror at the pile of garbage we had left behind, and I saw Mr. Way come hurrying out of his house, dressed in his World War I khaki uniform. He came to a halt and stood looking in our direction, standing at attention, then saluted us. I don't know if he saw me, but I saluted back to him, and it completed our departure.

  Chapter Seventeen

  2005

  I'D HAD ONE OF MY BAD NIGHTS BEFORE THE CALL CAME. I HAD NOT been able to fall asleep and lay in the darkness thinking of all sorts of things of the past, some of which I had written about in my book, an assortment of episodes, faces, voices, little snatches of vignettes, all of them disconnected, passing fleetingly through my mind. Then I got to thinking of Ruby and a time shortly after we were married when we went on a walking tour through New England. We had joined an organization called the American Youth Hostel Association. They would map out an itinerary for you, and there were hostels in farmhouses where you could stay for twenty-five cents a night and get a meal there for very little money.

  We had a gay time of it. We both loved walking, and we loved the hills and mountains that we went through, and we loved the hostels that we came to at night, even though they were sometimes beds in haylofts, the sweet smell of hay all around us. And we loved each other. There was a sweetness about all this that made me cling to the recollection for quite some time.

  But then, suddenly, my thoughts made an ugly turn, and I began to think of what we had done to Ruby when she had died. She had wanted cremation, but neither she nor I had given any thought to what that really meant. It meant burning her, destroying her until there was nothing left but ashes, and horror came over me as I lay there thinking of it. How could I have turned her lovely body over to be thrust into an oven of flames?

  But what else was there? Was burying her under the ground and letting her rot slowly away any less barbaric? But why think of either alternative? What difference did it make? She was gone, and that was all that mattered.

  So once again I found myself back in the misery of wanting her, missing her, and crying for her, although perhaps it had never left me. The year I had spent writing my book had been temporary forgetfulness. I thought I had made things worse now by sending my book out to publishers and adding the bitter disappointment of failure. I berated myself that I should have known that would be the inevitable result. I had brought it on myself, and perhaps I deserved what I was getting now.

  It was in this black mood that I got up next morning and began stumbling through making my breakfast. I had been clumsy before under ordinary circumstances, but now I was doubly so. Things fell out of my hands, toast burned, I knocked over a glass of orange juice, and I did a lot of cursing. I was in this state when the telephone rang.

  On top of everything else! I stood with a mop in my hand, about to wipe up the spilled orange juice that covered half the kitchen floor, wondering who the hell could be calling me at this time of the morning. My daughter reminding me to take my pills? My son asking if I needed anything?

  With one hand still holding the mop, I lifted the receiver of the phone with the other hand, put it to my ear, and said “Hello” in a voice that could not have sounded pleasant to the other party.

  A woman's voice answered, “Is this the residence of Harry Bernstein?”

  “Yes,” I barked, deciding now that it was a saleswoman, and getting ready to bang the receiver down.

  “Are you the author of The Invisible Wall?”

  This was something else. I felt my heart give a jump.

  “Yes,” I said in a much more careful tone.

  “I'm Kate Elton,” the voice said, “an editor at Random House, and I'm calling from our office in London to tell you that I've read your book and I like it very much, and I'm prepared to make you an offer.”

  What could my reaction be to that? What could be the reaction of anyone who has spent his lifetime trying to write a book that would be published, and finally in his ninety-fifth year has succeeded in doing so? What came to me then was skepticism. Although my heart started beating violently, I became cautious. This was a young voice, and young people didn't make offers to publish books.

  “Who did you say you were?” I asked.

  “Kate Elton.”

  I will never forget that name. “Are you in authority there?”

  “I am the editorial director of the Arrow Books division of Random House.”

  Could there be anything more authoritative than that? My heart was going rapidly now. All the skepticism had vanished. This was real. I didn't know what to say next. The voice went on to say that I would receive the offer shortly by mail, and this would be followed by a contract, which I should sign and send to them; she ended by telling me again how wonderful my book was and that Random House would be proud to be my publisher.

  I hung up in a daze. I stood staring at the spilled orange juice on the floor. I began to mop it up, but it was no longer something I wanted to curse over. In fact, I was glad to have this task because it steadied my nerves a little.

  It should not be hard to picture how I felt at this moment, how anyone would feel after a lifetime of trying and failing and then finally, when my life was virtually over, to find the success I had always been searching for. I remembered the time another editor had sent for me to discuss the novel I had submitted to him. The euphoria had been the same then as it was now, inspired by the certainty that he was going to accept my book, only to tell me he still had faith in me as a coming writer but that for the moment the answer was no. What a different outcome this talk with an editor had had now.

  This thought led to thinking of Ruby, and how I wished she could have shared this moment with me. I had mostly kept my disappointments from her, if I could help it. But those that she knew about she dismissed lightly, telling me that they were unimportant and that I was bound to make it someday. She would not have been surprised had she been alive. But she would have been happy about it.

  Adraenne was wildly happy when I relayed the news to her on my cell phone, finding her on a subway riding to the hospital where she worked. Charles took the news a bit more soberly but with equal, unmistakable joy in his tone. They'd both been brought up to the sound of my typewriter clattering away in the office I had in the house where we lived. When I'd had some time to spare, I lost none of it going down to this basement office, which was a table next to the oil burner, inserting a sheet of paper in the typewriter, and for the next few hours becoming oblivious of everything except the novel I was banging out at a rapid pace.

  The news that I had finally achieved what I had sought all those years must have come as a shock to them, but nevertheless a wonderful surprise. It was to me. I had not expected it, but as I said, there was a shadow cast across that joy when I thought of Ruby and wished she could share it with me. I remembered only too well the terrible letdown I'd had in store for her the day I went to see Clifton Fadiman and he handed my manuscript back to me with such sad regrets. Ruby and I had expected to celebrate our dinner that night with even more fervor than we had the previous night, when it seemed so certain that I'd brought a bottle of wine to toast my success.

  I remembered wondering how I was going to break the news to her, especially when I heard her footsteps hurrying up the stairs with such expectancy in them, and when the door opened her eyes went to me with that look in them, and her arms were already around my neck for a kiss of congratulations. I told her as we embraced, and it didn't change a thing. She
laughed and hugged me still tighter.

  “So what?” she said. “If it didn't happen today, it will happen some other time. But it's bound to happen. So let's drink a toast to that in advance, and we'll drink again when it happens.”

  There was wine left from the day before, and that's exactly what we did do. We filled our glasses and touched them, toasting to what was going to happen, and we kissed, and I never felt the disappointment and embarrassment that I had expected to feel.

  Well, it had happened, just as she had said it would, and I decided to do what she would have done. I put a fresh white lace tablecloth on the dining room table that night and set the table for two. I went out and bought a bouquet of flowers and a bottle, not of wine, but of champagne. I placed the flowers in the center of the table along with a framed photograph of her.

  I had also bought a roast chicken in the supermarket, and it gave off a delicious odor that mingled with the scent of the flowers. There could not have been a more beautiful table. All it lacked was her presence. But I had to make do with what there was. I sat down and filled the two glasses with champagne. I raised mine and looked at her photograph. She was smiling back at me.

  “To you, darling,” I said.

  But my hand shook and I had to put the glass down; it was several moments before I could recover enough to drink or eat.

  Chapter Eighteen

  1973

  GREENBRIAR WAS DESIGNED WITH A CIRCULAR SHAPE. SEEN FROM above in a plane, it would have resembled a huge wheel, with the clubhouse in the center as the hub and the streets radiating from it as the spokes. But I think the architect may have had a more profound thought. That circular shape could have meant another world, a world within a world that had been carved out of the surrounding pine forests, sheltered from the outside world by remaining thick clusters of pine trees that gave off their constant sharp, coniferous smell.

  Perhaps, as I suspect, the architect might have been trying to say, You are completely isolated from the world you have come from, with its noises and crime and pollution. Here you will be protected from all that in your golden years. And as the promoters of the community would add, Here you will find a taste of heaven before the real thing comes, and here is where you will find that every night is Saturday night.

  Well, it wasn't exactly like that, but it was quite definitely quiet and peaceful, and the surroundings were pleasant, and we had a comfortable house that gave us a view of the man-made lake around which every morning before breakfast Ruby and I would walk briskly, feeling younger and healthier than ever. The lawns were green and spacious, and in between the houses were broad stretches of common ground on which there were no houses, but only trees and bushes, and flowers everywhere. Then too, there was a nine-hole golf course, shuffleboard courts, of course, two swimming pools, and a clubhouse where you would find a constant round of activities, including painting and sculpting and ceramics.

  What more could anyone want in his retirement days, when he or she was free of the workday routine of having to sit in an office for eight hours every day? Here we could get up in the morning when we pleased, go where we pleased, do what we pleased, or do nothing at all. We no longer had the children to worry about and to get to school in the morning, and all the problems that went with their growing up. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, to worry about, and there were new friends to make. To Ruby's great delight there was dancing of all kinds at the clubhouse: square dancing, round dancing, line dancing, ballroom dancing, folk dancing. Greenbriar was the dancingest place in the world.

  Ruby loved dancing of all kinds, but folk dancing especially, chiefly because it had an international flavor, and she got me into it. I had resisted at first. I didn't mind the ballroom dancing on Saturday nights, but once Ruby had broken down my resistance and persuaded me to attend the weekly folk dances, I could never get over a feeling of embarrassment at holding hands with people on either side of me and sometimes skipping or hopping or twirling. I felt plain silly, but I did it, and stuck to it every week because I saw how much pleasure it gave Ruby, the glow it brought to her cheeks, and the sparkle in her big brown eyes.

  I didn't mind the Saturday night dances at the clubhouse with a live band playing. It was called café night. We sat at tables with about half a dozen other people, some of them couples like us, some singles, widows or widowers in their sixties or seventies. Coffee and cake were served. There was very little talk among them. Some of them simply sat and stared at the crowd dancing and never danced themselves. But Ruby and I did, and we broke away from them as soon as possible to go on the dance floor. I had become fairly proficient at it under Ruby's tutelage, and ever since that first night ages ago when we had met at a dance, I had lost none of the pleasure of holding her close to me and moving to the rhythm of the music with her, and feeling the warmth and softness of her body under the palm of my hand.

  We had returned to our table one night after the dance was over, and I still had my arm around Ruby's waist as we sat down next to two women who had been watching us. One of them spoke to the other, loud enough for us to hear, winking and saying, “I think we have a romance here.” She then turned to me and asked, “How long have you two been married?”

  “About forty years,” I said.

  They were both amazed. The other woman said, “I can't believe it. We were watching you dance and we were sure you were newly-weds, the way you were dancing so close together and the way you keep looking at each other. We were sure it was a second marriage for both of you.”

  We assured them it was our first marriage and a forty-year-old one, and we were both amused and flattered by their incredulity. I don't think we had realized until then how noticeable our feelings toward each other were to others. But it would always be that way. It was the one thing that would never change.

  So many of the good things don't last. Those early days in Greenbriar are among them. They went by too fast. But while they lasted we felt we were living a new life. Everybody felt that way. The community was new. It had been started only two or three years before we arrived there. They were still building houses and more new people were coming in. There was a sort of pioneering spirit among us that drew everyone together, and all the activities were well attended if for no other reason than everyone wanted to meet still more friends.

  Although people were beginning to break off into different groups, it hadn't taken us long to find out that so many of the people there knew nothing about the authors whose name was given to the street on which they lived. They had no idea who Emily Dickinson was, or Whitman, or Poe, or any of the others who were so precious to us. They were people who had never read a book, and so they were the people we shunned. We found our own group of book lovers and music lovers. There were Bruce Davenport, a former history professor at Hofstra College, and his wife, Martha, and of course Pete and Ann Warth, who were bird watchers as well and introduced us to the wonderful world of flying creatures. And the Milowskys, Nate and Esther, whose home on Collins Avenue was a gathering place for us because Nate had an extensive collection of Victor Red Seal classical records, with all the old favorites such as Caruso and Maud Powell and other great singers and musicians. The collection occupied one entire wall of their house in glass cases that reached from floor to ceiling.

  They are all dead now, but those gatherings in the Milowskys' house, with all of us listening in deep silence, enthralled by the music we heard coming off those ancient records, are vivid in my mind, and very precious to me.

  Eventually, those gatherings broadened into a classical music club, and there were so many people in it the meetings had to be held in the auditorium at the clubhouse, and it was there that Sarah, a talented pianist, performed for us, with her husband, Jake, a retired New York cop, turning the pages for her and beaming proudly as she played.

  These were the good days that went by too fast and made us feel that we were indeed living in another world, a sanctuary shut off from the outer troublesome world. But even then
, I recall, when the place was still new for all of us, this illusion was shattered one day, and some of the evil of the outer world managed to penetrate our sanctuary.

  One morning a woman resident was found dead in the pine woods surrounding the community. She was a widow who lived alone in a house on Poe Avenue, and she had been strangled. Clearly, this was a case of murder, and immediately following the discovery the place was swarming with police. The place that was being touted by its promoters as “a taste of heaven before the real thing comes along” was now a place of terror.

  It did not take them long to find the culprit, one of the workmen on a new house they were still building. He was a young black man. He and the woman had struck up a friendship while she was walking her dog one day, and she had invited him into her home. He came several times, and they would sit and drink beer and chat and perhaps, it was surmised, do more than that. One night they got into an argument after too much beer, and the young fellow lost his temper and there was a struggle and he killed her, then carried the body out into the woods and dumped it there.

  Surprisingly, not much of this got into the papers, not even when the trial took place and the killer was sentenced to life imprisonment. I thought this might have had something to do with the fact that Greenbriar was a big advertiser in all the papers. I reasoned that it could well have halted sales if the public had been better informed about the murder. To me this looked like a cover-up, and a largely successful one at that.

  Thinking about it, I felt there was something wrong in this. People were entitled to know the truth about a place in which they were going to live and that they were being told was another world of nothing but peace and harmony. The so-called leisure village was still something new, and not many people knew anything about them, so I decided that I would write an article and tell them what it was like living in one of these places. There was such a good story in Greenbriar that I simply could not resist writing it.