By the time Nancy died, all her efforts had been exhausted—and yet, even in her final delirium, she could speak of little else besides the house. To comfort her, Ben lied. He told her that at the eleventh hour, the provost had given in, agreeing that the Wright children could take over the land lease. And she accepted what he told her, or at least pretended to, and seemed to die in peace. Teary-eyed yet stoic, Ben and Daphne now organized the estate sale during which much of their parents’ worldly chattel was sold and hauled off, including the Danish modern leather chair with the cat pee on it, and the piano, and the stuffed piranha. Dora was dead. I took Little Hans, who lived with me until his own death a few years later. Two law professors—a married couple—bought the house, and Ben and Daphne, each bearing a third of the considerable profits, went their separate ways. For years I didn’t hear from them. I didn’t know that they were still plotting. I didn’t know that, especially for Ben, the reclaiming of that house, the fulfillment of that final lie at his mother’ deathbed, had become the driving ambition of a frustrated and unhappy life.
Two
NANCY WRIGHT “FOUND” me, as she found so many of her friends, at the hairdresser’. This was in November 1967.1 suppose I should say something more about what I was like at that time. I was twenty-eight, and had been working at Wellspring for just over a year. I was fat, with freckled, vigorous cheeks, and most of the time I wore men’ Oxford shirts and denim skirts with elasticized waistbands. I still do. Perhaps because of this, most people assume me to be a sexless spinster, or short of that a lesbian, when in fact I have always had a fairly easy time attracting men. Wives be warned: It is not necessarily the glamorous woman, the woman with the pronounced cheekbones and the red hair piled loosely atop her head, who is the femme fatale. On the contrary, the homely secretary may pose a graver threat to your domestic security. For there is often a great disparity between what men actually want and what they feel, for the sake of appearances, they should pretend to want. Thus, even within the deceptive realm of infidelity, one encounters secondary levels of deception. One of the married men with whom I had an affair, when his wife found a love letter he had written to me, insisted that it was for another woman—a more conventionally “pretty” woman—that the missive was meant. Others were glad to sleep with me, but would not be seen with me at restaurants. This attitude probably would have caused me greater offense had it not fit so well my need for privacy and independence. I was a creature too prone to passionate excess to thrive within the conjugal yoke. Affairs with married men better suited my character and disposition. The married men appreciated that I had no wish to interfere with their domestic stability. I appreciated that they were less likely to importune, to demand total loyalty, than would a conventional suitor. It was a system that worked well through a number of long affairs, including one with Ernest Wright.
And why, I now find myself trying to recall, had I gone to the hairdresser’ in the first place? I wasn’t in the habit of doing so—even then, I preferred to keep my hair short and to the point—only that week one of the other secretaries in my department must have put it into my head that I ought to “do” something with my hair, such as have it set. And so that Saturday, more to appease a sense of youthful insecurity than from any genuine enthusiasm, I went to Minnie’ Beauty Salon on Calibraska Avenue. I endured the ordeal of having my hair washed, cut, and then rolled with curlers, after which I was put to roost under one of the old-fashioned, kettle-shaped dryers. Next to me Nancy knitted. We had only met once before, at a department function.
“Hello,” she said. “Do you play piano?”
I thought I’d misheard her. “Excuse me?” I asked.
“Oh, it’ you,” she said. “Sorry, I didn’t recognize you under there. How are things going?”
“Oh, hello, Mrs. Wright! Fine, thank you.”
“I hope Ernest hasn’t terrorized you too much.”
“No, not at all.”
“I’m only asking about the piano because I’m looking for a four-hand partner. Do you play?”
“Badly,” I admitted.
“Good, that’ just