praised his writing to the skies, and lectured him at length on what he failed to grasp.
Something his father said came back to him. "You,re innocent, Reuben, yes, but life will teach you what you need to know soon enough." Phil was always making rather unusual pronouncements. He said at dinner last night, "Not a day goes by, when I don,t ask a cosmic question. Does life have meaning? Or is this all smoke and mirrors? Are we all doomed?"
"You know, Sunshine Boy, I know why nothing really penetrates with you," Celeste had said later. "Your mother talks in detail about her surgeries over shrimp cocktail, and your father will only talk about what absolutely does not matter at all. I,ll take your easy brand of optimism any day. The fact is, you make me feel good."
Had that made him feel good? No. Not at all. But the strange thing about Celeste was that she was far more affectionate and kindly than her words ever indicated. She was a killer of an attorney, a five-foot-two firebrand on the job, but with him, she was cuddly and downright sweet. She fussed over his clothes, and always answered her phone. She had lawyer friends on speed dial to answer any questions he encountered in his reporting. But her tongue? Her tongue was a little sharp.
The fact is, Reuben thought suddenly, secretively, there is something dark and tragic about this house that I want to know. The house made him think of cello music, deep, rich, a little rough, and uncompromising The house was talking to him, or maybe it would talk to him if he,d stop listening to the voices of home.
He felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket. Without taking his eyes off the house, he turned it off.
"Oh good gracious, look at you," said Marchent. "You,re freezing, dear boy. How utterly thoughtless of me. Come, we must get you inside."
"I,m a San Francisco kid," he muttered. "I,ve slept all my life on Russian Hill with the window wide open. I should have been prepared."
He followed her up the stone steps, and through the massive arched front door.
The warmth of the room was immediate and delicious, even though it was a vast space, under a high beamed ceiling, its dark oak floors stretching on forever in a kind of airy gloom.
The blazing fireplace was distant but cavernous, facing them directly from across a dark expanse of rather shapeless old couches and chairs.
He,d smelled the oak logs burning earlier, just a whiff here and there as they,d walked on the hillside, and he,d loved that.
She led him to the velvet couch right beside the hearth. There was a silver coffee service on the large marble coffee table.
"You get warm," she said. And she stood there herself before the flames warming her hands.
There were huge old brass andirons and a fender, and the bricks on the back of the fireplace were black.
She turned and moved about almost silently on the old worn Oriental carpets, turning on the many scattered lamps.
Slowly the room took on a cheerful glow.
The furniture was immense, but comfortable, with worn but serviceable slipcovers and occasional caramel-colored leather chairs. There were a few hulking bronze sculptures, all of predictable mythological figures, very old-fashioned. And a number of dark landscapes in heavy gilt frames hanging here and there.
The warmth was now relentless. In a few minutes he would be taking off his scarf and his coat.
He looked up at the old dark wood paneling above the fireplace, rectangles neatly trimmed in deeply carved egg-and-dart molding, and at the similar paneling that covered the walls. There were bookcases flanking the fireplace, stuffed with old volumes, leather, cloth, even paperbacks, and far to the right over his shoulder he glimpsed an east-facing room that looked like a vintage paneled library, the kind he,d always dreamed of having for himself. There was a fire in there too.
"It takes my breath away," he said. He could see his father sitting here, shuffling his poems as he made his endless notes. Yes, he would love this place, no doubt of it. It was the place for cosmic reflections and decisions. And how shocked everybody would be if - .
And why wouldn,t his mother be glad? They loved each other, his mother and father, but they did not get along. Phil tolerated Grace,s doctor friends; and Grace found his few old academic friends an absolute bore. Poetry reading made her furious on general principles. The movies