The reference to Holly was in a review of a group show at the Krug Gallery, in Woodstock, New York. Holly was one of four artists who had exhibited their video works there nearly two years ago. The review was lukewarm, and Holly’s piece rated barely two sentences. Like the Gimlet Players, the Krug Gallery hadn’t stood the test of time; it had closed last May. Which left me, as the evening wore out, knowing not much more about Holly Cade than her name. Except that I remembered what Jill Nolan had said.
“Because I’ve known her since, like, second grade…”
Holly Cade was mostly invisible on the Web, but Jill Nolan was not. I found a one-paragraph biography of her on the touring company’s website, and a headshot of her bland, pretty, bright-toothed face. The bio was mostly a list of stage and TV credits, but near the end was the nugget I’d been looking for. “Born and raised in Wilton, Connecticut…”
4
Forty-eight hours was more time than David wanted to wait for a progress report. I was happy to report what little progress I’d made over the telephone, but David wouldn’t have it. He was typically specific in his other demands too: no stopping by his office, no meetings south of Park Row or anywhere on the Upper East Side, and definitely no house calls- not to his house, anyway. In the end, we met at the Florida Room, an airy, high-concept diner around the corner from my place. It has a lot of jalousies and slow-turning ceiling fans, and enough background noise for private conversation. There’s a row of booths along the back wall and I was in one, working on a bowl of oatmeal, when David arrived. He kept his coat on and sat and stared out the windows at the pedestrians and cars.
“Holly Cade,” he said again, and shook his head. “Never heard of her.” He dug his hands into his coat pockets and seemed to shiver. The waitress came and David ordered orange juice and nothing else.
“How about Jill Nolan?” I asked.
“Not her either,” he said softly.
He was turned out in pinstriped navy, crisp and spotless despite the messy sidewalks. But David also looked smaller today, and older and more distracted too.
“Is this Nolan going to tell her pal about your call?” he asked.
“Maybe,” I said. “Probably. And I don’t expect it will take Holly long to figure out what it was about.”
“That’s fucking great,” David said. “What happened to discretion?”
“You think she’ll be surprised that you’re looking for her? It’s not like she ordered you not to try to find her, after all. Hell, she might even be flattered. Maybe it’ll make her get in touch.”
“Fucking great,” he said again. David’s juice came, but he just looked at it for a while and went back to peering out the window. He looked east and west and east again, searching for something along the length of Seventeenth Street.
“Has she called again?” I asked.
David snorted. “Don’t you think I would’ve mentioned it?”
I was by no means certain, but I nodded anyway. “Did something else happen, then?”
He stiffened and shook his head slowly. “What the hell are you going on about?”
“You seem a little jumpy.”
David stared at me for a long moment, his eyes feverish in his waxen face. “Don’t think you know something about me now, because you don’t,” he said. He tugged at a tiny scrap of skin over his Adam’s apple, a nervous habit he’d had since he was a kid but that I hadn’t seen in years. And I thought of something I hadn’t thought of for at least as long.
I couldn’t have been much older than ten, which made David maybe twelve. It was springtime, I remembered, because the French doors were opened onto the terrace, and a table was set outside with our parents’ breakfast on it, though no one was eating. And I remembered it was a weekday, because Irma, the woman who took care of us back then, was orbiting raggedly around Lauren and me, trying to get us ready for school. But her efforts were in vain that morning; we were even less cooperative than usual, distracted as we were by the tension congealing around us, and the dangerous hum in the air.
It was what happened when the usually simmering border war between our parents heated up to something more overt. We never knew the substance of their conflict, or the particulars that brought things to a boil, but we knew more or less what to expect: lowered voices, raspy whispers, quick footsteps and slamming doors, and a thick, oppressive silence in between. Familiar, but frightening nonetheless.
We hadn’t seen our mother, but only heard her voice in jagged fragments. Our father had made a brief appearance, unshaven and still in his striped pajamas and robe- he’d given up going to the Klein amp; Sons offices years before. He breezed through the kitchen with a bottle of seltzer under his arm and ruffled his hand through my hair. His smile was lopsided and his eyes were unfocused. He breezed off again, in the direction of the bedrooms, and I followed at a distance. I found David outside the double doors to their room, his ear cocked. He turned away as I approached.
“What are they saying?” I whispered. He didn’t answer. “Can you hear?” Again, nothing. I stepped up to the door, to listen myself, and I saw David’s face- the tears in his eyes and on his cheeks. It was the first time I remember seeing him cry.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” he snapped.
“Nothing.”
“Then get out of here.”
“Can you hear?” I asked again. “What are they talking about?”
David wheeled and wiped his arm across his face and shoved me in the chest. “You, you little faggot- they’re talking about what a fucking loser you are, and how they’re sending you to military school. So you better run now, before the Marines show up to take you.”
I stumbled backward until I hit the hallway wall. My eyes were burning. “Fuck you, crybaby,” I whispered.
David stared at me and tugged at a tiny scrap of skin over his Adam’s apple. He looked for a long time and then his fist came up from what seemed like nowhere and split my lower lip.
It was the first time for that too.
I shook my head and shook the thought away and the restaurant din returned. David was still looking at me across the table.
“So where the hell does this Cade live- in Wilton?”
“Somebody named Nicole Cade lives there- the only Cade in town; I don’t know if she knows Holly. But Jill Nolan grew up there, and she and Holly were childhood friends, and-”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah- I get it,” David said, and looked up and down Seventeenth Street some more. “Just call me when you get back.”
The waitress came to refill my coffee cup, and when she left David did too.
Wilton was just over an hour’s drive from the city, north and east on 95 and then north on Route 7- chaotic interstate followed by strip malls followed by pricey clapboard suburbs. Concrete and slush gave way to pines and stone fences and still white snow, and the cars were fewer but more expensive. I turned off 7 onto Route 33, toward Ridge-field, and turned again when I came to Cranberry Lane. It was a quiet road and the houses were large and far-between along it. My rent-a-car fishtailed through two miles of scenic turns before I reached the Cade place.
It was a red-doored, black-shuttered white colonial set well back from the road, and set handsomely in its landscape. The big lindens in front would make for nice shade in summer and nice color in fall, and the conservatory at the south end, while certainly not original, was well proportioned and well matched to the lines of the roof and the flow of the façade. The plantings around the stone foundations were wrapped in neat burlap. Snow lay like cake frosting on the brown bundles and covered the broad front lawn in a pristine blanket that was painfully bright under the noontime sky. The curving drive was plowed to a layer of ice and packed gravel and I took my time driving
