Tony Fleming was just unlocking the door to the duplex on the fifth floor when Rebecca Mayhew came flying down the stairs. “Laurie! You’re back! How was it? What was Mustique like? You have to tell me everything! Oh, I can’t even imagine being somewhere like that.”
“What about the rest of us?” Tony asked. “Don’t we even get a hello?”
Rebecca flushed with embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Mr. Fleming — I didn’t mean to be rude. Hello, Mrs. Fleming. Hi, Ryan.” But even before anyone could reply, she’d turned back to Laurie. “Can I see your room?”
Laurie hesitated. It was only the third time she’d ever been in her stepfather’s huge apartment, and the first since the wedding, when they’d all spent the night at the Plaza, then flown down to the Caribbean Sea the next morning, to the house Tony had rented for them on a little island named Mustique. The house, a yellow Victorian cottage with white gingerbread trim and one whole wall open to the sea, had its own saltwater swimming pool, a private beach, a cook, a maid, and a gardener. For two whole weeks, all they had done was lie around the pool, snorkel off the beach, or go to one of the other beaches to play in the surf. Her head was still swimming with images of the palm trees and bougainvillea that covered the little island and now that she was back in the city where everything should have been familiar, everything was as different as it had been on Mustique. Instead of going back to the apartment on 76th Street, they had come straight to Central Park West.
“Aren’t we going home?” Ryan had asked when the limousine that picked them up at the airport had turned on 71st instead of going on up to 77th.
“We’re going to our new home,” her mother had explained. “Don’t you remember? That’s why we packed up everything before the wedding. We had everything moved while we were gone. Someone else lives in our old apartment now.”
As the limo pulled to a stop in front of The Rockwell and Ryan peered nervously out the window at its dark facade, Laurie had hardly been able to keep from laughing out loud, so clear was it that he was remembering all the stories she and her friends had told him over the years. “Scared to go in?” she’d taunted him. “Afraid the troll might get you?”
That got her a glare from her mother, but Tony had just laughed. “I always thought Rodney was strange. Now I know why.”
But even though she’d teased Ryan about the stories, the truth was that she, too, was feeling more nervous about moving into her stepfather’s apartment than she was willing to admit, and now that she was standing outside the door to her new home, she also realized that she didn’t even know where her room was.
As if reading her mind, Tony tilted his head toward the wide staircase in the apartment’s foyer that led to the second floor. “Upstairs, then all the way down the hall. The door on the right.”
Laurie, grinning at Rebecca, turned to her mother. “Is it all right?”
“Of course it’s all right,” Caroline replied. “But take your suitcase, okay?”
With both of them hanging onto Laurie’s suitcase, the two girls started up the stairs, and when they got to the enormous landing — big enough to hold a sofa and two easy chairs — Rebecca gazed around at the floor-to- ceiling bookcases and the wheeled oak ladder, attached to a brass rail at the top, that could be slid along the wall to allow easy access to even the highest of the bookshelves. “This place is huge,” she whispered. “It’s at least twice as big as Aunt Alicia and Uncle Max’s.”
They moved down the long, wide hallway and finally came to the last door on the right. As Laurie pushed it open, Rebecca squealed with excitement. “It’s right underneath my room. We can pass stuff back and forth in a basket on a rope!”
But Laurie barely even heard her, for she was staring at the room in utter disbelief. It was huge — nearly twenty feet square, with a ceiling that was at least three times as high as Laurie was tall. A brass-and-crystal chandelier hung over the center of the room, and a four-poster bed — heavily hung with velvet curtains — stood against one of the walls. When she punched the old-fashioned button to turn the chandelier on, barely enough light emerged from its bulbs to cut the gloom in the immense chamber, and what little light there was seemed to get soaked up by the dark flocked wallpaper that had once covered the walls, but was now curling at the seams to expose mildewy-looking plaster beneath.
When Laurie reached out and touched the curled wallpaper, it cracked beneath her finger, and a little bit of the plaster crumbled away.
Other than the bed, the furniture in the room was from the old apartment. Her dresser, that had looked so large in her room at home, now crouched against the far wall, looking small and forlorn, almost as if it was embarrassed to be in such a huge room.
Her desk and chair were there, too, looking just as lonely as the dresser.
When she opened the closet all her clothes were there, but instead of filling the huge space, they barely occupied a quarter of it. And her shoes filled only one of the six tiers of compartments that were built into one end of the wardrobe.
Though all of her things were there, and the room was far bigger than anything she’d ever dreamed of, Laurie Evans felt like crying.
CHAPTER 12
It was late that afternoon, and as she closed the door behind what she hoped would be the last drop-in guest of the day, Caroline felt as if she’d been at hard labor the last two weeks instead of lounging on a Caribbean Island. And tomorrow and the weekend would be even worse, with school starting on Monday, which was why she’d insisted on coming home today instead of staying on Mustique until Sunday. “I need Friday and the weekend, and that’s that,” she told Tony, who’d been almost as bad as the kids in begging for the extra time on the island. “So we go home Thursday, and I don’t want to hear any more complaining from any of you.” But from the moment they’d arrived, when Rebecca Mayhew had come down the stairs before they’d even opened the front door, the stream of visitors had never let up — it was as if a magnet were drawing people to their door. After Rebecca came Alicia and Max Albion, apologizing profusely for Rebecca’s invasion, but bringing a huge tureen from which a decidedly peculiar smell was emanating.
“It’s only chicken soup,” Alicia said apologetically. “And I know it’s so warm today that you won’t even want it, but it’s my specialty and I just couldn’t resist making it for you. If you don’t want it, just throw it away — I’m sure that’s what everyone else does.”
“Nobody throws it away, and you know it,” Max assured his wife as Caroline took the tureen. “Alicia’s chicken soup is famous. And I brought something for the boy.”
Ryan, who hadn’t followed his sister and Rebecca up to the second floor of the apartment, edged closer to his mother, slipping his hand into Caroline’s as he gazed suspiciously at the plastic bag with a Sports Authority logo that Max Albion was offering him.
“It’s all right,” Caroline said, gently disengaging Ryan’s hand from her own.
Ryan reluctantly moved just close enough to Max Albion to take the bag, and when he opened it he did it almost as if he expected a snake to rise from its depths. But when he saw what was in the bag, the suspicion in his face suddenly turned to disbelief. “Wow,” he breathed, pulling the baseball mitt from the bag and slipping it onto his hand. “Awesome!” Then he was holding it up so his mother could see it. “Look! It’s the one I wanted!”
But Caroline had recognized the Wilson mitt as quickly as Ryan — the last time she’d seen it was the day before the wedding, when Ryan had dragged her into the Sports Authority on 57th for at least the dozenth time that summer, explaining once more why he absolutely couldn’t live without the mitt. Its hundred and fifty dollar price tag had been enough to explain to Caroline why he absolutely could
Albion shook his head, his florid jowls shaking slightly. “Nonsense,” he insisted. “A boy should have a mitt, and it shouldn’t be just any old mitt.” His attention shifted to Ryan. “Well, what do you say?” he asked. “Will it do?”
Ryan, already slamming his right fist into the mitt to start working on a pocket, looked up. “It’s great! I’ve been asking Mom for it all summer, but she said it cost too much!”
