The Wentworth house was the most conspicuous house in the neighborhood. It stood on two acres of land in a section of town where no one else owned more than half an acre. It was a vulgar house, a house that may have been conceived in beauty but grew uglier as time passed. When I drove by, I imagined that Dorian Gray could have lived in a house similar to this…a house whose image grew as grotesque as its owner's did every passing year.
It was crowned with a red ceramic tile roof in the Spanish hacienda style, where black slate would have been more appropriate. It had fan-lighted, double front doors with bronze sconces on either side, and a brass lantern hung from the portico above it. Above the portico was a sun deck, which you could easily see was phony. Even though three gaily upholstered lounge chairs stood upon it, rain or shine, there was no access to it.
The property was completely enclosed by a chest-high, Harvard brick fence punctuated every twenty feet by a fluted concrete column with a gold-painted ball at the top. The front lawn was populated with plastic deer and water birds. Plastic rabbits and squirrels played in the topiary. At the entrance and exit to the semi-circular driveway, two lawn footmen stood guard and offered hitching rings to nonexistent horsemen. Their faces were painted chalky white. There was, in short, a vulgarity about the place that proclaimed the vulgarity of the people who lived there.
To be vulgar, a person must be able to choose. He must have the opportunity to live with beautiful things but choose not to. I had an uncle who ate in his underwear. He did so because his father ate in his underwear before him. My uncle, having never eaten anywhere but in his father's house, was not vulgar. He was not aware of the choice to eat otherwise. In later years, when he became his union's local representative, he ate in a shirt and a tie.
H. Peter Wentworth's wife, Helen Watts-Wentworth, was a vulgar woman. When she and her husband sat alone under the pink and green umbrella by the side of the pool, she often wondered why the elite of Oyster Cove avoided them. She was president of the garden club, chair lady of Helping Hand, and chief contributor to the underprivileged scholarship fund -- yet she was invariably uninvited to participate in any of their decision-making.
"It's Thursday, Peter, where do you want to eat?" Thursday was the cook's night out, and only under extreme circumstances would Helen Watts-Wentworth be caught dead in her own kitchen. Furthermore, the cook would serve notice if she thought Helen had used it.
H. Peter Wentworth had fallen asleep an hour ago. His wide straw hat covered his florid face, and as his stomach rose and fell, he snored obscenely at every intake of breath.
"I said it's Thursday, Peter!" She repeated and rolled up her copy of Cosmo with the intention of flinging it at him. Something in her threatening tone of voice registered in Peter's sub-conscious, and from thirty-five years of living with Helen, he woke with a start.
"The country club'll be fine," he mumbled.
"I feel French . . . I know you don't like French, and Antoine don't buy his meat from you, but I feel French, and I wanna eat French . . . so there!"
That was that. H. Peter Wentworth really didn't mind French, but Antoine's got their meat at Giglio's. Dogs wouldn't eat at Giglio's back door. It was a tribute to Antoine's cooking that, as yet, no one had gotten sick there.
He fanned himself with his hat; life had become so complicated. His name, for instance. When he started out in the wholesale meat business, he was Pete Esposito, the youngest son of Angie Esposito. The best restaurants, the best hotels, all the best got their meat from Angie Esposito down on Fulton Street. It wasn't good enough for Helen. Oh no! It was her idea to change their name and move out here to Oyster Cove. H. Peter 'friggin' Wentworth! Helen wasn't going to have their daughter Stephanie grow up to be no Esposito! No way! . . . Where was Stephanie, anyway?
"Steph comin' widdus?"
Helen stood up, drained the dregs of her gin and tonic, and emptied the soggy lime into the pool. She pulled the muumuu free of the crevices of her ample bottom.
"Jesus, it's hot." She unrolled her Cosmo and fanned herself with it. "Stephanie is spending the night in the city; she told us this morning. The Whittakers, remember? Upper East Side . . . very posh. Gerald Whittaker's on the board of the New York Public Library. Why can't you be something, Peter?"
Peter gauged the distance between Helen and his foot and her proximity to the edge of the pool. Without a doubt, a well-timed push could topple her in. A momentary conquest . . . an immediate but shallow victory. Reparations would follow and outweigh the accomplishment for months to come.
What the hell had gotten into this woman he once loved? Well, he knew what it was, even if she didn't. We are not 'Oyster Cove,' old girl . . . we may have more money than our tight-assed neighbors, but we are not of the 'manner born.' He loved that phrase. Helen had dragged him into the city to see Hamlet with that pansy Englishman last year. He told some of his soldiers that he 'was of the manner born.'
"I could be something, Helen . . . but I ain't of the manner born."
"You better get in outta the sun, Peter." She picked up the mobile phone and punched in the number for Antoines.
"It's Mrs. Wentworth, Antoine . . . Oh, he's not? Well, tell him the Wentworths want that corner by the door . . . 8:30." She hung up and headed for the house, confidant that the corner table was hers. Should the Pope want it, should the President drop in, if God himself felt French that evening, that particular table in the corner by the door was reserved for Helen Watts-Wentworth. She was, after all, a vulgar woman.
Just as H. Peter Wentworth got to his feet, the mobile phone rang.
"Hello Daddy, it's Steph." Stephanie never called home unless she was up to something.
"I know, Steph, you're spending the night in the city. Helen told me." This was the third overnighter in three weeks and in the back of his mind he suspected more than an overnighter was in her plans. He was right.
"No, Daddy, the Whittakers are taking off for Westport this evening for the weekend. I'll be home for some clothes in an hour." She had been pulling these weekend deceptions for more than a month now. Well, she was nineteen . . . she ought to know how to take care of herself. Helen was making her way through the French doors, fanning herself with Cosmo and still picking her muumuu free of her rump.
He shouted at her, "Steph's comin' home fer clothes . . . goin' away for the weekend."
Helen turned, and for a second Peter thought she showed a flicker of concern, but it was quickly replaced with a satisfied smile. "It's great to see her goin' out with nice people . . . how's she gettin' here?"
"How you gettin' here, Steph?"
"Spencer's driving me home, then we're going on up to Westport."
"See you." Sure, Spencer, he thought, as he put the phone down. Jesus, why do kids think their parents are one step up the bell curve from chimpanzees?
He clicked off the phone and pulled the straw hat down over his bald head. Life was getting on his nerves. Nobody was who they said they were. You couldn't get the truth out of nobody no more. This damn house! All the money, all the plastic, all the fruit decorators in the world hadn't made it a home. Every time his brother Mike came out from the city, he'd say, "What's it witchoo, Petey? Elena gotcha' by the balls er what? When I come out here, me and Rosie can't wait to get home . . . everything here is less than a week old." He thought of Mike and Rosie's house in Little Italy with affection . . . the smell of tomato sauce and oregano, the oven on all the time, and the radio playing "Il Trovatore."
That's why he had gotten married. He wanted to live like Mike and Rosie. So he married Elena . . . Petey and Elena. Now Mr. and Mrs. H. Peter 'friggin' Wentworth. The whole thing was Helen's idea, and at that particular period of their married life, he would have done anything for Helen. She had gotten the name 'Wentworth' from the back of the plates on the wedding china. Well, if Steph was coming by with her Spencer, he'd better get into something more chic than his baggy old khaki shorts and yesterday's T-shirt.
Helen stood watching Peter from the cool dark interior of the 'music' room. Why did he have to look so Italian? Put him in the sun and he looks like a farmer; put sun glasses on him and he looks like a Mafioso. He was not Oyster Cove, not by any means. Yes, it was Peter that kept her and Stephanie from attaining their true potential in Oyster Cove. She ran her fingers over the mirror-like surface of the white piano . . . it hadn't been played since Stephanie was eleven years old . . . how sad. The only piece she ever learned was "fur Elise." The yellow stain from Peter's cigar was still slightly visible on the white bench. She would never forgive him for that. She turned to the door as he entered.
"How's she getting here?"
Peter could hardly see in the dark room. He took his sun glasses off and saw Helen by the piano. "How's who gettin' where?"
"Stephanie -- how's she getting here?"
"Oh -- Spencer what's-his-name is drivin' her out here, then she says they're goin' on up to Connecticut."
"Good God, they'll be here any minute. Look at us!! Get some goddam clothes on!" She headed for the stairs and started up. She turned to see Peter still standing there by the piano. "You deef, are'ya? Spencer Whittaker will be here and look at you!"
"Yeah, I'm comin', I'm comin' . . . Look, Helen, I'm a butcher, remember? I make my livin' cuttin' meat! My name used to be Esposito. So was yours .... Elena Esposito -- nee watcha'call Bonelli! Remember!? I'm not lookin' to bust your bubble, or nuthin' like that, but do you think Spencer Whittaker would get his drawers in a knot if we were headin' his way?"
The outburst had little effect on Helen. She descended a step or two and grabbed Peter's arm violently. She led him like a recalcitrant schoolboy up the stairs.
"How can you be so stupid, Peter? Don't you realize what this means for Stephanie . . . for us? The Whittaker family are quality people; they gotta box at the opera; they know the Mayor. Stephanie Whittaker, Peter . . . don't that ring a bell?"
Peter permitted himself to be prodded upstairs. The name Stephanie Whittaker seemed a very long way from Stefania Esposito. Then he considered the concept of Stephanie-Watts-Wentworth-Whittaker, and it struck him like a combination of false faces -- a vision of a quartet of little girls with empty shopping bags at the door on Halloween. He began to laugh uncontrollably.
"Did you have to pick this day -- this day of all days to go out of your mind? Get into that bedroom. Put on something that doesn't make you look like an Italian butcher! Are you gonna ruin Stephanie's life like you ruined mine!!?"
From where Peter stood, he could see himself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror on the other side of the canopied bed. He stood there, naked . . . his short, hairy legs . . . the bulging belly, and most revealing of all, the red hands and arms. Twenty-five years of wrestling 200-pound, frigid sides of beef from the freezer to the cutting table. The button of his masculinity, as empty as a surgeon's sympathy, looked back at him like a one-eyed beggar. He sighed and chose his light gray slacks, a buff, loose-fitting sport shirt, and a nautical jacket of dark blue serge with everlastingly polished brass buttons. He looked at himself again. "Pipe me aboard, Sir Thomas," he thought, "For I am of the manner born. But I am beached upon this desolate strand of Oyster Cove . . . and I desperately need a mug of your best grog."
Helen was struggling into a print dress a size smaller than it should have been. To keep her strawberry cotton candy hair in place, she had pulled a plastic bag over her head. Peter was struck with an idea . . . then he shook his head violently and scolded himself immediately. He'd been drinking too much, the heat perhaps . . . no, not the heat; heat doesn't breed such thoughts. Frustration perhaps. Frustration! What did he know about frustration? He was an Italian meat packer dressed up like Captain Andy in "Showboat"! That's what it was!! It was the make-believe! Everybody was in false face . . . incognito. H. Peter Wentworth and Helen Watts-Wentworth . . . the trick-and-treaters of Oyster Cove. Then there was their daughter Stephanie . . . yes, Stefania Esposito. No! That wasn't right either. What was her name again? Oh yes, Stephanie Wentworth, born in a three-room flat on the Lower East Side. Best looking girl in the senior class of Oyster Cove High . . . well, best made-up, anyway. Sweetheart of Andy Kelly, quarterback of the no-win football team. Helen put a stop to that in a hurry, didn't she . . . "Did you know his father filed for chapter 11?"
The front door slammed downstairs and a familiar voice called up to them, "Ma, Pa, we're here. Come down and meet Spencer."
"We're on, Helen, old girl. How do I look? . . . to the manner born, or what?"
"You just better watch your step, Peter. Remember, I go first, don't crowd me . . . follow me down the stairs, and take off that goddam yachting cap!"
Three steps from the bottom, Helen stopped abruptly. Peter, intent on the distance between them, pulled up just in time. From this height he could look down upon the entire tableau. Two young women stood at the door . . . one black . . . one white.
"Spencer, meet my mother and father . . . Peter and Helen Wentworth. Ma. Pa. This is Spencer Whittaker."
"I'll be Goddamned!" Said Helen
"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph." Said Peter.
Spencer strode to the foot of the stairs and shook Helen's hand vigorously. In a rich contralto voice, totally devoid of ethnicity, she said, "Very pleased to meet both of you; little Stephanie has told me so much about you." She looked at Peter and said, "Do you sail, Mr. Wentworth?"
"No, I don't think so," Peter mumbled from his perch.
"Well," said Stephanie, "come upstairs with me, Spence . . . help me pick out what you'd like me to wear."
As the girls ran upstairs, Helen and Peter slowly made their way down. Helen plumped herself heavily on the gilded settee by the phone in the entryway. She seemed to have difficulty catching her breath.
"You never mentioned the Whittakers was black," she wailed.
"Never told you Spencer was a girl, neither." Peter shook his head and headed for the liquor cabinet. It had been building up all day. "Not just a black girl, neither, right?"
"Don't say the word . . . I'll throw up!" Damn Peter anyway! He must have known the Whittakers were black. Just another one of his cute tricks, damn him! Damn Stephanie too! She must have known what this would do to me. Oh, I'll get back at them all right . . . you bet I will. I'll . . . I'll . . .
As she sat there seething, Peter returned with two large scotches, handed one to Helen and picked up the phone. "Who are you calling?" Helen fumed as she downed her scotch.
"Antoine? . . . Peter Wentworth. That table in the corner by the door? Make that a reservation for four." He turned to Helen, "C'mon, old girl, dont'cha think it's time we got to know each other?"