Epilogue

Pete

May1956

“We hope you’ll consider taking the room, MissGraves,” Pete said, trying not to stare. The prospective tenant was stunningly pretty, dimpled and short with waves of golden-brown hair—Pete suspected he was always going to have a thing for golden-brown hair on women. At least this one—MissLinda Graves, newly arrived in Foggy Bottom clutching a secretarial school certificate and looking for a job in the capital—was exactly his age, nineteen. Even though he was just finishing high school, catching up on the time he’d missed, Pete thought it would be nice having a boarder his age here at home.

“It’s smaller than I was hoping, but it’s so pretty...” She had looked mesmerized the moment she saw the flower vine growing up the wall on the first floor, following it with her gloved fingertips all the way up three flights of stairs until Pete opened the door to 4B and she saw the warm green walls where the vine blossomed in a riot of color clear up to the gabled ceiling. “Who painted it?”

“A past tenant.” Pete already knew he wasn’t going to mention that a man had died in 4B. Some houses might be haunted by such violence, but not this one: Grace’s old room glowed quietly, alive with sunshine and warmth, practically whispering, You’re home! “Maybe you’d like to stay and meet the other tenants? We have a weekly supper club on Thursday nights...”

By the time they came down the stairs chatting, Pete knew Linda Graves was going to take the room. And that was good; the house had been rattling just a bit with Fliss and Dr. Dan having moved back to Boston. They’d already taken the train down to visit: Angela was getting lanky, Dr. Dan looked terribly tired with the hours he was putting in at the women’s clinic, and Fliss confessed she was fed up to the back teeth with the way some of her fellow nurses chided her for working when she had a daughter at home, but her dimples winked back on whenever she talked about the fertility research she was helping with. “I don’t understand what this female pill is,” Pete confessed, and Fliss just looked amused and said, “You’ll be very glad for it in a few years.”

“Oh, goodness,” Linda Graves exclaimed, getting a look at the big painting hanging in the sitting room. “That’s an interesting picture.”

“Painted by a former resident.” Pete looked at the portrait Reka had done of the Briar Club in New York at Lina’s first Bake-Off, gazing at the Statue of Liberty. Harland had asked Pete’s dad about borrowing it: there was talk about a big display of abstract art going on tour through Europe. The New American Painting , Harland said the exhibit would be called, and it was going to smack one in the eye of the Soviets, who were always touting the superiority of artistic freedom in Moscow. Pete wasn’t entirely clear what someone like Harland had to do with art tours, since he worked for some branch of the CIA now, but it wasn’t any of his business—he just hoped this painting got chosen. Reka would have been tickled pink. He still couldn’t believe she was gone—a heart attack in the night, out of nowhere last spring. There was a nice widow living in Reka’s rooms now, a woman who’d lost her husband in the Second Battle of Seoul and brought apple turnovers for Thursday night suppers, but Apartment 2B still smelled like oil paint and Pete still got a big lump in his throat whenever he passed the door.

Pete introduced Miss Graves to his mother, who began explaining house rules—quite a lot fewer of them these days. The boarders all now knew (because Pete told them) that they could appeal over her head to Pete’s dad, who had his own apartment four blocks away but came around every evening to see what needed fixing, check Lina’s homework, and settle any disputes. There were usually disputes because Mom was always picking fights, and maybe it wasn’t the best thing having parents who fought a lot, but Pete reckoned he’d take it: at least now he and Lina had someone fighting on their side. Dad wasn’t perfect maybe, but he was talking about having Lina’s eyesight surgically corrected so no one would ever call her Cross-Eyes again, and he insisted Pete didn’t have to work at Moonlight Magnolias anymore; he also said he wasn’t going to evict any boarders just because they occasionally tracked mud in the hall or had the odd guest after seven o’clock.

“I will not put up with your father interfering,” Mom had shrilled, but Pete shot right back at her: “By interfering, do you mean taking an interest in our lives? When you told us for years that he didn’t care about us?”

“I knew you’d take his side! I just knew it—” His mother picked as many fights with Pete as she did with his dad these days, or tried to, but Pete had learned how to tune her out. The whole house had, really—the entire atmosphere of the place had lifted. Pete wouldn’t admit it for worlds, but he sometimes caught himself talking to the house when there was no one else around. A Don’t you feel better now? whenever he fixed a loose banister spoke, or a There, isn’t that nice? when the sitting room flowers got freshened up. And sometimes he could swear Briarwood House give a kind of contented creak in response.

Linda Graves was asking his mother about meal schedules, so Pete waved and went to collect the mail in the hall. An advertising circular for Bea; he’d hold it for her till she was back from scouting that pitcher in Bowie—she’d had her last prospect poached by a fellow Senators scout who thought MissVerretti should stick with fetching the coffee, and Bea was swearing up and down that he wouldn’t get the next one... One of those round-robin letters for Lina from the other Pillsbury Bake-Off contestants; he set it aside with a smile. Lina had already prepared her junior division entry form for this year’s contest, and she said with a jut in her jaw (tweaking and retweaking her recipe for Raspberry Ripple Cake) that this time she was going to win it . . . A catalog for Nora; Pete laid that aside too. He’d worried that Nora would be leaving, too, what with that big diamond reappearing on her finger, but “No, I’m definitely staying,” she said brightly, dishing up her colcannon at the last Thursday supper, and even if she stayed out late an awful lot of nights, she was wearing the diamond on her right hand and not her left, so who knew what was happening there.

Pete sifted the rest of the mail, hoping for a postcard from Claire, but she was a lousy correspondent. They’d only gotten one quick note since she’d moved out, postmarked exotically from Bermuda, and a photograph: Claire smiling in a red bikini, making Pete blush (all that red hair and all that creamy bosom), sitting on a dock in front of a huge pale green house, arm around a sunburned, grinning little boy. Her boss, Mrs.Sutherland, must have been the one who took the photo; you could see her tall skinny shadow on the dock. Awfully nice of her to offer Claire that job as social secretary , Pete thought, though he wasn’t entirely sure what a social secretary for a Washington political widow actually did in Bermuda.

At the very, very bottom of the mail stack, Pete saw it: an unsigned postcard showing the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, addressed to him in a familiar looping feminine writing.

Dear Hammerin’ Pete, Writing in haste—illustrations due for a children’s book AND helping plan Arlene’s wedding. What is it about American women and weddings? Did I mention how deadly dull her fiancé is? She runs him like a train & he seems quite happy.

Give my love to the Briar Club. I wish you were here!