Skinny Island Read Free Page B

Whitman's poetry. We were very hearty and drank several bottles of champagne. When all but Philip departed at midnight, I told him of Smull's resignation. He was grim but not surprised.
    "He never forgives, you know. He seems impersonal, but he's not. He's vindictive."
    "What can he do to me?"
    "Kick you out of Standard Trust."
    "Haven't I reached an age to retire?"
    "Father, what are you going to live on?" There was an agony of concern in Philip's tone, and I recognized with a start that my son still loved me. "You know how much your principal has eroded."
    "I do know. I shall sell this house and take a single room in one of the new hotels."
    "You! Adrian Peltz!"
    "I shall be a free man, Philip."
    "I suppose you could always live with me or Agatha."
    "I couldn't live with Agatha. You know that. And I'd never impose myself on your darling Mary."
    "Father. Dad. Listen to me. That all sounds very brave, but you won't like it when it comes. I had an idea that something like this was going to happen tonight, and I brought a manuscript I want you to read. You know that Mother kept a diary in her last two years, don't you?"
    "And that she gave it to you before she died." I nodded gravely. I had been bitterly hurt that she had not entrusted it to me. "To do with as you saw fit. In your absolute discretion. I have honored her wish. I have never even mentioned it to you."
    "I know. You have been, as always, the perfect gentleman. But now I am exercising that discretion. I am giving it to you."
    I stared. "You think there is something in the diary that will alter my decision about Smull?"
    "I hope there may be."
    "I shall read it this very night."
    "It won't take you very long."

    It didn't. The journal covered only two years of Cecilia's life, and each entry was brief; I was able to read it in a couple of hours. I had expected to be emotionally unsettled, and I was, but differently than I had anticipated. I found myself perusing the spidery handwriting with the admiration, at times even the jealousy, of a fellow journalist. For what was truly astonishing was the way in which our town, our whole life, was filtered through the curtains of the writer's sickroom windows. Cecilia had seen more from her chaise longue than I in all my perambulations of Manhattan.
    Her glimpses of Washington Square—a reference to a blue sky, a child with a hoop, a beggar, a shaft of winter light along red brick, the toll of a bronze bell—were exquisite.
A russet dawn; a shoulder-shuddering chill. Neighbor Matthews to wed today. Will he go to his office first? And then, at noon, open his gold watch to check the hour, nod, cover his ledger, and rise with that rusty cough? His entry: "Wind north northeast. Snow flurries. S.S. Persia still missing. Married Emily Hadden."
    Cousin Laura here. How faded the poor dear! Adrian says she was always so, but now you can't tell what color she first was. Spoke of the admitting doctor at Bellevue where she had her operation. Had she ever had a baby? That stare! "You must have misread my name, sir. It is
Miss
Temple."
    The passage that I knew awaited me, the one that had induced Philip to give me the diary, was written only two weeks before my darling expired.
It is leaving Adrian that gives me the greatest pain. Men are such idealists, and he the most of all! I sometimes think that half New York society is in a conspiracy to seem to be what Adrian deems it. Once they have glimpsed the beautiful conception in his mind it seems too terrible to let him even suspect the truth. For if he did, if that bright picture ever dimmed, might not some of their light go out as well? New York may have always been a shabby place, but isn't it a touch less shabby if there's an Adrian Peltz to believe in it? Oh, my darling Adrian, if you could only go first, with all the beauty of your young republic still intact in your nobly conceiving imagination, how patiently would I lie up here until it was time to join you!
    I have now written