Vicky Banning (6 page)

* * * *

“Vicky, you look stunning!”
Burton
said as she reached the entranceway. She had kept them waiting only five minutes, although she’d been ready in plenty of time, exercising the consideration that her sex and advanced years awarded her, but without pressing it. She tipped her head to him, and to Doris and Roger, acknowledging their looks of appreciation. She looked vital, and knew it, which made her appear even more so. She didn’t always bother to make the effort to look her best—her vanity being less important than her time—but since this was a special occasion and the restaurant had appeared, from the road at least, to be in the chic category, she’d gone all out. Her pale green shift covered her from ankles to wrists, deepening the color of her eyes to polished jade. She wore a spray of tiny diamonds at her right shoulder, with matching dots in her ears. Over her arm was draped a silver fox stole that matched her hair.

“Where are we eating?”
Doris
said, sounding a bit peeved. “
Buckingham
Palace
?”

“Close,” responded Vicky with a knowing laugh. “
La Villa
d’Este
.”

“I’ve seen their ads,” Burton said. “It’s new and sounds excellent. Somehow I haven’t around to trying it yet. The Sanctuary’s so convenient; I guess I’ve just gotten into a rut.” He turned quickly to
Doris
. “No offense, of course.”

Doris
laughed. “None at all. I’ve never tried it because it’s so expensive.”

“Good!” Vicky stated. “Then it’s a first for all of us. Let’s get going.”

As
Burton
opened the door for the party, Vicky glanced back toward the parlor and saw Sarah
Carstairs
watching them, without expression.

They drove along the darkening roads in Roger’s station wagon, until a white sign with blue lettering appeared on their right, directing them along a curving drive to the restaurant’s entrance.

The grounds were alight with hidden spotlights, casting circles of bright green on the darkened lawn. Azaleas, blooming in fuchsia and white, huddled beside the steps leading up to the doorway, which was quickly opened by a tuxedoed black man wearing white gloves.

“Have you reservations?” he asked with a slightly condescending tone, but with overt politeness as he blocked the door against riff-raff.

“Yes,” Roger said. “It’s in the name of…”

“
La
Contessa
dei
Strioni
,” Vicki proffered. She pretended to be unaware of her companions’ startled eyes and opened mouths.

“Oh,
yes
,
Contessa
!” the maître d’ called anxiously from behind the doorman and burst past him from the interior of the restaurant, nearly knocking him off his pins. As he bowed from the waist, Vicky listened to hear if his heels would click. They did. “We’ve been expecting you,” the prim, self-important man said with the utmost obsequiousness. “Please, enter.” He bowed his way across a deep-pile, oriental carpet as he escorted them to the center of the ornate dining room. “Will you kindly wait just a moment while I will seek out our manager, who wishes to greet you personally?”

Vicky smiled sweetly. “But of course.”

When the maître d’ returned, he was followed by a short, rotund man whose black bow tie seemed to be pressing all his flesh up to his face, and his face up through his hair, parting it widely in the center. “
Contessa
,” the manager gushed, “this is such a great honor.”

I intended it to be,
Vicky said to herself. She raised her hand to be kissed—making sure he saw the silver-crested ring on her finger, which she’d won at a carnival as a child—and watched him glance awkwardly about him, before bowing to buss her limp fingers.

“I am Brian
Riggio
, the manager,” he said, straightening up as tall as he was able. “I have reserved our finest table for you. If you will be so kind as to follow me, please?”

The restaurant had obviously once been a private home of an extremely wealthy family with superb taste, a mansion, actually. The walls were lined with portraits of stern-faced men and women dating back, judging by the period clothing, more than a hundred years. Each table held a small vase of freshly snipped flowers; a candle nested in a chimney of cut crystal.

“I would like to speak with you, Signore
Riggio
,” Vicky said when they were all seated. Her voice had deepened, and there was just a shading of an Italian accent. Their table was directly in front of a sculpted stone fireplace, close enough to enjoy watching the flames, but far enough away to not feel the heat. “
Parlare
l’italiano
?
” Vicky inquired.

Sr.
Riggio
shrank with embarrassment. “Only a few words,” he mumbled quickly with a humble bow, “but I used to, when I was…
un bambino
.” He sounded as if he hoped his confession would expiate the sin of ignorance.

Good,
Vicky thought.
Mine’s as rusty as an old tin can.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” she said. “You should never forget your roots, young man. But…we will speak in the English, then. Do you do catering?”

Sr.
Riggio
seemed uncertain how to answer. “Well, we haven’t yet,” he said. “But if you wanted something special, I am sure that…”

“I am here looking for to buy land on which to build a
palazzo
,” Vicky said, ignoring the three stunned faces gaping at her, and using the thickest
Anna
Magnani
Italian movie accent she could muster, without working her dentures loose. “There will be many parties; people from the embassies in
Washington
and
New York
to come. They must have only the best,
capisce
?”

“Oh,
si
,” said Sr.
Riggio
. “I
capisce
very well. Yes. Yes, indeed.” He was nodding with vigorous enthusiasm, his black tie bobbing with each word, like a novice bat preparing for takeoff.

“
Bene
!
” said Vicky. “Then bring us the best you have to offer, so we may judge for ourselves.”

“Yes, ma’am…
er
,
pardone
,
Contessa
.” He backed away from the table with a series of bows worthy of a Japanese sumo wrestler, and then rushed toward the kitchen.

Vicky’s companions sat, unmoving, like three mannequins propped at the table, staring at her with varying degrees of disbelief. Vicky held her back straight, looking very much a regal matriarch, her smile primly innocent. She leaned slightly over the table, glancing from one to the other, then rasped, “Ain’t this
groovy
?” She burst into giggles, keeping the sound sedately within the confines of the table.

Burton
roared, his laughter infecting everyone in the party. There arose from the circle, tumultuous billows of hilarity. “You’re incredible!”
Burton
said when he was once again able to speak. “No wonder poor Sarah believed you. You went through that whole performance without cracking a smile. And where on earth did you dig up a name like
La
Contessa
dei
Strioni
? Do you know what it means?”

Vicky’s lips pursed into a sly smile. “Yes, I do. Do any of you?” Roger and Doris shook their heads, while
Burton
nodded, his grin tipping his white goatee toward his chest. “
Strioni
, in Italian, means ‘actors,’ or ‘comedians,’” Vicky said. She folded her hands beneath her chin and batted her eyelashes, a silent-screen star’s version of coyness. “So I told Sr.
Riggio
right off that this was a joke. It’s not my fault that a man with a name like his doesn’t speak Italian, is it?” She looked at Doris, who was still staring at her with a look of awed disbelief. “Well, is it?” she asked her.

Doris
shook her head, slowly, from side to side, as if awakening from hypnosis. “No,” she blurted. “I guess it isn’t. I’m still a bit dazed, not having seen you in action before. Why do you do it?”

Vicky was taken aback by the bluntness of the question, surprised at being placed in a position of having to answer truthfully, which she would not do, but not wanting to insult her friends by lying. “I have my reasons,” she said, looking thoughtful for a moment. Then she shrugged. “Why not? If a real
contessa
came in here, she’d get the royal treatment, wouldn’t she? And she wouldn’t pay a cent more than anyone else—maybe less. So, why shouldn’t we get exactly the same treatment? Americans are so impressed by titles, for some reason. But in
Italy
, where there are so many people with titles they could start their own country if they could afford to, no one pays any attention to them.”

Sr.
Riggio
rushed up to the table, followed by the sommelier. “Our finest wine,” he announced. “Compliments of the management.” He stood back to watch as the bottle was uncorked with a pop and a taste poured into Vicky’s waiting stemware.

As Vicky lifted her glass to take her first sip, she smiled at
Burton
, then at
Doris
, then at Roger. Without a word, her raised eyebrow inquired,
Need I say more?

As the craft show drew near, Vicky grew anxious. The winners, she learned, would receive not only a ribbon but would have their entries shown at the county fair for as long as it lasted, and then be on display in St. Sebastian’s social room for the rest of the year. There wasn’t enough time in the evenings for her to complete
Blueboy
properly, so she began to work on him during the day. When the weather was drizzly, she dragged a lawn chair from outside her room, across the carpeting, to the balustrade that ran the perimeter of the second floor. She stitched away in privacy, wrapped in a vividly colored serape of llama wool that had been woven for her by an old Peruvian woman many years before.

She observed the comings and goings of the Sanctuary residents. Sarah, she was happy to notice, was back in the good graces of some of the women—she’d avoided Vicky ever since
that
night—and took advantage of the twice-weekly sojourns into town that Doris organized, for those who wished to shop, or see a film.

On sunny days, Vicky crossed the street to the park and sat on a bench beside the lake watching the ducks and swans glide past on their way to—where? Their lives were limited to the confines of the lake. She wondered if they were happy, living within such a limited world, content to be so restricted. The thought made Vicky uneasy; a prison without bars is still a prison—worse, if you knew of the great variety of life that lay beyond them, but were restrained forever from venturing out.

She wondered how the birds would react if a flamingo, or a crane were deposited into their midst. Would they run from it? Attack? Ignore? Or would they merely accept it as a variation of themselves? Unlike many humans she’d known.

A young couple entered the park and Vicky watched them stroll hand in hand along the water’s edge, a smile of remembrance softening her lips. She wondered if the boy was proposing, as Vicky had been proposed to some fifty-odd years ago.

She and Gerald had been strolling along the water’s edge, too, but hundreds of feet above it, atop the craggy cliffs of
Newport
. He’d worn a high-buttoned jacket and a stiff collar, his sun-streaked hair parted smartly in the center, while Vicky was a study in swirls. They’d stopped to stare at the sea, mesmerized, as the huge summer sun, low and to their right, sent rays of orange across the sky to settle on the water, lighting the sailing yachts like so many luminescent goldfish.

“I love you,” he’d said for the first time. “I want you…”

“Wanna dog?” a voice called, breaking through her reverie. She looked up from
Blueboy
, startled from her thoughts. A little boy wearing a red-plaid mackinaw—she hadn’t seen one in years—stood before her. In his hand he held the end of a long length of clothesline, the other end of which was tied around the neck of a brown and white puppy with large, black eyes, a lolling tongue, and a gyrating tail that swayed its body as if the body was an appendage of the tail, rather than the reverse.

“I’m sorry,” Vicky said. “What did you say?”

The boy couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old, but his face held the taut sadness of a dejected old man. “I asked if you want my dog.” He mustn’t have meant to say “my,” for after he did his chin began to tremble, his eyes to gloss with tears and his head to slowly bow.

“Come, sit down,” Vicky said softly, patting the bench beside her. She saw the straight brown hair move as he shook his head. He didn’t look up at her. “Oh, come now,” Vicky said, “stop pouting. Maybe I can help you. Sometimes it’s good to talk with an older person. Sometimes,” she repeated, noting how the boy’s shoulders had stiffened when she’d said it the first time. “Not always, mind you, but at least once in a while.”

The boy shuffled to her side and thumped down on the bench, his eyes staring at the ground. The puppy seemed to think it was play time and began to dance around, growling with all the intensity of a baby clown, tugging ferociously at his lead.

“What’s your dog’s name?” asked Vicky.

“Sally,” the boy mumbled.

“Sally’s a lovely name. And why are you giving Sally away? Don’t you like her anymore?”

The boy’s head jerked up and he looked at her with flared eyes, shocked that she could think such a thing. “Oh,
yes
!” he cried. “I like her more than
anything
!” The soft breezes from across the lake sifted through the hair that had fallen across his forehead. “But my Pop has asthma,” he said with a helplessness that curtailed all light, “so we can’t have a dog in the house. It makes him not breathe, and he says that we can’t afford to feed her anyway.”

“Don’t you have a yard where Sally could stay?” Vicky asked.

The boy nodded. “But she couldn’t stay there all the time. She’d get sick if it rained or snowed on her, Pop says.”

“You could build a dog house for her,” Vicky suggested.

“I don’t know how,” he said with a deep sigh. “And Pop says he hasn’t got the time, with two jobs and all.”

Vicky looked pensive, her brow creased as if she were in deep thought. “I’ll tell you what,” she said after a moment. “Are you a good boy?”
What a dimwitted question
, she thought.
Had any boy ever answered ‘no?’

The response she received was a mixture of confusion and a
What are you, some kind of nut?
look. “I guess so,” he said, with a somewhat dubious shrug. “Why?”

“Well,” said Vicky, “I was supposed to grant three wishes to another good little boy, but after I gave him two of them he turned out to be not so good after all. So, I still have one wish left, and I must find someone to give it to. Now, if you’re really good and you wish real hard, you just might be able to keep Sally for yourself. I can’t promise it,” she added quickly, “but it’s a pretty sure thing.” She paused, letting him think through her words. He seemed to be weighing her words, but was uncertain whether to believe them, although unwilling to give up the opportunity if it happened to be true. “You do want to keep Sally, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes!” the boy said with great enthusiasm. “More than anything!” This was Sally’s cue to leap onto her young master’s lap and ravish his nose and lips with sloppy wet kisses.

“Well, then,” Vicky said with a nod, “let me have your name and address so I’ll know where to have the wish delivered.”

As she spoke, the boy’s eyes widened with amazement, but the lines above his freckled nose deepened with incredulity. “Nobody can give away wishes,” he said with a hint of uncertainly. “How come you can? Who are you?” His face fell with embarrassment and he looked away from her.

Vicky smiled at the top of his head. Obviously the young fellow had been taught his manners well. “Let’s just say that I’m your fairy godmother, shall we? I’m not, of course, but let’s just pretend for now.”
Roger will love this story
,
and I can’t wait to put it in tonight’s letter
, she thought. “Does it really matter who I am, if I can make you happy?”

The boy still looked doubtful, but smiled up at her, his face softening to childhood again as he recited his name and address.

Vicky wrote the information in her little pad, below the listing for
Macky’s
, the pot parlor. Putting away the pad, she looked up at him. She touched the smoothness of his cheek with her fingertips, remembering. “Now you run along and play with Sally. Maybe I’ll see you here again and you can tell me if the wish came through. And don’t ever give up on anything. Keep on wishing, that’s the only way they might come true.”

“I will, I will,” the boy called as he scampered away. Sally scampered along beside him, her ears flopping with each jounce, stopping every now and then to growl with puppy ferociousness, to tug at her clothesline leash.

* * * *

“I’d like to order enough Doggie Chow
to last one dog for a full year, both puppy and adult types,” Vicky said into the phone when she’d returned to her room. “And a dog house—you’d better make it a big one. From the size of the pup’s paws, she looks as if she’ll grow to the size of a horse. Collars and leashes in different sizes as well, of course, and an assortment of pet toys. Oh, and please contact a good vet and arrange for her or him to give the dog all the shots and medical care she’ll need for the coming year. I’ll make further arrangements at that time. Send the bill for everything to me. And, very important, don’t tell anyone who it’s from.”

* * * *

Vicky stayed up most of the night before the show, working industriously on
Blueboy
’s
boring, gray-green background, finally completing the project as her eyes began to blur. She fell asleep with a grin on her face, and awakened tired but eager to a bright, sunny day. She’d overslept, but felt that everything was going beautifully. Now the show could be held outdoors, on the patio at the rear of the Sanctuary. It couldn’t be more perfect for her plan.

There was still work to be done, though. It was too late to wash and block the canvas, it would never dry in time, but she did want to display it to its best advantage.
Thumbtacks!
, she thought. She’d forgotten to get thumbtacks!

She dressed quickly, stored the canvas in her closet, blew a kiss to Mark Spitz, and rode down to the main floor in search of
Doris
. She first tried her quarters behind the dining room at the rear of the house, but received no response to her knock. After scanning the parlor, she finally located
Doris
arranging flowers on the tables in the patio.

“Good morning,”
Doris
called as Vicky stepped through a rear door. “We missed you at breakfast.”

Vicky was about to ask who “we” were, but decided she hadn’t time for idle chit-chat. She had more important things to be concerned with. “I need thumbtacks,” she said bluntly, ignoring the usual amenities. “I’m going to use the frame from that ‘pink nightmare’ that was in my room to attach my entry into the arts show, but I forgot to buy thumbtacks.”

“No problem,”
Doris
said, looking curiously at her. “What are you so anxious about? There’s plenty of time. The show won’t be starting until two this afternoon. I’ll give you a hand with the frame, if you like, as soon as I finish with these arrangements.”

“That’s just
it
,” Vicky said sharply, then realized that she was sounding like an old
kvetch
.
Blueboy
had taken more from her than just her time; he had sapped her energy and patience as well. “Thank you for your offer,” she said in a quieter tone. “But I want to complete this project on my own, for it to be a surprise—for everyone.”

Doris
’s eyes narrowed suspiciously and her grin was one of “the cat and the canary” sort. “What are you up to?” she asked, and then blurted, “
No
! Don’t tell me. I have a feeling that I don’t really want to know. Come, I’ll get the thumbtacks for you.”

* * * *

Mayor Lambert and his wife were the first of the judges to arrive. He parked his
Porsche
on the street, before the opening in the shrubbery.
So everyone can admire it
, Vicky thought, frowning.
But then, who can blame him?
She’d seen his photo in the newspapers often, usually showing him standing before his car—Black Beauty, he called it—as if it was his office. He seemed to spend more time driving it around town, showing it off, than he did working in City Hall.

He was a tall man, and round, with thinning dark hair and a seemingly perpetual smile carved into his chubby face, as if every day was Election Day. Beside him, his wife looked like a shy little girl dressed in women’s clothing she’d found in an attic, chosen, Vicky guessed, to appear more mature. It might have worked, but for the inane official’s-wife smile that remained so immobile it might have been formed of wax.

The vicar and the sheriff arrived with their wives. The sheriff, in his tans and campaign hat, looked like an aging, pudgy Boy Scout, while his wife could be typecast as Nurse
Ratched
.

The vicar, however, was charming. His black suit failed to dim the healthy, young glow of his face, or the genuine enjoyment he showed when meeting new people, visiting a new place. He was ebullient with enthusiasm, and his wife, a pert, vivacious young woman, reflected his
joie de vivre
perfectly.

Vicky viewed them as current versions of what Gerald and she had been, oh, so long ago.
I really should attend church more often
, she thought. She was standing in the shade of the veranda with the other residents, watching the couples parade up the path to the Sanctuary. She held the towel-covered, framed needlepoint tightly under her arm. She’d struggled with the recalcitrant canvas for over an hour, stretching it one way, then the other, eventually having to pull out all the tacks and start over. Finally, she’d gotten it done, but was so exhausted from the physical stress that she’d almost decided not to show it at all. Then, braced by a cup of strong, hot tea, and titillated by the thoughts of what was to come, she revived in no time at all.