Page 99 of The New Couple in 5B

Paul came home right away, as soon as I shared the horrible news.

And now together we sit in the pew behind the family. Charles and Ella are nearly catatonic with grief, moving with a stiff slowness as if the very act of being upright is a chore. Lilian leans against an elderly woman whom I recognize as her grandmother from Greenwich, and whom I met at one of the Aldridges’ famous Christmas parties.

I’ll handle the boy.

No. No. That’s not what he meant. Please, God. It was just an accident. A horrible accident.

Paul is right beside me, a strong arm around my shoulders. I lean into him. He’s worried about me, the shock of this event and what it might do to the child inside me. It’s true. I am shaken to the core. He’s been attending to me since he rushed home, cooking and bringing me tea in bed. Thank God for him. I’ll never betray him again.

We drive to the gravesite in Queens, part of the slow funeral procession, headlights glowing yellow, sodium light in the dark of the storm.

In the cemetery, we stand under umbrellas that barely keep us dry as Miles’s little body is lowered into the ground. We line up to throw earth and flowers on his coffin. The tears won’t stop when my turn comes. The white roses I’ve been carrying fall, scatter in the dirt below. The earth from my shovel lands on the wood below. The air smells of wet leaves and someone’s heavy perfume.

When I turn, Paul is gone. I thought he was right behind me.

Making my way back through the crowd, I spothim. He’s standing at the edge of the group, over by the trees. He makes his way to Charles, offers a bow and gives the other man an awkward embrace. When his eyes turn to me, there’s an expression of profound sadness.

Quickly, I look away and find my husband. I see his gray felt hat, his head shaking as if in denial, and then I realize that Paul is speaking to someone, a woman, tall and slim.

As I approach, the woman turns to leave him.

It’s Ella. I reach for her as she moves toward me, and we lock eyes. An unkind smile spreads across her face, but it’s just a flash, soon swallowed by her mourner’s mask of grief.

I try to grab her hand, to offer her my condolences. But she pushes past me without a word, her shoulder grazing mine roughly.

When I look back to Paul, his face is slack. In his eyes there’s an ugly brew of sadness, betrayal, anger.

My heart nearly stops beating in my chest.

Ella knew my secret. And, I don’t know why, here and now, but she’s told my husband.

thirty

There are a few hours to kill before the funeral, and I find I can’t stay at home another minute. I decide to keep my appointment with Arthur Alpern.

Alpern’s place is not far, so I walk, slipping out the back, letting the city rhythm carry me through the streets. I realize that the farther I get from the Windermere, the lighter, more myself, I feel. And by the time I reach Alpern’s Chelsea building, I have shed the darkness of my current life and disappeared into my writer-researcher mind. It’s a relief to be admitted by his doorman and ride up his unmanned elevator. I am just a writer here, researching a book.

Arthur Alpern is a small man, elfin in trim pants and a velvet green vest. I like him right away when he swings his door open wide for me and lets me into the two-bedroom he’s lived in since 1968.

“Ms. Lowan,” he says warmly.

I ask him to call me Rosie. And he leads me into a small kitchen where he brews coffee, and we sit at a wooden table.

I take in the details. A folded dishrag by the sink, a single hydrangea in a glass vase on the windowsill, dishes neatly stacked behind glass cabinet doors. He tells me how he fell in love with the apartment when he was a young man and has never felt the urge to leave. It’s a large, sparsely furnished space, a time capsule with Eames chairs and a leather sectional, a stereo and record player on a low credenza, photos of children and grandchildren on every surface, simple louver blinds, everything spotlessly clean and impeccably maintained.

“I’ve visited every grand building in the city, and I’ve never found a place I felt more at home,” he said, rubbing at his snow-white goatee, when I asked him why he’d never moved.

“My late wife and I lived our life here, raised our son. She lives on in every nook and cranny. All our memories dwell here like ghosts. To leave here would be to leave her behind.”

His words put a painful squeeze on my heart, thinking of Chad, our lost child, the darkness that has settled over our lives. Xavier’s funeral looms like a storm cloud. But I try to stay here.

“And,” he says, pushing up his thick glasses, peering at me, “I think that’s all hauntings really are. Just memories lingering.”

It snaps me back to the work.

“So the Windermere,” I say.

Arthur settles in his chair with a nod. “It might have been unremarkable had its architect not leapt from the roof, ruined by the Great Depression.”

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