The Dutch House(54)

“And you said No, I just stalk the place.”

“I told her we had left in ’63 after Dad died. I shouldn’t have said it that way but I wasn’t thinking. As soon as it was out of my mouth, poor Fluffy turned red, her eyes filled up. I think she was hoping she was going to find him there. I think she’d come to see him.”

“So then what?”

“Well, she was crying, and I didn’t want to be standing out there on the wrong side of the street so I asked her to come and sit in my car so we could talk.”

I shook my head. “You and Fluffy parking in front of the Dutch House.”

“In a manner of speaking. Danny, it was the most amazing thing. When she got in the car, we were as close as you and I are now, and the way I felt—I was so incredibly happy, like my heart was going to break open. She was wearing this old blue cardigan and it was almost like I remembered it. I could have leaned over and kissed her. I’ve always had it in my mind that I hated Fluffy, that she had hit you and she had slept with Dad, but it turns out I don’t hate her at all. It’s like I’m incapable of hating anyone or anything in my life that came before Andrea, and those were the Fluffy days. She still has that pretty face, even now. I don’t know if you remember her face but it was soft, very Irish. All of her freckles are gone now but she still has those big green eyes.”

I said I remembered her eyes.

“I did a lot of talking at first. I told her about Dad getting married and Dad dying and Andrea throwing you out, and you know what she says?”

“What?”

“She says, ‘What a cunt.’”

“Fluffy!”

Maeve laughed until her cheeks darkened and she started to cough. “I’ll tell you what, she cut right to it,” she said, and I handed her a tissue. “She wanted to know all about you. She was impressed that you were a doctor. She kept saying how wild you were, that she couldn’t imagine you holding still long enough to read a book much less study medicine.”

“She’s trying to cover her tracks. I wasn’t that wild.”

“Yes you were.”

“Where has she been all this time?”

“She used to live in Manhattan. She said she had no idea what to do that day Dad threw her out. She said she just stood there at the end of the driveway bawling and finally Sandy walked out and told her she’d call her husband to come and get her. Sandy and her husband took her in.”

“Good old Sandy.”

“She said they brainstormed for a few days and finally decided to go to Immaculate Conception and talk to the priest. Old Father Crutcher helped Fluffy find a job as a nanny with some rich people in Manhattan.”

“The Catholic Church helps a woman who was fired for hitting a kid to get a job looking after kids. That’s beautiful.”

“Seriously, you have got to stop interrupting me. You’re throwing the story off. She gets a good job as a nanny, and while the children were still young she marries the doorman in the building where she works. She said they kept it a secret until she got pregnant, so she wouldn’t lose her job. She said the first baby they had was a girl and that girl is at Rutgers now. She was on her way to see her and she decided to swing by the old house.”

“No one takes geography anymore. The Dutch House isn’t on her way to Rutgers from the city.”

“She lives in the Bronx now,” Maeve said, ignoring me, “she and her husband. They had three children in all, the girl and then two boys.”

It took everything in me not to point out that the Dutch House was not on the way to Rutgers from the Bronx either.

“Fluffy said she checked on the place every now and then, that she couldn’t help it. It had been her job before we ever moved there. It had been her job to keep an eye on things after Mrs. VanHoebeek died. She said she’d been afraid to go and knock because she didn’t know what Dad would say when he saw her, but that she’d always hoped she’d run into one of us there.”

I shook my head. Why did I miss the VanHoebeeks after all these years?

“She asked me if I still had diabetes, and I told her of course, and then she got upset all over again. I remember Fluffy as being very tough when we were children but who knows? Maybe she wasn’t.”

“She was.”

“She wants to see you.”

“Me?”

“You don’t live that far from her.”

“Why does she want to see me?”

Maeve gave me a look as if to say that surely I was smart enough to get this one myself, but I had no idea. “She wants to make amends.”

“Tell her no amends are in order.”

“Listen to me. This is important, and it’s not like you’re busy.” Maeve didn’t count the work I was doing on the building as a job. In this way she and Celeste were in agreement.

“I don’t need to reconnect with someone I haven’t seen since I was four years old.” I’ll admit, the story held a certain lurid fascination when it was about Maeve seeing Fluffy, but I had no interest in pursuing a relationship myself.

“Well, I gave her your number. I told her you’d meet her at the Hungarian Pastry Shop. That’s not going to be any trouble for you.”

“It’s not a matter of trouble, I just don’t want to do it.”