And who else do you bring here?I can’t help but wonder. Does he have a girlfriend, a boyfriend? All of the above?
“Why do you call her Stella?”
“She never took to the name Grandmother. It made her feel old.”
“I can see that about her. I like her spunk. She’s feisty. Although she would probably hate that word too. Do we ever use the wordfeistyto describe anyone under the age of sixty?”
“We don’t. And yes, I think she would hate it. I won’t tell her you said it,” Matthew promises. “Want to hear my favorite Stella story?”
“I’d love to!”
“This one is wild! My grandfather bought her a lion cub from Harrods department store in London as a gag. You could apparently do that in the sixties. They were kept in cages in the shop basement and Maxwell bought one for Stella’s fiftieth. He didn’t think she’d keep it. The cub was really just for show at the party, but she was completely smitten and it lived in their Belgravia town house for an entire month. She used to walk him on a diamond-encrusted leash around St. George’s Square. Frightened the knickers off the postman more than once, I heard. They eventually sent it off to our hunting facilities in Tanzania, where he was marked as absolutely off-limits to the game hunters. He lived for twenty years, sired ten cubs, and apparently he recognized Stella until the very end. It was gossiped about for years, which the rest of my family was none too fond of.”
“Why not?”
“We’re private. Very private. But Stella has never been able to be contained. My other favorite story is how she used to get guests to leave their dinner parties when they overstayed their welcome.”
“How?”
“She kept Tipu Sultan’s massive antique war sword mounted over her bed, and when it was time to clear the house she’d take it down and run through the dining room with it, roaring like she was going into battle.”
I can picture it easily. “I’d love to see that.”
“Sadly, she doesn’t have many parties any longer.”
The server arrives with a bottle of wine and pours us goblets of the thick bloodred liquid.
“Maybe you should hire someone to care for her, a nurse or a home aide. I think she’s lonely,” I tell Matthew.
Something passes over his face and he makes the same irritated expression he wore when he came out of the elevator. “It’s not possible right now, I’m afraid.”
“Not possible?”
His pause makes it clear he’s weighing what to say, how much to reveal.
“My father and sister think it’s time for her to go somewhere with more care. I’m supposed to convince her, but I don’t think it’s time yet. I wanted to ask you…how has she been when you’re in the apartment? Has she acted oddly? Said anything unusual?”
Is he fishing for information?
“I don’t know her well enough to know what’s ordinary for her,” I say. “She seems to like chatting with me.”
“What do you talk about?” His tone is sharper now.
“She’s talked about you. She adores you.”
He blushes slightly. “And I her. Does she ever mention my father or my sister?”
“No. I don’t think she has. We haven’t spoken all that much, but when we have it’s been about art.”
“Do you enjoy art?”
“I do.”
“Well then, there’s plenty to talk about with Stella. She has one of the sharpest eyes I have ever encountered in the art worldand impeccable taste. She’s always been underappreciated. She was my grandfather’s right-hand man…er, woman…helped run our business alongside him until my father took over, got zero credit for it.” Matthew leans back in his chair and lights a cigarette. “For her sake I wish she got along better with Father.”
“She doesn’t?”
“My pops believes Stella destroyed his parents’ marriage, that she’s a seductress homewrecker responsible for all his childhood misery.”
