A Big Storm Knocked It Over Read online

  DEDICATION

  To Harriet Shapiro,

  Franny Taliaferro,

  and Julie Devlin

  EPIGRAPH

  Surely, of all things in the world the rarest is a civilized man at peace with himself.

  —GONTRAN DE PONSCINS, Kabloona

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part I Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part II Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Part III Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Part IV Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Perennial

  About the Author

  Also by Laurie Colwin

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PART I

  CHAPTER 1

  Jane Louise Parker sat at her drawing board looking out her office window. The late September light was hazy and warm, but the breeze—the window was open a crack—was slightly chill. This was what the Chinese called “pneumonia weather.” Jane Louise knew this from having designed the interior of a book entitled Magic Needles: The Story of Acupuncture in the West. She yawned.

  Two weeks ago she had stood up in front of a judge and had been transformed from Jane Louise Meyers into Jane Louise Parker and become the lawful wedded wife of Teddy Parker, named Theodore Cornelius for his father and great-grandfather. After wedding cake and champagne they had gone off to Maine for a week and then returned to the apartment they had shared for a year. Now they were married and back at work.

  Back at work! Jane Louise had occupied this office longer than she had known her own husband. She had lived in this office for more years than she had lived at her present address. In some ways this office was her true home. She had come to it a comparatively young woman, and in not so long she would kiss her thirties good-bye.

  In this very chair she had agonized over love affairs gone wrong and wondered, as she had stared out of this selfsame window, if she would ever meet and fall in love with someone she might care to marry. At this drawing table she had realized that she had fallen in love with Teddy and had spent hours daydreaming about him.

  Then, after one short ceremony in the formal room of a rented mansion, she had been reclassified as a married woman.

  She could not stop looking at the plain band Teddy had bought for her at an antique store. His parents’ marriage had been short-lived and acrimonious, while Jane Louise’s mother’s hand was tiny. Therefore no family rings would have done. Besides, Teddy’s mother favored white gold, and Jane Louise’s mother preferred pink, whereas Jane Louise liked gold that was almost green. She was gazing at her hand when she heard a noise in the doorway and there, staring at her, was her boss, the art director, Sven Michaelson.

  “Nuptial radiance,” he said. “Covered like a veil.”

  Sven was compact and well made, like a good canoe. He had short-cropped silver hair and light, cold-blue eyes. His clothes were very beautiful and expensive. It was said that he had two real interests in this world, besides running the art department of a prominent publishing house: poker and fucking. There were numerous stories about him. His mother was a Dane. His father had been something of a shady character in show business. He was half Jewish, half flinty Scandinavian, and it was said that the art departments of major New York publishing companies were littered with his victims. When once confronted with this reputation by Jane Louise, Sven said: “I don’t discriminate against editorial.”

  He was married to his third wife, with whom he had produced his fourth child. His secretary, Adele Lewitkin, claimed that Sven’s motto was “A family for every decade.”

  There was no question about it: Sven exuded a kind of louche, creepy charm, a sex appeal devoid of such frills as affection or love. You looked at Sven and saw that action, plain and simple, was the name of his game.

  For years he had been nosing around Jane Louise, of whom he liked to say that he had seen her grow from a callow girl into a ripe peach. And one night, four years ago, Sven had made his move.

  They had both worked late, and Sven had come into her office. Only her drafter’s lamp had been on, throwing a cone of light onto her desk. The rest of the room was a dark, velvet brown.

  As Jane Louise bent over her work, her hair, which was shiny brown, shoulder length, and very straight, had parted. Sven had leaned over and placed his lips on the back of her neck. The electric jolt she had felt was as good as a dire warning.

  It was sort of depressing to spend your first day back at your office as a married woman being scrutinized by a man whose interest in you was almost exclusively carnal. Sven seemed unable to take his eyes off Jane Louise.

  “Married,” he said, settling into a chair. “Let’s have a look at you to see how you’ve changed.”

  “Why don’t you shut up, Sven?” Jane Louise suggested.

  “My sweet girl,” said Sven, taking a little cigar out of a leather case. “You can’t imagine how I pined for your return.” He crossed his legs, revealing blue-and-white-striped socks. He had many pairs of these sent to him from Paris by Anik, the beautiful product of his second marriage. He was still tan from having spent his vacation in Martha’s Vineyard with his present wife, Edwina; their little son, Piers; as well as his twins—Allard and Desdemona—from his first marriage, and Anik.

  “Ah, Jane,” he said. “I feel almost grandfatherly, watching you turn from a scrawny chicken into . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “A married hen,” Jane Louise said.

  “Oh, sweetheart,” he said, crooning. “A wedding ring only adds to a woman’s basic appeal. I mean, of course, if she is basically appealing.”

  “Listen,” Jane Louise said, almost pleading. “This is my first day back. My desk is piled with work. Don’t sit around here being provocative.”

  “In that case,” Sven said, “I’ll wait until your desk is clear.”

  Jane Louise gave him a look.

  “Never mind, Janey,” he said, flicking his ashes into her potted orange tree. “I must say marriage looks wonderful on you.”

  In the ladies’ room Jane Louise wondered if this was true. She felt she looked as she had always looked, but then she had never been married before and had no idea what was supposed to happen. She was tall and skinny, pale with the kind of paleness that is prone to blush, and her eyes were blue. She wore plain, trim clothes: She liked her skirts short and her sweaters large. For jewelry she wore a large gold man’s watch that had belonged to her late father—she had snagged it before her older sister, Nora, got it first—and she wore a Navajo silver bracelet with one round turquoise, and a plain brass bracelet, both presents from Teddy.

  She peered into the mirror. Had she changed? Was there now some new creature named Jane Louise Parker who was older, wiser, more grown-up? Did married people look and smell different?

  Back in her office she picked up the telephone and dialed up her closest friend and former college roommate, Edie Steinhaus. Edie was
a caterer and pastry chef. It was she who had made Jane Louise’s pink wedding cake, festooned with sugar violets and roses.

  “Hello,” Jane Louise said. “Is this Miss or Mr. Edith Steinhaus?”

  “Oh, hello, darling,” said Edie.

  “I have just returned from a voyage to another planet,” Jane Louise said. “I am a stranger in your country. I wonder if you could help me out.”

  “I can’t,” said Edie. “I am on a voyage to another reality. I am now rolling little round watercress sandwiches in chopped parsley. The Teagarden christening is this afternoon.”

  “Gee,” said Jane Louise. “Wouldn’t I just love to roll little sandwiches in chopped parsley. Who are the Teagardens?”

  “Oh, how quickly you forget,” Edie said. “Haven’t you heard chapter and verse? Besides, the question is, Who were the Teagardens? They used to be extremely. rich and vulgar, but they acquired an old master painting, and now they’re less extremely rich and refined.”

  “Oh, isn’t money heaven?” said Jane Louise.

  “They have a baby called Dudley. Or maybe that’s their dog,” Edie said. “This christening is straight out of House and Garden in the fifties—the British edition.”

  “No cake in the shape of a teddy bear?”

  “We’re having the traditional simnel cake with bachelor’s buttons and forget-me-nots.”

  “Those must be hell to make,” Jane Louise said.

  “Fortunately,” said Edie, “it’s all the rage amongst these people to use real flowers. Mrs. Teagarden told me.”

  “Don’t they wilt?” Jane Louise said.

  “No one hangs around that long,” Edie said. “How’s Teddy?”

  “He seems exactly the same,” Jane Louise said. “Here we are, married, and everything is exactly like it was before. Although, as Sven pointed out to me, now I have to get divorced if I want to be single again.”

  “What a sweetheart,” Edie said. “He thinks of everything. Did he send you a wedding present?”

  “A bottle of vintage champagne,” Jane Louise said. “Extremely appropriate.”

  “Well, call me a million more times,” Edie said. “But not after one-thirty, because I’ll be in Mrs. Teagarden’s replica of the kitchen in an English stately home of the nineteen-thirties.”

  Edie came from a distinguished family. Both of her awful brothers had political ambitions. She was the only girl and the black sheep in a family of lawyers. When she had gone off to study at Paris’s most esteemed cooking school, her parents could only bring themselves to say: “Our daughter is studying in France.” Jane Louise hated Edie’s brothers and her parents, too, and when Jane Louise pointed out their awfulness to Edie, whom she loved with all her heart, Edie lowered her eyes and said, “Thank you for hating my family for me.”

  Like Jane Louise she was tall and skinny. She had a mop of frizzy hair and a passion for vintage clothing and things made by people in dim little shops the size of pincushions. She was a clothes rack to hang wonderful garments on, another of the many things about her of which her parents did not approve.

  “By the way,” Jane Louise said. “Before you rush off, if you’re rolling those little sandwiches around, what is Mokie doing?”

  Mokie was Edie’s partner. It was not known to her family that he was also her lover and that they had lived together for several years. His name was Morris Talbot Frazier. He was tall and thin. He was also beautiful and black—the color of coffee. They had met at school in Paris and had come home together to start their catering business. He wore small horn-rimmed glasses and spoke perfect French.

  “Mokie’s chatting up the victims,” Edie said. “Those Teagardens are extremely nervous. Mo says it’s like catering for whippets.”

  “There’s a new angle,” Jane Louise said. “Parties for dogs.”

  “Next we have the Norris memorial service,” Edie said.

  “Catered funerals,” Jane Louise said. “What will they think of next?”

  “The old guy gave a couple of mil to the library, so this is not a funeral as you or I know them,” Edie said. “This is a public function.”

  “Public function,” Jane Louise said. “Just like my wedding. Gosh, I’m lucky I got you for a caterer. Have I told you what a work of art our cake was? I was so sad to cut it.”

  “Your mother felt there wasn’t enough of it,” Edie said.

  “My mother feels there’s not enough of anything,” Jane Louise said. “Do you think in the old days people got married and two weeks later had to go to a conference in Seattle?”

  “Is Teddy going away?”

  “I was going to go with him, but I’m too tired.”

  “Maybe you’re pregs,” said Edie.

  “Give a girl five minutes,” Jane Louise said. “Besides, didn’t we swear we would try to coordinate this?”

  “We did, and we will,” Edie said. “Go back to work. I’m sure we’ll speak several hundred more times today.” And she hung up.

  CHAPTER 2

  Being newly married made Jane Louise feel weird. She felt peculiar when people came in to congratulate her, as if her clothing was too itchy and didn’t fit. She suddenly became shy and at a loss for words. It seemed odd to her that people would congratulate you for being able to sleep with your boyfriend legally. But to her office colleagues marriage was about matched towels with monograms, wedding presents sent from all over, and eventually the creation of a nice little family. It was not, except to Sven, about the marriage bed. But then, who knew what marriage really meant to Sven? According to her secretary, Adele, a veritable encyclopedia on the subject, Sven liked being married because it gave him a reason to feel guilty about adultery.

  Jane Louise did not believe that Sven felt guilty about anything, but Adele’s theory was rather more complicated. She said that Sven did not feel guilt in the sense of feeling bad about something. Guilt to him was like a seasoning in cooking—hot peppers or chili powder—that put an edge on his philandering, without which he would have been bored.

  It was odd to feel so uncomfortable at work. Her office had always been like a friend. She had spent the crucial hours of her girlhood in this place, and even though she was hardly a girl when she got married, she felt that she had crossed some border.

  Her door was open, and through it stepped Adele, a compact young woman with bright yellow hair, long pink nails, and a fondness for outfits—clothes that actually matched. She was engaged to her boyfriend, Phil, who had given her a little diamond engagement ring. She came from an enormous family of telephone company workers, nurses, and taxicab drivers. On the subject of Sven she was brilliant. Her only other interest was her engagement and pending wedding, for which elaborate plans had been made.

  She had been invited to Jane Louise and Teddy’s wedding and had been puzzled by it, Jane Louise could see. It was so plain, so not like a wedding. But she loved Jane Louise, and she admired her. Adele felt that Jane Louise came from some loftier artistic territory in which people wore what looked like a sundress—and not even a white one—to their wedding, with no hat, no veil, and only the tiniest little bouquet of flowers, which the bride actually had to be reminded to throw. Adele, of course, had caught it, but then Jane Louise had thrown it right at her.

  “So hi!” Adele said as she entered. She was more than ten years younger than Jane Louise and seemed a veritable baby. “I see Sven’s been in to check you out.”

  “For signs of wear,” Jane Louise said.

  “I’m so glad I don’t register with him,” said Adele. “It would creep me out to get the once-over from him. You’re his type.”

  Jane Louise considered this. Sven’s wife, Edwina, was a strawberry blond. The mother of Allard and Desdemona had been a reddish blond, and the Swede, mother of Anik, had also been blond. Jane Louise mentioned this.

  “He marries out of type,” said Adele.

  Jane Louise made a mental note to remember to tell this to Teddy. She thought Adele was a genius, but Teddy said sh
e was only a genius on the subject of Sven.

  Jane Louise noticed that Adele, too, peered at her, as if for signs of wear. She focused on Jane Louise’s wedding band, and her face relaxed. Here was an identifiable and correct piece of wedding protocol! Adele sat at her desk at lunchtime and read such magazines as Modern Engagements (which Jane Louise originally had thought was a literary magazine) and Today’s Bride. Or she set out with Phil-the-Fiancé and went shopping for towels and matching shower curtains, place mats, and napkins. She and Phil were going to be married in two years, but they shopped assiduously for specials and sales (YOUR MONOGRAM EMBROIDERED FREE WITH THE PURCHASE OF TWO BATH SHEETS!), and the Stuff was hauled away and stored at Adele’s grandmother’s house.

  All this made Jane Louise feel very tender toward Adele. She did not begrudge Adele any of it: She wanted someone to want it.

  She and Teddy had simply merged their possessions and were now thinking about buying a sideboard. Jane Louise had never bought a piece of furniture with another person in her life. It seemed to her an act of almost exotic intimacy. After all, anyone can sleep with anyone, but few people not closely connected purchase furniture in common.

  Dita Neville was Jane Louise’s next visitor. Jane Louise was dreading her. She breezed into the office trailing cigarette smoke and wearing the sort of clothes girls might have worn in French convent schools in the forties. No one could identify where she got these clothes which, as Edie pointed out, were killingly lovely. Today she was wearing a heavy white shirt, a knife-pleated black serge skirt, heavy black stockings, and flat suede shoes like ballet slippers. Her stripey, tawny hair was cut asymmetrically. She was older than Jane Louise, and they had been close friends, but recently Dita had faded out of her life.

  When Dita first came to the firm she had created a minor stir: She was extremely glamorous. No one else in the office carried a burled-walnut cigarette case with a twenty-two-carat-gold clasp. No one else had lunch with people whose title was Princess. She seemed to know everyone: old film directors, movie stars, wild Southern boys who wrote dirty novels, elephant trainers who wrote poetry. At the moment she was publishing a novel entitled Dream of the Biker’s Girl, by a woman who had ridden with the Hell’s Angels and came to the office in full biker regalia. Undeterred, Dita, wearing sober gray and real pearls, took her out to lunch at the fancy women’s club of which her mother was a member.