Bone White Read online

  Judging by reader engagement, the obituaries are far more popular than the news, occasionally edged by the weather forecast, depending on the day. The comments section breeds complaints about the Southern California weather or lack thereof, and subsequent complaints about the complainers.

  Over on the obituaries page, comments aren’t always reverent, or even coherent. A few are written entirely in capital letters that transform condolences into screaming threats: I’M PRAYING FOR HER SOUL, or I WILL COME BY THIS WEEK WITH RIGATONI.

  Someone who goes by SamIAm writes just RIP on every obituary, and a person named Maynard—first, or last?—comments on all of SamIAm’s comments, accusing him of disrespecting the dead with stupid drive-by acronims. Someone else corrects Maynard’s spelling: Its acronym. Learn how to spell, freaking moron.

  No one corrects the Its.

  Fascinating, this window into other people’s lives.

  And deaths.

  The deceased are depicted in formal portraits or colorful candids, some recent, others courtesy of the prior century. A black and white photo depicts a ninety-year-old man as a handsome young soldier, the accompanying write-up referencing Normandy and a Purple Heart. A septuagenarian is shown in 1950s glam, with dark lipstick and cropped hair, her bangs riding high above heavily penciled brows and at least an inch of forehead. She’s survived by a devoted husband and three sprawling generations.

  You can learn a lot about a person, reading an obituary.

  Unless that person is Jerome Mundy.

  No photo. No comments, other than the obligatory RIP courtesy of SamIAm.

  No frills. No charming anecdotes, no unique facts. Unlike his fellow deceased, he didn’t have invention patents. Wasn’t appointed to Ronald Reagan’s administration. Didn’t set a Guinness Book of World Records for humming “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall” all the way through, not once, but one hundred consecutive times.

  Surprisingly, the hummer, alphabetically listed right before Jerome Mundy, died of natural causes.

  Hard to believe no one strangled that guy.

  An ironic thought, all things considered.

  Jerome Mundy’s obituary reads like a short story thrown into an anthology of opuses.

  Born in Los Angeles in 1940, survived by one daughter, Emerson Mundy, of Oakland. Died of natural causes.

  That’s it. The end.

  Strange.

  Seeing it there in black and white, you can almost believe it.

  Even the lie.

  Email

  To: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  Date: June 1, 2017

  Re: Your Upcoming Stay

  Dear Ms. Mundy:

  As the General Manager of the Dapplebrook Inn, I review upcoming reservations on the first of every month. Your last name caught my eye. Do you have a familial connection to Horace J. Mundy? He was a great American politician, and one of Mundy’s Landing’s most esteemed native sons. Our inn was built as his private residence in the late nineteenth century.

  I will look forward to your reply, and to welcoming you on the 21st.

  Best,

  Nancy Vandergraaf

  Chapter 2

  June 21, 2017

  Mundy’s Landing, New York

  The dusky two-lane highway is bordered by woods, rambling cobblestone walls, and spotlit homes. Some are pillared stone mansions, others turreted Victorians, a few transformed into office buildings or apartment houses. All are steeped in bygone grandeur.

  Approaching a fork in the road, Emerson notes that the business district lies east; Schaapskill Nature Preserve, west. That’s the site of the old riverfront settlement, but it closes at sundown.

  She bears east. Schaapskill will have to wait until tomorrow. There, she’s hoping . . .

  What, Emerson? What are you hoping?

  That you’ll discover some long-lost treasure or connection to your roots?

  That you’ll feel something other than this festering longing, loss, frustration, loneliness, anger . . .

  Something other than sorry for yourself?

  She abruptly turns off the arctic blast from the A.C. vents. Rolling down the window, she sucks warm, woodsy air into her lungs.

  The road broadens to four lanes and straightens. Houses and trees give way to a series of interconnected parking lots and painted concrete buildings marked by familiar logos you’d find in any other American town: Dunkin’ Donuts, Mobil, Holiday Inn, Home Depot, Wal-Mart, and every fast food chain known to man.

  Inhaling fryer grease along with exhaust, she hits every traffic light alongside an adjacent pickup truck reverberating loud bass.

  Roy Nowak, her fiancé, drives a similar vehicle, but he only listens to soft rock. He knows all the words to every song, and he sings to her, sometimes about her. She should probably find it endearingly romantic, but lately, it grates.

  “I’m not tiny, Roy, and I’m not a dancer,” she protested just the other day when he lyrically transformed her into the heroine of Elton John’s ballad. Seeing the wounded look on his face, she smiled to show that she meant it lightly, adding, “I’m definitely not a seamstress for the band.”

  Predictably, he stopped singing—and stopped talking—for the remainder of the evening.

  She met him last September, on a union picket line during a contract dispute. A torrential downpour hit out of nowhere. Roy had an umbrella. Emerson did not.

  He was smart and earnest and had good manners—hardly the most earth-shattering qualities in a romantic prospect. But then, who needs drama?

  “I just lost my dad. I’m not in a good place,” she told him when he asked her out.

  “I’m a great listener, if you want to talk about it.”

  “I . . . I can’t. Not . . .” Not with a stranger, she thought, but that wasn’t quite it. Not with anyone.

  She said only, “Not yet. It’s too soon.”

  “Then we’ll go out, and we’ll talk about other things, or,” he amended, watching her expression, “we won’t talk at all. Have you seen Finding Dory?”

  “What?”

  “It’s a feel-good movie. Don’t you want to feel good?”

  “I would love to feel good,” she relented with a smile.

  They went to the movie—an animated film about a forgetful blue fish who knew that she’d somehow become separated from her parents as a child, and longed for a family reunion. Emerson sobbed her way through it, Roy’s arm resting around her shoulders.

  It was cathartic—both the purge of grief and the companionship.

  Roy has been there for her ever since. He’d be here with her now if she hadn’t told him that this is something she needs to do alone.

  Past the sprawl, a white chamber of commerce signpost reads Welcome to Mundy’s Landing.

  Brick-paved streets meander beneath a leafy canopy, lined with gabled rooftops and nineteenth-century storefronts. Vintage street lamps illuminate post-prandial pedestrians with leashed dogs or baby strollers. The broad green is dotted with benches and blooming planters, a gazebo, and a fountain featuring a copper statue of Gilded Age financier Horace J. Mundy.

  Her Horace J. Mundy.

  Leaving the town square, she ascends the steep incline of Prospect Street into The Heights. In this aptly named neighborhood, the 1916 Sleeping Beauty Killer staged a series of grotesque tableaus. Almost a year has passed since the original culprit was identified and the copycat unmasked, making this the first summer in a quarter century that the village isn’t hosting a “Mundypalooza.”

  Tonight, all is quiet at both the historical society’s floodlit mansion and the notorious Murder House across the street, where the first butchered corpse turned up a century ago.

  Farther down the block, the Dapplebrook Inn is alive with activity. Every window along the three-story brick façade beams with light. People are dining and sipping cocktails at candlelit tables on the wide veranda. An elegant couple climbs into a waiting car beneath
the wisteria-covered portico.

  Emerson turns into the driveway and pulls around back, startling a squat, furry creature browsing in a Dumpster at the parking lot’s rear. Its masked eyes shoot an accusatory glare into the headlights as if she’s the interloper.

  “Hey, I’m the one who belongs here,” she tells the raccoon as it scuttles into a tall clump of rhododendron. “I’m a Mundy.”

  She opens the door, unfolds her legs, and grabs her suitcase from the trunk.

  The evening is warm, fragrant with June roses and honeysuckle. Strains of classical music and conversation float through the screens to join the night hum of air conditioners, and cicadas and frogs in a nearby stream.

  The brick mansion presides against shadowy foliage and a purple starlit sky. It was built in 1892 as a summer home for the illustrious Horace J. Mundy, who spent Hudson Valley summers hobnobbing with Roosevelts and Vanderbilts. Last summer, Emerson had discovered that he’d been her great-great-uncle, and that her roots do indeed stretch back to Mundy’s Landing’s earliest settlers.

  Emerson’s sneakers crunch along the gravel driveway as she makes her way past blooming bushes and lace-curtained windows. Beneath the branches of an enormous tree, a shovel and a couple of gardening rakes are propped against a wheelbarrow that holds burlap-wrapped shrubs waiting to be planted. The patrons on the porch don’t give her a second glance, busy eating and drinking, chatting and being served.

  A young waiter holds the door open for her on his way out. A tattoo peeks out beneath his white shirt cuff.

  “Checking in?” he asks with a smile.

  “Yes.”

  “Enjoy your stay.” He steps outside, letting the door swing closed behind her as she steps over the threshold.

  She takes in the polished hardwoods, period wallpaper, carved woodwork, and sweeping staircase.

  Home at last.

  Not really.

  Intellectually, she knows that it’s not a true homecoming if you’ve never been here before.

  Emotionally, she begs to differ.

  “You must be Emerson Mundy,” a voice greets her, and she sees a slender, attractive woman in her late forties or early fifties. “I’m Nancy Vandergraaf, the general manager.”

  Nancy is tall and trim with short, stylish auburn hair. The women’s civic club type, Emerson finds herself thinking as they shake hands.

  “In your e-mail, you said you’re visiting Mundy’s Landing to learn more about your ancestors?”

  “Yes. I’m new to genealogy. I wanted to see where my family came from.”

  ”I’ll be happy to help with your research. I’ve lived here all my life and I know everyone in town.” She grabs an old-fashioned brass key from a desk drawer. “You must be exhausted. I’ll show you up to your room.”

  “Wait, up?”

  “We have you on the second floor, in the Jekyll Suite. It’s our premier accommodation—a complimentary upgrade. I thought Horace’s niece should stay in what was once his own bedroom. Here, I’ll take your luggage.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to do that. It’s heavy.”

  “I’m stronger than I look,” the woman says with a smile.

  So is Emerson, but she allows Nancy to swing the bag over her shoulder as if it weighs mere ounces.

  “Have you had other descendants visit?”

  “No, and I’ve been managing this inn for years. None of Horace’s sons are living, and their families are scattered. There are Mundys who live here in town, though,” Nancy adds, leading her toward the graceful wallpapered staircase. “Different branch of the family, but they’d be your distant cousins. You’re all descended from Jeremiah Mundy, one of the village’s founding fathers.”

  To Emerson, Jeremiah and his sisters had always seemed like characters in her beloved childhood books. Plucky orphans surrounded by vengeful strangers, the Mundy siblings not only survived, but thrived.

  Their saga, like her favorite novels, had a most satisfying ending: by the time the village incorporated nearly a century after their parents were executed, residents named it after Enoch Mundy, a Revolutionary War general.

  Jeremiah’s grandson was one of many illustrious offspring who redeemed the family name, and made Emerson long for a connection—one her father denied.

  “They must have been so upset,” she said to him, years ago. “Can you imagine watching your parents die like that? What a horrible ordeal.”

  “For the kids, yes. But there are worse ways to die.”

  “Worse than being strangled to death by a noose?”

  “It’s faster than you’d think. You fall, your neck breaks, and it’s over. Better than slowly wasting away.”

  “You mean like the ones who starved to death?”

  “I mean like anyone who wastes away.”

  Pushing away troubling thoughts of her father, Emerson focuses on a series of framed sepia-toned exterior photographs of the mansion through the years. Some show vehicles parked beneath the portico: horses and surreys, bicycles with enormous front wheels or tandems, roadsters with rumble seats and running boards. Others include people in fashionable clothing from Gibson Girl shirtwaists to flapper fringe to miniskirts and go-go boots.

  She thinks of the framed snapshots that filled her own childhood home. They’ve been sitting in a box in her Oakland apartment for months. She couldn’t bear to display them when she returned from her father’s funeral. It was too soon. Too late.

  Nancy points to a Victorian-era portrait of three young boys. “These are Horace’s three sons—Robert H. Mundy, Joseph H. Mundy, and Arthur H. Mundy.”

  “What are the H’s for?”

  “Horace, of course.” Smiling, she points to another image, of a young man wearing a straw boater and pinstriped suit with a watch chain looped across his buttoned waistcoat. “This is the oldest, Robert, all grown up. He was lost on the Titanic, but he died a hero. He saved these children. Here they are after they were rescued at sea.”

  She points to a grainy photograph of a group of bedraggled ragamuffins posed in ill-fitting winter clothing. The eldest can’t be more than six or seven, clutching a well-bundled baby in her arms. In the background, a ship’s railing and a dense blur of sea and sky confirm the shipboard setting.

  “Taken on board the Carpathia,” Emerson guesses, familiar with the Titanic tragedy.

  “How did you know?”

  “I’m a history teacher.”

  “Then you’re going to love this picture.”

  From roughly the same era, it shows a pair of young teenage boys wearing vintage baseball uniforms, bats dangling from their hands.

  “The one on the left is Congressman Maxwell Mundy Ransom, descended from Jeremiah’s sister Priscilla Mundy Ransom. Do you recognize this young man?” Nancy points to the boy on the right.

  “Should I?”

  “I’ll give you a hint. His initials were FDR, and he wound up in Washington alongside Maxwell. Or rather, not quite alongside . . .”

  “That’s Franklin Roosevelt?”

  “It is. They were friends all their lives. See that? Your family had quite an exciting past.”

  “Tragic, too,” Emerson murmurs, thinking of Priscilla, a newlywed pregnant with her only child when she was widowed weeks after she’d written that revealing letter to Jeremiah.

  We shall never tell . . .

  They reach the wide second-floor hallway lined with white-painted doors, each closed and bearing a brass nameplate: the Lavender Room, the Sarah Suite, the Delano Room . . .

  Halfway down the hall, Nancy shows her oval oil portraits of Horace’s parents, Aaron and Sarah Mundy. He’s dignified but homely in a beard and black topcoat; the woman more handsome than pretty, with a mass of dark curls coiled on her head and a festoon of lace at her fleshy throat. They were painted by Martin Johnson Heade, a prominent nineteenth-century artist linked to the Hudson River School, mostly known for his landscapes.

  “Here we are.” At the end of the hall, Nancy unlocks a pair of do
uble doors leading to the Jekyll Suite—not, she tells Emerson, as in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

  “It’s named after the coastal Georgia island where Horace hobnobbed at the turn of the last century with Rockefellers, Astors, Morgans . . . you probably know all about that, as a history teacher.”

  She does. The elite group of prominent businessmen hunted, fished, and talked politics and finance. Those discussions paved the way for the Federal Reserve and changed the course of history.

  Nancy pushes open both doors with a flourish, like a grande dame in a vintage movie, and motions Emerson across the threshold.

  The lamplit room has towering ceilings, tall windows, ornate dark wood moldings. Mahogany furniture is well-polished, scrolled and carved, yet not overtly fussy. Hunter green walls color-coordinate with richly patterned upholstery, rug, and draperies. Florals are conspicuously absent; the aesthetic luxuriously masculine.

  There’s a marble wet bar topped by a backlit glass cabinet filled with cocktail glassware. Above the fireplace, an intricately sculpted stone frieze depicts soldiers in an ancient war. Stacked wood and a maroon leather hearthside chair await the next chilly evening.

  This is a room where a gentleman might retire with a snifter of brandy, a good cigar, and a Hemingway novel—or perhaps Hemingway himself. He was rumored to have been a friend of Horace, according to Nancy, who points out a massive gilt-framed portrait of an unsmiling bearded man, posed in top hat and tails in a blooming summer garden.

  “Is that Hemingway?”

  “No, it’s Horace. He commissioned John Singer Sargent to paint it in London in the 1890s, right around the time the house was being built. Sargent was sought after by all the most aristocratic families both here and abroad.”

  Aristocratic. A far cry from Emerson’s own life, especially after two heart attacks left her father on permanent disability from his job as an airline baggage handler.

  “Is this what the room looked like back when my family lived here?” she asks Nancy.

  “We tried to keep it authentic. Some of the furniture is reproduction, but most are antiques original to the house. A few pieces, like that side table and the mantel clock, are original to the room itself.”