PART ONE
My life had ceased to have much by way of meaning. My love of ten years, Melissa Blake, had died accidentally two years before in 1999. Her death at age 38, left me bereft and mourning her absence. After the actual shock of her passing subsided, I gradually began seeing the world through a cracked prism. There was no longer any sunshine in my life, no music in the air, no sweet fragrance caressing my nostrils. Only a gray, blah, dull nothing. Every day alive was just an opportunity for more nothingness and depression, one more day missing Melissa. The first 28 years of my life had been heavenly, the last 2, closer to hell.
It was a cold month, that May of 2001, one made colder by missing her warmth, and wit, and beauty. That was the day when I got the news about Melissa's will, and the second half of my real life began.
The news for this day delivered itself to our apartment in Brooklyn, in a cream-colored envelope embossed with the name of some fancy law firm. The letter lurking inside got off to the usual lurching Dear Ms. Wiseman.... start, but it ended up careening drunkenly around a corner I certainly didn't expect. It invited me to the offices of Michaels and Somerset, Attorneys at Law in two days, for the reading of Melissa's will. Well, that just started me crying again, and I sat on our shared sofa, sobbing, tears running down my face. At age 30, I felt as though my life were over, along with Melissa's.
We'd spent 10 deliriously happy years together, as lovers and partners, ever since I'd been a freshman at Cornell, and she, an assistant librarian in the graduate library at school. At the reading, I got a sense of the life Melissa had led as a child. There was no one else there from her family. She'd been an only child, a late surprise to her elderly parents, and they had passed on by this time. But the family's lawyers were upper crust, catering to the wishes of the very rich, and their offices showed it.
Leather, mahogany, and brocade everywhere, the place smelled like other people's money. The lawyer, a pretty starched sort, greeted me, then droned on for a while explaining the terms of her will. A will that seemed kind of peculiar to me.
... Blake Foundation, as a condition of Melissa Blake's Last Will and Testament, bequeaths to you, for your use as your sole domicile, her family residence at McKenzie Estate. Should you fulfill the further terms of this Will within one year, the residence, and all services required for its upkeep, will be made available to you for the rest of your life at no charge. In order to meet the requirements of this Will, and retain tenancy rights, you will have to complete the following...
Since I can tell you a lot faster than that over-priced lawyer Williamson could tell it, let me just sum it up. I had to move into, and live in her family's mansion, named "The McKenzie Estate," in upstate New York immediately, and live in it for at least one full year, without leaving the grounds even once during that time. It sounded to me like a strange gift, given to me by someone who I'd loved desperately, and who had loved me, but who was dead and gone now. I was pleased by the thought of her remembering me, though, and since I was able to move my writing work there, as well as being close to getting thrown out of our apartment, and the digs were nice, well...
And so I showed up at McKenzie Estate on June17th, Year of Our Lord 2001. Melissa and I had visited it at the beginning of our marriage, which was never formal, sometimes stormy, but always peculiarly intense. Melissa had always treated me like a long-lost lover, even from the beginning of our relationship, and I had never quite understood that, though I loved her love for me, and returned it fully.
The place matched what I remembered of it twelve years before, in 1989, though there were undoubtedly fewer Blakes running around now. Her parents had both died of old age five years before, and within a week of each other. That was rather romantic, I thought. That conceit came back to haunt me, when I endured the loss of my Melissa.
The estate was probably 100 acres surrounding a big, no, HUGE, stone mansion. 12 bedrooms, 15 bathrooms (I could never figure out that 'more bathrooms than bedrooms' thing - are rich people worried about the bathroom being occupied when they have to pee?)
Numerous weeping willow trees were rooted knee-deep in an ocean of close-cropped grass surrounding the mansion, several islands of granite boulders perched in a placid emerald sea of grass, that same smooth lawn tucking itself under the gentle waves of an attached lake. In the far distance, serving as a frame for the picture, were vast forests of old growth oak trees. All in all, a picture out of Great Baronial Homes of England , upstate New York edition.
Williamson, the starched barrister standing at the door, handed over the keys, and gestured vaguely at the hired help who'd keep the place up whether I lived there for the next year, or whether I somehow ended up floating in that mirror-finish lake in a fit of depression.
He told me to call him if I had any questions, and said that he would see me in one year, reminding me that I must not leave the grounds until then. "Laura, good luck," he said, a surprisingly friendly sentiment, though still delivered in that broom-up-the-ass way of his.
I had been reminded, painfully, at our first meeting, of how Melissa had died two years previous. Like all tragic deaths, it was needless and mindless, simply an unfortunate meeting of an innocent woman pedestrian with a drunk driver. Melissa had rewritten her will six months before her death, to insert me as sole beneficiary, a move that flattered me, but I didn't think that either she or I were mansion types. We'd not wanted to move into the mansion when she inherited it, yet here she had left it to me, and wanted me to live in it now.
The attorney showed a second unexpected spark of life when he said, "Melissa really loved you, Laura. Don't let her down." His words puzzled me. How would it be possible to let her down now?
I nervously opened the massive, but delicately wrought oaken doors, and entered the place. I started looking around and checking the lay of the land for the next year. There was only one kitchen, fortunately, so I knew where I could go to keep my 110 pound, 5'3 30-year old body fueled up. After making myself a pot of almond herbal tea, I made my way around both the inside of the structure, and a small portion of the outside nearest to it.
I found myself attracted to a shaded bower, with clematis vines growing up trellises, the large purple blossoms so lovely, and some of the smaller-blossomed flowers quite fragrant as well as attractive. The small arbor centered on a small bench for two - a place for lovers. I wondered if that house had ever seen any lovers in the last twenty years. From what little I knew of her family, lovers of any kind, at least under 75 or so, seemed a remote possibility. On our initial visit, Melissa and I had lingered in the bower, and her lips had caressed mine softly and warmly, her fingers had aroused me through my clothing, the fragrance of rich flowers filling my senses, the only real memory I had of our visit.
Melissa and I had met at a gay mixer on campus at Cornell, twelve years before, in 1989. Melissa was twenty-eight and a librarian, new to the campus, having spent some long amount of time here at her ancestral home on unexplained business she apparently could not leave, and I was an eighteen year old sophomore coed majoring in English, who had gone to listen to the music at the mixer. I was too repressed to actually admit that I might be attracted to the other girls there too, and too shy to look anyone in the eyes. As I sat on the grey stone steps outside the Student Union, the breeze pushing richly colored maple leaves along the pavement beside me, I could hear the bass line of "She Drives Me Crazy" through the doors, and I wondered if I'd ever work up the courage to actually enter.
While I was standing outside the doors watching the girls come and go, Melissa walked up to me, smiled and quietly asked me if I were going in. I looked up at her when she spoke, and saw an attractive brunette with a moderately short, layered haircut, wearing a cute red plaid wool vest and skirt combination, with a cream colored blouse underneath, and a pretty gold locket, with a clear precious stone set in its center. Her smile seemed dazzling to me, and her shape was nicely rounded, her breasts full, much larger than mine. With her glasses on though, she looked every bit the librarian, although an attractive, smiling one. Come to think of it, she WAS speaking in a whisper, at least at first. Her eyes were a startling shade of blue, so very bright and clear.
I suddenly felt like a complete slob, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, though in my defense it WAS a Cornell sweatshirt, and I HAD brushed my long dark blonde hair. Wearing sneakers, at 5' 3 I felt tiny next to her 5' 9 . I hemmed and hawed, as though I were afraid that I would be ravished if it were discovered that I liked music, and - the impossible possibility - other girls. As it turned out, Melissa was quite nice enough and she later did end up ravishing me, though with my consent and to our mutual pleasure.
We did both go inside to the dance, corny autumn-motif decorations all around us on the walls. We talked for a long time, and drank beer, and she told me that she had recently lost her lover, but that she was trying to get back into the social scene. I slowly found myself looking at Melissa as though she were completely different from any other woman I had ever met. I later discovered that she was. She treated me as though we'd known each other nearly forever, and were just picking up some threads from the tapestry of our relationship that had come loose. I never did work up the courage to dance with her there.
