“Do you know anybody in Zurich, Switzerland?”
“Nobody to you. Vivian, I’m dreadfully bored by this conversation. Can’t you simply open the damned thing and find out yourself?”
“I already told you. It’s a suitcase. It was sent to Miss Violet Schuyler on Fifth Avenue from somebody in Zurich, Switzerland. If it’s not mine—”
“It is yours. I don’t know any Violet Schuyler.”
“Violet is not nearly the same as Vivian. Doctor Paul agrees with me. There’s been a mistake.”
A gratifying pause, as Mums was set back on her vodka-drenched heels. “Who is Doctor Paul?”
I swiveled and fastened my eyes on the good doctor. He was leaning against the wall next to the window, smiling at the corner of his mouth, blue scrubs revealed as charmingly rumpled now that the full force of sunlight was upon them. “Oh, just the doctor I met in the post office. The one who carried the parcel back for me.”
“You met a doctor at the post office, Vivian?” As she might say, the gay bathhouse on Bleecker Street.
I leaned my hip against the table, right next to the battered brown valise, trusting the whole works wouldn’t give way beneath me. I was wearing slacks, unbelted, as befitted a dull Saturday morning, but Doctor Paul deserved to know that my waist-to-hip ratio wasn’t all that bad, really. I couldn’t have said that his expression changed, except that I imagined his eyes took on a deeper shade of blue. I treated him to a slow wink and wound the telephone cord around my fingers. “Oh, you’d adore Doctor Paul, Mums. He’s a surgeon, very handsome, taller than me, seems to have all his teeth. Perfectly eligible, really, unless he’s married.” I put the phone to my shoulder. “Doctor Paul, are you married?”
“Not yet.”
Phone back to ear. “Nope, not married, or so he claims. He’s your dream come true, Mums.”
“He’s not standing right there, is he?”
“Oh, but he is. Would you like to speak to Mums, Doctor Paul?”
He grinned, straightened from the wall, and held out his hand.
“Oh, Vivian, no . . .” But her last words escaped me as I placed the receiver in Doctor Paul’s palm. His palm: wide, firm, lightly lined. I liked it already.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Schuyler. . . . Yes, she’s behaving herself. . . . Yes, I carried the parcel all the way up those wretched stairs. That’s the sort of gentleman I am, Mrs. Schuyler.” He returned my wink. “As a matter of fact, I do think there’s been some mistake. Are you certain there’s no one named Violet in your family? . . . Quite certain? . . . Well, I am a doctor, Mrs. Schuyler. I’m accustomed to making a diagnosis based on the symptoms presented by the subject.” A hint of a blush began to climb up his neck. “Hard to say, Mrs. Schuyler, but—”
I snatched the receiver back. “That will be enough of that, Mums. I won’t have you embarrassing my Doctor Paul with your remarks. He isn’t used to them.”
“He is a dream, Vivian. My hat’s off to you.” Clink, clink, rattle. The glass must be almost empty. “Try not to sleep with him right away, will you? It scares them off.”
“You would know, Mums.”
A deep sigh. Swallowed by the familiar crash of empty vodka glass on bedside table. “You’re coming for lunch tomorrow, aren’t you?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Good. We’ll see you at twelve sharp.” Click.
I set the receiver in the cradle. “Well, that’s Mums. I thought I should warn you from the get-go.”
“Duly warned.”
“But not scared?”
“Not a lick.”
I tapped my fingernails against the telephone. “You’re certain there’s a Violet Schuyler somewhere in this mess?”
“Well, no. Not absolutely certain. But the fact is, it’s not your suitcase, is it?”
I cast the old gaze suitcase-ward and shuddered. “Heavens, no.”
“A cousin, maybe? On your father’s side? Lost her suitcase in Switzerland?”
“You mean a century or so ago?”
“Stranger things have happened.”
I set the telephone down on the table and fingered the tarnished brass clasp of my acquisition. As ancient as my mother’s virtue, that valise, and just as lost to history: cracked and dusty, bent in all the wrong places. A faint scent of musty leather crept up from its creases. There was no label of any kind.
I don’t mean to shock you, but I’ve never considered myself an especially shy person, now or then. And yet I couldn’t quite bring myself to undo that clasp and open the suitcase in the middle of my ramshackle Greenwich Village fifth-floor apartment. There was something odd and sacred about it, something inviolable in all that mustiness. (Quite unlike my mother’s virtue, in that respect.) My hand fell away. I looked back at the telephone. “I think it’s time to call Great-aunt Julie.”
? ? ?
“VIOLET SCHUYLER, DID YOU SAY?”