From under her desk, Casey pulled out her bag. Beside her wallet was the sheaf of music. With the fat pile tucked under her arm, she left the room. The enormous shredder hummed peacefully near the bank of copier machines. The whole business took about two minutes. She phoned her mother and checked to see how she was. Her parents were fine.
Lucy Griswold drove them up to Litchfield in her blue Saab. She’d welcome the company while going through Joseph’s things, Lucy had said when Casey phoned on Friday afternoon. The drive was not quite two hours, and Casey kept up the chatter by asking questions. They listened to NPR. Lucy said she liked Bill Clinton’s voice.
Joseph McReed’s sister-in-law was a nice-looking woman, trim, past her sixties, who talked intelligently about most everything. There was an authority in her voice; she would never suffer fools. She read two books a week, she said—mostly biographies and histories. A member of the Cos club, the mother of one grown son—a marine biologist who lived in California; she was a docent at the Frick. “You haven’t seen the Fragonards?” she’d remarked with disappointment, as though Casey had been born missing a finger. Her intentions were always good, though. That was obvious. A girl from the Manhattan School of Music gave her cello lessons on Tuesdays.
There were only three houses on Joseph’s street. His house, the one in the middle, was a two-story clapboard with a remarkable porch painted cream white. The shutters were a French blue like Joseph’s glasses and his watchband. The rooms smelled fresher than expected, but it was warm today, so they opened all the windows. There was no air-conditioning, but Lucy said the house had been winterized in the eighties. John was thinking of selling it in the spring, but it made him sad to think of doing so. Besides, the market was slow right now. A lady came to clean the house still; the plants had been watered. Lucy took the bills and circulars from the hall desk and dropped them into her net grocery bag. You died, but you still got mail. There were some hats in the second-floor bedroom, more in the attic, and the remainder in the guest room on the main floor.
“Take a look,” Lucy said. “They’re yours.”
Casey felt awkward, but this was what she had wanted to do today. She had phoned the Griswolds yesterday after the offers were announced, and Lucy had been so charming on the phone.
“I never understood their appeal, really. I mean, for me, anyway. I look funny in them,” Lucy said.
“I doubt that,” Casey said. Lilly Daché, the famous milliner, had written that every woman looked better in a hat. She just had to find the right one. Daché believed that wonderful things could happen to a woman wearing a hat—get kissed, meet a new friend, at the minimum, avoid freckles. Casey had worn a plain broad-brimmed straw today with a white T-shirt and chinos, tennis shoes. “Here, try mine. No, better, I’ll find one of Hazel’s.” How strange it was to say her name.
“Oh no,” Lucy protested. “Trust me, I know two things about me and fashion: I look lousy in hats and in the color green. My skin becomes lizardly.”
“C’mon. You’re silly. I don’t see that at all.” Casey shook her head dismissively. It could take a long time to convince a woman that she looked fine. Occasionally, you had to repeat the script of assurance till you were tired. But she was in no mood. Her fatigue from the summer internship had been compounding like interest, hitting her exceptionally hard this morning, but she’d rushed out of the apartment unwilling to yield to it.
Lucy continued to open cabinets and shut them as though she were searching for something in particular.
There were photographs of Hazel everywhere. In every image, even the color ones taken not long ago, she was wearing a hat. She was maybe five two, medium build. Friendly looking but not beautiful. Her clothes were simple but with dramatic lines, like Dior’s New Look. When she and Joseph were photographed together, he stood a head taller, his arm encircling her thickening waist. Her eyes were more green than blue. Near the end, her hair was white and puffy.
“She was very funny,” Lucy said. “She could tell a dirty joke. And loyal. No one was loyal like Hazel. Hated to cook meals, but baked on Sundays. Joseph liked a nice cake with his coffee.” In front of the heavy mahogany sideboard, Lucy unbuttoned her shirtsleeves and cuffed them.
Casey held up a photograph framed in marquetry wood of the two of them in front of the shop. They were almost strangers to her; she had never even met Hazel, but to be in this house so soon after Joseph’s death, they felt like kin.