Of Cats and Men by Nina de Gramont

Author:Nina de Gramont [de Gramont, Nina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-48899-2
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2001-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

We had to leave right after breakfast. Dante was in the midst of a sentimental project, moving a house from Plymouth to Cape Cod. He and his partner had bought a small plot of land just down the beach from Dante's childhood summer home— a lovely location, overlooking the town harbor. The house, built in 1723, had its original posts, panels, beams, floorboards, and fireplaces. Usually Dante rebuilt his houses in the suburbs of Boston. But from the moment he saw this one, he knew it belonged east rather than north. “I'm telling you,” Dante kept saying. “It wants to be by the sea.”

On the drive from Connecticut, Dante forgot his embarrassment

to focus on more pressing issues. “Marry me, Anne,” he said, as we merged onto Route 95. “I love you. I love your parents. They're so elegant. So polite!”

“I love you too,” I said, sidestepping his question. As a test run, our visit had had debatable results.

“I'd like to throw a party like that,” Dante said. “My mother's sixtieth birthday is coming up in June.”

Through the window, the bare winter branches gave way to early spring buds. June seemed terribly close.

“It's the kind of thing my father would have done,” Dante said. “Things were different when he was alive. Not so perfect as your parents. But not so out of hand. There were manners when my father was alive. Money and manners.”

Usually when Dante mentioned his father, he described a wheeler-dealer who built his family's security on an attractive but shaky structure. I suspected time was allowing him some liberties with the past, but I put my hand on his knee—as if comforting him not only for the loss of his father, but for the deterioration of decorum. Dante grabbed my hand and kissed it.

“We should at least live together,” he said.

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