The Astor Orphan by Alexandra Aldrich

Author:Alexandra Aldrich
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-08-19T04:00:00+00:00

DAD’S LATEST BOARDER, Walter, had been given notice that the guest rooms would be off-limits during the summer months. After his alleged grave-robbing career in Mexico, Walter purchased an abandoned and decrepit mansion down the road from Rokeby, perhaps in the hopes of one day joining the ranks of the Hudson River aristocracy. He was to live with us while he worked on renovating this new house of his, but it seemed to me that he was always at Rokeby and never working on his renovations. What Dad found most entertaining about Walter was that his history was opaque. Dad liked to joke that Walter had several pseudonyms because he was running from the law.

Walter was one of the few men whom Grandma Claire did not see as a potential danger to her granddaughters. “He’s one of those, you know . . . homos!” she tried to explain to us.

Walter had never said he was gay. People assumed he was because he spoke in a mock British accent and brushed back his naturally greasy hair so that it appeared to have been gelled, with a bump waving out to each side. He would slide like a shadow through the halls and stairwells, descending the stairs or slipping through doorways silently.

We knew about “homos” from one of Grandma’s stories, about the “Barrytown Boys,” who were a gay couple who lived down the road. They were, in Grandma’s words, “perfectly nice, even if they were—you know . . . homos . . . ,” so she had invited them to a long-ago Rokeby picnic. Everyone was out on the western lawn when Grandma suddenly noticed activity on the roof of the big house. “It was little Teddy leading those homos around on a tour of the roof!” At that point, Grandma almost fainted with fright at what they might have done with her son up in the tower.

But now it was the 1980s, and although there was no need to worry about Walter molesting us, she perceived another threat.

In Grandma Claire’s defense, this was when HIV was still first being discovered and very little was known about how it was spread. During our big cleanup that year, Grandma pinned a sign on the guest room where Walter had been staying for the past few months. It read: KEEP OUT. AIDS!

She then proceeded to spray all the rooms and bathrooms with Lysol.

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