Bitter Business

woman at his side with whom he chatted amiably. No doubt expecting me to arrive by car, their eyes were fixed on the street.
    I was in a snappish mood, my feet were soaked, and I was feeling damp and overheated from running in my raincoat. Moreover, I was anxious about getting back to the office in rush hour in time for my six o’clock with the investment bankers.
    “Stephen, what is it?” I asked breathlessly, once I’d gotten close enough to speak. He held his hands out to pull me into the circle of their conversation.
    “Patty, this is Kate Millholland. Kate, Patty Malloy.”
    “Are we ready?” Patty inquired, pertly.
    “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to take her up alone,” he said.
    “Of course.” Patty smiled knowingly and handed Stephen a set of keys as I looked on, bewildered. “I’ll just wait for you downstairs.”
    “What is it?” I demanded. “Where are we going?”
    “You’ll see,” said Stephen, taking me by the arm and steering me into the building. The doorman snapped to attention and swung the door open for us, putting his gray-gloved hand to the bill of his cap and wishing us a good evening.
    After the wet dusk outside, the lobby of the building seemed bathed in a golden light. The walls were covered with butter-colored damask. A crystal chandelier glittered above an enormous arrangement of yellow roses and calla lilies set on an antique pedestal table of carved rosewood. Very little had changed since I was a little girl.
    The elevator doors slid open silently and Stephen and I stepped in. My heart turned over when he pushed the button for twelve, but I did not say a word. My heart was beating absurdly fast and suddenly the air seemed thin— I knew exactly where I was going.
    When the doors opened I stepped out into the apartment that had been my home until just before my sixth birthday. Stephen turned the key in the door and I brushed past him to get inside. The place was completely empty and smelled vaguely of Murphy’s oil soap and old lady. I ran from room to room like a little girl, my high heels clattering on the parquet.
    It was an enormous apartment—eight bedrooms, if I remembered, with a formal double drawing room and a separate ballroom—in what was arguably the city’s most opulent address. Fourteen-foot ceilings and a wall of windows in the living room that seemed to actually own the lake. Every apartment took up an entire floor of the building, but my grandparents, who had once occupied the apartment upstairs, had given their apartment to my parents so that Mother could combine the two. They hired an architect and broke through the ceiling in the living room to accommodate a grand staircase and an upstairs portrait gallery.
    Whoever had lived there after us had done little to alter my mother’s decorating. There were so many things I remembered: the yellow chintz in the sunroom, the enormous six-burner restaurant range in the kitchen, the black-and-white checkerboard of linoleum on the floor. There was a dumbwaiter that still worked in the butler’s pantry, as did the bell system that was connected to the servants’ quarters, which were located in the basement of the building.
    I climbed the kitchen stairs that led to the second floor, taking them two at a time. I hurried past the rooms once occupied by my parents, the nanny, and my older brother, Teddy. The door to my old bedroom was closed. I turned the handle and stepped inside. The wallpaper was still the same—Regency stripes of Wedgwood blue on a white background; Mother believed that anything that smacked of the nursery was in poor taste. I walked into the closet and turned on the light. There on the inside of the doorjamb were the tiny penciled marks that set out my growth through the years.
    I went to the cathedral window and stood looking out at the traffic snaking northward on Lake Shore Drive, the headlights forming a luminous necklace against the edge of black water beyond. Stephen came up behind me and put his arms around my shoulders.
    “So what do you think?” he asked softly.
    “It’s so strange,” I said, turning to face him and taking a step away. In the best of times just the size of him makes me feel like a little girl. Standing in the bedroom of my childhood, the feeling was overwhelming. “I haven’t been here since I was five years old. I cried so much the day we moved I gave myself a fever. You know, from the day Mother bought the house in Lake Forest, she’s been