Think Of a Number (2010) by John Verdon Page B

rose from his wing chair, brushed a few wrinkles out of his cashmere sweater, and set his face with some effort in a generic smile.
    “The Importance of Honesty.”
    T he weather had remained blustery, never gaining any warmth. Brown leaves swirled over the grass. Mellery had gone to the main building after thanking Gurney again, reminding him to keep his phone line free that evening, apologizing for his schedule, and extending a last-minute invitation. “As long as you’re here, why don’t you look over the grounds, get a feel for the place.”
    Gurney stood on Mellery’s elegant porch and zipped up his jacket. He decided to take the suggestion and head for the parking lot by a roundabout route, following the broad sweep of the gardens that surrounded the house. A mossy path brought him around the rear of the house to an emerald lawn, beyond which a maple forest fell away toward the valley. A low drystone wall formed a demarcating line between the grass and the woods. Out at the midpoint of the wall, a woman and two men seemed to be engaged in some sort of planting and mulching activity.
    As Gurney strolled toward them across the wide lawn, he could see that the men, wielding spades, were young and Latino and that the woman, wearing knee-high green boots and a brown barn jacket, was older and in charge. Several bags of tulip bulbs, each a different color, lay open on a flat garden cart. The woman was eyeing her workers impatiently.
    “Carlos!” she cried.
“Roja, blanca, amarilla … roja, blanca, amarilla!”
Then she repeated to no one in particular, “Red, white, yellow … red, white, yellow. Not such a difficult sequence, is it?”
    She sighed philosophically at the ineptitude of servants, then beamed benignly as Gurney approached.
    “I believe that a flower in bloom is the most healing sight on earth,” she announced in that tight-lipped, upper-class Long Island accent once known as Locust Valley Lockjaw. “Don’t you agree?”
    Before he could answer, she extended her hand and said, “I’m Caddy.”
    “Dave Gurney.”
    “Welcome to heaven on earth! I don’t believe I’ve seen you before.”
    “I’m just here for the day.”
    “Really?” Something in her tone seemed to be demanding an explanation.
    “I’m a friend of Mark Mellery.”
    She frowned slightly. “Dave Gurney, did you say?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Well, I’m sure he’s mentioned your name, it just doesn’t ring a bell. Have you known Mark long?”
    “Since college. May I ask what it is that you do here?”
    “What I do here?” Her eyebrows rose in amazement. “I live here. This is my home. I’m Caddy Mellery. Mark is my husband.”

Chapter 13
Nothing to be guilty about
    A lthough it was noon, the thickening clouds gave the enclosed valley the feeling of a winter dusk. Gurney turned on the car heater to take the chill off his hands. Each year his finger joints were becoming more sensitive, reminding him of his father’s arthritis. He flexed them open and shut on the steering wheel.
    The identical gesture
.
    He remembered once asking that taciturn, unreachable man if there was pain in his swollen knuckles. “Just age, nothing to be done about it,” his father had replied, in a tone that prevented further discussion.
    His mind drifted back to Caddy. Why hadn’t Mellery told him about his new wife? Didn’t he want him to talk to her? And if he left out having a wife, what else might he be leaving out?
    And then, by some obscure mental linkage, he wondered why the blood was as red as a
painted
rose? He tried to recall the full text of the third poem:
I do what I’ve done / not for money or fun / but for debts to be paid, / amends to be made. / For blood that’s as red / as a painted rose. / So every man knows / he reaps what he sows
. A rose was a symbol of redness. What was he adding by calling it a
painted
rose? Was that supposed to make it sound more red? Or more like blood?
    Gurney’s eagerness to get home